Welcome to the reason roundtable your weekly libertarian podcast from the magazine that has no plans to buy parlor I am Matt Welch joined by Nicholas B. Peter Suderman and a limping Catherine Mankey Ward Heidi ho y'all Howdy, hey Matt. Howdy. Howdy. Wow Monday. How do you know I am Monday happy? Catherine I was just down at before we get sorry. I was just down at Liberty con the annual conference sort of annual conference depending on the pandemic Hosted by students for Liberty and a lot of people were expressing worry and anxiety about you because you were Unexpectedly absent due to a horrific injury. What happened Catherine? Yeah well, so I was I was on an e-scooter Listening to Justin Amash's podcast When I hit a pothole and fell and absolutely broke my kneecap and now I can't walk or do anything I am podcasting from my bed Yeah, yeah Hearing you just if you're retracing your steps Where do you I don't I've no steps now I've nary a where do you see the decision matrix breaking down? Is it like just being in DC and thinking that riding scooters is okay? You know, I actually had an incredible parenting moment about this which is that I Was explaining to my kids what happened and they one of them said Oh, so like the problem is that the government didn't do a good job of paving the road and I was like, yes That is the problem if more roads had been private Maybe I would still have an e-cap It's a stretch, but that's what you know, I'm I'm just working with what I got here the I'm talking about this at Liberty con and we will get to the podcast here in a moment With reason colleagues Robbie Suave and Christian Brits ski And I was making the usual offensive cracks against people who ride scooters in DC They then got to their phones to show me all the damage.  I will ride again Matt. I will Only Only non-mechanized scooters back in late 1970s, California Like the ones the little kids wear now or blow right now and had tassels red white and blue tassels coming from the handlebars like Man Alright, we're gonna get to talking about voters Stubborn refusal to prioritize what Democrats and the media want them to But first a word from our sponsor donor's trust the tax-friendly way to simplify your charitable giving without compromising your values friends is Cancel culture coming for your charitable giving big banks are increasingly reluctant to allow charitable savings accounts or Donor-advised funds as they're formally called to direct money toward libertarian or conservative nonprofits The list of charities that have been recently rejected by big banks include the Atlas Network National Review Institute the National Rifle Association Foundation Liberty Council and others to help ensure that your dollars support your values Come to donors trust donors trust is built to serve people who want to put money behind their beliefs limited government and constitutional rights to learn more download of Prospectus at www.donorstrust.org Slash reason If you already have a donor-advised fund, please consider opening a rollover account That's www.donorstrust.org slash reason a line you're giving with your values visit donors trust or today You'll be glad you did. Okay. It's not just the waft of pumpkin spice in the air No, that pungent aroma is the smell of flop sweat coming from Democrats With three short weeks between now and the congressional midterm elections. Here's a fresh headline from this morning's New York Times Republicans gain edge as voters worry about economy times Sienna poll finds with elections next month independence, especially women are Swinging to the GOP despite Democrats focus on abortion rights Disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party end quote Or as a more Caustic headline writer might put it this just in midterms are midterm sing There's been a bunch of polls out the past few days including an interesting Harvard Harris survey That can be crudely summarized as saying voters priorities are not the same as MSNBC's Catherine Why don't you lead us off in grabbing the interesting poll nugget of your choice and perhaps maybe Just tell us your level of enthusiasm preemptively as people get ready to blame the ladies once again for enabling fascism Oh, I didn't know I was gonna get the lady question right up top here. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's fair it's fair so I think that You know, I'm always torn on these poor results because on the one hand I love to have voters just generally be mad at whoever is currently in power because they are right to be mad at Whoever is currently in power on the other hand It is not going to be a solution to put this other batch of idiots in power like Republicans are not going to fix inflation Republicans are not going to make your pumpkin spice coffee cheaper and They don't have the power to do that for the most part now Of course policy matters and I did I would say the tidbit I liked the best from this poll Was the fact that all of the Biden Kind of stimulus payments support payments inflation offset payments all of those all of those payments are not polling Well, people are not saying like I that's really what I needed in this moment So they are both not electorally helpful for the people doing them and our counterproductive economically That's a that's a real win great work everybody But yeah, I think I don't think this is gonna be a blame the ladies cycle Do you I think I think it's gonna be I mean we're white women are bad I guess but but I think that this is definitely gonna be much more of a like very very classic The economy is bad the party in power is in trouble and as you say midterms or midterms thing this is The preemptive blame the ladies thing here's a little bit of a verbiage in the New York Times piece from today The biggest shift came from women who identified as independent voters in September They favored Democrats by 14 points now independent women backed Republicans by 18 points So like we're mad about abortion and now we're mad about inflation Yeah, and we're right to be mad about both those things so screw you Peter You brought the Harvard Harris poll to our attention. Thank you very much for that. What interested you there? So in that poll and in the New York Times poll I think what you're seeing is a weird kind of weird, but also in some ways predictable repeat of 1970s inflation politics and so I spent a couple of months earlier this year working on a big piece for the magazine about the The ways in which we are not exactly repeating the politics and policy mistakes of of the 1970s But it does feel like we're in some kind of like Trans synthwave remix of them, right? Like it's like the same stuff just in a different order and with a slightly different beat I mean, there's inflation and oil shocks. There's a foreign policy crisis or maybe several of them global disarray There's this sense that that crime is a real problem big liberal cities are a mess if you remember that dark weird speech that Biden gave where it looked like he was kind of addressing, you know The first order like the Empire in Star Wars and the whole thing was gloomy and kind of inexplicable and people were like What why is he doing this? Right? It was it was kind of sort of a version of the malaise speech It was like hey America We're in a dark place the malaise speech, which notably did not ever actually use the word malaise But the other thing you see looking at the 1970s and the politics of the 1970s the economy of the 1970s That is just really really apparent this morning in particular is that voters really really really do not like inflation and If you go back to the the polling on on issues and the debates that were happening between Carter and Reagan Or the one debate between Carter and Reagan before the 1980 election It was just far and away the number one issue going into the 1980 Presidential election voters were really mad about inflation and then like beyond inflation They would be like well, I'm also mad about the economy and about energy and you know what? Those are there's a kind of all the same thing and when it's when inflation is high It's just very difficult for incumbent politicians to deflect or shift blame and that's what Carter tried to do What Biden has tried you know to do as well. He's blamed Putin's price hikes the pandemic everything but Biden's policies and political leadership and the reason that politicians can't deflect blame is because rising prices are so Plain to see gas and food prices in particular are just incredibly visible on something like a daily basis To so many voters and I think that when people go to the polls in November more than anything else Maybe not maybe that's not the only issue that they're going to be voting on But in some ways inflation kind of captures all of the other issues It's the one data point and that's what is going to is going to decide this election more than any other single thing Nick, what do you see in those polls out there that is of particular interest to you? so in that the cap hair or Harvard cap Harris poll one thing that I found most interesting is less political but They ask people what are the most favorable Institute or what institutions? You have the most favorable opinions of and the top three by a lot are the US military Amazon and the police and and That in itself kind of suggests that like where the people are and where the media is are very divergent And which then has ramifications for a lot of coverage and a lot of the stuff that both Catherine Peter Peter were alluding to the other thing and this is from a summary of polls for ballot from Balapedia Trump and Biden basically have the same Unfavorable ratings or favorable ratings as as the other had at this time in their presidency But the difference was when in 2018 Something like 40% of Americans thought the country was going in the right direction now It's down to like 24% according to their averaging and that's a huge shift because if You know political scientists have have mapped the first term midterms for the president's party If the president is under 50% approval the average loss in the house is something like or the median loss is like 37 seats This is shaping up to be a really really bad house Outcome for the Democrats the Senate It's more interesting because the Republicans really in a lot of kind of walkover states where they should have been able When easily really have gone out of their way to Nominate just complete dumb dumps. So we'll see but it's not looking good for the Democrats It's really notable how much Democrats have just abdicated all of the economic issues to the Republican Party They're not talking about them or to the extent they are it's like I said It's it's Biden just blaming somebody else for problems or sort of saying well look at the the you know unemployment rate Which is which is quite low, but if you look at this poll the top five issues are number one is inflation Number two is economy and jobs number three is immigration number four is crime and drugs and number five is women's rights The first four of those are regardless of what we think you know about Republicans in immigration You know or or Republicans in crime the first four of those are all issues that Give Republicans an advantage and that Republicans have been playing up very heavily in advance of the vote Hey Peter in your research about inflation politics in the 1980 presidential race did Reagan specifically say what he would do to combat inflation or did he merely are you know kind of Say that he would fix it Because one of the things I agree with you know Biden has he's tried to blame everything else But he's also never said what he is going to do to fix it other than kind of will say like I'm going to Give people a lot of money and I think most people understand that that's not going to fix the problem That is the problem, but did Reagan specifically say you know I'm going to cut spending and you know push to increase You know interest rates while cutting taxes or did he just kind of say I would control things better than a mix of the two Somewhere in between I would say so he had an inflation plan that was and an economic plan that was built around tax cuts it was The numbers were honestly kind of dubious when you actually looked into how the plan worked out It was it was however something sort of specific But then when he was on the campaign trail and in particular when he was debating Carter Carter would say well look You know, there are all of these headwinds facing the country. We have you know in particular We've got global economic shocks that are just really messing with the price of oil that sort of thing And he would you know sort of say other you know, well, there are other problems, too We basically say the thing that you can't say as president even if it's kind of true This isn't really my fault and Reagan turned that around on him and Reagan just delivered this It quite effective again. I don't think perfectly accurate I could like quibble with a bunch of the things he said but incredibly effective response to Carter when they went at it on inflation Where it basically said you have blamed just about everything else. You've blamed the Federal Reserve You've blamed, you know Saudi Arabia and oil shocks. You've blamed Republicans you've blamed just what you what you have done what you haven't done is blame the government for The government itself and your policies and his and Reagan's sort of a summarize I don't have the quote right in front of me But what he came in sort of he finished this bit by saying the problem is that the government has been living too large and That that has made it hard for the people to live well And it was again, we could certainly quibble with the specifics I don't think that the inflation plan the economic plan that he put forward is you know, just like it was a Was unimpeachable At the same time What what he did was he turned around the question and said you can't blame everybody else You have to take responsibility for this and my my answer is don't make government the center of the solutions Catherine I want to invite you to react to a couple of quotes from our president Joseph Robin and Biden junior and you know in light of the accusation here from our colleagues that he hasn't really been saying Much of anything about about the economy inflation. So first one comes from a stop at a Baskin Robbins in Portland, Oregon Our economy is strong as hell That's the first one and then the second one is a is a tweet from Sunday That's thank you. That's such a good impersonation Real American genius second one is a tweet from Sunday if Republicans in Congress get their way Prices will go up and inflation will get worse and then a couple of little carriage return spaces and then at the bottom It's that simple. It is not it is not that simple Our economy is not strong as hell and it is not that simple. I don't know he seems wrong The thing about these like off-the-cuff Biden quotes is that they are almost indistinguishable from Carefully crafted Biden quotes like that's the thing that always blows my mind is like the dark Biden speech that Suderman was referring to earlier Had lines of equal poignancy and craft, you know, I mean it was just still Absolutely, like I will just assert stuff and you know what this reminds me of frankly is Donald Trump Who also would just like say things not back them up? Maybe not fully finish the sentence and then just hope for the best Um, it was like he was on a podcast all the time. It was like he was on a podcast all the time I mean we do that here, but like we're not the president of the United States for crying out loud Nick you were talking a little bit about the gap between media and voter concerns flip that a little bit like one of the things media is obsessed with and We frankly haven't talked about it as much maybe as we could have The january 6th hearings, right? Um, every day there's a new thing about This number of republicans half, I think roughly that are campaigning in midterms or for whatever offices are What media frequently calls election deniers and you know, every time you turn on cnn or msnbc You're going to hear the words january 6th and insurrection within the first 10 seconds And that's clearly not front of mind among most voters Um, but is there an argument and you know something like immigration is on the other hand Is there an argument to be made like well Well, it should be more front of mind and we're just doing our jobs to try to tell people what the important issues are Matt, I would love to answer that question But i'm still waiting on the final or actually the first invest investigation of what happened in Benghazi Hmm The permanent yeah, the permanent select committee on Benghazi is still and to be honest january 6th is a lot Like Benghazi where for the people who are into it. It is all that matters and the people who are insisting That this is you know the this rosetta stone of all the perfidy of the previous administration For a thousand years They're just writing themselves out of Relevance to to most americans January 6 was fucked up.  Uh, it was not an insurrection. It didn't work the system held etc Trump shouldn't run for office again. He shouldn't be president. The republicans shouldn't do that all it Well, you can say all of that stuff Nothing is going to come out of that that is going to You know chain make it more important to people I think and and to your larger point. It's just that the media You know and in particular subsets of the media are are obsessed with it because that's where they are But it's not where people are And we've talked about this before this is january 6th continues to be the basket in which You know a certain a certain type of commentator and a certain type of voter Has kind of put all the eggs of like people are going to realize that trump is really bad And we just have to keep talking about this and they're going to realize that this is bad And it was really bad. I will say like january 6th was worse than mangasi definitely in my view But we don't need to we don't need to do that ranking for the most part Because neither of those things are going to make a dent in the views that the other side has about The main character are there. All right, let's shift gears a little bit There's a lot of social media stuff in the news. We like to talk about it here on this podcast There's reporting from the wall street journal just today that the insanely talented and perhaps talented Lee insane rapper entrepreneur and anti-semitic conspiracy theorizer Kanye West is set to buy the freewheeling platform parlor Which fun fact is owned by the husband of conservative grifter kandace Owens Who's been palling around with Kanye West? Where the two of them wearing matching white lives at matter t-shirts and yes every single word I just said in the previous sentences would have been completely Indicivable to me 10 years ago. All this comes in the heels of news last week, which we covered a lot at reason From the internet 1.0 money service paypal Announced that they were going to start deducting $2,500 fines From users who were deemed by paypal To be spreading quote-unquote misinformation After an outcry including from the foundation for individual rights and expression They rebranded the online payments processing company Backtracked somewhat saying well, we're only going to find you and deduct from your accounts if you do intolerance um, peter to uh paraphrase The talking heads what the hell is going on? Uh with social media and is this all just an expression of the beautiful marketplace of private censorship that you've been advocating All along I mean after all the things we've been through I mean after all the things we got into I know some things that you ain't told me I did some things, but that's the old me Wow That happened, huh? Yeah, so that's uh, that's Kanye West over a decade ago in uh, the great song heartless on what is probably my favorite Kanye West album 808s and heartbreak Massively underrated maybe not his actual best, but my favorite. I don't know man I don't what is what what opinion are we supposed to have about my opinion about Kanye West is always and forever? Give me a new album. That's it um The question was about social media uh, peter. Uh, I was wondering if you could reflect on that But he's right. So Kanye West wants to buy a social media company. Elon. What Elon musk is buying twitter Uh, this this if nothing else this shows us that these things aren't That are that the the arrangements of social media power Is not stable right and so we have spent the last decade or so Having debates in congress sometimes and certainly it's pretty sort of major parts of our political and cultural discourse about Whether facebook and twitter are like so big that they will never ever Uh, you know sort of be dislodged from their positions and look facebook is like flailing into the metaverse Mark zuckerberg is really really happy that he added legs This is this is i'm not making this up. There was like a whole like a day-long press conference Yes, katharine. This is for you mark zuckerberg has solved your problem katharine Which is that your avatar needs functional legs and mark zuckerberg is like here functional legs Thanks, buddy. This is this just ridiculous this whole this app this whole thing that's the the political debate We have been having about how these things are monopolies about how they should basically be, you know sort of public utilities quasi arms of the government that like elizabeth warren and josh holly Should get together to decide exactly which posts or misinformation disinformation Or or either just sort of bad speech that they don't like about whether these things should be subsidized Owned by the federal government nationalized whatever it is It's all dumb. It's all dumb because someday elon musk or khanye west is going to wake up and think Maybe i'll just buy one and then what's going to happen after that. We don't know We have no idea at all and that's how the market works is we don't know how it will evolve We just know that it will and so any theory of Any industry but especially one that is so important as as the speech industry as the As the allowing people to say things online industry Any industry like any theory of that industry that says actually we've we've hit The the final form of it, right? This is the end of social media history and nothing will ever come after this That theory is always wrong nick uh first do it commend listeners to go check out your great talk with elie lake about all things khanye Um, I want to play our every podcast Matt and nick talk about do you remember when uh, or i'm old enough to remember when maybe Who's scared who's scared do for uh This better be about my space It's about pay it's about paypal my space We are old enough to remember when paypal was a super libertarian newfangled alternative To all them fuddy duddy payments processing system And who remind me matt who uh, who were the two big wigs of paypal. It was peter teal And then some other dude. Oh some kind of rusky. Whatever happened. I have uh But yeah, uh, can you just sort of reflect on that as like a a symbol of how many institutions Including, you know online only institutions have just absolutely devolved from their original purpose and ethos Yeah, you know another one, uh that came up around the same time was skype Which was going to revolutionize and empower the world Uh with free audio, uh free video calls, uh, which it kind of did but the guys who created skype Uh were swedish originally they moved to estonia, but they um, you know, they Uh put out a manifesto about how this was going to change the world skype is now on by microsoft Um, so not quite and you know, it has gotten its ass kicked by zoom and a couple of other things But I kind of missed that era, you know when paypal was going to bring You know, it was going to be a new form of e-commerce that was going to you know, it had a lot of it It was kind of had a lot of whiff of bitcoin pre bitcoin But it's not that way anymore. I want to introduce into the conversation just the concept Of what rob long who some of us know he does a lot of podcasts. He was the head He was the showrunner of cheers for a while rights for national review and commentary and other places, but He was telling me recently that um, you know, the ambulatory psychotics Uh that we see walking around the streets of cities like new york la in san francisco How would not have now jumped to the highest levels of power and he's talking about like trump biden and kanye west That they are ambulatory psychotics and like he's not sure whether this is like the ultimate triumph of the disabled Or a sign that we're going down the drain, but I like the phrase ambulance. Uh, that's that's that's a keeper kathryn For changing i'm going to read you a tweet. Um, this one comes from Thanks official, uh, the twitter account of the house judiciary GOP Okay, um, so the GOP public and party house judiciary Your committee, uh, this is from october 6th. So pretty recent and it's still up there Three words each with a period at the end ready kanye period elon period trump period How do you respond? First of all great lead dramatic opener. I like it Not sure that that level of literary achievement has previously been seen in that venue Um, right. So I think there's this always always there's this weird thing in this conversation where it's like members of congress Are like Here's the thing we're really worried about a small number of weirdos having a lot of control over things and it's like my guys It's you Like it's literally you I don't like I just don't understand how straight-facedly you can make this argument Like an elite cabal of unusual characters is is going to be in charge of what people can think or do or say Like it's you the call is coming from inside the house But they're a duly elected by up to 25 percent of the people they claim to represent this morning mad about inflation Are going to choose them. So I guess it's fine like I so there's that there's just like my basic, you know if your worry is Elite control like congress is not the place to solve that but also You know, I do I do think though. I actually remain fairly staunchly in the You know the the winds of creative destruction are going to continue to sweep through the social media Sector and we're going to be fine. I do think there is there is a possibility for a bad equilibrium here That we should be trying to avoid and that is one in which We have de facto control over what speech is or isn't allowed, but it is done through the mechanism of the decision makers at social media companies either trying to guess What the politically powerful want them to do or being told informally by the politically powerful what to do Who's allowed to speak on what terms they're allowed to speak? And that all happens sort of one layer of remove from where anyone can see it Either shareholders or the voting public and I think that that is a concern And I think this is like a classic example of a place where We're sort of crossing into Maybe a new ish form of cronyism like it's a new ish form of kind of collaboration between big business and big government in a way that Does harm consumers? I think there are a couple ways out of it One is just to you know to demand that their you know that users demand more transparency And I think that that is already happening You know people can defect from products that they don't like Regardless of their knowledge about where exactly the sources of those bad decisions come from and then also that we should you know Ideally be electing public officials who don't think that it's their business to sort of pressure or ultimately coerce Social media companies about what you know what they're supposed to do, but I think there is a there is a kind of Temporary probably unstable, but nonetheless pernicious equilibrium that we seem to be headed towards and I would like to avoid it I don't exactly know how Your your press release that you just read there is going to help with that problem Because the more that these individuals who own social media companies or who have big decision-making power in social media companies feel targeted You know, they're going to break different ways Like some of them are going to break jack and be like screw you guys I do what I want and then retire and some of them are going to give in for the sake of Maintaining the viability of their commercial enterprise. I would add before we leave the topic Come in people to check out a report by the Kato Institute A week or two ago about What they call jaw boning where the federal government various agencies or politicians Go after try to breathe heavily on Social media companies and other people to try to de-platform various people including pretty famously alex barons and the kind of a coveted skeptic um It was kicked off twitter or other places Both jake obsolom and ravi swab apron about this a lot And it is an increasing and still kind of too little probably a disgust Factor in our political life right now governments telling people to Kick people off their platforms. It's bad. They shouldn't do that. All right We're going to get to our listener email of the week here momentarily but first A word from our sponsor better help friends When you're weary feeling small Depressed by the ever shrinking days overwhelmed by all that life is throwing at you Do you focus more on the problem or on the solution stressful situations often produce fight or flight reactions? But that's no way to get through every day In this thing called life We need instead to train our brains into becoming problem-solving machines That is where better help.com comes in better help is customizable online therapy super convenient and affordable I'm ready right now to set you up with a professional counselor to help organize your noggin To become an organ that assists rather than a system that overloads. Here's what you do Go to betterhelp.com slash round table fill out a brief questionnaire Match up with a licensed therapist and you'll already get 10% off your first month. You don't like your first match You can get another and so on and so on. That's better plp Dot com slash round table go there today. You'll be glad you did okay reminder And and send whatever lend men to your queries to round table ad reason dot com This one comes from jd brennan in seattle He writes Noah smith makes an interesting case which he links below that the tarp bailouts. That's the troubled asset Relief program. See here. Remember that bailouts avoided a second great depression What say you round table kathryn? I don't know. I guess we give those guys a Nobel prize. So that's something. Um, yeah, like this actually is a really hard question because Um Everyone who's smarter than me on this stuff seems to think that that sentence is kind of true Um, which is interesting to me like I take that seriously when there's broad consensus about this sort of thing my um, you know My question is just always what is the long-term consequence? I think that you can both Have saved the world from a great depression and maybe Uh in the long run have done Serious damage that has yet to be fully appreciated But that's me taking refuge in first principles at like a very Cowardly level and I don't have a great answer to this question today Nicholasby, what's your answer? No, I don't think uh, the the choices are in between a second great depression Or the policy was perfect or something like that and there's no question that the tarp Program did not uh, you know, it didn't target the activity that it was intended to do It didn't necessarily save a lot of businesses. It almost certainly hampered the recovery Um, so I think that I think that's wrong, you know, the government did a lot of different things We didn't have the decline. We didn't have the depression that we had in the 30s for a wide variety of different reasons, including the you know, the fact that National currencies are much more linked. They're based against each other and things like that the economy is very different So no Peter, you are both a tarp critic and obviously A dc status. What's your answer? So I think there were a lot of mistakes made in response to the great recession and the biggest to my mind was uh Was actually aura the the obama stimulus the fiscal Policy response, which is just really badly targeted all throughout at very best I think you can make a case that tarp worked in a narrow sense and on its own terms that by injecting liquidity into the banking system It kept the banking system from total collapse from uh from sort of failures spreading from one bank to another And that unlike the obama fiscal stimulus, which was very expensive The cost of taxpayers was basically zero because the money was all repaid Even if you can argue about exactly whether the the rates that it was repaid at should have been higher and some of this sort of thing but I would say to that case Um, I have a couple of responses. First is that counterfactuals are just hard Inherently difficult. We just don't know what would have happened in the absence of tarp. Second is that there are serious legal and sort of Executive branch authority questions about tarp Um, this was at minimum of an extremely novel policy It was put together in like just a couple of days gave treasury the treasury department a kind of Unlimited power with not a whole lot of oversight and that created its own problem So again, not when I say not a whole lot of oversight. I don't mean zero But it wasn't like there were sort of folks from congress in their, you know Watching over day-to-day decisions and so there were congressional oversight reports that were released And I I want to be clear. This is not like the republican congressional oversight Reports, right? Elizabeth Warren was a channel was a panel member and I was looking at some of the reports Over the last day, you know in response to this reader's question and the second one Starts pretty much from the beginning and it just says the panel still does not know what the banks are doing with taxpayer money That's Elizabeth Warren and Jeb Henserling together saying we have no idea What treasury is doing with hundreds of billions of dollars treasury places substantial emphasis in its letter From December on the importance of restoring confidence in the marketplace But so long as investors and customers are uncertain about how taxpayer funds are being used the question They question both the health and sound management of all financial institutions So It was a plan to give the treasury all the power and hope that worked Now maybe Maybe you can say that it worked in this one case that ben Bernanke had studied the great depression And that we got lucky because there was a guy who actually really knew what he was doing there for once Do we think that that's a sustainable plan going forward? Do we have maybe one or two other examples of that sort of plan going badly? So I think at minimum it was sold poorly It didn't really help ordinary homeowners and it set a bad precedent because even if you accept that it worked this one time It created really terrible incentives because it was with the reason it really didn't help ordinary homeowners was at heart It was a bailout for banks and what it basically said was hey banks If you get big enough that your that your continued operations are We consider them sort of like deeply integral to the functioning of the us macro economy Then if you're ever like if it ever looks like maybe you're going to fail The u.s. Government is going to step in and make sure that you don't That is a very bad incentive going forward. I'd like to Provide a little bit of a context that sometimes gets lost as people present this as a Either prevent the great depression or not. This is what george w bush then president believe it or not said in september 2008 I forget whether this is right before the first vote on tarp or before the second but at any rate um People were panicking in washington people like michael bloomberg were saying it doesn't matter what we do We just need to do something Etc etc confidence. This was a you know a widely respected respected opinion the david brooks is the world We're all saying it doesn't matter. We just need to do something. Here's what george w bush said What would happen if we did not pass tarp? Hmm more banks could fail including some in your community The stock market would drop even more which would reduce the value of your retirement account The value of your home could plummet foreclosures would rise dramatically And if you own a business or a farm you would find it harder and more expensive to get credit More businesses would close their doors and millions of americans could lose their jobs Even if you have good credit history It would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college And ultimately our country could experience a long and painful recession All of that happened All of the things that we needed to pass tarp to prevent because it wasn't we're going to have another great depression It was we're gonna have that that i'm pointing at my computer that i just read to you We did have all of that In direct answer to the listeners question like kathryn. I don't know um i It's the the counterfactual is impossible to do but i can tell you what Many people including at reason And very thoughtful and detailed ways at the moment struggling with the world going crazier all around Predicted would happen if you do this Predicted that you'd be creating moral hazard. That's true Predicted that such amounts of Of government spending would uh, eventually cause or sooner rather than later Cause the government to grow so high that it would put a drag on long-term growth We'd go from the two to three percent that we'd enjoyed For decades to more like one to two percent and that's a huge difference. That all turned out to be true A whole bunch of of negative side effects including after a brief blip of austerity politics in the tea party wave including that There's basically you had blown to smithereens any sense of the restraints on federal spending which we have If we're being very honest about it that's gone created authorities Just random out of thin air like oh tarp means that we can take over the car industry. Sure Um, even though they specifically, uh tried to pass a bill doing that and it was voted down So those kinds of authorities in the and sense that the federal government could do anything it wants in a moment of crisis Hmm. Has that come up since? Um, yes, it has a couple of times a couple of times we had during the pandemic It's worth pointing out a thousand times for some reason I was at the cdc. I I'm still I can't believe it was telling people that they can't Kick people out if they don't pay their rent kathryn talk over me, please I would be delighted to um, no, I was just gonna say I think there is a counter counterfactual I guess where we would have gotten to that place Whether or not tarp had happened that is the the kind of factors that contributed to our politicians and our political culture being ripe for the Overreach essentially that tarp was If we hadn't done it then we would have done it in the next crisis. Um, that's a very dark vision I suppose from a libertarian perspective, but that basically We were we were already as a country in a place where we were We were one crisis away from just letting loose, you know, infinite spending essentially infinite emergency powers And that we had already done that in many areas including national security And so this was just a natural next step and tarp happened to be it, but it would have been something Um, and that that still puts us in this same bad place, but doesn't necessarily mean that Um, you know tarp was what uncorked it one thing to also watch which we did in real time at reason as well is that um, brock obama after becoming president and you look at the his speech craft in Um, uh early 2009 over and over again. Uh, he would keep saying things like, uh, you know When I took office we were the entire global financial system was on the verge of a meltdown Um, it's not true. He took office in january of 2009 meltdown to the extent of which it was hanging over everyone's head Was in the fall of 2008. It seems like that's a splitting hairs. It's not Because he used that to pass the aforementioned, uh, stimulus And uh, and also to uh, look backwards and bathe in a holy glow the decisions that his administration took or the ones that they kept from the bush Uh administration preceding and make it seem like um, it was more Uh dynamic dramatic, uh At the time than it actually was in real time. Um, the banks weren't melting down in march of 2009 In april 2009. Um, so when people use the framing of we avoided the great reset a great depression 2.0 That really wasn't The stakes being set out at the time. So watch it when people are are kind of uh retrofitting The stakes of a crisis backwards. Um, they might be right. I'm open up to that possibility But they're also rewriting what the stakes felt like at the time It's worth pointing out. All right. Uh, very briefly, uh, before we get to our end of podcast cultural recommendations Uh, I just wanted to Uh highlight the fact that today october 10th. No, it's October 10th 17th. What are these days? Who knows if I don't have my google calendar in front of me nick? I just it's really hard Uh, anyways, it's the uh anniversary of the authorization of the use of military force in iraq 20th anniversary in 2002 Um, which was a mistake At the time we shouldn't have used military force shouldn't have authorized it. Um, and led, uh, it's the legal Justification for the iraq war all of it terrible mistake, um And uh, also it should be repealed and there's more movement of foot uh in the house and the senate To repeal it instead of keeping an open-ended Authorization for force that's used in all kinds of matters that have zilchow to do with its original intent Um all aumf. So there's still ones in the books from eisenhower administration. I think it's like 1957 There's like an open-ended one because we were worried about like communism in the middle east Um, we still kind of can use. Um, there are uh, barbara lee has some peter mayer has some uh various Bills out there to repeal these aumf some rand paul has been in favor of that should be done Congress should do that. That's my editorial for today. All right. Let's go to our, uh, end of podcast what we have been Consuming the cultural arena kathryn besides pain killing drugs. What have you been consuming? You know, i'm gonna just go all in and say uh, the justin amash podcast Which is again What I was listening to when I went as overtake at all. It was not justin amash's It's so good. It hurts. Would you say it's so good? It hurts. I was listening to the Matt Fuller episode actually, which is very good because I was meant to be interviewing amash about the ways in which congress is broken Matt Fuller is a congressional reporter. I thought hey, I missed this one. I'll listen to this one. So Um, but in preparation for this interview, I was listening to several of them and it's a good podcast guys If you like this podcast, you are almost certainly gonna like that one. Um, and uh, you know, this of course Justin amash always and forever represents the greatest challenge to my Uh, my deep belief that all politicians are garbage and will disappoint you in the end Um, I sort of can't help but remain hopeful that uh, that justin amash's story will come out with the happiest of endings Uh, in which he becomes I don't know president of the united states failing that though He has a pretty good podcast and you should listen to it But I mostly want to put a request here. Um, I I'm gonna have some free time to consume some media And I would love recommendations from uh, from podcast listeners You know, I sometimes get these anyway, and I'm always super super grateful for them But I need them now more than ever. Um, my one plan is to consume absolutely everything in the expanse series both books and The show but Suderman has already talked enough about those and so I will not talk about that much on this podcast other recommendations would be Very welcome, especially something that's like a little bit funny. I would like some some funny. Thank you Uh, I recommend Catherine that you can start at any time in your life You should start listening to music music is great. No deal. It's art for the ears Thank you for that very insightful analysis Matt. You won me over for music There's a there's a backstory to that.  I guess but no, I was I it was a little bit It was a little bit damp out And uh, and so maybe um, we can blame puddles, but we cannot blame my phone Nick, what have you been consuming? So you mentioned Eisenhower at least once today Matt, but I consume this great Exhibition in a coffee shop in uh, in new york near town square park night street espresso Which bizarrely is on the intersection of 10th street and avenue b But it's called 20th century artifacts from another timeline by an artist named john tabo And there'll be a link where you can see it in instagram But basically, uh, what the guy does is he imagines a different timeline from the one where you are In where in the late fifties when um, eisenhower had a heart attack As a result his doctor, you know takes care of him and then Suggests that he take lsd in order to kind of calm his anxiety about death after that and then There's an alternative timeline including where he uh, he doses richard nixon as well who becomes president in 1960 because he's no longer like a bitter Horrible man and and things just go off in a different direction. Uh, it's very funny. Uh, it's very clever Um, I disagree with some of you know, the the places where john who I know slightly Wants to go with things, but it's really great and it's an imaginative exercise in you know, imagining an alternative future, which is in fact a way of a man or you know, an Uh, imagining an alternative present, which is a way of imagining a Alternative future matt you'll like this in particular. Uh, you know lsd In the 1950s particularly was used heavily to treat alcoholism And one of the subtexts of this series is that mickey mantel Takes lsd in the fifties and ends up having like a 35 year career As a result and ends up with the houston astros Yeah, um in like the 70s So it's it's it's a very inventive very funny very clever and I think very uh, you know low-key inspiring Kind of way to think about stuff and it it overlapped with the horizons conference, which is the oldest and longest running psychedelic conference, um that it's been going on for about 15 years where Business people are interested in this researchers and then culture critics and what not all get together in new york in the fall So 20th century artifacts from another timeline by john tabo It's really clever funny and inspiring. It sounds like one of my favorite Painting exhibitions I've ever attended about 20 years ago in la and I forget the guy's name. I'll look it up um, but uh, it was uh scenes included really large like, uh, uh very, uh, active Paintings about the war between northern california and southern california Yeah, um, and it's just it's fantastic and then breaks your brain in a lot of different ways There's a shift if I may just quickly uh in new york, and I think I did this two weeks ago Wonderland dreams, which was an immersive art project. This is kind of like that I mean, it's much more interactive than a typical kind of art thing and there's a shift going on I think it's particularly intensified post covet of making art much more of an interactive process and whatnot And I think that's all to the good because that's how we should be consuming all art anyway um, but you know this this kind of um Turn really foregrounds the creation of meaning and possibility and kind of inspiration from art So more power to it. Peter. What have you been consuming? I watched werewolf by night a marvel comics special On disney plus so a comic book guys out there. I know there are some in our audience Uh, we'll remember one shots Uh, which is a just single issue stories not really connected to anything else They're kind of out there often out of uh the continuity or sort of not directly related to the sort of mainline continuity of a comic book Or a character kind of fun little footnotes or side quests typically small ball Stories not big epics, but they were often some of the most fun things that marvel released as a result because they didn't bear the weight of The you know sort of the mainline story and that is what werewolf by night is it's a 50 minute marvel comics one shot In tv movie form. It's in black and white Now they originally shot it in color and like made it black and white afterwards and added digital grain So it looks kind of goofy but It's kind of a tribute to the william castle school of cheesy schlocky horror films and it's it's just really fun Right.  Although in this case, they only refer to him as ted Because that's he's not called man thing at all in the the show And it's just it's sort of amusing and silly and it doesn't take itself seriously But also isn't like a a self-aware parody of this sort of thing either It's there's just the right amount of comic book Werewolf monster movie schlocky earnestness, you know for a werewolf movie it gets kind of hairy inevitably But it's pretty good So I'm gonna make kathryn feel even worse um, I saw One of the most moving pieces of art um that I I have seen in a long time um, and it's also something that The vast majority of people listening will have zero access to so I'm now exercising my libertarian privilege Um, which is to say uh while I was down in florida. I traveled to the house of american hero bob pool reasons long-standing Saviour Transportation policy Chieftain uh and so forth uh lives over in fort lauderdale. I'm not going to give his address yet um, but bob has been known uh over the years to have an elaborate Model railroad set of his own design. Um, and I'd heard about this I've heard tell whispers But he and uh his now wife lu. Um, they were a contractual arrangement for a long time. Um Uh invited me to their house and uh and after appropriate proceedings And you know, I was made to follow the rules about what happens when you go in three-car garage converted into a incredible like diorama panorama 12d. It's not really Model railroad capturing of the year 1956 on a line That's a steady incline from the glendale narrows part of los angeles to santa barbara including stops in burbank and uh in the simi valley and various places and passes and uh street scenes and and uh Did we go to glendale? I forget if we go to glendale. Um, but in the narrows certainly um, I just words can't describe He's spent 20 they have spent but mostly bob spent 20 years designing Tinkering with creating little Trees with in baking them by hand with little orange trees because there's still some agricultural scenes in the valley Back then uh, just a remarkable feat of engineering of dedication of obsession From someone who like all good libertarian policy analysts advocates heavily against Uh foolish, uh train projects such as the ongoing high speed rail disaster in california Among other places and just loves trains loves loves loves trains and uh, and it it's remarkable If there's any way of those some of you who are listening know bob Um, I would find find yourself in fort lauderdale if I get yourself to miami Sweet talked man It's designed totally for the space. It'll never be seen elsewhere you unless someone You know pays 25 million dollars for a helicopter and just moves it somewhere It's not going to be shown in the museum. It is museum caliber. It's still not finished, but it's getting close Just remarkable Very moving like american ingenuity and folk art at its best. I love it. Nick. Have you ever seen the uh the situation I saw an earlier iteration of it when bob and lou lived in uh, los angeles In the uh early to mid 90s In a house that uh, mr. William shatner who you may have heard of used to um How's the swimming pool speaking of shatner? Yeah, no, you know, I think drained filled with sand As a health precaution. It's not funny, but it's yeah, that's where we are right now. Um anyways shout out to bob and uh, and uh, and and uh, you know ingenuity art and stick toitiveness It's beautiful. Catherine. Do you want to express your sadness that you've made bad decisions? Do you know life? I don't want the podcasters to hear me crying. Fair enough. All right Uh, if you like uh things that we do here at reason go to reason.com slash donate See all of our podcasts including the reason interview with nick gillespie at reason.com Slash pocket's nick.  Uh, yeah, we do actually on november 3rd We're going to have the great art designer and graphic designer steve heller who wrote a memoir called growing up underground a history of counterculture new york This is a guy who started with the free press new york free press and screw magazine in the late 60s And then devolved into working for the new york times and teaching at the school for visual arts But he's a major uh a major figure in what Art particularly counterculture art and magazines look like But we're going to be talking to him at november 3rd and this week on the reason interview. It's a live Yeah, it's a live interview. We recorded with uh, richard reeves the author of a boys and men a great book from The brookens institution scholar. Beautiful. Thank you for that and thank you for listening. Send us your uh, your Emails, they've been great and interesting to thought provoking a round table at reason.com. Okay. Goodbye


Hi! Welcome to PictureVis. I am Chenda. I'm recording from at home. And I'm Denea and I'm recording at the Billie Jean King Library. And PictureVis is our monthly conversation, sharing great books from our picture book collections, airing the second Wednesday of the month. Denea, let's get started with this session. What do you have to share? Okay, so my first book is actually an ABCs of kindness. So this is written by Samantha Berger. And so the great thing about this book that I really loved is that you get 26 ways to show kindness. And for every letter, there's something that you can do to show your kindness towards other. And I really love this book that a parent and child can talk with each other. And it's a fun thing to do where you can pick one thing out of this book and you can do it every day. Illustrations are very beautiful. And there's a lot of things that you can talk about. Say for example, H is for helping with the chores and giving hugs. So there's a lot of things that you guys can do together and show kindness to others. And this is a really great thing for the year. And also for my next book is Joy. And Joy is written by Yasmin Ismail and it's about a kitten who finds joy playing with her ball of yarn. And all of a sudden she hurts herself and the mama cat comes and comforts her and gives her cuddles and words of encouragement, which is really nice. And I thought this book was very relatable for young children because sometimes little kids, they get really into the moment of playing and they accidentally hurt themselves. And, you know, you always have somebody coming to make them feel better. So I thought this was a really good book. And it's also very encouraging for little ones to just get up, even though you get hurt, just get up and do it all over again. Because, you know, we want to have joy. And that's how we find joy in something. What about you, Chanda? Do you have any other books to show us today? I have plenty of books, but this one is one of my favorite this time of the year. It's Magic Ramen. It is a nonfiction book written by Andrea Wang. It's a story of Momo Fuku Ando. He's a Japanese person that lived after World War II and he saw how there were long lines on the sidewalk after World War II. People were scared and it just kind of reminded me a little bit of what we've been seeing in the news. People are lining up waiting for food. And anyway, Momo Mr. Ando thought that, you know, he has to do something about this because it's so sad. And he went home and he couldn't forget about the hungry people. And he said, the world is peaceful only when everyone has enough to eat, he realized. And that's what he set up to do for so many years. And he worked on it and it shows all the different experiment he attempt to make with different ingredients, different techniques. And he kept at it and he kept at it and he did it for 12 years using different methods. And until finally he was paying attention to what his wife was doing with her fried tempura. If you ever have sushi, you know what that is. It's really crunchy and nice. And then he used that technique and applied it to the noodles he was trying to make. And it made wonderful, great tasting instant noodle and his whole family helped him. And after 12 years in 1958 was when he finally made it to perfection and then everyone got to enjoy on those ramen poor people, children, busy workers and even royalty. It's tasty and convenient. And I have to say, on some cold days or nights, sometimes after work and you don't want to cook, I have my own ramen noodle. It used to be in package. Now I move up to bowls of noodles and I can add eggs for protein or even meat and vegetables to make it a little bit more healthy. So it's really good. I hope you guys enjoyed that one. And then following Ando how he has to experiment with many different ingredients and technique to try to accomplish, you know, making tasty ramen. He used a lot of the techniques that's in STEM and this series written by Andre Betty is a really wonderful book to start out kids to inspire them to become inventors and innovators. And this one is the latest one is more of, like, kind of like community service, Sophia Valdez, Future Press, and Sophia live in of course in the Blue Creek Valley with her grandfather, and she was always very helpful and very conscientious until one day, her grandfather and her walked up and found this horrible pile of trash is Mount Trashmore, and she got an idea of how to get rid of it. But how do you get rid of it. So they all decided everyone gave her ideas, but what they want it was a city park. It takes a lot of work. It took the whole community, and it took her learning to do what she have to do, even though she was afraid and it took a lot of effort, but she kept at it. And then it came with a lot of community help, you know how a lot of changes are happening in our community. And that's how we have to help each other. The class helped and eventually they all got their city park. It's called Citizens Park, and it's really wonderful just teaching when the community. So that's a really cool one, and there's tons of other titles, Ada Twist, Scientist, Rosie, Revere, Engineer, Aki Pek, Architect, and then now, the exciting thing is the series is now being released in the beginning chapter books for second or third grade readers. So it continues with the same character in Miss Layla career class. So I hope you check it out. And what do you have to nail. Oh, sorry, here I am. Sorry, I don't mute myself. But I have two more books that I want to talk about. And the first one is the Hidden Rainbow. It's by Kristy Matheson. I love this author. She's really good. And this book right here is an interactive picture book. And it's not only a picture book, it's a concept book so it actually has all the colors of the rainbow, and there's a lot of flower identification. So in this book, she's asking you to really interact with the bees, and you can do counting. So there's like four bees are eating pollen. Now that yellow has come out so you're really seeing a lot of color, a lot of just everything. I was really amazed with this book. And it's very simple. I always love her writing because it really just is very simple and so colorful. She's also written the book Tap the Magic Tree. So that's a really popular one too. So if you ever want to check this book out, it's another good book to have. And my second one is the three little yogis and the wolf who lost his breath. And it's a fairy tale to help you feel better. And this is written by Suzanne Verde. And the story is about a wolf who wants to huff and puff and blow that house down, but he doesn't, he can't find his breath. And instead of being scared, the three little pigs help wolf try and find his breath. So they help him by telling him, well, maybe you should meditate a little. So they teach him how to meditate. They teach him how to do some yoga poses. And there's all these things that they're kind of just helping him do, but you have to check it out to find out what happens at the end to see what he does. And I really love this book. It was really good. And if you ever want to like teach your child how to find their inner breath. This is a great book because we have three little yogi pigs helping you do that. And there's some cool yoga moves in here that you should check out. And what about you, Chanda? Do you have other books to show us? Well, I have a great book that follows that. I hope the wolf uses his breath. If you know the story of the three little pigs, not to blow something down. But, you know, having your breath, it works well with every situation you're in. This book is Mad, Mad Bear. It's the first book written by Kimberly Geed of this series. She has a new one now that just came out, Glad, Glad Bear. But I'm going to talk to you about Mad, Mad Bear because Little Bear here is, I love his expression. Oh, I've seen those spaces at preschool story time before when somebody is so mad because nothing is going his way. Oh, look at him. He has his arm crossed. He was, he was the first to leave the park and he has to go home and take a nap instead of being outside. And he has an owie. And then, guess what? The worst is he has to take off his favorite boot to take a nap and leave his stick outside. And he's so mad. You see him. Oh my goodness. Oh, and then he practices breathing exercise. Probably mommy has to do it with him or daddy too because he's so cranky and he's crying and he takes a breath and another breath and you do it along with him. And then like a balloon, he lets it all go. And he gives his little teddy bear a hug and it felt so much better. And it doesn't hurt that mommy and daddy. And now he feels quiet with mommy and daddy and takes a nap and after the nap and a little snack. Oh, he wakes up. He feels all better that we wish we could all feel better.  So this is a great book to share and how to practice breathing on breath. When our emotion gets the better of us. So that's by Kimberley. He is really wonderful. You have to check out Glad Glad Bear and what he's glad about. And this one is a book, Skyer and the bees. It's written by Marabeth Bolts. It's really a great book about bees and the benefits of, you know, people who keep bees on their roof top or in their garden. But what if you have somebody who's afraid of bees?  This little girl here shares an apartment with her dad. Her dad keeps the bee because he says, you know, bees pollinate that apple and the blueberries and all the fruits and vegetables need to be pollinated to grow. So they actually, bees is a necessity for us to have fruits and vegetables and to help things grow. And there he is in his bee suit. But oh no, you know what? She is afraid or even though her dad is a real beekeeper, she's always been afraid of getting stung.  And she got stung again. Oh, it hurts. But then she kind of keep calm and just let it go. And then her dad help her deals with her emotion and her fear. And she says one day she's going to go up there and help again. So that's, sometimes we have to do what we have to do because we know it's good for you because that I, oh, it's a mystery, isn't it? That a bee just a itty bitty insect but one stingers, two pairs of wings and six hairy legs can make honey. Not just make honey but helps our fruits and vegetables grow. So I hope you check this book out. It's all about getting over your fear. Alrighty, what do you have, Denea? So I have a book that is written by Min Lee and the title is called Lift. So this style of picture book is kind of like a graphic novel or comic style where there really isn't a lot of words in it, but the pictures show a lot of emotion and a lot of action. So I don't know if you ever heard that saying it's a new year and a new me. So if sharing is on your list of wanting to do this, do that, this book right here is a great example. So there's a family and there's an older girl, which is a sister, and her name is Iris. And she loves pushing the buttons on the elevator. And one day she had to share with her little brother because he started, he got the parents say, oh yeah, go ahead. And he can start pushing and she was not happy, as you can tell in this one page. So one day she hit all the buttons. And I'm not sure if that's what broke the elevator, but they had to have a technician to come out. And the technician threw away one of the buttons. And she took it. And she put it in a room and she put it in her wall. And she can push a button all the time and she doesn't have to share with anyone. So she ended up going on all these adventures but I can't show you that because you have to check it out so you have to see what adventure she goes to. The point is, is she willing to share these adventures with her brother. So you're going to have to go and check out this book, and to see not only the type of adventure she's goes on, but if she's willing to take her brother with her. That really does love her a lot, but sometimes I think even sharing is a really new thing for new siblings. And so this is a really good book. And even when there's not a lot of words, sometimes pictures can only show you, as they say, like a picture is worth a thousand words. So, yeah, this is another book. And we have a book that we both actually picked before even showing each other. And I'm going to change our screen to dual screen so you can see what we picked each other so I'm going to count it through we're going to throw up this book together. One, two, and three. Going up. It's a wonderful book. We both want to talk about it. It's written by Sherry Jay Lee and illustrated by Charlene Cho. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. Wonderful. I loved it. This was a really, it's a really good book when you, I mean, if you take a look at all the pictures and see it like, you know, what's going on in an apartment. There's just a lot of things going on in this book, but you can take a lot from me personally when I was reading this. I felt like this teaches others to be patient because none of us really liked me on elevator that long. And, you know, they're going up to a celebration and so I felt like, oh, they're giving and everybody has a sense of belonging in that apartment complex. And they're all coming together for one thing. So I thought this is a great way of like showing like, hey, there's like, we can all come together for one thing and let's make it happen. And it's all in an elevator. My favorite part is learning, being introduced to something new that I don't know that I have to look up. So one of the family, Mr. and Mrs. Habi on the fourth floor and their grandkids, they brought something holding in a big bowl. It's called gulab jenam. It's like Indian food, a dessert, and I had to look it up and I found it on the internet. You have to look it up to if you don't know what it is. It looks delicious.  And that's gulab jenam. It's a dessert that looks delicious. And so, and it's the favorite dessert of the kids in the book. I know I can't wait to try it out. And then my other favorite part is like everybody's finally in the elevator and I can't believe how many people are you ready to open yours. And how many people are in the elevator. Oh my goodness.  I know it's just like it's so many people. Okay, so if you check this book out, you'll have to take the time and reread it maybe and count how many people got on to the elevator. It's so fantastic. All the people that came to the party, or in the elevator with the little girl and her father. It's so wonderful you see, and even dogs, there's dogs and cats and other animals too. Everybody is just having fun. Yes, it's so wonderful and I can't wait for us to be able to do that someday. I imagine there will be a lot of parties going on after everyone gets vaccinated and it's become for us to go up and join our neighbors. I have a couple more books to talk about so I'm going to change my speaker view. Okay, I do. One of the book that I love is Oana means family. It's written in Hawaii. It's written by Ilama Lomas and illustrated by Canard Pack. I love just the process and it's building up rhyme. So they go, this is the callow to make the poi for Oana, Oana's luau. The poi, if you've ever been to Hawaii, is kind of like a mash up taro plant that it becomes really soft and this is the man making the poi. The callow is the taro and it just shows the process of it being grown in the mud and who takes care of it and how it's grown and then the family that gather together to share the food and drinks and everything and it's really just a wonderful book to share about the culture but also just family and it's wonderfully illustrated. I love the taro plant and how it's depicted and drawn in the picture and how the kids and the family work together to, you know, to provide for each other. It's also the stories that are told around and of course the scene that we all wish it's happening soon that we can have our families and friends gather again over dinner and the note from the author and the note on callow and poi is really wonderful to read about too. So if you go to Asian markets, you can probably find taro. It's like a, it's a root of this taro plant and it's really cool looking and they made it into chips now so you can find that also, but we use the stems and the root. We used to leave to wrap things up, and it's really an awesome plant to think about. And then my last book, our favorite day of the year, written by A. E. Ali, illustrated by Rehele Jamapur Bell. It's beautiful. I love the end paper illustration. It has all the different holidays from different culture, but it's mainly about the kindergartners who are meeting for the first time and their teacher asked them to do a show and tell of their favorite holiday or favorite day of the year, not just holiday, so you can pick any day that's going to be your favorite and then the class get to celebrate it with you. So of course, I love these, the illustration of the four boys. They're so different, but they're all in kindergarten. They all like their teachers and they're all thinking like, what can they possibly find to celebrate? There's a little boy. It's Mubarak. It's Musas. That's his favorite holiday it shows. But as the four boys celebrate all the different holidays, I noticed there's a commonality throughout the celebration. They all involve food and getting together and celebrating with families and sharing. And it's such a wonderful book as the boy. And then one of the boy, his family, Kevin, celebrate Pi Day on March 14. Pi Day is 3.14 is a very important number in math. And on that day, his family, they make different kinds of pies and they learn about scientists and their discovery. And so it's really awesome to just celebrate. Think of a day. I can't wait for 2021 to just pick a day that's going to be my favorite and make something or to bring it and share it with either my coworkers, my family, or just have a get together. And to share it with your friends is also, you know, just being able to celebrate with each other. It's awesome. So that's my favorite book so far of 2021. Danae, what's your favorite. What is going to be your favorite day in 2021. Well, it's not a shared holiday for me. Well, I am very I'm looking forward to celebrating my son's birthday this year, because last year we weren't really able to start it because it was the start of COVID so this year I'm going to be very excited to celebrate it.  But my second would be Christmas. I love Christmas just the whole lights and decorations and spending time with family and ornaments so that is my what is your favorite day going to be for 2021. I'm going to look so forward to having people come into my branch again at Ruth Bob Library and just having children being able to browse through the books. But probably just having a normal day where we don't have to stress about staying apart. But you know, having that option if we choose to, but just celebrating any day without COVID it's going to be my favorite day of the year probably the day we'll remember. Yes, right. So this for picture this if you're interested in any of the books we've talked about. You know, I'm Danae is going to show us how you can look up the books in our catalogs for this month picture book search you can just type in one word picture this 0121 for January 21. Let me share the screen. Turn off my video. So we can type in picture this 2021 and we can see all of the books that we talked about. Oh, is it 0121 for January 21. I'm so in. I don't know where I'm at. Okay, there it is. Yay. Awesome. Yeah. Now, if you want to just type, you know how we pick picture books to share we try to go for the latest books. If you're just interested in other picture books and you can also use our catalog to find out what's being ordered and get it ahead of us maybe find books that we're going to review even before we get it by putting it on order you just type in picture. Books, or just book actually, and then you, if you just type in picture book and do a search. If you go to search and then in the result you see like sort by filters, you can click on date, and that will show you the latest book that's being ordered for the library collection picture book collection. It's even, you know, even before the book is ready to be circulated as soon as we put the book on order that we're going to get it. You can see what we're going to purchase for the library. So that's a really awesome way to get the latest book for those preschool or really avid picture book readers so you can get your hands on a brand new book. So, there it is it has the most current book that we have is in our picture. And then, if you keep scrolling down you can see all of the other books that we have ordered in 2020. Yeah, this is a great way of trying to find new books that we have that usually if you come into the library they're in a specific place, but since you can't do that right now. We are showing you how to find it on the catalog. So if you're looking for a specific author or subject, you can always click on date and that will sort of from the latest book first so that you get the newest item and then you can put a request. And for the book so this is it for our year for picture this. So January 21 we'll see you sometimes will stay safe and healthy this new year. I hope you guys will see you next month.


The coming year is a historic event in many ways. The United Nations has declared the World International Yoga Day over fifteen thousand years ago. Since Adiyogi, many things have happened in terms of propagating yoga, in terms of reaching out. Many administrations in the form of kings took to yoga. For the first time, the head of a major nation on the planet is talking about yoga in public, in international forum. And I invite you to address the assembly, Mr. Prime Minister. Yoga is the only way to reach out to yourself, and to the universe, and to the nature. This could be a kind of a foundation stone to make scientific approach to the inner well-being of the human being. A worldwide thing, that if you want to be well, you don't have to seek heaven's help. You can turn inward and fix it. This is the message, when you say there is an international yoga day, this is what it means. The world is beginning to accept, human well-being is not in heaven, it's within us. It's a tremendous step for the world, and for the first time, one hundred and seventy-seven countries get together to pass a resolution. Never before in the history of United Nations, hundred and seventy-seven countries have voted for anything. I want you to understand, this has lived for over fifteen thousand years without any kind of one organization pushing it or forcing it. Simply because of its efficacy, because it works, it's lived. Today, nearly two billion people on the planet are doing some form of yoga. I'm not happy with that. I want the seven point two billion people to do some form of yoga because in the last hundred years, we've ripped the planet apart, but we are nowhere near well-being. If human well-being has to happen, the only and only way is one has to turn inward, there is really no other way.  The very light and darkness happens within you. The only space where you generate experience is within. If you don't turn inward, fixing your well-being on this planet is out of question. Today, we have the necessary resource, capability and technology to address every human problem on the planet. Never before was this possible. Only thing that's missing is an inclusive consciousness of human beings. And this is what yoga can do, beyond religion, beyond belief systems, beyond caste, creed, race, nationality. People can experience a deep sense of unity within themselves, which is what the world needs. This is a momentous step that humanity is taking. It is time the world turns inward for their well-being, not up, not out in. In is the only way out. If you want well-being, in is the only way out. Mass people all over the world took to their mat, marking the first ever international day of yoga. More than 35,000 gathered in New Delhi for the event. Isha Foundation also stepped forward to help reach yoga in a massive way. No less than 35,600 Isha teachers taught upa yoga classes in over one lakh locations around the planet. To bring the true wealth of yoga to people everywhere. Over two million across the globe took time out to become a part of Yoga Day. Today we heard our Sadhguru speaking. It's a very enriching experience. People from different cultures, ethnicities and religious backgrounds created a global wave. It just did one of the yoga classes. It was really good. The videos were really easy to follow. It is good that we are having a reminder at least once a year for people that there is something else to life. June 21st, International Day of Yoga has become a day to remember. Great experience for everyone. Definitely really good stuff, really good stuff. First time we noticed that it helped me a lot. Even 35,000 feet up in the air, people were getting high on yoga. If we travel to work in the flight, the flight by itself is very effective. The internet helped us reach even more. Over 7.5 million joined us as we released special content. 5 minute practices and even a yoga app. The inspiration behind this whole effort was Sadhguru, a profound yogi and mystic of our times. And with the support of the media, Sadhguru's wisdom on yoga reached many more. Sadhguru, he runs the Isha Foundation which is an international yoga foundation which has trained about 30 million people. Every individual should be able to hold the tools of transformation and well-being in their own hands. This message going across in the form of International Yoga Day is truly historic. This is a true empowerment to humanity. I hope everybody, every one of us will stand up to this occasion and fulfill this great responsibility that's been placed in our hands. The privilege of being able to raise human consciousness, the privilege of being able to make a huge difference in the world, thank you very much.


Hey guys shape your 1,000 here, and we have What are we doing monkey? All right, we're gonna do an unboxing and review of this it's called a rolly I've seen reviews of these before and they didn't get very good healthy views but We're gonna do it anyway. We got it at the I've seen on TV store So it's kind of one of those as well Screaming around there. All right now This was originally 2999 we got it for 1499. Okay Simply perfect eggs Let's see how this is pan out. That's what this is for. I'm not endorsing either one of these companies Or they're not pan me or anything whatever This is we bought this with our money wasn't sent to us Let's do breakfast right as in right now You know, it says it's a perfectly cooked eggs every time and it talks about it's 360 degree heating element The secret is our unique vertical cooking technology VCT Oh But let's open it up. Okay, we think monkey. Yep She keeps looking up there because we got another camera. We're doing different camera angles. We're gonna see how that pans out Probably not go away my editing Okay, so Okay, I Don't know what that's for but we're gonna find out. Okay Just stick Monkeys investigate me this is a cleaning brush. It comes with it. Yeah, I gave $15 for a bottle brush I'm gonna buy for a dollar So, oh, let's check that out And we got these skewers These wooden Skewers that one of us I can see stabbing ourselves in the eye Okay and Here is the dealio Here's the deal Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna read up on this first so we don't look too stupid or more stupider than what we already are On your new roly-grill Grilled Port read before use wash before you Must be coated inside the cooking chamber with non-stick cooking spray every time before use We're gonna check this out. We're gonna go right back with you guys hang tight. Okay guys. We're back Okay, when you plug it in this red light will come on Until it heats up and when it's ready to go the green light will light up. So it's Excuse me. It's ready to go It says you can use one to two eggs, but we're gonna try one egg first now This other stuff is for different recipes like this is for a food packer We sprayed it now These are for different recipes There's 25 recipes in here, so But it says to do this now I'm gonna do this first. I'm gonna set a timer because it says six to eight minutes. We're gonna do eight minutes All right, so let's set this timer minutes Start now it says to crack it right in there says don't beat the eggs I Mean noise she Monkey's laughing so We're gonna scratch the two different angles because the other camera battery went dead Yeah So tell us Tell us a spooky story All right, so we're gonna let this cook for eight minutes It says the first time you use it it could smoke, but it's not harmful. So I don't know So we're gonna be back with you here in about eight minutes. Stay tuned. Still got three minutes left I don't think it's gonna make it.   I thought it was going to crawl right onto the plate It's not a snake. No, it's a spider So anyway, we got one minute. That's one minute mark 45 seconds I wonder why they called it rolly because it rolled right out I don't need it. Why Jesus this is amusement for her It's naughty. It's interesting. That's $15 ever spent with what you guys like 15 seconds, that's funny. You might scare a kid though coming out like that. Well kids shouldn't be playing with something on anyway All right It is time Okay. Well, let's see what we got. This was eight minutes. Now we're supposed to just Okay, it's got We're gonna put two eggs in it.  I need to drop an egg. I don't even know what you're looking at I don't even know where it is. There it is. All right, let's get back to the rolly She's crying. Look at her She's laughing so hard. She's crying. All right, we're gonna put two eggs in here and then I gotta when I pause you guys all I got an egg to clean up off the floor Wait, what is Bruno? I'm glad I didn't watch it yet. All right. What do you say? I'm just waiting. I said what you said I'm waiting knowing you I forgot you forgot. Do you have to do that every time? I don't know what this is Okay, I'm gonna set the timer for eight minutes and we're going to we're going to get We're going to try to gain our composure It's good for his coat. I cooked one in anyway Oh my god had to buy a 14 dollar product Oh, I can laugh Whenever I undress Why why why all right guys? We'll be right back well We put two eggs in it this time This thing is still hot right here I'm gonna taste that but look at it. It's kind of Looks like a banana It's kind of like Weird-looking and it looks soggy like it wasn't fully cooked all the way because it's like soggy Yeah Maybe you have to use the plunger That's for other recipes. I read instructions Don't keep that and stay in there stay in there All right You are having a blast Is My life the weirdest thing you ever seen in your life. I would say so We should have did this live feed My nose is red Your face is red You were crying Yeah, it's not creeping as much Well, there's two eggs in there So that may be a good thing because maybe it will cook longer and not look like half a banana Sorry We got two minutes But I had to guess because I forgot to turn the timer on because I was cleaning up an egg He broke on the floor It's because you jinxed me.  You're not supposed to fiddle with it I don't think Maybe we should leave it in there like an extra minute just in case I don't know if you got two eggs in there Then it's probably going to take longer for it to cook. I always think that's what I just said. Yeah Yeah But also it's keeping the top egg from squirting up. So maybe it's like yeah Maybe not Isn't that freaking creepy? It's like a spider here. I come I could say other things You know, this is my channel.  I never said Look at it It's a mr. Wigglin. Look at it. It's Wigglin No, don't don't leave it. Leave it.  I don't see what it does But I can tell you that top part right there's not cooked just don't No, yeah Maybe it'll suck back in and cook more. I don't know.  Well, when you got heat and stuff like that creates a vacuum You know when it pushes up. No, it doesn't have anything that's pulling it back No, it just just what it does But the top part that I can tell you still Right there is still gooey Yeah, it's still gooey Stop looking at me like that But you would think yeah, I would take longer for two eggs because you know, it's more stuff to cook I think it's not gonna push out no more I was hoping it suck it back down to heat up some more Well, the other egg is probably blocking it. It's been about eight minutes.  Look see I read late. Yeah, I see it That's too funny though All right, let's dump this one out and see what happens Easy goer All right, so there two eggs came together and that's what came out Yeah, this is But now you should cut it open with a fork and see how much it did cook and how much it didn't cook I mean, how do you keep it down if it didn't cook all the way? You should be able to keep it down with this plunger here Honey, it doesn't stay Well, I wonder if you're on that if you said when you put the egg in you put this on top Maybe I keep it down and the plunger will push it up It'll push the plunger up out of it Oh Well, it's kind of it's kind of done back down in here Yeah It's just the top that didn't really go I'm gonna try the first one we did now. Let's put it down Not good What's the taste like? No, that is pretty good. Yeah Now could you wrap bacon around it and put it in there? Yeah, there's okay. Yeah, you can put bacon in it So you could put bacon in there and um Yeah, there's it's in a recipe. That's one of the first Okay, so in closing monkey your thoughts They can't hear you. I think I don't know maybe some practice The time might be completely kind of off. I mean where I tasted tasted done. It remind me a heart a soft Soft boiled egg That's what it remind me of Yeah I mean tastes like a soft boiled egg, but you think it's worth 15 bucks Hey, it depends if what I was doing for me. No, no, I don't need it. I rather just do my own thing But for someone who doesn't have a stove Someone who needs something to cook an egg or Something make omelettes or whatever you want to do in this because there's all kinds of recipes 25 plus And I'm sure you can come up with your and you can make wraps and I'd like to see how you do a tortilla Tia in here. Well, that you just roll it put it in there and then put your egg in it I don't know. You just have to read it. I think we have one We could try That would be interesting to see, you know, if it would work or not I would try hot though So what do you think? Yeah, I give it a five Thumbs up or thumbs down Some down All right, say bye. Bye I went out and caught a red nose All right guys, we got to go Shea bear one tap Shea bear one thousand You never told me if it was a thumbs up or something down I'm gonna call it thumbs up just because it's fun and if you do one egg at a time The two eggs, I mean it looked like it was somewhat done. You might want to cook them longer But I'm gonna give it a thumbs up Okay, I like it. I'm giving it to you I can't hear you.  It's not really that quick. It's not right perfect, but I mean You know if you cook like me while you're camping, you know, you use a five or so If you got electric source you plug it in make your name, so All right, that being said she bear myth man a legend again I am gone for now. So check out monkey 1000's channel. She has some great videos. She's got more to come So subscribe comment and rate to her channel as well. Thanks for watching guys, and we'll see you soon. Bye. Bye