watching Donald Trump speak at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University graduation ceremony on Saturday I've never felt prouder to be an American Jew it's 3 a.m. Tuesday May 16th 2017 I'm David Feldman we have a lot of show so let's get right to it welcome to the broadcast I'm David Feldman David Feldman show.com please friend me on Facebook follow me on Twitter do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman show website go to the David Feldman show website go to David Feldman show.com you'll see some Amazon banners click on those banners and you'll be taken to the Amazon site somehow we get a small percentage of everything you purchase it does not cost you any more money it does not cost you more money so check it out this is the David Feldman radio network on today's show we have late-breaking news about Donald Trump did he leak classified information during last week's Oval Office meeting with the Russian ambassador how he climbed from down with tyranny stops by to fill us in how corrupt is Congress well we know the answer to that question turns out it's a lot worse than we thought on Monday Politico released the results of a three-month study of senators and House members who continue to play the stock market trading on what many might call inside information despite passage of the law five years ago specifically banning such activity we talked with the author of that study Politico's Maggie Severns then radio and television stinks and that's because the Justice Department won't enforce antitrust legislation and so radio and television remains in the rapacious hands of just a few corporations who care more about money than they do democracy Trump's FCC is expected to allow media conglomerates to just get bigger case in point the rabidly conservative television group Sinclair Broadcasting announced plans to buy Tribune's television stations and the FCC is expected to let that happen we talked with David Dayan about this he writes for my two favorite publications the nation magazine and the intercept on today's program David Dayan joins us to talk about why the growth of large media giants is good for Republicans bad for what's left of America's critical thinking my good friend Graham Elwood is an hysterical comedian he hosts comedy film nerds and his new documentary about podcasting has just been released go see it it's called Earbuds the podcasting documentary which is all about my favorite subject podcasting and then we discuss parenting and mating with animal behaviorist Dr. Jennifer Virdelen her new book raised by animals came out this month we talk about what animals can teach us about parenting and also what's in her previous book called wild connection what animal courtship and mating tells us about human relationships it's all about the wild world of romance we learn a lot about parenting and we learn about how to attract a mate on today's show I'll give you a hint about attracting the right mate turns out don't use so much perfume and stop showering and she also tells us that birth control pills may be causing women to fall in love with the wrong men stay with me in September of 2008 Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chair Ben Bernanke went to Capitol Hill to inform Congress the oxygen had just been sucked out of the world financial system and we were just about to experience the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression Alabama congressman Spencer back is was the highest ranking Republican member of the financial services committee back then he attended that briefing in which Paulson and Bernanke said the stock market is about to collapse according to Peter Schweitzer's book throw them all out Alabama congressman Spencer Bacchus pretty much excused himself from that meeting called his stockbroker and told him to short the market then after the stock market collapsed Bacchus pocketed $5,715 on a trade based on what many consider inside information give it to him during that meeting by Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke in April of 2012 the office of congressional ethics ended their investigation of Spencer Bacchus concluding that despite that trade and many others Bacchus had not violated any congressional insider trading rules that same month April of 2012 the stop trading on congressional knowledge act otherwise known as the stock act was signed into law by President Obama the stock act strictly forbids members of Congress and employees of Congress from using inside information for their own financial benefit but according to a new investigation conducted by Politico during the past two years 28 members of the house and six U.S. senators have been trading stocks and companies that are directly related to their work on Capitol Hill according to Politico these lawmakers made a combined total of more than 21,300 trades that study came out on Monday in Politico for more on this we are joined by Maggie Severance who wrote the story for Politico she joins us from Washington DC thank you for doing this Maggie thanks for having me tell me about the study who conducted it how long did it take and where did you get this information yeah so this took about three months for me and one researcher to go through all 21,000 plus trades that lawmakers have done over the last two years so from April 2015 up almost until the present and you know all this information is actually available online so lawmakers are required to disclose any stock transactions they make within 30 days the only you know it's information that is available but not a lot of people use it so we thought it would be worth kind of doing some digging and seeing what's in there they made a combined total of more than 21,300 trades according to your research did they make a lot of money do we know if they made a fortune or is it just gambling you know we did not calculate if they made a fortune or not some of the trades that we feature in the story they it looks like they probably lost money but it's you know it's difficult because the lawmakers are they have to disclose information it's only in a very broad range so someone would say well I bought between $1,000 and $50,000 of stock and I sold between $1,000 and $50,000 of stock so you really have no idea if they sold off just a little bit or a lot in a lot of cases it's one reason that some people argue that this information should be much they should have to disclose much more specific information on what they're doing so that we can have a better idea of what happens. Dr. Tom Price from Georgia used to be a congressman they were holding hearings earlier this year when he was nominated for health and human services he's now head of health and human services trying to dismantle Obamacare he was accused of inside trading and was it against the law? Yeah so you know a lot of the trades that we talk about in our story and kind of what happened with Tom Price is that you can trade stocks based on knowledge that's public but maybe not very well known you know things are kind of known on on Capitol Hill but maybe not known on the general public and that's not inside our trading unless it's tightly held non-public information now with Tom Price people you don't have all the facts there but he had done a number of transactions in healthcare stocks while working on healthcare bills and then he had invested in one company repeatedly that is another house colleague Chris Collins is the biggest investor in that company so there was a question there over whether Chris Collins might have told Tom Price something about his investments that led Tom Price to then invest in that company it's a very small company called innate immunotherapeutic so there's really not a reason that Tom Price would have heard about it if it wasn't through Chris Collins. Was it information that Chris Collins gleaned from a hearing or just because he is so involved with the company? You know we don't know and you know Collins has said repeatedly that he's really involved in this company and he'll talk about it to anyone who will listen you know just how great it is and the work they're doing developing pharmaceuticals one thing that we feature in our story is that actually as all of this was coming to light there were five other house lawmakers who also invested in that company presumably based either on public information about their colleagues investing or based on you know something they had heard from Price or Collins and it's we you know it's impossible to know exactly what happened in conversations between you know private conversations between lawmakers we can only kind of record what's in the public record and report out kind of around that to see get a general idea of how these trades are working. Is the preponderance of this I don't even know if it's insider trading is it mostly Republicans who are doing this you write that Sheldon Whitehouse is also I don't want to say guilty but he's a Democrat right? Yeah we found it's actually pretty even evenly split between Democrats and Republicans when we're when we're just tallying overall the number of members of Congress who have made at least one trade it was pretty split between Democrats and Republicans so this is bipartisan issue. Is it mostly in defense and health care stock Sheldon Whitehouse he's the Rhode Island Democrat and he sits on the help committee what is the help committee and what did he end up buying and why isn't the stock act preventing all this? Yeah so you know our story features a number of transactions that tend to be in kind of defense health and energy because those are areas where it's very it's kind of very clear it's something you know is an energy company and if the bill is affected or if that company is affected by a specific bill. In Sheldon Whitehouse's case he bought and sold a number of stocks leading up to passage of the 21st century cured bill which was a 6.3 billion dollar bill that pumped money into medical research and a number of other causes and White House had been working on different parts of the bill in the weeks leading up to lawmakers kind of announcing that they had finally worked out an agreement and they're going to pass this and it's going to be signed by the president he bought health care stocks several times and then sold some of them shortly after President Obama signed the law so you know like I was saying there's kind of there's this difference between is something insider trading and is something morally or ethically questionable and maybe surprising to voters. We don't say that anyone in this story was insider trading we don't have any evidence of that. I do think that these are things that are probably surprising people who read them and just surprising the people who you know vote and expect that their members of Congress probably isn't isn't doing this kind of stuff. You mentioned the stock act that was passed about five years ago after kind of a number of different kind of dubious stock trades made by lawmakers including Nancy Pelosi had come to light and Congress decided they wanted to put some restrictions on this you know this is a practice that you can't do if you work for the executive branch and so they passed this law called the stock act that for the first time really officially made insider trading illegal for members of Congress and it required these disclosures that required lawmakers to disclose their trades within 30 days so the system we have right now it's there's more disclosure than there used to be and lawmakers are explicitly barred from insider trading but really there haven't been no lawmakers been prosecuted for insider trading and I think a lot of the behavior that we're seeing that is so surprising and shocking to people probably doesn't rise to the level frankly of insider trading but it does rise to be a conflict of interest or something that you know a voter would not be satisfied with it's disgusting it's repulsive and they shouldn't be spending any time trading stocks they should be doing the business of representing us is the loophole in the stock act that a congressman or a senator can hear something that would be insider information they can then pass it on to a relative and the relative can make the trade and so the congressman or senator doesn't have to disclose it is that the loophole you know I if that happens we probably wouldn't wouldn't know about it like I said I don't know how often people do that and you know if people if someone really wanted to they could open an offshore account and make all their trades through an offshore account not disclose them there are also no penalties for filing the disclosures late you could do a bunch of things then disclose it five years later because they really you know in order to encourage people to actually disclose their transactions they keep a pretty open window so there are a lot of kind of ways around being clear about what you're doing if you want to we saw a lot of late disclosures when we were going through our filings and things that people were things that people were reporting quite late so it's you know if you want to get around it I think you could get around it the people that were mostly talking about the story disclose relatively on time it's just information that a lot of people don't you know don't look at and like I said it's not it's not necessarily insider trading but it is behavior that I think people are surprised to learn about right and I don't even think we know anymore what constitutes insider trading it's a very specific violation of the law tell me about adam kinsinger the republican from illinois so adam kinsinger is another person featured in the story he's a republican who speaks to me often about defense issues and he went to a luncheon at a kind of national security intelligence and research firm and then about eight months later invested in that company when they were doing a private capital raise so this is not a company that's available on the stock market but he was given an opportunity to invest and he did that and you know that's it's a little bit of a twist on what we've been talking about so far which is you know he decided that he wanted to invest in something that he may have learned about or it appears he you know had interactions with the company as in his official role as a member of congress so that's another thing we have to kind of ask yourself is that is that something that people who vote for him would be comfortable with if they you know will now they will know about it if they know about what was happening well joe biden before he left office announced the cancer moonshot and congressman chuck fleishman of tennessee what did he do yeah so chuck fleishman and to be clear i should say well i'm on here you know all of these lawmakers who are talking about when we approach them about these trades they said that they the trades were made through stock brokers and that they were they were not the people individually doing these trades which is what tom price said that too right that's yeah you know which you know people a lot of people have stock brokers who you know some of them are able to you know independently do things at their discretion but we can get into that more later but i was chuck fleishman you know he's an advocate for cancer research and joe biden was kind of busy lobbying obama's idea to invest more in cancer research last summer and last fall and he multiple times purchased stocks in specific companies that specifically specialize in cancer research at one one of those purchases was made shortly after there was a gathering of industry leaders in washington dc and the white house announced some new programs that were meant to help cancer research as part of that cancer moonshot tell me about bob corker the senator republican from tennessee by the way i'm not seeing too many democrats other than sheldon whitehouse but well those are those are examples that we have in the story but that doesn't mean it's not something that's happening happening on both sides of the aisle all right senator bob corker by the way this is red meat for me the more republicans i see doing this the happier i am but uh that's but senator bob corker from tennessee what did he do yeah so corker over the years has made a number of large purchases and sales and he several times over the course of last year bought and sold large amounts of stock in chesapeake energy which during that time corker was an original cosponsor on a bill to end the united states ban on exporting oil and chesapeake is one of the companies that joined forces to lobby for lifting that ban so they were lobbying on this issue corker was working on this issue and trying to get this huge market moving policy change made and while he was doing that he was also buying large amounts and selling chesapeake energy stock we're talking about according to your article in politico on monday we're talking about half a million dollars that he sold at least half a million dollars yeah that's a lot of money i mean that you know the you know the uh the spencer bachas trade that i talked about earlier was only five thousand dollars but half a million dollars that that should raise some red flags shouldn't it yeah it's a lot you know which is why we felt it was worthy of including it's a lot of money and it's you know one thing that researching and reporting the story it's constantly eye-opening is just how wealthy members of congress are it's some of them have a lot of money and really complicated financial holdings so it's you know those those buying and selling more than half a million dollars worth of chesapeake stock was surprising to us but it wasn't the only time we saw people making large strides actions well this i find very interesting because i do radio and radio has been destroyed by clear channel which i believe now is owned by bane capital they went bankrupt but they bought up all these radio stations racked up all this debt fired everybody and as i remember bane capital now owns clear channel tell me about texas republican congressman mike mccall his wife is the daughter of laury maize who founded clear channel what kind of uh stock trading was congressman mike mccall doing yeah so mike mccall like a number of law makers we looked at he has a lot you know he's worth an estimated close to 300 million dollars because of his wife being the laury maize's daughter and he has a huge stock portfolio you know and he is kind of he was the most voluminous trader of the people we looked at he had made more than 7 000 trades over the last two years which puts him head and shoulders above the rest and they're in a huge range of policy areas so mike mccall had been trading in just a lot of different stocks and voting on a lot of different issues so it's kind of a broad question there about complex of interest hmm there's a part of me that just thinks these guys are degenerate gamblers anybody who trades like this if you make 7 000 trades it's really not about making money i think it's about the rush because it's just irresponsible they might as well go to a casino well and you have to remember in a case like mike mccall it's probably you know a lot of this money is being most likely handled by a broker who is you know rebalancing the portfolio or reinvesting dividends or all those little transactions helped to you know in other cases there is a pretty strong indication that lawmakers hands were directly involved in these trades which is why we felt like it was a important issue to look at well here's a democrat from oregon congressman kurt schrader what did he do kurt schrader is just another good example of a lawmaker who has a lot of investments you know is pretty wealthy and he has invested in a number of pieces on the house committee on energy and commerce which handles both health care and energy related bills and he had gotten sold stocks in a number just since the start of this year in a number of major health and energy companies so when we're talking about kind of conflicts of interest and people who often vote on issues and helps tear legislation he's one example of a lawmaker who his trades pose a clear potential conflict of interest with his work on capital health brian baird democrat from washington what was his involvement with the stock act yeah brian baird you know he was this was his idea back in the day um he was someone who had come up you know kind of come to capital hill and seen this and he's a populist and was really surprised by the stock you know that insider trading wasn't illegal among lawmakers and he introduced a bill the stock act in 2006 and it really sat around for years until there was a very damning 60 minutes report about lawmakers buying and selling stocks and i referenced it earlier it kind of had information on a number of high-profile lawmakers who had kind of made these dubious stock trades and all of a sudden people lined up behind the stock act and we're excited to support it because i think congress had been shamed a little bit into the board until the bill quickly became law and that was you know a big achievement for him even if we have seen some some loophole sense it's hard to get congress to pass ethics reform and he did it what's so funny in your article that made me laugh is these congressmen think like trump according to baird they think quote they're innately ethical they don't only think they're above the law but they think they're incapable of acting immorally i mean that's hysterical yeah you know i can't see i can't see in everyone's head um i can't see what everyone's thinking or know exactly but it was interesting hearing those kind of stories from former employees of lawmakers or a former lawmaker like baird or people who are who were exposed to this on a daily basis for a number of years and feels like there just isn't congress isn't inclined to police itself because people think individually they aren't aren't part of the problem or aren't making any issues with their own investments well this is just a great article in politico and it's going to make you really angry especially at dancy polosi is it the ethics committee that's supposed to enforce this or according to the stock act who who should be looking so you know if you were in federal trading it would be investigated by the sec and the sec is looking into at least one potential insider training case that we know of involving a staffer the ethics committees they play a different role which is kind of setting up ethics guidelines and the ethics guidelines that are in place right now are very lax they allow lawmakers to do a lot of things so there isn't a huge role for the ethics committees to play unless they want to change the rules you know which is something that is difficult as you can imagine to do but it's not impossible unbelievable do you see any anybody passing new legislation or is that just gonna be impossible with this you know it'll happen i imagine it'll happen someday i think this is an issue that when people know about it and when people talk about it they feel like it's important but it's you know the climate right now the political climate is one in which kind of talking about ethics reform can imply jabs at president trump and so people don't want to you know republicans don't want to do it which is you know i think understandable that we're kind of living in an era where talk of ethics has been you know politically weaponized to an extent but on the other hand it's it's sad to think that that's kind of the state of affairs in washington i'll say it that way there's so many ways to get rich when you get elected to the senate or the house it almost seems like insider trading is the least effective way to do it you're going to end up being a lobbyist you get to keep your war chest from the campaign it just seems like it's a pretty low rent way to to make a buck right there you know i haven't i have not been a member of congress or enjoyed many of those perks so i can't tell you which is what's easy and what's not but you're right that it's definitely right you know true insider trading is is risky because they're a very real content yeah just gonna be a lobbyist well i recommend this story it'll upset you i don't know what we can do about this but you should definitely know about it maggie severans writes for politico her most recent story is reckless stock trading leaves congress rife with conflicts i know how busy you are thank you so much for taking time to talk with us thanks for having me coming up down with tyranny's how we climb remember for only five dollars a month you can gain access to all our premium content go to david feldman show dot com we accept all 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advocate i was visiting my mother and my sister and we were having a nice mother's day and they were going on and on about trump and just everybody yes and just to keep the conversation going i said so what i just kept saying so what and this late breaking news about highly classified intelligence let me just play devil's advocate we're just learning that trump met with sergi lavrov the russian foreign minister in the white house last week and he revealed highly classified intelligence about some isis plot right so so not just uh i mean lavrov which which according to the white house pictures that were released it was only lavrov but when the russians released the pictures you notice there was this big fat guy who was even fatter than trump and that turned out that was the spy master for the kremlin for all of the western hemisphere and that is the ambassador to washington uh kiss lia i mean he he or who's name everyone is probably heard because he's the one that met literally met with every trump campaign uh... person that ever existed including jared kushner so he's the spy master for for the kremlin for the western hemisphere he's the main guy and he was in this meeting too and trump tried to hide that if you remember they didn't allow any western journalists and they allowed russian journalists in and uh the russian journalist then released a picture of trump with kiss lia kiss life is the guy flinn met with everybody met with him right flinn met with him uh as i said uh kushner and law met with him uh... what's his name uh carter page met with him manifold met with him everybody met with him there i mean it was almost like he was like telling trump who we could and couldn't hire he's a head russian spy for all the western hemisphere and and trump goes and tells him and labroth very very very highly classified information which was described by the uh the reporter for the new york post who broke the story as the kind of information that you need you need a secret code to even read the information that's how highly classified it is and basically the reason for that was because it came from an american ally who was not interested in russia knowing that they were passing this information along for whatever reason it could be very serious reasons and by trump revealing it he potentially put that ally in great danger and that is a complete no no and what not allowed on any level at all who is there and this who's the freak out everywhere among american intelligence services but also among foreign intelligence services to the point where the israelis are now saying you know trump is coming over there and they have to be careful of anything they say to him going back to the russians and then on to the iranians or some other enemy of israel's because i'm trying to get in the mind of a trump supporter and it's not that hard to get inside the mind of a trump supporter since it's so empty i'm gonna say isn't russia our ally half the time in syria isn't russia our ally fighting isis no russia has its own national interest and they are mostly divergent with american national interest they have some uh they're occasionally certainly not half the time we're not or close to that they the interest of the two countries will um intersect but that that's rare and and and certainly in syria i would say that that isn't even like you know two percent of the time the two countries are at odds with each other in syria and in terms of fighting isis uh i from what i can see russia it's all with russia it's all um all talk and no action i i don't see them helping the united states fighting isis in any way shape or form so the answer to your question okay uh by opinion no okay the news coming over the transom is that trump disclosed something to the russians that as you just said one of our allies had this information about an isis plot and he violated espionage etiquette by doing this donald trump did well it's more than etiquette but okay are we overreacting isn't the entire intelligence community in the weeds waiting for the slightest mistake and just pouncing on trump yes but i don't i don't think this was a slight mistake though this was this was a more major mistake than that uh you know they what the the fear is is that since he doesn't read his intelligent briefing them so so they give you know a normal president gets very detailed intelligence briefings he doesn't want them he wants basically charts and pictures and like a couple of paragraphs he doesn't want big intelligence briefings and and he will he has made it clear that anything over one page will be thrown directly into the garbage so basically he gets these one page summaries that have to have a charter or picture and then uh kushner comes in and reads it to him and while he's playing on his computer his uh his iphone whatever he uses and uh and he's not paying attention and intelligence officials are saying that he doesn't understand the difference between classified highly classified uh you know top secret he doesn't understand these things and to him it's it's none of the stuff that they give him is any different from what he hears shone had to be saying on fox it's all the same to him and he just blabs it and runs his mouth as though it doesn't make any difference and there are no consequences and they're they're all freaking out about it and i don't think it's a little thing i think it's a very big thing you think it's a big thing okay the united who can get his hands on any piece of information and can do anything he wants with it it is a 70-year-old senile freak like donald trump obviously he's a immortal threat to the planet i happen to sometimes think america is not being threatened by anybody that we juice up the threats so the defense contractors can get all their money that's not untrue that what you're saying isn't untrue but the two things shouldn't negate each other and there are threats on one level or another to the united states and you know what just as an example i mean several adversaries of america including russia have long advocated the international training community ditch the dollar and go to another currency uh... or another means of of of of selling up bills that would be you know course the united states trillions of dollars so that so is that an adversary is that a is that a threat to the united states yes and it's one of dozens and dozens of dozens that are different from uh... you know nuclear bombs dropping on an american city would you say that maybe we don't need to be worrying as much as they want us to about isis and al-qaeda and russia that russia crimea notwithstanding that russia is not as big a threat to our safety as well it is a threat but i mean not necessarily a threat in terms of bombing us there's other kinds of threats like i just tried to yeah but so if you have this crowd i don't i don't even consider crimea personally i don't consider crimea like the kind of threat that it's been painted to be because the in reality crimea really was part of russia not and they just sort of made a bureaucratic transfer to to make the ukrainians happy at one point in the nine hundred nineteen sixties or something and the people of crimea from all i could tell uh... are just perfectly happy being part of russia prefer and prefer it to being part of ukraine four years from now is it conceivable that they installed a complete idiot into the oval office who nobody trusts therefore he can't lead us into war he's an isolationist he's so irresponsible the minute he tries to send troops somewhere everybody mcmaster mattis everybody it's good no we're not going to war did you read um barbert tuckman's classic book the guns of august i skimmed it was a little too hard for me to read but i know that kennedy handed that out to all his advisors it was it it's a brilliant book and we're a very well well worth reading it it's not a complicated book or it's a difficult read or anything it's very enjoyable as a matter of fact you might try it because you you know you're in a state now where you probably uh... get a little pleasure out of it then whenever you just skimmed it in any case there was one of the major points of it was that these heads of government don't try to start a war that that's not that's not what they that they don't set out to have a war they blunder into it not with no with no intention of doing it and she's talking about world war one the most disastrous war in the history of mankind and and no one wanted that war no one thought it was going to happen but just one boob after another just you know made foolish mistakes and that is more the kind of a threat that trump would be in terms of a war than him plotting a war because you're right no one is going to let uh... trump get away with uh... starting a war he's not his people around him would stop that the real danger is because he's such an imbecile that he'll just you know stumble into one and people won't be around to uh... to clean up his mess fast enough before something disastrous happens with you know north korea or or russia or china or or any kind of adversary uh... and and that's that's a danger i mean you know trump is you know there's a lot of scuttle but that says that that trump has kind of accepted the fact that he's not really in the chain of command as long as he can make believe he is he doesn't have to really be part of the chain of command so that if that's really true i mean i i feel a little bit better about that but i don't feel great about it i would rather have a you know there's a reason that we have civilians uh... running the military yeah i'm just thinking yeah i'm just thinking about god's joke i mean things are bad there's no question and this is terrifying and we're on the precipice of fascism although i don't think he's smart enough well how smart was musselinia how smart was hitler they weren't that bright and it had a lot to do not just with them uh... but also with people around them and trump does have very dangerous people around him although you know there's also two rumors that he's going to fire bannon but bannon is certainly capable of uh... of leading the country into a state of fascism which i'm sure is is is what he wants to do going back to russia mother's day i asked my sister asked my mother yes it's bad but what did russia do that's so wrong they they hacked the dnc and they released some files and embarrassed hillary is that really that bad and out of you know they was only the tip of the iceberg they did a lot more than that well they colluded maybe with trump's campaign to do opposition research is that a possibility is that how i mean i think that they spent many millions of dollars on setting up operations to uh to deceive low iq american voters with all of this fake news through you know hundreds of thousands of fake twitter accounts and websites and news news reporting operations that don't exist and they and they and you know that doesn't work on people with three digit iqs not that that means someone is brilliant but you know when you look at the trump voters just look at them talk to one i mean it works on them right so whose fault is that that's more our fault than it is russia well it may be i mean you know getting rid of civics classes from i mean when i was a kid we had civic classes they don't anymore uh you know and and downgrading uh uh downgrading education i mean you know the republicans at every opportunity they do everything they can to downgrade education because they know very well that um their party depends on a poorly educated electorate that has no capacity for critical thinking if putin gave money to some of the candidates that would be obviously illegal how about using the money on behalf of some of the candidates i mean you know in france where he could get away with giving money i don't i guess there's no law against it they gave i think a 10 10 million dollars to look in in this country theoretically you can't do that although there are ways to launder money to candidates which apparently has happened and that's part of an investigation and that's why we need a non-partisan independent investigation that can't be controlled by paul ryan or by mitch mcconnell or by the justice department it's got to be an independent investigation and one of the things that everyone is trying to get to is trump is trump's business um dealings with the russians you know a member of congress last night called me and was telling me that the way he thinks from what he's read that they did it was by overpaying on real estate so in other words if a piece of real estate is worth two million dollars and they give 20 million dollars that's a way to funnel money into trump and and he said that that's that has happened uh many many times right in florida there was a mansion that trump that's one that was that was one he was this guy was talking specifically about new york real estate hmm we'll go back to shredding the safety net i know you brought up the giving money i mean that yeah no i i i want trump impeached i want him gone what's the difference between impeached and gone well he's not going to get impeached he's not going to get impeached is he going to get gone i don't think he's going to get gone i think they're going to keep him isn't he servicing the people who put him there by creating this clown show they certainly not going to get impeached while the republicans are in control of congress that's for sure so if there's any kind of impeachment we're talking about uh you know after the after you know 2019 after the elect in the midterms other than the fact that you despise trump how bad is this is it truly a constitutional crisis or do we just hate him you know so much that we're creating things to get upset about well can you accept that the two things can exist at the same time yeah i you know i would say that it's probably chase if he gets caught what do you think it's going to be the the money the russian money following that money yes that is what i think okay speaking of muddy we have a budget that's being negotiated and you write that they're going to be shredding the social safety net is there even a social safety net left to shred there's not much left but there is some left so remember trump plans on on massive tax cuts for the uh for the very wealthy like really massive just as an example getting rid of the estate tax for you know the estate tax if you're if you leave if you die and you have six million dollars the tax the federal taxes on that is zero nothing nothing but if you have six billion dollars then there's some real taxes on that they're getting they want to get rid of that that's a big deal so so so how do you fill in the gaps in the budget which the republicans in congress are insisting on trump of course doesn't care as far as he's concerned he would run up you know the most red ink in the history of the universe he doesn't matter to him but the republicans feel that they can't do that they say if you're going to uh you know they'll do it to some extent but they don't want to do it to the kind of extent that trump wants so aside from cutting taxes for the rich which he plans to do in a very major way and cutting corporate taxes he also plans to so in other words reducing revenues he also plans to spend giant amounts of money you know on the military he really wants to build up the military in a very big way even though the military the american military is bigger than the next six countries combined who cares he still wants to build it up and he wants to build that silly wall which is uh you know estimates range certainly the average is around a trillion dollars although it could even be much more than a trillion dollars to build the wall and to put that into the budget i'm sorry did you say it's a trillion dollars to build the wall sorry you said it's a trillion dollars to build the wall well the average is it could be much more i mean some people say it's three trillion dollars some people say it's more like you know a hundred billion dollars so you know when you i don't know what it's gonna cost but but i'm just saying the average is around a trillion dollars okay or i actually i think i read the average was one point three trillion dollars jesus um it you know no one knows exactly what the wall is going to be and where it's going to go and is it going to cover this area or are they going to leave it out or are they going to leave that area out i mean so people don't know for sure but you know they they did an estimate based on you know per i don't know if it was per it wasn't per mile it was a smaller amount of of per it was smaller than a mile and it was something it was it was atrocious the millions of dollars just for it i mean and and well forget about the fact that it's ineffective but you know the point is that they're gonna spend a lot of money on foolish things and and the republicans have agreed now that they are going to put these things into the budget they're angry that the democrats made fun of them for uh signing the uh the continuing resolution that didn't include any of trump's priorities so now they're going to include all of trump's priorities so the question then comes where do they get the money for this stuff and since trump has said he does well what he said is that he would have no cuts to social security no cuts to medicare and no cuts to medicaid they've already cut 880 billion dollars out of medicaid over 10 years so but he's apparently holding firm on no cuts to social security and medicare at least for now so then you say to yourself where do you get the money where is he going to get the money to pay for the silly wall for the arms buildup and for the other priorities that he wants and the answer to that question is there is no place else to get it from except for cutting uh spending for poor people uh social safety net as you refer to it that and that's that's what the republicans are up to now so i i i did a post about this morning uh that includes uh some interesting reactions from a guy uh you know labor union activist in paul ryan's district who's likely to run against paul ryan a guy named randy brice uh he's likely to be the democratic candidate against ryan now the d triple c the democratic um congressional campaign committee doesn't want to run anybody against paul ryan they never have they've never run anybody they've sabotaged every democrat who's tried to run against paul ryan and they're very very nervous now because this guy is a grass roots kind of hero he's when you think about paul ryan's district it went it went for clinton i mean it went for uh trump against clinton and and randy brice is like the exact opposite of clinton every every reason that anyone in that district had to vote against hillary clinton will make them embrace randy brice this is uh an iron worker with a huge handlebar mustache and uh you know he's a he's the kind of guy that you meet in the bar having a drink and then he goes home to his wife and kid a great guy and he's and he's going to take on ryan now and the d triple c is flipping out over it but anyway he was one of the people when he said flipping out we say flipping out they're they're angry that he they don't want someone running against ryan it's a it's against their policy they they oppose people running against paul ryan their perspective is it's going to take a lot of uh energy and we're not going to win anyway and uh they they don't want the resources going in that direction and they don't want people to have false hopes that we could beat ryan when we can't the fact of the matter is is they're going after much more difficult districts than paul ryan's district paul ryan i mean obama won paul ryan's district in his first run he beat him he beat mccain there i'm not saying it's easy race it's not it's a hard race but if you don't do it and you don't try you never find out and that's and you know now you know hillary won all these districts in texas that the d triple c has never ever tried to win now they're going they're trying to win all of them but it's the first time they've even worked in these districts so you don't win the first time so you know you know if you try one time and you don't win you learn how to do it better the next time then you could try it again the next time but it has to be a first time and and the d triple c doesn't believe in first times do you think polosi cut a deal with ryan over something and said okay if you give me this we won't run anybody against you it was long before ryan when they wouldn't run anybody against john bainer they sabotage every candidate who tried to run against john bainer i mean we we at blue america we worked very closely with this guy again a labor union activist named justin casouli and justin ran a great campaign but the d triple c did everything they could to sabotage him over and over and over again and they do that with republican leaders they all republican leaders they always try to protect them and it's the darndest thing because the republicans don't return the favor true they don't go after after polosi but you know i mean look what do you think the percentage was that trump got in polosi's district i i just want to show you how blue that district is well i know it's in francisco it's i think seven seven percent wow that's how that that was what trump's total was in in san francisco seven percent so you know so we don't really need the republicans not to pursue nancy polosi whole ryan is in a 50 50 district polosi is in a 90 10 district they don't go after steny hoeyer but he's in a completely blue district so i don't know what the deal is i don't i don't know why they're i don't know why there is a deal and certainly the democrats don't go after republican committee leaders but the republicans i mean the democrats don't go after republican committee chairman but the republicans go after democratic committee chairman and occasionally defeat them so so if there is a deal the democrats are getting a very very poor end of that deal health care they're saying now that it's going to get killed in the senate but a month ago no one is really saying it's going to get killed they're just saying that they're hoping that the senate is going to change it and make it less unpalatable and you know but the question then becomes if they send something back that's less unpalatable will the freedom caucus then say no we won't vote for it i mean how unpalatable can they make it before they lose freedom caucus so for example two senators at least two two republican senators have said they're not going to vote for a bill that defunds planned parenthood so both susan collins and lisa murkowski from alaska susan collins from main they both say if that's in there they're not going to vote for it okay well let's say they're being honest and they're not going to what happens then because if that bill goes back if the health care bill goes back to the house with a um uh with with that taken out with that provision to defund planned parenthood out then then the freedom caucus has already said they're not going to vote for it so so that so that is something that i don't i don't know how it gets worked out i don't know how that can can happen but you know there are a lot there are a lot of republicans that are determined to make it happen somehow i don't know how before you go what are the races we should be watching well there are there are two races coming up very very quickly in the next couple of weeks first of all there is uh the montana at-large house seat because ryan zinke the congressman from montana was named trump's interior secretary so his seat is open and that is people think well montana is so red well it's not really so red yes trump did very very well against hillary clinton but hillary clinton is exactly the wrong kind of candidate for montana if you had to say you know create a candidate that will have no chance in montana whatsoever you create hillary clinton that's that's what that's that the dem the republicans couldn't advance for someone better than her but on that same day that trump floated her in montana the democratic governor beat the guy who's running for congress right now in that district he won uh bernie sanders did really well in montana he of course he beat clinton by a lot and i think he beat clinton in almost every county if you want a couple but but but bernie really cleaned her clock so the candidate who's running now for the democrats uh this guy named rob quist who is a you know a kind of a i don't want to say a folk singer but either folksy really well known singer a professional and he's gone to every little town in in in that uh state and and been playing for years and years and years he's really well liked and really well known and he's he's the democratic candidate and bernie is going to be uh born storming the state with him on this coming saturday and sunday so we'll see uh he's been right rising in the polls he's still behind the republican they're spending a god awful amount of money the triple c doesn't want to spend money in there but they've been they've been forced into spending a little and then the other race in june that's really really important is the is the one in georgia georgia six to replace tom price who's now the secretary of uh health and human services and that that pits um john ossoff kind of a you know kind of a moderate to liberal democrat against a far right republican trump shill named caron handle just a complete uh point of trumps and the polling shows them neck and neck i mean the newest poll that came out yesterday had him leading her by two points is trump going to drag them down because trump is at wreck well that's the idea yes i mean i mean yeah i mean trump will trump drag them down so maybe he he but he went to atlanta she she refused to allow herself to be photographed with him so there are no pictures anywhere of handle and trump but paul ryan went also and he's there again this week and there are pictures of her with him and and remember paul ryan is very very toxic right now you know all the polling is showing that paul ryan is one of the most hated politicians in america his his approval rating is is in the gutter and no one likes him in fact in his own district i didn't mention this um they there was a poll that came out by p p p that showed that 51 percent of the people in the district think that they would not vote for him again and only 44 percent of the people in the district say he deserves another term so and that's his own district where where they know him and kind of like him but around the rest of the country they might not know that much about him but they do know that he wrote the health care bill or that it's his bill basically the trump care certainly wasn't written by trump it was under the direction of paul ryan and depending on which poll you read that trump care is is liked by either 17 percent of the people or 23 percent of the people but uh you know 23 percent of the people the high number is pretty bad and that's what people know about trump care so uh or about paul ryan and he's he's in karen handles district campaigning with her i don't think that's going to help her i mean it helps with donors they love paul ryan but i don't think it helps with human beings great howie kline is the founder and treasurer of the blue america pack and he writes the down with tyranny blog thank you sir thank you talk to you next week okay thank you great job thank you so much bye bye coming up from the nation magazine and the intercept david dayan please share this podcast with all your friends do all your amazon shopping via the david feldman show website you're listening to the david feldman radio program you sad pathetic hump david dayan is a reporter for the intercept the nation and countless other magazines you're a pretty great writer and you have a couple of pieces in the nation that i want to talk to you about one is about sinclair media they're a conservative tv network they own all the local stations and i guess the fcc is going to allow them to purchase tribune tribune media uh which uh once held the le times in chicago tribune but uh then sort of split off the newspaper business from their television business uh... that's company that owns w g n uh... and uh i believe tix in uh... new york and k t l a out here in los angeles and about 42 stations all across the country these are big stations big stations uh... in in the biggest media markets sinclair uh... owns far more stations in sinclair actually owns 173 television stations most of them in small and mid-sized markets so they're a bit under the radar foothold in 70 percent of the country and we're talking about local television stations which all of which produce local you talk about local news and you do you know people think well nobody nobody outside of their people in their 80s listen to watch local news not true it's actually the it remains the number one source uh for people who to get their news um you don't think about it too much but uh particularly in in you know areas where uh... that this is kind of the only game in town uh... local news remains an important source of information for people that might be scary to say but it's true and sinclair has a pension for using this power to uh... present a a significantly biased uh set of opinions uh biased in the conservative direction like back in 2004 that's right though uh... you know a couple things came up back in 2004 first it's of all sorts of television stations from abc to cbs to nbc uh sinclair's abc stations refused to air an episode of nightline that merely listed the names of iraqi war debt that was seen as as too controversial for sinclair own station then during the election campaign between john carrey and george w bush uh... sinclair said that they were going to air a two-hour documentary presented uh produced by the swift boat veterans for truth uh... that called into question uh... john carrey's uh military service and uh... they were going to force it on all of their stations without commercial interruption uh... and in prime time two weeks before the election i mean this is clear electioneering on the part of sinclair on behalf of george w bush what are the laws about that well there was two tremendous uh... outcry we didn't really get to the laws because there was such public outcry in the fact at concerted effort to tank the sinclair stock that they backed off and they they they only ran portions of this documentary along with uh you know sort of a broader discussion although it wasn't that much broader because there's about 30 minutes of the the the carry documentary and about three minutes on george w bush's service with the trip texas their national guard um... and there aren't really too many laws to answer your question about this anymore not since the uh... disappearance of the fairness doctrine which was a uh... uh... previous uh... law that forced uh... some manner of equality uh... in public affairs programming in terms of uh... opinions that is no longer with us and so you have sinclair that's able to uh... you know very quietly put together uh... a very conservative news source now you know how how local news works is these are cash strap stations they're always starred for content and sinclair produces content basically tells its affiliates to run it all over the country so it's the effect of a national news network vala a fox news but it's being done at the local news level where people don't really have that thinking that there's some sort of bias to their local news program don't they have a corporate executive at sinclair who delivers editorials right now correct that's correct and they they're must runs right they're must run their chief washington political analyst uh... actually served in the trump administration for a little while he got in poor sepstein he was a surrogate for the trump campaign yeah uh... and and yes their uh... vice president i believe delivers editorials that are must run even if these weren't must run their content you know it's like free content for these these news stations they're going to take it uh... so you know it did it creates this situation where all over the country people are watching their local news not expecting to be sort of indoctrinated in any way and they're getting all this very one-sided uh... set of news and information and that uh... went right down to the trump clinton general election where sinclair reportedly made a deal with jerry kushner trump campaign on these local news stations that were owned by sinclair and sinclair said you let us interview the president or the presidential candidate that that's on trump or uh... your top advisors and we'll just run it and we won't give any commentary whatsoever this was sort of an unmediated filter directly into these local news stations which as i said is a key source of news and and might even have more credibility than uh... a national news source which you know there's all these accusations of bias on uh... a fox news or even even on the other side but uh... you know this was a way to get these things on the local news which just isn't seen that way and uh... it was obviously pretty successful i i believe the uh... cio of sinclair broadcasting rode on uh... in the presidential inaugural parade uh... so there's clearly a close relationship here and what's important understand is that sing player just a few months ago would not have been able to make this deal with tribune that uh... that gives them this seventy percent uh... uh... you know footprint over uh... the country's news viewers uh... and the reason is that laws were changed at the federal communications commission which had previously clamped down on the amount of stations one company could own or the amount of stations we're getting a market we're getting ahead of ourselves for one second okay because i i do want to talk about the fcc yes but i want to get back to what i would assume you would call the astroturf of local news in that sinclair is presenting what appears to be a grassroots opinion in a small town market right but it's secretly being dictated by a corporate overlord in baltimore uh... just think about it david i mean uh... when you're watching a bc and link in nebraska you have no idea that that is uh... station that's owned by sinclair broadcasting you just know it's a bc there's there's no under you know recognition of this link between this uh... right wing uh... uh... propagandist and uh... the the local news that you're watching on your telephone if anything you you think you're watching a bc news that's correct and you get and and that credibility is sort of length uh... over to to that local news outlet so the prestidigitation that's going on and the brainwashing that is going on as you live in link in nebraska you're watching a local television station that's owned by sinclair but it identifies itself as an abc affiliate it's running abc content all day yep so you think oh it's part of the liberal media but it's it's owned by sinclair which has nothing to do with abc so they're running abc network news but they're using their local news to push their conservative agenda making it look like it's homegrown right and now when you know when some people looked at this sinclair purchase of tribune and all of these additional stations they thought oh here we go sinclair is going to create their answer to fox news they're going to create a more conservative network and pick up bill o'reilly or they're gonna do something like that the truth is they don't need to they've got the perfect thing going right now because it's just as you describe they they borrow the credibility of these broadcast networks uh... they've run their affiliate local news they they pipe in all of this uh... very slanted programming into the news product uh... that goes next to your local sports and weather and uh... they they benefit from uh... having this sort of unfiltered pipeline that doesn't have this any kind of uh... understanding or recognition of bias on the part of the viewer uh... that's able to put this agenda forward it it's really uh... quite ingenious it's scary because we're a nation incapable of critical thinking right and i don't mean to sound condescending but it it's true you said two things and they don't make sense you say that these local stations are cash strapped but they're owned by sin clare so right their cash i like to be yeah they're well the news budget i mean you know you have self-inflicted though right absolutely i i mean you know certainly they could raise the product of the news value on on on those stations but you know i mean in the modern era news has to bring a profit in the previous era uh... news didn't have to be a uh... cash cow for any network uh... so you know most local news budgets they don't have the budget to go out and have their own reporter in washington but for example uh... they don't have the budget to have an international bureau uh... no local news program has that sort of budget that's kind of what i mean by cash strap so they are are are pleased to have uh... a a corporate partner that's able to give them that level of news programming and and you know decently produced packages that they can just roll into their their news uh... eleven o'clock news and uh... eat up that two to three minutes of time i mean this is this is really helpful for a local news station that has to be mindful of cost because it's simply the case that that their budgets do not allow them to do you know massive amounts of of national uh... broadcasting in news gathering earlier you said cinclair was publicly traded and do we know if it's profitable it's it's wildly profitable uh... you're talking about uh... a company that owns and operates uh... hundreds of of these television stations uh... you know at which uh... are able to to bring in all kinds of of ad revenue uh... and uh... you know think of how many television stations there are in a community i'm talking about local television stations and in your your your you it's not like there's a lot of choice there right so whoever it is that owns them uh... has the ability to really uh... put a put a big mark you know upon that market and in some places they have more than one station in in a in a in a in a given market now there was a time when that was not allowed by the fcc you weren't allowed to own two stations let me tell you known to but not more than two however all of this could change with our new great and glorious trump era let me filter it through something i experienced when i was young and tv was black and white when i uh... moved to san francisco i work for k-r-o-n which was at the time the nbc nbc affiliate the nbc affiliate and it was pretty much one of their flagship stations it wasn't owned and operated by nbc but they were very proud of their news organization because it was owned by the chronicle family the san francisco chronicle sure something happened i don't remember what it was but the chronicle had to sell k-r-o-n because they weren't allowed to own this is why tribune broke up you weren't allowed to own a television station and a newspaper in the same market i think is the deal and it was because they didn't want one family influencing right a municipality which is which is good good public policy there was a time when foreigners could not own a tv station it was the great senator ted kennedy who was instrumental in lifting the ban on foreigners owning television stations so that rupert murdoch right could buy it fox television right interestingly fox was the other bitter in this process for tribune media they lost to sinclair and uh what is the thinking we we don't allow foreign governments to contribute to the trump campaign supposedly and right there was a time when we didn't want foreign governments owning television and radio stations what were they afraid of well i think i think basically the government has has walked off the field with respect to all of these things particularly uh you know uh antitrust concerns and and and concerns of foreign ownership um you know i mean look there's there's in the in the constitution uh the president can't be born in the foreign country there was there was a you know long-standing suspicion uh and and and you know you could you could even say xenophobia uh over these kinds of matters my my personal view is not that foreign ownership necessarily represents something that that should be feared and and and and should you know give us give us concern it's it's the concentration of power in my view that is a far more important issue at this point and this is the area where trump's FCC is operating to try to concentrate and consolidate media ownership more than we've seen uh in generations i want to get to the FCC in a second but i want to get back to cash strapped newsrooms across america because journalism is a sacred trust we can't have a democracy with the well-informed electorate we no longer have a well-informed electorate the russians are able to hack the dnc and spread disinformation because as i said earlier we are incapable of critical thinking we can't tell what's real and what's fake the justification for firing people at newspapers and in local television newsrooms is we are cash strapped right our television newsrooms our local stations really cash strapped and for example the los angeles times right which was owned by mr zell from the tribune they were told were cash strapped but wasn't it really the year yeah i mean you're talking about a few different things there if you're talking about newspapers and uh journalism print journalism uh it is the case that print journalism advertising has reduced significantly over the last uh 20 years and it's concurrent with the rise of the internet and the changes in in that advertising and and that is a monopoly problem as well something we're going to get into later i think in the show yeah about the fact that google and facebook have cornered the advertising markets uh online and uh you know about 88 percent of them are in the hands of those two companies and they can dictate what the actual producers of journalism can receive in terms of advertising and this has significantly constrained the ability of these uh the newsrooms to survive with the same number of journalists they had in the past and do the kind of very expensive enterprise reporting uh that they had that uh you know that had been their hallmark in the past uh that's true to a lesser extent with television news particularly at the broadcast level i mean you you see less and less international bureaus less and less uh you know long form 60 minute style kind of enterprise reporting out of the those outlets as well um it's a different i think it's a different dynamic in in in the television space it was more about how uh you know television news used to be a lost leader and the the entertainment programming is what made the money and the television news outlet was the prestige part of uh that uh you know equation and also it satisfied FCC requirements for public interest programming and public affairs programming and things like that but those rules were relaxed uh they were able to be uh fulfilled by other means and uh uh over time the uh owners of television news decided well the news has to pull its weight along with the entertainment programming and that's just that's just asking too much of television news which if you want to do it right is also very expensive to produce uh but uh it's it's certainly easier to throw up three talking heads and have them shouted each other and that doesn't cost very much money at all except for the camera uh and the microphone so uh that really is how that all about then sort of the rise of cable news as a competitor uh to drive that you know drove the conversation which much much cheaper product i think it was in the 80s where cbs got bought out i think it was tish some tobacco magnate who said okay news has to make a profit right as i understood it he said that because they discovered that news could make a profit that 60 minutes was number one that there was money to be made with good solid journalism right and i said that was certainly true in the case of 60 minutes i think what happened concurrently was sort of the rise of cnn uh which had an international footprint but also had a 24 hour news cycle to fill uh and that became you know sort of a less sustainable scenario and then it was about the nightly news trying to compete with the 24 hour news that was on all the time uh and figuring out how to do that the best uh 60 minutes was obviously you know something that like you said was was number one for a long time and commanded huge athletes but that was almost lightning in a bottle wouldn't you say i mean nobody else really found that formula uh whether it was uh you know 2020 or or some of these other programs um to to to really make that happen in such a way and of course uh what other uh what other news outlets could not do that 60 minutes sort of as a legacy was allowed to do was really challenge corporate power to really challenge uh uh the the forces that shape our lives and and and too much of programming uh news programming got uh influence whether directly or indirectly by advertisers you know if you look at the nightly news uh you'll you'll see two major uh industries represented at pharmaceuticals uh or the defense industry because it's more about influencing what goes on the news than attracting you know eyeballs to the advertising uh this is like it always amuses me when i walk through dc and you see all entirely different kind of billboard advertising about you know niche bills it's just intended to to to attract the eyes of the staffs of uh congressional representatives rather than uh any uh normal human being and i think that's a lot what happened with with television news if the justice department enforced i guess it's the Sherman act antitrust laws yeah if the justice department protected communities from wall street all radio stations are most and most television stations would be locally owned and as i recall before they relaxed these ownership rules i think it was a telecommunications act of 96 or 97 there was a time when if you owned a radio station a television station locally and even a newspaper because they were enforcing antitrust laws right it was a cash cow it was an absolute cash cow what role does debt play in the decimation of the newsroom the los angeles times was a cash cow but this guy zell bought it and racked up all this debt right well i was almost a private equity play yeah i mean that that's kind of what they do they take these companies private they settle them down with debt and they use that as a means to extract value uh out of the the corporation uh that's because debt is preferred in the tax code over equity and there are a whole variety of reasons oh yeah absolutely um there are a variety of reasons why private equity works you just changed that that that debt wasn't preferred in the tax code a lot of the financial engineering uh that we see out of private equity firms would go away i'm sorry i didn't know this so if i'm a private equity firm i'm gonna take a publicly held company right raise it out buy it out i'm gonna have to do we're gonna use debt to buy that out and then you're gonna place that that upon the company not upon your balance sheet but upon the company's balance sheet so the company then has to figure a way to dig out uh of that and meanwhile private equity takes its management fees uh from uh it's private investors uh it takes all these tax credits uh that you can get uh when you're using debt because you can deduct interest and you can you can do all sorts of of debt plays uh it you know can can sell the real estate uh uh underpinning the corporation and then lease it back to the cut to the uh the particular corporation and and make them pay rent on this thing that they used to own uh there are all sorts of schemes that a private equity company can use uh that are are are just ways to leak profits out of a corporation in the name of efficiency in the name of uh you know uh taking a failing company so so-called and and nursing it back to health uh what they're really doing is is field stripping that company for assets and uh yeah i think i i think you saw that you know with respect to the ellie times with respect to what sam depp is always doing uh one thing i would add though is that there is a there is a culprit for this you know lack of enforcement of antitrust and it goes back to the 1980s actually goes back to man named robert bork who uh we dodged a bullet with him not being a supreme court justice which he almost was he was nominated for that position by president reagan uh however before that in the 1970s he became the most consequential figure in antitrust law in american history because without changing a word of the Sherman antitrust act robert bork reinterpreted its meaning before robert bork uh the idea behind the Sherman antitrust act was thought to be to prevent large companies from growing in size and dominating a particular field and what robert bork did it said nope nope nope don't have to worry about size don't have to worry about bigness you don't have to worry about uh individuals who want to uh display their talents not having any company other than the main company that that dominates a a particular space uh to to to work for all you have to worry about is consumer welfare as long as prices go down there is no problem with any company merging with any other company wow so as long as the price is fall uh that's all you have to think about and that has that simple idea which is not part of the Sherman antitrust act has dominated the thinking around antitrust for the next 35 years wow how did he do what was he do what was he doing at the time he was teaching at Yale law school in fact the day the day after the election this year i was at the Yale law school giving a speech on my uh book and which is now i look yeah i looked up in the room and robert bork was looking back at me that was the room i was giving this uh talking um i mean there was a picture of him there was a picture giant giant portrait um he wrote a book called the antitrust paradox uh in the 1970s and this we invented uh what we know about antitrust law and then the Reagan administration in the 1980s um they they changed the guidance the official guidance in the justice department for how to look at antitrust cases at largely adopting robert bork's view of the case and that that essentially took uh the antitrust enforcement off off the the beat uh and and the country has really never been the same wow because it almost has become doctrine that you always hear while the merger was approved because the the consumer will benefit from a real benefit right they talk about efficiency and consumer welfare and that is not what what john sherman uh actually put in his law as as what he wanted to safeguard against what was he trying to safeguard he was he was trying to stop bigness he was trying to stop the domination of sectors by certain individuals uh and and and corporations and trusts that would uh have consequential outcomes for uh income and wealth concentration which he talked about uh personal liberty and the ability to uh you know be an entrepreneur the ability to uh if you want to take your your your use your particular skills that you can do that in an industry that isn't dominated by someone else so you have a barrier to entry there were all these other facets of uh the the sherman antitrust act that are not reflected in robert bork's interpretation because what he did was he turned it from a legal case to an economic case because you can always find an economist to make the case that there is a consumer welfare benefit to a particular merger and it's just math that they do and and and you can always sort of twist the statistics to make that case now interestingly there's some work that's been done recently that that actually does a retrospective look at a lot of mergers and finds that prices actually do go up of course these mergers happen of course so the entire even on robert bork's own terms uh this consumer welfare idea is ridiculous but it's especially ridiculous because he reinterpreted at a hundred year old law without changing a word of it legislatively just through interpretive guidance uh change literally changed legal history as i see mergers and acquisitions i can't compete with you you're a threat to me you're going to put me out of business i'm going to buy you and then fire everybody and i'll take that's the efficiency right yeah that's what's considered the efficiency and and you're absolutely right and and we have seen this now in sector after sector of our economy uh in places you don't even think about you go into a supermarket and you look down the aisle and there seems to be all these choices in front of you and yet it's a handful of companies that own every one of those brands uh most of the toothpaste in this country comes from two brands all of the eyeglasses in this country are made by one company uh who's the company they're an italian company called looksatica and and and they not only own the brands of eyeglasses but they own the stores in which they're sold um uh you know i could go on and on and on about this about the increasing market concentration and we're finally starting to see a little pushback to bork and what is called the chicago school the the economists at the university of chicago that that really took up these ideas and adopted them um i was at a conference in chicago at the university of chicago in march uh where it was a real consequential challenge to this notion of consumer welfare to this notion that we don't have a problem uh with these large concentrations of wealth and power uh that we're seeing all throughout every economic sector and so things are starting to change a little bit but it's going to take uh you know a good amount of time and obviously what we're seeing right now with the administration uh the trump administration has come in is is a sliding back in the chicago school was hayek milton friedman strouse these were people who big blur who who came up with the idea of regulatory capture uh and they believe they gave us the shock doctrine and they also gave us this belief in the free market that there actually is a free market and it's pure we know otherwise are among the other things they did is they adopted wholesale uh bork's ideas about uh market concentration and market power are they funded by corporate interests well it's almost that do they need to be i mean uh at the time you know i mean the university of chicago had this large endowment and they attracted all these scholars uh certainly you know i mean milton friedman uh worked in and all these all these different countries worked in chile and and and all over the world practically uh preaching this gospel which you know fit very well with uh the you know newly active ideas around uh corporations uh you know you think about the lewis powell memo in the 1970s and uh the idea that the corporation needed to exert its power in the political realm uh milton friedman of course was a favorite of uh the reagan administration so uh you know i think there was a synergy there i mean i i don't think you have to necessarily talk about funding colleges and universities get their funding from a variety of sources but uh there was certainly uh a lot of uh back and forth a lot of borrowing of ideas a lot of use of academics which we see to this day use of academics through funding uh to write reports favorable to business uh and and then you know it it's just a very cozy relationship i know this sounds paranoid but if you do read the the powell memo lewis powell wrote this memo for the chamber of commerce going after ralph nader and young kids and telling corporations to fund think tanks and create pro business propaganda when you hear that there are tax advantages i didn't know this but that you just told me that there are tax advantages for somebody to take a publicly held newspaper take it private and then gut it when i read that clear channel buys another roll up there's another uh uh large concentrated uh media company that was at one point owned by romney's bane capital right and they have dumbed down the country while racking up debt well while not turning a profit but they succeed in making the country dumber i'm not paranoid but i do think people are out to get me but you describe local tv news as the number one source of news for most americans is it conceivable that the republicans are so terrified that people are going to be informed that they've all chipped in to destroy our ability to learn well i mean uh you know i by way of answering the question let me just give this very interesting instructive example that we're seeing here in real time uh because it disrupts the notion that uh that these corporations are just out to make a profit and they're ruthless and and and you know and and uh all they care about is that last dollar and that protects us the public because they'll compete against one another et cetera et cetera so you know what's going on at msnbc right well tell me so msnbc uh we know under the bush administration keith olberman became uh almost by accident became this sort of celebrated figure on the left they built up their uh their roster of left-leaning commentators and news people and uh they continued that through some of the obama administration and now it's the trump administration and they have a new person in charge this guy andy lack who uh is an executive who um he seems incredibly disinterested in uh maintaining msnbc's position sort of on the ideological spectrum as sort of a left counterweight to uh fox news so you know over the last several months they have fired several hosts who were sort of left-leaning contributors to the network they've hired hugh hugh it's they looks like they're going to put him in a a show a weekly show uh to host they've hired george will they've hired uh they've paid given a show to nicole wallace uh who is uh was was served uh and on the communication staff with sarah palin um they have uh sought to rebrand and move to the right uh or at least to the center and the the problem with this is that if you look at msnbc's ratings they are outpacing fox in the coveted 25 to 54 demographic among their remaining left-leaning hosts rachel madel chris haze laurence or don those hosts are doing extremely well in the trump era as one would expect given you know the sort of uh feeling in the air and and and and how how trump you know sort of brings these headlines um but andy lack is going against the very uh ideas that that the network should go with what is doing well in fact laurence or donnell's contract is up in like three weeks and he has not even been talked to about renewing that contract he's the number two uh person in cable news right now and and it looks like they're gonna let him go we remember that during uh the early days of the bush administration before keith olmerman stumbled upon this formula phil donnie hugh was the number one uh host at msnbc and he got fired for talking about the iraq war two didn't rosie have a show too i think she might have so and they did what is that if it was corporations only sir look out for their self-interest and if something is making money for them that's what they're gonna do then you would see uh the building up of uh host and similar uh uh uh ideological uh interest as rachel maddox chris is more so donnell you think the exact opposite at msnbc and then and and it shows that it's not just about this corporate driver profit it's that there's a corporate class right and uh it's more important to be beholden to that corporate class and to be you know show fealty to that corporate class at least in the the business of television news then it is to make money is it just the corporate class or is it about making money one will facilitate the other i mean you might give up what uh a couple ratings points here but maybe your advertisers will come aboard to uh decide you know that you're you know fighting the good fight by getting rid of those left wingers off the television dial uh or maybe it's just that you'd rather put out news into the world that helps the cause of getting some large tax cut down the road so your personal interest outweigh the interest of uh the corporation in this case so i just think it's a really instructive kind of uh example uh of of how this this this idea and you know this is part of the board guide is that you know corporations are ruthless they'll go for their profit and we don't have to worry about them you know jacking up prices are doing all of these things because they they will they will compete uh because the free market the invisible hand of the free market will will will surely uh spread these benefits to everybody but it's not true yeah i was listening to bernie talk the other day i don't know what your politics are i suspect they're similar to mine and everything bernie says is spot on and i thought hmm here he is on meet the press the only way bernie would ever be allowed on meet the press is almost becoming president he was so undeniable that they had to put him on and when they put him on they couldn't shut him up because he almost became president and bernie sanders had a 25 year career prior to running for president where he probably appeared on on a sunday morning show uh two times right in that 25 years so uh that sort of answers your question is it the fairness doctrine that needs to be brought back or would with that fix it i doubt it right yeah i don't know if it's the fairness doctrine but it is about you know and the look at the Sinclair case for example so um like i said they wouldn't have been able to buy Tribune if it weren't for uh changes in FCC law the already rolled back media ownership rules say that no company can own more than 39 percent can own uh stations nationwide that that broadcast the 39 percent of the country but then they came up with this thing that they called the u h f discount and the u h f discount was rolled back a long time ago and what it said was that well if you have a u h f station you know what you remember u h f that was the the high stations on the dial didn't tell the tv well yeah and over the air television if you had a u h f station you could you can only count you can count half of the u h f stations you have towards this 39 percent number so the new FCC under trumps a handpicked chairman adjud pie reinstated the u h f discount in a time where practically everyone gets their television through a cable signal and there's no such thing as a u h f station that is high on the dial and inaccessible and and you know it it's ridiculous to bring back the u h f discount in this day and eight but what that did for Sinclair was it immediately brought their calculation of how much of the nation they cover from 39 percent to 25 percent so it immediately gave them more to buy more stations and that's exactly what they did first buying some stations in new york and then buying tribute now the assumption is now they've gotten so many stations that they're going to have to divest of some of them however adjud pie is talking about relaxing media ownership rules even further the u h f discount was just the beginning of what he wants to do and uh... i suspect that that by the time that Sinclair tribune deal closes that they won't have to divest of any of these stations they will come up with some other reason why they can hold on to all of them and you just see the concentration happened further and further and further and further and when you put that into the perspective of Sinclair made these deals to help trump get elected and now uh... trump's fcc is making policy to help Sinclair buy more stations and concentrate their control over the television industry uh... you you begin to to understand why this is is so troubling and even in a week last week where you know you had the firing of james comey and all of these you know human cry about uh... the office of the presidency and what what's you know what's become of it i really thought the Sinclair deal was was the the the the most ominous thing that we saw last week even more so than that fire you said the uh... see of Sinclair road in the presidential motorcade and it reminds me of Claire channel under the george w bush administration they're from san antonio and they were in bed with the bush administration thirty nine percent of the market share they have to have certain of yeah of households there's a percent of all households and is that the households that are available to watch television so let's say let's say there are a hundred million households in the country they could only broadcast the areas where thirty nine million households could access them in theory but because of this u h f discount that changes that you know the calculation is is this sort of customized calculation that only they have to deal with right one of the things they do is they'll buy a couple of stations and run one to the ground they'll just turn it into a shell right to save money and because one fewer station to compete against these are owned by the american people well the airwaves are sure and and we we sell those airwaves and spectrum options all the time and that money goes into the u.s treasury but but we don't we don't put as many conditions on that purchase as we used to and and and you know the the idea that these stations operate in the public interest they're supposed to provide public sources of information part of the fourth estate part of that you know creating a well-informed citizenry all of those things have have really gone out the window and and the public interest has been subsumed you know purely by commerce and uh... that that is a tremendous change that we've seen in this country over the last you know thirty forty years um... and uh... you know look look who we've gotten uh... from a public policy standpoint uh... after after that uh... change was made in the nation you have a piece about jonathan taplins new book move fast and break things how facebook google and amazon cornered culture and undermine democracy do we need to break up facebook google and amazon i mean when you look at the police so yeah i i i do believe so and uh... you know google has has sort of reoriented themselves an hour called alphabet right and they have all these separate business lines under alphabet and so it's almost that alphabet has given us the tool by which to break up google into all these different business lines and i think the first thing you have to do with respect to google is sever the relationship between the search engine and the advertising outlet when google bought double-click which was a big advertise online advertising uh... company uh... that was the beginning of the end right there because now you have a company where they control the platform they're a uh... what is known as a platform monopoly they control the platform for search engines so virtually all search happens through google and they control the advertising so uh... if people are searching for a product or searching for for an entertainment option and the same company where they're searching you know the same storefront also manages as a gatekeeper who can advertise to those people uh... this is why the profits of google uh... in in terms of gross revenue have gone up uh... in a straight line year after year and and now are over seventy four billion dollars uh... they obviously have this massive concentration they they buy a company a week uh... if they don't have it in house they they they purchase it you see a company like amazon they also have our platform monopoly for e-commerce uh... they invite all these other companies to sell things on their platform in their store and these other companies have no other choice to reach people than to go on amazon and amazon collects all the data that is uh... uh... uh... in terms of what people are purchasing on their website and they use that data to build competitors to these very people who are uh... coming on their platform to sell products uh... the same with google collecting the data of all of their customers and using that to sell it to advertisers that that's actually as much as it is the advertising itself that's the source of the revenue is to sell these customized ads uh... based on everything you do online that and and facebook does this as well uh... to uh... you know give premium uh... spots for advertisers that are dynamic that are based on they can be based on where you are walking in the in the neighborhood uh... that you live in and they can say hey here's a coupon for a pizza shop that you're about to hit in ten seconds because i know where you are because of your geolocation data on your google phone this is where we're getting to uh... and uh... you know what tafflin's book is really talking about is cultural he was the manager tour manager for the band uh... in the nineteen late nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies uh... he then became an executive uh... he worked with sony uh... he he's he's died he's produced films for people like martin scorsese and winwenders he has an insight into what happened in the music and movie business uh... in terms of when the google's and the facebook's and the amazon's world came in and what they've done to the ability for non-superstar artists to make a living and he tells the story about levon helm who was the great drummer for the band and how at the end of his life he had to give concerts at his house to pay for his medical bills uh... while you know corporate executives were making untold amounts of money off songs from the band so is that because what they do is they change the technology well he he describes a number of factors number one obviously is uh... you know uh... file sharing and napster and things like that uh... but it's also the fact that uh... google's youtube for example uh... uh... you know practically every song known to existence is streamable at the touch of a button with uh... youtube and royalties from uh... this was an amazing statistic i can believe it in twenty fifteen royalties from vinyl were higher as overall number than royalties from streaming uh... on places like youtube what do you mean by that i mean that that an artist that artists in the aggregate received more money as a percentage of vinyl record sales in twenty fifteen then they did from streaming streaming on youtube represents fifty two percent of all streaming uh... of music that is done and something like four or ten percent of the of the profits from streaming uh... they google has this tremendous power to digitize all of this information and then not pay the artists back even though they're attaching ads to these uh... these pieces of music for example or or you know movies or whatever uh... and and so the put the changes in technology as you describe is is is exactly it but the the money does not flow through to the artists in streaming whether you're talking about spotify or whether you talk about youtube where they're talking about uh... any of these sort of uh... next level kind of sources of income uh... and superstar artists can handle it they can make their own deals they can uh... come up with uh... ways innovative ways to uh uh make sure they're getting paid but below that level it becomes almost impossible to survive as an artist uh... in this day and age and uh... you know if you basically have we've returned to sort of a traveling troubadour kind of lifestyle where the only way that you can really uh... keep keep that living going is by playing endless gigs and uh... the the money if somebody is making money off of this music that's playing out there in the world it's just not the artist is there any way to audit google and find out what they're making off a levon helms song well i mean we know that they're making little to nothing and and if you ask them they'll say well this is what the market will bear and and uh... you know it's it the problem is that whereas you know tower records had a thousand cd's or something let's let's just use a round number well google has every thing ever been uh... digitized or ever been ever been put to to to down on a tape and so they don't have to take more than a tiny portion of each song and still make billions and billions of dollars but you know for that artist out there that's competing with every other song in the known universe they're simply not going to make that kind of value it's spread out over everybody you know so what is taplin what does he say has to be done i he talks about using the antitrust laws to break up these companies uh... to to make sure that your data uh... which is so lucrative i mean these are these he calls these uh... resource extraction companies and it's it's not oil it's data that's that's what they're making their money from and he says that that that should be able to be either freed or that should be uh... there should be opt out uh... but what about people to not give up their privacy i i i know i've taken up a lot of your time but very quickly what is like i always hear about they're getting consumer data and that's worth a fortune what do they have on me that would be worth anything they have every email you've ever typed they have every website you've ever visited they have every google search you've ever made your more you're more intimate with your computer that you are with anyone in your life you will have you will ask to search for things on your your your google search that you would never say out loud they have a tremendous amount of information on you and what is that can be used for what you format for a particular advertiser that's looking for a particular type of person uh... to to you know move this particular message and marketing tour so uh... it's tremendously lucrative on the part of uh... these platform monopolies and let me just say one more thing that that tapplin points out and i think it's really really important he says that the patents that uh... google has or facebook has for all of these different innovations should the way bell labs was in the nineteen fifties uh... there was a famous court case in nineteen fifties uh... eighteen t was a monopoly uh... they they ran all the phone service throughout the country and the justice department said all right well you can do that but you have this arm called bell labs where you're coming up with new innovations and ideas all the time all of the patents for bell labs what you're coming up with need to be able to be licensed by any company for nominal fate and what this did was create the electronics industry in america it created uh... uh... what eventually led to the internet in america it created all sorts of positive uh... benefits for society and it created the very competition that uh... inevitably led to uh... uh... you know what we see today and in many of these markets so if google if you did the same thing to google so they're trying to make the self-driving cars all right well the patents for that now can be licensed to any company and every company can have this self-driving car technology and they can uh... build a market and they can they can they can compete with one another on price and quality and and quality of service and uh... google doesn't get to just hold on to that that is one of the key recommendations that tappan makes and i think it's a very important well i'm kind of all over the map about the future my new hope is we have a guaranteed income and all of us are given a robot who goes out and does something makes a little money for us and then whatever the robot can't do the government fills in the gap and then the rest of us spend our waking hours consuming for the corporations instead of working for the corporations our job is to consume buy things eat things and convince ourselves that we're artists right i think uh... there there are there's almost two strains of thought on this there's the idea of a universal basic income and then there's the idea of a job guarantee and i guess what i've gone back to is what's the first thing we say to a child when you meet a child you say what do you want to be when you grow up i think there's an inherent value still in this in this country to the value of work that you would have to get over in order to really reorient society in the way that you're talking about i also think that there's a lot of work to do you know the idea that robots are going to come on board and and you know this place all of the jobs in in the country is number one not born out by experience i mean we went from punch cards to the personal computer and somehow we still have these tremendous needs within the country we have infrastructure that's absolutely falling apart uh... we have if you're going to put together self-driving cars you are going to have to engage in the biggest road project in the history of mankind to fix every road in america to make sure that it's available for use for a self-driving car because there's simply at two haphazard uh... we have we have roads that don't have the the lines painted on them we have we have you know in some more rural areas dirt roads gravel roads you're going to need to to you know make some of the infrastructure uniform in order to to ensure self-driving cars can actually operate and and if you do that you're talking about the largest infrastructure project in the history of mankind so i just don't believe that there's nothing left to do or that there will be nothing left to do in the next century let's say uh... maybe after that we we can talk but i i just don't think that uh... i i i think that the a better idea is to say if you need a job the government is willing and able to step in to give you that job and that job and and and whatever you're going to be working toward will benefit the public at large uh... whether it's a you know wpa style uh... uh... the kinds of things that we saw civilian conservation corps in the new deal uh... war it's you know these construction and road projects that need to be done uh... to ensure that we have uh... you know are available to move around i agree with you a hundred percent and i blame the republicans they just refuse to invest properly in our economy it's a sickness their justification is rooted in fallacy that being said i do believe that a hundred years from now we will talk about america's puritanical sloth ethic and that we will celebrate doing nothing that people i i i'm all for it because it's it's a lot of what i do in my personal life but i'm i'm not sure that i mean look at it this way the the uh... one area of the country where you see uh a lot of sloths and a lot of uh... you know inability to uh... have a job is is in is in these areas that have this terrible opioid crisis and it creates this despair um... you know obviously if you're getting a universal basic income maybe that that you know that those idle hands don't necessarily go toward you know this this very tragic situation but i i fear that it does i fear that there's this need uh... in human nature and it's really a question about human nature right uh... for you know some project of self-worth to to point to and be able to say that that you are making a contribution and uh... if we get away from that uh... i'm i'm concerned about what that unleashes well you're a writer and nobody has a greater work ethic than a writer a writer is haunted every second of the day i should be right now i should be writing i should be productive should be writing i'm not writing i'm right but most people most people are very comfortable lying on their back playing a video game watching television thinking about food thinking about shopping i genuinely believe that jobs and the idea of work is a new idea it's maybe it's a couple hundred years old most americans given the choice will easily i i'd say most people i know would say if i had to go to work or if i had a sit and binge watch netflix i'll choose netflix that's what's being offered and we're getting into inception territory where people will take the drug or the the video but see i think that's a problem i do too but most people don't right well anyway you've been this is great this has been so much fun david dayan writes for two of my favorite periodicals the nation which you need to subscribe to and donate money to it and the intercept glenn greenwald's magnificent internet news gathering operation they do real investigative journalism real investigative journalism it's a great resource for just figuring out what's going on and david dayan you could not have been more generous with your time please come back absolutely thank you thank you coming up dr jennifer vertland talks about what animals can teach us about romance and parenting i have to warn you there is some construction noise in our studio so you'll hear a little drilling that's not you that's us and we apologize for that joining us in ohio is dr jennifer vertland she's the author of a new book out raised by animals which talks about dr vertland's views on relationships families and lives that she's picked up from animals hello doctor thank you for having me your book raised by animals we had you on the raffinator radio hour and we talked about families and parenting this new book comes after your other book wild connection what animal courtship and mating tell us about human relationships you're an animal behaviorist what is an animal behaviorist you study lemurs from what i understand yeah so right now one of my current projects is looking at personalities and lemurs and and looking at personalities and other animals is a big big topic in animal behavior research currently but uh really an animal behavior so is is someone who is curious about and tries to understand why animals do what they do and of course humans are animals and so i've embraced both human and non-human animals and look through that lens and compare the behaviors of both can you correct behavior in an animal or you're just studying it so i uh there are people who for example might train dogs or cats uh or other domestic animals uh in in behavior and and correct certain things and certainly i would be capable of doing that having a fundamental understanding of of behavior and learning but my goal is really just to watch what animals are doing and place that into a broader context of trying to understand why certain behaviors emerge in certain animals and in certain environments and how flexible uh animals are in what they do i happen to be a great father my kids don't think i am but i i took the Hippocratic oath first do no harm that's how i raise my kids just watch tv read don't get involved unless there's danger let's go through parenting i'm kind of curious you've studied how different animals raise their children you say that chimpanzees can get their kids to stop screaming on an airplane how do they do that why don't think i quite said that but well when i when i heard that you observe chimpanzees minimizing temper tantrums on their kids i figured it must have been on an airplane well if only right um so so yeah so chimpanzee moms in particular uh they they do this thing called termite fishing so if people aren't familiar with what this means that means that you know a chimpanzee will take a stick and modify it and make a tool and then they sit patiently at a termite mound and they there's a technique to this and they dunk their their stick into the termite mound and and it's it's set just so and the termites grab on it and they pull it out and they eat the termites and they have a delicious snack and this technique takes you know five or six years to perfect and so chimpanzee moms uh obviously this is a rich protein source for them and so they go to these termite mounds and their young kids get bored um because they can't do it and they want to play or they want attention and it requires all of this focus of of their parents away from them and so they will you know try to interfere or become generally annoying and the strategy for chimpanzee moms most of the time about 85 percent of the time is to completely ignore the antics of their of their um children and if it gets really too much the worst they might do is turn their back on their kid or push them gently to the side like enough uh and so i think uh in that sense they're highly tolerant and others in the community are also tolerant because there's a general understanding that young chimps don't have as much control over their behavior sounds like every airplane i've ever been on that's right right and and really it begs the question are we expecting too much of a two or three year old to really sit quietly and on a plane and behave is is that really what they're capable of well now we can't even expect grown-ups to behave on an airplane this is true this is very true wait a second do chimpanzees get annoyed i mean don't they sometimes just say enough already i'm not in the mood today daddy's hung over they do get annoyed and in fact there are some chimps that do get hung over because they have a addiction to palm wine but that's a different story um but so so they do get annoyed and that annoyance is still um you know expressed gently so there's for for young chimpanzees they really don't experience any kind of physical aggression by their parent uh it's it's the worst that might happen is turning their back or pushing them away from them like okay you're getting on my nerves you know go over there what do you call a group of chimpanzees um a troop you can call them a troop is there a leader of the troop there tends to be so chimpanzees is very interesting they they have a pretty dynamic and uh highly political uh social system so you you do have an alpha male but that alpha male is only at the top because of the alliances that he makes with other males and those alliances are are are built on sand right so they can shift very quickly um in his favor or against his favor and so it's a pretty stressful position being alpha male um and the females are form these family groups these these uh sort of we call them major lines so related females and there's a dominant structure there you have high ranking females and their daughters and their sons are high ranking as well so you can start to see some of the analogies if you happen to be born in a high ranking family you tend to become a high ranking individual in in the group that you're in later as an adult so with the temper tantrums will a high ranking chimp walk over and say do something about your kid or i will so not in chimpanzees uh but it will happen in rhesus macaques and we call this the bystander effect right so if you set the scene at a any supermarket or target or or other store of any of us have seen this happen you have a two or three-year-old you know throwing themselves to the floor screaming and we might give dirty looks or if you're the parent you might be on the receiving end of some dirty looks or some comments and that's pretty much what happens in rhesus macaques so when a rhesus macaque infant is throwing a tantrum uh most of the time the mother if she's around friends and family will either ignore it or give in those are you know roughly equally she'll either ignore it or she'll give in to whatever is going on and it's usually about milk um wanting milk and so if there's a dominant individual around though this is a high risk situation for not just the the mother who could get beat up but also the infant so the dominant individual may as you said do something about this or i will and is that a man not necessarily it could be a high ranking female a dominant female someone who's not a friend or family member of of that particular female so there is physical violence there is there can be yes so in that in those cases what they found was that um rhesus macaque moms when faced with that situation given 85 percent of the time so they almost right so they just want to make their infants stop and they will do whatever it takes to make it stop let's get back to chimps because i would assume humans are closer to chimps right well i mean it depends uh so there's a lot of behaviors that we do share with chimpanzees but we also have a lot of behaviors that we share much more closely with others so for example we rely on mothers and fathers to raise offspring and chimpanzee males don't necessarily know that they are the father right so they don't play a role in raising offspring whereas in a species like um a Siberian hamster the male not only helps deliver the babies but helps care for them as well why would the chimps not know whether or not they're the father well that's because so female chimps even though there's an alpha male will mate with as many males as they can to confuse paternity and in many species they don't have a mori povich show among the chimpanzees they don't but right but you can certainly see the analogies here where um human females do this as well why do they want to confuse paternity well so there's a matter of protection so in a male is less likely to be aggressive towards an infant if he thinks he could be the father so yeah it's usually a strategy in many species to protect against infanticide or infant killing not it's not always done just by males if we don't want to give males a bad rap but in species where males may be physically aggressive to an infant it is less likely to happen if he thinks he could be the infant's father so if he mated with that mother he doesn't know but he could be and so it's it tempers aggression and is the aggression directed at both female and male baby chimps or just male chimps oh both male and female okay yeah the male chimps aren't possessive they they don't mind that the chimpanzee they just slept with is now sleeping with somebody else it doesn't bother them well well i mean you know of course we can't ask them directly but i will say that the alpha male generally would find that quite troublesome and goes to great lengths to prevent that but you know he can't necessarily control the movement of all the females in in a group and so and this is a common problem for males uh you know trying to control the movement of a female to prevent her from mating with other males i see so how long do chimps live in japan's in the wild they can live oh i don't know you know 30 to 45 years um in captivity it can go a bit higher um you know there's a sanctuary that i used to volunteer at the center for great apes and we have a chimp who's in his 50s um currently and do some chimps did some chimps make better parents than others it's a matriarchal society in terms of raising raising the kids yes yes are some females better mothers than others and secondly you would think chimpanzees being raised by women would create more peaceful troops is that the case uh okay so an answer to your first question uh are there better mothers than others and that is absolutely true in chimpanzees and humans in birds and hamsters in snakes uh there's always going to be you know variation in the quality of care that a parent provides right um and so yeah in chimpanzees that some moms are great moms some are not so great some inexperienced females may lose their their first infant because they make a mistake right um and and of course the more experience you get the better you get when you say lose them as in they die or they're not taken away by other female chimps are they oh no no no they but they might die yeah and and are they upset when they die oh absolutely there's i mean grief is pretty well established in many other species and especially surrounding either the loss of a of a mate or of a of a child and so in many cases when a chimpanzee mom will uh has an infant die she may carry the body around for days not wanting to leave it and is she consoled by the other female chimps um how much evidence there is to suggest that i don't know the answer i wouldn't be surprised if there was um some we do have some anecdotal evidence from emperor penguins um or that is the case so i wouldn't be surprised but i'm not aware uh of of any particular study or information about that with chimps there's no family right there's no father who is consoling the mother right there they're well there's no nuclear family they live in a community but there's no nuclear family like we think of nuclear family right where the mom and dad are going to be over here raising their offspring and and another mom and dad are going to be over here now that happens in titi monkeys tamarin monkeys um the you know marmoset monkeys uh those are like super dads um and and so that social structure is present in other primate species and in many other in birds and and many many other animals but not in um in the common chimpanzee and in terms of your other question was being raised by a female doesn't that lead to a more generous and and kind and peaceful so not for the common chimpanzee and and and because they're not matriarchal society they have matriarchal female lines where you have dominance among females and you have separate dominance among males but males are dominant to females things switch around when we're talking about bonobos and there's some recent evidence to suggest that bonobos might be more closely related to us than the common chimpanzee yet i wish i wish i know i well and of course people may not know why but those are the apes from venus it's it's all all sex and love and and good stuff um but they are a true matriarchal society right so the females are dominant over males in that case and so they are considered to be quite peaceful are they peaceful or just exhausted well they solve a lot of their problems through sex so if you you know use up all that energy in a positive way isn't that what we tell our kids right go run in the yard and burn that off um do something productive with all of that so they have sex to solve their problems they have sex how much sex are they having and is there any monogamy there well so i don't know if anybody's quantified probably somebody has quantified the amount of sex it's a lot of sex like will will chamberlain i mean what kind of numbers are they putting on the board well i mean it's a it's a free-for-all in a sense i mean if i want if i were a bonobo and i wanted you know uh to distract you from the food you're eating i might offer myself up and while you're having sex with me i'm going to eat your food and this or if we have a conflict we're gonna make up by you know have makeup sex so so there's a lot of sex happening for everybody um male male female female everybody is just in on it how productive are they well i mean what is what how do you define productive right they're very successful um where they're not being you know having to deal with other threats right um so of course the current environment is putting so much pressure on so many animals that whatever their strategies they may or may not be able to cope with um the changes we're throwing at them but you know for themselves they're quite successful and and you know i don't know how a bonobo would define being productive but if it finds enough food and has enough friends and is clearly having lots of sex perhaps that is a productive life for a bonobo is there birth control i'm being serious uh no there's no birth so everybody so i would assume the bonobos are always pregnant no well so this is a i'm glad you brought that up that's it's a bit of a myth that other animals only have sex to reproduce so lots and lots of animals whether it's bonobos or those that form long-term partnerships say like a kaka too um watch it watch your language well then i won't talk about the cockated woodpecker but so they they there's lots of good touching and and lots of of sex that goes on outside of pure mating and that's to form and maintain bonds which i think we can all relate to it's it's you know if you're in a relationship and you sex is a great barometer for um how healthy that relationship is or where you say that the chimps don't do that the chimps but that's a societal thing so as a society they they're matriarchal and and it does keep the peace and they are much more peaceful and part of that might be because they have a lot of good touching involved you're talking about the but who the good touching is bonobos right bonobos have good touch right but they're not always pregnant so i was trying to address that issue that i'm sorry no no no that's okay it's a myth that animals only have sex to get pregnant or to reproduce so bonobos use sex as a social tool to um to solve conflicts and they also use it obviously for reproduction but a female that has is nursing she may not produce another um infant for four years five years even and in that time she's still having sex so um you know but they naturally suppressed um another pregnancy while they're nursing and this is true most of the time for humans there are some exceptions and some women have unfortunately or fortunately found themselves immediately pregnant again um but many times if you're nursing that is an automatic sort of physiological suppression of pregnancy do bonobos to the are the are there ever any men male bonobos who force themselves on a woman uh no so there isn't a lot of from what i understand there isn't any kind of sexual coercion in bonobos and in fact uh there was a study done by friends to wall or it was published in one of his books because he's worked with bonobos quite a lot quite a bit and where if there's an expression of boredom or disinterest by one of the partners the sexual activity just stops really yeah nobody's like offended right i mean if anybody's ever been bored while they were having sex you know we certainly use a lot of strategies to try to make it end faster um so that it's over rather than just say yeah it's not working for me right now can we just stop and everybody can be okay with that and so uh yeah his uh in one of his books he pointed out if because they're one of the only other species other than porcupines for obvious reasons that have sex face to face and so um they're looking at each other and if one is disinterested then they seem to stop yeah tell me about the owl chick you say that they're born to share oh yeah so so the really neat thing about some owls was when i was talking about sibling rivalry right so i don't know um if you have any siblings or how many people have uh siblings and experienced any kind of conflict but barn owl chicks really negotiate how much food they get each one might get from a parent because in barn owls when a parent is come both males and females our mother and father are providing food to their chicks and they can't break up the food so if they get a small mouse one chick is going to get that mouse they're not going to get a half a mouse and the other chick is going to get a half a mouse and so prior there was some research that showed prior to the parents arriving at the nest the chicks uh brother and sister or or siblings would start chirping to each other and if one chirped louder they decided they negotiated that that was the hungrier one and it was the one that got fed rather than fighting over one chick getting all the food leaving the other one to die which certainly happens in many other bird species and that's innate that's imprinted on them they're not taught that by the mother right that's correct they're not taught that's just an automatic negotiation that they make as a form of cooperation and we need to be schooled or taught by our parents in this process right we we don't not all of us are born automatically sharing some of us are and many of us are not and unless we're taught or or the right conditions are set up for us to share we will share spontaneously under the right conditions how many animals other than humans have a need to teach oh gosh you know so many any any animal that requires direct parental care um in the form of either feeding or or or other forms of of direct extended direct parental care they're being taught something so honey badgers i mean okay so when we think about what we need to learn we need to learn what to eat and and honey badgers they the mom has to teach their baby to eat up to 50 different food items and how to handle things like cobras these scorpions like we just want to get our kids to eat broccoli you know and or honey badgers no we don't want to eat honey badgers they wouldn't taste very good they're they they teach through example they teach through example they also teach through like orcas or killer whales have been shown to help teach so they in some populations they beach themselves to get at seals one of the you know food items that are in their diet and learning how to beach yourself without stranding yourself wow is very difficult what happens when an orca gets stranded to the other orca can they save a stranded beached orca they can try and in fact with some of the young ones that's what they see happen right is that an adult will will actually try to come to the rescue of a younger orca that might have gotten itself in a sticky situation now an orca is a dolp