Transcript

0:00[Music] It’s time for the Chapter and Chatter

0:05Cafe with Camden County Library District Director, Professor Jim Paisley.

0:12[Music]

0:17Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Chapter and Chatter. We’ve got an interesting topic today. We do

0:23have an interesting topic. We got a great audience here and we’ve been talking already about AI. Okay. And and

0:31one of the members here said, “Well, I think I’ve got a bottle of that in the refrigerator. A It says AI on the bottle

0:36or A1 kind of, you know.” So, I’m the same way. I’ve talked to it several times. I get nothing out of it. You

0:41know, I’m not going to Yeah. So, this is going to be cravings are That’s right.

0:48time to get up. kind of fun in the fact that that you know I’m old school and

0:53here’s our new school if you would. Well, well, how about we call middle school because the new school is a lot

0:59younger and they have a lot more tricks. Behind the scenes, we have our producer here, Mark, and he’s our IT guy. So, you

1:06know, we hired a fellow here during the summer months to help us. And, you know,

1:12when we interviewed the fellow, there was a discussion between Mark and this young man. And I was like sitting in a

1:19room with two people speaking Greek. I just finally finally got up and walked out of the room. I thought I can add

1:26nothing to this, you know. And so, you know, we’re going to it’s going to be

1:31kind of fun to pursue a little bit of this. And I thought we’d start out being the history professor. We’d talk a

1:36little history and talk about AI and its impact. I mean, we’re seeing it

1:42everywhere today. and I’m inundated with with people trying to sell us stuff all the time for the library and and a lot

1:50of times I have to grab it in my hand and carry it in and say what is this you know and they every once in a while they

1:56do a pretty good job of explaining it but even after they do I think it can do that right yeah so

2:03so let’s talk a little bit about the story of the techn technological

2:08progress now what kills me about it is I’ve lived through a gener generation where every new fangled invention comes

2:15along and they say this is going to make things so much better. Right. And the

2:20other part of it is it’s not going to replace anybody’s job. That’s that you have lived through that

2:27one. Yes. Yes. I’ve lived through it several times. You know it does what? You know I years and years ago I started out

2:34working in construction and I was I was surveying. You know we literally drug

2:39what they called a chain. It was a 100 foot chain. Yep. And we had things called plumb bobs and

2:45you had to get the chain level when you up and down through the hills in the wilderness. The other day was that we’re

2:52not there. The other day there’s a guy comes out here and he’s surveying the lot. He’s got a stick with a little thing on top

2:58of it. And I’m walked out there. I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m surveying.” You know, and he walked over here and did that and he did that and he

3:04said, “I’m done.” And I’m like, “What?” Man, it’s all tied to satellites, you know. I’m thinking, “Oh, man. Where was

3:10that when I needed it? Right? You know, so again, we keep getting reassured that

3:16it’s not going to replace jobs and it’s going to be all this great stuff. Okay. Now, here’s the problem I have with AI.

3:24I’ll go come right out and say I got some problems. Don’t hold back. I have some problems with it. It’s not

3:31merely an extension of human physical capabilities. Like I say, it’s great that you can walk around with a stick

3:37instead of dragging a chain and cutting trees to do a survey, but it is an

3:42encroachment on our thinking capabilities. It thinks

3:49it does, but you have to give it the prompts. Depends on how good your

3:54prompts are or what the return results are going to be. If garbage out,

3:59pretty much garbage in, garbage out. Depending on how well you prompt that that AI service is how well you’re going

4:07to get a return result and it could make you still look not very smart.

4:13But the scary thing is is that they’re keep telling us that this thing is getting to the point where it can teach

4:20itself. It doesn’t need a prompt. It will just simply figure it out. Well, I

4:26don’t know if it’s so much that it doesn’t need a prompt or that it’s it’s it it’s kind of um how do I want to

4:33explain this? And I may have to have Mark help me out here. Here you go. Here’s a crayon. Um I don’t have a whiteboard.

4:41Yeah, it it it in a sense it’s going to teach itself because there is so much stuff that is being added to

4:47its servers and capabilities, right? So, it’s learning the new stuff that is being fed to it. Am I Am I kind of on

4:55the right track, Mark? Yeah. So, um, see.

5:01Okay. Whatever. I do think that it could probably learn on its own, but it’s it’s got to be it’s

5:07got to have something fed to it. All right. Well, let’s All right. Let’s watch. I’ll let you let me go. I’ll let you go.

5:13All right. Here we go. All right. All right. So, the industrial revolution. Let’s let’s

5:21start out with the original counterarguments. So, we’re going back to Eli Whitney and uh yes, the industrial revolution. Okay.

5:29Now, it started with textile workers. All right. These textile workers, you know, they

5:34started out there making cloth, you know, with a loom. They’re feeding, you know, a needle through here and there.

5:40Pull this big deal and everything. Okay. Well, all of a sudden here they come up

5:46with this brilliant idea of automating these looms. All right, steam powered.

5:53But all of a sudden, you got a machine that can do the work of 50 people in a

5:58day’s time. All right. Well, and of course, you know, they’re telling, “Don’t worry,

6:03you’re not going to lose your job. You’re not going to lose your job.” Wrong again. Off they went. Right. So

6:10all of a sudden people are like I’m not real sure I like this whole industrial thing. Right. Right. And and needless to

6:17say the looms all of a sudden you have things like the cotton gin and you have

6:23steam engines and it just spiraled out from there. All right. And they were

6:28telling them at the time don’t worry technology will not replace anybody’s job. It’s not nothing to fear here.

6:35Right. Okay. Well, then lo and behold, what we see happen is that these

6:44individual weavers lost their jobs, but all of a sudden now you’re going to have

6:49more managers and clerks and, you know, it shifts the workforce to more

6:55cognitive jobs, if you will. So, you had to learn how to manage a business and

7:01had to learn how to do sales and these sort of things. All of a sudden, it’s no longer just sitting there doing menial

7:07tasks, right? Now, the introduction of the automobile, this is where we see things go into a

7:15death spiral. All right? Because at the time, we had people with horses and buggies, right? And they’re getting

7:21around just fine. All you need a little grass to feed the horse. He you know what’s funny is when we started first

7:27talking about this and you sent this to me, I actually found a meme on Facebook and it talked about how before um

7:34everybody had a horse and buggy and only the rich had automobiles. Now it’s the

7:40everybody has an automobile and only the rich have a horse. Good point. But it’s it’s it’s definitely how it’s

7:46it’s flip-flop. Yeah. you know, so well, you know, when we had horse and buggies,

7:51now you you know, you also had blacksmiths, you had stable hands, you had, you know, all the things that went

7:58with building wagons, all that sort of thing, right? You know, all those people are going to

8:04lose their jobs because of these because of more specialized industry. Yes. You know, and I was I was telling

8:10Coley before the show, I have I had a great great uncle who had the first car

8:16in Moberly, Missouri, and it was a Cadillac of all things. You know, of course, it didn’t Cadillac like we see

8:21today, but he had this thing and he he owned the the John P. Buth plumbing

8:26company, but he’s the only guy in town had enough money to buy one of these new fangle machines. So, he bought it and

8:33drove it to work. And of course, everybody’s raising hell with him because it’s making noise and going down

8:39Main Street and all of this. And he pulls it up front and across the street is the livery stable. And all the good

8:45old boys are over there. They’re raising hell with him saying, you know, “Oh my god, I can’t believe you bought this

8:50thing.” And the town council even met and talked about telling me he had to

8:56get rid of it. They hated it that much. And so sure enough, after about two

9:01months, everybody in town hating him for having this thing, he turned around and gave it away. Gave it to two farm kids

9:09and said, “You can have it, but you can never drive it into town. You can just drive it around your farm.” So the first

9:15car in Moberly, he gave it up and gave it to two farm kids. You know, I wish I had that car today.

9:20Yes, we did talk about that as well. You know, it it’s so indicative of what happened there with technology, you

9:27know, and look where we are today. But nope, not going to happen. All right, so

9:32that right off the bat, the car coming along, next thing you know, automobile manufacturing becomes huge. Other jobs

9:40did come about, gas station attendance. Every high school kid in my generation worked at a gas station. You had road

9:47construction crews, you had just all kind, you know, car repair, you name it.

9:53There were all sorts of industries that sprang forth from it. So yes, there were other jobs that came about as a result

9:58of that technology. All right. Right. But there were people lost their jobs. They’re not shoeing horses anymore.

10:04And again, like I said, that becomes a more specialized field. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So good and bad.

10:12Right. Well, then along comes this glowing thing they set on our desks, right? This this they called it a

10:18computer. Now I can remember I am that old when they came out with these

10:26computers. Now I had a state job where you literally had carbon paper. We were

10:32talking about this with the audience. You you had had to have copies, you know, I had to have a copy for you and

10:38one for Mark and one for Vicki. And so they would take and the paper that you

10:43had had carbon paper in it. And when you fill out your report and pressed really

10:49hard, it went through to the other copies. And when you got done, you snapped it apart and it made four copies

10:55and you could hand them out. That’s technology for you, right? Technology for you.

11:00Well, here they come with this computer thing. A paperless society,

11:06right? You all been there, right? Let me ask you, did it did it create a

11:11paperless society? No. It created more. Yes. Now you Now you just hit

11:19you hit a button and it’s make 12 copies. You know that’s right. Wait a minute. I thought this was supposed to

11:25be paperless. No. Wrong again. Right. So again, I’m wondering about the

11:30technology advancing us here. All right. Now you can see she and I have some interesting discussions at work. All

11:36right. Now needless to say, the computers created all kinds of clerical

11:42roles. um explosion of software development, IT people like Mark sitting

11:49in here, right? Data entry, uh digital content creation jobs and stuff and even

11:57that technology has changed so much. Well, even I I think even when we were discussing doing this, you know, even

12:03you, Mark and I had the conversation, you know, I remember as a kid, um the

12:09first time we had a computer in the house was in in ’92, 93. somewhere right in there. Um, so I was 11, 12 years old

12:16the first time a computer had entered our house, right? And the only reason the computer entered the house is because my mom was going back to school

12:22after my parents divorce. So she had to have the computer to do the schoolwork, but otherwise we didn’t touch it. And it

12:28was a word processor. It was a glorified word processor is what it was because it had Windows. It wouldn’t have been 95,

12:34but it had uh 31 31 is 31 or 30 or whatever it was. And

12:39it just had the word processor and it, you know, had paint. That was the greatest thing when I was a kid was paint.

12:45See, but other than that, it didn’t get used. And I think it had an ex a spreadsheet

12:50program on there because she was going back to school to become a bookkeeper. But other than that, that’s it was a box

12:56that sat in a corner that came on every once in a while. It wasn’t something

13:01that we had to have on all the time. There you go. So, yeah. Um I do I you know, it’s kind of like

13:06one of the things we talked about, you know, when did it first enter into our lives? Yeah. Um, so I was still, you

13:12know, in the realm of things in the way that things have progressed digitally so far, you know, I was still fairly old

13:18when it came into our life. So there you go. Well, and and like I say, I was working for the state at the time,

13:25right? And God help you, you know, low bidder. That’s what we got. You know, we use things called Lotus Notice. I remember

13:32that. Oh my god. Created by some sadistic fellow of some sort, you know. Maybe it was Lotus 123. Oh, but this is

13:39technology. It’s going to work so much better, guys. Stick with us. Okay. So,

13:45now all these new jobs emerge because of this computer age, right? And along with

13:50that, you have to have a supervisor over the IT people, right? And so now you get a whole administrative staff and you

13:57have creative people and you have high-tech people and you have to have

14:03all kinds of of you know human ingenuity as to how to even make it run faster and

14:09make it be better. All right? And so there’s still a cognitive part of it.

14:14You know when you when you you make a great example, you had this little box sat in the corner. That’s what it did. And now the thing

14:21sitting in your pocket will do everything and beyond more more technology in that than when

14:27we sent a spacecraft to the moon, right? Did we really? Yeah. Well, here we go again. That’s I

14:33don’t know. Ask AI, right? And so here you are, you know, you’re sitting there

14:38and and being inundated with all of this information, okay? And and we have

14:45people that have jobs that are creating all sorts of different offshoots of of

14:50the use of this thing just like the people that had the loom originally. All of a sudden, you know, one thing leads

14:57to the next and steam engines and steam locomotives and steam boats and same

15:02sort of thing happened with the computers. All right, but could you imagine? I’m just going to throw this in here real quick. Could you imagine if Ada Love Lace and Charles

15:09Babage in the 1800s, they had the knowledge to create this technology then where we

15:18would be at now? Good point.

15:23I mean, how far more advanced would we be if they would have had the tools that

15:29they needed? Da Vinci. Well, even Da Vinci. Yeah. I mean, so that was what

15:37a gazillion gazillion, right? I mean, if everybody had the capab the tools and the supplies

15:43that they needed, then how technologically advanced we would be.

15:50Would we be here? Well, that’s a question. Again, goes back to our conversation. Would our audience

15:55have all just come in here on little robotic legs and there had been two talking heads sitting here talking about

16:02this? There’s there’s the issue. See, I I’m telling you, I’ve got a lot of work

16:08in front of me with these people right now. Here’s the thing.

16:14Crucially, we were always dependent on human brain power for the initial

16:21design, for the ongoing maintenance and the advancement of all of these

16:27different things, right? Because again, it took somebody to think

16:32of it and make it happen. Here’s the big problem we have with AI. AI

16:39thinks. It’s not it’s not running the loom. It’s not replacing somebody’s

16:46hands doing something. This AI stuff has the capability of literally sitting

16:51there, give it all the data and say, “What’s a better way? What’s a cure good cure for cancer?” And it’ll research

16:58everything over the planet, put it all together, and say, “These are the three best things.”

17:05Think about that. Well, okay. Again, it’s How long would it take you to do that? Research everything on the plane.

17:11I’m not a doctor. I haven’t gone to school. not AI either. I’m not either. But again, it comes down

17:18to how much information has been fed to that chatbot.

17:23Well, and who’s feeding it that information? This is the scary part about it because

17:31I know some people who know some people, do you now? That’s almost scary. who

17:37work with DARPA. And basically their big big push right

17:42off the bat was they said before they could get the computers to do anything, they had to teach them how to read. And

17:48they had to be able to read everything, read every language that’s ever been invented, everything that’s ever been

17:54written. But the computer didn’t know how to do that. So their first step was

17:59to have teach computers how to read. Well, they did it. And then they stepped

18:05back and said, “Have at it. Start reading.” Now, you can imagine that would be like, “Here’s a library right

18:11here in front of us. Go ahead and tell me everything that’s in here. Start

18:16reading it. Read it all.” And this thing, just like lickety split, reads everything in the library. Now, that’s

18:22all in there. All right. Now, it’s reading Sanskrit from thousands of years

18:29ago. It’s reading uh every language you can possibly imagine, every writing that

18:35that’s ever been put down, every sketch that’s ever been drawn by a Leonardo da Vinci. It has it all in there. And then

18:42you come back and you ask it, what would be the best way to build a flying car?

18:49And it t has all of that information, scans all of it, finds everything it needs, and puts it together and says,

18:55″Tada.” But how accurate is it? Well, I don’t know. Are you smart enough to

19:00question it? I’m just saying. I’m just saying that’s that’s one of the things with AI is you can give it all that information. Okay.

19:07Prime example. So, it got it itself. when um in my in my

19:12recent classes for my graduate studies, we were allowed the professor asked us

19:18to go to chat GBT co-pilot one of our one of those AI sources,

19:24ask it to give us a two paragraph um paper basically on a topic that we

19:32were looking for and then to site its sources. We had to go then back and make

19:37sure that those sources were true and that it did it correctly. I can tell you

19:42that the what the prompt that I gave it, it sounded good.

19:48The sources were looked credable because it kind of mish mashed some of

19:53them together. But when you come down to it and have to look those up, they weren’t anything real. So again, h even

20:01though you’re asking this and it can give you an answer, how do you know that it’s correct? So

20:07just like the cancer example, and we were talking about that earlier and you said it could come from Tibetan scroll

20:14just because it said it, does that make it true? Does that make it that it’s it’s that is the best or is it just

20:22pulling something because it said, “Hey, look, this one said it was the best.” I love it. We could probably end the

20:27show right here because I’ve convinced her. You have to have a human. That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. You have You have to have the

20:33human to make the decisions. You can have all this AI stuff, but you have to have the human component,

20:39but there you’ve you’ve led this perfectly where we want to go. Because now the problem is, think about it, kids

20:46in school and everything. Now, you know, people now, well, I saw it on the

20:51internet. It’s got to be true, right? Well, and that’s the problem is they’re leading us down this path to say, “Well,

20:57you don’t need to know that. Just pull your phone out and look it up.” Well, and see, that’s where there is the crux of it.

21:03See, that’s and that’s where the conversation we’ve even had it here is even just among staff. Why do we need to

21:09have reference materials here when I have it in my hand? You can look things up on Google even before AI. You could

21:15look it up on Google. You could look it up on any whatever browser that you wanted to use and it’ll return results.

21:22But until you come in here and you actually do the research and compare what you’ve read online,

21:29it’s not going to do you any good because you’re just The other thing it’s missing is the human experience.

21:35It is missing the human experience. When you’re as old as I am, I’ve made some pretty stupid decisions in my life.

21:41We all have. And you know that computer, it doesn’t care. You know, it’s like, well, okay,

21:47that didn’t work. next, you know, it’s not sitting down there trying to, you

21:52know, count out change for crackers with your deer chili, you know, I mean, it’s it’s a whole different ball game.

21:57It’s used in cryptocurrency. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So, needless to

22:03say, it’s it it gets down to this whole thing of the decision uh the the cognitive part of it, you know, are we

22:09are we going to become so dependent on it that all of a sudden everybody says, “Well, I don’t need to know it because

22:16AI can do it for me.” That’s going to be that’s going to be the crux of it and that’s going to have to come from I mean

22:23again look at the the generations that we have here. Okay, by far Mark and I are not the

22:29youngest generation. There are still younger people. No, you’re not. I hate to break it to you. And it’s it’s all going to come down to

22:35how well they are taught. Um it’s going to come down to, you know, how well they are they’re taught to

22:42think for themselves and to conduct that research. I you know that’s one of the thing again like I said that keeps going

22:48back to do we need a reference do we need non-fiction here yes we do that’s

22:54what people are in the third grade with sister Gertude Marie I guarantee you uh you know if

23:02she’d have been all over me about my lessons like she was and I had something

23:08in my pocket I could pull out and get the answers from it wouldn’t take this third grader very long to say I don’t

23:15need Mr. Gertude Marie anymore and I don’t need to learn this stuff. And and see that’s the thing. That is

23:21the thing. I remember being in junior high and high school. You had a textbook. You had an assignment. You had

23:27to read the assignment. You had questions at the end of the textbook chapter that you had to answer. You had to do that critical thinking.

23:34My kids are 19 and 22. Did they ever come home with one piece

23:40of homework? I never I take that back. The last time I saw homework was when they were in fifth grade. Do you know

23:45they stop spelling tests about fourth grade? Wow. My son, I asked him in fifth grade. I

23:51said, “Where’s your spelling test? Where’s your spelling words? Don’t need spelling words. We don’t even do that.” I’m like, “Oh, the computer will correct it for you.”

23:57Right. So, we know how to use a dictionary and all that. So, okay. Yeah. That’s why you get people submitting things that have there and

24:04there spelled differently, spelled wrong, right? Where and where. Yeah. That sort of thing. Yeah. But again, it’s all going to come down

24:10to teaching. Teaching. There you go. Which

24:15will be done by an AI computer. Max is going to be teaching the classroom. Right.

24:20So, here we are. The historical pattern basically doesn’t hold true for

24:28artificial intelligence in that it advances things that will make life easier for us and we don’t have as much

24:34hard labor. Artificial intelligence, like I say, it doesn’t have to mimic a

24:40weaver’s hands. It doesn’t have to uh imitate a mechanic replacing a fuel

24:46pump. Basically, this thing is a thinking critter, right?

24:51And that’s there’s the big difference is this is a a thinking monster. All right.

24:57Now, consider the implications. It’s a huge field of customer service.

25:03All right. Yes. You know, and you’ve all done it. You know, you you call because you got a

25:09problem with an appliance and they said, “Hello, my name is Bob.” No, it’s not Bob. It’s some guy in India. All right.

25:17Yeah. And then you answer a thousand questions. That’s after you’ve hit press one for English. Press two if you want

25:23to, you know, your person’s extension. On and on and on. Well, that’s all AI.

25:28That’s all, you know, part of it. Okay. Now these AI systems when you think

25:34about it those things you know there’s a reason why a guy in India is answering

25:40your questions about your appliance from Sears. I I do have a quick story about that. We

25:45had we had an LG washer. Yeah. And you were supposed to be able to hit the button when you had customer service

25:50on the phone. It would play a tone and they should be able to tell by the tone that it played what was wrong with that washer.

25:56Oh my god. No. No. They’re like what’s wrong with it? I’m like it won’t run. I played the tone. What’s wrong with it? Yes.

26:02Like, we have no idea, right? Yeah. See, so glad I paid for that. Yeah. Wrong tone,

26:08right? Well, and see, think about this. The AI in this that the beauty of it is is that

26:15it can literally handle thousands of inquiries at the same time, right? Worldwide, these things come in

26:23to some center somewhere where Bob is sitting, right? And you learn, it learns

26:29from each interaction. Okay? It learns something from you. Well, we obviously

26:34didn’t hear the tone, so that’s something we need to look at. Okay? But it also operates 24/7.

26:42It doesn’t need any breaks. It doesn’t need any days off or vacation. Uh

26:48oh, Mark, we’re in trouble now. Yes. It doesn’t complain about its pay.

26:53it doesn’t have, you know, well, this this AI got 10 minutes more break than

26:58this one did, right? And so you can see why some of these businesses are saying,

27:04hey, pretty good deal, right? And so we’re we shift in that direction without

27:10thinking about the overall implications. Now, in the legal profession, this one blew my mind. AI can, like I say, it’s

27:18read everything. Well, you know, we have all these people works work in law offices that have to do all the research

27:24for a case and put everything together, past law, past cases, what’s been ruled.

27:30This thing, boom, here they are again. Yeah. Is it accurate? Just because it has it?

27:38I don’t know. I’m getting I’m getting $140 an hour. I give me something, dude. Right. You know how this works. And And

27:45there’s the problem again. Do you have somebody behind the scenes that’s that’s reviewing it and thinking

27:51I don’t know about this? Okay. So, just like on the legal side of it, I was telling you earlier that I I’d found on Web Junction, which is a

27:58library type um organization. They put together web webinars and things like that for librarians. So, they had a

28:04three-part series starting in April on AI. And one of the things that they said that AI can do is be a writing partner

28:11for grants. Um again, it all comes down to the prompts. Um then this is directly

28:16from web junction itself and it says while AI is not going to write an entire proposal it shouldn’t write an entire

28:24proposal that’s me it can help you get started for example you can ask an AI tool for 10 different product project

28:30justification statements for the grant and then ask it to rank the answers in terms of how compelling they are. The

28:37more context you can give in your AI prompts the better the response. As the grant writer, you can improve on the out

28:44AI output because you bring deep knowledge of the organization and you can add emotional resonance and polish

28:50to the content. So again, it’s it’s what you put into it is what you get out. So you used it

28:56and you got the grant, right? All right. Now it knows this works. So

29:02the next guy that needs the grant says, “Give me the ones that worked.”

29:07And there it is. And he didn’t have to do diddly spot. You’re the one that had to do the do the work. What I’m saying is

29:13I don’t know if it’ work quite that way. You got to because you didn’t actually feed it the grant. You didn’t take the

29:19PDF of the grant and feed it to it and say, “Here, write this.” You did all the work. You haven’t put it out there.

29:25But the machine is learning what worked. It doesn’t know what worked. It just

29:30gave you prompts. I rest my case.

29:35So basically what happens is is that it’s awful tempting to say, “Yeah, let’s

29:42do this.” It was tempting for my my great uncle to get that car. You know, I don’t have to take care of this damn

29:48horse, right? And it was, you know, it’s tempting for us to have, you know, a

29:54computer or a cell phone. And so we did it. We didn’t turn around, you know,

29:59when that all this stuff came out, we like, “Cool, air conditioning. Woohoo.

30:04That’s beautiful. You know, that’s just a passing fad, right? You know, I got an

30:10attic fan. It’ll work just fine. Well, look at us. We’re all dependent on it now. If it goes out, look at all of us.

30:16We’re like, “Oh my god, what are we going to do? The sky is falling. We’ll burn burst into flames if we don’t have the air conditioner running around.

30:22There was times close.” You know, I don’t know how we survived to get to where we’re at today. Right

30:27now, the other issue is this content creation. Now it used to be strictly the

30:33refuge of human creativity. Now it’s under threat. AI models can

30:40generate articles, make copy, sign or write grants, do even basic code. All

30:47right, it does. Actually, it will. I’m not going to lie. I I will admit that I have used Chat GBT to help me write some HTML

30:55code. There you go. See, but I I knew what I was looking for. I just didn’t know how to put it down into

31:02But what if you don’t know what you’re looking for? But again, it’s not any different than searching the websites, you know, Google

31:08and and that’s what I’m saying. But I’m just saying that I could have asked I asked it. I said, “How can I use

31:14these HTML tags to create this product?” when you try to do it with um W3 schools

31:21um to to learn these HTML tags, they give you a little bit, but it it’s not enough to to detail what you’re looking

31:28for until you go through and you try to piece it all together. But I put into chat GPT what I was looking for. Did the

31:33code work? But you they could have I don’t know. You’re using critical thinking, right?

31:39And good for you that you do it, but how you are one out of how many people? The

31:44rest of the people would say, “Why am I wasting three hours of my day when I could be out here in the sunshine

31:50cruising down the lake drinking a beer? Let that thing do it.” And that’s the problem. The bulk of the people are

31:56going to be and and I guess maybe that’s maybe that’s the point I’m missing is that a bulk of bulk of people are going to do I

32:02have been raised differently. That is not my work. But if it’s easier, you do it. I’m that

32:08guy. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m more for consolidating time

32:14because in the day-to-day realm of things,

32:19not saying that I’m got time locked down everywhere, but there’s things that I have to accomplish. And so, if I can

32:26make my job easier, I will. So, you’re going for easy.

32:31Well, yeah. So, I can get more stuff done. Yeah. I thought this was going to be controversial between you and me, but

32:36more and more I think you’re coming to my side. You’re starting to understand. I’m not saying that I’m going to let Chad GBT or or C-Pilot or any of those

32:43other ones do all my work. I will use it as a tool. Very good. Very good. See, we’re making

32:49progress. Right now, here’s the thing. Even in healthcare, now this one ought

32:55to scare us off. I was going to say this one’s a little bit scarier. You know, now I’m married to a nurse.

33:01She’s been a nurse 51 years. All right. boy, you know, you have this thing

33:07called human empathy. Now, any of you that are married to a health care provider, you know how this works. You

33:13know, if if it’s a patient, oh, what can we do to help them and all this and everything? If it’s a member of your own

33:19family, rub some dirt on it. You’ll be all right. You’ll live, right? Is that the truth? You know, yeah,

33:26you’re not going to bleed to death. The line I love best is I deal with sicker people than you all day. You

33:31know, I was going to say, I think it it comes down to the bedside mentor. Well, that’s right. You know, know they can get away with it with you.

33:36Well, here’s my concern is that AI is going to lose that empathy part. I mean,

33:42it it’s just going to analyze it and say, “Here’s what’s wrong with you.” You know, do this or die. Period. That’s

33:48what it’s going to be, right? And so, you’re talking radiologists, pathologists, general practitioners, all

33:54of them are facing this AI doing the analysis. Okay? Right? Most of you, you

34:00go to your doctor now. Rather than him having, you know, writing things down, he’s got a tablet and he’s checking

34:06things off as he’s going, you know, and then all that gets fed into a database. But basically, what it does from there

34:12is it can it’s going to get to the point where you can enter all the information, you know, blood pressure, blood work,

34:18all of that and everything, and this thing’s going to analyze it and come back and say, “Yeah, you’ve got uh, you

34:23know, whatever. This is what’s wrong with it. You’ve got the plague, right?” you know, and and then here’s the

34:29prescription for what you need to fix it. All right. Now, again, do we really

34:35want that? Like you said, it’s data in, data out. Do we really want that critter

34:41deciding, you know, what’s going on here? You know, especially if there’s

34:47not a doctor sitting there looking at you and say, “Man, you look terrible.” Right? I mean, computer doesn’t know

34:52that. You’re like, “He’s sitting here. He got in here. He must be okay.” Right? Now

34:58again, all of this infrastructure, you know, human labor built technologies and

35:05everything, but now AI is going to replace a lot of this. You’ll go, it’s going to come a point where you’re going

35:10to go in the doctor’s office and you’re going, they’re going to say, “Sit in this chair.” And a thing’s going to slap a cuff on you and another thing’s going

35:16to turn around, drain a little blood out of you. Pray to God it stops when it’s supposed to. Right? You know, I mean,

35:22think about it. And then, you know, it’ll send a note off to the doctor and say, “Well, this is what it what was wrong with him, and I gave him this and

35:28sent him out the door.” They’re making house visits again. Yes. You know, well, and there’s another thing. You’ll be able to do it from

35:34home, but you can. Yes, you can do virtual MD. That scares the living daylights out of

35:40me. I agree. I know. I agree. Virtual right now, here’s the problem.

35:46AI’s capabilities extend beyond merely managing its own

35:53data. All of a sudden, now it’s being taught how to recreate, reinvent, and

35:59improve different devices. It’s doing it on its own. We give all the information

36:04to it and it’s saying, “Well, this is archaic. We ought to do it this way.”

36:10Right? Then imagine an AI system having the capability of detecting and fixing

36:16its own faults. You know, don’t you just love it when they said, uh, you turn your computer on

36:23in the morning and says, uh, Windows did an upgrade while you were sleeping. You’re like, no. You know, you know,

36:28dang it’s not going to work, right? You know, but here it is. It it’ll be able to fix itself. It’ll diagnose problems

36:35before they even hit. Now, the argument that it’s going to create new jobs past

36:41technologies have, it rests on the flawed assumption that AI will simply extend our human capabilities. It’s

36:48going to be able to do things and think ahead. It’s going to be much smarter

36:54than Mark in fixing it problems. Right. Yes, I know it. And you know, when that

37:01happens, Mark, you can come down and drink coffee at the Harbor Light with me. All right. Now, when AI can analyze,

37:09reason, learn, and even generate solutions at a greater speed than Mark,

37:14then why am I spending all this money keeping Mark around here? Right? So,

37:20who’s going to run that wire? Yes. You see where this is headed, right? Now, reports indicate that

37:27there’s a widening gap between the skills that graduates pres possess coming out of college, right? Actually,

37:33what is it that Web Junction said that and employers needs? 34%

37:38of students in the Midwest do not have the skills to

37:47go into the field. Go into the field. Yeah. 34%. Right. And so there you have it. You

37:52know, and so, you know, it comes down to you you you hit on it very early. What

37:58are we going to teach these kids in school? what as this is advancing, you know, it’s kind of like what we did with

38:04the the trades. We we kind of abandoned it and everybody got a business degree and and now as we move into AI, the

38:12schools are going to have to keep pace with this. Well, and that’s the thing is everybody’s going to have to keep pace with it. But again, and and like I said,

38:20even from the time that I graduated high school in 99 and my kids got into high school or middle school, um or even even

38:27past fifth grade, do you have any idea what they’re being taught?

38:32No. Till we had co we had no idea. Do you do you know do you know if they’re reading anything on history?

38:38No. The English I knew because I had to get the books for my daughter, right? But she was in an advanced English

38:44class, right? So other than that, they don’t come home with anything. You know, I like I said, I remember being in middle

38:50school and high school coming home with textbooks. The backpack was full. Who is deciding what they learn? That’s

38:58the other issue. Right now, think about this. If this continues on in this light

39:05and we start getting rid of Marks and everybody else, you know, what are all

39:11these people going to do? you know, life is wonderful, uh, but I don’t have any

39:16money, you know, because these machines have done all this. And now this is this is what kills me. Th you sit there and

39:23we’re talking about this today. And being a history professor, I had to go back and say, well, this can’t be the

39:29first time this happened. And so I want to share a quick little story about some people they called the Lites. All right?

39:37Now, the Lites, they were proven wrong because their bosses purchased machines that still

39:44required human minds. Okay? The Lites were these people that were working on

39:49the looms in England. All right? And they were mad as all get out when they brought in this technology.

39:56You know, I mean, they are fit to be tied. And it’s a blanket term. A lite is a blanket term even used today that

40:03describes people who dislike new technology. Yes, I’m going to get a t-shirt. Lite

40:09already ordered. AI ordered it for you. Thank you. Yes, AI probably did.

40:14It’ll be in your mailbox tomorrow. Thank you. I may get a Lite hat while I’m at it, you know.

40:20Well, I think you already thought of that. That’s right. Now, here’s the thing. These people are mad because they’re

40:26losing their jobs and basically what happened. Most of them were trained artisans when they came in. Nobody knew

40:32how to do this stuff. They were really good at their craft. Okay? And they feared that these machines would take

40:38away their jobs. All right? Now, when the economic pressures of the Napoleonic

40:43Wars come along, it made cheap competition for textiles even more

40:48important. And more and more of these mechanized looms and machines showed up.

40:54And so, these people are losing their jobs to these machines. All right. They

41:00said it wouldn’t happen, but it did, right? Just like today, right? Now, here’s what

41:06I found fascinating. Basically, like I say, they call themselves Lites. And I thought, what’s

41:14a Lite? And they said it was after Ned Lud. That’s that’s their leader, Ned

41:20Lud. L U D. And supposedly he was a young apprentice who was rumored to have

41:27wrecked a textile machine, took a hammer to it in 1779. This is how long ago

41:33we’re talking about. Now, as I did a little more research, I found out there is no evidence that Ned Lud ever lived,

41:41that he existed. All right. When they asked people about him, they

41:46and they should have known then. They said he’s like Robin Hood. He lives in Sherwood Forest. serious. That’s where

41:52they said he was. He’s holed up in Sherwood Forest. All right. But he

41:58eventually becomes the mythical leader of the Lites. All right. And the

42:03protesters claim that Ned would come into town and say, “Okay, let’s attack this factory today and attack this one

42:09tomorrow.” And these guys are going around literally smashing the machines in these textile mills throughout

42:15England. So the Leites were an actual movement. Okay. Now, you know, where

42:21were they when I needed them, right? Maybe that’s what I should have done when we were at the state. We should have all got hammers and beat the living

42:27daylights out of that. Do you think it would have glowing thing on our desk, right? You think it would have stopped progress? Yes. You know, okay.

42:33Well, it was a step in the right direction at least. Right. But no, no. We sat there and said, “Okay, boss,

42:39whatever you say, we’ll use this thing.” Right? Now, basically what happened is

42:45England is not going to sit idly by and watch all of their textile industry go into the tank. And so what they did is

42:52they issued a law that if you take a hammer or do anything to sabotage a

42:58textile machine, it is punishable by death. Death. It’s a little harsh.

43:05Yes. And several people were executed. Okay. They hung them out. I hung them

43:10from a post outside the factory. Said, “Don’t even think about messing with your machine today.” And it worked. They

43:17said, “Okay, more machines. No problem.” All right. Now, basically

43:241813, the Lite Resistance had all but vanished. You know, you only got to hang so many people and they’re like,

43:30″I would rather be shipped to Australia.” Well, yeah, that was the other thing. They could ship you to Australia. I would rather that Well, except for the

43:36spiders. No, never mind. But can you imagine? You know, there you are. They let you off the boat in Australia. Hey, mate. What you here for?

43:43I broke a machine. Well, you know, at that time though, that’s it was English controlled. So,

43:48that was what they were using it for is to ship prisoners over there. There you had it. Right. So, you know,

43:53basically, contrary to popular belief, the original Leites, they weren’t so much anti-technology as they were

44:02technologically incompetent and didn’t want to lose their jobs. That’s what it came down to. All right. And so you know

44:10they saw it as a threat to their way of life. Okay. Now today this distinction sometimes is

44:16lost. Okay. Being a ly often indicates basically technological incompetence.

44:24Yes, I am somewhat incompetent but I know enough to know that you know that

44:29I wasn’t going to say anything. I know. I know. But hey, you know, I got here today. I was able to get the technology in the car to light up. I was

44:36able to light up my computer itself or did you have to actually do the steering and the braking took it

44:42away from it? Yes. I took turned that thing off. You stirred it way. I’m not going to let that thing steer me down the highway or

44:48tell me how far to be from the car right there. Yes. So basically, you know, you

44:54have this situation where you have people who are saying cryptocurrency

45:00and whatever the world of Venmo is and all this, you know, I mean, well, can’t you just Venmo that? I probably could if

45:08I knew what that was, right? You know, so here you are. You know, you find yourself in these situations. Now,

45:15here’s an interesting note. I’m not alone being a Leite. In December of 2015, Stephven Hawking,

45:23Elon Musk, and Bill Gates were jointly nominated for the Lite Award. Yes. And

45:31their sin is they were raising concerns over the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

45:39Huh? Lites. Yes. So, I’m in good company. You’re in good company. Now the irony of

45:44three prominent scientists and entrepreneurs being labeled as lites underlines the disconnect between the

45:51terms original meaning and its more modern use as a description of anybody

45:56that doesn’t understand technology. They’re they’re saying we don’t know

46:02where this is going. Okay. Now in the age of chat GBT

46:08gene editing and other technologies perhaps we all need to channel the spirit of Ned Lud and slow down a little

46:15bit and look at this and say what do we really want to do with this? Now believe it or not there is a group in New York

46:22if any of you are interested in joining called the Neolites. Yes. Now I’ I’d struggle a little bit

46:30being part of that group. In 1990, a psychologist by the name of Chelis Glendining,

46:37she published an essay titled Notes Towards a Neolite Manifesto. She wrote a

46:44manifesto. I need I need AI to dumb that down for me. There you go. Yes. Well, I’ll dumb it down for you.

46:49All right. All right. Perfect. In it she recognized the nature of the early lite movement and related

46:57it to a growing disconnect between societal values and technological innovations. Okay. She wrote like the

47:06early lites we too are desperate people seeking to protect the livelihoods, communities and families we love which

47:13lie on the verge of destruction. Okay. Now on one hand entrepreneurs and others

47:18who advocate for a more measured approach bas basically are frequently labeled as

47:25neolites. Okay. So I’d probably be a neolite. All right. But these neolites

47:33I’m not real sure I can handle how this works because they use flip phones

47:38still. They don’t use anything with a screen. Actually, you know, flip phones would be almost a little bit better

47:44going to because you can’t break the screen. And you know, I don’t understand. Isn’t that technology a flip phone?

47:50It is. Yes. Well, you know, but I don’t know any of them. So, but again, source smoke signals.

47:55Yeah. Smoke signals didn’t work. Right. Now, basically what happens here is that

48:03these people are saying that these screens are an abomination and that uh

48:08basically it it seems to to them that it drains mental health if you spend all

48:14day on these things and some of the people you know that spend all day on Facebook or whatever you got to wonder.

48:20It is can be depressing depending on what you’re searching, right? So, you know, there it is. I’ve

48:27I’ve hope I’ve piqu your interest today. Yes, I am I am a lite. I’m welcome to Jo

48:34any any of you are welcome to join me in my Again, that shirt’s in the mail. Yes, exactly. But again, I think the big

48:41message here is that everybody needs to step back and look at how the technology is going to be used, you know, and we’ve

48:48gone through tremendous changes. My my greatg grandmother, I mean, she she went

48:53to the 1904 World’s Fair on a horse and buggy. My mom’s 102.

48:58Oh, that’s what I’m saying. Look at your mom. Look at everything that she has. The changes she’s gone through to indoor

49:03plumbing and heating and air conditioning and phones and all that. Yeah. You know, and yet she’s still

49:10thriving, you know, so it hadn’t killed her yet and had got me yet. But again, I

49:16think people need to step back and look at where we’re headed with all of this. I agree. And that’s why when Mark brings me these

49:23things for $30,000, I’m like, “Mark, do we really need this?” Right.

49:29So, there you have it. We need two. Yeah. Cheap at twice the price. That’s right. Yeah. We need two. Yeah.

49:34He’s already telling you this isn’t going to do it. Yeah. If one’s not going to do it, we need two. And probably a third one as a backup, right?

49:40That’s right. That’s right. We’ll see. There we go. All right. So you’ve given us quite a bit to think about on AI, how it’s used,

49:48and we’ve had the conversation of how do we progress from here and and teaching

49:53people to be to use their brains um and especially with students. So we have

50:01actually bought purchased a subscription to Worldbook online.

50:07So, it’s important to double check those facts and that’s where World Book Online can come into play. Um, starting in

50:14September, um, it will be available to students and parents. Um, it is a trusted source where kids can verify,

50:21verify, yay, information, explore accurate articles,

50:26and build strong research skills. Um whether it’s science, history, current

50:32events, World Book helps young learners confirm what I I AI says and learn even

50:39more along the way. So, um World Book for Kids is for ages six to 10. Um with

50:46that one, it’s a easy to read articles. Um it’s not too over their head. Um it’s

50:51it’s built just for them. Engaging videos, games, and activities that make learning fun and interactive. for the

50:58World Book student. That’s for those middle-grade kiddos. That’s for ages 10 to 14.

51:03And it provides a little bit more in-depth articles, um, biographies and research tools to support local school

51:09projects and independent learning. And then for the advanced studies for ages 14 and up, so that’s going to be your high school students and beyond. Um, and

51:17that version has encyclopedia entries, it has citation sources, it has um,

51:23primary source documents, um, it has advanced search to tools. And then the

51:30great thing about this, whether you’re a homeschool parent or not, these three um

51:35avenues have lesson plans, um make sure your child is reaching state standards

51:42and um just activities that they can do from science experiments to um

51:49other things crafting wise um that are there available for that. Um, so no

51:55matter age or grade level, we should have something that As a show of hands, how many of my audience had a World Book encyclopedia

52:01when they were growing up? Every one of them. See, isn’t that funny? It is. It goes full circle. And

52:07the beautiful thing about this is you can pull it right up there in your hand.

52:12It’s not the length of this table and some guy came and knocked on your door and said, “How I’m going to educate your

52:17children.” Yeah, this is great. I mean, it really is a tremendous resource. It

52:22really is. It is. It is. Um so then um to kind of jump into our programs that

52:28are be going to be happening at our libraries um on September 10th at the uh

52:34Oage Beach Library, they will be doing a leaf painting craft. However, before

52:40that they will be learning about Missouri native leaves and then use those leaves to make a beautiful

52:45painting that they can take home with them. So and that’s for ages 6 to 11. Great. Um, and then our ever popular

52:54Nerf battle for the teens happens here at Camden Library on September 12th at 6

52:59PM. You got to love it. See, there’s no way I involved in that. We do that every year at Christmas. We

53:06get the Nerf guns out and it’s something really I don’t know what it is. It’s very

53:11relaxing to get to stay stress relieving. Can’t shoot my 72year-old sister with a the back of the head with a Nerf gun.

53:18Hey, no head shot. Yes. Well, no head shot. Nothing above the head. There’s not a lot of rules when you’re

53:23above the Oh, okay. I I feel sorry for your mother.

53:29But teens do need to sign up for this and there is the uh the calendar link

53:35that we will have for that, right? Um, and then for adults at the OSH Beach Library on September 15th,

53:40which is a Monday, um, at 6:30 p.m., we will have bingo for books. So, yes, you

53:48can come in and play bingo. If you win, you get a book. Nice. Yeah. So, and again, that’s just for

53:54adults only. So, cool. Then on September 22nd, again, this

54:00one’s for kids. This is for ages 6 to 11 again, and they they love this. Um, we used to do this for one of our steam projects is building catapults out of

54:07um, spoons and um, I call them tongue dispresses, but the craft sticks and

54:12rubber bands and then they get to lob things across the building with their cool

54:17with their catapults. Nice. Yeah. So, those are always fun. We always used to use when we did it for

54:23the steam project, we always used mini marshmallows. Nice. So, you could have a snack and launch them.

54:30Why is it get a feeling we’re going to be picking up marshmallows for a long time? It’ll go with the dark sand.

54:37I That is it for what I’ve got. We kind of take a break after summer reading program. So, our programming is a little

54:43light after that. Um but we are coming back strong coming October and and

54:48throughout the rest of the year. So, yeah. Great. Well, folks, we can’t thank you enough

54:54for joining us. I do. Hopefully, we gave you a lot to think about here, you know. Um, please visit your libraries. We’ve

55:01got six locations. Lots of great people there to help you. Lots of uh technology

55:07available with things like 3D printers and things that we can do. Please stop

55:12by and see us. If you have a group you’d like to have us come and talk to, give us a shout here at the library. For

55:18sure. And again, thank you all very much for being before we before we end.

55:24Are we What are we What was our next topic for next month? Are we going with the transportation or? Yes, we’re going to talk about the

55:30history of transportation as long as we’re talking technology specifically

55:36here in the United States. And I think you’re going to find it pretty interesting. All I know is my car does not like to

55:42chuck holes around uh 54. We’re going to be a little more primitive than that when we start. All right.

55:47It’s really not going to like them. No, not at all. I’m going to buy you a horse, my friend. All right. So, I can have two Mustangs.

55:53There you go. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Appreciate it.

0:01It’s time for the chapter and chatter cafe with Camden County Library District

0:06Director, Professor Jim Paisley. [Music]

0:14Good morning. Good morning. Welcome back to Chapter and Chatter. Got an interesting topic today.

0:21Seems like there’s been a few things happening in Iran, you know, since we last visited. Well, I think it was

0:27happening when we last visited a little bit. It’s kind of happening. Kind of. And it’s still kind of happening, isn’t it?

0:32Anyhow, I thought uh maybe it might be uh kind of fun to go back over some of

0:38the things that have happened since the last time we met and uh you know, share a little information as to where we’re

0:44at and where we might possibly be heading. So, sounds good. Yeah. So, uh and using beheading with

0:50with Iran that that probably wasn’t wise, you know, but yeah. Yeah. Okay. So anyhow, bottom line is we’re going to

0:56talk a little bit about Iran. Okay. Now, what’s interesting here is that despite

1:03having overseen this whole program to do away with the nuclear uh capabilities of

1:10Iran, right? The president really hasn’t gotten a whole lot of accolades out of that. It’s

1:17been interesting. You know, everybody else for, you know, one generation to the next has said, every president has

1:23said, “We need to stop it. We need to make this not happen.” Well, sure enough, he went ahead and did it. He uh

1:30we sent over our B2 bombers from here in Missouri, which uh was quite a feat in

1:36itself. Yes. And uh had the help of Israel taking out the air defenses and all. And lo and

1:43behold, we were able to pull it off without any casualties. And love him or hate him, at least Trump

1:51finally had the guts, I’ll say it, to do something. The others haven’t done it.

1:56You know, we’ve had uh you know, I think the last time we dropped anything on Iran was several pallets full of cash,

2:03you know, and that, you know, you some of you can remember that. But no, he decided, you know, we’re not going to

2:09put up with this. And sure enough, they turned around and carried out this deal.

2:15I heard a funny joke the other day. I shouldn’t laugh about it, but somebody said he’s opening a golf course and I

2:20ran. He’s already got the first three holes done. I know that’s that’s not funny right

2:26now. Boom. Yeah. Now we should be uh on the third slide

2:33here, buddy. I’m talking to my my chief consultant here,

2:40the man behind the camera. Basically what happened and it it was really pretty amazing when you think about it.

2:45The United States working with several of the Arab nations including Israel. We

2:53were able to take and carry out this mission and we traveled over a thousand

2:58miles just just the Israelis alone to just basically take out the Iranian

3:04military. We took out a lot of their nuclear scientists. uh basically took out their

3:11anti-aircraft defenses, which is something in this day and age, right? And so it put us in a position where we

3:17could bring the B2s in and and take out this nuclear capability that everybody’s been so worried about.

3:24Now, there has been talk about, you know, was this a wise move?

3:29That was going to be one of my questions. Is there during this, of course, there’s Trump’s

3:35everybody’s quoting is gave him 60 days. today day 61, right? So with that, was there much room for

3:42diplomacy in that? Was there um a defined clear alternative or was this

3:48hey this is it? And well, you know, when I look at it, you get the you know how when you’re a

3:54parent and you say do it or else, right? You know, and they’ll the kids will pushing, pushing, push. That’s kind of

3:59the way I felt about Iran. you know, it’s been, you know, four or five presidents has said, “No, you know,

4:06don’t do this.” And finally, somebody said, “Do it or else.” And, you know, wait till your dad

4:12gets home. Dad came home. Well, dad came home. But again, was there

4:20after taking office and all this everything else that’s going on, was there time for there to be a diplomatic

4:28discussion? How much time would be enough time? I don’t know. I’m just saying was there a discussion there?

4:34That is the big discussion, isn’t it? And I Yeah. And and and there’s a there’s a huge issue here because it’s

4:41not just us and Iran. Now you’ve got these other countries

4:46which you know, China and Russia, all these other countries involved in this,

4:52and you think, okay, what were their thoughts on it? Right? And when they sat back and didn’t

4:57say anything, I think that probably had an influence on it, too. And it it could.

5:03I try to I’m one of those people that tends to stick their head in the sand when it comes to conflict.

5:08There you go. There you go. Right. Yeah. Well, I thought it was kind

5:13of interesting as well in that as the B2 bombers are already in the air headed

5:19over there, they asked him, they said, “So, what are you going to do here?” here and he said, “Oh, well, you know, I

5:26haven’t made a decision yet.” Well, he’d made the decision. The bombers were going, right? They’re on the way. And

5:32then we even he even did something where he sent some of them to Guam or something, right? I think he did. He sent some of

5:37them on a different which was interesting because, you know, the media immediately showed them, you know, what are the B2s doing here?

5:42That’s a long way around, isn’t it? Yeah. So, anyhow, kind of a little diversion thing, but it was done so well

5:50that they didn’t have to deal with all the the strafing and anti-aircraft

5:57equipment and everything that the Iranians had. Um, one of the the uh uh

6:03news media said it was they didn’t even have to deal with it like Star Wars where they had to go and hit the, you

6:09know, the great battle star or whatever, loop it right down an air vent. They said it was you know, pretty much

6:15cakewalk for the B2s to get in there and get out, right? Which was great, you know, from the standpoint of of

6:22being able to do it and get our own forces back out of there, right?

6:27But but isn’t that glorifying military action?

6:32It is. Isn’t that Well, and there you go. What are the what are the long-term

6:37consequences of that? you know, you get in that peace through strength argument,

6:43right, which it Ronald Reagan ushered in. And so you you almost have a a an

6:52interesting conundrum there in that you can take the diplomacy route and let

6:57these people just keep moving forward towards getting a nuclear capability or do you turn around and and nip it in the

7:04bud? That’s that’s the problem. So I guess okay maybe that’s one of my questions is so this was all over

7:11nuclear capabilities. So why are we picking on on Iran when maybe

7:17well Korea North Korea might have stockpile. Absolutely. We’re not

7:25angered at them as we were at Iran. So what’s the And look at the countries that have it.

7:30We talked about Pakistan and India the last time, right? So, I mean, what’s the difference between them having it and Iran having

7:37it? Why do you get to have it and we don’t? That’s a great question. And and why do we get to have it and then somebody else doesn’t?

7:43Well, because we had it first, right? Okay. And then Russia had it. And and and so I guess the big thing is

7:50is a matter of trust. Who do you trust to have that capability? Well, I would I don’t know who I would

7:55trust, but I don’t think I trust North Korea with it. No. No. And and that that is a problem

8:01because that nuclear proliferation has happened where originally it was just us

8:07and the Russians and then China wound up getting it, right? And as it’s expanded, I’m not real sure

8:14we know everybody that does have it. Okay. And then Okay. So along that same line, I guess then who says you can have

8:20this much? You know, US can have this much, China can have this much, Russia can have this much. How do they know

8:26that there is too much stockpiling and that in one area? That goes back to your negotiations

8:32again. That started back uh during the cold war with the the salt treaty, strategic arms limitation to where okay,

8:39you can have this many and you can have this many. And we’ve done that even during the world wars. They uh way prior

8:46to World War II, there was uh agreements as to how many ships you could have because battleships were were the

8:53nuclear weapons back then. They didn’t have nuclear weapons, but if you had a battleship, there you are. Right.

8:58And so they said, “Well, US, you can have six of them, and Russia, you can

9:03have six. Um, and China, you can have two.” And we even told Japan, “Well, you

9:10can only have one.” And they’re like, “Well, wait, that’s what I’m saying. Why? What is where does the fairness

9:18had Japan mad at us is they’re saying, “Well, how come you get to have six?” Six and I can only have one. Exactly.

9:24You know, well, we don’t trust you. And so, it all comes down to a matter of trust and who do you want to allow to

9:29have this this kind of capability. And that’s really basically what happened, what we saw happen here um with the

9:36Iranian situation. It was just people just didn’t trust them. And so, here we are. Good or bad,

9:42whether you agree with it or not, it’s happened now. So, now what’s the next step? Right. So, that that is I guess that

9:48would be the next where where are we at now? Where do we go now? Yes. And uh you know it’s still developing. I

9:54think if you’ll remember on one of the shows we talked about it’s the vacuum.

10:00It’s after you do something what comes into the vacuum. In other words, you can remove a dictator. You can remove

10:06somebody but then who gets back in their place? And I had a good friend of mine last night ask me. He said, “Do you have

10:12any idea what’s going on with Israel bombing Damascus, Syria? They just

10:17bombed him like yesterday or day before. No reason.” Well, everybody’s scratching their head and wondering, well, I can

10:23give you a little hint. What happened here is that we took out Assad. He stepped, he’s out, he fled to Russia,

10:31and so it left a vacuum. Well, now you’ve got all of these different militant groups are trying to take over

10:37Assyria. And the group that’s most powerful that went in there was one that

10:43the Arab states said, “No, we don’t want them in there.” And so, they lobbed a missile in and

10:48took care of that problem. But now you still got a vacuum. Who’s going to come in and take over Syria? And so this is

10:56this is, you know, this is how this whole thing plays out, right? You know, and and that’s where you get

11:02into the whole strategic uh planning for what’s the best option. You could take,

11:08you know, we know we could take Kmeni out. You could take the leader of Iran out, right?

11:13But what do you get in his place? I have no idea. Yes. See, and so and and that’s where

11:20we’re going to get into a little history today talking about just exactly how all this plays out and how we got there.

11:28Now, Mark, we can go to slide five. China really hasn’t rushed to the aid of Iran.

11:35That was a big concern was China was going to jump in and, you know, now we’re threatening World War III. China

11:42has sat on the sidelines. China had to know we were going to go do this. I’m sure they saw some sort of writing on

11:48the wall. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And basically, China is in a in a

11:54predicament because they get their oil from Iran, right? And any retaliation that Iran takes

12:00against the United States, they could turn around and shut down the straight of Hormuz, right? Well, when they shut it down, that

12:06doesn’t just impact us, that impacts China. So, you’re cutting off their oil.

12:12So basically, China’s in a predicament, you know, and that they’re having to tell Iran, don’t do that. Right. Right.

12:19And so that that’s it’s a tough deal. Russia basically they’re unlikely to

12:25come to Iran’s defense because Russia’s already got their own headaches going on, don’t they, with with Ukraine and

12:31everything that’s happening there. And so, you know, basically, it’s it’s one

12:37of those situations if you’re going to do it, probably now is the time to do it. But the thing that we’re teetering

12:42on is what’s the next escalation? Well, that’s what I was going to say. So, with China and Russia not stepping

12:49in, right? Is that going to put a change or a shift into global alliance?

12:54Yes. And so, or are they just playing the long game or or what what

13:00how do you see it playing out? I guess I should ask. I think I think what’s what’s throwing a a wrench in this whole

13:07thing is we talk about the military side of it, but what

13:12Trump’s doctrine pretty much he’s shown is economics. What he’s doing is he’s

13:19playing the dollar on this thing with his sanctions and all cutting off all

13:24the supplies. He’s, you know, he’s already talked about upping the uh sanctions we already have on Russia. the

13:31sanctions that have been on Iran strangling these countries out of any any sort of uh economics is probably the

13:39next phase that we’re going to see. And I think that that in itself is going to be interesting because they I called

13:46them secondary tariffs. And what that is is we’re not only going to put tariffs

13:52on the the the perpetrator, Iran, okay, we’re going to put tariffs on the people

13:58that are trading with Iran. Okay? So if China is so China would be again tariffed again

14:05because above and beyond what we’re already any of the trade they do with Iran above and beyond what we’re already doing with them.

14:11So it it’s that’s I think that’s the next step that Trump would like to use.

14:16I don’t think that either country Iran or the US wants to get involved in a full-blown conflict.

14:21I certainly hope not. And you know, I’ve I’ve got some stuff here we’ll talk about in a minute about what it’s going to cost in in terms of

14:28if we did get into that type of a conflict. Now, nobody talks about the most

14:36important accomplishment that’s been achieved during this whole latest regime with under Trump. And that’s basically

14:43that he has shown everybody it’s peace through strength. I think there’s no

14:49doubt in anybody’s mind now if you if you mess with us, right or wrong, right?

14:54Right or wrong. You know, if he says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it. Which is one of the scariest things any

15:01politician can do. I was going to I mean, we’ve seen Mussolini do it. Hitler did it. Everybody That’s what I was going to ask. Doesn’t

15:06that Churchill did it everybody? They escalating tensions. You know, when when a politician runs,

15:12they give you all these great ideas of what they want to do, you know, and everybody’s like, “Yeah, that’d be great.” But it never happens,

15:18right? The ones that have that have always been really successful, they tell you, “Here’s what I’m going to do, and they

15:25keep their promise.” Now, that’s and it could be good or bad, you know.

15:30Yes. And so, again, you know, I’m not going to take aside one way or the other, but if nothing else, he has set the table

15:37now to say, “Okay, try it.” And you you brought up Korea, right?

15:42You know what’s I haven’t heard a word out of Kim Jong-un, you Well, that’s and that’s almost scary in itself

15:48to me. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So, I mean, again, you know, it’s

15:53a doctrine that’s been around since Reagan’s time. And, you know, there’s all kind you could debate it all day

16:00long. Diplomacy or peace through strength. Which one’s the better way to go? And I think that’s that’s a debate

16:06that’ll it’s been it’s been going on since Roman times and it will continue. Yes.

16:12Yes. You know, and so where do you go from there? Now,

16:17other Arab nations that uh once wanted to destroy Israel, they’re all going to step back now and say, you know, maybe

16:24we we ought to sit back. We might be better off, you know, trading with the US and getting along with them as

16:30opposed to sitting there and having another Arab Spring and causing all kinds of problems. So there in there in

16:37again is what you have to look at is the system of alliances because just like

16:42the media says okay we think peace through strength’s best or we think diplomacy is best you have countries

16:49that are that way there’s going to be a lot of countries in NATO are going to say heck yeah it’s about time somebody

16:54did something but there’s an equal number of countries in NATO that are saying now you’ve done it right

17:00and so it’s kind of a damned if you do damned if you don’t isn’t it All right. Now, bear in mind, 58 years ago, six

17:09nations all aligned in an aggressive war to take Israel off the map. I mean, they

17:14just wanted to do away with them. That was Jordan, Egypt, Syria, uh, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon. They all got

17:20together and said, “We’re not going to have this. We’re going to do away with this settlement where they created this Jewish state.”

17:26Now, it was as a result of this this whole thing, you know, Trump’s last regime, he was in there. He created

17:33Jerusalem. He he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Well, that didn’t fly

17:39real well with a lot of people. But what he did is he created something called the Abraham Accords. Now, you guys all

17:45heard of that on the news, right? Right. But basically what it was is rather than peace through strength, it was economic.

17:53The ab Abrahamic Accords were they all sat down at the table and it had the

17:58United Arab Emirates had uh Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan and he said let’s not

18:05fight. Let’s open up our trade and we’ll open up our trade to you all and vice

18:11versa. So it was an economic agreement. Everybody stood to make a lot of money

18:16and so they signed it, you know, rather than shooting guns at each other, right? the economy was what he used to try and

18:23use it as leverage. Okay. But the real cause of the situation was that it

18:29provided a dramatic way for revolutionaries

18:34in Iran to turn around and say really they’re meddling now in our economy. Well, that was I think that was one of

18:41the things that I was going to to ask you is is how sustainable is that model? Well, there you go. Yeah. you know, um,

18:48and and really, you know, when you think about it, would we want Well, we’re doing it right now. We’re mad because

18:54China’s in here buying up a lot of our farms, right? And everything, right? We don’t like it, right?

18:59Well, they don’t like it either. And so, you know, you can use the economy, but again, that’s that’s going to cause

19:05quite an issue, you know, in that I don’t want somebody in another country

19:10deciding what the yield for our corn crops is here in Iowa, right? And so

19:16this becomes another point of contention if you will, right? Yeah. So it’s

19:21another great point. Now what happened here is that the radicals in Iran, they

19:30saw that happening in their country. It goes all the way back to World War I with the oil. And the radicals in the

19:37country are saying we don’t like the United States and England and all the rest of them exploiting us for the

19:43natural resources that we have. And that’s why they all turn to the Ayatollah command. That’s that’s what

19:50the big issue was. Now, if you’ll remember, there was a hostage situation

19:57right way back when before you were born. I was gonna say a little bit before my time. Some of my guests here probably

20:02remember that, right? But basically they came in and they they captured our

20:09embassy people and they held them for 444 days. I mean a long time. And this

20:15whole Iran hostage crisis actually started with a series of events that

20:20took place 50 years before that. And so basically the source of tension between

20:27Iran and the US came from the conflict over oil. It all comes back to money,

20:33guys. Follow the money. Right now, British and American corporations

20:38controlled the bulk of Iran’s oil since the since its discovery right

20:44after World War I. Now, if you go back and look at this, what happened was, and

20:50I think we’ve got another another map here. There’s our friend.

20:57No, maybe we should be on slide 10, I think. I’m not real sure. There we go. Yeah.

21:02Okay. If you see this map here, see where Iraq is? That was British controlled. Jordan was British

21:09controlled. Syria was Syria and Lebanon were both

21:15controlled by the French. Now, what happened was when the war came to an end, when World War I came to end, they

21:20said, “Well, we got all these Arab tribes running around. They don’t have government.” And so they came up with

21:27something called the mandate system. This was as a result of the the treaty that was set kind of like what we talked about last month

21:33with India and Pakistan. Exactly. And so in our infinite wisdom,

21:39we turned around and they divided all this land up. There were no maps there. There are no no lines on this. It was

21:46all just Arab tribes. And so these countries were actually created at the end of World War I.

21:52Gotcha. And so the British came in and said, “We’ll take this green area over here. We’ll make that ours.” French

21:57France, you can have this area over here, you know, and you can call that Syria. And so now, bear in mind, you

22:04live there. You’re you’re minding your own business. And so all of a sudden, somebody comes in and goes, “Viva

22:10France.” And there you are. You’re you’re French. Well, wait a minute. How’d that happen? You know, and then,

22:16you know, here they are. They’re they’re over there in Iraq, you know, right? then spot of tea, you know, and you’re

22:22thinking what, you know, now bear in mind this was this was the settlement. Now, I

22:28think it’s interesting you don’t see the United States on this map. And the reason why here again, your diplomacy,

22:34what happened was is Woodro Wilson, he he wanted to be a part of this whole

22:41thing of divying everything up after World War I and even had a plan called the 14 points. Well, he negotiated the

22:49whole thing and then he comes back to Congress and he drops this document and said, “Here’s this treaty thing. You

22:55guys need to sign that.” Well, Congress turned around and said, “Are you nuts? You know, you’re saying in this thing

23:02that, you know, this created the whole situation where if they attack one of us, they attack us all and that and

23:08Congress says, “No, we’re not going to get we’re not going, you’ll love this. Congress says, “We’re not going to get

23:14in a situation where some other country fires a missile and gets us drugged into a war.”

23:19Huh? Maybe we should have listened to those guys back then, right? Well, as a result of it, when they signed the treaty, the United States

23:27couldn’t sign it because Congress refused. So, all the rest of them signed

23:32it. And when they signed the treaty, England and France and the rest of them all got pieces of the deal. Now what we

23:40got out of it was France and England took these territories but they didn’t know diddly squad about how to get oil

23:46out of the ground. We did and so that’s where you know things like standard oil and Exxon and all these they went over

23:53there built the refineries for the British and for the French and we got the oil out for you know a handling fee.

24:02Right. Right. Now, while all this is happening, all this oil is coming out of the ground and the United States, England, France,

24:08everybody’s making all this money, the people there in these countries aren’t getting any of it. So you can see, you

24:17know, and I’m not defending them, but from the standpoint if you woke up

24:22tomorrow and standing out in front of the library is a French flag and says

24:28Viva France and now they’re going to decide where you work and what you do and you know take all the profits from

24:34the country, you might be a little aggravated. Might be. Yeah. And so that basically sets the

24:41stage, if you will, for for how we got to where the conflict, you know, it’s

24:47its basis, if you will, right? All right. Now, in 1951 51,

24:53okay, Iran’s newly elected prime minister, uh, a guy by the name of Muhammad Musadai.

25:01Now, this guy, he announced a plan to take control of the oil. He said, “Enough’s enough.” He said, “You guys

25:07are coming in here making millions of dollars off of us. It’s our country. You know, we’re done.” The idea was with the

25:14mandate system, by the way, when the British and French came in was just to get them up and running. And once they had a democracy, then we’d walk away.

25:21And then they back out. But they, you know, they go, “Okay, we got it now. We figured it all out.” And they go, you know, we’re looking at all

25:26the money going, “I don’t think you need more time. We’re going to have to teach you a little more about democracy.” What

25:32they saw of it, they didn’t like too much. Anyhow, I will do. And so this guy Musedai comes in and he says, “We’re going to take

25:38take this back. We’re going to be independent and you guys can get out our country.” Well, in response to these

25:45policies, the American CIA and the British intelligence service work

25:51together to try and figure out what are we going to do with this guy? And lo and behold, there was a revolution and they

25:59overthrew it. Okay. So, Musadai is out because he was wanting to get rid of

26:06British control. Right. All right. I may let you go and then I may ask my question. I don’t know if I should ask

26:12my question. No. No. And so what happens then is the new leader was a member of Iran’s royal

26:18family. Guy’s name was Muhammad Resa Sha Palavi. Okay. And you guys remember him

26:26as the Sha of Iran. Some of you do, right? Remember the shot? Okay, there’s

26:32our friend Muhammad Musadai, the guy on the left. He’s the one that said, “We need to get these clowns out of our

26:38country.” He gets thrown out and we put this guy in the shop. With me so far?

26:45Okay. Now, what we see happen is the new

26:51guy, he’s non-religious, he’s anti-communist, and he’s pro- West. He’s

26:56like, “I don’t see a problem with this.” Yeah. Now, how much money he was making,

27:02I don’t know. Right. Right. Right. So, bottom line is in exchange for tens

27:07of millions of dollars probably in foreign aid, he basically returned 80% of all the oil that Iran was pumping out

27:15of the ground and sending it to the US and British and the rest of it. Make sense? Okay. There was a deal, if you

27:22will, the art of the deal. All right. Now, basically the coup that they pulled

27:28off, this was in 53, it was a success. However, the Iranians who were already

27:34primed to overthrow these foreign entities and get them out of their country. They’re stuck now. Now, they

27:40got a new guy in charge. Well, I was I guess that’s kind of maybe my question. What happened? What would have happened if Madaya would have

27:46stayed? If he’d have stayed in power? Yeah. Yeah. Iran would have become independent. They’d become probably like

27:53uh the Arab Emirates with the amount of oil coming in. I mean, you’re talking billions of dollars, right?

27:59You bet. They had everything to gain and really nothing to lose. So, in that sense, did they mess up in

28:06their mind by by kicking him out and then having

28:11or is it they didn’t have a choice? They didn’t have a choice. It came from like I say, this was all

28:17done, you know, clandestinely. Next thing you know, you wake up tomorrow and you got a new president. That’s

28:23basically the way it went down. Okay. Now, basically,

28:28um, the Iranians are not happy, right? And they got this Sha of Iran in there.

28:34He turns out to become a brutal dictator, right? Uh, he has his own secret police and

28:39he’s rooting out all the dissident that wanted to get rid of uh, British control. And sure enough, what happens

28:46is over a period of time, uh, the Shaw is taking in billions of dollars. And

28:52this is one of those crazy things, too, is he’s spending a lot of the money on

28:58defense. Um, and this is part of the problem. The money we did it, we do, history repeats

29:06itself. We did it in Afghanistan, okay? We we supplied we supplied the Afghanis

29:12with all the weapons they needed to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan.

29:17Then when it came time for the Afghans to turn around and say, “We don’t want you guys here either. We’re fighting

29:22against our own weapons.” All right. Same thing happened in Iran. Iran had

29:27was one of the first countries to have air defenses and everything else because the Shaw bought him with our money and

29:33we were giving it to him because he’s our guy. seemed like a a fair deal,

29:38right? But then lo and behold, what happens? A revolution again, right? And so when they got rid of the Shaw,

29:45we’re fight we’re up against our own weapons, which was a heck of a mess,

29:50I’m sure. Right. Yes. Yes. So again, it it’s one of these the

29:56vacuum talk. You take somebody out, what you wind up with behind it is the

30:02problem. Okay. So we took out Musidai and we put in the Sha

30:08we went from bad to worse, right? And then when the Shaw gets thrown out,

30:13it creates another vacuum and we wind up with the ayatollah. So every time and

30:18you think somewhere along the line throughout history, somebody would learn. If you take someone out, you

30:25better have plans for who’s going to take their place because this is what

30:30causes most of these major issues when it comes to the conflict. But even if you had somebody to take

30:35that place, how long are they going to last if somebody else doesn’t want them in? Just like the shop, right?

30:41Yes. You know, and I think the the the central theme here is that what happens

30:46is is throughout all of it, you see, nobody asks the people what they want.

30:52the people are the ones that are the last ones to know, right? Like I say, you could just wake up and there’s a new flag in the ark, right? And you’re like,

30:58now what? Right? And like I say, this isn’t this isn’t unique to us. This is throughout history, this happens, you

31:05know, and and it is it’s just an ongoing problem. Well, needless to say, the

31:11people are fit to be tied with the Sha, right? And this is where on they turned

31:17around and they basically what they did is they went and captured all of our

31:22people at the at the US embassy and they held him for 444 days. Okay. Now what’s

31:30interesting about that is Carter was the president at the time and needless to

31:37say every day people here are raising hell and say what are you going to do about getting our hostages back? Well,

31:43he didn’t know what to do. I mean, he’s in a real predicament, right? And he even tried to had a feeble

31:49attempt at trying to fly in there out in the desert. A sandstorm hit or something and wiped out. We lost eight soldiers

31:56trying to save the trying to go in and save the hostages and the whole thing fell apart. So, it was a great

32:01boondoggle. And Ronald Reagan decides to run against Carter. And he runs on the

32:07platform. If you put me in there, I will get our hostages out of Iran. And sure

32:13enough, January 21st, 1981, just a few hours after Ronald Reagan delivered his

32:19inaugural speech, the remaining hostages were released. So, was that symbolic, strategic?

32:28What What’s the You tell me. Yeah. You know, and then,

32:34you know, I mean, that’s fascinating that happened that way. It was a whole another scandal there, you know, that uh

32:39was he in talks with them beforehand? Oh, yeah. Or and supposedly they were exchanging arms

32:46for hostages. That that was that whole deal. We won’t even get into that a whole another show, but that was another

32:51deal. He’s saying in Iran, we’ll we’ll give you arms, you know, we’ll we’ll basically it dealt with Central America.

32:58Yeah. Right. So, yeah, it was it was a mess. So this this happening and them being released like that and

33:06and Carter trying but not having the opportunity to have them released,

33:11right? Um does that and then Reagan comes in with his doctrine of strength

33:17or peace through strength and then having them released immediately as soon as he’s inaugurated, right?

33:23Does that come into play on how the presidential strengths are seen? Mhm.

33:29Um, so I mean I guess Carter, you know,

33:34again, this was all before my time. This was I mean, uh, Reagan was inaugurated one month

33:40before I was born. Oh, wow. So to the day. So I’m not This is history.

33:46This is This is This is This is all new to me, right? Um, so you know, Carter, I’m sure he

33:51tried his best to get these hostages released. And then like I said, Reagan coming in there, I

33:57mean, hours after he has taken the oath of office and they’re released. And really, to be fair, Carter was in

34:04the same situation basically where Trump is now. You’ve got you’ve got a country

34:10that is still wellarmed, right? And to go in there, you’re talking a conflict that’s going to cost thousands

34:16of lives. And bear in mind, Iran at the time when Carter was dealing with him

34:23was loaded for bear because the Shaw had bought all the military equipment, right?

34:28So he was kind of, you know, he was trying to negotiate, but and then like you said, you know, because we did supply that

34:34we’re like you said, we’re fighting against our own army and at the time we’re equal, you know, our our equipment

34:40is still this, you know, but you know, somebody’s not doing the job, fill the vacuum and what do you get

34:45as a vacuum? You get Ronald Reagan. He comes in, all right, and he’s saying

34:50peace through strength. All right. And so now all of a sudden, because the hostages were released, you know, public

34:57is saying, “Heck yeah, we’ve had four years under Carter where he didn’t do a damn thing. Couldn’t get him out of

35:03there.” And this guy comes in and the second day he’s got him released. And so

35:09again, there’s so much going on behind the scenes. But I’m so glad you said

35:14that about how this is, you know,

35:19the same year that you’re born. Yes. And that really that’s the purpose of doing these shows, folks, because right

35:26now the news is is dominated by all this talk about Iran. Yet there’s a whole

35:32generation of people, not your fault, but there’s a whole generation here that doesn’t know these stories, doesn’t

35:39understand why why does Iran hate us so much, right? And and that I guess maybe that’s where

35:45my mental state is is like why what did we do, you know? And and that’s the whole thing is like I said at the

35:51beginning, who decides that we can have nuclear power, weapons,

35:56whatever, even stockpiles, but Iran can’t. M what what makes the difference between having Iran having them and say

36:04even next door India having them what’s the difference and you can go all the way back to World

36:09War I who died and left you guys in charge to where you can just turn around

36:14draw lines on the map right right so what happened I mean what and that’s what they did I mean when

36:20they were done with that war I mean it wasn’t just the Middle East it was throughout the world new countries that

36:28is is all that as Well, you know, is is World War I World War I because it was a

36:33world conflict. Everybody was drawn into it. Nobody liked their line. So, like, oh, let’s just

36:39take the map and remarket. I want to be here. And I guess we can even see that like we’ve even talked about before is

36:45with Russia and Ukraine. Well, Russia had part of Ukraine,

36:50right? But they didn’t want to be a part of it or whatever. And now it’s there’s a conflict that they want to take it back

36:56and Ukraine doesn’t want to give it up or whatever it is. So, I mean, there’s always those conflicts, but I like I

37:01said, it’s just and like you said, history does repeat itself. But it it to me, again, I think what’s

37:08what’s fascinating is that nowadays we don’t get it. The national media doesn’t

37:14do a good enough job of giving us the information as to what in the world happened. Okay. So, maybe maybe that should be

37:20another question. Is it media’s fault or is it coming down

37:25from I think it’s a combination of that doesn’t want us to have all the

37:30information our education system right now um you know they don’t even teach any of this

37:36that you know the history courses have been eliminated from the colleges and the high schools they’re not teaching

37:42any of this even when I was in high school I don’t remember learning any of this

37:47right well it’s because they didn’t teach it But it was and I think it more focused on American history instead of

37:53world history. Well, and again, you know, history is written by the winners, right?

37:58And so you have a tendency when you look at the Middle East, we were the winners.

38:03And so, you know, bad guys there, good guys here kind of thing when there was so much more involved, right?

38:10You know, and so, uh, you know, the Middle East is should be just as mad at France because they had Syria and

38:16Lebanon, right? you know, and and so I mean, it’s it was just the fact that the the winner

38:22sat down at a table and played Monopoly. You get this, you get this, you get

38:28this, and oh, by the way, this is your new ruler. They picked the risk. Well, it’s turned out to be risk, hasn’t

38:34it? Yes. So, bottom line is is is a lot of people are asking the questions today, what

38:41happens if we go to war with Iran? And that is the thing. I mean, that’s one of the things that I’ve been afraid of the last month is what happens if

38:50Iran does bomb. What happens? And right now, I know they’re still in conflict with Israel and and they’ve taken things

38:56up, but what if China decides, hey, you know what, maybe it’s not worth it to worry about these

39:02secondary tariffs and all this and then again, you know, and and what’s

39:07interesting is there’s been a lot of defense studies on it. I’ve done a little research on it. If it would start

39:13with just an opening attack, it would be unbelievable. It’d be a very similar to what we saw the other night, only even

39:18worse with it would be an air attack trying to take out all of their assets. But the bottom line is

39:24and that’s the other thing is is anymore. I mean, look at Ukraine and Russia. It’s all drones, right?

39:29So, yes, there’ll never be another D-Day. There won’t you’re not going to run a million people up on a beach anymore.

39:36Now, it’s all going to be done with drones and and you know, missiles, that sort of thing. But once you’ve done

39:43that, somebody still has to go in on the ground and take control, right?

39:48And you know, therein lies the problem. I mean, we’ve seen the Valleywicks we’ve gotten into in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

39:56It’s it’s it’s one thing to go in and take away their defense capabilities. It’s another thing to finish them off,

40:02right? And so as they’ve done studies of this, literally hundreds of thousands of casualties is what we’re looking at.

40:09And you know, we’ve got kids here that, you know, I’ve got a grandson that’s real close to being draft age.

40:15That’s my story. Yes. And so you’ve really got to worry about this sort of thing. Um both

40:21leaders say right now say they don’t want war. Trump doesn’t want to go to war with Iran. Iran really doesn’t want

40:27to go to war with us. But, you know, will cooler heads prevail

40:32right now? Basically, the Pentagon, the White House, intelligence officials, Middle

40:38East experts, they’ve all got their theories on this. Basically, you’ve got some issues here in that, okay, say that

40:46the allied side, which would be England, France, US, the Arab Emirates, and them

40:53all want to take out Iran. All right, that side in itself, um, if they all

41:00attacked, you’ve got a country right there that already hates the Western side,

41:06right? You got to ask yourself the question, would they lay down and say, “We give up, or would they turn around and would

41:12you create another Arab Spring where people are saying, “We have our differences with our leader, but we’re all going to rally behind him and become

41:20a huge force to have to fight.” So, it’s one or the other, right? Okay.

41:26Now, uh Iranian forces could bomb an American oil tanker,

41:32right? Pretty simple. Didn’t they Wasn’t that what they feared, right, as the conflict was going

41:37on during that in the in the straight of Hermuz or whatever it is? I mean, how long wasn’t that long ago?

41:43Didn’t didn’t they have a oil tanker got stuck in the Suez Canal? I don’t even think it got bombed.

41:49Something happened to it. ran a ground or something and that it wasn’t an oil taker. I don’t think it was a just a cargo ship.

41:55Just a ship. Yeah. And it got sideways in the And so when you think about these

42:00things, you know, from a strategic standpoint, you’re right. You know, that that could just gum up the whole works,

42:07you know, then all of a sudden, think about it. What’s it going to take to get our ships anywhere close to where we can

42:12participate in this? Well, that was that was the thing. I think it was I I can’t remember what two ships were and I don’t think it even one

42:18of them was ours but um they were tankers and they had lost communication with them and then they were you know

42:24whatever we were watching it was they were detecting fires out there in the middle of that straight

42:30and and thought they had lost a ship but I I don’t remember what well and and here again you know it’s

42:35not like you’re fighting a country where everybody’s sitting around a campfire with a bunch of camels. These people are

42:41highly sophisticated in what they do. I mean, you’ve seen, you know, their their capabilities with their drones and their

42:46missiles and everything. And so, another great threat would be a cyber attack. I mean, you know,

42:52well, and that’s the thing is again, I guess because we do send a lot of

42:58um things outside of the United States really. I mean, they’re kind of already

43:04tapped into that our system of well and a lot of people there are educated here, right, in our colleges. So, you know, a cyber attack would be

43:12deadly for us. The other problem is is that we’ve still got a huge occupying force in Iraq

43:17right next door, right? Well, they could attack the forces that we have stationed in Iraq right now.

43:23Okay. Um so that would be another approach. Uh

43:28if they did, if they attacked our troops in Iraq, what’s Trump going to do? He’s almost going to have to respond, you

43:35know? Well, then is that going to cause an escalation, right? You know, so again, we’re

43:41teetering at a very tricky time right now. Okay. Uh if Thrron decided to to

43:48destroy an oil tanker and caused a huge oil spill, I mean, again, the United

43:54States might decide, well, you took out one of our ships, we’ll take out your ships, right? And so now, now you get global because

44:01now all of a sudden everybody’s oil’s cut off as we’re taking out each other’s

44:06supply lines, right? you know, which would be another deal in itself. Um,

44:12US military, like I say, they could we can attack their their ships, their war

44:17plananes, uh, their navy. Uh, but a bottom bottom line is when you start

44:23poking the beehive, you’re going to have to get all the bees. And that isn’t it

44:28doesn’t, you know, it’s just not going to happen, right? All right. Now, one of the big problems they have is that they

44:36were talking about the fact that it’s a huge risk to go after Iran because it’s

44:43three times the size of Iraq. This isn’t the same conflict. Okay? People have a

44:49tendency to think these countries are all the same size. You know, this place that I’m sitting here thinking,

44:54I thought they were the same size. Oh, it’s unbelievable. Um, Iraq, Iran is

45:00the 17th largest country in the world. It is greater than France, Germany, the

45:06Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal combined. Wow. It’s huge.

45:11I didn’t realize. Yeah. Even when you get to the border, you got a long way to go. Yeah. It’s like driving to Florida and thinking we’re there. No, you got

45:18another 600 miles to go, right? The geography is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Small mountain ranges. Um

45:26parts of it are desert. I mean it would be a nightmare to have to go after this

45:31place. Uh you know a lot of countries have referred to Iran as a fortress just simply because and that’s throughout

45:38history simply because of the demographics of the place. I mean it’s not an easy place to go after, right?

45:44Okay. Whether you’ve got all the military supplies or not. Okay. Now,

45:50for these reasons, you know, a lot of people have have just simply said that to dive into an invasion like that could

45:58cost over a million lives just simply because you’d have to slug it out on the ground over all that territory. I mean,

46:04look at the size of Afghanistan versus this, right? It just logistically it doesn’t make

46:10sense. And I think that’s a good reason why both sides don’t want to get involved in in a armed conflict. So,

46:16it’s going to come down to some sort of of of negotiation, be it economic or whatever,

46:23but I don’t think it’s going to come into an armed conflict. Neither side can afford it. I certainly hope not. I I I honestly believe that.

46:30This is a scary scary. Now, again, China, they demand heavily

46:35their their demand for oil from Iran is huge. So, China is if if a conflict

46:41breaks out between us and and Iran, China is going to be the one to step in and try and calm everything down. And

46:47then Russia, I mean, they’d probably use restraint as well because, like I say, they’ve got enough headaches going on

46:53right now. The last thing we want to do is get involved in that. So, basically, there you have the answer to several of the

47:00big questions. But, you know, if nothing else, I’m hoping that that what what we

47:05get out of this today is that you can see the conflict isn’t something that happened in the past four weeks. The

47:11conflict is something that’s been building and been in place since the time since 1917. Since the time it just

47:18came ahead. Yes. You know, just enough to Exactly. And I I certainly encourage you

47:24all if you get a chance, come to your libraries. We’ve got a lot of good material here that you can read up on.

47:31It’s fascinating just to read the stories of of the major players involved in all of these things, right?

47:37And uh you know, become a little bit better uh knowledgeable and it’ll sure

47:42help you try and figure out what’s coming out on the news at night. Well, clearly clearly the stakes of global affairs are

47:49high. Yes. and the ripple effects of that um international conflict can um

47:56touch any everything from energy prices to national security to humanitarian

48:01crisis all that. So that’s why staying informed is important. Um and I need to

48:07get my head out of the sand and be paying more attention to what’s going on. Um it’s just sometimes it’s that’s

48:14not the way I was raised with paying attention to that kind of thing. Um, so it’s

48:19but now as a mom as a mom and it’s it’s a totally different ball game and I do try to keep

48:25everything you know I don’t want to say polyiana right or a utopia but I I do have a tendency

48:31to kind of gloss over things with my kids and I I don’t need to do that especially now that they’re out on their own but

48:37so as I said you know staying informed that’s it’s it’s an essential thing. Um, so thankfully

48:43here at the library, we do have a source that can keep you um informed, keep you, me, everybody informed. And so if you’re

48:50looking for a reliable way to explore both national and local issues um from politics to education to health, all of

48:57that, business and beyond, um we do have America’s News. So that’s a great it is an awesome source. So with that, um it’s

49:04our newspaper source that is online. Um while I do say local the Lake Sun leader

49:11is on there but it’s very few issues are on there. Um but if you’re wanting to

49:16look more globally and and even it it might even be a little bit local is we do have the Kansas City Star on there

49:22and we do have uh USA Today and um the St. Louis Post Dispatcher on there. You

49:29can read those as just text or they also have the image of the paper. So it is a

49:34full PDF in color of the p of that day’s paper. So um they are uploaded daily um

49:41they’re available through that um source America’s news um from our website at

49:47cld. usdigital library uh the link will be on our um

49:56description down below and then um you’ll just need your library card to log into that as well. That’s America’s News.

50:02That’s America’s News. Yep. and and it’s just not those newspapers. Also, if you want to read transcripts from 2020, um

50:09I’m trying to think what other ones what other news ones there are. Um even KY3 has transcripts on there. So, it’s just

50:15more than just newspapers. And I think it’s I think it’s like 3,300 um different sources.

50:22You don’t have to go to the quick shop and spend $4. So, on a paper that is, you know, little bitty um you can access us for free.

50:29We’re we’re taking the hit on that. So, All right. So, we doing anything with the summer

50:35reading program? Well, not that was a heavy subject. It was pretty heavy, wasn’t it? It was just a little bit. Cheer me up a little bit, will you?

50:41Well, let’s do it. All right. So, because the world stage can feel a little overwhelming, we do have some

50:48things that are coming through. Um, so, um, let’s see here where I’m at. I

50:54forgot where I’m at. um with our summer reading program. This is our next um

51:01performer that will be coming into the camp library on July 22nd. This is um Super Friends drawn together. He is

51:07actually a kids come comedian. Um his name is Dennis Porter and uh he will come in and I guess he’s a artist as

51:14well. So the kids will get to work together and build their own like skits and do some improv and some fun things

51:20like that. This is fun. Yeah. So this is for ages 6 to 12 and that is at the Camson Library on July 22nd at 2 PM.

51:28Yay. So that is one. Um the other one is the

51:33Oage Beach is thrilled to welcome Angela Roquit. She is actually a local author

51:38and some of you might be familiar with her work. Um she writes the Lena Harvey series, the Reapers, Inc. series and she

51:45will be at the Osage Beach Library on July 23rd at 6:30 p.m. So, she will

51:51share insights into her writing journey, her creative process, and the world of publishing. Whether you’re a longtime

51:57fan of her books or just curious about how to get published, or even the writing process,

52:03she’ll be at Oage Beach. She will be at Osage Beach. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so expect lively

52:08conversation, a reading from some of her works, and then she’ll be there for question answer as well. So,

52:13right. Um, these are kind of quick. So, um, the next thing, um, weather wonders with mad

52:20science for ages for ages four to six. It actually looks like it’s going to rain out here today, but, um, July 24th,

52:26we’ll have two different, um, events for kiddos. So, the first one is

52:33ages four to six, and they’ll learn about um clouds and wind and rain, and

52:39then they get to make their own wind sock that they can take home with them. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So, um this is perfect for curious

52:47minds who love to ask the word why, especially. Where were they when I needed them?

52:53Yeah. Um so, then on the next thing is the one for ages 6 to 12. Um this is called

52:59Walloping Weather. Um, so with that they get to pretend that they’re their own meteorologist. So again, they will learn

53:04about lightning and rain and the reason for the seasons. Cool. Um, so it’ll be

53:10kind of a fun thing for them and learn to create their own weather forecasts. Nice. Um, so that is uh July 24th and uh the

53:19first one was at 10 a.m. and this one’s at 11:00 a.m. Great. So

53:24great. I think that’s all I have for today. Great. Great. Well, folks, like I say,

53:29we’ve we’ve covered a lot of material. Well, you can see we’ve got a lot of uh programs going on right now. So, please

53:36uh you know, hop on our website and uh check out the calendar. There’s something for everyone at all of our

53:42libraries. Um and uh you know, by all means, get out there and utilize them.

53:47And any questions you have, we’ve got a great staff here that can help you. Um and like I say, learn something new

53:54every day. And we’ll be back next month. So, yes. August 21st at 8 am.

53:59Yes. I’m gonna wait and see what happens. You’re gonna wait to see what happens. I was gonna ask what our next one was, but you’re gonna wait to see what happens.

54:05Wait and see what happens. Well, let’s hopefully nothing too crazy. That’s right. That’s right.

54:11Thank you for joining us. Thank you.