Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsh, and welcome to another episode of Metaviews, recorded live at the Academy of the Impossible, where the goats are getting into their daily walks and they're in pretty good moods. And today we got food for thought with a menage a trois going on with good old Mike Oppenheim and Russell McCormick. Both have joined us once again.

Returning visitors, guests. And this is, as we've been mentioning, the tail end of season two of Meta Views. The countdown is on.

Only a few more episodes to go, and today is more spontaneous a conversation than usual in that we've got two returning guests. And this is kind of a warm up for our salon, which will be in about a week, which will have an even larger, larger group.

So we're trying to add to the collectivity, add to the group dynamics, but we nonetheless stick to the same segment structure, which is to start with the news, partly to promote Mediview's daily newsletter on substack. And today we were talking about harvesting lies and the role of disinformation in the food system.

But of course, the primary purpose of our news segment is to throw to our guests, guests in this case plural, and say, hey, what news have you been paying attention to? What news have you brought for the Meta Views network? So, Mike, I'm going to throw to you first only because you are perhaps the most averse to news.

So on some levels, this is meant to be a bit of a challenge to get you out of your comfort zone. So what do you got for us today?

Yeah, this is a subject that hits home to me for many reasons of which people can jump to conclusions about all they want. According to CBS News, ex flight attendant reportedly caught with 101 pounds of drugs and luggage.

And it's a three way connection between Sri Lanka, England and Thailand. And the three people who are arrested face life in jail and one of them faces the death penalty.

Okay, you want to give more context on that? I mean, absolutely. There's a few different ways that I could read that story. My first one being presuming innocence and wondering if it's a setup.

But please, there seems like there's more to unpack in this story.

Yeah, I mean, I have an angle I want to take after, but I will briefly summarize the facts. A Sri Lankan, the first of all, the woman, the flight attendant, was caught in Sri Lanka and they seized nearly 60 kg.

I found this interesting, potent synthetic cannabis that foreigners had tried to smuggle in this month. However, the English authorities who had previously caught her said that she actually had over 100 pounds of the drugs in her suitcases.

It's also connected to Thailand. And they said that it's a triangle of drug trafficking, which I'm a little familiar with. Not fully.

One of the things that actually really, like, I thought was interesting is that it's a synthetic drug that also contains powerful opioids. They said. So she's mixing cannabis with opioids and it's synthetic. They said it's perhaps the biggest drug bust at the Colombo airport.

And the British media have identified the woman. I'm not going to say her name on the air. I don't like doing that. And I mean, can I get into my take or.

Yeah, please. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The take is the point.

First, of all, the cojones it takes to traffic drugs just right there. Just like of all the things that you could do in this world that garner risk. Second, the insider factor, the fact that it was a flight attendant.

You know, there's enough movies about this and our imagination can go crazy. Third, like I said three different times, it's the synthetic drug.

So I find that incredibly interesting because the definition of a drug, the definition of a synthetic drug, I find that hilarious. It's a little oxymoronic. And then third, the.

The part that I brought up at the beginning, and I don't want to bury the lead, is these people are facing lifetime in jail.

I mean, there's a lot of dynamics to these stories. I think one of them that you're teasing upon, that I happen to be familiar with, is the synthetic cannabis market in Britain, which is weird.

And it's weird partly because it's a byproduct of making cannabis itself illegal. And for many years, there was a gray market in Britain in which you could legally sell synthetic cannabis.

And this was before they realized that it had detrimental health effects on multiple levels that traditional cannabis does not. And then to your point, it was also possible for them to lace in or weave in other narcotics. So it wasn't just cannabis.

You could often get it mixed with opioids. You could get it mixed with methamphetamines and other drugs.

So there is clearly a market for said products in Britain, and that's why this was happening.

But the other dynamic of this, and I kind of prefer the more chutzpah than cojones, the other dynamic of this is whether these individuals were acting willingfully because most people who are in the employ of being a drug mule, of moving mass quantities of narcotics are not doing so out of their own free will and are usually doing so as a proxy for someone else. The pay is generally motivating enough for them to take the risk, but they are not the ultimate beneficiary of, say, moving that much volume.

That whoever had the capital to procure such a volume is most certainly not taking the risk in transporting it.

But a fascinating story nonetheless, especially here in Canada, where cannabis is legal and our industry exports quite a bit of cannabis around the world. So my take on this will be this is why all drugs should be legal and regulated so that you don't have to have people in harm's way.

Russell, I'll throw to you both for the privilege of commenting on this particular story, but also as you see fit, segueing to your own. I think I will also correct the misspelling there I have in your name cuz it's two S's, right? Not one.

Yep, correct. So I guess the main riff off the old what was already said is the question about willingly and free will.

There's a lot of illegal acts that are done out of poverty or other reasons.

And then you can start questioning whether poverty is a public policy and whether or not these are systemic problems which are then blamed on individuals if they essentially get caught up in the system in the wrong way.

You know, one of the things I observe with a lot of stories is that whole conflation between systems and individuals and they let's, let's blame the individual for everything and never question whether the environment itself itself created the problem that that individual is then getting solely blamed for.

So I'm not saying that the individual necessarily did something good, but they're not solely responsible and we need to start holding the environment more responsible rather than just saying, well point there's the one problem solved. You know, that person is, you know, capital punishment was mentioned. You know, that, that to me is just the wrong answer to a lot of these problems.

And can I add. Oh, sorry, please.

Oh, go ahead.

No, no, I, I was simply gonna add that I feel like this spills over into almost every conversation we're not having in my country, at least about corporations and corporate responsibility. That's all.

Yes.

Or, or as, as one of the comments I often make is the governance and how corporate governance is and how centrally how there's a corporate culture of political parties.

So, so before today happened, and I'll get to what's happening today in Canada downtown, I wanted to talk about corporate structures within parties that have the word Democrat or Dem. No, neither the newer classic Democrats and Some news stories from last week about how they weren't being very Democratic.

So there's the whole, you know, the DNC wants to nullify the election of David Hogue. Hogue wants to. So, so there's essentially the Democratic Party has manipulated primaries for a long time.

They, they finally moved forward with the idea that maybe they shouldn't be doing that. And of course someone says, no, I'm not going to sign on to that pledge because they want to reverse what the party has done in the past.

They want to get rid of the old folks as opposed to protecting the old folks. But anyway, whether there is ever going to be democracy within the Democratic Party, to me there's a lot of interesting stories there.

And so to get to the so called New Democratic Party of Canada, which is, you know, politically they were at one point left of the Democrats. Now they're centrist and who knows what.

But there's lots of conversations about how the interim leader, so, so the NDP has a process for determining an interim leader when a previous leader steps down. And it's supposed to involve the caucus. To me it should only involve the caucus. The caucus should be deciding who their own leadership is.

But you know, because Canada loves the United States and wants to be the 51st state. And so 100 years ago the Liberal Party said, hey, let's use the primary system.

So now a bunch of bureaucrats within the ndp, not caucus, but bureaucrats within the corporation. NDP has decided who the internal leader is going to be and a number of the caucus members found out about it from media reporting.

So not only were they not consulted, but they weren't even informed. And there's so many like to me, again, is there going to be democracy within the ndp? Is there going to be democracy within the Democrats?

You know, on the one hand, I'm waiting for the moment where I'll regret writing that issue, that the NDP is dead and that moment hasn't come yet.

And while technically and organizationally I think you're correct in calling them bureaucrats, I prefer the phrase consultants because consultants speak to the corporate culture that really embodies it.

Because even if they are full time staffers with the ndp, there is a kind of culture of consultants and a culture of consulting, of seeing these things as problems that need to be solved rather than processes that need to be embraced is kind of why I think they're dead and think they're a form of zombie.

And I will briefly, before we close out the news segment, allude to something else you said which is Mike the King is currently in town and I thankfully am quite a bit ways out of the city. And I was talking to my partner Jeanette and saying, this is one of those days. I'm really glad I don't live in Ottawa.

Cause it's kind of shitty to have the King. To have a king show up. So this is a big day in Canada. Mark Carney has called in the K to stand up to Trump. You want to jump in, Mike?

Yeah. I had two questions. One, I just want for point of hilarity, I almost picked that as my news article just to be funny.

I was like, oh, let me tell you Canadians something. This is fascinating. There's a king in your country. But second, I would like a clarifying question. It's related to what we just discussed.

Where is Canada as far as compared to America, with our Citizens United founding and then also political action committees and super PACs. Do you have a model like that?

It varies. It's not as unregulated or unleashed, but there has always been.

Both sides have always raised the specter of third parties in politics and third party financing and politics. We have more regulations than America, but there's ways to get around those regulations.

And for the right, there's Facebook groups like Ontario Proud and Canada Proud. And they tend to have both attracted American money, but also general money to work propaganda campaigns constantly.

And the right would tell you that it's the unions and special interests that they are the one. And it's apples and oranges. So it's not as unleashed, it's not as raw as the American equivalent, but it's there, right?

There is still a dynamic there. And finally, I will say that what the NDP right now are facing is they don't have official party status.

And without official party status, you don't get official funding to do your thing. So that may also be why they're dead. Cause it's unclear if they'll get money elsewhere.

But let us look to the future only because we do want to maintain a futuristic lens here on Meta views, only because the present can be so overwhelming. We do, of course, encourage people to live in the moment and not to fall too far forward into the future.

But let us nonetheless embrace the idea that nothing is inevitable, provided you're willing to pay attention. And I went to Mike first in the news. So, Russell, I'll throw to you first in the future. What have you got for the Meta Views constituency here?

What should we be paying attention to on the event horizon?

Well, I partly wrote an article for My own blog titled, you know, WTF itself what's the future?

Partly because I wanted to, so, so you know, last time we spoke I just said okay, well I don't, I don't have a specific thing in the horizons, more a different way of looking. And, and I wanted to talk a bit about the past to look at the future.

So I was, I've listened to many of the previous episodes and one of the things I saw brought up a few times, sometimes during the WTF and sometimes later, about the idea of the death of the future.

And because I of course was told there's, you know, human nature is this. And I, I, I saw the patterns and thought how are we possibly going to survive as a species given these patterns.

And it was actually, and this is contrary to everything that was told, it was actually anti racism and anti colonialism that got me out of the we're all going to die because it was recognizing that not everybody thinks the same and there are different ways of looking at the world and there are entire peoples s at the end different than groups of persons that have completely, completely different ways of looking at things. And so, you know, then started subjectivities and you know, questioning objectivities, questioning individualism, all of that stuff.

To me that allowed me to think about the possibility of a future. So now we can talk about the future and I can question whether AI is really part of the future as opposed to load shedding.

Like, let's be honest, I'm on the load shedding side of things.

You know, don't believe we're going to be uploading our brains because well, our, our little meat sacks are a lot more reliable than the electrical grid. But, but I can now picture there being a future. And I found like that is a very useful thing in that there's so much of this.

I think some of the division is partly because there's a, if we follow that path we're all going to die. And if you follow that path we're all going to die.

And there isn't actually a way of looking and saying well, what is an actual realistic that we can all go along into the future with as opposed to, well, you know, we're all going to die, which is, I think there's a lot in politics like, like the severity of house people speak to me suggests not just hyper partisanship, but a belief that if we don't follow certain paths, that's it.

Well, and, and I would augment that by saying there's a lot of violence in our contemporary language, in our contemporary narratives.

And whether you perceive that violence subconsciously, so it creates that sense of dread, it creates that, that, that sense of hopelessness, or as we see in the maga, the MAGA folks and the Trump folks, you know, that violence is perceived and expressed quite explicitly and consciously. You know, I think for me there is a real.

Not just to use your phrase and reframe it, the death of the future offers us inclusive futurism where we recognize that there are multiple futures, that everyone has a different vision of the future, and that the more we share those futures, the more we find ways that bring us life, that bring us alternatives, that allow for to be specific, a more harmonious relationship with nature rather than the extractive one that is not maybe sustainable to. I got currently a lot of anxiety about what this summer is going to be like, for example. So I think that's really important.

I think it's valuable that you make that link between anti oppression and forging futures that work for everybody, that allow everyone to feel optimistic and confident.

Because the other interesting kind of policy line that's happening here in Canada, and I flag this for a future conversation, not so much today, is about housing and how the Canadian government, Mike, one of their big, certainly public visible policy priorities is going to be affordable housing. And there's a lot of skepticism that they're going to be able to pull it off or do anything about it, especially the way that they're approaching it.

But I think for younger people, and we're all pretty old here, so we can't speak for them in Canada, there's two big anxieties, climate anxiety and housing. Because housing is really just not affordable. And it'll be interesting how that ties into people's vision of the future.

So, Mike, what do you got for us? What's on your event horizon that we should be focusing?

Sure, but can I comment on. On.

Please segue accordingly.

Yeah. Okay.

I just want to briefly say I always find it interesting too, when people talk about the end of humanity or like, is there a future for us collectively? Like, when Covid hit, it was obvious within a few days of enough research being available that it was not going to decimate and kill the human race.

It was going to absolutely drastically affect populations and could get to certain extremes. And I remember a lot of people still being very upset because they're like, well, what if I die?

And I was like, well, that's just your existential crisis. That's not humanity's.

And so I do always try to weigh these kind of conversations with a grain of salt, especially because as a young, impressionable teenager, when I read about Thomas Malthus and his predictions, whether that's apocryphal or not, at this point, it did serve as a good lesson for me that experts will predict things. They may or may not be right. And even if they are right, it would not make sense to hedge all of your bets in one drastic situation or another.

And so I try to live each day that way. But with that said, anxiety is really, for me, what's at the heart of all this is I. I am not young, so to speak, but I do share those two anxieties.

How are my children and I going to afford housing and basic things? And then how much is climate change going to affect the food supply and, and how we live and exist? So I thought that was a great point.

And I do think it's really important for us to, you know, it's even just the old sick, the cartoon with Chicken Little is the sky falling.

And so even with Trumpism, even with everything that's going on, I'm trying to temper my own alarmist reactions and those around me to the best of my ability, without sounding like I'm just pacifying a child and trying to get someone to shut up, because there's a. A thick line between the two. But I have to be careful with it.

And speaking of that, because it does segue exactly into what my thing about the future is. And I'm going to give a little bit of an introduction. First, it is about young people, of which none of the three of us are.

But they're an emerging market. And in my country, you can kind of follow trends based on how advertising meets the emerging market.

I was astonished two weeks ago when I was watching the basketball playoffs here in America, which are primarily targeted to Gen Z and African Americans. That's the two biggest demos. So I am not in Gen Z, nor am I African American, but I still like the NBA.

But the point is, they're not advertising to me, the.

All of the ads for like two playoff series on all of the courts, and it's the most expensive advertising you can buy was for a product called Michelob Zero. That is a zero alcohol beverage. Now this is in sports. Sports has always been strongly associated in my country, at least with drinking.

As a fan, not as an athlete.

Are you sure? But to be. I'm not doubting this. I'm just asking for clarification.

Sure.

It's zero alcohol, not zero calories.

Yeah, no, it's zero alcohol. It was, it was for their brand new product for Gen Z years because, you know, they're making healthier decisions. And then it segues to that.

Around the same time I started noticing an abundance of annoying fake meat products in my little slim vegan spot in my one grocery store I go to. I did not stop eating animals because I, I need to eat fake versions of them. So these things don't apply to me.

But it does touch my heart to see again, who are we advertising to and what is coming out, what products? And so now there's several competitive environments for fake cheeses and fake meats. And that little, little aisle is starting to get bigger.

So zero alcohol and that.

And then going back to what Russell brought up and what you wrote about today, actually it came out today on Meta Views, the food supply, the honesty or dishonesty about it. And so this is where I'm going to ask a question to both of you.

I was for a long time, my mom actually supplemented my income when I was 18 so that I would buy organic foods.

She said, it is so important to me that you eat organic, that I, even though we did not raise a spoiled brat, will pay the difference if you go to the grocery store and promise me you're buying organic. Which I did. I did not buy regular food and spend the rest on pot. I actually followed what you said, mommy.

And now today I still keep buying organic foods for my children, but I'm starting to become extremely skeptical of the American organic industry to the point where I've tried weeks where I don't buy and I've tried weeks where I do. And so I am going to shut up and give the floor to both of you with enough of this. But I'm.

What's the future with food organics, GMOs, what France is doing, what America is.

Not doing, and Canada Organics is a scam. 100%. And it's, it's, it's been a scam for quite a long time. It's the wrong focus. Right?

The sentiment of your mom, which was right, was don't eat shit. And the idea that there's some label that tells you what A shit or not is unfortunately where organics fail.

So you do have to navigate the commercial food system with a great degree of skepticism. But you can find food that's not bad for you, that is mass produced. The same way that some organic food is the same shit that you're buying.

Literally the same shit it's produced through the same process. Not to mention the fraud that also happens within the food supply generally on all sides.

But this is something I've mentioned before and I'll throw it to Russell to have his own comment and then I'll throw the feature and we could always go deeper into this. Granted, you live in Arizona, in a desert, in a megalopolis, you still need to connect with farmers.

It might be that those farmers live in Texas or in California. Like they might not be in your state, but they might be in your region.

Because the nature, especially of the American food system, is the interstate system. And the interstate system allows for a much faster distribution of food over extended distances.

So, and I don't mean you have to be friends with these farmers, I just mean understand what their practices are as the basis of your decision making rather than a label like organic or not organic or whatever. I do want to talk about the GMO stuff, but I'll punt that to the feature and I'll throw it to Russell to have your thoughts on this.

Well, I was going to go like as soon as you said organic, I automatically started thinking about certification.

Yeah.

And the what is and isn't and what processes are or not. And then the focus becomes so much on the certification in the branding as opposed to actually understanding the processes.

But I am going to slide right into the GMO thing because to me that goes right to the certification and the labeling. And I really wish I could remember the year, but there was a bill that was trying to go through the federal parliament here in Canada.

And one of the things you're not supposed to do is you're not supposed to pamphlet members of parliament or be doing lobbying within the main chamber itself.

And yet there were many members of Parliament talking about how there is these papers, these anti labeling for GMO papers showing up on their site, seats in Parliament. And, and the issue was entirely about labeling.

And I'm one of those people like, you know, this was in the 90s because of where my brain was at the time, because I was still in the, well, the free market and the free market and the free market. And to me, in order for the free market to work, there has to be information.

And so to Me disallowing labeling and, and actually the reverse, you know, not allowing there to be mandatory because this is something consumers wanted to know about. To me, that's against the concept of a free market.

And yet there they were in Parliament pamphletting all that and just to make, just to block consumers being allowed to make a choice. And again, I was still stuck in individualism and consumer choice.

So I'm going to segue that because I think there's a lot to unpack there because that leads to a kind of darker side, I think of the food industry and policy, which is here in Canada. And there are similar veins in a number of states in the U.S. but I don't think on the federal.

There are the most restrictions on freedom of speech, protesting and publishing information with regard to the food supply chain. And a lot of this.

Thank you.

A lot of this has targeted animal rights groups because of some of the propaganda and some of the protests and some of the events that they've done. But it speaks to a real deep insecurity within the food industry that they are loath to get more attention.

They're loathe to have more information about them unless it's on their terms.

And they kind of have on a communications professions strategy, complete disengagement like don't feed the trolls, don't read the comments, don't wade into the public debate. And it's allowed the extremists, it's allowed the, the other side. Because when I say the other side, I'm thinking RFK Jr. Right?

I'm thinking the full conspiracy side.

You know, the scientists who are genuinely concerned about this stuff, they tend to see themselves as moderates versus the big corporations on one side and the conspiracy theorists on the other.

It just makes for a really shitty information environment where, you know, to Russell's point about free markets, there are no free markets when it comes to food. Like not at all. These are very controlled, very regulated markets and on some level they should be regulated. It's food, we want it to be safe.

But I think there is a need for greater transparency. There is a need for greater understanding.

And I say this because, to bring us back to our anxiety conversation, I think I became a farmer partly because it was farmers who fundamentally changed my understanding of the climate change timeline that scientists talk about climate change in this Long term view of cities flooding and yada, yada, yada versus farmers said to me, we'll be dead way before the cities flood, right? One good frost cycle in the middle of May and we will have famine. Like, it is so brittle, our food.

And that's what made me like, I want to be in control of my own food. Anyway, Mike, you seem to be really eager to jump into this.

Oh man, I am eager to.

Actually, as weird as this sounds, I love listening to intelligent conversations, not even just debates about this subject because I need better ammunition.

Because just like I'm going to make a parallel, the thing I'm most sick of right now in my country is anti Trumpers, belittling Trumpers and just making the problem worse.

And I feel the same way about my compatriots in PETA and other programs who like, throw, you know, things at people with fur coats and like, it's just there needs to be a way to break through to people that we have to make it so YouTube can't boycott videos of factory farming. Like, there has to be at least like a break in that because that really is the entryway into ethical eating.

And I like to call it ethical eating because as we've discussed previously, I hate using the term vegan. And I also don't think it's immoral or wrong to raise and slaughter your own animals or any of that stuff.

It might be, I'm not saying like, I know what God's thinking, if there is one. But what I am saying is I don't see really on like my level of philosophy a huge moral dilemma there.

However, I do think that just, I mean, it's impossible for me to eat fast food at this point and I don't even want to take my family there. And then on the notion of this is the last thing I'm going to say of farming. You know, I've wanted to move and start my own farm.

And the two biggest impediments to me were finances and laziness. Now I have enough to do to conquer those. But now I have a family. And then so now I have a new impediment, which is, although most people.

Actually think that the family is the third requirement. Yeah, I acknowledge that that's often not the case, that that is a bit of a delusion.

But the far, like the, the other dark secret of farming is labor and the labor shortage. Right. Of immigrant labor and migrant labor, but also unpaid family labor. Right? Like that is the, the, the, the key to, to a lot of success.

Yeah, so, like, infant mortality rates went down, and then public, huge farming went up, which is ironic because the actual solution was right there. But the only thing I always want to ask you this, Jesse, I think I have asked you what.

What terrifies me is you move up north in Arizona and you start this beautiful farm right where, like, the snow line is and the rain and you're doing this. This flourishing work and there is a frost and it does ruin all the crops in Alabama and three states around it. And there's a huge food shortage.

There's just a ton of hungry people with guns near me, and they're just going to come and take my stuff. So it's like this. Like, I'm not planning a farm for that future. That.

That level of anxiety, it's the level right before that, which is just please leave me alone and let me eat, like, good quality food.

And as a few asides, there farming as a concept exists because of the technology of firearms. Like, there wasn't really farms. And here we're talking, you know, Asia, Europe, right?

Where, you know, firearms and farming kind of came together versus farming in North America, from an indigenous perspective, was completely different. It existed, but completely different. So I want to contextualize what I'm talking about.

But on the great Asian step, for example, it wasn't until firearms started spreading that horsemen, horse people were not entirely dominant. Like, you couldn't have farming because you'd get raided. And it was firearms that then allowed communities to start farming without being raided.

So there is a really intimate cultural connection between firearms and farming that a lot of urban people really don't understand. That becomes clear once you are part of these communities.

And then the other side is you need to be connected to your community so that the people who would come and take your food are already your friends.

Yeah, yeah.

Ahead of time is really the way to manage that. But the other subtext to this, and then I'll throw to you, Russell, to take this wherever you want to take this.

So much of contemporary society's understanding of farming is factory farming. And that if we start thinking of farming in the myriad of diverse ways that it can happen, right?

Both in terms of the indigenous traditions here in North America, let alone the revolutionary stuff that's happening in Latin America, Asia, Africa, all over the world, we are better positioned to deal with climate volatility. We are better positioned to deal with the extremes that climate is offering us. It's factory farming that's brittle.

It's factory farming that could cause famine. And that's what we need to be moving away from towards a greater diversity, a greater kind of range of science and experiments and practices.

Russell, I'm actually surprised that in the course of your life and I get policy has been a big anchor. I'm also kind of surprised you didn't become a farmer because all with. I can't think of a single exception.

Every successful farmer I've ever met is a systems person. Like, they fucking love systems and they see themselves entirely through systems.

And farming's the one place in which nobody fucks with their systems.

No, I've never been a farmer. I have a different relationship to the food supply than your average urban person. But, but it's more from a, a theoretical policy side.

I am one of those people who, who really don't like. And this is where like you said, factory farming and I was going to think industrial farming from a mindset point of view.

The idea that you have these separate industries, separate silos. You, you, you know, the corporatization, not the incorporation but the corporatization of, of these different silos of knowledge.

And so you ask people in many settings, urban settings, so majority of the population, where does your food come from? Well, the grocery store. That to me is fundamentally dangerous. I don't have to be on a farm all the time. I have been on farms.

I have never lived on a farm, but I've been on farms. But to not know where your food comes from, to me is.

And the isolation that and, and the lack of understanding that comes with that, to me that's just dangerous because if you have all these information silos, then you have intermediaries that can manipulate your understanding of things. And so I wanted to get.

Go back to something Mike said though, because one of the things I like about these podcasts is the fact that things are allowed to have nuance and people are not stuck in the binaries. And to me, whenever someone says, well, there's a binary, you have to choose A or B, Q, Z, alpha Alphabet, for instance.

One of those things that I was watching while it was happening is for instance, anti vax movement.

I don't know if either of both of you heard of that case. So here's a farmer who kept seeds from a previous year, who replanted the seeds, the seeds grew.

And of course, Monte Santos said, well, those seeds had our patented manipulation to make it roundup ready. And so therefore we're going to sue you for patent infringement.

Now of course, in the back of my mind, I'm sitting there saying, well, who carried out the process?

Well, when you're talking about seeds and growing and all of that, well, well, okay, so if an entity carried out the process, which is in theory what patents are about as a process, well, we can call it Mother Nature, Gaia, God, like whatever, that's who infringed upon the patent. If you, whatever, whatever deities or thoughts you have as far as, you know, nature.

And yet this individual again was being said, if you keep our seeds and replant them, you are now infringing upon a patent.

Now to me, there's a whole bunch of again, information silos and control over the food supply and all of these different types of problems that come into that.

So I understand why people question, but, but without realizing it, you have these people that consider themselves right wingers who are hyper individualistic, disagreeing with individualism based capitalism without realizing what it is they're disagreeing with. They say, yes, there's legitimate reasons to ask questions, but then they're targeting the wrong thing. Like, like, like vaccines aren't the problem.

Yes, there's a problem that all of these pharmaceutical companies are allowed to have patents on things that go into our bodies.

And when we talk about medical devices and the software and medical devices and all that, we can get into a whole thing there about how I have huge problems with there being things put into a person's body that someone else alleges to own. And there's movies I remember seeing, you know, essentially somebody recall, you know, collecting those things when you don't pay the fees.

Yeah, like pulling out your, your, your artificial heart because you were late on a payment. Like to me there's so many huge problems there. But so I can understand why there's hesitancy even if I think their target is wrong.

But then you have the other side in this fake binary saying, oh, those people are crazy. It's like, well actually no, they have a point to be skeptical.

And the fact that you're not addressing their skepticism, you're, you're missing the point. Like there's so many people that are arguing with each other, but they're actually arguing with each other.

As in they're, they're pointing at something else entirely, not even realizing that they're not even talking about the same thing.

And, and, and fundamentally that's the point of distraction, which the industry plays very effectively, which many policy players play very effectively. Your point about trying to prevent labeling, that's a distraction.

It's getting everyone to focus on labeling the product rather than debating the product, addressing the product. Your point about copyright and patents. I was thinking about music.

We constantly put music inside of us that we don't own and thankfully they don't try to get it out of us. But if we start singing it under the wrong circumstances, we could be penalized right now.

One of the big things to go to your point about seeds and illegally planting seeds. Cosmic Crisp apples are the latest bleeding edge of GMO apples.

And there are a lot of people encouraging that you buy a Cosmic Crisp apple just to take the seeds and grow the seeds so that the apple can be taken out of the control so its reproduction can be done in spite of.

But I think your point is fair, that this is a very complicated, very clouded in which the multiple sides, to be more generous of these policy debates, are focusing on the wrong things, either due to illiteracy or due to disconnection. And I'll say one last thing before I throw over to you, Mike, in the hopes that you take this anywhere you wish.

Palestinian activists in Toronto recently staged a very effective blockade of the Ontario Food Terminal, which is a major distribution point for food from producers to grocers in Toronto and where. I agree, Russell, most people, if you ask them where does food come from? They say the grocery store. It's a level up.

If you say the Ontario Food Terminal, I mean, granted it's not the ultimate source, but if you do a blockade at the Ontario Food Terminal, you are gonna get attention real fast. Go ahead, Mike. We're kind of rambling, but that's okay. That's part of us seeking nuance here on metaviews.

I think the point that you brought up, which is the hardest point for me to address and reckon with, is that we really do want people checking our food. Like we really don't just want, hey, here's a bag of spinach, hope it doesn't have E. Coli. Like there is a real purpose to this.

And as science and technology and detection measurement gets better, it only behooves all of us to have access to that and to use it.

So I always have trouble because the 16 year old me is a petulant libertarian and he's like, hey, let everyone do themselves and let's see what happens. And then like even just two years later, I was like, oh, that guy's kind of an. Maybe we can like find, you know.

So now I'm 43 and obviously I'm on like a weird side of. Yeah, my, my children can't afford to get E. Coli. My elderly parents cannot afford to get E. Coli. Sure.

A swath of us in the middle might be able to afford a bad E. Coli, you know, or something.

No.

Yeah. No, really, really. No one can.

Look, you can't even afford a COVID infection, but you're getting those anyway.

Yeah.

Because, you know, but let me, let me bring it back and I'll throw it right back to you, Mike, because a phrase that I wanted to, that Russell's comments were also evoking and this is a very fundamentally true but fundamentally flawed and problematic phrase that is being manipulated six ways from Sunday. And that is food is medicine.

Wow.

Right. Because it is, it's true, but it's also highly manipulated. Right.

It's become part of a predator prey relationship in terms of the RFK junior People who are like, you don't need vaccines, you just need food that will heal you.

I want to, I want to return to an offbeat comment you made, but it's like really something I'm paying attention to and trying to study, which is this don't read the comments philosophy because I have heard it in very reasonable circles and I've heard it in unreasonable circuses circles. But what I'm starting to notice is it's also tied into the apology tour.

The people who did not apologize during hashtag metoo in my country and also other versions of hashtag metoo, they're doing just fine. All the people who apologize, they are out of the picture and they're not coming back. And I'm going to relate this to the health insurance companies.

Okay, let me, let me quickly just reframe what you said.

Sure.

I would refer to the people who apologized as the people who validated the cancellation frame versus the people who defied or ignored the cancellation frame suffered no consequences.

Correct. And I'm. Yes. No, no. That was great.

And I'm glad you slowed me down and you said that because that 100% is applicable to and the basis of what I'm about to say and saying, which is that there's a. It's just, it's getting awkward with, with what you just said and then how it's playing out.

But what I am noticing is that corporations, a long time ago knew that you just never address the actual accusation. You do whatever you can.

And so I've been trying to see when UnitedHealth and other health companies were going to address this 3,000 million pound pink gorilla of, hey, some guy walked up on the way to one of your CEO's important meetings and blew his brains out.

But okay, here's where I'm going to. I'm going to.

I'm going to disagree and I'm going to say the position opinion discussion we had because all those corporations have addressed that gorilla in the room. They just haven't done it publicly. They've all done it within their circles. Because I. Cause you alluded the. Don't read the comments.

And I'm obviously in favor of. You must read the comments.

Yes.

And Russell's point, which I thought was spot on, was even though the people criticizing vaccines might be conspiracists, there is still a kernel of truth to their sentiment that needs to be addressed within the larger policy process.

And that's where I'd say you do need to acknowledge the criticism, you do need to acknowledge the concept, but you don't have to submit your position. For example, I might be fictitious entertainer and my position is I should not be canceled, I cannot be canceled.

And if I defy attempts to cancel me, I will not be canceled. But the moment that I adopt the position that yes, I could be canceled, well then I will be canceled because I've internalized that psychology.

So that's where I'm trying to distinguish this as to bring it back to our food conversation. I think the food industry does need to acknowledge their critics.

I think that they do need to start taking on the vegans, for example, because they are seeding the ground. And in seeding the ground, they are not only drinking their own Kool Aid, quite literally, but they are losing credibility in the marketplace.

And as a consequence, the marketplace is becoming far more muddied, confused and obfuscated. When I think most people at the table literally want more transparency, want more clarity, want more information.

And I think to go back to the recurring thread here, we're all distracted. We're not actually focusing on the key issues.

And that's where I think if we read the comments, if we actually took time to debunk the conspiracists and understand what they're talking about, we could find the nuance to talk about a food system that is resilient, that can operate at scale, that's not dominated by corporations, that keeps people healthy, and that is Fundamentally driven by science. So therefore, safety and nutrition is a driving force rather than profit or greed or whatever it might be.

And that. Well, the only last point I wanted to make, and that's it.

No one's reading the comments, so we're going to light things on fire. And so I'm, I agree with that 100%.

Yeah, yeah, that's fair.

And I think that's just.

Yeah, just to spell that out, if you don't read the comments, you will get violence.

Yeah, exactly.

And the alternative to violence is dialogue, which. Oh, by the way, that's why people are commenting. Russell, do you want to weigh in on this kind of sprawling conversation we got going?

There was a lot in there. I think I want to focus a bit on the hierarchies involved.

So whether we call it capitalism or corporations or any of those things, we're essentially talking about a hierarchy. And those higher in the hierarchy don't tend to want to read the comments or acknowledge the agency of those lower in the hierarchy.

And I don't think those that aren't reading the comments necessarily see that in themselves that, that not reading the comments is part of their. Where they situate themselves in the hierarchy.

I'm someone that would like to do away with the hierarchies, but it's hard to articulate the hierarchy, part of it, separate than the individual policies. So we have a bunch of different issues here. And, and, and we can.

To me, I would go through each one of them and say, well, here's the hierarchy in that one. Here's the hierarchy in that one. Here's the hierarchy in that one. There's a different hierarchy in each one. And to me, the hierarchy is the problem.

And so it would look like, I'm okay, here I'm critiquing capitalism. Here I'm, I'm critiquing rfk. Here I'm like, you know, not RFK the individual, but RK is representing eugenics way of looking at things.

Not really a, you know, eat healthy food. He thinks he's talking to eat healthy food, but he has a very specific, unique history as an environmental.

Well, the healthy food and the healthy food. To your point, Is the Trojan horse.

Well, I don't think in his mind, so, so yes, he's an individual and he's, he's the figurehead of a, of a whole thought process. But his own internal thinking is inconsistent in that like, you know, his, his unique history, you know, comes from the environmental.

As an environmental lawyer notices pollutants thrown out all over the place with no accountability. Why is there no accountability? We can call it capitalism, we can call it whatever.

There's, there's this hierarchy that has been generated that essentially allows those on the top to have no accountability and to have everybody on the bottom have all accountability, all costs, all of that. But then he, he, he bumped into autism moms and the autism moms experience explained it. You know how the mercury was causing autism?

No, no, it's hereditary. Sorry. I don't know exactly where in my parents things came from their predeceased before I accepted my autism, but bumped into that whole.

Oh, what was me. Isn't so terrible how my child is autistic and. But it's not really. Your child is autistic. That's the problem Again, it's capitalism.

There's no support, there's no community. It takes, it takes a village to raise a child and yet the village is being shot by capitalism, whether people realize it or not.

Individualism, all of that stuff. We have all of that.

Let me interrupt quickly because the individualism part is crucial in terms of acknowledging the narrative of American capitalism. And the narrative of American capitalism is built upon a eugenics narrative.

And that's why when families all of a sudden start realizing that their children cannot conform to the narrative that is presented to them, they have problems. And rather than accommodating those children, they seek the conformity. They seek means of trying to bend that into it. Please continue.

But they're also not provided any support from the society which is actually disabling their children.

But come on, as Canadians, their society doesn't ever offer support. Like the support is never part of the narrative to begin with. But please continue.

Yeah, I'm trying to avoid the. I guess I don't see. To me. And this is going to be an uncomfortable thing, I don't think of Canada, the United States is any more different.

So to me, I don't either.

I was just giving you an out if you want to say this. Neither society includes support as their narrative. I'm fine with that.

I don't understand why people assume that they are entitled to support when I don't see support as part of the eugenics capitalism narrative. Right. If they want support, they should be then saying, hey, we gotta get rid of this capitalism thing.

And I have difficulty to your point about internal contradictions. I have difficulty with people who try to make that argument. Go ahead, Mike. You wanted to also jump in.

I just want to say I do think K through 12 education is making great strides and actually trying very hard, despite everything we're talking about, to actually enable enough IEPs and different learning curriculums for all needs and abilities of students. And it is, it is drastically changed into the 30 years that I've been teaching and that I've seen it.

It's not there, but enough parents who are individualistic actually care about their own children. So it has spread.

I, I, I get to defer that partly because you have the authority of having two young children.

But I also teach. I mean, it's two things.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

I reject everything you just said and flag that for future conversation.

Sure.

Because I disagree entirely.

Yeah.

The only point I was trying to make is that there was zero attention and there was get out and there was, we're going to call you nasty names and we're going to put you in a special bus in a special school.

Again, I am deferring this conversation because I still completely disagree with everything you're saying. All right, Russell, sorry, you wanted to go somewhere else with this or Mike, do you want to go somewhere else with this? I'm not.

No.

No.

I like where this is going. I like it.

My bladder is full. And I do not want to open the Pandora's box of education right now because that is a huge element within the eugenics capitalism narrative.

We started falling apart when I was asserting that our society does not offer support ever, and that the support that exists in our society is either accidental or private in the sense that it's coming from private agencies. It's not society itself that is saying, we will support you. For the most part, society is telling people, sink or fucking swim.

And that is part of the problem. Food in particular is a great example of this. Right. Like, it strikes me as absurd that we do not have more sources of free food.

And, you know, food banks are often the institutional form here in Canada, there's actually a really interesting anti food bank movement which have created, you may know the name of the organization, Russell. It's on the tip of my tongue.

But they've created kind of the opposite of food banks in which people are involved in making their own food, sourcing their own food. It's around food Literacy.

So it's a really interesting alternative to food banks, but even then they're a private organization and all these things are happening privately. It just doesn't make sense to me that there isn't places in every town, in every community where you can just go and get fed.

What's. When you said. And it's not about education, but when you said, for the most part, society tells you. Why did you even say.

And I'm asking this genuinely, it's not a gotcha moment at all. Why did you even say for the most part? Like, what do you actually. Okay, police.

Police is the one. Right. And I say this because it's. No, no.

I was really curious. Yeah.

I don't encourage people to go to the police, but the vast majority of municipal funds in every municipality goes to police. And it's on the assumption that they are providing support when it comes to security.

Okay. Yeah.

Right. And so I. In a group chat, I'm in.

For example, someone shot a BB through their window and they had to call the police so that insurance could pay for it. Right.

So that's when I say, for the most part, society does fundamentally tell us, and I still think it's bullshit that police is there for us as support to protect our property for those of us who are lucky to have that. I digress. Russell, did you want to go somewhere else with this or still with this?

Well, it's hard to move away from the education piece because to me, the education piece isn't disconnected from food supply, isn't connected from. So there's. There's a performance of acceptance.

But then, and I know that in the United States, municipalities, education comes from municipalities, and Canada comes from provinces. But in general, funding is going down, not really up. And so educators have more on their plate.

There's more that they're expected to do, but they're not being resourced to do. So.

So while it's true that there's more of an inclusion and a performative level because there's fixed or reduced funding, it's coming at the expense of other things. So my wife and I, So my wife is a high school teacher. Are constantly like.

One of our constant conversations is about education versus community centers and how essentially high schools are schools in general.

In primary school, there's a large amount of things which are really things that should be within community centers, properly funded community centers, and pretty much everything. Like, to me, if you saying that an individual is performatively. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Okay, so where's your cash.

Like if it doesn't come with, forget about cash, but just resourcing in general. If it doesn't come with resources, they didn't really mean it. It's just a bunch of words. It's just a performance.

And, and, and rather than putting resources into the tools to build communities as we desperately need, like the nuclear family, individualism, all of those things has, have really been problematic to our societies. So there's neat. There needs to be resources for these things rather than just performatively. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be a good idea. Good.

You, the teacher, go ahead. And you're already spending a much larger amount of your day than the average 9 to 5 office worker. Let's just add that.

So rather than, you know, getting paid for a regular salary and having to do 100, 150% of a regular workload, let's go to 250% of the regular workload. And so it's all dumped on individual teaching staff or taking away from other programs in Ontario. Oh, sorry.

Well, let me riff off a few things you've said there because, and I say this clearly, both of you have greater connections to contemporary education than I do, even though I am also surrounded by ex teachers and ex education people.

But I think you're hitting the nail on the head, Russell, when you talk about the problem with contemporary education is the individual and the way in which the individual is not only perceived as the mechanism of delivering education, but the mechanism in which education is received.

When I would love to see a scenario in which the community center and the school were merged so that you had a campus, for lack of a better word, that had free breakfast, free lunch, free dinner, free snacks, free courses, free recreation, free music, free drama, free shop, free everything. Right. So you send your kids there, right, when they're kids. But adults can hang out there too. Elders can hang out there too. Right.

And that is one of the anchors of society where all those needs are met.

Because you're correct, I think, in identifying the extent to which we now expect teachers to be social workers when they didn't go to school, to be social workers, the same way that they're expected essentially to be tech support people because technology is dominating the classroom. Right. And then you have all these other dynamics. So I would love a. I do think schools should be having free meals for students.

Like I do think every school should have nutritious breakfast and lunch at minimum. Nutritious, yeah, but that's the key. Nutritious, like good food, good healthy, natural food. 100%. Right.

The same way that, like every school community center should have a gardening staff. Right. Who are on call so that the roof has a garden like, you know, like used to be growing food. Why wouldn't you grow food at the school?

It's a natural farm. Anyway, I digress.

I think the problem is individualism and I think we have to be rethinking these systems, systems within collective and community frameworks that fundamentally is anti American and by extension it would make the Canadians have the, you know, the creeps. But that to me is the future of education.

And I'm curious, Mike, if you've experienced anything close to that in your trials through the educational milieu.

Well, the only. I've taught at private schools and public schools, and the experiences were not phenomenally different, despite what many people would claim.

And one of the things that I will continually push back against one or both of you on is my brother's school, for example, in New York City, hired a second teacher for his classroom that is funding. That person is doing social work with the students and helping special needs students. So I. Again, I'm with you on everything except this one hang up.

I have. Which is don't. For me, not for you.

For me, it's very important that I don't belittle the small efforts within the massive failure, that there are good intentions.

But hold on, hold on. Let's be clear, because we're not belittling them. We're just.

No, I said me. I did not say no.

No, but to use your language, yeah, we're addressing the massive failure.

I. And I agree with that. But. But the problem is when people lose hope and spirit.

And this ties into Russell's comment, which is the other thing I wanted to talk about. Performativity still has a positive effect. Effect when the performance is performed by people who genuinely want the performativity to become real.

And there is a phenomena where that. So I'm. I'm only.

So I don't deny that, but. And I am trying to wrap things up partly because my bladder is full. No, I'm not trying to wrap up this conversation, but I am. No, no, no.

I completely. I.

My point is, though, we here are old and we will leave that as a relativistic definition.

Yeah, for sure.

I knew in grade school the system was fucked. Okay, the system is still fucked.

Absolutely.

That is criminal.

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. And more.

Yes.

And so therefore, I have no tolerance for people who are doing anything to keep the current system up. They can do things to Help the people in the current system. Right. I think survivors and refuge.

But at a certain point we got to burn the motherfucker down. Right? In the sense that it is still to this day, no matter how much better. Because I agree with you, comparatively, it is much better. Right?

Like sexual assault used to happen in the school building when we were young. At least now maybe it doesn't happen as often in the school building, but the point is there is it. It is still an indefensible system.

Well, I have a last question for both of you. If we all agree, and I'm, I'm assuming Russell agrees with this, so please correct me if I'm wrong, that we should burn the down.

Should we build the next structure before we burn the current one down, or do we burn the current?

It can be concurrent.

Okay. Because that's, that's the only issue.

As, especially as an relativistically speaking older person, it is quite scary to imagine a giant fire engulfing everything I've ever known and everyone I love and then seeing how we can build what we can afterwards. So because of the bitter animosity of.

I think the importance of the metaphor that you offer, which everyone entertains, is the core point about agency. We will never be responsible for burning the fucker down. It is not something we have a choice in. We have only two choices, burn or flee.

And I've flown and I encourage all other people to flown flee to get out of there. Because the question is not whether it burns, the question is how fast it goes up in flames. And that's out of our control.

It shouldn't be a concern of yours. What did the therapist say? Focus on the things you can influence.

Russell, what's the non binary to flee or burn? What's the third?

Well, I, I, I, I, I think this is a longer conversation and I know that these are a certain length and there's so many things we've left on the table for a later conversation. I, I don't know. I, I, I, I just, someone has fled. To me, there's fleeing as in you're not within the system as far as how you think.

I don't know that there's a way to physically flee given colonialism and all of those things. Like, like there's a, there's certain ideologies.

That are, have, are going to, there's certain limitations.

So. But this does sound like a longer conversation. I do want to go back to talking deeper about education.

I do, but I do want to, Okay, I want to clarify just in case I was. By talking about the failure, not noticing. So in, like, one of the narratives about autism is that we never had this in our youth. And. And.

And the reason why, of course, is that those who were not able to mask would have been institutionalized. And so it was a major threat. So. So one, like, I regularly get asked, like, I'm. I'm out because I feel I have the privilege.

At this stage of my life, I had a major issue with my workplace. I was essentially fired for being autistic. You know, there's details there. I can just retire.

Like, I did well enough in the rest of my career that I can just retire and say, okay, fine. Other people would never have had that privilege. And. And yes, if.

If what happened to me later in life happened younger and it happened 50 years ago, like, if I was diagnosed when I was born, none of these opportunities would have existed because I would have been labeled not worth the time to have been educated, not worth the time to have been hired. So, yes, there are changes that have happened.

Unfortunately, I don't think those changes are necessarily permanent because the worldviews haven't changed. Even if a couple of policies have changed, the worldviews haven't.

The idea that all life has this intrinsic value, whether it can be calculated in certain economic theories or not.

And that's why I stick by the metaphor that the roof is burning. Let the motherfucker burn. But at the same time, we can build a new shelter while it burns.

Yeah, we can start building elements of that new structure and most importantly, narratives, stories that allow people to feel different futures, that allow people to feel different societies than the society that tries to impose itself on them. Right. That tries to tell them, this is kind of the world that we live in. That brings us to the shout out section.

Although, before we formally go into the shoutouts, Russell, as you may be aware that when someone finishes their second appearance here on metavews, they have to adopt a title, right? A phrase. It could be a columnist, could be a liaison, could be a wackadoo.

There's all sorts of phrases that describe the cast of characters here on metiviews. So have you thought ahead? And, Mike, you wanted to come in with a. I have one.

Yes, I did. And it's not. I'm not forcing it on you, but I actually believe it's true.

Okay, I'm just gonna wade in. Russell, are you. How do you feel about him sharing that before you?

I'm fine. I was actually. You.

Okay, go ahead.

Mike, you invited me so, yeah, I.

Think you're our metaviews and. Or Jessie Hirsch, historian.

No, not Jesse Hirsch, historian. Medevue's historian. Might be a bit of a Faustian bargain. It might be buying off more than you could chew.

I mean, the amount of articles you've cited and that I've now been able to go back. Views. Not Jesse Hirsch, maybe, but that's so. That's all.

But maybe historian is the wrong phrase because it speaks only to the past and not the future.

Chronologists.

Well, but I think.

Scholar.

Scholar.

We're getting closer, but I think we might be leaning towards a systems centric view because I kind of feel part of what Russell has been doing is mapping out the metaverse systems, both on a language perspective, but also on like a media, how we function and how we communicate. So what would be like a system centric word? Like information system, Systems or. But it's more than information, right? Go ahead, Russell.

No, it's almost like we're getting towards. I was a systems analyst. It was my official job title at one point.

Okay, how do you feel about that?

I mean, we can just call it Leave it at that or stick something else in front to say it's not computer systems where my brain is spending most of its time these days.

Okay. Okay. So we need. You're right. We need a preface. Systems analyst.

Well, we're doing it right now on the live Intelligence, Systems analyst, Media systems, Conversational system, Ideas, Ontologies.

Ontologists. Is what I was thinking.

Is ontologists too much, you think, Russell, or what do you think?

Let's sit on it. And I'm hoping we will be having more of these conversations.

Okay. Okay. But here's the counter negotiation. We can let it sit, but when we start the next appearance, we have to start by deeming it that.

And we're currently leading on. Oh, how about this? Will you accept surreal systems analyst?

Sure.

Okay, that's it. That's it. We've settled it. Because I've always felt that metaviews was cyberpunk surrealism.

And so our surreal systems analyst, I think, fits within our larger kind of psychedelic underpinnings. So shout outs. Mike, do you have a shout out for us today?

I do. Yesterday was a national holiday in my country, America, it's called Memorial Day, and it's where you honor soldiers who specifically died.

It's not for soldiers who are active or have left, but are still with us. And so I thought today should be called Muhammad Ali Day, which is in honor of those who conscientiously object to.

To war and have nothing to do with it and refuse to be part of a system that keeps telling us that it's brave and noble to fight someone else's fight and lose our lives over it.

Right on. Well done, Russell. Do you got a shout out?

Well, you know, when I was preparing for this episode, as I know you're not supposed to prepare, I was going to shout out Mike, but I guess I'm going to shout out David Graham, who is. He was previously a member of Parliament, but I actually met him in the open source area.

He was essentially the first member federal Parliament that was on GitHub. He's still active. He's on substack now. So DavidGraham CA is on substack again.

Someone who's been an insider in that system and is a systems person and looks at it from that type of a background.

Right on. And I quite enjoyed his substack, which I signed to as a result of you sharing some of his posts. And I quite enjoy it.

It's both offers a really, I think, unique glimpse of kind of Parliament Hill and what happens on Parliament Hill, but very accessible in the sense that he's transparent about his politics but not ideological, if that is possible in our contemporary moment. And I'll actually give a shout out to someone named Shannon Litzenberger who writes a substack around play and creativity and dance and art.

And I've really been enjoying some of the posts that they've been posting and they are participating with them in an event in a couple of weeks on art futures and creative and play and all that stuff. So maybe a topic we will come back to. I do want to come back to the education piece.

I just felt that it is too big a topic for us to get into when we've already passed the halfway mark of a show. But we should come back to it.

I wrote a piece, I think yesterday on Memorial Day called the Pedagogy of Networks and it was kind of about the way in which we learn or not learn and the way in which kids are cheating, but I think they're winning in terms of using AI to navigate through the system. Another excellent episode of Metaviews. Russell, again, please, we gotta get you back as soon as possible.

I think in theory we should coordinate with Mike so that we very much continue the conversation as we've had today.

Love, love, love.

We have, I think, one or two episodes before our finale next week, which will be a salon, a bunch of people participating.

Metaviews is available on all audio podcast platforms, on Substack, on Bluesky, on threads, even mikeyop.com Flora CA we thank everyone for tuning in. We'll see you real soon. Stay fresh, stay cool, and take care.