Australia Bans Social Media For Kids, Dystopian "Dynamic Pricing" Is Here, And Crockett For Senate

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. The LOOPcast is brought to you, of course, by The Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter. Good morning, Grinders. It's going to be a great show. Happy Wednesday. Happy Advent. What is the quote? Like, people who grind, not people who are on the Grindr app, I guess. Oh my gosh, Josh. Sorry, I'm in too much church politics news. I just, like, went there. I didn't think about that. No, good morning, Grinders is a very common phrase.

Maybe I'm showing my age again, but good morning, Grinders. Let's get this bread. So, you know what? Imagine like a meat will. You know like the really crunchy people, they have the wheat mills, and they make their own, and they grind their own wheat to make bread. Think about that. Good morning, Griners. Oh, my gosh. My wife, she'd get into these things every once in a while. Like, let's make our own laundry detergent. Let's make our own this. I'm like, okay, making bread?

I like it, because it's good. Making bread's awesome. But I'm going to buy the laundry soap from Walmart, okay? Because everyone complains. Okay, this is going to derail the entire show. Everyone complains about how bad wheat in America is, because they put all the extra stuff in it, and then you have the pasta, and it makes you feel terrible. But if you go to Italy, Josh. As you know, you are an international, well-tasted, you know, traveled man. It does not make you feel bad.

My daughter is in Italy right now, and she says it is great. And where is she dining? She's dining everywhere. McDonald's. She sent a picture to you of McDonald's in Rome, like father, like son. I'm not going to put that on her. My daughter, I guess. Yes, we all know it's your daughter. Anyways, we've got a great show today. A couple of things that really snuck up on me and social media users in Australia, the accounts for people under 16 of, I think, like 10 different social platforms went dark, completely dark in Australia.

It's the first... big country to really do something like this, to have a policy with teeth for underage users in their country. And so, I just wanted to get into that. I was completely snuck up on me. We have some precedent here in America statewide. We'll see if we get a federal solution, but that's interesting, so we're going to talk about that. The second is we had a very interesting AI dynamic pricing experiment conducted without people knowing about it by Consumer Reports.

It was done by Instacart, and Instacart actually complied. Told them what they were doing. They sent out shoppers to, I think, 20 different of the same store across the country, and they got back the results. So, we have a little bit of an AI corner. There's also a fully AI ad from McDonald's. The machine is here, everyone. The machine is here. We have some updates on that. I want to talk about it all.

And then finally, Josh's favorite politician, rising star, Jasmine Crockett, has put in her bid for a Senate race in Texas, so I want to hear all about what's going on there, but of course, we have the good news. We have Twilight Zone. We have all the good stuff you expect from the LOOPcast, so if you like the show, go ahead and leave a review. Apple Podcasts, like the episode on YouTube, all that good stuff. Appreciate it from all of you, but before we get into it, it's Christmas season, and guess what?

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To get started, visit CharityMobile.com and use promo code LOOPcast. That's CharityMobile.com. Promo code LOOPcast. Thank you, Charity Mobile, for sponsoring the episode. I say we dive in. Let's do it. So, look, forgive me for showing a CNN article, but that was the one that is in the show today. I will put it up. Bang.

All right. Children across Australia woke up on Wednesday with no access to their social media accounts under a world-first ban designed to shelter those under 16 from addictive algorithms, online predators, and digital bullies. No other nation has taken such sweeping measures, and the rollout of the tough new law is being closely watched by legislators around the globe, including Loopcasters now. So, important to notice, what are the platforms that were banned? So, 10 banned platforms, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, Kik, Reddit, Twitch, and X say they'll comply with the ban using age verification technology to identify under-16s and suspend their accounts, but they don't believe it'll make children safer.

Shocker. Along with the list of banned sites is a list of platforms that aren't considered a part of the ban. Yet. They are Discord, GitHub, Google Classroom, Lego Play, Messenger, Pinterest, Roblox, Steam, and Steam Chat, WhatsApp, and YouTube Kids. So, it is not completely comprehensive, but a pretty significant start, more than I've seen anywhere else.

And so, of course, the ban is aimed at protecting kids from what their officials say are highly addictive platforms and will affect nearly 86% of Australians between the ages of 8 and 15 who use social media in the country, according to the Australian government. Um, the social media companies are now required to institute age verification or face a fine up to $32 million for repeated offenses. Social media platforms must now have age verification systems in place, ranging from asking users to submit live video selfies or official documents verifying via email.

Reports are already surfacing that verification systems incorrectly identifying these ages and users illegally evading the ban with VPNs. But that's to be expected with something like this. The interesting thing on my front, and the Aussies do have a different approach to, say, Liberty, libertarianism in general. I think they're a little bit more friendly to it, but a 2024 YouGo poll found that 77% of Australians supported the ban, with proponents arguing it will decrease cyberbullying and help protect children's mental health. Not everyone.

There are two 15-year-old Australians that are pursuing a legal challenge right now, and of course, platform executive, free speech advocates, some parents, and young people don't like the ban, but that's where it stands right now. And many other countries watching. Denmark and Malaysia have plans to institute a very similar ban next year. Similar proposals have emerged in countries like France, Norway, and the entire European Union in recent months, and may I argue it's for good reason, but just in general, before I get to some of the reasons, surprise, good thing.

How do we feel about this? Welcome to America. I love it. Let's go. Yeah, let's do this, too. I'm kind of embarrassed that the Aussies got to it first, honestly. I don't mind if another country starts it first, but, you know, my biggest question is... Why has it, now, we've had social media since really 2006, I mean, but MySpace was, you know, whatever. Facebook comes on the scene like it goes public, I guess, in 08. I guess college kids had it before that, but 08 or 07 or whatever is like about when it became part of the major.

I mean, you know, at least 15, 16 years, you know, and it's entrenched pretty strongly in our culture. And you would think that, like, I remember growing up that, you know, my government teachers were always so happy to tell me about this. Well, you know.

Businesses would do unfair practices, and actually, I agree with this. It is not okay. Where you go to a movie theater, and they would flash the subliminal messages that would make you thirsty and want to buy more pop and get more popcorn or whatever, and they said, okay, subliminal advertisements is like a way of deceiving you and trying to send you a message without you knowing about it. So, the government rightly said that that is unacceptable.

You cannot do certain things to manipulate people. Well, you know what? Social media, and by the way, pornography is the worst at this. Use algorithms and addictive things. It is like one thing if, yeah, you have a product and you want to try to encourage your people to use your product and enjoy your product and spend more time with your product to an extent, but if these practices are too manipulative, not just for kids, but especially for kids. As adults, we are like, gosh, I am wasting my time.

I got to go away, but it is harder when you are like 13 and you just. You're getting groomed by a predator? Well, it's not just, I mean, obviously the predator stuff is bad, but... If we take the criminal element out of it for just a second, not to say that, I mean, that's the worst. My point is, even if there's never any criminals on it, just the algorithms and what they know about, I mean, we cracked down on tobacco when we found out that they were hiring psychologists to try to get more addictive properties and how to manipulate this.

So, why isn't the Federal Trade Commission going after some of these bigger companies anyway? Why does it have to be Australia saying, this is too much? Why can't some of these companies be, you know? But the only thing we are seeing from a regulatory standpoint is the European Union saying, we do not want Elon Musk's X platform to allow people to have free speech. It is mind-boggling.

Erika? Yeah, I mean, I think this is long overdue. I'm really excited to see a country, you know, be the first to kind of stick their necks out here, because there are going to be challenges to it. They're going to find ways that people are working around it. That's just how this is going to work, especially when you have such a wide swath of the population so addicted to something. When you take it away, there's going to be people who are going to try and get around and find the loopholes, but that's part of the process.

Making society better is you pass a law. That has a good goal like this, and then you work out the kinks over time. And I'm excited to start this, and hopefully this happens. I hope Denmark, I hope France, I hope the EU, I hope the United States adopt this. I was reminded of when we had, was it Louisiana and Nevada, and maybe some other states now as well, we passed the age verification laws on porn, right? For pornography, yeah. And what happened?

We saw an 80% decrease in Louisiana. Within like three months on Pornhub, and 7% of that, I looked up the study this morning, 7% of that decrease, it's estimated, were minors who had been using. And if this law saves even, you know... 30,000 kids in Louisiana from watching hardcore porn on Pornhub, it's totally worth it. So, people are going to be like, oh, well, these two 15-year-olds worked around it, and these guys are suing, and the kids can still get on.

Yeah, maybe. So, there's a couple of people in the chat. We're all thinking through this together. So, there's a couple of people in the chat make these points, and I think these come up often whenever you have laws that do restrict people's freedom, because we're addicted to freedom in America. The purpose of the law... Is to legislate towards the common good, as classically understood. And maybe it's different because the two greatest goods in America are equality and freedom right now.

I'm totally fine with, well, there's two distinctions here. This is children we're talking about. We make all kinds of distinctions for children in the law, and sure, there are going to be some that use their parents' phones, but it'd be impossible to think there wouldn't be friction introduced here with age verification with this. It's going to at least take many people off of this, or maybe some would get around it, and a black market will evolve. I think it's actually really great to have, because if you use the black market argument, so then we don't legislate anything ever.

Then we have... Legal prostitution, right? Because then, well, there's going to be a black market for prostitution, people are going to be safer, and you get a Denmark situation. The point is, we need to guide the general population to the common good. I mean, I have a million stats in front of me right now on how damaging, particularly to children, this is. I'm not even suggesting we do it for adults, but shockingly... uh, harmful disproportionately to young girls. I think we all understand that U S girls suicide rates now higher than any prior generations at the same age, 167% increase one in five teen girls spent over 40 hours weekly on social media, 46% of teens online, almost constantly.

Um, Josh brought up the psychologist. Yes, they're all embedded. They try to get them addicted. Um, and there's this paradox of that we have with our children, like these kinds of helicopter parents and people that ...are terrified of letting their kids be unsupervised for two seconds outside, but inside, there's complete unsupervision, and there's... A shocking amount of documented evidence for Meta, Snapchat, etc., where they knew about accounts that were being pushed towards sexual predators, sex offenders that are registered, I think, and they shelved this.

So, this one's really crazy. Suppression of safety fixes for profit. 2019 Meta researchers recommended making teen accounts private by default to block unwanted adult messages, but the company shelved it for five years after growth teams calculated it would lose. 1.5 million monthly active teen users annually. The delay led to billions of inappropriate adult teen interactions on Instagram alone, 38 times higher than on Facebook Messenger. That's billions with a B, in case you missed it. This is the thing that people need to realize.

It's like, Tom, thank you for bringing that up. It's such a great point because, again, we're dealing with circumstances. People love their freedom. I get that, but the fact of the matter is, we have to make... informed decisions and if we just only allow well let's let instagram decide how to allow teenagers and people under 18 to use their platform only let instagram decide like no why would we only let instagram decide because then then they're going to have financial interest to see to maximize maximize uh user interests of course so like if creepy 53 year old dudes are sending nasty messages Girls that are under 18, that is a problem, but if Instagram is like, oh, gosh, we profit off that, so I do not know.

Should we be evil and make money, or should we be less evil and still make a lot of money? Come on. Again, this is a classic example where supposedly the left is like, well, we want morale. We do not want capitalists to only do what is for profit. Yes.

We, conservatives, are saying, The free market is a great thing. Maybe it is not the best thing in the world, but it is the best over everything else, but you got to have guardrails. You got to have a place where you just, you know, like, come on. Well, we do. That is kind of the thing. Like, people kind of turn a blind eye to that, and then the other thing I want to address. Well, there is something like this where there has been a gaping hole.

Oh, for sure. We have not brought the regulations to bear on it. For sure. No doubt. And someone is like, well, if you ban social media using the same reason for why, you know, people had to get the COVID shot or whatever. Like, I'm of the opinion of the new Trump administration, like, you use legislation for good, and then you need to stop thinking about, you know, oh, what if the other side uses this, or what if it's used in this bad case, and it's like, so then you just never use proper governmental authority, rightly vested, to work towards the common good ever, then.

You would just not do anything. That's like a very libertarian idea that I would certainly disagree with in this case, where there is proper authority vested in our lawmakers to check. The interests of the private market that are detrimental to the body politic, and this is just one I feel like this is kind of the new smoking for a lot of people. I mean, we're putting basically like a casino. Think about what it is, like it's giving unfettered access to children as young as eight to a casino in their pocket in which adults can contact them and groom them, and there's like little to no guardrails, even though internally they've gotten sued over it.

And they've pushed it away because, of course, that doesn't help their business model, and I think the next obstacle I'd like to tackle is the Section 230 immunity in which it just gives all these platforms blanket immunity for what goes on on their platforms because their thing is treated as a common good, as a public good, and I think that just right now where it swings in the pendulum, we're way too far in the freedom of a lot of these places to just really detrimental effects on children in particular.

I'd be happy to even move that up to adults. At some point, but children should be something we can all come together, and really, because, I mean, I have all these stats in front of me. Billions with a B is the right word, and it's been completely detrimental to our children. Well, I agree with someone in the chat who's saying that the American concept of freedom has Consumers devolved over time into, do whatever you want. Right, license. Which is license, yeah, and it's also a very pro-commercialist consume stuff.

You know, the consumer Uber Alis, the consumer can do no wrong. You know, whatever they want to keep them fat and happy, and it's like, no. Like, no. Freedom absolutely has to come with responsibilities and duties, too. Otherwise, you know, we become, because the fact of the matter is, we would become slaves to our own sins, and, you know, we need these guardrails in society. Absolutely.

Of course. That is like a very Marxist-Aurelius understanding of... Education and stoicism of the young is like the real detriment is to yourself if you don't learn to restrain your passions. And so much of social media in general, what they promote is that their business model is unrestrained passions. Go as far as you want with money, things that you can buy, consumerism, your sexual passions. Go as far as you want. Don't wonder. That's the promise of this consumer society.

That's a classically understood, like, the upbringing and training of your children should be the virtues in the mean, and you need to properly train and restrain your passions, order them towards the good of your soul, of your family, of the broader community, and if we really start training people that way, you're going to see, I already see it, because I see really well-raised, young, Children, young men around me, and I'm like, it's a really beautiful thing to behold. People are asking the right questions.

They're not just going along like robots. Yeah, I think the argument that freedom would just be the exercise of absolute license and follow your passions, and when it comes to children, you're talking about people at a stage of development where they don't actually have freedom. Like a child, because we're born in a fallen state. We're born as slaves to our passions, right? We're born with the effects of original sin, and so childhood should actually be a process through guardrails, through protection.

It should be a process of becoming more free from the passions that will harm you, right, as an adult, but when you take out the guardrails for children, as we have with social media, with the screens, with so much else, whenever the adults in the room fail to be the adults in the room, and children are just given this license, Then they never even get to the point of being free, right? They never even get to that point of actually being able to know the good life and to act as they want to for their good and for the good of society.

So, it's the arguments coming from... Australian families are ready with these 15-year-olds suing to get their accounts back because free speech and whatever. It's the complete inverse of what actually happens in a developing human person. So, go John Paul II. Love that. Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought. Thank you, chat, for providing a little JP2 for us in the morning. It's interesting to kind of follow how this trickles into America.

I was looking at, there is no federal solution right now. The closest thing that we got was... The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. It was so weak. It's just covering under-13s, and it was focused on data collection rather than an outright ban, so it doesn't get into the substance at all. It's like, well, they can do it, but we'll just not allow them to collect data or something. It was really weak. But Florida actually passed a ban for under-14s, and then 14-15s need parental consent and requires age verification, and it's already been upheld on appeal as of November 25, 2025, reversing a lower injunction.

So, it is possible, like it might just trickle up through the states, and the cool thing on this is I think this is a great opportunity for some bipartisan movement in Congress. Of course, they're going to have to jump the hurdle of the fact that all these tech companies basically have them all in their pocket, but isn't this kind of why you represent the people that you represent if this becomes a strong enough call? As I think the evidence is just overwhelming.

It's the new smoking. We need to get something done here. Well, in Australia, it's an 80-20 issue. I mean, that was what the polling showed, so if it's even close to that... If it gets to that, yeah. Well, Ed, you know, this is why, actually, Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, was saying, I don't want national standards for AI and all this other stuff on tech, because we want the states to have the ability to protect their kids for, you know, this and that, like you're just mentioning, without the federal government coming in and saying, no, we've applied a national standard, we're going to override what you're doing.

I would hope any legislation on the federal level would not supersede protections, whether it be For children or for AI or whatever, allow the states to have stronger standards if they like. Again, but we get this, like, well, I'm making a nice standard, so it's good for big companies? Right, right. In this case, though, a federal minimum, I think, makes sense. I'm not against that, of course. That's what I'm saying. I just don't want it to be. You know, I would like, you know, if, allow states to go further in their protection.

If they want to. Oh, yeah, good point. Like with abortion, right? So, we were talking about AI, we kind of led to this one pretty good, and then I kept going. Oh, man. So, this Consumer Reports article, fascinating. I read through, they have some good graphics here, but Erika, I had you take a look at that. Yeah, I took a look at this. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, Tom brought this to my attention this morning via Morning Brew, so thank you, everyone.

Yeah, sure, Morning Brew. So, yeah. They did a great job on this one. So, this was the Consumer Reports actual article. I'm just going to quote from them. Many US shoppers who order grocery deliveries through Instacart are unknowingly part of widespread AI-enabled experiments dating back to 2022 that price identical products differently from one customer to the next, sometimes by as much as 23%. For those of you who are interested, that was on the Wheat Thins. That's what was the biggest one.

The report came from Consumer Reports and then Groundwork Collaborative. They did a months-long investigation undercover into this. They said Instacart's algorithmic pricing experiments were found to be occurring through the platform at the biggest grocery retailers, including Albertsons, Costco, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts Farmers Market, and Target.

So, how did they do this? They were, Instacart says that it was a random selection of 437 shoppers who they followed throughout the experiment. They said that they didn't use any personal or demographic data, but critics are calling this- Which is the next step, by the way. Surveillance pricing is the distinction there. They say this is dynamic rather than surveillance, but- Exactly. Hard to imagine they're not going to start using that. The next step is consumer exploitation. They're going to use what they know about you to, what's the- The maximum price this individual is willing to pay on this item.

All told, the price variations, this was an estimate from Consumer Reports. If this goes into effect widespread, it could cost families for $1,200 additionally a year on groceries, based on how much Instacart says the typical household spends on groceries. Now, Instacart came back. They acknowledged that this has been going on. They did not deny it.

They said, yes, we've been doing this, but it was all for your own good. Yes. Instacart told CBS News in a statement that 10 of its retailer partners are using pricing experiments. They didn't say which ones. They said, quote, just as retailers have long tested prices in their physical stores to better understand consumer preferences, see, it's all about you, a subset of only 10 retail partners, ones that already apply markups, do the same online via Instacart. See, it's no big deal, guys.

Quote, these limited short-term and randomized tests Help retail partners learn what matters most to consumers and how to keep essential items affordable. So, see, guys, it was all for your own good to keep things affordable. I don't believe you. I do not believe you. Josh, why don't you believe them? What's actually going on here? I mean, to me, it's like you're trying to manipulate data, try to find out different patterns, and try to maximize your profits. You know.

It's hard for me to argue that people are going to not try to go for their self-interest. These corporations are going to try to do that. But then, you know, I love it how they feel. They at least feign, oh, but we're doing this for your own good. No, there's actually a lot of economists that would. So, dynamic pricing is not new. I think the new element to this is the potential for surveillance pricing, where they use all of your historical data to calculate a new price for you.

Because, like, in the examples of dynamic pricing that everyone kind of knows are, like, psychological tricks would be, for example, if there's a sale, you say that the starting price is higher than it would be otherwise, and then you say the discount that you get is bigger to get you to that number you always wanted to sell for. These are all the pre-Christmas sale emails that we've been getting, like, from Canvas Print. They're like, this canvas would have cost you $220, but it's a 90% markup.

Right, so that's one example that always happens, and then the other example would be like hotels during off-seasons, or, you know what I mean? Like, there's more, or airlines is a big one. Like, airlines, you know, they sell prices for cheaper, but even I think what everyone gets mad about is the opportunity for surveillance pricing. Like, we have a feeling about how much you can pay individually. Like, we want to find your exact pain point to where you won't. So, the example that they used here.

And they had some pretty good graphics. Yeah, this is great graphics. Highly recommend the article. Shopper1, who thinks Spuddies are by far the best chips and intensely brand loyal, would pay... I didn't even know it was a real brand. would pay up to $7. So, they're at the top here. Shopper 5 thinks they're fine, but no better than another brand that costs $3. The others fall somewhere in between. And then, if a retailer sets the price of Spuddy's at, say, $4 across the board, it will sell bags for a total of $16.

That leaves a lot of potential revenue on the table, what economists call consumer surplus. So, in this case, it would be total sales $16, consumer surplus is $6. What they're trying to get towards. Is if the retailer gets good at using data and algorithmic pricing to estimate how much each shopper is willing to pay, it might sell five bags for about $23, so it would be able to charge that brand loyal enthusiast around $7, and the one who doesn't care at about $3.

Leaving less surplus, having more sales, and a lot of economists would argue, well, this is actually better for you because you can save money here and there. I was trying to look at some of the... Not save money. Everyone's going to end up paying more money this month. Everyone will pay more. It's terrible. Yeah.

This is like one of those things where... So, I studied economics at Hillsdale College, a very free marketplace, okay? And in general, I think learning about market economies and how they work, and I think it is very helpful. You understand incentives. You understand... Opportunity costs. You understand, like, why is there price gouging in a hurricane? All this stuff is very important, or whatever. But I remember one thing that stuck out in my mind. One of the professors, he said, you know, if a...

Drugstore was trying to hire somebody as a manager, and they offered $70,000 or whatever it is, and the manager said no. He wanted to stay at his, like, be a different job that paid him less. He is doing a disservice to the rest of the economy because he is obviously so gifted, he should take that, he should level up and take the promotion. Now, normally, people Take the incentives of more money, and they take the job, and maybe it costs more hours, and his thought was it was bad for the greater national economy that Fred didn't take the promotion and end up working more hours and getting paid more money.

It is like, well, wait a minute now. What the hell is economics all about anyway? Like, if it's better for him to be, like, in the job he's at so he can participate in the youth, as a coach for the youth team, then maybe that's what he wants in life. So, like, just because, well, it might be more efficient this way, or it might be better that way, it's like, that's good. Allow that to inform the choices that we make. But don't make it that we're subservient to like this, you know, we're slaves to this system.

We should not be. And I think, again, well, we can maximize profits for shareholders. No, you know what? I don't want companies to manipulate data this much. Now, it's, you know, like, and this comes up when we're talking about social media. So, Instagram and Facebook and women especially get really, oh my gosh. I searched for something, and I mentioned I needed to buy laundry. Now, I'm getting laundry so bad. This is such an appropriate... People don't like it. Well, that's sort of an algorithm thing where it just spits the words out, and it's not like they're spying on you, per se, but this would be much more horrible if they somehow like, oh, well, we studied all the...

Like, look, if Walmart knows I like to buy jars of peanuts, then they might be like, hey, would you like to buy a jar of peanuts? You know, that's, I guess, within reason, that's fine, but then if they say, oh, we can keep pushing the price up on this, you've got to be good consumers, and you've got to not just sleep at the wheel, because they will milk you for everything you work. This is becoming, it's making it much harder to become a good consumer, or for you to find edge, because...

Because you don't even know what's going on. And what if they share data? So, they share, Walmart shares the data with Aldi. So that, hey, Josh always likes to buy, you know, jars of, you know, fresh, salty peanuts, and we're going to make sure we can, everywhere he goes in town, he's going to pay more than everyone else would. So, that's the kind of stuff, like, all this stuff, this all relates to it. We talked about social media and all this other kind of stuff.

Why have we not gotten some sort of... You know, digital bill of rights, where, you know, there would be limits to that which, you know, your information would be shared. Because some of these companies are like, oh, you want to participate in Facebook or X or Instagram, which all of your friends are. You have to sacrifice all of this. All of your privacy. All of your personal data. No, no, no. Right. To me, like, it's analogous to, if not the same kind of thing as the social credit system that we see in China right now.

The digital footprint. That the government surveils its citizens with. So, if your social credit in China drops because of something you said, or something you posted, or you didn't play nice at the job site the other day, you can't take a train. You can't access your bank card. And this is the same sort of potential happening, but in big business and the market, and Walmart having your information and starting to... It's not like they're going to say, oh, we're cutting off your...

But you can imagine this very quickly devolving into a scenario where, say, for example, Walmart buys all the data from social media and Twitter and my past purchases on Walmart Plus for store pickup. They do the same thing with my husband, Todd, and they start to realize that they could charge me something different if I'm on my phone than they charge to Todd. It could get down to that granular and that invasive into our lives.

Because the potential with AI, with chat GPT, it already exists, and we are very close to seeing it, where AIs can actually just start talking to each other and coaching each other on this, and companies are, that's why they're investing in people like Sam Altman, like Elon Musk, because the power of this, the potential, you take this Instacart example of 437 people, and you multiply that by millions of people using Instacart, if they can increase their profits by even You know, $1,200 a year per family.

Multiply that by millions. The temptation there to these companies, I don't think they will be able to resist, because that's why they exist, is to make profits and maximize profits. So, there's going to have to be some kind of stepping in with policy to get a guardrail. Well, and everyone thinks that the future is going to be like the Matrix. We're all plugged in our brains or something like that, but it's probably going to be more like idiocracy, where the guy is just sitting there, and he's like...

Like, ooh, ooh, buys TV and shouting at the TV and drinking a big Slurpee and just eating and... Like the fat people in WALL-E. That legit terrified me. Oh, WALL-E was so scary. I still have nightmares about WALL-E, like floating around because... Can you guys help me? Can you guys help me flesh out a point here? I'm really trying to get to the... Because, so, McDonald's did another fully AI commercial, and it's super... It pulled it.

Yeah, it's super... Unsettling, and then... X.A.I. is working on something where, like, they had an episode of Suits, and instead of cutting it up, like, into pieces for ads to be in between it, they, like, put a Coca-Cola in the hand of Harvey. Yeah, product placement. That's been going on forever. Right, but no, no, no. The difference here, though, is they're using AI to generate Coca-Cola in the hand of Harvey in the show so that you don't have to stop for an ad instead of him holding a generic cup of coffee.

Like in reruns. So, they're re-engineering reruns with AI. They're re-engineering reruns to put in products on top of stuff. So, okay, I'm just trying to think about, like, why this is so unsettling. I'm trying to, and of course, this is the million-dollar question, right? Everyone's kind of feeling this. And I think maybe what I'm getting at is it feels like the new attitude towards consumers and human beings are very, like, disrespectful, and they're...

Because as companies have kind of moved towards... Being way more corporate and having less connection to the people in their local communities. Think, for example, a local grocery store, and Josh, you were talking about the efficiency of economics, and so theoretically, this hyper-corporatism has been more efficient, but for example, if there was a local grocer and he knew that someone in the community just got laid off or something like that, and he wanted to help them out by giving them a cut on groceries, say, hey, we're not going to charge as much, because that would be the right thing to do.

But in a corporate environment, you wouldn't even account for that kind of thing because there would be no concept of, like, right or wrong, or you don't even know the people there. Or, for example, like— Or, like, welfare. But, I mean, the— With McDonald's, here's the other thing, too. It's pretty consumers-like cows, like, just— Right, like, we're all, like, lab rats. We get milk every 12 hours. Because what's the thing with the McDonald's ad, too, which is super unsettling and gross?

And why does it feel wrong? Because, yeah, it's just an ad, you know? Why do you watch it? But it's almost like you don't even respect me enough. To put some creative energy into making an entertaining commercial, you're like, we're going to go for the absolute bottom of the barrel, cheapest, most efficient, whenever you get this slop in your body, McDonald's, let alone not even getting into the product itself, but just the way you advertise it. It's like, we don't even respect you enough for that, or we don't even respect you enough to give you...

A show that you love in its original form without trying to sneak in something to try to get like a few more bucks out of you. It's just so, it's just, I feel like there's more dignity to the human person, and while the previous way of life was maybe more inefficient, quote unquote, there was something more human about it that I think people kind of miss or reminisce upon, and maybe I wasn't even alive for this period of time. I just don't like where a lot of this is.

Right, I mean, this is where, like, you know, even, okay, so Pat Buchanan, right? Super conservative! And the magazine American Conservative, which is like paleo-conservative, super-conservative, they would talk about, even 20 years ago, how mass industrial agricultural farms were not good, and farming is just like, oh, farming plus capitalism plus Republican, how dare you criticize anything? What are you, liberals? No, no, no, hold on a second. We can be, you know, We want these industries to profit, of course, but it is like, again, maybe you have too many chickens in this coop.

Maybe you are not giving the cattle enough room to move. Come on, there has to be some, again, there has to be some guardrails. When you do not have any regulations, and when you allow things to go crazy like this, then a generation later, you get communists.

Yeah. You do, because people are like, if this is what freedom and markets are all about, I don't want anything to do with it. For sure, and with farming, for example, it's like, I think with farming, they'll make the argument that, well, we all have more meat now than we did before. Maybe you only had meat a couple days a week, and now you can have it cheaper every day of the week, even if it's lower quality, and then...

It's more efficient economically for, say, Tysons to, they make all the money and maybe they employ more people, but maybe before Tysons, there were more people in the country that could make a decent living by being a farmer, and that's now impossible because you have to work for the big corporate version, and now that the CEO of Tysons or whatever, I'm sure, is like a bajillionaire, you know, that's better somehow. He totally uses the illegal labor all the time. Exactly. Well, of course.

I just think this, that's why I really, I don't know, call me a lib or whatever, I feel like I've become more critical of worshipping capitalism as a religion and more comfortable pointing out the obvious. flaws uh in what it's kind of become and i think we're just accelerating towards it becoming just really uh disgusting in the mouth as everyone's saying and you're like well people are like whatever this is i don't want it so let's listen to you know communists here or whatever to push to the complete opposite and that's how you get a revolution and then that doesn't work out for anyone so so this is why we're going for these kind of reforms because you know and like we were sounding the alarm months ago about the affordability stuff and now donald trump is you First, he's like, ah, what are you talking about?

I think there's so much better. But then he goes to Pennsylvania yesterday, and he talks about affordability, and he's out there trying to sell the American people why he's done a lot, and he has, to turn things around over the last nine or 10 months. And the fact of the matter is, you do need to talk about this stuff. You just can't do the right things and assume the American people are going to notice. The other side is going to be going crazy about this.

So, make the reforms, make the adjustments. Improve and save the system so that, you know, the commies don't take over. Yes, actually. Yeah. I have one fun story about AI resistance, though. Go for it. So, we bought a new mattress a couple of weeks ago, and the company to which we went, they're not paying us, so I won't say the name of the company. If you want to, if you want me to say it, you can just send us money. But our salesman, he walked us through, we told him, like, what we were looking for, why we were looking for a mattress now, blah, blah, blah.

I'm going to try a few out. He points us to one, of course, like top of the line first, and then we kind of go down. And he makes the sale, we buy the mattress, but at the end, he shows us, he's like, I just want to show you what I could have done. He flips around his little iPad thing, and he's like, when you walked in, I could have just plugged what you said into this. He was so proud of himself.

And so, he plugs in everything that we said into his little algorithm data thing. And sure enough, he hits select. And up pop all the mattresses that he'd shown us in the exact same order that he had come up with just by listening to us. He's like, I didn't even have to be here. His name is Ron. Shout out to Ron. And unfortunately, Ron is an older gentleman. He's been selling mattresses for like 30 years. He knows his people. He's like, I'm retiring next year and this won't happen anymore.

Next time you buy a mattress, you will walk in here, you will plug everything in, you won't talk to a person, and it'll be the end. But it was like... I was just proud of Ron for resisting. He's like, I'm going to do my job for the last year. I've been doing it 30 years. I know my people. I know my mattresses. I'm going to sell them the mattress they want without going into this iPad that the company handed me last year saying, use this instead of your brain.

So, here's to the resistors. Go, Ron. You dropped this, Kane. Total. On to good news. Erika, what do you got? Yes, good news out of Boston. We have bishops bishoping in Boston. I'm very excited to talk about this. Always good news. There was a display at St. Susanna Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, which I have been to in the past. My family is from outside of Boston. And instead of a normal nativity display outside, they have, oh, there's no baby Jesus. There's just a big sign.

Or holy family. Or holy family. No Mary, no Joseph. Ice was here. And then underneath the ice was here is a phone number you can call. If you know someone who's trying to escape ice, then they'll help you escape ice or something like that.

This is disgusting on so many levels. The good news is that the Archdiocese has ordered the removal of this. Totally sacrilegious display outside of a Catholic church. And I think it's on two levels. We have just the thing that really gets me about these, and there's all kinds of these popping up on the online world on Twitter. We had like the National Catholic Reporter retweeting another example of this outside a Catholic church. First of all, it's just terrible history. The analogy does not work.

The Holy Family was in Bethlehem because the government told them to go there. It was their town of origin. They totally belonged there. They were there for a census. They were there for the census. Guys, it doesn't even work. If you really wanted to get historical, you could have a display of Egypt, maybe, and Mary and Joseph were kicked out of Egypt by the Egyptian. But also, ICE didn't get the wise men. They were the guys that they would have gotten.

They were the immigrants. They were the illegals who crossed the border and then went around Herod. I mean, come on. At least get your history right. But also, I mean, that's sort of like the fascist level of like, it's just offensive to anyone who actually respects the Gospels for their own historical integrity. But also just the utter lack of reverence to the purpose of a religious display outside the church, which is to honor the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and to use that to make these political points and to...

Exactly. Go ahead, Josh. I know you have thoughts on this. Well, the incarnation and then thus the nativity of our blessed Lord should be subservient to the greater goal, apparently, of attacking the president's immigration policies. The message. So, to them, apparently at this parish, you know, celebrating the Lord and his birthday is not the most important thing this Advent and Christmas season, but attacking President Trump. And it's so funny, because when we posted about this on social media, We had somebody who was like… Isn't your name CatholicVote?

Like, the whole point of what you do is like, ah, yes, you are right. Thank you very much for telling me something I didn't realize. Yes, the job of CatholicVote is to try to enlist Catholics, educate them, and get them mobilized to vote. It is not to convince parishes to put posters and political placards and slogans inside of the nativity scene and take away Jesus. Jesus is the reason for the season, not protesting immigration policies. So, this was truly vulgar, and, you know, it's very unsettling.

And the thing is, we as conservators or traditionalists don't want it even for something that would be on our side. No. For example. Frank Pavone, used to be Father Frank Pavone, he's a friend of mine, okay? I say this with love, but he had brought out the remains of a dead child who had been aborted and placed them on the altar, and at least I feel like his heart was in the right place, but it was just not appropriate, and so like, no, like the holy sacrifice of the mass, I know that you're trying to say like Christ, you know, was offered up as a sacrifice, but that child didn't sign up for that, and that's...

Not what should be done with regards to the liturgy, and so I felt it was inappropriate. A lot of other Catholics thought it was inappropriate, too, but, you know, I understand at least the goodwill, and even then, like, these people truly feel like Taking foreigners who are here illegally and returning them to their country is somehow bad? Like, okay, we can disagree, but don't use the nativity scene and hijack it for your political purposes. And it's so funny, NBC did a story where they said over a third of the 220,000 people removed, illegal immigrants removed, didn't even have criminal records.

And I'm like... Why do you think that's a good highlight for you to talk about? Because that tells me a lot of them had criminal records. My goodness. Like, wow. You mean ICE has removed well over 100,000 people who have committed violent crimes other than coming here illegally? Yeah, well, Josh, you're missing out on the… They cross the border illegally. That is a crime. Yes, but additional, I was saying. Right, additional. I know, but that's even worse for NBC because you're implying that they don't admit it.

It wasn't the only crime they committed. Have you seen punishments for illegal immigration in many countries? They jail them for a year and then deport them after jailing them for years. We're kind of strict. But the critique for a lot of traditional and conservative Catholics has been... That a lot of the liberal Catholics are watering down the faith, you know, and that they're Catholic in name only, like places like Georgetown University. Like, really? It's Catholic? I mean, they had a fight to get crucifixes in the classrooms, you know, and we're like, come on, don't you take your faith seriously?

And they are here at this parish in Boston, voluntarily removing Jesus to put up a political sign. But the good news is... Thanks for confirming everything we ever thought about you. The good news is that the Archdiocese is pushing back, and that liberal Catholicism of the ilk you described seems to be on the outs. You can check out my episode on that on the deep... It was a smash hit, so if you haven't watched it yet, let's do that. It's a banger and gives me hope.

So, my good news is somewhat related, obviously, because we were talking about immigration. So, we had talked about this on the last episode, where there's like 250,000 children born every year to people who are here in this country illegally.

Well, new data confirms that it's actually likely that 2 million... Illegal immigrants have already left the country since Donald Trump was sworn in on January 20th, and in fact, Ryan Gerduski looked at the births, the statistics of births in this country. These are children that were born to people who are foreign-born, and according to the CDC, 41 states and the District of Columbia reported decreases in births from foreign-born women. With states like New York, Virginia, New Mexico, and Texas showing double-digit reductions, and incidentally, these reductions didn't really start until July, so you get sworn in January 20th, and it actually makes sense, because if you're here in the country illegally, and you're in your last trimester, you're probably just going to wait it out, I guess, but yeah, the number of births in the second half of the year.

Of this year. It is just this year. Wait, remind me again where this church was that they had the anti-ice? Massachusetts. Massachusetts, which has got a lot. Well, actually, Massachusetts looks like it went down a little bit, but Maine. What is going on in Maine, dude? Plus 10? You can go hide up there. Crazy. Well, again, the number of illegal immigrants in, I mean, Massachusetts is a different story, but in Vermont. New Hampshire and Maine had been historically relatively low. I cannot speak for the last couple of years, and so a swing in the percentage of data can be, you know, if you do not have a lot in, the numbers can switch kind of rapidly, but you are talking about bigger states like Virginia, Florida, Texas, California, Massachusetts, you know, New York.

It is pretty sizable, and what these numbers would seem to confirm that the estimates that The Department of Homeland Security was saying that approximately 2 million people have left the country that were here illegally. The data actually backs it up, and so a lot of people go, I don't really believe this. Trump isn't doing enough. Well, it seems like the policies are working, and in fact, again, it's not totally without compassion. As we mentioned before, they offered $1,000. Hey, you're here illegally.

We'll give you $1,000 to return home because we know it's not free. And then if you want to go through the paperwork of trying to apply for citizenship, go for it. But if you come here illegally, the current law does not allow you to apply for citizenship because you broke our law. So, it is an act of charity, actually. Word.

All right. I was just going to quote that fired me up. So, you know, TikTok, there's always something going on there, but someone just, the text of it is, I wasted my entire life because no one told me this as a kid. And it essentially was a person going back and forth with herself about. How they waited to do this, and they waited to do that because the conditions weren't perfect. Like, I didn't have enough money, or I didn't have a job that I wanted, so I didn't do whatever.

And I think people think a lot about this when it comes to having children. And of course, there's a C.S. Lewis quote for everything, and it fired me up, so I'm going to share it with everyone. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while conditions are still unfavorable.

Favorable conditions never come. There are, of course, moments when the pressure of the excitement is so great that only superhuman self-control could resist it. They come both in war and peace. We must do the best that we can. So, everyone just write this above whatever you got going on right now. Favorable conditions never come. And remember that the man who said this managed to complete his graduate work in English literature in the trenches while he was fighting in World War I.

So, C.S. Lewis is saying this from experience. He literally continued his education and became one of the most learned men in Oxford while he was... Fighting Germans in the trenches, the worst conditions of battle. I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying with this quote. So, like, in other words, don't delay stuff. Like, there's too many people in too many ages of, we'll say, waiting for the perfect moment before they...

You know, go for that job, ask that girl out, all that kind of stuff. Is that what you're trying to say? Timeless advice, yes. And also, I can personally relate to C.S. Lewis because, you know, similar struggles. Like, he was in World War I, and my wife woke me up last night because I was snoring, and then my kids woke up three times, and I still did the show today. So, I'd say we kind of have, we got a similar thing going on, me and C.S., kind of spiritually connected in that way, but on a serious note, fire me.

No, I think that's, I think that is... That's permanently good advice. I feel like so many, I mean, like, look. Don't wait. When, you know, Brian, Joe, and I, when we started CatholicVote, I mean, like, what kind of experience did we have? Like, there have been four or five other attempts to try to start an organization like this, and, well, I'm a son of a mailman, and, like, I'm going to be able to do it, you know, but. Are you really the son of a mailman?

Yes, my father is a postmaster. No way, dude. That is awesome. So, then I become editor of The Loop, and I would like to say that we both became man of letters. Every good story starts with, I did this despite the circumstances, okay? AI is weird. You know, the economy is struggling right now. Whatever. It doesn't matter. You know you need to do it. Go do it. The conditions will never be favorable. Get it done. If you need to get something done today, get it done.

There's no excuses. And I actually watched this interesting video about the marketing strategy and decline of Nike. And first off, Phil Nike traded to the country. He just went abroad to find slave labor and ruined his brand. But the second thing that they ruined was they changed their commercial strategy from... Ruthlessly pursuing greatness, excellence. Just do it. Just do it, of course, was their thing, and then they kind of pivoted to all these like dumb, you know, trying to make political points or like.

And of course, then the brand lost the allure because the allure to the brand was it doesn't matter what's going on. It doesn't matter what the odds are. Just do it. Just get it done. And people love that about Nike. And then they lost. And of course, they're blowing up. So, just do it. Tom, I think you've got stage advice. I brought this up before, but this is the laws of the public policy process. Everyone should go look it up online.

It is available free, The Laws of the Public Policy Process by Morton Blackwell, and what you had said with C.S. Lewis, he basically takes a lot of the wisdom of all these other people, and he makes them into these little rules, and the one that you are talking about there, for conditions to be favorable, he would say, number 13, don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. I have recounted that a thousand times to different people, and the other thing is, all gains Number 19, all gains are incremental, some increments aren't gains, but that is like the tried and true method of progress as we start looking ahead to the new year.

I want to be in better shape, or I want to pray better, or whatever. Don't try to swallow the whole pig at once. Just come on. You can do this day in and day out. Make that commitment. That's what really makes the difference. Devil's advocate, swallow it all at once.

I feel like sometimes you need the great motivation of just being like, this is borderline impossible, but I feel so fired up right now, I'm going to go do something awesome. So, I think that you need both advice, because of course, then you burn out or whatever, but there's times like, dude, just make the push. Go do it. Fire me up. I'm tattooing that. Sorry, not on my body. I'm going to put that over. My stuff that I do. Okay, I'm going to tattoo that on my brain.

It's this kind of talk that is how I ended up with seven kids. And you have an awesome life, and you throw ragers at your house. I do. I have an awesome life. We need photos of these parties. Of these ragers? Yes. Yeah, so for the audience, if you didn't, we had an Immaculate Conception.

Tom Across America needs to go. Tom Across America hits an Erika House party. Oh, it would be so fun. We could totally do an episode. Yeah, we had a party Sunday night to celebrate the vigil of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, because why not? And there were, I think we had 67 children. 47 children. 47 adults and three parish priests. It was awesome. When's the next party? Well, you know, we usually do one in January to welcome in the newly elect, so all the OCIA from the parish.

So, watch for an update in January. This one was particularly crazy, though, because the temperature dropped dramatically at like 4.30 p.m. just as everyone was arriving. And so, everyone, instead of the kids being outdoors, it was just all inside. I was literally waiting through children and like pushing their heads out of the way to get to the drinks table. How do we renew society one? Neighborhoods will perish one family at a time. House parties should come back. I think you shared that internally, but there's one that went viral on Acts of, like, an old-timey image of house parties where people would wear suits and ties.

A woman in pearls that makes sure that that's exactly what I looked like, yeah. Yeah, and there's arguments, because actually, funny, back on the social media beat. The report of loneliness and the lack of, like, leaving the house and friends and stuff directly correlates with when the smartphone was introduced, and, you know, I think we're kind of near a tipping point with a lot of that, where people, it's actually kind of cool now to not be so online and to have an in-person physical hobby.

It's edgy. And, yeah, it's different, like, because the new status quo is just, you know, isolation on your phone or digital success, and now it's like, oh, you're kind of like. Cool, mysterious, or a bit of a hipster. So, fire me up. Josh, I'll donate this one to your, you know, literally, I just want to hear your thoughts on Jasmine Crockett. Speaking of just doing it. Well, Jasmine Crockett is a, you know, she is a congresswoman originally from, she's originally from St.

Louis, but she moved down to Houston and became a congresswoman from Texas. She is absolutely crazy. You know, you just watch her give, you know, testimony, and we mentioned this before on the LOOPcast, it's like she does the whole fake ghetto accent, because 15 years ago, she didn't have that. She picked up a new accent when she went down to Houston. Yeah, exactly. But so, here's the thing. Republicans in Texas... Democrats decided to redraw their maps, and what it is going to do is eliminate, you know, basically make it so that five Democrats who will represent Texas in the House are going to lose their seats, likely.

And one of them is Jasmine Crockett. Yep. You know, she has got nowhere to go now, so what is she going to do? Well, should we watch her intro video? Let's do it. All right. It is glossy. She is the new star of the Demo.

How about this new one they have, their new star, Crockett? How about her? She's the new star of the Democrat Party, Jasmine Crockett. They're in big trouble. But you have this woman, Crockett. She's a very low IQ person. I watched her speak the other day. She's definitely a low IQ person.

Crockett! Oh, man, oh, man. She's a very low IQ person. Somebody said the other day, she's one of the leaders of the party. I said, you've got to be kidding. Now they're going to rely on Crockett. Crockett's going to bring them back.

And then she just smiles. It's a very ingenious ad, because at one point, what she's going to do is to say, Donald Trump hates me, send me millions of dollars of your money. Yep. I mean, she is really just...

Bat guano. Now, here is the funny thing about this. Did you know that the campaign arm for the Senate Republicans spent a lot of money to call Democratic voters and urge them to support Crockett and urge her to run for Senate?

Make sure people understand what I'm saying is, Senate Republicans spent their own money to convince Democratic voters to call Jasmine Crockett and urge her to run for the Senate seat in Texas. That's a little peculiar. Interesting. Wouldn't you say? Yeah. Why? Well, because they know she is going to be very toxic if she becomes the Democratic nominee, and she's almost guaranteed to lose. And it's not just me saying it.

Hardcore Democratic activists are going, oh no, Jess McCrockett, we're going to lose this seat. The dynamics of this race, too, by the way, the funny thing about this, back in the summer, the establishment Republicans in Washington were freaking out because their favorite guy, the establishment Republican, John Cornyn, who is terrible, by the way. He's horrible.

We say Republican in square quotes. Yeah, yeah. Yep. But John Cornyn is facing a big primary challenge. A lot of the conservatives in Texas are waking up, and they're like, why do we have this guy as our senator? He's in favor of gun control, and he loves wars in the Middle East. He's terrible. He's totally locked into a time warp of 2004. This guy's terrible. It's Texas. We can do so much better.

And so, Ken Paxton is the Attorney General from Texas, and he is running against John Cornyn, and I think he would be a great candidate, and the polls are so bad for the establishment Republicans. Oh my gosh, Ken Paxton is going to win. So, it is funny enough, by spending money to elevate Jasmine Crockett.

If she is the nominee, well, even Ken Paxton can beat her, is kind of the point. So, you have kind of undercut one of the arguments, because it is like, because if it is not Jasmine Crockett, it would have been this other Democratic candidate. It is Tallarico, and who is the entrenched one? The old football player. The old football player, yeah. Colin Allred. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Both of those candidates would have made, you know, they would have raised, everyone is going to raise a ton of money. But, you know, there could have been a chance for a possible upset, but with Jasmine Crockett, I mean, nothing's impossible. She's calling you now. So, I've seen number analysis. I'm sure you're probably familiar. Why are you saying it is impossible for Jasmine Crockett to win? Because she's going to generate a lot of fundraising for being anti-Trump.

Well, look, raising a lot of money is very important in order to win, but it is not enough. And the fact of the matter is, you know, it is a red-leaning, it is a red state, you know, and the right blue candidate in a bad year for Republicans could pull off an upset, possibly, but they've tried with, like, Beto O'Rourke, and he's been too much in the guns. You know, if he hadn't been such in favor of gun control, if you'd have had, like, a more moderate Democrat running, but the problem is, the Democratic bench...

In Texas, isn't so good. I mean, Republicans have been in control of the governor's mansion the entire 21st century. There is no old hand that they can run. Republicans have totally dominated. So, that is the problem. What, are you going to convince Matthew McConaughey to give up his millions and run for Senate? What is your plan B? So, there isn't. And the only Democrats that are elected are from these very congressional districts that are super blue, like Justin Crockett. Like Jasmine Crockett.

And she's kind of, from what I've seen on her, she, basically her entire brand is just being good, fighting Trump, I guess, because she's not even really like a dyed-in-the-wool progressive. Like, she's not like a member of the squad. Like, she takes a ton of corporate money. She took a ton of crypto money. She's very pro-Israel. Very pro-Israel. Like, so not the taste of the new progressive wing of the party. So, I really don't know.

I'm sure Bernie will, you know, say thumbs up to her or whatever. Well, he'll, you know, hold his breath and say whatever, you know, just for the party. But I'm saying on a grassroots level, I really don't know beyond that.

I don't think she's going to pull, say, Latino support or something like that. Like, she doesn't really have a clear... Well, the biggest thing is, like, you know, white, suburban... Voters who are not, like, solid Republican, they might vote for the occasional Democrat, maybe they voted for Kamala, or whatever, possibly. That kind of voter might have thought about voting for Colin Allred or... Tellurico. He's kind of like a soft-spoken, progressive Christian Democrat that's a little bit more centrist. His favorite thing to do is quote the Bible about how horrible pro-lifers are.

Yeah, he went on Joe Rogan, and it was like a whole thing. So that's a perfect thing for, like, a... Squishy, you know, suburban moderate who's like, oh, Ken Paxton is too conservative. Well, if you have Jasmine Crockett, who's just absolutely backwano and says all the horrible things all the time, you're like, yeah, I don't want that as my senator for the next six years.

No, thanks. Crazy, dude. My personal favorite, I know that we have a list here of her greatest hits. My personal favorite was when she accused Mike Lee of taking a donation from Dr. Jeffrey Epstein, and it was just a- On the house floor! She said this on the house floor. I'm just saying, it was just another guy named Jeffrey Epstein. Anyone can access these records. Jasmine, we know. Idiot, it's the wrong Epstein. No, dude, it gets better. So, she goes up, and she's like, he took money from Dr.

Jeffrey Epstein, the wrong guy, and then she goes on CNN, and Caitlin Collins even was like, hey, Jasmine, like, we, it was the wrong guy. Like, we all see it was the wrong guy. What would you like to say about that? And she doubles down, and she said, no, no, it was the wrong guy. That's not what's important. She's like, I had my staff. We only had 30 minutes to give a speech. Hey, maybe don't rush the house. And sound like an idiot.

I mean, just an absolute moron. Oh, my gosh. My favorite was, this was like last winter, it was after the election, and she's floating the idea, it was on a talk show, she's floated the idea that we needed to end taxes for Black folks. She's like, there was this celebrity who said we should end all taxes for Black folks, you know, like reparations, and at first I was like, I don't know about that idea, but then I started thinking about it, and I thought, if we decrease taxes, that will put more money in the pockets of the voters.

Which will, in turn, stimulate the economy. So, I think, yes. And I'm like, wait, that's Reaganomics, Jasmine, but only for Black people. For example, did you know that Josh Mercer donated $100 to Kamala Harris for president on October 30th? And you're like, wait a minute, how could the vice president of CatholicVote do that? No, it wasn't me. It was a Josh Mercer that lives in California. You're missing the point, Josh. That's not the point. Josh, you're missing the bigger picture, Josh.

You're missing it. It's not what it's about, obviously. Truthiness does not actually apply. So, I will be following this very closely. Yeah, we're excited, Jasmine. I'm really excited for what comes out of this. Let's put it that way. And what was the deal with Ken Paxton? Didn't Ken Paxton kind of have some weird stuff going on? Well, there were some scandals. I mean, you know, whatever.

I'm not going to do a deep dive on him right now. Like, is he flawless? No. But, you know. I feel like he's been exonerated on several of these things, and he's a thousand times better. John Cornyn, come on, man. We can do better. I'm not even talking about the person. I'm talking about he was sued over, or someone tried to impeach him or something.

Yeah, it went nowhere. I mean, there's a lot of establishment rhinos in Texas. By the way, Texas, we think, has voted Republican solidly, obviously, for the last 30, 40 years or whatever, but the Speaker of the House in Texas for the longest time was super liberal. And Joe Strauss drove me crazy. We couldn't get school choice through that legislature for the longest time, and we finally got it in, like, last year, and it's like, come on, man. Yeah.

Okay, on to the Twilight Zone now. Josh, you're up first. All right, all right. Hold on a second here. Getting all up in jet. Okay, so this is kind of like a twilight, so this is kind of also a little bit of good news, though. So, I like to dog on King Charles.

In England, because, you know, he's mostly just an idiot, and he does whatever the left will say, and, you know, he's very pro-Muslim and all that kind of stuff. But didn't he take away the royal title for Prince Andrew?

He's not Prince Andrew anymore, for Andrew. Right, for Andrew, yes. Yes, yes, yes, Andrew Mountbatten. But here's the thing. He did something good, so I am going to give him credit where it is due. King Charles attended a service and lit a candle for persecuted Christians at a service in Westminster Abbey, so I applaud him for this.

But I just want to say, every once in a while, you get people in our own country who wish we had a monarchy or whatever, and like, oh, it would be so great, and it's like, what, so we can have someone like King Charles? I mean, is he in any way going to bring about a true revival of England and realize that so many of these Muslim immigrants are coming to England? To be fair, is it really a monarchy in the UK right now?

Come on. You're really going to—he has no power. He's all symbolic. That is also true. But he could... He has no political power, but he still has power. He still has cultural power. The royal family has massive cultural power. And a lot of money, for crying out loud. True. I'd like to see reparations for all the Catholic churches and abbeys that were destroyed. I know. If you're going to trash them and put graffiti in them and have raves, just hand them back over, guys.

Yeah, give them back. Give them back. All right. Erika, what do you got? Yep, I'm going to pull this one. Okay, so after the Great Fire in Notre Dame, they rebuilt it. Wait, are you talking about them declining playing in the bowl game because they weren't good enough to make it in the playoffs? I'm talking about the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Ah, sorry. Like actual culture, yeah, not the football team. My bad, my bad, my bad. Yeah, the Indiana football team this year is actually Indiana.

So, many people were really worried. Okay, guys, off the football. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Twilight Zone. Yep. Many people were worried after the Great Fire that France would rebuild Notre Dame in the modernist, brutalist architecture that seems to be the favored artistic persuasion of France, for example, and everyone was really excited and happy when they chose instead to use traditional techniques to rebuild the wooden structures to give us the gothic glory that is Notre Dame. If anyone has ever been there, it's a life-changing experience.

However, they're not done with it. We got this this week. They rolled out the proposed new stained glass windows. The old stained glass windows actually survived the fire. Look at that. That is a beautiful, it's world famous. It's got color, ancient techniques. It survived the fire. It survived multiple fires. It survived the great terror in the French Revolution, for heaven's sake. But now we're going to replace it with this.

Clip it over. Okay. Do I have to? Yes, you do. This is Twilight Zone. No. Ah! And here we have, for those of you in the audio, I'll do my best to describe this, but it's inserted where the medieval stained glass once was, is this sort of random assortment of people of color dressed, it's probably the Blessed Mother, looks like Pentecost with a lot of pink, red fur. Oh, yeah. It's just, it's aesthetically vulgar and gross.

And the idea that they're going to spend millions, if not a billion francs, to replace all the old windows in Notre Dame, which have survived so long and blessed so many people. With this, we have more pictures. I don't know if we want to show them. It's pretty depressing.

Can we all just admit that art is just large-scale money laundering? Seriously? You know what I mean? Come on. No, it's absolute. There is a petition. You can go online. You can search for petition Notre Dame to Paris, but you can't have nice things. This is why we can't have nice things. So, please pray that this is ended. It's supposed to be installed next year by the end of 2026, so that's our... Maybe we should pray to Our Lady.

Tire of knots that this plan gets prevailed. If she can untie knots, she can tie them up, too. You guys are following the Louvre, too? I've not been... Other than the robbery... There's more. Tell me more, Tom. Tell me more. There was a fire recently. Tell me more. Tell me more. They just can't catch a break. Like, I don't... What is going on with art in France? Gosh, France is... It's civilizational suicide. Yeah, I'm pretty sure... I'm pretty sure they had, like, a fire or something, and then...

What is it? So, there's the jewel heist, tough. Then water leak damages rare documents. Yeah. Burst pipe from a heating ventilation system flooded the library in the Egyptian Antiquities Department, damaging 300 to 400 items. That's tough. And now there's a staff strike.

They can't catch a break over there in France. They don't like their... 25-hour week? Work week, or what? I guess. I don't know. It is just too much. All right. I will round it out and depress everyone. Here is Sam Baltman on Jimmy Fallon. Some could argue that he is talking to AI talking to AI, Jimmy Fallon talking to another. He is basically AI, and he is basically AI. I don't know if there is intelligence here, though. Here we go. And do you use chat GPT when raising your baby?

I do. I mean, I feel kind of bad about it, because we have this, like, genius level at everything, intelligence, sitting there, like, waiting to unravel the mysteries of humanity. And I'm like, why does my kid stop dropping his pizza on the floor and laughing? Yeah. You know? So, I feel like I'm not asking a good enough question, but it is.

I cannot imagine having gone through, like, figuring out how to raise a newborn without Chachapati. Clearly, people did it for a long time, no problem. Yes. But, so I know it. Do you need me to color in the lines here?

Go for it. Sam Altman is in a... A quote, same-sex marriage, and they traffic children via surrogacy, and so now he has a child that he doesn't know how to raise. It's almost like mothers solved this problem. I don't know how people raised people before Chebysheep. Yeah, moms did, and that almost seems like a feminine genius in a motherhood that needs to be present for raising children. That's the biggest reason, number 100%. You nailed it. Nailed it. The other thing, too, is that...

you know the the you know the the intergenerational uh divide gets wider and so like uh just as an example like You know, my mom was the first of 11, and she had three children, but we weren't raised by any of the other aunts or uncles or whatever. You know, they were 45 minutes away or whatever, so we didn't, like, we'd see them only twice a year or something like that, so we weren't, like, in the same community or town, and so, like, I would have younger cousins that were, you know, but it's not like I was changing diapers or babysitting them, and so, like, and then people are getting married and having kids later and later, so then the time between, you know, like, you're not If kids don't grow up around babies, And it takes that long before they actually, you know, have children of their own, then they're kind of like caught a little flat-footed on this stuff, even if they don't do the same-sex, you know, surrogacy trafficking kind of stuff anyway.

Yeah, my point with this is like, I'm less disturbed by your putting a question about child rearing into Google or AI or whatever, and you're asking for advice. I'm less disturbed by that than by the fact that they're laughing over the fact that they deliberately...

Like, bought and paid for the child of their choice and deprived that child who spent months in the NICU without its mother, without his mother. And that this is an actual child that they're just, like, laughing about. That, oh, people did this for many years without CHAT-GPT. Ha, ha, ha. This is disgusting. Chumming it up on Jimmy Fallon. Well, it's interesting that there was a post on X about a couple weeks ago talking about how Italy. Pass the law banning surrogacy for LGBT couples, and the fact check on it is like, no, actually, it is for all couples.

I am like, oh, dude, yes, thank you. Awesome. Even better. Yeah, although, Judge. I am not targeting gay couples. I am saying nobody should do it. Thank you. I think we all just acknowledge the base level is like surrogacy is insane and should not be done.

But, you know, it does make me a little bit sad. Like, I hear stories from my own mom. Talk about when she had us, like she had me and my brothers, that she didn't even know how to boil water. I didn't know how to boil water. I didn't know any of the things you needed to do to raise a family. My husband had never changed a diaper. Yeah, I never changed a diaper before I had my first child, and my mom would call my Nana daily.

And my Nana told her to, and maybe you could say, oh, there's an advancement in technology for her to be able to call a telephone or whatever, but that actually is a really beautiful thing to pass down, to kind of watch your daughter go through that as she has her own kids, and you remember raising her and all the things that you learned, and of course, there's value from that. And maybe back in the acceleration point, like maybe at one point, you know, it is good in certain circumstances to have availability to Google something, but now we're just kind of accelerating to a new society where you can completely sever your ties to your family, like the people that actually taught you and raised you and gave you the abilities to, in their tradition, to raise children.

You can completely remove that as we've seen through technology, through surrogacy. And then now through information with Google, et cetera, you don't even need to have them as a part of it. And you could say, I guess that's good in a utility sense, but of course, anyone that thinks about it long enough, you're missing maybe the most beautiful part of it. It's not the child itself, but the spiritual connection, the emotional connection between your family and what you love and the people that you love and the joy of getting to raise them together.

It's just sterile. It's sad. You're deprived of what... The experiences you should have, and yeah, that, yeah, it makes me sad. I think about how beautiful that is, like, hear that story from my mom, and then to go through it myself with my kids. I wish that for everyone, so just do it. The conditions are never perfect. True to the tradition, stay close to family, don't, you know, like, this idea that... Again, I was raised by quintessential boomers, like, go your own way.

And I'm like, no, I want to ask you for advice. I want to know what you learned, and so I can make good, informed decisions about life. Let's reestablish those bonds that previous generations were so wanting to cut.

100%. Yeah, and it just gives the opportunity to people that are tempted to make a decision not in their interest to completely remove that, as you said. Like, it pushes the most vulnerable to be like, well, I'll just use GPT, you know what I mean, or I'll just use the internet. I don't need you. And I'm like, that's bad. We shouldn't be pushing people in that direction. So, anyway, we went a little over today. Fun episode, though.

If you want to help us out, go check out Charity Mobile, our sponsor. Thank you so much, Charity Mobile. Join the Champions Club, catholicvoto.org slash champions. Go check out zeal.co for us. Loop 2.0 is where we are going to live. Tom Across America, next episode, Erika House Party. Now we got more.

We've got more coming. I'm really excited about that. In the new year, getting to travel around the country and have cool experiences and meet cool people, and yeah, I'm really pumped about that. That's next what's coming for me, but we're going to end today with prayer. Shout out to Lisa for the rack on the prayer today. It's actually one of my favorites. It's the prayer to St. Joseph the worker, so we'll pray that, and then we'll send you guys off to a good week.

In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. O glorious St. Joseph, model of all those who are devoted to labor, obtain for me the grace to work conscientiously, putting the call of duty above my natural inclinations, to work with gratitude and joy, in a spirit of penance for the remission of my sins, considering it an honor to employ and develop by means of labor the gifts received from God, to work with order, peace, moderation, and patience, without ever shrinking from weariness and difficulties.

To work above all with purity of intention and detachment from self, having always death before my eyes, in the account that I must render of time lost, of talents wasted, of good omitted, of vain complacency and success so fatal to the work of God, all for Jesus, all through Mary, all after thine example, O patriarch St. Joseph, such shall be my motto in life and death. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Arleta Guadalupe. Pray for us.

Great episode, guys. Got another episode of The Deep coming to you soon. Tomorrow. It is going to be great. We are working. We are cooking that one right now. Go subscribe to the YouTube. Check it out, but if not, we will catch you guys live on Friday. Peace.