Tales from the first tee
Stories about my life experiences and others . Interviews with golfers around the world that have one thing in common...the pursuit of excellence on a golf course and everything else that happens along the way.
Tales from the first tee
A Giant Needle, A Cheap Motel, And A Very Expensive Shoulder
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Your shoulder hurts, your social media feed is screaming, and the years keep moving. So what do you actually do if you want to feel stronger in your late 60s than you did in your early 60s, and still keep your head clear while the world argues in loops?
We sit down with Josh Salzmann, a lifelong friend and a strength coach who’s built his life around “super aging” and practical resilience. We start with regenerative medicine, including platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and stem cell therapy, and get into the details most people skip: what’s happening in the centrifuge, why ultrasound guidance matters, what the injection really feels like, and the lifestyle protocol that makes PRP more than an expensive experiment. We also talk honestly about inflammation, arthritis, and why quick fixes like cortisone or constant ibuprofen can come with tradeoffs.
Then the conversation opens up. Josh shares how his work life is evolving, why posture and phones are wrecking shoulders earlier than ever, and how his connection to Israel and Judaism deepened after October 7. Rich pushes on the hard questions about Palestine, media trust, and how people form beliefs when every outlet has incentives. From there we hit celebrity training in London, royal-family tabloid gravity, and why the truth can feel permanently “ten minutes behind” the headlines.
We close with the modern stress test: social media addiction, shrinking attention spans, AI, data privacy, and targeted advertising that seems to know what you said out loud. If you’re trying to age well, think clearly, and stay useful, this one gives you a lot to wrestle with. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves a deep chat, and leave a review. What part of this conversation challenged your view the most?
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Old Friends And New Experiments
SPEAKER_01This week I have a chance to talk to my lifelong mate, Josh Salzman, son of the rabbi who stayed active in his practice into his 90s. An all-American wrestler and football player from Pittsfield Mass who earned his way to Union College where we met as non-conforming athletes that found a common fraternity to make a mess of things while we were there. Our lives took different turns after school. I chose to climb some corporate ladders. Josh packaged his fitness mindset and regime and traveled abroad to Israel and London, built a business around his passion for strength and super aging. Then technology and curiosity brought our paths together again, and we've recorded hours of content individually and together.
SPEAKER_02Enjoy the hour because Josh and I did start with whatever this platelet-rich plasma treatments that I had a few times.
SPEAKER_01And also stem cell treatment, is that what it's called?
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah. I mean, there's a stem cell, which I did once, which is kind of more stem cell-y when it when you get it done from your lipo. So they lipo some of your body fat from your belly, and then they put it in the centrifuge and they they clean it up and then they shoot it back into the spots that are bothering you. In my case, it was my shoulders. But the other treatment I had, which does include stem cells, but it's more just blood. So on both treatments, you're supposed to abstain from alcohol or paracetamol or ibuferin or anything like that, you know, advila leave, for about two weeks. So your blood kind of purifies itself. THC is fine, he said. You know, that's that doesn't bother it at all. So that I didn't know. Was that your first question?
SPEAKER_01Was that your first question you asked him?
SPEAKER_02Well, I was getting close. I was listening to it and it was about first question, yeah. But the interesting thing is he withdraws blood from you, this guy, who's the number one guy in probably one of the top guys in Europe, and then he puts it into this machine that kind of you can see the sediment in your blood that they get rid of. Then they stick the purest stuff into a kind of centrifuge where they make from, say, as an example, a thousand plasma cells, they make it into a hundred thousand plasma cells. And that, and then they shoot it back in you. And over the times that I've done it over the last few years, he's refined his techniques, which, you know, gosh, who, you know, you and I got to live to like 100, then we'll be, we'll be, we'll be sound. But having said that, the techniques are so you can shoot it in and make sure that it's absorbed in that area because usually what happens is it gets absorbed in that area of your, in my case, my shoulders, but it kind of goes through the whole body. So you actually feel like you know, you're quite pumped up for a for a week or two because you've got all this, these multiple blood cells that you didn't have before. It's kind of like, it's kind of like in an idea, it's almost like it's not blood doping like Lance Armstrong and the other cyclists used to do, but it's kind of like it's kind of more of a therapeutic longer-term blood doping where you can actually regrow, as they proved, you know, a little bit of cartilage, if you're missing cartilage, heal up your ligament damage. But you know, as anybody will tell you, as it that works in that, if you're like, you know, 50 pounds overweight, you know, you better lose the weight first because you're just painting the painting the kitchen when the roof is leaking, if you know what I mean. So you got to follow a lifestyle protocol and you got to do your training and stuff. But I got to tell you something, over the last three years, I'm 100% stronger than I was three years ago because of the treatment. And I tried cortisone before and things like that. And, you know, back to my in 2019, if I knew about this, say in 2011 when it started kicking in, I would have gone for this treatment and it probably would have kept me away from the hip resurfacing. Once an area has been resurfaced or anything, then you gotta, you it's not gonna work. But you might, you know, you might find it works with all your joints and they they've been having great work. But every every couple months, there's a new discovery with this and how they can kind of you know up the ante and make it more effective.
SPEAKER_01Is this uh PRP platelet-rich plasma? Is that what it's called? Yes, yeah, yeah. I just pulled it up. I'm looking at it while we're talking.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's re it's called the term of regenerative medicine. And you may find that a lot of insurance companies, especially over here, some of them may cover some of that stuff, but most of them don't. They'll cover because they got deals with the hospitals and you know, and they'll cover a cortisone injection. And you know, funny enough, Rich, I'm always doing back to front. You know, when we were at school, you know, I'd always wait, you know, until I was almost flunking out to get my act together. But in my sense, also in my recovery from my hip and other things, I did a little bit more research and I discovered that number one, that you know, ibuprofen, core cortisone, and things like that, it actually eats up your muscle. It eats up your cartilage. Right.
SPEAKER_01And so that I've had several, I've had several injections, and every time the doctors would say, good fix, maybe it'll last six months to a year, but it's you know, that's it's accelerating the degradation of the area. And I'm like, okay, give me the injection, please. Only because first of all, I'm not aware of this where it's done in the United States. Certainly have to look it up. You know, I looked up uh stem cell treatment, and it seems like the best place to have it done is like Mexico or Turkey, where it's far less expensive than the United States, where it could be fifteen thousand dollars per shot. And I would tell you, yeah, we're on Medicare here, and when you get 65, you have the opportunity to pay less for medical, and it isn't it's not covered, as you would think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh 100%, 100%. And that, you know, funny enough, uh, when I was about 2016 when I started on this journey, the the woman formerly known as the Duchess Sarah Ferguson, she went to this place in the Bahamas, and they were doing stem cells there, and it was definitely American prices on steroids. And I remember I thought, she thought I could get a deal like she had, which was free, to get some stem cells. She got them in her feet, and it really helped her. I thought, okay, my hip like that. And the guy I met a guy on Harley Street that represented this company and worked there, but couldn't operate here because of the laws of stem cells and stuff. You know, it's like during the during when Superman Christopher was the Reeves. Yeah. Yeah, they were preventing him from getting stem cells, and they feel that that's worked, that would have worked really well, you know. But having said all that, I remember the guy said to me, Yeah, we can do you a really good deal. It'll only cost you$60,000. I'm thinking,$60,000? That's a deal, you know? Yeah, no. Yeah, I didn't have the$60,000. But this guy, because he operates, his clinic is up in near Birmingham, which is about two hours from here, and it's in a small town, and he does everything on his in his place. He operates out of Harley Street in the big place here in London, but the fees are like four times as high. Because why? Because of the lab fees. So if you want to use somebody's lab and you know, do the centrifuge for the blood and all that kind of stuff, they jack up the price like unbelievable. So, yeah, so you you you you you always, as you know, Rich, if you go into a really nice neighborhood on Rodale Drive or someplace like that, and you go to a restaurant, you better believe that some of your cost of that meal is going to be covering the rent. You know what I'm saying? Sure. So that's the thing, yeah. And the profit margin, you know.
SPEAKER_01So what's the what's the uh what's the process? Is it a one-day thing, hours? Like when you go in there, take me through just quickly what you what's the prep? What do they go through? And when you walk out, do you have to stay there or do you get to drive home?
Prep Rules And Clinic Walkthrough
SPEAKER_02Well, what I do is this. I think I talked to you one time on the way home one time from one of my treatments. But what I do usually, because I'm kind of more kind of concerned about once you get to treatment, you can get to back to work, even my work in a week's time, but I want to make sure that I give myself a chance to rest and not get stuck on a busy train or get stuck where I find because, okay, so the process is this, let's get to the point. The process is this you go for about two weeks where you be kind of abstemious as far as cleaning your nutrition out and what you drink out. So hardly any sugar. This is what I do, and no alcohol or anything like that. And then you go up there, and what he does is he, you know, I go up there the night before usually. So I'm not, you know, rushing to get up there first thing in the morning or something like that and driving or taking a train. And and so I get up there the night before, stay at a real cheap hotel in the area. And actually, where he is, there's not even a good hotel. So you only got cheap hotels, bless them. But which is which just shows you, you know, the kind of area it is. It's not kind of really run down, but it's a real kind of out of just outside of Birmingham. But, anyways, having said that, so then you go into this clinic and then you go in there and he takes some blood, and then he takes, you know, a couple vials of blood, and then you're sitting there on this couch, and then there's about 45 minutes where the process to clean the blood, and he comes back in and he says, Look at the blood, look at the vial. And you can see the sediment, the different color blood on the bottom. He gets rid of that, then he sticks the other stuff back in. And what he does, he doesn't work with an MRI photo, but he works just with ultrasound. Once he gets the cleanest blood with the plasma renewal, rich plasma back into the office where he surgery where he's doing it, he puts it in a big needle, he puts the ultrasound on your arm, you lay on your side, in my case, so you do one shoulder at a time, and he does the ultrasound, he goes, Oh, I can see that. And he puts it right where he thinks he needs it, and he puts in a little bit more than most people would. And then the last treatment I had, he added the substance that makes it coagulate more around that area so it doesn't kind of just go into your shoulder and then get absorbed by the rest of your body. And but the process is it's a bit uncomfortable. It's about a minute and a half on each side where you're getting this big flip of needle without anesthetic shoved into your bone. He goes, Look at it, you can see it going in now. And the first time I didn't want to look because you know, you actually see your bone and the needle, this massive needle going into your in between your bones.
SPEAKER_01What is that in your shoulder joint?
SPEAKER_02What does that feel like without it feels like it feel it feels like a in the beginning, it feels like slightly like steamroller running over your arm, in a sense, because because because it's actually shooting up all this blood into your joint and it's swelling up. You feel like you got shoulder pads on afterward. But after he does both sides, he lets you sit there, you know, because he we we get along really well. I ask him questions. It's not only like having a treatment, which in in American money would be about$5,000 I pay for this treatment for both shoulders. But he gives me also a clinic on the latest discoveries, what he's been doing. And the great news about this guy, he's an orthopedic guy by trade. So he's not, he went into regenerative medicine, and he still does orthopedics. And he's the only guy that actually practices, researches, and teaches simultaneously this regenerative medicine. So he's right on top of it and he's really very enthusiastic in a nice way and all that stuff. So, but anyway, so you can leave in about an hour after coming in, maybe an hour and a half, you leave, and I walk down to my my little motel or I'll go get something to eat, and then you know, kind of just you know, take that eat that day, which usually I have at about 11 in the morning. I'll go through the whole day, stay one more night, and then I'll go back to you know, toward the London area the next morning. So and then I can work in literally I mean, I probably could work in three days, but I wait about five working days, you know. So I wait over a weekend and I start working on a Monday. So if I get it done on a Monday, back working again the next Monday.
SPEAKER_01When can you start feeling the effects of it? Does it take hours, days, weeks, months?
SPEAKER_02As soon as the bruising goes down and the stiffness goes down from the sh injections themselves, I I feel better in three days. And I actually my whole body feels like I've gotten a bit, you know, kind of rejuvenation. But having said that, it's interesting because when I went back the last time from this treatment, I, you know, there's a part on the kind of turnpike here where you have to put your debit card into this thing, and you have to, you know, the window comes down, you have to stick it in, it comes back out. It's like, I don't know, the equivalent of like 20 quid to ride on this, well, maybe about$20 to ride on this one highway that takes you a bit faster. And I had a tough time picking my arm up. I felt like an invalid. I thought I almost dropped my card because, you know, even the next, the next day or you within 48 hours, you feel pretty stiff, you know, putting your arms over your head in my case is a bit of a challenge. But once it settles in, it feels great. It really does. And what it does right away for anybody that ever gets this treatment gets rid of the arthritis that you have in your knee joint or your ankle or your wrist or your shoulder in my case or your neck. It kills the inflammation because what you're doing is sending all this blood. Now, the interesting thing about shoulders is that shoulders don't get a lot of blood circulation. So if you had a neck injury, you could recover quicker from a neck injury, as long as it isn't like really serious breakage, but you recover from a little fracture quicker than you would from shoulders. And also, shoulders is a thing that's very postural. So, you know, people sitting at desks, you know, looking at their phone, their computer, they're in the wrong position for good shoulders. That's why a lot of women or and men in their 40s and 50s, it finally catches up with them, the shoulder thing. But also, with this young generation, I've started working with this young lad who's 13. It's kind of an Easter break right now, and he wants to get pumped up before he goes back to school. And he's 13 years old. And you can already see he's got neck issues and working his wrist as well. You know, you see that his hands are overused from texting and scrolling. And, you know, you know, we used to go and play basketball or baseball and get up to some kind of shit when we were that age, but we didn't we were constantly looking at something, you know what I mean, other than television. But you had to, you had to actually literally get up and change the channel, you know what I mean? So so I think this generation is gonna be feeling the effects of bad posture and shoulders and issues like that sooner than we did.
Work Changes In Your Late 60s
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know what the most impressive thing about what you just talked about? You used the word it's i abstremous. I thought you were gonna use like temperate or moderate, but you really blessed me with this new vocabulary that you have. I think it's awesome. Hey, talk to me about the uh your ev work evolution or maybe semi-retirement. I mean, now you're you're you're coming you're you and I are both in our late 60s. A lot of people that I know at our age have retired or are doing little odd jobs here and there. I'm doing consulting now a few times a week, but certainly not at a high physical level. Talk to me about what your life is now. Since last time we spoke, it was like three or four years ago. You were still into it, heavy. Yeah. What is life like now for Josh Salzman? The work life.
SPEAKER_02Well, uh on the work on the work level, I have days that I'm I would say I not as like ten people in one day, but I get like five or six people in one day sometimes. And it goes fluctuates, but I don't have the kind of pressure because of a bit of an inheritance, thank you know, goodness and bless my parents, that they left me. So I'm, you know, they I I've I've got a little bit more pag so I can make the decisions that I need rather than kind of go with like just taking a lot of people. I mean, when I was, you know, working out of a gym and they had I had to pay a rent for so many days a week of being there, you had to earn a certain amount of money, you know, back to the restaurant thing to in order to just cover yourself at the gym. So you take the odd person that you really didn't want to, and not only that would wear you down, but you know, you you you'd have a relationship sometimes with people that you really didn't want to have a relationship with, especially the intimate nature, the way I train people. I'm not just standing there. I'm actually, you know, on top of them, you know. So, and working with them. So, yeah, so the the pressure's off a bit, but I've kind of been thinking of my next stage, which is sticking with what I do, but actually probably doing it where I travel more. And one of the places I want to travel a lot, and we haven't spoken much in the last uh three or four years, whatever, is especially since October 7th, you know, is Israel. And I feel I can add something there if I stay in really good NIC and in my profession to, I don't know, to help some people heal there, you know, because the country's, you know, is suffering a lot of PTSD, you know, with what's gone on. And literally, you know, economically when I go there, which I've been probably five times or less since 2023, is is to just, you know, pay for a meal someplace where I'm adding to the guys, you know, keeping the restaurant open type of thing. And, you know, so it's a pretty tough time. And so yeah, so I I kind of think that, you know, the retirement thing for me isn't, it's just a kind of morphing into a different shape where I want to be able to be purposeful and be productive and be of use to people, you know what I mean? And and in a way, that's what's nice about working with a 13-year-old. My dad used to work until his 90s, you know, with bar mitzvah boys that were and bar mit bar mitzvah girls that were like 13. I'm working on the on the physical front with him, you know what I mean?
Reconnecting With Israel After Oct 7
SPEAKER_01So you're you're uh we've talked about last time we spoke uh a few weeks ago, you used a term that I thought was really cool. You said you're a man without a country. You live in London. Oh, you haven't been in the United States. You've lived more of your life, I think, out of the United States, if I remember you said that. You live in London, you travel to Israel, you traveled to the United States. What is your connection to Israel? Because you've, you know, I know you've been going there since you left Union College. Talk to me a little bit about this connection that you have.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think I think the connection I had with Israel is funny enough, I have a copy of a 1967 life magazine, you know, you know, Israel, the Six-Day War, kind of feature on the Six-Day War. And I remember coming from the neighborhood that I did and being, you know, fat rabbis kid, I always thought, you know, most Jewish people were just kind of bookworms and stuff like that. And I felt there was not many people in my area that I could that I knew that were playing football or wrestling that were Jewish, for instance, because I was in a small community, as opposed to, say, you know, where you were in Long Island or something like that. But having said that, so I always was admiring Israel. But when I took some time on, as the dean of students said at the union, rather than time off, uh, because I was taking time off at the school, I took some time on and I went to a kibbutz. I kind of opened my eyes, not up to just Israel, but I was on a kibbutz with a lot of volunteers, which they don't do this thing anymore as such. A lot of the volunteers on kibbutzim, they all come from Thailand or someplace like India or something like that. Where then it was like the traveler, you know, the beach, you know, uh Leonardo DiCario's uh, you know, DiCaprio's the beach movie without the violent ending, you know what I'm saying? So, and that opened me up to a lot of stuff. But interestingly enough, when I went back to Israel to live from 1980 to 84, and then I came over to London, I went to Israel in '89, maybe '90, '92 was the last time. And then I got a gig, this was 2023, but before October 7th, before the Hamas invasion of the southern communities in Israel, I went to this gig at the Six Senses, where they opened a Six Senses in the Negev Desert, and they said, Would you want to do a guest appearance? And you could train people. So I did that and I had a great time. And I went to Tel Aviv and I hadn't been to Israel since 1992. So that's 2023. So it's been a long time since I was in Israel. And I kind of fell in love with the country again. And then when October 7th happened, I always had this thing in my kind of mindset that I felt Israel would always be there. I knew the purpose of it. I didn't agree with the government. I didn't agree like a lot of things they do, like, you know, you know, like a lot of people, like a lot of places in the world or countries in the world, people don't agree with everything the government does. But having said that, I always felt it was there for me. And then October 7th came, I felt maybe it wasn't going to be there. Maybe it's under threat. So I went back in December 2023. And at that point, I just stayed with a friend in Tel Aviv over the kind of, if you want Hanukkah Christmas New Year period for a couple of weeks, because all the hotels were being taken up, except for the really, really expensive ones, by people that had moved from the northern border because of Hezbollah and the Lebanon border, and people that had moved from the south. And I saw kind of like, oh my gosh. And then I came back again in May of that year. And then I came back again in the following of December. And then I came back in May, and then I came back again, you know, leading up to this 2025. I came back, I was back in November. And the last couple of times I went back, I stayed in Jaffa, which is the old city of Tel Aviv, which is, you know, thousands of years old, and there's a huge Muslim community there where you'll hear mosques going off four times a day, and all the stuff that was in the papers and on the news, you know, Israel's apartheid state, and Israel is this, you know, second class. You know, you're going, I'm going to a restaurant where uh an Arab Israeli, a Palestinian, and a Jewish Israeli were had, you know, we used to have you know something to eat together, and then, you know, the guys would start rolling joints afterward at the table. You know, it's like, and I was thinking, like, I'm having a great time here, and people aren't seeing what I'm seeing here. And I'm not into the present Israeli government at all, as I'm not into the administration in the United States. But there's, I've got a bit more nuance in my approach, thinking, well, you know, sometimes they do things you got to do, which I do believe with Iran, it has to be done, this one. And but having said that, so yeah, so I have a very strong connection. And I kind of pushed into my Judaism a bit more, not in a kind of like I'm going to pray. I'm kind of, I always found that boring. I always said to my dad, you know, when I'm in synagogue, I think of canoeing, but when I'm in canoeing, when I'm in the canoe, I pray to God, you know what I mean? So it's not my best format to kind of get into a meditative prayer state and all that kind of stuff. But I must say that I didn't even know all the words to the Hat Tikfa, the Israeli national anthem. I didn't even know the Haggadah, which is, you know, what we use for Passover, means the telling. I didn't know a lot of this stuff, and I kind of embraced it more and kind of got into it more. And I found I even, you know, respect and uh, you know, love my Judaism more than I ever have because and my and the history of it, and the history of Judaism, the history of the Jewish people more than I ever have, because of this all of a sudden shock thinking, oh my gosh, I gotta, I gotta engage myself on this because, you know, I think there was a lot of October 7th Jews, you know, that kind of woke up and said, and there's other ones that went the other way, you know, the Bernie Sanders, you know, that kind of thing. But having said that, to me, I kind of embraced it more and I'm prouder, but also living in London, which is different than living in the States, although in the States, you know, when I was I was in high school, I just graduated high school, and my dad was on a local TV station where he was talking about the, you know, the abortion issue, which has always been an issue in the States, and my father said, Well, for reformed Jews, not Orthodox, but reformed Jews, we feel that woman should have a right to choose what she wants to do. The next day, somebody came at night and painted a swastika on our garage door, you know, and it said, Rabbi is a Nazi, you know? So I was always aware of this, you know, whatever we do as a Jewish people, this is my belief, people are not gonna like you, whether it's because you they thought you killed Christ or you started the plague, or, you know, they'll find a way. So now Israel's a good one, you know, like anti-Zionist, you know, kind of all Zionism means is that you feel that Jews have a right to a state, you know, like I don't know, 40 other Muslim countries do, or Christian countries do. The the Church of England is church and state together here, you know what I mean? So it's kind of I've kind of pushed back at people. And also they've had a lot of demonstrations here in this country. And, you know, on Saturdays, you know, and I'm not saying I agree with everything the Israeli armies did in Gaza, but I tell you what, you know, Britain went all the way over to the Argentine, all the Falkland Islands for a few sheep and a couple people, and there was thousands of people that were killed and everything else. And and Israel isn't an ext existential battle for its survival right now, there's no question.
SPEAKER_01So I always thought you were.
SPEAKER_02And you're around it, you push back. Sorry, go ahead, buddy. Sorry.
Palestine, History, And Personal Stakes
SPEAKER_01No, I always thought you weren't an apostate. You just were not a participator as much, and you became more of a participator the more you traveled over there, and certainly the sixth gave you a whole different perspective. What is your perspective of Palestine? I've never been there, so I still haven't been to Israel. But certainly there are impressions that we get here from the media. I don't trust any of them. I don't trust the media. Everybody's got a an agenda. What in in your perspective? What is your perspective of Palestine and its interaction with Israel? And Israel's and the way Israel treats Palestine. You've been there. I haven't.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I mean, Palestine. I mean, I did a demonstration for the army in the Gaza Strip in 1977 of, you know, one of, you know, wrestling, and somebody else was doing, you know, judo, and somebody else was doing Tai Chi, you know, we did it for the certain army individuals that were stationed in Gaza. And I remember going to a marketplace in Gaza in 76. So Israel gave back, you know, so so Palestine to me doesn't exist as such. Palestine, you know, the word Palestine comes from, there are Palestinians, but Palestine comes from the the Romans named after they conquered, after Barkakba was defeated in the revolution, I think it was 70 or 140 AD or something like that. He renamed Jerusalem or renamed Judea Palestinian. So they would erase the name of Judea and any Israel or anything like that out of the history. So it'd be renamed. And before the 1948, the creation of Israel, all Jews and Arabs within Palestine were considered Palestinians. They were Palestinians. You know, I mean, Goldemir, the very famous Israeli premier, she said, I was a Palestinian, I had a Palestinian passport. So the idea of this Palestine, there's never been a nation of Palestine. They've been before the Second World War, before the Second World War, you know, obviously before the first war, sorry, it was run by the Ottoman Empire. And before that, it was other empires. And a lot of Palestinians have lived there for years, but so have Jews lived there for years. And that's the other thing I dipped into, you know, like the Mufti of Jerusalem in the 20s and the 30s was really good friends with Adolf Hitler. And he was the Mufti of Jerusalem. He was appointed by the British. And he was inspired by the Hebron riots because the holiest city outside of Jerusalem for Jews was Hebron. And Hebron's seen as this, like, there are what I would call more fanatical Jews that settled there. The reason why I wouldn't want to go there and settle because you just you need a security presence all the time. So it's it's it's a kind of thing where the Palestinians also in 1947 were offered to split the country in half. So the present state of Israel, the pre-67, was going to be even, you know, three-quarters of that, and a lot of it would be given away to the Palestinians, but they refused. They rejected it so the idea that, you know, it's been it's been a refusal during the Anslow Accords. So this goes back to Iran. The Anslow Accords, when uh Clinton and Rabin and Al-Yasurafat shook hands and they tried to make this Palestinian authority, the ones that started setting off the intifada, the first intifada, was Iran, Hamas, backed by Iran to blow people up on buses and everything else. So, you know, there hasn't, it doesn't mean that there hasn't been an offering for peace. I mean, each Egypt got the whole of Sinai for peace, you know what I mean, where Israel could have had all their, probably a lot of their natural uh minerals and some oil in the Sinai Desert, but they gave it back for peace. So Israel's never been as a whole not willing to give back land and for peace. So there's never been so it but it's funny how the you talk about the media. I had kind of like four or five months ago, I was over my next door neighbors and they had some young people there, and I kind of talked with this lady and I said, you know, you know, somebody said Josh just came back from Israel, and she goes, What do you think about the genocide there? I'm thinking, like, excuse my French, but fuck off. The only genocide that was intempted to be was the genocide of Hamas in Hezbollah. They have it, you know, death to Israel. The Houtis flag has cursed the Jews on it. I mean, you put it on your flag, that's pretty serious, man. You know what I mean? They gotta really believe that.
SPEAKER_01I think that's part of why the aggression in Iran right now has more to do than just the auspices of stopping nuclear proliferation.
SPEAKER_02I think until the until the Iranian people, which basically, if you think about it, you know, the holiday we're in Passover now, but the holiday of Purim commemorates when Cyrus the Great, you know, decided to let the Jews go back. It was around that time the Jews got back to from from you know from Babylonia, so to speak, when he conquered that area. So we were pretty, we were pretty good with the Persians for years and years. And so this regime that started in 79, one of the first things they said, you know, if you if you want to keep a revolutionary government in place, there has to be a need for a revolution. And this branch of Shiite, and I'm not, I have really good friends that are Muslim, you know, I don't have any problem, problem with Muslims, but this branch of the Muslim faith of Shiite Muslims, they actually believe that there's this six-year-old kid that passed away so many years ago that's gonna come to life again, and he's in the mountains someplace in Iran. And after this Armageddon, he's gonna come out and be the Messiah. But in order to come make sure that he comes out, you have to get rid of all the infidels, the Jews in Israel, you know, the idea of a Jewish state is just an anathema, you know, and it's not the holiest site, the Alaska Mosque, you know. But, you know, before 1967, Jews couldn't pray at the Wailing Wall, you know, if they wanted to do that. So, you know, it's a lot of hypocrisy that goes on, and there's a lot of stuff that with this Palestinian thing. And to be honest with you, the Palestinians have never had a leadership that actually takes responsibility for things. And they even in their, you know, in Gaza, where they were teaching these young kids in a in a book of math, was like, if you kill four Israelis, you kill another four Israelis, how many Israelis do you kill? That's what they teach four-year-olds, right? And so, you know, it's kind of like, I mean, if you look at Passover, Rich, I don't know if you ever did this ceremony, but the idea in the Seder where you're supposed to take 10 drops of wine out of your cup because you shouldn't celebrate even your enemy who's trying to do you harm, their person they're they're they're you know, their tough times. And so you can't celebrate that. So, yeah, so all of that stuff. So, you know, it's kind of like there is there's never been a prime minister of Palestine. And the Palestinians, by this pro-Palestine movement, has pushed the Palestinian state or two-state solution farther from the Israeli mentality and anybody that actually really believes in the state of Israel, from the agenda for years now, because we don't believe it. You don't believe it. You you withdrew from Gaza in 2005, gave them as under Netanyahu, which was a big mistake, let them have more money, let them come into Israel, let them let them, you know, make more money in Israel, come back every day, 20,000, 25,000 Palestinians coming in and out. And they're not, they're not helping their people out. They're just building, you know, tunnels. And they don't even allow the people into the tunnels. The tunnels are just for the terrorists, you know what I mean? So it's it's kind of back to front that the kind of world kind of has this view that Israel's there's a kind of black and white, the oppressed and the oppressor, which is absolute bullshit. It's kind of like you know, the the the term anbrera, which in Hebrew means no choice, there is no choice but to fight against these things. How you do it is another thing, but you gotta Well, I appreciate your point of view, thank you.
Celebrity Clients And Royal Rumors
SPEAKER_01You're closer to it than I am, but I appreciate that. Hey, let me digress a second. Yeah. Are you and going back to training celebrity? I mean, I couldn't be any farther from what we just talked about to this next question. But anyway, but you and I could go back and forth all day. Sir Kenneth Brana, are you still training Sir Kenneth Brana, Sarah Ferguson? Are you still do they still have you training them or see them?
SPEAKER_02I still see Ken. I still see Ken. I see him three times a week at about quarter to seven in the morning, which is about a half-hour drive from here. And he's been in a lot of big stuff recently. He was with Michael B. Jordan in a movie uh that's coming out. The Thomas uh Crown Affair is gonna come out next year. He's in the Devil's Wear Prada 2. And he's also been in Ryan Reynolds' movie, trying to think what that movie is gonna be, and that comes out in the next year or two, uh, next year as well. So yeah, I see him, and he's a great guy, and it's kind of like uh a morning with Ken as we walk around his garden a couple of times and then start some Joshron stuff. It's it's always catching up on whatever project he's doing, you know, and and listening to it and and then his take on things. We don't get too political. Once in a while we do, in the sense of, you know, what's going on in the world, but but it's done at very much respect, not like, you know, jumping down each other's throats because one believes one thing and another person believes the other. But he's very, he's always very busy. He's got a he's got a season of of plays coming up. He's gonna be doing the Tempest and uh Shakespeare play, and then I think it's Kafka's uh cherry orchard in the next couple months in Stratford on Avon.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I remember you saying how disciplined he was. You were impressed with it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right, like you. What about Sarah Ferguson? Have you you in touch with her?
SPEAKER_02I've I I you know I haven't heard from her. I have had a couple texts over the last few months, but she's probably disappeared from most people's eyes. Although the last week it was funny because I had a couple calls from different members of the press thinking that I would I would know where she is. Or they would button me, butter me up by saying, Hey, you did really a lot of good work with Sarah Ferguson mate. You know, do you have you heard from her recently? And I'd say something like, Well, I think she's in a you know doing a yachting trip in the Gulf of Harmuz right now. You know, I mean, she got a good deal. You know, take take it. She's got she's in a really nice resort in Tehran, you know, you know, close to their missile producing factory. You know, it's it's the rates have gone way down since the war started. But you know, but she's done a complete nobody knows where she is. It's amazing that that with all the cell phones there are in this world, that they couldn't pick her up someplace, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01Oh, maybe she's choosing to disappear. Enough's enough. Yeah. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. Okay. What about what about the with uh Prince Andrew and Epstein? What is the with all the tabloids? That is gonna be a major talking point for everybody in London.
SPEAKER_02I it it has, and I think the only thing that's gotten him off the front news story and her, because she they come up with the facts that she had some emails going back 15 years ago or 20 years ago, thanking him for all his help and stuff like that, even when he got out of his first case. But with him, he was always there, and not only him, but this guy Mendelssohn, who's a who's gay, so he's not into the kind of hanky-panky stuff that Epstein used to get up to, but he was definitely good friends with him. And he was the ambassador for to Britain to the United States from Britain, and he was appointed by Stomer, the president of PM. And then they had to let him go when a lot of his name, his name came out in a lot of the emails. And the thing about him was, just like with Prince Andrew, was he giving government information? Right. And Prince Andrew had this role of head of Brisnet uh British business abroad. And so that's what he's working with. Uh Epstein. So he could easily say, you know, I found this, I heard about this deal, and he I think that one of the deals was literally a hotel in Afghanistan in Kabul. Now that would be a bad investment, I think. You know what I mean? But having said that, that's one of the things that came out. But where he is right now, he's up north in this estate. And I said to someone the other day, you know, I think he'd be better off being in jail. He'd probably have more free time because he's literally can't ride horses. He's been told by his brother, the king. He can't have anybody come over there unless they're kind of vetted. So basically, you know, he can't do any stuff. So, you know, I think he'd be better serving a term. He'd be out by now, you know, for whatever he could have been serving a term for. But a lot of it's projection too, Rich, because, you know, I remember here being in the 90s, even Princess Diana used to get a lot of shit for stuff. And until she died, you know, there was a lot of people that loved her while she was alive, but more people loved her when she was when she died tragically. And even gossip columnists that said things, what is she doing with that Egyptian guy, this guy Dodi Fayid, she was with. And then afterwards, she's like a saint. So sometimes it'd be interesting what would happen to Prince Andrew when he passes, what will be said at his his funeral. But it's even fed fed its way down to their daughters. So, you know, a lot of the suspicion and what did they know? What did the king know? Because don't forget he he got 12 million pounds, which is about 15, 16 million dollars, to pay off this Virginia when it was supposed to go quiet, but obviously it didn't, you know, a few years back.
SPEAKER_01So I find it interesting on what was redacted and what wasn't, right? And so I'm still I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any. I just wait to get as much as many facts as I can to make uh to give myself a point of view. And I and I just don't have enough facts on who else was involved. But it just seems, and this is the this could be a conspiracy theorist mindset, is that there are just too many people left out. There are too many things that were blacked out, there were too many things that were left out to make you believe there's a lot more involved, a lot more people involved in this of a very powerful and influential nature, yet yet Andrew's name was not blacked out. And it's almost like here, we'll throw this, throw them to the lambs, and maybe that'll divert some attention from some other people. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I I think there's you know, there's there's a conspiracy that goes, did Epstein kill himself or did he get killed? You know, that's another one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've heard I've listened to so many podcasts about things that led up to it, people that were in his cell, the cameras going, you know, all of those things. It's just there's no evidence that he was killed, but there's just a lack of evidence that he killed himself.
SPEAKER_02So Yeah, it's kind of like it's kind of like if you remember after JFK was assassinated, was it Harvey Oswald alone? Was there two people? Was somebody in the grassy knoll? You know, uh the Warren report came out, and then there was actually a Saltzman report that came out when we were in college. But I think I think it'll forever have its, it'll forever run. I just think at the end of the day, sometimes with these things, and I'm not saying they don't deserve shit, the people that have been involved with it, but at the same time, there's a lot of people, especially when it comes to the royal family here, is they'll project things on people because people are not happy with their own lives many times, and then they'll feel like it's almost like, you know, in London used to be the tradition during Queen Anne's time that people, and I think after that too, they used to, they used to, when they tried somebody for murder, they used to wheel them down Oxford Street, and people used to throw dead, you know, old fruit and rotten eggs at people, and then they'd hang them in Hyde Park.
SPEAKER_01It was very much, you know, kind of God that reminds me of like Monty Python, you know, give me your dead.
SPEAKER_02He's like give me your dead.
SPEAKER_00I'm not dead yet.
SPEAKER_02I'm not dead yet. Yeah, exactly. And and and and all that stuff. But so I kind of think, you know, there's a lot of things that we can't control. For instance, you talk about conspiracy theories, whatever we listen to on the news, you know, and and you know, about what's going on or you know, in the world, there's something else going on. And so the news reporter seems always behind. It's almost like the sports reporter is is given a play-by-play, but he's m he he's like 10 minutes behind what's going on on the pitch, you know what I mean? Because that's not what's going on, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think a lot of these, I think a lot of new a lot of media have agendas, paid for agendas, and they're focusing on the things that for whatever reason they want to focus on. And you're right, maybe it's to take attention away from something else, but it's I think it's for me, it's like where's the truth and what do you listen to? And I find myself, and I you know, I talk to Susan about this all the time. She'll she, like many of our friends, will listen to the point of view that satisfies her, that scratches an itch, right? And so for me, I like to listen also to the points of view of what people that I don't agree with, what are they listening to? So here in the United States, it would be Fox, it'd be Newsmax, things like that. And I have to listen to it, even though it sometimes it's gut-wrenching, but I have to listen to it to understand what information these people and they could be my friends also. A lot of people I played golf with in Charleston had a more conservative point of view. I don't know if they were a MAGA, but certainly, you know, they would tell you 20 different ways how Biden was wrong and Obama was wrong and all the lies there. So I know they had a different point of view than I did, but it's like, what are you listening to?
SPEAKER_02And again, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think it's it's like what do they say, buddy? If you hang around with people with the same opinion, you'll go nowhere, you know, only. And I think that's one of the problems with social media because people will, you know, especially during times of elections or something like that, they'll gravitate to their little echo chamber, which doesn't really do anything. And I've kind of like I've learned over the last couple of years, especially, you know, if people want my opinion on something, I'll give it. But I'm not going to get in debates with people about certain home truths with me. And so to me, it's kind of like well, it's like it's like it's like a fly arguing or bee arguing with a fly that, you know, honey tastes better than shit, but the flyer prefers the shit all the time. But hearing the fly story, why the shit could be better, is important because at least you get an idea why he likes that. And to me, it would be on the case of what we talked about before with the Middle East. I'll listen to Al Jazeera, which is interesting because I do too, as another point of view.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, give another point of view rather than just listening to something that's like the state media, you know, or because and I think sometimes you can learn something with that. And also what we what I learned sometimes is actually there's a probably a factor to that's missing of everyone's news, whatever side you're watching, that would switch the narrative completely. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01I think the truth lies in the middle. And a lot of times what we hear is far left, far right, or or you know, some angle, some shade left or right. And it's always like, okay, it's can't be that, it can't be that. So it's gotta be something else. You know, it's almost like Occam's razor of the simplest explanation is probably the one that is closest to the truth.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I mean, you're a you're a thinker. You're a thinker, Rich. So, you know, some of your peop some of the people that I hang around with, they're only interested in any election, how it serves their wallet. That's it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, I'm close to a lot I'm close to people that feel the same way, that feel like the current administration is working for them or had been until the stock market took a shit recently as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. Yep. But, you know, for them it's good because they don't want to rock the boat because their portfolio is more than covers the inflation that is a result of tariffs and a few other things that they just want to ignore because they're still better off, net, net better off. And so, but the majority of the people in the United States are not net better off and are being l I believe are being lulled into listening to a point of view, yet their groceries and their lifestyle is anywhere between 15 or 20 percent more expensive than it was, let's say, two years ago, and yet they're hearing how this is a temporary thing, or like the other guy would have been worse. And it's like, but uh you know, tariffs are having an effect on our everyday life, and this is not short term, and jobs are not coming back into the United States at the rate that tariffs were supposed to influence them. Now, maybe it takes longer, but there are certain things that you can't bring back in the United States. There are certain things that are just the cost of labor is so expensive in manufacturing that if you brought jobs back into the United States, they would be automated, automated jobs of manufacturing, that is. And so I don't know what these new jobs are, but I also see the quality of work that I'm seeing in here in the United States, the service industry, just the quality has diminished so much, and I feel like an old curmudgeon that wait, you want more people to do worse work than people are doing in other countries that might be getting paid less, but they are focused on getting the work done. And here we are in the United States, and the quality and I I commiserate over this all the time, and it probably bothers me picking up the phone and trying to talk to customer service about something, and and just the first of all, getting through AI to get to a human is now the next challenge for us. And then finally, when you get to a human, it's like what the quality of the service. And again, this might be old guy, this might be uh, you know, a boomer mentality of things used to be better, quality used to be better, and we have to, you know, we have to offshoot this work to a less expensive customer service, but then you get what you pay for. So I guess I'm becoming a curmudgeon. So for me, life in my 60s has been, you know, kind of like the old guy, like, get off my lawn, you know, become that guy become that guy.
SPEAKER_00Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson, Dennis, you know.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, it's it's funny you say that because I think what I gotta watch is, you know, you can kind of listen, if you stay around the planet long enough, you meet the same people twice, but at the same time you start remembering what it was like during your time when the postman used to walk with a bag up and down the street and not just take his car from one house to the other, right? And then get back in the car again. Or the milkman used to deliver the milk. And, you know, as a paper boy, that I used to actually have to fold the paper up correctly and put it inside the door and not just have this plastic-wrapped local paper that used to be thrown on someone's driveway. So whether it was like rain or snow, they could go pick it up. Services gone. I mean, I was to work in a supermarket where you had to pack the bags for people and give them their little stub so they could kind of drive around, and then somebody else would put the groceries in the car when they show the stub that was in your shopping cart. And you had to pack your bags square. It had to be square. You know, now, you know, that's now we're packing our own bags.
SPEAKER_01Everything is everybody's going to the self-service line. And what's a newspaper getting delivered?
Tech Overload And Attention Spans
SPEAKER_02What's a newspaper? Yeah, what's a newspaper getting delivered? And you know, I think, you know, and I think that's one of the reasons why you whatever you feel like politically happening in the world or you know, locally, or who knows what, it's ratcheted up because information is being thrown at you 24-7. You you see it coming out on your phone while you're looking at something else. You watch the news and there's underlying headlines that are happening all the time. So you're trying to absorb all this information, you know, and I'm not saying there's there's more information now, but you got to get away from it sometimes because, you know, bono health level, you can get traumatized just by, you know, constantly trying to absorb stuff that's at you. And so if you don't take the time out to, you know, play your golf, go for walks, you know, go to the gym, do something other than you know, look at this constant barrage of news, you know. I mean, when we were growing up in the 60s, Rich, you know, shit, you mentioned social media was going on, we had people getting assassinated, riots in the cities, you know, Vietnam War, you know, all that stuff. And, you know, we were really, you know, we had a we had a lot of reasons to go nuts then, you know what I mean? Well, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01So now, you know, so you look at the generations, and I'm very open to understand the idiosyncrasies of each new generation coming up. So this generation now, uh Z, why whatever this new generation is, you know, under the age of 18, they are inundated with information on whatever their tablet, their phone, whatever that is, and they're getting they are getting a fire hose of information and social media and criticism and and comparison to something that they have to look at that they're not. And this is what it is for them. And it's hard to say, well, you know, we didn't, you know, they have that. And that's you know, obviously, recently Facebook was just uh challenged by the US government, have to had to pay a fine because they knew that they were addicting young kids and to their social media platforms, you know, Instagram, not really Facebook anymore, but and so this is the new reality, is this is not going backwards, this is only going forwards with technology and AI, there's just gonna be more. And it's hard to legislate minimizing someone's ability to get information. They're trying, right? But it's just like they're gonna have more and more and more, and see more and be aware of more globally. Like that guy Friedman wrote the book, the world is flat, and it's you know, it's the the communication between you and me. You're in London, here in Virginia, there's somebody in China. We could all connect right now, so we're flattening the ability to communicate with each other. That just gets more, I think. It gets more, and so there are there's consequences for that. And it's tough, it'd be tough to be a parent right now, you know. Yeah, I could see it with Susan's grandchildren, they their ability to adapt to technology blows me away. Like a one-year-old, a two-year-old with the ability to understand what a tablet can do and to want to get on a tablet and play with a tablet, it's just because they have access to it, because it's there. And I think if we were kids and we had social media, as much as you wrestled and worked out and I played lacrosse and score, whatever we did, we would still have these phones in our hands, and we'd still trying to be connecting to you know, to find a connection, another person. And so that we would be doing the same thing as they are.
SPEAKER_02Oh, 100%.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, you know, it's kind of sad in a sense, if you think about it, Rich. I mean, you know what it feels like at our age to not be without your would be without your phone for a couple hours. That's the kind of like I have an appendage that I don't have on my body anymore. You know what I'm saying? Right.
SPEAKER_01I know. I always feel like something bad's gonna happen if I don't have this phone and I can't connect and get help. Or something somebody needs to connect with me. I can't imagine why they would, but somebody needs to connect with me because they have something they want to tell me, and I left my phone home. It's you're right. It's it is an appendage.
SPEAKER_02It's yeah. It's it's an appendage to your body, and you see young people. I see them walking around Windsor today, and they're tourists, a few tourists from like Asia and you know, Europe. And the parents are looking around, going, wow, look at Eaton College, because I'm right next to Eaton College, and and you know, the Windsor Castle, and the kids on his phone, you know, looking at his phone. And so, or texting to a friend. And, you know, the idea also that you know, life has gotten really quick and people's attention spans, as you know, you know, whenever you've tried, you know, you know, using Instagram or whatever those different, you know, social media things are, if you don't make it interesting for the first five seconds, you lose the person because they're they'll go on to something else. They'll scroll on to something else. I've been accused of that.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I happen to like TikTok because of the well, it knows my algorithm. It knows in the last few years I've been into cooking, home chefing and cooking. So every other one is some great chef in one minute teaching me how to cook something that would typically I'd have to look at a cookbook years ago. And I'm terrible at reading cookbooks. I like somebody talking me through it in one minute. And so, yeah, that's something that I am just I have this addiction. And if in three seconds I don't get what I want out of whatever, and then it'll be sports, whatever else it is, I'll just click and keep going. It drives Susan nuts because she's more Facebook and Instagram, a little less, and I am like I'm a I'm like 10 second Tom from 50 First Date. So it'll be within 10 seconds, if that thing doesn't satisfy me, I'm on to the next thing, onto the next thing. And so imagine.
SPEAKER_02Well it does, it highlights our personalities away, doesn't it, Riss? I've seen you were always, you know, kind of, you know, you wanted you wanted to see something uh interesting your whole life, you know, when I remember you too. So it it just highlights uh, you know, sometimes our you know, our kind of ADHD, if you want to say it, you know, and I don't mean you have ADHD.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I absolutely, absolutely have ADD, at least, of course, and I'm and I'm dyslexic. I know that because every time I go read something, I have letters that decide that they want to go from the back of the word to a front of the word. And I'll, you know, it's like, I know it, but I've adapted, you know, I adapt to those things. And the ADD, you know, there are certain things. CBD gummies help me a lot. Susan's son-in-law owns a company up here in Virginia, a very successful company, pure Shenandoah. They've got some great products, and they've got the CBD, sometimes a little THC with the C B D. And those gummies just help, first of all, they help to moderate pain for me, which is great. So far less anti-inflammatories, and those work. And it's just for me, it's moderating how much is enough to kill the pain, but not put me in a puff brain, right? So that's the that's the challenge for me. But yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I I agree with you. That's the other thing my surgeon said. He said, you know, TAC for your shoulders and pains is the best anti-inflammatory there is. But it needs to CBD doesn't work without TAC, he said, you know. So yeah. But having said all that, yeah. So but interesting, Rich. I mean, but I think at the end of the day, you know, it's kind of one of those things that you can't stop, you know, people moving on. And back to the social media thing, they banned social media for under 16s in Australia, which is quite draconian. And they're talking about it over here. And obviously the people that come on board with that, the first ones to testify about it, are the people that the parents that have suffered because a child went on this site and it taught them how to, you know, commit suicide or become you keep keep their anorexia going or their eating disorders going. And so, and and that's it, you know. So there has to be a little police, policing that goes on. I mean, you and I, if we wanted to look at a Playboy, that was a big deal. You know, somebody had a Playboy, or you know, we have to go to, I think it was, I try to think what that shop was in Schenectady. It was Joe's newsstand or something like that, that you could get the top shelf stuff. But now, kids don't need that. They can get the top shelf on their phone, you know, if they want it with interaction.
SPEAKER_01Well, okay, think about this under 16 thing. So, first of all, you're gonna have kids like us that'll figure away. But then you're also, if you're not the oldest, you're the second or third oldest, and then you have a sibling that is now sixteen or older, you're also gonna have access to it. So I you know, I guess it's a good start because certainly there have been problems with the wrong kids saying the wrong things and then taking action. And so I get that. You know, we want to protect those that we can protect. It's just going to be with it out there, the people are gonna find a way. It maybe might be harder, I think, but I just think of us as kids. And we were we were curious.
Tracking, Targeted Ads, And Privacy
SPEAKER_02Well, you're gonna be curious, but interesting enough, the other thing that you know, the Facebook people and Meta and all these people were accused of a few years back was also selling the information to other companies for marketing. You know what I mean? So they would, you know, I mean, how many times on Facebook or something like that is come up, hey Rich Easton, you know, a product of 70 years of hard work, you know, that kind of thing, a t-shirt like that. I mean, and and and if they know you're around an area, this is where Big Brother comes in, they know where you are. They know that you're walking down the high street, where you may get one of the kind of local stores that has outlets all over the place and get you to, you know, give you a little email telling you or a notification saying, you know, go check this store out, you know.
SPEAKER_01You know, when I was in consumer products in sales and marketing, I loved that that's where technology was going. Instead of doing an ad campaign that involved the old type of ad campaign where you you knew only 50% was working, but you didn't know which 50% it was. Now you could staple yourself to a person, and I could, let's say I have a product and I could buy data and then be very surgical about where that person is and how I could get that person to buy. So as a manufacturer, I loved it. As a consumer, I hate it. I hate that people are following me and know, and particularly when your phone is down somewhere by your person, you're having a conversation with somebody about something, and then within an hour or so, when you turn your phone on, whatever social media you're going to, it is now sending you information about that thing you were talking about. You weren't even searching, but it has a way of of listening. And so that's our future. That's that's our future, Josh. This is the way it is. So be careful what you say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, be careful what you say. But I gotta say, I gotta I I gotta say this. As far as all that stuff goes, I think it goes back to the individual. And if you talk about young people, you know, I mean, we could all pass the radar or or or kind of dodge the radar of parents, parenting if you had young children right now, because you know, you could be locked in your room and nobody would know what you're watching. But I think it's also having that rapport with people that you care about and kids in the sense that they could come up and ask you questions about stuff and you could talk to them about stuff. And and I think the real defense for that, and I do believe there needs to be some legislation on what people can be thrown at you and stuff like that. But I think it also comes down to the kind of the individual and how the individual takes that information and what's the supporting group around that individual, or it's parental or friends, that is smart enough to kind of not get sucked into this, you know, because you know, it's it's an endless well. And then the other thing is with the AI, like you say, you know, you could be, you know, AI can trick you in a lot of ways. I can always tell when it's an AI woman, that's for sure. You know, I can tell that, you know, they can't fool me with with you know these these ladies you see online, sometimes on Instagram.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but sometimes I'm okay being fooled. I'm just not gonna spend any money being fooled, but I'm okay with uh, you know, AI perfection. It's you know, it's same with your dreams. It's like it's it's made up, so why not make up perfect?
SPEAKER_02But that's just my point of view. That's another way of looking at it. Okay, maybe I'll go back to that one.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, listen, I've taken an hour over an hour of your time, and I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's okay, buddy. Got to do it again. Yeah, gotta do it again.
SPEAKER_02I listen, and and and it's good. And it's I I was actually really looking forward to this because I probably mentioned it in one of our podcasts before, but I do think this is kind of like therapy in a sense, you know, where you're both of us. Yeah, where you're you're you're you're talking without getting a judgment and and working your way through things, and also having the common thing of knowing that person so many years ago, and also knowing the fact that they're they've had more experiences, but the person is still the same person that you met in 1974, so to speak. So there you go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, agreed. Well, okay, buddy. Listen, have yourself a good day. I'll I'll work on this and then I will post it sometime when I have a few minutes.
SPEAKER_02All right, buddy. Well, listen, have a great have a great day today, Rich. Happy Passover. God bless, and happy Passover to you too, man. Take care of yourself, buddy. Love you too, bud. Bye, pal.
SPEAKER_01Hey, thanks for listening to the end. I'm Rich Easton, telling tales from the Shenandoah Valley, leaving you with this. Play aware, play kind, and remember this too shall pass. But don't sit quietly bye and just let it pass. Say something. Talk to you soon.