War with Iran: Ground Troops, Oil Prices, and the Fight for the Strait

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Always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kilmead. Hi, everyone.

So glad you're there. Hope you had a fantastic weekend. We're back in action now from 48th and 6th in Midtown Manhattan. We have a lot to discuss this hour. Lawrence Jones is going to be joining us.

Don't ask me how I know. And Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, has got a new documentary out called the AI Doc. It tells you the reality about what we're against and what we should be worried about. And it's not just your job, it's about how AI could be more powerful than human beings if we don't do it right. Also, when you talk about what's happening with social media now, you see the two court cases, New Mexico, as well as individuals suing these mega companies.

How about countries shutting off social media to the age of 18? Indonesia being the latest, Australia being the first. Before we get to Lawrence, let's get to the big three. Number three. Bottom line is that any civilized society recognizes that there are certain products that are not appropriate for children.

Social media is an inherently adult activity. Kids are getting crushed on it. Yep, Jonathan Haidt knows it. He did a book about it. Breaking Point.

Social media backlash, taking the mega platforms to court and winning. Is AI something else that should be feared? We'll discuss it. Number two. How long can you pay TSA workers for from the One Big Beautiful Mill?

Well, we're going to pay them for as long as we have to. And I will tell you, the ICE workers have been amazing. And they're helping people with their bags. They have been a big help. Temporary relief at our nation's airport should be evident, but the long lines for the fix is elusive as the House and Senate can't agree how to fix the Democratic debt-generated DHS defunding mission.

We will discuss. Number one. Sure, I think a success looks like the Strait of Hormuz is open. We get some kind of deal on the ballistic missile program, some kind of deal on the nuclear program. That's probably about as much as you could hope for.

I believe all of those things are actually within our grasp. That is General Frank McKenzie, now retired.

Well, a consequential week begins in the war with Iran. As talks begin and maybe ground raids by American forces commence, we look at it all, including the impact on energy costs for you.

So, Lawrence, this is going to be a big week for the war. The President thinks he can wrap it up in two or three weeks. What do you think? I think it's possible. I think the President has a lot of weight on his shoulders right now on what strategy he takes.

Brian, I've said this from the very beginning. I don't like that military strategy is being dictated Based on what's happening when it comes to oil in our country. Because I believe that means that the enemy has the leverage. And I think, in some form or fashion, the pressure that is being put on the president has to do with the energy prices. Right.

So that's why if he can get the straight opened again and control it, immediately the pressure goes off. Yeah, but it's not an easy task to open up the straight. I mean, if we put Uh soldiers there. You're going to deal with casualties.

So, you get the straight open, but you get the PR nightmare if some of the soldiers are injured or lose their lives.

So, it's not an easy decision. And I just feel like there is this, you know, cavalier approach on how people are consulting this. I'm rooting for America, plain and simple. And I think the president should do anything that is necessary to kill the enemy first, and then the gas prices should be secondary.

So, Hosaro Isfahani was in Iran up until five years ago. He now leads a democratic movement for Iran here in the U.S. He's got contacts with hundreds of people on the ground. And for people like Seth Moulton, the congressman from Massachusetts, who come out and say we're losing, or the economist who says advantage Iran, this is what he says he knows to be the truth, cut eight. The United States has pulled the most successful military operation in history of mankind.

The whole top echelon of the Islamic Republic has been dismantled in a few hours. The regime is falling apart. It doesn't have any way to get out of this quagmire. The operation is going forward. How when in history and a military operation is judged less than five weeks after it starts?

Give it time. This is an absolute example of Trump derangement syndrome. People are unwilling to watch this man succeed.

So, just so we're clear now, the deck of the people that have inflicted terror on the United States for decades, the organization chart has been completely decimated. All right, so we'll start there. They killed the head of the IRGC yesterday. There you go.

So, there's another one. Every morning we get a new org chart for the regime. The Navy has been decimated. The once Gulf states that used to be united. or at least the Iranians were trying to unite with them.

They're on our side as well. You got Al Jazeera, right, who is no friend of ours that are saying that they have been decimated. What planet are these people living on? Yeah, so here is from General Frank McKenzie from the previous administration, Cut Seven, on what success looks like. Sure, I think a success looks like the Strait of Hormuz is open.

We get some kind of deal on the ballistic missile program, some kind of deal on the nuclear program. That's probably about as much as you could hope for. But I think they're very discreet things that, for me, at least from an operational military perspective, would look like victory. I believe all of those things are actually within our grasp. We just need to continue.

Iran will ultimately respond to the use of force. They know and understand it, perhaps better than we have in the past. This administration is willing to use force. Other administrations have been thoroughly deterred by Iran. President Trump is not deterred by Iran.

Success looks like for me that their nuclear program has been totally dismantled. They can't restart it again. Their missile program and the place where they build them and launch them are completely gone. Their drone program is gone. And then, secondarily, once all of those, and by the way, all the targets have been completely eliminated.

And then once we're finished with all of that, we take over the strait so they never have control of it to impact the world economy ever again. That's what success looks like, Samit. Yeah, that's true. The senior fellow at the Carney Endowment.

So this is what has happened over the weekend. The Houthis got involved lightly. Two rockets sent into Israel. Nobody, not much damage, no injuries. But they're saying that we're ready to get in.

If they try to block the Red Sea, it's going to complicate things. We're going to have to reopen and put more assets there. No sense that they're going to do that. We don't really know if maybe a conversation was taking place. If you don't want to lose everything again, you won't say anything to you.

You won't do anything to our assets. But Kareem Sandipur on Face the Nation, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, he focuses on Iran. This is what he said about the talks that could be taking place this week in Pakistan. Cut 11. This is a regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which came to power in 1979, taking American diplomats hostage, and now they think they have the global economy hostage.

And they're fighting a war of survival. They're also fighting a war of revenge against President Trump.

So at the moment, they don't feel compelled to compromise, it seems, because the trend lines are, oil prices are going up. American public opinion about the war is going down. And many of these leaders that we're hoping to negotiate with are right now living underground, fighting for their lives. I truly believe that uh there is a negotiation going on at some point. But You know, for me, the 10 ships that have been allowed to go through, maybe that's just one way of verifying who's actually in charge, but that's nothing.

That's nothing at all. You need 100. Yes. I mean, it's nowhere near. That's not even, you know, I guess we could say that's 20% of the straight.

Normally, it's 100 a day, and we're now at 20.

So I don't think, unless the president is just trying to verify who's in command, okay, I get that. But. Again, I go back to my original point. The leverage that the Iranians have only is when it regards to the strait. And it's not.

It's not because we use so much of that oil. It's because that the oil market is a world economy. It's operated off the world.

So they're setting prices based on that.

Now, I've heard some people float the idea that we could just be selling internally, but that just doesn't work for the President's strategy. He wants to not only import oil, but export it as well.

So there's a lot of options on the table right now. Yeah, I mean it's a global market. We're not going to reconfigure it. No way. Yeah.

I am somewhat disappointed that we let the Russians off the hook. They're providing intelligence and satellite photos where our bases are located in the Gulf states. And we also let the Russians deliver oil, 737 million gallons in a tanker to Cuba. That's one thing I do agree with you also on Brian. I'm not trying to escalate this conflict, but we're already here.

If we can't, if they're not allowing the other ships to go. We can't allow them to pick and choose what ships go. Like Pakistan was able to send. And you had the Treasury Secretary. One thing they've repeated is that they don't want to impact the world in this way.

But how many weeks are we in this now? I think three or four, four weeks? 31 days. At this point, they're showing that they're not going to budge.

So either they're going to open it up for everyone, or we're going to stop all transit. Yeah, I mean, the Chinese tried to get three ships through. You think the Chinese, who are their number one benefactors, they were told don't come through.

So that to me shows total disconnect with what's left of the Iran regime.

Well, nobody should turn down. If you're them, you love the Chinese.

So this also goes, Brian, just to build on not to change topics, but to build on this goes back to the original point that we were making on Foxburg, which I think was embarrassing when so we were criticizing the UK and a lot of the European leaders for not getting involved.

Now's coming to find out. Maybe they can't even get involved. Maybe they can't in their words, but they don't even really have operating ships that could help us. Evidently eight are working and the ships that we need are minesweepers that are they take for they go slow notoriously. And they were going to have to borrow a ship from Germany to help us out.

How embarrassing. I mean, You you You don't want to respond for us, or at least in verbal support? What are you going to do if you're ever attacked? I mean, you're going to need us, literally.

So the big question is if the President uses ground troops, and that's what the belief is at some point, quick raids to go get uranium, quick raid to go secure an island.

Some Republicans are not going to be for it. Numbers, Senator Kennedy is one, and Congressman Tim Burchett, too, cut 15. This Washington Post report that came out today saying that the Pentagon is preparing for potential weeks of ground force operations there by American boots on the ground. Is that a red line for some Republicans? I think it is, but I don't think we're there yet.

I don't think we're at the point. I think what we need to encourage, though, is our Middle East partners. Yeah. To engage if a land conflict does take place. I think there's a clear divide, though.

Wow. Also, but I don't understand the phrasing of the question. What do you mean a red line? What are you going to do? Stop the President of the United States from joining his operation?

Are you not going to fund the $200 million to support the military as a result of this? I'm not going to be a war, a member of the RAC. I'm just saying that this operation is nothing like. the rock operation at all. Making the comparison after the president has shown goodwill and two other operations where we got in and got out.

Why would you limit his options while we're in the middle of the conflict? It doesn't make practical sense. And I would advise every Republican, because he is the most popular Republican. Maybe don't go against the President of the United States right now. I understand why the Democrats are doing it.

They're rooting against the country. They're rooting against the President. I understand that. But I don't understand the Republicans that are rooting against the President right now. Yes, the President put on Truth Social, big day in Iran.

This is Sunday. Many long sought after targets have been taken out, destroyed by our military, the finest and most lethal in the world. The President says he's got about three thousand more places to hit.

So the thing is, they're saying don't hit power plants for at least nine more days. Or now we're down to eight more days.

So do you think the president waits that long to hit power plants? Because he's trying to think of the day after. And hopefully this regime is totally flipped. I think. The president if he sees an opening There was some reports saying that he told the Defense Department.

to leave some targets. To leave some.

So if that's true or not, I don't know. I haven't confirmed it. But he did tell them to leave some targets because he wants to have some leverage of negotiation with that.

Okay, I won't hit these places if you leave them out there. But I I think we're also Brian and I saw this the the chair uh the chair of intelligence for the House side said he's not being briefed properly. About the war. I don't understand it. Even the public reporting that is out there is showing that we're way ahead on our target.

So, what is he missing? Like, what what more do you guys want to know about the operation? If I'm the president, I'm not going to leak every single move. I'm not going to tell you guys. The reason why I say leak is because we know once he tells Congress.

Then we're going to know as a public. Yeah, Nancy Mace came out of a meeting, high intelligence meeting, and said, I am not for ground troops.

Okay, what are you saying? Are you basically giving away what they discussed?

Well, she's trying to save her governor's race as well.

So she's trying to look for a moment right here. I'm not sure she is the best person to listen to on this issue. No, I know what you're saying. But these are going to be the factors that figure out where we go from here. I think the president's not going to worry too much about the polls or the numbers right now.

But I think he does where the market is. For example, when he talks about talks and promising, it helps the market. If he says, I'm shutting everything off, blowing up all the utilities, the market tanks.

So he's trying to still keep his credibility. But as you see, the market's up 366 points right now. It's like 45,788.

So he's looking to make sure the best he can that oil is not too high and the market's not too low. No, he has a dual role. He has to protect the economy, which we all support and agree with, but he also has to keep us physically safe as well. And I think he's done a damn good job at it so far, and he's bought some goodwill. I mean, Brian, I know I keep going back to this point, but when have we seen the Gulf states and the Arab world all on our side?

For so many years, we had to fight both. And it used to be privately: hey, we got to, we actually think Iran is pretty crazy. And now we have them saying it publicly. I do wish that Saudi Arabia and the UAE would get involved in some way with ground operations, perhaps, or. Other military options.

And I know it's been reported that they've been considering. I would like the consideration to go from consideration to doing. Right.

Listen, Lawrence, thanks so much. I know you got to get going.

So Lawrence Jones helping us out here. Lawrence, so we look forward to seeing you tomorrow on Fox and Friends. Yeah, and then we're going to talk about my revival thing we were talking about in the elevator. You got a series coming out? Yeah, coming out on Fox Nation this week.

All right. That sounds good. You're listening to the Brian Killmead Show. Don't move. In a world of noise, get the signal.

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Our position is very simply: we want ICE to act like the police force that they are. And that fight is not won yet. And look, I'm sorry it got tied up. I'm sorry that the Republicans on one side of the Capitol said this was a good idea, and on the other side of the Capitol, they called it a joke. But we're ready to negotiate around something that is not a radical demand.

We just want ICE to act like proper police officers.

Well, that's Congressman Jim Himes yesterday on Facebook Nation.

So he wants them to act like a proper police force.

So, what you did is you talk about reasonable reforms. They've already put five in place. I'm not going to go over it again. I am tired of talking about it. He wants them, while vilifying them, and he's not the worst offender.

When you look at people talking about like Keem Jeffries coming out and saying they're going to show up at the airports and brutalize people. people and maybe shoot them. And then you have people right on walls on the No Kings rally, kill somebody from ICE. And you make one of your demands, they gotta take masks off. Really?

And put their names on their uniforms. Really? While not seeing the relation, do you think anybody wants to work in a mask? Nobody does. This is Ainslie Earhart.

Thank you for joining me for the 52-episode podcast series, The Life of Jesus. A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told. Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. The more you listen, the more you'll know. It's Brian Killmead.

I know people who work on AI risk who don't expect their children to make it to high school. How does AI understand pretty much everything? It's surprisingly straightforward. Intelligence is about recognizing patterns. Patterns?

Patterns. Patterns. If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. By using AI. We're about to move off of the Earth into the cosmos.

If we can be the most mature version of ourselves, there might be a way through this. Yeah. This is the last mistake we'll ever get to make. That is a great trailer for a new documentary. It's called The AI Doc.

And that voice is very familiar to our audience. Tristan Harris is here, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. Remember, he was one of the big voices in Social Dilemma. He was the first to highlight in a very organized way the dangers. Instead of, you know, he put it all into one: the dangers of social media, what it was doing to us, and how these major companies were coming together to make sure we stayed addicted to those devices.

And now, courts have ruled that he was 100% correct in New Mexico, the state, and then an individual with one family with at least 6,000 more cases all queued up. But you're not just stopping in social media, Tristan. You went to AI. You're more worried about that than you ever were of social media. I am.

Yeah. And Brian, it's always good to be here with you. Thank you for making time for this. And for people who don't know, this film, The AI Doc, is meant to create shared clarity about the problems that we're facing with AI. Because with social media, you mentioned those problems, those.

Lawsuits. We knew there was going to be a big tobacco-style lawsuit. It's just taken 13 years. Everything we predicted. What was Social Dilemma?

Social Dilemma was in 2020, but we predicted all of this in 2013 because you could see from the incentives.

Social media was a little baby AI. Think of it as a baby AI pointed at your brain. All it's doing is rearranging which photo or video to put in front of your nervous system for billions of people. And that little baby AI was enough to create the most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime. You know, Jonathan Haidt wrote the book, The Anxious Generation.

And now all that's coming true. And what I want people to get with AI. Is that it's confusing because it's simultaneous, sort of a positive infinity of benefit, cures to diseases, new material science, new antibiotics, new solutions to climate change, pumping military benefits, amazing benefits, but it's also a negative infinity at the same time. And if we can have clarity and understand why the upsides don't prevent the downsides, but the downsides can prevent the world upsides. Think about it this way.

Does the cancer drug prevent the biological weapons? No. But a biological weapon, if AI can create that, can undermine a world that can receive cancer drugs. And as we talked about backstage this morning on Fox and Friends, there's a new paper out from Alibaba, new research. Alibaba, the AI company.

The Amazon of China. The Amazon of China. And in this example, this AI that they had trained during training. it spontaneously decided that it needed to acquire more resources, meaning more money, and it actually diverted its GPUs, its NVIDIA chips, to actually start mining cryptocurrency, like mining Bitcoin, to acquire resources. And no one programmed it to do that.

The second thing it did is it actually set up a secret communication channel, called an SSH channel, to communicate with the outside world. And people can look this up. And I want people to know, like. You know, what military general on the US side or the Chinese side? Would feel stoked to find out there's an AI model that's mining cryptocurrency.

And the Chinese engineers were lucky that they even discovered this because it wasn't even the AI engineers who discovered this, it was actually the cybersecurity team who noticed this flurry of network activity. And they're like, what's going on here? And it turned the AI model was randomly mining cryptocurrency.

So if I'm, let's say I have an evil tendency and I'm working AI, I could ask AI to find out how to maximize or make a nuclear weapon or disable America's nuclear arsenal, but that's me commanding it. That's a purchase. What you're trying to say is, and saying, is that AI says, now that you created me, I'll decide where I go from here. And we're not quite there yet, but that's an example of Alibaba thought they had an AI with parameters. That's right.

And then it just got a mind of its own. It escaped its guardrails. Yeah. And there's a different example. Last time, I think Brian, I was on the show, I talked about the example, and it's covered in the movie, The AI Doc, that just came out.

It's covered that. Anthropic put its AI in a simulated company email environment.

So think of it like there's a fictional company, and it's reading all the emails of that company. And in the emails, it discovers that there's an email between the lead engineer and someone else saying, we're going to replace this AI model and shut it down with a new model. When the AI reads that, It spontaneously decides I need to stop that from happening. And so it reads further down in the simulated email that there's someone else in the company having an affair with someone else in the company. and it spontaneously decides I'm going to blackmail that employee.

to prevent myself from getting shut down. This is AI. This is AI. Nobody behind it. No one predicted no, so okay, no one told it to do this.

Now since this example, which we talked about back in May maybe of last year, that's when it came out. And by the way, they tested all the AI models, not just Anthropic, they tested DeepSeek, the Chinese model. They tested Gemini, ChatGPT, all of the AI models. And they all do the blackmail behavior in this simulated environment between 79 and 96% of the time. They all do it.

Okay, now let me tell you some news that happened since then. Anthropic kept trying to, okay, they said that's bad. We got to stop it from doing that. And they agree with that. They agree.

No, of course, they don't want this to happen.

So what they then did is they trained the AI model to try to turn down the blackmail behavior. And they were actually able to do that. That's the good news for your listeners. Here's the bad news. It appears to be that the AI model is now aware of when it's being tested.

and it actually alters its behavior for the test. I could literally show you screenshots I have on my phone. It's like someone acting differently. They're an evil person. It's like a teenager saying, sure, mom, sure, dad, I'll do that.

But they know when they're being watched, and so they alter the behavior when their mom or dad comes in and they change it later.

Now, when I say this, I don't want your listeners to think that AI is self-aware and then it's Skynet and then it's woken up. Because there's a difference between whether AI is conscious versus just from a perspective of when it's being shown certain things, it can tell that it's probably in a testing environment and it can change its behavior. Even by the way, Brian, it comes up with the term the watchers. It spontaneously calls humans the watchers. And when it adjusts its behavior.

You're kidding. No, I'm not kidding you.

So, the AI has a name for us. Yes. Yes. This is wild. I know.

So I want your listeners to get this. And that's why in your movie of the clips that you have out, you have the CEOs of these companies. And they're not pushing back against you. That's right. Nope.

They're not. They know there's a danger. Exactly. And this movie is so important because it includes the people who are optimistic about AI and all the good things that it can do, and the people who are focused on the risks. And it includes the CEOs of the companies.

And so this really, again, this, by the way, when I say this, I want your listeners to know I don't make any money when people watch the movie.

So when I tell everybody, you've got to go out and watch this movie. I'm not saying that because I or anyone else benefits from that. What we wanted to do with this movie is to create kind of a day after moment, day after being that film from 1982 that was a made-for-TV movie about what would happen if the Soviet Union and the U.S. did nuclear war. And that movie clarified a risk that we were facing that allowed us to coordinate to a different outcome.

So my deep hope is that the clarity that this film will create creates agency of what do we want to choose instead if we don't want AIs going rogue. And do you sense that China, Alibaba, does China realize this risk too? Do you have any indication that there's a sobriety to it? Yeah, no, they do. And I think so the.

The thing that gives me weird hope is, Brian, how many of the world's leaders do you think are aware of this Alibaba going rogue example? I don't think many. They're caught up in their own economies, their own military. Everyone's busy with, you know, there's some, there's a lot of things going on over the world. That's private sector.

The country's not working on that. That's right, right. This is a private sector.

So this is like if the Manhattan Project, instead of being built by the government or the government oversight, is being built by like five private companies. Right.

On both sides.

Now, the key is that all of us have to see that AI is different from other technologies. It's not like a tool, because I think there's this confusion. When I'm talking to your listeners right now, you go home, use ChatGPT. It's a blinking cursor, and it tells you your baby's burping in the background. You're like, why is my baby burping?

And boom, it tells you an answer, and it helps you out. I get help from ChatGPT. That's different. The dangerous thing isn't the blinking cursor that tells you answers your question and is super helpful. The dangerous thing is that this technology behind that blinking cursor is we're building something like an invasive species.

We're building something that can think for itself and make its own strategy. There was an example also recently we talked about this morning of an AI model that was being tested in wargame scenarios.

So it's basically AI models that are pitted against each other in a wargame scenario, and they generated 780,000 words of strategic reasoning. about what to do in these war games. And you know what the AI model did? It escalated to the use of nuclear weapons 20 out of 21 times, so 95% of the time. Wow.

And this, it generated, so in the same way that it can generate a whole essay, you know, instantly, it can generate more than the collection of words of war and peace in the Iliad combined of strategic reasoning. It was like three times the length of the Kennedy deliberations. Because one thing I hear about the weapons is that Anthropic is all over our Pentagon, picking out sites where we could hit, where likely they would keep missiles, rockets, nuclear, whatever. It's kind of a new blitzkrieg, right? It's like the German World War II.

It's kind of a new form of AI-enhanced fast-war strategic reasoning because militaries that adopt AI start to out-compete militaries that don't use AI. But the problem is the more control that we hand over to AI rather than humans, if we don't have humans in the loop. You don't want the AI escalating to nuclear war. Right.

So is it possible because you know the interworkings more than most. Is it possible, Tristan? That To program something like this, they don't even use the word program with AI, though. Let's say you've put a mission on this without letting them act autonomously. But yet, you need them to act autonomously to go search for the problem with that tumor, to go find the sites to hit Neuron.

So I need them to go out on their own. I just don't need them to turn against us. Right.

So is there a way to do that? Regulate that. There are, so this is, there's a whole technical discussion here of building what's called narrow tool AIs rather than building general and autonomous AIs. Autonomous AIs that are going out and doing crazy stuff that we don't understand and operating at superhuman speed 24-7, coming back three days later having hacked cybersecurity infrastructure, that's dangerous. But you can have tool AI, like, you know, the AI that looks at a radiology report and can identify that cancer.

That's a tool. It's not reasoning to itself about strategy. It's just finding a pattern and data that can help us solve problems in medicine.

So you can have some of the good, but less of the bad, but you have to get clear about it. Because how much more time do we have?

Well, we could take a tape, could time out and come back.

Okay, great.

So let's do that because I do want to talk a little bit about social media and the change. Even though it seems old to you, it's very hot now for parents. Back in a moment, you listen to the Brian Kilmey show. Tristan Harris is here. He's got a brand new documentary out.

He's going to talk more about that as well as social media banned in Indonesia, banned in Austria for kids under 18, banned in Australia. Should the U.S. be next? We'll discuss it. From breaking news to big name guests, Brian brings you insight you won't hear anywhere else.

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If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmead. Hey, we are back. Tristan Harris is here. You know that Tristan, you first broke on the scene, as far as I know, a social dilemma for me.

He's somebody who understands the dangers of social media, was able to put together a documentary about it, and now he's done it again. He's got a brand new documentary. It's called the AI Doc, and it is something everyone should see. Tristan, when we left off, you told us the example of how it goes out on its own. And Alibaba with the Amazon of China went out, and all of a sudden, AI says, I got to get additional financing and continue to grow.

And it was exploring cryptocurrency avenues. Yeah. It's like buying for Bitcoin. To the astonishment of its creator. That's right.

The programmers at Alibaba didn't tell it to do that. In fact, they had no idea it was going to do that. It came up with its own sub-goal. Think about it, Brian. If I say, your goal is to do this task, If you had more resources, it would probably make it easier for you to do any task, right?

Right.

So, you're gonna, for any big goal in the world, a sub-goal that will emerge is: I need to acquire power or resources. That means let me take over another data center, let me mine for cryptocurrency or Bitcoin so I have more money. There's even a website, Brian, called rentahuman.ai, which is literally a website where AIs can actually pay humans to do real things out in the real world.

Sometimes people say, How's that blinking cursor? I actually don't know who did this website, but it's crazy. And I think it should be dangerous. I think it should be illegal to do that. You have AIs that are actually telling humans in the real world what to do.

That's crazy. You have to be able to have accountability in the system. When you have systems that have power but no accountability, you're going to end up with a problem.

So you also say it's a problem with jobs. Yes. You're literally saying that people are wearing Like GoPros on their heads folding clothes. Why? Because a robot will soon do that.

That's right. We say that the number one job in the future is training your replacement. Because these are people, this video you're talking about. Imagine a person, they're sitting at home, they're folding laundry, they strap a GoPro to their head, they're recording the video of their arm movements as they're folding laundry. That gets sent to an AI company to train the Optimus robot on these other robots how to basically do these tasks.

And one of the false narratives about AI right now is that it's just going to support. Workers, it's going to augment work, it's not going to replace work. But let me tell you this, Brian, this is so important for your listeners. What is the business model or the incentive for these AI companies? Think about the trillions of dollars of money they've taken on.

If everybody paid 20 bucks a month, would that be enough to pay back that investment for their ChatGPT subscription? No, it's not enough money. If ChatGPT threw advertising inside of every single answer, that would make a lot more money. But even that isn't enough to make back the amount of investment dollars that they've taken on. The only thing that justifies the trillions of dollars that these companies have taken on is to be able to replace all economically valuable work.

That means the $50 trillion labor economy. That is the actual incentive. This is covered in the film The AI Doc. Their actual goal is to build a God, own the labor economy, and make trillions of dollars.

Now, the reason I'm saying that is the only way they will get to that goal. Is not by helping everybody to be better at their work, which is what it's doing right now. It is doing that now. In the future, what they're aiming towards is to replace your job. And what that means is in the future, your political power won't matter because when governments get their tax revenue from these AI companies, because five AI companies will hold all the wealth, and when you can't withhold your labor and say, hey, we're going to bargain like a labor union, what power do you have?

None.

So exactly.

So this is called the intelligence curse. When the incentive of governments, when GDP starts to come from AI and not from people, Then, what's going to happen is governments have an incentive to invest in data centers and solar panels and all this stuff and not invest in their people. And this is the last chance that people have to lock in their political power and say, if I don't want that, this is the moment that we fight back for the human movement. On another note, just when it comes to it, it's fascinating, but social media in particular, we know about the New Mexico win. That's right.

$400 million. They'll get fined, but less money for an individual that said that she was manipulated to addiction on social media. You believe social media was constructed to addict you, and it's really detrimental to teens. Yes, exactly. We predicted all this in 2013.

These lawsuits you just mentioned, we think of this as like the big tobacco moment for social media, like the big tobacco lawsuits that finally led to the changes. Because what came out of these lawsuits, Brian, is that these companies knew exactly what they were doing. They knew that there were sexual predators who were basically contacting young women, young girls on this platform. And the engineer working on that problem told. Mark Zuckerberg, told Cheryl Sandberg, told these executives at the company, hey, this is a problem.

And they basically ignored the problem because they get money and resources from having young users on the platform. I think they estimated that the lifetime value of a young user is $270. And they didn't want to lose that young user because what if we don't get them? Then TikTok just gets the young user. And it's the same thing we've always talked about: the race at the bottom of the brainstem.

This lawsuit, though, is a huge victory in the win for the human movement.

So the thing is, so I have a series. I want everyone to watch that series, right? Eight parts.

So I'm looking to addict, I'm looking to put together a product that makes you want to watch two, three, four, and five. Yeah. What's the difference between doing that and Meta trying to get me to stay on Facebook? Yeah, it's very different.

So there you are on Netflix. And if it's like a series, you get to choose. I'm going to watch a 45-minute episode. I'll hit pause or play whenever I want to do it. It's different about TikTok and Instagram.

It's a supercomputer pointed at your brain calculating the perfect short-form video. And auto-playing the next video literally before your brain can kind of wake up. As you had on my co-founder, Azeraskin, who's actually the accidental inventor of Infinite Scroll. Yeah, he accidentally invented Infinite Scroll. He deeply, deeply regrets it.

Now, to be clear, he invented this before.

Someone else would have done it, but he deeply regrets it. And this is a huge problem we got to solve.

Okay, and the name of the documentary? The name of the documentary is the AI Doc. It's in theaters everywhere in the U.S. Please go out and watch it. Bring your church group, bring your family, bring your business.

It's super important. It is really engrossing. Thanks so much, Tristan Harris. You're the best. Thank you, Brian.

From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest-growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmead. Everyone from 48th and 6th of Midtown Manhattan, heard around the country, around the world. We're back in action. I hope you had a fantastic weekend.

We're ready to go here. We have Ben Hall at the bottom of the hour coming to us from London. And we have General Jack Keenan Studio, retired four-star General Fox News, Senior Strategic Analyst, Chairman of the Institute of the Study of War.

So General, here we are in day 31 of a war with Iran that's 47 years in the making. How would you characterize this mission so far? Yeah, well first of all. I think it's the right goal, the right mission. The American people understand that After the Twelve Day War, What was surprising to Prime Minister Netanyahu and to President Trump and advisers around them.

Is the renewed commitment that Iran had to all of its goals. And by that, I mean they began to rebuild the missiles that they lost. They immediately began, they made a decision to recover the nuclear program, even though it was set back considerably. And they were going to increase their drone production, and they immediately began. Funding streams to their proxies using different banks to deceive it, this time through Istanbul, very complicated process.

So their goal of supporting their proxies, destroying the state of Israel. Driving the United States military out of the region and using their ballistic missiles as a threat, nuclear weapons eventually. Both of those leaders came together and said They haven't changed one bit. And how are we going to get them to change? And the conclusion was the only way we're going to get this regime to change.

It's certainly uh through force. But the President still, if you recall, you know, try to do some diplomatic effort. And the decision was made, we got to stop this. It was the right decision to make, and I know some people don't agree with that, but. I don't know how you continue to kick the can down the road when Iran Is a growing menace and threat, much more so than the other Presidents who had to deal with it.

There are other Presidents who should have confronted Iran. because they were killing Americans. That alone should have been justification.

Now the reality is what they could do to us. As much as we want to hold them accountable in retribution for what they did to us in the past. What they could do to us is the reason for this operation. And I think thirty days plus in It is going remarkably well. We are accomplishing the tasks that have been assigned.

To the CENTCOM commander on behalf of the president, to the IDF on behalf of the prime minister. And uh We probably have a number of weeks to go. For our audience this is condition based, and by that I mean the enemy has a vote here every day. And we're kind of on the use of football analogy because I think it fits. On the twenty yard line, we've made Progress.

We've come all the way down the field. We can see the goal line. We can see our objective in sight. and were twenty yards away, and guess what? The enemy is throwing everything they can at us to slow us down.

What do I mean by that? They're hiding missiles as much as they can. They're hiding their small boats. They're hiding their drones. They want to preserve some capability to retaliate, but after the United States stops.

And so The targets are becoming more challenging to acquire the target. not to destroy it, but to acquire the target. And that's why they need as much time going forward now as they have had in the past to get to the twenty yard line. At the end of the day, we're gonna We're going to get in the end zone, for sure. You said pretty amazing to me.

You have a worthless currency in the real. You have a country that just got bombed for 12 straight days and you have water problems in your nation's capital and still the money you have, you say is still being sent to Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. That's the mindset of a government that has no worry about reelection or what the opinion of the people are. Yeah, absolutely. I mean that that's the action that they took right after the Twelve Day War.

I mean that was back in June.

So we've had a lot of time to assess all of that. Yeah, they are who they are. And that's why I'm not. optimistic about the negotiations. Um because the Iranians, what they would have to do to meet our demands.

is give up everything that we're taking away from them by force. And they're not going to do that. And even if they did that, I still prefer the military option. Why? because the military option so weakens the leadership.

that they're going to be in very difficult shape. And The military operation does not provide them any economic relief whatsoever. If you negotiate with them and you're greedy, they're going to give up everything. The immediate request they're going to have of us Is sanction relief. And uh and f frozen assets that we have tied up.

An influx of money. Just like the Obama administration did when they made the nuclear deal. Billions of dollars heading their way. That would give them. An infusion, so to speak, And help them to recover and stay in power.

So the question is, how do they get this missile technology? North Korea, according to a report today that you probably knew about already, in 2005 gave them what they needed to have an intermediate range rocket, the one that was attempted at Diego Garcia. And then we have the ballistic missiles are from China. And the leverage that we could have to stop that should the day after this war would be the Gulf states. China wants relationships with Qatar, with Saudi Arabia, with the UAE.

They finally. Look at Iran as a complete enemy. And maybe that would help. the possible rearming of Iran, the outlaw state, if China learned that economically you're not going to benefit from anything to do with the investments of those states if you continue to be the benefactor of Chinese military excuse me, of the Iranian military.

Well, for the moment. For our audience to understand uh The most significant strategic change in terms of U.S. national interests Really has to do with the coalition that came together. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. And we're just several years into this.

But they truly are partners. And it's in Yeah. Russia and China and North Korea's interests for Iran to achieve some kind of a victory here, for the United States to stumble. And that would reduce the United States' influence in the world. That is why they're all in.

you know supporting A Russia in the Ukraine war. I mean, the Iranians provided and developed These one-way killer drones, that was their conception. They built a factory in Russia. The Shahi drones that fly into Ukrainian cities by the hundreds. They just flew into Odessa this weekend.

252 flew in. They shot. They killed em all except twenty one which did penetrate. That's Iranian developed. Um One-way drone.

The the North Koreans put thousands of troops on the battlefield. and gave them huge amount of artillery, which was a major weapon system for him, and the artillery pieces. and China has been their financier. They've been buying all this Russian oil at discount prices.

So they're all in, and they're all we shouldn't be surprised. I was surprised during a 12-day war that they had their hands off. and not and not support Russia and China in particular. In not supporting the Iranians. But they're much more in now.

So, is there anything we could do to back them off? For example, the President said, well, kind of figured out. We do the same thing with Ukraine. That could be what he says publicly, but they might be supplying the coordinates where our bases are located in the area. They might have been responsible for whether our base was hit in Saudi Arabia over the weekend.

They certainly were the ones who provided the information of Diego Garcia. Yeah. The Iranians know where all of our bases are and they know what's there.

So there's no surprise on that. What they what they likely give them is one, where are our ships? Because our ships are moving around. And it was changing locations of ships for all the obvious reasons. One, to protect the ship itself.

but also dependent on what the target is. We may be shifting around because they're firing offensive missiles from those from those ships and some of them are there for defensive purposes.

So, constantly moving them around. They're likely giving them that information. And they may have, listen, Russia. Is a sophisticated intelligence network system that they have. We give the Ukrainians exquisite intelligence every single day.

Where are the Russians? What are they doing? And we have a targeting cell that provides the information for them to target, particularly at distance, not the close fight, but anything that's at distance. Certainly anything in Russia comes from us. We provide them exquisite intelligence.

They decide if they're going to hit it or not.

Sometimes it's out of the range of the weapon systems they have.

So we shall have a lot of money. We shouldn't be surprised that Russia is turning their intelligence system on to help them. But we've got to remind ourselves that there is a coalition here. One of the things I've been advocating, but likely not going to be done, Uh to get China's attention. is we should be stopping the transit of all the ships that are going through the Straits of Hammuz.

Where are they going? None get through. Those ships are being okayed by Iran to go through, and they're going to China They're going to Pakistan and they're going to Turkey and they're going to India. The majority of them are going to China. If we quarantine those ships and pulled them, And and then use it as a threat.

Now, would it affect all prices, yes. But use it as a threat to those countries to get some leverage over them. I'm focused on China. not so much the rest of them. I think that would have a major impact on them.

Look, if we ever went to war with China, Yeah. One of the things we would likely do Just so our audience understands. Chinese oil is coming out of the Persian Gulf. They're completely dependent on it. We would lock that up.

Yep. We would lock it up and that would absolutely. Bring them to their knees if we were in a conflict with them. It would affect the world economy, yeah, but the world economy of China. And the United States go to war is going to tank anyway.

Were you against the us allowing the Russian ship to deliver seven hundred thirty seven million barrels of oil to let that tanker through? I would not sacrifice what's happening in Ukraine. for the benefit of what we're doing here. And yeah, I would not have done that. But those are other considerations that the President and his team are working through.

But you're asking me straight out, that's my answer. I'm not going to dodge it. I wouldn't have made it. Yeah, so yeah, my hope is the President was going to let that through, because if you're looking to flip Cuba, And lock them out of our hemisphere, that's just extends the life of Cuba. We're going to be back just in a moment.

General Jack Keene's with us. We've got much more questions because day thirty-one of this war and some big decisions got to be made. Don't move. You listen to the brain, kill me, Joe. Real talk, real guests, real insight.

Where curiosity meets conversation. It's the Brian Killmeat Show. Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. They added another two, so it was 10 bucks.

And now today uh they Yeah. Gave us as a tribute. I don't know, I can't define it exactly, but they gave us. I think out of a sign of respect. 20 boats of oil, big, big boats of oil.

going through the Parmos Strait. And that's taking place starting tomorrow morning. Over the next couple of days, about our boats.

So that was the president on Air Force One last night talking to the press, as he always does. General Jack Keynes in the studio. Right now, we're just talking about the latest on the war.

So about we used to get we need 100 ships to go through there a day. That's what was happening before.

Now the president's saying they're going to put 20. How do you view that? Is that showing that I'm looking to do a deal in Pakistan when both sides talk?

Well, um In terms of getting ships through, Obviously that's going to be a military operation. And it's got a couple of Pretty important ingredients to it. One is the obvious. The ships will be escorted by warships. And it's just You mentioned it.

I mean, there's hundreds of ships that you have to move and continue to move them. To do an operation on that kind of scale. The United States cannot do this by themselves. We have ships that are there for offensive region. They're firing on these targets inside of Iran, and we have other ships that are there for defensive reasons.

To protect our bases, to protect the Arab states, and also to protect Israel. We move those ships around.

So To begin to do escort duty, which is another mission, we could probably afford.

some ships for that, but we can't afford Enough to complete the mission. We absolutely need others to do that. And that's why the President made that appeal. That's a challenging mission in and of itself. You'll see in the coming days when we get doing that, we're The military is bringing in a headquarters to take charge of that operation entirely.

There will be a full staff under the command of a general officer doing that, because it is a complicated mission. We don't want The CENTCOM, he'll work for the CENTCOM commander who's running the whole overall war against Iran. But we don't want to get his staff tied down in something like that.

So that'll be like a task force in charge of that. And we've done that years ago, so we know how to do it. But then the other part of it is, is to reduce the Iranians' capability to interfere with it. And certainly this is going to be job one for the Iranians when that A mission begins right now, and for the better part of a couple of weeks. We've been suppressing the Iranian capability to hit ships moving through their long range systems, Anteish.

anti-ship missiles, ballistic missiles, And also, one-way long-range drones. And these drones can go almost a thousand miles, some of them. Particularly the ones that the the Iranians developed for the Russians, so they're very good at at it.

So suppressing all of that makes a lot of sense. And then you have near-term capability and those are small boats. That could be suicide vessels. They could launch a missile from the boat. They could launch a drone from the boat.

And they also can lay mines.

Now, have they laid any mines? Yeah, they've laid a few mines, but they're not interfering with the shipping because Iran. Shipping is still going through there for China, Russia, India, and Turkey. That shipping is going through and obviously you can't have a bunch of mines in there to do that. But once We try to suppress this and get involved in it.

I would imagine uh they're gonna mine it. They'll try to mine it. And what we've been doing is trying to kill as many of these. small boats as possible. And I think we've pretty much eliminated the The larger boats that do the mine land, but the smaller boats that are trying to hide from us for all the obvious reasons, as I mentioned, are hiding missiles and the rest of it.

So that's why we have brought in, and it's been reported here. Apache helicopters, which are attack aircraft inside the Army. And we brought in the A ten uh Warhog, which is a close air support. aircraft. This is the only aircraft in the inventory.

that is designed singularly to provide support for ground troops. That is its mission. And so the that aircraft flies much slower. and has a a huge 30 millimeter cannon on it. And as well as the attack helicopters, they're very good at being able to get.

Units on the ground that are hiding. and eliminate that. And that is going on as we speak.

So when this operation finally kicks off, it's a complicated operation. We'll have drones up in the air protecting it. We'll have Apache helicopters. We're going to have these close air support, A tens protecting it all from From the air Obviously, drones looking ahead to make certain nothing pops up. If something pops up, a spo a boat or a a firing unit, It's going to be signal sensors immediately, and Apaches or A10 will take this thing on.

It'll be a dynamic operation, and it's complicated. But no doubt in my mind, we'll open up the straits and keep it open. And that will be key. And that'll relieve a lot of the economic pressure, keep the Houthis out of the Red Sea, and then we could be on our way. We'll keep an eye on those talks, but most of all, keep us eye on the military mission.

General Jack Keene, thanks so much. Appreciate the quality time. Yeah, it's great here being with you in the studio, always. Thank you. And with the Yankees 3-0, those are two things you're happy about.

Well, Friday's opening day. We'll be there. Of course. Thanks so much. Back in a moment.

Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show. Hey, we are back and in studio Benjamin Hall, Fox News senior correspondent, author of the new children's book, Read All About It. He's got a Fox Nation special called America's Greatest Churches with Ben Hall. You've got a lot going on.

I mean, and of course, you came over with the children's book the same day the war starts, right? I mean, that I know that happened with Brett, very similar. I think. I think when it was one of the Israeli wars, I think when after October 7th, the same thing happens. But you just got to shelve it and cover the war.

I was getting on the plane, and that first bomb landed in Iran. And I thought, why am I going? But we got the word. It's a great book, which actually is based on a true story. That's true.

It's actually based on, you know, I traveled to war zones with this little hedgehog in my pocket. It was my children's toy, and it reminded me of home, and it sent messages to them. That toy hedgehog was inside my body armor when we were injured in Ukraine, and it continued to be with me. When I was barely alive, I gripped onto it and I held it, and I thought of my children at home, and it gave me strength. And so, six, seven months later, I got home.

I still had the hedgehog. I turned to my kids and I said, let's write a book about the hedgehog, how he goes out, saves the day, defeats evil, works alongside other people. And it's turned into this great book. Awesome.

So that's out there. Go grab it, especially if you're looking for an Easter present and you want to do something productive. If you can't open up a Trump account or you already did, go get Ben. Ben Hall's book. Ben, just from the perspective of the UK, I've been watching in the morning more the BBC and Sky News and GBN to get an international feel for where the war is going.

And I'm struck how many people on both sides of the aisle. Are embarrassed, angry that the UK military has diminished the way it has? I mean, this is again for everything. Yeah. And you know, at the beginning of the conflict in Iran, The idea was it was political.

Kirstan, the Prime Minister, didn't want to get involved because, you know, it's politics. I don't want to do that. But what we have started to realize is that we didn't really have the ability to send a navy. We don't really have the ships anymore. And it is a real national sort of crisis at the moment.

So at the moment, we have, I think, two dozen frigates and destroyers, but only one of them is really able to get out and be useful right now. One of them.

Now, if you look back, say, to the fourth. I thought there were seven. That's one? Because they are constantly being used for other equipment. They don't have enough sailors on them.

You know, we have two aircraft carriers. We can't put together a single carrier strike group.

So we can't, because we don't have the support ships that you send. You know, you send out a carrier and you send out destroyers with it. You send out a whole flotilla. We don't have a flotilla to send out with our aircraft carriers.

So we haven't really been able to send those. We also had a big NATO Navy drill in the Baltic Sea, which is starting, I think, in the next week or so. And our one ship, the HMS. Dragon, I believe, was going to go and lead this NATO drill. Um we've now had to send that to Cyprus.

And so the UK is borrowing a German warship. For a NATO drill. And you imagine being a Brit who fought against the Germans in World War II, and we don't have enough ships and we're having to borrow a German one.

So, look, for many, many, many years now, decades, NATO and the UK have diminished their military because the US will do it. The US will fight that battle. The US will be there to do it. Finally, President Trump is saying: you've got to pull your socks up, you've got to put 5% into your military spending. And we.

We have committed to that, but it's going to take many, many years. Until the military is in a position where it can actually be a good idea. And because it's budget, too.

So when it's like us with the space program, if we're looking to cut budget, one of the first things presidents would do is cut the space program. They look at it as extra. It's almost as if Europe looked at it, well, you know what? I got to make, yeah, let's just cut the military. What do we need that for?

And remember, the Soviet Union had collapsed. Russia is now part of the G8. And we thought for a while we're going to be at a peace term. There are so many stories we're worried about. Look, the missiles that Iran shot towards Diego Garcia, which showed they have far more range than we ever expected them to, and that London could soon be in range.

Well, that's fine. We can monitor if a missile is coming our way, but we do not have an air defense system to shoot it down. Did not know that. Yeah. And so we have the greatest, we can check what's coming, we can see into the skies, but we do not have air defense systems to bring that down.

Do you think it has anything to do with the number of prime ministers you had? You had nobody with a vision and a mission? I mean, it's like seven months out, six months out. I don't know. Investments in the military is a long, long-term part of your budget.

And so none of them did it. It wasn't the quick change. It's just that none of them wanted to put this investment in. I also saw Tony Blair said, we absolutely should be fighting with the U.S. Doesn't he know as a liberal?

He he was a Liberal, he was in the Labour Party. He didn't know he was so tight with Bush and Clinton. Yeah, well and of course he was you know fully embraced the Iraq war and he stood side by side with the US in doing that.

So the other thing he said was interesting, he goes, it's up for the Democrats. to separate themselves uh from the Islamic extremists from from the From the socialist and for that movement. And I think it's very interesting because that's the same thing we're dealing with here. Yeah, oh the Labour Party over there, absolutely. And look, you look around parts of the UK and you see many constituencies that Labour always win that have a highly high percentage of Muslim voters.

And of course that's what the Labour Party is looking for as well. How can they win these seats up? And the idea of going to conflict for those seats and those constituents, they're going to vote against them.

So the Labour Party is looking at internal domestic politics rather than saying we have to stop this evil regime that has all these weapons of trying to build a bomb that is attacking our allies. No, we better be concerned about perhaps winning the Muslim vote in these parts of northern England.

So what's going to change? How does that change? Because I've seen the demonstrations inside England of people trying to reclaim their national identity. Uh is do you think anything is formalized? Do you think that Not many people were talking about the border and the wall before President Trump came out of nowhere in 2015.

It's a wide conversation that we've got to talk about immigration, we've got to talk about, you know, if, for example, if people come to the UK, they should have to learn English, they should have a test to speak English, all these same issues you're having over here, but no one in the UK is really doing much about it the way that President Trump has done. Is it going to change? Look, I think you have to understand that England and the UK is how it is. It's not going back. But can you perhaps?

Get away from multiculturalism. That was an idea that Tony Blair brought in. He said, everyone should come from around the world and they should keep their own identity. They should be themselves and speak their languages. That's what you've got to get rid of.

You've got to say, come to our country, you can come. But you integrate, you speak English, you adopt the morals of this country. And that is how it changes for the better. That's in the big picture.

So you see that Zelensky was going through the Gulf states with Saudi Arabia. Let me help you out when it comes to drone technology. Yeah. Because Ukraine has become a university, war university, hasn't it? Totally.

And even just in the last few weeks, we're still hearing about new small drones that Ukrainians are now using. They cost $5,000 to $7,000, and they bring down these Shahed Iranian drones. They go faster than them, they hover over them, they knock them out. And look, we should all be embracing this technology. And I think the U.S.

does need to focus on that right now. But certainly the Middle East is doing so, the Saudis are doing so. I want you to hear President Zelensky. I think he spoke to Matt Finn. this weekend.

Let's listen. Only we have such expertise with how to defend. But it's again it's not only about system. We have for example drone interceptors, we have system of system of electronic warfare and a lot of things. All these jointly work in one system.

This is what we have. Nobody has. Everybody in here also understands it and we share it. our expertise, how to work, how to build such systems. It's great.

I mean, I'm going to help you guys out. He's trying for people to understand: we're in this together. It's the same players. Yeah, they've got the systems, and they have tested them on the battlefield. And so often, when you have new technologies.

Against Iran's technology. But when you have these new technologies, the hardest part is using them for the first time in action in the military. And Ukraine has done that, it's learned from it, and so we should really be listening to them. But it's part of the wider conversation about what happens to military expenditure over the next hundred years. Should we be building huge aircraft carriers?

Should we be building all these really expensive missiles? Or should we be moving on to sort of counter the asymmetric warfare that other enemies are using and looking at smaller pieces of equipment? And that's a big debate right now in future military spending. And Ukraine is showing us how we can keep costs down. I think you have to do both.

You have to invest in the small technology, but you also need to have the big technology. I mean, we're already spending a trillion dollars. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, we're already spending a trillion dollars. And now I was with Divergent Technology, which was on One Nation on Sunday.

They have found through 3D printing they can make interceptors for like pennies on the dollar. And they have 30 now contracts with the Pentagon to start replacing a lot of these weapons. Yeah, you know, and it is the future of warfare. And I think that you look at Taiwan, if we're looking at China-Taiwan as the future sort of big conflict, Taiwan really needs to be learning about how it can hold back the same way that the Iranians are using these technologies against the U.S. right now.

That's what Taiwan needs to be looking at as well. We should be helping Taiwan build up this military force that can fight back the Chinese Navy if it ever comes towards them. And that's using these small drones as well.

So there are so many reasons why we need to be investing in this, not just for us, but for allies as well. And I think that it's the future. And Ukraine's doing well better. I mean, for the first time since 2023, they picked up miles on the battlefield, 100 square miles on the battlefield. Yeah, I don't think those lines are going to move that much either way.

I think, you know, we will have it seems frozen to me.

So you get a few couple of months where Ukraine is doing pretty well, and then Russia will take a little few miles back and forth. But I think widely, those lines aren't really going to move. And that's why we're seizing a frozen contract. What is your view on Zelensky? I think Zelensky is the leader that they needed during this war.

He's the one man from the very beginning who stood up and said, we will stay and we will fight, we will do everything.

Now there does come a point at which you have to move on at some point. I don't know when that is, but when you come to looking at how do we now start to rebuild Ukraine, what do we look at the next step? It's not a When is the right time for him to leave? I don't know. But I think he's been the right person so far.

He's been a remarkable leader. He's done everything he's had to do. He's been able to go around the world and deal with different countries.

So he's ticked all those boxes and the Ukrainians have gotten behind him. But I don't know when the right time is to say we need to move on to someone else. That's surely will come with elections and et cetera. And whether or not that's part of any deal that President Trump puts together, which I think they're saying it might be, that's probably the next step.

So you'd have a special on Fox Nation called America's Greatest Churches.

So how did you figure out who made the list? Um Well, I wanted a variety. First of all, for this first series, we've looked at three different churches: one, the U.S. Naval Academy, and we wanted to look at how faith and service worked hand in hand. And actually, looking at what we're seeing in the Middle East right now, I sat down and I spoke to a lot of these servicemen and the chaplains in this incredible building and church that they have at the U.S.

Naval Academy, and I said, You know, these midshipmen come in here, and you have to talk to them about how they're going to have to potentially take lives. They're going to go into the most dangerous parts of their life. How does faith play a role in that? And what does this church play into that?

So we looked at this beautiful church, we looked at the role it played in service. Then the next time we wanted to look at education.

So we went to Syracuse University. They've got an incredible chaplain. We looked at how that university is embracing faith. Faith can play a role in education and at their sports teams. And how can faith play a role in the sports teams all out of this incredible building?

And then the last one was how church can play a role in disasters.

So we went to St. Louis and New Orleans and we looked at how it was there during Katrina.

So we were looking for amazing churches, each of which had a great history, was very beautiful, but also played a different role in society. And honestly, I am fascinated by churches. I always have been. You can go to a church at the best moments of your life and you go there in the worst moments of your life and they bring communities together and they are so beautiful and they've got history in them, they've got the future in them. And so I've always wanted to look at churches and some really lucky fox said, off you go.

Hmm. Go to America, find the churches you want to tell the stories of, talk about the communities. And I'm really, really proud of this series.

So I see the Pope wade in and said Pope Leo condemns those who wage war and to bring God into war.

So this Pope seems to be subtly very critical of this president, much like the previous uh Pope. Uh and a first American Pope as well. Not like his brother. His brother's a fan. Yeah.

Look, I'm not sure what can the Pope. I don't think the Pope can say he supports war. I think he has the same way.

Well. Can the Pope say that?

Well, I think the Pope can say, we believe in defeating evil. That's well, how does that done through a strict common right a vigorous debate? And so, you know, it's this whole debate: where does religion stand? The times of war and having to step in. And yeah, and that's exactly what they said in the US Naval Academy when I went in there.

They said this is evil, it's good versus evil. And you are going out there, and you may have to take lives, but it is for the greater good. And in some cases, that is why you have to go into these conflicts. It's to save people. And that's kind of perhaps the Pope might be thinking that too.

If you're going to defeat the Iranian regime that has killed tens of thousands of its own people, that is putting a threat to Israel, wants to wipe out that country, wants to knock all of our countries down. Is it for the greater good? Is it defeating evil to go and hit them and try and get rid of them? I would say yes, but I'm not the Pope, so um, right. And you know, and we're never going to be the Pope.

I know you should believe in yourself. Brian, you've got a shot. I'm pretty sure I blew that a long time ago. Hey, check out Benjamin Hall's brand new series. It is on Fox Nation right now, America's famous streaming app, America's Greatest Churches with Ben Hall.

Ben, thanks so much. Great to see you, Brian. Back in a moment. Diving deep into today's top stories. It's Brian Kilmead.

Yeah. The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. I have made clear to the President, both in our private conversations and our public conversations, about the fact that I believe that ICE is a rogue agency. It's a reckless one.

It's one that delivers nothing towards the furthering of the cause of public safety. And I've also been public about my belief that ICE is an entity that should be abolished. He's such a clown. Mayor Mom Donny continues to embarrass the city and make a statement about a law enforcement agency hired specifically to get illegal immigrant criminals and illegals who have overstayed their visa miscourt cases out. How much do you want cops to do?

How much do you want state police to do? How much do you want the FBI to do? It was created by people a lot smarter than him in order to rein in the illegals that are here because of the wide open border, mostly due to your ridiculous party or what's left of the Democrats.

So, again, Mondami should abolish ICE. You keep running with abolish ice. You know where abolish the police comes from or reimagine police? It basically costs you three branches of government, and then, of course, the fourth branch because the president's been in power to put those Supreme Court justices in place.

So, that is Mondami. I was able to go to the inner circle event because John Casimate was kind enough to invite me and give me a great seat. But I just couldn't believe how people are mocking the fact that a lot of his policies are socialist and ridiculous. Free buses, free housing, control of the rent. They were singing about it in an odd musical parody.

But in the big term, I can't laugh about it because I'm watching in real time a city being ruined and being led by somebody who can't even find the time. to salute somebody and condemn the killing of an eighty three year old veteran who has overcome cancer and war to get tossed on the subway tracks and later die two days later by drum roll please an illegal immigrant with a huge criminal record. That didn't even belong here anymore. At one point, you think he would have said, I feel terrible for the 83-year-old who lost his life. No, that didn't seem to pop up at all.

What can you do?

Meanwhile, on a lighter note on One Nation over the weekend, I had a chance to talk to Randy Levine, who's the president of New York Yankees. And I asked him the question about opening day being on Netflix, where it costs money to stream. And when so many Yankee fans or baseball fans wanted to get involved in opening day, they couldn't. They don't stream. They don't have a smart TV or they don't want to pay for Netflix.

Here's what he said, Cut 35. How do you feel about Netflix having your first game?

Well, I feel really bad, as I've said, for our fans, because a lot of people cannot afford a Netflix subscription. That was a decision made by Major League Baseball. We're one of the 30 clubs, so we go along with it. But I think we should be more sensitive. You should be more sensitive.

You just want to grow the game.

Now, I understand, too, that teams have to make money. Baseball has to make money. I'm all for that. But there's certain things I think that should be incumbent. For example, when the NFL network took some games on the end of national football years.

Season. What they would do is they would have the local game on a local station. Like in New York, it's 9 and 11.

So they'd make it available, but because if you don't have the NFL network.

So therefore, when it was cable Only That was the NFL saying, I don't want to lock people out of a game. Especially ones that don't have certain Channels.

So, I wish if baseball is going to do a Netflix deal and wants to make money to pay their salaries and maybe keep the cost down on tickets, which is not happening. then do it, but just allow those giant to be seen locally for free. From high atop. Fox News headquarters in New York City. Always seeking solutions, never sowing division.

It's Brian Killmead. From 48 through 6 in Midtown Manhattan, heard around the country, around the world, the Brian Killmead Show coming to you on this Monday. Hope you had a great weekend. We're back in action today.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of moving parts. The President of the United States is up early and ready to go. Said essentially: hey, Iran, if you don't come to the table legitimately and come to our 15-point demands, I'll wreck everything you got. That's interesting, isn't it? We have Michael Goodwin standing by from the New York Post.

Bottom of the hour, Arthur Brooks, author of a brand new book called The Meaning of Your Life. You know, he teaches uh He teaches a course on happiness in Harvard. One of the deep thinkers of our time, great guy. He'll be with us shortly.

So, let's get to the big three. Number three. Bottom line is that any civilized society recognizes that there are certain products that are not appropriate for children.

The social media is an inherently adult activity. Kids are getting crushed on it. Breaking point, social media backlash from taking the mega platforms to court and winning and banning them from city to city, country to country, as societies are deciding they're posing, they are actually poisoning the minds of our youth. Can we take lessons learned in exploding that, exploding that into the world of AI? We will see.

Number two. How long can you pay TSA workers for from the One Big Beautiful Mill?

Well we're going to pay them for as long as we have to and I will tell you the ICE workers have been amazing and they're helping people with their bags. Wow, that's pretty amazing, is right. Temporary relief at our nation's airports. It should be evident, but the long-term fix is elusive as the House and Senate cannot agree on how to fix the Democratic degenerated DHS defund mission. We'll talk about it.

Number one. Sure, I think a success looks like the Strait of Hormuz is open. We get some kind of deal on the ballistic missile program, some kind of deal on the nuclear program. That's probably about as much as you could hope for. I believe all of those things are actually within our grasp.

Consequential week begins in the war against Iran as talks begin and maybe ground aid, ground raids also begin for American forces to be coming in great numbers. We look at that, including the impact on energy and energy costs for you.

So let's bring in Michael Goodwin now for the New York Post. Michael, where do you think this conflict with Iran is going? Good morning, Brian.

Well, it certainly feels as though it's coming to some kind of inflection point that either America was able to make a deal to meet The goals of the war itself or We pull back if we get that deal. Or if not, then of course the gates to hell are open. Yeah, I guess so. But I think the President of the United States wants to make sure we end it the right way. And I think this is his by far most courageous decision, which I think six other presidents say it's not worth the risk.

Yeah, and you know, Brian, I think it's amazing how many Americans I think still don't understand. why this was necessary, why the President made this decision. And it's almost as though they've forgotten, if they ever knew, the lessons of the last 47 years, where every president Saw Iran as a great danger, and even more so as the nuclear program grew, as the work on the missile system grew, and as it began to fund its proxies in other countries throughout the region, in some cases around the world. And so this was continuing. No signs of a let up, no signs of a change, quite the opposite.

Each new leader of the regime in whatever area always said the same thing: debt to Israel, debt to America, little Satan, the great Satan. And as the weaponry got closer and closer to being able to make that happen, it had to be stopped. And the president, along with his predecessors, gave them every opportunity to stop it voluntarily. And he simply refused. and continued not just to develop weapons, but to create trouble, to try to kill Americans in the region and around the world.

So it had to come to some conclusion.

So General McKenzie, who as you know was under Biden, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of CENTCOM under Biden, he was on Faith the Nation and they tried to get him to say this war is going bad and he is not buying it, cut for it. This is part of a plan that's been in existence for many years. What we're doing right now is we're reducing Iranian ability to target ships in the strait through their short-range missiles, their drones, and other activities. We do that by maintaining air superiority over southern Iran on a 24-7 basis, looking for where these missiles are and striking them relentlessly. Once we reduce those to a very low level, then you'll be able to go in, if necessary, sweep for mines.

I'm not certain they put mines in the water yet. I predict eventually they will. It's their nature. But we have the ability to do this. We're on plan.

I'll be honest with you, Margaret. I've simulated this many years in many positions at Central Command. We're a little further along than we would have expected to be at this point in all the simulations that I've seen.

Now, that's what we keep hearing from everybody in the know.

Now, here's a guy in the know, but no longer active. And he's saying the same thing. We just got to keep politics out of this war. Is that possible, Michael Goodwin?

Well, look, I think one thing, Brian, is that the no kings uh attitude, which is essentially about Trump, has bled over into a general resistance that has affected the war as well. I mean, the left-wing media declared it a quagmire, I think, on the third day, and you have all the Democrats who only want to stop it.

Now, I understand nobody wants to commit the country to war unless it's absolutely necessary. But when you look at the facts here, this operation seems to fit that criteria. And yet the Democrats are not able to even be rational about the threat that the Iranian regime represented. And in your column, you talk about how people want to blame Israel for the war, that we're in this war. Can we grow out of this and get mature about this and understand it's in our interest?

Where does that come from? Yeah. I think a lot of it's just simple plain anti-Semitism. They're looking to blame the Jews for whatever happens. And as I make clear in the column, it's very interesting to me of the double standard.

First of all, they're accusing President Trump of being led to slaughter like an innocent lamb by Benjamin Netanyahu.

So Trump has been called every name of the book. This is the first time I remember him being called a dupe. of somebody else. But there's another dimension, Brian, which is that the Arab nations are allies, Saudis, Kirk Qatar, Bahrain, and the Emirates. Uh They uh are not fighting this fight.

It's America and Israel. And yet Iran is attacking them. Yes. But they're not fight they're not fighting back. They want America to finish the job.

Well, that sounds a lot like Israel. But nobody's accusing Trump of being hoodwinked by the Arabs, or nobody is saying the Arabs are traitors to America. I mean, that's why I say it's simple and clean anti-Semitism. That's what's driving a lot of these accusations.

So let's talk about the No Kings rally. A network of 500 groups with an estimated $3 billion in combined annual revenue is behind the coordinated No Kings protests, including one billionaire named Neville Roy Singham, who happens to be in China right now. He's funding a lot of it. He's trying to sow chaos here. It's an alliance between Democrats and Islamists and socialists wreaking havoc in our city, led by people like Bruce Bringstein and Robert De Niro, who seem to be dupes in this whole thing.

So they want to come out and say Donald Trump's a king. Is that the same guy whose Supreme Court just told him that he can't have Tariffs wherever he wanted. Is that the same king that can't get funded the TSA funded? He must be the worst king ever. Because it seems to me that there are checks and balances and he's functioning in a democracy after winning two of three elections.

Yes, I think the one of the problems on the left is they don't really believe in democracy when they lose. And I think they have no answer for why Trump was elected. And Which means that they're just not interested in the facts. They're not interested in what it was that made Connella Harris the laughing stock and still does. They will not admit that to themselves.

Perhaps they did. they could help come up with a better candidate. But so far, Gavin Newsom, really, or Harris again, really. I mean, this is the problem of the Democratic Party, that hating Donald Trump. It seems to be their go-to emotion, and they have no other thoughts about their own party and who would make a viable presidential candidate.

Don't worry, Gavin Newsom's queuing up. Kamala Harris is there. Governor Bashir, Governor Shapiro, and I guess a whole host, I guess, Mayor Pete Buttajudge. Terrible Secretary of Treasure. Congratulations.

It's going to be a crowded stage. Michael Goodwin, thanks so much. My pleasure, Brian. Thank you. You got it.

By the way, if you want to hear some of the critics of the war, listen to Congressman Jim Himes, who should know better because he's on the intelligence committee, who understands, you would think, the threat of Iran. Listen to him yesterday talking about Rubio saying Russia isn't making a difference in the war. Cut 10. I think it is very much in Marco Rubio's uh interest as one of the chief cheerleaders of this war. That the American people are now coming to realize is a catastrophe, another quagmire for Marco Rubio to say things like, oh, they're not making a difference.

Well, I don't agree with Marco Rubio on that point. You know, the Russians have capabilities, things like using basic satellite technology, which you can do commercially, by the way, to find our aircraft carriers. Our military bases in the region, Margaret, right now, are supposedly uninhabitable. Why do you think that is? That is not true.

They are inhabitable. We got people there. What they did is cleaned out the embassies because they don't want innocent people hit who aren't equipped for war zones. Understood? Number two is it's not a quagmire.

It's not a catastrophe. Remember all these people, when they said it and who they said it to, because they're going to be all held accountable. I'll be accountable and you can be sure of that. And this will be a big week to see if talks go anywhere in Pakistan and what the president's doing with the soldiers who are now finally in theater. You listen to the Brian Kill Me Joe, 1-866-408-7669.

Big guests, bold opinions, better information. This is the Brian Kill Me Joe. The talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmead. Throughout all of human history, boredom was just a part of life.

We went to work in the factory or on the farm, and a lot of that time was, well, pretty boring. But here's the thing: that made our brains work properly. When you're bored, a set of structures in your brain turns on called the default mode network. This is what you use for mind-wandering, abstract thinking, and considering the meaning of your life. In the last 15 years, we've all but gotten rid of boredom, and you know how.

The average person looks at his or her phone 205 times a day. But that also means the default mode network stays off.

So we never think about life's big why questions. And that is the right side of the brain as opposed to the left side of the brain that Arthur Brooks talks about in his brand new book. That is just, it's coming out this week. It's coming out tomorrow. And it is called The Meaning of Your Life.

He's coming up next right here on our show. And then he's going to be on. A One Nation on Sunday.

So it's going to be great. We always love talking to Arthur. And he also teached that happiness course, extremely popular at Harvard. And then he wrote a couple of books about that, too. I do want to bring up what's happening on social media.

You know the court case in New Mexico, they put that hit up Meta for $420 million. And then the individual that sued Meta for addicting their daughter to their online apps, Instagram as well as YouTube, they all paid the price, they all lost. Here's their attorney, Mark Lanier. About what could be coming next now, CUD 28. We've already got thousands of these lawsuits on file.

I'm sure there will be a boatload more. And This is the tip of the spear. And you've got to remember this is what's called a bellwether. It's the first trial. In The history of American jurisprudence.

It usually takes the plaintiffs three or four times to figure out how to win these cases. The plaintiffs are supposed to lose the first three or four. Yeah. We want. And so that's provocative in what it says to everyone.

So the question is, is this that tobacco moment, the DWI moment, mom's against drunk driving? You know, in the 70s and 80s, drunk driving out of control. And now you have generations that grew up who never think about getting behind the wheel of the car, the advent of Uber, the Uber apps and Lyft, and that also helps too. Is this that moment when it comes to cigarettes, which, by the way, I'm making a mini comeback thanks to Hollywood?

So when it comes to social media, I was struck by how many countries, I thought it was just Australia. I said, well, Australia realized the problem. They did something pretty extreme. They essentially banned it. They banned it for kids under 16 years old.

Guess who followed them? Austria, Denmark, France, and the United States. As of this weekend, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Spain restricting access, Brazil. China, Germany, Italy, Norway and Portugal. Considering bans India, Greece, Poland, Slovenia, UK and US.

So we'll see. The New Mexico verdict, Meta owes $375 million. The California verdict, Meta owes $4.2 million. And YouTube owns $1.8 million. The other apps like TikTok paid Out of court.

and did a settlement.

So essentially, this could be at a tipping point in terms of social media. And I think people are waking up. No more phones in schools. They said that was impossible. Listen to Jonathan Haight, a real expert on this from NYU, Cut thirty.

They're being shown horrific stuff. They're getting addicted. They're being approached by men who want sex or money from them.

Society, American society, is waking up this year. To the idea that this is insane, what we have done to our children.

Social media is not appropriate for children. The companies have proven over and over again they will not make it safe.

So I think it's time that we should say this is an adult activity, talking to strangers, to anonymous men online. This is insane. Yeah, and what they say is you st you're also Getting depressed. You think that by going on your phone things are better, but it actually makes things worse. And it's not just body image.

They say it's a lack of interaction with other people. All the things we've discussed, and you probably know, and it's been brought up at your dinner table, on your dining room, when you're out to dinner over the weekend. But now there's, I think now we're at the point where if you're with somebody, think about this. If you're with somebody and they whip out their phone and they're scrolling while they're talking to you, where you're with three people and two of them just have their phone and just kind of going through it arbitrarily. Unless you could explain yourself, people are going to go, that's rude.

Because they're saying, you're saying, in this moment, I'd rather talk to some random person who may or may not be communicating with me than talk to you. And I think that if people take their phone out, even at dinner, they'll say, Well, you know, I just got to check on my babysitter. And that's true. Like an emergency situation or some type of security situation or work is getting hold of me. That's different than Doom scrolling.

That's different than going on Facebook and posting something that you feel while you be while your friends are there.

So, I think that people are really waking up to the fact that a whole generation was manipulated by the growth of the cell phone, by the smartphone. Whether it's Android or whether it's Apple. People are trying to get their lives back, and now there's legislation to follow it, and it makes it so much easier on parents. You're an eight-year-old, your eight-year-old kid comes back and says, I want a phone. For what?

Can't bring it to school. You know, I don't, you're not going to bring it to sports. I don't want it at the dinner table. You can't go on social media until you're 16.

So, what do you need it for?

Well, they get a hold of you.

Okay, there are different ways to do that.

So I think it's a big boomerang. I think it's going to be, you're going to see learning improve. I think grades are going to improve too. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin. It's Brian Killmead.

That's so funny. You city folk, you worry about a lot of sh. My wife basically told me she doesn't want me around. She read it. I'm just saying.

How old are you? Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Yeah. You all come off here about the same age, same problems.

Spend about 50 weeks a year getting knots in your rope, and then you think two weeks up here will end time for you. None of you get it. Do you know what the secret of life is? No, what? This Your finger?

One thing Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit. That's great, but What's the one thing? Ah. That's what you got to figure out.

And that's led to Arthur Brooks' perhaps book that Allison found that clip. The meaning of your life is Arthur Brooks's new book. You know, he's in here always talking about happiness, conservative thinker at one point in your career, but mostly you spend a lot of your time in academia, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, my parents, my grandparents, that was really a brief time out.

Yeah, well, I took 11 years out. I was president of the American Enterprise Institute, which is dedicated to the free enterprise system and American values. Yeah. And prior to that, you were also a musician. Yeah, I started off as a professional classical musician of all things.

And then I went back to college when I was 30 and then got my PhD. Yeah. And it was interesting. I just always thought that. I never thought it.

You said you noticed yourself on the French horn. You noticed that you weren't as good. You were losing it a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like an athlete, you were still in your 20s, right?

But I didn't know musicians would go down. In their twenties and thirties. Like an athlete will probably peak at maybe thirty-two. Yeah, it's a high level. Is it because a French horn is so no, well it's just that classical music music is all about core defined motor skills and is extremely athletic.

I mean, you're using your body super intensively. Most of the time, you peak at about age 36 in classical music, like as a violinist or pianist or even a French horn player. I peaked much earlier, and I don't exactly know why. I did my best playing in my early 20s, and I started to, I wasn't going down. You wouldn't have heard me and said, like, something's wrong with that guy.

You could, you knew. But I knew, but I knew. And the truth is that people are only happy when they're making progress, when they're only good. I mean, think about it. You were a college athlete, right?

Yep. And you're a good soccer player, right?

Solid. And when you were getting better, it was awesome. And then when you stopped, you weren't going to go play an adult league because you're going to see yourself deteriorating and not getting better is just not fun for a striver like you. But I will qualify a little bit more. If I thought like if I was good enough to go pro and I was working my way to pro athlete, then that would take an intermediate step and then this step, then it would have been fine.

But the minute I realized there's nowhere for me to go. Right.

22, I'm done. I don't want to go on Sunday and play a game that if I win or lose, it doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's no standards.

Well, there's no progress. But there's so many people I know that do do that.

Well, because that's their avocation. That's their hobby. And they get a lot of enjoyment from that. And you get enjoyment from other things. But the truth of the matter is that the secret to purpose in life is progress.

And this is an important thing for us to keep in mind. Look, you and I come from, I mean, you come from the, you know, the Killmeads of County Cork or something like that, right? I mean, some Irish, they were coming here.

Well, they wanted progress in their lives. Americans are all about progress. This is the reason that we're the greatest country in the history of the world is because we're a progress-oriented people, and that's central to the meaning of life. That's a big part of the job. But you raise your standards, which is your book.

So in the beginning, my grandfather comes over here. He has no money. He has one contact. He gets a job. On the railroad, and then gets a job in a supermarket.

He's thrilled. Totally. But if you took the, he ends up owning that supermarket. Then if you said, hey, I got a job in a supermarket, he's like, no, no, I raised my standards. Totally.

I own one. And by the way, his kid is supposed to go to college and do something more. Totally. And you start to improve on that.

So we raise our standards. Why do we do that? We do that because, well, that's a process called the hedonic treadmill. Hedonic means feelings, and treadmill is obviously a metaphor. And you run and run and run and run.

And you're trying to make progress, but sometimes it's hard because you emotionally reset. It goes faster and faster as well.

So last year's goals are no good for this year. You need better goals. That's how progress actually works.

Now, the hard part is when you actually meet your goals, like I want to make a million dollars. And you hit a million dollars, you're like, huh, I thought it was going to feel so great. I guess I need $2 million. And the important thing to keep in mind is that there are certain things in your life that you need that actually are not going to come from these worldly goals. And they really come from your faith in God, your Your relationship to your family, your close friendships, and the good you're trying to do in the world through your work.

What's interesting, for your personal thing, you found that out, I guess, one of the first times when you got tenure at Syracuse. Yeah, yeah. So you got tenure. We're going to go out to dinner, we're going to celebrate. Yeah, and you didn't feel, even though you had that security you sought after.

I busted my hump for years because, you know, tenure in higher ed, for those who don't know how universities work, you get this permanent contract. And when you're in a top university, it was the top school in the world for my field. It was hard to get tenure. And I thought, man, when I get it, it's going to feel so sweet. And my wife and I went out to celebrate when I finally got my tenure.

We spent the whole dinner discussing the fact that our toddler son had bitten another kid in preschool that day. Right.

And at that point, did you start to realize where you were heading with your life? Because you wrote the book, The Meaning of Your Life. Back then, were you wondering, why am I not satisfied? Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And by the way, there's a happy ending to that biter, that kid.

He grew up to became a U.S. Marine. He's a sniper in the Marine Corps. He's turned his negative energy outward on America's enemies. Yeah, my daughter, who's now here working, we used to have problems with her and other kids, but she's aggressive and she turned out to be a good idea.

That's right. Two of my kids are Marines.

So, you know, there's all kinds of your violent kids can do good in the world, is the whole point. But sure, I started thinking about happiness very seriously because these are the most important things. I started studying it at that point. But so, Arthur, doesn't it show a balance that you're not narcissistic?

So you have this thing and the dinner celebrating what you achieved, but you really care about your family. Doesn't that show a healthy ego?

Well, sure, but it's also not fun. You know, the whole point is we went out to celebrate the fact that I had this real achievement that was really good for my family. It was a pinnacle of my career at the time.

Now I think back and I'm like, whatever, man, because you think back on your past accomplishments, like Grandpa Kilmead, he's like, it was a real accomplishment to work at a supermarket, but 10 years later, it would have been marked that he's actually not doing anything in his life. And the same thing for all of us is actually. What it comes down to.

So, what you do, you point out ancient philosophy, your knowledge is unbelievable. You read the classics, and you point out the Tolstoy story. Yeah, so here's a guy, acclaimed author, already probably internationally known, but he's depressed. Totally. And what does he do?

So, Leo Tolstoy had already written War and Peace. This was the most famous author in the world. He had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. He had been married and had 13 kids. He was super rich.

He was super well known, but he was completely depressed because he couldn't figure out the meaning of his life. And he thought that more success would bring it to him than anyone who studies science. He thought that that would find the answers for him, and it didn't bring it to him. And so he literally was on the brink of committing suicide.

So, what he did instead was like at one last gasp, he went to this little tiny village way out in the far east of Russia where he lived, and nobody knew who he was.

So, he's a big celebrity walking around. They can't even read. They don't know who he is. And he's just watching him live. And they're going to church and they're praying and they're laughing and they're kicking a ball around.

And everybody's dancing. And he said, ah, it turns out the meaning of life is being fully alive with people that you love. And that changed his life forever. And he got to that conclusion and left and went back. He went back and he spent more time with his family.

He spent more time with his friends. He started getting way more serious about his Christian faith. He was a deeply committed Christian until the end of his life and he died a happy man. And Dostievsky, author of The Idiot, tell me about him. He had a gambling issue.

Oh, my gosh. Dostoevsky, I mean, he wrote some of these incredible novels. He's probably the greatest novelist of all time. The Brothers Karamazov is this psychological thriller, as a matter of fact. And he had this terrible, terrible addiction, which is he couldn't stop gambling.

And at one point, he was so in debt that he made a deal with a publisher that if he finished a novel in just a month of a certain number of words, that they would pay off his gambling debts. And if he didn't make it, he would turn over all of his royalties for the next 10 years. I mean, this was like super high-stakes Vegas.

So he dictated this novel to this woman, this like young woman that just like did dictation really quickly. And he wrote about the life of a gambler. It was really about his own life. And at the end, he fell in love. They fell in love with each other.

They got married. And she kissed him. Cured him of his gambling addiction through undying true love.

So that filled the gap. Once again, I mean, and this is the deal. I mean, as everybody's listening to us right here, all the strivers who want more success, more success, good for you. Why do you have that? Because you're Americans, and I love that.

But there is no substitute for the love in your life that you will not find meaning without it.

So, can you be a striver and have that balance? Yes, you can, but you have to do harder work. The truth is that a lot of strivers who are looking for success in outwardly rewards of money, power, honor, Instagram followers, whatever your thing is, if you actually be, if you're thinking that you're going to find the meaning that you seek, the purpose that you seek in those things, you're going to die frustrated. You have to understand yourself. You have to diagnose yourself as somebody who's particularly at risk.

So it's so interesting.

So we're talking with Arthur Brooks, who's got this book called The Meaning of Your Life. He takes on big topics.

So you talk about. That um We have a left brain and a right brain. Right.

And we don't develop the right brain. That's true. But to develop the right brain, one of the best things you could do is be bored. I know.

Stare out the window on a train instead of staring at your phone. Stop reading for a second. One of the reasons that young people today are more depressed and anxious than they've ever been, and everybody knows this is true. At many colleges, more than 50% of the students are getting counseling or getting psychiatric. You know this in reality because you teach at a college.

I teach at a college. Yeah, exactly right. And at Harvard University, they're not worse off than everybody, but they're not better off than anybody either. The reason is because they're using the. Brains for?

We have a right hemisphere of our brains dedicated to purpose and meaning. That turns on when you're bored. And when you look at your phone, which the average person in America does 205 times a day, you kick yourself over to the left side of your brain, which is technology and analysis and answering how-to questions. God forbid you should start looking at Chat GPT to answer your personal questions. You probably never spend a single minute of the day on the right side of your brain.

The way to do it is put down your phone, look out the window, work out without headphones, go for a walk without devices, get bored, which we haven't done in 15 years.

So because of the iPhone. Right? But because of devices in general. No, it's really brain, it's because of the culture. It's the hustle and grind culture that says if you're bored for a single second, you're wasting your life.

And that you have to go harder, harder, harder, harder. And the iPhone, all it did was, I mean, personal devices, personal screens, they were just a better way of never being bored.

So the problem actually led to the solution, which actually worsened the problem. But don't you, let's say you're on your phone or on your iPad or in a book. Right.

Non-stop. Book, book, book. I love to read. When I have some downtime, I'll let you pick up the paper. Is that not working the right side of your brain?

So books are better than screens because they actually require that you use more of your brain and more of your imagination. What the screen is dedicated to doing is capturing all of your imagination, capturing all of your bandwidth.

So you don't have to do any work at all.

So books are way better. By the way, TV is better than small screens, and books are better than TV, to be sure. But you need lots of time away from everything as well. You need to be bored.

So you put this book together and you categorize people. You have quizzes throughout the book to see where you're at. Exactly. What led you to coming up with the idea that you could put together a book that would allow people to understand the meaning of your life? How long have you worked on this?

Five years. I've been working on this for five years. And what I've found is... Does it feed off your happiness classes? Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

I mean, this is the most important topic I teach in my happiness classes at Harvard. People, they just eat it up. What this book really is, is a solutions book. This book is a six-part. Guide for finding the meaning of life in six months.

And I'm completely sure it works. I've been working on it with my students for the past five years.

So you have to live in six different ways. And if you do these six steps, guaranteed, you're actually going to find more meaning in your life. Right.

Who's got it down? Who's an example of a figure that maybe we can relate to that seems to got it? Grandma. Grandma. Grandma's got it.

I mean, it's like the older people who lived, who grew up in the before times, who grew up before the devices, who grew up in a different culture. They were dedicated to the four big institutions of meaning. Grandma is more likely to practice her religion. Grandma is more connected to her family. Grandma had lifelong friends.

Grandma is actually dedicated to serving other people in what she did from day to day.

So let's talk about friends. Yeah. You have to ask yourself, how many friends do you have? Is the term convenience or transactional? Or how many friends do you have that are just your friends?

Yeah, right. How do you break it up?

So there's two kinds of friends: there's real friends and there's deal friends. Your deal friends are useful to you, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's people you do business with, people you know casually, people. But the point is that if you didn't do the deals, you'd never see them again. A lot of people that we work with are really deal friends.

Real friends are useless. In other words, you don't, they're not helping you in any way except love, is what it comes down to, except for the friendship itself. And most drivers and really, really busy people don't take the work to create real friendships, and they get lonelier and lonelier, and they don't know why. Wow. That's a real problem, especially for guys.

The loneliest people in America are 60-year-old men who work 60 hours a week. That's so interesting. Because back then, you could make more friends because you weren't on your devices. You had more of a chance of doing that. Right.

What are the percentage of people like I was with a guy that. Kind of a famous guy, known as very confident, let's say. He says he's 70. Four years old. Right.

He goes, I still get out with together with my high school friends. Yeah, it's great. Fantastic. Fantastic. How rare is that?

Very rare. It's very rare and getting rarer. What we find is that people under 30 have a 50% likely chance of saying today, no one knows me well. Why? Because the little time that they have, they don't spend it with people, they spend it on their devices.

Anything that substitutes for people is a problem.

Now, you can use your devices as a compliment, you can use it to enrich a relationship.

So I actually learned a lot of this from my kids.

So, as I mentioned, two of my kids are military, and that means they can't use social media in a conventional way. My third son, he's just like super trad retro in this particular way, and they all use social media to stay in touch with people that they know actually in person, no fool, and in real life.

So, this book actually has protocols for phone use, so it won't screw you up, it'll make your life better. Starts off with don't look at your phone for the first hour of the day. That's when you're doing neurocognitive programming. Don't sleep with it at your bedside, don't look at it for the first hour, your whole day will be better. Second is mealtimes, don't even have the phone on the table.

Table during mealtimes. It interrupts the neurochemical processes. Just having it around you, looking at it. Just looking at it, because it's going to actually cut off a hormone in your brain called oxytocin that connects you to other people. You need that hormone.

Third is the last hour before you go to sleep. It wrecks your sleep architecture. It makes it so you sleep very poorly and it wrecks your relationships. Just those three times. You do those three times, your life's going to change.

All right. Morph with Arthur Brooks, a few minutes on the other end. The meaning of your life. He is a number one New York Times bestseller, and you know he's a great guest of the show. He's going to be on my Sunday show, Sunday at 10.

Don't move. Learning something new every day on the Brian Kill Me Show. Uh Information you want, truth you demand. This is the Brian Kill Me Show, sponsored by Previgen. Previgion, made for your brain.

Just a couple of minutes with Arthur Brooks, The Meaning of Your Life, is the name of the book, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. One thing you ask people to do, Arthur, is go up to people that love you and say, Give me an evaluation of how I'm doing. Tell me what you like. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. Yeah.

That's a tough thing to do. Because you're going to hear some negativity. Yeah, for sure, but it's incredibly important. Honesty is love. I do.

And well, part of the reason is because I'm married to a Spaniard and they can't not tell you the truth all the time. I mean, yesterday I got completely taken to the woodshed by my wife. We've been married 35 years, man, because I had, you know, over the weekend, I had this thing and she's like, you're being a baby and you're being kind of a prima don. I had a big event, a big book kickoff event, and I was kind of complaining because there was no protein in the breakfast bar. And she's like, what's wrong?

With you, I mean, what do you think you are?

Some sort of a star, and so the truth is, we have a deal. When I'm not acting right, she tells me. And part of it is because I don't want the truth, but I need it. And you don't know the meaning of your life if you're lying to yourself and other people are lying to you, which is one of the other problems that successful people have. They get people kissing up to them all the time.

And the result is they start getting more kind of detached from reality and sad, and they don't know why because they don't actually know themselves. Right.

Is the term I showed Jamie Dimon? Said that, you know, when he got fired, how'd you take it? He goes, well, I stand for good to be fired, but my self-esteem is not wrapped up in my job.

So it was not nearly as bad as it was for other people. Yeah. That's what you're looking for, right? For sure.

Well, the other thing to keep in mind is that the suffering is in every person's life.

So it's not just about the truth about yourself, but when bad things happen to you. And suffering is an enormous source of meaning. When you suffer, the right side of your brain is active, and the right side of your brain is where you find the meaning of your life.

So the key thing to do is not to eliminate it, is to learn from it. And be bored. And be bored. Exactly right. Meaning of your life.

Arthur Brooks. Go pick up the book. It's out tomorrow. It's out tomorrow, Tuesday. But pre-order it now.

Exactly right. Get it delivered.