Jesse Hirsh welcomes Cameron Cowan to Metaviews for an engaging discussion that traverses the complexities of contemporary politics, media, and the future of AI. The conversation kicks off with an exploration of current events, including the legal troubles surrounding Rudy Giuliani, which highlights the often ironic and convoluted nature of political alliances and consequences. Cowan shares his insights on the potential fallout from the upcoming elections, particularly as it relates to the U.S. and its neighbors. The dialogue delves into the future of AI, with Cowan predicting that 2025 will be pivotal in determining the real-world applications of artificial intelligence and the value it can deliver across various sectors. Both Hirsh and Cowan express skepticism about the so-called AI bubble and examine how military interests may drive technological advancements in ways that traditional markets may not.
Takeaways:
Links referenced in this episode:
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Hello, I'm Jesse Hirsch and this is Metaviews, recorded live in front of an automated audience.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:13
And today's show.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:15
Boy, we got a burner.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:18
What the hell is going on with Cameron Cowan.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:23
Yeah, that's right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:26
Now you know, every Meta Views, we like to structure into a number of different segments that allow us to both serve our audience, but also bring the best out of our guests, put them on their back feet, perhaps get some really interesting insights out of them.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:43
So, Cameron, every episode we'd like to start with the news.
Jesse Hirsch 00:00:50
And you know, in this case, normally I throw to our website, but I wanted to start by showing that you too are also in the news business.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:00
But at Metaviews, what we're really into, and this is someone who, where both of us, I think, share a passion for the news.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:10
I think we also share a belief that the news has become far more accessible, way easier for people to get into it now.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:19
Meta Views, we do a daily newsletter and today's issue looks at the UK's AI plan.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:26
It's been heavily criticized as being essentially all hope and no substance.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:32
And even though the labor government thought that they'd be able to use it as a way to give them credibility, it's kind of achieved quite the opposite.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:42
And Cameron, this is where I like to throw to our guest and say, do you have any news that you would like to share?
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:50
Could be personal news, could be world news.
Jesse Hirsch 00:01:53
I've had, unfortunately, some guests on this podcast, podcast who've offered some fake news that I ended up having to correct after the fact.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:00
But hey, it's the Internet, why not?
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:03
So, Cameron, welcome to Meta Views.
Jesse Hirsch 00:02:06
What kind of news would you like to share with our audience?
Cameron Cowan 00:02:10
I don't think I have any breaking headlines other than the last New York Times news alert I saw was Rudy Giuliani was able to keep his house in a settlement with Georgia election poll workers.
Cameron Cowan 00:02:24
Which I laugh because everyone's like, oh, the 2020 election was stolen and there was fraud and blah, blah, blah.
Cameron Cowan 00:02:31
And I'm kind of like, please tell that to Rudy Giuliani.
Cameron Cowan 00:02:34
Please tell him it's please, right wing media pundits, please explain to him as he's losing everything, how fake all of that is and how much it's lawfare.
Cameron Cowan 00:02:44
Because he, I think, would have some words to say with you about, about that.
Cameron Cowan 00:02:49
And honestly, I think he's probably, I think of all the people Trump has victimized next to the contractors he never paid to work on his casinos, Rudy Giuliani, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
Cameron Cowan 00:03:02
Are probably Trump's worst victims.
Cameron Cowan 00:03:05
And Cohen as well.
Cameron Cowan 00:03:06
Michael Cohen is up there.
Cameron Cowan 00:03:09
Everyone who is around him ends up paying a lot of money to somebody in jail, whatever have you.
Cameron Cowan 00:03:16
And yet people keep hanging out with him.
Cameron Cowan 00:03:19
That's the part I'm amazed by.
Cameron Cowan 00:03:21
If I knew someone, if I was in that sort of realm and that I was around someone like that and that kept happening to people, I wouldn't be in the same room with that person.
Cameron Cowan 00:03:33
But yet you still have the Marc Andreessen's, Peter Thiel's, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamys flocking to him.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:43
Although those last names, those last names, they do have much to lose.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:48
So unlike our friend Giuliani, who now has nothing to lose, you know, perhaps they don't see the train wreck ahead of them.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:54
Although I will push back and say I'm not.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:57
I don't know if Rudy would have learned.
Jesse Hirsch 00:03:59
I wouldn't be surprised if given the opportunity, he would still make those same mistakes again.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:05
But you're right, there is this paradox where the closer they get to power, the more likely they are to get to.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:11
The more likely they are to be burned.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:13
And yet there's a full line of rich idiots behind them ready for the same opportunity.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:18
So I think that's an excellent example of news.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:22
And it kind of brings us to our second segment called what's the Future?
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:29
And, you know, as a future centric show, this is where we ask our guests, is there something about the future that you've got your eye on?
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:38
Maybe good, maybe bad, Bad, maybe imaginary.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:42
But we like to suggest that the role the future plays for all of us is a kind of a target.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:48
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:48
Kind of something that we're calibrating based on.
Jesse Hirsch 00:04:51
So, Cameron, is there something about the future, aspects of the future that you would like to share with our audience?
Cameron Cowan 00:04:59
I think 2025 is going to be the year of what is AI going to actually do?
Cameron Cowan 00:05:06
Where is the application going to make sense that adds value?
Cameron Cowan 00:05:11
I did an appearance on a popular Indian streaming show last night for Indian television.
Cameron Cowan 00:05:19
And not only it was very awkward because I talk about the whole H1B immigration thing, which that was a huge issue, I'm sure.
Cameron Cowan 00:05:28
Yeah, that was not awkward at all.
Cameron Cowan 00:05:30
And, but also, you know, the work, there's a lot of hype.
Cameron Cowan 00:05:36
We've seen a lot of possibilities.
Cameron Cowan 00:05:37
I think what's frightening to me is nobody on the hype train is really concerned about the, okay, what is this actually going to do?
Cameron Cowan 00:05:46
I think this year in 2025, we're going to answer that question.
Cameron Cowan 00:05:51
What actual business use case is there for AI?
Cameron Cowan 00:05:55
Where is the value it's going to add?
Cameron Cowan 00:05:58
And I think this year we're going to answer that question.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:03
I agree with you on a logical level, and I would have said I've been telling people that had Trump not won the election, I was convinced the AI bubble was gonna burst in the first quarter this year.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:17
Nvidia stock already is starting to show signs, but I kind of felt the bubble burst.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:23
The problem is, with Trump winning the election, bullshit is on top.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:29
Right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:29
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:30
Lies have been emboldened.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:31
And so to bring us back to today's meta views, the two arguments we make is Sam Altman has made this proclamation that AGI will be achieved during Trump's term, which I thought was poetic, cuz Trump's a big liar.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:47
So if you're gonna lie about something, it's in the Trump term that you're gonna make such a big lie.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:53
But to your point, about the AI, the rubber hitting the road, I agree it has to happen.
Jesse Hirsch 00:06:59
But my fear, and maybe this isn't a fear, my hunch is that it's the military that's gonna bail the industry out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:07
It's the military that's gonna be the biggest customer.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:11
Right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:11
Because they're framing AI as a kind of cold war, as a kind of arms race where, you know, if they don't do it, it'll be China.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:19
And that makes me think that because I, I see an illogical business model to what they currently have.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:27
They are spending way more money than they're bringing in.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:30
And to your point, I am skeptical as to whether the product is going to be ready for prime time and really allow people to do stuff with it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:39
And that's why I'm speculating it could be the military who have often subsidized technology, could do so again.
Jesse Hirsch 00:07:47
Go ahead.
Cameron Cowan 00:07:47
Yes.
Cameron Cowan 00:07:47
I mean, there's a case, especially given the competition we're seeing in the drone situation.
Cameron Cowan 00:07:54
Supposedly China has nicer, better, faster drones than we do, and this is a huge security risk.
Cameron Cowan 00:07:59
Although I only heard that from one lesser known backbench congressperson.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:04
My question would be, okay, we've been using drones since Afghanistan and Iraq and for several years.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:08
And if we're not the top in the world, and what the, what on earth do we give Raytheon and Lockheed Martin money for there?
Cameron Cowan 00:08:14
It's like you have a budget of 900 billion.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:16
Your job is to be first in everything.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:17
And we do mean everything.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:20
So.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:21
So I kind of wonder what the veracity of that really is.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:24
But I mean, yeah, an AI powered drone storm which China demonstrates, those lovely dragons in the sky for celebrations and all, this type of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:30
Yeah, I could definitely see that.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:32
But on the business side, I think we're going to see it deployed in customer service a lot.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:37
So it's not just going to be, you know, talking to a voice in the phone, listening for a keyword.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:41
It's going to be something smart enough to actually parse out what you're trying to say and come up with an answer for you, I think, you know, especially as it gets into enterprise.
Cameron Cowan 00:08:50
I'm looking for innovations in accounting, budgets, things like that personal computer started there and all, and all this.
Cameron Cowan 00:09:00
So I'm looking for all of that.
Cameron Cowan 00:09:02
I think what's frightening is, yeah, I was kind of thinking the bubble was going to burst as well, but nobody seems to think so.
Cameron Cowan 00:09:10
I interviewed someone yesterday who is a former Fortune 500 tech executive and that interview was probably one of the most depressing I've done because he basically was like, look, this stuff is going to be fully deployed by the end of the decade and two thirds of people will have no jobs and there's going to be a tremendous social people.
Cameron Cowan 00:09:27
No one is prepared for this, no one is talking about this, this.
Cameron Cowan 00:09:31
And I think it's going to be, I mean, as Thomas Piketty said in his work on capital, as I've written About capitalism, the 21st century economically is for those who own assets.
Cameron Cowan 00:09:43
Yeah, that's 1% of people of any given country and a very small minority of people on the planet.
Cameron Cowan 00:09:51
Everyone else ends up in what we call techno feudalism.
Cameron Cowan 00:09:54
Great book, by the way.
Cameron Cowan 00:09:56
And, and I was kind of like, I mean, you know, if I'm toward, if I'm my dad who's retiring in two months, I care much less about this stuff.
Cameron Cowan 00:10:05
But I'm 37 in April.
Cameron Cowan 00:10:08
I have a couple more decades, potentially three decades at least, maybe.
Cameron Cowan 00:10:16
Yes, at least three decades of working life and life beyond that to actually have to deal with an address and address this.
Cameron Cowan 00:10:23
What on earth are we to do?
Cameron Cowan 00:10:26
And nobody has an answer for that.
Cameron Cowan 00:10:29
And I think that's genuinely frightening and I don't understand why.
Cameron Cowan 00:10:34
Honestly, that in my mind is the only conversation right now.
Cameron Cowan 00:10:38
Yeah, you know, this is coming.
Cameron Cowan 00:10:41
People are being laid off, their companies already saying they frozen hiring.
Cameron Cowan 00:10:44
It's here and nobody's talking about what we do afterwards.
Jesse Hirsch 00:10:49
Let me push back on two points there because I think people are having this conversation.
Jesse Hirsch 00:10:55
But to go back to the language of my episode, my appearance on your podcast, which I will be having linking in the show notes because it's kind of the Part 1 to today's discussion is this is happening at the periphery.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:09
Like everyone I know is having this conversation.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:12
And to your point, I think there are a lot of people who are having this conversation at the dining room table, right at the bar, you know, on zooms, on social media.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:23
But this conversation is not happening in the AI discourse.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:27
It's not happening in policy circles, it's not happening within the mainstream kind of, you know, look, there's a squirrel kind of news cycle.
Jesse Hirsch 00:11:38
And I think that that's, that's really.
Cameron Cowan 00:11:40
Dangerous 72 hour discourse about it on Twitter.
Cameron Cowan 00:11:43
I mean, right now everyone's still mad about H1B visas and big accounts saying that young men should be happy to manage a Pand Express working 60 to 70 hours a week for people they have nothing in common with.
Cameron Cowan 00:11:55
That's where the discussion is at right now.
Cameron Cowan 00:11:58
The bar just keeps getting lowered.
Cameron Cowan 00:12:00
And I'm kind of like, hey, everybody who thinks that they're going to be safe from all of this if this proceeds at even half the rate they're saying it is, you know, violent revolution is going to be on the table and not just here.
Cameron Cowan 00:12:18
Or at least be in every industrialized nation who can afford the servers that make this stuff work?
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:24
Or at least violent upheaval.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:27
And violent upheaval is often much worse than violent revolution because you get the violence and not the change.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:32
But the other thing I was going to push back on is I would advise you, friend, not to bank on three decades of work when you've described, when you've projected techno feudalism, you should expect to work until death.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:46
That is very much the model of feudalism historically.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:51
So, brother, we've got much change to do.
Jesse Hirsch 00:12:54
Which fundamentally brings us to our feature segments here on Meta views.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:02
And the way I structure each episode is I sort of take three themes that I like to wrap the conversation I have the guest with today.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:11
In our case, it's MAGA Madness.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:14
Automated media and podcast ecosystems.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:18
And you know, the reason I wanted to start with Maga Madness is I'm from Kanakistan and most of our listeners are from Kanakistan.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:29
And while we are certainly watching the Maga madness because we it impacts us directly, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:36
The guy is literally threatening our country and our economy.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:41
But I would love, given that, I really appreciate your perspective and you as a news producer are really kind of putting an effort to pay attention to ask, what was our title Again for today, which I will come back to.
Jesse Hirsch 00:13:58
What the hell is going on?
Jesse Hirsch 00:14:02
I'm curious, Cameron, without getting too deep, without getting too anxious, can you let us in Kanakistan know about this MAGA madness?
Jesse Hirsch 00:14:14
How concerned do we need to be when this guy is literally saying he's going to invade us and install a washed up hockey star as our governor?
Cameron Cowan 00:14:27
I mean, I had a similar question.
Cameron Cowan 00:14:30
The Indians were asking a similar question last night because of the tariffs that would affect them because most of our pharmaceutical manufacturing is in India and all this sort of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:14:40
And so they've poor India's kind of been under the Trump gun lately between the H1BS and the tariffs and everything.
Cameron Cowan 00:14:48
I mean, Trump has said, I mean, I don't necessarily see troops marching across the border, but Trump has said in very plain language, economic pressure is, is coming.
Cameron Cowan 00:14:59
And I think given that Trudeau's leaving in March and the Conservative Party in some form, maybe Polever, maybe somebody else will sweep into power with no problem whatsoever.
Cameron Cowan 00:15:13
I mean, I think it's kind of going to be in a situation where there's going to be a lot of capitulation, at least on the economic front at a minimum.
Cameron Cowan 00:15:22
But I will tell you the same thing I told the Indians last night.
Cameron Cowan 00:15:26
One of Trump's strategies that is a strength but makes everybody else's life a lot more difficult is we never really know what he's going to do.
Cameron Cowan 00:15:38
And so it's something where.
Cameron Cowan 00:15:42
But I think by and large we'll probably wrest Greenland from the Danes before we annex Canada.
Cameron Cowan 00:15:52
But I definitely think in terms of economic pressures on Canada to basically kind of sell the farm.
Cameron Cowan 00:16:00
I mean, at some.
Cameron Cowan 00:16:02
Here's what I think the kind of worst case, the most likely, but somehow yet worst case scenario is going to be there's a lot of economic pressure.
Cameron Cowan 00:16:11
You know, Canada will try to resist it first, but it won't be economically possible because your country's so small in people, not in land area, but in people, all this type of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:16:21
Ottawa's kind of forced to give in to every Trump demand possible and you become basically a de facto 51st state.
Cameron Cowan 00:16:28
All the responsibility with none of the benefits, sort of.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:32
And you sort of, you alluded to the power dynamics because part of what'll happen is the federal Conservatives, they won't resist.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:40
They'll from day one be like, hey, yeah.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:43
They'll be like, we should submit.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:46
These are our neighbors.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:47
We should like a dog, roll over and show them our belly and make sure that we get what we want.
Jesse Hirsch 00:16:53
I wrote a post in the early days of when this started saying, all right, let's talk terms, because we're not going to be the 51st state.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:02
We should be 51 through 65.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:05
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:05
Because we've got a bunch of provinces.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:07
In each one of those provinces is as distinct as, you know, Montana and Georgia.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:12
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:12
Or New York and Montana.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:17
No one is even looking at that.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:19
So to your point, I think it would be the.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:21
I'm not even sure we'd be the 51st state.
Jesse Hirsch 00:17:23
I think we'd be like Puerto Rico.
Cameron Cowan 00:17:26
Yeah, I know, but that's what I'm saying.
Cameron Cowan 00:17:27
But part of the problem with Puerto Ric as a territory is they have lots of burdens.
Cameron Cowan 00:17:32
They're subject to the Jones act, all this type of thing, and they have none of the.
Cameron Cowan 00:17:37
A lot of the privileges that come with being a full part of the country.
Cameron Cowan 00:17:41
I think, unfortunately, that's probably where this is going for Canada, which means life for your average everyday Canadian, and I do a lot of business in Canada, is going to get a lot worse.
Cameron Cowan 00:17:53
And here's where I think, maybe not necessarily during Trump's term, but long term, down the road, I can see a scenario where people are standing in Parliament, Ottawa, being like, you know what?
Cameron Cowan 00:18:04
We should have a plebiscite and apply.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:08
Because you can do that.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:09
You can apply.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:10
Our Constitution allows anybody to apply to be a state sort of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:14
And it's like, we really should have a plebiscite and perhaps adopt the US Constitution and come to terms with Americans.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:20
I mean, I think if the economic pressure works out and Canada ends up with a lot of burden and responsibility with no privileges, I think in five to 10 years, somebody's going to come along and say, let's just get married.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:34
Like, you know, living together is awkward.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:37
You know, the finances are separate and we're ven.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:39
Mowing all the time.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:40
Let's just get married and join the joint bank account.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:44
Well, and where.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:45
Where I.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:46
And I don't.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:46
I want to be careful with my words here, because there's a lot of Canadians right now pissed off, and rightly so.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:52
But where.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:52
I see.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:53
I don't blame them.
Cameron Cowan 00:18:54
I'm so sad we're having this discussion, by the way, Let me be clear.
Jesse Hirsch 00:18:57
But we have to be having these discussions if, you know, there's nothing inevitable as long as you're paying attention, is a great slogan.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:05
And I see two silver linings here.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:07
One is the opportunity for solidarity across the board.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:12
This is why I think our conversation and the way in which podcasts as a grassroots level of media are connecting Canadians and Americans the way that Redbook, aka RedNote, is currently connecting Americans and Chinese.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:28
I also think on the other side to that, you may or may not be aware of Canada's relationship with its first nations, which is highly contentious at best.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:42
And this could be both a positive and a negative.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:45
There.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:46
There are certainly a lot of first nations who would love the opportunity to renegotiate, renegotiate their relationship with settler governments.
Jesse Hirsch 00:19:54
And having a weakened Canada would very much put them into such a position, even though negotiating with Trump in America is a fool's game.
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:05
But then the flip side to that is your earlier point about revolt.
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:09
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:09
Because revolting in Canada is a lot easier than the United States because there's a lot of places to go underground, there's a lot of places to hide, there's a lot of places to kind of get out of the way.
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:22
And so while you're right, I think the Canadian establishment, the, the part of Canada that owns the mines and owns the, the oil and owns the natural resources, they'll be like, we love you, Lady Liberty.
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:36
But I think there'll be a lot of people who will be like, fucking no.
Jesse Hirsch 00:20:40
And, and, and, and, and that could as a virus of rebellion, a spread back into the United States.
Cameron Cowan 00:20:48
No, I think that is definitely possible.
Cameron Cowan 00:20:51
I don't know if Canada's first nations are going to have any better luck with our, our Bureau of Indian affairs.
Cameron Cowan 00:20:56
And it's quite the opposite way.
Cameron Cowan 00:20:58
Yeah.
Cameron Cowan 00:20:58
And it's still called that, by the way.
Cameron Cowan 00:20:59
We haven't changed the name.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:00
It's still called the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:03
I don't have any better luck with them, especially under a Trump administration.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:07
But yes, I mean, I think there, I think, and here's kind of the nice thing about Trump.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:12
Trump's political instincts are unmatched.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:15
If anywhere along the way, he gets a little too much resistance because he has no ideological values, he's gonna fold like a wet paper bag.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:25
So my advice to the average Canadian.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:28
Cuz your establishment's not gonna help you.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:30
They would.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:31
You're right.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:31
They probably would.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:32
Welcome this marriage is don't be quiet.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:37
Don't wait for Ottawa to decide or for them to say, no.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:41
Our sovereign.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:42
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:43
No, no, no, no, no.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:44
Get.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:45
You have an election coming up too.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:46
Get loud.
Cameron Cowan 00:21:48
Don't let anybody get into power that's not committed to Canadian sovereignty if you don't want to be annexed.
Jesse Hirsch 00:21:54
Now, here's the paradox of the strange times we live in.
Jesse Hirsch 00:21:59
And this is where I have to take a moment to go back and say, what the hell is going on?
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:06
Because I don't know how closely you followed convoy that occupied Ottawa around the same time that the January 6th event happened.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:21
And right now there are, right across the country, the Canadian far right is organizing a trucker convoy 2.0 for the sole purpose of demand.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:35
Well, I shouldn't say the sole purpose because they're always selling stupid shit.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:39
For the primary purpose of demanding that Trudeau step down immediately and call an election immediately.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:47
Because what he's done is he's resigned as the leader of the Liberals, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:52
So he's still the Prime Minister functionally.
Jesse Hirsch 00:22:55
And he's given the Liberal Party three months to have a leadership race so they can then pick a leader and then call an election so that the election is run under the new leader.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:05
And Jon Stewart sure interfered in Canadian politics by having Mark Carney on his show because that instantly put Mark Carney at the front of the pack.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:16
But this trucker convoy, this freedom convoy, is going to basically disrupt traffic across the country, organize.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:26
They're not going to do occupations like they did last time, but they are going to do kind of slow moving protests, rings around cities and blocking key arteries.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:38
So the paradox here is Canada's always seen itself as a modest, friendly, polite country where making loud noise, protesting loudly is kind of always seen.
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:49
Again, this was part of the colonial mindset to keep the population passive and kind of in line, Right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:23:57
And now it's the far right that are the one raising a stink.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:01
And these fuckers are exactly the ones who'd be like, we love Trump.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:05
Let's be a vassal state to Trump.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:07
We would be honored to be his feudal servants.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:11
So it's this paradox where the protest space has been occupied by the people with the least moral high ground to occupy it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:19
And a lot of people are scared.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:22
And this was your point about no one knows what to do.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:26
A lot of people are scared.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:27
They're looking for someone to give them guidance.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:29
They're looking for someone to kind of wade into it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:33
Are you in the United States?
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:36
We talked about this in part one of our conversation on your podcast.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:41
Do you think the Democratic Party, do you think there's anyone on the left in the United States who's, you know, starting to realize, shit, we, we gotta stand up, we gotta start giving people a sense of hope.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:51
We gotta start giving people a belief that there's an end to this and other side to this.
Jesse Hirsch 00:24:57
Are you seeing any of that?
Cameron Cowan 00:25:00
No.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:01
And you won't flat out, you won't.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:04
The left in this country has been completely and thoroughly defeated.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:08
We are raising the white flag.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:09
It's over.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:11
It's 1980, you know, it's, it's 1920 in a lot of ways.
Jesse Hirsch 00:25:17
Aren't going to elect Walter Mondale.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:20
Surprise, surprise.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:22
No, I mean the left is completely in disarray and entirely in retreat.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:28
We're completely out of power everywhere, in every branch of government.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:33
In most states, Democrats are structurally locked out of power.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:37
Looking at you, Wisconsin, looking at you, North Carolina, looking at you, Ohio.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:44
There is nowhere in this country where there is a beacon of hope for the left.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:50
I think even in California, thanks to the fires, we're going to see probably the biggest rightward shift we've seen in about 40 years.
Cameron Cowan 00:25:57
No, everything Democratic left leaning and whatnot is in complete and total retreat and disarray.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:03
And so because there's all this disorganization right now and nobody has a message no one wants to do, no one wants to do, no one knows what to say, all this type of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:11
There's no one offering a message of hope because no one even knows what to do next.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:18
And I think also the average, and I saw this immediately after the election and we've seen this in TV ratings and news engagement across the board.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:26
The average center left, far left person is simply disengaging.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:31
I've heard people say, I'll check in on this stuff again in two years.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:34
A lot of people are saying we're not paying attention to everything he does this time or resisting or anything like that.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:40
The national mood is just not there.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:42
There has not been a single major protest since his election.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:46
Not one.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:48
And a handful of kind of low level things.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:51
But no, no big marches, no pink hats, no no nothing.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:55
His confirmation went through in four hours without so much as a buyer leave.
Cameron Cowan 00:26:59
And certainly no, no riots or anything like that.
Cameron Cowan 00:27:03
It's, it's a complete retreat here and no one probably wants to hear that.
Cameron Cowan 00:27:08
But that's the sad state of affairs.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:09
Well, and I think you're right and I think the other historical analogy here was, was the end of the 60s because, you know, there were a number of incidents and in the pop culture sense, Altamont was, was a big one.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:21
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:22
Where Altamont was kind of considered the death of the optimism of the 60s.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:26
And what a lot of radicals did.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:29
Yeah, exactly.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:30
And what a lot of radicals did, my parents in particular was they went back to the land, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:36
They all retreated to kind of intentional communities and communes and experiments.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:42
Almost all of which failed.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:44
But it was, to your point, a retreat of going inward, of saying, I can't handle the shit show.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:51
I'm going to try to make a difference on my own.
Jesse Hirsch 00:27:53
But that was equally self defeating because then you're retreating and you're sort of seeding the political stage, ceding the political space to your opponents, your enemies.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:04
I want to.
Cameron Cowan 00:28:05
But it also gave us the computer revolution.
Cameron Cowan 00:28:08
A lot of those people moved to California, moved to Silicon Valley and began building the personal computer revolution as well.
Cameron Cowan 00:28:17
And let's make money.
Cameron Cowan 00:28:18
And they started building businesses.
Cameron Cowan 00:28:19
I mean, it's kind of interesting how that all shook out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:22
I, I disagree.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:23
I've actually dug into that only because, you know, the whole, the well and the whole Earth electronic link, like that whole, you know, the whole Earth catalog was kind of connected to my parents and their extension.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:35
And I dug into that.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:36
And the truth of that story is the nerds and rich people who did invent the computer revolution used the kind of hippie world as a cover, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:45
Stuart Brand was, was, was true.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:49
Stuart Brand was someone who was genuinely a hippie and part of the electric Kool Aid acid test and like, you know, part of the, the Haight Ashbury scene.
Jesse Hirsch 00:28:58
But most of them were not.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:01
And he was like the mascot, the way John Perry Barlow was kind of a mascot, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:06
They were tokenistic amongst these rich fucking nerds, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:11
And they like the idea of hippies.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:14
But no, they weren't.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:15
They were culturally appropriating the hippie culture and using it as part of the Silicon Valley origin story.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:23
And I say this only because I've gotten to an age where fucking I was there.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:27
And it's interesting to see how everything, the stories are being changed.
Jesse Hirsch 00:29:32
I totally, I know that the origin story of Facebook, if it wasn't in a movie, would have already been completely revised by now.
Cameron Cowan 00:29:42
I appreciate that, but I think there's especially as I did, I grew up in Denver, Boulder area.
Cameron Cowan 00:29:48
And Boulder got on the map during that time.
Cameron Cowan 00:29:50
And I'm old enough to remember the old Boulder, which was aging Volvos and aging VW bands and all this sort of of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:29:57
I don't think, I think if the 60s had been successful and Kent State hadn't happened, Altamont hadn't happened, all this type of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:30:05
I think a lot of very smart, intelligent, college educated people which by that time, in the late 60s, that's who was in the movement.
Cameron Cowan 00:30:12
The earlier business owners, people out of the beat movement kind of moved on this, the college kids, now Vietnam protests, all this sort of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:30:19
I think a lot of them took all that education, Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example, took all that education, all that knowledge.
Cameron Cowan 00:30:26
They moved to Boulder, they moved to Northern California, all this type of thing, and they decided, you know what?
Cameron Cowan 00:30:32
I think we like money.
Cameron Cowan 00:30:33
Let's start building some businesses, let's start doing some things.
Cameron Cowan 00:30:36
I don't think you would have gotten that culmination of talent and capital in those locations that would then enable someone like Bill Gates, who was a rich nerd, to have the infrastructure necessary to buy DOS from Xerox in order to make Windows.
Jesse Hirsch 00:30:54
I agree with you, but I think the argument you're making is a cultural one where I'm suggesting this technology would have happened, but it wouldn't have been as cool, it wouldn't have been as usable, it wouldn't have been as friendly.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:09
And I'm curious to throw a perception at you which you can push back.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:14
I always found the Colorado strains of, of this particular social movement heavily influenced by the.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:22
The figure and legend of Hunter Thompson.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:25
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:25
Because he, he was a, an archetype within this social milieu that I know I was attracted to as a young person.
Cameron Cowan 00:31:34
Yes, yes, yes.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:35
But he was also arguably on the right side of the spectrum.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:39
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:39
Like, he was kind of right wing libertarian, as Colorado does have a lot of right wing libertarians.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:44
And there was a time in the 60s and 70s where the left and the right had a lot of overlap because they were both rejecting the kind of Nixon establishment.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:55
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:31:55
And saying, you know, we want to have freedom in the country.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:00
I want to get to the part of our discussion talking about automated media, because it's kind of been coming up and it's something I want to pick your brain about.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:08
But before we get there, we've got the inauguration coming up on Monday, and I've sort of been joking that Mother Nature is providing us with a very dramatic backdrop as the polar vortex at about that exact time is gonna plunge North America into darkness and cold.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:28
We've just had, I think, a very sober but critical assessment of the state of the American left.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:35
What do you think's gonna happen on Inauguration Day?
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:38
And I don't mean this in terms of action, I mean this in terms of narratives.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:42
What kind of tone do you think the Trumpists, the MAGA crowd, are trying to set as their regime?
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:49
And I say this only because it feels like there's a lot of hype.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:52
It feels like there's a lot of innuendo.
Jesse Hirsch 00:32:55
But as a journalist, as someone who really pays attention to kind of the news and the general sentiment out there.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:03
What's your take?
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:05
What do you think?
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:06
The tone or the start to this regime?
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:09
How's it going to.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:10
How do you think it's going to play out come Monday in the week?
Cameron Cowan 00:33:14
Well, I think as far as the inauguration goes, I think it's going to be very interesting who isn't going to show up.
Cameron Cowan 00:33:22
We found out today that pretty much nobody's going to the inauguration lunch.
Cameron Cowan 00:33:28
And it'll be interesting to see kind of who shows up on stage.
Cameron Cowan 00:33:32
I think the crowds will be even smaller than they were eight years ago.
Jesse Hirsch 00:33:38
Especially if it's cold.
Cameron Cowan 00:33:40
Yeah, the stands are going to be even emptier than they were eight, eight years ago.
Cameron Cowan 00:33:44
And I think that's going to, you know, kind of piss Trump off.
Cameron Cowan 00:33:48
I think the day of, it's going to be a flurry of activity.
Cameron Cowan 00:33:52
You know, Melania will get paid a quarter million dollars to touch him for five minutes at the dinner, you know, which will be all MAGA people and Republican people and all this sort of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:01
And then probably beginning that evening and into Tuesday morning, we're going to see an avalanche of executive orders and there's going to be a lot of photoshoots, mobile office as they start doing stuff, and all this stuff is already queued up.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:14
They already know exactly what they want to do.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:16
It's already been typed out.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:17
They just got to put it on letterhead as soon as someone gives them the boxes that it's in.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:21
And so it's.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:22
So there's going to be a lot of stuff happening very, very quickly that's going to kind of be the day of, in the week following, it's going to probably be recovery from that.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:33
And if anything, if we know anything about Trump, he's going to do it so fast, we'll have barely had time to think about thing one before thing two comes along.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:44
So I imagine it's just going to be as it was eight years ago.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:47
You know, our every two hours, new thing, new alert, new this, new that, new the other thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:34:52
And that's going to be the pace of things, at least for that first week, because they've got a lot of stuff on tap.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:00
However, there's confirmation hearings happening now and into next week, and they're not going well.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:07
And so I think, I think, surprise, surprise.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:09
So I think while Trump is going to write a lot of stuff in executive orders, the other half of the narrative is going to be good luck getting any of your people through.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:17
Tulsi Gabbard, her confirmation Hearings have been delayed indefinitely because she's a security risk.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:24
Everybody knows it.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:24
It's not even a secret.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:26
Republicans know that.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:27
It's not a secret.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:27
Yeah, the Hegseth hearings are hilarious.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:31
And they're already a joke.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:34
It's.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:34
And it's just going to get worse as we, I mean, Marco Rubio will probably sail on through because he's senator from Florida.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:40
Everybody knows him.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:41
He's probably the only person that's reasonably qualified for what he's been appointed for.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:44
So his will be drama free.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:46
It will be drama for everything else.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:48
We also don't know what Trump is going to do with Doge.
Jesse Hirsch 00:35:51
Yeah.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:52
Is that, is he going to executive, you know, form a new department, appoint Eli Elon Musk the secretary of IT and they'll have to be confirmed by the Senate.
Cameron Cowan 00:35:59
What does that look like?
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:01
I think it's going to be outside of government.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:04
I think it's going to be some extra para again, the way the Gestapo were meant to be a regulating effect on the government as a whole.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:15
But I got to ask you a follow up there because I think you nailed it right on the nose in terms of the queue of executive orders that they have ready to, to blitz.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:25
And I'm curious, generally speaking, if, like, what's your sense of how the media is gonna handle that?
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:33
Cause I'm anticipating chaos.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:35
And my question is, is that sufficient distraction from the shit show that's happening in the nomination hearings?
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:43
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:36:44
Will it allow him to kind of destabilize the public narrative and maybe push a Tulsi Gabbard through, maybe, you know, try to again, get all eyes away from the democratic process, the confirmation hearings, and instead be kind of focused into the spiral of outrage.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:02
I think that's what he's going to try to do.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:04
But the reality is the Senate who has did the confirmation hearings is run by a not Trump person named John Thune from South Dakota.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:12
I'm familiar with John Thune.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:14
I've only met him once.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:15
I don't know him personally.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:16
Personally, some people I do know from my time in Republican politics, but I've known Jonathan for a long time.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:22
He's not a MAGA person.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:23
He's not a Trumper by any stretch of the imagination.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:27
And so he's gonna want to respect the process and the independence of the branch.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:34
So while Trump may try to do that, the reality is they still have to get the votes.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:39
Now Trump's gonna try to get them to adjourn, to do adjournment appointments so he can have people in for almost two years without Senate confirmation.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:50
Whether John Thune goes along with that remains to be seen.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:54
And let's also not forget Trump didn't get a mandate.
Cameron Cowan 00:37:59
He won by 1.5%.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:02
They control the House by two seats.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:05
They control the Senate by three seats.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:09
Very minimal.
Jesse Hirsch 00:38:10
Mm.
Jesse Hirsch 00:38:12
Which kind of gives power to.
Jesse Hirsch 00:38:14
To your point, those individual senators or individual congresspeople who may be the linchpin on some of these votes.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:21
Yes.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:23
And there, I think, will be opportunity for Democrats to get some of the stuff they want by, as they did during Trump 1, filling in the votes the Republicans are always unable to whip up in their own caucus.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:35
And we already saw that with the budget continuation bill and all this type of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:40
But, I mean, we're interested in terrible fights.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:42
You know, Elon and company want to try to cut things out of the budget.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:46
Elon managed to kill an entire piece of legislation with a tweet, and they weren't even in office yet.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:51
Now they're going to be in office, and that's organized.
Cameron Cowan 00:38:53
Everything we've experienced in the interregnum between November 5 and now is going to go into hyperdrive starting Monday at 12:01.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:02
Well, and to your point, it is a kind of snowball effect with where the more they get away with, the more that they'll keep pushing it and building momentum down speed.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:12
So.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:12
But I'm curious to sort of pivot the discussion, but also not because I think politics, it will continue to be the context of what we're talking about.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:21
You're a journalist.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:22
You're someone who, like myself, is passionate about making media, passionate about getting stuff out there.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:29
I wanted to talk to you kind of for selfish reasons today about what I call automated media, which is using tools to help facilitate media production, to make media production more accessible.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:43
What are your thoughts on using AI, on using automated tools as part of your operations, as part of your day to day?
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:51
And I say this because, you know, on part one of this discussion, we sort of got into it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:39:57
And here on my podcast, I've had a few conversations with other guests about how potentially empowering it is, how we're really lowering the bar in terms of giving people a voice, allowing them to make media.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:10
So given the political conversation that I've been enjoying so far, where does automated media come into this?
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:17
Because I think you're right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:18
Come Monday, there's gonna be a lot of silence on the left.
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:22
Can there be new voices?
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:24
Do these tools enable new voices?
Jesse Hirsch 00:40:26
Are you gonna be one of those voices, especially over the next Four years.
Cameron Cowan 00:40:30
Well, I will say this.
Cameron Cowan 00:40:32
I'm not looking forward to The Cameron Journal NewsHour on Monday.
Cameron Cowan 00:40:36
I've been compiling some other stories that I want to talk about, but obviously we all know what the big story I'll be talking about will be, and I'll be talking about quite extensively.
Cameron Cowan 00:40:46
And I haven't decided I'm going to livestream the inauguration or not.
Cameron Cowan 00:40:50
I'll decide on Sunday if I care that much.
Cameron Cowan 00:40:53
But yeah, I mean, it's going to be, you know, a lot of, a lot of stuff, kind of a fire hose of things.
Cameron Cowan 00:40:59
I think one of the things we're moving into now, and we talked about this before, so for more, hit the episode I did with you earlier.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:08
It's on the camera.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:09
Journal.com is we're yes, AI is very helpful.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:14
AI made clips of our segment together.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:16
Those are already out and they've done very well.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:19
I have an AI tool that takes conversations and turns them into articles.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:23
I've been towards playing around with AI for different things and purposes.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:29
And when I get into SEO and all this type of thing, it can be very helpful to help fill in gaps, fix problems, because a lot of my traffic comes from Google.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:36
I rank very well.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:37
But it's always a game.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:38
You can always do better.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:39
So I think that type of stuff is here and here to stay.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:42
I think there's going to be a lot of that.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:44
But I think it also, you know, we've seen a huge media shift, at least in this country, away from traditional media, which is all but collapsing and to independent media, independent voices.
Cameron Cowan 00:41:55
And there's, you know, even today, I was just before this, I was watching Vosh, who's a left wing YouTuber, talking about a segment Hassan Piker did with Bernie Sanders.
Cameron Cowan 00:42:06
And you know, and kind of being like, the Democratic Party, at least in this country, needs to understand times have changed.
Cameron Cowan 00:42:13
The influencers are on YouTube, they're on Twitch, they're on podcasts.
Cameron Cowan 00:42:19
I mean, I was just even reading this morning the New York Times had a thing about, you know, it's like how these podcast listeners move to the right.
Cameron Cowan 00:42:27
It's like, oh, my Goodness, is it 2012 Times Headquarters?
Cameron Cowan 00:42:31
I was about to take a train into Manhattan.
Cameron Cowan 00:42:33
I'm only in Connecticut right now.
Cameron Cowan 00:42:34
I was gonna take a train to Manhattan, be like, is it 2012 here?
Cameron Cowan 00:42:37
Are you in a time anomaly?
Cameron Cowan 00:42:38
This has been a thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:42:40
Joe Rogan has 100 million listeners.
Cameron Cowan 00:42:45
That is one third the population of our entire country.
Jesse Hirsch 00:42:49
I will say almost on a naive level, it still blows me away that A, people want to listen to Lex Friedman and B, that they'll listen to him for eight hours.
Cameron Cowan 00:42:59
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:42:59
Eight hour episodes.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:01
Like, oh, my God, as the culture and the discourse shifted.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:05
Right.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:06
Yes.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:06
I mean, the energy is.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:08
Is in Joe Rogan, it's Lex Friedman, it's Andrew Tate, and even on the left, which is a much smaller ecosystem, it is bosh.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:16
It's David Pakman, it's Hasan Piker, even me.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:20
I podbean rated me top 50 news and politics podcast last year.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:26
You know, it's.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:26
It's, you know, all this sort of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:27
I mean, it is.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:28
You know, I'm also one of the few podcasts that reviews books, but, you know, sort of thing like that's where.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:33
No, no, no.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:34
Let's verify you're one of the few podcasters who reads books.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:39
You know, let's get that statement accurate there.
Jesse Hirsch 00:43:42
But, yeah.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:43
Yes.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:43
I mean, that's.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:44
Yeah, that also can be true.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:45
That's where the energy is at right now.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:47
And we're going direct to the audience.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:49
You know, my newsletter goes out every Saturday.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:51
The NewsHour happens every Monday.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:53
There are hundreds of people that visit cameraman.com every single day for news.
Cameron Cowan 00:43:58
I know for a fact that for many of my superfans, I am the only place they get news.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:02
My videos are watched on six different platforms.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:04
All this.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:05
So I think that's where it is now.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:08
And the Democratic Party and the leftist establishment in this country got caught with their pants down on that, which is funny, because we're usually the ones who are ahead of this stuff, not the Republicans.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:18
And for two, even after the election, there's been no rush into embracing us.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:25
They're not calling up Every.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:27
The top 100 podcasts, which would include me in this country, and saying, hi.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:32
So we're having a meeting at the Watergate Hotel, which is where they're ironically headquartered, still at the Watergate Hotel in D.C.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:39
can you come down?
Cameron Cowan 00:44:40
Can you come in so we can figure out how to work with you?
Cameron Cowan 00:44:43
Those calls haven't come yet.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:45
The money to support this hasn't flowed in yet.
Cameron Cowan 00:44:48
They're still clinging to msnbc, which is a sinking ship.
Jesse Hirsch 00:44:53
And you're quite generously helping me transition to our conversation on podcast ecosystems, because this is kind of similar to where we ended our conversation last time with me asserting I suspect they will.
Jesse Hirsch 00:45:07
I agree they have their heads up their ass.
Jesse Hirsch 00:45:10
And I think at a certain point, to use my metaphor, the polar vortex is gonna make that chill so deep that they are gonna have to figure this Out.
Jesse Hirsch 00:45:19
And to your point, they are gonna have to look and say, who are those hundred podcasts?
Jesse Hirsch 00:45:24
As an aside, this is why I really love having you on the show and having this conversation, because you have that kind of sharp perspective that used to be in the newsroom of the Washington Post, used to be in the newsroom of the New York Times.
Jesse Hirsch 00:45:40
That's gone.
Jesse Hirsch 00:45:43
And you don't have to reject me now, but I would love to have you on, on a semi regular basis to kind of help us kind of understand what's going on down in the United States and help us kind of dissect this.
Jesse Hirsch 00:45:56
But I do want to talk about podcast ecosystems, because you said this last time of, you know what I love about what you're doing?
Jesse Hirsch 00:46:03
And this is why I wanted to throw in the automated tools, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:46:06
Is you as an independent media producer, an independent media voice, are really producing some phenomenal stuff at a scale that younger Jesse would not have imagined possible.
Jesse Hirsch 00:46:20
But now I'm like, wow, you're a trailblazer, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:46:24
You're creating a model for, especially on the left, how we can be getting out community news, how we can be doing local news, how we could be platforming voices and authors and activists who should be part of this public discourse.
Jesse Hirsch 00:46:39
But you're also right, and I had a conversation yesterday with someone in public broadcasting that it's cash strapped, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:46:46
It's resource constrained.
Jesse Hirsch 00:46:48
And I think that we need to articulate a new kind of funding mechanism, a new kind of funding environment so that we can channel this kind of money to producers like yourself, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:00
And to other producers and local communities so that we can really have this kind of media renaissance, a kind of media revolution.
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:08
Now, you know, again, in part one of this conversation, I was sort of saying, if you start creating this narrative, it'll happen.
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:16
But given that you've had some time to kind of meditate since we last talked, I'm going to throw the question at you a little tighter.
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:24
Let's say you all of a sudden got an invite from the dnc, from a chair of the dnc, and they said, okay, Cameron, how much and how many.
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:33
How much money do you need?
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:34
And how many people do you think we should be funding?
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:37
Is it 100?
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:37
Because you've been bringing out that number a few times, and I think that's a decent kind of start.
Jesse Hirsch 00:47:44
But what's it going to take, I guess is the question I'm getting to, because you're right in the sense that the Republicans are so ahead of the game, the fascists are so ahead of the game in terms of the grassroots media that they've built up that is swaying public opinion.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:00
So if we're going to do this right, and again, this is not the end of our conversation.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:05
This is just the second installment of what's going to be an ongoing series of, you know, Cameron and Jesse getting the big box and spreading it around the ecosystem.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:15
So, you know, how much and how many, how much money do you think it would take and how many people do you think should be funded so that the ecosystem has the strength, diversity, and vibrancy to truly kick ass?
Cameron Cowan 00:48:29
Yeah, I mean, I think you need to look at probably, you know, at least the top 100 to 150 podcasts by any, you know, any metric you want to pick.
Cameron Cowan 00:48:41
Traffic, listeners, reach, all this sort of thing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:44
I mean, unfortunately, the nature of the long tail is it probably wouldn't be hard to figure out who they are figuring out who's in the back 150, that's, you know, six of one, half dozen of another.
Jesse Hirsch 00:48:56
But the top part of the long tail is so thin that it's, it's, it's not difficult.
Cameron Cowan 00:49:02
I mean, yeah, the top 10 are easy to pick.
Cameron Cowan 00:49:05
The other hundred and forty will probably take a little bit of time and consideration.
Cameron Cowan 00:49:10
But I mean, honestly, very seriously, I think, especially when you have to, you know, you want to start paying top talent, top talent wages and all this type of thing, that conversation starts at about $50 million, but that's also given celebrity money, George Soros, all this type of thing, that's not, you know, that's not a huge, A huge lift for wealthy people on the left.
Cameron Cowan 00:49:35
I mean, I mean, you know, I mean, that's, you know, we can probably pull that together in a few dinner parties in the Upper east side of New York without a whole lot of.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:44
Overhead or just asking people to check their sock drawers.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:48
Right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:48
Like it's obscene the amount of money that exists on the coastal part of America.
Jesse Hirsch 00:49:54
In terms of the left, in terms of progressives, unfortunately, they keep thinking it should go into the center when really where it needs to go is to the left, because we're the ones who are going to bring America back from the far right.
Cameron Cowan 00:50:05
Well, I mean, I think, I think there's definitely an appetite, especially among the urban professional class, which is a huge base of Democratic Party, for a more centrist view of things on certain issues, especially when you get into, like, law and order, city safety, all this type of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:50:22
That's all fine and well, but I think if you Want to counterbalance the Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, all this type of thing, which is huge, has been well funded, has a great business model because they have so many people.
Cameron Cowan 00:50:36
You need to juice the left wing version of that.
Cameron Cowan 00:50:39
And that price tag starts about $50 million.
Cameron Cowan 00:50:42
And it.
Cameron Cowan 00:50:42
But it also means you're also going to want to find brands and companies that want to align with that to have that secondary wave of funding.
Cameron Cowan 00:50:49
You're going to want to make sure that there are, you know, spaces available, studios available, all this type of thing, you know, organization.
Cameron Cowan 00:50:55
And that's where, you know, partnering with legacy media, forging those partnerships, which New York magazine, the New York magazine has done, New York Times has done somewhat.
Cameron Cowan 00:51:04
All this type of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:51:05
There's kind of multiple layers to building that out and back.
Cameron Cowan 00:51:10
That I think is very important.
Cameron Cowan 00:51:11
And so, yeah, if the DNC calls, I will 110% hit the Acela down to DC.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:17
I agree 100%.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:19
And I think where there's potential overlap is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, because they are shitting bricks right now.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:26
I'm a big fan of WNYC's on the Media podcast and they've been doing a couple of episodes anticipating that this is going to be a huge battle for public broadcasting.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:39
And I think if they were smart, they would ally themselves with us, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:44
They would recognize that they're not, you know, fighting for themselves, they're fighting for a media ecosystem and that on their own, they're not going to win.
Jesse Hirsch 00:51:54
But if they align themselves with podcasters, if they align themselves with wherever the TikTok refugees go, because there will be a bunch of creators that will, you know, all of a sudden have an audience, but not necessarily a platform.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:09
I think that is part of the path to victory.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:11
And I say this because, again, this is only chapter two in Jesse and Cameron's ongoing conversation on the podcasting ecosystem.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:20
Because I think we got a campaign here.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:22
I think we've got a narrative, especially as things go further to shit in the next couple of months, you know, we will continue to kind of walk the walk, right, and put the content out there.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:36
And I suspect that that will give us.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:39
I don't want to use this word, but it seems apt a mandate to be arguing for a different media ecosystem.
Jesse Hirsch 00:52:48
So I'm curious what you think.
Cameron Cowan 00:52:51
No, I mean, I think that is good.
Cameron Cowan 00:52:53
I mean, I think to start that conversation now is healthy and positive.
Cameron Cowan 00:52:58
I think to, you know, get people excited about that and to start to bring in the, the money and the funding required to make it Happen and to get, you know, a lot of, quite frankly, media dinosaurs who don't necessarily understand this stuff.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:17
And quite clearly, based upon what I read in the New York Times this morning, still don't take us seriously, which in my mind is crazy, given what's just happened.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:27
I think.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:28
I think hopefully that conversation will start to happen.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:32
I'm kind of worried it hasn't already, but I agree.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:36
Perhaps, maybe if you and I are talking about it, we can spark something.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:40
Other people are talking about it.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:42
We can kind of get leadership who has the.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:45
You know, who can call 10 people and raise $50 million in the space of an afternoon.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:51
So here, you know, make that.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:53
Make it happen.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:54
I mean, someone get that MacKenzie Bezos woman.
Cameron Cowan 00:53:57
She has billions and he doesn't want the money.
Cameron Cowan 00:54:01
Well, I was gonna say bankroll this whole thing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:05
Although as.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:06
As a sign of respect, she may have spent, like, she's been spending so much so fast.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:11
Like, she's just like, I don't want this.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:12
It's evil.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:13
I'm getting rid of it.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:14
But.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:15
But you're right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:15
So here's.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:16
Here's my pitch to you.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:18
Let us reconvene maybe a few weeks from now, at most a month from now.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:25
If you want, we can have it here on my show.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:27
If you prefer, we can have it on yours.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:29
But let's have chapter three in the Cameron Jesse podcast ecosystem conversation, a brainstorm on strategy.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:37
Because Your point about MacKenzie, I think, is spot on.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:40
I think chapter three.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:42
So chapter one, we floated the idea.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:45
Chapter two, we kind of had a conversation today about the political context, you know, the fact that we're in this media revolution where anyone can make stuff.
Jesse Hirsch 00:54:55
And we've come back again to, you know, this is a good campaign idea.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:00
Chapter three.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:01
So we will now both go off on our owns.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:04
Let this idea meditate and percolate.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:07
Chapter three will come down.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:08
We'll brainstorm a strategy.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:10
We'll be like, here's what we should be thinking about.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:13
Here's the kind of pitch.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:14
Maybe here's some of the people we should be hitting up.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:17
And then I would say that chapter four is we convene a community meeting, right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:22
You reach out to some podcasters you dig.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:24
I'll reach out to some podcasters I dig.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:27
And so we'll discuss that in chapter three.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:29
We'll discuss who should we reach out to.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:31
We'll discuss should it be an open call or should it be a curated call.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:35
Right?
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:35
Should we, like.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:36
And I'm saying this now because I'm excited, but I'm proposing that we both go away, we both think about this, and then we both reconvene on one of our shows to then further this conversation together so that we build momentum, our own little snowball.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:51
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:55:52
To try to achieve this future that I think we are passionately starting to evoke.
Cameron Cowan 00:55:58
No, I agree.
Cameron Cowan 00:55:59
And a couple names already jumped to mind of other people I've already had this conversation with.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:05
There's another great guy, Mr.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:07
I forget his first name, last name of Drucker.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:09
He does a really great outcast podcast.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:10
He's a big.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:11
He's big in Hollywood.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:12
He was a film documentarian, all this sort of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:15
He and I have already had this conversation way before the election and that sort of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:19
He might be the first person I reach out to say I, you know, and also he would, when it comes to a strategy sort of thing, he knows the right sorts of people in whom we should be in touch.
Jesse Hirsch 00:56:28
So.
Jesse Hirsch 00:56:29
So maybe to your point, maybe Chapter three, if you want to host it, maybe chapter three is on your podcast on the Cameron Journal and.
Jesse Hirsch 00:56:38
And you decide who you want to bring.
Jesse Hirsch 00:56:40
I would say Chapter three should still be a relatively small group so that we can brainstorm and have a conversation.
Jesse Hirsch 00:56:47
But maybe it's more than just you and I.
Jesse Hirsch 00:56:49
Maybe there's one or two other people and allows us to build that momentum and kind of move this conversation forward.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:55
No, I think that's an excellent.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:57
That's an excellent idea and an excellent plan.
Cameron Cowan 00:56:59
I think that's a good way to do it and start to garner the attention and start to gather the type of people, the type of voices, all this type of thing that could make this.
Cameron Cowan 00:57:10
We don't want this to turn into an Al Gore Air America thing.
Jesse Hirsch 00:57:14
Right, Right.
Jesse Hirsch 00:57:15
Or Current tv.
Cameron Cowan 00:57:18
But I think that, I mean, but I think there's also.
Cameron Cowan 00:57:20
I mean, I think in organizing all of this and funding it, you have to maintain the uniqueness that makes each show have its appeal.
Jesse Hirsch 00:57:28
Yes.
Jesse Hirsch 00:57:31
And where I see an interesting parallel, and how much this analogy fits, I think depends on our next conversation.
Jesse Hirsch 00:57:38
But social media is having a moment, right, with the free Our Feeds initiative announced in the last week, in which they're doubling down on the kind of Blue Sky Mastodon active threads protocol.
Jesse Hirsch 00:57:51
So the metaphor is we're not trying to create an Air America.
Jesse Hirsch 00:57:54
We're not trying to consolidate podcasts, but we're trying to create a protocol, a funding protocol, a cooperation protocol that allows for a federation of podcasts, us that operate independently, that do their own fucking thing, but together all boats are raised because we're creating that protocol to kick ass, for lack of a better phrase.
Cameron Cowan 00:58:18
Yes.
Cameron Cowan 00:58:19
And that also is, you know, that also can be, you know, how we stream, where it's at, how we cross pollinate, you know, stories, messages, things like that.
Cameron Cowan 00:58:28
Access, that's honestly probably the biggest thing is even the biggest podcasts on the left have trouble, trouble with access.
Cameron Cowan 00:58:34
They literally tried to focus on out of the Democratic National Convention because he dared to talk about Palestine, which as it turns out, was a bigger issue than I think any of us.
Cameron Cowan 00:58:43
We thought it was sort of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:58:45
I mean, also getting in those access, bringing in the people.
Cameron Cowan 00:58:50
I mean, the fact that we went a whole election cycle and not one surrogate for the major Democratic party candidate went on a single podcast.
Cameron Cowan 00:58:59
Kamala Harris said that Call Her By My Name podcast.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:01
But no one was on Hasan or David Pakman.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:04
I didn't get a surge.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:05
All this type of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:06
That's criminal.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:07
I mean, the Republicans sent all of their people on all the right wing podcasts, but for me, it's the access is not just the Democrats, it's also the Republican side.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:15
Sure, yeah.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:16
Send Marco Rubio to my show, would love to chat with him, you know, sort of thing and send some of these people over.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:22
And I think getting.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:23
Becoming big enough, aggregating these audiences and being together and say, yeah, we are, you know, 50, 100, and we speak with one voice and here's the one email and one number you can call to get booked on all of these shows and have all of these conversations, all this type of thing.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:42
That's, that's when you.
Cameron Cowan 00:59:43
That's a lot of power.
Jesse Hirsch 00:59:44
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Jesse Hirsch 00:59:47
So, you know, this is the part of every episode where to, in the spirit of what we've just been describing, I like to pay it back.
Jesse Hirsch 00:59:58
I like to bring it back to the community in terms of doing shout outs.
Jesse Hirsch 01:00:02
Right.
Jesse Hirsch 01:00:02
Of letting our audience know if there are people, podcasts, thinkers, living or dead, that you would like them to know about.
Jesse Hirsch 01:00:13
You know, I'll go first.
Jesse Hirsch 01:00:14
I'm going to give a shout out to Bob Lewis, who is a retired journalist here in Canada.
Jesse Hirsch 01:00:21
May not be the Bob Lewis that you know, but I've been thinking about him today in terms of the future of journalism and kind of what we've been describing in our conversations.
Jesse Hirsch 01:00:30
So, Cameron, is there anyone that you would like to shout out and bring to the attention of the Meta Views audience?
Cameron Cowan 01:00:38
If you're into philosophy and aesthetics, there's a very interesting French philosopher by the name of Gaston Bachelard.
Cameron Cowan 01:00:48
And I would recommend reading his book called the Poetics of Space.
Cameron Cowan 01:00:52
And he describes the home, the city, how we experience these things, all this sort of thing.
Cameron Cowan 01:00:59
And I think if your philosophy minded at all.
Cameron Cowan 01:01:04
Excuse me, if you're philosophy minded at all, I would, I would pick up Gaston Bachelard.
Cameron Cowan 01:01:10
I'm currently actually working on a series about him for planksip.org, which is a Canadian philosophy publication in Vancouver.
Cameron Cowan 01:01:19
I'm working on a thing for him, but I would recommend Gaston Bachelor.
Jesse Hirsch 01:01:22
Right on.
Jesse Hirsch 01:01:23
That's amazing.
Cameron Cowan 01:01:23
And for other great reading, you can go check out my official book list@cameronjournal.com.
Jesse Hirsch 01:01:27
Under the official and on that particular note, do you want to tell us about any other than cameraljournal?
Jesse Hirsch 01:01:35
Cameronjournal.com is there anywhere else that our audience can connect with you and learn more about your ideas and your work and what you're publishing?
Cameron Cowan 01:01:46
Absolutely.
Cameron Cowan 01:01:47
So you can find me on Twitter, X, Instagram, amroncowen, YouTube.
Cameron Cowan 01:01:55
Cameron Journal is where you find all the videos for Facebook.
Cameron Cowan 01:02:00
It's Cameron L.
Cameron Cowan 01:02:00
Cowan, which is just my name.
Cameron Cowan 01:02:02
Follow me on.
Cameron Cowan 01:02:03
I'm on all your favorite platforms.
Cameron Cowan 01:02:05
You can follow me there.
Cameron Cowan 01:02:06
And all the links are@cameronjournal.com right at the top.
Cameron Cowan 01:02:08
You can't miss them Blue Sky.
Cameron Cowan 01:02:10
I'm on bluesky Cameron Journal.
Cameron Cowan 01:02:13
So find me in all those places.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:15
Right on.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:16
Thank you very much.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:17
And you know to our conversation about AI, one of the reasons I get guests at the end to kind of list off their socials or where people find them, the AI converts it instantly.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:26
It helps it put it into the show notes.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:28
So it certainly makes my job easier in terms of organizing.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:32
We've come to the end of another fantastic episode of Meta Views.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:38
Big shout out to Cameron for joining us.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:41
I do hope and expect that he will be joining us again soon as I hope to join him.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:46
And we advance these really pressing conversations around really the future of our democracy, the future of our public discourse, the future of journalism, the future of media.
Jesse Hirsch 01:02:57
So yeah, give us any feedback you thought on this episode of Future Episodes.
Jesse Hirsch 01:03:02
We'd love to hear from you.
Jesse Hirsch 01:03:03
And yeah, hope to see you soon.
Jesse Hirsch 01:03:06
All right, thanks again.
";}