11/19/25: Major Recession Indicator, Sheinbaum Hits Back At Trump, AOC-Zohran Bend Knee To Jeffries, Young Men Crisis

28:19But when you have these major military buildups, that arguably is the best case scenario is that it's a kind of peace through strength formula. But right now, he seems pretty eager, Ryan. And your reporting suggests that they are putting pieces in place that aren't mere signals of intent, but actually look like intent. Right, and they certainly are putting the pieces in place, and that's the trouble, that's the fear, because once they get in place, it's very hard to slow them down. And we're seeing that now in the Caribbean. I was on Piers Morgan. I saw you did that. Yesterday or whatever, talking about the war with Venezuela, which is, you know, Trump just keeps, or Rubio, I should say, just keeps ratcheting up the pressure.

29:06And you move dangerously close to a place where you either have to then completely climb down and capitulate and slink back to the U.S. without getting anything, or you then have to launch an actual war because your bluff has been called. because Maduro keeps offering basically the entire store to Trump, but Rubio's refusing to take it. And Trump has not intervened yet to say, just take it. He's offering you everything. Just take it. So in Mexico City, to talk about what's going on there, and to back up to the point about pressuring them to clean up, The previous Mexican government, under pressure both domestically and also from the United States, launched a full-on, all-out war on the cartels.

30:01And it was a complete and total catastrophe. And it did nothing to reduce drug trafficking. And it only ended up strengthening the cartels in the end. And so when Lopez Obrador came in, he was saying, we're going to try to take a different policy. We're going to try to reduce drug trafficking. We're also going to reduce violence. We're going to make Mexico livable again. Like entire places were just absolute Afghanistan level war zones. Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at the data around violence in Mexico, it's way, way down. Now, the idea that you're going to eliminate drug trafficking when you have a wealthy, drug-hungry country right next door is a fantasy.

30:52Like somebody's going to feed our noses. Well, part of the Mexican economy is built up around trafficking. Yeah. I mean, it's just— And the American economy is built up around consuming the drugs. Definitely. But there is obviously also that's baked into Mexico as well now. These cartels for years have been built up on this infrastructure related to trafficking. And I remember I asked Yohan Grillo early in the Trump administration. He's a great journalist in Mexico City and was doing some excellent coverage and getting tear gas done in Socolow over the weekend. But he pointed out if the Trump administration shuts down the mass human trafficking that was going with migrants throughout Mexico, up through Central America.

31:38But Mexican cartels, Sinaloa, they were all very heavily involved in that. Where else do they find profit? He's like, what are you talking like? They'll go back to heroin. They'll go back to they will find they will make up that lost revenue with drugs. They've always done it. They're used to doing it. And so the right wing in Mexico, the kind of upper class in Mexico has always hated Lopez Obrador. They do not like Scheinbaum. They had been agitating against her over the last several weeks and months. And then in early November, Carlos Manzo Rodriguez, which is the mayor of Europon in the Michoacán state, which is a cartel heavy state, was assassinated November 1st at this Day of the Dead event.

32:23And he had been militant. He had been he was trying the old Felipe Calderon. He was trying the old style that he's going to bring the hammer down. He's going to go to war against the cartels. He's trying to push Scheinbaum in that direction. Yeah. And so and he was assassinated probably by the cartels. Yeah. Jalisco. Yeah. And so that generated understandable outrage that that looked like you're headed back into this area. Now, the idea that that justifies that you should go back to a military war against the cartels, as I don't think the country agrees with. But so the protests then started adopting some of the cartel.

33:01And we need to crack down the cartel rhetoric, too. These are opportunistic protests. They're trying to create scenes in the street that suggest that Mexico is a repressive place and like Scheinbaum's a tyrant and that the U.S. should then intervene and get rid of her and replace, you know put the upper classes uh candidate back in um they this was sold as like a gen z protest yes yes you can look at the crowd itself like very few young people in the crowd um this is as they're trying to take enter the palace if you look you can see this guy guy who's kind of like bossing around these other um goons i interviewed a mexican reporter yesterday at drop site who said that it's well known that there are these elements of organized crime in the city that are for sale for protests.

33:55It's like, if you need a goon squad to cause trouble at a protest, we will bring them. And he said he could just tell by the way that, and that's one of the videos he took, by the way that they were operating that they were one of these organized goon squads. Like, he is somebody who's on the left. He knows the black bloc. He knows the anarchists. It's like they were not there. You can tell the anarchists from the organized crime goons. Right. And the anarchists were not there. But, I mean, what I saw from a couple of journalists who were there, they were in small numbers. It wasn't like a huge comparison.

34:31It wasn't a huge, it wasn't equatable. Right. You're always going to have a couple, for sure, like, you know, somebody. But, like, that violence that you saw was, you know, organized crime figures. ironically saying that we need to crack down on organized crime um we put up the the final element too this was the one of the funniest photos um that was uh circulating it's this producer griffin it's griffin it is so griffin was down at the mexican protest in his one piece t-shirt um people thought that this was vicente fox um he's claiming it's not it does look like him Whether it is or not, it's just comical.

35:13Because the late middle-aged dude with the hat and the glasses, the stash, and a one-piece T-shirt is giving the most hello fellow kids energy that you could ever possibly imagine. The Steve Buscemi skateboard. Yes. The only thing he's missing is the skateboard. Yes. So, yes, the Gen Z were out in force.

35:38Demanding regime change. The reporter, we had this on our drop site stream yesterday, the Mexican reporter interviewed a whole bunch of these old people at the rally. And they're just right wing rich white people who are old, which is fine. Like those people are entitled to not like Claudia Scheinbaum and be able to protest her. But you can't also call yourself Gen Z. Like, come on. Gen Z. Words have meaning. You're not young. Sorry. I mean, on a serious note, of course, and Juan David Rojas pointed this out in his great piece of compact. There have been, you know, if violence is going down overall in Mexico, great.

36:17There have been a lot of killings of mayors and journalists. The violence in Mexico is still absolutely horrific. So when you see the killing at a Day of the Dead, it was like a candle lighting ceremony just in front of other people of local mayor. horrific, but also part of an ongoing pattern. So still a really, really serious situation for the people of Mexico, of course. But Scheinbaum's approval rating is hovering around like 70%. It's very, very high. You can't even imagine that in the United States. Even on the question of violence, she has a pretty high, of cracking down on cartel violence, She has a pretty high.

37:03Juan points out her approval on handling of public security has more than doubled to over 50 percent since she assumed office. So the question of whether this was some type of referendum on Scheinbaum herself, it obviously wasn't. So that's important to point out. Yeah, for sure. All right, Ryan, let's get to talking about the Democrats. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest.

37:44It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

38:49shapes us and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

39:41Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

39:58Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is getting a challenge from Chi Osei, who is a city councilor in New York City, represents Bed-Stuy and parts of Crown Heights. He's also a Democratic Socialist, but he is not getting the support of the most prominent Democratic Socialists in the cities, Zoran Mamdani or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. To talk about what this means for the Democratic Party, we are joined by Van Lathan, friend of the show and host of Higher Learning. And as people know, man about town, Van, delightful to have you on the program. Finally, we've been talking about doing this. Glad to get you on here and hope to have you back again soon.

40:36But welcome to Breaking Points. Oh, man, you guys have no idea what it means to be here after having watched you guys for so long, watching Matt Walsh squirm over Haiti. There's so many things I could bring up. Let's get into the issues of the day. All right, let's do it. Excellent. All right, so Osei apparently had a bit of a falling out with the Mamdani campaign. It was reported that he was not at the election night party as a result of this. I did not see him there. Can't confirm if he wasn't sneaking around somewhere else. And so right out of the gate after Mamdani's win, there starts there's starting to be rumors that he's going to challenge Hakeem Jeffries for the for the congressional seat in that in that area.

41:18You then get reports that Mamdani doesn't want him to do it. And now you have and we can put up E1 here. So AOC was asked about this, and she said, she told Axios in a brief interview at the Capitol, quote, not aware that he was challenging, which is kind of crazy because it's been quite public. But she added, I certainly don't think a primary challenge to the leader is a good idea right now. Norma's about to unpack here. What was your reaction to AOC and Mamdani telling this challenger, Chi Osei, that now is not the time? A couple of things. One, before I even get into it, I want to shout out Chi Osei's dad, who's passed away, Reggie Osei, Combat Jack, pioneering, pioneering black hip-hop podcaster.

42:09Maybe the first black hip-hop podcast. I remember going on Cheese Wikipedia and seeing that Combat Jack was his dad and going, oh, my God, man, I knew your father. What the son of a legend. So, you know, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree as far as making an impact. This is what I'd say.

42:29I sometimes feel for the average progressive constituent, particularly the young ones, because they have to wake up one day to the sobering reality that all of these people become politicians. They are political operatives and they make deals. Right. I need Hakeem Jeffries gone. I need that wing of the centrist. I need him gone. I need him, Schumer, gone. I need people that are clearly anti-genocide and clearly pro-healthcare. My bar is so low right now, guys. I just want you to be clearly anti-genocide and clearly pro-you-don't-have-to-go-broke because you got cancer. Reasonable. That's the bar.

43:21That's it. Okay? um however in understanding how these things work i'm sure there's some sort of deal that's been cut between mom donnie and jeffries uh in terms of you don't support a primary challenger to me and i help normalize you to the democratic centrist elite base and we try to get some things done so everybody out there that is still looking at aoc and zoron as crusaders and not politicians that make deals, I think they're going to be continuously disappointed in sort of their stomach for actual revolution. This is not to say that these people are not useful. I'm not saying that at all.

44:03This is not to say that they don't represent the politics that we want to see, but they're politicians. So they're going to do some things that are going to disappoint you. And it's better that they do it earlier than at a time when you're really expecting them to come through. It's an interesting question about Jeffries too. which is like, is it, if you topple Jeffries, who comes in Jeffries' place? And are they better or worse than Jeffries would be if you're already cutting deals with Jeffries? You could have asked the same question, and AOC had to confront this many times, as Ryan has written about extensively, with Nancy Pelosi.

44:39So I guess that's a question in and of itself, is that, I mean, right now is a right moment. So it's tempting, of course, to just go full French Revolution and knock everybody down. But then there's a question. Wee wee. Not in that way. But, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like, it is a good moment. Like, this is what the Tea Party did to John Boehner. Get rid of leadership, but then you get Paul Ryan. So that's a question I think that's probably worth confronting as well with Hakeem Jeffries. Yeah, I mean, I get it. And once again, this is the difference between someone who's inside and someone on the outside.

45:16No one watches Star Wars and then goes, I wonder who's going to come after the emperor. We can't do this. Like somebody worse might be on the other side of the dark side of the force. They just go, emperor gone, movie, we win. Right. But when you're inside of the thing, you have to make those political calculations. So, yeah, there's a whole bunch of things that you have to think about. But this is what people don't want to believe. What people don't want to believe, and this is what's running up or what's sort of enmeshed in all of this, people don't want to believe that it's business as usual.

45:54The thing that people are most afraid of is the business as usual aspect of politics, which is, you know, in 2008, everyone's unemployed. The system looks like it's crumbling and somebody comes along and says, hope and change. And you buy in. You go, all right, hope and change. We are the ones that we have been waiting for. Still the coldest line any politician has ever up. That's up there with fear itself. We are the ones that we've been waiting for. You looked at yourself in the mirror. I went, tears streaming down. I was like, oh, me? I? Oh, us? Together. And then what do you get? Pew! Drone.

46:35So the business as usual thing is what sours people to the belief that we can actually live in a different type of world. And so that is kind of what AOC and Momdani are up against, is we elected them, they promised a revolution that was worker first, affordability first, and look at them now, they were Hakeem Jeffries, and that is going to be chilling to a lot of people. And it's up to them. Last thing I'll say, I'm typically more long-winded into this. You guys are getting a brief version. It's up to them to make it plain to their constituency that that's not what's happening here. Although it's a tough sell right now.

47:20It's especially a tough sell because of the history here, which makes it almost even more deflating. Because AOC in 2018 knocked out Joe Crowley, who was the caucus chair on his way to becoming speaker. when he's knocked out there's then an election to replace him and it was Barbara Lee versus Hakeem Jeffries and you know AOC got behind Barbara Lee it was very it's a pretty close contest you know lost by 10 or 20 or so but Hakeem Jeffries who was Crowley's deputy you know takes the caucus chair position and then is next in line and that's how he you know eventually becomes leader. So to go from there to then, well, it's not time to take him on.

48:03I think it's, you know, it's got to be frustrating for a lot of people. But like you said, they're making a different calculation. Like Mamdani at this point wants to take on real estate developers. He wants, he's got his agenda that he ran on. He wants to get that accomplished. And I guess he sees that going after Jeffries as not just a distraction, but maybe a hindrance. my counter argument might be sometimes the best defense is good offense like if you've got if you got jeffries on his heels and if you've got jeffries and his allies then defending this position then maybe they have less time to mess with you the whole time in city hall so i mean that so just even if it's all about pragmatics and we're not revolutionaries here maybe pragmatically going on offense might work like when has backing off helped uh i'd say never i tend to agree with your assessment you know mom don he's in the position to where he's not just uh governing for himself he's governing for a collection of ideas and for an approach to politics to where he is sort of proof of concept of something.

49:20And if it fails, he will be the example that it cannot work, right? And sometimes I wonder what that pressure or what that spotlight is like. Now, listen, I don't give any quarter to politicians. I believe that you are basically like a waiter in a restaurant. If I go into a wait, shout out to all the servers in restaurants. everywhere. But if I go into a restaurant and I say, hey, I want my food, and the waiter is very charming and very nice, but I don't get what I want, I'm going to say, hey, man, look, I'm glad that you told me about your family. Can you go back to the kitchen and maybe bring the steaks out?

49:58Very charming, very nice waiter that lets me down in a very eloquent way. I'm like, no, at some point bring the meat all right that's basically what bill clinton did for president trump allegedly at like at some point like like i want the meat all right bring the steaks out mom donnie has to bring the steaks he has to deliver the protein to the people and the question is what else is he going to need to do that and how much disappointment can you endure from the political process on the way. I tend to believe like you believe. I tend to believe that upheaval is the best way to progress. Clean the trash off the street and you drive down the roads easier.

50:48But it's just hard to do. These people are entrenched. They've been around for a very, very long time. They curry an intense amount of favor and they are very good at promise making. And there's also, I mean, you see this on social media a lot, an understandable impatience on the populist left and the populist right with their proof of concept type politicians. And I'm curious how you see the left's expectations going into the Mamdani mayorality, because he's now going to be in this position of great power, not just over New York City, but also over the trajectory of the party. And he's a politician.

51:25You know, you like him. You'd be a great waiter to continue your metaphor. But the expectations of like the young generation of the left are on his shoulders. And that is, I mean, nobody can meet expectations that high. So I guess I'm curious how you see people right now preparing to treat Mamdani as a politician. I saw a good tweet on this, a great tweet on this from Mia Khalifa Mia Khalifa actually, like, actually I saw, she, smart lady, I saw her tweet, she was like, okay Everybody's for, was for MomDani, everybody wanted to see this Happen, and it wasn't just because of the collection of policy, it was because You know, I don't have any problem with I just can't see anyone having a problem with, like, free buses, grocery stores and affordability.

52:14Like, I don't have any problem with making services more readily available to people, bringing costs and prices down. I just don't know what was so scary to everyone. But, you know, political differences and economic outlooks aside. The people wanted to believe that there was somebody that was brave enough to say what we all know is that this isn't working. This religious allegiance to the most cutthroat brand of American capital is not working. It's not working. People are being left behind. People can't live where they grew up. People have to move to the outskirts. People aren't finding. It's not happening.

52:56Everything is too expensive. We're not looking at the Americans that didn't make this country great, that are making this country great every day. And he said that with a lot of zeal and with a lot of compassion and with just he was a devastatingly good communicator. All of that. He's not an angel. He's not a deity. He's a politician. He's a local official that now became a mayor. And what her tweet said was, let's not put him on a pedestal. let's not make our entire lives and our entire belief system let's not get uh too down in the dumps about the obvious political disappointment that's going to come at some point from this guy let's try to be realistic about what he's up against what he's going to have to do and who he's going to have to be let's try to like like let go just a little bit she says let's not put him on a pedestal, he's a politician.

53:57We're going to have to do that, and that's going to be hard. But part of that, though, I'll say is this. Part of that is the media's responsibility, and this is why, speaking of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, now I'm going to do it to you guys a little bit. This is why independent media is important, because of the long-form investigation into topics, the context that is given, the sometimes sobering realities that can be had when something is deep dove into, to where you can come back feeling like everything is not a zero-sum game. And so to me, this is the whole deal with all of this stuff. Do I envision a world that's closer to Mom Donnie's world?

54:45Sure I do. I absolutely do. But do I think that he has unilateral authority? He's all powerful to blink and make New York into the vision of New York that he wants it to be? He just doesn't. He doesn't. And so there are going to be some things that he is going to win on and some things that he is going to lose on. If you lose complete hope in him, then you're losing hope in that brand of politics. And I think that that would be a tragedy. Meanwhile, so Hakeem Jeffries was asked about Osei's primary challenge. We can roll E3 here. New York City Councilman Chi Osei filed paperwork today to run against you to represent Brooklyn.

55:26He has said that Democratic leadership has failed to effectively fight against President Donald Trump. What's your response? Come on in. The water is warm. Water is warm. I think it's water is nice is the phrase. Okay. I was talking to a high school friend yesterday, actually, about Jeffries. And he's not a committed, he's an independent, but he was like, you guys got to do something about Hakeem Jeffries. I'm like, what do you mean you guys, by the way, first of all? Um, he's like, but he's like, that guy's, you guys bad for the, he's like, every time I see him or Schumer, like, I just dislike Democrats more.

56:05He's, he's, he's hurting, he's hurting what you guys are doing. Even that it's like, and Jeffries, his thing when he came up was that he was supposed to be this great communicator. like that was that was his selling point um it's i i don't know what happened between now and then uh just for fun speaking since you mentioned uh epstein our man did find himself uh unfortunately in those files um if we can roll uh not not in that not in the way you're thinking uh basically a consultant of his was reaching out to epstein to do a fundraiser invite him to a fundraising dinner. But here's E4, him getting dragged into these files.

56:43Another email shows Democrat fundraisers invited Epstein to an event or to meet privately with Hakeem Jeffries as part of their 2013 effort to win a majority. So Hakeem Jeffries' campaign solicited money from Jeffrey Epstein. That's what we found in the last document batch. The files underscore why former President Trump must appear for his deposition. We've subpoenaed him. To date, the Democrats have done nothing to help us secure his appearance. I support full transparency. The Oversight Committee will continue to work to get the truth to the American people and to get justice for the victims.

57:22That's our goal of this investigation. With that, I yield back. Now, I don't even know if Jeffrey's had any idea who Epstein was, but bad luck for him that his fundraising consultant reached out to Epstein to try to hit him up for money back in 2013, telling Epstein, you really need to meet this guy. He's a rising star. You know, he's going to be a top Democrat. Yeah, so I don't know. Like, Hakeem Jeffries, what's going on with this party? A couple of things. Number one, it's very hard to be a good communicator if you are measuring every single word, right? If you're measuring every single word, if your brain is cue testing every single word, are they going to like me?

58:07Are they going to like me? Do I come off cool? Do I come off like the cool guy? Am I, is this cool? The swag? Come on in. I bet he thought he killed with that line. He walked off stage and he was like, did y 'all see what I said? Yeah. I said, I told him, come on in. The water is warm. And there was some, there was some staffer that was like, booyah. Like he thought that was so cold. I bet when he walked off. Come on, man. You know, Be yourself. Believe. Say the things that you believe. Live in your authenticity. It shows when you don't, I promise. Another thing is this. I want to make sure that everybody on the right, everybody everywhere understands this.

58:49I'm going to speak for myself. It don't matter who is in the Epstein files. Done with all of them. there's not a person that could be in those files right now that i'm gonna be like nah man we need to stall them out everybody's like well what happens when you when you find out that bill clinton is in there i'm like what are you talking about what are you talking about oh no like who cares what is it 99 like like who like who who cares and i just want everyone to know this because i said this on tmz in 19 and this was one of the the things that i got in trouble from all the things I said on TMZ, I said this.

59:31I said the death of Jeffrey Epstein is Washington's most bipartisan accomplishment in decades, right? And that is a thing. It's a fact. Everyone is commingled in this. I want people to take a step back and look at what this actually is. This is the connection that you guys have always feared. It's the elites. It's the people that cover for each other. It's the people that make easy, soft beds for each other the lion it's the thing that you've been talking about and when people have been said been saying hey the left is involved in this the right is involved in this at least in terms of the political structure and the political elites and they're like no our guys are the great guys our guys are going to drain the swamp our guys are the ones no it's a class thing it's a thing that's it's there's a political ruling class and how they get on with each other so sit back watch it fall and don't get connected to these people.

1:00:29They're not the LSU Tigers. They're not the Yankees. They're not the Lakers. They're not political teams. These are people with agendas. And sometimes those agendas involve dealing with people like Jeffrey Epstein, however horrible and disgusting that that is. Yep. Van Lathan, really appreciate you being here. I'm happy to have you back anytime soon. Yeah. Tell Sager. Higher learning elsewhere. There's something else I do in the morning. I want to tell Sagar something. When I get up and I do my Andrew Huberman thing, when I walk around the neighborhood, there's something else I do in the morning, Sagar, and you're not going to like it.

1:01:02In the morning, I get up high, Sagar. There's something else. Hoo-hoo. Sagar. Sagar. I'm about to go get into it right now. Don't get mad. I'm still productive. There's something else I like to do, Sagar. I want you to come on and tell me why generations of Lathans are wrong. I believe in them. We've been doing this for a long time, Sagar. this would be a fun segment that that we have to get you on with soccer yeah that would be good actually no problem thank you guys that we're definitely gonna make happen all right take it easy and enjoy whatever you're up to next thank you every morning same time peace welcome to the a building i'm hans charles i'm menelik lamumba it's 1969 malcolm x and martin luther king jr have both been assassinated and black america was at a breaking point rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale.

1:01:53In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:02:42What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins and if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul a place for real conversation each episode I sit down with people from all walks of life celebrities thinkers and everyday folks and we go deeper than the polished story we talk about what drives us what shapes us and what gives us hope we get honest about the big stuff identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers.

1:03:22Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:03:39I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Nat Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bowen. Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:04:14We are joined now by Nicholas Eberstadt, who's the author of the new essay collection called Human Arithmetic. Very, very interesting new book. Nicholas Eberstadt, thank you so much for joining us here on Breaking Points this morning. We appreciate it. Hey, thanks for inviting me. Yeah, of course. I wanted to start with a section here from the introduction of the book, where you talk about how the damage from America's men without work problem, which you have written extensively on, quote, radiates outward. Their unnatural condition makes for slower economic growth, wider income and wealth gaps, increased welfare dependency, reduced social mobility, more fragile families, and a weaker civil society.

1:04:55And you go on and make some really interesting points here, but I wanted to ask that in the context of this news report. We can put this from Wall Street Journal up on the screen. The headline here, companies predict 2026 will be the worst college grad job market in five years. And I thought this was a good place to start, Nick, because you've been following this particular problem. And actually, you've been helping us understand it with data and explanations, socioeconomic explanations for a long time. It seems as though this problem is poised to get worse. But I'm curious if you agree with that, what you're seeing in the data right now and how people should be thinking about it.

1:05:32Well, it would be a little bit more helpful if the government were actually producing the monthly data on the jobs report that we kind of like to analyze. But we've been seeing a gradual flight from work by men and by older people. The older people part is new. We're also seeing a somewhat weaker job market now, and that's probably not surprising given some of the uncertainties, real and perhaps needless, that we see in the job market now, in the economic outlook. Some of this is policy created. Some of this is business cycle. I don't think I would make generalizations about long-term trends from a single year.

1:06:32Let's just say that. I mean, so what are you seeing overall when it comes to young men? And what has surprised you? Has anything surprised you about it as somebody who's been kind of monitoring this for some time? Well, I mean, the only thing that's a surprise is that so many people seem to be surprised by it. This didn't start yesterday. This is a historical trend that's been underway since the 1960s. But because we are still fighting the last war with our employment numbers, our jobs reports were—our framework was developed in 1939 and 1940 to track the Great Depression. when it would have seemed outlandish to think that a guy who didn't have a job wouldn't be looking for one.

1:07:23So we have a set of numbers that are great for looking at unemployment, but nowadays for every guy who's out of work and looking for a job, there are over three who are not looking for work. And if you are using just the unemployment metric, you're missing over three quarters of the problem. We have a work rate for 25 to 54-year-old guys today that is basically at the 1940 level, which is the tail end of the Great Depression. So we've got a Great Depression scale problem for work for guys. And if we don't look at it, we're going to be surprised by a lot of other things that are happening in America.

1:08:06And it's amazing how it lurks under the surface and gets so little attention in the ways that you describe it, because you've studied for a long time the effect, particularly the deindustrialization, but also, you know, welfare programs. And you and I may disagree a bit with Ryan on that. But if we focus on deindustrialization, just specifically with this AI transformation of the economy coming, we've seen the effects that, you know, these rapid changes in jobs have had in places like where I'm from, the Rust Belt and outside Milwaukee, for example. Is that something people seem like they're about to replicate at an even larger scale with AI?

1:08:50How are you thinking about the changes that are about to appear like they're about to happen in the American economy with the examples we've seen over the last several decades? I don't want to make a fool of myself in front of you by making categorical predictions about AI, Because it's evolving so rapidly that I'm not sure that anybody knows exactly where it's going to be in five years, much less 15 years. What we can say in general, looking at past technological innovations, is that people who have skills are able to kind of harness the new technologies and multiply their productivity and their incomes.

1:09:30And people who don't have skills are more likely to be displaced. So under any circumstances, we'd want to be skilling up our young people. But in the face of this new AI wave, that makes it, I think, even more imperative. I should say that one thing we also miss about what's going on in the United States is the extraordinary variety, disparity of circumstances from one community to the next. When I was a young guy, we'd talk about the Deep South or Appalachia or later the Rust Belt. But again, this is something that kind of escapes us because we don't collect good information on it all the time.

1:10:16Three quarters of the difference in work rates and workforce participation rates for young adults, for young guys, is now within states. I mean, you go 10 miles and you find radically different employment prospects, community prospects, all within given states in the USA. And we're kind of blind to this because, number one, we don't collect the right information for it. Our information systems are way behind the times. Number two, we need journalists who will actually go out and talk to human beings and take a bus and go from one community to the next. Because doing that, you get the kind of the human face on this nerdy sort of number stuff that I do in my basement, so to speak.

1:11:07And so you talked about there being three men, what, did you say 25 to 34 or 25 to 44? 25 to 54 is the usual range. So 25 to 54. So for every man who's looking for work and can't find it in that category, there are three men who aren't looking for work. And I think all of us can answer this question kind of anecdotally and make our own guesses at it. But what do the data say about how those men are surviving? Like, where are they living? How are they getting by? How are they feeding themselves? If they have families, how are they feeding their families? Well, as best one can tell from the limited information we have, there's numbers and things that I sift through, they get by with the help of their friends, they get by with the help of their family, and they get by with the help of their uncle, and his name is Sam.

1:12:07There's over half of the guys who are neither working or looking for work seem to be obtaining one or more disability program benefits. I'd be a little more informative about this, except that our crazy quilt of disability programs don't talk to each other. And so there's nobody in Washington who can tell you exactly how many Americans, much less prime age guys, are obtaining these disability benefits. You can't live a princely life on them, but quite evidently it is possible to live a life where you do not engage with the labor market anymore. And you also, oh, Ryan, did you have a phone? Okay.

1:12:59You also write sort of about the effect this has on the spiritual condition of the country, on young men in particular. And in light of the news yesterday, we can put this on the screen, this is ProPublica reporting that the Trump administration appears to have attempted to help Andrew Tate. The ProPublica headline is White House intervened on behalf of accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate during a federal investigation. But Nick, there's so much discourse at the moment about Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate and young men. And just because you're somebody who studied this for so long, what's your, I guess, perspective on this swirl of controversy?

1:13:40Is the economic well-being related to the spiritual well-being of young men in a way that seems to be fueling any of these trends? What do you make of it? well um you know i'm a grandfather i'm a couple of generations removed from this stuff but i've got ears and eyes um you know there's a there's a world of hurt and loneliness and despair out there that wasn't uh wasn't at all comparable you know uh when i was that age uh we've got a lot more loneliness. We've got a lot more family breakdown. We've got a lot more spiritual angst. We've got a lot more dependence on substances than we had back then.

1:14:30And if you are isolated, if you're cut off from work, if you're cut off from family, for whatever reason you're cut off from faith and from your community, you suffer for that. I mean, there's a reason that a lot of people think that solitary confinement is a cruel and unusual punishment. So we've got to do, I think we've got to do a much better job of, you know, reaching vulnerable groups in our country. And part of what we've got going on, I think, is this monumental empathy gap between the describers and deciders in the United States and little people who are suffering. So have you seen anything work, any pilot programs, any efforts by communities to prevent plant closures or like, you know, in places where you have like, you know, workers take, you know, they're going to shut a plant down or the workers take it over and keep it going?

1:15:30I think you have some famous cases of that. A couple of thoughts. One is we could look around the country and see where there are healthy communities and where there are communities that are really struggling. Because there's an enormous range and disparity of social success in communities in the United States. And they're mostly within states, not across states, as I mentioned. And a little bit of curiosity about human beings might help at this point in our national history. I mean, that's one thing to mention. Another thing to mention is the extraordinary problem of ex-cons in America. because the XCOMs are almost invisible in our country, and yet it is a gigantic army at this point.

1:16:30We do not collect information on XCOMs. Once they're out of the correctional system, they're invisible as far as our stat guys are concerned. But my own back of the envelope, working on some, I think, pretty good research by some of my defiant nerd demographer colleagues, suggests that one in seven adult guys has a felony record in his background. Do we really think that this has nothing to do with the circumstances that we find ourselves in today? Shouldn't we be at least a little bit curious about this, how people live, how they reintegrate into society or repair their job reputations? It's all anecdotal now because we don't collect the information that would allow us to see what's working and what's not working.

1:17:29Yes, I've always thought that if you actually, for people who are serving time in prison, like, you know, there's some people can get work release, but most people are going to either, you know, be reading books or be at the gym or just be stuck, you know, either in the common area or just, you know, frittering away, you know, years and years of their life. Has there been any effort to say, you know, let's actually bring some genuine education here? Like, if you do three years, you should come out, you know, knowing how to do carpentry or as an electrician or with your associate's degree or an undergraduate degree.

1:18:13I know there's some programs in that direction that are very small, but have you seen any of that work to intervene in this? Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of good people working to try to help with reentry all around the country. But this is all a sea of anecdote at this point. And it doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't have to be that way. And we talk about the mass incarceration situation in the United States, and that's true as far as it goes. But what we don't talk about is that for every person who's in prison, there are 10 people with a felony in their background in our general society, and they're just basically kind of invisible.

1:19:02We can do a lot more with skills in the United States. Even with the economy softening, we have so many millions of unfilled positions, right? And some of that is a skills gap. You don't have to go to college to come up with the skill set that's going to give you a good income and let you pay for a family and a home. Nick Eversett, thank you so much. The new book is called Human Arithmetic. We really appreciate you stopping by to break some of this down for us. Thanks so much for inviting me. Of course. Really big show today, Ryan. We covered a lot of ground and had some great guests. We did indeed.

1:19:45What is the saying? the real victories, the friends you made along the way. That's right. Exactly. Very true to die. Yes, indeed. And so we'll see you on Friday. And if you're a premium subscriber, we'll see you right now in the live AMA. That's right. If you want to get access to the live AMAs, to the second half of the Friday show, and get the show to your inbox, no commercials, no ads, nothing, every single day, go ahead, head over to breakingpoints.com. We'd love to see you there. We love answering your questions. So head on over, and Ryan and I will see you Friday. See you then.

1:20:351969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by Black people because of what happened in Alabama?

1:21:11After Montgomery Braw. This Black History Month, the podcast Selective Ignorance with Mandy B unpacks Black history and culture with comedy, clarity and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul.

1:21:45Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on my iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.