The Raw, Unprocessed Truth: The 345th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Episode number: 345
Episode title: The Raw, Unprocessed Truth: The 345th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying
Published date: September 30, 2026
Hosts: Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying
Guest: None
Podcast: DarkHorse Podcast (The Evolutionary Lens livestream)

Video: Watch on YouTube
Rumble: Watch on Rumble
Audio: Listen to the episode

Summary

In the 345th Evolutionary Lens livestream, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying discuss reporting in Harper's by journalist Belén Fernández on the villages of Panama's Darién Gap, which boomed while hundreds of thousands of migrants passed through between 2021 and 2025 and went bust once the flow slowed to a trickle. They praise the on-the-ground reporting while disputing its political framing, and Bret revisits what he saw on his 2024 trip to the region, including a camp of Chinese migrants, as well as the role of NGOs and of the Biden and Trump administrations. Heather then reads her Natural Selections essay “Raw,” on what separates emotional, embodied human experience from the analytical world of tools and AI. The two go on to discuss the limits of AI's knowledge, grief and its rituals, and AI as a kind of cognitively processed food. The episode opens with the 2026 Fat Bear Week winner.

Main Topics

• Fat Bear Week 2026 and bears' preparation for winter

• Mass migration through the Darién Gap in Panama, 2021–2025

• Belén Fernández's Harper's reporting on Darién boom towns such as Bajo Chiquito

• Panama, Colombia, and the history of the Panama Canal

• NGOs and border policy under the Biden and Trump administrations

• Borders as natural barriers to people and pathogens

• “Raw,” Heather Heying's Natural Selections essay

• AI, embodiment, and the limits of analytical knowledge

• Grief, mourning rituals, and authenticity

• AI as cognitively processed food

Chapters

00:00:00 Boredom Makes the Time Go Slow
00:03:57 Sponsor: Cozy Earth
00:07:35 Sponsor: Puori
00:09:22 Sponsor: SaunaSpace
00:12:05 Fat Bear Week: The Prepper's Mascot
00:16:40 Back to the Darién Gap
00:18:52 Invasion or Migration? Both.
00:24:24 How America Carved Panama From Colombia
00:30:33 Is a Boom Now a Right?
00:35:41 Where Did the Aid Organizations Go?
00:40:53 The Surge Was Too Fast to Be Organic
00:44:41 Why There's No Road Through the Darién
00:46:31 Great Reporting, Bad Geopolitics
00:51:00 Mayorkas, HIAS, and the Chinese Camp
00:52:10 Deport Only the Worst of the Worst?
00:58:09 This Is All of Us
01:02:12 Migration as Osmotic Pressure
01:06:15 The Feminization of Systems
01:10:01 Raw: Unprocessed, Unfiltered, Unclothed
01:21:02 The AI That Couldn't Lace a Wheel
01:27:27 Speedometer vs. the Wind in Your Hair
01:29:06 AI's Faustian Bargain
01:33:16 The Rawness of Grief
01:35:41 Why Can't Sociopaths Fake Grief?
01:39:59 Real Grief Is Raw. AI Is Cooked.
01:42:34 Playgrounds With Nails Sticking Out

Mentioned in This Episode

• Minding the Gap: https://harpers.org/2026/09/general-interest-minding-the-gap-belen-fernandez-jasmine-liu/

• Fernández – At the Edge of Empire: https://harpers.org/archive/2026/10/at-the-edge-of-empire-belen-fernandez-panama-immigration-towns/

• Heying – Raw: https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/raw

• Crawford, Why We Drive: https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Drive-Toward-Philosophy/dp/0062741969

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SaunaSpace: deep radiant heat from red and infrared incandescence—detox and decrease pain, reverse screen fatigue and improve your mood. http://Sauna.Space/DarkHorse for 10% off sitewide.

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Search Keywords

Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, DarkHorse Podcast, The Evolutionary Lens, Darién Gap, Panama, Colombia, immigration, migration, border, Harper's, Belén Fernández, Bajo Chiquito, Emberá-Wounaan, Panama Canal, Michael Yon, Alejandro Mayorkas, HIAS, Tom Homan, Chinese migrants, NGOs, Biden administration, Trump administration, screwworm, Fat Bear Week, AI, artificial intelligence, Natural Selections, Raw, grief, Matthew Crawford, Why We Drive, Sheldon Brown, bicycle wheel, Wintergatan, Marble Machine

Transcript

[00:00:00] (Music)

[00:00:05] Bret Weinstein: Hey folks, welcome to the DarkHorse Podcast livestream number 345. I'm led to imagine. I'm Dr. Bret Weinstein. You're Dr. Heather Heying. Um, autumn is well underway. Actually with our recent rains, fall is also well underway. I draw a distinction that nobody else draws between those two, but nonetheless, leaves are falling off the trees. It's undeniable at this point.

[00:00:30] Heather Heying: Indeed. And it's the last day of September, which means we're three quarters of the way through this year, which is surprising. It's true what they say. The years seem to go faster as one ages. It seems just yesterday that we were at the beginning of 2026, but here we are. Three quarters of the way through it.

[00:00:44] Bret Weinstein: There's a character in Catch-22. I'm trying to remember who it was. It was like Yossarian's best friend. I can't remember. But anyway, his approach to life was that he embraced boredom because it made the time go slow. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:01:02] Heather Heying: Yeah. Yeah. Or makes you think, well, maybe, maybe I have, uh, I have many thoughts about boredom and why anyone who claims to be bored isn't making enough of their life. Yes. And if you're, if you allow your children to claim that they're bored and you then fill their spaces with things, you're not being a very good parent at all. But that's, that's not what we're going to talk about today.

[00:01:25] Bret Weinstein: No, sir.

[00:01:26] Heather Heying: We're going to talk a bit about immigration and Panama and about rawness and perhaps about AI.

[00:01:34] Bret Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:34] Heather Heying: Some. So, uh, there's no Q&A today after the show, but we had one just last Sunday in which I went on a rant about roundabouts, among other things.

[00:01:43] Bret Weinstein: A roundabout rant. A roundabout rant. You got there at the end.

[00:01:46] Heather Heying: That wasn't the kind of rant it was, as you know. But I may bring that rant or a version of it to, uh, to DarkHorse, but you can check it out on our Locals there, um, on Locals. Uh, Bret's got, you've got your Patreon calls this weekend.

[00:02:02] Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[00:02:02] Heather Heying: And, um, as of now, we are, uh, yeah, in anticipation of the holidays, perhaps, and because we've got some extra copies that we're interested, that we've, we've been hearing from people, that they're interested in signed copies of our books. And so we're making them available at, um, darkhorsepodcast.org slash books. We've got Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century. Um, several copies of these are available, which if you go to darkhorsepodcast, keep on losing it, darkhorsepodcast.org slash books. Uh, you can fill out a form, ask us to sign it with a message, uh, and, uh, it's $40 shipping included within the US. Um, also Antipode, which is my first book published, uh, back in 2002, uh, Seasons with the Extraordinary Wildlife and Culture of Madagascar. And then we also have just not that many extra copies, but a few copies of Hunter-Gatherer's Guide in the French. This is the French publication and also the Spanish. The French, uh, is a soft cover, Spanish is hard cover. Uh, they're, we're putting them all on sale at $40. Um, although you get a discount if you buy more than one, uh, $70 for two.

[00:03:12] Bret Weinstein: And they contain the same information as in the English version. It just sounds sexier.

[00:03:18] Heather Heying: Uh, my they was all of the books. Bret's they was a different they, even though he did not correct his pronouns as he never does.

[00:03:25] Bret Weinstein: Never does.

[00:03:26] Heather Heying: Never does. Not up on your pronouns at all.

[00:03:29] Bret Weinstein: It's not my strong suit.

[00:03:30] Heather Heying: No, apparently not. Um, anyway, those are available at darkhorsepodcast.org slash books. Uh, for some people that might make a nice holiday present, uh, get, get on top of that now. Uh, did I already say that you've got your Patreons this weekend? That's awesome. Uh, Locals having a watch party right now. And we have, as always, three sponsors carefully chosen right at the top of the hour. And then we don't read any more ads throughout our show. You are going to start.

[00:03:57] Bret Weinstein: I'm going to start because our first sponsor this week is brand new to us. It is Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth makes wonderful bed and bath products and clothing too. We have been using a hundred percent cotton sheets from cozy earth and they're wonderful. They are soft, smooth, light to the touch and luxurious. They're breathable though. We do not recommend breathing them and naturally wick away moisture. Nothing. Uh, naturally wick away moisture.

[00:04:23] Heather Heying: You don't know if they laughed. What? You don't know if they laughed. That's true.

[00:04:27] Bret Weinstein: I didn't feel their laughter. Um, but nonetheless, it's very quiet here. Uh, yeah, they naturally wick away moisture. As I was saying, they help prevent that uncomfortable feeling of waking up in the middle of the night feeling clammy. The only negative is that they're so comfortable that getting out of bed in the morning takes a little more effort and Cozy Earth makes no, not makes it. I just made that up and Cozy Earth offers. That's what they do. A risk-free trial purchase with their hundred percent. No. English. You skip a whole paragraph. I don't think so. No. And Cozy Earth offers a risk-free purchasing with their hundred night sleep trial. You can try their sheets for yourself. Returns are easy, but once you try them, you're unlikely to want to let them go. And they've got a 10 year warranty. Cozy Earth stands behind everything they make because true luxury is built to last. We love their soft wash cotton sheets, but Cozy Earth also has a whole range of bed and bath products made from. I don't know that word.

[00:05:37] Heather Heying: Viscose.

[00:05:39] Bret Weinstein: Viscose from bamboo.

[00:05:40] Heather Heying: From made from viscose from bamboo. Would you like me to step in?

[00:05:45] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, actually made from viscose from bamboo.

[00:05:48] Heather Heying: Obviously, Bret.

[00:05:50] Bret Weinstein: And where was that? Sheets and duvet covers and comforters, mattress pads and blankets, plus pajama sets, pants, tanks and crew tops. They've also got towels and robes in a wide variety of fabrics and styles. And they've got sink. No, they've got Lord man. Pillows.

[00:06:11] Heather Heying: What pillows?

[00:06:12] Bret Weinstein: Silk. Pillows and linen too. Exclamation mark. So head to cozyearth.com and get our know and use our code dark. Wow. Yeah. I'm at my quota this week for reading. Use our code DarkHorse for up to 20 percent off. That's code DarkHorse for up to 20 percent off on home and sleepwear. And if you see a post purchase survey, please be sure to mention that you heard about Cozy Earth right here on the DarkHorse Podcast.

[00:06:50] Heather Heying: You're going to get a D for that read.

[00:06:52] Bret Weinstein: That is not.

[00:06:53] Heather Heying: That is not how we should honor our new sponsors. Cozy Earth makes great, 100 percent cotton sheets and all the rest of this amazing stuff at their site looks great, too. I haven't tried them. That's the only reason we're saying it that way, but it all looks fantastic.

[00:07:06] Bret Weinstein: Yes.

[00:07:06] Heather Heying: So so check it out. Go there. Ignore whatever typos show up in your transcription of Bret's read. And what's the code? Yes, it's 20 percent off

[00:07:17] Bret Weinstein: for 20 percent off the code DarkHorse

[00:07:19] Heather Heying: cozyearth.com.

[00:07:22] Bret Weinstein: You know, that's not actually even in here. But yes, I think that's going to be it. And by doing so, you are supporting the scholastically impaired being me.

[00:07:35] Heather Heying: Our second sponsor this week for this episode is Puori. Puori makes a wide array of supplements and powders from vitamin C and magnesium to creatine and protein powders. Again, I have not corrected that typo in there. It says protein powers still. Yes. What makes Puori different is how clean and pure all of their products are. All of them. Let's focus today on Puori's grass fed whey protein powder, which was named best overall by Vogue US and cleanest protein by Wired. Our 20 year old son Toby agrees. He's been making protein enriched smoothies for a few years now, but had a hard time finding a protein powder that he liked. Of Puori's protein powder, he says, this is the best of all the ones I've tried. It's smooth going down and full of great whey protein. I'm not generally protein powder using myself, but I made myself a couple of smoothies recently using Puori's protein powder. And I have to agree with Toby. It's great. Puori's grass fed whey protein powder is not just nutritious. It's clean. A significant fraction of protein powders on the market contain lead in amounts that are known to be dangerous. In comparison, Puori consistently meets California Prop 65 standards and is clean label project certified. Puori's protein powder also delivers a whopping 21 grams of whey protein in each serving and is free of GMOs, pesticides, and exogenous hormones. Whether you're looking for magnesium or a multivitamin, collagen, or protein powder, you can't go wrong with Puori.

[00:08:51] Heather Heying: Use code DarkHorse at puori.com slash DarkHorse to get 32% off your first Puori grass fed whey protein powder when you whey protein order when you start a subscription. In addition, you get a free premium shaker bottle on your first subscription order. Go to puori.com slash DarkHorse and use the code DarkHorse at checkout for this limited offer.

[00:09:14] Bret Weinstein: Well done. The contrast is stark.

[00:09:18] Heather Heying: Yes.

[00:09:19] Bret Weinstein: Nothing if not stark.

[00:09:22] Heather Heying: Our final sponsor today is SaunaSpace, which makes amazing saunas and therapeutic lights. SaunaSpace combines near infrared red light therapy and deep radiant heat for whole body results at home. Now, I read that wrong. I read the correct words, but with the wrong inflections. I'm going to read that sentence again. SaunaSpace combines near infrared red light therapy and deep radiant heat for whole body results at home. Instead of harsh LED panels or giant wooden boxes, SaunaSpace has developed what they call their Firelight spectrum, which is much like the sun. It's flicker free, glare free, comfortable to use with long life incandescent bulbs that consistently last for more than five years. Infrared saunas and red light therapy have exploded in popularity in the last few years, as you will have noticed unless you've been living under a rock. So of course, the markets are a mess. And if you're living under a rock, you need this more than ever because you're not getting the sun anyway. Rocks not being transparent. Full of claims, the claims of the infrared sauna red light therapy products that are out there seem designed to obscure rather than heal. The only product in this domain that I have found, which clearly lives up to its scientific and health claims, is SaunaSpace. SaunaSpace has two flagship products, the Glow and the Firelight Sauna. We've got both. The Glow is a single large light that can alleviate screen fatigue and the ill effects of blue light. Use it at night as your only light source.

[00:10:38] Heather Heying: We often do. Anytime a spot relief for tight muscles or just to help with skin mood or energy or to give your heat loving cat someplace to sit. SaunaSpace's Firelight Sauna is a full body sauna that promotes sweat while also providing red light and near infrared therapy. From deep detox to pain relief to better sleep, this sauna is amazing. No preheat necessary and sessions are shorter than with traditional saunas. You're sweating in minutes. The Firelight is a beautiful canvas sauna that fits in a spare room or corner. All SaunaSpace products are built with integrity and handmade in Missouri with organic cotton, bamboo, sustainable unfinished basswood and medical grade stainless steel. No toxic glues, plastics, and no off-gassing. The grounding mat and optional silver lining upgrade blocks environmental EMFs like Wi-Fi to enhance healing and you get a hundred day home trial and outstanding customer care. Take your wellness to the next level with SaunaSpace. DarkHorse listeners can get an exclusive 10% off site wide when you shop at sauna.space slash DarkHorse. That's S-A-U-N-A.space slash DarkHorse. Discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

[00:11:43] Bret Weinstein: Well done. Yes. Like a pro.

[00:11:47] Heather Heying: Do you have something to say?

[00:11:57] Bret Weinstein: We'll see. We'll see.

[00:11:59] Heather Heying: Okay. Do you have a place you want to start?

[00:12:02] Bret Weinstein: I think you should start.

[00:12:03] Heather Heying: Okay. Oh, actually first, last year we talked about Fat Bear Week as promoted by the Department of the Interior. We have a winner. You want to put that up, Jenn? The Department of the Interior posted today that the winner is Backpack, Bear 89. He got it from his mama, they say. Bear 89, aka Backpack, is the 2026 Fat Bear Week champ. Turns out, hefty runs in the family. His mom, Holly, the Duchess of Density won in 2019. She carried him on her back as a cub and helped him survive a serious leg injury. Now her little backpack has a crown of his own.

[00:12:38] Bret Weinstein: Wow. That is one fat bear.

[00:12:40] Heather Heying: Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice looking bear.

[00:12:44] Bret Weinstein: All right. This should be the symbol. This is the mascot of preppers everywhere. Right? I mean, that animal is prepared. I mean, you know, again, I feel a little uncomfortable gawking at these animals in their rotund form, but they're obvious.

[00:13:02] Heather Heying: And I like you and some of the people commenting are like, oh, but they're fat. We shouldn't be looking like, come on. What is that? And actually, the piece that I'm going to read of mine this week discusses a little bit about anthropomorphizing. Like, it's not that is that is an absurd form of anthropomorphizing to be like, oh, well, we don't generally like to celebrate the fatness of humans. And so we don't want to celebrate the fatness of bears.

[00:13:30] Bret Weinstein: No, no, that's not that's not it. The animal is a marvel of engineering, let's say. And in this day. You know, I'm obviously using the term loosely. I believe that it 100 percent came about through a, you know, a process with no engineer.

[00:13:57] Heather Heying: But but I just I mean, this is just one of the one of the topics on which I think that we are deeply confused as a society that many people have conflated engineering with science.

[00:14:08] Bret Weinstein: Okay.

[00:14:08] Heather Heying: And and, you know, in this case, it's not a product of science, it's part of selection. But engineering is is not what got us here.

[00:14:18] Bret Weinstein: You know, it's it's a it's a marvel of engineering without an engineer. It's a miracle without a miracle maker. I don't exactly know how we want to describe it. The problem is that the mundane terms that we would use do not properly account for this incredible thing. And in this form, it is sort of compromised in its ability to do the incredible things that it does in order to endure a long period in which it does very little.

[00:14:50] Heather Heying: So it's a what I mean, I have some idea of what you're referring to, but what do you think it can't do right now? Can certainly sharpen up salmon in this form because that's what it's been doing and it can, you know, it's walking.

[00:15:04] Bret Weinstein: But OK, if you took the boom and bust cycle out of the environment, what would the animal look like? What would it evolve to be?

[00:15:12] Heather Heying: What I mean, you can't do it that way, as you know.

[00:15:15] Bret Weinstein: No, you sure you can. But if you took the boom and bust cycle out, the animal would be it would be more similar to a wolf or a jaguar or any one of the other carnivorans. Carnivorans that doesn't get through winter this way. So my point is just that that's a distortion from the form in which it is maximally capable. And that is why I feel a little bad focusing on it. Though as a prepper, obviously it is marvelously well prepared.

[00:15:54] Heather Heying: And I mean, just this is strange to me because you are more than anyone else I have ever met absolutely focused on bears like you love bears so much. And yet you apparently object to how they look some percentage of the time.

[00:16:07] Bret Weinstein: I'm not objecting. I'm objecting to the fact that we are tuning in to the bears at the point that they are, you know, chemically prepared for the winter more so than we are tuned into them when they are svelte and, you know, maximally capable. Anyway, we don't need to dwell here. I've made my point. Maybe it's a lousy one. People will disregard it. Maybe it's a good one. Probably people will be divided about it. But nonetheless.

[00:16:37] Heather Heying: OK. We have two sort of different topics this week. And the first one was prompted by a piece that just came out in Harper's, which is itself an excerpt from a book that was published last year. A journalist about a journalist's travels to the Darién Gap in Panama and what she has seen there. And so just to set it up a little bit, you and our older son, Zach, along with Michael Yon and Chris Martenson and a few others, went there to the Darién Gap and just led there by Michael in January of 2024. That's that's you and Zach in 2024 in the canal. Yeah, that's in the walk in the Panama Canal. So that's not the Darién Gap, but that is definitely Panama. And and so that was January 2024, as I said. And you you and Chris had a conversation that we posted on Locals. And I believe Zach took a lot of photographs that we shared at the time as well about what you were seeing there. And I don't know if.

[00:17:43] Bret Weinstein: And people will also possibly have seen a discussion I did with Tucker Carlson and another one.

[00:17:49] Heather Heying: Oh, right after that. Yes.

[00:17:50] Bret Weinstein: Joe Rogan about what we had seen there because, of course, at the time, you know, the status of the immigration crisis was hotly debated. There were those who saw no crisis at all. There were others who saw, you know, an absolute catastrophe.

[00:18:07] Heather Heying: But I mean, as I remember, there were there was even disagreement about sort of whether it was happening. Right. Like some people were claiming like there's just there's no people streaming across the southern border of Panama or the eastern border, but the fact of the southern border, the border from South America.

[00:18:21] Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[00:18:22] Heather Heying: And others were saying, well, yeah, there's a lot of people coming through, but it doesn't matter. You know, the open borders people. And then there were people saying there are a lot of people coming through and they're not all fleeing. They're not all fleeing social and political chaos. And this is a problem. Right. That was the bias that you went in with. But but certainly you were reinforced and surprised even beyond what you expected.

[00:18:47] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, it was quite shocking to see it. And the details of it were particularly alarming. I will just remind people my conclusion at the end of that trip was that there seemed to be a division between those who saw. What was happening there as an invasion of the U.S. and those who saw it as mass immigration. My conclusion was it was actually both things happening simultaneously. And you could detect that by talking to people who were mid migration. You know, some of them were forthcoming and interested to talk about what they had experienced. Some of them were traumatized by what they were experienced, but we're not, you know, it was clear what they were doing. They were seeking a better life. And then there were other people, including numerous Chinese migrants, mostly male military age, who were absolutely unwilling to discuss anything about what they were doing, why they were there, how they had ended up there. And so it felt very much like you have an invasion being disguised by an induced migration crisis.

[00:19:59] Heather Heying: In which at the time, and there were there were there have been ongoing places in South America with regimes where people find it necessary to flee. And we've we've talked about this at the time. We met I met a family that I then introduced you to in Ecuador who had flown, who had fled Venezuela, an upper middle class family that had fled in the middle of the night from the regime there. That was back. We met them back in would have been 2016.

[00:20:27] Bret Weinstein: One of them at least was a doctor, I think.

[00:20:57] Heather Heying: And so we met them in especially South America, but of course, all over the world. But for, you know, for this story, with regard to the Darién Gap, this is people fleeing, you know, from Colombia, most proximally into Panama, but most of them are of course not aiming to settle in Panama, but trying to get to the United States. And there are, you know, there are reasons that we have legitimate ways to try to immigrate and that people can claim that they're that they're fleeing terror or other things that warrant them being allowed into the US. And then there are other situations entirely. And specifically, you saw a camp that was almost entirely Chinese people and specifically Chinese men of military age.

[00:21:41] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, a camp which then after, you know, Michael had been reporting on it, but after I brought it to a higher profile, had a mysterious fire in which records were burned up and the camp changed radically. So, you know, coincidence quite possibly. Right.

[00:22:02] Heather Heying: But, you know, and just just to be clear, in case people aren't, don't know their their geography. Can you see my, so my computer? Here we have Panama, effectively. Nope, still no. Okay. Panama is the isthmus that connects South America to North America, and you're not gonna be able to see it apparently. Still not? Jenn? And Panama effectively actually runs east-west, which is weird. We think of it being a connection between the south and the north. But at the east edge of it, you have the Colombian borders, or near down here. The screen is different from what I had originally. Panama City, the canal runs right through the middle. Here you've got Costa Rica up to the west, which feels like the north because again, you're the connection between South and North America. And Colombia is down here with, you know, Medellín is a city that most people will have heard of in Colombia.

[00:23:19] Heather Heying: But if you zoom out, let me just say, finish the sentence, China is over here. So there, it's not that we object to Chinese people inherently, it's that when you have Venezuelans coming across this border, heading up into the US, there's contiguous landmass and you can understand how that makes sense. And Chinese people showing up at this border to, in order to get into the US, requires a lot of additional epicycles, is what we would say in astronomy space. And it just can't have been fleeing from a regime the way that you have people fleeing from actual political regimes in South America across this border.

[00:24:05] Bret Weinstein: No. And in fact, there was migration from around the world, including the Middle East, which often came in through Ecuador because of a loophole in their visa policy. So people would move overland from Ecuador into Colombia.

[00:24:22] Heather Heying: Ecuador here. Yep.

[00:24:24] Bret Weinstein: It is worth noting, and it is noted in the article that has us on this topic, that Panama was part of Colombia, and was broken off from Colombia by the Americans in advance of the building of the Panama Canal. In other words, it needed to be, it needed to not be South American and under American control in order for us to have the relationship that we had with Panama, including the five military bases that existed in the canal zone, the canal zone, which was American until returned by an agreement that Jimmy Carter made.

[00:25:01] Heather Heying: So at the end of 1999. But the point is, That's when it returned.

[00:25:05] Bret Weinstein: Yes. 2000. And the point is that the fate of the Panamanians, which is the focus of the piece in Harper's, has long been downstream of American policies that have nothing to do with the Panamanians. Yes. And that's not to do with American hegemony and a desire to have the world organized in a certain way. I'm not arguing for or against any of this. Panama would not be the prosperous place that it is, were it not for the canal which the Americans successfully dug after a couple of failed attempts by others, most notably the French. But nonetheless, the idea that we have needs and desires and make policy and that people, hundreds or a thousand miles away, end up suffering the consequences of those policies because they're not real to the people making the decisions. That's a very old pattern. It goes back to 1903 and before. Yes, very much so.

[00:26:13] Heather Heying: So the Darién is this region and the Darién Gap is a gap, not because it is inherently much more insane to traverse piece of forest than everywhere else in North and South America. But in fact, it is the one section, something like a 60 mile section between Alaska and Argentina that the Pan- American Highway does not connect. And so you can drive all the way from Alaska to Argentina, except for this section in eastern Panama in the Darién region, which is called the Darién Gap. And so the Darién Gap has always, since we've been thinking about it, been understood to be a sort of, you know, a remote, wild, somewhat unregulated, somewhat ungoverned area in eastern Panama, in part precisely because it is near the border with Colombia. And there always has been movement back and forth, in part because the restrictions on movement that were imposed when Panama and Colombia were formally split, didn't match what the people were doing beforehand. I will say also that I have been to the Darién once I took my study abroad trip there in 2009. And you know, we spent a night sleeping in hammocks in the village and met with a you know a medicine man and and such and I found it similar to but distinct from other remote regions in Panama that I took my class to such as Kuna Yala.

[00:27:45] Heather Heying: So, you know, it was, it was not notable in terms of in terms of what was going on there but I also A, didn't get close to the Colombian border with my students and B, that was in 2009. Before the the immigration that is now the thing that I'm going to read some of what's in this Harper's article but the thing that I noticed first and it is that she's not pretending that the mass movement of people across the Darién Gap wasn't happening, which so many people were pretending at the point that you that you went there. So, let me just before we get to her article there's this is an interview in Harper's and the same issue that the the journalist Belén Fernández is her pieces excerpted and the first two paragraphs of this do a good job of setting up how Harper's views what's going on and mostly it's consistent with what we said here, but I think you will notice, you know, sort of why this struck me. Minding the Gap: Belén Fernández on the rise of the Latin American right and the United States role in imperiling migrants, you know, just even that phrase right there right.

[00:29:02] Heather Heying: The Darién Gap, the more than 60 miles trip of muddy mountainous jungle that connects Central and South America has remained sparsely populated for centuries. Yet some found refuge in its difficult terrain in accounts of the colonial era enslaved Africans who escaped bondage founded free communities along its rivers and coasts. And in the late 19th in the late 18th century Indigenous Emberá and Wounaan people who had previously lived in what is now Colombia began to settle in the region. Since the 50s, the settlements have been organized into villages under national development schemes. Then, in the early 2020s, the people, the population of people passing through the land bridge increased dramatically. In 2023, more than half a million people from Venezuela, Ecuador, Haiti, or even countries as far away as China, made the crossing. Overnight, villagers who had lived quiet lives farming avocados and plantains were faced with an influx of migrants in need of food, water, shelter and transportation assistance in the midst of treacherous journeys. Some retrofitted their piraguas, a type of traditional dugout canoe with motors to ferry migrants across the river. Others cooked and sold meals. Still others rented out rooms to staffers of humanitarian aid organizations. Just a little bit more. Now, largely owing to the Trump administration's restrictive immigration policies, migration through the Darién has slowed to a trickle.

[00:30:18] Heather Heying: This year, through the first week of September, Panamanian officials recorded just 481 people making the northbound passage. Consequently, the same villagers who reordered their economy and built a makeshift infrastructure to accommodate migrants have now been left to return to their old livelihoods. That is a remarkable framing. That alone is a remarkable framing. The idea, what we need to do when something extraordinary happens and people are able to actually transform their lives and capitalize in the best sense of the term, and not to say that there weren't people who are capitalizing egregiously, and thus raise their own quality of life, that it is somehow the world's responsibility to maintain what was a pulse of movement, which should not have been a con, which should not have been allowed in the first place. But because some people were transformed positively as a result of that pulse, now we have a problem and it's Trump's fault. This is a, this is a remarkably blind perspective, I would say.

[00:31:22] Bret Weinstein: Not only blind, I will say, as I read the article, I initially had this just eye rolling sense of like how insane is the person writing this. And by the end of the article, I was actually persuaded that the person writing it is not at all what I suspected and feared, that this is somebody who actually deeply understands the various communities involved, is not some American dilettante who's being pampered to say they went to the Darién Gap and report back what their editors want. This is somebody who actually attempted to cross the Darién Gap, I think she didn't make it, but made a solid attempt to cross.

[00:32:10] Heather Heying: And she's also lived a lot of her life in Mexico. So she's an American, but has lived in Latin America.

[00:32:16] Bret Weinstein: But this is somebody who I would say, from the point of view of understanding the phenomena on the ground, is actually not wrong. The conclusion of the article, which is up front, is insane. And it's not even, yes, we don't have a responsibility to, you know, nobody should have opened the Darién Gap and invited people to invade the United States through it. Having done so, we don't have an obligation to keep it open, even though there are going to be consequences for shutting it down. But it's even worse than that. What exactly, if you were to follow, if you were to carry through with what the first few paragraphs of this article suggest, we're talking about an influx of people that was something like half a million immigrants a year. Is the United States supposed to absorb this immigration indefinitely? It should never have been started, but once it was started, industry grew up around it. Wealth was flowing through. The people in the path had their lives altered by it.

[00:33:22] Heather Heying: Went from being subsistence plantain farmers to being able to build homes out of concrete rather than wood and maybe put solar panels on their roofs. They experienced an increased quality of life. And we are supposed to believe that that increase in quality of life is now their right. I mean, it's the sort of claim that you hear on sort of the naive left a lot. We have rights to all of these things. Like, no, in fact, you don't have rights to everything that you have become accustomed to and are comfortable with.

[00:33:52] Bret Weinstein: Yeah. And it's also just it's at some point we're going to have a real discussion about sustainability, which has a bad rap because of the way the left has abused the term, but is probably philosophically among the most fundamental things that we need to be paying attention to. At a lot of different levels. I'm not just talking about environment. But you can't. I mean, in fact, if there's one major fault to the author, it's that the author seems to be a border skeptic, skeptic of the very ideas of borders. And it might follow from that. Sure. Then, you know, you just allow the industry to grow up where it is. And the influx is nobody's problem or fault. And the the answer is no. The. The border should never have been opened. The influx should never have happened. The boom times are obviously good for anybody who experiences them. The bust that follows because the boom was initiated without any long term plan is the fault of the people who opened the border, not the people who ultimately returned it to the state it was in beforehand.

[00:35:04] Heather Heying: Yeah. I mean, it's frankly classic ecology, as the ecological cycles here. And that doesn't mean that it's nice for everyone all the time because life isn't nice for anyone all the time.

[00:35:13] Bret Weinstein: Right. And you might. I mean, if there's another fault, so you have the people who opened the damn border, whatever their purpose was. And I promise you, it was not the benefit of Americans. Somebody decided to.

[00:35:24] Heather Heying: Or or the the previously peasant farmers in the path in the Darién Gap. It was no, it was certainly not for their sake.

[00:35:31] Bret Weinstein: No, it was. Even if they meant it somewhat indifferent to their well-being. I think it was hostile to our well-being. But what these people were thinking, we don't know. But one of the glaring ironies here. And one of the things that I was surprised was so visible when Michael took us to the Darién Gap was the presence of NGOs that were pro migration. They just like the idea of migration. We want to facilitate. We want migrants to migrate. There's no thought about, you know, the fact that the Darién Gap was a massively dangerous place to migrate. You know, these organizations were literally handing out. I don't want to use the term rape kit because that has a specific medical meaning. Although those kits were being used in large numbers by the clinics during this period, but they were handing out kits to deal with the fact that rape was utterly commonplace in the Darién Gap. Rape, murder, accidental drowning and death. These things were happening all the time. You have these aid organizations effectively inviting people into that trap. Then the flow dries up because the Trump administration puts a halt to the open southern border.

[00:36:55] Bret Weinstein: Where are the aid organizations? Shouldn't the aid organizations be taking all of the massive amount of money that they had put into facilitating migration into protecting the people who are now being injured by the end of this migration cycle? The point is they don't care either. They are part of the plan to facilitate this migration for whatever diabolical purposes it was initiated. They're not about making people's lives better. And it's obvious that they're not. Because if they were, they'd be taking care of the crisis that now exists because the migrants have dried up. They're just not. It's nowhere in this article.

[00:37:31] Heather Heying: That's true. So yeah, the kind of thesis of the article or the population that she's following is the people who benefited from the flow through, the sudden flow through of migrants in the early 2020s who have now been dropped back into subsistence farming lives. Which has got to be tough, although honestly, it would be harder had the good times last for 30 years. Like everyone there remembers what it was like before, even if they wish they didn't have to. So let's just read a few paragraphs and then it's a long article. We're not going to read the whole thing. And then a few throughout. At the Edge of Empire: The Rise and Fall of Immigration Boom Towns by Belén Fernández. Again, this is from Harper's Magazine and I believe it's the October 2026 issue. Bajo Chiquito is an indigenous village of fewer than 500 inhabitants in the far east of Panama. It has no electricity network or sewage system. And like other villages in the country's Emberá-Wounaan Comarca, or semi-autonomous territory, it has been neglected by the state since its founding. Let me just take an aside here for a moment. Semi-autonomous territory strikes me as not going to be that meaningful to most American readers. Comarca is the closest thing that the United States has to a Comarca is reservation, an Indian reservation.

[00:38:55] Heather Heying: Comarcas have greater political power. The people within Comarca in Panama have greater political power relative to the federal government of Panama than do the people who are living within reservations in the lower 48 in the United States. But a Comarca is the closest analogy for American listeners is that. For most of the year, the village is unreachable by car, although a temporary bridge is usually constructed over the Chucunaque River at some point during the dry season. Until recently, the town had little connection to the rest of Panama, much less to the rest of the world. But things began to drastically change back in 2021. Again, notice that we are now formally acknowledging in Harper's and one in one of the most long standing liberal outlets that the crisis that you were reporting on, that Michael Yon was reporting on, that many people were seeing during the Biden administration, which most on the left were saying that isn't happening at all. There is now just full acknowledgement without, of course, the acknowledgement that there was a failure to acknowledge before. Things began to drastically change back in 2021. Bajo Chiquito sits on the Tuquesa River at the northern end of the Darién Gap, the more than 60 mile stretch of formidable terrain and riverine forest straddling Panama and Colombia.

[00:40:19] Heather Heying: It is the sole land bridge connecting South and Central America, meaning that when migration to the United States through its southern border surged during the first month of first months of the Biden administration, Bajo Chiquito and several other towns like it were suddenly inundated with migrants fleeing all manner of political and political struggles. Again, here we have the conclusion baked into the story without any evidence at all. The idea that these migrants were fleeing all manner of political economic struggles is a claim that is unjustified and provided without evidence here.

[00:40:53] Bret Weinstein: I would also point out that in that description is a kind of evidence that will be easy to overlook. The idea that migration through the gap surged in the first months of the Biden administration. How if this were a normal story of migrants fleeing for a better life as a general matter rather than being facilitated and invited by NGOs and others, it would take time if the Biden administration quietly dropped their enforcement on the southern border.

[00:41:31] Heather Heying: It would take time and or funded NGOs.

[00:41:34] Bret Weinstein: Well, if they dropped the enforcement, it would take time for people to figure out, hey, actually, you can get across this border pretty easily. Maybe this is a place that we can go to and make a better life. How long does it take before you actually see a massive increase in migration at the Darién Gap? It's a long time. Yes, it's not. Yes. So point is, this was somebody's plan. There's a there's a PowerPoint presentation that we didn't see in which the idea was for reasons that have never been shared. They wanted a massive influx of migrants, whether that's about creating dependent voters or about displacing Americans who are overly attached to the idea that they have rights or whatever the plan might have been. Somebody had a plan and as soon as they got into office, the clock was ticking. How can we get the migrants in while the you know, while the opportunity is still available to us? It went like that. Yep. Right. That's the evidence that this was about something that we still have yet to be told about. And you know,

[00:42:34] Heather Heying: it wasn't and could not, as you just laid out, been an organic change, given the timing. Yes. To do where where we seemingly overnight, it had become a massive transit hub. While migrants have been passing through for years, the sheer numbers were like nothing the region had ever seen. Hundreds of thousands of people from all corners of the earth were now stopping by the town en route to the United States. In response, villagers restructured their economy to cater to their new guests. Instead of farming or fishing, they began offering transport via piragua, meals, lodgings, haircuts and a range of other services. Life in Bajo Chiquito was transformed. Many residents were able to buy solar panels, household generators, satellite internet service and other theretofore unobtainable luxuries. Some were able to put their children through college. And then everything shifted again. On January 22nd, 2025, two days after Donald Trump resumed, reassumed office, he signed an executive order suspending the quote, "physical entry of aliens engaged in an invasion of the United States through the southern border," end quote. Apparently, the front lines of the invasion stretched much farther south. Even though no fewer than several Central American countries, in addition to the vast expanse of Mexico, lie between the Darién Gap and the physical US border, one of the perks of being an empire is that the true border is wherever you say it is.

[00:43:58] Heather Heying: So that's both true and also pretends that the author here, and in fact everyone, doesn't know that where those people are aiming for is the United States, which is a really absurd thing to pretend that you don't know that.

[00:44:13] Bret Weinstein: And I will say, one of the things that came out in discussions with migrants was there were a few who did not intend to come to the US, the overwhelming majority.

[00:44:21] Heather Heying: Who just needed to escape whatever they were escaping from and wherever they could get to better than where they had been.

[00:44:25] Bret Weinstein: And they had plans somewhere else in Central America or Mexico. But the overwhelming majority were headed for the US. It was clear to them from the point that they embarked on their journey. And the other thing is, you can say, if you're an empire, the border is where you decide it is. The reason that there is no road through the Darién Gap is because it makes a natural break that actually this protects North and Central America from an invasion from South America, either of soldiers or pathogens. There was a lot of pathogens flowing through the Darién Gap. One thing that Michael Yon called attention to when we were down there was screwworm, which is now across the southern border. So the idea that actually a border is on the one hand something made up and drawn on the map. On the other hand, they are where they are for reasons. You know, there's a there's a stalemate that happens between two populations where it's too expensive to try to move your border farther this way. So, you know, both parties agreed to the existence of it. In this case, the advantage of having that gap that prevents the flow of things that you don't want to flow is a it's a real fact.

[00:45:49] Bret Weinstein: It's a it's a geographic fact. Yep. And the idea that, you know, it should be something should be done to eliminate it. Well, don't you want to think that through? Is it in the interest of Central Americans to have this corridor to South America? Is it in the interest of the United States and the countries of Central America to allow this to be built into the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative? Is this the New World part of the Belt and Road? You know, the point is we have actual interests and we need to discuss these things like adults, not like children who are irritated that there's a line on the map that you're not allowed to cross without permission. Right. That's that's not where we are. This is this is actually about the well-being of people. And, you know, this this author, Belén Fernández, is actually really good about people on the ground. Yes. Right.

[00:46:40] Heather Heying: And she has she has real human instincts for and relationships with the people she is meeting.

[00:46:46] Bret Weinstein: Yes. And she doesn't you know, she doesn't fetishize the Indians that they're, you know, noble savages. You know, she she views the tensions between, you know, the Latinos and the Indios correctly. There's a lot of an indication here that on the ground, she actually has a deep understanding of people and the way they work and and genuine sympathy for people who just went through a boom and are now living through a terrible bust. But her geopolitical sense about borders and migration is not of that quality. It's kind of too bad.

[00:47:22] Heather Heying: Yeah.

[00:47:23] Bret Weinstein: Because otherwise this would be a strong contribution. And one does get the sense that what happened here, as you pointed out earlier, there was no acknowledgment at all that there was a real crisis. We were told that we were making it up. We were exaggerating.

[00:47:38] Heather Heying: Although she I mean, as you know, because you read the article, she was there in 2023. She was there just, you know, months before you were there during the peak.

[00:47:45] Bret Weinstein: Right.

[00:47:46] Heather Heying: So she saw it.

[00:47:47] Bret Weinstein: Right.

[00:47:47] Heather Heying: She never she was never pretending, presumably, that it wasn't happening.

[00:47:50] Bret Weinstein: She wasn't pretending. But my point is at the point that the mainstream decides that it is going to acknowledge that the crisis existed. Right. It needs to find a voice that can now say, isn't it a tragedy that the Trump administration treated these people so horribly? So the point is, this is sort of I'm again, I'm not faulting her because I actually think she's the very unusual person who does understand what's going on there. Not only that, but, you know, is courageous about the gap itself. But if you were going to come up with a grudging acknowledgment that, yes, there was a crisis, but we still need a way to blame Trump, you know, this would be it. Right. And and that's pretty unfortunate.

[00:48:39] Heather Heying: I agree. Just a little bit more from this and then I'll scroll down. The Biden administration had made intermittent noise about halting migration to the gap. Remember that Biden literally appointed in one of the few jobs that he gave his ineffective, presumably drunk VP was border czar, right. Wasn't wasn't Kamala Harris either border czar or immigration czar or something. And she was beyond incompetent in everything else. But, you know, so the as as Fernández writes in this piece, the Biden administration had made intermittent noise about halting migration to the gap, providing intelligence and material assistance to Panama to further that goal. But the Trump administration was even more aggressive. So, you know, that sentence feels again like I agree with you, Bret. I think the on the ground stuff and we're not going to read most of it is very long article, but we will we will link to it. And I recommend this piece. Her interactions with the people on the ground are extraordinary. But the analysis at the political level is frankly awful over and over again. And, you know, here she's actually trying to claim credit for the Biden administration and having tried to do something, which now they did not. The border czar Tom Homan said that he would be shutting down the Darién Gap altogether. In August 2023, Panamanian authorities recorded recorded 81,946 arrivals from Colombia through the gap.

[00:50:03] Heather Heying: Just two years later in August 2025, they recorded seven. Businesses and villages like Bajo Chiquito dried up and villagers returned to growing plantains. And then she says that she flew to Panama to take the measure of the long shadow cast by U.S. immigration policy in Bajo Chiquito and a handful of other former migration boom towns as if the fact that they had boomed during an immigration crisis is our responsibility to maintain.

[00:51:00] Bret Weinstein: Right. And I would just point out that that feint in there about the Biden administration toying with the idea of doing something about this was completely disingenuous because their homeland security chief Alejandro Mayorkas actually went to the Chinese camp in question and increased the flow of migrants through it. And it almost strains belief to add that Alejandro Mayorkas had been with HIAS, one of the NGOs that was facilitating at the Chinese camp right outside the gate. So you have the Chinese camp, which is being partially facilitated by these Panamanian soldiers, SENAFRONT. Yep. And outside the gates, you get the Panamanian soldiers there outside the gate is literally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society office. These were people who were actively facilitating the migration. Alejandro Mayorkas had been with HIAS before he moved to the government. So it's like just below the surface that you can see somebody's got a plan. I don't know why the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has an interest in flooding the U.S. with migrants from China, but apparently it did. And so we never get to have that discussion. What the hell happened? And then I hate to say it. What the hell is going on now? This was a primary campaign issue for Trump. There has been, yes, a closure of the border.

[00:52:17] Bret Weinstein: The number of people flooding through the Darién has gone from, you know, it varied a lot month to month, but something, you know, 90,000 people a month were coming through. They're going down to, you know, double digits a month. So kudos to the Trump administration for ending that. On the other hand, we were promised the deportation of the huge number of millions of new immigrants in the U.S. And then that has been massively backed off, as I pointed out last week, to the claim that we are now going to focus on deporting the worst of the worst, sounds really great until you realize that it leaves the middling of the worst and the best of the worst and all sorts of other people who broke the law and came here for reasons that we as Americans do not yet understand. Right. So something haywire has gone on here and we're still guessing at it. We're still guessing at it and playing games over. Yes, the Biden administration toyed with the idea of shutting down the Darién Gap. No, it didn't. No, it didn't. Alejandro Mayorkas stood in that Chinese camp and increased migration through it. Why? We don't know.

[00:53:27] Heather Heying: Yeah, so there are political points scattered throughout this article, which, as you have said multiple times here, does an excellent job of on the ground reporting about what she is seeing and with whom she is interacting. And, you know, I did not I did not come away with quite the same sense of her as you did. I think she does come across to me as somewhat naive. You know, they've they've found beds in a place. They don't supply sheets. You know, you're in the military and gap. What were you expecting? You seriously didn't bring like a sleep sack or something. So, you know, I don't have the sense that she's experienced in developing world travel as she might have us believe. But she seems to legitimately care about the human beings with whom she is interacting, which makes this article, which is, you know, long streams of, you know, real human interaction with real human people who had been barely subsisting in growing plantains, were briefly making bank in a in a legitimate way. And, you know, she also talks about people complaining from the larger towns to the north about the Indios, about the villagers, you know, making money off the migrants.

[00:54:45] Heather Heying: What would you have them do? You know, these were subsistence farmers who suddenly had, you know, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people coming through who needed food, who needed water, who needed shelter, who needed transport. And they were supposed to, out of nothing, supply that for free? No. They, of course, were, should have been able to make some money from a situation that must have been extraordinarily difficult. And they were able to do something good from it. But now, it having lasted a few short years, they find themselves back in the same economic situation that they were in before these people started flowing so freely across the border.

[00:55:29] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, arguably even a worse situation than they were in because the destruction that came along with this huge influx of people. This is not a habitat that, you know, can endure that. And so at some point, there's a quote in this article where one of the villagers says, you know, we went from growing plantains to, you know, servicing this massive influx of people. And now we don't have the influx of people and we're not growing plantains. Right.

[00:55:57] Heather Heying: So, yeah, I saw that quote too, although it wasn't explained. I don't know, you know, I don't know why they're not growing plantains anymore. And there are other people who are. And some of it is just simply the destruction that happens in a place when so many people come through. And what may not be clear to people who haven't spent any time in the wet tropics is that you trample an early forest. You know, you obviously people aren't trampling full grown trees, but you trample the understory of a forest like this. And in the temperate zone, the forest would be fine. And in the tropics, not so much because the fertility, the nutrients don't lie in the soil. The soil cannot just regenerate forests. The nutrients lie in the stuff above ground. And upon being trampled, it takes a while. It takes years for that to go back into the humus of the soil and become live plants again. So it's going to be some years before that's even possible. And it's very hard to do that if you don't have the time to effectively do what like swidden agriculture does, which is rotate among fields and be able to grow again.

[00:57:09] Bret Weinstein: Yeah. And, you know, the forest isn't what it was. You know, that number of people that's coming through. But at the level of, you know, stuff being hunted out, this was a devastating alteration to this otherwise very important forest. And, you know, I think the overarching lesson here is one, welcome to complex systems. You had somebody somewhere, some first worlder decide that they wanted a massive influx of people into the US for their own reasons. We are now zoomed in on a consequence that happens to exist in Darién, a consequence, both for the indigenous people, for the the Panamanians. It's all negative. It's all predictable in one sense that if you create this massive change, it's going to have massive negative impacts. And then if you withdraw it, that's going to have massive negative impact. Right. And really, what I want people to get is, do you think that you and I are any different in the eyes of the people who made this policy than the Indians?

[00:58:23] Heather Heying: The campesinos and yeah,

[00:58:23] Bret Weinstein: yeah, the campesinos and the Indians in the Darién Gap. No, no, they see us in exactly the same terms. What happens to us does not matter. So that is going to be profoundly important. You know, they're destroying the quality of life here in the US. The migrants have degraded the quality of life here in the US for some reason. Again, we don't know what it was. They haven't told us, but they wanted that to happen. They were okay with it for whatever goal they had in mind. What's going to happen when AI does to the entire population what the end of migration through the Darién Gap just did to these campesinos who live there? It's the same thing. There's no plan for us. It's not going to matter. The fact that, you know, we can't figure out how, I mean, frankly, wake up, folks. This is what the control grid they're building is for. They're not planning to take care of us. They're planning to keep us from noticing that we've been betrayed and doing anything about it. That's it.

[00:59:24] Heather Heying: Yeah. And in that light, I'd say, I think, you know, I'm not going to read any more from the article. And I didn't really share any of her insightful on the ground sort of anthropological, sociological reporting of how the people are experiencing life now. But it is exactly what we should all be considering, that there are real people everywhere who are having their lives, who are experiencing whiplash, economic whiplash, through no fault of their own, are sometimes lambasted for taking advantage of opportunity when it suddenly comes and are then also, you know, the whiplash in the opposite direction when it disappears again, get no support from anyone, yes, from the people who said you shouldn't have taken advantage of the opportunity that came your way in the first place, but especially not from the people who actually made it happen. So this is all of us. This is potentially all of us.

[01:00:20] Bret Weinstein: This is all of us. And what we are detecting, what you can see in this article about the Darién, but you can extrapolate to how we look, is that at some level, they've got an in-group and, you know, borrowing from George Carlin, we're not in it. They see us as effectively cattle, you know, it's not that they can afford to just completely ignore us. They don't want their cattle starving, but they don't think about us as like them and entitled to the same thing as if they are entitled to. We are a problem to be dealt with. And dealt with when ignoring us won't work. That's the point. They will ignore us until they can't, at which point they will deal with us. And the evidence is there. It's on the ground. You can see it in Darién, right? They don't care. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was all gung-ho to protect people marching north. They don't give a damn about the people who have been stranded in their wake.

[01:01:22] Heather Heying: I think she mentioned them a couple of times because that's the society you saw. In the article, she mentions, I think, the Norwegian aid society, which I had forgotten about your experience on the ground with the Hebrew aid society. She mentioned the Norwegian aid society and I thought, like, what? Why are they there? And so I just want to say, like, okay, Hebrew, Norwegian, there were a number of groups there. It wasn't just the Hebrew whatever aid society. There are a number of NGOs international there doing work that they maybe, you know, the people on the ground probably thought was honorable.

[01:01:59] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, I think the people on the ground generally do think it's honorable. The people who are making it happen, I think, are cynical. I know the people who are aware of what the plan really is are cynical. As Michael Yon describes it, austerity functions like osmotic pressure, right? You create chaos in somebody's homeland. It motivates them to move somewhere else. So if you're interested in moving populations around the globe for your own purposes, if you, like, let's say, need cheap labor over here or something like that, that one of the ways to do it is to create a little chaos, create osmotic pressure. You know, you open a valve in the Darién Gap, people flow north. You, you know, take the NGOs that are built to reorganize the world according to your private plans. And they go there with the excuse of, yes, we're just very concerned about the fate of migrants around the world. Oh, are you now? I don't believe you actually. I think what you're doing is you are facilitating a migration slash invasion for reasons that a small number of people are going to be concerned about. And I think that's one of the reasons that a small number of people have agreed on and have not shared it with the rest of us because they know that it would not stand the light of day. You know, I think that is NGO world, unfortunately.

[01:03:16] Heather Heying: Yeah, I, I unfortunately believe that I agree with you and I think the responsibility of someone who is so good as this author is at being on the ground and talking to people. If they are going to zoom out in the piece and talk about things at a broader scale, they have a responsibility to try to apply some of their analytical skills at that level as well as opposed to up here, accept the the mainstream narrative as to what is happening. And when they're actually talking to people, see the foibles and the differences and the idiosyncrasies of individuals as they are.

[01:03:58] Bret Weinstein: I think also it makes sense to imagine the interaction between the two layers that we've described. You've got the people on the ground who in general believe what the brochure says about what they're doing there. And then you've got other people who are deciding what gets done and where. If you were cynically going to try to move people around the globe because you wanted the people in places that they weren't, it would make sense to come up with a nonsense ideology that was pro-migration as a thing. It's not hard to rationalize this. Obviously, we're not about nations. What we really want is the people to go where the people want to be. And borders are an impediment to this. And wouldn't that be a marvelous world if everybody could just be wherever they wanted? And so we are in favor of migration because migration is the manifestation of people pursuing their dreams, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can come up with that story and then at the point that the mustache twirling filled room guys decide, you know what? We need a large increase in the number of people here to swamp out the votes of people who are getting wise to us or whatever they're doing. The point is, oh, well, let's call in the people who pretend to just love migration and we'll get them to facilitate a pipeline here.

[01:05:20] Bret Weinstein: And, you know, when interviewed, they'll look doe-eyed into the camera and explain how they just have this overwhelming compassion for people on the move. And, you know, it's like, OK, I get it. It's a game. But some of us see it coming. And no, there's nothing all right about this at all. And it's not like I don't want the people who are in the place where you're motivating them to move to be living under marvelous circumstances. I would love that. But at some level, you have to start by governing something that has borders that are not porous. Right. You have to define the borders of a thing and then you can fix it. And yes, people will want to go there. But you can also take the model of whatever it is that you've done there and you can start globalizing it. That's how you get to a world where these borders become less important, not by tearing them down and motivating people to move for your own twisted purposes.

[01:06:15] Heather Heying: As described by you just now, it sounds like, you know, if we accept what we've been saying for years, but as recently that, you know, the hypothesis that has recently been getting much more popularity that the wokeness and DEI and the falling apart of once functional systems can be attributed to a feminization of systems. That a female dominant way of approaching problems when it trumps a male dominant, a male coded way of approaching problems will tend to result in the kinds of collapse that we're seeing. What you've just described suggests actually still a male dominant mode, male, male dominance in the actual systems, seeing what happens if they just put a sort of female coded way of dealing with things into that middle layer and say, "Let it go, like let it go girls." And then you have like all the NGOs and the academics and everything else now being run by women and men who were acting like women, but they've been set to it by men who knew exactly what they were doing in the first place. The mustache twirling, smoke-filled room, you know, Monopoly guy that you invoke.

[01:07:35] Bret Weinstein: As the antithesis of the Volvo-driving,

[01:07:40] Heather Heying: latte-swilling.

[01:07:41] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, it's funny that I think we need to be cautious about overdrawing the analogy because one thing you could say is, "All right, I don't know why the Trump administration is behaving the way it is with deportation that it's behaving. That really spooks me. Something is not right." But the way they behaved with respect to shutting down the southern border and the extension of the southern border that exists in Darién makes a lot of sense to me. What did they do? They drew a line in the sand. Right?

[01:08:12] Heather Heying: They enforced a line that had already been drawn.

[01:08:14] Bret Weinstein: Fair enough. But my point would be if you take your framework, which I love, that male comp, it's not that women aren't competitive, it's that males are overtly competitive. Women tend to be covertly competitive. That the point is the line in the sand is the overt way of doing this. It's like, that's a line. You're not supposed to cross it.

[01:08:32] Heather Heying: Yeah, everyone can see it. Nope, you did it. Gonna shoot you.

[01:08:35] Bret Weinstein: Right. And the covert way is for Alejandro Mayorkas to go give a speech at the Chinese immigration camp. You know, in the Darién, in which he's... We feel your pain. Right, exactly. And it is, there is something female coded about it. The whole thing is not what it appeared to be. Right? That you have the excuse and then you have the purpose, which we have to guess at. But that was definitely covert. And, you know, I did end up feeling favorable to this author as a person. I have a feeling if you ran into her in travel, you'd have a lot of disagreements. But there'd be a lot of resonance too.

[01:09:19] Heather Heying: She had an openness and was clearly engaging with at least everyone she was talking about here as like actual human beings.

[01:09:25] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, and not caricaturing them.

[01:09:27] Heather Heying: Yeah, that's what I mean.

[01:09:28] Bret Weinstein: Yeah. But that said, it does feel like she is sort of bought a lot of the cover story strangely for why the whole thing happened. And that's a little mysterious.

[01:09:44] Heather Heying: Okay, let's... At some point, a few minutes ago, we were at a place where I thought there was a natural segue, but I can no longer quite see it. So let's just move to our second topic.

[01:09:53] Bret Weinstein: Our abrupt and jarring segue to our second topic.

[01:09:56] Heather Heying: Well, I think it fits, but it's not immediately clear to me how. So this week on Natural Selections, you can show my screen here. I wrote a piece that I call "Raw: What your phone and your dog don't have in common." I presume, I hope that you have not read it yet.

[01:10:13] Bret Weinstein: I have not.

[01:10:14] Heather Heying: So I'm going to read it, and then we are going to talk about it. Neither of them fly into fits of rage, find their eyes swollen from crying jags, or mull morosely over what they could have done differently. Why were they so damn foolish saying that thing to Jane, who of course was going to repeat it, so it was going to get back to Bob, with whom things will now never be the same. So stupid. Lions and bears don't ruminate this way. They don't reflect backwards, nor look forward in anticipation. They don't have the emotions that we worked so hard to hide in the first place. They are raw. Raw. Meat that has not been cooked. The word was first used centuries or likely millennia ago and can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European. Its meaning has thus had time to morph. Raw. Unprocessed. Unfiltered. Unclothed. Raw. Weather that is biting. Chills one to the bone. Raw. Skin that has seen too much exposure to sun or to wind and is abraded.

[01:11:33] Heather Heying: Raw. Inexperienced. The opposite of raw. Textiles that have been spun. Hides that have been tanned. Goods that have been manufactured. Data that have been processed, transformed, or standardized. Data that have been cooked or compressed. Raw talent is inborn and rough. With work you gain, polish you can gain, polish and lose your sharp edges. Raw is authentic, fundamental human experience. Sometimes it is brutal. Always it is real. When we are seemingly uncivilized, obscuring our emotional responses to the world, we are elevating the analytical, the rigorous and the logical. We have accomplished much in the sphere. So much. Stone knapping. The control of fire. Metallurgy and the wheel. Bridges, calculus and bicycles. Internal combustion engines. Radio, transistors, space flight, lasers, microprocessors, AI. To name but a few. Some of the most impressive things that we have accomplished through analysis and logic are, not surprisingly, fully reliant on analysis and logic. They do not function in the realm of the subjective or the personal. A knife isn't interested in your anxiety. Its edge is capable of slicing or not, regardless of how you're feeling. Your skill in wielding the knife is contingent on your emotional state and the quality of your slices will therefore vary.

[01:12:53] Heather Heying: But that is not a characteristic of the knife, only of its user. Bridges don't care if they make you sad. If the engineering was sound, the materials hold, the bridge stays put. What you do with the bridge is a decision that you, the emotional, analytical, soulful amalgam that you are, must make. Internal combustion engines, radios, transistors, spaceships, lasers, microprocessors and AI agents, they don't care about your mood. They're not interested. They are incapable of being interested. This static, cold, hard world that we have made with our formidable analytical skills is too much for some people. In response, the people for whom this world is too much may lash out. They may overexpress, embrace emo or goth, cosplay or performative outrage. They may invite us into their story before it goes sideways or far too far. They come to believe their own fantasies. Maybe they ask us to play along. Maybe they insist that we do so. "It's ma'am," bellowed the large angry man who demanded obedience from everyone in his sphere. His unspoken premise was, "I'm a woman, cos I say so." "I was born the wrong species," said the young Norwegian woman. "I'm a cat." As if to prove her point, she hissed at a passing dog. "I identify as black," said the demonstrably white woman who had recently resigned from her post as president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Black People.

[01:14:14] Heather Heying: Such delusions have wreaked havoc on Western society in the last few decades, many among us have objected, saying that reality matters. In so doing, we are apparently denying people's lived experience of being a woman when they are not, a cat when they are not, a black person when they are not. We are asked, sadly, "Can't you just be kind?" No. It is not kind to let bullies win. It is not kind to pretend that black is white or up is down or that a human can become a cat or that a man can become a woman. It is not kind to pretend that reality is not real. But maybe, somehow, these poor, sad people, the ones who are enraged and the ones who are merely confused, are responding to a world that has decided that cold, sterile analysis is the only way forward. This static cold, hard world that we have made with our formidable analytical skills is too much for such people. Or perhaps it is better said that this static, cold, hard world is too little for some people. This world is not enough. Perhaps the drama queens and the furries and the larpers have something to teach us after all. When my, when our, beautiful Labrador died recently, it was heartbreaking. She was such a good dog. She was thirteen years old and had come into our lives almost precisely as my father left this earth, and it has always felt a little to me like she stood in for him, especially with our boys, who lost their beloved grandfather as they gained a companion with whom they could race down trails and build forts and leap off root masses and the soft duff of Pacific Northwest forest floor.

[01:15:47] Heather Heying: I wish she wasn't gone, our beautiful Labrador, and I think of her often, and stand at her grave too, remembering. The first few days were the hardest, of course, the most raw, the most real. That's what we say, isn't it? Rawness feels real. That heart-wrenching, tear-jerking, chest-wracking feeling of pure despair, of blackness and emptiness, and like nothing will ever be okay again because she's gone and she isn't coming back. The stages that come, the disbelief, the negotiating, the anger, they are bright and sharp and awful and so very, very real. Those emotions identify us as human. There are other animals who have emotions with whom we can connect. When we are scolded for anthropomorphizing them, we can legitimately counter, "No, these animals really do feel things." Such animals include dogs among our closest associates, and among the wild things there are also dolphins and elephants, crows and monkeys, wolves and parrots. These are the usual suspects, the long-lived social critters with long childhoods and generational overlap, who learn from their elders and teach their youngers and feel deeply of this world. Iguanas don't do these things. Neither do dragonflies, nor AI agents, but it can feel like they do. It is easy to become enamored with AI, reliant on its superhuman capacities to find and organize and report on people, places and things.

[01:17:07] Heather Heying: But we humans, who are not merely analytical and rigorous and logical, but also quirky and emotional and psychological, see the quirky and emotional and psychological in the things we interact with. The quizzical expression from our dog, the evil intent of the blender that refuses to blend, the maddening nonchalance of the phone when it fails to live up to expectations, as if it doesn't even care. We anthropomorphize even when the thing has no capacity for engagement. The blender is not quirky or emotional or psychological. It is purely the result of analysis and mechanics, and its failures are the same. Your dog does have quirks and emotions and psychology, though. Your cat does, too, in a different way. Your brother definitely does, I hope. As does your spouse and your oldest friend, and also that guy you met at the coffee shop with whom you might start going on hikes because it already feels like you've known him for years, and why not? Walk together, talk together, let the air flow over you in the landscape as you move air through your vocal cords and make meaning out of its perturbations. Your dog and cat do have human-like characteristics. Blenders and phones do not. We all know this at some level, and yet, we attribute human-like characteristics even to things with no evolutionary history of beingness. Have you ever hurled your phone into the sea? The vast majority of us definitely have not.

[01:18:23] Heather Heying: The vast majority of us have, however, considered how very good it would feel to do so, for one glorious minute until the ramifications caught up with us. It's not enough, this static, cold, hard world that we have made with our formidable analytical skills. It's not enough. And the solution to it not being enough is not more application of formidable analytical skills. We can keep our emotions under wraps and wear pants unlike lions and use forks unlike bears and feel very modern and sophisticated and civilized, but if that's all that we do, we forget the other parts of ourselves at our peril. The solution to the static, cold, hard, analytical world not being enough is to remember what else we are, what else we are capable of, and to do more of that. Do the things that the AI cannot. Remember our dreams. Aspire. Move our bodies fast and slow. Relish our food. Smell the damp earth and the wood smoke. Listen to leaves blowing through branches. Taste the season's last fruit. Watch the moon move through the sky and consider what is beyond it. Let the raw emotion flood us when it comes. And be grateful for it, even when it hurts.

[01:19:34] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, I love it. I am. I guess my dominant thought here is that you're pointing to a very deep problem with where we're headed. Yeah. And the problem is that the AI actually is surprisingly capable at the analytical level.

[01:19:58] Heather Heying: So good.

[01:19:58] Bret Weinstein: And that without it having a raw experience, there is a danger in that and there that danger grows as you go through time. In other words, without it without it being embodied. I mean, tell me it's not jarring when there's this tone in what the AIs say in their responses.

[01:20:23] Heather Heying: I decided not to put its tone in here, but because that will change, right?

[01:20:29] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, it will get better at not triggering you. But there's something about the fact, you know, the AI, let's say that I'm in some realm where it just unambiguously knows way more than I do because it has the benefit of everything everybody knows on the topic. Yeah. Right. So it speaks with a kind of justifiable, encyclopedic knowledge. Never having once experienced the thing it's talking about.

[01:20:54] Heather Heying: Never having directly experienced anything.

[01:20:57] Bret Weinstein: Right.

[01:20:58] Heather Heying: And in fact, I'm incapable of experience.

[01:21:02] Bret Weinstein: I had a crazy experience with it months back. As you know, I've built, I don't know, a dozen bicycle wheels over my lifetime, you know, all in adulthood. It's a process that has two pieces. It has the lacing of the wheel. You've got all the right parts, the right length spokes, all the right parts. Prepare everything. Then you lace the wheel, you get everything so that it's oriented correctly, and then you tension it. I can do the tensioning part very easily. I don't need anybody to remind me how to do that. The lacing part.

[01:21:37] Heather Heying: So the lacing is getting the parts into the vaguely appropriate places such that the thing is holding itself together, but it wouldn't ride.

[01:21:48] Bret Weinstein: Not even vaguely appropriate. I think if you've never scrutinized a bicycle wheel, it will not. You've got four different.

[01:21:57] Heather Heying: The nipples, the spokes and the nipples, right, are all in the right place. But nothing is in its correct tightness. Therefore, it's definitely not ready for prime time.

[01:22:06] Bret Weinstein: Lucy, you see wobbly. But, you know, you've got two flanges on each side of the hub. You've got spokes that start on the inside and go outside and spokes that start on the outside and go inside, alternating both hubs. And they cross each other a fixed number of times over, under, over, and then figuring out, I mean, imagine your start.

[01:22:29] Heather Heying: That's what it's called lacing.

[01:22:30] Bret Weinstein: Yeah. Yeah. You're putting your first spoke in. Well, you have to figure out how to get that spoke from where it starts to a hole that is appropriate on the rim. And there are two different kinds of holes in the rim. That won't be obvious unless you really look carefully. So anyway,

[01:22:45] Heather Heying: is it hardest to start there then

[01:22:47] Bret Weinstein: or well, it's so for a good wheel builder, the objective is to get it so everything is correct. It's laced correctly. And so you can look through the hole where the valve stem of the inner tube goes and see the label, the like the brand of the hub through it. That's how you know that the person who did this didn't just barely build the wheel, but they built the wheel with enough control over it to get it right. But anyway, point is, I never, you know, the wheel build that I was doing was a two-cross. The average wheel, almost every wheel I've built has been a three-cross. There's only been one other two-cross. So you have to look up the pattern somewhere for how you do it. And I decide, you know what, every time I do it, I go back to the same page and I look through how it's done. And it's just a painful struggle. I'm going to ask the AI because of the way it's written.

[01:23:44] Heather Heying: Is this related? So you and I have talked about when I find a recipe that I want to cook, I almost always have to turn it into my own language, into a framework that organizes things in the actual order in which you're going to use them and informs me in advance how many, how much space, how many things. So I find that almost no recipe is written for the human being that I am. Is it that?

[01:24:08] Bret Weinstein: It's very close to that. So the place I would usually go is Sheldon Brown. Sheldon Brown was an important bicycle mechanic who died tragically some years back. But his site lives on actually the shop where he worked sort of lived on in his image. It's now gone. But his site is still up. But it's static. And it was written by a guy who built thousands of wheels.

[01:24:31] Heather Heying: And he wasn't claiming that clear communication to people who don't yet know what he knows is what he's expert at.

[01:24:38] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, he just he can't put himself back in the mindset of somebody who's built a dozen. So it was always a struggle getting it right. And I decided AI can solve this. I'm just going to get the AI to explain it in terms that are appropriate to my skill. I've done it. I know what it's supposed to be like, but it's not the lacing part is not native to me. Wow. Yeah. So badly, in fact, that I went through like four or five failed attempts to get the thing laced.

[01:25:06] Heather Heying: And each so you couldn't tell from what it gave you that it was a mess.

[01:25:09] Bret Weinstein: It was not obvious because it spoke very authoritatively and it gave directions that seemed followable. But the more I looked at like, why is it failing? Am I failing to understand it? It's like, no, it's saying things that are not true. And it's saying them with the same authority as it speaks when it actually completely does get what it's doing.

[01:25:31] Heather Heying: Even though that exercise is an entirely analytical one. But because it's an entirely analytical one that exists in physical space, it is probably it's it's maybe a little bit like this. This old from pre-AI era, like, no, really, tell me how to make a peanut butter sandwich.

[01:25:49] Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[01:25:49] Heather Heying: Like all of the steps. If you really have no experience ever before with bread or knives or peanut butters or plates or peanut butters, that's not the plural or any of it. It's surprising how many pieces there are. And so something that is incapable of having physical experience in the world may not understand what is necessary.

[01:26:10] Bret Weinstein: Yeah. And, you know, I don't want to undersell it. I do think that the AIs will come to understand without our knowing that it has happened because children are AIs effectively, they're LLMs effectively in the space between multiple LLMs that are interacting with each other. And that same opportunity exists for them to have emergent phenomena that weren't programmed in. I don't know that they understand anything yet. They probably don't. But the mismatch between speaking like someone who thoroughly does understand and not understanding at all actually gets to what you're arguing about here. The, you know, the person who speaks eloquently on any number of topics because they are thoroughly well read on, you know, speaks about how how you really improved your tennis game having never stepped onto the court. Like that's a maddening person. Even if they do have something to tell you because it's somehow encoded in the books. It's like I want to hear this from you very differently. I want the first thing you say, you know, hey, you should know I've never been on a tennis court. However, I have read a great deal about the game. And one theme that you will find across multiple discussions of the topic is X, right?

[01:27:26] Bret Weinstein: That would be much less jarring.

[01:27:27] Heather Heying: And it's relevant to Matthew Crawford, he of Why We Drive and the other books that I read first and adore and I can't think of either of their names at the moment. Oh, Shop Class as Soulcraft. And The World... Beyond Your Head. Beyond Your Head, yes. In one of those books, although I think it's more most likely to be in Why We Drive, he talks about the differences in how we perceive speed. And he is a motorcycle rider specifically, although this works in a car as well. It's like, well, you can look at the speedometer and that tells you something that is objectively true, you know, whether or not it's that is accurate depending on how off it may be. But it is reporting something that has been measured. But your felt experience of speed as you move around a corner, as the wind goes through your hair, as everything visceral and physiological in your body responds to the speed that you are hurtling it through space is a much more complete understanding of speed, whether or not you can experience all that and go like, that's 57. Right? Like you don't you don't necessarily know with the amount of precision, but you know many, many more things across many more domains.

[01:28:41] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, it is exactly that. And by the way, as you were reading, I was thinking, wow, this reminds me a little bit of Matthew Crawford.

[01:28:47] Heather Heying: Oh, that's an honor.

[01:28:48] Bret Weinstein: I thought we'd take it as the compliment that it is. But so imagine for a second, we... I know this is an extension of your point, because you and I talk about this often. I know this is primary in your thinking, but... Human beings have become capable through experience of a world that is actual. They have also become capable of describing that, such that I can pass something on to you through a non real, you know, arbitrary framework of sound vibrations in the open air. You can interpret what it must mean based on who you know me to be, what the rough meaning of the words is. And you can apply it again in the real physical world and, you know, fine tune it. And then you'll be like, oh, yeah, I see what you were saying. That did work. Right? A machine world that never... it doesn't... it isn't going from the real world to an encoding that allows you to talk about it back to the real world. It's up in the encoding layer, perfectly always, never anywhere else. That thing has a danger going forward.

[01:30:05] Bret Weinstein: It's like a... it's a Faustian bargain where it can be more intelligent than you today. Does it have a plan for discovering what you might discover tomorrow? No, but it can unhook the people who are going to do the discovering by making them very dependent on its instantaneous intelligence.

[01:30:25] Heather Heying: Yes, I was hoping you would continue talking for a minute because I have to add something here.

[01:30:30] Bret Weinstein: Yeah. So, so anyway, I, you know, the instantaneous intelligence problem is significant, as is, as you point to in your thing, the lack of generations that, you know, as we describe in our book, a human child picks up, if it's raised in a good environment, it picks up that fraction of what its parents know that is actually valuable. Yeah. And it does not pick up the arbitrary stuff. And then it...

[01:31:08] Heather Heying: Or does. I mean, I think some of family culture is children picking up some of the arbitrary stuff. And then frankly, going out into the world and coming back and being like, that thing that we call that other thing is not what anyone else calls it. I thought, I thought this was a human experience or an American experience. Like, that's dad. Like, what did you have us call this?

[01:31:29] Bret Weinstein: Why does our family call a rooftop box a RocketBox when that was in fact one model of one brand at one moment in time? Right. I'm not saying you don't pick up any of the quirks. You do. You pick up some arbitrary stuff. But in general, the point of being mortal and giving rise to children who are themselves mortal, who will give rise to children who are themselves mortal and passing the most important stuff of what it is to be a person outside of the genes is that you can pick up the fraction that makes sense. You can jettison the fraction that may have made sense for your parents, but doesn't make sense anymore because the world has changed. So you can edit it and then you can augment it. And that is what at least allows us to keep our head above water in a non-static world. And there's something, even if you can argue that it's sort of somehow loosely in the AI realm because it's reading up to date stuff. It's not really in there. It's not in there in an algorithmic tried and true, stood the test of time manner. And because of that, how exactly will it crash and burn?

[01:32:49] Bret Weinstein: A little hard to say. Will it crash and burn? I think it's pretty clear that until you figure out how to get that kind of edit and progress mode into the training, it's pretty much guaranteed that the instantaneous intelligence is going to cause it to stop becoming more intelligent.

[01:33:10] Heather Heying: Yeah. Different. It's interesting where you focus there. A lot of the feedback that I've gotten about the piece, most of it private, has been an entirely different valence. And my reason for writing it was I was prompted. I was on a walk with a friend last week, three weeks after Maddie died. And she was well familiar. She has recently lost a dog herself and was very attuned to how we were both feeling and asked me how I was. And I said some of what I say here, which was, you know, it's awful. It's so hard. And I miss her very much. And, you know, with a dog, unlike with someone whom you love but don't live with, you notice it even more, right? Because, you know, you feel the absence acutely all the time. And there's a rawness. I use that word with her is why I started thinking about this idea of rawness. There's a rawness to the feeling, to the awful, horrible, heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching feeling of the grief that is amazing, that is so real, that is so human, and that nothing in these screens can do for you.

[01:34:45] Heather Heying: It can't approach it. It's not the same thing. And so, you know, the AI can tell you true things and can tell you false things and it can be confused about which is which and you can be confused about which is which and you can learn things and you can even, you know, maybe use it to navigate relationships, which I hear people do, but my God, that seems like a foolish thing to do, but put that aside. The idea that you can experience something for which an analytical, logical, rigorous analysis will not be sufficient is something that can't be replaced by the screens, by the AI, by the phones, by the blenders, by any of it. And we should be tenaciously recognizing that this is fundamentally human and we're not going to let anything take it away from us.

[01:35:41] Bret Weinstein: There's something about, I don't know if it's all Cluster B or it's just a sociopath. There's something about sociopaths that cannot properly, cannot compellingly imitate true grief.

[01:35:56] Heather Heying: And

[01:35:57] Bret Weinstein: I've always thought that that was because true grief is so different from what you expect it to be.

[01:36:06] Heather Heying: Yeah, yeah. No, it doesn't. It's different for every person and every moment for it. Yeah.

[01:36:12] Bret Weinstein: You know, it could be, oh, you're overwhelmingly sad. I can imitate that. But that's not what it is. Your grieving process goes on hold when you need to be thinking about how to, you know, land the airplane, it does not come into your mind until the airplane is on the ground. Right. It is a process that has a meaning that you and I have talked about what it probably is in the book, but we don't know what the meaning is. So it's very hard, you know, if you go to a funeral, do you just see people crying? No. You see people laughing, right? And crying and everything in between and talking about how things are at work and stuff that you wouldn't expect to see there. And this is all normal, right? And what people say about grief is so far from the mark of what it actually is to experience it. And in part, that's because we sort of privately grieve. And so it's not visible to be described well.

[01:37:20] Heather Heying: Or copied by those who don't experience it.

[01:37:22] Bret Weinstein: Yeah, exactly. And so I think

[01:37:24] Heather Heying: that's part of the realness. Like this sucks. And it's, wow, now I know for sure. Like I'm still human here.

[01:37:33] Bret Weinstein: Yeah.

[01:37:33] Heather Heying: Yeah.

[01:37:34] Bret Weinstein: But the funny thing is the culture, we pass down rituals of grief. I think those rituals of grief are profoundly important and that our having modernized them has been to our detriment. And that they are the best you're going to get in terms of guideposts to get you to go through that process as effectively as you can, which matters and as non-disruptively as you can, which is to say you'll be very disrupted, but you don't want to be more disrupted than need be. Though you want to do all of the work of grieving. You don't want to put it off forever or not address it or be wounded by it or something like that. And what we did with Maddie, burying her ourselves, I feel like of all of the times that I faced true, profound grief, this was the healthiest of them. And I think because we came the closest to doing something that hasn't been modified. And, you know, it left me just sort of offloading all of the various stuff that happens to be here.

[01:38:50] Bret Weinstein: But it left me a couple of days ago thinking, you know, how profoundly I miss Maddie. But at the same time, there's a part of me that knows how old she was and how much harder things were getting and that it wasn't going to get any better. And so there's a part of me that is sort of glad that it didn't get worse than it ended up being at the end. And, you know, that's far better than railing at the universe for, you know, how could you do this? So to your point, the AI can review every last word that's ever been written about this process without coming close to the weird experience that grief actually ends up being. You know, the strange, healthy versus non-healthy dynamic that is not inherently encoded in the whether or not you're, you know, credibly sobbing.

[01:39:57] Heather Heying: Right, right.

[01:39:58] Bret Weinstein: Yeah. So so there is something about I guess the point, if I put it into your language, real grief is inherently raw. It just is. You can describe it maybe. You can you can do the refined thing maybe.

[01:40:14] Heather Heying: But AI is inherently a processed product. It's a product. It's processed. It's cooked. It's compressed. It's like it's all you know, I just I did the deep etymological dive at first with the help of AI into what raw has meant from, you know, from Oxford English Dictionary, you know, taking it back to the Proto-Indo-European. It's had, you know, so much time to change. But, you know, the idea that we are having our lives filtered through something that is already a filter, as opposed to, you know, there's a lot in the biological literature about how, yes, you know, your senses, you can only know what your senses have allowed you to sense. And so you have the biases of your own senses built in. And therefore, you can't actually experience objective reality. Fine. Yes. But if you add more and more and more filters through the human construction that is AI that is then processed, compressed and cooked and all of this, you are only taking yourself farther from objective reality. There is no way to get closer to it by adding more filters.

[01:41:20] Bret Weinstein: There is something so deep in the idea that AI is inherently processed, that it is the product of a process. Yeah, you know, that's obvious in the just the description of how it's produced. But that it has a relationship to a raw something that is undescribed as we as we consult the AI, thinking of it as a cognitively processed food is the right it provides the right caution because at first processed food seems like, oh, it's easy. It's pleasant. I get exactly the right number of this and that and the other. And, you know, what more could a body want? And the answer is, oh, for lots of reasons. That's just not true. Right. Yeah. Oh, the baby doesn't have teeth, you know, processed food. So the baby doesn't have to chew because, you know, nature didn't think to give the baby teeth. So we have to come up with a technological solution to address the toothlessness of the baby. Saws up the baby. Right. It's like, huh. No, no, in fact, you're going to screw up the child's health if you process the food and, you know, actually our theme song for DarkHorse is the Wintergatan Marble Machine song.

[01:42:42] Bret Weinstein: The guy who built the marble machine, Martin Molin, describes his own childhood in, I think, Norway, where the playgrounds had like pieces of lumber with nails sticking out of them and all sorts of things that would be considered irresponsible here in the U.S. But that the point is it creates a kind of mind that can deal with a world of consequences that hasn't been purified of every danger. And anyway, the. Are you getting enough raw in your cognitive diet is really the question.

[01:43:19] Heather Heying: Yeah, that's right. Good. That's where we'll stop. Yeah. Check out Bret's Patreons this weekend. If you're looking for holiday gifts or just signed books, we've got these Hunter- Gatherer's Guide in English, in French, in Spanish, plus Antipode for sale now at our site, which is darkhorsepodcast.org slash books. All the information is there. Check out our sponsors this week. Cozy Earth, Puori and SaunaSpace. And until you see us next time, be good to the ones you love. Eat real food and get outside.

[01:43:56] Bret Weinstein: Be well, everyone.