De-banking, Censorship, and the Right to Die | Rupa Subramanya

In Episode 390 https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/de-banking-censorship-and-the-right-to-die-rupa-subramanya of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Rupa Subramanya, a journalist at the Free Press, about the de-banking of political dissidents, censorship, and the "right to die." Rupa first came on Demetri's radar for the work she has done writing about what is known as "de-banking:" the closure of people's or organizations' bank accounts by financial institutions that perceive the account holders to pose a financial, legal, regulatory, or reputational risk to the organization. They speak extensively about her work in this area, along with her writings about political censorship of conservative voices and the right-to-die movement in the Netherlands and Canada, between the first and second hours. You can subscribe to our premium content and access our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe https://hiddenforces.io/subscribe. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe https://hiddenforces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces, you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334 | YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8URhgYos5fjHqFSO4RSIEg | Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP | Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/demetri-kofinas/hidden-forces | SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/hiddenforces | CastBox https://castbox.fm/channel/2629539 | RSS Feed http://hiddenforces.libsyn.com/rss Write us a review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334 & Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ https://hiddenforces.io/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas http://www.demetrikofinas.com/ Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io https://hiddenforces.io/ Join the conversation on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenforcespod/, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenforcespod/, and Twitter https://twitter.com/hiddenforcespod at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas https://twitter.com/kofinas Episode Recorded on 10/30/2024

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Demetri Kofinas?

  What's up everybody? My name is Dimitri Kofinas and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest in this episode of Hidden Forces is Rupa Subramanya, a journalist at The Free Press who began her career at The Wall Street Journal with a weekly column focusing on the intersection of economics, politics, and public policy. Her work has been cited in The New York Times, The Financial Times, and The Guardian, among other publications. Rupa first came on my radar for the work she has done writing about what is known

• 0:44Demetri Kofinas?

  as de-banking, the closure of people's organization's bank accounts by financial institutions that perceive the account holders to pose a financial, legal, regulatory, or reputational risk to the organization. We spoke extensively about her work in this area, along with her writings about political censorship of conservative voices and the right-to-die movement in the Netherlands and Canada between the first and second hours. If you want access to all of our conversation and you're not already subscribed to Hidden Forces, you can join our premium feed and listen to the second hour of today's conversation on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening to

• 1:24Demetri Kofinas?

  this episode right now by going to hiddenforces.io/subscribe. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to [email protected] and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this lively and educational conversation with my guest, Rupa Subramanya.

• 2:09Demetri Kofinas?

  Rupa Subramanya, welcome to Hidden Forces.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you, Dmitry, for inviting me to your show.

• 2:17Demetri Kofinas?

  It's my pleasure having you on, Rupa. So you came on my radar because of an article you wrote for The Free Press, where you write consistently about the banking system, but specifically the phenomenon of de-banking, or people getting off-boarded from the financial system, in some cases permanently, which obviously has devastating effects. And you highlight some cases that are truly remarkable. One in particular was a guy who runs a nonprofit, and the number I have in my head was something like 600-something million dollars he had raised through his nonprofit. And this guy was de-banked, because I think it was Wells Fargo wouldn't do business for him, and it was through Stripe. We'll have a chance to get into that, as well as a number of other topics that you write about, including the

• 2:58Demetri Kofinas?

  right to die, which is this, it's basically euthanasia, people's right to medically assisted suicide, and the way it's being abused in Canada and the Netherlands. We'll have a chance to talk about freedom of speech issues, DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, and its introduction in various areas. It's this phenomenon. We'll have a conversation about that, as well as a number of other cultural issues. But before we get into that, tell me a little bit about you. How did you get into journalism? How did you get into writing? Also, like, how do you define yourself? Are you a journalist, or what do you do?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Great questions, Dmitry, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. So just a little bit about me. I am originally from India. That's where I was born. I spent my formative years in the United Arab Emirates. And, you know, I actually trained as an economist when I came to Canada as a student more than 25 years ago. So I have a master's degree in economics and international affairs. So journalism was the furthest thing from my mind. I did like writing a lot, and I liked being in the idea space. I like debates and, you know, and discussion over issues, you know, that animated me. So I suppose, in a way, writing was always going to be in the Stars for me, if you will.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  And I really just happened to get into by accident. I happened to be in in India for a conference. And I, you know, at this point, I was living in Canada, but I was visiting India. And an editor at the Wall Street Journal. You know, we were chatting and he they were launching an online presence in India and he asked me if I wanted to write. They were looking for people to write. And I said, sure. And I was actually there looking for jobs in investment banking and so on. But, you know, I said, well, yeah, I love writing and I'm going to get into. Here's my first piece. And that's really how it began. I began to really enjoy writing and I abandoned this dream of finding a job in investment banking and became a full time writer.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  So that's how I got into journalism. And over the years, I'd been, you know, I've written for the Wall Street Journal. I've written for Foreign Policy. I freelanced a fair bit till I wound up at the Free Press, which used to be called Common Sense when I first began writing for them. And my first big story for them was about the truckers protest here in Canada where I live. And, you know, so I've basically been writing for them. I'm exclusive to the Free Press. And yeah, so that's how I got into journalism.

• 5:34Demetri Kofinas?

  Great, so I'm glad you brought up the truckers protest because I think this was the first time that this story really blew up across the United States and presumably in Canada where you live. Refresh my memory and that of my audiences about what happened in Canada and how that can lead us into a conversation about this phenomenon of deep banking.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So I live in Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada. And in twenty twenty two, January twenty twenty two, a big convoy of trucks descended on the Capitol. They were, the truckers were protesting a vaccine mandate that they were required to get this back, the COVID nineteen vaccine to go into the United States and return to Canada. And they objected to that, saying, you know, we don't want to get this vaccine. And they were exercising their right to not get the vaccine. But what they ended up doing was they were really capturing, you know, what most people in this country were feeling at that time. People were tired of the lockdowns, they were tired of the restrictions.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  You know, the pandemic restrictions in Canada, I would argue, were a lot worse than they were in other countries, barring Australia and New Zealand. But, you know, compared to even the United States, there were, you know, Florida was very different from, say, New York State, you know, in terms of its restrictions. In Canada, every single province in Canada was, you know, had very similar policies and schools were closed, you couldn't even go to a hiking trail, they shut down hiking trails. But the things that were open, bizarrely enough, were cannabis stores and the liquor stores, you know, but the gyms were closed, everything else that was good for you were closed. Anyway, the truckers were capturing, you know, were channeling this public sentiment.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  And, you know, most of us thought that it would just be a motley group of people, a few trucks, maybe a few protesters showing up. And I'd seen these protests happen very frequently in the capital during the pandemic. And it was nothing to write home about, it was just a few people protesting against pandemic restrictions. But when I first, you know, that morning when I woke up and I went to check out the protests, it was huge. You know, this is in the dead of winter, I don't know if you've been to Ottawa, but anyone who's been to Ottawa, it's one of the coldest capitals in the world. And, you know, it was freezing cold and you had all of these people who had shown up to support the truckers. And the protests just got bigger and bigger with each passing day.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  And each passing day got colder and colder and colder. And so one of the things that struck me about this thing was, well, this is not happening, you know, in the summer when it's really nice. These people are very serious about what they believe in, they're braving the conditions, you know, standing outside for 10, 12 hours, the truckers are sleeping. In their trucks, some people are just camped out in the cold. But this was extremely important for them, for the establishment to hear where they were coming from. Because their concern and what they were really angry about was the fact that they had been ignored this whole time. No one was listening to them. The politicians were not listening to them. In fact, the politicians, including the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, were demonizing them.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  They were characterized as racist and misogynist and white supremacist. I spent like three weeks speaking to, I can't even keep track of the number of people I spoke to, but I spoke to pretty much everybody who was there. And, you know, these were just average people who had not been listened to for years. They'd been ignored and they just wanted to be heard. They just wanted to be able to exercise their right to free speech, their right to bodily autonomy. And all of those things had been, they felt had been essentially taken away from them during the course of the pandemic.

• 9:31Demetri Kofinas?

  So I want to ask you about the legal framework or the legal foundation that is relied upon to remove people from the financial system. But before I ask you about that, you mentioned free speech. What is the, I'm familiar with the legal framework, which is constitutional. It's the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech in the United States. But what is the law in Canada around that?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Well, we don't have the one A, you know? And that's what makes America so incredibly unique is that the First Amendment is constitutional protected right to free speech. We don't have that in Canada and most countries in the world don't have that. In Canada, we have something called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it's not really, you know, something that, you know, and this came to light during the protests, actually, that it was just completely just. Pushed aside, ignored. And what the government did was it invoked an Emergencies Act to get rid of the protesters. A very draconian measure that it's only been used during wartime to quell dissent,

• 10:38Speaker 01

  to get people to not protest, to get them out. And this is what the prime minister did. And it was extraordinary because, you know, it really meant that he was crushing peace, what essentially was peaceful dissent. And so in Canada, so we don't have that constitutionally protected right to free expression. Anytime the government feels that you're crossing a line, they can pretty much step in and make that very clear to you, as happened during the truckers protest.

• 11:06Demetri Kofinas?

  So we're going to have a chance to talk about free speech more because also this is open to interpretation and there's a huge debate and controversy in the United States around this issue that you and I have discussed offline and some parts of which I've discussed on the podcast. So let's go back to the de-banking issue. What is the legal framework that's relied on to remove people from the financial system? And I'm presuming that most of this is driven out of the United States, correct? Or was initiated out of the United States primarily with the Bank Secrecy Act and the Patriot Act?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, the focus of the story was the United States, but de-banking has actually happened in the UK. It happened to Nigel Farage last year with Coutts Bank. It's happened in Germany to the AFD, the far-right political party in Germany. And it's happened here in Canada as well. During the truckers protest, about 800 bank accounts were frozen. People were de-banked actually for giving money through GoFundMe. They donated money for the truckers. And the list of those people was actually something that the government got a hold of and de-banked some of these individuals.

• 12:09Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  And, you know, and there were people who were without a bank account for a couple of weeks. So it happens everywhere, but the focus of the story was America. And there have been stories over the years of people who'll take to social media and say, you know, my bank just mysteriously closed my account without explanation. You know, I've tried speaking to the manager. I've asked them what is going on and no explanation, no explanation. So that's the common thread with each one of these stories. So I wanted to understand what was going on, what's driving this, what's creating the situation. One thing I noticed was, you know, from the stories that were already out there, most of these people pointing to this issue were conservatives.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  These were pastors doing good humanitarian work overseas, helping orphaned children, orphans and women who've been who are widows, you know, these are people working in places like Uganda. And suddenly Bank of America or Wells Fargo, whichever big bank that they have an account with, tells them your risk profile just doesn't match our comfort level essentially. And so you have two weeks or you have 30 days to take your money out, withdraw your money. And it was nice doing business with you, but we can't do business with you anymore. That's it. That's the end of the story. But it turns out it's not just evangelical Christians, it's not just conservatives, it's not just Republicans.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  It's also Muslim Americans who have experienced de-banking.

• 13:42Demetri Kofinas?

  It's also Melania Trump and Baron Trump.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  It's also Melania Trump and Baron Trump. So it goes all the way to the top and it's really extraordinary. So I really got into it trying to figure out like, what's driving this? What's the legislation? Is there a legislation or is it just some algorithm? Some people I spoke to said, oh, it's just an algorithm. The algorithm will like get triggered if your name sounds suspicious. So Mohammed, for example, or a Muslim name, you know, attached to a bank account could trigger the algorithm. But I think that's a cop out really, in my opinion. I think there's something else going on that there's a method to this, there's a process here. And so it's the Bank Secrecy Act, which came about in 1970, and it's the Patriot Act. So you have these two things working together.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  The Patriot Act, which was put into place after nine 11, was meant to go after foreign terrorists, Al Qaeda, Taliban, you know, you name it. And I think, you know, I'm just gonna make a, you know, I'm pretty confident in saying this, having researched this quite extensively. I think George W. Bush and his administration, when they came up with the Patriot Act, I don't think that they envisioned a situation where it would actually be used against Americans.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  It would be used against a parent objecting to gender ideology being taught to their child in school.

• 15:05Demetri Kofinas?

  Has it been used in that situation, or is that a hypothetical?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Well, no, I have, I have not been able to track this person down, but there's lots of anecdotes out there how parents have been labeled as domestic terrorists. And domestic terrorism suddenly became a thing. It started under Barack Obama. So it started with, and that's how financial surveillance really, really, you know, became, you know, what it is right now. That's how you can trace its origin. It happened with Operation Choke Point in, I think about 2011 or 2012, thereabouts, where the Obama administration went after businesses that they found to be unsavory.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  They were ideologically opposed to these people, even though they were all legal, these businesses had a right to exist. Payday lenders, people who sell guns, for example. And a bunch of these businesses actually had to shut down because that was the whole premise of this policy, literally is to choke the business. And so it ceases to exist. And when this came to light, a lot of people were upset. And it, Operation Choke Point eventually came to an end. I think President Trump, when he became president, took an executive decision and put an end to Operation Choke Point. You would think that would be the end of it. But the thing is, the thinking behind Operation Choke Point, you know, prevailed.

• 16:30Demetri Kofinas?

  And the know-how of the regulations and the laws and the ability to exploit them for political purposes.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  You know, now, now you're under, you're, you know, Joe Biden is president. Things are getting increasingly polarized, the pandemic happens. And you're seeing a weaponization of the financial system in a way that hasn't happened before. So there was a, one of my first stories about the financial system was about how PayPal went about canceling people and, you know, for speaking out on a range of different issues. You could talk about, you're a biologist, so Colin Wright, who's a well-known evolutionary biologist, speaks out against gender ideology. And he had a PayPal account and he found himself, you know, without a PayPal account for his opinion. And I profiled a bunch of different people in very similar situations.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  And so now back to the de-banking. There's sort of big banks who are taking these decisions and the clients, their customers, have no idea why they've been de-banked. They're not given any reasons because the Bank Secrecy Act actually protects banks. It enables banks to be in a position where they can say, look, you know, we don't have to tell you anything. We're not under any obligation. In fact, we're not supposed to tell you anything. So what the Patriot Act and the Bank Secrecy Act, in a sense, does is, you know, it gives the state more oversight to regulate and intervene in the financial sector, even in individual people's bank accounts. And that's the kind of thing that makes de-banking possible.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  It actually strengthens the relationship between the state and the financial sector, leaving average people in the dark.

• 18:10Demetri Kofinas?

  There's something I want to clarify with you. Now, obviously, in the case of, well, it's not obvious, but one can imagine that in the case of Melania Trump and Barron Trump, there was someone within the White House or within the government actually reaching out to their bank and trying to get them off-boarded. But in other cases, as you say, the decision-making starts at the banks, which are responding to an incentive structure coming out of the government. And so one of my questions is, first of all, let's break it down this way. Do we have some idea of what percentage of this activity is really being driven by the banking system and being driven by the banking system primarily to avoid running afoul of government regulations or government directives?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  No, we don't. We don't. See, there's a black hole here when it comes to data. We don't even know what percentage of America has been de-banked.

• 19:03Demetri Kofinas?

  That was going to be my next question.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't have this data, and that was one of the reasons why this story took as long as it did, because, you know, I've spoken to pretty much everybody for this story, you know, who knows a thing or two about de-banking. This data just doesn't exist. And there's a reason why it doesn't exist. Again, it goes back to this secrecy, the lack of transparency. And I'm sure, I'm sure someone in the banking system, some higher up, actually knows what is going on here. But unfortunately, the public is not privy to this knowledge, to this information. Yeah, so the point here is, Dimitri, is that they're not even obligated to tell you why you've been de-banked and how many people have been de-banked.

• 19:44Demetri Kofinas?

  So I have another specific question about what we were just talking about in terms of specifics, but this thing about they're not allowed to tell you, you know, is so terrifying. And it's not just in the case of de-banking. We've seen this all over the place. I mean, the first time I came across this was in the years after nine 11 with the no-fly lists. And there were people like Naomi Wolf. I remember she was a famous person who had declared that she was suddenly on a no-fly list and she couldn't understand. She didn't know why. And she had no one, no one could tell her. The same is true for the no-buy lists. The same is true as well for private media companies that might take you off of their social media platforms or delist your YouTube channel or whatever it is. The inability

• 20:28Demetri Kofinas?

  to get answers is a terrifying thing and it's part of this change in society, which I think is not just a government thing. It's, I don't have an answer for why exactly, but we all feel it where everything's become less personal or less personable and you just can't get somebody on a phone to solve a problem. And a perfect example of this in the de-banking case was the guy that ran the nonprofit, I think it was called Launch Good. And he got notification from Stripe that he, he could no longer be using their services and he flew over to Stripe and had a, a whole conversation with like 13 people in a conference room and they couldn't give him any answers. And it's just, that's just so demoralizing.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you just an update to that story. So he's been off-boarded again after my story appeared.

• 21:11Demetri Kofinas?

  Really? Because he had gotten another bank. So he got off-boarded from that bank.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And he told me that he fully expected it to happen after the story published. I mean, he was happy with the story, but he fully expected it to happen and it did happen. And again, no explanation.

• 21:28Demetri Kofinas?

  Now, the context there is that he's providing aid relief, including to people in Gaza. And the suspicion here is that there's some kind of, some kind of communication coming out of either the Israeli government or factions within the United States that are pro-Israel, that want to stop the sending money to Gaza because it could somehow be intercepted or a case could be made that it could be intercepted by Hamas. And that is the reason that they're shutting him down.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's a lot of aid that goes into Gaza that comes from the government, government aid. So it's not just charities like LaunchGood or crowdfunding platforms like LaunchGood, which are involved in this space. But, look, I mean, when you're operating in an area like that, you know, it's not always inadvertently, perhaps, some of this could end up in the wrong hands. I've spoken to Chris many, many times over the course of this story. And he, you know, comes across as an incredibly honest businessman. He's trying to do good in the world. But unfortunately, because of the nature of his work and where some of this work happens,

• 22:40Speaker 01

  it actually captures the problem with de-banking because you have someone who's actually trying to do some good here, but for some reason, for maybe ideological reasons, or for the fact that the banks are not comfortable doing business with someone they think might...

• 22:58Demetri Kofinas?

  They're risk averse. They're corporations. They're risk averse. They don't want to take any risks.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that might ruin their brand name, for example. All it takes is for people to say, hey, you know, this crowdfunding platform is funding Hamas and their banking partner is this bank, you know, and this bank should be canceled if they don't cancel their business with this crowdfunding platform. You know, we've seen this kind of stuff play out online all the time. Whether it's happening to Chris, whether it's happened to Colin Wright with respect to PayPal. The point is that innocent people, and I think they're all innocent people, get caught up in this.

• 23:38Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, no, no, totally. I mean, I'll give an anecdote for folks. This podcast is distributed on many international airlines. And I won't say, actually, I think, I think it's all of them now. It started with some of the airlines in Asia, who were particularly sensitive for certain types of content. But now, not American Airlines, the company, but US Airlines.

• 23:59Demetri Kofinas?

  Have become very sensitive to have anything that's political on their on their platforms. They just won't. They won't have it. Even exceptional content that isn't, you know, because this stuff on this podcast is not the kind of incendiary political stuff that you see. Thoughtful discussions, they just don't want it. And they've told me why, and it's that they don't want something to go viral. Those are the words they use. They don't want something that I have put on their platform to go viral in a negative way that negatively impacts their brand. So I can understand the incentives of the private sector in this case. And I think, you know, this also makes me wonder, have you seen evidence that there's been an acceleration in this trend, not just after COVID, but also after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the sanctions put on Russians?

• 24:43Demetri Kofinas?

  Because one other area where I imagine this has been abused is Russian, and I know it's been abused against Russian nationals who've had nothing to do with the regime.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:52Demetri Kofinas?

  But who have gotten caught up in in stuff like this. Because oftentimes I feel like what happens with this kind of stuff is legislations introduced, and then subsequent crises or some types or certain events happen that then become catalysts for further abuse of power with respect to those particular, you know, legislative changes or rules. So have you seen that with COVID and then again with Ukraine?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  For sure in the Russian, we saw that, but you know, as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine with sanctions and there was this environment where any association with Russia, you could be a Russian classical musician, a pianist or an opera singer, and your thing is art and music, but you found yourself suddenly canceled, uninvited to, you know, performances, you know, and suddenly you're, you know, everything changed for you. You're not even even in the political space. So we've certainly seen that. I mean, I'll give you a small example of this right here in Ottawa where I live. There was a cafe called Russian Tea Room, and it wasn't even owned by a Russian.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  It was owned by a Lebanese guy, but it had to shut down because it was called Russian Tea Room. And it went out of business because people objected to Russian in in.

• 26:11Demetri Kofinas?

  Well, wait, hang on, I just, I want to clarify something because. You know, objectively, no offense, like, the situation in Canada is kind of crazy. So maybe I am missing something here, but are you saying that people stopped attending the cafe and that's why they had to close down, or there was a directive that demanded that they close down?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  No, there's no directive.

• 26:27Demetri Kofinas?

  People just, people just kind of went crazy and they were like, we don't want to go to the Russian tea room. That's fascinating.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's related to what I'm saying here with respect to all of these things that we've just talked about, which is for these businesses, and when it comes to de-banking for the banks, as you say, they're risk averse and they're very particular about their brand being associated with something that the public, all it takes is one viral campaign on social media on X, saying that this bank is doing business with someone that we disagree with, so they need to stop doing business with this person that we disagree with. And we've seen this play out over and over again. So during the pandemic, it was any scientist that went against the status quo, any scientist that challenged the narrative that was prevailing at that time, or the scientific consensus that was prevailing at

• 27:18Speaker 01

  that time. And then the Russia-Ukraine thing happened, and it was anybody who raised questions about, about the conflict, or anybody who had any kind of association with Russia, right? I'm not even talking about politics, it could just be the Russian tea room, owned by a Lebanese guy, finds himself suddenly out of business because people won't patronize this business anymore. You know, if I, if I can get into this, I personally have been at the receiving end of something like this shortly after the invasion of, of Ukraine, where an academic at a university in Canada went through my social media feed, where I was, you know, raising concerns about the possibility of a nuclear war. I wasn't taking any sides,

• 27:57Speaker 01

  I was pointing to the, to the neo-Nazis in the, in the Ukrainian army, and so on. And I don't even have any expertise in this area, you know, I was just weighing in on an issue that was unfolding at that time. And before I know it, a couple of months later, he publishes an academic study, essentially implying that I'm spreading Russian disinformation. And I'm on this list, along with Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbert and a bunch of other people. And, you know, this kind of thing can be ruinous. You know, when you're someone like me, you know, I don't have Elon Musk kind of money where I can, you know, sue people and take them to court and litigate this and, you know, and get the best lawyers.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  But the thing is, you wind up on a list like this, it's like, well, what do I do here? This is defamatory. But the point is, we are in a situation right now where you can just accuse someone of, of something that they haven't done. And hoping it'll stick and you know that, you know, you'll get away with it. And, and I think that's what banks and big businesses are afraid of. You know, they're very afraid of their brand and they want to protect it as, as, as much as they can, I think.

• 29:12Demetri Kofinas?

  It's, uh, this is probably a good opportunity to transition to speech, free speech, censorship, also social media. And I can offer an anecdote. First of all, I just want to sympathize with you. I think it's very scary. And it's one thing if you're a corporation, because you're making a cold, calculated decision, that if it moves against you, it's going to cost you billions of dollars. But in the case of an individual like you, it could cost you your livelihood and your ability to live. So it's very scary and it creates a lot of silencing and journalists have to tread very carefully. I had a similar example, that's not something that concerns me at all, because I know that I've built a really strong track record so that I don't have to be intimidated by these types of situations. But I did an episode very recently with Joshua Landis,

• 29:56Demetri Kofinas?

  who's been on the podcast before, the last time was about four years ago, to talk about Syria and the US withdrawal from the Middle East, et cetera. And I brought him back on to talk about the Israel Palestine conflict, Iran, Lebanon, Hezbollah, a possible renewal of the Arab Accords. And, you know, Landis probably has a more pro-Arab point of view.

• 30:19Demetri Kofinas?

  But the truth also is that I, if I was being fair, I'm probably much more pro-Israeli for reasons not having to do with ideology or religion, but because of my Greek heritage and my appreciation for what the Jews, diaspora, and Israelis have been able to build in that part of the world. And I think also a lot of the conversations around it oftentimes are very skewed. But in any case, I published the podcast last week and I had tweeted out about it. And someone, not a particularly big account, but maybe, you know, 20,000 followers, a fund manager, accused me of all my guests being anti-Israel, which is not a big accusation, who cares, whatever. But, you know, I obviously took issue with it and I had a bit of an argument with the guy and he continued to make up some other

• 31:04Demetri Kofinas?

  false accusations. But the point is, Israel-Palestine is a great example because if I didn't feel like I was very careful with all my podcasts to sort of be factual and exact, and even if I was, I could easily find myself in a situation where, let's say if this guy had 10x the number of followers, or 100x the number of followers, I could easily find myself in this cascading situation where accusations are being leveled against me, followers aren't following me. I don't, you know, whatever it is, it's scary. And there's like a kind of mob element to it. It also doesn't serve anyone because even if you have different views on Ukraine or Israel, the value isn't debating the ideas. It's not attacking the person. So, anyway, I just thought I would sort of sympathize with you on that. So let's

• 31:49Demetri Kofinas?

  talk about the speech issue, because I think here, this kind of breaks down into two separate buckets for me. And this is something you and I talked a little bit about in the pre-interview, which is that, one, there is this sort of political censorship phenomenon, which we'll have a chance to maybe begin our conversation about. And then there is the other phenomenon, which is content moderation. And I think that on the right, on the political right in America, there's like darkness on the issue of content moderation, the power of internet platforms, and how information is spread and understood and speech is formulated on the internet, where, again, it's not speech the way we think of speech when the Constitution was written.

• 32:28Demetri Kofinas?

  It's not people walking into a town hall and vibrating their vocal cords and generating sounds through the air. There's no analog speech. This is a very different world that we're living in. And the power that these platforms have, which I think also these big tech platforms when taken all together, have their equivalent annual revenues or the equivalent GDP, what the exactly the metrics are, I'm not sure, are basically higher than every country in the world, except for GDP is the wrong number, but.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Their revenue, their annual revenue.

• 33:02Demetri Kofinas?

  It's some number I've heard, and I should have been better prepared to cite it, but these are huge corporations. So they have incredible power to not only define our speech, to limit it, to censor it, to amplify it, but also to define our realities as we slip into an increasingly digital world. So that's something I want to talk about, too. But let's talk about political censorship, because this is a real thing. You know, we just talked about how Melania Trump and Baron Trump had their bank accounts, how they were de-banked. I think they were at Mellon Bank. I can't remember, actually, where they were. I don't want to say that. But they were de-banked, clearly a political move. What exactly is going on right now with people's ability to say what they want to say in this country?

• 33:43Demetri Kofinas?

  And how do we differentiate between government-protected speech, which is the First Amendment, versus just the phenomenon that we've described now, the same phenomenon of private companies making risk-averse decisions, the same thing happening on social media or other places where people are getting attacked and their reputations are being slandered, having nothing to do with government, but just because of the nature of discourse, how things are happening, losing their jobs, et cetera? So what is really going on here?

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we're kind of in this Orwellian place right now, I think, when it comes to free speech and censorship. And, you know, whether it's de-banking or someone getting their accounts canceled on PayPal, or a scientist or an epidemiologist who, you know, had a different point of view on lockdowns and restrictions during the pandemic, all of these people were.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  And some of them fired, some of them lost their jobs. Their lives have been ruined because someone, you know, didn't agree with what they were saying. And that's extraordinary because that's if you really break this down, that's what essentially it comes down to. You're trying to, you know, one side has become, and I don't know what the side is because I'm also seeing this now happen on the conservatives, among the conservatives, among on the right as well, where the same people who decried the cancellation of people with a dissenting point of view are now trying to cancel these people. And I think on the, on the Israel Palestine issue, I think that, you know, I saw that happen shortly after October 7th.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  And, you know, it was very disappointing because for me, you know, as someone who believes, you know, I'm a free speech absolutist. I think you should be able to have these opinions. And if you don't like it, you don't have to listen to this person, right? But to take this to this extraordinary step of trying to ruin someone's life, I think reflects. And, and then you also have like companies and powerful people, you know, going along with it. And so therefore adding their weight to what is happening here instead of, you know, saying no, you know, there's a way to settle these differences and it doesn't involve cancelling someone. So I think we're in a very unfortunate situation where we've, we've lost the ability to have a conversation

• 36:02Speaker 01

  with someone that we disagree with. And I think that's what it's fundamentally come down to. And politicians, you know, I'm, you know, this is a very cynical view of the world. Someone might accuse me of that, but I think the political establishment realizes, you know, this is a great way to divide society, really. You know, divide and rule has always worked for politicians throughout the centuries. And so, you know, having one group of people go after another set of people has become political, let's face it. And that's very unfortunate. And that's not where we want to be as a society.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  In the U S, as I, I'd like to point out again, is very unique in having a constitutional protector. Right to free speech. And so the US is still doing better than a lot of other places. And again, my comparison here is just, you know, I'm just north of the border from where you are. And you don't want to be where Canada is right now. You know, and that's not the situation you want to be in where peaceful dissent is crushed through an emergencies act. Right now, this country is busy putting out proposals to create a separate set of criminal laws to go after people who deny that indigenous children were not genocide denial.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  You know, and no one even knows if there was a genocide that actually happened here with the indigenous community. But if you were to deny that, you could wind up in jail. And these are serious proposals that are being put forward by politicians and a lot of people seem to be OK with it. So that's certainly not the direction you want to go in in America. Sure, there are lots of problems in the US, but I think at the end of the day, you know, constitutional protected speech is still something that sets America apart from the rest of the world. And that's something to be cherished and protected, in my view.

• 37:57Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, so let's linger here a bit. I don't know that we're going to get any clarity on it, but we can try. First of all, I just want to say like, you know, there's obviously a similar history of laws around pro-Nazi sympathies in Europe. The distinction I would draw there is simply one of degree, which is that Europe fought against Nazi occupation. And the World War II sits at the center of the modern European project and post-World War II history. It's a defining period on the continent. And so one can understand why that particular issue carries so much weight or has carried so much weight or had an exception within Europe. What's interesting about the examples that you point to, this sort of genocide denial. So what's amazing about this is that

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:43Demetri Kofinas?

  we seem to be scavenging for new issues to become enraged about and to censor people about. And so like, back to your point about us, because I think it was actually, this was a really interesting insight of yours that Or statement that we've lost the ability to have conversations. And so let's talk about that a little bit. I don't want to put everything on social media because I think this, everything is complicated. And we've lost, we've gone through periods in society and all societies go through stages of their old enough civilizations where there's a lot of internal dissent and cacophony. But I can't help but feel, based on what we know about social media, that social media

• 39:24Demetri Kofinas?

  is a significant driver of the dysfunction in our discourse. Do you agree with that? How do you feel about that statement?

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Well, let's, instead of saying social media, how about we say the town square? Because that's how we had conversations before social media in the old days. You know, people would gather in the town square and catch up on what was going on. I think what-

• 39:50Demetri Kofinas?

  But it's not happening on a town square. It's happening on a server controlled by private companies that are defining objective functions that structure the types of conversations that are happening.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Sure. So there are algorithms for sure that are right now directing what you consume essentially. I can-

• 40:09Demetri Kofinas?

  Well, you consume what you want, what you see, what you think exists.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Everything. And there is a legitimate problem here, I think, when it comes to big tech. You know, we have oligopolies essentially, and that is a legitimate problem. And, you know, there are high barriers to entry. You have fixed costs that prevent companies from entering this sector. And especially, I think this is especially the case with social media where you have all of these network externalities, right? So, and you have these agglomeration economies basically happening in the sector. You know, you're on X because everybody else is on X. You're on Instagram because everybody else is on Instagram. And that's how you have these agglomeration economies where everybody just attaches themselves to these platforms.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  But here is where we run into a problem. What should we do about it? Should we do anything about it? And, and, and that's where, you know, I think free speech enters-

• 41:12Speaker 01

  The picture, as far as I'm concerned, anything short of incitement to violence. And that really is the ultimate for me. That's the ultimate red flag. I think a lot of this stuff, which I find unsavory, I myself have been like threatened and, you know, on social media and I've been called names and I've been told all kinds of things. It's upsetting, you know, it makes me angry, you know, but do I want to do anything about it? I think our initial instinct, when in that moment of anger and frustration, we're overwhelmed by all of this that is happening there because it's concentrated, right, on this one platform. That's all you're seeing. I think it's human nature to have this need your reaction to want to control something

• 41:57Speaker 01

  that you cannot control.

• 41:59Demetri Kofinas?

  But is that, I don't agree with the framing, because first of all, I don't think that what you have on these platforms is free speech.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Why do you say that? I mean, why is it not free speech?

• 42:09Demetri Kofinas?

  People are throttled all the time on these platforms. Some people's voices are amplified on these platforms. We don't all have equal speech. We're not all walking into a town square.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  No, absolutely. No, I agree. So let's, one thing we have to be clear about free speech. Free speech is a relationship between the government and a private citizen and an individual, right?

• 42:29Demetri Kofinas?

  Well, the way we conceptualize free speech in terms of a government right.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:32Demetri Kofinas?

  A government provided or government afforded right.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. A private organization like X or Meta is a private organization. It can do what it wants within the law. So a lot of people tend to use free speech very loosely. So when Elon Musk says, you know, free speech on X, he's misusing that term, in my opinion. I think what he really means is that we're going to be as politically neutral as possible. We're not going to throttle you like the other guys. We're not going to shut your account down because you said something that someone disagrees with. I think that's what he means. And that's a better way of saying it. So people will object when, you know, when you block someone, oh, this person believes in free speech, they're a free speech absolutist, but they're blocking me because they disagree

• 43:19Speaker 01

  with me or because I've been like, you know, I'm trolling them or whatever. That's not free speech. If you come into my home, you come into my space and you tell me things that are I don't want to hear and I'm not interested in that. I don't have to entertain that. I'm exercising my right to not hear you on that subject.

• 43:37Demetri Kofinas?

  But I think this is important to clarify because I mean, I want to actually, this conversation could easily fracture into lots of places. But I want to, I want to focus on the, on the reason why I think, first of all, I agree that the way that we traditionally think about guaranteed speech is guaranteed speech to petition the government, to organize the dissent, but not the ability to say whatever you want in someone's hair salon. If they want to kick you out, they can kick you out. But I think we also need to understand that historically, and there's precedent for this, there's precedent for this in the, in the re-regulation of the American economy during the second industrial revolution, which is that there is a spirit of intent

• 44:18Demetri Kofinas?

  in the Constitution and the framing of the Constitution and the laws of this country that has to be upheld in the changing political, economic nature and technological nature of it. And so what we have today is, you know, in the, during the industrial revolution, we had a situation where the nature of labor's value was changing relative to capital. And that was disrupting the, the physical environment in which people could economize their labor. And it was creating a concentration of power in the form of the baronialists, the capitalists, the people, the industrialists, that was corrupting the political process. Today, we have something similar with these internet platforms.

• 44:59Demetri Kofinas?

  And as we move into a world where people spend more of their time in digital spaces, which means that they spend more of their mind space inside of servers that are controlled by private corporations. We have a fundamental corruption of the Constitution. We have a corruption of our political system. Because the way that democracy works is it depends on the ability of people to discuss ideas and come to consensus in what is relatively a free mind space. Yeah, there are newspapers that are putting out pamphlets. Later with television and broadcast media, there were powerful corporations that could push messages onto people. But none of that begins to even remotely compare to the world we're living in today. And so what we're basically doing is we're moving into the matrix.

• 45:44Demetri Kofinas?

  And I don't know if you, you may not agree with that. I actually think that that is an incredibly appropriate metaphor. It was a metaphor in the late 90s, has become even less of a metaphor today and more of lived reality. And so in your mind, is there a point at which? Private power becomes so great that it needs to be confronted by public policy. And at that point, how do you conceptualize that?

• 46:10Speaker 01

  So your framing of the issue makes it sound like you and I don't have any agency, that we're just automatons.

• 46:21Demetri Kofinas?

  That we're losing agency, yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  I think that has always been a challenge throughout time. When you always have these power structures, if you want to use that expression. But the fact of the matter is, you know, I'm a participant in this space and I know what I'm doing. I'm, no one is putting a gun to my head. I am aware of the fact that an algorithm is driving what I consume, what I see, what I, what I read. I know that because I'm an active participant in this space. So I have agency. If I don't like what I'm seeing, I can exit, I can leave. My point is, why are we denying agency here?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Why are we denying our own ability to make decisions, whether to participate in the space or not?

• 47:14Speaker 01

  We're not compelled to be on X. We're not compelled to consume any of this stuff. You don't have to, you don't have to do any of this stuff. You can just take a break.

• 47:22Demetri Kofinas?

  Well, first of all, I would dispute that on two terms. What I would dispute, that we're not losing agency. I think we're losing agency in the course of our participation on these platforms. And I think that the framing of, well, if I don't like what I see, I can just leave, also leaves out the fact that you're not seeing all sorts of things. And what you're seeing, what you're not seeing is being determined by the platform that you're on. I also think it's important to note that these platforms and the way that discourse is being conducted and the strident nature of discourse. Has a negative impact across society. So in other words, my ability as an individual to live in a safe country and in a country that functions properly from a public policy point of view is dependent on how informed

• 48:04Demetri Kofinas?

  my fellow citizens are, how efficient and effective and truthful the platforms of information are. And we're basically saying that we're OK with living in a world where the dominant media platforms are structured to farm engagement of human beings who don't have to pay or, you know, there's no consumer relationship between people and these internet platforms or Google or anything else. We're just the farm animals to be herded and to be milked. And that leads to some really perverse outcomes, whether we're talking about political discourse, whether we're talking about the spike in incidence of transgender surgeries or demand for hormonal interventions on the part of young girls who spend an enormous amount

• 48:47Demetri Kofinas?

  of time on Instagram, rising depression rates. So when you compare, for example, the, this is something that 60 Minutes has covered. I haven't spent too much time on it, but it's an anecdotal example of TikTok in China versus TikTok here. You see very different outcomes in terms of what content is being displayed where. And that is not to say that I have the solution about what the dictates should be. Like I've said on this podcast and I've said on social media many times, one simple one that we can all agree on is transparency. Another example that I've told you, I think I mentioned this in a private conversation that Azar Roskin has brought up in a conversation with Yuval Harari on a panel some weeks ago or some months ago, which is that Facebook had discovered some years ago that the single

• 49:31Demetri Kofinas?

  best thing they could do to improve discourse on their platforms, to improve the quality of discourse, to reduce misinformation, all the negative stuff, however you want to define it, was to reduce the amount of times that a post could be shared. That's simple. That's not a political decision. That's not the government saying, "We want Republicans, we want Democrats." It's high-level decisions based on what effect they have on the quality of discourse or on the truthiness of the outcome that we're seeing. And but my point, and then I'll let you, and I don't want to keep drawing on, is that we seem to be blind to this because, or a lot of people on the right seem to be, they just, they want, they don't want to see this because they have this idea of like, "Well, I don't want the government getting involved in speech."

• 50:13Demetri Kofinas?

  And I just think it's a totally wrong framing. If there were chemical companies polluting the estuaries and kids were developing tumors across the United States, no one would say, "I don't want the government involved in telling private businesses what to do or how to act most efficiently." People would be like, "That's ridiculous." But it's much more difficult to see it because the pollution is so invisible. We live with it every day. We swim with this discombobulated discourse, with this cacophony and this shouting, and people who are YouTube stars and influencers rising to prominence in political conversations because they're really good at farming engagement. And so we have this really broken media landscape, and I see it firsthand because of the nature of the job that I do and because of what I'm willing to and not willing to

• 50:58Demetri Kofinas?

  do. And so I would just ask you one more time, is your view basically that like, we shouldn't try to solve that because it's a slippery slope? And we should just, if that just means that we end up with a cascade into fascism, not fascism Donald Trump fascism, but fascism as in, you know, a few private corporations basically run the government and they control the servers and we just become farm animals and they're futile, you know, dystopia, that's just the cost, the price of liberty.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Okay, so going back to your example about Facebook limiting, you know, how many times you can share a post because it could be misinformation or disinformation, however they describe it. Now, who determines what is misinformation and disinformation? And I say this as someone who has posted factually correct posts on the Russia-Ukraine invasion for two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, and that was called disinformation. And we run into this problem constantly, right? A lot of people who have been canceled and who've been shut out of the public discourse have been accused of spreading misinformation, disinformation, when in fact, they were just saying something that was different. So who determines this?

• 52:09Demetri Kofinas?

  No, I agree with that.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Who defines it?

• 52:11Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah. No, I hear that, but that's why I brought the example of resharing. There's nothing specific. You're not saying this is misinformation, this is disinformation. You're saying, just like you're saying, for example, if you put a 10-second delay on a tweet, how is that picking what is and is not disinformation? All that's saying is, we're going to create a barrier between when you think of a stupid idea and when you decide to hit the button on it, and we're going to reduce the amount of stupid ideas in general that come out of your mouth because there's a delay on when you can speak. That's a design issue, and these platforms aren't designed in that manner.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Okay, so here's a great example, a recent example, actually. So the Joe Rogan interview of Donald Trump. It doesn't actually show up like in Google searches at all.

• 52:54Demetri Kofinas?

  Apparently, there were moments when it wasn't. Every time I searched for it, I was able to find it, but directly at the top of the page, but...

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't. Like, a lot of people, like, I experienced issues finding it as well. That's an example of, and that's just one example. There have been other examples in the past where social media companies, YouTube especially, will, you know, will limit...

• 53:17Demetri Kofinas?

  But that's political censorship. That's them limiting a specific video for a specific reason.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they think that, whatever it may be, political censorship, or they think that this person is spreading misinformation, or this is something that they're ideologically opposed to, whatever the reasoning behind it is, the action is always the same, which is to throttle views, it's to, you know, not appear at the top of your searches. So...

• 53:43Demetri Kofinas?

  Well, that's not just a, I mean, Rupa, I appreciate this conversation, but I want to make sure that we're not talking past each other. It's not the same. It's, you're describing a targeted action. You're describing YouTube saying, "We want, if this is what happened, we want to throttle Joe Rogan's video with Donald Trump." That's not what I'm describing. What I'm describing is a universal action. Something that we identify increases, improves some other metric and reduces the incidence of some other metric that we define to be universally bad.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  So are you saying that it should be done across the board for everything?

• 54:14Demetri Kofinas?

  Absolutely. Of course. So the idea of putting a 10-second delay on a tweet, I'm not saying we should do that, but I'm giving you hypotheticals here. The idea of a 10-second delay on a tweet is a universal thing. Limiting the number of reshares to two reshares is universal. We're not saying Donald Trump supporters aren't going to be able to reshare something, but if you love Kamala, go for it. We're saying these are design issues. These platforms are very complicated media platforms that are subject to design constraints. And those design constraints inform what we get. The same thing is true, you have a master's degree in economics, you know this better than anyone. The way that we design laws in a country will determine the kind of economy that we get.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I get what you're saying. And I think, yeah, if you're going to apply this, you've got to apply it across the board and not just be selective in your application, for sure. But then we run into other problems, right? A company's right to make certain decisions for itself. You know, what about their rights? So I don't know how this would play out legally, in my opinion. But for me, as someone, you know, who's written about free speech issues quite extensively, and I also have, like, you know, I have a personal background in all of this, given where I grew up. I'm always weary when someone says, you know, there's a problem and it needs to be fixed right away. And only the government can do that, right?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Because that makes the assumption, or regulation can do that, because that makes the assumption that, you know, which may not be the right assumption, and that is that the government is wiser than everybody else.

• 55:47Demetri Kofinas?

  But let me ask you this. So do you think that there should be a law that's passed that forbids the FBI and the CIA and the NSA and any three-letter agency from having offices or presence in any private social media platform? Should we pass legislation that prevents them from being able to do that?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Prevent them from being on these-

• 56:07Demetri Kofinas?

  Prevents the executive branch and the three letter agencies from stationing people inside of Twitter who are in contact with a content moderation team and are in a position to censor the content of people whose political speech they don't like.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I think it would be awful to have that kind of policing of the internet.

• 56:25Demetri Kofinas?

  Right, so we should pass legislation to prevent that from happening.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I-

• 56:30Demetri Kofinas?

  Why wouldn't we? What I point is, this is an example of government policy. I think the other thing is, and I really appreciate you talking with me about this because it's something that I told you, for example, I'm friends with Jacob Siegel as well, he's been on the podcast, and we had this conversation. For whatever reason, for folks, when I have these conversations with certain folks, it's like we talk past each other. And I think part of it is also the framework that people have in their head about what government is. They think the government is, or in their mind, the government is the FBI and the CIA and the White House and the machine. But like, at the end of the day, the government in the United States is the legislative branch. That is supposed to be the most powerful branch of government. And we have the ability to make freedom of information requests because of government regulation.

• 57:13Demetri Kofinas?

  So like, the government can be a tool for the people. We've just lost that knowledge in this country. And I do want to continue this conversation and give you a chance to finish what you were saying, and then we'll also get into a conversation about Right to Die and DEI as well. But I'm going to move us to the second hour for that, Rupa. For anyone who is new to the program, Hidden Forces is listener-supported. We don't accept advertisers or commercial sponsors. The entire show is funded from top to bottom by listeners like you. If you want access to the second hour of today's conversation with Rupa, head over to hiddenforces.io/subscribe and sign up to one of our three content tiers. All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which you can use to listen to the

• 57:57Demetri Kofinas?

  rest of today's conversation on your mobile device, using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening to this episode right now. Rupa, stick around, we're going to move the rest of our conversation onto the premium feed.

• 58:11Demetri Kofinas?

  If you want to listen in on the rest of today's conversation, head over to hiddenforces.io/subscribe and join our premium feed. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, you can also do that through our subscriber page. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaou. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforces.io. You can follow me on Twitter @Kofinas and you can email me at [email protected]. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.