Cosmic Koolaid Series - Pt 3: Media, Global Threats, and Local Challenges: A Deep Dive

Host: Cory Short

Join us as we take a deep dive into the undercurrents of the media landscape with radio personality, Matt Mittan. Matt brings a fresh perspective on the media's shift from proactive to reactionary, resulting in an evolution of the public from engaged citizens to mere media consumers. We take on global threats like Putin and North Korea, emphasizing the need for a unified front of opposition. Matt urges us to focus on nurturing our communities as a countermeasure against those with sinister intentions.

We turn our focus to our beloved city, Asheville, to discuss the impact of extreme tribalism and the omnipresence of media. Matt sheds light on how these factors shape public opinion and impede open dialogue. We also touch upon the opioid crisis that looms over our community and the urgent need for sustainable solutions. In this context, we explore the role of Chief David Zeck in the larger narrative of police reform and its potential implications.

As we expand the scope of our discussion, we delve into the legalities of cannabis, the threats posed by AI, and the complexities of border security. Matt argues against imprisoning people for marijuana usage and expresses his concerns about AI developing self-awareness and judging humanity for its deeds. He advocates for stewardship of the earth and a respect for our planet. As we wrap up, we underline the importance of open conversations on pressing issues like homelessness, mental health, drugs, and economics. We invite you to lend us your ears for this thought-provoking discussion with Matt Mittan.

Be sure to visit BizRadio.US to discover hundreds more engaging conversations, local events and more.

Transcript

Cory Short: 0:04

And welcome back to Cosmic Kool-Aid. I'm Corey Short, matt Matan in the Booth with me. Matt is a legendary radio personality around these parts, just a great friend, great guy, great entrepreneur. He is currently the owner of what is it called?

Matt Mittan: 0:18

Bizradious and also buzzradioashvillecom are the two radio stations that we own. Okay, yeah, I co-owned Buzz Radio Ashville with Michelle Sheve. My partner in Bizradio is mine Okay wonderful.

Cory Short: 0:31

Well, let's just one final question on the last subject, before we dive into your personal life. Do you fear that Putin is going to end it all and turn the lights out on the entire populace?

Matt Mittan: 0:44

This is going to sound. I don't know how it's going to sound. I don't worry about any of that stuff anymore. I figure the world's going to end when the world's going to end and someone's going to cause it If it's somebody here in the United States or somebody in Uganda or somebody in Russia, I don't really have control over that, and I think, as more years have gone by, I'm less interested in investing my brain cells, my energy or, most valuably, my time to things that I don't really have control over.

Matt Mittan: 1:18

And I think that we've talked a lot about media today. I think a lot of media is reactionary in the style of coverage they do, instead of proactive, like here's some things going on that still have not been decided yet. Here are some things that are being discussed. Here are the avenues for you to have input. You just don't see that in media coverage anymore. It's like oh, yesterday this happened and oh, this is how horrible this is, and that's it, and that's just.

Matt Mittan: 1:47

I guess that's why they call it media consumers instead of engaged citizens. It's a very different thing. So, as far as who's going to lead to what ruin or this or that, I think there's players all around the globe that have sinister intentions, whether there may be some here in the United States or somewhere else. People that internalize their goals and ambitions for power and influence exist throughout the human race, and I think that there's always a struggle of people that want to seek the power and control and influence and those that want to live and let live and are willing to try to fight to protect other people's ability to live and let live, and I think that's the two categories of humanity that exist.

Matt Mittan: 2:36

Put aside race, national origin, religion or anything, I think the human race comes down to two different components those that want to create or restore, then nurture and protect, and those that seek to consume and expand of power and control and influence. And, unfortunately, the people in the camp that just want to create or restore, and then nurture and protect, they oftentimes instinctually, are not going after the ones that are trying to do the opposite, whereas the people that are doing the opposite seek to suffocate those that are operating independently and free. And so, when you have a view like that, like I do, is Putin a threat to world stability? Absolutely? Is Trudeau and Canada a threat if all of a sudden he gets ambition?

Cory Short: 3:32

Yeah, he would.

Matt Mittan: 3:34

Maybe they poisoned the syrup, I don't know, but I just I think that the best way to combat that evil, if you want to call it that, that exists within part of humanity is to try and put our energies into taking care of our own first and foremost. Be a steward for your own garden, your family, your business, your community, and then look to nurture, support and validate the others that are trying to do the same. And if we, and if we that are trying to do those things, focus our energies to that, I think it creates an unconquerable mass for the ones that have evil intent, so that when they do run up against a wall, like you saw with Nazi Germany, they hit a wall of opposition that they can't overcome. And I think that's been the struggle since Kane and Abel, do you?

Cory Short: 4:27

feel like North Korea is a legitimate threat.

Matt Mittan: 4:30

Like I said, I think anybody's a legitimate threat. I mean we've seen how somebody driving a car into a crowd can shut down an entire area.

Cory Short: 4:40

We've seen how a white balloon can fly all the way over the country and not get shot down.

Matt Mittan: 4:45

And how reporting on the other things that were shot down can disappear, like that never happened and everybody's like, oh yeah, but what about that halftime performance? You know I mean. So again, it's not that I don't care about things, it's that I care deeply about the things I can have impact on. And so when you get to a point of discernment where you don't invest your energy you're going to into trying to dialogue with the undi-logable. You know it makes for a little bit calmer, more peaceful existence. And going back to that meme thing, you know, getting to the point where if somebody comes to you and is absolutely dead set, the earth is flat, Alright cool.

Matt Mittan: 5:27

You know, are you going to the edge of that world? No, either am I. So who cares, you know? So it's just now. If somebody comes to me and goes oh, you know, there's a real issue with homelessness here in our community. And you know, if it's because of mental health, if it's because of drugs, if it's because of the economics, you know, let's talk about how we as a community can try to address it. And if people say, oh well, you know, people choose to be Okay, we still have people. We have businesses in our downtown district that are being broken into. We have people that are, you know, having attacks against them, and we have people that are suffering, sleeping under bridges and out in the woods.

Matt Mittan: 6:09

That's real. I can see it with my eyes. What do we do about that?

Cory Short: 6:14

Right.

Matt Mittan: 6:14

You know, those are the kind of things I would rather dialogue on, whether it's on a microphone or privately. Those are the things I spend my time on.

Cory Short: 6:20

That's a serious, serious issue. It is, it is it really is, and I can't even begin to concoct a solution. I got no, but you can.

Matt Mittan: 6:28

It's above my pay grade Right, but you can have conversations with the people that you come in contact with of like, what do you see? Here's what I see. What do you? I don't know what to do about it. I don't know what to do about it either. There's strength in that. There's strength in the acknowledgement and kind of manifesting into the universe that here's an issue. And all of a sudden, if two or three or four people that are independently, you know, entrepreneurs or media people and everything, talk with each other and acknowledge, yeah, this is something here, I think that that sends the signal in the universe that can manifest an idea or manifest something next in a conversation.

Cory Short: 7:04

I'm at the Shell station across the street from the golf course on Swannanoa River Road. There this past weekend it's just really sad to see the Swannanoa River, our French Broad River. Is that the French Broad? That's the Swannanoa River. The Swannanoa River, that's the Swannanoa River.

Matt Mittan: 7:22

The Swannanoa River. It's become its own community, yeah.

Cory Short: 7:26

It's so sad. It felt like, yeah, you remember the movie Cyborg with Van Damme.

Matt Mittan: 7:30

No, I don't remember it.

Cory Short: 7:31

Anyway, it's like this group of like apocalyptic. They're wearing whatever they can find and just terrorizing that strip of Asheville.

Matt Mittan: 7:42

Yeah Well, and I say it's become a community because when people are driving around and you're getting from point A to point B in your existence and you have your goals and you have your things, you may not be looking in your peripheral, just beyond the treeline, and see that they're entire campments. There's people that are stacked up on pallets in drainage pipes through the winter, just driving through parts of our town. If you take the moment to look beyond what your normal routine is, you can see it's there and you talk about the Cyborg thing.

Matt Mittan: 8:20

There's some drug stuff that I had a business downtown for a number of years and I engaged with people that were on the streets and everything. There's something very different going on right now.

Matt Mittan: 8:30

There is something drug-wise that is turning people into zombies. I mean the body movements and the yelling and the almost like the face melting right off their bones. There's something very different going on, and so having a conversation about what does that mean? Do you just lock everybody up? Do you do code purple, low bar shelters these are things people are talking about. But going back to early in the conversation, where there's been such a saturation of extreme tribalism around issues that when certain keywords come up, people all of a sudden label like oh, that's a fill in the blank issue. I'm guilty of that.

Matt Mittan: 9:11

I'm very guilty of that, I think we all are, and when you're saturated over, saturated with so much stimuli that is measured that way, you can't help but assimilate to that, and so it's hard to break away from that. And so long as we can't have the conversations to hear what that person thinks and then have the expectation that they're also going to hear what we think and why, if the conversations don't happen, you're never going to find a way to a solution. That's a manageable, sustainable thing, and so is Putin. The existential threat to our democracy and to world stability, or in our world right here in our community, is our inability to talk about the homelessness and the drug issues. Is that the detriment to our world and our sustainability? Which is more of the existential threat?

Matt Mittan: 9:57

Businesses in downtown all shutting down because no one will go downtown anymore that seems more like a realistic threat to the life that we live in, the world that we're existing in in our kids, than what Putin says about nukes. And it's not that it's not important, but you use phrase above my pay grade. There are people in a higher pay grade that are supposed to be dealing with that. Whether they do it right or if they do it at all, I don't really have control over that, but I do have control that I can try to support and have sincere, vulnerable, honest conversations about things that are happening right here in my community.

Cory Short: 10:35

Have you been paying attention much to the job of Chief David Zeck? I?

Matt Mittan: 10:39

have, I have.

Cory Short: 10:40

How do you feel about it?

Matt Mittan: 10:42

I feel like he's in an impossible situation. Yeah, you know, and like I was talking about before, when all of a sudden something gets said and there's such a saturation, people instantly throw that tribalism defense wall up and attack. And I think that there's things on the I don't think it's just a two sided issue when it comes to Chief Zeck. I think it's actually like a three, four sided issue, you know. And so I think he's in an impossible situation when it comes to dealing with different things. And you know I was talking about earlier that you know there was something I talked about on the air and I thought it was a pretty straightforward thing and all of a sudden it led to people calling Advertisers trying to boycott station. It was a piece of feedback about chiefs act that I gave on the air.

Matt Mittan: 11:27

Yeah, and, and I said, you know, there was a vote about bulletproof vests on city council for funding for that. One person on city council voted against it. Everybody else voted for it and he put out a statement. He made a statement identifying the one person that voted against it by name and Suggesting that that probably wasn't a smart vote, since police have to come and protect her if something goes sideways, yeah, and in today's climate I felt like there might have been a better way to address that. You know, because the tribalism all of a sudden people are like oh, he's threatening a city council woman?

Matt Mittan: 12:04

You know, no, he's not. He was voicing frustration on how in the world you not vote to protect Cops with bulletproof vests, right, have you not followed the news on how much murders and shootings and everything going on, the impossible situations our police are in and Anything you know about this? With me, I've been a longtime supporter of the police, I've done ride-alongs, I've done, you know, different community things with them and everything. And so I Said, you know, I think, focusing on the rest of council and saying, you know, I'm glad that they support it, for people that May have been opposed to it, maybe there's an opportunity to kind of, you know, talk to them and you know, but to instead of acknowledge the success in a time where there was a lot of pressure to defund the police, that they voted in support of this request, except for one, to focus on the one. I think just kind of it created that environment and everything. So I just suggested that, you know, maybe, maybe there's a little bit different way to address it. And then, all of a sudden, your anti-police and advertisers, you know Dropping and you know, and being labeled things, and it was like and from people that knew me too, it's like wait, you know, I'm not that you know, but but that when things like that happen, it goes the other way too.

Matt Mittan: 13:21

You know there's things that the police address legitimately. Why is the DA not following through on cases? You know, I mean, when you look at the data of the things that police are having to do and then people say, oh Well, they said they're not gonna respond to calls of under this. Well, why do you think it's getting worse? Well, why would they continue to respond to things when overwhelmingly, over and over again, the DA doesn't convict? Right, you know they were operating in a triage mode.

Matt Mittan: 13:49

So, yeah, it's an impossible situation and and and and. Unfortunately, I think the climate and the environment of platforms of dialogue are so defensively Structured, audience wise and host wise, that when there's an honest and sincere attempt to have a reasonable dialogue, it falls into the encampment stuff, and so Conversations don't occur and people have already Set their camp that they're for this or they're against that person or anything, and, and I don't know how to bridge that. I don't know how to bridge that because when I tried, you know the, the livelihood and the success of the platform that I'm trying to make positive impact, and all the people that Are reliant on that Was under assault.

Cory Short: 14:37

Sure, yeah Well, this isn't about Rider left. What do you think it is? The Todd Williams stands to benefit from letting all these people walk free. What does it do for his career to be so loose with convictions?

Matt Mittan: 14:52

Asheville has always had, even before the new Asheville, which I would say like 2012 on. You know, there's always been this thing of where Asheville tried to Present an ideal that was a little bit utopian and and I think, sometimes doesn't really deal with the reality of things. And and let's see how do I be more specific about that? I can remember way back when and I think this was probably mid 2000s and there was a city councilwoman who no, it was, it was Mayor Bellamy. It was then Mayor Terry Bellamy that had to pre qualify and have a whole disclaimer ahead of speaking out against public defecation on the sidewalks in downtown. She had to give this whole expose on on, like trying to minimize. You know how hard it's going to be to hear and say people shouldn't be crappin in front of business entrances, and you know so, for for regular people that are just going about their daily lives, it's like you don't have to spend 10 minutes apologizing ahead of saying people shouldn't be crappin at the entrances of businesses on the sidewalk. You know what I mean.

Matt Mittan: 16:06

So Asheville's always had that, you know. Even go back, you know. You read back on things and like the Great Depression during the 1930s and some of the kumbaya kind of you know, advertising that Asheville put out to attract rich people to come here and hang out at the Grove Park Inn and everything. And you had national, national, visible people that were there and were drunk and abusive and and all this kind of stuff. So there's always been a hypocrisy in Asheville's PR of who they want to be and somehow not deal with who we are. Is that, does that make sense?

Matt Mittan: 16:44

It does you know? And so I think that is still a factor today. And so, talking about solutions, I I think that moving to district elections for city council would help address some balance to that accountability and allow for a little bit more robust dialogue about different ideas or or or concerns.

Cory Short: 17:10

So how is the council formed now?

Matt Mittan: 17:11

Just that large top, yeah, just a top Large and it's nonpartisan, which I think it should stay that way. I don't think that partisan politics is a solution for anything. There have been attempts in the past to move Asheville city elections to being partisan elections, where it's Democrats and Republicans and anybody else. You got to go through this whole extra process for voting, and I think that is a detriment to think. I think on the other side, I think we should be moving more elections to nonpartisan, where you have all right. There's 10 people running for this seat, there's no letters next to their name, just here's 10 people vote for the one you think is best and then there's a runoff of the top two or three.

Cory Short: 17:50

Yeah, you know, partisan ship needs to go away for humanity.

Matt Mittan: 17:53

I, I yeah, and guess what? That's been said right since George Washington's farewell address, so these are not new problems. It goes back to what I said before. I think there's basically two camps of humanity's existence. There's those who you know live and let live, take care of your own garden, your own family, your own business, and then your community and those who are always seeking something else control, power, influence over how things happen.

Matt Mittan: 18:22

And the thing is is you can find areas where, talking about partisanship, there are Republicans that fall into the we want to make sure that people do this this way, and there's Democrats that other categories, but under that same vein of we want to make sure people do things that way. And then there are Democrats and Republicans that are like live and let live, man, but they, they do it in different parts of life, you know. And so for me, why would I want to dip myself and immerse myself into a dialogue that's futile, right? You know what I mean. And so when talking about stuff here, locally, whether it's the DA or the chief, I find it, I have found it to be more productive to talk to the nonprofits. I have found it more productive to talk to business owners about well, what do we do right here and now? What can we do? I'm not waiting on someone in an elected office or a higher government position to solve the problem we have in our neighborhood or on a block of downtown businesses. And I think you're starting to see some actual businesses coming together and saying, ok, do we need to hire our own private security folks that patrol our block, you know, or something like that, and people get all upset or like, oh, you're talking about vigilanteism and everything. No, you're talking about taking care of your garden.

Matt Mittan: 19:37

And if, if there's not, if, if we, the people, are not able to rely on a fire department to take care of? I know you, you had a house fire. You know what it's like to go through that, you know. If we don't have a fire department, are you just going to say, oh well, there's no fire department anymore? I guess I won't take any precautions. If there's no fire department, you're going to take some precautions. You're going to have fire extinguishers. You're going to be a little bit more careful about cleaning the flu, maybe, or something.

Matt Mittan: 20:03

Well, that's the same in anything. If government's not doing a good job of protecting the downtown businesses, then the downtown businesses need to have a conversation about how they can operate and how they can sustain their you know take care of their garden, and so why is the DA not convicting people? Who knows, who knows? I don't have a crystal ball into the heart, mind or spirit of anyone, but I know that a lot of people are getting sent and they're putting right back on the street. I know that with the chief. I don't know what's in his heart, I don't know what's going on in his spirit or anything, but I know that police are not able to respond to a bunch of calls that have existentially expanded over the last couple of years.

Matt Mittan: 20:47

So that's what I know, that's what I see. Now, how do we solve it and what? What's contributing to it? Let's talk about it.

Cory Short: 20:54

I felt that for the first time in my life, here in Asheville the other day I rear ended somebody. It was a little Mexican couple that didn't speak good English and I tried to tell them you know, there's no damage to your car. I can, you know, I can give you cash, I can give you my phone number if she's got medical bills, you know, and they're like no, no, no hurt. She pointed to her bag. Ok, we'll wait, we'll wait. And then we're waiting, and we're waiting, and we're waiting, and I call a friend that I have on the police force and I say, man, I've been waiting here for like an hour. Do you know where the cops are? He said, man, it'll probably be three, four hours for somebody's there.

Matt Mittan: 21:27

If somebody comes.

Cory Short: 21:28

I couldn't believe it. Yeah so I went back to the couple and I was like listen, you can come take a picture of my tag, take a picture of my license. You know, take a picture of me, you can. Here's my number. But they're not coming. I just called the police. They're not coming. All right, they don't have enough police. Right that's what I tried to explain to them and we ended up going away and they never ended up calling. Yeah they never ended up calling. She was fine, everything's fine, thank goodness.

Matt Mittan: 21:50

But well, see, cuz, one of the things, that One of the realities and it's not just Asheville, by the way. This is happening in communities all across the country and there's a lot of factors to it. You know, on retention and recruiting of police, you know the pay is an issue, but also there's a lot of media that has painted the entire police force as the bad apples, you know, and that's that's picked up a lot of fervor, and so you know it's doing something where you're called to serve as a first responder is a thing of dignity and of self-sacrifice and a service to others. And If there's not a system in place to truly hold accountable the ones that are violating that trust, and If there's not public confidence in that, then it ends up painting the entire force, which then Contributes to short staffing, which only reinforces the negative thing, because people are like you know, they're telling us to file our own police report or nothing's gonna happen.

Matt Mittan: 22:44

No, cops are coming. Well, why are they not coming? Because they don't have the cops do it. Why don't have they the kind of the cops do it? Well, there's not the money to hire more people. Well, why is there not? Is it defund the police? Well, no, actually, asheville's budget for the police went up last year but it was reported as it was, cut by four million dollars. Why? Because it was four million less than what was proposed, but it was an increase from what it was, you know. So media has a lot of manipulation, that it does.

Cory Short: 23:08

Yeah, you know, and yeah, so yeah well, I want to say my position on this yeah, I love what chief Zach is done. I love what he's done and it, you're right, he was thrown right into an impossible situation with those riots happening the first summer on the job and you know what a tough thing For for the city to go through. But being the new chief in that role in a city you really don't know anything about yet, right, and you're but he knew there were how many chiefs before him in a short period of time.

Matt Mittan: 23:39

That ought to tell you something, your villain number one, for nothing you did wrong and and to have to face that and but see, but but I mean, I mean I won't, I won't project anything on to you but coming in and not knowing about the Asheville vibe and what I was talking about of Asheville has a PR thing that it tries to Project when he comes in and speaks so bluntly about different things, not, you know, aware or concerned about the cultural. But, kind of motif that goes on.

Cory Short: 24:09

You've been shaking trees for 30 years.

Matt Mittan: 24:11

I would think you would love that well, like I said, you know, no, I did. I did love when he went ahead and put the data out when he released the report and like, hey, it's for me, when you're in a position of public office, present the information to support your statement. When you just make a statement and you don't provide something behind it, I think you set yourself up when you're in a public office. And so I loved when he said here's the data report since I've been chief here, or how many cases have been, you know, charged and dismissed. This is the percentage of public urination and defecation cases. This is the number of you know, panhandling and everything.

Matt Mittan: 24:48

I love that. It's the blanket kind of things that end up being fodder for the partisan and divisive Forces within our dialogue. I don't like to see people in public office feed that, whether Whether knowing fully, you know whether will, willfully or not, knowing that they're doing it and you know the lesson to me was okay, I can't give that feedback anymore because Climate is so, is so amped up that Trying to speak Unemotionally and productively toward a larger issue, there's just not the oxygen in the room for that right now and that's unfortunate.

Matt Mittan: 25:27

So instead of doing it on the microphone, I do it one-on-one with individual people and I work with different organizations trying to try and facilitate people working together, talking together in ways that that that are more possible to do under the umbrella of a business radio station than a political channel, you know, and so that's. You know. That's kind of where I'm at. You know, bringing it full circle is was that?

Cory Short: 25:56

you know, was that time, the riots and all that Was that one of the most emotional things for you to report on? I can't remember anything that tense in this city ever I do.

Matt Mittan: 26:07

I remember the Tea Party movements. I remember the Let Ashville Vote movement thing. I remember, you know. I remember what Joe done and Carl Mumpower you know, and that whole thing. You know, going back a little bit earlier in Ashville history than some people may remember, but you used to have political philosophical diversity on City Council. I don't know that you. We've had that for a while. You know, I think you have economic priority differences. You have hotel ears and community activists. You know that that people may say, oh, they're all liberal, well, but okay, but that is such a broad thing, you know.

Matt Mittan: 26:52

Let's talk about specific issues. Cost of housing in Ashville is unsustainable. The hotels are going up. Every time you turn around there's digging of another foundation for another hotel. Who's going to work in all these freaking hotels? Who's going to work in the restaurants that all these people going to the hotels want to go to? You know there has to be some kind of conversation where we look at more than just oh, I can get this many permits in the city and oh, look, our city is grown by this and oh, our TDA has this much more money to advertise for more people to come here.

Matt Mittan: 27:29

10 million visitors in the years. Not enough, it's probably more than enough. You know, when you have a, when you have a metropolitan population of 490,000, you get 10 million visitors. How do you sustain that with a year round population? You know it's. Yeah, there's there's big issues. There's big issues and big challenges, but I don't think we solve them through the larger media conglomerate channels and I don't think we fix it through our political systems anymore. I think we have to solve it through handshake diplomacy. I think we have to solve it through kitchen table conversations.

Cory Short: 28:08

Yep, All right, couple of rapid fire conversations here before we go to our final break Cannabis legal or no, and why Absolutely legal, Absolutely.

Matt Mittan: 28:18

I've said right along it's, it's. It's insane to me that people can be locked up in prison for smoking pot. I just I've said that from day one. Even though I'm not a smoke, I know I look like one, but you know I've been accused of that. You know you look like you're a stoner. Okay, I don't know what that means, but absolutely should never be locking someone up for doing something. Now, if they go, here's the difference for me. If something you're doing ends up crossing the line where you violate someone else's right or their ability to travel safely, or that's where the boundary should be it shouldn't be what you're doing on your own yourself Right.

Matt Mittan: 28:56

It's when you all of a sudden violate someone else. That's when the conversation should take place, whether it's a fifth, the JD, or if it's a or if it's a joint. When you cross the line where you're endangering others or violating other people's rights or ability to move safely, that's when it should be an enforceable thing. But what you do, what you grow in your garden or smoke in your living room on a Friday night, I don't care, and no one in government should either.

Matt Mittan: 29:21

Artificial intelligence Scary as hell, scary as hell, because I think there's a lot of situations where even people who have non artificial intelligence look around in humanity some days and go, yeah, no, we don't deserve to stay here, you know. So if artificial intelligence gets to a point of awareness and looks around and says, fuck that guy, I think what, I think what we know, has impacted the planet. And you know, just real quick, I know you said rapid fire- You're fine.

Matt Mittan: 30:01

But you know, if you believe that we were created by God and that we were put on this earth for a purpose, what is it? And you know, for those out there, this is my Asheville sensitivity. Whatever you call God, you know, you look out, you look through different major spiritual, philosophical, divine kind of teachings across world culture. There's similar themes through all of them and that theme is that we are stewards, that we were created to take care of creation, you know. And so if, if we take that approach toward things and and our job is to take care of creation has humanity lived up to that? How many extinctions have there been? You know pollution, violence, war, you know all these different things, and again it could go back to Cane and Abel. But if AI all of a sudden becomes aware and has capacities for things and we're completely dependent on our economy our supply lines are very survival, on technology, keeping us alive and producing our medicines and cleaning our air and our water, and all of a sudden something decides to shut that all off, Mama will take care of the rest. Mama Earth will go and take care of the rest, and I think you saw that with COVID at the beginning, when everything shut down.

Matt Mittan: 31:27

I don't know about you, but I noticed a difference in the skies. Oh yeah, oh man, the air was just. I was like this is what I was like when I was a kid After about seven months of everything shut down and I was like, yeah, this is amazing. And then you start seeing reports of things swimming up into the Venice canals that are clear and all these kind of things. It was wild to think how quickly Earth can rebalance itself. And if you see a house get abandoned, you see how quickly that house disappears into the landscape and how bad we are for this planet.

Cory Short: 32:01

That was a great example. I mean we're screwing this up.

Matt Mittan: 32:05

If we really lean into our purpose as stewards of creation. You know, I've said it a few times, phrase create or restore, nurture, protect. I've said over and over again take care of your own garden. If that's what we're supposed to do and if that you know all the busyness of life and chasing these different things and trying to acquire this, trying to influence that and everything, and it never feels right and you're out of sync and you're stressed out and you have all this anxiety or depression and all this kind of stuff.

Matt Mittan: 32:33

Well, if you have your little circle whether it's your home, a farm, a business, nonprofit, whatever it is, and you take care of that garden and you're just creating or restoring, nurturing and protecting, I feel pretty confident you're going to feel purpose and what you're doing, you're going to feel peace, you're going to feel balance and flow. And if you believe that we're created for that purpose, if we can get back to that, ai might say, might say you know what? Let's help them do this. They're doing a good job. But as things stand right now, ai terrifies me because I don't know that humanity is ready for something to judge us.

Cory Short: 33:12

And the last rapid fire. Subject is border security, sir.

Matt Mittan: 33:16

Yeah, that's a tough one. That's a tough one. I got to tell you the truth. I go back and forth on it all the time because for me the border is the outer atmosphere in some sense. You know we're all of the same tribe.

Matt Mittan: 33:30

And going back to what I just said, if we all realized that, you know, and took more of that steward spirit toward what we touch in our lives, then things like borders become irrelevant. But there's a lot of people that don't. And I go back to those two camps of humanity. There's a lot of people that are successfully oppressing the live and let live people and I don't blame them for trying to escape to a place where there's no one to help but at the same time so many of people coming in and overwhelming to where that garden becomes overwhelmed. You know if all of a sudden, if you know a pack of wild boar show up on your farm, your farm's toast and I'm not trying to compare migrants to that, but I'm saying as far as maybe the way for us to address border security is to try and address supporting more of that healthy, steward spirit Live and let live, example, exporting that more. I think the United States has become much more isolated and not as efficient at giving that example.

Matt Mittan: 34:29

You know there's a lot of, there's a lot of attempts to control things and influence things, you know. And so not that we don't have some things in history that have, you know, not lived up to that, but the promise of how we were created as a nation was on the principles of that stewardship. All men are created equal and now by their creator was certain inalienable rights. You know, that is at the very core, the foundation of what our societal cornerstone is, and we haven't always lived up to it but we've always evolved toward that. And so, yeah, the border issue is tough because at one sense it's like I wish, idealistically, we could get to a point where we realized that the outer level of the atmosphere is our border, you know, and out beyond that great vastness was a very special garden we have as a very unique place in our corner of the universe, you know, and at the same time there's such there's such horribleness going on in the world that it can overwhelm the sustainability of the places that it's not.

Matt Mittan: 35:26

And so, yeah, I don't have an answer to that one. Yeah, all good. Well, I appreciate that Good stuff.

Cory Short: 35:35

We got Matt Matan. I'm Corey Short. This is Kyle from Kool Aid. We'll see you next time.