AI Godfather Warns of Jobless Future

The godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, warns his own creation could unleash massive unemployment and strip away human dignity. A former wondery executive is betting big, and I mean big, on AI host rolling out 5,000 podcasts at just a dollar an episode. Hope I can still compete. School lunches, cut sugar and add scratch cooking. While Kennedy and Trump move to restrict drug advertising. The US Economy takes a hit as nearly a million jobs vanished from revised payroll data. Wall street warns about Fed independence and a judge blocks Trump's attempts to oust a Fed governor. And the Epstein files resurface again with suggestive notes, a phony Trump check, and growing pressure for full disclosure. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Foreign hello, we are back. My name is TJ Walker. This is Filtered, a special hello to our new friends joining us live streaming on X, formerly known as Twitter. And hello to all of our normal friends on TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, and YouTube. So what are we doing right here? This is your first time here. Every day we look at the top business technology culture stories of the day and filter them through the lens of communication and personal development skills. The whole goal is you don't just learn about news or Doom scroll, but you actually learn things that will improve you, make you more successful in your personal life and your professional life. So that's my promise to you. If you spend time here, either watching this podcast or listening to it on any podcasting platform, you'll actually build skills to make yourself more successful. Now let's job. Let's jump right into story one. AI Pioneer Warns of Jobless future the man often called the godfather of AI is sounding alarms about the technology he helped create. Jeffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winning scientist and former Google brain leader, told the Financial Times that artificial intelligence is poised to wipe out jobs on a massive scale. What's actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers, hinton says. It's going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. That's not AI's fault. That is the capitalist system. He dismissed the idea that universal basic income, quoted by tech leaders like Sam Altman, could solve the problem, saying it wouldn't address human dignity or the purpose people get from work. On the timeline for superintelligence, AI machines that can outthink humans hit an estimated between five and 20 years. Asked why young people should stay hopeful, he replied, why should they? At 77, Hinton added, the end is coming for me soon. Anyway, okay, so what's the real message here? The godfather of AI himself is saying virtually every job is going to be extinct in a few years. And maybe there isn't reason for hope, I don't know. But if you have no hope, why get out of bed in the morning? Why even continue living? To me, that is it rational to do? This time may be different, but everyone who's ever predicted the end of the world, the end of capitalism, the end of people having jobs, has been wrong. I hope they're wrong this time too. Let's dig a little bit deeper here we are in uncharted territories. There's no doubt about it. I. I see virtually every. In fact, our next story is about how wondery is doing 5,000 podcasts a week for less than a dollar each using AI host. So who knows, I. I may be out of a job very quickly here. You might be too. Here's the part that I've never heard anyone really explain. If a few big tech lords are all of a sudden controlling everything with AI, how are they actually going to get paying customers if everyone else is out of a job? If 90%, 95%, 99% of all jobs are gone and nobody has any income, it would seem to me that existing companies, whether they're owned by Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, I can't see how those companies revenues don't go down to zero. If nobody has income, nobody has a job and nobody has income, then all companies are decimated. It's not just the working Stip, it's not just the Uber driver, it's not just the podcast host, it's everyone. How do you keep there from being a complete, utter collapse? I don't have the answer for that. A part of what we do right here every day on this show is think together, try to reason through things together. In fact, if you have thoughts and you are watching live, we are available live, but also available on podcast, on demand, on every podcast platform. Platform. But if you're watching live, you can post your comments right now, wherever you're watching this, and be a part of the conversation. I don't have every answer. The answers I have are based on my own experience working 40 years working with Wall Street Wizards, billionaire fund managers, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, presidents of countries, prime ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional sports team owners, owners. I work with them, coaching them on communication skills and presentation, media skills, personal development skills. So I'm bringing that area of expertise to the day's news. That's what we're about. So a couple of things here. There's bias and I have a bias, you have a bias, the media has a bias. The sheer fact that I am reporting to you on a story about what Geoffrey Hinton said to the Financial Times is often a reflection of bias because there could be 20 other experts on AI and if they all make predictions, saying AI is going to make things more productive, it's going to be a bump up of 7% to GDP for the next 30 years and we're still going to have more jobs than ever 30 years from now, the way 30 years earlier when people were predicting the Internet would put people out of business. We still have jobs today and in fact, unemployment is near an all time low right now. If AI experts make that prediction, they don't get any news coverage, they don't get headlines, they don't get onto my show, in fact. So there is a bias about that. I do think Geoffrey Hinton does address a significant issue and that Sam Altman, Elon Musk and others have said at some point we're going to have to give a universal basic income to everyone because there's simply not going to be enough jobs and societies. While they like to pretend they're all for rugged individualism and the free market, no major democracy, no major economy today wants to all of a sudden see tens of millions of people starving to death, homeless on the streets. They just don't. So if in fact there are major corporations through the benefit of AI making higher profits than ever before, then a lot of people across the ideological spectrum have made the case that there does need to be a universal basic income. But what Hinton points out is how is that going to give dignity to, to people? Some of you may know people, I know people, they retire and their life falls apart. They stop showering, they stop shaving, they stop brushing their teeth, they stop coming up with an excuse to get out of bed, they let themselves fall apart, they spiral into a depression and they're dead. It might not be suicide. Maybe no one can put their finger on it, maybe it's a whole host of health issues that spiral out of control. But human beings do need some purpose. You may have seen someone in your town win the lottery and you know they've drunken themselves up into, into a car crash six months later because they have no purpose in life. Now I do remain optimistic about human beings ability to, to find purpose in life, to do something new. Are we all writing poetry or all writing novels? That we as humans still want to buy and contribute to and purchase and absorb and where we're giving money to our, our neighbors who are writing novel. I don't know, that sounds a little bit implausible, but it also sounds implausible to the idea that AI robots are just going to do 100% of everything. All any of us do is sort of sit around like, you know, the wall E people gigantically obese and just sitting around in carts, spinning around and not even walking. That, that does sound implausible too. Hinton has said this is almost like threat of an alien invasion. And it might be, there's no doubt about it. Let's keep in mind the, the big prediction is when AI reaches super intelligence level. And that's the point at which it can think like humans, think better than humans, can have access to all knowledge, assimilate things and have true agentic power. And at that point, it's not just going to be an app that answers questions, but a brain. An AI brain can be in something that looks like a humanoid robot and could cook in your house, clean in your house, drive for you, do anything and everything. At that point, virtually every single job becomes obsolete. And I've heard other AI experts recently opine on shows like Diary of a CEO that yeah, even, even not just an AI host, but whoever your favorite podcast host is, let's say it is the diary of a CEO guy who's a good host. An AI can look like him, sound like him, but ask better questions than he does, know how to hit the right moment with a guest or I guess in this case would be interviewing another AI clone of an expert. So this is mind boggling. If you, if you keep going further and further down rabbit holes, where it all ends, I don't know yet. So what's the real advice to you and to me? You've got to prepare today, I believe, for artificial intelligence. Let's talk practicality. If you aren't an author, an expert, if you're a subject matter expert, and that can mean you're the manager of a small hospital in your rural town, you're an expert on how to manage doctors and healthcare providers. Whatever it is you do, my advice is start protecting, preserving, curating your own intellectual property and turn it into an AI so you can get ahead of the game. There are various apps and websites out there that will allow you to upload your data, your information, your insights into a clone so that someone can type a question and type an answer back using your thoughts, your insights not just generically AI, not generically from the Internet. Now I've done that myself. I have a clone. And you'll see ads for it in a moment. Sorry to sound self serving, but it's the TJ Walker AI clone where my students and full disclosure, I have about 12 million online student enrollments in my online personal development communication skills courses. My students and really anyone, you included, can go to my clone. Not just type a question, not just call in and ask it a question, but you can have a conversation where you see me looking at you. And my clone can talk to you about your concerns, can judge your backdrop if you want tips on that will come in. If you're touching your face too much, it will tell you that you're doing that. And that's how I'm trying to get ahead of this whole AI thing. Because if AI is going to replace me, I want to be, I want it to be AI I've created, I control that, I monetize. Now I'm not. I'm losing more money each month on my AI clone than I'm making. So I'm not predicting this as some get rich quick, but I am trying to plan for the future. AI was used extensively in the creation of this clone. Now it's not telling me what to say right now. I'm thinking in lifetime to you right now. But I do have a script that summarizes a news story at the beginning of our five main topics every day. And I couldn't do it without the power of AI because I'm drawing from a lot of different news sources. Sometimes the news sources have 1, 2, 3,000 words. And I'm having it quickly, almost instantaneously compress a couple of stories like that into a lean, efficient 160 word script. And I'm able to put it out there. And it also is very helpful in creating some of the text overlays the images. So I use AI every day. My advice to you, use it. Immerse yourself in it. If you're a student, don't cheat, but figure out how we can enhance whatever it is you're trying to do. At this point, I think that's all any of us can do. May get to the point where it doesn't matter. And of course one theory about AI is we evolved to a world where AI is so good and so self perpetuating that it reduces the cost of everything to zero. And then we live in at least a partial utopia of everything is free. That does solve the problem of how do we keep from starving to death and companies not going bankrupt. If everything is free and AIs are running things, it partially solves the problem, but it brings up a whole host of other issues. This issue is not going away. In fact, it's in our next issue. In a moment, Filtered is brought to you by the following Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to tjwalker.com advertise want to become a better speaker, leader or communicator? Start with the TJ Walker Success Library. It's five of my most practical books, covering everything from public speaking to media interviews and persuasive messaging, all for only $9.95. I've trained presidents and Fortune 500 CEOs, and now you can get the same wisdom in a fast, affordable format. Go to tjwalker.com books and download your copies instantly. Thanks for listening. If you like today's episode, you'll love my online courses@mediatrainingworldwide.com. check them out now and level up your skills. Welcome back to Filtered. I'm TJ Walker. Why pay millions for a celebrity podcast host when you can create one for a buck? That's right, $1. That's the business model of Inception Point AI, a new company led by Janine Wright, a former Wandery executive. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the firm has already rolled out more than 5,000 shows and produces, get this, 3,000 episodes each week, all hosted by AI generated personalities with names like Claire Delish and Nigel Thistledown. Each episode cost about a dollar to make and becomes profitable with as few as 20 listeners thanks to programmatic ads. We believe that in the near future, half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that's bringing those people to life, wright said. Skeptics may dismiss it as AI slop, but Wright pushes back, calling critics lazy Luddites. The company isn't touching hard news yet, but it is testing everything from weather reports to lifestyle commentary, hoping to build thousands of digital influencers. Okay, so what's the real message here? AI clones are coming for everyone everywhere, including you, including me, and including talk show hosts and podcast hosts and YouTube hosts. The idea that any of us are so special and so unique and we can't be replaced, that's just our ego talking. And if you think you would never listen to an AI podcast host, well, you're not listening to one right now. But chances are you have in the past, and you will in the future. Let's Delve into this a little bit deeper, because this is. I mean, I certainly was aware that AI could host things. In fact, I have had my own AI clone host sections of other versions of my podcast and shows and YouTube content. So I know firsthand it can be done and it can do a pretty good job. But are we going to get to the point where there's so much of a flooding? I mean, if you go to your favorite podcasting app and all of a sudden there's 50,000 new podcasts, all on topics you're fascinated with, and they're all brand new within the last 60 seconds, how do you, how do you even find the old host you liked? And yes, I understand you can do the settings on a podcast app to give you what you want, but how are you ever going to discover a new podcast host if you type in a certain topic and you are given thousands of options from AI clones? And they're perfect. No ums, no us, no irrelevancies, no time wasting, no extraneous facts that might be boring. It's all been eliminated because of the power of AI. This is going to be tough to compete now. For the last five years or so, a lot of people like me have sort of smugly talked about, well, you Uber drivers, you're in trouble, and you truck drivers, you're in trouble now it's coming for us. So now it gets real. And I don't mean to sound as cartoonishly self serving as that. What I mean is all of us have to think about what happens. This relates to the first story in the prediction of Geoffrey Hinton as well. So here's what did strike me, is this new company, and it's founded by some real heavy hitters in the podcasting world. They used to work at Laundry, which is one of the premier podcasting companies. They claim they can make a profit with just 20 listeners per podcast. Now, I don't, I'm assuming that means they're. They can get their cost down to, you know, less than a penny, and they're claiming a show cost a dollar. And so I guess essentially what they're saying is they can make 5 cents a listener because they need 20 listeners to make it profitable or to break even. Now, here's the quote that perhaps got shrunken or taken out of context, where the CEO of this new company says, half the people on the planet be AI. What does that even mean, half the people on the planet will be AI? I suppose it could mean, all right, I'm 100, my body's falling down. My brain is uploaded into a computer and it's a fusion between every thought I've ever had, my own memories, my own reflections. But I'm now on the cloud. Maybe that's what they mean. But maybe what she means is all sorts of just completely AI generated clones are in some sort of a physical manifestation or have online Personas that are acting and interacting with everything else people as if they were real people. That's kind of a scary thought too. Now the Network has seen 10 million downloads since 2023. I'm going to I don't like to think of myself as a Luddite, but I'm not aware. Maybe I've been fooled. I'm not aware of any AI clone hosted podcast I've listened to. If you've listened to some, let me know. Post your comments right here in the platform you're watching. If you're listening to this on any podcasting platform, then you can always go to the Community tab on my YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube, type in TJ Walker Success. The name of my channel or the name of this podcast, which will take you there as well, which is filtered with TJ Walker. I would be interested in knowing your own experience listening to podcast hosts that are AI. Now, this network has 184 AI agents and 50 AI hosts, and I understand it's pretty comfortable if you're the CEO of this company when it comes to negotiating new contracts with the host. It's not like being the head of Sirius XM and trying to negotiate a new contract with Howard Stern every five years and months and months and months of protracted negotiations and lawyers and back and forth and arguments. This is as simple as the CEO saying, hey AI host, you were doing a show for a dollar a show last time about doing it for 5 cents this time. I think that's probably how the negotiation goes. The big question is, what can you as a human being do to really show your authenticity? I'm trying to do it here on this show. You know, an AI clone is probably going to have a little better hairline than I do. I'm not saying you should watch those of you on the podcast listening. I just showed my head. It's not the thickest, fullest head of hair out there. I'm not saying that's a reason to watch me, but I do think that can give you a sense that I am a real person. If you were to look at the transcript of everything I say, not everything is a completely constructed, perfectly constructed paragraph. There's human thought here starts and stops. I get things wrong occasionally. I can misremember. I don't intentionally give you misinformation, but the whole premise of this show is helping you spend a little time looking at the top stories of the day, thinking it through, thinking through the ramifications of this show. What does it mean to you and me as individuals who are trying to become more successful, trying to be more proficient in our communication skills, our personal habits, so we can together be more successful in our personal life and our professional life. So that's my own strategy for how to differentiate myself and compete against all these AI clone hosts. What's your strategy? Everyone's a little bit different. Everyone has their own issue, industry, niche, profession. But we're all competing with AI at some point, like it or not. Back in a moment. Hey, if you're enjoying this kind of take and want to hear more stories filtered through the lens of communication, make sure you're following the show whether you're watching or listening. New episodes drop every single day in it. There's a little notification option where you are now. Go ahead and turn it on. It helps you stay in the loop. Issue 3 School lunches, cut sugar and scratch cooking School cafeterias in America serve 45 million meals every day, more than any restaurant can claim. And this year, kids are seeing changes on their trays, according to the New York Times. New federal rules cap added sugar in yogurt, milk and cereal, with tougher restrictions coming by 2027. Districts are also moving toward more scratch cooking and even introducing culturally diverse dishes like tikka masala, which is one of my favorites, and ramen, which is one of my daughter's favorites. Some states are going further. West Virginia became the first to ban artificial food dyes in school meals, and California's law takes effect in 2027. Parents and kids alike are pushing for menus that look more like restaurant fare, while cities like New York are spending millions to upgrade cafeterias at the same time, the Time reports. The Times reports President Trump signed a memorandum to revive a 1990s policy that kept most prescription drug ads off television, one of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr's top priorities. Kennedy said drug ads have hooked this country on prescription drugs and promised to shut down what he called a pipeline of deception. Both moves, cutting sugar in schools and limiting drug advertising, could be positive for public health. But context matters. Kennedy has also rolled back other health protections, changes that experts warn could cost thousands of lives. So while these new steps sound good, they shouldn't distract from the larger risk his policies present. First things first. What's the real message a lot of school systems are sending students and parents around the country? It is enough with the sugar. This idea that we have to pour tons and tons of sugar in every piece of bread and every hamburger and every French fry in gallons of ketchup every day is killing us. It is making our country a nation of obese, overweight, diabetic people. And it's insane that we're forcing this on children at age 5 and 6. So it's a great thing that some of this is being cut back. Okay, let's go a little deeper here. School lunches are important, and increasingly, in so many schools across the country, every student gets a free breakfast and a free lunch. And for many students across the country, it's the only meal they're getting are the only two meals they're getting. They're not getting real meals at home. So it is literally keeping a lot of kids alive. The problem is, as I mentioned in the newsread there, you know, a lot of kids want stuff more like what they see at a restaurant. Well, you go to a Cheesecake Factory, and there's 10,000 options. And a lot of the entrees, even the appetizers, are more than a thousand calories, mostly of sugar and processed carbohydrates and salt and basically junk designed to make you obese. We don't want that. So I applaud any school system that is saying, okay, we're going to cut the added sugar, the processed sugar, and the artificial sugar. Yogurt's great, but the way most kids eat yogurt today is awful because it's got all this syrupy, highly concentrated little bit of fruit, but really massive amounts of sugar put into it. You might as well just be eating candy. Now, this happens to be an issue where I've worked with real chefs who work for schools, and here's what they tell me. The problem so many schools have is they're actually trying to be like a cheesecake factory. They're trying to give people eight choices, ten choices a day. So the chefs I know who I've worked with have gone into schools, and what they find is actual cooking. Utensils, pots, pans, knives are all way up on shelves collecting dust because they haven't been used in years. And instead, the only thing a lot of cooks do at schools is they cut open boxes of frozen, processed food, and they're reheating frozen stuff with heavy, heavy, not pesticides, chemicals, sugars, food Dyes, Everything else is all heavily artificial, heavily processed, not fresh, not nutritious. But hey, they're giving the kids 20 choices. And so what do the kids do? The kids say, thanks for the 20 choices. We'll take the chicken nuggets and the french fries as we do every day, and off they go. And the rest goes in the garbage can. That's what happens at a lot of schools. And that has got to change if we want to stem this rising tide of obesity and diabetes with our children in our greater society. So I'm all in favor, whether it comes from Kennedy, who I'm not a big fan of at the Washington level, or at the state level, or the city level of people taking control of their schools and saying, look, as adults, you're 30 years old, you want to eat garbage, nothing we can do. But if you're a kid, these formative years, your body's forming, you don't have money and you're gonna eat whatever's in front of you. Let's give those kids healthy food. We don't need to be giving them more and more processed, artificial sugar. Look, I love sugar, everybody loves sugar. But if you ask a kid what do you want to eat all day long, they will say, give me candy, give me french fries, give me chicken nuggets, and give me refined flour pasta with no nutritional value. Oh, by the way, I like to watch tick tock all day long. So the idea that you have to give kids what they want is absolute nonsense. And there is an infection with a lot of parents in their mentality think, oh, I gotta give little Timmy whatever he wants or he might cry. No, you don't give your kids healthy food. They may grumble at first. You can, you can get any child to acquire a taste for real vegetables, real fruit, real unprocessed food through enough exposure, you really can. But not if you say there's an option for candy and ice cream and french fries at every single meal. Let's look at some more facts on this, this particular issue. The new rules in a lot of states are capping the amount of added sugar in milk, yogurt, cereals, cereal, most cereal is an absolute unmitigated disaster. If you look at the ingredient box at most cereal, even so called healthy looking cereal granolas and I used to eat those. They're just nutritional disaster areas. So much added sugar, we don't need that. How about oatmeal? I eat oatmeal virtually every day, Zero added sugar. I put in a little fresh fruit Then it's sweet. I highly recommend that. And I'm not a nutritionist, but if you're buying sugar, Sugary cereal from a grocery store or letting your kid eat cereal at school, that's not something any nutritionist really recommends either. So I mentioned states like West Virginia banning artificial dyes. I don't really know how significant that is, but certainly sounds like it's not a bad idea to get rid of that stuff. The scratch cooking is what's important. So, again, what I. What the clients I've worked with, who are chefs who are brought in to work with school systems, and they bring me to talk about how they can talk to the local media in their communities. What they're telling me is what really works well in schools is if you get together at the beginning of the school year, you ask all the students and the teachers, what is it you really want? And they, of course, will say things like pizza, but they'll come up with a whole list of things, and they just need to come up with about 20 ideas. Then what this chef does is, okay, each day we're gonna cook from scratch one meal that's on your list. And if it's pizza, it's gonna be pizza from scratch. And you may be thinking, well, tj, how do you do that without hiring a whole bunch of new chefs? No, it's actually not that hard to do, because Instead of the 10 cooks in the cafeteria having to open 10 different frozen boxes and unfreeze and microwave and heat up, you know, 50 different frozen items, everybody can work on this one dish. And for people who don't want that one dish, you have a healthy salad bar that's got lots of fresh vegetables, fruit, and some lean. Some lean meats of some sort, some protein sources. By doing that, everyone is happier than they were before. It makes students happier. It makes the teachers happier. People can actually enjoy their food. So I wholeheartedly endorse that. People think it's more expensive. It saves money if you're not trying to buy 50 different options. Because the reality in most high school, middle school, elementary school cafeterias in the country is that most of the food is thrown away each day. It's garbage food. It's not garbage in, garbage out, because it's not even going in the mouths of the students. It's going in the school, in the oven, and then in the garbage can, and it's a travesty. Now, the other big health issue that I brought up in the newsread now, limiting ads. This is a little bit of a tricky issue. We do have a First Amendment in the United States that, you know, barring things like yelling fire in a crowded movie theater, there is freedom of speech, and corporations have that freedom as well. But there is a real problem with the idea that every big pharmaceutical company can bombard people with ads basically saying, oh, you've, you know, your diabetes has gone to a whole new level. Ask your doctor for this drug and it's $10,000 a month, and maybe it only works one out of 10 times. And it's yet another excuse of the person not to actually look at what they're putting in their mouth. It's another excuse not to exercise. So as much as I'm not a fan of, with this administration and health leader, Kennedy is dealing decimating our top scientists from health organizations and destroying our culture, or what was a positive culture about vaccines being a part of everyone's health. I think those are horrific. I, I do think there's something to this idea of limiting advertising for pharmaceuticals because, wow, I don't watch network TV news very often or local news. But if you do, it's, you're bombarded with one ad after another, after another after another. And it's mostly advertisements from pharmaceutical companies all dealing with the fact that most Americans eat too much garbage all day long and we don't exercise enough. And if you do that, you destroy your body. And one choice is eat healthy food and exercise. The other choice is spend more and more and more on the next miracle drug and the next miracle drug and the next miracle drug. Meanwhile, the country can go bankrupt. Medicare, Medicaid, go bankrupt. We all get more obese, less healthy. And this constant barrage of television advertising is a big problem. And we now live in a world where everyone thinks they're a medical expert and doctors have to spend so much time fighting misinformation, where people come in demanding to be given a prescription because I did my research. Wait, no, you didn't do research. You saw an ad 10 times while watching the Wheel of Fortune to buy some ad because you saw someone who looked like you. The before version, overweight, could barely move, looking horrible. And then the after, where they have a good looking, attractive, thin model showing you what you're going to look like after you give this pharmaceutical company more money. Now, I'm not one of those who thinks that pharmaceutical companies are all bad and evil and are profit gouging. They need to make money. I want pharmaceutical companies to make money. I like pharmaceutical drugs. I don't take any drugs at the moment. But there have been times when I've needed to, family members have needed to. Let's not forget, if we go back to 100 years ago, before antibiotics and vaccines, people died at age 35. That was about the average lifespan. So I love pharmaceuticals, but I don't love the idea that pharmaceutical companies always need to show 10, 15% growth. And the way to do that is by coming up with increasingly narrower, smaller niche drugs to get people to forget about the fact that they can't treat their body like garbage. And that's increasingly where money is being spent on pharmaceuticals and on advertising around it. So if my preliminary assessment is if we can somehow have new regulation that says, okay, you want to be a regulated pharmaceutical drug, you can't advertise on tv, I have to think that's probably a very good idea. Filtered is brought to you by the don't need a new degree. You don't need another expensive coach. You need the right communication habits. And I'll teach them to you in just a few minutes a day. @mediatrainingworldwide.com I've created the most comprehensive library of online communication and personal development courses courses anywhere. You'll learn public speaking, media training, persuasion, executive presence, and more. These are the same methods I've taught to world leaders, but now they're affordable and accessible to everyone. You can start for free and upgrade anytime. Go now to mediatrainingworldwide.com confidence isn't a personality trait, it's a skill. And it's trainable. Most people can't afford a full time coach, and even if you could, good luck finding one who's available when you need them. That's why I created the TJ Walker AI clone. It's built on my 40 plus years of real world coaching and training. You get my exact advice, style and frameworks instantly. Ask it how to handle a tough question. Get feedback on your elevator pitch. Rehearse your next big talk. This is the next generation of communication coaching. It's smarter than an apple, more personal than a course, and always ready. Start using it today at TJ Walker AI. You'll wonder how you ever did without it. Want to become a better speaker, leader or communicator? Start with the TJ Walker Success Library. It's five of my most practical books covering everything from public speaking to media interviews and persuasive messaging, all for only $9.95. Since I've trained presidents and Fortune 500 CEOs and now you can get the same wisdom in a fast, affordable format, go to tjwalker.com books and download your copies instantly. Welcome back to filtered issue 4 jobs rewritten. Fed under fire, Wall street blinks. America just got a reality check on the economy and on central bank independence. According to CNBC, J.P. morgan CEO Jamie Dimon says a new Labor Department Revision shows the US department the US added 911,000 fewer jobs through March than first reported. He said, quote, I think the economy is weakening. Dimon said, whether it's on the way to recession or just weakening, I don't know. At the same time, billionaire Ken Griffin broke ranks on the right in a Wall Street Journal op ed reported by the Times of London. The Citadel founder warned that attacks on the Federal Reserve's independence raise inflation expectations, lift risk premiums and weaken investor confidence in U.S. institutions. And late Tuesday, NBC News reports a federal judge temporarily blocked President Trump from firing Fed Governor Lisa Cook, ordering that she remain on the board while the case proceeds. The judge wrote that, quote, the public interest in Federal Reserve independence weighs in favor of Cook's reinstatement. Taken together, softer jobs, louder elite dissent and a courtroom shield around the Fed, the signal for money and the law is the same. Confidence requires credible data and an independent central bank. Okay, so what's the real message here? Thank goodness for at least a few judges in America who aren't completely spineless and complete toadies of the Trump administration. This is a good ruling that Trump can't fire a Fed governor just because he does. Of course he can't fire them. If he can, that means we are Argentina. We are Peron's Argentina. And we talked about earlier in the week, that's a place where a guy came in and said, I know best. I'm going to pick who runs the Fed. I'm going to pick what winners and losers there are in our economy. And he destroyed their economy. 60 years later, it's still a basket case. Let's dig a little deeper here. So many things going on in the economy. Now, Jamie Dimon is someone who has a lot of credibility across the political spectrum. He is the longest serving bank CEO of a really, really big bank. He's seen as a thoughtful guy. He doesn't go around bashing Trump willy nilly. He's certainly not seen as a Trump supporter, but he's really not seen as a partisan. And when he speaks, it generally carries clout. Now, I will give him credit, he says to his credit, I don't know when a recession's coming. The easiest way for the head of a bank or the head of an investment firm or an economist looking for attention. To get attention is to say, I know when there's going to be a recession, and I guarantee it's going to be within the next three months. And you got a lot of headlines. You get a lot of attention. Now, as the CEO of JP Morgan, the guy's probably already a billionaire. He doesn't have to do things to get a little extra attention and sell another book. He just needs to continue doing his job as he sees fit. So I give him credit for not predicting a recession, but he says the economy is weakening, that a rate cut is probably coming and it might not matter. This isn't helping really anyone's political position. He's just giving it in a straightforward way. What I mentioned about Ken Griffin is more interesting. Ken Griffin is someone in the United States seen as a true, true partisan. He's a big time, big time backer of President Trump, a big time backer of the MAGA movement, a big time financial backer of the Republican Party and Republican candidates. And it's rare, it is extraordinarily rare for someone of that position, of that stature to speak out against Trump and what he's trying to do, meddling with the Fed. But I do think that Ken Griffin, as much as he loves Trump and loves MAGA and loves the Republican Party, there's something he loves even more. You know what it is? Money. Ken Griffin loves money. And he is smart enough to see what happens to other countries, whether it is Peron's Argentina back in the day, whether it is Turkey, whether it is Hungary. He sees what happens to countries that do not have an independent Federal Reserve or an independent banking system, because the same thing happens every single time. Once a president or a dictator or a leader takes control, they're always thinking about, how do I look good today? How do I look good for this election coming up in two months? So the temptation is always extraordinarily powerful on an incumbent leader to say, let's reduce interest rates, because then people will be happy. They're going to see prices go down, they can buy a house. It's going to be great. That works really well until it stops working, because it always, always destroys an economy. Ken Griffin is smart enough to realize that. And I certainly suspect that virtually all of Trump's wealthy supporters and business supporters understand it. They are afraid of speaking out. This administration. What do you want to say to its credit? I'm just putting it out there as a, as a reality of what happens is they are great. I mean this in a Good way at managing their support team through fear and intimidation. Because when CEOs speak out or don't automatically give praise to Trump, he condemns them. He often causes boycotts. He ridicules them, mocks, sometimes says they should be fired. So most CEOs don't want to do it. Ken Griffin is in a little bit different situation. He owns his own company. He's already a billionaire. So he has a certain independence that the CEO of a publicly traded company really doesn't have, which is why we are speaking out. So the federal judge blocked the firing of Lisa Cook. She is the Fed governor who Trump claims he has cause for getting rid of her because she allegedly committed fraud on a financial application for a mortgage. Now, anyone who's looked at this seriously and objectively thinks this is complete bs. For starters, a huge number of people in the Trump cabinet are guilty of doing exactly the same thing. Now, without getting into all the minutiae of IRS regulations, when you are applying for a mortgage, you get a different rate. You get a better rate from a bank. If you say, this is my primary home, meaning this is where I going to live most of the time. And apparently on one of her forms, she has two different homes because she spends time in two different cities. And they both say primary. This is done repeatedly. I'm not saying it's okay, but it's not something she has been cited for. It's not something she's been convicted of. It's not something she's been arrested for. This is really Trump just saying, I don't like this woman because she's not voting to cut interest rates. So he says to his henchmen, do whatever you can. Look through everything about this woman. Let's find something to get her on. Now, that is scary, folks. That's what dictators do. That's what fascist leaders do. That's not what happens in democracies that believe in the rule of law and treating people equally. And so far, it's shaky. So far, there's still some shaky infrastructure left in this democracy and a rule of law that's keeping this woman in power in her position, her rightfully appointed position, where she's got another decade or so in her term before she should have to step down. So whether this holds, I don't know. Because if it's one thing the Trump administration does and believes in. So we don't care if the law is on our side. We fight, fight, fight, fight. We appeal. We appeal, we appeal. And eventually we'll get to some court where there's a Trump appointed henchman who would just give us what we want. And typically that frequently that is meant going all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court says, hey Donald, whatever you want to do, we'll look the other way. That has been the attitude. That may be the strategy. That may ultimately be what happens with this Fed governor where the Supreme Court says once again, do whatever you want. If that's the case, could be trouble, could be big trouble. Not that day, not in the next three months, but long term for the economic health of our country. It's not me predicting it. It's basically every single business person and economist, left, right and center, believes it would be a horrible thing for any president to be able to control the interest rates at will. And that, make no mistake about it, that is exactly what this president is asking for. Back after a very quick break. Want a shortcut to powerful communication skills? Download the TJ Walker Success Library, five of my best selling books for only 9.95. Go to tjwalker.com books instant access big impact Epstein files keep boomeranging back. According to the Times, the White House denials about President Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein Epstein are colliding with fresh documents, including a sexually suggestive birthday note apparently signed Donald and a novelty check joking about buying a quote, fully depreciated woman for $22,500, apparently because she was really old. She was in her 20s. Press secretary Carolyn Levitt again called it a hoax, but conceded she did not say the documents are a hoax, instead suggesting a forged signature and even inviting a handwriting analysis. Another by Mar A Lago member Joel Paschal shows a photo at the club with Epstein and an oversized check bearing a DJ Trump signature. Levitt said Trump absolutely did not sign it. Meanwhile, a rare Republican split has emerged. Several GOP lawmakers joined Democrats is unusual to press for releasing the full files even as party leaders echo denial. Bottom line, attempts to wave this away aren't working. The documents keep surfacing and so do the questions. Okay, what's the real message here? The Epstein file controversy is not going away. The more Trump pushes away. There's nothing to look at here. The more we see more documents with his fingerprints and blood everywhere. This could be the scandal that ultimately brings him down. Let's dig a little bit deeper because this is a fascinating, fascinating topic and you do not have to believe in conspiracies to believe there's a big problem here because there are certain things that are just absolutely established fact. It's absolutely established that Trump spent a lot of time with Jeffrey Epstein. He's on record saying what a great guy he is, and they both share a fondness for the lovely young ladies. It's all public record. There are videos of him. And it still shocks me that with as many thousands and thousands and thousands of hours that we've all seen of Donald Trump on video, I defy you to ever find a moment where Trump looks happier than when he is in the presence of this guy Epstein, arguably his soulmate. When you see them together smiling and laughing and checking out the chicks, Trump looks like he's never been happier a moment in his life than when he's with Epstein. Now, does that mean Trump is a pedophile and should go to prison? No, it doesn't mean that. But I keep getting back to the central issue that I don't understand, which is Trump is a guy when anytime you accuse him of a horrible crime of a felony, he's like, I relish the fact that I committed that felony. Yeah, I took those documents. What are you gonna do about it? Yeah, whatever. Eugene Carroll says she's not good looking enough for me, so if you want to accuse me of sexually abusing her, go ahead. I wear that as a badge of honor with every other crime you're saying I committed rebellious acts, treasonous acts against our country on January 6th. Bring it on. With every other allegation and even conviction of serious crimes, Trump has relished it. He's acted like he couldn't be prouder. And here, for the first time ever, he acts embarrassed, he acts ashamed. I can't figure out why. Again, I don't have any proof that he sexually abused girls, underage girls, even if they're 17 and a half. That would have been illegal in the Virgin Islands or in Florida. The two main hangouts for, in New York City for the three main hangouts for Epstein and Trump and women and girls. I should say so. I don't have evidence of that, but again, I've never seen any evidence of Trump being embarrassed about something. It does raise the question, why is he so embarrassed about this? More revelations dripping out here. This, this latest, this check where Trump is signing a check over to Jeffrey Epstein for $22,500 for a deep, fully depreciated woman. Now, a little, little context by many, many reliable sources, both men dated the same woman. This is some 30 years ago at about the same time, who was in her 20s. She is not alleged to be 15 years old. Let's be clear. About that. But again, a joke like that, it just seems like Trump, it seems like Epstein. There just doesn't seem any credible evidence that someone is creating these, doctoring it, putting it in a book that no one had touched for years. It just doesn't ring credible that all of this was crafted by AI today, which Trump now seems really happy about. AI says, oh, this means I can, I can just say everything is made up. You can. Doesn't mean that serious people who dig and do investigation can't conclude something is actually real. Let's look at a few more of the data points here. This oversized check says DJ Trump. It was surfaced by a Mar? A Lago member, Joel Paschal. So this is one of Trump's buddies. This is a Mar? A Lago member who presumably paid tens of thousands of dollars of his own money because he just loved hanging out with Donald Trump. He's such a cool guy. So this is not some partisan Democrat left wing media hack. This is being surfaced by one of Trump's own associates, own friends, own members. Now, interestingly, a number of Republican members of Congress are now pushing for full disclosure. Congressman Massie, Green, Boebert, Mace, they want more disclosure of everything the country knows about Epstein. The party leaders, including Mike Johnson, are doing bidding of Trump. They're like, nothing to see here, folks. Let's not talk about it anymore. Because they fear Trump calling for their head. Mike Johnson knows if he so much as criticizes one spindly strand of weird hair on Trump's head, Trump will instantly call for his dismissal. He'll urge the Republicans to kick him out and pick a new speaker. So he is walking on eggshells, there's no doubt about it. But once again, we're seeing this massive, massive overlap in all the different ways Trump and Epstein socialized, perhaps colluded in the 1990s and the early 2000s. And it just gets more and more awkward. And seeing this, this press secretary just deny, deny, deny, lie, lie, lie, spin, spin, spin. Say no, everything's fake, everything's fake. It just shreds a little more of the credibility every single day. If you happen to be someone who thinks there is credibility left there to begin with. Hey, I'm TJ Walker. I want to appreciate you joining me here today. Every day we look at the top five business, technology and culture stories of the day, and we analyze it, we filter it through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills, all with the goal of making you more successful, happier in your work life and your professional life. That's what we're about. So my promise to you is if you spend some time to me here on the video podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and special hello to our new friends today on Twitter X. This is the first time we're going live on X. Happy to see you and our friends on TikTok today joining us as well. My pledge to you is this is not just another chance to get down and depressed. Oh my. The world is getting better. It's a chance to learn things, to improve yourself. So together we're forming a community of people who are ambitious, want to be successful, want to learn from other people's successes and failures. Let's move now to the grab bag section of this show. We look at lesser news topics that perhaps didn't merit a full 10 minutes. But I still wanted to bring to your point. West Point Cancels Tom Hanks Award the West Point association of Graduates abruptly canceled plans to honor Tom Hanks with the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award. Leaders said they wanted to focus on, quote, preparing cadets to lead, fight and win. Hanks, long celebrated for his roles in Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, has also worked extensively off screen for veterans and memorials. He served as spokesman for the World War II memorial, helped raise funds for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, chaired the D Day Museum campaign, and launched Hanks for Our Troops, a coffee company supporting military families. Despite that record, the event was dropped and President Trump cheered, saying the cancellation calling was Hank's a woke recipient. West Point cancels the awards and this is utterly shameful. Now a little context here and why this is something I wanted to spotlight. I believe a good leader and just a good individual has some sense of self awareness and isn't constantly guilty of projection. And so we have a real problem here, folks. For many, many years with a kernel of truth. Many on the right, conservatives, libertarians, centrists even said, you know, the problem with the left is they want to politicize everything. They want to cancel George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because somehow they weren't perfect. They had slaves. So we have to take down every monument, remove them from every history book and just give them a one sentence that says George Washington, Tom Jefferson 100% evil because they own slaves. That was a real problem. And they were right. Conservatives were right. It is overly simplistic when you politicize everything and look through history through one narrow lens of current value. Today you politicize everything and you ruin everything. And that is exactly what conservatives are doing today. Tom Hanks is By most people's accounts, a national treasure. He's seen by most people as not particularly political. He is someone who's given countless hours time money helping soldiers, as I mentioned to you, raising money for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, the D Day Museum. He's started companies where all the money goes to support military families. And so West Point wanted to give him award. An award. And you know, the Pete Hegseth mentality, the Donald Trump mentality is up. This guy said something good about a Democrat once. This guy criticized somebody in our team. So he's canceled. You want to talk about cancel culture? Oh, Louis CK Said a joke I don't like. Let's cancel. Aren't those people awful? Look at those silly liberals canceling a comic because of one joke. This is a thousand times worse. Where conservatives have literally canceled award to Tom Hanks, who has done more as a private sector individual to humanize soldiers, to raise money honoring soldiers than perhaps any American alive today. Yet he's canceled. So yes, folks, when conservatives and right of center people and MAGA people say it's a horrible, horrible problem living in canceled culture in America today, they are absolutely right and they are the number one perpetra traders. A cancel culture. Moving on to the grab bag, Donald Trump ventured out into Washington D.C. this week. It's only the first time apparently. He's been outside of the White House since he's been back to go to a local business or a restaurant. He went to Joe's Stone Crab, which is one of my favorite restaurants. Not that particular version, but the one in Miami beach, which great stone Crab, by the way. He went there and protesters started shouting at him, free D.C. and again, these are the quotes from the protesters. Trump is the Hitler of our time as he dined with top officials. The White House had staged the outing to highlight falling crime after deploying the National Guard. But the heckling videos quickly spread online showing his continued unpopularity in the capital. So if, here's the real message. If you're running for office or you are a CEO of a company and you're going to a new place where you're considering opening a plant or you have a plant, you need to do some due diligence and get honest feedback from people. If you are wildly, wildly hated and detested by the majority of the people in that community, maybe you want to go in the back door. Maybe you want to change your policies to not be wildly hated. That can be unavoidable in some businesses. If you're shutting down a factory, you may Be hated. If you had a company that polluted and you're trying to clean it up, you might be hated. But in this case, I think this is a perfect example of Trump surrounding himself by such henchmen that you're only allowed to give him good news. You're only allowed to tell him how everybody loves you, you're wonderful. Hey, I'm thinking of maybe going out and getting a nice stone crab tonight. We haven't been out much. Good idea. Yes, Paul's great idea. That has to have been the response he got. And I would suspect he was not pleased and also surprised to hear people shouting down at him. Trump is the Hitler of our time. Now, certainly in the last 50 years, there have been many, many cases of people prematurely making the jump between here's a policy I don't like, or here's someone maybe an inch or two more conservative or further to the right than I am, therefore I'm going to call in Hitler. I will be the first to admit that sometimes that has been a rhetorical gimmick. A, you know, they've smashed the glass where that little Hitler thing was only for emergencies use, and they used it prematurely. But I have to tell you, the number of thoughtful intellectual centrists in our culture today who are overwhelmed by the parallels between this administration and, yes, the administration of Germany in the late 30s and 40s, I do think is overwhelming. And it's a huge, huge problem and it's not going away. Trump can crawl back to the gilded, increasingly gold gilded White House and just have, just invite people like Mark Zuckerberg to tell him what a genius he is, boss, which happened last week and was, was utterly disgraceful. I suspect that's what he's going to do or go from spending time like he has already this term and last term, spending time almost exclusively in the White House or in Mar a Lago or in one of his other resorts where everyone is vetted and everyone already loves him and he can, he can protect himself from criticism, but a real leader wants to hear criticism. If you're a CEO of a company, whether it's a company of one or a company of 100,000, you need to know what your actual customers think. You need to know what are not just the positive views, but the negative use of what you are doing. And yeah, it's all fine to say, let's be positive, let's be upbeat, I'm an optimist. But if you block out the negative feedback, you don't create any self correcting mechanism. You don't get better. And that is a huge problem because it leads you further and further down rabbit holes that can destroy your company if you're the CEO or can destroy your nation if you are the leader of a nation. That concludes our show for today. I want to thank so many of our new friends today joining us on TikTok but also on Twitter X hello to our friends watching on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitch. If you are listening to this podcast on Spotify, itunes, Apple Music, any other podcasting platform, thank you so much. Please take a moment to leave a review, to follow it, to subscribe to it, to set the automatic downloads because that really helps us build audience for this show, especially as we are just getting going. This marks the first full week. This show just launched in our full podcast version just one week ago today. So happy one week birthday to us. Thank you for joining me. Those of you who have been regulars, thanks. If this is your first time, hope you come back. Thanks so much. I'll see you tomorrow.