Emily Blunt vs. AI Actress Tilly

Emily Blunt says an AI actress is terrifying and Hollywood is bracing for what it means. Bad Bunny is set to headline the super bowl halftime show and the politics are already heating up. A Ball State University employee was fired for criticizing Charlie Kirk. Actually, she just said she didn't want to be friends with anyone who thinks he's a wonderful guy. She was criticized for what she said on her Priority private Facebook page. The looming government shutdown isn't just about budgets. It's about democracy itself. And we'll take a close look at how YouTube quietly settled with Trump over his suspension after January 6, a decision that never should have been reversed. Many are saying, let's get going. We've got a fun show for you today right here on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. Let's first check in on the markets, how they closed yesterday. The S&P 500 closed up 0.26% at 6661. The NASDAQ Composite closed up 0.48%. Never forget the long term perspective. Over a 25 year period, the S&P 500 is averaging 7.47% up every year. The NASDAQ is up 9.73% on average per year for the last 25 years. Let's dig right into one of the top stories of the week and one of the greatest controversies right now. Emily Blunt has just weighed in on Hollywood's newest controversy and AI generated actress named Tilly Norwood. Blunt called the digital creation terrifying and begged agencies not to take away our human connection. Tilly Norwood was designed to resemble a composite of familiar stars and is already being hailed by some as the next Scarlett Johansson. Her creator insists she's art, not a replacement for real actors. But Hollywood's pushback has been fierce and it's worth remembering technology has replaced humans before. In the 1940s and 50s, Disney animated films were drawn by hand, often requiring 600 illustrators. Today, thanks to CGI, major animated films can be completed with fewer than 80 artists. A single Pixar film can do what once took an entire studio. Lots filled with ink and paint and workers, special effects that once kept hundreds employed are now handled by software plugins. The fear is real once again. Livelihoods could be erased with the click of a mouse. Okay, so what's the real message here? The creator of this AI actress Tilly Norwood is telling people and others in Hollywood are saying, don't worry, this is not to replace actors. This is just an enhancement. It's to add to the process what's their real message. Their real message is, yes, we're going to replace actors with AI created things, whatever you want to call them, because we like money, we like to save money. Because then there's more for our pocket. Make no mistake about it, whether it's this AI actress or others, AI is coming for the big screen and the small screen. Now let's dig a little deeper here because this is an issue that upsets a lot of people. It's got a lot of people really kind of worried about this. But let's look at the facts here. There's always been a situation where technology puts people out of jobs. Cars put horse farms out of work quite often. So technology always does that. An example I like to give, perhaps too frequently, is telephone operators. In 1960, there were 400,000 telephone operators in America. And within a few years, all those jobs were gone. So what does this really mean for you and me? I got to tell you, I certainly feel sorry for any actor, actress, someone who's gone to Juilliard, gone to the Yale School of Drama. They've devoted their life to their craft, and all of a sudden they may be in a situation where they're not going to get hired anywhere. So that's a big potential problem. Some are saying this is gross. Some are saying this is unethical. Well, here's what I do think is unethical. If you put people out there or you put AI out there and you tell people it's a real person and you try to fool people, if you lie to people, that is clearly unethical. But using technology to create images on screens more cheaply than an older way of doing it isn't unethical. I'm sorry. If that were the case, you could never have a war movie because you're not really killing people, you're fooling people. You could never have multiple car crashes or buildings blowing up in any movie because that's being done artificially through computer generated graphics. So where do you draw the line? It's very easy to say, well, if it hits my pocketbook, it's unethical. Let's not confuse what's good for us individually with ethics. Ethics means you're doing something, you're not doing something bad that could harm other people because of some deception or something you're doing to genuinely pollute the environment. For example. Now I, I get it. I understand some people believe that putting an AI actress in a show is polluting the environment of entertainment somehow. But you know what? Some people feel like the Jerry Springer shoe was polluting the environment. Was it unethical for any for a camera operator to work on the Jerry Springer Show? I have a hard time making that argument in and really believing it. How do you feel? Because in looking at my comments across social media over the last 24, 48 hours, this has aroused a lot of passion. People are outraged by it. People have accused me of promoting something. I'm not promoting this. I'm simply bringing it to your attention because it's real, it's existing. Here's what I A couple of trends I think have not been talked about enough. I can certainly foresee famous actors having an AI version of themselves and say, okay, you can't afford my $20 million fee to be in your movie. You can use my AI version for a million dollars, and that way I don't have to show up and maybe I'll spend a half day tweaking things and giving it. I can definitely see that. Which would be great for people who are already famous movie stars. Because right now, if you're a famous movie star, it's very hard to do more than one, maybe two movies a year. I understand some do it, but if you're really the lead between prepping for the show, rehearsals, actual days of filming, and then what's even more time consuming, the doing all the publicity, you can easily spend an entire year on one movie and at most two. But in theory, if you license your AI clone to movie producers who don't have your full budget, it may end up being just as good from an economic standpoint for the producer. Audiences may like it. So that has not been talked about yet much, but I'm telling you, it's coming. The next thing that has not been talked about is why would a Hollywood producer want to use this AI actress Tilly Norwood? Because my understanding is she's sort of a composite of whether it's 10 or 20 or 500 famous actresses. Scarlett Johansson, just enough from all the others that no one can claim copyright infringement. I don't know why you couldn't just develop a new prompt on whatever AI system you're using, saying, create my own AI Tilly Norwood, but change the name and let's make her a little blonder and different color eyes. And now you've got something essentially for free that as a Hollywood producer, director, writer, you can mold any way you want. And therefore, the big winner here is not going to be the creator of AI actress Tilly Norwood. The big winner is going to be Hollywood producers who can now produce Movies at a much, much lower cost. And if you don't like that, there's nothing wrong with you boycotting that movie or not going to the movie theater or changing the channel if you still watch a TV or not clicking on that movie if it is on Netflix or anything else. Nothing wrong with you making that decision. But let's get a little bit real here, because there is a tendency to simply say, any new technology is bad, scary, it's unethical. I mean, there must have been people who said it's unethical to use a car because you're putting carriage drivers out of work. How many of us are really willing to say, you know what? They're right. Let's take the car back to the car dealership, let's get a stagecoach so we can properly pay the stagecoach owner driver. I don't think many people are willing to say that. But I can tell you right now, when Hollywood producers and creators say, oh, this is not meant to replace humans, they're lying to, maybe they're lying to themselves, but they're lying to you. Their job is to entertain people and make money. I don't care how magnanimous you are, how generous you are. Very few people who are successful who go into to Hollywood as a director and a producer say, my number one job is keeping the headcount as high as possible to give as many people work as now. Certainly some do get value out of that and see that as a part of their positive mission in life. But their primary goal is to tell stories that entertain people and to do it in a way that makes money. Now, some people do anything for money. But if you want a career in Hollywood and you want to do a second movie or a third movie, the first one has to make money. And if you make $100 million, but your movie cost 200 million to make, guess what? No one's going to find your next movie if you make only $9 million, but the whole movie cost 1 million. Well, you can get more and more funding and do the next 10 movies if you can figure out a cost structure like that. Now, let me be very upfront and be transparent with you with a minor, minor thing I need to reveal to you a conflict of interest. You could look, I have my own AI clone. I have a digital AI video interactive clone. Looks and sounds just like me. It's a video of me. And it will say the very same things I do, but it does it in a different way because it's not a real human, but it sounds like me. It looks like me. Yeah. You can tell if you look for more than 10 seconds. It's not quite the real TJ, but I do that because I want to help people communicate more effectively. When I'm asleep or traveling or on vacation, they can interact with my AI club. I'm not fooling anyone. It announces it's an AI cloud. So far, no major Hollywood directors have come to me and said, tj, we want the TJ AI clone to star in the next romantic comedy to be seen on three. No, that's not happening. Nor do I anticipate that. But if a movie producer came to me and said, tj, we want to use your clone for a movie about the evil clones taking over, would you license it for a fee? Got to be candid with you. I'd probably say yes if they said, we want to use a. A clone to do a whole series of media trainings with a star of a show is a part of the movie or as a part of the TV show, and it's going to take, you know, two weeks of your time. Can you do it? And they only want to pay a small amount, and they say, well, can your clone do it for that small amount? I'd probably say yes. If you think that's unethical, make the case. All I'm doing is taking away work for myself, working at a lower pay schedule, which in this case, I wouldn't want to do. Where does this all take us? A part of a theme that I've talked about on this show, unfiltered for a long time, is the fact that we all have to prepare for artificial intelligence. We can say, we don't like it in this area. In this area, we can say, how dare they put autonomous vehicles on the roads? But they're coming. How dare my radiologist be fired? I don't want to use a computer for that. And yet AI is better than human radiologist in many aspects. It's coming after consulting. The consulting industry is becoming decimated. It's coming after the legal industry. It's changing industry after industry after industry. And if Hollywood thinks it's different, I got to tell you, it's not. It absolutely is not. We are going to see efficiencies created. And if you want to say we're going to have humanity snuffed out, it's a viable opinion. I do think it is possible for an individual perhaps who's not well connected in Hollywood, who didn't go to Beverly Hills High the way a lot of movie stars did that didn't have the connections of a Michael Douglas whose father was Kirk Douglas. People who have genuinely interesting, insightful, creative ideas want to make a movie and don't even know where to start going out and raising $10 million. Now they're going to be able to make these movies using artificial intelligence, actors, special effects, scenery, the whole thing. So one part of it is the human creativity. There's going to be at least one person who's a human creative who has a vision. It's their unique human vision and using nothing but AI to make it seem like a real life live action feature movie. And I predict, and others have too, that within the next three years, one of those movies like that is going to go to number one in the box office. And at that point, Hollywood as we know it is going to be over. Everyone's going to panic and everyone is going to rush. That's going to happen in the next three years. But another version that I guess is a little more dystopian is the entire script is written by an AI. Someone can sit back and maybe it's a big fat guy chopping on a cigar. He can just say a prompt to a particular Hollywood AI and say, make me a romantic comedy script and then use AI actors to produce the whole thing and give me the 90 minute movie right now or I'm going to go to lunch for a few martinis. When I come back from lunch, I want to be able to watch the entire 90 minute movie and the AI will create it. Is the first movie going to be great? No, it will probably be unwatchable. Will the second one be great now? It'll probably be a little less unwatchable. But here's the problem. The AI is going to get better and better and better. The AI can study every single movie ever made. It can cross tabulate and analyze those movies with how they did at the box office. It can put people into focus groups and see when were they on the edge of their seats the most. It can analyze all that data to make it better and better and better. And unfortunately, we may be in a situation where the rotund Hollywood producer with a cigar in his hand and a martini can simply, with a prompt, make entertainment that maybe you don't want to watch it, maybe I don't want to watch it, but maybe the masses do watch it. And that's where all the money goes. I'm trying to sort this out just like you are. The premise of this show is we're going to learn about news and the stories in the news. Try to learn from it and figure out lessons that will help us communicate more effectively, have habits more effectively to be successful. As the world changes and it's changing things faster than ever. My advice to you, whether you are a young Scarlett Johansson wannabe or a director or a standup comic or any of these things, you've got to figure out how to use the latest technology available for you to share your craft, whether it's your entertainment value, your expertise with the world. And that's probably going to involve artificial intelligence. Do not wait any longer now. A year and a half ago, I created my own AI interactive video clone. Is it making tons of money? No. But I'm in the game. I'm learning every day. I'm studying. What are the questions people ask my clone that they don't ask me personally? Where are they improving? What do they like about it? Because I want to be ready for the next version. Because there may be a point when YouTube and TikTok and others say, we don't even want real humans. Just send your AI clone. I want to be ready for it. I hope that doesn't happen anytime soon. But I am a realist, and my sense is that if you're watching this at some level, you are too. We can't just sit back and say, I hope the world stops. I hope the world goes back to where it was 5, 10, 15, 20, 50 years ago. Because there are certainly hundreds of illustrators, sometimes thousands of illustrators working for Disney in the past. They're gone now. We've seen a reduction of the need of illustrators by something 90% on a lot of these movies. And we certainly may see a hybrid version of movies where two main leads are real people and all the other characters are AI clones or AI actors that are brought in for almost no expense. That I can virtually guarantee you will happen more 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 meeting, 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 and 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 your host TJ Walker. This is the show where we look at the top stories of the day, the top news stories, typically a handful, and then dive deep analyzing them through the lens of communication skills, personal development skills, messaging. All with the goal of improving you, making you more successful in your personal life and your professional life. Next issue Bad Bunny is officially headlining the next super bowl halftime. The Puerto rican superstar with three Grammys and 11, or excuse me, 12 Latin Grammys, is one of the most streamed artist on the planet. But not everyone is cheering. To Maga supporters, Bad Bunny is a perfect villain. He endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024, blasted Donald Trump for calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage, and has spoken out about immigration crackdowns. For many conservatives, he represents everything they fear about cultural change in America. But here's the flip side. Liberals and centrists have been told for decades to get over it when right leaning entertainers like Lee Greenwood or Ted Nugent turned politics into music. What's good for one side should be fair for the other as well. So what's the real message here? Conservatives, Maga lovers are up in arms over Bad Bunny performing at the super bowl halftime next year? Well, here's the message for you. Get over it. Hurts your feelings. Boo hoo hoo. Guess what? It's your turn to just sit in quiet and let other people enjoy the day. Let's go a little bit deeper. It always amazes me people who act like they're so tough. Oh, you're a snowflake. You're complaining about something I did and you don't like it. What a snowflake you are. And now we hear this same crowd complaining because they don't like the politics of someone who is a widely acclaimed musician. He's not there to give a political speech. He's there to sing. Now, full transparency. I've heard the name Bad Bunny. I have no idea what his music sounds like. I'm not here saying he's the greatest musician ever. Certainly not saying he's horrible. I know nothing about him other than he's wildly popular. A lot of people like his music. Other interesting things about him. Spanish is his first language. He grew up in Puerto Rico. He sings in Spanish. If you don't understand Spanish, if you're not fluent in Spanish and I'm not, that's on you. We live In a world where there's a lot of different languages. We do live in the United States, where there are tens of millions of people who speak Spanish. And as Americans, we have exported countless pop musicians around the globe singing in English. And other people have felt like they had no choice but to listen to English. It's how a lot of people learned English. But, you know, what comes around, goes around. If we force other people to listen to music in our language, maybe we should occasionally expose ourselves to other languages, too. I'm perhaps an aberration here. I think I have perfectly fine hearing, but I personally don't ever really hear words to songs. So for me it makes no difference. I'm hearing the music of it, the sound, the melody, the instruments. I don't really know the words to any song other than Happy Birthday. And you can say, well, T.J. that's pathetic. Maybe, okay, but if you're upset of all the things going on in the world, all the football players who are getting their skulls bashed in, who are going to die prematurely from cte, who are going to be in that super bowl game, all the wives and children are going to be beaten because of the violence hitting these people's heads, scrambling their brains. And you're upset about a musician who is by all accounts one of the most popular musicians in the world, who makes music that makes people happy, puts a smile on their face. They like his music. If that's the sort of thing that gets you upset, you need to get a life because, you know, talk about political correctness. Well, we now live in a world of right wing wokeness. It's not politically correct for the NFL to have Bad Bunny. They're doing it anyway. Good for them. And I'm not a fan of the NFL. It's not right wing woke enough. Maybe Lee Greenwood should just be named the permanent NFL super bowl halftime singer to appease a certain faction. No, That's a horrible, horrible idea. So I do. Even though I'm not a fan of football. We talked about this yesterday on the show. I do typically watch the super bowl and with my family, my wife and daughter typically like watching the halftime entertainment. And then I quickly go to bed right after halftime and read about how the game ended the next day in the news. So again, that's just me. You might love every second of it. You might hate it. That's okay. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. We have a lot more fun stories coming up. Don't go away. We'll be right back after this break. Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to tjwalker.com advertise 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 TV 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 app, 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. And we're back. Suzanne Swer was fired from Ball State University recently after posting on her private Facebook page. Her private Facebook page quote, if you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can't be friends. Well, the backlash was swift. Libs of TikTok amplified her posts, Elon Musk and Rudy Giuliani piled on, and Indiana's Attorney general labeled her vile. Within days, she was out of a job. But here's the context too many want to erase Charlie Kirk's record did in fact include vicious attacks on Martin Luther King Jr. Homophobic rants, and even rhetoric that suggested biblical punishment for gay people was acceptable. In case you forgot what that is, that's stoning you to death. When centrists hear that history, they don't see Kirk as a free speech martyr. They see him as someone who spent a career demeaning others. The real danger is that criticizing such a figure now comes with career ending punishment. Republicans are blaming Democrats for the we'll get to that in just a moment. So what's the real message here? This poor woman at Ball State University got fired not because she said anything hateful about Charlie Kirk, not because she advocated violence, not because she celebrated someone's death. She simply sat in a private place. She didn't want to be friends with someone who she thinks presumably spreads hate, spreads racism, spreads homophobia. Guess what? We live in America. That is her right. Or it's supposed to be her right. Let's dig a little bit deeper. For some reason, people who are constantly talking about how rational they are and how intelligent they are can't seem to get two ideas. Can't seem to hold two ideas in their head at the same time. Number one, you can absolutely be appalled by violence. Denounce violence, show sympathy for the victims of violence and think someone who is a victim of violence was indeed a horrible person. It's two thoughts. And what is happening again and again over the last three weeks in America is once someone goes to the second thought and makes a case that they think someone might in fact be a horrible person or have done many, many bad things, those on the right are instantly conflating that with, oh, you're promoting murder and assassination. No, it's completely different ideas. Completely different ideas. Now imagine, imagine you're Jewish, could be conservative, you could be a Republican, Democrat, doesn't matter. And somebody does something awful to the Reverend Louis Farrakhan, who has denounced Jews as being part of a gutter religion, living in the gutter like and well known record of anti Semitism. He has his fans, he has his supporters, he has people who love him. And imagine you denounced the person who attacked Louis. And again, I'm hoping, I can't remember, he might not even be alive, frankly. But you've denounced anyone trying to harm Farrakhan or member of his family. You've denounced that. But you see again and again and again, more people simply whitewashing all of his anti Semitism and saying, oh, he was a great singer, which he was in his youth. Oh, he was a great minister and a prophet. And it goes on and on and on and on. And you said privately, just to a handful of your own personal friends on Facebook, or maybe you sent an email to eight friends, or maybe you had a WhatsApp list of 12 friends and you said, you know, I really can't be friends with anyone who thinks that Louis Farrakhan was a great guy. I really don't think any serious person, regardless of where you are in the spectrum, would make a case that that is something someone should be fired for. But that is what's happened here at this, at Ball State University, where again, I want to clarify because these issues are being conflated. If this employee Suzanne Swerek had gone on Facebook publicly and said, I think it's wonderful when people I don't like are assassinated and I applaud this assassin, yeah, I think that's a horrible hate speech that's promoting violence and things like that do need to be treated. Especially if she said, and here's a list of other people I don't like, would someone please off them if she said that? Yes, by all means, let's fire her. That's not what she said. She said she didn't want to be friends with someone who thought a particular person who she didn't know was not a member of her community. All she knows about this guy is he routinely said things saying effectively, Martin Luther King Jr. Was a bomb. Liberals are awful. Homosexuals deserve the treatment outlined in the Bible. Hint, hint, you know what that was. These are morally reprehensible things in her view. In fact, if you are a centrist in America, if you are slightly right of center, if you are a liberal, a progressive or on down, there are numerous, numerous things that this Kirk individual said that would make you feel like he's wildly offensive, beyond the pale. Again, nothing to do with advocating his demise. Different issues. You can in fact criticize someone's words, someone's career, someone's rhetorical legacy, and come to different conclusions from others. It doesn't mean you should be fired. Now, this is particularly odious, what happened at Bowell State University, because this woman, she said it in a private Facebook page and one of her, I guess, alleged friends shared it with someone else that got on Libs of TikTok, which you haven't heard of, that it has nothing to do with liberals. It's a way of MAGA supporters weaponizing their power to take out of context and ridicule and make anyone left of center look like an extremist. So it's in fact the conservatives of TikTok doing this. And then of course, Elon Musk has to get involved and the Indiana Attorney General has to get him. Everyone wants to pile on because it's a way of getting cheap applause. Yeah, way to go, Elon. You own the libs. Once again, that'll teach her. And it's absolute insanity. Katie writes in, says, if private opinions cost jobs, what does free speech even mean anymore? Well, Katie, I have an answer for that. Here's what freedom of speech means in America today. There's absolute 100% freedom of speech. If you are a conservative and you want to say that Hillary and Bill Clinton are murderers, for example, absolute free speech. If you are a centrist or anyone to the left of center and you say anything that hurts the feelings of Orange Deer Leader or anyone in the MAGA coalition, you are now guilty of hate speech and extremist speech. And therefore you're essentially a terrorist. Therefore, you need to be punished, fired, excommunicated, and driven to the poor house on your way to prison. That's what free speech means in America today. Katie, sorry if that sounds harsh, but we're living in harsh times. So that's the problem. So again, I want to remind people Charlie Kirk called Martin Luther King, a communist fraud. He routinely mocked black communities as lazy, which is his right and does not mean he deserved the fate he received. But this idea that we all have to sort of worship him. No, we don't. I like many things about John F. Kennedy, but there are certainly plenty of people who take issue with him for a whole host of issues, whether it's his family values or handling the bag of pig. There's lots of people who are harshly critical of John F. Kennedy. We didn't say, well, now that he was assassinated, no one is allowed to ever criticize any part of John F. Kennedy. Now. In fact, there have been entire cottage industries of people writing books that are quite harsh about John F. Kennedy. For that matter, Robert F. Kennedy, also assassinated. So we don't say, in a free society, just because someone was assassinated, you're not allowed to criticize that person. Now, is it fair game to say if we go to that person's funeral when people are mourning and you trash the person in front of mourners, is that tacky and rude? Sure. That's not what this woman did. That's not what any critic of Charlie the Kirk has done. They didn't go to the funeral and trash him. That would be rude. Nor have I seen a single prominent or not prominent, any leader of the Democratic Party who've been elected to Congress, governor, Senate, ever been in a presidential cabinet. I haven't seen a single one of those people actually endorse what happened to Charlie Kirk. Not one. What I have seen is this conflating of the issue of, okay, here's something about him I didn't like and oops, you're now essentially endorsing what happened. No, that's a rhetorical game. And with the right wing echo chamber alive and active in the United States, it has had such momentum, such repetition, that it has become accepted as fact. But it is not fact. A couple more facts you do need to know. At least 145 people have lost jobs for my script says, for criticizing Charlie Kirk and his death. That's not what happened. It's for someone who even said anything that hurt the feelings of people who love Charlie Kirk. That's the environment we're in. Because let me go back a minute and look specifically at what this woman at Ball State University said. It's important to look at it word for word in the same way it's important to look at word for word what Jimmy Kimmel actually said, because he didn't criticize Charlie Kirk. She simply wrote to her Friends privately. If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can't be friends now. She didn't say he was evil. She didn't say he deserved to be attacked. And for all you know, she thinks he's someone who has a neutral place in society. Someone who had a mixed record, someone who's just okay and not wonderful. But now we live in a world where you can't say someone is okay. You have to say this person deserves saint status or it might hurt Dear Leader, might hurt his feelings. This is absolute insanity. This is tyranny, ladies and gentlemen. This is full fledged authoritarian rule. This is thoughtfully Orwell warned against it. Everyone who's ever lived under a fascist regime, a kingdom under the thumb of a tyrant, says this is the problem. They want to control what you actually think. Because this woman had a thought. Probably like a lot of us saying, you know, isn't this a little bit thick laying it on that this guy's just the greatest guy ever when look at what he said. She wanted to share a thought with friends in a private page. How far away are we from the government coming and putting an implant in your brain to read your thoughts? If this is a thought she had, we really are talking about thought police. If she can be eliminated from her job for having a thought considered impure by those on the right, what's to prevent you from being fired from ever even sending one email or one text to one person you thought was a friend? And then maybe you and your friend had a falling out and then they share that with one of these right wing extremists and now you've got 10,000 people emailing you, calling you, saying we know where you live. Is that really the world we want to live in? I hope not. I hope not indeed. There's more to come after these commercial words filtered is brought to you by the following. You 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 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, 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 app, more personal than a course, and always ready. Start using it today at tjwalker AI. You'll wonder how you ever did without it. Welcome back. I'm TJ Walker, your host here at Filtered. Democrats and Republicans, they're at it again. Republicans are blaming Democrats for the looming government shutdown, claiming it's all about giving, quote, free health care to illegal immigrants. Only one problem that's false. That's a polite way of saying it's a lie. The truth. Democrats are trying to extend Affordable Care act, the Affordable Care act, subsidies for millions of American citizens and restore Medicaid cuts. Republicans passed this in a big domestic policy law doing the cuts. If nothing happens, premiums will double for millions next year. The GOP plan would kick 1.2 million legal immigrants off coverage and strip subsidies from countless families. And there's a bigger danger. A shutdown would give Trump cover to keep consolidating power, avoiding oversight and investigations into actions already widely seen as unconstitutional, from purging the Justice Department to dangling pardons for January 6th rioters for. And he didn't just dangle them, he gave them for Democrats forcing a shutdown might be the only way left to slow the slide from democracy to authoritarianism. So what's the big message here? A government shutdown is likely coming. And guess what? It's the best possible thing that could happen among all the horrible things facing our country right now. It's a blunt instrument. It's going to be a painful instrument, but it's the only way the Democrats can send a message to Donald Trump. No more fascism, no more authoritarianism. You cannot rule this country like a dictator. We're going to make it stop today. So I personally don't like government shutdowns. I don't respect most of the time the people and Barack Obama did it once who use this gimmick to shut down the government. For those of you in other countries not following it that closely, we have this weird thing where the Congress passes laws saying we want to spend money for Social Security, defense, environment, this and that and the bureaucracy sets up, they start sending it. And then there's another law that says we can only have a debt level at a certain amount, and that has to be raised, otherwise they can't actually spend the money that the government itself already appropriated. So it's another way to sort of put the kinks into things and slow things down, which normally I'm not a fan of, because it gives a lot of power to a handful of people and allows typically, whichever party says we don't care about people really being harmed and going hungry and starving, et cetera, we want to make a point. It typically gives people who don't really believe in government working the upper hand. So you see, time and time again, Democrats typically cave to whatever demands Republicans have in order to reduce spending. Somewhere this is a little bit different. This is the Democrats essentially saying, we just don't forget raising more money. We don't want you to just throw millions of people out of their health care plan and to subvert democracy. Now, others have suggested that we'd be frankly, much better off if the government shut down, because Trump on a daily basis is doing so many things that in any other context, any other political era, no matter Republican or Democrat, would be considered grounds for impeachment. But because he's doing 10 of these day, no one can keep track. Everyone's head is spinning. Whether it is just simple things, like Congress passed a law saying TikTok had to be sold and Trump just ignores it. Routinely spending money on things that Congress didn't authorize. That's not what's in our Constitution. Routinely refusing to spend money on things Congress did authorize, authorize trying to fire members of the Fed for no legitimate reason. All of these things are either unconstitutional or extra constitutional. But the problem is we've got a Republican Senate that just rolls over and plays dead because they're so afraid of a nasty tweet from Trump and all the threats they'd get to their spouses and children. We have a Supreme Court and increasingly an entire judiciary that is beholden to Trump. He either appointed them or they're so fearful of him, they say, whatever you want, boss. Forget the Constitution. We're just going to go by, this is a Trump kingdom, and he gets to do whatever he wants. This is one bit of leverage the Democrats still have. And I don't say this lightly. I'm not a big fan of making statements and grabbing headlines when it means shutting down. You know, everyone loves to hate the government in the abstract, but everyone actually loves government if you're trying to fly from LA to Chicago or to New York to raise money for your startup or to raise money for your conservative political action committee, and all of a sudden there are no air traffic controllers, you're going to think, huh, maybe not all government is bad. So not to mention the way Trump is extorting law firms and universities and major media companies. All things completely unprecedented in the history of our country. And if shutting down the government just slows down this destruction of the very fiber of our country, I'm all in favor of it. Would there be massive pain? Yes. Would there be hunger? Yes. Would there be unmet medical needs? Yes. But all of that's happening anyway as more and more and more power consolidates to Trump in his reign of terror. So if this is what Democrats do, I would wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly endorse it. Comments coming in Shutdowns don't hurt politicians. They hurt families and workers in general. That is right. Some shutdowns do hurt politicians. It hurts their standing with the public. Famously, Newt Gingrich shut down the government in 1995 because his feelings were hurt, because Bill Clinton didn't let him come in through the front door and sit with him on Air Force One. And that is one of the reasons voters said in polling as to why they wanted to get rid of Gingrich, get rid of him and get him out. And in fact, the Democrats did well after that. So it does sometimes hurt politicians. But you're right, as a class of people, people, they have enough money for food, they have enough money for health care, their families are going to be fine generally. So you are right about that. It's going to be some interesting times. It's what I'm frankly shocked about is how few Democrats are actually saying what I think this should be about. This is about saying we have to just shut down the government because our entire government has been perverted and corrupted by a madman. The issue, in my view, is not the, the people who are going to get kicked off of Medicare. That's a horrible issue. But I don't think that is why Medicare and Medicaid, the health care subsidies, I don't think that's the reason to shut down the government. The reason to shut down is our government has been taken over by a madman and there's absolutely insanity coming out of the White House on a daily basis. And if the government can be shut down, if nothing else, it would slow his destruction of our entire society down a little. That's why I'm in favor of it. What do you think? You can post your comments on any social media platform where you are watching, watching this, or listening. You can post it right there on TikTok. Hello to my friends on TikTok. If you're watching on Facebook, on YouTube, on X, on LinkedIn, Twitch, Podbean, any other platform, they all have some place where you can leave a comment. And if you're listening to this on a podcast platform, a lot of those have places where you can leave comments as well. You can always go to my YouTube channel and hit the post section. That's what the community is now they call it post and you can leave a comment there as well. There's still more to come today on Filtered with TJ Walker. Imagine having a communication coach who never sleeps. Meet your new secret weapon, the TJ Walker AI clone. Go to TJWalker AI and start getting custom coaching. 247 no scheduling, no hourly fees. I train presidents, prime ministers and Fortune 500 CEOs, but the same exact communication I've delivered to world leaders is now available to you online anytime@mediatrainingworldwide.com. whether you're speaking on camera, pitching a client, or handling a crisis, you need these tools. These are fluffy motivational videos. They're practical, battle tested techniques to help you speak clearly, competently and persuasively. Go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and take your communication to the next level. Welcome back. YouTube has quietly agreed to pay Donald Trump $24.5 million to settle his lawsuit over being suspended after January 6th. Make no mistake, suspending him in 2021 was the correct legal and moral decision. On January 6th, Trump told his supporters to, quote, fight like hell. He's asking them to fight the United States government. There's a word for that. A mob stormed the Capitol, injuring 174 police officers and others. One officer died the very next day because of stress involved with that. One rioter was shot trying to break through a window. She died and four officers later died by suicide. The violence caused $2.7 million in damage. More than 1400 people were arrested, with over 1000 pleading guilty. YouTube acted to prevent further violence when they did this in 2021. Good for them. But today, Trump is rewriting history, calling rioters political prisoners and pressuring platforms to pay up. Now, Google may not have TV licenses to lose like Disney and abc, but it depends on government goodwill for contracts, antitrust rulings, and a lot of regulation that makes it vulnerable to retaliation. This settlement is more than money. It's A dangerous concession to authoritarian pressure. It tells future presidents they can break the law, inspire violence, and still cash in years later. What's the real message here? YouTube. Paying Donald Trump $24.5 million for having done the right thing, kicking him off of YouTube. And after January 6, when he caused the loss of human life, he was fomenting for violence. They did the right thing. Paying him money now saying they think they did something wrong. That's an atrocity. That is yet another sign that democracy as we know it, the rule of law, is over in America today. Let's dig a little deeper. This is profoundly troubling and it's not getting the attention in it deserves because there's so many other crazy things coming out of Washington. And through the sheer power of repetition, conservatives have sort of rewritten this. I mean, I constantly meet people who, who honestly think either, oh, the FBI was put this up, or it was some kind of, you know, rogue operation, it was a scam and, you know, it was just, you know, peace, it was a touristic event, or it was just people showing up to show their opinions. No, that's not what it was. It was an insurrection. It was a rebellion. It was traitors rebelling against their country and committing traitorous acts. Mary writes in It's a tool to stop the government. Do whatever they want. I think you're talking about the shutdown. So, Mary, thanks for being here. Glad you're here today. So, again, let's not forget Ashley Babbitt was killed on January 6th in part because Trump said, come and fight, fight, fight. He was telling people again and again and again, an absolute lie, that the election had been stolen. It wasn't no honest person who has a shred of credibility in America, who's analyzed the vote counts, think that anyone other than Joe Biden won the popular and the electoral college in 2020. So Trump promoted a lie again and again and again. And then he said, come to Washington and let's fight like hell because so called radical leftist Democrats were stealing the election. It was lie upon lie upon lie devoted to motivate people to acts of insurrection and acts of violence. Not to mention the fact that he basically wink, wink, nudge, nudge, sort of implied, go ahead and hang Mike Pence, my own vice president, if he's not willing to do the dirty work of trying to ignore democracy and install me as president. You know, everyone, I don't think Mike Pence forgets that. But everyone else seems to forget that Trump was willing to have his own vice president murdered. If he didn't do the dirty work Trump wanted. And we and to it. Today we talk about the rise of left wing hate speech. I don't know if it gets much more hateful than saying, oh, somebody didn't lie for me and give me a job I want. Go ahead, feel free to murder them. I don't know what's more hateful than that, but YouTube, I feel sorry for you. You got to know, nobody at YouTube wanted to pay Donald Trump a pay penny. But at some point, if you have a business that's, you know, generating billions of dollars a day and you've got so many employees around the world and stockholders to answer to, and you have to face reality as it is. And the reality is, at the moment, the United States is run by a particular president who is insistent on using his power to twist the arms of anyone who doesn't like big corporations, big law firms, big universities, twist extort, Twist extort, twist extort. And I'm sure that they didn't want to do this, but, like, it's the only way or we're going to be put out of business. These people mean business. They can attack us in many ways. For one thing, they can have the IRS audit every single employee we have, and no one can come to work because they're so busy meeting with their accountants. Even something like that, you have to fear in the modern world we live in. And it's absolutely shameful, absolutely disgraceful. So, YouTube, I feel for you. You're not the villain here. I wish you would stand up and fight. I mean, if you're, if you're the guys, if you're Sergey Brin and the other top shareholders, and you've already got gigantic jumbo private planes, and you're already a billionaire so many times over, your great, great, great, great grandchildren will never have to work. It would be nice to say, you know what? I don't need more money. This cost me money. Short run, let's stand up and fight this thug. It would be nice if that happened. But I understand. Life is complex. All the employees who work for Google are not billionaires. And if they're all out of a job overnight, that is something that's going to hang on the head of the leadership of Google as well. Okay, that concludes the main portion of our show today. We're going to switch to the grab bag section. My name is TJ Walker. This is filtered. If you're new to the show, whether you're watching on any social media platform or listening on any podcasting, platform. Here's what we're about. We look at the top business stories of the day, technology AI, economic stories and culture stories of the day, and then filter it through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills, all with the goal of improving you in your personal life and your professional life. Especially this ability to distill actual messages that have an impact on you and how you shape messages, receive them and share them and communicate those with others. Let's look now at our grab bag section of the show. This year alone, the US has suffered 382 mass shootings and nearly 7,000 since 2013. And just in the last few days, five dead and eight injured in Michigan, two killed in Texas, three in North Carolina. The clock between shootings never seems to reset by some counts. Over the weekend there were five separate shootings. Not just shooting your spouse, but shootings of targeted people, mass shooting, shootings in restaurants. Now, I'm not saying they were all inspired by one particular ideology, but what we've been hearing, especially the last three weeks, that there's this huge rise in left wing terrorism in America. Supposedly America is overrun with left wing terrorists, left wing extremists, left wing hate mongers who are organizing and motivating people to go out and commit these killings. And yet you look at any one of these last five. Now, I haven't seen all of them. Of all the ones so far, I've seen the pictures. They're all white men with their guns, posing, hunting over their deer that they've killed. Not a one of them looks like a Huey Newton or a left wing radical. None of them look like Abby Hoffman who's been dead for decades. Not a single one of them looks like Che Guevara. They all look a certain way. And this idea that we're going to. Here's what bothers me. If 1 out of 100 people commit an act of atrocity, it's always awful. But if 1 out of 100 commits an act of atrocity and we don't like that group, we don't like this philosophical leanings. We say, look, the problem is it's all people like that committing all the killings. We've been seeing that especially the last three weeks, it's just not true. Look at the other 99. I'm not saying these killers went to a MAGA rally, watched Steve Bannon for five minutes, and then went out and committed these acts of atrocity. But let's be fair about it, let's be honest about it. There's a lot of Cultural influences that can get in someone's head before they get to the crazy point where they just go in with a machine gun blasting and killing people. There's a lot of different things. Could be brain damage, they could have been dropped on their head when they were seven years old. They could be victims of fetal alcohol syndrome. None of that excuses you for killing people. But they're not particularly ideological reasons. This guy in North Carolina apparently hated gays, so he went in shooting people at a bar because he didn't like gays. Does not sound like any radical left winger I know. Last time I checked, the radical left is supposed to want everybody to be gay, right? They want everybody to be gay or trans, right? Isn't that what you've been told? So certainly I'm not suggesting this guy was a card carrying member of any political party, although I have a few guesses as to which one he is and is not in. But just let's be honest about things. The vast, vast majority of political killings, of big shootings in America of lots of death in the last 30 years. Not back in the 60s. Yeah, there was some left wing radicalism back then, but in the last 30, 35 years, it's an insanely high percentage of people who are either clearly motivated by right wing ideology. Doesn't mean they were a member of a party or were organized to do it. They're either that or they're just crazy gun nuts who grew up in a conservative culture where guns are handed out like candy. The number of people who seem like they were actually an active member of a left wing group, pretty close to zero. Certainly not in the last year. They may have had some left wing sympathies. They may have had a lot of right wing sympathies too. So let's be honest, when we talk about the problem of mass murder in America. It's a problem of too many crazy white men, loner losers who have too many guns, regardless of what ideological stripe. Moving on, our next issue in the grab bag. Disney just lost 1.7 million subscribers across Disney plus Hulu and ESPN. This is after caving to Trump's FCC pressure to suspend Jimmy Kimmel. That's a 436% spike in cancellations compared to normal. Kimmel's back on the air now, but the message is clear. Americans don't want comedians silenced by government threats. This is some of the best news. I mentioned it last week. I'll say it again this week. This is some of the best news I've seen hit this country in certainly the last nine months. The fact that enough Americans said enough. We do not want to live in a theocracy or repression, a repressive dictatorship. We don't want the government. And that is what happened. Again, there's so many lies out put out there that the Republican talking points about, oh, Jimmy Kimmel was fired from low ratings. No, he wasn't. Oh, Jimmy Kimmel's not funny. Nobody cares what you think is funny. Jimmy Kimmel was suspended because the head of the FCC in this regime basically told Disney to do it. They put pressure on it and it was overt. And thankfully the marketplace stood up. Because it's one thing to say, I'm a little worried about what a politician is saying about us. CEOs of publicly traded companies take money very seriously. You lose too many customers, you're fired, your stock price tanks, your net worth plummets. So I'm very Happy to see 1.7 million subscribers of Disney canceled Now. Have they come back? I, I would say to, to those of you who canceled, if you like their programming before and you cancel to send a message at some point, I think it behooves you to say, okay, mission accomplished. I sent a message, it was delivered. They put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. Remember, our goal is not to publicly shame people forever and say, you're horrible. Hey Bob Iger, you're horrible forever. You should never show your face again. The goal of having public argument debate is to persuade the 1.7 million people who canceled their ABC subscription and Disney subscriptions, persuaded Bob Iger to change, persuaded the poobahs at ABC to put Jimmy Kimmel. That's a celebration. That is a win. So thank you for voting with your pocketbook because that seems to be the only place anybody has any power in America yet is with the money. Big corporations are having to gain power of not being attacked by giving money directly to dear orange leader. But the rest of us still have some power by voting with our pocketbook and canceling companies that are betraying their commitments to us. Okay, little more light hearted topic. Our final topic of the day. Charlotte Chopin is still teaching yoga three times a week. She's 102 years old. She lives in rural France. She didn't start yoga till she was 50 years old. She survived a car crash at 100 and was driving at 100. Believe it or not. She says the secret to her life is simple gratitude, routine, community. Please note in this big profile in the New York Times, it wasn't, oh, I take 159 supplements. No, she exercises, she does yoga, and she can do it in her home. She does it with other people, too. She eats real food. She has friends, she's a part of community. She practices yoga, which anyone can do without spending any money. She's not going to get her own Netflix special in all likelihood, even though it is interesting to see someone 102 and active. But it's much sexier to hear from the guys. And it's mostly the guys promote. Here are my 157 supplements. Here's my hyperbaric chamber. Here's my extreme. I've got to hike in my shorts to Mount Everest and risk frostbite. All of these extreme things, when actually it's simple things that often don't cost money. Now, I've eaten in a lot of restaurants in France, but not rural France, but even in the big cities, you eat real food. It's very hard to find artificially processed food. This woman has been eating actual real food, real fruit, vegetables, not much processed. I'm sure there's probably a croissant from time to time, but for the most part, highly unprocessed food. She spends her time doing things she loves. She's moving. It's not that you have to do yoga, but you don't have to go to a $2,000 a month gym. You don't have to have a $5,000 bicycle. You can move, you can walk more. We all want to live. Not necessarily longer if it means unhealthy, but if you can be healthy and active like this. I mean, she was driving at age 100. If you can be active, teaching lessons, doing yoga, spending time with friends, why wouldn't you want to live to 102? I know I do, and I'm hoping you do as well. Regardless, I hope you have a healthy life as long as you want it to be. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for spending time with me Today. I come to you live here seven days a week because there's always something in the news. There's always something interesting we can learn from. That's what we're all about. See you here tomorrow.