TJ Walker covers happiness research showing love matters more than wealth, a figure-skating copyright dispute at the Milan Olympics, Kurt Olson's appointment as election security director despite Jan 6 ties, and health findings: two to three cups of caffeinated coffee daily cuts dementia risk by roughly 20%, while aerobic exercise works as well as antidepressants for depression.
Chapters
Prompt can generate blockbuster quality action. Studios may be tempted to cut labor costs. Scratch that, they're not tempted. They're going to reduce labor cost any way they can. Supporters call it innovation. Critics call it existential. Now, I would urge you see if you can find this clip again, I can't show it on this program. Those of you listening on the podcast know you can't see the video anyway. But it is amazingly realistic when you see Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt essentially fighting. And the staging is nice, the lighting is great, the music, everything seems fantastic. And the reaction from a lot of those in Hollywood are like, oh my God, we're dead, we're over. This is it. Let's look at some more facts. So ByteDance is sort of the parent company where this was placed. They're valued at half a trillion dollars. They've got a lot of clout behind them. The union, sag, aftra, representing actors, obviously are not too happy about this. They want informed consent in advance. Now Disney's trying to get in on all things artificial intelligence. They struck a $1 billion open AI deal last year and they are allowing people to use OpenAI and mixing it with characters. So they're kind of conflicted about this. On the one hand, they say, no, no, no, no, we don't want to violate and put out a business. Actors, directors, producers, set designers. On the other hand, they're saying, well, maybe we do. Let's be a part of this new cutting edge technology. Here's what one screenwriter told the Times. This is Rhett Reese. For all of us who work in the industry and devoted our careers and lives to it, I just think it's nothing short of terrifying, actual terrifying, if you're a screenwriter. The creation process is more natural and efficient and allows users to control their creations like a true director. This is from a ByteDance news release. Rhys also says, if I could wave my magic wand and make AI go away, at least in the creative field, I would absolutely wave the wand. Well, that's what people said about the, you know, the loom and the cotton gin and a lot of other technologies seem to work. That magic wand never came about. That's what the people who sold horse buggies and horseshoes said about the car. It didn't really work that way. Let's look at some bigger picture issues. You know, the. There was a time when Hollywood was afraid and terrified of computer generated graphics. Now the big fear is AI technology historically displaces creative labor first. Now there are those who say, oh, everything AI does is Slop. And it's never going to be as good as creative as a human being. Can I tell you, I don't know about that. Look, I'm in a creative field. I make money, I have an income career based on being creative. I've created hundreds and hundreds of online courses, I've created and published books. So I have a stake in this. I gotta tell you, I'm not so sure that AI isn't already better than a lot of human creativity in a lot of areas. Certainly when you look at the Hollywood blockbuster, the standard rom com really all the same, maybe one of them has Jennifer Aniston, maybe one of them has Jennifer Lopez. But really, can we just admit they're formulaic? And if it's one thing AI is good at, is discerning formulas and following formulas. They're just good at it. I like James Bond movies. I've been watching them my entire adult and adolescent life. But are you really trying to tell me that an AI can't create a James Bond movie? Certainly as good as, you know, a mid tier James Bond movie? I don't buy it. I. As I've said before, I'll say it again, I don't think we're more than a couple of years away from the number one movie at the box office worldwide being something a 17 year old did entirely on their computer with zero budget. Or maybe other than their monthly wi fi budget, I don't think we're that far away from that happening. AI is lowering the barrier to entry for filmmakers everywhere. Now you could obviously make a case, okay? Copyright law, intellectual infringement would prevent someone making a movie starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt without their permission. Okay, but what if you had two characters and they looked like a combination of those two guys? Or you took Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, and whoever your favorite punk heartthrob is, and you told AI create someone who looks different enough in that no one can claim artificial intelligence stole their image, their likeness that I see happening. This is easy to say, Tisk, Tisk, you shouldn't have used these famous actors without their permission. But does anyone really care about the actors if they're 20 years old? I mean, to a 20 year old, these guys are really old guys. These are grandpas, These guys are my age. So if you're 20 years old and looking to take a date out to a movie night, why do you care about what grandpa's doing? If you can have some AI generated hunky looking person, some beautiful woman, is there a chance it might not be more popular. So these are terrifying times, I think, for anyone in the Hollywood industry. But really any creative industry is now facing the reality that AI is good. It's getting better every day, and it is improving at a much, much faster rate. I'll be honest with you, I don't know what these unions are going to do. If you represent actors, if you represent producers, if you represent writers, it's nice to be entrenched and say we want our rights, we want pay, we want to be treated fairly. I'm on board for all of that. The problem is, what if the Hollywood studios aren't a part of the puzzle anymore? What if the owners of movie theaters realized why am I dealing with these people? Here's a really smart 16 year old who's created a great movie. It's already had 3 billion downloads for a part of it on YouTube in the first 24 hours. Why don't I put that movie in my theater and charge the same amount and maybe I keep more for myself and this 16 year old is going to become instantly worth $100 million. What do we even need Hollywood for? That's a tough question. I wish I had an easy answer. I wish I knew an answer that would make everybody happy. That would not result in mass unemployment for people who devoted their lives to their craft of acting, screenwriting, directing, producing, all important skills. But the one prediction I will make is the moviegoers. The people who really keep the movie industry going are frankly are not people like me. They're generally not people with gray hair or with little hair. It's teenagers going to the multiplex Friday and Saturday night and creating that first big weekend. And that's what often propels the long term lifetime value of a movie. Whether it ever makes a profit, whether the director gets to do another movie, whether the actors get big bonuses for their next movie. It's all about quite often that first weekend and that first week. I'm not rushing out to watch the movies then in the theater. I've got a nice home theater. I'm going to wait for it to be released on some streaming platform. So I'm essentially irrelevant. If you're not going out to movies when they first launch to the public, you don't really have a vote. The people who have votes quite often are teenagers, people in their early 20s. And I'm not convinced they care about whether a Hollywood screenwriter can afford to have his mansion in Beverly Hills. I'm not sure they are concerned about whether Brad Pitt can have a whole bunch more wives and have or adopt a bunch more kids. I'm not sure they care about Tom Cruise anymore and whether he can donate more money to Scientology or any other culture. I don't think young people care about that. What they care about is, is this entertaining for me right now just on what I'm seeing. So we got to get ready, folks. And who knows you're watching me. I'm a real person today. Maybe an AI clone or some AI generated program will. Will do a better news analysis show with the personal development Fair than I will now. I do have my own clone, so I'm trying to be on both ends of that equation. What's your plan? It's very easy to sit back and say, well, you know, they came for the Hollywood stars and that didn't affect me, so I didn't complain. What if it does come to you? We're seeing it creep in on every single industry. And I say this not because I think AI needs to be stopped. I'm not a Luddite, I'm not anti technology, but I am a realist, and I do see it creepy. I mean, just the other day I had a potential legal situation where normally I might have needed to engage a lawyer to write a very sternly written letter to someone I've done business with, with intentions to pursue things in a litigation route. And a very inexpensive lawyer would have had to have charged me 1500, $2,000. It would have taken at least three hours work. I was able to have chat GPT do it in about 60 seconds. And the letter had the exact intended results that I wanted. I saved $2,000. That benefited me, but some lawyer didn't get business. So this is affecting every single industry. This is a marquee one where the stakes are so hot. I mean, if you spend a hundred million dollars on a movie and it bombs, that can completely destroy an entire movie studio. It can put you out of business. It can ruin entire careers. On the other hand, if you can make a movie, or let's say nothing, or tens of thousands dollars or even a million dollars, forget making a hundred million dollars. If you can make $40 million on a million dollars or less of an investment, well, you now have a cash cow the likes of which the world has never seen. You're going to be. Everyone's going to want to do business with you. So the stakes are extraordinarily. I'll be following this. I don't have all the answers together. You and I are trying to piece together what's going on in the world so we can figure out a strategy so we all survive.
Imagine having a communication coach who never sleeps. Meet your new secret weapon, the TJ Walker AI.
Clone clone.
Go to TJWalker AI and start getting custom coaching 24 7. 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 aren't fluffy motivational videos. They're practical, battle tested techniques to help you speak clearly, competently and persuasively. Go to media trainingworldwide.com and take your communication to the next level.
Miracle Morning Supplement Recalled According to Newsweek, Ambrosia Brands has voluntarily recalled Rosabella Morning a capsules after possible salmonella contamination linked to seven illnesses and three hospitalizations. The capsules were marketed from a so called miracle tree and sold online, including TikTok Shop. Federal agencies are investigating whether contamination came from a specific raw ingredient supplier. Salmonella can be especially dangerous for children, the elderly and the immunocompromised individuals. The company urges customers to dispose of affected lots immediately. The broader issue highlights how supplements are regulated differently from prescription drugs, often after problems emerge rather than before. Okay, let's dive a little deeper here. I'm almost being a little euphemistic there saying it's regulated differently. It's not regulated. You can basically, as I've mentioned before, go to your sidewalk, scrape dog poop off, put it in a little capsule, sell it to people and say, hey, the FDA doesn't want you to eat this, the medical establishment doesn't want you to know about that. And you can sell people garbage. The only time the law kicks in is when the body count goes up or all of a sudden you have so many people headed to hospitals, then maybe the law kicks in. So buyer beware. Look, we all want the idea of some miracle pill. I don't want to eat healthy, I don't want to exercise. If I just find this one magical pill, I'll be healthy, I'll be strong, I'll have great muscles. I have a six pack ab. Everybody wants that. I want it. And unfortunately that sends people to hospitals that desire and it makes a whole lot of scammy, sleazy, skeezy supplement makers rich. Anyone who's followed the vitamin the supplement industry for very long knows it attracts a really sleazy crowd. It's been a Part of the multi level marketing scheme world scam world since the beginning of multi level marketing. But even when it's not a part of a multi level marketing scheme, quite often it's just garbage. There's been study after study after study showing that almost regardless of the supplement or the vitamin or the pill or the tablet, it either has no positive impact on your health or has a deleterious impact on your health. It actually harms you, in some cases can kill you. So why do we keep buying that scam? Why do we keep buying the myth that oh, take this green powder, oh, take this magic pill? It's unfortunately because we as human beings like to be lied to. We do. I like it, you like it. I like to be told I'm brilliant, have beautiful head hair. Everybody loves to be lied to. And unfortunately, that's what I fear the vast majority of supplement makers are doing. So to be clear, I'm not giving you medical advice. If your doctor specifically prescribes to you B12 and thinks you have a B12 deficiency and tells you which tablets to take, by all means, follow the advice of your doctor. But the idea that you're going to say, hey, Brian Johnson seems like he knows what he's doing. He's really rich. He takes 140 pills a day. I'm going to take 140 pills and tablets a day. Please, I beg you, don't do that. You could be doing massive, massive damage to your kidneys, to your liver. And it may be all you're doing is creating a different colored pee. Why waste your money on that? You've heard me say it before, I'll say it again. Eat real food. If you actually eat salads, not with all sorts of gloppy, sugary salad dressing that you get at McDonald's or at your local grocery store, but a little oil and vinegar, eat fresh vegetables, eat leafy greens, eat real fruit. Eat meat. If you are a meat eater that isn't highly processed, that isn't slathered in sugary sauces, deep fried breaded with lots of extra carbohydrates and tons and tons and tons of sugar and salt, eat relatively unprocessed meat and food. Eat the rainbow. Eat food of differing colors. And no, I don't mean purple gummies, I mean arugula, I mean kale, I mean bananas, mangoes. Eat the spec. If you do that, the chances are extraordinarily slim that you need any supplements or vitamins because you'll be getting them from real food. Let's take A look at what others told Newsweek. For this story, customers who have purchased the lots above are to dispose of it immediately. Do not eat, sell or serve the product. This is Ambrosia having to say this because they've already injured people and put them in the hospital. Moringa, and I was mispronouncing, it's called moringa is an interesting plant known as the miracle tree due to its impressive nutritional composition. This is according to Kelly Hopeley, a nutritional therapist. But again, there is no miracle plant that's going to make you perfectly healthy. There isn't. Plants are good. Variety of plants are good. And let's say something is really healthy for you in its natural plant form. By the time it's sliced, dye, dice, desiccated, dried up and put into a little pill, you don't really know what you're getting. That's the problem with all of these. And according to Ambrosia, Ambrosia Brands is conducting this recall voluntarily and takes this matter very seriously. Okay, when people are already in the hospital and people are sick, you don't get brownie points for recalling your product. That's making people sick. Let's look at some more facts. The US supplement industry exceeds $50 billion annually. Now, is it a smaller industry than the United States healthcare industry and the United States pharmaceutical industry? Yes. But the idea that it's this small mom and pop little industry where everyone is the little guy and a good guy. No. There are a lot of bad actors in the supplement industry and they face almost no regulation. Social media influencers are constantly hawking it because they get paid a lot of money. It's payola. But it's not illegal payola. It's not under the table. They tell you, hey, this show is sponsored by AG1 and all these other, all these other pills, potions, supplements. And I gotta tell you, when I'm looking at healthcare podcaster, a health guru, a personal development guru, and the first thing they do is try to sell me some magic potion that supposedly gets all the healthy green stuff I need without actually eating a vegetable or lettuce. That's when I know they've already been bought off. That's usually enough for me to say, I'll listen to one episode. But they care more about their pocketbook than they actually care about helping people. Every one of these companies, they like to use natural in their branding. It implies safety without proof. You know what else is natural? Hurricanes, typhoons. Arsenic is natural. Imagine I say, hey, get TJ's a good old fashioned natural elixir it's completely natural. Take it every day. I do. Turns out to be arsenic. Well, I didn't lie to you. It's natural. But it's arsenic and it will kill you. So don't be fooled by someone telling you that just because it's all natural, it's good. It's a scam. It's an absolute scam. Now these global supply chains complicate contamination tracing because they can each say, well, it's not my fault. It was this factory in Mongolia somewhere. Don't blame me. You don't really know what you're getting. That is the beauty of going to your local grocery store and getting a head of lettuce and getting spinach. And yes, I know those can be contaminated sometimes too. Make sure you wash it properly. But in general, eating fresh fruit and fresh vegetables, much less likely to cause you health problems than ingesting all sorts of pills and potions. I do think we need here in the United States stronger FDA regulation in Europe. They're much better about that than they are in the United States. Here our politicians had been bought off. When you say, oh, I don't want to pay for my politicians ads, this is what you get. The politicians then go to interest groups. They go to people who manufacture things like scammy, sleazy supplements. They take money from them and then give them what they want. They give them no regulation. The whole idea of, well, the free market solves the problem. No, we want regulation. Do you want someone taking over your local water supply and giving you poison and half the population dies? And you're thinking, well, what the free market decide now, you know, to go to another water company, well, it's too late if half your family's dead from poison. This is a perfect example of how you need regulation. The free market doesn't solve problems like this. And faith in self policing just ignores real public health issues. So beware. Have I ever taken a vitamin or a supplement? Yes, I certainly don't take vitamins regularly and I look very skeptically at any and all supplements. What I try to do, and it's not fun, is I try to eat healthy food at every meal. 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 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.
Want to advertise to ambitious, upscale professionals who actually care about communication, success and Results? Go to tjwalker.com advertise and no, we don't take ads for crypto supplements or Junk Food.
Why American Kids Become Picky Eaters in the New York Times, historian Helen Zo Viet argues that American children were once adventurous eaters, happily consuming oysters, cabbage, turnips and bold flavors as recently as in the 19th century. Widespread pickiness, she writes, is a modern phenomenon fueled by 20th century junk food marketing. Companies like General Foods and Nestle promoted child pleasing products, fragmenting family meals and reshaping expectations. Snack culture reduced hunger at dinner. Personalized food replaced communal eating. Today's narrow kids menus maybe less about biology and more about branding. The claim picking this wasn't inevitable. It was engineered. Okay, let's look at some more facts here. This is fascinating because one of the things we'll be talking about in the show today is why we all are guilty of certain conventional wisdom that just turns out to be wrong. We have to keep our minds open to new facts and new information. This op ed in the New York Times to me was eye opening. I really had no idea that as recently as the 19th century, kids supposedly really enjoyed eating all kinds of vegetables and oysters and things that so many kids these days say, I'm not going to eat that. According to this author, this health expert, there is a lot of evidence that children enjoyed bitter food, spicy food, sour food. Until the 20th century, the concept of pickiness was rare. Now you could argue, well, T.J. of course people starved to death. 90% of the world suffered starvation and famine for most of human history. Okay, but even beside that, that's not what the author's really talking about. What she's suggesting is that we have essentially perverted our children by giving them all this heavily processed sugar. Once you taste it all, the other range of foods loses its appeal. And it's sad and it's harming people's lives now. 1960 a craft ad promoted mild golden Velveeta, which isn't really cheese and confession. I ate a lot of Velveeta cheese growing up. I don't think it helped me. General Foods started marketing child specific products. Nestle expanded factory processed foods. Before you know it we had Goldfish spaghettios targeted. She'll Twinkies, Pop Tarts. Wow, I remember those. Again, sad to say, I ate a lot of Pop Tarts growing up. Now I still feel great at age 63, but who knows how I might feel or how much longer I might have lived if I had not been subjected to all of that food. Let's not forget obesity and eating disorders were extraordinarily rare throughout human history. And obesity, certainly extreme obesity, was practically non existent until about 1980. But that's when all the snacks and all the sugary foods just became an avalanche, affecting us everywhere. You can't even go to a gas station without having 10,000 sugary products marketed to your face. The author in the Times contends mass childhood pickiness is a modern phenomenon created largely by junk food companies. I have to tell you, I had not thought of that before. I just assumed, well, all kids like sugary treats and all kids like pasta. Okay, but what if they're not subject to that? What if it actually was an extremely rare thing? I mean when you look at the, the ounces and pounds of sugar that human beings ate until about 150 years ago versus today, I mean, it's just shocking. It's like this versus that. And those of you listening on the podcast, I'm holding my fingers together closely. I don't have the stats in front of me, but it's like a pound of sugar a year versus a hundred pounds of sugar. I mean the amount of sugar, processed sugar, artificial sugar that everyone in America eats, even if you're not going to candy store, because it's engineered into everything it's put in our bread. I mean, good luck going to a typical grocery store for that matter, at Costco, and trying to find any bread that doesn't have sugar put into it. So the other message that this author says is mass childhood pickiness isn't parents fault, it's the product of historical forces. Okay, I get it. But if you're a parent, you do have a choice. When you go to the grocery store, it won't make you popular. Believe me, I am extraordinarily unpopular in my household when I go to the grocery store because I look at labels and if something has sugar in it, processed sugar, artificial sugar, I don't buy it. But it can be done. It definitely can. It can be done. We're all subjected to reminders. Advertising works. Why do McDonald's and Coca Cola and Pepsi and Budweiser spend billions and billions and billions of dollars a year on advertising? They don't do it because their best friends work at TV stations and radio stations and Internet websites. No, they do it because it works. When you bombard people with messages that, hey, this is tasty, this is going to be fantastic on your tongue and your mouth and your belly. It works on us, it works on human beings. Unfortunately, healthy food, less processed food, doesn't have an advertising budget. And that's why we have this situation. I see this all the time when I'm out with other families when they're kids and I'm trying to order healthy food and get my daughter to eat healthy food. And the other parents say to their kids, okay, do you want french fries with your butter pasta? Like really? That's what you want your kids to eat? French fries and butter pasta? Heavily processed white pasta with butter on it. Not a vegetable in sight yet. I know potato is. French fries are made of potatoes, but you and I know when it's heavily fried, it's extremely harmful for you. It's not healthy at all. Not a fresh vegetable inside. I should have said not a green leafy vegetable anywhere. And it's just sad. I mean, these are people often educated, intelligent, successful, prosperous. And they're feeding their kids garbage like, oh, you know, I don't want to cause a conflict. Little Timmy only likes french fries and chicken nuggets and pasta. He's a picky. No, he's not a picky eater. You let him become that way and we're all paying the price for this. And the price is shorter lives, less healthy lives, less of a health span. You know, a lot has talked about why did the French, why do The Italians live seven, often 10 years longer than Americans do? And why are they vigorous at the end? Not just sitting, filling up a chair, watching cable news in an old folks home, yelling at the news. Why do we see people 85, 95 walking to market every day in villages in France and Italy is because they're going to get real food. They're eating real food, they're cooking real food, they're serving meals with real food for multiple generations. And that's really the key to not just a longer life, but a longer health span, which is something we all want. So if you're a parent, my advice to you is realize if you think your kid's a picky eater. Yeah, we can blame the fast food industry. Good luck changing that, but realize some of the accountability it's mine and it's yours and it's every single parent. If you constantly expose your child to real food, they can and will have a taste for it if you give them the option. Do you want real food that's healthy versus more and more heavily processed sugar filled junk food? Yeah, they're going to opt for the junk food every time. Want a shortcut to powerful communication skills?
Download the TJ Walker Success Library 5 of my bestselling books for only 9.95. Go to tjwalker.com books instant access big.
Impact.
I've had entire YouTube channels wiped out overnight, so if you enjoy this.
Show, don't lose track of me.
The safest way is my newsletter.
Substack.com.
J WalkerSuccess Sign up for free and you'll get exclusive commentary, live session alerts, and first access to new tools. Again, that's substack.com just search for TJ Walker or go to substack.com jwalkersuccess your.
Direct line to everything I do body positivity meets GLP1 reality in a New York Times opinion video, former body positivity influencer Gabriela Lascano says The Rise of GLP1 Weight loss drugs forced her to reconsider the movement she once championed. With 18% of adults in America reporting they've taken GLP1 medications, weight loss has become normalized again, Lascano says, quote, loving yourself at any size sometimes becomes an excuse to ignore health risks. Others fear the return of toxic thinness standards. The cultural question can you love your body and still want to change it? The movement now faces tension between medical data and identity politics. Okay, so this is a tough issue to talk about. I won't kid you. But I also won't pull punches. I'm going to say things here that I think are in the best interest for you, your family, your life and your health, even if it strikes some of you as insensitive. I've said this before and received a lot of criticism, but I'll say it again. Much not all, but much of the body positivity movement is really just an excuse for apologists for big corporate food industries, the candy makers, the junk food manufacturers, the soda pop manufacturers of the world to take advantage of you and kill you and reduce your life. Shorten your life, shorten the quality of your life. The body positivity movement has been essentially a smokescreen, a cover to protect corporate interests that are trying to Make a lot of money selling you garbage to eat. Having said all that, do I think that you're a bad person if you're overweight? No. Do I think you should hate your body? No. But I do think that you should love yourself enough and love life enough to do everything you can to make yourself feel good and make yourself healthy. And when I say feel good, I don't mean simply that sensation of ice cream on your tongue going down your throat into your belly. I get it. That feels good. I had some ice cream yesterday. I'm not holier than thou. But the idea that you can be wildly obese and hey, it's just as good as any other lifestyle. It's just as good as any other body type. I'm sorry, it's not true. Yes, there are things such as cultural norms where someone said, oh, I don't like your skin, it's too dark. It's better to have light skin. Horrible. Racist. A cultural form of oppression. Not endorsing that. But folks, we got to be real with each other and be honest with each other. For a couple of hundred thousand years. The basic genetic code of human beings hasn't really changed. And until about 45 years ago, obesity was incredibly rare. I'm talking incredibly rare. When I was a kid, 50, 55 years ago, there was one heavy kid in the class, and these days, he wouldn't even be considered heavy. It was rare. If you doubt me, look at any pictures. You know, look at pictures of Woodstock, look at pictures of college kids, kids at camp in the 40s, 50s, 60s, even 70s. And you say, oh, my gosh, everybody's skinny. No, they weren't skinny. They were human beings who ate three meals a day and didn't have this idea of let me snack all day long, it's been two hours. Let me go to Starbucks and get a drink filled with cream and lots and lots of sugar and syrup and goo. Every three. People didn't do that in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. Desserts were occasional. So it did fascinate me to see this video from this former body positivity influencer. Apparently she's received a lot of criticism from former members of her community. There is a controversy. There are some who say, hey, we have to love all large bodies, no matter how large. And if anyone even tries to lose weight, they're essentially fat shaming themselves, and that wouldn't be good. Sorry. Wanting to improve yourself is not a bad thing. Wanting to learn more is not a bad thing. Wanting to become stronger is not A bad thing. Giving yourself goals of exercise, daily exercise, eating healthy, nutritious, 2,200, 2,300 calories a day of food that is not heavily processed, that doesn't have lots and lots of sugar, processed carbohydrates and salt added is not a bad thing. It tends to be the thing that makes you live to 85, 90, 95. As opposed to getting diabetes at 45, having hypertension at 50, stroke at 55, and heart attack at 58, and dying at 59. I'm sorry, but it's. Some things are better than others. Living to age 85, 90, at what by every historical measure would be considered a normal weight is in fact superior to having 20, 30, 40, 50, oftentimes in America, 100 pounds of excessive fat, it is superior. Now, is one person a better person than the other? No. I'm not saying you are a bad person if you are obese. I'm not. Should you be loved? Yes, you should. But certain behaviors cause certain destruction to the body. You may think I'm a wonderful person, a lovely. I hope you do. But if all of a sudden on the show each day I'm drinking two bottles of wine and I tell you I drink a total of three bottles of wine a day, you might still think, well, TJ's a nice guy. He's an honest person. He's transparent. But you might also think, maybe TJ shouldn't drink three bottles of wine a day. Oh, but I feel fine and I look good, let's say. That's what I'm telling you. I think a part of you, it's okay. It doesn't matter. The human body is not designed to drink three or four bottles of wine a day. TJ figure out how to stop drinking three or four bottles of wine a day. Maybe you go back to a glass or two. Maybe you don't drink any wine a day. Why don't you try that? Now, I'm not saying it's directly analogous. I'm not saying anyone who's overweight should simply stop eating. No. I am suggesting it's almost a mathematical impossibility to eat 2,300 calories a day of relatively unprocessed food that's not filled with sugar, salt, processed carbohydrates and be obese. You can tell. Well, tj, I've tried every diet. Really? Why is it throughout human history we never saw wildly obese people when they were eating? Mostly unprocessed. Why is that? Because talk to any doctor, human genetics have not changed For a couple hundred thousand years, something has. What has changed is eating garbage food all the time. Am I telling you, go out and take a GLP one? No. There's a tremendous number of side effects that are quite harmful. I'm going to leave that to you and your doctor. I'm not here giving medical advice, but I do think that anyone, any human who cares about their health has to try to protect and preserve their own body. And there's a million different theories about all kinds of stuff, but there is consensus that if you eat mostly relatively unprocessed food, if you eat lots of fruit and vegetables, heavily unprocessed vegetables, salads, you drink water, which is what I'm drinking in this cup, I'm holding up. Instead of drinking sugar and drinking calories, it's almost impossible to be obese, which means you dramatically decrease your odds of getting type 2 diabetes and stroke and hypertension and heart attack and all the other things. So I'm glad to see this body positivity expert talk about receiving new information and getting a different perspective on on things and realizing that, okay, being positive about people's human moral worth is a good thing. Shame is not especially a great motivating factor for anything. But no, not all diets are created equally and not all of them are equally as valid. Now, there's a saying in the health community and the weight loss community, all diets fail in the long run. And on the one hand it is true. But on the other hand, find anyone you think of who is physically fit. I don't mean good looking, I mean physically fit, who looks like they have the right proportion of muscle and flesh on their body. Now look at what they're eating. That diet works. So in a sense, all diets work. If you consume a diet that is filled with excess of calories, devoid of nutrients, you're going to have a negative effect on your body. Now it is true, if you try to go from eating a horrible, horrible junk food diet all the time and 2 or 3,000 more calories than you need a day, if you try to then just eat celery, you're going to give up. So to that extent, yeah, diets fail. But anyone you've ever seen who has a healthy weight, their diet does work. Like what you heard.
Don't let the algorithm bury us. Subscribe now@substack.com.
J. WalkerSuccess.
Want direct access to me live? Want to unlock bonus episodes, behind the scenes takes and full access to my premium courses? Then become a member today just go to tjwalker.com members and choose your preferred platform, YouTube, Patreon whatever works for you. This isn't just another subscription, it's a full access pass to the tools, content, coaching and content that can transform your communication and career. Tjwalker.com members, I'll see you inside.
Free Bus rides. We're going to talk about that in our next issue right now, coming up. And thanks so much for joining me. This is Filtered. I'm your host, TJ Walker. Every day we look at the top business, technology, health and culture stories of the day and analyze it through the prism of personal development skills. How you can improve issue 5 today free bus rides and the surprising economics in the New York Times, Emily Galvan Almeidza argues that free bus programs deliver more than small rider savings. In New York City's pilot ridership rose 30% on weekdays and 38% on weekends. Assaults on bus operators dropped 39%. Boston tried this. They saw boarding time cut by 23%. Meanwhile, New York Transit Police overtime jumped from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million in 2024. This was chasing the people who were trying to jump over the turnstiles to get into the subway and in the buses. Eliminating fares reduces enforcement costs, court cases, jail strain and administrative overhead. The bias Challenge when we hear free, many instantly think, oh, wasteful socialism. And I was guilty of that, overlooking that roads and parking are heavily subsidized, too. So this was a fascinating article. I would recommend it to you. It's in today's New York Times. Emily Galvin Almanza writes it. And it really challenged my beliefs because I was one of those who heard in the recent mayoral campaign in New York City, the person who became mayor said, I'm going to have free buses. And there's a part of me that thought, well, that probably be a nice idea, but can the city afford it? It's going to cost too much. That's one of those things where it just seems unrealistic. I thought that, and I'm pretty sure a lot of mainstream centrist people thought that. Certainly conservatives and Republicans thought that. It turns out I was wrong if you really look at the facts. Let's look at some more of the data. In Boston saw their boarding times go way down. Makes sense if people are not fiddling with cash and looking for a card and going through one at a time. And people can just get on. You get on the bus much faster. The buses move faster. There's less traffic, there's less Fewer traffic jams, everything makes it. It's more attractive to other people to use it. You have less pollution in the city when this happens. So, again, the police, the amount of money spent on policing, the enforcement. New York City apparently did not enforce this very strictly. In 2022, they had $4 million in overhead costs or overtime costs for their police. It jumped up to $155 million. So more than $150 million extra was spent just trying to enforce people, oh, yo, you didn't pay for your fare. We're going to arrest you now. It absolutely clogs criminal court systems, and it's a big, big problem. Now. They had a free bus pilot. It ran in 2023 and 2024. Multiple cities have tested the fair elimination, and what they're finding is it either breaks even or they come out ahead financially when you take into account all the charges. So here's the part that I had not given enough attention to. The article points out in detail that in so many cities, especially a place like New York City, you've got a lot of poor people. Poor people are trying to get to a job, so they don't have enough money for fare. They take the risk, well, if I don't get on the bus, I won't get to the job. I'll be even poorer. So they break the rules. They get on the bus, well, now they're caught. Now they don't get to the job, they maybe lose their job. They've got to go to court. They've got court fees. Fine. It puts them deeper and deeper and deeper into a financial hole. And, you know, this is a part where it's just easy to forget about people like this. But there are, whether it's the bottom 20, 25%, 30% of Americans, they just don't have much money and they're trying to work. They're not on the streets begging for money. They're not begging for more welfare. They're just trying to get to the job. And transportation is very expensive in America between cars, tolls, parking, and even buses. So there's a number of biases here that I think have an impact. One of them is just success bias. If you think, well, I've got a car and I pay for bus fare, why doesn't everyone do that? Well, not everyone is lucky as you are and as lucky as I am, and I was guilty of that. This is a huge, huge problem. Legally, many people have gone their whole lives, and I'm fortunate enough to be one of them. I hope I'm not jinxing myself without ever being a part of the legal system. Never been arrested, never had to show up for a court date for anything other than jury duty. So it's easy to forget about how stressful that can be and how expensive that can be. And if you're living on the margins, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, even going to court one day could result in a smaller paycheck. That means you don't pay for rent. Now the city has a homeless problem. What if that could be alleviated or at least drastically reduced by having free buses? Now, I'm all in favor of efficiency, but the people who want to automatically and reflexively in a knee jerk way, say that you can't give people free buses because it costs too much, have not really looked at all the expenses associated with it. All of the overtime on the police, all of the court cost. And certainly if you're worried about violent crime, why in the world do you want violent criminals getting off? Easily, because they can't even work their way through the court system. Because our court system is filled with all of these people who just couldn't afford to get to work that day to pay the bus fare. Why do we want to punish and penalize law abiding citizens other than the fact that they couldn't pay their bus fare and let violent criminals out or get less scrutiny or not have the police paying attention to them because they're so busy trying to find, oh, this person didn't pay the full fee for their bus. So it really did make me think a little differently. Most people who write in the New York Times on policy issues or economic issues don't rely on public buses. Most people who opine on cultural issues don't have to rely on public buses and confession. When I am in New York City, which is quite frequently, or if I'm in other cities, I pretty much never use public buses for an issue that's a little bit related to this, frankly. I had just graduated from college and moved to New York City, was carrying my entire life, possession in one bag and I think a pillow under the other, trying to find my way to a friend's house who was nice enough to put me up for a few days so I could find a cheap apartment. I got on the bus at the time, the bus fare, this would have been 1985, the bus fare was 50 cents. I had a 50 cent piece and I put it in the coin receptacle for the bus, went and sat down. I was the last person to get on the bus. The driver goes to the next stop. All of a sudden he turns around and says, what idiot? What imbecile. Put a 50 cent piece and my bus here. It's broken. What are you doing? I'm sitting smaller and I'm trying to be invisible. I'm slinking down in my chair. So I inadvertently slowed down the bus that day, and I think I got off relatively quickly. I did not confess to my crime. Now, I did pay the proper amount, but the bus driver and the coin machine on the bus, it took coins back then was simply not built for a 50 cent piece. So I slowed it down dramatically. I slowed down the commute. This happens regularly, not because of 50 cent pieces. They don't really even take coins anymore, as far as I know. But if everyone's got to get on and fumble and fool with it, it slows it down. That means many people who otherwise wouldn't mind taking the bus don't take it. So the streets are filled up with Ubers and personal cars, which means more pollution, which means everyone's punished because things are much slower now. We're so used to looking at so many media stories through the prism. What does Elon Musk think? And what does Jeff Bezos think? Billionaires don't take buses, but tens of millions of Americans do. And they tend to be the ones who have the least clout. They're probably not busy doing their own YouTube shows on this issue or podcast about it. They're busy just trying to scrape by, pay the rent, keep a roof over their kids heads, and buy some food, and they're just short. And I had no idea how much this clogs up our court systems and all the other unintended effects. That's what made me reassess it. So I stand corrected. Free buses are not an expense. They actually save money and improve the quality of life. Okay, we don't really have time for our sixth issue. I was going to talk about pet tv. There is this phenomena now. It was getting major attention in major media about supposedly TV networks, YouTube channels, one of them called Dog TV that's drawing millions of people in and their animals. One feline favorite has 3.2 million views of animated mice. Its views. Its views. The overall channel has gone to 150 million. Now, what's really going on here? Obviously humans are doing it. Do these animals really care? I don't know. We don't have time to go into it, But I just wanted to put that out there in part because it's a big world. If you think everything's already been created and there's no chance for you, you're wrong. Somebody created Dog TV in 2013. It was originally a $4.99 monthly cable channel and apparently it's doing well. People are making money. Not what I want to watch, but some people like it. So keep thinking about how you can be a creator in this world and somehow add value to some person or maybe just to adult. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. Please review the show, leave your comments and share the show with others. And I missed some comments that did come in. Dr. Shalini Law says, Great to see you TJ. I'd taken a course from your public speaking a long time ago and learned a lot. Well, Dr. Shalini, good to see you. Thanks so much for Shalini. Thanks so much for stopping by today. Great to hear from you. I'm T.J. walker. See you tomorrow. An 85 year old woman lets an AI robot move into her home. Researchers say the secret to happiness isn't success, it's feeling loved. Olympic figure skaters are scrambling over copyright law instead of choreography. Republicans open the midterm cycle with a massive, massive cash advantage. An election denier now runs the Election Integrity Unit inside the federal government and a pardon. January 6th defendant is convicted of child abuse and child sexual abuse. And the politics are painfully familiar. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hi and welcome. Thanks for joining me today. Happy to have you with us. We've got a fun, fun, action packed show for you today. Let's dive right in. AI Companion Living in our AI companion in the living room, an 85 year old woman living alone in Washington's Long Beach Peninsula agreed to try an AI companion robot called Elliq, or LiQ. The device, provided through a state pilot program, engages her in conversation, games, meditation and daily check ins. The company says users interact with the robot an average of 41 times per day and more than 90% report reduced loneliness. Over time, the woman formed a meaningful bond with the machine. After one year, her resting heart rate had dropped slightly and some cognitive scores improved. Critics raise concerns about surveillance and emotional dependency. Supporters argue it helps seniors age in place. The bigger question when human connection shrinks, does technology fill the gap or redefine what connection even means? Let's dive a little deeper here. This is a profoundly interesting story to me and I think probably to a lot of us. And I've got mixed emotions. On the one hand, it's Great that a senior citizen, 85, can live independently, doesn't have to give up her home, things of comfort, her favorite chair, favorite living room, the kitchen, just the way she likes it to move into a retirement center. Not that there's anything wrong with a lot of nice retirement centers, but many, many people don't want to have to do that. So to the extent that an AI program and a robot can help someone maintain years of quality life and the surroundings they want, that's certainly you'd have to be hard, hard headed or hard hearted to think that that's a bad thing. Also, the fact that there is demonstrable evidence of cognitive improvement coming in for this woman and physical resting heart rate, things like that, better. It seems like it's actually helping her a great deal. And again, 90% of the people who've tried this report reduced sense of loneliness. Loneliness is an epidemic not only in the United States, but in many parts of the world, especially for senior citizens. Now, unfortunately, it affects children and people in their 20s as well. But for right now, let's just focus on seniors. The fact that our heart rate slightly decreased in a positive way is something that again, I would think you have to look at this as a benefit. Now on the downside, there are a lot of them. Do we really want to evolve as a species of humans where we've got 8, 9, ultimately 10 billion people all isolated, not even talking to each other? Do we want increased isolation? Do we want people spending all their time deluding themselves into thinking they're having meaningful conversations, building meaningful relationships with zeros and ones, which is what computers are made of their programming? There's a part of that's troubling. Not to mention, just think of what Mark Zuckerberg or the boys at Google could do with the data. If they have a robot able to probe you every day, think of the vitamins and medicines they can sell and home improvement gadgets they could sell. The potential for abuse of the elderly by capturing the data from this is potentially quite troubling. Let's look at some more facts of the issue. America faces a rapidly aging population crisis. More and more of us are getting older. Well, we're all getting older. But the percentage of people over the age of 65 and the percentage of people who are above 80 is growing compared to the rest of the populace. Loneliness is linked to a 30% higher mortality risk. So while people worry about too much smoking or drugs or sleep, all important issues, loneliness is a huge risk factor in dying. So anything you can do to Eliminate. That has to be at least considered. The Surgeon General has labeled loneliness a public health threat. In modern America, families are geographically dispersed. It would be nice to say let's be like France and Italy and a lot of the world where people stay together, they're a couple blocks away from their parents, their grandparents, their children, and everyone takes care of each other. That's not coming back to the United States anytime soon. And I'm guilty of that as well. I have taken jobs in other places and moved for other reasons to other places where I'm not as conveniently close to family as might have been in past times. Technology is stepping into the gaps left by this social fragmentation. There is public funding subsidizing these emotional AI companions. $60 million was invested in this program to engineer emotional intelligence. And we are seeing a combination of markets meeting the need through technology and governments paying for it sometimes. Now, many conservatives like to emphasize family first and for that matter, people across the spectrum. But it does kind of ignore the fact that we as Americans move for our careers, we move for other jobs, we move for opportunities, we move just because it's exciting to move to new places sometimes. So elderly people are often isolated, they don't have any family close to them, and their friends quite often have died. If you're 85 years old, statistically speaking, many, many of your friends, your peers have already died or they perhaps have dementia, Alzheimer's, and cannot continue recognizing it so hard to have a meaningful relationship there. So I think it's got to be studied. I have family members myself where I think an AI companion like this, to be clear, it's not yet to the point where it looks like a full human sized robot, where it's doing your laundry and cooking for you and picking you up off the floor if you fall down when that happens, that's going to be huge. There's no doubt about it. This is something for those of you watching on YouTube or any other social media platform. It's a small looking robot, appears to be about 6 inches high, so it's not particularly big, but it can have all sorts of conversations and it can engage and it can ask you things like, do you want to hear a joke today? It certainly seems better than just passively watching cable news. Or I hate to say it, it may be better than watching or listening to Filter with TJ Walker. Although I would certainly hope people of all ages would watch and listen to this show. I do think it's coming. It's absolutely coming. And governments need to figure out how to regulate this properly. Otherwise we could see the same thing that has happened in so many other sectors of society. We're going to see Facebook or Google gobble up some startup, Control it all, control the data and before you realize it, your rich grandma or grandpa who you thought was leaving you $10 million in the will. Not that I have any of those. They're going to give all their money to Mark Zuckerberg and the Google boys. And one thing I hope we can all agree on is those guys don't need more of our money.
Imagine having a communication coach who never sleeps Meet your new secret weapon, the TJ Walker AI clone. Go to TJ Walker AI and start getting custom coaching 24 7. 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@media trainingworldwide.com whether you're speaking on camera, pitching a client or handling a crisis, you need these tools. These aren't 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.
Got feedback or a question for me? I actually read them and if you send one I'll send you a free.
Mini course as a thank you. Just head to tjwalker.com feedback.
Ever wish you could just ask me your question live? Now you can. Every week I go live with members only on YouTube. It's called TJLive.
I review pitches, fix presentations and answer your questions on the spot. It's interactive, personal and hands on. If you want real time coaching in a small group setting, go to tjwalker.comlive and become a member. This isn't passive content, it's a two way conversation.
The Secret to Happiness New research highlighted in the New York Times argues the real secret to happiness isn't wealthy or achievement. It's feeling loved. Psychologist Sonia Luberinsky and co author Harry Rice says happiness depends more on whether we feel valued and understood than on how much love we give. Their practical advice is surprisingly simple. Listen better, don't interrupt. Don't offer unsolicited advice. I need to follow that more myself. Ask follow up questions like Tell me more. They recommend focusing on one relationship and intentionally deepening three conversations in a week. Their thesis is bold. Feeling loved is not passive. It's a skill and largely within your control. Let's end Full disclosure I've not Read this book before I have read a, I believe other books by these authors and it's getting very good review. And you know what? You're getting a review on the front page of the New York Times. You're doing something right. It was released this month and it's part of the advice is not particularly surprising and yet it's a constant reminder because we have so many people in our society focused on if I can just be more successful, I can just be the CEO. I could just make my startup go public and become a billionaire. Then I'll be happy and feel great. Not really. So this is something directly from the book. When someone feels deeply seen, valued and understood by you, they become more willing, motivated and eager to do the same. Feeling loved is, is not out of your control. Many people feel like it's beyond their capacity and it's simply not true. You can feel loved, but you've got to build skills involved around it. Let's look at some more facts. So happiness research is shifting from just being more positive, which hey, I like positive thinking and a positive mindset. I do still think that's important, but to more of a relational science. Western culture is often criticized, perhaps justly as overemphasizing self improvement over connection. And really the two should be seen together. Part of improving yourself is improving your actual connections with other human beings. Loving them and them loving you and you. Feeling loved is what generates a tremendous amount of happiness. Emotional fulfillment is linked to perceived belonging. Now there's been a lot written about how in America people aren't in bowling leagues anymore, people are going to churches together. There's not that sense of community that there used to be all fair criticism. But now we have a loneliness epidemic and it's being documented in in public health data. As we talked about in the previous story about AI companions, reciprocity is central to human social evolution. According to these authors, deep listening is rare, especially in a highly distracted environment. Because what's the number one problem most of us have is we're trying to have a conversation with someone and they're staring at their phone. Now I try to be a good role model in my own household. My daughter or wife are speaking to me. I don't simply put the phone down. I try to put it out of sight in my pocket, ideally in another room somewhere, dinner time, not having it on the table. It's what I try to do. And I'm trying to build that habit, that skill with members of my own family as well. Not always successfully. But if someone Be honest now. If someone is in front of you and you're talking to them about something you care about and they're also staring at their phone saying, huh, huh. It's annoying, it's frustrating. Deep down, you know, not really giving you 100% of attention. How could they? They're staring at what's on their screen and it makes you feel disrespected. Certainly doesn't make you feel loved. You can't necessarily control others, certainly instantly, but you can control yourself. So start by treating other people the way you want to be treated. Listen to them, really listen to them. And put your phone away out of sight. Chances are you're not so important that anything bad will happen if you don't look at your phone for the next five minutes or the next hour. So put it, put it away. Social skills increasingly monetized by coaching industry. So there are coaches out there teaching people how to like, put your phone away. Sad that that is something people have to be taught, but it is now. You could say, well, T.J. you're an old boomer. You didn't have that opportunity. You're right. When I was growing up as a kid, if I wanted to talk on the phone, I had to go into the kitchen. There was this long curly Q cord attaching a phone to the wall and I had to have a conversation in front of my mom, my dad and my two sisters. Guess what? Using the phone wasn't something I wanted to do more than about five minutes a week, if that. When I was a college kid, there was one phone at the end of the hall and it was used, I think typically Sunday night for a five minute conversation with my parents. So there was not this temptation to be staring at it every. You had to connect with other people. There was nothing else to do. It was boring. Well, now, unfortunately, every single person has competition for attention. And it's called every interesting idea, form of entertainment ever created because it's in every cell phone in the world. So it is driving people apart. It's not necessarily destroying relationships, although it can do that. It prevents relationships from ever starting in the first place. I see that in my own environment. My daughter goes to the school bus, the kids are lined up neatly in a well organized way, and every single kid in her middle school is hunched over staring at a cell phone. No one's saying a thing. Is that destroying relationships? No, it's preventing relationships from ever starting. That's the real problem. So to the extent that you can have any influence over your family, friends, certainly yourself. Let's all try to spend a little more time talking to actual human beings. And that means listening to human beings, which you can't do if you're staring at the phone. So if I do end up reading this whole book, I'll give you a more detailed analysis and review. Meanwhile, I don't think there's anything stopping any of us from at least trying to enact some of the principles today. And first of all, I want to acknowledge you and thank you for listening to me. Thanks. It makes me feel loved.
Filtered is brought to you by the.
Following get the deeper takes.
I don't post anywhere else. Subscribe now@substack.com jwalkersuccess and stay in the loop. For years people have asked how they could get one on one coaching from me inexpensively. Well now you can.
Anytime, anywhere.
With the TJ Walker AI clone, it's like having me in your pocket ready to help you prep for a speech, polish a pitch, or calm your nerves before a big meeting. You talk to it. It responds like I would based on my real world coaching of thousands of leaders and communicators. Check it out at tjwalker AI. It's not just smart, it's personal.
Figure Skaters and Copyright Chaos at the Milan Olympics Figure skaters are facing a new obstacle, copyright compliance. Several athletes were forced to change music just weeks or even days before competing after discovering they lacked proper licensing. One American skater was accused online of using music without permission. A Russian competitor had to swap programs two days before taking the ice. Licensing can cost from a few dollars to several thousand dollars annually. And, and the IOC does not cover. That's. The International Olympic Committee does not cover those costs. Historically, the better funded candidate. Excuse me, that's, that's the next one. Sorry about that. So let's look at this a little more deeply because this to me is a little bizarre. Full disclosure for any conflict of interest I have worked with the United States Olympic Skating Organization in the past and I can't even remember. It's been so long. I don't remember if I trained their athletes or their I think it was their PR team. But I just want to get that out there for conflict of interest enthusiasts. To me, this is a huge shame that the International Olympic Committee, with the hundreds of millions of dollars over decades, billions of dollars of revenue they receive that they can't pay for these skaters royalties. I mean, there's so many people making so much money off of the Olympics and now you have these ice skaters, most of whom never make any money I mean, if you're not getting all the gold, and especially if you're not from an English speaking country that has huge advertisers clamoring for you, most of these skaters don't ever really make any money. For them to have to go into debt or to sweat it about copyright issues seems ridiculous. And certainly big countries that have so many sponsors like the United States, for them not to just cut a deal with a recording artist, I think is disgraceful. Especially when you consider that they make a lot of money off these ice skaters. Because ice skating is much, much more popular as a televised sport, gets a lot more ratings, gets a lot more ad revenue than archery. And I realize archery is not in the Winter Olympics, but you get my point. There are plenty of obscure sports where, okay, nobody's really making much money off sponsorship advertising, and the athletes kind of need to keep costs low. But for something like this, which is prime time entertainment seen by around the world, tens if not hundreds of millions of people, why scrimp on a few thousand dollars in royalties? Because the musicians who created this music deserve to be compensated. These skaters who have devoted their lives to the most part, these skaters have devoted every second of their childhood. They've given up parties, friends, sleepovers, summer camps, prom. They gave up all of that to entertain you and me in the Olympics, to be the best in the entire world. And to see them sometimes, you know, a week before, in this case, two days before, worried about, oh, I'm going to get sued or I'm going to owe a bunch of money or I'm going to go into debt. These athletes, many of them already go into debt to get to the Olympics. They shouldn't have to go into debt to cover something like this. Now, copyright is a tricky issue. I mean, just yesterday I had a claim filed against me apparently in one of my online courses on presentation skills. Somehow a copyrighted image got put into a course that I was then selling. So shame on me. It was taken down right away. And we're trying to get things rectified. I try to be very careful. Ultimately, if my name's on it, I'm ultimately responsible and I accept that. I try to respect copyright, I want others to respect copyright. I do have people steal my courses all the time and put them on phantom website. I don't chase them down because if they're stealing my courses, chances are slim they have the wherewithal to actually make any money off of it. But we live in a world where creators spend time, energy, money. I'm spending time creating this show for you, they deserve to be compensated. So I'm not questioning that at all. I am questioning the Olympic poobas, many of whom have very nice cushy salaries and benefits. I'm questioning why they can't somehow figure out a way to get somebody to pay for the rights to the music for these skaters. It just seems to be a shame. My challenge to you though, as a creator, whether you're an athlete, a tiktoker, someone making online courses, someone making movies, the more you can control everything that comes out of you, the better, the more you can control your creative process. Now, I understand it's a bit much to expect someone who's a world class skater to also be a composer and a piano player and a singer. I get that that's asking too much. But you know, maybe you do like Spike Lee or Francis Ford Coppola and you have family members who are musicians and you, you make it a family fair. That may be a temporary solution, but long term, you know, the Olympic committees at the international level and the national level, they need to cough up some cash. What I have found in anything to do with big time sports, whether it's professional sports officially, like the NFL or the NBA or things that really are professional like the Olympics, even though most athletes don't get a salary, is things are very, very skewed. You've got a handful of winners, you've got less than 1% or big time winners. Yeah, Michael Phelps is going to make hundreds of millions of dollars before his life is over because of the fame he got from the Olympics. But most Olympians make nothing. I remember once I was checking into a hotel in St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands, and the person checking me in had won several gold medals in the previous Olympics in swimming. She didn't make any money off of it. Here she is working a front desk at a hotel. So most Olympic athletes, even those who win quite often don't make any money. But a handful make fortunes. Certainly the top executives in state or country level and international level get paid very nicely. They need to take care of some of these incidental expenses for some of the top athletes because I know my family members enjoy the ice skating. To have to throw away your whole routine or learn a whole new routine sometimes two days before because you couldn't get the rights to it seems a bit absurd, like what you heard.
Don't let the algorithm bury us. Subscribe now at substack.com@tj walkersuccess want direct access to me live. Want to unlock bonus episodes behind the scenes takes and full access to my premium courses? Then become a member today. Just go to tjwalker.com members and choose your preferred platform, YouTube, Patreon whatever works for you. This isn't just another subscription, it's a full access pass to the tools, coaching and content that can transform your communication and career. Tjwalker.com members, I'll see you inside.
Before we dive in, quick question.
Are your communication skills helping or hurting your career? Fix that in 20 minutes a day. Visit mediatrainingworldwide.com Real skills, real Results.
Republican Cash Edge in the Midterms Republicans are entering the midterm cycle with more than double the cash reserves of their Democratic counterparts, roughly $320 million to $137 million. Among key party groups, President Trump's aligned super PAC alone holds more than $300 million. The RNC started the year nearly $100 million ahead of the Democratic National Committee. The DNC crypto and AI linked super PACs are also building large war chests. Democrats who dominated fundraising in 2024 now face donor fatigue. Research shows the best funded candidates wins most congressional race not all, but most but history also shows that money is not destiny. For example, in the 2016 Republican primary, Trump was heavily outspent by candidates like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. Bush and his allies raised more than $150 million. Trump relied instead on earned media and small dollar energy. And he won. Money is oxygen in politics, but it's not always the deciding spark. Okay, so what do we need to make of this? This does spell some it does not look good for the Democrats to be this outspent. Money doesn't decide every elections, but it sure does have a huge, huge impact, especially in close elections. Now, I mentioned the example of President Trump. To his credit, he was able to win 2016, the Republican primary, not because he spent more money, and he certainly didn't spend much of his own money. He did it through communication, through spoken communication, in media, interviews and in social media. Now, you could make an argument that that's that's better for democracy. You could also argue that if you're getting attention because you're telling the bigger lie and you're a demagogue, that's not necessarily good. But we're going to leave that aside for one moment and delve more into some of the facts and why I think it's relevant to you as you try to figure out how to communicate what you're doing. So again, the facts that the GOP holds $320 million in cash, and that's just for their congressional races. The Trump Super PAC has $304 million. The Democrats actually raised more money in 2024. They raised $2 billion in 2024. Trump and the RNC raised $1.2 billion in 2024. So money did not decide things. I mean, the $290 million that Elon Musk gave to Donald Trump obviously helped, but you could certainly make the case that if money were the deciding factor, there would have been a different result. So here's what I think is important to realize that if in the modern social media world, if you have messages that are really interesting to people and it strikes them as thinking, okay, here's a candidate saying something interesting to me, relevant to me, he's trying to solve my problems, you can win even though you're heavily outspent. That's clearly the message of what happened in the New York City mayoral race last year. You had a candidate, one of the least funded on Dani, and he ended up winning, winning big time. Not because he outspent Cuomo or any of his opponents, because he had a superior communication ability, his use of social media, the clarity of his messaging, putting a spotlight on affordability, Anyone. And you could say the same thing about Trump, certainly going back to 2016. He put a focus on his messages and were very different from conventional Republican messages. Traditional Republican messages say, hey, let's cut Social Security and all this big government. He said, no, I don't want to do that. Traditional Republican messaging was, America does need to provide leadership to the world and stand up for democracy. Trump essentially said, no, I don't want to do that. Let's stay out of other people's affairs. We can debate another time whether those were worthy messages, but there's no doubt that he came up with different messages than all the other better funded candidates in his party nomination hunt. And that is, in fact, why he won. And because he said it in such a provocative way, he got tons and tons and tons of free media exposure. He was live on CNN seemingly half the time. So money doesn't decide everything in political campaigns, but if you have any kind of mainstream messaging, whether you are a Democrat or Republican and you are campaigning against someone else who is a representative of their party and is doing mainstream messaging, then money is often the deciding factor. Unless you have a district where the voting is so skewed for one side, it almost doesn't matter what the messaging is. Here's what Jesse Ferguson told the New York Times. He's a Democratic strategist. Donald Trump has 99 problems going into the midterms. Money isn't one of them. Stephen J. Law, a former Senate GOP PAC leader, says the next frontier is finding ways to put more money directly in the hands of candidates and campaigns because so much of it is going through these PACs, which technically the candidate is not supposed to have any influence over that and have any control over the messaging. Here's what Brian Derek, a Democratic fundraiser, had to say about Elon Musk spending last time more toxic than the Chernobyl gift shop, which by the way, is a great sound bite. It's got humor, it's attack, it's got emotion, it's got a reference to pop culture of Chernobyl and an example you can visualize a gift shop. So as a side note, putting on my media trainer cap. That's a fantastic quote. So hats off to Brian Derek, regardless of whether you agree with his political positioning or not. It's a fantastic classic, classic sound bite. Now let's look at some more facts. According to the Federal Election Commission, that's data from the FEC, in House races, the better funded candidate wins roughly 85 to 95% of the time. So if I'm a Republican incumbent and I don't even bother raising money and I spend $5,000 on my campaign and you're the liberal Democrat running against me and you raise $10 million, but my district typically votes 30% points more for the Republican than the Democrat, if I'm typically winning 65 to 35, I'm going to still win that race. Absent me getting caught committing some horrific felony that involves a child, you're going to lose that race. I would win even though I spend no money because the demographics of the district so heavily vote for one side. But typically if it's that lopsided of a House of a House race, you're not going to get $10 million. People won't give money if they think they can't win. Now in Senate, races are a little different. The better funded candidate wins 75 to 85% of them. It's still most of the time in presidential general elections. The higher spending campaign has won seven of the last 10 elections, so that's 70%. Now I would contend the reason that's lower is because when it comes to presidential elections, you get so much publicity, so much attention, you get so much mainstream media and social media attention that ads have a fewer or much less of an impact on voters has an impact on primaries, but not general elections because people are inundated with information about the two candidates. So that to me is not surprising at all that the correlation is much lower when it comes to general elections. So what does this mean for you and for me? I do think it means that, hey, if you're running for political office, it's not enough to say, you know, message beats money every day. If you're really serious about winning political office, you have to communicate and you have to communicate with people who don't necessarily follow you on social media, don't necessarily follow political media and mainstream news. So the only way to reach them is quite often through advertising, where you're meeting them, where they are. You can buy ads to get in front of anybody these days. You can say, I want to reach 21 year olds who've never read news a day in their life, but they follow mixed martial arts. You can get an ad in front of them and try to encourage them to vote for you. So there's always going to be a need for some money in politics. Now. Most countries heavily regulate this. Most countries do not want their politicians essentially bought off and bribed the way we do in the United States. We going to have to leave that for another day. My other more important message to you is whatever you're doing, whether it is promoting a new nonfiction book you've written, whether it's promoting an online course, whether you have produced a documentary, whatever it is, focus on having the absolute most interesting message possible and then communicating in a captivating way. And quite often that will lead you to success. That will make up for the fact that you don't necessarily have the most money. So that's really my message to you because there are plenty of examples of people who've become wildly successful. I gave you two in the political world, Mondami and Trump, who did it through interesting messages, not simply by spending more money. We'll be right back after this break. Want more?
Grab my 5 book success library for 9.95 at tjwalker.com books.
It's the fastest way to level up your communication.
Imagine being the most confident person in the room whether you're on zoom or on stage. That's what thousands of professionals are learning to do right now. Through my online communication courses at Media Training Worldwide. You can access my complete training library on demand. Affordable and actually effective. Whether you're preparing for media interviews, client presentations or TED style talks, I've got you covered. Check it out. Mediatrainingworldwide.com you'll never wing it again.
Election denialism inside Government Kurt Olson, a lawyer who pushed claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent, now serves as director of election security and integrity in the federal government. An unsealed FBI affidavit revealed he investigated or he instigated a new investigation into the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, despite repeated debunking of fraud claims, Olson previously helped pursue lawsuits attempting to overturn election results and was sanctioned in at least one case. Critics argue his appointment signals that election denialism has moved from political activism to into official authority. Supporters defend him as committed to election integrity. Opponents warn that using federal power to relitigate settled elections erodes trust in democratic institutions. Okay, I'm sorry, folks, but this is troubling. And it should not just be troubling to Democrats, liberals, progressives, Bernie Sanders. It should be equally troubling to centrist, to moderates, to libertarians, to right of center, political Unidentified and yes, it should be profoundly troubling to Republicans. We now live in an era where certain people say, if I win the election, that's great, I'll say I won, and we'll do things as we normally do. If I lose the election, I'll just say it's fraud, not leave. And if I just say it's fraud, it's fraud, it's fraud. And it was stolen here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Every time someone says, well, no, there's proof this wasn't stolen, I'll go to over here, I'll eventually win. And if I say it with enough conviction and enough authority and act like I believe it, I'll convince a bunch of stupid rubes out there and they'll start following what I say and repeating it and acting on it. I mean, that is the philosophy. And I want you to step back for a minute and ask yourself, let's say hypothetically, you are a supporter of the current administration. How would you feel if Jimmy Carter had simply proclaimed that he won the 1980 election if he just said, okay, Ronald Reagan stole the election, his followers support it. They stole it, they miscounted key states, and I'm not leaving the White House? I think you'd be pretty upset. I think you would be screaming at the top of your lungs that this is an absolute thumbing of the nose, a shredding of the United States Constitution. It means demise. Maybe if he had in fact simply said it was all fraudulent, if he had started gathering voting boxes and seizing votes in states where he lost, well A, it would have been a pretty tough time because there are so many states he lost. B, it would have been a lot of work and, and see, if he had done that, I think there would have been outrage across the political spectrum. I think the New York Times would say, hey, we endorsed him over Ronald Reagan, but he lost Democracy is Democracy America. In 1981, which in fact he was. That would have been the response from people who were Democrats, who were liberals, were the. Even communists would have said, okay, Jimmy Carter, you've got to step down. And yet somehow, now that things have reversed, you change the D to an R. And a lot of people are saying, you know what? Forget this whole democracy thing. Overrated. We're simply going to take a heads we win, tails you lose position on all future elections, current elections, past elections, future elections. If the votes add up and we win, we do things normally. We're all in favor of democracy. And if the votes say the other person won, we're just going to proclaim fraud, abuse and say the election didn't really work that way, that our team still won. Now, don't take my word for that. Listen to a candidate in 2016, when asked, what are you going to do if you lose? He said, well, first of all, win. But if I lose, I'll just claim fraud. I'll just contest it. Who said that it was in fact Donald J. Trump, who, contrary to popular belief, does sometimes say the truth. He does sometimes honestly speak truthfully, and I happen to believe that is one of them. He admitted to all of us that his first response if he didn't get enough votes would be to simply proclaim fraud. Now, he did actually get enough votes to win the electoral college in 2016, so he didn't have to do that. But in 2020, he did not get enough votes, popular votes, or electoral votes, and he did exactly as he promised. He just proclaimed it was fraud. And, you know, it's interesting to me, for those of you are film buffs out there, Donald Trump and I do have something in common. One of his favorite movies of all times is Citizen Kane. One of my favorite movies of all time. Citizen Kane. What happens to Charles Foster Kane when he runs? I believe it's for mayor of New York City and he loses. Since he owned newspapers, he was a fictitious. Look at Liam Randolph Hearst. And before the election was counted, he already had his newspaper men, and they were men, come up with two headlines. One, you know, kaine wins in a landslide. And just in case he lost, he already had the headline of massive fraud, Mars election, something to that effect. And that's Trump's favorite movie. There's no doubt in my mind that that made a big impression with him, because he thinks of himself as a big shot, like Charles Foster Kane, like William Randolph Hearst. And if it worked for them, it would work for him as well. To reiterate, all the 2020 fraud claims of the election have been repeatedly debunked, not just by liberals or Democrats, but by centrists, by Republicans, by conservatives, by anyone who actually believes in a fact based universe. Now, has there ever been a fraudulent vote cast in America? Sure, but we're talking about maybe dozens a year. Certainly nothing that would have even had an impact on a race as close as the year 2000, where there were a mere 323 votes that decided Florida. So we've never even had any documented evidence that in any one state that could have changed an election there's been more than a few dozen fraudulent votes. And even then there's no evidence it had a positive impact for one side or the other side. This is clearly an example of just sour grapes and people who want to skew things so that again, heads I win, tails you lose. And the fact that we're seeing people who are officially election deniers talk about the fox guarding the hen house. I mean, this is just an egregious, egregious example. Unfortunately, it's happening everywhere in this government. And the Democrats who think the 2026 elections are going to be run normally, I think are deluding themselves. I've spent time on this program talking about that. I hope not ad nauseam, but I have talked about it. I think we live in a new reality and Democrats are delusional if they think that they're going to be close elections where the Democrat wins House seats by a few dozen, a few hundred, even a few thousand votes. If you think those aren't going to be discounted, thrown in the garbage, overruled. You are living in fantasy land. Not when clowns like this Kurt Olson are giving positions of authority in this administration.
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.
And we are back. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filter. This is the show where every day we look at the top business stories, culture stories, health, technology stories, and then filter them through the lens of personal development skills so that you become more successful in every aspect of your personal life as well as your professional life. Let's dive right into our final issue of the day and it's not a happy subject, but I cannot disregard it. Pardon capital rioter convicted of child Abuse Andrew Paul Johnson, who participated in the January 6 Capitol attack and insurrection should correctly be called and later received clemency, was convicted in Florida of multiple child sexual abuse charges, including molestation of a child under the age of 12. Prosecutors say he faces the possibility of life in prison. That's, you know, assuming he doesn't get a full pardon once again from the current president, Johnson was one of roughly 1500 January 6th defendants granted clemency. The case is already reverberating politically. The parallel some observers are drawing, although not enough, is to the 1988 Willie Horton episode, when a single violent crime committed by a furloughed inmate became a defining symbol against or used against Michael Dukakis, the then governor of Massachusetts who was the Democratic nominee for president. In both cases, one individual becomes the face of a broader policy decision. The political lesson from history A single story can eclipse complex debate, and in campaign seasons, symbolism often outweighs nuance. Let's look at some more details. I'm perhaps being a little overly optimistic there because I don't see the media giving this Andrew Paul Johnson any attention, in part because every day the news is filled with more and more examples of Epstein and various people tied to, if not outright acts of pedophilia with Epstein than collusion, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and tacit support of a pedophile. So one more pedophile, especially if he's not molesting thousands of children the way Jeffrey Epstein did, it almost gets lost in the conversation and it's not really fair. So again, Andrew Paul Johnson would not have been able to molest this 12 year old or this child under 12 if he had been in his rightful place, which is prison. This Guy waged war on the United States government. This guy was there when another human being was killed in these riots. This guy was there when a police officer was injured and then died hours later on January 7th. This guy is an insurrectionist, and he was given a full pardon. Now, Michael Dukakis did not give a full pardon to Willie Horton, the convicted felon. He put him out on a work program, a weekend work furlough program. And when he was out, he apparently murdered, raped and murdered a woman. And this became sort of a way of defining, Michael Dukakis is weak on crime. Well, I can tell you, in a million years, Michael Dukakis would have never given a pardon to 1500 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, threatened to kill the Vice President and numerous senators and members of the House. Michael Dukakis would not have given a full pardon to someone who was a part of a mob trying to destroy American democracy and ending up killing people. That is what President Trump did. And yet the people who claim to be tough on crime just ignore it. Say, oh, he's on our team. If he does things that end up with more death, more children, molest, hey, it's okay. He's on our team. That's how tribal American politics has become. No matter how good you are, no matter how much you help the economy, the stock market, you're on the other team. We'll just say, you're an evil communist, you're worse than Fidel Castro. We all starve to death when you are running things. If you're on our team, you can give complete pardons to hardened criminals, to monsters, to child molesters. They can go out, commit all sorts of other crimes, molest children, and we're not going to say a peep. Hey, you're on our team. That is the world we live in, unfortunately. Let's look at some more of the facts here. Andrew Paul Johnson, convicted of five, not one, not two, not three, but five child abuse related counts. Charges included molesting children under 12 and under 16. He was arrested in Tennessee, extradited to Florida. The case began with discord messages discovered by the victim's own mother. The alleged abuse occurred in April 2024, when he should have been serving time in prison for committing acts of insurrection when this child was 11 years old. The prosecutor says the potential penalty includes life in prison. But who knows? Maybe he just has to say, I love Trump and click his heels together and get out again so he can maybe become less, more children, maybe yours. So don't tell me you care about Children don't care. Tell me you care about law and order if you support not just the sort of person, but the person who lets this guy out. And that person is sitting in the White House today. And again, he pled guilty to January 6th related charges in 2024. But like all of those criminals, like all of those traitors. Because, yes, when you're rebelling against the United States and committing acts of insurrection, you are a traitor to this country. He was given full clemency. Now, Johnson claimed he'd be awarded $10 million as a January 6th or so. Maybe that's what he was saying to lure these children, to impress them. That sounds bizarre, but this is. According to the Guardian, Trump has allegedly discussed giving compensation to defendants, actually taking your hard earned tax dollars of being an American citizen and paying these criminals the inconvenience of them having to go to trial for committing real crimes. That hasn't happened yet, but there's no doubt it could. Again, part of the problem the Democrats have is there's so many different ways you can talk about Trump being complicit to lawlessness, felonies, child abuse. It's hard to even pick one. When you were Michael Dukakis, there was only one thing you could focus on. And that did get the attention of the Republicans running the campaign and the super PACs running the political campaigns way back in 1988. It's a shame, I guess. Apparently we live in a country where crime only matters for one tribe. The other tribe says, oh, crime all the time. Crime matters for the other tribe only if it was perpetuated by someone you don't like of another tribe. It's a sad day in America. I'm T.J. walker. Most of what we talk about in this show and Certainly the first 50 to 60% positive news stories designed to make you happier, healthier, more successful. But I'm here to give you a sense of what's really going on in the world. So we have to talk about ugly stories like this as well. Thanks so much for joining me. Please post your comments on social media wherever you're watching this, wherever you're seeing it. So thanks so much. I'll see you again tomorrow. American optimism just hit a record low. Executives warn the US Economy is splitting into winners and losers in a K shaped divide. A 40 year old study links caffeine or caffeinated coffee to lower dementia risk. Another massive review finds exercise may rival antidepressants for depression. A deadly school shooting in Canada forces tough questions about media coverage and risk perception and nearly 3 million newly released Epstein files are triggering resignations and political turmoil from Washington to Europe and beyond. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hi and welcome. Thanks so much for joining me today. Let's dive right into the top stories of the day. American Optimism Slumps this is a new poll and it's not good. American optimism about the future has hit the lowest point Gallup has recorded in nearly two decades. Just 59.2% of U.S. adults say they expect to be living a high quality life five years from now. That's down 9.1 percentage points since 2020. That translates to roughly 24.5 million fewer Americans feeling optimistic about their future. The steepest decline happened between 2021 and 2023 as inflation surged to 7% and squeezed household budgets. In 2025 alone, Democrats future optimism dropped another 7.6 points while Republicans stayed largely unchanged. Overall, only 48% of Americans now qualify as thriving, down more than 11 points from the 2021 post vaccine high. Gallup's data suggests economic strain, affordability challenges and political transitions are shaping how Americans see their future, and confidence is clearly eroding. Okay, let's dive a little deeper here. A couple more facts. As I mentioned to you, 24.5 million fewer optimistic adults, that's pretty huge. One thing America is known for around the world is we're the optimistic people. We're the people who would travel from the east coast to the west coast and die and have our bones picked apart on wagon trains. We're so optimistic about how things would go. We're the people who would get on boats, risk scurvy, sharks, starvation to go from another country to the United States. So Americans are sort of pre selected for being more optimistic than people on average around the world. So this is saying something. According to Dan Winters with Gallup, the percentage of U.S. adults who anticipate high quality lives in five years declined to 59%. 2025, the lowest since measurement began nearly two decades ago. So lowest in 20 years. That's pretty significant. As of Q4, the fourth quarter of 2025, the percentage of American adults who rate both their current and future lives high enough to classify as thriving dropped to 48%. So that is frankly sad. According to the poll, black households hit the hardest 2021 to 2024. Hispanic adults saw the sharpest drop in 2025. Political transitions affect partisan outlook Democrats being much less optimistic about the future. Health care cost, rising inequality and housing cost are a big issue affecting this. So what are we to make of this? I hope that you thrive. Let me say that, right? I hope everyone thrives. But if you're taking the time to watch this show, to me, that tells me you actually care about controlling your own destiny. Because, yes, there are societal forces, there are public policies. There are things like living under tyranny and oppression and international weather crises that no one can really withstand. We're all susceptible to our larger environment. But in many cultures, United States, Canada, most of Europe these days, many parts of Asia, if you are middle class or above, you do have tremendous control over your future, your destiny. And the research bears this out. Having optimism in and of itself is a huge predictor of whether you will thrive, whether you will improve, whether you will grow, whether you will be happy. So optimism is essential. Now, let's dissect a couple of things affecting this. Part of it is I do think that while the long arc of history is progress, there are clearly ups and downs. In the early part, to the middle of the 20th century, there were some real downs. Not one, but two world wars, lots of massive death, destruction, nuclear weapons going off. So the arc of history is not always better. Have we returned to the point where life is no better than, you know, 1918 or 1941? I think that's a bit of a stretch to say we've gone back to that era. Things are still dramatically better by many metrics. The world has never been better in terms of the percentage of human beings living in poverty, the percentage of people who are literate, the percentage of people who have access to clean water. Things have, frankly, never been better. But we're talking here about the United States. Clearly, there are some declines and lots of political turmoil. What is different about our current situation is we have certain political forces explicitly telling half or arguably 40% of Americans, this country's not for you, this government is not looking out for you. We hate you, and we want you to fail. That's unprecedented. Now, I'm not here to be a partisan talking head. You can get that on Fox News, occasionally, cnn, msnbc, and other places. You don't need that here. I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist trying to filter the news through the lens of not conservatism, libertarianism, or anything else, but through the lens of personal development, how you can improve your own life, your family's life, and ideally, enough of us do this. We help society. We help everyone get better. I do think it's essential for you to focus each and every day on something you're optimistic about literally on my phone, in my to do list every day. I have a question that I answer every day. Tj what are you most optimistic about? Forces me to think and reflect because if all I did was look at the news, it's very, very easy to be pessimistic because news by its very nature focuses on the extreme and often the negative extreme. As we'll be talking about later in the show today, huge, huge headlines about nine people murdered by a killer, a lonely gun killer in Canada of all places. It's news, it's getting talked about that's going to get news. Nine kids learning how to read today won't get news. Nine people starting businesses won't get news. More planes than ever landing without crashing. It won't generate news. So it's very easy to be shaped by this modern hyper media environment we all live in. We call it social media. It's not really social media anymore. It's simply the world we live in. We're all enveloped in this cocoon of non stop news and most of it is negative. That doesn't mean the news business is doing it wrong. It doesn't mean they're biased in ideological ways. But it can be very easy to get depressed about the future and to convince yourself the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Things have never been worse. Well, no, my friends, it is simply inaccurate. I mean, when I was born, we lived in a world where about 90% of humanity lived in extreme poverty. Now we live in a world where fewer than 10% live in extreme poverty. And again, this poll was talking about United States optimism. And the United states didn't have 90% extreme poverty in 1962 when I was born, but it did have a lot more poverty than today. I want to put my cap on as your personal development coach right now and tell you if you're feeling pessimistic about your own future, about the future for your family, your loved ones, then it's going to be up to you. Certainly you can vote to change politicians and policies that you think will make things better. And I encourage political activism. But this is not primarily a political activism show. I do want you to focus on what you, what you can personally control every single day. Think about what is one thing you're optimistic about in the future. Another thing I write down every single day. What's one thing you're grateful for? Literally write it down. What's one thing you are actively trying to improve that will improve your own life? Help other people, ideally help your bottom line, help your own personal economy. I know for me, I'm about to launch dozens and dozens of new personal development shows. Now, you may have no interest in doing something like that, but we live in an era where it is never ever in the history of the world been easier to start a business to do something where you can help other people and potentially make money. Am I saying it's easy? No. Am I saying go post a video on TikTok today and you'll be rich and famous by lunchtime? No, I'm not. I'm not spreading you spreading nonsense and delusions and false hopes. But anything is better than sort of sitting back and thinking, wow, the world is getting worse and worse and worse and I feel pessimistic about the future. Are there things where I think if we don't change there can be serious problems? Well, absolutely. There are things I think that are headed in the wrong trend line, but there are solutions. Focus on what you can do. Let's take a question comment from our audience. A good friend of the show Patrick Galvin has written in, says, I love your take on optimism. To keep my spirits up when I see negative news about people doing despicable things, I remember the wisdom of the late great Mr. Rogers who said focus on the helpers. Well, Pat, thanks for pointing that out. I actually don't remember Mr. Rogers saying that, but it certainly sounds like something he would say. And Pat, I don't know if you've heard me say this before, but Mr. Rogers was my initial media world role model. I grew up or I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is the home of Mr. Rogers. Back in the 60s. The very first TV studio I ever went to was Mr. Rogers Studio at Public TV in Pittsburgh. Sadly, they were doing another show and I didn't get to actually see his set. The highlight of my kindergarten years was Mr. Rogers came to my own elementary school and spoke and I was in such awe I couldn't even look up at him. I had to look down at the ground. My parents told me. And the interesting thing is my father bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Rogers. And after the speech, kids came around and asked my dad for autographs. They thought he was Mr. Rogers. So always happy to hear someone quoting the late great Mr. Rogers. I'm T.J. walker. We have lots more show to come. You're not going to want to miss it, so stay tuned. Next up, we will be talking about something you've been hearing in the news lately a lot, the K shaped economy. We'll be right back after this break. Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements.
No 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 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. Instant 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. The K Shaped Economy the US Economy is growing, but executives say it's splitting in two. Economists describe it as a K shaped economy where high income households surge ahead while lower income Americans fall further behind. The top 1% now hold nearly 32% of total household wealth, a record since tracking began in 1989. Companies are seeing it firsthand. Delta expects premium seat sales to outpace main cabin tickets. McDonald's reports visits from higher income customers rising double digits while lower income traffic declines. Mondelez says consumers are fed up with price increases. Households earning under $75,000 are cutting discretionary spending compared to 2019, while those earning more than 150,000 are spending more. High interest rates, affordability pressures and artificial intelligence could widen the divide further reshaping a corporate strategy and the broader economy. Okay, so what are we to make of this? The United States was based what we think of the United States, certainly the last hundred years was based on this huge expansion, expanding middle class. Believe it or not, there was a time when CEOs of companies lived in the same neighborhoods as their workers and yeah, they maybe made three times, four times as much. Maybe their house was a little nicer, maybe their lawn was a little better kept up, but people were kind of the same. Those days are long, long gone. Everything is segmented in our society for people who basically have a lot and those who don't, and I mean every part of our society. I was noting just at the county fair or the South Florida State Fair this year. Again, something you think of as all American and as middle class, even lower middle class as a fair still has this huge division. There are the fast pass rides for the kids who come from wealthier households and then there's the rides for everyone else that are still expensive that the I won't even say middle class, the lower middle class now has to take the actual middle doesn't seem to be a place for them. There is something sad about that. What can you do about it? Let's look at some more facts here. Again, top 1% hold, 32% hold of all the well, it is always surprising to me that so many people who claim they want to make America great again by going back to the good old days in the 50s and 60s of traditional values never stop to ask themselves what made the 50s and 60s better in some regards. Now, it wasn't a perfect place. Certainly if you were black, minority, a member of an unpopular religion or sexual orientation, the 50s and 60s weren't really rate. But for the average white heterosexual who belonged to a popular religion, 50s and 60s were in some sense a better time. The question most economists would answer with is the answer you had unionized labor. You had people working in a factory. Nothing special about working in a factory, but you had people working in a factory driving trucks, doing other things, where they had an organized labor union representing them to give them a bigger piece of the pie. You had truck drivers making relatively nice incomes compared to Uber drivers who often make less than $10 an hour these days. So you had the percentage of overall money in the economy filtering out to a much larger percentage of the economy. That's not the case. We now live in a world that is much more winner take all. So you have the New York Times making more money than ever. Meanwhile, newspapers in small and mid sized towns and even large towns are closing every day. And let me not be hypocritical about this, I've benefited from that by getting in early and online courses for personal development and communication skills. I have 12 million student enrollments around the world. Meanwhile, there are plenty of personal development coaches and trainers and public speaking coaches and trainers who've gone out of business or been forced to retire in the last 10 years because of the changing economics of how those businesses are running. So we're seeing this divide in virtually every sector. What do you do about it? To me, the big lesson, and it's not particularly fun to hear this or fun to say it, the lesson is we're no longer living in an era where you can simply show up for a job and think, okay, I either got my training, I got my junior college degree, my college degree, my professor professional credential, and now I'm simply going to show up for work, punch the time clock, not worry about it and have a nice income, nice retirement. It's not going to work anymore. Everyone is under serious competition. Everyone is in danger of being put out of business, either by a competitor or someone in another country or by artificial intelligence. What that means is if you want to be in the top part of that K, the part of the K that's going up, not necessarily the top 1%, but the top 5 or 10%. If you want to be a part of that, you have to be vigilant every single day in learning new skills that are hard, skills that when you master them, you can create value to other people. That I believe is the only real solution. It's not getting lucky buying bitcoin before it goes up. It's not picking the correct score of the Super Bowl. It's not placing a bet or a wager on Couchy as to how many times the press secretary at the White House says stupid. That's not the way for you to and your family to gain a permanent place in the top part of that K. I wish I had some other easy solution. I wish I could say, hey, buy my course for $9 and I guarantee you'll be in the top part of the K and you'll be in one top 1%. I can't do that. Anyone who tells you they do are just trying to steal money from you. There is no get rich quick. Yeah, some people get lucky. Some people can be homeless, living on the street, their last dollar. They buy a lottery ticket and become a billionaire. If that's the strategy you want, you can try it. I think that is a great strategy for getting poorer and poorer. So I do not recommend that at any level. You're going to have to learn new skills. Will you see some people just getting lucky? Some people having their wealth handed to them, some people getting trust funds and falling into money? Yeah, that will happen. Guess what? It's probably not going to happen to you. If it hasn't happened already, it's not going to happen to you. The solution is lifelong learning, lifelong creating. One of the things that helped me the most in my own career. About 10 years ago I decided, hey, I like watching TV shows, I like movies, I'm a normal person in that regard. But I limited myself to on average 1 hour of television a night. Which means if I watch a two hour movie tonight, the next night I'll read a book, I'll do some writing. It's so easy in our culture to just say, oh, I worked hard all day, I'm gonna have dinner and now from 6:45 till 10:45 or 11:45, I'm just gonna veg and relax, Netflix and chill. You're not building value. You're not doing anything to get yourself to the top part of that K. And I want you there. So yes, you can still have entertainment. I can watch a hundred movies a year by limiting myself to one hour of video entertainment today. That's a lot of movies. There aren't really a hundred great movies a year. But what you can't do is simply use every bit of spare time to look at video, look at fun, look at video games, do all sorts of non stop entertainment and simply show up at your job and think you're going to be the top part of that k, that top 5%, 10% of the economy winners in terms of income. And let me be clear, money does not guarantee happiness. I know plenty of wealthy people not happy at all. But in America, a capitalist society, not having money can really impede your ability to be happy. It can be a real downer. And for about 15 years of my life I was poor. I really struggled from about 24 or 25 to 39. So I have been there, my friends. I made I think $5,000 in total income in 1998 and that was living in New York City in the most expensive city in America, one of the most expensive cities in the world. I can tell you I have a lot more fun now than I did in that year. So I'm urging you, certainly you can vote for political policies that you think will distribute our money and the spoils of our capitalist society in a fair way. It does continue to mystify me that so many Americans, and I'm thinking of you, Alabama and Mississippi and Kentucky and West Virginia where some 90% plus of white voters consistently vote for politicians who impose economic policies that completely are against the economic interest of those voters. They continue to do so. I can't control that. Inequality is at a 60 year peak. Retail sales are softening. In December, 60% of Chipotle customers now earn above $100,000. And it is one of my family's favorite fast food restaurants. So that doesn't particularly surprise me. What is interesting is the McDonald's is seeing the higher income people seeing their rates double in terms of becoming regular customers. You would think sort of the poor people would be more likely to go to McDonald's. I guess they can't even afford that. I'm TJ Walker. I'm wishing you financial success and for you to get to the top of the case. So thank you for spending some time with me today. I'm hoping that some of the lessons here, some of the messages, will actually help you make more money and be more successful. 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 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.
A massive 40 year study following nearly 132,000 people suggests that drinking two to three cups of caffeinated coffee a day may reduced dementia risk by about 20%. One to two cups of caffeinated tea was linked to roughly 15% lower risk. But here's the key Decaf showed no benefit. Published in the Journal of American Medical association and funded by the National Institutes of Health, the research tracked participants for up to 43 years and found the advantage plateaued beyond about two and a half cups of coffee a day. More caffeine didn't add protection. Researchers say caffeine may reduce neuroinflammation and improve vascular function, but they stress this is correlation, not proof of causation. Some meta analyses show moderate coffee consumption, roughly three to four cups daily is associated with with lower mortality, while consistently exceeding five to six cups per day has been linked to anxiety, sleep, depression and in some studies elevated cardiovascular risk. So let's look at some more facts of this study. Again, 131,000 participants for 43 years were studied. 11,000 developed dementia. Now they're not claiming that the coffee caused that. That's more of just normal percentages of people who get that after so many decades. The caffeine, the decaf showed no dementia benefit, but two to three cups of coffee showed a 20% lower risk. To me, that sounds pretty substantial. The one thing about coffee that we do know is, and I've seen this printed numerous places, it's the most studied thing in the world. It's certainly the most studied drug in the world, caffeine is a drug. And so many of us are taught, well, all drugs are bad. If you're completely drug free, that's the best thing. Not necessarily. So am I telling you to go out and start a coffee drinking habit if you've never had coffee? No, but certainly a majority of adults, at least in the United States, in many parts of the Western world, already drink coffee. And there are times when you hear hysterical self help gurus telling you, oh, don't drink coffee. Worst thing in the world. Well, if it's affecting your sleep, yeah, it probably is a problem. If you are drinking in the afternoon or early evening or after dinner and you find yourself having a hard time falling asleep or waking up after four hours of sleep. Yeah. Chances are you need to make sure you don't drink any coffee after lunchtime or even mid morning. I mean, there can be all sorts of pros and cons. If you drink three cups of coffee, which this says is good, but you put tons and tons of cream and tons and tons of sugar and it gives you diabetes, well, that's not going to help either. Most recommendations are drink black coffee. Is the healthy. I try to bring drink black coffee. I do have such a fantastic cappuccino making machine. Now, I will confess, I do drink one cappuccino, I limit it to one. And if I have a second coffee in the day, I do drink it black. I put in cinnamon, nutmeg, a little bit of hot pepper, believe it or not, you might like it, you might not. I put in vanilla and I put in a grand total of five spices. I'm not claiming any of them are going to make you live longer or decrease your dementia. I do it for taste and flavor. I do not put any sugar in. There's a lot of evidence that whatever you drink, don't drink sugar, calories, that's for certain. The study looked at 17,000 women who completed cognitive testing. And again, three to four cups of coffee per day was linked to lower mortality. But five cups, five to eight cups increased your chances of health risk. So you know this idea of drinking all day long to fuel yourself, not particularly good. According to Dr. Daniel, beyond two and a half cups of coffee daily, the advantage plateaued. So I'm a huge fan of, number one, getting sleep, trying to do anything and everything you can to get eight, eight and a half hours sleep. Because lack of sleep is also highly correlated to dementia plus other health risks, plus things like obesity and diabetes. So whatever you do with coffee don't let it interfere with your sleep. Please, I beg you. If you are going to drink coffee, and I do, don't load it up with lots of sugar and cream. But if you do drink coffee and you're not receiving any negative signs, negative reactions, I personally would ignore the occasional study or the occasional health guru who tells you, oh, coffee's the word worst thing in the world. Because when you look at the meta analyses and a study like this that came out that's really Quite thorough for 43 years, it does not seem as though there is any long term negative effect with drinking a moderate amount of 2 to 3 cups of coffee per day. So that to me is the real takeaway. It's so easy to feel like you're spinning in a wheel. One day you hear a report that says you need alcohol, another day saying you shouldn't drink alcohol one day, drink coffee, the next day you don't drink coffee. At some point unless you are a full time scientist studying these things, you have to look at reputable medical sources and I'm not your source of medicine, but you have to look at meta analysis, that is those people who study all the other surveys out there and try to weight them fairly to show you what the preponderance of evidence suggests is true. And in this case, it looks like moderate coffee use is actually good for you.
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.
Hi and welcome back. Thanks so much for joining me Today. We're going to go a little deeper into some health news today. We do try to look at the top business stories, economic, technology and health stories, and culture stories every day right here on Filtered. And then look at them through the lens of personal development so that you can become more successful in your personal life as well as your professional professional life. This next story jumped out at me because you've heard it before. You've even heard me talk about it before. But I still believe it does not get the attention it deserves. A sweeping review of nearly 80,000 people suggest aerobic exercise can reduce depression symptoms as effectively and in some cases more effectively than antidepressants or psychotherapy. This was a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the analysis of over a thousand studies. This is another one of these.
More from TJ
You're Not Being Judged on Your Work Yet: What New Hires Are Really Evaluated On
