Gen Z Revolts, Craft Beer Crashes, and Musk Cancels Netflix

Foreign. Z unrest is erupting from Kathmandu to Chicago, and we'll show how economic policies that favor the old and wealthy have left young people angry, broke and priced out of a home ownership. Then inside, the strange rise of co CEOs. Why? Why? Two bosses usually means confusion, rivalry and chaos. Although sometimes it works out. Craft beer's hangover, an industry that lost its voice, can't explain what makes its product different and is now failing blind taste tests against get this, Bud Light, Elon Musk latest crusade canceling Netflix over a single cartoon that makes up just 0.013% of its catalog, even as his own platform X drowns in extremist content. And in Chicago, federal agents deploy tear gas and pepper balls against peaceful protesters and journalists outside an ICE facility. All that and more today right here. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hello and welcome. Thanks so much for joining me. This is the Monday edition of Filtered. It is Monday. I'm October 6, 2025, and we're going to dive right in to the top stories of the day, as we always do right here on the show. If you're new to the show, what we do is we look at typically the top five news stories of the day and dive deep and filter those stories through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills, all with the goal of not only informing you about the world, but giving you tips, trick tricks, tools so you have better communication, personal development habits so you can be more successful in your own life. Let's dive right into issue one. Gen Z results revolts as the system favors the old around the world, young people are losing patience. From Spain to South Korea, Gen Z is taking to the streets, furious that the global economy seems built for their grandparents, not them. According to the Washington Post, many of the protesters aren't radicals. They're just exhausted. They followed every rule, studied hard, worked long hours, stayed out of trouble. But now they can't afford homes, can't build savings, and can't imagine the stability their parents took for granted. In the US for example, a 28 year old trying to buy a median priced home today would need more than eight 80% of their annual income for a down payment. 80%. Fifty years ago, it was about 15%. Economists say the math is simple. Older generations benefited from cheap housing, pensions and rising asset values. Younger people face debt, low wages and skyrocketing rents. If policymakers ignore that divide, experts warn the next generation's rebellion won't just be online, it will be in the streets. And in fact, it is in the Streets, some places. It's not always about economics and meaning. Kathmandu, they were protesting the taking down of social media. So what's the real message here? Policymakers around the world cannot continue to ignore young people and say, these people don't vote. Let's just give more goodies to old people because they vote. They can't keep doing that or we're going to see more and more unrest and in the streets. Whether it's in Kathmandu, whether it's in Korea, whether it's in Chicago. Let's dig a little bit deeper here because this, this is a big problem. No one has been more eloquent about this issue than the commentator Scott Galloway who points out that, that old people are just systematically ripping off young people when they get elected officials to vote them. More and more benefits, more goodies, more tax breaks. It's younger people who proportionally are not getting the value and at some point are given all the debt and adding to a deficit on a yearly basis. Adding to a national debt at some point can cause a real drag on the economy. And the old people will be gone by then, presumably, so they're not going to pay for it. So let's look at some of the stats and dig a little deeper. In the United States, US government's benefits go to senior citizens by 65%. 65% of all benefits go to people more than 55 years of age, my age. Social Security and Medicare now consume 45% of the federal budget. That's nearly half the top 20 House 20 top 20% of households in terms of income receive half of all tax breaks. Guess how many Gen Z people are in that percentage? Virtually none. Gen Z and millennials combined hold just 8% of national wealth, despite forming over 50% of workers. Now you can say, well, T.J. of course, older people who've been around saving for a long time are going to have more wealth. Yeah, I get that. But there is a real structural problem with our public policy system as it is now, because there was a time certainly going back to the GI Bill after the World War II, where if you were just a guy, not particularly brighter than anyone else, no education, you went into the military, you came back, you helped win a war. Thank you. But you had so many governmental goodies. You basically could get a house, you could get a college education for no money or very little money. You showed up, you paid one debt to society, and now you were kind of set for a life. Now you had to work, you had to show up to the factory, you had to do other things, but you were able to own a home. You were able to have an American dream. Middle class barbecue in the backyard existence. Increasingly today that isn't happening now. Part of it is structural change in the worldwide economy. I get that there's competition from a lot of places that were just doing subsistence farming back in 1946. I get that. But a part of it is sheer government policies. And it's United States is the worst I'm familiar with. But certainly there are other countries around the world where the government goodies go to senior citizens increasingly who don't need it. Before Social Security, the poorest demographic in the United States was senior citizens. If you were a senior citizen In America in 1930, there was a pretty good chance you were really poor because you couldn't work hard anymore. And there was no other way of sustaining yourself. Other pensions were not really very common. There was no Social Security. And so the country decided, we just don't want to see our parents, our grandparents dying, starving in the streets and dying. So they created things like Social Security. It was a good idea at the time. It's still a good idea. But at some point, it goes too far when more and more and more of the government's heavy hand, and I'm not anti government necessarily, but if more and more of the government's heavy hand is helping everyone over a certain age, things start to become very unequal. You get to the point where senior citizens are just vastly wealthier than their kids and their grandkids. And the big problem is the kids can't get on that first run. They can't get homeownership. They can't get out of student debt. Let's look at some more stats here. Median price to income ratio has ballooned from 2.2 in 1970 to 6.8 today. What does that mean? In 1970, if you took your income, let's say your income was $10,000 a year, that would mean you could buy a house for $22,000. These days, if your income is, say, $100,000, you need $680,000 to buy that house. That's the cost of the median house. So again, I'm doing these proportionally, not. That's not the specific number. The typical down payment of annual income today for a young person, or really anyone, is 81% of your annual income. 81%. In the 1970s, it was 15%. And a lot of millennials don't know that. But at some point, instinctively, they sense, hey, we're getting screwed here. Something is out of whack. Something just isn't fair. It's not working for us. And that's part of why we're seeing civil unrest around the world again. Every country is a little bit different. And in Nepal, the whole parliament was taken over and parliament moved to discord because people were outraged at the government shutting down social media. So younger people want their forms of communication. They want some things that are new. But you know what else they want? They do in fact, want a piece of the pie. They do want money for things like houses they would like to get out of debt. So this is something policy makers are going to have to take into consideration or you're going to see more pitchforks at the gate. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm blaming the victim here, but I'm going to go ahead and blame the victim. Young people, you had a vote. There is a reason senior citizens get so many goodies from governments around the world. They show up to vote. Now, it's not as sexy or glamorous as the big protest march, as burning politicians in fhe as shouting chants in front of government. That's sexy. That's fun. That's the stuff of TV news and movies. You know what isn't really sexy and fun? Just showing up to the precinct and voting on election day and specifically voting for politicians who favor the policies you're looking for. Now here in the United States, a lot of people complaining about, why are all of our politicians 180 years old? Well, young people, why don't you start running for office and stop voting for people who look like me and I'm not nearly as young as our last president or our current president. Vote for younger people. Run for office. As much fun as it is to make fun of an old coot like Joe Biden, let's give him some credit. He ran for public office when he was 29 years old as a senator. And before that he ran for public office and he was, I think 27 or 28 years old. So he was the young, youthful guard at one point a long, long time ago. That could be you. So I want you to think about actually running for office Some more stats that are important. Student loan debt exceeds $1,000,000,000,000. This is delaying home purchases for an entire generation. So one of the reasons younger people in America, this is more of an American problem than what we're seeing in other countries is the cost of education has skyrocketed. Well, well beyond any proportion you would assume from inflation. The other big Advantage baby boomers at people like me is college education was really cheap. I had the benefit of going to one of the best exclusive colleges in the country. And it was, I think $8,500 a year, all in food, tuition, everything. So that's just not very expensive compared to kids getting hundreds of thousands of debt, especially if they go to professional school. So this is rightly something a lot of young people are upset about and angry about it. It doesn't have to be this way. Our federal government is instrumental in a lot of policy on education because we fund so much of it. And it was there in lockstep when so many universities said, hey, we want to charge more money because we want to seem as fancy and as exclusive as other prestigious colleges that charge a lot of money. And so it just ratcheted up well beyond inflation. And it's not fair. It first of all, it increases the value of my own education because other people can't afford it or get it. And it makes it unobtainable to so many others. And the people who do get it are saddled with this mountainous debt. Therefore you can't buy a house, therefore you don't have the resources to run for political office. So all these things tie together as well, other things. The OECD data show that young adults real incomes have stagnated while housing and health costs have declined doubled. Youth unemployment above 20% in nations like Nepal also fuels unrest and migration. So that is not as big of a problem here in the United States, although we are seeing a rise of unemployment among young, college educated, freshly minted college grads that we've not seen before. Economists are warning about gerontocratic geriatric. The geriatrics is really what we're talking about. Old people. That's a fancy word of saying politics run by and for old people. And I just botched the word. But I think you get what I'm talking about. It threatens social stability and the benefits keep skewing older because in America now there is a whole generation, baby boomers, even some younger, where if you bought your home, you paid off your home. You were able to get a house inexpensively, your education was inexpensive, you got this momentum. Now you got money in the stock market. The stock market has exploded. Great. Everyone can buy the stocks, right? Well, wrong. If you are a young person today and you're saddled with student debt, you're saddled with massively higher health care costs than your parents and grandparents ever had to pay and the cost of houses 10 times more than it used to be. Forget trying to put money into a 401k. It's all well and good for people like me to say, you know, put 10, 20% of your income every month into a low cost index fund in the S&P 500 and you'll be rich by the time you retire. It's easy for me to say that. It's also true. The problem is there's nothing left at the end of the month for so many people because of these societal forces beyond their control. And it's often a result of specific public policies that government officials and politicians have made. So I think we're going to see a lot more unrest for those of you who live in still functioning democracies. And when it comes to whether that applies to the United States, my big advice though, is run for office or find public officials and candidates willing to support your own interest. Because senior citizens do it all the time. They all the time say, I don't care what you stand for in any other issue. If you don't vote to give me a Social Security increase, if you don't vote to give me more and more health care, I'm going to vote you out of office. It's very clear. It's focused, it's, it's tactical. It's also strategic. And it works for senior citizens. They get what they want. So if you're a young person, you got to start doing the same thing. And before you go out and start the big protest, because those are fun and it's exciting and you feel like a rebel, get to the ballot box. If you're in a country that still lets you vote. And I hope that come election time here in the United States, that still applies to us. But we'll see 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 liked today's episode, you'll love my online courses@mediatrainingworldwide.com check them out now and level up your skills. Welcome back to Filtered. I'm your host, TJ Walker. If this is your first time here, here's what we are all about. We look at the top stories of the day and then we analyze them. We filter them through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills, all with the idea of making you not only more informed, but to have more skills. You need to be successful and thriving in your personal life and your professional life. Let's dive right into issue two. Two Bosses, one Mess the rise of co CEOs Spotify's Daniel Ek is stepping down. Instead of one replacement, he's naming two. Alex Nordstrom and Gustav Saderstrom. They'll join a growing list of co chief executives at big corporations alongside Comcast and Oracle. According to the New York Times, it sounds moderate, even collaborative, but it doesn't always end that well. At Charles Schwab, co CEO split the company into rival camps before one quit in frustration at Deutsche bank and SAP. Power struggles and blurred accountability follow communication. Consultants call it a crisis of message discipline. Two leaders can't sound like one voice and employees end up confused about priorities. As one analyst told the Times, shared authority is rarely shared clarity. Okay, so what's the real message here? Can occasionally two CEOs co CEOs work? Yeah, but it's rare. It's really sending a message to shareholders in the rest of the world. We can't make up our mind. We're not really sure who should have the largest voice in our company. So you can kind of guess each day on a case by case basis and that leads to confusion. Okay, again, I don't want to seem too dogmatic. There are companies that have had co CEOs and done extremely well. Netflix, through most of its history has had a long part of its history has had co CEOs and it's worked out well. Now there are some times where there's a co CEO, but it's with an asterisk. When you look at a company like Oracle, yeah, they have co CEOs, but the chairman is Larry Ellison and he still owns some 45% of the company. So you can bet your bottom dollar when there's a big decision or something crucial. Larry's making the final decision. He might not be the one appearing on the quarterly conference calls, but he really is the one where big, big decisions are going to be made by it. So there's still clarity. Now look, I don't want to sound like an old codger, an old coot. TJ's an old white man. He wants a top down, one person KING no, I'm very much in favor of inclusion, democracy, more participation, the idea that not one person isn't a genius in all things. However, running a company is a little different. It's not a city, it's not a state, it's not a country. It's not meant to be a pure democracy. Sometimes you need to speak with one voice to let your investors know what's important. Your key stakeholders, the media, your top vendors, your, your employees. You sometimes have to turn the ship of what your whole organization is about. It's simply harder to do that with one person with two people at the helm. It also kind of muddles the issue of who's really in charge, who should get the credit when things go well, who should get blamed when things don't go well, who needs to be fired when performance is bad, you automatically toss them out. Now let me share with you some research. Korn Ferry shows did some research showing that productivity drops 15 to 20% when decision authority is split. The intricacies of how they figured that out I don't know but I'll share with you some more stats. Most successful cases KKR early Google worked only because of clear division of labor was enforced and communication aligned daily. Now the two founders of Google kind of ran things earlier, but even they were smart enough to realize we don't really know what we're doing. If we want to take this company public, let's bring in an adult like Eric Schmidt to run things and be the one voice so it can work occasionally. It's a little more common in Europe and in Europe the whole idea of more voices being a part of a company is more acceptable. I mean in Germany, for example, this blows the minds of a lot of Americans and American investors. But in Germany it's written into the law that unions have a seat on the board of directors of a company. I mean, most Americans cannot even comprehend that. I do think institutions can communicate as institutions, but I also think that there's nothing like one human voice speaking where you can see that person. Whether it's in person at a financial conference, whether it is on a video, whether it's an ad to see one company speaking on behalf of a company or one individual, one CEO speaking on behalf of a company I do think brings clarity. Now I have nothing wrong with obviously CEOs delegating all CEOs delegate. Sometimes I worry that the the title of co CEO is given to someone just to make them feel good. Just to make them their not feel bad and run away and go to another company. And I get it. If you got top talent, sometimes you got to do whatever it takes to keep them. If it's a situation where, let's say there's a founder and people are kind of saying, hey TJ, you're getting a little old, you're 70 years old, it's time to start thinking about a successor. Sometimes it can make sense. You've groomed top talent and you've got someone who you really want to take over and you're afraid they'll be poached by another company. B CEO. They're ready to be a CEO, especially if it's a big publicly traded company. There have been times when people say, okay, we're going to name you co CEO. You know, the old guy's still going to be here. He's going to be a CEO as well. But once he retires, you're going to be the sole CEO. That has happened from time to time and that can work out. But I've also seen that happen in places like Charles Schwab where it didn't work. The the old guy all of a sudden didn't like other people addressing the young guy and it's usually a guy, but could be a woman doesn't like other people addressing the new co CEO and they do everything they can to sabotage them and they run them out of the company. I've seen that happen. But of course there have been times when the founder CEO still has the title of CEO but the other younger person is kind of running things. And then when the person retires or dies, it is a smooth transition. Here's my advice to you. If you're an investor and this show is not primarily about investing advice, I'm not telling you to buy or sell anyone's stock. I do think you should be a little skeptical of a company that all of a sudden goes from one CEO to two CEOs because sometimes it is a sign of we're not really quite sure what to do and our board can't really make tough decisions. Not saying dump the stock, but I am saying be skeptical because as noted, Korn Ferry has this study showing 15 to 20% drop in productivity because it does raise the question like well, if two is better than one, why not three CEOs, why not four? Why not a whole committee? And that clearly is not going to be in any company's or investors best interest. More in a moment 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. Welcome back to Filtered with TJ Walker. I appreciate you spending time with me today. Here's what I do here. This is not a completely straight newscast. It's not just facts. You can get facts anywhere in the Internet. What we're doing is looking what I perceive to be five of the most important or interesting or useful stories out there in any one 24 hour news cycle. And then I analyze them. I filter these stories through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills based on my own experience. I have 40 years of experience working with presidents of country CEOs, billionaire Wall street managers, executives of every industry, plus world famous athletes, celebrities, Miss Universes, people like that. So I'm bringing to you real world experience based on what I've done, face to face with leaders who are trying to communicate with you, many of whom are still in the news every day. I'm giving you the other side so you learn how to do it and I give you my honest opinions. I'm not trying to spin it one way or the other. Everyone has biases. I have a bias. But my number one bias is in favor of helping you improve your own communication skills, personal development skills to be more successful. So please keep that in mind. I guarantee you at some point you'll hear something from me that will offend your own political beliefs. I don't hold back, but bear in mind this is not primarily a political punditry show. This is a show about business news, technology news, economic news, culture news. But occasionally politics does weave into it. So if you listen long enough, you'll hear something that will perhaps offend you or make you think, well, TJ's clearly in the other camp. He's, you know, he's skewed, he's biased. Timeout. I'm not trying to spin you one way or the other. I am a sane, sensible centrist and I'm not running for public office I'm telling it like it is and I let the chips fall where they may. And this next story is a perfect example because I guarantee you, some of you are going to be outraged by what I say. Some of you are going to think I am insane. And guess what? I'm not talking about politics at all. Let's dive right in. Craft beers identity crisis. America's craft beer boom is now a bust. The New York Times reports more breweries have closed than opened in the past year, the first time in two decades. At 21st Amendment Brewery in San Francisco, the taps are going dry after 25 years. Founders say they were driven by passion, but the business stopped making money years ago. Part of the problem, most drinkers can't tell one unique beer from another. Double blind taste tests by the Guardian and Popular Mechanics and other publications found that in blind trials comparing, get this, you're not going to believe me, but I am in the section of the show where I report facts. What they found that is that in blind trials, meaning you don't let people, you don't have to put blinds on them necessarily, but you don't let them know what they're actually tasting. Comparing Budweiser, Coors, Miller and high end IPAs, most people. Most people couldn't distinguish them, often rating mass market beers higher without clear communication about what makes their products special. Craft brewers are stuck with higher cost and shrinking demand. It's a storytelling failure as much as a financial one. Okay, so what's the real message here? The craft brewing industry is in a free fall. They're going out of business every day. And the problem is not that people have less spending money or drink less beer. The problem is, it's a little secret. Nobody can tell the difference between most craft beers and Budweiser and the cheap stuff. It's all in the mind. And it's too hard to spread that fantasy generation after generation. Sorry. Okay, let's dig a little deeper here. And I know some of you are saying, well, DJ, that's crazy. I know my IPAs and I know my Stella from Coors Light. That's insane. I know how. Have you ever done a true double blind taste test? That is where someone gathers, for example, six different types of beer. There's no label on it, they know what it is. They then hand it to someone else who also, who doesn't know which is which. They put it in front of you. They ask you to taste it, write down what it is, and if you think you can pass that to, you might be right. You might have one out of a thousand or one out of 100 taste buds, but most people can't. And that's the real problem for these, these micro breweries and all this craft beer is it just doesn't taste any different. It seems cooler. You go into a nice craft beer distillery and you see all the distilling thing in it. It looks cool, it looks hip. I remember the last time I went to Asheville, North Carolina, it seemed like there were more craft breweries and craft distilleries than there were seven Elevens or libraries or churches. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but at some point there's just not enough demand because it has to cost more because of old machinery than just going down to the grocery store and getting a cord. Now, I should tell you at this point, full disclosure, I don't really like beer. Now, I'm not a teetotaler, but beer doesn't do much. So if you want to just write me off as a philistine, as someone totally unsophisticated, because I don't share your taste for craft beer, you can do that, but you can't simply ignore data. I've long contended that for most beer, for that matter most liquor, most wine, what's really going on is the phenomena of the emperor wears no clothes. Saying you like a particular beer or a particular wine or a particular liquor or vodka is a way of signaling to other people, look how cool I am. I'm not one of these low level savages who drinks like Coors Light. I drink this nice import. It's a way of signaling. It's a way of showing status and we convince ourselves of that. If you are absolutely convinced 100% that you can taste the difference of all these different beers, I believe you're sincere. I don't actually believe you can do it unless I see you do a double blind taste test. Let me share with you some more of the specifics of what actually happened. Now, again, the sale of craft beer, down 4% in 2024, the US now has 9,900 breweries, double what it had in 2013. There's just no possible way the economics of that makes sense. I'm sorry, in the Guardian blind test, 60% could not tell craft beer from Budweiser or Heineken. 60%, that's a majority. I know it's not you, but believe me, your friends and the other people at that craft brewery, or think they're being cool and hip, can't tell the Difference between Budweiser. Yeah, you hate Budweiser. I don't like it either. But guess what? I don't like any beer. So I'm not an objective analyst. Popular Mechanics experts guessed right only 33% of the time. Essentially the same as pure chance. The Washington Post did a test. Miller Light outranked several high end ip. This is when they just line up a whole bunch of beers and they ask people rate them in terms of what do you like? Miller Light came out first. And I guarantee you if you go to a, a nice high end craft brewery and ask people, do you like Miller? How dare you? That's an outrage. What do you think I am, savage? People would say that. And yet when you put the double blind test to them, they can't tell the difference. Not only can they not tell, they actually preferred Miller Lite to high end IPAs. Now, there's nothing at all uncommon about this in the world of blind taste tests for drinks. I've seen results of blind taste tests for wines showing the most popular wine is a relatively sweet wine made in New Jersey. It won a popularity contest with some of the finest California wines and French wines. Same with vodkas. It's often the inexpensive one. Because people are buying into a label, they're buying into an image, they're buying into a brand of who they aspire to be. It's not really about taste, I'm sorry to say. Breweries that survive, like Sierra Nevada, invest heavily in brand storytelling, not recipe tweaks. Now, Sierra Nevada is, is huge. I've been to their, their craft brewery in Asheville, North Carolina, and it's a gigantic, beautiful place and it's a whole experience. You do a tasting dinner. I get why they're surviving because they realize it's not really about the beer. It's about creating an image, an atmosphere, an experience. People who do that will in fact survive. But I think you can expect to see more and more people exiting this business because just saying something is craft. I mean, I'm kind of tired of hearing people just put the word craft on something and expecting you and me to be a rube and say, oh, I'll gladly pay double, I'll gladly pay three times as much. Ultimately, it's about, are you creating something that has a meaningful difference, a meaningful experience difference, a result difference? I can't just tell you this is a craft podcast, so instead of getting it for free, you should pay a dollar more for every or a dollar for every one of my. I can't just tell you that words have to mean things. And unfortunately, and I, I know you can say, well, we don't have all the preservatives and coloring, blah, blah, blah. People can't tell the difference between craft beer and regular beer. Now, I may have alienated a lot of you. I may have lost a number of sponsorships. I guess we're not going to see any craft brewing companies advertising on filtered with T.J. walker. That's okay. I give it to you straight. I try to give you the best available information and insight. So what's the real message for you is you do have to worry about. Are you truly communicating something meaningful to people? There's always a superficial way of luring people in. A little better lighting, some logo design on your brewery, restaurant, bar that just looks different than a big chain. There's superficial ways of bringing people in, but at some point, you got to deliver the goods. You have to deliver something that is completely meaningful to be. It's got to be unique in some way. There's got to be some advantage. There has to be a unique selling proposition. To look at this from a pure marketing standpoint. And unfortunately, more and more consumers are coming to the conclusion there's just no unique selling proposition to most craft beers. Sorry, I know that offends some people. The other thing is this idea that you should start a craft because this has happened repeatedly, this idea that you should start a craft brewery because you have a passion for beer is one of the lamest possible reasons to start a business. Now, I understand Steve Jobs, many others say, follow your passion. Follow your passion, and then you'll never work a day in your life. You'll always be engaged. Yeah, but it's not fun to follow your passion and go bankrupt. It's not fun to follow your passion, go into massive debt, open the doors and have one customer come in. Meanwhile, your overhead for the day was $2,000. That's not a lot of fun. It's very easy to drain your passion out of things when that happens. So I want you to follow. I'm following my passion right now. And I have most of my life. I'm doing this because I genuinely love it. But I didn't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on machinery for a factory to brew my beer or to brew my podcast. There is a difference. When you're following your passion, you have to be candid and honest with yourself and ask you, does anyone else care about this passion? Because if it's just you, that's okay. There's a word for it. It's called a hobby. And there are a lot of people who enjoy the hobby of brewing a batch of beer for their I have many friends who do that. They love it. I've tasted it. Tastes like any other beer to me, but they love it. Nothing wrong with that. So I urge you, if you have a passion for crafting beer, make it in your basement, make it in your bathtub, or wherever people do it. But don't, I beg you, don't go to all your family and friends and your local banker and say, please invest in my dream. Give me a half a million dollars so I can start yet another craft brewery. Because that's just an expensive hobby. More in a moment after these words. We'll be right back after this break. Want more? Grab my 5 book success library for $9.95 at tjwalker.com 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. Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to tjwalker.com Advertisement welcome back story for Musk vs Netflix one cartoon, one outrage cycle Elon Musk has a new target, and it is Netflix. The billionaire is calling on followers to cancel their subscriptions over Transformers Earth Spark. It's a cartoon featuring a non binary robot. The backlash centers on a single clip where a robot tells a child that being neither male nor female is a wonderful experience, but perspective helps. Netflix currently hosts around 9,000 total titles of movies and TV shows. The show Musk is railing against represents 0.013% of all content. Critics note that X Musk own platform contains a much higher percentage of pro Nazi and extremist material, much higher than Netflix does of woke content. In other words, he's boycotting the mirror while selling the glass. Okay, what's the real message here? Elon Musk is once again showing us all of his family dramas worked out in public space. He's apparently so outraged that his own child became non binary that he wants to spend his time attacking Netflix for far, far, far less than 0.01% of its content doing something that's offensive. Meanwhile, a thousandfold higher percent of content on X is openly pro racist, pro Nazi, pro extremist, and apparently like lots about free speech. But Netflix, oh boy, you better not say anything that talks bad about things that relate to what happens in my family. Let's dig a little deeper here. So to be clear, it's not censorship asking people to cancel a subscription because you think somebody is putting out awful content. That's the free market. There's nothing wrong with that. But when others have said, let's, let's get off Twitter, let's get off X, let's cancel quick, he's the first one to say, oh, you're not in favor of free speech, you're in favor of censorship. So he's constantly muddling these issues. And with Musk, this is bizarre. Like, you know, he gets angry with someone, so he calls them a pedo, short for a pedophile. And it turns out, well, apparently he has a lot of experience with that. Based on well reported sources about Elon Musk's father. Elon Musk's father apparently had numerous, numerous credible allegations, according to multiple family members of being a pedophile. Not towards Elon, although who really knows? So the things sort of animating him are, you know, you're bad, you must be a pedophile without any facts whatsoever. That's one of his traits and one of his characteristics. And now saying, okay, we're all in favor of free speech, as long as it's pro Nazi and pro white, pro extremist and race, that's all good. But here's a media company that showed a second of a cartoon clip that somehow suggested it's not bad to be non binary. And that's, that's what we should all get upset about. That's the outrage. Don't cancel it. Your family may enjoy hours and hours and hours of relaxation, enjoyment, but you should cancel all that. You should end all of your family's entertainment because of some show you probably never heard of until now that you're never going to watch. So look, if, if we were back in the early days when I was a kid and there's three TV networks to choose from and there's no Internet, there's no cable, there weren't even videotapes back then. And one of those networks decided to put on in prime time for three hours, a, a far right or left or extremist commentator dominating it. And you knew, like there was no way you would avoid that person. And everyone else had heard it and a third of the nation was watching it. Yeah, I could get sort of saying, okay, that's too much. Let's cancel it. Let's unsubscribe, let's. But we're talking about Netflix here. They have 9,150 titles in their life. I believe in that available to the U.S. it's a little bit different in every country based on rights. But the point is thousands and thousands and thousands of shows. Here's a solution, Elon, watch a different show. I mean, there's, there's seemingly endless shows about how great you are and how to be a brilliant. Like Elon Musk and Elon Musk biographies. Watch those if you want. There are numerous, numerous biographies about. Yeah, Tesla, the namesake of your car company. Watch that. So it's almost like saying, cancel the Internet because there's something on the Internet I don't like. Now, I understand Netflix is not the same thing as the Internet, and I understand at some point they had to spend money on this. You could use that as a factor if it were really sending some horrible evil message. But the idea that saying it's okay to be non binary, which is essentially the message from this cartoon for a couple of seconds, the idea that that's such an attro. Oh, boy. There's all these kids out there who are perfectly happy being gay or straight, and now they're like, now that that cartoon mentioned it for one second, you know what? I'm no longer a man or a woman. All these people watching this show who are very happy being a boy or a girl now are all of a sudden, because of one cartoon, going to say, you know, I'm no longer happy being a boy or a girl. I'm going to say I'm neither. Is that really how this works? I don't think so. I'm not an expert on human sexuality or gender idea or gender politics. I don't really think that's how it works. So once again we see Elon Musk playing out his own traumas in his life because his own child, who is non binary, apparently hates his guts, apparently doesn't speak to him, apparently thinks he's the worst parent in the world. And I gather a number of his kids. And when it comes to the number, who really knows? I lost track. After about a dozen or so, and multiple wives, multiple women he's having children with, he somehow sees it upon his as his mission because he's so brilliant, he has to reproduce as often as possible. We're going to leave that topic for another day. Now here's what is interesting. According to Netflix data, family animation viewership is up 12%. The cancellation the call for cancellation is having no impact whatsoever. The Transformer scene aired on Paramount in 2022 before moving to Netflix. So Musk's attack has come two years late. Funny, I don't see him attacking Paramount because that's now owned by the child, one of the Nepo babies of one of Musk's big buddies, Larry Ellison. So I guess you get a pass if you're one of Elon Musk's buddies and you can't do damage. The first two years the show is out, but now it's somehow so damaging we need to boycott it. Utterly ridiculous, as is increasingly everything Elon Musk says and does. Like what you heard. Don't let the algorithm bury us. Subscribe now@substack.com jwalkersuccess1 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. Welcome back to Filtered with TJ Walker. I appreciate you being here today. We've got one more big issue for you today we're going to hop into in just one moment. So Tear Gas and Pepper Bowls ICE Crackdown in Chicago Shocking new footage from Broadview, Illinois shows federal agents using tear gas, pepper balls and physical force against protesters, members of the clergy and journalists outside an ICE processing center. According to the Guardian, the confrontation is a part of Operation Midway Blitz. The Trump administration's new immigration enforcement surge videos show peaceful demonstrators dragged to the ground, including Reverend David Black, who says he was hit seven or eight times while praying. Local officials, including the mayor of Broadview, accused ICE of, quote, making war in our community. Even nearby businesses reported tear gas leaking into their workplaces. Civil rights groups say the crackdown marks an escalation of violence against non violent protest and a disturbing warning for how federal power can be used against dissent. So what's the real message here? Trump is sending a message to America. If you don't like me, if you don't support me, you are now a criminal and I will come arrest you. Crack your skull if that's what it takes. And don't even think about showing up at a voting booth next year unless you're on Team Trump. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. I hope I'm wrong on that last part, but I fear that I'm correct. Because, look, there are times in a country's history where there is genuine civil unrest. And you have governors of states and mayors saying, please, we need help, call in the cavalry. That's not what's happening here. You have Trump going to cities that have in some respects, the lowest crime rate they've had in years and years and years. Typically, most of the time, the crime is low and lower. And he's using this as a context to crack skills, be tough, be macho and intimidate people. And you know what? It is intimidating. It's easy to talk tough if you're in a studio, as I am, or you're just pontificating. But when someone's there and they've got the guns and they've got the clubs, it is intimidating. There's no doubt about it. Let's look at some more of the facts here. Again, this Reverend David Black struck eight times while kneeling in prayer because he had the temerity to be out in public in a way that wasn't holding a Trump sign. That's essentially what his crime was. Tear gas is being used. Legal observers wearing green hats were targeted. So there were people there specifically saying, I'm not a part of this. I'm here to observe. For legal monitoring reasons, they were targeted. That's extraordinarily unusual. The Guardian reporters documented detained media chemical exposure. Illinois has seen 4,900 detentions this year, most of them under Operation Midway Blitz. The Department of Homeland Security claimed public safety, but footage shows there was no provocation by protesters. Civil rights attorneys warned repeated use of military style tactics chills free speech. Well, no kidding. If you think that if you're going to go to a no King's Day protest, for example, but that you could be body slammed and have your skull cracked and you have children or family responsibilities, you're going to think, eh, maybe I'm not going to use my constitutional right for free speech. Maybe I'll stay home. And that is what dictators and far right authoritarian leaders want. They want you to stay home. Because Trump is smart enough, he is savvy enough to look at history and see there's a certain threshold when enough people, people take the streets, whether it is toppling Marcos, whether it's toppling the Shah or any other far right leader, when there's a certain threshold of people in the streets chanting, demanding that you leave, you have no choice. But if you can chill dissent, if you can scare people, if you can intimidate them and make them so fearful that just think, oh, I'm going to stay. If you can make it like Russia, no one is willing to go out and speak against the dictator there. There is too much fear. I mean, that's how the Soviet Union stayed around for decade after decade after decade. Dissent was stifled. And that is exactly what's happening here, folks. This concludes the main portion of our show. What I like to do most days is we go into a grab bag section of the show where I look at other stories. We don't have the time to go into as much depth, but I do want to bring attention to you, to some of these stories. This next one is bow to the Emperor. A New York Times magazine survey of 50 top legal experts finds near unanimous alarm at how the Trump administration has weaponized the Justice Department. Department. No kidding. Even Republicans say the department now functions as a tool of the White House, with prosecutors pressured to charge political enemies and drop cases against allies. Now, it's one thing if you see a commentator on MSNBC or if you see Bernie Sanders criticizing Trump's lawlessness, it's easy to just, well, they're just partisan hacks. You know, everyone's guilty of this. No. The New York Times took the time to interview and poll 50 of the top legal minds in the country, and they have Republican former judges, Republican former prosecutors, Republican political leaders. They did not just ask a handful of liberal legal professors at Harvard or Yale. They really went all across the spectrum. They did it last year before Trump was in power. And it was kind of a mix because so many people said, look, he's really going to do like he did last time he was in office. He says extreme things. But when you look at what he did in his first term, he by and large stuck with traditional lawyers who went to good law schools, clerked under serious judges, and did things by the books. Did he occasionally push and, yeah, but by and large, he appointed people from the mainstream legal community. He's not doing that anymore. So the people who said last year, we don't really have to worry about Trump now, they're lighting their hair on fire. They're saying this is an atrocity. They're saying, this guy is not even considering traditional qualifications for leadership position in, in the judiciary or the Department of Justice. He's looking for one criteria and one criteria alone. Are you willing to be my slave? Are you willing to be my henchman if I say on a sunny day it's cloudy and rainy out? Are you willing to say it's cloudy and raining out even if it's a sunny day? If the answer is no, your legal career is over. If the answer is yes, well, have we got a fast track for you. That is what's going on in our government today. It's not politics as usual. It's not everybody does it. This is an absolute, critical, critical destruction of our. Not just our Department of Justice, but the very rule of law this country was based on, and it's an absolute disaster. Okay, what do you think? You can weigh in on this? I'd love to hear from you. You can post comments if you're watching this live. You can Post comments on YouTube, on TikTok, on Twitch, on LinkedIn, on X, on any of the other platforms we're on. If you're listening to this on your favorite podcasting platform, thank you. We've only been doing this on the podcast platforms for about 35 days. So you can either post a comment there sometimes, or you can always go to the TJ Walker Success Channel on YouTube and go to the Post tab and you can leave a comment there as well. I would love to hear from you. Okay, our next grab bag issue. According to the Telegraph, Senator Ted Cruz is distancing himself from Trump's tariffs and censorship threats, signaling a potential 2028 run. Now, those of you who may remember and follow US Politics closely, Ted Cruz was the last MAN Standing in 2016 in the Republican primary before he had to throw in the towel and endorse Donald Trump. He clearly is an extraordinarily ambitious man. He, like Trump, is respected for being extraordinarily smart, very high iq, and even the, well, at least formerly Democratic liberal professor at Harvard, Alan Dershowitz, once taught Ted Cruz and said, this man is brilliant, not saying that about Trump, even though he's defended Trump. So Ted Cruz is smart. I'll never forget the first time I saw him give a speech. It was, I believe, the 20042012 Republican Convention. I saw him speak, and I'm not a fan of his. I have to tell you, I saw him speak and I was like, my jaw dropped. And I thought, wow, this guy's running for president. He was walking the stage, commanding with extreme confidence, not just sitting there reading the teleprompter. He really stood out as a great speaker. In fact, I went on YouTube and made a prediction that, wow, this guy's going to Run for president. President. Everyone instantly laughed at me, chastised me, and said, TJ it just shows how stupid and ignorant you are. He was born in Canada. He's not eligible to run. Well, apparently the rules don't apply to you if you're a Republican. So he got. He got rid of that rule and he did, in fact, run, and no one's even mentioned it again. So he clearly can run. He's not going to be prohibited based on having been born in Canada. And he is a great speaker. Now, here's the interesting part. According to the. To the Telegraph, he's trying to position himself as more of a mainstream, traditional, conservative Republican. That means no tariffs. That means following the rule of law and positioning himself as sort of opposite of JD Vance, who was the current front runner. When you ask polls, who would you vote for if in the next election, if Trump weren't running among Republicans? And J.D. vance is sort of seen as. I'll do whatever Trump's been saying. Here's my big question, though. I'm not sure there's much of a marketplace in the Republican Party for the traditional conservatism of free markets and low taxes. That's what the Republican Party ran on for years and years. And Trump, to his credit, to his utter brilliance, realized most voters don't give a hoot about any of this cutting taxes for the wealthy and free market theory. They don't care about that. They want punishment, they want retribution. They want someone attacking the Democrats, and they want action to look like a tough guy in the international scene. If that means tariffs, they love it. That was Trump's brilliance, and I give him credit for that. It clearly resonated. So Ted Cruz, I think, seems to be on the wrong side of this divide within the Republican Party. And can he overcome? Can he be a shapeshifter? Yeah. I mean, here's a guy who Trump ridiculed. He called him a lying Ted, said it certainly implied that Ted Cruz's father killed Kennedy, was a part of the utter nonsense, but implied that Ted Cruz's father assassinated Kennedy and said that Ted Cruz's wife was ugly. And what does Ted Cruz do? I'm the most pro Trump senator in the United States Senate. So he clearly has no sense of shame. He clearly has no spine or core principles he's willing to stand for. So you never know. He may outdo Trump. He may go bigger on tariffs than Trump is if he thinks that's what it takes to become president. I do think Ted Cruz is smart. He's hardworking and he is ambitious. He's also widely hated and despised as a political figure, especially by people who know him. Al Franken once famously said, I hate Ted Cruz and I like it more than any other senator does. And boy, we miss Al Franken from being in the Senate. So I'm going to keep an eye on Ted Cruz, as I think you should, too. All of this is based on the premise that there is a 2028 election for president, as we're seeing today across the country with increasing incursions of federal forces into cities, cracking down on inner cities, cracking down on Democratic led cities and states. I don't know that we're really going to have an election. I think that Trump, and I do think Trump occasionally is honest. I do think you have to listen to him. And Trump has said consistently the only thing he regrets from his first term was leaving office. I've said it before here, I'll say it again. I do not think Donald Trump will ever leave the White House unless he is in a horizontal position. And I'm not wishing him ill will. I just don't think he's going to leave. He's going to use some context, national emergency. He'll just get the Supreme Court to say, oh, there's no amendment to the Constitution limiting you to two terms. If he just gets his judges to say it and no one's willing to enforce it, he'll just run for a third term. So I do not have any degree of confidence that there in fact will be another election for a long time in America. So Ted Cruz might have to wait. But he's a lot younger than Donald Trump. Not as young as J.D. vance, though. So we'll see. Ted Cruz, always an interesting person to keep an eye on. I should point out one other thing about Ted Cruz. He did some. He's an extraordinarily articulate person. But he was giving a speech on the floor of the Senate last week and he said we have to be again, you know, something like we have to be against this. We could all agree against this and against prosecuting the child molesters. He made it sound like he was in favor of, made it sound like he was pro pedophile. Now, it can happen to anyone. I'm sure I've had a verbal slip that people could make fun of, but it was funny and to his credit, he owned up to it and said, yeah, made a mistake. We all do. I don't think that will hurt him in the long run. Final grab bag issue of the day. I wanted to address. This is from people magazine. IO Marino Neto of Brazil just celebrated his 113th birthday. So I want to say happy birthday and forgive me if I'm not getting your name correct. I think it's Yayo is his first name. He was born in 1912. He's the 26th oldest man ever recorded. Pretty old. Now, the oldest person right now is a woman. She's 116 years old. But he credits his longevity to blood transfusions and taking 159 supplements a day and going to a fancy gym member. No, I'm kidding. That's not what he said at all. He credits his longevity to being in a community, having surrounding himself with love, surrounding himself with people he loves. He did not mention 159 supplements he takes each day. In fact, according to what I saw, he doesn't take any. He's not crediting it to fancy gym memberships. Now, you've heard this before, but I do think it bears some repetition because certainly if you listen to podcasts, you hear again and again and again by smart, intelligent, articulate people. Take this gummy. Take this athletic greens. Take this magic potion, this magic pill. This will help you recover from a hangover. And that's because those podcasters like money. They get money from selling a product that doesn't necessarily help you and could often hurt you in terms of liver and kidney damage. You don't make money stressing to people you want to live longer. Try to reduce stress in your life by surrounding yourself with people you love. Socialize with people. Don't spend more and more time home alone staring at a phone or a screen. You don't hear many podcasters talk about that because there's no money in it. And I like money too. But you know what? I have money, okay? I want to help you. And it bears repeating. The people who live the longest lives and seem to have their minds intact as well. It's not about spending money on more potions and pills. It's about things like daily movement, walking, gardening, maybe finding a sport you like surrounding yourself with people you love having conversations with real people. And that is a lot more likely to help you not just live longer, but have a longer health span as well. I'm TJ Walker and I hope you have a long, healthy life and I appreciate you spending time with me today. Again, please leave comments, questions, disagreements. Post it. I do read everything. I look forward to seeing you here tomorrow. And please, please leave a review, especially if you're on any podcast platform. We've only been on podcasting for about 35 days and trying to let more people know if you're watching on YouTube or TikTok or anyplace else. Please leave messages. Sign up for notifications and subscriptions. Thanks. See you tomorrow.