Hollywood Flops, A.I. Cheating & New Epstein Emails on Trump

At South Korea's Ivy League, AI Isn't just writing essays. It's helping students cheat on exams. And the schools are scrambling to catch up. That's coming up. Other top stories today. Hollywood, Meanwhile, just went 0 for 25. 0 for 25 on adult dramas and comedies. Big stars, big budgets, empty theaters. I'll show you where the real audience has gone. Back home, a new wave of right wing wokeness is shaping college classrooms with red states deciding which ideas about race and gender can even be discussed. Verizon's new CEO is swinging an X. 15,000 jobs are gone to pay for phone deals they think will keep you from switching carriers. And the fresh Jeffrey Epstein emails, oh, boy. Raise new questions about Donald Trump while Republicans and conservative media scramble to manage the fallout. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Okay, welcome. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm your host, TJ Walker. We're going to dive right in as we always do at the start of every show, giving you an update on yesterday's market. We are live today. It is November 14, 2025. Let's check in on the market vitals. Yesterday, The S&P 500 closed at 6,737.49. That's, that's down 1.66%. The NASDAQ Composite closed at 22,870.36. That's down a whopping 2.29%. Always keep in mind the long term, long term, what we've seen is over the last 25 years, the S&P 500 has gone up 8.32% on average per year. The NASDAQ 100 has gone up 9.09% per year on average for the last 25 years. So please, please, always keep in mind the long run. Okay, we're going to dive right into our top story of the day. This is coming out of Korea. This is our story. 1. AI cheating shakes the Ivy League schools, the top schools of Korea. According to the New York Times, South Korea's most prestigious universities are discovering what every professor secretly fears. AI has quietly moved into the exam room at Yonsei University. In an online midterm, literally about ChatGPT, students were told not to use artificial intelligence and to keep their cameras on. After reviewing footage, the professor concluded that dozens, that's right, dozens had cheated and 40 students admitted it. They'll get a zero for the test, as they should. Within days, similar cheating cases surfaced at Seoul National University and Korea University, the three schools known Collectively as sky, the pinnacle of South Korea's hyper competitive education system. Now, one education professor told the Times that AI now handles retaining and organizing information, so testing students on those skills is obsolete. I don't know about that. Adding the current method of education is already out of date. Another student put it bluntly. You can't really stop AI usage now. You can only decide what counts as cheating and what counts as the new normal. Okay, what's the real message here? Yes, universities, high schools, colleges need to do a better job of teaching students that how to use artificial intelligence intelligently. But they still had to learn them how to teach them how to think. And at some point, if an instructor says, take this test, you're not allowed to use ChatGPT and we're going to have a camera on you. Don't use ChatGPT, don't use AI. You've got to follow the rules or you deserve a failure. Let's go a little bit deeper here. So this is a little bit bizarre to me. I understand the temptation to have ChatGPT do a first draft of an essay or a final draft of an essay, or to edit things quickly and cleanly. And I think that smart, savvy teachers at the university and high school level actually are encouraging students to have a partner with ChatGPT or other AI LLMs in the same way. For a long time, teachers have wanted students to use spell check and grammar check to improve and refine. But just when, you know, there was a similar situation when calculators came out in the 70s and people thought, oh my goodness, no one will ever learn math anymore. Well, no, that's not true. Math teachers, math professors realized you can incorporate the use of calculators for doing some math, but you could also have a test where you got to leave your calculator outside. You can't have your calculator on your desk. You need to know how to actually do the calculations yourself before you offshore all of that or outsource that to machines. So in fact, very few people would say mathematical skills of our most advanced mathematicians in the United States today are worse off because of calculators or because of computers. No, it's a way of going deeper, learning more, pushing the frontiers of mathematics. There's no reason that other fields can't also use technology to combine that with students learning to create greater outcomes. And for the life of me, look, I understand some students cheat, okay? And I understand there's a temptation to cheat. But what I can understand is why you would cheat if you know There's a video camera on you and you're told explicitly you can't use this. You know, oh, there's a camera right here. Let me Type in to ChatGPT and see what it says. That, to me, shows just a fundamental lack of intelligence. Not artificial intelligence, human intelligence. Part of what annoys every single student, I don't care if they're in college, graduate school, or first grade, is the idea that sometimes in school they have to do dumb stuff where it doesn't seem like there's a point and they won't use it in the real world. I get it. One of the rules you're learning is in real life, you're going to have to do some things where it seems pointless. It might be hard, but you have to do stuff other people ask you to do from time to time, even if it's not what you want to do. That's a great lesson to learn in the academic world because you need that to survive in the real world. So again, I'm not one of these absolutists that says any student ever caught using artificial intelligence for research or a draft or anything like that should instantly be banned. No, we need to revamp our education system to encourage students to use AI but to do it at the very same time. They're building their own brain, they're mastering complex concepts themselves. They're not just AI asking the large language model or the AI to do all the thinking for them. So I hope this is a wake up call not just in South Korea, but for students around the world that the old rules still apply. We can all say it's a brand new world and AI is ruling everything. And yes, I use AI all the time. AI helped me write the initial script right here for you in setting up this story. But I still had to master the subject matter. I had to do the research in advance. I had to think about what to say. So it can't do everything. And I don't think I'm going to get anywhere close to the point where I just say, hey, chatgpt, do an entire script for an hour for a show. I don't know what I want to say today. I just want to roll out of bed and read a teleprompter. I don't think it would be as interesting. It certainly wouldn't be genuinely me. But the combination makes something better. Because ChatGPT, which is what I use, does help me consolidate the fundamental facts that I can present to you. And then together we can have this conversation to explicate and go in more detail and slice and dice the particulars of issues. This is what I believe students need to be taught how to do in university situations. Now, there was a 2024 survey of South Korean students that showed that 90% of students use generative AI for assignments. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'd be surprised that it's not. 100, maybe 10% are lying when students say it's inevitable for this to be used. I do think that matters. And there are trust issues between students and their teachers. I think we have to go beyond the trust. I think what teachers are going to have to do is ask more students to show their work, actually encourage them to use artificial intelligence for certain functions of brainstorming, concepting, maybe second drafts, maybe final drafts, show the different ways and maybe document where you came up with your own unique ideas that a large language model wouldn't have done. So otherwise, there are a lot of opportunities here and no, we cannot simply go back to that. We can't say, isn't it awful these kids are not learning how to chip their stone tablets and write with stone tablets where they could spend two days chipping away at a stone tablet with a hammer and a chisel to write. Isn't it awful that they now have this parchment and a quill? No, we can't do that. And we can't go back to the days where there is no AI. We have to use our creativity and are smarts and university professors are supposed to be smart and figure out how can we use it as an enhancement for the entire learning experience to make students more relevant. Because when they get out in the real job world, their employers are going to expect them to be able to use ChatGPT effectively. If you're asked to give it a two page summary report on the marketplace and it's your first day as a junior level consultant at a business consulting firm, you're not going to get extra credit to your boss saying, hey, I didn't use any AI. The boss is going to say, well why didn't you? I want you to use every available source and give me the best possible 2 page or 10 page report possible. Using your own insights and intellectual but pulling the very best of AI. That's where the world is headed. That's where the academic world needs to go as well. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. It's Friday and I'm here for you every single day. If you're new to the show, let me tell you what we're about. Every day I look at the top typically five stories of the day in the business world, stories related to business, technology and culture. And then we filter these stories through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills. My pledge to you is spend a little time with me each day and you'll learn more about important stories affecting you and your world. And you'll learn more about yourself, how you can have better communication and personal development skills so that you can be more successful. We're broadcasting this, simulcasting it on every single major live social media platform in the world right now. It's also available on demand. So whether you're listening on any podcast platform live or on demand, thank you. Please subscribe, follow and like what you're watching and I would especially appreciate if you could leave a review. We're just two and a half months old, so all the algorithms are listening trying to figure out do people like this show filtered or not. So you leaving a positive review right now would be especially helpful. Lots more to come on the show today. You're not going to want to miss this next story talking about the woes of Hollywood. Want to communicate like a Pro? Go to mediatrainingworldwide.com Millions have already transformed their speaking skills. Why not you? This show doesn't run on a lot of corporate sponsorships or big media backing. It runs on caffeine and your support. If you like what you're hearing and want to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee. Really, just go to buymeacoffee.com tjwalker it's quick, it's easy and yes, it helps cover editing, hosting and staying relatively ad free for as long as possible. Buymeacoffee.com TJ Walker, your 3.95 makes a real difference. One live coaching from me, bonus episodes, full course access. It's all waiting@tjwalker.com members join now. We are back. TJ. I'm TJ Walker. This is filtered issue two Hollywood's drama problem stars without audiences. According to the New York Times, Hollywood just went 0 for 25. Over the last three months, every drama and comedy released in North American theaters has swapped by traditional standards. Even star driven projects with Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Margot Robbie and Dwayne Johnson. They've all flopped. Now. Historically, a modest hit for these genres meant at least $50 million in ticket sales. Today, many of these movies are limping to a few million dollars and then disappearing. Analyst Kevin Goetz says that quote to succeed in theaters today, dramas and comedies must have event status, something truly elevated and special. It's not just a phase, it's an evolution you can't reverse. Meanwhile, horror, anime and franchise films like Predator Badlands still draw some crowds, even as October box office sank to its lowest non pandemic level on record. Variety's Owen Glaberman put it bluntly. It has seriously begun to look like the bottom is falling out for adult dramas and comedies in theater. Okay, so what's the real message here? If you are a movie star, if you want to be a movie star in serious dramas, serious comedies, and have yourself seen on the big screen, guess what? You're too late. That industry is shutting down. Nobody's going to see big movies anymore. The best you can really hope for is getting on the little screen, or at least the medium screen on TVs at home. And some of those screens are pretty big these days. Let's dig a little deeper here. So it's one thing to say, oh, I didn't like this movie, or this star is past their prime, but there's a lot of big stars I just named for you. And all of the movies have essentially tanked. There are a number of issues going on here. Part of it is the skyrocketing cost to make movies, even with AI. The distribution and marketing costs are astronomical. And there's a couple of other things that have been talked about some, but I want to go into more detail. Part of the issue is it's. I find it very unpleasant to go to a movie theater these days. The number one reason is people on their cell phones. I don't want to go, nice dark room, big screen. It's the climactic moment of the entire movie. And the guy next to me has to check his Facebook status. At that particular moment, the screen lights up. It's wildly distracting. I'm looking at him, he's looking at me like, what are you looking at, buddy? It's an awkward, awkward situation. So that's part of the issue. Another part of the issue is so many Americans of all ages don't have the attention span. Forget a 2 or 3 hour movie or the Godfather or something like that. An 89 minute movie is too much for a lot of people because we're so used to looking at a TikTok video or a YouTube short or a Facebook reel or an Instagram reel. Getting a chuckle for 30 seconds and moving on. Another issue I think driving this is that TVs have gotten so much better than really just a few years ago. I'm old enough to remember when it was exciting for my family to have a TV about, I want to say, 18 inches maybe it was 14 inches black and white. And that's what we watched on tv, you know, three channels. So, yeah, it was a big deal to go to a movie theater, a giant. And this is back when you didn't have multiplexes and one building carved up into 89 screens. You had one giant screen and maybe a theater that held a thousand people. That was the typical movie going experience for me and a lot of people. Well, that, needless to say, that's gone. The screens at movie theaters have gotten smaller at the very same time, the screens at home are now bigger. You can now get a 98 inch TV screen from Costco and other places for less than $2,000. I mean, that's practically insane. That's not much smaller than what you see in some multiplexes. So if you've got a great screen and a good sound system and a comfy chair, watching a movie in your own home is so much more enjoyable, more relaxing. Plus, you don't have to drive somewhere, fight for parking, get a parking ticket, battle with weather, pay $89 for a small popcorn which would feed a village. You don't have to deal with any of that stuff. Which is why I, and you can say, well, tj, you're just old. It's why I rarely go to the movies anymore. Now, there are some exceptions. Something like a. The big Barbie movie really dominated pop culture to such an extreme a while back that, yeah, that was a big success. But as I mentioned to you, all these movies that came out in the last, last three months, 25 major dramas, big budgets, 25 major comedies, big budgets, not one of them was a hit. Now, could some of them go on to make money through other distribution? Yeah, but if you, if you are making a movie and you're spending $50 million making it and 50 million on distribution, you're not going to make that all back. Typically, just hoping, okay, nobody watched it in the theaters. I'm hoping Netflix gives me a lot. By then it's too late. Typically, you need to do really well that first weekend, that first week, that first month for it really to recoup all of its investment. Now, I think the smart stars have realized this a while back and they have migrated to streaming services. Adam Sandler had a very good movie career. He's now the king of Netflix. Doesn't seem to bother him that his movies are seen primarily on Netflix because they're paying him Tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars and $100 million deals. We're seeing this with other stars as well. Seth Rogen seems to be on every cable. Not cable, every. Every streaming show I watch these days. And I like his show, the studio and others. You know, he's a guy who's done very well on the big screen and you now see him everywhere on streaming. Jennifer Aniston, I see her in the morning show. She's also in something called Murder Mystery with Adam Sandler, which is a huge Netflix project. Martin Scorsese streamed the Irishman. That was not his first choice. If you'd asked him 10 years ago, do you want to not be on the big screen and just be seen streaming, I think he would have scoffed at that. But these days he realizes that it's a new world we live in. Tell me what you think. I'd love to hear from you. If you are watching this live or on demand, post comments Let me know how often do you go to the movies now versus in the past and certainly in the United States, there was a culture before everyone had a TV where everyone went to the movies at least once a week and kids would go to the movies and see one movie after another after another. Double features, triple features. Haven't heard anyone talk about that in a long time. I can't even imagine sitting in a theater for a double feature anymore. Part of it is we're all used to getting up and eating anything we want. So many of us are multitasking while watching video streams. We want to have a big screen in front of us, an iPad where we're checking out whether the star is wearing a cell phone, where we're texting our friends about the show we like or doing other things. It's fortunately, I would say not gotten to the point where people are so comfortable going to the movie theater, where they're bringing all these devices, an iPad and a phone and a laptop, and simultaneously sending out messages on two or three or four screens at once. When that happens, that'll definitely be my last day attending the movies. Let me know the last movie you saw in a movie theater and was it worth it? Was it special enough? Now, forgive me, this, this sounds like I'm bragging. It's not even humble bragging. It's just bragging. I have recently moved and I have built a home theater so the sound system is powerful. It's not that expensive to get seats that recline just like you have in a movie theater. And really large hundred inch TVs are not that expensive anymore. Great sound system. The cost have gone way down so I'm very, very comfortable watching movies from home and frankly don't see a reason to go out to theaters now. You may be younger, you may be dating and you're looking for something to do on a date. It may still be a good reason for doing that. What are your reasons for going to see a movie? Because the days are long gone of that being the only way to consume a movie. You can consume a movie on your cell phone, on your iPad, on your TV, on your computer. What is your own criteria for deciding? I can't wait for this to be on Netflix or on HBO or on Apple Plus. I want to go to the theater now. I would love to hear from you, so post your comments. Whether you're watching this or listening to this on demand or if you're watching live, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks. More stories in just a moment. Filtered is brought to you by the don't need a new degree. You don't need another expensive coach. You need the right communication habits and I'll teach them them to you in just a few minutes a day. @mediatrainingworldwide.com I've created the most comprehensive library of online communication and personal development courses anywhere. You'll learn public speaking, media training, persuasion, executive presence, and more. These are the same methods I've taught to world leaders, but now they're affordable and accessible to everyone. You can start for free and upgrade anytime. Go now to mediatrainingworldwide.com confidence isn't a personality trait, it's a skill and it's trainable. Most people can't afford a full time coach and even if you could, good luck finding one who's available when you need them. That's why I created the TJ Walker AI clone. It's built on my 40 plus years of real world coaching and training. You get my exact advice, style and frameworks instantly. Ask it how to handle a tough question. Get feedback on your elevator pitch. Rehearse your next big talk. This is the next generation of communication coaching. It's smarter than an app, more personal than a course, and always ready. Start using it today at tjwalker AI. You'll wonder how you ever did without it. What the Rise of Right Wing Wokeness on Campus According to the New York Times, Texas A&M's governing board has approved a system wide rule saying no course will advocate race or gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Unless the campus President personally signs off. Administrators insist this is just tightening up syllabi and keeping professors on script. Many faculty members say it hands political appointees a quiet veto power over what can and cannot be discussed in the classroom. In Indiana, a social work lecturer at Indiana University was pulled from a graduate diversity course after using a widely circulated white supremacy pyramid graphic that listed make America Great Again as covert white supremacy. One student went to Senator Jim Banks and the matter is now being investigated under new intellectual diversity law. Civil libertarian or civil liberties groups like FIRE and conservative writers such as David French warned that these red state educational gag orders look less like restoring balance and more like old fashioned government censorship of campus speech. Okay, what's the real message here? Yes, there was a problem a few years back where so called left wing thought leaders said you can't use the word homeless anymore. You have to say unhoused. Or you can't say a pregnant woman anymore. You have to say a pregnant person. That was laughed at, scoffed at and ridiculed. Rightfully so. But now we're entering a new phase and it's a phase dominated by right wing political correctness, right wing wokeness, where you're not allowed to say something that might make someone feel bad. According to some of this new legislation and its interpretation in places like Texas and Florida. If you are to talk about American slavery and point out that by and large the slave owners were white and by and large the slaves were black from Africa, that might hurt a white person's feelings and therefore it's bad and you can't say that anymore. This, you know, the right wing in America has become a parody of what they accused the left wing of doing for years and it ought to stop. Let's go a little bit deeper here because we're seeing this increasingly sprouting across the country, this right wing wokeism, the idea that Texas A and M is now going to scrutinize anytime someone wants to use the word gender or race in a classroom just seems bizarre. And to be a student and complain to tattle to your senator. I heard something I don't like. I heard something I don't agree with. Well, guess what? College is supposed to be a place where you hear ideas you don't agree with. If you're only hearing stuff you already know and already agree with, that's just an exercise, a four year exercise in confirmation bias. You're not really learning anything. Is every idea articulated by every professor in college always going to stand the test of time and be 100% accurate historically and From a factual basis? No, that is the nature of the academic world. There's competing schools of thought, there are debates, there's vigorous debates, there's evidence. Some ideas come in fashion, some come out of fashion. Let me give you example. It's all well and good to say, as I hear every day, socialism is the worst form of government and nothing can be learned. And every country that's ever tried to have socialism has failed miserably. I hear that every day. And truth be told, I don't consider myself a socialist. If you define socialism as the means of production, the economy being controlled by the government, but still you want to be open to ideas. How could our leaders have ever actually combated Marxism if they hadn't learned about Marxism? How could there have ever been a fall of the Soviet Union if we didn't have a lot of American leadership learning about what Soviets actually thought? Now let's go a little bit deeper. Here's a perfect example. Do you believe in public schools? Have you ever sent your child to a public school? Have you ever attended a public school or supported a public school? I'm betting the answer is yes. Well, I got news for you. You're a socialist. Public schools is a socializing of education for everybody. The government uses its big power, its brutish power to tax people, to raise money, to build a building, to pay teachers. And then it uses its power to coerce a six year old to go to school who otherwise could be in a factory or a field somewhere working for their parents. You know who came up with this idea? Karl Marx, in the Communist Manifesto. So if you say we need to simply put a tamper on any idea we don't like, an idea that we think, broadly speaking is bad, you get no public schools. Sorry. Have you ever enjoyed a public park in your community? Guess what? It was talked about in the Communist Manifesto. Now, am I a Marxist? No. Do I want to see some leader in a government, authoritarian, communist, any type of leader, controlling every aspect of the economy as communist societies did? No, I don't. But the beauty of capitalism in my view and the beauty of the United States has been we're constantly on the lookout for the best ideas that have practical implications, that actually work. And we steal those ideas, we borrow them, we, we use them, we adapt them to our own society. And that's why you've got public schools everywhere in America, whereas you really we didn't 200 years ago. That's why we have public parks everywhere in America. We really didn't a couple hundred years ago now there was a lot of open land, but they weren't parks as we think of them. So that's why this is so concerning. You never know when someone who has a fix an overall theory that might be destructive. And I think Karl Marx's theories did a lot of damage of the world. Look no further than the arguably tens of millions, some estimates as high as 100 million people who died under communist rule in China. You don't even have to be worried about the Soviet Union which was obviously a mess. So I have no doubt that some of his ideas were harmful. But some of them were helpful and smart people try to find the best ideas they can anywhere in society. They don't simply say this guy's on my team so everything is good. This person not on our team. So we're not going to look there. We're not going to look there. And that's the problem I have with this newfound right wing political correctness that is running rampant on college campuses in America today. What do you think? You can post your comments right now. I would love to hear from you. Back in just a moment to talk about some layoffs going on at Verizon. Imagine having a communication coach who never sleeps me. Prime ministers and Fortune 500 CEOs. But the same exact communication I've delivered to world leaders is now available to you online anytime@mediatrainingworldwide.com whether you're speaking on camera, pitching a client or handling a crisis, you need these tools. These are fluffy motivational videos. They're practical, battle tested techniques to help you speak clearly competently. Welcome back. Verizon Launches its Biggest Layoffs Ever According to Reuters, Verizon's new CEO Dan Schulman is planning the largest layoffs in the company's history, about 15,000 U.S. jobs, roughly 15% of its workforce. Pretty significant cut. Most of the cuts will come from non union management, shrinking those ranks by more than 20%. Verizon will also convert about 180 corporate owned retail stores into franchises. The moves could start as soon as next week. Verizon has been losing ground to rivals like AT&T and T Mobile, which are using aggressive discounts and trade in deals to win customers. Cable companies such as Comcast and Charter are also bundling wireless with home Internet adding more pressure. Shoman says Verizon must become, quote, simpler, leaner and scrappier. Analysts say the savings are likely aimed at finding or at funding expensive handset subsidies and retention offers. But it's unclear whether job cuts alone can reverse Slowing subscriber growth. Verizon's shares rose about 1.5% on the layoff news, even as the stock has badly trailed the broader market in recent years. Okay, so what's the real message here? Another big tech company has laid off thousands and thousands of employees. Verizon's laying off 15,000 employees. Message to you. If you want a nice cushy job with a traditional company, thinking, once I get my foot in the door, I put in my 20, 30 years, I'll have my healthcare, my benefits, my weekends. I can kind of coast at a place like the phone company. Guess what? It's not going to be there. They are melting away these opportunities every day. Let's go a little deeper here. I'm old enough to remember growing up when someone found out a neighbor's dad worked for the phone company. That was considered, well, that's pretty good, that's a stable job, benefits. Back then they even had pensions. And maybe the pension days are long gone. But working for a big telecommunications company was seen as a great on ramp to the middle class. Maybe unless you were a CEO or a top manager, you didn't make the really big bucks, but you made enough for a nice living. You made enough for a home, maybe a 2,000 square foot home, maybe two cars, maybe one spouse didn't have to work. That's what it meant to have a job. Not just an executive job, an office job. Working on the telephone poles quite often meant a nice solid middle class job and it's being hollowed out. The executives of these companies are going to make seven figures, eight figures, but fewer and fewer middle income jobs. Now that's not Verizon's job. Let me say that that is a function of greater societal forces, technology forces and yes, public policy forces too. I don't want to make it sound like that's nature. Nothing can be done. There's a lot that can be done from a public policy standpoint. Not necessarily forcing Verizon not to fire people, but to do things to make it easier for average. I don't mean this in a condescending way, but average people to have a middle class income because that is something that the right put their finger on and MAGA has embraced. But increasingly Democrats, centrist and those on the more progressive side are focusing on this whole issue of affordability relates to this. If you worked for a big cable company, if you worked for a big telecommunications company, a phone company in the past, you might not have had some big net worth or huge portfolio, but you could afford a house, a car, going out to dinner occasionally with your family and maybe a vacation once, or you could afford that. And what's happening across America and other parts of the world, too, is the bottom 80. Sometimes the bottom 90% are saying, now we can't afford it anymore because jobs like this one are disappearing. And how did the market respond? How did investors respond? They said, way to go. They applauded. The Stock went up 1.5% once it was announced they were firing a bunch of people. 20% of managers were fired. Now, one thing about big government that people like to talk about and complain is, oh, it's so bloated. All these managers, titles. There's no government in the world that's nearly as bloated as a really large corporation. Big companies have tons and tons of managers who sit around in meetings all the time. No one really knows what they do. Half the time they don't know what they do. And believe me, I work with a lot of them. They're all nice people. They're lovely people. They make good PowerPoint slides. But in so many situations, if they were just gone, it wouldn't really have an impact on the bottom line of the company. So more and more companies are realizing this. As much as I'm not a huge fan of Elon Musk and some of his activities of late, he did send a real message to a lot of technology companies and communication companies when he essentially gutted almost all of Twitter when he took it over. Fired an incredibly high percentage of engineers and executives and managers, and it really didn't affect their revenues much. And ever since then, you've seen, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Google, every company in the world that's in the technology or communications space to say, how can we fire more and more people and get artificial intelligence to do the job for it? Because in many cases, it is doing the job, if not better, certainly a lot less expensively than what humans are doing. Good for the company, good for the shareholders. If you're a retired teacher and your Money's in a 401k and you own one of these companies, it's good for you. It's a mixed bag. It's not all going to the CEO getting $100 billion a year. It does trickle down in other places, but it's very bad for people who had that job, were good at that job, but they're not necessarily superstar. Not everyone can have an MBA from Harvard or be this entrepreneur who goes from nothing to making hundreds of million the world can't survive under the expectation that that's going to be most people. That's a tiny, teeny, tiny sliver. You judge a society not by how it treats its most successful, most aggressive, most intelligent people can be one's judgment, but you judge it by how does it create a life for the average person and even below average in terms of education, drive, smarts. And there was a time. This is one example where MAGA is right. You look back in the old days, the 1950s, things were better. Now you can quibble about why some would say, well, that's back when women knew their place, the minorities weren't seen and the men in coal mines did. Well, I think that's a false reading of history. If you go back to the 1950s, even early 60s, you had 30% of the workforce in America, the private sector workforce, in unions. What's so great about unions? You made a lot more money than unions fought for you. You weren't just outsourced to an app, ending up like an Uber driver getting sometimes $2 an hour after you factor in all your expenses. So that's the difference. Our society, our legal structures were different in the 1950s. Was it perfect for women, minorities, gays back then? No, but it was a lot better in terms of having a sustained middle class in a way for a lot of so called average people to have a middle class lifestyle in a way that just doesn't exist anymore. I'll point out a few more facts. And 180 corporate stores are shifting to franchises. What does that mean? They find some local guy who thinks, oh, I'm going to be rich and I'm going to own all these franchises and get rich. They're outsourcing the risk because if the store doesn't make a profit, it no longer hurts the company, it's no longer going to hurt Verizon because it's the local franchise guy's problem. Now you rarely see McDonald's go out of business, but sometimes you do. Doesn't hurt the McDonald's corporation. It hurts the local guy or woman who couldn't figure out how it works. And they're the ones who lost money. So these are trends. You've got to realize it. My message to you, if I'm putting my hat on now, as your own career coach, you've got to realize there's simply fewer and fewer areas in our economy here in the United States where you can kind of coast. And I apologize if that sounds condescending. If you worked at Verizon, and you just got fired. You may be thinking, well tj, I'm not coasting. Okay, maybe you're working really, really hard. But there are a lot of jobs, or certainly have been a lot of jobs in mid level management at big technology companies, big communications companies, energy companies, and even today in insurance companies where they're just going to be hacked out because artificial intelligence chatbots, in some cases robots, is going to make the job irrelevant. Now don't get too smug if you're on the top, because AI could come for you too. The prediction is that AI and robots will ultimately make all of us unemployable and perhaps we'll have enough money, it won't matter. But in the short term we're going to see more and more people eliminated from jobs if they don't have a unique skill set, if they don't have some cutting edge, some, some unique advantage. The days of just hey, I graduated from high school with a B minus average kind of like everyone else. And maybe I took a few courses at the local community college in business. Maybe I didn't. And hey, I'm going to get a job down at the local plant or the factory or the local phone company or the newspaper as a mid level manager and have a nice middle class income, live in a nice middle class house, have two kids, take a vacation. Those days are gone. I hate to tell you, you're going to have to find a unique talent, a unique skill set, a unique value proposition so you can fight off competition from AI and everyone else. If that sounds dystopian, I do apologize. There's a lot of opportunity, but it's opportunity where you're going to have to be much more aggressive or you may just be out of luck. I'm TJ Walker. We'll be back in a moment with our final big issue of the day. And yes, it does involve politics and some scandal. 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 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 TJ Walker AI, it's not just smart, it's personal. Want to support this? Welcome back to Filtered. I'm TJ Walker. Epstein's emails and the Trump question. According to Slate and the New York Times, the new Epstein files don't just name check Donald Trump. They show Epstein talking about Trump in ways that raise serious questions about what the former president or what the current president knew. Getting ahead of myself. What the current president knew and when. In a 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote that Trump spent, quote, hours at my house with one of his victims, calling Trump, quote, unquote, the dog that hasn't barked. In another exchange, Epstein offers photos of Donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen. That's a direct quote from an Epstein email. Now, it should be noted the journalist in question says he never saw the pictures. It was never sent. And he jokes about Trump almost walking through the door, leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool. He bragged privately that he alone was able to take Trump down. On Capitol Hill, House Republicans first tried to dodge a full vote on releasing the Epstein files by hiding behind a symbolic oversight committee investigation. They controlled a move meant to shield Trump that instead produced more damning material, including a sexy, suggestive birthday book page apparently signed by Trump. And in conservative media, the initial reaction was near total silence. Then Fox Newsmax and pro Trump influencers settled on a talking point, claimed that Democrats smeared Trump by redacting Virginia Giuffre's name, and insist, despite tens of thousands of pages of new emails, that Trump never did anything wrong. Okay, so what's the real message here? More dribs, more drabs coming out about Epstein? And it all makes Trump look bad. When the world's most famous pedophile is caught talking about you, constantly emailing about you, saying he's got dirt on you, it should make everyone sit up a minute and think, wow, this is a much bigger problem than we thought. Let's dig a little deeper here. So it is fascinating to me as a part of my duty to you, I scan a lot of different media all across the landscape, regardless of all across the ideological landscape. I look at centrist media, the Associated Press, so called liberal media, msnbc, but I also look at Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Newsmax to get a sense of what's shaping our zeitgeist. And it was fascinating to me this week when emails were released about this topic that Republicans and MAGA and people like Marjorie Taylor Greene say is the number one concern of her conservative Republican constituents. It's fascinating to me that the mainstream media kind of played it straight. They released the emails and the documents that came out, summarize them, put a spotlight on the parts that were most newsworthy, which is exactly what they would do and they have done. Anytime there's been bad information about Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. That's not what conservative media did. For the most part, they ignored it. Then they did come up with a story and it was buried as sort of the fifth story on the page. And the positioning of it was Democrats unethically smear the president by releasing documents they should not have released. The whole spin was positioned in a way to say Democrats are bad. Now, I'm not here as a Democrat or Republican or a partisan. I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist trying to give you a sense of what's going on in the world and how to understand it. So, yes, there's all sorts of media biases in the world, but what we have seen dramatically this week is how there is a particular bias in the conservative media where it's not just that they spotlight problems if they see a Democrat or a liberal or a centrist or someone on the so called left getting into. Nothing wrong with being a little more enthusiastic about certain stories because it's hitting people you don't like. But this is something very different. This is something where it's the biggest story, not just to centrist and to Democrats and people who don't like Trump, but according to Republican members of Congress, this is the number one story their own constituents care about. And what we're seeing with conservative media today and this week is they are carrying, they are figuratively carrying water for this administration, saying we're not going to give the juiciest stories our viewers, listeners, readers want. We're going to try to play politics by helping to prop up someone on our team, someone we like. So they are, they're doing a couple of things. They are, first of all, ignoring the story, which is a type of bias when it's a big story. Number two, they're instantly repositioning it to attack the people who are bringing out the news. In this case, Democrats who released the documents, which is kind of bizarre. And the third thing is they're now acting as if they are the defense counsel for the White House. So the point they're harping on is that in one of the Epstein emails, he says that Trump spent hours alone with one of the young girls and it redacted the name and the name of the, of the young woman girl at the time, Virginia Giuffre has stated on the record in her own memoir that yes, she was passed around, she was forced to have sex with friends of Epstein, but that it wasn't Trump. So you have conservative media essentially saying all this stuff is nonsense, it's all fake news, because that's what Trump says. But you have to look at this one piece that is true because she said it wasn't Trump. Therefore, everything else in this email, this one email has to be correct. But all the other stuff that makes Trump look bad, well, that's fake news. You shouldn't use that. That was wrong. But the fact that a victim's name was redacted is, again, somehow a sign that Trump was smeared. Now, I play it to you straight. I will say in Trump's favor. This woman who did talk about, I believe it was Prince Andrew and other famous people she was passed around to and forced to have sex with, did say that she was not forced into having sex with Donald Trump, and he never did anything. Now, let's put this into context. Trump's own wife, one of his many wives, has stated in official court proceedings that Trump raped her. She later recanted. Now, there are some who are speculating it's so she could get more alimony and more of a payment. Which time do you believe her? One time she said he raped her. Another time she said he didn't. So people have been known with enough influence or money to change their tune. But again, I'm being fair. It is a good defense point for Team Trump to say Virginia Giuffre specifically said she was not, not only not forced into having sex with Trump, but she never saw him do anything that was inappropriate. That is a point in his favor. But you can't cherry pick one point and say, here's other 10,000 documents because they make us look bad. We're going to say none of those are legitimate and worthy of talking about, but here's one document that kind of makes us look not as bad. So that's the only thing anyone should talk about. That, to me, is just bizarre. Now, let's look at a few more facts here. So it's Fox, it's Newsweek, It's a lot of influencers. They're ignoring the email and they just talk about it as a spot smear. They're not listening to their own constituents. This is perhaps the only issue in America right now that truly unites the left and the right, because Democrats are incensed over this as are a lot of Republicans. For years and years and years, I give credit it was only Republicans talking about this, that this was a big conspiracy, a cover up, that there were wealthy, powerful individuals in our country guilty of perversity, of being pedophiles and getting away with it. Well, what do you know? They were right. And this guy Epstein, he had a wide social circle, let's not kid ourselves. Even though he claimed that Donald Trump was his best friend, he was buddy buddies with Clintons and the Bill Gates of the world. And what's come out this week is all of the emails back and forth with Larry Summers, the former Secretary of the treasury in the Clinton administration, the former President of Harvard and a well known prominent liberal Democrat. So he looks worse in all this too. He was essentially getting dating advice and women advice and all sorts of constant email back and forth with Jeffrey Epstein. So he's not looking good. But you know what? He's not in office. He's not running for office. Nobody really cares about Larry Summers anymore. But if you want to criticize him, it's certainly fair game. So predictions here. This issue is not going away. Now, right now the House is supposedly going to vote on releasing all files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Now here's where it gets complex. The House, it certainly looks like they are going to vote to now that a Democrat, a newly elected Democratic member of Congress was finally sworn in, there are going to be enough votes to request that the administration release all documents related to Epstein. It then goes to the Senate where it is anticipated that the Senate will vote to release documents. Because if you're a politician, regardless of what party you're on, you've got so many people saying release the documents, release the documents, release the Epstein files. It's going to be very hard to say no to that. So here's what happened. It then goes to the President's desk. So he's going to have to deal with a tricky issue. He has his own right to veto the legislation. But how is that going to look when Republicans and Democrats in the United States House and the United States Senate vote to release the Epstein files and the President vetoes it. So that's going to look horrible. That's certainly going to look like an admission of guilt. His other option is he signs it, lets it become law and then all sorts of additional documents come out that it's hard to imagine they're not being more embarrassing documents that make Trump look bad. I'm not saying there's any compelling evidence, clear cut evidence that he committed Illegal acts. But it's really looking suspicious with how he's acting, how he's trying to change the subject constantly. So nothing to look at here. It just thinks like when people ask him about Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted felon, someone convicted of some of the most heinous atrocities known to humanity, trafficking children for sexual purposes. What's his response to her? He says, oh, I wish her well. And then his administration gets her into much cushier prison. Why would you wish somebody well who is a sex trafficker aiding abetting pedophilia, a convicted felon? Why would you wish someone like that well? Unless you want them to treat you well and maybe not say anything that makes you look bad. Okay, I'm tired of this issue. But this issue is not going away. Sorry, but it's just not. But that's all we're going to talk about today for our top big issues. Okay, I want to share some, what I like to call grab bag issues. For the remainder of our show, we're going to talk about those as well as concluding the show, as I always do, answering your questions. We take one question every day and questions that do not relate specifically to the news. We go a little deeper than the news and try to talk about things that can really have a positive impact on you and your career, specifically as it relates to personal development and communication skills. But first, I want to do something. It's going to become a regular feature here and I'm going to do a product review. I should point out these are not paid product reviews. Not that I have anything against that. It's not an affiliate deal. I'm simply sharing information with you that I think could help you be more successful in what you do. So this is the product I want to talk about. It is the Oura ring. You may have seen me wearing two rings on my hand and think, oh, what's. Why does TJ have two wedding rings? Does he have two? No. This is my wedding ring. But this is an aura ring. And here's what it does. It tracks your sleep. It tracks a number of other metrics related to health and things like your steps, other body metrics. I use it and purchased it four and a half years ago to help me with sleep. And I just want to share with you how it benefited me and you can consider doing it yourself again. I'm not an affiliate. You can just look it up. It's aura O U R a ring dot com. You can look at it if you want, but here's how I find it beneficial because sometimes you fall asleep and you wake up groggy the next day. You don't really know what happened. You think, well, I went to bed at 11, I got up at 7, I got 8 hours of sleep. Well, this will tell you, well, no, maybe you only had six hours sleep because you were waking up constantly throughout the night and you don't remember it. Sometimes you know you did not wake up at night or your perceived you did and you think, I'm still feeling a little groggy. I wonder why. And the OURA ring will give you data on the quality of your sleep. How much deep sleep did you get? How much REM sleep did you get? So here's why I find it beneficial. You can really track what did you do that day, the day before, that night, and how did it end up with your night's sleep? So for me, I have found, for example, that if I play pickleball till 9 o' clock at night, I don't get as good a night's sleep. For me, it's important to finish exercise earlier in the evening. That helps. I'm not here to tell you to drink alcohol or abstain from alcohol. But what I can tell you is I've noticed that even one glass of wine can have a dramatic impact on how long I sleep. But even more important, it has an impact on the quality of my sleep. My deep sleep is not as good. My REM sleep is not as good. So it's a constant reminder, hey tj, you want to enjoy wine? It needs to stop at half a glass. If I drink half a glass, it does not seem to affect my sleep. If I drink no alcohol, then it increases my odds of having a good night's sleep. I'm a huge believer in the idea that your sleep is the cornerstone of your entire health, a good night's sleep, and your entire career. Frankly, a good night's sleep, you're more likely to exercise. You're more likely to practice good habits in every aspect. You're more likely to wake up and be able to dive into your career, your job, you're learning, you're creating, or simply being a better partner or family member. You're in a better mood. When you have good sleep, your athletic performance will be better. If you care about that, everything is better with a good night's sleep. Without a good night's sleep, you're much less likely to exercise. You're much more likely to say, ah, to heck with it, let me eat that candy bar. You're much More likely to say, I don't really feel like reading this latest best selling book by an author I really respect. Let me just sit back and watch more videos. So, so much of your health, physical health, mental health relates to sleeping. I personally have found this Oura ring to be important and helpful to me. I like the fact that it's not another device. Also, while I use an Apple Watch, I don't want to sleep with a watch. So the Apple watch can do a lot of the same things too. I personally don't want to sleep with a watch and that's one of the reasons I like you. Put it on and you don't really have to think about it now. For the first few years I could charge it once a week. Didn't have to think about it now as this particular ring is four and a half years old, which is pretty old, let's face it, for any piece of consumer technology, I have to charge it every day. But it's a pretty small price to pay. Now let me be fair because Aura's not paying me anything here. There can be some downsides for some people. If you are an obsessive person or a neurotic person. Apologies if that sounds condescending, but you know, everyone's got certain issues. People can be so obsessed with their sleep data that makes them sleep less. They wake up in the middle of the night and they want to check their sleep data. Don't do that. So if you are the sort of person that's obsessed with it or you woke up, you feel rested and relaxed and you look at your sleep data and you thought you had eight hours of sleep and it gives you a sleep score. You thought you had a 95 sleep score and 8 hours of sleep and your aura ring shows you well. Actually you got 6 hours and 52 minutes of sleep and it was a 79 sleep score. And your deep sleep was good, but your REM sleep was really below targets. For some people, they can't handle it. Oh my God. It puts them in a funk and it depresses them the rest of the day and then the next night they're worried about, oh no, I'm not going to have enough REM sleep. So for some people, it's not a good fit if you care about your sleep. And by the way, this is one of these things you see increasingly on a lot of successful CEOs hands, men and women, because really successful people who have to work hard, travel a lot, be in multiple time zones, your sleep is already being attacked from A lot of different areas. All the more important to do everything you can possible to get a good night's sleep. So that is why I would recommend, if you're trying to get sleep, at least experiment with this. If it doesn't work, it's a relatively inexpensive thing. Now, by the way, I'll also give you a review on Sleep 8, but I'm installing mine today. That's another device they put on your bed to sleep more effectively and to really regulate the temperature so you don't have any kind of night sweat. So once I've used that for a month or so, I will try to give you a review on that. So thanks so much for listening to that. Again, I'm not a paid spokesperson for aura. I just want to give you the best information about technology and products that can make use of you more successful. Okay, we have a few more grab bag issues. Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage foundation, you've probably heard of them before. He's trying to explain why he defended Tucker Carlson's friendly interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes. And he's really a Nazi. Nick Fuentes, his defense, he says he basically doesn't follow current events to his own staff. Robert said, I don't actually have time to consume a lot of news. I consume a lot of sports. Okay. On Fuentes, the avowed Nazi lover and Hitler sympathizer, he added, I didn't know much about this Fuentes guy. I still don't. He also tried to pin the blame on a subordinate saying of the Carlson video, when the script was presented to me, I understood from our former colleague that it was approved. Critics insideheritage are calling the excuse cowardly and unbelievable for a man running a hundred million dollar think tank. Okay, this to me is a bizarre, bizarre story. So the Heritage foundation, hundred million dollar budget. I mean, they were the guys who, mostly guys, but they had some women way back in 1980 who basically gave a blueprint to Ronald Reagan of how to run the government. These are the folks who had their 2025 blueprint of how to essentially dismantle and destroy the federal government. So I view them primarily as a PR outfit and a lobbying outfit. They like to think of themselves as an elevated think tank. But there's no doubt they are extraordinarily powerful and influential and have been since the 1970s. So this guy, Kevin Roberts is the president of it. It's one of the most powerful positions in all of Washington D.C. in the past, United States senators have resigned their job to take this job job as head of the Heritage Foundation. It's considered that powerful and that big a deal. And he got in a lot of hot water. Essentially endorsing Tucker Carlson last week for interviewing avowed Nazi lover, Hitler lover, this Fuentes character, and a lot of criticism from his staff, from other conservative. There's this big rift now among conservatives in the political world, the conservative intelligentsia about let's distance ourselves from avowed Hitler lovers may seem like a stretch. Doesn't seem like a good PR move for us to have conservatives in bed with people like Nick Fuentes when their professed love of Hitler. William F. Buckley, did a great job of keeping all the Hitler lovers and the Nazis and the anti Semites out of the conservative movement. But he died more than a decade ago. So a lot of conservatives are saying we got to go back to the days where we kept the anti Semite out of our movement. And here's Kevin Roberts, one of the most influential conservatives in America, saying, oh, I think it's fine. Tucker Carlson, he's always going to be one of our boys. He's always going to be on our team. So there was a huge, huge backlash. But now his defense makes him look like an utter fool. Arguably, his entire business is shaping the news. The Heritage foundation has tons and tons and tons of full time official PR people. They spend all their time getting their so called policy thinkers on every kind of talk show. They put out a gazillion podcasts. And he says I don't have time to consume a lot of news. Now you might think, well, maybe he's doing this as a volunteer and he has a full time job and he has to bill 2000 hours because he works at a law firm full time. No, that is not what happened. He's paid a princely $800,000 a year to do this job. So yeah, he's paid 10 times what the American, the average American family makes. 1,000% more. When you add his full package and compensation and benefits, I'm sure it's a seven figure. It's a million dollar a year job. And he says he doesn't have time to read the news and apparently had no idea Tucker Carlson was interviewing the most famous anti Semite in America today, Nick Fuentes. And it's because he says I consume a lot of sports. Oh, come on. If you want to watch sports, fine, but you're paid a million dollars a year to be on top of the news. You don't consume news because you're busy watching sports. You know, conservatives and a lot of people who, like the Heritage foundation, say it's time we bring back meritocracy, give people jobs for merit. Let's not have an affirmative action program just for people because we feel sorry for them. Well, if this guy, Kevin Roberts still has a job in a week, it shows that affirmative action is well entrenched in Washington because it's basically saying meritocracy doesn't apply. Your whole job is to follow the news, be up on the news, shape the news, and you're saying you're too busy because you got to watch sports. That. That to me just seems bizarre. That is the opposite of meritocracy. That is affirmative action. But it's affirmative action for rich white guys. So, hey, I guess that's okay. The final thing that seems silly. So I just read the script in front of me. It brings back all these images of Will Ferrell from the anchorman where they realized he was such a stupid anchorman, he'd read anything put in front of him. So this is what Kevin Roberts saying. He's essentially a comedic Will Ferrell or though without the comedy. But it is. It does seem laughable. And then they're talking about, it was given to me by an aide, our former colleague. I don't know what happened there, but it sure sounds like he fired the aide who wrote this script instead of using his own judgment. Now, if you work for me and you write a script that says, I, T.J. walker, think Adolf Hitler's great, and I read that script, I think I should be the one to take the blame for it. I think if I lost my sponsors, no one would be interested in me saying, well, it was my aide who wrote the script that said, I love him. I don't think I could get away with that. But who knows? Maybe we don't have enough affirmative action for old white guys here at Filtered with TJ Walker. But no, I think we'll stick with having a meritocracy right here on this show. Okay? On a more positive note, the woman behind plan B, Sharon Camp, she died this week at 81. Now, she wasn't a pharma titan. She was a policy expert who decided when big drug companies got scared to build a tiny three person company to get emergency contraception on the market. Camp once said, the pharmaceutical industry has, quote, the political instincts of celery. I don't quite know what that means, but it doesn't sound positive. When nobody would take on the project, she snapped, damn it. If they won't do it, we'll do it ourselves. Plan B eventually became an over the counter staple, preventing untold numbers of unwanted pregnancies while Camp gave the profits back to nonprofits and a charitable trust instead of cashing out. So there are many who believe, and I'm one of them, that she's a true hero. She has helped countless women protect their bodies, protect their lives, save lives, and give people, but especially women, control over their own destiny. Because if you are raped, the plan B was a way to not make sure that rape became a human being that you had to deal with the rest of your life. So it's emotional issue if you don't ever want to have either a chemically induced abortion or to use birth control. There's certainly some people who feel all contraception is immoral. If that's your belief, fine. I'm not asking you to ever use contraception. But if that's not your belief and you actually think that human beings and women should be able to control the destiny of their own body. She was a real hero and she passed away this week. Condolences to her family. Okay, we're going to switch now to our final topic of the day. That's where we answer your questions every single day. At the end of the show, I take one of your questions that relate to not something in the news, but personal development and communication issues. So this question comes from Kevin, Kevin Osee. He is a student in my complete course for speaking and presenting. And the question is, what role does audience analysis play in crafting an effective story for presentation? Well, Kevin, it's an extraordinarily important part because you can be a great speaker. You can have good eye contact, have a lovely voice, have good hand gestures, be a good storyteller. If you don't stop and think about your audience and what they care about, none of that's going to matter. You're going to be a horrible communicator. Your messages will land with a thud. So here's the steps I suggest all my clients go through when they're preparing a speech. Ask yourself, what is it? The first thing you need to do, not come up with a whole bunch of slides and graphs. The first thing you need to do is ask yourself, what is it I want my audience to do after hearing me speak today? That's the first thing. You should write it down in one sentence. The next thing you got to do is brainstorm on every possible message that would motivate your audience to do the thing you want. What would make them want to do that? This is where you have to take into consideration your audience. So if you are talking to people of low income status, you're a politician and you want to run for congress and you're talking to, let's say, a group of teachers under the age of 25, by and large, teachers under 25 do not have huge net worth. They don't have huge incomes. They're not really rolling in the dough. So if you're a candidate for office and you start giving a speech about how your number one priority will be to reduce the estate tax so that you can have more than $28 million exempt, like the first hundred million, that's not going to have any impact on these teachers who are 22, 23, 24, 25, because they don't have $28 million, which is the standard exemption for a married couple where they're wealth, they don't have to pay any estate tax when they die on the first $28 million. So that would be an example of a horrible message because you didn't analyze your audience. Now and I'm going to give examples across the political spectrum, let's say that is an issue you want. And now you are speaking to your local hedge fund managers. Meetup. Everyone there is a hedge fund manager and most of them are worth in excess of $50 million. Now you give that speech on how we got to eliminate the estate tax. Well, now your audience is sitting on the edge of their seat. They're practically salivating. Same speech, different response because of the analysis of the audience. So yes, Kevin, analysis of your audience is crucial because remember, it's never about you. You already know the stuff you're going to speak about when you're speaking. You've got to figure out how do you make those ideas interesting, relevant, useful to your audience. You can't force them to be interested in things that are inherently not interesting to them. Thanks so much for the question, Kevin. I wish you more luck with all of your presentations in the future. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. If you could please, please take just a moment and leave a comment. Sign up for notifications if you're watching this on YouTube, subscribe. If you're watching it on TikTok, LinkedIn, X any other platform. Thank you. Leave a comment Leave a positive word. Share it if you're on a social media platform that allows you to do so. If you are listening on any podcast platform, please follow the show it costs Nothing. Or subscribe to the show It Costs Nothing. And please leave a review. It'll really help. Thanks so much. See you tomorrow. Hope you enjoy the rest of your Friday.