Meta’s $65M AI Push | iPhone Rescue | $660M Fraud | Royal Arrest

Ultimize a $65 million election push from Meta to shape artificial intelligence laws. An iPhone satellite feature that helped save six Avalanche survivors out west this week. A Kindle paperwhite that may actually improve your sleep. A former executive accused of massive fraud who will never ever face trial and get to keep all the money. The billionaire electric vehicle founder who won't pay $660 million and a senior royal arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walk. Hi and welcome to Filtered. Thanks for joining me today. Meta's $65 million AI election push. Meta is dramatically escalating its political spending, committing $65 million to influence state elections in Texas and Illinois. The goal shape artificial intelligence regulation before a patchwork of state laws restricts development through municipal super PACs. Backing both Republicans and Democrats, Meta is supporting candidates seen as friendly to AI expansion. Texas is central because of major AI data center investments. Illinois is significant due to proposed AI regulation. This marks the company's largest election investment ever and signals that the future of artificial intelligence policy will be fought not just in Washington, but in state capitals across the country. Now, is this smart corporate strategy or corporate overreach? Should tech companies fund both parties to protect innovation? Well, traditionally they do. There's nothing unusual about that or surprising. Let's look at some more facts here. And oh, I just realized I didn't put on my normal props. Now I do use glasses for reading, but I use these when I'm doing shows with you. So I'm going to switch that out. Those of you listening on the podcast didn't see that obviously I just put my, my normal sort of non invisible glasses on for the show. So let's look at at some of the issues here. So Meta does not want there to be big regulation when it comes to what's going on in artificial intelligence. And none of the big tech companies do they want to be able to do whatever they want to do. Now they have given massive contributions to, shall we say, certain political factions in Washington D.C. who've told them, yeah, you can do whatever you want, we'll help you. But what we are seeing across the country is Republicans and Democrats are facing, they're hearing loud and clear from their constituents saying we want regulation of AI. We do not like that our children can be five years old and addicted to TikTok. We do not like the fact that half of our land is being taken over by AI servers AI server farms and our electricity bills are quadrupling meanwhile, no new jobs in our community. So there is a bipartisan push to regulate this at the state level, at even the local level. And again, this, this spans partisan politics, this show. By the way, I'm a sane, sensible centrist. I call it like it is. I'm not carrying water for any one political party. So we've seen the Bernie Sanders of the world, the Senator Elizabeth Warrens on the more progressive side, we've seen Governor DeSantis, Ron DeSantis of Florida on the conservative side, all saying the same thing. They want the ability to regulate what AI is doing and how it's essentially taking over communities. So what Zuckerberg is doing is putting big money into this. And, you know, big money in American politics usually wins the day, but not always. If, if actual citizens are angry enough, they are going to get what they want because a politician, they're happy to take money if it's kind of a quiet issue and they don't really hear from their constituents. But if you're a politician and you've taken $10,000 from a political action committee, for example, but all of a sudden you've got 100 constituents calling you and writing you, saying, I'm angry you're going to vote against this legislation coming up, or you're going to vote in favor of this legislation coming up, or I'm going to vote against you in the next election. Well, the politicians typically will say to heck with what the political interests want, what our funders want. They will throw the funders overboard every single time for what their voters want, which arguably is a good thing. That is democracy. The problem so often when it comes to funding, though, is that it deals in the shadows. It deals with complex issues where voters simply don't know enough to really figure out what's going on. And that is the big problem there. We'll be following this closely. It could have a huge impact on elections, but not necessarily in a partisan way, because again, this is one of those few issues in American politics today that doesn't have a clear cut. One side wants this, the other side wants the opposite. This is more an issue of you've got elites from both parties sometimes saying, get the big tech companies whatever they want. And you have grassroots across the political spectrum saying, no, no, we actually want authority. We want control ourselves for what goes on in our community. More meta news in just a moment.

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Big week for Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. He walked into a packed Los Angeles courtroom yesterday and faced a simple but explosive question. Did Meta knowingly design Instagram and Facebook to be addictive for kids? In this landmark bellwether trial, a 20 year old plaintiff known as KGM alleges she signed up for Instagram at age 9 and spiraled into anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia as the platform optimized for engagement. Under questioning from attorney Mark Linear, Zuckerberg repeatedly insisted critics were mischaracterizing Meta's intent, arguing users spent time on Instagram because they find it valuable. Internal documents presented in court, however, showed concerns about maximizing total teenage time spent on the platform, beauty filter harms and millions of under 13 users despite so called age limits. With roughly 1600 similar lawsuits waiting in the wings, this case could redefine how courts treat social media less like neutral platforms and more like engineered behavioral products. Okay, Mark Zuckerberg, never known as the most eloquent, polished spokesperson in the world, didn't seem to blow up on general newscast everywhere looking especially bad. But to just continually say, oh, you're mischaracterizing what I said. I don't think he's fooling anyone. Now the plaintiff's attorney is making the case that Instagram and as well as YouTube, somehow YouTube got out of this, are built like digital casinos. Well, they are. That is if you talk to the the founder of the Stanford program that teaches these young engineers how to create habits for their products. It's all modeled after what casinos do. They're trying to make it addictive. And for Zuckerberg to contend otherwise is disingenuous. I mean, he is, he is a good businessman, he's focused and he realizes hm, every single additional second of anybody's time on planet Earth from the day they're born until the day they die, every second they spend looking at my screen, whether it's a Facebook screen, an Instagram screen, a WhatsApp screen, is an opportunity for me to make more money. I like money. That is what Mark Zuckerberg is about. And now we're Seeing the ugly side of this. The downside of this is, yeah, you get teenagers on places like Instagram and they just can't stop their brains. Their prefrontal cortex is not wired to, to say, no, it's not wired to say, maybe I've had too much of this, let me put it down. That's just not how pre teens are wired. It's frankly not how a lot of adults are wired either. But we're going to leave that for another day. I'm hoping that something happens in this trial so that there's real punishment towards Meta that feels to them like punishment. And Meta is so big now that a $1, 2, $3 billion fine is going to be like you or me paying a $10 parking ticket. It's going to seem as a minor inconvenience that is forgotten by lunchtime. So something else has to happen. Now we're seeing Jonathan Haidt, the well known NYU psychologist and the author of the Anxious Generation, essentially taking a victory lap. He was on Bill Maher last week. He's all over the place. He's testifying in Europe, Australia. More and more countries are passing bans on social media. Now he predicts that this thing happens everywhere, including the United States. He's made the point others have as well. It's kind of like smoking. I mean, I remember as throughout my entire adulthood, you go to a restaurant, a bar, you hear a band in the 1980s, you come home stinking with the wretched smell of smoke. Didn't matter if you smoked or not. I didn't smoke. Smoke was everywhere in the 1990s. All of a sudden you still smelled like smoke everywhere. It was everywhere. It was inescapable. It seemed like, well, what can you do? People smoke. You have to let them smoke. Turns out you don't. It did not start in the United States, but when it did, it went to New York City and then big city after big city and then small city, and then it went everywhere. And these days, if you light up a cigarette in a restaurant or a bar, people are going to look at you like you're insane. I predict, and I'm hoping that we're not that far away from a future where a 13 year old opens up a cell phone and goes on Facebook or Instagram and people look at that kid and their parents like, you're insane. What are you doing? That's crazy. It's against the law. Hasn't happened yet, but I certainly think it could. More testimony from these trials. Again, Mark Lanier, the plaintiff's attorneys said in court Instagram and YouTube's apps were built like digital casinos. Mark Zuckerberg trying to downplay his testimony, saying, I'm actually well known to be sort of bad at this. Okay, but that's not an excuse. It's one thing when you're the, you know, the cute 20 year old kid in 2004 and you're not very good and you're sweating profusely when Kara Swisher is interviewing you. Maybe that was cute and endearing when you didn't control the minds of billions of people around the world. But fast forward 22 years later, you're one of the most powerful individuals in the world. You're one of the richest individuals in the world. You have the ability to shape reality for billions of people. So simply saying you're not good at explaining what you do doesn't really make sense. So some more facts. The lawsuit was started in 2023. The plaintiff is now 20 years old. Snap and TikTok settled with her. Meta and YouTube remain defendants. The CEO of YouTube was supposed to testify. Somehow he got out of it. I'm not quite sure. Well, so again, it's one thing when Meta, Facebook was this little upstart, this college upstart that a few thousand people used. It now is used by 3.5 billion users. You can go to the most rural parts of sub Saharan Africa these days and you're going to find people on Facebook. They might not have running water, but if they have some old refurbished $10 cell phone, they're probably on Facebook. So that's a remarkable testament to Zuckerberg's business prowess. But it also shows the power he has to potentially shape lives in a negative way. In these days, they're every single day. There's more research coming out showing teenagers, preteens are simply not built to withstand this avalanche of imagery, of body shaming, of guilt tripping, of just presenting the world in a way that doesn't really exist. It's just too much. They can't withstand it any more than a gambling addict can withstand going into a Vegas casino every day. At some point, if you're a gambling addict and you've gone bankrupt and you can't pay your bills anymore, the casinos will toss you out. They don't want you there. They also don't want the negative publicity. We need to get to the point where social media is treated the same way now in this courtroom. Interestingly, apparently some people were trying to use Meta's smart glasses to take footage, pictures and video of the jurors and the judges banned them, saying that's going to be risky to the jurors. Now, in 2024, the US Surgeon General urged warning labels on social media. Different regime back in 2024, different mindset on what the government should be doing back then. Is that enough? We have warning labels on cigarettes for adults, but we don't say, oh, sell that pack of cigarettes to the 14 year old because there's a warning label on. They can make up their own money. No, we make it illegal to sell cigarettes to 14 year olds. As pointed out in this program before, Australia banned kids under the age of 16 from any social media use. State attorneys general are suing Meta. New Mexico has an ongoing trial. The Instagram CEO says that Instagram is not clinically addictive. What does that really mean? Okay, you can make the case. Any one person could just stop smoking cigarettes too. It's not addictive permanently for that person does not mean that cigarettes are not addictive. Zuckerberg still controls Meta with an iron fist. He has the majority voting power. Yes, other people have bought shares in the company, but he still has complete, unbridled monarchical control over that company. So if he wants to change it, he certainly could. There's no doubt about it. So we'll be monitoring this closely. I think that Facebook has had a tremendous ride. They've done well as a business, but at what cost to societies? How many more democracies have to be torn apart by people motivated and energized by the anger, the vitriol spilling out on Facebook page after Facebook page? How many more teenagers have to cut themselves or possibly do worse after being subjected algorithmically to things designed to drive them crazy and addict them? There's really no other way around it. More in a moment. Stay tuned.

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And we are back. IPhone satellite feature saves avalanche survivors 6 avalanche survivors near Lake Tahoe stayed in contact with rescuers for four hours using Apple's emergency SOS satellite feature. If you don't know how that works, you're not alone. I didn't either. Now they were able to do this despite having no cell service. The feature allows iPhone users to text emergency responders via satellite when traditional networks fail. Rescue officials say real time communication helped coordinate a successful response. Models from the iPhone 14 forward include the feature, and certain Google Pixel phones now offer similar capabilities. This is a clear example of technology functioning at its best. Not distraction, but survival. Should satellite emergency features be standard on all phones? I'd certainly like to see that. Let's dive a little deeper. So again, I try to give you a slice of the world based on reality and not just come at things always from some knee jerk perspective. It's very easy and I guess I'm guilty of it occasionally to look at big tech stories and talk about, here's another example of how they're killing our kids or doing something awful and I think sometimes we swing too far to one side. So for the first 20 years or so of technology, certainly starting in the late 1990s, you could say that pundits, reporters were too much the booster, always saying how great this is, how wonderful this technology is. Always licking the boots of big tech CEOs. And certainly the last 10, certainly the last five years, we've gone to the other extreme where almost all of the coverage is negative and again, I would argue most of it well deserved negativity. But things are so negative quite often that's not giving an accurate perspective as well. So I do think it's time to periodically reflect on all the good things big tech companies have done. I mean for these skiers, it apparently saved their lives. They were trapped under an avalanche, no way of anyone finding them other than through these satellite services on their iPhone. So let's take a minute and celebrate that. According to Dan o' Keefe with the California Office of Emergency Services, he said, quote, one of my personnel was communicating with one of the guides over a four hour period and that's how they found them. Let's look at some more facts of the situation. Again, the avalanche happened in the Lake Tahoe section of California, Nevada area and apparently stunningly beautiful area. They got a tremendous amount of snow recently. I've not had the good fortune of skiing there. Six survivors were involved. No cell service, but they were able to communicate for four hours. Until they were reached. So this is good. Apparently it requires a 16.1 iOS or newer. It's free for two years after activation. You have to be outdoors with clear sky view. So I guess lucky for them, there wasn't another snowstorm. The responders request location and battery status and they were able to track them down. The Google Pixel 9 supports the feature. Google Pixel 10 supports satellite texting. But experts remind you the emergency number should be what you try first. But again, if you're in a remote area and in an avalanche, you might not be near cell towers. So this is a good thing. So I wanted to just take a moment and remind myself and the rest of us frankly, how fortunate we are to live in a world immersed with big technology. Because yes, there are negatives and there are kids who do serious damage to themselves, their self esteem, their body because of too much social media. But there are a lot of advantages to living in these tech times. The fact that you can call any relative, friend, family member, essentially for free, anywhere in the world, and you can see their face, I mean, that's something. When I was a kid, the Jetsons had, that is like five centuries later, that was just science fiction. I'm old enough to remember that if you received a call from someone in another city, you, you were already kind of scared. You're thinking, oh, did someone die? Must be really important because placing a long distance call was profoundly expensive. It just wasn't something the average middle class American did, much less most of the world. And now we can communicate with people. If you already have a cell phone and some kind of wi fi connection for free, you can publish books on any subject. I've published books now independently. I have worked with traditional publishers, large publishers, small publishers, but I've published books myself. You couldn't do that without technology. You couldn't do that without Amazon. And so let's be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Am I saying that gives Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and the Google boys a blank check to do whatever they want? No, but I think sometimes it's too easy to just go in one direction. Oh, everything about technology is great, and then go in another direction. Oh, all tech companies are so horrible. You need to get rid of all of them and go back to living on Walden Pond. No, that would bore me to death and it would probably bore you to death as well. So I don't want to go back to the days of no tech. The idea that, I mean, this blows my daughter's Mind the idea that not that long ago in human history, certainly when I was a kid, even a young adult, you wanted to watch tv. You had to watch what some executive in New York City decided you would watch. You had three choices. One of them might have been a really lame movie of the week that you didn't care about, but you watched it because there was nothing else to watch. These days you can watch millions and millions of video forms of Entertainment, whether it's TikTok, YouTube, some movies for free. You can watch entire movies for free on Amazon or excuse me, on, on YouTube. If you happen to belong to Amazon prime, which is not free, you can watch tons and tons of movies there. So the idea that you can now watch basically any movie ever made, any TV show ever made, every sitcom ever made, for very little money, in some cases, no additional charge for you, the fact that you can do that anywhere, anytime, anyhow, on any device in your pocket, your phone, that's mind blowing. And yet we take it for granted now. But throughout most of human history, if you had suggested that to the wealthiest Kings, billionaires in 1970, they would have said, wow, I'd pay anything for that. That's crazy. That's fantastic. Wearable devices captures irregular heartbeats often saves people's lives My now my Apple watch coincidentally broke today or yesterday I should say. So I'm without my watch. You normally see me, but apparently that watch does save lives and can actually call emergency service responders if you've fallen or it senses through your heartbeat that something's happened. That's a great thing. Real time language translation My own digital clone at TJ Walker AI can now help people with my voice, my ideas, my insights in 30 some languages. So if you want advice on personal development skills, communication skills, and your first language is Hindi or Korean, you can get my insights. I mean that's just mind blowing. In the past, any kind of translation was very slow, very, very expensive. You see in the old James Bond movies in the United nations, you see all the translators and everyone has the, the different headpiece in wired getting translators doing in real time. You don't have to have any of that anymore. It's all because of technology. Online education has transformed millions and millions of lives around the globe. I've been the beneficiary of that more than most, given the fact that I have hundreds of online courses and it's allowed ME to reach 12 million student enrollments. So every single day, if I were a person with normal gratitude, I would get up and pinch myself saying, how lucky I am to live in this modern world of technology that allows things like online technology, taking my ideas, my insights that I said once on video and then sharing it with millions of people around the globe when they want to while I'm sleeping or doing other things, not at all possible throughout human history until really just a few years ago. It certainly radically transformed my life and the life of my family. But I also like to think it's radically helped other people around the globe who would not have been able to afford me or come to me or fly me to them to help them with the skills they wanted to learn. So that's it. Telemedicine consultation is saving people's lives. AI radiology is able to spot cancer and tumors often, much more efficiently and inexpensively than some radiologists. Now, it's untrue that radiologists have become irrelevant in the world of AI. Some predicted that they were wrong. But in general, telemedicine and being able to diagnose things using technology in general, artificial intelligence in particular, is saving lives. We're seeing drones deliver medical supplies now. You can make the case. Well, tj we're seeing drones kill people, too. Okay, again, a mixed bag. I spend plenty of time talking about the downsides of technology. I do think if we're going to be fair, and I try to be fair here, I'm fair to people of different political parties. I'm fair to people in different industries, and I want to be fair to the technology space. It has dramatically improved life for billions of people around the globe. I hope you but me in particular. Technology has created early wildlife. Well, excuse me, wildfire detection. Now, it obviously didn't solve the problems Los Angeles had when it mostly burned to the ground last year, but it does help in many situations. AI is good at detecting cancer in ways that would otherwise be missed by people who can't get to the doctor or their doctor doesn't do it quickly enough. Emergency alerts sent by smartphones helps people react to crises much, much faster. Remote monitoring of senior citizens is helpful. Fundraising for medical emergencies. That alone, just using the technology of phone to alert people quickly. And of course, GPS. Now, I'm old enough to remember when I was 16 growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte's a beautiful city, wonderful city, but it has this odd thing where there are half a dozen or more major roads all named Queens. Could be Queens Boulevard, could be Queens Road, could be Queens Road East. But it's not a grid like New York City. And the name of roads just change in the Middle of the road. Sometimes a road with one name will take a right hand turn. So getting anywhere before the age of GPS was difficult. It was time consuming. Now it's gps. Boom. You plug in the address, you don't even have to think about it again. You can make the case that GPS has made a lot of people lazier, not rely on their memory as well, not use certain spatial relation skills. All fair. However, it's so much easier traveling anywhere, getting, getting to places in normal daily life, certainly taking vacations or trips. With gps, it is absolutely, believe me, you would not want to go back to the times without gps. Everything was more time consuming. You spent half your time lost. Husbands and wives get into fights about whether they should pull over to the gas station to ask for directions. No one has to do that anymore, for the most part, as long as you don't lose your cell connection. And of course, probably the thing that's most meaningful to people of all. And for podcast listeners, I'm holding up a cell phone without technology. If you say, well, tech is bad, we should get rid of tech. I wish all the tech companies had never existed. You'd have no cell phone. And I spent a lot of time on this show talking about all the problems of cell phones, diction problems, and making people less social, antisocial. But again, what I want to go back to the days without a cell phone where you might, you might go to a town to visit a friend and you literally never connect for the whole weekend. They miss, they're in the shower, they miss their regular phone, you don't have their address yet, you're trading back, you never even meet them. That used to happen, believe it or not, in the 80s and 90s, Going somewhere and say, well, I'll call you when I get there. No, you couldn't do that. You had to make this whole elaborate plan, oh, I'm going to New York City. If I don't see you, I'll meet you at noon at the big clock in the center of Grand Central Station. Do you have any idea how inconvenient that was? So I often worry about how much time I and other loved ones spend on this device, this cell phone. But there's no doubt about it, there's an insane number of positive aspects to having a cell phone and living in the modern world. Yeah, there are downsides. I'm not minimizing the downsides. We talk about them all the time on this program. But for just one moment, I do think if we're going to be fair and honest. We do have to talk about the tremendous, tremendous upside to technology. And what started it all was this story about how six skiers had their lives saved out in Lake Tahoe because they were buried in an avalanche of snow.

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direct line to everything I do A writer for the New York Times Wirecutters is Reading a Kindle in bed finally ended decades of insomnia. Instead of staring at the ceiling, he replaced rumination with low light reading and found himself drifting to sleep. Experts say keeping brightness low and using warmer light tones, especially on devices like the Kindle Paperwhite, may reduce stimulation compared to phones or tablets. The key is low brightness, warm settings, and a consistent routine. It's a reminder that not all screens are equal and sometimes technology can improve sleep rather than disrupt it. Okay, let's look at some facts and first, a moment of full disclosure. I learned this for myself. For those of you listening on the podcast, I'm holding up my Kindle Paperwhite and no, this is not a paid promotion and I'm not an affiliate for this. But I have found personally that this is a great thing for sleeping at night. If I wake up at two in the morning and I turn on my Kindle, I there's settings for the brightness from 1 to 24. I put it on 5 so it's just bright enough for me to read it. I don't have any extra lights on. I don't want to wake up my wife and I don't want to have the bright light on because that's what keeps you awake. So what this writer found is it really helped him fall asleep. And it's worked well with me too. Now, many years ago, I shifted away from technology. Well, I shifted away from real books to technology, then to work on sleep. I shifted away from reading electronically and I went to all paper books. But what I found a couple of years ago is if I Wanted to read a paper book because I woke up at 2 in the morning. I'd have to get up, go down the hall, turn a light on. Very hard to ever get back to sleep. What I do and this author talked about is I could just pull the Kindle next to me again. I have it on this very low, low setting. Now, what they're suggesting is put it on a warm setting. The brightness level needs to be low, so it's so dim you're not getting all this light stimulating your brain, telling your brain it's time to wake up because the sun is up. So that's the beauty of using something like this. Now, I'm not your doctor. If you have insomnia, you may want to consult your physician. But let's look at some more facts here. This is according to Dr. Catherine Sharkey at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. You're not under the light. You're just tapping to turn a page. You're quieting your mind. According to Rory Evans. Again, that's the author in the New York Times. Then I started reading my ebook. In bed with the lights out. I couldn't keep my eyes open. Open. What Rory's saying is, okay, I'm reading for a few minutes and boom, sleep is induced. I have found that to be the case. Not always, but a high percentage of the time. I also find that this is the best way to put me to sleep. I used to read a paper book, but that entailed turning on a traditional light. So if I read a paper book, I would read for at least 30, 45 minutes. Quite often when I'm reading a Kindle, then I may only be able to stay awake for five minutes and I drift to sleep very, very quickly. So, again, I'm not here to promote this one brand. They do seem to have figured out a great way of allowing you to see the text on the screen with very, very little light. But if you can find another device that does that, by all means, be my guest. I'm not here to convince you to buy a particular product. Now this, in this case, Rory Evans, the author, talked about having insomnia from childhood into adulthood and gives this credit for essentially solving the problem. Now, you may have other problems with it doesn't necessarily always get me back to sleep, but it's very, very powerful. I do recommend if you are going to use a Kindle, the Paperwhite is, I think, still the most recent one. And they really do a fantastic job of letting you adjust the brightness so that it's just bright enough to see it. You're not squinting. I'm not squinting. But it's putting so small amount of light in front of your eyes, in front of your brain that you are less likely to be stimulated. Very different from turning on a cell phone. A cell phone, unless you have really taken precautions to dim it and take the color out, is going to be so bright it's very easy to wake you up to stimulate, you're not going to get back to sleep. The other real danger of a cell phone, which is why I never ever bring a cell phone in a bedroom, is you're turning your cell phone on and you say, oh, oh, I got a text. Let me just check. Could be something important. And then you get a text and now you got to write to someone and maybe you're angry about something or someone's angry with you. Now you're not going to get back to sleep. Maybe it's not text. Maybe it's a WhatsApp message. Maybe you have some other notification on your phone. Look at it. I'm looking at my phone right now. I just wanted to make a point. And even I'm now stuck looking at email. I just got a message from a construction company doing oh, tj, our technician will be out today to install the transformer. Well, if I had been looking at that at 3 in the morning, then I might be thinking, well, why didn't they come yesterday? Or why did it take so long? All of these things can stir you up. What I love about a Kindle or a reading device is it has a single purpose. We live in an era where we expect every machine to do everything and be connected with everything and do everything. I suppose there is some way I can access websites on my Kindle. Thankfully, this is an area where my laziness benefits me. I don't know how to get onto websites or to check email or to check text or to check notifications, which means when I go to sleep at night and I'm reading it, or if I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm reading it, I'm not tempted to get distracted by other things. I know I'm just reading content from that one book and that gives me control. So if you do have trouble falling asleep at night or if you have trouble staying asleep, I would recommend you look at some type of digital reading device that's not your phone. I don't know how to describe the technology, but there's something about what the Amazon Kindle people did that is profoundly different from how the screen is lit on a cell phone. Even when you use the Amazon app, the Kindle app on your phone, it's a different experience and maybe there's a way around it. But I haven't figured out a way of using my phone at night that doesn't either put out too much light or become a gateway to other distractions. So I would recommend the Kindle. Again, no professional financial ties to it at all. I get nothing from it. But I want you to get a good night's sleep. That is really my goal here. I do have some explanation. Again, I'm not a technologist savvy to all the things they do in the Kindle, but I want to share with you some aspects. Similar facts in a controlled lab work light emitting E readers and tablets used before dead delayed sleep timing and suppressed melatonin versus printed books. So not all tablets are the same. And if you're using an E reader on a tablet or a phone, it can still cause problems. It can still delay your sleep. Harvard's summary of that research warns that bright blue leaning light at night can shift circadian timing and worsen next morning alertness. So there is some controversy with this. It's not 100% clear cut. Now the Amazon people I'm reading this from objective sources, but this is a summary of Kindle Paperwhite that it may be different in real life. Paper white is in is E ink with a front light, not an LCD blasting light straight at you. That's one reason many people find it less stimulating in a good way than phones or tablets. Even though it still uses LEDs for lighting, it's using it in a different way. A practical clinical quoted guideline from a consumer health outlet reducing paper white brightness to around half lower plus using warm light mode at night should minimize the blue light concerns for most. So again, to spell it out, I'm holding up my paper White on camera. For those of you listening on the podcast, it has a brightness setting from 0 to 24 and I will hold it up for the camera. You can see it's incredibly bright when I put it on 24, so that's enough to keep you awake. So they're recommending you do it at least half, which is 12. For me, that's still way too bright. I have found that as long as I put on my reading glasses, if I put it on a brightness level of 5, you can see there it's much, much, much darker and dimmer, but I can still read it without causing eye strain. So that's the recommendation is to dramatically reduce the brightness. So the research says drop it at least 50%, but preferably 25%. That's pretty much the setting I'm on because it goes up to 24. I've dropped it to 5 and I can still read it clear clearly, but in a way that it doesn't keep me awake. There's a dark mode option as well. I I do prefer the normal mode. So I do recommend if you're not getting enough sleep, do whatever it takes to get a good night's sleep. I spend a lot of my time each day doing things to enhance my sleep. I don't spend time every day on this show talking about. But it's such a cornerstone, a keystone to every other aspect of your success in life, your health in life. Because without enough sleep, your good habits and every other aspect can disintegrate. It can have a profound impact on your career. Just ask former governor and former presidential candidate Rick Perry. His infamous moment in a presidential political debate where he just couldn't remember and said, oops, you know, I don't remember. Came because of insomnia, had been battling for the last month and had very little sleep. If you don't get enough sleep, chances of you exercising right, eating right, all of that goes out the window. So give it a try. If you don't have the budget for a new one, perhaps borrow a friend, a family member, find an old refurbished one on ebay. But give it a chance. It may make the difference in you getting a good night's sleep. More in a moment.

We'll be right back after this break.

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Okay, this story is a big one. It just came in. While preparing for the show today, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor arrested. Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has been Arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Police are searching properties in Berkshire, Norfolk and Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. This is all in Great Britain. The investigation follows review of material connected to the Jeffrey Epstein files. Though correspondence note the probe may extend beyond publicly known emails. Buckingham palace says it will cooperate and King Charles stated that, quote, the law must take its course. No charges have been announced and the investigation is ongoing. So yet another person's career reputation destroyed. Now, Prince Andrew's had his reputation destroyed a long time ago. All the famous people caught up in Epstein's horrors. He seems to be frankly, the most culpable. He has been sort of pushed further and further aside out of the royal family for years, most recently with his title being stripped and being pushed out of their public housing. Now it looks like he can actually go to jail. It's one thing to lose your prestige, lose fancy palaces to live in, but to lose your freedom is another. So, again, let's look at the facts. We've seen photo after photo after photo of Prince Andrew with girls, underage girls with him with a creepy smile on his face, his arm around them, and his next Epstein. Recently we've seen pictures of him, like, on all fours over young girls. There's been countless, countless, countless documents showing he spent a lot of time with Jeffrey Epstein and all sorts of emails about, you know, how, how naughty that young girl was last night, that you don't have to be a suspicious person in general to think, okay, this guy, and I'm not making any allegations official, so don't sue me, Prince Andrew, although I think you've got bigger fish to fry than coming after me, it certainly seems almost beyond a reasonable doubt that this guy participated in illegal sexual activities with underage girls. It's hard for me to fathom that that was not part and parcel of what his daily routines were like. I don't mean to laugh. This is a serious issue and lives were destroyed and some of the young women involved killed themselves. So it's by no means a laughing matter. I laugh at the idea of sort of anyone suggesting that this guy has been framed or it's all put upon or it's made up or it's fake. Now this guy's good. What are we really to make of this? I do have a slightly different take on this and it might not be popular. I'll share that with you in a moment. But first, a few more facts. Prince Andrew turns 66 years old today. Happy birthday, Andrew. And seem like it will be a memorable birthday, but not necessarily a Happy one. So the, the. Apparently there was a raid on every place he's spent any time in the last few years. The investigation involves him sharing confidential material. So there. Let me make sure I'm explaining this carefully. So Great Britain has a king and queens and princes, so it's partially a monarchy, but it's really a democracy where parliament runs things. But it's this weird sort of, we can't decide completely what we are. We're still going to pretend that kings and queens are important. So they still have these close relationships and members of the royal family are given confidential material and they're bound under oath not to share it with people. So apparently, I guess when you're naked on all fours, cavorting around with wild orgies and things, I guess things slip out. I don't know how better to explain it. Things slip out. So that provides the context or the long arm of the law coming after him. Let's not kid ourselves. A lot of people are upset about Jeffrey Epstein, as they should be. They are upset by so many rich and powerful, mostly men. But as we found out recently from Goldman Sachs, their top legal counsel, a woman was spending a lot of time and doing favors for Jeffrey Epstein. Not to mention supermodel, no, Naomi Campbell, who apparently did all sorts of things connecting Jeffrey Epstein with models and attractive people as a part of his entourage, but mostly men. A lot of people are upset about how wealthy, powerful men aided and abetted this criminal and his abusive apparently thousand. We're not talking about 1, 2, 5, a handful. We're talking about thousands of young women. So when enough people are upset and enough people are looking at you from enough different perspectives, all sorts of contexts can be created to figure out how can we get this guy. Al Capone was a well known gangster in the United States in the early part of the 20th century and he went down for tax evasion. Are there perhaps other people who evaded their taxes and didn't go to prison? Yeah, they got him because so many people were going after him because he figured his trail of crime was so great. We have to do whatever it takes. And I think that's essentially what happened in Great Britain where they figure this guy is such an embarrassment, we've got to do something to get this guy. It should be noted this, these investigations, these charges, these searching of all of his property apparently did not have anything to do specifically with Virginia Jew Free, a woman who killed herself, who made all sorts of allegations about Prince Andrew when she was an underage teen. And when there's lots of pictures with his arm around her, looking really, really creepy. King Charles, his brother has said he's going to work with the law officials. He's not asking for any special treatment for his brother. By all accounts, King Charles, Queen Camilla, they're all sick of this guy. It's a huge embarrassment for Buckingham palace, for the monarchy and the investigation continues, but it's not looking good. Okay, here's the part where I'm going to upset some people and give you my take, which is the problem is not Prince Andrew. He's clearly a problem person. He's no great catch, he's no great prize. The problem was, is with the idea of monarchy in the first place. When you tell people, hey, you don't have to do any work your whole life, hey, you're special God or some power from above has anointed you or your ancestors with special divine privilege. You get to do basically whatever you want. Just don't break the law. If that's what you tell people. And you have a bell shaped curve, random distribution of individuals, characters, you're going to have some people who really take it seriously and they devote their life to helping charity, putting a spotlight on important events. Arguably, I would say Prince Charles fits into that category. He seems very public spirited. He's devoted his life to helping the environment, preserving architecture, promoting British businesses. He shows up on time, sober, well dressed and representing his nation. So you've got that on the one extreme. You've got some in the middle where, okay, they try not to embarrass anyone. They realize, okay, I had kind of a lucky hand dealt me, I never have to work for a living, I got plenty of stuff and homes. That's the good side. The downside is, yeah, I'm kind of in this fishbowl and I'm going to get criticized if I do anything that upsets anyone. So I kind of need to be on the straight and narrow. But there's going to be someone on the bottom end of this bell curve. There's always going to be, you know, in any group of people. When you have enough people and a family for generation after generation, you're going to have some who are the bottom 5% when it comes to morality, ethics, the ability to control one's impulses, the desire to look for new kicks. And if you're someone where you know from day one, you're never going to be a successful entrepreneur and make enough money to change your lifestyle because you're already fabulously rich, if you know you can't really run for office because you know you already have power. It's very easy to get bored again. I'm not in any way condoning Prince Andrew and his actions. I'm not excusing it. What I am saying is if you give enough people through generations unlimited wealth, power, time, fame, you're going to end up with someone like Prince Andrew. You are. Because he's so used to people saying yes to anything he wants. He's so used to people opening doors, he's so unaccustomed to people saying no. That there's a certain percentage of people who want a greater thrill, a greater challenge, something a little more forbidden, something a little naughtier. And that's how you end up with Prince Andrew. So I'm not going to make any friends in Great Britain today and I'm not going to make any friends in any monarchy today. But if you're sick and tired of hearing about Prince Andrew and you want to solve the problem, get rid of the monarch, let's get rid of this idiotic, imbecilic idea that somebody, something, some power, some force, you want to call it God, whatever, has anointed certain people with having more intelligence, more wisdom, more self control to govern other people. Until you realize that's just a bunch of baloney, that's nonsense that's going to lead to someone like Prince Andrew doing what he did. Maybe not every time, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe even not in one generation, but sooner or later it's going to happen. And the solution, as I said, is punish Andrew any way you want. But you're not really addressing the root of the problem until you get rid of monarchy. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. This has been another edition of Filtered where every day I come to you and look at the top stories of the day and try to filter it through the lens of communication skills. Thanks so much and thanks for for stopping by. Some of you were nice enough to send comments. I do appreciate it. I do see one comment coming in from Stargirl. Christina says thank you for the presentation 150 hour class. So it sounds like you're in one of my complete presentation skills class. I'm glad you got a lot out of that. Thanks for stopping by Christina. I do appreciate it. If you got any value out of this, please leave a review, please leave comments and subscribe. Thanks.