Leaders Who Shaped the Future, Dr. Roy Casagranda & Museum of the Future's Lessons from the Past

0:00 [Music] I'd like to welcome Dr. Roy Casikanda. So, I'm pretty sure I have the bubonic plague. It feels awful. And as a result, I have like severe brain fog. So, if I say something completely stupid, I actually have an excuse this time as opposed to normal. So, I'm I'm really happy I have this built-in excuse. Um because of the brain fog, I'm going to my talk just a little bit. I planned something a little bit more complicated. I don't think I'll pull it off. I've lost IQ points today and I I just I blew my 753 killer Sudokco streak and so I'm

0:45 starting over. Okay, so the the talk today will probably end being a series about leadership. I I actually want to do is I want to back things up a little bit and before I dive into a story about leadership and then I want to give you an example and then we'll just see where things go. Half the planet last year voted in elections and of course there are plenty of places on the planet that don't have elections. But one of the things I think is safe to say is that there's a leadership crisis on planet Earth right now. There are some places that have fantastic leadership. Have you noticed there's a trend? They're usually small states. The big states seem to be rather problematic. It's not that there aren't some small states that have bad

1:30 leadership, but it doesn't seem like there are many big states that have good leadership. So, my goal is to try and give examples in the past to sort of showcase what good leadership might look like. And so before I do that though, I want to touch on a few things because one of the problems that we have as a species is the way ideology affects the way we think. So one of the fun things about going into the past to give examples is rarely will I trigger somebody's current contemporary ideology and set you off. But that doesn't mean that there aren't going to be things that'll get in your way for when you're listening to what I'm saying. Because we all, all 8

2:19 billion people on the planet right now have biases. Those built-in biases have a tendency to make us not hear what's being said or not see the data in front of us. Like our brain spends a lot of time deleting information. When you think about it, thank God because think about how much information is coming at you right now. There's all the background sounds and there's clearly a lot of them in here. There's all the visual stuff that's going on. There's the air temperature. There's a little bit of air movement, eye moving, there's patterns all around you. So, in other words, there's a lot of visual input coming in right now. There's a lot of audio input coming in. There's a little bit of temperature. There's all sorts of things coming in

3:05 and our brain has to go, they don't need this piece of information. They delete it. So, it's your subconscious mind that does that. Your subconscious mind is this amazing filter that's telling you, okay, this is a good piece of information. This isn't. Unfortunately, even though we wouldn't survive without this, we also have a tendency to delete information that contradicts our world view, that contradicts the things that we take for granted to be true and we do it a little too much. And then of course, one of the effects of ideology is that it's a heristic device to simplify the world so that you can quickly get to an answer that you think is acceptable. And unfortunately, we live on a planet where simplifying isn't

3:51 really necessarily the right way to proceed because it's too complex. And what we need instead of having ideologies that oversimplify things, what we need is to approach things in a more humble matter and accept that there isn't anybody on the planet who knows enough to be sure of anything. Right? That at the end of the day, doubt is your ally. embrace doubt and don't don't get trapped into believing that right you've got the answer. So what I want to actually do is point out an implicit bias and that implicit bias actually you know what I I'll start with an example and then I'm going to explain what implicit bias is or should I go the other way I'll start with the implicit bias and then I'll do the example. So, a

4:38 few years ago, 11, 12, 13 years ago, something like that, it's all starting to blur together, a group of Harvard researchers went into emergency rooms in the United States because what they wanted to do was figure out if women were being systematically undertreated in emergency rooms. So, they created three sets of fake patients. They they weren't really fake patients. They got real patients and they just deleted the identifying material. So they had X-rays, all the data that you would need to diagnose the patient. And one of the sets didn't have gender on it. One of the sets didn't have race on it. And then the other set didn't have anything race or gender on

5:23 it, right? and they went in emergency rooms and they asked emergency room doctors on their breaks, "Do you mind looking at these patients and then diagnosing them and then coming up with a treatment plan?" And so the doctors did and the researchers discovered that women were undertreated in emergency rooms. They discovered that as a general rule if a man complained about pain that man was going to get painkiller but a woman might get less a smaller dose or might not even get a dose because the doctors were just assuming that the woman was complaining extra but a man is tough and I'm really confused about that because I thought it would have been the other way around. But anyway, um child birth did I miss

6:09 something? I don't I don't even know how you could get there. Like I feel like a person who's completely oblivious to how our species functions would land on that answer. But okay, that wasn't the real shocker though. The real shocker was the role that race played. Race and the darker your skin color was was literally deadly because they had the control group. The control group didn't have race or gender on it. So they knew what the answer should have been. And doctors systematically underdiagnosed and then undertreated people based on skin color. But you have to remember something about the United States. It's complicated. It's fun. So the United

6:56 States is 58% white, but the doctors are only about 48% white. So this systematic undertreatment of brown and black people wasn't just being conducted by white doctors. it was being conducted by brown and black doctors too. And so the researchers were shocked. Didn't expect this. They compiled the data and even with everything I've told you so far, that wasn't the real discovery. The real discovery is what happened next. They went back to the doctors and showed them the data. So they could show the doctor, this is how you underdi this person. they've got the results. And these MDs, emergency room

7:44 doctors, my mother was a nurse and she loved to invite doctors to our house for parties. So, as a kid, I used to hear stories and my favorite doctors to talk to were the emergency room doctors. The crazy stuff they would see, right? When I think of emergency room doctors, I'm I'm thinking of a, you know, they're like Navy pilots. What kind of maniac tries to land a plane on a runway that's too short that's moving? You know what I mean? Like I feel like emergency room doctors are like that. What kind of maniac tries to treat a patient and they don't have enough time? Anyway, so uh they show the emergency room doctors the data and a bunch of them burst into tears and started crying and they were

8:31 saying, "I'm not a racist. I'm not a racist. I'm not a racist. But they're looking at the data and it's of course one of those moments where there's too much evidence pointing in the direction that apparently they are even though they themselves are brown and black too, right? It was also the white doctors obviously but even the brown and black. So a bunch of schools began implementing implicit bias tests. By the way, you can go to the Harvard website and you can take them. Uh you can totally cheat. The idea is for you to not cheat because nobody will see your results. So when you're moving your cursor, just go with your impulse. And you can do race, gender, uh, sexual orientation, body shape. Oh,

9:17 by the way, good news. I I am now 86 kilos and I'm 186 cm tall. I know I know it seems un unbelievable, but no, it's not true. But I feel like that's the trend now. I can live in this illusionary place where I just make stuff up and it's okay. Um, so you can do body body shape, right? You there's religion and for the record, you will probably feel bad after you take the implicit bias test. And it's okay because you're taking the first step towards recognizing you have a problem. And it's everybody and it's all of us. So about a year after I read the

10:03 study, I was listening to NPR, National Public Radio, in the car, and this story popped up about it, and I thought, "Oh, this is so cool. I just read this study like a year ago, and it it was an exciting study. Maybe it wasn't even a full year, nine months." And it was that John's Hopkins had immediately implemented an implicit bias course. Like the study came out in spring that fall they had one that was now mandatory for everybody in their medical school. And so this woman gets up. Part of the course is you have to share your results in front of the classroom. And this woman gets up and of course they hide her name for obvious reasons. And she gets up and she says, "Uh, I'm actually kind of shocked by my

10:51 results. I apparently have a really profound anti-br implicit bias and she said a really profound anti-muslim implicit bias. And then she said, "I'm from the Middle East and I'm Muslim and I'm brown." And I'm like, "Oh, this is so intense." And it was you know that kind of a moment where you think ah unfortunately all of us whether we like it or not do this at least most of the time maybe not all the time with everything we encounter in life the the trick is to constantly try to interrupt it. So when we hear information that kind of runs against us we should against what you're

11:37 thinking or if you concluded something. So let me give you the example. So remember when Qatar got the World Cup in 2022? What I remember most about that was everybody's reaction. There was such outrage. It's dirty. It's corrupt. You know, they bought it. There was It was amazing. I was like, "What is this?" Wow. Cuz four years earlier, Russia got the World Cup and I don't remember that level of There was a little bit like, "Was it dirty?" But, you know, was Yeah, of course it was dirty. It's Russia, you I think that was kind of the attitude which by the way is an implicit bias response again. So, but the the response the Qatar was just so intense. You're like, "Wow, what

12:22 did they do? Did they murder people to get this?" In twi in 2002, the Winter Olympic Committee had run into such profound corruption and incompetence, they were literally debating cancelling the 2002 Olympics, winter Olympics, because they were worried about the long-term implication if they went ahead and did the Salt Lake City, Utah Olympics that were the Olympic Committee was headed by Senator Mitt Romney. It was so dirty they thought about cancing the Winter Olympics. Where

13:07 was the outrage? Where was like maybe Cthar did do something. I don't know. I'm not on the inside. The assumption is that I'd like to see some evidence. That'd be neat. But in the 2002 Winter Olympics, the evidence was overwhelming that this was a dirty event. And yet there wasn't that kind of outrage. In other words, one of the things we do and this will apply more later is we tend to have a double standard. We tend to hold especially I've noticed Arabs to a higher standard than the rest of the world. And I want to try to put a little bit of attention on that and interrupt that a little bit. I'm I'm for let's not corruption. That'd be fantastic. Wouldn't that be amazing? By the way,

13:53 just a heads up. this idea that we should have business leaders as politicians. The goal of a business is to maximize profit. The goal of a government is to deliver services. Maximizing profit often requires you to be a little dirty. Why would you want a business person to maximize pro benefits to the population? It seems to me like you're asking for corruption at that point. But anyway, that's that's just because what does a profit look like in a government? It means that somebody was taking a little extra, doesn't it? Anyway, something to think about next time you're voting. So, having said that, what I want to do is to to ease into this, I'm going to start with a story because I want to do is I

14:40 want to bring up as we go, if I continue to do this series, stories of people who made small decisions that have big impact. Usually when we talk about the, you know, the historical events that move us, we talk about these big movements. And what I want to do is I want to talk about the small pieces because sometimes those small pieces, especially when they're stacked, end up doing something really amazing. And actually, they probably have a much bigger impact on your life than you think about. So here's what I want to do. I want to start with Theodore Roosevelt. I figure that won't set anybody off. We can ease into this because probably you don't care. He's on Mount Rushmore. Some of you think get him confused with Franklin Delano

15:27 Roosevelt. By the way, it was uh Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wife's uncle. Elanor Roosevelt was her maiden name. Franklin married his cousin to get to the Republican money because Franklin was a Democratic Roosevelt. So, it's not uh coincidence that they're both Roosevelts. It's just Eleanor thought she married him for love and then later in life discovered that she was married for politics and it broke her heart. She should have been president, by the way. She would have been better, but oh well. Missed opportunity. So, but I want to talk about Theodore, the uncle, not the not Franklin. So, Theodore Roosevelt was rich. He was a Republican, but only just

16:15 barely. In other words, he did participate in party politics, but he wasn't like an enthusiast. He wasn't working his way up the ranks. He wasn't paying his dues. The way you should think of political parties is frequently like 99.9% of the time they're basically like a Ponzi scheme, like a a triangle scheme where there's a guy at there's a group of people at the top who are the party bosses and then everybody else is trying to work their way up. And Roosevelt wasn't interested in that. He didn't need to be because he had no intention of having a traditional political career. He was just sort of experimenting. So, you know, at one point he's secretary of the Navy, another point he's governor of New York, but he never really took it seriously. Tragedy strikes and his wife

17:01 dies and he decides that the best thing he can do for himself is become a cowboy and do a lot of hunting. So, he moves out west and he hangs out with a bunch of really drunk alcoholic cowboys and shoot a lot of animals, including bears. And so at some point somebody goes, "Isn't that cool that Roosevelt has this connection to bears, he likes to shoot them?" And they came up with a teddy bear, as in Teddy Roosevelt. So next time you're cuddling with your teddy bear. That's where that came from. I'm a little confused about the shooting them part, but it's okay. Um, so in the midst of this, the United States decides to go to war, and it goes to war with Spain. Now,

17:48 the United States wants to go to war with Spain for multiple reasons. It wants Guam. It wants the Philippines. And it wants Cuba and Puerto Rico. And those are the only colonies that Spain had outside of Africa. Spain still had Spanish Morocco and what will become Western Sahara. And so, the United States decides it wants to fight Spain to get those four colonies in the Pacific, in the Caribbean. But it also wants to fight Spain cuz it's grandpa, right? England is dad. Spain is grandpa. This is our debutant ball. We'll go to war with Spain. Defeat Spain. And then the United States comes out as the empire it was meant to be

18:33 because grandpa's out of the picture. And so William McKinley, the president, tries to figure out how to trigger a war. and he's having all sorts of trouble because the Spanish aren't going along with so he moves a ship, the USS Maine to the uh to Havana Harbor and it's just sitting there and luck strikes and the main sinks after an after two explosions. The main sinks I think everybody was lost or almost everybody was lost. There's a catastrophe and so we declare war on Spain. We now know that main sank because coal dust because right this is 1898. So coal powered ship the coal dust in the boiler room

19:18 detonated and it caught the boiler room on fire and then it launched a piece of metal into the uh gun battery where all the ammunition was stored and it set off one of the rounds and then because it was next to a bunch of other rounds that exploded. So there are two massive explosions. And the reason we know this is when we sent submarines down there, you can see the holes go out. In other words, nothing punctured the ship. The ship exploded outwards and it was a catastrophe, but it's perfect. Now we have the excuse to go to war with Spain. Spain repeatedly tries to surrender because they're not in the fight. So what's the point? You might as well just surrender and get it over with. We're like, "No, no, no. We need to do the dance." So we fight them anyway. Roosevelt, for whatever reason, decides

20:04 to do a publicity stunt. He he goes to his cowboy friends and he goes, "Let's participate as a military force. You guys know how to shoot and ride. We'll go as a cavalry force." So, for the record, shooting animals is not the same as shooting soldiers. Soldiers shoot back at you, as a general rule. It's a very different experience. Do you know what I mean? And then hunters frequently ambush their the the animal they're shooting at. You know, combat in 1898 didn't necessarily involve a lot of ambushing. It was a lot of straightforward attacking. It's not the same. And the the kind of but for the record, the kind of anxiety you feel in combat is so profound. The Germans used

20:50 to do, right? We think of the German military is one of the finest ever, right? The German military would spend a year in basic training trying to turn their men into marksmen and they realize it was a waste of time because once the battle starts you panic. You can't help it. You're filled with fear and you just start randomly shooting. So the Germans invented a weapon to compensate that for that. And in the towards the end of the war it's too late to matter but it they still put it out there. They created the world's first assault rifle and the idea was just just shoot in the general area. You're bound to hit something eventually. to forget all this marksmanship training. So, grabbing a bunch of drunk cowboys and going and putting them in a war is probably not a great idea. But that's what they decide to do. They go to Miami, Florida, and

21:38 they try to rent enough ships to take their horses. And there are there aren't enough ships available. So, they decide to leave the horses behind. They're going to take one horse, and it's Roosevelt's horse. So they and they call themselves the Rough Riders, but they're going to be on foot and and they're a paramilitary force. They're not part of the United States military. And so Roosevelt randomly takes the rank of colonel. He's not a colonel. He's a civilian who's going to be riding a horse into battle and they they attack San Juan Hill in Cuba. So, uh, they land and when they I want to tell you a story about a movie, a Hollywood movie. Hollywood movies are so amazing sometimes. Uh,

22:25 Bite the Bullet, Gene Hackman. He just passed away. So, I feel like we should talk about the movie, too. So, I'll do I'll do what the movie did because that's the education I got. Well, kind of. So, my I wasn't actually watching the movie. My wife was watching the movie and I was listening to the movie and doing something else. I don't know. It's probably playing a video game, something really important. And so, but I have the movie in the background and I can hear it. And multitasking is very bad for your brain. Please don't do it. Just it's it cir hardwires your brain incorrectly and you become dumber and dumber to stop. I'm saying this is a hypocrite. So, uh, she's watching this movie and Gene Hackman goes, he's a he's one of the

23:10 Ruff Riders and it he's out west. It's years later and there's the love interest and he's talking to her and he goes, "It was horrible. We went up San Juan Hill and we were fighting and the Spanish were giving us hell and they're they're bringing bullets down on us and and we're dying. My best friend dies in my arms and I, you know, we run out of ammunition and we're fighting with bayonets and breaking the bayonets off in the Spanish bodies and we're using the rifles as clubs and it's a fifth fight after a while cuz we break the rifles and we eventually capture the fort and you know she's like impressed and I'm thinking, "Oh god, why? Why are

23:57 they doing this? Why?" And then Gene Hackman goes, "It's not true. That's all a lie." And I went, "Wait, what? Hollywood's going to tell the truth? Hollywood's going to tell what actually happened? This is amazing. This film must be from like the 60s or the 70s before Hollywood decided to start lying all over again in the 80s during the Reagan administration." Um, and he goes, "This is what really happened. And now I'm on edge." You know, like, "How are they going to tell the story?" He goes, "We get to the hill and there's like two Spaniards on top and they see us and they throw down their rifles and they run off the back side of the hill. We get up to the top of the hill. We plant the US flag in the hill." And then one of the guys walks

24:45 over to Roosevelt with the map. He goes, "Conel, I don't think this is Sanon Hill. I think we captured the wrong hill." So that they're like looking around trying to figure out where they are looking for landmarks. And off in the distance they can see a hill with a fort on it with a Spanish flag flying from the fort. And they go, I think it's that hill. So they run cuz they're on foot, right? Run down the back side of the hill. They run up the hill. There's a few Spaniards in the fort. They take a couple of pot shots at them, throw down their rifles, run out the back, and capture the fort. So everybody's confused. What do we do now? So the journalists are like, "Oh no, this is not this is not how this

25:33 happened. We're this is not okay. We have to fix this." So they go into town and they go to the morg and they pull out some dead men from the morg. They go back to the fort and they put them in Spanish uniforms and they put the bodies in chairs and they shoot them. And then they lay the bodies out and then they have the rough writers stand around holding rifles and they take pictures with all these dead Cubans in Spanish uniforms that died of other causes. And then they went to the presses with that story. Isn't that amazing? It's incredible. Thank goodness it happened a long time ago. 127 years ago.

26:20 So, bite the bullet. I know. I feel like I have to go watch it because I never watched it. Uh, and I ruined it. I don't know. That's probably like the most important scene in the whole movie. I I suspect it's not, but who knows? Um, so here's why all of this matters. The 19th century. Okay, so I I I need to clarify something. There's a political scientist named Steven Skironic. I I am madly in love with Steven Scoronic. Stephen, if you actually end up watching this video, I'm first I'm sorry. Second, if you ever find me stalking you, I'm I'm again sorry. Um Steven Skiranic is like one of the few useful there are a few useful political scientists in the world who

27:05 actually made a a meaningful discovery and it's about the presidency. So, I'm totally a Scoronic Ian. And so, a lot of what I say now is me reurgjurgitating Scoronic and I just want to give him full credit. We disagree on some things and I'm going to add some insights that hopefully will expand upon what he said, but my disagreements with him are meaningless. So, um here's what he discovered. There is a cycle to US presidential power. Then when you think about it for long enough, you realize, "Oh, I bet this is true everywhere that there's a cycle for power." And you can look at it in the English monarchy. You can look at it in the Roman Empire like there is

27:50 definitely this sine wave. History repeats itself. Maybe it just rhymes. Whatever it is, but there is clearly some kind of sine wave that we are on whether we like it or not. like I really want to get off. I don't I don't know why we have to do this. Feel like maybe we do more history or something. I don't know. So the discovery he makes in the US presidency is that there's effectively five types of presidents. There's the boring guys whose names we don't have to mention and we can just delete them. We can just forget about them. Chester Allen Arthur, Millard, Philillmore. You know what I mean? Like just the names make you want to not like them. What is that? Chester Allen Arthur. He has three first names. What's wrong with that guy? Get a

28:38 last name or something. Um, he was also dirty corrupt. Amaz like on a on a really amazing level. So I I I despise him. Most of the 19th century US presidents were really dirty, really corrupt. I mean some of them were amazing Abraham Lincoln but most of them were not Franklin Pierce like just awful people one after the other but then there's like James K Pulk so there was there was some good there was some good uh Monroe Madison Jefferson but most not so much and the American public knew it. They knew they were corrupt. They knew they were bad. And so, as a general rule, they never got reelected. The 19th

29:26 century was a bunch of one-term presidents. And also, there was a lot of assassinations. Um, it's bad. It's really bad. So, William McKinley realizes he has a problem. He wants to run for a second term in 1900. He's just pulled off this war against Spain. He's thinking, "Okay, look what I've done. It's so incredible. The empire is loose, but how do I get a second term?" And he has a problem because there were second term presidents in the 19th century. So, we're going to ignore the first six presidents because those are the revolutionary war heroes and as a result, they had like a they were part of the revolution. So, they just like a

30:12 pass. Four of them got a second term. One of them didn't even win. He didn't It's not that he didn't win the popular vote, but won the electoral college. No, he didn't win either. He got second place on both. They cheated and made him president anyway. And then the other one uh got was a one-term president. But the first six, four of them got a second term. After that is when we enter into the chaos period where they're all a bunch of one-term presidents with some exceptions. Andrew Jackson, the first of these, got a second term. So that's what McKinley wants. He wants to pull on Andrew Jackson. The next guy to get second term with Abraham Lincoln, not what he wants to pull off. He's shot to death a few weeks later when he gets a second when he's inaugurated. So, not the model he wants to go

30:57 to. The next guy to get a second term was Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland did a term, then lost, then did a term. It's only happened twice now. Trump is the second one. So that wasn't the model either. He wants two back-to-back terms. So he's trying to figure out, you know, like how do I get Oh, I forgot Grant. US Grant got a second term. And he went all the way through, but US Grant isn't the model either. He was so awful and corrupt. He's the first president to kill somebody while in the White House. I think he's the only president to kill somebody while in the White House. It was a drunk driving accident 11 years before the car was invented. He He killed a man in a drunk buggy accident.

31:44 Horse and buggy. He ran him over. But then it makes you wonder about the guy who was killed. Like, is that the president coming at me with a horse and buggy? Oh, did I just kill that guy? It's okay. I'm the president. He rides off. Um, so McKinley, that's why we put him on the $50 bill. So, uh, I mean, he was a war hero and he was a he was a fantastic general. Like, he I don't want to just trash the guy. I have to give him his dues. He really he might have been the best general the United States had ever produced. He's just that good. Like, I know everybody like, "What about all the southern generals?" Grant was better. This is going to make it so I can never back to Texas.

32:29 Um, but anyway, so McKinley sitting there going, "Andrew Jackson's my first choice. Grant's my second choice. Definitely don't want to do a Grover Cleveland and really don't want to do." And Abraham Lincoln. And also, just for the record, I said there was a lot of assassinations. Zachary Taylor was was poisoned. Uh, James Garfield was shot to death. Lincoln is shot to death. Right? like there's a there's a little bit of a trend going on here and he's thinking it's dangerous. I'm pretty sure being president of the United States might be the most dangerous profession on the planet. Uh it's 11% shot to death or poison rain. uh like I think combat infantry have 11% fatality in moder well

33:15 maybe maybe in one of the recent wars it's probably way over 11% in that one but as a general rule I don't certainly US military doesn't suffer a 11% fatality rate so because we just bomb the plane until the enemy is destroyed and then we walk in and count the bodies and we've been doing that since World War II and it's only worked once in World War II So, just keep using the same failed formula over and over again. Eventually, it'll work. I'm pretty sure that's how that works. Um, in any ca, you know what? Hasn't has anybody realized war doesn't work anymore. It's time to stop and walk away. Like, since World War II, how many times has the attacker won a war? It's It's actually not zero. George Bush Senior attacked

34:03 Panama and defeated it. And George Bush Senior's first attack against Iraq. I think you can claim that as a win. Uh, Soviets in Afghanistan, no. United States in Vietnam, no. The French in Vietnam, no. Like, since World War II, we name another world war. The attacker won. I don't It's not there. It doesn't happen. So, I wish world leaders would figure this out. You know what's better? Trade. Just trade with the other guy. Buy his stuff. Sell them stuff. Make the world prosperous. No. It sounds like such a capitalist answer, but why not? We're here doing capitalism. I think capitalism is profoundly flawed system, but it's

34:48 better than warfare. Anyway, so I derailed myself. We were talking about what uh so McKinley is trying to I'm just going to jump back into McKinley. McKinley is trying to figure out what the formula is to get a second term without going down one of these other paths that'll end in disaster. And so here's what he comes up with. What if I dump my really boring VP whose name nobody will ever remember and put the Roosevelt on the ticket? He can ride the Rough Rider experience and it'll catapult us into a second term. So that's what they do and it works. McKinley gets the second

35:34 term. Isn't that amazing? They'll rename Denali in Alaska, the tallest mountain in Alaska. They'll name it Mount McKinley. And then we renamed it Denali again, but I'm sure it'll get renamed McKinley again or Mount America or whatever. Uh, you know, it's coming because Denali was the Native American name. So, got to put McKinley back on there. Unfortunately, McKinley pulled a Lincoln and shortly after getting inaugurated, a guy walks up to him, point blank, shoots him in the chest, and kills him. And McKinley's out of the picture. Roosevelt is suddenly president of the United States of America at 42

36:19 years old, the youngest ever president. So, I know thought some of you thinking, "No, I thought it was JFK." JFK was elected at 43. Roosevelt wasn't elected president. He was elected VP. That's why the who who is the youngest elected president? It's JFK. Who is the youngest ever president? It's Roosevelt in case somebody tries to trip you up. It's quibbling over details, but why not? That's what makes trivia fun. Um, so all of a sudden he's president as a guy who hasn't paid his dues. He hasn't worked his way through the Ponzi scheme that political parties are. So, here's how the Ponzi scheme works. It's really a Ponzi scheme. There's no other way to think about it. I give you

37:04 favors, my power goes up because you now owe me. You want to be the person owed, not the person who owes. Power is from the giver, not the receiver. You should very careful gifts you accept. Isn't that cool? Right. So, I'll give you an example. So, maybe one of the best people doing this in the 20th century is one of my least favorite people to ever live and it's Henry Kissinger. But I feel like I need to just show you the example. So, Henry Kissinger flees Germany, ends up in the United States. He's not eligible to ever be president. He starts working his way up the system inside the Republican

37:49 party. He doesn't run for political office. What he does is he keeps track of every bit of information he finds out from everybody he ever encounters. So he walks up to you and he starts asking you questions. And people love to talk. So you tell him, "Oh, you know, I'm a journalist. I graduated from Harvard or whatever." And and my goal is to one day he would go home and he'd write all that down. If you gave him names of the of the of your children, he would write that down. If you gave them the birthdays of your children, you'd write. He didn't care. No detail wasn't good enough to write down. And so by the time Nixon gets elected president, Kissinger has information on everybody and he connects people. So he

38:37 finds out what he wants and she has it, but she doesn't want what he wants. She wants what he has. And then he becomes the power broker and he gets him to give this thing to her and then takes that thing, gives it to him. And now he owes. And actually she owes now technically he owes him but it's okay because at some point he'll need a favor. And the next thing you know he goes I want to be secretary of state and there's nobody in the Republican party who can say no to him. So because the constitution had a constitutional amendment had been passed after JFK's assassination creating line of succession in case we had a really bad and a bunch of people died at the same time because that had been passed secretary of state was in the line of succession. So Congress had to pass a

39:23 law temporarily pulling Kissinger out of the line of succession so that he could become Secretary of State because he wasn't eligible to be president. So technically it would have been unconstitutional for him to be Secretary of State. And so they they skipped him. He became Secretary of Stalin is world famous. You know, like all the crimes against humanity, he pulled off overthrowing democracies. But he did it because he knew how to play the party. He understood the political system from within and he worked it. Another way to think of this is the opening scene of The Godfather, right? One of the greatest movies ever. The guy goes and he talks about how these two boys had abused his daughter and the godfather basically

40:09 says, "I cannot refuse you because today's my I can't refuse you cuz today's my daughter's wedding." And and then sure enough, he has the boys, you know, and then his son gets I'm really the movie, aren't I? Anyway, and then he goes to the guy and gets a favor because it's all about favors. He says, "You will owe me and I'm going to collect. I'm going to do this for you, but you're going to pay me later. You don't know what it is, but you will pay." A good politician makes you pay a lot with a lot of interest and keeps coming back time after, oh, remember 25 years ago. And yeah, so long ago. Yeah, but you still owe me. That's that's a sign of success.

40:56 Roosevelt doesn't have any of that because he hasn't been working the system. In that moment, a normal human being would go, "Okay, I've got four years before the next election to work my way into the system. I'm the president. I can do a lot of people a lot of favors." Right? That's the solution that 99% of us would have done. Roosevelt makes a calculation. And this is the part that I think is fascinating because it's such a small thing that has such a massive consequence. The the the the thing that he realizes is if he spends the four years slowly working his way through the party machine giving

41:43 people favors, he'll actually be quite weak still. And even though he might be able to run for a second term, he'll have wasted his first term just trying to get in position to have a second term. So he decides, you know what? I'm going to pretend I'm not going to get a second term. And I'm just going to make this presidency count and see if I can figure out a way to create my power base some other way. So here's I think something people mistake about political power. institutions, constitutions, laws don't necessarily give you political power. So in other words, becoming the president of the United States doesn't

42:29 make you instantly powerful. You need to have a power base that you brought into the presidency that you can then utilize to make you powerful. I'll give you one of my favorite examples of this. So Nikita No, that doesn't bring a smile to your face. I'll say it again. Nikita, it should you instantly smile. The guy who would take his shoe off in the UN and bang it on the desk, right? Like he had so much character and he built his career at Stalenrad at the Battle of Stalenrad because he's the guy who went, "Why are we letting the commasaars murder our own soldiers? Aren't the Germans murdering our own soldiers? Maybe we should stop that." And everybody went, "Oh my god,

43:14 that's genius." And so in just a um by the way, I did do a battlefield tour of Stalenrad and one of the I I'm derailing myself again, but it's important because I did this and I just want to be fair to the commissars. So, there was this woman that we met and she would take troubled youth into the Russian countryside and they had gotten so good at finding battlefield sites. They could tell by the plants growing on the surface and she would just have them dig up the the the parts of the battlefield to find the remains and then they would bring the remains to cemeteries. So, there's a big Russian and a big German cemetery. The Russians have allowed the Germans to start burying their dead at

44:00 Stalen Grod. Um, and the Germans, you know who they are, because they had dog tags and they jam half the dog tag in the teeth and then they take the other dog to to report the death. So the you find it, the Russians, they give them a piece of paper and then the Russians thought it was bad luck to fill the paper out. So even if the paper didn't just, you know, decay over 80 years, they just were left blank because they thought it was bad luck. So the Russians are gone into unnamed graves, but the Germans have named graves. And she said, "I found a pattern, and the first person we dig up when we find a Russian site is a commasar."

44:46 In other words, after the men would go charging, the commasar is in the back with a machine gun. And if you turn around and run back, the commasar would shoot you to force you to charge. After they would, they would charge in and die with the rest of the men. So, they did have honor. So, it's bad idea. I wouldn't do this, but at least those commasaars had honor. And I I just feel like I just if I want to be a jerk, I can at least give them their their Fair ado. So, um, gets in trouble and he's in New York. He's at the UN and he's doing another one of his bang a bang a shoe on a table event. And this is after he's had the kitchen

45:32 debates with Nixon. Nixon was then the vice president and he humiliates Nixon and the Russians win the kitchen debates. And if you you just go look for film footage of this, it's hilarious. Nixon Nixon is just completely lost and Kushchef is running circles around him asking him complicated questions and Nixon has no clue. It's embarrassing. Kushchef flies back to Moscow and there's nobody waiting for him in the airport. You know, he's like, "Wait a minute. I'm the president of the Soviet Union. Why is there somebody waiting for me in the airport?" This is weird. He goes over to a pay phone and he dials a number and it's some random guy on the other end and he's like, "You're not who I was calling and and then he hangs up, calls another number,

46:17 calls another number and it's the the Russians had changed his telephone, all the telephone numbers in the Soviet Union, everybody's telephone number." And Kushf couldn't call any of his allies. K'eta, he's done. He goes to the Black Sea, spends the rest of his life in Adaca, fishing, hanging out in the beach, enjoying himself. Isn't that cool? Every politician has to have a power base. You can't go into a political position without a base. And if your power base is a bunch of telephone numbers, you might get in trouble. You might want something else. Just throwing that out there. Poor Nikita Kushf. like, "Oh, I didn't see that coming. That's so clever. Easiest coup d'eta

47:04 ever." And I like how gentle they were with them. They're like, "You you look great. Just go spend time on the beach. You'll be fine." So Roosevelt decides he's not going to try and do this. I think most people would just work their way through the party. He decides he's going to go out on his own and he figures out what his power base will be because it's not the party. Because if a bunch of people don't owe him favors, where's his power going to come from? Foreign policy. He decides that the path to the president's power is that he as the representative of the new empire, the

47:51 United States Empire, every time there's a foreign policy victory, he'll get the prestige and the credit for it, and then he can go to the American public and they'll love him. And then he can use the American public to leverage against Congress. So if Congress makes him mad, he'll be like, "Man, you've got an election coming up in two years. Are you sure the American public loves me? They'll vote you out of office. So, for example, he paints the United States Navy white and he sends it around the world once. Isn't that cool? Steam power chips burning coal, painted white. As the soot slowly falls on them, they start to turn gray and eventually even black. So they had

48:38 to be repainted frequently as they're going around the world so that they can keep arriving white. In other words, this is a big event. It's it's circus, right? It's it's opulence because we're wasting all this money on the coal and the water because every port you have to buy new coal and new water. There's no ship that had enough coal and water you could make around the world once. And paint. And you have to repaint the ships when you're at sea so you can arrive white. It's glorious. And of course, white is purity and it's perfection and it's goodness and it's innocence and black is evil and it's dark and it's mysterious. That was implicit

49:25 bias. Interrupt that. Isn't that cool that we've done this to color? I personally love the color of black or shades of it. Um, so he does this because he wants to tell Europe and for that matter everybody else on the planet, the United States might have a large non-white population, but at the end of the day, it's a white empire. And that's why he paints the ships white. He's making a statement. At the time, we're about 15% not white. So, another thing he does, the French go to build the Panama Canal.

50:10 They're dying. They can't get it done. They're losing so many people to malaria and all a bunch of other diseases as well. They abandon the project and walk away. So, he says, "We'll do it. We launch a civil war in Colombia and get Panama Panameanians to declare their independence. And then we break Panama out of Colombia. And then we go into the middle of Panama and we create a US zone that'll be US territory, splitting Panama in two. And then we build a canal, by the way, using a bunch of Panameanian labor. And we paid them by the color of their skin. I'm serious. It was a It was a skin

50:57 color payment system and thousands of people die. We get the glory. And Roosevelt look goes, "Look, we did what France couldn't do." You got to remember this is the 120 years ago. This is when France is still a global empire. In other words, we've elevated ourselves to a new level. He does another thing that's really fascinating. The Russians and the Japanese went to war. It's a disaster. Russians are dying like there's no tomorrow. They trigger a famine because they're they're running out of horses and they're actually literally taking horses from the farmers to have cavalry and as a result the

51:43 farmers don't have enough horses to farm and the Russians are literally running out of food. Roosevelt tells the Russians, the Japanese, I have an idea. Why don't you guys come to San Francisco, and I will negotiate out a peace deal with you guys. What are you getting out of this war? You're getting nothing. Let me end it for you. So, he puts the Japanese in one hotel. He puts the Russians in a second hotel. He goes to a third hotel because he can't be in a hotel the Japanese or Russians are in because then the other side will think he's biased. And then he goes to one delegation one morning first and the next day he'll go to the other delegation first and then when he's done with that delegation he goes across the street to the other hotel and he goes back and forth back and forth back and

52:28 forth like the shuttle in a carpet making uh loom and that's where the term shuttle diplomacy comes from. Right? And then somebody went because we could do that with a bus, too. And then we had a shuttle bus. And then for some reason, somebody thought a spaceship and we had a space shuttle, too. It's it's a device for making carpets, the shuttle. In any case, that's what he does. And in the beginning, they have to work out really important details like I mean, unbelievable stuff like where will they hold a negotiation? Which hotel? After arguing and fussing, they pick a hotel. Now me to pick the room. So they have he's going back and forth. Which room in this hotel is suitable? They

53:14 find a room. Problem is room has one door in. So who goes in first, the Russians or the Japanese? Obviously, they have to go in at the same time. So he goes to the management for the hotel and he goes, "Can you just punch a second hole in the wall and put a door so they can walk in at the same time?" And management's like, "Whatever you want, Mr. President." and they punch a hole in the room and they put in a second doorway. And now are they going to have a round table, a square table, a triangular table, a trapezoid table? They have to work out all of these really critical details painfully one after the other. They finally get it worked out. But here's the thing about diplomacy. You want to have the deal done before you go to the tables, right? You don't want to

54:00 actually sit them down and go, "Wait a minute. Let's work out the you want to have it done. So he goes to them and he goes, "What was the problem again?" Here's the problem. The Russians had three railroad three, one, two, three, four, four railroad tracks. They had one that went from Warsaw to Moscow, one that went from Warsaw to St. Petersburg, one that went St. Petersburg to Moscow, and then they had one that went from Moscow to Vladivosto. So it was 11 or 12 time zones across. I think it was 12 at the time. Russia is still 11 time zones. The Earth has 24. Is Russia very big? It's amazing. 11 time zones. And that's after they lost one. Um they thought they got Port Arthur, a port city in China on the

54:47 other side of Manuria on the other side of Korea. So they they started building a railroad track from Vladivvastto to Port Arthur so that they could expedite trade from China to Vladivosto on its way then to Moscow. So they start building this railroad track. The problem is the Japanese had recently just attacked and conquered Manuria. So technically they were building the railroad track in Japanese territory. And the Japanese went, "What are you doing? Stop. This is ours. We conquer this fair and square. That's how this works. We run over. We plant the flag before anybody else does. And then we explain to the locals that you belong to us now because we planted this flag. And then they go, "Oh, I missed out. I should have planted my flag first." So that's why flags are very

55:34 important. You spend a lot of time designing good ones. The Japanese tell the Russians, "Please stop. Please stop." The Russians decide, "We're just going to ignore them. We're just going to build a track, never asked for permission, and keep ignoring them." And so finally the Japanese went, "That's it." and they attacked and that's what was the start of the RussoJapanese War. So Roosevelt has worked out for the Russians and the Japanese what to do. He's got it all figured out. They're at the table. He's in one spot. The Russians and Japanese across from each other and he turns to Russians. He goes, "Just like we rehearsed. Just like we rehearsed." And the Russians go, "We would like to ask permission to build a railroad track through Manuria to Port Arthur from Vladvastto." And the Japanese go, "All

56:20 you had to do is ask." And that's it. Isn't that amazing? Few months later, Germany and France are getting all riled up over Morocco and Roosevelt decides to get involved again. And he writes a letter to the the German chancellor saying, "I would really like to do what I did for you in France that I just did to for Russia and what do you think?" And the German chancellor writes a really rude letter about back something the effect of gutless worm where it's just mean nasty. Roosevelt writes another letter and he says, "Look, I've seen war from the inside. It's not true, but in this

57:06 case, I like illusion. You know what I mean? Like he saw them shoot dead people from a morg, but still I don't care. I'm ready. Sometimes good lie is a good thing to do." And he goes, "I've seen war from the inside and it's horrible." And he and he says, "Please, I'm begging you, let me do this. Don't start a global war for some territory in Africa." And he signed it gutless worm, the letter. And the German chancellor is blown away that the American president would humble himself like this. He goes, "All right, let's do this." They go to Spain. Everybody piles on. The the English are there, the Italians are there. Nobody knows why. Uh, right. All these different what really it's just France, United States, and Germany. And they work out a deal where they change the border of Togo land and Germany

57:51 accepts it. And Germany actually ends up looking a little dumb because it was like, you almost started World War I for a few acres of land. And Roosevelt wins the Nobel Prize. He becomes the first sitting president to get it. He's the only sitting president to earn it, though there's been two. And then there was an ex-president who also got it and earned it also. So, three presidents, uh, two earned it. The other guy is president for literally one month. Like, he he got the Nobel Prize for not being somebody else. I was I've never I want a prize like that. You're not that kid that you sat next to in fourth grade. Here's a prize for not being that guy. Everybody hated him. So, Roosevelt has a president like

58:39 this. Then he does something crazy. He decides that these big corporations like Standard Oil are in violation of US law, antitrust laws, laws that stop monopolies from forming. Standard Oil owned 95% of the US oil market. 95% is 100% a monopoly. There were literally only two companies left. Standard Oil had destroyed everybody else. shell, which was royal Dutch shell by that point because the Dutch had bought it. And Texico and the only reason Texico existed was because Rockefeller had decided that Spindle Top 1901 when Texas struck oil, that was a one-off fluke. It was literally the

59:24 largest oil strike in US history. I have to tell you the story. This charlatan makes a fake geological report. Walks around the area around Spindletop knocking on people's doors. He goes, "Look, there's oil. There's oil here. Look at this logical report. $20, $50, $10, whatever you can spare. I will make you a shareholder in my company." And of course, remember 124 years ago, $100 is a lot of money. And people were doing it. They were giving them the money because the geological report was so convincing. They go out, they build a a dyke to catch the oil as it comes out of the ground. and they start digging and uh the ground eventually starts to rumble and it explodes like a bomb. It launched

1:00:12 a folks fogen beetlesiz boulder into Louisiana. I don't know how many miles that is. It's really close to Louisiana border, but still it was multiple kilometers away. It launched this thing. There was so much oil coming out of ground it flowed over the dykin into the Gulf. And people were of course dancing because they're filthy rich thinking, I can't believe this. And the guys like freaking out going, I I thought I thought I was a charlatan stealing everybody's money. I just made everybody filthy rich, including myself. This is amazing. And Rockefeller says that and goes, "It was a oneoff." Anyway, Texas accounts for 30% of all the energy produced in the United States. United States is the largest energy producer on the planet. So, it turns out it wasn't a one-off. Oops.

1:00:59 Anyway, uh, by the way, the next guy, same thing. He's a charlatan. Makes a fake geological report. He's a few kilometers to the northwest of Spindletop. Convinces a bunch of people to invest. They can't wait to because they just saw what happened at Spindletop. They dig. Second largest strike ever. And charlatans pop up everywhere and Texas becomes filthy rich. It's amazing. Sometimes I guess it's okay to have charlatans. I don't know. So weird. So Roosevelt decides he's going to destroy Standard Oil. He's a Republican. He's the president of the United States, but he's a representative of big business party. It was the big business party at its founding in the 1850s. The anti-slave, the abolitionist

1:01:47 movement and the big business guys and the finance guys got together and created a coalition, turned it into the Republican party. The voter base would come from the abolitionists. The money would come from the financers and the big business guys. He's going after his own base. The Republican party is tearing its hair out. And he doesn't just do that. He makes the meat packing industry reform. He changed American football. His son writes a letter saying, "They're going to ban my favorite sport." His son, I think, was at Princeton. Princeton, Yel, or Harvard. Those are the three the three football leagues. All the schools were in one of those three leagues. And they would they would hook their finger in each other's eyes. They'd kick each other and they'd punch each other. There like every game there was at least three guys with a broken bone hospital. And he

1:02:32 writes his dad. He goes, "I love this sport so much. Please save it." And Roosevelt goes, "Why don't you put helmets and pads on? You just beat each other all day. You'll be fine." He becomes this crazy transformative force, totally free from his own political party, relying on US foreign policy to leverage the American public to help him win over Congress and he does it for eight years. He gets his second term. Wildly popular. We stick them on Mount Rushmore. We loved them so much. People couldn't wait to buy their kids teddy bears. Loved them so much. And as he's leaving the White House, he says, "My only regret is that I did not

1:03:17 face a real crisis so I could have proven how amazing of a president I would have been." That's a little narcissistic. You're sad because there wasn't a bunch of suffering. That's that's a little little narcissistic, but it when you think about it, he actually was kind to that guy because he did all these things. Now, okay. So, for those of you who don't know me already, I I always destroy heroes because I have to bring in the bad. Sorry, I know you wanted to go home loving Roosevelt. You can you can admire what I just said. You just have to know the bad. He also did genocide in the Philippines. The United States launched a 15-year long war against the Filipinos because when the United States Army

1:04:02 arrived in the Philippines, the Filipinos were like waving Filipino flags saying, "Thank you for liberating us." We United States went, "Wait, no. We're here to conquer you. I'm so sorry. We're replacing Spain, not getting rid of Spain." And the Filipinos fought. And the low number is that United States murdered 800,000 Filipinos until they finally submitted. The high number is closer to 2 million. He's eight years of those 15 years. He didn't have to do that. He could have walked away from it. He also at one point did consider jumping into the civil rights movement. It was in it's a fledgling, like it wasn't even a real movement yet. and he decided it wasn't politically cost-effective. Also, Mother Jones, the person working to get rid of child labor, did a march. She started somewhere in the Midwest and walk to his

1:04:49 Long Island home. And what she would do is she would get children who worked in the factories to join her and then walk through the town and then they when she got to the end of town, they had to go home. But that way there was a parade of children and she would have them hold up their their hands because then you would see all the missing fingers because they were working in the factories as eight-year-olds getting stuff chopped off because it was brutal. And she got all the way to his Long Island home and there's, you know, cadre of like 20some kids or 50some kids and she knocks on the door and he and he didn't come out and see her. All right. He had the power to help reform child labor and it happened anyway without him. So he wasn't

1:05:34 perfect, but he was still amazing even if he has some black marks. Oh, is that that implicit? Even if he has some white marks against him. He picks a guy named Taft to replace him. Handpicked successor. Taft wins the election in uh 1908. Taft turns out to be completely corrupt. There's an embarrassing bathroom scene that involves a tub that I won't get into. And but I guess now you'll have to look it up. Um and Roosevelt turns against him in 1912. He runs against Taft and Woodro Wilson um as a bull moose candidate. He creates a third party and comes in second place.

1:06:20 Taft comes in third and Wedro Wilson becomes the president because he got first. while he's on the campaign trail, somebody walked up to Roosevelt and shot him in the chest. And Roosevelt hadn't yet gotten up to give the speech yet. So his speech was folded up in his vest pocket and the bullet as it was going through the speech slowed down just enough it got lodged in his ribs in between his ribs. And you know, he's obviously shot, so there's a little bit of push back. And um the crowd grabs the wouldbe asalent assassin and beats him up. He's hauled off to jail. And you know, his staff are trying to get him to go to hospital. And Roosevelt goes, "No, these good people

1:07:08 came here to hear a speech." And by God, they're going to hear a speech. And he pulled the speech out of his pocket. There's a bullet hole with a blood blood ring around him. and he gave the speech and then at the end he said, "I could normally take Q&A, but I'm really not feeling good. I should go to the hospital and get this bullet removed." Isn't that cool? He also must have been having flashbacks because that's how William McKinley died. There's no way he wasn't like, "Oh, what the heck?" But anyway, isn't that crazy? What a what a guy. In any case, when you think about it, that's one of the most important transformative events in US presidential history because every president afterwards, at least to a degree, has

1:07:55 relied on foreign policy to shake the popularity they generate globally. I said, until recently, because obviously things are going haywire, but when you think about it, like what was one of the key stones of US foreign policy? It was that in a way the US had pulled all these states like European states and Japan and South Korea into this protective system where the United States made these really amazing guarantees and in the process what does the president get out of it? Prestige leader of the free world. Thank you so much Dr. Roy. It was an excellent session. I just like everyone to know that we have these sessions every month until the end of end of the year. So every month until

1:08:41 December, Dr. Roy will be having a session here at Museum of the Future. Can we have just one more round of applause, please? [Music]