Why is the left against nuclear power?

So why don't we go next to, oh, I don't know. How about Emerson from Kansas City, Emerson from Kansas City? Welcome to The David Pakman Show. What can I do for you today? I check you're on the air, Emerson. You are live. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. You are live on the air. David, thanks for accepting my call. Hope you're doing well. I was just wondering, I'm a big leader, power advocate. I was wondering your thoughts on nuclear power as a green alternative. And then more specifically, I'm like, what candidates do you think would be the best for someone like me who is worried about nuclear power going forward? Well, listen, I don't know what you're the totality of your political views are. So I it's hard for me to recommend a candidate for you. Let's let's table that part for the moment. I have said before that there is a lot of misinformation about nuclear power. There are some on the left, my my my friends on the left who reflexively reject the idea of nuclear based on very old safety data about nuclear power, which, by the way, per energy generated nuclear power is not even even old nuclear power was not particularly unsafe. When you consider the pollution effect of generating power from coal or gas, I mean, I've talked about this before, but modern nuclear, if we were to build new nuclear capacity, the safety would simply not be a concern. Those concerns have really been dealt with. The issue for me with new nuclear is it takes a long time to come online and I don't want it to supplant making strides in other forms of energy. But I don't have a problem in principle with new nuclear. I just don't think it necessarily should be like the pillar on which the left bases its platform. OK, that makes sense. Have you heard about the like the small modular reactors that new scale has been developing? I think that that's going to be a technology that is going to make it like manufacturing a lot more affordable and more quicker. It'll be able to get onto the grid a lot more quickly as well. I've read a little bit about that. These are these are the ones that can do. I don't remember if it was like three or four hundred megawatts per module or something like that. But yeah, I mean, I don't know that much about it. It's all interesting to me if there's some big thing about the small modular reactors that I'm missing that makes them terrible. I'm sure people will write in. But I think all of this technology is interesting. I'm not a nuclear advocate, but I think the reflexive anti-nuclear instincts of some on the left are a bit overblown. OK. And then a final question. There's been about a dozen states or so that have lifted their nuclear construction ban pretty recently within the last year or so. I think that that's like a sign that the younger generation and more active voters are looking at nuclear and saying, why aren't we using this more often? And I want my state to be able to, you know, implement this technology. It strikes me as reasonable that that's why I don't know enough about it to say definitively. But let me research that a little more. OK. Thank you, David. All right. Thank you so much. Emerson from Kansas City. Nuclear always an interesting topic. Why don't we go next to Daniel from Melbourne? I don't know if that's Melbourne, Florida or oh, it's Australia, Daniel. Welcome. And you're a website member as well. Thank you. Oh, boy. And can you hear me? Yes, I can. Oh, beautiful. I was giving you a call because we're currently going into a referendum to change our constitution to give a voice to Parliament for the Aboriginal communities. And I was actually calling to see ask you two things about that. One, is there any motion movements in America to do a similar thing with the Native Americans? And then two, what's the kind of what would be the social democratic stance on such a process like that? So I'm a little bit familiar with what you're referring to. This is the Australian indigenous voice referendum. Is that right? Yes. And if I understand it correctly, it's basically to enshrine specific representation in legislative bodies for Australia, Australia's Aboriginal community. I mean, is that generally what it would do? So that they can have a representative in Parliament so they can't make laws or change laws, but they can give an opinion to laws that are made in the Parliament. Yeah. You know, we this has been talked about in the United States when it comes to the Native American community. And one of the big elements of like a stumbling block has been how do you do it? Do you do it based on the current Native American population? Well, maybe that's unfair because part of the reason the current Native American population is so low is because of prior killing of Native Americans. OK, well, do you do it per tribe? And the problem there is that there are so many tribes, some with very small numbers of members, that it would basically be some insane number. So very often when I hear people who agree that there should be some specific representation and that's not everybody. But even when people agree, there's significant disagreement about the logistics. So I don't really know its prospects in the United States. I think it's a very interesting idea that there's been a counterpoint which has been, listen, Native Americans already live in states and so they have representation locally. They can vote for senators and members of Congress and president and all these different things. The counter to that then becomes, well, sometimes they are. I don't even know if reservation is still the politically correct term, to be honest, but that's the term I recall. Some of them are within their own systems of government on reservations. And so actually they sort of are. It is almost like a state and therefore it does deserve representation. I'm not an expert in this issue, but I've heard interesting discussions about it. And I mean, I think you've highlighted a few of the points here because the trend was trending towards a yes a few months ago. But as it gets closer and closer, it seems to be trending in the polls closer and closer to a no. Much for the reasons you've listed there with questions about how the actual detail of it will be executed. Right. I will be interested to see what the outcome is. When is the vote? Actually in the next couple of weeks, I think the next two or three weeks. All right. Well, I will follow it closely. Beautiful. And one other question with your books. Will you make a book that says how to think like a psychologist? Oh, that's you know, that's let me think about that one. I don't know if that's necessarily under the umbrella of critical thinking, but it's an interesting idea. OK, sort of a different type of thing. Thank you. All right. Daniel from Melbourne, Australia. Very much appreciate the call. Why don't we go next to Joseph from Tulsa, Oklahoma? Welcome, Joseph. What's on your mind today? Joseph, please. And last call for Joseph. You're on the program. Well, that's really too bad. We are not able to hear from Joseph. How about Carter from Washington? Carter, welcome to The David Pakman Show. Thanks for having me. What's on your mind today? I guess I just wanted to ask for some advice. I am was kind of not educating myself as a younger person. And now I all of a sudden have a desire to kind of learn as much as I can. And I'm a bit I'm skeptical on validity of sources with today's, you know, media. I wonder if you have any advice to kind of find legitimate and useful sources for information. Well, first, let me ask you this. When you say you want to educate yourself on what topics you're saying, you just want to keep up with the news or you want to educate yourself about a particular topic? Yeah. Like politics, economics, you know, mostly like just like the affairs of the world, stuff like that. So what I would encourage you to do is to build your knowledge base and your ability to think critically about these issues, not from news articles, but from reading books about these issues. And I, you know, I can't give you a full bibliography here. I have a bunch of recommendations on my Web site about books in all of these categories which you can look at. But with something like economics, for example, great. You want to be informed about economics. Reading news articles about what's going on economically in different countries is fine. And I would encourage you to use primary sources, Associated Press, Reuters, original reporting like New York Times and Washington Post rather than opinion stuff. But more important really would be to read the foundational books about a lot of these subjects. So if you go to Google, for example, or even if you go like if you go to chat GPT and you were to say, what basic books about economics should I read to understand the foundational principles? Let's see what what chat GPT would spit out. It suggests a combination of classic texts as well as introductory type books. Yeah, that's exactly what I would do. I would I would start there. Do a search on Goodreads or chat GPT or wherever the area that you're interested in. You need to build up your understanding of the concepts first rather than than going straight to the news articles, because you really need that foundational understanding. That makes sense. Thank you very much. All right. Carter from Washington. Great to hear from you. Let's go to Sarah from Quebec. Sarah, welcome to The David Pakman Show. What's on your mind today? Hey, can you hear me all right? Yes, I can. Awesome. So I was listening to one of the last people you're speaking to. And towards the end, you just sort of mentioned that when you're talking about if you would write a book on how to think like a psychologist and you said that you don't know if that would be critical thinking. And I was just curious to know kind of what your perspective is on that. And what about. Yeah, no, I have no I am I am not an anti mental health treatment person. Ninety percent of my family works in mental health, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers. You have a bit of perspective on it. Yeah, yeah. It's more so that I think I think that books about psychology really should be written by experts in that particular field. And so my series is more about the sort of basic types of critical thinking and epistemology for being news consumers, for thinking about reporting and political issues, et cetera. It just seems like think like a psychologist is an extremely worthy topic. But that is separate from my forthcoming series of books and should really be written by a psychologist or expert in that field. Interesting. So when you have this series going, do you think it would be worthwhile then to collaborate with experts in specific potentially that level of potentially? Yeah, I think that would be reasonable. I mean, like the series we're doing, we did think like a detective. We're doing think like a scientist. We may be looking at think like an astronaut, which I think would be you know, we have all these different ones that have a particular umbrella. I think think like a psychologist is great, but maybe for a slightly older audience and maybe written by a psychologist or even like there could be sort of a different level at different ages. And this is like, but I think that there is a huge lack of mental health education in youth, even just basic things like how to breathe, to regulate yourself in difficult moments. And, you know, there there might be some value to that, even if it's slightly different. You know what, Sarah, you're convincing me for that. You're convincing me. Something like this tailored to kids. I think that this is a great idea. I think a collaboration with a mental health professional is the way to do it. We'll put it on the list. I think you're convincing me as we talk. All right. Well, if you ever need convincing on anything else, let me know. Things are OK. Are you in Quebec City? No, I'm in Montreal. Oh, OK. All right. Well, one of my favorite cities, as everybody knows, is Montreal. Yes, absolutely. Oh, what is your favorite thing about Montreal? I can't you know, there's so much I don't think I'd be able to name just one thing. I think that the diversity of the different styles of neighborhoods, fantastic quality of museums, variety, a number of restaurants and the food scene, the people are great. I mean, it's just I think I've been probably 20, 25 times in my life. It's just a great, great place. Yeah, it's I think the food is the piece that I love, but it's such diversity and you get to experience such amazing food from so many places. Very much so. You know, there's a need to come out and try. There's a Vietnamese food stall at the Atwater Market. I can't recommend it more highly. I wonder which one that is. Yeah, I have. There's a Vietnamese place that's nearby in St. Henry called Tran Tran Cantina, and it's the best on me I've ever had in my life. There you go. I will have to add it to my list. Perfect. All right. Well, have a good one. OK, thanks, Sarah. Thanks for joining us from Montreal, Quebec. Many books forthcoming that I can promise you, folks, if I have anything to say about it. Thank you for joining me. We're going to go to a break. We'll take more calls again. Everybody relax. We will take more calls again.