And, uh, first, before we get off, getting to know you a little bit, um, would you like to kinda share some of the stories or experiences that you've planned to share with us today? Give a little summary, and then we can get into it.

Um, yeah, I guess I- I'm originally from Upstate New York, so I grew up in about 70 miles from Palmyra, so where a lot of the history of the printing of the Book of Mormon, where Joseph Smith lived, and stuff like that.

So when I was growing up, we used to go up there a lot for the pageant, and which they don't do anymore, but, uh, they went up there and did.

So every time, every time someone would come to visit our family, we'd always go up there and see those things.

My grandparents lived right next door to us, so we'd al- When, after we moved away, we came back, we'd always go back for visit there, and so I'm very familiar with a lot of the church history in that area there.

So that's originally where I'm from, Upstate New York, and then, um, moved to Missouri.

Well, I lived, moved to Texas for a little bit, then lived in Missouri, France West, Missouri.

Yeah, I can

Mm.

It clearly draws, uh, in various places from ballads, from popular songs, and yet, you know, and the images themselves are accessible, right? Like, they're not arcane.

You know, they're sometimes contradictory.

They're sometimes strange.

There are sometimes novelties of language.

But on the surface they seem accessible, and I think it, I think it's right to say that he, you know, he talks of them as being accessible, while at the same time they have these, these extraordinary web of illusions behind them.

And he goes on to write an extraordinarily [laughs] lengthy exegesis-

Mm.

Anytime we end up in a Chili's, I have to get the fajitas.

Well, we appreciate it.

You know, a lot of work goes into making sure that you got some of the highest quality proteins, that they're prepared the right way.

They come with all of the accompaniments they make for a great meal.

But you had kind of mentioned the whole industry was kind of on their heels a little bit.

Yeah.

I think what we've demonstrated is, is that you can recover and you can turn around these brands that America's once loved.

Mm-hmm.

But equally, even if he'd sought to build a bigger one, he'd end up in the same place.

One of the major issues simply is personal and is a question of leadership.

Um, you know, immediately after Labor lost the 2019 election, I spent some time, actually spent a lot of that winter sort of really, uh, hitting the classics and doing lots of meditation and sort of trying to detach from the, [laughs] the sort of horror, um, that surrounded me, um, after that, that very, uh, very bruising, uh, election campaign and, and all the misery that, that, that followed.

Um, but I spent some time reading Weber, and Weber gave me, Max Weber, uh, sort of important, uh, uh, sociologist of the, the, uh, early social democratic period, um, who gives us lots of insight into what's happening, um, when social democracy is forming, um, or forming in the way that it, it, it, it, it, uh, continues through the 20th century.

Uh, and Weber is very interesting on the kind of person who succeeds as a political leader, and I think if you look at that very strange, actually, in lots of ways, very strange lecture, "Politics as Vocation," which is, uh, given to a class of, of young, um, uh, uh, young people, young university students, um, it will tell you it has lots and lots of interesting things to say about the, the perils that are faced by, by leaders.

Uh, and so there are personal characteristics that I think are, are missing, uh, in Starmer.

Sort of that capacity to, um, you know, for both the kind of quick and reactive, while also, um, being able to sort of span the long term.

You know, Geo- George Bernard Shaw or God knows who writing a column.

Now, when did we first begin to understand the vastness of this aquifer? When did we recognize it for what it is, and, and kinda get a picture of how big it is?

Well, uh, David, we've known since I would say the 1890s, if not earlier, that, uh, that there was a extensive, uh, or a huge amount of groundwater in, uh, in the High Plains region.

Uh, this is the United States Geological Survey scientists had noted that.

We just couldn't, um, exploit it 'cause the technology wasn't there, so it was only into the, in the '40s and '50s that, you know, with the pumps, with central pivot irrigation, this sort of thing, that the technology allowed us to, to begin to develop that resource.

But we, we knew of its potential for, uh, we as a, a, as a discipline, groundwater hydrology, knew it, it for, uh, you know, for, for a good long time.

And in, I read the reports from the US Geological Survey, USGS, or, and the Kansas Geological Survey, the KGS, back from the '40s and '50s.

They understood, uh, by then certainly the extent of this resource, and they understood how we needed to proceed cautiously with the development because of the fact this is a semi-arid area.

Mm-hmm, mm

It's quite unusual, isn't it, James?

Well, I mean, common sense or an act of desperation, and I think there's a common factor here, and you heard it in Keir Starmer's attempted answer to that question by Cathy Newman, is that they've seen the, the polling, they've seen the, the, uh, electoral battlegrounds coming up and have thought, "Okay, well maybe a sharp left turn here is going to shore up our support, and we'll bill our, our government as sort of social democratic or soft left." You've seen a bit of that over the past week, um, as well, with the sort of few Keir Starmer mouthpieces, uh, left in the media saying, "Well, actually the government's achievement, if you look at it in reality, it's really soft left," and things like this.

What this is is the classic thing that happens to Labour governments around local elections, is that they tend to react to, uh, those areas that are, that are, are up for election.

So if you remember last year, they reacted very strongly to the Reform successes, uh, in those elections by saying, "Oh well, okay, well we really need to get, get harsh on migration.

Um, we'll put Shabana Mahmood up to, to say some unpleasant things, and we'll get Keir to give, uh, an unpleasant speech about migration as well." So, so this lack of principles at the center, um, for the Labour government leads them to, to, to move which way, uh, the wind blows or, or, or try to shore up advantage that way.

I, I think it's implausible.

I don't think it's going to work.

... which, you know, I have no idea what that even looks like, as they haven't heard, learned their lesson from Palestine Action, evidently.