If you’ve ever said “I Hate Politics” this podcast is for you…

UMBC Political Science professor Sunil Dasgupta and Nestor cross paths every summer at the Maryland Counties Conference in Ocean City. Finally, they share a Maryland Crab Cake Tour chat at State Fare in Catonsville discussing why his podcast is called “I Hate Politics.”

Nestor Aparicio interviews Dr. Sunil Dasgupta, a Political Science Analyst and host of the “I Hate Politics” podcast, about the political landscape in Montgomery County, Maryland. Dr. Dasgupta discusses the unique nature of Montgomery County’s political scene, including the impact of primaries and the challenges faced by candidates like Marc Elrich. They also delve into the role of money in politics, the importance of humanities in understanding human behavior, and the potential dangers of AI. Dr. Dasgupta emphasizes the need for better public engagement and education in politics and humanities to address societal issues effectively.

UMBC’s Montgomery County Connection

• Nestor Aparicio introduces the show and mentions the first crab cake tour and the first podcast recorded at State Fair in Catonsville.
• Nestor highlights the presence of UMBC gear at State Fair and mentions Freeman Hrabowski’s visit to the show.
• Nestor introduces Dr. Sunil Dasgupta, a Political Science Analyst and host of the “I Hate Politics” podcast.
• Dr. Dasgupta explains his remote work at UMBC and his role in running the Political Science program at the Universities of Shady Grove campus in Montgomery County.

Montgomery County’s Educational Landscape

• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the lack of a four-year institution in Montgomery County and the creation of the Universities of Shady Grove campus.
• Nestor compares Montgomery County’s educational landscape to other counties in Maryland and the impact of nearby institutions like College Park.
• Dr. Dasgupta highlights the significant number of Montgomery County students attending UMBC and the county’s large population and school district.
• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the demographic changes and the impact on enrollment in community colleges and four-year institutions.

Montgomery County Politics and Elections

• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the political landscape of Montgomery County, including the election of Larry Hogan and the unique nature of the county executive position.
• Nestor mentions the significant spending against county executives and the ability of candidates like Marc Elrich to win without significant funding.
• Dr. Dasgupta emphasizes the importance of primaries and the low voter turnout in down-ballot elections.
• Nestor shares his experience as a mayoral candidate in 2020 and the challenges of fundraising and media influence in politics.

The Role of Money in Politics

• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the impact of money in politics and the challenges of raising funds for campaigns.
• Nestor shares his experience of running for office without significant financial support and the reliance on media advertising.
• Dr. Dasgupta shares his experience of running for school board in 2020 and the significant amount of money spent on Facebook advertising.
• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the differences in campaign strategies between the U.S. and other countries, such as Canada.

The Nature of Politics and Public Opinion

• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the nature of politics and the difficulty of changing public opinions, especially in the context of Trumpism.
• Dr. Dasgupta emphasizes the importance of understanding humanities and social sciences in politics and the challenges of persuading people with different beliefs.
• Nestor shares his frustration with the unchangeable beliefs of Trump supporters and the impact of social media on public opinion.
• Dr. Dasgupta highlights the importance of rearranging desires rather than changing minds and the role of public health officials in managing public perception.

The Impact of AI on Society

• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the potential impact of AI on society and the importance of understanding its ethical implications.
• Dr. Dasgupta emphasizes the need to treat AI as a tool rather than humanizing it and the potential for increased inequality due to AI.
• Nestor shares his experience of learning about AI and its potential benefits and challenges.
• Dr. Dasgupta highlights the importance of training engineers and scientists in ethics and humanities to manage the impact of AI.

The Role of Humanities in Modern Politics

• Dr. Dasgupta emphasizes the importance of humanities and social sciences in understanding and managing politics.
• Nestor shares his experience of running for office and the challenges of balancing political beliefs with public perception.
• Dr. Dasgupta discusses the role of public health officials in managing public perception and the importance of including the public in scientific decisions.
• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the impact of political polarization and the need for better leadership and communication in politics.

The Personal Journey of Dr. Dasgupta

• Dr. Dasgupta shares his personal journey of coming to the U.S. from India and his experience of American culture.
• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the changes in American society over the past 20 years and the impact of events like 9/11 and the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Dr. Dasgupta explains his decision to run for office as a way to engage with his community and address concerns about racial profiling.
• Nestor shares his own experiences of running for office and the challenges of balancing personal beliefs with political realities.

The Importance of Education and Public Engagement

• Dr. Dasgupta emphasizes the importance of education and public engagement in addressing societal challenges.
• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the role of humanities in education and the need for a broader understanding of human experience.
• Dr. Dasgupta highlights the importance of training future leaders in ethics and humanities to manage complex issues like AI and political polarization.
• Nestor shares his own experiences of learning from public engagement and the importance of staying connected with the community.

The Future of Politics and AI

• Nestor and Dr. Dasgupta discuss the future of politics and the role of AI in shaping society.
• Dr. Dasgupta emphasizes the need for a balanced approach to AI, treating it as a tool rather than a human replacement.
• Nestor shares his own thoughts on the potential impact of AI on his work and the importance of staying informed and adaptable.
• Dr. Dasgupta highlights the importance of continued education and public engagement in addressing the challenges of AI and politics.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

UMBC, Political Science, I Hate Politics, Montgomery County, UMBC campus, Universities of Shady Grove, political education, election primaries, political spending, AI impact, humanities, social sciences, public health, political leadership, voter turnout.

SPEAKERS

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Dr. Sunil Dasgupta, Nestor Aparicio

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. Positively out here and my favorite place. This is the originator of Baltimore positive. We did our first ever crab cake tour. Here we did our first ever podcast. Here we’re at State Fair in Catonsville. Life is great in the 21228, and made even better, because we’re right off the UMBC campus. I’ve already I got, I got workers here at State Fair wearing UMBC gear. I’ve seen UMBC parties here and all that. But other than having Freeman Hrabowski, the good doctor, here a couple years ago before he retired, one off the sunset, we’ve today. We’ve got political science, and I’ve waited years to have us. Dr Sunil does Gupta on he is a Political Science Analyst, but he has a podcast that I am a neighbor to in Ocean City at Mako every summer that’s called, I hate politics. And I thought, you know, I got to have this guy on it. And like you and I are working hard at the beach, and I’m getting all these guests, and Senators, Congress people, electeds, are coming by and whatnot. And I thought, I’m gonna get you. I told you when I had you, I said, I do my show over right off UMBC. You’re a professor there, and I get to get you on. And you’re like, Well, I sort of work remotely. And I thought I was just calling you from like, a block away to come over here. But we’re all remote at this point, doctor, aren’t

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  01:24

we? Well, it’s not just remote, right? So actually, UMBC has a campus on at the Universities of Shady Grove, which is in montgomery county. In fact that the Universities of Shady Grove campus is a multi institutional campus where, you know, University of Maryland is there, and Towson is there, and UMBC is there, Salisbury is there. And so different public institutions in Maryland do offer programs there, and I run the Political Science program for UMBC there. So it’s not that

Nestor Aparicio  01:57

I’m here montgomery county based says UMBC, yes.

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Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  02:01

So you know, if you look at it, montgomery county, the most populous county in Maryland, does not have its own four year institution, and this is the political solution they came up with in order to give montgomery county its four year institution. Now we have a great community college. I never thought about that, right? Well, so we have a great community college called Montgomery College, that is two years and then where do kids go after that? So then they go to USG, Universities of Shady Grove, where UMBC has, I

Nestor Aparicio  02:33

hadn’t really thought about that, because College Park sort of eats up that whole top side of the beltway, right? It was there before the beltway was there, right? But then I think about like Loyola, Johns, Hopkins, cop and Morgan black institutions here, DC probably ate all that up with Howard and GW and Georgetown, right? So like putting a big college in Upper Marlboro or putting a big college in gaithersburg. Those were all communities that kind of came later, and you’re like, well, college parks right over there, right? So College Park becomes this big banana. But I thought about that like a whole lot, that they’re even Northern Virginia has George Mason, has other schools up here. We got Towson, yeah, PG and montgomery county. I can’t call it PG, Prince George’s. I don’t anybody mad at me, but they don’t have anything other than Maryland, right?

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  03:29

Other than So, yeah. So in part because University of Maryland is so close to Montgomery, you’re right. They, you know, gather up all the students. It is Montgomery County’s college, right, right? Yeah, in practical terms, but UMBC gets a ton of students from montgomery county, right? That’s, I think, the part that we are missing that, you know, there is a lot montgomery county is 1.1 million people. That’s fully 1/6 of Maryland. See, I think a

Nestor Aparicio  04:00

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Baltimore County is being huge when I’ve looked up, you know, it’s a top 90 population in the country, like 900,000 or whatever it is. And I’m thinking it’s not even the biggest in the state, right? No,

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  04:13

it’s not. And you know, the school district in montgomery county is, I think, 14th largest in the nation. It’s a huge school district, even though, you know, enrollments are now going to drop off because of the demographic cliff that you know the then is nationwide. Well,

Nestor Aparicio  04:28

your podcast is called I hate politics, which, when I go to Mako, he’s got a big sign. He’s got a set like this, not like here at State Fair, where there’s Tammy is bringing me coffee and seafood. Benedict’s over here. But for your your podcast, I didn’t know that it wasn’t a Catonsville or UMBC, but it’s very montgomery county centric, right? And I’ve gotten to know your county executive down there, and he comes from an education background, unique individual mark, you know, just in. Big way. We’re talking baseball, talking rock and roll, I kind of talk to anything but montgomery county to me to have an elected like him as county executive, I’m like, that’s an interesting County, and every time I talk to him, it doesn’t come across in the same way as when I talk Anne Arundel County, Harford County, Baltimore County, anything that’s Baltimore centric. Montgomery county is an interesting beast, right? Yeah, montgomery

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  05:24

county is a very interesting beast. I mean, don’t forget, when Hogan won first time, in part because montgomery county voted for Hogan. So it’s not like, you know, it’s fully in sort of, it’s a Democratic stronghold, no doubt, right? And it is, you know, incredible. It takes a lot of fortitude. Mark Eldridge won very narrowly now two times, but

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Nestor Aparicio  05:50

also the money that gets spent against him. It becomes its own little ecosystem of everything that’s wrong and still, yet, right in America, that’s that someone could spend millions of dollars to unseat someone, and someone who just says, I’m not going to take money, can win. That almost sounds like it’s in a movie somewhere, not in a county with a million people, right?

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  06:16

And the interesting part about that is, and it’s, I think applies to a lot of Maryland is that the real election is not the general election. It’s not against the Republic. Sure. It’s not against Republicans, right? It is within the party. So do we know as much about primaries as we know about general elections? How many people actually vote in the primaries? I mean, a really small number relative,

Nestor Aparicio  06:42

not enough, as it as it pertains to less than 20% electing mayors and electing county executive. Yeah. I mean, just here in Maryland, right,

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  06:50

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right, most people vote for the president and then they’ll vote for the governor, maybe, maybe a couple of other positions, Congressman, you know, Senator, and then they just leave the rest of the ballot out, because that’s called a, you know, down ballot drop off. It’s just a crazy situation.

Nestor Aparicio  07:06

That’s what I was hoping to take advantage of as a mayoral candidate in 2020 when, when I put this together to run for office, I started looking for numbers, and I’m like, Sheila Dixon is going to be the mayor again by getting about 70,000 votes in a primary, right? Because she can’t lose the general. Winning the primary is everything right? And I’m like, How many votes is it going to take? And the amazing part for me is I own an FCC license. I have, in 27 years, I think I’ve taken less than a couple of $1,000 in political money for ads. Steven l Miles, who you know, the famous attorney, I think he gave me 1000 bucks. He was running for State’s Attorney 20 years ago. Gave me 1000 bucks to run some ads. All of the ecosystem of media, Bal, Jay Z Fox, all of them live on local and national political money, especially a political season, right? So it’s astonishing to me, with all the money that does get spent and all of these politicians that come around now, and I’ve had Nick Stewart on I’ve had Julian Jones just here in Baltimore County. I had Pat young across the street a couple weeks ago. I had Izzy Patoka on up, and they’re all running for county executive. They’re all out wanting money. Raise money, raise money, raise money to win a primary in Baltimore County, right? And that all this money that gets spent, they still can’t get people to even. And Trump’s gonna screw all this up by the mail in vote. He’s gonna go away because he’s a criminal, and so there’s going to be even less people voting the next time around. So as mad as we get at politics, and I hate politics, and Trump wakes me up this morning, and what are we going to do for the Jamaican people in the storm at the end of the day, the activation of politics in this country is against the world, and how much we control the world. Your vote in America is among the most valuable things in the world that is correct, your passport and your vote in America, and it is lost on 80% of our population.

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  09:13

You know, I like to say America’s biggest weapon in the last 70 years is not the atomic bomb or the drones or the fancy fighter jets, but the green card. The green card is the most potent weapon that the United States has had in the last 70 years. Because when you issue that, what you’re doing is you’re telling somebody, right? You go to a Vietnam right? And then you go, if you help us, we’ll give you a green card, and we’ll give you a green card to bring your family over, right? And that changes the entire life of that family. That’s an amazingly incredible thing to have. I want to say this, you know, I don’t hate politics. The name comes from. Them all the stuff you said you ran in 2020

Nestor Aparicio  10:02

I didn’t run. I was setting up to run and I didn’t run. But everything everybody said to me was you got to go out and get money from people. Give money and then give it to jump, W, Jay Z, give it to the Baltimore Sun. And I’m like, what? Like, I’m not doing that. That’s silly.

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Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  10:16

Hold on, I actually ran in 2020 you ran for school board. I ran for school board in 2020, and so I got over 205,000 votes. That’s, you know, obviously a million people County, you know, six, almost 700,000 voters. I got 200,000 votes. That’s just a crazy I raised $43,000 for his inky dinky school board campaign, you know. So the thing I learned a lot, and that was the covid year. So you know, where I spent all that money, because I couldn’t knock on doors online. I spent it. I gave it to Mark Zuckerberg. I spent $40,000 on enriching Facebook, and rich in Facebook

Nestor Aparicio  11:01

actually trying to win a county seat right in a place that’s a billion miles from Facebook. So that would be my point is, like, where that’s the problem in politics. And I learned this when I went up to Canada. I went to see Pearl Jam at four years ago, and I’m driving through Quebec, and I’m driving through Ottawa, and I drove through Montreal, and everywhere I went, there were, like we have in downtown Baltimore that would have the Oriole signs or the art scape signs. They were literally on the streets. There would be a picture Sunil does Gupta running for county. So all of their political ads were on street signs, but there’s no advertising, and there’s no money taken in. In Canada, there were, there was equal placement everywhere. Of these people signs and and they were running for town council. They were, they were local, very hyper local elections. And I’m like, I googled it a little bit, a little bit, to try to understand, I don’t fully, I’m not Canadian, right, but how that is so much different than every politician I’ve ever met who’s trying to get the biggest check from the biggest place, to buy the biggest media, to buy votes that still don’t really translate, because the money doesn’t really buy the election Always,

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  12:20

yes, does your Elon Musk, Your Honor, I Exactly, exactly, that’s what I’m saying, is that money is important, but not determinative, right? It doesn’t determine elections. So I lost, by the way, I raised 300% more than my opponent, but I lost right? Mark elrich, we were just talking about him right, as county executive in montgomery county. He didn’t have as much money as his opponent, and he won. He won narrowly. I mean, you know, 32 votes, 72 votes, that’s like, you know, winning by a hair, right? I mean, just that. That’s amazing. And so money is important, that one of the things I tried to teach my students is that money is important, but we can’t think of money alone. There are several other things we want to understand about politics, and one of them is organizing. Right now, think about this. If you had, I mean, we have a pothole problem everywhere, right? And every winner there’s like, potholes everywhere, and they need to be facts. And so imagine the pothole manager of Baltimore County, he or she has to determine which pothole to fix first, right? There’s, there’s a, there’s got to be some logic to it. Now, how, what’s, what’s going to be the logic? How are they? How is this person gonna, well,

Nestor Aparicio  13:32

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the road that’s the most used, the deepest hole, right?

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  13:37

But also maybe the richest part of town. Also, of course, also, who is, you know, maybe there’s a well organized, not so rich community that calls a lot. And so, the way, the squeaky wheel, sure. So, so there are several logics by which we determine right how to fix potholes and a pothole manager of wherever needs to pothole

Nestor Aparicio  14:05

management is not corrupt. Well,

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  14:09

wait, but is

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Nestor Aparicio  14:10

we fix the rich people first anyway, and we never fix the poor well, so yeah, that’s corrupt.

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  14:14

Well, so that then it raises the question of, what is political power? And actually raises the question of, what is politics? What is politics? It’s who you know. It’s who you know. Well, part of it is but what is politics? Why are some things political and other things not political? So this is a good example. So if you’re going to buy a gas stove today, right, if you want a gas stove in your house, is that a political decision, or is that a non political decision?

Nestor Aparicio  14:42

Well, it might be based on gas versus electric burning clean coal or not. That’s right, that’s, I mean, there’s no whether you’re you’re buying the gas stove from China, or whether you’re buying it from musboro, Tennessee, or whatever, making

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  14:56

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cold. Now, compare that with buying a dishwasher. Is. That political?

Nestor Aparicio  15:02

Well, you’re using water, but you’re using less water theoretically, theoretically, dishpan hands is a guy who did my dishes this morning, I can tell you, is telling me here I need some lotion, yeah? But if you it is political, Am I doing the dishes or my wife doing? Yeah?

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  15:20

Well, well, hold on, but the dishwasher decision is less political than the gas decision, right? The gas stove decision is much more political because I used using gas. Are you going to go electric? That’s a big political argument in this country. But the dishwasher, there’s consensus that it should use less water, and almost every manufacturer you know, is actually using less water, trying to use less and less water in their dishwasher. So that’s almost an economic decision based on, do you want the meal or do you want the ken more, right? That’s the decision that you have to make. But in a gas stove, you’re making much overtly political decision. But why is the gas stove different from dishwasher? And the difference is that we disagree on the gas stove, on the dishwasher, we have consensus. So that’s not political. So politics consists of politics is a room full of disagreements. There are disagreements that science, money, faith, everything else cannot solve politics is this, like, it’s like a sewer. I mean, it’s just a room full of disagreements, and obviously it’s going to be nasty as a consequence, because, you know, people are disagree.

Nestor Aparicio  16:33

We either have to agree to disagree or disagree disagreeably. But you’re, you’re rarely going to be swayed on beliefs, faith and ethics in regard to politics. I mean, I think that’s one of the problems with Trump at this point, is I’m 10 years into this shit show, and every day I have not I found one person that I can, that I can manage it. I can that I have in my phone, that I can text him who voted for Trump in 16, who didn’t in 20 and never intended to the next time around, right? So, and I know lots of people have voted for Trump. They voted for him three times, not, not one like so for me and will for even though it’s unlawful, even though, even though the White House so to your I guess this is a larger point of something Orwellian is to say, or not even that Sagan wrote about this, people won’t change their minds. Yes. So we know that the Epstein files, like, if you’re in on Trump, wouldn’t matter what pictures or videos like Ronald Reagan this week, he’ll just say it’s fake. And if you’re involved in the cult, if you’re involved in the belief, if your belief is so strong that that man is Christian, that man is believable, that man is always honest, and everybody’s out to get him. I live a life in that having grown up in Archie Bunker’s Dundalk in the 70s, me 80% of the people I went to high school with are trumped up for life there. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue because that’s how far in they are. And I But man, that’s been well worn as he runs the country. I think that’s the hardest part of modern politics, is it’s unbendable. You can’t, you can’t shape someone’s opinion, even with facts, even with evidence, it’s be. It’s beyond that.

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Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  18:29

Beyond, yeah, the great German physicist actually said that all ideas don’t, you don’t change people’s minds. Old people just die away. That’s what he said, Max blank. But, you know, we know in the humanities, right? And this is a, this is really, really the crux of the issue right now, is that we have focused our education system so much on science, technology, etc, and the idea of science in the last 40 years now, right that we have forgotten the humanities and the social sciences and what they bring to the table. If you study the human humanities, is a really, really hard thing to do, and we make, you know, fun of art history majors and all of that. But humanities recognizes, for instance, that you don’t change minds, that all you can do, the best you can do is to rearrange desires. The best you can do is rearrange what people want, but you do not change minds. And I you know. So now that SNAP benefits are going now that you know Medicaid, you know, really, you know health insurance is going to balloon, I think you people will change their mind, because it’s going to affect their actual lives. They’re going to recognize that governing, that is the pendulum, that is a penny. It’s going to happen. But what I want to say is. That, I think the bigger problem, the reason we have January 6, the reason we have Trumpism in the first place, is because we have neglected this entire knowledge of humans called humanities, social sciences. And you know, science has been wonderful. The vaccine is wonderful. The antibiotic is wonderful.

Nestor Aparicio  20:26

Getting on a plane and flying off the plane

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  20:29

is wonderful. The pill is wonderful.

Nestor Aparicio  20:32

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It allowed. The internet

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  20:35

is wonderful. This computer, I mean, exactly nobody’s saying, nobody’s talked AI yet, and I got to do that. Yeah, nobody’s talking and nobody’s dogging technology or science. But the fact is that you cannot ignore, you cannot ignore the human experience, right? And no, and

Nestor Aparicio  20:52

psychology, yeah, we only perceive it as humans. And what we all have in common is whatever prism we choose to right? So take this information and say true, false, and what does

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  21:05

it mean to me? So what are the tools of politics in that context? Right? Persuasion. But, well, persuasion, you maybe we, we agreed on the fact that we don’t change minds, right? So what do we do? We punt if we and I you and I don’t agree we punt that problem while we work on something now that we can agree on punting is an incredible tool. It allows you to defer a conflict to a later time, right? What is and let’s focus on something else. Yes, let’s focus on something else. Let’s focus on what we can do. Sometimes what we can do is very minimal, and that’s why people get upset. And so eventually you got to move towards the like the big issues and try to solve them. But punting is an incredibly positive tool that is often not recognized. As

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Nestor Aparicio  21:57

I do that my marriage all the time. Well, yeah, I do it.

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  22:00

I’m not kids, but if politicians do it, you get

Nestor Aparicio  22:04

mad. Well, we chase them down the hall.

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  22:08

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The other thing I would say is that another incredible tool is reframing. Like, you know, I talked about rearranging desires, right? What does, what does that look like? It’s reframing. It’s saying, Look, this is not as important as you think. There’s no point you fighting over whether a woman should have a right to abortion is a ridiculous proposition, right? That’s her, right. Forget it. I mean, we are not in a place where we want to control anybody, another human’s body, we decided that not now, but 200 years ago.

Nestor Aparicio  22:44

Well, 38 miles away, they’re doing something completely different, yeah, just inside the beltway.

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  22:49

Yeah. So that’s what I mean, is that, if that’s the thing that makes things political, and that’s what, you know, animates the podcast, that’s what animates the, you know, the idea these things we have to focus on, otherwise we are going to get society malfunction. And we’re close there. Doc, we’re not close. We are there. I’m not even saying close now we are the government is shut down as we shut Yeah, government, government is shut down. We have

Nestor Aparicio  23:19

elected leaders who hate government, right? And who hate half the population, or more than half the population. You have no idea

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Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  23:27

how many elected leaders have, and even democratic ones, by the way, have come on my show and said they hate politics. It is amazing to me, so I asked them this question. It’s like, then, why are you doing this? They’re like, Oh no, no, no. There are parts of politics I hate, and

Nestor Aparicio  23:46

politics only way to change the world. That’s the only that’s why I was gonna run for mayor. Because I’m like, What is mayor’s going to prison, and looking out my window and seeing the city burned down and seeing Freddie Gray, right? I was like, All right, what am I doing that’s so important, and if I could get the votes, they would at least know that I’m not corrupt, right? That at least I want what’s best for the city, right?

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  24:09

So everyone that thinks that they can do better, they’ll hate

Nestor Aparicio  24:12

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me, but they know I’m honest, just like John Harbaugh,

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  24:15

everybody that, yeah, everybody who thinks they can do better, should damn run. That’s my, that’s my I

Nestor Aparicio  24:22

want to reset. I hate politics. Is the podcast. The good doctor is here. Dr Sunil does Gupta. I’m trying to get that straight. UMBC, Poli Sci has a podcast here. And you know, so much of this is like hacking college aid, tax revenue, all this sort of thick stuff in Montgomery County and all of that stuff. You and I had the most interesting conversation where we came onto the set about AI, because when I met you two and a half years ago in Ocean City, and I’ve never had him on the show, and we’ve chatted very briefly, AI wasn’t even like, talked about. Two and a half years ago, like in the way that it is the last six months where jobs not job losses, but sort of the come ons on the Zuckerberg sites of where there’s going to be billionaires and millionaires made out of capturing AI. And then really, in the last 90 days, I’ve learned how much of a drain AI is putting on techno bases and and infrastructure and electricity and energy. I never knew about any of that, and I’m diving into it as a 57 year old. And I pointed out to you, it’s kind of like diving into the internet when it came along, or diving into mobile phones or telling my son I’m never going to text with you. Don’t text me in 2004 and by the end of 2005 I’m like, You’re a genius kid. You know, the AI thing is clearly ingenious in many ways. You have an argument with whether it’s really intelligence or not, and also you being the smart guy and the doctor here, you’ve taken this to the nth degree to say that this is going to end humanity in some way, or it could, if it’s not controlled, sort of like a monster movie, right? Like so I don’t

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  26:15

think it’s going to end humanity. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that we should not humanize. So when we say intelligence and we say artificial intelligence, we are giving this entire technology a human form, right? We talk about AI hallucinating. I do not like that. I call it malfunction. It’s a machine. It malfunctions. I don’t want to give it human qualities such that human decisions are then expected of it. That’s what I am afraid of, that we will delegate, because

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Nestor Aparicio  26:52

we’re letting it make decisions instead of provide information. Correct? I’m trying to get to be the student here, Doc,

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  26:59

well, so that’s, that’s, I think, part of it, right? You don’t want to give it the agency, the sense of agency that AI on its own, this machine, when you start thinking it has emotions, yeah, it doesn’t have emotion. It doesn’t have anything. In fact, what it does it is it has some negative impacts. And the most negative of all is actually true of a lot of technology, right, which is that it increases inequality, that it allows the really resourceful, the rich to gather up even more of the resources that are generated via that technology and leave everybody behind. So we do get this inequality effect now, and weaponization and weaponization, and consequently the politics of it, right? So all of that comes in at the back end of that. Again, I would go back if you don’t study humanities, if you don’t study ethics, and look at the training that engineers and scientists and all of and public health people, right? Sure get they don’t study politics. There is, you know, there may be a course in ethics and engineering or ethics, and you know, Doc, you know how you become a

Nestor Aparicio  28:14

doctor or whatever, but at the end of the day, you’re dealing with

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  28:16

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humans. You’re dealing with humans, but you’re not actually formally studying it. And that’s a problem. That’s a real, real problem, because if you and the expectation is that you will learn all that informally, right? Yeah, and get down the street. And so some people become really good at it. Anthony Fauci, right? Really good at it. A guy who served like, what, six or seven Presidents, it’s amazing. He was, you know, the head of a major institution within the National Institutes of Health for decades. I mean, he’s a politician. He knows politics even better than any political science professor. So some Nestor knows you shouldn’t inject bleach, yes, and but, but some people will learn that, but others were not right, and so we have a situation where, you know when the pandemic happened, so many local public health officials found themselves attacked on various counts, in part, I’ll tell you, because they were not prepared For the backlash that politics brings when you don’t include people, right? So one of the I don’t know if you know the story, but doctors introduced a white coat, not because a white coat is more hygienic or anything. It’s a sign of authority. So you want the doctor to have authority, a doctor will tell you make sure you take your pill two times a day, right? As a new doctor, right, right? And so you want the patient to follow the doctor. So you want to bestow on the doctor a sense of authority. And that visual, what, and the white coat is a visual that cements that authority. But all. So what ends up happening is then the doctor feels that they know everything right, because that authority structure then becomes calcified, and then you know that, then they claim positions that they don’t are not prepared to defend. And so including public in science is a humanities problem. It’s a very odd thing to say, and so we need to be able to do that more. They need to be trained more in politics, in psychology, in sociology. These things are important. They are absolutely what will save humanity, and whether it’s AI or it’s Trumpism, or any one of these things that are attacks on, you know, our life. I mean, so I don’t want to call AI an attack. AI is a tool, like it’s like a knife you can

Nestor Aparicio  30:59

cut with it. Call it a threat. Call it a threat. It’s sometimes

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  31:03

it’s a threat. A knife can be a threat sometimes, sure, in the wrong hands, but it is also the thing I used to cut vegetables with and to eat right, right? So it’s so it’s so to me it. I see it entirely as a tool. I don’t want to humanize it. I want to treat it like a machine. That’s my approach. That’s what I teach my students, is that this is a tool you have. You should learn to use it just like you learn to drive a car. No more nor less, the car can get better.

Nestor Aparicio  31:30

That’s what I’m doing. Santa Claus is going to bring me AI education for the holidays. Oh, okay, so I can get up to speed. Have a better company or Baltimore positive, yeah. So I get up earlier and drink my coffee instead of being up till three in the morning watching World Series games.

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Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  31:42

Well, sure. Games. Well, certainly you can save time using AI in certain tasks.

Nestor Aparicio  31:46

His podcast is called I hate politics. Tell me the origination of your podcast and where they can find it. And I’m already more educated for getting together with Dr Sunil Dasgupta from UMBC, but really down on the Montgomery County campus, which I become more educated about. So, yes, so

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  32:05

I do, actually, first of all, I would say I do cover a lot of Baltimore. You should listen to my interview with Jill Carter talking about, talking about the Martin O’Malley days, okay, in Baltimore. And she is cathing. She is absolutely scathing. And the context of that interview, well, everybody was getting arrested. Why everybody is getting I mean, how many people, 750,000 off the streets? It was an incredible time. And the context of that interview, I think now, two and a half, three years ago, was that Biden was going to appoint Martin O’Malley to be the Social Security Administration director. And what Jill Carter said at that time on the show was, if that happens, I am not voting for Biden. And I was really struck by this, because I asked her, if you don’t vote for Biden, and generally, if Black support for Biden wanes on the on this account, then can Biden win? That was a question I asked in 2023 I think that was the interview. And we had this incredible interview that we did then this year I did delegate Alethia McCaskill, who was the leader in the House of Delegates in Annapolis on the reparations bill that Governor Moore vetoed, and she was not happy. So, you know, we do cover Baltimore. We do, you know I was

Nestor Aparicio  33:40

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Democrat on Democrat aggression. At this point, I have some negative things I could say about Wes Moore right now, and I’d like to, but I’m I’m not giving oxygen. And I’ve known Ed Hale since I was 15 years old. I mean, I like Ed, Ed. I’ve been in Ed’s home. Ed’s been in my home. I don’t know where Ed’s and I would love to have ed on the show. Ed’s been ducking me, quite frankly, literally, as is Wes Moore, but Democrat on Democrat aggression. And I had a conversation with Stuart Pittman about this, with Johnny o when he was still county executive. Not a great time for that, right now, right? I mean, like, and I’m not in any way bunker minded in regard to and I’ve had people here that the Democrats can do no wrong. The Democrats have made so many mistakes here over the last 15 years to open the door for this nonsense. And Gavin Newsom is speaking to that big time this week, right, just on like the Democrats have to get their ish together, right and and that is on so many of these social issues and so many of these things that allowed this to happen that literally, fascism to take root in America and become popular amongst people who, to your point, have no education in humanities or arts or worldview or. History to even know who Hitler was right or what he did, that’s right. That’s right. So to see how this mirrors so the

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  35:06

I think you know it, 7 million Democrats did not vote in 2024 so I think to say that that the Democrats are not going to have to resolve some in house problems is not true. So they have it is about leadership. They have to work it out. Now in Maryland, the problem is mitigated, right? Clearly, Maryland is overwhelmingly democratic,

Nestor Aparicio  35:33

so therefore we had a two term Republican, you know, andy Harris is running around screwing that so, like it’s not, you would say that’s balanced. That wouldn’t be balanced. And certainly Hogan doesn’t have as much in common with with andy Harris as I do. I mean, and when Hogan left the Trumpism really took over on the fringes here for Democrats like me who are of a Purple Heart. Believe it or not, I voted for Bob Ehrlich. I’m embarrassed by that. I mean, I had him in my home. I’m even more embarrassed by that, but, but I have voted Republic, Bless me, Father, for I have, my father would kill me because he have Herbert Hoover a chicken in every pot. My dad had none of that. So my dad never voted for Republican in his life. So if I sat here and said that I endorse Bob Ehrlich over a Kennedy. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who’s almost as worthless as the Kennedy that’s running the whatever this, Dr Kennedy, you’re a real doctor.

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  36:33

I don’t know what he held. Well. I mean, he’s a politician. He’s a politician, but, you know, he has made a name being anti vaccination. So, I mean, okay, folks, get get your kids vaccinated. Get yourself

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Nestor Aparicio  36:51

he’s made his name standing up for being anti science. I know. I know. And who makes their name standing up saying the earth is flat. Who does this?

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  36:59

So, so, you know, because of people like him, it is very difficult to is part of the argument that I was making earlier, that science needs a humanities element to it. It’s very hard to make that. I think it just we come off as anti science. But science is great. Science is wonderful. We are here. I mean, I, I take statins.

Nestor Aparicio  37:24

I mean, half of something going from polio, the other half like we right? Yeah, without penicillin, come on, dog, you know, without real dog. I don’t know, without

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  37:34

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penicillin, where we would we be? That’s, that’s, that’s what science is great, right? So there is no doubt about it. I think what we do need is a little bit more, you know, return to return to the humanities, return to social science, trying to understand humans in a different way, outside of this very narrow, technological way that we understand humans in. Now, they do understand humans. They try to understand humans. There is an entire technological field called user experience that is not, you know, that is part of it, but it has to go more so if you, by the way, you know what I say, if you want to hire a detective, hire art historian, if you want to somebody to run your operations like logistics. Hire a theater kid. Nobody knows the run of show better than a theater kid. Hire a politician in your political science major in your marketing department, because, darn it, we are persuasive.

Nestor Aparicio  38:37

So far so good.

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  38:40

Well, I mean, that’s what we are trying to teach kids, right? So many of our kids are learning that, and we have to keep that, we have to keep that alive. And if we don’t, then we will get society malfunction, just like you will get AI malfunction if you don’t put in the right prompts.

Nestor Aparicio  39:00

So he’s been here 45 minutes, telling me to explore the humanities we so what’s the problem? Is, here’s where I’m going to be the jerk kid, Okay, class and do it, the 19 year old kid, and say, I’m going to use AI to explore the humanities.

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Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  39:15

And more power to you. But remember, more power to you that anything you get from AI has been written by somebody that understands humanities before. Have a whole background, right? So if you want to study humanity, there’s a entire I mean, AI is

Nestor Aparicio  39:31

very kind. I must say, I ask AI things. It’s, it’s way more polite than most people I meet in

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  39:37

life, correct? AI will denature anger. So I actually one time put in an article, an angry article by a anthropologist, and it looked at De escalated and basically, and when it gave it back to me, it has completely denatured the anchor. Anger was all gone.

Nestor Aparicio  39:56

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I need to do that my John Harbaugh letters, I’m put that i. The doctors here, Dr Sunil does Gupta, and now how to pronounce his name. Where is your family originally? Give me, give me a little background. I

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  40:07

grew up in India. I came here with not much but a letter of admission to the University of Illinois in 1995 Champagne. Champagne, all right, yeah. REO Speedwagon, right. And my introduction to American culture is, am, 580 W, I, L, L, which is the public radio in Illinois, in Champaign. And, you know, I used to wake up to, you know, Cokie Roberts and Bob Edwards, and that’s and, you know, even today, at the end of my I do a Wednesday noontime current affairs discussion group that is open to everybody, and I end that with saying, You know what, you’ve wasted a perfectly good hour after the car talk, guys, did you

Nestor Aparicio  40:58

have Paul Harvey when you were there? Paul Harvey was a national and I had to look Paul Harvey up because he turns out he was a real conservative nut, but he say, now you know the rest of the story. So it’s like this old Yeah, old time telling you how something works, yeah? And you know how we discovered the paper clip? This is how the paper clip happened, you know, like, literally, it was those kinds

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  41:20

of stories, yeah, so I that was my introduction to America. The America that I came to is not the America today, right? It’s a very different country. The America I came to was extraordinarily optimistic. It is not so when did you get here? Early 80s, 1995

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Nestor Aparicio  41:39

95 okay, even later than that, yeah. So you got here during the Clinton administration, right, okay,

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  41:44

so that those were that was a really optimistic time. The Cold War had ended. The economy was

Nestor Aparicio  41:50

booming. It was incredibly optimistic for Baltimore, too. Yeah, our lives here, yeah, for everybody, 911 kind of, you know, I mean, we talk about tectonic plates, 911 covid, Trump, you know, somewhere in there, in this century, for sure. You know all those things

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  42:04

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it has been, it has been dramatic these last 20 years. There is no doubt 25 years,

Nestor Aparicio  42:10

I don’t recognize it in lots of bad ways, lots of bad ways.

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  42:13

Yeah, I mean, so one of the reasons, actually, I I decided to run for office was, even before I decided to run for office, was I was afraid when Trump came to power for the first time, I was afraid that I’d get picked up walking the dog just from the street, or just I’d be walking down, and somebody would call the police and say, well, that’s happening every move, every day. No, it’s happening

Nestor Aparicio  42:38

now. But I was, people look like me because I’m Venezuelan, right? So I was, were you born here? Yeah, I was born a church home hospital. Throw you in. And then, then what happens? Right?

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Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  42:48

What happens? That’s what I was afraid. That’s what I was afraid of in 2016 and so one of the concerted decisions I made is the way to stop anybody from any of my neighbors, from calling the police on me is to know them. Literally, I got to know every neighbor. And then I, you know, went into the PTA and this and that, and suddenly I was like, Okay, I’m gonna run for school board. That’s like, a crazy decision to make, right?

Nestor Aparicio  43:15

I was gonna run for mayor. Do you think anybody that’s a crazy decision? Yeah. I mean, Cindy’s like, what? I know you said you were 23 right? Listen, I’m gonna have you back. All right, all right, and it may go, I’ll show up a little mako’s mess, man, because we’re all drinking, right? We’re eating, we’re drink. She’s drinking me up. She gives me free bar tab. I could cross the bridge, and she’s buying me orange crushes with deep Eddy doubles. So like doing the show with you down at the beach. I’m trying to get set up and all that stuff. So you’re

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  43:45

a busy guy. You know the first Mako I came back with my first case of covid. So I don’t go to party? No, I don’t know I but I went to one of the parties and I came away with covid. I ain’t going to parties at Mako anymore. I love Mako, though.

Nestor Aparicio  44:00

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All I know is this first time it’s happened to me in Mako, and I’ll tell us, just make you laugh. We’re down to Mako. It’s like one o’clock in the morning on the third night. Everybody’s a little in the bag, and I’m sober because I don’t drink like that. I’m just not a drinker. And then my hair was out like my hippie, and I’m out on this outdoor deck, and it’s summer night, and this really young, pretty girl comes up to me, and I’m like, All right, she comes up to me and she said, and this is last summer, and she’s like, Hey, dude, you got any weed? And I’m like, what? Like, well, if all these people here and I looked around like that, like, that’s illegal, and she’s like, No, no, no, it’s legal. She’s like, 21 years old. She’s like, No, it’s legal. I haven’t elected with me who want, like, literally want from some County. And I’m like, Why did you come up to me? Why me is 1000

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  44:48

people. It’s the hair. Nestor, well, it’s

Nestor Aparicio  44:51

probably the belt buckle to rock and roll belt buckle. Dr Sunil, God’s Gupta is here. I hate politics, very easy to find. Am UMBC, Poli Sci Professor based down in montgomery county, made his way up here to beautiful state fair. We’re doing it all on behalf of our friends at the Maryland lottery. I have a raven scratch offs to give away. We will be at Coco’s next Wednesday afternoon, then Friday we’re going to be in Essex, the homeland of pizza John’s. I’m going to get some french fries with crinkle cut and some proper gravy. And I don’t know if the ravens are going to be wherever the ravens are going to be, we’re going to be there. We have a new Oreo manager. Luke and Alan are going to be here later. My dear friend Cindy Atkinson is going to be coming on here to talk about the first ever business card that I ever made for myself. Was made by her in 1992 when I started this odyssey of the Budweiser sports. We weren’t even the bubbly. It was just a sports forum that I even have sponsors. Then the sports forum with nasty Nestor Aparicio, you know, I was going to get a radio station. I was going to get nationally syndicated. We were going to bring the NFL back to Baltimore. We were going to win not one Super Bowl, but two Super Bowls after Camden Yards was built and we were never going to play a playoff game at Camden yard. So yeah, 34 years later. So I’ve known her a long time east side, looking forward to talking to her about a big event that benefits community up my way in the Towson area, and the doc. Appreciate you, man, it’s a pleasure. Keep trying to make these young people smart. Tell them not to vote for Trump. All right, I

Dr. Sunil Dasgupta  46:17

can’t say that, but what I can do, I thought you hated politics. I don’t I, as I said, I don’t hate show is I hate the name of the show is ironic, right? It tries to capture a Zeitgeist that is exists in society. But I don’t hate politics. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to hate politics. It’s like saying I hate walking. Yeah, he told me

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Nestor Aparicio  46:38

recently he doesn’t like water doesn’t like the taste of it. I’m like, All right, what are you not human? I got Alan here later is arguing against cheese. If you don’t like cheese, that’s one thing. Yeah. Water, right? All right, be good, yeah. How do you talk about politics? Well, it’s kind of messing our lives up. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery. I’m out here at State Fair. I’m gonna have more guests, more fun, more stories. I might even meet Cameron Crowe this week. So I’m very excited, and I’m gonna get some more coffee. We’re at State Fair. We are the Maryland crab cake tour. This is W, N, S T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stopped talking politics in Baltimore. Positive. Stay with us. You.