TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Man + Woman = Awkward + Danger
Date: 03/14/25 Length: 00:55:38
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, Happy Warriors and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I your rabbi, reveal how the world really works. Thank you so much for being part of the show, and I know that you are telling other people about the show, because absolutely nothing works as well as work word of mouth. You can advertise as much as you like, and you can get YouTube algorithms, but when somebody mentions to a relative or a friend, somebody says to you, you know what, I've been listening to a podcast, you really are going to find useful. Many podcasts are interesting, but this one is useful. It's by a rabbi. Yes, I know. But still, you know, give it a chance, and you will see, because he tells how the world really works, even when it's on topics that other people wouldn't touch, not with a 10 foot pole, with a 570 foot pole, and today's topic and in the title of today's show is man plus woman equals awkward plus danger. That's right, man plus woman equals awkward plus danger. What are we talking about here? Well, it's certainly a topic that would not be touched by a 570 foot pole. There was a teacher who one of my favorite aquariums is in Atlanta, Georgia, and partially because the man who paid for most of it was a friend, a person I knew quite well, Bernie Marcus, just passed away recently in the last year, and he was the one of the founders of the Home Depot store. We had some very interesting conversations about business and about the Home Depot in particular. And he put this, he donated the money for the Atlanta aquarium. We did a fantastic aquarium, and a young woman brought her class of, I think they were fifth graders, fourth or fifth graders, and boys and girls. She brought them to the aquarium and then said, you know, enjoy yourself. Let's meet here in 20 minutes time. And she noticed that the boys, almost without exception, took off for the tanks with the piranhas, you know, those South American Amazonian fish that can eat a horse in about five minutes. And shocks. The boys dashed off to the dangerous fish, and the girls went to the tropical tank, where all the beautifully colored fish, the beautiful fish. So she said she's tried this experiment several times now, and each and every time, the girls are drawn to the beauty and the boys are drawn to the danger. And that really pretty much says it all. Boys and girls are different. Men and women are even more different. Mother, and so man plus woman equals awkward and plus danger. I'll come to the danger in a little while. But first of all, let's look at the exceptions. The exceptions are male female relationships that are not awkward at all. And there are four of them. There are four exceptions. That's all, mother, son, father, daughter, brother, sister and husband and wife, right? Those are the exceptions. Otherwise. What I'm going to be sharing with you today, in terms of how the world really works, is that male female interactions, where it is not You're not relating with your sibling or your parent or your spouse, but anything else, any other male female relationship, is intrinsically awkward, and I'm going to lay out for you. A. What happens with girlfriends and boyfriends? What happens with cohabiting? Hey, what about two partners? How about two entrepreneurs start a company? One is male, one is female, and they have no relationship whatsoever. Intrinsically awkward. I'm going to show you. How about the space station? Well, let me not spill too much before we get into the meat here. But first of all, if you haven't yet subscribed to the show, please do that, because that way you will be able to be notified. And also, according to the algorithms they use. This is what everybody tells me, and I think they write that the more people that subscribe, showing that they value your show, the better exposure it gets. So if you haven't yet subscribed on whatever platform that you listen to the show on, it would be great if you could do that. And also, if there's any opportunity or possibility of giving a review, please do that as well. Also if you are not yet a member of our happy warrior community, do that the, I must say, the the chatter on the message boards on our happy warrior community site this last week have been absolutely fascinating, ranging from Greenland and the President's desire or stated desire to take over Greenland to all kinds of topics revolving around the five key areas of your life, your family and family relationships, friend relationships, that means all social connections, finance, everything to do with money and the fitness, everything having to do with your body, and finally, everything having to do with the world of the spirit, right things that you cannot touch or measure. Everything in that category is dealt with. So those are the five F's, and those are the things that we speak about in the happy warrior community. You know, we don't talk about very much about dance contests, or, you know, how to get rid of weeds and stop deer eating your flowers in your garden. Those are things that information is freely available, but information on how the world works in connection with the five important F's of your life, that's what we talk about in the happy warrior community. So go ahead and become part of it, and that way you can not only be a receiver of benefits, you can also be a giver of benefits. And I think you'll find that stimulating and encouraging. So please go ahead and do that. And then finally, let me tell you something, if you go to the website, Rabbi Daniel lapin.com Rabbi Daniel lapin.com I always repeat it because Daniel ends with an L and Lapin starts with an L. And sometimes people, when they're looking for the website, forget to put in two hours there. And so there it is. If you look in the store, we're doing a Okay, here's the deal. We're no longer going to be stocking certain books in hard version, and we are letting them go. Now we want to clear out the inventory. And so books are going like for $5 each. Books that you know normally might sell for $20 and more, basically $5 there you go. So take a look at those books you can really load up on a few help us empty our inventory, because we pay stocking fees for every every month for the books that we have and that we're just really not doing much with. And so you can help us, and you can help yourself. You know you can have, you can buy, I don't know, three or four of them, and have them on hand as gifts, because they do make nice gifts, because they all contain valuable, not just entertaining information, but valuable information, things that you can actually use in connection with your family, connecting more deeply with your spouse, connecting with children, siblings, etc, and so on. So take a look at that at Rabbi Daniel lapin.com
Daniel Lapin 9:45
and now let us dive in to the equation for today, the equation that is the title of today's show, man plus woman equals awkward and dangerous and. Uh, and I'll come to how come it's dangerous. But first of all, let's talk about the awkwardness. Well, you know, there's a space station orbiting the Earth, right? And you know that it gets staffed by crew members from time to time. And nine months ago, SUNY Williams, a lady and Butch Wilmore, a guy, went up for what was supposed to be a week long trip. Makes me think of Gilligan's Island, and they've been stranded there now for nine months. And NASA is a very problematic agency for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that between NASA and Boeing, that alliance could not bring him home, not Never mind on schedule, they couldn't bring him home at all. And so Elon Musk is bringing them back fairly soon, I hope. But here's the thing, look SUNY Williams has a husband, and his name is Michael Williams, and Butch Wilmore has a wife. Her name is Deanna Newport. And let me, let me tell you something about Michael J Williams. I don't know the man. I've never seen pictures of him. I've not read anything about it. I know nothing about him, other than I know that he's one of two things. He's either good and upset or he's damaged. In other words, my dear happy warriors, if you're okay with your wife spending Never mind, nine months, but even one night together with another guy, even though the environment and the circumstances and understanding is that there will be no Hanky Panky of any kind whatsoever. They will not even touch each other. Nonetheless, you're not going to be happy, and if you've talked yourself into that, oh, there's no problem. There are professionals doing their job, and it's just fine. Yes, my my wife is was sent by her company, together with her boss on an overnight trip to support a client in another city, and yes, they're staying at the same hotel, but we're all professional. I get that. I understand that I'm not a controlling husband. I'm not an abusive husband. I'm not trying to to regulate her or or suspect her. I trust her. Everything's fine. You're either lying or you've become a damaged human being. It is simply not normal for a man not to feel possessive about his wife. It's just it's not normal you are damaged if you are if, and I'm not saying you can't easily get to that point, because popular culture is so wrong about so many things that when enough people have told you that it's primitive to be that possessor about your wife and it's a throwback to an early stage of male hierarchy and patriarchy that makes you think that you should worry about your wife being on a business trip with another man, or stuck on the space station for nine months with another man. You've been damaged. And I don't in any way underestimate the power of the culture to damage people. It does. It does. It's it's managed to persuade large numbers of young men that not only do they not necessarily want to marry a girl who's not been with another man. They actually actively do not want that. They want a girl with some experience. That's what the culture has successfully managed to inculcate into the minds of impressionable young men, in spite of the fact that there is no disputing the statistics that the more premarital partners you had before you got married, the lower the chances are of your marriage surviving. Survival. The more people, the more people that you or your spouse were with before they married you, the less likelihood there is of your marriage succeeding, and that's not by a tiny, little negligible factor. No, it's a significant difference. And in spite of that fact, which everybody should know, it's easy to find out. In spite of that the culture is managed. To persuade men that they would rather marry a girl who's been around the block a few times. So yes, I don't underestimate the culture's ability to damage men and women and so and so. I don't know, and I'm I would guess that both Michael Williams, the husband of sunida, who is in space, and the wife, Deanna Newport of Bucha, who is in space with sunida. I'm quite sure that they are making, if they are making public statements, I'm sure they're saying things like, No, we understand the professionals and we support our partners careers as NASA astronauts, of course, obviously. But if Michael Williams tells you that he's not gnashing his teeth and not quite upset about this, then he's either lying or he's damaged. It's, it's one of the two. And I'm focusing mostly on on him, because male female is different at any rate, that look. Just think about it. I mean, no, no emotional attachment being built up there, it's not possible conversation staying on a professional level all the time. Do you really think that in spite of the fact that the FAA requires what they call a sterile cockpit environment on all passenger carrying airlines, and that means no talking on matters irrelevant to the flight. But do you really think that on longer flights, pilots and CO pilots have no conversations at all? Nine months in space? Come on. It's not a comfortable situation. Man plus woman equals awkward plus dangerous. In this case, I don't think it adds to the danger. I think it's just extremely awkward look. Let me give you a thought experiment. This is for you to perform. It's a thought experiment. What we're going to do is we're going to make arrangements with the owners of a very busy office building, with people coming in and out all the time, the employees of the office building, of the companies housed in the building, clients, patients, customers, whatever it is. And what we're going to do is we're going to set up clandestine surveillance equipment in one of the elevators, and then we're going to set up a switch so we can stop the elevator at any point. We wish this is fun, right? I'm sure you could get into this. And so we'll go and sit in our control room, and we will watch and the elevators coming down from the 27th floor, and there's a man in it, and and then it comes down, and it stops at the 23rd floor, and a woman gets into it. And fine, you want to know ages? I'm going to say the guy is 45 and the woman is 28 okay, just for argument's sake, roughly, as we look at them on the monitors, that's what it looks like. And what we're going to do now is as the elevator moves past the 13th floor, even if, in that office building, they don't have a 13th floor, and they call it 14 for superstitious reasons, but when it passes the authentic 13th floor, we're going to hit the switch and jam the elevator stops right where it is no danger. Nobody's in any peril whatsoever. But it stopped, and now, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to think about this experiment, and let's, let's change that right now. The first thing where we've got is two guys, two guys in there, you know, one guy late 30s, one guy in his 40s, and the elevator. Gems, please tell me. What do you think the men will do? I'll give you a clue. The first thing they're going to do is look for the intercom or the telephone that lets you notify somebody, presumably in the management of the building, that the air that the elevator is jammed. That's the first thing they're going to do. That right? One of them, or there's both of them, one of them will find it. They'll do that. Okay, what do you think they'll do next? What do you think?
Daniel Lapin 19:45
Do you think it's possible that one of them might say, if you give me a leg up, I'll put my head through that. I'll push open the hatch in the roof of the elevator and look out and see if I can see anything that's a problem, or maybe there's somebody. I can call Do you think that could happen? I do not necessarily, but it could happen. Do you suppose they might fiddle with the buttons and try and get the buttons on the maybe one of the buttons they could pray, I think it's there's every possibility that they're going to try and fiddle with the buttons. I think that could definitely work. Okay. Now replay the experiment. We'll let them, we'll we'll activate the elevator again. The two guys can get off at the ground floor, which was their destination, and we run it again. This time we are going to arrange for two women to be in the elevator. You know, shall we say, a woman in her 40s and a woman in her 30s does it's not critical. But just to fill out the picture, and once again, we're going to wait till the two of them are passing the 13th floor. We're going to hit that switch, jam the elevator. The elevator comes to a sudden stop, and what do you think you might notice on our surveillance equipment as you watch the monitors? What do you think you're going to see these women do? Well, I'll start you off. First thing is, they're going to look for the intercom. They're going to call the through to the building management. Another thing they might do is go through their purses and get out cell phones and use the cell phone. I could well imagine one calling her husband. I think my wife would probably do that and say, I mean, there's the elevator in this building. And, you know, this is this building. Do you think you might be able to try and hurry up? Yeah, that that's that's what husbands are supposed to do. So now, do you think one of the women might say to the other, give me a leg up and I'll put my head through the hatch in the roof and see if I can attract any attention up. Now, I don't think that's very likely. Do you think they're going to start hitting the buttons? And I don't think so. In this thought experiment is playing out in my mind. I think the two women are going to make themselves comfortable. They might stand for a while, and then they might sit. I think it's quite possible and likely that they will start talking and sharing experiences and, you know, becoming, you know, talking about their family. I think it's very possible I have a whole conversation. I think it's quite possible that at some point they'll give each other a big hug. By the way, none of that is happening with the guys in their elevator, right? There's no hugging, there's, there's no, there's no discussion about anything other than, how do we get out of this elevator? How do we get rescued? How do we get it to work? Okay, all of that, I think, is pretty straightforward. And I'm thinking that most, if not all of you, most of you, are probably saying, yeah, pretty much. That's about, right? That's how this thought experiment would play out. If there are two guys in the elevator and if there are two women in the elevator. But now we come to the main point of the thought experiment. And in this elevator run, we've got a man and a woman, all right, 34 year old woman, 45 year old man. And here we are in the elevator. Now the elevator jams to a halt as we hit the switch. And what do you think is likely to happen? First of all, who is going to reach for the intercom? Who's going to find where the telephone is to call you building management and notify them of an elevator problem. Do you think one is more likely to do that than the other? And what else might happen? Do you think they'll there'll be more discussions about what they can do to get out of this? Do you think they'll talk about fiddling with a phone? They might talk about who else they could call on the cell phone, that's possible. But do you think that after a little while, they'll just sit down and have a long, deep conversation? No, of course not. It's down right? Awkward. It's an awkward situation. The guy is trying to think to himself, how do I let her know that I'm not a psycho? Or do I even have to let her know she doesn't have to worry I'm not about to do anything untoward? And she is saying to herself, this is weird, and I'm stuck in the elevator with a guy for all I know, he could be a serial rapist. That's what she's saying to herself, even though she looks she doesn't think so, her instincts are not that that's what this is. But yeah, well, it's an awkward situation that's right, just as it is in the International Space Station for Sunita Williams and Bucha Wilmore, it's downright. Like awkward. That's what it is. And how about girlfriend and boyfriend? I said every male female interaction is awkward, other than mother, son, father, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife. How about girlfriend and boyfriend? Awkward? Awkward? Why? Well, it's okay for the first few days, but pretty soon it becomes awkward in the sense, what do I mean? I keep saying awkward? Well, it depends on their religious and moral and social backgrounds, but girlfriend and boyfriend, pretty soon, they're both thinking, you know, he's saying, Should I make a move? I mean, should I at least indicate that I find her attractive? And she might be saying, I hope he doesn't touch me or anything. This is, this would be very creepy. I'm not ready for anything like that. Or they may have been dating for a little while, and she might be saying, I wonder what's wrong with me. He doesn't he's not made a move on me at all, nothing. He probably doesn't find me attractive. And he's saying to himself, I don't want to make a physical move. I don't want to progress to intimacy, but I do want to let her know, but I'm not good at speaking. So how do I let her know how I'm enjoying being with her? That's called awkwardness, and this is hanging in the air, and each knows that there's things going on in the other's mind that have to do with the fact that one is a boy and one is a girl, and that is the awkwardness. That's what it's all about. Couples cohabiting. Same thing. You know, you'd have thought that people who marry after cohabiting have a better shot at marriage. The figures are exactly the reverse. Nobody disputes it anymore. It's very, very well known cohabiting couples who get married do much worse than couples who didn't. So now here's an interesting one. How about entrepreneurial business partners? Right? We all know about jobs in Wozniak starting apple, and we all know that starting a business with a partner has huge advantages to it, and I know of a number of successful businesses started by two female entrepreneurs, and I know plenty of businesses started by two male entrepreneurs, but what is a lot harder to find are businesses that are started by a man and a woman partners who are not in any way related or relating to one another. Personally,
Daniel Lapin 27:55
it's much harder to find. There are a few and out of five the top five that I found four out of the five they got married. So, so that sort of says, yeah, there is, there is something very nice about working with somebody on a project. And that's what marriage is on a day by day basis. You're working on your family, you're working on your relationship, you're working on each of your separate children, providing what each child needs. And it's, it's a wonderful adventure, and it's, it's very intimacy inducing. And so I totally get it that you, you're interested in starting a business to make widgets. You need a partner who's good with numbers and to handle the finances, and a woman answers your ad, and you think to yourself, hey, I'm an enlightened, woke, modern man. There's no way I would turn her down. Just because she's a woman makes no difference. I'm just going to look for competence and skill, and if she's okay with that, I'm bringing around, we're going to become partners in starting our new CO and guess what, in four out of the five first examples that chat GBT threw up for me, the four out of the five, they end up getting married, yeah, because they built something together, and they're working together, and they're supporting one another, and they're being considerate of one another, and there is something bigger than their relationship, the project, the company, the entrepreneurial venture. And so I laughed when I saw this. I thought I was going to be able to give you a list of companies where that are run by male and females who are not related to one another. And it's it's a lot harder than I thought, but when I give it some consideration, why? Of course, it makes sense, because men and women, a man and a woman together who are not husband, wife, brother, sister. Father, daughter, mother, son, it's just awkward. And awkwardness is a problem in business. And so in these three, four out of the five cases, the way they solved the awkwardness problem was simple. They got married, and as far as I know, everything is fine, that's good, makes perfect sense. All right, doesn't it? I think it does. One of them that I thought might be an example was Theranos. You might remember that company that turned out to be a terrible scam. It was a fraudulent company claiming to be able to do the most remarkably sophisticated blood tests on almost no blood at all. And this was started by Elizabeth Holmes and I thought, also by sonny balwani. But it turns out to be a little more complicated. When they met, she was 18 years old. She was a student. He was 37 little bit creepy, right there. He 37 year old guy married, I think, and a an 18 year old co ed at Stanford. And so they do not fit the criterion I was looking for in my study and so happy warriors. Up until this point in today's program, I've been focused on the inherent awkwardness of male female relationships and and they and this is true everywhere. You know, if, if, I, if I volunteer for a job, you know, maybe a charitable job, or something like that, where I'm going to be working on something. And I arrived there, and they put me to work with another volunteer, another guy. You know what? It doesn't take us two weeks to learn how to get on with each other. I promise you two guys, they don't know each other, but they're given a job to do, they'll get on with it, and within no time at all, they'll be accustomed to one another's work styles. And you know, I'll come home and I'll tell Susan Lapin, hey, you know I, I spent the morning doing this job, working with this guy, you know, John Smith, who I never met before. My wife will say to him, so is he married? I'll say, I don't have a clue where, like, where's he from? Like, where was he born? And, you know, do you know anything about his family? Not a clue. I'm sorry. It's not that I'm anti social, but for the most part, if I'm working with another guy on a job, we get on with a job. But if I were to show up at the charity and they've assigned a woman to work with me, to work on the project during the morning, I got to tell you, I'm I'm not sure. I'm not sure I would, I would want to stay and do that, you know, and maybe I'd have to, maybe I don't have much choice in it, and so I would do it, but I will tell you, I will be tightly coiled the whole time. It will have an awkwardness to it, and that's no in any way slight on the woman. She can be charming and lovely and pretty and delightful and everything, but it's still awkward. It just is, provided you haven't had all your male female sensitivity eroded out of you by an abrasive culture. But if you're a normal man, what I just described would leave you, and it's not because I'm saying I'm normal. I'm I should be more normal in many things, but in this area, this is, this is very, very typical of men. And I'm probably there are women happy warriors listening right now, saying, What is he talking about. But at any rate, if you are a happy warrior, and you remember, I would love your comments on this topic on our happy warrior website, because I will join in, and we'll see if there's anything that needs to be corrected, if there's anything I'm saying that you are going to persuade me I'm completely off base on. But you know, here's another example. And you know, any guy who's traveled on an airplane a few times, you find yourself on a plane, you sit down next to somebody, and you know, it's a guy, what happens? I always say, Good morning, if I sometimes he's he gets it in first. And you know, we're not necessarily going to be best buddies or anything, but with this, probably going to be some conversation. He's going to ask what I do. I'm going to ask what he does. I might know somebody in a company we we might find out each of us, are we heading out on a trip? Are we heading home? You know the sort of thing that. What guys chat about, and then, you know, one of us might start doing some work, and then there won't be a conversation for for an hour or so, and then one of us might pipe up again with something else. But that's, that's pretty much normally how a flight goes. However, what happens if you are a woman traveling, well, you strike up a conversation with a woman next to you. No problem. It's going to be the female equivalent of what I just described. But what happens when it's a man and a woman that are seat mates? Awkward? There is no way around it. That's what I'm trying to say. I understand we're civilized people. We're modern people, we're post enlightenment people, and we are not merely the product of our biology. And after all, the fact that I'm a man and the person I'm sitting next to is a woman. Shouldn't matter at all. We're just passengers on an airplane. Yeah, that's a load of unadulterated bilge water. Men and women are different, and what is more, a huge amount of everything that we cherish in life is built and based on the fact that the way the good Lord created us is for there to be a tension between a man and a woman attention. And the correct word for that tension is awkward. That's what it is. And so yeah, sitting sitting next to a woman on the plane, it's not an easy, natural as it is. THE SAME GENDER conversation, two men, two women, easygoing conversation, different conversations between two women and two men, different but easy going, but between a man and a woman, not easy going, it is awkward. It's it's got to be calculated, should I? Shouldn't I it? That's what happens. And what did she mean? What did he mean was, was that intended this way or that way? That's what this kind of interaction is absolutely filled with and where it gets really interesting is in the cockpit of airplanes. Now I know a lady pilot, actually. I think I know two lady pilots, one of them works for United and one of them works for another airline. And
Daniel Lapin 37:42
no problem, right? When I when, when I find out that there's a woman pilot never used to bother me, never used to strike me in any way as being significant. But now, thanks to a bright writer called peachy Keenan, I do feel differently. And now if I discover that there are two women on the flight deck, pilot and co pilot are both women, no problem. And if I discover that there are two men on the flight deck, pilot and co pilot are both male, no problem. But when I discover that the pilot is a woman, youngish woman, and in the other seat is a middle aged guy. Well, I think I want to be told that in advance, what am I talking about? I'm talking about the fact that the horrible crash in February of an American Airlines jet and an army helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington DC, as the jet was on final approach, turns out that at the controls of the helicopter was a young woman, trainee pilot, and in the next seat, the person training her, the person who was co pilot, was a man. And you'd say, well, that shouldn't be a problem at all. But wait. It turns out that Delta Airlines, which was the operator of the airplane that landed very badly at Pearson Airport in Toronto, recently smashed down on its on its right, on its right landing gear damaged. It. Plane dipped. The left wing is still developing lift, and so the plane flips over, upside down, and miraculously, everybody walks away. Turns out pilot was a woman. And the co pilot was a man, younger woman, middle aged guy. So no problem with two women pilots up front or two men pilots in up front, but mixed gender cockpits. I'm not at all sure that there's no problem then. So in my title for today's show, man plus woman equals awkward, plus dangerous. This is where we get to the dangerous part. Because, yeah, that that is kind of how things have been. They've really been a lot of accidents like this. And it's really very, very disturbing, because there was this accident Continental, and it's a few years ago, but it's high on the list of danger. You know, of major accidents in America, even though it took place, what's it about 15 years ago? This was a winter flight into Buffalo, New York, middle of winter. So not great conditions. It was continental flight, 3407 you can look it up if you like. And there we go. The pilot. The the pilot was a 49 year old man flying for for Continental, and the co pilot was a 24 a 24 year old female co pilot, and the plane crashed, killing 50 people. It was a bad, bad, bad accident. And as you know, since then, I think then the next, the, the the next accident in America, the next accident was this one in in February, the on the Potomac River, again, a male and a female pilot, the the the prom. Well, okay, let's talk about the Delta flight. Okay, so delta, the Delta flight comes down and wing, wing tears off. The plane flips over, and the landing was being conducted by a young female first officer, and in the next seat was a, again, a middle aged guy who who did training for for Delta Airlines, Kendall Swanson. She was 26 years old, young blonde pilot and and her and the and the guy with her middle aged, senior guy, okay? And things did not go well. Fortunately, miraculously, they all plane flipped over. But as you by now know, everybody walked away safely from that and and what's interesting is that delta had been running a lot of advertising about unmanned flights. They were boasting about the fact Delta has been extremely susceptible to the woke era in American history, and they unmanned flights, means flights that are manned entirely by women, only women in the cabin and only women in the cockpit and so again, you know, God bless you. No problem at all. That's fine, but in the cockpit a man and a woman is an intrinsically awkward situation. Well, why? Is that such a problem? And to understand that, we need to take a look at career airlines. Korea airlines really got going in the late 70s, early 80s, and became an active international carrier with a horrible safety record, a really, really, really bad, bad, bad safety record, bad crashes, and it was recommended not to fly on on Korea airlines at that point. So they went and did a huge investigation, what's going on, and can we fix it? Well, it turns out to have been a cultural problem. You see what goes on, particularly in an emergency, when everything's going fine, planes in straight and level flight, autopilots in control, no problem. But whenever anything gets a little bit gnarly. Things happen a lot. There's a lot of data coming in, frankly, too much for one person to handle, and that's why they put two people in the cockpits of commercial airlines, because if anything goes wrong, there is so much data flying at you that. In person. Literally, the limitations of the human brain are that it cannot deal with that amount. So two people do it. But it hinges on, critically, it hinges on absolutely fluid, fluent, easy, understandable communication between the two of them. That's what it depends on. There's this is so much a part of training that. It's called CRM cockpit resource management, I think, and it means how well the two pilots work together. And as I said, before you put two guys in the cockpit of a plane, even if they don't know one another, within no time, they're flying the plane like a team, flawless. No problem, the communication is easy and prompt and direct and specific, no problem. And I suspect that in its own way, two women manage in much the same way. Now we haven't had an incident like the Miracle on the Hudson with Captain Sully, where we do know a lot about the communication between the pilot and the co pilot, and when you look at the transcript of that, it gives you a very good idea of what I'm talking about. How critical to flight safety it is that pilot and co pilot kind of work like one machine. And that's really what these two men were like over the Hudson River and the National Transport Safety Board, when they release their reports on accidents, they've from time to time, assign the blame to crew, in other words, a crew fault mistake on the part a human mistake, and on more than One that I've read the it's attributed to improper and inadequate communication between pilot and co pilot. Anyways, Korean airlines decides they're going to study this and get this thing right, and they take lessons from El Al Israel airlines. Now, in Israel, the Army is very flat. It's well known that a private in the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces can can talk pretty directly to a general. There are some very funny true stories of things that have happened. In one case, a private mother let a general have it. And this is how it works. That's how it's Israeli culture. You like it, you don't like it. It's good, it's bad. But I'll tell you that on the in the army and in an airplane cockpit, it's magic. It's fantastic. And so for instance, when Asiana Airlines, I think it's also a Korean company, they
Daniel Lapin 47:40
in 2013, 12 years ago, you may remember, they flew a large passenger jet into San Francisco Airport, and the plane came in a little too low and a little too slow, and at The last minute, the pilot pulled up the nose, which, as you know, makes the tail of the plane go down. And the plane hit a sea wall, because, you know, it's on San Francisco Bay, just short of the runway. And flight Asiana, flight 214, ripped off its tail, ripped off the undercarriage, the plane slid down the runway, and again, miraculously, out of 187 people on the plane, 182 I think, I believe, 184 maybe, pretty much everybody got out. Seems there was some Chinese kids in the back of the plane, where the tail tore off, and they weren't wearing seat belts, apparently. And then, tragically, one girl who got thrown out of the plane was was alive on the tarmac when she was run over by an ambulance racing to the site of the accident. So. But anyways, when this was analyzed, and you know, the pilots walked away so they were able to interview them, and the problem was inadequate communication. The co pilot knew that they were coming in too low and too slow, and he didn't feel comfortable telling the captain that. And that turned out. Now, this was more recent, but in the 80s and 90s, Korean Air had numerous accidents, and it turned out that they needed the Israeli help, because what was going wrong was that the hierarchical culture and the culture of respective elders that was so much a part of what is beautiful in Korean culture turned out to be deadly in the cockpit. And so Korean 801 was the 747, that crashed on approach to Guam in 97 killed 230 people. And what happened? The. Junior officer failed to communicate his concerns to the captain. The captain was making mistakes, and the junior officer kept quiet. In 99 a Korean, Korean, Boeing 747, took off from London Airport and crashed. Okay, again, the analysis attributed the crash to rigid relations between the senior and the junior pilots, and they weren't communicating properly. A lot has to happen in a copper during takeoff and landing, and the two have to be able to communicate a there was a Korean airline in also in 91 it was a seven to seven. It was an internal career flight, flight 350 and it landed. The pilot didn't lower the landing gear landed on its belly, and so again, they survived. So they interviewed them, and the the junior pilot said, during the flight, the audio alert system was becoming annoying, and my captain asked me to turn it off. That is a system that, in a voice wise, says, you know when you're coming into land, if you come down below 300 feet and you haven't loaded the land again, it says landing gear, landing gear, landing gear. Or if you know, if something goes with you, you do something with the autopilot. Says, autopilot, autopilot. You know. And it can be, it can be annoying, but it's it's a lifesaver also. So he said, I turned it off normally, that would say you haven't lowered your landing gear. And he said they said to him, the the investigator said to the co pilot, didn't you know that he hadn't lowered the landing gear? And he said, Yes, of course I knew, but he had told me to turn off the voice alert, and so I thought he knew what he was doing that he wasn't comfortable sharing. Well, I have to tell you that once Korean airlines got the hang of this and saw what was going on, they fixed it, and boy, did they ever fix it. The Korean Race to the Top of the safety record I think it's in the top three of safety record airlines right now, so it's doing absolutely brilliantly, but this is what we're talking about. Yes, why would communication between a man and a woman pilots in the cockpit not be as good as between two men and two women, because male female relationships are awkward, and it's even intensified during the woke period, where I can readily understand A male a senior male pilot and a junior woman pilot, he sees that she's doing something wrong, and I I fully understand him, saying to himself, you know what, all I got to do is correct her. She'll put in a complaint that I'm mansplaining and that I was offending her. My career is ruined. Now. I don't think she's going to crash. I think she's probably going to get this right, but what she's doing now is not good. It's not right. Well, she doesn't get it right, and she slammed into Toronto Airport. I'm not saying that's what the man said to himself, because I don't know, but I readily understand. I'm just giving you one example of what it is there would be awkward about a man and a woman being in the cockpit. It's a mixed gender situation, intrinsically awkward, and my dear happy warriors, intrinsically dangerous, so much so that I only half jokingly suggest that they have a moral obligation to notify us before we board, that the airplane will be flown by a mixed gender flight crew, and let each person decide for himself how risky that is. Me, I actually think it's pretty risky. I'm not saying I'd necessarily get off the flight. Because, you know, you sort of think the odds, but intrinsically risky, I do think. And so there we are, my dear, happy warriors. I think we are quite as far as we can go today. We've we are timing out, and we have to bring us in for a landing, as they say. So thank you for being part of the show. Take a look at those books that you can pick up on our website. Rabbi Daniel lapin.com for about a fiver each. And if you haven't subscribed to the show, please do. Please. How do you How much do you have to make me beg you it is helpful to me and it doesn't harm you. So go ahead and subscribe, and also make sure that you are a member of our happy warrior community. Thank you for being with us. I'm sorry I missed the show last week, and God willing, there'll be one next week on time, and until then, I want to wish you a week of growth and delight and optimism as you improve your family and your faith, your finances, your friendships and your fitness. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin, God bless you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
