About Patrick Reasonover

Patrick Reasonover is the lead Producer on They Say It Can’t be Done. He previously produced the award-winning feature-length documentary Of Dogs and Men. He is co-creator and producer on an animated comedy web series based on the NY Times bestselling book series, “The Politically Incorrect Guides,” also to be released Fall 2020. Through his work with corporate partners, Patrick has produced more than 300 animated, documentary, virtual reality, and narrative projects. He holds a B.A. from Emory University in Creative Writing and Philosophy.

Ed’s Questions: Segment One

Welcome to The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy, sponsored by Sage, transforming the way people think and work so their organizations can thrive. I’m Ed Kless with my good friend and co-host, Ron Baker. And folks, on today's show, we are pleased to have our interview with Patrick Reasonover. Let me quick read the bio and bring him on. Patrick Reasonover is lead producer on the movie, They Say It Can't Be Done. He previously produced the award-winning feature length documentary Of Dogs and Men. And he is the co-creator and producer of an animated comedy web series entitled, based on the New York Times best-selling books, The Politically Incorrect Guides, has been released in 2020. Through his work with corporate partners, Patrick has produced more than 300 animated documentaries, virtual reality and narrative projects. He earned a BA from Emory University in creative writing and philosophy. Welcome to The Soul of Enterprise, Patrick Reasonover.

I first got introduced to you, one of your publicists got in touch with me. And we did an episode of the Sage Thought Leadership podcast together, which was about three months ago, and talked for about 10 minutes. And I said this is a really fascinating documentary, I’ve got to get this guy on The Soul of Enterprise. So I sent it over to Ron and he took a look at it and said, yeah, this is a great topic for us. Patrick, let's talk about They Say It Can't Be Done. Talk a little bit about the film, [which was released on March 23, for rental and purchase, on all kinds of major platforms: Apple, YouTube or pretty much wherever you want to stream. It is rolling out internationally as well in Japan, and now I think in Arabic, across the swath of those countries, we’re very excited to finally get it out there. What's the initial reaction so far so good?

The film focuses on four different companies, or industries, or problems: Just, the alternative meat; The Center for Negative Carbon Emissions; Regenerative Medicine; and the Catalina Sea Ranch, and the story then weaves together around what they propose as these innovative solutions. But then also goes back and forth with the regulations and the challenges that these folks face. And I think you've done a pretty fair job of showing both the pluses and the minuses [of regulation]. I didn't find this to be hugely skewed one way or the other. Others might not think that, maybe that's just confirming my biases, I suppose it's possible. Is that something you strived for, a balance, because it comes across to me in the film?

What I thought was really neat about it, you also had some experts, such as Alex Tabarrok, Tom Bell, Clark Neily, Adam Thierer [and others]. Adam Thierer has been a guest on the on the show, talking about Permissionless Innovation [Episode #294]. But you also had folks who were regulators who you interviewed as well. And I thought that was an interesting balance. Tell me a little bit about those conversations that you had with those folks, before we get into the meat, if you will, of the documentary?

One of our former guests, Steven Landsberg [Episode #106], suggested that the FDA be paid in pharmaceutical stock to counteract that problem.

I forget which economist, might have even been Steven Landsburg [it was]: The two words that all economists agree on is incentives matter, everything else is commentary. That's certainly what we have. Just a quick story, we'll get into some of the different stories that you had in the documentary, but my son, curiously, is having a pizza party with his friends tonight, they're coming over, and they'll be ordering, I'm sure they'll be ordering cheese pizza and pepperoni pizza. And what I learned from your documentary is that cheese pizza is regulated by the [FDA], and pepperoni pizza is regulated by the [Department of Agriculture]. And it's just a great example of the confusion, and not the regulator's fault, per se, right? That's just the system that they were dealt, but they've got to square that circle in many cases.

That’s also brought up in the Catalina Sea Ranch problem, too. One other scene we'll talk to you about is when Tom Bell goes through all of the different offshore regulations back and forth, “we can't figure out how to regulate it so you can't sell your product.” Wait, what? Really crazy stuff? Well, Patrick, we're up against our first break. The time is flying by as we knew it would.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Two

Welcome back everybody. We're here with Patrick Reasonover, the producer of They Say It Can't Be Done. Patrick, it's great that you have a degree in philosophy because I want to ask you a big question. The documentary opens by saying, Throughout history, the idea was that God would bring the world to an end. But then after Hiroshima, man figured out that we might be able to do this ourselves. Why is it that doomsayers always underestimate the human ingenuity of man?

And human sanitation as well, not just horses, right? I thought that was a great analogy. One of my main takeaways from the documentary, and Jane Jacobs, Virginia Postrel, and George Gilder, have all written about this: that the real conflict is not the rich versus the poor, Democrats versus Republican, it's the past versus the future. Are we going to let the future unfold, from these innovators, and from these creators, because the status quo, obviously, has a lot of people who are invested in it, and they don't like change. And your documentary also does a great job with that, especially when it starts looking at the alternative foods, and the meat producers and the cattle producers.

And like Ed said, you focus in the documentary on four areas: regenerative medicine, , food, climate and Aquaculture. I'm just curious, how'd you land on those four, because I'm sure you had a much longer list?

That's great. The drug one was fascinating, the kid who you profiled who got the new bladder. And he said he was one out of 10 who has had that in 18 years, is that right?

And the 3-D printing of the ear and the other thing that blew me away, and you talked with Ed about this, which regulatory agency has jurisdiction. The FDA is great with food, cosmetics, and drugs, because those are mass market. But all of these organs, these are bespoke. So who has got regulatory Control. And if it is the FDA, are they really set up for it? Those are fascinating issues to contemplate.

I remember when I watched the documentary the first time, about three months ago, I remember talking with Ed and said, the biggest oxymoron I learned was the term “regulatory science.” Didn't Richard Feynman say anytime you have to qualify science, it's not science. And of course, the definition she gave for what “regulatory science” meant. It reminded me of Feyman’s line that “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

Good, I'm glad you did, because that was just really strange. I totally agree with what Ed said, too. The way it started, when I first watched it, you were quoting all these governmental officials, and I thought, “Oh, geez, it’s going to be one-sided. And then all of a sudden, you have all these economists and all these different think tank people that we recognize. But it's really well balanced. It's said throughout the documentary that there is a need for regulation, sometimes regulation can spur innovation. Do you have a personal opinion on where you come down between command-and-control regulation and performance-based regulation? Because I see a big difference between those two.

Yes, and we think reputation would probably be on that list as well. Well, Patrick, this is awesome. And really great job on the documentary, it's thoroughly enjoyable. So we will definitely link to it in the show notes and where you can get it.

Ed’s Questions: Segment Three

And we are back with Patrick Reasonover, the film is They Say It Can't Be Done. There’s also some screenings list and take a look at that. Patrick, I want to ask you straight up. Did you taste the alternative meat?

Amazing. Did you have any hesitancy in tasting it? Was there a little bit of like, wait, this is weird, or no?

Great, now I really am looking forward to that making it out to an actual product in the market. One of the things that your film really brings out, and Ron and I have talked about this on previous shows, is how often incumbents in the industry are behind the regulation, and big businesses actually love regulation. There's a real misperception out there, and the way it has manifested itself in this particular group, for the Just company, is that the meat growers, or the meat producers, want to define meat as harvested from animal flesh, even though chemically the stuff that Just is producing is the same. To me, it's the absolute inverse of the transubstantiation in the body of Christ. It's like the opposite of that. So talk a little bit about that, that big businesses, or regulations, are often done by the incumbents.

That was brought up briefly by one of the regulators, the Bootlegger Baptist coalition, which Ron and I have talked about, that's always very interesting to figure out who's the bootlegger, and who's the Baptist. I wanted to turn over to the regenerative medicine piece, and 3-D printing of organs. You talked about that with Ron, absolutely amazing. But I think we saw a little bit of this with regard to the COVID-19 vaccines, the same kind of regulatory problem with the FDA, that they're not set up for it. We have a vaccine, which is different from high blood pressure medication—we’ve got to test that to make sure it's safe, then does it actually reduce high blood pressure. But if you're producing a vaccine, test it, make sure it's safe, then get it out there. Tell people, “Hey, continue to social distance, we'll compare you to people who are not vaccinated at all.” And if it goes down, well, we know that the vaccine is effective, right? So that we can do this a lot quicker by what they call [human] challenge trials. I think that would be much more effective. So talk a little bit if you have a comment around that. What would be helpful there?

Right, it’s the seen versus the unseen. How absurd is it that they still are not technically approved [the COVID vaccines]. There's only a temporary authorization, by the time you get around to the actual approval, it'll be completely gone.

I see, yes, that's another ancillary benefit. That's wild. We had Ronald Bailey on the show [Episode #307], and I think this was the first time he actually said it publicly, and Reason magazine has just come out with a cover story on this, that this might be the last pandemic because of the mRNA technology platform that was developed, and they've been pretty successful with AIDS as well. Well, I only have two more minutes with you, and I wanted to ask you one more question about the Catalina Sea Ranch. Another thing from a regulatory perspective, the woman from the company says, the problem is that the testing requirement was done for a naturally recurring heard of muscles, which takes place over a much, much greater area then how they grow them. It sounded like the regulators just threw up their hands and gave up, saying, “Well, we don't know what to do. So you can't sell your product.” Is that what happened to them?

Really, that's great. Well it's bad for us, good for them. We are up against our last break here, thank you so much Patrick, Ron's going to take you the rest of the way, we really appreciate you appearing today.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Four

Welcome back, everybody, we're here with Patrick Reasonover, the producer of They Say It Can't Be Done. Patrick, on the climate change aspect, the taking of CO2 out of the atmosphere, that was just really awesome. His whole prospect of geoengineering. Are you optimistic that we will solve the climate challenge with innovation and technology?

You know, it's those types of innovations that make me think about the very small segment in the film about the losses from companies like Solyndra. I think there were 12, or 11 others that lost a total of $6.5 billion, and it made me think of George Gilder and his famous line that the dog is always the politicians’ best friend. If the government is going to pick winners and losers, it's always going to pick the past, it's never going to fund the entrepreneur with the crazy idea of sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere. And I just wonder about the technology and how much more we would have, and how much more innovation we would have, if the government wasn't subsidizing these relics?

On top of the don't bet against human ingenuity, I also thought one of the takeaways that your documentary made me think of was Hayek’s saying that the mind can't see its own advance. If you would have said to a regulator, what about Uber? Well, you're not supposed to take rides from strangers. The whole innovation of Uber and Airbnb sounds so counterintuitive. This tension between permissionless innovation and the precautionary principle, as Adam Thierer explains, it's on a spectrum. I just feel like we've been living under the precautionary principle for the last year with this COVID pandemic. Are you optimistic that we can go back to the permissionless innovation side?

Well, you're the exception to that Patrick. It's a great job [on the documentary] and it's got a fantastic message, and we'll do everything we can here to promote it. So, thank you so much for appearing on The Soul of Enterprise. Stay with us for a minute as we go through a live close. Ed, what do we have next week?

Next week, as we make our way through the rest of the Reagan speech writing team, we have the top dog, Tony Dolan.

Ron

Awesome, looking forward to it. See you in 167 hours.

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

This week is bonus episode 339 - The Last Pandemic, Bourdain, and Profitable Solutions

Here are some links discussed in the bonus episode:

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