David Pakman joins us live from the other side of the planet to talk about his thoughts on the anti-vaxxer controversy and why we should all be nice to a fault. David also talks about the dangers of being a narcissist and how to deal with it, and why it's important to be a nice guy even when you don't like what you're saying. David also discusses his views on the government and intelligence agencies, and whether or not they should be held to the same standards as the rest of the public when it comes to what they say and how they do things, and what they do in response to things they say. David is a great guy and a great talk-show host, and I really enjoyed having him on the show. I hope you enjoy this episode, and don't forget to give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts. If you like the show, please consider becoming a patron patron, leaving us a five star rating and reviewing the show on iTunes. We'll see you next Monday! Thank you so much for all the support, and stay tuned for more episodes! See you next week! -Jon Sorrentino Timestamps: 5:00 - What's your favorite conspiracy theory? 6:30 - What are you going to do next? 7:00 8:15 - What do you think about the CIA? 9:40 - Is the CIA a good guy? 10:00- Is there a conspiracy? 11:00 Is the real or fake? 15: Is there any such thing? 16:00 Do you think the CIA good or bad? 17:00 Does the CIA better than the CIA just because it's not? 18:00 Are you a good person? 19:00 Can you be a good leader? 21:00 What kind of intelligence agency? 22:00 Would you like to become a better man? 25:00 Should the CIA be a cult leader ? 26: Is it better than a cult guru? 27: Is he a better person than a better guy than the other? 29: Does he have it all of those things? 30: Is that a problem? 32:00 How do you need to be more like that? 35:00 Who are you better than me? 36:00 Will he be a better than you?
00:01:11.000It doesn't hurt my feelings when you say things like that.
00:01:14.000Even if I understand what you're doing, it's no big deal.
00:01:17.000I feel like there's too many opinions, and it sucks for the people with opinions, and I think it's one of the problems with what we do, and one of the reasons why people get so angry at us.
00:01:27.000So if you and I are having a conversation, and perhaps we agree on something, but someone listening is like, fuck that!
00:01:34.000This is what's wrong with that idea, and they want to say it, but they can't!
00:01:38.000And so the comments are almost inherently angry because it's really so much of it is just people who want to say something but there's no forum for them.
00:01:50.000They feel like they're in on this conversation that they want to jump in on and interject.
00:01:56.000I got an email today from someone who said, I love everything you've been doing for the last six years, but yesterday you used the word anti-vaxxer.
00:02:20.000They're being completely unreasonable.
00:02:22.000Can you imagine if there was a show that you enjoy, and the guy said one thing that you disagreed with, especially something like calling someone an anti-vaxxer, and you're like, fuck this!
00:02:33.000That purity standard is impossible to achieve, especially when you're doing something like what you and I do, where we're basically just talking with a very...
00:02:43.000I mean, I'm sure you have some bullet points of things you want to cover, but you're ad-libbing all the time.
00:02:48.000What we call free-balling all the time.
00:02:51.000And it's a crazy standard to try to hold, to ask someone to not say anything that you're going to disagree with.
00:03:04.000I'm like, why did I even say it like that?
00:03:06.000I have videos from seven years ago where it's not that my foundational values haven't changed, but I do look at it and I say, if I had known then what was going to happen four months later, I never would have done it that particular way.
00:03:23.000Yeah, there's a lot of things that happen in the news that force you to sort of shift your opinions and go, oh, that kind of stuff does happen.
00:03:32.000I've had this perception of whether it's the government or the intelligence agencies of being beyond reproach, and now I find out, oh...
00:03:41.000Alright, now I've got to go and revisit a lot of things that I was saying were nonsense, a lot of things that I was dismissing openly.
00:03:46.000Now I've got to go, oh, well, we like to think that, when it comes to governments and intelligence agencies, we'd like to think that there's some level of, whether it's government or military, there's some place that you could reach where you're like a super person,
00:04:02.000where you're not going to make any of the mistakes that we'd attribute to people based on Greed or ego or pettiness or short-sightedness that when you get to that point You're a proven commodity and that you are you're what we're looking for as a leader and you have to be upheld You have to uphold these very strict standards at that spot and we assume that there is an actual thing like that and I think it's one of the reasons why people get so frustrated at Trump It's
00:04:32.000because he doesn't even try to pretend he's one of those things.
00:04:39.000Well, one of the things that I was kind of in a battle with in with my audience during the primary was I would get emails from people who would say, And then I would get people who would say, the only person who could beat Trump is Tulsi Gabbard.
00:04:57.000Everybody else is straight up a bad person.
00:04:59.000And my message was always, listen, we shouldn't deify any of these people.
00:05:36.000And I also think that the position itself, the world has grown too large for the position.
00:05:43.000I feel like if we left from all parts of the land and all parts of the world and found an empty continent, well obviously the United States wasn't really empty, but if we found a place where we resettled and we tried to restructure government from scratch,
00:05:58.000We would take that into consideration now.
00:06:00.000I think our Founding Fathers, they were just dealing with this archetypal structure of one person that sort of runs things, but in this case it would be a person that we all agreed to, and it was a much better step moving forward than kings, right?
00:06:14.000Now that we've kind of done that for a while, we realize, well, yeah, that might be great when it's 100,000 people or a million people.
00:06:20.000But once it gets to 320 million people and complicated things like international business and trade agreements and the environment and nuclear power versus solar and wind, one person is going to be responsible for all these insanely important decisions?
00:06:44.000It's just I don't think we would do it this way.
00:06:46.000I think we would have some sort of a council of wise people or something along those lines.
00:06:51.000You know what's interesting to me about that?
00:06:53.000I mean we're like diving headfirst right into a bunch of stuff here.
00:06:57.000What's interesting about that is when you think about who to vote for for president, and I know that we'll get into this stuff, I'm sure, you're not just voting for the person, you're voting for who are they likely to have working for them, what is likely to happen in courts,
00:07:14.000what is likely to happen regulation-wise.
00:07:17.000And so, of course, you want to think about who it is that the person is, but you also want to think about who do they bring with them.
00:07:25.000And for me, I see voting in November at this point.
00:07:29.000Yeah, most people have made that concession.
00:07:31.000And it's an interesting concession, right?
00:07:33.000Because it's not a concession we had to make.
00:07:35.000If it was Tulsi Gabbard or Bernie Sanders or Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg or, you know, go down the line.
00:07:43.000There's a lot of very credible candidates that would have made like interest, like maybe this person could be.
00:08:00.000Whether or not he's having moments that are related to cognitive decline, which you could speculate, or whether or not this is just his reaction to the most extreme amount of pressure he's ever faced in his life and that does happen with people we know people lock up I would imagine that a guy who's been in the spotlight as long as he has for so long probably would would be able to handle stuff but I think running for president is a whole different ballgame.
00:08:27.000I think everything gets turned up by 10, and I think it gets turned up in this society that we're experiencing today.
00:08:33.000It gets turned up even more so because of social media.
00:08:35.000Like, no president other than Trump has really had to deal with this kind of wave of social, viral, you know, feedback online with Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and all the stuff that we're experiencing right now.
00:10:31.000But in that moment, in front of those people, to do it that way, while he's running for president and while he's had a few of those before, he could be dealing with anxiety, too.
00:10:39.000There's probably a lot of shit going on.
00:10:43.000Yeah, I mean, listen, so I don't have any, I don't, my view is just based on actual professionals that I've talked to and people that have been in a room with him because I'm not a professional and I've not been in the room with Biden.
00:10:55.000So Andrew Yang was on with Sam Harris recently, I don't know if you saw it, and this topic came up.
00:11:00.000And Andrew Yang basically said, listen, he's 78 years old.
00:11:05.000If you compare a video of Biden debating Paul Ryan in 2012 to Biden a month ago, obviously it's different.
00:11:12.000And to some degree, that's normal when someone's 78 years old.
00:11:17.000But Andrew Yang's perspective was that he didn't see anything that he would call dementia or cognitive decline beyond that.
00:11:27.000It doesn't tell us anything definitively.
00:11:29.000The other thing is, I've interviewed a few people, and I think you and I maybe have even messaged about some of them.
00:11:37.000Neurologists and mental health professionals who are very concerned about Trump, like the oranges of an investigation, where he seems to sort of lock up when his shoulders sort of, you know, this thing that he does where his shoulders kind of lock up in a weird way.
00:12:38.000I think if you went to like search.twitter.com and just searched in videos the way you can do and you put like Trump brain glitch, I'm guessing that some of these would come up.
00:12:51.000But the gist of what I was getting to was some of these They're Democrats.
00:14:03.000This is what Trump has said, that he is pro-life and that he would pick someone that would – or it's just by virtue of picking conservative.
00:14:29.000It's like an ABC after-school special.
00:14:31.000Let's imagine that that's true, that he had an awakening at age 68 after being pro-life his whole life.
00:14:36.000He said he would pick justices that were recommended to him by, I forget which conservative group.
00:14:43.000You're only going to get so-called pro-life justices from these groups.
00:14:48.000On the other hand, Joe Biden will absolutely pick a pro-choice justice.
00:14:53.000So if I was pro-choice like you are, how do I justify voting for the guy who's going to That's a good point.
00:15:07.000I'm going to get into it in a second, but Jamie just pulled up this video of Trump, and I'm going to get to watch him have this weird twitch for the first time.
00:15:46.000I think a better thing is something that you showed me on your show, a better example, when there was real problems with him enunciating words.
00:15:55.000You know, there was speculation like, was he falling?
00:16:08.000Like he was wrestling with a paralyzed tongue.
00:16:11.000Your perspective matches mine, but I think I really, for me, it's like this stuff, we're not probably ever going to really get an answer to this.
00:16:20.000And I don't know that it's imperative to know the answers for me to know who it is I'm going to vote for, I guess, is the point I'm trying to make.
00:16:30.000It's fascinating that pro-choice is such a hard-line issue on left-wing people and right-wing people.
00:16:38.000It really is that it's this line in the sand and people are willing to make concessions In favor of going in that direction.
00:16:52.000Because they recognize the slippery slope of limiting people's rights and the dangers of going in the other direction.
00:18:34.000And if you move in the direction of limiting it, you run the risk, I always feel, of shifting, even like the consciousness of the public, shifting the way people approach things like this, accepting control, that the government has control of your body.
00:18:51.000The idea that they can come and decide what you have to do for the rest of your life now based on maybe something that wasn't even your choice, that to me is crazy.
00:19:06.000It's one of the reasons why picking a president and picking a party, it's so crazy that we let one person and then his group that he gets with him shift the consciousness of the public or shift the direction of the country one way or the other.
00:19:21.000It's just, it's a really weird choice that we make in even making a president.
00:19:26.000And then doing it every four years and having all these checks and balances that you have to follow.
00:19:31.000I mean, I think it's a great system for the time when they invented it.
00:19:35.000I mean, it's amazing how well it holds up from 1776 to today.
00:19:39.000It shows you how amazingly wise they were.
00:19:42.000But just think about what we know now in 2020 about just the nature of communication like what you and I are doing.
00:19:49.000I mean, this is going to affect millions of people and their opinions.
00:19:53.000If you knew that today in 2020 and someone asked you to make rules based on what was going to be in place 300 years from now, you would be like, I'm not qualified to do that.
00:20:04.000It's incredible how well they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights back then.
00:20:10.000It's one of the most amazing things ever if you really think about all the different times that it's come up and then you think about how long it's been that it was created.
00:20:23.000I mean, it's really an astounding piece of human work.
00:20:28.000Your argument, though, is really one for having to update the infrastructure that we...
00:20:35.000As you're saying, in order to change the way that we govern the country, as you're saying, one person making all these decisions with all of these different areas that they're responsible for, if you want to change that, you do have to change that document that you just said.
00:21:03.000We don't have a Windows 10 of government.
00:21:06.000We're still working with 95. We still have the older versions of Apple's software.
00:21:11.000We don't have OS X 10, whatever the latest...
00:21:15.000We are in this weird place where, you know, we have this system that's better than anything that we could see anywhere else, but yet it really, it doesn't necessarily work perfectly for the complicated issues that exist in managing just the 330 million people and all their problems.
00:21:36.000What is your sense of, I mean, is there...
00:21:46.000Trump's side in terms of the political position?
00:22:06.000I wish I knew exactly, you know, like when there's some negotiations in these trade war deals with China, for instance, like I wish I understood that better.
00:22:16.000I wish I really knew what was at stake and what China's actually trying to do and whether or not In particular, when you think about China and the military and their engagement with the companies, I never understood why they were trying to keep Huawei out.
00:22:32.000I was like, that doesn't make any sense to me.
00:22:34.000Shouldn't they show that they've done something bad?
00:22:37.000But it's a company that they feel is inexorably connected to the Chinese government.
00:22:45.000For me to say that I think that this person is doing a better job, or I like the way Biden would handle it better, Do I really know what the fuck I'm talking about?
00:23:01.000I feel like there's low-hanging fruit where just from listening to you, it's like when you said that you were mostly sort of a Bernie guy, that in the primary you seem to...
00:23:11.000I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that Bernie would be your primary, the person in the primary that you would lean towards or support.
00:23:17.000If you pick environment, just for one example...
00:24:05.000Okay, Biden is not Bernie for sure, but it's closer.
00:24:09.000And so that's where I'm interested in whether there's really anything you can identify where you're like, I just don't agree with Biden on this.
00:24:15.000Well, when you talk about Bernie and why I was interested in Bernie, what Bernie represented to me was someone who wanted change at a societal level, wanted to help people in a way that wasn't going to make anybody any money.
00:24:31.000It wasn't something where he was clearly doing this because of the special interest groups.
00:24:35.000They put him in a position, think that this would ultimately be more profitable.
00:24:39.000When he's talking about things like eliminating student loans and making school free for everyone, when you say that, I go, first of all, that's not making anybody any money, right?
00:24:51.000That's one of those things you're only doing because you think it would be better for humans.
00:25:18.000Simple misfortune we would let their life completely fall apart because they got injured and they come up with this bill that literally changes the whole course of their life if you're a person who makes $50,000 a year and you know you're doing fine and then all sudden a catastrophic injury comes along and you get hit with a bill a medical bill that's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and You're fucked.
00:25:42.000Like, your life, you don't have enough time to make that up unless you do something significantly different in terms of earning more money.
00:27:11.000If we can fly across the planet and try to fix countries that we've blown up in war, why can't we try to fix the inner cities that our kids go to school in?
00:27:22.000That doesn't make any sense to me, that people are forced to live in.
00:27:25.000That's why I was interested in Bernie Sanders.
00:27:30.000The healthcare example is an interesting one because it really comes down to what is the main point of the healthcare apparatus, right?
00:27:39.000If the main point is to get people as healthy as possible so that they can live the longest, most fulfilling lives that they want or are able to, that gets you one set of policies.
00:27:51.000If the perspective is healthcare is just an industry like any other where the participants just are there to make money, That's a totally different policy prescription and regulatory infrastructure.
00:28:27.000I know people that are pretty right-wing that would give me a hard time about calling me a socialist and a commie because I'm really into Bernie Sanders.
00:28:34.000A lot of those very same people are now wanting to get that stimulus check.
00:28:39.000A lot of those very same people are now understanding why I supported Andrew Yang and his concept of universal basic income because his concept is based on his understanding of technology and his knowledge of AI and the potential possibility to just take millions of people out of the market,
00:28:56.000out of the workplace like that almost like this like a virus of technology that removes diseases excuse me removes jobs instead of removes your health and I think that More people probably would be better off if we shifted our ideas about what socialism means and what democratic socialism means.
00:29:56.000How are businesses able to pollute the environment, make terrible mistakes, go under, go bankrupt, and they're absolved of their debt, but a kid who wanted to learn something goes to a school and winds up, you know, you're 22,
00:30:11.000you're not even a fully formed human yet, and you're in debt, you're fucked, you're starting out of the gate, crazy, crazy behind the line.
00:30:20.000Well, you're completely right, of course, about the toxic nature of the word socialism.
00:31:06.000I do think that the continued use of that word socialism was not helpful.
00:31:12.000And I know people will hear me say this and they'll say, David, either way they were going to call him a socialist.
00:31:17.000What difference does it make if he embraces the term or says it's not the right term or whatever?
00:31:21.000Sure, that applies to some people, but I failed to see what the advantage was to using a term that didn't really describe what his campaign was.
00:32:04.000And when he came on to my show, he actually did try to define it and describe the difference between the concept of socialism, which a lot of people connect to communism, and what he calls democratic socialism.
00:32:17.000You know, and he was showing a more tamed-down version of this concept that, you know, a lot of like real young lefties, like my friend Bridget was on the podcast the other day, Bridget Phetasy, she's a hilarious writer,
00:32:33.000very funny comedian, and she was talking about how she found some stuff that she wrote when she was in her early 20s.
00:32:40.000And she read it, and she's more center today, I would say.
00:32:46.000Left on many issues politically, socially rather.
00:32:58.000I'm sure Bernie was probably a full-on socialist at one point in his life, but what did that mean back then versus what does it mean now?
00:33:06.000And even the term socialist, when you look at the term conservative or the term socialist, you're talking about a spectrum.
00:33:14.000You're not talking about a one or a zero.
00:33:17.000No one has the same number factor of conservatism.
00:33:21.000There's a lot of people that are conservative that they're very liberal on a lot of social issues, but yet they still vote red.
00:33:28.000And I think there's a lot of people that consider themselves Like a socialist, but at what level?
00:33:36.000If you're pro-fire department, I think you embrace some socialist values, right?
00:33:43.000If you're pro a lot of the services that we use that are a part of your tax dollars, we're combining our money so that the world is better for all of us.
00:34:06.000Because I know that although there are, and we're seeing these more than we've ever seen in our life, multiple circumstances beyond your comprehension, totally out of your control, that fucks up your life.
00:34:16.000But yet we also see people who are lazy and who keep fucking up their life and you keep enabling them and helping them.
00:34:25.000Just because you agree with one thing that we need to help each other doesn't mean you deny the fact that there's a real problem psychologically to giving people free money and to giving people free room and board and taking away incentive for them to survive.
00:34:40.000There's something, for whatever reason, that a lot of us need this sort of inner drive, this knowledge that you're responsible for your own destiny and you have to go out there and you have to put in the work.
00:34:51.000You have to get out of bed when the alarm goes off.
00:34:53.000You have to do the things you're supposed to do.
00:34:55.000And there's people that don't do that, and yet they still want to be rewarded.
00:35:09.000See, both of those things are not good.
00:35:10.000It's not good to let people who are sick rot and live their life in a compromised position because they don't have enough money for the medical care.
00:35:28.000If there's money and food and we could distribute it more evenly, especially to people that are unfortunate, but it's also not good to let people just camp out on the sidewalk where you can't walk through it.
00:35:38.000Los Angeles is filled with tents now, especially now because of all this craziness and the pandemic.
00:38:44.000So this is where it starts to get tricky because it sounds like you might trust them...
00:38:50.000To monetize it, but then if it gets messed up, hey, we shouldn't trust them to clean it up.
00:38:57.000Someone else should do it, which maybe I agree with, and you're right, we should give them the bill, but that's the role of regulation to begin with.
00:39:03.000If they were better supervised, we could have prevented this from the start.
00:39:06.000I mean, with the BP oil spill, I'm going back like 10 years now, but there was some $500,000 valve, I believe.
00:39:16.000I'm going from memory, so I hope I'm getting this 90% right.
00:39:19.000There was some regulation that was removed where they were no longer required to have this $500,000 safety on these rigs, which would have prevented it.
00:39:29.000And obviously the $500,000 they didn't want to spend up front, but it would have been way cheaper than what ultimately happened.
00:39:35.000You know, when I see those rigs outside, like, um, there's a place that I love to go to in Santa Barbara that they have these offshore little oil rigs.
00:39:57.000It's like if you're an oil company and you're in Texas, you have to have either a lease on the land or you have to have rights to the land, it has to be yours, in order to dig into the ground and get oil.
00:40:06.000But out there in the ocean, you're just kind of doing it on public...
00:40:13.000I mean, once you get a certain amount of miles, I forget how many miles it is offshore, it's international waters, right?
00:40:18.000So we're making agreements, we're letting these companies go into the ground, and we're not profiting from it at all.
00:40:26.000All the money goes to them, and they're sucking it out of the ocean, and at any moment, it could go wrong, it could be an explosion, and the beaches are ruined for the rest of your generation.
00:40:37.000I don't know if it's going to be like in 50 years or 200 years or, you know, however many years.
00:40:42.000At some point, we're going to look back and there will be, you know, the books will say, we used to pull this stuff out of the ground and then refine it and then burn it.
00:40:52.000And people would say, you guys did what?
00:42:15.000If I'm taking a road trip and I'm going across the country, I want options.
00:42:20.000Maybe if they have a little engine that could get you by, just a little tank of gas, a little engine to get you by in case you run out of batteries.
00:42:51.000But the point is, like, it's such a clear leap in the evolution of technology that once you drive one of those, you're like, oh, it's game over.
00:43:00.000Like, he told me that when Elon was here, he told me that, and I was like, oh, you're just saying that because it's your product, and we were joking around about it.
00:43:06.000But then when I drove one, I'm like, oh, okay.
00:43:09.000Yeah, I mean, it's like, it doesn't even make sense.
00:43:12.000They're so much better than regular cars because it's instant acceleration.
00:45:03.000It was what happened with, I think it was around the same time where he said, I might have found someone to take the company private, and SEC got involved, and I just panicked.
00:45:12.000And I was like, I'm up so much, I'll just sell half.
00:45:46.000When I'm talking to him, I feel like I'm talking to someone in the future.
00:45:50.000If I had to go back in time and have dinner with a Neanderthal, I feel like it'd be real similar to when I sit down and hang out with Elon, how he feels.
00:46:03.000Because I think he's another level of human being.
00:46:07.000I think that that is a natural course of progression for evolution.
00:46:11.000We are going to eventually find people that are getting smarter.
00:46:18.000We're not going to stay in a static state forever.
00:46:20.000Just like we didn't stay as an Australopithecus.
00:46:23.000We became human beings over natural selection and evolution and all that good stuff.
00:46:29.000And if it's going to keep going, you're Especially when it's integrated with this insane access to technology that kids have today and insane access to information.
00:46:46.000So he does make mistakes just like human beings make.
00:46:48.000Like when he called that guy a pedo guy and that kind of shit.
00:46:51.000But when it comes to his ability to allocate resources and do things and get things done, he's so smart they just let him drill tunnels under LA. They're like, okay, go ahead.
00:47:04.000How many people would be able to go to the city of Los Angeles and go, I've got an idea.
00:47:09.000I want to put a tunnel, go all the way to Vegas.
00:47:47.000Because If you say the people should be allowed to make their own decision, you run into the very real possibility that especially if you have to go to work at that factory and you can't not work and you do get sick and you do go home and you do spread it to your family, a loved one could die.
00:48:04.000On the other hand, the government doesn't really seem to have any sort of straightforward plan as to how people can economically bounce back from this.
00:48:14.000I mean, there was one of the weirdest quotes.
00:48:49.000I mean, that does not make me feel good, man.
00:48:52.000If I'm a restaurant owner, you know, and there's a few restaurants that I'm always shouting out on the podcast that, like...
00:48:59.000Are owned by friends of mine that these businesses are hurting so bad.
00:49:05.000They went like that to no customers or a very small percentage of customers who order takeout when they had dine-in every night and they have these bills and they had their business set up in a way that you have to make X amount of money in order to stay open.
00:49:21.000And they were successful and they were doing well and one of the toughest businesses to be successful in.
00:49:25.000And then all of a sudden the rug gets pulled out.
00:49:28.000Should people just be able to go to restaurants and everybody who works there is a waiter or a cook or they just maybe get sick and then more people die?
00:49:34.000Boy, that doesn't sound good to anybody either.
00:50:08.000There's so many things where they've put into place these lists of what's approved and not approved, and I just don't think that it's an—first of all, I think the information's constantly changing.
00:50:20.000And I think that they're going off this old information and they haven't made adjustments.
00:50:24.000And then on top of it, I don't think they're qualified to.
00:50:27.000Just like we were talking about a president, like one person who's involved in the economy and the environment and all these different things.
00:50:33.000I don't think one governor can really be smart enough to know, A, what kind of impact it's going to have economically to close all these businesses down, and B, which ones get to open up and what is essential and why.
00:50:48.000It's very frustrating for all involved, and it highlights one of the reasons why the way we do government is not perfect.
00:50:58.000It's definitely better than a lot of ways in a lot of places in the world, but still, there's a lot of holes in it.
00:51:04.000Yeah, I share your frustration with constantly changing messages.
00:51:11.000What is essential in one state versus in another state?
00:51:15.000I mean, on the other hand, In Massachusetts churches were included in the first phase of reopening and a lot of public health officials say that doesn't make any sense and the suspicion is that it's there because of a lot of pressure and that it probably should have been in phase two or maybe even phase three.
00:51:35.000But I think it's hard to really talk about the state by state without acknowledging The disastrous response from the federal government.
00:51:45.000You may totally disagree with me on that.
00:51:46.000And I think that there's a lot of straw men that are being put in place to argue that Trump handled it beautifully, to use his term.
00:51:53.000But I think if you start with the idea of the coordinated federal response we could have had, a lot of these other issues that we're having now Just wouldn't be issues, and I'm glad to get into it more if you want.
00:52:06.000I don't know if you've talked about that a lot.
00:52:07.000Yeah, I think it'd be really interesting to talk about this, because what do you think they could have done differently?
00:52:12.000What do you think the government should have done differently, the federal government?
00:52:16.000The narrative has been a lot of two sides that are arguing.
00:52:22.000People who just vaguely say Trump failed, he didn't do enough, and he was slow, without really giving specifics, which I will give.
00:52:31.000And then on the other hand, you've got a lot of people who are just reflexively defending, hey, he shut down travel from China really early, and he took it seriously, and we've done the most tests, which is a whole other fiasco talking point that we can get into.
00:52:46.000But for the most part, I think that the critiques and the praise is just not tied to real dates.
00:52:54.000So in January, we had our first case, January 20th, I think it was, and South Korea had their first case, January 20th.
00:54:11.000He probably would have then, on April 5th, have had to ask for another 30. So we would have done like 60 days, March 5 to May 5. And where would we be right now?
00:54:29.000But we had the information on March 5th, March 10th, March 12th.
00:54:34.000At any one of these points, if we did a real shutdown, we'd be in such good shape.
00:54:39.000First of all, I think that the support for a shutdown that early would have been almost zero.
00:54:43.000I think you would have a really hard time convincing people that this was going to be that big of a deal and that there wouldn't be something they could do to stop.
00:54:50.000I think a lot of this is Monday morning quarterbacking, right?
00:54:53.000We're looking at what happened factually.
00:54:57.000Like, we're looking at it in the past.
00:54:58.000This is when there was this amount of cases.
00:55:01.000When it was happening live, There was a lot of confusion.
00:55:05.000First of all, the World Health Organization, as recently as January, was saying that, according to China, this is what they wrote on a tweet, it doesn't get transmitted from person to person.
00:55:44.000And I also, I do think we want to be careful, though, If we write any retrospective analysis off as Monday morning quarterbacking, then it's not even worth discussing, right?
00:55:54.000Because we could just say, throw it out, it's Monday morning quarterbacking.
00:56:22.000I mean, certainly there's no doubt that Cuomo and de Blasio are deserving of some In one other example, there was a period, we'd have to look at covidtracking.org to get the exact numbers, but there was a period in either late March or early April where South Korea,
00:56:39.000remember South Korea had their first case the same day we did, within like six or eight hours.
00:56:44.000It might have been January 1920 or vice versa, but there was a point in late March or early April where South Korea had as many positive We did tests total.
00:56:57.000So this is really important to understand the discrepancy here.
00:57:01.000There was a day where we tested 800 people in the United States and they did so many tests that they had 800 positive cases.
00:57:09.000And so the slow testing response is a disaster.
00:57:14.000And the proof is, you know, we can say it's Monday morning quarterbacking, but South Korea got it right.
00:57:51.000It's so funny because Trump was asked about this at a press briefing a couple months ago.
00:57:55.000This is when Anthony Fauci was still allowed in public.
00:57:58.000And when the question was asked, why did you shut down the pandemic response team, Trump turned, the video's out there, Trump turned and said, I don't know anything.
00:58:07.000Tony, do you know anything about that?
00:58:09.000There's video of Trump from 2018 bragging about shutting that down.
00:58:14.000To get back to our cognitive decline thing, is it possible Trump literally had no memory of that when he was asked about it a couple months ago?
00:58:45.000Yeah, it's related to some number of items, right, that you can keep track of simultaneously.
00:58:51.000Humans that you can have some sort of a by-name relationship, recognize their face, people that you know are going to be in your circle of humans you interact with.
00:59:02.000And it's somewhere around 150, and they think it's based on how we evolved in these small tribes, and we've evolved to know the people that are around us, and that's all the database you needed.
00:59:13.000You didn't need a full terabyte for people's names and addresses.
00:59:18.000I think that's the case with everything.
00:59:20.000And I think when you see a guy like Trump, and he's got fucking...
00:59:23.000Towers all over the place with his name on it and how many different businesses is he juggling and all these different deals going on and he's cheating at golf and all this different crazy shit.
01:00:45.000And he's busy between the press and the virus and reopening and all this different stuff.
01:00:49.000I don't know if you saw the reports that he often gets into what we would call work at noon or later after watching five or even more hours of TV and tweeting.
01:00:59.000It doesn't strike me that he's that busy with actual work.
01:01:13.000I mean, in not the best way possible, but we're so comical in so many ways that our president, he's eating junk food and watching TV and tweeting, angry tweeting at people while he's watching Fox News.
01:01:36.000This president is sometimes covered by, sometimes it's people who call themselves centrists or sometimes it's people who say, I'm just reporting facts and not giving an opinion or whatever.
01:01:49.000One of the things that really scares me Is that this is being treated like a normal presidency, when as you're pointing out, it's really not a normal presidency.
01:01:58.000And the analogy that I would sort of apply to it would be, imagine that you're doing UFC commentary, and this is me going out on a limb because this is not my area of expertise, but let's see if the analogy will work.
01:02:10.000Imagine that one of the fighters comes in, And he at one point tries to light his opponent on fire.
01:02:18.000And you as a commentator say, this is an unusual strategy that's very aggressive.
01:02:24.000You're treating it like it's within the realm of normality when this is a destruction of the system, right?
01:02:36.000It scares me because I see, you know, I like to use the term enlightened centrist, and it's a little bit pejorative, but it's Where they'll say, you know, listen, Trump kind of has a different way of talking about politics,
01:02:54.000but I think he's pretty good on trade.
01:02:56.000It's like, what are you talking about?
01:02:58.000And that really scares me because there's like a normalization going on that's crazy to me.
01:03:03.000Well, there's also a thing that we desire as humans that's for our leaders to exhibit virtue and dignity.
01:03:14.000There's like a thing, we expect them to be a statesman or a stateswoman, right?
01:03:18.000You expect them to, like Tulsi Gabbard's an excellent example that, to me, of someone who speaks like someone That I would appreciate addressing the nation in some sort of a disastrous state.
01:03:30.000If something was going wrong, I would want someone who speaks the way she speaks talking about it.
01:03:37.000There's a certain characteristic that you would want from someone who is in a position of leadership.
01:03:42.000I get a certain amount of calm out of listening to him break down the current situations and what they're doing to remedy and mitigate all the problems in New York.
01:03:51.000And when you think about it, New York got hit harder than anywhere in the I guess anywhere on the planet, right?
01:04:00.000Yeah, so at this point, it's anywhere on the planet.
01:04:02.000I mean, he's done a remarkable job of exhibiting all the characteristics, whether or not you think his decisions were correct or not, because there's some real arguments, especially with the early days of letting old people go back to nursing homes when they had tested,
01:04:29.000Yeah, and I think that this is why a lot of mistakes have been made during this, and a lot of it came from, like you're pointing out, we had incomplete information, masks are good, then they don't work.
01:04:40.000It's transmitted through droplet versus how much is happening via surfaces, and it's dangerous for this group versus...
01:04:48.000A lot of mistakes were made because of lack of information.
01:04:51.000But not everybody was saying stuff like 15 cases will soon be zero.
01:04:57.000Anybody who wants a test can get a test.
01:04:59.000It'll wash through by April and we're not going to have cases by the...
01:05:03.000That stuff has a very particular effect on people who basically want a license to go out and act however they want to act regardless of what the facts are.
01:05:14.000And that's why it's been so dangerous to see that stuff.
01:05:17.000Well, it also is dangerous because people dismiss some of the things that he said when he was talking about using UV inside the body as a disinfectant or using Lysol as maybe a cleaning, he was saying.
01:05:31.000One of the problems that came out of this, I don't know if you're aware of this, there was a publicly traded biotech company.
01:05:36.000That had a concept for UV light that would go in when someone was intubated.
01:05:43.000It would go in through the same tube and they would use that UV light and it would kill the virus from inside.
01:05:50.000That is something that UV light actually does work to kill bacteria and viruses.
01:05:55.000In fact, at my house I have a cell phone cleaner.
01:05:58.000You put it in there and you close it and it uses UV light to kill all those things.
01:06:02.000I mean this is something that they've had forever.
01:06:06.000A SteriPen is something that backpackers and hikers use.
01:06:09.000You can take water out of a creek and you take this light bulb, it's like a long wand, and you wave it for a certain amount of time in the water and that UV light kills all the bacteria.
01:06:44.000There's a bunch there, and I want to get to the Twitter stuff because I saw when you talked to Bridget over the weekend about the regulation of social media.
01:06:54.000I don't know this one, so I can't say too much about it.
01:06:58.000So Trump mentioned in that wondering aloud, he said, what if you hit the body with heat or light?
01:07:05.000And what if you put the disinfectants that were up on the TV behind him inside the body?
01:07:11.000So we got like four things, four things that he mentioned, right?
01:07:13.000So UV light, heat, and I think isopropyl and bleach were the four elements, so to speak, to use his term, that were up on the screen behind him.
01:07:26.000There were these couple papers about this UV technology, and a couple people on Twitter started saying, this is the stuff Trump was referring to.
01:08:43.000I don't really understand them that much.
01:08:45.000I kind of know there's spark plugs and there's fuel injection, but I don't really know what the fuck's going on.
01:08:49.000If I had to explain it to somebody, like how the gas gets converted into energy and how the pistons go up and something fires and what's regular...
01:11:26.000And then there's pictures of him having really dilated pupils, even under TV lighting, which is weird because TV lighting is really bright.
01:11:41.000I guess we have to look at them one by one.
01:11:42.000Well, dilated pupils is usually a response to some sort of drug, right?
01:11:48.000Some people get that with MDMA. They get that with certain amphetamines.
01:11:53.000To be fair, I think that the most sort of innocuous explanation would be Sometimes it's like the very high-key Trump, very agitated Trump talking fast and sweating.
01:12:07.000And then sometimes there's this depressed Trump where he's talking really, really slowly and he has a totally different delivery.
01:13:03.000And my doctor said, there's a giant difference between the dosage and the response to the dosage of A dose that you would get if you are sick with a disease versus a preventative dose.
01:13:14.000And he said there's many, many doctors that are taking preventative doses of this hydroxychloroquine and that this stuff has been around for a long time as a malaria medication.
01:13:43.000There was a journalist that claimed they found the right pharmacy that prescribed Trump speed, that where Trump would pick up this stuff that he would get, this amphetamine, for a metabolic condition.
01:13:59.000But, if your doctor prescribes you something, like, I have friends that take Adderall, and they take Adderall, the doctor prescribes them Adderall, and they take it, and they don't think there's anything wrong with it, because the doctor prescribes it.
01:14:09.000They don't even think that they do drugs.
01:14:11.000I'm like, you're on a hardcore stimulant all the time, and it's really, really, really common.
01:14:17.000So, if he's a guy that's willing to take hydroxychloroquine, which, I mean, maybe it's a good thing to take, and he's around a lot of people, and it is possible that it has some sort of a preventative effect.
01:15:15.000All these factors that we're not getting discussed in the news.
01:15:19.000When we're hearing all these things about social distancing and covering your face, it would be really nice if the exact same amount of effort was put to Let's all use this time to make healthy choices and to understand that there's a real benefit to having a healthy body and a healthy immune system.
01:15:36.000And this is the best example of it we could ever possibly face.
01:15:39.000It's a pandemic that with some people, they brush it off like it's nothing.
01:15:43.000And I know many people that have had it like that, and then I know Other people that got it, and they got it really bad.
01:15:49.000I've had two friends that were hospitalized, one who was on a respirator.
01:16:18.000But better advice is both of those things together.
01:16:22.000Yeah, so on hydroxychloroquine, my understanding of the randomized controlled trials right now is that it's essentially been tested as a treatment when someone is already sick.
01:17:15.000And then the letter that his doctor put out didn't actually say he was taking it.
01:17:19.000It was one of the weirdest letters, I don't know if you saw it, where there's one paragraph which just says, We talked about this drug and determined the potential benefits outweigh the risks or something like that.
01:17:30.000Maybe the doctor did that because it's off-label?
01:18:14.000The point is, after he mentioned it and people said, is he really taking it, clearly the White House directed the doctor, put out a letter proving I'm taking it, and the doctor writes a letter, doesn't say Trump's on it.
01:18:24.000Well, maybe the doctor was like, hey man, why the fuck did you say that?
01:18:33.000I don't think you would outright lie about that because the reason being is that I do know people are taking it.
01:18:39.000And I do know doctors, and I've discussed it with doctors, and I've even been offered it.
01:18:43.000And I think people are willing to, if they really think there's a possibility of getting ahead of this thing and some sort of a preventative measure, they'll take it.
01:18:55.000And especially if you're the type of person who takes things.
01:18:58.000So, do you think that there's going to be a period where wealthier folks with connections will be able to buy a vaccine before it's available?
01:19:08.000I think that's a possibility, for sure, right?
01:19:11.000If there's a small quantity, that's always going to be the case.
01:19:14.000I mean, one thing that people were getting upset at me in the early days of the pandemic was that I was testing everybody that came into the podcast studio.
01:19:21.000Like, where are you getting these tests?
01:20:16.000It's unfortunate that anybody would ever have to choose that.
01:20:19.000Yeah, and how it'll go down, I guess, is a question mark.
01:20:22.000Like, how will people in the know be made aware that this is now something they'd potentially be able to buy?
01:20:28.000Are you aware of, I mean, look, there's a bunch of different trials going on right now where they're trying to figure out how to make a vaccine, but so far no coronavirus vaccine has ever been successful, right?
01:20:39.000There's not one that they can use as a model.
01:20:43.000There is, so there are coronavirus vaccines that have worked in poultry, from my understanding, which can be modified potentially.
01:20:53.000So I think at least one or two of the vaccine candidates are modified potentially.
01:20:57.000Poultry coronavirus vaccines that could potentially be used in humans.
01:21:03.000And the other unique thing about this vaccine, potentially, as I understand it, is that this would be, if I understand correctly, it would be the first vaccine of its type that instead of having a weakened version of the virus,
01:21:20.000Instead, it would be a compound that triggers the body to create certain proteins, if I'm understanding that correctly.
01:21:28.000It would be innovated in that sense as well.
01:21:30.000Yeah, that was explained to me by Alex Jones.
01:21:33.000I had a long conversation with him about it last night.
01:21:47.000Well, I don't know that there's been...
01:21:49.000Now all of a sudden we're both biologists.
01:21:51.000So yeah, from what I've read, there's not been an opportunity like this where the technology would be near enough where we would try to make that type of vaccine versus the traditional kind, is my understanding.
01:22:05.000I don't want to be an early adopter of that one.
01:22:09.000Especially if this is something that for a giant percentage of the population, in terms of the virus itself, it's not deadly.
01:22:20.000Wouldn't you want to know if there's a new thing that's never been tried on people before?
01:22:24.000Wouldn't you want to know what the long-term ramifications of taking that are?
01:22:28.000Just on anything, any kind of medication, anything.
01:22:30.000I think what is important to remember is, Even if phase three of the trial is shortened, that would only lead to maybe a question mark as to how long the immunity lasts.
01:22:42.000But before you even start testing it to see whether it generates immunity, it's safety tested.
01:22:47.000And by the time it's available, even to buy it as a wealthy person, I think that the safety piece of it will be widely established.
01:22:55.000And it might just be a question of, does it give you six months or 12 months of immunity?
01:23:10.000The real question is, if this is a totally new thing, and obviously I'm grossly unqualified to be talking about this, but if it is a new kind of vaccine, what are the possibilities of this going wrong?
01:23:22.000And what could that mean to people that do have an adverse reaction to it?
01:23:26.000So I want to be really careful not to say things I'm not sure of, but also not to allow false fears about the vaccine to be perpetuated.
01:23:35.000That this would be the first widely used mRNA vaccine for a human virus.
01:23:43.000Does not mean that it would be the beginning of the research into using these types of vaccines in humans.
01:23:49.000And my understanding is that it's been decades that this has been researched and that it's been under development, generally speaking, and now it's being used specifically for coronavirus.
01:23:59.000So I want to make sure that I'm not like in any way implying that I have any broader concerns about the type of vaccine because I don't.
01:24:06.000And I'm not saying that somebody might not present one of those concerns, but I'm not aware of any of those concerns.
01:24:10.000But that's a well-worded way of describing it.
01:24:13.000Yeah, I mean, obviously we're all hoping that it works.
01:24:16.000We're all hoping that everyone's going to benefit from this and that we'll have a cure so we can go back to as normal as possible.
01:24:22.000But, you know, again, like I said, I think we really, more than anything, we're under...
01:24:29.000Under-appreciating the value of the immune system, and I think that's something that is really driving me crazy about the short-sightedness of this response, is that it's all about sanitation and avoidance and all these different factors, and very little of it is about strengthening the immune system and keeping the body healthy and making a shift of recognizing that,
01:24:50.000you know, hey, we're all very vulnerable here.
01:24:52.000We're all very vulnerable, and we've had a wonderful Goldilocks Yeah, I've seen some really scary numbers about for the younger Maybe
01:25:22.000even under 60. Obesity is extremely prevalent.
01:25:27.000There's some correlation studies about vitamin D, but there's really a lot of question marks about whether it's a causal thing and whether the infection itself can reduce your vitamin D. It would be delightful to learn that if you have low vitamin D, you supplement it and it protects you.
01:25:44.000But there's a correlation and it's really not clear what the deal is with that.
01:26:46.000Zinc has also been connected to recovery from COVID. And then one of the things they were speculating about with hydrochloroquine and zinc, they would use the two of them together.
01:26:57.000And there's been some speculation that maybe it wasn't, in fact, the hydrochloroquine that was really benefiting these people.
01:28:06.000Drink a lot of water, you know, and we're not hearing, again, I mean, I'm beating a dead horse, but we're just not hearing enough about this.
01:28:12.000Yeah, I got a vitamin D and B12 at home test a month ago because I was just curious, what are my levels?
01:28:17.000I live in Boston, you don't go outside that much in the winter and it's only starting to be spring now.
01:28:22.000And they were both fine, but had my D been low, Yeah, we're very fortunate.
01:28:31.000I mean, it's really easy to get some vitamin D and it can make a giant difference in your body.
01:28:36.000Are you changing anything about your lifestyle?
01:28:40.000Obviously, you're stuck at home, but are you changing anything in terms of going, okay, I need to make some corrections to make myself healthier or corrections to get better sleep?
01:30:21.000If it's spread through the air inside, why, if you're passing someone and you're breathing out heavy because you're running, it would make it seem to me that that would be a better way to walk right into it if it's in the air.
01:30:33.000It's in the air and you're breathing it out.
01:30:34.000Well, this is why I'm wearing the mask, but from the studies I've seen, there were these really scary-looking images where it was like black, where the particles were different colors.
01:30:46.000Yeah, and it was like, you know, you could be 20 feet in front of someone on a bike, and you could sneeze, and the wind could bring the droplets directly back, and they could breathe in at that exact moment.
01:30:56.000I don't deny at all that it's physically possible, but every single study that's coming out where it's possible to sort of figure out, like, where are people getting this?
01:31:04.000I'm just not aware of it being a real risk on a six-foot-wide bike path to run past two people.
01:31:10.000It's got to be one in ten million, right?
01:31:16.000If you're breathing it out, if you're breathing it out, and you got spit, there's stuff that comes out of your mouth, and then someone's going this way, it just makes sense.
01:31:53.000Democrat of Minnesota has been asked by Joe Biden to undergo a formal vetting to be considered vice president's running mate, one of several potential candidates now being scrutinized by his aides.
01:34:14.000I would want the best person that he could possibly get, especially when you consider his physical state and mental state's been questioned.
01:34:21.000I would want someone who I really feel like could make the cut.
01:34:25.000Yeah, I'm not big on this type of identity politics.
01:34:30.000I mean, listen, last time I was on, we talked about that time where this, we won't even say her name, but where this woman tried to get me fired from my teaching gig because I said, saying you will not consider a white or male candidate, that's not okay.
01:34:44.000But I do think that when you think about all of the people that have been president, so it's like almost all white men, and then Obama, who was half black, I mean,
01:35:40.000If there was a woman president, it's one of the reasons why I thought Tulsi Gabbard would be amazing.
01:35:44.000If she ran for president, became president, and you're talking about a woman who's a veteran, who's served overseas twice, who's been a congresswoman for six years, I mean, that would be great for everybody.
01:35:56.000Like, a really qualified woman who's the president.
01:36:42.000Well, there was a big push towards that in the period during and after World War II in trying to stimulate a lot of new industry and just get more people working and producing stuff.
01:36:53.000So what I would say is that men, in terms of public positions of leadership, have...
01:37:00.000We've had this massive head start and that we're changing the way we look at what a leader is.
01:37:07.000We used to look at a leader as being like the alpha chimp that leads us to battle.
01:37:14.000You go back in time 10,000 years ago, that's essentially what a leader was.
01:37:18.000And now we look at a leader as someone who can navigate the treacherous waters of the environment and industry and Unions and all the different things that the president has to deal with and it's it's not it doesn't require someone who's male or female It requires someone who again I hate to keep bringing up Tulsi Goward,
01:37:37.000but I think she's great She seems like a leader, right?
01:37:40.000That's what you're looking for you were looking for someone who's gonna make good decisions someone with good ethics and good morals that's gonna sort of Guide you in a way that the country will be better off with them doing that job than it would be without them.
01:37:55.000But again, if I was talking to my kids about it, it's a complicated discussion.
01:38:03.000And I think you'd really have to go back to How different human beings are now than they were even in...
01:38:10.000You know, I've talked to my kids about my grandparents.
01:38:12.000My grandparents came over from Italy during the early days of the 20th century, and they had a hard life.
01:38:21.000And when my grandfather used to talk to me about living on a farm and coming over here from Italy and, you know, how hard it was to struggle and what their life was like...
01:39:01.000We're changing what we find acceptable.
01:39:05.000We're changing what we find to make sense and what doesn't make sense.
01:39:09.000And we're readjusting things all the time.
01:39:12.000But I think one of the things that you said that is An important point was that if a woman becomes president, it does send a message that this is possible and it gives people hope.
01:39:22.000And I think in a lot of ways, Barack Obama did that.
01:39:26.000And when Barack Obama was in office, we were like, hey, even if people are racist, Even if there are racists, there's such a small amount that you can get this guy to win the popular vote and become the president of the United States while he's black.
01:40:35.000Well, that's what really scares me about when I see the people who, for 20 years or for however long they've been following politics, talk about what matters...
01:40:47.000What matters is That you've got to be religious and you've got to pray and be God-fearing and you've got to, you know, divorce is bad and you've got to speak a certain way and all of these different things.
01:41:04.000Like they never really cared about that.
01:41:11.000Well, he represents them in some ways.
01:41:17.000You know, you just have to make concessions to be on their side.
01:41:20.000And that's one of the real problems with having two parties, right?
01:41:23.000It's like, if you're not in the other party, you must be in my party.
01:41:26.000If you're not with those people, you must be with...
01:41:28.000If you're saying Hillary Clinton is, you know, she's a problem and you've got to drain the swamp and these career politicians, oh, well, then you must be over here.
01:41:36.000You know, if you're against corruption, oh, well then you must be on my side, because I'm against corruption too.
01:41:43.000You know, if we had 10 different parties to choose from, it would be way better.
01:41:47.000We would have a way better understanding of the subtleties of human characteristics and what we enjoy and what we don't enjoy, what we believe and what we don't believe.
01:41:55.000I think a big part of what you're saying when you join a team, whether it's the Republicans or the Democrats, you're sort of adopting a predetermined group of opinions.
01:42:36.000You know, what percentage are you going to be in support of the Second Amendment?
01:42:40.000It's going to be a very high percentage.
01:42:42.000Now, if you ask someone who's on the left, what do you think about gun control?
01:42:47.000It's going to be a high percentage that are in favor of gun control, in favor of maybe doing something different about the Second Amendment.
01:43:17.000Yeah, you're signing on to the package to the orthodoxy in a certain way.
01:43:21.000And one of the crazy things is I get emails from viewers, particularly in Northern Europe, who say, you know, one of the craziest things about American politics when you're in Europe is, compared to the diversity of parties that they have in many of those countries, the standard Democrat and the standard Republican are really,
01:43:44.000On economic stuff, you know, 39.7% top tax rate or 36% top tax rate?
01:43:52.000I mean, of course, there are Democrats who want a much higher top tax.
01:43:56.000There are Republicans who want to do away or really drop it.
01:44:00.000But in a lot of cases, a lot of this stuff is created as, I don't want to say as theater, but it's to create a package people can sign on to.
01:45:33.000And he was known for getting buck naked, taking off all his clothes, and going to war.
01:45:39.000So he would go to war, and he's killed many, many, many people.
01:45:44.000And on video, on Vice, back when they had the Vice Guide to Travel...
01:45:48.000On video, he was talking about what they would do if they captured children from the opposing army, that they would cut their heart out and eat pieces of their heart.
01:45:58.000He was talking about this, murdering children and eating their heart.
01:46:42.000That same guy, you know, he's the same guy that that lady came up to him and asked him about flying public and he was like, you know, saying that there's demons on those planes.
01:47:51.000Televangelists are one of the very weirdest elements of society.
01:47:56.000Where we're allowing people to just lie, like clearly lie, but we feel like the lie is so obvious that you have to be so dumb to believe them, I can't help you.
01:48:08.000I made this analogy recently because I was talking about YouTube censorship and how YouTube has decided that they're going to pull down videos from doctors who have different opinions on how to handle the coronavirus and criticisms of how things are.
01:48:23.000And I'm like, it's really interesting that they make that line.
01:48:26.000That that's the line that doctors, practicing physicians, they'll pull their video down.
01:48:53.000That are saying, we're looking at the statistics, this is the deaths, this is the deaths in terms of age groups, and this is why it's not nearly as dangerous as we thought it was, and these quarantines are not the best way to handle it, we think there's better way...
01:49:15.000I don't think that's a healthy way to handle things.
01:49:17.000I don't think it's good for the debate.
01:49:18.000I think, in fact, it strengthens the resolve of the people on the other side that watch those videos and some of those points resonate with those people.
01:49:25.000I think That's not the way to handle it.
01:49:28.000I don't think removing those videos is the way to handle it.
01:49:30.000I think the way to handle it is let other people with opposing points of view put their videos up and let people discuss and debate and see which one makes more sense to you and usually the weight of the information overwhelms the bullshit and at least with most people.
01:49:47.000I don't understand why it's okay to leave some obviously full of shit videos up, but take down things that are very, very controversial but debatable.
01:49:58.000Okay, so this now gets into that part of your episode with Bridget from over the weekend that I saw, where you basically accurately characterized the view that I had last time I was on with you about the regulation of social media.
01:50:12.000So first, just to play devil's advocate just for a second on why do you leave up flat earth but take down the coronavirus videos that YouTube or whoever disagrees with.
01:50:24.000One can make an argument that there is no real action someone would take because they believe the earth is flat that would endanger others.
01:50:33.000I mean, I guess you might try to go to the edge and see if you fall off or something, right?
01:50:37.000But there's no actionable thing, for the most part, that flat earth belief could cause.
01:51:06.000And then another doctor, a guy who has a YouTube channel, did a counterpoint where he said, He's talking about the hygienic theory, but he has it backwards.
01:51:16.000It is true that if you were never exposed to dirt and bacteria and whatever, it will impact your immune system.
01:51:23.000But it's actually the opposite is what happens.
01:51:25.000It's that because you're not regularly exposed to things, your immune system will overreact and it'll start attacking things that aren't really a threat.
01:51:33.000Okay, so What's the harm, I guess, right?
01:51:35.000Like, there was a video where these doctors identified what they think is the problem with the quarantine, and then another doctor came in.
01:51:44.000I think it's actually been proven that, yeah, that does happen, where your immune system overreacts to people that don't get exposed to enough.
01:51:50.000But I think it's also been proven that people that are around a lot of different people and constantly exposed to people have stronger immune systems because of that.
01:52:00.000That it does get practiced, and it does get strengthened by exposure.
01:52:04.000Oh yeah, I think that's what the sort of fact check was saying, which is it's completely true that exposing kids to the world out there is good, but that what is being asserted will happen from staying home for two months is both wrong and it wouldn't happen in two months ever.
01:52:21.000Like the idea that it weakens the immune system.
01:52:23.000Yeah, I was wondering about that, whether or not it was like a cardiovascular system.
01:52:26.000Like that it only responds to the level of, you know, work that it needs to do.
01:52:31.000Like your cardiovascular system, you know, if you run, if you take some time off, boy, it slacks off really quickly.
01:52:37.000It would be a real shame if that was the case with the immune system.
01:52:42.000I guess the point I was trying to make was...
01:52:46.000There are a lot of people who are understandably frustrated by what's going on, and they're looking for any excuse to just let it rip, so to speak, and go and do whatever.
01:52:57.000And so I think that the play devil's advocate, there is a different level of risk from allowing some of this disinformation to be propagated that doesn't exist with leaving flat earth up.
01:53:43.000Well, not even the different interpretation, because they're basically just going over the statistics, but they had a different viewpoint of how they should move forward.
01:53:51.000And they were also discussing things like furloughed doctors and nurses because hospitals are no longer doing elective surgery, and then many hospitals are on the verge of bankruptcy, which apparently is true.
01:54:02.000The problem is that's not disinformation.
01:54:05.000And so if you're saying that if giving people disinformation makes them make poor choices and they could be putting themselves at risk or putting loved ones at risk because of that, yes.
01:54:20.000It's just information with a different perspective other than what we're getting Which is only one point of view from the World Health Organization and people who subscribe to those ideas.
01:54:29.000So it's not a lie, but I think your point of if someone believes in the flat earth, there's no harm in that.
01:54:35.000So if someone believes in Pizzagate and they think that there's kids being held in a basement somewhere and they go and shoot up the store, then it is a problem.
01:54:43.000And that kind of a video, I could understand where someone would say, hey, that shouldn't be up there because this is bullshit and this is what gets caused from that.
01:54:51.000I don't think it's the same argument when we're all trying to figure out what's going on with a medical situation and two practicing physicians, two actual medical doctors, are talking about their perspective on this virus.
01:55:05.000So I don't think they're really on the same line.
01:55:08.000Yeah, I totally agree that these are not all equivalent Our conversation about what regulation should be in place, who gets to regulate or this sort of thing.
01:55:23.000The point that I had made last time we talked about this was not necessarily that I'm in favor or against having some kind of infrastructure that says here's how a social network has to operate, YouTube, Twitter, whatever.
01:55:36.000We could talk about that and I'm glad to.
01:55:38.000My argument last time we talked was I don't know what the legal case is.
01:55:44.000How do you define legally what it is that is supposed to happen?
01:55:49.000What would be the legal framework for that?
01:55:51.000And there's also a double standard element of it because there's a lot of really, really loud right-wingers who are saying the left is being propped up on social media and the right is being suppressed, to put it very simply.
01:57:12.000I think one could make the argument that in 2020 it's used by so many people to convey so much information and it's so significant that I believe it is an essential thing.
01:57:54.000We need to figure out what's okay and what's not okay.
01:57:57.000And I think one of the problems with isolating...
01:58:00.000Tech, I think tech people, whether it's Google or Apple, and you've made a really good argument that they...
01:58:14.000I think that when you're dealing with the ability to discuss things and you might say that your perspective is the one that you want to hear because you're a left-wing person and these are your beliefs But you're isolating the whole other team from being a part of that conversation.
01:58:33.000And maybe they have something you want to hear and maybe they don't have anything you want to hear.
01:58:38.000But to not allow them to communicate, you are alienating a giant chunk of the population.
01:58:45.000And if someone gets to a prominent level where they're communicating a certain way and you just decide that that certain way is unacceptable and you kick them off, you don't just kick them off.
01:58:56.000You also silence all the other people that are along or aligned with them because they have similar ideas and they don't want to speak out either.
01:59:03.000When you ban James Woods, you don't just ban James Woods.
01:59:07.000You ban a lot of other people from saying something.
01:59:10.000They might be furious about You know, the Russia investigation or whatever.
01:59:50.000And I think this different world needs some different examination about what the ability to communicate online is.
01:59:56.000And this is an important point because Alex Jones made some crazy video after our conversation that I had with him yesterday where he was saying that I'm going to war against censorship and a war against YouTube.
02:00:09.000I made this deal with Spotify because it's a great company and it's a great deal and I'm excited to be in a partnership with a company as opposed to a company that I just put my stuff up on their platform, whether it's Apple or YouTube.
02:00:25.000I don't like that YouTube censors things.
02:00:27.000I don't like that they do that with those doctors in Bakersfield.
02:00:51.000I've watched several videos that are talking about this lockdown and that it's not a good idea.
02:00:56.000There's people that believe in herd mentality versus immunizations and or vaccines and I don't know who's right and I would like them to all be able to discuss it equally and openly.
02:01:12.000The idea of trying to manage this in real time while it explodes and takes over the way human beings communicate over a period of a decade, just like that.
02:02:01.000The vast majority, 70-80%, are reasonable people that you could have a conversation with if you were in front of them one-on-one.
02:02:06.000When they don't feel like they're a part of the conversation or when they speak their side and their stuff gets deleted or removed or put into some shadow ban category, it's fucking infuriating for people.
02:02:19.000And it's not good for all of us as a community.
02:02:22.000And I think that is the burden that these places like YouTube or Twitter...
02:02:44.000And I think that it's in this position where it literally is a part of who we are as human beings.
02:02:51.000The ability to express ideas and communicate is so critical right now.
02:02:55.000And as we're evolving and as we're evolving our culture and our civilization, discourse is so important.
02:03:04.000It's a giant part of being a human being in 2020. And I don't think it should be just flippantly removed from people.
02:03:11.000So my personal view is very similar to yours in terms of, short of illegal content and really very specific things, my instinct is leave it up and let people evaluate it, let people publish counterpoints.
02:03:29.000Now, the conservative view on this is, if this cake baker doesn't want to bake a cake because of who you want to marry, You don't do anything to the baker.
02:03:42.000If there's a demand for those types of cakes, for those types of weddings, bakers will enter the market and that's it.
02:03:50.000If you apply that here, and we'll get to the differences in a second.
02:03:53.000If you apply that here, if the James Woodses want to say stuff, and a whole bunch of people want to hear that stuff, Why don't they just go and make their platform and bring everybody over?
02:04:04.000It sounds like a great business, right?
02:04:05.000Yeah, it does sound like a great business.
02:04:27.000But everybody already does use Twitter.
02:04:30.000So I think the question really is, does Twitter have a responsibility for fair and even treatment?
02:04:38.000I'm sure you've seen some of those James O'Keefe, Project Veritas videos where they have secret cameras filming executives talking about how to censor conservative people.
02:04:52.000What I do remember is from the Planned Parenthood era where what they published was pretty dramatically dishonest from what I recall, but I've not seen the one you're referring to specifically.
02:05:09.000Are you talking about the Acorn stuff?
02:05:11.000The stuff where they brought in a pimp to try to get money for opening up a brothel?
02:05:18.000It's been so long that the details escaped me, but I remember that incident.
02:05:23.000I've not really seen anything recently that they've done.
02:05:25.000Whenever you have deceptive editing, the problem is even if in the future you don't do that anymore, it's like everyone's always going to remember that you did do something.
02:06:08.000When Republicans are in power, they draw the districts in a way that's favorable to them.
02:06:12.000Democrats are in power, they take the opportunity to redraw districts that are favorable to them.
02:06:18.000You have these ideas of, okay, we'll have a commission with three Democrats and three Republicans, and together they'll figure out how the districts could be drawn fairly.
02:06:28.000The lesson from that, how do you apply it to, does the Trump administration decide what kind of content must be left up versus what can be removed?
02:06:38.000But then that administration gets replaced.
02:06:40.000Now the next administration says, here's how Twitter is supposed to operate.
02:07:59.000It was just somebody he worked with, and Trump is – We're good to go.
02:08:24.000When it when it comes to the president and the president when you get to a certain level like you could just do shit like that like you could just threaten North Korea like you could say we have the best missiles will fuck you up like he could tweet that he could tweet hey hey buddy I'm glad you fake your death and I know you're still alive but I just want you know we got the best missiles and we'll fuck you up have he tweeted that like whoa but this is not really unique the Twitter in the sense that if you look at our justice system there's sort of like the justice system for the And then
02:08:54.000for other people, the focus on street crime instead of white-collar crime.
02:08:58.000This exists in a lot of different places.
02:09:00.000What can a really big business get away with versus what can a small business sometimes get away with?
02:09:07.000One of the things I'm thinking about is, what's the main point of Twitter?
02:09:12.000Twitter is a publicly traded corporation.
02:09:15.000So at this point, is it fair to say that the main point of Twitter is to be profitable and deliver a return to shareholders?
02:09:22.000Because if it is, All the stuff we're talking about, about how we would like to see it operate, is sort of irrelevant because they now have this fiduciary responsibility to just make money.
02:09:37.000What if the government bought Twitter and just applied the First Amendment to Twitter?
02:09:41.000What if the government said, listen, you guys are kicking ass, great job.
02:09:44.000However, you're basically a public utility for communication of ideas and it's imperative that for liberty and for the ability for people to have free speech, everyone has to have access to this.
02:09:55.000And so when you go to, maybe it's like one of those things, you go to jail for a horrible felony, you lose your ability to vote.
02:10:00.000Maybe you go to jail for something, you lose your ability to tweet.
02:10:53.000I mean, so, literally, there are ads on Twitter as well, right?
02:10:57.000Boosted posts, promote advertisements, etc.
02:10:59.000I have no idea how much money they're making from that versus what is the value of the user base.
02:11:04.000Wasn't there a point recently where a very conservative investor bought a giant chunk of Twitter and was thinking about kicking out Jack Dorsey?
02:11:13.000Wasn't that something that was brought up really recently?
02:12:03.000I would never want to take it away from the people that own it, obviously.
02:12:05.000But I just think as a concept that we should consider that what we have here with something like Twitter, or even maybe there's a good argument for YouTube as well, that what these new abilities to express yourself are They're incredibly important in terms of the process of our culture,
02:12:27.000the process of going over ideas and evolving those ideas.
02:12:31.000There's no better way to do that than open communication.
02:12:34.000There's no better open communication than Twitter and YouTube.
02:12:36.000Like, in terms of regular people, you can start a YouTube video right now on your phone.
02:12:40.000I could just set the phone up here, press record, and start talking, and then upload it, and bam, my thoughts could be available to anybody.
02:14:02.000And I have no idea how one would even begin and how long the process of figuring out what the rules should be, how long it would take before we all agreed on that.
02:14:12.000And I think that would be another great argument for the ability to express yourself, because in forming these laws, we would want to hear all perspectives.
02:14:23.000Perspectives from people that have been harmed by social media, and Twitter mobs and shit like that, and what should be done about that, and the same thing could be said about YouTube as well.
02:14:34.000But one thing that no one can deny is how significant these tools are.
02:14:40.000Whether it's Twitter or YouTube or any new one that comes out, whether it's TikTok or whatever, they're really powerful.
02:14:47.000There's something to them that's unprecedented in the history of humanity.
02:14:52.000And we can't just apply the old rules to them.
02:15:00.000I've talked to conservative people about this.
02:15:04.000If you're not accustomed to it, if you're not accustomed to feeling like you're censored and you're angry, you don't know what it's like until you're around these people.
02:15:12.000And then you see their frustration and their anger and their fury at Twitter for doing that and for censoring voices that are similar to their perspectives.
02:15:22.000Instead of just letting the process take place like it always has been, it's just in a different form, the process of being able to talk through ideas.
02:15:30.000One of the risks of this is that once you assert a right to a platform, to exist on a platform that supersedes Twitter or YouTube's ability to say, for whatever reason, because they're a company that can have terms and conditions,
02:15:46.000and they say, we just don't want this.
02:15:47.000If YouTube was determined that they don't want gardening content on YouTube, I can't think of a legal reason why they can't say no gardening content.
02:16:32.000You don't have a right to speak at any particular school.
02:16:35.000Schools can make decisions about what they want and what they don't want as long as you're not being discriminated against based on your identity.
02:16:42.000Is it not sort of the same thing with YouTube?
02:16:45.000What is the legal basis for saying they can no longer make these decisions?
02:16:51.000First of all, a school is a single destination that's a physical place.
02:16:55.000So you can decide, you know, this is a conservative school, we don't want people coming over here and talking about this, or this is a very progressive school, we don't want to have someone from the KKK come here and tell us how all races are not equal.
02:18:09.000You're part of this whole news empire and there's many categories, but what they are is not as simple as just a business.
02:18:19.000They are a business, but what they all are as well with, you know, all the executives, all the people that...
02:18:26.000YouTube as an entity is one of the most powerful tools for expression the world has ever known.
02:18:32.000So if you have this incredibly powerful tool for expression At what point in time, or when are you able to deny people the use of that thing, and why?
02:18:42.000You know, and what is freedom of expression if it doesn't apply to these new tools?
02:18:47.000What is the First Amendment if it doesn't apply to these new tools?
02:18:50.000If someone can come along and say, hey, I know you're a doctor and a practicing physician, but I'm 28, and I live in Palo Alto, and I say, fuck you, because I believe in the WHO, and I don't believe in you, and I'm just gonna delete your video, and it seems to me that I followed the rules that YouTube has set forth, If you don't agree with the WHO and you're giving some sort of contrary coronavirus information,
02:19:14.000I think that's a very, very complicated issue that should be debated publicly and discussed publicly whether or not these people have the right to be heard.
02:19:24.000And this is just one example that we keep bringing up, but there's many different kinds of things that fit along those lines.
02:19:29.000You know, when you just want to ban all conspiracy theories, air quotes.
02:19:35.000The problem with conspiracy theories is, first of all, the word as a pejorative was created to try to steer people away from the Kennedy assassination, which is like one of the greatest conspiracies of all time.
02:19:46.000Some people did that, whether it was Lee Harvey Oswald by himself.
02:20:02.000When you mention the First Amendment, though, I don't think the First Amendment is in play here because you're not talking about the government when you talk about YouTube.
02:20:09.000But I think we should revise the First Amendment.
02:20:12.000I think freedom of expression used to be, I can't infringe upon your right to express yourself.
02:20:17.000But that was like yelling on a fucking Apple box.
02:20:21.000When that was created, other than writing something in print or yelling something in a public square, there weren't a lot of ways to express yourself.
02:20:30.000Now, the most powerful way the world has ever known has come along to express yourself.
02:20:41.000And how much of a responsibility do the people who own those things have to adhere to the fundamental ideas that got us to this republic in the first place?
02:20:51.000And I think there's a real good argument that they're more powerful than simply just a company.
02:20:56.000That they have this amazing ability to get information out.
02:21:00.000And that this is, I mean, it should certainly be profitable.
02:21:04.000I don't deny them their profitability.
02:21:06.000I mean, they've made an amazing thing.
02:21:08.000They've created something that we all benefit from.
02:21:11.000But I think we should really be careful about who gets to use this and who doesn't get to use this.
02:21:17.000Just because someone says something that you disagree with that get other people to also agree with them doesn't mean they should be shut down.
02:21:24.000If you don't agree with what they're saying, if you don't like what they're saying, you probably shouldn't View it or listen to it or read it.
02:21:31.000You should probably find something else or examine why you don't like it.
02:22:01.000I only vaguely Zoobie is a he's an entertainer a rapper out of the UK Great guy wonderful guy doesn't even swear very religious guy He was in a discussion with someone on Twitter didn't know if that was a male or a female or what they prefer to be Mentioned as what their pronouns are,
02:22:20.000but they said I bet I have sex with more women than you and he writes Okay, dude That's all he writes.
02:23:29.000But banning someone for that, it sends a ripple of self-censorship that changes the discourse and makes you feel like you're oppressed.
02:23:37.000Makes you feel like the overlords who watch over the social media platforms, you know, they have the final say in power and it might not align with my ideas and there's nothing I can do about it.
02:23:46.000Yeah, again my view personally essentially lines up with yours in terms of my tolerance of speech.
02:23:54.000I still think that there's a huge issue and hypocrisy here Where you have large swaths of people that are only in favor of this type of regulation because they believe that it benefits them based on their biases.
02:24:09.000And they don't want the regulation when it comes to, like I said, guns, business, everything else.
02:24:15.000There's another hypocrisy which I think is important.
02:24:18.000When you talk about net neutrality, there's this debate.
02:24:20.000Is the internet so necessary and ubiquitous now that it should be like the phone and like electricity?
02:24:28.000If you believe YouTube, which is a piece of the internet, Should warrant this degree of additional regulation?
02:24:36.000How can you not say that the infrastructure that carries it obviously should be democratized and treated like a public utility?
02:24:45.000And yet you have a ton of people who want to regulate tweets, but they don't think that at this point the Internet is so important that it should be a public utility.
02:24:56.000You know, I think there's a way to balance it out where...
02:25:01.000Everyone has access to it, but if you want really hardcore, high bandwidth access, it's very expensive, you pay for it differently.
02:25:09.000Sort of like how in places that have public healthcare, they have the option for a private specialist that's really good at certain surgeries.
02:25:18.000You could pay for it as long as everybody has access to it, but you don't have access to it the way that maybe, say, a business would need, like a really fat pipe with a lot of bandwidth.
02:25:29.000But I think what you nailed earlier about discussions for regulation is so important because it does highlight the hypocrisy that people have with ideas that are controversial.
02:25:42.000And one of the things that they feel when it comes to...
02:25:45.000Whether it's the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, whatever it is.
02:27:08.000And I think this is what we talked about earlier that we hope happens out of this pandemic, is that we have a greater understanding of some things are out of our control, and we should be prepared as a community, as a large community.
02:27:20.000We should be prepared to help each other.
02:27:45.000This is something you earned by being a part of this country.
02:27:49.000We're going to have to adjust some of these hardline values that we have in terms of what people are responsible for and what people aren't.
02:27:58.000My argument has always been you can't...
02:28:01.000I hate that pull yourself up by your bootstrap shit.
02:28:25.000So all this, you know, you need to get your shit together.
02:28:27.000Like, no, we need to help people get their shit together.
02:28:30.000And we need to figure out how do we...
02:28:31.000If we looked at the number one problem, and this is, again, going back to Bernie Sanders...
02:28:36.000The number one problem with people that are young that are coming up is having opportunity, having healthcare, having safety, having a place where you actually have a fighting chance to thrive.
02:28:50.000And my perspective is, if you're a person that thinks America as a team, that we are America and I'm proud to be an American, well, what's the best way to strengthen an America?
02:29:01.000Less people that have a shitty hand of cards from the jump.
02:29:06.000That's what we should be concentrating on more than anything.
02:29:08.000You know, there's a number that, a corresponding number, as unemployment rises, there's more people dying because of heart attacks, suicide, depression, all these different factors.
02:30:57.000I think so many of these choices, like even just having a female president, they're done for perceptions and they're done to...
02:31:04.000He's appealing to the people that want him in power in the first place, those old guard Democrats, you know, and the business of the Democratic Party.
02:31:15.000The whole thing is getting control and, you know...
02:31:19.000There's some social carrots that are dangling out there at the end of the stick that we would like to think that, you know, having someone in there that's going to vote left in terms of Supreme Court justices and things along those lines would help us all tremendously.
02:31:35.000The way this whole Bernie Sanders thing went down, I'm cynical about that.
02:31:38.000How they all dropped out right before Super Tuesday and it was Bernie versus Biden.
02:31:43.000There's so much of it that I felt like there's so much coordinated shit that he had to endure from the DNC in 2016 that he was enduring similar shit running into the 2020 election.
02:31:57.000I don't have a lot of faith in the same standard I mean, I guess, I don't know, I'm thinking, like, I don't have kids, but thinking if I did,
02:32:14.000all, like, frustrations with the DNC, the coordinated dropouts, all of that stuff.
02:32:20.000It's just for me so simple where like, if Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice, that could affect your kids' kids in horrible ways.
02:32:29.000Whereas if Biden gets to pick the next Supreme Court judge, like that alone, and you know, these other 250 judges that Trump selected that we don't really hear about, but that make way more decisions.
02:32:43.000Tax policy, I think you'd be more with all these different issues.
02:32:47.000Just the judges part would impact society for 20-30 years and that just seems so huge.
02:32:55.000I mean, and we should probably consider whether or not that makes sense, whether or not Supreme Court justices should be lifetime appointees.
02:33:04.000And should it be so significant that you're willing to ignore everything else just because you want someone in the Supreme Court that aligns with your politics because they're not going to be there for a couple of years.
02:33:15.000They're going to be there until essentially they either retire or die.
02:33:22.000It's almost like there's something that happens to professors when they get tenure, where they can kind of get away with wacky shit and do whatever they want.
02:33:30.000And I think that whenever you get people in a position where they don't ever have to worry about getting fired, I mean, obviously a scandal, they murder somebody or something, but they're appointed for life, you know, I think.
02:34:49.000You should be a fucking lawyer that understands what you're actually going to vote on and what the implications of giving this person this gig is going to be.
02:34:56.000And also, wouldn't it be logical if we're just assuming that there's probably a terrible idea because it would result in...
02:35:54.000But wouldn't it make more sense to have equal representation of both sides when it comes to complex issues that's going to affect the entire country?
02:36:02.000I mean, it shouldn't just be a simple matter of this one guy as the president, he gets to just appoint all these right-wing Jesus bangers, and they come in and burn all abortion clinics.
02:36:57.000And it's so crazy that that is like one of our number one considerations.
02:37:02.000Should someone be able to infringe on your rights as a human being to tell you you have to carry this baby and then you have to either put it up for adoption or raise it?
02:37:56.000Does that mean if it's icy, 35 is safe?
02:38:00.000The fact that there is an arbitrary nature to it often gets you into a philosophical black hole where people end up saying, you just can't have it because it's not clear in the way we would like it to be clear.
02:38:12.000And I think we don't want to fall into that kind of philosophical black hole because it's not unique to abortion that that exists.
02:38:19.000Yeah, you could make a good argument about being something you could apply to a lot of different things, but abortion is so emotional because when you talk to the pro-life people and they're screaming that you're killing a baby, there's nothing else like that that sort of has the consequences of...
02:38:36.000You know, on one side, people looking at a woman's right to choose, and then the other side looks at it, you're killing a baby.
02:38:43.000That is a really polarizing and complex issue.
02:38:47.000But I agree with you about the speed limit thing, and the other problem with the speed limit thing is you're turning cops into glorified revenue collectors.
02:38:55.000Because they're out running around giving people tickets and collecting money for going too fast.
02:39:00.000Like, that's not what they're supposed to be there for.
02:39:02.000I mean, for sure, if someone's driving unsafe, they should do that.
02:39:05.000But they shouldn't be waiting to catch people going three miles an hour over the 45 limit.
02:39:10.000And also, like, what kind of a car do you have?
02:39:13.000Because if you have a, you know, a 1965 Buick and it doesn't stop at all, like you hit the brakes and it skids for like 15 feet before it even starts to break, Your car is dangerous.
02:39:27.000Your car is dangerous probably even going 35 miles an hour.
02:39:30.000If you had an old tank of a car with shitty brakes, those cars, they're not designed to go fast in comparison to today's cars at all.
02:39:39.000Maybe you shouldn't even be allowed to drive those.
02:39:41.000When you see someone with one of them classic cars like Jay Leno drives all around Burbank...
02:39:46.000Hey man, those brakes barely work on that fucking piece of shit.
02:39:49.000But if you have a Tesla, like my god, man, those things are super fast.
02:41:54.000And then I came back home and mostly I've been just coming here to the studio and going home.
02:41:59.000Aside from being freaked out and all the anxiety and being sad that people are suffering, I myself have enjoyed the time off and enjoyed the ability to reflect and to just think about What is important in life and what is important in terms of how I spend my time and how critical health is,
02:42:24.000that it's not just a luxury or a vanity, that health and exercise, it's imperative.
02:42:30.000And I may not beat people over the head with that maybe too much.
02:42:34.000But I think it's so goddamn important.
02:42:37.000And that, to me, that's really been hammered home to me about this pandemic.
02:42:42.000Love, friendship, how important my friendships are, how I value them so much.
02:42:48.000My obligation in doing this thing, you know, in this thing, it's like, I want to express a beneficial idea.
02:42:56.000I want to express ideas in a way that maybe people could get something out of it.
02:43:01.000I want it to be entertaining, but I want people to get something out of it.
02:43:06.000And I think that that's all been highlighted, and what a unique position I'm in, and how fortunate I am, and what obligation comes with that fortune.
02:43:16.000That's all been really highlighted by this pandemic.
02:43:20.000Yeah, I just feel so lucky that my job doesn't depend on me driving somewhere, on some boss, whatever.
02:43:28.000The community that, you know, people are home watching stuff.
02:43:31.000And for that reason, you know, shows like these are particularly important right now.
02:43:37.000But also, that responsibility thing about, I really need to make sure I'm informing people about what's actually going on.
02:43:43.000I don't want to be spreading disinformation.
02:43:45.000The feeling of that responsibility, I've always had to.
02:43:53.000And, you know, David, it's interesting.
02:43:55.000We were talking about this earlier, but your show couldn't exist in any other time, and nor could mine.
02:44:01.000And we're very, very similar in that way.
02:44:04.000If you had someone standing over you, telling you what to do, or, hey, David, here's the data we've got from the polls.
02:44:11.000They don't like it when you talk about this, or they say not to talk about that, and the sponsor wants you to change the way you're dressed, and that kind of shit...
02:44:22.000And I think one of the reasons why shows like yours resonate with people is because it's very obvious that no one is telling you what to do.
02:44:29.000You're just a guy who has your perspectives, and you're a brilliant guy, and you have very interesting thoughts on things, but these are home-brewed thoughts.
02:44:53.000So if this moron is to be able to talk to all these people and have these intense conversations, there's not really a barrier of entry that we once thought it was.
02:45:03.000To be a person who has that kind of an audience, you used to have to be vetted and you used to go through a long process.
02:45:11.000There was a lot of other people in consideration.
02:45:13.000You had to play games and politicking and you had to be chosen.
02:45:18.000You just have to do it and get better at it.
02:45:20.000And I feel so fortunate to be in the situation that I'm in where this is happening and to have this ability to just do a show, to not have to talk to anybody, to be able to just go and have conversations with whoever I want,
02:45:52.000Because I think it's going to be a phase where we'll kind of remember the beginning, middle, and end of it, and I don't know when the end of it is going to be, but I don't want to feel like the time was squandered in any way.
02:46:03.000I think perspective-wise, I think we're all going to benefit from this.
02:46:06.000The real problem is people with businesses.
02:46:08.000The real problem is people that didn't do anything wrong and everything's taken away from them, and I feel fucking terrible for them, and if there's any way we could save them and do something, I mean, I just don't know what the answers are.
02:46:19.000I don't know what the answers are medically.
02:46:33.000Like sometimes I'll just be driving down the street and I'll have forgotten that we're in the middle of a pandemic and I'll see some person with a mask on like, oh yeah.
02:46:42.000Oh yeah, the world's fucking haywire right now.
02:46:45.000We're all afraid to touch each other and everyone's far apart and you get hand sanitizer squirting every five minutes on yourself.
02:46:52.000It's just the weirdest time of my life.
02:46:55.000Yeah, my biggest concern is that all the stuff that we figured out we weren't ready for We learn nothing from it and then just the next one of these happens and we're just as unprepared and things go just as haywire.
02:47:08.000That would be like the biggest waste and I fear that that is a good possibility.
02:47:12.000That's a big fear and it's also like how, what, in terms of money to allocate, what's left?
02:47:19.000Like after the stimulus packages, after all this stuff that we're doing, what is going to be left?
02:47:25.000How much money is there going to be to try to restart everything?
02:47:30.000Do they have enough money to really put together another pandemic response team and do a better job with it?
02:47:35.000To really fund research on the flu and various viruses and to find out what's going on.
02:47:40.000I know there's talk about these things, about picking up these programs and really stepping up.
02:47:46.000There is absolutely, I mean listen, six trillion already.
02:47:50.000Prevention is so much cheaper than emergencies.
02:47:56.000Obviously, pandemic response team never should have been disbanded.
02:47:59.000It would cost pennies on the dollar to what is being spent right now, no doubt.
02:48:03.000It's crazy when you go back and listen to Bill Gates' TED Talk in 2015 talking about the possibility of a pandemic and wiping everybody out.
02:48:11.000And then five years later, you see it happen.
02:48:30.000Help me there with that one, because that one's weird.
02:48:32.000I was watching this video from Newport Beach, or Huntington Beach, where all these people are protesting free California, and they're running around, and this guy's got a megaphone, and he's like, Bill Gates is the devil!
02:48:45.000It's one of the weirdest cultural memes that this thing has happened that Bill Gates, this philanthropic billionaire who's literally made toilets in Africa and spent millions of dollars to try to get people education and millions of dollars on all sorts of great social good.
02:49:10.000The number of people I've just muted or unfriended that I personally know.
02:49:14.000I mean, it's not just random people on Twitter, but it's people I went to high school with who say he wants to profit from the vaccine or he wants to use a vaccine to control the population.
02:49:42.000So when someone looks for a conspiracy and they say something like, Bill Gates, he just wants a profit on the vaccine, you can't say no one ever profits on vaccines.
02:50:21.000But it's funny to me that people don't have a problem with that with capitalism.
02:50:24.000But the same people that would vote right and don't have a problem with capitalism, maybe be anti-regulation, are angry that people make money off of vaccines.
02:50:34.000But they're also angry because we're cynical and we wonder, okay, if they're making money off vaccines...
02:50:40.000Would it be possible for them to incentivize doctors to vaccinate people more?
02:50:45.000Or if they got more people involved, they would make more money?
02:50:48.000Like, that is a problem in just human nature.
02:51:15.000You've seen those images of, I mean, I probably never saw them until the internet, of the images of what people look like when they were devastated by smallpox.
02:52:38.000And I'm worried that that could lead to shutdowns that people are not going to be able to make it through, that made it through this one.
02:52:45.000Or they barely made it through this one with their business.
02:52:48.000And then the second lockdown comes and they lose everything.
02:52:53.000I'm also worried that people are going to lose their health and their life.
02:52:57.000I mean, I'm worried about both things.
02:52:58.000I'm worried about the second wave coming and people...
02:53:02.000Being ignorant to the possibility of it hitting and then it does hit and it's devastating.
02:53:07.000Both those things are terrible, you know, but again my My thinking is, if we're going to quarantine people, we really should make more of an effort to quarantine people who are sick and old.
02:53:20.000That seems to me to be a better way of handling it from here forward than quarantining all of us.
02:53:28.000I think maybe we could pull that off for a month or so, but I think after a while, the fucking wheels fall off, and I feel like that's where we are right now.
02:53:35.000So I think, as I said before, Much more emphasis on health and your immune system and taking care of your body and being smart.
02:53:42.000Those things are underappreciated and critical.
02:53:47.000But I don't know how long it's going to last.
02:53:49.000I think the best scenario is a widespread vaccine by March, April 21, right?
02:53:56.000But would you jump right in with one of those mRNA vaccines?
02:54:00.000Well, unless I go out and buy one, by the time I get it, millions of people will have had it already.
02:54:06.000It's going to be healthcare workers first, and then the most vulnerable.
02:54:09.000By the time there's one available for me, unless I just figure out who I can buy it from, millions of people will have had it already.
02:54:15.000At this point in the movie, the screen would go black, and we'd open to David Pakman, covered in dirt, carrying a club filled with spikes, running down the street with his friend, trying to avoid the zombies.
02:54:26.000Because by the time it got to you, they had already turned to zombies, and you couldn't afford it, and lucky you.
02:54:33.000Now there's millions of zombies running through the streets of Boston trying to eat people.
02:54:37.000We don't have to go into this, but I am doing some prepping now, and I have no clue what I'm doing.
02:56:51.000It's because I'm freaking out because I'm up all night worrying about whether or not society is going to fall apart and everyone's going to die.
02:56:58.000So it took a while for me to relax, I guess probably a couple weeks before I was getting real consistent sleep and feeling much better.
02:57:07.000But I'm still very, very worried about what it's going to be like once things restart.
02:57:17.000I thought four different times I had coronavirus, first of all, so that whole thing went on.
02:57:22.000But there's some stuff that is going to take a while to get back to just like human interaction type things, right?
02:57:29.000I mean, I don't think there's not going to be a day where we say we're back to hugging and handshaking and sharing drinks and that type of stuff.
02:57:38.000Like some of this stuff will persevere for a long time.