Ep 509 ｜ How a Former Soros Activist Is Taking On Toxic Progressivism ｜ Guest： Michael Shellenberger
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Summary
In this episode, we talk to Michael Schellenberger, the author of the new book, San Francisco, about the growing homelessness crisis in the city, public drug use and public defecation, and why progressive policies are actually enabling and exacerbating these issues rather than doing what they say they intend to do, which is fix them.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so
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far. Today we are talking to Michael Schellenberger. He is the author of a new book, San Francisco,
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where he is analyzing all of the big political problems that are happening in San Francisco
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right now that are causing a very beautiful, once wonderful city to deteriorate. And we're
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going to look at the homelessness crisis in San Francisco, the public drug use and public
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defecation crisis that's happening there, why progressive policies are actually enabling
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and exacerbating these issues rather than doing what they say that they intend to do,
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which is fix them. Michael Schellenberger is not just an author. He has been in progressive politics,
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he was a progressive activist for a very long time. So he comes with a very unique perspective.
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And just to set us up, I want to talk about some of the things that are going on in San Francisco.
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I mentioned public homelessness, which has increased and it's not just homelessness. It's
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these homeless encampments that have spread throughout parts of San Francisco. We've always
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had homelessness. We've always had poverty. We've always had drug addiction and mental illness.
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But now all of these things have increased and they have converged into a really toxic environment.
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And not just for people who are suffering from these things themselves, but also people who are
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being affected by these encampments in their neighborhoods. Unfortunately, as with every social
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justice policy, the people who are most affected are always going to be the most vulnerable.
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The Thomas Sowell quote, two Thomas Sowell quotes that are coming to mind as we're talking about
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this subject. One is whenever you are presented with a progressive policy or progressive idea,
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for example, that we don't need to criminalize public defecation because somehow that is harming
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homeless people or we don't need to have any consequences for public drug use. This is in the name of equity.
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It's in the name of compassion. It's in the name of social justice. You always have to ask two
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questions about policies like that or any social justice progressive policy. The first question is
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at what cost? The second question is what hard data do you have? What hard data do you have that this is
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going to make life better? What's the goal of this? Is this going to make life better for one or two
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people at the expense of everyone else? Well, that's not a very good trade-off. And when you are a
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policymaker, then you have to think about those trade-offs. Unfortunately, we've seen over the
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past year and a half with COVID policy that our politicians are not very good at making those
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trade-offs. They make policies that have the intention of benefiting a small number of people
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at the expense of everyone else, always disproportionately the most vulnerable that comes
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with things like defunding the police as well. So we're going to talk about all of that today.
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We're going to focus specifically on San Francisco, even though this is happening in every city that's
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run by progressive politicians in the country. That's why whenever there are people who say,
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oh, well, I'm a moderate or, well, I'm, you know, I'm still a Democrat. I think democratic policies are
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going to do well. I'm a progressive. I think that implementing all of these progressive policies
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will finally make America more tolerant and more compassionate. And we'll just be able to push for a
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better tomorrow. Well, the better tomorrow has arrived. It's arrived in Houston, in Austin, in
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Denver, in DC, in New York City, in Seattle, in Portland, in San Francisco, in LA. It's arrived.
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And what does it look like? It looks like a demolished quality of life. It looks like a place
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where people don't want to live anymore unless you've got millions and millions of dollars to
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insulate you from the realities of the consequences, the terrible consequences of progressive policy.
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So there are a couple of news stories that are coming out of San Francisco today. And one of them,
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of course, is just the constant reporting, surprisingly, in some ways, of course, with some
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of a liberal bent a little bit with the rise in homelessness and crime. But there's also this
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headline that I thought was pertinent to my audience. And that is San Francisco temporarily
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closes In-N-Out Burger due to vaccine defiance. So In-N-Out said that they refuse to become the
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vaccination police for any government. In-N-Out legal and business officer Arnie Winsinger said,
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we fiercely disagree with any government dictate that forces a private company to discriminate against
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customers who choose to patronize their business. You know what's funny about this is that
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leftists were calling Ron DeSantis an authoritarian and Greg Abbott an authoritarian who said that no
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entity can force people to show proof of vaccination. And they were calling them authoritarians for saying
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the school districts can't force kids to wear masks. But they're OK with this form of authoritarianism,
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which is they are inflicting their views about masks and vaccinations on private business
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leftists. Leftists are fine with that. They're fine with that. And that's what I've realized about
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leftists is that when they say authoritarianism, really what they're talking about is policies that
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they don't like. They're totally fine with authoritarianism as long as it accomplishes what
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they view as progressive policies. And so go In-N-Out. Good for In-N-Out. We should be supporting In-N-Out.
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I might support In-N-Out on my way home. I don't need In-N-Out, but I want In-N-Out.
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And now I can kind of feel good about it. I can feel like I'm giving back just by eating a hamburger
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and fries. And this actually does go with the things that we're talking about today, because San
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Francisco, the state of California in general, but specifically San Francisco, has been very strict
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about COVID rules, not just for private businesses, but just for private citizens with their mask
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mandates, with their vaccine passports. And of course, as we'll talk about with Michael, the mayor,
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London Breed, she was seen dancing in a club without her mask on, even though there's a mask
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mandate, even for vaccinated people. And her excuse was really incredible. You know, she was asked by
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a reporter how she got away with this or why she feels good about breaking her own rules. And she
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said, you know, I don't know if you've ever been to the kind of concert that I was at, but I was
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feeling it. I was feeling it and I was feeling the groove and I'm not, you know, I'm just not
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going to wear a mask. Rules for thee and not for me. How people haven't realized over the past year
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and a half that the COVID restrictions that are being put in place and that are not followed by
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the people who are putting them in place is not for public health. It's just beyond me. And then
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how you could look at the things we're going to talk about today, which is a public health crisis.
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The homelessness crisis is a public health crisis being exacerbated by the same people who are making
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your two-year-old wear a mask at daycare. Like, how do you see this is not about public health?
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How do you see that? Maybe this episode will be a red pill for some people. I certainly hope so.
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Michael, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
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Sure. I'm Michael Schellenberger. I'm the author of two books, one that just came out,
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San Francisco, Why Progressives Ruined Cities, and a book that came out last year called Apocalypse
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Never, Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
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You are not some right-winger that is trying to criticize progressivism in general. You come from
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Yeah. I moved to San Francisco in 1993 to work on radical left causes, progressive causes. I've worked
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for charities that have been supported by George Soros. I've advocated for decriminalization of drugs,
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of alternative sentencing, focused more on rehabilitation rather than on punishment,
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and have been focused on environmental issues for the last 20 years. But when I stopped working on
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drug issues and criminal justice issues in the late 90s, my understanding was that we were trying to
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move people into drug treatment, drug rehabilitation, and that's not what we ended up doing. We ended up
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basically just stopped, we just stopped enforcing a lot of laws, and that's why we ended up with so
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And would you say that the problems that we're seeing today, the rise in crime, the homeless
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encampments, you're saying that that kind of started way back in the late 90s?
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Yeah. I mean, basically, over the last 20, 25 years, we have in California in general, but also
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in San Francisco in particular, it's just stopped enforcing a lot of laws against people who we've
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categorized as victims. And that includes the untreated mentally ill people suffering from severe
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drug addiction. And so what's led to what we call homelessness, which is really a propaganda word
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designed to confuse you about what's really going on. That's what's resulted in the chaos or what,
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you know, academics call the open drug scenes, the open drug markets, which are causing so much of
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So let's talk about that, which you just mentioned a little bit more, homelessness being kind of a
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euphemism for propaganda. I've never heard that before. Can you explain what you mean?
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Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, the word homeless has been around for a long time, but it's really a
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misleading word. It was deliberately chosen by progressives in the 1980s to mislead people about
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what was going on. I mean, we were dealing with basically, you know, decades of untreated mental
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illness. We, after we shut down most of our psychiatric hospitals, many of the people were
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put on the street where they became homeless, addicted to hard drugs. We also suffered a crack
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epidemic in the 1980s. And we really did a misservice to people that were sick, that were
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mentally ill by referring to them as homeless, because it suggested that the main problem was lack
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of housing when really it's a medical problem. So we're just dealing with people that need to be
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either in rehab or in psychiatric hospitals or giving some kind of psychiatric care. And the word
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homeless was really used to basically, you know, justify heavy government subsidies for public housing,
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for subsidized housing. It was always part of a kind of socialist agenda to expand public housing,
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which in some cases, you know, may be appropriate, like there may be a role for some of that. But
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what ended up happening is that we removed basically any requirements that people achieve
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abstinence or sobriety in return for, you know, public services, public benefits, including housing.
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When conservatives talk about this, I'm a conservative, we get accused of, I don't even think
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actually homeless is the term that I hear. I think it's like, houseless, or there are even more
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politically correct terms that I hear now by progressives. I'm not even sure I can't keep up
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with all of that. But they claim that we are shaming the homeless community that we're victim
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blaming, or that we're cruel, because we say, you know, these homeless encampments don't seem to be
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good for communities, they don't seem to be good for children who have to walk to school. And actually,
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it seems to be disproportionately affecting people who are impoverished, who are kind of forced to
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live amongst these encampments, which cause public health problems, obviously safety problems.
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I'm accused or we're accused of lacking compassion. Can you talk about kind of the ideology? What is
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behind that kind of thinking when it comes to progressives? How are they believing that by allowing
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these encampments and allowing unfettered homelessness, that they are actually the ones
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kind of, I don't know, legislating in an empathetic way? It's really hard for me to understand that.
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Yeah, well, it's a great question. And I wrote San Francisco in part to be a really complete
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explanation, both of what is going on with people that are living on the street, also what explains
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rising homicide rates. The book also deals with crime, not just drugs and homelessness.
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And I really trace it back to the 1960s. You won't be surprised after we passed the Civil Rights Act
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at a national level in 1964. There was a growing concern around the, you know, around father absence,
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around the breakdown of families, particularly African American families. And the response from
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the radical left from people was that that is blaming the victim. There's a famous book in 1970
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that was called Blaming the Victim that came up with this idea that any requirement of reciprocity
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or accountability or personal responsibility in exchange, even for support from taxpayers,
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was itself a kind of oppression, was itself a kind of victimization.
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So it's a, you really have to unpack a lot of it. The basic idea is that there are whole groups of
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people in society that can be categorized as victims, which I think is a really terrible, toxic idea.
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It's a racist idea to call every African American a victim. It's insulting. It's false. Similarly,
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people that are mentally ill or suffering from drug addiction, you know, traditionally, the way we think
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about victimization is that it's part of the road to heroism. Like you don't become a hero without
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overcoming oppression and victimization. And so there has been a shift. It's been gradual to some extent.
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It's also, I think, accelerated. You know, when I was a young lefty in the 80s and 90s,
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our heroes were people like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. It was a story of overcoming
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oppression, very similar to the story of Exodus or, you know, the stories in the Bible. But now it
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becomes like, now we're kind of celebrating victim status. We're actually making victims sacred.
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And it's just a kind of, it's just as dumb as it sounds, Ali, honestly, I wish I could say that
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there was more philosophical sophistication to it, but it's pretty dumb at bottom. It's very childlike.
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The idea that people should be treated like victims or like children. And that's where it all comes
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from. And so if you say, yeah, we should enforce laws against sleeping in public, people will say,
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how dare you blame the victim? You know, I also documented many times, people said this to me directly,
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but I saw it with other people, the radical left who really call themselves advocates for the
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homeless, but it's just a pose. It's kind of a, an identity that they put on to suggest that their
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concerns are fundamentally with the people on the street and not with some other ideology.
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They would often say things like, oh, those kinds of questions you're asking,
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the things that you're saying cause violence against people, which is a horrible thing to suggest.
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It's completely false, by the way, it's not true, but it's a way to shut down any conversation that
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might lead to actually helping people rather than letting them live in continued squalor and
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suffering. Yeah. The phrase that we hear from people like AOC, and I'm sure a lot of progressives
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in San Francisco is that if you do pass any laws that inhibit someone's so-called right to sleep on the
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street or to shoot up on the street, that is criminalizing poverty. Is this really about
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criminalizing poverty? Is poverty what's driving all of this? Yeah, it's another manipulation of
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the language. Uh, they say things like criminalizing homelessness, criminalizing poverty. You know,
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when I I've started to just point out that that's propaganda, you know, it's, you have to interrupt
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because what it, what those words do is they hijack your brain and they manipulate your emotions.
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So obviously that's not what's going on to suggest that the parks should be free to use from every,
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by everybody that it should be safe for a mother and her kids, a mother pushing a stroller to walk
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safely through a park that that she has a right to do that. That's not criminalizing poverty. That's
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protecting public spaces. You know, similarly intervening in the lives of addicts when they're
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breaking the law is humane. That's standard treatment of addiction. We've known that for a hundred years.
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We have a whole television show called intervention. It, you know, I like a lot of other people. I
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love freedom. You know, I live in California because I love the freedom of it. There's a
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libertarian culture. I don't know anybody, certainly not me that is advocating that you go and like
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chase down addicts who are using, killing themselves with fentanyl or meth and the privacy
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of their own homes. Fine. If you want to do that, I don't, that's terrible, but I don't think
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the police should make that a priority, but you are not allowed to shoot heroin in public in any
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developed societies, not in Amsterdam, not in Frankfurt or Zurich or Lisbon, the cities where
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that did occur and they shut it down. I mean, I'm here in Washington DC right now, and I just went and
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got a coffee at Starbucks and there's three big tents right, right outside of Starbucks. Obviously
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these are addicts living on the street or they have some untreated mental illness. That's not okay
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to block sidewalks like that. They need to be told that they should, they need to go and stay
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in the shelter or they'll be arrested. It's just that simple. And yeah, I think conservatives have
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been more honest about it, but I think there's also a lot of people that might consider themselves
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liberals or left of center, like myself, who just think it's absurd. You know, there's even a
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difference, I think, between the way people in New York, the way liberals in New York and Boston view
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this issue as opposed to people in San Francisco. I've noticed that in Boston, there's now an open
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drug scene on Massachusetts and Cass, it's a mass and Cass, it's an open drug scene. The Boston
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Globe refers to it as a drug problem. Whereas in San Francisco and Los Angeles, we create euphemisms
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and call it a homeless encampment, which makes it sound like it's some sort of camp out or some
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sort of peaceful gathering. Women are raped in homeless encampments. You know, people are taken
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advantage of. Drug dealers run them and they enforce the law with machetes. So this romantic
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projection onto open drug scenes, it's pretty despicable, honestly. And I think it comes from
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a really dark ideological place. Yeah. You mentioned that you've always liked living in
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California because you like freedom, which is not really something that you hear a lot of people say
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that you live in California because you love freedom. And I'm guessing what you mean by that is
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not necessarily freedom from big government policy, which I don't think has been experienced by
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Californians in a while, but more of kind of like the libertinism of, you know, live and let live,
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like, you know, chill, no judgment, that kind of thing. That's what I think of when I think of
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California. And that is something that people who have lived in California really like, kind of have
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prided themselves on being open minded. But that libertinism has really shifted. Like, I don't think
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that you could consider liberals libertarian there anymore. They're extremely tolerant of all kinds
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of immorality, the kinds of what you're talking about, open drug use and things like that. But
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they're very harsh when it comes to regulations, when it comes to other kinds of public health
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restrictions, like mask mandates, even if everyone is vaccinated, having to show, you know, vaccine
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passports or whatever, I think in San Francisco, even as London Breed is dancing and feeling the
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music in her own, you know, nightclub and not wearing a mask. And so it's strange, like leftism
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is so strange to me. It's so strict when it comes to some things and so tolerant when it comes to other
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things, when really, to me, it should be the exact opposite. I don't know. I guess I've already asked
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you this, but I want to know even more. I guess I'm asking you to psychoanalyze the far left
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progressives like London Breed, like the DA there. I think his name is, uh, is it Chase? Is it
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Boudin? Boudin. Um, and why for them, and I guess the people that vote for them, like this is not
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a problem. How, how did we get to the place of being so strict on things like mask mandates
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because of public health and not caring at all about a public health crisis that has to do
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with homelessness? I really have a hard time comprehending it.
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It's such a great question. Yeah. I mean, when I say what I like about California,
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you know, I lived in Washington DC for a year and you know, you'd meet people and they'd kind of,
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there's a snobbery that I I'm not crazy about where people would ask you like, where you went
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to school, you know, where'd you go to school? And they were always asking whether you went to a
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good school or not. And I didn't like that. Whereas in the Bay area, people want you traditionally
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would want to know what are you doing? And there's a lot more respect for
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entrepreneurialism, but no, you're absolutely right. I mean, look, I think the big thing,
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and this is something that I've touched on both in apocalypse never end in San Francisco
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is that, you know, as people move away from traditional religions, whether Judaism or
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Christianity or Hinduism, they fill that spiritual void by creating new religions out of their politics.
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And so the new religion for the radical left has been the victim ideology or victimology.
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And it's just as dumb as it sounds. I mean, it basically, the idea is that there's some people
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that are victims, they're sacred, to which everything should be given and nothing asked.
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So one question then is like, well, why is it that progressives care so much about African
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Americans killed by police, but they don't do much of anything. In fact, they defund the police,
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even though the police aren't necessarily to prevent 30 times more African Americans from being killed
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by civilians than by police, even more last year with the rising homicide rate. So why do
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progressives care about some victims and not others? And the short answer is that
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progressives care more or exclusively about victims of what they see as victims of the system.
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So the police are viewed as part of the system. They're against the system. They think the system
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is bad. This comes from a very old romantic idea from Rousseau, which is that society corrupts
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individuals. Individuals are innocent. Conservatives have tended to have the opposite view.
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Which is that society is needed to restrain bad instincts or bad behavior. And so it comes really
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out of a kind of extremism of that ideology. It's certainly not something that most liberals do in
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their private life. They put stricter rules on their own kids, for example. They teach their kids not to
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be whiners or to have a positive mentality, although even that coddling culture has become worse and worse
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over the years. So, yeah, I mean, there's there's a real authoritarianism that's been increasing on the
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left. And, you know, there's just not even an open discussion of these questions. Like I said, there's
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the rather than discussing that these things, progressives will just denounce the person as evil
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and they'll suggest that even talking about it results in violence, even as they allow the violence of the
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open drug scenes to continue. And it's just the difference between viewing the system as responsible
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for all bad things, whereas victims themselves, by definition, could not be victimizing other
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people. It's obviously wrong and dumb, but that is what's at bottom of it. It's just taken as a matter
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of faith and it's enforced sort of socially and ideologically by ostracizing people who disagree.
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Yeah. Gosh, there's just so much. There's so much double think there. And you're talking about how
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if you say something about homelessness or policies that you want to put in place to change some of the
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things that are happening, you are accused of causing harm, of causing violence. At the same time,
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we're told by the same ideologues that silence is violence. But if people say, well, here's actual
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violence happening in these homeless encampments or here's actual violence happening in some of the
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riots that we've seen over the past year and a half or here's actual violence happening by the
00:24:10.920
activists, you know, who don't want a conservative's book to be sold in a bookstore in Portland or
00:24:17.660
something like that. That's not violence. That is actually some kind of what they would probably
00:24:22.840
refer to as repressive tolerance. That kind of action is actually necessary to create a more
00:24:29.040
inclusive, intolerant society. And it is it's very confusing. I think some of it is supposed to be
00:24:36.040
confusing. And do you think that's what that kind of mentality is truly what's motivating the mayor of
00:24:44.300
San Francisco, like London Breed or the prosecutor, Chase Boudin? Or do you think that there's is there
00:24:50.060
something else there? Like, why aren't they doing anything about the things that we're talking about?
00:24:54.380
Why don't they care? Yeah, I mean, those are two different figures. I mean, the mayor of San
00:24:59.740
Francisco had traditionally been a moderate. You know, she would like to break up the open drug
00:25:05.580
scenes. I'm pretty confident. The district attorney, on the other hand, comes from the radical left.
00:25:10.740
You know, his parents were famous terrorists. They actually killed or were involved in killing
00:25:15.500
police officers and security guards in a robbery gone bad or Chase Boudin's parents. Yeah,
00:25:21.880
were whether part of the weather underground. Wow. I didn't know that. And he never renounced.
00:25:26.560
He's never renounced either their ideology or their tactics. So those are two different people.
00:25:30.600
But the mayor has basically been, you know, cowed by the radical left. It's the same in most of these
00:25:36.600
cities, Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, ostensibly moderate officials, but they were under
00:25:44.280
severe pressure from the radical left. Look, we were in a moral panic last year after the George Floyd
00:25:49.280
protests. The only way to describe that is as a moral panic. I was struck by how quickly
00:25:53.660
the city councils in various cities felt the need to defund the police and not have any discussion
00:25:59.480
about it because the people that were advocating the defunding were saying that any discussion was,
00:26:04.120
you know, immoral and suggested some, you know, lack of concern for the lives of African-Americans.
00:26:11.220
So I do think, yeah, we're in, you know, I think we're in a crisis period of the United States.
00:26:16.000
There's a huge amount of chaos in the system. I think we're seeing this obviously accelerated
00:26:21.380
by social media. I had an argument, sort of an argument, but really, I do think a long-term
00:26:26.400
trend towards really where wokeism or victimology is an alternative religion. It's been fueled by
00:26:33.940
social media, which ends up creating a lot of incentives for extremism. And then I also think
00:26:39.220
that, you know, the United States is in a really bad way in many ways because we've really,
00:26:44.360
our solidarity with each other has declined along with national identity. You know, we used to have
00:26:50.660
a much stronger national identity when we were during the Cold War. I think that China is a
00:26:56.040
totalitarian system we should be deeply afraid of. We should be competing with to spread, you know,
00:27:02.320
really Western civilization and the values that we believe in and promote those with our allies
00:27:10.120
abroad. Instead, we're letting China basically take over the world. So I think it's a very deeply
00:27:14.040
scary time. And we need to, we've lost touch with the fact that we're, we're, you know, we're all
00:27:20.240
Americans and that we have a duty to help each other and support each other. There's a lot of people on
00:27:25.280
the radical left, a lot of progressives that really just hate their fellow Americans. And it's,
00:27:31.420
it's really sad. I don't see any alternative to it beyond trying to find a new patriotism.
00:27:37.200
Um, what I would say to conservatives is that I think we need to, I think that we, you know,
00:27:41.620
we all need to rethink some of our prior assumptions. You know, one of the things I
00:27:45.020
advocate in the book that I think is maybe the most liberal thing is that you do need to have
00:27:49.500
universal psychiatric care. And I found, I did find some support for this idea on the center, right.
00:27:56.220
Which is that, you know, people are suffering from addiction and mental illness. Um, we can't have
00:28:01.200
this thing where people don't have, uh, insurance, like they just need to get the care they need,
00:28:05.240
particularly for people that are, I mean, they're out of the people that are literally out of their
00:28:07.940
minds and psychotic states. So my hope is that with something like Cal psych, which is, um,
00:28:13.300
basically a new way to centralize and make more efficient the provision of psychiatric and addiction
00:28:19.480
care, that there would be some common ground to bring us together around sort of a common vision,
00:28:25.080
but it does need to be accompanied by enforcing the law and requiring some amount of personal
00:28:30.580
responsibility. Well, there certainly seems to be a political realignment going on right now.
00:28:36.780
There in so many ways we could cover all of the ways the left and the right, I think have shifted
00:28:40.900
over the past few years from the left and now loving the intelligence bureaucracy, um, in this
00:28:47.560
country to the right, really starting to champion some, what I would call some populist ideas, even some
00:28:53.420
center left economic ideas who really are kind of trying to stand up at this point for, uh, the working
00:28:59.800
class. And part of it is talking about these issues, these homeless encampments, a lot of the
00:29:04.820
progressive policies that intentionally or not disproportionately hurt, um, pretty poor working
00:29:12.080
class Americans who just don't seem to have a whole lot of representation. As you're talking about these
00:29:18.840
policies, I'm thinking about, about a million Thomas Sowell quotes that, that I know one of them, when he
00:29:24.900
talks about how progressive policies are always measured by their intentions and never by their
00:29:31.180
results. And so we hear something like decriminalize poverty or allow homeless people to live in dignity
00:29:38.220
or all of the different, you know, propagandizing euphemisms that we hear about this kind of thing,
00:29:44.980
or not wanting to criminalize, you know, addiction or something, which is certainly not something that
00:29:50.140
you're calling for criminalizing addiction, but we hear all of these things. And I think people just
00:29:54.480
nod along. No one wants to be called a bigot. No one certainly wants to be called some, you know,
00:29:59.340
privileged, white, rich person who doesn't care about the poor. And that's basically what those dogmas
00:30:04.720
are doing. That's what those maxims are doing. Um, they're silencing people preemptively. They don't
00:30:10.560
want to hear your arguments because the intention sounds good. And if you go against the intention of trying
00:30:15.880
to help homeless people by allowing these encampments, then you're just seen as a bad
00:30:20.420
person. Most people just, they don't want, they don't want to pay the price of being called a
00:30:28.440
bigot, especially somewhere like San Francisco. I imagine where certainly you don't want to be seen
00:30:33.780
as a conservative. Probably you don't want to be seen as right wing. You don't want to be seen as
00:30:38.020
anti-empathy and compassion. But would you say there are Democrats in San Francisco and elsewhere
00:30:44.240
who are starting to wake up and speak out about this kind of thing to say, okay, this is not a
00:30:48.880
left or right issue. These progressive policies are not working. Yeah, I think so for sure. I mean,
00:30:55.520
there's no, I mean, there's no doubt about it. I mean, it's, um, it's definitely, you know,
00:31:00.040
among Democrats and liberals on the East coast, it's an easier sell for sure than in San Francisco,
00:31:05.640
for example, but certainly in California. Absolutely. I think you're already starting to see it. I mean,
00:31:11.180
we just saw the mayor of San Francisco announced a crackdown on crime, even though there had been
00:31:16.640
claims that crime had not been increasing. We just had Walgreens just announced it was closing
00:31:21.400
another half a dozen stores because of the shoplifting. And at first they chronicled our
00:31:26.640
local newspaper and various Twitter. So on the shoplifting, just to, just to pause right there
00:31:31.500
for a second on the shoplifting, is it true that basically shoplifting under a certain amount
00:31:37.020
of money is not enough to get arrested? Is, is that the case in San Francisco right now?
00:31:44.780
Yeah, that's right. We passed a statewide ballot initiative in 2014 called Prop 47, which decriminalized
00:31:51.480
theft, including shoplifting of items below the $950. 62% of the public voted for it.
00:31:58.920
They tried to do that in Dallas, Texas too, actually.
00:32:01.660
I'm sure. Yeah, it's, it's been part of the agenda. I mean, I mentioned, I may have mentioned
00:32:07.580
that I, you know, worked for George Soros funded think tanks in the late nineties. This has been
00:32:13.140
part of the progressive agenda. You know, again, I thought that the idea was that, you know,
00:32:18.520
you arrest somebody trying to shoplift to feed their addiction and you say that you give them the
00:32:24.660
choice, the judge gives them a choice. You go, you can go to prison or you can go to rehab. That was my
00:32:30.000
understanding of where we left it, but we just went in this really radical direction of just not
00:32:35.280
making people even do the rehab. So, but we are seeing a response already from political officials.
00:32:42.100
We are seeing the mayor now making stronger pronouncements. I think the other thing is
00:32:46.940
just that people are grossly ignorant. They've been misinformed. I mean, the voters have been
00:32:51.360
victims of propaganda really for 30 years, including around the manipulation of their,
00:32:56.480
of their feelings, of their empathy around homelessness. I mean, honestly, it was a bit
00:33:00.960
of a fluke that I just happened to be in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, which is a very liberal country.
00:33:07.120
I mean, you may know that marijuana is decriminalized. Prostitution is decriminalized.
00:33:12.020
Nobody would accuse Amsterdam of being a right-wing town. And yet there were no homeless people on the
00:33:17.120
street. You could walk safely back to your hotel from the bar at 2 a.m. I was with my young female
00:33:24.300
colleagues and they, the next morning, they were like angry that they couldn't have the same nice
00:33:29.740
things that they could have in San Francisco that they have in Amsterdam. And the Dutch are really
00:33:35.280
humanistic about it. They do a really good job treating people with mental illness and drug
00:33:40.480
addiction. So I just think there's some, to some extent, I have some faith that while there is a
00:33:45.460
hardcore, let's say 20 to 30% of the population that is pretty radical, particularly in San Francisco,
00:33:51.000
there is still a majority, 60, 70, 80% that want to see the open drug scenes shut down and want to
00:33:58.480
see people that are mentally ill and addicted to hard drugs get the treatment that they need so
00:34:02.640
that they stop being so destructive of themselves and of others.
00:34:10.300
You know, you mentioned George Soros and working for some Soros-funded think tanks, and he has been
00:34:16.580
credited both by the New York Times and then, you know, conservative organizations like the Heritage
00:34:21.480
Foundation of really funding an overhaul of prosecutors or of, you know, local prosecutors.
00:34:32.680
And so Chesa Boudin is one of those people that was funded. His campaign was funded by George Soros.
00:34:38.420
And so I can't credit him with all of the disasters and the chaos that's going on right now,
00:34:43.900
certainly. But his money is behind a lot of these changes that are leading to a lack of prosecution,
00:34:54.560
an enabling of lawlessness, of homelessness, public drug use, and all of that. Do you ever look back
00:35:02.880
at your time spent in those think tanks and think, did I kind of help create some of the problems that
00:35:10.800
we're seeing right now? Yeah, I mean, one of my motivations for writing San Francisco was to figure out
00:35:16.520
what, if anything, I got wrong and how so and what I believe now. I mean, I advocated for the
00:35:22.480
decriminalization of drugs. I advocated for the distribution of clean needles. You know, where I came out on it
00:35:28.260
was that, you know, I don't think, I think it should be against the law to use drugs publicly. It should be
00:35:34.740
against the law. I should continue to be against the law to camp publicly, defecate publicly. You should
00:35:39.860
be arrested for those crimes as you are in European cities. And then when you're brought before the
00:35:45.140
judge, I think the judge should have the ability to offer an alternative sentence. But it's an
00:35:51.540
alternative sentence. It's not no sentence. And that was how I understood it in the late 90s, is that if you
00:35:57.940
were arrested for those crimes and brought before a judge, and you clearly were suffering from drug
00:36:01.960
addiction or untreated mental illness or both, you would be getting this alternative sentencing. And
00:36:06.740
that is not what happened. Similarly, with needle exchange, if you're getting clean needles, you
00:36:13.020
should be offered drug treatment and rehab. That's not happening. If you're given, you know, we should be
00:36:19.920
requiring shelter. In other words, you have to sleep in a shelter, you can't sleep on the street or
00:36:24.360
get arrested. But those are your choices. Shelter should be universal, we should have shelter for
00:36:29.840
anybody that needs it. It should be basic. It should not be luxurious, but it should be safe and
00:36:33.980
clean. But then housing, meaning, you know, the thing that most a lot of people want is they want
00:36:38.840
their own room, understandably. But housing should be earned. And this is how they do it in Europe. This
00:36:44.200
is how they do it in Asia, is that you don't just get your own apartment in downtown San Francisco,
00:36:47.660
because you claim to be homeless. You have to earn it. It's a reward for abstinence or making progress on
00:36:54.180
your personal plans, such as having a job. So, yeah, it's restoring carrots and sticks. It's restoring
00:36:59.440
some incentives for personal behavioral change. To some extent, I think my views changed more on the
00:37:05.600
environment than they did on these issues of drugs and homelessness. Though I will say, I think one
00:37:11.180
thing that I have changed my views on is I do believe in greater restriction, really, of all drugs, including
00:37:17.840
alcohol, which is actually a pretty dangerous drug. And so I used to kind of scoff at the restrictions that
00:37:23.640
we put on alcohol consumption, including, you know, being able to buy it in grocery stores or buy it on a
00:37:28.140
Sunday. And there's some counties that are dry. I've really come to appreciate those restrictions. I worry
00:37:33.220
about the ways in which the society, including people that are maybe more center right of things like
00:37:40.860
psychedelic drugs, things like marijuana. It's true that nobody dies of an overdose of marijuana. It's much safer in
00:37:47.220
that sense than alcohol. But this but all drugs can be abused. And we should, I think, be really careful
00:37:53.440
with how we're, these drugs are getting out there. And that's the other reason I think you need to have
00:37:58.280
some universal psychiatric care. I think a lot of people that are using drugs heavily, including
00:38:03.400
alcohol, are just self-medicating, and they may have better lives if they had access to an
00:38:08.400
antidepressant, or just or to therapy, or just really exercising more regularly. For me, anyway,
00:38:14.000
exercise is important to mental health. So yeah, I just think we're doing a really poor job in the
00:38:18.840
United States right now of taking care of people's mental health. Yeah. And that's been a big reason
00:38:23.300
for, you know, we had 93,000 people die of illicit drugs last year. That's a five times increase from
00:38:29.060
the 17,000 that died in the year 2000. So clearly, something's deeply broken. And there's a lot of
00:38:34.760
things we need to do. But I definitely think restoring carrots and sticks, having universal psychiatric
00:38:40.020
care, and much greater care over how we deal with these really intoxicating and addictive substances
00:38:45.220
is required. Yeah. You know, I often say that politics, or I don't often say this, a lot of
00:38:50.260
people often say this, but I repeat it, that politics is downstream from culture. Culture is
00:38:54.760
downstream from cult, from religion. Whatever we worship affects our culture. Culture then affects
00:39:00.400
politics. But policies do have the ability to change culture. Like if you look at something,
00:39:08.540
for example, like gay marriage, before Obergefell, the majority of Americans were not for gay marriage.
00:39:14.440
After Obergefell happened, it very precipitously changed. Support for gay marriage changed very
00:39:20.960
quickly. And yes, part of that was culture, obviously, media representation, things like that.
00:39:25.620
But I think the Supreme Court decision actually had an effect, at least over time, on people's
00:39:33.480
mindset about it. And I think that that can be true, as well, when it comes to policy surrounding
00:39:42.020
homeless people, or whatever you want to call it, the accurate terminology for that. I don't think
00:39:48.660
that we have to wait for the very destructive culture that I think has been created, especially in
00:39:54.280
progressive cities, that any type of law enforcement is some form of oppression, any type of incentivizing
00:40:02.540
that you're talking about, the carrot and stick, the carrot and stick strategy, that that is somehow a form
00:40:11.420
of harm. Even just everything on the left, that it seeks to destigmatize and that it seeks to
00:40:18.820
normalize in the name of compassion and empathy, I think has just created a very destructive and lawless
00:40:27.400
culture in which the in which people who are most vulnerable really suffer, like it's poor people
00:40:33.680
that suffer from that. The rich people in San Francisco, I love San Francisco, by the way, it's
00:40:37.880
my husband and my favorite city, we love visiting San Francisco, it's beautiful. But the rich people are
00:40:44.380
not the ones who are most affected by this. It's the working class people. It's the poor people who no
00:40:49.740
longer can be safe. Same thing when it goes when it comes to defunding the police, same thing when it
00:40:54.720
comes to any progressive policy that sounds really good, but costs most of society a whole lot. And I
00:41:01.980
guess I have hope, I guess that people are, are waking up to that. And it sounds like you do too.
00:41:08.440
My question is, do you consider yourself a conservative now? And do you think that it takes
00:41:15.340
people becoming a conservative to wake up to some of the detrimental effects of the progressive policies
00:41:21.260
that we're talking about? Yeah, sure. And I agree with everything you say. And, you know,
00:41:27.600
there's a great quote from the late Senator Patrick Moynihan, where he said, you know, culture,
00:41:31.140
the central conservative insight is that culture determines the fate of a nation, but the central
00:41:36.500
liberal insight is that politics can intervene in that culture. And I really believe that I do think
00:41:42.240
we need a new political formation. It may be a third party, it may be a different realignment of the
00:41:48.620
political parties. I struggle with labels. I mean, part of the reason I wrote, you know,
00:41:53.520
two 400 page books is that I wanted to sort of say, here's what I think. And you can call it a lot
00:42:01.100
of different things. I mean, there's definitely some things that I believe that I think progressives
00:42:05.520
would call conservatives. I think families are important. I think enforcing the laws are important.
00:42:10.240
I think we should not tear down institutions, but really try to reform them. I think there's other
00:42:17.220
things I believe that are probably considered more liberal. I support, as I mentioned, universal
00:42:21.140
psychiatric care. I think gay marriage is a wonderful bit of progress. I, you know, I, I,
00:42:30.080
I basically more liberal in my habits and in my, you know, I sort of decriminalization of marijuana
00:42:35.440
fine with needle exchange. But again, I do think there has to be carrots and sticks. So I do,
00:42:40.200
I hope that I think people will read both apocalypse never in San Francisco and kind of walk away being
00:42:45.720
like, this is not easy to categorize. I don't want to sound too fuzzy or something, but I do think
00:42:52.700
that there needs to be some balancing here of liberal and conservative tactics. I mean, one of
00:42:58.820
the problems, you know, one of the reason that people become street addicts is that inside the
00:43:05.100
families themselves, there's a really confusing relationship to drugs, where often what you'll see
00:43:12.380
is parents having a liberal attitude towards drugs at first being like, well, he's just experimenting
00:43:17.540
or he on his own has to decide what, whether he's going to quit or not. And then when the addiction
00:43:22.160
spirals out of control, just kicking their kids out of their house, understandably, I mean, I've had
00:43:26.620
friends that are addicts and became street addicts for that reason. But I think we need to get better
00:43:32.280
at imposing discipline earlier in the process, both in the family, but also in the society so that we
00:43:39.460
don't have to resort to more draconian means later, whether that be, you know, eviction or prison.
00:43:45.820
Yeah. You know, I think that conservatives, at least in my estimation, I am very squarely
00:43:52.300
conservative. Now I'm with you when it comes to a lot of the political labels. But I think that
00:43:56.620
conservatives have more of an appetite for solutions that may be politically considered
00:44:03.240
considered center left than it seems like, at least from my vantage point, people on the left have
00:44:09.240
for social positions that may be considered on the right, because I don't think the right is going to
00:44:16.060
compromise on some social things. Like, I don't think that you're going to see a large swath of
00:44:20.280
conservatives say, yeah, man can become a woman and vice versa. You're probably not going to see a lot
00:44:24.660
of conservatives say, you know, that abortion through nine months is awesome. But I do think that
00:44:32.080
conservatives are more welcoming, one of heterodox people with whom we disagree on a lot of things,
00:44:37.160
but can link arms on other things. They're all of a sudden considered right wing, like Joe Rogan,
00:44:42.260
who is not right wing. He's now considered right wing by the left. I see actually conservatives as being
00:44:47.860
a lot more open to some of the solutions that you're talking about. And just in general,
00:44:53.900
with linking arms with people that we disagree with on other things, then people on the left are.
00:44:59.900
Do you see that, too? And do you hope that it changes for some of our friends on the left,
00:45:05.120
that they will kind of, I don't know, meet us in the middle, at least on some things?
00:45:10.820
Oh, yeah, for sure. Of course, I'm finding that. I mean, look at who whose podcasts I'm doing. I've
00:45:15.140
been invited on Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson talking to you talking to Glenn Beck, Tim Poole. And it's
00:45:22.780
been a total pleasure and exciting. And the disagreements themselves have been interesting. And
00:45:27.720
and it hasn't threatened the relationship. Whereas, yeah, like, I mean, I'm not being
00:45:33.740
invited to go on progressive TV shows or radio shows. It's disappointing, but I'm also kind of
00:45:40.320
over it. Yeah. You know, I'm old enough now that I have, you know, you kind of understand that
00:45:47.260
there's just things that are outside your control. What I'm excited about in California is trying to
00:45:52.080
build a movement of and this is what we're doing, you know, parents that are of kids that are that
00:45:56.620
were killed by fentanyl parents who have kids that are addicted and would like to see their kids
00:46:00.440
arrested and required to go into drug treatment. Community leaders who are sick of the disaster on the
00:46:07.320
streets. You know, these are groups of people that are very liberal and very conservative, but we share
00:46:13.000
a common agenda. And so there is I feel optimistic in the sense that I don't think America is done as a
00:46:21.220
civilization. It just doesn't feel like we're done yet. Yeah. I mean, I don't know.
00:46:27.500
No, I mean, me too. I mean, my book ends with a meditation on whether this is it, guys, like is
00:46:32.040
America just over? And I don't think so. And and I think that's because, you know, it's still just
00:46:37.320
the greatest country on Earth. I mean, where else are you going to go live in China where you have to
00:46:41.100
have social credit scores or, you know, Europe? It's just you know, you go to Europe. It's like
00:46:45.220
visiting a museum. It's beautiful, but it's old and it's not innovative and it's not where the
00:46:49.620
excitement's at. So, you know, United States and I think California still have a huge amount of
00:46:54.260
potential as places of innovation and entrepreneurialism and social change in
00:46:58.840
positive directions. I do think it's going to require new politics. And, you know, I mean,
00:47:03.660
one thing that's happening in California is just that it's now that it's a one party system. It means
00:47:09.000
that I do think Republicans in California are more open to being having a somewhat different agenda
00:47:16.500
than has been the Republican agenda in the past. Yeah. You know, people get super overwhelmed when
00:47:23.660
we talk about these big issues that seem to run so deep, especially in places like California. I
00:47:29.680
think people had a little glimmer of hope when there was a recall. But but then I think what
00:47:34.360
really confuses people and burdens people is when it seems like everyone's waking up, then you read a
00:47:39.680
story about Walgreens. Like you said, they've had to close down five more stores because they're just
00:47:44.040
losing business, shoplifting, all of that. Well, they donated fifty thousand dollars to Gavin Newsom,
00:47:48.640
who is part of this whole problem. He may have not started the problem, but he certainly
00:47:53.040
hasn't helped it. And it just I think the alternative to what you're saying is, well,
00:47:58.800
it doesn't seem like the companies care. It doesn't seem like the people in charge really care if a
00:48:03.060
so-called moderate ends up kowtowing to the far left. So what can the average person do to help wake
00:48:09.940
people up and hopefully help make some positive change?
00:48:15.420
Yeah, I mean, we definitely need new leadership. I mean, you know, the the candidates that we had
00:48:21.740
running in the recall were not folks that were striking the right chord with moderate voters.
00:48:28.160
You know, we you know, most voters, I think, voted on coronavirus. And that's definitely an issue
00:48:34.700
where conservatives and liberals tend to disagree. I tend to be more alarmist about coronavirus than
00:48:42.280
most of my conservative friends. So that's probably an area of difference, although I do think the
00:48:46.700
mask mandates for kids, for example, has gone way too far. But I do think there's a place for more
00:48:51.800
moderation there. It was also a recall. And for the most part, voters just we we don't really like
00:48:58.020
recalls because, you know, you just elected the guy a few years earlier. So I think we have a big chance
00:49:02.180
to make some change next year. But again, I do think it's going to require different leadership.
00:49:08.060
Yeah, I think that the thing that can wake a lot of people up is seeing just the hypocrisy and the
00:49:14.440
apathy that comes from a lot of the leaders. Like you talked about those COVID restrictions. You know,
00:49:19.640
a lot of people are where you are. They're on board. They want to follow the rules. It's not the rules so
00:49:24.960
much that bother a lot of people. It's the lack of adherence to the rules by the people who set the rules
00:49:31.580
for everyone else, like London Breed, like Gavin Newsom. When you see Gavin Newsom dining at the
00:49:36.280
French Laundry, when you hear London Breed say, well, I wasn't following the mask mandate because
00:49:40.060
I was, you know, feeling the groove at a club. That is the let them eat cake stuff that makes
00:49:47.480
people really mad. When you hear Jen Psaki, you know, the the press secretary say, oh, supply chain
00:49:54.180
problems, the tragedy of the delayed treadmill. That's what she reduces it to. That's my hope that
00:50:01.440
that kind of thing that I want people to realize that the state doesn't care about you and that
00:50:05.660
most of the people we've put in charge really don't care about the issues that they say they do. And
00:50:10.800
they're actually exacerbating the problem. I hope so, too. It was infuriating. I mean,
00:50:15.940
my daughter is 15. She has to wear a mask at school and to see our mate, the mayor of San Francisco
00:50:21.260
out there partying it up and then making excuses for it. But even though she's the one that imposed
00:50:26.560
the mask mandate on indoor, it's pretty upsetting. So I hope that is one of the things that triggers
00:50:31.760
people. Although I do. I think that the main issue is just that we have to offer a positive
00:50:36.460
program for dealing with the biggest problem in the state. And it's not going to be enough to point
00:50:41.360
out the hypocrisy. I think we need to offer a really positive agenda. Yep. Yep. And, you know,
00:50:46.160
this is not just San Francisco. You mentioned this a little bit earlier. This is happening in
00:50:50.300
Houston, in, you know, the heart of Dallas. It's happening in Austin. It's happening in Denver.
00:50:55.440
It's in D.C. It's in Boston. It's in New York. It's in Chicago. It's in Portland. It's in Seattle.
00:51:00.640
Every city that is run not just by Democrats, but we're talking about left wing progressive
00:51:05.460
ideologues where their policies have actually been able to take root. Life has become worse. It's
00:51:11.560
become worse. That's just an objective fact. And hopefully people are waking up to that. And I think
00:51:16.760
you are playing a big role in that. Thankfully, tell everyone where they can follow you and get
00:51:21.140
your book. Thank you. Yeah. Please. I hope folks do consider buying San Francisco. Why progressives
00:51:29.800
ruin cities. You can get it on Amazon. Hopefully it's your local bookseller. While you're there,
00:51:33.860
buy Apocalypse Never. Why environmental tourism hurts us all. The two books really do go together.
00:51:38.880
They're a defense of the pillars of Western civilization, which I view as being under attack
00:51:43.780
and threatened and also a case for kind of rebooting our civilization with some new institutions,
00:51:50.620
some new ideas. And yeah, they can follow me on Twitter, Schellenberger and then MD. I'm not,
00:51:57.140
I'm not a doctor, but those are my initials. Schellenberger MD at Schellenberger MD on Twitter,
00:52:02.000
or I'm also on Facebook, Michael Schellenberger. Well, thank you so much. I also hope people go out
00:52:06.320
and buy your book. We'll include the links to those. We'll include the links to those in the
00:52:10.860
description of this podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. I really appreciate
00:52:16.060
it. Thanks for having me. All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. I learned a lot
00:52:26.800
from him. He's really interesting. Definitely go out and buy his book and just keep in mind,
00:52:33.640
keep in mind that progressive policies, progressive ideas, progressive dogma,
00:52:38.320
that sounds good, that sounds compassionate, whether it's about abortion, whether it's about
00:52:43.280
transgenderism, whether it's about homelessness, poverty, education, always ask at what cost and
00:52:52.320
what hard data do you have? Always ask the person who is putting forth a line or an idea or a policy
00:52:59.180
proposal that sounds really good, that sounds really compassionate, that sounds like, oh, if you're
00:53:03.960
against that, then you're a bigot or you're a bad person or you hate poor people or whatever,
00:53:07.660
rather than giving in to that and saying, oh, you know, I'm compassionate, so I support you.
00:53:12.800
Ask yourself, what facts do you have to back up the idea that this is actually going to help? And what
00:53:18.200
cost is this going to put on the rest of society? This sounds like maybe it's meant to be compassionate
00:53:24.620
for one group of people, but what about everyone else? The same is true when it comes to illegal
00:53:28.860
immigration. Oh, we have to be so compassionate by letting everyone in who wants to come in.
00:53:33.620
At what cost to the country? At what cost to the people at the border? At what cost to people who
00:53:37.500
are being trafficked? And really, at what cost to the migrants in the countries that they're coming from?
00:53:42.940
As Thomas Sowell says, what is typically called social justice should actually be called anti-social
00:53:48.380
justice since the thing that is precisely ignored is the cost to society. That is so true. That's why
00:53:57.540
I don't believe social justice is just. It never is. Read Quest for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell.
00:54:04.860
If this episode didn't red pill you, then Thomas Sowell definitely will. All right. One more thing I
00:54:12.300
wanted to say. So we've been talking about, we've had a lot of, you know, fun, fun moments on Instagram
00:54:17.660
this week where we've talked about this millennial problem, issue, syndrome, whatever you want to call
00:54:24.120
it that we have. And maybe it's not just millennials, but I do think it's mostly generational and then,
00:54:30.580
you know, part personality and things like that where we have this paralysis when it comes to doing
00:54:36.660
small things. And there was actually a BuzzFeed article on this a couple of years ago. They called
00:54:41.280
it errant paralysis. So we can do other things. You know, the big things we can, you know, go to medical
00:54:49.380
school. We can get married. We can have kids. We can do the big obligations and responsibilities that
00:54:55.480
we have. But when it comes to like sending packages back that we, uh, uh, that we need to return or going
00:55:03.380
to the post office or listening to a voicemail and calling people back, reading like a long personal
00:55:09.060
email, it's very, very scary to us. So I want to hear from you, like, tell me your personal stories
00:55:16.580
about your paralysis surrounding, you know, small things, whether it's like, oh, you've had, uh,
00:55:22.540
boxes in the back of your trunk that you have meant to donate to Goodwill for the past six months.
00:55:28.200
I want to hear like the craziest ones. Like how long have you been putting off that one task that
00:55:33.460
you have meant to do? And I want to hear like the most menial tasks and the longest someone has waited
00:55:40.700
and procrastinated to do that thing. And tell me your thinking behind it. Why have you put off
00:55:45.260
doing that thing? And I'll give you our phone number so you can leave a quick voicemail telling
00:55:51.140
me this, and I'll play a few of them maybe next week. Uh, 682-503-1369, 682-503-1369 call. Leave us a
00:56:01.220
voicemail. Also tomorrow, I am going to be announcing finally the winner of the giveaway that we announced
00:56:07.880
at our 500th episode. You'll get lots of good stuff. So I'll announce that tomorrow. So make sure