The Charlie Kirk Show - Highest Level of Teenage Sadness EVER with Michael Knowles

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's on the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:01.000 Michael Knowles joins us to talk about architecture and why are people so sad.

00:00:05.000 Why is America sad?

00:00:06.000 It's the saddest generation in history.

00:00:08.000 That's teenagers right now.

00:00:10.000 Take a pause.

00:00:11.000 It's not going to be the most uplifting episode, but it's very important.

00:00:14.000 Let's explore it together.

00:00:15.000 Let's find out some solutions.

00:00:17.000 We talk about solutions, but it's critically important why this is the saddest generation in history.

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00:00:50.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:52.000 Buckle up, everybody, here.

00:00:53.000 We go.

00:00:54.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:56.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:58.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:01.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:05.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:06.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:07.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:15.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:24.000 That's why we are here.

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00:01:39.000 This segment and the one following is not going to be the most uplifting segment that we ever do here on the Charlie Kirk Show, but arguably one of the most important.

00:01:47.000 This is a segment that you're not going to want to hear, and you might not think it's real, but I could tell you from my experience with young people, it's absolutely real.

00:01:55.000 And it's a story that actually starts in the publication for Lorene Powell Jobs, The Atlantic, quote, why American teens are so sad.

00:02:05.000 Four forces are propelling the rise of rates of depression amongst young people.

00:02:09.000 Now, before you kind of just roll your eyes and say, oh, whatever, toughen it up, this is a huge problem with our nation's young people.

00:02:16.000 I know at least two young people in my general circle, periphery, I did not know them personally, that committed suicide in the last week.

00:02:23.000 It's a serious issue.

00:02:25.000 Young people are, by definition, now the most alcohol-addicted, drug-addicted, depressed, sad, suicidal, anxious, medicated generation in history.

00:02:35.000 Now, there's many reasons as to why this is the case.

00:02:37.000 One of the reasons, of course, would be our imprudent response to the Chinese coronavirus, locking down our entire society. 1.00

00:02:46.000 It was not the pandemic that did it.

00:02:47.000 It was our reaction to the pandemic.

00:02:49.000 Now, if you're listening to this right now and you're a parent or a grandparent, an aunt or an uncle, I hope you listen to these words very carefully.

00:02:56.000 Because if you have a young person in your life, they might not be telling the truth about how sad they actually are.

00:03:02.000 This generation will be the most suicidal generation in history when the numbers come out.

00:03:05.000 In fact, the numbers already show it.

00:03:07.000 We don't know how this year is going to shake out.

00:03:09.000 Theatlantic.com writes, quote, the United States is experiencing an extreme teenage mental health crisis.

00:03:15.000 From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high school students who say they, quote, feel persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness rose from 26% to 44%, according to a new CDC study.

00:03:31.000 This is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded.

00:03:34.000 Now, I don't trust the CDC, and I know you don't either.

00:03:38.000 But if you dive into this study, it really isn't that politicized.

00:03:42.000 It was done in a pretty fair, double-blind way, but let's pretend it's not 26, 44.

00:03:46.000 Let's say it's only 30%.

00:03:47.000 Let's say that it's off by a 50% mark of an increase.

00:03:51.000 That's still unbelievable.

00:03:53.000 The government survey was over 8,000 high school students, pretty big sample size, which was conducted in the first six months of 2021, last year.

00:04:02.000 It found a great deal of variation in mental health among different groups.

00:04:07.000 More than one in four girls reported that they have seriously contemplated committing suicide during the pandemic, which was twice the rate of boys.

00:04:14.000 Nearly half of gay teens, LGBTQ teens, say they had contemplated suicide during the pandemic, compared with 14% of their heterosexual peers.

00:04:24.000 Sadness among white teens seems to be rising faster than among other groups.

00:04:30.000 The Atlantic writes, quote, but the big picture here is the same across all categories.

00:04:34.000 Almost every measure of mental health is getting worse for every single teenage demographic.

00:04:39.000 And it's happening all across the country.

00:04:41.000 Since 2009, sadness and hopelessness have increased for every race, for straight teens, for gay teens, for teens who say they've never had sex, for teens who say they have had sex with males and or females, for students in every year of high school, for all teens in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

00:04:56.000 So that's the what.

00:04:57.000 And you look at the chart, it's remarkable.

00:04:59.000 I could say this.

00:04:59.000 I mean, we get emails at freedom at charliekirk.com every single day.

00:05:03.000 Charlie, I have no hope.

00:05:04.000 There is no meaning.

00:05:05.000 There is no purpose.

00:05:06.000 I can't find my place.

00:05:07.000 Now, of course, and this is reflected in a lot of young people's disapproval of Joe Biden.

00:05:12.000 Only 21% of young people approve of Joe Biden because everything is terrible.

00:05:17.000 And I saw this at Berkeley and in just pure terms, the dystopian sadness and depression.

00:05:24.000 People are not happy anymore under the age of 30.

00:05:28.000 Now, some adults you listening right now is like, oh, come on, just get happy, snap out of it.

00:05:32.000 Just hold on a second.

00:05:33.000 Let's have a little bit of sympathy.

00:05:36.000 Let's just walk through and see if there's any sort of validity to these claims and what we could possibly do about it.

00:05:42.000 I don't want to live in a sad country.

00:05:44.000 We are living in a sad country right now.

00:05:46.000 This is something that transcends political lines, by the way, or it should, even though our politics played into this significantly.

00:05:53.000 Our political decisions of locking down our country, putting masks on children, have made children sadder.

00:06:00.000 And a lot of parents don't know what to do about it.

00:06:03.000 Well, the first problem, and I'm going to go through the Atlantic piece and where they go wrong, the first problem is the overindulgence of pleasure.

00:06:13.000 The restraints that you put on your impulses, the restraints you put on what feels good, is what we call civilization.

00:06:21.000 Not doing what feels good all the time is what creates mature and happy people.

00:06:27.000 Unfortunately, we've created a set of circumstances and a scenario where 12, 13, and 14-year-olds do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it, whether it be sexually, whether it be with drugs, whether it be through any sort of process.

00:06:41.000 They have prioritized, not processed, any sort of indulgence, I should say.

00:06:45.000 They have prioritized, our society has prioritized pleasure above all.

00:06:51.000 Pleasure comes with a price.

00:06:54.000 Pleasure comes with a price that means that you are going to overload your dopamine reactors.

00:07:00.000 Your life will not, you won't know what meaning is.

00:07:03.000 That's number one.

00:07:04.000 Now, the Atlantic speculates a couple things.

00:07:06.000 The Atlantic speculates, they're not totally wrong here, that we have the saddest, most depressed, alcohol-addicted, and drug-addicted generation in history because of four reasons.

00:07:14.000 Number one, social media use.

00:07:16.000 I agree.

00:07:18.000 Number two, socializing is down.

00:07:20.000 Number three, the world is stressful and there's more news about the world stressors.

00:07:20.000 I agree.

00:07:24.000 I agree.

00:07:25.000 I think that's overblown.

00:07:26.000 Number four, modern parenting strategies.

00:07:29.000 I agree.

00:07:29.000 Most parents are terrible.

00:07:30.000 I see it firsthand.

00:07:32.000 And whenever I say that, I get so many angry emails about how great of a parent you are.

00:07:35.000 I say, okay, well, maybe you're a great parent.

00:07:37.000 I don't know.

00:07:38.000 So the Atlantic quotes, why is this happening?

00:07:40.000 Quote, I want to propose several answers to that question.

00:07:43.000 And this is the first thing.

00:07:44.000 First fallacy that we could chalk this all up to teens behaving badly is in fact, a lot of self-reported teen behaviors are moving in a positive direction.

00:07:53.000 This is what's so amazing.

00:07:55.000 Now, I don't totally agree with all this because pornography is up and drug use is up, but drinking and driving is down.

00:08:02.000 Okay, school fights are down.

00:08:04.000 Sex before marriage, sex before 13 is down by 70%.

00:08:08.000 I didn't even know that was a thing.

00:08:09.000 Sounds really creepy and weird.

00:08:11.000 School bullying is down and LGBTQ acceptance is up.

00:08:14.000 Oh, that's interesting.

00:08:15.000 So LGBQQ acceptance is up, yet there's more depression.

00:08:20.000 And socialization is down, and there's more depression.

00:08:23.000 So I think it's more nuanced than this.

00:08:24.000 I don't think the Atlantic is totally right.

00:08:26.000 I don't think teen behavior is getting better.

00:08:27.000 I don't.

00:08:28.000 But that's fine.

00:08:29.000 I think that there's some metrics that I think it's a mixed bag.

00:08:32.000 Teen suicides are up in a massive way.

00:08:35.000 Anxiety and depression, eating disorders, self-harming behavior, sharply up over the past decade.

00:08:41.000 And what's amazing is that the richest countries in the world actually have the highest suicide rates.

00:08:48.000 The wealthier a country is with a couple outliers, the more likely your children are to want to kill themselves.

00:08:53.000 In really poor countries, they don't have suicide problems.

00:08:57.000 Something we're thinking about.

00:08:59.000 The third fallacy is that the mental health crisis was principally caused by the pandemic and the overaction of COVID.

00:09:04.000 This is what he writes.

00:09:05.000 Quote, rising teenage sadness isn't a new trend, but rather the acceleration and broadening of a trend that clearly started before the pandemic. 0.84

00:09:10.000 You're right, but our reaction to the pandemic was ridiculous and it was imprudent and it was dangerous and it was wrong.

00:09:18.000 But I have to say that the thing that drives this more than anything else that this piece doesn't even dare touch on is the defeat and the destruction of what Friedrich Nietzsche warned us about, which is the death of God.

00:09:33.000 Now, God is not dead.

00:09:34.000 He's certainly alive, especially for those of us Christians.

00:09:37.000 We had a great Easter weekend.

00:09:39.000 But if the predominant culture, the predominant movie production apparatus, the predominant social media belief, when I go to Berkeley and I have 40 kids in front of me, I say, how many of you are atheists?

00:09:48.000 And all their hands go up. 0.97

00:09:49.000 Like, no wonder why you're so miserable. 0.59

00:09:52.000 How can you possibly have meaning if you believe in nothingness? 0.99

00:09:57.000 Atheism is by definition a gateway drug to misery. 0.96

00:10:02.000 That's not to say there aren't happy atheists. 0.97

00:10:04.000 There's plenty of them out there.

00:10:05.000 Of course there are.

00:10:06.000 But generally, an atheistic society will breed a lack of optimism and a culture of despair.

00:10:19.000 There's a lot more I want to talk about with this, and this is by Derek Thompson.

00:10:22.000 I actually think did a pretty good job here, even though he's a left-winger.

00:10:27.000 I disagree with some of this here, but the article's going viral and it should.

00:10:31.000 It's The Atlantic.

00:10:32.000 We're going to put it on CharlieKirk.com.

00:10:34.000 Why American teens are so sad?

00:10:37.000 And if you have a teenager in your life, keep your eyes on them.

00:10:41.000 And I'm going to tell you some things I think that can be helpful to that.

00:10:45.000 It's the saddest generation in history.

00:10:49.000 But meanwhile, baby boomers are richer than ever and they actually approve of Joe Biden a lot more than young people.

00:10:54.000 The generational divide in America has never been so dramatic.

00:11:01.000 I'm not saying baby boomers are to blame for that necessarily, but it's true. 1.00

00:11:05.000 What's true is the divide.

00:11:10.000 Almost every day we hear about another major corporation that has gone woke.

00:11:13.000 Disney hates you and everyone should cancel Disney.

00:11:17.000 They hate families.

00:11:18.000 Disney made tons of money off of being family friendly and family safe.

00:11:23.000 Now it's time to divest from Disney.

00:11:26.000 There's a lot of companies like T-Mobile that's firing all their unvaccinated employees.

00:11:29.000 They're tormenting their employees with leftist propaganda and funding organizations who seem to hate this country.

00:11:35.000 And so I was on a mission.

00:11:36.000 I was seeing how much I was spending on my cell phone bill, how much turning point USA was spending on our cell phone bill.

00:11:41.000 I said, I'm so sick and tired of giving these anti-American cell phone companies my hard-earned money and our amazing donor money at Turning Point USA.

00:11:49.000 So I told my team, I said, go find the cell phone company that shares our values.

00:11:54.000 And I remember I met this guy, Glenn.

00:11:56.000 We'd run into each other a couple of times, and he was super enthusiastic, always wore this right red polo, said Patriot Mobile on it.

00:12:02.000 And I saw him again at an event.

00:12:04.000 I said, okay, now you really got to sit down.

00:12:06.000 Like, let's plan some time together and talk about this.

00:12:08.000 So we had this meal in Dallas.

00:12:09.000 This was back in November.

00:12:10.000 And he laid it all out.

00:12:12.000 And I got it.

00:12:12.000 I was like, wow.

00:12:13.000 Okay.

00:12:13.000 So you're a conservative Christian cell phone provider and I don't have to pay all these woke companies.

00:12:18.000 And it just like clicked in a minute.

00:12:20.000 I said, let's partner together.

00:12:21.000 Let's have you on the show.

00:12:22.000 Let's do some things.

00:12:23.000 And that's how it all started.

00:12:25.000 So Patriot Mobile, they have plans to fit every budget.

00:12:28.000 And their U.S.-based customer support team provides exceptional customer service.

00:12:32.000 Most importantly, Patriot Mobile shares your values and supports organizations fighting for religious liberty, constitutional rights, and the sanctity of life.

00:12:41.000 So make the switch today.

00:12:42.000 I know the whole management team behind Patriot Mobile, Glenn, all of them, they support Turning Point USA.

00:12:48.000 They support us beautifully.

00:12:49.000 So you go to patriotmobile.com slash Charlie or call 972 Patriot.

00:12:53.000 People ask all the time, Charlie, what do I do?

00:12:56.000 What do I do?

00:12:56.000 Well, a good way to start is, you know, make your cell phone bill, whatever.

00:13:00.000 If you see it on your cell phone statement, you get your cell phone statement.

00:13:03.000 You might as well just say, oh, that money's going to the DNC or that money's going to Christian conservative organizations or company like Patriot Mobile.

00:13:11.000 So you get a free activation with the offer code Charlie.

00:13:14.000 They also have special discounts for veterans and first responder heroes.

00:13:17.000 It's patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie or call 972 Patriot.

00:13:21.000 Join me and the Charlie Kirk Show in our change to Patriot Mobile and forgetting all these woke, awful, terrible cell phone companies.

00:13:28.000 Portions of this program, the Charlie Kirk Show, are brought to you in part by Patriot Mobile.

00:13:33.000 It's patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie, patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie.

00:13:41.000 Every generation has a moment that they remember, whether it be the 2008 financial crisis or whether it be D-Day, or World War II, I should say, Pearl Harbor, or the Vietnam War.

00:13:54.000 You look at the generation that grew up in the 80s and 90s, plenty of things they had to deal with, but nothing close to what this generation has to deal with.

00:14:02.000 And social media addiction is playing a huge role in this.

00:14:05.000 A lot of parents just kind of throw a screen in front of their kids and say, oh, yeah, this is fine, even though it's resulting in a huge increase in every negative trend we can imagine.

00:14:17.000 Quote, across the country, we've witnessed dramatic increases in emergency department visits from all mental health emergencies, including suspected suicide attempts.

00:14:25.000 The American Academy of Pediatrics said.

00:14:27.000 Today's teenagers are more comfortable talking about their mental health, but rising youth sadness is no illusion.

00:14:33.000 Now, of course, part of the problem, of course, is the medication that is being prescribed.

00:14:41.000 Doesn't seem as if the antidepressants are making any sort of dent in any of this.

00:14:45.000 It's the most medicated generation in history as well.

00:14:51.000 A pandemic and closure.

00:14:53.000 The pandemic of closure in schools likely accelerated teen loneliness and sadness.

00:14:58.000 Found that loneliness spiked in the first year of the pandemic, but it rose significantly for young people.

00:15:04.000 Quote, it's well established that what protects teens from stress is close social relationships.

00:15:09.000 When kids can't go to school to see their friends and peers and mentors, social isolation could lead to sadness and depression, particularly for those predisposed to feeling sad or depressed.

00:15:17.000 But of course, the adults locked down the kids, didn't they?

00:15:20.000 Did they think this through?

00:15:22.000 Well, we were told that we must 15 days to slow the spread.

00:15:26.000 What a lie.

00:15:28.000 This is more important to say clearly, quote, aloneness isn't the same as loneliness, and loneliness isn't the same as depression.

00:15:33.000 But more aloneless, including from heavy smartphone use, and more loneliness, including from school closures, might have combined to push up sadness among teenagers who need socialization to protect from all the pressures of a stressful world.

00:15:47.000 So, what are parents supposed to do about this?

00:15:49.000 Well, first of all, take the phone out of your kids' hands.

00:15:52.000 Do a Sabbath at least one a day, 24 hours without a phone.

00:15:55.000 If you say it's not possible, I don't believe you.

00:15:57.000 It's just that simple.

00:15:58.000 Get the phone out of their hands.

00:16:01.000 Make sure your kids aren't doing alcohol or drugs.

00:16:03.000 Those things are very bad for kids.

00:16:04.000 They're depressants and they're bad regardless of their age, but they're especially bad when they're 15, 16, or 17.

00:16:11.000 Make sure they understand what a meaningful relationship would actually be, meaning a relationship with a man or a woman or what that would be.

00:16:19.000 Make sure that their eyes are being protected with what they're consuming online and that what they value is not rooted in an immediate burst of pleasure, but instead something that takes work over a long period of time.

00:16:35.000 Children that understand that things that are valuable take effort and investment over a long period of time will be much happier than children that believe that things can happen instantaneously.

00:16:45.000 We call that instant gratification, but let's think about it.

00:16:47.000 If you raise a child to believe that things can happen at a push of a button, isn't that what you're reinforcing with a smartphone, by the way?

00:16:54.000 You're reinforcing that dopamine is on demand.

00:16:57.000 Well, guess what?

00:16:58.000 The brain's not supposed to be built that way.

00:17:00.000 Dopamine on demand is not the way that our brain is configured.

00:17:04.000 So by the time you're 15, your serotonin, your capacity to produce seropotonin, your neurotransmitters are fried by the time you're 15.

00:17:15.000 Like, where am I supposed to get my happiness from?

00:17:17.000 I keep on pushing these buttons because their parents who didn't know any better, who didn't listen to our warnings over the last decade, because they didn't want a parent, they wanted to be their kids' friend, their friend, hand them an iPad.

00:17:26.000 And meanwhile, all they're doing is eroding their dopamine every single day.

00:17:30.000 You know, the people that create these applications, the people behind Apple, the people behind Pinterest, the people behind Facebook, they don't even allow their own kids to use these devices.

00:17:38.000 Because they know how dangerous they are.

00:17:38.000 Why?

00:17:40.000 The same reason why the tobacco manufacturers didn't let their teenagers smoke cigarettes in the 1950s and 60s, because they knew the cigarettes actually would hurt their kids.

00:17:49.000 It's a huge problem.

00:17:51.000 So what's a parent to do?

00:17:53.000 Well, that's a good place to start.

00:17:56.000 Good place to start is to challenge your child, especially young men.

00:18:01.000 Give them something worth living for.

00:18:04.000 Tell them that they have to stop doing something in order to get something.

00:18:07.000 I don't see that very often in young people.

00:18:10.000 And finally, reinforce the belief in objective and absolute truth.

00:18:15.000 If you believe in subjective truth and the subjective, let's say, view of existence, they will deduce themselves down to nothingness.

00:18:28.000 I could go at length for Man's Search for Meaning, which is just phenomenal book by Viktor Frankl.

00:18:32.000 And then, yes, every child should have to read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, who was in a concentration camp himself.

00:18:39.000 I think it was Auschwitz. 0.71

00:18:40.000 It might have been Buchenwald or Auschwitz, and came up with the entire school of psychotherapy called Logotherapy. 0.68

00:18:47.000 Prager has a great book called Happiness is a Serious Problem.

00:18:50.000 All these are good books.

00:18:52.000 But it all comes down to this: Do you believe some things are absolutely true?

00:18:55.000 If not, you'll make yourself go mad and you'll descend into a tornado of pleasure.

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00:20:15.000 With us right now is one of my favorite Catholics in the world, Michael Nulls, smart guy, and really came to my defense last week, which I didn't ask for.

00:20:24.000 I was trending on Twitter.

00:20:24.000 I'm not even allowed on Twitter, but I was still trending as a Twitter person.

00:20:28.000 And someone texted me.

00:20:30.000 They said, Charlie, you're trending on Twitter because of your building comment.

00:20:33.000 I was like, whatever.

00:20:34.000 And the great Michael Knowles came and defended me, which was awesome to see.

00:20:38.000 And he's with us now.

00:20:39.000 Michael, welcome back to the program.

00:20:41.000 Charlie, great to be with you, as always.

00:20:44.000 So let's dive into the topic that I was talking about.

00:20:47.000 I said, and I didn't say it as precisely as I said it previously or afterwards, is that population density and also very tall buildings can have an unintended effect, such as creating the tragedy of the commons and a society of renters and not people that own property.

00:21:03.000 In fact, population density is one of the leading predictors of whether or not someone will vote Democrat and the country going liberal.

00:21:10.000 What are your thoughts?

00:21:11.000 I so loved that you made this comment. 1.00

00:21:15.000 I only found it because your publicists over at Media Matters decided to clip this out because they thought that what you said was stupid and crazy and so off the wall. 1.00

00:21:25.000 Here's that lunatic, Charlie Kirk, talking about how big buildings turn people into libs or whatever. 0.98

00:21:32.000 And I thought about it for a second and I realized not only is what you said true, it is one of the most insightful things I've ever heard you say, or really any conservative in modern memory. 0.86

00:21:43.000 You're making a point that we have known since the Tower of Babel.

00:21:48.000 You're making a point that we have known.

00:21:50.000 Certainly Edmund Burke has articulated this.

00:21:53.000 The modern conservative philosophical movement came out of a man who was an aesthetic philosopher, Edmund Burke.

00:22:00.000 We know that place matters, that architecture and art matter.

00:22:04.000 When you're in a place, it's either going to slightly raise your spirits or slightly lower your spirits.

00:22:10.000 We're incarnate beings.

00:22:12.000 That's kind of how we live.

00:22:13.000 And it was a point that Chesterton made really, really well.

00:22:17.000 In one of G.K. Chesterton's detective stories, one of the Father Brown stories, it's called The Hammer of God, I think is the name of this story.

00:22:25.000 Chesterton says that people should be very cautious about praying in the tallest places, about living in the tallest places.

00:22:36.000 Because from the really, really tall places, all the people look like ants.

00:22:40.000 Everything looks small. 0.75

00:22:42.000 The people look like bugs.

00:22:43.000 But when you're down on the bottom, in the valley, on the floor, on your knees, praying, and you look up, only then can you see heaven.

00:22:50.000 Then everything looks really, really big.

00:22:54.000 We could go on about this for hours.

00:22:56.000 This is a crucial conservative insight into human nature and the way that societies form.

00:23:02.000 And so I'm so grateful that those dolts over at Media Matters are such Philistines, so deeply uneducated, that they would popularize a great insight that you had. 1.00

00:23:11.000 Well, I appreciate that.

00:23:13.000 And I mean, so we take a town you're familiar with, Nashville.

00:23:16.000 And so when I visited Nashville last, I'll never forget they had at least 12 construction cranes and massive high-rises going up, right?

00:23:24.000 All to be future renting high-rises.

00:23:27.000 And I was at this event with Senator Bill Haggerty and Senator Marshall Blackburn and Governor Bill Lee, and I have respect for all of them.

00:23:34.000 And I was like so obsessed.

00:23:35.000 I was like, you guys have got to stop allowing these buildings to be built.

00:23:38.000 And they would look at me like, what are you talking about?

00:23:40.000 Like, this is a great thing for Nashville.

00:23:42.000 I was like, of course, it's good for development, good for property values, good for jobs, good for economic progress.

00:23:47.000 But what the unintended consequence they don't realize, and this has happened in Phoenix, Arizona, that Phoenix had height restrictions for a long time, which therefore incentivized, which was the suburban sprawl.

00:23:58.000 The largest suburb in America is Phoenix, Arizona, all the way from Glendale out to Queen Creek.

00:24:03.000 It's like 100 miles almost, not that much.

00:24:05.000 It's like about 65 to 70 miles, if you will, of like suburban sprawl from one side to the other.

00:24:13.000 And then now all of a sudden they're saying, well, because of environmentalist reasons, we have to now go vertical, which is now hyper-liberalizing some of these areas.

00:24:21.000 Why are people not mentioning this, Michael?

00:24:23.000 Well, because it's working for the libs, and so they're going to keep on doing it.

00:24:27.000 And I also think it's because they actually don't really appreciate the philosophical and the aesthetic point here.

00:24:37.000 Just think of it in your own experience.

00:24:40.000 When you are walking around Grand Central in New York, Grand Central is a big building, the big train station, but it's not a skyscraper.

00:24:49.000 It's not a tall building.

00:24:50.000 And crucially, people are not walking around all the top levels of Grand Central.

00:24:54.000 You're on the ground and you look up and it's really big.

00:24:57.000 And you walk into New York, you feel like a king.

00:25:00.000 You feel dignified.

00:25:01.000 This is true of great cathedrals.

00:25:03.000 I love big, big giant cathedrals, but I don't want to be praying at the very tippy top.

00:25:07.000 I don't want a skyscraper cathedral where I'm praying on the 120th floor.

00:25:11.000 I like to look up and raise my eyes up to heaven.

00:25:15.000 And now think about when you've been in some glass and steel, soulless skyscraper.

00:25:22.000 You don't feel good.

00:25:23.000 You don't feel dignified.

00:25:25.000 And I do have this sense that the masters of the universe, the gazillionaire oligarchs who are trying to turn us all into a woke utopia, I suspect they look out of their giant glass towers and they see people below and they think, oh, here's how I can tinker.

00:25:40.000 Here's how I can totally transform society.

00:25:42.000 These little ants so far below me.

00:25:45.000 It's inhuman.

00:25:47.000 It's really dehumanizing for the people down below and also for the people who are viewing themselves in this way.

00:25:55.000 So Michael, I want to get your comments on something we opened the hour with, which I'm sure you can riff on at great length.

00:26:01.000 It's an Atlantic article that's actually pretty helpful, which is rare for them.

00:26:04.000 Why American Teenagers Are So Sad.

00:26:07.000 And it talks about how it's the saddest generation in history. 0.74

00:26:09.000 Majority of young people are dealing with depression, highest suicide rates in history.

00:26:14.000 Why is this happening?

00:26:16.000 There are lots of reasons, and they're all sort of kind of related.

00:26:20.000 But just to tie it in with the conversation we're having, the late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton pointed out that if you want to have a, he's a wonderful, wonderful conservative philosopher.

00:26:32.000 I really recommend people watch his clips on YouTube and read his books.

00:26:35.000 He observed that if you want to have a conservative society, and by definition, that means a more content society, a more comfortable society.

00:26:45.000 When you're a conservative, you often like the way things are.

00:26:50.000 You at least like the tradition.

00:26:52.000 You want to conserve something.

00:26:54.000 And when you're a radical, you know, you want to upend everything, whether it's the buildings or human nature or education or everything in the middle.

00:27:00.000 And Scruton made this point.

00:27:02.000 He said, if you want a more conservative society, you need to give people a place that is lovable.

00:27:07.000 You got to put them in a place where they feel comfortable, where they feel at home.

00:27:11.000 And so this isn't just about the buildings, of course.

00:27:13.000 This is about family.

00:27:15.000 This is about community.

00:27:16.000 This is about settled institutions that we can rely on.

00:27:20.000 Now, neither party even believes in the integrity of our elections.

00:27:23.000 We don't even believe in the basic premises of our institutions of government.

00:27:28.000 And with some good reason, by the way, because they've been very corrupted.

00:27:32.000 We don't believe in basic truths about human nature, as you've mentioned before.

00:27:37.000 Boys are boys and girls are girls.

00:27:39.000 Truth exists.

00:27:40.000 God exists.

00:27:41.000 Really basic stuff.

00:27:42.000 And so, of course, you're going to be unhappy and unsettled.

00:27:45.000 I mean, just at a very basic level, if you tell someone, hey, you have no idea who you really are.

00:27:52.000 All you are is a bag of feelings and chemicals and emotions.

00:27:58.000 And if it feels good, do it, whatever that is, betraying whomever you want.

00:28:02.000 There's no such thing as objective reality. 0.94

00:28:04.000 And when you die, you're going to turn to worm food and take a dirt nap.

00:28:07.000 Do you think that's going to make someone feel happier or less happy?

00:28:10.000 I don't think this is exactly rocket science.

00:28:13.000 Yeah, unfortunately, it's kind of spread into every single corner of American society.

00:28:18.000 So how much of this, Michael, is now incumbent on conservatives to actually go about fixing, right?

00:28:24.000 So it's one thing for us to complain about it, but a lot of conservatives will get very uneasy and nervous and say, hold on.

00:28:30.000 Young people are sad. 0.98

00:28:31.000 Cut corporate taxes.

00:28:33.000 Young people are cut corporate taxes. 0.99

00:28:36.000 There's got to be another way here.

00:28:38.000 What would that be for a conservative running for office or someone in power?

00:28:42.000 It involves building things.

00:28:44.000 It ties right back into the point you made, which is why I love it.

00:28:47.000 Seriously, Charlie, I'm not blowing smoke here.

00:28:49.000 That point you made about the buildings actually is my favorite conservative point I've heard in a long time.

00:28:54.000 And I listen to a whole lot of commentary because we have to build things.

00:28:57.000 It's not enough merely to destroy or to debunk or to take down or to criticize.

00:29:02.000 We actually have to offer an alternative.

00:29:04.000 And this is where conservatives have been really weak for the past 20 or so years.

00:29:09.000 We were excellent before that.

00:29:11.000 Now we're pretty weak.

00:29:12.000 And you see it really in the free speech debate.

00:29:14.000 Right now, when we talk about free speech or often even education, conservatives will say, listen, I don't care what you say, only that you have the right to say it.

00:29:23.000 Or I don't care what you teach, only that you have the right to teach it.

00:29:27.000 Or I don't care what you think, only that you have the right to think it.

00:29:30.000 So they're speaking in these really abstract terms.

00:29:32.000 But the reality is, free speech doesn't mean anything to people who don't have anything to say.

00:29:38.000 This is the thesis of my book, Speechless, which is my only book with words in it.

00:29:42.000 You have to articulate a standard.

00:29:45.000 So take the gender issue because it's so popular right now. 0.88

00:29:48.000 It's so trendy.

00:29:49.000 Very often you'll hear conservatives say, listen, if a man wants to put on a dress and call himself Sally, that's totally fine.

00:29:56.000 That's his right.

00:29:57.000 It's none of my business.

00:29:58.000 Just don't do it to the kids.

00:30:00.000 Just don't do it to the toddlers.

00:30:02.000 Just don't do it to the babies.

00:30:03.000 I mean, they're going to keep moving that further and further down the line.

00:30:06.000 And conservatives need, if we are to actually build something, we need to make substantive claims.

00:30:12.000 We have to say, no, sir, you don't have a right to put on a dress.

00:30:15.000 You don't have a right to call yourself Sally.

00:30:17.000 Sally is a girl's name.

00:30:19.000 You don't have a right to use the girl's bathroom. 1.00

00:30:21.000 You don't have a right to play on the sports team.

00:30:23.000 Not just because you're going to take a trophy away from some pen swimming girl, but because it's wrong and there's truth and we can know about it and we can count on it. 0.79

00:30:32.000 There is a word that the modern left would have put into the Declaration, and that would have been the pursuit of your happiness.

00:30:41.000 And it's not there.

00:30:42.000 It's the pursuit of happiness.

00:30:44.000 It's a big difference.

00:30:46.000 That's right.

00:30:47.000 To promote the general welfare, as we see it.

00:30:51.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:30:52.000 My truth, it's my happiness, okay?

00:30:54.000 If I want to go chemically castrate my nine-year-old, it makes me happy.

00:30:59.000 Well, actually, the founding fathers believed in an absolute standard of virtue that you must look at and study and aim for.

00:31:07.000 It's not the pursuit of your own moral happiness.

00:31:13.000 Hey, everybody, towels just don't seem to dry you anymore.

00:31:16.000 They feel soft and lotiony in stores, but you get them home and they don't absorb.

00:31:20.000 Well, Mike Lundell at MyPillow found out that around 2006, towels changed forever.

00:31:25.000 They started importing them and adding softeners and other things to the cotton that made them feel good, but they didn't work.

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00:31:32.000 They have proprietary technology to create towels that feel soft but actually work.

00:31:36.000 They are all made with USA cotton, and they come with a MyPillow 60-day money-back guarantee.

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00:31:45.000 They're soft yet absorbent.

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00:31:50.000 Just go to mypillow.com and click on the new radio listener specials and get deep discounts on all my pillow products, including the towels.

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00:32:09.000 Michael, I don't know what your thoughts are on this.

00:32:11.000 What's your take on Elon Musk's bid to take over Twitter?

00:32:15.000 I absolutely love it, as do most conservatives, I think.

00:32:19.000 And I hope that it works.

00:32:21.000 I really hope that it works.

00:32:23.000 I want anything that will bring our extremely corrupt ruling class down a few pegs, I'm in favor of just about. 0.97

00:32:31.000 But even if it doesn't work, even if the Twitter board is able to fend off the hostile takeover, Musk has already succeeded at one very important thing, which is that he has exposed the depth of the corruption in Twitter and I think broadly in our ruling class.

00:32:47.000 The fact that the Twitter board of directors is willing to tank the value of their stock to actually harm the shareholders just to stop Elon Musk from letting Charlie Kirk tweet again and letting the Babylon bee tweet again really shows you how desperate they are.

00:33:03.000 Two, the fact that now that Jack Dorsey is leaving Twitter, the members of the Twitter Board of Directors actually don't own very much stock at all of Twitter.

00:33:12.000 And one, it opens them up to legal liabilities if the shareholders want to sue the board of directors.

00:33:17.000 But two, it shows you that these people don't really care about the product.

00:33:21.000 They certainly don't really use the product.

00:33:23.000 They're just trying to control what we say.

00:33:25.000 And then three, you've got the institutional investors here.

00:33:29.000 Until Musk tried to take over Twitter, it actually never occurred to me, even me, I'm pretty plugged into all this stuff.

00:33:35.000 It never occurred to me to ask who owns Twitter.

00:33:38.000 Oh, BlackRock owns Twitter.

00:33:41.000 Oh, State Street?

00:33:42.000 Oh, Saudi Arabia owns Twitter?

00:33:45.000 That's kind of weird.

00:33:46.000 And so you're looking at major institutional investors in the case of something like a BlackRock that is pushing very woke policies on America's corporations.

00:33:55.000 It's called ESG, Environmental, Social, and Governments Policies.

00:33:59.000 So these investors are wielding your money.

00:34:02.000 They're wielding your retirement money to push and pressure these CEOs to promote leftist policies.

00:34:09.000 And then you've got Saudi Arabia.

00:34:11.000 Well, why is Saudi Arabia here so worried about an Elon Musk takeover?

00:34:15.000 Maybe it's because they've got vested political interests in the way that information is spread throughout the U.S.

00:34:20.000 This is not merely a question of technology or private enterprise.

00:34:25.000 We live in a republic.

00:34:27.000 At least we used to.

00:34:28.000 We're supposed to live in a republic.

00:34:29.000 In a republic, speech is not just one aspect of the political order. 0.98

00:34:34.000 It's the whole damn thing. 0.95

00:34:35.000 That's how we govern each other. 0.99

00:34:37.000 We speak to one another, we debate, we persuade one another.

00:34:40.000 So if you have a small number of oligarchs controlling 90% plus of speech in America, and don't forget, Twitter is the smallest one of all of these big tech platforms, then functionally speaking, we no longer live in a republic, but something more akin to an oligarchy.

00:34:55.000 Yeah, and that's what's so ironic about this, right?

00:34:58.000 Is that the richest person coming in to buy a company would actually be closest to an oligarchy, but it's less like a hostile takeover, more like a rescue mission and a liberation.

00:35:06.000 And so it's, and this is what I love about it, is that I don't care if it, I don't like what's happening.

00:35:12.000 I care more about whether or not we are going to win or not.

00:35:15.000 Closing thought here, Michael.

00:35:17.000 Closing thought, I am cheering Musk on.

00:35:20.000 We're talking about how important it is for free speech.

00:35:23.000 We're talking about how important it is for conservatives, not just Charlie Kirk, not just the Babylon B, Donald Trump.

00:35:28.000 They booted him out of the public square when he was the duly elected sitting president.

00:35:31.000 So it's a really important matter.

00:35:33.000 But just as one final add-on, I think it's really important that Twitter finally pursue some diversity and inclusion and equity.

00:35:41.000 I think if Twitter were being run by a notable African American such as Elon Musk, that would just be the cherry on top of the delicious Sunday of this takeover. 0.99

00:35:51.000 Diversity, equity, inclusion.

00:35:52.000 I think they need ideological diversity, and they need to have, I think, Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter on the board of Twitter.

00:36:00.000 Michael Knowles, you're the best.

00:36:02.000 Subscribe to his podcast.

00:36:03.000 Buy his book.

00:36:04.000 The one that has words in it.

00:36:05.000 The one that doesn't is also equally hilarious.

00:36:07.000 Reasonable for Democrats.

00:36:08.000 New York Times bestseller, and there's no words in it.

00:36:11.000 I'm still salty and bitter.

00:36:12.000 I didn't think of that idea first.

00:36:14.000 Michael Knowles, thank you so much.

00:36:15.000 God bless you.

00:36:16.000 Great to be with you always, Charlie.

00:36:17.000 Thanks.

00:36:18.000 Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

00:36:20.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:22.000 And subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast and get involved with Turning Point USA Today.

00:36:26.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:36:27.000 God bless.

00:36:31.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 19, 2022

Highest Level of Teenage Sadness EVER with Michael Knowles

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