Is Lord of the Rings actually homoerotic? And why does Blake love Reddy 40? Subscribe to our new podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show: A THINGcrime Podcast, and become a member at charliekirk.show.
00:00:42.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. 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.
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00:02:51.000Anyway, he's also very ghastly looking because he famously would be covered in a million gazillion tattoos.
00:02:59.000He was basically the prototypical modern millennial by being tatted up from neck to ankle.
00:03:06.000And a kind of strange story to have happen in the first three weeks of the Trump administration is he went and he got all or almost all of his tattoos removed.
00:03:18.000Which, I don't know if you guys are aware, because I don't think any of us here have tattoos, but it's actually a pretty involved process to do this.
00:03:25.000He apparently had to spend about $250,000, and they basically have to burn it off.
00:03:32.000Like, they systematically burn your skin, and then it has to grow back.
00:03:36.000So, this is a pretty intense thing for him to do, but he actually did burn it off and, you know, did a kind of gay-looking photo shoot there.
00:03:48.000What we're dwelling upon is, this is happening in the first month of the Trump administration, and it's also happening while we're having all of the DEI rollbacks.
00:04:01.000We've moved on from just Walmart and Target to Disney is canceling DEI. Goldman Sachs, a major investment bank, they're canceling their DEI. Is there a vibe shift, and can we detect it from such things?
00:05:16.000But then he is, to Blake's point, he's probably the most surprising person that you would see reform his life in such a way.
00:05:25.000So I don't know if he had some really good alpha dad and he's kind of reconnecting with that energy that he, you know, obviously with his dad's tragic death in 9-11 kind of fell away from it and he just had a really long rebellious period.
00:07:10.000But again, there's a lot of things in the Old Testament that we don't necessarily bring forward to the New Testament, like women's head coverings.
00:07:52.000I actually think this is part of the swing back with Gen Z.
00:07:55.000Gen Z is a lot less edgy about this stuff.
00:07:58.000I kind of, I've always equated to people.
00:08:01.000The millennial thing is kind of like hippie.
00:08:03.000Is Gen Z less edgy or, If someone told me Gen Z can't get tattoos because they're so scared of needles because they're scared of everything so they can't handle the tattoo process I would probably believe them because it seems like Gen Z is scared of its own shadow.
00:08:21.000Like those phone apps, you know, that can track people?
00:08:24.000I think you can agree, like an older millennial kid would be angry if their parent was, you know, putting a tracker on their phone to know exactly where they were at all times.
00:08:33.000Apparently it's the opposite now, where Zoomers are uncomfortable, Gen Zers are uncomfortable, if they can't have the app on their phone so their parents know where they are at all times.
00:09:29.000Fisherman85 says he got a tattoo when he was 23. He was drunk and he had $50 burning a hole in his pocket.
00:09:36.000LOL. I think that does accurately represent the thought process that goes into permanently marking your body.
00:09:43.000Much of the time, like, yeah, I'm definitely going to want this, like, the name of this girl I've been dating for two weeks on my skin forever.
00:09:54.000I actually have a good story about this.
00:09:55.000We had staff leading into 2020. They all went out one night, and they got inside their lip tattoos that said MAGA. And then, obviously, we know what happened in 2020, so we had no choice but to spend four years of fighting back because their tattoos...
00:10:13.000And they were told that those tattoos would fade on their inside of their lip.
00:16:10.000The story itself is not necessarily homoerotic, but there's, like, gazes that are, like, half a second, two seconds too long, and then, like, the whole, like, Sam, I'm so glad I have you with me.
00:16:23.000It's, like, completely unnecessary extra lines of dialogue.
00:16:26.000I'm sorry, I, like, I rewatched it, and it's such a good movie, and it's so amazing, but if you kind of go back to watch a movie 20 years ago through modern, ultra, like, let's just say, Gay lens of film.
00:16:49.000This reminds me of what happened with Abraham Lincoln, right?
00:16:54.000So he had this really close friendship with a guy named Joshua Fry Speed.
00:16:58.000And this is before he was president, like well before.
00:17:01.000I sent the old-timey image of Joshua Fryspeed.
00:17:05.000But there was, in 1926, a biography of Lincoln by Carl Sandburg alluded to the early relationship Lincoln and his friend Joshua Fryspeed as having a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets.
00:17:20.000And that kind of reminds me of a really good description of Frodo and Stanwise.
00:19:22.000But like this entire feminization of males, I think the feminization of males in general has made it impossible for guys to have like those old school, you know, guy best friends because people look at you and question if you're gay.
00:19:38.000So when you create a world in which that's so prevalent, I think it's harder to be.
00:19:46.000Actually, I've talked about this recently with friends.
00:19:49.000It's actually hard in general for men to get together and do anything.
00:19:52.000Kind of the old school days, it was like men used to get together and do bowling leagues and poker nights and da-da-da-da.
00:19:57.000Those things happen, but I don't think they're nearly as prevalent as they were many years ago.
00:20:05.000And I think this is all part and parcel to, again, Hollywood, everything, just pushing the gay agenda, which may or may not have started with Lord of the Rings.
00:20:51.000That's what I think when I think of Italy.
00:20:52.000All I'm saying is through a 2025 lens, you watch the movie 20 years later, and it's just you can't help but think because we look at all of that stuff as homoerotic and gay.
00:21:08.000Thanks for ruining a childhood favorite, Tyler.
00:22:02.000He died of a condition not associated with that.
00:22:06.000Well, I'm just telling you what I saw.
00:22:08.000And men in Italy walked down the street together holding each other's hand.
00:22:11.000And if you watch the movie closely, near the beginning at Bilbo Baggins' 110th or 111th birthday, Sam was really nervous to go up and talk to the ladies or the woman, so he needed like an extra thing of beer and had to be thrown into it.
00:23:46.000The Godfather, it was really kind of like, it wasn't really the five families, it was kind of like a gay conclave that was running inner Italian mafia.
00:23:55.000You're gonna be like, the good, the bad, and the ugly, gay.
00:25:12.000I googled the gayest movies that aren't explicitly gay and also on there is Wizard of Oz.
00:25:19.000That's a different one where whether that movie is gay or not, gay people are obsessed with Wizard of Oz because gay men love Judy Garland, I guess.
00:26:54.000I have not actually seen the Fight Club movie.
00:26:56.000I think I'm the only person born in my year to have not seen it.
00:26:59.000That's a perfect example of a movie that was directed at men, that men, like, boys were supposed to like, that had severe gay undertones, for sure.
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00:29:31.000France, the French Assembly, has just passed a bill.
00:29:35.000And it is going to ban repeat incivilities on public transport.
00:29:41.000And so they're cracking down on uncivil behavior on the nation's buses and trains, which include, as possible examples, listening to music without using headphones, carrying on a phone conversation on speakerphone rather than sticking it up to your ear so people can't hear the other end of it.
00:30:06.000I think in one version they're even suggesting it could just ban having a phone conversation if you're on the train rather than on a platform or something.
00:30:16.000Also, they're going to ban putting your feet onto the seat opposite you when you have a four-pack like that.
00:30:23.000And they're also going to ban handing out tracks to people on the subway platform, like the Jehovah's Witnesses manuals and stuff.
00:30:31.000And so France is cracking down on annoying behavior on the train.
00:30:38.000So, do we have strong thoughts about this, everybody?
00:30:41.000Does America need the authoritarian crackdown on people listening to music without headphones?
00:31:00.000I'm not saying that the government should be involved in it, which public transport makes it a bigger issue, right?
00:31:07.000But I will tell you that I am very in favor of getting rid of, like, people listening to speakers or, you know, movies without headphones on planes, which is a private company.
00:31:18.000So I have run into this a lot, where people just start talking on phones and they start playing clips from social media and I'll be sitting right next to them and I'm just like, what's happening?
00:33:03.000I was in D.C. I would actually take the public bus up to Union Station.
00:33:09.000I would take it to the Pentagon and then get on the train.
00:33:13.000And the answer for why it would affect you even if you have headphones is, Charlie, you would be amazed at how loud some people play music or carry on their phone conversations on their phone.
00:33:23.000So if you really want to be honest, I think this is a real thing.
00:33:28.000The reason it might be a good idea to actually have a government...
00:33:32.000To be allowed to crack down on something like that is someone who listens very loudly to music on their phone or on some other device on a bus on a train is actually a probably big red flashing warning sign that they have some antisocial tendency that's going to explode.
00:33:59.000It's like broken windows theory applied to the guy who's going to shove someone in front of a subway train.
00:34:04.000There are people who will play loud music on a subway, basically, so it's like they're waiting for someone to ask them to turn it down so they can snap at them.
00:34:15.000Or it's a way of asserting dominance over other people by making things unpleasant for them.
00:34:23.000For Charlie's case, I think if you're outdoors, if you're walking on the sidewalk...
00:34:27.000I don't think that matters as much because, I mean, you can have a literal outdoor concert in the park.
00:35:34.000So if you're a couple on a plane, because I've run into this with my wife, where one of us has to put one headphone in, and the other puts the other headphone in, so you can both watch the same thing as you're sitting next to each other on a flight.
00:35:45.000Now Apple lets you connect two different Bluetooth...
00:36:00.000If you've got a 90-10 issue, that 90% of normal Americans would agree that it's extraordinarily rude to watch a phone on full volume in the plane while people are trying to sleep or have conversations or whatever, you should be able to regulate that.
00:36:17.000If you're not going to do that, if they're free to do that and we don't pass the law, then we should be free to approach that person and if it gets violent, to have no liability on us.
00:36:34.000I like LucasMP47 who says, Riding the bus, I loved it when people had private phone conversations on speakerphone.
00:36:41.000I would chime in and make them very uncomfortable.
00:36:45.000I'm going to tell you, listen, I get so annoyed because when I get on a plane, I like to sleep the entire time.
00:36:53.000I try to go to sleep before it takes off and wake up when literally the plane's landing.
00:36:58.000That's the best way to fly because I hate just sitting there amongst myself because I'm a pacer and I need to walk around and talk and do all that stuff.
00:37:07.000It is so annoying when people are loud in any kind of way.
00:37:20.000I've been in this situation one time where literally this woman who probably hadn't bathed in it seemed like weeks sat down next to me with a cat that was in a bag that was right next to me.
00:37:35.000They literally sat her right next to me and I thought I was going to die.
00:37:57.000I couldn't tell if it was the cat or the woman or a combination of both, but I'm telling you, it was like pig pen, like you could almost see it in the air.
00:38:05.000And to me, that's just like, and that's the same conversation that they were talking about.
00:38:09.000People are overweight, they're splitting over, spilling over.
00:38:11.000We had the other ones with feet, people like putting their bare feet out.
00:39:39.000We talk about this, like, you know, with bullying, how, like, you know, we argued back and forth whether or not bullying had some upsides because it's become such a feminized, like, weak culture.
00:39:49.000Like, I feel like this person needs to be bullied.
00:39:52.000This person, like, with the shaving their foot on the plane obviously has had a lack of bullying in their life.
00:40:06.000If you, when you can bully someone doing something, you're able to do through sheer social sanction.
00:40:13.000You're able to do something through sheer social sanction instead of needing a law to do it.
00:40:16.000So it's less punitive than when you need the state to come in.
00:40:20.000Wait, you were just arguing with me, Blake.
00:40:23.000I put in the chat like a few weeks ago, I said that part of the reason why society's so screwed up is because we've targeted bullying.
00:40:30.000No, but people have like a bad warped idea of what a bully is because they watch too many movies.
00:40:34.000And so they just watch things where they think a bully is like a guy who would just stuff someone in a locker and then they decided that's based and we need more of it.
00:40:46.000Punishment of genuinely bad behavior instead of what we have now, which is social punishment of actually pro-social behavior.
00:40:52.000Nowadays, you mainly get bullied if you call the cops on someone who...
00:40:56.000You would get bullied and lose your job if you tried to argue against someone doing that, at least if they fell into one of 18 discrete protected categories on the lib hierarchy.
00:41:07.000By the way, while we're doing thought crimes related to airports, you know what we really need a jihad against?
00:41:19.000So a ton of airports will basically, if you're not mobile or not, you know, limited mobility, they'll basically, they'll provide you a wheelchair and they'll wheel you priority through security and you can get on your own plane early as like a priority access.
00:41:53.000You'll see two generations of a family all in the freaking wheelchairs.
00:41:58.000No, and every dog you see on the airplane, too, is not like a service dog.
00:42:02.000It's just somebody who's like, I'm going to call it a service dog, and I got my service license or whatever you have to do, certification.
00:42:10.000I can't stand that because I... It's all a con because everybody's too...
00:42:15.000This is why I think we need to bring back bullying and social policing and all the things because there was a time and place where some a-hole tried to bring their dog on a plane that like...
00:42:27.000The guy would have looked over to the dog and been like, sorry, I'm not going to put up with that.
00:42:33.000Now, listen, I like dogs as much as the next guy, but it's just gotten out of hand.
00:43:48.000The subways, I think, are more packed, and I think they have more rules in the big cities.
00:43:54.000The real issue that most of our listeners probably have to encounter are the useless light rail that they've been putting in all these cities.
00:44:02.000They have trolleys and light rails that nobody uses except for homeless people.
00:45:14.000I remember that from movies and stuff.
00:45:17.000Before we forget it, we have a special question for Charlie if he has any inside information.
00:45:22.000Ruron donated $10 and asked, when do you think Brent Bozell will be confirmed by the Senate so Carrie Lake can finally be confirmed as director of Voice of America?
00:45:31.000I don't know if we have any inside lore on that.
00:45:35.000I definitely know Democrats have decided...
00:46:41.000What do you think the proper solution is for public transit?
00:46:45.000So I think you agree on the plane, but what do you think about public transit and headphone listening, dogs, all the different ways people can game it?
00:49:02.000I can't remember if we did a thought crime on this or not, but typically and traditionally, the dogma is that mass deregulation raises the quality.
00:49:15.000Ted Kennedy led a mass deregulation crusade of the airlines in the 1980s, and it resulted in worse air travel, more delays, a worse experience.
00:49:31.000That's the thing, is that there was kind of an advent of cheaper airfare, and now that window has closed through mass consolidation and mass regulation.
00:49:39.000And look, that's probably Pan Am, which my grandfather actually helped run Pan Am way back in the day.
00:49:44.000And look, I mean, that was before Teddy Kennedy decided to just wreck it all.
00:49:51.000And if you ask anybody over the age of 60, do they look fondly back on how airfare used to be?
00:51:27.000No, but Charlie's point is really good because the consolidation, the monopolization that came through deregulation, and this is the same with the big banks, has created an inferior product.
00:51:38.000When you have more airlines, you can have Blake's option.
00:53:02.000People used to, and now you go on airlines, and it's like you're sitting next to somebody in their frickin' PJs, watching a phone with the speaker on, no headphones, and they smell, and they got wheeled in on a wheelchair that they didn't need.
00:53:14.000I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous.
00:53:16.000Like, the whole experience is ridiculous.
00:53:19.000And so, like, you know, food sucks, and you had an expired Diet Coke.
00:53:25.000And you get coffee that is indistinguishable from jet fuel, and you might get peanuts.
00:53:31.000And, like, my favorite, I mean, again, I have millions of miles of flying, right?
00:53:35.000Million mile club in America, two million miles in America, a million with United, a million with Delta.
00:53:39.000And I always loved when I was flying American where they would act as if, Mr. Kirk, thank you so much for being concierge key and for being a two million mile flyer.
00:55:08.000Like, if you're stuck on a plane even for four or five hours and they're serving you, like, that dog food that they serve you now, it is terrible.
00:56:52.000Because you fly on these other European airlines or, you know, fly LL and all of a sudden they have, like, pride and they love their airline.
00:58:27.000Charlie, if you don't think it's amazing...
00:58:31.000If you're flying Spirit, you might leave that week.
00:58:34.000Charlie, if you don't think it's amazing that I can get into an aluminum tube, accelerate it to 700 miles an hour, or whatever they go, 500 miles an hour, and go to Dallas and do it all again to come back...
01:00:45.000and you go from riding you know the beautiful airport in qatar in doha that's literally like backlit marble counters when they check your passport to america and it's like literally they like give you the bird when you walk on and like put out a cigarette that is Why are you here?
01:01:07.000First class, like, they're still pretty ground.
01:01:09.000Yeah, but you're not stuck in one place seated the whole time.
01:01:13.000Listen, I have not heard an idea like this much in a long time.
01:01:17.000We need to make American air travel great again.
01:01:26.000The amount of flights that I've flown in the last year that have been delayed because of mechanical failure or because of some light went on and they've got to process the paperwork and they've got to bring so-and-so in from this other outside hangar, and then it's like two and a half hours later, you're sitting there waiting for the flight to take off, and you don't even know if it's going to take off, and you're like wrestling with do I try and book on another airline?
01:02:19.000I mean, the most recent foreign flight I think I took was on Korean Air.
01:02:24.000And these women were, like, on top of it.
01:02:26.000They were making sure you had everything you needed, when you needed it.
01:02:29.000I mean, it was a little bit robotic, but it was impressive.
01:02:32.000And American Airlines or Delta or whatever's flying abroad, we need to be better representations of the American culture.
01:02:39.000Well, that's the problem, too, is everyone internationally already thinks we're slobs and disgusting, and then they fly on United or American, and then they're like, oh yeah, this is exactly what I expect.
01:02:54.000I'm always kind of embarrassed when I get to an American airport after international travel, because I'm like, if I showed up here, if I spent all that money to come to California in my head...
01:03:06.000And I show up to LAX, which is literally a third world country.
01:03:39.000And then you step outside, like in California, for example, and that's their first impression of America is the ghetto of California, which is disgusting.
01:04:04.000You know, this whole renaissance on architecture, why not also focus on air travel?
01:04:08.000Well, we have to demand change when we have power.
01:04:13.000And I'm just saying, vibe shift starts with us.
01:04:16.000I'll never forget, Charlie, you remember when Tucker did this, when he went to Hungary?
01:04:20.000And he was like, the architecture was so beautiful.
01:04:23.000And that started this, I would say, kind of renaissance within conservative intellectual circles saying, yeah, you know what, you're right.
01:04:30.000We need to get our architecture game back on.
01:04:32.000And I think this is going to filter through where we demand excellence out of our own countrymen and our own industries again.
01:04:42.000Alright, we've got about ten minutes here.
01:04:44.000Do you want to, Blake, tell us why America's super healthy?
01:04:47.000What we're going to do is, I think our fun conversation could be, so RFK Jr. got through today.
01:04:54.000He's now HHS Secretary, so I thought we could discuss what should our actual top priorities be?
01:05:01.000For making America healthy again, because I thought that could spark a good debate, because I'm always in disagreement with everyone about what our health issues are.
01:05:08.000And to commemorate RFK getting confirmed, maybe you've seen me waving this Hiroshima carp mug around, I brought in, over the holidays...
01:05:21.000Anyway, they made a Shirley Temple-flavored 7-Up variety.
01:05:27.000And there is no way that this soda is going to be legal under RFK's regime because I think the second most common ingredient in it is Red 40. So I'm going to crack this one open to celebrate it.
01:07:10.000So, Blake, why don't you uninterruptedly tell us why America is so sick, so lethargic, so suicidal, so overweight, so anxious, so depressed?
01:07:19.000You don't think it's any of the Maha stuff.
01:07:21.000So the burden is on you because the data is objective.
01:09:04.000A lot of the stuff that people blame on causing autism, for example, it doesn't necessarily make sense because it should be like a light switch where we did this and then it doubled overnight.
01:09:13.000Whereas stuff like allergies, stuff like autism, it's that it's just going up every single year on a pretty linear basis.
01:09:20.000And for something like that to be happening, I think you need some sort of constant environmental factor that's shoving itself in.
01:09:28.000And so it's probably not like seed oils where it's just...
01:09:32.000Or, you know, this or that shot that people have decided is to blame.
01:09:39.000I think the best use of RFK is if we were to just go all out on let's fund as much study of this as we possibly can.
01:09:48.000Let's produce as much science as we possibly can.
01:09:51.000As opposed to what I think a lot of people are tempted to do where they basically want to impulsively ban certain things or People want money for this or that thing.
01:10:03.000There are people who are going to want to use Maha to just mean you can use Medicare or Medicaid to pay for homeopathic medicine.
01:11:23.000All the health experts acquitted themselves very badly for the most part.
01:11:28.000And some people have reacted to that by going, they lied to us about that, so they're lying about everything, and I don't trust the doctors.
01:11:36.000The only person I can trust is, you know, this weird guy I found on the internet, and all of that.
01:11:44.000I would encourage people to be more skeptical of that than they often are because I think it can lead to unfortunate outcomes.
01:12:00.000They actually are not way less active today than they were 20 years ago, yet they are fatter than they were 20 years ago.
01:12:07.000They are more depressed than they were 20 years ago.
01:12:09.000They are exhibiting weird medical problems.
01:12:13.000We were looking at that article just today that the rate of kind of precocious cancers, people getting cancer under 50 years old, went way, way up between 1990 and 2019. And if you're looking, what's the obvious change that happens between 1990 and 2019?
01:12:30.000I'm not sure there is one, and people are just freaking out about it, and I think they're right to do that, but I think the correct focus should be increase our level of knowledge as much as possible, as opposed to playing whack-a-mole where we decide, oh, actually, Red 40 is the thing that's going to kill all of us, so ban it immediately.
01:12:49.000I mean, if they want to, I'm sure they will, but I don't think it's going to be the kill shot that makes us all healthy.