The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1798 - Michael Shellenberger

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:12.000 And we're up with the future governor of California, Michael Shelby.

00:00:16.000 Hello, Michael.

00:00:16.000 Thanks for having me back, Joe.

00:00:18.000 Nice to see you.

00:00:19.000 Hey, I said that I wasn't going to do any more political podcasts, but I had already booked this one. 0.98

00:00:24.000 So, for people like, what the fuck, man? 0.98

00:00:27.000 But you're not just a political person. 0.99

00:00:30.000 You know, your book, San Francisco, what would you call that?

00:00:33.000 That's a socio-political book.

00:00:36.000 Yeah.

00:00:36.000 That's a work of journalism.

00:00:38.000 Yeah.

00:00:38.000 Commercial nonfiction, for sure.

00:00:41.000 And a way for people to understand what can happen when bad policies get in the way of a city and turn it sideways, which is what has happened to San Francisco.

00:00:53.000 Yeah, pathological altruism.

00:00:55.000 I like that word.

00:00:57.000 Yeah.

00:00:57.000 I like that expression.

00:00:58.000 It's not mine.

00:00:58.000 I mean, I just, you know, it's synthesized a bunch of other people's stuff.

00:01:01.000 But, I mean, I considered whether it was Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

00:01:05.000 Why so?

00:01:07.000 Well, so Munchausen syndrome by proxy, of course, is when, like, a parent deliberately poisons her child in order to be able to treat the child for illness.

00:01:16.000 Yeah.

00:01:16.000 So we have...

00:01:17.000 Is it just children?

00:01:19.000 It's like a caretaker, right?

00:01:20.000 Yeah, I guess it could be like a nurse and a patient.

00:01:23.000 But we – one of the things since I've seen you last, a few things have happened.

00:01:27.000 I discovered – I was the first one to report that we have a supervised drug use site now illegal in San Francisco's United Nations Plaza where people are using fentanyl and meth under city supervision.

00:01:42.000 So I guess the difference is that, you know, Monk has a syndrome-like proxy.

00:01:46.000 The adult or the caregiver is poisoning the person directly.

00:01:51.000 In this case, people are poisoning themselves in front of the supposed caregivers and the caregivers are there to monitor it.

00:01:57.000 When they do something like that, do they have any proposal or any sort of protocol these people can follow to get off the drugs?

00:02:06.000 They call it radical compassion.

00:02:09.000 This is, you know, there's a chapter on my book called Love Bombing, but it's basically, this is the big blind spot for progressives, is that they just can't conceive that being radically compassionate could cause harm.

00:02:22.000 And radical compassion, the idea is you're going to accept these people for who they are, the fact they're drug users, and you're going to give them a comfortable, safe place in order to do their drugs.

00:02:34.000 Yeah, radical.

00:02:35.000 Sorry, and by the way, it's radical hospitality is what they call it.

00:02:40.000 Hospitality.

00:02:41.000 When you're attaching the word radical to anything, you should be cautious.

00:02:45.000 Yeah, I mean, the idea is, so there's supposedly this was the, they called this, so in December, we whipped up a lot of concern, you know, in California, in San Francisco, for what was happening in San Francisco, the open air drug markets, the overdose deaths, which were almost triple the COVID deaths in 2020. And the mayor announced a crackdown in December.

00:03:07.000 She said she was going to put an end to all the bullshit. 0.99

00:03:09.000 That was literally a word she used. 0.99

00:03:11.000 And she said she was going to use tough love, which is what we want, tough love.

00:03:15.000 So what do you think lit the fire under her?

00:03:18.000 Well, I think the book helped a lot.

00:03:19.000 San Francisco, I'll take some amount of credit for it.

00:03:21.000 It was national media attention.

00:03:23.000 I think it's bad for tourism.

00:03:25.000 People don't want to bring their families to San Francisco.

00:03:27.000 Is that the worst city in terms of, like, the way things have eroded due to extreme progressive ideology?

00:03:34.000 Honestly, I think the book is San Francisco because, and people are always like, you should write that book about, you know, Seattle.

00:03:40.000 And it's like, no, no, it's...

00:03:42.000 It's the same thing in all these places, but San Francisco refers also to compassion sickness.

00:03:49.000 St. Francis is the saint of compassion.

00:03:54.000 You go too far and you get pathological altruism, but the worst city by far is Los Angeles.

00:04:00.000 There's no doubt about it. 0.97

00:04:01.000 Skid Row is just insane.

00:04:06.000 I mean, I don't even know.

00:04:06.000 It's like visiting hell.

00:04:09.000 It's hard for people to believe if they haven't actually visited, and I'm saying this as someone who hasn't visited it in more than 15 years.

00:04:17.000 But 15 years ago, it was insane.

00:04:20.000 And Sagar, Sagar and Jetty from Breaking Points, he was just there.

00:04:24.000 And he told me, you can't believe it.

00:04:27.000 You can't believe it's real.

00:04:29.000 No, it's horrible.

00:04:30.000 I'm a father of a 16-year-old girl, and you see young women, you see teenagers prostituting themselves in psychotic states, clearly not in control of their minds or their bodies.

00:04:47.000 Why do we allow this?

00:04:48.000 This is a complete breakdown of civilization.

00:04:51.000 It's not civilized.

00:04:52.000 It's barbarism.

00:04:53.000 It's depravity.

00:04:55.000 It's also rarely discussed when they bring up the key problems in LA. They bring up homelessness, but they don't bring up literally the epicenter of homelessness in the United States, which is inside downtown LA. It's a crazy place.

00:05:09.000 We're talking about it, but I think it defies description.

00:05:15.000 I think you have to experience it.

00:05:17.000 And again, I'm talking about the way I saw it 15 years ago.

00:05:21.000 I think if you saw it today, it probably measures worse, right?

00:05:26.000 Absolutely.

00:05:27.000 I mean, one thing that happened since I saw you last, because I was here in October, and the New York Times trashed my book, as we would have expected.

00:05:36.000 One of the most crazy things they said is they said that I didn't interview any homeless people.

00:05:42.000 Which is like bonkers.

00:05:44.000 I interviewed hundreds of homeless people.

00:05:46.000 So I didn't even know how to respond to that because it's just so bizarre.

00:05:49.000 So finally I was like, alright, that's how you guys want to roll.

00:05:52.000 So I started putting up videos.

00:05:54.000 I started recording videos of folks on the street.

00:05:58.000 Just being really, really honest.

00:06:00.000 And it didn't take much at all.

00:06:03.000 The first people I interviewed, I was like, why are you here?

00:06:05.000 I'm addicted to fentanyl and meth.

00:06:08.000 And where are you from?

00:06:10.000 Louisiana, Texas.

00:06:12.000 Because one of the mythologies is that everyone's just local and they couldn't afford their rent.

00:06:15.000 And so then they decided to live in a tent on the sidewalk. 0.92

00:06:18.000 It's ridiculous.

00:06:20.000 I've never met anybody that had that story. 1.00

00:06:22.000 It's addiction and mental illness, full stop.

00:06:24.000 Yeah.

00:06:26.000 And have they moved to Los Angeles specifically because it's easy to exist there like that?

00:06:31.000 That's so ambitious.

00:06:34.000 It's hard for people to move out of state, right?

00:06:37.000 It's hard to move out of state for a job.

00:06:39.000 Imagine moving out of state for an addiction.

00:06:42.000 It's actually a pretty classic story.

00:06:44.000 I mean, it's slightly different stories that you hear in San Francisco and L.A. A lot of people show up in L.A. kind of Mulholland Drive style.

00:06:51.000 You know, I'm going to try to make it here as an actor in Hollywood or whatever.

00:06:54.000 And then they, you know, end up depressed, taking drugs, end up in Skid Row.

00:06:59.000 San Francisco, people definitely go to San Francisco to service their addiction.

00:07:03.000 And they tell you that.

00:07:04.000 They come from Ohio or Kentucky or, you know, wherever.

00:07:08.000 So I just started filming.

00:07:09.000 I started interviewing people on the street with my iPhone and posting them on Twitter and they would go viral right away.

00:07:15.000 I interviewed a guy that one of them went viral.

00:07:19.000 A guy told me he had sold fentanyl to a 15 year old.

00:07:22.000 And I was like, why are you here? 0.94

00:07:23.000 And he's like, because they make it pretty fucking easy to be homeless here, man.

00:07:27.000 Yeah, I've seen quite a few interviews like that where they describe how much money they get per month and why would they move. 0.84

00:07:33.000 Right, yeah.

00:07:34.000 That was a lot of my stuff.

00:07:35.000 That was my elaborate response to the Times review. 0.96

00:07:40.000 The Times has gotten silly.

00:07:42.000 I mean, listen, I'm a fan of the New York Times. 0.81

00:07:44.000 I still subscribe to the New York Times.

00:07:46.000 I still think it's one of the greatest papers.

00:07:48.000 If you just look at their history alone, it's one of the greatest newspapers in the history of the world.

00:07:53.000 But there's so many blind spots.

00:07:57.000 Candace Owen, who has many blind spots of her own, was talking about how corrupt Ukraine is. 1.00

00:08:02.000 So the New York Times contacts Candace Owens and says, what are you basing this on?

00:08:08.000 Why are you saying that Ukraine is corrupt?

00:08:13.000 And she said... 1.00

00:08:15.000 How about articles from your own fucking newspaper? 1.00

00:08:17.000 And she sends them all these links that specifically talk about how corrupt Ukraine is. 0.99

00:08:22.000 But these are from 2017, 2018, whatever. 0.99

00:08:26.000 But it's like, you guys didn't even look through your own fucking archives before you're trying to dunk on someone? 0.98

00:08:31.000 Like, your own newspaper talked extensively about corruption in Ukraine. 0.98

00:08:37.000 You know, it's super complicated because obviously there's bigger problems than the corruption in Ukraine.

00:08:45.000 It's, you know, a giant superpower is trying to take over another country and it's put the whole world on notice and we're all terrified of World War III. But still, you guys are supposed to be the New York fucking Times. 0.95

00:08:57.000 Like, you gotta know whether or not you wrote articles about something that you're criticizing someone for talking about. 0.96

00:09:04.000 It feels like the nuanced stories are kind of gone now, and so it's either...

00:09:09.000 A defense of the president or a defense of some progressive person or it's a hit piece.

00:09:17.000 That's what it feels like.

00:09:18.000 There's a lot of activism.

00:09:20.000 And I think this is a problem today with young people that are getting involved in media and that are getting involved In social media companies and that are getting involved in even big corporations like Google and Facebook and Netflix even,

00:09:36.000 is they feel like they have a duty to be an activist.

00:09:41.000 But the best way to really get the truth out there, if you want to be a journalist, a real journalist, You can't do both.

00:09:52.000 You can't put like these political one-sided spins on things and then have people trust you across the board about all the complexity that's involved in corruption and international dealings between Large superpowers and corporations and what's the entanglement here?

00:10:11.000 Well, if I think that you are completely biased towards the right or completely biased towards the left, everything you say, I'm going to be cynical about.

00:10:20.000 Everything you say, I'm going to be like, eh, how much of this is true?

00:10:23.000 How much of this is real?

00:10:25.000 How much of this is a political slant? 1.00

00:10:27.000 How much of it is bullshit? 0.98

00:10:29.000 The New York Times used to be, I mean, obviously they've always had opinion pieces, but the New York Times was the best source of objective journalism. 0.99

00:10:36.000 It was so good. 0.96

00:10:38.000 You know, it's like you got no bullshit. 0.98

00:10:41.000 You knew what you were reading was true and that they had vetted it and it had been like these hard-nosed editors who'd been out there for fucking decades pounding the pavement doing real journalism. 0.99

00:10:52.000 They were the ones responsible for giving the green light to whether or not this story makes it into the New York fucking Times. 0.93

00:11:01.000 And there was sort of a kind of humanism in it, which is a sense... 0.97

00:11:05.000 Trust is the right word, by the way.

00:11:06.000 And there's a sense in which we're all in it together.

00:11:09.000 We're all mortals.

00:11:10.000 Yes.

00:11:11.000 There's not a kind of making of monsters that you have now, that if you are on the wrong side or whatever, you're a monster.

00:11:18.000 And so it's just gotten...

00:11:21.000 Yeah, there's like no like...

00:11:22.000 It's that moment where...

00:11:24.000 Was it Murrow who stood up to McCarthy and was like, have you no decency?

00:11:29.000 It feels like that's the moment again, which is like, what's the basic...

00:11:33.000 You know, they're going after a friend of mine, Alex Epstein.

00:11:36.000 He just texted me very upset before I came in about the Post running a hit piece against him for something he said when he was 18, supposedly alleging he's a racist.

00:11:46.000 I know he's not a racist. 0.97

00:11:47.000 It's ridiculous. 0.98

00:11:48.000 So... 0.79

00:11:49.000 How old is he now?

00:11:50.000 I think he's in his...

00:11:51.000 Must be in his late 30s.

00:11:52.000 Jesus Christ.

00:11:53.000 Maybe early 40s, you know?

00:11:54.000 So it's kind of like, well, but even if...

00:11:56.000 What did he write it on when he was into it?

00:11:57.000 I don't even know.

00:11:58.000 I haven't even looked into it yet.

00:11:59.000 But it's just kind of like, what are we doing here, guys?

00:12:01.000 Like, what are we trying to do?

00:12:04.000 They're trying to get people outraged.

00:12:05.000 Trying to get clicks and delegitimize somebody because he defends fossil fuels.

00:12:09.000 You know, at a time, by the way, when we needed a lot more of them.

00:12:13.000 You know, at a time when the idea that you could power the world on renewables has come...

00:12:18.000 You know, crashing to an end in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

00:12:23.000 So, you know, I just think you kind of go, this just all feels like, that's where it's like, you don't trust it because it's like, why are they going after Alex Epstein?

00:12:30.000 It doesn't have anything to do with what he said when he was 18. You know, it has to do with...

00:12:34.000 His stance on fossil fuels.

00:12:35.000 Yeah, his stance on fossil fuels.

00:12:37.000 Yeah, it's a problem.

00:12:39.000 Yeah.

00:12:39.000 And it's such a strange time to try to vet the truth out.

00:12:44.000 I think, you know, this is one of the biggest problems with a guy like Donald Trump.

00:12:49.000 It's not just that, you know, people like the Washington Post cited so many times, I forget what the number was, that he lied while he was in office.

00:12:59.000 It's pretty crazy.

00:13:00.000 It's in the thousands.

00:13:02.000 Yeah.

00:13:02.000 Have you seen it?

00:13:03.000 No, but I mean, I'm not surprised. 1.00

00:13:05.000 Some of them are like partial truths, but at the end of the day, you're a fucking president. 0.98

00:13:11.000 But the thing is, people were so opposed to him and his... 0.99

00:13:18.000 Sort of bombastic, you know, it's like just the way he would, his conflict style of communication, you know, the way he would have all these conflicts with people, rile people up so much that they feel like they have to oppose him almost in the same way that he opposes other people.

00:13:41.000 So they can't be, like even the way they didn't like George Bush, George W., They never attacked him the way they attacked Trump.

00:13:49.000 There was always a divide between the right and the left, but it was always civil.

00:13:55.000 It doesn't seem like there's a civil divide today.

00:13:57.000 It seems very hostile.

00:13:59.000 And it seems like you are allowed to do things that are outside the realm of normal journalism to attack someone that you feel is the enemy of your ideology.

00:14:10.000 And that didn't used to be the case.

00:14:12.000 It used to be the case that You would report about things in an objective manner and that's what being a journalist was and they probably took pride in that.

00:14:20.000 And then maybe they had drinks together afterwards and they smoked cigarettes and talked shit and gave their own real opinions.

00:14:26.000 But when they wrote these pieces, these pieces were objective journalism based on facts.

00:14:30.000 And I don't think you feel that anymore.

00:14:33.000 I think there's a problem also with clicks, right?

00:14:36.000 Because how many people are actually buying the New York Times?

00:14:39.000 I'm sure a bunch of people still get it delivered to their home and still pick it up on the way to the subway or whatever.

00:14:43.000 But for the vast majority of folks, you're getting it on your computer, or you're getting it on your phone.

00:14:48.000 So you have to attract people in this new world where there's fucking millions and millions of controversial headlines that are trying to vie for your attention. 0.58

00:15:01.000 Yeah.

00:15:02.000 And the flip side, of course, is that people are also really gravitating towards these long form podcasts that you've been pioneering and Bridget and, you know, Mel and these other folks that we know.

00:15:12.000 And so there's clearly a hunger for the other side of that digital experience.

00:15:17.000 Well, there's a hunger for honesty.

00:15:19.000 And complexity.

00:15:22.000 Yeah, complexity, nuance, and being honest about maybe your own conflicts about an idea and a problem.

00:15:29.000 And I think it's very hard to do that.

00:15:32.000 First of all, it's very hard to do that in a small article, and it's very hard to do that when you work for a giant corporation that has an agenda.

00:15:40.000 I'm friends with Barry Weiss, and Barry, when she was talking about her time at the New York Times, she ran into many issues with that, where you have an idea that you want to say in a certain way, and then the editors say, no, I want you to say it like this,

00:15:55.000 or no, I want you to change that, and then it doesn't become your voice anymore.

00:15:59.000 It becomes this sort of bastardized, conformed version of your voice.

00:16:04.000 Yeah.

00:16:04.000 Oh, and just look at what she's done since.

00:16:06.000 I mean, her essays are incredible.

00:16:08.000 The two best essays that I've written since over the last six months were for her.

00:16:12.000 She made them better.

00:16:14.000 Her sub stack's amazing.

00:16:15.000 It's incredible.

00:16:16.000 She made them more in my voice than my articles from my own sub stack are in my voice.

00:16:21.000 You know, it's like when you go to like a restaurant and they serve like a dish and it's like this is the most essential aspect of Apple.

00:16:27.000 You know, and it's like I feel like she brought out my voice.

00:16:30.000 In her editing.

00:16:31.000 It was an incredible experience.

00:16:33.000 But yeah, I think there's that hunger for it.

00:16:36.000 Hey, man, that's why I'm here, dude. 0.89

00:16:37.000 Because I just think there's a desire for something that gets beyond this just really bad, dumb, left-right stuff. 0.99

00:16:44.000 It's so dumb. 0.99

00:16:45.000 Good and evil stuff. 0.97

00:16:46.000 And the rise of Substack has been one of the most amazing things about the era of censorship that we live in, is that this one platform has attracted Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Barry Weist, you, so many people who have these...

00:17:03.000 Brilliant voices that have a very difficult time finding an unfiltered path to the mainstream, to people, to people to just check out.

00:17:15.000 And people know that now.

00:17:16.000 They know that Alex Berenson's on there.

00:17:18.000 They know all these people are on there that are writing these articles.

00:17:21.000 They probably couldn't write anywhere else.

00:17:23.000 Right.

00:17:23.000 Well, I thought it was interesting.

00:17:24.000 Matt Taibbi comes out after Putin invaded Ukraine and was like, hey, I got this one wrong, guys.

00:17:30.000 I think the defensive kind of petty nature of what we used to call the mainstream media, I think people don't like it.

00:17:39.000 They don't trust it anymore.

00:17:40.000 Right, because they don't ever say they got it wrong.

00:17:42.000 That's right.

00:17:42.000 And a guy like Matt Tybee will always say he got it wrong.

00:17:45.000 That's right.

00:17:46.000 And for me, it's a source of creative...

00:17:48.000 It's a source of creativity to be like, how was I wrong about the environment and energy?

00:17:52.000 How was I wrong about drugs, crime, homelessness?

00:17:54.000 That's interesting.

00:17:55.000 And it's humbling.

00:17:57.000 And people are interested in it.

00:17:59.000 People always say, we want to hear how you changed your mind.

00:18:02.000 It's like, okay, great.

00:18:04.000 I'll accumulate myself.

00:18:05.000 I'll describe the...

00:18:06.000 But it's interesting.

00:18:07.000 It's humbling.

00:18:08.000 It makes you a little bit...

00:18:10.000 It should, at least, in your better moments...

00:18:13.000 Introduce some hesitation and caution before being like, I know what my view is of X, Y, or Z. Right.

00:18:19.000 People love to be able to proclaim definitively what the problem is and what the solution is.

00:18:25.000 And oftentimes you get it wrong.

00:18:27.000 Right.

00:18:27.000 But when you get it wrong, if you want me to still trust you, you have to tell me what happened.

00:18:33.000 So then I know, oh, Michael is, like, really honest. 0.55

00:18:36.000 Like, if he fucks up, he's going to tell me, oh, this is why I thought this.

00:18:39.000 This is where I got the bad information. 0.91

00:18:41.000 This is where I made a calculated guess, and I was incorrect because I didn't factor in these things.

00:18:46.000 And let's look at what led to this, you know, ultimately what I didn't think was going to happen.

00:18:52.000 Yeah, I'll tell you something interesting.

00:18:53.000 I just started reading this book called The Scout Mindset, which sort of summarizes cognitive errors that we make.

00:18:59.000 It's sort of in that tradition of...

00:19:03.000 Of behavioral economics and sort of – but I think my concern with it was when they're sort of – when she's describing – and she does a very good job describing the state of the science as far as I can tell.

00:19:13.000 But in my experience, it's usually things like fear, social fear that lead us to get it wrong.

00:19:21.000 In other words, for me, it was like – My thing I'm most famous for having changed my mind on is nuclear.

00:19:26.000 My hesitation to come out as pro-nuclear and to raise concerns about renewables, it wasn't like a cognitive error.

00:19:33.000 I was scared of the backlash.

00:19:35.000 I was scared of being attacked.

00:19:37.000 It wasn't like – and I think I see that a lot more where it's not just like – Oh, I, you know, made some cognitive error due to our evolutionary biology.

00:19:46.000 I mean, certainly that exists, but it's more like, no, I was scared of losing my friends and losing my employment.

00:19:53.000 And, you know, I heard another story of someone last night just telling me that Carnegie Mellon, dean of this great university, Put his pronouns in his Twitter bio and this donor who was donating to Carnegie Mellon was like, why did you do that?

00:20:09.000 Do you worry that people didn't know that you were a man?

00:20:14.000 And the guy's like, he's like, no, and I'm totally, he was upset about it.

00:20:18.000 He was embarrassed.

00:20:20.000 But he was like, I'm scared.

00:20:22.000 You know, I'm scared of the students.

00:20:24.000 You know, it's the scared of the Maoist students.

00:20:26.000 That's so crazy.

00:20:26.000 I know.

00:20:27.000 But that's not like, oh, I made a cognitive error and I wasn't sure if I was a man or a woman anymore.

00:20:32.000 It's like, no, I was bullied into it. 0.99

00:20:35.000 It's so preposterous, especially for an older man who grew up in a different time to be jumping on board the woke shit right now. 0.99

00:20:42.000 Right. 0.99

00:20:42.000 Yeah, that fear, that social fear, is a real problem. 0.99

00:20:46.000 It's a real problem and it leads people to adopt groupthink just for their own safety.

00:20:51.000 Right.

00:20:52.000 And then what's terrible, too, of course, and Barry does a good job describing this on her, has other people describe it, too, is then it becomes contagious.

00:21:00.000 You know, and so then it's like you see people you respect cave to the bullies and the woke mob, and then other people feel the need.

00:21:08.000 So it just becomes...

00:21:09.000 Now, the reverse is true, too.

00:21:10.000 You know, one person stands up and people feel emboldened.

00:21:13.000 And I think that's part of what's so inspiring about Ukraine, right, is you kind of go...

00:21:19.000 I don't need a ride, I need ammunition.

00:21:20.000 Did he really say that?

00:21:21.000 I hope he did.

00:21:22.000 I don't know.

00:21:22.000 Am I repeating misinformation?

00:21:24.000 I don't know.

00:21:24.000 It's one of those quotes, it's so good.

00:21:26.000 Yeah, I hope it's true.

00:21:27.000 Man, I hope he really said that.

00:21:28.000 That is pretty badass if he did say that.

00:21:31.000 Yeah, but you can see it's like, because I was skeptical too, but you're kind of like, wow, they're really putting up a fight and it does take somebody in a position of power to be like, no, we're going to fight this.

00:21:40.000 Yeah.

00:21:41.000 I guess probably the opposite is true, too, on the right, though, right?

00:21:46.000 Like, instead of woke thinking, I bet it's, you know, what's the...

00:21:51.000 I mean, there is got to be a polar opposite of woke when you think about, like, hardcore right-wing people.

00:21:58.000 Like, what is that?

00:21:59.000 Because it must exist.

00:22:00.000 Maybe we have a blind spot to that.

00:22:02.000 No.

00:22:03.000 I mean I find it – where I see it on the right – I mean there's a lot of examples.

00:22:07.000 But I think one place I see it is in – because I'm proposing, for example, to centralize psychiatric and addiction care as part of the reason I'm running for governor.

00:22:15.000 Decentralize?

00:22:16.000 Centralize it at the state level.

00:22:17.000 Yeah, because they can't – Fifty-eight counties, they overlap these expensive administrative services, plus then you have the gaps, and so people get out of rehab and they overdose.

00:22:25.000 You need to be able to – and plus, you need to be able to – people need to be able to go off into places where it's cheaper to get drug treatment or psychiatric care.

00:22:33.000 It might not be in downtown LA. It might be in Fresno, particularly if you're trying to get people out of the open-air drug markets.

00:22:38.000 Some of the resistance to it comes from conservatives who are like, oh, well, we don't want another big government program.

00:22:44.000 We should probably tell people you're running for governor because we didn't really...

00:22:47.000 I joked around about it at the beginning, but you were saying that...

00:22:51.000 I'm actually doing that.

00:22:52.000 You're actually doing that.

00:22:54.000 Yes, I'm running for governor.

00:22:56.000 As preposterous as that seems.

00:22:58.000 Have you officially announced it?

00:23:00.000 I did.

00:23:00.000 Yeah?

00:23:01.000 Yeah, I did.

00:23:02.000 But I mean, I'm announcing it.

00:23:05.000 I'm re-announcing it.

00:23:05.000 That was the soft launch.

00:23:07.000 The soft launch.

00:23:07.000 You're the hard launch.

00:23:09.000 So what led you to make this decision?

00:23:12.000 Because last time I saw you, you were just promoting your book.

00:23:17.000 What made you decide that you have a voice that should probably be heard and that you can change some things?

00:23:24.000 I'm upset.

00:23:25.000 I'm upset by what's happening, not just in terms of the open drug scenes, which we misname homeless encampments.

00:23:32.000 I'm upset by the destruction of our civilization, of our liberal democracy.

00:23:38.000 I see it.

00:23:39.000 It's all over.

00:23:39.000 I mean, you see it everywhere.

00:23:41.000 And so I want to – I believe – I think civilization is good.

00:23:45.000 I think that it's so radical.

00:23:49.000 How are you going to run for governor with that wild stance?

00:23:51.000 Yeah.

00:23:52.000 I'm taking a hard pro-civilization position.

00:23:55.000 Yeah.

00:23:55.000 And the governor – I've given – look.

00:23:58.000 I did everything.

00:24:00.000 I did my job in terms of really reached out to the governor's office, really put pressure on the mayor of San Francisco.

00:24:07.000 Same thing in LA. For people who haven't heard of you before, let's just detail your political background just so that people understand that you have a long history of being a progressive and this is like – These conclusions that you come to, a lot of times when people read things like that, like about cleaning up the drug problem,

00:24:22.000 cleaning up the homeless problem, they might not know, they might have like a cookie-cutter idea of where you stand politically, and it'd probably be way off.

00:24:32.000 They'd think you're right-wing, right?

00:24:34.000 Sure.

00:24:35.000 So, right.

00:24:36.000 So, a very young, radical young man.

00:24:39.000 When I was 17, I skipped the first half of my senior year in high school to go help the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, learn Spanish.

00:24:48.000 What was that like?

00:24:49.000 I feel like that was a whole podcast on its own.

00:24:51.000 Amazing.

00:24:52.000 Amazing.

00:24:53.000 Well, yeah, because...

00:24:54.000 Did you get shot at at all?

00:24:55.000 No.

00:24:56.000 It was actually one of the safest war zones I'd ever been in.

00:24:59.000 That sounds bizarre.

00:25:00.000 How many war zones have you been in?

00:25:01.000 A few.

00:25:02.000 A few.

00:25:04.000 Yeah, I was pretty...

00:25:05.000 I was comfortable...

00:25:06.000 What did your parents think?

00:25:07.000 Because my son was 17. He said, I'm going to go help to San Denise.

00:25:10.000 I'm like, the fuck you are? 1.00

00:25:11.000 You're going to graduate from high school, stupid. 1.00

00:25:13.000 I had softened them up because I was going to go to North Africa and the word of kind of, you know, of what was going on in North Africa was even hairier than what was going on in Nicaragua. 1.00

00:25:24.000 So they were like, okay, Nicaragua, we'll go with that one.

00:25:26.000 Oh, that's hilarious.

00:25:27.000 So, yeah, I mean, I always felt pretty confident in terms of like street wise and keeping myself safe.

00:25:34.000 You know, I mean, really, I'd always, you know, I've been in a hurry to live because when I was eight, I was hit by a truck and almost died.

00:25:42.000 And that was a pretty formative experience.

00:25:44.000 So for me, life was always, I never, like that whole memento mori, you know, remember your mortality, remember your death.

00:25:51.000 That was always there for me.

00:25:52.000 So for me, it was like, let's go and experience life.

00:25:55.000 So some sense of adventure, but also a sense of, I was really angry at the Reagan administration for supporting the Contras, which were fighting a war against the socialist Sandinistas.

00:26:08.000 Let's see.

00:26:08.000 Went to a Quaker school, got a degree in peace and global studies, which is what we called cultural Marxism back in the 80s, early 90s.

00:26:16.000 Some people are like, cultural Marxism is a conspiracy theory.

00:26:19.000 And it's like, no, no, I'm pretty sure I got a four-year degree in cultural Marxism.

00:26:24.000 My Antonio Gramsci is like well-read, well-dog-eared.

00:26:28.000 Yeah.

00:26:29.000 There's so many stories of people like you that started out like a hardcore radical, Marxist, socialist, and then upon maturing, develop like a more sensible sort of view of what is possible, what's not possible, what the problems and the holes in socialism are.

00:26:46.000 Well, thanks, man.

00:26:47.000 Well, I think the tendency sometimes is for people to go from one extreme to the other.

00:26:52.000 And I was deliberate.

00:26:53.000 I didn't want to do that.

00:26:54.000 And that's a problem, right?

00:26:56.000 It's a huge problem.

00:26:57.000 So for me, that's why I did these last two books.

00:26:59.000 I wrote two books during the pandemic, Apocalypse Never in San Francisco.

00:27:02.000 And in both cases, it was some humility that I was wrong.

00:27:06.000 And I wanted to figure out what was right in order to not make the same mistake.

00:27:12.000 of lapsing into somebody's pre-baked ideology But anyway, long story short, I graduated from college.

00:27:20.000 I did a couple of years in grad school at Santa Cruz, which was also a place of cultural Marxism.

00:27:26.000 Again, a real thing.

00:27:27.000 I've always been an activist.

00:27:29.000 I still consider myself an activist.

00:27:30.000 I write books because I want to make the world a better place.

00:27:32.000 I don't write books because I want to – I want to sell books for sure, but the books are in service of a broader mission.

00:27:39.000 I don't think my values have changed.

00:27:40.000 I still care about people.

00:27:42.000 I still care about the environment.

00:27:45.000 And yeah, in the 90s I worked for George Soros.

00:27:49.000 Which is crazy to say.

00:27:50.000 Which is crazy because someone on Twitter, to legalize, to decriminalize drugs by the way, because somebody on Twitter was like, that's a dog whistle.

00:27:57.000 And I was like, I actually did work for George Soros.

00:28:00.000 I'm not like dog whistling.

00:28:02.000 A dog whistle is like you're saying something, but you're not quite saying it.

00:28:08.000 They always like to use it for racism.

00:28:11.000 They're suggesting that I'm anti-Semitic because I'm mentioning that I worked for George Soros in the late 1990s.

00:28:19.000 But Soros is Jewish. 0.57

00:28:20.000 It doesn't make any sense at all.

00:28:22.000 No, no, don't overthink a joke.

00:28:26.000 But yeah, I mean I worked for a bunch of radical causes, did publicity for Saving the Redwoods, fighting Nike sweatshops in Asia, juvenile and criminal justice reforms, many of which I still support.

00:28:38.000 I worked with Maxine Waters to mobilize civil rights leaders to support needle exchange so that heroin addicts could shoot safely and not get HIV-AIDS. I support decriminalization.

00:28:50.000 I still support the decriminalization of drugs because I don't think that addicts need to go to prison.

00:28:54.000 I think they need to go to rehab if their addiction is causing problems.

00:28:59.000 And I don't even – people accuse me of all sorts of things that are not true.

00:29:01.000 I don't think we should criminalize addiction.

00:29:03.000 I think if you can maintain and manage your addiction – I think you've had Carl Hart in here.

00:29:08.000 I mean there's other folks in here.

00:29:10.000 You know, they're right that a significant majority of people can use drugs without having problems.

00:29:16.000 The problem is there's a significant minority that do have serious problems and they can end up on the street and they can end up committing crimes.

00:29:23.000 So we need to have solutions to that.

00:29:26.000 So that's what San Francisco works through.

00:29:28.000 But that was I mean, that's the basic picture.

00:29:31.000 And then the environment is a whole other thing.

00:29:33.000 And I was really working on the environment for the last 20 years.

00:29:37.000 And that's really a story of going from having a really apocalyptic view of climate change, it's the end of the world, to a view that climate change is real.

00:29:46.000 We should take action to address it, but it's also not the end of the world.

00:29:49.000 And in fact, we have really good technical solutions to it.

00:29:53.000 San Francisco ended up being a much darker book because my view is that the drug addiction crisis is actually much worse than most people realize, that the meth and fentanyl are really, really dangerous.

00:30:08.000 Deadly, dangerous drugs.

00:30:22.000 You put that in contrast with climate and weather-related natural disasters globally killed 6,000 people last year.

00:30:30.000 So just in terms of scale, we've reduced the number of people dying from natural disasters by upwards of 95 percent, whereas the drug deaths are increasing, deaths of despair, the whole thing, the basic picture that people have.

00:30:42.000 So I've become much more alarmed about the mental health crisis, the addiction crisis.

00:30:48.000 And that's why we've been organizing a movement and why ultimately, after failing to get the politicians to do what they need to do, decide to run.

00:30:55.000 It is bizarre and illogical why we concentrate on some causes of death that are preventable and not other.

00:31:04.000 It's very strange how we lock into certain diseases and certain things, but there's very little discussion about the fentanyl overdoses, which are really insane.

00:31:15.000 I mean, I personally know of multiple people who've died from it, and it's scary stuff.

00:31:20.000 I'm sure you've seen the amount of fentanyl in relation to a penny that it takes to kill you.

00:31:26.000 It's crazy.

00:31:27.000 It's such a small amount, and they're bringing it through Mexico at an alarming rate.

00:31:33.000 You see that lady who got arrested because she had it stuffed in her vaginal cavity, like, enough fentanyl to kill, like, a city?

00:31:40.000 Oh, sure.

00:31:41.000 How about the West Point cadets that—I think it was West Point—the cadets that overdosed?

00:31:46.000 I mean, there's all sorts of artists, you know?

00:31:48.000 I mean, it's— Tom Petty.

00:31:50.000 Yeah.

00:31:51.000 Prince.

00:31:51.000 Yep.

00:31:52.000 Yeah.

00:31:53.000 Was the actor from The Wire—is it Michael Williams?

00:31:56.000 Yep, same thing.

00:31:57.000 Yep.

00:31:58.000 Yeah, so it's, you know, it's tragedy and sad and depressing and, you know, when I went out, when I go out and interview people on the street, So I found a guy.

00:32:08.000 I interviewed a guy.

00:32:09.000 I put it up on Twitter.

00:32:10.000 It went viral because he was so honest.

00:32:12.000 He's such a – God, these guys are so – it's really – it's actually quite wonderful how honest they were.

00:32:18.000 But I was like, what's your drug of choice?

00:32:19.000 And he said heroin.

00:32:20.000 And I was like, well, how many people are still using heroin out here?

00:32:22.000 He's like 5 percent.

00:32:24.000 Like 95 percent of opioid users have switched to fentanyl.

00:32:27.000 Can't even hardly get heroin anymore.

00:32:29.000 Meth is now – He's old school.

00:32:31.000 He's a guy like vinyl.

00:32:32.000 He likes vinyl records.

00:32:33.000 Exactly.

00:32:33.000 He's an analog drug user.

00:32:34.000 He rolls his own joints.

00:32:36.000 No, and then I was kind of like, and then you're like, what about meth?

00:32:40.000 And he's like, well, yeah, I mean, like meth and crack, that's like baseline.

00:32:43.000 You know, it's like if you're using opioids, then you're, especially if it's fentanyl, then they're using meth and or crack just so that they don't kind of become completely comatose and they can enjoy their high.

00:32:55.000 Right.

00:32:55.000 So these drugs are really challenging, you know, and detoxing from them and getting into recovery is a super major challenge.

00:33:04.000 I also am discovering cases where kids are going right from weed to fentanyl.

00:33:10.000 You know, that's terrifying.

00:33:12.000 You know, it used to be whatever.

00:33:14.000 You would experiment with weed for many years and then maybe try psychedelics and then they would do – you should experiment with a little bit of cocaine and then you'd be like, wow, that's too much.

00:33:22.000 But now, I mean, going right from marijuana to fentanyl is terrifying.

00:33:24.000 So we have a bunch of concerns now about that pathway being much more – Real, I think, than people realize.

00:33:33.000 It seems like all of these situations where you're talking about addiction, whether it's to fentanyl or whatever opiates, the root cause is some deep despair.

00:33:45.000 The root cause is something terribly wrong in their life.

00:33:48.000 This is not something LeBron James is doing.

00:33:51.000 It's not something someone who's ridiculously successful and happy is doing.

00:33:55.000 It's someone who's Life is filled with trauma and pain and tragedy and just despair and they they are the ones who get addicted.

00:34:05.000 So what does that say about our society and our values and like the way we raise people and the way we've structured our civilization because Yeah.

00:34:34.000 Yeah, I mean, for sure.

00:34:35.000 And the folks on the street are often victims of trauma or child abuse.

00:34:40.000 A lot of people came out of the foster care system, for sure, for sure.

00:34:43.000 At the same time, the evidence is pretty strong that the amount of child abuse that occurs in our society has declined significantly over the last several decades.

00:34:53.000 I think there's probably much more abuse in the past than there is now, and yet drug addiction, drug deaths, homelessness have all increased.

00:35:02.000 So I think the other factor here, it's a little confusing given the trauma on the street, but also there's just a coddling culture, which we're all aware of, that parents are coddling their kids.

00:35:11.000 I've become obsessed with Stoicism, this philosophy, which I think is summarized in what gets called the serenity prayer.

00:35:20.000 You know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

00:35:26.000 Should be called, by the way, the serenity, courage, and wisdom prayer.

00:35:29.000 But that is basically all Stoicism is, is it's stop having anxiety about things you can't control, but do find the courage to take care of the things that you can control.

00:35:40.000 And I think that so what you find is the opposite.

00:35:43.000 The society is going the opposite that people are not taking control of diet and exercise and education and studies.

00:35:49.000 And we're having anxiety about things that are basically beyond our control, like the pace of decarbonization often or what's happening to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

00:36:00.000 I mean, what have you.

00:36:01.000 These are things that people are obsessing over that are often out of their control, whereas the things that we do have control over, we're really not taking control of.

00:36:08.000 Yeah, and of course social media is just gasoline on that fire.

00:36:11.000 Yep.

00:36:11.000 Because you get a bunch of people like-minded in an echo chamber all freaking out about something together, like climate change, or like, you know, I watched this whole thread the other day, just a couple days ago, where people were talking about I'm not going out without a mask on.

00:36:24.000 And then all these other people are like chiming in.

00:36:26.000 Me neither.

00:36:26.000 I don't care what they say.

00:36:28.000 And it was like all of these crazy people who are hypochondriacs have like, they've grouped up together and they're enforcing each other.

00:36:37.000 And this one guy was wearing a respirator and there's like people, you know, I went to the supermarket.

00:36:41.000 I was the only one wearing masks.

00:36:42.000 I'm like, bro, it's over.

00:36:43.000 It's a cold now.

00:36:44.000 Yeah.

00:36:45.000 Why are you wearing a respirator?

00:36:46.000 Like, are you going to wear this in five years?

00:36:49.000 People in their cars with masks?

00:36:51.000 Oh my God.

00:36:51.000 People on the hiking trails?

00:36:53.000 Yeah.

00:36:53.000 Masks and gloves.

00:36:55.000 Yeah, I don't know.

00:36:56.000 Yeah.

00:36:57.000 I mean, it's interesting when I see it, because I do all this work on nuclear, and I saw very similar amounts of neuroticism around radiation.

00:37:04.000 So, you know, radiation's naturally existing.

00:37:07.000 Obviously, you don't want to have too high of exposure, but, you know, dust makes the poison.

00:37:12.000 Yeah, radiation's in rocks.

00:37:14.000 Yeah, it comes from the sky.

00:37:15.000 If you sit on a rock that's outside, you're getting radiation off that rock.

00:37:18.000 For sure.

00:37:18.000 But the radiation that exists from nuclear power plants scares the shit out of us because of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and Fukushima, those things.

00:37:26.000 Those are legitimate concerns.

00:37:28.000 But my understanding is that the technology that's involved in the construction of nuclear power plants has kind of hit a stagnant point only because people are afraid of it.

00:37:39.000 But the capabilities are much higher than they were...

00:37:42.000 Like when they built Fukushima, they had a backup power plant and all that got wiped out by...

00:37:46.000 A backup power generator, rather.

00:37:48.000 All that got wiped out by the tsunami and they didn't have a fail-safe.

00:37:51.000 They didn't have like a step three.

00:37:52.000 What if a tsunami hits? 1.00

00:37:54.000 So when the tsunami hit and everything went down, they're fucked. 0.99

00:37:56.000 I mean, that thing is still... 0.99

00:37:58.000 It's just a nuclear disaster.

00:38:00.000 I mean, it's what it is.

00:38:01.000 It's leaking nuclear radiation into the ocean.

00:38:04.000 You know how they had to...

00:38:05.000 They dug a hole around it, that was one idea, and they're freezing it, you know that?

00:38:10.000 Right, right.

00:38:11.000 There's so many wacky ideas to try to contain...

00:38:14.000 I think it's also what's interesting about the Fukushima example because it's about the ways in which irrational fears can create more danger.

00:38:22.000 They were afraid to raise the seawall that would have prevented the tsunami from flooding the plant because they were afraid of scaring the local community.

00:38:33.000 And so you get these social fears or with the case of nuclear, the piece I just did for Barry was Europe has been shutting down its nuclear plants and not building new ones.

00:38:45.000 It's been refusing to frack for natural gas out of fears of fracking.

00:38:49.000 As a result, it became extremely dependent on Russia so that it would have no way to deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine and they're struggling with how do you – yeah, they're kind of like, well, we're going to put some sanctions on the oligarchs and we're going to have some economic sanctions.

00:39:06.000 And paying for Russian energy, they're in a bind.

00:39:09.000 And we're going to do all these things, but a lot of them are going to take years to be able to get our gas to Europe and it will be much more expensive than if they had created their own or if they just expanded nuclear power plants in Europe.

00:39:19.000 So the fear of nuclear, it's not just like...

00:39:23.000 Like the people with the masks on the hiking trails in Berkeley are just sort of – they're just kind of like whatever.

00:39:28.000 Who cares?

00:39:29.000 They're also signaling.

00:39:31.000 They're signaling.

00:39:31.000 They're letting everyone know that they're a good person and they're wearing a mask.

00:39:34.000 That's right.

00:39:35.000 But if you – but not building nuclear power plants and becoming too dependent on the Russians has serious consequences for the Ukrainians and not building – or California.

00:39:45.000 Or Texas, I mean, not having enough reliable power plants weatherized for natural disasters and over-relying on weather-dependent renewables puts you at the risk of blackouts.

00:39:58.000 And blackouts kill people. 1.00

00:39:59.000 You lose your electricity, people die.

00:40:01.000 So it's the ways in which these irrational fears actually put us in greater danger that I think should be of a concern for us.

00:40:09.000 Let's talk about fracking, because the general consensus amongst the public is that fracking's bad on the left, and on the right, it's that fracking's necessary.

00:40:19.000 Yeah.

00:40:40.000 How much of a concern do we have about fracking in terms of the long-term environmental consequences?

00:40:46.000 Well, first, just look at the carbon emissions.

00:40:48.000 So U.S. carbon emissions declined more than any other country's carbon emissions had declined between 2005 and 2020, really 2020, 2021. Why?

00:40:59.000 Because we replaced a lot of our electricity coming from coal with electricity coming from natural gas, which produces half as much carbon emissions.

00:41:06.000 So to give you a sense of it, our United Nations Paris climate commitment Was to reduce carbon emissions 17% between 2005 and 2020. We reduced them 22%.

00:41:19.000 So we exceeded, which almost never happens, by the way.

00:41:22.000 We always make promises and then, you know, politicians make a promise and then future politicians break them.

00:41:27.000 So the main way we reduced carbon emissions in the United States was just by switching from coal to natural gas.

00:41:32.000 And to the extent that renewables helped with it, they were enabled by having natural gas power plants to provide that backup power.

00:41:40.000 In terms of the methane that leaks from natural gas production — methane being natural gas, by the way — methane is like — and the reason the natural gas industry has an interest in reducing methane leaks is because that's a valuable — that's their fuel.

00:41:54.000 They don't want to lose that fuel.

00:41:56.000 They want to sell it.

00:41:57.000 We saw a decline.

00:41:58.000 During the time while fracking was expanding, we saw a decline in methane leaks.

00:42:02.000 What about water?

00:42:04.000 The big issue is the disposal of frack fluid because that stuff is contaminated.

00:42:08.000 It's dirty.

00:42:09.000 Well, that's just a matter of regulating it well and making sure that you dispose of it well, and we know how to do that, and to the extent to which it hasn't been happening, it's a failure of regulation.

00:42:18.000 Can I pause you there?

00:42:21.000 When you say that the fluid is contaminated, what is it contaminated with?

00:42:25.000 Is it contaminated with these chemicals that they use?

00:42:27.000 Yes, and sand.

00:42:29.000 And is it possible to filter that stuff out?

00:42:31.000 Is there any sort of plan that's in place to try to do that?

00:42:35.000 There is.

00:42:36.000 I'm not totally up to date on it, but there's always – I remember when I did this work a lot when it was a hot issue 10 years ago, there were these companies that were – there were ways to – and as usual, it's one of those things where it's like a lot of these processes where it's like,

00:42:51.000 does it take more cost and money to recycle the wastewater or just to dispose of it well?

00:42:59.000 So that's been the issue.

00:43:00.000 And I think there are companies that are finding ways to do it.

00:43:04.000 I just don't know the latest state of the technology.

00:43:05.000 But in terms of like – I mean so frack land – sorry, gas land was full of misinformation.

00:43:11.000 I mean the famous scene where the guy is lighting the faucet on fire, that's not from fracking.

00:43:15.000 That was from an older well.

00:43:17.000 So the older – these wells – They can be sealed to prevent the gas from leaking out of them.

00:43:24.000 Natural gas that's in the ground.

00:43:46.000 That there was this natural oil and gas leaks.

00:43:48.000 People think oil and gas spills are completely human.

00:43:51.000 In fact, Earth is spilling oil and gas in many places.

00:43:55.000 So that was totally misleading.

00:43:58.000 As like a lot of technological processes, we've just gotten a lot better at regulating the industry.

00:44:03.000 So that's not to say there's not more to do or that we don't need tighter regulations.

00:44:08.000 We probably do to reduce methane.

00:44:09.000 But it's not the main event.

00:44:12.000 What other misinformation was in that movie?

00:44:14.000 I mean, that was one of the most important ones.

00:44:16.000 I think the other was that, you know, we never – New York banned fracking.

00:44:19.000 So – and I don't know if that scene of the Fosnow fire was in Colorado or New York, but they were suggesting that the fracking was causing these problems in New York.

00:44:29.000 Well, it couldn't have been because New York banned fracking.

00:44:32.000 I think the other misinformation, the big piece of misinformation is that natural gas – Is more polluting than coal, which is just absurd.

00:44:41.000 Like, try lighting coal in your kitchen.

00:44:44.000 I mean, your kitchen will be filled with toxic smoke instantly, whereas you cook with natural gas in your kitchen all the time.

00:44:50.000 So, sort of transparently, gas is burning cleaner than coal is burning.

00:44:54.000 There is also these estimates, well, the methane, because it's a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, would outweigh the benefits of lower carbon dioxide.

00:45:07.000 I think?

00:45:27.000 In the next century, you know, in a century or two, the higher temperatures are the temperatures that we worry the most about.

00:45:35.000 But overall, I mean, look, even global, this is new data that nobody is talking about, but basically carbon emissions globally were flat and even slightly declined over the last decade, both because of the transition from coal to natural gas and also because of less land use change.

00:45:52.000 Mainly less conversion of forests and grasslands into farmlands, which emits a lot of greenhouse gases as well.

00:45:58.000 So there's just been a lot of good news on the environmental front where we produce more food with less land.

00:46:05.000 My view is that the worst environmental problem in the world remains the conversion of rainforests into farmland.

00:46:11.000 That's what kills endangered species. 0.88

00:46:13.000 It takes away their habitat.

00:46:14.000 It also results in a significant amount of carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions.

00:46:18.000 That's the main event is you want to protect the Amazon.

00:46:21.000 We want to protect the rainforest of Africa.

00:46:24.000 Well, those trends should also all go in the right direction, but it requires the same things that we did, which is that we have greater urbanization, industrialization, people moving from low efficiency, low intensity farming to more modern forms of agriculture.

00:46:39.000 And then moving, you know, the basic picture is moving away from wood and dung towards coal, oil, natural gas, and eventually to uranium.

00:46:46.000 In that process, you'll reduce our environmental footprint.

00:46:50.000 And the final piece of that is nuclear power, which can effectively reduce humankind's energy footprint to near zero.

00:46:59.000 Yeah, we have to change public perception about nuclear power, right?

00:47:03.000 That's the main event.

00:47:05.000 That's the main event.

00:47:06.000 There's technological things, but like you said, we're making progress on the fuels themselves so that you get these fuels that can't melt down or will take longer to melt down.

00:47:17.000 Also, the training is better.

00:47:19.000 I always point out, you know, jet planes.

00:47:21.000 The jet planes are better than they were in 1950, but it's the same basic technology that we had in 1950. Same thing with nuclear power plants.

00:47:30.000 What really changes with jet planes is that the entire system is so much better.

00:47:35.000 Air traffic control is better, the pilots, the safety systems.

00:47:38.000 So you see this huge increase of air miles traveled and a huge decline in fatalities from airplane crashes.

00:47:44.000 Same thing with nuclear.

00:47:46.000 The worst accidents were all closer to the invention of commercial nuclear power.

00:47:52.000 And even Fukushima, which was one of the worst nuclear accidents.

00:47:57.000 According to the best available science, somewhere between zero and one people died from the radiation of Fukushima.

00:48:04.000 Really?

00:48:04.000 That's it?

00:48:05.000 That's it.

00:48:06.000 Yeah.

00:48:06.000 Now people, what really killed people was the evacuation, the dislocation, the relocation of people, which was much more exaggerated and longer lasting than it needed to be.

00:48:15.000 But that place is fucked for a long time. 0.97

00:48:17.000 I mean, obviously it's not good. 0.98

00:48:18.000 Like, you can't use the area around that nuclear reactor for a long time.

00:48:24.000 A small area, but most of the farmland is now coming back and they've been able to clean it up.

00:48:29.000 I mean, really, they over-cleaned it.

00:48:31.000 They scraped all of this beautiful Fukushima because it's a beautiful agricultural area.

00:48:35.000 They scraped all the topsoil off that they didn't need to do.

00:48:38.000 There was a study in the British Medical Journal...

00:48:58.000 Rightly so, right?

00:49:02.000 It went too far.

00:49:03.000 Now is that because just we're terrified of nuclear disasters to begin with, which is one of the reasons why it's so difficult to try to convince people that nuclear power is the future?

00:49:11.000 For sure.

00:49:12.000 I know that there's some uses for nuclear waste now, productive uses for nuclear waste as a potential recyclable fuel.

00:49:21.000 Yeah, there always have been.

00:49:23.000 Over 95% of the energy is still in the used fuel rods.

00:49:28.000 The dream in the 50s was that you would have basically what they called a closed loop where you would then reuse the fuel and reprocess the fuel.

00:49:38.000 France does that.

00:49:40.000 Yeah.

00:49:41.000 It has this huge facility.

00:49:42.000 I think it's like a mile long and they reprocess the fuel and they recycle it.

00:49:45.000 Now, it's also then a process that allows you to create significant quantities of plutonium, which of course is weapons-grade material.

00:49:54.000 That was used to alarm people.

00:49:56.000 There's some debate about whether you should be alarmed.

00:49:58.000 Bill Gates is developing a new reactor that...

00:50:02.000 We're good to go.

00:50:20.000 I think?

00:50:53.000 Why is he doing that?

00:50:58.000 The official reason is that it's causing impact to marine life.

00:51:06.000 And the reason that's so absurd is that there's no evidence of any decline of fish population.

00:51:11.000 And when you visit the plant...

00:51:26.000 This is the one that's near San Diego.

00:51:39.000 That one was shut down.

00:51:40.000 That was San Onofre.

00:51:41.000 This one is near San Luis Obispo.

00:51:43.000 It's called Diablo, unfortunately named Diablo Canyon.

00:51:47.000 Jesus.

00:51:47.000 So why'd they shut down the one near San Diego?

00:51:50.000 The real, the ostensible reason is that they had a steam generator, which is this important piece of the plant that they installed wrong and it was expensive.

00:52:02.000 But basically, the real reason is the governor, Jerry Brown, who was anti-nuclear, used it as an excuse to just shut the whole plant down at great cost to taxpayers.

00:52:10.000 It could have been fixed.

00:52:12.000 I think that was 2013. And Diablo, I mean, we're at a point now where Diablo...

00:52:19.000 So we've had rolling blackouts in California for several years.

00:52:23.000 They are now...

00:52:24.000 They've lifted air pollution regulations, so they're burning more diesel in...

00:52:28.000 And affecting, as usual, poor communities of color. 0.85

00:52:32.000 It's the grid.

00:52:33.000 We're having serious reliability concerns with our grid.

00:52:36.000 And the governor basically pushed as lieutenant governor to shut down Diablo as a kind of scalp for his donors, for friends of the earth, for the activists, as something he could brag about to primary voters in Iowa.

00:52:53.000 I, by the way, you know, when we were together last time, I mentioned, I sort of said I thought that the governor cared about these things.

00:52:59.000 My view, especially made illuminated in the last few months, is that he really is focused on becoming president.

00:53:05.000 Like he is one of the Democrats' main hopes.

00:53:09.000 And so I see all of this stuff through the lens of this is a guy that is trying to appeal to primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

00:53:18.000 I think we're good to go.

00:53:34.000 It was just viewed as bizarre.

00:53:36.000 You know, people just thought I was crazy to try to save Diablo Canyon.

00:53:40.000 So now it's become quite, it's much more popular.

00:53:42.000 Is this just doctrine amongst environmental activists that nuclear equals bad?

00:53:48.000 The devil.

00:53:49.000 Yeah.

00:53:50.000 The underworld.

00:53:51.000 I mean, look at the Germans. 0.99

00:53:52.000 Like, they shut down three reactors in December.

00:53:54.000 They're supposed to shut down three more.

00:53:55.000 Their last three reactors this December at a time when they're, like, dangerously relying on the Russians for oil, gas, and coal.

00:54:02.000 Very strange.

00:54:03.000 And they were like, well, we'll think for, like, a minute.

00:54:05.000 They were like, we'll think about keeping it open.

00:54:07.000 And they're like, no, no, we're not going to do it.

00:54:09.000 It's just, yeah, it's like renewables are a way to harmonize.

00:54:12.000 It's a religious pursuit and nuclear is considered a demonic force.

00:54:17.000 They really, anti-nuclear people really think they're going to get rid of nuclear somehow.

00:54:21.000 So is this, in your opinion, is this just an ignorance thing?

00:54:25.000 Like it's very difficult to educate people on what the pros and cons of nuclear are and that the pros far outweigh the cons, especially when you take into consideration the Very low chance that something would go wrong versus the amount of carbon that gets emitted like for a coal plant or for any of these other methods of generating electricity that are far more toxic.

00:54:51.000 For your person on the street, it's ignorance.

00:54:54.000 But for the hardcore anti-nuclear leaders, like when you meet with them and talk to them and interview them, they'll agree with a lot of the points that you make.

00:55:03.000 They'll be like, no, no, we agree.

00:55:05.000 I mean, Greenpeace sometimes says, oh, nuclear somehow emits carbon emissions in some way.

00:55:09.000 But the more serious people are like, yeah, we know nuclear is a large source of zero carbon electricity.

00:55:14.000 We know it's reliable.

00:55:16.000 We know that it's gotten safer.

00:55:19.000 But, yeah.

00:55:21.000 It's politically toxic.

00:55:24.000 Well, and it's There's just this background ideology.

00:55:30.000 Right, right, right.

00:55:30.000 And it's related to...

00:55:32.000 I once met with a nuclear...

00:55:35.000 Someone in the industry interviewed him about his experience, and he said...

00:55:39.000 He's like, you know the Fritz Lang...

00:55:41.000 I think it's like a Fritz Lang movie, Metropolis, which kind of depicts this terrible capitalist industrial civilization.

00:55:48.000 That's the picture that people had and have of a high-energy planet, of a world where...

00:55:54.000 Because my view is abundant energy allows us to save nature.

00:55:58.000 That's what allows you to have cities and produce significant quantities of food in greenhouses. 0.94

00:56:03.000 It allows for people to live high energy, wealthy lives without destroying nature because it takes a lot of energy to protect the natural environment.

00:56:13.000 So people need to move from the countryside to the city, all that.

00:56:16.000 So for me, abundant, cheap energy is the key to sustainability.

00:56:22.000 They have anti-nuclear and pretty, I would say, I think it's fair to say anti-human environmentalists have the opposite view.

00:56:29.000 Energy is what gives the fuel to the cancer of human existence.

00:56:34.000 We need to degrow the The economy, and basically that means choking off our power source, our power supplies at their source. 0.82

00:56:43.000 So when you say by anti-human, you mean people that want to decrease the human population?

00:56:48.000 Yeah, decrease the human population, reduce...

00:56:50.000 But isn't that something that Bill Gates has talked about as well?

00:56:53.000 Haven't they talked about the need for sustainability and that for global health, it's probably a good idea to decrease population?

00:57:02.000 Yeah, and I mean...

00:57:04.000 I would say there's a kinder, gentler version of it, and there's a harsher Malthusian version.

00:57:10.000 I mean, you know, we know now that when you go from living in the country to living in the city, you don't need to have six kids.

00:57:17.000 You might have one or two or three kids living in the city.

00:57:20.000 You don't need to have a bunch of worker bees to sustain your farm and sustain you in your retirement.

00:57:26.000 That that happens...

00:57:28.000 Yes, birth control helps. 0.97

00:57:29.000 But really, it's just moving from the country to the city and the moms go to work and the kids go to schools and you don't need that many kids. 0.85

00:57:36.000 And then we overinvest in the kids and they become coddled.

00:57:38.000 That's the basic picture.

00:57:39.000 But that is I think is mostly beneficial.

00:57:43.000 The women get to have lives beyond being mothers. 1.00

00:57:46.000 The kids get to have they get to become they get to realize their human potential.

00:57:50.000 That's the way I think that Bill Gates has intended it.

00:57:54.000 It's not supposed to be coercive, whereas there was this coercive, Malthusian, anti-human, we have to sterilize people kind of environmentalism, which is quite dark.

00:58:08.000 Yeah, what's the goal of that?

00:58:10.000 Aren't they people?

00:58:11.000 I never get that.

00:58:13.000 They're depressed people.

00:58:14.000 I know that they're depressed people, but people always say that I wouldn't want to have children and bring them into this world and this world is terrible.

00:58:21.000 But don't you like people?

00:58:24.000 Do you want to be alone?

00:58:25.000 Do you want to be alone by yourself in the woods?

00:58:27.000 You don't, right?

00:58:27.000 You want to be around people?

00:58:28.000 Yeah.

00:58:29.000 Okay.

00:58:29.000 So where do you think these people come from?

00:58:31.000 You have to make them.

00:58:32.000 You have to raise them.

00:58:33.000 And that's where people come from.

00:58:35.000 Like, people make people.

00:58:36.000 And I like people. 0.99

00:58:38.000 So what the fuck are you talking about? 0.99

00:58:40.000 When you want to depopulate the planet and you want to have less people. 0.99

00:58:43.000 It seems like this poorly thought out idea that they espouse to just get social brownie points.

00:58:51.000 And amongst people that they...

00:58:55.000 They're pro-environment, right?

00:58:57.000 And they're pro-nature.

00:58:59.000 So they feel, for some reason, that human beings and the advancement of human beings is a detriment to nature.

00:59:06.000 It's literally...

00:59:08.000 This was my...

00:59:10.000 Over ten years ago, when I was looking at the basic story of anti-human environmentalists, it's a story of a depressed person.

00:59:18.000 It's a story of, I'm guilty, a bad person...

00:59:23.000 The world is a terrible place, and it's all going to end in apocalypse.

00:59:28.000 I mean, that's sort of the depressed, you know, like, I mean, those of us that experience some amount of anxiety and depression, that's like my attitude before I take my morning run.

00:59:37.000 Yeah, right?

00:59:38.000 And after your morning run, you're like, I feel, you know, we can achieve anything.

00:59:41.000 Isn't that amazing, the difference?

00:59:43.000 Like, you know how I experience it now?

00:59:44.000 I have a slight cold, as you can tell if you hear my voice.

00:59:47.000 It's very slight, but today's Tuesday, and so Monday and Tuesday, I haven't been able to work out. 0.97

00:59:53.000 And this morning, I woke up, and I got my normal, like, weird anxiety, and I'm like, oh my god, I better fucking work out.

00:59:59.000 But then I'm like, oh, with this cold, like, I better be careful. 0.86

01:00:02.000 I don't want to fuck this cold up and make it really take root. 1.00

01:00:05.000 It's like, shit. 0.99

01:00:06.000 And then I realized, like, wow, this is only two days. 1.00

01:00:09.000 I was thinking, sitting up in my bed, like, imagine being a person that goes through 50 years of life like this and never exercises.

01:00:17.000 Oh, absolutely.

01:00:18.000 It is a medicine that we should prescribe to the global population.

01:00:25.000 Yeah.

01:00:26.000 And, you know, instead we have...

01:00:29.000 This is another problem I have with hardcore left-wing people.

01:00:32.000 They get so crazy about ideas that they have such blind spots.

01:00:36.000 There was an article, I think it was in CNBC, or was it MSNBC, that was saying that exercise is tied to far-right extremism.

01:00:47.000 Oh my god, I saw that. 1.00

01:00:48.000 What the fuck are you talking about? 1.00

01:00:50.000 So marathon runners are Nazis? 1.00

01:00:53.000 Like, what are you saying?

01:00:54.000 It's bizarre. 0.56

01:00:54.000 People who do yoga are right-wing psychos? 0.56

01:00:58.000 Like, what are you saying?

01:00:59.000 They're subtweeting you, I take it.

01:01:01.000 Oh, I don't know.

01:01:02.000 I don't read any of my sub.

01:01:04.000 If you tweet at me, you're tweeting to the abyss.

01:01:06.000 I don't read anything about me.

01:01:08.000 I don't think it had anything to do with me, honestly.

01:01:10.000 I think it was...

01:01:11.000 They did mention MMA and fighters in something, but I don't think they brought me up.

01:01:18.000 Well, I mean, I think, look, I'm so glad we're getting to this because my view is we're dealing with serious emotional dysregulation of the population.

01:01:27.000 And I think it's really simple.

01:01:29.000 It's you need cardio for anxiety and depression and you need to lift weights for anger.

01:01:36.000 Well, lifting weights actually has a significant impact on anxiety, too, according to a recent study.

01:01:41.000 For me, when I lift weights, there's moments where I'm really lifting weights where I actually can feel the anger actually coming and then it going away.

01:01:50.000 I think of it as like I'm converting whatever the anger chemicals are into muscle mass.

01:01:57.000 Where are you living right now?

01:01:58.000 Berkeley, California.

01:01:59.000 Berkeley.

01:01:59.000 I can connect you with a good kickboxing gym.

01:02:02.000 If you really want to get rid of anger, hitting a bag is the greatest thing the world has ever known.

01:02:08.000 That makes sense.

01:02:09.000 Oh my god.

01:02:10.000 It's the greatest.

01:02:11.000 It's the greatest.

01:02:12.000 Because there's something about...

01:02:15.000 I have many screwball theories about this, but I think this one is kind of based in the idea of what a human being is today versus what our genes were designed for.

01:02:28.000 How we evolved thousands and thousands of years of avoiding predators and wars with neighboring tribes.

01:02:37.000 We have a certain amount of necessary energy expenditure, and I don't think most people meet those requirements.

01:02:46.000 And explosive work, whether it's running hills, I used to love when I lived in California to run hills with my dog.

01:02:52.000 It was one of my favorite things.

01:02:53.000 Because there's something about running hills.

01:02:55.000 And it's very low impact, too, because you're going up, for the most part.

01:02:59.000 When you're running up, and going down, I would go slow.

01:03:01.000 I wouldn't really pound down.

01:03:02.000 But when you're running up, it's just plyometric.

01:03:05.000 It's just an explosion.

01:03:05.000 And when you get down, I love everybody.

01:03:07.000 I wanted to call my friends.

01:03:09.000 I wanted to hug everybody.

01:03:10.000 I love everybody.

01:03:12.000 Because it's so exhausting, and I think, You can't get to who you truly are unless you clean away the dirt, the anxiety dirt, the psychological dirt, like the aggression, the tension, just the stress of society and the mass of human beings around you,

01:03:32.000 especially in LA. And to me that was like the greatest gift ever, was the ability to be able to run those hills and to expand all that energy.

01:03:41.000 I feel terrible for people who don't know that, who don't know that we have these biological needs that are built into the, whatever it is, whatever the human vehicle is that carries around your mind, that vehicle needs a certain amount of work.

01:04:00.000 Just like my dog needs me to throw the ball for him and play with him, or he seems depressed, he's just laying around.

01:04:06.000 Yeah, he is!

01:04:07.000 Probably is.

01:04:08.000 No, look, I think this is such a...

01:04:10.000 It's kind of like, wow, at the end of the day, you're like, so it's diet and exercise, basically, right?

01:04:14.000 That's a lot of it, man.

01:04:15.000 No, I mean, I totally agree, and that's part of why...

01:04:19.000 One of the big ideas for reforming our schools is that we're not doing physical education right.

01:04:25.000 The kids should be getting a workout first thing, early in the day.

01:04:33.000 That's the best time to do it, is first thing.

01:04:35.000 And look, I'm like, look, I hate...

01:04:37.000 My worst part of my day is when I realize I have to go running and the first half of the run.

01:04:44.000 That's the worst part of the day.

01:04:45.000 You're like, this is just...

01:04:46.000 There's no way to...

01:04:47.000 You just have to...

01:04:49.000 Gotta get through it.

01:04:49.000 Muscle through it.

01:04:50.000 But in the last half, oh yeah, the last half and then like on the drive home.

01:04:54.000 I love that study that came out a few years ago.

01:04:56.000 I don't know if you saw that.

01:04:56.000 It was like, new study finds runner's high is real.

01:05:01.000 It was like, wow, the department of no duh.

01:05:03.000 New study.

01:05:04.000 Boys like girls sometimes.

01:05:05.000 But that's part of the issue.

01:05:07.000 So you have father absence.

01:05:09.000 I mean, you can say parental absence.

01:05:10.000 But father absence, often it was the fathers who were the ones that were getting their kids...

01:05:14.000 That was typically, I mean, we did, you know, you have hunter-gatherer, you go into farming.

01:05:19.000 Farming, people are getting up early, and they're doing chores.

01:05:22.000 The boys are, whatever they're doing, milking the cows or, you know, doing their stuff with their dad, doing chores around the house.

01:05:28.000 Girls are up with the moms, doing the stuff that the girls and the moms did. 0.96

01:05:32.000 You then get into the industrial and post-industrial age, and it's just been, there isn't that physical activity early in the day.

01:05:40.000 I've become obsessed with Ryan Holiday who's this guy who writes these books on stoicism.

01:05:46.000 Barry Weiss turned me on to him and I've been reading his books and he's just like – it's so simple.

01:05:51.000 Hard exercise – by the way, not just walking.

01:05:54.000 Hard exercise, aerobic exercise early in the day, first thing in the day.

01:05:57.000 Don't turn your phone on for the first hour.

01:06:00.000 Hard exercise, journaling.

01:06:02.000 Then you go and do the hardest thing at work, the first thing.

01:06:06.000 After the exercise.

01:06:07.000 Yeah.

01:06:08.000 And then you wait to eat until you do that sort of intermittent fasting.

01:06:12.000 But I'm kind of like, that seems like we could...

01:06:15.000 And then you could actually get that into schools.

01:06:18.000 I think parents just need more choice about where they send their kids to school.

01:06:21.000 But you start to get that into schools.

01:06:23.000 I think you start to see some big changes because I agree with you.

01:06:26.000 It's like, yeah, we can put blocks on social media and you can try to regulate it, but we're dealing with serious emotional dysregulation from childhood on because we're not dealing with some of these fundamentals around exercise and diet.

01:06:40.000 Also, we're not mirroring enough successful, emotionally successful, and physically successful people.

01:06:46.000 Not just successful in terms of financial, what you could show on paper and numbers, but emotionally successful.

01:06:55.000 Physically successful meaning they maintain a good healthy weight, they have good health in terms of their metabolic health.

01:07:11.000 Yep. 1.00

01:07:20.000 Sometimes I stare at my shoes for a half an hour before I put those motherfuckers on. 1.00

01:07:24.000 Then he'll go and run a marathon. 1.00

01:07:27.000 But he is just like you and I in that.

01:07:31.000 It's getting the ball rolling.

01:07:34.000 I wake up, and when I know I have to work out, which is almost every day except today, I have like a certain amount of anger with myself that I don't want to do it.

01:07:44.000 Oh yeah.

01:07:45.000 You know, and so there's two voices in my head. 0.97

01:07:47.000 One voice is like, let's have breakfast, let's fucking relax, let's watch TV. And the other voice is like, fuck you. 1.00

01:07:53.000 Like, come on, we gotta go. 1.00

01:07:54.000 That's the right voice.

01:07:55.000 That voice always wins.

01:07:58.000 There's a conversation.

01:08:00.000 I would be lying if I said that I don't have any hesitancy and then I'm like supremely disciplined. 1.00

01:08:05.000 That's horse shit. 1.00

01:08:06.000 I think kids... 1.00

01:08:07.000 I think one of the things...

01:08:08.000 I mean, my mom made me...

01:08:10.000 Because my mom provided a lot of discipline, and she made us, like, do that hard work, including learning to swim early in the morning.

01:08:17.000 I think that it's important for people to remember that you have to make yourself do hard things.

01:08:22.000 That there's no, like...

01:08:24.000 It's not like the people that are getting up early and doing their exercise and doing that hard work.

01:08:28.000 They're different somehow. 0.99

01:08:29.000 No, no, it sucks. 0.98

01:08:31.000 It sucks for, like, pro athletes. 0.99

01:08:32.000 It sucks for everybody. 0.96

01:08:33.000 It gets easier over time.

01:08:35.000 But yeah, that period where it's like from the getting out of bed to getting your running shoes on to the first half of the run is miserable.

01:08:40.000 It is, but life is a series of hills and valleys.

01:08:45.000 And to achieve those hills, you've got to get into those valleys.

01:08:49.000 You've got to get to the bottom and then go all the way up.

01:08:51.000 And everybody wants to be at the top of the hill all the time.

01:08:54.000 That's right.

01:08:54.000 Everybody wants to be happy all the time.

01:08:56.000 Like constantly, consistently happy is madness.

01:08:59.000 It's impossible.

01:09:00.000 By the way, there's not much new in, like, I mean, I'm sort of disappointed.

01:09:04.000 I mean, addiction science, there's not that much new there, but there is Anna Lemke at Stanford.

01:09:10.000 I don't know if you had her on, but she's amazing.

01:09:13.000 She has a new book out.

01:09:14.000 But basically, they prove now, scientifically, that you can't have peaks without valleys.

01:09:18.000 Like, it's just part of what you're doing.

01:09:20.000 So you're trying to regulate them and avoid the big extremes.

01:09:24.000 Exercise, diet, good discipline, good mentality, right?

01:09:28.000 Right?

01:09:29.000 This is what we call cognitive behavioral therapy, but having the right mentality is also essential to that.

01:09:35.000 Yeah.

01:09:35.000 And that's, you know, it's not super new, but when I start thinking about, like, what would it look like for us to do cal-psych, for us to have rehab, to have some kind of standards.

01:09:42.000 Cal-psych?

01:09:42.000 What is that?

01:09:43.000 Well, so the big idea is that we need to have this statewide psychiatric and addiction care system.

01:09:49.000 And that means that you can have rehab facilities, psych beds, because, you know, we have officially 166,000 homeless of whom 116,000 are unsheltered, but that's now two and a half years old.

01:10:01.000 Can I ask you this, though?

01:10:02.000 Yeah.

01:10:02.000 Is California responsible for all the homeless people that migrate there?

01:10:06.000 At a certain point in time, when you get to a number, like whatever that number is, and then you do a survey of these people and you find out, oh, they're coming from Louisville, Kentucky, and this place and that place, because they heard that California is an easy place to be homeless because they give you money.

01:10:20.000 Right.

01:10:20.000 And they take care of you.

01:10:21.000 And they don't enforce drug laws.

01:10:23.000 Right.

01:10:23.000 Well, then you have to deal with the crime that comes out of it.

01:10:26.000 Because not everyone's going to be immediately rehabilitated.

01:10:29.000 And, like, how do you regulate that?

01:10:31.000 Well, here's what I would do.

01:10:32.000 If I become governor and I'm inaugurated...

01:10:35.000 Excuse me.

01:10:36.000 Yeah.

01:10:36.000 When?

01:10:38.000 You have to say it like that.

01:10:39.000 Thank you.

01:10:39.000 You have to say it that way.

01:10:40.000 Otherwise, people are like, oh, this guy doesn't even really believe it.

01:10:43.000 I do, actually.

01:10:43.000 I believe it.

01:10:44.000 When I become governor.

01:10:45.000 When I become governor.

01:10:46.000 Ooh, look at that.

01:10:46.000 Sounds good.

01:10:49.000 Alright, you're hired, Joe.

01:10:50.000 You're hired, man.

01:10:51.000 Yeah, when I become governor, like, day one, the inaugural address is...

01:10:57.000 First of all, we're going to take action right away because the governor has extraordinary powers, which we will use very judiciously.

01:11:05.000 But we can get people into shelters.

01:11:07.000 We can get people into triage, get people the care they need.

01:11:10.000 Are there enough shelters currently?

01:11:12.000 No.

01:11:13.000 No, there's not.

01:11:13.000 So would you have to build them or would you have to take buildings that already exist?

01:11:18.000 I mean, one way you look at it as you go, we would never...

01:11:22.000 If there were like a hurricane or earthquake and we had...

01:11:26.000 Somewhere upwards of 150,000 people living in decrepit tents in their own waste on our sidewalks.

01:11:33.000 We would never allow that.

01:11:34.000 We would have FEMA shelters within hours. 0.67

01:11:37.000 We would call out the National Guard.

01:11:39.000 We would get people the care they need.

01:11:41.000 Interesting.

01:11:41.000 That's a good point.

01:11:42.000 And when the Europeans did that, that's what they did. 0.94

01:11:45.000 They mobilized the whole society to shut down the open drug scenes.

01:11:49.000 I would say—here's my view, is I would say—because part of recovery— We're good to go.

01:12:15.000 Find a way to get back home.

01:12:17.000 We'll do our part.

01:12:20.000 To the extent to which California is going to treat...

01:12:22.000 Because you're right.

01:12:23.000 Homelessness...

01:12:24.000 Don't you think a lot of people...

01:12:24.000 I'm sorry to interrupt you.

01:12:25.000 Don't you think a lot of people don't want to go back home?

01:12:27.000 Oh, for sure.

01:12:28.000 A lot of those people, that is not an option at all.

01:12:30.000 Oh, absolutely.

01:12:30.000 I would say a large majority...

01:12:32.000 I don't know.

01:12:32.000 I'm guessing.

01:12:33.000 A large majority don't want to go into shelters when you offer it to them.

01:12:36.000 Right.

01:12:37.000 Because then they can't do drugs.

01:12:38.000 Right.

01:12:39.000 Yeah.

01:12:39.000 And they'd rather camp outside and do drugs.

01:12:41.000 Do you remember the Brentwood thing?

01:12:43.000 Do you know the Brentwood thing?

01:12:44.000 The campsite?

01:12:46.000 I'm not sure which one now.

01:12:47.000 Brentwood, which is one of the most wealthy neighborhoods in Los Angeles, had a campsite that they set up for homeless people.

01:12:54.000 And it was at the VA, I think.

01:12:57.000 And so they had this big fenced-in campsite.

01:13:01.000 But then when you're in that campsite, you had to observe their rules. 1.00

01:13:05.000 And so other homeless people were like, well, fuck their rules. 0.99

01:13:08.000 I'll just camp just outside the campsite. 0.99

01:13:10.000 So just outside the fence, they set up their tents.

01:13:14.000 And so they're doing drugs, like, right there.

01:13:15.000 And then there's people inside the fence, and it's like, it's madness.

01:13:18.000 And it created this crazy environment with all these people, like, breaking into cars, and all kinds of other crimes, and open drug use, and you're driving four miles away from that, or, you know, four blocks away from that, and you have multi-million dollar houses.

01:13:34.000 I'm going to put an end to that.

01:13:36.000 Just to be clear, when I'm elected governor, I'm going to create the shelter.

01:13:42.000 I'm going to require people to stay in there.

01:13:44.000 We're going to have triage stations to get people the care they need.

01:13:48.000 We're going to create the rehab facilities that people need.

01:13:51.000 We can make significant changes in a matter of months, Joe.

01:13:55.000 Let's break down how that works.

01:13:56.000 Okay.

01:13:56.000 So first of all, what are the numbers?

01:13:58.000 What's the number of homeless people in Los Angeles currently?

01:14:02.000 Because Los Angeles is the big problem.

01:14:03.000 If you'll be the governor, you're going to have to deal with – obviously, San Francisco is the other big problem.

01:14:07.000 San Diego, much less so.

01:14:08.000 I'll tell you the official numbers, but they're wrong because they're two and a half years old and they were probably undercounts in the year 2020. But it's in L.A. County, 60,000 homeless.

01:14:19.000 In L.A. City, 44,000.

01:14:23.000 All of California, 116,000 unsheltered, meaning outside in tents, 160,000 total, meaning unsheltered and in shelters.

01:14:33.000 How is it 100,000 in Los Angeles, in Los Angeles County and Los Angeles City, but in only another 16,000 in the rest of the state?

01:14:40.000 No, no, 60,000 in LA County.

01:14:43.000 Right, but you said 40,000 in LA property?

01:14:46.000 Oh yeah, sorry, but the 60,000 includes the 44,000.

01:14:50.000 And San Francisco has somewhere between, I would say, officially it has 8,000 total homeless, but I think it's much more likely to be 10,000 to 12,000 total homeless, of whom...

01:15:05.000 I would say around six to eight are unsheltered.

01:15:08.000 Now, during a year, at least 25,000 unsheltered homeless pass through the city.

01:15:14.000 So you get a lot of movements.

01:15:15.000 So do you consider that people without tents?

01:15:17.000 Are they unsheltered?

01:15:18.000 No, no.

01:15:19.000 The people in the tents are considered unsheltered homeless.

01:15:21.000 Oh, okay.

01:15:22.000 So the only people considered sheltered are people in official shelters.

01:15:26.000 Oh, I see, I see.

01:15:27.000 Yeah.

01:15:27.000 So roughly speaking, you're talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 people in the state.

01:15:32.000 It could be that many.

01:15:35.000 It's a daunting task when you consider it, particularly since the models that we have are of the five European cities that shut down their homeless encampments.

01:15:46.000 One thing I discovered is that the Europeans called them open drug scenes.

01:15:50.000 We euphemistically refer to them as homeless encampments, which makes them sound like they're making marshmallow s'mores.

01:15:56.000 Yeah, and it also brings us back to that they're down on their luck narrative.

01:16:00.000 Right, that they're Okies is the picture. 1.00

01:16:02.000 They're just Okies. 1.00

01:16:03.000 They just can't afford the rent.

01:16:04.000 No, they're not.

01:16:05.000 Okies? 0.90

01:16:06.000 Well, remember Grapes of Wrath, the John Steinbeck novel.

01:16:12.000 They came from the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma.

01:16:13.000 They came to California.

01:16:16.000 Oh, okay.

01:16:36.000 They usually often stole money or lied or cheated from the folks they were staying with and then they were finally kicked out onto the street and then they go just live.

01:16:51.000 Yeah.

01:17:12.000 The people often in the open drug scene might not be homeless in the sense that they might actually have places to stay.

01:17:19.000 But what you'll see when you watch the open drug scenes is that people will come on their bikes or they'll walk there.

01:17:23.000 They'll buy the drugs from the dealers and they'll use them right there.

01:17:27.000 They're in such a hurry to get their fix.

01:17:29.000 They'll buy the fentanyl and meth and they'll just sit right there.

01:17:32.000 And then over a period of time, they're just there all the time with their little foil and lighting the meth and fentanyl and smoking it.

01:17:39.000 And they just become...

01:17:42.000 So we have these numbers.

01:17:44.000 Let's just, whatever the number is in LA, 100,000.

01:17:46.000 Let's say 100,000.

01:17:47.000 Let's start with LA. What is available in terms of shelter?

01:17:52.000 And do you make new buildings?

01:17:54.000 Do you buy buildings?

01:17:56.000 Yes.

01:17:56.000 Both.

01:17:57.000 Yep.

01:17:57.000 And it's not clear that, I don't, I'm not sure yet.

01:18:00.000 I have my, we have a working group on this.

01:18:03.000 And so we're looking at this.

01:18:04.000 It's not clear where you start.

01:18:06.000 Matthew Feeney We'll see what happens.

01:18:16.000 But for example, let's say the Sacramento mayor is like, Michael, we love your whole agenda.

01:18:22.000 Let's start in Sacramento.

01:18:25.000 Because what I know, what I feel very strongly about is that success breeds success.

01:18:31.000 So we want to start somewhere where we get some good outcomes, where we see a big difference in a pretty short period of time, by which I mean months, not years.

01:18:41.000 That it's humane.

01:18:42.000 That we are using our emergency powers the least amount necessary because we want to protect human rights and individual rights, which are now being violated.

01:18:53.000 We want to protect those rights.

01:18:54.000 We want to limit the powers that the governor has because the governor has absolutely extraordinary powers in disaster situations, which is what this is.

01:19:01.000 You get success.

01:19:02.000 Now, you get people into shelter.

01:19:04.000 You get people into rehabs.

01:19:05.000 You get some people into psych hospitals.

01:19:06.000 You might actually get people to go back home to Kentucky or Colorado or wherever they came from.

01:19:12.000 But I think it's also fair to assume that some amount of those so-called unsheltered homeless addicts and mentally ill people will go somewhere else in the state where they're not being required to stay in the shelters because, of course, you've got to enforce the no camping.

01:19:26.000 You've got to enforce the camping ban.

01:19:29.000 Otherwise, you destroy your cities, which are being destroyed now, and people are not getting the help they need.

01:19:33.000 So one vision is that you would start where you have the strongest local support.

01:19:38.000 Another vision is that you start in a smaller town.

01:19:41.000 Another vision is that you start where it's hardest, which is LA. I would say start in LA, just because it's too far gone, and it needs to be cleaned up as quickly as possible.

01:19:52.000 And some headway needs to be done, because it's just going to keep growing.

01:19:55.000 Have you paid attention to what happened in Austin?

01:19:57.000 Yes.

01:19:58.000 Austin's been pretty interesting because the mayor, who I had on the podcast, he really clearly stated that this is his goal.

01:20:07.000 He said, I want to clean this up before I leave office.

01:20:10.000 And if I don't do that, I'll consider my tenure a failure.

01:20:14.000 Good.

01:20:14.000 And he did a lot.

01:20:16.000 He's reversed himself because there was a ballot initiative passed that banned camping.

01:20:21.000 He was the one that allowed public camping, right?

01:20:24.000 And then there was a ballot initiative that passed that banned it.

01:20:27.000 Now, my understanding is that a lot of unsheltered homeless have moved into the woods, have moved into other parts of Austin.

01:20:33.000 I haven't tracked it closely.

01:20:36.000 But, I mean, at the end of the day...

01:20:37.000 They've done a lot to put people into shelters.

01:20:39.000 That's great.

01:20:39.000 But the thing is, if you don't kidnap them, it's very difficult.

01:20:42.000 I mean, I'm not saying you should kidnap people.

01:20:45.000 But I'm saying if you don't physically force them into doing something, these people...

01:20:50.000 I mean, by nature, the type of person that's willing to live on a tent on Cesar Chavez, that's a radical mindset.

01:20:59.000 Sorry to use the word radical again.

01:21:01.000 They've disintegrated.

01:21:02.000 Yeah, I mean, you've gone that far.

01:21:04.000 They've lost their...

01:21:05.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:21:06.000 You're setting up a lawn chair on a major street in front of this tent that you live in, and you're drinking water out of an old milk jug that you bought or got somewhere.

01:21:15.000 It's crazy.

01:21:16.000 It's not okay.

01:21:16.000 The whole thing is crazy, and they've done a great job In Austin of cleaning it up, but one of the things that the mayor said when I talked to him about it, he said, we can clean up 3,000 people.

01:21:29.000 We can do that.

01:21:30.000 He goes, but if it gets to where Los Angeles is, that's untenable.

01:21:34.000 It's unmanageable.

01:21:35.000 That's what his thought was.

01:21:37.000 He felt like it was so far gone that no one had the resources to gather up all those people and get them off the streets.

01:21:44.000 That's not true.

01:21:45.000 Okay, like Skid Row.

01:21:47.000 That would be where you would start.

01:21:49.000 You want to start?

01:21:49.000 Start at Skid Row.

01:21:50.000 I don't know that we'll start there.

01:21:51.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:21:52.000 See what I'm saying?

01:21:53.000 That's such a giant problem.

01:21:55.000 We'll get there.

01:21:55.000 Well, yeah.

01:21:55.000 I mean, the other issue is that...

01:21:57.000 And let me just address this other issue, which you raised, which I think is an important issue, which is like...

01:22:01.000 Let's say we do a really good job and we get addicts and mentally ill people coming, more of them coming to California, and then we're shouldering the burden for the entire country.

01:22:12.000 There's two answers to that.

01:22:13.000 First is that we're going to need to ask the states that sent us their people to share that burden.

01:22:19.000 And or we're going to need to go to Congress and be like, look, if we're going to treat the nation's addicts in rehab facilities, then we're going to need to be reimbursed.

01:22:28.000 We have mechanisms to do that.

01:22:29.000 There's also a real danger if this becomes a place where people can go to clean up and people can go to be taken care of, that more people come and then crime increases and then more people leave the state.

01:22:43.000 Right.

01:22:43.000 Which, I mean, the numbers of people that have left California over the last couple of years are staggering.

01:22:50.000 That's right.

01:22:51.000 We need all the other issues.

01:22:52.000 Yes, that's definitely a concern.

01:22:53.000 So you also need more police officers.

01:22:56.000 So I point out, you don't have to choose between mass homelessness and mass incarceration.

01:23:01.000 But that means that you need the three key piece, more police, more psychiatry and more probation.

01:23:07.000 So that is for sure part of this agenda.

01:23:10.000 I think the other part of it that's not appreciated is that you need more development.

01:23:23.000 This neighborhood is awesome.

01:23:24.000 I mean, if you ignore the complete human depravity and tragedy on the ground...

01:23:28.000 Oh, you mean like the real estate?

01:23:29.000 Yeah, you look around the buildings and like it's sunny and it's near the highways and you're like, this is an incredible neighborhood.

01:23:34.000 It needs to be redeveloped.

01:23:35.000 It needs to have...

01:23:36.000 You need to have a much broader mix of people in there.

01:23:39.000 They tried to do that for a while, right?

01:23:41.000 And it's to some extent happening, but it needs to happen much more significantly, which means that we need to...

01:23:49.000 We're good to go.

01:24:12.000 The rehab you might get might be in Fresno or Bakersfield, or it might be in Yuba County, or it might be in the Sierras, and that might be where you should—that might be the best place to be—90-day rehab facility or 120 days where you're then on a fire crew.

01:24:27.000 I mean, for heaven's sake, we need many more people working on preparing forests to prevent fires, for example, is one of the many things that we need to do in California.

01:24:36.000 We need to clean up dead wood.

01:24:38.000 Absolutely.

01:24:39.000 Prescribed burns.

01:24:40.000 That's like manual hard labor.

01:24:42.000 Not everybody's going to do it.

01:24:43.000 Some people might learn Python at rehab.

01:24:46.000 Some people might learn woodworking.

01:24:48.000 Python?

01:24:48.000 It's just a basic programming language.

01:24:50.000 Oh, I'm sorry.

01:24:51.000 I thought you were talking about cleaning up pythons in Florida.

01:24:54.000 You're going to ship them out to Florida?

01:24:56.000 Maybe that, too.

01:24:57.000 Yeah.

01:24:58.000 This can be—I mean, one of the revolutions that we have not taken advantage, either in schooling or in mental health care or rehab, is personalization.

01:25:08.000 I mean, everybody's different.

01:25:10.000 Like, there's some people that should be doing—people that would be great on a fire crew.

01:25:15.000 You know, working on Cal Fire.

01:25:17.000 Other people, you know, could be helping other people to get into recovery.

01:25:20.000 So we can do all those things with a centralized system, with a really good centralized system.

01:25:26.000 And the other key ingredient that we don't have is professional, assertive case managers, where somebody is tracking your progress.

01:25:35.000 If you're arrested or you overdose and you go into rehab, Before you get out, there's a plan for you so that you don't just go right back on the street and start smoking fentanyl and overdose and die or just become an addict again.

01:25:47.000 There's some plan for you.

01:25:48.000 And we're going to keep a close eye on you and make sure that you commit to that plan.

01:25:52.000 We know that people relapse, but we can reduce that amount of relapsing with a really engaged, good sort of case manager.

01:25:59.000 And it may be that this is someone who does have a potential to be reunited with his family in Ohio.

01:26:05.000 If that's the path, that's great.

01:26:06.000 And I'll work with the governor of Ohio to get that done.

01:26:09.000 I'll work with the Congress to make sure that there's Medicaid money for that person to get fixed and repair their life. 0.92

01:26:15.000 But right now, there is nothing like that.

01:26:18.000 And that's what Cal Psych would do.

01:26:20.000 So in the emergency response, I give myself two years before we go back to voters.

01:26:26.000 I'm going to put, as soon as we come into office, day one, I'm going to go to the legislature and be like, here's my legislation for shelter first.

01:26:34.000 That's the first thing.

01:26:35.000 Shelter first, treatment first, housing earned.

01:26:37.000 You don't have an entitlement to your own apartment in LA. You don't just get to go to LA and be like, hey, I'm a homeless drug addict.

01:26:43.000 Give me my own apartment.

01:26:44.000 It doesn't work.

01:26:45.000 It's not ethical.

01:26:46.000 It's not fair.

01:26:47.000 Okay, but if they do go there and then they don't work, they're just going to be homeless.

01:26:52.000 Right.

01:26:53.000 So we're going to enforce a statewide camping ban.

01:26:56.000 So where do you start?

01:26:57.000 Venice?

01:26:57.000 That's a good eyesore.

01:26:59.000 I've got a little bit of time to figure out where we start.

01:27:02.000 And some of it will depend on politics.

01:27:04.000 Have you run numbers with anybody?

01:27:06.000 We're doing that right now.

01:27:08.000 We're going to come in on my inauguration day with legislation that goes in front of the legislature.

01:27:15.000 And I'm going to take emergency actions as governor to deal with the disaster.

01:27:19.000 We can get FEMA shelter set up, triage tents.

01:27:22.000 We can get the National Guard involved if we need to in a strictly civilian capacity.

01:27:25.000 How many people do you need in terms of like counselors, police officers, law enforcement, just to handle the homeless problem?

01:27:32.000 It seems like you need a team.

01:27:34.000 Oh, it's a huge—that's a great question.

01:27:38.000 That's in many ways—there's sort of the institutional arrangement.

01:27:42.000 There's where do you start geographically.

01:27:44.000 There's how do you do the legal side.

01:27:46.000 I assume we'll just be sued by ACLU. That's fine.

01:27:50.000 We'll go to court over what we're doing.

01:27:51.000 That's fine.

01:27:52.000 And then there's workforce.

01:27:53.000 And in some ways, the workforce is the most important thing.

01:27:56.000 We're losing—I mean, both L.A. and San Francisco are short, like, 500 police officers at this point.

01:28:01.000 It's a big part of the reason for the crime.

01:28:10.000 Yeah.

01:28:11.000 Yeah.

01:28:14.000 Yeah.

01:28:22.000 Who's a Democrat, by the way, African-American.

01:28:26.000 They use all the same police tactics that everybody has, police network investigations and hotspots and all these weed and seed methods, they call them.

01:28:37.000 The same methods, but what was the difference is that he believed in the police.

01:28:41.000 So he came in and was like, I support you.

01:28:43.000 And he had a new police chief brought him from San Jose, California, actually, and they re-inspired people.

01:28:49.000 Morale is everything.

01:28:50.000 So we need to re-inspire our police To get involved, to go the extra mile.

01:28:56.000 We need co-responders.

01:28:58.000 So social workers go out with police.

01:29:00.000 That relationship is essential.

01:29:02.000 So we're not going to be able to do it overnight, but we're going to be able to do a lot in two years.

01:29:06.000 Legislature either acts on my agenda or parts of it.

01:29:10.000 Whatever they don't act on, we go to the voters with in 2024 as ballot initiatives.

01:29:16.000 We also then get in the legislature, if we need to, new legislators who are going to do what we need to do to deal with this crisis.

01:29:23.000 I think we make such significant headway, Joe, in the first two years that that builds—because nothing succeeds like success—that builds the momentum that we need to deal with these other challenges—school reforms, greater parental choice— Energy, water,

01:29:38.000 abundant energy, water, reduce the cost of living, more housing.

01:29:42.000 But we need that first momentum because if we don't have cities, if we don't have functioning cities, if we don't deal with the open drug scenes, then we can't do any of the rest of it.

01:29:51.000 Where are you going to get all the money for this?

01:29:53.000 Well, first of all, the reason the problem got so bad is because we've been spending money to make it bad.

01:29:59.000 So, I mean, we spend more money on homelessness and mental health than any other state per capita and have the worst outcomes. 0.82

01:30:06.000 Half of all fires that are being put out in LA and Oakland are in homeless encampments, the vast majority of which, by the way, are arson, not accidental, so just crazy, dumb revenge stuff.

01:30:18.000 I think probably around half of all EMT calls, if not more, are responding to drug overdoses.

01:30:23.000 So the system is so grossly inefficient because of this coddling victim ideology attitude towards the open drug scenes.

01:30:33.000 Will it cost more?

01:30:34.000 I have no idea.

01:31:03.000 And so the amount of money that's being spent on homeless people right now is exorbitant but ineffective.

01:31:09.000 So what are they doing with that money now?

01:31:11.000 And what they're doing, is any of it necessary?

01:31:15.000 Do you still need to spend that money doing what these people are doing, but manage it better?

01:31:19.000 And do you need money on top of that to implement your plan?

01:31:23.000 We don't know.

01:31:24.000 I mean, the funny thing is, so the big cost is housing.

01:31:27.000 It costs between $750,000 to $850,000 to build a single apartment unit for a homeless dude.

01:31:35.000 One person.

01:31:36.000 One person in Venice Beach in San Francisco.

01:31:39.000 That is not going to work.

01:31:40.000 They passed a ballot initiative in Los Angeles called Proposition HHH, and it was billions of dollars to build supposedly 10,000 units.

01:31:49.000 They're going to end up building fewer than 2,000.

01:31:52.000 To meet the needs of 60,000 people.

01:31:56.000 It was doomed from the beginning to not work.

01:32:06.000 I think?

01:32:26.000 They do not have a right to their own apartment unit in Venice Beach or San Francisco.

01:32:31.000 That's absurd.

01:32:32.000 But yet that is the official policy in California is that we're going to give all 150,000 or so unsheltered homeless people their own apartment unit.

01:32:41.000 That is literally the ideology right now.

01:32:44.000 I read this moronic tweet where they were talking about how many people are working at home now and how many office buildings are unoccupied and then how many people are homeless. 0.81

01:32:53.000 And now we have a solution. 0.97

01:32:55.000 Very simple.

01:32:56.000 Just move these homeless people into these office buildings. 1.00

01:32:59.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:33:00.000 What about the people that own the fucking office buildings that would like to sell them? 0.99

01:33:02.000 They bought them. 0.99

01:33:04.000 They spent millions of dollars.

01:33:05.000 Are you a communist? 1.00

01:33:06.000 The fuck are you saying? 1.00

01:33:08.000 Where does this make sense to you? 1.00

01:33:11.000 Is the state going to buy these gigantic office buildings that are worth a fucking kajillion dollars and then use those for homeless shelters? 0.73

01:33:20.000 And who's going to manage those? 0.95

01:33:22.000 Who's going to clean them up?

01:33:23.000 Who's going to make sure that these people aren't shitting each other in there?

01:33:26.000 Well, right now what we've done is we're basically just warehousing people in motel rooms, as we've been doing since COVID. They all get trashed.

01:33:33.000 They all get destroyed.

01:33:35.000 I don't even want to describe its gross, what happens to them.

01:33:38.000 These basic questions you're asking, the establishment, Governor Gavin Newsom, the people he relies on, they don't even answer them.

01:33:48.000 They think it's just a moral issue that we should give everybody their own house.

01:33:52.000 It doesn't work.

01:33:53.000 It doesn't even keep people housed.

01:33:55.000 Do you think they really think that or do you think they say that because it's politically effective?

01:34:00.000 Like it's a good thing to say if you want to get like the hardcore lefties on your side.

01:34:06.000 Yes.

01:34:07.000 I mean for sure.

01:34:07.000 I mean he wants – Gavin wants George Soros and ACLU to back him as governor.

01:34:15.000 I mean George Soros gave Gavin a million dollars during the recall last year.

01:34:20.000 He wants that support to go win in Iowa and New Hampshire and become the Democratic nominee in 2024. Really?

01:34:27.000 That's the strategy, yes.

01:34:28.000 After almost getting recalled, they really think that he can do that?

01:34:32.000 Well, yeah, because his approval ratings hit a 57% approval rating two months ago.

01:34:39.000 It is down to 50% now.

01:34:41.000 Everybody that was in the recall, all the people competing in it, are not running.

01:34:47.000 I got in at the very last minute because I was like, who's going to do this?

01:34:51.000 Like, come on, guys.

01:34:51.000 Somebody's got to run against this guy.

01:34:53.000 You got in the recall?

01:34:53.000 I'm sorry.

01:34:54.000 I got in this election at the very last minute.

01:34:56.000 The best candidate was Larry Elder in terms of the biggest threat.

01:34:59.000 And he got 38%.

01:35:00.000 Yeah.

01:35:01.000 But he was just a popular radio guy.

01:35:03.000 He's not even a career politician.

01:35:05.000 But he was the best in that he was a high-profile public figure.

01:35:09.000 And he was, you know, but look, I mean, super nice guy, by the way.

01:35:11.000 I've met him.

01:35:12.000 But, you know, he's a Trump guy.

01:35:15.000 And California, we're, that's not who we are.

01:35:18.000 I mean, I, you know, that's...

01:35:19.000 I think you're misinterpreting who he is.

01:35:21.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:35:21.000 What he is, is the black face of white supremacy. 0.99

01:35:26.000 That's what the LA Times called him. 0.99

01:35:27.000 Right.

01:35:28.000 Like, what?

01:35:28.000 Right, right.

01:35:29.000 And then, by the way, a month or two ago, then, the LA Times ran a story complaining of the lack of civility in politics.

01:35:37.000 Oh, adorable.

01:35:38.000 Yeah.

01:35:39.000 Well, hopefully a different person wrote that.

01:35:41.000 But people, I mean, I think people wanted to shake up the system with Larry Elder I can shake up the system because I don't hold a lot of those views.

01:35:51.000 The negative views.

01:35:52.000 I support a high minimum wage.

01:35:57.000 As do I. I think immigrants have made this country great and strong.

01:36:02.000 I would like to see it legal and regulated, but...

01:36:06.000 There's just a lot of views that, you know, I support the decriminalization of marijuana.

01:36:11.000 I think, you know, psychedelics hold a lot of potential.

01:36:14.000 I'm not a drug prude.

01:36:15.000 I also think that you have to, for cities to function, you can't allow people to camp anywhere.

01:36:21.000 And I think that reciprocity is essential.

01:36:24.000 Carrots and sticks are essential.

01:36:26.000 There need to be consequences.

01:36:29.000 For misbehaviors, including breaking the law.

01:36:32.000 You sound like a Republican, though, when you say that.

01:36:33.000 See, this is the problem, right?

01:36:36.000 These ideologies are so divided that good things that are supported by the other side are denounced.

01:36:44.000 By the LA Times.

01:36:45.000 Yeah, well, not just by the LA Times, by a lot of people on the left. 0.99

01:36:47.000 A lot of people on the left that were in this defund the police fucking camp. 0.98

01:36:51.000 When that was going on, I was like... 0.97

01:36:53.000 Have you ever been involved in real violence?

01:36:55.000 Have you ever needed to call the police?

01:36:57.000 Because when you say defund the police, you don't know what you're saying.

01:37:01.000 You don't know what you're saying because you will then allow criminals, which there are many of, you will allow them to go commit crimes and have no repercussions, which will embolden them and will increase their crime.

01:37:15.000 And that's what we're seeing in New York City.

01:37:17.000 That's what you're seeing in Los Angeles.

01:37:19.000 It's crazy.

01:37:20.000 There was a video that I sent a bunch of my friends where, again, it was on my friend Coleon Noir's Instagram page, where he was talking about this gang member was leaving LA because it's too dangerous.

01:37:34.000 And he was telling all his friends, get out now because they're going to release some very large number.

01:37:41.000 I think it was like 70,000 people.

01:37:44.000 They're releasing them early from prisons, from prisons with violent histories, drugs, gangs, violence.

01:37:52.000 And they're going to release them and they have no jobs.

01:37:54.000 Right.

01:38:09.000 Well, yeah, although, I mean, we're in—so first of all, I think, yeah, look, there's 20 to 30 percent of the electorate that is in favor of police abolition, defunding the police, public camping.

01:38:22.000 I hate to say this, but those people need to experience what that's like.

01:38:26.000 I mean, I don't want anybody to get robbed and beaten up, but you should kind of see what that means.

01:38:33.000 Yeah.

01:38:33.000 Because what we need is more funding of the police.

01:38:35.000 Absolutely.

01:38:36.000 We need police to be held to a higher standard, but we need better training for the police.

01:38:40.000 And we also need a lot more respect. 0.97

01:38:41.000 Those people are doing a really fucking hard job. 0.86

01:38:44.000 And it's one thing that I say, I've had so many conversations with people that disagree with me on this, you know, outside. 0.98

01:38:51.000 Like, I don't like your open support of the police. 0.99

01:38:53.000 What the fuck are you talking about, man? 0.99

01:38:55.000 Do you know how hard it is to be a cop? 1.00

01:38:57.000 You know, you're seeing out of the millions and millions of interactions that police have with people that are committing crimes or the people that are pulling over or whatever, you're seeing a choice few amount of people that either We're good to

01:39:31.000 go.

01:39:31.000 Andrew Yang had a really good point about that as the police, too.

01:39:34.000 He said, you shouldn't be a police officer unless you're at least a purple belt in jujitsu, which is dead on.

01:39:39.000 I agree.

01:39:40.000 You can't be 120 pounds with no ability to defend yourself, and your gun has a snap, and you're three feet away from someone who can punch you in the face.

01:39:50.000 You're vulnerable.

01:39:52.000 You're not really enforcing the law.

01:39:54.000 You're barely there.

01:39:56.000 Well, I mean, right now, basically what happens in a place like Skid Row and Tunneline is the police just watch crimes occur.

01:40:01.000 Right.

01:40:02.000 And they don't do anything.

01:40:03.000 They can't change anything.

01:40:04.000 Yeah, and they kind of go, what's the point?

01:40:06.000 They'll take him to the DA and the DA won't prosecute.

01:40:09.000 That's a problem.

01:40:10.000 Do you get rid of that guy immediately?

01:40:11.000 Well, so first of all, he's going to – the San Francisco DA is almost certainly going to be recalled in June.

01:40:18.000 What about the LA guy?

01:40:19.000 The LA will probably be recalled in November.

01:40:22.000 So this is – things are changing quickly.

01:40:25.000 My candidacy, we did some initial polling.

01:40:28.000 I'm drawing – Equal support from independents, Democrats, Republicans.

01:40:33.000 It's an open primary on June 7th, meaning that anybody can vote for anybody and the top two vote-getters go in.

01:40:40.000 I was a lifelong Democrat, changed my party affiliation to no party preference.

01:40:46.000 So, look, I think I'm going to come in second, which is all I need to do on June 7th.

01:40:51.000 Gavin comes in first.

01:40:52.000 And then...

01:40:53.000 The voters can choose between a fairly radical, you know, agenda that basically Gavin is captive to or a much more sensible approach that I'm proposing that we find is actually quite strong, 78% support.

01:41:06.000 So when you say he's got a radical agenda, like what is that?

01:41:10.000 If you would categorize that to people that aren't familiar, they know that California is kind of nutty.

01:41:14.000 What is the agenda?

01:41:16.000 First and foremost is housing first.

01:41:18.000 It's this idea that anybody who shows up in Venice Beach or San Francisco and says they want their own apartment.

01:41:25.000 And then when you say, well, of course we don't have an apartment for you now, then it's like, okay, well then I'm going to camp here in the park or on the sidewalk and the cities say, okay, fine.

01:41:35.000 As opposed to, no, you can go stay in the shelter, you can go back home, you can get a job and pay for your own apartment, but you can't sleep In public places.

01:41:46.000 That's not compatible with civilization.

01:41:48.000 It's not safe for you or for anybody else.

01:41:51.000 To not do that, to not require shelter, is radical in my view.

01:41:58.000 What city, if any, in this country handles it correctly?

01:42:03.000 New York actually before the pandemic did better than anybody else.

01:42:06.000 They sheltered over 95% of its people.

01:42:10.000 We shelter in California about a third of our homeless.

01:42:14.000 So New York had how many?

01:42:16.000 What percentage was it?

01:42:18.000 Over 95% of its homeless were sheltered, yes.

01:42:21.000 The number's huge though, right?

01:42:23.000 What are the numbers of homeless people in New York?

01:42:26.000 One of the ways that the wokes manipulate these numbers is they say, well, New York has many more homeless people. 1.00

01:42:32.000 It's like, well, but they're sheltered.

01:42:35.000 So when most ordinary people don't distinguish between sheltered and unsheltered homeless, when most ordinary people think of homeless people, they think of the people they see on the streets.

01:42:46.000 Those people are called unsheltered homeless.

01:42:48.000 So there's a whole group of other people that live in shelters that should be having personal plans to get on the straight and narrow to improve their lives or to get residential care.

01:42:59.000 My aunt who suffered schizophrenia, she had good residential care in a group home, which also does not need to be super expensive, by the way.

01:43:06.000 She shared a home.

01:43:08.000 She had her own bedroom, but she shared a kitchen and living area with other people and a caretaker.

01:43:13.000 For people that are mentally disabled, that's what they need.

01:43:16.000 But look, 75% of our—I mean, I estimate, talking in the research that we've done and talking to a lot of other people, I estimate that 75% of our homeless are just addicts, meaning they don't have schizophrenia, they don't have bipolar disorder,

01:43:32.000 they're just addicts.

01:43:34.000 Some of them—people sometimes say to me, and they go, come on, Michael, if you're a 75-year-old heroin addict who's been using heroin for 40 years, it's going to be really hard for you to— To, you know, achieve recovery.

01:43:45.000 I agree, but most of these guys are not 75. 25 year olds, the 75 year old, there's a case for a small, very small share of them to be getting effectively palliative care and they can get methadone or Suboxone or maybe even heroin maintenance for the rest of their lives.

01:44:01.000 They still need to be in residential care.

01:44:03.000 The 25 year old who was a pothead and then became a fentanyl smoker Just needs to go to rehab, get a job, and get re-affiliated with family and friends.

01:44:14.000 We know how to do that.

01:44:15.000 God, that sounds so easy because rehab is not that effective.

01:44:19.000 Like, what's the success rate of rehab in terms of the recidivism?

01:44:23.000 In terms of, I don't know if it's recidivism, but it's relapse.

01:44:25.000 It's high.

01:44:26.000 It's high, but it's also high when you don't have any consequences.

01:44:30.000 Right, but there are better solutions.

01:44:33.000 And this is what I want to bring up.

01:44:35.000 Psychedelic solutions.

01:44:36.000 One of the most effective things in terms of weaning people off drugs and getting them to quit and recognize their ways appears to be Ibogaine.

01:44:44.000 And Ibogaine is not a recreational drug by any stretch of the imagination, but it's illegal in the United States.

01:44:51.000 It's legal in Mexico. 0.59

01:44:53.000 And a lot of people go over to Mexico to kick drugs, and my friend Ed Clay, he started a center over there because he had an experience, back pain, injury, got on pills, couldn't get off of them, was really fucked, and went over and got treatment,

01:45:09.000 and it was so radically successful that he decided to start his own treatment center over there.

01:45:15.000 I think that we need to take a much more radical...

01:45:19.000 Hey, there's that word again.

01:45:21.000 A much more, you know, more effective approach.

01:45:26.000 And psychedelics are a more effective approach.

01:45:30.000 And I know there's...

01:45:31.000 There's some use of psychedelics that's being sanctioned in the United States.

01:45:35.000 For instance, ketamine for depression.

01:45:37.000 You can get a prescription for ketamine, which is in some ways a psychedelic drug.

01:45:43.000 It's not traditionally a psychedelic drug in terms of mushrooms or all these other ones.

01:45:48.000 The most effective one appears to be Ibogaine.

01:45:51.000 And it's not a good time, according to all the people that have done it.

01:45:53.000 I have not done it.

01:45:54.000 But according to all the people that I know that have done it, that have gotten off pills, it's not fun.

01:45:58.000 And it's a 24-hour experience, but when it's over, you're radically changed.

01:46:03.000 And you kind of understand in a very clear way.

01:46:07.000 It's apparently ruthlessly introspective in a way that even acid isn't.

01:46:13.000 And it forces people to see, like, this is where your trauma comes from.

01:46:17.000 This is why you're hijacking your life with drugs.

01:46:19.000 This is the path forward.

01:46:22.000 Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say, look, California is exactly the place that there should be trials of these things.

01:46:29.000 Scientific trials under medical supervision.

01:46:32.000 For me, the key thing is we have had...

01:46:36.000 There needs to be assertive case managers.

01:46:38.000 We need to have psychiatric evaluations.

01:46:41.000 Some people, for those trials, California is exactly the place.

01:46:46.000 I mean, California is the home for experimental psychedelics and drugs.

01:46:49.000 Very open to all that.

01:46:51.000 I think a lot of other people in their recovery, they benefit from hard exercise, like we were just talking about.

01:46:56.000 Routine, work, love, relationships, reconnection.

01:47:02.000 This is not like nuclear engineering.

01:47:06.000 That's hard.

01:47:07.000 This is social work.

01:47:09.000 This is case management.

01:47:12.000 We're dealing in California with a breakdown of civilization because the powers that be are in the grip of a radical woke ideology funded by George Soros and funded by ACLU over decades to basically not require people to take responsibility for their own behaviors or For their own health,

01:47:32.000 for their own citizenship, their participation in society.

01:47:36.000 Those folks, we get them in our system. 0.99

01:47:39.000 There's things that we're going to ask from them.

01:47:42.000 But I think I'm very open to, you know, we have all sorts of, I mean, it's not just psychedelics.

01:47:46.000 We also have injectable antipsychotics.

01:47:48.000 We have 30-day Suboxone, which is the opioid replacement therapy that's an improvement over methadone, it appears.

01:47:56.000 I'm very practical.

01:47:57.000 Like, we want to, but the goal, this is what matters.

01:48:02.000 The goal right now is addiction maintenance.

01:48:05.000 That's what these guys are doing with everybody, including the 20-somethings.

01:48:09.000 The goal should be recovery.

01:48:11.000 For those who can achieve recovery, the goal should be recovery.

01:48:14.000 I grant you there's a small minority of people for whom it's going to be palliative care, and that's a sad situation, but we can deal with that.

01:48:23.000 But what disturbs me is that we have a palliative care approach to the entire community.

01:48:29.000 I think we're good to go.

01:48:48.000 That they're things that we can deal with, and then we get people back into it.

01:48:53.000 A lot of people are going to take some time to get into recovery, but recovery should be the goal.

01:48:57.000 Right now, recovery is not the goal.

01:48:59.000 It's kind of crazy that that seems to be the number one problem in California is drug addiction.

01:49:06.000 In terms of when you're dealing with this homeless problem, the number one problem is drug addiction and also dealing with childhood trauma.

01:49:14.000 Like a lot of these people come from broken homes and sexual abuse and all the other things that lead people to become drug addicts.

01:49:24.000 What do you do that's different from what they're doing now?

01:49:30.000 You were talking about how much money is being spent.

01:49:33.000 How much money is being spent right now on homeless and what are they doing wrong?

01:49:37.000 What are they doing with that money?

01:49:39.000 Yeah, I mean, it's an astonishing sum of money, right?

01:49:42.000 So, officially, it was around $14 billion over two years, but that is a gross underestimate of it.

01:49:48.000 Is that for the entire state?

01:49:49.000 That's just the state spending.

01:49:52.000 There's billions spent in...

01:49:53.000 So, San Francisco's homeless budget is around a billion dollars.

01:49:57.000 For 10,000 people, Joe, that's 100,000 per person.

01:50:02.000 So, you could just...

01:50:02.000 You know, give them $100,000.

01:50:06.000 And they've taken over some of our most beautiful plazas.

01:50:11.000 People live in tents.

01:50:13.000 Addicts, they live in tents.

01:50:15.000 They smoke fentanyl and meth all day long.

01:50:17.000 They have three meals a day delivered to their tents.

01:50:20.000 They don't have to do anything.

01:50:23.000 Their toilets are cleaned and paid for by people.

01:50:26.000 They have clothes brought to them.

01:50:27.000 There's no pressure put on them to get towards recovery.

01:50:31.000 It's insane.

01:50:32.000 And that doesn't even account, by the way, fire departments, EMTs.

01:50:36.000 These things are really expensive to send out five EMTs.

01:50:39.000 So let's just concentrate on San Francisco.

01:50:42.000 So that billion dollars that's spent in San Francisco, it's just a maintenance program, right?

01:50:47.000 Because it has no impact on the amount of homeless people.

01:50:50.000 A maintenance and magnet program.

01:50:52.000 Maybe it has the opposite effect.

01:50:54.000 It does.

01:50:54.000 Right?

01:50:54.000 You bring people in.

01:50:55.000 Yes.

01:50:55.000 Yeah, I think that our thinking is, people get, we're confused about it because people, I think the idea as we go, I think, I mean, progressives think, well, we're just not spending enough money.

01:51:04.000 No, no, no.

01:51:04.000 We have been spending, the money we have been spending created the problem.

01:51:09.000 You got to remember, the number of homeless people in California increased 31% between 2010 and 2020 and decreased 18% in the rest of the United States.

01:51:20.000 So they just moved to California.

01:51:21.000 So a lot of them moved to California.

01:51:23.000 Wow.

01:51:25.000 It's not to say there's not some people, you know, I would say somewhere between 50 and 75% of the unsheltered homeless are from outside the state at this point.

01:51:33.000 Okay.

01:51:33.000 So what they're doing now is ineffective.

01:51:36.000 They're spending all this money that's essentially just attracting more people and it's just a maintenance program.

01:51:42.000 So how do you wean them off of that?

01:51:44.000 How do you start?

01:51:46.000 The first thing you do is do you ban camping and then force them into some sort of sheltered situation?

01:51:53.000 Do you stop them from doing drugs when they're in the sheltered situation?

01:51:56.000 And how do you do that?

01:51:57.000 Yeah, and it's, I wouldn't even say ineffective, I would say counterproductive, effective at making homelessness worse.

01:52:05.000 Yeah, I mean, look, the first thing is you have to have places for people to go, which we don't have.

01:52:10.000 You know, when I was in the Netherlands doing my research for San Francisco, and in the caseworker, we would interact with a homeless guy who was psychotic, and it was like, where is he going to go?

01:52:19.000 I'd be like, where is he going to go?

01:52:20.000 He's like, well, we have a shelter bed for him.

01:52:22.000 Oh, what about the hospital?

01:52:24.000 Do you have a room in a psych bed in the hospital?

01:52:26.000 Yeah, we have that if he needs that.

01:52:28.000 Do you have a rehab for him?

01:52:29.000 Yeah, we've got that.

01:52:30.000 So you've got to have that.

01:52:31.000 So the Netherlands is like, what's the population of the Netherlands?

01:52:34.000 I think it's 17 million.

01:52:36.000 So the population is roughly like three quarters of L.A.? Yeah.

01:52:40.000 Something like that?

01:52:41.000 Yeah.

01:52:42.000 And that is effective?

01:52:44.000 They've been able to do that?

01:52:45.000 I mean, I go to Netherlands.

01:52:46.000 I mean, basically you get to Netherlands, Germany, France, Japan.

01:52:49.000 They have world-class systems.

01:52:51.000 It's all tiered in that same way.

01:52:53.000 So it's kind of like, we have basic, clean, safe shelter for you.

01:52:57.000 We also have, if you succeed, carrots and sticks the entire way.

01:53:02.000 So by making housing an entitlement rather than something earned, you're removing both the carrot and the stick.

01:53:09.000 So what we know, there's something rewarding good behavior is called contingency management.

01:53:16.000 So the classic studies that were done were homeless addicts.

01:53:20.000 They would be in shelter and they all want their own room because everybody wants the privacy of their own room.

01:53:24.000 So they'd say, if you pass your drug test, you can go into your own room.

01:53:28.000 They get their own room.

01:53:56.000 I mean...

01:53:59.000 You need it all.

01:54:00.000 You need universal shelter with capacity.

01:54:02.000 You need rehab facilities.

01:54:06.000 You need permanent residential care for mentally disabled, seriously mentally ill people, which I think we estimate around 10% of the total homeless population.

01:54:16.000 And you need massive amounts of counselors.

01:54:19.000 So, and you need a whole, you need a cadre of well-trained, I'm not saying they all have to have MSWs, but a cadre of super well-trained, assertive case managers.

01:54:30.000 But how many do you need?

01:54:31.000 I mean, if one per 100 people, you have a thousand?

01:54:35.000 No, no.

01:54:36.000 There's a debate in the literature.

01:54:37.000 Last time I checked, I think it's somewhere like a single case manager can manage between 10 and 20 people.

01:54:42.000 Whoa.

01:54:43.000 But it depends on...

01:54:44.000 But think about how many people you need then.

01:54:46.000 Well, yeah.

01:54:46.000 And the other thing is that we have a lot of people and it's completely inefficiently managed.

01:54:51.000 We have tens of thousands of counselors that are willing to get into this hard work? 0.87

01:54:55.000 We have...

01:54:56.000 I don't know the exact number and it's hard to know because some of them are at private non-profits, some of them are with government agencies.

01:55:02.000 But they have a hard time finding people to work at Home Depot.

01:55:05.000 We have a workforce problem. 0.71

01:55:06.000 Yeah, we have a real workforce problem. 0.68

01:55:08.000 Well, under the extraordinary powers of governor, you can...

01:55:13.000 You can get people into the right jobs, and you can also use the National Guard, and you can take extraordinary measures.

01:55:19.000 But this is what it's going to take.

01:55:20.000 We're not going to let a crisis go to waste.

01:55:22.000 We've spent two hours just on homeless people.

01:55:24.000 There's obviously some other...

01:55:26.000 We did fitness, too.

01:55:29.000 And depression.

01:55:30.000 But that's all connected to why people turn out to be homeless, right?

01:55:32.000 Yeah.

01:55:34.000 What other issues are of primary concern?

01:55:38.000 So I look at it, by the way, I put it in three broad categories.

01:55:41.000 Drugs, crime, homelessness, housing, schools, infrastructure, energy, water, environment.

01:55:46.000 We did a bit of those.

01:55:48.000 And like I said, I think we make success.

01:55:52.000 We have progress.

01:55:53.000 We get 60 to 70 percent of the public on board, excited about what we're doing.

01:55:57.000 I think it gives us the momentum we need.

01:55:59.000 L.A. Public Schools.

01:56:00.000 It's a disaster, Joe.

01:56:02.000 Disaster.

01:56:02.000 Okay.

01:56:02.000 So we have...

01:56:04.000 On average, 30% math proficiency, meaning 30% of the students are proficient at the basic levels of math in their grade, 50% reading proficiency.

01:56:14.000 Black proficiency, about 10%, Latino at 15%.

01:56:17.000 This is a scandal.

01:56:20.000 I mean, this is shocking.

01:56:20.000 And we've put more money into schools.

01:56:24.000 We are in the top 20 per capita resources for schools.

01:56:29.000 Something's clearly not working.

01:56:33.000 Look, you know, my parents were public school teachers.

01:56:36.000 My mom was a union rep. 0.93

01:56:37.000 I believe in great teachers.

01:56:40.000 At the same time, nobody hates a bad teacher more than a good teacher.

01:56:43.000 By the way, in part of my research, I discovered the cops say the same thing.

01:56:46.000 Oh, yeah, true.

01:56:48.000 So, look, we provide tenure for public school teachers.

01:56:53.000 There's a lot of questions about why we do that, because that is an obstacle to moving out bad teachers.

01:56:59.000 I would be open to negotiating that with the teachers union, which I think most people expect.

01:57:03.000 Do you think they would be willing to do that?

01:57:04.000 Well, here's what I would say.

01:57:07.000 We're going to negotiate that.

01:57:09.000 But the other issue is just we need more parental choice over schools.

01:57:12.000 We need more innovation and choices for schools for kids.

01:57:17.000 I would love to see longer school days, better physical education like we talked about.

01:57:25.000 Well, I think the school day needs to match the work day for parents.

01:57:28.000 It's hard for a parent.

01:57:29.000 Like, why is it that kids have a completely different...

01:57:32.000 If you're working a 9 to 6 job as a parent, why is it that your kid is going to school from 7 or 8 a.m.

01:57:39.000 to 3 p.m.?

01:57:41.000 Well, but they can – and look, it's not for everybody.

01:57:44.000 That's why you need more parental choice.

01:57:46.000 But a lot of kids, especially the kids that are underperforming, they need more time at school and often time away from an environment that may not be the healthiest environment for them.

01:57:58.000 True, but a lot of times the school is an unhealthy environment because the kids from that environment are then contained inside the school.

01:58:04.000 And on top of that, if you're talking about keeping them for long periods of time because they need more time at school to get better, what they need is better education.

01:58:14.000 I think it's exhausting to be in school for long, long hours like that.

01:58:19.000 Remember, if you're doing a sport, you're often on campus for a long period of time.

01:58:23.000 So you're talking more physical education.

01:58:26.000 The littler kids, no.

01:58:27.000 They don't necessarily need a longer school day, but they may need nap time.

01:58:30.000 I think older kids might need nap time.

01:58:33.000 They need – they should – these are – I'm really interested.

01:58:36.000 When you go to Japan or Germany, kids are involved in cleaning the classroom.

01:58:40.000 Kids are involved in cooking.

01:58:42.000 It's absurd to me that children can graduate from high school and not know how to cook themselves a basic meal.

01:58:47.000 It's absurd to me that kids don't know – because I've had interns.

01:58:51.000 I've been working with interns for over 25 years as a professional.

01:58:55.000 I'm shocked by the kids that graduate from college that don't know how to cook, they don't know how to clean, they don't know how to do basic life skills.

01:59:02.000 We don't have proper vocational education.

01:59:06.000 We need to have personalized education.

01:59:08.000 Not all kids are going to go to college.

01:59:11.000 Most kids don't go to college.

01:59:12.000 A few kids go on to get graduate degrees.

01:59:15.000 Germany has a beautiful program of apprenticeships.

01:59:18.000 We've got to open our educational system to more opportunities and choices for parents and kids.

01:59:27.000 So obviously this must mean a massive budget increase for the school systems as well.

01:59:33.000 Not necessarily.

01:59:34.000 Really?

01:59:34.000 Not necessarily.

01:59:36.000 Maybe.

01:59:38.000 On the other hand, look at what the costs of poor education are.

01:59:42.000 And again, I think some of this stuff has to be negotiated.

01:59:45.000 I'm reluctant to say what needs to be, because I think the budgets right now are so opaque.

01:59:51.000 We just don't know at this point.

01:59:53.000 The other issue is that there's so much disagreement on schools, on housing and infrastructure.

01:59:59.000 I view my obligation as governor to build consensus in the society that can last for years and decades.

02:00:06.000 Otherwise, it'll just be undone by the people that come after me.

02:00:09.000 So I would be doing the processes.

02:00:11.000 I want to do citizen's juries. 0.51

02:00:13.000 I want to have hundreds of people involved in deliberating on these issues in 2023-2024 on these two big areas, housing, schools, infrastructure, education, energy, water, environment.

02:00:28.000 We still have legislative hearings, but I want to get the public involved in building consensus.

02:00:32.000 I want to get beyond—I want to get into long-form slow thinking beyond the kind of crazy social media, crazy politicized advertising, news media, and really seriously deliberate and figure out how to do this.

02:00:46.000 I think we're going to be able to find solutions to this.

02:00:48.000 I don't think the same solutions for the same kids everywhere, but clearly parents need more choice in this matter than they've had.

02:00:56.000 One of the things that is in my mind that keeps popping up in regards to someone being a governor is very similar to what I think of someone being a president.

02:01:08.000 That the idea of having one person that is somehow responsible for so many different insanely difficult things that require incredible amounts of time and effort.

02:01:21.000 For you to be one person that's involved with energy, education, homelessness, and then the financial issues that the state has, taxes, all these other things, there's so much work to be done in each individual thing that obviously you're going to have to allocate some of the work to other people.

02:01:42.000 So how will you make sure that those people are good enough for that task?

02:01:47.000 Like, I would assume that you can't devote the amount of time that's necessary to make sure the education system gets reformed.

02:01:53.000 It would take too much time.

02:01:54.000 If you're concentrating on cleaning up the homeless issue, and if you're concentrating on cleaning up the crime, refunding the police, and retraining the police, You know, all the other issues that the state has, like each one of those seems like it would require a massive team of people,

02:02:11.000 not just one person that would dedicate all their time to it, but many, many, many people.

02:02:16.000 Oh my gosh.

02:02:16.000 And there's like thousands of agencies and boards and administrative bodies in California.

02:02:23.000 I think the governor appoints thousands of people.

02:02:28.000 There's still hundreds of people not appointed.

02:02:31.000 So, right.

02:02:32.000 So that's why I would say the first thing is we've got to deal with this immediate threat to civilization.

02:02:36.000 I've got a vision for doing that right away with significant executive action and then legislative action.

02:02:42.000 What does this mean when you say that?

02:02:42.000 Homeless drugs and crime.

02:02:43.000 Okay.

02:02:44.000 That's the one that you think is the biggest thing?

02:02:46.000 I'm going to come in on day one with a legislative package and I'm going to deliver it to the legislature and I'm also going to take a series of actions that we start to see real change and progress in the first few months.

02:02:55.000 By the time the elections come in 2024, voters are going to be excited about what they've seen.

02:03:00.000 They're going to want to see more of it.

02:03:01.000 During those same two years, on energy, we have an immediate need to stabilize the grid and prevent more blackouts from occurring.

02:03:09.000 So we're going to keep our nuclear plant operating.

02:03:11.000 We're going to make sure we have abundant energy.

02:03:13.000 Is there a potential to reopen the other nuclear power plant?

02:03:28.000 But then in terms of long-term change, you're right.

02:03:32.000 We got to have a consensus.

02:03:33.000 We got to have a common shared vision.

02:03:36.000 So if I'm governor for eight years, that's a good amount of time to get a lot of stuff done.

02:03:41.000 But it's got to last for 50 years.

02:03:43.000 It's got to last for a long time.

02:03:45.000 We had...

02:03:47.000 I mean basically the last time significant expansion of California and of our infrastructure, of our educational system occurred was in the 1960s under the father of Jerry Brown, Edmund Brown.

02:04:00.000 That's when we created the water systems that bring water to Los Angeles and elsewhere.

02:04:05.000 That's when we created the UC system, our incredible school system.

02:04:09.000 We're, I mean, right now, our schools, like, the main agenda is just to wokeify the universities.

02:04:15.000 And I think there's some real questions about whether that's consistent with maintaining high educational quality.

02:04:21.000 How so?

02:04:21.000 When you say that, how so?

02:04:21.000 Just an obsession with all of this identity politics of, like, it's just taken over.

02:04:27.000 It's like a religious crusade.

02:04:29.000 Meanwhile, our kids aren't getting the math and reading education they need.

02:04:33.000 Why do you think that happened?

02:04:36.000 I mean, why are we in the midst of a woke—well, I think we've—you know, this is the subject of—this is where San Francisco and Apocalypse Never are going, is that really people have created a new religion, you know, that people are in search for meaning and they're looking for new purpose.

02:04:53.000 I think a much better purpose—I mean, look, I think part of this is that—and this is some of the craziness that we've been just talking about with the news media and the kind of the demonization.

02:05:06.000 Is that I think people are losing.

02:05:09.000 We don't feel like we're all in this together.

02:05:11.000 And that's what you sort of see the governor, you know, going places without masks while imposing masks on schoolchildren.

02:05:18.000 We've got to have a sense that we're all in this together.

02:05:20.000 We're all Californians.

02:05:22.000 We're all Americans.

02:05:23.000 I believe that when it comes down to it, we should all have the same goals, most of us.

02:05:33.000 We're good to go.

02:05:56.000 So I think we've lost sight of our purpose, that civilization has a purpose, you know, that it's abundance, that it's opportunity, that it's realizing human potential.

02:06:06.000 That sounds very hippie, but I do think that that's one of the contributions that California has made, has been the sense in which it's not just, you know, man does not live on bread alone, you know, that really we all have this higher creative potential.

02:06:19.000 That's what the UC system, the University of California university system, was designed to realize.

02:06:26.000 Was to realize the whole human, but also to help us to specialize and develop a more personalized education.

02:06:33.000 And what do you think is the primary factor?

02:06:36.000 Like, what has caused this woke religion to take over the university system and the school system?

02:06:42.000 I think a big part of it is declining belief in a higher power.

02:06:47.000 And I'm not proposing to...

02:06:50.000 I don't have a way to solve that in the sense that I don't think government...

02:06:54.000 I think we should keep government and religion separate. 1.00

02:06:57.000 That's what I want to do.

02:06:59.000 It's like there seems to be a default setting for people where they have almost like a religious gene or a thing that makes them want to buy into an ideology, hook, line, and sinker, just to show all the people around them that they're part of the team.

02:07:17.000 Yeah, and there's some sense in which...

02:07:19.000 I think when people – when the traditional religions go away, people start to lose sense of their ultimate purpose.

02:07:26.000 I think there's a lot of things going on here, especially with something like this, and it's hard to get at it exactly.

02:07:32.000 I mean we talked about changes to lifestyle, that people aren't getting the physical engagement.

02:07:37.000 There's a loss of human connection.

02:07:39.000 You know, the rise of, you know, this was happening before we had the rise of digital media.

02:07:44.000 And so I think that these, what I'm proposing is that these institutions that have been around, they need to basically be revitalized, reaffirmed.

02:07:54.000 It's not just that we need to re-inspire the police and rethink policing.

02:07:59.000 We do.

02:07:59.000 And refund the police.

02:08:01.000 We need to do the same thing with our public schools.

02:08:03.000 We need to do the same thing with our mental health care system.

02:08:08.000 We need to do the same thing with our infrastructure.

02:08:12.000 I mean the governor was building – the governor – like this governor and the last governor have been building a high-speed rail.

02:08:17.000 Rail makes sense when you have high population densities.

02:08:21.000 Like you need – like trains are great in places where you have a lot of people.

02:08:26.000 But the idea of running these trains – I mean they were spending tens of billions of dollars to build this high-speed rail.

02:08:30.000 It was like what are we doing here, guys?

02:08:32.000 Meanwhile, our roads need repairs.

02:08:35.000 It's also a problem.

02:08:36.000 The culture of California is a culture of individual cars.

02:08:40.000 It's a car culture.

02:08:41.000 Cars provide mobility.

02:08:43.000 We love our cars.

02:08:44.000 Cars allow us all this freedom.

02:08:46.000 It's just hard to get people to switch that in California.

02:08:49.000 The extensive subway system that they put in on. 0.98

02:08:52.000 No one fucking uses that. 0.97

02:08:53.000 Well, and now, like, it's been overrun. 0.99

02:08:56.000 I mean, the Bay Area was, I think, pretty widely utilized.

02:08:59.000 But part of it would be like...

02:09:00.000 The BART system.

02:09:01.000 Yeah.

02:09:01.000 But not in LA, right?

02:09:02.000 Well, yeah.

02:09:02.000 The LA system that they implemented, does that get used a lot?

02:09:05.000 It is used.

02:09:06.000 I mean, I think it's one of the things that we need to do these...

02:09:09.000 That's what I want to build some consensus around, is like, what are we doing?

02:09:12.000 There's been a war between the YIMBYs and the NIMBYs.

02:09:16.000 The YIMBYs have a very specific vision.

02:09:18.000 Yes, in my backyard...

02:09:21.000 Of greater urban housing density, greater mass transit.

02:09:26.000 The NIMBYs and 65% of voters are homeowners. 0.53

02:09:29.000 The NIMBYs want neighborhood quality.

02:09:32.000 They don't want a lot of change in their neighborhood.

02:09:34.000 They certainly don't want you to put big apartment buildings or big homeless shelters in their neighborhoods.

02:09:39.000 My view, because I've looked at how cities grow, and it's the same everywhere.

02:09:44.000 Cities both become more dense in terms of population near mass transit, and they get more suburbs.

02:09:52.000 This is the dogmatism.

02:09:53.000 People need to be more reasonable.

02:09:55.000 I think there are solutions to have a significant expansion of housing and infrastructure and transportation.

02:10:01.000 Everybody needs to do their part, but we do also need to protect neighborhood quality.

02:10:06.000 Are you prepared for the amount of aging that you're going to experience over four years of this?

02:10:12.000 You know, I'm humbled by this, and I'm honored that folks are backing me and are excited about this.

02:10:19.000 There's a lot of people excited about you.

02:10:20.000 Thanks, man.

02:10:21.000 My son is 22. My daughter is 16. This is the right time for me.

02:10:26.000 I have more energy than I've ever had.

02:10:28.000 How old are you?

02:10:29.000 50. When you're 54, I want to see what you look like.

02:10:34.000 Some people just hardcore age whether it's governor or president or anything.

02:10:40.000 I'm excited for the challenge.

02:10:42.000 I've made my own changes to diet and lifestyle to give me the energy I need and the focus we need.

02:10:48.000 Look, it would be an absolute thrill for me.

02:10:50.000 I'm in love with California.

02:10:53.000 I've always loved it and it's just such a tarnished jewel.

02:10:56.000 Yeah, to me it's like an ex-girlfriend that I used to really love hanging out with, but now she joined the cartel and she does meth. 1.00

02:11:05.000 That's what it feels like. 1.00

02:11:07.000 Every time I go back, I'm like, oh, you crazy bitch, what are you doing now? 1.00

02:11:11.000 It's so sad. 1.00

02:11:12.000 I was just back.

02:11:12.000 I was just back last weekend.

02:11:14.000 I did the comedy store.

02:11:15.000 Oh, you did?

02:11:15.000 How'd that go?

02:11:16.000 It was great. 0.90

02:11:17.000 The shows were fun, but I was just like, Jesus, driving around LA, it's like, holy shit is it different. 0.95

02:11:23.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:11:23.000 Yeah, it's unacceptable. 0.99

02:11:25.000 No, it's not.

02:11:26.000 Absolutely unacceptable.

02:11:27.000 It's totally unacceptable, but it's also...

02:11:29.000 I think we're at a breaking point.

02:11:31.000 I will say, I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to over the last few months and years that start their sentences.

02:11:36.000 They go, I'm a very liberal person, but...

02:11:39.000 Yeah, that's what the red pill thing.

02:11:42.000 People say that people have been red pilled.

02:11:43.000 My message is, you can still be a liberal person.

02:11:46.000 In fact, the only way to be a liberal person...

02:11:49.000 If you want to be a liberal person, a good person, you don't want to feel like you're living in an immoral society.

02:11:53.000 It's to make some of these institutional reforms that we need to make.

02:11:57.000 Yeah.

02:11:57.000 I have refused to change.

02:12:00.000 Like, you know, I am still at my heart a liberal.

02:12:04.000 I grew up on welfare.

02:12:06.000 I was on welfare when I was a kid.

02:12:07.000 I'll never forget it.

02:12:08.000 We were on food stamps.

02:12:10.000 That, to me, is like social programs made sure that we had food.

02:12:15.000 And I'll never forget that.

02:12:17.000 They work for families that are struggling and that are in bad situations.

02:12:22.000 They're important. 0.97

02:12:23.000 And the idea that they're not and all this pull yourself up by your bootstrap shit that you hear from successful Republicans like, bro, save that. 0.98

02:12:32.000 Right. 0.99

02:12:32.000 Save that shit because not everybody's bootstraps are in the same place. 0.99

02:12:36.000 Like some people start out in horrible environments. 1.00

02:12:39.000 And for you to come out of the suburbs and do well and have this attitude that people just need to work hard, it's crazy talk.

02:12:47.000 It doesn't accurately represent the problems and the challenges that people in poor communities face.

02:12:53.000 And I know that because that used to be me.

02:12:55.000 Absolutely.

02:12:56.000 I mean, it's sad because there's a way in which both liberals and conservatives say things that are true, right?

02:13:03.000 Like mentality, hard work, discipline.

02:13:07.000 These things are really important.

02:13:08.000 They really matter.

02:13:10.000 Having structure.

02:13:11.000 These things are super important.

02:13:13.000 At the same time...

02:13:14.000 So do good schools.

02:13:16.000 So does a functioning social safety net.

02:13:21.000 I have found when I'm able to really engage, especially in these kind of long, slow conversations with conservatives, I'm kind of like, look, people with schizophrenia are not out there shopping the market for health care.

02:13:35.000 You know, drug addicts are...

02:13:38.000 You can sit there and judge them.

02:13:41.000 But at the end of the day, they've lost control.

02:13:44.000 That's the main characteristic of addiction is they've lost control and there needs to be an intervention.

02:13:52.000 I am that intervention.

02:13:54.000 I'm going to intervene in this in ways that I think will restore our humanity, restore the cities, restore democratic liberal civilization.

02:14:04.000 Someone told me recently, I don't know who said it, but, you know, libertarians fight for freedom.

02:14:09.000 Liberals fight to care for the least among us and conservatives fight for civilization.

02:14:16.000 I mean, who among us?

02:14:17.000 I mean, I guess there are some radicals or some extremes.

02:14:21.000 But I think most of us think you need all three.

02:14:23.000 The people that don't think we need our three are so damaged.

02:14:26.000 That's all it is.

02:14:28.000 When I see people saying that, you know, civilization needs to be burnt to the ground and replaced with what? 1.00

02:14:34.000 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

02:14:36.000 You're doughy. 1.00

02:14:37.000 You're just a doughy, sloppy person talking nonsense and you get away with it because we have civilization. 0.99

02:14:42.000 That's the only reason why you're surviving right now. 1.00

02:14:44.000 You're not like a fucking super predator out there dominating all the other species. 0.99

02:14:49.000 You exist inside this Civilization that was created by people far smarter and far more accomplished than you. 1.00

02:14:55.000 And to say we should burn this civilization to the ground because it has flaws.

02:14:58.000 No, it's filled with people.

02:14:59.000 People that have children and families and loved ones.

02:15:02.000 We should make it better.

02:15:03.000 Absolutely.

02:15:04.000 Don't burn it to the ground.

02:15:05.000 That's nonsense.

02:15:05.000 Absolutely.

02:15:06.000 Those people that say that, they should just be discounted. 1.00

02:15:09.000 They're just silly. 0.96

02:15:09.000 I think that, you know, we were in a kind of mass shock for the last, I think you were a guy out here that was what we called it, mass psychosis, right? 0.96

02:15:17.000 Mass formation psychosis.

02:15:17.000 Mass formation psychosis, which, you know, psychosis refers to basically being in a dream state or being disconnected from reality and having all sorts of fantasies.

02:15:26.000 We've been through a lot over the last couple of years, the pandemic, the riots, the defund, the spike in crime.

02:15:33.000 I think people are ready because I think you asked earlier, you know, people are going to say terrible lies about me and they're going to say all sorts of things.

02:15:42.000 Yes.

02:15:42.000 And when I come in, when I make it to the runoffs on June 7th, we're going to have from June 7th until November 8th, We're going to have five months for people to really look at what I'm saying and proposing and contrast it to the chaos on the streets.

02:15:58.000 And I think there is a moment where there's going to be a moment where people are going to be like, oh, Michael Schellenberg or whatever they'll say, I'm the white face of white supremacy.

02:16:06.000 The green face of white supremacy.

02:16:08.000 They'll say all sorts of lies and then I think people will be like, okay, I've heard all the lies.

02:16:13.000 Let me listen to the three hours or the six hours with Joe Rogan or maybe read about it because...

02:16:20.000 This is the best time ever to be smeared because people are so skeptical.

02:16:24.000 They don't believe the mainstream media nearly as much as they did four, eight years ago, ten years ago.

02:16:29.000 They don't have the same credibility across the board.

02:16:33.000 So when you do get smeared, it's not going to have the same impact.

02:16:36.000 That's right.

02:16:37.000 Do you think that there's a potential for Gavin and his people to recalibrate, to recognize that you're a threat, and then maybe try to defuse that threat by pretending to focus more on the homeless situation and try to clear things up a little bit?

02:16:57.000 I mean, one scenario is that they all just do the right thing.

02:17:00.000 For political survival, I mean, Sun Tzu says the best way to win is by not fighting, right?

02:17:05.000 So if my candidacy results in the entire...

02:17:17.000 I think?

02:17:31.000 You know, he's a pretty linear guy at the end of the day.

02:17:34.000 I think he doesn't, I think he kind of goes, he's got his vision.

02:17:37.000 He's gonna, you know, he sees Biden and Kamala failing.

02:17:41.000 He wants to, he's gonna take, he's gonna go grab the brass ring in 2024. His mind's focused on that.

02:17:46.000 If you listen to his State of the State address, which he gave a couple of weeks ago, I mean, I couldn't believe it.

02:17:51.000 I was just like...

02:17:52.000 What's he saying?

02:17:52.000 It was just...

02:17:53.000 It was arrogant.

02:17:55.000 It was perfunctory.

02:17:57.000 I mean, here, like, the homeless crisis is far worse than it was two years ago.

02:18:01.000 Well, two years ago, he gave a pretty darn good State of the State address, mostly on homelessness.

02:18:07.000 This time, it was just a kind of, you know...

02:18:10.000 Just a kind of little bit of, you know, frippery.

02:18:14.000 I don't know what that word is.

02:18:17.000 Just a little bit of nothing.

02:18:18.000 Have you ever heard frippery?

02:18:21.000 Frippery.

02:18:23.000 I hope it's a word.

02:18:24.000 I may have just made it up.

02:18:26.000 A little bit of nothing.

02:18:27.000 How would you spell frippery?

02:18:28.000 Bullet points.

02:18:29.000 It was bullet points.

02:18:30.000 And it was almost disrespectful for...

02:18:33.000 It's a real word.

02:18:35.000 Showy or unnecessary ornament.

02:18:37.000 Yeah.

02:18:38.000 A frivolous thing.

02:18:39.000 Ooh, I love that.

02:18:39.000 New word.

02:18:40.000 I picked up a new word for you.

02:18:41.000 Thank you.

02:18:43.000 And so I don't see – I think they're just – they're really confident.

02:18:47.000 He's got – look, he's got $20 million in the bank. 0.76

02:18:49.000 That's why a lot of the people were like, dude, what are you crazy running for governor?

02:18:54.000 And it was kind of like – Say the serenity prayer.

02:18:57.000 The serenity prayer isn't just to take peace in what you can't do.

02:19:01.000 It's also to have the courage to do what you think you can.

02:19:03.000 And it felt like we could do this.

02:19:05.000 And this was a natural extension.

02:19:07.000 You know, we've built this beautiful movement of people who have come to love, of parents of kids killed by fentanyl, of parents whose kids are homeless drug addicts, of recovering addicts, including our mutual friend, Bridget Phetasy.

02:19:19.000 Amazing.

02:19:20.000 I mean, recovering addicts are amazing, right?

02:19:21.000 And they're so honest and...

02:19:23.000 Some of the most incredible people.

02:19:24.000 And funny.

02:19:25.000 Because they've gone through so much and there's so much humility in that.

02:19:29.000 Bridget's hilarious. 1.00

02:19:30.000 Yes.

02:19:30.000 By the way, her podcasts are amazing.

02:19:36.000 And go find them because they're some of the best podcasts.

02:19:38.000 And she has some of the best takes on everything. 0.97

02:19:40.000 Anything that's wacky shit that happens in the news, I always go to Bridget to get my takes. 0.95

02:19:45.000 Absolutely. 0.99

02:19:46.000 Yeah.

02:19:46.000 I mean, so if you look at SchellenbergerforGovernor.com, which is the website, it flows right out of CaliforniaPeaceCoalition.org.

02:19:54.000 I mean, we built this incredible coalition.

02:19:56.000 We did four protests, two in San Francisco, one in Venice Beach, one in Sacramento.

02:20:01.000 We've been campaigning.

02:20:03.000 And we got to the place where it was like, OK, we have put this in.

02:20:06.000 I mean, I literally went up to Gavin Newsom in person in medical scrubs and a stethoscope and said, sir, would you please support CalPsych?

02:20:15.000 And he's like, I'll take a closer look at it or something like that.

02:20:17.000 I have him on video saying it.

02:20:19.000 Did you like corner him outside?

02:20:20.000 I did.

02:20:20.000 I cornered him outside.

02:20:21.000 No, I was in Chinatown in San Francisco at an event.

02:20:23.000 I cornered him and he was like, follow up with my people.

02:20:25.000 And I did.

02:20:26.000 And of course, crickets.

02:20:28.000 So we did the work to take this as far as we could to the lawmakers.

02:20:32.000 Why did you wear scrubs in a stethoscope?

02:20:33.000 Because I was trying to perform Cal Psych.

02:20:38.000 How much is like a stethoscope involved in psychiatric evaluations?

02:20:42.000 Not much, probably.

02:20:46.000 But we, you know, look, we did it.

02:20:48.000 We pushed it as far as we could.

02:20:49.000 And then I was kind of like, guys, I'm not sure what else I can do here.

02:20:53.000 You've never held office before.

02:20:56.000 I have not.

02:20:57.000 How much of an issue do you think that is?

02:20:58.000 And how much of it...

02:20:59.000 I mean, how much will it benefit my campaign?

02:21:02.000 How much maybe will it benefit your campaign and benefit you when you get in?

02:21:06.000 And how much of it is you don't necessarily understand what's involved until you get in there?

02:21:12.000 Oh, thank heavens.

02:21:13.000 Beginner mind.

02:21:14.000 Super important concept.

02:21:16.000 I don't know.

02:21:18.000 I'm not...

02:21:18.000 I haven't been...

02:21:19.000 Gavin is persuaded...

02:21:21.000 So CalPsych, which is the statewide psychiatric addiction care system...

02:21:26.000 So Gavin's guy told me, his top mental health advisor told me that basically, in a roundabout way, he basically said, Gavin doesn't think he could do it because it may involve, I'm not sure it would, but it may involve changing the Constitution.

02:21:38.000 Okay, that sounds daunting, but we know how to do it.

02:21:41.000 You do it with ballot initiatives.

02:21:42.000 So maybe then in 2024, I got to go back to voters, change the ballot initiative.

02:21:46.000 We can do that.

02:21:47.000 California voters, we love to change the Constitution.

02:21:48.000 We do it all the time.

02:21:49.000 Right.

02:21:53.000 Look, there's ways in which I'm the same person I always was.

02:21:56.000 I'm still an activist.

02:21:57.000 We didn't even talk about it.

02:21:59.000 But after I broke the story of the supervised drug use site in United Nations Plaza in San Francisco, I went back and without revealing my reporting methods, I found a way to get into the site.

02:22:11.000 And shoot video and document what was going on.

02:22:14.000 And I was kicked out of the site, kind of with the bum's rush, so to speak, bounced out by the security guards.

02:22:25.000 That's how I'm going to be with all these agencies.

02:22:27.000 I'm going to go into the agencies. 0.97

02:22:29.000 Like in person, into the agencies and find out what the fuck is going on and fire everybody who was in charge of whatever things went wrong until I get somebody there that can sort it out and can run that place. 0.79

02:22:42.000 Are there enough qualified people to replace the people that you're firing? 0.82

02:22:47.000 Absolutely.

02:22:48.000 Absolutely.

02:22:49.000 Because we're talking about how there's a crisis of lack of workers for all sorts of industries right now.

02:22:55.000 Yeah.

02:22:56.000 First comes the vision, then comes the leadership, and then you find folks that are going to get on board with it.

02:23:02.000 You know, the famous thing is California lost $22 billion in unemployment benefits through the EDD. Lost it?

02:23:11.000 What do you mean?

02:23:12.000 Well, it was stolen, often by criminals in these criminal gangs.

02:23:16.000 It's like the media has not properly reported that $22 billion was stolen in COVID stimulus money.

02:23:23.000 Really?

02:23:24.000 Yes!

02:23:24.000 It's insane.

02:23:26.000 $22 billion?

02:23:26.000 $22 billion.

02:23:27.000 Just in California.

02:23:28.000 Just in California.

02:23:30.000 And Gavin goes, I'm going to send in a strike force to figure out what went wrong.

02:23:35.000 Really, bro?

02:23:36.000 What went wrong?

02:23:37.000 No.

02:23:38.000 I am the strike force.

02:23:39.000 I'll go into the...

02:23:40.000 This is the cool thing about governor.

02:23:42.000 You can just...

02:23:43.000 You're like all, hi, yeah.

02:23:45.000 I'm going to go over unannounced.

02:23:46.000 Go right in.

02:23:48.000 Like, I'm the governor of California.

02:23:49.000 I can go into the agencies and be like, yeah, we're opening up the files.

02:23:52.000 I'm going to look in the files.

02:23:53.000 I'm going to look in the computer.

02:23:54.000 I can get the guy in the room privately and be like... 0.99

02:23:57.000 Start explaining the shit show that is your agency. 0.98

02:24:01.000 And they can give me a good answer, but what happened and how they're going to fix it, and they may get a chance to do that, or they're fired. 0.99

02:24:07.000 I'm going to do that.

02:24:09.000 I have those powers as governor to fire people.

02:24:12.000 I have the whatever-it-takes attitude that we need those assertive social workers to have with homeless drug addicts.

02:24:20.000 I can have it with my government bureaucracy.

02:24:23.000 So yes, I'm assuming that the people in power right now would go, oh my God, you could never do that.

02:24:27.000 The unions would be so angry with you if you did that. 0.98

02:24:30.000 Well, I don't fucking care. 0.98

02:24:31.000 I'm not beholden to them. 0.99

02:24:32.000 I'm an outsider.

02:24:33.000 I'm going to go in and get it done.

02:24:35.000 That's what needs to happen.

02:24:36.000 It's a big state.

02:24:37.000 It needs to be grabbed by the lapels.

02:24:40.000 And people need to be starting getting fired. 0.72

02:24:42.000 They're going to be scared of me, is what's going to happen.

02:24:45.000 This is why they're going to come after me for the campaign.

02:24:47.000 But I'll be able to explain to the voters.

02:24:49.000 This is what I'm going to do.

02:24:51.000 They're going to come after you no matter what, right?

02:24:52.000 Yeah.

02:24:53.000 I think that's fair to say.

02:24:54.000 I think the fact that my mother was a union rep isn't going to stop the teachers union from attacking me.

02:24:59.000 No.

02:24:59.000 You're probably going to say your mother would be ashamed.

02:25:01.000 Yeah.

02:25:02.000 Is your mother still alive?

02:25:03.000 She is.

02:25:04.000 My dear mother.

02:25:05.000 How does she feel about all this?

02:25:06.000 They're excited.

02:25:07.000 They're excited.

02:25:08.000 You know, they're lifelong Democrats and progressives.

02:25:11.000 And my mom, you know, my mom was sucked into the whole Russiagate thing because she's a big Rachel Maddow fan. 0.97

02:25:15.000 My mom's always like, my mom's like, how come you never go on Rachel Maddow?

02:25:19.000 You know, why do you just, why is it just, I'm like, mom, I would love to go on Rachel Maddow.

02:25:24.000 Why don't you ask her if I could go on?

02:25:26.000 I would love to go on Chris Hayes.

02:25:28.000 They never invite me.

02:25:29.000 The farthest left person that's invited me on their show is Anna Kasparian of the Young Turks.

02:25:34.000 Mm-hmm.

02:25:35.000 But I do think that, you know, look, they'll demonize me, they'll trash me, they'll lie about me, but there is going to be a moment when ordinary people are going to be like, hey, I'd actually like to see what he stands for.

02:25:45.000 How much of a difficulty do you think it's going to be to not be affiliated with a traditional party?

02:25:51.000 I mean, this is the great thing about our system.

02:25:53.000 This is the one reform that Schwarzenegger got done is this open primary system.

02:25:57.000 When was the last time an independent won the governor?

02:26:00.000 Was it Jesse Ventura?

02:26:01.000 Oh, that's interesting.

02:26:03.000 I don't know.

02:26:03.000 Maybe outside of California.

02:26:05.000 Nobody's ever done it in California.

02:26:09.000 Probably nobody did it in Minnesota before Ventura.

02:26:12.000 I don't know that.

02:26:13.000 I hired a great team.

02:26:15.000 I have a bunch of the former Schwarzenegger people, but I also have Chesa Bodine's former advertising guy.

02:26:20.000 So I've got a really cool nonpartisan team.

02:26:22.000 And one of my guys was like, when I told him, when he was interviewing me...

02:26:29.000 Because I was happy to get these guys.

02:26:30.000 They were kind of like, we've been looking for somebody like you.

02:26:33.000 There's somebody that needs to do this that has your energy, your spirit.

02:26:40.000 And your understanding of politics, too.

02:26:43.000 Or my non-understanding of politics. 0.98

02:26:46.000 I mean, I know how to get shit done. 0.54

02:26:48.000 I want to get stuff done. 0.88

02:26:49.000 At least you know what's going on.

02:26:51.000 You know what the problems are.

02:26:52.000 You know, it's that thing – the thing that I've suffered from and has been a hard thing in my entire life has been being disagreeable.

02:26:59.000 You know, this personality, this big five personality characteristics and there's a spectrum of agreeable, disagreeable and I've always been disagreeable.

02:27:07.000 Sometimes people say I'm contrarian and I don't really love that word because contrarian sort of implies that you're trying to be contrarian.

02:27:16.000 But like, I'm not trying.

02:27:17.000 Like, I'm just trying to get things done.

02:27:19.000 I'm trying to make things better.

02:27:20.000 And if that means I need to go protest, you know, I tried to commit civil disobedience to save our last nuclear plant.

02:27:26.000 I couldn't get arrested because it was San Francisco.

02:27:29.000 Yeah.

02:27:30.000 But, I mean, I'm not doing that because I'm trying to be difficult.

02:27:33.000 I'm doing that because I'm trying to save the last nuclear plant, or I'm trying to figure out why the $22 billion was stolen, or I'm trying to create Cal Psych.

02:27:40.000 I'm going to get it done.

02:27:41.000 And they can sit there and be like, you can't do it that way because that's not the way anybody's ever done it, or you're going to have to modify the Constitution.

02:27:48.000 Well, then, let's modify the Constitution.

02:27:51.000 You're saying the whole agency needs to be...

02:27:55.000 You know, changed or destroyed and we need a new agency, then let's do that.

02:27:59.000 I mean, this is what the Founding Fathers meant when the Founding Fathers said, one of them said, don't quote me, I think one of them was like, we need a revolution every decade or so.

02:28:09.000 It's not every decade, but you need new institutions after the old ones become corrupted and fail.

02:28:17.000 We need to create new institutions.

02:28:19.000 That's what we're going to do with CalPsych.

02:28:21.000 That's, you know, it's going to work with the police departments.

02:28:23.000 I don't control the police departments, by the way.

02:28:25.000 That's still controlled by the local government.

02:28:26.000 So I've got to do everything I can in my power as governor to then put the pressure on the mayors to do their part.

02:28:32.000 But if they have a functioning psychiatric and addiction care system that their people can go into, then they're not going to be able to give me any excuses about why people are still camping on the streets.

02:28:41.000 What about state police?

02:28:42.000 Are they controlled by the governor?

02:28:43.000 Well, California Highway Patrol and the National Guard.

02:28:47.000 So we can do some workarounds to this workforce problem that we have.

02:28:52.000 That was one of the things that was proposed in Austin by the governor, Governor Abbott.

02:28:57.000 When they were talking about defunding the police, he was saying that he would use state police.

02:29:03.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:29:04.000 I don't know if it's highway patrol or state police, but we can certainly use California Highway Patrol for this.

02:29:10.000 We need to hire a bunch more people.

02:29:12.000 I mean, whether we have a $45 billion surplus or something less than that, we're going to get it done.

02:29:19.000 Because with the emergency powers that we have, we can get this done.

02:29:21.000 And we have to get it.

02:29:22.000 I understand...

02:29:24.000 Look, like, if I don't make progress on this issue over the first two years before the midterm elections in 2024, you know, presidential elections nationally, but in California, then there's no point.

02:29:37.000 I'm not running for governor to be governor.

02:29:39.000 I'm running for governor to save our civilization.

02:29:41.000 And that means that I've got to make significant progress in months.

02:29:45.000 Of taking office, and we can do that. 0.93

02:29:47.000 We need to make a difference so that people like you are like, damn, you know, LA sure is beautiful now, and Skid Row's coming along nicely, and I could see myself coming back here. 0.86

02:29:57.000 That's cute. 0.91

02:29:59.000 Yeah, that's a tall order at this point in my life.

02:30:01.000 Yeah, well, it just settles here.

02:30:03.000 Yeah, I like it here.

02:30:04.000 But if I was a younger man, you know, didn't have kids.

02:30:07.000 Yeah.

02:30:07.000 But what do you think that, let's, you know, try to end this on a positive.

02:30:12.000 Is there anything that the governor of California does well The current governor?

02:30:18.000 Yeah, the guy who's there right now.

02:30:21.000 Wow, you're really, really...

02:30:22.000 Sorry, I should have prepared for this.

02:30:24.000 I'm sure he's...

02:30:26.000 Look, I suspect he's a very fine father and husband and nice guy.

02:30:31.000 I think he's...

02:30:33.000 You think he's captive by the system?

02:30:35.000 Yeah, I mean, look, I think he's...

02:30:37.000 Look, honestly, I think he wants to be president for reasons he doesn't even understand.

02:30:42.000 I think he wants to be governor.

02:30:44.000 I think he wanted to be governor for...

02:30:45.000 What do you mean by reasons he doesn't understand?

02:30:47.000 Well, I mean, I just mean, like, I just think he's...

02:30:49.000 They're all chasing the brass ring.

02:30:51.000 I mean, you may remember, there's this famous incident where they discovered, there's a viral video that went out of the trains that had been looted in LA, and there was all this, like, looted Amazon packages in Los Angeles and the Union Pacific trains, and he kind of shows up,

02:31:07.000 Babylon Bee did a parody of it, and he shows up, and he gives this press conference, and he's kind of like, what the heck is going on around here?

02:31:14.000 You know, and the Babylon Bee was like, California governor vows to get to the bottom of who's in charge of California.

02:31:19.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:31:21.000 That's some of the shit that got them suspended off Twitter. 0.99

02:31:24.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:31:24.000 So I look at the whole ruling elite, the mayor of San Francisco, the mayor of Los Angeles, the governor of California. 0.99

02:31:32.000 These are all people who basically brown-nosed their way to the top. 0.95

02:31:36.000 Then they get into a position of authority and there's a crisis.

02:31:40.000 And they're like, okay, like, what do we do now?

02:31:44.000 And everyone around them is like, you know, you're the guy that is in charge.

02:31:47.000 And they're like, they don't know how to deal with a crisis.

02:31:50.000 These are people that came up during normal times.

02:31:52.000 Well, we're not in normal times anymore.

02:31:55.000 But they are so oriented to just getting that next job that they've completely – they don't have any – Experience actually solving these big problems.

02:32:05.000 They just follow whatever...

02:32:07.000 That's why they went so far on COVID. I mean, some of it I agree with, some of it I think is nuts.

02:32:12.000 But they went so far on it because they just basically became captive to these experts that tell them what to do.

02:32:17.000 Well, the experts made the situation catastrophic at the local level in California.

02:32:24.000 It's the experts who caused the problem.

02:32:27.000 And the mass exodus.

02:32:28.000 And the mass exodus.

02:32:30.000 Well, Michael, I wish you well.

02:32:33.000 It would be amazing if you pulled it off.

02:32:35.000 If you said all these things and then we go to 2024 and California's looking amazing.

02:32:41.000 I mean, if you can do it.

02:32:46.000 When are the elections?

02:32:47.000 We can do it.

02:32:48.000 June 7th.

02:32:51.000 At this point, there's no reason we shouldn't come in second on June 7. We just need support.

02:32:57.000 People go to SchellenbergerforGovernor.com.

02:33:00.000 And then November?

02:33:01.000 And then we become the biggest political news story in the world when we come in second because there's a heterodox, not easy to classify person outside of politics who's going to compete for the fifth largest economy in the world and become a model for dealing with addiction and mental illness.

02:33:18.000 Saving our civilization from radical wokeism.

02:33:22.000 And then the battle is joined.

02:33:24.000 And then we're in a race.

02:33:25.000 We have five months then from June 7th to November 8th to make our case and win the election.

02:33:32.000 But if Gavin wants to be president, why doesn't he just...

02:33:34.000 I know.

02:33:34.000 I was going to say, why don't you just go ahead and do that?

02:33:36.000 Just go do that. 0.90

02:33:37.000 Go do that. 0.52

02:33:38.000 I mean, listen.

02:33:39.000 He's got to be better than what we have. 1.00

02:33:41.000 What we have is a fucking disaster. 0.99

02:33:44.000 I guess I look at Gavin's record as a guy who's been in power for 20 years, and during that time, it's created this catastrophe, human, moral catastrophe, and I wouldn't want to put that guy in the White House. 0.99

02:33:56.000 Do you think that that's because of who he's obliged to support?

02:34:03.000 Like, what has gotten him to the position?

02:34:05.000 Like, who has funded his campaigns?

02:34:07.000 Yeah.

02:34:09.000 I had a former member of the Board of Supervisors.

02:34:11.000 He was a member of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco before he ran for mayor.

02:34:16.000 And this person told me that there was some vote coming up and that he inadvertently insulted Oh, wow.

02:34:43.000 Yeah, it's sort of anecdotal.

02:34:48.000 On the other hand, you look at the decisions that are being made.

02:34:51.000 I mean, this is why Gavin's failure is such an indictment of the expert class because he's actually followed the expert recommendations on these things and made the situation worse.

02:35:05.000 They did housing.

02:35:05.000 The experts all said housing first, housing first, housing first.

02:35:10.000 Just give people on the street their own apartment units.

02:35:13.000 Don't require anything in return.

02:35:16.000 And that will solve homelessness.

02:35:19.000 He pioneered Housing First.

02:35:21.000 It is kind of astonishing that experts have been wrong about everything, whether it's the way they handled COVID, the way they handled homelessness, the way they handled crime and violence.

02:35:30.000 Energy.

02:35:31.000 Energy.

02:35:32.000 Every single thing.

02:35:33.000 There's not one thing they could point to to a large uptick.

02:35:36.000 Joe, I went to Europe for the last six years, and I'd meet with, like, except for the Netherlands, but in most of Europe, I would be like, you guys are becoming too dependent on Russian gas.

02:35:48.000 You've got to keep your nuclear plants operating so that you're not wholly dependent on Putin.

02:35:52.000 And they'd go, no, no, you don't understand. 0.97

02:35:54.000 Putin's dependent on us for our money to buy his gas, you silly American. 0.99

02:36:00.000 Cut to. 0.99

02:36:00.000 You know, and it was like, great. 0.99

02:36:02.000 So then, like, when Putin invades, then Europe's like, well, we'll...

02:36:10.000 They don't have an answer.

02:36:11.000 Well, I wish there was a superpower that we could point to that's doing it correctly.

02:36:17.000 And that used to be what people thought of America.

02:36:21.000 They used to think of America as one place where it's not perfect, but at least they have the most amount of freedom and freedom of the press and freedom of expression.

02:36:31.000 The Dutch.

02:36:33.000 The Dutch do? 1.00

02:36:34.000 The Dutch in the fall announced that they were going to expand nuclear before Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

02:36:40.000 They were going to do nuclear in part because of our work with them.

02:36:44.000 It's a really beautiful relation.

02:36:45.000 I'm close with the member of parliament who brought me there.

02:36:48.000 She's the one that introduced me to her husband, who's the character in San Francisco, who taught me about carrots and sticks and who I shadowed.

02:36:57.000 The Dutch have—I think what I'm inspired by is that her political party came to power addressing the open drug scenes in Amsterdam.

02:37:07.000 They shut down the open drug scenes.

02:37:10.000 They got people the care they needed.

02:37:11.000 They then took power over the subsequent decades because they were offering tough love.

02:37:17.000 You know, nuclear—I mean, I always kind of think about how I don't want to over— You know, egg the comparison.

02:37:23.000 But I mean, there is something about nuclear and this approach, which is like, yeah, nuclear is...

02:37:28.000 Nuclear is hard, but there's a right way to do it.

02:37:31.000 And the benefits are so enormous.

02:37:34.000 And not doing it creates more risks than doing it.

02:37:37.000 So it's kind of like, you know, I have people, there's definitely, I mean, becoming governor and doing what I need to do entails significant risks.

02:37:44.000 I'm aware of that.

02:37:45.000 Like, you know, we're in a humanitarian disaster, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't make it worse.

02:37:50.000 Of course we could.

02:37:51.000 It requires great care.

02:37:54.000 Great responsibility for taking on that challenge, but you have to lean into it.

02:38:00.000 Sometimes I think when I look at how everything has failed at every level, I go, it's basically people, it's not just they follow the experts, it's that they don't really take responsibility.

02:38:11.000 It's really the refusal to take responsibility at every step of the system.

02:38:31.000 I love America, but the project is incomplete.

02:38:35.000 You have a statue of liberty on the East Coast.

02:38:38.000 You need a statue of responsibility on the West Coast.

02:38:41.000 So one thing that I've decided that I'll do as governor is build a statue of responsibility in the San Francisco Bay.

02:38:49.000 Wow.

02:38:49.000 Complete the American Project.

02:38:51.000 That's a great idea.

02:38:52.000 I mean, symbolically, it'll mean a lot.

02:38:55.000 You can't have, you really can't have true freedom.

02:38:58.000 You can't care for people without first taking responsibility.

02:39:01.000 And on that note, Michael Schellenberger, good luck to you, sir.

02:39:05.000 Thanks for having me, Jeff.

02:39:06.000 My pleasure.

02:39:07.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 30, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1798 - Michael Shellenberger

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