American Stories, with Bari Weiss, J.D. Vance, and Mike Rowe | Ep. 123
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 35 minutes
Words per Minute
169.01408
Summary
Happy Independence Day, America! Happy 4th of July! Today we re celebrating the day of July 4th with a reading of the Declaration of Independence and three of our favourite stories about the founding of our country.
Transcript
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when i found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from winners i started wondering is every
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fabulous item i see from winners like that woman over there with the designer jeans are those from
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winners or those beautiful gold earrings did she pay full price or that leather tote or that cashmere
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sweater or those knee-high boots that dress that jacket those shoes is anyone paying full price for
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anything stop wondering start winning winners find fabulous for less welcome to the megan kelly show
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your home for open honest and provocative conversations
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hey everyone i'm megan kelly welcome to the megan kelly show and happy independence day america
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here we go into another july 4th weekend and i hope you're looking forward to it as much as i am
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i feel like we need to celebrate america especially right now right with all the america bashing going
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on those of us who love our country my anecdotal experience has been that more and more people are
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having big fourth of july parties making a point to celebrate what we stand for here in this country
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people are starting to fight back against the america bashers who don't get it or just are willfully
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blind to it to the magic of what we have here and uh i am one of them we're we're actually having a big
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big bash and i can't wait and i do believe that the majority of people in this country understand
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how lucky we are to live here to have been born here you know what a what a fortunate circumstance
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of our birth to have wound up of all the places in the world here where liberty matters where freedom
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freedom is an ideal that's written right into the founding documents of our country so today we have
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an interesting show for you we've got um we've chosen sort of a three of our favorite stories and
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we're calling these american stories that relate to our country and i think you're gonna love you i
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know you're gonna love all these guests and they're you know sort of gonna give you a feel for where we
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are right now as a country um it being july 4th weekend it's basically three of our favorites out of our
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120 plus episodes and a bonus for you you're actually going to get to meet our team too all
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of those writing nice letters about canadian debbie you're going to get to hear from her directly today
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uh along with the rest of our team who i'll introduce to you shortly but before we get to
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our guests i just want to i just want to read you this okay we're in preparation for our fourth of
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july party um we're putting together a reading of the declaration of independence i recommend you do the
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same um i'm actually thinking about amazon priming some like colonial wigs i don't know i'll get back
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to you on whether that happens but anyway um we're gonna have a reading of part of the declaration of
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independence i mean they really go on about how bad the king is that's kind of outdated um but i just
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want to read you the very very beginning because it's so great to go back and read these things isn't
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it like the gettysburg address um the preamble to the constitution the declaration so this is what
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this is what july 4th 1776 was all about the declaration of the independence of the united
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states of america and it was game on to fight for it at that point and here it is when in the course
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of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
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them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station
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to which the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them a decent respect to the opinions
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of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation
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and here we go we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed
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by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of
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happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers
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from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends
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it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government and on and on it
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goes from there just so beautiful no matter how many times you read it and i was reading up you know
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it's like thomas jefferson was the chief architect and he and john adams were at each other's throats
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for a long time when they were running for office i mean they sort of helped found the country and then
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went into partisan politics against one another and then when they were much older and getting close to
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death they started a series of correspondence with one another and managed to reconnect and managed to
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remember their brotherhood as founders of this extraordinary experiment called america
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and people who fought for a cause that would change the course of billions would change the course of
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life for billions of people on this earth think about it right these two guys and do you know you may
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remember this do you know they they died on july 4th the july 4th 50 years after 1776 july 4th i mean
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it's just it's pretty extraordinary you want to feel good about the country go back and read some of
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these documents go back and and read some of the letters these two guys wrote back and forth and it'll
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humble you as a human being and before you do all that take a listen to this show and some of our
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american stories there's a common through line to the three sections that we've chosen to highlight
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for you today from three perceptive brilliant americans truly that is not an overstatement
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these are important americans in the truest sense mike rowe barry weiss and jd vance they all can see the
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challenge that we're in in this country right now they can all see the flaws of america of course but
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they have solutions and it comes from believing that america is and americans are at the core
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good special and worth saving we're going to start with mike rowe we talked to him back in
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december for an interview that aired on new year's day of this year and everybody knows this guy from
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dirty jobs from so many great shows highlighting the sort of americans that don't usually get
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highlighted on tv shows it's why he's been so successful but mike does not often get into politics
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or policy so our exchange was pretty extraordinary and here we're going to talk about safety about
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patriotism about socialism about curiosity and about americans who rightfully feel as mike says
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like liberties and livelihoods are being transformed under their very feet that's coming up but first this
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we've gotten incredibly risk averse and and risk is not inherently bad risk can lead to great
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reward sometimes you can fall flat on your face sometimes you can break the arm but in my experience
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usually succeed or fail you emerge the better person for having taken it if safety were truly first
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if safety were truly first what company would be in business you know if safety were truly first
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our our cars would be made of rubber they would not exceed exceed speeds of 15 miles an hour we would
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all wear helmets and we would eliminate left-hand turns if you did that liquor stores no more liquor
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stores look the things we could do to save millions of lives every year are manifold we don't do those
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things because we've made a calculation and we've decided that the risk and by the way it's not even a risk
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we've decided from an actuarial standpoint that the certainty of 35 000 automotive deaths in the coming
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year the certainty of that is a fair trade for the ability to come and go as we like and drive our
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vehicles at the posted speeds and so forth it's it's a bargain that we made 690 000 people died last year
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of heart disease we could stop a lot of that by dramatically changing the types of foods we sell
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and implementing a mandatory exercise program we're not going to do that because 690 000 deaths is a fair
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trade for the freedom to live the way we want to do now people don't like to say that out loud
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but how else can you conclude when you look at the reality of the data 10 million people died of cancer
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last year they're going to die this year 10 million people starved to death you know i read something
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the other day and i maybe you can verify it but it it seems it seems real it seems in multiple places
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the cdc has concurred that the number of starvation deaths likely to occur as a result not of the disease
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but of the lockdowns will be between 80 and 100 million around the world because the logistic
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chain has been destroyed because trucks can't get where they need to go with the food this is what
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the red cross is saying this is what a lot of organizations are saying we just have no real
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understanding of the unintended consequences on a global level of shutting down the most powerful
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country in the world and every other country for that matter it's going to be mind-boggling
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think about the split in how people are coming down on these harsh shutdowns and it does tend to be
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you know the media seems 100 behind them um and sort of the liberal elites seem to be the ones shaming
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others who tend to be more working class more dirty jobs kind of people who say i'll take the risk i want
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to put food on my table i'll i'll do what i need to do to protect myself and my family but let me work
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let me work it's not the media people who are going to lose their jobs you're not going to lose your anchor
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job on cnn because there's a shutdown of bars and restaurants and other industries as you point out
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that are deemed non-essential and um like it to me it seems it does seem like a class issue and i you know
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i think the dirty jobs are the noble jobs where you really do get your hands dirty and you're you're in
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the street all day and you don't mind it and you're you have a certain mentality of my life may be risky
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and it may be dirty and that's okay and and sometimes you get hurt sometimes not the perfect
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result happens sometimes it isn't perfectly equal back to your other point yeah and that's the way america
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is and used to be i don't know mike i i think maybe you're right maybe they've overstepped to the
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point where there's going to be an uprising and and i do think the political messaging is playing into
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this because that same group of people many of whom voted for donald trump has been told for four years
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that they're awful that they are horrible that they because they support this guy who seemed to reach
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out to them and say i'll fight for you not only are they just you know dumb and stupid and not worthy
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of celebrating but they're racist they're sexist they're xenophobic god it's the old look this is a
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big generalization but i do find some some truth in it by and large my my friends on the right will
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look at my friends on the left and conclude that they're mistaken and my friends on the left will look
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at my friends on the right and conclude that they are evil and there's a big difference between being
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wrong and wicked and so that is an unfortunate way to set the table and the word deplorable was an
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amazing choice to make and one of the truest things i think that was ever said maybe not intentionally i'm
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sure she'd like to have that one back but man that set the table and when hillary clinton called half
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the country deplorable half the country listened and and they believed her and so you know ever since
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i mean that was one of many but that was certainly a moment where people looked around and said wow
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there's a line there's a line in the country and it's being drawn as we speak am i deplorable i'm not
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you know people i mean i know a lot of people who ask themselves that question so right you know
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it's a it's a heck of a thing and do you think we're do you think we're we're losing because i
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think after trump was elected people started to see that you know i think some of my liberal friends
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started to see okay there there we seem to be getting a message from you know the work working
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class workers of america that we need to pay some attention to them that not every policy can be
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to please the chamber of commerce right and that was a republican problem but i think sort of the
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elite started to say okay let's listen but now now just people are angry and they seem to be i don't
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know when they they're looking at these trump voters and the white working class and the black working
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class they seem to be saying something very different yeah i think it has to do with i don't
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know it's just like last week i interviewed jd vance and we were talking about his the movie based on his
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book hillbilly elegy that's come out it's getting killed killed in the reviews which was completely
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predictable but i read those reviews and i think the movie was great and i think you know what it's
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okay to it's okay to go after deplorables again and it's and it's not okay to humanize them as he does
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look megan it's it's that's just straight up hubris you know i've spent the last nine months
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working from home and and prospering and i know that and i know a lot of people
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haven't so therefore and for no other reason i can't mouth off about a whole lot of things that
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i might have an opinion on because i've been able to work you know the cnn and the fox news anchors have
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been able to work and yet they have opinions and they and they just can't help but share them
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and so it's it's it's appalling to me the lack of self-awareness among so many people who have a
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platform and look i've been accused of it too i suppose i'm guilty from time to time but by and
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large you know i try to stay in my lane and i try not to get over my skis with all this but
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do you remember when the smoking thing really tipped when when when public sentiment really really
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once and for all and forever turned against the cigarette industry i i think it was around the
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issue of secondhand smoke i i think when people realized that it wasn't their decision to smoke
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was not necessarily the proximate cause of them getting smoke into their lungs and when that happened
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right secondhand smoke became a thing and it became a deadly thing part of what's going on right
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now i think is that our breath has been deemed to be secondhand smoke the mask argument is no longer
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about whether or not i get to choose to assume a certain level of risk vis-a-vis my decision to wear
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or not wear a mask it's oh you selfish bastard you're not wearing a mask therefore you're filling
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the air with your own toxic breath and you're going to kill grandma um and that you know i understand
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that argument it's the exact same argument i heard persuasively made around why cigarettes
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ought to be outlawed unfortunately we're not talking about smoke we're talking about
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breath and we're talking about the fact that millions of viruses exist in a drop of seawater
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and the air is filled with things the the world is filled with things that can kill us you know we
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live in a desperately dangerous place and nobody's getting out of it alive you know but this new thing
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this new thing has come along and the idea that somebody can breathe on us and infect us with a
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disease that has a 99 survival rate if you happen to be under 70 has for some reason petrified us to
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the point where we're simply not thinking rationally and um you know sometimes things just have to go
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splat before they get better and i don't know what that means in this case but we've just seen a lot of
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rioting we've seen a lot of protesting and i understand why it happened we could see that again
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times 10 if if this goes too far and people well and truly believe their liberties and their
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livelihoods and their country is being transformed under their feet i'm fascinated and and a little
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frightened by what could happen okay let's talk about freedom for a minute there um there was a
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poll that recently came out that said it was talking to young people um as we've seen a lot
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with young people the the rise in support for socialism is spiking this this is actually not
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particularly new a lot of a lot of young people when they go to these universities and they get told
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about how wonderful the communist manifesto is they suddenly say oh it's a good idea i'm going to be a
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marxist sadly that's the truth but then they tend to grow out of it but anyway um the other the
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other stat that jumped out at me from this survey was that only 44 see the flag is representing
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freedom i mean that to me is nuts and a little scary like the just the erosion of patriotism and love
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for the country what do you think i think that uh i think that's symptomatic of something you know i
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don't think it's a problem in and of itself not to minimize it but i just think there's something
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under it you know and i guess maybe it's maybe it's curiosity maybe we're less curious
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than we used to be you know i mean and maybe i'm just saying that because i work for the discovery
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channel and satisfying curiosity is their mandate and so i i tend to look at everything through the
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lens of you're either interested in it curious about it or persuasive you know but you can't be
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persuasive until you're informed and you can't be informed unless you're curious and if you think
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socialism is a good idea well then persuade me and if you can't persuade me it's because you don't
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know anything and if you don't know anything it's because you're not curious enough to go around the
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world or read and and and make make a persuasive case for socialism do that i i say that every day
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to people who who take that view i like to think my mind is open enough to be persuaded
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it's just that i can't find a single example in the history of the whole world where socialism has
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worked and no i don't want to hear about denmark we're sweden that's not socialism that's that's a
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kind of high tax capitalism um i've just i'm standing by you know i'm standing by to look at the study
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and to and to hear a case for it and it can't just be well capitalism bad or look at look at the bad
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things that happen in a cap capitalism is is not perfect in fact there's a lot wrong with it i've
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just looked around and for the life of me i can't find a better plan i can't i can't find a i can't
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imagine of a single thing in the history of the world that has elevated more desperate people up from
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poverty than capitalism it's it's one of the great success stories of all time and conversely
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socialism has got to be one of the greatest and most impressive failures of all time
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the guy from whole foods just wrote a terrific book john uh what's his name is it john mckay john uh
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yeah mackie mackie right conscious capitalism was his first when he wrote something called conscious
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of leadership i think is his second one but you know he makes this point you know the evidence
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demands a verdict and there is no shortage of evidence to make a case for capitalism
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uh or a case against socialism or you could say it the other way too but you have to look at the evidence
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and it's to me it's just it's just overwhelming we're not a perfect country we don't have a perfect
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system the constitution is not a perfect document the flag has evolved just as surely as the bill of
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rights has it's changed its complexion is different and so forth we're we're a work in progress but
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to affirmatively look at the iconography um the symbols of our country and to then just lean back
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and evaluate the decisions made by our ancestors and look at them through the lens of modern sensibility
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that is the height of arrogance in my view and the very definition of an incurious mind
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it's it's it's it's a it's a statue to laziness is what it is this is the thing for me the biggest
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difference and again i i keep qualifying this in a stupid way you know i have many liberal friends
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i really do my best friends are are very liberal and just the other night we were sitting around
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socially distanced naturally drinking beer in between the moments where we lowered and raised our mask
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and you know i said to a group of my friends it's like it's amazing what we agree on in fact i can't
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think of really a single big issue whose outcome we we wouldn't all like to see it's just a matter of
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process and in a general way if i'm going to say something critical to you i would say that you're
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impatient in the same way the millennials are that we talked about before you look for shortcuts a high
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minimum wage is a shortcut uh rent control is a shortcut now we'd both like to see people paid
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fairly none of none of us want to see people evicted from their homes but if you look at the
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policies that are either popular or not popular then i think you can in a very general way say well
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that's a shortcut or it isn't um i think as i understand it socialism is a shortcut capitalism
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is not and capitalism is messy because there's competition and people are going to fail good
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people are going to fall short you know uh and so again it's well-intended people can disagree
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over the way to get to a place you know but the place that we're all trying to get to and i take
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some hope in this is by and large the same so what are we arguing over really it's process
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you know two two points on that one i i agree with everything you said and i also think you could
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expand it to what's happening right now the discussion we're happening in the country we're having in the
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country over race i think most people want the same thing equality love support non-judgment
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opportunity uh but there are real disagreements i think in particular between republicans and
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democrats on how we get there how do we get there right you can just go back to the disputes we used
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to have over affirmative action now it's morphed into disputes about you know should you be doing
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what robin d'angelo wants you to do or should you be doing what professor glenn lowry of brown
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university wants you to do but everybody wants equality and opportunity and and love and support
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you know it's just but what we do in today's day and age is demonize anybody who doesn't see the root
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there the same way we do and well and yeah go ahead uh look to me the entire race thing and i'm gonna
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really oversimplify this um but isn't the goal of the entire conversation to become a colorblind society
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i mean well it used to be it seems like ultimately the best world we could hope to live in would be a
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world where people look around and truly do not give a tinker's damn what color your skin is so
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it's a great example because every thoughtful person i know loves that world we don't you know we imagine
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a world where we don't see color but everything we seem to do in order to get to that place
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is accentuate color and so you know it it's just a fundamental tautology i think i mean how can you
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how can you correct a problem with affirmative action for instance you know how can you hope
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that the ultimate end result of that policy is going to get us to a colorblind place when the very
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definition of that policy precludes certain people from participating in it well you know the answer
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on these and on this general argument is only white people would say such a thing which isn't true of
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course you know many black intellectuals are saying exactly the same thing but it's your white privilege
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that makes you say let's not make color a thing you know these activists white and black alike
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these activists would say um it is an issue because america is systemically racist and we have no
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no choice but to acknowledge that and work past that and i would buy that criticism because i just made it to
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you a half hour ago when i talked about you know the hypocrites in the media who who who can't see their own
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place of privilege and therefore hold forth with just delightful impunity um what i'm saying here is
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that okay if you want to take everything i just said and say well that's easy for you to say you rich
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white guy in the middle of your life all right i'll i'll accept for the purposes of the argument being
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dismissed based on those things i can't control but then what are you going to say to thomas
00:28:30.380
soul what are you going to say to tim scott what are you going to say to candace owens what are you
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going to say to all of the black people who said the same thing i said well you're going to call him uncle
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toms you're going to criticize anything you don't agree with not based on the substance of the observation
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but on the color of the observer which is the precise thing you're complaining about in the first place
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and so if you can't see that you know and then then i'd go back to my earlier point and say you're not
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a genuinely curious person you're you're something else you're a you're an advocate and that's okay too
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you know the world needs advocates but it's important to know when you're being sold something
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and when you're going on an exploration these people they're not exploring the kind of society
00:29:39.920
that that i would like to live in a colorblind society they're exploring ways to gin up conflict
00:29:48.400
to keep their thumb on the scale and keep us more and more divided you know oh going back to something
00:29:57.100
you said about well discovery and exploring and that really is how you've spent your life but you
00:30:03.260
were saying maybe it's because you're you work for the discovery channel that you have a different view
00:30:08.800
of patriotism america capitalism all these things i think it's also because you spend a lot of time
00:30:15.760
with veterans and i do think you tend to love the country and see the flag differently if you spend a lot
00:30:23.880
of time with veterans how do you not you know i mean one percent of the population wears a uniform
00:30:30.880
every single freedom that we enjoy has been paid for in blood people roll their eyes when i say that
00:30:37.720
because it sounds like a talking point off of a monument but it's true every single thing we have
00:30:43.640
was paid for by somebody who either volunteered or answered the draft or put on the uniform and paid the
00:30:50.400
ultimate price you're either impressed by that or you're not if you're not okay but jesus what's it
00:30:57.920
take to impress you incidentally one and a half percent of our country are farmers one and a half percent
00:31:04.960
feed 330 million people three times a day you're either impressed by that or you're not if you're not
00:31:12.260
okay but jesus what's it take you know our skilled workforce is a relatively small percentage of our
00:31:20.140
country but when you flick on the switch and the light comes on and flush the toilet and the poop goes
00:31:26.760
away you know these are miracles these are modern miracles that we all take for granted and you're
00:31:32.600
either impressed by that or you're not so dirty jobs and somebody's got to do it and returning the
00:31:40.120
favor and the way i heard it every show i've ever worked on is essentially the same show i just
00:31:44.640
changed the title every couple of years and their their goals are all interchangeable i my job i think
00:31:54.520
to the extent i have one is to tap the country on the shoulder every so often and say hey get a load of
00:31:59.120
him get a load of her look at what's going on over here so on returning the favor you know i get to do
00:32:05.820
that a lot and we've done 100 episodes and 14 or 15 have been based on veterans roughly the same number
00:32:14.460
have been based on farmers and i didn't realize it when i was doing it but when i look back on it
00:32:20.820
i i think that i think that in a really general way aside from our country's uh fungible ever-changing
00:32:29.160
definition of gratitude and if we're not a grateful people and i say this you know on a on a micro and
00:32:49.080
a macro level if we're not fundamentally grateful for what we have then we're essentially rolling out
00:32:56.420
the red carpet to a long list of feelings that that we're not going to enjoy you know i mean it's it's
00:33:03.280
hard to be angry when you're fundamentally grateful it's hard to be bitter it's hard to be suspicious
00:33:09.400
and resentful it's hard to be envious when you're fundamentally grateful for what you have but it just
00:33:15.860
seems like because we're not as curious as we once were we don't have an understanding of history
00:33:22.760
the way we should and so we look around in relative terms and we don't see our country for
00:33:30.260
the miracle that it is we don't see our form of government for the singularly remarkable construct
00:33:37.180
that it is instead we look at mount rushmore and go probably be prettier without all those
00:33:44.480
slave owners up there you know it's an amazing thing this ability to judge our ancestors based on
00:33:56.520
what we know to be true today can you imagine imagine 150 years from now whose statues are going to be
00:34:06.780
pulled down that will depend entirely on how woke and how enlightened that generation is i mean 150 years
00:34:17.440
from now what will the topic be that most mirrors the way we feel about slavery today i don't know anybody
00:34:29.240
who doesn't look back at slavery and go oh my god it's it's the human stain it's our great sin
00:34:36.240
what a terrible thing what a demonstrably undeniably terrible thing that was what do you think 150
00:34:44.000
years from now that generation will be saying the same thing about could it be eating meat could it be
00:34:52.580
abortion capital punishment anything that's in the headlines right now that seems controversial is
00:35:00.600
going to be completely worked out 150 years from now assuming we make it that long including the environment
00:35:06.240
and when that generation looks back at us how harshly how harshly will they judge us you know if they
00:35:16.700
judge us as harshly as we judge our ancestors then whose statue is safe right who will be left
00:35:27.200
standing it reminds me of the there's a report not long ago about the famous the the famous martin luther king
00:35:35.680
biographer this guy david garrow who um got access to these fbi files from the 1960s studying martin
00:35:44.100
luther king jr and some of what was in there was not good uh suggesting he had affairs with 40 women
00:35:50.560
this is a guy who won a pulitzer prize for his reporting king uh that he stood by as a friend raped a
00:35:55.520
woman was not good stuff yep it's never going to change what martin luther king did for race relations in
00:36:03.120
this country it's hard it's hard to sum up the character of any man or a woman um by by diminishing
00:36:12.340
it based on even one terrible thing you know people are complicated and back then when when you know
00:36:19.520
thomas jefferson had slaves sadly so did a lot of other people it just wasn't the same and you're right
00:36:25.620
i think when it comes to even just the way we treat our animals today and you know when you think about
00:36:30.600
what happens with the chickens what happens with the cows and so on makes it hard but right now we're
00:36:35.780
not there doesn't make everybody who has a hamburger a bad person it's so delightfully glib and easy
00:36:41.360
that's all i'm saying you know the the it's the laziness that allows us to take our standards and
00:36:50.120
apply them to alexander the great or george washington or william the conqueror or sally hemmings
00:36:57.060
or it you know and william winston churchill of course of course you know if if you can't separate
00:37:04.300
look martin luther king when he talked about the the content of character that idea deserves to be
00:37:14.140
ruminated on and and unpacked um completely separate from the man as as all ideas do because
00:37:26.800
all men are deeply irredeemably flawed who are we kidding we're all pigs we all know it you know
00:37:36.580
we all know it it's just you know if if i see myself as more of a cougar
00:37:44.540
hey not yet give yourself another 10 years you're still a lioness megan oh i like that better okay i'll
00:37:53.360
choose lioness over pig but the point is animals we're animals yes yes i mean look i i do think
00:38:01.040
there's a hierarchy of of species um and i do make value judgments all the time and i and i i can't
00:38:08.880
defend it but i look at dogs differently than i look at chickens um but who knows 150 years from now
00:38:18.040
what the most enlightened among us who knows how they're going to make sense of our inconsistencies
00:38:27.420
our proclivities our flaws our contradictions our hypocrisies
00:38:32.820
this is the part of the show where we're going to talk about some of the interviews you're going
00:38:37.540
to meet a little bit of my team actually all my team who am i kidding um so we're bringing on
00:38:41.860
the cast of characters as follows is steve debbie danny natasha and abby steve's our ep
00:38:47.840
debbie is basically our senior producer she runs our news danny is our booker natasha is our editor
00:38:54.100
she's the one who does all the good recording and slicing and dicing to make me look good at the end
00:38:57.600
and abby you probably knows know by now is my assistant little sister mentor nanny um all all
00:39:04.080
things above so anyway are you guys nervous do you feel nervous uh yeah i'm nervous you know you
00:39:09.060
and steve have the uh upper hand on this obviously i keep saying like at least it's recorded you know
00:39:14.360
if we suck you can cut us out natasha only makes me look good canadian yeah you guys are on your own
00:39:20.300
just megan all right so i'll kick it off to make life easy for you i thought mike roe he he does have
00:39:28.220
this special gift of having spent his life not just with veterans but with real work working class people
00:39:32.840
so he doesn't have his nose up in the air about them and that's what people love about him
00:39:36.680
i was amazed that listening back to to him he used to work at cnn you know and it was a different
00:39:43.180
era of cnn he was like the after the dirty jobs and then he went did a cnn show that was similar
00:39:47.280
2014 2018 uh he never felt less like cnn than when i when i heard uh you know hearing back to to that
00:39:56.580
interview right they've gone a different direction and i don't know i think he's he's the same kind of
00:40:01.820
guy but they they're they're a shadow of their former selves i can never see them hiring him now
00:40:06.100
right you know the whole interview we really felt like it was one of the most open and honest
00:40:10.580
conversations we ever had you know he wrote like wasn't afraid to get into anything racism classism
00:40:15.800
his blind spots you know like he was willing to like go there with everything you know it's hard
00:40:20.920
to do which is really genuine and uh and then at the end of it you you know i felt like you know
00:40:26.540
we're listening to it again like oh very patriotic like i got to go plant my american flag in the
00:40:32.580
middle of toronto and leave my children go out there and salute it because that's just how he
00:40:39.840
makes you feel mike actually hit on like with his safety last everything safety last and personal
00:40:46.240
responsibility and assuming your own individual risk we live in the dfw area but if you go an hour
00:40:53.320
outside of dfw in any direction it's like an entirely different world no one's wearing masks
00:40:59.180
everyone's doing their own thing and they're perfectly happy and they're all farmers and
00:41:05.300
they just have done this forever and they're not waiting for the government to tell them like when
00:41:10.380
it's time to like do stuff they're just doing it and living their life and that's why i love texas
00:41:15.720
next up is going to be barry weiss she's amazing she's a powerhouse and she's come on the show twice
00:41:25.180
now by no accident so the first time she came on was just after she launched her substack publication
00:41:30.920
and before she became a champion for and board member of a new organization called fair that i'm
00:41:37.280
also an advisor to the foundation against intolerance and racism and this organization is actually fighting
00:41:43.740
all this racist nonsense that's being shoved down the throats of our children today in our school
00:41:49.000
systems anyway her voice is so necessary in our culture and in our current media landscape and she
00:41:54.780
speaks with openness and independence which is why she was essentially pushed out of the new york
00:41:58.580
times last year right she's like they wanted voices other than their normal far left people
00:42:02.920
they hired barry who was a liberal she's a lesbian none of that was enough you can't be a lesbian and a
00:42:08.760
liberal and is outspoken person for causes on the left unless you adopt all of their orthodoxy
00:42:14.080
and she hasn't she's she's an independent thinker well that's why she left and in like a barn burner
00:42:20.820
of a resignation letter and she's a star and here you're going to hear uh just a little bit of
00:42:26.300
how little incentive young americans and particularly those in the media have these days
00:42:32.100
to deviate even slightly from the norm because barry talked to them she talks to a lot of people they
00:42:38.060
they write to her and she's pretty open about what she hears and she's going to talk about how
00:42:42.940
uniquely american it is to have challenging and honest conversations yes everybody who listens to the
00:42:48.620
show knows that and heaven forbid with people with whom you don't necessarily agree um that can be
00:42:55.740
really fulfilling too so listen to barry she's coming up in one minute but first this
00:43:00.040
we talk a lot about the internet and twitter and social but it's like do people understand that
00:43:09.040
we're living in an era in which you cannot make a mistake you cannot make a mistake and everything
00:43:15.920
is captured for all eternity and there's just so little incentive um you know i i spent a lot of
00:43:23.320
time talking to teenagers and college students who you know want to get into public life or want to be
00:43:30.380
journalists or want to be op-ed writers or maybe want to run for office one day and these kids rightly
00:43:37.520
see no incentive to do so and if they do want to um why would they ever uh take any kind of strong
00:43:46.340
opinion why would they stand up for something unpopular that's exactly that's what you wrote in
00:43:51.680
your in your in your resignation letter saying there are it's very clear to the young people there are
00:43:56.000
rules one speak your mind to your own peril two never risk commissioning a story that goes against
00:44:00.720
the narrative three never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain
00:44:05.620
oh i mean don't you think it's true i do and it scares me because as i always say the bullies have
00:44:13.640
really won when when they're when they're in your head changing your behavior right like it's never
00:44:19.020
good to be bullied but it's really scary when the bullies turn you into a bully of yourself
00:44:24.880
right and that's what's happening i want to read you two two really short things that summarize
00:44:30.980
the moment i think we're in with regard to this um i get emails every single day from people like
00:44:38.980
this young journalist who wrote me i never thought i'd practice the kind of self-censorship i now do
00:44:45.120
when pitching editors but i've no power to do otherwise for woke skeptical young writers banishment and
00:44:51.020
rejection awaits you if you attempt to depart even in minor ways from the sacred ideology
00:44:56.160
i used to live in china where i worked as a foreign correspondent and these dynamics are eerily similar
00:45:02.100
to aspects of the cultural revolution i had a student from harvard write me the other day from his personal
00:45:07.920
email because he was too scared to write it from his college email to explain and he wrote to me and
00:45:14.560
explained that he self-censors even when he's talking to some of his best friends for fear of word
00:45:20.880
getting around um and that he you know projects what he thinks professors want to hear in his papers
00:45:27.260
and tries to write um answers and write papers with the perspective that mirrors their worldview rather than
00:45:34.580
what he thinks are the best arguments like they sound like missives like smuggled out of a totalitarian
00:45:40.640
society i think one one thing i'm hoping uh given that you know the era of trump hopefully with him out of
00:45:48.620
the picture and the clownishness and the you know just the grossness of of a lot of what that meant
00:45:56.460
that we will be able to see this other threat with more clarity um maybe that's pollyanna-ish but but that's
00:46:04.440
what i'm hoping for you know i i hope you're right i mean i certainly hope that there's there are more
00:46:10.640
people coming over to our side but they're they're so smart the way these sort of radical leftists have
00:46:16.660
seized control of so many aspects of our culture and our debate because the less people speak up and
00:46:23.040
offer differing views the more people who haven't said anything yet think they're in the minority and
00:46:27.960
that they can't speak up you know that one of the reasons i've been so vocal about this and i try to
00:46:33.160
talk about the third rail stuff you know trans race sexism and misogyny um so bluntly is because i think it's
00:46:43.120
american i think it's uniquely american i've never been one to be ginger with my language but i i think people
00:46:49.520
need to be reminded it's not east germany it's the united states of america you're allowed to talk about issues
00:46:55.160
don't be shamed out of having the opinions that you have debate is the answer silence is the devil
00:47:00.800
and don't listen to the people who tell you your views are not okay and they're not shared because
00:47:08.520
the truth is i forget the 75 million people who voted for trump you're you're of the left that most i
00:47:16.300
think most people on the left are with us they're they're just freaking terrified yeah and you know what
00:47:21.980
they're right to be terrified to some extent because how much does how much time and effort
00:47:27.820
does it cost for me you know to go on twitter and call someone an ism takes two seconds and nothing
00:47:35.160
nothing you don't need a mass group of people to to sort of ruin your reputation and take away your career
00:47:44.340
and hurt your family you just need a dedicated group of like 25 people because i'm watching it happen to a friend
00:47:51.060
right now and that scares people and it's not just you know the fact that you could get you know kicked
00:48:00.460
off of twitter for saying you know for misgendering someone meantime the ayatollah khamenei you know
00:48:06.300
talks about genociding the jews but okay um so it's not that it's that it's not that far-fetched and a lot
00:48:14.280
of people in silicon valley have been talking about this over the past two weeks to imagine you know this
00:48:19.280
sort of um censoriousness coming you know to your email or to the browser that you use or maybe
00:48:25.340
even to the bank and so i think what's going on right now is not just people protecting themselves
00:48:32.880
for whatever the mores are in the current moment they're projecting out to what they could be a year
00:48:39.360
or two years or three years from now and the other thing that i'm but but there's this sort of paradox because
00:48:47.100
people are silencing themselves and closeting themselves in order to protect themselves and maybe they will
00:48:56.140
in the short term what they don't realize is that in doing that they're sacrificing not just themselves
00:49:03.700
in the long term but the whole thing that makes this country exceptional like speak out now if if you
00:49:12.460
if you get one thing from this conversation um or one thing from my letter my story like speak out now
00:49:20.940
because it's not just about you and your mortgage or you know your professional advancement it's about
00:49:28.480
our ability to protect the things that have made this country you know the last best hope on earth
00:49:36.340
that's what's at stake here and and and i really hope people understand that you you've written so
00:49:42.560
beautifully about this i mean it's been a pleasure preparing for this interview because i got to read so
00:49:47.300
much barry weiss and one of the things you pointed out in the same vein is what we're losing
00:49:53.820
is liberal america and that is not used in the political sense not conservative versus liberal
00:50:00.500
but liberal ideals i just want to read this to the audience because there's so much it's so hard to
00:50:04.940
choose which ones i wanted to read because they're all so beautiful oh no there's amazing all right so
00:50:10.000
you you're writing about how we've lost that america used to be liberal and you write not liberal
00:50:14.240
in the narrow partisan sense but liberal in the most capacious and distinctly american sense of the word
00:50:19.680
the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of god the belief in the
00:50:25.780
sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe the belief that the rule of law and equality
00:50:31.380
under that law is the foundation of a free society the belief that due process and the presumption of
00:50:36.580
innocence are good and that mob violence is bad the belief that pluralism is a source of our strength
00:50:41.880
that tolerance is a reason for pride and that liberty of thought faith and speech are the bedrocks of
00:50:47.780
democracy the liberal worldview was one that recognized that there were things indeed the most important
00:50:53.700
things in life that were located outside of the realm of politics friendships art music family love
00:51:00.540
this was a world in which antonin scalia and ruth bader ginsburg could be close friends because as
00:51:06.280
scalia once said some things are more important than votes oh you don't even realize you've lost it
00:51:15.080
until it's been chipped away and chipped away and you have to ask yourself why do i feel so bad
00:51:22.280
why do i feel so sad i know something's gone that i once loved and and that this is it this is what's
00:51:29.800
happening it's not about i mean listen it's a little bit about critical race theory and that stuff which
00:51:34.760
needs to be stopped in my view but it's much bigger than that yeah i mean i i think that there's i grew up
00:51:42.900
you know i write in my book that i i feel like i grew up on a holiday from history and and maybe other
00:51:47.940
people listening felt that way too that's certain that it's like my my friend likes to joke that
00:51:53.840
americans are people that think history happens to other people like it seemed like we were inoculated
00:52:00.180
from some of the worst things that were going on um in other times of course and in other places and i
00:52:07.280
think what we've learned over the past few years really really clearly is that the veneer of
00:52:14.220
civilization and the things that we maybe assumed were as natural as gravity like the things you just
00:52:21.880
read off in that paragraph they're not they need to be protected and defended and sacrificed for and
00:52:31.000
the things that make this country exceptional you know it's not bloodline it's not you know soil it's
00:52:40.720
our ideas it's our ideas and when those ideas are under siege and they are very much under siege now
00:52:48.480
um from from lots of different directions um then america gets pulled back into the mean of history and
00:52:56.960
i think that's what we're living through um right now i think that you know nothing less than those
00:53:04.460
ideals that make us um exceptional are under attack and you know i think back to this summer
00:53:13.320
and you know lots of statues were pulled down some of some of people that you know maybe deserve to be
00:53:20.620
pulled down like confederate generals but among them were people like our first founding fathers like
00:53:26.120
abraham lincoln and our second founding fathers like frederick douglas and you didn't hear a lot of
00:53:32.400
people that are supposed to be our intellectual and moral betters you know our elites offering a full
00:53:39.080
throated condemnation of that and that's a problem like i see a direct connection between um the vandals that
00:53:49.680
pulled down lincoln and the vandals that stormed the capitol like both groups of those people
00:54:03.640
i i i'm worried about i mean obviously i'm i'm really worried about where we are um and
00:54:13.820
i just think that you know it's it's we we you know we've seen other countries sort of torn apart
00:54:22.320
by the dislocations of the 21st century and it's hard to imagine that we would be one of them and
00:54:30.280
yet you know anyone that studies history sees that you know nothing lasts and we're we're so young
00:54:36.180
and of course it's possible for things to come apart that's why i think it is you know all of us
00:54:42.180
that love with this country is at its very best even with its flaws are obligated um to to defend
00:54:49.300
the things that you know the vandals are trying to to tear down right the vandals beyond beyond the
00:54:56.160
statues they're they're trying to tear down a lot of things that we care about you you try to you toy
00:55:01.520
around with the name you know because i do think some of us have been struggling to define
00:55:05.720
forgive the rhetoric but the enemy um you know like what what is this force against which we're
00:55:11.700
fighting you know i'll get out there and i'll talk about some of these absurdities that are being
00:55:15.720
done to us and i don't have a name for it and you you've written and i quote again here that american
00:55:22.240
liberalism is under siege there's a new ideology vying to replace it no one has yet decided on the
00:55:27.920
name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism some say it's social justice the writer
00:55:33.620
wesley yang refers to it as the successor ideology as in the successor to liberalism at some point it will
00:55:40.000
have a formal name one that properly describes its mixture of post-modernism post-colonialism
00:55:46.120
identity politics neo-marxism critical race theory intersectionality and the therapeutic mentality
00:55:54.320
until then it's up to each of us to see it plainly look past the hashtags and the slogans and the jargon
00:55:59.740
to assess it honestly and then explain it to others and that's the that's the challenge right to get our
00:56:05.980
arms around what are because it's like if you feel like i i can't stand critical race theory i can't
00:56:11.040
believe that this thing is making its way into corporate america and into the schools of america
00:56:14.840
and that the the shaming of people based on pigmentation has now become acceptable and if
00:56:19.440
you think it's okay just because the people who are being shamed are whites you haven't studied history
00:56:23.260
to see how that pendulum swings back right like that this is not going to end well if we continue
00:56:28.220
going down this route it's creating more racism which is what i hate so much about it it's totally
00:56:34.520
anti the mlk dream which they're open about i mean people pushing this stuff don't believe in the mlk
00:56:39.580
theory they they don't believe they think if you're after content of character instead of color of skin
00:56:43.920
that's your racism talking um but if you focus in on that right the response from the the sort of
00:56:50.000
the radical left is you're a racist like what you're trying to avoid is an education on the history of
00:56:55.880
racism in america and how to combat it you know you need to read more robin d'angelo and i think
00:57:00.740
you and i can look at them and say you're insane robin d'angelo's book is racist her theory is racist
00:57:05.200
i'm fighting against racism i don't believe we have the same goal get rid of racism if we can or at
00:57:10.200
least eliminate it in the pockets in which it still exists or work to work toward it but we have a very
00:57:15.100
different approach and very different very deep disagreement on the methods that kind of talk that
00:57:20.240
kind of language is not available to most people they don't even understand that that's that's the
00:57:24.160
argument we're having that's what's been so genius about this movement is that it frames itself as
00:57:29.780
social justice as the new civil rights movement as anti-racism who wouldn't want to sign up for those
00:57:35.340
things but in reality it is cynical it is intolerant um it is neo-racist it is neo-racist the idea that
00:57:44.840
some people are born into original sin or collective guilt because of their skin color and that other
00:57:53.060
people have more claim to morality and truth because of theirs um i don't want to live in a
00:58:00.100
world that believes that i don't want to live in a country that accepts that as normal um and one of
00:58:06.520
the things that i think is so important is you know we've lived through the past few years you know
00:58:11.760
we've seen just such a degradation of language and such a coarsening of language and i think one of
00:58:17.480
the things that's very important is for us to reclaim the language um and that's certainly the
00:58:24.140
case when it comes to critical race theory um again it do you believe um in equality under the law
00:58:34.680
do you believe that we should strive to live in a world where color doesn't matter um do you believe
00:58:41.480
that you know the world is complicated and people should not be slotted into you know two categories
00:58:49.440
you know victim and victimizer oppressor and oppressed and do you think that anyone that
00:58:55.020
thinks the opposite of that is embracing something illiberal intolerant and dangerous you know it's we
00:59:01.680
have to do a better job of explaining it and while there are people out there that are you know again
00:59:07.540
like it is hard to explain it because these are ideas that you know are quite can be quite jargony
00:59:14.420
come from um the fringes of the academy um you know it's post-structural is like we don't have to go
00:59:21.460
into all of it but i i know why it's hard for people um to explain it even though they're trying to
00:59:28.080
to do a good job and i think frankly it's the job of people like me and you um to to to sound the alarm
00:59:37.120
on it even more than we already are the one and only barry weiss i mean she is she's so important
00:59:43.580
to what's happening in our culture right now to the the fight against all this nonsense and she is
00:59:49.140
totally fearless barry weiss is somebody you want on your side and by the way team um the reason they
00:59:57.140
hate her so much like the left that's sort of the woke left not the regular normal left but the woke
01:00:01.880
left hates her so much because she's so effective she's so good she's so articulate she's got away
01:00:07.140
with the words things and um you know when you listen to her she's persuasive it also was one of
01:00:12.800
the more requested guests we had before we got her on i mean there was probably a few there was like her
01:00:17.440
sam harris jordan peterson there was a small list of people that we just got from the very moment we
01:00:22.920
launched tulsi yeah um but it was a kind of a perfect fit i feel like i mean and she is she's
01:00:28.900
someone who's going to be in in the orbit for a long time she she came to new york and this is
01:00:33.740
before she actually came on and i this is the first time i met her in person and we sat down
01:00:38.240
and several margaritas later we were hysterical laughing and crying and agreeing on a lot and
01:00:45.380
just lamenting the state of our society but resolving to do a million things together to solve it
01:00:50.300
and fair is one of those things that actually did work out but i i would partner with her on anything
01:00:55.520
she's just she's a force to be reckoned with and unlike yours truly she's organized and she'll make
01:01:00.400
things happen she has just enough of um abby in her to make her both a fearless warrior and a very
01:01:05.840
well organized party planner yeah and this is this was one of her well actually this was the first long
01:01:12.360
form interview she gave after leaving the new york times and you know what i liked about the discussion
01:01:18.540
and it kind of it's where it kicks off at the beginning and you talk about her being you know
01:01:22.600
denarius targaryen coming out with the flames going on behind her and and you got i guess you kind of
01:01:28.240
think that that's how it is right you think someone like barry weiss like it would be so easy to fire
01:01:33.640
off you know a letter like that and to you know leave the new york times and with explosions going off
01:01:41.060
but you know she talked about how it was really scary and i think that it resonates with a lot of people
01:01:46.900
because it's a really scary time sad but can i tell you something weird that's been happening to
01:01:52.240
me in new york barry's profile i think is only going up and she's become like some sort of weird
01:01:58.680
litmus test amongst a lot of new yorkers who you'll be talking to and you'll be talking about politics or
01:02:03.660
commentators and people will say to me like how do you feel about barry weiss it's like people who
01:02:09.200
clearly are not listening to the podcast and uh i'm like i love her and then you'll be like yes me too
01:02:13.620
me too right like they don't want to say they love her because if you say you love barry it's
01:02:18.460
like saying you you love me or you love somebody who's on the right and she's of the left so like
01:02:24.200
they have to be careful about openly loving barry weiss meanwhile i'm like i i can't get enough of
01:02:29.820
barry weiss i want to be the third person in their marriage like i i would have throuple with them
01:02:33.540
you know it's so weird because i'm a gen z millennial cusper and this is danny speaking our booker
01:02:41.800
sorry keep going danny and my friend i have friends who are non-binary who are on the lgbtq i
01:02:49.640
abcdefg uh you know spectrum but then i have friends who are big maga fans and i feel like i mean my
01:02:59.060
friends and i were all in our early 20s and we have open conversations about politics and i think we all
01:03:06.900
are just trying to figure out what the heck our beliefs are because we're growing up i mean we
01:03:12.220
were in college when cancel culture started and i think we're all just trying to figure out what what
01:03:18.100
is cancel culture like what what was the world before cancel culture because we were you know
01:03:22.620
18 19 when that started like what do conversations look like before this and we're still trying to
01:03:29.180
figure out what our beliefs are and how to navigate this new world it's going to be up to young people
01:03:34.780
like you to fight back against the people who are saying you have to accept all or nothing whether
01:03:39.540
it's some diehard maga person who's like you will not criticize the trump or the diehard wokesters who
01:03:46.280
are like you will not express a different opinion than my own or your bad jd vance i said when he came
01:03:53.540
on was literally my favorite interview at nbc it's the piece of journalism that i did there that i'm most
01:04:01.920
proud of and you can see it on youtube by the way the interview it's just it's a beautiful family and
01:04:07.100
i got to meet his sister lindsey who is a star of the book and what became a movie and um i still think
01:04:13.560
you should go back and watch it because i think it'll tug at your heartstrings in a way it'll be
01:04:16.760
meaningful uh anyway so we got him on the show and it was everything i i knew it would be you know this
01:04:23.700
name because he's if you haven't heard the interview he's the the author of the massive massive best-selling
01:04:29.300
book hillbilly elegy and he's actually now finally really considering a move into politics running for
01:04:36.820
senate in debbie's home state of ohio he's got big big money backing him um peter teal the investment
01:04:43.760
banker who backed trump remember he got kicked out of silicon valley basically he's um really well-known
01:04:49.700
investment guy anyway he he employed jd in san francisco for a couple years and jd got out there and was
01:04:54.160
like what the hell am i doing in san francisco i don't i don't like it moved back to ohio married
01:04:59.320
usha who had clerked for the u.s supreme court brilliant woman and i think he's finally getting
01:05:04.580
ready to make the move and we need him we need more just like him in politics um and we'll have him back
01:05:10.220
on the show if he decides to announce anything anyway he came on november last year it was around
01:05:14.860
the same time that the movie version of the book had been released on netflix and he's unlike anyone
01:05:21.080
he really his personal journey is an incredible american story um when he was on we talked about
01:05:27.960
the learned helplessness that exists in some parts of america but also about his hope for americans
01:05:35.460
because he has seen that those who say life's unfair and leave it there are not nearly as prevalent as
01:05:44.180
those who say life's unfair and here's how i'm gonna overcome it the american dream
01:05:51.020
you could say he's coming up don't miss this one second get an ad in and then jd vance
01:05:56.580
you talk about culture versus economics and the effect on a community and you know the absurdity of
01:06:08.260
the learn to code message to these coal miners let's say think about if they turned around if if you know
01:06:14.540
trump's administration turned around to black america in chicago and you know where you talk
01:06:21.220
about blight right and said learn to code yep the the outrage that we would get in that message
01:06:28.640
you know there yes we do have to talk about agency and willingness to get off the couch and fix your own
01:06:34.900
life for sure that's a that's a massive piece of it but we also have to be realistic about what the
01:06:42.240
economics look like and what's really realistic and expecting of these people and i just think
01:06:47.940
you can't if you can't do it with the black community you can't do it with the white community
01:06:52.080
and what we're really talking about is people who are lower socioeconomic status and and how to lift
01:06:57.140
them up and and you got to look at both of these things what's their attitude and what's what's
01:07:01.340
potentially available to them yeah there's there's a sociologist who's actually a very liberal guy and
01:07:06.360
i've gotten to know him a little bit and i cited him a few times in the book his name's
01:07:09.620
william julius wilson and um you know very much a guy on the left but just incredibly thoughtful
01:07:16.020
about these problems and you know he's he's been i think pretty influential in how i think about this
01:07:21.720
interplay between cultural and economics because you're right you've got to take people who are
01:07:26.040
sitting on the couch doing nothing and you got to get them off the couch you got to get them into
01:07:28.960
good jobs you're hopefully able to support families able to raise those families and stability and
01:07:33.820
comfort and then you create a virtuous cycle from generation to generation instead of you know the
01:07:38.800
vicious cycle that we sometimes have in families that are struggling with joblessness and um and
01:07:43.940
addiction and so forth but you know one of the things that's going to motivate people to get off
01:07:49.240
the couch of course is the existence of a good job right that's an important piece of it but it's not
01:07:53.220
the only piece another thing that's going to motivate people to get off the couch is when their neighbors
01:07:58.420
and friends are also getting off the couch right when you're in a community where there just isn't a lot
01:08:04.440
going on where a lot of people are doing drugs a lot of people aren't finding good jobs even the guys
01:08:10.580
who want to go and work and find good jobs it creates this sort of mentality where why try right
01:08:17.560
i call it you know learned helplessness um you know hopelessness is a good way to think about it
01:08:23.260
but but if you want to actually improve people's lives you can't just say well here's a money here's
01:08:31.140
a check from the government spend it well or here's a good job go and apply but you've got to
01:08:37.040
create the community infrastructure uh that makes it people feel like it's possible and if they try
01:08:43.480
something good is actually going to come from it and they've got to feel pressure too i mean i you know
01:08:47.820
i've certainly been um i'm sure all of us have been in moments in our lives we're feeling a little
01:08:52.540
bit lazy a little bit shiftless unsure what we want to do you know one of the things that helps break
01:08:57.240
you out of that pattern is somebody in your life saying hey you know do something else here right
01:09:02.660
um you know go you know maybe it's maybe it's your wife who says you need to do the dishes or
01:09:08.060
help out a little bit more maybe it's somebody in your family who said you need to go and apply to that
01:09:12.320
job you know those things matter but like i think about my own life and all of these little influences
01:09:19.580
that helped get me on the right path you take those influences away and it's just me trying to figure
01:09:25.600
this stuff out on my own and i think things just don't don't go as well for me right if mamaw wasn't
01:09:30.260
telling me you need to go get off your ass and apply for that job and work hard if if i didn't have
01:09:36.760
you know my my sister and my aunt and my mom saying you know if you want to have a good job
01:09:42.240
you may need to go get an education if i didn't have people in the marine corps saying you know here's
01:09:47.600
what you need to do here's how you need to apply for financial aid here's how you need to sort of
01:09:51.500
structure your life so you can actually succeed in school you know all of these weird little
01:09:55.960
community influences are what i think the building blocks of success ultimately are um and and and
01:10:02.600
those you know that that's sort of as i see at the interplay between culture and economics is it's not
01:10:07.980
just the good job it's also the full spate of community actors that make it seem both possible
01:10:14.800
and available to you to actually get off that couch and go do something um and that's what's
01:10:20.500
what's ultimately missing when you're when you've got people um who who who are really really left
01:10:28.960
behind and and really don't see a path forward i also think that's the thing that's missing the
01:10:35.040
most is people in their lives who can actually help them right it's it's back to the old if you can see
01:10:39.560
it you can be it you know it's it's very helpful to see role models around you who have done it
01:10:44.100
but i also think this is one of the problems with identity politics because the messaging from people
01:10:49.400
who are obsessed with their gender their skin color their sexuality uh is you the reason you
01:10:56.520
can't do it is because of these immutable characteristics like you can't you the american
01:11:01.480
dream is not possible for you because the system won't allow it and it completely takes away a person's
01:11:08.340
agency and and they do openly crap on the american dream it's not possible for you america itself
01:11:15.760
is not what people say it is and this anti-american sentiment cropping up i think is another thing
01:11:21.940
that motivates a lot of voters but it's they're basically challenging the notion that anyone no
01:11:28.820
matter their circumstances can achieve success in this country what one of the things that i think so
01:11:34.100
beautiful about your book your story and the reason why many on the left hate it is that you're
01:11:41.620
you you you're an example of it being possible even under really tough circumstances even for a kid who
01:11:50.340
has almost no advantages other than a grandma and and grandpa who really loved him and decided to give
01:11:59.540
him a little tough love yeah i mean the thing i always ask people when they talk about the structural
01:12:08.880
and systemic factors that make it hard or impossible for people to achieve is let's say you're absolutely
01:12:15.840
right let's just say for the sake of argument that you're absolutely right what good is that message
01:12:22.980
when directed at a kid who's struggling and trying to figure out how to make their way right so i i'm not
01:12:29.180
one of these people who says the people you know says that sort of poor folks don't have any disadvantages
01:12:35.040
like i can't possibly look at my grandma's life and my grandma's upbringing and say you know she had
01:12:40.440
the same set of opportunities as someone who was born in an upper class background in the 1940s in new
01:12:48.340
york city i think frankly she also had a lot of advantages right she had i think a lot of important
01:12:52.760
cultural training that she wouldn't have gotten but obviously her life was hard i don't i i don't even
01:12:58.520
would look at my life and say you know jd had it easy relative to a kid born of privilege
01:13:04.760
but so what in some ways is the takeaway from that to tell a kid like me when i was 12 years old your
01:13:12.340
life is unfair the deck is stacked against you there's nothing you can ultimately do so you know
01:13:17.480
why isn't the message that i take from that ultimately well i should just give off them right if
01:13:22.400
the deck is stacked against me if there's no hope then i shouldn't even try and there's there's just
01:13:27.320
this weird strain of thought in american life right now where you can't hold two thoughts in
01:13:31.940
your head at the same time and and in this particular moment i think the two thoughts
01:13:36.700
of this particular question the two thoughts that we have to hold in our head at the same time are
01:13:41.320
one yes life can be hard for people who are born poor in tough circumstances but two it's still
01:13:50.420
important for them to see that they have agency and that they need to try anyway right it might not
01:13:56.080
always work out and we got to be honest about that fact but the worst of all possible worlds
01:14:00.960
is where people are just told there's no hope there's no reason to try there's no reason to make
01:14:06.660
anything of yourself and i do unfortunately think that's the message that a lot of people on the left
01:14:11.520
are ultimately giving uh to communities like mine i am you know my you know my my grandparents
01:14:18.640
were classic blue dog democrats and i'm actually sympathetic to a lot of the arguments that folks
01:14:26.180
on the left make about you know certain unfairnesses you know especially when it comes to people who
01:14:31.500
don't um who don't have a lot of money who grew up in traumatic homes who grew up in abused
01:14:35.980
and neglected environments i don't think that they're wrong that that creates special disadvantages
01:14:42.020
but you can't just encourage people to wallow in everything that's gone wrong in their lives you
01:14:48.220
have to be able to say on the one hand you know we as community leaders as policymakers as media folks
01:14:54.100
are going to try to make it a little bit easier for those who are disadvantaged to have a shot at the
01:14:58.440
american dream while at the same time telling people who are struggling to achieve the american dream
01:15:03.280
it's possible it is out there for you if you're if you're willing to work for it
01:15:07.640
mm-hmm well i think the other piece of it too is once whence is once one achieves the american dream
01:15:14.820
the response the collective response from the left in particular should not be fuck off like that's
01:15:22.860
one of the problems we're seeing is success has been so demonized in the country now even if you are
01:15:27.700
self-made just having it is a problem you know they're they'll hold it against you you've you've you
01:15:34.020
must now see the rest of the country as less than you must not be paying your fair share you have to
01:15:40.120
give more of it back you know and the less you give the more of a miser an awful person you it's like
01:15:44.980
i don't know that i i just think we've changed the messaging from good for you maybe i could do it too
01:15:51.180
help me understand how to screw you yep yeah there's definitely a way in which i think our country is
01:15:59.040
really i shouldn't say our country i think that our leadership class is really uncomfortable with
01:16:04.100
success and with people who have achieved success so i saw this interesting poll just a couple of
01:16:09.220
days ago and it was looking you're just at trump voters college educated trump voters versus non
01:16:13.940
college educated trump voters it was the question was you know do you think that it's possible for
01:16:19.900
a person to achieve the american dream and i think it was 71 percent of non-college educated trump
01:16:24.960
voters said yes and i think it was you know 40 or something of the college educated trump voters said
01:16:30.960
yes and it was true for the for the biden voters as well i don't remember the exact numbers but it's
01:16:35.340
basically the people who didn't have college degrees were actually more optimistic about their future and
01:16:39.980
more optimistic about the chances for the american dream than people who had gone to college
01:16:44.780
and i think that's because they haven't thankfully absorbed the message that their lives are hopeless just
01:16:52.480
because they don't have all the advantages in the world and that's that's just an important thing
01:16:56.600
and i i worry about our our country's inability to you know try to uplift those who are struggling
01:17:05.440
without treating those people as hopeless children who have no have no agency and no no responsibility
01:17:11.180
um you know there's can i ask you something about that because i i wonder is the other piece of that
01:17:18.640
the people who are college educated saying eh i don't know is that do you think born of i i made it
01:17:27.340
it's not that great like i have to work my ass off i never see my family the government takes 50 percent
01:17:35.380
of my dough uh you know i i kind of made it to the promised land and what do you think you know i i i think
01:17:43.940
there's there's part of that going on but the the biggest when i looked at that poll what i took away
01:17:49.300
from is that if you're a working class american uh versus a professionally educated american a person
01:17:57.180
with with post uh bachelor's education uh then you're you're fundamentally living in in two different
01:18:03.440
media and information environments and i i do think that you know our universities our elite media
01:18:10.720
institutions have just grown pretty pessimistic about the american experience the american
01:18:15.340
experiment and consequently people who have spent their lives in those academies in those media
01:18:22.800
environments i think they've just absorbed uh that things are uh more pessimistic and and more
01:18:29.860
you know more negative than a lot of working class americans believe uh i also you know i i i really do
01:18:38.040
think that a lot of this is like ideology ends up trumping people's ability to think because
01:18:44.880
one of the more interesting dynamics is in in in in response to the book is that people who were
01:18:53.280
you know really well educated who are sort of the winners in american society both in terms of their
01:18:59.340
income and their prestige they really wanted to project their own political narrative onto the book
01:19:05.080
and they wanted to sort of fit me into this box right so if like jd said this thing that i agree
01:19:09.540
with i'm gonna ignore that i'm gonna only you know attach myself to the things that i disagree with
01:19:14.800
or vice versa right people would sort of you know had either very strongly positive or negative views
01:19:19.900
and and what i found you know is that working class americans were actually better able to hold
01:19:26.040
two thoughts in their their head at the same time they sort of got that i was i was making both an
01:19:31.100
argument about the fact that yeah sometimes life is unfair but you still got to try to work against
01:19:37.300
that unfairness and make something of yourself anyway and you know i think that's just because
01:19:43.820
people who don't grow up in a particular media environment are not constantly looking for alarm
01:19:49.660
bells that a particular idea or concept violates one of their the sort of sacred tenets of their faith
01:19:55.340
their ideology instead of just more open-minded i think i predict with your movie because the movie
01:20:03.120
is now out about uh you know based on your book you're going to get slaughtered by the reviewers and
01:20:09.040
you're going to get completely loved by the actual viewers it'll be reviewers versus viewers as we've seen
01:20:15.320
in any film that you know that hasn't a message like yours which is the american dream may still exist
01:20:22.600
it may not be perfect it may not be pretty but it does still exist and that even shines a spotlight
01:20:27.600
on this group of people you know people in appalachia people struggling with the opioid crisis
01:20:32.640
in a way that that isn't entirely about woke culture or victimization and how the country's bad
01:20:39.380
that's what we've seen you know it's it's one of the reasons why roseanne the reboot was so successful
01:20:43.560
right like they talked about these issues in a way that really resonated with real america
01:20:47.880
even though the people who wrote about that the reboot were like they're horrified even before
01:20:52.860
her scandal they were like this is horrifying how could the show be succeeding and i saw this already
01:20:57.660
there was one review by the washington post that's this is so perfect because that what their
01:21:03.360
criticism of the book the movie is that they really wanted it to be more woke and and this is a
01:21:09.280
quote from one of the reviews vance paints appalachia as a near exclusively white space erased our black
01:21:18.220
residents and their history in the region missing are the many generations of native american communities
01:21:23.320
ignored is a growing latino population disregarded are appalachians who embrace racial justice and
01:21:29.960
acceptance of their lgbtq neighbors this is a personal story of your family what why did you get into all
01:21:37.200
that right right right like and if you imagine what a movie like that would look like you know
01:21:42.300
where where you're trying to tell the story of a family but you have to you have to actually talk
01:21:46.840
about every other conceivable group majority minority what have you and present them on the screen so
01:21:54.100
that it satisfies this sort of woke obsession it is with a little no justice no peace sign in the
01:21:59.480
background it's it's it's just yeah it's it's just totally preposterous um and anyways it happens
01:22:05.840
most of my family voted for donald trump uh my family is hardly politically monolithic my mom
01:22:11.120
you know who by the way has been clean for six years now is doing very well uh just just saw her a
01:22:16.080
few days uh just saw her a few days ago you know my mom voted for jesse jackson in the democratic
01:22:20.720
primary in 1984 um and and then she's voted for republicans and she's voted for democrats since i i just
01:22:27.840
think that there's this way in which elite americans want working class americans to be more
01:22:35.220
ideological and more woke than they actually are you know one of my favorite responses to the book or
01:22:40.880
to the movie i can't even remember uh which at this point uh but is is that uh you know jd vance
01:22:47.640
doesn't talk enough about bipoc bipoc and lgbtqia americans in his sort of experience of appalachia
01:22:58.520
it's like okay so bipoc is black indigenous people of color lgbtqia is lesbian gender non-performing
01:23:07.980
bisexual transgender intersex asexual and i read this and i'm like you people are crazy like truly
01:23:16.820
the authentic real appalachians use these like 14 character pronouns every time they talk about
01:23:24.160
themselves and you know i i just listen to this and i think who who are you kidding that you think
01:23:30.140
this is the way that appalachians or frankly anybody else black white brown whatever talks about
01:23:35.380
themselves in their communities this is a particular obsession of a particular upper class of americans
01:23:42.300
and i think it's insane uh but don't try to pretend that that's the real america because you want it to
01:23:48.380
be it just isn't right a moment on the asexuals in the holler
01:23:52.940
you know what one of my one of my good friends just a a side you know he's sort of like a populist
01:24:04.000
he calls himself a populist reagan democrat but um he's he's a professor i won't give his name because
01:24:09.780
i don't want him to to get fired but uh he's he's you know he's he's a gay man uh you know in his in
01:24:15.960
his mid-50s just a great great friend of ours and he sent me this tweet from elizabeth warren's
01:24:23.520
campaign a twitter account back when she was still running for a president and it was like something
01:24:29.180
like you know we love all people who are intersex asexual and two-spirit and this guy sends me this
01:24:37.900
tweet and he says look man we gay guys just wanted to be left to hell alone you you can have your two
01:24:44.440
spirits there's there's something about just this bizarre way of discussing these issues
01:24:53.100
that's alienating and dividing the country i love that i i love that the the ripping on hillbilly
01:25:00.960
elegy is you know you really needed to diversify your cast and and the way you look back at your
01:25:05.800
own hometown and add in a bunch of transgender people who weren't there in a bunch of different
01:25:10.960
races and ethnicities that weren't actually there when you were they just need to do it everything
01:25:15.580
needs to be woke okay and now they're going after a senate campaign i mean you know that the the idea
01:25:21.620
that a populist message but being funded by billionaires it's like peter thiel i mean you're
01:25:27.800
not going to group him in with like you know your typical billionaire i don't know how that is you know
01:25:32.800
in some sort of is not allowed to to happen where where that that could have a populist message
01:25:37.800
yeah only the far left cares about stuff like that it's like anybody running for office has to raise
01:25:42.580
money you know they all have to raise money it's not easy to put ads out and all that stuff i want
01:25:47.480
to know about the person is it a good person out there beholden to some dark corporate force that's
01:25:52.600
important to know but peter thiel is like an investor across many properties like what if you're beholden to
01:25:56.860
him i think you're beholden to sort of amorphous causes i have something i have two things that i thought
01:26:02.680
about when i was listening to this the first is he talks a little bit about the word prestige i have
01:26:08.060
never felt a desire for prestige i thought it was so interesting his focus on you know he was talking
01:26:12.900
about like how he came i mean he is he's literally the american dream like he is obviously the american
01:26:18.040
dream and when i was listening to him i was like i never felt a desire for prestige and i wonder where
01:26:23.180
that comes from and should i have a desire for prestige this is why you became my assistant
01:26:35.300
i don't know that and like his other is other stuff about like learned helplessness you know like
01:26:43.600
how we are learning helplessness in society i also when i hear that i'm like my i have such a strong
01:26:50.300
desire to make sure my daughters do not learn helplessness like i want the exact opposite i want
01:26:57.720
them to learn no helplessness i want them to be the opposite of that well i was going to say so i've
01:27:03.460
said this um to our other teammates before about you abby abby's got the highest eq of anybody i've
01:27:09.760
ever met in real life i it's off the charts like you just you can read people and situations quickly
01:27:15.480
and accurately in a way that is special and i think it's no accident that you don't feel the need for
01:27:23.040
for prestige because you have your priorities straight what is prestige what is that that's a
01:27:26.880
bullshit word right it's like you love kevin you love your daughters love me anyway but my point is
01:27:33.980
like you've got your priorities straight and you put all of your energy into those things and you work
01:27:38.860
hard you work your ass off at your job you do really well that's what matters who cares how other
01:27:43.560
people are looking at you and like prestigious it's almost like another word for created envy and i love
01:27:49.940
jd i don't think that's how he meant that but like i also don't feel the need for that like i feel the
01:27:54.460
need to have a happy life not to have people admire me when jd was talking about the american dream and
01:28:00.120
how it is possible and it's a beautiful thing to you know shoot for and if you say that anymore if
01:28:05.900
you say like oh you know i still believe in the american dream you're almost like shit on for it
01:28:10.400
and it's really sad because this is an amazing country and in saying that you believe in the american
01:28:17.500
dream is saying you believe in your own individual agency to do whatever the heck you want and that's
01:28:22.640
really what we should be celebrating and no one seems to want to yeah saying like america sucks is
01:28:27.900
part of the american dream yeah you have the right to say that equality of opportunity is awesome
01:28:32.400
equality of outcome is not your guarantee as an american and in fact the hard work and effort that
01:28:37.760
goes into how one approaches any task in one's life is what makes inequality of outcome a reality
01:28:44.640
and a great thing now you shouldn't wind up in the same place if you phoned it in if you didn't work
01:28:48.960
as hard if you didn't you know spread as much positive energy right you shouldn't and that's
01:28:53.760
why the system does ultimately work not perfectly but it does work i also love what he said when he
01:28:59.040
says like you know the message that permeates our society is the deck is stacked against you and how
01:29:05.280
bad that message is because if you're given that message what what there is literally no incentive to
01:29:11.040
do anything better or work harder or to explore another avenue or see how you can get out of your
01:29:16.380
current situation like what a dead end message the deck is stacked against you like that's just not
01:29:22.220
a good place to start do not go away because we have a special special treat for you right after this
01:29:28.960
break we are going to bring you daniel rodriguez known as america's tenor the singing policeman
01:29:35.680
daniel became famous after the 9-11 terrorist attacks when his rendition of god bless america
01:29:43.080
uh became incredibly popular and he was invited to sing at several memorial events i have had the
01:29:49.400
honor of seeing him perform live many times and it will send chills down your spine he has given us
01:29:56.100
permission uh to play his rendition of god bless america for you guys and um if you don't already
01:30:04.920
while the storm clouds gather far across the sea let us swear allegiance to a land that's free
01:30:19.800
let us all be grateful for a land so fair as we raise our voices
01:33:04.080
And don't forget to tune in to the show on Monday because we have Brett Weinstein.
01:33:08.700
He's been all over the news lately, getting a lot of pushback on an episode he did on the COVID vaccines.
01:33:16.000
And kicked off YouTube and just Brett's all over the news these days.
01:33:20.200
And I've been wanting to talk to him anyway, so we moved it up and we're going to have a fascinating discussion about all of it.
01:33:26.020
In fact, by popular demand, because I think I see his name more than any other in our comments these days saying,
01:33:34.340
And in the meantime, happy Independence Day to America, to all of you.
01:33:41.160
And God bless our beautiful country, the United States of America.
01:33:53.560
The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.
01:33:58.020
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Manulife wants you to see healthy living differently, so you can live a longer, healthier life.
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