The Megyn Kelly Show - Bret Weinstein on Tech Censorship, The Value of Conversation, and COVID Treatments ｜ Ep. 124

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00:00:30.000 welcome to the megan kelly show your home for open honest and provocative conversations

00:00:36.200 hey everyone i'm megan kelly welcome to the megan kelly show today by popular demand including my

00:00:47.780 own brett weinstein you know brett he's got a hugely successful podcast and youtube show

00:00:54.540 though that one's been temporarily shut down it's still on there but they're not letting him

00:00:59.100 monetize it it's a whole thing we're gonna get into it because of his covid coverage um he's got

00:01:04.000 two actually the dark horse podcasts one does clips one is brett and his wife interviewing people

00:01:10.400 talking about things doing sort of live streams and so on and uh i first noticed this guy when

00:01:16.900 i saw the movie which you probably know by this point i love no safe spaces by mark joseph it

00:01:22.360 follows dennis prager and adam carolla around as they go on these college campuses and one of the

00:01:26.520 campuses they highlight was evergreen and that was brett weinstein's campus he was a professor there

00:01:32.200 who got in trouble over nothing nothing and they tried to ruin the guy and he came back and and in a

00:01:41.120 big way and his influence his national influence has grown profoundly and he continues to push back

00:01:47.360 against narratives that don't make sense to him uh and including on covid whether it was him pushing

00:01:54.680 the lab leak theory not pushing but saying like i think this makes sense and i think it's the likely

00:01:59.020 explanation at a time when you weren't allowed to say that we're talking back spring of 2020

00:02:02.520 and now it's on things like ivermectin oh i said it and vaccine side effects and whether the vaccines

00:02:10.340 are safe oh i said more and he's been saying a whole lot and the folks at youtube don't like it so brett

00:02:16.520 for a lot of reasons has been sort of a personal hero of mine and we just had an amazing discussion

00:02:21.080 you're going to love this discussion it's tense at times when it was over he described it as tough

00:02:25.660 but excellent i'll take it i like that and i think you guys are going to like it too so we'll get to

00:02:30.260 brett in one second first this how are you uh i'm doing well it is a pleasure to finally meet you

00:02:41.320 sort of oh it's i know it's a weird way to meet but it's an honor i'm such an admirer of yours and

00:02:48.120 i have a long story to tell you but i'll i'll we can get into it when we get to uh what happened

00:02:53.680 at evergreen but suffice to say for now deeply deeply admire you and have such empathy for what

00:02:59.920 you went through and now still are going through um even today all right let's start with the news

00:03:06.800 about you which is this just happened a couple days ago june 28th i've been following your saga

00:03:11.480 with youtube how they continue to crack down on your on your show on your episodes demonetizing

00:03:17.560 this episode that episode and now it seems to me that on june 28th they demonetized both of your

00:03:24.260 youtube channels is that am i up to date on the latest well i don't know if you're up to date on the

00:03:28.920 latest but that's the latest i know yes they demonetized both channels which took out more than half

00:03:34.820 my family's income in a matter of minutes that's defcon one that's a good way to put it um that is

00:03:42.100 harsh is that can it be undone well they uh they they seem to be making up the rules as they go along

00:03:50.240 with us i don't think anyone else has seen this pattern yet what they said is that we are demonetized

00:03:56.900 and that we are entitled to reapply in a month effectively uh drawing a line in the sand where

00:04:05.940 presumably if we were to agree with the limits that they wish to establish about what can be

00:04:11.520 discussed on the channel then we could restore our capacity to earn on youtube but if we insist on

00:04:18.640 evaluating the evidence on questions where they would rather not have it evaluated then it is permanent

00:04:25.120 if you will just be a good boy and cover covid the way youtube sees fit you can get your platform

00:04:33.060 back right in fact the predicament is i more or less have to not do what i am professionally trained

00:04:40.340 to do which is to evaluate evidence and see where it leads and instead i have to start with the

00:04:45.140 conclusion that has been handed down by the cdc an agency that has obviously been wrong on one question

00:04:53.040 after another since the beginning of covid this is so maddening um i mean i'll start with this i

00:05:01.080 understand youtube doesn't want to put out dangerous misinformation that could hurt people i get that

00:05:07.460 but there's a line right i mean let's start with the most extreme case you you're on the air you're on

00:05:15.260 youtube and you're saying drinking a bottle of palm olive is the cure for covid just drink a bottle of

00:05:21.300 palm olive or antifreeze antifreeze and covid will go away of course so will you your life will be over

00:05:27.660 which you know you then don't mention okay let's just say this weird hypothetical where you you're

00:05:32.600 completely reckless you agree youtube could sense it could could demonetize that could censor that

00:05:39.240 they obviously have legal rights to censor certain kinds of content i don't think anybody disagrees

00:05:47.600 with that in this case of course we're talking not just about me but my wife and i are both trained

00:05:54.840 evolutionary biologists we are more than capable of evaluating evidence we have a long track record

00:06:02.640 of doing so well and when we have made errors which is inevitable we go back and we cover those errors so

00:06:10.300 that our audience is up to date and the fact is this idea that what we are saying on our channel could

00:06:19.940 cost lives is true but it has to be matched up with why we are doing this which is that the current cdc

00:06:29.720 conclusions will cost lives if we are correct we we are both deeply committed to doing what we believe

00:06:39.160 is in the public's interest and that means that at some level this question has to be navigated

00:06:44.980 in some venue where it is possible for both sides to get a hearing and i believe that if that happens

00:06:51.080 we will recognize that for one reason or another the official cdc guidance is at odds with both the

00:06:57.980 proper medical recommendations for individuals and at odds with the public health so i mean back to my

00:07:05.940 example i i will say youtube could i think consistent with its ethical obligation um both to public

00:07:15.180 health and just to fostering some sort of meaningful debate as a as a major information carrier of the

00:07:21.160 country it could censor that i can understand i can understand a policy that says we're not going to help

00:07:26.420 you put that out there to the world if you want to find another way in which to say that to people

00:07:29.680 you can but we're not going to facilitate that in the same way they have tried to crack down on

00:07:35.860 al-qaeda and and isis operatives showing people how to make bombs they they don't do it perfectly but

00:07:42.340 they do try to keep things that can directly lead to harm in a way that's easy to see off of youtube

00:07:48.360 the problem is as i see it you're nowhere near that line they've used that responsibility

00:07:55.100 in a way that's really irresponsible right they've said you're you're like the isis bomb maker and

00:08:01.860 you're nothing like the isis bomb maker i mean i've listened to these discussions you're having

00:08:05.820 i find them really interesting i don't know whether they're all true i've heard a lot of information that

00:08:09.680 i've spent some time researching on my own and i have found contradictory information but that's

00:08:16.200 only the beginning that's how you get conversation going that's how you get a discussion going and

00:08:20.460 learning going it's it's not to just tell one side that has questions about the information we're

00:08:25.100 being spoon-fed to shut up well i think it goes one level deeper if you think about what the cdc is

00:08:36.400 suggesting has concluded and what the social media platforms are now using as the basis for their

00:08:44.460 censorship policy it just so happens that it matches exactly what a pharmaceutical company might prefer

00:08:53.300 if it was trying to administer the maximum number of doses of vaccine now that could be a coincidence

00:09:00.000 but it could also be that capture has taken over these uh these platforms and that the cdc is being

00:09:10.120 effectively used as cover for a policy that is not in the interest of the public and my contention is

00:09:16.300 that the only way for us to be safe from the possibility of the capture of something like the cdc 0.99

00:09:22.580 is for us to be able to talk about the possibility that has been captured and to evaluate that question

00:09:28.400 and that is what we are forbidden to do we are not allowed to look at the evidence and say actually the

00:09:35.360 the proper medical policy does not look like what the cdc is suggesting and frankly from the point of

00:09:41.980 but it's not all the cdc that it's not it's not just you're making it sound like it's just the cdc

00:09:46.240 coming out and saying the vaccines are safe it's a lot of independent doctors have come out and studied

00:09:51.340 this and there's been a bunch of studies outside of the cdc saying they're safe and and you you can

00:09:56.820 take them oh i'm not saying it's just the cdc saying that obviously a majority of people are saying

00:10:01.560 that but it is the cdc that youtube points to with respect to its uh claiming that we are spreading

00:10:09.200 medical misinformation it is the fact that what we are saying is in conflict with what the cdc says

00:10:14.420 that has them declaring it false which obviously is preposterous on its face that's absurd yes that is

00:10:20.900 absurd i mean that's the one of the things that you were out in front on was the covid lab leak

00:10:27.140 theory and you were you were saying i think it was a year ago i think it was either march or april

00:10:32.880 of 2020 that you said i believe there's a 90 chance this came as a result of a lab leak and you were

00:10:40.380 attacked back then as some sort of a quack some sort of deliverer of misinformation and i'm amazed they

00:10:46.560 didn't demonetize you back then but you were just getting started at that point and it turns out

00:10:52.840 it definitely appears that you were right that's certainly the leading hypothesis now amongst 0.90

00:10:57.560 anybody who's been paying attention so it's not like you have a history of being some crazy crank

00:11:03.260 to the contrary you've got a good history of predicting accuracies about this virus well not

00:11:09.780 only with respect to the lab leak and i would point out that i believe there is a hundred percent chance

00:11:14.280 that we are right about the lab leak because the way we presented it was this is a hypothesis

00:11:20.140 hypothesis and it is clearly a viable hypothesis in this case many people now agree with us that it

00:11:25.860 is the most likely explanation but yes we were way ahead and we were we were demonized as conspiracy

00:11:33.040 theorists i agree with you there's something interesting about the fact that they did not

00:11:36.420 choose to demonetize us then but of course having been vindicated you would imagine that they would

00:11:43.620 now look at the question of repurposed drugs and hazards that may be associated with these

00:11:50.920 current vaccines and they would take take a step back and ask themselves the question of whether or

00:11:57.560 not we may again be ahead of the curve but that is not what they're doing and i guess i would just add

00:12:03.260 that the lab leak is not the only question on which this was the pattern we were also way ahead on masks

00:12:10.440 we were way ahead uh on the idea that the outdoor environment is safe and that actually one is

00:12:18.660 probably best off not using a mask outdoors we have been way ahead on a model of transmission in

00:12:25.780 which one considers the volume of the room as a primary factor in the hazard posed by that room and

00:12:32.960 adjusts it accordingly opening windows creating airflow all of these things are places where

00:12:39.640 our method of evaluating things has put our listeners ahead of cdc and who guidance and for youtube to now

00:12:48.560 come back at us as if these these sources are beyond question is is utterly preposterous

00:12:56.580 mm-hmm let's talk about what the final straws were as i see it there was an episode on ivermectin

00:13:05.940 uh that they they took issue with they said um they were you were advised i think you aired it on

00:13:12.860 june 11th and on june 12th you were advised by youtube that that post violates their misinformation

00:13:18.000 policies about uh covet 19 for promoting ivermectin as an effective treatment that was june 12th and i was

00:13:25.660 following it then saying okay he's getting in trouble your podcast still lived on but your youtube was

00:13:30.520 getting demonetized and threatened um and then boom you're gone it's the youtube channel's gone and i

00:13:37.200 was that because of the follow-up episode rather than cower in your corner you came out with another

00:13:43.220 with another show questioning the vaccines it's like it's like you wanted to to poke the bear and the

00:13:50.280 next thing i know you're gone so did they tell you that it was the vaccine episode that was the last

00:13:54.160 straw well first of all we're not gone our channel still exists and although we were unable to post

00:13:59.700 to it for i believe a week we are now able to post to it but it is it is demonetized it is of course

00:14:05.640 under threat because it each of our two channels has a strike and at any point that youtube wishes to

00:14:13.140 do it they can add more strikes and eliminate the channels permanently so we're living in limbo i would

00:14:19.860 not say that i wanted to poke the bear but i have an obligation which is perhaps second only to my

00:14:31.420 obligation to my family and that is my obligation to humanity writ large i trained to be able to evaluate

00:14:39.520 evidence it is a difficult job and the evidence that is available to us is painting a relatively clear

00:14:47.960 picture now it is impossible to be precise about it and i'm not claiming that i have been and i'm not

00:14:55.040 claiming that i have not made some errors that is inherent to evaluating noisy data in a complex system

00:15:03.440 but what i am saying is that the picture is relatively clear and that imprecision does not change the final

00:15:12.920 analysis we are making errors with respect to the way we are dealing with the covet 19 pandemic and

00:15:19.960 there is no question that that is putting human lives at stake it is a sobering fact that when one

00:15:27.460 speaks about this issue it will very likely persuade people to change their decision about things like

00:15:32.860 vaccines and while i believe that people who listen to our podcast are liable to have their chances of

00:15:40.020 remaining healthy increased that will not be true for every individual it is certainly true that somebody

00:15:46.320 who for example becomes aware of the adverse event signal surrounding the vaccines may decide not to get

00:15:54.300 vaccinated and if they don't get vaccinated they could well contract covid19 where they would otherwise

00:15:59.980 not have they might die they might pass it on to someone else who would die that's not a responsibility i want

00:16:06.360 but it's one that i feel i have to take on because the the analysis that matters is the net analysis

00:16:13.660 what is the best policy from the point of view of reducing the number of people lost to this disease

00:16:19.840 and lost to adverse reactions to vaccines well let me ask you a question about that brett because i will

00:16:26.200 tell you as a journalist i found the episode um with the two guys kirsch and malone the guy who invented the

00:16:32.420 mrna technology malone it's kind of frustrating to be honest with you and the reason is you didn't

00:16:38.500 have somebody from the other side i wanted to hear somebody make all the points about how safe the

00:16:42.800 vaccines are and why these guys are off and how kirsch isn't really a doctor and just put science you

00:16:48.480 know studies together and have been looking at it but like why should we listen to him i'm from

00:16:51.480 johns hopkins i'm from harvard i'm from whatever and so i didn't find i didn't walk away convinced

00:16:56.300 i didn't because you didn't tee up the other side for me you just had two guys you know throwing out 1.00

00:17:01.960 concerns and you saying your concerns and then when i started researching what did they say about

00:17:08.060 like where did they get all this information where these guys get this from i found out it's from this

00:17:12.780 one guy's study bryam brittle he's an associate professor of viral immunology in the department of

00:17:19.900 pathobiology at the university of guelph in canada guelph that is um the guy does study

00:17:26.100 vaccines for a living so that is his area of expertise and and his information seems to have

00:17:32.000 led to a lot of your conclusions but i don't know anything about that guy and i've seen a lot of

00:17:36.000 smart scientists here in the united states including somebody we had on the show from johns hopkins

00:17:40.900 marty mccary who's been pushing back on a lot of the cdc nonsense he's not it's not like he's team cdc

00:17:47.000 um push back on brittle's research too saying well uh so first of all there

00:17:55.220 we are we are in the wild west here what we have is a an official narrative about the vaccines

00:18:02.980 about the testing that they went through in order to reach the market about the emergency use

00:18:09.640 authorizations under which they are administered about the immunity from liability enjoyed by the

00:18:16.420 manufacturers and the official story effectively has almost the entire landscape so there's a question

00:18:26.340 about whether or not it is fair to require of those who would point out that there is another analysis

00:18:33.940 that they must instantly give equal time to an analysis that has almost all the bandwidth i do agree

00:18:40.600 you have to do that i just think it would have been more helpful well i just think point counterpoint

00:18:45.000 would have been more helpful it would have been more persuasive i agree and you know it's not the

00:18:49.840 only thing about that podcast that frustrates me i must say uh i have been in contact um with

00:18:57.660 with uh dr bindle and he is quite um he is quite credible and i have checked on his credentials it all

00:19:08.160 adds up so i'm not saying that he is the ultimate source but it is interesting that the place so it is it is not

00:19:13.540 the case that the podcast was basically built on his research there is a couple of questions on which

00:19:22.320 his work is central surrounding in particular the toxicity of the spike protein and the likely

00:19:29.280 toxicity of the subunit that is used in all of these vaccines um and let me just interject there just to

00:19:37.180 just to make it super clear because you're very very smart and sometimes i don't totally follow but i

00:19:42.000 have looked up some of these terms yeah um so you did say you say on that podcast that the spike

00:19:47.800 protein is very dangerous it's cytotoxic as you just said here i mean and that means it's toxic to

00:19:53.200 living cells yes and and and i didn't know what that meant to be honest but having looked at what

00:20:01.740 doctors i respect mccary i mentioned is just one of them he's a he's a hopkins guy he tweeted out an

00:20:07.740 article fact checking that claim and and saying quote there is no evidence that the spike protein

00:20:13.560 in the vaccines is cytotoxic and the pushback on that point you guys spent a fair amount of time on

00:20:19.180 is that there's a difference between the spike protein that happens from the virus and what happens

00:20:28.380 when you're given the vaccine and that they made changes on purpose to the vaccine that would prevent

00:20:35.900 the spike protein from being able to undergo binding to the receptor to a fusion and basically saying

00:20:42.700 that the mrna vaccines are more sophisticated and smarter than what happens to you when you just get

00:20:49.580 covid and they foresaw this problem and protected against it well i believe that is a false story

00:20:56.940 it certainly contains many elements of the truth what we know is that the vaccines have several design

00:21:05.200 failures in them and we can argue about whether or not those failures are consequential but the

00:21:10.980 vaccines are not remaining local to the injection site the spike protein which is the chosen antigen

00:21:18.660 in all of the current vaccines turns out to be toxic the spike protein itself and we will return to the

00:21:24.560 question of whether or not that means that the version of the spike protein that the the vaccines

00:21:29.460 in code is also toxic but it is also the case that it was designed to remain stuck to the surface of the

00:21:39.200 cells that produce it so you're supposed to be injected your cells in the case of the mrna vaccines take up

00:21:45.780 the mrna they produce the spike protein and the spike protein is supposed to move to the surface of the 0.89

00:21:50.460 cells and stay there and no doubt some of it does but we now know that a lot of it does not it floats

00:21:57.200 freely and so what this means is that you've got a vaccine in which effectively the brochure says that

00:22:03.820 it works one way but we know that in practice on three different counts it does not do what its

00:22:08.980 designers intended well i just want to interject there and say it my my own research on this suggests

00:22:16.140 you are right on that point that even your critics have kind of given you this one saying

00:22:20.540 it's true that some of this spike protein may enter the bloodstream after vaccination

00:22:26.100 their their point is but it's a very low level versus what you would see in an infected animal or an

00:22:32.960 infected person and that it's not dangerous it's not problematic and that the results of even knowing

00:22:39.280 that don't indicate that the vaccines are dangerous well i understand their argument but i would point out

00:22:46.260 that especially working downstream of an emergency use authorization and accelerated testing schedule

00:22:54.260 that does not allow even the normal level of assessment of uh of safety and in light of the immunity from

00:23:03.060 liability that the manufacturers are under that we have to proceed with extreme caution when we get the

00:23:09.180 sign that these vaccines are not working as intended but the core problem with the story about the spike

00:23:16.800 protein or more specifically the s1 subunit that is being used or produced by these vaccines

00:23:23.360 is that the claim that it was locked open in order to make it safe i believe is incorrect

00:23:31.560 it was locked open what do you mean locked open so imagine uh a protein that functions like i'm trying

00:23:39.840 to imagine what what the analogy might be some kind of a clamp that automatically clamps shut when it

00:23:46.660 reaches uh reaches uh some target of a particular shape so that's the normal spike protein is a it's a

00:23:54.760 protein that when it encounters a chemical of a particular shape changes form and that's part and parcel of how it

00:24:05.660 functions when it meets the uh the ace2 receptor in the version that is produced by the vaccines it was

00:24:13.620 chemically locked in the open position so imagine you had like a pair of scissors and you welded the two pieces

00:24:19.820 together so that they couldn't open and close anymore my understanding from dr malone is that

00:24:26.040 the reason that it was locked open was not to render it safe but to leave the portion of the protein that is

00:24:33.420 not naturally covered in sugars available to the immune system so that the immune system could effectively

00:24:39.740 see it and create immunity so there's nothing wrong with that plan that's a good idea from the point of

00:24:46.400 view of making an effective vaccine but if it is true that locking it open renders the vaccine safe

00:24:53.100 that will be a lucky accident so ultimately i think what we have to say is when they say that there is no

00:25:02.500 evidence that the spike protein encoded by the vaccines is dangerous they are speaking with a

00:25:09.660 level of precision most people don't detect to say that there is no evidence does not mean that there

00:25:14.640 is evidence that it is safe it means that the evidence we have that this protein is dangerous

00:25:19.600 comes from the natural wild type protein and that we don't yet have the evidence on what the locked

00:25:25.100 open version of the protein is but logically speaking in the case where we are actually immunizing people

00:25:32.260 with this protein it would be wisest to presume that it has the same toxicity as the protein from which

00:25:41.120 we derived it until it is proven to be safe and in light of the adverse event signal i get you i get

00:25:47.520 you you see there that they they do say and i i agree with you that that if there's i don't want to

00:25:56.780 figure out how how to say it but no no active proof of harm doesn't mean no chance that it's harmful

00:26:04.060 and and you would argue there is there is proof of active harm but no no no i i wouldn't i wouldn't

00:26:09.520 say there's proof of active harm what i would say is that the natural presumption is if the protein on

00:26:16.380 which it is modeled is dangerous and it is not established that locking it open renders it safe

00:26:23.100 then one should presume it is dangerous until proven safe they i mean the people who defend it

00:26:30.540 say not only not only is it is it safe but they argue that it actually appears the vaccines appear

00:26:40.440 to inhibit the spike protein any injury from the spike protein injury to your blood vessels injury to

00:26:46.820 your lymph nodes that they may actually prevent vascular damage so they actually are arguing that not

00:26:52.000 only do they do no harm um they will they will protect you and they say 890 million people

00:26:58.480 worldwide have been vaccinated the fda is monitoring it they pause j and j which proves they have fully 0.99

00:27:05.220 independent safety monitoring of these things and um you know that they they say they've looked at all

00:27:11.420 these things they're not so persuaded by the one guy in canada and there have been scientists from all

00:27:17.480 over harvard yale johns hopkins people again who i've had on this show as more heterodox thinkers when

00:27:23.560 it comes to covid saying you're wrong well so first of all i think what you have is a situation in which

00:27:31.860 you've got a confusing picture and in light of the fact that we are injecting people uh with these

00:27:38.600 vaccines that we can know nothing about their long-term impact in light of the fact that there is a very

00:27:44.640 strong signal of adverse events unprecedented in fact in the VAERS system then we have to proceed

00:27:52.380 with great caution but uh if you'll allow me to change the focus just slightly all i will but just

00:28:00.520 hold that thought because i just hold that thought hold that because i do want to hear what you're going

00:28:03.280 to say but just just to correct that record there's a question about how strong the adverse events

00:28:08.660 evidence is i know the VAERS system you know people who defend that system say of course that's

00:28:14.860 not a system that's meant to capture everything because you know it's set up drug companies don't

00:28:18.300 want a meaningful forum in which you can go on and say let me tell you all the things this drug did to

00:28:22.760 me like that's not good for them they don't want their drug to take that kind of a hit they don't want

00:28:26.360 to get sued they don't want class action lawyers you know pouring over that so i get that

00:28:30.200 but but it people have defended some of the bad numbers on the VAERS system saying a lot of the

00:28:35.780 early vaccines were given to 90 year olds and really old people and you can't really say the

00:28:41.000 deaths were caused by a vaccine so much as the initial vaccines were given to the very old or the

00:28:45.600 very sick well you you can't establish really almost ever that any individual event is the direct

00:28:53.700 result of the vaccination because of course people do occasionally spontaneously drop dead but

00:28:59.420 the signal does not involve just the old so if you wanted to test the question of whether or not

00:29:09.180 the alarmingly high rate of death following vaccination was the result of some sort of

00:29:17.640 sampling error as you're describing you can test that question and one way to do it is to look at

00:29:22.760 whether that's been the case for people in the age class that you're suggesting is responsible for

00:29:28.580 the signal for other vaccinations and my argument would be any way you slice the data there is an

00:29:35.060 alarming signal now what critics of this perspective generally say is yes there is an alarming signal but

00:29:42.980 the number of people who have been saved by the vaccines far exceeds the number who have been lost no

00:29:48.660 matter what number you use and that is probably correct so far however is it all right for me now to

00:29:55.760 pivot to what i think is the central question yeah yeah go for it the vaccines all of the ones that

00:30:01.740 we are administering all depend on emergency use authorizations those emergency use authorizations

00:30:09.900 have a requirement that there not be a safe and effective treatment available they should never have

00:30:16.320 been granted if such a treatment existed and at the point that it is discovered that such a treatment does

00:30:21.240 exist they should have been withdrawn and administration of the vaccines should have ended so this is why

00:30:27.960 the question of ivermectin and the other repurposed drugs is so vital it does not really make sense to

00:30:34.920 talk about whether or not it is acceptable to lose x number of thousand people to the hazards of the vaccine in

00:30:43.080 order to save y number of people from the covid pandemic if there is a treatment that does not

00:30:49.560 produce this massive adverse event signal and is highly effective at both treating the disease and

00:30:57.880 crucially preventing it now wait before we get to ivermectin i agree with that in principle that's that's

00:31:03.720 to me seems like a no-brainer if you've got a a very effective treatment you know if you've got

00:31:07.960 strep throat you got penicillin there it is you don't have to have a vaccine against against strep throat

00:31:13.080 because we have the cure uh so as a theoretical matter yes you're 100 right now we can get to

00:31:19.080 whether ivermectin is that thing but i also think even before we get to is this ethical because there's

00:31:25.640 you know potentially a drug available the conclusion the place we both just landed is you know maybe

00:31:31.560 maybe certainly some people have died after getting the vaccine and you know was it as a result of the

00:31:35.960 vaccine we we don't have all the information yet and i think this is what leads reasonable scientists

00:31:42.040 and doctors to say all right so then let's make a value judgment based on your risk you know if

00:31:47.160 you're old you're immunocompromised and you're somebody who really could likely get killed by

00:31:51.480 covid and that's a small small small percentage of the people then this may be a a smart risk for

00:31:58.040 you to take but if you're young you're 18 it's a very different story especially given that whether

00:32:05.240 you whether you agree with brett on everything he said about you know the spike protein and all that or

00:32:10.120 not you have to agree that we don't know everything we'd like to know about this vaccine they just it

00:32:15.080 hasn't been around long enough right when do long-term trials you may have a very different risk

00:32:19.640 calculation and i mean that that's true and i know we both agree on that yes i would say the problem

00:32:27.720 with the analysis you know i agree that for the young it makes little sense uh to administer this if

00:32:36.280 they tolerate covid very well effectively that it becomes a transfer of health between the young

00:32:44.680 and the old we are putting young people at risk with a vaccine that is clearly experimental about

00:32:49.560 which we know uh little about its long-term impacts and we would be doing it to save older

00:32:55.240 infirm people and i don't think a sane society does that i agree with that it's medically unethical 0.99

00:33:02.280 they're trying to boost herd immunity by using the young kids who don't need it and for whom the

00:33:08.600 implications are unclear because too many people won't get the vaccines for for valid reasons they

00:33:15.160 have concerns what have you and they're trying to use my kid and yours to up the numbers yes and i think

00:33:22.920 it is absolutely unforgivable on that point though i i i want to say that reasonable people could disagree

00:33:32.280 i actually don't think that's true i think that reasonable people would all have to grant that we

00:33:36.760 have an obligation to protect children even at risk to older people and i say that as somebody who's much

00:33:43.480 closer to old than young but there are other cases in which the the picture is even clearer

00:33:52.680 for example people who have clearly had covid people who have for example tested positive and lost their

00:34:00.440 sense of taste and smell these people do not need a vaccination they have effectively been vaccinated

00:34:09.080 by nature and the vaccination that they have gotten from nature is much more uh useful in all likelihood

00:34:16.280 because it is much broader so for us to recognize that there is an adverse events signal that let's

00:34:24.680 say needs to be discussed maybe it is the result of some phenomenon in the reporting system and it is not a

00:34:30.680 medical fact but we don't know that so we have an indication that there might be a substantial hazard to

00:34:36.120 the vaccines and yet we are administering them to people who for whom they are redundant we could

00:34:42.840 instantly reduce those people's risk dramatically by simply saying a conclusive demonstration that

00:34:51.800 you've had covid is sufficient and when you look at the cdc website as to why it is still recommending

00:34:57.640 vaccination for people who have had covid 19 what it says is because we don't know how long the immunity

00:35:06.520 from the disease lasts which is obvious nonsense we also don't know how long the immunity from the

00:35:13.000 vaccines last and certainly if there was a risk that it was going to fail at the point that it becomes

00:35:20.040 clear that people are losing their immunity we could start vaccinating them then but in the strong

00:35:27.000 chance that the vaccination or that the immunity from the disease itself is long lasting possibly

00:35:33.560 lifelong we could simply keep those people out of harm's way and yet we don't do it

00:35:39.320 and then of course there's a third category which is pregnant women for whom it would seem that we

00:35:45.720 should be treating them with great caution in light of the the extra risk to um to especially their unborn

00:35:56.040 children and yet we are behaving in a way that suggests that the driving

00:36:02.600 objective is to administer as many doses of vaccine as possible rather than yes okay let me ask you that

00:36:09.880 yeah i don't i don't totally understand i don't understand why they are insisting on vaccinating people

00:36:17.800 who have had covid i mean that's one of the first things my own doctor who i trust who's an infectious

00:36:21.480 disease specialist said which was he said not only should you not get the vaccine if you've had

00:36:28.280 covid you like not only do you not need it he said you shouldn't get it you shouldn't get it and he

00:36:33.960 said that we've had some more adverse reactions to the vaccine with people who have had covid and by

00:36:38.600 the way what the hell is like the comfort of having had covid if you can't just say at least i don't have

00:36:42.200 to get the experimental vaccine it's like again disincentivizing people um on every front they just

00:36:48.200 don't know how to handle public relations which is a front in this battle anyway um why why won't

00:36:54.360 they just admit that they don't have to vaccinate the people who have natural immunity i don't that

00:36:58.760 i don't understand the agenda i know they lean into fear i know they're trying to get herd immunity up

00:37:03.640 but that's a whole huge section of the population that's got it so why well you know i can hear it in

00:37:09.320 your voice if you look at that question long enough you are left scratching your head and the

00:37:14.840 problem is that i know only one answer that that adds up and the answer is that this isn't about

00:37:23.240 public health and it isn't about individual health it is about something else it is about

00:37:29.480 something like profits within the pharmaceutical industry and i know how that sounds but i also know

00:37:37.880 that if we were to take this outside of the context of covid in general people are aware that

00:37:44.600 the pharmaceutical industry has a perverse incentive to sell products that may not be in your interest

00:37:51.080 to take people are generally on their guard about that and if one thinks about it for even a few minutes

00:37:57.560 it should be apparent that whatever problem exists from the perverse incentives of pharmaceutical

00:38:03.160 companies gets far worse when we have immunity from liability so i don't know maybe there's a

00:38:10.920 good answer to your question but i have yet to hear it and i certainly haven't been able to come up with

00:38:15.080 anything and i've spent a tremendous amount of time looking for some alternative explanation i don't

00:38:20.760 want to conclude you know go ahead the these folks who are in charge of not only big pharma but big

00:38:27.080 tech and media think the american public is a bunch of rubes right and they it could be an instance of

00:38:33.880 the experts thinking americans they can't they can't handle nuance if you tell them they don't

00:38:38.200 have to get vaccinated because they had covid then you know the rubes are just going to wrongly assume 0.95

00:38:43.240 that they don't have to get vaccinated at all they're not going to understand so you know our our

00:38:46.920 big brother is going to take care of us dum-dums by just saying everyone's got to get it period i

00:38:51.720 don't it could be your theory as well greed you know protection of these companies that have come

00:38:57.720 up with these vaccines and making sure they get their payola i don't know but that one to me made

00:39:02.280 absolutely no sense up next we're going to get into the i-word ivermectin the thing that cannot be said

00:39:10.280 according to youtube and some of these other social media companies but we're going to say it we're

00:39:14.600 going to talk about it and why it became such a problem for brett right after this

00:39:22.440 i want to talk about ivermectin a little the word that shall not be mentioned because youtube got so

00:39:27.320 upset when you had a podcast about ivermectin and i think it's kind of interesting i mean i

00:39:32.520 will confess i haven't bent that into the whole hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin debate i just

00:39:37.640 like okay if i get covid i mean now i've been vaccinated but if i had if i get it now or if i'd

00:39:43.400 gotten it before i would have gone to my doctor and i would have said what should we do do i do

00:39:47.560 i need a medicine at all i'm relatively young like what and if he had said try ivermectin i would have

00:39:52.680 i didn't really feel the need to sort of pronounce anything on it but it's become a debate and for

00:39:58.440 good reason because if to your point if we have what's essentially a cure we should know it's cause

00:40:04.520 for celebration and um here's my problem with it with your discussion on it you're not allowed to

00:40:11.000 discuss it you can't talk about ivermectin why not what i looked at it i'm like is brett crazy is

00:40:19.080 he is he out there all the studies i saw that you know on my own this is me with canadian debbie she's

00:40:24.920 my researcher um doing our own you know sort of the stuff we would do to interview anybody american

00:40:30.920 journal of therapeutic study peer-reviewed meta-analysis study published june 17th analyzed 24

00:40:36.440 randomized trials conducted in 15 countries found that the drug ivermectin could reduce

00:40:41.880 covet 19 related deaths found it reduced the risk of death in mild to moderate patients by an average

00:40:46.680 of 62 percent there was a study out of australia researchers there show that treatment with ivermectin

00:40:53.400 inhibited the covet 19 virus within 24 to 48 hours of treatment a pre-clinical data showed ivermectin

00:40:58.920 prevented the virus's rna from replicating and still the fda i get it right now they they warn

00:41:05.320 against on the unauthorized use of it and i actually understand their warning okay because

00:41:09.400 what they're saying is that clinical studies are underway so kind of we'll get back to you

00:41:14.040 but they take forever which is why people have the conversations in the meantime and people are dying

00:41:18.200 but the fda wants people to understand that there are some risks with ivermectin because

00:41:22.680 when people just hear about a drug and start pumping it into themselves without doing their homework

00:41:26.840 bad things can happen uh ivermectin which i now know treats rosacea it can treat head lice

00:41:35.880 um it can come in a tablet form or i think uh some sort of a lotion form they give it to animals to

00:41:42.600 prevent worms or treat worms okay don't take your horse's ivermectin don't take any medicine without

00:41:50.760 running it by your doctor assess the risks of any medication or the effectiveness of any medication

00:41:55.640 with your doctor we don't want people just you know self-diagnosing and self-medicating but you

00:42:01.560 tell me brett why we can't discuss the fact that there are several studies showing this thing's

00:42:07.000 amazing and it's actually doing some real good when it comes to the fight against covet

00:42:10.600 tremendous good in other parts of the world but i'd like to reorient you a little bit because again

00:42:15.240 i think that even as it's uh occurring to you that there is clearly utility in this drug you're

00:42:22.120 still subject to a false narrative about it so the fact is we can both agree that there is some risk

00:42:30.360 for having people self-medicate that really using a drug off label meaning not for its original purpose

00:42:39.160 is something that should be done in consultation with your doctor but the fda could be recommending to

00:42:45.320 your doctor that they administer ivermectin cautiously to people who either have been exposed

00:42:52.680 to covid or have begun to show symptoms we know that the drug works much better if it is given early

00:42:59.000 that delay is a problem and so and we also know that this is one of the safest drugs that we have

00:43:04.120 it's been administered something like four billion times it has been in use for four decades it is

00:43:10.600 among the safest drugs we have and so what people should be comparing is if you show up at your

00:43:18.120 doctor and you appear to have covid the current medical advice is to send you home to sicken in

00:43:26.280 place and if your lips begin to turn blue then we take action all of that time is lost the fact that

00:43:36.200 there is evidence it may be noisy and we can talk about why it's noisy statistically noisy i mean

00:43:42.040 but the fact that there is evidence that this drug seems to work at very low risk and high

00:43:48.120 effectiveness means that the the hippocratic oath effectively dictates that we should be giving it to

00:43:53.720 people who appear to be exposed to covid or have just come down with covid and we should be giving

00:43:59.000 it to them as early as possible prescribing drugs off label is something doctors do it's something

00:44:04.920 they're trained to do and in this case it's why we have botox keeping away our wrinkles that's not

00:44:10.440 what it was designed for indeed we and so there's there's no reason that i can come up with that we

00:44:17.000 shouldn't be cautiously administering this drug and if somehow somehow the critics are right and i can't

00:44:24.840 imagine in light of the huge volume of evidence and the multiple different kinds of evidence that point

00:44:29.880 to its effectiveness but if they were somehow right and it does not work we will not have harmed

00:44:35.720 patients by administering it and we could stop administering it so that is the difference as i

00:44:41.160 understand it between um ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine which in studies actually did do some harm it was

00:44:49.160 causing some harm to people and that's why they say they shut down those studies and kind of shied away

00:44:55.080 from that drug which some people had touted as a miracle drug but as i see the studies on ivermectin

00:45:01.000 they they haven't gotten to that place and even vice which took a shot at you and went off in this

00:45:06.440 long thing even they said the studies show ivermectin is at best a mediocre treatment for covid

00:45:13.240 that's that's an endorsement coming from vice which you know normally i would expect to be completely on

00:45:18.680 the other side for whatever it's worth again i asked my doctor who i trust is another guy's been

00:45:24.440 around a long time and he's an infectious disease guy and he said there's no hard data to support the

00:45:30.360 use of this drug he said we need to adhere to a scientific model of proof to avoid injuring people

00:45:36.520 or misdirecting them i.e giving them a false sense of security um controlled experimentation is what is

00:45:42.760 needed uh and that experimentation he said should not be suspended in any sort of an emotional or

00:45:48.360 frightened frenzy right and is there risk of that that of it get of i mean maybe that that is what

00:45:54.360 happened with hydroxychloroquine right like they suspended the testing well i i would like to see

00:45:59.320 as much evidence collected as possible but the studies have to be designed well and so for example there is

00:46:04.600 this uh ivermectin has been added to a trial at oxford but the design of the trial appears like it's being

00:46:11.480 set up to fail they're soliciting people up to 14 days past the uh onset of symptoms or past a positive

00:46:19.960 covid test and while yes it is true that if you just did that at random you would get some people

00:46:24.680 who had just contracted covid the later you give it the less well it works so what this may sound

00:46:30.520 counterintuitive but a well-designed randomized controlled trial is excellent a poorly designed

00:46:37.560 randomized controlled trial is very misleading what we have good what we have is a meta-analysis

00:46:44.840 that is composed of many smaller trials and the good thing about a meta-analysis

00:46:49.560 is that the flaws in one trial tend to be canceled out by the strengths of another so although it that's

00:46:56.120 the one by tess lorry exactly and the evidence there is very strong it is plenty strong to administer

00:47:03.240 a safe drug to people for whom we have no alternative i would also point out though that the story about

00:47:09.720 ivermectin is distorted because people are far too focused on the treatment aspect of the drug

00:47:18.200 and the treatment aspect is a complex there's a question of what the appropriate dose is there's

00:47:23.720 a question about when it should be administered and all of those things make the the evidence around it

00:47:28.280 uh noisy but it has a second value which as far as i know none of the other repurposed drugs do

00:47:35.800 and that is as a prophylactic for preventing covid and we really need to be thinking about the following

00:47:43.640 question we have uh 86 as the uh the average effectiveness expected by the uh meta-analysis or the

00:47:55.800 average effectiveness determined by the meta-analysis that's a very high percentage of effectiveness we

00:48:01.720 have a study in argentina a very powerful study in which 1200 people participated they were frontline

00:48:10.280 covid workers so they were being exposed to covid 800 of them were given the drug none of them came

00:48:17.480 down with covid and in the 400 uh member control group 57 percent of these frontline workers contracted

00:48:25.400 the disease now either that study is outright fraud for which there is no evidence that it is or it is

00:48:33.080 very powerful evidence for the capacity of ivermectin to prevent people from contracting

00:48:38.680 this disease and my contention is even if the number that's uh borne out by wider use is the 86 percent

00:48:48.600 number that number is high enough to drive sars cov2 to extinction with no other tools and so when we

00:48:57.800 talk about things like the adverse event signal surrounding the vaccines we need to talk about it not by

00:49:04.200 comparing it to the risk to people with no preventive measures at all we need to compare it to this

00:49:10.920 preventive measure that we have at our disposal and say if the numbers are what they appear to be

00:49:16.680 there's no reason to be exposing people to a large adverse event risk when we have a safe alternative

00:49:24.200 that works similarly and if i could just make one last point there even if you think this is wrong even

00:49:31.240 if you think it is well established that these vaccines are safe and that the adverse event

00:49:35.480 signal is going to turn out to be something about the way data is collected rather than about people

00:49:40.520 being sickened it still makes sense if you're pro vaccine because you want us to get to herd immunity

00:49:47.960 in order to drive the pathogen to extinction it makes sense for you also to be rooting for the

00:49:53.960 administration of ivermectin to people who've been recently exposed or the use of it as a preventive

00:50:00.040 measure because we don't need to get to herd immunity by one measure alone a composite will

00:50:07.080 work just as well so if some fraction of the population has had covid and they are immune some

00:50:13.720 fraction of the population has had the vaccine and they are immune and some fraction of the population

00:50:18.360 is on ivermectin and we can get that number above the critical threshold we can drive the pathogen

00:50:24.440 to extinction and our likelihood of doing that is far lower if we're not using all the tools at

00:50:29.160 our disposal i mean i should say that the fdi fda definitely does not want you using ivermectin to

00:50:36.520 treat or prevent covet it's not approved they talk about the risks in taking a drug in large doses in

00:50:43.640 in a human that is often used in animals to treat or prevent parasites and they say that they've

00:50:51.400 received multiple reports of patients who have required medical support and even been hospitalized 0.99

00:50:55.480 after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for horses don't fucking take your horse's medicine 0.99

00:51:01.800 sorry but that's a dumb ass thing to do don't do that go to your doctor ask him if he likes ivermectin 0.99

00:51:07.960 for you that's it don't listen to brett don't listen to me we're just trying to have a discussion 0.98

00:51:12.440 about what are the arguments that are getting people talking about this and brett's he's got his

00:51:16.680 feelings and i've told you my doctor's feelings i'm i'm open-minded to what my doctor says but i

00:51:22.360 certainly would not be taking medicine or not taking it based on anything i heard on youtube or

00:51:25.880 on a podcast you know that's what we have physicians for what what what's bothering me

00:51:32.120 about your situation is the censorship of discussion and i understand that youtube is going to say no no

00:51:40.760 no this is like we're trying to stop the guy from saying drink antifreeze which by the way will

00:51:45.720 instantly kill you um they're trying to say we're not suppressing any science you know science is going

00:51:51.880 on ivermectin is being studied the vaccines and their side effects are being studied but we are 0.88

00:51:57.560 stopping what we think are potentially irresponsible discussions that could hurt people prior to us

00:52:03.800 having all the answers and the answer to that is how do we get all the answers we have to talk and

00:52:08.920 you're not you're not some snake oil salesman you as you point out are an evolutionary biologist who

00:52:14.360 studies studies and studies trends and knows how to read these studies in a way not every joe schmoe

00:52:20.760 knows how to and you have responsible discussions they may not always be conducted perfectly according

00:52:26.840 to megan kelly who cares i'm not your boss um and more and more this is what's happening matt taibbi

00:52:33.320 made the point when alex jones got deplatformed people wondered is this a slippery slope right is it like

00:52:39.480 where is this going and he said you know we're there it is a slippery slope and and you're a great evidence

00:52:46.760 of the fact that they've gotten too powerful and too quick to press the off button on people's

00:52:51.880 microphones yeah i would just add that capture of regulatory agencies is a well-known hazard there's

00:53:02.920 a question here as to whether or not capture has occurred and it has somehow been extended to the

00:53:09.160 social media platforms in effect their censorship policy is protecting the capturers which in this

00:53:17.480 case would likely be the pharmaceutical industry and their proxies in the public health apparatus

00:53:25.080 and the question that i would ask people is maybe you don't believe that that has happened in this case

00:53:31.560 but if it were to happen we would have to discuss it somewhere in order to figure out how to regain

00:53:37.480 control so that the public health authorities can go back to protecting the public health and if youtube

00:53:44.920 is going to prevent the discussion then effectively the the capture is complete so i really think that

00:53:52.440 that's what we're we're fighting about ultimately and that the examples here provide us a set of test

00:54:00.920 cases these are places where we have evidence it's available to evaluate experts can talk about what it does

00:54:07.480 and doesn't mean people can listen in and contribute and that that's the healthy thing to do the unhealthy

00:54:14.120 thing to do is to assume that public health officials are automatically right because they hold those

00:54:19.480 titles that's really true we've talked about on this show before deference to authority whether it was

00:54:25.880 the fbi who who would be deferential to james comey knowing now what we know about him right where uh

00:54:32.840 the cia talk to glenn greenwald the nsa right like to talk to glenn they're even the president

00:54:39.000 right like there's plenty of reason pick your poison obama trump now biden do you want to be deferential to that

00:54:44.920 president any of them do you think they're thinking about you whoever you are or are they thinking about

00:54:50.840 themselves um question for you though i this i want to ask you about there was uh you took down this tweet and i just want to ask you about it

00:54:58.840 because it was on june 24th and you you tweeted as follows for months i've asked everyone i talked to

00:55:03.640 if they're vaccinated and what their experience was nearly all had scary symptoms some terrifying

00:55:09.160 question so how could anyone doubt that there is a huge adverse event signal answer most aren't talking

00:55:15.240 unless asked asked around ask around we have a problem but then the next day you tweeted out my

00:55:21.480 tweet was bad and i know it without presenting the background it was alarmist in effect and not clarifying

00:55:27.400 i apologize so what do you make of that when i read that i just thought so he's taking anecdotal

00:55:34.760 evidence and making it into a thing like it's a pronouncement on reality and that you know you

00:55:39.240 can't do that right like i i could have responded i i for months i've asked everyone if i talked to

00:55:45.320 if they're vaccinated and what their experience was nearly all had amazing experiences with zero symptoms

00:55:50.520 and we're really really gratified to have the vaccine that doesn't tell me you'd say mk that doesn't

00:55:55.000 tell us anything you haven't talked to the people i've talked to right so to me i thought it was not

00:56:00.200 really valuable i don't know you but why did you take it down well let's let's add a couple things

00:56:06.760 to what you've said about the story i did make the tweet it is uh an honest account of my experience

00:56:15.240 now i will say and after in the aftermath of the tweet i did think about all of the conversations i had

00:56:20.440 had had and i did come up with a couple others of people who did not have remarkable symptoms but

00:56:24.680 in my sample and that there's nothing that says that my sample is representative nor did i suggest

00:56:30.520 that it was but in my sample the number of people who did have something alarming to report was

00:56:37.720 shockingly high now what you didn't say in describing this is i took the tweet down

00:56:45.240 i then described why i am alarmed by certain symptoms that other people might well not be

00:56:51.320 alarmed by in other words i don't find a headache alarming under normal circumstances but a crippling

00:56:58.680 headache one that sends you to bed because you can't function any longer in the aftermath of a

00:57:04.120 vaccination like this one in which we have a protein that we have strong evidence shreds the blood brain

00:57:10.920 barrier that is alarming so in any case that's denied by scientists we've had on the show and trust what

00:57:17.560 is denied that that it it crosses the the blood brain barrier well that that it's again i read to

00:57:26.360 you earlier that that actually what they're saying is these vaccines appear to prevent that kind of

00:57:32.680 transmission well what i said was that the spike protein shreds the blood brain barrier perforates it

00:57:39.880 and we do have evidence of this which i posted in my thread when i took down i just so your

00:57:44.360 listeners understand when i took down my tweet i did what i always do when i take down a tweet

00:57:49.640 uh in a substantive way you know if i make a stupid mistake and i need to retype it that's one thing but

00:57:54.760 if i make a substantive mistake and i take down a tweet i always screenshot it and i post it because

00:58:00.680 what i don't want is for my wrong tweet to spread but i don't want to hide what i wrote i want people

00:58:05.800 to be able to be able to follow the history of it and so in this case uh what i did was i wrote a

00:58:10.600 thread in which i included that screenshot and i included the evidence uh for various things including

00:58:17.000 the perforation of the blood brain barrier by the spike protein so anyway people can evaluate it as

00:58:23.640 they like but there is reason to be concerned about this and there are symptoms frankly of the

00:58:30.760 post-vaccine syndromes that many people are suffering including something called brain fog

00:58:37.720 something that actually dr malone reports that he who's vaccinated is suffering from i've had several

00:58:43.160 other friends of mine report uh a profound anecdotal that's anecdotal i i have everybody i know who's

00:58:50.120 gotten the vaccine loves that they've had none of that you can't go by anecdotal no no no hold on a

00:58:54.200 second what the end of my tweet which again i'm not standing behind this tweet i took it down because

00:59:00.040 i did think it was a bad tweet as i said quite clearly but the point of my tweet was you should

00:59:07.240 ask people in your circle and it is interesting that somebody like you in your circle you you tell

00:59:14.840 me that you asked and i take you at your word that you've asked people and you've only heard good reports

00:59:19.960 right i i heard one problematic report which i which i told my audience about before it was with

00:59:25.080 the johnson and johnson it was a what was one of the women who got a blood clot although she was not 0.99

00:59:29.720 one of the ones who was identified you know what they remember they said we held we only had six

00:59:34.680 and she was not one of the six so so that was somebody who i don't know but i met at a party but i

00:59:40.040 have i have asked everybody hello i live in new york everyone's been vaccinated and it's been uniformly

00:59:45.320 positive but i like you understand that doesn't really mean anything that's not a scientific

00:59:52.440 example it's not a scientific example my point was that i mean the point of the tweet if people want to

00:59:59.400 go back and look at it is that i believe that there is a bias against talking about the adverse events and

01:00:07.880 the reason i think that is because i've made a point of asking and people who said nothing or if we were

01:00:13.000 discussing it and i said are you vaccinated they said yes and then they didn't say anything about

01:00:17.160 it and i said okay what was your experience i get back these stories it's not every time but it is an

01:00:23.960 alarming percentage of the people i have asked and this you also don't know whether brain fog it was

01:00:31.080 caused by the vaccine you get the vaccine on tuesday you have brain fog on wednesday you have no

01:00:36.040 idea whether you had the brain fog without the vaccine you know maybe you have low blood sugar that

01:00:40.520 day you skip breakfast right this is why we don't normally cite examples like that as as relevant

01:00:47.000 at all until they've been run through the scientific studies okay but first of all this is my area of

01:00:53.640 expertise what this is is an observation it's the first step in the scientific method if you notice a

01:00:59.640 pattern right you haven't taken data on it but you see a pattern then you come up with a hypothesis

01:01:05.640 about what might be causing that pattern then you make predictions from that hypothesis and then you

01:01:10.920 either run an experiment in a laboratory or you collect data that would test the predictions in some

01:01:17.560 natural context and my point was i've got an observation that observation tells me that there is

01:01:24.520 something to talk about now if it was true that most people had the opposite then yeah that's going to

01:01:30.040 suggest that my observations here are somehow subject to sampling error i don't know why they

01:01:36.280 would be but it could be that there's something about my friend group well there could be something

01:01:40.840 about your own internal bias that you already decided that the vaccines are not safe and therefore

01:01:46.280 you're looking to confirm your own bias but i haven't decided that well i mean just having listened to

01:01:52.680 your podcast you're not you're not pro vaccine oh now i'm alarmed but i did not start out that way i

01:01:58.520 started this was 6 24 it's not like this was this was six months ago no no but what i was reporting

01:02:04.120 in my tweet was that i had done this over a long period of time so i wasn't initially even eligible

01:02:10.440 for the vaccine and so i was and heather and i talked early on in the vaccinations about the concern

01:02:18.360 over the fact that we have no information about their long-term impact we can't have that information and

01:02:23.480 so that is something that we need to be honest about which is to the extent that we can say

01:02:28.360 something like these vaccines are safe we are talking about in the short term and we are leaving

01:02:34.040 the question that is true so i was interested in the question of whether or not something would show up

01:02:40.680 over time and so i did start asking early on and i was you know initially concerned about what we

01:02:46.680 didn't know long term but i was not um i was rooting for the vaccines and expecting them to work and in

01:02:54.120 fact in many ways they have worked they've been highly effective at preventing covid infections so

01:03:00.520 that's a very good thing the question is what else do they do

01:03:05.480 up next i think is the most profound part of our interview we get into evergreen and brett getting

01:03:11.720 just pummeled on clubhouse and why he does that and why he keeps going into the fray in this way and

01:03:18.440 is it worth engaging these woke warriors who are not proceeding in good faith and the moment that

01:03:24.920 made us both cry don't miss that that's right after this but first before we get to that and our

01:03:30.040 quick commercial um want to bring you our feature called asked and answered where we get after some of

01:03:35.080 our listener mail steve krakauer is our executive producer he's got today's question hey steve hey

01:03:40.280 megan this one it comes to us uh at questions at devilmaycaremedia.com it's from james benjamin and

01:03:46.040 really relates to today's show i think in a lot of ways because james says that his wife

01:03:50.360 and him have different political views sometimes it can be a strain on the relationship he leans

01:03:54.520 right she leans left but besides politics their relationship is great but he says they're expecting

01:03:59.320 their first child in september and he's wondering what advice you might offer for relational and

01:04:03.720 parenting advice when raising a child with parents with two very different world views well i think this

01:04:09.400 is great this is great for your kids because it's going to force you to offer reasoned arguments and

01:04:17.480 expose them to both sides both sides ism is somehow a dirty word today well screw those people who say

01:04:23.320 that people are complicated issues are complicated they're not black and white it's not perfectly

01:04:28.760 clear this some of the stuff we're talking about and certainly political matters and i think you do

01:04:32.760 your kids a service by exposing them to arguments and ideas that's what we try to do and that's what

01:04:39.400 you guys will necessarily do because you're less likely to describe an issue in a way that's completely

01:04:43.960 unfair to the other side if your wife happens to share that other side world view and so i think it's a 0.94

01:04:49.800 great opportunity for you even if your wife's not around to describe an issue let's take the one of the 0.80

01:04:55.800 diciest abortion in a way that's fair to the other perspective i do that with my kids all the time i

01:05:01.720 don't actually always tell them where i stand on an issue i will it's not like i'm trying to keep it

01:05:06.120 a secret but i'm not really in the business of trying to make them share my world view i'm in

01:05:11.480 the business of trying to teach them how to think how to be critical thinkers and so if that's your

01:05:16.680 approach then you're even if your wife and you had the same views you'd be talking about the other

01:05:20.600 side fairly so your kids can make up their own mind and i actually make a conscious effort often to

01:05:25.400 not put my thumb on the scale you know i don't know how my kids are going to come down on these

01:05:28.680 issues and i think they have to function in a world that's extremely woke and they pussyfoot 0.85

01:05:33.400 around all these issues in a way i don't so i don't really want to push them to be like me because

01:05:38.040 that's it's a difficult existence but i do want to push them to know how to think through things

01:05:43.960 and to argue a logical point and to look for the flaws in their own logic in order to make an

01:05:49.160 argument and you so you have a great opportunity because you've got somebody right there who's going

01:05:52.440 to hold your feet to the fire if you misstep or if you're too partisan or you know just just

01:05:57.240 unfair in the way you present an issue so it's an opportunity to raise great critical thinkers

01:06:01.640 um i just i wish you good luck with it and i i think in discussing the the items whatever the

01:06:07.720 items are of the day remember that in describing the other view they're held by somebody you really

01:06:12.920 love and your kids really love too so you don't want to say anything too personally diminishing

01:06:16.840 and something that will keep your kids minds open and then privately when they get over

01:06:21.720 or when they get older over a beer you can tell them how they need to think

01:06:24.760 you can tell them what the real answers are once they've had a chance to kick things around and

01:06:30.280 come to their own opinions and you can tell them why they're all wrong and these colleges are teaching

01:06:33.880 them the wrong things and they're not going to be limousine liberals wait what

01:06:38.440 james thank you for the question if anybody else has one it's questions at devilmaycaremedia.com

01:06:45.800 now back to brett

01:06:52.920 the way i first got to know you is with what happened at evergreen i think that's how a lot

01:06:56.680 of people first got to know you and your name and what happened to you there was very unfair and you

01:07:00.760 don't know this but on this show we've talked about it many times because the movie no safe spaces

01:07:05.240 by mark joseph is it's truly like my dianetics it's that and douglas murray's book um the madness of

01:07:12.920 crowds i just think it was so revealing and it left me glued to my chair when it was over i just

01:07:19.160 couldn't move and the and the part that brought me to tears i actually had i was weeping in the movie

01:07:25.480 theater was the part about your story and what happened on at evergreen and on the campus there to

01:07:31.400 you and to the young the young black woman who tried to just speak with you about it and it was

01:07:37.240 publicly shamed and made to read aloud in front of everybody essentially an apology for dany to even

01:07:42.200 speak to you just trying to speak about what happened and she was punished humiliated you and

01:07:49.000 your wife were effectively forced out of your jobs they paid you a pittance it wasn't enough 1.00

01:07:54.280 and i just feel like you've been on this life mission of forgive me because i hate this term but

01:08:00.280 speaking truth to power or just pushing back against narratives that don't ring true for you

01:08:05.320 and wanting to know more and that's i'm sure this isn't where it started you probably led a life like

01:08:09.720 this but so the audience understands quickly because they probably know you by this point but

01:08:13.560 you're a professor at evergreen you're a bernie sanders supporter you know firm progressive um

01:08:20.440 and then one day you push back against a movement at the school to have sort of an an annual sick out

01:08:25.800 where people of color voluntarily chose not to attend just to bring the message of like this is what life

01:08:30.680 would be like without us until this one year where they switched it and said now how about you

01:08:37.720 non-people of color white people how about you don't come and you publicly took a stance and said

01:08:44.680 this makes me uncomfortable this is different one race telling another don't show up i'm short for me

01:08:50.680 and all hell broke loose you were under threat security campus police uh told you that they weren't

01:08:56.520 gonna they couldn't protect you the university president didn't stand by you um you were treated

01:09:02.280 like you showed up to do your class in a kkk hat and robe as opposed to somebody who said like is this

01:09:09.560 the same i don't know it doesn't feel fair it was so disturbing and they they swarmed the office of the

01:09:16.120 administrator they're not not happy about you being there they want you fired they want everyone

01:09:20.600 apologizing who's ever getting to speak to you and we have a little a butted soundbite of some of what

01:09:25.720 happened when the protesters the people who are upset confronted the administration there listen

01:09:30.200 ho ho these racist teachers have got to go hey hey ho ho these racist teachers have got to go 1.00

01:09:38.200 fuck you and fuck the police that's how whiteness works whiteness is the most violent 1.00

01:09:44.200 fucking system to ever breathe 1.00

01:09:46.680 when somebody's talking if you are not listening in your head if you're thinking of a response 1.00

01:09:51.240 while somebody is talking that is not listening you need to listen

01:09:55.480 it's not an accident that all of our administration is white right it's not an accident 0.99

01:10:01.880 that shit is systematic as the thing is that my ancestors were slaves and your ancestors were not 0.99

01:10:10.760 your ancestors came here of free choice and decided to bring along my people of their own not of their 0.99

01:10:17.560 own free will to work and build this country okay and so i'm just letting you know that slavery still

01:10:25.080 has repercussions in society today and that is what we're here about those repercussions it doesn't go

01:10:32.360 away it's not over i played that for douglas murray and he said in response to that last point we can all

01:10:42.200 do that we can all do that you know everyone's got something in their history you're jewish if you want to

01:10:49.000 play the card of what happened to your ancestors you absolutely can it's it doesn't do anybody any good

01:10:55.560 but just listening to that now i'm curious do you do you feel like it was folly to believe you could

01:11:02.040 have had a rational discussion with the particular mob that came for you there you know that's that's

01:11:07.960 a very interesting question i still i i feel like i my values forced me to attempt to have that conversation

01:11:17.160 whether or not i think it's likely to work and there's certainly many instances in the

01:11:22.680 week of protests that quickly became riots in which there were hints of progress and i would also point

01:11:31.000 out it took me months to realize what the protesters who showed up at my classroom as the whole thing

01:11:39.960 began to unfold what they were expecting and i i should point out for your listeners none of the students

01:11:48.440 who protested and demanded my firing or my resignation were students that i knew my students

01:11:56.120 stood by me including numerous students of color and i believe that that surprised the organizers of

01:12:03.720 the protest i believe they were expecting my students to defect and they got quite the opposite so was it

01:12:10.840 folly to imagine that one could reason with such a mob at one level maybe on the other hand the

01:12:19.320 demonstration that people who had direct knowledge of me and of the situation did not see it in the way

01:12:27.640 it was being portrayed was a success in and of itself in fact i think it's a big part of why my

01:12:35.320 story seems to have captured people's imaginations is they is they you know if you heard if you hear the

01:12:42.040 story just bare bones some white professor resists diversity equity and inclusion proposals at the

01:12:50.680 college it might be natural to wonder whether that person is a bit tone deaf about race or might harbor

01:12:57.480 some kind of prejudice and then to discover that it's actually a totally false story because those

01:13:04.760 who were engaged in the protesting and rioting filmed everything and it becomes very clear in reviewing

01:13:11.080 those films that uh that the charge is false that's a very that's a very interesting thing to be revealed

01:13:18.840 so while reasoning with the protesters arguably didn't work revealing what the actual internal

01:13:26.200 dynamics were was very successful and yes it did not save my job or my wife's job but i do believe

01:13:34.920 it uh it was a victory for the values that are now being jeopardized and that we have to protect

01:13:44.440 that's so good you're a hundred percent right that rings so true to me i i can honestly tell you i

01:13:51.880 i don't think i'd be sitting here today doing this podcast if i hadn't heard about this if i hadn't seen

01:13:56.120 it if i hadn't been moved by the way i was it was it was just devastating to me as an as a window into

01:14:03.720 what's happening in our country that the cruelty the unfairness of it the the un unreasonableness of

01:14:11.880 some of the positioning that and and what happened to the young girl a young black girl who tried to talk

01:14:17.160 to you you just wanted to ask you about the letter and she was she too was treated like she had the

01:14:23.000 hat on i mean just for wanting to speak to you and then they made her read a pre-written apology

01:14:29.800 for that sin and this was the moment it's not the same listening to it now forgive me but people need

01:14:35.560 to see this movie no safe spaces and you'll feel as i did with the build-up but here's that clip

01:14:40.600 have demonstrated anti-blackness in the pigeon holding char charging and sensing of two black trans 0.98

01:14:54.680 disabled students based on false racially charged alleged allegations sorry they humiliated her

01:15:06.360 she wasn't a good public speaker she had trouble reading their text she needed it didn't matter that

01:15:12.680 she was a person of color she had to be humiliated for her sin of wanting to speak about it i i just to 0.99

01:15:17.880 this moment it makes me emotional it has to stop it's the reason i get up in the morning and do this

01:15:22.600 show it's the reason i don't care what people call me i don't care what they say the discussions have

01:15:27.400 to go on there should be no third rails ivermectin vaccines black lives matter trans kids running 0.97

01:15:36.040 against cis kids whatever it is conversation is the key to solving it yeah i agree i must say when 0.64

01:15:42.520 you play that clip um i am not somebody who cries easily it's it's fairly rare for me but that clip

01:15:51.960 the um there's something so horrifying about yes and you know i think your listeners probably won't

01:15:59.800 quite get the context but she actually wanted to figure out she'd never met me and she wanted

01:16:05.880 to figure out if what was being said about me was true and the way for her to figure it out was for

01:16:11.800 her just to come talk to me it's the most honorable natural instinct you can imagine and it went well

01:16:19.000 actually it's one of the things about that week that was actually a sign of hope we had this discussion

01:16:25.880 and you know she and i did connect and then to find her humiliated in front of a crowd you know forced to 0.85

01:16:33.640 read a statement my my assumption is that maybe like me she's dyslexic reading in front of a crowd

01:16:39.160 is not easy and to just put her to that that cruel fate is so it's it's almost indescribably upsetting

01:16:48.920 and um yeah i agree with you you know her story i think you've i think you've hit the nail on the

01:16:55.560 story indicates that the solution to many of these things begins with an honest candid conversation

01:17:02.920 and that it's hard for me to think of an example where the people who are interested in shutting

01:17:09.560 down conversation are in the right yeah i i see a connective strain you know you're you're still out

01:17:18.440 there doing it i don't know whether you probably wouldn't be doing this if what happened at evergreen

01:17:22.680 hadn't happened because you'd be still teaching and not doing a podcast and youtube show but

01:17:28.360 there's clearly there's something in you you're a fighter you know in a way i admire and and to some

01:17:34.680 extent can relate to i flatter myself but i i see you sort of banging your head against that brick wall

01:17:41.640 no matter how hard it looks or how how bad the consequences could potentially be to you

01:17:46.120 and i will that brings me to another moment with you brett i follow you um you went on clubhouse

01:17:56.040 which i don't really get i had i complained a long time ago that i hadn't been invited to go

01:17:59.880 on clubs and then everybody started inviting me i never gone i never went on i don't want to it's not

01:18:03.560 my thing but you went into this i don't really understand how it works but our room that had been sort of

01:18:11.160 taken over by like black lives matter activists i guess it's fair to say they were but they're not

01:18:17.640 just black lives but the trans stuff and all of it you they were railing on you i think before you 0.99

01:18:22.760 even joined and then you joined them and brett it didn't go well and all i thought as your fan was

01:18:30.680 what is he doing sitting here right now i actually understand better but let me play the clip and then

01:18:35.160 i'd love to get your thoughts on it do you believe in white supremacy do you believe in

01:18:39.080 on white are those sentiments that you stand by um people here are saying that you have spewed

01:18:44.920 racism across this app so can you speak to that can i can i ask something of you um before i answer

01:18:51.400 your questions did you answer those questions do you support white supremacy are you anti-racist

01:18:56.680 and transphobia okay uh i'm happy to do all these things but i would ask you to try to listen

01:19:03.640 no listen listen we're in charge here okay we asked you some questions you can answer them or you

01:19:09.720 can go first of all i'm not a classical liberal i'm an actual liberal okay far left have been my whole

01:19:16.200 life i am thoroughly anti-racist by any normal definition but i don't like kendy's definition of

01:19:24.280 anti-racist that doesn't make sense to me i'm not by any stretch of the imagination a white supremacist

01:19:30.440 as a matter of fact i'm not even sure whether i qualify as white i'm jewish it's a different

01:19:35.240 thing my people have been persecuted by europeans you are you're just spicy white but continue 0.95

01:19:42.200 so you saying that you are an evolutionary biologist there's little to claim eugenics

01:19:46.680 was also a field in science so your claims do not push the fact that you are not transphobic

01:19:51.320 that's still a transphobic position to take it's it's not transphobic i'm i'm interested in

01:19:56.840 seeing trans people how can you say that something is not transphobic when people are 1.00

01:20:01.960 telling you that it's transphobic like the privilege it's like so i don't understand how you think this

01:20:08.360 works okay we can have a disagreement we can have a disagreement about whether or not i'm

01:20:13.240 now you sound like no we can't have a disagreement you're gonna have to go to the audience and you

01:20:20.840 need to cash out everybody up here a thousand dollars for you coming back up next we just let

01:20:26.120 you speak and that's exactly what you dispute white supremacy wrong not even a little and all i could

01:20:34.440 think when i heard that was john mcwater's advice was about john mcwater's advice which is

01:20:38.280 to do not engage with the woke in this way it is a fruitless exercise exercise he he's made the point

01:20:44.600 of they need to be defeated not engaged but what why did you why did you try well so first of all i

01:20:52.600 didn't set out to have a confrontation with them the way clubhouse works you go into a room and you

01:21:00.200 listen and then if you want to come up on stage you raise your hand and so i was i was interested to

01:21:05.000 hear the discussion because part of what i'm about is understanding how things look from other

01:21:11.000 people's perspectives and especially if a perspective is one that you don't naturally

01:21:16.200 understand it makes sense if you you know it's a privilege to be able to go listen to such a

01:21:20.280 conversation and hear how people sound to themselves so you know i at some level whether it sounds

01:21:27.240 honorable or not i think i was doing research and then at the point that they noticed me there's no

01:21:32.280 way to be anonymous in clubhouse at the point that they noticed me things unfolded as as your

01:21:37.240 listeners have now heard but i would also say you know there's part of me that people come up to me

01:21:44.440 all the time and they say certain things about what they see first of all in my experience in the last

01:21:49.800 four years almost every time somebody has come up to me and recognize me they've said nice things

01:21:55.400 right on twitter i get hate uh but in person that's not what happens they say nice things and one of

01:22:02.680 the things they say is that i'm brave and i look at this and i think i was in my own house and i

01:22:13.000 walked into a quote unquote room of people who vehemently disagree with my perspective and i tried to

01:22:21.960 engage them and you know i mean this was a walk in the park compared to evergreen and frankly

01:22:27.960 evergreen as frightening as it was at times is uh also likely to have been safer than what people have

01:22:35.720 done throughout history confronting uh evil of various kinds and so i wonder if we haven't just gotten

01:22:43.720 soft and if i'm trying to find my way back to some level of willingness to confront things that actually

01:22:53.160 stands a chance of leading to a solution so yeah you know it wasn't my plan that that would happen i

01:22:59.800 didn't know that the event would become famous but i also think it's not quite true that there's no point

01:23:09.000 in having these conversations because they're the people i talked to i don't think the people i talked

01:23:15.320 to were likely to have been persuaded by anything but then there are also a lot of people who heard

01:23:19.160 the interaction in real time and then as it has been repeated across the internet and many of those

01:23:25.320 people might well be reachable and just simply hearing what the discussion sounds like might awaken

01:23:31.480 them that you can't just sign up for something where the label on the box says black lives matter you

01:23:38.760 have to check what's in the box and it doesn't match right this is not uh there's no future in this

01:23:45.080 perspective i just think to me for me i wouldn't i would not engage in a discussion with people who

01:23:53.480 were not proceeding in good faith and to just dismiss you as a white supremacist they called you a

01:23:58.200 eugenicist because you're an evolutionary biologist they really thought you were you they didn't sound

01:24:03.720 particularly smart to be perfectly honest and they they were not there in good faith they just want to beat you

01:24:08.200 up and to me it was upsetting to listen to and there's zero chance i would do that to myself i

01:24:13.800 even if it was for the greater good it's like i only have a limited amount of time on this earth and

01:24:19.000 mental my own mental health would prevent me from i was like i could also go follow the number six bus

01:24:25.000 and just inhale as much exhaust as it puts out from you know broadway over to columbus but i have better

01:24:30.200 things to do with my time okay but i i agree with this and certainly it would not make sense to keep

01:24:36.680 doing such things because there's diminishing returns and the amount one learns from each new

01:24:41.160 interaction is less and less on the other hand when you've been told that some other group

01:24:49.320 misunderstands something and you've heard their perspective described it makes sense to go check

01:24:56.600 whether that is a match and you know one of the things that gets said about what happened to my

01:25:04.680 wife and me at evergreen and in particular what i said to the congress about it when i testified i said

01:25:12.440 effectively that this wasn't a free speech issue that it wasn't fundamentally about college campuses and

01:25:18.200 that it would spill out about power and control yes it was about power it's about turning the tables of

01:25:23.560 oppression or perceived oppression and that it would find its way into every part of society and

01:25:31.000 that has now happened so how did i know that i knew that because i had participated in enough

01:25:39.080 of these discussions to know what they were made of to know where they were headed and so i think there

01:25:44.840 is some value in doing that and you know you can be surprised in both directions sometimes you

01:25:49.960 tune into a conversation that you think is nonsense and you discover it isn't so uh i you know step

01:25:56.920 outside well that's interesting i mean if you're if you're there as a researcher you know as as somebody

01:26:02.600 who's observing human behavior and seeing what happens next i guess that's one thing uh i would say

01:26:08.600 attempt to persuade it's it's it's willful willful ignorance they they uh they were not there to learn

01:26:15.480 anything or open-minded in any way and it was not a good faith receipt of your your good faith

01:26:20.120 attempt to be there but anyway i get your point and i think you're right about a lifetime of trying

01:26:25.800 it and then coming up with information because i i did watch your congressional testimony and one of

01:26:30.280 the things you said was these activists are basically in a cult and the members of the cult think

01:26:36.520 they're stopping oppression but the leaders know what they're really doing is turning the table

01:26:41.720 on oppression and eliminating due process and other protections in in the process so the leaders are

01:26:50.520 i think your point was that you were trying to make the leaders are fine with oppression just as long as 0.92

01:26:54.760 they're on the right side of it yes and they are very foolish to imagine that they will remain

01:26:59.320 on the right side what they're doing is inherently unstable and unfortunately they are going to take out

01:27:06.920 the pillars of western civilization before they discover that what they have achieved even from

01:27:12.200 their own perspective is not going to last we can't let that happen but in some sense i think uh it does

01:27:19.800 take people with maybe my strange instinct to walk towards these things and to engage with them

01:27:28.440 in order to find out that that's true i i know so many people who were caught off guard by

01:27:35.480 the woke revolution and its effectively capturing of institution after institution and they didn't

01:27:42.200 have to be surprised it was there they could have seen it coming and arguably we could have prevented

01:27:47.720 it if more people had understood that that was the case but at least now what we have is a prediction

01:27:53.320 that turned out to be quickly quickly blown out and it raises the question of okay well what's next

01:28:00.200 don't leave me now we got more coming up in 60 seconds

01:28:09.480 you were ground zero you really were you were in the thick of it and saw it on the front lines

01:28:13.400 before a lot of us did and and more accurately because people knew that college campuses were

01:28:18.520 really left and that some of this stuff was bubbling up but didn't necessarily complete

01:28:22.600 predict the complete takeover of academia k-12 sports corporate america

01:28:27.000 america and on it goes the way we've seen in particular since george floyd i i want to ask

01:28:32.120 you about something you talked about on your podcast recently and it was about an interview

01:28:35.320 you had done about all of this i think and um there was an interviewer who asked you a great

01:28:39.800 question and i thought oh that's fascinating and even you were like it's a great question

01:28:43.480 and it was about whether you'd considered that martyrdom is like a drug can you talk about what that

01:28:49.560 raised for you and how you process that question sure that's uh from lex friedman's podcast right

01:28:57.480 right lex and you know he he asked the question it caught me a little bit off guard which is part

01:29:02.680 of why it was so good and i know he was asking in some sense things related to what you've been

01:29:09.640 getting at here which is why are why is my instinct to engage where maybe i know that it's not going

01:29:16.600 to work out why would i for example find myself in a conflict with youtube when i can obviously

01:29:23.400 calculate the odds of winning a conflict with youtube as well as anybody else can and i guess

01:29:33.880 what i told blacks and what i then thought more about and said on my podcast was that i don't think

01:29:39.560 there's any part of me that is interested in martyrdom that that really we've got two phenomena

01:29:49.880 that seem alike but they're actually opposite people who seek martyrdom are actually they're needy they

01:29:57.240 have some something that they are trying to to do internally and the confrontation with whatever the foe is

01:30:07.800 is like a drug and then there are people who are willing to accept a risk in order to accomplish

01:30:15.320 something but it's not that they want something bad to happen to them but they know that well in

01:30:21.560 in evolutionary terms we would say that in order to get to a higher peak you have to go through what

01:30:26.520 we call an adaptive valley and that can be very dangerous in fact it can be fatal but um i i you know i i

01:30:35.320 also have to say we are all mysteries to ourselves it's possible there's something in me that i don't

01:30:42.360 know is there but when i do a thorough census when i talk to people who know me well it does not make

01:30:50.120 sense that this is some compulsion on my part it actually makes more sense that i feel an obligation to

01:30:57.320 do something and i guess the last thing i would say is that having been through a number of these

01:31:04.360 events and they don't actually start with evergreen they start much earlier than that for me but having

01:31:09.080 been through them there is a a skill set that gets built up where you learn you know just as if you put

01:31:19.800 somebody on a battlefield who's never been there presumably they freeze up they don't know what to do

01:31:24.120 but if you take somebody who's been through many battles they probably have a really good idea how

01:31:29.160 not to get uh distracted by the uh the huge risks that are present so i think my trajectory in life has

01:31:38.920 allowed me to see some of these confrontations i maybe i've just been lucky or maybe i've been

01:31:45.240 skillful or maybe it's a combination of the two almost certainly it's that but i've survived them to this

01:31:51.400 point and so i do suspect i know something about how to engage these things and you know it's not like

01:31:59.320 one wins every time but to see them to expose them to live to fight another day that seems like a

01:32:07.480 worthy thing to invest in especially when the stakes are as high as they seem to be well i i agree with

01:32:18.520 that i i think having watched you it's kind of the opposite of martyrdom because the way i see

01:32:25.720 the way you've challenged you've handled your your challenges is it's not about you it's about principle

01:32:32.520 you're a man of principle and if you have to sacrifice the self in service of the greater principle

01:32:39.080 whether it's conversation engaging pushing back against you know narratives even if you're going to be

01:32:45.160 called names or considered heterodox standing up to bullies you do it even even if you will have to

01:32:52.520 pay some price not that you want to pay the price it's just when you look at the hierarchy of principles

01:32:58.200 truth conversation learning honesty all that ranks high for you that's how it seems and and also standing

01:33:06.600 up to bullies who don't like somebody like that they you know youtube right now is bullying you to

01:33:12.280 accept the narrative or else and you could have stopped after your episode on ivermectin they they

01:33:17.880 they put your neck on the on the chopping block and you didn't and i don't think it was because

01:33:23.240 you wanted to poke the bear or you wanted to martyr yourself it's because you have a greater commitment

01:33:28.680 and you're if you're going down you're going down swinging so what let's leave it at this what what

01:33:34.680 now how do we how do we get youtube to see it our way i know you said we need elon musk to buy one of

01:33:42.280 the vaccine companies but like short of elon getting involved how do we get youtube to see it our way or

01:33:47.240 at least behave better well i'd like to say one thing in response to what you just said you you

01:33:51.320 reminded me of something i haven't thought about in many years i used to talk to students as the term

01:33:57.320 privilege started to show up more and more i used to talk to them about what privilege actually is

01:34:03.800 and that privilege is kind of a bad term it's not very useful but unearned privilege is a useful term

01:34:11.880 that is to say if you earn a privilege then that's a reward for doing something good and we shouldn't

01:34:17.960 try to stamp that out because it actually makes civilization work better but some of us and i definitely

01:34:23.400 include myself in this category have some amount of privilege that didn't come from something we

01:34:28.840 did and my sense is it doesn't make sense to take it away but it does make sense to think about whether

01:34:34.360 or not having some of those privileges puts the onus on you to spend that privilege honorably and

01:34:43.960 i hope that i am accurate in saying that what i think i am doing is recognizing that actually i'm

01:34:49.080 tremendously lucky and that because i'm tremendously lucky i can afford to take risks that others can't

01:34:56.360 and that that's the right thing to do oh i appreciate that you're going to be you're going

01:35:03.160 to be less able to afford it if youtube stands by its decision you you still are without half of your

01:35:07.960 family income yes we do need to reverse that as successful as your podcast has been the the visual

01:35:13.960 piece of it on youtube is important so i i i quite like your your question and i hope that this is

01:35:21.960 a satisfying answer to it i am resigned to the fact that in the short term these battles are not really

01:35:32.440 winnable but i know most recently from the lab leak hypothesis and the turnaround that happened in the public

01:35:42.120 narrative that somehow at the present moment it is possible to embarrass the institutions into

01:35:54.520 retreating and acknowledging certain things and my hope is that when people see that irrespective

01:36:03.560 of where you come out on the evidence that is to say the actual evidence that there is sufficient

01:36:11.960 evidence for anybody who looks at it to see that there is something wrong with the story regarding

01:36:17.880 repurposed drugs there is something wrong with respect to the story of the adverse event signal

01:36:23.960 in the vaccines and there was definitely something wrong in the claim that this virus had to have come

01:36:29.720 directly from nature and my hope is that sooner rather than later people will start to notice this

01:36:37.000 pattern that they will recognize that on all of these different topics the same people have sought to shut

01:36:44.600 down discussion they have turned out to be wrong in the end and that that says something really important

01:36:51.640 about the state of our institutions and the jeopardy in which they are placing us and i hope that

01:36:58.920 it does not take 10 or 20 years to get there because frankly i don't know what my family and i will do

01:37:05.400 if it takes that long for the story to emerge but one way or the other we are going to have to confront

01:37:13.560 the what i think is the clear indication that these failures of narrative that put us in jeopardy

01:37:22.840 are actually not the problem they are the symptom of a problem that has no name and it is one that must be

01:37:30.920 our top priority so i'm hoping that that happens soon and that we can get to the discussion about

01:37:36.120 what to do with the failure of all of our institutions and how we can get back to a society

01:37:41.000 in which we move forward together and we believe in collective well-being

01:37:48.520 well said what a pleasure talking to you regards to your wife heather who i know has been at your side and

01:37:53.080 been through all of these with with you she co-hosts your shows and she was at evergreen with you so

01:37:59.560 one day i'd like to meet her as well but all the best to you brett we'll be watching and we'll

01:38:03.080 continue covering it well thanks so much it was a tough but really terrific interview and uh

01:38:07.800 i look forward to our next conversation thank you same

01:38:10.920 next up on the mk show we've got a really interesting guest for you her name is lisa

01:38:20.840 carpenter she's coming on to talk about the lawsuit she is pursuing against the biden administration

01:38:25.800 she is a white rancher and she is going after them for this policy that he openly says is designed

01:38:32.520 to help only farmers and ranchers of color no farmers or ranchers who happen to have white skin

01:38:38.440 will get any help from joe biden um because they have the wrong melanin is that legal her story is

01:38:45.480 fascinating and how's the case going so far that's next thanks for listening to the megan kelly show

01:38:53.560 no bs no agenda and no fear the megan kelly show is a devil may care media production

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The Megyn Kelly Show - July 05, 2021

Bret Weinstein on Tech Censorship, The Value of Conversation, and COVID Treatments ｜ Ep. 124

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