Left's Hypocrisy on Women, Ignoring Nashville Trans Shooter, and How to Live Better Longer, with Glenn Greenwald and Dr. Peter Attia | Ep. 525
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 36 minutes
Words per Minute
187.70737
Summary
Glenn Greenwald joins host Megyn Kelly on the show to discuss the latest news and headlines from the past weekend, including the mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, and the so-called "Tennessee Three."
Transcript
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Beat, beat, beatboxing actually has hidden health benefits.
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It can help strengthen and protect your voice from injury.
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.
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Hope you all had a great Easter weekend, enjoyed Passover, et cetera.
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And there is something so good about seeing that, isn't there?
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Our priest was saying how happy it made him to see the number of people who were there
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You know, it's just like a good message for your kids.
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There are others in your community who share these same beliefs.
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This is not just something being forced on you by mom and dad.
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The whole exercise, so worthwhile and just a great time to reflect as a family on what
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it means, what Easter means, what your religion means to you, how it bonds you with your community
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So thumbs up to ceremony, to religious holidays and to Jesus on his big comeback.
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Later, we're going to be joined in the show by Dr. Peter Atiyah.
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I have thought so many times about our last interview with Peter.
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And now he's got a new book out, which you must buy.
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It's number one right now on the New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction.
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I burned through that thing in like a morning plus a little bit of the afternoon.
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Want to tell you that right now it's noon Eastern and we are keeping an eye on some news this
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morning regarding a shooting in downtown Louisville, Kentucky at a bank.
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It sounds like from the initial reports, this is a case of workplace violence.
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Reports are that there are five dead, including the shooter, who appears to have been an employee
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Meanwhile, over in Tennessee, the so-called Tennessee Three, as they want to be called,
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I mean, the absurdity with which the mainstream is reacting to what happened in Tennessee.
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They're making heroes into these guys who disrupted the proceedings, broke protocol,
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were absolutely rude and disruptive and disrespectful to their fellow colleagues, many of whom were
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voicing the opinions of families aligned with the victims of that Tennessee shooting.
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The media wants to make it sound like, oh, all the victims of that Nashville, Tennessee
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And it was all about race, too, because the black guys got thrown out without the white
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The seven million people in Tennessee, many of whom did not agree with what those two were
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And they were rude in trying to silence the debate when they didn't get their way.
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Of course, Vice President Kamala Harris making a surprise visit to Nashville on Friday not to
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support the victims of the Christian school shooting over which the lawmakers were arguing
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in the first place, but in support of the ousted lawmakers, she did not even deign to visit
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with the families of the three nine-year-olds who were murdered at that Christian school.
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She didn't even try to do the fig leaf of saying she wanted to.
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Joining us now to discuss this unbelievable news and news cycle, Glenn Greenwald.
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Glenn is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and host of System Update on Rumble.
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The fact that she would deign to go down there and not even make a showing of saying, I would
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love to meet with the victims of the six who were killed, especially the victims of the
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But I'm going to meet with these three posers who are looking for their moment in the sun,
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who disrupted the proceedings, were disrespectful and rude to everybody, but are now being lionized.
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Did you see them on the Sunday shows by the media as, you know, critical to democracy?
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And by the way, they're going to get right back in, too, because they were expelled.
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They're going to get put right back in there by the voters like this week.
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I mean, first of all, I remember very well in the weeks and months after January 6th that
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he demands that a whole variety of members of Congress who had nothing to do even arguably
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with the January 6th riot, such as Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, anybody basically who wanted
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the congressional examination of that election be expelled.
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They were demanding expel Josh Hawley, just expel Ted Cruz, expel these dozens of House
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members, and now suddenly expelling elected members of Congress for disrupting congressional
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procedures, not for positions they've taken as some sort of fascist assault on democracy,
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exactly what people like AOC were demanding not all that long ago.
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I think the bigger and more important point, though, Megan, is this Nashville shooting has
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been erased from memory, even though it happened very recently, because it's such an
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inconvenient narrative, given that the shooter was not just someone who was trans, but very
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possibly acted on behalf of this radical ideology.
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And amazingly, they won't show us the manifesto, even though we always see the manifesto when they
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can link it to the right. And we're actually we retain counsel in Nashville to try and obtain
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that that manifesto, because, of course, it's journalistically in the public interest.
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So that's why Kamala Harris goes there and pretends there are no victims, because they want
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to forget about that shooting completely, except to the extent they can exploit it for gun control
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issues. That's exactly right. And now what we're seeing is this message that once again,
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it's Jim Crow 2.0. I mean, how many times have we heard that? It's like they're excited
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on the left because they can turn what was the targeting of a Christian school and little
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nine year olds by a trans person into Black Lives Matter. You threw out the two black guys
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instead of the white woman. And by the way, her expulsion only failed by one vote. And
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she did not grab a bullhorn and take it out into the well. And she did not lead the protests
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of the people up in the balcony. So there was a distinction. And she argued those distinctions
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on her own behalf and through her representatives in distinguishing her own behavior from that
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of the two black men, only to then be saved. And then when she was saved and the black men
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were kicked out, she turned around and said, racism. You're the one who distinguished your
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behavior. OK, so but the left is loving the shift to it's not about the dead Christian children.
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It's not about the trans person who committed the murders or the buried manifesto. It is about
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the the expulsion of the two black people who were fighting for democracy.
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Yeah. You know, I first of all, one of the main weapon of the Democratic Party,
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kind of the establishment that would the establishment wing that leads it is to depict
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anyone and everyone who opposes them and their views of being bigoted in some way.
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It's an automatic reflex. It probably had its roots or at least it's kind of newer iteration
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back in the 2016 election when I don't know if you recall, but the main tactic of Hillary Clinton's
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defenders against Bernie Sanders supporters who were trying to kind of challenge the establishment
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wing of the party was to claim they were all misogynist. That was the only possible reason
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you might be opposed to Hillary Clinton, somebody with a long line of ideological positions and all
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kinds of corrupt behavior in public life. It had to only be misogyny and it worked. They did it through
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the general election where it didn't work, but that became their main tactic. So they're incapable of
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ever engaging in any kind of political debate without immediately insisting that anyone who's on the other
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side by virtue of being on the other side of them is automatically a racist or a misogynist or a
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homophobe or transphobe or whatever. That's why they're so eager to destroy Clarence Thomas because
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he's kind of a living, breathing testament to the lie of that narrative. But that's the only political
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debate and the only framework in which they're comfortable. And so somehow a shooting by what
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appeared to be somebody motivated by, at least in part, radical theories of gender ideology and killed
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Christian children in the name of that ideology, somehow that has been turned around so that
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whoever is concerned about that component of the story is now back to being a 1960s Jim Crow racist.
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And of course, it wouldn't work without the media's cooperation. That's how they frame everything in
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Yes. You see, Kamala Harris goes there to meet with, again, the lawmakers, the ousted lawmakers,
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not the victims. And for the first time in her vice presidency, she was truly animated. You could tell
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this is what she actually cares about. The race narrative. Yes. Something I can glom onto. I can really
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get behind. That's been injected. That actually fires me up. And listen to her messaging. Listen to this.
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This is a sought three. It wasn't about the three of these leaders. It was about who they were
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representing. It's about whose voices they were channeling. Understand that. And is that not what a
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democracy allows? A democracy says you don't silence the people. You do not stifle the people. You don't
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turn off their microphones when they are speaking about the importance of life and liberty.
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Okay. So she finally cares about something. She's finally managed to have an articulate moment
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because race and divisive insertion of it where it doesn't belong. That's what fires her up. But the
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irony, Glenn, the irony of her saying in a democracy, you don't silence people. You don't take away their
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microphones. Tell it to the disinformation doesn't. Right. Tell it to Trump who you impeached twice
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because you didn't want the people to be able to vote for him a second time. Tell it to the Twitter
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files reporting on how how many private citizens have been stifled and not been able to offer their
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opinions online. Tell it to Facebook. The shutdown discussions that went against the administration's
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narrative when it came to COVID and so on. Tell it to the people who are on the banned lists
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after January 6th who suddenly couldn't get books published or hired or do business at banks
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because they were affiliated with Donald Trump. This is an absurd statement to come out of her mouth.
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What a lie that she believes that. All right. She didn't believe any of that. Let's remember the
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only good moment of her ill-fated presidential campaign. Remember, she dropped out before the first
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vote was cast. That's what a complete object failure it was, was when she accused Joe Biden of being a
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racist because he had opposed bus busing and and desegregation of schools. And she had that moment
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in that debate where she said that little girl was me, Joe, really strongly implying that he was a
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racist. She shot up in the polls very temporarily. And then if she really believed that Joe Biden was
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animated by racist sentiments, depicting him as this Joe Jim Crow supporter of segregation, which is what
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she said. It's amazing that, you know, then she turned around less than a year later and embraced him
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and heralded him as this man of great character when just a year earlier she was claiming he hated
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black people. That shows you how cynical this game is. And on top of that, the bigger issue is exactly
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the one that you raised, which is suddenly now the Democratic Party is the party that safeguards the
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voices of dissent and the right to protest. Like when all those people were going to protest
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COVID lockdowns at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and they were told they were should be
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arrested and were criminals and were risking grandma's life because they wanted to go protest.
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And then suddenly when they had a protest, they liked after George Floyd's death, they demanded
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everybody go protest or exactly. They've imposed a censorship regime on this country using not just
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their power over big tech, but also the law. Remember, they tried characterizing parents at school
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board meetings, expressing concerns about the curriculum their children were being taught as
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people engage in a RICO violations or terrorism. The Democratic Party is about nothing other than
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criminalizing dissent and protest. Everything she just said there is so cynical and so disingenuous.
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It's hard to know where to start, honestly. And let's look what actually happened in Tennessee,
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that she's that this is what's firing her up. This is what's outrageous to throw out two guys
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who in the wake of all these protests in which people are now officially getting hurt as the mobs get out
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of control. And we'll get to rally gains in a second. Finally, somebody stood up as the lawmakers
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of Tennessee and said, you will not do this. You this is such a breach of decorum. You're thrown out.
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You're out of here. You're done. And that's a procedure available to us to expel lawmakers who go
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beyond who actually lead the protest of the protesters up in the balcony, who actually breach decorum to the
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place where they take out the bullhorn and start shouting over civil debate that we're trying to have on
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a public shooting because you didn't get your way. Do you remember how the Democrats
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freaked out at Marjorie Taylor Greene for heckling Joe Biden at the State of the Union, how disgusted
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they were at the breach of decorum? Oh, my God. But this with the bullhorn underneath the jacket,
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that's fine just because you're losing the debate. That's totally fine. What does it depend on skin
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color? Does it depend on ideology? Does it depend on whether you're talking about shootings of little
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Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of things that have, you know, increasingly sickened me about the
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Democratic Party. It's kind of new hegemonic coalition with people who had spent their lives
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as Republicans and who became disaffected Republicans. One of the things, maybe the thing
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that principally revolts me the most is the utter lack of principle. They just have no principles of
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any kind. They feign outrage at one thing and then turn around the next day and do exactly that.
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And they demand that nobody notice. And the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing is a perfect example.
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Nancy Pelosi melodramatically tore up President Trump's State of the Union speech in front of him
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and in front of the cameras to express her disgust. And that was a potted that became a very popular
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meme among liberals. And now suddenly they're worried about decorum because Marjorie Taylor Greene
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yells something during his speech. But then expelling people who actually disrupt the procedures,
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not just speak out of turn, is this grave assault on democracy. It's just from one day to the
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next. What they condemn becomes what they do. And then the next day it goes back
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to what they condemn again, entirely based on their own power, whatever they need in the convenience of
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the moment. And there are a few people more repellent than that because they sanctimoniously pretend to
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defend things that are righteous. And in reality, it's all just about their own power. And, you know,
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it's just a repellent character trait. And I just want to add one more thing, which is,
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you know, Megan, just as a human being, like if you want to go to Nashville and exploit
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that situation for political gain, you know, have at it, that's what politicians do.
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But isn't there like any kind of human, you know, sentiment that would say, oh, I'm the vice
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president, I can go and like, give the power of my office to console these families who just lost
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their three children, as well as the other three families that lost adults because they were blown
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away and had their lives snuffed out by some crazy unhinged person acting the name of a radical
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ideology. You would think just like on a human level, there'd be some desire to do this. But
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these people are vacant of that. They're just so craven that they see the world entirely as a
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function of their own agenda. On this same front, you have a week, at least, of the Democrats telling
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us no one is above the law. No one is above the law on the week that Trump sits and gets arraigned
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on this indictment, this paper thin indictment that Alvin Bragg, the DA in Manhattan, has brought
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against him. No one's above the law, totally ignoring that there is prosecutorial discretion
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and that prosecutors make decisions all the time on whether this case is worth it or can
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be proven and is worth the time and heartache it's going to bring to any given community.
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Never mind the defendant. That was the messaging. Then we get a ruling out of a Texas federal district
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court that this abortion drug approved by the FDA in 2000 may need to be stopped, that the FDA is going
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to have to stop distributing it in the wake of the collapse of Roe and the Texas law down there on
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abortion. There was a conflicting ruling in another jurisdiction. And you have AOC going on with CNN State
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of the Union, I think, to begin. First, it was Anderson Cooper. First, it was Anderson Cooper saying,
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do not comply. OK, so we've gone from no one is above the law to F that federal court ruling. Just
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don't follow it in the span of about two minutes. Here she is, top one. Senator Ron Wyden has already
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issued statements, for example, advising what we should do in a situation like this, which I concur,
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which is that I believe that the Biden administration should ignore this ruling. The interesting thing when it
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comes to a ruling is that it relies on enforcement and it is up to the Biden administration to enforce
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to choose whether or not to enforce such a ruling. OK, so it's all it's like your choice. I'll leave
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it up to you. And then to her credit, Dana Bash actually asked her about it on State of the Union
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on Sunday. And listen to this. What? Listen to AOC dodge, because here's the real question.
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You could make the argument that when there's dual dueling court rulings in two federal district
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courts, just proceed. If you're the if you're the Biden administration, just proceed with the status
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quo until the higher court resolves it. You could definitely make that argument. And Dana Bash zeroes
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in on this with her and listen to the dodge that follows, which is just to simply ignore the court ruling.
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That's a pretty stunning position when this case is resolved by the Supreme Court. Should the
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administration follow that decision if that decision ends up banning this abortion drug?
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Well, you know, I want to take a step back and dig into the grounds around ignoring this preliminary
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ruling as well. There is an extraordinary amount of precedent for this, for folks saying this is a
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first, that this is a precedent setting. It is not. The Trump administration also did this very thing,
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but also it has happened before. And we know that the executive branch has an enforcement discretion,
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especially in light of a contradicting ruling coming out of Washington. But I do not believe that the
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courts have the authority to to have the authority over the FDA that they just asserted. And I do believe
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that it creates a crisis. So Dana Bash asked, should that apply if the Supreme Court upholds the Texas
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judge's decision? If the Supreme Court of the United States of the land says the Texas judge was right
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and the FDA should not release this drug, should that hold? And she dodges because now she's out on a limb
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saying we can say F the Supreme Court and not. And this is where the Democrats are going, Glenn. This is where
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they're going. The mentality of the Democratic Party, the court animating principle, it was actually
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expressed in a very viral video by the philosopher Sam Harris when he was asked about the way the
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media lied and the CIA lied about the Hunter Biden laptop. And they made up the story that it was Russian
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disinformation, got the story centered and discredited before the election. And he said, I think Trump is
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such a singular evil. I think our cause, meaning Democrats or Trump opponents, is so just that anything
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and everything we do, even lying, censorship, disinformation is justified in the name of this
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broader cause because the evil of Trump is so much greater than anything we might do to stop him.
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It's an ends justify the means argument. It's what's led to every historical evil when you completely
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are unmoored from any poor principle, any fixed principle, which is exactly what they are. That is
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their mindset. Judicial review is the foundation of our entire republic. It was, you know, Andrew
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Jackson, who notoriously said when the Supreme Court ruled against him, oh, well, the Supreme
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Court made their ruling. What army are they going to enforce it with? This is, you know, this was
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resolved 215 years ago with the idea that the courts do have the power to rule that executive
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branch conduct or executive branch policy is it legal or transgresses the Constitution.
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When she first made those statements, it wasn't grounded in the fact that there was a conflicting
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district court ruling. It was grounded in the fact that when Democrats believe that a court ruling is
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sufficiently erroneous or baseless, that the executive branch, since they're the one with all
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the power, they're the ones with the people with the guns, can just go about and ignore the courts
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because the courts have no enforcement mechanism, just like the Congress does it. So this would work
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for the Congress as well. This is a recipe for presidential tyranny. The idea that the president
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is like this strongman figure, you know, that's what happens in Latin America and in Asia a lot where,
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you know, they get to the point where they say, we don't care about the courts anymore.
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We're going to strip the courts and the legislature of all its power so that we just have a strongman
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ruling with no barriers. That is what she and a lot of other Democrats were calling for here.
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And I think it reflects this kind of underlying mindset that's very dangerous.
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Mm hmm. You get to the point where you're just completely ignoring Supreme Court rulings and we
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don't have a country anymore. I mean, that is the fundamental thing that binds us together is the
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rule of law. Well, there's no Constitution. It's the Supreme Court. The Constitution is a list of things
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the government can't do. And if the government does one of those things anyway, it's the courts
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that come in and say, this is something that the Constitution doesn't allow you to do. And if the
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president can now ignore court rulings instead of appealing them, which, of course, they should do.
00:22:08.480
But no, ignore them. And they don't exist. Violate them. There's no Constitution. There's
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no republic. It's just rule by tyranny. The same person was on the air last week saying that Clarence
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Thomas needs to be impeached for accepting perfectly acceptable gifts from a very rich Republican donor
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for the last 20 plus years. They changed the rules on March 14th to say, OK, if you go on somebody's
00:22:33.940
private jet, you do have to report that publicly. Part of that, you didn't have to.
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She wants to get him impeached for taking nice vacations with the guy and going on his private
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yacht before it was required that he disclose any of it. My point is, she's a congressional
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Kardashian. She's an idiot. She's there to make herself a star. And yet she's all over the Sunday
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shows. We have to listen to this. I object to being surrounded by this stupidity.
00:22:58.500
Yeah, you know, I was defending 60 Minutes for interviewing Marjorie Taylor Greene because the
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reality is whether you like her or not or things about her or not. Marjorie Taylor Greene is somebody
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who does represent the views of millions of people. And I don't think it's a job of journalists
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just wish people away. And I know you're not suggesting that. It is annoying how ubiquitous
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she is because she is extremely ignorant. I don't know if you ever watched her get interviewed about
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foreign policy, but she can barely place countries on a map, including ones about what she has very
00:23:24.840
didactic views. She was on with Margaret Hoover once on Fire in Line. She had made this like very
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melodramatic statement about Israel and Palestine. It turns out she had no idea what she was talking
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about. She didn't know what the occupation was that she was condemning. She's a person of complete
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ignorance. Exactly. Her talent is a social media star. But I don't think that that her ignorance should
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distract us from the fact that she is a talented demagogue and is channeling not just sentiments on
00:23:50.320
the kind of conservative or mainstream Democratic Party wing, but also their allies now on the left.
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There used to be kind of a tension between establishment liberals on the left from the
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Hillary campaign against Bernie, but that has disappeared. And this sentiment is now united.
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And there's a lot of neocons and Bush era Republicans with them that our country faces such a grave threat
00:24:10.920
in the name of Trump's movement or conservatives in general that we can't even allow people basic
00:24:17.620
freedoms anymore. They can't vote for themselves. They can't decide things for themselves because when they
00:24:22.040
do, the outcome is too dangerous. And all we should do, this is the AOC view, and a lot of people are
00:24:27.800
cheering, is just seize power in whatever way we have to, including by ignoring court orders. That really
00:24:32.860
is what's animating everything they're doing from the censorship regime to criminalizing dissent.
00:24:38.560
One of the things that's bothering me about AOC and others like her is I watched them absolutely ruin
00:24:46.880
the Me Too movement. You know, that that was rooted in something good, which was we shouldn't force
00:24:54.280
women to be sexually harassed in order to advance their careers at the office. Who would disagree with
00:24:59.660
that? Really? I mean, what normal person would say? Oh, I disagree. And it's complex. I get it. And
00:25:04.580
you know, whatever. But they're the ones who turned it into a witch hunt. They're the ones who just
00:25:08.460
wanted scalps. They wanted male scalps. Brett Kavanaugh, believe all women, all women. OK, unless the target
00:25:14.960
happens to be a Democrat like Andrew Cuomo, in which case it's complicated. Oh, we're all going
00:25:19.460
to switch secretly and help the man accused and not the women or Joe Biden. In the case of Tara
00:25:24.020
Reid, let's secretly work against Tara Reid to ruin her life and smear her as a human because the
00:25:30.560
target is Joe Biden. So they ruined it. And it was people like AOC. And they're the same ones who told
00:25:35.680
us they were all about women. They're about women, women, women, women. And now that leads us to
00:25:40.820
Riley Gaines, an actual woman and a fierce competitor, somebody they would normally be
00:25:46.020
celebrating out there in the pool with the best of the best NCAA tournaments, winning medals and so on,
00:25:51.680
who didn't win in the NCAA final. And I can't remember whether it was the 100 or what heat it
00:25:58.940
was because she tied instead with Leah Thomas. And instead of getting the trophy to Riley to hold,
00:26:06.300
they gave it to Leah Thomas saying we want Leah to hold the trophy, not you. Why? Oh, why would
00:26:10.840
that be the one who was on the guys team this time last year, placing 500th or or Riley Gaines?
00:26:18.480
OK, so Riley has a thing to say about trans people in sports, trans women in particular and in women's
00:26:23.800
sports. And she goes, as we discussed on Friday, to this San Francisco State University and gets
00:26:29.740
absolutely attacked. She did speak. So that was a plus. But then get absolutely attacked.
00:26:34.540
The video is horrific. She says she was assaulted twice by a trans woman, some guy wearing a dress,
00:26:40.380
punched in the shoulder and then again grazed her face. They were screaming terrible things at her.
00:26:46.140
She was forced to hide in a room for three hours as the cops on campus did virtually nothing.
00:26:51.780
They were yelling ransom demands to let her out. And I mean, not a peep, not a peep from the AOCs of
00:27:00.160
the world on women's rights and the assault of a woman who was not saying trans people don't exist,
00:27:06.720
who was not saying I refuse to use pronouns, who was simply saying it's not OK to have trans women
00:27:13.080
compete against biologic women in sports like mine or they have an unfair advantage. That's it.
00:27:17.640
So I can't listen to them paint themselves as our advocates. It's absurd and it's an obvious lie.
00:27:24.800
I'm sure you've had this experience to be willing to bet. But when you're somebody who's in a so-called
00:27:32.140
marginalized group, if you're a woman, if you're black, if you're a person of color, if you're a
00:27:36.560
gay, a gay man or a lesbian, whatever, this is something that Democrats and liberals supposedly
00:27:43.180
honor and protect and constantly demand that you be respected to right up until the point that you become
00:27:50.740
some kind of a dissident to their ideology, at which point the vitriol and and use of these
00:27:58.920
very bigoted tropes is just unleashed like nothing before. I mean, the most grotesque racism I see
00:28:05.680
directed toward Clarence Thomas comes from liberals and Democrats who hate him. The most grotesque
00:28:12.080
misogyny I bet you you've encountered probably came during moments when you confronted Donald Trump
00:28:19.180
and people were angry at you for that, but then also from liberals who hate you. And that's
00:28:23.600
definitely been my experience in terms of just like ugly homophobia has mostly come overwhelmingly
00:28:29.860
from those moments in my career when I've been perceived as being a dissident to the Democratic
00:28:34.160
Party or the American left. And so to watch this woman who, as you say, would ordinarily be celebrated,
00:28:39.840
be violently and physically threatened. It wasn't that they were just disagreeing with her or
00:28:45.160
expressing dissent toward her speech, all of which is fine. They menaced her physically to the point
00:28:50.520
that she needed 20 police officers in order to safely leave. She was trapped in that school for three
00:28:55.900
hours. They were saying things like, let her pay us and we'll let her leave. This is criminal behavior
00:29:01.160
that's obviously misogynistic, misogynistic in nature. It's exploiting this perceived vulnerability
00:29:06.860
that women have under those kind of situations to defend themselves physically. That's the way in which
00:29:11.620
she was menaced. And nobody has the slightest objection to it who ordinarily would be waving
00:29:16.920
the misogyny flag because she's expressing dissent to their agenda. And it's it's you know,
00:29:22.580
that gets back to the thing I was describing earlier. It is absolutely repulsive to watch.
00:29:26.400
I mean, who would look at that video no matter what your views are on trans women in sports and
00:29:30.900
not be disgusted and horrified by that behavior? Absolutely right. There's and there's a lot more to
00:29:36.180
discuss on Riley and what the university is now saying. We'll pick it up right there after this
00:29:40.600
quick break. More with Glenn after two minutes. Don't go away.
00:29:44.400
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00:30:00.080
What I experienced was peaceful. It wouldn't even be peaceful in an alternate universe. I mean,
00:30:07.300
it was quite literally the exact opposite barricaded in a room where I could not leave for three hours
00:30:12.540
where they were yelling obscene, terrible, violent things towards both myself and these officers who
00:30:19.260
were protecting me. What you have to do to make changes in regards to protecting those freedoms is
00:30:27.540
to go where it hurts, which is the pockets. If I weren't to do something, there would be no repercussions
00:30:34.880
for these people. Therefore, something needs to be done to hold these people accountable.
00:30:40.440
Right on. That's Riley Gaines saying she's going to sue. She's going to sue the university over what
00:30:45.760
was done to her. Welcome back to the show. I guess today, Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize winning
00:30:50.080
journalist and host of Rumble's system update. She's right, Glenn. You hit him in the pocketbook.
00:30:55.800
That's the only thing they'll listen to. Absolutely. I mean, you know, I was just thinking,
00:30:59.920
first of all, I'm a little bit worked up still from those clips about how the Democrats should ignore
00:31:03.360
court rulings. I forgot how angry I was about that. It was a few days ago. So I'm trying to
00:31:06.840
put that to the side. On this Riley Gaines thing, the one point I do want to make that I think is
00:31:11.160
very important is, I don't know if you saw, you might have. There was a viral clip where Ben Shapiro
00:31:15.680
was interviewing Neil Tyson DeGrasse and asked him about this kind of gender ideology. Can a trans woman
00:31:21.380
be a woman? And he basically said, look, beyond the issue of what we teach kids in schools, which is
00:31:26.600
always relevant, the only real issue that matters when it comes to trans people, otherwise we could just
00:31:33.240
say adults live and let live and they have the right to do what they want, is the issue of how
00:31:37.480
we treat fairness in sports. Even people who are on the side of the trans movement acknowledge this
00:31:43.820
is a very, very legitimate question. People like Martina Navratilova and Chris Everett, who are
00:31:48.180
pioneers in women's sports, who basically are the reason why there's so many opportunities along with
00:31:54.060
Billie Jean King for female sports to exist on a professionalized level with a lot of corporate
00:31:58.920
money involved and for female athletes to get wealthy and famous doing it, are very good liberals.
00:32:04.220
But both Martina Navratilova and Chris Everett have said, there's no way it's fair to allow people
00:32:09.260
born as biological men to compete in professional women's sports because you can never treat or
00:32:16.280
hormonize out the advantages, the inborn advantages that come from being a biological male, especially if
00:32:22.500
you pass through puberty as a man. This is all Riley Gaines is saying. She's talking about that issue
00:32:27.420
that even supporters of this movement acknowledge is a valid one that requires debate and to grapple
00:32:35.600
with. And she obviously has a lot of credibility since she's devoted her life to excelling at swimming
00:32:41.120
and feels like she's being cheated against or mistreated. And to treat her like she's some kind
00:32:47.060
of Nazi figure to the point where violence and that kind of abuses is merited is sickening.
00:32:55.180
But I'm not surprised this movement, once a movement gets so righteous, you know, it gets
00:33:00.420
back to what we're talking about before. They feel like anything they do is justified in the name of
00:33:04.300
their cause. And increasingly, that is liberal politics in the United States.
00:33:09.140
They they're jumping the shark. This is their moment of, you know, when BLM would go up to the
00:33:14.800
private diners in the summer of 2020 and say, raise the fist, get your fist up or your tables going
00:33:21.980
over or you're getting attacked. And they lost the American people who they had after George Floyd.
00:33:27.480
They had this is their this is that moment. You've gone too far. You're losing the people who are in
00:33:34.140
the center, who are open minded to you. It's it's done. And I do think this is an inflection point.
00:33:39.540
What happened to her? The latest poll, I think it was by trying to find out who to NPR. Ipsos
00:33:45.040
suggests nearly two and three Americans oppose allowing trans people to compete on the sport of
00:33:52.440
whatever they identify with. So they don't support trans women competing against actual women in
00:33:58.720
sport. That's two thirds of the American people. That includes a lot of Democrats. And this kind of
00:34:03.360
thing is not going to help. So that brings me to the problem with the university system, which
00:34:08.740
deserves at least a nod here. I know we're all aware of it, but we can't just breeze by it.
00:34:14.000
So when we saw the behavior out at Stanford and it was terrible and, you know, I mean,
00:34:19.360
the protests out there with the judge and how disgracefully he was treated, at least Stanford
00:34:23.380
tried to say, we're sorry, we stand for free speech and we're going to do a half day reeducation
00:34:28.940
clinic for the protesters on why you should not say to a federal judge, you can't find the CLIT on a sign
00:34:36.480
and do fake throwing up sounds as he begins his remarks. They need a little lesson on that at
00:34:42.700
Stanford law. God help us. This university didn't even feel the need to pretend it cared about Riley
00:34:49.880
Gaines and what happened to her. San Francisco State University issues this long statement.
00:34:55.180
I got to tell you, Glenn, I read it and I literally thought they forgot a paragraph. Whoever posted this
00:35:00.380
must be a San Francisco state hater. And they removed the paragraph where they said, we're very sorry
00:35:04.480
about what happened to Riley. No, that's not what happened. It's not in there. I won't read the whole
00:35:10.020
thing as it just goes on, but it's basically as follows. Let me begin by saying clearly the trans
00:35:14.880
community is welcome. Okay, wait, well, that's not where you begin. What? What? No, Riley Gaines is
00:35:20.160
welcome. Free speech is welcome. Let me begin by saying the trans community is welcome and belongs
00:35:25.180
at SFSU. Further, our community fiercely believes in unity, connection, care, and compassion, and we value
00:35:33.120
different ideas. Okay, great. We do. How? How do we let those ideas be expressed? Walk us through it.
00:35:38.000
Doesn't get to that. We may also find ourselves exposed to divergent views on campus and even
00:35:45.080
views we find personally abhorrent. These encounters have sometimes led to discord, anger,
00:35:50.400
confrontation, and fear. We must meet this moment and unite with a shared value of learning.
00:35:54.560
Where's the condemnation? Where's the, we must not let those emotions take us to the place of violence
00:36:00.120
where we actually heard another human, not in there. Then this woman goes on to say,
00:36:04.080
thank you to our students who participated peacefully in Thursday evening's event.
00:36:09.840
It took tremendous bravery to stand in a challenging space. Oh my God. I hope she's
00:36:16.800
referring to Riley Gaines. I am proud of the moments where we listened and asked insightful
00:36:22.320
questions. I'm also proud of the moments when our students demonstrated the value of free speech
00:36:26.500
and the right to protest peacefully. This is, I don't, she's just ignoring what happened.
00:36:32.540
And then she says, this is the capper. This feels difficult because it is. As you reflect,
00:36:38.160
process, and begin to heal. From what? Your assault? Your foray into the criminal behavior?
00:36:48.200
Please remember there are people, resources, and services available. And she goes on to list them.
00:36:52.440
Equity and community inclusion, counseling, psychological services, dean of student's office,
00:36:57.340
and goes on. Her name is Jamila Moore, vice president of student affairs and enrollment management.
00:37:02.540
My comment on the, on my memo, I'm not going to lie, reads, you asshole. But when you go back and
00:37:08.200
look at her history, Glenn, it's a long list of DEI. Of course, it's straight out of central casting.
00:37:15.180
It's also Orwellian. I mean, first of all, the idea that to be a student of this extremely left-legged
00:37:22.580
school in San Francisco, it requires courage to protest a speaker that I'm sure 98% of the faculty
00:37:30.680
and student body at least are opposed to. It requires courage to join a mob, to join the crowd,
00:37:36.940
to take the majoritarian position and threaten somebody from dissenting over it. That doesn't
00:37:41.700
require courage. That requires this kind of mob behavior, this, this like thuggish sentiment.
00:37:48.340
And, you know, I think when I see stuff like this, you know, people often, not often, but sometimes
00:37:54.220
argue about what my political ideology is. Am I on the left? Am I on the right? Am I Democrat,
00:37:59.500
Republican, whatever? Really, my ideology is just anti-authoritarianism. I distrust human beings,
00:38:04.860
institution, human institutions to wield power without limits, which is why it was so horrifying that the
00:38:09.760
idea that Joe Biden, as president with all of his immense power, could even ignore when the Supreme
00:38:15.420
Court or the judiciary tells him that he's crossed constitutional lines, like Democrats can just
00:38:19.600
ignore that because they're the ones with all the guns and power. And that's what's happening at these
00:38:24.600
kinds of universities when you're part of the mob that commands overwhelming majoritarian sentiment,
00:38:31.180
when almost nobody is willing to stand up and disagree with you because that's actually what
00:38:34.860
takes courage, is to disagree with the mob. They have this sense of power, and it's very inebriating.
00:38:42.080
Like what you were saying with going and forcing somebody to raise their fist against their will
00:38:46.740
in support of a cause they may or may not support under threat of physical violence. That's the kind of
00:38:52.580
power that when human beings get it, it pulsates through the body, and it makes them do very,
00:38:57.620
very dangerous and kind of threatening things. And I think that's really what you're seeing here is this is
00:39:03.520
mob justice, the idea that if we gather enough people, and we unite in hatred of somebody else based on
00:39:09.520
their political viewpoint, there's nothing and nobody that can stop it. I wouldn't be surprised if they had
00:39:14.740
torn her apart physically without being in a locker room and without that police escort. I think those
00:39:19.280
measures were necessary because that's what mobs start doing when they work themselves into that kind of
00:39:24.500
frenzy. But increasingly, that is what is animating left wing politics on the culture war is that kind of
00:39:30.580
sentiment. Yeah, mob justice is right. And that's that's why I for one was delighted to see the
00:39:36.700
Tennessee legislature do something about these three out of order rude, disruptive lawmakers teach
00:39:44.280
them unless they're coming right back in. Please give me a break. This is not the death penalty for
00:39:48.380
these three. But they were trying to stand up for the constituents who they represented. There will be
00:39:54.380
law and order inside of this chamber. There will be a protocol that you follow. You are not the leader of
00:39:58.780
a protest mob. You are a lawmaker. You were elected here and agreed to follow certain protocols. You
00:40:03.680
didn't do it. And I noticed you sent out a tweet that I thought was perfect because let's just say
00:40:09.120
you disagree with me on Tennessee. They shouldn't have thrown out the lawmakers, whatever. Fine. That's
00:40:13.240
OK. There's room for disagreement there. That's how you would see it. That's how I would see it.
00:40:19.580
When reporting on it as straight news reporters, we would report the facts and let the people decide
00:40:25.200
not if your name is Ben Collins and you work at NBC as a senior journalist over there.
00:40:33.200
I loved your response to this. So Ben Collins tweets out. He retweeted somebody else and agreed
00:40:41.720
with a Democratic Party activist, like an overt liberal Democratic Party activist.
00:40:47.680
Yeah, you tell the story. I mean, I have the quote in front of me if you need it.
00:40:49.860
But no, you go read it. I just wanted to make clear that the person he was retweeting,
00:40:52.760
because I don't have the quote, is someone who says I my my goal in life is to advance
00:40:57.580
the interests of the Democratic Party. I want to elect as many Democrats as possible
00:41:00.740
because I'm a liberal and I believe in liberal ideology. That's the person this news reporter
00:41:04.820
for NBC was retweeting. And you go ahead and read the tweets. I don't have it in front of me.
00:41:09.240
OK, so so this guy is tweeting out. He's outraged about the Tennessee lawmakers expulsion.
00:41:13.800
And Ben Collins, the NBC guy, tweets out exactly right. Both sides are not the same. And it's time
00:41:20.820
for media outlets to stop pretending they are. The polarization is asymmetric. And you made a great
00:41:27.800
point about how this is a good thing. It's a good thing that Ben Collins was bold enough to retweet
00:41:34.020
that and say what he said on behalf of NBC News. Why? Yeah, you know, I it's so ironic because when I
00:41:41.240
first began writing about politics, I really disliked the conceit in journalism that journalists
00:41:46.160
were objective. I don't think journalists or any human beings are objective or all the byproduct of
00:41:51.680
our subjective biases. I think we strive toward objectivity. We that's the goal is to present facts
00:41:58.300
as neutrally as possible. So as you say, we inform the public rather than propagandize them.
00:42:03.000
But everything about what we do, including who we recognize as experts, how we describe situations,
00:42:08.220
what we react to. Of course, we're seeing that through a subjective prism. And I never I'd always
00:42:13.060
felt that the journalistic claim that they're objective and partisans are subjective was a kind
00:42:17.840
of fraud that corrupted the profession. Because if you start off lying to people about what you're
00:42:22.220
marketing to them, which is journalism, they're already going to be suspicious of everything else
00:42:26.340
that follows. And I always wanted more candor among journalism. So when I did that Snowden story,
00:42:32.660
I would report what the NSA was doing. But I would also be very clear that I opposed what the NSA
00:42:37.780
was doing, massifying on Americans, because I didn't want to hide my own views and pretend I
00:42:41.820
had no no perspective. I feel like reporting is more honest when journalists admit what their biases
00:42:47.020
are. We're now at the point where NBC and CNN, like ostensibly apolitical or at least nonpartisan
00:42:55.040
news outlets that would be claimed to be allow their reporters to be very explicit about the fact that
00:43:00.420
they believe the Democratic Party is superior. And what was so notable about that tweet that he
00:43:04.940
retweeted, that media coverage should reflect that premise that the parties are not equal, that the
00:43:10.820
Democrats are superior, the Republicans don't believe in democracy, they don't believe in freedom or
00:43:15.080
whatever, they're a fascist party. And so for an NBC News reporter to say this is how I see the world, I
00:43:21.040
believe the Democratic Party is not only better, but that journalism should be about making that clear
00:43:25.440
was kind of a new level of candor to me that I do consider positive because that is really what they all
00:43:31.960
think. So why not just have it on the table? Come right out and say it. So that great. Half the
00:43:37.700
country now knows this is explicit from NBC News is Ben Collins. Both sides are not the same. And it's
00:43:43.000
time for media outlets to stop pretending they are. OK, got it. Keep that in mind when you watch their
00:43:49.840
coverage and read his reporting, how he feels about 80 million Americans on the subject of NBC.
00:43:56.840
I have to touch on what happened this morning. So the some of the Easter festivities at the White
00:44:03.440
House took place today and Al Roker was sent over to the White House to interview President Biden,
00:44:08.720
I assume, because everyone on both sides is assuming zero damage can or will be done in such an exchange.
00:44:16.000
Well, guess again. Watch what happened when Al Roker tried to get the president to make news on whether
00:44:22.480
he is going to run again. Are you saying that you would be taking part in our upcoming election in
00:44:31.300
20? I'll either roll an egg or, you know, being the good, you know, the guy who's pushing him out.
00:44:37.180
Come on, help. Help a brother out. I plan on running out, but we're not prepared to announce it yet.
00:44:43.580
All right. There you go. I'm planning on running. I'm planning on running, but we're not going to
00:44:49.900
announce it. I don't know what that first half is about. I'm going to roll it. I'm going to push it.
00:44:53.920
We're going to don't know. But he said it. He said he's going to run again. And all we could talk
00:45:00.240
about on the team before the show, Glenn, was they needed the Easter Bunny again. Remember last year
00:45:04.900
how the Easter Bunny was like, no, no questions. And he was in charge. That guy really served a
00:45:10.560
purpose. Look, this person needed to get back in the suit and keep him away from Al Roker.
00:45:16.040
I mean, it's really, you know, it's such an interesting media dynamic because on the one
00:45:23.260
hand, obviously, the overwhelming majority of people at NBC and places like it, CNN,
00:45:28.440
want the Democrats to win, want Joe Biden to be reelected. That was what we were just talking
00:45:32.380
about. But on the other hand, and you were the one who pointed this out in a clip I always use
00:45:37.340
because it was said so vividly and so clearly, nobody benefited more from Trump's candidacy and
00:45:44.800
from Trump's prominence in politics than liberal media outlets, because that's the only thing that
00:45:50.180
generates ratings for them. Nobody watches their show. If Trump's not in the news, the only time
00:45:54.200
people watched was when he emerged in politics because he's interesting and liberals won't watch
00:46:00.500
them unless they they're excited by Trump and they need Trump. So they're in this very weird position
00:46:05.920
where on the one hand, they obviously for as as ideologues don't want Trump reelected.
00:46:12.700
But as media figures, as people whose career depends on ratings, which they can't get without him,
00:46:17.640
they do need Trump to go back. And if you're somebody who's worried about another Trump presidency,
00:46:23.200
the fact that he's leading polls, especially after the Salvin Bragg indictment in the Republican side,
00:46:28.520
and you watch Joe Biden, who's going to be even two years older when he runs, he's going to be 82,
00:46:33.440
too, Megan. His term, if he wins, well, he'll be 86 when he completes it. He's already so clearly
00:46:39.780
addled cognitively. I think it's going to be, you know, I don't think there are enough medications
00:46:45.020
in the world to get him through that this time, let alone a covid pandemic that really helped them
00:46:49.560
hide in the basement the whole time. And I think they're playing a very dangerous game,
00:46:53.880
but we'll see how that works out. But you really see that clip and he's just degenerating before our
00:46:58.360
eyes. Well, here's another one, which is just funny. Look, look at this, where he appears to be
00:47:04.240
terrified that the Easter bunny is chasing him. This is from this morning. Watch. They're walking
00:47:10.080
in jail. The Easter bunny holds hands with jail. He turns around, notices that they're twice.
00:47:16.660
Twice. You got to go to YouTube and watch this later. He's like, oh, shit. Here he's coming for
00:47:24.600
me again. He's going to stop me. It's pretty amazing. Well, I think there was like a jealousy.
00:47:30.360
There was a little jealousy there. It was like, who is this rabbit holding my wife's hand? Like
00:47:34.620
there was some kind of like protectiveness. And then, yeah, he kind of got scared. He like
00:47:38.140
scampered to stay in front of the rabbit so the rabbit couldn't get him. Meanwhile, they really
00:47:42.400
should have used the rabbit again to keep him away from Al Roker and making any additional news.
00:47:47.640
He's obviously running again. I think that's right. He was supposed to announce in February. He
00:47:51.220
didn't. Now here we are in April. He hasn't. There's no way they want Kamala Harris, who at this
00:47:56.620
point would be the only realistic. I mean, the closer they wait until we get to the summer debate system
00:48:01.160
a season, the less likely anybody else can run. Although Robert F. Kennedy has thrown his hat into the
00:48:07.960
ring. Oh, it's a pleasure. Oh, I forgot about Marianne. Yeah. My friend. Thank you, Megan.
00:48:13.180
Great to talk to you. Great to see you. All right. We're looking forward to Dr. Peter Atiyah. He's
00:48:18.320
back. His new book is so good. And there are really, really great approaches to your well-being,
00:48:24.100
your long-term well-being and your longevity. Don't go away.
00:48:31.880
Aging is a fact of life, but one of our health did not have to decline with the passage of time.
00:48:37.960
I mean, we all got to go sometime, but what if we could push that time back and live really well
00:48:42.700
up until the moment of death? In a new book, Dr. Peter Atiyah challenges the conventional
00:48:48.400
medical thinking on aging. This is a brilliant man who's done so much research and study
00:48:53.780
on all the aspects of aging. We are so lucky to have him here. When we had Peter on the show last
00:48:58.660
year, he mentioned he was working on this book and now it's out to save us all. It's called
00:49:04.900
Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity. And it is a number one New York Times bestseller,
00:49:11.880
which is not easy to do. Peter, congrats and welcome back to the show.
00:49:16.560
Thank you so much, Megan. And thanks for having me back.
00:49:19.460
Oh, I think it's so interesting. And I love how you sort of say up front, look, I know if you're
00:49:25.080
reading this book, you're like, tell me what to eat. Tell me exactly how to exercise. Tell me exactly
00:49:30.160
what I should be taking. Right. So I can live forever or at least to 110. Well, and you're you
00:49:35.420
talk about how that that's not exactly what this book is. We're talking about approaches and educating
00:49:41.580
you on what matters and what doesn't matter. And you do get lots of very practical, useful tips,
00:49:48.160
but it's it's an education on how to think about your life and your wellness. And before we get to all
00:49:56.220
that, I think that you set it up beautifully when you started the book with the egg story. And as I
00:50:00.440
listened to the books, I listened to the audio with you reading it. The egg story keeps coming
00:50:05.260
back and it makes sense to me. Can you tell us about that that nightmare that you that plagued you
00:50:09.060
for a long, long time? Yeah, it was basically kind of standing beneath a building and trying to catch
00:50:17.080
eggs that were being thrown off the top of the building and being, you know, sort of quasi successful,
00:50:22.920
right? So you catch an egg, but then you miss an egg and it sort of splats all over the ground. And
00:50:27.640
this was just, you know, kind of a feeling of helplessness. But it led to an epiphany eventually,
00:50:35.320
which was the strategy of waiting until the eggs are about to hit the ground and then trying to make
00:50:41.940
a miraculous catch was really doomed to fail in the long run. A far better strategy was to go to the top
00:50:48.620
of the building and find the guy who was throwing them and either forcefully or not remove his basket
00:50:54.100
of eggs. And that's the same when it comes to one's wellness, one's health. You talk about how
00:50:59.960
as a doctor, you saw young people dying in the hospital and you think, oh, that's terrible. The
00:51:04.460
woman with the aneurysm. But really that aneurysm, even though she was a young woman who died of it,
00:51:09.220
was coming her way a long time prior to that. And so there's very little the doctors can do when you
00:51:14.240
come into the hospital about to have an aneurysm, but there's a lot the doctors can do 15 years before
00:51:19.420
that in checking your wellness and advising you on how to avoid the aneurysm 15 years later.
00:51:26.980
And where does it start? Does it start by just a good person going in to see a good doctor and saying,
00:51:32.640
here are the blood panels I actually want, not the nonsense lipid panel that we do that just gives
00:51:38.540
us surface level info every year? It's actually many things. And I don't think I could
00:51:44.220
say it's just one thing, but I think the most important thing and the most important first
00:51:48.700
step is the cognitive shift from what I describe as medicine 2.0 to medicine 3.0. And that cognitive
00:51:56.820
shift, I liken to as important a shift as what took us from basically witchcraft into the modern era of
00:52:05.800
medicine 150 years ago. That was the scientific method. So that was a huge step forward. Being able
00:52:13.720
to realize that not only was everything that we saw happening in the body explained by actual nature,
00:52:21.600
laws of science, but that you could form hypotheses and test those hypotheses with experiments using
00:52:27.560
the experimental and scientific method. That's basically what allowed us to eradicate, for the
00:52:32.720
most part, infectious diseases and double human lifespan in the span of five generations.
00:52:38.540
Well, we're sitting here looking at a deeper problem today, or at least a different problem,
00:52:42.060
for which that solution isn't working. The solution of let's just extend life once life is close to its
00:52:51.040
end, as the example we've just discussed, isn't working. We need a radical shift. And the radical
00:52:56.500
shift is living longer does not mean living longer with disease. It means living longer without disease.
00:53:02.500
disease. And you can only accomplish that if you truly adopt principles of prevention that get a ton
00:53:10.380
of lip service in the conventional system. There's nobody who's going to say, oh, I don't agree with
00:53:14.080
prevention. The question is, what does that mean? How early do you have to start and how aggressive do
00:53:19.000
you need to be? Well, and also what came across to me in the book is you're not without data.
00:53:24.240
Like there are data that are available. If you connect with the right doctor on where you are
00:53:29.560
right now, what genetic blessings you may have, what genetic, I don't want to say curses, but
00:53:34.560
challenges, as they say, when you get your school kid review opportunities, yet another opportunity for
00:53:40.720
us to work on, uh, opportunities for you. Um, so it's not just, I have shitty genes and that's that
00:53:48.020
I'm going to die young. It's there's so much that you actually can do. Even if the magic age of 52,
00:53:53.520
you write about it in your book. Um, you use it as an example age. It's where I am now. Last year,
00:53:58.320
you told me I really needed to be committed to a health routine and like sort of be getting my
00:54:02.320
fitness on by 53. So I've got about seven, eight months. I don't know what it is. Anyway,
00:54:08.260
there are things that you can do. And to me, the reason I mentioned the lipid panels,
00:54:11.460
because that's one thing that's, that's real data you can get that's available to you.
00:54:14.560
Yeah, it's really interesting. We got an email through our website over the weekend from a guy
00:54:20.320
who had read the book already. And I say already, cause the book has only been out about 10 days.
00:54:24.660
And it's, as you know, it's not the shortest book. Um, nevertheless, the guy read the book
00:54:28.720
and immediately and went and had, uh, his LP little a checked. Now LP little a is a, is a lipid that most
00:54:37.380
people aren't aware of. It's a lipoprotein. Most people aren't aware of yet. It's the most common
00:54:40.920
hereditary, uh, uh, cause of cardiovascular disease. He went and had his checked and it was,
00:54:48.920
uh, a little bit elevated, not hugely elevated, but, but certainly elevated. Uh, his APOB, which
00:54:54.360
is another lipid we talk about was also slightly elevated, but not enough that anybody would have
00:54:58.060
cared. But a CT angiogram revealed a 90% occlusion in, um, the main artery that runs down the left
00:55:05.900
ventricle. Um, interestingly, this guy's a remarkable athlete, uh, you know, has done
00:55:11.780
several iron men. And in the past, he'd even complained a little bit of chest pain, but it
00:55:16.860
was never taken seriously because how would you take that seriously in a 41 year old who's a,
00:55:21.000
you know, as fit as a fiddle. And there are lots of other reasons why, you know, people have chest
00:55:24.700
pain, especially young, um, healthy athletic people to make a long story short. He ended up requiring
00:55:29.300
two stents in his, uh, left interior descending artery over the weekend. And, um, just wanted to write us to
00:55:34.700
tell us, you know, Hey, thank you for, you know, alerting me to all this stuff so I could go out
00:55:38.900
and get this done. And in some ways that's a success story, but in some ways it's a tragedy,
00:55:42.500
right? It's a tragedy in that, you know, why aren't we checking LP little a on everybody in
00:55:47.060
their teenage years? Because there's a lot that can be done about this. If you catch this early.
00:55:51.940
You know, it makes me think because Abby knows my assistant every year, because my dad died at 45.
00:55:56.340
And I know you've had lots of early death and thanks to cardiovascular disease in your family,
00:56:00.580
which I now believe was like, there was a reason for it. That it gave you, it gave us,
00:56:05.100
you determined to look into these issues. Um, but yeah, so my dad died of a sudden heart attack at
00:56:10.400
age 45. So I, every year I go for a stress test and Abby's always got to give me the 30 day warning
00:56:15.360
because I do exercise going into my stress test, Peter. I'm defrauding myself. Study for the test.
00:56:22.780
Yes. It's very sad. But, um, in any event now I'm wondering what am I doing? Am I, why am I getting,
00:56:28.620
you know, the stress, it's the real stress test with, you're hooked up to the monitor and you have,
00:56:31.880
you get down right after you do the 13 minutes and they check your breathing. But like you're,
00:56:36.280
I don't know. I didn't, I'm not sure. I can't remember how you feel about that, but
00:56:39.340
I've also had my calcium score done. It was zero, but you're not even saying the calcium score is
00:56:44.800
all that reliable. It's the CT angiogram, which I do think is really, should everybody be getting
00:56:49.360
that? I think at some point it depends. Well, let me back up for a second. So the calcium score
00:56:55.780
is directionally helpful. But as you're alluding to, as I wrote about in the book,
00:57:00.480
15% of calcium scans give a false negative. So 15% of the time, if you get a zero on your
00:57:06.920
calcium score, it's not actually zero either. There is calcification that's so small it's being
00:57:12.880
missed. That actually happened to me once. Alternatively, you don't have calcium, but you
00:57:18.100
have soft plaque, which is just as problematic, meaning you still have atherosclerosis, even at
00:57:25.040
the level or at the gross resolution of a CT scan. So that's one point I would make. The other point I
00:57:30.620
would make is, you know, I don't believe in doing tests unless the test is going to alter your
00:57:36.000
behavior. So if I'm treating a person who's young and has other risk factors that we deem relevant,
00:57:44.500
I don't necessarily need the CT angiogram because the probability that, you know, a 30-year-old is
00:57:50.520
going to have advanced atherosclerosis, that's going to change our management might actually be
00:57:55.060
low. So, you know, in your case, having that calcium scan of zero is great news, but I'd want
00:58:01.680
to make sure I knew what your LP little a was, what your ApoB was, and were those things being treated
00:58:06.400
as aggressively as you could tolerate medically? And if they are, then I wouldn't feel the need to
00:58:11.560
repeat those scans or move you to CT angiogram. And as far as the stress test goes, you know,
00:58:17.800
a stress test is a great test because it's, as its name suggests, putting you under the maximum
00:58:22.520
amount of stress, which is when we can see changes in the heart that would be different in its
00:58:28.500
electrical activity. And those would be real, you know, canary in the coal mine changes for ischemic
00:58:33.620
heart disease. The good news is generally for people who are exercising aggressively, if they're
00:58:40.060
doing it symptom free, a stress test is not adding a whole heck of a lot in a, in a, in a case like
00:58:45.060
yours. But again, I still think the stress test is a valuable test and we do use them in, in select
00:58:50.760
patients. You talk about the four horsemen of death and you know, what's going to get us. We all know
00:58:58.040
something's going to get us, but can you just walk us through what those are? Yeah, the four horsemen
00:59:03.660
are basically the big chronic diseases that took over. So once medicine 2.0 ushered in an era of
00:59:10.140
remarkable success against infectious diseases and communicable diseases, which really happened
00:59:15.200
again in the late 1900s in the early part of the 20th century, we basically started living longer,
00:59:20.700
right? We went from living an average of 40 years to getting into our, you know, eighth decade of life,
00:59:26.040
living into our seventies. And all of a sudden something happened, which was all of these chronic
00:59:31.320
diseases started to kill us. So the, basically the way I think of them is these four horsemen,
00:59:36.380
right? So atherosclerotic diseases, so heart disease and stroke far and away, number one
00:59:40.700
cancer, which is not one disease. Of course, cancer is a herd of diseases that all get lumped in under
00:59:47.840
one umbrella. So breast cancer and colon cancer are totally different diseases, different risk factors,
00:59:52.500
et cetera. But nevertheless, we think of it as one disease neurodegenerative diseases. And when a lot of
00:59:58.600
people think of that, they think of course, is the most prevalent of these, which is Alzheimer's
01:00:01.560
disease, but that also includes Lewy body dementia, Parkinson's disease, et cetera.
01:00:06.540
And then the third one doesn't directly account for a lot of, you know, lists on the death certificate,
01:00:14.440
but indirectly may be the single greatest contributor of them all. And that is the suite of metabolic
01:00:20.580
diseases that ranges all the way from even just insulin resistance through fatty liver disease,
01:00:26.660
which is an enormous epidemic at this time, uh, all the way up to type two diabetes. So that I kind
01:00:31.860
of think of that as a metabolic continuum of disease that again, in terms of actual lives lost
01:00:37.440
on a given year is not an, it's not a huge number, but when you have those conditions, your risk of the
01:00:43.500
other three horsemen that I mentioned goes up significantly. And on that last front, I do think
01:00:48.840
it's interesting. You don't really refer to obesity so much in the book. It's about metabolic disorder
01:00:53.080
because you could be thin and have the fatty liver there. You tell some harrowing stories in
01:00:59.240
there about cutting people open and seeing, Oh my God, this is a thin person who's not a drinker.
01:01:03.400
And there it is. So don't, don't assume you don't have that just because you're not heavy into booze
01:01:10.120
or you're not obese. The metabolic disorder could encompass you. And as Peter points out, it could
01:01:15.560
lead to one of the other three horsemen. So that's disconcerting.
01:01:19.180
Yeah. We have this preoccupation with weight, right? That, you know, obesity is the big boogeyman.
01:01:25.420
And I don't want to suggest that obesity doesn't come without its problems or that it isn't correlated
01:01:30.280
strongly with some of these other issues. But I also think like we should be smart enough to walk
01:01:36.900
and chew gum at the same time. Like we should be nuanced enough to actually be able to talk about
01:01:41.760
what really is causing the issues. And it's not obesity per se. It is the metabolic derangement
01:01:48.460
that often comes with obesity. But as you point out is often present without obesity. I think I have
01:01:53.720
a figure in the book that I drew that shows the Venn diagram, the overlap of lean people who are
01:02:00.020
metabolically unhealthy, obese people who are metabolically unhealthy. And interestingly,
01:02:06.260
a lean person who is metabolically unhealthy has worse outcomes than an obese person who is
01:02:12.880
metabolically unhealthy. In other words, there's something really dangerous about a person who can't
01:02:18.400
get fat, but goes directly to metabolic unhealth.
01:02:23.660
If memory serves, it was like 10 million people are walking around in that boat. So it's a lot.
01:02:28.500
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it's about the most conservative estimate I can come up with is
01:02:33.060
that there are 100 million adults in the United States that are metabolically unwell from both of
01:02:39.660
So how does one, before we get to lifestyle changes, because a lot of this is within your
01:02:44.700
control. It is not just the genetic lottery. Did you win it or didn't you? But there are ways of
01:02:49.680
finding out whether you won it or you didn't, which we can talk about too. But how does one begin?
01:02:53.680
Like people who are inspired by your book, by this conversation who say, I'm with you. What should
01:02:58.280
I do? How do I get data to figure out where I am?
01:03:00.920
Well, I mean, you know, unfortunately, we do live in the medicine 2.0 world still. And so that means
01:03:09.620
that as an individual, you have to become a bit more of a consumer. I guess that's why I wrote the
01:03:14.480
book. So think about it from your profession, right? So you're a lawyer, Megan. And if a person comes to
01:03:22.360
you and says, you know, Megan, I need to retain an attorney. I'm just going to go to Google and find the
01:03:27.300
person closest to me. Would you say to them, like, that's a great strategy. Definitely do that.
01:03:32.500
I mean, of course not, right? If they said, I need a contractor to build my house. I guess I'll just
01:03:38.940
find the guy with the nicest truck. Like, you know, in most other areas of our life, we're relatively
01:03:44.960
sophisticated consumers. And we're relatively interested in taking some ownership of the
01:03:51.100
problem. Somehow medicine has turned into this deity state where we just assume every doctor is
01:03:58.820
equal and every doctor is incredibly knowledgeable and we don't have the right to become stewards of
01:04:05.880
our own health. And I think step one is sort of saying, how much of this stuff can I do without a
01:04:12.340
doctor? For example, I can go and get a DEXA scan without a doctor and that DEXA scan will tell me
01:04:18.000
how much muscle mass I have, how much body fat I have, how much visceral fat I have.
01:04:23.540
And the data is all readily available to tell me how I stack up against other people in the
01:04:27.600
population. So in other words, I'm not just going to have some abstract number that doesn't mean
01:04:31.520
anything to me. I will know for my age and for my sex if I'm doing well or if I'm not. Similarly,
01:04:37.560
I could go and get a VO2 max test and that will tell me how fit I am. And you can certainly ask
01:04:43.960
the doctor to say, look, I know that you're going to order these standard tests, but I also want to
01:04:48.700
see some of these more advanced tests, for example, ApoB and LP little a. And right there and then you
01:04:53.720
have a check gate because a doctor that says, I don't know what those are, bingo, failed the test,
01:05:00.040
time to get another doctor. So I know that people don't necessarily want to hear that because that's
01:05:05.140
work. You know, it takes work to go out and doctor shop and find people who have this level
01:05:10.720
of sophistication. But I can't think of a problem that's more pressing, that's more worth putting
01:05:16.420
effort into. So one of the things you would love to hear if you go through all that is that under
01:05:22.260
this ApoE, ApoE I think it is, which is right about in the book, there are three little subsets,
01:05:30.580
E2, E3 and E4. And I loved hearing about this. I don't know what my numbers are, but okay. E2,
01:05:38.380
one copy of this gene and no copy of E4 is good. That seems to protect you against dementia and
01:05:48.740
suggest you are more likely than the average person by far to reach old age. So yay, you would love to
01:05:54.760
go get this test and find out you have one copy of E2 and no copies of E4. However, E4,
01:06:00.580
E4 is not so good. One copy of E4 increases your risk of Alzheimer's by a factor of between two and
01:06:07.440
12. And it makes you 87% less likely to reach old age. If you have two E4s, you got one from mom
01:06:12.680
and dad. So you may be thinking I'm screwed if I've got two of these E4s. However, you keep reading
01:06:18.280
the book, you go down and you find out there's another possible longevity gene, FOXO3, where you can
01:06:25.800
activate, you can activate better things for you when it comes to longevity. So I don't know that
01:06:30.920
I'm making them all relate to one another accurately, Peter, but to me, it seems like people are afraid,
01:06:36.400
right? They don't want to hear that they have two E4s, but it's better to know because there are
01:06:40.020
things available to you to activate longevity genes inside of you. So you can fight that. It's better
01:06:45.260
to don't just let it sit dormant. It is what it is. The truth is there yesterday, tomorrow, and today,
01:06:49.500
tomorrow, it could be a lot better if you take action. Yeah. I mean, it comes down to a philosophical
01:06:55.580
question. So I've been spanked very hard in the past from various physicians when I've tested for
01:07:03.680
their APOE status. And it's exactly as you say, with a couple of differences. So if you have one
01:07:09.980
copy of the E4 gene, so if you're a 3-4, your risk of Alzheimer's disease is about twofold higher,
01:07:16.840
maybe up to threefold higher. But as you said, when you have two copies of the 4-4,
01:07:21.200
we're talking about that eight to 10, maybe even 12-fold higher risk. That's an enormous risk
01:07:26.800
difference. So I've had some doctors say, how careless of you, how cavalier of you to order
01:07:32.840
such a test because all you're doing is giving the patient something to worry about for which they can do
01:07:38.020
nothing. Now, I was involved in this series called Limitless that was part of NatGeo. And Chris
01:07:45.880
Hemsworth was kind of the protagonist. He's the star of the series. And then there's a whole
01:07:50.220
bunch of little two-bit people around him like me that are kind of helping him along this longevity
01:07:54.740
journey. And in the process of this, Megan, unbeknownst to any of us going into this, we
01:07:59.800
discovered Chris had two copies of the E4 gene. Now, keep in mind, this is pretty rare. Only one to
01:08:04.820
2% of the population have this. But what I explained to Chris and what Chris now understands
01:08:11.700
and has accepted and embraced is knowing that at such a young age, I mean, Chris found this out when
01:08:18.580
he was 37, empowers you to make a lot of changes that will reduce risk greatly. And where people like
01:08:27.280
me fundamentally differ from people who are kind of stuck in the old way is, I think the data is
01:08:32.520
overwhelming that you can indeed reduce risk of all of the horsemen, including Alzheimer's disease.
01:08:39.200
And if that's true, and again, I could point to reams of data that suggest it's true,
01:08:44.160
then not knowing is simply the worst thing that you can do from an outcome perspective.
01:08:49.400
Wow. The Chris Hemsworth thing made national news. And I didn't realize that he was quite that young.
01:08:57.500
Oh my God, I thought he was a little older and that you were involved from the baseline in that.
01:09:05.900
Yeah, it was kind of an interesting situation because we're getting ready to do this thing.
01:09:11.800
We took advantage of Chris being in the US passing through to get his blood tested. And then the plan
01:09:17.940
was I was going to go out to Australia for the first shoot. This is over three years ago,
01:09:21.540
COVID really slowed down the production of this thing. And two weeks before I'm supposed to go
01:09:27.440
out to Australia to begin the shoot, I get the blood test back. And I go through it and I see
01:09:31.580
that he has two copies of the E4 gene. Again, you don't see this all the time. This is very rare.
01:09:36.380
And I knew that they wanted me to present the data to Chris on screen for the first time because it
01:09:43.020
is a documentary. And so I was stuck in a bit of a bind because one, I just didn't think that was the
01:09:50.980
right thing to do to present that type of news to a person for the first time on camera.
01:09:56.680
So I called Darren Aronofsky, who is the producer and also a very close friend. That's the reason I
01:10:03.400
was involved. And I said, look, I can't tell you why, but I need to talk to Chris before we're on
01:10:09.620
camera alone. Meaning like now, like in the weeks that lead up to this. And you have to trust me
01:10:15.640
because I'm not going to, you know, I couldn't tell Darren why I wanted to have this discussion.
01:10:18.940
And Darren was like, yep, no problem. I trust you completely. So he connected me and Chris
01:10:22.940
beforehand. Chris and I had a chance to discuss just that one finding. And truthfully, Chris was
01:10:30.760
not sure that how comfortable he would be with that information being public. So interestingly,
01:10:36.480
as we filmed Limitless over the course of several years, everything was done in parallel. There was a
01:10:42.820
version that included that information and a version that did not. So that at the end, Chris could make
01:10:47.960
the decision. Um, and completely on his own, Chris decided, you know what, I really do want people
01:10:53.900
to know this. Cause I, you know, I know that 25% of the population have one copy of this gene. So if
01:11:00.840
being public about this is going to help those 25% of people, that's a lot of people.
01:11:06.380
Does it mean, I mean, he's also got a very famous brother. Does it, if you have it,
01:11:10.240
does it mean your siblings also have it? Cause you have the same gene pool.
01:11:12.900
Um, you have to go back and look at the parents. So for example, if his parent, if one parent has a
01:11:20.020
two, four, and one has a two, three, uh, say a three, four, one sibling could be a four, four,
01:11:26.960
the other could be a two, three. So as a general rule, we just sort of test everybody. Um, and you
01:11:33.760
know, if we, if we can't figure it, it's not worth trying to guess what a person is.
01:11:38.000
Hmm. I mean, does this, is this what explains, cause you talk in the book of fair amount about the,
01:11:42.900
I I'm not going to pronounce it right, but it's not centurions. It's centenarians.
01:11:48.320
Yeah. The people who live above to be above 100 and happily we have one of those in my,
01:11:53.400
in my family. I think I mentioned my Nana to you last time. My mom's mom lived to 101
01:11:57.760
and broke all the rules. And you mentioned that's not unusual that it's not all Japanese fishermen.
01:12:05.200
You know, that's what you think of, right? It's like, it can like, there's lots of examples in
01:12:09.480
your book of the person who loved the whiskey every day, the person who smoked cigarettes,
01:12:13.460
the person who had two glasses of wine every day and just cut back on calories. There's just no
01:12:18.640
unifying principle. If you look at diet exercise or general approach to life in my Nana's case,
01:12:24.700
she, yes, she was born in 1915 and she ate natural foods for most of her life. But then
01:12:29.400
for most of my life, she was eating processed foods. She was kind of stressed out. She never once
01:12:34.360
exercised a day in her life. Um, all the rules, right? She didn't smoke and she didn't really
01:12:39.520
drink a lot, but I will say one good thing she did was she was very social, very social. And I
01:12:44.480
think, you know, you write in the book about how important that is in emotional wellness and,
01:12:47.440
you know, connection. But in any event, what do you glean from these centenary? Like what,
01:12:53.420
what? Cause of course everybody's like, I'll do it. I'll drink whiskey. I'll, I'll eat processed foods.
01:12:57.220
I'll socialize. I'll get grumpier. What do I need to do?
01:13:00.020
Yeah. The lesson from the centenarians is pretty clear and you're right. There's an entire chapter
01:13:05.460
devoted to them because they teach us a very important lesson. And there's some sub lessons.
01:13:11.260
The most important lesson we learned from centenarians is that they live long despite
01:13:16.800
their lifestyle, not because of it. Because on average, centenarians are indeed doing things less
01:13:24.860
healthy than the non centenarians. It's kind of crazy, but they're more likely to smoke more likely to
01:13:29.960
eat poorly, less likely to exercise. And despite all of those things, they live longer. So this
01:13:35.520
points to a very clear set of genetic attributions that they have. And, you know, the truth of it is
01:13:42.460
the genetic study of centenarians has proved less exciting than people would have hoped. There are a
01:13:49.660
handful of genes that seem to crop up more often than not in this group. You've already mentioned a
01:13:55.920
couple of them, right? So APOE, the two version of that gene crops up disproportionately here.
01:14:02.480
A certain variant of FOXO3 pops up disproportionately here. I could rattle off a few others. It's not
01:14:10.860
relevant. Here's what is relevant. The superpower of the centenarian is their ability to live longer
01:14:18.940
without disease, not their ability to live longer with disease. This is so important. It's worth
01:14:25.660
reiterating. Once a centenarian comes down with a given disease, i.e. has their first heart attack or
01:14:32.540
develops cancer, they're just as likely to die in about the same time period as a non centenarian.
01:14:40.640
What their superpower is, is the length of time it takes them to get that disease in the first place.
01:14:46.780
What everybody else looks like at 60, they look like at 80 or 85. This effectively becomes the
01:14:57.460
cornerstone of the strategy for medicine 3.0. You must delay the time it takes for chronic disease
01:15:03.920
to sink in, not do what medicine 2.0 does, which is figure out ways to extend life once disease has
01:15:11.040
taken hold. That strategy has produced lousy outcomes. That's so helpful.
01:15:16.780
And we can spend some time now on how, even though it's not, as I pointed out, a TikTok on exactly
01:15:23.040
what to eat and how to exercise. But let's talk about the E word. Because exercise is really,
01:15:29.380
I mean, if it boils down to one thing, it really is exercise.
01:15:33.320
Yeah, there's virtually nobody out there who doesn't have opportunity to get better based
01:15:40.340
on exercise. And I know we talked about this the last time I was on, Megan, so I won't need to
01:15:44.680
rehash it. And exercise is so important that of the 17 chapters in the book, three of them are devoted
01:15:50.240
to exercise. There's no other chapter, there's no other topic in the book that warrants so much
01:15:54.940
attention as exercise. But I think the simplest way to explain it is the following. Take the magnitude
01:16:02.300
of harm that is caused by the most harmful things you can think of. Smoking, type 2 diabetes, high
01:16:09.440
blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer, you name it. When you look at the all-cause mortality
01:16:17.320
risk associated with those things. In other words, if you have X, let's take smoking. If you are a
01:16:23.820
smoker, when compared to someone who is otherwise identical, but not a smoker, what is the risk that
01:16:30.380
you will die in a given year relative to the non-smoker? It's about 40% higher. That's huge,
01:16:35.980
right? Do the same exercise with high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, all of these things.
01:16:40.600
You're going to see anywhere from a 20 to 100% increase in the risk of all-cause mortality.
01:16:47.320
When you do the same exercise and compare being unfit to being fit or being weak to being strong,
01:16:57.040
that magnitude difference is two, three, and even four times higher than the ones we just spoke about.
01:17:07.120
In other words, being unfit relative to being fit is worse than having any of these typical
01:17:14.560
medical conditions that we know so clearly are associated with a shorter life.
01:17:24.940
So typically fit is defined by this metric called VO2 max because it is reproducible. It is highly
01:17:32.400
objective. And it's been, you know, we have so much data on it. It is the gold standard by which
01:17:38.300
we measure peak aerobic performance. It's not a pleasant test. So it's a test where by definition,
01:17:45.700
you are exercising to the point of maximum exertion and failure. It's typically done on a bicycle or on
01:17:52.220
a treadmill. So it's sort of like your stress test, Megan. It's almost exactly like your stress test,
01:17:56.800
except my guess is they stop you a little earlier on your stress test because they probably just target
01:18:03.200
a certain heart rate for you. And they say, okay, you got there. You're fine. We're going to stop you
01:18:07.660
with the VO2 max. You'd be doing the same thing, but you'd also be wearing a mask. And that mask is
01:18:13.480
measuring how much oxygen you're consuming and how much carbon dioxide you're producing. And you would
01:18:18.300
go until you truly failed until you couldn't stay on that treadmill any longer. What we'd be looking
01:18:23.860
for is at your peak, how much oxygen were you able to extract from the air you breathed in?
01:18:29.960
That number is called VO2 max, ventilation of oxygen max. And that number is so predictive of how long you
01:18:40.120
live. In fact, I haven't seen, and I've been looking, I haven't seen a single number that can be gleaned
01:18:47.300
from an individual, either a biomarker test or otherwise, that is more predictive of how long you will live
01:18:53.320
than your VO2 max. What if you could do really well on that after 30 days of exercise, but then you
01:19:01.740
totally abandoned it. You've got to keep the VO2 max going, I imagine.
01:19:07.420
Well, here's the good news. The reality of it is if you did nothing for 11 months and then just train
01:19:14.780
for 30 days, you wouldn't really get to a high VO2 max. To truly have a high VO2 max, it does require
01:19:21.740
consistently training. By the way, it doesn't require consistently killing yourself. It just
01:19:26.000
requires consistently training. And you don't have to be in the top 5%. That's certainly where
01:19:34.460
you're going to see the most benefit. But simply going from being in the bottom 25% of the population
01:19:40.100
to being in the third quartile, so being from the 50th to the 75th percentile, that's a very reasonable
01:19:47.440
jump, right? To go from being in the bottom quarter to the third quarter has the equivalent
01:19:53.120
of reducing your mortality by 50% in any given year. Huge.
01:19:59.520
So yeah, it's just like there is nothing. There's no drug that does that. There's no diet that does
01:20:05.420
that. There's no anything that does that. Not even close. And that's not a big ask. That's the kind
01:20:12.840
of thing that you can achieve that level of fitness exercising five hours a week, combined
01:20:18.340
with weight training, right? So it doesn't have to be five hours of cardio. It's like five hours,
01:20:22.360
six hours of really well-balanced exercise consisting of both strength and cardio. That's
01:20:30.340
The cardio is important, though, because in my world of women who would like to be thin,
01:20:35.660
um, the, the messaging is don't be a cardio bunny. You know, that the new messaging is cardio bunnies.
01:20:43.940
They don't lose weight. You know, you just tread away, tread away, you know, you spin, spin, spin,
01:20:48.680
and you never lose any weight. And it's better to just eat less, not drive up your appetite and
01:20:53.640
remain thin. But that doesn't take into account at all fitness, cardiovascular or other strength
01:21:01.460
or longevity. It just takes into account appearance.
01:21:07.280
Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a real tragic set of messaging. And it's, um, it's, it's, again,
01:21:12.000
it's missed the mark. Um, I think obviously there are lots of reasons for that, that, that are
01:21:16.440
certainly beyond my area of expertise in terms of the social and cultural reasons of why, you know,
01:21:21.780
we place such an emphasis on leanness aesthetically without any concern for health. I mean, I'm sure
01:21:29.440
you're very familiar with the latest craze with semaglutide, which is a, an injectable drug that
01:21:35.620
has Zempic. Yeah. Zempic being the diabetes version of that would go V being the pure weight
01:21:41.420
loss version. It's the same drug, just a different name. Um, you know, there are clearly patients who
01:21:47.120
benefit from this drug, but Oh my God, what I see behind the scenes of what it's doing to people.
01:21:52.860
And I'm sure other doctors can tell you similar stories. Um, this, so, so give you an example,
01:21:58.760
Megan, if a person, let's just say a person wants to lose weight and, and, and they need to, right.
01:22:02.800
You know, you do the DEXA scan. They've got, they've got too much body fat. Um, they've got
01:22:06.760
visceral fat. They need to lose 20 pounds. Here's what we consider ideal weight loss. Ideal weight loss
01:22:14.320
would be if you lose 20, 15 of it should be fat. Five of it should be lean mass. So you can't just
01:22:23.840
lose fat mass, but three quarters of your weight loss should be fat mass. When we're putting people
01:22:30.260
on a Zempic and every person we put on a Zempic or semaglutide or, you know, whichever one of the
01:22:35.180
variations, and there's another drug called trazepatide. That's actually even better than
01:22:39.340
semaglutide. When we're putting patients on these drugs, we're doing DEXA scans before and after.
01:22:44.120
This is something the FDA did not require the company to do when they sought approval.
01:22:50.440
We're seeing two thirds of the weight loss is lean mass. Only one third is fat mass.
01:22:57.760
Wow. So they're getting lighter, Megan, but they're getting fatter. Meaning their body fat is
01:23:04.800
either not improving or getting slightly worse and they're disproportionately losing muscle mass.
01:23:10.140
They are becoming less healthy. They might look better in some perverse metric where they,
01:23:15.960
you know, wear a smaller set of jeans, but there's nothing about them that's healthier. Furthermore,
01:23:21.000
we track our patient's heart rate overnight, every night. And without exception, every patient who is on
01:23:29.140
a GLP-1 agonist or dual agonist, so semaglutide or trazepatide, every patient, Megan, and we've seen this
01:23:35.660
for the last three years, their resting heart rate at night is going up by eight to 12 beats per minute.
01:23:41.440
There's nothing I'm aware of that is good about your resting heart rate going up at night.
01:23:47.620
Hmm. Well, that's scary. What did you say? You said that one of the drugs is better.
01:23:53.420
Did you, do you mean better at curbing appetite or better at messing you up?
01:23:57.600
No, more potent. No, it's more potent. It's just, uh, trazepatide is a, is a, is a more potent version
01:24:02.380
of, of this type of drug. Um, it just produces better results. It may be more durable as well.
01:24:08.900
I think it's too soon to say, cause that's the other drawback of these drugs. And again,
01:24:11.820
I don't want to suggest that these drugs shouldn't be used. They're absolutely our use cases for them.
01:24:17.160
And clearly we use them in some patients, but we don't use them in patients who say,
01:24:22.120
I just want to lose 10 pounds to look really good in a bathing suit or look good at the wedding next
01:24:26.060
summer. We're like, that's, you know, you can find another doctor, but that's not how we operate.
01:24:30.260
And we think that that's a lousy strategy. Um, but one of the challenges with these drugs that we
01:24:36.120
don't really know is when you stop taking the drug, are you eventually just going to regain all the
01:24:40.180
weight? Uh, and in the short run, it looks like that's mostly the case. Um, yeah, they say that,
01:24:46.880
they say that in the studies, people regained at least two thirds of the weight. And that if you go on
01:24:53.340
it, it's really kind of a lifetime drug. If you don't want to regain the weight, you just have
01:24:56.280
to stay on it forever. And it's very expensive. Unbelievably expensive. I mean, truthfully as
01:25:01.780
draconian as it sounds, you're better off getting a gastric bypass, which has equal efficacy that
01:25:07.580
lasts indefinitely and costs a fraction of the, you know, the whole thing is just, again, if we could
01:25:13.280
just come back to metabolic health, muscle mass, you know, caring about those things. Um, I think
01:25:20.120
there'd be less demand for this. I want to ask you about metformin because, uh, a good friend of
01:25:25.940
mine read your book and had a question about that. That that's, that could be a potential miracle
01:25:30.720
drug. It's also got some downsides. Um, but we'll talk about it. Let me squeeze in a quick break
01:25:36.160
and come back and we'll talk about that and food more with the one and only Dr. Peter Atiyah right after
01:25:41.620
this. We're kind of on the subject of meds because I brought up metformin. The book talks about
01:25:49.540
rapamycin, talks about, uh, AMPK. Is there something right now in the form of a pill moving
01:25:56.900
on from the shot? Let's move to the pill that can help us live longer that we should be considering.
01:26:02.460
I think it's a bit too soon to say, um, to your question about metformin, that question
01:26:06.600
is being posed in a clinical trial. Uh, I don't know if the trial has started yet, but it has secured
01:26:13.060
funding. So, you know, at the pace at which this type of science moves, it might be five years before we
01:26:19.020
know the answer to that question, but it is asking this question, which is does taking metformin,
01:26:24.920
if you are not a diabetic, because metformin is a drug that is indicated as a first line treatment
01:26:30.280
for people with type two diabetes. And it it's proved beneficial in that regard, but is a non-diabetic
01:26:36.300
person who takes this likely to delay the onset of chronic disease, which is we've discussed is
01:26:41.520
tantamount to living longer. Um, I, I think it might, to some extent, I don't, I don't,
01:26:49.200
you know, and again, I could, I'll be happy to be proved wrong on this, right? So be happy in five
01:26:52.840
years to look at this clip and have egg on my face. My intuition is it's not going to be a dramatic
01:26:59.420
difference. Um, but again, I could be wrong. Uh, but I, but I, the reason I say all that Megan is if
01:27:05.780
you go back and look at all of the epidemiology that has been suggestive of metformin's gyroprotective
01:27:12.900
benefits, gyroprotective is just a word that means it broadly tackles or targets the hallmarks of
01:27:20.200
aging. I actually think the epidemiology is not as compelling as it looks on the surface. In other
01:27:24.800
words, I think there are enough confounders in those data that I don't think metformin is as potent as
01:27:30.320
we would be led to believe if just looking at the, at the surface level data.
01:27:33.580
Is there another drug that we should be consider a supplement people? A lot of people think there's
01:27:38.200
a supplement they need to be taking. I, I, you know, again, my bias is having looked at all of
01:27:43.880
these data. I think rapamycin is the most promising gyroprotective agent out there, but I say that with
01:27:51.800
an enormous, uh, set of caveats. First, it's unambiguously the most gyroprotective agent. If you're
01:27:58.220
anything other than a human, in other words, when you look at the, this is what they give to transplant
01:28:02.120
victims. Is this the one they give to people? Transplant patients take this, um, and it's, uh,
01:28:07.860
it's an immune suppressant, but, um, it's all about the dose and it's all about the frequency.
01:28:12.660
So if you take a low dose of this drug every day, it suppresses the immune system. If you take a higher
01:28:18.320
dose, say once a week, it actually enhances immune function. And it seems that almost independent of how
01:28:25.660
you give it to animals, they live longer. Um, so the, the, the sort of accolades supporting
01:28:32.620
rapamycin's efficacy in, you know, anything from mice to worms, you know, fruit flies, yeast up to
01:28:40.220
dogs seems pretty promising. There is a very large study that's, um, undergoing, well, I guess it'll be
01:28:47.500
done in 2025 or 2026 looking at dogs. It's called the dog aging project done by Matt Kaberline at the
01:28:53.460
University of Washington. That will be the closest we get to human data. And frankly, that's as close
01:28:57.960
as it's going to get. So the real question is, could we believe that a drug that has proven efficacy
01:29:05.460
across a billion years of evolution on basically all more, all model organisms, will it extend to
01:29:12.680
humans? I don't know. Uh, you know, full disclosure, I take rapamycin myself. I've been taking it
01:29:18.480
for five or six years. Um, and, but it's a bit of a leap of faith because I don't, we don't have a
01:29:26.640
biomarker for it. You see, if you're taking a drug that to lower your cholesterol, you have a biomarker,
01:29:32.020
you can measure your cholesterol. You know, the drug is working at least through that metric.
01:29:35.480
We have no biomarker for the efficacy of, you know, a zero protective drug like rapamycin. So
01:29:41.700
it's possible. When I, when I read the book about the dog study first, I was like, Oh dogs. But if
01:29:47.480
you're saying that it helps them either way, then that makes me feel a little better. But you're,
01:29:51.220
the point you make in the book is that this is on another thing. This is on intermittent fasting,
01:29:54.700
which got my attention since I'm a fan of it. The studies that have been done on that saying it's,
01:29:58.780
Oh, it's so good for you have been done on mice and they're useless because mice have a very limited
01:30:04.600
time on this earth. And so you're basically saying like studies on mice really are very limited in
01:30:11.640
terms of your takeaways. Well, certainly for that application, they're a little more,
01:30:16.060
depending on the strain of mice, you can learn something about drugs from them. But yes,
01:30:21.400
on the fasting cause, boy, it's really tough. The reason is if you keep mice fasting for 14 hours a
01:30:28.660
day and it does something heroic to them, you really have to be careful how you extrapolate that
01:30:34.240
to humans because a mouse not eating for 14 hours is like you not eating for probably three days.
01:30:45.960
I know. So you're not really a fan of the intermittent fasting anymore, but you do acknowledge
01:30:50.040
that lower calorie intake on a daily basis has beneficial effects.
01:30:55.600
If you're overnourished, meaning I sort of go through these three questions when I'm looking
01:31:00.920
at everybody. Are you undernourished or overnourished? Meaning are you storing excess energy? Yes or no.
01:31:05.860
Are you under muscled or adequately muscled? And are you metabolically healthy or not?
01:31:11.440
Only when you have the answer to those three questions, can you begin to dole out advice on
01:31:17.760
how a person should be eating? Do they need to be in a calorie deficit? Are they eucaloric? Do they
01:31:22.880
need to be in a calorie excess? Are they getting sufficient protein? Yes or no. You know, obviously
01:31:27.480
what's the role of exercise and sleep because those play a huge role in insulin sensitivity and metabolic
01:31:33.260
health as well. So sometimes you get these really hard cases, right? The hardest case is the person
01:31:38.260
who's overnourished, meaning they're overweight, but they're under muscled. Because in that person,
01:31:43.460
you have to lose weight while adding muscle, which is not easy to do.
01:31:48.120
Right. I haven't been asked anybody. Pretty much everybody would like to do those two things
01:31:52.820
simultaneously. You also spend a little time on seed oils, which is interesting because we've done
01:31:58.140
shows on that and I was turned hard against the hateful eight and all that. Tell me,
01:32:03.260
well, look, it's a, it's a great story, right? It's a great story to demonize seed oils because
01:32:09.880
as you know, having had people on the show, I'm sure, um, you know, these things didn't really
01:32:15.400
exist 150 years ago and now they're running rampant. Um, but if you look at the data and
01:32:22.420
I'd love to demonize seed oils because I think that the foods that they come in are horrible
01:32:27.000
for the most part, but if you look at the data, Megan, if there is, if there's a downside to
01:32:33.660
seed oils, it's, it's, it must be pretty small at the level, at the resolution that we can measure
01:32:39.460
it. You know, and I cite the three most comprehensive meta-analyses ever shat into our
01:32:47.020
civilization on this subject matter. And there just doesn't seem to be much of an effect.
01:32:52.060
So I think the precautionary principle is a reasonable approach, right? I think when it
01:32:57.540
comes to the three main types of fats, saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and the polyunsaturated
01:33:03.920
fats, which are predominantly made up of seed oils on the Omega six branch, you know, the data are
01:33:09.660
pretty clear. One of those is a clear winner. And my view is why not make that the fat that is the
01:33:14.880
dominant fat in your diet, that fat of course, being the monounsaturated fat. So rather than dwell
01:33:21.180
on, you know, seed oils, like I don't eat a lot of seed oils, not because I think they're bad,
01:33:25.580
which they may be, but the data doesn't really suggest it if you're being honest and looking at
01:33:29.800
it, but because the data are so clear that Omega, that, that pardon me, that monounsaturated fats,
01:33:34.360
like olive oil, olives, avocado, that those things are really beneficial. So it's, it's, it really
01:33:40.120
should be 50 to 60% of our total fat intake should come from, from, you know, olive oil and the like.
01:33:46.100
Yeah. And just finally, because people were wondering about the diet, you said this last time and you
01:33:50.160
maintain it in the book, you're not, you're not a keto, paleo, vegan. It's the diet. It's just,
01:33:57.680
there's no silver bullet there. No, I mean, look, any, any, any sort of named diet is going to be
01:34:04.680
an improvement over the standard American diet, the standard American diet, which says basically
01:34:08.720
eat whatever you want, whenever you want, and whatever quantity you want. That's our default state.
01:34:13.340
We live in a default environment that, that fosters that. And that for most people is devastating.
01:34:18.380
Our genes did not have enough time to catch up to that environment. So instead I argue that
01:34:25.720
virtually everybody to be healthy is going to have to live in some form of restriction. And there are
01:34:31.440
three things you can be restricting. You can obviously do combinations of these, but you have
01:34:35.700
to be thinking about this through the lens of dietary restriction, time restriction, or caloric
01:34:40.320
restriction. So dietary restriction is kind of where most people think of diets. It's pick a boogeyman
01:34:46.040
and just don't do it. So the boogeyman might be plant food or whatever, animal food or sugar or
01:34:53.500
carbs or fat or whatever. Um, that said, it could be, uh, you know, limit the time in which you eat
01:35:00.660
that's time restricted feeding, or of course, just restrict the calories altogether. And that's what
01:35:04.280
calorie restriction is. Hmm. That's, I mean, that's, that does make sense. And the way you outlined
01:35:09.580
the questions you should be asking of your doctor before you get to what's my next move makes sense
01:35:14.520
to all of this is in the wonderful outlive. And this is a gift from Dr. Peter Atiyah who didn't
01:35:20.880
have to write this down for us at all, but has, and there's a reason that it's number one on the
01:35:24.660
New York times. I mean, this is legit. Um, thank you so much for writing this and please, will you
01:35:28.700
come back? There's so much more to discuss. I feel like we only scratched the surface, but hopefully got
01:35:32.460
people inspired. Yeah. Thanks so much, Megan. Really appreciate it. And thanks for taking the time to read
01:35:36.660
it or listen to it. Cause I know it's, uh, Oh, the pleasure is all mine. Again, the book is called
01:35:40.780
outlive the science and art of longevity. Uh, and it's well, well worth your time. And you're going
01:35:46.060
to have more time. Thanks to this book. It's out now. We'll be back tomorrow with the EJs. The gals
01:35:52.600
are going to come on. There's so much to discuss. Don't miss that show. Thank you for spending the past
01:35:57.200
hour plus with us. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.