The Megyn Kelly Show - Michael Shermer on COVID Hysteria, the Religion of Wokeism, and Cults

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00:00:31.220 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.720 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.860 Today, Dr. Michael Shermer.

00:00:48.780 This guy's the founder of Skeptic Magazine, which you should be reading if you're not already.

00:00:52.960 He's a science writer. He's host of The Michael Shermer Show.

00:00:56.540 And he happens to be a presidential fellow at Chapman University.

00:01:00.400 Born in LA, raised in Southern California, still out in California

00:01:04.580 and has so many insightful things to educate us on, including skepticism, for sure,

00:01:10.580 and how it can serve you well and how it can serve you poorly.

00:01:14.220 And we're going to go from cults to COVID to the craziness during this pandemic

00:01:19.580 and how it really is affecting people's ability to separate fact from fiction

00:01:25.000 and to weigh truth versus untruth, right?

00:01:29.580 Like reality versus imaginary.

00:01:32.360 And I really think a lot of people have gotten sucked into some of these conspiracy theories

00:01:36.020 on the left and the right, frankly.

00:01:37.200 And this is a great guy to listen to on how to get yourself out,

00:01:41.180 how to figure out if you're one of those people, how to stop doing that,

00:01:43.980 and how to stay at least with one foot in rationality, okay?

00:01:48.180 So he's going to walk us through it.

00:01:49.400 I think you'll find it very entertaining.

00:01:51.040 We sort of get to, at the end, his belief that

00:01:53.180 we're living in the most moral time in human history, okay?

00:01:56.280 Don't believe what they say about America,

00:01:58.680 about this world, about us as Americans.

00:02:01.800 We're better than we've ever been, and it's pretty damn good.

00:02:04.940 So anyway, there's reason for skepticism, and there's reason for optimism.

00:02:08.980 Those two things are not inconsistent.

00:02:10.860 And I will play you a soundbite of possibly my least skeptical moment ever

00:02:14.740 and how it came back to bite me in the bottom.

00:02:18.140 Okay, we'll get to Michael in one second.

00:02:19.980 First this.

00:02:26.400 Michael, hi.

00:02:27.560 Good morning.

00:02:28.620 Help me get to know you a little bit,

00:02:29.880 because I read something about you that I've seen

00:02:31.960 about a lot of people I know in New York,

00:02:33.740 which was you described yourself as a fiscal conservative

00:02:37.540 and a social liberal.

00:02:38.840 And in response to everyone who says that in 2021 America,

00:02:42.040 I say, still, because socially liberal today,

00:02:46.280 I don't even know what it means anymore.

00:02:48.100 So traditionally, that phrase was associated with being a libertarian.

00:02:53.640 I've tended to call myself more of a classical liberal now

00:02:56.540 in that kind of founding father sense.

00:02:58.160 There's a lot of fringe elements on the libertarian party

00:03:02.320 or small L libertarians, you know, pot smoking,

00:03:06.040 porn watching people living in isolation in Idaho

00:03:09.040 or something like that, or crazy about guns or whatever.

00:03:12.740 There's a lot of fringiness there.

00:03:14.860 So I've kind of stopped using that.

00:03:16.200 But by fiscally conservative, I mean, you know, small government,

00:03:21.720 lower taxes, that kind of thing.

00:03:23.320 By socially liberal, I mean, pro-choice, separation of church and state,

00:03:27.700 you know, some gun control measures, you know,

00:03:30.320 recognition of science as a reliable institution,

00:03:33.740 you know, women's rights, gay rights, animal rights, civil rights,

00:03:37.580 and that sort of thing.

00:03:39.140 But in general, I try not to fit into any particular category

00:03:46.260 because then you're forced to tick the box for whatever cluster represents that category.

00:03:52.860 And then I don't like that it's so easy to predict people.

00:03:56.360 I mean, if I know what your position is on abortion, for example,

00:03:59.060 I can predict with fairly high certainty what your position is on immigration

00:04:03.060 and gun control and, you know, foreign policy and a whole bunch of other things.

00:04:07.780 And that just seems, I don't know, it's just, I don't like that.

00:04:10.860 It's like, it'd be nice if you thought through each issue

00:04:14.240 and then gave your reasons rather than, well, I'm in this tribe,

00:04:17.420 so this is what we believe.

00:04:19.480 Well, it's funny because, I mean, I think about it sometimes.

00:04:22.040 I just feel like the ground is moving beneath us,

00:04:24.560 especially on social issues.

00:04:26.280 And I used to say I was more socially liberal,

00:04:29.620 but now I don't think I am.

00:04:32.460 I'm not sure.

00:04:33.260 The list you gave, yeah, I share a lot of your views on that, on those items.

00:04:37.620 But, you know, even saying pro-women's rights, it's like, well, I'm not against that.

00:04:41.540 But also, what does that mean?

00:04:43.360 Does that mean no due process for men who get accused on college campuses?

00:04:46.200 Well, I'm against that.

00:04:47.040 You know, is it anti-male?

00:04:48.220 No, I'm against that.

00:04:49.040 Is it, you know, all that stuff.

00:04:50.540 Is it like the taxpayer has to pay for abortions?

00:04:53.100 I'm against that.

00:04:54.000 Is it pro-LGBTQ?

00:04:55.840 Well, does that mean that I have to support all, you know,

00:04:58.720 trans girls running against cis girls, biological girls?

00:05:02.460 Well, I don't think I do that.

00:05:04.260 You know, so it's like things have changed so rapidly in the past,

00:05:07.220 even just five, ten years.

00:05:08.660 I'm like, I don't know what the hell I am.

00:05:10.800 Actually, I think we need four categories at least.

00:05:13.540 What you've just described, I agree with everything you just said.

00:05:17.460 People that go along those lines, I would put in the far left,

00:05:21.100 the so-called progressives, or sometimes called the regressive left,

00:05:24.160 or illiberals, illiberalism.

00:05:26.500 Traditional liberals would agree with you and I.

00:05:30.040 And then maybe on the right, you have, you know,

00:05:32.100 kind of neocons or traditional old school conservatives,

00:05:35.980 somebody like George Will.

00:05:37.240 And then you have Trumpists, you know,

00:05:39.260 wherever you want to put them far right of someone like a George Will,

00:05:42.680 something like that.

00:05:43.860 So at least four categories.

00:05:45.620 And so, but again, you know,

00:05:47.980 I prefer to take it one issue at a time.

00:05:50.820 And often we're going to end up with conflicting rights issues.

00:05:55.060 People get confused about this.

00:05:56.400 Like, well, I believe in women's rights.

00:05:58.620 Well, how about a man who identifies as a woman?

00:06:01.360 Shouldn't she have the same rights?

00:06:03.280 Well, yes, under the constitution, if you're a U.S. citizen,

00:06:06.160 you get protected by the constitution and so on.

00:06:08.460 But what about competing against women in women's divisions in sports?

00:06:11.960 Well, no, you can't just have all rights.

00:06:15.180 Because there's conflicting rights.

00:06:16.520 The rights of women to compete against other women

00:06:18.500 and the rights of trans to compete maybe in their own division,

00:06:21.840 something like that.

00:06:22.540 The problem at the moment is I think there's not enough trans people

00:06:26.820 in either direction to fill a sports division.

00:06:31.800 You know, can I say something that says I've been thinking about that lately.

00:06:34.260 I agree with you.

00:06:34.960 I totally agree with what you just said.

00:06:37.980 But the thing that bothers me is,

00:06:41.220 okay, so there's not enough trans girls to fill a division

00:06:44.920 or fill a track team, what have you.

00:06:47.140 Well, why do the biological girls always have to suffer?

00:06:49.960 So what that means is somebody who's going to run is going to suffer a little.

00:06:54.180 Because if the trans girls run against the biological girls, the cis girls,

00:06:58.540 the biological girls are going to suffer.

00:07:00.780 They're going to lose, as we've seen many times.

00:07:02.920 Right.

00:07:04.000 If they have to run in their own league,

00:07:05.920 if the trans girls have to run in their own league against, you know,

00:07:08.180 one other person, the trans girls aren't going to like it

00:07:11.300 because they don't have enough people to run against.

00:07:13.280 If they have to run as biological boys,

00:07:15.260 they're not going to like it because they say they're not boys

00:07:17.420 and they'll probably lose more of those races.

00:07:19.620 But in every one of these instances,

00:07:21.560 we always side with the biological girls must suffer.

00:07:24.840 They are the ones who will take it on the chin.

00:07:26.460 And by the way, if you offer any objection as their mom,

00:07:29.060 as the girls themselves, you're a bigot.

00:07:31.300 I was like, that's what's so irritating about the discussion right now.

00:07:35.440 Yeah, exactly.

00:07:36.280 And people get confused about whatever the science says about X and rights,

00:07:41.460 which are two separate issues.

00:07:42.840 Even if, you know, there seems to be this push,

00:07:45.320 like there has to be a large number of trans people

00:07:47.900 in order for us to take their rights seriously.

00:07:50.980 And that's mistaken.

00:07:52.400 It wouldn't matter if there's just one person in the entire country.

00:07:55.000 They deserve the same rights as everybody else under the Constitution.

00:07:58.680 But again, then you end up in these rights conflicts.

00:08:01.140 Just say something like the abortion issue,

00:08:03.020 the rights of the fetus to live,

00:08:04.740 the rights of the mother to choose.

00:08:06.320 You know, well, there's no scientific correct answer to that.

00:08:09.700 It's a political issue.

00:08:10.680 At some point, you just have to say, this is what we've decided politically.

00:08:13.960 We're going to allow or disallow.

00:08:15.980 And that's just the way it goes.

00:08:17.920 And so with trans, again, you have this kind of conflicting,

00:08:21.220 you know, scientific evidence comes out that says,

00:08:24.400 well, male to female trans at whatever age,

00:08:30.480 you know, even at puberty or even before,

00:08:33.700 they still have a distinct physical advantage.

00:08:36.340 That's what the evidence looks like now.

00:08:38.220 But people get confused and think,

00:08:39.480 oh, no, that means they're not going to have any rights

00:08:41.380 under the Constitution and you're a bigot.

00:08:43.000 No, no, that's not what it means.

00:08:45.600 Again, you can't just have any rights anytime for anything.

00:08:49.420 That's not what rights mean.

00:08:51.260 You know, so much of what it means to live in a democracy

00:08:54.220 is that we have these conflicting rights

00:08:56.020 and we have to vote on it or debate about it or argue about it.

00:09:00.040 And then, you know, then we settle in and see how it goes

00:09:02.460 and then have another election and rerun the experiment again

00:09:05.080 and see how it goes.

00:09:05.720 We're in the middle of one of those with the trans issue.

00:09:08.540 It's good that, I mean, like you raise the issue of abortion

00:09:11.460 and mothers and babies.

00:09:12.960 It's like, yeah, you got to look at both parties.

00:09:15.500 And I understand the law doesn't recognize rights for a baby

00:09:19.420 up until a certain point in viability right now.

00:09:22.100 But you are obviously considering the rights

00:09:26.020 or potential rights of both parties involved.

00:09:27.880 And it's the same with trans in a way,

00:09:30.320 because yes, we want to recognize trans rights,

00:09:33.060 but there's another party, cis girls or biological girls.

00:09:38.260 Cis, a lot of people don't know that term,

00:09:39.460 which is why I just keep trying to find another way of saying it.

00:09:41.300 CIS, cis girls means biological girls.

00:09:43.640 You're born a girl, you identify as a girl,

00:09:45.080 you never change it.

00:09:45.960 You're always a girl.

00:09:46.780 Anyway, it's like, great, I want to be supportive of trans girls,

00:09:49.820 but I also am supportive of biological girls

00:09:52.840 and their rights don't cease mattering just in my effort

00:09:56.180 to recognize the rights of trans girls.

00:09:58.400 What's so irritating?

00:09:59.700 And so I feel like so many people have been shamed into silence

00:10:02.260 because they don't want to be called biggest.

00:10:03.760 They don't want to seem like they're unsupportive.

00:10:05.820 What about the other party?

00:10:07.620 The other party has rights too that need to be exercised,

00:10:10.420 stood up for and so on.

00:10:12.260 It's revealing that most of the trans sports issues

00:10:16.600 are male transitioning to female and competing in women's sports,

00:10:20.340 not the other way around, right?

00:10:22.840 Because it would be much harder to go from female to male

00:10:25.860 and go, okay, now I'm going to compete in track and field

00:10:27.980 or weightlifting or cycling or whatever.

00:10:30.280 Cycling is my sport.

00:10:31.320 And there is a huge difference.

00:10:33.140 There's a reason we have women's divisions.

00:10:35.000 It just wouldn't be fair.

00:10:35.960 I mean, Serena Williams herself,

00:10:37.620 the greatest tennis player of all time,

00:10:39.540 says she wouldn't beat the top 100 men in the men's division.

00:10:43.800 Or even college athletes.

00:10:45.120 Even the top college male players could probably be.

00:10:48.180 Right, right, right.

00:10:49.720 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:50.180 So, you know, again, conflicting rights,

00:10:53.040 you have to draw the line somewhere.

00:10:55.140 Now, in the abortion issue, you mentioned that.

00:10:56.860 There is a scientific element in terms of what the law follows.

00:10:59.860 It is, to what extent can a conscious creature suffer?

00:11:03.460 So, you know, the law has kind of decided,

00:11:05.580 well, by the end of the second trimester close to it,

00:11:08.740 you know, we're going to draw the line there.

00:11:10.820 There's no scientist would say,

00:11:12.320 yes, that's the perfect, you know,

00:11:13.600 day 163, hour 12,

00:11:16.180 that's when, you know, a fetus becomes a baby or a person.

00:11:19.960 You know, you just have,

00:11:20.680 the law has to just draw the line and have a category.

00:11:23.560 Well, what's the viability?

00:11:24.780 When can the baby survive outside the home?

00:11:27.960 That's right.

00:11:28.700 So you have something like when Lacey Peterson

00:11:30.420 was murdered by her husband and she was pregnant,

00:11:32.860 I think in her third trimester,

00:11:34.420 I think it was a double homicide.

00:11:35.360 She was eight months, yeah.

00:11:36.180 Yeah, so, you know, so there we,

00:11:39.420 I think the law has followed track pretty well,

00:11:42.780 the science on that.

00:11:44.260 And that's what I like to see us do

00:11:45.840 in terms of, you know,

00:11:46.840 using science to help advance moral progress

00:11:50.800 in legal and democratic systems like this.

00:11:54.920 You know, what does the science say?

00:11:56.560 But at some point, you know,

00:11:58.040 we're not going to be satisfied with the science

00:12:00.060 and then we have to just, it's just pure politics.

00:12:02.880 So, well, yes, correct.

00:12:05.080 But I will say on the abortion issue,

00:12:07.720 I think it's kind of the opposite of what you said.

00:12:10.320 The science says that's a life.

00:12:12.940 I mean, there's no question that life begins

00:12:14.320 at the moment that the embryo is formed, right?

00:12:17.980 That the sperm and the egg unite to form a zygote.

00:12:21.020 That is the beginning of life,

00:12:23.040 as any scientist would have to admit.

00:12:25.100 But we've changed the question, right?

00:12:27.300 If that were the relevant question,

00:12:29.060 can you abort something, you know, that has begun life?

00:12:33.520 Abortion would be illegal everywhere.

00:12:34.740 We have a judicially imposed test

00:12:37.520 of when does viability begin?

00:12:39.860 And that too can be answered,

00:12:41.900 not with total certainty, but with relative certainty.

00:12:45.160 And it puts the date much later.

00:12:47.180 And this goes to the heart

00:12:48.240 of what we've been debating all along, right?

00:12:49.640 Like, what should be the test?

00:12:50.980 So the people who are pro-life

00:12:52.000 don't want the Supreme Court involved in this at all.

00:12:54.480 But they certainly would like the test

00:12:55.800 to be moved a lot sooner.

00:12:56.920 They don't like viability.

00:12:57.940 And they would say, it's a life, it's a life.

00:12:59.260 And so I think as a Catholic,

00:13:00.300 this is what we wrestle with all the time.

00:13:01.940 Because I think an honest person and a scientific one

00:13:04.560 would tell you life begins at conception.

00:13:07.400 And then it's a question of, okay,

00:13:08.940 so how could you be in favor of abortion after that point?

00:13:11.540 Because you'd have to admit you're extinguishing a life.

00:13:13.980 Something we Catholics have been wrestling with

00:13:16.140 since 1970 and wrote.

00:13:18.040 If we look at it historically,

00:13:21.000 you know, men have always tried to lord it over women,

00:13:23.460 particularly their reproductive choices.

00:13:25.360 You know, that's kind of the natural state of things.

00:13:27.960 So moral progress for women's rights,

00:13:30.560 in part, came about from giving women more choices

00:13:33.820 over their reproductive choices that they wanted to make.

00:13:38.260 And so at some point you have, again, a conflict.

00:13:41.560 Yes, the moment of conception is a good place

00:13:43.980 to draw the line.

00:13:44.760 But, you know, is a little packet of 16 cells

00:13:49.480 the same as an eight-month fetus?

00:13:51.880 No.

00:13:52.620 You know, there's a huge continuum difference.

00:13:54.580 At some place, there's a qualitative difference.

00:13:57.460 And, well, I mean, this is a complex issue.

00:13:59.540 But if I was going to steel man the pro-life position,

00:14:02.220 because I'm pro-choice,

00:14:03.080 I would say, you know,

00:14:05.420 that women that want to have the baby,

00:14:07.540 the moment they get pregnant,

00:14:08.660 they're excited.

00:14:09.360 They talk about my baby.

00:14:11.220 You know, they don't talk about,

00:14:12.180 oh, it's fetal tissue in there.

00:14:13.700 You know, it's, or it's a medical procedure.

00:14:16.640 You know, they use different language.

00:14:18.320 So I will acknowledge that for sure.

00:14:20.560 But these are hard issues.

00:14:21.880 I would rather give women more choices

00:14:24.980 for the many reasons they get pregnant

00:14:27.680 when they don't want to be.

00:14:29.280 And I'd rather shift the conversation to,

00:14:31.440 well, what's the problem we need to solve?

00:14:33.220 The problem is unwanted pregnancies, not abortions.

00:14:36.800 And what can we do to decrease

00:14:38.780 the number of unwanted pregnancies?

00:14:40.140 Well, economic empowerment of women,

00:14:42.920 you know, accessibility to,

00:14:44.620 you know, to birth control,

00:14:48.100 more freedom, more choices, more autonomy.

00:14:51.180 That's what drives women to have fewer babies.

00:14:54.120 That is to have fewer unwanted pregnancies.

00:14:57.600 And there, I think we can find a solution

00:14:59.840 between conservatives and liberals

00:15:01.160 or pro-choice and pro-life people

00:15:03.760 is that let's work toward the common problem

00:15:06.280 of getting, of lowering the number

00:15:08.020 of unwanted pregnancies.

00:15:10.280 Yeah, it is.

00:15:11.400 It is such a tricky issue.

00:15:12.740 And I generally try to steer clear of abortion

00:15:14.720 because I just have,

00:15:16.680 I've got my own views on it,

00:15:18.200 but I have so many people I love

00:15:19.620 who are on differing sides of it

00:15:22.800 that I just,

00:15:23.620 it's something I've never sort of spoken about publicly

00:15:26.000 in terms of my own view.

00:15:27.020 I just, it's too fraught

00:15:28.920 and it's too personal.

00:15:31.060 I will say this,

00:15:31.940 having had three babies now,

00:15:33.700 there's, I don't think there's many women out there

00:15:35.840 who when you see that beating heartbeat

00:15:37.300 at the eight week mark

00:15:38.520 would say that's not a life.

00:15:39.860 I mean, it's, it's not a viable baby,

00:15:42.280 but it's, you know,

00:15:43.400 you see that heartbeat, boy, oh boy,

00:15:45.000 it can change your worldview pretty damn fast.

00:15:48.700 Okay.

00:15:49.160 So let's talk,

00:15:49.720 it's on the subject of health.

00:15:51.460 Let's talk a little bit about the pandemic

00:15:53.280 because this is one of the reasons

00:15:54.160 I wanted to talk to you.

00:15:55.820 I have seen,

00:15:57.820 people are going nuts.

00:15:59.600 People are going nuts

00:16:00.920 in the wake of this pandemic.

00:16:02.280 Now we're,

00:16:02.820 I don't know how many months in,

00:16:04.080 but initially I thought it was the lockdowns.

00:16:06.900 It's not the lockdowns anymore

00:16:08.200 because that's now we're a year plus past the lockdowns.

00:16:11.600 The, the mandatory masking,

00:16:13.320 the mandatory vaccine,

00:16:15.300 the thumb of big government on you,

00:16:17.540 wherever you turn,

00:16:18.940 you know,

00:16:19.260 society turning man against man,

00:16:22.660 woman against woman, right?

00:16:23.680 Like the pressure's on to do this thing

00:16:25.780 or to not do this other thing.

00:16:27.480 And I am seeing it in my own life.

00:16:30.460 People are going nuts.

00:16:32.000 They're changing in ways that are disturbing to me

00:16:35.080 as somebody who still has a foothold in reality

00:16:37.320 and isn't particularly ideological.

00:16:39.000 And I'm sort of like,

00:16:40.180 come back,

00:16:41.140 come back like Rose on the little door

00:16:43.520 in the Titanic waters to Jack,

00:16:45.900 come back.

00:16:47.220 Or to the boat that left

00:16:48.700 when she was blowing the whistle.

00:16:50.340 So why,

00:16:51.380 as somebody who studies conspiracies

00:16:53.600 and understands the effect

00:16:55.080 of things like pandemic have on a people,

00:16:57.400 what's happening?

00:16:59.140 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:59.980 Cue that Titanic music at this moment.

00:17:04.280 Right.

00:17:04.800 Well, I think there's,

00:17:05.480 there's several different issues going on here.

00:17:08.040 Yeah.

00:17:08.300 The pandemic has kind of,

00:17:09.600 you know,

00:17:10.500 jolted people into different levels of irrationality.

00:17:13.700 I mean,

00:17:14.500 these are,

00:17:15.420 this is a collective action problem.

00:17:16.780 What can we all do together to solve this problem?

00:17:19.380 We do this all the time.

00:17:20.560 You know,

00:17:20.700 we want an interstate highway.

00:17:22.080 So we all gladly pay that.

00:17:23.880 Not gladly,

00:17:24.560 but we all pay our taxes.

00:17:26.300 You know,

00:17:26.540 we agree to drive on the right side of the road

00:17:28.320 so that I'm free to not worry about you

00:17:30.340 coming down the same lane as me

00:17:32.040 in the opposite direction.

00:17:33.980 You know,

00:17:34.420 we give up all kinds of freedom

00:17:35.740 so that we can be even freer of risks.

00:17:39.100 And that's normal.

00:17:40.080 You know,

00:17:40.240 seatbelts,

00:17:40.780 everybody wears seatbelts now.

00:17:41.980 And you don't hear any libertarians,

00:17:44.060 you know,

00:17:44.260 well,

00:17:44.520 maybe there's a few,

00:17:45.640 but crying out,

00:17:46.560 you know,

00:17:46.720 hey,

00:17:46.880 I should be free to not wear a seatbelt

00:17:48.460 or,

00:17:48.800 or motorcyclists.

00:17:49.900 I should be free not to have to wear a helmet.

00:17:51.580 Yeah.

00:17:51.820 Well,

00:17:51.980 I should be free of,

00:17:53.980 you know,

00:17:54.140 having to pay for your healthcare

00:17:55.560 when you,

00:17:56.320 you know,

00:17:56.600 crack your head open on your motorcycle.

00:17:58.220 I mean,

00:17:58.320 these are common things that used to be debated,

00:18:00.780 but we're,

00:18:01.620 we're acceptable.

00:18:02.780 We accept that now,

00:18:03.900 or the MMR vaccine,

00:18:05.320 you know,

00:18:05.900 parents routinely get their kids vaccinated.

00:18:08.700 With MMR vaccines who will then in five minutes

00:18:11.460 later say,

00:18:12.040 yeah,

00:18:12.180 but I don't trust the COVID-19 vaccines.

00:18:14.960 Well,

00:18:15.620 they're pretty,

00:18:16.560 they're pretty good.

00:18:17.320 I mean,

00:18:17.580 you know,

00:18:17.880 this is probably the best vaccine ever invented.

00:18:21.220 And,

00:18:21.740 you know,

00:18:22.640 so it's,

00:18:23.080 it's a matter of in part getting used to this

00:18:26.180 kind of change.

00:18:26.780 Now,

00:18:27.140 to what extent should the government enforce it?

00:18:29.760 I mean,

00:18:29.980 what I've been seeing is government really doesn't

00:18:31.740 have to do anything independent companies.

00:18:34.480 And like the university where I teach Chapman,

00:18:36.760 they just sent out an email saying,

00:18:38.560 you got to be double backs.

00:18:39.940 And if you're not,

00:18:40.560 you have to show your exemption and either way,

00:18:42.480 you have to wear a mask,

00:18:43.680 everybody.

00:18:45.140 you know,

00:18:45.520 and the government's not telling them they have to do

00:18:47.360 that.

00:18:47.620 They're just doing that for probably their lawyers

00:18:49.560 probably said,

00:18:50.160 Hey,

00:18:50.260 you got to do this just to protect ourselves.

00:18:51.940 And okay.

00:18:52.960 All right.

00:18:53.280 That's the rules.

00:18:53.920 And that's the rules.

00:18:54.760 And so I,

00:18:56.020 I,

00:18:56.240 I'm not crazy about government mandated vaccinations

00:19:00.560 or masks.

00:19:01.620 I think the market can kind of solve the problem

00:19:04.700 as we go along.

00:19:06.340 A second thing,

00:19:07.420 I think on that free,

00:19:08.440 the freedom issue,

00:19:09.120 people get confused about this.

00:19:11.200 Again,

00:19:11.680 it's what you get used to.

00:19:13.160 And then there's also an element of injecting yourself

00:19:16.600 with an element,

00:19:17.420 a piece of the thing that you don't want to get,

00:19:19.760 because that's what inoculation used to mean.

00:19:21.760 But these vaccines are not part of it.

00:19:24.340 You're not getting a little piece of the SARS-CoV-2

00:19:26.800 virus that,

00:19:28.020 that jolts your body into being inoculated against the

00:19:31.980 actual disease.

00:19:32.580 It's not like that at all.

00:19:34.260 It's a,

00:19:34.660 you know,

00:19:35.060 and RNA vaccine and that's different.

00:19:39.120 So,

00:19:39.440 and people aren't quite used to that as well.

00:19:42.520 The,

00:19:43.000 the break at the moment appears to be,

00:19:45.060 you know,

00:19:45.900 more Republicans or vaccine hesitant than Democrats and more

00:19:49.620 of the kind of Republican dominated,

00:19:51.600 United States are,

00:19:52.460 or have lower rates of vaccination and higher rates of the

00:19:55.480 breakthrough Delta variant.

00:19:57.560 So there,

00:19:58.520 it's basically Republicans and minorities.

00:20:01.360 I mean,

00:20:02.060 that those are the,

00:20:02.740 the vaccine.

00:20:04.140 So I'm encouraged to see prominent public conservatives,

00:20:07.740 people like Ben Shapiro,

00:20:09.180 for example,

00:20:09.640 who a lot of younger people look up to,

00:20:11.660 you know,

00:20:12.260 insisting vaccines are definitely the way to go.

00:20:15.040 And you know,

00:20:16.440 just more people like that,

00:20:17.940 that would speak out and say,

00:20:18.980 just get the vaccine,

00:20:19.760 just do it.

00:20:20.880 And there's been pretty much every day.

00:20:23.000 There's some new story.

00:20:24.220 I pretty much watch ABC world news.

00:20:26.740 And they have one pretty much every night of some conservative line in bed,

00:20:30.080 you know,

00:20:30.980 hacking out his,

00:20:31.880 his interview with COVID-19 saying,

00:20:33.920 I didn't get vaccinated because I'm a strong conservative,

00:20:36.260 or I'm a libertarian.

00:20:38.120 And you know,

00:20:39.500 then they're dead the next day and they orphan their children.

00:20:42.000 It's terrible.

00:20:42.640 I mean,

00:20:42.840 just get the vaccine.

00:20:43.900 It's been unfortunate that it's gotten,

00:20:44.780 it's gotten some sort of partisan affiliation.

00:20:47.100 You know,

00:20:47.200 like you're,

00:20:47.700 you're tough or you're anti-government or you're,

00:20:50.560 you're a Republican.

00:20:51.600 If you're not going to,

00:20:52.840 you know,

00:20:53.020 like if you're not going to get the vaccine,

00:20:54.580 that's all bullshit.

00:20:55.420 This is a health decision.

00:20:56.740 This doesn't have to do with politics.

00:20:58.300 However,

00:20:58.740 there's a lot of reasons we got here.

00:21:01.140 As you know,

00:21:01.700 it's like,

00:21:02.020 you know,

00:21:02.600 Biden,

00:21:03.620 Harris,

00:21:04.980 Andrew Cuomo,

00:21:05.920 all these people express some vaccine hesitancy while Trump was in the

00:21:09.380 office.

00:21:10.020 And you can't just undo that with a magic wand.

00:21:12.600 And I think,

00:21:13.060 I think in internet censorship has had a lot to do with it.

00:21:16.860 The more you tell people that they can't have access to people having

00:21:19.840 skeptical discussions about it,

00:21:21.380 the more they're like,

00:21:22.800 I'm even more skeptical than ever.

00:21:24.540 Right?

00:21:24.720 Like,

00:21:25.240 what are you hiding?

00:21:26.160 You must be hiding some information I need to know.

00:21:28.340 Therefore,

00:21:28.520 I definitely am not going to get it.

00:21:30.240 And then I just think that there's the natural,

00:21:32.540 okay,

00:21:32.700 it's new.

00:21:33.260 Obviously there's been no long-term studies that we can't,

00:21:36.620 no one can dispute that.

00:21:38.340 So I'm going to let somebody else be the Guinea pig.

00:21:40.700 So I do think that there are good reasons why somebody would be hesitant and

00:21:45.460 say,

00:21:45.900 I don't know,

00:21:47.380 but I also think it's an extraordinary time.

00:21:50.660 It's extraordinary virus.

00:21:52.280 And you sort of have to do the risk benefit calculation.

00:21:55.100 You know,

00:21:55.260 it's like COVID too can cause a lot of havoc in your life.

00:21:58.340 It can take your life.

00:21:59.460 Even if you're 50,

00:22:01.220 like I am,

00:22:01.760 the odds are very,

00:22:02.320 very low,

00:22:02.820 but it can.

00:22:04.060 And you don't know what,

00:22:04.900 uh,

00:22:05.980 you don't know what the long-term effects of COVID are going to be.

00:22:08.200 You don't know what the long-term of the vaccine is.

00:22:09.760 You don't know what the long-term of COVID is going to be.

00:22:11.980 Could be,

00:22:12.580 you know,

00:22:13.120 40 years.

00:22:13.880 We find out it causes some sort of dementia,

00:22:16.920 right?

00:22:17.120 The actual COVID.

00:22:18.020 I don't know.

00:22:18.320 I'm just making things up right now.

00:22:19.500 But my point is there are risks both ways.

00:22:22.360 And,

00:22:22.420 and the vaccine at least minimizes your risk of death or hospitalization.

00:22:27.720 That's right.

00:22:28.380 It's,

00:22:28.640 it's assessing the,

00:22:30.060 the,

00:22:30.420 the different kinds of risks and we should be better at this as part of our,

00:22:34.040 you know,

00:22:34.200 critical thinking program is teach people how to think about probabilities and risk taking.

00:22:38.840 Yes.

00:22:39.000 The COVID-19 vaccine is far less riskier than getting COVID itself.

00:22:43.780 And so you just,

00:22:44.720 you gotta do,

00:22:45.440 you gotta make a choice one way or the other.

00:22:47.180 So,

00:22:47.660 um,

00:22:48.540 and yeah,

00:22:49.080 of course,

00:22:49.620 uh,

00:22:50.120 you know,

00:22:50.320 we don't know what the long-term consequences is and there's,

00:22:52.740 there's enough uncertainty,

00:22:54.060 uh,

00:22:55.480 and issues in the scientific process itself,

00:22:58.800 historically,

00:22:59.400 uh,

00:23:00.640 that people can be what I call constructively conspiracist.

00:23:04.300 Uh,

00:23:04.860 you know,

00:23:05.060 my next big book is on why people believe conspiracy theories.

00:23:07.540 One reason,

00:23:08.100 one of my three big reasons is what I call constructive conspiracism.

00:23:11.440 There's enough real conspiracies in the past,

00:23:14.160 uh,

00:23:14.960 you know,

00:23:15.160 Watergate or Iran-Contra or,

00:23:17.760 you know,

00:23:17.880 the assassination of Lincoln or the assassination of Franz Ferdinand that triggered the first

00:23:22.680 world war.

00:23:23.020 These are all conspiracies,

00:23:24.180 Volkswagen conspiring to cheat the emission standards,

00:23:27.380 you know,

00:23:27.600 that the Sackler family and big pharma,

00:23:30.060 uh,

00:23:30.600 you know,

00:23:30.860 scamming and conning people to make a profit.

00:23:33.480 There's enough examples of those that reasonable,

00:23:36.560 rational people can look at that and go,

00:23:38.940 yeah,

00:23:39.120 why should I trust big pharma?

00:23:40.980 Look,

00:23:41.340 look at this,

00:23:41.920 this,

00:23:42.140 and this,

00:23:42.520 or why should I trust this government agency or that big corporation?

00:23:46.220 And,

00:23:46.720 and that's a rational response.

00:23:48.800 So,

00:23:49.300 you know,

00:23:49.440 in each case you have to go,

00:23:50.540 okay,

00:23:50.820 that's right.

00:23:51.660 That could be,

00:23:52.580 uh,

00:23:53.280 mistaken.

00:23:53.940 There's could be a kind of conspiracy,

00:23:55.420 but,

00:23:56.000 but is it?

00:23:56.900 Because not all conspiracy theories are real.

00:23:58.900 You know,

00:23:59.100 most of them,

00:23:59.660 a majority of them probably not,

00:24:01.400 but enough of them are that,

00:24:03.000 you know,

00:24:03.660 it,

00:24:03.800 it pays to be,

00:24:05.180 uh,

00:24:05.560 you know,

00:24:05.840 precautionary,

00:24:06.860 take employee,

00:24:07.880 the precautionary principle.

00:24:08.860 I'm going to wait and see.

00:24:10.300 And that,

00:24:10.960 you know,

00:24:11.100 that's not an irrational response.

00:24:12.980 Well,

00:24:13.360 that's what's so annoying about the vaccine mandates.

00:24:15.560 I mean,

00:24:15.660 I'll tell you that we just got one handed down in our,

00:24:17.820 in our boy's school.

00:24:19.160 So I have an 11 year old boy and a,

00:24:21.600 an eight year old boy,

00:24:22.580 and thankfully I don't have to make the decision just yet,

00:24:26.500 but my 11 year old is going to be 12 in September.

00:24:28.460 So it's coming.

00:24:29.840 Um,

00:24:30.800 anyway,

00:24:31.080 since the Pfizer vaccine was approved on a,

00:24:33.320 you know,

00:24:33.560 more permanent basis.

00:24:34.400 Now it's no longer the emergency authorization.

00:24:36.220 The school just handed down a vaccine mandate for all boys who are 16 and up.

00:24:40.920 And if you don't get your 16 or older child,

00:24:44.020 the vaccine,

00:24:44.880 you have to leave the school.

00:24:47.540 I'm like,

00:24:48.400 this is kind of crazy.

00:24:50.400 Now,

00:24:50.620 you know,

00:24:51.560 my 16 year old,

00:24:52.820 who's at virtually no risk from COVID at all.

00:24:56.760 Um,

00:24:57.200 and maybe you have a family like mine where you have a long history of heart

00:25:00.440 disease and you're a little worried about that heart inflammation side effect

00:25:03.420 coming and how can it,

00:25:04.520 how's it going to affect my boy and how long does it last in my boy?

00:25:06.940 All that stuff.

00:25:07.680 Like that to me is infuriating and,

00:25:10.660 and makes me feel that thing I was talking about with the thumb of big

00:25:13.660 government.

00:25:14.000 You're like,

00:25:14.480 get off,

00:25:15.040 get,

00:25:15.340 get off my lawn.

00:25:16.480 I get out of my business.

00:25:17.820 This is a decision for my pediatrician,

00:25:19.860 my son and me,

00:25:21.040 my husband.

00:25:21.840 You're right.

00:25:23.220 Right.

00:25:23.580 But if you're the director of the school,

00:25:25.580 let's say it's a private school and you have lawyers going,

00:25:28.400 Hey,

00:25:28.880 you know,

00:25:29.220 if something bad happens and one of our kids died,

00:25:31.380 we're going to get sued.

00:25:32.620 So we better,

00:25:33.740 you know,

00:25:34.120 take all the precautions we can.

00:25:36.400 Uh,

00:25:36.640 so you kind of see it from their perspective.

00:25:38.480 I'm going to sue their asses.

00:25:39.740 If God forbid,

00:25:40.240 anything happens to my kid from taking that vaccine.

00:25:42.320 I will be like a dog with a bone.

00:25:45.440 Up next,

00:25:46.460 our masks becoming a religion for some people in this country.

00:25:50.560 We'll go there one minute away.

00:25:53.580 I have the vaccine.

00:25:58.460 My,

00:25:58.620 my audience knows I,

00:25:59.520 I like the vaccine.

00:26:00.960 I think the vaccine is a miracle.

00:26:02.780 I'm really proud of us.

00:26:04.160 I think I,

00:26:04.840 we should be proud of our American ingenuity.

00:26:07.360 You know,

00:26:07.780 our,

00:26:08.440 we're not good at taking like instructions.

00:26:12.360 We're not good at following mandatory rules.

00:26:14.940 That's not in the American spirit.

00:26:16.620 That's why there's been pushback on like quarantining and,

00:26:19.300 you know,

00:26:19.380 the lockdowns and all that.

00:26:20.480 And now the vaccine and then the mask hesitancy,

00:26:22.440 but but we're very good at innovation.

00:26:25.580 We're very good.

00:26:26.680 Americans are the ones who find the way through tough problems.

00:26:29.480 And it's no accident.

00:26:30.340 Our companies came up with these miracle vaccines and we should be proud of

00:26:33.780 them.

00:26:34.840 It's not to say that vaccine hesitancy is,

00:26:38.360 is always irrational,

00:26:40.420 you know,

00:26:40.600 but I would say,

00:26:41.820 like you said,

00:26:43.560 you get the vaccine,

00:26:44.680 you know,

00:26:44.900 unless your doctor says,

00:26:46.220 tells you you have a medical reason not to get it.

00:26:47.900 You have a,

00:26:48.360 you have a greater risk from COVID,

00:26:50.820 especially if you're a little older than you do from the vaccine.

00:26:54.480 But I also see the craziness on the other side,

00:26:57.600 Michael.

00:26:57.940 I don't,

00:26:58.300 these like the crazy,

00:27:00.280 crazy mask Nazis are driving me insane.

00:27:07.440 It's very sketchy whether the masks are really an effective tool at stopping

00:27:11.260 COVID in particular with our kids,

00:27:12.660 but with everybody,

00:27:13.600 I mean,

00:27:14.460 versus social distancing and,

00:27:16.500 you know,

00:27:16.700 being outside and all that,

00:27:18.320 which we understand and is scientifically backed up.

00:27:21.360 But I am so sick of people looking at people who choose not to wear masks,

00:27:24.840 especially outside as though they're running around like lepers,

00:27:28.780 rubbing their skin against people.

00:27:30.280 And I,

00:27:31.560 the craziness is there too.

00:27:33.900 Oh,

00:27:34.020 absolutely.

00:27:34.580 Yes.

00:27:34.880 Well here I'm in Southern California and Southern Santa Barbara area.

00:27:37.880 I've noticed that the,

00:27:38.940 they just changed it last week.

00:27:40.360 And like I went into target with my five-year-old headed straight for the toy

00:27:44.420 section.

00:27:45.280 And then we didn't have masks and no one said anything.

00:27:47.760 And I thought,

00:27:48.320 Oh,

00:27:48.560 okay,

00:27:48.860 maybe they're chilling out.

00:27:49.820 I mean,

00:27:49.960 my position at the moment is could change is that,

00:27:52.140 you know,

00:27:52.620 just get everybody vaccinated and let's just get,

00:27:55.180 get back to normal.

00:27:56.060 And just,

00:27:56.580 just see what happens for a couple of months.

00:27:58.460 Just everybody go back to normal.

00:28:00.140 But you know,

00:28:01.520 again,

00:28:02.140 precautionary principle,

00:28:03.220 I was going to do this as of last week.

00:28:05.160 I tell my students at my class,

00:28:07.360 it starts next week.

00:28:08.580 You know,

00:28:08.800 if you want to wear a mask,

00:28:09.680 fine.

00:28:09.960 If you don't,

00:28:10.620 don't,

00:28:10.940 don't worry about it.

00:28:11.620 I'm not going to wear one.

00:28:12.800 I'm double backs.

00:28:13.760 I assume you all are.

00:28:14.680 Well,

00:28:15.160 you know,

00:28:15.400 yesterday the Dean said,

00:28:16.680 Nope,

00:28:17.220 if they're not masked,

00:28:18.040 you've got to kick them out of the class.

00:28:19.280 Like,

00:28:19.440 Oh man.

00:28:20.380 Okay.

00:28:21.820 And this is a private university.

00:28:23.500 And I know,

00:28:24.420 I know.

00:28:25.120 I just like,

00:28:25.860 so that that's also science denial,

00:28:28.340 right?

00:28:28.640 Because we actually don't have any good scientific study to support the use of masks

00:28:32.560 right now.

00:28:32.960 There's a great piece in New York magazine taking a hard look at the masks just last

00:28:36.520 week.

00:28:36.820 It was,

00:28:36.920 and it was really like they haven't,

00:28:39.060 they don't have the proof that masks work.

00:28:41.120 They just,

00:28:41.580 it's just sort of like,

00:28:42.300 okay.

00:28:42.560 And look,

00:28:43.160 I get it.

00:28:43.580 There's a sign up in our pediatrician's office saying like,

00:28:45.660 some guy's about to pee on your leg.

00:28:48.120 Would you rather he have his underwear and his pants on or have nothing on?

00:28:51.920 I understand.

00:28:53.700 There's some prevention.

00:28:54.700 I've heard that analogy.

00:28:55.560 Droplets coming your way.

00:28:56.820 Right.

00:28:57.280 But to mandate somebody put a piece,

00:29:00.680 like a fabric across half of their face,

00:29:03.740 everywhere they go is such an imposition on one's freedom that I think you'd have to have

00:29:10.220 extraordinary proof it's going to prevent the virus.

00:29:12.240 And there isn't.

00:29:12.780 And in fact,

00:29:13.220 people have said the opposite from Fauci to this top white house guy who just left,

00:29:16.940 who was running the pandemic response,

00:29:18.940 admitting that these cloth masks do nothing.

00:29:21.600 So I just think that back to my original point,

00:29:24.680 people are going a little crazy and they read the quote science to affirm their preexisting

00:29:29.500 worldviews or to sort of reach the outcome they want anyway.

00:29:32.880 Right.

00:29:33.080 Like I don't want a mask.

00:29:34.820 So I refuse to see anything,

00:29:37.240 any of the mask information as validating masks and same with the vaccine one way or the

00:29:42.000 other.

00:29:42.220 And I just think like people are in a weakened position right now.

00:29:46.800 They're in a weakened position.

00:29:47.860 There's something about a pandemic and feeling insecure financially, physically,

00:29:53.820 just in all the weird ways we have been.

00:29:57.240 That's making people not their strongest selves emotionally, mentally.

00:30:00.720 You tell me.

00:30:03.200 Yeah, that's right.

00:30:04.240 And a second factor in conspiracism that I write about is proxy conspiracism.

00:30:09.820 That is that the particular conspiracy that you're talking about, let's say it's something

00:30:13.720 crazy like QAnon, whether people really believe it or not is kind of beside the point.

00:30:19.640 They it's a proxy for something else.

00:30:22.440 You know, I don't trust big government agencies.

00:30:24.560 I don't trust big corporations.

00:30:25.880 I don't trust those scientists or those big pharma.

00:30:29.120 You know, they're always cheating the system and that kind of thing.

00:30:31.200 And so even if I say show you there's no pedophile ring at the out of the comet ping pong

00:30:38.740 pizzeria in Washington, D.C., and there's no basement there.

00:30:42.400 And, you know, the one guy, Edgar Welch, who went there with his gun, you know, was quite

00:30:46.100 surprised to find that there's no pedophile ring there.

00:30:49.100 But most people didn't do that.

00:30:50.920 They just kind of.

00:30:51.800 Yeah.

00:30:52.100 I mean, polls show something like a third of Republicans and even maybe a fifth of Democrats

00:30:57.060 think there might be something to the QAnon conspiracy theory, you know, and and I find

00:31:01.840 it hard to believe that anybody could believe this.

00:31:03.740 So I think it's a proxy for something else.

00:31:06.620 Like, yeah, even if I show you that there's no pedophile ring there, you're not going to turn

00:31:10.900 around, vote for Hillary.

00:31:11.700 You're never going to vote for Hillary.

00:31:13.380 Right.

00:31:13.780 This was always a proxy for I don't trust Democrats or I don't trust liberals or those far left

00:31:19.140 progressives.

00:31:20.060 And and so the you know, it's kind of a stand in the analogy I make in my forthcoming book

00:31:25.340 is the OJ trial.

00:31:26.540 In a way, you know, Johnny Cochran and the rest, they floated a conspiracy theory that

00:31:31.780 that the LAPD planted the bloody glove and the blood splatter and so forth, because that's

00:31:37.260 what LAPD do.

00:31:39.320 You know, they're they're racist.

00:31:40.320 And, you know, the jury, for whatever reason, you know, bought that.

00:31:44.620 That's a kind of conspiracy theory.

00:31:46.540 But, you know, I was watching this ESPN series on OJ, which wasn't really about OJ.

00:31:52.060 It was about the African-American community in Southern California, particularly Los Angeles

00:31:56.520 from the 1950s on when they migrated from the South to L.A.

00:31:59.640 after the Second World War and then how the LAPD interacted with them.

00:32:04.200 And it's horrible.

00:32:05.260 It's just terrible.

00:32:06.260 I mean, everything that that an African-American today might say, you know, that that police

00:32:11.660 are racist and so on.

00:32:12.720 Well, they were and they used to plant evidence and things like that.

00:32:15.780 Now, by the 90s, that was no longer the case.

00:32:17.700 But it was a reasonable kind of a proxy conspiracy.

00:32:20.920 Yeah.

00:32:21.140 Yeah.

00:32:21.360 Whether OJ, he probably did it.

00:32:23.400 But, you know, but cops really do plant bloody gloves.

00:32:26.820 They really do plant evidence to get to get the who they think the perpetrator is.

00:32:31.300 And so I think a lot of OJ, but to indict the system.

00:32:35.840 Exactly.

00:32:36.480 Yeah, exactly.

00:32:37.340 So, you know, I think a lot of specific conspiracy theories, whether vaccines or masks or anything,

00:32:43.260 even if I go, look, well, here's the evidence showing you why vaccines work or whatever.

00:32:47.780 It's like that that isn't actually the point.

00:32:50.180 The point is something else.

00:32:51.460 You know, again, a lot of people don't trust science as a reliable institution to produce,

00:32:57.400 you know, reliable knowledge.

00:32:59.440 Well, why is that?

00:33:00.380 Well, you know, then they'll rattle off, well, Tuskegee and and, you know, nuclear weapons

00:33:04.520 or, you know, they'll have enough, you know, the replication crisis or fraud in science

00:33:10.640 where people make up the data, you know, just to advance their careers or whatever.

00:33:15.080 You know, I can counter all those.

00:33:16.400 But, you know, those are not completely crazy reasons to be a little skeptical of science

00:33:22.240 as an institution.

00:33:23.860 Well, and now, I mean, so science as an institution, I mean, right now, sadly, it's represented by

00:33:28.620 the face of Dr. Fauci, who has admitted to lying to us so many times.

00:33:33.820 He's reversed himself on so many things.

00:33:35.480 It's like, all right, Dr. Fauci, I'm sorry, but no, you if you're the face of science and

00:33:40.760 which he says of himself, if you attack him, he says you're attacking science.

00:33:45.060 Then, no, I'm out.

00:33:46.420 Then I guess I'm not scientific.

00:33:48.000 I don't believe we should not don't sacrifice your credibility.

00:33:50.860 And I accept that conclusion.

00:33:53.960 Right.

00:33:54.500 Yeah.

00:33:54.800 So, you know, part of the point of science is you don't it's not an argument from authority.

00:33:58.680 You know, no one's omniscient, not even Fauci.

00:34:02.160 And so, no, don't trust him, but trust the institution.

00:34:05.400 Don't believe any one particular climate scientist.

00:34:07.380 It's the entire climate science community that's very competitive.

00:34:10.880 They don't know each other.

00:34:11.740 They try to debunk each other.

00:34:12.940 They work in different fields.

00:34:14.960 And so my confidence is reasonably high on this particular issue that global warming is

00:34:19.500 real and primarily human caused, which is separate from is it going to be an existential

00:34:24.900 threat?

00:34:25.420 No, I don't think so.

00:34:27.020 So we can do something about it.

00:34:28.860 But but my confidence is is not a faith in science or any one particular scientist.

00:34:34.120 It's that it works pretty well when there's independent lines of inquiry and they all point

00:34:38.380 to the same conclusion.

00:34:40.600 Let me challenge you on that.

00:34:41.480 What about what we're hearing from the scientific, quote, scientific community on back to the

00:34:46.560 trans issue about the new standard of care is affirm, affirm, affirm, affirm.

00:34:50.300 It doesn't matter if it's a 14 year old kid, a 10 year old kid going in there saying,

00:34:53.220 I think I'm trans, even though if left alone between 70 and 85 percent of the kids will

00:34:57.560 grow out of it.

00:34:58.540 No, the new standard is to affirm you are trans and start talking about treatment options.

00:35:04.520 That's quote science.

00:35:05.580 That's coming down from the scientific community.

00:35:07.080 And it's bullshit.

00:35:09.140 It is.

00:35:09.980 It is bullshit.

00:35:10.640 I've looked at this pretty carefully after I had I had that Abigail Schreier on my podcast

00:35:15.280 and then I got a lot of pushback from my own people.

00:35:17.800 She's great.

00:35:18.420 Yeah.

00:35:18.720 Well, then they go, well, but the science says this and that mainly what you just said

00:35:22.580 about the affirmation.

00:35:23.700 And then if you go to the actual literature, if you read the abstracts only, it looks like

00:35:29.700 she misrepresented the science a little bit.

00:35:32.520 But if you actually read the papers, no, actually, she got it right.

00:35:35.220 That there is no evidence that affirming whatever it is the person says that they identify as

00:35:42.140 is not enough.

00:35:43.280 I mean, there has to be many, many more steps in between.

00:35:45.800 And really, the science is so new.

00:35:48.640 I mean, I think the analogy I make is it's like this is climate science in the 1970s or 80s.

00:35:53.340 We don't know.

00:35:54.680 I mean, we need another decade or two of research on this.

00:35:57.680 And, you know, I mean, we have no idea back to the transports, you know, to what extent

00:36:03.000 that you take testosterone blockers if you're a male to female trans person, say, in your

00:36:10.840 teens or early 20s, you go, OK, I'm going to block my testosterone and so forth.

00:36:15.820 We have no idea to what extent that's going to work.

00:36:18.980 I don't think it's going to work nearly enough to make you the equivalent of a female

00:36:23.280 athlete.

00:36:24.100 But, you know, some people say, well, yes, it does.

00:36:25.800 Here's this paper.

00:36:26.700 So you read the abstract.

00:36:27.720 It goes, yeah, it looks like it that supports your position.

00:36:30.160 But then you actually read the paper.

00:36:31.600 You go, well, no, actually, you know, the end was like 11 people.

00:36:35.380 It's just nothing.

00:36:36.000 And it was never replicated.

00:36:37.800 Right.

00:36:38.640 So, you know, you're probably aware of this.

00:36:41.400 Well, look what's happening now in the medical community, right?

00:36:42.640 Barry Weiss has been doing great stuff on her substack with this with, you know, you can

00:36:47.540 no longer refer to mothers.

00:36:48.660 It's birthing people.

00:36:49.920 And you'll get chastised in the medical schools these days if you actually assume biological

00:36:54.580 sex by looking at somebody.

00:36:56.520 I would argue that is all anti-scientific.

00:36:59.280 You can say my gender identity is different.

00:37:01.900 But like all that stuff undermines faith in science, a capital S, by the regular Joe Schmo

00:37:08.720 out there, you know, who's like, oh, I'm not trusting any medical community that tells

00:37:12.080 me a man's a woman, a woman's a man, you know, all that stuff.

00:37:15.100 I think it has real world consequences.

00:37:16.980 And I feel like maybe as a result, I think I am more sympathetic toward the people who

00:37:23.560 are vaccine skeptical than I hear in your voice.

00:37:26.080 But you tell me, you understand how all that collectively would make somebody say, I don't

00:37:30.400 trust science.

00:37:32.800 Yeah, that's what I mean by a proxy conspiracy.

00:37:35.600 You know, the specific one is a proxy for something larger.

00:37:38.160 And then they'll throw in examples like what you just gave, people who give birth.

00:37:42.400 If only we had a name for that, just a single word.

00:37:45.620 What could it be?

00:37:47.400 Yeah, that's, you know, that's just-

00:37:49.260 Oh, wait, that's offensive.

00:37:52.180 Well, so there again, people are confused.

00:37:54.280 And this is mostly coming from the far left or the progressive left or whatever you want

00:37:58.240 to call them.

00:37:58.860 And so centrists or people slightly on the right may look at that and go, well, this is what

00:38:02.760 liberals believe.

00:38:03.800 No, actually, most liberals don't believe that.

00:38:06.340 But, you know, centrists are just to the left of center.

00:38:09.740 So again, we need a much more granular spectrum of political positions because then it becomes

00:38:17.440 harder to lump people into those.

00:38:19.100 So although I'm socially liberal, as we started off with, I completely agree with you on all

00:38:24.640 those particular issues.

00:38:25.860 And it's not just that I'm an old white guy.

00:38:27.560 So, of course, I think that, no, you know, where's your evidence that, you know, that

00:38:32.480 if a fetus born with a penis and the doctor is standing there looking at it and has to

00:38:37.440 tick the box, male or female, and that it's pretty much random, he could just flip a coin

00:38:42.420 because who knows what this child is going to grow up to identify as.

00:38:46.120 This is absurd.

00:38:47.500 I mean, we're talking about-

00:38:48.900 They want a new box for, they're calling them babies.

00:38:52.500 Babies.

00:38:53.880 Babies.

00:38:54.240 Babies.

00:38:54.720 Oh, my God.

00:38:55.140 I haven't heard that one.

00:38:56.460 Okay.

00:38:56.660 Help me.

00:38:57.060 Yeah.

00:38:57.660 Well, okay.

00:38:59.160 Hopefully, this too shall pass.

00:39:02.020 I've been telling my wife this for five years.

00:39:04.340 I've been telling my wife this for six years since she moved here from Germany.

00:39:07.140 And she's like, what is with Americans and sex and gender and all this craziness?

00:39:11.060 I just keep telling them, don't worry.

00:39:12.540 This is just one of these crazy pendulum things.

00:39:14.480 It's going to swing back any week now.

00:39:17.080 Yeah.

00:39:17.180 Well, I mean, the next big war or actual problem we have will allow us to focus on

00:39:22.240 something, the outside enemy, the Herb Brooks.

00:39:25.840 Remember the story of the miracle on ice, right?

00:39:30.340 Herb Brooks brought all these ice hockey players from all these different colleges

00:39:33.400 to play together, and they were total rivals.

00:39:36.680 And he gave them a common enemy, which bonded them.

00:39:38.760 And frankly, that's kind of how America worked for a long time.

00:39:42.460 We had the Russians.

00:39:43.340 We had, well, first we had World War II, right?

00:39:45.140 Then we had the Russians in the Cold War.

00:39:46.940 Malcolm Gladwell was joking he'd like to go back to those years, right?

00:39:49.440 Because it's like the common enemy is very clear who the enemy is.

00:39:52.340 But nobody's actually getting killed.

00:39:54.920 And then, you know, we've had terrorism.

00:39:56.860 We've had terrorists for the past 20.

00:39:58.640 And now it's like, not that we've solved that problem, but thank God it's been kind

00:40:02.240 of quiet and we're turning on each other.

00:40:04.520 We're making up stupid problems and really working ourselves up into a lather.

00:40:09.840 I mean, the wokeism is another cult.

00:40:12.740 I agree with you that Trumpism, like the hardcore Trumpism, 100% can be a cult.

00:40:17.020 And we can go through the list of what the criteria are, but it's chilling.

00:40:20.700 But wokeism is another form.

00:40:23.180 Absolutely.

00:40:23.820 I think the analogy, it's like a religion, is reasonable to make, because religion's not

00:40:28.120 just having a supernatural being in the worldview.

00:40:31.700 It's a lot more than that.

00:40:32.980 And so this idea of, well, if you go back to like Nazism or communism or Marxism, that's

00:40:38.700 kind of a faux religion.

00:40:39.720 You have something like a figurehead at the top, a Hitler or a Stalin or a Marx, and then

00:40:44.640 you have original sin, you know, whatever you believe on the other side, you have to

00:40:47.900 atone for that.

00:40:49.200 And that's what wokeism is.

00:40:50.500 I mean, you are, we are all born or, you know, anti-racist.

00:40:53.280 We're all born racist.

00:40:54.260 That's your sin.

00:40:55.800 But I'm not a racist.

00:40:57.000 Well, you don't even know you're a racist.

00:40:58.600 You're an unconscious racist.

00:40:59.880 And this is all based, premised on these, this scientific theory that you can test people,

00:41:06.620 this, this kind of subconscious test where you associate faces with different kinds

00:41:12.180 of words.

00:41:12.620 And this is not replicate.

00:41:14.520 This did not survive the replication crisis.

00:41:16.860 In fact, it appears to be just measuring your response rate to things you're familiar

00:41:23.160 with or not familiar with.

00:41:24.300 So I'm a white guy, so I'm more familiar with white faces than white faces say.

00:41:28.080 So I'm going to respond slower or faster to different faces.

00:41:30.640 It's not measuring some unconscious racial bias that I have, but I still see this cited

00:41:37.080 over and over and over by, by liberal scientists.

00:41:40.940 And it's like, you know, we've debunked that.

00:41:43.160 You know, we, in Skeptic Magazine, we've, we've debunked this like a dozen times and, you

00:41:48.040 know, citing peer-reviewed journals saying, no, this, this is, this is not withheld, you

00:41:53.960 know, replication.

00:41:54.820 It did not survive the replication crisis.

00:41:56.640 It's out.

00:41:57.280 It's not a viable argument, but people, so there, but there doesn't seem to matter what

00:42:01.060 the evidence is.

00:42:01.620 It's like, you're born racist.

00:42:03.280 So now you have to atone for that.

00:42:05.220 And, you know, then, then people start talking about reparations or whatever.

00:42:08.240 So here again, another example of, you know, well, this is what the science says.

00:42:12.220 No, actually it doesn't.

00:42:13.820 So the rest of it doesn't follow.

00:42:15.560 But if you're in a culture, religion, none of that matters.

00:42:19.020 This is what we believe and full stop in, in, in, in a way, I mean, many religious doctrines

00:42:25.840 are like that, you know, whether you accept Jesus was resurrected and died for your sins

00:42:29.800 or not, it's not a scientific question.

00:42:32.060 Either believe it or you don't.

00:42:33.480 If you don't, maybe you're Jewish or Muslim and you do, you're a Christian or Catholic or

00:42:36.780 whatever.

00:42:37.360 And, and so I think for wokeism, it's a little bit like that.

00:42:40.440 Um, it's more like a religious truth rather than something grounded in, in, in empiricism.

00:42:45.700 And in that case, it should be grounded in empiricism, whereas religious claims like the

00:42:51.180 resurrection, I think can't be tested.

00:42:54.240 Well, this is how they get away with phrases like my truth, or she told her truth.

00:42:59.000 It's like, well, I don't know what the hell that is.

00:43:01.460 Yes.

00:43:01.740 Personal experience is not a reliable form of, of knowledge.

00:43:06.000 And we know this from now half a century of cognitive psych research that, you know, we

00:43:11.240 all have our confirmation bias and hindsight bias and my side bias.

00:43:15.380 And it was like a hundred of these biases.

00:43:17.620 What you experience is not reliable.

00:43:20.740 You know, it's personal, that's fine.

00:43:22.440 But it's not a truth.

00:43:23.920 If you think about what is truth, well, most of us want it to be grounded in some kind of

00:43:28.060 rationality and empiricism that it's not just me.

00:43:31.920 So here's an analogy I make, you know, if I say, well, I like dark chocolate and you know,

00:43:35.040 well, I think milk chocolate's better.

00:43:37.140 Well, there's, there's no experiment we're going to run to decide who's right.

00:43:41.200 You know, or I think, you know, Stairway to Heaven's the greatest rock song of all time.

00:43:44.520 And you think it's, I don't know, Freebird, or I don't know what, you probably have different

00:43:49.100 choices than me, but there, you know, that's just a personal truth or preference.

00:43:53.520 You know, it's like, you know, I like this form of art and you like that form of art.

00:43:56.840 But, but, and I think that's how people are trying to think about other issues that are

00:44:01.740 not just personal preferences, you know, rights and, and, you know, the stuff on scientific

00:44:08.480 grounding of, of different kinds of claims.

00:44:10.800 Those aren't just personal.

00:44:11.880 The whole point of science is that, you know, here's my evidence and my arguments.

00:44:15.980 Now you, you can evaluate them and you tell me what you think.

00:44:18.860 And I'm not, it's not just me who thinks this.

00:44:21.120 I'm trying to make a claim that you should believe it too.

00:44:23.220 And maybe you do, maybe you don't.

00:44:25.200 And then we have a debate about it.

00:44:26.920 And, you know, the other analogy I make is like, if I say, well, meditation works for

00:44:32.020 me.

00:44:32.880 And then you say, well, I tried, it didn't work for me.

00:44:35.340 Okay.

00:44:35.560 That's, that's still at that kind of personal truth level.

00:44:38.440 But what my friends in the business of meditation want to argue is that, no, no, I'm not claiming

00:44:44.620 it works just for me.

00:44:45.800 I mean, it's, it's really good for most people, you know, meditating 40 minutes a day, six days

00:44:50.660 a week will, you know, lower your stress levels or whatever.

00:44:54.120 They want to say it really works.

00:44:56.100 And that's that, that the difficult transition from personal truth to empirical truths.

00:45:01.740 And I do, I agree that I think a lot of the woke and anti-racism stuff is in this personal

00:45:07.860 truth category.

00:45:09.260 So I read all those books, you know, the Ibram X.

00:45:12.020 Kendi's books and, and Isabel Wilkinson's book and so on.

00:45:15.720 And, and, you know, it's hard for me as a white guy to go, you know, I just don't accept

00:45:20.440 your, your arguments because most of them are just anecdotes.

00:45:23.380 You know, I was on the subway and this person said this to me and, and I think, God, that's

00:45:27.840 just so bad that this person would say something like that, really racist.

00:45:32.120 But, you know, but those are just anecdotes.

00:45:35.340 It's what we really want to know as a society is, well, is that getting worse or better?

00:45:40.300 Are there more people doing that?

00:45:41.840 Fewer people doing that?

00:45:43.400 And, you know, there, then we can transition from, well, that's my personal experience.

00:45:47.920 America's racist versus what I want to argue is like, well, but is it racist compared to

00:45:53.920 say 1950s or 1850s?

00:45:56.180 And, you know, we can actually track through data that, you know, things are getting better.

00:46:00.340 People are a lot less racist than they used to be, you know?

00:46:03.980 And it's, I'll say something like, you remember when, when interracial marriage was illegal

00:46:08.300 in a, in a thing, most people today go, no, what?

00:46:11.580 Like, yeah, 1967, the Supreme court finally voted that, you know, interracial marriage

00:46:16.140 is not illegal.

00:46:16.760 It's like, what?

00:46:17.800 Yeah.

00:46:18.080 It's like, wow, we've come a long way.

00:46:20.900 So what troubles me about the anti-racism movement is they're portraying it in a kind

00:46:26.160 of a black and white way, if you will, that, you know, if there's any incidents of racism

00:46:30.720 anywhere, then America's as bad as it's ever been.

00:46:33.720 It's like, no, no, it's a continuum.

00:46:36.180 Oh, it's very frustrating because the other piece of it is as you then cite data, like

00:46:39.700 let's take the, I heard you on, um, our, our mutual friend, Coleman Hughes's show.

00:46:44.480 If you, Coleman's been great about putting actual numbers to the police shooting issue

00:46:49.740 and they're not what the woke people tell us they are.

00:46:53.120 Right.

00:46:53.440 I mean, it's, uh, I think in, in, uh, last year it was, uh, 18 unarmed black men were

00:46:58.680 killed by police the year before that it was, I think 14, right.

00:47:01.580 And then if you pull most people, especially liberals, especially progressives, I should

00:47:05.620 say, I sort of far left progressives, that some think it's, it's in the thousands, some

00:47:09.780 would say 10,000 unarmed black men are killed by police a year.

00:47:13.540 I mean, that's, that's completely wrong.

00:47:15.540 And if you then cite data, real data, I mean, those are knowable numbers for the most part.

00:47:20.480 Um, you get called a racist for that.

00:47:23.600 That's don't throw your facts and figures in my face.

00:47:25.620 This is my lived experience.

00:47:27.180 You know, all cops are racist and they shoot unarmed black men.

00:47:30.660 Well, they do sometimes, but the numbers are way down from where they used to be.

00:47:33.980 And they're shooting far less unarmed people in general than they ever used to.

00:47:37.460 And far, far less people than they ever used to.

00:47:39.720 And okay.

00:47:40.980 We're not even allowed to talk about those things because even just to discuss it under

00:47:44.560 the new religion of wokeism is a form of bigotry.

00:47:47.920 You just must accept there's no discussion.

00:47:49.800 There's only acceptance by the people objecting.

00:47:54.780 Yeah.

00:47:56.040 Some of that research you just cited was actually conducted by my organization at Skeptic, the

00:48:00.620 Skeptic Research Center.

00:48:01.780 We actually pulled, I think it was 2,100 Americans randomly selected of, you know, how many people

00:48:08.660 they think are shot each year by cops.

00:48:11.080 And then we, you know, you're right, you're right, Michael.

00:48:13.680 I actually, I knew that should have given you credit because I actually just pulled this

00:48:16.880 for another interview and I never got to, I was going to interview Heather McDonald and

00:48:20.920 we never got to cops.

00:48:22.000 Oh, yes.

00:48:22.360 But I had that, you're right.

00:48:23.120 And I had you cited in my outline.

00:48:25.340 Yeah.

00:48:25.520 Sorry, go ahead.

00:48:26.380 Yeah.

00:48:26.820 So it's an interesting story.

00:48:29.020 The next, you know, we, we released that I think on a Thursday and then, you know, the

00:48:32.340 next Monday I see Tucker Carlson talking about it and he's got our graphic up on the screen.

00:48:37.500 I'm like, oh my God, it's incredible.

00:48:39.900 So, so I contacted his producer and I said, yeah, yeah, you know, we have a lot more data,

00:48:46.120 you know, you should have me on and we'll talk about this.

00:48:49.180 And, and it's like, yeah, yeah, let's do that.

00:48:51.440 I said, by the way, we have some information showing that, you know, Republicans and conservatives,

00:48:56.620 they, they also distort perceptions, you know, depending on their particular issue, like

00:49:00.940 on immigration, how many immigrants are coming here or abortion rates or, you know, what

00:49:04.880 percent of American, uh, U S budget is, is allocated for foreign, uh, foreign affairs

00:49:10.740 or support of other countries.

00:49:11.980 And so, so, uh, in other words, we all distort and liberals are distorting on that particular

00:49:17.500 one.

00:49:17.920 Well, anyway, they didn't seem all that interested in, in showing that Republicans conservative

00:49:23.320 also distort.

00:49:24.460 We all do, you know, it's not fair to just say it's just the liberals, uh, but, but, but

00:49:29.040 on that particular issue, it is.

00:49:30.440 And again, here, I think people are conflating rights and, and, and, and data, you know,

00:49:35.960 it doesn't matter how many, uh, blacks are killed by cops, you know, this should never

00:49:39.760 happen, but, but, but, but that it happens a little or a lot, you know, that the difference

00:49:44.320 matters.

00:49:45.060 I mean, what is the number?

00:49:47.080 Um, and, and so, but people think, well, if the number is low, uh, uh, I want the number

00:49:52.740 to be high so that I can insist that, uh, the police system be reformed so that we can all

00:49:58.000 have civil rights or something like that.

00:49:59.500 Again, they're confusing the concept of rights.

00:50:02.200 Uh, you know, the number should be zero, but, but it's not zero.

00:50:05.520 So how about we just treat it as a problem to be solved?

00:50:08.900 Let's lower the number.

00:50:10.040 Well, how do you do that?

00:50:11.640 Well, you don't do that through defunding the police or putting everybody at Starbucks

00:50:15.940 through every employee at Starbucks through some sensitivity training program, because

00:50:20.320 99% of the people working at Starbucks are probably uber liberal.

00:50:24.140 They're probably not racist at all.

00:50:25.900 So you're just wasting your time.

00:50:27.960 And, uh, you know, I've had employee at Chapman university, like everybody else there, I have

00:50:32.120 to go through these computer programs and they're just hilarious.

00:50:35.260 First of all, they're easy to hack.

00:50:36.640 It's obvious what they're asking.

00:50:37.880 It's obvious what the correct answer is, which is contact HR and tell somebody in HR what the

00:50:43.380 problem is.

00:50:45.040 Up next, Colts.

00:50:46.680 Michael's written a lot on Colts.

00:50:48.560 And how do you know if you're in one?

00:50:50.020 By the way, I was, I think I was, we'll talk about it.

00:50:52.420 Um, and how do you get one out of one, not actual Colts, right?

00:50:57.180 But things that really have a lot of the characteristics of Colts.

00:51:00.340 You might be in one right now and you might not realize it might be affecting your mental

00:51:03.960 health in ways you do not know.

00:51:05.600 And, uh, we'll talk about some of the more famous ones in one minute.

00:51:09.720 I think you're going to find this interesting, but first, before we get to that, want to

00:51:12.820 bring you a feature we have here on the MK show called asked and answered.

00:51:16.880 Steve, why don't you explain how it works?

00:51:18.840 Wow.

00:51:19.380 Okay.

00:51:19.840 Got it.

00:51:20.180 All right.

00:51:21.740 I guess how it works is that we look at all of the emails that listeners send to us at

00:51:26.380 questions at devilmaycaremedia.com.

00:51:29.200 We get a lot in there, keep them coming.

00:51:31.520 Uh, and we also look at our social media accounts at Megan Kelly show on all of your social media

00:51:36.300 platforms for questions to ask you and have you, uh, have you answer them.

00:51:40.220 So this one today, the reason, the reason I wanted you to explain that is because I, I tell

00:51:44.740 the audience that I read all the reviews on Apple podcasts and I do, I've read all of

00:51:49.440 them or 20,000 now.

00:51:51.100 And, um, one of them said, I would like to hear more from Steve.

00:51:55.420 And I thought, Steve, you can just text me.

00:51:57.720 You don't have to get to me on Apple.

00:51:59.140 I was going to say, my dad, my dad likes to leave reviews, literally has left reviews

00:52:03.400 in that Apple section.

00:52:04.320 So it probably was him.

00:52:04.920 Oh, cute.

00:52:05.680 Well, if it is your dad, he, he deserves it.

00:52:08.300 He deserves a yes too.

00:52:09.840 So, um, take it away.

00:52:12.040 All right.

00:52:12.460 I'm glad I could, uh, could, could satisfy that one Apple reviewer.

00:52:16.040 Uh, Taylor Anderson has a question for you.

00:52:18.620 Uh, she says, I had a question regarding you pulling your kids from the New York school

00:52:22.420 district.

00:52:23.380 Uh, and, but she also wants to know about those who are unable to do so.

00:52:26.040 She says, I fully support your right and your choice, but what about those that can't afford

00:52:29.800 it?

00:52:31.000 Hmm.

00:52:32.120 My, that hurts Taylor.

00:52:33.400 I get it.

00:52:33.960 Trust me.

00:52:34.300 I get it.

00:52:34.860 I've got dough at this point in my life, but I spent most of my life without it, uh, where

00:52:39.280 that wouldn't have been a choice.

00:52:40.300 And my kids were in private school.

00:52:41.820 So I, we moved them to a different private school, but when you're in public school, you

00:52:45.820 pay taxes.

00:52:46.340 And so they have to take your kid and that's kind of the deal, right?

00:52:49.180 You pay your taxes and that pays for the education and you want to take advantage of it.

00:52:52.860 And, um, a lot of people have jobs.

00:52:55.340 They have houses they can't sell.

00:52:56.960 It's not that easy to just pull up stakes and leave the school district.

00:52:59.840 So trust me, I do get that.

00:53:02.080 Uh, if that were my situation, I think I would do one of a couple of things.

00:53:06.820 I would consider other public school districts.

00:53:08.740 If there were any nearby where we could reasonably move and I could get my kids in where I didn't

00:53:13.800 have to quit my job and find a new one.

00:53:15.840 If that were not an option, I would take a hard, hard look at how much it would cost to

00:53:21.360 homeschool.

00:53:21.800 Right?

00:53:22.400 Like, is there any way I could do it with my husband, with the community?

00:53:25.220 Cause it's not now, not all up to mom and dad.

00:53:28.020 They're great, great homeschooling communities that can make this a lot easier on a parent,

00:53:32.020 though, not as easy as sending them off to the school building.

00:53:34.780 And I get that too.

00:53:36.020 But the number of people's homeschooling their children now has skyrocketed.

00:53:40.840 It was like went from 3% to 20% of, uh, families.

00:53:44.900 I think I just saw, uh, the, the latest stat.

00:53:47.780 So anyway, it's a, it's a reasonable option to at least consider.

00:53:51.440 Okay.

00:53:51.740 It's not like so crazy.

00:53:52.760 You shouldn't even consider it.

00:53:54.080 But the, but the last suggestion I'd have, and to be honest, probably the most practical

00:53:58.880 one is I would be all over that school district's lesson plans, like white on rice.

00:54:05.180 I would be so much more involved in what they're learning than I normally am, frankly, as a

00:54:11.520 working mom.

00:54:12.100 And frankly, even if I weren't a working mom, I don't think it'd be all over administrative,

00:54:15.240 you know, issues and all the agendas that are, I don't know.

00:54:19.160 Um, but even now as somebody who likes the school district that we went to, I'm going to

00:54:23.300 be way more attentive to agendas and certainly if I were stuck in the public school and I

00:54:27.940 couldn't leave it, I'd be really attentive to agendas and man, would I be a squeaky wheel.

00:54:32.660 They'd be hearing from me by email.

00:54:34.420 I'd be at all the board meetings.

00:54:36.040 I would be organizing parents.

00:54:38.060 I'd be getting strength in numbers.

00:54:39.780 So it wasn't just me.

00:54:40.940 That's the only pain in the ass parent.

00:54:43.320 Um, so you don't want them taking that out on your kid, which they sometimes do.

00:54:47.160 Uh, but you got to fight if you can't move, right?

00:54:50.820 It's like the back to the art of war, right?

00:54:52.940 If you're outmatched, don't fight, but if you must fight and if you can get colleagues

00:55:00.960 to fight with you, you know, brethren, brothers, sisters, so much the better.

00:55:05.060 But if you're stuck there, you got to fight and you can't just surrender to it.

00:55:07.920 And even if you can't fight at the school board level and stop the agenda, which you

00:55:12.060 should not give up on, you can fight in a more powerful way, which is you've got your

00:55:16.240 kid's ear.

00:55:17.060 You live with your kid.

00:55:18.560 You've got, you still have a greater influence over your kid than the teacher does.

00:55:21.820 Maybe not than the peers, but then the teacher and start early, you know, explain to them

00:55:27.080 what indoctrination is.

00:55:28.340 And by the way, I don't think you do that by you yourself indoctrinating, right?

00:55:32.840 Teach the value of critical thinking, teach and live the value of allowing opposite viewpoints

00:55:38.400 and then debating them respectfully.

00:55:40.680 Um, make sure your children understand that you appreciate different worldviews and letting

00:55:46.660 the best one win, but fighting it out, not demonizing one's enemy, right?

00:55:51.880 Like all these things will set them up to reject dogma, which is what the school districts,

00:55:56.100 the teachers want to shove down their throats and certainly not of K through 12 in a college.

00:56:00.600 So I think that's sort of a baseline you can instill in your own kid that will protect

00:56:04.980 them against the school districts approach that doesn't align with that.

00:56:08.860 Uh, and if you can immerse yourself in a community where your friends are doing the same with

00:56:13.280 their kids, so your kid's not alone, so much the better, right?

00:56:17.840 I know some people say, just go move and live by people who share your values.

00:56:21.460 Well, it's not that easy.

00:56:22.820 You know, I mean, look at me, I'm in media.

00:56:24.820 Media is, it's a New York thing, or maybe LA, maybe DC.

00:56:28.560 Those are not towns that share my values.

00:56:31.040 So you got to counter program.

00:56:32.480 You got to be clever about it.

00:56:33.580 It's not always so easy to pick up stakes.

00:56:35.240 Anyway, I appreciate that question, Taylor, and I'm rooting for you.

00:56:38.400 And, you know, you could also play the Megyn Kelly podcast on your way to work, school

00:56:42.100 while you're dropping them off.

00:56:43.600 We'll get to them together.

00:56:45.780 Steve, would you like to comment?

00:56:48.880 Uh, you know, it's funny.

00:56:49.900 Actually, I do have a thought here because I, my, my son just started kindergarten and,

00:56:55.720 uh, I'm, I'm in a school district in Texas that is, uh, defying the governor's mask mandate,

00:57:01.960 um, and is requiring masks, uh, for every child, including kindergartners, uh, who are just

00:57:07.940 starting for the first time to learn, you know, how to socialize in a seven hour day

00:57:12.140 after they've been in preschool for three hours and not really doing much of it.

00:57:15.660 So it's really frustrating.

00:57:17.220 Uh, you know, it's, it's totally, uh, I've, I've weighed leaving Facebook comments or saying

00:57:24.320 something, you know, at the, at the school meetings and I haven't yet.

00:57:27.500 Um, but it, it's definitely frustrating and I, and I, you know, it's, it's a different

00:57:30.820 thing.

00:57:31.180 It's sort of, you know, physical versus, versus, you know, mental and socialization,

00:57:35.040 but it's just, it really, uh, it's, it's going to come to a head everywhere.

00:57:39.660 And, and it's, it's certainly something that I think everyone's wrestling with.

00:57:43.320 That's infuriating.

00:57:44.400 And can I tell you a good friend of mine, she was just, she's a, she teaches preschool

00:57:48.320 and she was just told that she's, when she goes back, she has a class of four-year-olds

00:57:53.460 and a class of two-year-olds, um, the two-year-olds are going to have to wear mandatory masks,

00:58:00.380 two-year-olds.

00:58:01.180 And she, last I spoke to her, was going to go back to her school and say, I'm not teaching

00:58:06.800 that class.

00:58:07.380 That is not consistent with my values.

00:58:09.360 I will not be somebody who enforces that on a bunch of babies, nor can you run even a

00:58:14.820 preschool like that.

00:58:16.200 And so like, you need, you need brave teachers like her and you need parents like you, like

00:58:22.060 Taylor, like me to either make the point by being vocal, make the point by walking, taking

00:58:28.880 our money with us and our great kids, right?

00:58:31.620 Like more and more people are starting to do it.

00:58:33.480 I feel like long-term we're going to win this.

00:58:35.900 I really do.

00:58:36.900 But the masking of children at age five or two is outrageous.

00:58:43.680 Let's keep in mind, they don't mask.

00:58:45.600 They haven't been masking kids in most of Europe throughout the pandemic.

00:58:48.560 Certainly not anybody under 12, right?

00:58:50.540 So it's like, and they're fine.

00:58:51.960 And they're way more uptight on a lot of these pandemic things than we are.

00:58:55.080 Like, this is like in England where you can't go outside of your little circle.

00:58:58.440 Well, they don't mask their kids.

00:59:00.260 We're the only ones who refuse to acknowledge that that A, probably isn't doing anything.

00:59:05.080 And B, if it's doing anything, the harm way outweighs any potential good.

00:59:10.280 Right, exactly.

00:59:10.900 And it's the kind of thing where it's like, look, if you want to send your kid who's in

00:59:14.240 kindergarten a mask, you're certainly able to do that.

00:59:17.280 But not everyone has to follow that.

00:59:19.100 That was the deal with banning mask mandates, not banning masks in schools.

00:59:24.180 That's not currently the way things are here in my district.

00:59:27.240 But I have to say, I'm going to say one other thing on this.

00:59:30.280 I hate mask mandates and I hate the masks.

00:59:35.240 I understood when we were at the height of the pandemic, whatever.

00:59:37.940 OK, it's done.

00:59:39.920 I am so over the damn mask and I am really over the mask for my kids.

00:59:44.320 But I don't have any choice.

00:59:46.440 The schools that we like, right, for they're not ideological, but they're very COVID terrified.

00:59:52.060 They're mandating the masks.

00:59:53.580 As I mentioned, they're mandating the vaccines.

00:59:55.180 And it's it's upsetting, right?

00:59:58.840 It's like but what I hate so much of the mask is.

01:00:01.780 These COVID fear porn mongers have managed to get their their hand over my face, over the face of my child.

01:00:17.120 You know, they're they're making me put something on my child's face that I don't want there.

01:00:23.760 It's so intrusive.

01:00:26.380 It it really genuinely angers me.

01:00:29.700 It makes me feel fire in the belly.

01:00:32.140 And when you're talking about a five year old, I mean, I'm sure you feel it, too.

01:00:36.080 Yeah, yeah.

01:00:37.080 And that's and that's the thing I get.

01:00:38.920 You know, people make the argument.

01:00:39.840 Oh, look, it's just a piece of cloth.

01:00:41.080 Who cares?

01:00:41.720 First of all, you're proving why masks don't really work that well.

01:00:44.320 The ones you're talking about, these pieces of cloth that do nothing.

01:00:47.060 But second of all, if you if you feel strongly about it, go for it.

01:00:49.720 Wear three masks.

01:00:50.620 I don't care.

01:00:51.240 But don't tell me I have to wear a mask.

01:00:52.760 Like, I'm I'm vaxxed anyway.

01:00:54.000 So, you know, the whole thing is infuriating and non-scientific.

01:00:57.400 And but that's that's kind of where we're at right now.

01:00:59.360 Yeah.

01:01:00.680 Well, anyway, good discussion.

01:01:01.880 Maybe they were right about you, Steve.

01:01:03.900 Steve Krakauer, always a pleasure.

01:01:06.040 Thanks.

01:01:06.600 You, too.

01:01:07.720 Back to back to our guest, Michael Shermer, in one minute.

01:01:16.580 Well, that's like at Fox News, they long before the Roger Ailes scandal, he went down and

01:01:20.980 all these guys started to go down for sexual harassment.

01:01:23.160 They used to make us take twice a year.

01:01:25.540 We had to take sexual harassment seminars ever since they came out that Bill O'Reilly harassed

01:01:30.080 Andrea Macris back in 2004.

01:01:32.420 I think I had just started working there.

01:01:34.220 So it was like, oh, my God, we have to pay attention to sexual harassment because this

01:01:37.100 made the papers and it was very well known.

01:01:39.080 He gave her a big payout.

01:01:40.480 OK, I'm like, why the hell do I have to go to these things and suffer through this?

01:01:43.960 Right.

01:01:44.080 OK, I guess I'll go.

01:01:45.100 But because I have to, I have no choice.

01:01:46.600 But I'm telling you, the guys, half of them were using it for ideas.

01:01:50.440 It's not helpful to anybody.

01:01:53.120 Oh, wait.

01:01:53.660 So what you're saying is the line is here, not there.

01:01:56.060 OK, got it.

01:01:56.760 That's how it encompasses a whole new group of things I can do.

01:01:59.880 And these scenarios they present in these in these training programs are just hilarious.

01:02:03.900 They're so politically correct, you know, so it's like I mean, it's well known now that

01:02:08.320 as a professor, you know, don't sleep with the students.

01:02:10.720 Don't even think about it.

01:02:11.880 It's like and we've been told this since the 90s, like, OK, I got it.

01:02:14.520 I got it.

01:02:15.300 You know, in the 70s when I was in college, you know, this happened a lot.

01:02:18.720 So, OK, the rules have changed.

01:02:21.360 Now we know.

01:02:21.880 Right.

01:02:22.140 So but then you'll see these scenarios like, you know, that you witness a professor, you

01:02:27.180 know, making a comment to a student.

01:02:28.800 But but but it has to be balanced.

01:02:30.420 That's to be a female professor hits on a male student.

01:02:33.240 It's like, oh, yeah, that used to happen all the time.

01:02:35.580 Sure.

01:02:37.180 OK, right.

01:02:37.840 Exactly.

01:02:38.220 Pam.

01:02:38.880 Oh, what was a woman?

01:02:40.380 Pamela Smart.

01:02:40.960 Is she the one who had the affair and had the kid killed her husband?

01:02:45.700 It's rare enough, you know, that that a female teacher will have sex with a male student.

01:02:50.360 It's rare enough.

01:02:51.080 It becomes the joke fodder for late night comedians.

01:02:55.260 It's just it just almost never happens.

01:02:57.540 Yeah.

01:02:57.720 And but anyway, that's so that's an example of these training.

01:03:01.620 But this is a waste of time.

01:03:02.800 I assume that the lawyers at the universities all say, we got to do this because if we get

01:03:07.080 sued, then we can say, hey, we put that guy through our program.

01:03:09.920 So we're our hands are washed.

01:03:12.060 Right.

01:03:12.460 There's probably some legal reason.

01:03:13.820 But again, for terms of moral progress, it comes from targeting specific problems, you

01:03:20.120 know, not like the police, but that police department right there.

01:03:24.220 That's the one where, you know, three of the eight officers are, you know, noted white

01:03:28.900 supremacists.

01:03:29.600 OK, target that.

01:03:30.940 That's the problem.

01:03:31.740 And not like let's defund all police because that's just it's not going to work.

01:03:36.880 Can I ask you this?

01:03:37.980 And that's I know that you've written a lot about cults and myths and that kind of thing.

01:03:42.380 And to me, it's like pretty jarring.

01:03:45.780 I'm way into cults.

01:03:46.840 I've done a ton of stories on cults, just find them fascinating.

01:03:50.580 And when I go through your list of cult characteristics, number one, I realized I was in a cult when I was

01:03:58.220 at Fox News.

01:03:58.800 I was totally in a cult for a long time.

01:04:02.100 Yes.

01:04:02.500 I mean, a lot of things I had to say.

01:04:04.380 Don't get me wrong.

01:04:05.180 I had a lot of great years there and I love a lot of people there, but it's got a lot of

01:04:08.260 the characteristics.

01:04:09.040 OK, I'm going to go through your list.

01:04:11.740 Veneration of the leader, excessive glorification of a leader.

01:04:15.260 OK, now I want I do want the Trump diehards to listen to this.

01:04:17.860 And you tell me whether this does not apply to the most fervent Trump crowd.

01:04:22.020 Not not all Trump supporters, but the most fervent.

01:04:24.480 OK, excessive glorification of the leader, inerrancy of the leader, belief the

01:04:28.780 leader cannot be wrong.

01:04:30.080 Mm hmm.

01:04:31.320 Um, omniscience of the leader, acceptance of beliefs and pronouncements on virtually

01:04:35.960 all subjects from the sublime to the ridiculous.

01:04:39.160 A hundred percent.

01:04:40.060 This is like because right now I'm thinking about Roger Ailes at Fox, but it could also

01:04:43.880 apply to Trump, among others.

01:04:45.600 Uh, dissent is discouraged.

01:04:47.640 Questioning and doubt are punished.

01:04:50.020 Uh, absolute truth.

01:04:50.960 Belief that the leader of the group has a method of discovering final knowledge on all

01:04:55.460 subjects.

01:04:56.700 Absolute morality.

01:04:57.880 They have their own system of right and wrong.

01:05:00.420 In group, out of group mentality.

01:05:02.200 Us versus them mentality.

01:05:03.360 Hundred percent.

01:05:04.000 My God, this is so true.

01:05:05.960 Um, ends justify the means.

01:05:07.940 Leads members to do unethical things that they would never have done before joining the

01:05:10.980 group.

01:05:11.800 Hidden agendas.

01:05:12.760 Potential recruits are not given full disclosure.

01:05:14.660 I remember saying to my friends long, like when I sort of was getting higher up in the Fox

01:05:19.980 news organization, um, I, I didn't need to know all these secrets.

01:05:23.960 I didn't need to be brought into the inner fold.

01:05:25.620 I didn't need to, you know, like there was a lot that he started sharing with me where

01:05:29.500 I was like, Oh my God, I, I, now I see the man behind the curtain and I don't, I don't,

01:05:32.920 I didn't need to see, need to see that man, uh, financial or sexual exploitation.

01:05:37.060 Hello.

01:05:37.380 So group think and no accountability, isolation and aggressive recruitment practices.

01:05:41.960 I just, I mean, it's kind of jarring, right?

01:05:45.860 Like Fox had this leader, Roger Ailes, who a lot of this applied.

01:05:51.100 And then the Republican party had this leader earlier.

01:05:53.920 You referred to trumpet, like Trumpism is far right.

01:05:56.140 I think it's not, I think it's populist, you know?

01:05:57.800 So it's like shooting darts at a board.

01:05:59.800 You never know where they're going to come down on any issue, but the diehards, the veneration

01:06:03.880 of the leader, inerrancy, dissent is discouraged in group, out of group, you know, he can say

01:06:09.240 anything and it's right.

01:06:10.080 My God, how did it happen?

01:06:12.140 Why, why did that happen?

01:06:14.440 Yeah.

01:06:15.500 Yeah.

01:06:15.920 Here's a question.

01:06:16.760 Do the people that follow Trump or Roger Ailes in your example, do they really believe

01:06:21.740 it or are they, are they kind of going along with it?

01:06:24.720 We have this concept in social psychology called pluralistic ignorance or the spiral of silence

01:06:30.020 where everybody thinks, everybody else thinks something when in fact they don't, most don't.

01:06:35.440 And this can be kind of hover along for quite some time unless somebody speaks out.

01:06:41.540 And so, I mean, just analogously, like with QAnon and Trump says, yeah, these are fine people

01:06:48.240 and I, you know, who knows, there might be something to it.

01:06:50.500 And then other Republicans kind of fall into line, just using that as an extreme example.

01:06:55.400 Yeah.

01:06:55.560 Yeah.

01:06:55.700 I think there's something to QAnon.

01:06:56.900 Do they really believe that?

01:06:58.000 Or are they just kind of saying that because, well, I guess other people in the party believe

01:07:01.640 it.

01:07:01.880 So I'll just say, I believe it.

01:07:03.780 But in the, you know, sort of the quiet of their own mind, do they think, is there really

01:07:07.680 a democratic, pedophile, secret, satanic, cult at a pizzeria in Washington?

01:07:11.600 That can't be true.

01:07:13.080 Right.

01:07:13.320 So, you know, to what extent, I guess, did people in your example at Fox really go along

01:07:19.200 with this or are they thinking, well, I kind of got to go along with it.

01:07:21.560 I'll just say I do.

01:07:22.600 But in my heart, I don't believe it.

01:07:24.880 You know, but it's funny how the group morphs as an amoeba to support certain narratives,

01:07:32.340 you know, like, you know, there was something about like Roger's a genius.

01:07:36.900 Roger's such a genius.

01:07:38.020 You know, Roger's the one who thought of this.

01:07:39.160 Roger's the one who thought of the other thing.

01:07:41.120 And then you'd find out, well, actually, that was thought of by Rupert or actually that was

01:07:44.540 given to him by the following consultant.

01:07:46.560 And I'm not saying that he wasn't a television genius.

01:07:48.420 I believe he was.

01:07:49.920 But this is a narrative that was sort of pushed at every turn and like reinforced by posters

01:07:54.620 around the building.

01:07:55.600 And you don't sort of get a little brainwashed without realizing that you're getting brainwashed.

01:08:00.700 Do you know what I mean?

01:08:01.260 And then it's only once you're out of the cult that you can look back and see more clearly

01:08:05.220 like maybe that wasn't true.

01:08:07.880 And maybe, you know, this group that was demonized at every turn within that group isn't all bad.

01:08:14.400 And maybe we could be more open minded.

01:08:16.240 You know what I mean?

01:08:16.680 Like it takes extraction.

01:08:18.560 But I am somebody who's never been ideological.

01:08:21.160 I'm really not.

01:08:22.360 That's why I'm open minded to most points of view and can have conversations with people

01:08:25.680 across the aisle.

01:08:27.240 I think I'm the exception.

01:08:29.220 I feel like, you know, a lot of people easily get sucked into these groups and never get out.

01:08:33.340 I remember watching you on Fox News thinking she's different from the other hosts.

01:08:37.960 And now I see what that difference was.

01:08:40.300 There's that scene in that movie about everything that happened with you and the other women.

01:08:44.400 And Roger and so on where they all came in wearing T-shirts.

01:08:48.200 I think it was I believe I believe Roger or I trust.

01:08:51.080 Yeah, team Roger with the T-shirts.

01:08:52.700 Team Roger.

01:08:53.380 Yeah.

01:08:53.920 Yeah.

01:08:54.280 I mean, that was very cult-like, right?

01:08:57.720 Yeah.

01:08:58.240 So, again, the question, let's take North Korea.

01:09:00.820 You know, after Kim Jong-un's father died, Kim Jong-il, you know, there was like weeks of these

01:09:07.880 videos of people just weeping just hysterically.

01:09:11.060 Particularly the women just on the ground, just rolling around and sobbing.

01:09:15.200 Now, they can't possibly really feel that kind of grief.

01:09:18.540 I think it's kind of a theater in a oppressive state like that where everybody thinks everybody

01:09:23.440 else believes this.

01:09:25.320 So I better go along with it.

01:09:26.700 When, in fact, probably most of them didn't believe that.

01:09:29.120 And there's new evidence now I've been reading on the Holocaust, Hitler, the Nazis and so

01:09:33.780 on.

01:09:34.320 You know, they came to power with a minority party and then, you know, through dictatorial

01:09:39.420 moves, you know, just took over power, oppressed it, suppressed the media and so on.

01:09:44.740 And but to what extent did the average German go along with the Nazi program?

01:09:49.960 Well, of course, most of them like the economic policies that, you know, pulled Germany out

01:09:54.760 of the Depression.

01:09:55.960 But, you know, the kind of exterminationist policies of Hitler, it looks now like even

01:10:02.600 though most Germans were anti-Semites, like most Europeans and Americans at that time, most

01:10:08.280 of them did not go along with the idea of the kind of extermination of the Jews.

01:10:11.580 That was definitely a pretty much a Hitler only and a few of his crazy acolytes like Himmler.

01:10:17.140 Most Germans, I think, did not go along with that.

01:10:20.160 But you couldn't speak out for two reasons.

01:10:22.220 One, you know, you could be locked up and sent to a concentration camp.

01:10:24.800 And two, most of them probably thought most everybody else went along with it.

01:10:29.920 So I'll just keep my mouth shut and keep my head down.

01:10:32.900 And I think a lot of systems that are cult-like can be held aloft for quite some time, in this

01:10:39.640 case, 12 years for the Nazis, without a majority of people believing it.

01:10:45.520 Mm-hmm.

01:10:47.260 So, okay.

01:10:48.040 So that brings me back to wokeism, which is like a cult.

01:10:52.240 But there is no...

01:10:53.240 How does it fit?

01:10:53.960 Because there's no, quote, leader to venerate or excessively glorify, exactly.

01:10:59.260 There's no leader to never be in error, to have omniscience.

01:11:04.740 I don't like...

01:11:05.720 So can it still be a cult if it doesn't hit all of the criteria?

01:11:09.760 Oh, yeah, for sure.

01:11:11.700 I mean, my list of cult criteria, and depending on who you read, the list varies a little bit.

01:11:17.080 It's a little bit like the DSM-5R in psychiatry.

01:11:22.380 You know, what constitutes a schizophrenic or a paranoid delusion or whatever?

01:11:28.220 Well, there's, you know, like 20 things.

01:11:30.120 And the psychiatrist, if he ticks 15 of the 20 boxes, then that kicks you over into that

01:11:34.680 category.

01:11:35.080 It's a scale.

01:11:36.900 It's a continuum.

01:11:38.160 And at some point, back to where we were starting this conversation, you know, you have to draw

01:11:42.960 the line somewhere and say, well, this is what this category represents, these 15 out of

01:11:47.640 the 20, something like that.

01:11:48.940 So I would say that's the case with cults.

01:11:50.560 You don't necessarily have to have a leader, although I would say some of the more prominent

01:11:54.720 authors of these books, like in the anti-racism, I mentioned Ibram X. Kendi and a few of the

01:12:01.520 others, they think, I wouldn't say they're cult leaders, but they certainly stand out

01:12:05.280 as, you know, if you oppose this guy, you know, you are going to be pounced on on social

01:12:10.080 media.

01:12:11.380 And, you know, so there, then you get that spiral of silence.

01:12:14.200 Well, I better keep my mouth shut because I'm here to be in the minority.

01:12:17.140 So if enough of us speak out and say, you know what, I'm liberal, but I don't go along

01:12:22.080 with this far left, regressive left liberal, illiberalism.

01:12:26.140 And then if enough of us say that, then it'll become apparent, I think, that most people

01:12:31.560 don't go along with those extreme positions, but they feel like I have to, or, you know,

01:12:36.840 I better keep my mouth shut.

01:12:38.100 I mean, in many cases, people are losing their jobs.

01:12:40.840 And so I'm sympathetic.

01:12:43.440 You know, I'm pretty well protected, mostly self-employed.

01:12:46.280 I'm not worried about being canceled, but most people are not in that position.

01:12:49.660 So I'm sympathetic.

01:12:51.560 I wish people would speak out, but I understand why you don't want to, if you're in a big department

01:12:56.780 or a corporation or university and, you know, you know, you're going to get pounced on, you

01:13:01.080 may lose your job.

01:13:02.920 Well, I wonder if the, if the leader, if a leader could be subbed in and subbed out based

01:13:07.060 on groups, you know, like the leader is for wokeism, the victim, only if the victim has

01:13:13.120 a certain skin color or lady parts or, you know, LGBTQ identity, right?

01:13:17.600 Like it certainly wouldn't be a guy like you.

01:13:19.440 The, the, the leader who can never be wrong is definitely not the white man, the cisgender

01:13:24.300 heteronormative white man.

01:13:27.060 But like, there is definitely, I had talked about this when, um, I, people were attacking

01:13:31.540 me because I didn't, I threw through some skepticism on the story being told by Naomi Osaka about

01:13:36.640 whether she had real mental health problems or whether she just doesn't like dealing with

01:13:40.600 the press.

01:13:41.080 Right.

01:13:41.800 And the reason it was so quote wrong of me to doubt her, I believe is because she's a

01:13:48.420 woman, a young woman, a young woman of color who is playing the mental health card.

01:13:53.720 And all of these things are, are revered, right.

01:13:58.660 Revered by wokeism and, uh, treated as sort of untouchable, right?

01:14:02.820 Like you're not allowed to criticize people like that.

01:14:04.800 And so I wonder whether the sort of identity is like a stand-in for the dear leader.

01:14:12.140 Uh, I think so.

01:14:13.880 Although I've, I've had some conflicting thoughts about this recently with the recall election

01:14:17.940 coming up next month of Gavin Newsom here in my state of California, you know, identity

01:14:22.700 politics.

01:14:23.600 Well, Larry Elder is a, he's a black man.

01:14:26.320 He's an African-American and prominent.

01:14:28.120 No, no, no.

01:14:28.760 Identity doesn't count if you're a Republican.

01:14:31.580 Right.

01:14:32.060 So, uh, so identity politics, apparently the politics matters more than the identity.

01:14:38.120 Right.

01:14:38.780 Yeah.

01:14:39.500 Yeah.

01:14:40.160 I mean, sometimes it doesn't seem, it seems like, you know, race is everything, but then

01:14:43.400 you go, okay, Larry Elder's black.

01:14:44.760 Oh, not him.

01:14:46.620 The LA Times is calling him a white supremacist.

01:14:49.120 It's amazing.

01:14:50.100 Just stunning, stunning.

01:14:51.620 Or, you know, Shelby Steele, he's black and he says, oh, well, he's, you know, an Uncle

01:14:56.260 Tom or he's a conservative.

01:14:57.280 Uncle Tom, yeah.

01:14:57.980 Well, what about Jason Hill?

01:14:59.420 What about, you know, Coleman Hughes?

01:15:01.100 Coleman, he's an interesting example because he, um, he's a liberal, but he's not saying

01:15:08.040 the things they want him to say on wokeism.

01:15:10.420 Right.

01:15:10.520 So he's not a good liberal.

01:15:12.460 He doesn't get the exception.

01:15:15.220 Yes.

01:15:15.560 And, and even more prominently, uh, John McWhorter, because he's not, not just a, he tells

01:15:19.720 him of a grumpy liberal, which is kind of funny, but you know, he's a university professor

01:15:23.380 just highly respected in his field of linguistics and so on.

01:15:26.920 And, you know, when, when he pronounces on something, you can't just say, oh, well,

01:15:30.240 he's just some, you know, Uncle Tom conservative black.

01:15:33.140 No, no, no, he's not.

01:15:34.700 Okay.

01:15:34.980 Then what?

01:15:35.380 But the fact that you and I even have to cite people like that because of their skin color

01:15:39.500 is very troubling to me.

01:15:40.900 I mean, this should be the least interesting thing about John McWhorter is how much melanin

01:15:45.080 he has in his skin or example I use because I'm friends with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

01:15:49.640 You know, that he tells me, he'll tells me that he gets offered, uh, you know, these

01:15:54.080 awards and, uh, from black groups and he doesn't accept them.

01:15:57.960 He doesn't, I don't want to be the black astrophysicist.

01:16:00.800 I'm just an astrophysicist full stop.

01:16:03.120 Who cares what color my, it's irrelevant.

01:16:05.100 I feel like he, and he is, I mean, he really is only, only these ideological driven groups

01:16:10.080 or identity driven groups, even thinking about him like that.

01:16:12.640 Right.

01:16:12.860 It's like you and I are having this discussion because we're talking about them and how they

01:16:16.940 prize certain things and certain beings, but not others.

01:16:19.780 But this isn't how we would normally talk about these people.

01:16:22.660 You know, like that's not how we'd ever discuss John McWhorter.

01:16:25.920 If I met you at a cocktail party, this is their game.

01:16:28.700 This is the identity politics people's game.

01:16:30.780 You know, it's so abhorrent.

01:16:34.700 Don't leave me now.

01:16:35.620 We got more coming up in 60 seconds.

01:16:42.640 Just to follow up on our earlier discussion about how now during the pandemic and so on,

01:16:47.240 people seem particularly odd.

01:16:49.860 They seem, I don't know whether they're, they're, they're pro cult more than ever.

01:16:54.160 They're pro conspiracy theory more than ever in this reporter's view.

01:16:57.860 This is a quote that, that I got from you.

01:17:00.640 You were writing in time magazine.

01:17:02.040 I think it was in reference to the JFA, JFK conspiracies, but I love it.

01:17:05.600 Um, this is your quote psychological research also shows that when people are placed in

01:17:11.240 environments or conditions in which they feel anxiety and a loss of control, holla.

01:17:17.640 Okay.

01:17:17.780 That was my footnote.

01:17:18.680 They are more likely to see illusory patterns in random noise and to look to conspiracies as

01:17:26.040 explanations for ordinary events.

01:17:28.240 Sociological research has also found that natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes

01:17:34.000 lead people to think that there are conspiratorial forces at work.

01:17:37.100 So doesn't that mean that in many ways, the pandemic has primed the pump for some of the

01:17:44.200 nuttiness we're seeing that does that's not even COVID related.

01:17:47.980 Totally.

01:17:48.580 Yes.

01:17:48.800 That research has held up.

01:17:49.880 I wrote that, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago.

01:17:51.440 Uh, that was Jennifer Whitson's research on, uh, illusory patterns.

01:17:54.800 And if you put people subjects into conditions where they feel anxious or you have them recall

01:17:59.240 a time in their life when they were uncertain or anxious or sad or whatever, uh, they're,

01:18:03.640 they become more conspiratorial, but that has survived the replication crisis that, that

01:18:07.900 held up pretty well.

01:18:08.780 And we're, we're witnessing it right now.

01:18:10.620 I mean, this is probably the most disjointing time in, in the last century, at least maybe

01:18:16.040 comparable to the first world war and the Spanish flu.

01:18:18.880 And then the second world war, I'd say it's comparable to that probably even more disrupting

01:18:22.740 than 1968 Watergate, Vietnam war protests, assassination of, uh, uh, RFK and MLK.

01:18:29.840 Like this, this is even more than that.

01:18:31.880 I would say that we're going through.

01:18:33.180 So, and of course, you know, the daily news, Fauci says this, Fauci says that, what are

01:18:37.520 we to believe it's, you know, talk about uncertainty and anxiety.

01:18:40.660 Of course, people are going to then, you know, not trust institutions or not know what

01:18:44.680 to think.

01:18:45.160 So, uh, yeah, but this too shall pass.

01:18:48.680 I mean, just, you know, look what happened after the first world war there.

01:18:51.140 You had the roaring twenties.

01:18:52.300 I'm, I'm hoping we get to the roaring twenties here soon.

01:18:55.040 Maybe starting next year, maybe I hope people can hear that.

01:18:58.840 I hope people can hear that, that even if you think I'm strong, I'm not affected by any

01:19:03.200 of this, right?

01:19:03.720 I don't, I don't, whatever that I'm fine.

01:19:06.900 Maybe you have been right.

01:19:08.540 Maybe if you find yourself falling victim to this, like hell no vaccine, Bill Gates has

01:19:13.500 got something in there and I'm not getting it.

01:19:14.980 Right.

01:19:15.340 Or we're wearing that.

01:19:16.960 I'm never going any place without a mask again.

01:19:18.580 And why would you?

01:19:19.520 And my children will too.

01:19:20.300 Maybe you could take a minute and just pause and say, perhaps I have been affected perhaps

01:19:26.040 without me totally being conscious of it.

01:19:28.260 I have been anxious and knowingly or unknowingly I've leaned into something that's conspiratorial

01:19:35.760 at least.

01:19:37.000 And it's a, it's a chance for me to check myself, to check myself and see whether I'm

01:19:43.080 as okay as I thought I was.

01:19:44.660 But as I'm saying this to you, Michael, I'm doubting that anybody will hear that because

01:19:50.460 I grew up in the 1970s and I remember the Christy McNichol and Jimmy McNichol after school

01:19:56.220 specials where the only way to get somebody out of a cult or conspiratorial thinking is

01:19:59.960 really to drive by in the flowered van and grab them and spend days with the deprogrammer.

01:20:05.220 And even then it's best of 50, 50 shots.

01:20:07.720 So you tell me how we're supposed to get anybody we know and love that's conspiratorial out of

01:20:12.920 that thinking.

01:20:13.400 Yeah.

01:20:15.100 And that, that group cult awareness network and, and, you know, they got bought up by

01:20:19.580 Scientology of all places.

01:20:20.920 So people were calling this number.

01:20:22.900 Seriously?

01:20:24.180 Yeah.

01:20:24.700 In the mid nineties, they, they got sued by Scientology so many times because that Scientology

01:20:29.460 is one of their targets, uh, that, that Scientology ended up just buying them out.

01:20:33.460 And then, so people would call this, you know, 1-800 number, you know, my kid's in a cult

01:20:37.440 and there's some Scientologists on the other line.

01:20:40.500 They didn't even know.

01:20:41.040 Oh my God, they called a cult to get their kid out of a cult.

01:20:43.400 Yeah, exactly.

01:20:45.040 But, you know, the, the, then there were some lawsuits about how, uh, to what extent that's

01:20:49.940 illegal to actually go and, and kidnap somebody who's over 18 and hold them against their will

01:20:55.740 in a hotel room somewhere.

01:20:56.720 Or is it deprogram them?

01:20:58.280 There were some lawsuits against that.

01:20:59.600 So I don't think anyone's really doing that anymore.

01:21:01.980 I think more it's like kind of debiasing programs.

01:21:05.340 To what extent can we, um, uh, you know, talk somebody out of something, uh, that they believe

01:21:11.000 it is doable.

01:21:11.860 Um, you have to follow certain, um, guidelines like, you know, don't, don't, uh, uh, get too

01:21:18.900 emotional.

01:21:19.400 Don't accuse people of being wrong or stupid or ignorant.

01:21:22.620 And, you know, these are the kinds of things that cause cognitive dissonance to kick in.

01:21:26.640 The person's not even listening to you anymore.

01:21:28.340 If you call somebody Hitler, a Nazi for believing X, you know, they're, they're not going to listen

01:21:32.400 to you anymore.

01:21:32.960 Uh, you know, and, and, and mostly just, you know, speak with, you know, openness and kind

01:21:38.500 of compassion, empathy.

01:21:40.440 Like I totally understand why you would believe X, whatever it is, climate stuff or vaccines

01:21:46.340 or whatever.

01:21:46.840 You can't just say, well, you're an idiot, uh, to believe that you have to say, well, you

01:21:50.280 know, I, something like, well, you know, I thought there was something to that at first.

01:21:53.620 And then I read this, or, you know, I tried that or, and take kind of a Columbo style.

01:21:58.820 Remember the Columbo TV series, you know, just asking questions.

01:22:01.640 You know, I'm just, I just, I just have this one more question, you know, what, what is

01:22:04.860 your source for that?

01:22:05.780 Or, you know, how confident are you that that's true?

01:22:08.840 And, uh, those kinds of strategies do seem to work.

01:22:11.380 You know, nothing's a hundred percent or maybe not even 50%, but you know, that, that people

01:22:15.900 do change their mind, usually quietly in the privacy of their own heads.

01:22:20.420 They don't announce publicly.

01:22:21.920 If someone's publicly announced, you know, I'm, I believe X, it's going to be harder for

01:22:26.460 them to change their mind, especially if they're a public intellectual, they write it down

01:22:30.160 or they have a podcast or a blog, or they state something in an op-ed somewhere, it's

01:22:34.300 going to be really hard to change their mind.

01:22:36.160 Most people don't do that.

01:22:37.340 They're, they just, yeah, most people are just, you know, I believe X and it's just in

01:22:41.640 their own head.

01:22:42.180 And so there it's much easier to, uh, just kind of plant the seed and then they come

01:22:47.360 around and change their minds without saying anything.

01:22:51.820 Um, yeah.

01:22:53.100 I feel like it proves you're open to learning, right?

01:22:56.020 It's like, oh my gosh, I know more today than I knew yesterday.

01:22:57.980 Exciting times.

01:22:59.540 Totally.

01:23:00.200 Totally.

01:23:00.700 I mean, I've, I listened to, you know, again, pro-lifers, I'm pro-choice, but I think they

01:23:05.520 do have some good arguments.

01:23:06.400 And, and I, you know, my students who are mostly liberal and pro-choice, I ask them,

01:23:10.980 well, what are the like three best arguments that the pro-lifers have?

01:23:14.000 You know, they mostly have no idea.

01:23:15.700 Well, they hate women.

01:23:16.900 No, that's not one of their arguments.

01:23:18.600 Okay.

01:23:20.260 Um, you know, so you have to, you know, you have to engage with, you know, steal man, the

01:23:24.800 other person's position, restate it in such a way that they would go, yes, that is exactly

01:23:28.420 what I believe.

01:23:29.080 And that's actually pretty hard to do.

01:23:30.740 I like that.

01:23:31.500 Instead of straw manning it, you steal man it.

01:23:33.440 Now, can we talk more generally about skepticism?

01:23:36.500 Okay.

01:23:37.220 I, I don't know whether I am a skeptical person as in terms of my nature.

01:23:42.940 Oh, you are.

01:23:44.300 You are.

01:23:44.720 I think I am.

01:23:45.880 I was going to say, I think I am as a journalist, right?

01:23:49.460 I'm usually like bullshit.

01:23:51.100 That's bullshit too.

01:23:52.260 I'm always looking for people's hidden agenda.

01:23:54.680 Um, but I've got to tell you not always.

01:23:58.660 And I, I wanted to bring up this example with you guys.

01:24:00.780 I thought you might find it slightly amusing.

01:24:02.800 Okay.

01:24:03.480 Back on NBC.

01:24:05.920 There was a couple that came on.

01:24:07.400 You probably remember this story.

01:24:08.560 Um, it was a male, female couple and the woman, she, she like went out in her car.

01:24:19.160 And supposedly ran in, she ran out of gas and a homeless man came to help her get the

01:24:24.600 gas and give her like his last $20.

01:24:26.520 And she was so touched.

01:24:27.840 This homeless guy helped her that she started to go fund me for him.

01:24:30.680 He was a veteran and they got hundreds of thousands of dollars because Americans are

01:24:34.960 lovely and donated all this money.

01:24:38.500 And then the couple came under fire for allegedly spending the homeless man's money and going

01:24:46.900 to Hawaii.

01:24:47.540 And they were like, no, no, no.

01:24:49.000 We always took trips to Hawaii even before the co fund me money came.

01:24:52.340 And we were helping him manage it because he was a drug addict and we didn't want him

01:24:55.980 to blow it on drugs.

01:24:57.160 So they had a defense, but I had an exclusive interview with the husband and wife in the

01:25:02.880 midst of it all.

01:25:03.780 Okay.

01:25:04.200 And it was exciting.

01:25:05.200 He's like, Oh, they're coming out.

01:25:06.060 Okay, great.

01:25:07.440 And my entire team.

01:25:08.880 And I have to say, my audience is like, F them liars.

01:25:12.920 They, they spent the dude's money.

01:25:14.920 I'm like, I don't know.

01:25:16.500 I kind of.

01:25:17.680 So, and it turns out, I mean, I'll just give you the, you know, the bottom line.

01:25:21.460 Public's probably heard it by now.

01:25:22.660 They were guilty.

01:25:23.480 In fact, the husband, Mark D'Amico pleaded guilty as the ringleader to misspending this

01:25:30.700 money.

01:25:31.720 And by the way, it turned out the homeless guy was in on it.

01:25:33.780 It's so crazy.

01:25:34.620 All of it was crazy.

01:25:36.000 But can I, I would love to play for you a soundbite of the exchange I had with a couple.

01:25:40.640 And the last line you'll hear on it is me talking to the audience like a week or two

01:25:44.960 later with the update of what we learned.

01:25:47.580 Okay.

01:25:47.720 Listen to this.

01:25:48.440 It was a feel-good story about a homeless man who offered his last $20 to help a woman

01:25:53.660 get home after she ran out of gas on the highway.

01:25:56.860 As a thank you, the woman, Kate McClure and her boyfriend, set up a GoFundMe page for Johnny

01:26:02.780 Bobbitt and wound up raising over $400,000 to help Johnny turn his life around.

01:26:10.440 Recently, however, Bobbitt accused the couple of withholding the money from him and even spending

01:26:16.080 it on themselves, which they denied.

01:26:18.640 Have you spent $1 of that $400,000 on yourselves?

01:26:22.500 No.

01:26:23.280 Nothing?

01:26:23.800 No.

01:26:24.140 You're representing that right here and right now.

01:26:25.760 There's never going to be any proof that you did, that you did.

01:26:28.100 No.

01:26:28.620 How much is left in the account now?

01:26:31.280 He has well over $150,000 left.

01:26:33.880 Yes, he spent a lot of money.

01:26:36.360 They've had a court proceeding in the days since that appearance.

01:26:40.140 The couple's attorney advised the court, there is no money left.

01:26:47.260 That was my update.

01:26:48.860 They spent it all.

01:26:50.100 And I've looked back on that, Michael, saying, where was my skepticism when I needed it?

01:26:56.160 Well, I think you were skeptical.

01:26:58.240 It's just how far does it go and when should you be skeptical?

01:27:01.740 You're really touching on a really deep and important issue in cognitive psychology.

01:27:05.880 To what extent are humans by nature gullible and we fall for scams and cons and cults all

01:27:11.320 the time?

01:27:11.800 Or are we by nature skeptical?

01:27:13.880 And it takes a lot of work to trick somebody into joining the cult or whatever.

01:27:18.260 I used to believe the former.

01:27:19.720 Now, I believe the latter, that we're pretty much skeptical most of the time.

01:27:24.240 I mean, we've rattled off a few cults as examples.

01:27:28.580 But just think about the tens of thousands of self-help groups and organizations there are.

01:27:33.700 Most of them are not cults.

01:27:34.840 Most people don't join cults.

01:27:36.800 Most people don't fall for scams like that most of the time.

01:27:39.880 Political advertising, corporate advertising, it takes a lot to get people to buy a product

01:27:45.500 or join a group.

01:27:46.740 It takes a lot of effort.

01:27:48.100 And the Jim Joneses of the world with Jonestown and all that stuff, those are pretty rare.

01:27:54.380 I mean, most groups don't end up along those lines.

01:27:56.600 So it's easy to pick out anecdotes.

01:27:58.700 That's what I do for a living, citing certain things that, you know, irrationalities that are

01:28:02.840 obvious.

01:28:03.180 But in fact, most of the time that doesn't happen.

01:28:06.180 And my experience with journalists is that they're pretty good skeptics because they have

01:28:10.880 a database of experiences of people just bullshitting and lying, just flat out lying.

01:28:17.040 And I think if you don't have a lot of experience with that, you kind of default to truth.

01:28:20.920 But it's probably reasonable to just assume this person is being honest with me until I have

01:28:26.720 reason to believe otherwise.

01:28:27.860 But if, you know, in the case of the journalist, if you have, yeah, but for every hundred of

01:28:31.820 those, you know, 25 of them are bullshitting me in line, then I'm going to ratchet up my

01:28:36.700 skepticism for every one of the future ones I hear.

01:28:40.200 And so I think you're a pretty good skeptic, you know, but you don't want to be skeptical

01:28:44.640 all the time.

01:28:45.520 I mean, what does skepticism mean?

01:28:46.860 It doesn't mean, you know, cynicism or solipsism or, you know, nothing is real.

01:28:53.240 We can't believe anything that that can't possibly be true.

01:28:56.200 You wouldn't even get out of bed.

01:28:57.640 You have to assume certain things about the world to be true to even function.

01:29:01.860 And I think we do that reasonably well.

01:29:04.840 We're reasonably rational.

01:29:06.320 I mean, I make the point that my conspiracy book that, you know, even people that go,

01:29:09.880 yeah, I'm totally on board with this crazy QAnon conspiracy theory.

01:29:13.100 They don't call it crazy.

01:29:14.220 These are rational people.

01:29:15.420 They have jobs.

01:29:16.160 They have careers.

01:29:17.140 They raise children.

01:29:18.560 You know, they can balance their bank account.

01:29:20.300 They have stock investments.

01:29:21.620 You know, I mean, they function totally rationally.

01:29:23.980 And they have what I call these logic-type compartments.

01:29:26.860 But, you know, in this little corner of my mind here, I have this one little belief I'm

01:29:30.540 hanging on to, no matter how irrational it may seem.

01:29:33.620 But they're not just across the board gullible all the time.

01:29:36.720 So the research, I think, is leaning more and more toward that.

01:29:41.420 I think, you know, we're not that gullible.

01:29:43.360 It takes a lot of work to get people to literally drink the Kool-Aid or that NXIVM cult, you know,

01:29:49.440 for how many women got the branding?

01:29:53.340 Yes, I know.

01:29:54.860 Right.

01:29:55.140 That's from my hometown, Albany, New York.

01:29:56.540 That cult, run by Keith Ranieri for people who aren't familiar.

01:29:59.360 Right.

01:29:59.660 You won't wind up running a sex cult where women were branding themselves and so on.

01:30:03.960 Keep going.

01:30:05.360 But, yeah, that's right.

01:30:06.980 I mean, but you look at the highlighted interviews with the women that got it.

01:30:12.100 How many women joined that group over all those years or were part of it or engaged with them

01:30:17.340 who didn't go for any of that?

01:30:19.300 See, we never hear about those.

01:30:21.420 You know, from what I know, the little I know about that particular one, there's more information

01:30:26.160 still to come out is I think most did not go for the branding.

01:30:28.920 It took quite a few steps between, hey, I'm going to take this seminar on how to be a successful

01:30:34.860 businesswoman to I'm going to get the brand.

01:30:37.780 I think there's like a hundred steps in there where, you know, he had those female assistants

01:30:42.760 who were kind of coaching the women along, you know, which is kind of social proof.

01:30:46.900 Well, this is a woman having me do this.

01:30:49.020 That must make it slightly more OK.

01:30:51.600 You know, but again, it took a lot to get him to do that.

01:30:54.060 And I don't think that many of all the probably thousands that had engaged in that guy,

01:30:58.900 Renier's, I mean, he had a couple of different companies and like hundreds of seminars and

01:31:03.540 workshops.

01:31:04.420 And just think of the thousands of people that took it.

01:31:06.700 You know, most did not go for the branding thing.

01:31:09.200 So to me, that's a little encouraging.

01:31:10.900 I mean, we're not as a species, we're not hopelessly irrational.

01:31:15.020 We're not doomed.

01:31:17.020 Well, I think just looking back, I will say I feel like in that one story with the soundbite

01:31:21.780 I played, I was really rooting for it to be not true, that that they would fleece the

01:31:27.720 guy.

01:31:28.100 You know what I mean?

01:31:28.600 So it's like I really I preferred the original narrative a lot.

01:31:33.420 I loved the original story of like the homeless guy helping.

01:31:36.760 And then, no, they didn't betray the homeless guy.

01:31:39.920 Oh, wait.

01:31:40.900 The whole thing is a freaking fraud.

01:31:43.620 You're like, you hate it.

01:31:45.280 You know, you hate to see it.

01:31:46.220 But enough years in the news business.

01:31:48.080 And yeah, you do have to fight a little to from to stop yourself from crossing over from

01:31:52.720 skepticism to cynical.

01:31:54.520 Right.

01:31:55.100 And but again, what what are we not looking at?

01:31:57.600 How many Patreon accounts are totally legitimate?

01:31:59.980 You know, I don't know, probably ninety nine percent.

01:32:01.640 How many nonprofits, you know, turn into, you know, these corruption schemes?

01:32:06.760 You know, probably not that many.

01:32:07.980 You know, there's tens of thousands of hundred thousands of nonprofits in the United States.

01:32:12.500 And, you know, how many of them make the news for, you know, con games like that?

01:32:16.180 Not many.

01:32:17.100 Right.

01:32:17.500 So I think it's reasonable to be hopeful and optimistic and trusting, you know, but with

01:32:22.300 verification.

01:32:22.960 As Reagan said, yeah, have some skepticism.

01:32:28.260 Absolutely.

01:32:28.980 I mean, this is what I do for a living.

01:32:30.220 Right.

01:32:30.380 Be skeptical.

01:32:31.160 Right.

01:32:31.400 But don't be cynical.

01:32:33.120 Don't be distrusting of everybody you meet.

01:32:35.060 Most people are good people.

01:32:37.220 And, you know, again, like we were saying, most people are not racist today.

01:32:40.440 Don't just assume the worst.

01:32:41.740 Most people are not like like that Derek Chauvin guy.

01:32:45.840 OK, most people aren't most cops are not like that.

01:32:49.200 That's right.

01:32:49.920 So it's but, you know, the availability heuristic, what we see on the news that bleeds, it leads,

01:32:55.040 you know, it distorts our perception of how things are going.

01:32:58.820 So you have to look at the trend lines, not the headlines.

01:33:01.440 And when you do that, things are really quite good.

01:33:04.500 I mean, we're probably living in the best times ever in human history, despite this last year

01:33:09.840 being pretty crazy.

01:33:11.420 Maybe think of it as just a little blip in the in the upward curve.

01:33:15.180 Think of it as a sawtooth blade.

01:33:16.960 You know, it's on the way up, but you have these little dips down.

01:33:19.640 But overall, I'm pretty optimistic.

01:33:22.700 Yes, I heard you say this is the most moral time in the history of our species.

01:33:27.280 I agree with you.

01:33:28.680 And it's delightful that we somehow found ourselves stationed here at this particular moment

01:33:32.740 in time.

01:33:33.320 Um, yes, there's things to complain about, of course, but there's like a net net.

01:33:39.300 We're doing pretty well.

01:33:40.400 That's what you got to stay focused on.

01:33:41.760 You can't get too wrapped up in fighting the day's battles that you lose the 30,000 foot

01:33:47.480 view.

01:33:49.400 Exactly.

01:33:49.920 You got to take that view.

01:33:50.840 Just think, you know, when would you rather be alive and say you as a woman, you know,

01:33:54.560 I mean, 1500, 1800, how about 2020?

01:33:58.060 You know, I mean, this is terms of rights.

01:34:00.360 And that's not to say because things are better than they used to be.

01:34:04.060 They're perfect.

01:34:04.860 No, they're not.

01:34:05.700 Don't conflate those.

01:34:06.640 Uh, and, and, and anecdotes are not data.

01:34:09.640 You know, the one example of the, uh, of the misogynist CEO, uh, uh, and okay, that that's,

01:34:17.120 but that used to be quite common.

01:34:18.440 Now it's rare.

01:34:19.440 Again, you got to follow the trend lines.

01:34:21.860 I will give you one good thing about being a woman in 1500.

01:34:25.480 Um, I just recently for a costume event, we did wore a corset and one of those dresses

01:34:30.540 they used to wear.

01:34:31.260 And I'm telling you, there's a reason that that was in style for so long.

01:34:34.220 It shows off all the things you want to show off and it hides all the things you want to

01:34:38.520 hide.

01:34:38.900 I think we rejected that too soon.

01:34:40.980 Ladies, we could have found a, like a, like a comfortable one that didn't make your ribcage

01:34:45.220 collapse.

01:34:45.980 Um, but I really liked the way that worked.

01:34:48.420 You could eat whatever you wanted at dinner.

01:34:49.760 Okay.

01:34:52.800 I wouldn't know about that, but okay.

01:34:54.260 I'll take your word for that.

01:34:55.260 That is what we call looking on the bright side.

01:34:57.480 Michael Schirmer.

01:34:58.060 What a pleasure.

01:34:58.660 Thank you so much for being here.

01:35:00.100 Oh, well, thank you for having me.

01:35:01.220 I'm a fan.

01:35:02.120 I just love your show.

01:35:03.020 Congratulations on your new, you got your radio show coming up, right?

01:35:05.840 Yeah.

01:35:06.040 Yeah.

01:35:06.220 We're launching live on Sirius on September 7th.

01:35:08.140 And so I hope you'll come back and do that show too.

01:35:10.600 Absolutely.

01:35:15.700 Okay.

01:35:16.020 So this is an exciting moment for us because we're not going to speak to you again until

01:35:19.440 we are live on Sirius XM's Triumph channel at noon, not Monday, because it's Labor Day

01:35:26.240 on Tuesday.

01:35:27.680 And, uh, for those of you who haven't, you know, sort of been paying attention to that

01:35:31.300 because you're living your lives and I assume you're not obsessed with news about the MK

01:35:34.420 show.

01:35:35.140 Um, although fine by me, if you are, what we're doing is this podcast only, we're going to do it

01:35:41.240 five days a week and we're going to do it live.

01:35:43.780 So if you would like to listen to it live, which can be fun, no net, um, you can do that from 12 to

01:35:50.920 two Eastern time.

01:35:52.520 The good thing about it is even if you like just listening to the podcast at your leisure,

01:35:56.300 if you want to do it that way, you can call in and we can talk because we're going to

01:35:59.960 take a live call.

01:36:01.260 Something I've actually never done before.

01:36:03.520 It could be a hot mess for many reasons, but bear with us because nobody turns away from

01:36:08.160 a training.

01:36:08.760 So tune in on Tuesday, not to give us a bad omen and you can listen to it that way, or

01:36:13.860 you can just keep listening to it exactly the way you currently do.

01:36:16.560 Nothing's changing there.

01:36:17.500 Um, okay.

01:36:18.620 So wish us luck and we'll talk on Tuesday.

01:36:20.860 Have a great, great labor day.

01:36:23.660 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - September 02, 2021

Michael Shermer on COVID Hysteria, the Religion of Wokeism, and Cults ｜ Ep. 153

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