Skip to content
The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #2211 - Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger is an investigative journalist and founder of Public, a Substack publication, founder and president of Environmental Progress, a research organization that incubates ideas, leaders, and movements, and the CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship and Free Speech at the University of Austin. He is the best-selling author of multiple books, including “Apocalypse Never” and “San Fransicko," and is a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment" and Green Book Award winner. https://www.public.news/ https://environmentalprogress.org/founder-president https://x.com/shellenberger

Joe RoganhostMichael Shellenbergerguest
Oct 9, 20243h 15mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:24

    Twitter Files Brazil: Supreme Court-driven platform bans and secret deplatforming

    1. NA

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    2. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music) Mr. Schellenberger, good to see you.

    3. MS

      Mr. Rogan, good to see you, man.

    4. JR

      How you been, man?

    5. MS

      (sighs) Every day, every day is so- (laughs)

    6. JR

      You've been neck deep, neck deep in the chaos of the world.

    7. MS

      I made it, I made it to Brazil and back, so put it that way.

    8. JR

      What was that like?

    9. MS

      (inhales deeply) It was intense, man. I mean, it was, uh, it's still going on. Um, we did Twitter Files Brazil.

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. MS

      And three days later, that was back in March, three days later, Elon just throws down and starts to attack this main Supreme Court justice, who's the guy that's now banned X. So X is banned in Brazil, they're in negotiations, but it was very exciting to be there, because... And the Brazilians were just relieved. They were like, "Everything that we thought was happening is proven by the Twitter Files Brazil." And they were just very grateful to Elon. So it's been this-

    12. JR

      What, what did the Twitter Fires Br- I know about the Twitter Files America, I don't know about the Twitter Files in Brazil.

    13. MS

      So they, uh, this is like one of the most extreme forms of censorship we've seen in democratic countries. Um, India's been pretty bad too, but this, what they were, uh, the worst of it was that they were-

    14. JR

      Pull that sucker up.

    15. MS

      Is it too... Okay.

    16. JR

      Yeah, sorry, just bringing it up to you.

    17. MS

      How's that?

    18. JR

      Good, better? Good to go.

    19. MS

      This is, the most dramatic part is that they were, the judge, this is a Supreme Court justice who's basically the dictator of Brazil, is, had, was demanding that particular journalists and politicians just be banned, not only from X, but from every other social media platform, which is a tactic that we had seen in earlier censorship files. We had done something on something called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, uh, with Taibbi, showing this, and it was an early military censorship operation, and they'd had a list of tactics, and one of them was to get people banned on every platform. So you're basically like, just de-personing people, just destroying their career. You can't make a career o- as a journalist or a politician if you're banned from every platform. So that was the, one of the most dramatic parts, all in secret, all, um, you know, open investigations, ongoing, and basically nobody had... there was no checks and balances, there was no chance to argue with it,

  2. 2:24 – 4:05

    Free speech protests in São Paulo and Elon Musk’s dilemma: principle vs access

    1. MS

      so that came out and Elon responded like three days later and was like, "Yeah, Brazil's like the worst in the world." And just starts attacking the Supreme Court justice as like Darth Vader and Voldemort and doing what Elon does. Fast-forward to last month and they had a huge protest in Sao Paolo, one of the largest free speech protests in history, which was itself just amazing and inspiring, because, you know, it's, uh, free speech has been something that we didn't really think we had to fight for. So to see like hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of Sao Paolo was amazing. I was there with the former president, he sort of sees me, brings me up, I'm up, up on top of the stage. He's, you know, just, you know, ba- you know, yelling at the crowd, everyone's worked up, you know, he kinda looks over at me and covers the mic and he's like, "It's Schellenberger, right?" You know, he's like, "Michael Schellenberger's up here." And the crowd's just, you know, they knew about the Twitter Files. Afterwards we go down and it's just, you know, it's just a lot of emotion and anger, but also hope. The Brazilian people are, for me it's like one of the most exciting cultures in the world because they're so expressive. The president, like while he's speaking, he's like crying, you know, it's a very like emotionally open culture. So now, I mean, the question for Elon, they're having to do negotiate this, is do you, do you out of principle keep, you know, X banned in Brazil to defend the several dozen people that the government is requiring be banned permanently, but that means that 20 million Brazilians are denied X as a platform, or do you go along with what the government's demanding and hope to fight for another day? And that's what's happening now.

  3. 4:05 – 5:34

    What counts as “misinformation” in Brazil: COVID and election narratives

    1. JR

      The, the 12 people, it's 12 people?

    2. MS

      We, we actually don't know, but it, probably under 100.

    3. JR

      And what are they being accused of that the government is saying is, uh, so important that they need to be banned?

    4. MS

      Misinformation. You know, uh, particularly, you can see every country in the world is particularly obsessed with COVID misinformation and election misinformation.

    5. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. MS

      So, but to give you an example of how arbitrary and unjust it is, there's one of the members of Congress who's one of the most dynamic, he's not actually in the party of Bolsonaro, that's the, the controversial former president. He's in a different party, um, his name is Marcelo Van Hotan, and he was, he got in tr- he didn't even know this until the Twitter Files Brazil came out, and then Elon did release, because the House of Representatives, Jim Jordan asked for these internal files from X, he subpoenaed them, so we even learned more information from those files. They, they showed that Van Hoten had, he was, he was supposedly being deplatformed for election misinformation, but it turned out that the video he posted was posted the day after the elections and it had to do with labor issues, had nothing to do with elections. And that's just really common. I mean, you just see, it's just arbitrary rule by one guy. That's why I say it's a dictatorship.

    7. JR

      And has there been any debate or discussion? Like does anybody try to hold him to the fire as to why these people are being banned and please prove that this is misinformation? Has there been any sort of discussion?

  4. 5:34 – 9:17

    Lula, Brazil politics, and Shellenberger’s personal history with Brazilian leaders

    1. MS

      Oh, huge. I mean, it's p- maybe one of the biggest issues in Brazil. It's, the president of Brazil, who probably hasn't gotten enough criticism for it, because he's going along with it. He defended the censorship-

    2. JR

      This is Lula?

    3. MS

      This is Lula.

    4. JR

      I t- always heard that he was a great guy when Jair Bolsonaro was the president. The, the, the narrative was O- Bolsonaro's a dictator, that he was a bad guy. But I know so many Brazilians, you know, from jujitsu, I know so many Brazilians, and they all love Bolsonaro. I was like, "I am so confused about their politics over there. I don't know what's going on." But Lula was supposed to be this guy that was for the people-And to hear that he is a part of this whole disinformation crackdown, alleged disinformation crackdown, is so disheartening.

    5. MS

      Well, yeah. I mean, for me pers- so the funny thing is I had this, just coincidentally, I have this deep relationship with Brazil because I lived in Brazil in the, in the early 90s. I was working, I was actually working towards my PhD in the semi-Amazon. I went to Rio and Sao Paulo. I interviewed Lula in 1994, sat across from him, just like I'm sitting across from you right now. And I-

    6. JR

      What was your take on him?

    7. MS

      I, I love, I mean, at the time, I loved him. I mean, I was, you know, I was on the radical left for-

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. MS

      ... you know, up until, you know, five minutes ago. And so ... (laughs)

    10. JR

      (laughs)

    11. MS

      Um ...

    12. JR

      Up until the Kool-Aid wore off.

    13. MS

      Yeah. I mean, even until the cen- I mean, really, even up until the censorship part. I mean, when, when you start censoring, you're just like ... Not to digress, but it's kind of like, you know, back in the 90s, we were antiwar, pro-free speech-

    14. JR

      Mm-hmm. Sure.

    15. MS

      ... and pro- and pro-gay rights.

    16. JR

      Yeah.

    17. MS

      Now the left is, is pro-censorship, pro-war, and engaged in horrible medical mistreatment of gay children-

    18. JR

      Yeah.

    19. MS

      ... in the name of trans medicine.

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. MS

      So it's like, literally, like, "Who changed here?"

    22. JR

      Right.

    23. MS

      You know? My values did stay the same, at least on those things. But anyway, I mean, I sat across from him and I just said, you know, "Everybody says that you're gonna turn Brazil into Cuba." He does love Fidel Castro, but he said, "Absolutely not."

    24. JR

      (laughs)

    25. MS

      He does. No, seriously. They're like-

    26. JR

      That's a bit of a problem.

    27. MS

      They're bros. They're, no, they're bros. I mean, but the, the, the-

    28. JR

      That seems like a bit of a problem.

    29. MS

      The thing is that in Latin America, like e- like, everybody on the left, e- even some of the center left, they actually had a lot of respect for Fidel.

    30. JR

      (laughs)

  5. 9:17 – 14:05

    Why the left flipped on censorship: populism, “deep state” reactions, and migration politics

    1. JR

      What do you think changed?

    2. MS

      ... unacceptable." (sighs) Wow, great question. I mean, there's a way in which it's the same thing that changed for the left everywhere. I mean, this is the question we're always asking-

    3. JR

      Right.

    4. MS

      ... which is like-

    5. JR

      How?

    6. MS

      I mean, 'cause, you know, if you read the histories, I've been, n- n- you know, I'm now ... By the way, I'm so, I'm, we're gonna spend three months in Austin every year now, 'cause I'm the CBR Chair of, of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at the University of Austin.

    7. JR

      Oh.

    8. MS

      I'm the first and only endowed chair there, so, um, so it's exciting. So I'm here, and-

    9. JR

      Well, welcome.

    10. MS

      Thank you, man. I'm really ... Yeah, we just bought a little house, and-

    11. JR

      Nice.

    12. MS

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      Nice.

    14. MS

      So yeah, I mean, one of the ... 'Cause of course if you read the histories of free speech, particularly the last couple hundred years, it's really the le- it's really the right censoring the left.

    15. JR

      Right.

    16. MS

      There's a few exceptions. But I mean, overwhelmingly, all the way back to the original, you know, French parliament where they split, you know, the French Con- where they split people left and right became a way to refer to liberals and conservatives. Conservatives were about protecting tradition, about propriety, "Don't say certain things." You know, that was like what conservatives were. And then if you go to the United States, like the, one of the most dramatic instances of censorship here is the early part of the 20th century with the Sedition Act, and that's when the, that's when they were, you know, arresting socialists, incarcerating thousands of people. I mean, it was a crazy period. And so that was the, that's basically the tradition. That's why when we were i- i- you know, in the 90s and up until recently, uh, s- you know, free speech was som- was part of the left tradition. So what happened? I mean, one of ... What, what's clear about the censorship that's going on is it's, it's, it's counter populist. So they're going at ... Jair Bolsonaro, like Trump, is a populist candidate. So one thought experiment would be if Bernie Sanders had become president in 2016, would the deep state have sided with, would they have sided with the right, with the Republicans to censor a populist Democratic Party? It's an interesting question. I don't know the answer to it. Clearly, I mean, I would say the pri- right, if you look at what the global elite, you know, the, which is kind of a center left elite in Europe, Brazil, United States, Canada, it really wants to censor on COVID, elections, and migration. And they do the migration, mass migration stuff around hate. So like, if you criticize mass migration, it's hate speech and you should be censored. So clearly, this is a reaction by the deep state against populism, which clearly threatens them, their ability to build a wage war when they wanna wage war, to, to move people around. I mean, it's huge. I mean, the mass migration that's been occurring under Biden, of course, has been happening in Europe too, and everybody's like, "What is ... Like, what's going on?" Like, "Why, why is this happening?"

    17. JR

      Why do you think it's happening?

    18. MS

      Well, that's a great question. I mean, obviously, the story that... the traditional story had been that this is compassionate and, you know, it's the right thing to do and wanna bring people in. There's so many... I mean, the Democrats and the Europeans, they went so far with it that it actually hurt, is- has hurt them politically. Like, you know, Kamala may lose the elections because of just the mass migration. It was like the number one thing 60 Minutes asked her about just now. You know, in Germany, the AFD, which is considered the far-right party, far means anti-mass migration, um, so they went, they went really far. I mean, you know, I mean, I think there's probably some truth to the idea that Democrats are bringing in folks to, to increase Democratic voters. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's something that, you know, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira wrote a whole book about called The Emerging Democratic Majority, where they talked about how Latinos are gonna side with Democrats. And then another part of me just wonders if it's related, is that there is a con- there was a concern that populism... Because, I mean, the- the- the danger, the threat of populism is that it's popular (laughs) .

    19. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    20. MS

      You know? So the threat of populism is that the people actually govern rather than these deep state organizations that have constrained, that c- you know, pre-internet constrained what was acceptable. They- they narrowed the so-called Overton window. With populism, you get potentially, uh, populations that say, "We don't want to go to war in Ukraine. We don't want to support foreign wars. We- we don't want to have ma- mass migration." And for a variety of reasons, the- these deep state organizations, by which I mean, you know, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, State Department, are absolutely freaked out about it, as are the kind of global elite that end up supporting the NGOs pushing for that same agenda. George Soros, um, you know, Craig Newmark, uh, Pierre Omidyar are the people that basically end up financing the NGOs that the US government then comes along and finances, which- which by the way is another thing that we keep discovering. Like, we'll be in Brazil and we'll be like, "Wow, these NGOs

  6. 14:05 – 16:17

    Infiltrating Twitter: intelligence-linked moderation proposals and propaganda instincts

    1. MS

      are doing the exact same thing in Brazil that they're doing in Europe. Oh, and they happen to be funded by George Soros." They happen to have a fact-checking groups that come along and fact check as a pretext for censorship. They do advertiser boycotts against the social media companies in order to control the social media companies. Obviously, there was this huge infiltration of Twitter. I mean, since I saw you last, we discovered what basically looks like a CIA effort to take over the content moderation at Twitter, it was former CIA people, um, Alethea Group, uh, which basically was... W- we discovered these internal memos where they're basically trying to come in and create a special new content- content moderation, which is of course code for censorship.

    2. JR

      How did they frame that?

    3. MS

      They framed it, uh, it's so fascinating because of course we can see all the memos and we have it, so it's not a theory. They were, they were addressing... They- they basically were hi- in the internal... In the sale- the sales pitches from this Alethea Group, they were selling, uh, the... They were basically hyping the criticisms that Twitter was getting for not censoring enough (laughs) . Um, and then they were saying, "Well, we're gonna bring all this intelligence experience and, you know, we've got these people that are really skilled at foreign languages." I mean, they were promising to bring in people that spoke all these different languages. And there was some internal resistance within Twitter, but it basically was on track to happen, and then- and then Elon buys Twitter, and it all, it all ends.

    4. JR

      What do you think would have happened if he didn't buy it?

    5. MS

      I mean, I mean, honestly, I go... I mean, as long as you... I'm careful, I don't want to engage in hyperbole, but I do feel like what we're seeing is totalitarianism, that this is-

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. MS

      It's not tanks and torture chambers, at least not yet. But the- this instinct, this d- this demand to control the entire information environment, because of course it's not... The censorship is in service of actually propaganda. They wanna... They both wanna, they both wanna prevent certain information from getting out, and then they want to promote certain information.

    8. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. MS

      And that, I... The- this is... I mean, when... I just re-read 1984 by George Orwell, and it's like this is what he's talking about, this is what he's worried about.

  7. 16:17 – 22:57

    Printing press parallels and why the First Amendment is historically unusual

    1. JR

      So do you think when social media first came along, they sort of underestimated the potential and they let it become what it is, and then once it got so huge, then they tried to infiltrate? Like perhaps after 2016, then they tried to infiltrate and kind of realize it's a little too late, because there's just too many people like yourself and Substack people and podcasters. There's just too much, too many popular people on Twitter that have huge accounts that are on it all day long and monetizing it and acting as legitimate independent journalists without any sort of oversight?

    2. MS

      Yeah, hun- 100%. In fact, not... It's not just that. They were using social media to support, uh... I mean, CIA, intelligence community, Defense Department were using social media for co- for Arab Spring, you know, for the color revolutions in Eastern Europe. It was a weapon. It was part of what they call hybrid warfare. You know, getting people, you know, mobilizing people in the streets to do regime change to overthrow governments. I mean, if you can... The Holy Grail for... I mean, it's like Sun Tzu, you know, the best way to win is by not having to fight, you know.

    3. JR

      Right.

    4. MS

      And so if you can not have to fire any bullets, if you don't... If you... You know, CIA 1.0 after World War II, you know, it's a crude military overthrow of governments. CIA 2.0 regime change is, put a bunch of people in the street, peaceful protest, get the head of state to resign or call an early election, and then overthrow the government that way. So social media was a tool of US government statecraft for whatever that period was when... You know, Arab Spring 2011 until 2016. And then, yeah, I think it was basically Brexit, Duterte in Philippines is another right-wing populist that gets elected, Trump. And even though I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that Trump was not elected because of social media. He was elected because he defeated his opponents in the... his Republican opponents in the debates and then defeated Hillary in the election, mostly through conventional media.... the, his use of social media and those other things clearly triggered a reaction from these deep state organizations. And I like it, and it's funny, I just read this beautiful history of the printing press in Oxford History, and the printing press, at first, you know, 15th century, first 100 years, the Catholic Church is just like, "We love the printing press. You know, we're just cranking out Bibles and it's going great." And then Martin Luther gets ahold of the printing press and prints his theses, which are mostly attacking the church for corruption, for selling indulgences as a way to, uh, over- you know, pay for your sins, basically, and he condemns that. And he literally goes viral. I mean, when you read, like, that history, you're like, it's eerily similar to social media.

    5. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. MS

      I mean, can you, I mean, it's am- it's amazing because... Well, I mean, long- long story short, there's like a long period (laughs) of revolutions and wars and, and the Protestant R- Reformation and then the Counter-Reformation, and they're like, the printing presses, they're like hiding them in people's houses, the church and the, the government is trying to, is arresting people for having printing presses. The printing presses-

    7. JR

      Wow.

    8. MS

      ... go to Netherlands, you know, they're sneaking the- the printing press into the Netherlands. And so it's like, you can't help but see, and you're like, "Wow, it's like VPNs."

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. MS

      'Cause in Brazil when they were like, "We're gonna ban X," we're like, "Get a VPN," you know, and VPN in.

    11. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MS

      Still hard for people to post publicly-

    13. JR

      Right.

    14. MS

      ... 'cause th- that would obviously show that they were on it, but still, it's like, you're always... And this is sort of an argument, this would be an argument for Elon to cut a deal to get X back up in Brazil, and I'm not saying that's what he should do, I'm just saying one argument for it is that, you know, stay in the game, don't let them confiscate your printing press out of, you know, to make, out of principle or pride, because at some other point, you're gonna be able to find a way to work around that censorship.

    15. JR

      Does Brazil have something similar to our First Amendment?

    16. MS

      They have a line in their constitution that is extremely strong, that there should be no censorship for social or political issues. The problem is that (laughs) their constitution is so long and it was created by so many people that there's then all these other caveats, like you can't engage in racism, you can't engage in hate, you can't... There's even, the Nazis are, N- Nazi Party's banned in Brazil, so there's all sorts of other things that... I mean, the, the constitution's full of contradictions. It's a huge problem. It made me... The whole experience, by the way, 'cause you know, when you're growing up and you go to, and you grow up and you go to, you know, you go to, you know, elementary school and high school and the teachers are telling you, "The Constitution of the United States is so special," and you're just like, "Oh, come on," you know, like whatever. But you realize when you get older and you re- you realize the First Amendment, it's so radical, because e- basically every other country in the world, certainly every other western country, the progression of free speech was, you would ask the king for permission. You's like, "Oh king, can we criticize you for this?" And he'd be like, "Oh, okay, we'll allow you to do that." But it, free speech was something gradually granted to the people. Here, as soon as they get the Constitution done, Jefferson and other Anti-Federalists, the people that were pretty skeptical about even wanting a country, were like, "We need a first, we need a Bill of Rights, and the first thing up there needs to be free speech, and it's without qualifications." So the free s- I mean, the First Amendment doesn't say, it doesn't say except for liable and defamation and imminent-

    17. JR

      Right, right.

    18. MS

      ... incitement of violence, those things were built, those things were Supreme Court rulings in the 200 and 50 years after the, the Constitution's ratified in 1789. And so that's why it's so amazing is that, like, you just never s- I mean, I was, this history I just read of, of free speech is, is so amazing 'cause like you g- all this battles over how much free speech to have, is it just for the elites, is it for the people? Then you get to the United States and it's just cl- it's just a clear moment in history where the founders of this country were just like, "Fuck it," like, "This is essential," like the speech comes before the government. The government, you don't have a government and then have free speech. We have free speech as an inalienable right from God or from our creator or just something that we're saying that we have, and then you make a government based on speech. So this Orwellian idea that we hear, including, you know, tragically from Barack Obama and now his two Secretaries of State, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, and Bill Gates, they're saying, "We have to have censorship to protect democracy." It's like the most Orwellian, un-American idea. It's anathema.

  8. 22:57 – 28:17

    Billionaires, Epstein, and power maintenance: why censorship advocates have influence

    1. JR

      How is Bill Gates in this conversation at all? That's what's confusing, a non-elected official who just owned a software company.

    2. MS

      My, my colleagues don't want me to talk about, but don't be, don't, don't be conspiratorial about this. There's other explanations (laughs) for it.

    3. JR

      It's conspiratorial. Well, we've already talked about George Soros.

    4. MS

      (laughs)

    5. JR

      And the fact the FCC f- fast-tracked him purchasing 200 different radio stations.

    6. MS

      I mean, that's kinda run-of-the-mill corruption. Um, I mean, with e- with, with Gates, you get into, you get into Epstein, right? So-

    7. JR

      Yeah.

    8. MS

      I mean, so I'm not saying this is the reason, but I mean, it is, like this is not a theory. The, the, the current CIA Director, uh, Bill Burns, was at Epstein's apartment multiple times. Bill Gates was there, I, I believe, well last time I checked, nobody knows how many times actually Bill Gates was with Jeffrey Epstein. He went out and did this, you know, really, he did this PBS interview where he just looks guilty the whole time and was defensive talking about Epstein.

    9. JR

      Is that what that woman, where she, when he says, "Well, he's dead now."

    10. MS

      He said... (laughs) Oh.

    11. JR

      "So be careful."

    12. MS

      Uh.

    13. JR

      Which is just the wildest thing to say.

    14. MS

      It's weird that, yeah, like, you're like, that's what he was thinking. When she was like, "Why are you..." He's, he's basically like, "Why are you going on and on about it? He's dead." It's like, "Well, we weren't talking about him, we were talking about you and your relationship with him."

    15. JR

      Right, right.

    16. MS

      So, I mean look, so obviously there is...... there was a sex blackmail opera- I mean, I'm 90, 95% on it. I think the Wall Street Journal reporters who did fantastic reporting on this are probably 99%. That was a sex blackmail operation.

    17. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    18. MS

      They were shooting film, there were one-way mirrors, they were entrapping people. There's real- there's known connections to Mossad, and I just don't believe that Mossad operates in the United States without CIA approval.

    19. JR

      So, the prevailing theory is which, what most people believe, is that they brought these people there under this premise that you're gonna be there with heads of state and industry and famous people and scientists-

    20. MS

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      ... and this is gonna be an amazing place where exceptional people get together. Then once you get there, you get a little loose and you start drinking a little and-

    22. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    23. JR

      ... perhaps taking in some party favors, and then there's ladies.

    24. MS

      Yep. And they're underage.

    25. JR

      Yeah.

    26. MS

      And they're, and then your next thing, and you don't know it, but that mirror on the wall-

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. MS

      ... someone's filming you, and then you're owned.

    29. JR

      Yeah.

    30. MS

      So-

  9. 28:17 – 46:48

    COVID narrative control and “retconning” vaccine claims: debate with Bill Nye

    1. MS

      I mean, I just did a debate with, uh, Bill Nye, um, in Florida.

    2. JR

      He's the science guy.

    3. MS

      The science guy, yeah.

    4. JR

      How could you do a debate against the science guy?

    5. MS

      (laughs) 'Cause I'm anti-science, obviously.

    6. JR

      You must be.

    7. MS

      And, you know, I mean, I just pointed out that simple fact that the, I just pointed out the vaccine didn't obviously prevent infection or transmission. And the cr- "Oh," you know, "how can you say that?" And whatever, and it's like, because it, because everybody knows it reduced hospitalizations and reduced death. And I, I agree with that. I mean, it's, I, that's fine, but the point isn't... I'm not arguing about the vaccine, I'm arguing that it didn't do what they said it did, and nobody's actually... And then they just gaslight you as though that were the reason they were telling you to get the vaccine in the first place, was to reduce hospitalization and death. No, they were telling you that it was gonna reduce infection and transmission.

    8. JR

      Well, everybody's seen that Rachel Maddow clip, right?

    9. MS

      Yeah.

    10. JR

      But here's the thing. If everybody took it, how do we even know if it reduced hospitalization and death? We don't know. And when, when we know that the fact that the, the people that died of COVID, the vast majority of them had four plus comorbidities.

    11. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    12. JR

      And we-

    13. MS

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      ... know that some ungodly amount of the population was vaccinated. Was it like 80%? Something like that?

    15. MS

      So you, but you're saying that we don't know-

    16. JR

      How do we know if it reduced death?

    17. MS

      Well, 'cause you could com- you could compare the vaccinated to the unvaccinated group, right?

    18. JR

      Y- could you, though? If you have 80% of the people that are vaccinated and the 20% that are unvaccinated, are they of a particular political leaning? And, uh, what are the health metrics of that par- particular political leaning? Like, uh, has anybody done some sort of an analysis on the people that did versus didn't? Like, what were their health... What was the state of their, their physical health, their metabolic health before they made these decisions? Because ideally, what you would look at if you wanted to find out if it, if it stopped transmission, uh, or, or, excuse me, hospitalization or death, you would wanna look at the overall body of human beings, and then we have a bunch of things that we do know. Right? Okay. So we know that...... the, here's a group of people that died. Well, what do they have in common? Well, the vast majority of them have comorbidities. The vast majority of them are either really old or obese or are very ill, very, very ill. So we have... What was the, the actual number of people that died of COVID? I, I think 99.7 survived, right?

    19. MS

      Right.

    20. JR

      So it's, uh, 0.03 of the people that got CO- is it something like that?

    21. MS

      Man, I have none and an expert on COVID. (laughs)

    22. JR

      You have to take into account... You also have to take into account, uh, how many people were put on ventilators-

    23. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    24. JR

      ... who wound up dying, uh, which we now know was a terrible idea. 80% of the people they put on venere- ventilators died. We know, uh, remdesivir had terrible health consequences.

    25. MS

      Yeah.

    26. JR

      We know there's a bu- a bunch of things that people are connecting to the vaccine that no one is admitting, you know, and that it... Co- hospitals and especially employers are very reluctant to say that these mandated vaccinations caused these serious health consequences that we know are real. And then we have this mysterious uptick of all-cause mortality that everyone wants to conveniently ignore, and no one wants to make some sort of a correlation or causation. So do we really know that it, it prevented death?

    27. MS

      That, that is a good question.

    28. JR

      You're dealing with so much-

    29. MS

      Honestly, Joe, I'm not a, I'm not a vac-

    30. JR

      Right.

  10. 46:48 – 1:00:36

    Institutional failures beyond COVID: pediatrics scandals, DEI language policing, and “Pathocracy”

    1. MS

      And it's even more dangerous when it's in the med- health and medical context.

    2. JR

      Sure.

    3. MS

      I'll give you another example. I mean, American Academy of Pediatrics, my friend, Marty Makary, just came out with this amazing book called Blind Spot, uh, yeah, Blind Spots, um, where he looks at American Academy of Pediatrics, look at what they did. They recommended, uh, letting babies sleep on their stomachs. That resulted in the sudden infant death syndrome. And babies, like, many babies died from that.

    4. JR

      Suffocated, right?

    5. MS

      Suffocated. They recommended not giving children peanuts, and they created the peanut allergy epidemic. They, um, and now, they're, now they're recommending transgender medicine. In all three cases, there was never any science to support any of those positions. And it's bizarre 'cause I was, I mean, when you read his book or you kinda look into it, you're like, "What was going on? Was there some special interest?" Or whatever. It was just, like, ego, and also, it, and it was a desire, in many cases, it was a desire to, to have answers to problems that they should never have given answers to. Peanut allergies, for example, there were a few, uh, tiny number of people that, tiny number of kids who had peanut allergies. Um, but they came to AAP, and they said, "What should we do about it?" And the AAP goes, "Well, it's better just to be safe than sorry to, to, to recommend that parents don't give their kids peanuts." They ended up creating the peanut allergy epidemic. They ended up making the b- and, uh, it's an incredible story because-

    6. JR

      Do you know the other theory of why there's so many peanut allergies?

    7. MS

      What's that?

    8. JR

      And so, allergies in general?

    9. MS

      No.

    10. JR

      I don't know if this is true. Obviously, I'm not a, an expert in any of these things that I'm talking about. But the theory is that when you're vaccinating children and you're using aluminum, which is ... So, you have the inert virus, you have the dead virus, and you have this agitator, this thing that causes people to have this reaction. And then, they find the inert virus, they develop antibodies for it, and that's how vaccines work.

    11. MS

      Right.

    12. JR

      But that aluminum causes, uh-... severe allergic reactions and can cause you to become allergic to various things-

    13. MS

      Mm-hmm.

    14. JR

      ... including peanuts. This is... I'm butchering this, for sure, but Bret Weinstein has made this, this argument and, uh, he believes that's possibly why he has a severe wheat allergy.

    15. MS

      Mm. Could be. I mean, in this case, they had a pretty good study comparing American kids to Israeli kids, and the Israeli kids had peanuts at young ages and they didn't have these allergies. And I don't know if the facts-

    16. JR

      Did they have the same vaccination schedule?

    17. MS

      I don't know. I'm gonna have to check. But in the, but it-

    18. JR

      Yeah. Well, they were very vaccinated for COVID. I mean, it was an interesting way-

    19. MS

      Israelis were?

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. MS

      Interesting.

    22. JR

      Yeah. I believe they mandated it.

    23. MS

      I mean, what's so amazing about that, assuming that Marty's account is correct, what's incredible about that story is that you had... So, so first of all, something like, like over 14 years went by before they did a study showing that depriving the kids of peanuts at a young age was creating the allergies. But everybody, every... there's a whole field called immunology and there's all these immunologists who were watching this happen and they would know from their basic theory, which has been around for thousands of years, that you would end up creating allergies-

    24. JR

      Right.

    25. MS

      ... by not having that early exposure. So, one of the cra- so you're always like... I have a n- this is, I, like another case of this is like we're, we're working on... I'm working on this study of, like, the last Harvard president who came to power, Claudine Gay, who ended up leaving. She was not a great scholar, you know, she was actually in trouble for plagiarism. That was, that was why she ended up having to leave. But, you know, one of the-

    26. JR

      So, that was obviously after those hearings where-

    27. MS

      It was after those hearings and then someone-

    28. JR

      ... she said the crazy things about-

    29. MS

      Someone commissioned the plagiarism to go after her because of that.

    30. JR

      Mm-hmm.

  11. 1:00:36 – 1:23:17

    Mental health, drug use, and psychedelics: tools vs quick fixes

    1. MS

      I mean, look, we're in this, I mean, look, we're in a mental, I mean, we've been in a, our country is just in a bad way, in terms of mental health, right? We're just not taking care of it. I mean, no, no country in the-

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. MS

      I mean, we have, people, we, we have a lot of guns, and then you have no proper psychiatric or mental health care system.... which is crazy because now you have telehealth and, you know, you- you- we should have a bunch of ways to deal with it, but it's just not who we are, I guess. (laughs) As a society.

    4. JR

      Well, it's also, it's very difficult to get people to seek treatment.

    5. MS

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      And, you know, and then also the treatment, especially in terms of things like SSRIs, they have to try a bunch of things on you. They- it's not as simple. Everybody has a different level of mental illness, right? And so, the- there's also different causes of this mental illness and there's different medications at work.

    7. MS

      Right.

    8. JR

      And they don't really know until they try it on you. And then, then we find out, now, that the entire theory that it's based on, which is that there is, uh, some sort of chemical imbalance, is incorrect. It's not true. So then, okay, well, we have to take this holistic view of the body and the mind and the health of the individual based on lifestyle and choices and community and friends and all these different things-

    9. MS

      For sure.

    10. JR

      ... that we don't want to take into consideration. Instead, they're just giving people pills. And they give people pills and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes, it causes a dissociation effect. These- the dissociatives, these weird drugs that people take where they don't even exactly know what the fuck they're doing while they're doing it.

    11. MS

      Well, and some- I mean, I think als- I mean, yeah, f- 100%, and, you know, we also, unlike Europe and whatever, we don't- we don't allow- we don't coerce- we don't mandate antipsychotics to people with schizophrenia or those kinds of treatments.

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. MS

      We're much more libertarian than that.

    14. JR

      Right.

    15. MS

      You know, I mean, I- w- this guy particularly, the Pelosi guy, I actually- my th- I- I can't prove it, but my theory would be that he- that there may not have been an underlying mental illness. He had a rough life, he did a huge quantity of drugs. You know, there's just a set of people, as we've known from LSD over the decades, there's some people that take LSD, we're now seeing it with mar- with the high-potency marijuana.

    16. JR

      They never come back.

    17. MS

      That trigger psychosis.

    18. JR

      Yeah.

    19. MS

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      And it's probably, they already have a propensity for it. The- the-

    21. MS

      Right.

    22. JR

      ... the thought is that... I forget what percentage of the population, I think it's 1% has a tendency towards schizophrenia or will eventually become schizophrenic, and then you take that 1%. That's a lotta people, man.

    23. MS

      Oh, for sure.

    24. JR

      One out of 100? You take one out of 100, you give them a giant dose of edible marijuana and pft, they're gone.

    25. MS

      Well, this is the- this is, uh, uh, Marc Andreessen, who you had on, was- was making this point about ayahuasca, which is very fashionable among the elite set. And I think the point that I- that resonates with me is, you know, when I was working at San Fransicko, after the Summer of Love, 1967, when all the- everybody shows up in San Fran- in San Francisco and they're tripping out on acid, the privileged kids, the educated elite, they go back to Yale and Harvard at the end of the summer. But the working class kids, the kids that were not as educated, you know, lower middle class, they hung around in San Francisco and got addicted to speed and heroin. And that was the early beginnings of the homelessness crisis.

    26. JR

      Was this after the sweeping, uh, psychedelics acts of 1970 what made everything Schedule I?

    27. MS

      No, this- this is back in the Summer of Love, which is 1967.

    28. JR

      So in six- even in '67, they were doing speed?

    29. MS

      Oh, yeah.

    30. JR

      So it was just something-

Episode duration: 3:15:29

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode dK3HK5Yy1AI

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

iOSAndroidClaudeChrome