Tom Mueller: The Most Dangerous Part of America’s Healthcare System Isn’t What You Think

Trevor, Eugene, and author Tom Mueller examine how corruption, greed, structural failures, and declining public trust in the American healthcare system have shaped patient care — and whether meaningful reform is still within reach. If you haven't already.... Subscribe to the channel here: http://bit.ly/SubscribeTrevorNoah Or follow the podcast on your other favorite platforms... SiriusXM - Apple Podcasts - https://bit.ly/WhatNowOnApplePodcasts Spotify - https://bit.ly/WhatNowOnSpotify 00:00:00 - The dialysis story America was never supposed to hear 00:01:06 - Growing up everywhere - New York, London, Paris, Texas 00:04:00 - Inside Goldman Sachs - when smart people sell their lives 00:07:45 - White collar crime and why we treat it like a victimless sin 00:10:00 - South Africa, state capture and the other side of corruption 00:12:15 - Why do people steal - and when does it stop being survival 00:15:00 - Corporate culture, sock puppets and the 2008 mentality 00:18:00 - Dialysis as miracle - and how America turned it into a business model 00:21:00 - Nixon, Medicare and the only Medicare for all law the US ever passed 00:24:00 - From Great Society to cost cutting - how the system pivoted 00:26:30 - Dialysis as incarceration - when a company literally owns your body 00:29:30 - The fast food template for American healthcare 00:32:30 - Why US dialysis patients die up to three times faster 00:35:30 - Redlining with kidneys - race, ZIP codes and who gets to live 00:38:30 - Chicago’s 30 year life expectancy gap in one city 00:41:30 - Apartheid, malnutrition and what inequality really looks like 00:45:00 - How we soften crime with language - corruption vs theft 00:48:00 - Whistleblowers, retaliation and killing the messenger 00:51:30 - Luigi Mangione, UnitedHealth and when people cheer a villain’s fall 00:55:00 - Everyone wetting their beak - shares, betting and legalized skimming 00:57:30 - When markets enter your bloodstream - the seatbelt thought experiment 01:00:00 - Department of Defense, self defense and the power of naming things 01:03:00 - Hunger as policy - school photos that tell the whole story 01:06:00 - Illegal mining, dirty gold and the same old enablers 01:08:30 - Why whistleblowers are treated like the real threat 01:11:30 - Justice for one man vs immunity for a whole system 01:14:00 - Trillion dollar wars, starving hospitals and what we choose to fund 01:16:30 - When the fight becomes personal - Tom’s brother and urgency 01:18:30 - Homeboy Industries and how communities save themselves 01:21:30 - Patients’ last requests - and the promises that keep Tom going 01:24:00 - Learning to love your kidneys - and what they are worth 01:25:30 - Why Tom cannot walk away from this story 01:27:30 - The FDA, antitrust and a book that reached the right desk 01:30:00 - Should profit ever run healthcare 01:32:00 - The shepherd, the wolves and who is really protecting the flock 01:36:00 - What it will actually take to fix American healthcare"

Trevor NoahhostEugenehost

Nov 27, 20251h 38mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

105 min read · 21,348 words

0:00 – 1:06
The dialysis story America was never supposed to hear
1. SPSpeaker
  The story of dialysis is an amazing case study of good intentions being thwarted by bad incentives, poor oversight, and profiteering.
2. SPSpeaker
  When I was working at Davita, the priorities was to get them on dialysis and get the next patient on as soon as possible. It was all about numbers.
3. SPSpeaker
  Tom Mueller is the author of How to Make a Killing: An Investigation of the Dialysis Industry. In America, patients on dialysis die one to two times faster than in any other developed country.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  [upbeat music] This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Eat well for less. [upbeat music] I've never known you without glasses, now that I realize it. You actually have. When? Half of our relationship was without glasses. What? Yes. Take off your glasses? Remember this guy? No, actually, yeah, no, you're right. It was the beard. You're right, actually. Yes. Yeah, yeah, the beard. Now it's like a flip.
1:06 – 4:00
Growing up everywhere - New York, London, Paris, Texas
1. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. It's like a- There was, there was no beard, more hair, no glasses. It's like I've known every version of you. [laughs] Do you know this guy? Eugene, where are you? [laughs] I'm here. Oh, Eugene, you're back.
2. SPSpeaker
  I think someone else has his glasses.
3. TNTrevor Noah
  Where is he? [laughs]
4. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
5. TNTrevor Noah
  [laughs] Welcome.
6. SPSpeaker
  I'm just saying.
7. TNTrevor Noah
  Welcome to, welcome to our idiot friendship, Tom. I'm so sorry. [laughs]
8. SPSpeaker
  Thank you very much, Trevor, Eugene. I feel like I fit right in.
9. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh, you do actually. You do. If you want to, you do, man. You do indeed. Um, actually, you know why I feel like you fit right in is because you, you, you got like one of the, the, the most beautiful, weird stories of how you've lived your life, you know? A- and, and when I read your books, I can't help but wonder if the way you write and the way you've thought of writing comes from how you've lived your life. Like, ju- just, just take us through some of this, so ... 'Cause a- a lot of people are fans of your books, but I don't think a lot of people know a bit of your life. It's like, where were you born?
10. SPSpeaker
  I was born in New York City.
11. TNTrevor Noah
  Okay.
12. SPSpeaker
  Left six months later, went to London and Paris.
13. TNTrevor Noah
  I like how you say that like you left. You were like, "I'm out."
14. SPSpeaker
  I was lefted, yes. [laughs]
15. TNTrevor Noah
  You were like, "I'm out. I'm out, parents."
16. SPSpeaker
  That's right.
17. TNTrevor Noah
  "I can't do this anymore."
18. SPSpeaker
  Yeah. When I say I was born in Columbia-Presbyterian, my New Yorker friends say, "Yeah, but you're not a New Yorker, you know?"
19. TNTrevor Noah
  [laughs]
20. SPSpeaker
  So I try to make that clear at the outset.
21. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah.
22. SPSpeaker
  And I ... And we moved around a lot in the United States. Um, California, upstate New York, Texas. Um, I, I did my high school in Houston, Texas.
23. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
24. SPSpeaker
  Which I do not recommend.
25. TNTrevor Noah
  [laughs]
26. SPSpeaker
  But was an experience. I learned about football, which is something. And, uh, and then, yep, we went east for college, and then went to England for grad school, and have really not lived in the United States since Ronald Reagan was president.
27. TNTrevor Noah
  Wow. That is wild.
28. SPSpeaker
  I spend half my time or more in the United States, and I technically live in the United States, but yeah, I've been based in Italy for 30 years or so.
29. TNTrevor Noah
  Do, do you think, like, some of that has affected how you're able ... Like, maybe I'm projecting here, but I, I sometimes feel regardless of nationality, one of the best things you can do is remove yourself from a situation to be able to see it better.
30. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm.
4:00 – 7:45
Inside Goldman Sachs - when smart people sell their lives
1. SPSpeaker
  pace, at an alarming pace, really. But you can see that better if you're outside the bubble for a while and then you pop back in. So.
2. TNTrevor Noah
  How did you get into writing? 'Cause I, I, I don't know if my research was correct, but were you in banking at some point?
3. SPSpeaker
  [laughs] Yes. I, um, I did a PhD in history.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
5. SPSpeaker
  And love history, but realized I was not cut out for academia. So I thought, well, um, I know languages. Europe 1992 is happening. Let's try, you know ... Th- there were recruiters on, on, uh, on campus, uh, checking for people who were interested in recruit, uh, in banking and in-
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah
7. SPSpeaker
  ... uh, um, consultancies and various others. And I ended up at Goldman Sachs in London, uh, doing mergers and acquisitions, which for two years, which was a remarkably good experience from a business point of view. Um, I met some of the fan- most fantastic people in the world, and I came away with this amazement that some of the most fantastic people in the world were swindled into [laughs] giving their lives away for a modest amount of money. I mean, it was big money, but-
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean by that?
9. SPSpeaker
  They, um, were indentured servants to this company. Um-
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh
11. SPSpeaker
  ... and simply their lifestyles were terrible. Their incomes were very good, but, uh, terrible, terrible lifestyles. And, uh, and that was well before, you know, the run-up to 2008 and all the massive crime. I was in a business where it was still the relationship was important.
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
13. SPSpeaker
  Um, and, and if you screwed up with a client, you were done. I mean, y- you were finished. Um, and then later, s- clients became sock puppets, and traders replaced relationship bankers, and you got 2008. Uh, so you know, one of my closest collaborator or bosses and collaborators at the bank was on the 1MDB indictments. I mean, he was, you know, the head of investment banking.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  This was l- we're talking about, like, the-
15. SPSpeaker
  The 1M-
16. TNTrevor Noah
  This was the 2008 Wall Street crash financial collapse?
17. SPSpeaker
  Yeah. I mean, they were testifying before Congress. They were explaining why, um, you could call a client a sock puppet, and you could create financial, um, vehicles.
18. TNTrevor Noah
  Wait, wait, Tom. That was an actual term?
19. SPSpeaker
  Actual term. Sock puppets, yes.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Was it used within your circles, or just within your-
21. SPSpeaker
  Not within my circles, but my, you know, my-
22. TNTrevor Noah
  It worked
23. SPSpeaker
  ... the folks that I worked with who stayed at the bank, that's what they were talking about, yeah. And the, and again, trading is very, very different from relationships.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
25. SPSpeaker
  Trading is One day at a time.
26. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
27. SPSpeaker
  I win, you lose. I mean, there's a w- it's a zero-sum game. So trading is, at the end of my day, I close out my position, and you are my counterparty. You're not my client at all.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh, wow.
29. SPSpeaker
  And that means I can take advantage of you. Um, and that's what happened in the run-up to 2008.
30. TNTrevor Noah
  Hmm.
7:45 – 10:00
White collar crime and why we treat it like a victimless sin
1. SPSpeaker
  But as you say, um, i- it's, it's almost lionized in, in the business school community-
2. EUEugene
  Huh
3. SPSpeaker
  ... as something, "Hey, you know, he really is a risk taker," right?
4. EUEugene
  Mm-hmm.
5. SPSpeaker
  "He's a real har-" You know, you talk about killers in business. You talk about making a killing.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
7. SPSpeaker
  That's a good thing. That's supposed to be a positive attribute.
8. TNTrevor Noah
  They see it different than we do.
9. SPSpeaker
  Yeah. And, and if you're flying, you know, close to the, to the wind in legal terms or beyond, that's, it's viewed as an incentive. There's no normative quality to a law.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
11. SPSpeaker
  You break the law-
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Yes
13. SPSpeaker
  ... you're, it's wrong.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Yes.
15. SPSpeaker
  "What are you," they say, "What are you talking about? I mean, how much do I have to pay here? What's the settlement? I'll pay it." Put out a checkbook, write it. And while you're at it, individuals don't go to jail anymore. It's corporations, right? So it's the perfect crime. I mean, you, you, you are lionized as a killer on Wall Street. Um, you, uh, are covered by your corporation, so you individually aren't prosecuted at all. And when the time comes to write a check, you can write a check instead of going to jail, and your corporation writes it for you. And you keep your beach house. It's beautiful. [laughs]
16. EUEugene
  You're the perfect person to be having this conversation with. In South Africa, we had the state capture commission.
17. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
18. SPSpeaker
  Mm.
19. EUEugene
  Where bas- You ... Did you read about it?
20. SPSpeaker
  I did, I did.
21. EUEugene
  For those who don't know, it was an inquiry headed by a constitutional judge who's now retired, that was based in South Africa to hear about widespread corruption in the government with private actors, so who were involved in ha- in having government contracts. That went on for, I think, almost two years. A billion rand later, not a single prosecution. Everyone got away with everything. But when I was having conversations with my friends even, I would always say, "Why is it that whenever we talk about corruption, we speak about the person whose hand is caught in the cookie jar?"
22. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
23. EUEugene
  So if you and I steal, we make a billion dollars, we still have to go buy Ferraris, Maseratis, Lamborghinis. Who's selling us those cars? We have to go buy mansions.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
25. EUEugene
  Who's selling us those mansions?
26. SPSpeaker
  Absolutely.
27. EUEugene
  Who's investing our monies? Where are those funds kept?
28. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
29. EUEugene
  Where are we making the transaction and the withdrawals?
30. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
10:00 – 12:15
South Africa, state capture and the other side of corruption
1. SPSpeaker
  revealed that a certain bank, um, Wells Fargo bought it, was, um, laundering money for the Sinaloa cartel. He said, "Those enablers, those bankers, had their finger on the trigger every time the Sinaloa cartel fired a gun."
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Damn.
3. SPSpeaker
  And that's true. I mean, we cannot look at enablers, bankers, real estate people, corporate fi- you know, corporate, um, foundations-
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah, yeah
5. SPSpeaker
  ... um, all the other folks that make their lives possible, tax advisors, all these offshore-
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah
7. SPSpeaker
  ... you know, those are fundamental figures-
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
9. SPSpeaker
  ... in the crime syndicate. And they are as responsible for every bullet that hits as the actual person who pulls the g- trigger. As I would argue, that they're more responsible.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Hmm.
11. SPSpeaker
  I mean, I would argue that people who do it just for the money, um, as opposed to a hired killer, I mean, I don't know what that person's background is. I don't support hired killing. But somehow it's even more sinister when you're making a killing by doing a killing. I mean, those people are not making a lot of money, right?
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
13. SPSpeaker
  The hitmen and women of this world.
14. EUEugene
  They're the lowest in the food chain.
15. SPSpeaker
  Yeah. They're just tools in the hands of these other people. But we, we admire the lawyers, the white shoe lawyers-
16. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah
17. SPSpeaker
  ... and the, and the big bankers and so on. We admire them. They get their names written on, you know, New York Public Library. All sorts of very special perks for them.
18. TNTrevor Noah
  You know what's, what's, what's amazing? Even when we think about our thinking of it, it's amazing that if you shoot somebody in the street or if you rob somebody or if you shoplift one of those, you have committed a crime. You are a criminal. But if you defraud millions of people's pensions, if you get millions of people addicted to opioids and, you know, now they're having overdoses, et cetera, this is white collar crime. It's amazing that we've given crime a different name.
19. EUEugene
  Mm-hmm.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  But why? Do you know what I mean?
21. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Why is it a, "No, no, this is a white collar crime." We've almost, we've almost given it a, a respectability that it doesn't deserve. It's like-
23. SPSpeaker
  What kind of collar do the people-
24. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
25. SPSpeaker
  ... who define it wear?
26. TNTrevor Noah
  Exactly.
27. SPSpeaker
  They wear white collars. They're judges. They're lawyers.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh, man. Do you know what I mean?
29. SPSpeaker
  They're the folks who are making these rules.
30. TNTrevor Noah
  Wow.
12:15 – 15:00
Why do people steal - and when does it stop being survival
1. SPSpeaker
  lives, which is something that happens.
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
3. SPSpeaker
  Um, they don't see that as a problem because they're not elderly teachers. They don't see, they don't see at the ul- at the ultimate- Analysis, they don't see the common good as a major concern. They just don't. It's a dog eat dog world
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
5. SPSpeaker
  ... it's an Ayn Rand world, and it's, um, I win, you lose. That's it. And that's ultimately why the heroes of, of finance, the heroes of the law and so on, are so clubbish and so in agreement, um, along with the judges, when it comes to defining the social damage by certain kinds of crime. And a- as you said, white collar crime causes infinitely more damage, and just erosion of trust, erosion of respect, erosion of the social fabric, than any blue collar crime.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  People don't realize how much the things they're experiencing in the world every single day are a byproduct of those crimes. And while we'll never dismiss a murder or a robbery, those crimes have far less of a ripple effect out into the world. Do, do you know what I mean?
7. SPSpeaker
  100%.
8. TNTrevor Noah
  So when, when you see your town dilapidated, when you see your parents sick or a family member who is dying and can't get treatment, when, when you see your, your, your retirement fund disappear, when you ... Those types of things have such a widespread effect. You know what I mean?
9. SPSpeaker
  100%.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  They're more likely to create more of the thing-
11. SPSpeaker
  Yes
12. TNTrevor Noah
  ... that you don't wanna see. And, and it's, it's, it's so crazy to see that I, I, I actually wonder, like, how you had this ... Because your, your life is really, it almost feels like a series of trap doors when I think of your life.
13. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
14. TNTrevor Noah
  You know, you, you're studying history and then you fall down this trap door, and then all of a sudden you're in London, you fall down a trap door, and then at some point you were studying music. You know, and then it's like you-
15. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
16. TNTrevor Noah
  ... you fall down another trap door, another trap door, and then you stumble into this world that honestly I think everyone should be grateful for. And for me it was like, you know, when you were writing about the corruption in the olive oil industry.
17. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
18. TNTrevor Noah
  Which seems like a, such a, like, light topic. You know? So i- so when I saw that I was like, "Ha, corruption in olive oil? Well, this is like a, a, a, a cute world to be in." You, you know? But you expose so many of the layers. And then your next book you talk about whistleblowers-
19. SPSpeaker
  Hm
20. TNTrevor Noah
  ... and, and, and, and the, the role they play in society and how we don't protect them enough, and what they've done to-
21. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
22. TNTrevor Noah
  ... expose what we're experiencing. And man, I feel like your latest book, I hate to say it, is more and more applicable every single day.
23. SPSpeaker
  Right.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  You know? How to Make a Killing in Healthcare in America is like, you know, you look at all the stories that have popped up, the Luigi Mangione story. You know, you, you, you look at, uh, people, you know, going on strike or rioting in certain
15:00 – 18:00
Corporate culture, sock puppets and the 2008 mentality
1. TNTrevor Noah
  parts of the world, you look at, because they're losing their health benefits. You, you look at people just losing faith in the societies-
2. SPSpeaker
  The system
3. TNTrevor Noah
  ... that they live in, in the system.
4. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm. Yeah.
5. TNTrevor Noah
  And when I read your book, I went, "This guy, you didn't just critique it, you, you, you break it down on the, on, on the, like, the most minute levels."
6. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
7. TNTrevor Noah
  And I wanted to know, like, why you started with dialysis, because that's, that's like the, you know, the, the, the real crux of your book, but it exposes everything. You, you, you went, you go into dialysis. Why, why that topic? Help me understand.
8. SPSpeaker
  Yeah. Well, I, as you mentioned, I wrote a book about whistleblowing, and I was interviewing a bunch of different whistleblower classes. So there's, you know, the Big Pharma whistleblowers-
9. TNTrevor Noah
  Right
10. SPSpeaker
  ... and the, uh, defense contractor whistleblowers, the big bank whistleblowers, all this.
11. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
12. SPSpeaker
  And there was this weird outlier, um, dialysis whistleblowers. The finance people in dialysis who were, who were bringing s- false claims suits, wh- whistleblower lawsuits against the big dialysis companies. And I'm like, "What's going on here?" And they were, the dialysis companies were signing 400 and then $500 million, uh, settlements-
13. TNTrevor Noah
  Psh
14. SPSpeaker
  ... at a pop.
15. TNTrevor Noah
  No way.
16. SPSpeaker
  Their stock price is going through the roof. Uh, Warren Buffett owned 40% of one of them, and I'm like, "Okay, what's going on here?" My, my bank, inner banker was like-
17. TNTrevor Noah
  [laughs]
18. SPSpeaker
  ... bing, bing, bing. The, my board is lighting up red.
19. TNTrevor Noah
  All the alarm bells are going off, yeah.
20. SPSpeaker
  Yeah. Uh, what is going on here? And so I looked into, um ... Well, first I started with the finance people, then I worked my way back into nephrologists, kidney doctors, who were working for these companies, and then gradually backed down to the blood floor where dialysis is actually delivered.
21. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm.
22. SPSpeaker
  And that's when I realized, this is not a chapter in a whistleblower book, this is its own book. 'Cause as you said, Trevor, I mean, it is, it is a perfect microcosm of what can go horribly wrong-
23. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
24. SPSpeaker
  ... when you put profits before patient care.
25. TNTrevor Noah
  It's also a terrible story of, of how a miracle can be turned into a curse, right?
26. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm.
27. TNTrevor Noah
  Because you look at when this technology's invented. You know, and I, I only learned this from your book. I- it's not like I knew this before reading the book.
28. SPSpeaker
  I didn't either. [laughs]
29. TNTrevor Noah
  You, you look at this world where it's like dialysis is this miracle.
30. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
18:00 – 21:00
Dialysis as miracle - and how America turned it into a business model
1. SPSpeaker
  back, at a time when the Republicans, the Democrats, the insurance companies, the AMA, everybody had their plan for national health.
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
3. SPSpeaker
  The US was gonna have national health, and they viewed dialysis, this breakthrough, um, cure, which had hit the news in a way that made it very difficult for them to ignore. There was, who d- decides who lives and who dies. There was, you know, Life magazine cover stories about this. There's, um, Edward Newman doing, doing, um, NBC reporting on it. And, uh, and it's pretty blunt i- that, you know, the folks who were chosen for the very few chairs that were available survived and lived pretty well for decades, and the rest- Were die, were dead
4. EUEugene
  Yeah.
5. SPSpeaker
  I mean, they had no chance at all. They were condemned to death. So Congress got involved, and they made it the one and only Medicare for All program in 1972, signed by Richard Nixon, and that is at a time literally where everyone is thinking we're gonna have national health. Everybody else, I mean, most other countries around that same time adopted national health. Australia, which is the, the counterpart that I compare the-
6. EUEugene
  Mm-hmm
7. SPSpeaker
  ... US to a lot-
8. EUEugene
  Mm-hmm
9. SPSpeaker
  ... in 1972. But then Watergate consumed Nixon, the Vietnam War went ballistic. Um, s- you know, uh, the OPEC oil embargo, stagflation, and the entire government pivoted from build a great society to cost cutting-
10. EUEugene
  Hmm
11. SPSpeaker
  ... and Reaganomics very soon after.
12. EUEugene
  Mm-hmm.
13. SPSpeaker
  And, and govern- government's the problem, not the solution.
14. EUEugene
  Damn.
15. SPSpeaker
  And we've never looked back. We've never gone back. So dialysis from a historian's point of view is a really interesting sort of relic-
16. EUEugene
  Tipping point
17. SPSpeaker
  ... of a different era where government felt and the people felt the government had a role in taking care of human beings. Um, that's an important part of being a citizen-
18. EUEugene
  Yeah
19. SPSpeaker
  ... is getting healthcare, so we once thought. Um, and then, then the dialysis, uh, the fascination to me of this treatment, which is done wrong, it's a sort of an incarceration. I mean, you need dialysis three times a week, minimum, minimum, minimum three, three and a half hours each treatment-
20. EUEugene
  Mm-hmm
21. SPSpeaker
  ... or you die.
22. EUEugene
  Whoa.
23. SPSpeaker
  So-
24. EUEugene
  It's as simple as that. They own you.
25. SPSpeaker
  If, if it's a good organization, they are looking out for you.
26. EUEugene
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
27. SPSpeaker
  They're saving your life every single time. They ... If they're, it's a bad organization that's run like Taco Bell, which one of the former CEOs actually bragged about, "This is how we're gonna run this company," then it, they own you. They actually possess your body. So it reminded me, one of the lawyers who got in ... I, I have, in order to help a lot of patients who have contacted me, I've been contacted [laughs] by over 3,000 patients and, and family members since this book came out and long before. Uh, one of the lawyers who really got it was a former Innocence Project lawyer, so people, um, in, unjustly incarcerated people on death row, mostly Black and brown.
28. EUEugene
  Huh.
29. SPSpeaker
  And he said, "Oh, I get it." He had just retired from the Innocence Project because Illinois had done away with the death penalty, and it was a major success for him.
30. EUEugene
  Yeah.
21:00 – 24:00
Nixon, Medicare and the only Medicare for all law the US ever passed
1. EUEugene
  Damn.
2. SPSpeaker
  Punch in the gut.
3. EUEugene
  That's exactly what it is.
4. SPSpeaker
  But I suddenly saw what he meant about this combination of healthcare and incarceration. So to come back to your question, this is ex- let's say one of the most extreme cases of healthcare delivery, where you need it, and you gotta ... If you don't get it, you're gonna die.
5. EUEugene
  Yeah.
6. SPSpeaker
  At the same time, you have to follow the rules that whatever organization is taking care of you is laying down, or you don't get it.
7. EUEugene
  Yeah.
8. SPSpeaker
  And if those-
9. EUEugene
  Hmm
10. SPSpeaker
  ... th- that ... And there are good organizations, and there are good facilities, and there are wonderful people, um, and they do a good job about focusing on the individual and their individual needs-
11. EUEugene
  Yeah
12. SPSpeaker
  ... as with all medicine. But there are big companies that are running things on an assembly line, one size fits all basis, and they're really looking much more at Wall Street than they are at their individual patients. I mean, they are hedge funds with an exposure to healthcare. That's not an overstatement. They are financial vehicles with exposure to healthcare.
13. EUEugene
  How complicit or how complicit is the average person who buys stock in these companies?
14. SPSpeaker
  Why, why did you look at me when you said that?
15. EUEugene
  [laughs]
16. SPSpeaker
  That was weird.
17. EUEugene
  Complicit is ours.
18. SPSpeaker
  No, no, no.
19. EUEugene
  Complicit-
20. SPSpeaker
  No, but-
21. EUEugene
  ... is Tom's world. [laughs]
22. SPSpeaker
  No, no, no. But what you, you went, "How complicit are y- y- you?"
23. EUEugene
  The average person.
24. SPSpeaker
  We. [laughs]
25. EUEugene
  And you looked at me.
26. SPSpeaker
  Y- y- y- y- you, we, us.
27. EUEugene
  You looked directly at me as if I've bought stock in any of these-
28. SPSpeaker
  Co- complicit-
29. EUEugene
  Yeah, that was, that was weird
30. SPSpeaker
  ... to a friend of yours who has an afro-
24:00 – 26:30
From Great Society to cost cutting - how the system pivoted
1. SPSpeaker
  You should be kicking the tires on what's going on.
2. EUEugene
  Hmm.
3. SPSpeaker
  Right? I think that's very important, and I think people should be able to call folks on that. Um, now, it, he might argue that, uh, this is a good investment, and what I'm doing is investing, and that is precisely the argument. Uh, that I, there's zero social, you know, uh, obligation on my part. I am an investor, and that's just sort of the Ayn Rand approach, right? Or the, you know, the Reaganomics approach is- Ultimately, it means that you don't have a social responsibility, and in fact, there's a, there's an argument that says social responsibility in running a company is actually, should be illegal.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
5. SPSpeaker
  I mean, your only legal obligation is to shareholder value.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
7. SPSpeaker
  Um, that's another of those insane things, like corporations are people and money is speech. One of those complete idiotic, insane things. But we-
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Corporations are people?
9. SPSpeaker
  Keep... This is United, uh-
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
11. SPSpeaker
  ... Citizens United.
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Okay.
13. SPSpeaker
  Corporations are people as a, as a legal entity.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
15. SPSpeaker
  And, and their money, and any money, is speech. Those are two things that s- s- uh-
16. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, that's one of the worst decisions America ever made.
17. SPSpeaker
  It's preposterous.
18. TNTrevor Noah
  It's, it's-
19. SPSpeaker
  I mean, just if you think about it, what is... That's, that's crazy.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
21. SPSpeaker
  It's crazy talk, but we've been fed it so many times, you know, with our pablum, that we ultimately say, "Oh, well, it must be true. Like, those really smart people are saying it." It's, it's, not only is it insane, it's also hugely damaging because of course then the corporations with their speech are gonna go in and buy politicians, and that's what our... I mean, the US campaign system, campaign finance system, is illegal in most countries.
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
23. SPSpeaker
  I don't know how it is in South Africa.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  No, no, no.
25. SPSpeaker
  But a big company can't come-
26. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
27. SPSpeaker
  ... and give you a million bucks.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  So I was just-
29. EUEugene
  Mm.
30. TNTrevor Noah
  You can in South Africa.
26:30 – 29:30
Dialysis as incarceration - when a company literally owns your body
1. TNTrevor Noah
  essentially for-
2. EUEugene
  Forever
3. TNTrevor Noah
  ... and it's, it's massive amounts of money.
4. EUEugene
  Yeah.
5. TNTrevor Noah
  But it's exactly what you're saying. And when you, you know when we talk about complicit, I lo- I love that you use that word because when we talk about somebody like Warren Buffett-
6. EUEugene
  Mm
7. TNTrevor Noah
  ... I go, I will not call Warren Buffett good or bad or whatever, but it is interesting. It is interesting that we would never accept that excuse, let's say, from another person-
8. EUEugene
  Mm
9. TNTrevor Noah
  ... if they, if it turned out they funded the Sinaloa cartel, you know, if they owned 40% of it. Like, imagine if you said to somebody, "I own 40% of the Sinaloa cartel." They'd go, "You're a criminal." And you're like, "No, no, no, no, no. I just invest in the Mexican drug cartels."
10. EUEugene
  Mm.
11. TNTrevor Noah
  "I, I don't engage in it."
12. EUEugene
  Mm.
13. TNTrevor Noah
  "They're a good investment."
14. EUEugene
  Apart from the guns, yeah.
15. SPSpeaker
  They are.
16. TNTrevor Noah
  "They're a great investment."
17. SPSpeaker
  They are rapidly growing, good market share.
18. TNTrevor Noah
  I, I mean, you know?
19. SPSpeaker
  All of the, the return on assets is awesome.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  It's a, it's a great, uh, uh... But I, look, do I condone everything? Of course I don't. Uh, but I'm not, I'm not there for the murder. I'm just there for the investment.
21. EUEugene
  No, it's-
22. TNTrevor Noah
  There, there is a level of asking yourself like, you know, like, w- who are, if everyone gets to say that they are not responsible, then who is responsible?
23. EUEugene
  Yeah. I think it's also how things are phrased, you know? An inquiry, an inquisition, a, you know, white collar crime, corruption-
24. TNTrevor Noah
  Exactly. Yeah
25. EUEugene
  ... bribery.
26. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
27. EUEugene
  It's theft.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
29. EUEugene
  All of it is just theft. And I was asking you before we started that, what is it that makes people steal?
30. SPSpeaker
  Hm.
29:30 – 32:30
The fast food template for American healthcare
1. SPSpeaker
  the day or the end of a year to say, "I've done something really important." It's easy to count money. And if you're in that culture where you say, "Look, look at that, I got 5 million bucks," that's very tangible.
2. EUEugene
  Mm.
3. SPSpeaker
  And now it's 5.2, and on the s- and the stock market is growing and growing. The m- wealthy people that I know, the ones that have 100 million, they only talk about the people who have 200 and 300 million.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
5. SPSpeaker
  The ones who have 300 million, they talk about the billionaires.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
7. SPSpeaker
  The ones who have a billion, they, they talk about the two bi-
8. TNTrevor Noah
  No.
9. SPSpeaker
  It's never enough.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
11. SPSpeaker
  It's like the shark that can never get full, and that's where I think that's the ultimate problem. It becomes, especially when the society worships these people and, and condones all of their actions, it becomes this sort of s- um, endless, endless hunt for more, uh, for more money at the end of the day. And it, and it's a status thing, and it's a... But how can you possibly live? How can you possibly use even a million dollars, let alone a billion dollars? I mean, how can you... It's just, it's just a sco- it's a counter for the quality of your life because the quality of your life, I don't know. I mean, again, working in banking for a brief time, I saw some amazing people, incredibly smart people, doing incredibly dumb things with their life. [laughs]
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
13. SPSpeaker
  Throwing away their time-
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
15. SPSpeaker
  ... in order to have a metric ton of money. They didn't have cars. They didn't travel. They didn't live. Um, but they felt successful. And for me
16. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah
17. SPSpeaker
  ... after two years I was like, "But you're losers, you guys. I mean, I'm sorry." And now they think, I'm sure, that I'm a loser because [laughs] I don't have any money.
18. TNTrevor Noah
  [laughs] Don't go anywhere, because we got more What Now? after this. This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Eat well for less. You know how Thanksgiving always sneaks up on you? One minute you're eating leftover Halloween candy, and the next everyone's arguing about who's making what for Thanksgiving dinner. Who are you talking to? Luckily, Whole Foods Market makes it easy to pull it all together. With great prices on turkey, sales on baking essentials, and everyday low prices from the 365 by Whole Foods Market brand, you can actually prep for the holiday without losing your mind or your budget. Yo, why are you speaking like that? They've got high quality organic produce and grab and go sides, which honestly save your life when you said you'd bring something and completely forgot to cook. Is this an ad? Did you just teleport us into an ad? The 365 brand is all about better everyday essentials, affordable pantry staples, baking must haves, all the basics that still meet Whole Foods Market's quality standards. So whether you're hosting, contributing a dish, or just showing up hungry, Whole Foods Market has everything you need to make this holiday season easier and more delicious. We're sponsored. Shop everything you need for Thanksgiving now at Whole Foods Market. Can we go back to the episode? You, we had a, um, we had an episode of the podcast with, uh, Rutger Bregman,
32:30 – 35:30
Why US dialysis patients die up to three times faster
1. TNTrevor Noah
  right? And, uh, some people might not know his name, but he was the guy who rose to a little bit of infamy by, um, he went to Davos.
2. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm.
3. TNTrevor Noah
  And at Davos, he, he basically said to everyone in the room, he's like, "Hey, hey, why is everyone here trying to solve the problems of the world as if you are not causing the problems of the world?"
4. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
5. TNTrevor Noah
  And he said to everyone in that room, "Just pay your taxes. Everyone here is avoiding ta- You flew in on private jets and you're like, 'What should we do?'" He's like, "Pay your taxes." And then they were like, "Who invited this guy?"
6. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
7. TNTrevor Noah
  "Don't invite him back again." But one of the things he talks about
8. SPSpeaker
  Mm
9. TNTrevor Noah
  ... and that's what he's working on now, is he said, "We've created a society, a society where the smartest, brightest minds go into fields where they're just trying to extract from society."
10. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
11. TNTrevor Noah
  There wa- there was a time when the most brilliant scientist tried to work on the science that would change the world in the most positive way. Invent a light bulb, create an airplane, find a new type of health solution. You, you know what I mean?
12. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm.
13. TNTrevor Noah
  And then now that person goes like, "Go to a company that can make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible." Mathematicians were trying to solve going to space or, you know
14. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
15. TNTrevor Noah
  ... trying to figure out the circumference of the globe, what- whatever. And then they were just like, "Go to this company, make as much money as possible, get the trading."
16. SPSpeaker
  Mm. Yeah.
17. TNTrevor Noah
  But, but what you said I think is key. It's the reverence.
18. SPSpeaker
  Mm.
19. TNTrevor Noah
  You turn on the news and they go, "L- Larry Ellison, now the richest man in..." But why? Like, if society, like ... And, and I mean that on like a, a media level, not, not the people on the ground, because I think the people are oftentimes sort of, not victim to it, but you, you, you're experiencing it.
20. SPSpeaker
  Mm.
21. TNTrevor Noah
  If the news tells you that this is good and important, and the media tells you it's good and important, then you think it's good and important.
22. SPSpeaker
  And not by accident, half the media is owned by those very people.
23. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
24. SPSpeaker
  I mean, if you look at the
25. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
26. SPSpeaker
  ... oligarchs that are, that are owning, you know, the big news outlets, they're legion. And, uh, and trying to tell Jeff Bezos that he really shouldn't be, uh, a monopsony in, uh, all, you know, goods sold in the United States, you will not last very long, right? There is a lot of self editing. So I think that's ... No, that's absolutely right. Um, this reverence, this sense that they are gods. And it builds into this sense, too, that there is an ubermensch society, and then there
27. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
28. SPSpeaker
  ... are underlings.
29. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
30. SPSpeaker
  And those underlings, if they're, you know, homeless, well, they're not human really.
35:30 – 38:30
Redlining with kidneys - race, ZIP codes and who gets to live
1. TNTrevor Noah
  in some of these stories, man, it, it, it sounded less like healthcare and more like a fast food drive through-
2. SPSpeaker
  Mm
3. TNTrevor Noah
  ... chain. It felt like they're trying to get people on and off a machine as quickly as possible
4. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
5. TNTrevor Noah
  ... use as few nurses as possible
6. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
7. TNTrevor Noah
  ... make as much time work as possible, look after the patient for the least possible. And I went, I mean, I guess this is great if you're trying to get fries out quickly, but these are human beings. You know what I mean? It, it, it feels like the business model isn't ... It's not about healthcare, it's about health profits.
8. SPSpeaker
  100%. It's fast food medicine, and it's a model that wasn't invented by dialysis. It was invented in the '60s by, um, by people who actually, um, ran, uh, Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises and, and Wendy's.
9. TNTrevor Noah
  Literally.
10. SPSpeaker
  Literally. Who then started buying up, um, you know, uh, started privatizing hospital systems-
11. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh, wow
12. SPSpeaker
  ... and, and putting together. So they literally were the people with this branding experience and this mass fa- um, you know. Uh, and in theory, I mean, you know, um, Atul Gawande wrote the, the Cheesecake Factory, um, article in The New Yorker, which got a lot of attention. I don't, I don't like it, but he's a smart guy. He's a doctor, and he ... The idea of focusing in on a specific, uh, medical procedure, making it as efficient as possible, and delivering it in as low cost a way as possible, that's a- But potentially a useful idea. The important thing here is that it not become, um, turning patients into widgets on an assembly line.
13. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
14. SPSpeaker
  Which is precisely what the fast food model, uh, or the Cheesecake Factory does. Um, you, you're not tailoring your care to the individual needs of your patient. You are looking ... And once again, this is a finance person's view.
15. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16. SPSpeaker
  The person, person who brought this into dialysis or pop- popularized it, Kent Thiry, he was a former CEO and the founder of DaVita, one of the two big companies. He made his bones at Bain Capital. That's a private equity firm. He was a pr- he was a finance guy, the kind of guys that I worked with. Um, and he basically, and he said, speaking to a business school audience, um, he said, uh, "You know, if I were running Taco Bell with," I forget the exact numbers, "23,000 outlets and I would be doing all the same things as I'm doing-
17. TNTrevor Noah
  No
18. SPSpeaker
  ... at DaVita. It's not about the patients," is what he said. And some doctors hate it when I say this. These are quotes, right, from his speech.
19. TNTrevor Noah
  This is an actual quote.
20. SPSpeaker
  Actual quote.
21. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
22. SPSpeaker
  Yeah, I can show you the video. It's quite striking. But again, it fits in a business and situation in which you are Wall Street facing and you're talking about return on assets.
23. TNTrevor Noah
  Investment, yeah.
24. SPSpeaker
  If you have, uh, 2,000 dialysis clinics around the country and your main focus is shareholder value-
25. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
26. SPSpeaker
  ... and I'm getting paid in stock as a CEO, so my shareholder value [laughs] is pretty important to me too, right?
27. TNTrevor Noah
  Right.
28. SPSpeaker
  This is conflict of interest on a massive scale. Anyway, if that's your aim, you want to thr- run as many patients through every single one of those facilities as you can, 'cause your asset base, your buildings, your machines and so on, the more units you shoot through them-
29. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
30. SPSpeaker
  ... and it
38:30 – 41:30
Chicago’s 30 year life expectancy gap in one city
1. SPSpeaker
  is just like Taco Bell, except people are not burritos, right? Every single person who goes into that facility needs, should have a, a treatment that is tailored to their individual problems, their individual biology, their individual size and everything. And if you're running it as a fast food, you know, um, assembly line model, you're not gonna do that. You're not, you're-
2. TNTrevor Noah
  One size fits all.
3. SPSpeaker
  One size fits all. And you're gonna penalize the people who slow things down.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
5. SPSpeaker
  Who say, "Oh, actually, you know, Tom here, he should be getting five hours." Uh, no way, no way. And they're, they violently push back. And the doctors, some of the doctors I've talked with who work in these facilities are not best pleased. Uh, and some of them, and some of the workers, um, are also suffering from serious moral harm.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm.
7. SPSpeaker
  Because they realize this is like s- soldiers forced to commit, you know, um-
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah, yeah
9. SPSpeaker
  ... uh, horrible-
10. TNTrevor Noah
  That's the perfect analogy, actually
11. SPSpeaker
  It is. Yeah.
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Actually, that's the perfect analogy.
13. SPSpeaker
  They're, they're literally, they, they know what's wrong and they are not able to fulfill their Hippocratic Oath to their patients and take care of their patients, 'cause the structure they're working in doesn't permit it.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, I think that's the perfect analogy because we take for granted how much an overlord and a system can then oppress even the people within it.
15. SPSpeaker
  Mm.
16. TNTrevor Noah
  And then what happens is, in a society, we start fighting amongst ourselves.
17. SPSpeaker
  Yes. Yeah.
18. TNTrevor Noah
  As if there's not one central thing that we should be looking at.
19. SPSpeaker
  Yes. Right.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  So you have leaders and governments who send soldiers to do things that are despicable. Those soldiers return home to their countries. They get spat on in the streets.
21. SPSpeaker
  Right. Yes.
22. TNTrevor Noah
  The defense company doesn't get spat on.
23. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  The people who lied about weapons of mass destruction, they don't get spat on.
25. SPSpeaker
  No, no.
26. TNTrevor Noah
  Do you know what I mean?
27. SPSpeaker
  No, no.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  And the same thing happens here. People go, "My doctor is trash. My this is..."
29. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
30. TNTrevor Noah
  But it's when you delve into it that you go like, "Oh, man, my doctor's victimized by the same system."
41:30 – 45:00
Apartheid, malnutrition and what inequality really looks like
1. SPSpeaker
  die two to three times faster than any other developed world, and many lesser developed countries as well.
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
3. SPSpeaker
  I mean, you know, we're talking tw- 20% to 22% per year death rate, whereas mortality in, in Europe is anywhere 12 to 15%, um, and more on the 12 side. Japan, 6%. I mean, we're talking, uh, uh, the most ... And that's, and that's just how soon do you die. Quality of life is another big issue. But I mean, the, the, the central premise that everything has to be for profit, um, is, is preposterous.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
5. SPSpeaker
  'Cause every other country in the world does it better, does it cheaper.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
7. SPSpeaker
  I mean, the basic pro- promise of the Reaganomics era and ever since is we will do it better 'cause government's the problem.
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
9. SPSpeaker
  And we will do it cheaper because we are so efficient. Now, uh, in, in America, we do it worse and we do it vastly more expensively at the same time.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
11. SPSpeaker
  So something's rotten in the state of Denmark. [laughs] Uh, not Denmark.
12. TNTrevor Noah
  [laughs]
13. SPSpeaker
  You know what I'm talking about.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
15. SPSpeaker
  And, and, and, and you have ... So in most countries, you have, you have the fisc, you have the treasury that collects taxpayer dollars, and you have, I don't know, patients, um, in, uh, hospitals where patients go. And, and the money goes from the treasury, boop, boop, boop, boop, to the hospitals, pays the doctors, pays the staff, and gets, and pays for the treatments. America, you have the treasury and you have the hospitals, and in the, or the dialysis facilities in this case. In the middle you have this twin towers or, of, of massive corporate You know, absorption
16. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
17. SPSpeaker
  Um, you ready to talk about, um, middleman and the cost to healthcare, this is a classic example. You have these two twin towers that are, that are soaking up a lot of the billions and billions, and we're talking roughly-
18. TNTrevor Noah
  I wouldn't do twin towers and the hands like that. It might be the ... It looks like the wrong thing
19. SPSpeaker
  Yeah, I'm s- yeah, you are using-
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, you went twin towers-
21. SPSpeaker
  And we're in New York
22. TNTrevor Noah
  ... and you used hands, and I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, Tom
23. SPSpeaker
  Maybe, yeah, yeah
24. TNTrevor Noah
  ... Tom, Tom, Tom, wrong hands
25. SPSpeaker
  Let's, let's find-
26. TNTrevor Noah
  Wrong ... Different analogy. Different analogy
27. SPSpeaker
  Let's find s-
28. TNTrevor Noah
  Let's go with something
29. SPSpeaker
  Two large l-
30. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, two large ... You know what? Sinkholes
45:00 – 48:00
How we soften crime with language - corruption vs theft
1. SPSpeaker
  look at Australia, the majority of, of ... They push patients to home dialysis.
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Wow
3. SPSpeaker
  And ever since the 1960s, ever since this miracle cure was invented, the people w- who are not trying to make money off of it said, "Home dialysis is the way to go." You get to control your destiny. You get a feeling of ... I mean, any chronic disease, a sense of agency is critical-
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah, yeah
5. SPSpeaker
  ... to getting well or to feeling better, right?
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
7. SPSpeaker
  And being a passive recipient of care, lie down, put your arm out, I'm gonna take your blood. I've heard the, I've heard patients tell me this from [laughs] you know, in, in dialysis facilities. You need to have control of your destiny, and doing that at home is the way to do it. Also, again, you can tailor your care to ... And it's doable. So Australia pushes people home. Um, a- a- but just a fa- that is another of the fundamental, widely, universally accepted laws of dialysis. It's being broken in the United States. It's being broken because it's, you know, there are companies that make a lot more money doing it elsewhere, but it's also being broken because CMS, uh, well, the health, um, Health and Human Services, doesn't enforce best practices on their ... You know, I, I, I beat up in my book, I beat up a lot on corporations. I think they deserve it. But I didn't give sufficient time to the silent partner in the crime, and that is the CMS. That is the National Health Administration in America that is simply in bed with or complicit with or toothless to do anything about major corporate, um, wrongdoing in dialysis
8. TNTrevor Noah
  What, what is, what is CMS?
9. SPSpeaker
  Uh, it's the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Okay, got it. Yeah, yeah.
11. SPSpeaker
  So it's the ones that administer Medicare and Medicaid funds
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Right
13. SPSpeaker
  And they know what good dialysis is.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. Oh
15. SPSpeaker
  They know what the metrics are.
16. TNTrevor Noah
  Okay
17. SPSpeaker
  They're just not counting them.
18. TNTrevor Noah
  Okay
19. SPSpeaker
  So they don't count treatment time.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
21. SPSpeaker
  They don't penalize people who don't treat longer, um, and, and they don't count, um, UFR, ultra- ultrafiltration rate, which is the speed with which you remove liquid from someone's blood and their body, um, which are critical to survival.
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
23. SPSpeaker
  They don't count those things. Like the ... W- what are you counting exactly? They don't count, uh, septicemia, which is, you know, one of the major causes of death. What ... If you're not counting that shit, what are you counting? I mean, you know, it's putting the ladder up against the wrong wall.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, but the question is who's telling them what to count and how to count?
25. SPSpeaker
  I guarantee you the answer is the revolving door.
26. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
27. SPSpeaker
  I mean, I, in my book, I, I, I, I cite several examples of people from the White House who have gone to the board of-
28. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
29. SPSpeaker
  ... of the big pharma comp-
30. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, man
48:00 – 51:30
Whistleblowers, retaliation and killing the messenger
1. SPSpeaker
  common good anymore. It's just, uh, let's grab as much as you can [laughs] before, you know, while it's your turn to eat.
2. TNTrevor Noah
  You know why? The, they've done a great job of tricking us, you know?
3. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  It, it's, it's one of the greatest scams that has ever been pulled on people collectively. What they did was governments were providing a good. It doesn't mean that they were perfect, but the good was being provided by the governments. In this case, it's the 1970s when Medicare says they're going to cover dialysis.
5. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
6. TNTrevor Noah
  This is revolutionary. You have this problem with your kidneys. They're gonna come in. The machine will be there. The government is going to help you out.
7. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
8. TNTrevor Noah
  And because you can amortize the cost acr- across a population-
9. SPSpeaker
  It becomes cheaper
10. TNTrevor Noah
  ... it will work.
11. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
12. TNTrevor Noah
  It will work.
13. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  And then very quickly, companies who see a gap go, "Wait, wait, wait. If the government's paying for it, we can get that money."
15. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
16. TNTrevor Noah
  And then they go, "If we can get that money, how do we get more of that money?" And then they become part of the cycle. It's so crazy how you see this in every country, whether it's the UK-
17. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
18. TNTrevor Noah
  ... whether it's South Africa, whether it's the United States, where- wherever you're having these issues.
19. SPSpeaker
  Hm.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  The people who work in governments work with the companies To make the government look inept.
21. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
22. EUEugene
  Mm-hmm.
23. TNTrevor Noah
  The people on the ground then go, "The government is terrible."
24. EUEugene
  Mm.
25. TNTrevor Noah
  "We should give this to the private companies." The private companies then take the work.
26. SPSpeaker
  Yep.
27. TNTrevor Noah
  And then they provide a professional ineptness that not only doesn't do the job as well, but it extracts more wealth. So it's like, before the government was gonna be maybe not great.
28. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
29. TNTrevor Noah
  But they weren't gonna be as expensive.
30. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
51:30 – 55:00
Luigi Mangione, UnitedHealth and when people cheer a villain’s fall
1. TNTrevor Noah
  you know, food on a basic level, that's a war that you could be fighting in your country without-
2. SPSpeaker
  100%
3. TNTrevor Noah
  ... bombing anybody.
4. SPSpeaker
  And that's exactly the r-
5. TNTrevor Noah
  You know what I mean?
6. SPSpeaker
  ... the reason-
7. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah
8. SPSpeaker
  ... in the 1970s, a number of people, this is during the c- you know, the, the Cold War, the coldest part of the Cold War, and the fight against Russia and everything else, and yet, at the same time, um, bipartisan congressional figures, Republicans and Democrats, are saying, "We're spending billions," and back when a billion was a big number, "billions to build these rockets, and we can't even take care of our own citizens."
9. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
10. EUEugene
  Yeah.
11. SPSpeaker
  And they were pushing for dialysis in that, in that way. And the other thing about war is, of course, a- and, and the trillion dollar Pentagon, is that, you know, as, as one former general told me, when you get to be a big hammer, everything starts looking like a nail, right?
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
13. EUEugene
  Mm.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
15. SPSpeaker
  I mean, you gotta go out there and b- I built all this k- cool stuff.
16. TNTrevor Noah
  You've gotta find reasons to use it
17. SPSpeaker
  I'm trained, highly trained-
18. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
19. SPSpeaker
  ... in doing this stuff. We gotta find a way to use it.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  And we have to get rid of it.
21. SPSpeaker
  Yeah. [laughs]
22. TNTrevor Noah
  'Cause we have to make more.
23. SPSpeaker
  That's true.
24. EUEugene
  Oh, you're not wrong.
25. TNTrevor Noah
  There's inventory.
26. SPSpeaker
  That's right. That's right.
27. TNTrevor Noah
  You're not wrong.
28. SPSpeaker
  That's right. There's, there's new stuff coming on, so we gotta-
29. EUEugene
  And some of it gets lost in these smaller-
30. TNTrevor Noah
  Oops
55:00 – 57:30
Everyone wetting their beak - shares, betting and legalized skimming
1. SPSpeaker
  And the money aspect, again, you see f- sports betting now, and to me-
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm
3. SPSpeaker
  ... that is another thing where-
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh, don't even. Oh, man
5. SPSpeaker
  ... it's like the st- stock market versus the real economy.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Who are we?
7. SPSpeaker
  I mean, when you're putting a bet on something, you debase it inherently, and your focus, again, turns from the activity on the field to-
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Outcome
9. SPSpeaker
  ... outcome. And you can have derivatives that are bets on bets, and th- and this is all-
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, it is
11. SPSpeaker
  ... stock market stuff. This is a way in which you think if you're not really engaging with the real world. And not only is it not helpful to what's going on in the field or what you're eating or what you're, uh, healthcare, it's diametrically opposed. If you focus all your energies on making it into a money-making operation and betting on it-
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm
13. SPSpeaker
  ... you're actually taking the energy away and the resources and the s- and the intelligent people and all the things who should be saying, "How do we make a better dialysis machine?" There hasn't been a better dialysis freaking machine in the, in 40 years because-
14. TNTrevor Noah
  No way, Tom
15. SPSpeaker
  Oh, no. Absolutely. There have been tiny little adjustments there, but there's no, been no phase shift, major breakthrough. Why is that? Because there's no freaking money in it. These two corporation, uh, big corporations, before them, there were others, have s- have locked in the market, they have their cash cow, and they are milking it relentlessly. They're not interested in a new milking machine.
16. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
17. SPSpeaker
  They're not interested in the cow.
18. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. I mean- You know what I've realized as well with the ... I don't know how it is in this country, but in South Africa, when you get life cover now- Yeah ... you're not obligated to take an HIV test, where else before you were obligated to take an HIV test if they're gonna insure you for a certain amount of money. Huh. So they'd have to test or they have to know- Yeah ... what your lifespan is, what your CD4 cell count is. Hmm. But right now, they're like, "No, just bring it, and then we'll, we'll see when we get there." So I'm like, was HIV always that dangerous to the body and your longevity? Huh. Or they found a way to not profit from you having HIV anymore? Do you know what I'm saying? I wonder which one it'll be, though. Because remember that before there was no home testing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with you.
19. SPSpeaker
  Oh, okay.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  So they, they would have to send you to a facility. Yeah. Then you'd get tested. But I'm saying I wonder which one it is, 'cause my brain goes, which one is it?
21. SPSpeaker
  Hmm.
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Have they found a way to de-risk it, or have they found a loophole on the other side? I'm, I'm saying I don't know which one it is. It's just interesting when I hear that, I go like, huh, I wonder what changed. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. You can- Like, like, like what switches in a system that changes something? How do we look at it differently?
23. SPSpeaker
  Hmm.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  I, I even think of-
25. SPSpeaker
  Hmm
26. TNTrevor Noah
  ... man, that, can I tell you? The-
27. SPSpeaker
  Hmm
28. TNTrevor Noah
  ... there are parts of your book where I was just like, "I have to just meet this person." 'Cause no, there's, there's books and there's thinkers that you encounter in life where you go, "Who is this person, and how are they so magical in, in the way they approach things?" Yeah, absolutely.
29. SPSpeaker
  Or crazy. [laughs]
30. TNTrevor Noah
  Because ... No, but crazy in a good way. Can I- Who takes naps- Yeah, with you ... at
57:30 – 1:00:00
When markets enter your bloodstream - the seatbelt thought experiment
1. TNTrevor Noah
  noon. [laughs] He's a noon napper.
2. SPSpeaker
  Fair comment.
3. TNTrevor Noah
  He's a noon napper. He's a noon napper. [laughs] But, like, there's, there's a part of the book where, man, I was, I was so impressed and, like, just, like, taken by how you stitched together even civil rights in, in American healthcare-
4. SPSpeaker
  Hmm
5. TNTrevor Noah
  ... and the way we think about how it's doled out and not doled out. Because you see, again, I, I didn't know, and I would have never known how you can trace dialysis and Medicare and who gets treatment and who doesn't get treatment-
6. SPSpeaker
  Hmm
7. TNTrevor Noah
  ... back to segregation and desegregation- No way ... in the United States. No, literally. Uh, I mean-
8. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
9. TNTrevor Noah
  ... talk a little bit about that because it's, it's ... That blew my mind. I was just like, oh, man, we, we, we really have to think holistically, and sometimes I don't think our brains are big enough.
10. SPSpeaker
  No, I ... Yeah. It, one of the most shocking things in my research for this book was the way in which dialysis impact, um, impacts disproportionately Black and brown communities. Um, if you're Black in America, you're 13% of the population, but you're 35% of the, um, end-stage renal disease or f- kidney failure population.
11. TNTrevor Noah
  Wow.
12. SPSpeaker
  You're m- four times more likely to get dialysis than if you're white. And, and it's this death by ZIP code r- redlining-
13. TNTrevor Noah
  Wow
14. SPSpeaker
  ... you know, that, that I've gradually begun to see. I mean, dialysis is a perfect map for it, but there are many other, uh, diseases that, you know, the incidence of, of hypertension, diabetes, um, and, and obesity, the way in which these communities historically the wrong side of the tracks-
15. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
16. SPSpeaker
  ... and I mean that literally. I'm working in, um, I'm working in South Chicago, um, where there's a disparity in life, uh, in, in longevity in between North and South Chicago of 30.1 years.
17. TNTrevor Noah
  In the same city. 30 years.
18. SPSpeaker
  30 years in the same city, 30 years. If you're in North Chicago, the wealthy areas, you live 30 years longer, 30.1 years longer than in South Chicago.
19. TNTrevor Noah
  That's insane.
20. SPSpeaker
  It is insane. It is utterly, utterly unacceptable, and it has been going on. I mean, a- as one, um, uh, Magellan Hanford, one of my great, um, dialysis nurses who was formerly an LAPD officer, as he said, "It's got Jim Crow written all over it."
21. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. Mm.
22. SPSpeaker
  This is absolutely, if you look at the maps of the impact of, of dialysis on communities, and that's kind of what I'm doing now. This book, I couldn't walk away from the book.
23. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm.
24. SPSpeaker
  As usually with i- with, with books, um, you know, I, I write it, I care about it, but six months before it comes out, I'm thinking, "What, what's next?" I don't have any next. This is next.
1:00:00 – 1:03:00
Department of Defense, self defense and the power of naming things
1. SPSpeaker
  Um, so I've gotten together with, um, folks at the, um, at the new school, the, uh, Institute for Race, Power, and Political Economy, and we're doing some research on, on these areas in, in Chicago, South Chicago, and East LA, um, Boyle Heights, where the impact of dialysis is disproportionate. Trying to understand not just on, on individuals what bad dialysis does, but what does it do to a community? How do they start to see dialysis as sort of a-
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
3. SPSpeaker
  ... part of their life's arc, where you'll end up in the chair.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Hmm.
5. SPSpeaker
  Gran did. My uncle did. My kids are coming with me now to my treatments. They'll probably end up ... I mean, it's just-
6. TNTrevor Noah
  That's, yeah
7. SPSpeaker
  ... it's nightmarish, and especially when there are solutions that are in hand, that are ... And, and, you know, again, every other country does it better, but there are very straightforward solutions to prevent this from happening in the first place. So But come back to your question. I mean, the, it is absolutely, dialysis in America is-
8. EUEugene
  Mm
9. SPSpeaker
  ... absolutely perfect, um, radiograph CT scan of what's wrong with racialized structural racism in America.
10. EUEugene
  Yeah.
11. SPSpeaker
  It is, it is the poster child of what can go wrong. Um, and it i- it, for me it's been quite a, I mean, a kind of a rediscovery of what America is.
12. EUEugene
  Wow.
13. SPSpeaker
  I'm going to places I haven't spent a lot of time in.
14. EUEugene
  I can imagine.
15. SPSpeaker
  And, um, and I understand what the wrong side of the tracks means now. I mean, I, in Chicago, you literally walk underneath the tracks and you're in a different world. Everyone's a different color.
16. EUEugene
  Yeah.
17. SPSpeaker
  I mean, literally in the space of, it's the most segregated city in the, in the country, but many, many, many areas are like that. And, uh, it's an, yeah, I'm rediscovering my homeland in a way that, uh, is deeply, deeply disturbing.
18. EUEugene
  We had an episode where we spoke to one of, one of the most interesting s- people we've spoken to in South Africa, Dan, and we spoke about the remnants of apartheid.
19. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
21. EUEugene
  And what, what, what people who say, "It's been 30 years, it's time to move on now."
22. SPSpeaker
  Uh-huh.
23. EUEugene
  And I said, "What the genius of that system was, was to ensure that the longevity or the quality of life of a Black person for generations will not be the same as the life quality of-
24. SPSpeaker
  Uh-huh
25. EUEugene
  ... a white person."
26. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
27. EUEugene
  And I said, "Here's a typical example. Malnutrition within the Black community-
28. SPSpeaker
  Ugh
29. EUEugene
  ... is such a, you might have groceries in your cupboard, but are they keeping you healthy?"
30. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
1:03:00 – 1:06:00
Hunger as policy - school photos that tell the whole story
1. EUEugene
  In doing sport, because it becomes so glaringly obvious-
2. SPSpeaker
  Uh
3. EUEugene
  ... that there's size differences, that there's nutrition differences, and also there's concentration differences.
4. SPSpeaker
  Oh, yeah.
5. EUEugene
  I mean, the queues that will come up, I was, when I was growing up, they took us into this rugby clinic at one of the biggest stadiums. It was, um, a program by the rugby club. The one thing that happened when all the township buses landed at the stadium or arrived at the stadium is all the township kids went to go queue for food.
6. SPSpeaker
  Hmm.
7. TNTrevor Noah
  That's the first thing they did.
8. EUEugene
  First thing we, we did. Not they.
9. SPSpeaker
  Yeah. Oh, wow.
10. EUEugene
  I was part of the, the kids that were in the bus from the township school. This was one of the first things that we did. It was we left where we were, and the first thing we were like, "We're gonna eat something," because clearly it's not gonna be where we come from. And I'm thinking to myself-
11. SPSpeaker
  Hunger and malnutrition as a government, as a, as a-
12. EUEugene
  As a weapon
13. SPSpeaker
  ... government agenda or as a weapon, yeah. That's-
14. EUEugene
  Of o- of oppression
15. SPSpeaker
  ... oppression, yeah.
16. EUEugene
  And no, no one ever talks about that. And I always think whenever big companies expand and whenever corruption is going to take place, you can always see by how much hope they give to people about how many of them they'll employ.
17. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
18. SPSpeaker
  Yeah, that's right.
19. TNTrevor Noah
  They love that.
20. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
21. TNTrevor Noah
  Bringing, bringing this many jobs, bringing ... Oh, they love that.
22. SPSpeaker
  Love the mining companies
23. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah. They love that.
24. SPSpeaker
  Yeah, they're really nice. Yeah. Aren't they great? Yeah.
25. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh, no, they love that.
26. SPSpeaker
  Mm.
27. EUEugene
  Yes. Yes. In South Africa now, they're trying to clamp down on illegal mining, but the, they've discovered that the billions of rands in illegal gold lands in the mainstream.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. Because-
29. EUEugene
  Legally
30. TNTrevor Noah
  ... because the gold needs to be sold into a market that is formalized. So at the end of the day, it, it, it all comes back.
1:06:00 – 1:08:30
Illegal mining, dirty gold and the same old enablers
1. EUEugene
  people are losing lives and how much money [imitates whistle] .
2. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
3. EUEugene
  What are you doing? Why are you blowing the [laughs]
4. TNTrevor Noah
  [laughs]
5. EUEugene
  Who still blows a whistle?
6. SPSpeaker
  Exactly.
7. EUEugene
  Information is timeless.
8. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
9. EUEugene
  But whistleblowing also makes, makes it feel like you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. It's a n-
11. SPSpeaker
  That's right
12. TNTrevor Noah
  ... it has an annoying connotation to it if you are-
13. EUEugene
  Yes. Where did you find a whistle?
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
15. EUEugene
  You had to have it first.
16. TNTrevor Noah
  You look at a whistleblower-
17. SPSpeaker
  You're a snitch.
18. EUEugene
  Yeah. It's, it's got a ratty vibe
19. SPSpeaker
  ... you're a snitch sort of a, yeah. Exactly.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Whistleblower.
21. EUEugene
  And why are you blowing it?
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah.
23. EUEugene
  Why is everyone keeping their whistles quiet? And-
24. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
25. EUEugene
  ... there's, and there's always in whistleblowing, there's never plurality.
26. SPSpeaker
  No. No, no. That's right. The individual-
27. EUEugene
  A lone jewel standing on its own
28. SPSpeaker
  ... standing up. Yeah.
29. EUEugene
  Yes. It's always the shunned person who will generate as much noise as possible.
30. TNTrevor Noah
  Edward Snowden.
1:08:30 – 1:11:30
Why whistleblowers are treated like the real threat
1. TNTrevor Noah
  research. You are going to go read an article that either affirms what you think or that-"
2. SPSpeaker
  Gonna read someone's research.
3. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
4. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
5. TNTrevor Noah
  You're gonna go read someone's, you're not gonna go do the research. And yes, you can argue on a, like a-
6. SPSpeaker
  My own truth
7. TNTrevor Noah
  ... semantic level.
8. SPSpeaker
  Yes.
9. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, on a semantic level, you can be like, "But that is research."
10. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
11. TNTrevor Noah
  No. No, no, no. No.
12. SPSpeaker
  It's-
13. TNTrevor Noah
  I like to-
14. SPSpeaker
  ... cumulative effort
15. TNTrevor Noah
  ... yeah, I like to read the, the work of people who have done the work. Do you get what I'm saying?
16. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm.
17. TNTrevor Noah
  And that is how we should acquire knowledge in life. I don't think every one of us should go and test the principles of Newton to actually apply them in our lives.
18. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
19. TNTrevor Noah
  You know?
20. SPSpeaker
  No.
21. TNTrevor Noah
  We can apply-
22. SPSpeaker
  You're not gonna run those experiments.
23. TNTrevor Noah
  Exactly.
24. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
25. TNTrevor Noah
  Exactly.
26. SPSpeaker
  Cumulative process. Exactly.
27. TNTrevor Noah
  You know what I mean?
28. SPSpeaker
  Yes.
29. TNTrevor Noah
  But, but-
30. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
1:11:30 – 1:14:00
Justice for one man vs immunity for a whole system
1. TNTrevor Noah
  but I, but maybe I'm wrong.
2. SPSpeaker
  No, no, it's deeply frustrating and, and to see something with a sort of a lot of PR, um, potential, um, an, an opportunity, a crisis gone wasted, um, because you haven't changed the structure. You, you haven't-
3. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
4. SPSpeaker
  ... basically asked the fundamental question, number one, are you really serious that you don't understand the, the outrage-
5. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
6. SPSpeaker
  ... and the anger and the sense of, of, of powerlessness? And, and number two, are we really going to make sure that something called UnitedHealth Care is primarily focused on health and not primarily focused on their, you know-
7. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
8. SPSpeaker
  ... share price?
9. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm.
10. SPSpeaker
  We haven't done anything about that. We haven't gone upstream and said, "Is capitalism indeed the best way to organize our society? Or better, is profit motive the only way-
11. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah, yeah
12. SPSpeaker
  ... we should be focusing on our healthcare industry? Is it, is really an industry?" You know, these are bigger questions that never get raised, and I, I had my own sort of Luigi Mangione moment. I was cor- corresponding with ... I, since my book came out, I g- have, I had count- countless, um, contacts from people in the industry, and one of them was a young nephrologist, uh, Dr. Andre Aboua, who, um, was very, is and was very, very frustrated about the, um, about, about the misuse of dialysis by certain n- nephrologists that he named. Um, and, um, he sent me a lot of data. He, he showed me, um, he has a website, as a matter of fact, um, kidneykiller.com-
13. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm
14. SPSpeaker
  ... um, which alleges the use of certain drugs to knock out, um, people's kidneys so they will be on dialysis sooner.
15. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh, man.
16. SPSpeaker
  All sorts of stuff like that, and he, he wrote, we corresponded, uh, for three months, um, until January of this year, and then three days after his last email, which were data filled, really thoughtful.
17. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
18. SPSpeaker
  He gets in a car. He drives from Miami to Terre Haute, Indiana. He attempts to, allegedly attempts to murder one of the nephrologists-
19. TNTrevor Noah
  Wow
20. SPSpeaker
  ... that he had mentioned in his emails, um, and were, and was mentioned in other lawsuits Now I, of course, when I heard this I was horrified. Um, and I went through those emails a million times saying, "What could I have seen this coming?" I mean-
21. EUEugene
  Could I have missed-
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Wow
23. SPSpeaker
  ... they were the absolute picture of data driven thoughtful measured.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  Right. Yeah.
25. SPSpeaker
  But at the very end of one of the last ones, he said, "I just can't see a way to make this stop. I can't find a way to make change."
26. TNTrevor Noah
  [sighs]
27. SPSpeaker
  And you know, it's a horrifying thing to,
1:14:00 – 1:16:30
Trillion dollar wars, starving hospitals and what we choose to fund
1. SPSpeaker
  uh, to, to, to be in the middle of it. But I think the, that sense, as you said, Trevor, of pointlessness, of sense of hopelessness and of powerlessness to stop, um, and just the, just the obscenity of a situation of, uh, the Luigi Mangione situation where you have one person who un- well, apparently, allegedly murdered another. Luigi murdered Brian Thompson. But you have Brian Thompson who has been making a very successful career on, in part, denying care, um, to people who claim their, whose doctors claim they need it. Now I don't know about you, but until we can talk about that second group of people-
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
3. SPSpeaker
  ... making an enormous am- making a killing, as I say-
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yes
5. SPSpeaker
  ... in the, on denying care as a form of taking people's lives, if we can't say it out loud-
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
7. SPSpeaker
  ... we're not gonna get anywhere.
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
9. EUEugene
  Yeah.
10. SPSpeaker
  We're not gonna ever get anywhere. And if we can't say it out loud that making money doing that makes it worse, we're really not gonna get anywhere. And money may not be the root of all evil, the love of money, but it's a pretty good proxy until you find it. And we really need to get off the money drug, somehow find a way to s- to reorganize our view of how life should be led so that money isn't [laughs] the number one thing. And those folks can't come out and say, [gasps] "I'm shocked, shocked. I can never condone violent acts against..." But yes, we have two people, and how many, again, how many people has the major healthcare, um, CEO-
11. TNTrevor Noah
  CEO, yeah
12. SPSpeaker
  ... um, accounted for in his long career?
13. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, but, uh, it's, it's, it's that old line, right? Um, if you owe the bank $1,000, it's your problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, it's the bank's problem.
14. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
15. TNTrevor Noah
  If you do something on a big enough scale.
16. EUEugene
  Yeah, our problem now is-
17. SPSpeaker
  I was thinking of Voltaire, the, you know, murder to the sound of trumpets thou- by the thousands-
18. TNTrevor Noah
  Yes
19. SPSpeaker
  ... is called, is good.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, exactly.
21. SPSpeaker
  One murder is n- unacceptable.
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. There's a, there's a weird thing that happens in society where if you get the scale great enough-
23. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
24. TNTrevor Noah
  ... it's somehow not seen as the same issue multiplied-
25. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
26. TNTrevor Noah
  ... when, when in fact it is. And, and-
27. SPSpeaker
  What is this, Stalin's? One murder's a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  Yes, exactly.
29. SPSpeaker
  Oof.
30. TNTrevor Noah
  But that's, that's exactly what it is. And, and, and to your point, accountability is also doled out differently.
1:16:30 – 1:18:30
When the fight becomes personal - Tom’s brother and urgency
1. TNTrevor Noah
  there's no life sentence.
2. EUEugene
  Right.
3. SPSpeaker
  Check.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  There's no death sentence.
5. EUEugene
  Nope.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  There's barely even a financial sentence, right? The last I checked, the Sackler family, who are responsible for more deaths in the US than most criminal organizations.
7. SPSpeaker
  Than all criminal organizations. [laughs]
8. TNTrevor Noah
  They're still out there. Think about how many families have lost a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a child because of opioids that they were told were there to help them. Those people became addicted, died from pain, whatever, you name it.
9. SPSpeaker
  Hm.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  The Sackler family, they didn't even lose all their wealth. Like just, just think of this for a moment. Even if you said to me, "Okay, they're at zero. We took away everything. I know they're not in jail, but they're at zero." I'd go, it's still not fair, but-
11. SPSpeaker
  Hm
12. TNTrevor Noah
  ... but they didn't even take all their wealth.
13. EUEugene
  Hm.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  The people could still fly away in a helicopter. The pe- like my brain-
15. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
16. TNTrevor Noah
  ... do you know what I mean? It's like wait, wait, wait, then are we living in a just society? And, and that's the thing that I think people at these levels either don't understand or either act like they don't understand. If a justice system is not just, then people stop believing in the system.
17. EUEugene
  Yeah.
18. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
19. TNTrevor Noah
  You know what I mean?
20. SPSpeaker
  And we're seeing that more and more. I mean, the violent acts are because the, the safety valve is clogged-
21. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
22. SPSpeaker
  ... and we're blowing gas.
23. TNTrevor Noah
  You're like why would you, why would you not see this? Do you not see that this is gonna blow back on you? [upbeat music] We're gonna continue this conversation right after this short break. [upbeat music]
24. EUEugene
  I think what's going on in the world, you're absolutely making so much sense. What's going on in the world is what usually happens in the classic mafia movies. You know, no one, first part for me is no one ever talks about the marketers. People talk about the great CEO that came from this company that did this to this thing.
25. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
26. EUEugene
  But if you think about it before, when people trusted a government more, they would buy government bonds.
27. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
28. EUEugene
  And the government would be accountable to the people that bought the bonds because the government would have to pay the bonds back. The same
1:18:30 – 1:21:30
Homeboy Industries and how communities save themselves
1. EUEugene
  people that make the legislation, which is the guardrails that are supposed to keep people safe, now go into private business. They get rid of the guardrails, but they still keep the government bonds, uh, system by saying you're selling people shares.
2. SPSpeaker
  Hm.
3. EUEugene
  But the marketers have realized, just like in that scene in The Godfather where he walks around the square and he bites an apple and then later on, the nonna would come and complain and-
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah
5. EUEugene
  ... Don Corleone will take care of it. Everyone is wetting their beak.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Hm.
7. SPSpeaker
  Hm.
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
9. EUEugene
  If you are betting online-
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
11. EUEugene
  ... if you are buying shares-
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
13. EUEugene
  ... if you're watching the stock price go up, if once in a while, the thing that astonishes me more in this country is when you watch television, these ads about, "You know, you owe this much money if you call this," and then this was up.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15. EUEugene
  And then they always give the stat of how many people haven't versus the how many people should. And all of a sudden I look at the drug companies different and I go, but if they care so much, they're here buying ads, but they're, are they advertising the product? Are they-
16. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
17. EUEugene
  ... do they really want you? Which lawyers must you call to do this thing?
18. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, it's all, it all becomes-
19. EUEugene
  All, yes, everyone's beak is wet.
20. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm.
21. EUEugene
  Everyone is eating a little bit here and there with online betting, with buying shares, with working there and knowing someone who is in it, right?
22. SPSpeaker
  And no one's looking after the little guy, us.
23. EUEugene
  Yeah.
24. SPSpeaker
  Right? And no one is looking at, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is cons- constantly the target of attacks, has been dis- dismantled. No one is out there saying, "Yeah, but what, what about, you know-
25. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
26. SPSpeaker
  ... Sally out there? What about Bob? I mean, what about..." You know, there's no one after them. And that's the thing that, I mean, that's kind of what I saw in, in dialysis, but I see it everywhere, is the sense of the most vulnerable people are taking it in the neck.
27. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
28. SPSpeaker
  And everyone's sort of, "Oh, well, you know, they're sort of vulnerable. It's, maybe it's their fault."
29. TNTrevor Noah
  Right.
30. SPSpeaker
  Who knows?
1:21:30 – 1:24:00
Patients’ last requests - and the promises that keep Tom going
1. SPSpeaker
  and it's in, uh, you know, Boyle Heights centric. Every business has to be in Boyle Heights. They have urban gardening, they have all kinds of other things. They have art, but they are actually taking the people who are most at risk.
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
3. SPSpeaker
  So when I arrived-
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm
5. SPSpeaker
  ... I mean, the people that everyone else fails-
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm
7. SPSpeaker
  ... to do, and won't even take a chance at because-
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
9. SPSpeaker
  ... their statistics might be s- skewed. When I arrived, um, I couldn't get anyone on the phone, but I wanted to talk with Father Gregory Boyle, and I wanted to talk with, um, you know, the head of, of, of research and so on. So I just arrived and sat down, and they have a wonderful homegirl cafe. I sat down, and, and I said, "I'd love to talk with Father Boyle and, and Mike Larán, and, and the other people." They go, "Oh, well, he's very busy today." And I said, "That's okay. I'll stay as long as is necessary." And they said, "Well, you know, he may be busy all day." I said, "Oh, that's okay. I'll stay today, and I'm coming back tomorrow, and I come back the next day." And I went and sat down, and, and I really meant it. I had my computer. I was perfectly happy, and I wasn't, you know, and I really needed to meet these people. And about five minutes later, someone came, and I went back. I, remember, this is gang rehabilitation.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
11. SPSpeaker
  These are some ser- the people with, like, tattoos-
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, yeah, yeah
13. SPSpeaker
  ... over their faces and stuff. They read you in a heartbeat.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  Yep.
15. SPSpeaker
  They can see. They know their territory.
16. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
17. SPSpeaker
  They know who you are, and, and 20 minutes later, a couple guys came and sat down and had lunch, and, and one of them looked over each other, "Oh, that's the kidney guy, yeah." And so by, by the, by the third hour-
18. TNTrevor Noah
  I can imagine
19. SPSpeaker
  ... I had already met with the people I needed to meet with.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
21. SPSpeaker
  And we are, we are off and running, but that feeling of l- of entering this space where hope is in the air, they have been in a terrible place, and they're still facing incredible difficulties. But there is a sense of let's not let the state or the govern- uh, the federal government or the-
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Hmm. Hmm
23. SPSpeaker
  ... let's do this in a community, is that's, I think, part of the system that we need to, uh, employ to get back on our feet as, as a country. But, uh, but that place is amazing, and that's, and that's the sort of street level, uh, person to person, um, information that you really need to make a difference and to understand what dialysis or anything else is doing in a community, is find the people who know that community-
24. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
25. SPSpeaker
  ... who grew up there, who are really plugged in.
26. TNTrevor Noah
  The people on the ground.
27. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  You know what I realized, uh, reading your book and then meeting you, is you, you're that person from the movies.
29. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
30. TNTrevor Noah
  You know, you, you know those movies we used to watch? They don't really make them anymore.
1:24:00 – 1:25:30
Learning to love your kidneys - and what they are worth
1. TNTrevor Noah
  that doesn't really fit too well, and they've got their briefcase.
2. SPSpeaker
  Yes.
3. TNTrevor Noah
  And then they go to, like, an office, and they'd be like, "Excuse me, I, I would like to meet the..." And they're like, "I'm sorry, he has no appointments." So it's like, "Okay, I'll, I'll just sit here." And then it's like, and then, like, two hours later, they're like, "Hey, he's not, he's not coming back." It's like, "It's fine. I'll just sit here." And I, I remember watching the movie, those movies.
4. SPSpeaker
  [laughs] Yes, exactly.
5. TNTrevor Noah
  And I'd go, "There's no one like this."
6. SPSpeaker
  Yep. [laughs]
7. TNTrevor Noah
  Now I've met one. You, you have a, like a, it's a dogged and insatiable attitude towards, like, finding the truth, the people-
8. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm
9. TNTrevor Noah
  ... the, the, the story.
10. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
11. TNTrevor Noah
  It's, like, how, how... Is it, is it, is it conscience that's pushing you?
12. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
13. TNTrevor Noah
  Is it, like, what is, what's motivating you beyond, don't get me wrong.
14. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
15. TNTrevor Noah
  I mean, it, it is, it is a noble cause, but beyond that, like, what, what is, what is making you sit down for that long? What's making you go talk where people don't wanna talk? What ma- what's making you investigate unbeatable, quote-unquote, corporations?
16. SPSpeaker
  Hmm. Yeah, it's a really good question, and, um, I, you know, part of it is a sense of unfairness. I do have this sort of sense that, you know, bullies are one of the worst species, and hypocrites are also one of the worst.
17. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
18. SPSpeaker
  So you have a bully hypocrite-
19. TNTrevor Noah
  Oh, yeah, that's the worst combination
20. SPSpeaker
  ... who's feeding you a line, that's the worst of the worst, and I run into that a lot in corporate America. So, um, also just a sense that, you know, we can do better. We have to do better. We must do better, and that it can start with, it needs to start with information, good information. So what is really going on in the dialysis industry? But it can, it can, I think, in, in a, in a pretty short space of time, you can turn something around
1:25:30 – 1:27:30
Why Tom cannot walk away from this story
1. SPSpeaker
  by taking the small community view-
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
3. SPSpeaker
  ... and building outwards, rather than trying to fix it-
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah
5. SPSpeaker
  ... with a blanket. Everything needs to change.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yes.
7. SPSpeaker
  And, uh, and besides which, there is no blanket anymore, so, you know, might as well do it [laughs] in your own backyard, 'cause no one's gonna be looking out for it.
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, but you've also done something that's pretty amazing, 'cause people would write books. People do, you, you, you know, it's, it's, it's so many stages. First of all, you hope someone will help you make the book.
9. SPSpeaker
  Mm.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  You hope somebody will publish it and put it out there. You then hope that people will read it. You hope that it'll connect.
11. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
12. TNTrevor Noah
  But the hardest step after all of those hard steps is you hope it'll make a difference.
13. SPSpeaker
  Yeah, that's-
14. TNTrevor Noah
  And, and there's something that happened with your book that is, a- again, it's like a Hollywood movie that you, you hope would be written. There's a moment where the FDA, the head of the FDA goes, "I, I wanna use your book to go after these two sinkhole companies that are, you know, scamming Americans-
15. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
16. TNTrevor Noah
  ... for their healthcare-
17. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm
18. TNTrevor Noah
  ... scamming the government essentially for all of the money that it's trying to provide to help people." And I think your book, if I remember correctly, got cited 21 times, and there was a lawsuit. What, what, what's the latest on that is, like, is, is this still moving forward? Are these companies still being held accountable? Because your book actually made a change on a level that people didn't think a change could be made.
19. SPSpeaker
  Well, it, it is work in progress. Nothing has been fixed yet. But I will say that, um, Marty Makary, who before he became FDA head, had read my book. When he became FDA head, he asked me for a memo. "How do you fix dialysis?"
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. Wow.
21. SPSpeaker
  "Give it to me." Uh, and he said he's ex- he's, he's, uh, spread it around in, uh, to, to Dr. Oz and to, and to RFK and others, um, at the highest levels. Who knows what's gonna come of that, but at least they asked.
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm.
23. SPSpeaker
  There has been a, a recent lawsuit, came out in May, um, alleging antitrust violations of all kinds.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  Right. Yeah.
25. SPSpeaker
  They did cite my book 21 times and cited people I cited, another 15. Um, and
1:27:30 – 1:30:00
The FDA, antitrust and a book that reached the right desk
1. SPSpeaker
  they simply lay out, um, in my view, um, they're all allegations until proven, but in my view, a pretty good case for why you have two huge corporations that control 80% of the market. That's harming patients, that's harming workers, and that's harming taxpayers. I think they made a pretty good point. So yeah, I mean, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is funding some of the work that I'm doing. There is forward moti- motion on this.
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm.
3. SPSpeaker
  And there is a sense, I think, and I've r- received thousands of emails from people inside, um, the industry, whether they're patients or families or whatever, and I would say it's bipartisan. There is a sense of enough is enough.
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
5. SPSpeaker
  And some of them are Trumpists.
6. TNTrevor Noah
  It's health.
7. SPSpeaker
  Some of them are, some of them are voted for Kamala Harris. Some of them, who knows, they didn't vote.
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, it doesn't matter.
9. SPSpeaker
  They, it, it's health.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm. Yeah. It's health.
11. SPSpeaker
  It is a fundamental thing that goes beyond politics and-
12. TNTrevor Noah
  Your kidneys don't vote, bro.
13. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
14. TNTrevor Noah
  [laughs] They don't. You know what I mean?
15. SPSpeaker
  They do not.
16. TNTrevor Noah
  [laughs]
17. SPSpeaker
  They just ... And, and those babies call-
18. TNTrevor Noah
  I didn't see that one coming. [laughs]
19. SPSpeaker
  I've never had such a warm and fuzzy feeling for my kidneys.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
21. SPSpeaker
  You don't think about your kidneys, right?
22. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, man. Your kidneys don't vote.
23. SPSpeaker
  They are the or- they are the, they are the conductor of the whole orchestra of your body. Without those kidneys, you know. People wanna talk about renal fortitude. They talk about guts and brains and heart.
24. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
25. SPSpeaker
  But they don't talk about kidney power. [laughs] They should. They should.
26. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
27. SPSpeaker
  Renal fortitude.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  It's one part of you.
29. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
30. TNTrevor Noah
  Y- you know the analogy I use? There, there was someone I was, I was having this discussion with, like, after reading your book, and they said, "I don't know. I think, you know, the market this and the ... And I, I don't think you should get, the government shouldn't get involved in what's happening here, and I think private companies..." And, and I was trying to figure this out because I was like, "Wait. Okay, how would I ex- how would I explain this?" And I struck, and then, and then it struck me. I went, "I would never deny that there are many private companies that have done an amazing job providing us with products that we love and use." We're using a bunch of them now, right? But there are certain aspects of life where you have to ask yourself, "Who should be in charge of this?"
1:30:00 – 1:32:00
Should profit ever run healthcare
1. TNTrevor Noah
  We've made it seem like it's this foreign entity. No, no, no.
2. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
3. TNTrevor Noah
  It's our collective force that's acting. It's your friend. It's almost like having one friend where you go, they go to the bar. "Hey, what do you guys want for drinks?" Yeah, that's government.
4. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
5. TNTrevor Noah
  You go get us drinks, and then you hold them accountable and be like, "Yo, where's my drink?"
6. SPSpeaker
  Mm-hmm.
7. TNTrevor Noah
  That's what it's supposed to be, but now we've made it seem like your friend at the bar goes to the bar, and then all of a sudden you're like, "That bar guy. Man, let me tell you about Barry."
8. SPSpeaker
  Hmm. He took my money.
9. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. It's just like, no, no. This isn't-
10. SPSpeaker
  Hmm, took my money.
11. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah. It's like, took my money. Yeah, yeah, but was supposed to take your money to buy you the drink-
12. SPSpeaker
  Get a drink. Yeah
13. TNTrevor Noah
  ... that you wanted them to buy.
14. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
15. TNTrevor Noah
  And when you think about, like, healthcare and these types of industries, I keep, I keep thinking, and this was the analogy I used with this person. I said, "So you think it's fine?" They're like, "Yeah. Well, they made money. They found a way to make money on these things." I said, "Okay. What if I found a way to make a technology that could suck the oxygen out of the air? What if I found a way to do that?"
16. SPSpeaker
  Hmm.
17. TNTrevor Noah
  "And you lived next door to me. If I sucked the oxygen out of the air, you know there's no law that, like, stops this right now, right?"
18. SPSpeaker
  Hmm. Hmm.
19. TNTrevor Noah
  "And now I say to you, 'Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Please, I'm not saying you shouldn't breathe. I'm just saying you should pay me to breathe.'"
20. SPSpeaker
  Hmm.
21. TNTrevor Noah
  Would you accept that, and would you live in that society? Right now, even someone would be like, "That's a crazy, that's a, that's a ridiculous analogy." Is it though?
22. SPSpeaker
  You know, AI, what's happening with AI right now, it's sucking the oxygen out of our- [laughs]
23. TNTrevor Noah
  If somebody, if somebody has a machine-
24. SPSpeaker
  Yeah
25. TNTrevor Noah
  ... that decides whether you live or die, and you have to pay them in order, like, a crazy amount of money to stay alive, and then your government doesn't really cover you the way they should because that same company has convinced them to no- And the, how is it any different?
26. SPSpeaker
  I think you said the key word there, convince. I think we've had, we, we have a lot of whistleblowers. We have a lot of researchers. But I think the fight back from these corporations and these companies and these institutions is how much they invest in marketing.
27. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, they do.
28. SPSpeaker
  And the language-
29. TNTrevor Noah
  You're not wrong. Yeah
30. SPSpeaker
  ... that they put out there.
1:32:00 – 1:36:00
The shepherd, the wolves and who is really protecting the flock
1. SPSpeaker
  organs are not given priority based on what the, the language, the common colloquial language is for that, for that organ. For example, a kidney.
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Hmm.
3. SPSpeaker
  As essential as it is-
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Marketing and language has made it seem like you can do without it.
5. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
6. EUEugene
  Damn.
7. TNTrevor Noah
  And also, marketing has also made it feel like it's something that someone will give begrudgingly if you need to.
8. EUEugene
  [laughs]
9. TNTrevor Noah
  But you'll still be fine with it.
10. EUEugene
  Yeah, a kidney transplant.
11. SPSpeaker
  Get a kidney transplant.
12. EUEugene
  Yeah.
13. TNTrevor Noah
  Get a kid-
14. EUEugene
  Oh, man
15. TNTrevor Noah
  ... the, the, the doctor's not called a k-
16. EUEugene
  Yeah, two of them
17. TNTrevor Noah
  ... kidney-ologist.
18. EUEugene
  Yeah.
19. SPSpeaker
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  They're a nephrologist. So-
21. EUEugene
  That's interesting
22. TNTrevor Noah
  ... it, there's also this-
23. EUEugene
  Yeah
24. TNTrevor Noah
  ... shroud of mystery that's put around things. And sometimes-
25. EUEugene
  Yeah
26. TNTrevor Noah
  ... if it's not mysterious, it's trivialized.
27. EUEugene
  Yeah.
28. TNTrevor Noah
  So you don't take it as seriously as it should be. You know, the biggest example for me is Department of Defense versus Department of War.
29. EUEugene
  War, yeah.
30. TNTrevor Noah
  And I say to people-
1:36:00 – 1:38:36
What it will actually take to fix American healthcare"
1. SPSpeaker
  we definitely can, and I've seen, you know, these small groups and, and larger groups, People's Lobby in, in Chicago, and the Homeboys in-
2. TNTrevor Noah
  Mm-hmm
3. SPSpeaker
  ... LA, and a bunch of others-
4. TNTrevor Noah
  Hmm
5. SPSpeaker
  ... who are just saying, "Okay, let's just do this. You know? Let's just do this right here among us."
6. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
7. SPSpeaker
  And then we see how it goes. And, and I think that's kind of, that's kind of my model until [laughs] I see a better one.
8. TNTrevor Noah
  Hey, man.
9. SPSpeaker
  Uh.
10. TNTrevor Noah
  I'll tell you now, you, you've put forward one of the best models. I hope as many people as possible read your book, because one of them might become the next head of the FDA. One of them might become the next something of something. And, uh, yeah, wherever we can help, let us know, man. It's, it's-
11. SPSpeaker
  Thank you
12. TNTrevor Noah
  ... it's really worth, worthwhile. Thank you for taking the time.
13. SPSpeaker
  Thank you very much, Trevor and Eugene. It's been a pleasure.
14. TNTrevor Noah
  This was really great, man.
15. SPSpeaker
  Okay.
16. TNTrevor Noah
  Thank you so much.
17. EUEugene
  Tom.
18. TNTrevor Noah
  For real, man.
19. SPSpeaker
  Thanks.
20. TNTrevor Noah
  Oof. We've gotta stay in touch.
21. EUEugene
  Sorry about your brother.
22. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
23. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
24. SPSpeaker
  Yeah, it's tough.
25. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah.
26. SPSpeaker
  It's tough.
27. TNTrevor Noah
  Sorry about your brother.
28. SPSpeaker
  It happens, but you don't think it's gonna happen.
29. TNTrevor Noah
  Yeah, no, but-
30. SPSpeaker
  Until it happens. Yeah

Episode duration: 1:38:41

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

Transcript of episode 62d9iBDfHKw

Get more out of YouTube videos.

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

iOS

Android

Claude

Chrome