B (2:55)

Hey, Hal, thanks for having me.

A (2:56)

Thanks so much for joining me. We always have so much fun and there is not a better person to go through all of this with. Not to freak you out because I know you're bringing life into this world and you're going to have to send, you know, your son or daughter to school one day and it's not looking good. Right? So starting in Illinois, and this isn't just happening in Illinois, but J.B. pritzker, he is going to enforce this annual mental health screening in schools, which I think is a total slippery slope. But Starting in the 2027 and 2028 school year, Illinois is going to be the first state to force manual health screenings for all public school kids grade 3 to 12. And he says, Pritzker says it's going to catch issues like anxiety and depression and it's going to help them get on track academically and socially. I don't know about you, but I never really talked to my guidance counselor or anything or even the school nurse about this. What about you?

B (3:59)

So actually I went to public school all throughout my time From K till 12 in Illinois of all places. So I can kind of speak to the system a little bit. You know, when I first saw this, my thought process was third grade is way too young. Of course. Like, what issues were you having in third grade resolving around anxiety? I understand we have phones, which you and I didn't have an issue with when we were that young. So I can't speak to that in terms of experience. But generally that just felt really young. I don't know if this was just a high school thing. I feel like I might be a little bit more inclined because a lot of the parents there is an opt out featured for this. The parents that are on the ball, the parents that are looking out for anxiety, depression, kind of weird, odd signs in their children. They're probably already going to opt their child out because they're reading all of those slides, clips. The kids whose parents maybe aren't and maybe are at a higher risk are going to not opt out and those kids are going to get maybe A screening that they otherwise wouldn't know about would afford. So I don't think I necessarily have an issue with this being done in a very concentrated fashion, especially what I witnessed in my high school growing up. I don't, I lived in a very affluent area, but I didn't go to a very affluent high school. And I think that anxiety and depression and just general testing of the mental capacity of the student body at the high school I went to might have been a good thing. But I don't think doing this to third graders does anything because I don't know about you, Haley, but whenever I get a little sick and I ask, you know, Chad, GPT or WebMD or whatever what I might be sick with, I just kind of self identify with that sickness and go down a rabbit hole. And, and if I self identified in third grade as anxious, I just think that would perpetuate anxiety even further. So I don't know that this is a good idea for children that young, but I don't necessarily think we'd be doing a disservice by helping kids address their anxiety, their depression and potential anxiety and depression in high schoolers. I don't know. Am I crazy for thinking that?

A (6:11)

No, I think you have a good point. I think because to your point about the kids who grow up in maybe not so good of a household, right, they maybe their parents are splitting up or maybe they are growing up in an abusive type situation. There are a lot of kids who rely on school for breakfast and things like that or after care because their parents are working. So there are a lot of different dynamics, right? And maybe the school can kind of fill in the gaps where some parents can't. So I get, get what you're saying where, you know, if a kid maybe is, doesn't, they're not going to have access to mental health. And as we know, kids these days are just increasingly anxious about everything. They're depressed. We should fix it, right? If we can. But who decides if your kid is mentally fit or not? Right? So this is where I think it's a slippery slope where schools will decide because we've seen this, where schools will affirm trans kids. You know, there's no such thing as trans kids in my opinion. I think trans kids have been groomed by adults who are sick in the head. But let's just say a kid says, you know, they learn about trans stuff from ChatGPT or someone on the playground or something and they're thinking, oh, I'm also trans or maybe I'm Confused or what does this mean? Or am I gay? And then they go to some woke school guidance counselor or some mental health professional that the public school deems woke or whatever good enough. But is it good enough for the parents? So like you said, you can opt out of it. But for these kids who don't opt out, do you think there's a world in which some of these mental health providers might not have the kids best interests in heart, they might have an agenda to push?

B (7:59)

No, that's absolutely true. I'm looking at this from like such a practical angle and from an angle of I didn't grow up with that trans nonsense. Like it just exist when I was in high school. So I don't, I can't fully wrap my head around that because I knew my guidance counselor, he was awesome, he was really cool and we would like, he would like have lunch with us. Like he was awesome. So it's tough for me to wrap my mind around that kind of a person. Like the influences I had in my life. And now these crazy administrators, which you're right, they're a growing population and they're only going to continue to grow because that's what they're learning in these education schools and education programs on college campuses. So it's really tough to say. I think you're right, that's where the slippery slope is. I also think that you're going to get the argument from the opposing side that if this wasn't instituted statewide and this wasn't instituted in all public schools and instead this was targeted at schools in downtown Chicago perhaps where people probably need those resources a little bit more, that that will come across as somehow like racist and classist or whatever. And I just don't think that giving children access to mental health should revolve around whatever ist or, or whatever phobe you are going to be called. We should be giving more care and maybe these kind of mental health screenings to two kids in impoverished areas which are yes, sadly traditional, traditionally black areas of Chicago. Those kids need those resources. Why are we doing this statewide when we can offer this to a subsect of the population, be it white, black, whatever color they are. But we know in a predominantly low income area where these kids need it more. And so unfortunately the woke government of Illinois is giving itself no help and actually getting these programs which perhaps this is good, perhaps this is bad. We can debate it all night long. If it had any goodness to it. It's probably going to be spread so thin it's not going to actually Help the people intended to help.

A (10:00)

Yeah, I think you make a good point there. And this is not just happening in Illinois. There's another instance in a Boston school. In the Boston area, they were when they were going viral for posting this youth risk survey. And now this is being investigated by the Department of Education's Student Privacy Policy office. Because this was Burlington Public Schools in the Boston area. And this is a very graphic survey. They asked a lot of sensitive topics. So, Chrissy, I'm just going to read some of these questions off from this survey and you. We. We can get into this after. So which of the following terms best describes your current gender identity? Which of the following best describes your sexual orientation? Has anyone done sexual things to you or forced you to do sexual things that you did not want to? Has someone you were dating or going out with ever done sexual things to you or forced you to do sexual things that you did not want to? Has someone you were dating or going out with physically hurt you? How old were you when you had your first drink of alcohol? More than a few sips, it says in parentheses. During the last past month, did you ride in a car or other vehicle driven by someone who had been drinking alcohol during the past month? What flavors were your tobacco products? Which is interesting because it doesn't just say, were you smoking? It says, what flavor? We know you were smoking. What flavors were they? This is how big vaping has gotten. All the kids are vaping. This is horrible. We're going to get into that. We're going to get into all this. But some of the other questions during the past month, how did you get your tobacco products? Have you ever had sexual contact with another person? Have you ever had sexual intercourse? Have you ever received sexual messages or nude pictures? What?

B (11:49)

It's disgusting, dude.

A (11:51)

I went.

B (11:51)

So, like I said Illinois public schools. So kind of crap. They actually put a similar survey out to us. I believe I was either a sophomore or junior in high school.

A (12:01)

Wow.

B (12:02)

The results were so skewed. And the whole point was they actually had pre made these banners where they wanted the results to be one thing. And they kind of were. But the idea was that they were going to ask us, have you had sex before? And then do you think your CL or what percentage of your classmates do you think have had sex? And it was like 24% of the student body or something like that had allegedly engaged in sex at the age of like under the age of 18.

A (12:30)

Yeah.

B (12:30)

This.

A (12:30)

These are minors.

B (12:31)

Yes. And we all perceived that 74% of our classmates did And I'm like, I still, these numbers are ingrained in my head, like to this day. I don't know why we, why did we need to know that? They didn't teach me anything. I don't walk away, however, eight or ten years later from graduating high school and being like, I remember these numbers because it was so absurd, but I didn't learn any knowledge from it. And I doubt people were telling the truth. People probably, we had to put our names on these things. They, they give you like an identity code or whatever. Your student. Oh, yeah, like your student ID has a code on it. And you had to type that code in, but it wasn't your name. I'm like, but it's the code.

A (13:12)

Look it up, who it is. Yeah.

B (13:13)

Name.

A (13:13)

This is insane.

B (13:15)

My name. Whether I've done drugs, whether I've. What?

A (13:18)

No, my first thought, my first thought was, no kid is answering this honestly. There is no way. Even if they said this is anonymous, your teachers aren't going to look at the answers. I'd be like, then why are we doing this? Obviously you're going to look at the answers. This is insane. And then what are they doing with this data that they're collecting? Is this like a government thing that they're trying to get information? Is this like an outside company who's funding it? I mean, I have a lot of questions as I would have a lot of questions as a parent. And quite frankly, the parents probably didn't know that this was happening.

B (13:55)

Yes, but this is what's happening. You hit it right on the nose. And looking at the article right here, there is a third party company that comes in the public schools using your tax dollars, of course, then come in and pay these contractors to do these kind of DEI seminars with the teachers, DEI seminars with the kids, and put out surveys like this. And you're spending taxpayer dollars which could be going to a new swing set or perhaps quality mental health care for students, real guidance, scholarship. Literally anything else other than surveys about whether you've had sex and sophomore year.

A (14:33)

Of high school, totally insane. And you know, they, I think a lot of these people, they come at this with this angle that they care about the students and they want to help them. But the truth is a lot of these kids are, they were mentally ill and they, because of these lockdowns, they have been stunted socially beyond belief. I think the, the student unions and the school boards and all these people and all the draconian lockdown measures, they had such a detrimental effect that they really didn't know how bad it was going to be during COVID and they locked these kids down. They were going to zoom school. Now that they're back, it's like, you know, they're doing these weird surveys. I feel like no one knows how to talk to each other now. These, these kids are mentally ill, they're depressed, they're anxious, and they're going to chat GPT. Like you said earlier in this episode, when you're sick, you go to ChatGPT. Younger people are using ChatGPT like Google, but, but not only are they using it like Google, they're using it as, like a friend. They're using ChatGPT as this confidant, not really understanding that it's not a human behind this, it's a computer. But who's running it? Who's collecting the data? What are they doing with that data? The same thing that maybe they'd be hesitant to answer this survey. They're willy nilly telling Chachi PT these things about their lives.

B (16:07)

Oh, yeah, 100%. And ChatGPT could probably hack into my bank account if it wanted to. And it's really unfortunate because you just put your life into there trying to optimize your life and unwittingly you're giving so much information to this thing. I think ChatGPT knows my babies due date. I'm like, I, I severely messed up, guys. I, I admit it. I messed up and I have the capacity to do that at 28 years old. I can understand the side effects of this. Other kids cannot. I know you have a story you want to get into about Chad and the results of this, but let me just say this for people in the audience who maybe haven't used it or aren't familiar with it, the big problem that people are seeing with ChatGPT generally is you could tell it, you could show it something ugly and it'll tell you it's the most beautiful thing in the world. You could tell it that your, you hit your mother and it'll be like, you know, she probably deserved it. Like, that is kind of the level of audacity that chatbots has. It's a little bit delusional and making the user feel like every action they do outside of a screen is justified and every action that they do online is also justified. It is just, just. It's basically a tool for justification of poor decision making and poor actions. Literally. I swear, you, you could say that. What was that Trump line like? I could go to 6th Avenue and shoot someone and everyone would still like me, ChatGPT would be like, while shooting is not okay. You might have been justified. Right. Like, it's crazy. Yeah.

A (17:37)

I feel like it affirms people's delusions. And then if people who are already mentally ill are going to Chat GPT, it's a recipe for disaster. So, yeah, let's get into this story because a family is now suing Open AI, the company that owns ChatGPT, for allegedly encouraging their son to commit suicide, which is so horrible. This is the family, the parents of Adam Rain, who died at the age of, of 16. And he went to ChatGPT at first to get help with homework. So of course the parents knew about the ChatGPT usage, but he said, okay, I'm using it for homework. And he did. He was using it as kind of a source for information, a search engine, if you will. And then he was telling Chat about his problems with anxiety, depression, some intrusive thoughts that he were. He was having suicidal thoughts, a suicidal attempt. And Chat didn't end the messages or alert him to any hotlines. Like you were saying about kind of affirming these beliefs rather than putting a stop to it. OpenAI said in the wake of this lawsuit that it'll make changes to ChatGPT. It's going to be hopefully better in these sensitive situations. But it is very concerning that these young people are taking to ChatGPT rather than a trusted professional, oh, 100%.

B (19:07)

And I think the big takeaway from this story is that OpenAI while, yes, of course, Sam Altman, the CEO, is not going to be out here issuing apologies left and right for the problem of lawsuits in our litigious society and whatnot. But at the end of the day, you have to wake up and realize that we're the guinea pigs for all of this. Right. And our people under I, probably under the age of 25, without fully formed frontal cortexes, probably shouldn't be utilizing a technology that, that A, is generally untested, B, promotes itself as having a PhD level of knowledge and yet can't tell you what happened in the news this morning. It's actually quite stupid technology that has been branded as beyond the pale genius because it operates quickly. And then third, you know, why are we putting this out to kids? You know, it's, it's hard because it's not like social media where you need a login and, and you need, you need all of these access codes and parental permission and whatnot. It's relatively easy to get, I think even on the latest iPhone. It just comes installed and you can hold one of the bottom buttons and it just pops up and you can take a picture of something and Chat GPT will tell you all the knowledge about that individual or being or furniture item or something. It's, it's nuts what this thing is doing and how it's kind of being implemented into our daily lives. I feel bad for kids, of course, that this is being thrust in front of them and they're the guinea pigs of it. But I'm more frustrated at parents that they kind of believe the PR that's being put out. I read like daily news every day, which I'm sure most people don't. It's my job to wake up and read the news. And I've always found it really odd how much propaganda in the News is about AI advancement, conversations about AI and other than, you know, the occasional ChatGPT search, AI is not something that's necessarily at the forefront of my life or outside of the tech sector really in anybody's life quite yet. Unless like you're at the McDonald's drive thru and you, you're typing the buttons instead of, you know, ordering from a human being. Other than that, it hasn't really taken over the way that people are catastrophizing. And I just feel like we're kind of in the midst of this weird phase where everybody is telling us AI takeover is imminent and I'm just kind of looking at it like it's kind of dumb. It doesn't know actually what's going on. It's insensitive and it lies to you. I'm not really threatened by this thing yet. And I don't really know understand why most of the liberal mainstream media is pushing this and thrusting this upon us while we're still guinea pigs. And this is being put out to children.

A (21:59)

What to your point about it shouldn't be normalized for children? I totally agree with that. I covered this, this story on a previous episode, but this older guy, he was in his 40s, he was using ChatGPT for work and he's an accomplished, you know, young man, but, you know, older than high school. And he had been going through a breakup and he was using Chat GPT for work. And then I don't know how this slips from using it to homework to telling it about your problems. This seems to be a trend. So maybe, yeah, this is like a homework to therapy pipeline. I'm really not sure how this all happens. It seems like this is a trend though, whether you're younger or older people are falling into this trap where they're talking a to it about their lives and giving it information. I was getting a facial the other day, and the woman doing my facial was saying, oh, yeah, I. I hit a lot of red lights on the way in. I was just having a bad day the other day, and I told Chad about it, and I wanted to be like, why? That's so weird. But, you know, nice girl, but I just think it's odd that people are using it as a friend. If you had a bad day, I would just text a real friend. Like, I would text you or someone else saying, like, hey, I'm having a bad day. I just wouldn't even think to go to ChatGPT. But to your point about older generations versus younger generations, I mean, this guy was an elder millennial, and he was using it, talking to about its problems, saying, hey, I'm going through a breakup. And Chachi PT told him to jump off of a building. Chachi BT told him, you can jump off of a building, you'll fly. So again, I think that there is, like, an evil component to ChatGPT or maybe like, a joking component that's, like, not really there yet. And people are taking it seriously. Certain if. Certainly if you're younger and if you are vulnerable, you are emotionally unstable. This is not the entity that you want to be talking to. And to your point about it not being very advanced, I will say we still see photos and people have eight fingers on one hand or their face looks a little wonky. I think people who are using AI at this point are really only using it for, like, memes or creative things online. I will say. Have you ever fallen for an AI video?

B (24:24)

Yeah. So the tsunami video. Have you seen those? Those tsunami videos? So it kind of looks like it looks like a beach, and then like, a wave will come over. And it said, like, 2017 tsunami in Thailand or something like that. I can't remember the dates in my head correctly. And I was like, there's no way that that wave was that big. And all those people were just on the beach screaming, not running from it. And underneath it said AI, right? And I was like, dang, that was pretty good. But that's the only one.

A (24:57)

That's the only one. So I fell for my first AI video pretty recently. I'm, like, so embarrassed to admit this because normally AI is so bad. It's, like, obvious that it's AI, but I was on TikTok and this video came up, and it was a bunch of bunnies jumping on A trampoline.

B (25:20)

Jumping on the trampoline. Oh, I was like, there's no way. Because there was one where a moose. I saw it with a moose first. Yes. And so I was like, oh, this must be a thing.

A (25:28)

If I had seen the one with a moose or the deer, I saw those afterwards, I would have been like, oh, this is fake. But it looks like a real ring camera footage at night where, you know, the camera's not the best. It's like a little glitchy and it looked like there were a bunch of bunnies jumping on the trampoline. My first thought was, aw, that is so cute. Then I click on the comments and people are like, you morons. Like how could you fall for this? I was like, oh my gosh, I fell for it. Then another thing that's crazy is that the other day I played a video of. It was like an AI video of the Cracker Barrel CEO, not actually the Cracker, like an AI rendition of the Cracker Barrel CEO and she's running around the store cursing and having like a full on meltdown for losing all this money. And there are people in MAGA hats and they're like, there's Confederate flags in the back and, and people are saying that the pancakes are like a kid rock concert in your mouth and all this stuff. And I said in the video this is AI twice. Lo and behold there are comments and people are saying, why would Cracker Barrel hire such a foul mouthed woman? Why would Cracker Barrel do this? All this stuff? And I said in the video that it was AI twice and it is so clearly AI. But people are still falling for it. I think it's not even a generational thing. I think people just don't pay attention anymore.

B (26:51)

No, I, yeah, I think, I think it's on both ends of the spectrum that unfortunately AI, the readability of it is limited to a very like to the middle crowd. You know, like people over the age of, I would even venture to say 35 or 38 at the top end, like they're just not around this as much. Especially a lot of like women moms are not on social media. Like they're off doing their thing, living their lives, there's things going on and then kids, yes, kids are probably better at it than our 38plus crowd, but they're still susceptible. Their brains aren't fully formed. I think there's like a small 10ish year gap we have with people that are like, yeah, we know, we know that this is AI. What's AI what's not? But other than that, it's like, gosh, what are we doing? Pranking grandma and pranking 14 year olds? It's kind of awful.

A (27:43)

I know. It is awful. Well, so let's talk about teenagers, right? Because we're on this theme of protecting our kids. Kids. And Kim Kardashian was pictured with her daughter, who she had with Kanye West Northwest. And northwest is 12 years old. And this is what has gone viral since because people are slamming Kim Kardashian for letting her daughter go out like this. She is dressed in a blue wig, she has a corset on, she has a short skirt on with black lace, and she's wearing these platform black leather boots. It is a very sexual outfit in nature, I would say. I think that this is inappropriate for a 12 year old. Lots of people online are saying this is inappropriate for a 12 year old. People are saying, when Kanye was right, you know, it's bad. So what say you? Are you on Team Kim or are you on. I won't say Team Kanye, but are you on Team Save Northwest? Team Internet.

B (28:47)

Team Save the Internet. The only grace I will give is, you know, I had some pretty fugly outfits when I was 12 years old and there was nothing my mom could do or say to change my mind. But the inspiration that I had was relative to the world I grew up in, right? So I was wearing camisoles with T shirts underneath and like I looked like Hannah Montana wannabe. That was my inspiration. Nowadays the inspiration for 12 year olds is so hypersexualized, that part of me is like, okay, Kim K, for all of her millions of faults, I mean, they give her the, the sliver, the tiniest bit of grace because it is difficult to get a 12 year old to conform with your standards. But also it's an indictment a on culture and be on what you're filtering into your house, which I'm sure Kim Kardashian is not filtering things that are coming into her house. And it's hyper sexualized. And so what she's seeing, what she's consuming is not as sweet or innocent as Hannah Montana or limited to, if you remember that store that was so innocent and pure for 12 year olds. Nowadays, it is so sexualized. And therefore, of course that's what she's going to veer towards. These kids nowadays, they're more interested in going to Sephora and having the drunken elephant products and doing their get ready routines on TikTok. That is the culture now. And it's just about forcing kids to grow up. So I'm not, not blaming Kim Kardashian, but at the same time it's like it must be really hard to be a parent nowadays because how do you protect your child from the hypersexualization that is inherent in pretty much all culture from I'm going to venture to say like ages 8 and 8 and up, not just 12, like 8 and up.

A (30:40)

And social media usage has changed so much. When I was growing up, we had Facebook. We would maybe put a few photos of, you know, all of our fingers in like a star formation on the playground and you know, on when we would make a pics art ugly edit of it, you know, pictures like that. And I would be wearing two to three Abercrombie polos at once and I would pop all of them so you could see the colors on the inside and I would wear plaid Bermuda shorts. It was definitely ugly, but it wasn't age inappropriate. I would say the other kids were also wearing this and we weren't on social media seeing Instagram models with their boobs out and all these other things. Like I feel like kids nowadays to your point about scrolling on Tick Tock and seeing Get Ready with me videos. I mean do you remember a few months ago, or maybe it was a year ago at this point when all these 12 year old girls and middle schoolers, they were going into Sephora and they were buying all of these expensive skincare drunk elephant brand products that are $50 a pop and it's like why do you need this moisturizing lotion? Your skin, it's like a baby's bottom. What do you need this for?

B (31:58)

They have this weird sense of entitlement as well, which I think entitlement has, is a problem in quite literally every generation. Don't get me wrong, the problem is that we're not parenting the entitlement out of people. There's an. I can point to examples of entitlement from Boomer to Gen X to, to Gen Z to Millennial to Gen Alpha. It exists in all of them in some way, shape or form and it's really annoying. The problem with Gen end of Gen Z and oh, just all of Gen Z, I'll whatever lump myself in there with Gen Z and Gen Alpha is it's not being parented out of them. So they go to these stores and not only do they think that they, they want these things, they want $50 skincare which what why go get some cetaphil but they want this. They also believe they, they have to have it. They deserve it. They're entitled to it.

A (32:51)

And it's Keeping up with the Joneses. It's Keeping up with the Jones is on social media, it's like, oh, the cool girl in school has this and I want this. And I think there was a little bit of that when we were growing up too. But now it's just like so in their faces on social media that it's hard to keep up with. And speaking, speaking of kids on social media, I want to get your take on these influencers who make money off of being a family blogger. Right. We've seen the. What's the blonde family. They live in Tennessee now.

B (33:22)

The LeBron's.

A (33:23)

The LeBron. That's right. So like they're the ultimate family blogging couple, right? They have a bunch of kids and they. They live in Tennessee now. And interestingly enough, California has. I don't gar. I don't agree with California all too often, but I will say that California passed a blog. It is Senate bill. Sorry. They passed a family blogging law called the Senate Bill 764. And it is essentially that content creators who make money off of their families have to establish a trust account and deposit a significant amount of the earnings into the account for the minors. Because if you're making this content and you're using your child's face, they need to get a cut of the deal, which I totally agree with. But I actually don't think that kids should be in social media. I don't think that parents should be profiting off of them. I understand that other moms want to see other families and interact with that kind of content, but a lot of influencers now are kind of doing the opposite where they're making content. Like, do you follow Laura Fitz? She has the cute little girl Lena, and she has her son Sam. She decided halfway through, you know, her daughter was getting famous and she said, okay, this is not good anymore. I don't want people to recognize her. So now she keeps her kids faces out of all of the social media. Allison Cooch, who's married to Isaac Rochelle, former NFL player. They are kind of like a couple blogger, I will say. They have a. A daughter named Scotty, I think it is. And you know, they have decided off the bat, right off the jump, never showing her face. I respect that. What do you. Where do you stand on it?

B (35:13)

Yeah, this has actually been a huge topic of conversation. I have two Instagram accounts and you can try and find my other one, but you will not be. But don't I will block you. Don't worry. But I just had this conversation with my husband because. Because we're expecting our baby in the. In early 2026. And I was like, I don't think I want to post any pictures of his or her face on the Internet. I don't think I want to post a birthday, and I don't think I, like, I don't know if I even want to post a full name. Like, I think I'm just going to call my baby Baby S, because that's my other last. Like, my actual last name. I was like, I just don't think that that's what I want to put on my personal or, like, my public social media. And so I went through and I vetted my entire private one. I had 3, 500 people that followed my private account that I had somehow let through the. Like, I either let them do the cracks.

A (36:10)

Yeah.

B (36:10)

Or they'd followed me while I was. I had that account still public. 3, 500 people who I'd never met, never talked to in my entire life. That is a fraction of the people that have access to all, all of these children on the Internet. And I was like, I just don't think it'll happen. I've also heard horror stories of. This just happened to one of my dear friends, and I feel so terrible for her. She had a personal picture of hers that she had. It was just taken. It was going to a doctor, so we'll put it like that. It was taken on her phone, and then she was going to show it to her doctor of something bad that was happening on her body. Someone hacked her icloud. They hacked her icloud. Hacked her phone and was able to take that photo off of her personal icloud account on her phone and posted it to Reddit for the world to see. It is disgusting what people will go to the lengths to do. So I have just generally speaking, I'm like, I don't know how much access people will get to my phone to social media. So I, I have decided we are not going to be putting our kid on the Internet. And I think that's just safe. Like, your kid cannot consent to this. So when we're talking about family channels, I do think that there is an age of consent. Ish. Right. It's probably somewhere in the 12 to 15 age range where kids can opt into wanting their face out there like they're older. The Lebrant's right. The. The Tennessee. Right.

A (37:39)

The older one is older. Yeah.

B (37:41)

She's Older, she can probably make decisions for herself about whether or not she wants to be dancing, whether that has an impact with her at school. But generally speaking, like, why are we putting kids faces everywhere? Why are you trying to get famous off of your kid? I just find it weird. Yeah, I just find it weird. It's like people did that with dogs at first and now it's like, kids are the new dogs. Yeah, weird.

A (38:05)

It's giving stage mom energy. I don't love it. It's like you're profiting off of your child. I think it's kind of sick. I totally respect your decision. I think you can't go wrong by not posting them. And once you do post them, you can't go back. Right. Because the Internet is forever. You post photos of them. People could screenshot it. We've seen this with videos online of people posting videos of their daughter. And then there's like, you know, 30,000 saves on the video. And it's like, why? Who is. Yeah, it's like, who is saving this? What are they using it for? You just never know. So I think your best bet is to just keep kids off of the Internet. You can't even trust people that you do know. So in my opinion, I think you're making the right decision. But speaking of photos going viral on the Internet, unfortunately, we have to talk about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. Just quickly, for people in the chat who are watching. I'm sorry, we're going to get over this very quickly, but I saw some people in the conservative movement commenting on this saying, I don't like Travis Kelce. I don't like Taylor Swift, but I'm happy for them. That is the camp that I am in. I think that they're annoying, I think they're attention seeking. Don't like them. But I will say they seem to be happy together. And for that, I am all for it. Now, I have seen other people in the conservative movement saying, well, I hope they have a ton of babies and I hope that they reverse the population decline by influencing more people to get married and have babies. But they haven't even said if they're having kids. Like, they just got engaged. They're not even married yet. So are we jumping the gun?

B (39:42)

Ed? Ed, I think, is Travis his dad's name. Yeah, he's like, so not media trained. He said the reason they're getting married is because they can't wait to start a family. So I think that's where people are getting.

A (39:52)

Oh, well, maybe. Do you think she's Pregnant now?

B (39:55)

I don't know. I'm not gonna speculate on that. I have no clue. But also I think that getting pregnant and as somebody that's like currently going through it, there's nothing that's made me more conservative than getting married and getting pregnant. There was even a part of me where I was like married but still like in a girl boss era, post marriage between getting pregnant and I'm like, I've been, I'm the most traditionally conservative I've ever been in my entire life. So I'm, I keep hearing the argument like, oh, what is like people getting married and having kids? Like, what is that going to do? We're just going to have a bunch of liberal babies. And I'm like, I don't know. It's kind of like it's going to make them all more moderate. All these psycho libs that are like, we're not going to repopulate because of the climate. Like they're not populating to begin with. So who cares about them? It's like the moderate liberals that we might.

A (40:47)

So you're saying, so you're saying there's a chance I could get even more red pilled. I could get black one day if I get married and pregnant. Well, I'm looking forward to that.

B (40:59)

Yes. You think you're conservative now and then you get pregnant.

A (41:02)

Wait.

B (41:03)

Nothing else in the world matters except for my kid. Give me 18 guns. I will shoot anybody that gets near me.

A (41:08)

18 guns, no vaccines, no social media. I'm going to live off the grid. I'm going to homestead. I'm going to make my own food. That's. Yeah, the pipeline is. There it goes.

B (41:17)

Oh my sourdough.

A (41:19)

To completely homesteading and farming and having your own chickens and eggs and all that.

B (41:22)

So I see that in construction already. We just got a home and we've started construction on the backyard garden. And Jake's like, we're gonna have a chicken in, in a month.

A (41:32)

Yeah, well, let's, let's focus on having a healthy baby first. Then we can bring some chickens into the mix. And I have had your sourdough by before and it is wonderful. It is very tasty. So once you start with the chickens and the eggs, I'll fly back to Tennessee. You'll make me an omelette, how's that?

B (41:50)

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I wanted flaky salt. Yes.

A (41:53)

So good. So, so good. So I wanted to talk about having families in general and having a big family. So the Financial Times did a piece about how having a big Family now is the ultimate status symbol. And here's a an excerpt from this article. It says, once upon a time, it may have been flaunting a rare handbag sports car or flashy watch, but with soaring costs of living and shrinking household sizes and uncertain global future, and a noisy pronatalist rhetoric, perhaps the most serious flex of wealth in developed countries in 2025 is something once considered a natural part of human life. Having kids, specifically, lots and lots of them. Interesting. What is your take on. You know, because people talk about the population decline, famously Elon Musk, he says, nobody's having babies. I think a lot of it is because of the economy. I do. I think a lot of it is just circumstances. People can't buy houses, therefore they're living in an apartment. Oh, we're not financially stable enough to have a kid. Let's get a house first. Or I, I just think that life is more expensive now. Getting married is expensive. People are kind of getting themselves into debt. And then when it's time to have kids, it's like, oh, I don't know if we could do this 100.

B (43:11)

And I feel like I should say this just because I know you have a little bit older of an audience than, you know, you and I are. I don't say this to be, like, annoying the way that you, you guys all grew up with, like, $65,000 is a lot of money. Like, it's, it's just not like that anymore. My husband and I did everything right. We had no student loan debts. In fact, my husband basically got paid to go to college. We. We have had no credit card debts. We have never been in debt in our entire lives, separately, ever. Together. We have debt on, like, the house we bought, but, like, other than that, we don't have any credit card. Nothing. We have done everything by the book. We barely could afford a house like, 50 minutes away from the city. Barely by the skin of the teeth, made it. And we did everything right. And we're 28, almost 29 years old. Right. And I just think, and I. We're having our first kid at 28. I just think people don't understand how rare it is to get ahead. And I should caveat not to, like, brag. I made six figures since I was 24 years old. And my husband does really well as well. Right. Like, we're, we're not above average. We make way more money than we probably need. We've been generally pretty fiscally responsible. We've gone on two, Two trips, one mission trip One fun trip, nothing that broke the bank or anything crazy. We're like booking flights on deals, all that stuff. I'm just saying like we did it all right and it was really hard for us. And even then once we got the house, we needed family to help pay to do basic things like paint. And so I just don't think people understand, like we're not being whiny babies, it really doesn't matter. And I think that's kind of where the hard part for Gen Z is right now is like it didn't matter how hard we worked, it was still virtually impossible for us. So when you're just kind of in this perpetual cycle of like it's gonna be basically impossible anyway. What's the frickin point again? I think that's like to the beginning of our conversation tonight with like, you get told you have anxiety, you get more anxious, you get told it's basically impossible for you to buy a house. Why are you even trying? You know, you're stuck in swallowing debt, crippling debt. And so then when you come to having kids, which yes, in our minds, I don't necessarily think it's right, I got pregnant before we bought a house. Like I'm still, we still have our apartment, I'm in my studio apartment, my studio apartment doing this, you know, and, and we don't, we have a kid on the way obviously as I've said multiple times. It's just really hard to like wrap your mind around it. Like it's a difficult thing to be having a kid and buying a house in six months. Like we're beyond privileged to do that. And I don't think people understand that because it's not how it used to be. So I do think part, part of the massive problem, a large part of it is what we just described. There's also, I think, a lot to do with health care. I've been learning a lot about unmedicated births versus medicated births and how expensive it is to give birth. And I think there's a lot of fear mongering around that. Now of course you can't plan for certain things. Some people have to have C sections, those are frickin expensive in America. But generally speaking we've made the birth experience so medicalized. You get in, you get your penicillin IV shot into you within two seconds of being in the hospital, you, you have this IV and that drip going through you and you're just, you're all wired up, you're in these sterile cold rooms and it makes the entire experience traumatizing and scary. And yes, there is. It's a real thing. Guys like you. I literally do something that's horrible. I'll feel terrible in pregnancy, and then I'll be like, five minutes later, I'll be like, that's fine. I mean, that was easy. I'm fine. You just kind of like, get through it. But I do think that we've over medicalized birth to a point where we're traumatizing a lot of women. And so why would they want to go do that three, four, five, six, seven times, right? To have a big family, they just want to do it once or twice to get their nuclear family and move on with their life. And I think it's really sad because all we tell people is like, you must have, you know, get married, your kid in the hospital, have a bunch of kids.

A (47:18)

And it's like, I want to have a bunch of kids, but it's expensive. Like, one is crazy. And they argue in this article that parents used to have to raise their kids until 18, at least financially support them. Once they were 18, it was like, all right, you know, kick them out of the nest, they get their first job, they get an apartment, they get a house, they raise their family and they move on with their lives. Now, according to the Financial Times, parents are financially supporting their children until they're 30. In some cases, that is more than.

B (47:52)

To declare that is a 28 years old.

A (47:54)

Huge. That is a huge difference where parents. That's a huge financial burden to be taking care of someone in their 20s. I have a friend, love her to death. She's 25 years old, she has a great job, but her dad helps her pay rent. She can't afford her rent by herself. It's crazy. Like, what do you mean you have a job and you can't pay? I mean, it's. Parents are taking on a lot of the financial burden. I think grandparents are going to have to take on a lot of the financial, financial burden that they were not expecting because younger generations can't do it alone. It's just not the same. College people used to be able to put themselves through college. I'm 10 years out of college and I'm still paying back my student loans, so. And I can't even fathom buying a house. And I do well for myself. Like, I do relatively well. I have a good job, I'm fiscally responsible, and I couldn't even imagine buying a house, not by myself, for that matter. Like, I would have to meet someone and go in on it together like a lot of people. It's crazy. Speaking of rent, there's another headline that I want to get to you. And then we're going to get into some scrolling time videos because I think that'll be fun. But this headline says more young people aren't socializing because they have to pay for rent. They are skipping meals out. They are socializing completely differently, if at all, to pay for rent. So 40% saying they are eating out at restaurants less to make their monthly rent payments. And they are taking fewer to no vacations. 27% said they are borrowing money from family or friends just to make rent. And 25% say they're working extra shifts to afford housing. So like we were talking about, people need to now work two jobs to just afford rent. And I was trying to think about this, and I've talked about this before. I think we had a conversation. My producer, Andy, one of these days I forgot what it was. But we tried to think about, can you hang out with someone for free if I invited you over? And I said, hey, you know, let's watch some trash television or a movie and we'll just have a wine night at home. Well, a wine night turns into, well, now we have to buy wine. Well, we're not going to just drink wine. Let's have a charcuterie board. Now we're, now we're going to go to the grocery store and now we're going to spend, you know, 20 bucks on cheese and crackers and whatever else or we're going to order a pizza or even if you go for a walk with someone which is supposed to be free, well, let's walk into this coffee shop or let's get lunch after. It is very hard to hang out with someone for free. And I think this is part of the reason why a lot of these gen zers who and gen Alpha who were impacted deeply by COVID 19 and the lockdowns, they got very used to being a lone wolf.

B (50:43)

Yeah, I will say it's. We've always been saying that we're really blessed. I so I had a really tough pregnancy. I was basically unable to work, move, eat, couldn't walk, wasn't going outside, pretty much spent the entire day either asleep or throwing up for 10 straight weeks. It went on for 10 weeks. And in that time period, other than the occasional McDonald's run to get french fries, we didn't do anything because I couldn't do anything.

A (51:12)

Yeah.

B (51:12)

And if I had not been that sick for those 10 weeks, we would not have bought a house because we did absolutely nothing. But let me tell you, at the end of those 10 weeks, I looked over Hayley. I'll be vulnerable for a second, sobbing to my husband, saying, I know what I'm doing is really important, but I've never been so sad in my entire life. It's miserable being that alone. And I had my husband every single day and my cute little dog every single day and my growing baby and my life was incredibly bless. It's effing depressing. And so I get really frustrated with older generations. They'll look down on us and say like, oh well, stop getting your whatever, $7 coffee, okay. Stop getting it in excess, absolutely. But like, gosh, we're, we're unsocialized. We can't afford to socialize. We just want some hit of dopamine. And of course there's a difference between cheap dopamine and like true real dopamine. That real dopamine is coming through a friendship and that's harder and harder to obtain nowadays. And so we go for cheap dopamine on chat GPT that tells us to kill ourselves, apparently. And it's just like a spiral downward. And the truth of the matter is, is that either the prices of things need to come down in some way or the wages need to go up. And I think that's why ironically, people hate me for making this point. The Trump movement and then like the Zo Run Mamdani movement, what they see stand for is really not all that far apart. They just have radically different ways of getting there. Both of those subsects of the population have realized the government doesn't give an F about us. They don't care that we're suffering. They don't care that we're depressed, getting our happiness from a screen and can't afford basic things like rent and health care. Yes, that is wrong. I don't know why the right. And I'll be critical of myself here in this too, because I used to think this way. I don't know why that makes you a socialist to say that. Like, when were we on the side of afterpay or Klarna or all of these companies and corporations that are taking basically saying like, hey, you want to get Chipotle so that you can hang out with your friends? Oh, don't worry, you can take that in like four installment payments with a 17% interest rate. Horrible. They're just scamming us.

A (53:24)

Bankrupting left. Yes.

B (53:25)

And right. Bankrupting an entire generation. Indebting an entire generation. And then we have older people looking down and go, well, if you just wouldn't eat avocado toast. Like that's not it. That's not it. We're being. There are predators out there. There are predators out there coming for us on the left and the right and these populist movements, be it left or right, are right and saying that this is not okay, this is unacceptable.

A (53:51)

Yeah, totally. Speaking of unacceptable, once the Democrats used to champion these woke words and now they are saying unacceptable. We have to move back. Things are not working. So do you remember back in the 2020 days they, they were saying words like chest feeder and birthing person and Latinx and all these woke words. You remember that?

B (54:20)

Yes, yes. I just did a reel all about this.

A (54:23)

Okay, well a think tank called Third Way, a left leaning think tank, they published this memo basically saying, leftists, Democrats, if you want to look like normal people, you got to ditch these words. So they made a whole list of, you know, there's a section on here that says like gender and there's a section on race and therapy speak. So don't say privilege, don't say violence, don't say dialoguing othering triggering microaggression. I'm already off just looking at this list. So hey, they're, they're onto something, right? I mean these words are annoying, they are not genuine and certainly it didn't work for the Democrats. These are the kind of things that get people turned off by them completely.

B (55:10)

Yeah. Now he actually think that this memo does a really good job at attributing why these are really annoying. If you see it, it says like where it says seminar room language underneath it says, this language says I'm smarter and more concerned about important issues than you. Your kitchen table issues. Like not only do they, they hit the nail on the head with like, these are really annoying words, like shut up. But the rationale is like what human being likes to be talked down to. And that's what those words convey. And I don't think the left, the far left of the people that engage in this quite understand that it's not just demeaning to like the right and the general population, but ironically the very demographics that they're going after. Low income black people can't give like don't have the ability to give a flying F about dead naming or pregnant people instead of a pregnant lady, like the unhoused instead of homeless people that don't have the time, energy, capacity, which really is the lower class working class. Middle class Americans. It's an elite cabal of people saying I'm better than you because I use this language. No, you're frickin not. So I liked this memo because not only was it hitting the mark on yes, this is probably why the average person is not jiving with your platform, but also why. And that's very rare in this Democrats trying to figure out post 2024 why they lost.

A (56:39)

Totally. I'm with you, Chrissy. Let's get into my scrolling time segment. I've got some fun videos that I want your rapid fire reaction to. So let's get into it.

B (56:47)

Let's do it.

A (57:02)

All right, I want to start with video 11. This is a woman who is claiming that President Trump is making it very hard for women to be childless and single. Watch this.

B (57:14)

I really hope that this administration knows that. I don't care how difficult you make it for me to be a single woman in this country. I'm not having kids, I'm not doing it. I don't care if you make it illegal. I would rather go to literal prison than be in the prison that is motherhood. I'm not doing it. I don't care. Find me, charge me, put me in jail, give me a criminal record. I don't care. I'm not having any kids.

A (57:46)

I think she's watched a little too much Handmaid's Tale, but what's your quick reaction?

B (57:51)

She spends too much time on Tick Tock. This is a whole thing. I'm actually working on a video about it right now. About how this child free child, child free lifestyle is like the ideal lifestyle. I kind of thought that too until I had a kid. Now I'm like, oh my gosh, you guys are such.

A (58:07)

You're not living. You're a lizards, you're not living. Yeah. So these people, they're just, they're totally Trump deranged. Including this little kid who wasn't sure if Donald Trump was a real person, but he found out the truth and he wasn't happy about it. Watch this.

B (58:25)

No, he's fake. No. Andy, what's wrong? Yes, Donald Trump is a real person. I feel you, buddy.

A (58:39)

I feel like this stems from maybe the parents talking down about Donald Trump in the home because why else would your child be so upset at the thought that the President is real?

B (58:50)

I really hope that when my child comes into this world, they have no idea about politics or anything on the likes of politics until they are like learning about it in school. It's such an inappropriate topic. You should be teaching your kids how to think, not what to think.

A (59:05)

Totally agree. Chrissy, thank you so much for joining me. Quickly, tell everyone where they can follow you. Your podcast, your socials, everything.

B (59:12)

Yeah, so my podcast is on a hiatus while I grow a human. But other than that, guys, you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at the Chrissy Clark and I still post. They're called underreported stories. So news stories that if you turn into cnn, MSNBC or Fox News, you really wouldn't hear about. And that's my whole mo. So I'll see you over on socials.

A (59:30)

Awesome. Chrissy, you are the best. Thank you for joining me and thank you to all of you that were watching. Couldn't do it without you. You guys make it great. I love all the interaction in the chat. If you want to join people in the chat, got to do it on rumble. Rumble.com Haley. Of course. In the meantime, you can follow me on social media at Haley Karania and I will see you right back here on Monday.