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- [00:04]
A
It's the way I heard it with me, Mike Rowe, Chuck, Klaus Meyer standing by to push all the buttons. Actually, that's not true. You've already pushed the buttons and you've already heard the conversation that's unfolded, and you, it appears, are no less gobsmacked than I.
- [00:15]
B
No, I love this guy. I love what he does. I love the honesty with which he talks about it. I love the heart that he has about this, because he's really trying to save people's lives is what he's trying to do.
- [00:29]
A
Jan Ye Kellek is on a mission. Has been for as long as I've known him. He's. I think he's the chief editor over at Epic Times, and he has a show called American Thought Leaders, which I've been on once or twice. And I've gotten to know the guy over the last few years. And early on, he confided in me that the. The issue of his life is the organ harvesting that has been happening for a few decades now in China. And, you know, I don't know what to do with that kind of information. You think you know a guy and he tells you that 90,000 political prisoners are being killed to order. Literally. You know, he's talking about the Falun Gong and the Uyghurs and a giant population of people who have been incarcerated, whose blood has been typed, whose tissues have been tested, and who are essentially just standing by to be harvested for an unbelievably robust market of humans desperate for better working parts.
- [01:37]
B
These people are living in a place against their will. They're in prison. And the prison they're in is right next to a hospital where their organs will be extracted. And here's the thing, Mike. It's not like they're murdered and they take their organs out.
- [01:50]
C
They.
- [01:50]
B
They take their organs out while they're alive still, and just toss away the bodies afterwards. And then they take the bodies right next door to the crematorium, which all three are next to each other.
- [02:03]
A
If that sounds fantastical to you, it's because it is fantastical, but it also happens to be true. And I feel really lucky. His book is out today. On 17 March, he asked if I would write a blurb. I said, sure, sure. A lot of other people have as well. I think we are in the phase that all truth eventually passes through on its way to general acceptance. Right now, people are gobsmacked, they're skeptical, but the evidence is overwhelming. And this book, Killed to Order, provides just page after page testimony after testimony, eyewitness accounts, and it's happening. You know what? Go to your favorite AI assistant right now, Claude Grok chatgpt. Ask if organs are being harvested from human beings in China. The answer is yes. Everywhere. Everywhere. The only people who are saying no are the people who are doing it. Yes. Right? Yeah. And to be fair, a lot of people who are involved, there are whistleblowers out there, but not as many as you would hope. The reasons for that are several. And we get into it. Yan and I talk about it right out of the gate. Because, of course, the consequences of talking about this are death.
- [03:33]
B
Right.
- [03:33]
A
Quick, immediate, do not pass go. So, look, China's a hot button for a whole bunch of reasons. Jan has never shied away from any of those reasons. What he's alleging is shocking, but he's been at it now for a long time and people are starting to pay attention. So do you recall the episode he was on prior? That's probably worth a quick look, because what I'm going to recommend you do, if you haven't heard it, it's worth listening to because we really dig in and talk in detail about many of the claims that are in this book now. But I didn't want to go over the same exact data again. So this conversation is really more about Yan and about the conditions on the ground and the conditions in the species that allow for this kind of catastrophe
- [04:30]
B
to unfold and the overall subject matter of, you know, being moral, being ethical, what you would do if you found yourself in that situation. By the way, it was episode 438.
- [04:42]
A
438.
- [04:43]
B
The Terrible Truth About China.
- [04:45]
A
Yeah, so that's where it started. Yan came on here. It wasn't even a year ago the conversation we had went totally viral. Millions of people have either seen or listened to it, including the publisher, who reached out to Yan shortly after that appearance here and said, you need to write a book about this. Yep, he did it. He did it quickly and compellingly, and we're here to talk about that book, but also, as we just intimated, to talk about the fundamental things that allow this kind of thing to happen, that allow it to persist, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's an important conversation and I admire the guy. He's taken a lot of shots for taking the position he's taken, but. But it's an important one. And my guess is that he will be utterly vindicated in time.
- [05:35]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [05:37]
A
Because I know this is going on. I just know it. And I can't prove it, but I know it. Yeah. The book is called Ordered to Kill or Kill to Order, which is a. Chuck.
- [05:50]
B
Killed to Order.
- [05:51]
A
The book is called Killed to Order and so is this episode because it's a great title and Janja Kellick is a great guest. He'll prove that right after this. Dumb. I don't have a crystal ball. But then again, I don't think I need one to make this prediction. Everything about modern education is going to change in the next few years. I mean, everything. I can't say precisely what will happen first or when the system as we know it will become unrecognizable. But I do know that transformational change is already upon us, beginning with new approaches to career readiness like K12's career and college prep program. This is a tuition free online public education platform that prepares students for lucrative careers in construction, healthcare, cybersecurity, so many other fields that are expanding every day. K12's career in college prep is exactly that. It prepares students for the industry, certifications they'll need, and allows them to earn college credits along the way. In other words, kids are learning how to work while they're learning how to learn. Whether they want to head to a university or jump straight into a high demand trade, K12's career in college prep gives them something that a diploma can no longer guarantee. A head start. It's practical, it's smart, it's long overdue. Give your student the opportunity to explore the right fit for them with K12's career and college prep. Go to K12.comRoe and learn more. That's the letter K the number 12.comRoe the letter K, the number 12. Is this your first book?
- [07:57]
C
It's my first book.
- [07:58]
A
How's it feel?
- [07:59]
C
It's surreal, especially since we're doing the book launch at Kennedy center with Rob Schneider. Okay. In a room of 2,000 people at the concert hall in Kennedy Center. That's the book launch. Can you imagine? I think we've probably got 500 now RSVPs, but we need a lot more than that.
- [08:17]
A
Yeah, that's great. And I got news for you. We're in the thing right now. It's happening. It's happening. You and I are doing this again right now in real time. I'm so happy for you because I know that this topic has been. How long did you feel like just a lone voice in the wilderness telling a story that everybody was skeptical of?
- [08:41]
C
Mike, the thing that happened with most people, I mean, I say most, probably most, is right when I would Talk about it 20 years ago is that people would mentally leave the conversation and I would see their eyes sort of change. You know, you can see that kind of look when someone is no longer there. Right. That is no longer connecting.
- [09:04]
A
Right.
- [09:05]
C
I sympathize with these people because this was. I was talking to them about real life horror. So.
- [09:11]
A
Yes, well, I mentioned that in the preamble and we talked about it in some detail. Was it a year ago? Has it been a year since you were here?
- [09:20]
C
It's less. And so that's why what's amazing about this whole thing, right, is that actually this podcast, as you point out, and thank you for endorsing the book. So, I don't know, deeply, I guess, is the word I'm looking for. But it played a major role because the publisher was interested in me writing a book, and I said, this is the topic I'm interested in writing. What do you think? Right. And so he was checking with different people about it, as you were checking before you had me on for the first time. But one of the things that he found that I shared with them for full transparency was our viral interview on this. And this was one of the things that made him think, okay, I think maybe we can do this. Right. Of course, Skyhorse is keen to cover difficult topics. We know that. However, this one is particularly difficult, especially since there's this massive effort by the CCP and frankly, using some, even Western institutions to make it sound like it's not real. Right. Because it's so unbelievable. Right.
- [10:35]
A
The thing about our last conversation that I believe stuck with so many people was the thing that stuck with me. And it's just the question, why, if the allegations are true, as they certainly appear to be, why is there such resistance? And I just assumed the obvious answer was, you know, we have our head in the sands for the same reason fans of the NBA don't really want to know what China did to Enes Cantor. Freedom and how they've locked down and how the NBA has become completely captured. You don't want to be a fan of that. You just don't want to have that pushed in front of you. It harshes your mellow. You know what I mean? It's a buzz kill. But this isn't that. There's something else happening that makes this so awful. And it's not just the dread of the topic or the horror of the accusation itself. I think it has to do with the fact that if you ask 99 out of 100Americans who would be horrified by this and would condemn it just as surely as any right thinking person would. If you get that person in a corner and if you say, look, let's be honest, your 15 year old daughter has a month to live unless you get her a new heart. And a new heart costs $200,000 and I can get you one, but don't ask a lot of questions, just give me the money and I'll get a heart. Enter how many people who could afford it would do it. And I think the answer is probably an awful lot. So this thing reveals, I think tacitly something kind of awful lurking in us all.
- [12:31]
C
Well, and it also highlights, I mean, one of the central themes of the book, as you would well know, is how the CCP is very good at making everyone complicit at weaponizing basically anything. In this case, desperation, right?
- [12:51]
A
How do they make the complicity so universal?
- [12:54]
C
Well, they're very good at it and using all sorts of ways. I mean, internally, you know, my mother, even in Poland in the 70s when she escaped to Canada, ultimately, you know, experienced a situation like this where, you know, you, you get called in by the commissar. The commissar says, so I'd like to know what your friend, or maybe your loved one, in my mother's case, it was what your friend was doing last night because seemed to be a little bit off kilter. It's for the good of the party. For the good of the party, right. And my mother, so my mother was not one of these people who were actively, publicly against the party. She was like a passive resister. But at this moment they forced her hand because she said, and you could never say no to these guys. These were very serious, cold eyed people. She said, I'm not really made out to kind of do that, Right. They let her leave, but she lost her passport, she lost a lot of her privileges, et cetera, et cetera. Right? But in other cases, you know, if it's say your wife that was, is being asked about, the next comment that's made is, well, so my comrade over there, he's over there with your daughter over at the school, making sure she's safe, you wouldn't want anything to happen to her, would you? Right? And at that moment you make the decision, you say, well, I guess I'm going to tell you what my wife was up to last night because I need to save my daughter. Right? A lot of people would do that. And this is just one example. They make you choose the lesser of two evils. And now Your moral high ground has been lowered. You know, you've done wrong, you were forced into it, but you did it. And now you have to live with that. And now they can control you a little bit more. That's just one example. That's internally, right?
- [14:43]
A
Well, I guess, I mean for context we're talking, what is it now, 80,000
- [14:48]
C
a year, you figure, you know, it's a very difficult thing to calculate, but 60 to 90,000 transplants per year in the Chinese system, in this kill to order system, that's a conservative estimate. Those boundaries are conservative estimate. Okay. In fact, I've reviewed for myself in intricate detail how we got to these numbers. They were first discovered, described by Ethan Gutman, one of the heroes of this research project, so to speak. At the time he testified, I believe it was in 2016 in front of Congress. And he explained exactly how he got to those numbers. Right? And the bottom end of those numbers is a wildly conservative estimate. And even the top end of it, frankly is a pretty conservative estimate. So it's a huge number. But I don't want to say definitively because I just don't know. These numbers are secret. We get them through inference. But one thing I can tell you is that when Ethan came to that very conservative, he estimated 60 to 100,000. The reason I take it down a bit, I go with Matthew Robertson, another one of the heroes of this research recess. I just want to be a little even more on the conservative side here. I mean, that's basically his thing, right? I say, okay, Matt, I'm going to go with you. I'm going to go with you on your numbers. Even though Ethan vehemently contest this, this is like kind of insider baseball. That estimate was 146 hospitals active doing transplants in China, okay? Organ transplants. The number today is 200. Based on the way these numbers are calculated, it's incredibly unlikely that those hospitals individually are doing less individually than what those 146 were doing before. So it seems like the numbers in the over the last 10 years have gone up significantly. But can I be absolutely sure? No, I cannot. But can I be absolutely sure they have no legitimate source of organs? Yes, I'm pretty darn sure of that.
- [16:48]
A
How
- [16:51]
C
until 2015 or so they didn't actually have any legitimate source of organs. Just for the record, right? What was said to people who are getting the transplants is like, oh, it's a death row prisoner. That was a common thing. Or another thing that we heard. Actually this was a South Korean film Crew that went undercover with hidden cameras looking at it, Right. I talk about them in the book as well. They were told, oh, there's a lot of people in China. That was the answer. I mean, also the death row prisoner answer. I believe it's 2015. I hope I'm not getting this wrong. They introduce an organ registry, the big flourish. And they say, look, now we have an organ registry. It's all legitimate. Now they admit to not to having used prisoners before, even though they didn't before. They say, we're not going to use prisoners again. Now, what the researchers found, and when you look at this guy, Matthew Robertson, I mentioned him earlier, has an amazing PhD thesis that he published last year, has multiple amazing. One of the things he publishes, this, what I call part of the smoking gun evidence, but another thing that he published was an analysis of that organ registry of the numbers that they presented. And they are a perfect. And you will appreciate this more than many people hearing this, right? Those numbers were a perfect quadratic equation, the growth. It's incredible how, you know, perfect that
- [18:18]
A
curve, the fly and the demand, just hand in glove.
- [18:21]
C
Yeah. I mean, it just means that the data were obviously false. It wasn't even an elegant falsification. Right. So to speak. It wasn't even an elegant fraud. It was obvious fraud.
- [18:33]
A
So to go back to the importance of this, your first point, complicity. You know, if there are 200 hospitals in China that are performing daily organ transplants and there's a giant population of political prisoners still in jail, still being used, harvested, how many people need to know what's going on over there? How many doctors, how many wardens? How many? I mean, you just go down the list. And part of my skepticism, the first time I heard about this, the first time you shared it with me, was just, people are bad at keeping secrets. By and large, humans are bad at it. You would need to be in a completely different kind of situation, in other words, to keep the lid on something that consequential. And yet, like, where's the videos? I imagine you must have gotten that question more than once.
- [19:32]
C
Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's a few answers. Okay. There's a few answers to the question. One of them is that revealing. This means death. Everybody knows that. Like, it's not an ambiguous thought. You know, every Chinese family has experienced personally the heavy hand of the regime on even trivial matters, never mind exposing, you know, one of the greatest crimes against humanity in existence today. So institutional memory, okay, or family history memory, that's part of it.
- [20:18]
A
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- [21:46]
C
another part of it. There is a rumor around it, by the way, it's used as a tool of control in the incarceration, the massive incarceration system that China runs. All these different prisons, black jails, re education camps, all of it. One of the things they will tell people, and we've heard this a lot, is, you know, you better, you know, do the thing that I require you to do or, you know, we'll take your organs. That's something that's commonly used. Of course it's not. That doesn't prove anything in itself, right? It's just a kind of a coercive verbal tool. But this is one of the difficulties actually of assessing the crime in the first place because some of these people, you're being tortured to death, right? So prisoners of conscience, they're disappearing for maybe just because they were tortured to death, because they refused to renounce their faith, right? And then that person disappears. And you don't know, in the early days, like people didn't even imagine that there was something like this happening. But you know, the other part is you where the crime scene is an operating room, right? It's like meticulously cleaned every single time because you don't want people to become infected, right? You want these, you want people to keep coming back. So you're making sure the organs are extra fresh, you're making sure the matches are really strong. And you're making sure that there's absolutely no evidence, right? So, and this is the other part. You know, there's an example, Ethan Gutman sites where there's, you know, in Xinjiang province they built a hospital, a prison and a crematorium kind of side by side, right? I mean, it's kind of crazy. You'd think they would maybe hide one of those three or something. But in this case, it's very plain to see. Why would you leave any evidence when you have in effect disposable people? You know, one of the key theses in the book is the CCP instrumentalizes absolutely everything bodies, right? In this case, human beings, right? To be used as fodder if you're doing something like this. History tells us that when people are affecting, in most cases these very extreme crimes against humanity, they tend to not want to leave the evidence, right? So if you can just, you know, burn the body and you're done. And you don't even in the. Again, these are all incredibly vulnerable people, right? With the Falun Gong, they dehumanize them first, which is always happens preceding any atrocity, right? There's always this huge dehumanization aspect. Mass propaganda is pushed through the system. That's why for this type of organ harvesting, it has to be a state actor because you have to be able to dehumanize people. You have to be able to convince the rest of the population not everyone's a psychopath. Not everyone's ready to do horrible things to their fellow man. Especially here. We're talking 1 in 13 Chinese back in 1999, right?
- [24:42]
A
So these people who were practitioners, who
- [24:44]
C
were practitioners of Falun Gong, practicing truthfulness, compassion, forbearance, right? Very grassroots, very bottom up and you know, also very resilient to this re education techniques which the party has been so good at developing over decades, right? Transformation, I hate that term. But that's what breaking, essentially breaking people, right? Imagine how vulnerable this population is now, right? And they're just, they're basically, they're seen as somewhat disposable. There's this trick. We've been tricked in our minds into thinking that these people are dangerous or lesser than us, than whatever. That's what these dehumanization things do. Now we can kind of. It's easier for us to go along with the need to eradicate, to use the, you know, Jiang Zemin, the dictator at the times term. And so that's happening. You know, people are. Falun Gong deaths are being considered suicides, right? This is now we're talking going back to 1999. And, you know, so it's kind of normal. It's now normalized to that people that are Falun Gong, it's okay for them to die.
- [25:47]
A
Is there a corollary in this country? I mean, can people. I mean, I understand conspiracies. I understand black markets. I understand big criminal enterprises that. That operate, you know, just underneath the surface. This isn't that. This is the government that we're talking about 100%. And that, I think, is the first thing that Americans need to wrestle with. We just don't have any corollary that I can think of on that scale. I also want to understand better how many Falun Gong are incarcerated at the moment, and Uyghurs, for that matter.
- [26:27]
C
So this is the tragedy, right? The tragedy is that for 14 or 15 years, nobody really does anything. Major international institutions effectively run cover for all this. And the Chinese Communist Party finds another group that's convenient in exactly this way. They're already dehumanized. They're different, racially different. They have a different religion. They're Muslim. They're very isolated in the northwest of China and Xinjiang Province. Strategically important region, by the way, to the Chinese Communist Party. They've been pushing Han culture and forced intermarriage and all sorts of stuff there already. And now they dehumanize them further. They incarcerate them. So now we have another group where, frankly, the whole region itself is almost like a prison camp. From what we hear, the huge part of the population has had their vitals taken. Not even just the incarcerated people over there. Right. Because the whole area functions a little bit like a prison in itself. So you can get these blood type, tissue type, all those measures, organ scans on people that aren't even in actual prison. Right. And this is what happens when you don't do it, when there's atrocity happening and you just say, I guess it's their problem. Right. The problem spreads. And frankly, now, I was just talking with Pastor Bob Fu about this, actually an episode of my show, American Thought Leaders, about to publish. I've been seeing increasing dehumanizing rhetoric against Christians. He's seeing that too. Right. And what does that mean? Well, I don't know what it means. I just know that the CCP has utter contempt for human life and particularly for any group. Any person that doesn't say, yes, the Chinese Communist Party is supreme, at least performatively. And so we have the Zion Church being rolled up. We have Catholic clergy being Put under stricter control, we have this increase in dehumanizing language. Where does it lead? I say let's. How about we draw the line and just at least stop being complicit in our part, right in this.
- [28:29]
A
Well, better to know, you know, better to look at it, if it can be seen. I think maybe that's the other thing. It's so big, like, Nancy Guthrie's still missing in real time. As we discuss this, this is one woman who has become a household word. One person has gone missing, and that seems to, you know, represent our capacity to worry about such a thing.
- [28:57]
C
Right.
- [28:57]
A
In some kind of context. Meantime, during the period of time she's been missing, and I sure hope she's okay, you know, but ICE has found what, 3,200 kids that had been missing, that had been lost would come over the border. Right? 3200. We can't think about that. That's too horrible and too big. The idea that a few thousand kids were brought in here illegally and then just lost to the wind. It's just not even really reported on. This is so much bigger.
- [29:31]
C
It's bigger. But, you know, there is one, I can tell you, one change, which I think is very positive. Okay. At least for me, it's a sea change. Okay. And that is when I talk to people, and I talk to people a lot, especially with this book now all I'm doing is talking about forced organ harvesting with people, basically. Okay. And everybody's saying, oh, my God, this is horrible. People are not cluing out. I haven't had a single person do that thing that back in 20 years ago was frankly the norm. Not everybody, but quite common. I would say the majority. They're not doing that anymore. Somehow things have shifted a bit. I would love to see it to be, you know, key breaking news. Right. Sometimes just the fact that it's been happening for so long, it's becomes normalized. This is the horror of it. This is the horror of it. Right. Well, is it? How do we get breaking news? Well, when Cheng Peiming the Survivor came out public, went public for this time, we got a news cycle, at least in the uk, that this is what was interesting. In Europe and in the uk, there was a significant news cycle around this. It was. There were articles written. I'm not going to say I was jealous of it. I was incredibly impressed at some, you know, people I'd never heard of wrote articles about this issue that were, you know, excellent, well sourced, well done, thoughtful tell. I think Telegraph UK comes to mind as One particularly notable example. Okay. But for some reason, not here.
- [30:59]
A
But then it's gone.
- [31:01]
C
But then it's gone.
- [31:01]
A
The article comes out, people read it, we clutch our pearls and we shake our head and we say, those dog gun Chinese, what are they up to now? And then a new issue is out and some other headline. Do you know the story of. Oh, God, Chuck. What was his name? The guy who snuck into a concentration camp? Pilecki.
- [31:22]
C
Yeah. Pilecky.
- [31:23]
A
The Pilecky.
- [31:25]
C
Pilecky.
- [31:26]
A
That guy.
- [31:27]
C
Yeah.
- [31:27]
A
Okay.
- [31:28]
C
Yeah.
- [31:28]
A
So sounds like, you know, I mean, you could certainly pronounce his name better than I.
- [31:32]
B
He is Polish.
- [31:33]
A
He is Polish, of course.
- [31:34]
C
Extremely, extremely Polish.
- [31:36]
A
You really are about as Polish as he gets. Yeah, he sneaks into or deliberately allows himself to be arrested and. What was it, Auschwitz or Birkenau? Was it Auschwitz? And he gets in there to basically be an embedded reporter. Takes the notes, you know, sees what he sees and then escapes and tells the world. And I think he goes back. Right. And he started. Wasn't he doing some underground broadcast or something?
- [32:07]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's the volunteer. Incredible book to read if you want to read about Vital Pilecki or. I don't know how you pronounce it in English. Actually, it's unpronounceable, but. Yeah, I know. I mean, there's people that are heroes like this, but. Right. They exist. There's not many, but they exist.
- [32:25]
A
But my point, I think, is your point. There is an arc. There's a chronology, like, on its way to becoming the truth. A claim has to go through various stages. And early on, those stages are incredulity, skepticism, doubt. And the people making the claim are dismissed as lunatics. And then less lunatic. And then, well, maybe. Maybe not a lunatic, but, you know, we need more evidence. And then. Okay, well, that's some evidence, but we're gonna need. There he is. Polecki.
- [33:01]
C
Yeah. Looks like a serious guy, right?
- [33:04]
A
Dude, all business. And by the way, the horror was. I think he was. I think he was executed.
- [33:12]
B
Yeah, he was killed by the Soviets after the war.
- [33:15]
A
Yeah. For spying, I guess. Well, here, let me just land a plane real quick on this one point because I think there might be a corollary after all. There. That guy is blowing the whistle about what's going on in Auschwitz. A firsthand witness. He sees it and he tells the world, or a chunk of the world, and the tale starts to grow. But people are still like, no, no, man, there's no way.
- [33:40]
C
No, it can't be that.
- [33:41]
A
It can't be.
- [33:42]
C
Very famously, another poll Jan Karski, you know, actually traveled to the uk, traveled to America, talked with the ag, usag Felix Frankfurter. And there's this famous line that actually is kind of speaks to this very directly. He said the line is that when he's confronted later with the fact that he didn't do anything after Jan Karski exposed this whole thing to him, he says, it's not that I said that this young man was lying, it's that I was unable to believe him. And now what's really interesting about this, right, is that this is interpreted in different ways too, right? Some people, I always interpreted it the charitable way, which is just like I was unable, I just simply couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to believe that it was true, right? Some other people interpreted in a more cynical way, which is that he was not allowed to accept that it was true by the political reality of the situation. I don't know. I haven't had a chance to speak with him, you know. But it's interesting, right? In both cases, it's a case in point. However, isn't it
- [34:53]
A
dumb? Gentlemen, if you're looking for a pill that'll make you thinner, stronger and more energetic, I've got some bad news. It doesn't exist. MDrive for Men knows that, which is why they'll tell you straight up. If you don't eat right and exercise, they can't help you. But if you're still taking care of yourself and not getting the results that you used to get, if you're getting tired faster than you used to, or if you're putting on weight for no obvious reason, then you are probably cursed with what the experts call a normal metabolism. That's where mDrive for Men can help. In particular, eMDrive's Boost and Burn. Boost and Burn has thousands of satisfied customers. Regular guys of a certain age who did their research and came to the obvious conclusion that mDrive for Men is the real deal. They've been around for 20 years because they under promise and over deliver every time. In other words, they make a product that actually works, one rooted in science, not marketing. Do your homework. Don't fall for the hype. Check the science behind mDrive's boost and burn@mdriveformen.com. read the reviews, shop the competition, and you'll come to the same conclusion I did. Use code RO for 20% off your first purchase at mDrive for Men. That's mDriveformen.com keep exercising, keep eating right, but give your Metabolism, a hand@mdriveformen.com m driveformen.com I think. I mean, if you look at all truth going along that evolutionary bend, if you believe that's a. That's its journey, and I do, then it's always kind of instructive, maybe even fun every now and then to, you know, try and check yourself and figure out, well, where are we on the. It's like the five stages of grief, you know, where are we on our path to acceptance? And obviously I know the answer to this. You believe at some point in the future the claims in here will be accepted not just as fact, but as a conclusion. Foregone, obviously. Right. How long you think that'll take?
- [37:24]
C
Well, if we do our jobs well, a few years. Isn't this what we're trying to do here, like to try to help people? This is one of these issues, Mike, that people coming. I mean, this is the whole purpose of the book. Right. I feel like there's been a sea change in people's ability to conceive maybe of evil. Right. And there's all sorts of reasons we could describe partially. I think it's the seeing the CCP welding people into their homes during COVID Right. Like just barbaric and useless. Just simply a non productive expression of power because they could. Because they could be totalitarian. We saw the totalitarian mind at work for no benefit, actually, other than totalitarians being totalitarian, really, and just really, you know, harming their own population and. Yeah, I mean, it just. I think that played a role in helping people conceive of this. Okay, I do too. Yeah, I do too.
- [38:27]
A
But I also don't want it to be so. Like, if we remember the Nazis as simply bad. Right. And we put them into some sort of trope of just laughing maniacally and twisting their mustaches and just being villainous and bad and simple. We miss the point 100%. We just miss it. Man, there's a great interview with who played Christoph Waltz in, I guess it was Inglourious Basterds maybe or.
- [38:59]
C
Oh, the. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, I know. Like the Jew Hunter. Yes, the Jew Hunter. Yeah.
- [39:05]
A
Yes. And his. His interlocutor asks him, how did you do it? How were you able to embody evil so incarnate that it leapt off the screen the way it did? And his response was. Appeared to be one of genuine confusion. He said, I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. He wasn't evil, not the way I Played him. And that explains it all. He's like, that character was so compelling because he didn't play the trope. You really believed he was who he was because he didn't let the stereotype take it over. And so when I imagine the big, bad authoritarian state welding people into their homes, I look at that and I immediately go, wow, that's the personification of terror, right? That's about as bad as it gets. But I think there was probably. There were probably other people on the street and in the neighborhood who saw it happening. And while it may have been fearful, while it may have frightened them, I'd wager that it also elicited a certain level of comfort. Like they knew that somebody was in charge. They knew that somebody was handling the situation. They were glad it wasn't them being welded in there. But you know what? Those people, they didn't follow the rules. And now we can see a consequence for stepping out of line. And we can see the power come in. And even though we look at it and recoil, you know, why wouldn't the masses rush out and simply overpower the thugs and free those poor people? Something else is in us, and it sucks. It's the fault in our stars, absolutely. But it's real.
- [41:05]
C
No, it's extremely real. And you're just reminding me. I had a prominent Cuban dissident on my show on American Thought Leaders some time ago now, but he made this one comment that it kind of blew my mind, and it went. Went. I clipped it immediately, and it went viral. To summarize, he says that there's something about totalitarian rule that certain types of people rather enjoy. Okay? It takes away your own power over yourself. Okay? But strangely, it actually gives you a lot of power over others. That is, if you want to make someone else's life a living hell, you. You can do that. Now. You actually have a kind of power that in a free society, you don't have. Right. Because you can by. By performatively saying the correct thing that would be politically correct or accusing someone of being politically incorrect. Now you can have. You can sic the whole power of the state on them.
- [42:09]
A
Yes. It's the little tyrannies that are in some ways the most terrible. And, you know, to keep the metaphor going, it's the ratting out the Jew next door in hiding. It's ratting out, oh, you know what? My neighbor is not wearing the mask. They did not get the vaccine. Right. It's. Once you can create that dynamic in the. In the proletariat within the hoi polloi. Then you've got the. Then you've got the power, because that's easy to manipulate. And that's the thing we're talking about. Why in the world aren't the many thousands of people, many thousands of Chinese people who are complicit in at least 90,000 harvestings a year, how have they managed to remain quiet? And maybe that's as close as we can get to see.
- [43:08]
C
Because they would have to go out and say, I'm murdering people for organs. And there's a few that have, by the way, you know, it takes a very special person. Listen, I remember one of the most horrifying. Even thinking about it makes me want to cry, frankly. Horrifying but powerful and courageous things I've ever read in my life was an essay in. There's a group called Pitt Parents. P I T T Pitt Parents. Parents With Inconvenient Truths About Trans. I believe that was the kind of. It's a weird acronym, okay? They wrote a book of essays about parents and this one parent who trans their child. Right. And there's this argument made that if you've done that, you're never gonna admit to yourself that you did something wrong. Okay. For obvious reasons, I probably don't need to explain, but this woman does this in this essay. This woman understands. And I don't know if I can tell this story while staying composed because it's so heartbreaking and powerful, because on the one hand, she knows what she's done and she knows she got caught up in this mania, right? And she thought she was doing good and she did terrible things to her child. And then she has the courage to say, I did this and I was wrong and I did horrible things and this should never happen again. So on the one hand, we kind of hate her for what she's done. I mean, if you're reading this and you agree. Right. On the other hand, you're shocked at the unbelievable courage it took to be the one person who dared to write it, to admit it publicly and try to share with people, to stop others from making the same mistake, right? So there are a few people like her in this forced organ harvesting industry have came up. Annie, right? Her. She came out. I mean, really, it was her husband doing it, but she risked everything to come out and tell the story. You know, a surgeon, Enver Totti, you know, who, before this whole industry scaled, operated on a living person, you know, with armed guards around him, to be fair, knowing what would happen if he decided to say no. But he killed someone by extracting their organs. And he admits it. There's people like this, and those are the hero. You know, I mean, they've done horrible things, but they're also heroes because they're trying to make peace with God or they're trying to somehow, you know, find a penance, find a way. Redemption. Looking for redemption. Absolutely. But I think it's so rare. I mean, in all these, whenever it comes again to these atrocities, how many Nazis people who were, you know, involved. I mean, think about the millions of people that were involved in exterminating Jews in World War II. How many said later, oh, I did wrong. Right. And I mean, you know, and this is the horrible part. You know, I, I, it's incredibly important what you said, that we don't want to imagine these villains being like the, you know, the twisty mustache or whatever, because. No, like this is. Well, okay, I'm gonna mix a whole bunch of ideas here, but Solzahitsin, right, the line between good and evil cuts through every human heart. I always think about that. Right.
- [46:31]
A
Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
- [46:32]
C
Exactly.
- [46:33]
A
Gulag or Capella?
- [46:35]
C
Well, that's his magnum opus. Right, That's. Yeah, exactly.
- [46:39]
A
And Cancer Ward.
- [46:40]
C
And if you're into a shorter version, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. If you want to read a book in a day that'll give you a picture of what the Gugalag archipelago does, I would recommend that book. People have short attention spans these days. That's why I tend to recommend, recommend that one. But it's, what I was going to say is most of Germany was involved in. And that's just the truth, right? That's, that's the truth that we have to face. It wasn't the Nazis, it was Germans. And you know, my father in law, when he was in Germany, I know this because I had the conversation with him right, when he was on one of these death trains. He wouldn't have dreamed of jumping from the train. That's how he, one of the reasons he lived. Of the many sort of near misses he had during the Holocaust, he was traveling from Buchenwald east when the, the front was advancing, right? And they were moving the evidence, so to speak. Of course, with a lot of people dying along the way, he wouldn't have dreamed for a second of jumping out of that train in Germany because he knew he would be taken in immediately to be killed, basically. Because this is the problem with totalitarian system. They basically create this internal external complicity. It doesn't mean there aren't lots of heroes. There are. There's lots of heroes in China as we speak. Billions doing amazing things. Okay. But the problem is, is that these systems, they. They try to get your. Get at your soul, right? They get. They wear down your moral high ground. They make you participate, and then you feel like you're kind of going along. You don't have that energy anymore to say, no, this is wrong. I will not participate. And of course. But some people do.
- [48:16]
A
Some do, right?
- [48:17]
C
And those are the heroes. Those are the people that we want to think, you know, like, those are our heroes. Right?
- [48:21]
A
What is that trait? Yeah, I mean, it's. I've. I've read conflicting things on this. I think we confuse it with courage. We just think, well, those people are very brave. But it's not quite that. It's. I think Gladwell talks about it in terms of disagreeability. You need to be disagreeable in order to be in that cohort. That doesn't go along with the riot. Right. Dumb. I first heard about Folds of Honor from my old buddy John Rich, who's been supporting them for years. This is a foundation that provides scholarships to spouses and kids of U.S. military service members and first responders who have fallen or been disabled while serving our country and their communities. They have done extraordinary work over the years and inspired me to do more with my own foundation. So far, Folds of Honor has awarded over $340 million in scholarships. Amazing. And this year, they've asked me to make sure that you guys know that their scholarship supports all forms of education, including trade schools. I'm happy to help spread the word because the skills gap in this country is wide and getting wider and closing. It is now a matter of national security. And also because 91% of every dollar donated to Folds of Honor benefits the families of our nation's heroes directly. That's extraordinary for a foundation this large. The scholarship application window is open right now from February 1st to March 31st each year. Apply today for a scholarship or donate@foldsofhonor.org scholarship, come into honors. Come into honors.
- [50:15]
C
Fold. Do you know what another thing is, Mike? Eccentric. Yeah, this is. Dennis Prager wrote a piece. We had. We carried it a few years back. I remember he was commenting on. On this. What were the characteristics of the people who actually helped Jews during the Holocaust? One of those. And he's there was. I forget what this. Maybe disagreeableness was, the second characteristic. I always forget what the characteristic was. But one of them, which really struck me because it's so obvious the moment you think of it, right? Eccentricity. Why? It's just people that just don't do things like everybody else are much more prone to be heroic in situations where you're demanded to follow the crowd in doing something horrible.
- [50:57]
A
But this is the difference between a characteristic and a virtue, right? Courage is a virtue. Eccentricity is a characteristic. But that's why Prager's. I know the piece you're referring to. It's so interesting to unpack somebody through their characteristics. It's adjacent to virtue. But you can start to understand why you have to have different cohorts. I take it back somewhat, this idea of villains. They're there for sure, like Mengele, clearly, obviously, Hitler. You can go down the list of Nazis who check that box, right? And then there are the other Nazis who are Nazis with a small N. Right. But then there are the Germans, and it's much more interesting to talk about the good Germans and the Germans in general. The persuadables, I would call them. Right. They're the one. They're the fat part of the bat. That's why, like in China, obviously, there's a surgeon. He knows what he's doing. I'd hold him to a different standard. And maybe they're guards in the operating room. Okay, hold them to another standard. But there are people around who aren't directly in it, who know. And that's why everything we're saying matters, because they're the ones who are being shackled without chains, but nevertheless constrained. And they don't have that characteristic or the character.
- [52:29]
C
Right. So, you know, you're reminding me of a couple of things here. So there's an amazing piece in Tablet magazine which David Samuels wrote some years back called the Rower. I strongly recommend reading it. It's the story of a man named. Let's see if I get his name right. I'm not good with names usually, but I think it's Nud Samuelson off the top of my head. Okay.
- [52:48]
A
How do you forget Nud?
- [52:51]
C
And, I mean, it's just such a beautifully written piece. But the essential story is that Nud was an Olympic rower during the war, and he was the one that rode on his skiff the Jews of Denmark to Sweden to safety. That's his claim to fame. And Nud, when you. I mean, I don't know. I think David was very meticulous in trying to stay true to Nud's real life story. It's honestly unbelievable. You know, he actually. David met him as a kid in New York City. There it is. That's the piece. Exactly. Let's see if I hope I got his name right.
- [53:29]
A
David Sims.
- [53:30]
C
Well, David, I definitely got right, but Newt Christiansen. Newt Christiansen. Sorry. Okay. But I've been struggling with this idea, right. I've been reading. There's a book that I reference in Kill to Order called Political Ponerology. And in it, a man named Andrzej Wobachevsky makes the case that communist systems are pathocratic. In other words, they elevate the psychopaths in our society in particular over any other political system. Like, that's their problem. That's why you get the Gulag. And so it's a very compelling argument. A little bit difficult to read, but incredibly compelling argument, and I think there's truth to that. So I. I'm kind of living with this idea that there's just these people out there that are just structurally. I don't know. See, Obachevsky, this was fascinating. He defines evil as. He didn't want to go into the metaphysical stuff at all. He just said people that have these psychopaths. Antisocial personality disorder. Now it's called psychopathic tendencies. That's evil, you just said. Yeah. So you don't want a society. This is why communist societies are so horrible, right? Because they empower evil people, Right? Yeah. They put them in positions of power, and then those people push that through the society in different ways. Not only this is just part of the story, but when I read the Rower, right, What struck me. And I remember I called David after this, right? Because I was so moved by it, right. I was like, wait a second. If there's these people that are structurally evil, maybe there's also people who are structurally good. They can't help themselves. And this guy was like this, right? Like he was a nobleman. I think he might have even been, like, in the royal family. Maybe not the royal family, I don't remember. But anyway, the point is, this guy was kind of set. He could have just been sort of neutral, could have not done anything. But, no, he was part of the resistance. He had to be like, Jews, we're going to save them all, okay? We're going to roll them. You know, it's just. He couldn't help himself. Well, here.
- [55:27]
A
Here's the great dichotomy. He's clearly in the minority.
- [55:32]
C
Oh, of course. Of course.
- [55:33]
A
He's clearly the.
- [55:34]
C
Yeah.
- [55:34]
A
And yet when you read the Rower, and this maybe is a testament to the power of literature and maybe another fault in our stars. But even though the vast Majority of people who read that book would not do. What nut did they think they would? The vast majority of people who read the Diary of Anne Frank figure, oh, you know what? She knocked on my door. Nice little Jewish girl, you know, bad guys chasing her, especially the super evil bad guys. Yeah, I'll save her. Come on in. We'll get in the attic. Would you really. Would you really let Anne Frank stay in your attic if you knew that the punishment is death? It's like sitting there watching Schindler's List, Jan. I'm guilty of it. I'm sitting there going, yeah, yeah, that was brave. You know, I'd have done that for sure, but, boy, it would have been scary. I don't know that I would have done that. What I do know is the vast majority of people didn't, and the vast majority of people today in China aren't. And that never changes.
- [56:42]
C
Well, there's this famous photo, right, of the. The one guy that's not doing the Zeke Heil in the picture, right. And everyone's like, I'd be that guy. It's like, I actually think in most cases, that's not even. You see, that's so interesting because that's not something where you're, you know, you're saving somebody. You're just. You're performatively expressing obedience or allegiance.
- [57:03]
A
Yeah.
- [57:03]
C
What does it take for a human being to choose to not do that in the face of mass power being projected through a population and saying, this is what you need to do? Right.
- [57:15]
A
But how was that guy, you know, a. What happened to him? I don't know. But how was he thought of in that moment? Because when you're in the moment and you're the one who refuses to conform, you're not immediately lauded. You're not immediately seen as heroic.
- [57:34]
C
No. No. You're not lauded at all. You're. You just lost your job. Which is what I, from what I understand, happened to this guy. But sort of the cobwebs. I'm remembering a bit of his story. I don't want to say it because I don't remember exactly, but he had his own reasons for not doing that. Making him disagreeable, perhaps. Okay. Or eccentric in this case. Or eccentric.
- [57:55]
A
I think maybe the point of all this is that there's this other component that is really germane to your book and to Witold Pilecki. And to.
- [58:06]
C
Pilecki.
- [58:07]
A
Pilecki, yeah. And all of it. And that's the. As Kamala Harris would say, at the passage of time, the time in passing and the passage of time. When I look at the protests in Minneapolis just the last couple of weeks, you know, I see those people in a very specific way. Personally, I see a lot of misguided sound and fury. I see a lot of performative acting out. That's just what I see. I don't think that's what they see. I think they see themselves as righteous and brave and maybe the way the guy who didn't Zig Heil saw himself in that moment. And so it's very confusing.
- [58:53]
C
This is how. This is how the Hitler and the Nazis sold it to the population. You know, listen, this is. I keep thinking about the one guy,
- [59:03]
B
it says be more like this guy.
- [59:06]
C
Yes, Correct.
- [59:07]
A
Easy to say 60 years later. That's right. Right.
- [59:10]
C
Yeah, easy to say. So Hannah Arendt, who kind of studied Nazis after the war. Right. Was, you know, there's this famous term that we hear, but the banality of evil book right. Of hers. And basically what she figured out was even some of these people that were, you know, monsters in effect, when she, you know, interviewed them and figured out what they were about and how they thought about things. They weren't monsters actually in their own thinking about themselves and what they were doing. They're just like, hey, that's just what we were doing.
- [59:44]
A
Yeah, look. That's such a great photo, Chuck. I mean, so I'm thinking of Colin Kaepernick. Okay? I'm not down with that. That whole kneeling thing struck me as performative and I didn't buy it. But if he sees that photo, he
- [60:01]
B
thinks he's that guy.
- [60:01]
A
He thinks he's that guy. And who am I to say he's not? A lot of people think he is.
- [60:08]
C
You're Mike Rowe to say you're Daggone, right?
- [60:10]
A
Yeah, I'm Mike Rowe, dammit.
- [60:13]
C
Because it's so obvious he's not that guy in any way, manner, shape or form. I don't. And again, I don't know him personally. The machine is behind him in doing that. Right. The difference is that guy, very clearly the machine is not behind him.
- [60:30]
A
Right.
- [60:30]
C
Okay.
- [60:31]
A
Right, yeah.
- [60:32]
C
You can't even compare these situations other than on the surface. But if they've been convinced, you're right, the person has been convinced somehow.
- [60:39]
A
That's right.
- [60:40]
C
That they're that guy.
- [60:41]
A
That's fascinating because in a sliding door universe, in an alternative universe, and Germany wins. Right. And Japan wins and the Nazis are elevated, nobody's circling him and saying, be that guy. They're saying that, that, that stupid bastard didn't get the memo. You know, what an idiot. There's all. There's one in every crowd. It'd be that, you know, and that's just another example of history being written by the. By the winners, right? And then we get to look back and we get to second guess everything. All of that is to say that this book is. Personally, I'm so delighted that it got written in part because you came here to talk about it. And I was honored to write the blurb in it. You know, apologies to those of you listening. We're not taking a deep dive into the details because we already did that. And if you want to go back and listen to that episode.
- [61:39]
C
No, you should. No, no, no, don't listen to the episode. Buy the book.
- [61:42]
A
You should absolutely buy the book. But look, it's like. It's like that Tolkien quote. I forget which book it is, but it's like, you know, the tale grew in the telling. It wasn't a reference to. It became more fantastical or made up or exaggerated. It just took hold. Tales take hold. They have to be told and told again. And then people need to be shown, and then sometimes they have to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck. Their face has to be pushed in it. We're in, I think, the evolution of all of that. This is a new level because Kill to order. You're not tiptoeing around this anymore. There's bodies and bones all over the front of this thing. I mean, you're. You're going for it.
- [62:32]
C
When this cover was, you know, I asked a friend who I work with on a few projects to. Because he's kind of been known to be good with getting books out. Okay. So he made this cover for me, and I looked at it. Wow, that is intense. And I showed it to a whole bunch of people, and they thought to themselves, people said all sorts of interesting things, Right? But ultimately I realized that what's on that cover is an understatement, not an overstatement. Right? That was the key. Like, I don't want to. I don't want to ever pretend that what we're talking about. I don't want to make it bigger than it is. In fact, this 60 to 90,000 a year, it's horrible. I mean, how can I be sure? Well, I mean, let's game out the argument of how you come up with 60 to 90,000. You see, like, the point is, it's actually under. It's a very conservative estimate, ultimately. And so similarly, the COVID you know, a lot of People have been killed to order murdered for their organs in China. How many exactly? I cannot tell you. I don't know. It's a state secret. People will be murdered for trying to tell that number, and they don't even know themselves. Because it's somewhat compartmentalized. No one's sitting there trying to figure out the total number. Right. Of course, the official numbers are all, you know, just. They exist for propaganda purposes, nothing else. So it's funny how this played out, because even our producer, Irene is. My producer is watching in the. Over there. And. And, you know, she was vehemently against this cover. She's like, oh, it's gonna work. Everyone's gonna hate it. I'm embellishing a little bit, but I think she understands. I think she's grown to appreciate it as well. And I. As I did. And I think it's. I think it will help people understand what we're talking about. We're talking about something that, you know, some of the legislation that's now passed the House. Actually, this bill passed unanimously. The. What was. I think they're working on changing the name a little bit, but the Falun Gong Protection Act. I think they're working to change the name to make it clear that this Protection act is for anyone who would be organ harvested, even though the Falun Gong were the dominant group over the years.
- [64:42]
A
Keep that up, Chuck.
- [64:43]
C
Okay.
- [64:44]
A
I mean, really, I'm, you know, listening to you talk, Jan. It's like I. I think I was in the seventh or eighth grade when the teacher put on. Was it Night or Night and Fog? Eli Wiesel.
- [65:00]
C
Oh, I'm not.
- [65:01]
A
I think. I think it's Night and Fog.
- [65:04]
B
It's a war documentary, right?
- [65:06]
A
No, it's Elie Wiesel. Wi.
- [65:09]
C
Eli Wiesel, Yeah. Prolific Holocaust survivor.
- [65:14]
A
Very short book.
- [65:15]
C
Right.
- [65:16]
A
But just incontrovertibly. I mean, the evidence is there was the. And the film of the same name just had. I mean, look, when you see piles and piles of corpses. Piles and piles of corpses. You know, I don't know that they would show that today in the eighth grade.
- [65:38]
C
You want. Do you want to know a little bit, A little crazy anecdote? So my father in law, one of the reasons we made Finding Manny is we had footage of him opening up an old cigar box that he had collected of photos he had after the war. So what people were doing after the war. This is going to sound really crazy in macabre, but, you know, Warsaw had been completely blown out. Like it was. It was the the city was just. You can see it's just like piles of rubble and people trying to figure out what to do. Some people were taking photos. Had taken photos of some of these atrocities and were actually selling these photos and somehow he bought some of them. Right. Like, it's just kind of a weird. Sounds so crazy. But you can imagine it was a very different situation.
- [66:20]
A
Sure.
- [66:20]
C
Right. And so he has this old cigar box with a bunch of these photos that were. So I was talking. Who took these photos? How did you get them? He's like, yeah, people were just kind of selling them on the roadside, trying to get by. Right. And he had this. So that's part of the reason we have this evidence. It's in crowd. It's unbelievable, right. Is because of these, you know, people trying to be entrepreneurial after the war when they have nothing. Yeah, yeah.
- [66:45]
A
Well, I mean, in some way, I mean, the guys up in the Eagle's Nest, you know, taking whatever they could take. The strange mementos, you know, a piece of. I met a guy a couple of years ago who was 101 and he was over there and he went into his desk drawer and he pulled out a piece of carpet. Just. He had taken his knife and he had cut a piece of the carpet out of. What's the name of the Eagle's Nest? It starts with a. Some German name. It's no big deal, but it's. But it. Like, you're right. It's so interesting when, you know, you're in a consequential time, place, moment, you want to grab onto to something. Pure bunker, no? Oh, Ro. The one up in the. Up in the mountains at the end of where eagles.
- [67:42]
B
Oh, the wolf's lair.
- [67:43]
A
Sorry, yeah.
- [67:44]
C
Oh, yeah, I visited that actually. Yeah.
- [67:46]
A
Yeah. And so Wilcza.
- [67:49]
C
Saniec in Polish, by the way.
- [67:50]
A
Of course it is.
- [67:51]
C
Yeah.
- [67:53]
A
We never like that tendency today I think might be called a selfie. It's become so homogenized and dispersed that anybody can. I mean, this idea of watching the present unfold through a monitor as opposed to simply watching Metallica play on stage. Right. If you're up there, James Hetfield, and you look out and all you see are 10,000 people watching you through this screen, you know, and I find that amazing. Our desire to grab onto mementos and talismans, you know, and in a way, you've got to do that with the COVID of a book. You got to get people's attention. You have to. You know, you've got a story to tell and the Facts aren't enough. You've got to tell it in a way. And that's why I mentioned, I think, double check me, Chuck. I think it's Night and Fog. I want to get that right, because it's famous.
- [68:53]
C
I'm aware of this, but I couldn't tell you the name credibly.
- [68:56]
B
Well, Night and Fog was a French film made in 1956 and it was directed by Alain Resnay and it's about the Nazi concentration camps.
- [69:08]
A
Okay, that's it. Okay, that's it. But what was Ellie's biography called? For some reason that night is in my head. Sorry to be pedantic, folks. I just don't want people. I got a letter the other day
- [69:22]
C
from somebody, I mean King, although I shouldn't be.
- [69:24]
B
What's Ellie's last name?
- [69:26]
A
W E Wiesel.
- [69:27]
C
Ellie Vizel.
- [69:28]
A
Yeah. So W E I S E L. Super famous. Lived, I mean, long, long time, in fact.
- [69:35]
C
So this is what I was going to comment on, right? This, this Falun Gong Protection act, which is being kind of updated. One of the things it requires America to do, right? One is America's policy should be to stop all kind of cooperation around this stuff with communist China. That's kind of a no brainer. Another one is to sanction people that are involved. But a third one is just to assess under the Elie Wiesel act, right, which is Atrocity Act. Whether this is in fact an atrocity. And of course I'll tell you absolutely it's an atrocity. But it would be good to officially know that, right?
- [70:12]
A
No.
- [70:12]
C
Yes.
- [70:13]
A
Kidding. Yeah, no kidding.
- [70:14]
B
The book was called night.
- [70:16]
A
Thank you.
- [70:17]
B
1960.
- [70:18]
A
Yes. Right. So at the top of the funnel, we must see it, we must acknowledge it, we must call it for what it is. And then we can go about the business of eventually accepting it, maybe doing something about it. And then, then we can go about the business of denying it. Right? I mean, I just bring all this up because, look, how in the world can you have such a robust cohort of knuckleheads to suggest the Holocaust didn't happen? And yet we do. After all this time, all that proof, all those firsthand witnesses, those biographies, all of it, it's there. And I mean, you're talking about 6, 7 million deaths, not 90,000 a year, which is mind boggling, but exponentially more. And we still, we're still dealing with flat earthers. We're still dealing with it. So.
- [71:19]
C
And part of the reason is quite honestly that it's hard for us to fathom that such things can happen. I really. I'm not excusing that, by the way, just for the record. Right. And of course, there's always massive propaganda operations that are looking to take advantage of this. And frankly, the CCP fuels some of this stuff. There's considerable evidence around that, too. But part of it is just simply, you know, decent human beings do not want to believe these things. It's part of our nature. I'm glad. And that's something I'm glad for in a way. Right, In a way. But it's extremely inconvenient when you're trying to expose atrocity.
- [71:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. I want to go back to my thing, too, for a minute, because it's the most uncomfortable thing about the book for me, is that you don't really pose it. You don't really hit it on the head that hard. But if you really think about it, it's so personal, it really does come back to you. I don't mean you. You. But I mean anybody who's listening to this, who feels outraged by this, needs to, in the same moment, really imagine what they would do if their son or daughter or mom or dad or loved one, wife, husband, whatever, could be saved by simply putting in the order. Simply putting in the order. You don't have to get your hands dirty. You don't even have to look at it. But if you knew, would you do it anyway? I don't know what the answer to that is, but it's not flattering.
- [72:56]
C
I know an answer, though. I have, like. I think this. It sort of crystallizes an idea that as we educate our young people, which is, by the way, something that everyone here knows you're deeply involved in yourself, We've forgotten that a key element of education is just teaching people how to be good. It's a central issue of education. Right. Wherever it comes from. Right. And so teaching people to know deeply. Right. Not just because in your gut you know that this is wrong. You do, actually, I think. Right. But to know why and why you could never do this, even though you know you might get some kind of pleading benefit from it, that is an extension of life. So there are much more important things than that. We need to remember that that needs to be a central part of our education. Virtue. Right.
- [73:57]
A
Where is that in the Chinese curriculum?
- [74:02]
C
I wish I could tell you that on the books. Officially, the greatest good in that society is maintenance of the supremacy of the Communist Party. That's how they view it, and that's how they teach it. And that's why when you're young, you get put in, everybody basically becomes either a young pioneer or youth league member or joins the Communist Party. You know, it's crazy. This again, something incredibly important to understand, but hard to imagine, right? And this is why. So like, you know, you know how utilitarian bioethics is an important, you know, theme, theme in this book, right? Utilitarian bioethics is the medicine or the health of the greatest good for the greatest number. Right? But in that the extreme of that is actually in a communist society where that greatest good is the survival and supremacist of the Communist Party, of the vanguard really of the extremely affluent people have taken the wealth of the nation for themselves and view them and are going to keep that power forever with using this ideology and this structure that's been developed and somehow is incredibly effective at bamboozling everybody else. That to think that there might be something good in this.
- [75:20]
A
What did you think, what did you think when you heard Mamdani talking about the, the warm, the warm embrace of collectivism as opposed to all that rugged individualism nonsense?
- [75:36]
C
The truth is I don't know him personally and I don't know if he believes it or if this is, you know, just something that is helpful politically. But it's deeply wrong in a incredibly troubling way if you understand how these systems work and where it always leads to. Right? And every one of, you know, this sort of socialism, right? Socialism is a stepping stone. The communists view socialism as the stepping stone to the, you know, the real system, right. Which is always having, since Lenin, right. The ability to push massive coercive power through a population to ensure that it functions the way it does because people aren't going to comply otherwise. They're not going to participate. It's an anti human system. It's just so difficult because it sounds like if I say this to someone that's been taught that it's all about just being fair, right? That's how it sells itself, right? It sells itself by saying the reason you don't have everything that you want is because the rich guy took it from you or the guy that, you know, the sort of. The modern cultural variants or, you know, we could debate that. But these, you know, critical theories all have an infusion of communism in them.
- [76:59]
A
There's zero sum game, Oppressor.
- [77:00]
C
Oppress. Exactly. It's just, it's like. It's the, it's the person that's the different color that's the cause of it or the person that's the different or sexual orientation that's the cause of it or whatever. Or the person that's thin in one case. Right. When it comes to fat studies, right, this. If the thin person is oppressing the person that isn't thin. Right. I mean, it's kind of crazy stuff, but it sets going back to the original variant. Right. The pie is fixed and the only reason the rich people are rich is because they took it from you. That's a horrible sales pitch. Right? I mean, we've struggled. So many people have struggled with the idea of prosperity is real. The pie gets increased. Why do people work for others? Well, it's because if you work for that person, you're better off yourself. Sure, sure. That person is even more better off. And someone will say, well, that's not fair. Why does he get to be more better off than I'm better off? Well, but can't you be appreciative of the fact that you're better off too? Like, you know, and that guy should get some benefit from helping you with that too. Right? None of that means anything, right? In the communist worldview, it's all about. But the point is, it's rhetoric. It's not true. It's a core falsehood from the very beginning. And this, again, it blows my mind. But I'll tell you something else. I didn't even understand where prosperity came from until the last 10 years of my life. I was a biologist. I was an evolutionary biologist. We didn't learn that. I never learned this. I never studied basic economics. Thank you, Tom Sowell, for helping me understand so many things. How incentive structures work, whatever. Many, many things. But just. Yeah, like division of labor creates prosperity, innovation creates prosperity. Right. The pie gets bigger. We create that for ourselves. We help each other. Right. It's not this. And this is, by the way, there's a book by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, cynical theories. Okay, all of these Marxian theories are cynical. They just, they believe that. They don't believe in the warmth of the relationship. You know, we enjoy each other's company. Right.
- [79:10]
A
I hope I'm hanging on every word. Keep talking.
- [79:15]
C
No, but my point is that it's not. No, every relation, the only meaningful relationship in our lives according to these marks, you know, the communist and the Marxian way of life is the power play really deep inside. Whatever people are seeing here, what's really happening is me angling to try to exert my power over you. And you. Or no, actually, in this case, I think it's you because you're the more prominent one. Right? So. So you're the oppressor. So I'm actually struggling against you because you're trying to oppress me. And I'm gonna have to figure out how to. Because I've achieved my critical consciousness now I have to figure out how to take what's mine from you. Mike, that's what they teach. This is what this ideology is. It's not about fairness. It's about kind of enshrining the idea that if I'm jealous of someone else, if I envy what they have, it's saying, yes, you are right. You deserve to be. Get that. Live that energy and take what's yours, finally. And then, guess what? The moment that those, the people that run the revolution, take power, meet the new boss. Exactly.
- [80:19]
A
Same as the old boss.
- [80:21]
C
Well, frankly, in many cases, I think in all cases, actually, a lot worse. Right, so that's how it plays.
- [80:29]
A
I want to go back for a minute to something you said about there's a difference between trying to teach a kid the difference between good and evil. It seems an obvious thing to say in most literature, and, you know, great art grapples with that. But the more nuanced thing is, if I heard you right, is trying to understand why good people do good things. That's interesting. And I think it was Thomas Wolfe. I read an essay years ago that tried to answer that, and he gave an example of if you're with your kid today and you walk into the corner store and you see him palm a Snickers bar and slip it in his pocket, well, clearly that's bad. It's time for a teachable moment. So you call him over. You call the proprietor over, son, put it back. Listen, that's a bad thing to do. And it's bad because if everybody did that, this poor guy would be out of a job and we would have chaos, and our society wouldn't work. Right? Because stealing, you know, it's just economically not in our mutual interest. Don't do that. You know, 100 years ago, the same kid would have got boxed in the ears. You know, they would have put it back on the shelf and say, look, you don't want to do that, son, because if you do, you'll go to hell. It's very simple. It's very simple. So, you know, how do you teach good today? Do you think of it in those extremes or terms, or is there something else to it?
- [82:17]
C
There's something that you're. Again, I keep citing Thomas Sowell. He's Just so awesome, I guess.
- [82:22]
A
I can't believe he's still around. He's still doing it.
- [82:24]
C
He's still doing it. I'm going to totally mess up this one. But it's essentially that sort of the history of the last recent years is that of replacing what worked with what sounded good or something like that. Okay. And it's. It's beautiful. It's beautiful because that's kind of. Right, like, you know, this 10 Commandments in the Judeo Christian tradition. Just a lot of really good ideas. Like, this is not. These are not like, exclusive even to the Judeo tradition. These are like basic rules for society to be able to function that have been figured out over a long period of time. And so, you know, it seems to me like this, the whole kind of progressive approach has been to say, ah, those things. Do we really need those? You know, we have much better ideas. Right. And in some cases, these people are serious. They think these are much better ideas. But it's like, so what, you're going to push those through a society and just see how it happens without, like, you know, thinking it through a little bit and then think that there might have been some wisdom in these. I mean, this is. I call them kind of universal values. A lot of those things, they're not exclusive to the Judeo Christian tradition at all.
- [83:36]
A
We've been in a trance, Jan. You know, we've been beguiled, I think, for the last five or six years in a lot of different ways and, yeah, longer probably. So, I mean, look, my own recency bias is just like, I. Yeah, I think, you know, I. We will look back. I'm so curious to see how, like, when we look back 150 years, God, it's just so easy to dismiss, you know, what were you thinking, you know, with this whole slavery thing? What were you thinking? Same point as before, like, well, I'll tell you, I wasn't there. But had I been alive back then, I. I certainly would have engaged in that terrible, terrible institution. How do I know? How do I know how I would have thought, felt growing up in Georgia in 1840?
- [84:31]
C
If I may. Okay. I think if you had been taught decent values. Okay, right. I think it's okay for us to say, I don't think we need to kind of create this moral equivalency with everything. I think we should be able to tell ourselves, you know what? If I may, okay, this is my thought here. I'm trying to articulate it, but we have to take that question, ask ourselves, how can I make sure that if I was in that situation, or my son or my daughter or someone in my field, how can I make sure that they would make the right choice? Right, right. Because there are tools for this, actually. Right. Because what's implicit to the question is sort of like, well, you don't know. If you're faced with a tough situation, of course everyone's gonna fold. Right. But no, you don't need to. And actually, there's ways to educate people, I think, typically through faith, through effective righteous faith systems. Right. For people to know what the right thing to do is. And sometimes they might struggle with it, sometimes they might make the wrong decision. But, for example, if you know you're gonna have to face your God and be judged, you might make the right decision faster. Because it's not just. The decision isn't just for right now. The decision is for all eternity. Right. And that becomes a different equation.
- [85:54]
A
Consequences. Yeah. I mean, it's teaching consequences.
- [85:58]
C
And I think you would have done the right thing, by the way.
- [86:01]
A
Well, you know, I like to think so. I also like to think I'd be brave in battle. I like to think that, you know,
- [86:09]
C
you are brave in battle. You're doing it. You're living it. I hope it's kind of probably obvious to the people watching, right? I mean, maybe it's not obvious to you. The point is just that, that, no, we're not all going to be the super most courageous person every time and every single issue, like Nud Christiansen. Okay. Which who was.
- [86:30]
A
We're not usually like that. The German who refuses to say heil.
- [86:34]
C
Yeah, yeah. However, I do think you do mention these last five years, and I do think that there was a bit of a selection. I think a lot of people found a little bit of courage where they didn't know maybe beforehand they would have thought to themselves, yeah, I don't know what I would do. But I think a whole lot of people found out maybe there was a little bit of that courage in there. Even though we've been taught, we haven't been taught that this is a virtue strangely. Right. Courage is so unbelievably important, right? To be. No, this is like, you know, to figure out what you believe in, know why you believe it, and try to live it. Right. Do your best. You're not always going to win. I mean, it's not always going to work. Sometimes you'll have fear. It all happens. That's just the human condition. But try. Try like hell, right?
- [87:19]
A
Try. Look, I don't think you can be courageous without fear. Courage is overcoming the fear. If you don't have the fear and you do a brave thing, you're just a lunatic. You're missing a synapse. You know, like Alex Hunnell, that free
- [87:37]
C
solo, it goes back to these people that might be wired for just having to do good. That's very interesting, right? Maybe, actually, they're not really good, are we? This is, you know, this topic for another day. But.
- [87:48]
A
No, this is the topic, Jan. This topic is central to your excellent book. I think very few books do the work they intend to do purely between the covers. They have to do something that make you, you know, in a Kaguardian way, you know, the unexamined life. You know, this book made me honestly ask myself, what in the world would I do? And I hate to even say that out loud because it should be obvious, you know, if I have a chance to blow the whistle and stop this deplorable thing from happening, I'll do it. But if my daughter's life is counting on it, maybe I'll just do one more. We'll just get one more kidney out of this whole awful thing, right? Which is one more slave, one more, One more thing. And then that's the thing in me that I'm most keen to overcome.
- [88:52]
C
And it's all. And it comes back, right, right back to Solza Heatson, that line between good and evil. Right? And it's all. It's in us. And we have to make those choices.
- [89:00]
A
Give me the quote again.
- [89:01]
C
The line between good and evil cuts through every human heart. It's one of the most beautiful things that I keep. I often think about it, actually, as
- [89:11]
A
we start to land the plane here. You mentioned Prager earlier. You friendly with him?
- [89:18]
C
I haven't seen him since his accident and. Yeah, but. Yes, we're friends.
- [89:23]
A
Yeah. Yeah, I think we are, too. I haven't talked to him since his accident. I did a commencement speech at Prager University. He did the first one, I did the second one and I saw him interviewed the other day and Amazing Grace,
- [89:45]
C
you know, well, and, you know, courage, I think, is a. Maybe a good word to include here, right?
- [89:51]
A
Well, yeah, yes, but. But humanity too. I mean, he. He fell in the shower. It's like my guys up in the Bering Sea and the Deadliest Catch and you know, the after years, the people who watch that show, when somebody dies, you know it's going to be because of a rogue wave or a fire off the Pribilof Islands. It's gonna be Some spectacular calamity and. Ugh. But no, the. You know, I mean, that happens. But the star of that show, you know, Phil Harris, he had an embolism. He died slowly and awkwardly and commonly, and in the process touched millions of people because it was just suddenly so human and so relatable. Dennis fell in the shower and now he's paralyzed from the larynx down, but his mind is still there. And there he is, propped up, being interviewed in prime time about his new book. What's it called, Chuck? Something about the case for God or something. Something like that. But, you know, still in the face of that adversity, I just was.
- [91:14]
B
If there is no God, the battle over who defines good. Oh, sorry. If there is no God, colon. The battle over who defines good and evil.
- [91:23]
C
Seems sort of relevant to our conversation, doesn't it?
- [91:26]
A
That's why I bring it up, Jan. You know, the line for good and evil cuts through everything. We get to decide. A lot of people fall in the shower. A lot of people have their entire life upended. A lot of people are suddenly smote, smitten, redefined. And now they have all these decisions to make. And some are rooted in, like you say, real courage, others in desperation. And it's just. It was amazing to see him rise.
- [92:00]
C
And I want us to live in a society where we teach people that these decisions are ones that you're going to have to make in your life. Very likely. And all in different contexts, hopefully not catastrophic context, but sometimes that'll be. And you can learn, it's teachable, how to make the right decision, the morally correct decision. Right. To figure it out. The best literature of history has been written to explain these questions. Read Dostoevsky, Crime Punishment.
- [92:36]
A
Yeah, well, look, that's why your book's important. It's for all the obvious, literal reasons. Attention must be paid. And a travesty is unfolding and you've blown the whistle, but right under the surface. You know, this is a macro cover, and it's a macro problem, but there's a lot of micro.
- [93:02]
C
A lot of subtext.
- [93:03]
A
A lot of subtext and a lot of deeply, deeply personal queries that can be explored. A lot of tires to kick. So, look, I mean, we're in a world where it's very comfortable to put our heads in the sand on any number of things. And this thing exists today because of that. And you are this disagreeable eccentric who is inviting people to pull their head out of the sand. And, you know, perhaps my final question is, are you still being invited to dinner parties. I mean, are you still on the, Are you on the circuit? Are you. Oh, Jan's going to come over and he's going to bring his book. You know, the one with all the bones on the front.
- [93:53]
C
Well, we'll, we'll have to see because I'm still on the front end of that. Right?
- [93:57]
A
Yeah.
- [93:57]
C
Like right now, as I was saying, you know, I wanted to say you can do it, you know, because it's amazing that, you know, Rob Schneider. If I may comment a little bit about.
- [94:07]
A
Rob, Please.
- [94:08]
C
I sort of imagined a lot of my life that he was kind of like his kind characters. It's stupid to imagine. I don't know why I imagine that,
- [94:15]
A
but like one dimensional, kind of clownish looking for these.
- [94:17]
C
Yeah, like, exactly. And it's just, it didn't make any sense because of course people aren't like their characters in most cases. Right. He's a comedian and an actor. Right. But just the humanity and like deep thoughtfulness of the man is astonishing.
- [94:34]
A
And he paid a price.
- [94:35]
C
He's paid a price. He's paid a huge price for it. And he's, and it's painful to him. I know, right? Very, very painful to him. Yet he's made a decision and like I am. So it's amazing to have, you know, people like yourself and people like him decide, hey, this is something I want to put my voice, my clout, you know, so to speak, that I've developed over years, my reputation behind. Right. Because this is, I think that's part of the reason too, why a lot of people haven't said something because maybe they were afraid. What if it turns out to be fake? What if it, you know, I, I'm there.
- [95:12]
A
I don't want to be. Have you seen the Y Files?
- [95:16]
C
No.
- [95:16]
A
Huge show online. AJ Gentile does it. I'm going to talk to him, I hope, next month. It's an ingeniously fun sort of take on the X Files where he looks at all manner of conspiracy theories. Some really feel kind of out there, but he gives them their due and he lets his audience go along with the idea or the, the reasons that the tale grew in the telling. And. Right. But then at the end he's like, okay, now here's what's wrong with it and here's where it doesn't quite hold up. And, and, and my point is people love that. They. It's delicious. The story of it is, you know, gosh, did we go to the moon? Let's really think it over, you know, could the world actually be flat. I don't want to be on the wrong side of any of those obvious things. This is dangerous. I mean, I feel like I know you now, but I didn't. You know, the first time you ran this by me, it took two years of me, like, thinking about it and reading up on it as best I could and then just asking myself, you know, if the NBA could become so captured and if Hollywood could become so captured by all that money and all that power and just all that China, well, then why wouldn't this be happening? It certainly seems plausible. So I'm betting on you. I'm betting you're right, because it feels right to me.
- [96:48]
C
And also, I wish it wasn't. Mike, I truly, deep in my heart, I truly wish this was all a story.
- [96:56]
A
That's why I wish it was. Here's my blurb in the very front of your book. A lot of what you're about to read. I heard directly from Yan when he first appeared on my podcast to talk about the multi billion dollar human organ trade in China. I had no idea our conversation would go viral or ruffle so many feathers, would lead to this extraordinary book. Spoiler alert. As you read, you will likely experience the same mix of incredulity, horror, and disbelief that I did when Jan explained to me precisely how and why this atrocity has continued to unfold since 2000. But with every chapter, every page, really, your skepticism will be challenged with some very uncomfortable facts, and you will be confronted with a simple choice to accept the claims herein as true or not. Frankly, I wish the evidence was flimsy or circumstantial or refutable. I'd prefer to live in a world where human beings are not wrongly imprisoned and routinely harvested for their parts. But I'm afraid that isn't the case. The evidence in this book is compelling and credible. And the evidence demands a verdict, no matter how uncomfortable or upsetting the truth might be. Such are the hazards of pulling one's head from the sand and having a look around at a world in desperate need. Improvement. I was writing for me. You asked me to write a blurb. That's what I'm thinking about for. For me. And I bet a lot of people who read this are going to wrestle with the same thing.
- [98:32]
C
Well, you're a good man.
- [98:34]
A
It's his book.
- [98:36]
C
I'm not gonna get emotional.
- [98:39]
A
Your book is officially out today. It's called Kill to Order. It's not a comedy, but it's important.
- [98:49]
C
Thanks, Mike. Thank you so much. Great it's coming out on the 17th.
- [98:56]
A
Yep. Wow.
- [98:58]
C
That is so cool.
- [99:01]
A
This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online. And leave us a river. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review all you got to do is leave a quick
- [99:52]
B
5 star review and not 3 all
- [99:54]
A
you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review. Definitely not 2 all you got to do is leave A quick 5 star review 5. All you got to do is leave a quick Even if you hate 5 especially if you hate it.
- [100:08]
C
Thank you Everyone deserves to be connected
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B
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C
But that's weird.
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A
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