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Another pina colada?
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Yes, please.
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Open a new retail location with 36% more square feet. Fantastic. Hire 36% more help.
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You're hired and you're hired.
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C
Well, hell, ladies and gentlemen, what is up? Jack Posobic in here for the great Tim Pool. He is on sabbatical this week, we wish well in his transition and we're a number of us are holding it down. And what a transition to not being on the show for a week. Transition to vacation. That's, that's. Everyone in the room is giving me looks like. Transition to what? No, no. All will be revealed when Tim comes back. But our lead story tonight, very, very big stuff. Is the United States poised to take military action in the communist state, the communist island of Cuba, just miles off the southern coast of Miami. A place where I actually had the, the honor and privilege of serving at Guantanamo Bay for about, about a year. We could talk about all of that. We got a lot of stories tonight. We have incredible guests here in studio joining us and yes, Tim will be back as soon as possible. But we're very excited to also have as a special guest tonight, in addition to yours truly, Dr. Joseph Wit Doring.
B
Hey, Jack.
C
Hey.
B
Really happy to be here.
C
Tell us, tell us who you are. Tell us about yourself.
B
Yeah, so I'm a psychiatrist. I help people come off psychiatric drugs that are ruining their life.
C
I mean, all right, end of story. Like, just, just cut the show off right there. Yeah, yeah. Well, how do you, how do you, how do you help people do that?
B
So do a lot of education, you know, talking about how throwing more psychiatric drugs at mental health problems in the US Is not helping people. In fact, it's making people worse. And so I go around the country talking about that. And then in my clinic, we get all sorts of people coming in, and then we do these very long, slow tapers, get people off the drugs. Because the doctors don't know how to get people off these medications. They, they mess it up. They go way too quickly. And then when people end up in withdrawal, they say, ah, your underlying illness, you need to stay on. And so that's why we've got like 17% of Americans on antidepressants right now. You know, it's just wild. And so what we do is we pair these drug tapers with all of the stuff that people should be doing, you know? You know, we have therapy, we do dietary and lifestyle change, we do sleep training and essentially give them all of the stuff that they should have been given instead of a prescription and a seven minute visit, you know, 10 years ago, which was just mindlessly continued.
C
And you press the button. Well, here, let's, let's, let's put a pause on that because I think I want to come back to it. But let's, let's go around the room because we're also joined by Libby Evans.
A
I'm Libby Evans. I'm really glad to be here with everybody tonight. This is terrific. You what? Libby Emmons, Post Millennial. That's my thing. I do that. The Post Millennial and Human Events. I'm the editor.
C
Chris Carr is over here.
B
What's up?
E
Chris Carr, writer, editor, and proud father
B
of two Wild Boys.
C
Let's go. I also have two Wild Boys.
D
They are phenomenal.
B
Isn't it the best?
C
It's the best thing in the world.
D
Well, I am a wild boy. I'm actually looking forward to getting off the drugs myself. So, Joseph, I'm glad you're here. Drinking coffee now, caffeine, maybe one of the most insidious drugs on the planet. Maybe the biggest psy I've ever known. I don't know. But we get into that later as well. At Ian Cross and you'll find me on the Internet. Happy to be here, Carter. Banks also hanging out and thank you all for joining us. Let's get into it, Jack.
C
Yeah, let's get it. Back to this first story. So we saw the headline earlier today. This came down. Acting attorney general Todd Blanch and CBS has the story. US indicts Cuba's Raul Castro on murder and conspiracy charges for downing of planes in 1996. Libby, I think you were digging into like, what is the actual underlying case here?
A
Yeah, so I was checking this out before the show and Raul Castro has been charged for his alle alleged role in the February 24, 1996 shoot down of two unarmed U. S. Civilian aircraft operated by brothers to the rescue, also known as Hermanos al riscate, over international waters. Once we take a closer look, it turns out that according to these allegations, three of these aircraft flew from south Florida toward Cuba. They were trying to look around and see if there were any Cuban migrants in need of assistance. Cuban military fighter jets under the chain of command overseen by Raul Castro fired air to air missiles at two unarmed civilian Cessna aircraft, destroying them without warning while they were flying outside Cuban territory and killing four US Nationals, including three citizens.
D
Pigs all over again. I don't know.
C
What do you think? Well, I don't know if it's Bay of Pigs because it's not a full, full on operation, but I guess the question here is Dewey and I don't have any inside knowledge on this, but, you know, the question is, does this ratchet things up for the United States? And we'll, you know, throw it to the chat, throw it to everyone. For the United States potentially look at an operation similar to Venezuela because what happened immediately preceding that, Maduro was indicted. So Maduro was indicted. And remember, that is not seen as, you know, the media would say, oh, it's a kidnapping or it was a, you know, they black bagged him, et cetera. But officially speaking from a legal perspective, that was extradition to go and stand charges from Nicolas Maduro. It was right before the, I think it was February. It was like right before the state of the union and right at the beginning of this year where we woke up and said, oh my gosh, we've just arrested the leader of a foreign country, brought him back to New York City to stand trial. So the question is, do you guys think that's gonna happen here?
D
Yes, absolutely. I think it is the playbook. And they've been. We know that the military industrial complex, the joint chiefs of staff wanted Cuba as far back as jfk. They tried to get JFK and what's called Operation Northwoods to sign paperwork fabricating that the Cubans had killed Americans. They were going to dress people up in Cuban uniforms.
C
And we're six minutes in. We're at Operation Northwest. It's already going to be a good show, no joke.
D
They don't want it, and I don't blame them. That was a Soviet missile outpost for most of the Cold War. Terrifying. The thing is, like, does this justify China taking Taiwan because it's right off their coast, too. I tend to think that the military industrial complex is in control of Earth right now. And I don't think the Chinese are going to overstep, but I think it's the next step of securing the northern and I guess western hemisphere militarily and economically. Personally, what is Cuba?
C
Libby, do you think we're getting. We're going to see military action. What do you think we're going to see?
A
Yeah, I mean, maybe if we're lucky, we'll see another one of those sonic weapons and they'll go in and blow the sonic weapon. Everyone's eardrums will blow out and they will kidnap Raul Castro and drag him to Miami where he'll face charges just like we did with Maduro. I don't know. I don't know if this is the greatest thing to do. I'm not super jazzed about all of the foreign intervention in other nations, especially since with Venezuela, like, if we're going to take Venezuela, I thought we could at least just take all their oil. But I'm still paying like 450 for gas.
C
Fair enough.
D
With Cuba, I hope that Castro, because what is he, like 90? He's so old. I hope that he just takes a plea deal or gets sold out and then it peacefully transitions. I don't.
C
So that was going to be. So that was actually my take. Is that because, remember. So Ratcliffe, the CIA director, was just down meeting with members of the Cuban government. And so this sets up, I think, kind of a different situation with Venezuela. You wouldn't really see high level officials doing a meeting like that, holding a meeting like that. And so what I think might be even more interesting, that's going on. And Axios has some good stories about this as well, about how Marco Rubio is talking to elements of the government, including Castro, Raul Castro's grandson. So could he be setting it up where they're sort of like getting rid of the old communists and bringing in the new leadership who are cutting a Deal with the Americans and are they,
A
I mean, are they communist to the new people, the younger people?
C
Yeah, I mean the whole thing's coming. They're all regime.
A
Right.
C
But the point is these would be pro us. Well this, this is eventually what happened in Venezuela. Just the question of, hey, do we actually need this military operation or not? So you know, maybe it's, maybe it's just, maybe they'd hand him over.
D
The last thing I would say about Cuba, until I want to hear what you guys think about this too, is this is the Cuban crisis. The hundred year crisis of having communists control an island off our coast is a result of the Americans not seizing that island when they, when they liberated it from the Spanish and the Spanish. Spanish War 1898. We fought a war against the empire of Spain to, to free Cuba. We let them be free and they chose a communist dictate.
C
Remember the main.
D
So like is sometimes letting people be free is like a bad thing. You might want to control it instead. Weird take. I know I'm all for freedom, but like freedom at what cost? You need to set up borders to protect people so that they can be free. That's my take.
C
You know, there was also, you know, I mean there's so many different alternate history takes on, on Cuba. So actually when I was there, I got to, at Guantanamo, I got, so I spent, you know, just under a year at Guantanamo. And so it, but you can't leave the, the base, right, because there's no status force agreement with the Cuban government. So we could, you know, walk up to the fence, give or take that. Supposedly there's a lot of mines around there, so you don't want to get too close to the fence. And, and so when you're there so you can look into Cuba and you're physically on the island of Cuba, but just sort of, you know, on the one tail end of it as opposed to being able to get to the rest of it. We used to have a joke, you could get these T shirts, it said Guantanamo Bay. Close but no cigar.
B
Get it?
C
Like hahaha. I still have one somewhere. And it was interesting though because you could rent sailboats and motorboats and like go fishing on the weekend or whatever in the actual bay itself. There's a lot of snorkeling down there, a lot of scuba, and I got into free diving a lot when I was there. And for whatever reason, the, the deal that we signed with the Cubans originally allowed them, you know, counter passage rights basically through the bay. So they would send their Spy boats like through the bay pretty much a couple times a week, you know, we'd send these boats with these guys with, you know, clearly had signal collectors on them and guys with huge binoculars would be looking through at us and they would always say like, hey, don't go too far up the river because then you're actually in Cuba and you know, they might do something like this and shoot you down again or something like that. So it would be, it was pretty wild. So I'll just say from a personal standpoint, I've always had this sort of interest in being able to actually see the rest of the island because you're sitting there for so long, you're just stewing because like you can't, can't go out and see the rest of it.
D
I wondered growing up in the 80s and 90s, like why didn't the Americans just take Cuba by force? What do you think it would set off a chain reaction of super.
C
Because, because, because. Yeah, because they were allied with the Russians, they were allied with the Soviets. So that, I mean that's really. Because remember even in the Cuban missile crisis, that's because the United States had put long range missiles in Turkey and then, then the Soviets put long range missiles in Cuba so. As in missiles that could strike Moscow and missiles that could strike Washington D.C. and of course we just didn't really talk about that part.
D
Interesting. What do you think Carr?
E
I'm pretty much with Ibi, with Libby on this. I mean I'm just, I'm so fatigued with the foreign intervention stuff when we got 20 to 30 million problems to deal with here. I mean it seems like they want to prioritize everything including indicting a 94 year old guy instead of just like addressing problems that are more urgent and pressing here. It's, it's, it's exhausting. Although I would like to see Cuba, I would like it to be, I mean just, you know, aesthetically I, ever since Hemingway had his exploits in Cuba, I've always wanted to go there and this would be a nice pretext I suppose later on down you can always
A
just go to Key west though, right?
E
Well yeah, that's true, that's true.
C
I mean Key west isn't Cuba. No, Key west is this kind of break.
E
The cigars aren't the same.
D
I hear this, this like rips apart open a philosophical conversation about like what the Romans did, seizing external territory to protect the mainland. Because you say you want to strengthen the United States, but if you have enemies literally on the border, that can lob artillery into your country, you're not safe. So just as the Romans did, we've reached out and basically taken land and subjugated countries around us. And in order to protect and strengthen the homeland, you know, so to speak, especially economically because you can extract the resources from them. So at what point do we, Would you ever suggest, like we give, we pull out our bases of the hundred countries or wherever we have and just kind of turtle up? I mean, I'm not saying that's what you're saying, but no, I agree with that.
E
I mean, if you, if your kid's misusing a toy or all their toys, you take it away from them. We've misused our military extensively for decades. I think it's time for us to dial it all back. We have to focus on this country first. And for some reason that's just not a priority for the. It's funny you talked about communists taking over. We're already run by communists in the shadows of the government. And it has been like that since at least Kennedy, probably Since World War II, you know, I mean, so we already are run by a crypto communist set of bureaucrats that are unelected and unaccountable to the American people.
A
There's more on the way.
C
I don't, I don't disagree. I certainly don't disagree with you're saying at all. I do think though that I would draw a distinction between countries that are in our own hemisphere and countries that are literally on our doorstep as opposed to ones that are thousands of miles away that, you know, are not a direct, you know, effect to us. Guantanamo, it's our oldest overseas based. 1898 to your point. And it's, we actually got to travel some of the, like walk some of the steps of the Spanish American War. We were trying to find like Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders where they actually had come through. And there's even a fair bit of evidence that Christopher Columbus even sailed into Guantanamo Bay.
A
Oh, really?
C
That, yeah, that there's, there's like a plaque there that talks about he. I don't think he got off, but that he, I think it was his second trip and doing this from memory. But. But yeah, there was this plaque that, you know, they're pretty sure that Columbus had come here and said, oh this, you know, you could build a great city here and this would be an incredible economic driver, which it would be if the island wasn't communist.
D
So like I might take on the Middle East. I used to think like, we gotta get out of the Middle East. Stop these. Iraq, Afghanistan. I was. That's why I started making YouTube videos. I was irate about that Iraqi invasion. But then I realized that we are now controlling the Suez Canal through force because we control those areas. Israel's stocked up with nukes that we're ready to blow anything up that tries to take it. If we were to retract from that, then the economic damage to the United States, especially where we're going post money, it's more about being able to transport goods than anything else. I feel like I'm almost going all in on military domination of the planet. And I mean, that would mean I have to go kill people. Like I have to serve in order to really follow through with that. And I don't wanna do that. So there's got to be a better way. I just, I don't. It's like the ball is rolling down the hill.
A
Well, that's the thing too. It's like as soon as we're involved in one of like, I would prefer not to be involved in these conflicts, but if we are involved, then we should win as decisively as possible.
D
Yeah, the Iranian thing, what's the plan? We're sitting on the doorstep waiting until what?
A
Yeah, I don't understand that. Why is that happening, Jack?
C
Why is Iran happening?
A
Yeah, no, why. Why are we not just like, okay, so yesterday Trump, or the other day Trump was like, I almost bombed the hell out of Iran. Now I'm giving them another couple. What is the logic with the back and forth thing?
C
You mean as. You mean diplomacy?
A
Yeah.
C
Why do diplomacy?
A
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D
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Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back.
B
I can create a site with my eyes closed.
C
Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know,
D
and it thinks about the customer more than anything.
C
Every day I'm thinking about some other new business, but Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like, I can't stop, stop.
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I'm addicted.
C
Start your free trial@shopify.com yeah, because hopefully that diplomacy help allows you to avoid a long protracted Iraq, Afghanistan war situation and gets to a pool, gets you to a point where both sides are able to put down the, the swords and are able to achieve some kind of lasting new agreement as to, you know, in this case, the status of the straight of Hormuz. And you know, again, so it comes down to the waterways, just like you're saying, excuse me, Philly, waterways and the, you know, the idea. So, you know, Guantanamo Bay. Why did it matter so much to the, to early America? Well, it mattered because this was how we could extend our influence throughout the Western hemisphere, throughout the Caribbean, throughout what's now the Gulf of America, et cetera. Because you needed that as a coaling station. It's. It's a gas station. Right. You know, for, for Navy ships to be able to go through and then eventually planes and all the rest, even long before it became a detention facility, it was the waterway that mattered and then seemed to illustrate a Hormuz which, you know, even prior to the two, the current situation, it was run by the Dutch. And the Dutch had, and that's what, you know, fueled so much of their empire. It's just the understanding that if you control what they're called, the strategic lines of communication, the slocks or just choke points, these key maritime choke points around the world, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Taiwan Strait, Babelmandeb, which is the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, which is the north part of the Red Sea, you can tell his navy officer and that, you know, this is where world power comes from. Because so much of our information in terms of data and so much of our goods in terms of not only energy and fuel, but also our manufactured goods, because we have the system of globalism and are transported on the seas. And a lot of people think, oh well, we have Starlink. It goes from satellites. No, it's all oceans. It's all oceans.
D
My concern about diplomacy with Iran, which you mentioned is probably the key vector in what you had asked, is that I watched Scott Horton on Joe Rogan's show, which you should watch. If you care about any of this, watch it. And Horton said the new leader of Iran, who was like the son of the old one that got killed, that the Americans killed his wife and child. And he's now he's like, how could he not be more radicalized than his father at this point? How can you plan diplomacy with. Are they just planning to kill the guy? I don't understand, like, what's the, what's
E
the odds they made a martyr out of him? I mean, it's disastrous. I mean, not to mention 165 girls that were killed in the school. I mean.
A
Wait, which guy? The much tolerant.
D
I mean the father.
E
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean he's martyred. And for these people, as far as I understand, I don't have a completely sophisticated understanding of Iranian culture, but it seems like that's probably a worst case scenario. You make a martyr out of their leader.
D
Oh, and if you killed somebody's wife and kid, like, well, yeah, what human would ever bow down at that point? I mean, maybe it's a safe.
C
But it's not. But it's not. It's not. I wouldn't say it's bowing down. Right. And you know, I understand Scott's point that you mentioned there. And of course it's a, it's a good point. But at the same time, you know, you have to say, does Iran want, you know, is it in their interest to get into this massive war with the United States or is it to their interest to go back to maintaining a stable country, to preserving their regime, to having some kind of. Obviously the revenue from the oil that be able to come through, which are currently not able to get through because of the blockade. So what's in the better long term interests?
D
Yeah, it would be a sack. I don't know this guy. I don't know who the new leader is. I haven't even seen him speak ever, I don't think.
C
But they said he was injured.
D
Yeah, I thought he had his leg blown off or something. There's a lot of, there's been a
C
lot of different stories.
A
Yeah, he hasn't. The statements have all been written. There haven't been any video statements.
C
Well, you Know why that is? Right?
A
Because he's unconscious or dead?
C
Well, potentially that's one option. But another option could be that if they, if they released a video, then Israel or the CIA would be able to track down where he made the video.
A
Oh, that makes sense.
C
And would be able to follow the file digitally to where he was.
A
That how that works?
C
Well, that's Bin Laden had the same thing. Right. That's why bin Laden stuff would always be like a cassette tape that was smuggled in a pouch that would, you know, end up in a courier, etc. Etc. Because they always knew that the intelligence agencies were about to get them.
D
And I got to imagine that's what they want, is to find this guy and destroy him, I would imagine.
C
Well, not only that, but you have to be careful, you know. You know, is the CIA going to pay off somebody who works for you? Right. So who can you trust?
D
Yeah.
C
This situation like that, put myself in
D
this guy's head, if he's even alive still, like, he, what, is he going to live the next 50 years of his life on the run, living in mountains, or is he just going to be like, fine?
A
That's what Bin Laden did, right? He was like, well, in Pakistan.
C
Yeah, well, and for some, for, they actually say, though, that the father was talking about wanting to become a martyr almost. So that's, there was, there was one theory I saw where Ayatoll Khamenei sort of let him, you know, said, I'm not going to go hide. You know, I've lived a long life, I'm not going to go hide. If they're going to do this to me, I'm going to let them do this to me. And, you know, I want to go down as, as the man who fought against the great Satan and fought against the world for my people.
E
Sure, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, it's hard for me to understand that this is diplomacy at an intelligent level, what Trump is doing. I mean, he just seems too erratic. Unless you want to go with the 5D chess argument. I don't mean to like, give a low resolution interpretation of the, this is diplomacy. But I mean, I don't understand the erratic behavior from Trump. Is he trying to be crazy like a fox or what's, what's the play here?
C
Well, I think the big play in, and that we haven't quite seen all of the back, you know, the back end part of it is China. So I think that China and the meeting with China was very strategic, I think. Now, what did we see? China's meeting with Putin right now, so. Or I guess it was yesterday. And now Putin flew back. And so the real question is, is China gonna come in with leverage to create some kind of grand deal where, okay, the U.S. israel, that gets turned off, but they come in, and the biggest thing that the White House was saying over and over and that was that we both agreed Iran should not have a nuclear weapon.
B
Why is that such a big deal? Because I think, I mean, China has nukes. You know, Russia has nukes, India has nukes. We have a lot of enemies around the place.
A
Like, Israel probably has nukes.
B
That's the thing. I don't. I don't really.
C
Israel has nukes.
A
Yeah. They just don't say it.
D
Yeah.
E
Israel doesn't want Iran to have nukes.
B
That's the reason, like, I understand maybe, like, flexing on the country because they have all these, like, little satellite militia groups that are constantly, like, you know, attacking our ally over and that in that country. And it's like, okay, we're going to, you know, we're going to come in, we're going to bomb you, we're going to take out some of your leaders. Stop doing that. You know.
A
Yeah. I mean, they also, they say, like, in Parliament, there have been repeated times when the entire Iranian parliament is calling for death to America.
C
Yeah.
A
Like, you don't want death to America people to have nukes if you can prevent it.
C
Well, and that's. Right. So the, the, the argument would go that if this is truly a radical regiment, and if they got. And the President says this over and over and over, that if they got nukes, they would use them, and that this is a different scenario than, say, the other countries you mentioned, because they're not. They are actually radical.
B
Yeah.
A
Yeah. I mean, India hasn't used nukes against Pakistan, and it's been a while.
C
North Korea has. So North Korea is a country where, you know, we were told for years that if North Korea gets nukes, they're going to use them against the South. They're going to use them here, they're going to use them. There's. They're gonna use them against Japan. They're gonna use them to get. They want. And they haven't nuked anybody.
B
Yeah. And so it's like, are they. You know, because that would be suicide. Right. You know, if they would. If they would nuke the United States, they'd be wiped out in a second.
E
Well, yeah, then that's not an option. I don't think it's Israel's concern and it's been Israel's concern for nearly 40 years actually.
C
Just on North Korea, just on the North Korea example, they've also demonstrated submarine launch capability. And the reason that submarine launch capability is so key is because that's second strike capability. That means even if you take out, so let's, let's say we do a preemptive strike, take out Pyongyang, take out Kim Jong Un, if there's a sub out there that's got some nuclear tipped hot ones on there, that sub can still reach out and strike Tokyo or Beijing or Seoul or, or perhaps even Seattle, San Francisco, Louisiana.
D
How likely is it, or possible is it that North Korea has submarines literally off the coast of the United States?
C
Like 800, I would say unlikely. They just, their subs just, just aren't known to go long range like that. The Russians do, the Chinese do, but North Korea, now they're, they're, they're usually, usually more short range than that. But, but you know, Okinawa, South Korea all the time, right? They, they cross what's known as the NLL or the Northern Limit Line and, and cross down into South Korean waters all the time.
D
So nuclear submarines, you think that sounds like the ultimate deterrent? Like the Russians probably have subs off the coast of Washington D.C. somewhere we don't know about is that.
C
Well, that's, and that's the idea, right? So the whole idea is that, and this gets into the psychology of MAD from the Cold War like we're talking about before, that I can, and, and what nuclear weapons actually do. It's, it's, it's this interesting situation where we've created a weapon that's so powerful that you can't use it, right? Because if everyone gets it, then everyone destroy it.
D
So you blow up the whole world.
C
It's like, I forgot what the numbers like 42 minutes or there's different, there's different scenarios, but very quickly the whole world gets blown up. And so the idea being that hey, if, and to your point about the strategic calculus, then, and this is something that, an argument that I've raised and I've seen a lot of people raise as well, is does this actually create a scenario where regimes that want to be truly independent actually are incentivized to seek nuclear weapons? Because we saw Libya, for example, in the wake of the Iraq invasion that you're mentioning, they gave up their nuclear program only for about what, seven years later to have NATO come in and bomb them to smithereens and have Gaddafi sodomized in the street and murdered. And so the question being that, well, if he had nukes, would they have been able to do that?
B
Yeah, for sure.
C
You're going for it.
B
Yeah. Well, think about it. I mean, you would, otherwise you would just get pushed around. I mean, it's almost kind of. You would want to seem like a threat and kind of unstable, and then it's kind of like a bargaining chip or Saddam.
C
Right, Saddam. Famously, of course, you know, sort of used it as a bargaining chip, but then didn't actually have them.
B
Yeah, that's right.
D
That's what makes me think that the Iranians would never use it if they had it. They would just use it like the North Koreans. And, and the idea is they want to disarm them ahead of time so that they can seize the country, take the oil. Go back to the Anglo, you know, oil companies that were under the Shah.
A
Sorry, I keep trying to talk over you.
D
Tell me what you're thinking.
A
Thinking I should stop.
C
There's a great book about what Ian's talking about, about the, the Shah, the Anglo oil companies, and it's called Dune by Frank Herbert.
D
Spice. The spice.
C
Spice.
D
Extraction of the spice.
C
No, so literally Frank Herbert's Dune is based on a. In Iran. Oh, really?
B
I missed that. Yeah.
C
Oh, yeah. Oh, no, it's, it's quite clear once you see it, once you kind of like start thinking about it, it's, you know, the one, the one ruling house had control over the desert land that has the, you know, the, the resource that everyone needs, but the, the religious zealots of the land do not want the empire to take it. And then they are taken out by another empire. So this is the, the British and the Americans going at it. And that's the. Oh my gosh, the, the Atreides and the Harkonnens. There we go. I knew it was in there somewhere.
B
Right, yeah.
C
And, and so, yeah, that's that it all just matches in. So Herbert was probably doing a lot of drugs, but then also, you know, just kind of watching the news in the 1960s about Iran.
D
I know they want that land.
C
They've keep in mind that he wrote that before for the revolution.
D
Oh, wow.
C
Yeah, so he actually predicted like in do Messiah, he actually predicted that there would be a revolution, a religious revolution in Iran.
D
It makes me concerned that it's fear mongering that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, which, by the way, they can. We just don't want them to, but they can. So stop using that stupid messaging, you guys. You're you're smarter than that.
C
But Ian, just, just play devil's advocate though. Didn't you just say that the name of the game is world domination?
D
Yeah, but at what cost? You know, you really want to win. You don't want to trigger a nuclear war. You don't want to see he triggered
C
to kill everyone and now he's a pacifist.
D
No, but, no, you got to.
E
Winning is through it. It's, it's a very complicated situation.
C
We should dominate the whole world.
D
Asian just means they all surrender. Well, you could blow apart, but to get them to surrender, get them to transfer allegiances, things like that, I don't know if that's necessarily the name of the game. Sorry, Libby.
A
No, I, you know, you do have to look at what Iran has done. Like you say, Iran might not use a nuclear weapon, but if you look at the way that they have used their influence around the region, and I'm not like pro Iran war, I kind of, I'm just not really in favor. But when you look at it and how they've used their influence around the region, this is one thing that Trump said when we started this whole conflict. He said that one of the goals was to prevent the Iranian regime from using their political influence outside of their borders. Iran has used their influence to fund Hamas. Right. They okayed, they greenlit the October 7th attack. That's something the Wall Street Journal reported on shortly after that attack. Who greenlit Iran, greenlit the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. That was, you know, I mean, the Wall Street Journal had good reporting on that. They also have been backing Hezbollah and they've been funding all of these groups as part of their effort to destroy Israel, which they're very intent on destroying Israel, and they're using every conceivable means to do it. And if you also look back at the Iranian revolution, What was it? 78? Was it 79? 78, 79, 79. It was shortly after that that in fact, the Islamic regime of Iran started really getting into using this term Islamophobia and perpetrating this among the west to try and prevent the west from being able to criticize the regime. And then after 9 11, Iranian funded and, you know, Arab funded groups started pushing all of this anti Islamophobia stuff into American academic institutions and into our textbook publications and things like that. So they've been pulling like a whole op on us for decades to try and prevent us from being able to criticize them while they continue to attack our, you know, primary ally in the Middle East. So I think you could look at it and say, would they use nukes? Like, so you're running out of closet space. The good news, you don't need to stop shopping. You just need to start selling with the RealReal. The RealReal is the world's largest and most trusted resource for authenticated luxury resale. Whether it's that mini bag that can't even fit your phone or those boots you never fully broke in, the RealReal handles everything. Everything from photography and copywriting to shipping and pricing. So you can just sit back, get paid, and make room for things that actually feel like you. And with 10,000 plus new arrivals every single day from top designers like Prada, Celine, Louis Vuitton and Louisville, all for up to 90% off retail, you're bound to find something perfectly on brand to fill that extra closet space with. Plus, this may only you can get an extra $200 to shop when you sell for the first time. Make room for what feels like you go to therealreal.com to start selling and get your extra $200 to keep shopping@therealrail.com that's therealreal.com terms apply
D
now.
C
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A
Visit audible.com There's a good chance that if they just wanted a one shot to get rid of Israel, they'd go for it.
D
Man, I wonder that. But if that, that could trigger nuclear catastrophe across the globe, which would.
A
Yeah, I mean, I wonder if they care about that. Like, they don't seem to care about any of this stuff right now. They've massacred a bunch of their citizens because of protests and, you know, protest.
C
I'm going to be. I'll be devil's advocate on you then. Then why don't they just bomb Israel all the time?
A
I think they do bomb Israel all the time. Through proxies.
C
No, I mean like, like they have. So Iran has significant ballistic missile capability, not intercontinental, so they don't pose a direct threat to the United States. They can range Europe. They can range, but they certainly can range Israel, as we've seen. So why not just Keep bombing Israel.
A
Maybe they have been afraid of the consequences so far.
C
But to your point, you were just saying that if this is going could they could.
A
I mean, people can do things, but they don't. But they haven't.
D
No, I don't think you could one shot a country with missiles. You got to go in and take it by force or at least seize the leader. We tried to one shot Iran with our. When we blew up Fordo.
A
We did, did we?
D
I mean, we, we leveled Fordo to the ground. The elevator shafts are all sealed up. They can't use.
A
Almost a year ago at this point.
D
Yeah, yeah. But it did nothing but just cut off the whiskers of the snake. I mean.
C
Well, I guess, I guess what I'm trying to say though is that snakes have, is that we are seeing, we are seeing elements of pragmatism there. We are seeing elements of decision making of, of things where may. Perhaps they are. To what I was saying to Chris before, they are actually considering regime long term survival, stability that they're not, you know, perhaps it's not quite as, you know, constant with, you know, the need to, you know, blow up everyone all the time. But to your point, you know, remember the content with this sort of low level of it. But you do see elements of pragmatism and I don't think we should discount that.
D
Yeah, they say Islamism and that it's a radical Islamic government. That's Islamism. It means it's a government of a religion, of Islam, of theocracy.
A
Right.
D
Yeah, yeah, it is. And so there's a lot of scaremongering about this because they're a theocracy, because they're a religious government. They're psycho. But like the Israelis are a religious government. I don't know if it's like a
A
Jewish state that's actually, I think it's not really a religious government. I think it's pretty secular. Israel's a pretty secular place.
E
The Likud Party, they kind of play both sides of that. They're very religious when they need to be and they're also very secular when they want to be. It's God's land. But they're also not devout, you know, they're not all devout Jewish citizens. So it's.
D
And I wonder if the Iranians are like that too. And we just aren't told that in the American media.
E
I think that's a distinct Israel characteristic, personally.
B
I mean, the thing with Iran is it's. I, I feel like the culture of the country is just anti West. I mean, it's like a defining thing that they do. You know, we're pushing against Israel, we're pushing against America, and that's who we are. And that's one of, like, the reasons why, you know, maybe going in there right now and just saying, if you're going to keep on doing this, we're going to start taking out your leaders, we're going to make it really uncomfortable for you, we're going to start bankrupting you. And so if you keep on funding all of these proxy groups to, you know, attack Israel, that's not going to work out for you. Well. And hopefully that kind of shifts away from, hey, our core identity is going to be essentially chanting death to America and, you know, going after the Israelis.
D
I think if the Chinese, I just read on Twitter that the Russians, the Chinese and the Americans are looking at starting joint projects. If they, those three countries came together on solving this, I think the Iranian regime would step aside. I mean, what choice if all three countries were to.
C
Well, well, this, this is actually a good jumping off point into our next topic because I want to get there because we're talking about all the international politics. But what's, what's amazing is that all of these geopolitics are now playing a role in our elections directly here in the United States on both sides of the aisle, believe it or not, boys and girls. And we've got this from the New York Times. Candidates backed by Trump, comma, Ocasio Cortez. That doesn't mean together, by the way. That means separately. New York Times. That, by the way, Libby, if this was a headline for Post Millennial, I probably would have rejected it.
A
Would you? Yeah, I wouldn't.
C
It sounds like they're working together.
E
Yeah.
A
I have a totally different headline for this story.
C
Candidates backed by Trump, Ocasio Cortez Triumphant Key House Primaries. So what they're saying here is that, let's see, the President's preferred candidate, ousted and incumbent in Kentucky, Thomas Massie. While a Democratic primary in Pennsylvania was a win for the Democratic socialists. And this was one of the Philadelphia races. And where, you know, they've got this guy in, in Philly who is just full on dsa. There he is. Chris.
A
I found the Chris Rob.
C
Chris Robb. Yeah. And this is a guy. I mean, he's doing, he's right there. He's got the fist up. He's got the fist up. He's got aoc. Yeah. Jamie Raskin came in and campaigned for him, I believe. Ilhan Omar Came in. Rokahana came in. So this is an area and this is Philadelphia. This is Philadelphia proper. Philadelphia 3. Does that succeed? Dwight Evans.
D
It says We Save us behind them on the picture. That's like so Communist. We Save us.
C
Who are they talking about? The straight Communists.
A
Yep.
D
I hope that. I hope there's not another letter to the left of the W, but I don't know what letter that would be.
A
All save.
E
Yeah, that's the first thought.
C
I. Oh, oowe save us or you. It could be about a, like a female sheep.
D
It's so generic. It's such like a propaganda. We save us makes people feel good. It instills the communal cult worship, the communist ethos. That's. Oh, God, I don't even know what their messaging is.
C
How would you break this down psychologically?
B
Oh, don't throw this to me.
C
Yeah, but no, it's different. So you have Make America Great Again.
B
Right.
C
As the classic, you know, MAGA slogan. And perhaps this is, this is sort of a Democrat, as Democrat socialist as Ian saying, you know, response to that slogan, we save us, so make America great again. I mean, I've gone through this for years, but it's active, it's got nostalgia in it, you know, baiting Great again. Right. So hearkening back to the past, of course, Donald Trump ubiquitous with the 80s 90s, so there's a lot of nostalgia just wrapped up into his figure to begin with. But it's also nostalgia for America as a great power, as a great country. People can always, you know, think back to these, these Libby, I believe is the French say la vie en roo. The, the, you know, the rosy view of the past. And I told you we were watching Audrey Hepburn movies.
A
I love Audrey Hepburn.
C
And, and the key here though, is that you have all those things in Trump's. And it's got good cadence to it. Make America great again. I hate the cadence with We Save Us. We Save us. How do you chant that? It just doesn't.
A
They also, they do this weird thing. What is it? The people united will never be defeated. And when they used to do that chant in the late 90s, which does have cadence.
C
Okay. That is. Or this is what democracy looks like.
A
United will never be divided. Better than will never be defeated. But they dropped that and they changed to defeat it. And it's.
C
I feel like We Save Us is just, I mean, to me that just smacks a full on narcissism.
A
Yeah. It's sort of like a Simpsons level joke about a campaign.
B
Yeah.
A
You know, which reminds me, there was this thing.
C
Can't parody it, Right.
A
Karen Bass has. Part of her campaign is like, don't change course. Right. And it reminds. Yeah. It's so, so bad. And in Wag the Dog, remember that movie partially written by David Mamet? Great movie. So the campaign. Oh, he's amazing. The campaign slogan of the guy who essentially, you know, sexually assaults a Firefly girl, his campaign slogan is never change horses in midstream. And Karen Bass is don't change course. And I'm like, what? You're in Hollywood, like, how do you not realize how stupid you're being?
D
There's a problem with progressivism is progress is. If you're progressing towards the edge of a cliff, you need to change course, you need to regress, you need to stop progressing. So people that are obsessed with progress at any cost will find themselves walking into traps. That's why I disagree with Karen Bass. Momentum.
A
I disagree with her also. I mean, part of the progressive thing is they think is the people who are progressives believes that an expert class should decide what happens to the rest of us. And that's one thing that I appreciate much more about, you know, populism and even federalism, is it. It's not about, like, experts ruling over us. It's about the government being accountable to the people, which I think is much more important.
C
We save us.
E
Terrible, terrible branding.
D
That expert class is like, AI is like given over control and authority to the machine, controlled by technocrats.
A
Like, now it's AI.
C
Well, one. One piece that I do want to say on this, just speaking as a Pennsylvania and also looking at how things are going in pa. When you see the Democrat Party going so far to the left in terms of this, that's going to create a real political situation for John Fetterman. So.
D
So what do you think?
A
Yeah, I think the Democrats are already
C
so out of step with his party that this. If this is the way the Democrat Party and the Democrat constituency is going in Philadelphia, then you are going to see that across the state. And he's got a race coming up in 2028. He's up again. And it. It's because he's been very pro Israel. He's been saying very good things about President Trump from time and time again. This is quite the opposite of what you're seeing Democrat primary voters in Pennsylvania wanting. Keep in mind, Philadelphia is the largest pool of Democrat primary voters and Democrat voters in all of Pennsylvania. So he's going to be vulnerable to a primary.
D
I've heard that his Party doesn't want him. And I don't know how much of
C
his propaganda or not. Well, and then the flip side of that is how much does he want his party then? I know, because if he wants to stay in the Senate, what would you. You would, what you would then do is look at potentially going independent or switching parties.
A
Yeah. And you've already heard also you've heard Obama and so many others saying that Mamdani is the face of the Democratic Party and is the future of the Democrat Party. And so you see that all over the place. Right. You have Michelle Wu in Boston, you have mom Donnie, of course in New York. You've got these little candidates popping up all over the place. What's her name? Katie Wilson in Seattle, Karen Bass in Los Angeles. You have people who are not just, you know, dabbling, putting their toes in the waters of socialism, but people who proclaim that that's their ideology and their mission and what that looks like in practice. Mom Donnie put out a little infographic earlier complaining about how people on food stamps are going to required to work, saying that will lead to starvation, which obviously doesn't make any sense. But what he's saying is he wants people to. And he's saying if the government really wanted people to have jobs, then they would provide more jobs, more government jobs for people to have. So he. This is the vision of Mamdani. And if Obama is to be believed, this is the vision of the Democrat Party. It is that Americans will work for the government, buy their groceries at government stores, have their children raised by the government. Right. What's, what's 2k and 3k? It's that your kid is in a government operated educational facility from the time they're two years old. That's way too like that's crazy town. Right. And also that you will rent all your housing from the government. Their idea is to have more government run housing all over the place. And that makes the American subservient to government, which is exactly the opposite of our founding documents.
D
What I like about it and what didn't exist when the founders were our mega corporations that are international. The blackrock headquarters in wherever. Switzerland. All these crazy big. Not saying blackrocks in Switzerland, but so I understand the socialists movement in that they want to disempower the corporations. I get that.
C
I do too.
D
I don't want to live under a corporatocracy. I don't want a corporate governance system run by esg. Or if you say the wrong word, you get your bank, bank account Taken away. But seizing it and giving it to a government. It's an extreme counter position. We've seen what happens when the government centralizes control.
A
Well, that's not good. It's also, you know, also what you're saying about the corporations. It's not great. Look at Meta today, right? Meta laid off 8,8000 people. And this is just one of many rolling layoffs that they've had. And they reassigned. They're reassigning 7,000 of their staffers to essentially train AI, right. And the way they're going to train AI is they're going to do their jobs and AI is going to monitor every keystroke and every mouse stroke that these employees do.
D
It might come to a point where we, I say we, but people on the right out decide to ally with the people on the left, the socialists and the popular, whatever you want to call them, the capitalists ally to stop these vacant corporations. These AI run machines that are trying to own land and rent it to you. And there'll be like a mass upheaval and seizure.
C
That's a populace.
A
Yeah.
C
So what you're talking about are, is left wing populism and right wing populism. And you, you certainly have both going on right now. You see this in the backlash to the data centers where everyone's backlashing. Broadly, broadly speaking, it. The people on the left and the right are like, screw them, data centers. Because people don't like the tech bros. But also people feel it as, as like the machines taking over and not just taking over jobs in the economy, but taking over our towns. I do want to add, by the way, another piece on the Pennsylvania politics before we go too far down the other road. Is that Josh Pirro? So the governor of Pennsylvania, he wants to run for president. He certainly wants to run in 2028. But again, another very pro Israel Democrat. He himself of course, is Jewish. That's going to be a problem in the Democrat primary when that was already a problem. And that's. And we, we've. We were told. All right. In Kamala's book, she wrote that one of the reasons she didn't choose him was because she didn't think that they could drive out enough votes. She thought it would be a problem for the ticket.
A
Yeah. She thought having Jewish. She had two walts. Remember Mayonnaise?
D
What a forgettable character.
A
Very forgettable.
D
Like to meet him.
A
Yeah, I, I have seen. No need.
C
We know you know about Tim Walls. Here's my, here's my thought with Tim Walls. Is that They're. What the Democrats are doing is that they. They sort of know that they need white men to start voting for them again. And so what they're doing is they're trying to find white men that kind of fit the bill, but they always kind of get it wrong. And so Tim Walls was like the first, like, like, laboratory Igor prototype that kind of got rolled off. And they're like, here you go. Here's a white man. Look at him. He's. Can load a shotgun, but he couldn't load a shotgun. And it was. It was just really bad. And then they got James Talrico down in Texas, who's just awful.
A
Shapeshifter.
C
Totally shapeshifter. Ridiculous. People like people to judge. He's a white man. Gavin Newsom.
A
He's pooping.
C
He's normal, just like you call him poop. Buttigieg.
A
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C
And, well, Graham Planter is the latest in Maine, where, you know, I would say he at least comes off as more authentic as a, you know, as a. As a, you know, a veteran. And he is a combat veteran, but. But also, he's like. He's also got that really narcissistic tendency that a lot of these Democrats do. Going back to the we save us where he. I guess it came out that he was putting down other Veterans and attacking people who died and things like that.
A
Talking about cheating on his wife in Thailand and so.
C
And these. Well, again, veteran. I say as a veteran, and I, I think those are much better lines of attack than like going after him for a tattoo because I think, I think that was just, I think that was just foolhardy of the Republicans to do. It's a tattoo of people.
D
Badass tattoo. I know. Nazi thing.
C
People in Maine. People in Maine have tattoos.
D
Well, it didn't used to be a Nazi thing. The Nazis co opted the thing from the Prussians.
C
There's a lot of working class voters in Maine. They have tattoos. It's going to be some. They're going to feel like they're getting attacked because a guy had a skull and crossbones tattoo.
D
So who do you guys think is the Democratic front runner? I know it's early for 2008 presidential run because you mentioned Josh Shapiro. I thought it was Gavin Newsom.
C
Hands down, straight up Newsom Shapiro. I believe Kamala Harris is still running very high in the polls, though, that she wants to run again. And. Yeah, and let's not forget, let's not forget Hillary Clinton.
A
What about aoc, who wants to run again? AOC either wants, wants Chuck Schumer's sheet seat or she wants to be president.
C
Potentially.
A
Yeah.
D
How old is Hillary Clinton now?
C
Like old.
D
Very old. I guess 86 is my guess.
A
I don't think she's too old.
C
She's not 88.
D
She's younger than Bill.
C
70s.
D
Okay.
C
Yeah, he's in 70s.
D
She was a hot young thing when Bill swooped her up. Or were they the same age? Because I thought Bill was up in his 90s.
A
No.
D
That old.
C
No, he just looks like he is because he's been married to Hillary for so long.
A
And also he doesn't have a portrait in the closet, so he just looks like that.
D
Now we, you know, we brought up this story about all these Trump candidates that won, basically a couple of AOC candidates.
C
But people are in the chat are all saying that I've got. Are all saying that Jack's trying to cover up for one of his tattoos. I have no ink. I have no ink neither, man.
A
I also have no tattoos.
D
Unless you got to have like a secret conversation like thieves can't, like if it's illegal to say a certain thing. And you have like a symbol of like the Jew, the, the Christian fish. Jesus fish. Yeah, stuff like that. I don't really get into that, but I understand it is like coded language. So Trump's guys, a bunch of Trump's people got in as well, and that means Massey's out. How do you guys feel about foreign money or at least money coming from out of state to fund candidates?
C
Well, money from out of state is. Is a perennial issue in competitive races. People on both sides of the aisle have done it for years. I do think the influence of foreign money though, is something that. That is something that should be talked about. That I think a lot of people have, you know, tried to deny that's going on. And I don't care whether it's China or one of the Gulf nations or Israel or Paraguay. Right. We should be able to talk about this and we shouldn't be censoring anyone just because they have an interest in that.
B
Do we know how much money it was that was coming in from foreign interests in that election?
E
Almost 100% of the 32 million.
D
It was foreign. How do you know that?
A
You mean out of state?
E
No, no, like for, well, foreign interest groups. Yeah.
A
Really interesting.
D
And then so it's like aipac, for instance.
C
Well, so they. To push back on. That is they would say it's American citizens who tend who vote a certain way, not foreign in terms of actually being being generated from a foreign country.
D
And like if a guy takes a contract from foreign country, earns the money and then gives that to a campaign, it's technically domestic money.
C
But like, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of that though.
D
There's.
C
I mean it. No, as someone who's worked in elections and worked campaigns that, you know, you, once you start ask actually asking these questions, it. You realize how complicated it becomes very quickly.
D
Yeah. And so, okay, I bring it up because at face value, get rid of foreign money. No, no, no foreign money campaigns. But dude, I can make an Internet video and tell the world to vote for a guy in Zimbabwe. And like you can't. I don't even have to put a dollar down to do that except to pay my Internet bill. And what you're buying with money is influence. You're buying TV time, you're buying billboards. So you don't need that with YouTube or with rumble. You just make the video. People do what you say if you're charismatic enough and direct enough. So like, how can you stop foreign influence on campaigns where the. So government where it's all like globalized now with Internet? I just don't see it. I mean, I feel like it's like,
C
how do you stop it? Well, I think transparency is the best sunlight I mean, like Chris, you were just saying, you know, this is trackable. It's something that, you know, that people can see, hey, this much money came from groups that were tied to this thing, whether it's AIPAC or others, and that it, I think it tends to be something that's, you know, something that younger voters are actually better at tracking just because they're on the Internet more, they're using the Internet more. And so this was a huge thing that you saw in that primary, for example, was that when you're looking at some of the exit polls on this, so on Massey, because I saw a lot of people saying, oh, you know, Massey totally flamed out, et cetera, et cetera. And to be clear, by the way, President Trump clearly showed that he is in command of the Republican Party solidly and solely. And that election, plus Louisiana, plus Texas, plus the Indiana a couple of weeks ago, just shows it in spades. But what Massie showed was that he was able to pick up every under 65 demographic in the district. Now, they didn't vote as much as the over 65. So he lost. But the question is, is there something perhaps coming five, ten years from now that will be very different than what the current voting demographics are?
D
Probably, probably. I mean, it's going to be a very different world in seven years when, when things have become so heavily automated. There's going to be a huge loss of jobs, a mass unemployment strike, populism is going to rage. You're gonna get people like Thomas Massie. But I do think he's missed. Tom, I think you're misdirected on the Epstein stuff. I think that the Trump admins using it as kompromat on the deep state, which is why they fervently wanted you to shut up about it and pay people to shut you up about it basically or get you out of office. Beyond the Epstein stuff. And it's a nice feel good story. I think you got the cojones for the job. I think you should run for president in 28 and just jam up the Republican Party and let the chips fall.
C
Oh God, yeah.
D
May J.D. vance earn it. Make him show why he's a good president.
C
And so by the way, and by the way, I've heard that and Justin Amash is, you know, someone who's been sort of like, you know, his name is out there for perhaps libertarian candidates. I would also just go back to the. This specific race here is caution everyone to from reading too much into it as well because keep in mind this was a closed Republican primary. And in a closed Republican primary, that means that independent voters don't have a say. And now I'm personally of the. Of the opinion that primaries should be closed because if you're running as a Republican candidate, you should only face Republican voters. But what I'm saying is, from a political analytic standpoint, that you don't want to read so much into a closed primary that extrapolates to a general election, because in a general election, you will get Democrats, you will get independents, you will get crossover voters, you'll get at. You'll get everything right. And so this is a select pool of people that, yes, President Trump by far is in control of his base there. But there's. There's some information, I would say, under the hood that, you know, that gives me pause and says, I think there's something a little more nuanced going on.
D
What do you mean? In what way?
C
Well, I was talking about the younger. The younger demographics, for example.
D
Oh, dude. And the fastest superstar.
C
The younger. The younger demographics of Republicans. But then keep in mind that independents couldn't vote in a primary.
B
Yeah.
D
And they love Thomas Massie. Independents, ex Libertarians, I'm sure a lot of Democrats just like that. He's trying to stick it. What they see is him trying to stick it to Trump. Now, okay, final question on foreign.
C
Which, by the way, doesn't surprise me at all that, that Trump would be against Massie for. Because of. Of the Democrats clearly wanting to use him as the face of the resistance for opposition to the, you know, the bbb, the big beautiful bill. And just in general, for. For not being strong on the border, not being strong on deportations, which is his signature issue. Like, literally his signature.
D
Funny thing is, if it was a Democrat, he'd be just as jamming them up like Biden. He was jamming Biden up just as hard as he was jamming Trump up, because that's his job. He's Dr. No. 2.0. He's Ron Paul all over again, kind of. He's a different dude. Okay, so final question about foreign money and influence in campaigns. If a dude in, like, Mauritania made it, made Internet videos telling you to vote for Thomas Massie or whoever, and he's getting a million hits per video. And YouTube is allowing the videos to be on the algorithm to show up, should we make it illegal? Should. Should we force these corporations to ban foreign people's accounts that are trying to manipulate American politics?
A
Well, people try to all the time.
B
Yeah. And I guess you have to draw the line somewhere because at least with, you know, you have an influencer who has a big following and they got. Get a lot of views, but you may have influencers on the other side that kind of balance that out. The thing with foreign money is, is, I mean, you can just run ads on Meta. Yeah. I mean you, you don't have to really be that persuasive. It's really just poor money into the, into the machine. And all of a sudden you have hit piece ads out against your whole opposition. You're everywhere. So people see who you are and there's something about that that's just, that's just unfair. Especially when it's to the realm of like $30 million and the other side isn't getting anything.
D
So with the Massey thing, that was the. Someone told me it was the highest grossing primary ever in the history of the United States.
A
It was like 32, would you say what I heard? 32? Yeah.
B
So I mean, what is it about him that made him like so hated as to get that much money come in?
A
Right.
D
Definitely did the COVID like, he was very, very much. He didn't like the big beautiful bill that kind of put him on Trump's crap list. He'd done some things like during. I think during. He wanted people to come in and vote in Congress. He kind of pissed off his compatriots in Congress too. But I think it's the Epstein stuff. I don't know for sure, but I think the Trump admin, they were like, yeah, we're going to reveal the Epstein list. They got it. And they're like, all these bankers are on it. All these people that are trying to control our government are on it. Well, let's just tell them that we're going to release it unless they do what we say. Unless we can break up usaid.
B
Ah.
D
And. And then Thomas Massey doesn't know that. So he's like, we got to do the right thing, which is reveal the info to save these girls and to bring them justice. It's another level.
A
A lot of information when you can't. They don't have. I think they don't have the information that everyone wants.
C
Yeah. And they should release whatever they have. And, and more. Right. But I would just add, I would just also add that, I mean, you can't, you can't take Israel out of the conversation when you're talking about Mass. That clearly Israel played a huge, huge role here.
E
Yeah.
C
The issue of Israel.
E
He refused to have an AIPAC babysitter.
D
He doesn't have any APAC funding. So you think the Israelis wanted him out of office?
E
Oh, certainly.
D
For what purpose? Because of the Epstein stuff.
E
Look, Massie is a dissident who refuses to play political gamesmanship. You know, or maybe he's playing a different kind of gamesmanship, but, I mean, he's not playing the kind of establishment gamesmanship that both. Both warring teams want him to play. And that's very frustrating for the establishment, including Trump.
D
Oh, so you think. Okay, question. Do you think it's better to have someone that opposes you or someone that is just refuses to play at all in office?
E
Well, as an anarchist, I like. I like the latter option.
D
Obviously, he didn't take sides.
E
Exactly. I respect that enormously. Yeah.
D
I mean, that's dangerous to a war machine that's trying to, like, sneakily take over. Oh, we got to get this guy back on. I know. He was so busy with his campaign. He's free now to do whatever he wants. Was he going to run for governor?
C
I don't know. I mean, I think.
E
I don't know.
C
I think being a. I think being an elected official or being in government is always more powerful than, you know, just being on the outside. If you, if you have the ability to. I mean, Kentucky four, Right. Who was the Kentucky four congressman before Thomas Massie? Right. Clearly the guy's very talented. Clearly he's, you know, able to command a mass audience. But at the same time, you know, I wouldn't want to trade a government because he's there, what, 12, 14 years, I think, six, seven terms. And so you wouldn't want to trade that political power in just for a, you know, a microphone.
A
Yeah, you wouldn't want to. And that's always.
C
Because clearly it's clearly stepped down. I mean, he obviously raised a lot of money to win. So, I mean, he, He. He lost big. There's no question.
D
Bongino, his. Because he was already super famous in the private sector, he doesn't really fit into that calculation when he left.
A
Let's sort of. I think it's totally different because Bongino was like a. He was like a FBI staffer. I mean, high up. But I think, yeah, I mean, if you're running for office, it's because you really want to represent your constituency or you want power. But that's something I always think about when people vote out an incumbent who has a lot of power in, you know, the legislature is, you wonder, like, is my district not going to be heard as much because we're getting rid of this guy, you know?
C
Yeah.
A
Like, if the people in Brooklyn got rid of Hakeem Jeffries, who is awful, would they have as much power? Would their district have as much power? Absolutely not.
C
That's actually one of the big, big arguments for incumbency is that so typically, you know, whoever the, the House leader is or the speaker is that their district just gets everything basically.
A
Yeah, exactly. You get a lot of stuff. So you think about that because you're
C
head of the table.
A
Yeah. You're at the top. You get the drumsticks, you know, do they.
D
Okay, you think they think that deep constituents, they're like, let's just get this guy because he's been in 20 years, he knows people well.
B
It's.
C
I don't think it's necessarily that they're, that they're thinking about that way. It's just that, hey, you know, it's just sort of this idea of like, Congress sucks except for my guy.
A
But I think that's true of everybody. Right. Like, I always think, I don't think very highly of Congress, but I do think my congressman is a pretty good guy and I think he's trying his hardest and doing a good job.
D
Yeah.
C
See what I mean, too, you know,
A
but like, I think everybody else is.
C
But no, your congressman is. Because you have Riley Moore. Yeah, you have Riley Moore. No, he is legitimately great primary, Riley Moore. It's legitimately great. That's, that's the different. That's not the dynamic I'm talking about.
A
No, but there. I mean, that is true too. I mean, when I was.
C
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much.
D
Please, for the love of everything good
C
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C
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A
Yeah. Oh, yeah, Constituent services. Well, constituent services is a big part of what congressmen are supposed to be doing, you know, is like making sure that there's rental assistance for their. Now I'm thinking like Brooklyn Constituent Services, but, you know, making sure there's rental assistance, making sure there was always stories about the. Who is that guy who represented Harlem for a really long time, and then it turned out that he had two rent control apartments that he was using for his office against the law. What was that guy's name? But he, you could call that guy if you were in his district and you could be like, my mom needs a place in a nursing home. I can't find anything. And she'd be, you know, he'd have her set up within the week.
C
No, I think, and I think a big part of it, too, is if you're, if you're going to nationalize and internationalize an election, you know, the question is, do you want someone who, you know, in this case, do you want someone's pro Israel, anti Israel? Right. So you've got to go into a district that, you know, depending who they, depending on where it is, Israel may not be 1, 2, or 3 on anyone's priority list. And yet you're getting all of these ads. Now, to be fair, I don't believe, and I, I didn't go in watching many of the attack ads or pro or anti ads. I don't believe Israel came up as a, as a flashpoint in the actual, like, messaging.
E
Right. I didn't see the ads either, but I'm not sure. I would imagine that it probably didn't play a big.
C
Yeah, yeah. So I don't think this was something that people, it was more like, who does Trump support? Who's Trump not support? You know, who does he fight? And Massie, by the way, and this is something that I think a lot of people need to point out, too, is that, and I don't know if his supporters will appreciate this, is that in a lot of his messaging, including a text message that he put out, he was showing that he was closer to Trump. So he was trying to counter that with, like, old endorsements or old videos of him closer to Trump because that's where the voters are.
D
Yeah. Trump wanted him to pull that down. Like, that's not my endorsement.
C
So he sent his campaign, sent out a text message to everyone with A. An endorsement of Thomas Massie by Donald Trump, but didn't mention that it was from 2022.
D
Misleading. Ooh, brutal. Dirty man.
C
It's. Welcome to politics, brother.
D
When you mentioned anti Israel, I'm like. Like, you gotta be like. I'm not saying you, but one has to be very clear what that means. Aspects.
C
Like, you can be a. I mean, he said it. He said it in his. In his speech. You know, he made the crack about, you know, he said his opponent was in Tel Aviv.
D
Yeah. So, like, dissing on the Israeli military's strategy doesn't necessarily make you anti Israel. Like, sometimes I'll crap on the tactics of the American government. I'm very pro American government. I want them to have better tactics. So I'll point out when they're doing bad and encourage them to do better. That doesn't. You say something?
A
I looked like I was going to say something.
D
Took a deep breath. I was ready for it.
A
But is it? Yeah. With the Massey anti Israel stuff, a lot of the money that was coming in was probably because he was anti Israel. Right. So that was probably a lot of it. But his voters. Do voters really care that much about Israel? That's, I guess, what I'm curious about.
D
I don't know.
A
It's a bubble as a voter, like, when I look around at my representatives, like, Israel is not really the top of my list of anything to care about.
D
Like, they started the Iranian war, you could argue, and then they bombed. Or they were like, we're going. And Trump's like, well, we weren't ready for it, but, okay, now we'll send our US Military assets because the Israelis sparked a fireball. So I was pissed about that. It's like, who's the client state here? That's something Bill Clinton would ask.
A
Yeah. Yeah. That was a weird reveal.
D
Yeah. However, I don't know if most people know about that stuff.
A
That was like, one quip from Marco Rubio that everyone then spent a lot of time trying to walk back. Right.
D
What was that?
A
That Israel was the catalyst for the Iran.
D
Yeah. That's out of the box now. At least I know. I can't unknow it.
B
The narrative I hear about Israel is. Is just that it's. It's really frustrating to see the government focus on that issue when, you know, you know, there's so many people, you know, there's inflation going on, AI is taking our jobs, all of these things. And it's like, why are we focused on these problems? Why aren't we focused on These problems at home. Why do I have to, you know, turn on the news and hear about the billions of dollars and the Navy going around the world? What about me? And, and my concerns? And that's. And, and so I think that's the, that's the narrative that I see about it. It's like, hey, focus on us and our problems.
D
Like the opiate crisis and like psychosis induced marijuana. Like, this is your specialty.
C
Up, up, up. Wait, wait. He just said it. He just. You just gave me. You just gave me. You just gave me my segue into our next story.
A
Really well done.
C
Because. Because, not because. Are we going to be flying now? We already know there's crazy people in the skies. Secretary Duffy is working very hard to get them out of there. He did. He got rid of Spirit Airlines. So congratulations on that. Joking, joking, but, you know, kind of. And TSA is now starting to let passengers bring their weed on planes. However, there is a catch. Let's find out what that is. The friendly skies just got a little bit friendlier. TSA is now allowing medical marijuana to be taken on commercial flights. Change significant because although cannabis for medical use is now legal in 40 states and D.C. remains outlawed at the federal level, which of course has jurisdictional control over the nation's airports. This comes after the Trump admin signed an order reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule 3 drug, effectively acknowledging that it has medicinal uses and allowing medical research at a federal level. Dr. Prescribed weed is now formally allowed on flights both within customers checked and carry on baggage, according to the TSA website, which it's more concerned with thwarting potential safety threats than narcing on passengers stashes. Okay, what is the. They're not going to be searching for illegal drugs, but if any illegal substance or criminal activity is found, they'll refer it to law enforcement. Where's the big catch? I'm not, I'm. I'm missing the big. What's the. What's the big catch? Weed.
A
But don't bring your heroin or something. I don't know.
E
Feel like.
B
I mean, it just seems to be part of a general trend of just like, loosening up the way we look at cannabis. Right. You know, you know, it's legal in 40 states. You can now bring it on the plane. We're going to reclassify it as Schedule 3, and it's A. It's a bad thing. I mean, this isn't necessarily bad. I mean, someone bringing their, you know, prescription pot on a plane. But the general trend in the country towards Normalizing the use of cannabis now is very dangerous. I mean, yeah, we've got dangerous, we've
D
got cannabinoids in our brain. Like our, I think the hominid had evolved alongside eating this stuff and maybe smoking. But you were mentioning earlier that like, they basically Frankenstein this stuff in labs to have like excessive amounts of THC driving children's psychosis and even adult psychosis.
B
Yes, Ian. Like, and so the, we have, yeah, we have cannabidiol, you know, receptors in the brain. You know, it is, it is a natural thing. But from 2010 onwards, like the concentration in THC just hockey sticked. I mean we went from sub 10% cannabis strains and you know, back in the 70s it was 3% to now. You go into a dispensary, it's like 25, you know, and even higher. I mean if you're doing wax dabs or things like that, it's like 90% gummies as well and. Okay, so why is this important? Well, you know, when we, you know, a study was done about 10 years ago, it was in the UK and they looked at, you know, what is the conversion to schizophrenia in two groups of people who were smoking cannabis products. You had one group who was smoking, you know, 5% concentration, which is really the stuff that most people smoked in like the 90s, early 2000s. And then they had another group that was on 15%. They looked at the rate of conversion to schizophrenia, it was five times higher in the group that was on the 15%. And so a couple other stats here that are important is background rate of conversion is 1%. The group that was smoking 5% stuff every day, no difference, you know, no difference compared to the background rate. But once you start going up to that 15 range and even higher, it goes up by a factor of five.
D
This is because it's the, the acute dose basically is, is breaking or causing, I don't know if you know, the science behind what it's doing specifically.
B
I, I think it's causing brain damage is, is what's happening. I think the, the cannabis that people are smoking now is neurotoxic and because what they're seeing is if you're smoking this high concentration thc, you, you have a fivefold higher risk of getting diagnosed with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is not just like a drug induced psychosis where you smoke and then, hey, a couple days later when you sober up, it goes away.
A
These sticks, the.
B
Yeah, yeah.
A
Schizophrenia sticks. Yeah, people bad weed.
B
Yeah, people have enduring psychosis. And you know, I, and so I see this in my practice, this is why I talk about it so much. Because, you know, what happens is you get a kid, they go away to college, they join a frat, and then they start smoking weed with their buddies. And, and for whatever genetic reason, they're just more susceptible to this. And then they have a psychotic episode. This isn't a kid who looked like he was going to develop schizophrenia. He didn't, you know, previously high functioning, social, doing well in school. But then he has a psychotic episode and he's just not the same afterwards. You know, there's just kind of these ongoing delusions that happen afterwards. And the only way that I can understand it is that the drug actually damaged his brain. And there's a whole lady. I mean, there's a lady on YouTube, her name's Aubrey Adams, she does a channel called Every Brain Matters, where they interview young men and their parents who have gone through drug induced psychosis. And if you listen to these stories, like, like when you have a drug induced psychosis from cannabis, these kids, it takes them like a year or sometimes two years to get better.
A
What's it really just to get their thing back together. Just like get their life back together.
B
Yeah, I mean, it's. It's almost like you've had like a toxic reaction. Like they might have a really bad psychosis at first, but then for the rest of the years they're kind of going in and out of paranoia and delusions. They have mood instability, their mood swings, things like that. And so it's taking them a long time to normalize. And what's happening in the meantime is they're getting diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar and getting jacked up on all these antipsychotic drugs. And, and that's essentially when they come to me is like years later, they've sobered up, they come off and they're like, why am I on a drug for schizophrenia? And I'm like, yeah, good question.
D
Does it have something to do with stripping the CBD out of the marijuana as well? The cannabis?
B
I mean, the concentration's just crazy. I mean, like, like I get so much pushback when I talk about this because there's like some really die hard stoners out there and they're just like, this is some reefer madness bull from like the 70s. Like, we've gone through this before. It's really not that big of a deal, but it's like, no, I mean, the stuff we're smoking now is, you know, it's like Frankenstein weed. You know, it's. It's hybridized. You know, they've multiple generations of picking the strongest strains. You grow it hydroponically, you know, filled with fertilizers. And then you can even take it a step further where you're getting concentrates and dabs and people are vaping it and they're trying to pretend that it's the same thing that we smoked back in the 90s or in the 70s or, you know, before 2010 when the technology just.
C
Oh, what do you mean we?
B
I, I did, I did partake in. I did partake back in the day. Oh, yeah.
E
I mean, I, I know this is anecdotal, so for whatever it's worth, I used to love smoking weed, but it was the weed that was grown on farms from people that I knew, you know, whether it was.
B
Did it have the seeds?
A
Yeah, seeds and stems. Yeah.
E
I mean, it was from farmers, you know, Jamaicans and Yonkers or farms and Long Island.
C
It doesn't have seeds and stems anymore.
A
It doesn't.
E
It's been engineered to, you know, used to love smoking weed, smoke blunts. And when I moved to California, and I guess it was 2018, I was like, this is paradise. This is great. I get all the weed I want. I stopped smoking in two weeks because I. No, no. I had had acid trips that were more genteel than the weed that I was smoking. I'm not even joking. This is serious. Like, I mean, long time weed smoker. California done. Not for me.
D
What year, what year was that?
E
That was 2019. 2018. 2019. When I was in California. Yeah.
C
So that fits into what you're saying?
B
Oh, 100%. I actually, I had the exact same experience. I came to the US back in 20, I think it was. Yeah, it was. It was probably around 2013. I was doing an exchange down at LSU and it's like, like, this is exciting. We're in the U.S. you know, California's legalized weeds. A friend of mine, he goes into a dispensary. I think he pays. Oh, no, he goes to see a doctor. Yeah. Because it, because it was medically legal then. And. And it was just like the biggest fake experience ever. You're just on the Venice boardwalk. You walk into, like a shady room. You give a guy 150 and you walk out with a card. And we said, okay, this is funny. You go into the dispensary. We smoked one joint. We missed our flight that day. We were so, We. We were so wrecked. Yeah, it's bad. We. We ended up just like, somehow making it to a hotel. Because what. The experience that we had had smoking, essentially the ditch weed, you know, back. Back in Australia, I mean, it was. It was already, like back then. It was just. It was so crazy strong. It pretty much knocked us out. And I've even seen. What is it? Pete Davidson has been online recently talking about, like, how he's kind of turning away from the modern weed. And he was like a. I don't know, like a stoner icon for years.
A
He's also removed most of his. Like, most of his tattoos.
B
Yeah, yeah.
D
Cleaning it up. I'm. This is terrible. You know what bothers me is that marijuana. Cannabis, as far as I know, has a lot of healing properties in its natural base state. You know, you have the brain chemistry for it. The cannabinoids are ready for it, but they're calling it the same name, but it's a different substance now, and it's destroying people. It was wrecking me. I was using it for, like, four months straight because we were using it to heal. My buddy. I mentioned this before my buddies got into a car accident, and so instead of using opiates, he decided his brain injury, he's like, I would rather use cannabis to help. And it did. And we smoked it together. We played guitar. We were regrowing brain cells. And then after. After a lot of that healing happened, I just kept on that path. I was traumatized. I kept doing. Driving me insane, dude. Insane.
E
Literally.
D
My sensory perception overload was impalpable. I don't know how to describe the pain and the disassociative suffering that I was going through. It's anecdotal. Anecdotal. I've been smoking it for 25 years.
C
So. Dr. Joseph, then you know what other types so we're talking about. TSA is letting it on planes. I just. You know, it's. It's decriminalized in Philly. It's decriminalized in Pittsburgh. It's not. It's in New York, too, so. So it's not legal.
A
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C
But it's, it's decriminalized, meaning it's a citation which you like, you're probably not going to get picked up. I smell it everywhere. I smell it literally everywhere. And it's disgusting. I smell it in parks and it's like, Tanya, my wife, Tanya, Tay, she doesn't want to take the kids there when she's smelling this, like all over the place. Supposed to be illegal in parks, but they do it anyway. What other types of social outcomes are we seeing from this in terms of crime, in terms of perhaps, unfortunately, psychosis induced, perhaps violence?
B
I mean, I mean, the main thing that people kept, kept on saying, oh, this is gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna legalize cannabis and it's going to help these minority communities where, you know, where the use, you know, there's, there's not going to be as much dealing with it. Less people are going to be going to jail. And none of that happened. You know, it was the worst thing for the minority communities because cannabis rates went up. And that does not help people. You know, when you're, you know, when a larger proportion of your community is getting high. I mean, there's the. And so I want to say this. Here we are actually, I think we're standing on a precipice of this problem getting a lot worse. Because what was buried in that story there was about the. How it was reclassified to Schedule 3 from Schedule 1. And so what that means is there's essentially tax breaks now for these cannabis companies. And so let me kind of draw a line. So, so now these companies are going to have tax breaks, which means they're going to be able to spend more money on marketing. And they. And big. This is a massive billion dollar industry now that's really kind of pushing these narratives like it's natural, it's safe, it's not a big deal. And I'm not going to sit here and say, hey, you know, we should take the weed away from the guy who has glaucoma or the weed away from someone who has, you know, end stage cancer and they just want something for pain. There's clearly some use case scenarios in there, but this machine, this thing has just expanded so large now where these small use case scenarios is just like, you know, it's normal, it's natural. People smoke weed every night to go to sleep. You know, people smoke weed whenever they're having problems with anxiety and they're Smoking this, this crazy stuff stuff, it's going to lead to higher car, you know, car accidents and things like that. I don't want to live in a place where I have to worry about people being high on the road. I mean, to me, that's terrifying. You know, if we have.
A
Can't test for that either. Yeah, yeah, I can't test for the.
B
It's no breathalyzer.
A
No breathalyzer for weed. Yeah.
D
Do you think it'll get to the point where we start delineating between, like, old school weed, like 5% THC, and this is like, this is the stuff that might help you go to sleep and then everything else?
B
Yeah, Ian, I actually think that's what we should do. I mean, if we want to let the genie out of the bottle and say, hey, you know, you know, responsible adults should be able to get this stuff. There needs to be a big time education campaign on how bad the strongest stuff is. And there needs to be requirements that in the dispensaries, it's like, hey, you need to stock sub 10%, you know, concentrations from like, you know, back in the day for people who, who want to use that product but not put themselves at that increased risk of psychosis and all of those problems.
C
I mean, there's. There's been. What's interesting about substances, right, is that, you know, we've had times in this country where, you know, you could. Everyone talks about 100 years ago, you could order, you know, cocaine and heroin from the Sears catalog or Coca Cola used to actually have cocaine in it. But at the same time, you've also got things right now like fentanyl. Like, you can go to any hospital and they have fentanyl as a painkiller. But that doesn't mean. I'm going to go pick up some at the pharmacy.
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's.
A
I got a press with today about how there's fentanyl, like how some of these, like, marijuana vapes are being spiked with fentanyl.
D
Oh, gross. Wow. Which is like, oils are so unknown.
A
Really bad.
C
No, I'm sure, because then. Then you get a faster high. Man.
D
I was just watching this clip on
A
Instagram, but a totally different kind of thing, right?
C
There's also. There's like the synthetics too, which also run into K2, but there's all these different blends and who knows what's in there.
D
Spice garbage from 2010.
B
Daniel Neely or Jordan Neely. There was that.
C
There was that on the subway. Jordan Neely.
B
Yeah, there was that thing in the subway. And this was where he was choked. Yeah, yeah. Daniel Penny choked him out.
D
Right.
B
K2 Spice that. That's what that was. He was having a psychotic episode, like on the tr.
C
On.
B
On the train. Because he was smoking synthetics. That's exactly what we're talking about. Yeah, that's what it was. Like, you. You look into it and they're like, yeah, he was. He was. I think he was living in like a homeless shelter or something like that at the time. And they talked to one of his bunk mates over there, and they were just like. He was just constantly smoking K2. And so he goes and has a psychotic episode and ends up dying because he causes a public disturbance on the train. And Daniel Penny obviously jumped in and, you know, choked him out and he. And he. And. And he died. But that's like. You'll start to see, you know, a lot of these random.
C
Do you think, by the way. And. And. And now we're getting into trouble. But do you think that him being on the K2 could have contributed to his death as well? Yeah, not. Not just in terms of behavior, but also just in terms of respiration and his heart rate and all of that.
B
Yeah, yeah. I. When people go into psychosis from cannabis, I think they're having. They're experiencing brain damage because it endures afterwards. And so what. What are the things in the brain? You know, cardio, respiratory centers, you know, all of that. And so I think it's. Yeah, definitely a possibility. I mean, he was. He was really. I mean, he was. He was.
C
Because the way it works is that it's already blocking. You're blocking your neural receptors. It's already block. Air to the brain. Right. Oxygen to the brain is kind of the whole. The whole point of it. So then you're doing that then Jordan Elliot or, excuse me, Daniel Penny, which I don't think anyone actually thinks that he wanted.
B
No.
C
You know, for him to die because. But, you know, it probably didn't realize that he was in this. In this, you know, K2 state, the psychotic state.
B
Yeah.
A
So scary, too, when people.
C
Which. Yeah. Which kind of gets into George Floyd with fentanyl, you were saying?
A
No, it's just freaky when, like when people are freaking out on the subway. It's terrifying.
D
Freaking out alone in my room is terrifying.
A
Trapped in a tin can with, like, a nut job. I one time had this guy who was clearly tripping out on something and he had a weird clown face on and he kept walking up to everybody like this. And then, like, Looking right in here, face like this. And it would turn into that situation where like the whole normal population of the train car was crowded down one end while this guy was like doing his weird creepy kilan thing at the other end.
C
Yeah. What's amazing is that when you go to other parts of the world, Japan, Eastern Europe, this doesn't happen. You keep saying, you find out that we actually don't have to live like this.
E
You keep saying this doesn't happen other places.
C
And you know, once, once you realize it, you know, what Bukele can do down in El Salvador, et cetera, is that there are places where they, you know, they take people like this and they say, get out of public, get out of here.
D
Yeah, like drug addled psychos.
C
Yes.
D
That's one harsh way of saying psychosis induced.
C
But you know, there's a TV show in Japan about like little kids who just go to school by themselves on mass transit.
D
Oh, that was bad. My life growing up, man, and I just walked though.
C
And I think there's ones called where they rig, they like run errands and stuff too. They just, just go to the store and get something. I mean, think about how many people you know will say, or your, your parents, your grandparents, depending on what the generation is. Oh, when I was eight year old, eight years old, I used to go down to the store to get milk from my mom or something. And how many of us have kids that we'd let our kids do that today?
A
Well, when I, when I was 10, my stepmom would, would drive up to the general store and send me in to go buy her cigarettes. And I remember distinctly when Massachusetts changed the law and said that you can't sell miners cigarettes. Like they changed some law with that. And I went in and I was like, oh, I'm, you know, I have to pick up Merit Ultralights for my, for my mom. And they were like, oh, we can't sell it to you. And I was like, oh, I'm going to get in so much trouble. And I went out to the car and my stepmom was so mad and she like yelled and she went into the store and she threw a fit. Are you telling me I got to come into this store to buy the cigarettes myself? I can't just send my kid in here. You're not what. She freaked out.
E
Oh, what a great childhood to grow up. I wish we had more of that.
A
These days what I think is hysterical is I will never forget my stepmom's brand of cigarettes, Merit Ultralights.
D
I have to champion for cannabis soft pack because. Only because I just watched an Instagram video. This isn't the only reason. But Brian Wilson, the founder of the Beach Boys, you know, one of the greatest bands of all time, human history,
C
passed away last year, right?
D
Yeah. Pet Sounds, he actually went through a heavy bout of psychosis. Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys greatest album, arguably was written stoned. He. He talks about. I invited my buddy over, we partook in the marijuana, and they just went to town, no interruptions for days, writing that album. And then they got it done. One of the best creative works in human history, to be honest. That's what we need to preserve, is the value of that.
E
That plant, the 5%. Yeah, that's what. That's the.
B
Yeah, yeah.
C
But again, that's. That's going back to, you know, what Sick. I think the Pet sounds, what, the 60s? Yeah.
A
And the Beatles, totally different weed. They were probably picking out this.
C
Yeah, Beatles, of course.
B
Yeah, yeah.
D
Different weed.
B
Yeah. That was that study. You know, those people listen to Sgt.
C
Peppers. There's a lot of drugs on that album.
B
Yeah.
A
Did they smoke weed at the White House with Bob Dylan?
C
Probably.
B
Hopefully.
D
Likely.
E
That's true.
D
I think so, yes.
A
I remember reading that. I don't know if it's true. I like to believe it.
B
Well, I was gonna say, you know, in that study, the people that were smoking that 5 to 8% meant they had no higher rate of conversion to schizophrenia than just the general population. So. So that older stuff was like, fine, you know, and there wasn't an issue with that.
C
So if you're going, if you're going. And I, I just don't know how this works, but if you're going to a dispensary, is this something that you can sort of request?
A
They don't like that.
B
Yeah, I mean, I, I don't, I don't smoke it, so I haven't been in there. But has anyone been in there lately?
D
Maryland. You can't get CBD, so. But it normally has.
B
Does it say the THC, like 29. Okay, yeah. Crazy, Crazy.
D
You're saying there's a. There's an exponential rise in psychosis induction from going from 5% to 15%. That's a three times more THC where you're seeing a five times increase in psychosis.
B
Yeah.
D
So what does that mean? If you're multiplying it by nine times, are you seeing a 27 times increase in psychosis?
B
I mean, we don't have the data for that, but yeah. I mean, if it. If it went from, you know, 1% background rate to 5% background rate with 15, if you're getting 29, 30 there, it's like that could be even higher. I mean, that could be like a, you know, 1 in 10 conversion if you're a daily user.
D
I brought up CBD because I don't think it's as simple as lower the THC and everything's fine. I think that the CBD cannabidiol is an important part of the plant's healing process and to take that out is like very rude. Like what? I don't know it. I've had marijuana where there's no THC or like 1% and it's all CBD and this.
B
And there's data about that because the synthetic stuff that is just made in a lab that just like hits that receptor hard as, you know, full on is much worse than even the, you know, the, the buds that you get that are even stronger. So yeah, there's something about it. If you at least have the natural form, it's a lot better than the synthetics.
D
What if it burns out neural pathways? If it like gets them really hot really fast and flashes them and they burn?
B
I think it's just, I mean, I'm not sure what it is, but it's, it's toxic. And you know, the last thing that I, the last point that I really want to make about this, which is important, is I actually think it leads to the homelessness crisis. I think a lot of homeless people on the street right now are actually there because they have brain damage. I think there's this like.
C
Well, this is what Spencer Pratt is talking about in la.
B
Yeah. And. And you know, Brett Cooper was talking about it recently as well. She has a brother who, you know.
C
That's right. It was. I. You know, in all this time that you've been mentioning it, I knew that there was someone I had seen recently, you know, on Twitter talking about it. I couldn't remember who it was. Thank you. It was Brett Cooper.
B
It was Brett Cooper. And. And for years the doctors told them that her brother had schizophrenia. And then, you know, when a lot of this started coming out in the last couple of years about how dangerous the new pot is, she was like, oh, is actually drug induced psychosis. And he suffered from homelessness for a really long time. And they tried everything that they could to kind of get him help, but he's, you know, it sounds like he's, he's still suffering.
D
I'd like to see an fmri scan of a patient under the influence of like a 29% and then underneath under the influence of a 5%, same guys and do like 100 people, you know, and, and give them a week to, to buffer. But I mean if you can see the brain scans of what's going on, it'd be a lot, make a lot more sense, I think.
B
Yeah, that would be some really good research that we need now.
D
So what do you need to do to get that going?
B
I think we need a better nimh. We need an NIMH director who's really going to be wise to these problems and not just following what the pharmaceutical industry wants them to do, which is essentially just look for more targets for pharmaceutical drugs.
A
Right.
C
And unfortunately the Schedule 3, which I was against, very publicly against, so you may recall that it's, you know. Sure. Are they going to be funding research? Of course they're going to be funding research. And I wonder what that research is going to say. Right. You know, so you know, they'll, they'll make sure to get it out. And the reason that was such a big deal is because it makes, makes it so that you can write that off as a business expense now.
D
And they'll do things like, they'll be like we found no evidence that it leads to psychosis. You'll be like, oh, what were your studies? We didn't do any.
C
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
D
Like that's what they do with aspartame. They're like, we did, we haven't been able to find a correlation between aspartame and cancer. And you're like, how many studies have you done?
C
You never really tried to look.
D
We couldn't find maybe one study with rats that they found causing tumors with as aspartame. I believe so. Yeah. Hold their feet to the fire and make them study this stuff.
C
Cuz I'm an aspartame truther by the way. I don't think aspartame's a, is, is dangerous.
D
Wasn't it a rat poison before Searle made it?
C
No, no.
D
Before they put Donald Rosfeld on that board and like passed it into the,
C
as a food additive. No, no. There was one study, there was one study that said it went after rats. I know.
D
Where are the other studies? That was it, it was a positive.
C
Because they couldn't. Because they couldn't, they couldn't find another one. Well, I don't think they did another one.
A
You know, most asbestos is not cancer causing and it's a really good fire prevention insulator. But because there was one form of asbestos that turned out badly, all the asbestos is pretty much banned.
C
Are there so many house fires now?
A
I don't know. But it could be because you're not allowed to use the asbestos installation.
C
That's wild.
D
Yeah, well, that same thing with weed. They're insulation. Maybe there's like one kind of weed, 28 THC, that'll drive you insane. But I bet there's other. That's important.
C
Before we, before we go to super chats, I wanted to make that point too, because I do think. And here, this will be my thought crime of the night. I guess that. Not really, though, but.
A
Wave to Earth the Pieces tour live across North America. Get tickets now@livenation.com to your point that
C
I do think that it affects people differently who have different genetics. I think people, some people are predisposed to it. And that clearly speaks to, you know, what you're saying about, you know, Brian Wilson can go and write Pet Sounds and the Beatles can go and create their music. And given that that's at a lower dosage, etc, but. But at the same time, you know, there's other people who just completely, you know, completely go wild on it. It's kind of like we're, you know, you see those people who are 100 years old sometimes and you're like, how'd you get to 100? And they go, I smoked a pack of cigarettes every day and I drank some wiki and I was fine. And you're like. But then other people get. Get lung cancer at like 60. So I do think that there is a huge role that genetics plays in all of this that, you know, for a lot of politically correct reasons, you know, people don't want to talk about.
D
Oh, and we should. Like where your ancestors came from decided did they have the cannabis plant? Even in the environment, you see this
C
with lactose intolerance, for example.
D
Okay. I was on the boonies skate podcast. I don't know if it's live yet. Cody McIntyre, Richie Jackson. It was awesome. Brandon Minor and Andros. Anyway, Richie doesn't smoke pot. He's very much against it. But I think it's just speaking to what you said because the same conversation we had that his ancestors probably didn't smoke it or likely maybe didn't. I don't know how to find out, but. And some did. Man, I didn't touch it Till I was 23, but it locked in with me. Like it. It took me to another level of quality, of value. Like, I got inspired. I made started doing YouTube videos in 2006, way before anyone knew what that meant.
A
Do you think that you could have ended up there without it?
D
No, no, I was in the box. Do what? They told me I was gonna be an actor in Hollywood, just make the money, say the. Whatever they wanted me to say. I didn't care. Then I started to care. I really believed, like, there's something much bigger than what I can see in here and feel and all that. But that's because of the weed. The hypersensitivity allowed me to, like, sense God, for instance, I think. But it maybe doesn't do that for everybody.
B
And some people aren't using it for inspiration. I think a big problem is a lot of people, they just use it like any other pharmaceutical. If they have, like, anxiety or if they're having panic attacks or they're having issues with insomnia, that's just like, an easy thing to reach for now. It's just like another sort of chemical thing to soothe it, and it ends up making them worse over time.
C
So I do want to jump to super chats, and rather than go all the way back to the beginning, since we're already right here, I want to go because we actually have a ton of super chats about weed, drugs, all the rest of it. So let me see.
D
I love that we're talking about this while you're pulling up super chat. This is such a prescient issue. I think it goes under the radar a lot.
C
This has more super chats than any other topic that we've talked about, talked about tonight.
D
People in the chat love the weed talk.
C
They love the weed talk.
B
Yeah.
A
Big.
C
So, yeah, I want to get this one in because it's. It's. It's very interesting. So super Jassinder. 25, 000 people reported that their cannabis can. So wait, should I actually click it and pull it up?
E
Will that work?
C
I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to. I don't know how to. YouTube reported that their cannabis consumption activity caused them to use less morphine and less methamphetamine. So I guess that's an argument, like a pro argument. What would your response to that be?
B
I mean, I don't. I don't know about that. That study. And I think there's. I mean, there's always this argument that, hey, you know, would you rather people be on, like, fentanyl and morphine for their pain or be smoking cannabis? I think it's a fair argument for chronic pain, but I mean we are kind of move like that. There's always these like little niche scenarios about, hey, you know, what about the person with, with pain? The issue that I have is that there's a big cannabis industry now that is essentially just like pushing it to everyone, young kids essentially saying it's safe and it's legal and everyone thinks it's not a big deal. I do think you can do that calculus and just say, hey, do we want to use cannabis instead of fentanyl and opiates? You know, is that a better long term trade off? I think that's totally fair, but yeah, but it's become a bigger issue than that.
C
No, I hear you. That makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. Mike here is coming in, says I'll forever be more worried about alcohol than weed. And to be sure, this is, and what's interesting though is actually we're seeing trend after trend of people drinking less and just, just that it's, it's becoming less now. But that's probably because they're smoking more weed.
B
Yeah, yeah, I think.
C
Doesn't mean they're getting out of all substances.
B
Alcohol. Alcohol does cause a lot of problems. I mean, you know, when you look at the stats for alcohol, there's a lot more like violence, domestic violence, things like that, you know, car accidents. Cannabis is just causing different problems. I mean, so I mean, if you care about brain health, psychosis, mania, mood instability, all of that, I mean, I think you can care about both of them. I don't think you need to pin them one against another. I think both need to be used carefully and safely.
A
Yeah, both things are bad.
B
Yeah, we're good.
D
Depending on how you use them.
C
Yeah, no, I, I, I mentioned from time to time, but 20 years sober, so.
D
Or amen, brother. Do you drink coffee?
C
I do drink coffee.
D
That caffeine get me wired up, baby. Intense drug right there.
C
Yeah. 20 years. 20 years last year. Let's see, let's see. Big seven, five, eight. Eight says regulate license and tax the sales like alcohol. Well, I mean that's what they are doing.
B
Yeah, yeah, I think they need to, we need to tax it and we need to push that money into regulation about educating kids that, you know, it's, it's really not that it's, it's not safe. And then also to, and, and especially young kids as well. Like, I mean a lot of these problems, they're not happening in people who are over 30. You know, once your brain has fully matured, you're much less Likely to have a drug induced psychosis.
C
This is so, it is so it's, it's, it's, it's under 30.
B
Yeah, yeah. So. So the highest risk period is really in adolescence, and that's with any kind of drug or especially psychiatric drug.
C
Is that because you like, the brain is still forming kind of.
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Your brain is still maturing up until age 30. I mean, so it goes through this long maturation. You see way less psychiatric side effects after that. And so just educating, you know, taxing them, using that to push into education, you know, making sure that they have lower concentrations of THC that are, you know, more like what people used to smoke, you know, pre2010.
A
You know, it's interesting, you were talking about how, you know, the different strains are. There's like the lower THC content or whatever, and with alcohol you can buy a bottle of wine and it's like relatively lower alcohol content. Or you can buy whiskey or you can buy what, like Everclear or whatever. That's like crazy high concentration of alcohol. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense that you can only buy
C
or your favorite absinthe.
A
Yeah, I don't really drink absinthe.
C
I don't really drink.
A
No. I always wanted to when I was younger because I read crazy novels. And then by the time I was growing up, I didn't care anymore. But the, like, you should be able to buy like the, you know, wine cooler version of weed. Yeah.
B
And I, you know, I, I worry sometimes that the reason where I was hearing about so many celebrities like crashing out nowadays is because of cannabis. I, I mean, do you guys remember Amanda Bynes?
D
Oh, yeah.
B
Have you guys seen her recently?
A
She looks different.
B
Yeah, she looks different. She doesn't, she doesn't look too hot. And when you look at her story, I mean, it's a very similar, like Britney story. I mean, she had a psychosis about 10 years ago. She got put on conservation conservatorship for very many years. And if you look at her now, she does psychiatrically, she doesn't, she doesn't look too hot, you know, when you see it.
C
Yeah, I'm, I'm thinking Brittany's dad was right.
B
Yeah. Yeah. Well, so here's the other thing. So I'm so Amanda Bynes, you read her story, it's cannabis, you know, drug induced psychosis from cannabis and Adderall. That, that kicked it off. Kanye west, you know, he starts having all of these, you know, going into the 2010s he starts to have more of these, like, manic episodes. The big one with the swast stick situation at the. At the start of last year. You look at his history, you know, heavy cannabis user. He talks about that publicly.
A
He talks about how agents and everybody were, like, trying to keep him drugged.
B
Yeah. And. And so. And then wasn't. Didn't something happen with Britney lately? And they were talking about how she was having problems.
A
Well, she did have that knife dance.
C
She was like. Like a knife.
D
Making videos, like, every other day now.
C
I think there was something at a store maybe that was something. I can't remember exactly.
B
I. I feel like it's all.
C
It's all. It's all been pretty bad. It's all been pretty bad.
B
Yeah. It's not. Yeah, I think. I think it. Yeah, I think a dad probably was right. It doesn't. Her social media doesn't look too hot. And so I look at all of this stuff, like, what are the chances that all of these celebrities are just, you know, developing bipolar disorder, mania psychosis, ending up on conservatorship, especially the, like, young.
A
Young stars, young ones.
B
And it's. It's all, like, happening in the 2010s. Like, after this, you know, we have this huge uptick in the strength of thc. I really think there's something there.
C
Well, no, I. I think. I think the real edgy thing to do now is go full straight edge.
D
I was like, geez, Jeff.
C
No, no, no. The straight edge. Straight edge.
D
Straight edge means cutting caffeine and sugar.
C
No, it doesn't.
D
No, it doesn't drug you up. It's crazy. It's so intense.
E
Get through this, Ian. Gotta have something.
D
Yeah, you gotta have something. I agree with you. You gotta have something.
C
Well, let's say without what. Where would you categorize caffeine in with all of this?
B
Yeah, So, I mean, I would say cannabis. One of my. My talk about cannabis is. Is probably the most unpopular talk that I have, you know, in terms of, like, people in the super chat. The second most unpopular talk I have is when I talk about caffeine and nicotine, because especially when I come on conservative shows. You guys love your nicotine products. You know, we got. We got some dip over there. Yeah. Got some pouches over there. And so my problem with stimulants for everyone here who loves caffeine and nicotine products right now is, I think, in men and in women as well, but mostly in men, it is fueling an epidemic of insomnia. And so, you know, we look at this. We look at the data. Women use twice as many antidepressants as men, but men use way more sedatives. So things like benzo, Xanax, all of that. And what I think is going on is I think it has to do with the amount of caffeine and nicotine products we consume. And let me draw this link for you. So a lot of people, a lot of men will get hooked on benzos. Again, this is what I do in my clinic. I take people off sedatives. And the stories that I get is you have someone who really busy guy, maybe a little bit type A, doing a lot of work, you know, drinks a cup of coffee in the morning, maybe has another one in the middle of the day. You may use some nicotine products as well. They do that for a little while and then they start to say, I can't sleep. You know, I wake up in the middle of the night at 2, 3am and you know, as much as I'd like to go back to sleep, I just can't. And they're just, they're just there wired. And so it starts like that. And then eventually they have difficulty getting to sleep and they go, you know, what is, you know, what is this all about? And then they run and they see the doctor and then they end up getting put on a sedative which they then become addicted to because the doctor should have said, hey, well, where did this insomnia come from? So here's where the caffeine and the nicotine comes in. Especially in the US where we are really busy, we push ourselves a lot. It's just in our culture, we, we take a lot of stimulants. And what happens is you eventually, if you do that all the time, you wire your brain to be in a state essentially of hyper arousal. I mean, you're constantly kind of of either working, focusing, doing things. You know, that's what we do in a very competitive society. But when you layer on the stimulants on top of that, it makes it even worse. And if you're constantly in that state, just pounding energy drinks, drinking nicotine, working behind a computer, stimulating yourself, you stop shifting into a space of calm, of low arousal. And you need to be able to shift into that state of low arousal to have deep sleep. And so this is a, this is a massive problem. And this isn't just insomnia. This is why people get panic attacks and they end up on antidepressants. And things like this is why people feel tense and Agitated that they're just so in this hyper aroused state all the time that they can't shift down. And so yeah, just this busyness and this stimulation. I actually think it's like the common root cause of a lot of anxiety where people get burnt out, they stop sleeping and then they become depressed. It, and so that's where the caffeine and the nicotine comes into it. I don't think it's a good thing for people to be using a lot of this. I mean if you do it, I think like a cup of coffee in the morning is fine. Try and, try and cut it off. And, and yeah, so I, I do think it leads to this big, you
C
know, I, I actually, you know, I, I, I hear what you're saying and in fact, you know, when you get, start getting these patients in, I have another, I mean I'm not, I'm not licensed but, but you know, if you have people that are having trouble getting sleep. Another possible prescription could be a brand new MyPillow at MyPillow.com promo code POSO for ladies and gentlemen, the best night's sleep in the whole wide world.
B
You want to know what's really good is.
A
I actually went to a doctor one time because I was having trouble sleeping and I couldn't sleep. It was terrible. It was a real disaster. And she prescribed me whatever those things are that they prescribe all ladies.
D
Ambien.
C
My pillows?
A
No, I think it was Ambien to try to get me to go to sleep. And then I would fall asleep, but I would have these ridiculously horrific nightmares. Just always having nightmares like every night. And then I went to the store and I bought a new pillow.
C
Aha. She got a my pillow.
A
I didn't get a my pillow.
C
It wasn't my pillow.
A
Okay, it wasn't my pillow about 15 years ago, but whatever it was. And then I could sleep and all I needed was a new pillow. Like seriously, I needed a new pillow. And I got rid of the ambience.
D
Flat back sometimes. Oh, sorry. We got another super chat.
C
No, no, no, I just wanted to, I just want to mention to, to Dr. Joseph that, that this is something that I used to talk to Charlie Kirk about a lot. And he was completely off of caffeine and I, you know, people know those, you know, he's not. The Starbucks cups was not, yeah, it was mint majesty tea and two honeys. And that, you know, no, you know, that was the most caffeine he would have was tea. There was not coffee in those Starbucks cups. And he even said to me once that he is super into biohacking, that if he wrote another book, that he wanted to write a book about sleep and just the importance of sleep and how we do, you know, to everything that you're saying. Because his last book ended up being this book about rest and taking just one day a week where you cut off social.
B
Did like the Sabbath or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
C
And then. But he. He went into. There's more to it than. It's stopping the name of God, but it's. It's more to it than just the spiritual elements. He gets into a lot of the physical and psychological elements as well. And he even said to me once that he would want to do an entire book just about the importance of sleep and how we totally discount that.
D
The stimulation of looking at a screen. I don't know if you guys feel it, but if I ever wake up in the night, if I look at this damn thing, I'm like, I got 15 minutes. I gotta rest again.
A
That is what happens.
C
Well, that's what they're designed to do. So.
D
Is there evidence that cigarettes have more nicotine than they used to?
B
Not that. Not that I'm aware of. I mean, that's like, pretty regulated where there's like, you know, you can buy, like. I can't remember what. It's been a while since I've smoked cigarettes, but I know you can pick, like, the different strengths on the boxes. Yeah, you get them, but. And so I still think it's fairly standardized, but.
C
But in general, people are using nicotine products more.
B
They are. Because they've become incredibly popular in conservative media, in tech circles, in finance. Like. Like there's. I think. I think we would.
E
Yeah, we were talking about this on the way here.
B
Yeah, we were talking about this on. On the way here. And about that, I mean, a lot of people are saying that there's, like, health benefits and they'll, you know, they'll
A
find some, like, stave off dementia or something like that.
B
Yeah, they'll find like, some study that found a relationship, and then they'll just, like, go to town and people love it because it's like a great justification. Oh, you know, maybe there's a health benefit to this. But I mean, overall, I mean, my philosophy is, like, people end up using, you know, caffeine or nicotine or cannabis. They usually for a reason. You know, you. You have this feeling like, I feel flat. I don't have focus, I don't have energy. Like, I need Something so I can get through my work. I did this as well. I. I can talk about this problem so. Well, because I had this problem because I used to drink heaps of coffee and use nicotine products. But the question that you really need to be asking yourself is like, well, why do I have that problem? You know, why is it that I'm having difficulty focusing? You know what? You know, is it the fact that I'm not sleeping? You know, is it the fact that I never rest? Is it the fact that, you know, I have a really busy work schedule and then when I have a break, you know, I just pull out my phone and just like bombard my. My eyes with like dopamine and bright lights, so I never shift into a state of rest and I'm kind of like there all the time. I mean, and so, you know, in a big meta way, you know, the caffeine, the nicotine, the cannabis, and also the psychiatric drug stuff that I do, it's all the same problem. I mean, we need to be slowing down. And before people reach for any kind of chemical to help themselves, like, like the doctor or the therapist or the professional, whoever it is, needs to really audit their life and just be like, hey, let's. Let's talk about, like what your life looks like that leads you to become so dependent and so craving of these things.
A
This is.
D
Something came up on the pre show, the Discord show. I'd like to go. Go to the next super chat too, but is it RFK is now leading a charge to pay doctors to deprescribe people of medicines. I've never heard of anything like it ever in the history of medicine. Fascinating. I don't know if you know more about it than I do. I just saw a tweet about it, but it's awesome. They're actually incentivizing doctors to take people off of drugs now that they don't need.
B
Yeah, yeah, there's. There's billing codes to do that work. And there never was billing codes before. It was just, you know, it's, you know, the economics of how mental health care works, works in the US is essentially that doctors, to make ends meet, really have to see four people in an hour. And so, you know when you have
A
like, oh, that's why it's like you go to the Doctor and it's 15 minutes.
B
Yeah, well, well, yeah. So we talked about this in the pre show. Let me go into it again. So back in the early 90s, we Healthcare insurance companies conglomerated and so they held all the patients. And they could go to doctor groups and say, we're going to give you our patients. You don't have to do any marketing at all. You know, we're gonna, these patients are going to be in network for you. You have to see them at this rate. And the doctor said, well, okay, well, we don't have to do the marketing. Let's go with that. And essentially you have to see four patients in an hour to make ends meet. And so that's, that's why now doctors have panels of 2,000 people. Because, you know, when you're seeing four people an hour to just, just to fill it up, you have to have a huge panel. Now for something like mental health, that's complicated, where you actually need to understand someone's relationships, you know, their work, their meaning and purpose, their health, the substances that they're using. You know, you can't understand that when you're looking after 2,000 people. It's just, it's just impossible. Like it's, maybe you could do that for like 200, 300 people if you're pretty good, but at that, at that big level, you can't. And so what happens, Libby, is essentially you go and you see a doctor for, you know, seven minutes of FaceTime and they say, hey, fill out this, you know, nine question question, you know, this nine question questionnaire thing here. And okay, you have depression, you know, take this medication. And so that's why we have a over prescribing epidemic because that's all you can do in the limited time. And Ian, what happened with Bobby recently was that there was never any billing codes to do additional work to help people come off these medications. And so now he's sort of smoothing that out. And so something that takes more time to do than like just putting someone on a drug or prescribing a higher dose.
D
What do you mean there's billing codes to take people off. What does that mean exactly?
B
Like you can. So when you're doing this work, you know, say there's some, you know, phone calls with respect to, you know, drug tapering or lowering the doses. You can now get reimbursed for that.
C
Oh yeah, that's cool. Do you want to get this out? Because super, super cool, super chat that we got in. Tyler Taylor 891 in Tim cast fashion. My wonderful wife and I are in the hospital right now welcoming our third child, Stephen James.
A
Congratulations.
C
That's right, folks. The patriot population.
B
Praise the Lord by one.
D
Gravity's a little annoying.
C
So that's something that. That. That folks do. And I don't even know how we're
D
gonna get into it. When you were going to the My Pillow ad, I was like, he's gonna use this.
C
No, no, no.
D
Almost.
C
God, no. I saw it there, by the way. I saw you highlight. I know. I was gonna go to it. I don't know how it started, but, you know, this is. People keep coming in and. Wait a minute. Actually, more. I think we have another one.
B
More babies.
D
More babies.
C
Yeah. William Blackburn, in keeping with tradition, sending this message from my hospital after. I think he means after my wife gave birth to our first child mere hours ago. Macy, with a more loyal and loving companion. Has no man been so blessed as I. That's two babies, two patriots.
B
How good is that, Macy?
C
We love that. This.
B
This is amazing.
A
Yeah. That's so cool.
C
Oh, my. No, wait, guys. I'm wrong. Guys. No. I lied.
B
They're trolling now.
C
These are paid. These are all paid. These are all. And the names are different, so it's got to be real. This is fun. From Rebecca. In keeping with tradition, McBride family proudly announces the birth of baby number five. Let's go. Mom and baby girl are doing great. That's just a guess.
B
Those are. Those are Utah numbers right there.
C
Those are Utah numbers. We love it.
B
We love it.
E
All right.
C
I'm checking the super chat for Bab for more babies, everybody. And no. Absolutely no. I think only three babies in one. That's a three. Three baby night here.
A
That's good.
C
That's just incredible.
A
Three baby Tim cast.
C
Three baby night. That's. That's wild. And that's.
D
Happy birthday, kids.
C
That's why we do what we do, though, because we want be a rebel, start a family, go have kids.
A
That's the most important.
C
But also, we want the world to be a better place for those children. Want our country to be a better place. I had to get this one. This is from Amos Moses. Jack. I get the love of Pizza Hut, but where is the love for the KFC buffet? I didn't know KFC had a buffet.
D
You guys didn't know that either.
A
I also did not know that the
E
town that I grew up in in Corbin, Kentucky, is the birthplace of kfc. Yeah, I didn't. I don't remember any kind of buffet. But they do have a whole museum built into the original restaurant. They got Colonel Sanders suit, and they've got the original kitchen they used to make the original fried chicken in. And it's. It's a whole thing. It's a Big deal in Corbin, Kentucky.
C
Now, does the chicken taste the same there as it does at the other
E
KFC when I was a kid? I don't think so. Now it's probably the same.
C
Yeah. Wow.
B
There are KFC buffets, though. You can search for them. There's not a lot of them, but they are scattered around the country.
C
Yeah, that's what it says.
D
They used to play style during the 80s and 90s. Just randomly splattered around the country.
C
Well, yeah, no, just wasn't as familiar, but, you know, had to shout out that we. You know, since the first time I've been here, is that since the announcement came back that I think 80 pizza huts are now going to Pizza Hut Classic. And as you guys may. May recall, I've been ranting and raving about Pizza Hut nationalism here on my show. And then every time I come on this show for, like. Like five years now.
B
This become, like, an issue of importance for you?
C
Because it was in the COVID era, and I remember, and I had kids, and I said, you know, I want to take my kids to Pizza Hut and just have that, you know, memory and that experience that I had and this Pizza Hut. And it. And it went so viral. When I tweeted this out, it was atrocious. This thing was horrible.
A
It was just a Pizza Hut and a Taco Bell mix.
C
It was. No, this one was, like, falling apart. They. It was. So it had been reduced to. Now you could tell it was a. Formerly a fully functioning Pizza Hut with, you know, the. The lights and the video games and tables and all the rest of it, but now it was basically just a DoorDash outlet and UberEats outlet. And so you would see the drivers come in. And so I walked in, I said, oh, no, we want to eat here. And, you know, everyone was sort of looking at us like, eat in the. In the restaurant. Yeah, I'm with my kid. You know, I'd love to. Love to eat here. They had no idea what I was talking about.
D
Eat what?
E
Wow.
D
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
C
You know, and there were, like, boxes all over the tables and things like this that it just. It was just totally beyond their.
A
That happened during COVID You'd go into a restaurant and, like, they're reasoning you couldn't eat anywhere because it was all covered with boxes.
E
Right.
C
I was like, I just want to eat here. Is that okay? And. And I tweeted about it, and it just started this whole Internet phenomenon that went far beyond me that. That people kept saying, yeah, why don't we have things like this anymore and
A
sort of like mid level comfortable family restaurant where you could go in and it's got like an interesting atmosphere. I used to go to Pizza Huts with my family when I was a kid. It was.
C
And they had the Book IT program. So they need to bring back the Book IT program. This is the other Book IT program. The book IT program was if it was this, this card, it was like a circular card that you would get and then you had, and you got stickers for reading. I think it was five, right? You had to read five books and if you read five books and got it signed off by your teacher and brought it back in free personal pan pizza as a kid. Wow. Let's go.
D
Delicious. Look it, I like you're going to eat pizza. Book it and then you can get it. Makes me think of the dough.
A
Read your next book while you're sitting there.
D
Hey, if they could convert Pizza Hut and upgrade it to do like the finest artisanal dough with just delicious homemade sauce. Because that high fructose crap out of my face. But like it's a brand that's primed for delicious, phenomenal mind bending pizza. Do it.
C
No, and it's, it's, it's something where too that, that people have said like oh well, America has, you know, is having fewer kids. Americans are having fewer kids and people are more, they're working harder, et cetera. But, but I, I think that you know, as we move towards and, and hopefully you know, part of what, what, what, what I do, what Libby, we were talking about, hopefully what all of us are talking about. We want to go back to that family friendly country that America used to be that you know, you have to create the conditions for a pro family environment as well. And so Pizza Hut nationalism, it's not about, you know, it's not about Pizza Hut. Right, but, but it is about Pizza Hut. And you know, it's also like the McDonald's that used to always have the outdoor playgrounds, like the big outdoor playgrounds
A
until there started being like, like poop in them.
C
You just, you just don't see them anymore. They said, well we don't make money off of that, you know, but I could remember, I can remember going to those and you know, my mom with my brother and my mom would get, you know, some Happy Meals and we'd run around like crazy and then she could just get relax, you know, whatever. And then we'd go back and it was great. It was just great. It's just a great country that we used to have. And we're getting a little bit of that back. We're making America great again.
A
Yay.
C
All right, let's go around the horn because I think we're getting right to our two hour mark. So I want to hold people over, but for folks who haven't gone to the subscriber side and want to hear about it, this is a. This is going to be a good one because. Libby, are we doing it?
A
Yeah, let's do it.
C
We are getting into the chud the builder story. Oh, yes. And I did not ask Tim's permission about this one, so.
B
All right.
C
We are just doing it. This is a shooting. Is it a good shooting? Is it a bad shooting? He is known for making extremely provocative videos. Some might even say harassing. But we are going to look at this story from a legal perspective. So that's gonna be there. Let's go around the horn.
D
I'm excited for it. I'm Ian Crossland. Find me on the Internet at iancrossland and go to Graphene Movie. If you haven't been over there yet, sign up for the mailing list. We have a documentary coming out. It's been in post production for a while now. I think the 6 7. Kevin worked on it with Andreas Exertus.
C
Love 6 7. I love that man. I love that man.
D
Higher energy, lovable guy. We went down to Rice University, interviewed scientists.
C
He, like, preempted the 67 meme. He did. He totally did.
D
On the Pulse. So believe it. Go to Graphene Movie, sign up for the mailing list and you'll be notified when the documentary goes live. Follow me at Ian Crossland. Libby Evans.
A
I'm Libby Emmons and I invite you to check out my podcast, the Pod Millennial. This week's guest is Brianna Gilmore with ARC Press. And you should definitely go check that out. Also, I'm pleased to announce that I have my very first sponsor. So all grown up. It's very exciting. And so thanks to Native Path, a great health and wellness company. You can go to getnativepath.com libby if you want to support me in my new Show. Thanks.
B
I'm Dr. Yosef. If you're interested in coming off psychiatric medications, you can check me out@taperclinic.com and I'm on all social media platforms under Dr. Joseph. So that's J O S S E F, not ph. And talk about psychiatric meds, I really
E
got to do a double shout for 67 Kevin. I love that guy. He's a friend of mine. We were hanging out once and I was just like, you have to meet my kids, okay? And I was like, I went to the kids. I was like, do you guys want to meet a giant?
B
They're like, whoa.
E
They just couldn't even speak because he's like, so tall. They loved it. Great experience. Love, Kevin. Love, Kevin. Chris Carr 17 on X. Check out my substack kriskar.substack.com that's car with a K K A R R where I write about film and interesting people now.
C
He's. He's a great guy. He helped us out a lot in. In Arizona. He was there for a number of things, especially when we needed him. So huge shout out to that man for sure. And I was such a good man.
D
Scored a movie with him. He did Sin Frontera for Tim Cast also nice. Great hit. Six seven is the best you can find me at Carter Banks everywhere. Want to give a shout out to my brother who was born on this day in like, 1995, so it's his birthday as well. Oh, a birthday today. In the chat, you share it with my brother. Happy birthday, man.
C
I'll throw out. It's my. It's my dad's birthday tomorrow. It's my mom's birthday next week.
A
Hey, happy birthday.
C
Happy son's birthday last week. So it's the 14th, the 21st and the 28th are all family birthdays in May for me, which. Which of course was planned. It was. It was all God's plan. All right, folks, if you want to follow me, Jack Posobic. The podcast is Human Events Daily. We're up on Apple, we're up on Spotify. Give us a listen. We do geopolitics a lot, but we get into a lot of other things as well. Stay tuned because our three is going to be very spicy.
Episode Title: DOJ INDICTS CASTRO, America Will TAKE CUBA w/ Josef Witt-Doerring
Host: Jack Posobiec (in for Tim Pool)
Guests/Co-hosts: Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring, Libby Emmons, Chris Carr, Ian Crossland, Carter Banks
This episode, guest-hosted by Jack Posobiec while Tim Pool is on sabbatical, dives into breaking geopolitical news, starting with the dramatic DOJ indictment of Cuba's Raul Castro. The panel grapples with the implications of potential US military intervention in Cuba, using the news as a launchpad for a broader debate on US foreign policy, power dynamics, and the cycle of regime change. The discussion also weaves in the politics of nuclear deterrence, US involvement in the Middle East, and the shifting American political landscape. A substantial second half features an extended, impassioned exploration of marijuana legalization, drug policy, and the psychiatric risks of high-potency cannabis—with leading insights from psychiatrist Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring.
The tone is energetic, skeptical, and occasionally conspiratorial, with the panel reveling in offbeat tangents that connect domestic policy, personal anecdotes, pop culture and geopolitics.
This episode’s signature: A fierce, sometimes playful skepticism about government, the establishment, and the effects—intended and unintended—of generational changes in American policy, politics, and culture.