Speaker 1: I'm manny, and this is no such thing. The show
Speaker 1: where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually
Speaker 1: doing the research. On today's episode, does RFK Junior have
Speaker 1: a point?
Speaker 2: There's no no such thing, no such thing.
Speaker 3: Such than such than such. Thank you?
Speaker 1: All right, how's it going, guys? Good as you can see.
Speaker 1: I'm set up it with all these boxes around me.
Speaker 4: How is the move?
Speaker 1: It was fine. I think I went through like all
Speaker 1: of the classic moving processes where you think you don't
Speaker 1: have that much until it's the day before, and then
Speaker 1: you're like, how the hell do I haven't touched any
Speaker 1: of this in a year? The move was fine, but
Speaker 1: I still do have like a deep layer of resentment
Speaker 1: towards the previous landlords for selling the building and course, yeah,
Speaker 1: and making me move. I really liked that place. Speaking
Speaker 1: of someone who also inspires deep layers of resentment, that's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. This episode is about RFK Junior. Obviously. RFK
Speaker 1: Junior is the head of the HHS, the Health and
Speaker 1: Human Services Department, which has a stated goal of enhancing
Speaker 1: the well being of all Americans. I think we're in
Speaker 1: a bit of a cliffhanger in regards to that mission,
Speaker 1: because RFK Junior has pushed and promoted a lot of
Speaker 1: problematic theories and ideologies as it pertains to our health.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, he's captured the adoration of
Speaker 1: millions of people in the so called Make America Healthy
Speaker 1: Again movement, And so I thought this episode would be
Speaker 1: a good opportunity to ask two questions. One, how has
Speaker 1: he taken these ideas and resonated with so many people?
Speaker 1: And too, what should we as trusters of science do
Speaker 1: about his influence and reach? And so, similar to the
Speaker 1: episode we did about the rise of political violence and
Speaker 1: assassination attempts a couple months ago, I think we're going
Speaker 1: to keep our intro here pretty short because we just
Speaker 1: want to get straight to the expert. But first I
Speaker 1: just wanted to ask you, guys, where do you think
Speaker 1: his explosion and popularity comes from?
Speaker 5: If we're being honest, the reason RFK came unto my
Speaker 5: radar is because of Curb your Enthusiasm, Shara Hines, right,
Speaker 5: And that was you know, he wasn't really on my
Speaker 5: radar until people are like, oh my god, Cheryl's dating
Speaker 5: at Kennedy.
Speaker 4: I remember working on a show and they were covering
Speaker 4: the anti VAXX movement, and RFK was obviously figured into that.
Speaker 4: And then just in his background, I knew he was
Speaker 4: an environmental lawyer, and that gave him some sort of
Speaker 4: legitimate See. Obviously, also being a Kennedy, people assume you're
Speaker 4: probably not going to be totally crazy, even though yeah,
Speaker 4: it's kind of a cursed family. He was always kind
Speaker 4: of careful, careful enough in his phrasing for things to
Speaker 4: kind of have one foot in and foot out. I
Speaker 4: think we still see that today.
Speaker 1: I think years ago, I remember, like years like before
Speaker 1: I got to New York, like in college. Maybe I
Speaker 1: remember hearing about some of the things he was doing
Speaker 1: for the environment, for the cause of the environment. I
Speaker 1: remember he got arrested, I think, and I remember thinking, wow, like,
Speaker 1: this is a Kennedy who's part of this like very
Speaker 1: established apparatus of politics. But here's one of the family
Speaker 1: members who's kind of going out getting arrested because he
Speaker 1: cares about the environment so much.
Speaker 2: Tell us why you got arrested yesterday, Bob. We were
Speaker 2: protesting the Xcel pipeline or demonstrating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's arrested for a keystone Excel oil pipeline protest
Speaker 4: at the White House seeing.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredible considering the people he works for. Now,
Speaker 1: fast forward, fast forward years and years and years, he's
Speaker 1: running for president. He's got all these scandals. The one
Speaker 1: thing I remember sticking out the most in terms of
Speaker 1: like controversy was this measles vaccine moment that happened in Samoa.
Speaker 1: Have you guys heard of this.
Speaker 6: There's an update from the Samoan government latest. Over three
Speaker 6: thousand measles cases reported, one hundred and ninety eight recorded
Speaker 6: in the last twenty four hours, fifty three measles related death.
Speaker 1: Basically before this outbreak, two kids died after getting the
Speaker 1: measles vaccine, not because the vaccine was dangerous, but because
Speaker 1: the nurses accidentally mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxant
Speaker 1: instead of water, which is how you're usually supposed to
Speaker 1: do it. RFK Junior kind of saw that as an
Speaker 1: opportunity to be like, hey, look, the measles vaccine is
Speaker 1: killing kids, and he visited the island and drummed up
Speaker 1: all of this anti vaccine rhetoric. The vaccination rates dropped
Speaker 1: on the island, and then when there was an outbreak,
Speaker 1: so many people died, and he denies any involvement of
Speaker 1: getting fewer people vaccinated. But if you talk to people there,
Speaker 1: if you've talked to experts about it, they see a
Speaker 1: pretty clear correlation between his rhetoric in Samoa and the
Speaker 1: drop in vaccination rates during an outbreak that killed people.
Speaker 1: Here's Senator Elizabeth Warren confronting RFK Junior about this at
Speaker 1: his confirmation hearing.
Speaker 3: Do you accept even a sentill, just even a sliver
Speaker 3: of responsibility for the drop in vaccinations and the subsequent
Speaker 3: deaths of more than seventy people, anything you do differently?
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: The Samoa incident was years ago, But today RFK Junior
Speaker 1: is still going on about measles, talking about how vitamin
Speaker 1: a is a good enough treatment for the measles outbreak
Speaker 1: happening in Texas, and now kids there are overdosing on
Speaker 1: vitamin a, which I didn't even know was a thing,
Speaker 1: learning so much about this, about how dumb all of
Speaker 1: this is. All right, we have established the kind of
Speaker 1: healthcare risks that AREFK junior poses. But sometimes I struggle
Speaker 1: with how to process him, because, you know, like ten
Speaker 1: percent of the shit he says, you do kind of
Speaker 1: go like, oh, okay, man, that kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1: He's talking about like ultra processed foods and how bad
Speaker 1: they are for you, and it's like, yeah, okay, these
Speaker 1: like forever chemicals that are in the water. In the
Speaker 1: water doesn't sound good to me. He wants to do
Speaker 1: he wants to do universal HSA's, which is great but
Speaker 1: weird because he's like gutting all of hhs. You know,
Speaker 1: he talks about childhood obesity, being anti big pharma. If
Speaker 1: I didn't know exactly who RFK Junior was and I
Speaker 1: only listened to what he said in speeches, I could
Speaker 1: pretty easily see someone getting caught up in that.
Speaker 5: It's funny because we were stunning around the clip and
Speaker 5: I saw it for a few days before I actually
Speaker 5: listened to what he said in the clip. But like
Speaker 5: the headline of the clip was like r K. Junior
Speaker 5: is like, we need to take the phones out of
Speaker 5: the schools because they're not good for kids.
Speaker 7: I was like, oh, yeah, I agree, agree, And then
Speaker 7: you played a clip and then he's talking about, you know,
Speaker 7: like how it fucks with their brains because of some
Speaker 7: way I don't even know.
Speaker 2: The cell phones also produce electric magnetic radiation. It has
Speaker 2: been shown to damage to neurological damage to kids when
Speaker 2: it's around them all day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the five gives actually what arget was, which is
Speaker 4: like a new spin on it.
Speaker 5: And I was like, all right, you know, not the
Speaker 5: reason why I would say take the phone out of
Speaker 5: the schools. But I've heard people talk about Michelle Obama
Speaker 5: try to get people to eat healthier and people are
Speaker 5: picking out so it's like some of this stuff, Like
Speaker 5: I don't think everything he's saying is out right, like
Speaker 5: this is dumb and bad, which I think, from my
Speaker 5: point of view makes it harder, right, Like it would
Speaker 5: be a lot easier for me to know how to
Speaker 5: approach this guy if everything he was saying was just
Speaker 5: sort of crazy and like I could just basically ignore it.
Speaker 5: But the fact that like, yeah, we should be eating
Speaker 5: less ultra processed foods, but like the way that he
Speaker 5: wants to tackle it is like not allowing for snap
Speaker 5: benefits to cover ultra processed foods, and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: what are these people going to eat? And a lot
Speaker 5: of these ways they don't have fresh fruits and vegetables,
Speaker 5: and as we all know, fresh fruits and vegetables are
Speaker 5: a lot more expensive than ultra processed foods, So are
Speaker 5: you gonna make you know, are you gonna get people
Speaker 5: more snap benefits? And they're talking about cutting snap benefits right,
Speaker 5: So it's like there's always I feel like, oh yeah,
Speaker 5: that kind of makes sense. And then and either the
Speaker 5: way it's going to be executed or the reason for
Speaker 5: some of this stuff kind of throws you off, So
Speaker 5: it makes it makes it harder to sort of navigate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he gets into a universally human problem,
Speaker 1: which is like, we're so good at being able to
Speaker 1: point out something that's bad, but it's when it comes
Speaker 1: time to like figuring out how to fix it or
Speaker 1: having any kind of like meaningful discourse about solutions, that's
Speaker 1: just garbage.
Speaker 4: Listen, if he can solve autism by September, like you said.
Speaker 6: That's great.
Speaker 4: We recognize obviously autism is famously a spectrum, you know,
Speaker 4: certainly livable, but it's like, you know, okay, this is
Speaker 4: concerning if it is rising this much, or is it
Speaker 4: diagnosing whatever.
Speaker 5: What drives me crazy about this shit is like there
Speaker 5: have been doctors who've been studying this stuff for decades.
Speaker 1: And in just so we don't get demonetized. The CDC
Speaker 1: data shows that there is no correlation between vaccinations and
Speaker 1: an increase in autism. But RFK Junior is here to stay,
Speaker 1: and like I said at the top of this episode,
Speaker 1: I want to figure out how he's been able to
Speaker 1: resonate with so many people and what we should be
Speaker 1: doing to deal with this kind of a figure that
Speaker 1: high up in office. So after the break, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk to Derek Brez. He's a writer, an author,
Speaker 1: he's the co host of the Conspirituality podcast, and he
Speaker 1: has been covering RFK Junior extensively for the past few years.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're here with Derek Berez, co author of
Speaker 1: the Conspiratuality book and co founder of the Conspiratuality Podcast.
Speaker 1: We want to talk to you, Derek, not just because
Speaker 1: you've reported extensively on RFK Junior, but also because you've
Speaker 1: reported on the wellness environment that surrounds basically everything that
Speaker 1: he does. But first, on the day of this recording,
Speaker 1: actual RFK Junior announced at a cabinet meeting that he's
Speaker 1: going to figure out what's behind the quote autism epidemic
Speaker 1: by September of this year, by.
Speaker 2: September, we will know what has caused autism an epidemic
Speaker 2: and will be able to elimit those exposures.
Speaker 1: So, Derek, I just want to get your reaction to this.
Speaker 1: Can RFK Junior figure this out by September?
Speaker 6: He figured it out years ago when he decided that
Speaker 6: he was going to start suing a lot of pharmaceutical
Speaker 6: companies around vaccines. So he's doing science in the exact
Speaker 6: way that science is not done, meaning he's already come
Speaker 6: to a conclusion, and now he's been systematically putting the
Speaker 6: pieces into place to come to that conclusion in some
Speaker 6: sort of official manner, even though the science is likely
Speaker 6: not to hold up.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting because I consider RFK Junior to be
Speaker 1: a peddler of misinformation. But do you think there's enough
Speaker 1: of an argument to be able to call this disinformation
Speaker 1: where where he is being intentionally misleading?
Speaker 6: It's always hard for a lot of reasons, especially in
Speaker 6: a litigious society like America, and RFK Junior being a
Speaker 6: lawyer who knows how to navigate that. But I would
Speaker 6: say that if you were intentionally saying things in order
Speaker 6: to monetize them or to sway people to your side,
Speaker 6: and to your opinion, I would call that disinformation.
Speaker 1: So, Derek, you and two other people, Julian Walker and
Speaker 1: Matthew Remsky wrote this incredible book called Conspiratuality. It talks
Speaker 1: about influencers in the wellness space who kind of pedal
Speaker 1: misinformation and conspiracy theories. And so I thought you would
Speaker 1: be a great person to ask about how RFK Junior
Speaker 1: and his ideas have resonated with so many people. So
Speaker 1: I'll just put the question to you, how the hell
Speaker 1: did this happen?
Speaker 6: We live in a for profit healthcare system that does
Speaker 6: not look out for people, and the idea that pharmaceutical companies,
Speaker 6: in alignment with insurance companies and medical systems would not
Speaker 6: be looking out for our best interest has affected tens
Speaker 6: of millions, hundreds of millions of Americans for a very
Speaker 6: long time. People don't go to preventive screenings or get
Speaker 6: tests done because they can't afford them. So that that
Speaker 6: is the root cause of so many people's frustration with medicine. Now,
Speaker 6: on top of that, we have a longstanding wellness quote
Speaker 6: unquote community in America that has always looked to alternative medicine.
Speaker 6: In our book, we go back two hundred years finding
Speaker 6: examples of this and probably goes back even further. And
Speaker 6: I was a yoga instructor for decades of my life.
Speaker 6: I was very heavily involved in the wellness community, working
Speaker 6: with food companies, and I know that community very well,
Speaker 6: having spent time there, and they are mostly well intention people.
Speaker 6: But the problem is a lot of them are scientifically illiterate.
Speaker 6: And that really is what happens is that RFK Junior
Speaker 6: takes a feeling that people have about their being distrust
Speaker 6: in the government and with healthcare specifically, but then they
Speaker 6: do not really understand how the scientific process works, and
Speaker 6: he exploits that gap in people's knowledge, and he appeals
Speaker 6: to this idea that nature at some point was healing
Speaker 6: and that everyone was just in great shape all of
Speaker 6: the time, which is a complete fallacy, but he exploits
Speaker 6: those sorts of gaps and.
Speaker 1: Knowledge you mentioned earlier. Being a part of the wellness
Speaker 1: community as a yoga instructor for my whole life, that
Speaker 1: kind of community has always been adjacent to, like a
Speaker 1: lefty liberalism. These days, I feel like that kind of
Speaker 1: community has been pretty successfully branded as closer to the right.
Speaker 1: Could you explain that shift from the left to the right.
Speaker 6: So conspirituality is this sort of blending between new age
Speaker 6: liberalism and right wing conservatism. But where the connective tissue
Speaker 6: in my feeling is that it's an individualism. These sorts
Speaker 6: of spirituality that we practice in America is very self
Speaker 6: focused and self centered. It's always about healing the individual.
Speaker 6: It's very rarely about talking about community, and usually when
Speaker 6: community is invoked, it usually only is my community, the
Speaker 6: people who already believe the way that I do. So
Speaker 6: while on its face it seems like how did these
Speaker 6: communities come together, it's really a form of protectionism, of
Speaker 6: self protectionism that has united them because a lot of
Speaker 6: so called Latte liberals, you know, they are also people
Speaker 6: who are involved in nimbi movements. They want to solve homelessness,
Speaker 6: but they don't want it built on their block. So
Speaker 6: that's kind of a feature of liberalism in America.
Speaker 1: So I was recently watching one of those twenty versus
Speaker 1: one YouTube videos from Jubilee, and the topic for that
Speaker 1: episode was anti vaxxers versus a doctor. One of the
Speaker 1: sentiments that kept coming up from the anti vaxxers was
Speaker 1: this idea that we are actually glowing away from nature,
Speaker 1: and the further we get away from nature, the more
Speaker 1: diseases we will see. I was wondering if you could
Speaker 1: respond to that sentiment, because I feel like nature could
Speaker 1: kind of kill you in a heartbeat. So what is
Speaker 1: the science behind that.
Speaker 6: It's called the naturalistic fallacy, and it actually is another
Speaker 6: parallel with the right wing, because the right wing glorifies
Speaker 6: the nineteen fifties post World World War two. America is
Speaker 6: this ideal time because it is when we became a
Speaker 6: global superpower, but there was a lot going on that
Speaker 6: was not good in the nineteen fifties. The same things
Speaker 6: happens in the wellness perspective, whereas this idea that we
Speaker 6: were once in harmony with nature, which is just total bullshit.
Speaker 6: Before antibiotics, vaccines, and then measures like hand washing, you
Speaker 6: could very easily die of a cut. Infectious diseases killed people.
Speaker 6: You know. One thing that RFK Junior does is he
Speaker 6: goes we have a chronic disease epidemic. Now, we do
Speaker 6: have problems with chronic diseases. But the reasons that chronic
Speaker 6: diseases are more prevalent than infectious diseases right now is
Speaker 6: because We've solved a lot of problems with infectious diseases
Speaker 6: through vaccines and antibiotics, So this is just a different
Speaker 6: example of how we've been grappling and fighting against nature
Speaker 6: for a long time. Becoming an apex predator doesn't just
Speaker 6: happen without a long struggle, and that struggle continues. But
Speaker 6: in some senses, we're victims of our own success. We
Speaker 6: can pretty much eat any food anytime of the year
Speaker 6: from wherever we want, if we have things that would
Speaker 6: have killed us just a few generations ago. I'm a
Speaker 6: cancer survivor and I had a relatively and I'm putting
Speaker 6: this in quotes easy time with it because the technology
Speaker 6: and the science has advanced so much. Whereas one hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty years ago, I would not be here right.
Speaker 1: Now, Derek, I feel like so much of how RFK
Speaker 1: Junior resonates with people has to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that he is the person introducing people to a given issue.
Speaker 1: I find myself being introduced to a lot of these
Speaker 1: topics by r of K Junior, and then I have
Speaker 1: to go figure out, you know, what's right and what's wrong.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping we can just throw some r of
Speaker 1: K junior claims at you and get your reaction. Where
Speaker 1: do they come from? Is it bullshit or not? So
Speaker 1: how about we start with this idea that vitamin A
Speaker 1: is a sufficient enough treatment for measles. Where does that
Speaker 1: come from?
Speaker 6: It comes from studies that were done on malnourished children
Speaker 6: in Africa, and it's very specific to malnourished children, and
Speaker 6: they had good efficacy with megadoses of vitamin A too,
Speaker 6: megadoses to be specific, given over the course of something
Speaker 6: like forty eight hours. They had good results from that.
Speaker 6: But what often happens with anti vaxers or wellness people
Speaker 6: in general is they'll cling to a study, extrapolate from it,
Speaker 6: and then pretend that it's good for everyone. Vitamin A
Speaker 6: toxicity is a known problem, and we've seen some children
Speaker 6: now have to go to the hospital in West Texas
Speaker 6: because of that toxicity. But there is a little bit
Speaker 6: of truth to a very specific community that they pretend
Speaker 6: will we'll affect everyone in the same way, and that's
Speaker 6: just not how biology works.
Speaker 1: Okay, what about the claim that seed oils are bad
Speaker 1: for you. Seed oils, of course the oils that are
Speaker 1: extracted from vegetable crops, so we're talking canola oil, corn oil,
Speaker 1: flax seed oil. Are those things bad for you?
Speaker 6: That started with or at least was mainstreamed by someone
Speaker 6: named Paul Saladino, who was formerly known as the Carnivore
Speaker 6: Doctor because he was an early carnivore diet devotee, who
Speaker 6: now incorporates fruits and vegetables because he knows that sort
Speaker 6: of diet can't last, and he's moved on to another stick.
Speaker 6: Seed oils, like canola oil, they're used in ultra processed
Speaker 6: foods a lot because they are inexpensive. The problem is
Speaker 6: the sugar and the carbs, and then different things, the
Speaker 6: excess carbohydrates that are in ultra processed foods and just
Speaker 6: the manufacturing process. They've isolated one of the components that
Speaker 6: is extremely well studied, is known to have cardiovascular benefits
Speaker 6: and is known to have other health benefits, and they've
Speaker 6: taken that and pretended to that that is the actual problem.
Speaker 1: And the anti seed oil rhetoric has been pretty successful
Speaker 1: because you have franchised restaurants like Steak and Shake making
Speaker 1: a big deal out of switching from seed oils to
Speaker 1: beef tallo for when they make their French fries.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's audience capture. I mean, any sort of company
Speaker 6: is going to look for what can give them a
Speaker 6: leg up and to get into the news cycle. And
Speaker 6: I don't know much about Steak and Shake, so I've
Speaker 6: never lived in an area what that has one, So
Speaker 6: I don't know their policies. I don't know their politics,
Speaker 6: but it doesn't surprise me that if they perhaps have
Speaker 6: a conservative bent to their politics, then they want to
Speaker 6: appeal to that crowd. It does not surprise me that
Speaker 6: they jump on the bandwagon.
Speaker 1: I am actually from a state that has Steak and Shake,
Speaker 1: and I can confirm that it has a conservative leaning. Okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: what about fluoride in the wall? Good or bad?
Speaker 6: First off, I'll just say that this feeds into another
Speaker 6: aspect that RFK is really good at exploiting. I brought
Speaker 6: up the naturalistic fallacy. There's also chemophobia, and that's people's
Speaker 6: fear of chemicals. So the idea that something is synthetic
Speaker 6: and that it's put into something skivs people out. My
Speaker 6: understanding is that the benefits have largely been around the
Speaker 6: enamel of teeth and people have gotten less cavities. We've
Speaker 6: seen instances for example in Canada, where one province took
Speaker 6: the floride out and the childhood cavity rate shot up,
Speaker 6: so they put it back in and it went back down.
Speaker 6: I happen to live now in the largest city in
Speaker 6: America that does not fluoridate its water, which is Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 6: There's a strong hippie culture here that runs with some
Speaker 6: of its politics. But from my understanding and from the
Speaker 6: experts that I've talked to, it is a net positive
Speaker 6: to have fluoride in the water at the levels of
Speaker 6: point seven no leaders, it is not going to have
Speaker 6: any harmful effects.
Speaker 1: Earlier, Devin Noah and I were talking about some of
Speaker 1: the things that RFK Junior says that we actually agree with,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious, has he said anything that you actually support.
Speaker 6: Well, Unfortunately, the changes that he's proposed that I would
Speaker 6: love to see happen, I don't think he has the
Speaker 6: power to do. And that's things like ending the pharma
Speaker 6: lobby in DC and ending direct to consumer advertising of
Speaker 6: pharmaceuticals on television. We are one of two countries in
Speaker 6: the world that allow that. He campaigned on those things,
Speaker 6: and since he's been installed at the AHHS, he has
Speaker 6: not brought them up once, And that is what I figured,
Speaker 6: because the pharma lobby just has too much power with
Speaker 6: both Democrats and Republicans. It is the largest lobby in DC.
Speaker 6: The idea that he would get that through was always
Speaker 6: a misnomer.
Speaker 1: Right as anti establishment as RFK Junior seems, he doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be immune from the classic politician behavior of
Speaker 1: making promises that he knows he can't keep. But Derek,
Speaker 1: we have learned so much in this episode. However, before
Speaker 1: I let you go, I wanted to ask you what we,
Speaker 1: as individuals have the power to do in the face
Speaker 1: of this movement of shitty science. What would you say
Speaker 1: to someone who perhaps has dipped their toes in the
Speaker 1: worldview of someone like RFK Junior, but hasn't quite gone
Speaker 1: off the deep end yet? How would you approach someone
Speaker 1: like that?
Speaker 6: I would do my best to try to get that
Speaker 6: person to adhere to a heuristic that I came up
Speaker 6: very early on with conspirtuality, which is, watch what they
Speaker 6: say and then watch what they sell. So if you
Speaker 6: look at not just RFK, but if you look at
Speaker 6: the people in his inner circle, all of them sell
Speaker 6: branded supplements, books, or protocols that go against mainstream medicine
Speaker 6: in some capacity, every single one of them. So if
Speaker 6: you can help someone say why are these people fomenting
Speaker 6: distrust and conventional medicine at every turn but then selling
Speaker 6: you their own branded products, that should be your first
Speaker 6: signal that something isn't right here?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 1: That was Derek Barris, co host of the Conspiratuality podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what did we think? I mean? I really I liked
Speaker 1: the point about like approaching people in a reasonable manner
Speaker 1: instead of like what's been the average liberal response to
Speaker 1: things we don't agree with, which is just to like
Speaker 1: completely shit on someone.
Speaker 5: This is going to be a tough four years for
Speaker 5: me because I feel like I have very little patience
Speaker 5: for this stuff in that like, I don't want to
Speaker 5: spend time explaining to people you don't like basic things
Speaker 5: that experts are saying, because it feels like we are
Speaker 5: living in a world right now where it doesn't really
Speaker 5: matter what the facts are or what actually happened.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. I have family members who, I mean, at
Speaker 1: peak COVID were you know, kind of spousing all the
Speaker 1: same kind of stuff, and I went into a mode
Speaker 1: of like, you don't know what you're talking about, and
Speaker 1: it's an understandable reaction, like I still feel the need
Speaker 1: to be like that. But then yeah, the result is
Speaker 1: not that they're like understanding your position better. It's more
Speaker 1: that like, what the hell I'm being antagonized for the
Speaker 1: way that I think, and and it probably makes them
Speaker 1: double down, like get even deeper into that avenue of information.
Speaker 1: But like Devin said, there does seem to be just
Speaker 1: like two different worlds of information happening. We saw that
Speaker 1: this week with the Supreme Court decision that was nine
Speaker 1: to zero against Trump about bringing the mistakenly deported guy back,
Speaker 1: and they immediately were like, actually it was nine to
Speaker 1: zero in our favor, and then and that was it.
Speaker 1: Conversation's over. So it's like, all right, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: going to be a fair like an incredibly frustrating era
Speaker 1: to live in. And I feel like, you know, I
Speaker 1: do feel like the classic like MSNBC like mom now
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, in the first Trump administration,
Speaker 1: I'm like whatever, like this is very all, very stupid,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna be okay. And now I'm like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: I can't I can't believe what I'm seeing. And so
Speaker 1: I want to be able to practice more patience and tolerance,
Speaker 1: but then this is like the worst era to be
Speaker 1: trying to practice that. In the part of the appeal
Speaker 1: of RFK is of course that in this kind of
Speaker 1: what the whole episode has been about is like, there
Speaker 1: will be these things where it's like you want to
Speaker 1: hear them out on certain things, or attacking big pharma
Speaker 1: and you know, advertisement on TV and these sorts of
Speaker 1: things which are obviously way harder goals because there is
Speaker 1: money and other factors.
Speaker 4: Right. I guess like my approach if someone I knew
Speaker 4: was kind of dipping their toe into some of this stuff,
Speaker 4: my approach would be to try to take it on
Speaker 4: a case by case thing and not just like, oh well,
Speaker 4: everything RFK or you know, insert anyone in this realm
Speaker 4: is totally off base and wrong. The seed oil thing,
Speaker 4: if you don't want to eat that, I don't really care.
Speaker 4: I don't think kids aren't gonna die, but that obviously
Speaker 4: there's stuff where it's like, Okay, we're trying to get
Speaker 4: rid of the polio vaccine. That's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to no such thing by Manny, Noah
Speaker 1: and Devin. This was our second news oriented episode. Let
Speaker 1: us know if you liked it and if we should
Speaker 1: do even more of them, or let us know if
Speaker 1: you're like, uh, this sucks. Stop doing news. You guys
Speaker 1: are idiots. Our guest today was Derek Barris, author of
Speaker 1: the Conspiratuality book and host of the Conspiratuality podcast. Definitely
Speaker 1: visit the substack for today's episode at No Such Thing
Speaker 1: dot Show. It's going to have a list of resources
Speaker 1: for people who want to learn more about all the
Speaker 1: issues we talked about today. The theme song for No
Speaker 1: Such Thing is produced by me Manny certain self is
Speaker 1: on the beat for the song you're listening to right now. Finally,
Speaker 1: if you liked what you heard today, please leave us
Speaker 1: five stars on wherever you're listening to this podcast. It
Speaker 1: helps us so much and I'll talk to you guys
Speaker 1: next week.