Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Daniel Moody recording from the Home Bunker.
Speaker 1: You know, this week, a clip that I have posted
Speaker 1: onto my Instagram of Sonny Houston of the View has
Speaker 1: gone viral, and in the clip, Sonny very clearly lays
Speaker 1: out the path and plan of the Republican Party and
Speaker 1: very articulately tells people that are watching that this election
Speaker 1: is not about a candidate. It is about the few
Speaker 1: future of this country. And I urge everybody to watch it,
Speaker 1: to watch you know that I think it's a little over,
Speaker 1: you know, close to two and a half minutes, because
Speaker 1: like I said yesterday, I get it, you know, I
Speaker 1: get it, and I feel it. I feel the anger
Speaker 1: and the rage that I have against this administration and
Speaker 1: their actions in Gaza. I have rage and anger about
Speaker 1: their inability to create a large enough narrative to disrupt
Speaker 1: Maga supremacy. And I just need folks to realize that
Speaker 1: these people, these white supremacists, they are not fucking around.
Speaker 1: And for folks who think that like I'm gonna sit
Speaker 1: this one out as my protest because Biden doesn't align
Speaker 1: with my values, well, Donald Trump, sure as fucked doesn't
Speaker 1: align with your values either, right, none of them do.
Speaker 1: But the fact is is that with a person in
Speaker 1: office that is imperfect and actually still believes in the
Speaker 1: rule of law and the constitution, you can fight them,
Speaker 1: You can protest them, you can push them and call
Speaker 1: them out to be better. That does not happen in
Speaker 1: an authoritarian, dick tatorship or fascistic rule. It does not happen.
Speaker 1: People are disappeared, they are killed, they are silenced, their
Speaker 1: families are threatened. And if you think like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: well that's not happening, folks, how many fucking times have
Speaker 1: the judges that are sitting on Donald Trump's cases now
Speaker 1: been swatted? How many elected officials right? How many poll workers?
Speaker 1: How many election workers have been threatened since twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: So if you think that the escalation is not possible,
Speaker 1: I tell you that this shit will happen in a
Speaker 1: blink of a fucking eye, and there'll be not a
Speaker 1: goddamn thing that we can do about it, because Donald
Speaker 1: Trump will control the military and there will be no
Speaker 1: General Millie, there will be no fucking guardrails as shitty
Speaker 1: as we thought they were in the four years that
Speaker 1: he was president. What we know is that those people,
Speaker 1: the handful of them that wanted to write books after
Speaker 1: the fact, really did save our democracy from going into
Speaker 1: a nuclear, literal fucking meltdown. They will be gone, and
Speaker 1: everybody that has money and access and influence will flee
Speaker 1: because they will see the writing on the wall. The rest, however,
Speaker 1: will be left here to suffer, because cruelty is the
Speaker 1: fucking point. So I can't express enough the legitimate fears
Speaker 1: that I I have that much like climate change and
Speaker 1: the experience that I had and people on the East
Speaker 1: Coast had, you know, with a mini tropical storm that
Speaker 1: decided to roll through in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: last night with sixty mile per hour fucking winds and
Speaker 1: rain in fifty degree weather in January, just like we
Speaker 1: continue to ignore the very real effects that are happening
Speaker 1: outside of our window of climate change, and elected officials
Speaker 1: who have the ability to do more than put together
Speaker 1: packs that they don't actually uphold, do anything about. There
Speaker 1: will be no fucking recourse if we fuck this election
Speaker 1: up by not voting, or voting third party, or voting
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump, because they all amount to the same thing.
Speaker 1: White supremacist Christian fascist rule for generations to fucking come.
Speaker 1: The conversation that will be coming up with our friend,
Speaker 1: doctor Jonathan Metzel is talking about a public health crisis
Speaker 1: around despair and anxiety and depression and loneliness that is
Speaker 1: all stemming from the same places. The thing that a
Speaker 1: democrat in the White House provides is possibility, and possibility
Speaker 1: is what eventually leads us to change without possibility and
Speaker 1: hope we die plain and simple. Coming up next my
Speaker 1: conversation with our friend, our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, folks, if you happen to be in
Speaker 1: the New York area, I will be live and in
Speaker 1: person with Jonathan February fifth in Brooklyn at green Light
Speaker 1: Bookstore in conversation with him about his latest book, What
Speaker 1: We've Become, that you can pre order now folks. It
Speaker 1: is Oh my god. I think it is the first
Speaker 1: conversation of the new year with our friend, our in
Speaker 1: house doctor, doctor Jonathan metsl That has you know, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: when I think about it in hindsight, I actually have
Speaker 1: no idea how many years we've been in conversation on
Speaker 1: this to go seventy five, But I have absolutely continued
Speaker 1: to be so grateful for the way that you show
Speaker 1: up for me and the WOKF audience, particularly as we
Speaker 1: are navigating just I mean unprecedented times, I miss precedented.
Speaker 2: Times, I.
Speaker 1: Miss it a lot.
Speaker 2: Give us some precedent.
Speaker 1: So I want to start off today, folks. Jonathan had
Speaker 1: sent me two really interesting pieces that I think kind
Speaker 1: of play into where a lot of people find themselves
Speaker 1: in terms of understanding mental illness, understanding emotional well being,
Speaker 1: and how these unprecedented times continue to affect us. And
Speaker 1: so Jonathan, first off, you had sent I want to
Speaker 1: start with the with the with the graphs. And there
Speaker 1: was a report that was done to who is more
Speaker 1: likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness And the
Speaker 1: person that is writing this is Ryan Burge, and it
Speaker 1: says liberals that consistently, that's consistently true across all kinds
Speaker 1: of measures, but when it comes to religion, Liberal Protestants
Speaker 1: and Catholics are less likely to be diagnosed an atheists
Speaker 1: and agnostics. And so he runs through what we're talking
Speaker 1: about when we're talking about mental illness. For this particular study,
Speaker 1: they're talking about anxiety, depression, and loneliness in in that way.
Speaker 1: So talk to us about this report and why you
Speaker 1: think that it's important that we understand kind of the
Speaker 1: context around it and how it's being measured.
Speaker 2: Well, First, happy New Year, everybody, and I want to first,
Speaker 2: you know, hopefully before we start talking about depressing stuff again.
Speaker 2: I hope that everybody got a little bit of a
Speaker 2: break over the over the holiday. And also just put
Speaker 2: in a quick plug which we can do a lot now,
Speaker 2: which is that you and I are going to be live.
Speaker 2: We're taking our show on the road, or like on
Speaker 2: our road. So we're going to be in Brooklyn doing
Speaker 2: my book lunch the first week of February, so we
Speaker 2: can talk more about that and all this stuff. But
Speaker 2: it's an interesting time for me, right because I have
Speaker 2: two books coming out. I've got the book about mass
Speaker 2: shootings and the ways our country normalizes mass shootings, and
Speaker 2: that's really a book about mental illness, right. That book
Speaker 2: is a story of how a naked white man who
Speaker 2: was really psychotic broke into a waffle house and killed
Speaker 2: four young adults of color and injured for more. And
Speaker 2: that's really a book about, you know, how do we
Speaker 2: define sanity and safety in the context of a country
Speaker 2: that is armed to the teeth basically. And then also
Speaker 2: I have a new version of Dying of Whiteness coming
Speaker 2: out February fourth that looks at my argument from twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty twenty, which looked at how health policies that
Speaker 2: were rejected by white America were killing white Americans at
Speaker 2: a greater rate. You rejecting the Affordable Care Act, doing
Speaker 2: all these pro gun stuff, all these things. And so
Speaker 2: it's really interesting for me because in light of these
Speaker 2: two books really coming out that are about whiteness, I've
Speaker 2: been tracking a lot of articles that really complicate my argument,
Speaker 2: particularly my Dying of Whiteness art art argument, which basically
Speaker 2: say that maybe before the pandemic or twenty nineteen or
Speaker 2: twenty ten to twenty something or other, there really was
Speaker 2: a clear correlation between conservative politics and negative health outcomes,
Speaker 2: but now we're seeing those issues creep into liberal populations
Speaker 2: as well, or maybe we're just doing research differently that
Speaker 2: ask the same question of the question, is is it
Speaker 2: the research or is it really happening? And so there
Speaker 2: were two articles that have been on my mind, and
Speaker 2: this is a long preamble to get to your question,
Speaker 2: but the one that we'll talk about in a minute.
Speaker 2: Here was an article in the Economist that showed how
Speaker 2: deaths of despair is not just a metric for poor
Speaker 2: white people anymore. Actually, if you look at different pathogens,
Speaker 2: that's happening across multiple populations. But the one that you're
Speaker 2: talking about really caught my eye because the header, of
Speaker 2: course was does liberalism lead to mental illness? Basically?
Speaker 1: And we and we know. I mean the reason why
Speaker 1: I laugh, right is because we've heard that refrain from
Speaker 1: the Maga supremis where they're you know, they they say
Speaker 1: all types of things about liberals and liberal brain disease
Speaker 1: and woke brain disease and blah blah blah. And so
Speaker 1: when you sent it to me, initially I thought it
Speaker 1: was a joke.
Speaker 2: It was like, oh damn, there's some data here, here's
Speaker 2: some data, and what's really interesting about it. So I
Speaker 2: first let me just say, as a caveat, I would
Speaker 2: take this research as a grain of salt, because it's done.
Speaker 2: It was published by a religious outlet that has a
Speaker 2: vested interest in telling people, yeah to go to for
Speaker 2: their mental health. But that thing said it did kind
Speaker 2: of feel right. I Mean, the basic argument was that liberals,
Speaker 2: particularly liberals who identify as atheist or agnostic and are
Speaker 2: non church going. So that's the big you know, red
Speaker 2: flag or about the research right there. But it said
Speaker 2: that basically, if you're socially unconnected, you have a higher
Speaker 2: chance of getting a diagnosed with anxiety or depression or
Speaker 2: other kind of loneliness disorders. Now, of course, you could
Speaker 2: poke holes in this until the sun goes down. You know,
Speaker 2: liberals are probably more likely to go to psychiatrists. If
Speaker 2: you're atheist or agnostic, you're probably more likely to go
Speaker 2: to a mental health practitioner than go to a confession
Speaker 2: and things like that. But it did seem like something
Speaker 2: that we used to I guess when I read the study,
Speaker 2: I thought about the research that depression and heart attacks
Speaker 2: are higher if your sports team loses. You know that basically,
Speaker 2: if you feel like you're on the losing side or
Speaker 2: there's no momentum, there's no community built thing around this,
Speaker 2: that people feel isolated, particularly when they don't have a
Speaker 2: fallback community. And I do think that there's a sense
Speaker 2: of the world spinning away from us right now as
Speaker 2: liberals that's not tied to like imagine if you don't believe,
Speaker 2: or you don't go to church, or you know, you're
Speaker 2: an atheist or something. Imagine like being a democrat in
Speaker 2: the time of Obama, for example, there was a massive
Speaker 2: social movement, you know, believe and hope and all these
Speaker 2: kind of things. You were part of some bigger social movement.
Speaker 2: And I don't know do liberals or democrats have that
Speaker 2: right now. I don't think fighting the end of democracy
Speaker 2: is like an uplifting movement in that way. And certainly
Speaker 2: there is just a lot more depressing stuff, as you
Speaker 2: and I talk about every week. And so the interesting
Speaker 2: thing was it was kind of making this argument which
Speaker 2: I'm curious, I'm curious about your thoughts about it, but
Speaker 2: it basically said, even when you control for the fact
Speaker 2: of who goes to psychiatrists more or less, us that
Speaker 2: liberals are more likely to have mental illnesses link to loneliness.
Speaker 1: In all honesty, we started to get into a greater
Speaker 1: conversation about loneliness and the effects of loneliness in COVID, right,
Speaker 1: you know, and there being a lot of research that
Speaker 1: was done and just you know, our own anecdotal research,
Speaker 1: like humans are pack animals, we are communal animals, and
Speaker 1: so when we are left in isolation, obviously you're going
Speaker 1: to see a deterioration that happens in your mental health
Speaker 1: and in connectivity. And then after right quote unquote, after
Speaker 1: even though, folks, I just learned the other day that
Speaker 1: a thousand people a week are still dying of COVID,
Speaker 1: but we don't talk about it. Nonetheless, but after we
Speaker 1: came out of isolation, re engaging with one another was
Speaker 1: also really difficult thing to do. So I mean to me,
Speaker 1: if you are involved in any type of regular community
Speaker 1: based activity, whether that be through a religious institution, through
Speaker 1: a sports team, you know, through a writing group or
Speaker 1: dancing or what have you, like, that is going to
Speaker 1: be fundamentally better for you than to remain in isolation
Speaker 1: all day every day, particularly when you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people still like myself, work from home, right and
Speaker 1: so you know, while I communicate with people all day
Speaker 1: long and talk NonStop, it isn't like I'm going into
Speaker 1: a studio every single day and connecting with people in
Speaker 1: real life. So taking those extra steps are really important.
Speaker 1: But Jonathan, the other the other piece that you had
Speaker 1: sent me is one that I that I also found
Speaker 1: really troubling, which was the one that was in the
Speaker 1: economists the depths of despair narrative is out of date.
Speaker 1: Can you give us a kind of like fifty thousand
Speaker 1: foot view on again, this kind of connecting to mental illness,
Speaker 1: this rise that we're seeing, and why this should be
Speaker 1: on our radar.
Speaker 2: Sure. Well, So there were two very esteemed economists who
Speaker 2: were coupled who had a argument basically that tracked where
Speaker 2: it was really an unprecedented it's really unprecedented in industrialized
Speaker 2: countries to see a fall in lifespan among people who
Speaker 2: are in the demographic majority in other words, white men
Speaker 2: a lot of times. And what they saw was the
Speaker 2: across rust Belt America, Red state America, white longevity, white
Speaker 2: lifespan was falling by two to four years in some instances,
Speaker 2: which is again unprecedented if you were like in the
Speaker 2: privileged quote unquote group. And so they looked in detail
Speaker 2: at that and it was a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: I talk about in Dying of whiteness, you know, no
Speaker 2: access to healthcare, but it was also a lot of
Speaker 2: addiction fentanyl factors like that or you know, earlier versions
Speaker 2: at that time. And so the idea was basically, you know,
Speaker 2: their finding was white Americans are having a worse, worse
Speaker 2: drop in life expectancy than pretty much any other group.
Speaker 2: Other groups or more communal, They're less into guns, they're
Speaker 2: less addicted, all these kind of things. They had two
Speaker 2: versions of their book come out about Death to Despair
Speaker 2: and a number of articles, and it was the jumping
Speaker 2: up point for a lot of stuff, including for me.
Speaker 2: It was very useful in dying of whiteness, even though
Speaker 2: of course I tied it to the ideology the performativity
Speaker 2: of what it means to be white in America. But
Speaker 2: what we're seeing is economists are now al ying these
Speaker 2: same metrics to other groups, and we're now seeing falling
Speaker 2: lifespan among other groups as well. It's not just a
Speaker 2: white people disorder. So Black Americans are dying of overdose
Speaker 2: and gun violence and other factors in ways that are
Speaker 2: impacting longevity. And the article in the Economists, I think,
Speaker 2: did a really good job of talking about suicide in
Speaker 2: Native American communities, for example, which is really impacting longevity.
Speaker 2: And so trends that started as being a dying of
Speaker 2: whiteness kind of disorder now look like they're a dying
Speaker 2: of everybody kind of disorder. And to me, that's not
Speaker 2: really surprising, right because, as you said, we're not tracking COVID,
Speaker 2: and our health infrastructure is falling apart, and it's really
Speaker 2: spotty across the country, and we're not having the kind
Speaker 2: of unifying national programs that you would think in industrialized,
Speaker 2: advanced society would do, like national health care for example,
Speaker 2: and other things like that. And so in a way,
Speaker 2: what we're seeing is that those same factors and also addiction,
Speaker 2: right which has been a driving point of right wing
Speaker 2: talking point that I personally don't feel like, with no disrespect,
Speaker 2: liberals have done anywhere near a good enough job of
Speaker 2: addressing or refuting or rebutting. Now their hands are tied
Speaker 2: in many ways, but it gets tied into immigration and
Speaker 2: then we can't answer and things like that. But it
Speaker 2: really is having an effect on longevity. And so this
Speaker 2: question of dying of whiteness, you know, it kind of
Speaker 2: begs the question should I write another version of dying
Speaker 2: of whiteness? I don't want to called that dying of
Speaker 2: americanness in a way, which is what.
Speaker 1: We're seeing, you know, And I think that that is
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so troubling and so deep. First of all,
Speaker 1: you know, again going back to COVID, that we learned
Speaker 1: that our life expectancy fell by three years collectively. I
Speaker 1: think back down to what seventy three years old. But
Speaker 1: when you are when you were basing that on various
Speaker 1: demographics and various groups, the numbers, just like equal pay,
Speaker 1: vary across the board. But I think that what is
Speaker 1: startling is that to your point, for a highly quote
Speaker 1: unquote one of the wealthiest nations and industrialized nations, a
Speaker 1: democratic nation, for us not to have the healthcare system
Speaker 1: that is preventative right for us to for for people.
Speaker 1: I mean, now you have women that are basically waiting
Speaker 1: in parking lots to die, you know, in order before
Speaker 1: they get any type of care. You're you know, doctors
Speaker 1: are giving you more medication because that, you know, feeds
Speaker 1: into their bottom line as opposed to telling you, you know,
Speaker 1: to get outside, maybe eat some plants and like, you know,
Speaker 1: change your lifestyle. Well, that doesn't help the part of
Speaker 1: sumical pharmaceutical industry. And so you know what I see, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: which is very scary. The movie that I bring up
Speaker 1: all the time, Elysium, terrible movie. Matt Damon, Jodie Foster,
Speaker 1: you know, but all of the healthy, happy, you know,
Speaker 1: fit people are in this place called Elysium, and Earth
Speaker 1: has turned into a disease ridden, you know, toxic, horrible environment.
Speaker 1: Stop me if it sounds like a documentary, and you
Speaker 1: know what you are going to see, I think is
Speaker 1: an incredible increase in divide and it's going to look
Speaker 1: like help. So when you see people that are fit,
Speaker 1: that are well rested, right, it is going to be
Speaker 1: the privileged class. And I'm like, how do you combat
Speaker 1: that inside of a system that doesn't want to give
Speaker 1: health care to everybody? Because the politicians are racist, right,
Speaker 1: and they don't want everyone to have care. They want
Speaker 1: white people to have care.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's part of it, absolutely, But I mean,
Speaker 2: how many people got a COVID booster for example, COVID
Speaker 2: boosters are the COVID booster. I have to say they
Speaker 2: hit a home run with this booster. I mean, the
Speaker 2: numbers on this COVID booster are incredible, but they couldn't
Speaker 2: get anybody to get the COVID booster. Nobody got it.
Speaker 2: And now there are states like Florida that even though
Speaker 2: the data the data either there's another study this morning,
Speaker 2: the data is a slam dunk on the COVID booster
Speaker 2: in terms of safety, blocking long COVID, you know, not
Speaker 2: having you know, seventy two percent reduction in hospitalization, all
Speaker 2: these factors. But it's also it's not it's for me.
Speaker 2: I have to say, I agree with you, of course
Speaker 2: about socioeconomic class, but it's also an information and trust
Speaker 2: issue because they're just the disinformation that's out there, the
Speaker 2: trust in science, the defunding of science. I mean, again,
Speaker 2: we have a vaccine that's that's effective, honestly effective, and
Speaker 2: an entire state of Florida that is trying to block
Speaker 2: the entire vaccine in that state. And so it's just
Speaker 2: a weird moment that is tied to socioeconomics. But I
Speaker 2: have to say, I think we're it's obviously politics, ideology,
Speaker 2: all the things we've been talking about in terms of
Speaker 2: the despair of American ness and things like that. Just
Speaker 2: I think that a class analysis is part of this.
Speaker 2: But I also think our country is ripping apart ideologically,
Speaker 2: and it's impossible to have any kind of coherent narrative,
Speaker 2: even if that narrative is like add four years to
Speaker 2: your life.
Speaker 1: You know, And that's the thing I just again, yes,
Speaker 1: I believe that there is an information vacuum. I think
Speaker 1: that there is a trust level, and I think that
Speaker 1: all of these things were strategic and have been done
Speaker 1: to continually rip this country apart, to make room for
Speaker 1: a big strong man right, to make room for authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: Because if all of the systems fail and then somebody
Speaker 1: comes in and says, oh, I alone can fix this,
Speaker 1: and you're in a place of desperation, well guess what
Speaker 1: you're going to do. You're going to drink the sand
Speaker 1: and think that it's water. All I have to say
Speaker 1: to Peep is that you have to take your health
Speaker 1: and wellness all across the board into your own hands,
Speaker 1: because there are full systems in place to try and
Speaker 1: make sure that you don't access health care. And even
Speaker 1: though that there are the Biden administration tells people to
Speaker 1: get their shots, tells people to get their boosters. We
Speaker 1: know that medicine and medical information and public health have
Speaker 1: been weaponized. So Jonathan, last question for you, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you want people to take away
Speaker 1: from the from from kind of this narrative, this alarm
Speaker 1: around despair and americanism.
Speaker 2: We have an opportunity now as Democrats to reverse all
Speaker 2: of these narratives, right I mean, there's really two choices,
Speaker 2: as you've been saying, I think, very articulately on media
Speaker 2: NonStop for the past couple of weeks. We can either
Speaker 2: join in a cross cut movement to save democracy that
Speaker 2: also has tons of health benefits, joining in a broader
Speaker 2: coalition reaching across divides that you didn't think were possible,
Speaker 2: being activists, being hopeful and advocating for things like better
Speaker 2: healthcare and more universal gun safety and other factors like that.
Speaker 2: So are the Democrats to going to create a big
Speaker 2: tent where people feel like they're all under the tent?
Speaker 2: Which is I don't know, it seems almost laughably impossible
Speaker 2: right now, but that you know, right now, you've got
Speaker 2: about ten months really to create. You have autonomy for
Speaker 2: the next ten months to create that movement to you know,
Speaker 2: as they said in my childhood Kumbaya or that decision
Speaker 2: is going to be made for you and it's going
Speaker 2: to be leading to a lot more despair. And there's
Speaker 2: a pretty clear choice of a big tent right now.
Speaker 2: So I don't I know that it's almost funny hearing
Speaker 2: the words come out of my mouth because it feels
Speaker 2: so impossible. But I would just say, we have a
Speaker 2: choice right now, which is are we going to build
Speaker 2: alliances that improve these metrics or are we going to
Speaker 2: go the other direction? And so I realize I'm just
Speaker 2: riffing off of your talking point, but it has to
Speaker 2: be the talking point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean, you know, and I as belate,
Speaker 1: A'm struggling with that talking point because people are fucking
Speaker 1: angry and I don't know if it's going to subside
Speaker 1: in the next ten months. And I am worried, you know,
Speaker 1: as everybody else is. I am. I am absolutely worried
Speaker 1: because we say this with every election, but this is
Speaker 1: absolutely the last election if Joe Biden doesn't win. And
Speaker 1: trust me, folks, Joe Biden is not one of my
Speaker 1: favorite fucking characters right now at all. But I also
Speaker 1: know what the alternative is. As always, doctor Jonathan metzell
Speaker 1: our in house doctor. So happy to see you happy
Speaker 1: and healthy in the new year, folks. We will be
Speaker 1: at green Light Bookstore in Brooklyn on February fifth. Absolutely
Speaker 1: go go, go and check us out. Go head to
Speaker 1: Jonathan's website Jonathannetzel dot com, and you can find out
Speaker 1: all of the information there and if you follow him
Speaker 1: on social media and me, we will be promoting it
Speaker 1: as well. Appreciate you hanging there, everybody. That is it
Speaker 1: for me today, Dear friends on Woke af AS always,
Speaker 1: Power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.