Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: For it's the face that I'm winning reward of patience
Speaker 2: given to her politics with pride. Uh man, I'm in
Speaker 2: a good mood. I'm glad to start the show here,
Speaker 2: got a great show for you today. I don't know
Speaker 2: why I'm starting like that, but glad to talk to you.
Speaker 2: So let me tell you about today and how things
Speaker 2: gonna be is going zon It's like what the licks
Speaker 2: reads you feel me like, this is what we're picking
Speaker 2: up throwing damn take you about the black black whoop woop.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna catch you on the fifty third. I don't
Speaker 2: know why I just became my uncle Edges now rest
Speaker 2: in peace, but essentially that here's the thing, dude, what
Speaker 2: we tried to do this year, if you ain't figured out,
Speaker 2: was to stay more current with our episodes what I
Speaker 2: did most of last year. That was like kind of
Speaker 2: my plan to kind of be more professional about my
Speaker 2: podcast and was like I want to be like at
Speaker 2: least four episodes ahead every month so that like if
Speaker 2: I don't know, I gotta go on tour or something
Speaker 2: like something like that happens, where like I can I'll
Speaker 2: be good. Like I could like skip recording because there's
Speaker 2: there's enough in the tank. What kept happening last year
Speaker 2: was like life just kept moving so fast, Like the
Speaker 2: news kept moving so fast that it was like, by
Speaker 2: the time I'm ready to talk about it, it's like
Speaker 2: old news, you know. And I appreciated y'all like riding
Speaker 2: with me, but ultimately it was like, man, you kind
Speaker 2: of gotta you gotta stay on point, bro, Like you
Speaker 2: gotta stay where where we are. In the episodes that
Speaker 2: were I'm plugging my headphones in because I realized I
Speaker 2: can hear myself. But the episodes where we were, okay,
Speaker 2: see now I can hear myself, the episodes where we
Speaker 2: were like right on top of like what was happening,
Speaker 2: ended up being you know, the more higher downloaded you
Speaker 2: may or may not know. By now, I have yet
Speaker 2: to reach the numbers of the other Cool Zone series
Speaker 2: to where I'll be able to like actually make some
Speaker 2: residuals off this show. So what we're trying to do
Speaker 2: is get them numbers up, So please like subscribe and share.
Speaker 2: Dot makes bread out this mug. I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: doing the Lord's work. But anyway, I did not get
Speaker 2: sent No. One hundred thousand subscribers to YouTube channel. I
Speaker 2: ain't salty, feel me, and I'm not salty Like congratulations
Speaker 2: to the to the Kendrick Lamar of the Cool Zone
Speaker 2: Media te oh Man, that joke has levels, especially because
Speaker 2: were gonna talk about Kendrick in a little bit. But yeah,
Speaker 2: So I've been trying to like make sure that these
Speaker 2: episodes are much more current and visually stimulating and all
Speaker 2: that good stuff. But there's such a panoply a good
Speaker 2: good word right there, of a plethora of things we
Speaker 2: could cover every week. So much happened, trade wars, tariffs, USAID,
Speaker 2: the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Consumer Affairs,
Speaker 2: like the people that make sure that a car company
Speaker 2: kids can't sell you a card that don't work, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying, Like they gonn like so much
Speaker 2: to cover. But in that that made me have to
Speaker 2: scrap the first episode I made that was supposed to
Speaker 2: be for the beginning of this year, about the cars
Speaker 2: driving into the French quarters, about the Tesla catching on fire,
Speaker 2: which clearly was a metaphor and foreshadowing. I didn't get
Speaker 2: to talk about South Korea impeaching, like impeaching there there
Speaker 2: there president or Prime minister about that food, trying to
Speaker 2: call nat you know, martial law. Like, there's so much
Speaker 2: I didn't get to talk about because life just happened
Speaker 2: so fast, you feel me. I even did a whole
Speaker 2: episode about Nikki Giovanni, but like that'll probably see never
Speaker 2: see the light of day because like I didn't have
Speaker 2: my camera set up then and too just so much
Speaker 2: has happened, but a dope thing fell in my lap
Speaker 2: today and it's about the RFK of it all. So
Speaker 2: we got to talk about the likelihood of an entire
Speaker 2: generation having Measles and Ricketts again. Hood politics, y'all. Okay,
Speaker 2: you may or may not know our play cousin pod,
Speaker 2: the House of Pod doctor cave Holda who's been on
Speaker 2: I've been on his show many times. A lot of
Speaker 2: us on our team have been on his show, and
Speaker 2: he's also been on The Bastards Pod many times. We
Speaker 2: love kave Man. I feel like for me specifically, his
Speaker 2: show is really much like the medical science version of mine,
Speaker 2: to where it's like he's taking things that are truly complicated, truly,
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's medical science, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: and explaining it in a way that us who don't
Speaker 2: have you know, degrees in that stuff could like really understand.
Speaker 2: And I feel like it's so important because it's like
Speaker 2: sometimes I feel like I have to have I have
Speaker 2: to jump a hurdle to convince people that, like, yo,
Speaker 2: you should you should, you should care about politics, like
Speaker 2: it really affects you, you know, And I have to
Speaker 2: try to like walk people through as to why this affection,
Speaker 2: why it's important for you to know what you're talking about, Okave,
Speaker 2: is like I mean, I don't have to convince you
Speaker 2: that you should understand medical medicine in the medical field,
Speaker 2: like you should understand the medical field because it obviously
Speaker 2: affects you. I know. My premise is these people aren't
Speaker 2: smarter than you in the political spectrum, They just use
Speaker 2: a different language. I can't say that about them doctors.
Speaker 2: They are exactly they are actually smarter. But he has
Speaker 2: a way of bringing it, bringing it to us. So
Speaker 2: I was on an incredible show with an incredible human
Speaker 2: being who is freakishly smart, and I am not gonna
Speaker 2: double introduce it because it's gonna get introduced when you
Speaker 2: guys listen to this episode and I'll put some sort
Speaker 2: of visual on that you could watch if you on
Speaker 2: YouTube while you're listening to this episode, it'll probably be
Speaker 2: some sort of performance video of me doing a show
Speaker 2: at some point, So you can just watch me perform
Speaker 2: music at poetry while the sound is not synced up,
Speaker 2: and just listen to these really smart people talk now.
Speaker 2: But before we get into that.
Speaker 3: But look, it's like this. Bulldok is like this.
Speaker 4: Buldeok is like this.
Speaker 2: It's been quite a week, y'all. Like I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not like y'all don't know, it's been quite a week. Tariffs, boy,
Speaker 2: Trump Trump ignited, no sweet little tariffs. Like, if you're
Speaker 2: from DC, Maryland, you Trump talk about tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, tariffs.
Speaker 2: Here a tariff, There're a tariff. You get a tariff. Now,
Speaker 2: you may or may not know what a tariff is.
Speaker 2: It's a tax. It's an international tax. Basically, if you
Speaker 2: want to sell here, you got to pay me more
Speaker 2: to be able to sell here. If you're gonna sell
Speaker 2: your stuff here, I'm gonna charge you for access basically,
Speaker 2: and we have what's called a trade deficit. What does
Speaker 2: that mean? Well, it means the opposite about China, which
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to do a whole show about this.
Speaker 2: But China got a trade surplus. This is all about tariffs,
Speaker 2: trust me. And in the what that means is this
Speaker 2: is that China and US sells more than they buy
Speaker 2: the products they export. They they're making so much more
Speaker 2: than they're spending because everybody buy China stuff. And Trump
Speaker 2: don't like that because we have the opposite. It's called
Speaker 2: a trade deficit, meaning we buying more from everybody else
Speaker 2: then we're selling. And Trump's response is rather than or
Speaker 2: it's two parts. It's like, we need to get our
Speaker 2: weight up. But the only way to get our weight
Speaker 2: up is to try to like make it harder for
Speaker 2: them to sell. And what he's going to do is
Speaker 2: raise the prices on being on having access to all
Speaker 2: these buyers, right because clearly America likes buying. Now, he
Speaker 2: was using that as leverage to the North American countries
Speaker 2: like Canada and Japan, or Japan, like Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 2: His reason is, well, y'all got to show up them borders.
Speaker 2: You got to stop all this fentanyl from coming. Canada,
Speaker 2: like sir, we represent less than one percent of your
Speaker 2: fentanyl problem. Mexico, like sir, fentanyl is coming from legal
Speaker 2: citizens going through legal ports. It's not they're not codes.
Speaker 2: Why with someone trying to flee a wartorm country looking
Speaker 2: for asylum bring a drug in? It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: But whatever, what do you want? And Trump's like, whoever
Speaker 2: did this last trade? Was a dumb dumb who set
Speaker 2: up this deal last time? Deal's awful. He set up
Speaker 2: the deal in twenty eight it's his trade deal. I
Speaker 2: love it, dude. My man turned in his homework from
Speaker 2: his junior year as if it was a new essay.
Speaker 2: I love it. Mexico like, this is what you said,
Speaker 2: this is what you wanted last time. Well, how about
Speaker 2: I agree it is? And basically they agreed to what
Speaker 2: they already agreed to. They said, if not, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: send ten thousand troops to the border. Mexico like, there's
Speaker 2: already ten thousand troops. You've already sent them. I don't know,
Speaker 2: what do you what are you talking about? Anyway, So
Speaker 2: depends on what channel you watch. It worked because you
Speaker 2: know Canada and Mexico big old air quotes back down.
Speaker 2: I don't know, we'll see our groceries are more expensive.
Speaker 2: And because according to him, you know, it's hard to
Speaker 2: bring down grocery prices. I oh, man, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's just so funny to me. And now you know,
Speaker 2: the maga folks is like, that's right, you should pay more.
Speaker 2: It's patriotism. These are patriotisms. These are these are patriot eggs.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Like you post them. These
Speaker 2: are patriot prices. You're support You're willing to pay higher
Speaker 2: prices for your groceries because you love our country. It's
Speaker 2: like putting your finger on jello man. Anyway. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: Consumer Protection Agency shut down. Get him to people that
Speaker 2: make sure the consumers are protected. Yeah, they gone. According
Speaker 2: to the Department of Government Deficiency or Efficiency, the douge
Speaker 2: man got yourself security and I'm gonna tell you that
Speaker 2: right now. Yeah. And the guy that's been put in
Speaker 2: place to run it for now, this guy named Russell Boight,
Speaker 2: who you might know from previous hits such as Project
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. You know that thing that Trump said
Speaker 2: he had nothing to do with that. He has his
Speaker 2: own plan. Yeah, the guy that wrote that is now
Speaker 2: in charge of the consumer It's absolutely amazing. We got
Speaker 2: two additions to the State of the Blackness address that
Speaker 2: will happen in June, one of which is Ye is
Speaker 2: officially in the gone ahead Bruh season. Look, you got
Speaker 2: a Chief. It ain't even no point in us hashing
Speaker 2: out his tweets the Nazi. You got it, Chief, it's
Speaker 2: all you And like I've talked y'all before, and this
Speaker 2: is black speech for you're so dumb and it's not
Speaker 2: worth our time explaining to you or trying to save
Speaker 2: you from whatever damage you're doing. Like Kanye West is
Speaker 2: the Kanye West of hating Kanye West. He's the best
Speaker 2: at destroying himself. But you know what, you're a genius.
Speaker 2: You got it.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 2: Trump kind of subtly, not so subtly, absolutely suggested colonial takeover.
Speaker 2: Oh Gaza man, does it? Like does net y'allhoo understand
Speaker 2: that this man is not your friend? Then he don't understand.
Speaker 2: He even got to talk about that costco costco keeping
Speaker 2: it real. Them fools said, not only is we not
Speaker 2: ending our DEI we raising our are wages thirty dollars
Speaker 2: an hour. Listen, go get you a job. Okay, you
Speaker 2: could eat your dollar fifty slices of pizza for lunch.
Speaker 2: You can have twenty five pounds of mayonnaise. At a discount,
Speaker 2: which you won't need because you make thirty dollars an
Speaker 2: hour gonna get it costco. I don't know about their
Speaker 2: I know nothing more than that about them, and the
Speaker 2: fact that my wife goes there, tries to go at
Speaker 2: least once a month. It's a lot of food. But
Speaker 2: then we're a family. For with the sports ball that
Speaker 2: happened during Kendrick Lamar's concert and the Eagles put a whooping,
Speaker 2: just this is just a bad day for light skins,
Speaker 2: you know, because yeah, yeah, there's a bad day for
Speaker 2: the light skinned folk. And I tell you what, the
Speaker 2: Eagles whooped them boys the way the Democrats got booked,
Speaker 2: whooped in the election, ran the skull up on them
Speaker 2: and speaking to run the score up on them. Corn
Speaker 2: roll Kenji k Lama, pg Lang, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: Pull it, sir Kenny. Just that was high art. I
Speaker 2: saw my favorite My favorite post from this was like
Speaker 2: Kendrick Lamamar's performance was for people who understand tariffs. It's
Speaker 2: high art. The symbolism, it's just beautiful at Samuel L.
Speaker 2: Jackson being Uncle Sam and also a stand in for
Speaker 2: America being a menstrual show. Knowing how to play the game,
Speaker 2: the game being over, just so many levels. The revolution
Speaker 2: we will be televised. You pick the right time, but
Speaker 2: the wrong guy. This is just so I don't know
Speaker 2: what your faith is. I don't know how you understand
Speaker 2: higher powers. But listen the way, the way, the way,
Speaker 2: the way my blackness is set up. There's there's a
Speaker 2: piece of us that just kind of says, you know what,
Speaker 2: some people are just God's chosen person, right man for
Speaker 2: the right time, chosen as the Bible would say, for
Speaker 2: such a time as this. I look at Kenny, I
Speaker 2: look at Kendrick, and I'm like, you're just God's choice.
Speaker 2: You were, you are the right person for this moment.
Speaker 2: There's no like, no one, there was no These ruby
Speaker 2: red slippers don't fit nobody but your foot. And as
Speaker 2: an artist from California that wants to see political change,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm not the right guy for this. Kendrick
Speaker 2: was the right guy for this. And it's like and
Speaker 2: it's performances like that that remind you of it. Right man,
Speaker 2: right time? Boy did he deliver. There's gonna be think
Speaker 2: pieces forever about all the symbolism, but know that the
Speaker 2: I know y'all saw the PlayStation remote as like the
Speaker 2: floor buttons the middle of it was a prison yard,
Speaker 2: and then him saying, you know, I want to play
Speaker 2: y'all favorite, but you know these people like to sue.
Speaker 2: And then it turns it looks at him directly say
Speaker 2: Drake oh man, you can't Serena krip walking, the guy
Speaker 2: sneaking out the gaza flag. Just everything was beautiful. And
Speaker 2: even more beautiful was the response from the Conservative's worst
Speaker 2: halftime show ever, Lauren Bober talking about not only one
Speaker 2: that needs subtitles and you just couldn't think of nothing
Speaker 2: to tweet except for I don't understand him and you
Speaker 2: know these songs, so stop playing around. Madison Calthorne talking
Speaker 2: about halftime show should have been Donald Trump just singing
Speaker 2: to YMCA boy. I want to believe he's kidding. Charlie
Speaker 2: Kirk talking about this is not my style of music
Speaker 2: at The Daily Mail, kench Klamar getting slammed for the
Speaker 2: worst halftime performance ever. Joe Budden's even talking about why
Speaker 2: you choose these songs? It was a w care what
Speaker 2: you say? Y'all ready to get into this episode, so
Speaker 2: allow me to introduce you to our friends. Please go
Speaker 2: support their pod to the House of Pod. So listen
Speaker 2: to this science stuff while you watch me do a
Speaker 2: rap performance.
Speaker 1: It's like this, and welcome back to the House of Pod.
Speaker 1: My name, I'm told is doctor kave Hoda. I hope
Speaker 1: I'm saying that correctly. Thank you for joining our fun
Speaker 1: little uh humor adjacent medical podcast or medical adjacent podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure anymore. We're gonna look at public health,
Speaker 1: We're gonna look at medicine. We're gonna look where it
Speaker 1: meets the news and pop culture today. It meets the
Speaker 1: news hard. It's always right into the news and it's
Speaker 1: a nasty fender bender and everyone's gawking at it out
Speaker 1: side of the road because there's blood and guts and
Speaker 1: it's terrible and it's people are slowing down traffic for it.
Speaker 1: It's been about two weeks since President trump second term
Speaker 1: has begun, and there's been what seems like a large
Speaker 1: scale attack on the public health infrastructure here in the
Speaker 1: United States. It's been focused mainly with online information that doctors, scientists,
Speaker 1: healthcare professionals use to take care of our patients and
Speaker 1: our communities, but also feels like more than that, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about it. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: what's been happening, get the latest updates, talk about what
Speaker 1: that means, maybe if there's any good news to mine
Speaker 1: out of what's happening these days as well. To do that.
Speaker 1: I have two good friends and I'm excited to have
Speaker 1: them both on because they're both friends from different parts
Speaker 1: of my life and I like them meeting and introducing.
Speaker 1: I like doing this. This is exciting for me. I
Speaker 1: hope they get along. I'm really worried that they're not
Speaker 1: and they're going to fight, and which would be great air,
Speaker 1: would be great audio, it'd be a great podcast, but
Speaker 1: it would be weird for me because I love them both.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the guests with the most appearances. We
Speaker 1: have Jason Emmanuel Petty, known as Propaganda aka prop He
Speaker 1: is an MC, a teacher, a host of the very
Speaker 1: popular Hood Politics, which is one of my favorite podcasts,
Speaker 1: and all around swell fella, prop Welcome back to the
Speaker 1: show Man.
Speaker 2: Thank you, And I'm really mad that I didn't think
Speaker 2: of saying the House of pod is in effect, y'all
Speaker 2: in every body steps up is getting wrecked. I can't
Speaker 2: believe I've never thought about that the House of Pain's
Speaker 2: classic album starts with the House of Pod is in effect, y'all.
Speaker 2: I'm like, why have I never thought of it? I
Speaker 2: don't know why I've never said House of Pain puns
Speaker 2: every time I saw you.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because looking at me, I feel like
Speaker 1: I would be a shoeing for one of the House
Speaker 1: of Pain.
Speaker 2: Could have joined you, could have jumped around with him.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I do jump around, jump up and get down. You
Speaker 1: feel like less of these days jumping these days exact
Speaker 1: more like rocking back and forth rhythmically. You know, you
Speaker 1: are very attuned to politics, and you follow things very carefully,
Speaker 1: and your show, as I mentioned, covers a lot of
Speaker 1: these issues. I love having you on to discuss this stuff.
Speaker 1: I also brought on someone else that can help us
Speaker 1: dive in to the public health aspect and what's happening
Speaker 1: someone who's been following this very closely. My friend, doctor
Speaker 1: Jeremy Faust. He's an er doctor. He does a lot
Speaker 1: of health policy work. He's got a very good sub
Speaker 1: stack called Inside Medicine. Jeremy, welcome back to the show. Buddy.
Speaker 4: Good to be here.
Speaker 1: Is is it good to be here. How do you feel.
Speaker 3: I feel terrible, but it's better to be three less company.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, it's less terrible when you're with me, right exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, your your whole social media avatar is always you
Speaker 3: high in the air, jumping up. Literally you like jump Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it really does follow that you should be jump up
Speaker 3: and jump up, jump up and get down.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had decent ups when we played basketball. I
Speaker 1: had decent I mean, it's got you a whole Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was a below the rim guy. Let's
Speaker 1: be fair. But if I had to get up, I could.
Speaker 1: I just became so much harder, so much harder. All right, right, breakaway.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to that later. Let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what's happening, Jeremy. Let's start with sort of
Speaker 1: an overview of the organizations before we go into what
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is doing to these important health policy organizations.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could get like a one liner on what
Speaker 1: these organizations do, or at least historically have done, like,
Speaker 1: for example, the NIH. Everyone's talking about the NIH these days.
Speaker 1: For our listeners who may not be totally familiar with that,
Speaker 1: what is the NAIH? What do they do?
Speaker 4: So the NIH is the United States federal governments.
Speaker 3: It's the National Institutes of Health, So it is a
Speaker 3: bunch of institutes.
Speaker 4: Within a bigger.
Speaker 3: Organization, and they study science, they study medicine, they do
Speaker 3: research internally, so we have scientists professionals who work there
Speaker 3: to advance.
Speaker 4: Knowledge for us all.
Speaker 3: And for example, it was a scientist at the NIH
Speaker 3: who took the sequence of the coronavirus, the novel coronavirus
Speaker 3: that was published online in January of twenty twenty, and
Speaker 3: she put that into a experiment essentially to create the
Speaker 3: first vaccine that was going to be tested. So someone
Speaker 3: had to take that information and get that vaccine up
Speaker 3: and running so Maderena Andfizer could do that. It was
Speaker 3: an NIH scientist who was entrusted with that work. We
Speaker 3: owe her Kisi Korbett, you know, a detO gratitude. So
Speaker 3: they do everything from science that benefits us and saves
Speaker 3: lives today to research on chronic diseases cancer HIV that's internal.
Speaker 3: And then the NIH also is a grant giving body,
Speaker 3: so scientists in academics Stanford University, UCSF, Harvard, where I'm at,
Speaker 3: any place anywhere, apply for grants and I say, hey,
Speaker 3: we want to study X, Y Z, and here's how
Speaker 3: we're going to do it. And the NIH is essentially
Speaker 3: where where those where decisions on those grants are made,
Speaker 3: and how federal funds are distributed. So there are NIH
Speaker 3: funded researchers at literally one hundreds, if not thousands, of
Speaker 3: institutions around the country. So the NIH does its own research,
Speaker 3: and it funds external research extraordinarily powerful.
Speaker 1: Would it be safe to say that, like, it's where
Speaker 1: a lot of the new good ideas revolving around science
Speaker 1: come out of, Like when we're looking for new cures,
Speaker 1: when we're looking for something serious, when when a family
Speaker 1: member says, isn't there anything that can be done? Is
Speaker 1: it safe to say that's really where the NIH comes in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Because the NIH funds projects that might seem
Speaker 3: a little far afield, like oh, why are we putting
Speaker 3: money into that? And the answer is, you just never
Speaker 3: know what's going to materialize in an unexpected way. For example, again,
Speaker 3: I'll use them, I'll use the COVID experience. There were
Speaker 3: NAH funded studies back to the nineties and two thousands
Speaker 3: that someone figured out, oh you know this little mRNA strand,
Speaker 3: that's a strand of genetic material that our bodies used
Speaker 3: to make anything, your eyebrows, your finger nails, whatever it is.
Speaker 4: The mRNA is.
Speaker 3: Like the little messenger that tells our body how to
Speaker 3: make stuff. But that little molecule is really fragile. And
Speaker 3: so some project I think it was nah funded, was, oh,
Speaker 3: you know what, we figured out a way to stabilize
Speaker 3: that molecule to make it's less fragile. We don't know
Speaker 3: really how that's going to help in the future, but
Speaker 3: isn't that cool We can actually take a thing and
Speaker 3: make it less fragile and make it more robust.
Speaker 4: Well, fast forward twenty years.
Speaker 3: You need that technology to make the vaccines that we
Speaker 3: used in COVID. So no one knew in the nineties
Speaker 3: or two thousands when they funded that project where it
Speaker 3: was going to lead. And a lot of things are
Speaker 3: dead ends. But that's kind of how it works, and
Speaker 3: it's sort of a venture capital approach. And cave to
Speaker 3: your point, like, there are a lot of diseases that
Speaker 3: affect very few people, so there's not going to be
Speaker 3: an industry model for that. If a thousand people have
Speaker 3: a deadly disease, it's very tragic. But I'm sorry Fizer
Speaker 3: just not going to care because they need they need
Speaker 3: a patient. But the NIH government research can say, you
Speaker 3: know what, we have the resources to look after these
Speaker 3: forgotten things.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and it's hugely important.
Speaker 2: I think I think you you you nailed something that
Speaker 2: I feel like if you if any person is like
Speaker 2: works in a field to where they've gotten to they've
Speaker 2: done their ten thousand hours, it's like I've read the
Speaker 2: level of nerdery that I know I can't really talk
Speaker 2: about at cocktail hour, Like nobody's going to get this,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. Like, So when you hit
Speaker 2: that level in your field, I feel like when you're
Speaker 2: reading someone else or listening to someone talk about their
Speaker 2: field that you you don't know shit about, you can
Speaker 2: tell if like you're like, okay, nah, I'm just I
Speaker 2: know that you know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know when you see it, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So Like, and one of the things you just brought
Speaker 2: up right now, which is something that I've tried to
Speaker 2: say on my podcast, I'm like with when it comes
Speaker 2: to medicine, especially during the pandemic, it's like you you
Speaker 2: want me to tell you you want these you want
Speaker 2: these scientists to tell you, oh, it's this, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: any scientist that knows what they talking about is going
Speaker 2: to be like, I don't know. I think it's that.
Speaker 2: You know, we're still looking at this. We guessed in
Speaker 2: the nineties, we thought it was this. Turns out there's nothing.
Speaker 2: Like you said, it's like some stuff. You research it,
Speaker 2: You're just like, oh, yeah, it was, it was nothing.
Speaker 2: And I'm like the only reason I know it was
Speaker 2: nothing is because we spent twenty years on it, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying, So like, so to me, to
Speaker 2: the it's almost like to the degree for which you
Speaker 2: can't give me a yes or no answer, especially in
Speaker 2: that field, is makes me go, this will knows any
Speaker 2: persons they're talking about.
Speaker 3: That is so important because a lot of the people
Speaker 3: on what I would call the anti science side, who
Speaker 3: put forward things that are not scientific. They love to
Speaker 3: lead with so much certainty, and then we say, well,
Speaker 3: here's what we think we know, and we couch it
Speaker 3: around all this language like you're saying, and we're trying
Speaker 3: to be humble and we're trying to adhere to that
Speaker 3: scientific principle which you just you just you just described
Speaker 3: but some people will say, oh, they're not even sure
Speaker 3: it's a theory. It's not it's not a fact, and
Speaker 3: we don't even know, like the theory of gravity is
Speaker 3: a theory, you know, that's I'm pretty sure exactly so
Speaker 3: and so. Yeah, but there is this whole thing about
Speaker 3: about how to communicate uncertainty, and we struggle. We struggle
Speaker 3: with it because we don't want to say something. We
Speaker 3: don't want to downplay what we how strong we feel,
Speaker 3: how strongly we feel. But we also don't want to
Speaker 3: be you know, eating our eating.
Speaker 4: It when if something is wrong.
Speaker 3: And that's, by the way, one of the things I
Speaker 3: said during the pandemic was the difference between an expert
Speaker 3: and a non expert is an expert will change their mind.
Speaker 3: An expert will say, we just learned something.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, No, that's a very good point. I don't
Speaker 1: totally agree with the gravity thing, because, as we discuss,
Speaker 1: my ups defy it. But other than that, I absolutely agree.
Speaker 1: Whenever there's like a gray zone, it's a vacuum and
Speaker 1: it's filled by all these bad actors, and no matter
Speaker 1: how hard we try to educate, it's always more appealing
Speaker 1: to the mass. If someone says, here's the answer. It's
Speaker 1: this versus here's what we think so far, like that's
Speaker 1: always more appealing. It fits our brains better. It's that
Speaker 1: little rush that people want. All right, let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the other organizations that are big in the news.
Speaker 1: The CDC. What does the CDC do.
Speaker 3: The Centaers for Disas Control and Prevention is in Atlanta,
Speaker 3: and they are It's a massive organization. Does a lot
Speaker 3: of important work, ranging from just pure epidemiology, meaning they
Speaker 3: keep statistics like how many people die, what did they
Speaker 3: die from? That's something that they do. The CDC studies disease.
Speaker 3: It helps scientists and physicians like me and you know
Speaker 3: what the latest recommendation is. So they have a vaccine
Speaker 3: committee that says, okay, what should the scheduling for pediatric
Speaker 3: vaccinations be? And we know that that has saved so
Speaker 3: many lives the past century.
Speaker 1: So they do that.
Speaker 3: They and they also partner with other organizations, both in
Speaker 3: the United States, so it could be nonprofits, it could
Speaker 3: be state public health officials, but also around the world
Speaker 3: in detecting and combating outbreaks. So I'll give you an
Speaker 3: example of that. Right now, there is an outbreak of
Speaker 3: ebola virus in Uganda, and I wouldn't recommend getting ebola,
Speaker 3: but CDC scientists in general would hear about this, and
Speaker 3: they would and there, their experts would be on a
Speaker 3: plane the next day to go to Uganda and say,
Speaker 3: how can we help, What do you have, what do
Speaker 3: you need? How can we augment your resources, your expertise.
Speaker 3: They're not there to tell them how to do it.
Speaker 3: They are there to see where our resources can plug
Speaker 3: holes and be of assistance. And that is the work
Speaker 3: that we do with the w WHO, the World Health Organization,
Speaker 3: and our in our in our own foreign aid. Trump
Speaker 3: put a pause on that last week, so we do
Speaker 3: not have those people on the ground helping that outbreak.
Speaker 3: So that's an example of things that the CBCD is.
Speaker 3: They track down outbreaks. They'll send out literal they call
Speaker 3: them disease hunters, just like the nickname. Someone says, oh,
Speaker 3: there's something happening in rural Washington, these kids are getting sick.
Speaker 3: Someone goes out there and looks into it and figures out, oh,
Speaker 3: oh gosh, there's like there's a poisoning in Salmonila. You know,
Speaker 3: we got to make sure that people know about it.
Speaker 4: So they do everything from keeping.
Speaker 3: Track of big, big data sets, tracking debts, COVID hospitalization,
Speaker 3: tracking disparities and outcomes, and how to treat diseases to
Speaker 3: responding to crisis.
Speaker 1: And just remind the world again for those who may
Speaker 1: have forgotten, why is it important for us, the United
Speaker 1: States to have involvement in infectious disease elsewhere in the world?
Speaker 1: Why is that important for us?
Speaker 3: So even if you yeah, you could just say why
Speaker 3: do I want to help anybody? You could, you could
Speaker 3: say why should we be saving lives? And you know,
Speaker 3: I don't freaking know Slovenia pop new game.
Speaker 1: They give us basketball players who get traded and make
Speaker 1: a big headline. We're not going to talk about that
Speaker 1: because props a Lakers fan, I don't want to deal with. Yes,
Speaker 1: we are sorry, Yes, it's a different podcast.
Speaker 2: Listen, listen. Don't you lose your train of thought. Please,
Speaker 2: don't lose your train of thought.
Speaker 3: Talk about it. I'm an, I have to talk. I
Speaker 3: can get I can get interrupted and go right back.
Speaker 2: Yes, listen, have you ever listened? My way I think
Speaker 2: about this is like if you've if you've ever been
Speaker 2: hit on by somebody incredibly out of your league, super hot,
Speaker 2: and you're like, what am I missing? Why are I?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm decent, like I'm like a good catch,
Speaker 2: but I'm like what what am my business of it?
Speaker 2: Why are you? Why are you talking to me? That's
Speaker 2: the way I feel about us getting Luca, because I'm like, what.
Speaker 1: Am I why? There's less of a stretch. It's less
Speaker 1: of a stretch for you. You're a handsome guy, you're artist,
Speaker 1: the Lakers.
Speaker 2: I get it, you know, And like you said, like
Speaker 2: you know, I'm a pretty talented brother. You know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. But still like you.
Speaker 1: Don't, you don't get them. No, I'm a I'm a
Speaker 1: Warriors guy, so a personality guy.
Speaker 3: That's how I hear. This is how I felt when
Speaker 3: Cave started, you know, damning me a little bit. I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, coved holder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're saying I slipped into your DMS? Is that
Speaker 1: what you're trying to say?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure which way I went. It was a romance.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Yeah, Yeah, go on, sorry, let's le'll get it
Speaker 1: back to time.
Speaker 3: So why do we want to help people? That's the
Speaker 3: question you wanted to ask? Why would we do that?
Speaker 1: So you could you could take.
Speaker 3: The humanitarianis side and say why do we care about
Speaker 3: people in Papa, New Guinea wherever? But there's actually a
Speaker 3: geopolitical reason that we help people. One is our own
Speaker 3: security and one is soft power. So our own security
Speaker 3: is if we can go help a novel outbreak get controlled,
Speaker 3: it won't reach our shores and we don't have that problem,
Speaker 3: that would be lovely. Another one is for HIV for example,
Speaker 3: we provide up until recently, although the question is whether
Speaker 3: it's back online or not, it's very unclear, but up
Speaker 3: until recently, we since the Bush administration, which always shocks people,
Speaker 3: George W.
Speaker 4: Bush started this, we.
Speaker 3: Have been We had this program called PEP Farm, which
Speaker 3: has provided HIV medications to poor nations and has saved
Speaker 3: twenty five million lives. Twenty five million lives, which is
Speaker 3: pretty substantial.
Speaker 4: It's it's a government project that worked.
Speaker 3: Actually, it's like amazing, and so yes, you could make
Speaker 3: the argument like why do we care? But when people
Speaker 3: actually have their HIV controlled by medications, there's less likely
Speaker 3: for resistant bad strains to emerge again, which can come
Speaker 3: here and make our lives more miserable. So it could
Speaker 3: be selfish. Could you can make the altruistic argument, but
Speaker 3: there are selfish reasons to save lives overseas. And then
Speaker 3: the last one is I would say that that I
Speaker 3: could think of is this soft power thing we why
Speaker 3: as America? Why does America have a positive reputation or
Speaker 3: why did it? And a lot of it has to
Speaker 3: do with things you don't always think about. It could
Speaker 3: be literally things like we make the best movies, we
Speaker 3: have the best music, we we have great writers. Culture, right,
Speaker 3: culture is a way to express that a society is
Speaker 3: doing well.
Speaker 4: But another way.
Speaker 3: To do it is to to do the kind of
Speaker 3: work in public health that we've done. And so people
Speaker 3: actually say, oh, the cash the Americans, they really screwed
Speaker 3: it up on this thing in this war, this foreign policy.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, they did save twenty five
Speaker 3: million lives, so maybe we shouldn't be complete jerks to them.
Speaker 3: So it's it's actually, there's a lot of reasons why
Speaker 3: we do this work.
Speaker 2: This is this again. Now we're crossing into my world
Speaker 2: because of the soft power, cultural power and how to
Speaker 2: be just how to be the man, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, Like, this is how this is how you
Speaker 2: run this is how you run a city. You be
Speaker 2: the guy they go to, no matter how much of
Speaker 2: a jerk that you are. If I'm the dude you
Speaker 2: got to go to, then then if I'm to put
Speaker 2: up with a lot, you put up with a lot.
Speaker 2: Number one, you put up with a lot because you
Speaker 2: have to come to me. And then number two, if
Speaker 2: if you're the guy that you got to go to
Speaker 2: and you're a good dude, then like when you're in need,
Speaker 2: you're gonna be the first person they think of, right
Speaker 2: when when it's when it's my turn, or if there's
Speaker 2: like if we're lobbying for something like okay, I could
Speaker 2: sell you know, we could give this ten million gallons
Speaker 2: of crude oil to this country, or we could give
Speaker 2: it to them. Then again, they did save twenty million lives,
Speaker 2: and maybe we should sell it to them first and
Speaker 2: maybe at a discounted rate. You know. So yeah, there's that,
Speaker 2: there's that. But I think the best part to me
Speaker 2: is what you're saying as far as the selfs side
Speaker 2: of Like you act like there's a force field at
Speaker 2: the forty seventh parallel that just stops the air from flowing.
Speaker 2: Like what is you talking about? Like is one planet?
Speaker 2: Like why would it not get here like like, there's
Speaker 2: no we don't really have a wall, guys. And even
Speaker 2: if we did, like if COVID taught.
Speaker 1: Us nothing else, it should be that what's happening in
Speaker 1: other countries will impact us. There is no way we're
Speaker 1: going to be able to plan with that. Oh it's
Speaker 1: it's mental. But you know what else is unavoidable and inevitable.
Speaker 1: It's the commercials that are coming right into your ears.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned, we'll be right back. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about what's happening to these organizations. We'll be right back,
Speaker 1: and we're back. That break was also brought to you
Speaker 1: by my favorite hot sauce in the whole widest world.
Speaker 1: It's called Lucky Dog Hot Sauce. It's super, super, super delicious.
Speaker 1: And you know what, My guests are gonna go home
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Speaker 1: please do that. Lucky Dog Hot Sauce dot Com. Anyways, Okay,
Speaker 1: we are back and we're going to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what is happening to these organizations. So
Speaker 1: the CDC, let's start with that. Jeremy, what is happening online?
Speaker 1: It's what do we make of a federal Health and
Speaker 1: Disease agency deleting pages of their website and censoring words?
Speaker 1: What the This was my question.
Speaker 2: I was like when he said, I was like, can
Speaker 2: somebody tell me why? Like this?
Speaker 1: This?
Speaker 2: Are we in a movie?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: This is a movie. That's what you're doing a movie?
Speaker 2: Mortal scientists did not say to science shit, Jason?
Speaker 1: Has this ever happened before? I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: you study history. Has there ever been a time in
Speaker 1: our world where they've limited what the scientists can say?
Speaker 2: They've sid I just want to It's on the tip
Speaker 2: of my tongue.
Speaker 1: Oh, Jeremy, what's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I read this book.
Speaker 3: I read this book a bunch of years ago called
Speaker 3: How Democracies Die, and they were like, check check check check,
Speaker 3: check check check, you know, and this is just right
Speaker 3: on that playlist and our checklist, and yeah, it's what's
Speaker 3: funny to me? It's not funny, None of it's funny,
Speaker 3: but what's funny to me is if you look at
Speaker 3: what they're doing, is how how sensitive they are. Oh no, oh,
Speaker 3: oh gosh if someone were to say this word, what
Speaker 3: would your virgin, precious eyes do with that information?
Speaker 4: Really, I can't say gender, like come on, grow up?
Speaker 3: Like what what is wrong with these people? So I
Speaker 3: get that they have a particular agenda that I don't
Speaker 3: agree with, But what I think is just worth noting
Speaker 3: is what a bunch of snowflakes, you know, Like, come on,
Speaker 3: if we talk about these issues, is the world going
Speaker 3: to stop turning? And so what they've done is there's
Speaker 3: been a couple levels of censorship with the CDC. It's
Speaker 3: been escalating and then a little bit of de escalation
Speaker 3: and then escalation again. So at first Trump said there
Speaker 3: was a complete gag order on all communications from any
Speaker 3: federal agency but including public health agencies, so they couldn't
Speaker 3: get anything out.
Speaker 4: So the CDC's usual.
Speaker 3: Scientific journal gone, the CDC's weekly emails about whatever they follow,
Speaker 3: whether it's COVID or whether it's how many people died
Speaker 3: of opioids this week gone, There was do comms freeze.
Speaker 3: And then on Friday of just three four days ago,
Speaker 3: and I say that because it feels like about sixteen
Speaker 3: years ago, three or four days ago, they actually wiped
Speaker 3: their websites of like tons of stuff, and some of
Speaker 3: it would fall under the I roll my eyes, but
Speaker 3: I understand what they're doing. They don't think trans is
Speaker 3: a thing, so they're gonna scrub the CDC data website
Speaker 3: of websites that I think are at at minimum they're
Speaker 3: harmless and at best they're helpful, So like how to
Speaker 3: help people who are who identify as transgender get their
Speaker 3: healthcare or get their the medications they may need to
Speaker 3: prevent HIV, the prep that's called right, So they got
Speaker 3: rid of all those and I kind of I would
Speaker 3: I roll my eyes and just like, you know, have
Speaker 3: a seizure when they do that, because I think it's
Speaker 3: just so silly and cruel that they would do that.
Speaker 3: But it kind of matches what their worldview is, and
Speaker 3: they think that that's what the election gave them sort
Speaker 3: of a mandate to do. But they also took down
Speaker 3: vaccine recommendations. They took down data dot CDC dot gov,
Speaker 3: which just has just statistics on stuff like heart disease
Speaker 3: and car accidents and just things that aren't political, and
Speaker 3: also they could scrape it of this langue and that
Speaker 3: one political appointee has to approve before it goes back.
Speaker 1: That is the there's so many crazy parts about this,
Speaker 1: and I will get back to how they're planning to
Speaker 1: do this, But why, I mean, what what is even
Speaker 1: their reasoning for like scrapping things like information on maternal
Speaker 1: morbidity or opioid use. What is the what is their
Speaker 1: long term gain from that? Are they just trying They
Speaker 1: don't want people to know about it, They don't want
Speaker 1: people to know what the racial disparities in like maternal
Speaker 1: health outcomes that like African American women are doing worse.
Speaker 1: What is what is their reasoning for it?
Speaker 3: Well, their stated reasoning is to get rid of wok ideologies,
Speaker 3: whatever that means.
Speaker 2: So what the yes, that's what I'm still like, what
Speaker 2: does that mean? What do you mean? What do you
Speaker 2: mean by that?
Speaker 3: But anyway, finish, I mean, it's it's a really important
Speaker 3: question for the lawyer is to tear apart like what
Speaker 3: the hell does that mean? So that's their stated reason
Speaker 3: and but then it's so wide that people don't know
Speaker 3: how to apply it. So why on earth would they
Speaker 3: take down. Oh, here's one who should what kind of
Speaker 3: contraception women should should have after pregnancy?
Speaker 4: And you think, oh that, why is that complicated?
Speaker 3: Well, actually, it turns out that if you were just pregnant,
Speaker 3: you just gave birth, and now you're going to get
Speaker 3: back on contraception, it actually matters that you don't use
Speaker 3: certain things. Maybe you developed a complication during pregnancy and
Speaker 3: now you're on a medication and the contraception that you
Speaker 3: used to use could actually really harm you. Okay, that
Speaker 3: is something that is not easy to memorize. So the
Speaker 3: CDC has a chart for that. And so why did
Speaker 3: they get rid of that chart because it had the
Speaker 3: word gender on it? Oh my god, gender, you know gender.
Speaker 3: And again I'm like, god, y'all, it's not a bad word.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just a you know gone.
Speaker 2: And it's also in his executive order you said there's
Speaker 2: two genders. Mm hm, So you can't say gender just
Speaker 2: so you mean we're so you mean we're genderless.
Speaker 3: They're trying to make this sex gender. They're trying to
Speaker 3: make this whole sex gender thing like tex is what
Speaker 3: you're born, you know, what your chromosomes are, ok, And
Speaker 3: gender is how you present, and that's what they're trying
Speaker 3: to do. But the but the crazy thing is that
Speaker 3: even CDC epidemiologists who I've worked with, I've published papers
Speaker 3: with them once in a while, like they'll just put
Speaker 3: like sexual gender interchangeably. They don't actually like don't think
Speaker 3: about it too much. And so they're like, Oh, we
Speaker 3: don't have to change anything. We just have to go
Speaker 3: We literally have to take this website down until we
Speaker 3: change the word sex gender to sex. And there's thousands
Speaker 3: of pages and it's and there's no way to do
Speaker 3: it with AI.
Speaker 2: There's no FQ, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: And so it's it's it's that kind of thing. Another
Speaker 3: one is they got really up up in arms about
Speaker 3: pregnant people versus pregnant women. And I'll just say, as
Speaker 3: someone who was like born a long time ago, pregnant
Speaker 3: people is one of the terms that like I have
Speaker 3: to remember to say because I think of pregnancy as
Speaker 3: something that happens to women. But then I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: but there are these educations and you can tell me like, oh,
Speaker 3: this person was born this way and they have a
Speaker 3: uterist but they're a man in terms of their gender,
Speaker 3: So I get it. I'm woke okay, but it's still
Speaker 3: hard for me to always get the words out the
Speaker 3: first time, you know, just because that's how I'm from here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, but it makes me want to
Speaker 1: say it more than ever. Totally, This makes me want
Speaker 1: to be I'm not I don't even consider myself like
Speaker 1: necessarily woke. I don't, but like I don't even know
Speaker 1: what that means anymore. But like, I don't even consider
Speaker 1: myself that like progressive, But this makes me want to
Speaker 1: use pronouns. This makes me want to do that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. They don't understand, like adults are doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I first of all, am like, I refuse to
Speaker 2: succeed the definition of woke to these people. Like, that's
Speaker 2: not what it means, right, My granddaddy said woke. What
Speaker 2: he's what he means is are you aware for which
Speaker 2: are you? Are you awake to the ways for which
Speaker 2: you're being subjucated? Are you aware of your politics? You
Speaker 2: have to stay awake, so stay woke. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: if anything, I'm like you just as wek as we are,
Speaker 2: because what you're saying is you being subjugated and your
Speaker 2: way of life is being taken from you, and you
Speaker 2: are staying aware and fighting back. I'm like you just
Speaker 2: as well as I am, so I don't understand what
Speaker 2: you're talking about, right number one? And number two, I
Speaker 2: think to your point about just I've always said that,
Speaker 2: like privilege makes you brittle man, And I'm like, I
Speaker 2: just and then and then the weird mixture of that
Speaker 2: and just this whole like masculinity man of sphere of stuff,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I don't. I don't, like you said,
Speaker 2: I don't carry a lot of your a lot of
Speaker 2: their views of like what it means to be a
Speaker 2: masculine man. But there's one thing that I do have
Speaker 2: is most of the time, I really don't care what
Speaker 2: that man's doing over there. That's not my concern. You
Speaker 2: want to you want to say gender, what do I care?
Speaker 2: What do I care? If you want to say pregnant people?
Speaker 2: I don't like.
Speaker 1: I got shit to do.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Like, I don't like, why
Speaker 2: is you so worried about?
Speaker 1: To me?
Speaker 3: That sounds pretty and to be you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And they claim that they're doing this to defend women.
Speaker 3: And my problem with that is that they don't do
Speaker 3: things that actually defend.
Speaker 1: I mean. Also, no one's ever gotten mad at me
Speaker 1: for not saying pregnant people like, you know, I should
Speaker 1: use the term. I agree I should use it. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be much more mindful about using it now because
Speaker 1: of this. But no one ever got mad at me
Speaker 1: in the past. Ever. You know, maybe what someone would
Speaker 1: correct you. But like they make it sound like there's
Speaker 1: this army of quote unquote woke people online, scientists and
Speaker 1: doctors like, no, man, no one's gotten mad at me that.
Speaker 2: I've missed a few days, then a couple of times. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And like you said, no one blinks because we've shown
Speaker 2: we actually care that other. I care about how you feel. Like,
Speaker 2: if that's important to you, I'm gonna try to do
Speaker 2: something that's important to you. You understand that. That's the
Speaker 2: way I feel. It's no skin off my Like, that's
Speaker 2: not a hill I need to die on. What are
Speaker 2: you talking about? They wanted to call you this, I
Speaker 2: just forgot.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And there's also this whole thing about the extreme, the
Speaker 3: extremes of this. So the Trump administration argument against all
Speaker 3: this stuff, or against DEI is that on the liberal
Speaker 3: progressive side, these things are requirements to get grants or
Speaker 3: to get hired or whatever, and that's just not true.
Speaker 3: What is true, but is true, is that on that
Speaker 3: side of the spectrum, there's interest in those things so
Speaker 3: that we have representations, so that we serve the communities
Speaker 3: that we are trying to serve. And there's so there's
Speaker 3: interest in that. And I think I'll know that that's
Speaker 3: not only true, but it's important that there's interest in that.
Speaker 3: But there's no there's They have this fantasy that people
Speaker 3: get hired or things happen one hundred percent only because
Speaker 3: they check those boxes and when in fact it's a
Speaker 3: piece of the pie. On the flip side, they're banning
Speaker 3: it one hundred percent because of that. Yeah, they so
Speaker 3: they are actually taking something that is a part of
Speaker 3: the pie and saying thou shalt not do that, and
Speaker 3: they're making it the whole pie.
Speaker 2: I think I get. I think to your point, I
Speaker 2: get the The real the sinister part about that is
Speaker 2: like that the not so subtext is you are either
Speaker 2: qualified or diverse, right as if to say that if
Speaker 2: I am of a diverse group, I am not qualified.
Speaker 2: And then and out of that same subtext is the
Speaker 2: idea that like, well, you've just you've defined what you
Speaker 2: mean by diverse.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So you're saying, that's everybody except right. If you not
Speaker 2: a white dude, you part of diversity, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. And like a straight white dude, then you
Speaker 2: part of diversity. So you're saying, no one is qualified.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a fundamental, fundamental misunderstanding of how it works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fundamental understanding how it works.
Speaker 2: Yes, And then I'm saying, but like I'm saying, if
Speaker 2: you were just a pure evil capitalist, just the worst
Speaker 2: version of a late stave capitalist, you would be like,
Speaker 2: I'm I am going to fish in the largest ocean
Speaker 2: possible to find the best person. But instead you saying
Speaker 2: I Am not gonna find the best person possible. Is
Speaker 2: what you just said. That's what you're actually saying is
Speaker 2: you're removing this, You're eliminating an entire pool of people
Speaker 2: that are probably better than you because you don't want
Speaker 2: to diverse higher. That's what you're saying. Just like I'm like,
Speaker 2: I thought you liked money.
Speaker 1: Just the fact that our science is going to be
Speaker 1: limited in any way is not good science. Our science
Speaker 1: should be open, and as Jeremy said earlier, sometimes you
Speaker 1: may not see the importance of one small study. Maybe
Speaker 1: they did a study on squid neurons twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: and you're like, why would you study squid neurons? Fast
Speaker 1: forward to thirty years down the road, people are using
Speaker 1: it for paraplegics in studies there that you did an
Speaker 1: expensive study on coffee stains. Someone could joke about that
Speaker 1: and laugh about that, but looking at that helps us
Speaker 1: with signs somewhere down the road that you can't even imagine.
Speaker 1: It's yeah anyways, and it's not like it's any random
Speaker 1: schmuck can just get a study funded by the NIH
Speaker 1: or do work with these things. It's a difficult process.
Speaker 1: You have to go through steps, you have to prove
Speaker 1: things to get there. It's absurd to think that they
Speaker 1: just get it because they're using these terms that are
Speaker 1: quote unquote woke.
Speaker 2: Jeremy, I have a question actually based on that. Like,
Speaker 2: so obviously, the what we're discussing right now is the
Speaker 2: reasons that things are being scrubbed from the website. And
Speaker 2: it's it's not because it's junk science, is because as
Speaker 2: you words, you don't like, where are there any instances
Speaker 2: that you can think of in your time as a
Speaker 2: professional where you were like, yeah, we should probably pull
Speaker 2: that down because that's actually bad science.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, good question, the great question.
Speaker 3: I think that an example of science changing and websites
Speaker 3: responding to that change is the degree to which COVID
Speaker 3: spreads through the air word that is like and by
Speaker 3: the way, this example is one of my favorites because
Speaker 3: it does actually show why content moderation is really really tricky.
Speaker 3: Because I'll give this example because it's what's great about
Speaker 3: this example is it kind of it goes in the
Speaker 3: pendulum in all these different directions. So if in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty I went on Twitter and I said COVID is airborne,
Speaker 3: somebody would be really a lot of really smart scientists
Speaker 3: would say that is false information, that is misinformation, Get
Speaker 3: that out of here. And so the concept moderation that
Speaker 3: people actually think they want would have actually suppressed that information.
Speaker 4: And at the time I really didn't know what to
Speaker 4: do with it, because you know.
Speaker 3: I thought we knew what we knew, and I was
Speaker 3: wearing a mask because I'm like, look, I don't know
Speaker 3: how airborne this thing is or isn't, but it's airborne enough,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like it's gonna get in my mouth
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 4: So I wasn't sure.
Speaker 3: And then the argument in the data came forward and
Speaker 3: then we realized, yeah, it's much more spread through droplet
Speaker 3: and air than anyone ever realized. And so then we
Speaker 3: had scientists and public health organizations had to say, oh,
Speaker 3: we gotta we have to change this. Actually yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so you go with it. So I think that's an
Speaker 3: example of both. Like everyone got really freaked out about
Speaker 3: CONCEP moderation a few weeks ago because Meta and all
Speaker 3: of them took away there a fact checking. But I
Speaker 3: always use that example. It's not so easy because they
Speaker 3: would have absolutely censored covid is airborne back in February
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. And just like they and they could have,
Speaker 3: by the way, if they if they said that, I know,
Speaker 3: norovirus is airborne, that's wrong. You know, it's still that's
Speaker 3: still wrong. So it's really it's it's hard, but yeah,
Speaker 3: the answer is we do it. We do change our minds.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a really important thing. And I
Speaker 3: it drives me crazy when people won't admit it. You know,
Speaker 3: when they'll stick. They'll stick to what they know, regardless
Speaker 3: of the of the of the data.
Speaker 1: Well, it came back to like this concept of all
Speaker 1: this information in the CDC being censored. How are they
Speaker 1: going to do that? Are they just running some sort
Speaker 1: of program that's gonna AI look through every paper or
Speaker 1: is it gonna be one person? Because to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: there's only been one political point thus far to the CDC.
Speaker 1: Is this one person the new acting director? Is that
Speaker 1: the person now responsible for looking at every study that
Speaker 1: comes their way? Yes, that is all mental answer.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's good?
Speaker 3: Be well it's slow, yeah, yeah, yeah, or clunky?
Speaker 1: How many papers would you estimate? Just a rough estimate.
Speaker 3: I really can't tell you that. I don't know, but
Speaker 3: it's a lot. And it's also these data sets, right,
Speaker 3: A lot of these data sets went down because if
Speaker 3: you had a data set that was saying, how many
Speaker 3: people here's the one this is a real example, how
Speaker 3: many people have gotten their vaccine against RSV, a virus
Speaker 3: that is a seasonal respiratory virus, and the CDC tracks
Speaker 3: that and they report it pretty much as close to
Speaker 3: real time as they can. That went away because I
Speaker 3: think they had women as one of the metrics eighteen
Speaker 3: to forty nine women, fifty to sixty four women, sixty
Speaker 3: five plus women men. Oh no, that had to come down,
Speaker 3: and now it's back on. It's back live because now
Speaker 3: I think it's as females because that's sex versus gender.
Speaker 3: That is the level of creepy obsession they have. They're
Speaker 3: obsessed with something that nobody cares about. And so that
Speaker 3: so and literally one person at the top has to
Speaker 3: have to reprove that there might be some degree of devolving,
Speaker 3: meaning the top person saying, okay for issues that are
Speaker 3: gender sex.
Speaker 4: That one I just gave you.
Speaker 3: That can be done by people below me, and I'm
Speaker 3: gonna sign off on that. But I have not heard
Speaker 3: that happening. So that's literally what is what it takes.
Speaker 3: And it's not, by the way, this is not conjecture,
Speaker 3: this is design. The Trump administration said anything that goes
Speaker 3: out of these agencies have to be approved by a
Speaker 3: political appointee, and that's a Trump administration person.
Speaker 4: That's one Person's just.
Speaker 1: Gonna be such a terrible time, such a terrible time
Speaker 1: the next coming years in terms of getting new information
Speaker 1: out and learning about anything new, anything new, it's gonna be.
Speaker 1: It's really I don't know if it's getting enough. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's getting enough attention. I you know, last
Speaker 1: week there was a lot of confusion with all our
Speaker 1: friends in academic medicine or anything resembling academic medicine about
Speaker 1: the freeze spending freeze. Can you explain a little bit
Speaker 1: about why there was so much confusion and has that
Speaker 1: cleared up at all?
Speaker 3: Yes, the administration an ount through a memo that all
Speaker 3: federal grants had to stop not.
Speaker 4: Judging new ones. That had to stop.
Speaker 3: We knew that, which is stupid enough, but existing ones
Speaker 3: had to be frozen. So spending couldn't happen until they
Speaker 3: made sure that the terms that they don't like were
Speaker 3: not involved D whatever, transgender, And the issue there is
Speaker 3: that the scientists at these institutions could be whatever. The
Speaker 3: University of Massachusetts are funded by the NIH and they
Speaker 3: don't want When they get NAH funding, it's so audited.
Speaker 3: Everything is checked. You have to justify every dollar you spent,
Speaker 3: and that's how they make sure that there's no corruption
Speaker 3: and whatever. So if they spent money during that last week,
Speaker 3: they were people were worried that they would be accused
Speaker 3: of having violated a federal action in an executive order
Speaker 3: and that their grant, their million dollar grant for five
Speaker 3: years to support ten researchers, whatever it is, would be
Speaker 3: canceled tomorrow. So that meant that, for example, someone who
Speaker 3: just pays for like some software that they used for
Speaker 3: statistics and it is five ninety nine a month and
Speaker 3: it's just on an auto pay, if that wasn't canceled,
Speaker 3: they violated the agreement. Some people. Yeah, so some people
Speaker 3: felt like felt like panicked to that level, and they
Speaker 3: were literally trying to figure out how do I make
Speaker 3: sure I don't lose my grant on a technicality. Others
Speaker 3: were like, no, they're not going to be that crazy,
Speaker 3: But I don't know how they knew because there was
Speaker 3: no guidance. So then fortunately the American Public Health Association
Speaker 3: and a few other nonprofits.
Speaker 4: Sued it got to stay.
Speaker 3: That bought pause. Then then the Chump administration said, okay,
Speaker 3: just kidding that we're pulling that memo. Turned out that
Speaker 3: maybe they claimed it hadn't actually been their intention, which
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, that's just in competence, and so.
Speaker 1: They're fine if that really wasn't competent. Yeah, yeah, massive
Speaker 1: level that.
Speaker 2: You can't just be like oh wait I was just
Speaker 2: playing or wait not. I mean what I was trying
Speaker 2: to say was like, you don't like this talk about
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is a CBS receipt, like the list
Speaker 2: we're talking about of things that you shut down on
Speaker 2: some I mean to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: It was Actually it was actually really even more bizarre
Speaker 3: than that, because they pulled the memo and they said, oh, sorry,
Speaker 3: that memo was not cleared.
Speaker 4: Uh, it came from the Office of Management and Budget.
Speaker 3: We didn't do that. But yeah, yeah, I was like,
Speaker 3: somebody press, you know, send And and then at the
Speaker 3: press conference where they announced that, they're like, oh so
Speaker 3: that means that the freeze is over right, and the
Speaker 3: press secretary said, oh no, the freeze still but wait,
Speaker 3: can you just tell us? How can you please just
Speaker 3: tell us what you want to be happening, Like we
Speaker 3: don't have to agree with it, like we may hate it,
Speaker 3: but can you at least just do us the service
Speaker 3: of letting us know the oppression that you're trying to do.
Speaker 1: Yes, do effective at your fascism? Please?
Speaker 2: Am I gonna get paid on the fifteenth and that Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: Like what are you saying?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Can I just say that what you just said
Speaker 3: is actually the most important thing, because what's happening here,
Speaker 3: whether it's the NAH grant recipient at whatever Rutgers University,
Speaker 3: or whether it's the CDC scientist who has to pull
Speaker 3: their paper because it says the word woman not female,
Speaker 3: everyone is complying because can I pay my rent? Yeah,
Speaker 3: because they may they may be right, and some lawyer
Speaker 3: may sue for them, and they may retroactively be told, oh,
Speaker 3: you can't be fired. You get your job back. But
Speaker 3: in the meantime, the payroll stops and you're going to
Speaker 3: mis rent and you're going to be evicted. And so
Speaker 3: everyone is being forced to pick their battles so that
Speaker 3: they don't become homeless. And that and that is that
Speaker 3: is so to me just just disgusting. Yeah, yeah, it will.
Speaker 1: Other than rescinding this memo, has there been any other
Speaker 1: bits of good news you referred maybe to something with
Speaker 1: that pep FAR if you could also explain what pep
Speaker 1: FAR is.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Pep FAR is the President's Emergency Relief Plan for
Speaker 3: HIV AIDS that was announced by President George W. Bush
Speaker 3: when he was president. It was such an amazing amount
Speaker 3: of funding for the United States to commit to fighting
Speaker 3: HIV AIDS globally by giving less wealthy nations inexpensive HIV drugs.
Speaker 3: It was so massive that I remember this. All these
Speaker 3: liberal progressive activists were like, what George, but now this
Speaker 3: can't be read.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They were literally like, we're being We didn't have the
Speaker 3: turn back then gas lit and it turned out no.
Speaker 3: He just believed that this was something that was important
Speaker 3: to do and it saved twenty five million laps so far,
Speaker 3: and so that was halted last week. That was the
Speaker 3: one that really just like turned the knife in a
Speaker 3: lot of our hearts, because it's one thing to do
Speaker 3: something that's going to affect science down the road. This
Speaker 3: is like someone in you know, South Africa going to
Speaker 3: their clinic on Monday to get their HIV med and
Speaker 3: maybe there's someone whose immune system really got to the
Speaker 3: brink where they almost died a month ago, but now
Speaker 3: they got on meds, they're just reconstituting their immune system.
Speaker 3: These meds are a bridge to their life. If they
Speaker 3: don't get their meds this week, they're going the other direction.
Speaker 3: They're dying and so for that to stop, I mean,
Speaker 3: we just people lost in the United States health care
Speaker 3: help with health we lost our minds. So that apparently
Speaker 3: was reversed, and so supposedly the aid's coming out, But
Speaker 3: then we don't even know because a lot of the
Speaker 3: organizations that that work on this rely on our funding
Speaker 3: and that funding is frozen from other ways, so we're
Speaker 3: a little unclear on what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, It's it is really amazing. I you know,
Speaker 1: in regards to you know, sometimes these presidents from the
Speaker 1: past that we had lower you know, lower esteem for
Speaker 1: these I still do. I'm not gonna say that George W.
Speaker 1: Bush is by any means a good dude or a
Speaker 1: good president. We're not gonna that's not gonna happen on
Speaker 1: the show, on any of our shows. But it is
Speaker 1: such an amazing contrast to see what we're seeing now, yea,
Speaker 1: and to see the the direct impact this sort of
Speaker 1: thing we'll have on patients. And it's funny because you
Speaker 1: you can imagine someone a Republican arguing, well, why waste
Speaker 1: that money and not take care of the person here
Speaker 1: who needs medicine, And the answer is obviously yes, you're
Speaker 1: almost there. Let's do that too correct.
Speaker 3: Well, no, there's also this idea of it's kind of
Speaker 3: at this point a term of dis bastardized but effect
Speaker 3: of altruism, which is like doing the most with what
Speaker 3: you have. And so if you have one hundred dollars
Speaker 3: to spend to save a life, like what is the
Speaker 3: best way to spend that? Is it on yourself or
Speaker 3: is it on someone else? And it might be something
Speaker 3: like a mosquito net for malaria will save twenty lives,
Speaker 3: you know, and so but also for our own thing again,
Speaker 3: like giving HIV meds to a country that wouldn't have them,
Speaker 3: even though it doesn't seem like it directly helps us,
Speaker 3: probably a thirty day supply of those HIV meds going
Speaker 3: to that place actually saves more American lives than directly
Speaker 3: giving it to the American.
Speaker 4: Person who didn't need it anyway.
Speaker 3: So in a way it actually you have to do
Speaker 3: like the second order effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a funny story about Pep far Well maybe
Speaker 2: it's not funny, but just a little bit of color there.
Speaker 2: I got a chance to like do some lobbying through
Speaker 2: the one campaign that gets a lot of his like
Speaker 2: one campaign kind of started around this time that Bush
Speaker 2: was doing this thing. And the story goes, Bush was
Speaker 2: such a Bono fan, Bono gets hip to all this stuff,
Speaker 2: and then Bono invites just like Christian rock artists. So
Speaker 2: this dude named Michael W. Smith in this other group
Speaker 2: called the Newsboys. So they come and they sit down
Speaker 2: and they meet like just Christian rock. They just come
Speaker 2: and sit down and talk to it, and they convince
Speaker 2: him that this is the godly thing to do. And
Speaker 2: fast forward, fifty percent of AIDS in Africa's has been eradicated.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying off of just bringing just
Speaker 2: a youth group band.
Speaker 1: That's wild.
Speaker 2: It's so bonkers, right, so wild.
Speaker 1: But there's nothing like that for Trump, Like what does
Speaker 1: he care? Obviously he doesn't care about religion. He is not,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, George W. Bush might have actually believed
Speaker 1: in the stuff, but Trump clearly doesn't.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, right, Yeah, that story.
Speaker 3: Is a good example of how we change minds and
Speaker 3: we and I'm really mindful of this in my work,
Speaker 3: but I don't always stick to it. I try, which
Speaker 3: is that if you want to change minds, dunking is
Speaker 3: not the way. The way is to reach across and
Speaker 3: try to make a connection. But there is clear, clear
Speaker 3: data and experience showing that people trust people on their
Speaker 3: own side. And so what you want to do is
Speaker 3: is work talk to someone like that. You know, so
Speaker 3: Bono found the Christian Rockers so they could talk about books.
Speaker 4: Find someone you know who voted for Trump and say hey,
Speaker 4: this is why this one matters, and try to make
Speaker 4: that difference because they're not going to hear it from you,
Speaker 4: but they might hear from your friend who is on
Speaker 4: their side or who was or who has connections.
Speaker 1: That's actually I.
Speaker 3: Think what's happening with pep far now is like the
Speaker 3: roller coaster we're on with pep far has a lot
Speaker 3: to do with people who are sort of peripheral Trump
Speaker 3: World individuals who are trying to say, hey, look to
Speaker 3: the extent that you haven't completely gone off the rails,
Speaker 3: this one really matters. And even Marco Rubio, who's the
Speaker 3: Secretary of State, he co authored the bill to renew
Speaker 3: pep FAR. In twenty eighteen, he wrote a Fox News
Speaker 3: op ed saying pepfar is one of our greatest achievements
Speaker 3: as a nation. So for him to sort of be
Speaker 3: in there it tells you how small the circle is
Speaker 3: that they did this, But I still think that that
Speaker 3: their hearts and minds are in play a little and
Speaker 3: we have to just try. Well.
Speaker 1: That brings me to my last question for you, which
Speaker 1: is that you and I have both bumped heads online
Speaker 1: with some people who are going to be getting some
Speaker 1: pretty important positions within the NIH and HHS, and you
Speaker 1: more so than me, And you're very diplomatic and you
Speaker 1: know fair and balanced way I feel much much much
Speaker 1: more so than me. But these are now people who
Speaker 1: don't necessarily like all of us. They don't like me
Speaker 1: that much. Some of them they don't love you because
Speaker 1: you've been outspoken and you've been critical of their some
Speaker 1: of their stances on vaccines and masking, et cetera. How
Speaker 1: are you going to work with these people? How do
Speaker 1: you feel you're going to approach this coming going forward?
Speaker 1: Because you do have a very vocal voice. People look
Speaker 1: to you people they don't know already. They can watch
Speaker 1: you on like the news all the time or interviewing
Speaker 1: you know, important people on your your sub stack and
Speaker 1: your your channels. So how are you going to approach
Speaker 1: this going forward?
Speaker 3: I have to be honest this is something that's in flux.
Speaker 3: I had a plan, and in the words of the
Speaker 3: Great Mike Tyson, everyone's got a plan until someone punches
Speaker 3: you in the face. My plan had been, Okay, I
Speaker 3: have a few connections in Trump world who respect me.
Speaker 3: We have a sort of an understanding that we don't agree,
Speaker 3: but we can work on things, and that if the
Speaker 3: Harris had won, I would have had a red phone
Speaker 3: that they would call me and say, hey, just we
Speaker 3: want to flag this is one thing, and would you
Speaker 3: help us with this, and sort of in exchange if
Speaker 3: their side one, I got a red phone and say hey, look,
Speaker 3: so there's a certain amount of clout. And my plan
Speaker 3: had been, all right, I'm gonna go write a book
Speaker 3: about something else. I'm gonna do my usual work. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna keep my head down, but I'm going to work
Speaker 3: behind the scenes with people that I think are in
Speaker 3: play and choose wisely. When I tried to make the
Speaker 3: call and say hey, maybe on this one could we
Speaker 3: do something that was plan at And then the last
Speaker 3: two weeks happened and I like had to speak out.
Speaker 3: So now I'm worried that those calls aren't going to
Speaker 3: be easy to make But I'm trying even now, even now,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to do it in a way that doesn't
Speaker 3: doesn't like bastard, it doesn't like dunk on someone's intent,
Speaker 3: or it doesn't say anything about about individuals. And I'll
Speaker 3: give you just like a very you know, cave is
Speaker 3: kind of dancing around. There's a very specific example is
Speaker 3: the guy who might run the NIH. Not too many
Speaker 3: people can say that the nominee to run NIH has
Speaker 3: written a hit piece on them in the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 3: But I can say that I could say that he
Speaker 3: did that. He did that to me and uh and
Speaker 3: I responded by email to say, you know, you might
Speaker 3: want to correct this just literally wrong. It's a fact check.
Speaker 3: I watch to tell your editor and he's like, okay, thanks.
Speaker 3: You know, was like a number he got wrong.
Speaker 2: I was like, actually it's twenty exactly like it was.
Speaker 4: Really you got the number wrong, just in case you care.
Speaker 4: He's like, got it.
Speaker 1: But you know, a power that's a power move.
Speaker 2: That's hard. I love that, Like that's that's look, that's
Speaker 2: that's that's a g move. I actually really like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So and and you know, I responded the journal, let
Speaker 3: me write a little thing saying like why he was
Speaker 3: wrong and and I've debated him on a podcast one time,
Speaker 3: and you know, we we you know, he butt heads
Speaker 3: and we I don't think there's a lot of love,
Speaker 3: but you know, uh and I but I I twice
Speaker 3: this past two weeks I mentioned him in my in
Speaker 3: my newsletter, and I did it in ways that I again,
Speaker 3: I they're meant. It's meant to highlight a disagreement, but
Speaker 3: not to say that this guy is evil or that
Speaker 3: he can't get nothing redeeming about him.
Speaker 4: And I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: You know, he's got a pretty you know, I've heard,
Speaker 3: I've heard rumors he's got a little bit of a
Speaker 3: thin skin. But yeah, maybe it's not true. Maybe he
Speaker 3: wants to work. Who knows. And so I'm trying my best,
Speaker 3: even while I'm calling this out more than I thought
Speaker 3: I would, being much more of a public voice in
Speaker 3: the past couple of weeks than I intended to, and
Speaker 3: put in my neck a little higher.
Speaker 4: I'm still hoping that even with doing that, there.
Speaker 3: Will be ways to do Plan A, which is to
Speaker 3: work behind the scenes to make some differences.
Speaker 4: But I don't know, We'll see.
Speaker 2: I have a question about maybe him specifically, Like, so,
Speaker 2: but let me, I'm gonna back into this question. Uh okay,
Speaker 2: I'm born and raised in California. We just saw the Grammys.
Speaker 2: The fact is Kendrick is the superior rapper. It is
Speaker 2: what it is. But Drake is a cornball to me.
Speaker 2: But it's not like he can't rap, like he's a
Speaker 2: great rapper.
Speaker 1: He's just a.
Speaker 2: Cornball and he's just not better than Kendrick. So my
Speaker 2: professional opinion again is I mean, Drake's a great rapper,
Speaker 2: you know. So my question is if you can't see
Speaker 2: where I'm going here is.
Speaker 4: And I do, and I'm terrified because I don't have.
Speaker 2: No because you are you are clearly the expert in
Speaker 2: this in this scenario, in the scenario, you're the Kendrick
Speaker 2: like you clearly know what you're talking about. Yes, So
Speaker 2: my question is when you look across the table with
Speaker 2: somebody like him, are you like, bro, what the hell
Speaker 2: are you talking about? Or is it like, No, he's smart.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just added I don't. I think I
Speaker 2: think he's misinformed on certain things. But no, he's I mean,
Speaker 2: he's you know, he knows he's you know, Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, it's so complicated. It's a
Speaker 3: great question because I do see some people who over
Speaker 3: the past number of years, they've gone increasingly from where
Speaker 3: I was at to much more in the in the
Speaker 3: extreme category, and it's and watching that's very depressing and sad.
Speaker 3: But then there are people who you just disagree on
Speaker 3: certain issues. I'll give you an example for him, like,
Speaker 3: I know he is not I know he has he
Speaker 3: has intelligent neurons in his brain.
Speaker 4: I know that in fact.
Speaker 3: They He wrote a paper in twenty twelve that was
Speaker 3: published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which
Speaker 3: is like one of our top journals, that measured the
Speaker 3: mortality effect of pepfar Wow. And it was. It was.
Speaker 3: And there's two things that blew me away about this.
Speaker 3: Number One, of course, it showed the incredible early effects
Speaker 3: that pep bar was already having in twenty twelve. So
Speaker 3: now it was a very very well done study. It
Speaker 3: was very rigorously done. And the second thing that was
Speaker 3: so interesting to me about that was it used a
Speaker 3: lot of the theme statistical techniques that a lot of
Speaker 3: COVID researchers did to show that mitigation worked. But when
Speaker 3: it came to that he didn't agree, So I thought
Speaker 3: it was interesting, like, oh, it's interesting. He used difference
Speaker 3: in different techniques, which is a statistical technique to look
Speaker 3: at pep far and slam dunk, just the way people
Speaker 3: use that technique to look at some COVID outcomes.
Speaker 4: But when it came to that, he wasn't on board.
Speaker 3: Because he felt that we overdid it with our COVID response. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so I look, I look at that, and I'm
Speaker 3: just I'm just really kind of just puzzled by it
Speaker 3: because I know that he's a smart guy who can
Speaker 3: do great work. But I also know that, like everything
Speaker 3: in the world, your priors, your bias you bring into
Speaker 3: something just changes how you how you process knowledge. So
Speaker 3: I said across if I remember across the table from him,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna take it on an issue by issue basis. Literally,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna be Okay, how do we are the
Speaker 3: neurons doing their thing or not? Are they firing or
Speaker 3: are they misfiring?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you totally answer the question. That's exactly what I
Speaker 2: was asking. Thank you.
Speaker 1: You're looking for internal consistency. And speaking of consistency, you
Speaker 1: know what's consistently great your substack let's plug it right
Speaker 1: now so people can find you there.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: My substack is called inside Medicine Inside Medicine dot substock
Speaker 3: dot com. It used to come out twice a week
Speaker 3: for free during the week and then a paywall about
Speaker 3: my life as an er doctor on the weekends.
Speaker 4: Currently is coming out more than once.
Speaker 1: A day because I can't stop.
Speaker 3: That's that's not sustainable, but I'll do it until I collapse.
Speaker 3: And you know other places blue Sky and Threads and
Speaker 3: Instagram actually Instagram my full name.
Speaker 4: My mom's very happy. Jeremy Samuel Faust.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a sweet boy, that Jeremy Samuel Faust. It
Speaker 1: is a great substack. I do read it. It is
Speaker 1: where I get a lot of my up to date
Speaker 1: information keeps me going on this show and it helps me.
Speaker 1: It's a real source of information for me. So it's
Speaker 1: really it's really well written. It's not so long that
Speaker 1: it's not manageable. You can read it in like one
Speaker 1: easy sitting. You get a lot of information. It's a
Speaker 1: very high impact and it's well ritten. So I highly
Speaker 1: recommend it. Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, you know, prop Yeah, there's so much
Speaker 1: that you do, and you do very well at a
Speaker 1: very high level. I'm not sure what to plug, but
Speaker 1: let's start. Let's start with the show a Hood Politics
Speaker 1: for those who are listening to Hood Politics right now
Speaker 1: and are listening to the House of Pod where can
Speaker 1: people find Hood Politics? And can you tell us again
Speaker 1: a little bit about that show, which again I love?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so the politics for PROP is on all
Speaker 2: the pods, It's on the video versions on my YouTube,
Speaker 2: which is just prop hip hop. And yeah, the ideas that,
Speaker 2: like the cornerstone premise is like if you've grown up
Speaker 2: in an urban area, you understand politics more than you
Speaker 2: think you do, and that it's just more of a
Speaker 2: just a language thing. Like so, like, so what I'm
Speaker 2: trying to do on the show is use what you
Speaker 2: already know to help show you that the stuff you
Speaker 2: think you don't know, you actually know better than you
Speaker 2: think you do. So we covered, you know, from filibustering
Speaker 2: all the way to what's happening with the CDC. You
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying, and just try to like explain
Speaker 2: it in a way that's like not so much analysis
Speaker 2: and commentary but more like translation, Like this what that means.
Speaker 2: They're saying this about this, and you would probably feel
Speaker 2: the way I feel about that because you grew up
Speaker 2: like I grew up, you know so, uh so that's
Speaker 2: kind of the idea.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I also do music and poetry. All that's on prop
Speaker 2: hip hop dot com and probably shutting down the coffee
Speaker 2: thing because I'm out of money. I love coffee, But
Speaker 2: just running a business turns out that's I don't know
Speaker 2: if you know that's hard.
Speaker 1: I've heard, yeah, I've heard things.
Speaker 2: Starting a business is hard and clearly not my skill set.
Speaker 1: Well, let me listen. You can't be amazing at everything.
Speaker 1: It's just not fair. Okay, it's all right to take
Speaker 1: a take a hit on this one. Take a one.
Speaker 1: It's okay, okay, because honestly, uh you are an amazing
Speaker 1: I use teacher in your introduction specifically, and if you
Speaker 1: look at your page up on Wikipedia, doesn't have that,
Speaker 1: I don't think, but like, to me, that is such
Speaker 1: an important part of what you do, how you make
Speaker 1: things relatable. Jeremy's never been related to Kendrick Lamar before.
Speaker 1: But actually that's not true.
Speaker 4: I say that is not true.
Speaker 1: Let's go ship.
Speaker 4: That is not true.
Speaker 3: So I actually wrote a Slate article when he won
Speaker 3: the Pulitzer Prize about about the politic because the Polser
Speaker 3: Prize is a very classical music kind of thing usually,
Speaker 3: and I'm in that world and actually had been involved
Speaker 3: with a Politzer Prize winning piece from a year or
Speaker 3: two before that, and so, and I actually had the
Speaker 3: privilege of informing somebody that they won the Politzer Prize
Speaker 3: for music, and so when it was such a great
Speaker 3: moment and when and so when Kendrick won it, I
Speaker 3: went and listened to that album a handful of times,
Speaker 3: and I was like, I get why this one. Let
Speaker 3: me write about from a classical perspective, why.
Speaker 4: I think the Poltic committee kind of did its job here.
Speaker 1: Well, it proves my point even more. He nailed that
Speaker 1: in like just not even knowing that, just meeting you
Speaker 1: for this short period of time.
Speaker 3: Anyway, when he got to the whole Drake thing, I
Speaker 3: was like, I know there's beef, I know there's tracks,
Speaker 3: but I'm out of my element.
Speaker 1: So well, there's other podcasts for that. But again, hood
Speaker 1: politics amazing. The music also very good, underrated really my opinion,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic stuff. And I really enjoyed it. If you
Speaker 1: haven't already rate and review this show the House of
Speaker 1: Pod you can find us anywhere you find your podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks again to Lucky Dog Hot Sauce, and thank you
Speaker 1: both so much. This was super helpful and I learned
Speaker 1: a time. All right, bye bye bye bye.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, now don't you hit stop on
Speaker 2: this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need
Speaker 2: you to finish this thing so I can get the
Speaker 2: download numbers. Okay, so don't stop it yet, but listen.
Speaker 2: This was recorded in East Lost Boyle Heights by your
Speaker 2: boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at prop hip hop
Speaker 2: dot com. If you're in the cold Brew coffee we
Speaker 2: got Terraform Coldbrew. You can go there dot com and
Speaker 2: use promo code hood get twenty percent off get yourself
Speaker 2: some coffee. This was mixed, edited and mastered by your
Speaker 2: boy Matt Alsowski killing the beat softly. Check out his
Speaker 2: website Matdowsowski dot com. I'm a speller for you because
Speaker 2: I know m A T. T O S O W
Speaker 2: s Ki dot com Matdowsowski dot com. He got more
Speaker 2: music and stuff like that on there, So gonna check
Speaker 2: out The Heat Politics is a member of Cool Zone Media,
Speaker 2: Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network.
Speaker 2: Your theme music and scoring is also by the one
Speaker 2: and Overly Mattowsowski. Still killing the beat softly, so listen.
Speaker 2: Don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living,
Speaker 2: you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you.
Speaker 2: We'll see y'all next week.
Speaker 1: But the