Freedom, Tyranny, and Childhood Lost: The 291st Evolutionary Lens w/ Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying
Today we discuss childhood, fitness, and self-defense; the through-line is freedom. First up: Illinois has become the first state in the Union to mandate mental health screening for children in grades 3 – 12, so that conditions from trauma to anxiety can be detected early. How mandatory will these screenings be? How confidential? What is anxiety, and why are children better off learning to experience and solve their own anxiety, than to be coddled at every turn? We argue that anxiety—like pai...
Hey folks, welcome to the 291th Dark Horse podcast live stream with me, Dr. Brett Weinstein, and this lovely person to my left, Dr. Heather Hyang.
It is late August.
There's always a sadness about late August.
And a weird feel in the air.
There's just kind of a, it's like a gap.
I don't know what I mean by that, but I feel it as sort of a gap, yes.
And it makes me miss, you won't have this sense at all, but it makes me miss the academic schedule, the academic calendar, because there's a, this time of year, many people are starting anew.
It is a formalized moment to start anew.
And without being beholden to an academic schedule, one can just feel the sort of the timer on summer running out without anything to promise its replacement.
Well, you know, it's funny that you say I won't get that because on the one hand, you're right.
And you're sort of right.
At Evergreen, I enjoyed the teaching enough that I did anticipate the beginning of a new program and, you know, all of that.
But in general, as a student, I sure didn't appreciate the end of summer, but I so appreciated the break in the horror of schooling that happened during the summer that it did have that importance.
And maybe that's why I feel about August the way I do, is it's just you feel it slipping away.
It's true.
It's true.
So we're going to have a fairly short and tight, I don't know if it's going to be tight, show today.
We appreciate those of you who are joining us on locals.
As always, please consider joining us there.
We had a Q ⁇ A this last weekend.
We talked about lots of interesting stuff.
It's all up there on locals and you can join us live.
We interact with the chat some.
And let's just get right into paying the rent.
We have, as always, three sponsors right up at the top, carefully chosen, including this week, one that is brand new to us.
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But really the scent is just some extra thing that your body has to process.
You're like literally inhaling it and you have to get rid of it.
Yep.
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Well, just like, so we're going to.
pick this right up.
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There is that.
Yeah, let me start.
Fair enough.
Actually, can you see my screen?
See, I thought I'd start like just while my screen is still visible to the tech powers that be this will this will be good absolutely yeah so um earlier this month illinois governor pritzger signed a bill into law uh mandating mental health screening for children in grades three through twelve and here is the tweet that he that he shared And
it's easy to mock him for the tweet, honestly.
Illinois is now the first state in the nation to require mental health screenings in its public schools.
Our schools should be inclusive places where students are not just comfortable asking for help, they're empowered to do it.
So he's using the language of wokearies and he's not shy here about saying require elsewhere.
In fact, if you click through onto this, the news, the media source that he is referring to here, you find a piece that is using the word universal, Pritzker signs legislation to implement universal mental health screenings in Illinois schools.
Let's just read a little bit of this.
Students in 3rd to 12th grade in Illinois and this is from sorry July 31st 2025 so I believe it was signed into law.
I thought it was at the very beginning of August, but maybe it's the very end of July of this year.
Students in 3rd to 12th grade in Illinois will be able to take annual mental health screenings starting in the 2027-2028 school year under a bill government JB Pritzker signed into law Thursday.
So already we have an inconsistency.
We'll be able to, as opposed to universal, as opposed to required.
Screenings provide early identification and intervention so that those who are struggling to get the health that they need as soon as possible.
So those, that's not actually good English, is it?
Did I misread that?
This is not going to surprise me at all.
I've read this before, but it didn't strike me as so off.
So this is a quote from Pritzker in this article from WTTW, which looks like a local public broadcasting channel in Illinois.
Screening, quote, screenings provide early identification intervention so that those who are struggling get the help that they need as soon as possible, Pritzker said.
I maligned him unnecessarily.
They improve academic and social outcomes.
They help us break down the stigma that too often is a barrier to seeking help.
So he's speaking as if.
this is established, as if these screenings that are now going to be, are they mandated or are they optional?
It's not clear yet.
are definitely going to help.
But what you find when you look at the bill, and I can show us the bill if we want to end up looking at it, is that part of what the bill requires is that various statewide health agencies help figure out what the screenings are going to be.
and then they feed those to the schools.
So we don't even know what the screenings are yet, which of course makes it difficult to critique precisely what is going on here.
But it also means that claims that they improve academic and social outcomes and help break down the stigma that too often is a barrier to seeking help, those claims can't be known.
Those claims are like claiming that the vaccines were safe and effective when they couldn't possibly have known that they were safe.
Claiming that these screenings that don't yet exist are going to do improve academic and social outcomes puts the lie to the claim.
It's purely aspirational.
It's purely aspirational.
The piece continues.
The mental health screenings would be self-assessed with students being able to take the screening on a tablet or a form, according to Dana Wiener, chief officer for the Children's Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative under the governor's office, and who was credited for laying the foundation for the piece of legislation.
Parents can opt their students out of mental health screenings if they wish, Wiener added.
clear how easy that will be that will be to do and if you have to do it every year and if you then yourself so we're trying to avoid stigma right we're trying to avoid the stigma of mental health problems for children but of course there will be the stigma of opting out of things that everyone has already agreed make you a better human being so just like opting out of vaccine mandates had came with a heavy stigma but was necessarily was obviously the right thing to do i'm imagining that opting out of such such screenings will also come to
have a stigma the screening form form of detection and are not meant to serve as a diagnosis, according to State Senator Laura Fine, who chairs the Mental Health Committee.
Detection, not diagnosis.
Interesting distinction that probably doesn't mean anything.
We've got, this is a quote from Fine, from State Senator Laura Fine.
We've got children in third grade who are struggling and we need to be able to reach these kids and now they will have access to that age appropriate and confidential mental health screening, Fine said.
The screenings will be designed to catch the early signs of anxiety, depression, or trauma before it becomes a crisis or in some cases sometimes too late.
So I want to come back to the idea.
The idea that anxiety, depression, and trauma are real problems for many third graders, some children experience trauma and some of those traumas are hidden from the adults in their lives.
We all know that this is true and we all know that those children should be helped if they possibly can be.
But the idea that anxiety is a creeping crud in society now, that we need to be alerting children to the fact that maybe they have it and maybe that's a problem, reminds me very much of the gender ideology that is in schools, even younger than third grade, wherein you inform a child of something that isn't real.
Ah, maybe you're in the wrong body.
Maybe the fact that you like to play with trucks, even though you're a girl, means you're actually a boy.
And maybe we should be talking to you about that.
Do you want to change your name?
I feel like the focus on anxiety for young children is very much the same, and it's creating a culture of incompetence, of other sufficiency, of anti-self-sufficiency, and of just, just,
Yeah, it's, we've talked about this many times, but it is going to create learned helplessness.
In other words, one of the purposes of childhood is to learn to deal with your anxiety, right?
Anxiety is an adaptation.
Exactly.
It can be maladaptive.
You can have too much anxiety or it'd be triggered over nothing or whatever.
But the basic point is you have to learn the lesson that you are misperceiving how serious something is and how big an implication it has for your life so that you can learn to calibrate.
What happens if because you're feeling anxiety and we treat it, you know, it's the same damn mistake that all medical fields make as if pain is a pathology rather than pain is a signal, right?
If you treat anxiety as a pathology and you step in and you treat it, what you're doing is you're creating a person who doesn't know how to deal with their own anxiety.
You're creating a patient for life.
And it does raise for me the question about what is driving this.
And one possibility is that there are people who are not the friends of your child.
These are the enemies of your child who do want to turn your child into a permanent profit center.
getting schools to participate in screening them for stuff that psychology pretends it knows what to do but demonstrably makes matters much worse in many cases.
The idea of, well, you know, it's your choice as a parent.
Would you like to opt your child out of our attempt to figure out whether there's something seriously wrong?
You know, well, that doesn't sound like a very good idea, does it?
Of course, it probably is a very good idea to opt out.
But then, of course, you will be held responsible for anything that goes wrong in your child's life, despite the fact that your child is in a totally broken system in a world that doesn't take care of them, in which predators are allowed access to them.
So there's lots that can go wrong.
And the idea that, well, you did opt out, didn't you?
Right.
And again, it's vague yet.
The screens don't exist yet.
They're being claimed to help, which we can't possibly know because they don't exist.
It's being claimed that it is both mandatory and that you can opt out, that they are confidential.
And yet if you can opt out, how is taking them going to be confidential?
What are the children whose parents have opted them out going to be doing while the other kids are taking these either on a tablet?
Yeah, that's going to help with your anxiety, putting third graders.
in front of screens for more time or in front of some form which you know a lot of third graders aren't exactly comfortable with their with their handwriting yet uh so you know they're off there off you know getting more anxious because of the thing they're being put through and the other kids are doing what?
And how is it that everyone doesn't know who's doing it?
And, and, and, okay, so the results aren't going to be public, but then where do they go?
Well, there's so much ambiguity here.
And there are so many, so many claims of what amazing, what an amazing piece of progress this is.
Illinois is the first state in the country.
And again, they do say, let's see, they do claim in this, in this piece, the law makes Illinois.
the first state in the country to mandate universal mental health screenings in schools, Pritzker said during a bill signing ceremony at Chute Middle School in Evanston.
Mandate universal mental health screenings.
Mandate universal COVID vaccinations.
It's the same language and like, oh, well, you can opt out.
Well, okay.
What does your mandate mean?
What does universal mean if you can opt out?
Therefore, I question how easy you're going to make it to opt out and how socially possible it is going to be to do so.
not only how socially possible at the level of the parents but imagine what's going to happen in school right some number of kids are going to But let's just say it's even clumsy, right?
Right.
And some student who is, you know, not yet good at calibrating expectations or just doesn't know how to understand the question, says something, oh my goodness, apparently Julie, you have an issue with anxiety.
Anxiety.
Suddenly things go into motion and suddenly Julie is special in somebody's eyes.
They're trying to figure out what might be going on, whether it has anything to do with why she's not succeeding at this, that, or the other.
She mentions it to her friend.
And it's like, well, apparently I have a problem with anxiety, right?
They discuss what was asked of, how did they know that?
What was asked on the thing?
You can imagine a contagion flowing through.
through the students based on the fact that they become special if they say certain things and they fail to be special and what's more don't have something to say you know let's suppose they're not succeeding in school not succeeding in school and then you're handed the tablet that figures out whether you have a problem with anxiety and then it comes back that you don't Well, now you've just got a problem in school and the same argument that you're having with your parents.
Maybe you're just stupid.
Whatever.
That's the thing that comes back to you.
Like, wait a minute.
Why, really?
Those are the options.
I'm anxious or I'm stupid.
Right.
Or lazy or whatever.
But wouldn't it be marvelous if you could go back to your parents and say, oh, they figured out why I'm having trouble in school.
It's anxiety, you know?
So.
Well, in this, I mean, in this is, you know, there's the state senator who said, this isn't diagnosis, it's detection.
But, you know, detection of what?
And, you know, from detection of what goes to diagnosis pretty quickly.
And we do, you know, we humans, with all of our language, sure do like to have names for things.
And we feel better.
We feel calmer.
If we have some vague, oh, my God, what's going on with me?
I can't figure it out.
Like, oh, you've got an X. Oh.
Okay.
Well, other people have seen this before.
Yeah.
Other people have experienced this before.
I have an X. I like, at least I know that there's a real thing.
It's not all in my head.
I'm not totally alone in the world.
And so, you know, every human being has had that experience sometime or sometimes of feeling relieved, sometimes despite themselves, sometimes in spite of their own analytics who are telling them, do not feel better just because there may be a name for the thing that you are experiencing.
Because the names don't necessarily name real things.
They don't necessarily, they aren't necessarily applied in the appropriate place.
But a child.
a child we're continuing to do this to children yeah where we we bring them into our delusions our systems our systems of control and authority and certainty and we inform them at an age when they are supposed to be exploring everything.
saying fantastical things that couldn't possibly be true.
And sometimes they know that and sometimes they don't know that.
And it is their right as children to be allowed to explore space and time while they are children where they do not have to distinguish between the reality and the fantasy of their own beliefs that they are forming.
And when you have authorities with their mental health questionnaires coming in as early as third grade, and in fact in the bill it says kindergarten, it's not clear to me what that connection, you know, what that disconnect is.
Like we have to stop informing our children of our current delusions.
We have to stop, we have to protect them from our insanity instead of feeding it to them and encouraging them to come along with us.
Johnny, I think you might be a squid.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not.
It's, it's, it's, it's, it's three quarters of the way there.
Yeah.
And what's more, the track record.
of clinical psychology at treating mental pathologies is not good.
Oh, it's not.
It's not a failure to recognize that pain is a symptom in psychology as we fail to recognize the same thing in medicine.
But there's also a failure to realize that a person has a complex system.
and that you can come up with some very clever description of why the person is malfunctioning.
Oh, it must be a serotonin deficiency, and so we can block the reuptake or whatever intervention you're going to do.
Very often this is downstream of a nonsense model used to justify some pharmaceutical that then decades later it turns out didn't do any good and did a hell of a lot of harm because of course it would.
You're intervening in a complex system.
Almost the best thing you could give them is a placebo, right?
The chances you're going to improve their well-being with some chemical intervention is pretty freaking low.
But on top of that, that's true for an adult human being.
What are the chances that you've got a chemical that fixes that person?
Low.
What are the chances you're going to mess that person up even worse if they're still in the process of developing and you're going to intervene not only in their physiology, but in their development?
The chances are near certain.
Why?
Because development is a process by which things that are not properly scaled or calibrated get properly scaled or calibrated right that's what it is it's how you become a highly functional adult from being an utterly clumsy little baby and toddler right so the idea that the person is mentally discombobulated at 12 is not surprising or eight right of course they are that's part of It's part of what being a pupa is.
Like this is it's metamorphosis.
And the point is.
I call it that because, you know, you can recognize a baby and a and a child and an adolescent as part of the same progression.
Like you don't go into a chrysalis and completely melt your insides and become something new, but it is a kind of metamorphosis.
And us going in mid-metamorphosis and going, oh, goodness, by our adult standards, that doesn't look good.
Like, well, your adult standards are way off.
And also, you forgot that that's a child.
Right.
You forgot that that's a child.
And not only, I love your point about they have a right to think fantastical things.
Yes, they do.
They also have a right to overreact, right?
The point is, why do they have a right to overreact?
So that they can learn not to do it.
Right?
You have to overreact and then discover that the consequences aren't what you hoped they were in an environment that is safe enough for that to work.
And if the environment is scrutinizing you to see if you have adult pathologies and to cure them with a pill or, you know, whatever, then the point is you will never learn it and so you know the we are supposed to be check protecting the children at all costs and in every single way we are like handing them over to at best moronic forces often demonic forces that do not have their long-term interests at heart and you know it's it's so
tough when you see it in this initial form because on the one hand you could imagine let's say that we lived in a civilization that actually really worked was firing on all cylinders and somebody said well look there are some kids who are going to go on to have some problems and we could probably help if we caught it early.
So let's just put them all through a screening.
And if the indicators that the pathology that goes on to be so serious later in life is present, let's at least start tracking it early, see whether or not the person actually has a problem.
You could imagine a system that worked saying that and it not being like, oh my fucking God, what are they doing now?
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
No, absolutely.
I mean, among other problems here, time is zero sum.
So school has already been turned over to the gender ideologues in large part.
So this is another piece of the school day, the school year.
Okay, it's only going to be once a year.
Maybe it's only going to be an hour out of one school day, but an hour out of a school day is a big chunk, right?
So time is zero sum.
I think that as crazy as school is in its modern form, that we could actually return to some valuable basics.
Obviously, and you know, this seems very, And like it's weird because they don't actually start with R except for one of them.
So I don't know why we end up.
going with the three R's.
That is reading.
Nature's way of telling you school sucks.
Reading, which actually does start with R for those of you who are like hanging on by a thread.
Writing, which does not start with R. And arithmetic, which also does not start with R. But, you know, these are things that actually it is very hard to learn on your own.
Okay.
Yeah.
It does help.
And I don't think that most of the instruction that is being used is particularly effective.
But there is a place in school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic.
And let's talk about the other things that are mostly disappearing from school that actually, and I'm thinking like elementary school, maybe into middle school now, you know, once you get into high school, there are things like lab classes and calculus and, you know, things, and again, that's math, but that really do take some, some, some careful consideration and probably do at least benefit from a school environment to learn them.
But for the younger children, instead of providing them mandatory but optional mental health screenings, make sure that they're getting the three R's in a form that is actually helpful as opposed to makes them, guess what, anxious about their incapacity to do these things.
But then more recess, let's bring back free play like actual free play so recess a few times a day uh without the the hall monitors turn schoolyard monitors informing you that you need to include that guy over there even though he's going to ruin your game and you need to not running so be running so fast because you might trip and hurt yourself right so free play experimentation in the classroom and um outside in the form of um science and gardens music art Okay,
so these things, bringing children to exposure to music and art and experimentation and scientific thinking and letting them engage freely with one another and resolve their own disputes, create their own games and resolve their own disputes is guess what?
Going to make them less anxious.
And there will be some who aren't as good at integrating into groups at first and they will feel left out and they will be left out.
And if you give it, if you come in as the adult and say you have to include him, the group that has been forced to include.
the kid who wasn't good at integrating is going to be resentful and the kid who has now been forced in is not going to have learned anything so that is going to make the problem worse not better i don't know how this isn't obvious to everyone who spends time with children.
Like, honestly, I cannot believe we are decades into some of this total insanity in schools.
And now, like, oh, mental health screenings.
How about lay off with your heavy-handed insanity and let the children be children?
Right.
All right.
I think I now know what's bugging me about this.
Okay.
Okay.
Anxiety is the natural symptom.
of development.
Yeah.
That the point is because the creature literally starts helpless, unable to roll over and it ends up hopefully being you know cogent and able and insightful and funny and all the things that you want your child to grow up to be what process did this well i'm going to come back to this another day but the genes have to be they have to build the creature
that is capable of developing into the fully fledged adult with all of the wonderful characteristics but they don't do it development does it and development is a process and the reason is so damn long in human beings is that it requires a hell of a lot of time to pick up all of the nuances to be an adult well, right?
Where do you think they're coming from?
They're coming from every single error that you made along the way.
And all of those errors are what childhood is.
So what happens?
You make the error, right?
You get overly angry at your friend and you yell at them and they're not your friend anymore and you miss them and then you discover something about why you actually modulate your degree of anger rather than just always going to 11.
Okay, that's lesson learned.
And the point is, oh no, did I lose my friend?
Well, now you've got some anxiety.
That anxiety is supposed to be teaching you.
And if you anesthetize it by whatever mechanism, you're going to screw that process up.
And then you're going to do it as an adult.
And you're going to lose somebody who would have been in your life for a long time when you didn't have to because somebody decided your anxiety was the problem.
Yes.
Your anxiety is a symptom.
We need to stop treating symptoms and consider.
why the symptoms are there.
What is causing the symptoms?
And in the case of anxiety, it's not just a symptom.
It's actually adaptive.
Yeah.
It is a signal as well as a symptom.
You know what it is?
It's a teacher, just like pain, right?
Pain, now you can have pain that doesn't mean a Goddamn thing, you can have a limb removed and you can have pain in the limb that you don't have anymore.
That's not useful pain.
But most pain is supposed to be training you.
It's either telling you you did damage or you did something that could do damage.
Don't do that again.
Here's how important it is.
You know, protect that limb because it needs to heal.
Whatever it is, those things are teachers.
And so the point is you have the school system going after the real teachers.
right the school system that doesn't know what it's doing and the state which doesn't understand that a person is a complex system and what the implications of that might be they're competing with the built-in teachers that actually do work yeah so i feel sad here's a happyy pill.
I feel pain.
Here's a pain pill.
I feel anxious.
Here's some SSRIs.
Like, no, on all fronts, frankly.
And, and yes, yes, we both mean that with regard to the pain pills, almost especially because it's, it's the most obvious one of.
I feel like a girl.
Call me Julie.
Sorry, Bob.
No, you're not a girl.
Yeah.
And, you know, and, you know, that one, the gender ideology madness is is is also so obvious because we adults made it up.
We just made it up.
It's, it's, it's just, it's our fantasy.
And, you know, are adults allowed to have fantastical thoughts and explore fantasy worlds as well as children?
Yes.
But we actually have a responsibility to keep it contained and to not pretend to those who can't tell the difference that our fantasies are reality.
And so at the point that we have forced upon children who, as one of our own children has said about himself in retrospect at the age of five, I didn't know what a boy or a girl was.
Like I knew what I was told I was and it turns out it was true.
But I didn't, if you had asked me, what makes you a boy?
Like, what feelings make you a boy?
I've been like, I don't know.
I just am a boy.
But if teachers, if he had had different parents and different teachers and he had started to be said, to be told, well, it's not what you look like, it's how you feel.
Almost every child is going to become compelled by that because every child has had weird thoughts, has had fantastical thoughts.
And so similarly, oh, you know, I was running and I twisted my ankle and it's swollen.
How can I start running right away again?
You can't because you injured yourself.
That's going to happen.
Not saying that you were inherently doing anything wrong because you will injure yourself if you take physical risks and you should take physical risks.
But what you're going to need to do is listen to your body, let it heal, do not mask the signals that it is sending you.
And at the point that your body, without the help of pain meds, is informing you that you can now bear weight on your ankle again and then later that you can run again, go for it.
Do it.
Yeah, and think.
But if you start running again when your pain is masked by meds, what is your body supposed to do?
It can't help you anymore.
If you have told it, I'm not interested in your signals.
I just want to do what I want to do.
So this is like, this is, this is retaining children in a state of perpetual immaturity because the entire society has demanded that we all get to be as immature as we want for as long as we want.
So it is like civilization-wide learned helplessness.
But think also of the elegance of the system, the system that is designed to teach you what to do about your sprained ankle, right?
Okay.
So you sprain your ankle.
Oh, God, there's pain.
I can't put weight on it.
What should I do?
Don't put weight on it.
Brilliant, right?
But here's the thing.
Really?
I can't put weight on it.
What if I'm being chased by a tiger?
Oh, then you will be able to put weight on it.
You'll see the pain will vanish, right?
It will instantaneously and you'll be running.
If your life actually depends on it, you'll be able to make it work.
Right.
The whole system is built to like to be the little doctor on your shoulder that tells you, oh, no, no, you should run now.
Right.
That's fast and fast.
Right.
And yeah, it's going to do some damage, but it's worth it compared to the tiger.
Right.
So that system.
Also, where were you that you're now being chased by a tiger?
It's interesting.
Oh, this is just a mental tiger.
Oh, which, you know, it gives me a little anxiety.
But I've learned to manage my mental.
I don't think you should bear weight on your sprained ankle to run away from a mental tiger.
My mental ankle can handle it.
Yeah.
I will probably get mental arthritis in my.
I mean, that's kind of the lesson.
Yes.
Right.
But here I am, a well-functioning adult who knows these things because nobody anesthetized every little pain that I had.
Right.
and you were forced to just deal with it and also then you began to learn i mean i'm not like Babies talk about everything they're experiencing and they don't have language, but it's a little baffling and sometimes hard for the adults in their world.
Like, oh my God, what is it now?
Like, okay, there's like three main things it could be, but it's none of those.
So what is it?
Like, what's the complaint?
But, you know, as a five-year-old, a child who was cuddled and protected and just basically protected in every way from the world learns to bring every tiny little scrape and bruise to their parents and to also exaggerate,
to be a little drama queen about how bad it is because that gets the attention that maybe the parents aren't otherwise giving because why maybe they're just stuck on their phones and maybe not maybe of course but actually what the parents should do is make sure that they spend real time with their children when no one is feigning the need for attention such that when something happens that the child should now be old enough to learn how to handle on their own they do so because it's far better to have your parents'full
attention when you can both be fully engaging with whatever it is you're doing.
Maybe learning to skateboard or play backgammon or I don't know, any number of things as opposed to, oh, I can get my mom's full and undivided attention when she's applying a bandage to my boo-boo.
Yeah.
Like stop it with the boo-boos all the time.
Just like make sure it's clean and move on.
Yeah, as a parent, you have to learn to recognize what actually requires intervention and how much.
I mean, we talk in our book about the fact that we've now become reluctant about even doing things like putting a cast on a broken limb.
If the limb is properly aligned, you're actually built to know what to do.
And so anyway, won't go more deeply there, but think about the...
Well, you learn that the way the emotions are modulated goes through this external party and that that, you know, you get some attention and, you know, somebody suddenly is interested in your problems, whereas otherwise they might not be because you're a kid and they're probably not that important.
So anyway, the point is I've said in a number of places recently that Addiction is one of these things that we've named after the pathological version.
Oh, what?
Addiction.
Addiction.
Oh.
Right.
And that the problem is that there's a good version of addiction which doesn't get filed in the same place.
It's not like, oh, yeah, addiction is the.
the misfiring of passion or something like that right and that this is this is a problem um because you know i'll just take myself i feel good when i hear that i am good under pressure under fire right that i can not freak out at things that would cause other people to do and you are i am but the point is okay that's a reward,
an internally generated reward that I now, that allows me to stare down things that other people can't.
Okay.
That's reinforces something that already existed in you, but that could have otherwise maybe, probably wouldn't have in your case, but could have started to dissipate.
Oh, I absolutely think A, I don't think it's written on a gene somewhere.
I think some early experience caused me to realize that actually when you do stare down certain stuff, it results in positive things, right?
People look to you for.
I don't know, advice or whatever.
So I learned some early lesson, too early for me to remember what it was.
And so I started developing some skill that now as an adult has turned into, well, I mean, it has a lot to do with what I now do for a living.
anyway that's good and how easy would it have been to interrupt that process and turn me into an addict of other people intervening to protect me from my own overreaction or whatever right so easy yes to have that happen and last
thing i'll say here we haven't talked about sophistry in a long time but it's a timeless topic it needs a revival because what's really going on here is arguments that sound right and are are definitely not are being deployed because it's very hard to counter them, right?
Yeah.
oh, you're really against us screening children for anxiety?
Do you realize what anxiety can do to a person?
And it's like two things.
Yeah, it can.
Second, learning to manage it is what childhood is for.
And third, this is going to come from left field, but I just did a podcast, not yet out, in which microbiome issues turn out to have huge implications for these things.
So to the extent that you have somebody.
These things meaning psychological.
Psychological disorders of many different kinds.
So the point is, actually, if we were wise and we did a screening that was careful and immunized against children gaming it in order to get attention or whatever, then the point is, actually, you might spot that somebody has an issue.
And instead of prescribing some insane pharmaceutical, which is going to radically interrupt their neurobiology, might be that there's an intervention that has to do with correcting their diet.
And what direction?
In the direction of a natural diet that doesn't contain all of the artificial statutes stuff that's causing the disruption of microbiomes right so you know drink kombucha so but it again the like you've got the answer to all of these things is the same go back and fix the developmental environment and let the kid develop, right?
That's the answer always, right?
And revel in it.
Like that this is one of the extraordinary joys of parenting is your kid is not a mini you.
And times have changed and that makes things harder because of the rate at which times have changed and how artificial and toxic much of the modern environment is.
But watching someone whom you helped create and are helping to grow reveal that they are utterly their own human being.
They are not, you know, in one way they're half you and half they're their parent but that's the least interesting part of them as we have said over and over and over again the genes are the least interesting part and so yes you know we have two boys between us who are each half genetically you know one of us and half genetically they're the other of us and that doesn't come up in conversation or in analysis really at all right um it is my goodness from the very beginning they both had personalities
and their personalities have changed and they have you know woven and uh and you know i have said for instance before that i was i was very glad to have had two boys because otherwise I might have attributed some of their personality differences to sex differences.
No, they're just really different human beings and they're both all boy.
And it's just, it's just utterly delightful.
And if you think that you can perfectly predict or perfectly form or perfectly mold what the future human will be whom you have.
whom you have helped create and are parenting, you're wrong.
Like you're delusional.
And you obviously want to do the best that you can, but the best that you can does not mean bringing certainty to either your role in their lives or to what you imagine they will be.
Absolutely.
And it is really the point of life and the delightful part of life.
And the, you know, the thin end of the wedge was school.
Well, there are actually some things, as you and I agree.
There are some things that you're not going to learn on your own that are important to know.
I mean, if you're going to be a part of our civilization, you do need to know how to write.
And you'll learn how to speak without anybody helping you.
You won't learn how to write without anybody helping you.
You won't learn math.
So.
So there's a role for that.
But once you have that role and you say okay what are the things that you won't learn on your own okay that's school and then it's like well what else could we add in there that might be enriching and then before you know it it's occupying a huge fraction of your time and these people think that they're the thing that makes you smart and that's really the error right yeah oh We're going to make you smart.
No, you're fucking not.
You're not.
At best, you're going to add some modules that will allow you to leverage the smart that you're going to pick up in the world better than you otherwise could.
But you can also make a person dumber really easily.
And one of the surefire ways to do it is to overscript their time and constrain what it is they're supposed to be doing with it.
Your point about free play, you know, what is that really about?
it's like well actually um they're gonna need some training in life and childhood involves a miniature world in which you can learn those lessons right you have like friends and people
you know, it is once again where Monty Python nails it.
Right.
They do it in their skit about the delivery room, you know, where the doctors are convinced that they are effectively producing a baby.
And they're not realizing that actually they don't know almost anything about that process.
They're just kind of facilitating it best.
Yeah.
And I mean, it's the same thing.
This is like a cognitive birth process and the government and school thinks that it's doing it.
And it's like, no, at best you've just broken it.
That's it.
I'm reminded actually of one of the school where you and I met, where I was for six years and you spent your two final years of high school.
It's a school that some people will have heard of only because Elon Musk blames it for having transed his kid.
But Crossroads, the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, California, which I loved and had just, you know, I started out as a music major there and just had, you know, the film curriculum there.
I had three, four years of film with the amazing Jim Hosney and great books curriculum.
It's just a really extraordinary school in a lot of ways.
And they started maybe the year that you showed up or maybe the year before for seniors, what I think was a mandatory year-long program called Mysteries.
And I thought, what is this?
Like, what nonsense is this?
This is so woo.
And we like sit around in a circle and like kumbaya and it was ridiculous.
And I thought, and.
And there was also included a retreat to the Ohio Foundation, which involves a sweat lodge with some members of the graduating class.
It was small classes, 100 people or so per class.
And I think those Ohio trips had maybe a quarter of the class each.
And I remember looking ahead at the end of junior year to this and thinking, yeah, there's so much else I want to do here.
Why?
Like this is taking up part of my day.
And it was actually really remarkable.
And I don't even remember what kinds of things were said in the circle on campus, you know, but it was a weekly class, I think.
I think we had, you know, I think we had mysteries once a week.
And they knew something.
They knew something real about the kind of certainty that starts to develop in teenagers around what they know, what they've experienced, what they believe, what they care about.
And this was a way of reintroducing correctly uncertainties and actual things that various people throughout history, throughout space, different cultures have known and have intuited.
And what happens when you put two worldviews that both seem to explain a lot in, in, um,
Like there was just a lot of sitting with paradox, actually, that happened in that school that felt to me at the time as a sciencey sort of a person like what are we doing and yet it was incredibly valuable yeah i think it actually reveals just one of the basic errors that is overtaking civilization which is the liberals aren't wrong they've seen
something the good ones at least but they so easily get carried away with the nuance and they will overwrite the entire functional system with that nuance and turn it into a completely unfunctional system right the the desire um you know i mean we saw this and talked about it with respect to the what was a moral panic over racism, right?
Were liberals wrong that there was a racism issue?
Well, obviously, you know, they weren't in the 50s or the 60s.
Right.
Did it go away completely?
No, it didn't go away completely.
hasn't gone away completely.
But as it waned or disappeared, It wasn't cool.
And that's exactly what you want as a society in which it is socially bad for you to have that characteristic.
So.
So, but then the desire to keep that thing alive, to pursue ever smaller, you know, now it's structural, right?
Microaggressions, like, okay, what did you just say?
Microaggressions.
And you're asking me to be certain that that is one rather than making a statistical argument over a population like, no, sorry, maybe the racism thing isn't the focus anymore.
And, you know, the structural issues, sure, but is it racism, right?
So that desire to keep the thing alive caused them to actually reinvent racism.
To, I know it's...
Yeah, to embrace it and then start wielding it as a weapon.
Yep.
And the point is, what did that do?
Well, very predictably, it made everybody super race conscious and it revived racism.
Congratulations.
Well done, liberals.
You almost had it.
Fucked it up.
So, anyway, point is, I agree with you that the...
There was a point, you know, back in the...
It wasn't wrong.
All right.
Let's very briefly talk about Bobby Kennedy and the New York Times.
Yep.
And then go to what you want to talk about.
All right.
Or maybe we put that one off.
Oh, we got a little time yet.
Okay.
So the New York Times wants to have its cake and eat its two.
Eat its two.
Not a thing.
The New York, if I know the New York Times, the New York Times wants to eat your cake.
Yeah, they want their cake.
They want to have their cake and eat your cake.
Yeah, they want all the cake.
Yeah.
They also want to be eating all the cake all the time.
And then treat it with a pill so that it won't look like they've eaten all the cake and it's not going to work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, I mean, this has gotten, you can show my screen here.
It's 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups in under 10 minutes.
What could go wrong?
That's the headline from the New York Times.
Fitness experts caution against jumping into a difficult routine suggested by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth.
So this has been on social media and apparently on the HHS page as well.
The Pete and Bobby challenge is these two guys in a timed fitness challenge in a video basically asking people to try to do 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups in under 10 minutes, which, you know, any human being who has any intelligence whatsoever will recognize that if they haven't been doing push-ups or pull-ups recently, they're going to be unlikely to be able to pull this off in under 10 minutes the first time they try and that they should exercise some caution.
I guarantee you knowing nothing at all about Hagseth, but knowing Kennedy a little bit, that he is well aware of that and that this was not intended to damage Americans.
However, the New York Times needs to find something to argue with in every utterance that Bobby Kennedy makes.
And so this article could be worse.
I mean, it's insane, but it could be worse.
But this sentence.
Challenge them.
But this sentence in particular strikes me as it's just perfect.
This is exactly what the New York Times does.
The challenge might have seemed novel to some, but high volume calisthenic couplets like this are nothing new.
Really?
And fitness experts caution they may not be for everyone.
So this might seem new, but it's not new.
Don't worry about it.
Like these guys are not on anything new at all, so you shouldn't be impressed.
But also, also this is dangerous.
So if it is new, it's dangerous.
You definitely don't want to do it.
But by the way, we've seen this coming like we've all done this.
They're claiming both sides, both positions are simultaneously obvious and insane somehow.
How did that set manage to make it through?
Somebody who has done no push-ups and full-ups rotated is what happened.
Yeah.
This reminds me there used to be a principle that I would break out for special occasions, which was you know you're really on to something when the world tells you these two things simultaneously.
What you're saying is dead wrong and we knew it already.
Exactly.
That's it's that.
It's that.
It's like, oh, I guess I must be honest with me.
Now, the idea.
So first of all, I will make my one complaint about the Kennedy Smith challenge here.
100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups are from two very different universes, right?
What do you mean?
Pull-ups are incredibly hard.
That number is really high.
A lot of people, a lot of women, myself included.
I'm strong.
I've always been strong, but I've never been able to do a pull-up.
I can't do a single pull-up.
And like back before Obama took away the presidential fitness test, thanks.
And we were like kids in America were doing presidential fitness tests.
The one place that I couldn't match my pre-adolescent peers of either sex was pull-ups.
Yeah.
Well.
Let's just say I don't understand how you get to those two numbers because they're really very, very different levels of challenge and the 50 pull-up thing in 10 minutes.
What?
Yeah.
No, crazy.
But the article goes on.
It's like, well, they're not doing, you know, their form isn't perfect.
It's like, again, you can't have it both ways.
Right.
And, you know, if their form is risking damage and people are going to copy their form, that's one thing.
It's like, oh, we're not going up all the way.
Like, okay.
Well, but, okay, if it were sit-ups, there'd be room for an article, right?
Because a person who doesn't know how to do a proper sit-up, maybe even somebody who does know how to do a proper sit-up.
You can hurt yourself.
You can hurt your back.
What's going to happen if you fail to do the push-ups?
You're going to be on the floor.
You will fail.
fails you.
You're starting out real close to the floor.
The fall is not a big one.
And if you're just, you know, you're just going to go down and you're not going to come back up.
Right.
That's what's going to happen.
It's not that dangerous.
And the pull-ups, you know, you could suffer a severe case of embarrassment, right?
But yeah.
So it's sort of a self-regulating exercise here.
And so the challenge, really, if there's one challenge, I mean, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think anybody needs a warning on this one, right?
Try it.
See what happens.
You'll learn something about where Bobby Kennedy is in his 70s versus where you are.
And maybe it will motivate you.
It's, you know, it's pretty.etty safe stuff yeah um so that's all i got there yeah well damn new york times these people are so derivative and dangerous exactly yeah this is nothing and deadly um okay so Last chapter here,
I wanted to talk a little bit about a story that we actually know almost nothing about, but nonetheless, it opens the right topic.
It's a topic that has been hooks its head through the surface every now and again.
So the story is., and maybe you can put up the police report, the police media report on the arrest.
The basics of the story are that on I think the 18th of August in a place called Lindsay, Ontario, a 3.20 a.m. in the morning, the police responded to a call about an altercation.
A man had confronted an intruder in his apartment.
The person had broken in, was armed, and the person whose apartment it was apparently stabbed them.
them and stab in here?
I believe so.
Stabbed.
And the intruder was severely injured and airlifted to a Toronto hospital.
Okay, so far that's a story.
But then the person who...
Yeah, it says homeowner, which is not right.
The person in whose apartment this happened was charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon.
And unfortunately, without more details on what happened, we can't.
tell if this is a story like, wait, what?
You charged who?
You know, you charged the guy who was defending himself at 3 a.m. in the morning against an intruder who broke into his apartment.
It's hard to imagine the situation in which that is not a reasonable response.
And okay, it's too bad somebody got injured.
But on the other hand, that is the risk you take when you break into somebody's home and they, you know, awaken to find you in there.
Yep.
On the other hand.
You know, my dad, a lawyer, used to delight in throwing curveballs at us where he would come up with scenarios, you know, to see if you could figure out legally, you know, if you, you know, this is an actual one from long ago.
He, you know, you shoot and kill your best friend intending.
to kill him.
at the time he was dressed as a gorilla and he had leapt out of a closet to frighten you and so your intent to...
Right.
You were intending to kill the gorilla, which turned out to be...
Right, exactly.
So how does the law deal with this?
You know, should you have, you know, known that it was a gorilla suit based on the fact that it was like a fancy McGillagorilla suit, not a, you know, the point is you could imagine the court case, right?
So the question is, what would the law make of that?
But anyway, in this case, you could come up with scenarios, you know, let's say, you know, in general, and by the way, this is Canada.
Things are different in the U.S. Both the gun laws are different in the U.S., which is obviously not relevant, but is relevant to many of these cases where somebody ends up injuring an intruder.
Are you entitled if somebody walks through your open door, right?
Let's say that your door was left wide open and somebody walks into your house so they are entering your house but they didn't break in you know are you entitled to injure them well it really often comes down to whether or not you have a reasonable reason to fear for serious injury or death right If the person was a 10 year old child and you say, well, they broke into my house, well, the answer is no.
A 10 year old child walked into your house and you shouldn't really have been afraid because you're a full grown man, right?
You wouldn't be justified in that case.
On the other hand, if somebody, you know, let's say somebody breaks in and they point a gun at you and you shoot them well okay what if the gun wasn't real well it hinges on whether you thought it was real right that kind of thing so yeah anyway we don't know enough about this case but i will say that there is a general trend widely discussed in gun rights second amendment circles where people who appear to be engaged in clear
acts of self-defense find themselves on the wrong end of the law, that the law has become inverted in this way, where it now overly focuses on the likelihood that a person who broke into your house had a disadvantaged upbringinging and, you know,
says, well, why didn't you, you know shoot him in the leg why'd you shoot him in the heart right and it's just totally disconnected from reality again don't know if this case is one in which the police have overreacted or whether actually there's some nuance to this story that makes the injury to the the intruder somehow uh unreasonable but in general what i want to raise is the following possibility We are stuck not knowing whether the attack on
each and every one of the fundamental rights on which our civilization is based is the result of a bunch of numbskills who don't know what they're doing, who have ascended to power and are experimenting on us, but that's as far as it goes.
Yeah.
Right.
Is it a Chesterton's fence issue, therefore, where it's like, well, what good is habeas corpus, really?
Like, what's that about?
Why that seems cumbersome and like Latin.
So why do we need that right?
You know.
Why, you know, why do you get the right to see the evidence against you if it's clear that the evidence against you, you're seeing it isn't going to change the fact that it absolutely conclusively proves blah, blah, blah?
You know, you could imagine people upending all of the hard-won core elements that allow a western civilization to run.
Because they've lived in a successful western civilization for so long that they've forgotten what the fundamental features of it were that allowed them to live the way they live.
Right, exactly.
And it's an easy mistake to make.
In fact, the habeas corpus is an obvious example because it actually goes back to the Magna Carta.
Yeah.
And so the idea that you have your...
And the people, without throwing out the king, forced the king to agree that he didn't have that right.
Okay.
So the point is you've lived downstream of habeas corpus.
I think you've lived downstream of habeas corpus until the NDAA of 2012, which destroyed it without saying so.
In the United States.
In the United States.
So the NDAA of 2012, this is a National Defense Authorization Act, which But that's annual.
Yeah, annual.
But the 2012 version had these onerous provisions that basically gave the executive the ability to designate you a terrorist on its sole authority.
And having done so, no matter who you are, no matter where in the world you were, it then had the right to haul you off, not acknowledge that it have you.
That's where your habeas corpus rights went.
And that meant you didn't have the right to a lawyer.
You didn't have the right to see the evidence against you because it didn't even have to admit that you had been incarcerated.
So habeas corpus lasts from, I've forgotten when the Magna Carta was exactly, till 2012, at which point it's now widely still utilized, but in extreme cases doesn't really exist and most people are unaware of that.
Even people within the court system are unaware.
So is this a Chesterton's fence issue or has somebody looked at the West and decided, oh, this is a galling structure that's getting in the way of all sorts of wonderful things that we would like to do.
And so we're going to take it apart by subtly going after the foundational.
pillars and the right to defend your home the idea that hey here are the basics you know you're not allowed to shoot somebody because they've wandered across your front lawn.
But once somebody has physically broken into your house, the presumption is going to be that actually they are a threat to you and you have a right to defend yourself.
In many places, including California, I was interested to find out, you are not required to retreat, right?
There are places where you're required to retreat from an intruder.
In California and many other places, you are not.
You are allowed to defend yourself.
There are states in the United States where you are required to retreat within your own home from an intruder.
Within the United States, I believe so.
We should check that.
We should check that.
But it is one of these things that is specifically delineated in many states.
You have the right to.
stand your ground.
So that's in your own home.
In your own home.
I would hope so.
Yes.
On the other hand, a lot depends on how the courts view these things.
And the idea that you're not well protected in many cases, especially if there's a firearm involved, when you do stand your ground is an important thing to understand.
In large measure, I just wanted to highlight the question.
We are all stuck with not enough information.
We can see that the foundational pillars of Western civilization are being chipped away at every single place.
they exist.
Is that because people don't know what they are and they're chipping away with them, not realizing that eventually the thing is going to collapse?
Or are they under attack because something finds the rights that we have in Western civilization to be galling?
I genuinely think we don't know, but I think there's a good fraction of the latter.
It seems to be...
I think you're right.
Yep.
All right.
Is that it?
I think so.
All right.
Well, as promised, we're going to call a little bit short today, but we'll be back next week, same time, same place.
And before we see you, then, a reminder that our sponsors this week were Branch Basics, these great cleaning supplies, and Joe Lee with their awesome Showerheads, and CrowdHealth with their new Black Swan membership, which looks awesome.
And really, if you can get out of the insurance rat race with CrowdHealth, you should do so.
We always have watch parties on Locals.
I encourage you to join us there.
And until we see you next time, I shouldn't say that.
Until next time.
Yes, until next time.
Until next time.
We talked about this on our Q&A this last week.
last whenever that was Sunday about your apparent seething objection to people saying until we see you next time when the fact is that you know and we know that we can't see you.
Seething.
You're seething now?
I don't know that I was seething, but yes, it is a pet peeve to be sure.
Yeah, okay.
Until next time, be good to the ones you love, eat good food, and get outside.
