The Michael Knowles Show - Michael REACTS To "HopeCore" TikToks: Try Not To Smile!
Aired: 2026-01-25
Duration: 16:49


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[00:01:53]  Your Highness, the transmission we received.
[00:01:58]  What is it they've sent us?
[00:02:01]  hope.
[00:02:16]  The West is falling.
[00:02:18]  We all know civilization is on its last gasps.

=== Glimmers Of Hope (13:31) ===

[00:02:22]  Everything is bleak.
[00:02:23]  We're all black pilled.
[00:02:28]  We doom scroll on our phones and that sense of doom grows greater and greater until the enormity brings us to the brink of despair.
[00:02:39]  But sometimes there are little glimmers of hope.
[00:02:42]  Hope.
[00:02:44]  As my producer team, this Professor Jacob in particular, has apparently found on his feet.
[00:02:50]  So there's a new challenge.
[00:02:51]  Very often the challenge is Michael, watch some crazy video and try not to laugh.
[00:02:56]  Try not to get angry.
[00:02:58]  Try not to, this is the opposite.
[00:03:00]  Professor Jacob is going to pull up those little signs of hope that just creep into the algo every now and again.
[00:03:06]  And I will do my best not to smile.
[00:03:10]  Take it away.
[00:03:11]  What's in there?
[00:03:12]  What's in it?
[00:03:13]  Open it up, Dania.
[00:03:14]  What's in it?
[00:03:15]  Yeah, pajamas.
[00:03:18]  Yeah!
[00:03:22]  Yeah!
[00:03:24]  Pajamas!
[00:03:28]  Oh Happy birthday, Mr. Porker.
[00:03:49]  Oh, my goodness.
[00:03:51]  I've never had a birthday cake before.
[00:03:54]  Oh, really?
[00:03:57]  Christian.
[00:03:58]  Christian.
[00:03:59]  I've seen these little baby with the glasses.
[00:04:02]  Like goofy little eyes.
[00:04:05]  Hi.
[00:04:06]  Hey, Munchkin.
[00:04:12]  Yeah, I've seen the last one is kind of cute, but the rest of them really, wow, I've never had a birthday cake before.
[00:04:18]  Is that real?
[00:04:19]  Wow.
[00:04:19]  Yeah, all of it.
[00:04:20]  The kid, my dad, my dad.
[00:04:22]  It's tough.
[00:04:23]  It's tough.
[00:04:23]  Wow.
[00:04:24]  Like, I come home from work.
[00:04:26]  I usually don't get home too late.
[00:04:28]  Sometimes I travel, but if I'm in town, I usually don't get home too late.
[00:04:32]  Come in, and my kids will come.
[00:04:35]  Often my kids will come to the door.
[00:04:36]  Oh, hey, Day Dai.
[00:04:38]  But now my youngest, who's like a year and a half or so, he's now old enough to kind of get it when I come.
[00:04:43]  He just comes in and he starts dancing when I come in.
[00:04:48]  It's like doing a little jig.
[00:04:49]  He's so happy.
[00:04:50]  It's very, it really melts your heart.
[00:04:52]  Wow.
[00:04:53]  The fact that after years of just increasing viciousness, invective, polemic, nasty, demonic kind of stuff.
[00:05:05]  There's little glimmers of hope in the algo.
[00:05:08]  What does that mean?
[00:05:08]  All right, give me the next one.
[00:05:10]  A big surprise today for One Channel 8 Eyewitness News reporter when her longtime boyfriend showed up to propose to her.
[00:05:22]  Wow.
[00:05:27]  Oh my God.
[00:05:30]  It was as far opposite from Eva and Tony's as you can get.
[00:05:33]  This one was very laid back, very casual.
[00:05:39]  What are you doing?
[00:05:41]  What are you doing here?
[00:05:42]  I'm just here to say that I've loved you since the day I met you.
[00:05:46]  And want to spend the rest of my life with you.
[00:05:49]  I don't like this.
[00:05:51]  Very unprofessional.
[00:05:53]  I don't like this one.
[00:05:54]  The first one was cuter.
[00:05:56]  This one is unprofessional.
[00:05:57]  He's making it all about him.
[00:05:58]  Yeah, okay.
[00:05:59]  I want, I lost it a little bit on the first one.
[00:06:02]  That was because she seemed so genuinely surprised and it was like a clever way to do it.
[00:06:06]  The middle one I didn't like, though, because it's just this guy saundering out.
[00:06:09]  Hey, Toots.
[00:06:10]  Hey, Ron.
[00:06:11]  Hey, Millie.
[00:06:12]  I know you're working or whatever, but hey, let's make this about me.
[00:06:16]  They decided to marry.
[00:06:18]  But the first one is really sweet.
[00:06:21]  Because she didn't know, you know, she really didn't get it.
[00:06:24]  I guess the reason I like the first one is she was led unawares into participating in this very sweet act that she desired.
[00:06:33]  That you had, you, you, you could, you do.
[00:06:38]  Whereas in the second one, the girl was just interrupted.
[00:06:43]  Okay, but I like, I want partial credit for keeping it despairing, you know, in the, okay, next one.
[00:06:53]  I lost.
[00:07:01]  Am I supposed to turn around yet?
[00:07:32]  The problem is these days, that could be real.
[00:07:51]  Yeah, that's kind of whatever.
[00:07:52]  The elephant one is the best one.
[00:07:56]  Because that's a real, it's not just a contrived.
[00:07:59]  What I don't like, look, why is this creeping into the algo now?
[00:08:04]  This is actually a great sign.
[00:08:07]  And it's the same reason that the despair crept into the algo.
[00:08:10]  It's that reality exists and you can't divorce yourself from reality forever.
[00:08:15]  So whatever's saying everything's great, we're great.
[00:08:19]  The borders are opening.
[00:08:20]  Prime is skyrocketing and we're casterating kids and we're killing babies and ha, but it's all green.
[00:08:26]  The reality creeps in and you can't really deny what you're seeing.
[00:08:31]  No, it's this is bad.
[00:08:33]  This is getting worse.
[00:08:34]  Things aren't going to get better if we don't acknowledge the reality that they're bad right now.
[00:08:39]  But just as that is the case, so too, I think now that we're all blackbilled and despairing, the reality that is creeping in is actually there is hope in the world.
[00:08:48]  Actually, we can do good things.
[00:08:54]  Kind of, we can choose virtue over vice.
[00:08:58]  God exists and he extends grace to us and we can cooperate with that grace.
[00:09:03]  And we're not necessarily destined eternally to death or torment, but actually we might have everlasting life and you might.
[00:09:09]  And like kids are cute and animals are kind of funny.
[00:09:12]  And that is just as real as like all the bad things in the world.
[00:09:18]  And so sometimes people cynically, or not even, it's not even cynicism.
[00:09:24]  It's like a jadedness.
[00:09:25]  They'll say, well, you know, kid, you don't understand how dark it is out there.
[00:09:30]  And that could be true.
[00:09:33]  You could be correcting for an optimism, but you also need to correct for pessimism, which are two sides of the same coin.
[00:09:39]  That's why this is creeping back in.
[00:09:40]  And the thing I don't like about these, like be happy videos, is when they're just totally contrived, when it's like forced, when it doesn't feel real.
[00:09:49]  But the elephant one, that's like real.
[00:09:51]  It's just like a delightful little thing that happened.
[00:09:53]  Okay, keep going.
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[00:09:59]  Right now, go to expressvpn.com slash michael letter y letter t.
[00:10:02]  Did you know that your internet provider watches every move you make online, tracks all your clicks, all the endless time that you spend online, doom scrolling, searching, building a profile that they sell to the highest bidder?
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[00:10:18]  Well, one reason is the government benefits too.
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[00:10:22]  Normally, the government would need a warrant to collect your information without consent.
[00:10:26]  But when they buy the data from the brokers instead, it's totally legal, no warrant required.
[00:10:31]  These data brokers are eroding our freedoms as Americans.
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[00:10:42]  ExpressVPN allows me to keep all of my online activity secure through their encrypted servers.
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[00:11:03]  Find out how you can get four months free by scanning the QR code on screen, clicking the link in the description box below, or by going to expressvpn.com/slash Michael, letter Y, letter T. already seen this one, so I'm going to succeed.
[00:12:16]  Yeah, say hello to the camera.
[00:12:18]  Hello.
[00:12:18]  Hey, mom.
[00:12:28]  I almost lost it there at the end.
[00:12:30]  And you know what it was?
[00:12:31]  It wasn't even the.
[00:12:32]  It was the.
[00:12:33]  It was that.
[00:12:34]  I almost lost.
[00:12:35]  And I hadn't seen that video before.
[00:12:36]  The one with the baby on the news clip.
[00:12:38]  I had, we've all seen that.
[00:12:39]  There was.
[00:12:42]  That one got me.
[00:12:43]  Okay.
[00:12:43]  Did I pass that one?
[00:12:44]  That was a great effort, Michael.
[00:12:46]  I was smiling.
[00:12:47]  Does it count?
[00:12:48]  Does it count?
[00:12:49]  I was kind of doing a little bit of like a.
[00:12:51]  I'm so hopeful now that I'm going to give you a point for that.
[00:12:54]  Thank you.
[00:12:55]  Wow.
[00:12:57]  What an act of grace.
[00:12:58]  The quality of mercy is not strained, you know.
[00:13:01]  That's what he's the goat!
[00:13:03]  The goat!
[00:13:06]  Though justice be, thy plea consider this that in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.
[00:13:10]  Okay, all right, that's her.
[00:13:11]  Is that it?
[00:13:11]  Are there any more clips?
[00:13:12]  There are like so many more.
[00:13:13]  Oh, there are.
[00:13:14]  Okay, all right, keep going.
[00:13:14]  I think there's a black on my screen.
[00:13:16]  I don't know.
[00:13:17]  It's a black bill on my screen.
[00:13:19]  Grammy, what are we seeing right now?
[00:13:23]  We're seeing 7,000 years of lava flow.
[00:13:26]  7,000.
[00:13:27]  Opa, what do you see?
[00:13:29]  I see Grammy.
[00:13:30]  And just Grammy.
[00:13:33]  But now look at Grammy.
[00:13:34]  I don't see anything.
[00:13:34]  There's nobody else.
[00:13:38]  What are you going to do for your anniversary?
[00:13:41]  We looked at it.
[00:13:41]  Same thing we're doing right now.
[00:13:44]  And he kissed me on the forehead.
[00:13:47]  You kissed her?
[00:13:48]  Yeah, he always kisses things.
[00:13:52]  He kisses me on the jack.
[00:13:53]  He kisses me on my head.
[00:13:55]  He kisses me anywhere.
[00:14:04]  Love you, huh?
[00:14:06]  Love you, too, baby.
[00:14:07]  And I look at a granddad and I don't see anything.
[00:14:10]  I don't see anything.
[00:14:12]  Aww.
[00:14:19]  That almost got me.
[00:14:22]  It almost got me.
[00:14:24]  I think I passed that one.
[00:14:28]  Next one.
[00:14:28]  I gotta be honest.
[00:14:29]  The reason why I stopped you is because you've got a child in the car with no child seat.
[00:14:36]  Are you sure?
[00:14:37]  Are you positive about this?
[00:14:39]  Are you saying I do?
[00:14:41]  Okay, alright.
[00:14:46]  We do have a child in the car with no car seat.
[00:14:52]  You can have me do it.
[00:14:59]  Hurry up, take it up in a hurry.
[00:15:02]  Nova, hurry.
[00:15:02]  You stevize to get to the place.
[00:15:04]  Come on now.
[00:15:06]  I come home.
[00:15:29]  Yeah, all right.
[00:15:30]  Yeah, the thing with the wife with the pregnancy test.
[00:15:36]  Because I don't like, there was a period for a while when everyone was attacking cops.
[00:15:41]  Well, that could be any year, I guess, but this was around the LM era.
[00:15:45]  And then these cops would pull people over and it would be like, all right, you know what I'm pulling you over to tell you to have a great day or whatever.
[00:15:51]  There was like a PR campaign.
[00:15:52]  I was like, don't do that, man.

=== Cops and Great Days (00:55) ===

[00:15:53]  You can't.
[00:15:54]  That's not your job.
[00:15:55]  Don't do that.
[00:15:57]  You're bringing the force of the state in to like make people smile at you.
[00:16:01]  No.
[00:16:01]  But that is so great where the wife obviously coordinated with the cop.
[00:16:05]  It's like, you're driving around with a kid without a car seat on.
[00:16:09]  There's no kid in the car.
[00:16:10]  Like, yes, there is.
[00:16:12]  That's good, man.
[00:16:15]  That's good.
[00:16:15]  You keep a straight face for that.
[00:16:17]  You're not going to succeed.
[00:16:18]  All right.
[00:16:19]  What'd I do?
[00:16:19]  I made it through two of them without breaking.
[00:16:22]  Yeah.
[00:16:22]  Okay.
[00:16:23]  I can't.
[00:16:24]  I can't.
[00:16:25]  I'm just, I am too hopeful.
[00:16:26]  You know why?
[00:16:28]  It's not only a theological virtue, but a demand.
[00:16:31]  You got to be hopeful, man.
[00:16:34]  Future is so bright.
[00:16:35]  We got to wear shades.
[00:16:36]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:16:38]  I don't have my sunglasses on me.
[00:16:39]  Doesn't matter.
[00:16:40]  I'll get them later.
[00:16:41]  I'm Michael Knowles.
[00:16:41]  This is the Michael Knowles show.
[00:16:42]  See you later.
[00:16:46]  I'm going to go hug Professor Jacob.
[00:16:48]  Wow.