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Sept. 2, 2021 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:36:38
20210902_michael-shermer-on-covid-hysteria-the-religion-of-
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Biological Differences in Sports 00:14:38
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show.
Today, Dr. Michael Shermer.
This guy's the founder of Skeptic.
Magazine, which you should be reading if you're not already.
He's a science writer.
He's host of the Michael Shermer Show.
And he happens to be a presidential fellow at Chapman University.
Born in LA, raised in Southern California, still out in California, and has so many insightful things to educate us on, including skepticism, for sure, and how it can serve you well and how it can serve you poorly.
And we're going to go from cults to COVID to the craziness during this pandemic and how it really is affecting.
people's ability to separate fact from fiction and to weigh truth versus untruth, right?
Like reality versus imaginary.
And I really think a lot of people have gotten sucked into some of these conspiracy theories on the left and the right, frankly.
And this is a great guy to listen to on how to get yourself out, how to figure out if you're one of those people, how to stop doing that, and how to stay at least with one foot in rationality.
Okay, so he's going to walk us through it.
I think you'll find it very entertaining.
We sort of get to at the end his belief that we're living in the most moral time in human history.
Okay.
Don't believe what they say about America, about this world, about us as Americans.
We're better than we've ever been, and it's pretty damn good.
So anyway, there's reason for skepticism and there's reason for optimism.
Those two things are not inconsistent.
And I will play you a soundbite of possibly my least skeptical moment ever and how it came back to bite me in the bottom.
Okay, we'll get to Michael in one second.
First this.
Michael, hi.
Good morning.
Help me get to know you a little bit because I read something about you that I've seen about a lot of people I know in New York, which was you described yourself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.
And in response to everyone who says that in 2021 America, I say, still?
Because socially liberal today, I don't even know what it means anymore.
So traditionally, that phrase was associated with being a libertarian.
I've tended to call myself more of a classical liberal now in that kind of founding father sense.
There's a lot of fringe elements on the Libertarian Party or small L libertarians, you know, pot smoking, porn watching people living in isolation in Idaho or something like that, or crazy about guns or whatever.
There's a lot of fringiness there.
So I've kind of stopped using that.
But by fiscally conservative, I mean, you know, small government, lower taxes, that kind of thing.
By socially liberal, I mean pro choice, separation of church and state, you know, some gun control measures, you know, recognition of science as a reliable institution.
Uh, you know, women's rights, gay rights, animal rights, civil rights, and that sort of thing.
So, um, but but in general, I try not to fit into any particular category because then you're forced to tick the box for whatever cluster represents that category.
And then I don't like that it's so easy to predict people.
I mean, if I know what your position is on abortion, for example, I can predict with fairly high certainty what your position is on immigration and gun control and you know, foreign policy and a whole bunch of other.
Things.
And that just seems, I don't know.
It's just, I don't like that.
It's like, it'd be nice if you thought through each issue and then gave your reasons.
Rather than, well, I'm in this tribe, so this is what we believe.
Well, it's funny because I mean, I think about it sometimes.
I just feel like the ground is moving beneath us, especially on social issues.
And I used to say I was more socially liberal, but now I don't think I am.
I'm not sure.
The list you gave, yeah, I share a lot of your views on those items.
But, you know, even saying pro women's rights, it's like, well, I'm not against that.
But also, what does that mean?
Does that mean no due process for men who get accused on college campuses?
Well, I'm against that.
You know, is it anti male?
No, I'm against that.
Is it.
You know, all that stuff.
Is it like the taxpayer has to pay for abortions?
I'm against that.
Is it pro LGBTQ?
Well, is it, does that mean that I have to support all, you know, trans girls running against cis girls, biological girls, and races?
Well, I don't think I do that, you know?
So it's like things have changed so rapidly in the past, even just five, 10 years.
I'm like, I don't know what the hell I am.
Actually, I think we need four categories at least.
What you've just described, I agree with everything you just said.
People that go along those lines, I would put in the far left.
So called progressives, or sometimes called the regressive left or illiberals, illiberalism.
Traditional liberals would agree with you and I.
And then maybe on the right, you have kind of neocons or traditional old school conservatives, somebody like George Will.
And then you have Trumpists, wherever you want to put them, far right of someone like George Will, something like that.
So at least four categories.
But again, I prefer to take it one issue at a time.
And often we're going to end up with.
Conflicting rights issues.
People get confused about this.
Like, well, I believe in women's rights.
Well, how about a man who identifies as a woman?
Shouldn't she have the same rights?
Well, yes, under the Constitution, if you're a US citizen, you get protected by the Constitution and so on.
Well, what about competing against women in women's divisions and sports?
Well, no, you can't just have all rights because there are conflicting rights the rights of women to compete against other women and the rights of trans to compete maybe in their own division, something like that.
The problem at the moment is I think there's not enough trans.
People in either direction to fill a sports division.
Can I say something?
I've been thinking about that lately.
I agree with you.
I totally agree with what you just said.
But the thing that bothers me is okay, so there's not enough trans girls to fill a division or fill a track team, what have you.
Well, why do the biological girls always have to suffer?
So, what that means is somebody who's going to run is going to suffer a little because if the trans girls run against the biological girls, the cis girls, the biological girls are going to suffer.
They're going to lose, as we've seen many times.
If they have to run in their own league, if the trans girls have to run in their own league against one other person, the trans girls aren't going to like it because they don't have enough people to run against.
If they have to run as biological boys, they're not going to like it because they say they're not boys and they'll probably lose more of those races.
But in every one of these instances, we always side with the biological girls must suffer.
They are the ones who will take it on the chin.
And by the way, if you offer any objection as their mom, as the girls themselves, you're a bigot.
I was like, that's what's so irritating about the discussion right now.
Yeah, exactly.
And people get confused about whatever the science says about X and rights, which are two separate issues.
Even if, you know, there seems to be this push like there has to be a large number of trans people in order for us to take their rights seriously.
And that's mistaken.
It wouldn't matter if there's just one person in the entire country, they deserve the same rights as everybody else under the Constitution.
But again, then you end up in these rights conflicts.
Just say, Something like the abortion issue, the rights of the fetus to live, the rights of the mother to choose.
Well, there's no scientific correct answer to that.
It's a political issue.
At some point, you just have to say, this is what we've decided politically.
We're going to allow or disallow.
And that's Just the way it goes.
And so with trans, again, you have this kind of conflicting scientific evidence that comes out that says, well, male to female trans, at whatever age, even at puberty or even before, they still have a distinct physical advantage.
That's what the evidence looks like now.
But people get confused and think, oh, no, that means they're not going to have any rights under the Constitution and you're a bigot.
No, no, that's not what it means.
Again, you can't just have any rights.
Anytime for anything, that's not what rights mean.
So much of what it means to live in a democracy is that we have these conflicting rights and we have to vote on it or debate about it or argue about it.
And then we settle in and see how it goes and then have another election and rerun the experiment again and see how it goes.
We're in the middle of one of those with the trans issue.
It's good that you raised the issue of abortion and mothers and babies.
It's like, yeah, you got to look at both parties.
And I understand the law doesn't recognize rights for a baby up until a certain point in viability right now.
But you are obviously considering the rights or potential rights of both parties involved.
And it's the same with trans in a way, because yes, we want to recognize trans rights, but there's another party, cis girls or biological girls.
Cis, a lot of people don't know that term, which is why I just keep trying to find another way of saying it, but CIS, cis girls means biological girls.
You're born a girl, you identify as a girl, you never change.
You're always a girl.
Anyway, it's like, great, I want to be supportive of trans girls, but I also am supportive of biological girls, and their rights don't cease mattering just in my effort.
To recognize the rights of trans girls, what's so irritating.
And so I feel like so many people have been shamed into silence because they don't want to be called bigots.
They don't want to seem like they're unsupportive.
What about the other party?
The other party has rights too that need to be exercised, stood up for, and so on.
It's revealing that most of the trans sports issues are male transitioning to female and competing in women's sports, not the other way around, right?
Because it would be much harder to go from female to male and go, okay, now I'm going to.
Compete in track and field or weightlifting or cycling or whatever.
Cycling is my sport.
And there is a huge difference.
There's a reason we have women's divisions.
It just wouldn't be fair.
I mean, Serena Williams herself, the greatest tennis player of all time, says she wouldn't beat the top 100 men in the men's divisions.
Or even college.
There's a reason for that.
Even the top college male players could probably be.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah.
So, again, conflicting rights, you have to draw the line somewhere.
In the abortion issue, you mentioned that there is a scientific element in terms of what the law follows.
It is to what extent can Can a conscious creature suffer?
So, you know, the law has kind of decided, well, by the end of the second trimester, close to it, you know, we're going to draw the line there.
There's no scientist would say, yes, that's the perfect, you know, day 163, hour 12, that's when, you know, a fetus becomes a baby or a person.
You know, you just have to, the law has to just draw the line and have a category.
Well, it's something like, when can the baby survive?
Viability.
That's right.
So you have something like when Lacey Peterson was murdered by her husband and she was pregnant, I think in her third trimester, I think it was a double homicide.
She was eight months, yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, so there we, I think the law has followed track pretty well, the science on that.
And that's what I like to see us do in terms of, you know, using science to help advance moral progress in legal and democratic systems like this.
You know, what does the science say?
But at some point, you know, we're not going to be satisfied with the science.
And then we have to just, it's just pure politics.
So, well, yes, correct.
But I will say on the abortion issue, I think it's kind of the opposite of what you said.
The science says that's a life.
I mean, there's no question that life begins at the moment that the The embryo is formed, right?
That the sperm and the egg unite to form a zygote.
That is the beginning of life, as any scientist would have to admit.
But we've changed the question, right?
If that were the relevant question, can you abort something that has begun life?
Abortion would be illegal everywhere.
We have a judicially imposed test of when viability begins.
And that too can be answered not with total certainty, but with relative certainty.
And it puts the date much later.
This goes to the heart of what we've been debating all along, right?
Like, what should be the test?
So the people who are pro-life don't want the Supreme Court involved in this at all, but they certainly would like the test to be moved a lot sooner.
They don't like viability, and they would say it's a life.
It's a life.
And I think as a Catholic, this is what we wrestle with all the time, because I think an honest person and a scientific one would tell you life begins at conception.
And then it's a question of, okay, so how could you be in favor of abortion after that point?
Because you'd have to admit you're extinguishing a life, something we Catholics have been wrestling with since 1970 and Rowe.
If we look at it historically, you know, men have always tried to lord it over women, particularly their reproductive choices.
You know, that's kind of the natural state of things.
So, moral progress for women's rights in part came about from giving women more choices over their reproductive choices that they wanted to make.
And so, at some point, you have a, again, a conflict.
Yes, the moment of conception is a good place to draw the line, but, you know, is a little packet of 16 cells the same as an eight month?
Fetus.
No, you know, there's a huge continuum difference at some place.
There's a qualitative difference.
And, well, I mean, this is a complex issue, but if I was going to steal man the pro life position, because I'm pro choice, I would say, you know, that women that want to have the baby the moment they get pregnant, they're excited.
They talk about my baby.
You know, they don't talk about, oh, it's fetal tissue in there, you know, it's or it's a medical procedure.
You know, they use different language.
So I will acknowledge that for sure.
But these are hard issues.
I would rather give.
Women more choices for the many reasons they get pregnant when they don't want to be.
And I'd rather shift the conversation to well, what's the problem we need to solve?
The problem is unwanted pregnancies, not abortions.
And what can we do to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies?
Well, economic empowerment of women, accessibility to birth control, more freedom, more choices, more autonomy.
That's what drives women to have fewer.
Babies, that is to have fewer unwanted pregnancies.
And there, I think we can find a solution between conservatives and liberals or pro choice and pro life people is that let's work toward the common problem of getting, of lowering the number of unwanted pregnancies.
Vaccine Risks and Big Pharma 00:15:10
Yeah.
It is such a tricky issue.
And I generally try to steer clear of abortion because I just have, I've got my own views on it, but I have so many people I love who are on differing sides of it that I just, it's something I've never sort of spoken about publicly in terms of my own view.
I just, It's too fraught and it's too personal.
I will say this having had three babies now, I don't think there's many women out there who, when you see that beating heartbeat at the eight week mark, would say that's not a life.
I mean, it's not a viable baby, but you see that heartbeat, boy, oh boy, it can change your worldview pretty damn fast.
Totally.
Okay, so let's talk.
On the subject of health, let's talk a bit about the pandemic because this is one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you.
I have seen people are going nuts.
People are going nuts in the wake of this pandemic.
Now we're, I don't know how many months in, but initially I thought it was the lockdowns.
It's not the lockdowns anymore because that's now we're a year plus past the lockdowns.
The mandatory masking, the mandatory vaccine, the thumb of big government on you.
wherever you turn, you know, in society turning man against man, woman against woman, right?
Like the pressure's on to do this thing or to not do this other thing.
And I am seeing in my own life, people are going nuts.
They're changing in ways that are disturbing to me as somebody who still has a foothold in reality and isn't particularly ideological.
And I'm sort of like, come back, come back like Rose on the little door in the Titanic waters to Jack, come back or to the boat that left when she was blowing the whistle.
So why?
As somebody who studies conspiracies and understands the effect that things like pandemic have on people, what's happening?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cue that Titanic music at this moment.
Right.
Well, I think there are several different issues going on here.
Yeah, the pandemic has kind of jolted people into different levels of irrationality.
I mean, this is a collective action problem.
What can we all do together to solve this problem?
We do this all the time.
We want an interstate highway.
So we all Gladly pay that, not gladly, but we all pay our taxes.
You know, we agree to drive on the right side of the road so that I'm free to not worry about you coming down the same lane as me in the opposite direction.
You know, we give up all kinds of freedom so that we can be even freer of risks.
And that's normal.
You know, seatbelts, everybody wears seatbelts now.
And you don't hear any libertarians, you know, well, maybe there's a few, but crying out, you know, hey, I should be free to not wear a seatbelt or motorcyclists.
I should be free not to have to wear a helmet.
Yeah, well, I should be free.
Of having to pay for your health care when you crack your head open on your motorcycle.
I mean, these are common things that used to be debated, but we're acceptable.
We accept that now.
Or the MMR vaccine.
Parents routinely get their kids vaccinated with MMR vaccines, who will then five minutes later say, Yeah, but I don't trust the COVID 19 vaccines.
Well, they're pretty good.
I mean, this is probably the best vaccine ever invented.
And so it's a matter of, in part, getting.
Used to this kind of change.
Now, to what extent should the government enforce it?
I mean, what I've been seeing is government really doesn't have to do anything.
Independent companies and like the university where I teach, Chapman, they just sent out an email saying, you got to be double-vaxxed.
And if you're not, you have to show your exemption.
And either way, you have to wear a mask, everybody.
So, you know, and the government's not telling them they have to do that.
They're just doing that for probably their lawyers, probably said, hey, you got to do this just to protect ourselves.
And okay, all right, that's the rules and that's the rules.
And so I'm not crazy about.
Government mandated vaccinations or masks.
I think the market can kind of solve the problem as we go along.
A second thing, I think, on the freedom issue, people get confused about this.
Again, it's what you get used to.
And then there's also an element of injecting yourself with an element, a piece of the thing that you don't want to get, because that's what inoculation used to mean.
But these vaccines are not part of it.
You're not getting a little piece of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that.
That jolts your body into being inoculated against the actual disease.
It's not like that at all.
It's an RNA vaccine, and that's different.
And people aren't quite used to that as well.
The break at the moment appears to be more Republicans are vaccine hesitant than Democrats, and more of the kind of Republican dominated states have lower rates of vaccination and higher rates of the breakthrough Delta variant.
So, there it is.
It is.
It's basically Republicans and minorities.
I mean, those are the vaccine results.
So I'm encouraged to see prominent public conservatives, people like Ben Shapiro, for example, who a lot of younger people look up to, insisting vaccines are definitely the way to go.
And just more people like that that would.
Speak out and say, just get the vaccine, just do it.
And there's been pretty much every day, there's some news story on.
I pretty much watch ABC World News, and they have one pretty much every night of some conservative lying in bed, hacking out his interview with COVID 19, saying, I didn't get vaccinated because I'm a strong conservative or I'm a libertarian.
And then they're dead the next day and they orphan their children.
It's terrible.
I mean, just get vaccinated.
It's been unfortunate that it's gotten some sort of partisan affiliation.
You're tough or you're anti government or you're You're a Republican if you're not going to, you know, like if you're not going to get the vaccine.
That's all bullshit.
This is a health decision.
This doesn't have to do with politics.
However, there's a lot of reasons we got here.
As you know, it's like, you know, Biden, Harris, Andrew Cuomo, all these people expressed some vaccine hesitancy while Trump was in the office.
And you can't just undo that with a magic wand.
And I think, I think internet censorship has had a lot to do with it.
The more you tell people they can't have access to people having skeptical discussions about it, the more they're like, I'm even more skeptical than ever, right?
Like, what are you hiding?
You must be hiding some information I need to know.
Therefore, I definitely am not going to get it.
And then I just think that there's the natural okay, it's new.
Obviously, there's been no long term studies that we can't, no one can dispute that.
So I'm going to let somebody else be the guinea pig.
So I do think that there are good reasons why somebody would be hesitant and say, I don't know.
But I also think it's an extraordinary time, it's an extraordinary virus.
And you sort of have to do the risk benefit calculation.
You know, it's like, COVID too can cause a lot of havoc in your life.
It can take your life.
Even if you're 50, like I am, the odds are very, very low, but it can.
And you don't know what the long term effects of COVID are going to be.
You don't know what the long term of the vaccine is.
You don't know what the long term of COVID is going to be.
Could be, you know, 40 years, we find out it causes some sort of dementia, right?
The actual COVID.
I don't know.
I'm just making things up right now.
But my point is there are risks both ways.
And the vaccine at least minimizes your risk of death or hospitalization.
That's right.
It's assessing the different kinds of risks.
And we should be better at this as part of our critical thinking program, we teach people how to think about probabilities and risk taking.
Yes, the COVID 19 vaccine is far less riskier than getting COVID itself.
And so you just got to make a choice one way or the other.
So, and yeah, of course, we don't know what the long term consequences are.
And there's enough uncertainty and issues in the scientific process itself historically.
That people can be what I call constructively conspiracist.
My next big book is on why people believe conspiracy theories.
One reason, one of my three big reasons, is what I call constructive conspiracism.
There's enough real conspiracies in the past, such as Watergate or Iran Contra, or the assassination of Lincoln or the assassination of Franz Ferdinand that triggered the First World War.
These are all conspiracies.
Volkswagen conspiring to cheat the emission standards, the Sackler family and Big Pharma scamming and conning people to make a profit.
There's enough.
Examples of those that reasonable, rational people can look at that and go, Yeah, why should I trust Big Pharma?
Look at this, this, and this, or why should I trust this government agency or that big corporation?
And that's a rational response.
So, in each case, you have to go, Okay, that's right.
That could be mistaken.
There could be a kind of conspiracy, but is it?
Because not all conspiracy theories are real.
Most of them, a majority of them, probably not, but enough of them are that it pays to be precautionary.
Employ the precautionary principle.
I'm going to wait and see.
And that's not an irrational response.
Well, that's what's so annoying about the vaccine mandates.
I mean, I'll tell you that we just got one handed down in our.
In our boys' school.
So I have an 11 year old boy and an eight year old boy.
And thankfully, I don't have to make the decision just yet, but my 11 year old is going to be 12 in September.
So it's coming.
Anyway, since the Pfizer vaccine was approved on a more permanent basis, now it's no longer the emergency authorization.
The school just handed down a vaccine mandate for all boys who are 16 and up.
And if you don't get your 16 or older child the vaccine, you have to leave the school.
I'm like, this is.
Kind of crazy.
Now you know my 16 year old who's at virtually no risk from Covid at all um, and maybe you have a family like mine where you have a long history of heart disease and you're a little worried about that heart inflammation side effect coming and how can it, how's it going to affect my boy and how long does it last my boy?
All that stuff like that to me is infuriating and and makes me feel that thing I was talking about with the thumb of big government.
You're like, get off, get get off my lawn, get out of my business.
This is a decision for my pediatrician, my son and me, my husband, you're right Right.
But if you're the director of the school, let's say it's a private school, and you have lawyers going, hey, you know, if something bad happens, one of our kids dies, we're going to get sued.
So we better, you know, take all the precautions we can.
So you kind of see it from their perspective.
I'm going to sue their asses if, God forbid, anything happens to my kid from taking that vaccine.
And trust me, I will be like a dog with a bone.
Up next, are masks becoming a religion for some people in this country?
We'll go there one minute away.
I have the vaccine.
My audience knows I like the vaccine.
I think the vaccine is a miracle.
I'm really proud of us.
I think we should be proud of our American ingenuity.
We're not good at taking instructions, we're not good at following mandatory rules.
That's not in the American spirit.
That's why there's been pushback on quarantining and the lockdowns and all that.
And now the vaccine and the mask hesitancy.
But we're very good at innovation.
We're very good.
Americans are the ones who find the way through tough problems.
And it's no accident our companies came up with these miracle vaccines and we should be proud of them.
It's not to say that vaccine hesitancy is always irrational, you know, but I would say, like you said, get the vaccine.
You know, unless your doctor tells you you have a medical reason not to get it, you have a greater risk from COVID, especially if you're a little older than you do from the vaccine.
But I also see the craziness on the other side, Michael.
I don't, these like the crazy.
Crazy mask Nazis are driving me insane.
It's very sketchy whether the masks are really an effective tool at stopping COVID, in particular with our kids, but with everybody.
I mean, versus social distancing and being outside and all that, which we understand and is scientifically backed up.
But I am so sick of people looking at people who choose not to wear masks, especially outside, as though they're running around like lepers rubbing their skin against people.
And the craziness is there too.
Oh, absolutely.
Yes.
Well, here I'm in Southern California and Santa Barbara area.
I've noticed that they just changed it last week.
And like I went into Target with my five year old headed straight for the toy section.
And we didn't have masks and no one said anything.
And I thought, oh, okay, maybe they're chilling out.
I mean, my position at the moment, this could change, is that, you know, just get everybody vaccinated and let's just get back to normal and just see what happens for a couple of months.
Just everybody go back to normal.
But, you know, again, the precautionary principle, I was going to do this as of last week.
Tell my students at my class that starts next week.
You know, if you want to wear a mask, fine.
If you don't, don't worry about it.
I'm not going to wear one.
I'm double backs.
I assume you all are.
Well, you know, yesterday the dean said, nope.
If they're not masked, you got to kick them out of the class.
Oh man.
Okay.
And this is a private university.
I know.
I know.
I just like it.
So that's also science denial, right?
Because we actually don't have any good scientific study to support the use of masks right now.
There's a great piece in New York Magazine taking a hard look at the masks just last week.
And it was really like they haven't, they don't have the proof that masks work.
They just, it's just sort of like, okay.
And look, I get it.
There's a sign up in our pediatrician's office saying like, some guy's about to pee on your leg.
Would you rather he have his underwear and his pants on or have nothing on?
I understand there's some prevention if the droplets come in your way, right?
But to mandate somebody put a piece like a fabric across half of their face everywhere they go is such an imposition on one's freedom that I think you'd have to have extraordinary proof it's going to prevent the virus.
And there isn't.
And in fact, people have said the opposite from Fauci to this top White House guy who just left who was running the pandemic response, admitting that these cloth masks do nothing.
So I just think that back to my original point, people are going a little crazy and they read the quote science to affirm their pre existing worldviews or to sort of reach the outcome they want anyway, right?
Like, I don't want a mask, so I refuse to see anything, any of the mask information as validating masks.
And same with the vaccine, one way or the other.
And I just think like people are in a weakened position right now.
They're in a weakened position.
There's something about a pandemic and feeling insecure financially, physically.
Just in all the weird ways we have been, that's making people not their strongest selves emotionally, mentally.
You tell me.
Yeah, that's right.
And a second factor in conspiracism that I write about is proxy conspiracism.
That is, the particular conspiracy that you're talking about, let's say it's something crazy like QAnon, whether people really believe it or not is kind of beside the point.
Conspiracy Theories and Distrust 00:02:31
It's a proxy for something else.
I don't trust big government agencies.
I don't trust big corporations.
I don't trust those scientists or those.
Big pharma, you know, they're always cheating the system and that kind of thing.
And so, even if I say, show you, there's no pedophile ring out of the Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria in Washington, D.C., and there's no basement there.
And, you know, the one guy, Edgar Welch, who went there with his gun, you know, was quite surprised to find that there's no pedophile ring there.
But most people didn't do that.
They just kind of, yeah, I mean, polls showed something like a third of Republicans and even maybe a fifth of Democrats think there might be something to the QAnon conspiracy theory, you know.
And I find it hard to believe that anybody could believe this.
So I think it's a proxy for something else.
Like, yeah, even if I show you that there's no pedophile ring there, you're not going to turn around and vote for Hillary.
You were never going to vote for Hillary, right?
This was always a proxy for I don't trust Democrats or I don't trust liberals or those far left progressives.
And so it's kind of a stand in.
The analogy I make in my forthcoming book is the OJ trial.
In a way, Johnny Cochran and the rest floated a conspiracy theory that.
That the LAPD planted the bloody glove and the blood splatter and so forth because that's what LAPD do.
They're racist.
And the jury, for whatever reason, bought that.
That's a kind of conspiracy theory.
But I was watching this ESPN series on OJ, which wasn't really about OJ.
It was about the African American community in Southern California, particularly Los Angeles, from the 1950s on when they migrated from the South to LA after the Second World War.
And then how the LAPD interacted with them.
And it's horrible.
It's just Terrible.
I mean, everything that an African American today might say, you know, that police are racist and so on, well, they were.
And they used to plant evidence and things like that.
Now, by the 90s, that was no longer.
Case, but it was a reasonable kind of a proxy conspiracy.
Yeah, yeah.
Whether OJ, he probably did it, but you know, but cops really do plant bloody gloves.
They really do plant evidence to get who they think the perpetrator is.
And it was a chance not to just quit OJ, but to indict the system.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
So, you know, I think a lot of specific conspiracy theories, whether vaccines or masks or anything, even if I go, look, well, here's the evidence showing you why vaccines work or whatever, it's like, That isn't actually the point.
The point is something else.
Empiricism vs Personal Truth 00:12:28
Again, a lot of people don't trust science as a reliable institution to produce reliable knowledge.
Well, why is that?
Well, then they'll rattle off Tuskegee and nuclear weapons, or they'll have enough replication crisis or fraud in science where people make up data just to advance their careers or whatever.
I can counter all those, but those are not completely crazy reasons to be a little skeptical of.
Science is an institution.
Well, and now, I mean, so science is an institution.
I mean, right now, sadly, it's represented by the face of Dr. Fauci, who has admitted to lying to us so many times.
He's reversed himself on so many things.
It's like, all right, Dr. Fauci, I'm sorry, but no, if you're the face of science, and which he says of himself, if you attack him, he says you're attacking science, then no, I'm out.
Then I guess I'm not scientific.
That's right.
I don't believe you.
We should not sacrifice your credibility, and I accept that conclusion.
Right, yeah.
So, you know, part of the point of science is you don't, it's not an argument from authority.
You know, no one's omniscient, not even Falchie.
And so, no, don't trust him, but trust the institution.
Don't believe any one particular climate scientist.
It's the entire climate science community that's very competitive.
They don't know each other, they try to debunk each other, they work in different fields.
And so, my confidence is reasonably high on this particular issue that global warming is real and primarily human caused, which is separate from is it going to be an existential threat?
No, I don't think so.
So, we can do something about it.
But my confidence is not a faith in science or any one particular scientist.
It's that it works pretty well when there's independent lines of inquiry and they all point to the same.
Okay, but what about what?
Let me challenge you on that.
What about what we're hearing now from the scientific community?
Back to the trans issue about the new standard of care is affirm, affirm, affirm, affirm.
It doesn't matter if it's a 14 year old kid, a 10 year old kid going in there saying, I think I'm trans.
Even though if left alone, between 70 and 85% of the kids will grow out of it.
Nope.
The new standard is to affirm you are trans and start talking about treatment options.
That's quote science.
That's coming down from the scientific community and it's bullshit.
It is.
It is bullshit.
I've looked at this pretty carefully after I had Abigail Schreier on my podcast and then I got a lot of pushback from my own people.
She's great.
Yeah.
Well, then they go, well, but the science says this and that, mainly what you just said about the affirmation.
And then, so if you go to the actual literature, if you read the abstracts only, it looks like, She misrepresented the science a little bit.
But if you actually read the papers, no, actually, she got it right that there is no evidence that affirming whatever it is the person says that they identify as is not enough.
I mean, there has to be many, many more steps in between.
And really, the science is so new.
I mean, I think the analogy I make is it's like this is climate science in the 1970s or 80s.
We don't know.
I mean, we need another decade or two of research on this.
And, you know, to, I mean, we have no idea back to the transports, you know, to what extent that you take.
Testosterone blockers.
If you're a male to female trans person, say in your teens or early 20s, you go, okay, I'm going to block my testosterone and so forth.
We have no idea.
To what extent that's going to work.
I don't think it's going to work nearly enough to make you the equivalent of a female athlete.
But, you know, some people say, well, yes, it does.
Here's this paper.
So you read the abstract, it goes, yeah, it looks like it, that supports your position.
But then you actually read the paper, you go, well, no, actually, you know, the end was like 11 people.
It's just nothing.
And it was never replicated, right?
So, you know, you probably don't know.
Well, look what's happening now in the medical community, right?
Barry Weiss has been doing great stuff on her Substack with this, with, you know, you can no longer replicate.
To mothers, it's birthing people, and you'll get chastised in the medical schools these days if you actually assume biological sex by looking at somebody.
I would argue that is all anti scientific.
You can say my gender identity is different, but like all that stuff undermines faith in science at a capital S by the regular Joe Schmo out there.
You know, he's like, I'm not trusting any medical community that tells me a man's a woman, a woman's a man, you know, all that stuff.
I think it has real world consequences.
And I feel like maybe as a result, I think I am more.
Sympathetic toward the people who are vaccine skeptical than I hear in your voice, but you tell me.
You understand how all that collectively would make somebody say, I don't trust quote science.
Yeah, that's what I mean by a proxy conspiracy.
The specific one is a proxy for something larger.
And then they'll throw in examples like what you just gave people who give birth.
If only we had a name for that, just a single word, what could it be?
Yeah, that's, you know, that's just.
Oh, wait, that's offensive.
Well, so there again, people are confused.
And this is mostly coming from the far.
Left or the progressive left, or whatever you want to call them.
And so centrists are people slightly on the right, and they look at that and go, Well, this is what liberals believe.
No, actually, most liberals don't believe that.
You know, centrists are just to the left of center.
So again, we need a much more granular spectrum of political positions because then it becomes harder to lump people into those.
So although I'm kind of socially liberal, as we started off with, I completely agree with you on all those particular issues.
And it's not just that I'm an old white guy.
So of course, I think that, no.
You know, where's your evidence that, you know, that if a fetus born with a penis and the doctor's standing there looking at it and has to tick the box, male or female, and that it's pretty much random, he could just flip a coin because who knows what this child is going to grow up to identify as?
This is absurd.
I mean, we're talking about a new box for, they're calling them babies.
Babies.
Babies.
Oh my God.
I haven't heard that one.
Okay.
Help me.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
Hopefully, this too shall pass.
I've been telling my wife this for five years.
I've been telling my wife this for six years since she moved here from Germany.
And she's like, What is with Americans and sex and gender, all this craziness?
I just keep telling, Don't worry.
This is just one of these crazy pendulum things.
It's going to swing back any week now.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the next big war or actual problem we have will allow us to focus on, you know, something, the outside enemy, you know, the Herb Brooks.
Remember the story of the miracle on ice, right?
Herb Brooks brought all these ice hockey players from all these different colleges against each other to play together.
And they were total rivals, and he gave them a common enemy, which bonded them.
And frankly, that's kind of how America worked for a long time.
We had the Russians.
We had, well, first we had World War II, right?
Then we had the Russians in the Cold War.
Malcolm Gladwell was joking he'd like to go back to those years, right?
Because it's like the common enemy, it's very clear who the enemy is, but nobody's actually getting killed.
And then we've had terrorism.
We've had terrorists for the past 20 years.
And now it's like, not that we've solved that problem, but thank God it's been kind of quiet and we're turning on each other.
We're making up stupid problems.
and really working ourselves up into a lather.
I mean, the wokeism is another cult.
I agree with you that Trumpism, like the hardcore Trumpism, 100% can be a cult and we can go through.
The list of what the criteria are, but it's chilling.
But wokeism is another form.
Absolutely.
I think the analogy, it's like a religion, is reasonable to make because religion's not just having a supernatural being in the worldview.
It's a lot more than that.
And so, this idea of, well, if you go back to like Nazism or communism or Marxism, that's kind of a faux religion.
You have something like a figurehead at the top, a Hitler or a Stalin or a Marx.
And then you have original sin, you know, whatever you believe on the other side, you have to atone for that.
And that's what wokeism is.
I mean, we are all born anti racism.
We're all born racist.
That's your sin.
But I'm not a racist.
Well, you don't even know you're a racist.
You're an unconscious racist.
And this is all based, premised on this scientific theory that you can test people, this kind of subconscious test where you associate faces with different kinds of words.
And this did not survive the replication crisis.
Measuring your response rate to things you're familiar with or not familiar with.
So I'm a white guy, so I'm more familiar with white faces than black faces say.
So I'm going to respond slower or faster to different faces.
It's not measuring some unconscious racial bias that I have.
But I still see this cited over and over and over by liberal scientists.
And it's like, you know, we've debunked that.
In Skeptic Magazine, we've debunked this like a dozen times.
And, you know, citing peer reviewed, Journals saying, no, this is not withheld replication.
It did not survive the replication crisis.
It's out.
It's not a viable argument.
But there doesn't seem to matter what the evidence is.
It's like you're born racist.
So now you have to atone for that.
And then people start talking about reparations or whatever.
So here, again, another example of, well, this is what the science says.
No, actually, it doesn't.
So the rest of it doesn't follow.
But if you're in a culture or religion, none of that matters.
This is what we believe.
And full stop.
And in a way, I mean, many religious doctrines are like that.
You know, whether you accept Jesus was resurrected and died for your sins or not is not a scientific question.
Either believe it or you don't.
If you don't, maybe you're Jewish or Muslim, and you do, you're a Christian or Catholic or whatever.
And so I think for wokeism, it's a little bit like that.
It's more like a religious truth rather than something grounded in empiricism.
And in that case, it should be grounded in empiricism.
Whereas religious claims like the resurrection, I think, can't be tested.
Well, this is how they get away with phrases like my truth or she told her truth.
My truth.
It's like, well, I don't know what the hell that is.
Yes.
Personal experience is not a reliable form of knowledge.
And we know this from now half a century of cognitive psych research that we all have our confirmation bias and hindsight bias and my side bias.
And there's like a hundred of these biases.
What you experience is not reliable.
It's personal.
That's fine.
But it's not a truth.
If you think about what is truth, well, most of us want it.
To be grounded in some kind of rationality and empiricism, that it's not just me.
So, here's an analogy I make.
If I say, Well, I like dark chocolate, and you go, Well, I think milk chocolate's better.
Well, there's no experiment we're going to run to decide who's right.
Or I think Stairway to Heaven is the greatest rock song of all time, and you think it's, I don't know, Freebird, or I don't know what.
You probably have different choices than me.
But that's just a personal truth or preference.
It's like, I like this form of art, and you like that form of art.
But, and I think that's how people are trying to think about other issues that are not just personal preferences, you know, rights and, you know, the stuff on scientific grounding of different kinds of claims.
Those aren't just personal.
The whole point of science is that, you know, here's my evidence and my arguments.
Now you can evaluate.
Them and you tell me what you think.
And I'm not, it's not just me who thinks this.
I'm trying to make a claim that you should believe it too.
And maybe you do, maybe you don't.
And then we have a debate about it.
And, you know, the other analogy I make is like if I say, well, meditation works for me.
And then you say, well, I tried it, didn't work for me.
Okay.
That's still at that kind of personal truth level.
But what my friends in the business of meditation want to argue is that, no, no, I'm not claiming it works just for me.
I mean, it's really good for most people meditating.
40 minutes a day, six days a week will lower your stress levels or whatever.
They want to say it really works.
And that's the difficult transition from personal truth to empirical truths.
And I do, I agree that I think a lot of the woke and anti racism stuff is in this personal truth category.
So I read all those books, you know, the Ibram X. Kendi's books and Isabel Wilkinson's book and so on.
And, you know, it's hard for me as a white guy to go, you know, I just don't accept.
Unarmed Black Men Statistics 00:05:29
Your arguments because most of them are just anecdotes.
You know, I was on the subway and this person said this to me, and I think, God, that's just so bad that this person would say something like that, really racist.
But, you know, but those are just anecdotes.
What we really want to know as a society is, well, is that getting worse or better?
Are there more people doing that?
Fewer people doing that?
And, you know, there, then we can transition from, well, that's my personal experience, America's racist, versus what I want to.
Argue is like, well, but is it racist compared to, say, the 1950s or 1850s?
And, you know, we can actually track through data that, you know, things are getting better.
People are a lot less racist than they used to be, you know.
And it's all say something like, remember when interracial marriage was illegal in a thing?
Most people today go, no, what?
Like, yeah, 1967, the Supreme Court finally voted that, you know, interracial marriage is not illegal.
It's like, what?
Yeah, it's like, wow, we've come a long way.
So what troubles me about the, The anti racism movement is they're portraying it in a kind of a black and white way, if you will, that, you know, if there's any incidents of racism anywhere, then America's as bad as it's ever been.
It's like, no, no.
It's also very frustrating because the other piece of it is, as you then cite data, like let's take the, I heard you on our mutual friend Coleman Hughes' show.
If you, Coleman's been great about putting actual numbers to the police shooting issue, and they're not what the woke people tell us they are, right?
I mean, it's, I think in last year it was, 18 unarmed black men were killed by police.
The year before that, it was, I think, 14.
And then, if you poll most people, especially liberals, especially progressives, I should say, sort of far left progressives, some think it's in the thousands.
Some would say 10,000 unarmed black men are killed by police a year.
I mean, that's completely wrong.
And if you then cite data, real data, I mean, those are knowable numbers for the most part.
You get called a racist for that.
Don't throw your facts and figures in my face.
This is my lived experience.
All cops are racist.
And they shoot unarmed black men.
Well, they do sometimes, but the numbers are way down from where they used to be.
And they're shooting far less unarmed people in general than they ever used to, and far less people than they ever used to.
Okay, we're not even allowed to talk about those things because even just to discuss it under the new religion of wokeism is a form of bigotry.
You just must accept there's no discussion, there's only acceptance by the people objecting.
Yeah.
Some of that research you just cited was actually conducted by my organization at Skeptic, the Skeptic Research Center.
We actually polled.
I think it was 2,100 Americans randomly selected of how many people they think are shot each year by cops.
And then we.
You know what?
You're right.
You're right, Michael.
I actually knew that.
I should have given you credit because I actually just pulled this.
For another interview, and I never got to it.
I was going to interview Heather McDonald, and we never got to cops.
Oh, yes, but I had that you're right, and I had you cited in my outline.
Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, so it's an interesting story.
The next, uh, you know, we released that, I think, on a Thursday, and then you know, the next Monday, I see Tucker Carlson talking about it, and he's got our graphic up on the screen.
I'm like, oh my god, it's incredible.
So, so I contacted his producer and I said, yeah, yeah, you know, we have a lot more data, you know, you should have me on, and we'll talk about this.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, let's do that.
I said, by the way, we have some information showing that Republicans and conservatives also distort perceptions, depending on their particular issue, like on immigration, how many immigrants are coming here, or abortion rates, or what percent of the American U.S. budget is allocated for foreign affairs or support of other countries.
And so, in other words, we all distort.
Liberals are distorting on that particular one.
Well, anyway, they didn't seem all that interested in showing that.
Republicans, conservatives also distort.
We all do.
It's not fair to just say it's just the liberals.
But in that particular issue, it is.
And again, here, I think people are conflating rights and data.
It doesn't matter how many Blacks are killed by cops.
This should never happen, but that it happens a little or a lot, the difference matters.
I mean, what is the number?
And so, but people think, well, if the number is low, I want the number to be high so that I can insist that.
The police system be reformed so that we can all have civil rights or something like that.
Again, they're confusing the concept of rights.
You know, the number should be zero, but it's not zero.
So, how about we just treat it as a problem to be solved?
Let's lower the number.
Well, how do you do that?
Well, you don't do that through defunding the police or putting everybody at Starbucks through every employee at Starbucks through some sensitivity training program because 99% of the people working at Starbucks are probably uber liberal.
They're probably not racist at all.
So, you're just wasting your time.
And, you know, I've had an employee at Chapman University, like everybody else there, I have to go through these computer programs and they're just hilarious.
First of all, they're easy to hack.
It's obvious what they're asking.
It's obvious what the correct answer is, which is contact HR and tell somebody in HR what the problem is.
Up next, cults.
Michael's written a lot on cults.
And how do you know if you're in one?
School District Homeschooling Trends 00:09:45
By the way, I was.
I think I was.
We'll talk about it.
And how do you get one out of one?
Not actual cults, right?
But things that really have a lot of the, Characteristics of cults.
You might be in one right now and you might not realize it.
It might be affecting your mental health in ways you do not know.
And we'll talk about some of the more famous ones in one minute.
I think you're going to find this interesting.
But first, before we get to that, I want to bring you a feature we have here on the MK show called Asked and Answered.
Steve, why don't you explain how it works?
Wow.
Okay.
Got it.
Caught off guard.
All right.
I guess how it works is that we look at all of the emails that listeners send to us at questions at devilmaycaremedia.com.
We get a lot in there.
Keep them coming.
And we also look at our social media accounts at Megan Kelly Show on all of your social media platforms for questions to ask you and have you answer them.
So, this one today.
So, the reason I wanted you to explain that is because I tell the audience that I read all the reviews on Apple podcasts, and I do.
I've read all of them, over 20,000 now.
And one of them said, I would like to hear more from Steve.
And I thought, Steve, you can just text me.
You don't have to get to me on Apple Comics.
I was just saying, my dad.
My dad likes to leave reviews, literally has left reviews in that Apple section.
So it probably was him.
Oh, cute.
Well, if it is your dad, he deserves it.
He deserves a yes, too.
So take it away.
All right.
I'm glad I could satisfy that one Apple reviewer.
Taylor Anderson has a question for you.
She says, I had a question regarding you pulling your kids from the New York school district, but she also wants to know about those who are unable to do so.
She says, I fully support your right and your choice, but what about those that can't afford it?
That hurts, Taylor.
I get it.
Trust me, I get it.
I've got dough at this point in my life, but I spent most of my life without it, where that wouldn't have been a choice.
And my kids were in private school, so we moved them to a different private school.
But when you're in public school, you pay taxes, and so they have to take your kid.
And that's kind of the deal, right?
You pay your taxes and that pays for the education and you want to take advantage of it.
And a lot of people have jobs, they have houses they can't sell.
It's not that easy to just pull up stakes and leave the school district.
So trust me, I do get that.
If that were my situation, I think I would do one of a couple things.
I would consider other public school districts if there were any nearby where we could reasonably move and I could get my kids in, where I didn't have to quit my job and find a new one.
If that were not an option, I would take a hard, hard look at how much it would cost to homeschool.
Right like, is there any way I could do it with my husband with a community, because it's not now not all up to mom and dad?
There are great, great homeschooling communities that can make this a lot easier on a parent, though not as easy as sending them off to the school building, and I get that too.
But the number of people homeschooling their children now has skyrocketed.
It was like went from three percent to 20 of uh families.
I think I just saw uh the the latest stat.
So anyway, it's a, it's a reasonable option to at least consider.
Okay, it's not like so crazy you shouldn't even consider it.
But the last suggestion I'd have, and to be honest, probably the most practical one, is I would be all over that school district's lesson plans like white on rice.
I would be so much more involved in what they're learning than I normally am, frankly, as a working mom.
And frankly, even if I weren't a working mom, I don't think I'd be all over administrative issues and all the agendas that are, I don't know.
But even now, as somebody who likes the school district that we went to, I'm going to be way more attentive to agendas.
And certainly if I were stuck in the public school and I couldn't leave it, I'd be really attentive to agendas and man, would I be a squeaky wheel.
They'd be hearing from me by email.
I'd be at all the board meetings.
I would be organizing parents.
I'd be getting strength in numbers.
So it wasn't just me that's the only pain in the ass parent.
So you don't want them taking that out on your kid, which they sometimes do.
But you got to fight if you can't move, right?
It's like back to the art of war, right?
If you're outmatched, don't fight.
If you must, fight.
And if you can get colleagues to fight with you, you know, brethren, brothers, sisters, so much the better.
But if you're stuck there, you got to fight and you can't just surrender to it.
And even if you can't fight at the school board level and stop the agenda, which you should not give up on, you can fight in a more powerful way, which is you've got your kid's ear.
You live with your kid.
You still have a greater influence over your kid than the teacher does.
Maybe not than the peers, but than the teacher.
And start early.
You know, explain to them what indoctrination is.
And by the way, I don't think you do that by you yourself indoctrinating, right?
Teach the value of critical thinking.
Teach and live the value of allowing opposite viewpoints and then debating them respectfully.
Make sure your children understand that you appreciate different worldviews and letting the best one win, but fighting it out, not demonizing one's enemy, right?
Like all these things will set them up to reject dogma, which is what the school districts, the teachers want to shove down their throats, and certainly not of K through 12 in a college.
So I think that's sort of a baseline you can instill in your own kid that will protect them against the school district's approach that doesn't align with that.
And if you can immerse yourself in a community where your friends are doing the same with their kids, so your kid's not alone.
So much the better, right?
I know some people say, just go move and live by people who share your values.
Well, it's not that easy.
You know, I mean, look at me.
I'm in media.
Media is a New York thing, or maybe LA, maybe DC.
Those are not towns that share my values.
So you got to counter program.
You got to be clever about it.
It's not always so easy to pick up stakes.
Anyway, I appreciate that question, Taylor, and I'm rooting for you.
And, you know, you could also play the Megan Kelly podcast on your way to work, school, while you're dropping them off.
We'll get to them together.
Steve, would you like to comment?
You know, it's funny.
It actually, I do have a thought here because I, my son just started kindergarten and I'm in a school district in Texas that is defying the governor's mask mandate and is requiring masks for every child, including kindergartners who are just starting for the first time to learn, you know, how to socialize in a seven hour day after they've been in preschool for three hours and not really doing much of it.
So it's really frustrating.
You know, it's totally.
I've weighed leaving Facebook comments or saying something at the school meetings, and I haven't yet, but it's definitely frustrating.
And it's a different thing.
It's sort of physical versus mental and socialization, but it's just, it really is going to come to a head everywhere.
And it's certainly something that I think everyone's wrestling with.
That's infuriating.
And can I tell you, a good friend of mine, she teaches preschool, and she was just told that when she goes back, she has.
Class of four year olds and a class of two year olds, the two year olds are going to have to wear mandatory masks.
Two year olds.
And she, last I spoke to her, was going to go back to her school and say, I'm not teaching that class.
That is not consistent with my values.
I will not be somebody who enforces that on a bunch of babies.
Nor can you run even a preschool like that.
And so, like, you need brave teachers like her, and you need parents like you, like Taylor.
like me to either make the point by being vocal, make the point by walking, taking our money with us and our great kids, right?
Like more and more people are starting to do it.
I feel like long term we're going to win this.
I really do.
But the masking of children at age five or two is outrageous.
Let's keep in mind, they don't mask.
They haven't been masking kids in most of Europe throughout the pandemic, certainly not anybody under 12, right?
So it's like, and they're fine.
And they're way more uptight on a lot of these pandemic things than we are.
Like, this is like in England where you can't go outside of your little circle.
Well, they don't mask their kids.
We're the only ones who refuse to acknowledge that that A, probably isn't doing anything.
And B, if it's doing anything, the harm way outweighs any potential good.
Right, exactly.
And it's the kind of thing where it's like, look, if you want to send your kid who's into kindergarten in a mask, you're certainly able to do that.
But not everyone has to follow that.
That was the deal with banning mask mandates, not banning masks in schools.
That's not currently the way things are here in my district.
I have to say, I'm going to say one other thing on this.
I hate the mask mandates and I hate the masks.
I understood when we're at the height of the pandemic, whatever.
Okay.
It's done.
I am so over the damn mask and I am really over the mask for my kids.
But I don't have any choice.
The schools that we like, right, they're not ideological, but they're very COVID terrified.
They're mandating the masks.
As I mentioned, they're mandating the vaccines.
And it's upsetting, right?
It's like, but what I hate so much about the mask.
Is these COVID fear porn mongers have managed to get their hand over my face, over the face of my child.
You know, they're making me put something on my child's face that I don't want there.
It's so intrusive.
It really genuinely angers me.
It makes me feel fire in the belly.
And when you're talking about a five year old, I mean, I'm sure you feel it too.
Male Students and Legal Issues 00:02:22
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's the thing.
I get, you know, people make the argument oh, look, it's just a piece of cloth.
Who cares?
First of all, you're proving why masks don't really work that well.
The ones you're talking about, these pieces of cloth that do nothing.
But second of all, if you feel strongly about it, go for it, wear three masks.
I don't care.
But don't tell me I have to wear a mask.
I'm vax anyway.
So, you know, the whole thing is infuriating and non-scientific.
But that's kind of where we're at right now.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, good discussion.
Maybe they were right about you, Steve.
Steve Krakauer, always a pleasure.
Thanks.
You too.
Back to our guest, Michael Shermer, in one minute.
Well, that's like at Fox News.
Long before the Roger Rail scandal and he went down and all these guys started to go down for sexual harassment, they used to make us take twice a year, we had to take sexual harassment seminars ever since they came out that Bill O'Reilly harassed Andrea Mackress back in 2004.
I think I had just started working there.
So it was like, oh my God, we have to pay attention to sexual harassment because this made the papers and it was very well known.
He gave her a big payout.
Okay.
I'm like, why the hell do I have to go to these things and suffer through this?
Right.
Okay.
I guess I'll go, but because I have to, I have no choice.
But I'm telling you, the guys, half of them were using it for ideas.
It's not helpful to anybody.
Oh, wait.
See, what you're saying is the line is.
Here, not there.
Okay, got it.
That's how it encompasses a whole new group of things I can do.
And these scenarios they present in these training programs are just hilarious.
They're so politically correct.
So it's like, I mean, it's well known now that as a professor, don't sleep with the students, don't even think about it.
And we've been told this since the 90s, like, okay, I got it, I got it.
In the 70s, when I was in college, this happened a lot.
So it's like, okay, the rules have changed.
Now we know, right?
But then you'll see these scenarios like that you witness a Professor, you know, making a comment to a student, but it has to be balanced.
It has to be a female professor hits on a male student.
It's like, oh, yeah, that used to happen all the time.
Sure.
Okay, right, exactly.
Pam, what was the woman?
Pamela Smart, is she the one who had the affair and had the kid killed her husband?
It's rare enough, you know, that a female teacher will have sex with a male student.
It's rare enough it becomes the joke fodder for late night comedians.
It just almost never happens.
Identity Politics and Leaders 00:13:29
But anyway, so that's an example of.
You know, these training, this is a waste of time.
I assume that the lawyers at the universities all say, we got to do this because if we get sued, then we can say, hey, we put that guy through our program.
So we're, our hands are washed, right?
There's probably some legal reason.
But again, for terms of moral progress, it comes from targeting specific problems, you know, not like the police, but that police department right there.
That's the one where, you know, three of the eight officers are, you know, noted white supremacists.
Okay.
That's the problem.
Not like, let's defund all police because that's just a thing, it's not going to work.
Let me ask you this.
I know that you've written a lot about cults and myths and that kind of thing.
And to me, it's like pretty jarring.
I'm way into cults.
I've done a ton of stories on cults, I just find them fascinating.
And when I go through your list of cult characteristics, number one, I realized I was in a cult when I was at Fox News.
Totally.
Really?
Yes, I mean, a lot of things I have to say.
Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of great years there and I love a lot of people there, but it's got a lot of the characteristics, okay?
I'm going to go through your list veneration of a leader, excessive glorification of a leader.
Okay, now I do want the Trump diehards to listen to this.
And you tell me whether this does not apply to the most fervent Trump crowd.
Not all Trump supporters, but the most fervent.
Okay.
Excessive glorification of the leader, inerrancy of the leader, belief the leader cannot be wrong.
Mm hmm.
Omniscience of the leader, acceptance of beliefs and pronouncements on virtually all subjects, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
100%.
This is like, because right now I'm thinking about Roger Ailes at Fox, but it could also apply to Trump, among others.
Dissent is discouraged.
Questioning and doubt are punished.
Absolute truth, belief that the leader of the group has a method of discovering final knowledge on all subjects.
Absolute morality, they have their own system of right and wrong.
In group, out of group mentality, us versus them mentality, 100%.
My God, this is so true.
Ends justify the means, leads members to do unethical things that they would never have done before joining the group.
Hidden agendas, potential recruits are not given full disclosure.
I remember saying to my friends long, like when I sort of was getting higher up in the Fox News organization, I didn't need to know all these secrets.
I didn't need to be brought into the inner fold.
I didn't need to, you know, like there was a lot that he started sharing with me where I was like, oh my God, I now I see the man behind the curtain and I don't, I don't, I didn't need to see that man.
Financial or sexual exploitation, hello, groupthink and no accountability, isolation and aggressive recruitment practices.
I just, I mean, it's kind of jarring, right?
Like Fox had this leader, Roger Ailes, who a lot of this applied.
And then the Republican Party had this leader, Earlier, you referred to Trumpism as far right.
I think it's not.
I think it's populist.
So it's like shooting darts at a board.
You never know where they're going to come down on any issue.
But the diehards, the veneration of the leader, inerrancy, dissent is discouraged in group, out of group.
He can say anything and it's right.
My God, how did it happen?
Why?
Why did that happen?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Here's a question Do the people that follow Trump or Roger Ailes in your example really believe it or are they kind of going along with it?
We have this concept in social psychology called Pluralistic ignorance or the spiral of silence, where everybody thinks everybody else thinks something when in fact they don't, most don't.
And this can be kind of hover along for quite some time unless somebody speaks out.
And so, I mean, just analogously, like with QAnon and Trump says, Yeah, these are fine people.
And who knows?
There might be something to it.
And then other Republicans kind of fall into line, just using that as an extreme example.
Yeah, yeah, I think there's something to QAnon.
Do they really believe that?
Or are they just kind of saying it because Well, I guess other people in the party believe it.
So I'll just say I believe it.
But in the quiet of their own mind, they think, is there really a democratic pedophile secret satanic cult at a pizzeria in Washington?
That can't be true.
Right.
So, to what extent, I guess, did people in your example at Fox really go along with this?
Or are they thinking, well, I kind of got to go along with it.
I'll just say I do.
But in my heart, I don't believe it.
You know, but it's funny how the group morphs as an amoeba to support certain narratives, you know, like, You know, there was something about Rod, like Roger's a genius.
Roger's such a genius.
You know, Roger's the one who thought of this.
Roger's the one who thought of the other thing.
And then he'd find out, well, actually, that was thought of by Rupert, or actually, that was given to him by the following consultant.
And I'm not saying that he wasn't a television genius, I believe he was.
But this is a narrative that was sort of pushed at every turn and like reinforced by posters around the building.
And you don't, you sort of get a little brainwashed without realizing that you're getting brainwashed.
Do you know what I mean?
And then it's only once you're out of the cult that you can look back and see more clearly, like, hmm.
Maybe that wasn't true, and maybe you know that this group that was demonized at every turn within that group isn't all bad, and maybe we could be more open minded, you know what I mean?
Like it takes.
Extraction, but I am somebody who's never been ideological.
I'm really not, that's why I'm open minded to most points of view and can have conversations with people across the aisle.
I think I'm the exception.
I feel like a lot of people easily get sucked into these groups and never get out.
I remember watching you on Fox News thinking she's different from the other hosts.
And now I see what that difference was.
There's that scene in that movie about everything that happened with you and the other women and Roger and so on, where they all came in wearing t shirts.
I think it was I Believe Roger or I Trust Roger with the t shirts.
Team Roger, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that was very cult like, right?
Yeah.
So, again, the question let's take North Korea, you know, after Kim Jong un's father died, Kim Jong il, you know, there were like weeks of these videos of people just weeping, just hysterically, particularly the women just on the ground, just rolling around and sobbing.
Now, they can't possibly really feel that kind of grief.
I think it's kind of a theater in a oppressive state like that, where everybody thinks everybody else.
Believes this, so I better go along with it.
When in fact, probably most of them didn't believe that.
And there's new evidence now I've been reading on the Holocaust, Hitler, the Nazis, and so on.
They came to power with a minority party, and then through dictatorial moves, just took over power, suppressed the media, and so on.
But to what extent did the average German go along with the Nazi program?
Well, of course, most of them liked the economic policies that pulled Germany out of the Depression.
You know, the kind of exterminationist policies of Hitler, it looks now like even though most Germans were anti Semites, like most Europeans and Americans at that time, most of them did not go along with the idea of the kind of extermination of the Jews.
That was definitely pretty much a Hitler only and a few of his crazy acolytes, like Himmler.
Most Germans, I think, did not go along with that, but you couldn't speak out for two reasons.
One, you know, you could be locked up and sent to a concentration camp.
And two, most of them probably thought most everybody else.
Went along with it, so I'll just keep my mouth shut and keep my head down.
And I think a lot of systems that are cult like can be held aloft for quite some time in this case, 12 years for the Nazis, uh, without a majority of people believing it.
So, okay, so that that brings me back to wokeism, which is like a cult, but there is no how does it fit because there's no quote leader to venerate or excessively glorify, exactly, there's no leader to never be in error.
To have omniscience.
I don't like so.
Can it still be a cult if it doesn't hit all of the criteria?
Oh, yeah, for sure.
I mean, my list of cult criteria, and depending on who you read, the list varies a little bit.
It's a little bit like the DSM 5R in psychiatry.
What constitutes a schizophrenic or paranoid delusion or whatever?
Well, there's like 20 things in the psychiatrist.
If he ticks 15 of the 20 boxes, then that Kicks you over into that category.
It's a scale, it's a continuum.
And at some point, back to where we were starting this conversation, you have to draw the line somewhere and say, well, this is what this category represents, these 15 out of the 20, something like that.
So I would say that's the case with cults.
You don't necessarily have to have a leader, although I would say some of the more prominent authors of these books, like in the anti racism I mentioned, Ibrahim X. Kendi and a few of the others, I wouldn't say they're cult leaders, but they certainly stand out as if you oppose this guy.
You know, you are going to be pounced on social media.
And, you know, so there, then you get that spiral of silence.
Well, I better keep my mouth shut because I appear to be in the minority.
So, if enough of us speak out and say, you know what, I'm liberal, but I don't go along with this far left, progressive left, liberal illiberalism.
And then, if enough of us say that, then it'll become apparent, I think, that most people don't go along with those extreme positions, but they feel like I have to or I better keep my mouth shut.
I mean, in many cases, people are losing their jobs.
And so, I'm sympathetic.
I'm pretty well protected, mostly self employed.
I'm not worried about being canceled, but most people are not in that position.
So, I'm sympathetic.
I wish people would speak out, but I understand why you don't want to if you're in a big department or a corporation or university and you know you're going to get pounced on.
You may lose your job.
Well, I wonder if the leader could be subbed in and subbed out based on groups.
The leader is, for wokeism, the victim.
Only if the victim has a certain skin color or lady parts or LGBTQ identity, right?
It certainly wouldn't be a guy like you.
The leader who can never be wrong is definitely not the white man.
The cisgender heteronormative white man, right?
But like, there is definitely, I had talked about this when um people were attacking me because I didn't, I threw some skepticism on the story being told by Naomi Osaka about whether she had real mental health problems or whether she just doesn't like dealing with the press, right?
And the reason it was so wrong of me to doubt her, I believe, is because she's a woman, a young woman, a young woman of color who is playing the mental health card, and all of these things are.
Revered, right?
Revered by wokeism and treated as sort of untouchable, right?
Like you're not allowed to criticize people like that.
And so I wonder whether the sort of identity is like a stand in for the dear leader.
I think so, although I've had some conflicting thoughts about this recently with the recall election coming up next month of Gavin Newsom here in my state of California.
You know, identity politics.
Well, Larry Elder is a black man, he's an African American.
And prominent.
No, no, no, identity doesn't count if you're a Republican.
Right.
So identity politics, apparently the politics matters more than the identity, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, sometimes it doesn't seem like race is everything, but then you go, okay, Larry Elder's black.
Oh, not him.
The LA Times is calling him a white supremacist.
Yes.
It's just stunning, stunning.
Or Shelby Steele, he's black and he says X.
Oh, well, he's an Uncle Tom or he's a conservative.
Well, what about Jason Hill?
What about Coleman Hughes?
Coleman, he's an interesting example because he.
He's a liberal, but he's not saying the things they want him to say on wokeism.
So he's not a good liberal.
He doesn't get the exception.
Yes.
And even more prominently, John McWhorter, because he's not just a grumpy liberal, which is kind of funny.
But he's a university professor, just highly respected in his field of linguistics and so on.
And when he pronounces on something, you can't just say, oh, well, he's just some Uncle Tom conservative black.
No, no, no, he's not.
Okay, then what?
But the fact that you and I even have to cite people like that because of their skin color is very troubling to me.
I mean, this should be the least interesting thing about John McWhorter is how much melanin he has in his skin.
Or the example I use, because I'm friends with Neil deGrasse Tyson, you know, that he tells me that he gets offered, you know, these awards from black groups and he doesn't accept them.
He doesn't, I don't want to be the black astrophysicist.
I'm just an astrophysicist, full stop.
Who cares what color my skin is?
It's irrelevant.
I feel like he is.
I mean, he really is.
Only these ideological driven groups or identity driven groups are even thinking about him like that, right?
It's like you and I are having this discussion because we're talking about them and how they prize.
Certain things and certain beings, but not others.
But this isn't how we would normally talk about these people.
You know, like that's not how we'd ever discuss John McWhorter if I met you at a cocktail party.
Conspiratorial Thinking Patterns 00:03:47
This is their game.
This is the identity politics people's game.
You know, it's so abhorrent.
Don't leave me now.
We got more coming up in 60 seconds.
Just to follow up on our earlier discussion about how now during the pandemic and so on, people seem particularly.
Odd.
I don't know whether they're pro cult more than ever.
They're pro conspiracy theory more than ever in this reporter's view.
This is a quote that I got from you.
You were writing in Time magazine.
I think it was in reference to the JFK conspiracies, but I love it.
This is you quote Psychological research also shows that when people are placed in environments or conditions in which they feel anxiety and a loss of control, holla.
Okay, that was my footnote.
They are more likely to see illusory patterns in random noise and to look to conspiracies as explanations for ordinary events.
Sociological research has also found that natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes lead people to think that there are conspiratorial forces at work.
So, doesn't that mean that in many ways the pandemic has primed the pump for some of the nuttiness we're seeing?
That's not even COVID related.
Totally, yes.
That research is held up.
I wrote that, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago.
That was Jennifer Whitson's research on illusory patterns.
And if you put people, subjects, into conditions where they feel anxious, or you have them recall a time in their life when they were uncertain or anxious or sad or whatever, they become more conspiratorial.
That has survived the replication crisis that's held up pretty well.
And we're witnessing it right now.
I mean, this is probably the most disjointing time in the last century, at least, maybe comparable to the First World War and the Spanish flu, and then the Second World War.
I'd say it's comparable to that.
Probably even more disrupting than 1968 Watergate, Vietnam War protests.
The assassination of RFK and MLK.
This is even more than that, I would say, that we're going through.
And of course, the daily news Fauci says this, Fauci says that.
What are we to believe?
Talk about uncertainty and anxiety.
Of course, people are going to then not trust institutions or not know what to think.
But this too shall pass.
I mean, just look what happened after the First World War.
We had the roaring 20s.
I'm hoping we get to the roaring 20s here soon, maybe starting next year, maybe.
I hope people can hear that.
I hope people can hear that.
Even if you think, oh, I'm strong, I'm not affected by any of this, right?
I'm whatever, I'm fine.
Maybe you have been, right?
Maybe if you find yourself falling victim to this, like, hell no, vaccine, Bill Gates has got something in there and I'm not getting it, right?
Or we're wearing masks, I'm never going anyplace without a mask again.
And why would you?
And my children will too.
Maybe you could take a minute and just pause and say, perhaps I have been affected.
Perhaps without me totally being conscious of it, I have been anxious.
And knowingly or unknowingly, I've leaned into something that's Conspiratorial, at least.
And it's a chance for me to check myself, to check myself and see whether I'm as okay as I thought I was.
But as I'm saying this to you, Michael, I'm doubting that anybody will hear that because I grew up in the 1970s and I remember the Christy McNichol and Jimmy McNichol after school specials where the only way to get somebody out of a cult or conspiratorial thinking is really to drive by in the flowered van and grab them and spend days with the deprogrammer.
And even then, it's best a 50 50 shot.
So You tell me how we're supposed to get anybody we know and love that's conspiratorial out of that thinking.
Yeah.
Changing Minds on Scientology 00:02:44
And that group, Cult Awareness Network, and You know, they got bought up by Scientology of all places.
So people were calling this number to seriously, yeah.
In the mid 90s, they got sued by Scientology so many times because that Scientology is one of their targets.
Uh, that Scientology ended up just buying them out.
And then so people would call this, you know, 1 800 number, you know, my kid's in a cult.
And there's some Scientologists on the other line.
They didn't even know they called a cult to get their kid out of a cult, yeah, exactly.
But you know, the then there were some lawsuits about how, uh, To what extent that's illegal to actually go and kidnap somebody who's over 18 and hold them against their will in a hotel room somewhere, deprogram them.
There were some lawsuits against that.
So I don't think anyone's really doing that anymore.
I think more it's like kind of de biasing programs.
To what extent can we talk somebody out of something that they believe?
It is doable.
You have to follow certain guidelines, like don't get too emotional, don't accuse.
People are being wrong or stupid or ignorant.
And these are the kinds of things that cause cognitive dissonance to kick in.
The person's not even listening to you anymore.
If you call somebody Hitler or a Nazi for believing X, they're not going to listen to you anymore.
And mostly just speak with openness and kind of compassion, empathy.
Like, I totally understand why you would believe X, whatever it is climate stuff or vaccines or whatever.
You can't just say, well, you're an idiot to believe that.
You have to say, well, something like, well, I thought.
There was something to that at first, and then I read this, or you know, I tried that, or and you take kind of a Colombo style.
Remember the Colombo TV series, just asking questions.
You know, I'm just, I just, I just have this one more question.
You know, what is your source for that, or you know, how confident are you that that's true?
And those kind of strategies do seem to work.
You know, nothing's 100%, or maybe not even 50%, but you know, that people do change their mind, usually quietly in the privacy of their own heads.
They don't announce publicly.
If someone's publicly announced, you know, I'm I believe X, it's going to be harder for them to change their mind, especially if they're a public intellectual.
They write it down or they have a podcast or a blog or they state something in an op ed somewhere.
It's going to be really hard to change their mind.
Most people don't do that.
They just, yeah, most people are just, you know, I believe X and it's just in their own head.
And so there it's much easier to just kind of plant the seed and then they come around and change their minds without saying anything.
Yeah.
I feel like it proves you're open to learning.
Right.
It's like, oh my gosh, I know more today than I knew yesterday.
Exciting times.
Homeless Man Branding Strategies 00:11:46
Totally.
Totally.
I mean, I've listened to, you know, again, pro lifers.
I'm pro choice, but I think they do have some good arguments.
And my students who are mostly liberal and pro choice, I ask them, well, what are the like three best arguments that the pro lifers have?
You know, they mostly have no idea.
Well, they hate women.
No, that's not one of their arguments.
Okay.
You know, so you have to, you know, you have to engage with, you know, steel man the other person's position, restate it such a way that they would go, yes, that is exactly what I believe.
And that's actually pretty hard to do.
I like that.
Instead of straw manning it, you steel man it.
Now, can we talk more generally about skepticism?
Okay.
I don't know whether I am a skeptical person in terms of my nature.
Oh, you are.
You are.
I think I am.
I was going to say, I think I am.
As a journalist, right?
I'm usually like bullshit.
That's bullshit too.
I'm always looking for people's hidden agenda.
But I've got to tell you, not always.
And I wanted to bring up this example with you.
I thought you might find it slightly amusing.
Okay.
Back on NBC.
There was a couple that came on.
You probably remember this story.
It was a male female couple, and the woman, she like went.
Out in her car and supposedly ran in, she ran out of gas.
And a homeless man came to help her get the gas and gave her like his last $20.
And she was so touched.
This homeless guy helped her that she started to go fund me for him.
He was a veteran.
And they got hundreds of thousands of dollars because Americans are lovely and donated all this money.
And then the couple came under fire for allegedly spending the homeless man's money and going to Hawaii.
And they were like, no, no, no, we always took tricks.
To Hawaii, even before the CoFundMe money came.
And we were helping him manage it because he was a drug addict and we didn't want him to bloat on drugs.
So they had a defense.
But I had an exclusive interview with the husband and wife in the midst of it all.
Okay.
And it was exciting.
It's like, oh, they're coming on.
Okay, great.
And my entire team, and I have to say, my audience is like, F them.
They're liars.
They spent the dude's money.
I'm like, I don't know.
I'm kind of.
So, and it turns out, I mean, I'll just give you the, you know, the bottom line.
So the public's probably heard it by now.
They were guilty.
In fact, the husband, Mark D'Amico, pleaded guilty as the ringleader to misspending this money.
And by the way, it turned out the homeless guy was in on it.
So crazy.
All of it was crazy.
But can I?
I'd love to play for you a soundbite of the exchange I had with the couple.
And the last line you'll hear on it is me talking to the audience like a week or two later with the update of what we learned.
Okay, listen to this.
It was a feel good story about a homeless man who offered his last $20 to help a woman get home after she ran out of gas on the highway.
As a thank you, the woman, Kate McClure, and her boyfriend set up a GoFundMe page for Johnny Bobbitt and wound up raising over $400,000 to help Johnny turn his life around.
Recently, however, Bobbitt accused the couple of withholding the money from him and even spending it on themselves, which they denied.
Have you spent $1 of that $400,000 on yourselves?
No.
Nothing.
You're representing that right here and right now.
That you did?
No.
How much is left in the account now?
He has well over $150,000 left.
Yes, he spent a lot of money.
They've had a court proceeding in the days since that appearance.
The couple's attorney advised the court there is no money left.
That was my update.
They spent it all.
And I've looked back on that, Michael, saying, Where was my skepticism when I needed it?
Well, I think you were skeptical.
It's just how far does it go and when should you be skeptical?
You're really touching on a really deep and important issue in cognitive psychology.
To what extent are humans by nature gullible and we fall for scams and cons and cults all the time?
Or are we by nature skeptical and it takes a lot of work to trick somebody into joining the cult or whatever?
I used to believe the former.
Now I believe the latter that we're pretty much skeptical most of the time.
I mean, we've rattled off a few cults as examples, but just think about the tens of thousands of self help groups and organizations there are.
You know, most of them are not cults.
Most people don't join cults.
Most people don't fall for scams like that most of the time.
Political advertising, corporate advertising, it takes a lot to get people to buy a product or join a group.
It takes a lot of effort.
And, you know, the Jim Joneses of the world with Jonestown and all that stuff, those are pretty rare.
I mean, most groups don't end up along those lines.
So it's easy to pick out anecdotes.
That's what I do for a living, citing certain things that, you know, irrationalities that are obvious.
But in fact, most of the time that doesn't happen.
And my experience with journalists is that they're pretty good skeptics because they have a database of experiences of people just bullshitting and lying, just flat out lying.
And I think the If you don't have a lot of experience with that, you kind of default to truth.
It's probably reasonable to just assume this person is being honest with me until I have reason to believe otherwise.
But if, you know, in the case of the journalist, if you have, yeah, but for every 100 of those, you know, 25 of them are bullshitting me in line, then I'm going to ratchet up my skepticism for every one of the future ones I hear.
And so I think you're a pretty good skeptic, you know, but you don't want to be skeptical all the time.
I mean, what does skepticism mean?
It doesn't mean, you know, cynicism or, Or solipsism, or nothing is real, we can't believe anything.
That can't possibly be true.
You wouldn't even get out of bed.
You have to assume certain things about the world to be true to even function.
And I think we do that reasonably well.
We're reasonably rational.
I make the point in my conspiracy book that even people that go, Yeah, I'm totally on board with this crazy QAnon conspiracy theory, they don't call it crazy.
These are rational people.
They have jobs, they have careers, they raise children, they can balance their bank account, they have stock investments.
I mean, they function totally rationally.
And they have what I call these logic tight compartments.
But in this little corner of my mind here, I have this one little belief I'm hanging on to, no matter how irrational it may seem.
But they're not just across the board gullible all the time.
So the research, I think, is leaning more and more toward that.
I think we're not that gullible.
It takes a lot of work to get people to literally drink the Kool Aid or that Nexium cult.
How many women got the branding?
Yes, I know.
Right.
From my hometown, Albany, New York, that cult run by Keith Raneri for people who aren't familiar who don't wound up running a sex cult where women were branding themselves and so on.
Keep going.
But yeah, that's right.
I mean, but you look at the highlighted interviews with the women that got it.
How many women joined that group over all those years or were part of it or engaged with them who didn't go for any of that?
See, we never hear about those.
From what I know, little I know about that particular one, there's More information still to come out is I think most did not go for the branding.
It took quite a few steps between, hey, I'm going to take this seminar on how to be a successful businesswoman to, I'm going to get the brand.
I think there's like a hundred steps in there where he had those female assistants who were kind of coaching the women along, which is kind of social proof.
Well, this is a woman having me do this.
That must make it slightly more okay.
But again, it took a lot to get him to do that.
And I don't think that many of all the probably thousands that had engaged in that guy, Renier's.
Uh, I mean, he had a couple of different companies and like hundreds of seminars and workshops.
And just think of the thousands of people that took it, you know, most did not go for the branding thing.
So, to me, that's a little encouraging.
And we're not as a species, we're not hopelessly irrational, we're not doomed.
Well, I think just looking back, I will say, I feel like in that one story with the soundbite I played, I was really rooting for it to be not true that they would fleece the guy, you know what I mean?
So, it's like, I really.
I preferred the original narrative a lot.
I loved the original story of like the homeless guy helping, and then no, they didn't betray the homeless guy.
Oh, wait, the whole thing is a freaking fraud.
You hate it.
You hate to see it, but enough years in the news business.
And yeah, you do have to fight a little to stop yourself from crossing over from skepticism to cynical.
Right.
But again, what are we not looking at?
How many Patreon accounts are totally legitimate?
I don't know, probably 99%.
How many nonprofits?
Turn into these corruption schemes.
Probably not that many.
There's tens of thousands, I don't know, 100,000 nonprofits in the United States.
And how many of them make the news for con games like that?
Not many.
Right.
So I think it's reasonable to be hopeful and optimistic and trusting, you know, but with verification, as Reagan said.
Trust and verify.
Yeah.
Have some skepticism.
Absolutely.
I mean, this is what I do for a living, right?
Be skeptical, right?
But don't be, you know, cynical.
Don't be distrusting of everybody you meet.
Most people are good people.
And, you know, again, like we were saying, most people are not racist today.
Don't just assume the worst.
Most people are not like that Derek Chauvin guy.
Okay.
Most people are, most cops are not like that.
That's right.
So it's, But the availability heuristic, what we see on the news, if it bleeds, it leads.
It distorts our perception of how things are going.
So you have to look at the trend lines, not the headlines.
And when you do that, things are really quite good.
I mean, we're probably living in the best times ever in human history, despite this last year being pretty crazy.
Maybe think of it as just a little blip in the upward curve.
Think of it as a sawtooth blade.
It's on the way up, but you have these little dips down.
But overall, I'm pretty optimistic.
Yes, I heard you say this is the most moral time in the history of our species.
I agree with you.
And it's delightful that we somehow found ourselves stationed here at this particular moment in time.
Yes, there are things to complain about, of course, but there's like a net, net, we're doing pretty well.
That's what you got to stay focused on.
You can't get too wrapped up in fighting the day's battles that you lose the 30,000 foot view.
Exactly.
You got to take that view.
Just think, you know, when would you rather be alive?
Say you as a woman, you know, I mean, 1500, 1800.
How about 2020?
You know, I mean, this is in terms of rights.
And that's not to say because things are better than they used to be, they're perfect.
No, they're not.
Don't conflate those.
And anecdotes are not data.
You know, the one example of the misogynist CEO.
Okay, that's, but that used to be quite common.
Now it's rare.
Again, you got to follow the trend lines.
I will give you one good thing about being a woman in 1500.
I just recently, for a costume event we did, wore a corset and one of those dresses they used to wear.
And I'm telling you, there's a reason that that was in style for so long.
It shows off all the things you want to show off and it hides all the things you want to hide.
I think we rejected that too soon, ladies.
We could have found up like a comfortable one that didn't make your rib cage collapse.
Labor Day SiriusXM Show 00:02:07
But I really liked the way that worked.
You could eat whatever you wanted at dinner.
Okay.
I wouldn't know about that, but okay, I'll take your word for that.
That is what we call looking on the bright side.
Michael Shermer, what a pleasure.
Thank you so much for being here.
Oh, well, thank you for having me.
I'm a fan.
I just love your show.
And congratulations on your new, you got your radio show coming up, right?
Yeah, yeah.
We're launching live on Sirius on September 7th.
And so I hope you'll come back and do that show too.
Absolutely.
Okay.
So this is an exciting moment for us because we're not going to speak to you again until we are live on Sirius XM's Triumph channel at noon, not Monday, because it's Labor Day on Tuesday.
And for those of you who haven't, you know, sort of been paying attention to that because you're living your lives, I assume you're not obsessed with.
news about the MK show.
Although fine by me if you are.
What we're doing is this podcast, only we're going to do it five days a week and we're going to do it live.
So if you would like to listen to it live, which can be fun, no net, you can do that from 12 to 2 Eastern time.
The good thing about it is even if you like just listening to the podcast at your leisure, if you want to do it that way, you can call in and we can talk because we're going to take live calls, something I've actually never done before.
So it could be a hot mess.
for many reasons, but bear with us because nobody turns away from a training.
So tune in on Tuesday, not to give us a bad omen, and you can listen to it that way, or you can just keep listening to it exactly the way you currently do.
Nothing's changing there.
Okay, so wish us luck and we'll talk on Tuesday.
Have a great, great Labor Day.
Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
The Megyn Kelly Show is a devil-may-care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.
Thank you.
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