The Megyn Kelly Show - 20220113_arrogance-of-the-elites-and-our-alarming-digital-f
Aired: 2022-01-13
Duration: 01:30:35


=== Arizona School Mask Study (14:39) ===

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[00:00:35]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:47]  Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
[00:00:48]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
[00:00:50]  We begin today with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky continuing to tout a wildly misleading study that the CDC knows has been discredited as a reason why millions of children across the country should be masked indefinitely.
[00:01:07]  On December 17th, we interviewed journalist David Zweig.
[00:01:10]  He writes for The Atlantic, New York Magazine, among others, regarding his months long investigation into the study published by the CDC in September.
[00:01:19]  Okay, it suggested the study did that schools in Arizona that did not mandate masking were three and a half times more likely to have COVID outbreaks.
[00:01:30]  This appeared to confirm the CDC's own obsession with masking, and the agency's director, Walensky, was quick to promote it nonstop all over the news.
[00:01:40]  We also published a study out of Arizona that demonstrated that places that had no masks in place were three and a half times more likely to have outbreaks than places that did have masks in place.
[00:01:53]  A study that was done in Arizona, published on Friday, that demonstrated that in jurisdictions that had masking early in their school year this year were three and a half times less likely to have outbreaks in the school.
[00:02:07]  But the study that you're referring to in Arizona demonstrated that schools that had masks were three and a half times.
[00:02:13]  Less likely to have a school outbreak than schools that didn't have masks.
[00:02:18]  We have new science.
[00:02:19]  You see, it goes on and on.
[00:02:22]  But David Zweig, having dug into the previous studies touted by the CDC on masks and found them wanting, had questions.
[00:02:30]  Three and a half times is a huge factor.
[00:02:33]  Not even the previous, albeit largely unsound, studies touting masking had suggested that masks make a difference that big.
[00:02:41]  So he decided to investigate the study's methodology.
[00:02:44]  And here are a few highlights of what he found.
[00:02:46]  One, the study.
[00:02:48]  Cited more schools than exist in the counties observed.
[00:02:53]  It compared schools that were open for three or four weeks with some that were open just two weeks.
[00:03:00]  In other words, how do we know if a no mask mandate school, a more free school that saw more COVID cases, had an uptick because of its no mask mandate policy or simply because it had, say, two extra weeks of classes factored into the results than the fully masked schools did?
[00:03:18]  If I want to compare one school for 30 days that didn't have any masks.
[00:03:22]  With a school over one day that had masks on, guess how it's going to turn out?
[00:03:27]  The school that's open 30 days is going to have more COVID cases.
[00:03:30]  That doesn't say anything about masks.
[00:03:32]  The study even cited masking data from schools that were still in virtual learning.
[00:03:38]  Okay, I'm sure that a school the children never step foot into, but which happens to have a mask mandate, is very effective at stopping the spread of COVID.
[00:03:47]  One scientist David spoke to called the study so unreliable that it probably should not have been entered into the public.
[00:03:54]  Discourse at all.
[00:03:56]  Wolensky's team knows all about David's investigation.
[00:04:00]  Again, this is not a Fox News partisan host or even straight news journalist that they can easily dismiss as of the right wing.
[00:04:08]  He's not.
[00:04:09]  He's been a straight shooter right down the middle from the beginning of this, and they're trying to blow him off.
[00:04:15]  He says they were made well aware of his findings.
[00:04:18]  His article made major headlines.
[00:04:20]  And when he asked them to explain why they are touting this study, despite its obvious and serious flaws, they went dark on him.
[00:04:27]  So, did Walensky or the CDC retract or update their findings?
[00:04:31]  No.
[00:04:32]  Did Walensky at least quietly stop talking about it?
[00:04:37]  No.
[00:04:38]  Instead, this week, she promoted it again during a U.S. Senate hearing.
[00:04:44]  We have new science that has demonstrated the value of masking three and a half times increased risk of school outbreaks if you're unmasked in schools versus if you're masking in schools.
[00:04:55]  She can't stop herself.
[00:04:56]  Meanwhile, she's wearing 40 masks for people who aren't watching this.
[00:05:01]  She's mummified her face.
[00:05:04]  David Swagg is back with me now.
[00:05:08]  It's crazy, these people like, okay.
[00:05:12]  A lot of masks.
[00:05:13]  A lot of masks.
[00:05:14]  When you heard her do that, once again at a Senate hearing, no less, mention this discredited study, what was your reaction?
[00:05:25]  I was, I guess, a combination of astonished, yet also not surprised, considering the track record that's happened thus far.
[00:05:34]  It's, I have a couple sources inside the CDC.
[00:05:38]  And to me, the main thing I'm trying to find out is does she actually not know what's going on?
[00:05:46]  Or does she know and is, you know, making some sort of strategic or political decision to continue to cite a finding from a study that I think any reasonable scientist or academic would say is widely discredited at this point?
[00:06:03]  Would have abandoned by now.
[00:06:04]  What, what, Light, if any, does it shed on your query?
[00:06:09]  Watching her with Brett Baer this past Sunday dodging and weaving on just calling out Sonia Sotomayor, which even the left wing fact checkers have been willing to do, falsely asserting that 100,000 children are in the hospital because of COVID right now.
[00:06:25]  Yeah, I think there's something that is deeply unsettling when you see someone who is ostensibly grounded in being a scientist.
[00:06:37]  Communicate in a manner that we typically would associate with a politician.
[00:06:43]  And I think as Americans, we need to think about and decide is the CDC itself a political organization?
[00:06:50]  And is the head of the CDC essentially a politician?
[00:06:54]  Or is this person a scientist and trying to communicate the science to the American public?
[00:07:00]  Because those things together don't seem to be working right now.
[00:07:05]  There was a question when you last came on about just how far she'd gone in defending.
[00:07:11]  That three and a half times number.
[00:07:13]  And we played this soundbite between Rochelle Walensky and Chris Hayes of MSNBC, where she went even further.
[00:07:20]  You had given her maybe a little wiggle room.
[00:07:22]  Let's see.
[00:07:23]  She went even further.
[00:07:24]  And it was a stunning moment.
[00:07:25]  I want to play it for the audience who hadn't seen that exchange.
[00:07:28]  You should go back and look at our interview with David on December 17th.
[00:07:31]  But this is the longer soundbite, Deb, where we've got Chris Hayes pressing her and what she says.
[00:07:37]  Okay, listen.
[00:07:39]  The study that you're referring to in Arizona demonstrated that schools that had masks were three and a half times.
[00:07:46]  Less likely to have a school outbreak than schools that didn't have masks.
[00:07:51]  Just as a follow up, are we sure that's not a correlation issue and not a causation, which is to say, like, There's higher levels of community transmission in the school districts that are also the ones most inclined to not have a masking policy.
[00:08:05]  See what I'm saying?
[00:08:07]  Yeah.
[00:08:08]  And that's actually been studied as well.
[00:08:10]  And we've examined those correlations for exactly the concern you raised.
[00:08:14]  This is an independent effect of masks.
[00:08:18]  That wasn't true.
[00:08:19]  And did you ever follow up with them?
[00:08:20]  And did they ever give you a response as to why she said something?
[00:08:24]  I mean, not even the study's authors, I think, were claiming that that was the case.
[00:08:29]  Yeah, I mean, they stopped responding to me after a while.
[00:08:32]  In fact, my editor at The Atlantic had to start communicating with the authors and with the PR person at Arizona State University, where the lead author is located, because they wouldn't even reply to me.
[00:08:47]  Which, to me, when I talk about it in the article, or at least you and I had spoken about this, which is that's the thing that I find in some regards the most troubling is that, again, a public health agency, if nothing else, Should be based in transparency.
[00:09:01]  This is not part of the security apparatus.
[00:09:04]  This is not the CIA.
[00:09:06]  We're talking about, they're supposed to be for us, the people.
[00:09:09]  And they were presented with very clear evidence of significant discrepancies.
[00:09:17]  This is not about a pesky journalist bothering them.
[00:09:20]  This is not about scientists quibbling over the methodology.
[00:09:24]  These are significant discrepancies in the numerical, in the statistics of the study.
[00:09:31]  That I found from the state of Arizona and from the county of Arizona that were very, very different from what was in the study.
[00:09:39]  And they wrote back to me and said, There are no errors.
[00:09:42]  We're done.
[00:09:43]  Right.
[00:09:44]  Okay.
[00:09:44]  I'm definitely going to use that approach in my future journalistic matters.
[00:09:48]  If I ever make a mistake, I'm just going to say, I didn't.
[00:09:50]  I didn't.
[00:09:50]  I don't care what you say.
[00:09:51]  Whatever you say, I don't care who you are.
[00:09:54]  You pointed out in your original article on this when it comes to, well, did they rule out other explanations for.
[00:10:01]  The increased spread in the schools that don't require masks.
[00:10:04]  That's basically Chris Hayes was kind of saying, you know, did you rule out the fact that in a community that doesn't require masks, maybe there's a lower vaccination rate?
[00:10:13]  That's basically what he's saying.
[00:10:14]  You know, like maybe it's a community in South Florida where it's a bunch of Republicans who don't see these issues the way Chris and Rochelle do.
[00:10:21]  And that's when she said, absolutely not.
[00:10:23]  That's not it.
[00:10:24]  We factored all that in and we still got three and a half times, which isn't true.
[00:10:27]  Just to be clear, that was not true.
[00:10:29]  But you put out your original article, you cited a guy, Jason Abalak.
[00:10:33]  Economics professor at Yale, who was the lead investigator on a 340,000 person randomized trial of masking in Bangladesh, who called this study ridiculous, you write, for failing to control for the vaccination status of staff or students.
[00:10:49]  And why would that have mattered?
[00:10:51]  I mean, explain.
[00:10:52]  Chris Hayes is saying, did you just look at the community's attitude toward COVID or anything?
[00:10:57]  But this is talking about specifically vaccinations.
[00:10:59]  Why would that have mattered?
[00:11:01]  Well, I mean, anytime you're studying the The incidence of something, you need to look at what factors are going to affect that.
[00:11:09]  These are different confounding variables.
[00:11:11]  So, when you're looking at the incidence of cases, or specifically for this study, what they called outbreaks, which is just two or more cases, is that of course the vaccination status of the staff and of the students is going to impact the degree of outbreaks in the school.
[00:11:31]  Moreover, certainly last summer it would have.
[00:11:34]  Right now, not so much.
[00:11:34]  Exactly.
[00:11:35]  Now it's a very, very good point.
[00:11:37]  Right.
[00:11:37]  With Omicron, Not some, but back when the study was conducted, that certainly was a significant factor.
[00:11:43]  And on top of that, they also didn't account for the change in community rates over time.
[00:11:48]  So, I mean, it's such a long list of things.
[00:11:50]  And I think, as you noted in the beginning, they also included more than 40 schools that literally don't exist.
[00:11:57]  They were virtual schools.
[00:11:59]  It was like a Votec program for metalwork or automotive repair, things of that nature that are not schools.
[00:12:08]  This was a program, a class you could take in your regular high school, yet they listed that as its own school and they did that more than 40 times.
[00:12:16]  The question is how does that affect the results of the study?
[00:12:20]  And the answer is no one knows because they've refused from day one all the way to now to release their data set.
[00:12:28]  No one knows.
[00:12:29]  Where, how they put all this data together because they won't let us see it.
[00:12:35]  It's getting nuts.
[00:12:37]  And Walensky and others are trying to ramp up the masks now rather than dial them back in any way, just at a point where a lot of us are at the breaking point in the masks.
[00:12:46]  The news now is that the CDC is getting ready to recommend N95 or KN95 masks for everyone if you can tolerate it.
[00:12:54]  So I'm like, great, I can't, bye.
[00:12:57]  But more and more schools are already saying we have to.
[00:13:00]  We're seeing it pop up in district after district saying, Well, college level saying the kids have to wear KN95s or N95 masks.
[00:13:08]  What are your CDC contacts saying about that?
[00:13:10]  Are we about to get that push?
[00:13:12]  Because sometimes it starts with a suggestion and it turns into a mandate.
[00:13:17]  I can tell you that a number of infectious disease doctors who I'm in a little text group with a bunch of them are not pleased about this.
[00:13:25]  And that exactly as you indicated, everything about Omicron suggests to these people that it's time to start winding things down.
[00:13:33]  Not ramping them up.
[00:13:34]  And it's sort of the, you know, be careful what you wish for.
[00:13:37]  We finally got the sort of mainstream public health establishment with people like Leanne Wen finally coming out and saying, cloth masks, they don't work.
[00:13:46]  They really, you know, at best are marginally affected.
[00:13:49]  This is something that we've known for a very long time.
[00:13:53]  People like Michael Osterholm and others had been mentioning it, but it was kind of tamped down.
[00:13:58]  But it's finally kind of reached the mainstream.
[00:14:00]  Now, I thought when we found out that, you know, it was finally made known that they, Aren't particularly effective.
[00:14:07]  Well, I assume that meant okay, so we don't have to make kids wear masks anymore, they're not working.
[00:14:11]  I hadn't fully anticipated that it would be the opposite direction.
[00:14:15]  Oh, since those don't work, now we need children wearing masks that are designed for healthcare professionals and you know, specific workers in particular professions, you know, where you have to have these things fit tested.
[00:14:29]  It's kind of alarming.
[00:14:31]  Once again, we are the outlier in many regards to many other nations around the world.
[00:14:35]  It's the mask you would wear if you went to visit Chernobyl.

=== Kids Have Had It With Masks (07:36) ===

[00:14:39]  About two decades ago.
[00:14:41]  And there, I said this on Twitter and I say it right here.
[00:14:44]  There is zero chance of me wearing an N95 or KN95 mask and zero chance of me putting one of those on my kids.
[00:14:52]  This is a hill I wish to die on.
[00:14:55]  And I won't die because I've been double-vaxxed and had a booster, and my kids aren't going to die either because they're healthy and they don't need the vaccine.
[00:15:01]  I haven't gotten it for them yet.
[00:15:02]  I haven't totally ruled it out.
[00:15:03]  But my point is, they don't need an N95 mask.
[00:15:05]  I'm not putting it on them.
[00:15:06]  I refuse.
[00:15:07]  And I am not alone because I saw something extraordinary on Twitter.
[00:15:12]  CNN on CNN with Aaron Burnett, who is probably, I definitely think she's less crazy than some of the other anchors there.
[00:15:24]  Her sin was never that she was sort of a hard left wing partisan.
[00:15:28]  It was just kind of a little milquetoasty.
[00:15:30]  But anyway, fine.
[00:15:31]  I respect her.
[00:15:32]  I like Aaron Burnett.
[00:15:33]  She seems like a perfectly fine person.
[00:15:35]  And she had on a doctor to talk about masking.
[00:15:38]  I think he's a doctor from Harvard.
[00:15:40]  Watch the clip.
[00:15:42]  So, your tweet says, quote, eight degrees in Boston, no outdoor activities at school.
[00:15:47]  My nine year old, quote, so no mask breaks today?
[00:15:50]  That's worse than freezing.
[00:15:53]  Then you continue, don't tell me two years of masking doesn't impact kids.
[00:15:57]  Their risk is low.
[00:15:58]  Vaccines avail for all adults and kids.
[00:16:00]  Anyone who wants can mask.
[00:16:02]  It's time.
[00:16:02]  And the hard data I'm referring to here is on the risk to kids that has been consistent since day one.
[00:16:07]  Their risk is low.
[00:16:08]  New data out of New York State during the peak of the Omicron surge shows that child hospitalization rates are on the order of one in a hundred thousand if you're unvaccinated.
[00:16:18]  If you're vaccinated, a child's risk is on the order of two to three per million.
[00:16:24]  These are low rates.
[00:16:26]  On top of that, adults, all teachers and staff had had 10 months or more.
[00:16:30]  To get vaccinated and take the precaution they need to.
[00:16:33]  We're coming up on two years of disrupted school, kids en masse.
[00:16:37]  To think there's no harm there or no loss in socialization, no impact, I think is incorrect.
[00:16:42]  We've been prioritizing adults at the expense of kids.
[00:16:46]  That guy is the head of Harvard School of Public Health.
[00:16:49]  So, yay!
[00:16:51]  It makes me have a little hope, David, that, you know, as I said last Monday in an opening monologue that's gone viral.
[00:17:00]  There's reason to hope.
[00:17:02]  The center left is starting to break away from the far left, who are really leaning into their COVID fear and realize we don't need to be doing this craziness anymore.
[00:17:14]  Yeah.
[00:17:14]  Joe Allen, that's who's in that clip.
[00:17:16]  He's been really great and he's been at the forefront of this in the sort of mainstream public health community.
[00:17:22]  So it's great that he has such a platform and a voice.
[00:17:26]  I think, and I'm familiar with the data he's talking about, where it really is, it's something like, 0.3 per 100,000, which equates to like three per million if a kid is vaccinated.
[00:17:39]  And that gets to the heart of the issue, I think, Megan, which is reasonable people could have disagreed in the beginning of the pandemic whether or not it made sense to wear masks and do all sorts of other mitigation measures.
[00:17:51]  But the reason why I believe that's not necessarily a reasonable debate anymore is that these are what are known as temporizing measures.
[00:18:00]  These are things that delay the inevitable.
[00:18:04]  And once vaccines came out and all the adults were able to protect themselves, and children who already were at an incredibly low risk than the vaccinated adults, they could protect themselves even more.
[00:18:16]  Once the vaccines came out, now we are just delaying things.
[00:18:21]  These are just temporizing measures.
[00:18:22]  So we have to ask ourselves or ask officials, what are we delaying this for?
[00:18:28]  Initially, you delay because we're waiting for the magic bullet, for the not the best metaphor, but we're waiting for the vaccines to come.
[00:18:36]  But once we have that, What else are we pushing for?
[00:18:39]  And these are the conversations I'm having with a lot of the experts I know, you know, off the record and behind the scenes, as people are starting to say, we need to figure out how to unwind this thing because we are not going to stop it.
[00:18:51]  You could close the school for a day, you could close the school for a week.
[00:18:55]  The virus isn't going to wait and then disappear.
[00:18:57]  It's there, it's not going away.
[00:19:00]  So we need to figure out how to function as a society.
[00:19:03]  Now, perhaps some people would like to live in a society where kids are wearing masks all the time to reduce, you know, or at least theoretically reduce the risk.
[00:19:12]  That's not a society that I would like to live in.
[00:19:15]  You know, I don't want my kids to be harmed.
[00:19:17]  I don't want other kids to be harmed.
[00:19:18]  But part of living is carrying some degree of risk.
[00:19:23]  And to me, I'm willing to have a low grade fever for a few days, you know, once a year or whatever it is, if it means that I don't have to wear a mask every day.
[00:19:32]  And I certainly would hope the same for my kids.
[00:19:34]  And he was pointing out that the data show if you wear a mask, if you want to wear one of those lunatic masks, go right.
[00:19:43]  Ahead because the studies do show that they're effective at protecting you.
[00:19:48]  I don't have to wear one to protect you.
[00:19:51]  And whether I'm vaccinated or unvaccinated, I can spread this virus.
[00:19:54]  So it's at the point now where if you want to prevent yourself or your child, if you're that paranoid about it, You can slap one of those on your kid's face.
[00:20:03]  I won't do it.
[00:20:04]  Honestly, I'll come up with another plan.
[00:20:05]  I don't know what it is, but you know your lines.
[00:20:08]  And I'll tell a story that I told David privately because I texted him with this story.
[00:20:13]  But I'll tell you kids have had it, including my own.
[00:20:15]  So my little eight year old got in a bit of trouble last week because he went to school, second grade, and he took off his mask.
[00:20:22]  He just took it off.
[00:20:23]  He's had it.
[00:20:24]  I mean, he's had almost no school history without a mask on.
[00:20:28]  He was in kindergarten when this damn thing broke.
[00:20:30]  Now he's in second grade and he's still got the face covering.
[00:20:33]  And so he just took it off.
[00:20:35]  And the teacher said, Thatcher, you have to wear your mask.
[00:20:38]  And do you know what he said, America?
[00:20:40]  He said, The CDC did a study of 90,000 children in Georgia that showed that masks do nothing.
[00:20:50]  And so she sent him to the principal's office.
[00:20:54]  And my little Norma Ray.
[00:20:56]  I can have him as an assistant.
[00:20:57]  If he's looking to get into journalism, you know, he and I, we should talk, right?
[00:21:00]  If he wants to dig into some more studies with me.
[00:21:03]  It's sad to me, David, because it's like I did, I had to round back to him and I had to tell him, Thatcher, I have to tell you, I think what you did is.
[00:21:09]  Kind of badass.
[00:21:10]  But the next time we're going to have to make the argument with the mask on because right now I need you in school.
[00:21:16]  You need to be in school.
[00:21:16]  We don't have another option.
[00:21:18]  It's infuriating, but it's also somewhat exciting.
[00:21:23]  Right.
[00:21:24]  Yes.
[00:21:25]  That's the weird thing when you look at your kids.
[00:21:27]  You sort of want them to be courageous and rebel, but yet you also not too much necessarily.
[00:21:33]  So there's that balance of pride and a little bit of like, that's great, but dial it back next time.
[00:21:39]  I will say this, I'll give you a nice epilogue to it.
[00:21:42]  I had a very nice exchange with the school about it.
[00:21:44]  Like, they were actually really cool and they saw it too, and they understood where the kids are.
[00:21:49]  And, you know, they're under a mandate from the governor.
[00:21:51]  So there's only so much they can do.
[00:21:53]  It's the governor we need to be writing our letters to here in Connecticut and so on.
[00:21:57]  Anyway, I've been laughing and sending pictures of Norma Rae, Sally Field, if you haven't seen the movie with the union sign, my relatives.
[00:22:05]  David, it's a pleasure.
[00:22:07]  Thanks for having me, Megan.
[00:22:08]  Anytime.
[00:22:09]  See you soon.
[00:22:10]  Okay, coming up, we are joined by someone.
[00:22:12]  He's like a JD Vance, although not quite as conservative.

=== Real Americans on the Acela (09:52) ===

[00:22:16]  And he's got a lot of insight into Americans and why they voted for Trump or why they don't vote at all and why they're disillusioned by this system completely run by elites who have no connection to them.
[00:22:27]  Right after this break, Chris Arnati.
[00:22:29]  Don't miss him.
[00:22:37]  To prove how little DC insiders know about the state of the country, this week two of the most insane op eds were published.
[00:22:46]  The first one proposed that what Americans really need to see in the 2024 presidential race is a Joe Biden slash Liz Cheney ticket.
[00:22:56]  Okay, I just choked on my tongue.
[00:22:59]  And then another by my pal, Doug Schoen, who I love, explored why Hillary Clinton is the Democrats' most viable candidate in 2024.
[00:23:09]  Oh my God, a supposed change candidate.
[00:23:12]  Doug, my pal, Doug.
[00:23:14]  I'm not sure what happened.
[00:23:16]  What does this say about how out of touch DC is?
[00:23:20]  My next guest probably knows better than anyone else in the country.
[00:23:24]  Chris Arnotti is a writer, photographer, and author of Dignity, Seeking Respect in Back Row America.
[00:23:31]  Welcome, Chris.
[00:23:32]  So good to have you here.
[00:23:34]  Thank you very much for having me.
[00:23:35]  So I love your background.
[00:23:37]  I know a lot of guys like you who spent a lot of time on Wall Street doing really well and then sort of became disillusioned with what is this all for?
[00:23:45]  Does this have real meaning?
[00:23:46]  Is this how I want to spend my life?
[00:23:49]  But unlike you, most of them do not then.
[00:23:53]  Take to their car, take out the back row, start driving around to some of the poorest, most ignored communities of America to figure out.
[00:24:01]  Why the disillusioned are disillusioned, why people who have it probably rougher than anyone in this country don't bother to vote, why they feel loathed by pretty much everyone in the media and on the political stage.
[00:24:14]  But that is how you've spent your past X, how many years?
[00:24:19]  12 years.
[00:24:19]  12 years.
[00:24:20]  12 years now.
[00:24:20]  Okay, so a dozen plus years.
[00:24:22]  And you divide them into the back rowers and the front rowers.
[00:24:25]  And just explain that for our audience who hasn't read your book.
[00:24:28]  Yeah, so it's easier to explain in terms of what the front row is.
[00:24:32]  That's basically me.
[00:24:33]  PhD in physics, worked on Wall Street, lots of education, left my home to move to New York City, travel all around the world, you know, and focus on getting, you know, focus on building a resume or had focus on getting, building a career.
[00:24:51]  Left the church at some point, lots of education.
[00:24:55]  You know, a lot of people in the media are that, you know, you can think of lawyers, bankers, people who went to Harvard, Cornell, you know, Stanford.
[00:25:05]  That's the front row.
[00:25:06]  You can think of the schoolroom analogy, you know, the kid who always raised their hands and wanted to be a teacher's pet and wanted to get ahead through education.
[00:25:12]  And then basically the back row is everybody else, which is what I call normies.
[00:25:19]  People who, you know, if they have any high school, if they have any college, it's usually community college, maybe a few years of trade school.
[00:25:26]  But, you know, that's the majority of people.
[00:25:29]  It's the front row, people like me, we're the weirdos.
[00:25:32]  And so that's, and I think that division between, you know, the front and the back, between the educated, highly educated, and then The rest.
[00:25:40]  So you can use DC Insider as another proxy.
[00:25:45]  That gap is really what drives so much of what's going on in this country right now.
[00:25:51]  It definitely can help explain the Trump election in 2016.
[00:25:55]  I know you've said that.
[00:25:56]  You saw that coming.
[00:25:56]  You were one of the few who saw that coming.
[00:25:59]  Whereas most people in the sort of mainstream press said never, could never happen.
[00:26:04]  But you were talking to, quote, real Americans and describe sort of the cities that you've been going to.
[00:26:10]  I know you say you spent years going into the McDonald's and The Bronx, for example, every day, because that's where the folks were.
[00:26:16]  And that's, you wanted to actually understand people as opposed to doing a two week flyby like some of these quote in depth magazine pieces do.
[00:26:24]  We're talking years of research on your part.
[00:26:26]  So, where'd you go and who are you talking to?
[00:26:30]  I went, you know, the back row is everywhere.
[00:26:32]  It's not just, you know, as I say, you don't have to get out of the Acela corridor.
[00:26:38]  You just have to get off the Acela.
[00:26:40]  I mean, the Acela goes through a lot of back row communities.
[00:26:43]  It goes, you mentioned one of them in the Bronx, Hunts Point, where I spent two and a half years.
[00:26:47]  It goes through Western Baltimore, Kensington, Philadelphia, and for instance, Anacosta, right across from the DC Insiders in Anacostia, which is where I was four days ago walking.
[00:27:01]  I walked across Anacostia and Indianapolis, everywhere.
[00:27:06]  I went absolutely everywhere.
[00:27:08]  And I went into communities where people, the front row certainly makes policy for these places, but don't actually go and interact with people.
[00:27:18]  I spent a lot of time in McDonald's, Applebee's, Walmart's, things that shouldn't be weird for people to do.
[00:27:25]  But for the front row, that's weird.
[00:27:28]  And I just talked to people and I got to know them and got to listen to them and try to write about what I saw and take pictures of what I saw to give a sense to the other people in the front row how out of touch we are, how much privilege we have, and how arrogant we are, and how clueless we are about the people we make policy for.
[00:27:51]  Or we claim to know what's better for.
[00:27:54]  Completely different.
[00:27:55]  A lot of folks in towns basically ruined by globalization, the factories that once made them vibrant and sources of pride.
[00:28:03]  Have been long closed.
[00:28:04]  Society's moved on.
[00:28:06]  There's not a source of industry.
[00:28:08]  And not only has society moved on from these towns, they've turned their noses up at them.
[00:28:13]  You know, these people get categorized pretty frequently as deplorables by people like Hillary Clinton and others.
[00:28:19]  But there's really no moment of stopping and thinking and looking back at them and saying, wait, how can we help?
[00:28:26]  How can we help create opportunity for folks who used to enjoy it abundantly in towns where they were willing to work?
[00:28:35]  Yeah.
[00:28:35]  I mean, what I would say is the only answer they ever have is the old, you know, learn to code or move.
[00:28:44]  You know, it's like we've destroyed your community.
[00:28:46]  We shipped your jobs overseas.
[00:28:49]  We devalued everything you find meaningful, such as faith, place, and family and nation.
[00:28:57]  We in the front row find these things awful.
[00:29:01]  And so then we tell them, oh, I'm sorry.
[00:29:04]  I guess just.
[00:29:05]  Now that your drug town is filling up with drugs and despair, I guess just move or learn to code.
[00:29:10]  And that's extraordinarily offensive on so many levels.
[00:29:13]  The whole idea of just moving.
[00:29:14]  Like, no, this is, you know, place matters to people.
[00:29:17]  It's some of the few things they have that really, you know, it's meaningful to them in a way that's not meaningful to the front row.
[00:29:25]  Like, you know, being a resident of, you know, Texas or being, or having grown up in Portsmouth, Ohio, that really matters to somebody.
[00:29:36]  That defines who they are.
[00:29:37]  And to say you can just get rid of that.
[00:29:39]  And just move someplace else.
[00:29:41]  Forcing people to become economic migrants in their own country because the policies that benefit the wealthy, that's just offensive.
[00:29:50]  And so, you know, the other solution is, you know, just get more education.
[00:29:53]  And, you know, not everybody wants to just get more education.
[00:29:57]  It's not how everybody thinks that we should just, you know, be careerists running around building resumes.
[00:30:03]  Some people just want to live life and, you know, and define themselves through things like family, faith, and nation.
[00:30:11]  It's crazy now because more and more our universities are a place you go to get a four year credential in liberal orthodoxy, you know, not so much to actually learn something that's going to set you up for a future career like a vocational school would be.
[00:30:23]  And what I've seen on the right half of the country is people becoming more and more reluctant to put their children into that system where they just say it's all it's going to do is turn them against me and the beliefs that I've tried to raise them with.
[00:30:36]  So that's an additional problem.
[00:30:38]  But you're right, there's an elitist system that prizes a four year degree, something beyond that.
[00:30:43]  And I do think all this is when I was reading about you and listening to you and a bunch of podcasts you've done and so on, all I kept thinking about was Roger Ailes, my old boss and founder of the Fox News Channel, who was a ditch digger in Ohio back when he was a young boy.
[00:30:58]  And he understood the back row, whatever his flaws.
[00:31:03]  And I could talk to you about those too.
[00:31:05]  He understood the back row better than anyone.
[00:31:07]  That's why when he hired primetime anchors, he did not want to see a Harvard credential.
[00:31:12]  He loved the fact that, you know, I went to Syracuse undergrad and Albany for law school.
[00:31:17]  Hannity dropped out of college and O'Reilly went to Marist, though now he claims to have gone to Harvard, but he didn't really.
[00:31:24]  He did like the Harvard Kennedy thing later in life.
[00:31:27]  Anyway, that's what he was looking for.
[00:31:28]  Contrast that with what happened at NBC, where everybody's got an Ivy League degree.
[00:31:32]  Yeah, you know, I mean, the ability, one of the lessons of my last 12 years of work and what I try, if I had to put a bumper sticker about what I think about kind of what you call the DC elites, I call it the overeducated front row is, or the political class is, they don't understand the people they make policy for.
[00:31:50]  And that's really bad.
[00:31:51]  Now, I think, you know, I happen to think I'm not a like, you know, throw all the elites over the bridge because, you know, I'm an elite myself and I'm very open about that.
[00:31:58]  And I have to say, I want to stay on the bridge.
[00:32:02]  I'm very much there's a lot, and I think a lot of people who are front row are good people and well intended.

=== Pushing People Into a Corner (14:53) ===

[00:32:08]  But I think a lot of us have gotten completely out of touch with America, completely out of touch.
[00:32:15]  And I don't just mean that in a way, we don't go into McDonald's, we just don't know what people value and how they think of themselves and how they comprehend the world.
[00:32:25]  And consequently, when we make policy or we think, I always think about the phrase when it says, There's a lot of when a party loses an election, the elites and the parties say, well, the voters are voting against their self interest.
[00:32:43]  What an arrogant phrase to say.
[00:32:47]  The idea that voters don't know what's best for them.
[00:32:50]  The answer is no, actually.
[00:32:52]  The voters are voting in their best interest.
[00:32:55]  It's you who don't know what their best interest is.
[00:32:57]  It's you who are making a sign.
[00:32:58]  It's a very colonialist attitude, this idea that Americans somehow are voting against their best interests.
[00:33:04]  It's really fucking insulting.
[00:33:07]  And I don't think people realize how insulting it is.
[00:33:09]  Oh, no, it's reflected.
[00:33:11]  I mean, if you watch any cable news, it's evident.
[00:33:16]  And folks know it.
[00:33:16]  I mean, I don't know how many of these folks are still engaged in watching cable news because it's so there's so much hatred for middle America and flyover country or back row, however you want to put it, by most of the channels.
[00:33:30]  And in particular, when it came to Trump, and in particular, you know, when there's an election on the line.
[00:33:35]  And the clip that embodies it all, it's like the worst.
[00:33:40]  Slash best cable news clip ever for showing how out of touch these cable news anchors are is the one with Don Lemon, Wajahat Ali, and Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project.
[00:33:53]  Here, watch.
[00:33:55]  Donald Trump couldn't find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it.
[00:34:02]  He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world.
[00:34:07]  And so that's partly him playing to their base and playing to their audience, you know.
[00:34:13]  The credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump, that wants to think that Donald Trump's a smart one in there.
[00:34:21]  Y'all elitists are dumb.
[00:34:24]  You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling.
[00:34:28]  Even though my math and your reading.
[00:34:30]  Yeah, you're reading.
[00:34:33]  Your geography, knowing other countries, sipping your latte.
[00:34:37]  All those lines on the map.
[00:34:41]  Only them elitists know where Ukraine is.
[00:34:47]  I find that clip disgusting.
[00:34:48]  I just, it makes my sense.
[00:34:49]  You know, imagine if they had done that in a, you know, one of the things that frustrates me is I write about the back row, which I call us people without a high school education or without a college education.
[00:35:00]  That's a lot of minorities, that's a lot of African Americans.
[00:35:04]  And so when you're mocking the back row, you're mocking minorities, which of course they wouldn't do on CNN, but you're allowed to mock the working class whites.
[00:35:14]  You know, you're allowed to make fun of them.
[00:35:16]  But it's just so offensive at so many levels.
[00:35:19]  You know, the thing is, the other thing that's kind of fascinating to me is when I saw that clip, it was just this idea that we all should be focused on the news all the time.
[00:35:29]  You know, one of the things that I try to write about a lot is how a lot of people, we in the political class, and I use we because that's me and certainly you.
[00:35:39]  Yeah.
[00:35:40]  Our job is news, our job is politics.
[00:35:42]  That's not how people approach the news and politics.
[00:35:45]  They, you know, like I said, the largest voting block in the country is.
[00:35:50]  Is none of the above, people who don't vote.
[00:35:53]  Because quite honestly, people have lives.
[00:35:57]  They don't live and die by what Don Lemon says or what.
[00:36:03]  Or what the president even says.
[00:36:07]  And I quite honestly, I'll defend that.
[00:36:10]  I mean, we shouldn't expect people to have to spend all their time.
[00:36:13]  Like, why do we, we're the weird ones who obsess over the news and all the time.
[00:36:20]  And people just want to live their lives, man.
[00:36:21]  They want to focus on their family.
[00:36:23]  They want to focus on their church, their community.
[00:36:25]  They want to focus on being a decent father or running the best hair salon.
[00:36:33]  They don't want to just focus on politics all the time.
[00:36:36]  It's so true.
[00:36:37]  And that's why, if you find yourself on the political stage or on the news stage, you know, you get into one of these more prominent posts in terms of visibility.
[00:36:48]  It's so important to maintain your friendships and your relationships with people who are not of that world, who can keep you grounded, who can remind you of what's important.
[00:36:57]  Who I just, you know, is one of the things where I feel like I've always made this a priority in my own life because I come from a middle class background and I have all the things that.
[00:37:07]  The back row has in my family, you know, that you write about.
[00:37:10]  Like, we definitely have in my family had addiction and had alcoholism and had bankruptcies and had all this stuff.
[00:37:17]  And it's important to remind yourself that not everybody is obsessed with AOC's latest tweet, right?
[00:37:26]  That shit doesn't matter.
[00:37:28]  Twitter does not matter to the average person, even a little.
[00:37:34]  You know, it's so funny because what I, for the listeners who don't know exactly what I spend a lot of time in, Writing about addiction.
[00:37:42]  I spend a lot of time in crack houses, not using, but documenting people who use.
[00:37:47]  I spend a lot of time in, I'm a white guy, and I spend a lot of time in minority communities where I'm the only white person.
[00:37:53]  I spend a lot of time in people who have a lot of problems and a lot of complications and a lot of places where they're, you know, are stigmatized as having high crime.
[00:38:00]  And I take pictures.
[00:38:01]  I have a camera.
[00:38:02]  I'm a photographer.
[00:38:03]  And I've been in, you know, I've been in situations where I'm, I'll tweet about what I'm doing because I'm, I also, I'm active on Twitter, like a lot of people in the front row.
[00:38:12]  And people ask me, like, yo, what are you doing?
[00:38:14]  And I'm like, oh, I'm using Twitter.
[00:38:15]  Like, what's that?
[00:38:17]  It's amazing.
[00:38:18]  It's great.
[00:38:19]  I can't tell you the number of people who, like, you know, now Trump helped raise profile people now know what Twitter is.
[00:38:25]  But, you know, one of the most disconcerting or jarring things for the work I do is to jump because I spend two lives.
[00:38:35]  I go around doing what I do, photographing and hanging out at McDonald's and Applebee's and all that.
[00:38:39]  And then I jump on Twitter at night.
[00:38:41]  And it's just so jarring.
[00:38:42]  I can't even begin to describe how different, how out of touch.
[00:38:49]  The kind of, you know, credential class, the front row is how we are with, with, with, quote, normies, with the back row.
[00:38:55]  No, it's true.
[00:38:56]  And it's just, it's really shocking.
[00:38:59]  And so sometimes I just go on Twitter and I just want to tweet LOL because that's all I can say.
[00:39:04]  I just look at the craziness.
[00:39:05]  I just like, this is just absurd.
[00:39:07]  This is not what people care about.
[00:39:09]  No, people are worried about putting food on their table, taking care of their kids, making sure the schools stay open, especially now with an economy that's 7% inflated, right?
[00:39:17]  Inflation's at 7%, a record over 40 years.
[00:39:19]  They're not worried about whether, uh, A biological woman should be allowed to play the part of a transgender, whatever, you know, whatever the latest freakout is on Twitter from Hollywood, what have you.
[00:39:30]  And yet, you wouldn't know that if you just lived in sort of these more elite, in particular, left wing circles, but the right wing gets sucked into it.
[00:39:39]  I will say that COVID is the case where everybody is impacted by COVID.
[00:39:46]  So, you know, it's the case where the back row has strong opinions on it because you can't.
[00:39:54]  Hide from COVID policy.
[00:39:55]  And so it's touched everybody.
[00:39:56]  So it's going to be a huge, huge issue in the politics going forward.
[00:40:02]  It's right now, according to the latest poll, it's the number two most important issue right after the economy.
[00:40:08]  Economy, let's see, I have it in front of me.
[00:40:11]  Let's see, the Associated Press.
[00:40:14]  68% say the economy is their top priority, especially with these inflation numbers, and 37% say it's COVID.
[00:40:21]  And the third issue is immigration.
[00:40:23]  Even racism and racial inequity, which we hear a ton about these days, and I think that's more wokeification than anything, is only 15%.
[00:40:33]  It's dropped by nine points.
[00:40:35]  Climate, the environment, 21%, which has dropped by three points.
[00:40:38]  And I could go on.
[00:40:39]  But the number one by far is economy.
[00:40:41]  Number two is COVID.
[00:40:42]  And you've got a lot of interesting insights on COVID and how people figured it out, notwithstanding what they were being told.
[00:40:48]  That's where I'll pick it up right after I squeeze in this quick break.
[00:40:51]  Pleasure to have you here, Chris.
[00:40:53]  Really interesting discussion.
[00:40:54]  And don't forget, folks, you can find The Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon East.
[00:41:01]  And the full video show and clips when you subscribe to my YouTube channel, youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly.
[00:41:08]  If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast for free.
[00:41:14]  There you will find our full archives with more than 230 shows.
[00:41:17]  If you add a comment on the Apple, when you subscribe on Apple, and then you can comment underneath, I will read it.
[00:41:25]  I promise.
[00:41:25]  I read them all this morning, all the new ones, and I really appreciate the feedback.
[00:41:29]  Some of them are so eloquent and beautifully said, and it's great to hear from you guys.
[00:41:33]  So please do it.
[00:41:40]  Okay, Chris.
[00:41:41]  Let's continue the discussion about how they figure things out, the back row, even without the Harvard education.
[00:41:48]  These folks talk sense and they speak sense and they see sense when they see it.
[00:41:54]  They know it when they see it.
[00:41:55]  And you talk about this, you've written about this when it comes to COVID.
[00:41:58]  And I think this is really good.
[00:42:01]  This is from one of your pieces called Among the Unvaccinated.
[00:42:05]  You're talking about how you've spent a lot of time among that subset of the population that's just not going to get vaccinated, period, end of report.
[00:42:13]  You did.
[00:42:14]  You're not saying you're one of it.
[00:42:15]  You're just saying you made an effort to understand them, which is what a shocker.
[00:42:19]  And you write about how these people sort of came to their conclusions in part because the messaging was not trustworthy.
[00:42:30]  It was all over the map.
[00:42:31]  And you write, for example, what do you mean it didn't come from a lab?
[00:42:35]  They got a goddamn COVID lab right in the city it started in.
[00:42:38]  What do you mean my kids can't go to the skate park?
[00:42:41]  It's outdoors.
[00:42:42]  People may not be fully educated, but they've got common sense.
[00:42:46]  That's it, right?
[00:42:47]  That's it exactly.
[00:42:49]  Yeah.
[00:42:49]  I mean, you know, I'll use the term normies or back or what have you.
[00:42:56]  I mean, they operate by focus, like common sense, experiential.
[00:42:59]  Like, you know, it's kind of that midwit meme.
[00:43:02]  Like, you know, it's like, what are you fucking talking about?
[00:43:05]  Like, you know, how can you, you know, stop your book smarts?
[00:43:09]  Like, it's so fucking obvious what's going on here.
[00:43:12]  And, you know, and over time, it became pretty clear to a lot of people that COVID policy was not only All over the map and confused, but it was directly beneficial to the front row.
[00:43:28]  It was done everything about what we've done in COVID, around COVID, has been to the point where it has had the least harm to what the laptop generation, the front row, and has harmed the back row the most.
[00:43:40]  You know, you think about from the early stages, you know, sheltering in place from a person who had, you know, a second home and four deep freezes to, You know, someone in the Bronx lives in a four floor walk up with three generations and one bathroom.
[00:43:56]  Like sheltering in place is very different things in that context.
[00:43:59]  And then I was, you know, back then I was writing about the laundromat gap.
[00:44:03]  It's like people in the political class don't realize that people use laundromats.
[00:44:07]  You know, we don't have, a lot of people don't have, they can't hide from people.
[00:44:12]  They can't sit in their room and Zoom.
[00:44:15]  It's not only can't they because their job won't allow it, but that's not how they operate.
[00:44:20]  That's not how people in the back row operate.
[00:44:22]  Community and one on one interaction is central to who they are, it's central to what they do and how they think and how they live.
[00:44:29]  And it's central to how they actually operate.
[00:44:32]  See the world.
[00:44:33]  And that's where the common sense comes.
[00:44:37]  You learn from other people, you learn from interactions, and you build a catalog of interactions.
[00:44:42]  And it's pretty clear that COVID policy has, they've gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to COVID policy.
[00:44:50]  But also, they've suffered the most in terms of the deaths.
[00:44:54]  But also, at the same time, they're also being asked to, I think the phrase I used in one of my pieces was you have to go into the office, keep on working at the Amazon warehouse, but you can't barbecue with your friends.
[00:45:06]  Right.
[00:45:06]  Like, you know, it's just, it's so unjust and they know it.
[00:45:09]  And so eventually, you know, it's just like it became this thing where one of the ways to rebel against that was not to get vaccinated.
[00:45:17]  Now, I happen to think that's a mistake.
[00:45:20]  I think that's, you know, I'm vaccinated, I'm boosted.
[00:45:25]  I think a lot of the political discourse around a vaccine is really sad.
[00:45:28]  And I'm not saying that I don't, I'm not pro anti vax, but I understand why people feel like they've been pushed in that corner.
[00:45:39]  And that's really frustrating and really sad that we've gotten to a place where it's a hill that some people feel they're forced to die on.
[00:45:46]  And that's sad.
[00:45:48]  I know that's how I feel.
[00:45:49]  I want them to know.
[00:45:49]  I mean, I've got a lot of Republicans who watch our show and listen to our show, and I want them to know the vaccine actually is doing a great job.
[00:45:58]  It's not perfect, but it's doing a great job at reducing the severity of COVID for those who get it and greatly reducing the chances of death.
[00:46:07]  So look at it like that.
[00:46:08]  No, it's not going to prevent you from getting COVID, but it really can make COVID.
[00:46:12]  Like a nothing for you if you do get it.
[00:46:15]  It really can.
[00:46:17]  So I know people, it's gotten weird.
[00:46:19]  People online talk about how, like, my blood's pure.
[00:46:21]  You know, I haven't gotten the vaccine.
[00:46:23]  My blood is pure.
[00:46:24]  It's like, it has nothing to do with purity of blood.
[00:46:27]  It has to do with you living.
[00:46:28]  You got to live.
[00:46:28]  You got to live to make these arguments and raise your kids and be with your buddies and go to the bowling alley and go to the Applebee's.
[00:46:34]  And as much as they've politicized the vaccines on both sides, I do hope people see that.
[00:46:40]  I'm pro vaccine.
[00:46:41]  I just, I'm anti-mandate and I'm certainly anti-anybody telling me what to do with.
[00:46:46]  My kids, so I can understand these folks.
[00:46:48]  One of my frustrations is what I try to get across in the piece is if you want to get people vaccinated, vaccine mandates is not the way to go.
[00:46:59]  Yelling is not the way to go.
[00:47:00]  Scolding is not the way to go.

=== Vaccine Mandates and Voting (08:29) ===

[00:47:02]  Laughing when somebody who's not vaccinated dies is not the way to go.
[00:47:06]  It's only pushing people more into a corner.
[00:47:08]  The way to go is to actually.
[00:47:09]  No, wait, hold that thought because that's a good place to leave it before we squeeze in a break.
[00:47:13]  And who exactly you need to convince if you want to get somebody to take that vax.
[00:47:18]  That's where we'll pick it up with Chris next.
[00:47:26]  So, Chris, the only person who can convince a vaccine hesitant or somebody who doesn't want to get the vaccine to take a vaccine is who?
[00:47:35]  Is somebody in their community.
[00:47:37]  Somebody, you know, it can't be a talking head.
[00:47:39]  It can't be a politician.
[00:47:41]  It can't be, you know, LeBron James.
[00:47:44]  It can't be anybody like that.
[00:47:45]  It has to be somebody who just, you know, is in the community, is part of the kind of basketball pickup team they play on or part of the, you know, Go to the hair salon, they go to.
[00:47:56]  It has to be somebody who kind of just, you just have to basically, you know, family member.
[00:48:00]  Who kind of just talks and who knows them and talks people through in a non political way, man.
[00:48:06]  Just like, you know, just kind of just, hey, you know, I have these conversations all the time because I, you know, I'm in places like that.
[00:48:13]  And I just, you know, I basically try to be very polite and just say, you know, hey, probably better you get it.
[00:48:19]  You know, it's kind of makes it less like you die.
[00:48:23]  You know, that's a good thing.
[00:48:25]  Well, and it's like, I mean, hopefully people are starting to feel a little bit more comfortable with it now that it's been out for so long.
[00:48:30]  You know, I mean, there absolutely have been deaths and there have been complications from the vaccine.
[00:48:35]  But they're minuscule compared in number compared to the number that have had it without incident.
[00:48:41]  I guess one of my frustrations about the whole COVID debate is I think, again, it's another example of how the extremes can dominate the conversation.
[00:48:49]  I think that the normal view, the bulk view is, has been, you know, hey, get the vaccine, get boosted if you're in a high risk group, and move on, you know, because that's what the vaccines allow you to do.
[00:49:10]  Is to move on.
[00:49:11]  Well, they should.
[00:49:13]  Yes.
[00:49:15]  And that's kind of where most people are.
[00:49:16]  And that's where, you know, you don't hear that view a lot because it's not, you know, because it's not politically convenient.
[00:49:25]  And the thing is, it's just, you know, people, again, it's the common sense view.
[00:49:31]  That doesn't mean there aren't going to still be deaths.
[00:49:33]  That doesn't mean COVID is still not a big issue.
[00:49:36]  It just means that the reality is that.
[00:49:42]  The bulk of the people want to live their lives, and they have a vaccine that allows them to go on and live their lives with moderate to very, very low risk.
[00:49:52]  And that's where people are.
[00:49:54]  And I think, unless the administration gets there, I think this administration is already toast.
[00:50:01]  I think the 22 elections are going to completely crush the Democrats because COVID policy impacts everybody, and so does inflation.
[00:50:09]  Those are two things that are here and working against the back row.
[00:50:15]  But I think there's a chance that if the Biden administration were to get some sensible thoughts on this and move on to where most normal people are, he could survive.
[00:50:28]  But I doubt he will.
[00:50:30]  And so, what is he doing?
[00:50:31]  What is Joe Biden doing in the wake of that poll I just read in terms of priorities and what you just said?
[00:50:36]  He's focused on voting rights.
[00:50:38]  He wants to federalize elections, which is not even close to on the front page for, as you say, the back row.
[00:50:46]  Yeah, you know, again, news trickles down.
[00:50:51]  It has to be a big event.
[00:50:53]  People like politics has to impact people for them to care about it.
[00:50:56]  And COVID and inflation has impacted people.
[00:50:58]  And you, you know, I'm really tired.
[00:51:00]  I'm really tired of the front row.
[00:51:02]  Well, actually, inflation.
[00:51:03]  Well, actually, well, actually, you know what?
[00:51:06]  Inflation is fucking annoying.
[00:51:08]  It's hurting people.
[00:51:09]  It's impacting their lives.
[00:51:11]  It's messing up their world and they don't like it.
[00:51:13]  So, you know, they're going to vote whoever's in power out if there's inflation.
[00:51:17]  They're going to vote whoever's in power out if COVID continues to linger.
[00:51:21]  And COVID continues to impact their lives.
[00:51:23]  It impacts if they can send their kids to school.
[00:51:26]  It impacts if they can go into a mall.
[00:51:28]  It impacts, you know, if they can have the backyard barbecue, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:51:33]  And those two things are going to, I don't think there's anything Biden can do at this point.
[00:51:38]  I think the 22 elections, the Dems are toast because, you know, again, it's not, people think about, you can't unleash, you know, you can't give five speeches at Georgetown or Harvard, and that's not going to change.
[00:51:52]  People don't care.
[00:51:53]  It's what's impacting their life.
[00:51:55]  And right now, COVID and inflation are impacting their life.
[00:51:58]  Well, and on inflation, his policy has been to just sort of tell us not to believe our lion eyes.
[00:52:03]  You know, it's transitory, it's transitory.
[00:52:05]  No, it's not bad.
[00:52:05]  And then the press is writing, like, well, you shouldn't shut up.
[00:52:08]  You're mad you can't get a Peloton right now.
[00:52:10]  Oh my God, that's not who's being affected by inflation.
[00:52:15]  The rich people are not the ones who are really impacted by inflation, the ones buying Pelotons, right?
[00:52:20]  It's the people who have to watch it very carefully when they have to go buy their groceries every week.
[00:52:25]  They're worried they're not going to be able to make their car payment.
[00:52:28]  I understand.
[00:52:29]  I have these people in my family.
[00:52:30]  I understand this.
[00:52:33]  That's not the right group.
[00:52:34]  You know, going to the TNA and your pump bill is now 40 instead of 30 is a big deal, man.
[00:52:42]  You know, like, and so they can't be told that it's a lie.
[00:52:48]  You can't, well, actually, inflation.
[00:52:50]  You can't go, well, actually, because, you know, again, it's people see through the shit.
[00:52:54]  They see through the bullshit.
[00:52:56]  And it's just like, it's common sense, man.
[00:52:58]  Inflation is bad.
[00:52:59]  Like, and so it impacts them.
[00:53:01]  And so they don't want it.
[00:53:02]  And so, They're going to vote out whoever is responsible for it.
[00:53:06]  And Biden's a president, so he's responsible for it.
[00:53:09]  I also think these vaccine mandates are not, you know, they're not going to bode well for folks in the back row when it comes to voting time, because a lot of these folks are more working class folks who are getting swept up into this vaccine mandate.
[00:53:23]  And they don't want to have to lose their job if they don't want to get it.
[00:53:26]  You know, we've seen that too.
[00:53:28]  Let me shift gears and just ask you a little bit about what I kicked it off with, because I do think some of the press and the way they're going with our political narratives.
[00:53:38]  It really makes me think they're more out of touch than ever, Chris.
[00:53:41]  I mean, that New York Times piece suggesting that what we need, the answer to the problem right now, is a split ticket of Joe Biden and Liz Cheney.
[00:53:51]  I mean, it's obviously like that, that's insane.
[00:53:54]  So that's clearly written by a Democrat.
[00:53:57]  Was it, who was it?
[00:53:57]  Was it Tom Friedman?
[00:53:58]  Who was it wrote it?
[00:54:00]  It was Tom Friedman.
[00:54:01]  So obviously written by a Democrat, somebody who doesn't understand the right, because the right hates Liz Cheney.
[00:54:08]  I'm sorry, but they do.
[00:54:10]  That's a reality.
[00:54:11]  Only the left likes Liz Cheney at this point because she's been very condemned.
[00:54:15]  She's been quick to condemn Trump and Republicans who believe his story about the election and so on.
[00:54:20]  I actually had my team pull the numbers for me just so I could see.
[00:54:23]  Overall, only 7% of Americans, never mind Republicans, have a very favorable view of Liz.
[00:54:30]  And they say, amongst Republicans, CBS poll, 69% say she is not on message with our party.
[00:54:37]  So nobody.
[00:54:40]  What do you want?
[00:54:41]  That's not the answer.
[00:54:42]  And then you got Doug Shelling, who I love.
[00:54:44]  When I saw that headline, all I could think of was remember what the elites wanted the 2016 election to be.
[00:54:50]  They wanted it to be Hillary versus Jeb.
[00:54:56]  I actually said Tom Friedman got it wrong.
[00:54:58]  He was shooting for the Hillary versus Jeb energy.
[00:55:00]  That's what he should have proposed.
[00:55:06]  It's laughable at this point.
[00:55:09]  Tom Friedman is a perfect Davos kid.
[00:55:11]  Like, you know, it's like he's just, he's like, he's so out of touch.
[00:55:15]  I mean, the only time he, again, it's like, it's that joke.
[00:55:17]  The only time he ever tells a story about a real person is it's their cat, his cab driver.
[00:55:22]  Like, you know, like he doesn't know anybody else.
[00:55:25]  I mean, it's just so true.
[00:55:26]  Like, check.
[00:55:28]  I mean, it's like this generation of playing, they're playing like sim politics.

=== Risk Assessment vs Community Needs (03:06) ===

[00:55:32]  You know, they're just like, they're sitting in their little room in front of their computer, scared of normal people so they can't talk to them, coming up with fantasy politics.
[00:55:40]  Like, you know, sure.
[00:55:43]  Biden versus Cheney.
[00:55:45]  You want to see how that goes.
[00:55:48]  Yeah.
[00:55:49]  By the way, one of the points you raised, I wanted to ask you about because you're talking about the back row and COVID policy and so on.
[00:55:55]  My experience with the back row is.
[00:55:58]  They don't scare easy.
[00:56:00]  And I do think that explains some of the difference in attitude between them and those so called front row when it comes to COVID.
[00:56:06]  Like, they're not terrified about losing their lives, and B, they're used to taking risk and having some negative consequences, and they realize it tends to end fine.
[00:56:17]  Yeah, I think the big issue is that they're better judges of risk assessment than people realize because they have to do that.
[00:56:25]  I mean, that's their lies, risk assessment.
[00:56:30]  And they understand the consequences of a bad action because they've had bad actions and they suffer the consequences more.
[00:56:37]  It's kind of the sheltered versus unsheltered meow.
[00:56:40]  And the other thing is, what a lot of people in the elites are scared to admit or won't admit is that they kind of like the sheltering in place.
[00:56:50]  They kind of like the restrictions.
[00:56:55]  It's comfortable for them because the restrictions are not comfortable for the back.
[00:57:04]  So, it's convenient.
[00:57:06]  There was a quote from Rose Kennedy, the matriarch of the Kennedy family, the mother of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and all that crew.
[00:57:14]  And it was better a broken bone than a broken spirit.
[00:57:20]  So she let her kids take big risks.
[00:57:23]  And of course, they did come back to both help and haunt those children, but that's the way life goes.
[00:57:29]  But I feel like these people who want to shelter in place all the time and want the most restrictive policies and are terrified of getting a little virus and whatnot.
[00:57:37]  Want to control everybody else's behavior, they have broken spirits.
[00:57:40]  They didn't take enough risks.
[00:57:42]  They don't understand you can break a bone and it will heal and you'll be fine.
[00:57:47]  I mean, the degree people are going, to me, the most frustrating thing in this whole thing is they haven't factored in their calculations.
[00:57:59]  And that's what it is it's calculations for the people, how important human on human interaction is for people.
[00:58:08]  How central is community?
[00:58:09]  So, one of the things I write about in my book is the central role of McDonald's.
[00:58:13]  And what I keep on showing is that McDonald's are community centers.
[00:58:17]  And they're community centers because think about that.
[00:58:19]  McDonald's are made fast food franchises, they're meant for quick, immediate transactions.
[00:58:25]  But their community centers tell you how much people want community.
[00:58:28]  People need to be around other people.
[00:58:30]  Like, you can't play this game of policy where you build a spreadsheet and say, this is more efficient.

=== Staff Shortages Fuel Crime Spikes (03:02) ===

[00:58:38]  This saves X lives.
[00:58:39]  So, therefore, let's do it.
[00:58:40]  You're not calculating the cost of, People being removed from people.
[00:58:44]  Like, you know, the stories I've heard of people, especially during the early lockdown phases, of things that were denied of people and how impactful that's been.
[00:58:52]  And I will say, and this will probably anger some people on the right, that I think a lot of the increase in the crime that we've had in 2020 and 2021 is due to the fact that a lot of children are out of school, especially working class, poorer kids, where a lot of the crime is.
[00:59:08]  They're denied the structure of schools and they're denied being with their friends and they're denied being in communities.
[00:59:15]  It was, it leads to depression, boredom, bad behavior.
[00:59:21]  And so I don't think, I really worry like in five, six years, we won't fully understand until then the full cost that we've done, especially to teens and children, when we've basically denied people the ease of getting together.
[00:59:39]  Yeah.
[00:59:39]  I think the right would agree with you on that, Chris.
[00:59:43]  I think all of America is starting to realize that the consequences of shutting schools are catastrophic.
[00:59:49]  I mean, they're beyond.
[00:59:51]  And even I have been so outspoken about it, I can't stand the masks.
[01:00:00]  I know I'm very lucky to be at a school that's open.
[01:00:02]  Yeah, go ahead.
[01:00:04]  One quick thing is part of the reason that recent schools are closing is because teachers are getting ill.
[01:00:09]  So I myself recently signed up to be a substitute teacher.
[01:00:14]  Nice.
[01:00:15]  I haven't got called yet.
[01:00:17]  My application went in like three weeks ago, but a teacher, you know, if people out there are actually concerned about school closing, some of it is due to the fact that staff shortages.
[01:00:28]  And you can't go in.
[01:00:29]  Like COVID spreading like wildfire right now.
[01:00:31]  Can't go in for at least five days if you've got it.
[01:00:33]  And blah, blah, blah.
[01:00:33]  It's like we got to think of a different way for these teachers because, you know, now that COVID for most people is basically a cold, we can't stop, can't keep making them stay at home every day and expect society to function.
[01:00:44]  But I, you know, someone called me out when I was yelling about school closings and they said, well, put your money where your mouth is.
[01:00:50]  And that person was right.
[01:00:51]  So I signed up to be a substitute teacher because I should be willing.
[01:00:54]  If I'm calling out saying school closings are bad, I should be willing to go in and teach.
[01:00:58]  That's amazing.
[01:00:59]  Other people that, you know, that's one thing to think about doing is just do it.
[01:01:04]  Can you just?
[01:01:05]  You can just like sign up to be a substitute teacher.
[01:01:07]  I haven't got, I haven't, I put the application in.
[01:01:09]  I have, that was two weeks ago.
[01:01:11]  I haven't got called back, but they have, I happen to have a PhD.
[01:01:15]  So, you know, that helps.
[01:01:17]  Yeah, that helps.
[01:01:19]  But they do have, they have relaxed the requirements to become a substitute teacher.
[01:01:28]  They still do have the box on there that makes you prove that you're a Democrat, however.
[01:01:32]  So you could get in, but I could not.
[01:01:35]  They did not have that box.
[01:01:37]  Well, that's awesome.
[01:01:38]  Chris, I would love to have you back and continue this discussion.

=== Democrat Box for Teachers (09:00) ===

[01:01:41]  You're fascinating.
[01:01:42]  Really, really appreciate all the great work you've been doing.
[01:01:45]  All right.
[01:01:45]  Well, thank you very much for having me again.
[01:01:47]  Yeah, all the best.
[01:01:48]  Wow.
[01:01:49]  All right.
[01:01:49]  Coming up, we are going to spend the last block of our show looking into the future and the future that's already here.
[01:01:56]  Our next guest is going to talk to you about what your identity is going to look like in this new digital era and how a face scan might be able to show you what age you'll be when you die.
[01:02:08]  What diseases you're likely to get, and more.
[01:02:12]  You do not want to miss Futurist.
[01:02:15]  Tracy follows.
[01:02:16]  She's here next.
[01:02:21]  So, what does our future look like?
[01:02:24]  Deep fakes?
[01:02:25]  The metaverse?
[01:02:27]  Get ready because the future's here.
[01:02:28]  Joining me now is Futurist, CEO of Future Made and author of the book, The Future of You Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology?
[01:02:38]  Tracy.
[01:02:40]  Tracy, so good to have you here.
[01:02:41]  So, I'm fascinated by all of this, right?
[01:02:45]  Like where it's going.
[01:02:46]  And let me just start broadly because this is your area of expertise.
[01:02:50]  When you think about what's coming 10 years down the line, you know, 15 years down the line, what gets you most excited, scared, or intrigued?
[01:03:01]  All of it, I guess.
[01:03:02]  Thank you for having me here today.
[01:03:05]  Yeah, all of it.
[01:03:06]  I mean, there are some really big trends.
[01:03:07]  Obviously, we've talked about globalization for a long time.
[01:03:11]  We've had technology, digital technology, so digitization.
[01:03:15]  We've got increasing feminization.
[01:03:17]  But I think the thing that really intrigued me was how we think about ourselves in the future, how we represent ourselves, how we treat ourselves biologically, psychologically.
[01:03:29]  And I came to the conclusion that actually we're heading towards a future where the psychology of the self and the biology of the self are really going to be now joined by another dimension, I suppose.
[01:03:42]  Which is the technology of the self.
[01:03:44]  And so, as we head down, as you say, into the next 10 years, I can very well see us getting to 2030 and needing something like, I don't know, a digital bill of rights because we're using so much technology.
[01:03:59]  Not just externally, but internally to the self now.
[01:04:02]  And actually, we need to have probably more rights over that than we seem to have at the moment, even.
[01:04:10]  Yes.
[01:04:11]  Okay.
[01:04:11]  So, speaking of putting things inside of you in terms of technology, there's wearable tech now.
[01:04:17]  And there's a TikToker who goes by the name of Chip Girl, who's a great example of this.
[01:04:22]  And you just touched on it.
[01:04:25]  This woman, she's got 2.6 million followers.
[01:04:27]  She makes videos about her techie life.
[01:04:29]  And she and her husband have RFID chips implanted in their hands to make their home accessible only to them.
[01:04:37]  We have a clip of her.
[01:04:38]  This is Soundbite 9.
[01:04:40]  I call myself Chip Girl because I have an RFID chip inside of my hand that unlocks things around our house.
[01:04:45]  Today, somebody asked me what I can open with my hand.
[01:04:48]  So I'm going to show you.
[01:04:49]  This is also a door that it opens.
[01:04:51]  We've got another door that it opens.
[01:04:53]  It also opens our bedroom door, as well as our office, as well as the drawers in our office.
[01:05:00]  This is our nightstand, which can also be opened with a chip.
[01:05:04]  Our closet is chipped.
[01:05:06]  And this is really cool.
[01:05:07]  We can chip all of the doors.
[01:05:10]  Look, look at it.
[01:05:11]  We can even lock up our towels.
[01:05:13]  See?
[01:05:14]  What the?
[01:05:15]  Chip lock my makeup room.
[01:05:17]  Chip guy has an even cooler chip.
[01:05:18]  He's got a dual chip.
[01:05:20]  And he can hold information like a website or a social media page.
[01:05:25]  My hand can also open every door in my house.
[01:05:27]  I just grab the handle and turn it.
[01:05:29]  Why is this necessary?
[01:05:31]  Well, clearly, this is the new normal.
[01:05:34]  I think this isn't necessary.
[01:05:35]  So, I do know somebody with a chip like that, my friend Nick.
[01:05:39]  I think, you know, it's an experiment.
[01:05:41]  We always want to upgrade our bodies.
[01:05:43]  Well, some of us do, and to upgrade our cognition.
[01:05:46]  And I think that's being applauded in some areas.
[01:05:52]  Obviously, it gives you a story to tell about yourself in social media, which is increasingly important when it comes to the representation of the self, of course, to sort of invent oneself and reinvent oneself in these new media.
[01:06:05]  But also, I think people are just curious and they want to know what this technology will do.
[01:06:10]  I did interview people and talk to people in the book who are absolutely clear that they think that at some point in the future, we'll be getting these sort of upgrades, if you like, over time.
[01:06:23]  And that as humans, a lot of us will want these upgrades.
[01:06:26]  This is what people think is going to happen if you take the vaccine.
[01:06:30]  Some people think that Bill Gates is putting one of those chips in you.
[01:06:33]  It's not true.
[01:06:34]  Well, exactly that.
[01:06:35]  So there are many people who are very enthusiastic about it.
[01:06:38]  And many people who are incredibly reticent about it and are worried and quite terrified, it all comes down to this idea of how much autonomy do you have over this technology?
[01:06:49]  Do you have the rights to use it in the way you want to use it and have the control over your own data?
[01:06:55]  So it's user centric.
[01:06:56]  Or does a technology platform, the provider, the service that offers this, you, do they have the control over it?
[01:07:03]  I think that's pretty much what it comes down to.
[01:07:04]  What about that?
[01:07:05]  Because I read that you tried this.
[01:07:09]  Sort of biomarker, that's how it was described, is something that scans your face and analyzes and rates your face according to age, beauty, gender, emotional state, and life expectancy.
[01:07:21]  It's going to tell you how beautiful you are, what your main emotional state is, and how long you're going to live.
[01:07:26]  What is this thing?
[01:07:27]  Well, I think that this was a project, it's on my blog, but this was a project that's been rolled out as a research project, and I think it had European, like EU funding, but it is fascinating.
[01:07:38]  Obviously, you hold your phone up, and it basically Reads you.
[01:07:42]  I mean, this is like an app.
[01:07:43]  Yeah, it is an app.
[01:07:47]  And it's pretty scary because what it does, I mean, I don't want to spoil it for you, but as you go through it, it then tells you towards the end some of the things that you didn't know it was kind of testing you for and checking you for and reading you for.
[01:07:58]  No, don't tell us.
[01:08:00]  What's the name of the app?
[01:08:01]  Oh, I can't remember what it is now.
[01:08:03]  Oh, we got to find out.
[01:08:05]  I'll tell you.
[01:08:06]  You can put it in the notes.
[01:08:07]  But yeah, I mean, this is exactly it.
[01:08:10]  But this is, we are becoming machine readable.
[01:08:13]  And so whether it's RFID tags or it's an app or it's logging into Facebook, wherever it might be, and of course, this will be exacerbated because we'll be in a sort of immersive 3D media when we're in the metaverse.
[01:08:27]  These are all important things that I think we should be thinking about.
[01:08:31]  What regulations do we want?
[01:08:32]  What ethics do we want?
[01:08:34]  What privacy, what autonomy do we want?
[01:08:36]  And at the moment, the public aren't engaged in any of this.
[01:08:41]  Even just like a retina scan, it's like, well, who's going to have access to it and who else could use it and where could it be used against me?
[01:08:47]  I read in the same report about you and taking this test, it said your dominant expression was sad.
[01:08:56]  What?
[01:08:56]  Yes.
[01:08:57]  How long did you stare at it for?
[01:08:58]  What are you supposed to do?
[01:08:59]  Like grin like a moron while you're looking at your phone?
[01:09:02]  I think it's because I was in my pajamas doing it.
[01:09:05]  I don't know.
[01:09:06]  Yeah, it's always sad.
[01:09:07]  And quite frankly, when it came back with my age, it was older than I am.
[01:09:11]  I was not happy.
[01:09:13]  Oh, it said you look older than you actually are.
[01:09:17]  Is that what you're saying?
[01:09:18]  Oh, no.
[01:09:18]  And it told you you were going to live to be 81.
[01:09:21]  How did you feel about that?
[01:09:22]  Good or bad?
[01:09:24]  Well, you know, this is an interesting thing because I've been looking at this idea of, you know, predicting longevity or mortality.
[01:09:32]  Because increasingly, we're getting to the point where people want to use biomarkers, so data, but biomarkers to work out how healthy we are.
[01:09:44]  So, for example, we've known for a long time that whatever our cholesterol levels are might be an indication to whether we might suffer heart disease or something.
[01:09:51]  Well, there's a whole plethora of these biomarkers now.
[01:09:54]  And increasingly, people are kind of saying, well, actually, if you have enough of these biomarkers, then you don't necessarily have to have, we don't need to talk about.
[01:10:03]  Lifespan in a chronological age, we can talk about health span.
[01:10:08]  And increasingly, I'm reading lots of reports about how, you know, two 70 year olds, if you like, one healthy and one less healthy, are going to be treated in very different ways, not just by insurance companies, but by anyone really.
[01:10:22]  And we can get to this point where, you know, we are so tracked or we're tracking ourselves, as we saw in your video, that actually, you know, we are wanting to get feedback all the time on, you know, Well, how healthy am I?
[01:10:35]  How many years left have I got?
[01:10:36]  How many, like, what might I die of?

=== Voice Deepfakes After Death (05:35) ===

[01:10:41]  What might I survive?
[01:10:42]  You know, and we don't even know if I do that.
[01:10:45]  I didn't, I don't want to get that 23andMe sort of DNA.
[01:10:48]  Like, I might do like the background thing, but not to know.
[01:10:52]  They'll tell you, like, these are the latent diseases that could come out in you.
[01:10:55]  Like, I'm not sure I want to know.
[01:10:57]  And I definitely don't want somebody looking at me telling me what age I'm going to die, though I don't think this app can actually do that.
[01:11:02]  But it might be just fun to try.
[01:11:04]  Okay.
[01:11:04]  My team tells me the app is called How Normal Am I?
[01:11:07]  Available at Sherpa, S H E R P A dot E D U.
[01:11:12]  So it could be fun for, you know, just to check out for kicks.
[01:11:15]  But let's talk about one area in which, like, the future is here and it's scary, and that is deepfakes.
[01:11:24]  As a newswoman, these terrify me.
[01:11:26]  I mean, it's not too long in the future that everything we run, we're going to have to ask ourselves is that the actual Rochelle Walensky, Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden, or is that a deepfake?
[01:11:38]  I have two that my team put together.
[01:11:40]  To show the audience and people who are listening to this, go check out our YouTube.
[01:11:44]  We posted about two hours after the show ends, youtube.comslash Megan Kelly, because you've got to see these examples.
[01:11:50]  One I've seen, one I haven't.
[01:11:51]  The first is Richard Nixon.
[01:11:53]  So apparently, they released a transcript recently of the speech Richard Nixon was going to give if Apollo 11.
[01:12:01]  didn't end well if everybody died.
[01:12:04]  And it was a paper transcript.
[01:12:06]  He never, thank God, had to deliver that speech, but they put together a deep fake showing him allegedly doing it, you know, quote him, allegedly doing it.
[01:12:13]  And here it is, part of it.
[01:12:15]  Good evening, my fellow Americans.
[01:12:20]  Fates has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
[01:12:30]  For every human being, Who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.
[01:12:43]  So that never happened.
[01:12:46]  I mean, that's like we have to remind ourselves that that looks like it happened, but it didn't happen.
[01:12:51]  It's a deep fake.
[01:12:53]  It reminds me of the one that the Times put together of JFK delivering his speech that he would have given in Dallas.
[01:13:00]  So they managed to put That the voice fakery together.
[01:13:05]  But there are many companies working on this.
[01:13:07]  So, voice deepfakes, as we might think of it, that are building these interactive AI that are taking all of these snippets from people's speeches or conversations or appearances, logging it, recording it in anticipation of when that person is no longer alive, they'll still be able to create a conversation and create a language and get the correct intonation so that.
[01:13:33]  There is some sense of, let's call it the digital afterlife.
[01:13:37]  So if somebody passes, then you can still have a conversation with them.
[01:13:41]  I mean, there are so many apps now doing this and quite a lot of services.
[01:13:44]  Who thinks of the responses?
[01:13:46]  Is it sophisticated?
[01:13:49]  Yeah, but like I can see how they could fake, you know, okay, read the Richard Nixon speech, but how do they have somebody have a conversation with you?
[01:13:56]  I mean, somebody has to do the thinking in terms of responses.
[01:14:00]  Yeah, and that's what the AI does because it's so sophisticated.
[01:14:03]  You can do that.
[01:14:04]  There's a company called Hereafter AI.
[01:14:07]  The guy lost his father, but before he did, because he knew he was terminally ill, he recorded a lot of the conversations so that when he passed, he could still have these conversations.
[01:14:15]  Now, one knows they're not real, of course, but in terms of having some value, it turns out that it's of some comfort to some people and that they can feel like somebody's still with them and around.
[01:14:29]  Well, it's kind of like Kim Kardashian had that birthday party, and Kanye West, when they were still together, had a hologram of her dead dad, Robert Kardashian, show up with a message, which No, no, thank you.
[01:14:40]  I would not want that.
[01:14:42]  Okay, two more on this front because we do have the voice as well, this Adobe voice Photoshop.
[01:14:48]  It was so realistic, they didn't release it because they knew it could be misused.
[01:14:53]  I'll get to that in one second, but I'm dying to see my team has one of me, a deep fake of me from the movie Snow White and the Huntsman, which I haven't yet seen.
[01:15:02]  We will see it together now.
[01:15:04]  Here we go.
[01:15:04]  Oh, it's just showing my face.
[01:15:08]  Oh, that's so weird.
[01:15:10]  Oh, well, this version of me is much more attractive than the real deal.
[01:15:15]  Whoever played Snow White and the Huntsman was a very good looking, had a very good looking body.
[01:15:21]  That one I didn't find as realistic.
[01:15:22]  Okay, it's fine.
[01:15:23]  They kind of just smushed my face into this body.
[01:15:25]  But let's listen to the Adobe Voice Photoshop where they, you set it up, Tracy, because apparently they, like this technology is so good, they realized they could never release it to the public.
[01:15:35]  It would be misused.
[01:15:37]  I don't think I've seen this one, actually.
[01:15:38]  Oh, you haven't?
[01:15:40]  Okay, then let's just do it again.
[01:15:42]  Let's have a look at it.
[01:15:42]  Yeah.
[01:15:43]  Here we go.
[01:15:44]  Introducing Project Vocal.
[01:15:47]  Project Vocal allows you to edit speech in text.
[01:15:52]  So let's bring it up.
[01:15:53]  So I just load this audio piece into Vocal.
[01:15:58]  I jumped on the bed and And I kissed my dogs and my wife in that order.
[01:16:07]  Yeah, so how about we mess with who he actually kissed?
[01:16:12]  And here we go.
[01:16:14]  And I kissed Jordan and my dogs.

=== Medical Registries and Group Think (10:00) ===

[01:16:16]  Well.
[01:16:30]  You're a witch.
[01:16:32]  We can actually type small phrases.
[01:16:34]  So let's say, and playback.
[01:16:40]  And I kissed Jordan three times.
[01:16:46]  So Jordan Peele is one of the guys involved there.
[01:16:50]  So those phrases were never uttered by the speaker, they were made up by the computer, and they sound exactly the same.
[01:17:00]  I think this could be misused, not only the voice, But the visual and the deep fake in general, in ways that forget news people have to deal with, this could lead to wars.
[01:17:12]  This could be, I mean, it could be potentially catastrophic.
[01:17:15]  Oh, it could be.
[01:17:16]  And first off, it'll become a massive industry.
[01:17:20]  And then, obviously, it can be weaponized, as you quite rightly point out.
[01:17:24]  And it is to some extent already.
[01:17:27]  There's a thought that we will have to have some kind of digital forensics around this, some tools, because we're not going to be able to tell the difference between the real and the fake ourselves.
[01:17:37]  It's going to pass us by.
[01:17:38]  We can't.
[01:17:40]  We just can't do that as humans.
[01:17:42]  But we will need some sort of algorithmic tools.
[01:17:45]  We'll need some sort of AI as an assistive service, probably, to try and detect what's real and what's fake.
[01:17:51]  But of course, then you're becoming very, very dependent upon more and more machine learning, more and more AI, and not making these decisions or these judgments oneself because one can't.
[01:18:02]  Well, that's what worries me.
[01:18:04]  So I like technology.
[01:18:05]  You know, I feel like it's exciting.
[01:18:06]  And for the most part, it can enhance your life.
[01:18:10]  But as with the iPhone, I tend to love it and hate it in equal degrees.
[01:18:14]  So, it can, the technology can be used against us.
[01:18:17]  And I was thinking about it when I was looking at the Apple Air Tag, right?
[01:18:24]  And this is something where you can use it to track every movement that you make.
[01:18:32]  So, if you don't want to lose your keys or your dog or your wallet, you could put an Apple ID tag on it.
[01:18:40]  But this has already potentially been used, I guess, by stalkers.
[01:18:45]  Against victims, thieves, right?
[01:18:48]  So there's, you know, how do we reconcile that conflict?
[01:18:54]  We have to get more engaged in this, and people need to understand some of this technology better, or certainly its implications.
[01:19:02]  I think one of the things that's happening a lot with the internet is it's incredibly, obviously, it's connected and it's making us all interconnected, but it's pushing us all together to behave in a certain way together and really creating a collectivism.
[01:19:17]  And that is in turn creating a group think.
[01:19:20]  And anybody who has a dissenting voice or a different opinion isn't kind of going along with this collectivism.
[01:19:29]  And what I'm trying to say is it's very important that we have our individual identity and autonomy over our identity.
[01:19:37]  So if we feel some of these technologies are sacrificing that, and I think with some of the stuff you've just been talking about, deepfakes or even tracking or surveillance, you know, it can be that we then succumb.
[01:19:50]  To this technology that then has become so powerful or has a sense of control over us rather than us controlling it.
[01:19:57]  And there's no other way around it other than us trying to make ourselves.
[01:20:01]  More cognizant of it, more aware of it, and understand the implications and bring that to the debate and the discussion.
[01:20:08]  Well, one of the things that interests me about it is promotion of longevity, right?
[01:20:13]  I mean, if they can use tech to extend our lifespan, you know, the pill that makes you age slower, or maybe that's more medicine and not tech, but they are, this is a tech thing, and it's a piece of the futuristic business, extending our longevity.
[01:20:30]  So, what's happening there, and is there any reason for, you know, celebration?
[01:20:36]  Well, I think there's a certain set of people who are looking at that.
[01:20:39]  It's usually billionaires, isn't it, who want to extend their life.
[01:20:45]  I think it's probably because it's the only thing they can't overcome.
[01:20:49]  I mean, with so much wealth, you can overcome so many other barriers and obstacles in life, but you know, death is going to get us all.
[01:20:56]  Great equalizer.
[01:20:58]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:20:59]  Death and taxes, although not taxes anymore, just death.
[01:21:04]  I think this is why they're looking at longevity, and there's a real resurgence in the likes of cryogenics.
[01:21:13]  So, the ability to freeze oneself or even just freeze one's head, basically.
[01:21:23]  It's just your brain.
[01:21:24]  It's not the whole body.
[01:21:25]  And then hope that there's going to be a sophisticated technology that can revive one.
[01:21:31]  And there's an awful lot of investment going into both, as you say, the longevity science, trying to slow down the degradation of our.
[01:21:38]  Our cells and the aging of the body, and also this idea of reviving us after we are sort of dead.
[01:21:47]  There's a lot of work going on in Berlin at Biostasis.
[01:21:51]  So, yes, so we seem to be, we seem to be, we want to keep our identity going as long as possible.
[01:22:00]  I think that's what it is.
[01:22:02]  Some do.
[01:22:02]  I mean, I definitely would like to live longer, but I don't just want to, you know, I don't definitely don't want to be frozen and brought back.
[01:22:08]  That would be very scary.
[01:22:09]  I don't want to.
[01:22:10]  Can you imagine somebody like George Washington being brought back in today's day and age?
[01:22:13]  He'd be terrifying.
[01:22:15]  Well, this is one of the things, actually, because when you die, of course, you are handed over as human remains and you lose your identity.
[01:22:22]  It's not like you can come back.
[01:22:24]  You have lost your identity then.
[01:22:25]  So who are you coming back as?
[01:22:28]  And who are your friends?
[01:22:29]  And where do you get a job?
[01:22:30]  You know, there are some practical considerations.
[01:22:33]  Yeah.
[01:22:33]  And what makes you, you, right?
[01:22:35]  Like, what makes you, you?
[01:22:37]  Is it just what's inside this human frame or is it?
[01:22:42]  The timeframe in which you live and the people you surround yourself with, and the sum of your, in my case, now 51 years experience.
[01:22:49]  Exactly.
[01:22:50]  And that's a very Buddhist way of thinking about it.
[01:22:52]  You only are you really towards the end of one's life because you are the sum of all of your experiences and interactions with everyone you've ever known.
[01:23:01]  Maybe I'm Buddhist.
[01:23:02]  I don't know.
[01:23:03]  I'm kind of into Buddhism when I hear about it.
[01:23:06]  Okay.
[01:23:06]  So I want to talk about 23andMe for just one second because I do think that's a fascinating concept.
[01:23:11]  And I know some people who have gotten the health tracking done where it's like they say you've got.
[01:23:16]  It's not like I don't know if you could call it a latent disease, but they can say you're more prone to get this disease and predisposition.
[01:23:23]  Predisposition, exactly.
[01:23:24]  So, how far has that technology come since it was unleashed?
[01:23:30]  I think that's probably gone a lot further than we know, certainly than I know.
[01:23:36]  But I did my own DNA testing because I wanted some functional nutrition and I did that.
[01:23:43]  And I felt that was fine.
[01:23:45]  And I checked out the company when I did it.
[01:23:47]  I understood their privacy around their data principles and policies.
[01:23:53]  But I think a lot of this sort of biological data, which is really valuable now, I mean, it's so valuable to companies.
[01:24:01]  And let's think about it, there's more data in the biological world than there is anywhere, really, that we don't really know what's happening with this data.
[01:24:11]  In the UK, there was quite an uproar when we found out, or were told by the government, that our GP data was going to be given to third parties for research.
[01:24:22]  What's GP data?
[01:24:23]  So, general practitioners, so our doctors.
[01:24:25]  So, our patient records, our patient data was going to be shared with third parties for research purposes.
[01:24:32]  What?
[01:24:32]  And people were in uproar.
[01:24:34]  It's now gone back into consultation because people just did not understand that this has gone this far.
[01:24:41]  So it is now in consultation, as I understand.
[01:24:43]  But one of the interesting things about this is that, to my point about the collectivism as being a good thing and individuality and identity, personal identity being a bad thing or a selfish thing, what we're seeing is this mantra now and a narrative about the solidarity approach for biological.
[01:25:02]  Data.
[01:25:03]  So we heard it around COVID and we're hearing it around other things, and it equates quite well with the World Economic Forum's report on shaping the internet of bodies that there is somehow some sense of common purpose and community spirit to make one's personal biological data ready and available to be used in the public forum for the public good.
[01:25:32]  Now, I can see all the advantages of that, and there are indeed advantages of it.
[01:25:35]  Course in research, particularly, but I think there's definitely a pressure to give over more and more and more biological data without really thinking it through.
[01:25:45]  And I think, you know, the COVID passport area is just a glimpse of what's to come there.
[01:25:52]  That's right, because people are worried.
[01:25:53]  I mean, there was a proposal not long ago, just this week, I think, in the news from Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who's the brother of Rahm Emanuel, former Obama chief of staff and mayor of Chicago.
[01:26:04]  But Zeke is a big time medical guy, and he and some others issued these papers.
[01:26:09]  And they were talking about some sort of medical registry or some roving medical squad that might sort of keep track of your medical information.

=== Contact Lenses and Biological Data (03:46) ===

[01:26:17]  And it's going to be electronic.
[01:26:20]  I mean, I don't know that it's going to happen, but if it does, it will be electronic and they will know a lot more about you than just whether you've gotten the COVID vaccine.
[01:26:27]  Then, you know, you have to worry.
[01:26:28]  Somebody like Zeke Emanuel, he doesn't think you should live past 75, that we should be extending people's lives past that point because he thinks you're kind of out of gas at that point.
[01:26:36]  As far as Zeke says, well, I don't want him to know what's in my medical profile.
[01:26:39]  What if I need a lung transplant?
[01:26:41]  Zeke says, I can't have it because I'm 74, right?
[01:26:43]  Like, I don't know if.
[01:26:44]  I just, I realize they already make these decisions every day, but I think a lot of people don't want to give any more info to the government in particular than they already have.
[01:26:51]  Let me switch to something else because I do, I want to ask you broad brush the dumb but fun questions.
[01:26:56]  When you look ahead to the future, you know, when we were kids back in the 1970s, we used to watch the Jetsons and we saw Judy Jetson talking on the phone, quote unquote, quote unquote, phone with video.
[01:27:09]  And you thought, oh, that's so cool.
[01:27:10]  Like, imagine if you're talking on the phone, you could actually see the other person.
[01:27:13]  Well, Of course, we do that every day now, thanks to the iPhone.
[01:27:17]  Our kids really don't know any other way.
[01:27:19]  They don't even understand really the landline.
[01:27:22]  You watch something like Back to the Future, which was, I think, in 1985.
[01:27:26]  They had this hovering skateboard.
[01:27:29]  Well, we have that.
[01:27:29]  We have it on land and we have it on water.
[01:27:32]  So I wonder what you think the cool new tools we might be using in the near or long term might be.
[01:27:41]  Is there anything that virtual reality glasses, what is it?
[01:27:45]  Yeah, I mean, yes, audio visual, virtual reality, or augmented extended reality glasses, they're coming, they're already in the pipeline.
[01:27:52]  But actually, what's more interesting is contact lenses.
[01:27:55]  So, the companies that are working on the contact lenses that can give you the sort of virtual, sorry, augmented reality overlay.
[01:28:02]  Onto the physical world through some really sophisticated contact lenses.
[01:28:09]  I mean, one may or may not want to use that sort of thing, but I think one of the things I'm most interested in is how the smartphone or the device that you were just talking about disappears so that we have more connected clothing and we have things like really innovative shape shifting materials so that anything can portray imagery and anything can be connected.
[01:28:34]  I don't need my smartphone, I can just Have a gesture around my jacket or something like that.
[01:28:40]  And that allows me to call someone or talk to somebody in a sort of ambient context.
[01:28:45]  So, yeah, so moving to sort of ambient computing and spatial computing where the actual devices and the hardware sort of disintegrate, they move away and the communication happens, you know, ambiently.
[01:28:58]  How would you do, you know, games, right?
[01:29:01]  I have a 12, 10, and eight year old.
[01:29:03]  They like to do games on an iPhone.
[01:29:05]  You think that can move into your.
[01:29:07]  Jacket sleeve?
[01:29:08]  I mean, how?
[01:29:09]  Oh, yeah, definitely.
[01:29:10]  So, that's sort of happening already with virtual reality.
[01:29:14]  So, if you're doing body scans, it's as you move your body, that's you in the virtual reality game moving it kind of physically in the immersive environment.
[01:29:26]  So, that's kind of happening.
[01:29:27]  And also, there's a layer of biofeedback on that.
[01:29:30]  So, it's always to your point about surveilling us and our body and our physicality, there's always a feedback loop with the data going from our body is being measured.
[01:29:40]  It's um, obs are being measured if you like, and it's feeding back, um, into how you're behaving and how you need to behave and how you might change.
[01:29:48]  And one of those things will be very interesting for the future of training and learning.
[01:29:53]  Wow, I can't imagine walking around with contacts in that augmented my reality.
[01:29:59]  Uh, though I think it would have been very useful for me during my 14 years of cable news.

=== Biofeedback Loops Change Behavior (00:30) ===

[01:30:04]  Well, there's always tomorrow.
[01:30:07]  Tracy follows, you're fascinating.
[01:30:08]  Thank you so much for all the good information.
[01:30:10]  Oh, thanks for having me.
[01:30:12]  All right, and don't forget her book is The Future.
[01:30:15]  Of you, Marco Rubio.
[01:30:17]  Senator Marco Rubio is here tomorrow, first time on the show.
[01:30:21]  Don't miss that.
[01:30:22]  We'll see you then.
[01:30:24]  Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
[01:30:26]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.