Ep. 265 - The Shocking Attack On The Press That The Press Is Ignoring
Today on the show we'll discuss a real attack on the press. But this is one that the press itself ignores, and maybe even defends, because of their ideological allegiances. Also, in the wake of an embarrassing Ben Carson video, we'll try to figure out why Trump made Carson head of HUD rather than appointing him Surgeon General or head of Health and Human services. And finally, why have we decided that it's smart for young married couples to begin their lives together by bankrupting themselves on expensive rings and fancy wedding receptions? Date: 05-22-19
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, let's discuss a real attack on the press.
How about that?
We hear a lot about attacks on the press, but this is a real one.
Only this is one that the press itself is ignoring, or even defending.
Also, Kamala Harris embarrasses herself in awkward fashion.
Ben Carson, a world-renowned surgeon, demonstrates that maybe he should have been given a job in government that actually relates to his field.
And finally, we'll ask the question, Why have we decided that it's smart for young married couples to begin their lives together by bankrupting themselves to buy expensive rings and fancy wedding receptions?
We'll try to answer that question today as well on The Matt Walsh Show.
Okay, we're going to talk about a real attack on the press, on journalism, on free speech, on the First Amendment, but this is one that the press itself has no interest in reporting on.
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Okay, so we hear that the press is under attack.
That journalists are courageous martyrs.
That the government is stomping on the First Amendment to hinder the work of these brave, you know, warriors for truth.
The only problem is that most of the time when you hear this stuff, the people who make this claim have difficulty citing any examples.
They'll say this, but then what examples do they give you?
Well, they'll say, well, you know, Trump says mean stuff about CNN.
Or they'll talk about some of the mean gifs.
And it is gif, not jif.
That Trump retweets about the media.
But as for actual legal persecution of the press, they don't seem to have very many examples of that that they can provide, right?
Or at least, I should say, there aren't very many examples that they would want to provide in the left-wing media.
But here's one.
This is one of the ones they don't like.
But we've got one.
This is a real live example here, okay?
We caught one here.
This really is an attack on the press.
This is an attack on the First Amendment.
It is chilling, terrifying, potentially disastrous for the First Amendment itself.
It is an assault on the work of journalists.
So here it is right here, guys.
If you're looking for an example, you found it.
It's right here.
Except, even though it's The best example of government persecution of journalists in America, it's also the one example that journalists in America will ignore, or even defend.
David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt are two journalists with the Center for Medical Progress.
Maybe you recognize their names.
You should, if you don't.
They're the people who infiltrated Planned Parenthood in an undercover investigation a few years ago, and they revealed widespread criminal conduct at every level of the organization.
They revealed, among other things, that Planned Parenthood haggles over and sells the body parts of the babies that they kill.
And we'll get to this in a second, but I know that if any liberal that's watching this will say, oh, it's deceptively edited.
No, it wasn't.
We'll get to that in a second.
But that's what it proved.
Rather than it leading to the prosecution of the crooks at Planned Parenthood who are engaged in this macabre form of human trafficking, it has led to the prosecution of the journalists who discovered the crime.
and which is a basically if you look up shooting the messenger in the dictionary you're gonna find this case that's what's happening here the state of california First, when Kamala Harris was Attorney General and now with Xavier Becerra, both absurdly and openly biased in favor of Planned Parenthood and against these journalists, both recipients of donations from Planned Parenthood, both who have pledged to stand with Planned Parenthood.
Nonetheless, the state of California, led by these two partisan minions of the abortion industry, has been trying to punish Daleiden and Merritt for years now for exposing these crimes, for engaging in journalism, the kind of journalism that other journalists aren't going to do.
Trying to exact vengeance on them, essentially, for embarrassing Planned Parenthood.
Now they claim, the state of California claims, that Planned Parenthood's privacy has been invaded, and that that's the great crime here.
But of course, privacy is always invaded in undercover journalism.
That's part of the point.
Right?
If there's some truth that's being hidden from the public, some truth that the public has a right to know about, and that's what undercover journalism is supposed to do, is to tell the public things that we should know but we're not being told because it's being kept from us.
Such as, by the way, Planned Parenthood, which gets 500 million dollars a year in the Welfare payments from the government is selling body parts.
That's something we should know.
Our money is going to this organization.
We have a right to know it.
But if it's being kept from you, if lies are being told, if secrets are being kept, then the only way to reveal it is to invade the privacy of this organization, which is what they did, which is what undercover journalists, again, always do.
And if this is a criminal case of invasion of privacy, then nobody can ever do undercover journalism again.
That's what's at stake here.
Not that the media cares.
There was a, I believe it was in California, where there was a few years ago an undercover investigation done at, I think it was like meatpacking plants.
And you hear about this kind of stuff all the time.
Where someone infiltrates one of these organizations to try to find out what's happening so that they can tell the public.
That's undercover journalism.
If Dave Daleiden and Sandra Merritt can't do that, then nobody can do it.
So these two journalists have been charged with 15 felony counts.
The case was stayed by the California Supreme Court a few weeks ago, but now it's moving forward.
And now California will have the ability to try to lock these people in prison Attack on the press?
On journalism?
On speech?
Yeah, I would say that's what it is.
A partisan attorney general who is a supporter of Planned Parenthood and a recipient of Planned
Parenthood money is leading the prosecution against two undercover journalists who expose
legal activity within Planned Parenthood, the organization that gives him money.
Attack on the press, on journalism, on speech, yeah, I would say that's what it is.
Now a few points, it will be said as I referenced earlier that, and it has been said a million times,
that the undercover Planned Parenthood videos were deceptively edited.
This has been the slogan of abortion apologists for years now, ever since these videos came out.
They say it reflexively, almost like a hiccup.
They can't even help themselves.
The moment you bring it up, they're, deceptively edited!
Deceptively edited!
And if it were true that Dalyden and Merritt basically went in there and, you know, using camera tricks or something, they made up a bunch of stuff and lied about what they discovered and made it seem like Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts when really they weren't.
Which, when someone calls it deceptively edited, that's what they're implying.
That, no, they didn't really discover that, they just made it seem like that.
Which, already, there should be red flags there because, you know, I feel like You could do an undercover investigation of me and record everything that I say, secretly, and then deceptively edit it.
And in doing that, you may be able to accuse me and make it seem like I said a lot of things I didn't say.
I don't think even with the most deceptive of editing, you could make it seem like I ever tried to sell a baby's kidney, right?
Because I just...
Unless you're hiring voice actors to come in and dub over what I actually said.
There's no way, just anything that I say, there's no way you could slice it up in any form that would make it sound like I'm trying to sell a dead body.
That's a difficult form of deceptive editing.
So, that should have been Red Flag.
When you hear this Claim of deceptive editing.
But the point is, if it was deceptively edited, then yeah, in that case, this would not be an undercover investigation.
This would just be a smear campaign and yeah, sure, go ahead and prosecute him.
Just like Chris Hansen used to do those undercover stings to catch child molesters.
I think he might still do them, actually.
And he invaded their privacy.
He lied.
He met them under false pretenses.
He did all that.
But it was considered okay because it was an undercover investigation to expose child predators, and it's sort of understood that unless you are secretive about it and sneaky, you're not going to be able to—no child molester is going to show up if he knows that he's going to be on TV in the middle of an investigation.
But, if Hansen had edited the tape to make someone look like a child molester who really was there to deliver a pizza or something, then he would have gotten in trouble for that.
Obviously.
So, were the Planned Parenthood videos deceptively edited?
No.
No, they were not.
It has been proven that they weren't.
I want to emphasize that.
It has been proven that they were not deceptively edited.
The people who say that they were deceptively edited are either ignorant or lying.
There is no third option.
Now, they weren't deceptively edited.
Were they edited at all?
Well, obviously they were.
It was hours and hours of video footage, and a lot of irrelevant material has to be cut out so that it's digestible and so that it's something that people will watch.
If they just release 13 hours of tape and say, hey, sort through it and find what you find, then it's going to have no impact because no one's going to watch it.
You're not going to do that.
You're going to release the highlight, the point.
And as long as you put it in context, And you properly represent it, then it is not a deceptive edit.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled recently.
Of course, you didn't hear this in the news.
They ruled that the videos were not deceptively edited.
Here's what the court said.
Reading now.
The record reflects that OIG, Office of Inspector General, had submitted a report from a forensic firm concluding that the video was authentic and not deceptively edited.
And the plaintiffs, Planned Parenthood, did not identify any particular omission or addition in the video footage.
There is no question that the OIG here made factual findings after viewing the videos and related evidence on the basis of the administrative record.
And so it goes on from there.
So they did a forensic analysis and they did not find any deceptive editing.
But it gets better, okay?
Planned Parenthood itself hired its own investigators.
Hired Fusion GPS, actually.
You may remember them.
Hired them to do an analysis and prove that there were deceptive edits.
Again, this is an analysis that was paid for, subsidized, by Planned Parenthood.
And now, let me read from their report.
Once again.
This is from Planned Parenthood, or at least the people they hired.
They're going to try to dress this up as favorably for themselves as they can.
Here's what they said.
Fusion GPS analysts reviewed all four of the full footage videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, totaling more than 12 hours of tape.
This analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.
But we did identify cuts, skips, missing tape, and changes in camera angle.
A forensic video expert, Grant Fredericks, reviewed segments of tape identified as suspicious during this preliminary review.
This professional analysis revealed that the full footage videos contained numerous intentional post-production edits.
While many of these edits removed likely irrelevant content from the beginning and end of the interviews, all four videos also contained intentional edits that removed content from the middle of the videos.
Okay, did you get that?
This analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.
This is from like three years ago, that Planned Parenthood admitted that there wasn't deceptive edits, and you still hear this from the media, that there were deceptive edits.
Um, the best they could do is say, well, there weren't deceptive edits, but there were intentional edits.
Well, of course there were intentional edits.
Yes, there are cuts and skips, because obviously you're going to make cuts to any video that you film, and then release to mass consumption.
Almost every piece of footage you have ever watched on the news, on any channel, at any point, anywhere, has been, uh, has cuts and skips and missing pieces of it.
Because that's the way it works.
The question is whether those cuts and skips are meant to deceive, meant to give a false impression, meant to make it seem like something is happening when it's not really happening.
The answer that we get now from two forensic investigations into the footage, one funded by Planned Parenthood, is that no.
The edits were not deceptive, they're just irrelevant.
Cutting out irrelevant stuff.
So that's it.
That's the end.
You cannot claim anymore that these videos were deceptively edited unless you are willing to be a blatant, despicable liar.
And I know that a lot of pro-abortion people are willing to be that.
But, I mean, really look in the mirror and ask yourself, are you happy being that?
Because I wouldn't be.
Matter how you feel on the subject, you just have to deal with it.
This stuff is on tape.
When you watch the tape and you hear someone from Planned Parenthood trying to sell a body part, that's what happened!
You might not like it, you might wish it didn't happen, I wish it didn't happen too, but it did.
Period.
Okay, so if the video was not deceptively edited, then what does that mean?
It means that when Planned Parenthood officials are caught on tape haggling over the price of a dead baby's liver, it's real, it happened, and it's illegal.
And these journalists exposed actual illegal activity, and now they're being prosecuted for it.
Because that really is what this all comes down to.
If the videos are real, then this is a legitimate investigation.
And they uncovered, at a minimum, they uncovered widespread unethical activity.
At a minimum.
When really it is federal crimes they uncovered.
That's investigative journalism.
Even if you don't like the results.
And so this is, again, if they If they are successfully prosecuted for this and they go to jail or they face some kind of legal penalty, the implications for all of journalism are vast and troubling.
Alright, let's move on.
I've got two... Lighten the mood a little bit.
I've got two extremely awkward videos to play.
One courtesy of Democrats and one courtesy of Republicans.
We're going to be bipartisan.
So here's the first from Kamala Harris.
We have a little fun kicker that we like to do with all of the presidential candidates that come on here today.
It's called Candidate Mixtape.
That was the musical sting for it.
And we like to talk a lot about music here on this program.
So, what is your favorite musical genre?
Oh, I mean, I'm hip-hop and reggae and jazz.
Those are some of my favorites.
Okay, do you have a favorite band or favorite musician?
I'd say one of my favorites is Bob Marley.
Good choice.
You can't go wrong with that.
That's a crowd pleaser.
On your mixtape, what would be like your favorite three songs?
Oh, okay.
Let's see.
Aretha Franklin.
Anything Aretha Franklin.
I would say Bob Marley.
And then, I don't know, I love Cardi B. As she says.
Those are great.
Thank you for playing along.
Oh, man.
Lord help us.
Lord save us.
I could barely get through that the first time.
It took me like five tries to watch that whole minute-long clip because the second-hand embarrassment is so extreme that I can't stomach it.
And I'm going to leave aside the fact that a presidential candidate lends her endorsement to Cardi B, a woman who admits to drugging and robbing men.
So we'll put that to the side, even though really we shouldn't, but I will.
It's obvious that Kamala Harris has never listened to music in her life.
She lists Aretha Franklin and Bob Marley as two of her favorite songs on her mixtape.
And I'm not sure if she knows what a mixtape is.
I'm not even sure if she knows what a song is.
My favorite song is Elvis Presley by the Beatles from the album Radiohead.
Hi kids, I'm cool too.
It's, you know what, let me just say, if you don't like music, just say that you don't listen to music.
It's okay.
Because she's not the first person to fall victim to this.
When you've been in a conversation, you're talking about your favorite bands or whatever, and someone turns to someone else, hey, what do you listen to?
And you can tell they're trying to come up with... because you can tell they don't listen to anything.
Which is fine!
You don't have to listen to music.
It's not a requirement.
I think it's a little weird to not listen to music.
For me, it seems like a really human... it's like a human need, almost, music is.
But if you don't listen, you don't listen.
It's fine.
It's okay.
You're not a bad person.
You can just say, oh, you know, I don't really listen to anything.
It just doesn't interest me.
But then you've got, but people don't want to say that because they feel like they're going to be judged.
Which they will be a little bit.
If you don't listen to music, I'm going to judge you a small amount.
Not that, just a little bit of judgment I'm going to throw at you.
And it'll fade, don't worry.
It's just a little moment of judgment, no big deal.
But that's better than the alternative where you start making up your favorite genre off the top of your head and now the judgment is heavy.
Now it is just, these are just, it's like a machine gun of judgment coming at you.
Whereas before it was just a little squirt gun.
So that was pretty bad.
All right, now let's be bipartisan.
Ben Carson is the head of housing and urban development, for some reason.
The word housing is right there in the name.
So you'd think he'd be familiar with super basic real estate terms that even I know.
And I don't know anything about real estate, but As you look it up, I'd also like you to get back to me, if you don't mind, to explain the disparity in REO rates.
Do you know what an REO is?
An Oreo?
R. No, not an Oreo.
An R-E-O.
R-E-O.
Real estate?
What's the O stand for?
The organization owned real estate owned.
That's what happens when a property goes to foreclosure.
We call it an REO and FHA loans have much higher REOs.
That is they go to foreclosure rather than to loss mitigation or to non foreclosure alternatives like short sales then comparable loans at the GSEs.
So I'd like to know why we're having more foreclosures that end in people losing their homes with stains to their credit and disruption to their communities and their neighborhoods at FHA than we are at the GSEs.
Now that one... See, that's not even funny so much as just baffling.
One of the weirdest decisions that Trump ever made was taking Ben Carson, a world-renowned surgeon, And rather than making him Surgeon General or Head of Health and Human Services, making him the head of housing, of all of the jobs to give him.
He obviously has no basis of knowledge at all, even now after two years.
He doesn't know basic real estate terms.
But, you know, that's okay because he's literally a surgeon!
There's a whole job in government set aside for somebody like that.
Why not give him that job?
If you feel like you gotta give him a job in the government in the first place.
I actually think, see I take this kind of personally because this whole Ben Carson thing to me is very sad.
I mean, this guy is a medical genius.
One of the great surgeons in history.
And that gets lost in this.
When people talk about Ben Carson he's become this joke, but he's not, he's a genius.
What this guy was able to do in the medical field, he's a pioneer in the medical field.
He was performing, you know, he was separating conjoined twins, conjoined at the head, before anyone was doing that.
He was doing just medical marvels, this man was pulling off, for decades.
This is also a guy who came from nothing.
He came from destitute poverty, And became, and climbed his way up and became one of the most respected, world-renowned, pioneering surgeons in the world, in history.
But then he decides to get into politics, and now he'll be remembered as this kind of bumbling political figure, even though he's a man of incredible brilliance and accomplishment.
Yet he decided to become a bureaucrat.
So you see, this is the lesson here.
You become a bureaucrat and this is what happens.
If bureaucracy can make even someone like Ben Carson look like that, who is a genius, again for the third time, and certainly has a much higher IQ than any of the people making fun of him.
But if it can do that and make him look like that, then what do you think it could do to the rest of us?
Uh, I just, that's why when, when, you know, Ben Carson, he, he, uh, you know, he retired from his, from the medical field.
Fine.
Well-deserved retirement.
And then he's, you know, he appears, he does a few speaking engagements, he appears here and there, and, uh, he, he says a few things critical of Obama, I guess, and he makes a few political statements that conservatives agree with.
And that's fine.
But then everyone seizes on to this guy, and next thing you know, he's running for president.
And it's like, no, we don't... Just because he said a few things we agree with, we don't need to make him a presidential candidate.
There's not necessarily a lot of crossover between what it takes to be a great president and what it takes to be a great surgeon.
Both take a lot of skill, but they're not the same skills at all.
So, there's no reason for that.
Why couldn't Ben Carson have just remained a retired surgeon who comes out and speaks and engages in the national conversation, but he's not a political figure, he's not a bureaucrat, he's not running for office, nothing like that.
He's just his own man.
Why couldn't he have just been that?
It's a damn shame.
Alright, let's discuss something else non-political before we go... Well, that was political, so we'll discuss something non-political for once before we get into emails.
Let's talk about jewelry, girls.
We'll have a little girl talk, because there's nobody better to lead that conversation than me.
I know when you're thinking about, let's have a girl talk, let's talk to a boy, the first person you think, you want me to be the one to lead that discussion.
A few days ago, somebody on Twitter, I'm not going to throw her name and Twitter handle out there because I'm not trying to add to the dog pile, but I do want to talk about this subject, so I'm just using this as the entrance into the subject.
So this woman on Twitter said, I would dump a guy if he got me a nasty cheap Pandora ring for my engagement.
A guy spends 20% of his yearly salary on a ring.
Don't you agree, girls?
Now, this might even be a parody account.
Honestly, I'm not sure.
It's impossible to tell anymore what's parody, what isn't.
I don't know.
It doesn't really matter.
The point is, I want to talk about this whole thing, this tradition of buying a very expensive piece of jewelry.
Because during, before, you know, before you get married, during this discussion on social media, some people, and these were real people for sure, basically came to this woman's defense and told me that the rule is, this is the rule, the tradition, the custom, is that you're supposed to spend two months salary, so four to eight pay periods worth, on an engagement ring.
That is the tradition.
Two months salary.
Now, let's be clear that the tradition of spending two months' salary on a ring is like the tradition of going to a designer clothes store and spending $86 on a t-shirt.
It may be something that people do out of vanity.
It may be something that a lot of people do.
It may be something that people have been doing for a little while now, but it's not some sort of deep, ancient human custom that we have to preserve at all costs.
Most humans on Earth Throughout the history of the earth, um, have not spent that kind of money on t-shirts, and they don't spend that kind of money on jewelry.
So, it's, it's, it is, this is not really a human tradition that dates back very far.
These are customs invented by the companies who sell the stuff, okay?
Uh, the keepers, the preservers of the two-month salary for a ring custom are jewelry stores, not surprisingly.
Because they profit from it.
The custom was invented somewhat recently by jewelry stores, and it is totally crazy.
It is just completely crazy.
You're starting out your life together.
You're beginning the journey.
Probably you don't have a lot of money.
Most young married couples don't.
Some do.
And you know what?
If you're a multi-millionaire, then everything I'm saying, put to the side.
I mean, do what you want.
You've got the money, I guess.
But talking to normal people in a normal situation.
You're getting married.
You don't have a lot of money.
You're starting your journey together.
This is the way it was for me and my wife when we got married seven years ago.
And you're going to start out in a financial hole so that you can spend four to eight paychecks on a fashion accessory?
Think about the saving that that requires.
And you're gonna take all of that saving that you've been doing, leading up to your wedding,
and you're gonna dump it all into a little rock that someone's gonna wear on their finger
until it gets knocked into the, you know, into the trash can accidentally thrown away?
Um, so I just, I don't get it.
I think it's completely crazy.
If I went out and bought my wife a ring, and I gave it to her, and it was beautiful, and she loved it, and then she asked, which she would eventually, and then she asked, well, hold on a second, how much was this?
And I said, oh, you know, just two months' salary.
Don't worry.
Just two months' salary.
I mean, you know, the kids don't need to eat for a couple weeks.
It's fine.
She would have me committed to an institution if I did that.
She wouldn't even be angry about it.
She would be terrified.
She would be scared.
She would assume that I'd gone crazy to do something like that, and I would have to be crazy to ever do something like that.
We've got this idea that in order to enter into some new important phase of life, you have to spend tons and tons of money first.
And this is completely artificial.
And this is one of the reasons why so many young people are putting off adulthood and
putting off the entering into these new and exciting phases because they think that you
need to have tons of money to do it when you don't.
It is completely artificial.
You can get married for free if you want.
Getting married doesn't have to cost you anything.
You can do it for free.
Or you can spend a few hundred bucks and have a cookout and you can buy an inexpensive ring
on clearance.
You can have a cookout with your family and friends and you can spend a few hundred bucks
and be done with it.
You could get through the whole thing for less than a grand.
Easily.
Or you could spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars putting yourself into debt, your parents into debt probably, all so that you can, what, show off to everybody.
So you can have the pageantry and the really nice thing and the really nice table arrangements and everything's really nice.
Everyone will talk about how nice it is and they'll put it on Facebook and then you can put your picture of your ring on Facebook and all of that.
Or you could do something in between, which is what me and my wife did.
Our whole wedding experience definitely didn't cost only a thousand bucks, I'll say that.
It was probably too expensive.
It wasn't nearly as expensive as what some people do.
But it was probably too expensive, and that's because there's a lot of pressure and force as a young person, as a young couple, kind of pulling you in the direction of spending a ton of money on everything.
And you're kind of tricked into thinking, well, if this is really important to you, then you're going to spend this money.
Oh, so this woman, you want to marry her?
She's not worth it?
She's not worth spending $12,000 on a ring?
Isn't she worth it to you?
Or it's the most special day of your life?
It's a special day!
So of course you've got to spend $40,000 on a wedding.
It's a special day!
Well, yes, it is a very special day.
It is going to be one of the most special days of your life, alongside when your kids are born.
But since when does that mean you have to spend tens of thousands of dollars?
Since when does special have to mean expensive?
It doesn't.
It's the same kind of thing with college.
College has to be $100,000.
Weddings have to cost tens of thousands of dollars.
I mean, just to get married and get educated, we're saying that young people need to either be children of oil tycoons or they need to go into debt.
And I think that's crazy.
Here's the point.
A ring is not going to keep your marriage together at all.
A fancy wedding is not going to keep it together.
No marriage in history has ever been permanently sustained by the financial commitment that went into it.
Except maybe Bill and Hillary.
So maybe there are a few exceptions, but for most of us, for the vast majority of marriages, the thing that's going to sustain it is no matter how much your wedding costs, no matter how much your ring costs, what sustains the marriage is love, devotion, sacrifice, duty, service, faith.
That's what's going to do it.
And if you don't have those things, but you've got the nicest ring and you have the fanciest reception, your marriage won't last six months.
And then not only do you have a devastating divorce, but you've also wasted all this money that you can't get back.
So, don't do it, kids.
Get married for cheap.
That's my recommendation.
Everything involved in the marriage, do it for cheap.
Save the money.
Spend it on something more important.
Build a nest egg.
You won't regret it.
I don't think anyone has ever, after getting married, looked back and said, I wish we spent more money on that wedding.
You know, that's my one regret.
My one regret in life is that we got married for $2,000.
I wish we had spent $45,000.
I wish we had spent 45,000.
No one ever says that.
And I also don't think that there are a lot of women out there.
Correct me if I'm wrong, ladies, but you get married, you love your husband, he's a devoted husband becomes a devoted father.
If your wedding ring wasn't that expensive or your engagement ring, are you waking up every day distraught that the ring isn't expensive enough?
If so, you're a shallow, miserable person, so I'm going to assume that that's not the case.
And anyway, down the line, once you've been married, And you've saved some money as a man.
If you want to treat your wife then and go out and buy her a more expensive ring, now that you've got the money and you can do it and you can afford it, you can always do that.
You can buy your wife jewelry anytime.
You don't need to do it when you're both broke and not even married yet.
Let's see, mattwalshowe at gmail.com, mattwalshowe at gmail.com.
This is from Aaron, says, hi Matt, thanks for doing the show, it's great.
On the show you stated that you don't believe that upping the age to buy tobacco products and vaping would be beneficial.
Do you feel the same about firearms?
I feel there should be one age to do everything, say 19.
Buy and carry guns, buy alcohol and tobacco, join the military, drive a car.
All of the things that adults are entitled to do.
19 would keep all this out of high school's thoughts.
It is kind of interesting to think of someone doing all of that all at once in one day.
I mean, that would make for a really interesting 19th birthday.
Got my gun, I got my cigar, I got my booze.
Let's go join the military, folks.
Oh yeah, and I'm driving too.
No, I actually think it's good to taper some of this stuff so that you're not doing it all at once.
I think that, if anything, it makes sense to have the drinking age lower than the driving age.
So that maybe, you know, you can introduce a teenager to drinking responsibly.
Before they can even drive.
So you don't have to worry as much about drunk driving, although they could still do it, obviously, but less of a chance.
So doesn't that make sense?
Doesn't it make sense?
Because, again, we go back to, you're telling me that at 16, somebody is competent enough to drive a huge tin box 70 miles per hour down the highway.
They're competent enough for that, but you wouldn't trust them with a Sam Adams?
My thinking is, if this is someone you really can't trust with a Sam Adams, then I'm not going to trust them with an SUV.
So I think maybe we, you know, the Sam Adams, the beer, should be one of the first things, when it comes to the adult things that we are allowing teenagers to start doing and introducing them to, I think probably the beer should be one of the first things.
Like, why don't you get that down?
Unless you don't want to drink, which great.
But if you do, let's get that down.
Let's figure out how to do that responsibly.
And then maybe we can move on to some of these other things.
So that's how I would look at it.
All right.
This is from... Hold on.
This from William says, Hey Matt, I've just recently started watching your podcast.
I love them.
I've been watching them going backwards now.
And one of them, you answer a question, These podcasts will be very confusing if you watch them backwards, so I would recommend the traditional forwards method.
I've been watching them going backwards now, and one of them, you answer a question saying we should explore outer space.
I was curious which one you think is more important to explore, space or deep into the ocean?
Because we consistently keep finding strange creatures from the ocean.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I love your show.
Yeah, it is a fascinating thing that there is so much still on Earth that we have not explored.
There's so much about Our oceans that we do not know.
The oceans are very mysterious to us.
Because we haven't seen most of it.
Especially under the surface.
And, you know what, I wouldn't even rank them, William.
I'm all about, I think we should explore everything.
I think it's great.
Explore the oceans, explore the space, explore the uncharted wilderness, which still exists, jungles, oceans, Antarctica.
Explore everything!
Let's, let's, why not?
Let's find out about this world we live in.
We're not here for very long.
I mean, this is our chance to explore it, so let's do that.
All right, from Rose, says, Hi Matt, love the show.
I'm impressed by the fact that you have hobbies.
You talk about beekeeping and fishing.
It seems like you also do a great deal of reading.
How do you find time for these hobbies and how do you develop them?
I hate being the kind of person with no real interest aside from watching TV, but that's what's happened to me.
Did you just decide to become a beekeeper one day and do it?
How did it work?
Yeah, good question.
But I do have, I guess, what I would call maybe three hobbies.
So fishing, beekeeping, now that's new.
And I've always liked to read.
I actually did kind of just decide one day that I wanted to have hobbies.
Like I was like you, I didn't have any hobbies.
And I said I would, I just, I feel like I'd like to have hobbies.
I don't want to be the kind of person who doesn't have hobbies.
And so what I started by doing is I literally looked up, I googled a list of hobbies.
I just googled, like, hobby suggestions or something.
And I started scrolling through and seeing if anything piqued my interest.
And I saw a few things and I tried a few things out.
Brewing beer was one I tried.
Gardening.
I thought, you know, I like garden fresh tomatoes.
Maybe I'll do some gardening.
Tried brewing beer.
Tried a few different things.
One hobby I saw suggested was knife making.
And I still might pick that one up.
I put that one to the side.
That requires a lot of equipment.
But I like the idea of that.
That's cool.
Tried some of those, didn't really click.
And ultimately I decided to go with beekeeping because it's just something I've always, it's always been in the back of my mind.
I've always been interested in it.
And I said, well, I'll just do it.
Why not?
And fishing developed a little bit over time because we vacation at lakes a lot.
I think, although now it's become kind of an obsession for me, so it kind of picked up gradually and now I am somewhat obsessed with fishing.
I think It is important to have hobbies, and that's why I decided I wanted to develop some.
The advantage to having hobbies is that, for one, I think it makes you a more interesting person.
Not saying you're not interesting, but I think there are more things about you, right?
If someone asks you to describe yourself, talk about yourself, you have more things you can say about yourself.
Because that becomes kind of troubling, doesn't it?
Have you ever been stumped by that question?
A really basic question.
Someone says, you know, tell me about yourself.
And you realize that you have almost nothing to say.
You don't even know what you can say about yourself.
So I think part of picking up hobbies is just having some things about yourself.
So that's good.
And it also gives you specific, specialized knowledge about something, which is important.
It makes... I think it's good to be...
Part of my thinking process with a hobby is I want to have some subjects that I just know really well.
Even if I can't use that information, quote-unquote, on a day-to-day basis, I think it's good to just know things and to have certain areas that you know really well and that you're an expert on.
Now, I'm not an expert on any of these things yet, but I'm learning about it, and I know a lot more about it now than I did before, and I probably know more than the average person because this is what I've been learning about.
And then what you find is you start building this base of knowledge that seems irrelevant, although it's not irrelevant, because no knowledge is irrelevant because it's enriching for you.
It's enriching for your mind, so it can't be irrelevant.
But you start building this base of knowledge that seems at least not functional, and then what you find is that you kind of branch off from there, and you start learning other things related to it.
and then the knowledge grows. So part of fishing is it starts by learning about the kind of fish
that you're, you know, specifically what kind of things do they eat, what kind of lures do you use,
so on and so forth. Then you start learning about lakes and different bodies of water and,
and, you know, different habitats for different kinds of wildlife. You start branching off and
learning even more. So that's another advantage. And I don't know, there's just, gives you access
to new social communities of people who like the same kind of stuff. Teaches you patience. I'm a
big advocate for it. So I would say as far as how to get into a new hobby, which I guess was your
question, which I haven't answered. I think you just pick one and start doing it. Find something
that seems vaguely interesting to you, pick it up, start doing it. Here's how you'll know that
That this is a hobby that might click for you.
When you first start doing it, depending on what it is, you're probably not going to be good at it, you'll probably be very bad at it, and clueless.
But if you can still enjoy it, and even kind of mysteriously enjoy it, like you don't even know why you enjoy doing this thing, but you do, and you enjoy learning about it and reading about it, Then, I think that's a hobby that will stick.
If you try it for months, and you're bad at it, and you don't enjoy it, and it just is terrible, then just give it up and find a new one.
That one's not for you.
But, if you can enjoy it when you're bad at it, then that means it's a good hobby, and it also means eventually you'll probably be really good at it.
So, that's my thoughts on a hobby story.
Alright, we will, I think, leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening. Godspeed.
You only have to look around at the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates or the farce of congressional testimony on the Hill to see that this is very likely true.
We ask the question, are we all just getting stupider?
