Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
Subscribe at PragerTopia.com.
Hello everybody, Dennis Prager here!
In my usual jolly mood.
Somebody asked my wife if I need coffee in the morning.
And she said something to the effect, well, A, no.
B, he's caffeinated.
He's pre-caffeinated.
That really is a blessing, and that is true.
I drink coffee for the taste.
It has absolutely no effect on me.
Actually, I wish it did.
It is what it is.
So I told you that I saw...
Should I be embarrassed, by the way?
Sean, should I be embarrassed that I had never seen it before?
I mean, it did come out in the 90s, right?
All right, I don't need to be embarrassed.
I had not seen The Matrix.
My wife didn't either, which surprised me.
She's more up on these things than I. Which doesn't mean a thing.
You think I should be ashamed?
Oh, that's fair.
That is fair.
Well, anyway, we did.
We watched The Matrix.
And I'm reading Christopher Rufo's magnificent book.
I had him on.
It's very common now.
I have these authors on, and then I read their book.
And as I've said to you, I have interviewed authors in both ways, having read their book and having not read their book, and I cannot tell you which is the superior way of actually interviewing an author.
There are advantages to both, but I will have them on again because this book is so important.
So, let's see.
Shop Christopher Rufo's books.
Let's see.
The name of the book.
I'm reading America's.
That's it.
America's Cultural Revolution.
How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.
Man, do you learn a lot from that book.
Really, how the left took over everything, and especially education.
So, what does that have to do with the matrix?
Ah, I knew you would ask.
So the left's theory, I don't know what they had in mind when they made the movie.
I'm sure there's been a lot written about the movie.
So I'll tell you my take.
The left believes that we, all of humanity, except for the enlightened few, as represented by, what are those guys called, Sean?
The guys who have the power to...
The guys who are keeping everybody in the matrix.
What are they called?
Not the system.
Come on.
You don't know either?
No, no.
Not Anderson.
I'm talking about Mr. Smith.
Agent Smith.
What does Agent Smith represent?
Agent Smith and his colleagues represent...
The people, maybe whatever they are, or not people, AI, that are keeping humanity in the matrix.
And there are a few people who have taken the red pill and they have escaped the matrix into reality.
Yes, there are three agents that are constantly fighting the good guys.
So, my take is, I'm sure they didn't mean it this way, but this is exactly how the left views society.
They are the handful of people who have found reality.
You and I, we live in this colonialist, imperialist, heteronormative, patriarchal, Matrix.
We don't realize, capital, of course, capitalist.
We don't realize that we are living in a fake world.
They are living in the real world and they will liberate us.
We are being controlled by a handful of capitalists, imperialists, colonialists.
That is their version.
Of the world.
And, okay, I apologize for those beeps.
I think I got rid of them.
I think.
That's the world in which we live.
And as I read Christopher Rufo's book, I realize that is how the left views it.
You, with your house and your two-car garage and your dog, you live in a fake state.
We will liberate you to live in a small apartment in a big city without a car, relying on wind and solar power, learning about how despicable,
The founding of your society was, and that true liberation lies in a larger and larger and larger and larger state.
And that's how I understand it.
I have no doubt that that was not what the people who made it had in mind.
But who knows?
It doesn't even matter to me.
Fastest growing job market government.
New York Post today.
See?
That means less freedom.
By definition.
The bigger the government, the more it controls.
The less free you are.
Private sector hiring has slowed down at a worrisome rate.
When counting downward, revisions...
In hiring from the previous two months, the net employment gain was a meager 99,000 in the June report.
But what is even more troubling is this.
Guess what sector of the economy is on the biggest hiring binge?
Government.
This is very scary.
I mean, truly scary.
During the just-ended first half of 2023, federal, state, and local governments Oh my God.
This is the first half of 2023. Federal, state, and local governments added 379,000 workers to their payrolls.
The left wants this because the bigger the government, the more power it has, and the more people government employs, the more people vote Democrat.
Their jobs are at stake.
The very idea of shrinking government and thereby spending less money that we don't have is anathema to people who are employed by the government.
Why would they vote Republican?
It means I am voting to fire myself.
This was more hires than any industry in America.
It was more than mining, manufacturing, construction, wholesale, and transportation combined.
With the federal government running a $2 trillion annual deficit.
$2 trillion.
And with the COVID crisis long behind, shouldn't we be systematically downsizing?
The only industry that comes anywhere near the government in hiring so far in 2023 is healthcare slash hospitals.
Oh, that's charming.
And that industry is half-funded with government dollars from programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
Even these numbers distort the disproportionate impact government is exerting on the economy because under the Biden administration, Congress has appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare subsidies.
For example, the CHIPS and the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.
God, was that a lie.
A pure lie.
Funnel tens of billions of dollars.
To the microchip industry, green energy, and electric cars.
Did you hear that?
Tens of billions of dollars.
Americans, by and large, don't want electric cars.
The government pays them to buy them.
The government is thus adding tens of thousands of private sector jobs that are financed by taxpayers.
This is very painful to read to you.
Anyway, that's growing.
That is the way it works.
I have quite a story for you.
A principal killed himself in Toronto.
A 60-year-old man.
I will tell you why when we come back.
On MyPillow's 20-year anniversary with over 80 million MyPillows sold, Mike Lindell at MyPillow wants to thank each and every one of you by giving you the lowest price in history on their MyPillows.
You'll receive a queen-size MyPillow for $19.98.
Regular price is $69.98 and just $10 more for a king size.
You'll receive deep discounts on all MyPillow products, such as bed sheets, mattress toppers, pet beds, mattresses, MySlippers, and so much more.
This is the time to try out some of their other amazing products you had your eyes on.
Go to MyPillow.com and click on the radio slash podcast square and use promo code Prager to receive this amazing offer on the queen-size MyPillow for 1998 or call 800-761-6302.
This offer comes with a 10-year warranty and a 60-day money-back guarantee.
It's time to start getting the quality sleep you deserve.
So go to MyPillow.com and use the promo code Prager or call 800-761-6302 today.
There's quite a story for you.
A Toronto school principal has died by suicide.
Notice, this is now, by the way, the new lingo.
Old ways of saying things, or normal ways, are now rejected.
You don't say committed suicide.
You probably didn't pick up on that.
But one of my five languages is leftism.
And I speak it fluently.
They have changed committed suicide to died by suicide.
But you didn't know that, did you, Sean?
That is like the milk spilled itself.
It's a very intelligent comment, despite the fact that it came from you.
That was a compliment, by the way.
You're taking it as an insult.
No, no.
Okay, fine.
All right.
All right.
As long as you understand it was a compliment.
Let's see.
Is it like this?
Yes.
So died?
Yes.
You're entirely accurate.
That is the intention.
How did he die?
By suicide.
Oh, he didn't commit suicide.
The milk spilled.
You're so right.
That's the intention, correct?
He died by suicide.
Why did the Daily Wire, excuse me, not Daily Mail, why did they pick up this lingo?
Okay.
A Toronto school principal committed suicide.
I must tell you, committed suicide is so much more truth-telling.
Died by suicide?
It didn't happen to him.
He did it.
It doesn't honor the person.
After he was accused of supporting white supremacy for calling out a black instructor during anti-racism training, you know that arguably Canada is moving towards totalitarianism at a greater rate than the United States.
With Justin Trudeau and blocking the truckers' ability to use their own money in their bank accounts, I think that they surpassed us at that point.
But it is definitely a competition downhill for which society can die by suicide more quickly, Canada or the United States.
Richard Bilkszto, B-I-L-K-S-Z-T-O, so it's not, it's probably Bilkszto, because it sounds like a Hungarian name.
And I believe S-Z is S, not S in Hungarian.
Worked in the Toronto School District for 24 years.
Had been serving as fill-in principal at the Burnham Thorpe Collegiate Institute.
Where he faced workplace bullying as a result of the argument with an anti-racism trainer.
Because we know if there's one country that is truly racist, when I think Canadian, my first thought is racist.
That's right.
All those hockey players.
How many blacks are in hockey?
He filed a lawsuit earlier in the year claiming his reputation was systematically demolished, unquote.
And he was labeled a white supremacist for his remarks questioning racism in Canada.
If there's anything you don't want to do, it's question racism in Canada.
On July 13th, his lawyer, Lisa Bildy, announced on Twitter Bill Stowe took his own life.
Unfortunately, the stress and effects of these incidents continue to plague Richard.
She wrote in a lengthy statement, last week he succumbed to this distress.
His family and friends have been left feeling and wishing they could have had the chance to convince him that he was loved, respected, and needed here.
See, most people, totally understandably, when they're attacked by the left-wing mob, it is a new experience.
I have had it a lot.
So I have been vaccinated against leftism.
But most people...
Think their life is ruined and that everybody believes what the left says about them.
As this poor man did.
His problem started on April 26, 2021, when Toronto School District Board educators attended an anti-racism training led by Kike Ojo Thompson, the founder of the Kojo Institute, a consulting firm.
I'll tell you where the money is in modern society.
The money is in DEI. Diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In anti-racism seminars.
Being part of the dominant class at universities.
Not faculty.
Not students.
But administrators.
In his lawsuit, the Toronto Star reported Bill Stowe claimed Ojo Thompson told educators that Canada could be considered more racist than the U.S. because it never reckoned with its anti-black history.
That's right.
You Canadians.
You thuggish society.
What was the old line, the old joke, blame Canada?
Remember that?
Well, that's what the left is doing in Canada.
The principal who had previously taught high school in Buffalo, New York, disagreed with the sentiment.
He said it would be an incredible disservice to our learners to suggest the U.S. is a more just country than Canada, according to the lawsuit which claims Ojo Thompson reacted with vitriol.
She allegedly lashed out at the principal for appearing to undermine a black woman.
That's right.
He did not understand that on the left, you don't differ with ideas.
you differ with races.
Really despicable people are involved on the left in ruining people's lives at This example from Toronto is really perfect.
Where we have this man, 60-year-old principal of a school, and he told this black...
I don't know what word to use for her.
Perhaps ignoramus with regard to what she was talking about.
You know, Canada actually...
A ball of slavery well before the United States did.
So the argument that it's more racist than the United States doesn't seem to me to have merit.
It doesn't have merit to say the United States is systemically racist, except for the left, which is systemically racist by definition, since it believes that race is truly significant.
So he actually spoke up at a session.
And most people are too afraid to speak up, so he did.
And he said it would be an incredible disservice to our learners to suggest the U.S. is a more just country than Canada.
And she reacted.
This woman, Ojo Thompson, that's her last name, Ojo.
It's Ojo hyphenated Thompson.
She allegedly lashed out at the principal for appearing to undermine a black woman.
See, you can't do that.
Truth is not a left-wing value.
Race is.
So you can't say, is what this woman is saying true?
That's a right-wing.
It's even a liberal.
The liberals vote for the left, and so they are ruining the society single-handedly.
But liberals ask, is it true?
They used to anyway.
And conservatives ask, is it true?
Leftists ask, who said it?
What is the color of the person who said it?
So you can't, quote, undermine a black woman.
We are here to talk about anti-black racism, but you in your whiteness, now why isn't that pure?
Undiluted racism.
You in your whiteness.
Think that you can tell me what's really going on for black people.
Yeah, but she's telling him what's going on with white people.
That she can do.
The lawsuit added Bilstow tried to de-escalate the situation, admitting that there was anti-black racism in Canada.
I'm sure it's just pervasive.
But argued the evidence suggested we are a far more just society than the U.S. I have no idea if that is true, but that's not the issue.
The issue is what was done to this man.
At another session the following week, Ojo Thompson allegedly brought up the argument again, describing it to Bilstow and his colleagues as a, quote, real-life example of someone supporting white supremacy.
Because he said that Canada is not as racist as the U.S. He's a supporter of white supremacy.
The woman is clearly a moron.
She has no answer to his question.
All she has, and by the way, she's not a moron because she's black, and she's not a moron because she's a woman.
She's not a moron because she's a black woman.
She's a moron because she's a leftist.
If you think clearly, you are not a leftist, by definition.
In the aftermath, the lawsuit claims Bill Stowe suffered workplace bullying, which caused severe emotional distress and had to take a stress leave as a result.
I would like to know what that workplace bullying was about.
That's why I want to have the lawyer on.
He had filed a mental stress injury claim to Canada's Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, which provided him with two months of lost earnings.
The board investigated Bilstow's claims and found that Ojo Thompson's conduct was...
This is interesting.
I am shocked, actually.
The board, that's a Canadian board, found that her conduct was, quote, abusive, egregious, and vexatious, and rises to the level of workplace harassment and bullying.
But following his six-week...
Medical leave, the Toronto School District refused to reinstate Bilstow's contract.
Wow.
Even though the Canadian board found her guilty.
To rise in the educational world, you have to be a combination of coward and bully.
We'll be back.
Hello, my friends.
Hello.
Hope you had a good weekend.
I didn't expect that.
I'll bet you didn't.
I didn't either.
Because it's Tuesday.
Does it make sense to you that we are approaching the end of July 2023?
Is there not something sci-fi about all of this?
Since the next hour, I will be talking to a psychiatrist who blows the whistle on her profession and the evil that it is engaged in with regard to so-called transitioning.
So folks, if truth matters to you, and if you're on the left, it doesn't, and I mean that literally, because the moment...
Truth matters to you.
You become a liberal or a conservative, and increasingly only a conservative because liberals have opted for much of the left.
But the moment you do, you will acknowledge that you cannot become the other sex.
You can think you are, you can look it, but you cannot become it.
Male and female are objective realities.
I was telling you about a 25-year-old woman named Prisha, P-R-I-S-H-A, mostly M-O-S-L-E-Y. She was a depressed young girl.
She was sexually assaulted at 14. She was hospitalized for depression.
By age 16, I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and an eating disorder.
And I engaged in self-harm by cutting myself, which became so serious I was taken to the emergency room.
Starting when I was 16 years old and continuing into my teen and young adult years, doctors and counselors set me on a path of medicalized gender Transition.
They told me that changing my body to look like a boy's body would cure my mental health problems.
Who are these doctors and counselors?
Who are they?
How do such bad human beings enter the profession?
How are they developed in a decent society?
It's a general puzzle to me about the left.
How did...
A decent country produced so many indecent people.
That's another question for another time.
They told me that injecting large amounts of testosterone into my female body would be good for me.
They also encouraged me, they encouraged me, you hear that?
To undergo surgery to remove my healthy breasts.
Well, I trust that nobody on the left condemns Muslims for clitoridectomies, the removal of girls' clitorises in various Muslim countries in Africa.
It's not a Quran procedure.
It's not done in all Muslim countries, but it is widespread.
Nobody who is for cutting off girls' breasts can condemn that practice of clitoridectomy.
I trust these health care providers.
I trusted them to take care of me.
Because of that relationship of trust and my vulnerable condition, I believed what they said, and I thought they were treating me properly.
Years later, I realized I had been lied to and misled in the worst possible way.
Years of taking testosterone prevented my body from developing as it should have.
It caused significant vaginal atrophy.
And the inability to have intercourse.
My voice was permanently changed.
I was no longer able to lift my voice and sing, which I used to love doing.
I could cry reading you this.
I'm actually holding back crying now.
It would be a cry of pain for her and anger.
At the scum in the medical, psychiatric, psychological professions who did this to her.
And I'll bet a good 75% were female.
I'm going to ask my guest, a female psychiatrist, next hour about that.
Without my breasts and I am unable to nurse a child, should I be able to conceive one?
I have pain in my chest where my breasts used to be.
Wow.
Where my breasts used to be.
Wow.
The monsters in the medical professions.
The gender-affirming care was anything but.
Instead of addressing my severe mental health issues and helping me feel comfortable in my feminine body, which is what they should do, gender-affirming care should be care to affirm your gender.
If you're a girl, we affirm you're a girl.
What if all of these monsters in white coats What if they all said, you know, you're a girl, we're going to help you celebrate what nature or God has made you.
What if they did that instead?
But they have an agenda.
Not sure what it is.
I guess it's to be gods.
Just like the serpent said in the Garden of Eden.
Instead of helping me feel comfortable in my feminine body, my doctors and counselors pushed me into the belief that damaging my body was the answer.
It was not the answer.
I wish all of these detransitioners named all of those who were involved.
That's another question I'll ask my guest next hour.
Their care, quote-unquote, in the form of testosterone injections and breast surgery left me broken.
With extreme physical injuries and without my body parts, it did not cure my mental health problems and instead made them worse.
I have shared my story to warn others about what is happening in America.
I have testified before state lawmakers and committees to explain the need to protect vulnerable individuals like me.
I also want troubled teenagers who are looking for belonging and acceptance like I was, to know that you can be accepted for who you are.
Trying to change your body won't fix you.
It will break you.
And you don't have to change your body to please anyone, certainly not health care providers, who stand to benefit financially from setting you on a path of lifelong medical care.
I am still picking up the pieces and trying to put my life back together.
I am in dire need of health care, as I live with the consequences of what the doctors and counselors led me into when I was a teenager.
As the next step in my journey, I have decided to seek justice from the legal system.
Hold my health care providers accountable.
And hopefully serve as a warning to other doctors and therapists not to do this to anyone else.
There are many teenagers out there struggling with their mental health like I was.
They need to be supported, not given sterilizing medications, and have their healthy body parts removed.
Prisha Mosley is a 25-year-old woman.
And detransition her.
I hope she sues them into bankruptcy.
What constitutes a bad person?
It's a tough question.
Is a bad person someone who does bad?
Or is a bad person someone who intends to do bad?
Only intends to do bad.
Or in other words, only those who intend to do bad are bad.
Those who intend to do good and do bad are good people.
I don't buy it.
That's why I have very little interest in people's intentions.
Very few people wake up in the morning and say, ah, another day to do evil.
Most people who do evil have deluded themselves, like these psychiatrists and other doctors.
Kamala Harris visited Florida this past weekend to Condemn Florida's curricula.
By the way, I will report to you at some point, I'll report to you right now, that Florida is the first state to adopt PragerU materials officially in its curricula.
Teachers in all 50 states have been using them, but Now it's going to be an official part of the curriculum.
The left is going crazy.
You can have radical left stuff permeate the curriculum that they love.
But to have responsible...
It's not even right-wing.
It's just responsible.
Look at our materials.
So they are actually using PragerU materials.
But even before that, Kamala Harris, one of the least impressive people to ever hold public office in American history, went to Jacksonville, this is from National Review, to criticize its new school curriculum.
In Remarks Thursday, that's last Thursday, Harris blasted efforts in some states to ban books.
And push forward revisionist history.
For the left to accuse others of pushing revisionist history, it's so painful, since that is all they do, like 1619. Just yesterday in the state of Florida,
they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery, she said in a conversation for the traditionally black sorority Delta Sigma Theta.
They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.
I believe that she knows she's lying.
She was fed this line by some aide.
Really?
That is what the Florida state curricula are now teaching?
That enslaved people benefited from slavery?
Has that ever been taught?
Even in the worst days of racism in this country?
So here is what Charles Cook of National Review writes.
And that's not a flamethrowing website.
This is a brazen lie.
It is an astonishing lie.
It is an evil lie.
It is so untrue, so deliberately and cynically misleading that in a sensible political culture, Harris would be obligated to issue an apology.
Instead, NBC confirms she will repeat the lie today during a speech in Jacksonville.
This was Friday.
I have been trying to work out how best to illustrate the sheer scale of Harris' falsehood, and I've come to the conclusion that the only way to achieve it is to list in one place all the relevant parts of the course about which she is complaining.
So I have copied and pasted every single reference to slavery, slaves, Abolitionism, civil rights, and African Americans that is in the document.
Wow.
That's a lot of work that he did, Charles Cook.
I salute him.
The list is extremely long.
That's because Pache Harris.
There's a lot in there.
If you're able to read it and conclude that the single reference to slaves developing skills, which I've bolded, is indicative of the narrative direction of the course rather than a tiny and correct part of it, then you are beyond saving and you deserve to live your life as an ignoramus.
There is simply no way of perusing this course.
And concluding that it gaslights people or whitewashes slavery.
Among many, many other things, it includes sections on, quote, the conditions for Africans during their passage to America, the living conditions of slaves in British North American colonies, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, including infant mortality rates.
The harsh conditions and their consequences on British-American plantations, e.g.
undernourishment, climate conditions, infant and child mortality rates of the enslaved versus the free.
The harsh conditions of the Caribbean plantations, i.e.
Poor nutrition, rigorous labor, disease.
How the South tried to prevent slaves from escaping and their efforts to end the Underground Railroad.
The overwhelming death rates caused by slavery.
The many ways in which Africans resisted slavery.
The ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on individual freedoms.
And the struggles faced by African American women in the 19th century as it relates to issues of suffrage, business, and access to education.
Many of these modules apply to Florida specifically.
And then he gives a list of 191 items that contain the word slave.
No, 191 items on the issue.
It contains the word slave 96 times, slaves 23 times, slavery 45 times.
Kamala Harris didn't merely lie.
Like all of the left, she's a liar.
This is the proof, but no one on the left will read this, will know this, or hear this.
Here's an interesting piece I found in the Daily Mail.
Albert Einstein Letter, in which he said, God could not have created the universe and science replaces and supersedes religion, goes on sale for £100,000.
Letter was sent to a religious studies teacher based in Brooklyn, New York.
He famously described religion as a childish superstition born out of human weakness, but four years before his 1954 God Letter, legendary physicist Albert Einstein told a group of students in separate correspondence that science, quotes, replaces and supersedes religion.
Why am I bringing this to your attention?
Because I don't give a damn.
What Albert Einstein thought about religion.
That's why.
The fact that people care about what he thought about religion is proof that he's right.
Science has superseded religion.
I came to this conclusion decades ago when I saw an ad in the New York Times, whole page, Nobel laureates oppose capital punishment.
And I thought, what the hell do I care what a Nobel laureate in chemistry or physics or poetry thinks about capital punishment?
It's part of the worship of the intelligentsia, which the intelligentsia tries to bring about.
Albert Einstein was not a particularly bright man outside of science.
He was, for example, a pacifist.
Pacifism is stupid.
Pacifism is morally stupid.
It is never right to kill.
Are you kidding me?
Einstein, a Jew, thought it was not right to kill the Nazis?
I mean, he's not here to answer the question, but if you're a pacifist, then you believe that fighting the Nazis was evil.
That's what pacifism means.
It doesn't mean sometimes you kill.
That's my position.
Sometimes you kill.
That's the reason I'm bringing this to your attention.
By the way, not by the way.
Well, I guess by the way.
Science supersedes religion.
It's as stupid as pacifism.
I'll prove it to you.
Give me one moral instruction that you derive from science.
One!
Does science tell you to love your neighbor as yourself?
Does science tell you to give charity?
Does science tell you to tell the truth?
What does science tell you?
Nothing!
I don't blame science.
Asking science to give me moral instruction is like asking a fish to ride a bicycle, to use the old feminist phrase, where it's worthwhile to use it.
Science has no moral teaching.
If it has any moral implication, it's that the fittest will survive, which is exactly what Hitler said.
Well, Einstein said science supersedes religion.
Well, that's...
So what?
Two of the most powerful words in the English language.
So what?
Listen here.
Here is this.
It was written in German.
So I think I should read it to you in German.
Sehr geehrte Frau Munch, solange die Erzählungen der Bibel wörtlich genomen werden, I am at this moment amusing Sean and myself. I am at this moment amusing Sean and myself.
More me than Sean, I will admit.
I will give you some of the English when we return.
Hello everybody, this is the Ultimate Issues Hour, the third hour every Tuesday.
It's impossible to overstate the importance of the Ultimate Issues Hour.
It's in fact the non-clarity on the big issues of life that has led us to the terrible state that we are in right now in so many arenas of life.
So, this is it.
We talk about the big issues.
There's no bigger issue.
There may be many tied for biggest, but there's no bigger one than this.
What is being done to young people in the name of transitioning.
So I have an eminent psychiatrist on who has written a truly critically important book, Lost in Transnation.
Good title, isn't it?
A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness.
Madness is the perfect word.
People look at the Salem witch trials and go, how could they have been so crazy?
I would say that the argument for witches is no less valid than the argument of transitioning people into the other sex, something that is not possible.
It is not possible.
You could disprove this movement, but you couldn't disprove witches.
Maybe they really existed.
We are living in an age of madness.
It takes guts for a psychiatrist to be a whistleblower.
It takes guts for anybody to be.
Dr. Miriam Grossman has courage, and she is my guest.
The book is Lost in Transnation.
Transnation, not translation.
Julie Hartman is with me, as she is now, often on the third hour of my show.
Good to have you, Julie.
Thank you.
This is a big deal to have Miriam Grossman on.
She's a special woman.
So, before anything else, Miriam, Dr. Grossman, I'll interchangeably call you both.
Could you tell my listeners what Barnes& Noble has decided to do about your book?
Yes, of course I will, and thank you so much for having me on.
Well, Barnes& Noble is not selling my book.
If you go to their website and try to order it, You get a response that says, we are currently out of stock for availability.
If you go to an actual store and ask for it, they tell you the same thing.
We're out of stock.
And this began the day, or I heard about it, the day after the book came out.
Which was last Tuesday.
So I first heard a report.
People started to email me and message me through my Twitter account that they were walking into Barnes& Noble or they were going online and trying to buy it and they were getting that message and they were saying it sold so well that they don't have any copies left.
So I asked my wonderful publisher Tony Lyons from Skyhorse, who's a warrior for free speech, and he looked it up and told me that actually Barnes& Noble didn't order any copies.
So what they're doing is telling people that they're out of stock when there never was any stock.
Wait, you're telling me a left-wing institution would lie?
I'm entering cognitive dissonance.
This is really...
So wait, is Amazon selling it?
Amazon is selling it.
However, on Amazon, last time I checked, there were about 10 bogus titles mimicking my book, trying to get people to buy that bogus book.
And one of them was a paperback.
So it was a bit cheaper, and people who bought the so-called paperback, which doesn't exist, there's no paperback, would, you know, they would write to me and say, well, I was excited to open it, but when I opened it, it was a book on office management.
So that's another sort of scam that's going on on Amazon.
I don't know what...
The motivation is of those people that are putting up those bogus books.
No, we do know the motivation.
It's probably financial.
No, no, it's to hurt you.
It's not financial.
They're not going to make a big amount of money on a paperback on office management.
But I'm looking at right now, I want to see something.
Lost in Nation, Grossman, let's see what comes up.
Transmission.
Oh, you're right.
I'm sorry.
You're right.
My boo-boo.
Transnation, right.
Okay, so let's see.
So the first thing that comes up is, in fact, the actual book on Amazon.
I'm happy to tell you that.
Okay.
Lost in Transnation, and the actual book is coming up.
When was it?
You go on.
It says, Forward by Jordan Peterson.
Yeah.
Okay, that's the actual book.
It came out July 18th.
Okay.
So this is a child psychiatrist's guide out of the madness.
So let's talk about entering the madness.
Let's start with a big macro question.
Since I was in college...
I have assumed that most psychiatrists are fools, yet I have great admiration for psychiatry, and as you know, one of my dearest friends is a psychiatrist.
Two of my dearest friends, actually.
Is that an unfair judgment on my part about your profession?
Did you say, I want to make sure I understand...
You said...
Fools.
I said, I think, I have believed since college most psychiatrists are fools.
It began when they said that when, I don't know how many it was, hundreds, a thousand, signed a petition that Barry Goldwater was mentally ill because they didn't like his politics.
Barry Goldwater was not mentally ill.
They perverted science by making a therapeutic assessment of someone they never met.
And the silence of the psychiatric group about using psychiatry to place Soviet dissidents in psychiatric wards.
Nothing that I have experienced in my life has made me admire the American Psychiatric Society, or whatever it's called, Academy, whatever it is, or it's the profession.
There are any number of terrific individual psychiatrists, but tell me if my assessment is overly harsh.
Well, the way that I look at it is that my profession, my specialty of medicine, is particularly liable to influence, you know, ideological influence.
So I don't think it's a matter of being so much foolish as it is a matter into mental health in general are not people who have strong faith.
And so their faith becomes psychiatry, psychology.
And, you know, you're not going to find truth in psychiatry.
You're not going to find a moral compass, a phrase that I learned from you, in psychiatry and in mental health.
And so I think that it's easy for people who have no moral compass of their own, no real beliefs in it, That they then turn to psychiatry, and they make it their god, and they really lose their way, as they have with transgenderism, which is probably the best example.
Well, perhaps the prefrontal lobotomies was just as bad, but in terms of our current day, the way that my profession has lost its way and is...
Bringing harm to so many young people and their families.
All right, which is what we'll talk about when we come back.
Dr. Mary Grossman, Lost in Transnation.
It's up at DennisPrager.com.
This is the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
My guest is a courageous human being, which immediately puts her in the very...
A little narrow part of the bell curve of humanity.
She's a psychiatrist, a children's psychiatrist.
She's writing about the, well, I tell you, Jordan Peterson in his introduction put it, the criminal misbehavior of the medical professionals and counselors perpetrating the gender-affirming care travesty.
Criminal behavior.
So here's a child psychiatrist.
Okay, so let's get to the nitty-gritty.
You say you're giving a guide out of the madness.
So let's say there was someone listening, and I have no doubt that someone is listening, whose child came home in the last few months, maybe today, and said she's, let's say, 11 years old or 8 years old.
Mom, Dad, Usually just mom, I suspect.
That's an interesting question unto itself.
I'm a boy.
What should the parent say?
Well, Dennis, I have an entire...
of exactly that conversation, the first few conversations that a parent can have with their child.
When the child comes home and makes such an announcement.
And to boil it down to just a few essential elements.
Those first conversations are not a time to argue.
Those conversations are a time, number one, to listen.
To be curious.
To learn from your child.
Because if your child...
It means that they are in distress of one sort or another.
They are choosing a new identity.
Either they're running away from their masculinity or femininity, or they're running to this new persona.
And there are reasons for that.
So one of the big differences in my approach and what I'm telling parents, As opposed to the narrative, the ongoing gender quote-unquote affirming narrative.
When any person, especially a child, a vulnerable child, decides that they have to be somebody else.
Now, in those first few conversations, the parent wants to just be present and be curious.
And ask a lot of questions.
Is the child going to know the answers to those questions?
Half the time, no.
Or they're going to give answers that don't make any sense.
But that's okay.
Because the child needs the connection with the parent.
The parent may think that that's not at all just running away and doesn't want that relationship.
That is not true.
The child wants approval on a deep level.
The child wants the parent's approval.
And they are nervous about having this conversation.
So in the first few conversations, and I explain in detail in the book, to try and be calm, not easy.
You can freak out later.
But do not freak out in front of your kid.
And do not say, try not to say, what are you talking about?
This is insane.
You want to try to not go in that direction when you're speaking to your child, because that's going to be pushing your child away.
And the key to surviving this ordeal of having a kid in distress about their sex...
The key is actually the relationship with the parent.
Not an easy thing because the parent is on a tightrope.
It's very difficult because on the one hand, you do want to be there for your child.
Supportive.
You want to be present and you want to be loving.
But you do not want to be agreeing.
With the ideas that your child has been indoctrinated with.
Yeah, but it sounded like in the beginning you're not in any way refuting the idea.
So you are agreeing with it.
No, no.
What you're doing is you're saying, I want to learn more.
I see that this is really important to you.
Am I going to start calling you by a different name?
No.
And there's a way that that's important.
We went through a lot of, you know, that was a big decision for us to pick your name.
I am not going to be making that decision right now.
I am not going to be calling you by different pronouns, but we're going to keep talking about it.
And most importantly, I want to learn more about what this is all about for you.
I'm going to do all the research.
I want to learn.
I want to become an expert in this issue.
Right now, I'm not an expert.
Okay, so how long do you carry on this approach?
Because every day that you don't say, well, in fact, God or nature made you a girl, or since we're using the girl as an example, it's usually girls saying they're boys.
Every day you are obviously adding to the credibility of her belief that she's a boy.
Do you do this for a week, a month, six months?
How long do you do this for?
No, because just because you are listening and you're not contradicting and having conflict over it doesn't mean you're agreeing.
Sit calmly.
And listen to what their child is saying and disagree with it deeply and have a deep emotional reaction to it without necessarily making that the focus of their interaction at the time.
The focus should be on maintaining some sort of loving connection.
Are you allowed to say at that point even, I believe you're a girl?
No.
Well, yes.
I mean, there's no...
All right, tell me the answer to that when we get back.
I want to push your book.
Lost in Transnation, a child psychiatrist guide out of the madness, Dr. Miriam Grossman.
Miriam Grossman is a child psychiatrist dealing with about as tough an issue as exists today in that arena.
Yeah.
Lost in Transnation is the name.
A child psychiatrist's guide out of the madness.
Alright, so I have been pushing you because I so respect you and so want to hear what you have to say.
I gave you the imaginary...
Example of somebody coming to their parent, a girl, 8 or 11, I'm really a boy, and what should the parent say?
So the first thing is, I'm reviewing.
The first thing is, you have to maintain your child's desire to communicate with you in this regard, correct?
Is that a fair summary?
Absolutely.
You want to be present and child, yeah.
Okay.
At the same time, you can say, I love you the way you are, and you are a girl.
Can you say that?
Well, of course.
Listen, this is not a recipe that everything is measured out perfectly.
I'm giving parents just basic sort of guideposts that they should follow.
That they might be prepared should this happen in their families.
It is for families that are currently going through this catastrophe, and it is a catastrophe, but it's even more so for parents who might be facing this in their future and for them to be prepared so that they're not blindsided like the hundreds of parents that I've talked to who Who just didn't know even what to say and had no understanding of where this is coming from.
You see, I discovered this gender ideology, this belief system, because that is what it is.
There's no science or medicine that's behind it.
Belief system.
And I discovered it maybe 15 years ago when I was studying sex education.
And I realized that as part of sex education that was being put out there by Planned Parenthood and Seekers and other organizations, the kids were being told that there's no such thing as a male-female binary.
That is an oppressive idea.
There's many different sexes.
Sex is on a spectrum.
Sex is assigned at birth.
Now, of course, you know, Dennis, and Congress a few weeks ago, kind of appalling, right, that a doctor has to testify in the House of Representatives that sex is established at conception when the sperm makes the egg.
It is not randomly assigned at birth by a doctor or a midwife.
That is Orwellian language.
That manipulates us, and children especially, to believe that male and female are random, insignificant decisions made by someone that hardly even knows what's going on.
And that your body, the sex of your body is essentially insignificant.
It's how you feel.
How you experience yourself.
In other words, it's a philosophy that promotes disembodiment.
Disembodiment, being separate from your body.
That is what our kids are being indoctrinated to believe is healthy and wonderful.
When it's really the opposite, we don't want anyone feeling disembodied.
That in itself is a psychiatric problem.
A destructive way of thinking.
It's an irrational belief system that's been around for quite a long time.
I tried to warn parents about it in a book that I wrote called You're Teaching My Child What?
in 2009. Unfortunately, that book was considered an extreme religious right screed because it was published by Regnery.
And, unfortunately, it took this calamity that we're in right now, in which we have tens of thousands of kids and parents who are being destroyed by this.
That's right.
I'm going to ask you when we come back, would it help if every one of these kids met?
A young person who regretted having transitioned?
Are we using these people of whom there are more and more every day?
The book is Lost in Trans Nation.
Miriam Grossman is the author.
A courageous and knowledgeable psychiatrist, Dr. Miriam Grossman, has written...
And just published, it's got a foreword by Dr. Jordan Peterson, which is self-recommending just in that.
Lost in Transnation, A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness.
What do you think of my idea that there be a sort of repository of young people who deeply regret transitioning?
And they would be available to speak to your child who claims to be the other sex.
What do you think of that?
Well, in fact, Dennis, that is already happening.
And the parents of these kids are quite desperate sometimes to reach the detransitioner and get that person.
Detransitioner meaning, of course, somebody who went through so-called affirming care.
It was medicalized to either a lesser or greater degree.
Some of them took hormones.
Others had surgery and now regret it.
And you're absolutely right.
The numbers are growing as we speak.
I'll just explain something.
First of all, these people who are detransitioners, they are dealing with their own healing from what they've been through.
And so, you know, some of them are coming out and making videos and, you know, being interviewed.
Chloe Cole comes to mind, a remarkable young woman who's been out there now for a while, was interviewed in a very, very moving way.
I mean, you cannot watch this and just not cry.
You cannot watch this.
What happened to this young woman and what was done to her by my colleagues, my medical and mental health colleagues.
And, you know, this is why I wrote the book also because I'm so outraged at how parents and children are being misled and given misinformation.
But getting back to your question, Dennis, so the detransitioners, they can only do so much.
I do definitely encourage my patients and their families to watch videos and read, you know, articles and essays that have been written by some of the detransitioners.
And I try to pair together the right detransitioner with a patient because, you know, people have different issues.
Some are on the autism spectrum.
You know, got into pornography, and that was their gateway into the transgender world.
But, you know, theoretically, yes, it is a great idea.
But some of these kids are indoctrinated.
That they think that anyone, anything that comes up that's going to try and...
That, you know, change their mind and that will challenge them, even in the most gentle, challenging enemy.
Right.
Transphobic enemy.
And so, you know, that's when I have kids who fire me.
When I just very, after getting to know them for a while, I might suggest, you know what, let's spend some time, you and I, and we'll just speak for a few minutes about the dangers of estrogen.
No, you're fired.
Won't meet with me again.
So, you see, part of the evil of what's going on is that when these kids are indoctrinated with these ideas about disembodiment, they are also indoctrinated to think anyone that won't go with your...
Your identity, your self-perception, the way that you want to express yourself, your desire to...
Including their parents.
Oh, number one is the parents.
The enemy.
The people who most love me are my enemy.
Exactly.
So they drive a huge wedge between this confused, vulnerable child and the people that love and adore them.
In the most in this world, on this planet.
And it ends, it does end, I'm sorry to say, but I've seen this over and over again.
It can end in complete estrangement.
Right.
Because the child, you know, or the teenager or young adult becomes so convinced and their thinking becomes so rigid that they see their parent as...
Not accepting of them and dangerous.
And they simply cut off ties.
So this is the destruction of the individual, the destruction of the family.
So tell me, forgive me because of the time factor, I want to ask you as much as I can.
How do you explain your colleagues, since there is no science to back them up and they claim to be scientists?
Is it ideology uber alis?
Is it money?
Is it both?
There's different ways of thinking about it.
I know that my colleagues that I've talked to about this privately all agree with me.
They all agree.
What are you going to do about it?
No, no, you're doing a great job.
Okay, I'm doing a great job, but you need to speak up about it.
Well, I don't know.
I'm not the type.
So basically, it's an issue of lack of courage.
Of course, being worried about losing your...
Yeah, but that's why they don't speak up.
I'm talking about the activists.
The ones telling kids, you're really a girl, you're really a boy.
Oh, in that case, Dennis, I believe that most of them, I'm going to put money aside.
In mental health, there isn't that much money to be made.
The surgeons can make a lot of money.
But in mental health, I believe it is the blind following of our professional organizations.
That have been hijacked.
So people just blindly say, well, but the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, they're all hijacked.
But that's the next subject for when we get together again.
One of the important books of our time, Lost in Transnation, a child psychiatrist's guide out of the madness, Dr. Miriam Grossman.
I salute you, Dr. Grossman.
I'll have more to say, folks, when we come back.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the Daily Show Prep.