Where There's Woke - Thomas Smith - WTW120: People Simply Cannot Stop Believing Bogus Child Trafficking Stats
Aired: 2026-03-20
Duration: 42:49


=== The Woke Virus and Diversity (03:39) ===

[00:00:03]  What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming?
[00:00:11]  Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
[00:00:19]  Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic can sound.
[00:00:27]  The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything, Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
[00:00:42]  Hey, hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke.
[00:00:44]  This is episode 120.
[00:00:45]  I'm Thomas.
[00:00:46]  That over there's Lydia.
[00:00:47]  How are you doing?
[00:00:48]  Hello.
[00:00:48]  I'm doing okay.
[00:00:49]  How are you?
[00:00:51]  Do you like how I push off like the witty little remark I'm supposed to do?
[00:00:57]  Push it to you a bunch of times.
[00:00:59]  Oh, you're supposed to do a witty remark?
[00:01:00]  I didn't know.
[00:01:01]  I feel like I'm supposed to, and I don't, I, I don't know what to do usually.
[00:01:06]  And so I answer just honestly, you know, from my heart, and then pass the ball to you in hopes that you do something better than I could come up with.
[00:01:15]  I hope magic happens.
[00:01:16]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:01:17]  Exactly.
[00:01:18]  Have you noticed that about me?
[00:01:20]  I don't want to answer it in anything that's going to start an argument or incriminate me in any way.
[00:01:26]  Marital disagreement.
[00:01:27]  Yeah.
[00:01:29]  No, I am so awash in today's subject that I can't even, I realize I filled the banter section of my brain.
[00:01:37]  Can I just say really fast?
[00:01:39]  So I said, hey, we should probably start recording soon.
[00:01:42]  You said, yeah, I'm trying to track down an Ashton Kutcher video.
[00:01:45]  Yeah.
[00:01:46]  That's what people have to do.
[00:01:47]  That was unrelated to the thing.
[00:01:50]  I just really wanted to see an Ashton Kutcher video.
[00:01:52]  That's how deep we go through this show.
[00:01:56]  You know, I once had a stranger say I was Ashton Kutcher.
[00:01:59]  No way.
[00:02:00]  Really?
[00:02:01]  I don't see it.
[00:02:01]  I don't know how convincing.
[00:02:03]  You don't see it?
[00:02:03]  I mean, some amount of it.
[00:02:05]  Really?
[00:02:05]  Yeah.
[00:02:06]  Have you looked at Ashton Kutcher?
[00:02:08]  The funny thing is at the time, I didn't even know anything about it.
[00:02:11]  I knew the name, but I was like, oh, kind of.
[00:02:13]  Okay.
[00:02:13]  I just typed in our shared browser.
[00:02:15]  Maybe the reason you had a hard time finding Ashton Kutcher video is because you're spelling his last name incorrectly.
[00:02:22]  No, the internet doesn't care.
[00:02:25]  You don't, you don't know.
[00:02:26]  That could have been one of the kids.
[00:02:28]  Ashton Kucher.
[00:02:29]  You don't know that that was me.
[00:02:31]  I'm typing.
[00:02:33]  I've got my wife trying to record before narcolepsy kicks in.
[00:02:37]  And I've quickly...
[00:02:39]  This is the most I've ever made you laugh.
[00:02:43]  Me trying to spell something.
[00:02:45]  It's so funny.
[00:02:49]  Look, there's a golfer named Matt Kucher who has the name spelled that way.
[00:02:54]  My brain probably did that.
[00:02:55]  Okay, I'm looking at him.
[00:02:57]  And then I spelled it.
[00:02:58]  I spelled it at least three different ways.
[00:02:59]  I think you can only see one.
[00:03:02]  The best one.
[00:03:03]  I think that's the browser is kind of sparing my feelings a little bit there.
[00:03:06]  Hiding the more you're not.
[00:03:08]  It's like, I'm not even going to show you the other ones.
[00:03:10]  This is the closest he got.
[00:03:11]  Your wife can't know.
[00:03:13]  Okay, drum roll, the results of the Ashton Kutcher look-alike contest.
[00:03:19]  There's some.
[00:03:20]  Okay, maybe a little bit.
[00:03:21]  Here's the thing.
[00:03:21]  Also, maybe, okay, it was in 2000.
[00:03:24]  No beard.
[00:03:25]  Yeah, it was before.
[00:03:26]  It was a long time ago.
[00:03:27]  Okay, I was going to say because I'm looking at this picture.
[00:03:30]  What happens in Vegas?
[00:03:32]  I could see if your hair was grown out a little bit.
[00:03:34]  In Vegas?
[00:03:35]  It's a movie.
[00:03:35]  Oh, okay.
[00:03:36]  Miss Cameron Diaz.
[00:03:38]  My brain was going wild.
[00:03:40]  I thought that was used shorthand for like, okay, I guess I would do this guy.

=== Ashton Kutcher Look-Alike Contest (07:54) ===

[00:03:43]  Like, maybe.
[00:03:44]  Like, I'm looking at this video.
[00:03:46]  Maybe what happens in Vegas situation.
[00:03:48]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:48]  No, I could see that because like you have grown out your hair since we've been together.
[00:03:53]  And so like I've seen you with like a little bit longer hair.
[00:03:55]  So it kind of matches this vibe I'm seeing in this movie poster.
[00:03:58]  I've never seen you without a beard.
[00:04:00]  Anyway, and so I think that's the missing piece.
[00:04:03]  I think that is actually the key because I didn't have much of a beard back then.
[00:04:06]  Yeah.
[00:04:07]  Speaking of missing pieces.
[00:04:10]  Oh.
[00:04:10]  We're going to talk about missing kids.
[00:04:12]  That was what this entire setup was.
[00:04:14]  Yeah.
[00:04:15]  I plan the whole thing.
[00:04:15]  Every word of that tightly choreographed.
[00:04:18]  So much to talk about.
[00:04:19]  I can't even, I know I say that every time, but this is such an interesting one.
[00:04:22]  Truly fascinating.
[00:04:24]  We have a lot to talk about.
[00:04:25]  We have a lot to talk about regarding the possible bullshit organizations we've looked into.
[00:04:30]  There's a lot of fun stuff around that.
[00:04:32]  But I really thought, okay, I've already spent two, three episodes telling you about that and just showing you kind of the bullshit of this one particular guy.
[00:04:39]  So I want to make sure we got to the hard stuff, the hard data stuff like soon.
[00:04:44]  I wanted to do that now.
[00:04:45]  So we're going right to that because I want to get, I want to make sure we get to the meat and potatoes right now.
[00:04:51]  And then we have a bunch of other fun bullshit to go through.
[00:04:54]  Fraud, all this.
[00:04:55]  I mean, there's so much.
[00:04:56]  It's unending.
[00:04:58]  Unending.
[00:04:59]  But I really wanted to talk about, and it's already hard to put a name to it.
[00:05:02]  And that is the very problem of the subject is it's so nebulous.
[00:05:07]  I'm going to say child trafficking, I guess, is where I'll put it because it really, really, really, really changes the situation depending on what word you use.
[00:05:16]  Are you using human trafficking?
[00:05:18]  Because that includes a gajillion people all around the world who are mainly trafficked for labor.
[00:05:23]  Right.
[00:05:23]  I think the majority of it.
[00:05:24]  I didn't bother to check that stack because I'm not doing that subject, but every time I saw it referenced, you know, that might be the, especially now.
[00:05:31]  God, there's horrible stuff.
[00:05:33]  I'm just remembering a podcast where it was one of the news podcasts.
[00:05:36]  The daily or something.
[00:05:37]  Yeah.
[00:05:37]  Somebody who got, now people get like kidnapped into the cyber fraud places.
[00:05:42]  You know about that?
[00:05:43]  No.
[00:05:43]  It's awful.
[00:05:44]  Like it's around the world.
[00:05:45]  There's a guy who graduated, probably he was in India, I think, graduated with a degree in like computer science.
[00:05:52]  And then they'll put up fake job listings.
[00:05:53]  Oh, wow.
[00:05:54]  It's like, hey, come be our technical whatever.
[00:05:56]  And then it's, it's a bullshit thing and they kidnap them and they keep them like at gunpoint.
[00:06:02]  Like just and they have to essentially be stuck in an office job at gunpoint trying to perpetrate fraud.
[00:06:09]  Like severance.
[00:06:10]  Yeah, kind of.
[00:06:11]  Yeah.
[00:06:11]  It's a real thing.
[00:06:12]  Wow.
[00:06:13]  Can't speak to the numbers, but so anyway, that's trafficking.
[00:06:16]  There's very, very, very real problems.
[00:06:19]  And I think that's one thing I do really want to say is that the hard thing, I've already kind of mentioned it, but I just want to reiterate the really hard thing about doing this topic is in the same sentence, I could be talking about an incredibly silly, fake, made-up thing.
[00:06:32]  And then one word later, the most serious, horrible crime that anyone commits.
[00:06:37]  That's very real.
[00:06:38]  So it's really, I just.
[00:06:39]  That absolutely happens.
[00:06:41]  Yeah, it's so hard.
[00:06:42]  Like we could switch in a heartbeat, depending on like the placement of a word.
[00:06:45]  Cause if you say child sex trafficking, that's awful and does exist.
[00:06:49]  But as we're going to talk about, it's also when you try to look at the actual numbers, especially in the U.S., it's vastly lower than everybody says, but it's real.
[00:06:59]  And they're absolutely victims.
[00:07:01]  And yeah.
[00:07:01]  And then that's also confused with child sex abuse.
[00:07:04]  Right.
[00:07:04]  Obviously, very real, very prevalent, way more prevalent than sex trafficking.
[00:07:08]  It's a completely different thing, though.
[00:07:10]  Like completely different.
[00:07:11]  Yeah, they're related in some ways, but like it really matters which of these things you want to look at if you're going to be donating money, be making promises about what your organization can do about a given problem.
[00:07:23]  Or, you know, you're trying to pass a bill or you're in general just trying to scare people in a QAnon sense about the, you know, the Hillaries and the whatever's that are doing the sex trafficking of children.
[00:07:33]  Like it's so easy to be talking about a vastly different thing, just a slight word over.
[00:07:41]  And all what I found is it all just gets blended together by both good actors and bad.
[00:07:46]  You know, I think genuinely it's a complicated thing.
[00:07:48]  It's also a thing that it's hard to be super precise all the time in how we talk, but there's also bad actors who are either knowingly doing it or don't care or, you know, because there's all kinds of money involved when people's heartstrings are tugged at.
[00:08:01]  And that's very good that people are wanting to help.
[00:08:05]  It really is.
[00:08:06]  But I think the one of the main things that motivates me on this is, for one, it was just wild to go on this journey from the Charlie Kirk fucking thing to what the hell is.
[00:08:17]  Yeah, that's where we started.
[00:08:18]  What are they talking about?
[00:08:19]  Tim Tebow donated a bunch of money to like a, you know, an organization.
[00:08:22]  Like, it's just wild to go on.
[00:08:24]  It's a doll fundraiser day, like with the Aldin.
[00:08:27]  Right.
[00:08:27]  Well, yeah.
[00:08:28]  Yeah.
[00:08:28]  He donated first and then there's a guy.
[00:08:30]  But also, I think what really frustrates me about this, and I made the point before, and I'm going to come back to it.
[00:08:36]  If this were about rape kits, no one would give a shit.
[00:08:39]  If this were about so many things that are actually things we need or the actual cultural changes, societal changes that we would need in order to prevent harm, all of a sudden these conservatives don't care.
[00:08:52]  They care about a particular thing described a particular way.
[00:08:56]  And I also want to say, I've seen, I've watched a bunch of interviews now with different stuff.
[00:09:00]  I'm not, don't worry.
[00:09:01]  I'm not going over much of it.
[00:09:02]  But like, there's also a bunch of genuine right wingers who do genuinely care about this.
[00:09:06]  Of course.
[00:09:07]  And like, you know, and some of them are doing.
[00:09:09]  Maybe like a Marjorie Taylor Greene, right?
[00:09:10]  Like, boy, that's a tough example.
[00:09:13]  Maybe.
[00:09:14]  Well, I just think about like regarding Epstein.
[00:09:17]  She feels very, very strongly about something like that.
[00:09:22]  And I don't buy anything else that she says ever.
[00:09:25]  Right.
[00:09:25]  Yeah.
[00:09:25]  But I just, I also meant like there's, there's all kinds of these like weird wannabe manosphere.
[00:09:30]  Like they're even in the extended mano atmosphere podcasts that's like two dudes who, you know, we're in the army or something, you know.
[00:09:38]  And there's one of them that was kind of touching because even though these are probably right wingers, this is one I watched with Matt Murphy.
[00:09:44]  Again, we're not going to go over it, but just as an example.
[00:09:46]  And it was kind of touching because they're like, they had actually started some organizations themselves to help homeless veterans.
[00:09:51]  And they were like, yeah, we just were, you know, in a way, it makes it all the more tragic if there's anything fraudulent going on.
[00:09:57]  These two gentlemen, they're total nobodies from, from what I can tell, but they had, you know, a little show and they were like, we were saying somebody should raise money for these homeless veterans and then we decided we'd do it.
[00:10:07]  And, you know, one was a musician.
[00:10:09]  And so they're like, yeah, we played a concert and, you know, we raised a few thousand bucks for the, like, it seemed really heartfelt and really like, even among, you know, someone's politics doesn't determine their entire worth as a human.
[00:10:19]  You know, lots of people can just be wrong and can believe certain things for unexamined reasons, all kinds of stuff.
[00:10:25]  Cultural reasons.
[00:10:26]  Like a single issue voter or something like that.
[00:10:28]  Yeah.
[00:10:28]  And so cultural.
[00:10:29]  It's so based on the culture you're steeped in.
[00:10:31]  It really is.
[00:10:32]  Like it just, unfortunately, it's more about that.
[00:10:35]  And there's some people who really care and really want to help.
[00:10:37]  But I do think it's really tragic that their attention gets pulled in these wrong directions.
[00:10:42]  But also going back, turns out these myths and these moral panics about missing traffic sex abuse children, all this stuff, kidnap children.
[00:10:50]  I mean, it dates back.
[00:10:52]  I knew that, but like it's interesting to look at the details.
[00:10:54]  Not only does the panic date back, but also debunking dates back.
[00:11:00]  There's nothing new under the sun.
[00:11:02]  Like this is a constant problem.
[00:11:03]  It just continually gets debunked and doesn't matter.
[00:11:07]  So I'm going to add one more debunking to that.
[00:11:09]  I mean, I say it doesn't matter.
[00:11:11]  It doesn't like end it, obviously.
[00:11:12]  Like there's just, and there's so much information out there, so many places to receive wrong information more than ever that it's just more and more important to put out the correct information.
[00:11:22]  Just hope we can keep up.
[00:11:24]  You know, it's the only thing we can do until until some president and some Congress that runs on my agenda of cancel the internet that I'm now every day.
[00:11:34]  Every day, I'm more firmly in the cancel the internet.

=== Fighting Misinformation with Facts (15:36) ===

[00:11:37]  Just cancel it.
[00:11:38]  It's just, let's keep it.
[00:11:39]  It's not good for humans.
[00:11:40]  But social internet should only exist with a verified ID.
[00:11:45]  I'm seeing these YouTube comments now of stuff that I'm going in, and I don't think there's a single real person on the internet.
[00:11:50]  Oh, yeah.
[00:11:51]  And like, I'm genuinely concerned about it.
[00:11:53]  Like, really concerned, because it just creates this entire fake environment.
[00:11:58]  Anyway, point is information environment sucks.
[00:12:00]  Gonna try to put out some good information here, see what we can do, have some fun along the way, and learn some stuff along the way.
[00:12:07]  So here we are.
[00:12:08]  I had to be roasted for my horrible spelling.
[00:12:10]  So that took some time, but we're gonna get to our first break.
[00:12:12]  Patreon.com slash where there's woke.
[00:12:14]  Please support the show.
[00:12:14]  Support our efforts here.
[00:12:16]  And please share the show with someone, especially if you ever see anyone talking about any of the stuff we talk about and being wrong about it.
[00:12:21]  You know, we got to help our help our debunks get to where they need to get to.
[00:12:25]  Thanks so much.
[00:12:26]  And we'll take a break and get going.
[00:12:32]  So remember Ashton Kutcher?
[00:12:34]  You mean Kucha?
[00:12:35]  I don't.
[00:12:35]  Yes.
[00:12:36]  Okay.
[00:12:37]  Ashton Kucher.
[00:12:38]  Yes, I do remember Ashton Kutcher.
[00:12:40]  Of course I do.
[00:12:41]  I barely do.
[00:12:42]  Really?
[00:12:42]  Yeah, it's funny.
[00:12:43]  So in the back of my mind, when I first started looking into this, I was like, I do kind of remember he had a human trafficking thing going.
[00:12:49]  But it's funny because when I'm looking at these claims, he is a big example of one of them.
[00:12:54]  And he's an interesting case because I also think he was trying to do a real thing because he talked about slavery around the world and human trafficking around the world.
[00:13:02]  But he also delved into some a piece of misinformation that I want to get into.
[00:13:07]  But I completely forgot the interview that is the key thing I was looking for is Ashton Kutcher and you remember?
[00:13:16]  No.
[00:13:16]  His partner at the time.
[00:13:17]  Oh, Demi Moore.
[00:13:18]  Demi Moore.
[00:13:19]  Oh, man.
[00:13:20]  2011 on Piers Morgan.
[00:13:22]  Is that why you like don't really remember Ashton Kutcher is because you also don't remember Demi Moore?
[00:13:27]  Could be.
[00:13:27]  Yeah.
[00:13:28]  Yeah.
[00:13:28]  Well, I remember her now because, boy, she's, she's good looking in this interview.
[00:13:32]  I didn't, I just like, I never really saw her or anything.
[00:13:35]  I don't know.
[00:13:35]  I didn't really know.
[00:13:36]  But I forgot they were a thing.
[00:13:38]  God, that age difference was cool.
[00:13:40]  Yeah.
[00:13:41]  Yeah.
[00:13:41]  Good for her, I guess.
[00:13:42]  I mean, yeah, they were a thing for eight years.
[00:13:44]  It was a while.
[00:13:45]  Anyway, Piers Morgan on CNN in 2011, I believe.
[00:13:52]  Oh, wow.
[00:13:52]  Ashton Kutcher is a weird case because I'm uncomfortable the entire time I watch him because he's so worked up about this.
[00:13:58]  And I think it's genuine.
[00:14:00]  I think it's mostly genuine.
[00:14:01]  And he talks about like having, you know, met real victims of stuff.
[00:14:04]  And I think his heart seems to have been in the right place.
[00:14:08]  And then there's, he testified in front of Congress in 2017.
[00:14:12]  Yeah.
[00:14:12]  Actually, I remember that.
[00:14:13]  Yeah.
[00:14:15]  And I don't believe he was still spreading this false number then, but he did in this 2011 thing.
[00:14:22]  And God, what a weird thing.
[00:14:24]  It was just like a real blast from the past.
[00:14:25]  And then you realize how long ago this was and it feels like yesterday.
[00:14:29]  But this is as good a video as any to introduce the main fake stat that I want to talk about today.
[00:14:36]  Into the sex trade is 13 years old.
[00:14:38]  And that's globally, by the way.
[00:14:40]  Like most people sort of see this and they go, okay, that's a problem in Cambodia or that's a problem in India.
[00:14:46]  And it's happening in the United States.
[00:14:47]  There's between 100 and 300,000 child sex slaves in the United States today.
[00:14:52]  And so when we immediately I'm like, that's not true.
[00:14:57]  Yeah.
[00:14:58]  Yeah.
[00:14:58]  100 and 300,000 child sex slaves in America today.
[00:15:03]  No.
[00:15:03]  Now, 2011 was a long time ago, but I don't remember that.
[00:15:09]  That is a, that is a whopper.
[00:15:10]  But we, there was a time when like these things, and probably still now, when these stats are just rattled off, that's, that one's pretty extreme because it was child sex slaves.
[00:15:19]  Like that's, I mean, that's fucking crazy.
[00:15:21]  Like you got to be out of your mind to believe that.
[00:15:23]  Yeah.
[00:15:24]  And yet I grabbed a few more clips for fun.
[00:15:28]  The claim changes a little bit.
[00:15:30]  These are kind of random.
[00:15:31]  The internet is ruined now.
[00:15:33]  So no search actually works.
[00:15:34]  True story, Google discovered if it made their search function worse, people would have to use it more.
[00:15:40]  And so that's one of the reasons that nothing works anymore.
[00:15:43]  but I did track down a couple old ones here just for fun.
[00:15:47]  But these are real though.
[00:15:48]  They're old, but I mean, they're major.
[00:15:49]  I guess this is slightly less old than the one we just did.
[00:15:52]  Al Jazeera English story here.
[00:15:54]  12 years old or 13.
[00:15:56]  And it just boggles my mind that that can happen to them at such a young age.
[00:16:02]  Child sex trafficking is often considered a developing world problem.
[00:16:06]  But the U.S. Justice Department says up to 300,000 children are being prostituted right here in the United States.
[00:16:13]  The average age when they start, 13 to 14.
[00:16:17]  So that's 300, what was it?
[00:16:20]  300,000.
[00:16:22]  Because I wasn't.
[00:16:22]  Yeah.
[00:16:23]  300,000 kids being prostituted here in the United States.
[00:16:28]  Yeah.
[00:16:28]  And that was the Justice Department, he says.
[00:16:31]  So a real place.
[00:16:34]  Here's another one.
[00:16:35]  Now, this one seems to be from 2019.
[00:16:38]  It is estimated that there are between 100 and 300,000 children here in the U.S. being exploited for sex every year.
[00:16:45]  Today we are introducing.
[00:16:47]  So that's 100 and 300,000 being exploited for sex every year, which is you've kind of seen an evolution there.
[00:16:54]  Now, that could just be coincidental in the clips I found because you really see all kinds of clips all, you know, like everywhere.
[00:17:01]  Pretty much constant.
[00:17:02]  That first Ashton one was the most ridiculous.
[00:17:04]  I mean, the idea that there's 300,000 sex slaves.
[00:17:07]  And I have, lest you think that this is just random news clippings and random whatever, I found a poll done that is even more depressing here.
[00:17:17]  Now, the weird thing is I tried to track down any like data or the actual poll.
[00:17:22]  The only thing I can find is this weird like blog site about it.
[00:17:27]  However, in my search, I tracked down from the actual guys who did it, one of their like web pages, like his personal page.
[00:17:35]  And I was like, oh, I found it.
[00:17:37]  I clicked on the link and it was the same weird blog site.
[00:17:39]  So it's like, I'm going to go ahead and take that as an endorsement of this was the actual results.
[00:17:45]  But it's weird that I, I don't know, I just can't find, I don't know if they didn't publish like any more details, but these are people who do tons of good surveys and research on this.
[00:17:53]  So I don't have any reason to doubt it.
[00:17:54]  But in 2020, I believe, Joseph Yusinsky and Adam Enders did some surveying about this stuff.
[00:18:02]  They've studied a lot of like conspiracy stuff.
[00:18:04]  They've studied a lot of QAnon stuff.
[00:18:07]  And as part of that, they did a survey.
[00:18:11]  They say we asked our survey respondents if they believed the number of children being trafficked in the U.S. was above, about, or below 300,000 children.
[00:18:22]  We frame the question this way because several politicians have used this number in the past, even though it has been labeled with four Pinocchios by fact checkers who consider it a gross overestimation.
[00:18:32]  What percent of Americans do you think said that the real number was 300,000 or higher?
[00:18:39]  32%.
[00:18:40]  Ooh, not bad.
[00:18:42]  So this says our survey found that 50% of Americans think the real number of trafficked children is about 300,000 or higher.
[00:18:49]  That's crazy.
[00:18:50]  Now, I can't tell if this is a subset, but hold on.
[00:18:53]  34% think it's much higher.
[00:18:56]  Oh.
[00:18:57]  I think that 34 is within the 50.
[00:18:59]  So it's not like, you know, add them up and be 84.
[00:19:02]  I think that's within the 50.
[00:19:03]  Yeah.
[00:19:04]  But still, like, that's more than half our country thinks that the number of trafficked children in the U.S. is 300,000 or higher.
[00:19:11]  Why aren't people like out in the streets right now if that's truly like believe?
[00:19:17]  I mean, they kind of have been in different ways.
[00:19:20]  I guess, but like, why wouldn't you be doing it even more?
[00:19:23]  You know, because we tried.
[00:19:25]  Like, if I honestly felt that scores upon scores of children were being sex slaves or sexually abused or like trafficked, like all these other ways that they've like framed it and stuff.
[00:19:36]  I feel like that's the only thing I'd want to talk about.
[00:19:39]  And screaming at all my government representatives constantly.
[00:19:44]  Yeah, I don't know.
[00:19:44]  It just seems, it just seems weird.
[00:19:46]  I mean, there is a lot of that.
[00:19:48]  Like a lot of what I'm going to talk about is kind of that.
[00:19:51]  Like this is that.
[00:19:53]  People are busy, you know, so people don't have a lot.
[00:19:56]  All right, fine.
[00:19:57]  So here's another thing, though.
[00:19:59]  This isn't exactly related, but it does have implications for a lot of stuff we've talked about.
[00:20:03]  Adjacently, we asked respondents about the existence of elite Hollywood and government sex trafficking rings.
[00:20:09]  Oh, God.
[00:20:10]  35% agreed that, quote, elites from government and Hollywood are engaged in a massive child sex trafficking racket.
[00:20:18]  Huh.
[00:20:19]  Yeah.
[00:20:19]  This was, so this blog thing was in 2021, and I think it was written from the perspective of like, hey, see all this QAnon stuff?
[00:20:27]  Well, it's not just.
[00:20:30]  Yeah.
[00:20:30]  Yeah.
[00:20:30]  So there's a big swirling thing that happened around this time.
[00:20:34]  But what's interesting is this is written from the perspective of like, this didn't happen yesterday.
[00:20:38]  Like these beliefs, yes, the QAnon beliefs are hijacking sort of and piggybacking and like exploiting this stuff, but like these myths actually predate that as well.
[00:20:49]  Yeah.
[00:20:50]  And what I found that I think is kind of funny and something that I maybe have uniquely noticed is that weirdly this 300,000 number is very sticky.
[00:20:58]  And it's very sticky even beyond what has been tracked to be like the source of it.
[00:21:04]  I actually found what's funny because I tracked, I was, you know, looking into this and I saw like what the alleged source for this is.
[00:21:11]  And then what's funny is I found something that predates that by six years that also said 300,000.
[00:21:18]  And what's so funny is that I, I don't, that could be pure coincidence or not.
[00:21:24]  I mean, it just seems like for some reason, this number is just very sticky with this particular thing.
[00:21:33]  So this is a major thing.
[00:21:35]  This is not just like, oh, there's a few random people saying that they're, you know, this is a major subset of people.
[00:21:41]  I wouldn't even want to say subset.
[00:21:42]  It's a majority of people in our country, apparently.
[00:21:44]  I don't, I mean, unless things changed drastically in since 2021.
[00:21:49]  And if anything, I bet you that number could be higher now because of Epstein and actual things.
[00:21:54]  Thing is, though, Epstein, if you think about it, like that, that is an extreme, extreme example.
[00:22:00]  And the number of kids that you could prove were trafficked based on that extreme example through all of his fucking trafficking career.
[00:22:12]  Yeah.
[00:22:12]  30 years.
[00:22:14]  My impression is it's like, could be 100 or so, could be like 200, I think.
[00:22:18]  This is just me estimating.
[00:22:20]  I've seen different quotes here.
[00:22:21]  There's a lot of victims.
[00:22:23]  The actual trafficking qualification is a little bit different.
[00:22:26]  Yeah, that's fair because I was going to say I had seen things about like could be up to a thousand, but not on the trafficking side of things necessarily.
[00:22:35]  Maybe this is a bad point, but just in thinking of like, well, that's the, that's the fucking Michael Jordan of trafficking.
[00:22:41]  Like that's the biggest example we know of in the U.S. of like this awful, what, what people are thinking of as like, ah, pedophile ring, sex trafficking, whatever.
[00:22:52]  So like, can you imagine how much of that you would need to get to 300,000?
[00:22:56]  Like, it's just like, you would need 30,000 of him or something.
[00:23:00]  You know, it's like, does that, I mean, there's a lot of people in the country.
[00:23:04]  I guess you could argue that there would be like, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of people trafficking one child.
[00:23:10]  Like, it's just so many.
[00:23:12]  It's so many.
[00:23:13]  But I just think people don't have a good sense for numbers.
[00:23:16]  And I think that kind of goes both ways because there's, there's stuff that people will underestimate and there's stuff that people will overestimate.
[00:23:22]  But then also if it's one kid per sex trafficking ring, then it's not exactly like these complex significant trafficking rings then.
[00:23:33]  Well, I think it's like B-Y-O-C, like bring your own child to the, like everybody has to bring a child to the ring.
[00:23:39]  Yeah.
[00:23:40]  Yeah.
[00:23:40]  And so like, I don't know how big the rings are.
[00:23:43]  But yeah, you remember, and I think you mentioned the Wayfair thing.
[00:23:47]  That was around the time of this survey-ish.
[00:23:50]  You know, there was this QAnon.
[00:23:52]  There's this swirling QAnon Pizzagate Wayfair thing.
[00:23:55]  And it really did swirl.
[00:23:56]  And one thing I forgot is there's also some stuff I forgot about where there was a hashtag like save the children.
[00:24:03]  Yeah, I actually almost said save the children earlier doing this.
[00:24:06]  Oh, I didn't remember it.
[00:24:07]  Yeah, save the children.
[00:24:08]  Oh, okay.
[00:24:09]  It was everywhere.
[00:24:10]  Yeah.
[00:24:10]  And the thing was, it like it did start off as an earnest thing, but then QAnon just took over and just like posted so much in it that it became useless.
[00:24:20]  Yeah.
[00:24:20]  Yeah.
[00:24:20]  You just use that hashtag on whatever conspiracy you want.
[00:24:23]  Yeah.
[00:24:24]  But there was a specific like time that this happened in 2022 where it really blew up.
[00:24:29]  But like I said, I mean, this dates back and I think it's really interesting to go into the history.
[00:24:34]  It's never going to be comprehensive, but it does seem like the early 80s, maybe 70s, but early 80s into that milk carton kid era.
[00:24:42]  Like that, that's kind of when it really, you know, there's 1979 Eaton Pats.
[00:24:46]  I knew that name.
[00:24:47]  That's a very like dramatic, visible story.
[00:24:50]  But there was also Adam Walsh, who you might know was the son of John Walsh.
[00:24:58]  Oh, interesting.
[00:24:58]  Who then became the host of America's Most Wanted.
[00:25:02]  And he, I mean, he's kind of responsible for a lot of this.
[00:25:05]  You know, hard to blame him, I guess.
[00:25:07]  But he testified in 1983 in the Senate.
[00:25:12]  And he claimed that 50,000 children were abducted for the reasons of foul play in the United States every year.
[00:25:19]  From what I can tell, that was kind of like believed, you know, I don't have any surveys from back then, but especially back then, you consider your ability to access information.
[00:25:29]  Exactly.
[00:25:29]  That's what I was going to say, too.
[00:25:31]  It's like, who's going to sit there and fact check?
[00:25:33]  Yeah.
[00:25:33]  A guy who's on TV who's testified in front of the Senate says 50,000.
[00:25:37]  I mean, what information are you going to use?
[00:25:41]  I mean, there's ways, but like that, that's, that was believed widely.
[00:25:45]  And also what's interesting here is Congress passed some laws then.
[00:25:49]  And do you remember when I asked you like, oh, do you know the NCMEC?
[00:25:54]  I was just like curious if you knew about that.
[00:25:56]  Yeah, that comes from this.
[00:25:58]  Oh.
[00:25:58]  They passed a law establishing the nationwide hotline and creating the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
[00:26:04]  I didn't even realize because it's still going strong.
[00:26:07]  And you want to talk about money.
[00:26:08]  That's got government money.
[00:26:10]  Now, elements of what Matt Murphy were talking about are kind of true in terms of like, oh, we put so much more money into the drug war than we do our children or whatever kind of thing.
[00:26:19]  And that's kind of true.
[00:26:20]  Like I say that this has gotten a ton of money.
[00:26:23]  It's still on the order of, you know, 80, 90 million, which sounds like a lot, but relative to other stuff, obviously relative to anything involving the military or whatever, you know, that's gajillions.
[00:26:34]  Yeah.
[00:26:34]  But like relative to the drug war too, like it is true that we seem to have put more money into drug war stuff probably because of racism.
[00:26:41]  I'm guessing.
[00:26:42]  And it is true that there's probably a lot more.
[00:26:44]  And that's the biggest thing is like, I wish we, especially now that we don't have a government or anyone who believes in facts involved in the government, I would love to put good money where it needs to be in terms of this.
[00:26:58]  And I think we're probably going to talk about it a bit later in terms of there is some legitimate stuff happening in terms of trying to track down victims.
[00:27:06]  There's some legitimate use of maybe some of these nonprofits and all that trying to trying to help aid in technology for police.

=== Estimating Victims in Drug Wars (14:44) ===

[00:27:14]  Like there is stuff that could be done, but mixed in is so much of the crap we've talked about where it's like, well, we're going to fly in with a helicopter and we're going to shoot.
[00:27:22]  Point is that was the origin of the NCMEC.
[00:27:27]  And then if you think about kind of how that went, that organization is now kind of incentivized to, you know, perpetuate itself like any organization.
[00:27:37]  And that's where a lot of the stats you see there, and they're not, they're not lies because, I mean, it is a government organization.
[00:27:42]  It's one of those weird like private public partnerships.
[00:27:44]  I think it's kind of, it's not, I didn't spend too much time looking into the exact funding because they've, they've got all the money in the world and they've got a lot of it from the government.
[00:27:51]  So whatever.
[00:27:52]  I mean, I'm not, I'm not worried about them like ripping people off per se.
[00:27:56]  And they do real things, but they often they put out statistics that are like, here's our hotline.
[00:28:02]  Here's what we've gotten on our tip line.
[00:28:03]  And I mentioned that before.
[00:28:05]  And then people will cite that as like, there are X number of missing kids because there were X number of tips about a kid, you know, and it's like that's kind of fed into this information environment.
[00:28:17]  But what I find so interesting and that I didn't know until just doing this research is that this was debunked in 1985 in a story that the Denver Post won a Pulitzer Prize for.
[00:28:29]  Oh, wow.
[00:28:30]  Yeah.
[00:28:31]  1985.
[00:28:32]  That's like a couple years later because they're like, geez, everybody is really going nuts about this.
[00:28:37]  And they've got the milk cart and kids and they got all this panic.
[00:28:41]  And so some reporters like got into it and we're like, boy, this.
[00:28:45]  Yeah.
[00:28:46]  Is that real?
[00:28:47]  Yeah, no.
[00:28:48]  Yeah.
[00:28:52]  So that's one track.
[00:28:54]  Now we've got a different track.
[00:28:56]  So we also had the 300,000.
[00:28:58]  And I'm realizing now that I want to go back to that because we've got the 50,000 number that was given by, I almost said Joe Walsh.
[00:29:04]  That's given by John Walsh.
[00:29:06]  John Walsh.
[00:29:07]  Yeah.
[00:29:07]  And that was kind of the bullshit stat on record for a while, from what I can tell.
[00:29:12]  And that's one thing.
[00:29:13]  I'll get back to that in a second.
[00:29:14]  But going back to this 300,000 number, because I'm going to trace both of them and they're going to kind of meet in the middle in a way.
[00:29:20]  This is one that lots of people, lots of people have quoted it.
[00:29:24]  And now what's frustrating now is that there's a different thing that has taken over, which is even more annoying in some ways.
[00:29:32]  And I've already referenced it.
[00:29:33]  It's that border thing.
[00:29:34]  So when you search this anywhere post like 2020, like I guess Biden admin, that's when the claim switched to, oh, the border's open.
[00:29:46]  And then there was that traffic children quote unquote, or the Biden administration has lost 80,000 kids.
[00:29:52]  And then weirdly, so that number also merged with the 300,000 in a way.
[00:29:58]  And so now it's, well, the Biden admin lost 300,000 kids at the border.
[00:30:02]  And it's like combined two different bits of misinformation to one.
[00:30:06]  Because, you know, when you just don't care about checking your facts, stuff just goes, man, like different, especially when you're Trump and your party is Trump.
[00:30:17]  You just fucking open your mouth.
[00:30:19]  Yeah.
[00:30:19]  And whatever falls out falls.
[00:30:20]  And then if it changes, then that's the new thing.
[00:30:23]  And then that'll morph and that's the new thing.
[00:30:25]  Like when it's not tied to reality, the sky's the goddamn limit.
[00:30:29]  So like, that's kind of funny tracing that one, but it's, it's even more frustrating because it's like a newer iteration, but it's the same old bullshit.
[00:30:37]  And you, you see the same thing where some people say, some people say what it is, of course, which is, well, there is X number of people who haven't been called to their hearings yet or whatever.
[00:30:47]  And then some people change that to that many people are missing.
[00:30:51]  That many kids are missing.
[00:30:52]  And then some people change it to that many kids are trafficked into the United States.
[00:30:56]  Like literally, like all these claims come from that one thing.
[00:31:00]  And again, people are just not precise in their language whatsoever and they don't care.
[00:31:04]  So that's like the, we'll call that the current era we're in, like 2020, I guess the 2020s era is the basically the border thing takes over that.
[00:31:13]  And we heard Matt Murphy kind of talk about that.
[00:31:16]  And that kind of took over.
[00:31:17]  So it's, it really is like the border, the traffic children, the blah, blah, blah.
[00:31:20]  Before that, there was the 300,000 that I already went over a few times that was either kidnapped kids, sex slaves, or kids at risk or exploited.
[00:31:30]  And that one was a really sticky one.
[00:31:32]  And tracing that one back goes all the way back to, well, 2001, but the data was from the 90s.
[00:31:41]  So this fucking number that gets cited forever was from a 2001 report written by Richard J. Estes and Neil Weiner Weiner of the University of Pennsylvania.
[00:31:56]  And it relied on data from the 90s that suggested that, you know, here we go, 326,000 children were, quote, at risk for commercial sexual exploitation.
[00:32:09]  That makes more sense.
[00:32:12]  But imagine saying that in 2001 from data from the 90s and having that just, that's just, people just said that for 20 years after 300,000 children kidnapped.
[00:32:23]  300,000 children, sex, sex trafficking.
[00:32:25]  Sex slaves.
[00:32:25]  Yeah.
[00:32:26]  Sex slave.
[00:32:26]  I mean, it's just nuts.
[00:32:27]  Yeah.
[00:32:28]  Just so many.
[00:32:30]  And like, there's, there's obviously plenty of debunkings about that.
[00:32:33]  There's like 2008, there's a big report where people were like, in all caps, please stop.
[00:32:39]  Please stop citing.
[00:32:41]  Please do not cite these numbers, the report pleaded.
[00:32:44]  Quote, the reality is we do not currently know how many juveniles are involved in prostitution.
[00:32:48]  Scientifically credible estimates do not exist, which is interesting.
[00:32:52]  I feel like that's a strong statement, but you know.
[00:32:54]  I could see it being a really hard thing to be able to say, these are how many kids were rescued from a situation like that, but I don't know that that would give you any idea as to how many total are experiencing that kind of situation.
[00:33:09]  Yeah.
[00:33:10]  And that's something that is constantly said.
[00:33:12]  It kind of frustrates me because this is a thing that happens with scientists that I complain about sometimes.
[00:33:17]  I love, I love my scientists, but often I don't know what the solution is.
[00:33:21]  And maybe it's, you know, maybe it's not on the scientists.
[00:33:23]  Maybe it's on the UNI or the whoever else, the science communicators, but so often there will be some insane claim.
[00:33:30]  And then the scientist being a scientist, being a responsible person and speaking with an intended audience probably of scientists will say, well, there isn't evidence to back that up.
[00:33:39]  And it's like, that's not good enough.
[00:33:41]  Like for the standard idiot American, that does nothing, like nearly nothing.
[00:33:47]  I get in the in the faculty room, in the in the science circles, that's like, huh, no evidence.
[00:33:52]  You know, like, and, but it's like, it's also, it's, it's accurate.
[00:33:55]  It's careful because you always want to leave open the possibility that it could be true, but you just don't have evidence, you know?
[00:34:02]  But like, that's a frequent problem because our discourse is not built for that.
[00:34:06]  You know, like climate change, like all these different things, it's not built for this precise scientific discussion of, well, there's, you know, there's no evidence that that is that and there's no evidence.
[00:34:15]  It's just not good enough, you know?
[00:34:16]  It's like we need better ability to communicate different layers of like plausibility, you know?
[00:34:22]  It's one thing to talk about a claim that's like, you know, 10% different and be like, well, there's no evidence to say that it's 10% more, you know, but yeah, you could believe that, you know, that's one thing.
[00:34:34]  If it's like, well, the moon landing was faked, you can't be like, well, there's no evidence that the moon landing was faked.
[00:34:38]  Like it just doesn't, those aren't the same thing, but we use the same words for them.
[00:34:43]  You know, it's really doesn't work.
[00:34:45]  It needs to be like, that's fucking dumb.
[00:34:48]  You know, like scientists say that's stupid, you know, it's just, but it won't, it won't happen.
[00:34:53]  But anyway, along those lines, there's a lot of like, well, even one kid is too many.
[00:34:58]  It's like, yeah, no, I know.
[00:35:00]  I know even one kid is too many, obviously.
[00:35:02]  And also like this language where it's like, well, we can't know because anyone involved in this is involved in a crime.
[00:35:08]  Yeah.
[00:35:08]  You know, exactly.
[00:35:10]  And whether it's the victims or the perpetrators, it's a shadowy thing.
[00:35:12]  It's hard to estimate.
[00:35:13]  Yeah, that's going to be my next point is like, how, how are you going to get an accurate understanding of an ongoing crime that someone is perpetrating?
[00:35:24]  Well, there's ways.
[00:35:24]  Yeah.
[00:35:25]  You know, and I've seen different ways.
[00:35:26]  I'm not really sure why that quote said there isn't a scientifically reliable estimate.
[00:35:30]  I actually don't know.
[00:35:31]  But no, that's about prostitution.
[00:35:33]  So maybe that is a, that maybe, you know, maybe that is why.
[00:35:36]  Cause again, we got to, we have to be so precise in what we're talking about.
[00:35:39]  So that was, the reality is we do not. currently know how many juveniles are involved in prostitution.
[00:35:44]  Scientifically credible estimates do not exist.
[00:35:46]  Now, that was a 2008 debunk.
[00:35:49]  So that might be a different thing because prostitution, I imagine if you stretch kind of the limits of like the definition and how many like very subtle transactions there could be, like maybe that's what that scientist is thinking.
[00:36:01]  I don't know.
[00:36:01]  Maybe that maybe there is no scientifically credible way to estimate that.
[00:36:04]  But that's why we have to be so precise because there are ways to estimate, you know, things like crimes.
[00:36:09]  There are ways to estimate even unknown things.
[00:36:11]  Like the most famous one I'm going to talk about is a survey.
[00:36:15]  I'm not the scientist, so I don't understand it, but this is cited as the like be all end all that put a lot of this to rest.
[00:36:22]  And it's weird because it's so old.
[00:36:23]  It's from like 1999.
[00:36:24]  Oh, wow.
[00:36:25]  And all that did was a survey somehow.
[00:36:27]  But I guess if you're a scientist, maybe you understand like the different methods of doing this and maybe how rigorous it was that actually like asked enough people, hey, did your kid go missing?
[00:36:37]  Essentially.
[00:36:38]  And then like did follow-up work to get those stories and to kind of match it up to different stuff.
[00:36:42]  So I don't want to get too much into methods, but my understanding as not a scientist, just seeing what everybody is citing, that that one that I'm going to talk about later is like pretty decisive kind of thing.
[00:36:52]  So it depends on what you're talking about.
[00:36:54]  So maybe there is no way to know the exact on prostitution, but in terms of kidnappings, you know, yeah, there, there are ways to know that.
[00:37:01]  And that links us back to that 50,000 number.
[00:37:04]  Because if you remember, the 50,000 was kidnapped children.
[00:37:08]  So then you might wonder, how did this report from 2001 that referenced 1990s data, how did that keep getting reported?
[00:37:18]  And you heard it in one of the news things we did.
[00:37:21]  How did that keep getting cited as current Justice Department figure?
[00:37:25]  Oh, geez.
[00:37:26]  Well, yeah.
[00:37:27]  Are you ready for a dumb answer?
[00:37:28]  Yeah.
[00:37:29]  That's because in 2010, something called the Office of Justice Programs published an article in its juvenile justice bulletin that cited that estimate.
[00:37:41]  The bulletin makes clear that this is only an opinion article and doesn't express the official position of the Justice Department, but that doesn't matter.
[00:37:48]  Interesting.
[00:37:50]  I was just about to blame Obama and now I can't.
[00:37:53]  Yeah.
[00:37:54]  Thanks, Obama.
[00:37:55]  Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Provincial.
[00:37:58]  I'm trying to see what sub-sub-sub-government, whatever this is.
[00:38:02]  But it, you know, since it says it's an opinion thing, but because it's on the fucking letterhead or whatever, you know, because it has the imprimeter or imprimatur, I don't know how I never remember how they say that, of government, of the Justice Department specifically, that just kept getting cited over and over and over.
[00:38:17]  Also ignore the date, apparently, too.
[00:38:19]  And because 2010 is like, you know, a recent thing now.
[00:38:24]  And what's funny is it's the very first sentence.
[00:38:25]  In the United States, estimates suggest that as many as 300,000 children may become victims of commercial sexual exploitation each year.
[00:38:32]  Now it gives the citation, Estes and Wiener 2001.
[00:38:36]  Nobody looks at that though.
[00:38:37]  Right.
[00:38:38]  But what's funny too is like you think about that's in 2001.
[00:38:42]  That report is in 2010.
[00:38:46]  So then imagine it's like 2015 and you're looking at, oh, okay, that's 2010.
[00:38:50]  That reference, you know, like by the time you're a citation of a citation of a citation, I'm sure it's pretty easy for people to just think, well, that's what they think over there in the Justice Department now.
[00:38:59]  You know?
[00:38:59]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:00]  So that's the origin of that 300,000.
[00:39:02]  Now I want to go back to our other end of the story, the 50,000.
[00:39:06]  So, you know, I'm looking at the time though, and there's a lot more to this story.
[00:39:10]  So I actually think I don't want to get started on it running out of time.
[00:39:13]  I think we should do an episode break here.
[00:39:14]  And then when we come back in the next episode, which don't worry, I'll get out right away, especially for patrons, patreon.com slash Where There's Woke, of course.
[00:39:23]  That's for the first shout out.
[00:39:24]  You don't do that in the end of the show.
[00:39:26]  It's like you don't even know how to podcast.
[00:39:28]  Basics.
[00:39:28]  Didn't you go to college?
[00:39:30]  Anyway.
[00:39:30]  So in the next episode of Where There's Woke, I'm going to link back that 50,000 number and they're going to meet in the middle.
[00:39:36]  And then what's so funny is there's going to be also a 300,000 in there sneakily that I think is really interesting.
[00:39:42]  But a different one.
[00:39:43]  But a different one.
[00:39:44]  Or is it?
[00:39:45]  It is, but is it coincidence that's different?
[00:39:47]  I don't know.
[00:39:48]  And then there's lots more to talk about in terms of actual numbers.
[00:39:51]  I have some stuff to talk about in terms of how to put this into context, what to really worry about in terms of children.
[00:39:57]  I'm not covering the world of things to worry about, but like when it comes to this stuff, you know, some numbers for comparison and just ways to really try to tether ourselves to reality a little better.
[00:40:07]  I think it's just so important, you know, especially as a parent.
[00:40:09]  Like as a parent, you know what I really care about?
[00:40:12]  You drop everything else.
[00:40:14]  I care about knowing real fucking information because that is what might reliably help me help my kid in some way.
[00:40:21]  Yeah.
[00:40:22]  Yeah, of course.
[00:40:22]  You know, and I wish more people approached it like that.
[00:40:25]  The things that we get really scared of are not necessarily the things that are the most scary or that we should be the most scared of.
[00:40:33]  And it is so hard.
[00:40:34]  And I found myself doing it too.
[00:40:36]  I'll get into it in the next episode.
[00:40:38]  But even though I was consuming stuff that was a debunk, it references real stories of kidnappings.
[00:40:44]  And I'm like, fuck, you know, I can't help it.
[00:40:46]  Like even me, I'm like, it becomes personalized.
[00:40:49]  You know where your child is.
[00:40:50]  You know, you're just like, God damn it.
[00:40:52]  It's so easy.
[00:40:53]  But, and the thing is, it's not about trying to say, hey, don't worry about your kids.
[00:40:58]  It's not about that.
[00:40:59]  But it really is about it could be important if you are so consumed with worry over someone snatching your kid randomly that you do things like, well, okay, I guess maybe I'll drive them somewhere else.
[00:41:12]  And it's like, okay, well, actually, in reality, driving them fucking anywhere is going to be more dangerous than so many things.
[00:41:18]  It's similar to like the fear of things like shark attacks and stuff too.
[00:41:23]  No, those are real.
[00:41:24]  Every day, 300,000 children are eaten by sharks every single day.
[00:41:28]  But like you watch JAWS and now there's so many people that are like terrified of shark attacks.
[00:41:34]  And that's from around the same time.
[00:41:38]  To an unreasonable degree and stuff.
[00:41:40]  And like being able to kind of put it into perspective, you know, it's obviously terrible if someone gets attacked by a shark.
[00:41:46]  You know, no one wants to get attacked by a shark, but how likely is it really?
[00:41:49]  What are the ways that you can prevent it from happening to you?
[00:41:53]  And where should we be spending our time?
[00:41:55]  And the thing people don't realize is most people are attacked by a shark they know.

=== Shark Attack Fear vs Reality (00:50) ===

[00:41:58]  Exactly.
[00:42:00]  It's a shark in the family.
[00:42:22]  Maybe the reason you had a hard time finding Kinshash to cut your video is because you're spelling his last name incorrectly.
[00:42:30]  No, the internet doesn't care.
[00:42:32]  You don't, you don't know.
[00:42:34]  That could have been one of the kids.
[00:42:36]  Ashton Kuchar.
[00:42:40]  Scientists say that's stupid.
[00:42:44]  I was just about to blame Obama and now I can't.
[00:42:47]  Are you ready for a dumb answer?