Calvary Audio, August four, two thousand and twenty two. I am at Bolinsky. This is your weekly dose of sanity, the prevailing narrative getting into the dog days of summer here, And it's been a minute or two since I've been with you. Guys. We had an episode a couple of weeks ago with Kamal Robber CONSPT fantastic chat, but it wasn't a real outright assault on the news worthy events of the day and current events as it usually is. So we're back to that this week. And oh man, there's no shortage of stuff to dissect. Um, what do we have this week? The American economy apparently in a recession, but then apparently not in a recession because the Biden administration seems to believe that the kind of historical default definition of a recession to consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth no longer an adequate definition. And oh my god, how dare you ever even consider or or assert that that was the definition of a recession? Would you talking about? We're gonna go into how the vertically integrated messaging apparatus is, Wesley Yang describes it seems to all be acting in concert to support. All of a sudden, Joe Biden decides and the Biden administration decides, wait, this is no longer the definition of a recession, and a big media apparatus brings into action to support that narrative. And what's really going on there. We're gonna describe that a little bit in a couple of other places where the media seems to be carrying a lot of water for the establishment and for the Biden administration in an odd way where they're putting their thumb on the scale. Um abortion, the hot button issue of the summer, big news last night in Kansas, one of these statewide legislative events that seems to be defining now that the Supreme Court has handed the issue back to the states. And despite what a lot of people seem to think and that the Supreme Court simply ruled abortion illegal, that's not what they did. They returned it to the states. Kansas had a referendum last night. We're going to describe that, and we're gonna get a little update on that whole tiff in the Ukraine between Russia and the Ukraine, because the reality is, and it seems that nobody talks about that conflict any longer, even though it's having some pretty significant substantial impact on the world economy. Um, it's not going very well for the Ukraine. But simultaneously, just as it's not going very well for the Ukraine, President Voltimore Zelinsky appears in Vogue. May figured it was the right time to do a glamor shoot in the fashion magazine Vogue with his wife, And this guy seems to be far more interested in kind of these glossy, uh celebrity antics meeting with Ben Stiller posing in Vogue, than as actually prosecuting this war and utilizing the sixty billion dollars that the United States has granted the Ukraine to fight, which essentially has become a proxy war between the West and Vladimir Putin, and prosecuting this war properly. I understand it's not that easy, but speaks to a little bit of un seriousness that he decides to pose in Vogue. So we're going to get into that and also kind of a summation of the status of the conflict in the Ukraine. Also a bunch of state of emergencies going on in a few states right now. Monkey poks Is this the next pandemic? Is this the new great plague, Um, what is the status of the prevalence of monkeypox? And where do our good friends at public health seem to be veering off track and trying more so trying to influence public behavior or or be guided by public behavior or social justice principles as opposed to just giving us the scientifically accurate assessment, because it seems like they're doing that again. They did that a lot during COVID, and even a lot of top public health officials will kind of sort of admit that they did that, said, Okay, we didn't necessarily give people the full truth. We might have have nibbled on things. They're a little white lie there hid some information there because people needed to take this thing seriously. They're doing something similar with monkey poks. We're gonna get into all of that. But also, and I think this is almost an umbrella issuing an umbrella description for this episode and a lot of what I do on this podcast, Dark plots and secret explanations. That is a great piece that was written this week by Mike Salona. Mike Salona is a venture capitalist, but also like a lot of other people that I interview or discussed on this podcast, like David Sachs, you know, both the business person and a comment a robust commentator on newsworthy event, just as I try to be um So. Salona's piece was called Dark Plots and Secret Explanations. It's a great piece. The title is kind of a tongue in cheek refrain on how the establishment continued in the institutions continue to lose public trust because they keep on getting things wrong. There will be an establishment narrative. Some people go counter narrative, they're kind of the anti establishment figures. They're they're kind of labeled as crazy as dark corner of the Internet conspiracy theorists. And then the conspiracy ends up being if not entirely true, or at least the anti establishment narrative, um, if not entirely true, the establishment narrative that everybody just said, if you don't believe this, you know, and you need to be completely shunned from society, that ends up not being true either. And this this is a pattern that keeps on happening over and over in particular, and one that I'm going to be discussing with my good friend and wellness expert Max Lucavier in just a moment um about the use of anti depressants to cure depression and the explanation of depression as the result of a chemical imbalanced This has been an orthodoxy as sacred cow for a while that the world, the the world of psychology and psychiatry is determined and understands that, you know, a lot of depression is caused by a chemical imbalance UM generally, which is measured as low serotonin rates, and that's why we're prescribing so many antidepressants referred to as SSR eyes uh in order to treat this chemical imbalance, raise serotonin levels. And that's you know, a common necessary that is the healthiest way to treat depression. Then a big study comes out, very comprehensive study this week out of the University College London that suggests that that is all that, that is all bullshit, after analyzing thousands of studies which have you know, a data set of hundreds of thousands of patients UM and subjects that this there's no connection. Necessarily, you can you cannot establish a direct connection between low serotonin levels or any other sort of chemical imbalance and depression. That sometimes there is some crossover, but it's not single variant that like usually there are other variables that are involved or can be used to explain why a person may be suffering from depression. So I don't think this study is the end all beyond is completely dismissed the notion of a chemical imbalance um or or the explanation of low serotonin levels period. But it certainly casts a lot of doubt on it. And Salona was looking at it through the guise of our good buddy Tom Cruise, because if everybody remembers back in two thousand five, he's dismissed as a kuk because he goes against the medical establishment in saying prescribing riddling um and other antidepressants and all these pills for children is not a great idea, and that it has a lot of side effects, and that what is deemed a chemical imbalance or the causes of depression can be cured or addressed through other means. And he was not. It's not that people think, Okay, he might have a point, but you know, overall he's wrong. I mean, he was dismissed as a complete and utter kuk, right, And that if you're looking at the extent and the severity of the reaction to cookie Tom Cruise. Um, and you circle back about fifteen years later, And I don't know it's hard If he's not entirely correct, his positions are quite well supported. Are we really feeling good about how many pills were prescribing for kids these days? Um? All of a sudden, looking through that lens in retrospect, Tom Cruiz's cook cookie antics are not so cookie. And that's just a good proxy for what Salana describes as a lot of the justification and validity of anti establishment thought. Um. As he references an Associated Press article, a growing number of people in Western nations have lost faith in democratic governance, science and a free press, turning instead to conspiracy theories, dark plots, and secret explanations. Well, are they turning to conspiracy theories, dark plots, and secret explanations, or just counter narratives that many times turn out to be correct. Certainly seems like the latter. Um. As Salanas puts it, It's true most people no longer trust the establishment, but this is because the establishment has proven relentlessly over the last five years it can't be trusted. Does anyone really take issue with that statement? I think it's pretty right on the money. And if you're even to say the last five years. You could expand that to the last seven or eight. But how many establishment narratives that are just taken as articles of faith that if you counter them, or if you vieer away from them or deviate, you were dismissed as a kuk end up being in correct. If they were more measured in their assertions, right, if they said, Okay, we think this is the truth, but we we want to qualify the state, and we don't know it's a dent true and if people do question it, we're not going to dismiss you as a kook. I'd be a lot more forgiving. But look how anyone who dismisses these counternarratives, whether they make a lot of stuff around COVID it's origins, the vaccine, what we see with s SR eyes and the explanation of a chemical chemical imbalance for depression. You see all this, and they keep on being dead wrong. Right. The way that they treat dissidence continues to be completely unjustified. So that's a bit of a common thread that runs through all of these segments this week, Like I said, we're gonna get more deeply into the science and what the study actually says around uh, the chemical imbalance and analysis of that issue with Max in just a second. But um, Mike Salona, check out all of his stuff. It's his substack is called Pirate Wires, Dark Plots and Secret Explanations. Yes, obviously a Tonguian cheeked title. Um, but interpreting that once again is a really good thread for everything we discussed this week. I'll hope you enjoy. So last week, it at least appears that it was announced that we are in a recession. The United States economy experienced two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. I believe for the second quarter two thousand twenty two it's about negative point nine percent. Not great news, somewhat troubling, but not necessarily unanticipated. We've had rampant inflation issues still coming off, you know, a bunch of disruptions from the pandemic. Hey, negative GDP growth two consecutive quarters of that or recession is not the first one that we've ever had. So what is more noteworthy about what occurred in response to this announcement? Wesley Yang describes this as the vertically integrated messaging apparatus, And what does he mean by that that you know, listen, we're looking back on the history of the media, both print, analog, television, digital media up through recently. But it's called about a decade ago. You know, we've known generally what to expect. There is a slight, uh, there is a slight left leaning bias in most of the mainstream media. You had Fox News, you had a number of a more niche conservative outlets, and you kind of knew what to expect from from everybody across the board, that you're going to get somewhat of a biased view from one direction, somewhat of a biased view from another direction. But what Wesley is describing as something that is new over the last decade or so, as one social media companies and other centralized media actors meeting uh your Facebook's, your Wikipedia's, you know, the fact checking uh, the fact checkers that now essentially partnered up with those centralized information filters right. Um, so that along with the more liberal leaning mainstream media outlets, seemed to be far more coordinated, um and far more willing to kind of bend narratives to support what seems to be anything coming either one against it was against Trump, not necessarily anything against any Republican although that case could be made UM or in favor and support of whatever in particularly the Biden administration happens to be doing. And that vertically integrated messaging apparatus really sprung into action in an interesting and somewhat troubling way in response to this UH announcement about the recession, about the negative GDP growth, and that they're trying to redefine reality. They're trying to redefine language and redefine our understanding of the word in this instance, regarding the definition of the term recession. Listen, there are obviously there's not one tried and true sent down from the Heaven's definition of recession, right, and there's a number of factors that you try to try to integrate um into an analysis of whether or not an economy is contracting, whether or not that term is appropriate. But the default definition that we had all agreed on was two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Nobody really up until this last week apparently seemed to UH seem to reject or oppose that as the definition. But then two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth for the Biden administration, what happens the vertically integrated messaging apparatus springs into action to go support the Biden administrations contentions that we are not in a recession and that that definition negative GDP growth for two quarters, what do you talk about, Well, of course that's not the al there's many definitions to a recession. Look at all these other factors, particularly one Biden saragate ahead of the National Economic Council, Brian d says, you can't have a recession right now because we have strong job growth numbers. The economy is growing, more people are entering the workforce. We have uh, consumer spending is strong, and thus it doesn't matter that GDP contracted. You can't call it a recession. There is actually somewhat of an argument for that that, hey, we should be looking at other factors. But look at what happened in terms of the entire digital media sphere and all the most powerful centralized information actors all all kind of coming together and coordinating to forward the Biden administration's narrative. Right Facebook in Facebook uses PolitiFact as one of its official fact checkers. Facebook and PolitiFact start tagging and flagging posts claiming that we're in a recession, saying No, that's not actually the definition of a recession. PolitiFact has an entire post, you know, probably about twelve hundred words about how, no, how did anyone or claim that this was the actual definition of a recession. No, the Biden administration isn't trying to alter the definition of the recess of a recession. Well, no, they are. You can contend, as Brian Bees contends that no, we should be looking at other factors to determine whether or not it's a recession. But in terms of what did we have kind of a consensus on the definition of a recession? And is there now a coordinated media effort amongst both actual media companies, fact checkers, and the social media companies through which these media companies filter their information to now change the definition or at least dismissed the idea that the Biden administration was changing the definition. Absolutely. Did you see what went on with Wikipedia? Wikipedia people edited the Wikipedia definition of recession saying I think someone edited that there is no default understanding or definition of a recession, and Wikipedia then went and locked the Wikipedia page so nobody could go back and edit it. That does that not speak of some ill motives? Does that not seem like they're trying to manipulate reality, our understanding of language. And it's almost beaten to death and redundant to mention something as Orwellian or reminiscent of nine four but could you could you picture anything more reminiscent of that? And this does not seem to be in good faith whatsoever. Elon must called that out that Wikipedia does not seem to be an objective actor. Places like Facebook and Wikipedia are supposed to be platforms. They're not supposed to put their thumb on the scale, and they're not supposed to directly given the power that they hold over what information seeps out and reaches just an inordinates amount of people, Like, it's really bad when they're trying to alter a manipulate our understanding of the universe, particularly just to carry water and do the bidding of the current people in power in this case the Biden administration. That's exactly what they did. Who fact checks the fact checkers? What credibility, what validity? Does politi fact have whatsoever to tell us? No, sorry, folks, all you people who thought that we actually knew the definition of a recession, and oh my god, the Biden administration isn't trying to be shady about dismissing the idea that we're in one. Oh my god, you people were a bunch of you know, uh, just victims of misinformation and disinformation more Q and on supporter airhead knuckle dragging idiots. Well, screw off politifacts, screw off Facebook for using PolitiFact as their so called faux fact checkers, and screw off Wikipedia. These are platforms that are supposed to be neutral. They are not supposed to be manipulating our language and our sense of reality. But that's exactly what they're doing. So this is not the only place that this is happening recently, uh, just around the definition of a recession, the Inflation Reduction Act. Inflation has been a huge problem recently, if you're to put a mark on the Biden administration's records, so far, everybody's hammering up because of inflation, because that the American consumer is experiencing price inflation that is cutting into their budgets and their spending income and the value of the dollar, and that is reflecting badly on the Biden administration. The Biden administration seems to have been incredibly feckless and impotent in trying to stem inflation. All hey, gas prices have gone down a little bit over the past month, but the Biden administration is just flailing trying to figure out the inflation thing. So, okay, come, what comes along the Inflation Reduction Act? Okay, let's hear them out. What is in the Inflation Reduction Act which might actually reduce inflation? You look at it, you look at the bill. There's nothing to do with inflation whatsoever. There's nothing that regardless of whether it would reduce inflation or increase inflation, it's not necessarily like it's a bad solution. This bill does not seem to have anything to do with consumer prices or business prices, or commodity prices or anything else having to or the money supply or anything else having to do with inflation. It seems like a bill completely about completely different topics. It's got a ton of subsides, subsidies and planning around the green economy, renewable energy, things like that, and people can argue about the pluses and mind as is, costs and benefits of those initiatives. I think there's you know, hey, I would like to see a reduction in greenhouse gases and a stemming of any climate change by all means. And I think that there's an argument to be made that, hey, we need to be careful about which the which of the solutions um in kind of forwarding the green economy are good are bad. But listen, that's fine. People can reasonable people can argue about that. But what you can't argue about is that this has nothing to do with inflation. They just put together a a bill filled with their pet projects and other policies addressing other issues, and then just slap the name Inflation Reduction Act on it. Roy Cooper, and internet commentator, commented on the manipulation going on here, said, listen, I'm a cynical guy, but naming a tax and spend bill the Inflation Reduction Act such a brazen move that I would never have even imagined trying it, primarily because I would have assumed I'd be called on it almost immediately. Right, So they pass a tax and spend bill once again. You can argue against or for whether the tax increases are justified. They added more I R. S agents, they added they increase corporate taxes. You can argue on on the substance of those, but they went ahead and just slap the name Inflation Reduction Act on it. Look how cynical it's Look how insulting that is to the American people that they think they can just pass any bill, slap any name on it, and that would suggest that they're solving the problem that's on everybody's mind. And it's a pretty mendacious attempt. And they seem to have gotten away on it because nobody's calling them out on this. Very few people. You get the Rory Cooper's, you get a couple of people in right wing media, but you've got an entire media apparatus that seems to not care at all that the president just that the president hit his administration just when passed a massive bill, a massive tax and spend bill that was named something that has nothing to do just for pure purely peri in political purposes and from for manipulation. It seems like an honest and effective and worthwhile press would call him out on this, would kind of put his his feet to the fire, would suggest that an administration would be hesitant if that press did exist, that they would be an administration would be hesitant to go try a move this dishonest in this cynical because they'd be called out on it, but they were not, and they intensipated they would not be and they were. They were right about that. And then we can even go beyond that. You look at a bunch of studies University of Pennsylvania, you know, beyond well beyond that, any you know, other than the most in the can for the Biden administration, uh, economic think tanks or any institution whatsoever, they all know this is gonna do nothing to even I'm not even saying it's gonna increase inflation. It's just gonna do nothing because it doesn't address the problem in the first place. But just an incredibly cynical move and incredibly evident of how the vertically integrated messaging apparatus is in place to either too pretty much carry water and do anything the Biden administration says and alter our our views and our understanding of reality. It goes beyond simple media bias, right, the media bias of the call it two thousand eight to two thousand twelve Barack Obama era. I mean, you know, nobody, nobody, honest would look at the media landscape there and say, okay, you know, the the the mainstream media is clearly on the side of Obama. Fox News is clearly against him, and they're you know, they're never gonna run a flattering story about him. And we get that, and you know, everyone who goes into it with that knowledge base should not be surprised. This goes so far beyond it because it's it just dispenses with any notion of ethics, honesty, or impartiality whatsoever. And given how powerful these digital nodes in the information network are, it's very dangerous. Um. We can go on here the Biden administration, fascinating stuff here two thousands. You know, for years everyone said Donald Trump, yes, was very crass um, very abrasive regarding the security of the southern border, although he identified the problem accurately. It was like, yeah, you gotta have a border. You have to be able to uh, you have to be able to determine who gets to come in and out of your country and establish a legal process for doing so. And we weren't doing that at the southern border. So his solution is a wall. Okay, you know, I could see whether or not that is the best solution. Is it a proper solution? But you got called a bigot if you even thought that was a a relevant solution, you got called a fascist, racist bigot, And I'm like, well, wait a second, that seems to be quite overstating the case. Just because you want to actually establish a border for your sovereign nation and there might be a physical structure involved in that, that doesn't make your racist. Sorry, it just doesn't. Okay. Also doesn't make you a fascist, even though everyone likes throwing that word around as well. But that was what you were called the powers that be the the you know, anyone in polite society and anyone who wanted to comment from the democratic side of the al whatsoever. If you have anything to do with the wall, you are a fucking bigot. Okay. Joe Biden in two thousand twenty, when he was campaigning for president, when he when discussing this issue, says, not another foot of the wall. We are not building another damn foot of Donald Trump's racist, bigoted wall. Well, okay. Last week it is announced the Biden administration is completing a tract of the wall outside you, Arizona. You know why because there's people endlessly streaming through it. Right because the Biden administration has not been able to secure our border and establish a sovereign southern border without such a physical structure, right, Um, seems like hypocrisy, seems like they this is something that the media would call people out on. Hey Joe, you kept on calling you said anyone who was in favor of a wall was a racist, bigot, You and everyone from your party. You said you'd never finished another another foot of the wall. Your press secretary, Karine Jean Pierre, she even said, I think her quote was what in two thousand nineteen, Hey, Trump, where the pasos for your bigoted wall? Well, your press secretary said it was a bigoted wall, and now you're finishing it. So of course, the only people who pressed her are pressed the Biden administration on this issue are people from the conservative media. It's not what I want. I would like people in the liberal media or the neutral media to be pressing them on these just direct hypocrisies and lies and bad decisions in fact. But you're not going to get that for some reason. You know, you unfortunately have to only rely on right wing media for that. In response, uh, Karine Jean Pierre deflects again another attempt to manipulate reality, that no, we're not finishing the wall. I don't know what you're talking about. This, Uh, this is not at all hypocritical or in contrast to what Joe Biden says. This is just h This is to save lives, because that's a dangerous boy. They're crossing. Like, spare me this bullshit. This complete utter bullshit, and like I get it, every administration does it, but I'm sorry, this seems to be a level of bullshit that goes beyond the normal levels of bullshit. They're just lying to our faces what they hold us on in such low regard and the media. Once again, these are people who are supposed to be searching for truth, that are supposed to be holding our institutional actors and public figures accountable, and they don't do a goddamn thing. We can go on here to other issues. The one that always that was the most prominent, that keeps on spring back up, that refuses to die, the Hunter Biden laptop, because it was the most brazen. Okay, this was something. This was information regarding the president's son that seemed to implicate actions and corruption involving the president, with documentary evidence, video evidence, copious emails, everything from the man's own laptop, and because it was going to reflect badly on Joe Biden at the entire there was an entire coordinated media and do not even anyone who denies this is just out of their mind, from all the social media companies, from all of the media beyond just the New York Post to bury this story, and it was a relevant one. It was information that was relevant to people's decisions over who to vote for an election and whether Joe Biden's son, degenerate son is acting uh is involved in corruption that leads back to him that might compromise America's sovereign interest. And they buried it. They all did. And then fifty one members of the intelligence of the National Intelligence Apparatus, including former heads of the CIA, came out and declared it based on zero evidence, no evidence whatsoever, that it was rush quote unquote Russian disinformation. These are people who literally at the top wrongs of the CIA, top wrongs of the FBI, and they all put their name on something saying this is Russia Russian disinformation. And then as time went on to see like, okay, well was one was the laptop verified? Er two? Did these people who claimed it was Russia disinformation have any basis to do so, absolutely not none whatsoever. They literally just pulled it out of their ass and they used their credentials, and they used their position and and the credibility that they had built up as members of these UH intelligence organizations to essentially lie to the American people and dismiss this and once again curve our understanding of reality, because you would think historically that these people had some there, there was some safeguarden place they would not so brazenly lie, But they didn't. They brazenly lied, and we got more information and more more bad omens aiming in this direction. This last week, when a number of FBI whistleblowers revealed a whole docket to Senator Chuck Grassley the FBI is bearing anything negative about Hunter Biden, that the FBI whistleblowers came forward with information that there's a concerted effort inside the FBI to discredit any negative information about Hunter, particularly information about Hunter that once again leads back to Joe Biden, the President of the United States, because in the communications on the Hunter Biden laptop, numerous times they mentioned they referenced people that some of a kickback is going back to referenced as the big Guy. There is a suspicion and a valid suspicion that that is Joe Biden, and in the materials released last week more uh more verification that the big Guy was in fact Joe Biden. One of around the release of the Hunter Biden laptop which his associates. Of everyone who dealt with Hunter Biden obviously knew that it was true because it's been verified. Right they had they in their private communications, they weren't lying. One of Hunter Biden's business associates directly referenced Joe Biden as the big Guy in surrounding emails. In this email was sent to the FBI, and the FBI disclosed the FBI whistle blower disclosed it to Chuck Grassley. So let's dig into this a little bit. The FBI Assistant Special Agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, Timothy Timothy Tibald, shut down a line of inquiry and a Hunter Biden in October, despite some of the details being known to be true at the time. A whistle blowers that Tibald ordered closed an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting, even though all the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants. They didn't. They knew that there was smoke here, they knew that there was reasonable and valid cause and probable cause to investigate these things as crimes, and did not because it was Joe Biden's son. I don't understand why everybody's okay with this. I don't understand even people that don't like Donald Trump, how are you okay with this? Why do you think this is an okay world way for our intelligence are intelligence agencies and the people, and in coordination with the media, to shut off the truth from from you and from everybody else, and to lie so brazenly. I find this very offensive. Like my intelligence is insulted, I don't understand why your intelligence, in your just sense of good faith and and ethics in general, is not insulted as well. Just because Donald Trump is a fucking prick does not mean this all just goes away, okay. The FBI, our intelligence organizations, in concert with the guy who was at the time about to be president and is now president, along with all every major media, every major media organization, every social media platform, all conspired to drown out this information to very information that was clear, clear criminal evidence of criminal behavior on behalf of Hunter Biden that did implicate and did seem to touch his dad. I don't know. I don't get it. People seem a lot of people seem to be okay with this, just at a tribal loyalty. Not you're not gonna get that from me. Okay, you're not gonna get that from me. I can find tons of fault with Donald Trump. I hope he just dissolves and floats off into the ether. I'm not okay with this. I am not okay with the vertically integrated messaging apparatus, both from social media, from media publishers, and from the intelligence agencies, bearing information, manipulating our sense of reality and lying to our goddamn face. It keeps on happening here just what I've discussed on this segment, or just a handful of the topics and issues and sub and kind of channels around which they've done it. But it's gonna keep on happening. And this is not a way that we can propel society forward. This is not Things are not gonna work out. We cannot allow what our society's levels of trust get chipped away day by day by day okay, and this the people that are supposed to be with the people that are can rolling information, they're as much to blame as anyone else. And people need to start vocalizing their their disapproval of this, their dissatisfaction. If not, they're just gonna keep on doing it. And we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break. Let's turn to the abortion issue now. Is there are some big news last night on the state level out of Kansas. About a month ago the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court's ruling in the case Dobbs versus Jackson's Women's Health Organization. That is the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. And it's for some reason less known cousin Planned Parenthood verse casey always odd to me in the abortion conversation, how planned a parent had verse case? He never gets brought up. It's always Roe v. Wade because over the past thirty years, roughly Planned Parenthood verse case he has really been the operative ruling it's from and it upheld the right to have an abortion as part of the ruling from Roe v. Wade and issued as its key judgment, the imposition of the undue burden standard when evaluating state imposed restrictions on that right. And so let's let's just so people understand the legalities here. So first off, the idea that abortion was simply outright illegal before Roe v. Wade, that's false. It was actually making its way through a number of states to be legalized. And what happened with Roe v. Wade is the Supreme Court issue to ruling that said no state can essentially, no state can impose a ban that prevents just anybody from having an abortion. So if a state did pass a law that prevented anyone from getting an abortion, that would be challenged and then ruled unconstitutional. And there are a variety of challenges to that. One of it was in regards to planned parent had verse Casey, and the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, And you know, it's basics in the underlying premise, but even further specified it that the way that any state law that limited abortion would be uh judged by if it was challenged was the undo burdened standard. And that's what's been operate. That is what has been operative and ruling for the past thirty years. Dabbs versus Jackson's Women's Health Organization of Mississippi case around a Mississippi abortion clinic that actually challenged a law I believe that was outlying in Mississippi abortions after week fifteen, which is kind of odd because that's generally where most of the other Western world seems to fall on on the abortion issue. If you go look at most Western European countries, UM, a lot of other countries in our sphere and peer nations that they you know, outlaw abortion or at least elective abortion with a few exceptions after about week fifteen. And it's kind of odd that that ended up being the case that was challenged that overturned row Um and case e Ver's planned parenthood. Anyways, that moving on a month out from that, and so in response to the overturning of row and planned parenthood verse Casey, it's kind of three reactions. People had three general reactions. One, Oh my god, we've sent uh women back into the kitchen. We are back into the stone age. It is uh complete, the visceration of a woman's right to choose in all female reproductive rights. Oh my god, this is crazy too. What a victory for the pro life cause. Abortion is murder. Finally, we have America has been suffering under the karmic the the karmic thumb of child murder and abortion is murder, and thank god that we finally overturned Roe v. Wade. Then there's a third reaction, which was generally Okay, this could potentially be troublesome, but this does just return the choice to be sorry. This does just return the issue to the states for it to be legislated state by state, and the vast majority of the states are going to allow abortions and nothing much is going to change. A few states will likely outlawed, and a bunch of states will have UH some restrictions more restrictive than it is right now, but not outright, Bennitt. Let's see how the legislative process uh plays out, and we're anticipating that it will still allow for reasonably non restrictive abortion rights in most states. Well, and I'm i am unapologetically part of that third batch, right um. That ruling last night on the state level in Kansas seemed to support reaction number three. Because Kansas a fairly conservative state, Republicans outnumber Democrats about two to one. There's referendum on the abortion issue on a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution that would have added language stating that it is not grant the right to abortion. So essentially, if this referendum passed, the state constitution would be amended allow you know, essentially creating the precipice in the space for the Republican legislature to go and just ban abortion outright. This referendum was defeated soundly by about so that was a big victory for the for the pro choice uh, for the pro choice contingency, And it seemed to signal that the people in Kansas want to do not want to ban abortion outright, that they want to maintain some some they want to maintain some space for people to get elective abortions and I imagine after a certain point, um, non elective but for medical purposes and rape and incest and things of that nature. Um. So that's a big one for the pro choice side. And what does this portend for the issue more more broadly, it seems to suggest that you know, in in China, project out how many states are going to outlaw, outright outlaw abortion as a smaller batch of states than we would imagine. Right, Um, we're looking at how this is playing out overall, Vermont and Michigan are gonna hold similar referendums. Michigan is actually pretty interesting because the there's only a very restrictive abortion limitation on the books in Michigan because it's outdated because they just after Row, they didn't have any reason to update the laws, so they didn't, so they just left it on the books. So now they'll probably in all all likelihood they're gonna update that law. Um, it will not ban abortion outright, it will not. It will probably fall towards the middle of the pack on abortion restrictions, but that's coming up in Michigan. Um. And then you know, there's an article in The New York Times which seemed to suggest even broader, more broadly, that Republican legislatures and states that are you know, slant to the right and have are more likely to impose restrictions on abortion. That this the likelihood that the issue is not so black and white, that there's a lot of debate going on within these state legislatures over whether they want to ban abortion outright, and some of the states that would enact in abortion ban may end up not doing so, just like Kansas. This is specifically in regards to Indiana, so that the piece is titled with Rogan Republicans quarrel over how far to push abortion bans? UH subtitle an effort in Indiana to pass an abortion ban with exceptions is exposed riffs among conservatives on how to legislate in a post real world. So it's not going to be so clean the whole idea that you know, all these Republican legislatures are just gonna pass outright abortion bands. It's looking less and less likely. There's a lot of debate around one particular piece of legislation in the Indiana state legislature, and that's heavily Republican. But you know, there are a couple of Republicans there that seem to push back against the idea of an outright ban. Couple even um coming out in favor of allowing it a electively during the first trimester. UM. And you know, there really was not any consensus, and that the New York Times article, you know it acknowledges that. And are they more likely to pass something more restrictive than what was just seen or there to be a different results in Kansas? Um? Yes, but once again not so cut and dry. Here's how they put it. Some Republican legislatures in many of the party's most outspoken supporters want to ban abortion with you are no exceptions, but a Republican state Senator Kyle Walker, said he wanted to He wanted abortion to remain legal during the first trimester of pregnancy, and many in the Party of race questions about whether and how to include exceptions for rape, incest, and a pregnant woman's health. As State Senator Mark Messner says, this is one of the most complex issues any of us will ever try to tackle in our lifetime, and this just demonstrates the near impossibility of threading the perfect needle. Um So, I don't know, you know, once again the category number three of the individuals who felt like, all right, you know, yes, there's going to be some pushback in some restrictions on a portion in a number of states, but less states than people are anticipating and going through. The legislative process is generally going to land on reasonably non restrictive laws. You know, even in some of uh, some of the more right leaning states. That perspective is start is continuing to look better and better and more accurate. Um there are some states obviously that are being more restrictive South Carolina, West Virginia. UM, in looking at some of the other states that are going to tackle this issue, Nebraska is another one that seems to fall in the category of Kansas and Indiana, where people there are some forces that are pushing pretty aggressively for an outright band but there seems to be some pushback there. So we're gonna have to see how this plays out. But um, you know, I just the reaction to Dobbs in the overturning of Row and Casey just that it was interpreted with such finality, but that just wasn't the case. And I mean outright sure you can say, oh, the the ruling was issued by some very conservative, Christian, religiously eating Republicans, and even though they're just sending it back to the states, we all know what they're trying to do. Well, okay, but practically, in reality, that's what they did. They sent it back to the states. Every state is going to get to rule on this separately, and every state through the legislative process, whether it's direct referendum or the state legislature, can rule to essentially keep things just as they were not change them very much. And it's looking more and more that in the vast majority of the states, and even more importantly in the vast majority of the states, that essentially that how the vast majority of the population of the United States not much as going to change, and that the states that are going to change are actually fairly sparsely populated, and that this issue and the laws around access to an abortion are probably not going to change a whole hell of a lot for eight percent of the population. Sure you'd say, hey, it shouldn't change for any of the population, fair enough, I don't agree with these, With these states like West Virginia or South Carolina that are outright banning it, I don't agree. However, we have to talk about Yale, right, the scale of the issue and what the actual result of the Supreme Court ruling was, and it seems to be a lot less malignant than a lot of people were anticipating. People can react to this differently, right, Some people can say, hey, these are actually good signs. Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe it thinks maybe the impact of overturning Row is not going to be as bad as I thought it was gonna be. Or people are you know, absolutist on this issue, and the fact that any states out at all combandant, even if some of these states themselves, if that's the will of the people in those states, I don't know. I can't really take that much issue with it. But once again, the three categories of reactions to this decision and what's going on on the abortion issue, I would make a stronger case, and I believe recent facts and occurrences do make a stronger case for being in the third category. So um, as always with all of these very hot button topics, we will maintain, we will continue to monitor, and we'll see how these things play out. Ah. So, that whole Rush a Ukraine thing, it's still going on, even though it doesn't seem to occupy quite as much of our mind space these days, it's still going on. And here's the thing. It's not going well for the Ukrainians, and by extension, it's not going well for the West because we've made them essentially a proxy in this proxy battle with the Russians. Um. I'll get into the specifics of that in a minute. You wouldn't know how not well it's going for the Ukrainians. If you read the most recent Vogue. The most recent issue of Vogue, a fashion magazine, has a an elaborate spread with President Baltimore Zelinsky of Ukraine and his wife. This is Vogue. What in the fuck is Zelinsky doing posing for some clamor shoot in Vogue in the middle of a war that he seems to be losing with the whole hell of a lot of the United States and the West's money, and even more so that as a residual result of has caused significant impact and harm on Western economies. A lot of people have made sacrifices for this man and for this nation, and he's prancing around fucking Vogue. As one person put it, I don't work my ass off, spend another extra two dollars a gallon on gas so this guy can pryant surround and Vogue once again. Some people seem to think this is okay. On on social media, I see some friends of mine, some people I know, uh post pictures of the Zelinsky shoot in Vogue with in in glowing terms like oh man, this guy, him and his wife, what a story. Uh, They're they're sacrificing for their country, true heroes. What in the funk are you talking about this guy has no business in this circumstance, in this situation, appearing in an unserious publication for some clamor shoot shot by Anie Liebovitz in Vogue with his wife. This speaks this if you're just looking at this and why this is wrong, because it seems I still don't understand how some people don't seem to get this. This is a serious situation, and this speaks This photo shoot speaks to a deep level of un seriousness, right. I mean, it's not just listen, I understand it is. It is difficult circumstances. It's a terrible tragedy. What has befallen the Ukraine. There's another entreat that was the aggressor, that one ahead and invaded them. That does not relieve them and their leaders of any responsibility whatsoever, particularly when Zelinski is coming to us hat in hand, to the United States and asking for billions upon billions of dollars in financial aid, which he is getting. We've given this guy sixty billion dollars. You're supposed, Hey, you don't have to win. You don't have to win the war. It's not an obligation. We understand if if the Russian military as it is is more powerful, and you're simply not in a practical strategic position to actually win this battle. But if you're demanding the money to ostensibly keep this conflict going, I'm expecting you to use it properly and responsibly, and they don't seem to be doing that. And aside to the fact that we're gonna one day, ten fifteen years down the line, start looking at how this money is actually being spent, and I'm hoping it all went to an actual war effort and not to lining the Zelinski's guy's pockets, despite the fact that he seems more interested in posing in Vogue and meeting with you US celebrities like Ben Stiller than and actually leading the war effort. But yeah, yeah, you ask for all this money. You want to be the tip of the of the United States and the Western spear um in its proxy battle with the West. No, I don't want you prance and around fucking Vogue. Um. Some people are flummixed by how people reacted negatively to this, and but I think Lauren Bobert, you know, is a Republican House member who's a little more sometimes engages in some clown antics. I'm not really a fan, but she hit the nail on the head on this Ukraine, on this Vogue situation, said, while we while we send Ukraine sixty billion dollars in aid, Zelensky is doing photo shoots for Vogue magazine. These people think we're nothing but a bunch of suckers. Yeah, that's the message. I'm sorry man, when you appear in Vogue and your your nation that we are funding is losing the war, like it blatantly, and we're making sacrifices in order for you to continue perpetuating it and not going to the negotiating table and unfortunately accepting a ceasefire under terms that you do not like, but which are better than the ones that you're gonna get as Russia continues to chip away at your country. Um. Yeah, this this says your suckers that Okay, thanks for the money, guys. Great, you guys have done everything. You've allowed me to pose as the hero, continued to fund this war, um, which we were not performing under and we're just gonna go and be flimsy and and highlight ourselves as celebrities and do glamour shoots. That's pretty offensive in my book. I don't understand how people see it otherwise, UM, in terms of how the conflict is actually going. I think a lot of people are finally wising up to the fact that, you know, this didn't turn out so well, that this is not even a long war, only about what six months into it, and you know that the initial results where it seemed like Russia was having more trouble economically that the Ukraine was, you know, really showing a lot of resolved Unfortunately that has has dissolved. Right, is like this is a battle of pain tolerance, as I'll expand on in just a moment. But no, Russia has continued to make military advancements, the Ukraine seems to be falling apart the economic sanctions that the West decided to admirable job, hey in going around and if we had had the pain tolerance and if we actually had the leverage the job of coordinating amongst Western countries to isolate Russia, it was actually done well. Unfortunately it was probably the right uh the rights, the right tactic, but the wrong strategy because it did not work out in the long run. UM. One of the best summations of this was by Anni sar Faruki. UM. He wrote an unheard the pieces titled our Russia strategy is backfired. Here's how he described it. The what the West unleashed the economic weapon upon Russia, truting it is not a powerful adversary, but a nuisance that could be rather effortlessly strangled through understrained use of Western sanctions. Right, So the West figured, Russia's pretty weak, we can strangle them with set with sanctions, and that's what what they the strategy they tried to implement. Everybody's sanctioned Russia economically isolate Russia. These hopes and expectations were based on wishful thinking. Non Western powers such as China, India, Brazil and Mexico and South Africa appeared more worried about the web the wests weaponization of the dollar system than by Russian aggression in the Ukraine. Even more importantly, Western leaders were gravely mistaken in the idea that Russia was a second rate power that could send be crushed with an economic weapon. They we assumed, or at least the mess The message was sent that if we do this to Russia, this will squeeze them so hard that they will either collapse or they will be intimidated. We press these leverage points and this will uh, this will shock them back away from the Ukrainian out of this conflict, or perhaps even bring down Vladimir Putin. None of that happened, and in fact, none of that happened even close because we weren't able. It was like trying to blockade an island on three sides, but not four sides, because Russia was able to find buyers for all its commodities and economic partners in China, India, Brazil, etcetera, etcetera. As Feruki goes on, indeed, Russia is not dependent on the world for hard to replace stuff. The world is dependent on Russia. Read that again, Russia is not dependent on the world for hard to replace stuff. The world is dependent on Russia. It supplies significant fraction of the world's energy medals for alizers and food. Sorry, that is reality, and that's a reality that we knew going into this that Russia, that Western Western Europe Germany in particular, is dependent and reliant on Russia for oil natural gas. The entire the worldwide oil market is also dependent on Russia, and is why Americans have lost millions upon millions, if not hundreds of billions, If not billions of dollars uh in in increases in oil and gas over the last few months, because it shocked the oil markets. Right, that did not help people the West had to make. The West got hit economically in it cut its nose to spite its face in imposing economic sanctions on Russia. Russia impost economic sanctions in return on us, and that hit us, that hit consumers, that hit the worldwide economy. And we were told what as a matter of principle and freedom and liberty and if you want to be a good person, we have to make these sacrifices on behalf of the Ukraine. And then we got Zelinsky prancing around in vogue in response to our sacrifices. Um Farouki sums it up here. The upshot is that the West economic war on Russia is generating tremendous blowback in the form of sky hype, commodity prices and the mother of all inflationary shocks the world economy, just like imposing an economic blockade on Saudi Arabia is a recipe for self harmed right, Kasadi Arabia has all the oil. Trying to economically strangulate Russia as a fool's errand there you go. I'm sorry to tell you, guys, the sanctions we imposed on Russia were a fool's errand we knew they had this leverage. Vladimir Putin knew that he had this leverage. He's known this for a while. And this is what happens when you keep on underestimating your enemy, when you think Putin is some your irrational, cartoonish supervillain who just invades countries just for the funk of it. No, the guy's been planning this for quite a while. He knew going into this that he had more pain tolerance for this than we did. He knew that he could start turning on and turning off Russia's commodities pigot that the West of the rest of the world relies on, and enact and visit pain upon us, and eventually he has more tolerance for that pain than we do. Um In particular, gas Prom, Russia's essentially stay owned UH oil company, decided just recently announced they're gonna cut natural gas applies to Germany by another half down to capacity through nord Stream one. Do you know what this is gonna do. It's already doing to the German economy. The German economy is in shambles, finishing up summer in a couple in a couple of months, it's gonna get cold in Germany. You're gonna have half that country unable to get heat whatsoever. This isn't how I want things to be. This is a plane in stark reality because Russia controls these commodities in these oil prices, and we should have known this going into it, but we acted uh in this kind of false flag, this phony notion of moral imperative that they much like. Listen, we could look at it from the circumstances and the perspective of other wars that we've been in there that we've gotten involved, and where yes, there is a good guy and a bad guy, and we'd like to be on the side of the good guy, but we have to be practical about whether or not what we're doing for the good guys actually going to work, and whether we have the pain tolerance to see it through, because as we're seeing we do not. Okay, Russia militarily continues to eat up the eastern Ukraine, and they're gonna end up getting of what they initially set out to do or even sixty six five. Vladimir Putin will be fine with that. And his economy isn't collapsing. He's got the full support of the Russian people, his administration isn't collapsing, and you know, he's like, hey, okay, so what you you guys need military incursions to be nice and neat and quickness and accomplish all of your objectives. I'm okay with. I'm okay with having to now go and sell oil and gas to the Russians and the Indians instead of to you guys. And you know, I'll accept the burdens of that, and that risk calculus has worked out for the Vladimir Putin is not worked out for us. Another more of these fanciful notions everyone wants. It's just the social media campaigns where everyone sticks the flag in their bio and posts on behalf of the Ukraine and gets involved in this really sad, you know, this sappy moralism, and like, I'm sorry, yeah, I want people to have some sort of moral compass, but you've gotta understand when something is hollow and you've got to look at the practical concerns here, because we haven't, and that's what's led us into this position. Currently, another guy who was very supportive of the Ukraine seems to have finally, you know, come around on this and understood the cold, harsh, sober reality of what's going on. Andrew Sullivan his recent piece Putin's long Game in the Ukraine, and understand that, oh well, oh, now that it comes into focus that Putin's long term objectives were more clear and he's able to accomplish them, and like Andrew, stop it. Everybody knew. Anyone who was looking at this new this is not even long term, this is only six months. Anyone who's looking at this soberly and objectively. Back in January and February when this incursion start, when this war started, I knew that Vladimir Putin had more risk tolerance, more pain tolerance, and these leverage points, and we were all ignoring that. But now at least some people like Andrew Sullivan are coming around and owning up to it that hey, things are not working out so well in the Ukraine's gonna have to uh negotiate some sort of ceasefire, and that this endless bigot of money going to support Mr Vogue Zelinsky is going to have to turn off eventually. As he puts it, Russia has now conquered more than a fifth of the country, including its critical industrial and agricultural regions. It has blocked Ukraine's capacity to sell its goods and grains by sea. It controls Crimea and the Black Sea and is connecting them to my mother Russia with the land bridge. It's obliterating infrastructure and committing atrocities, and the occupied regions and beyond it is forcibly relocated about a million Ukraine's into Russia proper. It's beginning to russify its conquered territory. If this division of Ukraine indoors, it will be very hard to reverse. I'm sorry, that's the reality, guys. As Sullivan goes on, and this matters, without a swift military turnaround, the rump of western Ukraine's risks become a failed state. As the winter beckons, Kiev's economy is in free fall. It's run out of money, and it's suffering wave after wave of a brutal casualties amongst its curateeous young men and women. Once again, that's just reality. The Ukraine is losing, okay, and we are funding and we are one funding a losing cause and to accepting economic sacrifice on behalf of a losing cause. And I'm sorry. At some point you've got to look at that and be honest about that. And the Western nations, the United States needs to be driving the Ukraine towards some sort of ceasefire. We have to unfortunately, bite the bullet and negotiate some sort of secession and reintegration of Russia into the Western economy. If not these cost this cost benefit works out, deeply, we are deeply in the red on this investment. This estment has gone belly up, and oh, how could you put it in terms like an investment? Stop it? Okay, stop it and be an adult and exist in the adult universe where you have to take these considerations into account. If not, let's just go and try to overthrow us. Go do Iraq Part two, three, four, five, and six, and just go try to overthrow every bad guy or interfere in every international skirmish and hostility whatsoever. We of course do not do that. We of course should not do that, and we should have been a little more hesitant to do something do so here and should be looking to a way to contain Vladimir putin instead of fight a proxy war using the Ukraine to do so. So that beyond I guess we'll see Vladimir's Lyinsky if he's got any more fashion fashion, bad glamour. I don't know. Harper's Bazarre might be calling him, but might not be the best use of his time at this point. And this week brings us more states of emergency. We've got a state of emergency in California, New York I think they announced one in Illinois and also in Washington, d C. What are these states of emergency you about there? About monkey pox? Yes, another virus, another supposed pandemic. I don't think we've quite reached that level yet. The decade of plagues continues. Yes, now we've got monkey pox, although it seems if you look at the numbers they're pretty small. But the one piece of evidence that slaps you in the face around monkey pox is, thus far, it is one almost universally confined to men. It's I think of cases are men. But within that cohort of men of the monkey pox cases thus so, thus far are either men who have declared themselves to public health officials to be homosexuals or to have had sexual contact with men. So this is not my opinion. This is just I'm relaying to you what public health officials in a variety of different all across the board here from the World World Health Organization to the local public authorities in California, Illinois, San Francisco, New York. This is what they're saying. Right. It seems to be highly concentrated amongst homosexual men and men that have had sexual contact with other men. Um. So that brings our good friends at Black Health back into the public conversation, and we have to look at what they're telling us and and their messaging and what they are their their guidance and their suggestions, and to see what we should be doing about monkeypops. And as we all saw for about two years during COVID, is that the public health officials have kind of there's been a little mission creep. They stopped, you know, they stopped kind of running in their lane of just being you know, studying viruses and the spread of viruses and epidemiology and public health and got into kind of behavioral studies. Even some of the most prominent public health officials will even admit that they were a little bit more. They were telling some white lies, some FIBs and exaggeration here, you know, leaving out some information there because they believe that people needed to take COVID more seriously. And that's not But here's the thing that's not science, that's behavior. That's it could be called the behavioral sciences. Um, it's sociology. It is certainly not the hard sciences that they're trained in. Okay, So this this went from you know, the topics of how COVID spread, its level of severity, the usefulness of man asks, the usefulness and efficacy of vaccines and who should be taking them, and what the punishment beer or how dire your situation was if you didn't take it. All of this they seemed to message that the message seemed to be somewhat dishonest, but they would claim that, well, our intentions were pure. We did it. We knew what was best for everybody. People needed to take this thing more seriously, and so we fudge the messaging here and there. Some of the more honest commentators, including one gentleman. His name was Trevor Bedford. You know, he's been studying commenting on covid UM. He was one of the you know, new media stars of being a COVID commentator. He's an epidemiologist, very smart guy, and know he was not a COVID contrary. He took it very seriously, but you know, in a recent, uh recent comment he mentioned how you know, however, I think it's best not to conduct messaging for intended behavioral effect and just try to make scientifically accurate statements. Once again, best not to conduct messaging for intended behavioral effect and just try to make scientifically accurate statements. Yet this proved fairly difficult for public health over the past couple of years. And on the one hand, you know that what is motivating some of the distortions right or some of the bay he behavioral influences here with COVID for the most part, it was wanting to take it seriously. And you know, listen, I'm sure some of these people, their hearts were in the minds were in the right place, um and understanding that there was a risk, but exaggerating the risk was not necessarily what they should have done, but they thought that they were helping people. Some of it was motivated by quote unquote social justice concerns. You saw this around a lot around the phase, right at the end of you know, hard lockdowns in May two thousand twenty, when after three months of telling everybody that they needed to stay in their home, all of a sudden, racism became a bigger public health concern than the spread of this virus, and public health essentially said, hey, no problem, you can go and congregate with five thousand people to go and protest and even though it might you know, kind of dip into expand into a riot, and that concern seemed to take precedent over the spread of the virus itself. For what would be a pure epidemia, what would be purely informed by concern about the virus and epidemiology. Uh noem bloms in Twitter on Twitter under Neon taster Um. The tiptoeing around monkeypox is the potential to be a repeat of the messaging around BLM protests and COVID. God forbid you give accurate information because someone might get their feelings bruised, their tactful ways to tell the truth about transmission risks. And that seems to be what's going on here again with monkeypox, and that the public health officials and will get to specifics in just a moment, are being influenced by a concern over not wanting to offend or hurt the feelings of certain quote unquote marginalized groups or special interest groups, and it is veering them away from the truth, the truth about how monkeypox transmits, who are in the high risk categories and what is high risk behavior. They seem unable to tell the truth about this, and so what is distorting that um. There was a New York Times piece on this in regards to the New York New York City Health Department. The debate over monkeypox messaging divides New York, the New York City Health Department and how they describe this. Inside the department, officials are battling over public messaging as the number of monkeypox cases is nearly tripled in the last week, nearly all of them among men who have sex with men. A few epidemiologists say the city should be encouraging gay men to temporarily change their sexual behavior while the disease spreads, while other officials argue that approach would stigmatize gay men and would backfire. So that's that seems to be the issue. This this virus, this infirmary appears to spread. All the available evidence suggests that the high risk groups are gay men in the high risk behavior is sec is sexual behavior between men um many cases. In a lot of these cases seem to trace back to orgies. They seem to be they seem to trace back to group sex. So that clearly appears to be the hard and fast evidence appears to say that that is high risk behavior. And so a public health official would you know, look at that, just look at other high risk behavior. Let's call it. During COVID said, you know in June two thousand, twenty July two and twenty, don't go to a crowded theater. Uh, we are not allowed to have ten thousand people packed into a stadium or indoor stadium or an arena for a basketball game or a concert because that is high risk behavior. So we're counseling you not to do it. But here there seems to be a battle amongst public health officials over whether they should get caution people or their guidance should be based on what is high risk behavior and what is not. This is kind of odd, isn't it. But apparently not wanting to quote unquote stigmatize gay men or gay sex behavior that seems to be taking precedent over actual transmission of the virus. As The New York Times goes on, the internal divisions peaked when the Health Department issued an advisory last week suggesting that having sex while infected with monkeypox could be made safer. Of people avoided kissing and covered their sours. It's a little odd. Several officials of the agency were outraged, saying the agency was giving misleading and even dangerous health advice, according to several epidemologists within the department. So some of the epidemiologists were like, guys, if you want to accurately guide people and inform people of about this virus and how to stay safe, you can't be like trying just not to hurt people's feelings or oh hey, if they want to engage in certain sexual activity, you know you need to. You should be got. You should be informing them that they can do it. But that instead leads to these absurd instructions like just kiss, but don't put your sores on each other. Like that's that's not quality health advice. The advice on safer sex was not medically sound, said Dr Don Weiss, the director of Surveillance for the Department's Bureau of Communicable Disease. He believes the department should advise those at risk of monkeypox to temporary, temporarily reduced their number of partners, saying, we're not telling people what they do to have to be safe. His concerns are shared by certain colleagues. However, and you just heard Dr Weiss, that seems like a pretty sound, a pretty sound approach to these things, like, hey, we should inform people about what is high risk behavior and what is not. However, according to The New York Times, the strategy favored by Dr Wise, who has long played a frontline role in department's response to disease outbreaks, has received little traction within the department. In fact, the agency, in a statement Monday, argued against such an approach. To quote the Agency, for decades, the l g B t Q plus community has had their sex lives dissected, prescribed, and proscribed in a myriad of ways, mostly by heterosexual insists people. The statement said, the city's response to monkeypox is grounded in the science and history of how poorly abstinence only guidance has historically performed with this disgraceful legacy in mind. So because there has been criticism of the sexual behavior of people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. I don't know what Q and plus there necessarily mean community because there has been uh, you know, unnecessary scrutiny in the past. We are for some reason not allowed to accurately diagnose what is going on with monkeypox and advise people based on the risk factors of their behavior. That that appears to be the message. Once again, public health is involving themselves in are They're trying to be behavioral therapists. They're trying to influence people's behavior beyond the hard sciences and the hard facts and data around how diseases spread. Is this healthy? Is this good? Doesn't seem like it's good to me? And the agency claims, well, absinence only guidance has historically performed poorly. Fair enough, Hey, if you tell people not to have sex, maybe they're just going to ignore you. However, there seems to be one there seems to be a unique uh scenario here where a lot of this is occurring in group sex. A lot of the people who who report to medical professionals that they have monkeypox, that the confirmed cases of monkeypox mentioned. Yeah, I was involved in a gay orgy last week. Once again, this is not my opinion. I'm just relaying what public health is revealing. Okay, so could you maybe tell people to refrain from certain certain group sex sex acts, or maybe don't attend the orgy, or maybe limit you know, limit new partners, limit anonymous partners. That seems to even that seems to be a bridge too far or asking too much of some people to other people. So gentleman named Charles King, he's quoted in the New York Times piece. Apparently it is a long time AIDS activist. His quote telling people not to have sex, or not to have multiple sex partners, or not to have anonymous sex, it's just a no go and it's not going to work. That is a fascinating perspective. Okay, So telling people not to have multiple sex partners, not to have anonymous sex, that's just a no go. You can't say, you know, listen, you don't have to go be cell a bit, you don't have to become a monk. But this is clearly high risk behavior. Not just endangering yourself, but you're in endangering others. Maybe hold off on the orgy, maybe hold off on having sex with that person that you just met through an app that seems to be too repressive, that is bigoted. Um, this is a strange way to operate public health. This definitely makes me question. I mean, I would like to believe that people who are quote unquote AIDS activists are on the side of the good and the righteous. But this, this is odd. This is an odd message where it seems to be that they have a real problem with with public health or with any institutions or public officials whatsoever, telling people, hey, maybe hold off on the group and or anonymous sex. So where does that leave us for monkeypox? I mean, where is this gonna go? Is this gonna expand beyond from the the gay community to other communities? Um, hey, that's a little bit beyond on my pay grade. I don't necessarily know. Um, I have a couple of friends who are not who are not gay, did not engage or you know, heterosexual couple. I know a couple of people who have gotten monkeypoks. So it's not strictly only one game end, but it is overwhelmingly so we'll have to see how this proceeds. But there seems to be a real a real cleavage, a real distortion in public health, not being willing to state messages accurately and firmly and to give people good guidance just because they don't want to either hurt their feelings offend a certain particular group, or because certain behavior was once improperly scrutinized, to now scrutinize that behavior properly once again, just because in the past certain behavior was unfairly criticized and unfairly scrutinized. If it's fairly being scrutinized and fairly being criticized now based on public health concerns, that what happened in the past really should not matter, I'm sorry. That's just ridiculous. And that goes back to Trevor Bedford's comments about how it's not at best not to conduct messaging for intended behavior oral effect, just try to make scientifically accurate statements. Let's see if public health can get back to just trying to make scientifically accurate statements, and we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break. Max Lugovir, how's it gone. It's going well to be here, so the Genius Live Podcast, New York Times best selling author, you have another book that recently reached the best seller's list. Recently, how's the new book on It's doing really well Genius Kitchen. We hit a number of best seller lists and it's been a real treat to see because it's it's kind of a cookbook, it's a hybrid cookbook and wellness guide. And you know, in the publishing industry, cookbooks are always like hit or miss, but mine seems to be doing really well, so I'm super excited about that. Hell, if everyone saw the bright, shining photo of you on the front of this cookbook, it's success would not be any shock to anybody. I share you. Thank you, brother, Thank you trying to keep up with you, no doubt, no doubt. So those who challenge the medical consensus and the consensus of the medical establishment, um, you have been one of those people, and definitely score a victory for those people after some recent discoveries and revelations around UH, the studies around chemical imbalances and the use of S S R eyes UM to treat depression. Um. But let's back up in terms of those challenging the medical consensus. One place that that you know, I'd say, if you work to be categorized in terms of UM. Looking back at dietary instruction over the eighties and nineties and two thousands, that was heavily carb oriented, and that just being that just being revealed to be completely wrong. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you know, when I was growing up, we had the food pyramid, which compelled us every day, every twenty four hour cycle, to eat seven to eleven servings of grains a day. And you look at the bottom of the foundational layer of that pyramid, and it was pasta, it was bread products. They're every grain that that for the most part, every grain that that people consume on a day to day basis when you look statistics at the population level, they're refined grains. And we know that refined grains are an ultra processed uh, they're indicative of an ultra processed product. And we know that ultra processed foods are associated with early mortality and increased risk for dementia. So it's a it's a huge problem, and it continues to be UM. That line continues to be told today. In fact, the study was published last week that found that in the twenty UM Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee, so the people who get together every five years to determine what Americans should eat, right, cent of them had conflicts of interest with companies like Kellos General Mills. So you can just imagine that, like we're you know, the the adage to just trust the science. Um, it's that's not sound advice if you want to be healthy today in the Unfortunately, and still after all the revelations about and all the essentially at least the consumer consensus around low carbs around you know, uh kind of very more to its proteins and facts. The consumers seem to have woken up over the course of the twenty one century, uh in terms of, you know, the kind of rules and guidelines around diet, but the medical consensus is still pushing the carb thing. Yeah. Well, I mean I would say that it's it's it's kind of a stretch to say that people have woken on because today still sixty of the calories that your average American consumes comes from these ultra processed food products like you know, jungle. Would you say that that's more so because of a lack of they know what's right to eat, they just don't eat it, as opposed to they're taking the guidance from the so called experts and implementing it. I think it's a it's it's multi factorial. I think the food environment has become toxic in many ways. But also there's still the the issue of food access, although that's improving to be fair. I mean, you can now go to Walmart and Costco and find organic food. You can find grass fed grass finished bee if you can find wild salmon and the like. UM. But but no, there are still very powerful forces that be that are that are working diligently to mislead the public. Unfortunately, there was another UM and I this sort of went viral for me on Instagram recently I posted about a a food nutrient profiling system that was devised over at Tufts University of the Freedman School for Nutrition. That UM basically what it's called. It was called the Food Compass, and it was this hierarchy of foods UM with the intent of both giving consumers an easy way to determine what's healthy and what's not at the point of checkout UM, but also away from manufacturers to influence consumer purchasing decisions. And when you use this algorithm and and arrange typical foods in terms of a hierarchy, you found the most nutrient dense foods like ground beef, eggs, and dairy products at the bottom of the list and at the top of the list. In terms of foods to be UM to to be uh included more frequently heavily consumed frosted me aw, it's lucky charms are eggs substitute fried and vegetable oil, you know. So it's just a force. It's a house of cards. And that's why I feel, you know, I'm empathetic to the average consumer who um is nutritionally ignorant, you know, and um and yeah, it's a big problem, and it's and it's hard to communicate these topics without, you know, without also sewing distrust in science, because at the end of the day, science is a method of asking questions and investigating truth, right, But unfortunately it's also an industry, and there are bad actors in the industry of science, just as there are in every other industry. And this analog is very, very nicely to the topic that we want to discuss this week, in terms of the studies around chemical imbalances, claims regard in the connection between depression and low serotonin levels, and then the prescription of s SR eyes um, which we'll get to in just a second. But the idea being that for for pretty much thirty years, regardless, it seems that there has been a bit of a consumer awakening around nutrition. If even if it has a filtered out, let's say, it's gotten to of society. If it hasn't blanketed society, many people have woken up. However, Um, the use of the prescription of antidepressants and the medical consensus and and your average consumer, your average citizen out there's you know, figuring out or or assuming that if they suffer with depression, or if someone they know suffers with depression, the prescription of antidepressants is um is, if not beyond reproach, very sensible. Um. All the all the experts would support it. However, this recent study by the University College of London casts a ton of doubt on that and that chemical imbalance. And I'd like to hear your thoughts. Chemical imbalance always to be sounded incredibly vague, like okay, almost by nature, your brain is made of chemicals. If things are not going wrong in your brain, and your brain is sending unhealthy or or destructive signals to the rest of your body. There's of course got to be some sort of imbalance that thus the description of a chemical imbalance doesn't really describe anything. Yeah, I mean, so what this What this Umbrella review and meta analysis found was that we have um often, especially in in pop culture, described the depressed person as somebody who is who has a chemical imbalance in the brain. And the chemical in question is serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that we associate with mood. It's also involved in executive function. UM so it's got a lot of side hustles, so to speak. It's not it's not purely a mood chemical. But I think that that messaging really has been a condescending one. It sends the message to people that are depressed that there's something wrong with their brains. And what does meta analysis UM found was that there's really no evidence to say that people who are depressed have lower levels of serotonin than people who are not depressed. They can look at levels of serotonin and serotonin metabolites and spinal fluid. There's um no difference according to the current body of evidence with regard to people who are depressed and people who are not depressed. They have various ways of um temporarily reducing serotonin in the brain with what are called trip to fin depletion studies, where they will usually give a patient a compound or um certain amino acids like branch chain amino acids which have the ability of out competing entry of tripp to fain into the brain, which is the precursor molecule precursor amino acid to serotonin and also melotonin, and there are there's no evidence that doing that causes depressive symptoms. There's some evidence that it causes UM certain symptoms, but they're not depressive symptoms. UM they look at people who genetically have variation in the concentration of serotonin receptors. So essentially, what this review found was that there's really no such thing as a chemical imbalance theory a chemical imbalance UM that is responsible for depression. But what this I think it's also important to underscore what this review did not look at, and it did not look at the efficacy of antidepressant drugs. So what I think is important for people to to note is that rugs that do modulate serotonin, like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, do work in in certain populations. So if you're taking an SSRI a drug and you and it's working for you, then by all means, continue to take that drug because regardless of the mechanism, um, if it's working, it's the outcomes that really matter, right, And these drugs work via a number of different mechanisms. So I mean, they do work to increase availability of serotonin at the at the synapse, but they also have been shown to boost neuroplasticity by upregulating a compound called b DNF or brain derived neurotrophic factor. So, um, whatever the case may be, if the drug is working for you, continue to take it. But what we do know, also in tandem with that, is that these drugs tend to be overprescribed. Today, one in ten people is on um some kind of antidepressant drug and that number that that that proportion shoots up to one in four for women over the age of forty, which is just you know, heartbreak. And think about this, and people need to put this in historical perspective. Despair, unhappiness, and depression has existed from the beginning of time. These s s r s and these antidepressants have only been around for at most forty years most for the vast majority of them, prevalence has really expanded over the past ten, fifteen, twenty years. So these human experiences and emotions that people have been able to deal with without mass suicides throughout society for god knows how long society has continued to operate, all of a sudden, we're treating these with and and as you as you mentioned, yes, the the study did not necessarily dismiss the efficacy or the usefulness of antidepressants outright right, but we've kind of um accepted these this prescription or this the solving, the solution as a singular, you know, as something that is necessary that the cost benefit you know, always will work out in order to address something that has been experienced by human beings for thousands of years but has only been treated like this for about years. Yeah, exactly. The cost benefit um is not always so cut and dry. You know that these these drugs have significant side effects for many, and their efficacy increases with the severity of the depressions. For people with more severe clinical depression, the drugs are more efficacious. So there's no doubt about that that that people definitely benefit from these drugs, but they're also prescribed to people with mild and moderate depression, for which they are no better or at least minimally more effective than a placeboat and certainly not as effective in likely not as effective in in those populations as exercise, which we know is an incredibly powerful um antidepressed and activity. So I think it's really important to remain um skeptical and to have a critical lens about these drugs which are handed out, you know. I mean, that's kind of how Western medicine works in many ways. Unfortunately, at the point of care, we just throw drugs at a problem. But as you mentioned, depression could be caused by many different things. That can be caused by a negative life event. It can be caused by inflammation. We're now starting to see this is a cytokine inflammatory cytokind model of depression. So, um, this idea that for everybody who's depressed, and to be fair, uh, any psychiatrists worth their their salt, you know, is aware of this, is keenly aware of this. But still I believe, according to this review, um of the general public still believes that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, and I think it's a narrative that we need to do away with. Yeah, and I think part of the mechanism here is that all of these decisions, a patient has to accept the advice from their doctor. Right at the end of the day. The doctor can say my word is bond um, but a patient still has to go ahead except the diagnosis and take the drug and some of what and what I liked, uh from what this study at least the the description around the study from the doctor who conducted it. So she understands that part of this is just making sure that patients are informed and understanding that Okay, antidepressants might just be an option as opposed to the only option. And here's Joanna Moncrieff was the professor who can to the study. Here's what she said. Many people take antidepressants because they have been led to believe their depression as a biochemical cause, but this new research success suggests this belief is not grounded in science. Thousands of people suffer from side effects from antidepressants, including the severe withdraw effects that can occur when we try to stop them, yet prescription rates continue to rise. We believe the situation has been driven partly by the false belief that depression is due to a chemical imbalance. And I guess what she's saying is that, you know, you can't separate the science from the behavior behavioral science, right, the actual science from how humans behave and humans will. And the reason that, uh, that consumption of antidepressants skyrocketed seems to be because human beings believed that there's a one to one cause and effect between a chemical imbalance and their depression. And this is a one to one solution. And it seems that just breaking free from that misunderstanding will lead to healthier outcomes because it's gonna get people to assess this with a more critical eye. Yeah, and then you know, I mean with that, that's the whole uh fallacy behind monotherapy drugs like ss R e s, which again do work for some people. But that's kind of how drug discovery works. We look for single molecules that we can potentially patent, right, that typically work via one or two or um or perhaps even myriad pathways. UM. But then you take something like you compare it to something like physical exercise or a healthy diet, which UM strengthens the entirety of the system via innumerable pathways right. Like exercise does increase levels of serotonin in the brain. Exercise also strengthens um synaptic strength. It also boosts neuroplasticity. It's also really great for boosting cardiovascular health, which we know, UM is important for supplying the brain energy and oxygen and antioxidants and the like. So UM, that's why I always, I always defer to these lifestyle based modifications, UM, instead of reaching for the drugs, which I know can can be a quick fix for some people. UM. But you know, it's important for as you mentioned, informed consent to know that these drugs typically and the other thing that all add is that they're hard to come off of these drugs, I mean once you start taking them. I have personal experience with this, not that I've taken them myself, but my mother, UM, which is the reason why I got involved in in science health science communication to begin with, was prescribed search really brand names zoloft when uh, a psychiatrist thought that all of her dementia like symptoms were attributable to depression, and we later found out that that was very obviously not the case. But nonetheless, she was on a drug for years and when she tried to finally come off of them once we realized that her symptoms were not due to depression but due to dementia. UM, it was impossible to come off of them. And they don't tell you that at the at the point of prescription unfortunately, and that needs to be because they do. They are a drug right there. They are eco active to some extent. They will alter your behavior and the other natural uh kind of you know, equilibrium that your body and your your glands um have established. I mean you have to factor that in and look out how long you want to be on these things? Um. And in terms of why of why we seem to be over prescribing these drugs. And I'm taking a kind of concept I see in the legal world. Sometimes you know, one lawyer will look at how another lawyer on the other side of a deal is operating. It's a god is why are they wasting time on this? Oh, They're just trying to prove to their client that they're doing their job. Do you think sometimes doctors are over prescribing antidepressants because it seems like it doesn't take a doctor to tell you to go exercise, doesn't take a doctor to tell you to go eat healthier. Anyone can tell you that it does take a doctor to prescribe you medication. And thus, uh, they don't want to be accused of not doing their job, or of being a waste of time and money, or or kind of their professional efficacy by not prescribing drugs. I definitely think that that's part of it. I also think just to just to you know, not undermine personal accountability. People tend to want an easy fix. They tend to want a magic pill, right. They want change, but they don't want to change. And um, and we've always seen the means the memes on social media of the two lines, right, the two like lines of of of people. You know, it's like one of the lines is like for the for the easy solution, right, and then the other line is for the lifestyle change, the harder fix, but the more sustainable and the more effective one. And nobody's in the line that's more difficult to attain. Everybody wants the magic pill, the magic bullet for whatever ails them, right, And so um, yeah, I mean changing one's diet is adopting a a less sedentary lifestyle routine for somebody who's who's who's primarily sedentary that's difficult, but we do know now thanks to a growing, growing body of evidence, the diet is a powerful antidepressant for somebody who's on a junk food diet and suffering from clinical depression. We now have solid evidence to say that when this person switches to a more whole foods Mediterranean style diet, the kind of diet that I advocate for in my work, there's a dramatically increased UM proportion of remission from from depression. And even for those those who don't remiss, it's we see, we've we see significant symptom symptom improvement. We can look at the Smiles trial that was performed at Deacon University, the Food and Mood Center there, which is one of the UM seminal institutes now ushering in this this field of nutritional psychiatry, which looks at how food effects mood. We also UM we there are there are accounts, high quality meta analyses now looking at at dozens, if not hundreds of studies that are showing us that exercise, whether it's resistance training or aerobic exercise um can both significantly improve symptoms of depression symptoms of anxiety. So but it's not It's not as easy as waking up and going to the medicine cabinet and taking a pill every day, unfortunately. Yeah. It also requires that people might have to stare their depression or they're despair in the face and deal with it for a week, a couple of weeks, a month, or two months until some of those lifestyle changes start to yield benefits. Um. And that is probably scarier than the notion of being able to take a pill right there. That's going to give you that relief right there, and obviously be an empathetic to those that are suffering from depression, but that once again could influence behavior. Yeah, or also to acknowledge that I, um, for some have done this to myself, which is a very no pun intended, hard pill to swallow. Right for somebody who UM you know has lived a lifestyle of sedentary behavior, drinks too much alcohol, smokes, it lives a pro inflammatory lifestyle. For example, UM you know, there is good data to suggest that UM, living a pro inflammatory lifestyle can manifest as depressive symptoms. I mean, every any animal when under inflammatory assault, right like when uh and an animal has acquired an infection. UM zoologists to know that animals exhibit what are called sickness behaviors. They retreat from the herd, they see to groom, they lose their appetites, They exhibit symptoms that and a human being would be well described as depressive symptoms, symptoms of depression and um. And unfortunately, today for your average human, our immune systems are not activated due to uh, you know, threat of pathogen exposure or due to physical injury. But instead our immune systems are chronically activated at a logan. They tend to be chronically activated at a low grade level due to our ultra processed food diets, are overly sedentary lifestyles, are exposures to environmental toxic ins, are chronic stress, are sleep as an afterthought lifestyle. And so the idea that we could that this, that that these feelings could be attributable to actions that we've taken in our lives, that that we're somehow not victims but instead head um, we've done this to ourselves. That is a very hard pill to swallow. And I'm not saying that that is the cause for depression for all people, certainly not, but uh, with doubt, a upset of the depressed population just might be a behavioral factor that motivates people to take pills as opposed to you know, grind it out and uh and and aim towards more lifestyle changes. Before I let you go, there's another piece of clinical data that came out that seemed to thumb its nose in the face of the establishment around the the issue that got you into this field of study, Alzheimer's. There's another big study that came out seemed to suggest that some of the studies that were most reliant on over the course of the the last quarter century turned out to be completely falsified. Was that correct? Yeah, So this is a huge issue UM. And essentially what happened was a the dominant theory of what causes Alzheimer's disease since Alzheimer's was named in ninety physician Alois Alzheimer's Alois Alzheimer was the amyloid hypothesis he saw in um cadavers that had developed Alzheimer's disease and ultimately died from it, that there was an overwhelming amount of plaque like the plaque on your teeth, but in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease, surrounding neurals, and it wasn't until the eighties of this plaque was named and we the foundational UM constituent protein was identified as amyloid beta. Unfortunately, UM, though this plaque is highly associated with Alzheimer's disease, there UM was really no evidence that that UM it was causal with regard to Alzheimer's disease, because even though it was present in the brains of patients with this condition, it's also present in the brains of people without that condition. So again it was associated UM, but not determined to be causal. Nonetheless, UM, it's a very seductive UH model to buy into that this plaque is causal with regard to the conditions. So it really has directed UM pharmaceutical research drug discovery for this condition for UM for essentially a century UM, certainly the past few decades UH, and these trials have failed over and over and over again. Alzheimer's drug trials have a ninety nine point six percent fell right. And in fact, UM, what what few drugs have shown to be effective in terms of reducing the overall plaque burden in the brain don't improve the clinically meaningful symptoms that we aspire to improve. In UH, A patient with Alzhemer's disease, right, like the cognition, the memory, the quality of life. And so by the year two thousand six, UM we were starting to lose and I say we, UM not including myself in this because UM, you know, I was never for as long as I've been UM working in this field and putting out information and publishing on the topic of Alzheimer's disease, was never convinced that amyloid was causal. But certainly as I meant, and the three billion dollars a year that go into drug discovery, UM was really going down this path of trying to trying to UM create the bad guy of ameloid beta and ultimately invent a hero to to clear it. So we were steam was starting to to be lost, and it was not. It was two thousand six that a paper was published in the journal Nature, which you know as a scientist, if you get published in the journal Nature, it's like winning an Academy award. Essentially, that was able to directly tie alleloid beta to memory impairment. So what they did was they discovered a subtype of amloid beta. So the protein that is foundational to this plaque, a subtype called a beta star fifty six and they were able to um This scientist uh Sylvan Lesnie at the University of Minnesota was able to inject it into young rats and see profound cognitive deficits. So that two thousand six paper has been cited thousands of times since then as being the holy grail to link. Finally, it was the missing link to connect amyloid beta this plaque with memory impairment. And so for the past sixteen years since that paper was published, it served as this powerful confirmation bias to the scientists in the field that amaloid beta is the bad guy. We knew it all along. Amaloid beta is a bad guy. But still since then, antibody drugs like agacanamab, which was very controversially approved by the FDA, which talk about a couple of years ago, like two years ago, UM, we're doing a looid beta in the brain along with terrible side effects patients on the in the intervention group, but no clinically meaningful improvement in in symptomology and UM. And nonetheless this it still continues to believed by the amioid mafia that amoids the the problem. But here's the revelation that was published um in in Science this past week, and that is that that data, all of the data from that seminal two thousand six paper was fraudulent. It was faked. That grail was fraudulent, The Holy Grail was fraudulent, confirming that amyloid beta is just this boogeyman that was essentially created that is associated with aging, but is not causal in the the in the ideology of Alzheimer's disease. It's there at the scene of the crime, but it's not the cause of the condition itself. It's a symptom. It's like people that develop athros sclerosis, right, It's like cholesterol is certainly involved because we see it in the plaque build up that cloggs arteries. But is it the cause or is it what is causing it to be there? That is the question that we need to be asking, and that's the question that a small um niche within the field of neurology and neuroscience have been asking for decades, but they were quieted and ridiculed by the amaloid mafia at large. Hopefully, Yeah, this seems to be a pattern that we continue to see, whether it's in more arcane fields of study like or issues that arcane issues like the science around the science around Alzheimer's and what causes it. Stuff that's a little more that's called general admission, like you know, basic diet or how to treat depression. Unfortunately, how to treat depression has become more widespread and more uh kind of a consumer staple health atom. Unfortunately. But um, it seems like the the establishment continues to take els pretty consistently. The establishment continues to take els, and more so beyond you know, the establishment turning out to be wrong, it's how the establishment seems to treat everybody who had previously questioned them. Right, So if they had been more if they were more accommodating or at least a little more gracious in a kind of encounter encounter arguments and you know, uh kind of meeting people halfway or at least not dismissing people who seemed to challenge them. I mean, it wouldn't be quite such an issue. But these revelations take on a new gravity when everybody who believe these revelations previously had been dismissed called a kop and it now turn uh are now proven to be at least partially correct. Oh absolutely. I mean scientists are flawed humans just like the rest of us, and yet many of them have a God complex. They're super obstinate, su burned, fiercely territorial. I mean, I spent a lot of time in the nutrition space, and uh nutrition UM. Scientists can be some of the most toxic people you will ever encounter. It is pretty wild because I mean I see the content that you put out, and it seems like the most non controversial stuff on the face of the planet. And yet somehow, just like more hot button issues. You know, you're putting that stuff on on just how to live healthier, what to eat, nutrition. You know, you're not talking about politics, you're not talking about values. Yet somehow these become contentious, hostile issues. I mean it seems like some people really um digging their heels on this stuff. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a massive problem, and it's very disheartening. And that's why I think we all need to develop greater sense of science literacy and UM and a critical when we hear studies come out. I mean, it's important to be able to go and read science and too, and to be able to um shrink the delta between the headlines right that come out about various scientific um studies and issues, uh and the actual the papers that are being published. And and also to recognize that the papers that the scientific data isn't the holy grail of truth, right because it can be manipulated. That is, it's it's such a huge problem and it's it's this is a difficult message to convey without sewing skepticism for science, which again you know, I mean is a method really of of investigation. Um. But unfortunately, you know, it is way too often the case that the science is skewed, and it's really sad. And so that's why I think, I mean, my approach has always been to be evidence based but not evidence bound. I mean that's a term that I've coined for myself, and I think it's so crucially important a term to coin. Their max that is well done. Yeah, it's it's super important because the data can only take you so far, and the data can be fudged. I mean, with with regard to nutrition, I mean, there was this revelation published. It was an expose published in the New York Times a couple of years ago that found that one of the seminal papers to take the blame off of sugar and put it on fat with regard to heart disease, the dietary factors that influence one's risk for heart disease, published I believe nineteen seventy six in the new Inland stem Revery Button in the in the Burgeoning nutrition space. The scientists who published that paper, this was only revealed decades after the fact, where each paid fifty dollars equivalent of today's money fifty UM two uh to basically publish that paper by the Sugar Um Research Foundation. I sometimes think, yeah, I sometimes think follow the money is a little is also a circular reasoning, but sometimes it ends up being right on target. It's like, all right, if if there's a financial component, if you follow it, you will find the motive, and by by you know, by acknowledging the motive, you will understand the result. But um, we're hoping to you know, if if we're looking at on a healthier path forward from the consumer, we want to see a little more healthy skepticism as opposed to just conspiratorial dismissiveness, UM, and from the medical establishment, hopefully we find a little more humility around some of this stuff seems to be I don't think that this seems to be just the first battle in the war over the usefulness, over the notion of a chemical imbalance, the prescription or the are kind of recent recent orthodoxes around the prescription of anti depressant. So we'll see how this all plays out. But um it score one for the skeptics on this one. Um Max, tell everybody where they can find you on the Internet or anywhere else that is relevant. For sure. Well, I host my own podcast called The Genius Life UM available wherever you get your podcasts, and then I'm very active on Instagram and Twitter at Max Lugavier and his new book Jinia's Kitchen. There you go, available wherever you get your books. Fantastic guys, Thanks so much, Thanks Matt, I am at Bolinski. Once again. You can listen and subscribe to The Prevailing Narrative on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you're listening right now. Make sure to follow me on my socials at Matt Belinsky, M A T T B I L I N s K Y. The Prevailing Narrative is a Cavalry audio production and association with I Heart Radio produced by Brandon Morgan, Executive produced by Dana Burnetti and Kegan Rosenberger for Calvary Audio. I'm Matt Bolinsky.