0:01happens to be the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's murder.
0:06And I take that to be a significant fact and a kind of a sobering responsibility to be talking at a a conference about 9/11 and what it is that may have taken place 25 years ago.
0:22So, anyway, it's I think it's a significant event and I'm heartened to see the online discussion of the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 and people you know, bringing footage back to the fore that you know, some of some of which has not been seen by most of us.
0:42Pretty fascinating moment.
0:43>> Do you remember where you were that day in 2001?
0:46>> 100% Yeah, I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was a grad student. I was a teaching assistant in a mammology program.
0:58And I somehow I woke up got word that there had been what at the time seemed to be an aviation accident and [clears throat] I turned on the television and I was I hope I'm recalling this correctly, but I think I was watching the tower burn. I was thinking about, you know, what little I knew [clears throat] in terms of precedent. I know that a an aircraft had crashed into the the World Trade not the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, you know, long ago. Yeah, 1932. So, I was thinking about that fact as I believe the second plane crashed into the tower and of course, that moment everybody who was watching this had the
1:51same thought, which is, okay, that just changed what this event is. That's not [clears throat] an aviation accident in any way. It's intentional and many things follow from that.
2:05>> Hey guys, three quick things. Number one, if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe. It's a huge huge help. Number two, if you'd like to join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes, you can join via the link in my description or in the pin comment below. And number three, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make content from the show and make money, you can join via the Discord link in my description below.
2:26>> And I um at the time, you know, we didn't have mechanisms for easily reaching out to anyone at any moment. I mean, they existed, but they were crude and I didn't have any way to reach the professor who was going to be teaching this class and I rode my bike to school um and [clears throat] I think because I'd been watching the aftermath of this, I arrived a few minutes late. I was sort of expecting nobody to be in the class and the class is sitting there in their seats and the professor mammologist is up at the front of the room lecturing as if nothing had happened.
3:07>> Really?
3:09>> And I remember thinking, I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do, but I know that something historic is taking place at this very instant and I walked up to the front of the room and I pulled him aside and I said, not in a way that the class could hear, I said, I think you need to know that something is going on, you know, the Twin Towers have been attacked in New York.
3:34Um two aircraft have crashed into them.
3:38And he said, yes, I know.
3:41And then he just kept going.
3:43And I thought, whoa, how on Earth does anybody not realize that mammology, important as it may be, is not the priority at this moment, right?
3:57>> Um, I don't think I've ever heard anything like that before, like someone just so continuing operations without even really acknowledging it at all.
4:07>> It was weird, and in fact I've thought of it rarely. It's so out of keeping with that the moment, the hours and weeks that followed, which to me I think a lot about the hours and weeks um, that followed [clears throat] 9/11.
4:22One of the things that struck me about it, I was already quite, uh, skeptical of the our news environment. I wasn't a believer that we were being widely told the truth about much.
4:36>> Good for you. Early adopter.
4:38>> Yeah, early adopter. And I remember having the experience of watching, okay, this event happens, the towers are hit, they collapse, the Pentagon's been hit, everybody's grappling with what just happened.
4:51This is historic, but at what level is it historic? What happens next?
4:55And my impression was that you had a bunch of phonies who didn't know they were phonies, who were had have been hired to pretend that they were reporters. You know, and so they had all the equipment and they dressed the part, spoke the part. And but, you know, they didn't really dispense the news because the news was so corporate that it wasn't in the news business. But, at the point the attacks happened, these people were kind of like, okay, I'm in the street in New York, this terrible thing has happened, there's chaos, I've got a microphone, and they just started like behaving like reporters.
5:32>> Right.
5:32>> Right, it was the strangest thing. And I don't know how well you remember it, but the commercials were pulled off the air.
5:40>> Mhm.
5:40>> Immediately it was considered, uh, inappropriate to have them. They were off the air I think for a couple of weeks, and there were just there was this period, and you know, now I regard the official story of what happened uh during 9/11 to be laughable, but there was something very authentic about the reaction of the population, the way people Americans found the humanity in each other, and you know, the reporters started doing their jobs. It It was a very different moment, and it was like a moment outside of time.
6:16>> Yes.
6:16>> Um and you know, and then there was that moment when the commercials [clears throat] came back, and things sort of returned to the, you know, nonstop propaganda regime.
6:29Um and [clears throat] you know, I I always wonder, is there not Can we Can we tap back into whatever it was that had us uh thinking organically and and authentically during that brief period?
6:44>> Yeah, I just had two guys here yesterday who were kids when 9/11 happened, and they both lost their fathers in the North Tower. And, you know, this has come up on podcast before over the years, but something about the spirit of 9/12 and the days after that to where, you know, people often forget we were 8 months removed from what was at the time the most contentious presidential election in modern history, and yet all things like that went outside went out the window.
7:15The next day. And And it's interesting, I was I was 8 years old, and we have a booth still in here from earlier. We did a podcast together. He was also 8, so it's interesting to talk to someone around the anniversary who experienced it at the same age I did. But one of, if not the most common DMs I get on Instagram, are many of you asking me what my favorite books are. Well, today's your lucky day, because if you use the link in my description below to join my newsletter, I'm going to give you my top 10 book recommendations right now. Also, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make
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8:02It's one of It is really the first day in my life where I can remember every single thing. Like from start to finish.
8:09And so, it's a seminal It was always personal to me. I'm from this part of the world, too.
8:13But, you know, the fact that it takes such tragedy, regardless, we'll talk about the story and all that, too, obviously. That's a huge issue. But, that it takes such tragedy and such loss for people to put aside not even just stupid disagreements, but, you know, human disagreements and come together around a shared humanity.
8:35There's something about that that's really sad to me because we, you know, we're so lucky to live in this country.
8:41I feel very fortunate to to have been born here. It's such an amazing experiment in so many ways, but I keep seeing ways that we're trying to find new methods to [ __ ] it up. And, you know, then you get the people out here who are like, "Well, it's going to take a tragedy for us to come together." And I'm like, "Does it really need to be that?" And then you look at the reality, and you're like, "God damn, when else has has something like that happened, you know?"
9:05>> I do know, and I think my whole adult life I've been watching a some version of the slowly boiling frog, where our our media environment, our information environment, the academy, everything is coming apart and and becoming captured by something that is hostile to our well-being as people, as Americans.
9:34And this is created a kind of puzzle for me, which is the circuitry that we need to be human with each other is there.
9:46We saw it on 9/11. Inorganic as the story we were fed may have been, the reaction of the people was genuine and it was decent and frankly it is what I know of people from having traveled all around the world and interacted with people from many different cultures.
10:00This is built in. It's not our only mode, but it's definitely there.
10:06And if people understood the danger that we are in in the near term, you know, over the course of the next 15 years, the concern that we have for each other and the willingness to put aside minor differences would be right there at the fore. So, in some sense we're being fed entertainment and comfort that keeps us from recognizing that we are in peril and that is preventing us from having the reaction to each other that we should be having. I mean, my my daily is I don't really care about your ideology at all. If you're acting in good faith, if you're patriotic, if you believe in just the basics of, you know, the
10:52Constitution, then you and I have almost nothing to disagree about because we're so far off track from that vision of the world, we can march 90% of the way together before we ever get around to anything we disagree over. And yet, we're spending all of our time fighting over this minutia that just has no impact, right?
11:15>> The [ __ ] We're we're on a ship at sea that is being actively sunk and we're fighting over what color to repaint it.
11:24>> It's a good way to put it.
11:26>> Yeah, and and I think your your career and there's a lot of people out there who are very familiar with your story and have heard you for a lot of years on some of the biggest shows in the world including Joe Rogan to where like your career has been a demonstration of the fact that no one can ever really put you in a box. Like you always have been open to so many different ideologies and thoughts and I like kind of considered you even before the whole COVID thing when you were blowing the whistle on that stuff early very bravely. I might add. I always kind of considered you like that quote-unquote
11:58in the good way not the stereotypical like thought leader. Like you were the kind of guy that people could go to to present evidence and and and ideas they might want to put forward and they were going to get a fair hearing from someone like you and if there's one decent thing to come out of the COVID era and I do want to talk about those perils that you're referring to in a minute here. But if there's one decent thing to come out of it, I think you know, while we have seen a lot of people get each other's throats, there are at least like some more people out there that I can see who have clearly
12:31been inspired by guys like you and the way that you look at things so that we can create you know the third frontiers if you will instead of the binary system. I don't mean that literally. I mean that like figuratively in a way and I hope you know that because it it it does I I know it's got to get really frustrating with some of the things you've been through but like you being brave and at the forefront of stuff has definitely inspired people to come after you.
12:59>> Well, um I appreciate you saying that. I I do my life has played out strangely where I keep finding myself in the right place at the right time to do some kind of work that I think is important.
13:16Um and and I have a characteristic that I think almost nobody has which makes me right for the job. It's the characteristic that if I could push a button and distribute it across the population, I would do so.
13:32>> Mhm.
13:32>> And the characteristic is not being persuaded by social cues.
13:42All right, if you're trying to figure out what's true, then the fact that a whole bunch of people tell you you're stupid for thinking X is not actually evidence. It doesn't show up in the matrix of things that you should be processing. And there are lots of reasons that people might try to convince you that you're being foolish that aren't about evidence at all. So, it's not that I don't feel the pushback. I do, and I dislike it intensely.
14:12But it doesn't persuade me of anything because I know from basically from the analytics and from developmental experience, I know that the way I usually say it is, every great idea starts as a minority of one.
14:27That means that there's a moment at which you know the thing, everybody disagrees with you, and they are wrong.
14:36All right, so the fact that everybody disagrees with you can't possibly be evidence because if you accepted that, then there's no possibility of progress, of discovering the new thing that was hard to see at first.
14:47So, that the the developmental experience that allows you to remember that at the right moment is very rare.
14:57And I guess my history had enough of it that when I stood my ground early on, stories actually that go back before Evergreen, when I stood my ground, it took time. I went through hell, and then there was a vindication later.
15:17>> Do you have moments along there where you question yourself?
15:21>> Every day.
15:23That's the thing that people don't get is that the the courage of your convictions is not a magic property. It comes from doing a kind of work where you check in with why do I think this? Okay, there are a ton of people telling me that I'm nuts for even contemplating this. Why do I think they are actually making an error and that I'm on the right track?
15:50And you go back and you go through, you know, the out here I'll I'll give you an example.
15:57Um Building 7 is the smoking gun of the 9/11 story.
16:01Something did not go according to plan with respect to Building 7 and so we have the anomaly of a building that was not hit by an airplane that collapses due to a fire that should not have been capable of bringing it down.
16:14There is an explanation that would solve that problem. It's one I've hypothesized for a long time.
16:21Well, that building had a tremendous amount of important stuff in it including secret stuff, CIA stuff.
16:31Maybe the building was wired so that it didn't fall into enemy hands the way uh you know, a Black Hawk helicopter is wired so that if it is lost on the battlefield it can be destroyed and not fall into enemy hands.
16:45That would explain Building 7.
16:47But then the problem is so okay, A, why didn't they own up to that?
16:53But B, now you've got the physics of Towers 1 and 2. The physics of Towers 1 and 2, those aren't standard controlled demolitions. Controlled demolitions start at the bottom, not the top.
17:05>> Mhm.
17:05>> So, something is not a controlled demolition in the in the sense that we're familiar with it there.
17:11On the other hand why do these buildings fall the way they do? If they were truly compromised by some combination of the airliners, which should not have significantly compromised them, and the fires, which should not have significantly compromised them, but let's say some calculation was off in both towers, and you know, the dice came up snake eyes or whatever.
17:34You would not expect them to collapse completely. You would not expect them to collapse anywhere near free fall speed.
17:41They're falling into this incredibly robust structure that is designed to resist exactly this. So, the point is, okay, I can see an explanation for building seven that doesn't involve the entire story being a lie. That makes me question the entire story. But then I go back to the entire story, and it's like, okay, how many things do I know about the rest of the story that simply never added up. The foreknowledge, the physics of buildings one and two, you know, the thermite in the dust, the recycling of the steel, all of the things that the anomalies that we talk about reinforce my sense. So, you know,
18:17how often do I go through that? Every time I think about 9/11.
18:21>> Yeah, and I think it I think it's with any idea, too. Like, obviously, that's I want to come back to that cuz it's it's a pretty important one at the moment right now, of course, and has been for the last 25 years, but you know, I always look at the world as best I can in like the extremes, right? So, if a pendulum swings way too hard one way, the law of physics says it has to swing really hard the other way. And the farther apart those pendulums are, the more violence there is to create equilibrium.
18:50And you're the way you put it was really cool, which is you're like, every you said it better than I'm going to say it, but every new idea starts with one person believing in it.
19:00>> Every great idea starts as a minority of one.
19:02>> Okay.
19:03Yeah, smarter way than I put it, but [snorts] everyone hears that, and it's like, yeah, that clicks. The danger of that can be like, if you just get really convinced of something, and not to pick on him, but like Terrence Howard was really, really convinced that 1 * 1 does not equal 1. And then he might have made some really smart leaps after that with other things, but if the bottom floor is already wrong, the next leaps you make are compromised. So, when I ask you that question, it's like you think about everything, obviously.
19:32Like, you were thinking about a lot of things, you've touched a lot of different ideas in your life. You know, have you had moments though where you start to play with an idea saying, "Hey, this might actually be the total opposite of the narrative." And you start to build evidence on that.
19:46And then after a while you're like, "You know what? They actually might have this one right."
19:50Have you had examples like that before?
19:52>> Of course.
19:53>> Yeah.
19:53>> Yeah, it's hard to remember what they are because the point is you have some moment where you think you're onto something, and then you realize, "Oh, I'm not onto something." And it doesn't loom large in your thinking going forward. It maybe given time I'll come up with some examples, but yeah, happens all the time.
20:08Um but I would also point out something else. And I don't mean to be, you know, super self-focused on my story, but I know my story better than I know anybody else's, and so I know what what came from it that contributes to the weird places I end up.
20:24One of them is that what I trained to do is to study complexity. Literally the most complex phenomena in the known universe, including things like tropical forests.
20:40The table stakes for studying complexity is a kind of extreme analytical humility.
20:50>> Mhm.
20:51>> When you walk into a tropical forest, you need to know there isn't anybody on Earth who knows how it works. We're not even close.
21:00We know some things about it for sure, but it's a tiny fraction of what you would want to know. And so you can either walk into that forest and you can say, "Well, it's hopeless. I Where would I even begin? Right? We We don't have the the basics here." Or, you could say, "I wonder if I can figure out this piece in spite of the noise that dominates the system." It's the exact opposite of what you have in a physics or chemistry lab.
21:26>> Mhm.
21:27>> Right? In the laboratory, you purge all the noise so that the only phenomenon on that lab bench is the one you're interested in to the extent you can purge everything else. And if you do it right, it it's elegant.
21:38That's off the table. You're not going to do that in a tropical forest. You're not going to do that trying to understand the behavior of some creature. So, the toolkit that comes from doing high-quality analytical work under rotten conditions is where I come from. I feel at home doing science in rubber boots with a machete.
22:02I like it. Right? [laughter] Um so, when I get to something like a polluted narrative environment around important historic events, and I'm dealing with some sort of claims that may be deceptive, it's not identical to walking in a tropical forest, but you know, you walk in a tropical forest, there are lots of creatures there trying to deceive you so you can't find them and eat them, that sort of thing. Um so, or, you know, you got plants that are putting chemicals into the environment in order to distort the physiology of herbivores so that the herbivore will move on to some other plant. You've got
22:38all kinds of mechanisms that are not straightforward, and becoming at home with those things so that you can see past them and identify the pattern is it's a skill that I I prize, and I'm glad to have taken it from a realm as marvelous as biology into a realm as unpleasant and poisoned as our discourse over important events.
23:06>> Yeah, I and but it is an important time to have voices like that to where you can take you know, the expertise you built in something else your whole life and put it to use to where everyone from an an intellectually curious 15-year-old to someone who has watched things really fall off from where they were maybe who's 65 that kind of band can hear you and and listen to you and and hash out their ideas with the things you're bringing up. That that's that's a pretty cool thing and you've also been a part of so many a range of conversations. We're sitting here talking about 9/11 but like you're
23:43part of the COVID conversation. You were part of the change like the woke conversation on campuses really at the forefront of that and stuff. It's like you've really had a quite a diverse repertoire here of things that that you've had to get really deeply involved in for sure.
24:00Well, it it's strange. You know, I'm uh I'm not a believer in the supernatural.
24:07I don't think fate exists.
24:09>> You don't think fate exists?
24:10>> Yeah, I don't think fate exists but I've also noticed that if you play the game as if fate exists, you end up uh punching above your weight class. That's an interesting uh I would call it a fact. It's at least been a fact in in my life.
24:25Um and so yeah, I keep finding myself, you know, COVID perfect example, right? I went you know, I I became known publicly. I developed a voice in public over the woke revolution which I was very well positioned to talk about because I was a college professor at the most liberal college in the country. I was also a biologist teaching students wonderful community of students that I knew very very well. So I was just in the right spot to discuss that book.
25:00>> didn't exist, right? [laughter] >> Quite to the contrary. Um yeah, no. And so, you know, people who only casually understood that story may not realize that there was a revolt of students with me at the center of it.
25:14None of those were my students. Not a single student that I had ever met was leading that revolt. My students defended me, and they defended Heather.
25:23And it was >> Yeah, Heather, uh co-host of the podcast.
25:28But the point is Okay, they literally came for me, right?
25:33They were chanting my name trying to get me fired for a reason. That put me dead center, which caused me to have a public voice. But then, COVID happens.
25:44Well, COVID's a very different beast, but who better than an evolutionary biologist, or even better than that, a pair of married evolution- evolutionary biologists to talk about this issue?
25:57Because, you know, you could be better trained in virology, but if you're better trained in virology, then you're not going to be well-versed in epidemiology, or the, you know, phylogenetics, or any of the, or, you know, I studied bats in my graduate work. And here you have bats on the, you know, the front page of the newspaper. So, the point is >> You were born for it.
26:24>> Apparently, I was just I was steered right into the center of that one, too.
26:29And, you know, okay, presumably, that's just luck. But um but at some point I think you just have to accept the most fundamental obligation that each of us are handed, and frankly, I don't even think this is a human thing.
26:44For every creature that has ever existed, the only question is, what is the best way to play the cards you have been dealt at every instant of every day of your life.
26:54What is the best way?
26:56And that works perfectly well as a guiding principle for a living human being. You have cards, they may not be fair, but you're supposed to play them as best as you can play them every instant of your life.
27:12And as long as I keep getting steered into the center of really important questions, I'm going to keep I'm going to keep playing my cards. Um so far they've turned out to be the right ones.
27:23>> I'd say so. Were you Did you have any idea when you went to do that podcast in June 2020 with Joe Rogan, which is where I mean it aged incredibly well, where you kind of laid out the origins of COVID as best you could see it as a literal evolutionary biologist, like kind of kind of your lane right here.
27:42>> Mhm.
27:42>> You know, that was one of the most shared podcast I ever saw on all my group texts of people like you got to listen to this. And it resonated with many people because you laid out a brilliant case. It also brought you unbelievable blowback. Did you have any idea the volume that that blowback was going to be when you went to record that?
28:03Yes and no.
28:05Um I would say one of the most underrated processes is development. We are the product of our developmental experiences. And because I had been through several developmental experiences that were relevant before that, it didn't catch me completely off guard because, you know, I'd been at the tip of the spear before.
28:30On the other hand, the paygrade of those who wanted this story shut down was a good deal higher than I'd ever dealt with before.
28:40And so the nature of the pushback and the close quarters from which it came, and it it was every time it uh it teaches you what you need to know about the way the world actually works.
28:58But I would I would actually use it to surface a a principle that I think everybody needs to be aware of, and I I'm struggling to figure out what the name of it should be, but in each of the battles that I've been involved in, there is a period of time in which the questions, at least, are visible to anybody with the courage to look for them.
29:26But the asking of those questions creates a disproportionate punishment, and I really do think of it as an a punishment. Something wants you to suffer for having given voice to these things because it doesn't want them voiced, >> Right. The whole channel got demonetized.
29:43>> Got demonetized and was demonetized for many years.
29:47>> Yep.
29:47>> Um So, the what is what is that period where the questions are obvious if you want to look, but something is delivering punishments to keep as few people looking as possible, to make examples of anybody who dares speak these things out loud. So, it's kind of like the Overton window, but in time. So, I think of it as maybe, you know, the Overton gap, something like that. The period of time where you cannot speak the obvious because of what will come back at you if you do.
30:20Now, I would say just coincidentally, this seems to have broken for the October 7th attacks yesterday.
30:30News >> Oh, right.
30:32>> News emerged that Benjamin Netanyahu had been personally warned, I think by the UAE, >> Mhm.
30:38>> um that something major was coming, and he did nothing about it.
30:41>> You and I have known that for a long time though.
30:43>> [laughter] >> Right. it Exactly. It's like, "Okay, I get it that it's >> Yeah.
30:47>> the particular detail who warned him is news, but he was warned by many people."
30:52>> Right.
30:52>> Including the Egyptians. This has been long known.
30:55So, the point is, well, what, you know, okay. Now we can publicly talk about it.
30:59Now we're talking about what sort of a terrible human being Benjamin Netanyahu is.
31:03Where, you know, if you tried this 2 years ago, you know, they'd call you an anti-Semite, and if you were Jewish, they'd call you self-hating.
31:14You know, so, okay.
31:16Learn the lesson.
31:18There's a period of time in which totally reasonable questions are totally unforgivable, and you will be punished for asking them.
31:27And then at some point it breaks, and everybody will be asking them. Okay? We are in that phase with respect to Charlie Kirk's murder.
31:35>> Mhm.
31:36>> Charlie Kirk's murder is not a slam dunk case for the prosecution of Tyler Robinson. Maybe Tyler Robinson did it, but it's anything but slam dunk from where the public sits.
31:48>> Yeah.
31:49>> Yet, we are in the place, I can tell you because I am now being raked over the coals about my unforgivable beliefs about this, but we are in the place where we cannot yet talk about it. Right? It's taken 25 years to get through that gap for 9/11, where people can talk about this openly.
32:07I remember the pushback that people used to get for voicing any sort of concern that the story didn't add up, or it didn't account for certain things.
32:15So, it's time that we got wise, and we started realizing that yes, it is true, if you say dumb things, people will push back, sure. But it will not be with the intensity if you get close to something sensitive.
32:32>> Could you see why cynically I've I can look at every situation, even just stopping at JFK and not even going past that in time and see that it's been the same pattern over and over again without change to where there is always that period you point out to where you can ask questions about stuff and if you do, you get punished tremendously and I can't think of one major story where that is not the case in my lifetime at least.
32:56>> At least where there's a villain, a powerful villain that that has in some way, and I think we need to be agnostic about what the way is cuz I think you know, there's direct control over the media, there's uh nudging and everything in between. I don't know what how it's done, but when powerful forces engage in uh behavior that is hostile to the public's interest and wishes not to be known for doing so, it arranges pushback that affects that period of time. We have to get wise to the existence of it and so when you see a dozen powerful people come after somebody for saying something that they claim is simply stupid, you
33:47have to ask, you know, is it worth it?
33:49Like really? All that firepower over saying something dumb?
33:54>> Yeah.
33:54>> That doesn't That doesn't seem reasonable and I think if I'm remembering correctly, Einstein, I hope this isn't apocryphal.
34:01I think this is something Einstein actually said.
34:03Uh >> Same pronunciation.
34:04>> I got that down.
34:05>> Oh, yeah.
34:06>> Weinstein and Einstein.
34:07>> Oh, that's good. I have to use that. Um but >> [laughter] >> I think what he said is some there there was like a publication, something like 50 physicists against Einstein or something like that and uh >> When was this?
34:22>> Uh I don't know.
34:24>> Sorry to put you on the deep. We'll find it. We'll deep We'll find it.
34:27>> something or others against Einstein.
34:29I'm not even sure it was about physics.
34:30Um but we'll find out here in a second. But Einstein's response was if I'd been wrong, one would have been enough.
34:38Right? And it's kind of like that.
34:39>> You needed an army.
34:41>> Yeah, right. You You needed an army that That tells me I might not be wrong about something.
34:45>> Yeah.
34:46>> Yeah. Yeah.
34:46>> It's like you're over the target.
34:48>> Yeah.
34:48>> Now, you actually just did a deep dive.
34:51Albert Einstein famously responded it to the 1931 critical book 100 authors against Einstein by saying, "Why 100?"
34:58It was 100, not even 50.
34:59>> Wow.
35:00>> "If I were [snorts] wrong, one of them would have been enough." Published in Germany as 100 Autoren gegen Einstein.
35:06It featured essays by various critics attempting to discredit his theory of relativity, partly driven by scientific disagreements and rising ideological hostility. Einstein meant that scientific truth is determined by empirical evidence and logical proof, not by a popular majority vote. A single valid counterexample or correct refutation is all it takes to disprove a wrong theory.
35:27>> So, >> There it is.
35:28>> That is a lesson I was imprecise, but not inaccurate.
35:32>> Yeah, no, you you were you were actually conservative on it, but yeah.
35:35>> Yeah.
35:35>> It's even more. But, you know, the the Charlie Kirk thing, you and I were talking about this quickly right before camera, and I wanted to save it for camera. Like >> [sighs] [gasps] >> it is one of the most toxic online environments I have ever seen, and I've I mean, I don't need to tell you I've seen some pretty toxic ones over the past 6, 7 years especially.
35:56And, you know, at the end of the day, it was someone who was killed, and they were killed in some way for their political beliefs referring to Charlie Kirk, which in America just goes against everything we're we're based on. And now, it feels like the people who at least want answers for him and answers for the future so that things like this maybe don't happen, which seems like a really low bar, but, you know, they're being shut down in many ways. And then, it turns into this kind of throwing tomatoes at both sides. And I know you just did a sit-down. I haven't seen this yet, but you had Viva La Frey and Jimmy Dore on
36:39talking about this. I I don't know, you know, I I had a couple people in here as well, but it was a very friendly, nice back-and-forth. I don't know how you took that afterwards, if it's just kind of like we're going to be in an endless loop here, or you feel like someone's actually going to win this argument and change the trajectory of the case. Like what What do you think's happening with the public discourse here?
37:01>> Um I think we're battling through the period where we can't yet speak the obvious about Charlie. I mean, you can say it, but the pushback is incredible.
37:09Um and I would just point something out.
37:12Let's say you've got the Tyler Robinson obviously did it, and you're stupid and don't understand DNA evidence if you think anything else. You've got that group, and then you've got um the various conspiracy theorist is probably a fair term. What they should be offering is hypotheses. That's what a theorist does.
37:36The distinction is incredibly important, and most people don't get it. So, we we come back to that in a second. But, you've got those two camps.
37:43>> Hey guys, if you haven't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button. It's a huge huge help. Thank you.
37:49>> Let us say there is vital importance in figuring out who killed Charlie Kirk and why.
38:00It's much less important if it was Tyler Robinson acting alone.
38:05If Tyler Robinson was acting alone based on some malformed leftist value system, >> Mhm.
38:14>> then he altered history and robbed us of a potential president, certainly a very powerful and influential voice, somebody who opposed our entry into war in Iran.
38:27Um somebody in a position to change the trajectory of the country like few people are.
38:33But it's kind of a senseless killing.
38:37All right, it doesn't mean anything.
38:39It's sad, but it robbed us in the same way that if Charlie had died of a heart attack, it would have robbed us.
38:47On the other hand, if powerful forces killed Charlie Kirk because they thought they would advance their cause, then we have an obligation to figure out who those forces are and in what way they want their cause advanced that Charlie would have stood in the way of because this is the most anti-democratic thing there is. You're taking somebody with influence off the map. You know, it's a tragedy from the point of view of Charlie's death, from the point of view of his family, but it's also a tragedy for the West and for democracy, irrespective of what you thought of him. This is not how we settle these things. We settle them
39:27in conversation. We settle them at the ballot box. We do not settle them with the bullet.
39:32So, the disproportionate importance of figuring it out if it was a powerful force that presumably got what it wanted, that means that we have to be extra careful to make sure we have left no stone unturned. The amount of justice that there is to be done in simply convicting Tyler Robinson if he acted alone is small. It's not going to fix anything.
39:55The amount of good that there is to be done if we figure out that something larger wanted Charlie dead and took action and made sure it happened, the amount of good there is to be done in making sure that the perpetrators don't get what they wanted, that's a tremendous amount of good. So, there's an asymmetry in these things. And you know, I'm pretty persuaded that the story of Tyler Robinson acting alone doesn't make sense. It's not satisfying.
40:22>> I agree.
40:22>> And the fact that all of the people I'm going to say something nasty.
40:27I don't understand why this story turns smart people stupid. Mhm, right?
40:33Built into the idea that it was not Tyler Robinson acting alone, that hypothesis requires that there will be plenty of evidence against him.
40:45Right? The idea that he's the patsy means that there will be evidence, you know, when you frame somebody the the meaning of the term to frame is to paint a picture so that people will reach the conclusion that is in the picture.
40:57Right? So, it is not persuasive that yeah, there's a bunch of evidence against Tyler Robinson. The question is how consistent is that evidence? Does that evidence add up like a normal story or does it fall apart on scrutiny?
41:09Right? That's the question. And are there other things that aren't being pursued?
41:15Were there drones?
41:17I think so. I think I've seen evidence.
41:20Is it as clear as I would like it to be?
41:22No. Could I be persuaded that the evidence is better explained by something other than drones? Sure. Could there have been drones there that were irrelevant? Yes. But if there were drones there that were irrelevant, then it should be all all of our obsession to figure out whose drones they were and whether they saw anything. Right? We should all agree on that. And the people on the other side should agree if they say those weren't drones, those were birds.
41:47Can we at least agree that if they are drones that it is then a very important fact of the case and something that needs to be pursued?
41:54>> No, cuz then they feel like they're giving up some ground and if they give up an inch, they're giving up a mile.
41:59It's crazy.
42:00>> Right. And so, my point is I'm just trying to behave in a hypothetico-deductive way. In other words, I'm trying to do this in a scientific way. I see evidence that isn't accounted for. I'd like to know what accounts for it. Maybe it all gets explained away. Maybe Tyler Robinson's story is clearer than I think it is.
42:20Fine. I don't want I I I don't I would like Tyler Robinson to be the explanation because frankly, it's the least bad explanation on the table. So, I would like that to happen, but I sure don't want to see the whole thing dismissed on the basis that Tyler Robinson acted alone if that's not what happened precisely because somebody had an incentive to kill Charlie. If they killed Charlie and they got what they wanted, then the point is that incentivizes this behavior going forward and we can't allow that.
42:49>> 100% and unfortunately, we've done that again and again incentivizing it because we've seen major assassinations thinking of the ones in the 20th century specifically that happened that all have severe problems with them where there was a quick narrative that was brought out by the government and people were told this is what it is and the story really sorry we lost them. Let's move on and then somehow something like that continues to happen. So, we've already seen your theory literally play out. Charlie's just another notch on the belt of it unfortunately.
43:18>> Yeah, I am going to correct you though because frankly the difference between hypothesis and theory is fundamental and it is because we misuse the term theory that we we make ourselves vulnerable. So, >> Okay, can you explain that a little more?
43:32>> 100%.
43:33And mind you, we all kind of know it because we've all heard, you know, Darwinism is just a theory, right? And then somebody will say that word doesn't mean what you think it does. The fact that Darwinism is a theory, that's as close to saying it's a fact as we ever get in science. Okay? You've heard that.
43:50Now, the problem is that scientists do not maintain that discipline over these words. They only maintain that discipline over this one question.
44:00Is Darwinism a fact? No, it's a theory, but that means every competing hypothesis has fallen.
44:09Right? So, the way to think of it is theorists do not produce theories. They produce hypotheses. If a hyp- And ideally, if you're trying to explain something, you want to produce every single hypothesis that could possibly account for it. And then you falsify them one by one.
44:29You >> Scientific method. Yeah. Yeah.
44:31>> So, you have a theory only at the point that every hypothesis has fallen but one, and that one has withstood substantial tests. And that doesn't mean it couldn't be overturned later. It can be.
44:46But you get a theory only as a result of a single hypothesis maturing into that state. You should never have more than one theory at a time. Okay? The theory is the last hypothesis standing. And the reason that I draw this distinction is because when I say when I offer a hypothesis, like hypothesis, Charlie Kirk killed by an armed drone.
45:10I'm not telling you this is what I believe.
45:13>> Mhm.
45:14>> I'm telling you this is something capable of explaining what we saw.
45:19>> Test it.
45:19>> It needs to be tested. It could be one of a hundred different explanations, many of which are so foolish you can falsify them yourself. A few of them there's enough evidence that they remain standing for a while. But I'm just saying the philosophically this the philosophy of science that allows you to do this work rigorously requires you to pay attention to the status.
45:43You've got an idea.
45:45An idea can be formulated as a hypothesis. If it is a hypothesis, it makes predictions. Those predictions allow you to falsify it. And you are not responsible for putting a hypothesis on the table that turns out not to be true because it's actually your responsibility scientifically to put all hypotheses on the table.
46:02>> That's right.
46:04Yeah, and and I think that that has been, as you say, systematically shut down continually to this point. Now we're a year out, so it'd be be interesting to see if is the number 3 years? Is it 4 years? Is it 5? How long after the trial, after something's already been done that's perhaps irreversible, someone found guilty and maybe executed or something like that?
46:23Is it going to be like, "Oh, yeah.
46:25Remember all those questions you were asking in October 2025? They're actually They were valid. A couple of them were.
46:32>> Yeah. Oh, surprise, surprise. Yeah.
46:35>> Sorry.
46:36Now you you also knew Charlie, though.
46:38>> Yeah.
46:39>> And you were telling me before cameras, I don't want to say anything cuz I I'm assuming some of that was off record until you tell me otherwise, but as far as like what is publicly available that you're comfortable saying, like how well did you know him and were you working with him on anything?
46:53>> Yeah, I'm comfortable talking about it.
46:55Um if I I believe that in talking about our behind-the-scenes correspondence, that I'm doing what Charlie would want done.
47:06Um I of course don't know that. But I'm I wouldn't I wouldn't say anything that I would think Charlie wouldn't want me to say.
47:15Charlie and I did know each other. We did not know each other well.
47:19I feel some sorrow about that because when I first became aware of Charlie, I misread him. I thought he was sort of a dyed-in-the-wool standard Republican, you know, taking glee from the fact that the left was melting down and ready to, you know, drag anybody fleeing the left, you know, into the Republican Party that he might.
47:46That's not who Charlie was. Charlie was actually a very decent guy.
47:49He was very decent to me in spite of the fact that I uh come from the left and was not about to join the Republican Party. Um he was just he was a very sweet, genuine person. Uh he was also extremely helpful in making the Rescue the Republic rally that I was one of the the founders of happen. He uh he backed us. He was actually supposed to be our closing speaker, but he got laryngitis and his doctor forbid him so close to the uh the election to Can you tell people what that was who aren't familiar with that, by the Um Rescue the Republic was a rally that we held on the National Mall to gather the coalition of politically
48:35homeless people. Tulsi Gabbard, Bobby Kennedy, me, Heather, Jimmy Dore, a long list of uh prominent people, Matt Taibbi.
48:48And we basically put on a uh show, for lack of a better term, on the Capital Mall uh where we gathered people from around the country. And you know, it it served a number of purposes. One, it sort of announced that there was this coalition of people who were dissatisfied with the way Washington ran.
49:10I believe we broke January 6th syndrome, where people did not want to do any protesting in Washington because of the concern that somebody was going to create a January 6th-like moment. We successfully held this thing. There were you know, there was no violence, there was no uh you know, it was a peaceful assembly.
49:31>> amendment >> assembly. Good demonstra- Yeah, we exercised our first amendment rights.
49:36>> And he was going to be a speaker at this. That's interesting.
49:38>> Yeah, he was going to he was going to be our closing speaker, and he was really excited to do it. He had uh financially backed us. Uh we would not have pulled off the event without his help.
49:49And uh his doctor forbid him to speak because of his laryngitis. And so he he backed out last minute but was still very enthusiastic about >> Yeah, and made it happen. Yeah.
50:00>> Yeah. But anyway, Charlie and I you know, so like I said, I wish I had figured out who Charlie was earlier, but I did figure it out and he basically drafted me in his quest to convince the president, with whom he was very close, of the danger of the mRNA COVID shots.
50:22And so I was helping Charlie understand why that platform is so dangerous so that he could convey to the president, "Hey, we've got a real problem here. These shots need to be pulled off the market. We need to deal with the vast number of vaccine injured. We need to start figuring out how to help these people. We need to deal with, you know, people who've lost their kids and and other terrible things." Um >> You got a doctor over here shaking his head at every single thing you say, up and down. By the way, very interesting.
50:55>> you've traveled amongst these people, you realize that it's a um a cryptic tragedy of immense proportions.
51:05Um so anyway, Charlie was very committed to convincing the president of the danger of these things and he needed my help to deal with the scientific questions. What is it about the platform that makes it inherently dangerous so that it's not just the COVID shots, anything you build on the mRNA platform is going to do the same thing.
51:25And he needed to understand that. So anyway, we were partnered in and I must say I've now made it public again because I thought uh Charlie would have wanted me to.
51:34But um Charlie and our private back and forth said something that still means a great deal to me. He said, um you know, I congratulated him on on one of the early successes and he said that we were doing the Lord's work together, which, you know, for a devout guy to say that to a, you know, materialist evolutionist, [laughter] um, was was powerful. You know, and I and I I I don't think he's wrong. I think of these things in different terms. I don't think of a a deity, but anyway, so he said that and he also we had a we had a back and forth about uh the potential of war with Iran.
52:16And >> You and he did?
52:19>> Yeah.
52:19>> Mhm.
52:19>> And I've I've now made my my chat with him public. And he said that he was spending two full days in the White House trying to convince the president not to do it.
52:34>> Joel Kent does back that up as far as I know. Yeah.
52:37>> And I said something to the extent or to the effect that um these maniacs are steering our country into grave danger and we absolutely have to stop them for the good of the United States and the Israelis.
52:57>> The people >> Israelis.
52:58>> And the Israelis. I do not think this is in Israel's interest. I think >> I agree with you.
53:03>> They have fallen under the spell of some absolutely terrible people who um I don't have anything any reason to think that these these people value >> human life, that they >> see the long-term well-being of either their population or our population as important. You know, I I remember that Netanyahu has his his syringe from his supposed COVID vaccine sitting on his desk like a freaking trophy.
53:36>> And so weird.
53:38>> Yeah, so okay, this guy oversaw the vaccinating of the entire Israeli population or nearly so with this very dangerous shot and Netanyahu is still proud of this fact. Something's wrong and anyway, Charlie agreed with my assessment that basically for the good of Israelis and Americans we should not be going to war in Iran and and then you know, I think I did use the term maniac. We need to stop these maniacs.
54:08Um >> Who are the maniacs as you thought of them besides like Netanyahu and some of the world leaders if you will?
54:15>> I don't know. I wish I did. Um I would say one of the the the ways that I do this kind of work is I try to figure out what object best explains the phenomena that I can see. So in the same way that you might see, you know, a planet slow down in its orbit and you think, well, I can't see anything out there, but there's something with a lot of gravity to it, right? I look for those things and and one thing that has made it very much easier for me to understand the world I live in is I have downgraded my belief in nations.
54:57It's not that I, you know, I am patriotic to my nation and maybe more importantly to the West of which it is the originator and and the exemplar, but I think we pay too much attention to lines on the map and we assume that the things that are taking action are patriotic to some patch of dirt and I don't think that's how it works. I think >> I agree.
55:20>> we're dealing with elites from many different patches of dirt and they have alliances we know nothing about and they fail to have allegiances that you would expect them to have to their nominally their own populations. So anyway, I think of them as mafias.
55:36Um and I and I think I think this is just a literal description.
55:39>> You could take >> They're criminal, they're organized, they're very powerful, and if you start thinking of them that way, then you stop scratching your head over, you know, why they would do certain things because of course mafias will do things that nations wouldn't.
55:59Um, so anyway, who? I don't know, but I do think there is something that controls our nation that is clearly at best indifferent to the interests of Americans. I think it's probably more like hostile, but it's at best it doesn't it doesn't give a [ __ ] about us at all, and that we should act accordingly. That we should not expect it to be trying to help us, and that when it tells us, "Oh, you know, for your own safety, you're going to have to be injected with this, you know, magic goo."
56:32The answer is, "Well, you know, if somebody on the street walked up to me and said, "I've got magic goo, you should take it for your own good." I wouldn't I wouldn't give it a second thought. I'd turn him right down, and the point is when somebody disguises that as a public health intervention, my feeling is the same. Who who the hell are you, and what have you done that demonstrates you you know, you even want me to live longer?
56:56>> Right.
56:56>> So, yeah, I don't know who, but I I think you can you can just see our policy is not about the well-being of >> [snorts] >> the public. It's about other things at our expense, and we need to solve that problem immediately because, you know, for a while we can rest on the laurels of past generations.
57:20The bridges don't fall down immediately, but the you know, you can just see over the course of even 5 years you can see the degradation in the quality of life in any American city. that's telling you something.
57:34Right? So, so anyway, yes.
57:37I wish I knew who.
57:38>> Yeah. Well, this is actually a good place to bring it back to something you said at the very beginning that I put a pin in where you were talking about these perils that we're facing over the next 15 years. And obviously, some people can hear some of the things you said already and draw some clear lines on on on some of those things. But like not to dumb it down or anything, but if you had if it's possible to answer this way, if you had like the three to five kind of clear list of key concerns that you think if they are not addressed correctly by us the people, we could see a threat to our way
58:14of life in the West or you know, a world that we don't recognize in in 15 years.
58:19What would those things be?
58:22>> Well, it you could build a pretty long list and it it'd be nice to strip >> to go longer than three to five, go ahead, please.
58:30>> Let's say my top priorities would probably be corruption.
58:37And I don't mean that in some sort of garden variety way. I think our entire system has been corrupted.
58:44>> Yeah.
58:44>> And that we are now routinely targeted with somebody else's profit of one kind or another in mind.
58:55Clearly, there is no bar to >> [gasps] >> the dispensing of medications that make us crazier and sicker and more dependent and shorter lived.
59:09There's no interest in discovering when we've done that, so it's obviously not an accident. But I would just say across the board, we have a system that on paper involves the consent of the governed, which means as frightening as it is that we decide for ourselves how we are to be governed. And that system has been unhooked.
59:29I don't know what all the mechanisms are. Mechanisms seem to include election tampering of very various kinds. They seem to involve things like assassination.
59:42They may involve blackmail. But whatever it is that causes our governmental structures to do things that they would not do if they were under our control, ought to be our top concern because at the moment we're on a ship headed where we don't know. Headed into what kind of waters we can't say. We can't turn it around.
60:04We're just at the mercy of whatever has taken control.
60:08The second thing is subordinate to that, I guess.
60:12But it's the question of well, in evolutionary terms, I would say the human beings are built really, like all creatures, for lineage against lineage competition.
60:31>> Lineage against lineage competition.
60:33>> Yeah.
60:34So, populations displace each other.
60:37That's the evolutionary battle that is at the bottom of what takes place in a forest.
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