Shawn Ryan Show - #87 Michael Shellenberger - Elon Musk, Twitter Files and Media Collapse | Part 2

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

Michael Shellenberger is an award winning Journalist and best selling Author. He is best known for his book "San Fransicko," a cautionary tale of how progressives ruin cities. In part two, Michael and Shawn discuss the dissolution of partisan lines in the U.S. political system. Michael outlines the damage disinformation has done to the country's institutions and the erosion of public trust. Shawn and Michael cover the infamous "Twitter files" and the roles of faith and free will in a modern democracy. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://1sthphorm.com/srs https://puretalk.com/ryan Michael Shellenberger Links: X - https://twitter.com/shellenberger IG - https://www.instagram.com/shellenberger Substack - Public.Substack.com Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We had to clean up these institutions, you got to remove the narcissist and the psychopaths who run them. You got to remove the narcissist and psychopaths from political office because they only serve themselves and they're weaponizing these institutions. So for me that's the right path forward and you needed at every level of our society, federal, state, and local and you needed in the culture. I mean it's why I love talking to you and love the senes of the you're doing is to rehumanize the people that are doing the hard work, the people that are protecting our country, you know, the

people that are serving in our military, serving as police officers, working at the power plants, working at the feed lots, you know, doing the Lord's work and not getting their respect that they deserve from the society. I think that, you know, we were batting around bright and love stuff. I think that I Think the party lines are just becoming very blurred and in it's Anybody who who actually takes a moment to think about how things are panning out. I mean it's It's it's starting to look like one big team to me, one big unit party. Yeah.

And in the major question I have, is we see extremism on the right, we see extremism on the left. We don't see, we don't see a lot of middle of the rotors. Now, I think that the middle of the rotors, and the moderates on both sides are, I just don't feel like it's being covered. What do you think?

Are the moderates still the majority, or is the majority of the left extreme left is the majority of the right extreme right? Because that's all we're being fed. Yeah, I mean, I think that the moderates have disappeared. I mean, the original moderates, and it's in part because they were overtaken by reality. You know, the moderates among Republicans got to send into a really bad war. The so-called moderates on the left enabled addiction.

They remember Biden, who was always considered a moderate Democrat, has done more to weaponize the federal government than any president I can remember. I mean, people look back at Nixon and they go, he was really corrupt, He weaponized federal government. I mean, the stuff that we see Biden doing, the stuff with the FBI was so blower. You know, the stuff with the covering up of the Biden influence peddling scheme with his son. And, you know, the media, which supposedly is the mainstream moderate news media, behaves in absolutely horrendous ways, basically participating in disinformation campaigns. I mean, just to pause on that for a minute, we've seen very scary disinformation efforts

by the federal government with the work of the media paid for by major corporations. They basically lied about the origins of COVID. They said there was no way it could have come from a lab, even though there had been thousands of lab leaks up until then. And there had been a huge debate about whether or not to even do coronavirus research in a lab because of the concerns about it. They came out right after early 2020, so there was no way it was a lab leak.

That was a lie. We know it was a lie. Our sources tell us that it was a lab leak. That was a lie. We know it was a lie our sources Tell us that it was from the Wuhan lab and yet you had Anthony Fauci you had the you know top people saying oh, it's a conspiracy theory They said that the vaccine would prevent infection and transmission did neither thing Now I think for elderly people and vulnerable people that did prevent Hospitalization I took the vaccine myself. I'm in favor of it neither thing. Now, I think for elderly people and vulnerable people, it did prevent hospitalization.

I took the vaccine myself. I'm in favor of it. But the amount of lying about the vaccine is really quite incredible. A hundred by an laptop. It was always obvious that it was what it appeared to be. And yet you had all these former CIA directors and others come out and say it had all the hallmarks of a Russian information operation, spreading disinformation, demanding censorship of their opponents. We see the White House demanding censorship by Facebook and Twitter.

The entire time that my colleagues and I have been exposing the censorship that we've discovered that occurred at Twitter before Elon Musk took over and that occurred at Facebook, since really particularly since Biden took office, but before then. The mainstream news media for the last year has been saying that we were conspiracy theorists.

There was no censorship going on. It was just content moderation, and there should be more of it. That's all now been exposed. I mean, we have the Supreme Court just announced last week that it's going to hear as a First Amendment challenge, a Missouri versus Biden, a lawsuit byissible. We've seen, we broke the story of the first people according to our sources to get COVID that worked in the lab in China.

Wall Street Journal came out a couple weeks later came to the same conclusions. We see with the FBI whistleblowers and obviously I've seen with some of the UFO stuff where we have for decades the government saying that they're not studying it, they're not covering anything up. And we know that they've been covering up a lot and still are covering up a lot. So I worry because when people say that it's a problem to have all this distrust of the

government, I agree with them. But the solution is not for us to just start blindly trusting the government. The solution is to have more transparency, is to have some accountability. Like, why can't we get the JFK files? Why can't we get the UFO files? Why can't you tell us the truth about COVID origins? Why can't you tell us the truth about the vaccine? I think there's obviously powerful interests that have an interest in maintaining these lies. But I also think it's just short-sighted and dumb and like stop treating us like children. You know, America was always special because we didn't come from kings.

You know, in Europe it was always the kings who would gradually allow more freedom of speech and then gradually allow more rights for the accused. In the United States, we started with free speech as sacrosanct, and we started with innocent until proven guilty, and everybody is equal before the law. No matter your color or your wealth or whatever. Obviously, we had to get over some terrible things, including slavery and all this horrible stuff. But we got to a place where we had equal justice in the law.

We want to protect that. So I think that something's got to break. We're at a, I think a pivotal moment in human history and American history. The distrust is at an all time high. People don't trust the media. They don't trust the government. They don't trust our institutions.

So we need to start seeing some big changes before we can win that trust back. And then it's gonna be a long road because I think we all know this experience where you can have a lot of trust takes, it takes a long time to build up trust but it doesn't take very long to lose it. Yeah, I'm getting a little off topic here

because I wanna stick with California, but I wanna run with this. You know, I will, a little off topic here because I want to stick with California, but I'll run with this You know, I will I mean California definitely seems to be leading the way in dismantling itself country right behind it But this isn't just a this isn't just a this isn't just an American problem. This is a, this is a world problem. The entire world seems to be just coming and glued at the hinges, no matter, I mean, it's everywhere, it's woke stuff, it's everywhere, the government overreach, it's everywhere. I mean, we see UK is, you know, going after Russell Brandt, trying to get all of his money. I mean, we see UK is, you know, going after Russell Brandt, trying to get all

of his money. I mean, it's every corner of the world seems to be going through something. What do you think is at the root of all of this? That's the right question. It's a really powerful question. You're absolutely right. I mean, clearly, we're a single species of humans, you know, and we're connected in a lot of different ways. You see a different point in, in, in history, I see the 30s, it's a period of major change. Again, in the kind of late 60s, early 70s, clearly we're in that new phase, kind of every 50 years, early 70s, clearly we're in that new phase, kind of every 50 years or so. Something's going on. There are leaders are weak. It's very weak leaders. We have a president of the most powerful country in the world who is barely there, very much struggling, struggling to walk, struggling to things, struggling to speak. The head of the opposition party, the Republican party, literally freezes when he speaks, said to two all-column

strokes. They said they said it wasn't, but all-column strokes, two strokes, two months, on camera. That's just on camera. That's right. Nobody's counting how many times this happens off camera. We're people dying in office waiting their notes for them. It's Senate hearings. Yep. We, I mean, yeah.

What? I mean, boy, as a symbol,, boys, a symbol, a symbol of a civilization and crisis, leaders that should no longer be leaders, they're too old or too unhealthy. We look at Israel. We think that the solution is the head of Israel, the prime minister without the solution, was to support the more radical Palestinian group, Hamas, as a way to divide the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. That obviously failed.

He thought he could control the Palestinians that way. We look around the world and we see weak leaders. I'm not familiar with that. So so Netanyahu was doing was was was was funding Hamas. That's right. And authorizing the funding through Qatar of Hamas supporting Hamas as a counterweight against Fata, which was the more moderate party that controlled the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Netanyahu is, you know, there's other things he did. I mean, he moved the security from Gaza to the West Bank. That should have been there.

They over-relied on this fence that turned out to be very flimsy. They could just take a little bulldozer through it. So the miscalculation on the part of Netanyahu, it's reminiscent of the miscalculation by the Neocons in the United States under Bush and Cheney. So you see poor decision-making by leaders. You see delusions of being able to control chaotic actors, that they're simply not able to control. We see borders that are poor us or open in the United States. We see borders in Europe where they can't control who comes in, caught between being cruel who comes in, caught between being cruel or allowing chaos. So the system is unraveling right now. And that's the most dangerous time.

It's the period in between regimes. So we're clearly the regime that you might call it the neo-liberal era on the kind of left and center left with the neo-conservative era on the right and center right. Both are failing. We sent too much of our industry to China. We thought we could just have everybody else manufacture for us and not manufacture alone.

We failed to deal with serious medical problems, mental illness addiction. We allowed our children to consume toxic amounts of social media and develop psychiatric disorders including anxiety and depression. We see all this weird behaviors where people think that they can change their biological sex. There's no debate that there's two biological sexes among scientists. It's like gravity, it's uncontroversial. Somehow people got in their minds that they could change it through drugs and surgeries.

So you see a set of disorders in the society, and it's in part because we're not oriented in any way. And I think part of it has to do with a spiritual crisis that comes out of the belief that we're all alone, that nothing else is going on, that the scientists have figured out precisely what it's all about, that it all started with a big bang and then there was evolution, and that we're all alone in the universe, and everybody knows that, and then when you die, nothing lives on, and you have no soul, it's obviously wrong.

It doesn't make any sense. It's not working out very good. And then the consequences are awful of this. As opposed to, what's interesting for me about the UAP thing, everybody worries, you know, the UAP thing is a new religion or kind of a cult. Maybe, but it's also a chance to have some sense of wonder and some mystery and excitement, such an interesting topic. It's the reason why so many people want to read, you know, listen to your podcast on the topic or read the articles that we do on it.

It shows that we don't really know what's going on, you know. We can't explain a lot of phenomena in the world. There's a lot of anomalous phenomena that we can't explain and that there are people that are clearly telling the truth who are if that there's I'm there there is disinformation so I don't want to say there's not there is disinformation but it's not like the disinformation that I've seen it's not it's not you know a man Anthony Fauci says there's no way that the coronavirus came from a lab or we know the vaccine will prevent infection and transmission. That's disinformation coming from the heads of government. On the UFO thing, mostly it's been disinformation in the form of the government saying that we're not looking at, there's nothing there.

So we're seeing all these things fall apart, you know, a sense of trust in science, trust in the government. I think it's a really powerful moment to kind of come back to a kind of core spiritual and existential moment, which is just that we're all human. We're all in this incredibly mysterious, we have no idea how we got here. We don't know what our prehistory is. These stories that people tell these chicken bones and wood to make the pyramids and all these complicated hieroglyphic,

anybody that goes there sees that we don't know what hat was going on. And that should be a source of excitement, I think, a sense of wonder and of wanting to explore and to be less dogmatic and less certain and more open-minded to the ways in which maybe we got things wrong or the experts might be wrong. So I think in this really dark moment,

there's also a chance to allow for some new light to come in. It's the cracks that allow the light to come through and we're starting to get little beams of light. We can't tell exactly what it all means, but something's going on. Those of you that have been around SRS for a while know that we take mental health very seriously here. So seriously that in almost every episode, you'll find a segment where we discuss how to improve your mental health.

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We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. What do you think about how long have you been following this UFO stuff? About 40 years. 40 years. What we discussed a little bit about this earlier, but what is your, I mean, what are you finding now?

Like for me, and I get a ton of hate for cover on this talk, but I don't care what anybody says, there's something, there is something to this. And I don't care about the hate. But what I found is there seems to be, it's a very clickish topic. And there seems to be a couple of different camps. And everybody in each camp seems to think they know everything about the they're the resident expert, they know everything, everybody else, they don't know, they're full of crap. And then you go talk to that person and it's the exact same thing.

I know it all and just talk to me and all be the one that comes on your podcast to talk about it and don't listen to these guys. They're all disinformation agents. And it's almost all of them. The only one that I have spoken with that is not in any particular camp is Brandon Fugel on our skin walker branch. He seems to be, he wants to hear everybody.

But it just seems to be a topic that everybody would want to come together and share information. I mean, we're all living on one planet here. Yes. You know, I think we all have, we're all concerned about what is going on, but nobody's sharing. What have you done now? Well, yeah. And Sean, I should say, I mean, that's why I was, as I was excited to make contact with you finally and come on the show because I think you're bringing a real humanity to the topic and to the folks that have had experiences that I don't think are lying.

I think it's very hard for people to, most people are not very good actors. Most actors aren't very good actors. And so when you see people share these stories, it's clear that they believe what they're saying. And that doesn't mean that it happened exactly When you see people share these stories, it's clear that they believe what they're saying. That doesn't mean that it happened exactly like they think it did or that it wasn't some sort of psychological or some psychogenic part of it, or that the US government or some

other government isn't using some new technology to create experiences in some way. These are all possibilities. There's been various forms of disinformation as well. But I think that the spirit that you're talking about is very important right now. And it's a humanizing spirit because I think it's wrong to dismiss people's experiences. I think it's the right approach is to hear them out. There's definitely some of the grabbyness and the snobbery in the space that I've seen in other spaces, the sort of a line of the truth. I don't think anybody knows. Like I don't think that the big bang explains.

I don't think it really explains much of anything. If you want to get down to it, I don't think we know everything about our prehistory or the ancient history or even our evolution. I think there's a lot of mysteries. Every time you have an answer to something, there's always another question of, well, what became before that? Why did that happen? So I've tried in my writing.

I've done four big pieces on the topic. I did three pieces this year. I really enjoyed the experience of working on all of them. My last one, I wrote about how around three dozen or so, or 30 or more people have come forward and given testimony, either to the DOD department called Aero, or to the Inspector General of the DOD department called Arrow or to the Inspector Generals of the DOD or to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. So this is not just one guy, David Grush, who's telling stories.

There's actually a lot of other people that have been giving testimony. I feel very confident in that. And in that piece, I made sure to interview and quote the some of the most famous skeptics, you know, one of them is Mick West. And it's not somebody that UFO believers tend to appreciate very much. But when I spoke to him, I said, you know, if you don't think there's anything there, it seems like you would be one of the first person to want the government to share what it does know and to have disclosure. And he said, absolutely.

And if there's more people sharing the information, then there's a higher chance that it's true. I thought that was very big of him to say. So what I was trying to do in that piece, because of course, as an outsider to this issue, you come in even though I've followed for a long time, I've not written on it. I have the courage to write on it until recently.

When you come to you, let me see if I have the straight. It seems like basically everybody wants the government to share what it knows because it's not the property of the US government. It's not the property of Lockheed Martin or of aerospace corporation. If there's information about what's going on with all these anomalous phenomena, then we, the people, have a right to know it. I mean, this is, this is why America is the greatest country that's ever existed in the entire world.

It's because we control our government. We don't, we're not controlled by our government. This isn't a kingdom. We don't have the people in power, not just the strongest and most able to dominate it. So we'll have the people. And so we would like to know what you've discovered. And you know, pretty soon I'll be coming out with some more information about some of the retrieved, you know, craft that people believe to be from non-human telegences. Is it from non-humans? I don't know, but we should all have a chance to look at it.

And I respect the need for the US military to do experiments and develop next-generation stealth craft or propulsion. At the same time, I think if there's some evidence that there's non-human life in the world or in the universe, that's the right of the people to know that and we should be able to know it. At the same time, if there's been an effort, if it's just a disinformation campaign using highly sophisticated technologies that appear to violate the known laws of physics,

then we should not be victims of a government disinformation campaign. We should be able to know about that too. So I try broadly in this issue, I try to think in probabilities, which is probably the right way to think about all issues, but I feel the need to do it on this one more than anything. There's some chance of the conventional story that we hear about UFOs is true that there's been a cover up since World War II has something to do with nuclear. There's some sort of reverse

engineering and maybe contact has been made. That's kind of, maybe that's true. Maybe it's all a disinformation campaign, plus social contagion or folkloric contagion. And maybe it's secret, you know, and relatedly some sort of secret weapons programs or whatnot. And then maybe it's unknown unknowns. But you know, whatever it is, it's a reminder of our mortality and of our common humanity and of the importance of having democracy and of having free speech and not allowing a small group of people to control information and have secrecy. And so, you know, I'm, I'm, I was just accepted invitation from organization called MOufon,

which is a big organization of UFO investigators to give a keynote next July at their annual convention. And I'm also speaking to a group of UFO skeptics in December. And I hope to continue to talk to both sides because it seems like we all have a greater interest in knowing what the government knows rather than having a kept secret from us. When is the, you would mention you have some peace coming out We all have a greater interest in knowing what the government is rather than having it kept secret from us.

When is the, you would mention you have some peace coming out about the non-human biologics and crash retrievals? One is that coming out. Well I did. It's, I'm doing a story about a particular case, which I don't want to say too much about, but I did do an earlier story about with multiple sources, I should say, and because on the UFO store, usually as a journalist you wanna have at least two sources

for every fact. On UFOs, our standard is three or more because it's so out there. But no, we had multiple sources in their well place, and a position to know that says that the US government has, really between 12 and 30 or so, retrieved craft of non-humans. I did not report non-human biologics,

but David Grushen, his congressional testimony, did report that. I have also heard that, I have not reported it. I was happy to let someone else say that, but yes, that is coming up in the reports. I wrote about a crash in Brazil that occurred in the 90s. It's a pretty well-studied crash where there was multiple witnesses that say they saw non-human entity, including, you know, alive and dead. And so that is not easy to dismiss, particularly the character of the witnesses and the fact they haven't changed their story and they didn't say what

they said for money. In fact, they claim to have turned down money to change their story. So there's still a lot more there than I think most people realize. And it's good for that it be a source of fascination because it's super interesting and important. If humans are indeed, we know that we don't revolve around the sun. And we know the earth is not flat. And it made turnout that we're not alone in the universe. And if that's the case, then it'd be really fun to find out while we're all still alive. Are these skeptics? You had mentioned a skeptic. What was the gentleman's name?

Mick West is I think West is Mick West a Christian do you know have any idea? I think I don't know I don't think so okay, but I suspect not I find the UFO skeptics to also be atheists as a rule I have a friend I won't say his name who was very bad at me I had many just like you had many people bad at me. I had many, just like you, I had many people that were very upset with my first article and begging me not to do this or talk about it. And, and, you know, it's interesting because it's a little bit like, you know, like, why do you feel so strongly about it? Like what, what's so upsetting about it to you? Is it really that I'm talking about it? Because certainly there's a lot of people I talk about it. And one of the things that you and I experienced

all the same what happened, we both know that ordinary folks in the world have had these experiences. This is not a small group of people. Like you can find people that have experiences, but haven't been comfortable sharing them with you. So, but, you know, like, like, I'm a Christian and I also write about UFOs. I don't know how they fit together. They may not maybe all learn something

that will make me question my Christianity. I don't know. But why be so upset about it? Why be so emotionally intense about it? Where I was going with this is, you know, if you are a Christian, do you really think that we are the best creation that God could make?

I mean, come on, look at what's, look at us. Right, we're a disaster, you know. And so it's interesting that all the skeptics are seem to be atheists. That takes a lot of pain to be an atheist. I actually had, and I should say, I have also some Christian friends who are absolutely to be atheists. That takes a lot of faith to be an atheist. I actually had, and I should say I have also some Christian friends who are absolutely horrified by this and they think it's either, it's not, it's either not real or it's demonic.

I think another thing I've been interested in is the way that, is the way that we think about free will in the context of this. So in the Christian story, free will is part of how you deal with the fact that there's evil in the world, and yet we believe in a God that is ostensibly all-powerful and all good. How can you, if a God that's all-powerful and all-good and still love evil in the world? One of the answers that's been given is that we have free will. And so there's something on us to choose a better world. And so we're sort of realizing God's will through our actions

and behavior, but we're doing it freely. We're not just God's puppets. Because that would make it really easy then. We're not responsible if we're just being manipulated by somebody else. That same sort of debate shows up on the UFO thing, which is that, if there are non-humans, how come they're not helping us? There's not humans, why are they letting us kill each other, why are they allowing all these bad things. There's sort of a similar story that emerges, at least in the conventional story, from people that follow this, which is that you know, all these bad things. And there's sort of a similar story that emerges, at least in the conventional story

from people that follow this, which is that there's free will and that we're actually, and that, you know, what do you believe about free will? This is interesting. I literally just had this discussion last night. Wow. And so it was the last discussion of the night, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this.

And I'll share mine. You know, I love to. I mean, free wills, it's one of the most important conversations in philosophy. It might be the most important question because you can tell a story where we don't have free will and the story kind of goes, hey, you didn't choose your genetics,

you didn't choose your body, you didn't choose your body, you didn't choose your parents, you didn't choose the time and place in which you were born. So to what extent can you say that you choose anything? Everything was chosen for you. And the problem with that story, saying the side, whether the truth of it, just saying this side, the problem with that story when you deny free will, or you're actually taking away where it's someone's responsibility. I've been obsessed with this guy, Sam Bankman-Free, who is the cryptocurrency king, he's in court and trial right now for fraud

and kind of a pyramid scheme similar to Bernie made off. His mother did not believe in free will and had sort of the same story that I'm describing, which is something that I mean it's been on the right and the left and the most sound. I mean the left recently has been sort of saying it around criminal justice. Like you didn't choose your time and place or your circumstances. You're a victim of your circumstances. You don't have a free will. Free will is just something that people talk about in order to punish and to give you a sense of control. That's the story that Sam Bankman freed some other gave him. And then his father had the story of utilitarianism,

which is that you should use your brain to figure out that maximum, good for maximum number of people. which is that you should use your brain to figure out maximum good for maximum number of people. Now, the result is you have somebody that doesn't take responsibility. So one possibility is that the belief in free will is actually what really matters. Because if you believe in free will, then you're more likely to take responsibility

for your actions. You're less likely to engage in the kind of anti-social behaviors that are so destructive of society and of yourself. So maybe free will is a myth, but it's a good myth to have, because if you don't have that myth, then people are going to do all sorts of horrible things. I think that's kind of where I come out with it, which is that you have free will if you that you have free will, if you believe you have free will. If you deny that you have free will, then to some extent,

you're deciding not to take responsibility. I think that you're a, I think, I think if you, if someone were to tell me that they don't have free will and not responsible for their actions, I would be very careful around them. I would not trust them. Be more likely to trust somebody who takes responsibility who says, yes, I didn't choose my body or my brain or my parents or my circumstances, but I have consciousness. I'm aware that I make my own choices. I'm going to slow down. I'm going to think about things. I'm going to think about what's good for not just myself but for other people. So I think where I land about things, I'm gonna think about what's good for not just myself, but for other people. So I think Ryle land is that, and I do have a little discussion of it in here too.

Maybe free will is a myth, but it's a good myth to have, and we should affirm it. I think we had this discussion last night, as I mentioned, and I, as a Christian, you know, it is. It's like the one question that nobody seems to have an answer to. And I'm new with the Christianity stuff. So I'm diving in. But what I think is, everybody talks about surrender to Jesus, surrender yourself to God. Or, and so I think that you have the free will to choose which side you're going to be on. You're going to be on God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit side, and you're going to surrender.

You know, you have the free will to surrender to that, or you have the free will to surrender You have the free will to surrender to the other side, to Satanism, devil worship, and whatever you want to call it. But you're going to serve one or the other. There is no in between. And so I think that maybe that is the free will. What do you think about that? That's basically where I land. I think it's important to affirm free will. Victor Frankl, who's this amazing psychologist

who was a Holocaust survivor, and he wrote man's search for meaning a book after he survived the death camps. And he was somebody who, while he was in the death camp, said, I'm gonna take control of my experience because mentality is everything. That it's not, the meaning of something is determined by my own view of it.

And I'm gonna turn this horrible experience into a chance to become a stronger, better person, rather than allowing this experience to make me a worse person. I've been talking with my colleagues about Israel. I'm at the Hamas attacks. The Hamas attacks happened, and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza is happening. The question is, what do you do now? There's nothing, I think it's dangerous to suggest that it doesn't matter what we do. It matters incredibly what we do. So, Frankl has this great saying, which is in between stimulus and response is free will. And we're not like other animals. We're not just knee jerk. We have we're able

to think slowly, not just quickly. I was interviewing people in Ireland about free speech issues because they have this terrible censorship law they're proposing they're debating. And I interviewed people on the street and I would, if I had kind of like, should we censor hate speech? Oh yeah, we should definitely say, you know, absolutely. And I'd be like, well, what would that, you know, what is hate speech?

You know, what would count as hate speech? What kind of things? And I would say that because they're iris, so I'd be like, do you think James Joyce and Oscar Wilde ever wrote anything that might be considered today to be hate speech. You know, we'll go, oh yeah, I probably, you know, and I came away from and I was like, I don't think you can go around Ireland and be like, that person's, you know, for free speech, that person's against it. I don't think that, I don't think anybody's like that. I think it's more like,

you can, you can be free speech and you can also be pro-sensorship. And the main difference is whether you're thinking about it quickly or whether you're slowing down. Because free speech actually turns out to be a really hard thing for people. We saw it here on the Hamas and the Palestine stuff. Somebody gets up there and chance death to Israel, and it's offensive, or somebody says they support him awesome, they support terrorism, it's so horrible. There's a fair number of people that think that that should be illegal. But when you kind of go, so if we make that illegal, what else do you think might be illegal? People slow down about it, they, you know, this is, this is, I'm borrowing this from this guy Daniel Connamen, this,

it was, I think it was a psychologist. We're very different people when we, when we think slowly, and we think quickly. That's why I love this, it's why I love this format, you know, like I'll go on Fox News or I'll go on News Nation or You know, like I'll go on Fox News or I'll go on News Nation or somewhere and I'm like, I got to, it's a test. You got to be, what can you say in 30 seconds? But that's a different kind of thinking and the people that are watching this are, I think their brains are working differently than when they're watching something quickly. And I think that when you slow down, it allows for the humanity to reemerge.

I think it ultimately makes us more in favor of free speech, more in favor of universal values. Because I always point out, if it's just, if you just want the right for your group to speak, or if you just want your civilians to be protected, that's not human rights. Those are just group rights for your group. Human rights means that you think that there's rights that all

humans should have, even humans that you might really hate at the moment. And so for me, that's where I come out with the free will thing is free will is real when we affirm that it's real and when we slow down enough to really take advantage of it. Interesting. Speaking of censorship, I mean, I know you were, you were on the forefront of the Twitter files. And so where do you kind of stand on censorship? And I mean, it seems like Elon Musk is free speech all the way. Anything goes, am I correct on that on on X?

Yeah, so to answer that question, we have to go back a little bit in time. I mean, so first of all, I'd never thought about first-time issues, which may seem surprising, but I never, I just assumed it was fine, right? Like we have a first-time in the constitution, like, like, there's nobody wants censorship.

Like I'd never heard anybody advocate censorship. And then, well actually I then got my book, Apocalypse Never Came Out 2020, and Facebook censored me. And they've maintained some sort of algorithms that when you, so when I show up on YouTube, like which is owned by Google, so I'm censored actually by Google, I should say, and Facebook. So when something comes up to me,

like, I'll be talking about drug addiction on YouTube, and there'll be like a little warning about being like, here, get accurate, accurate information on climate change, because there's some algorithm that has me as a climate change, not dinners, you know, something, whatever it is. And there's no, I've tried to appeal it. There's no way to appeal, it's like a star chamber. It's all completely unjust, unfair. And I was very upset at the time. I think people don't realize, like when you're censored, it feels so bad, like you're so angry.

It feels really unfair. And just, I mean, almost like a kind of self-destructive anger I felt. And then that kind of went asleep for a while. I just kind of moved on. And I was like, I can't do anything about it. So move on. And then we were invited to do the Twitter files in December last year. And I've been working on censorship issues ever since.

And yeah, I mean, I was just shocked. I learned just a huge number of people, you know, they're elites. It's not the people that bag your groceries or work at the gas station or work at the factory floor or who it's not cops and nurses. It's people that work at universities. They work at think tanks. They work at news companies and they want the social media companies to censor speech that they don't like. Legal permitted speech. And it's shocking. We owe Elon Musk a debt of gratitude because we wouldn't have known about how much censorship there was

if he had not opened up their files to us. He gave us pretty open access to the files. We were never denied any files. We uncovered a lot of censorship, you censorship, a lot on different things. We also discovered these disinformation campaigns, the disinformation campaigns around Hunter Biden's laptop, around COVID. And it's not just Twitter, it was also Facebook. So then you get to the question of what is Elon's position. At first he would say, I'm a free speech absolutist. The US, which is the freest country in the world,

even we're not free speech absolutists. We don't allow immediate insight into violence. You know, I can't get a bunch of friends and say, hey, let's all go kill that person. I can't threaten to kill somebody. That's illegal. I can't commit fraud. I can't use my words to lie to you, to commit fraud, to steal your money.

And I'm also not allowed to engage in liable and defamation, although this is a very high bar. You're allowed to say terrible things about other people in the United States. It's very much protected. So very limit, very, very small limits. So nobody's technically a free speech absolutist. But I'm with him in spirit, which is that I think we should have very strong protections for free speech, much stronger than they have in Europe. Elon has also said that he wants to follow the

local laws of different countries. That's been controversial because other countries engage in a lot more censorship. And so if you want X formerly Twitter to operate in Turkey, for example, he has to accept some amount of censorship. That's if you want X formerly Twitter to operate in Turkey, for example, he has to accept some censorship. That's the case I know because I wrote on it and researched it. Elon was criticized for allowing the Turkish government to demand that certain people be taken off the platform. He did that. He complied with the law. I and others encouraged him to release the imp to just be transparent about it. You know, if you have to do censorship is better to be transparent because like in the case

I was describing with YouTube and Facebook, I don't even know the ways in which I'm being censored, you know, and so it's a little crazy making. You kind of don't know like you become paranoid. So at least you're transparent about here's the censorship that we've done. Mostly I think he's done a good job on it. I'm sure I think there's some cases that are on the line, but much better than Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook had done and others. But I think the short and long of it is that there's really like a shocking number of

people in the United States of America today that want to see more censorship. They justify it in all sorts of ways. They say they're protecting people from harm. That's kind of what everybody says. But I don't really know if I, I mean, psychological harm, you know, people say terrible. I mean, I mean, you're a public figure and republic figures. I mean, people say awful things. People have wished me death and all sorts of terrible things.

I think they should have the right to do that. I don't think they should have the right to organize a mob to come to my house and threaten to kill me. That's where I would draw the line. But pretty much beyond that, I think there should be freedom. And I mean, and the crazy thing about it is that we actually have to speak up for it because I think there's so many people

that that really don't believe in free speech. Yeah. You know, it's getting to be a tricky topic, I think. I mean, I'm definitely pro-first amendment, pro-freedom of speech. Hey, everybody, I want to talk to you about two products from first form. One is Optigreans 50, the other's Opta Reds 50.

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That's what you wanna call it. There's a lot of weirdos in the truth space, is what I'm finding. I've had a couple show up here. Some of the interviews will never be released because I don't necessarily know if it's factual. And and and and we'll kind of where I'm so what I I do here, I, I, I mean, a lot of people watch this. I mean, we hit number two, the number two podcast and, and, and the world a couple of months. But, and, and, and, well, with that comes a lot of responsibility. And, and what I don't want to do is just bring everybody on and just, hey, let's hear what everybody has to say because everybody thinks that just because I have somebody on, that this is 100%

factual information. Right. You know, and so the way I kind of try to navigate it is is whatever the information that's being put out is that going to affect somebody's decision-making process that could affect their life in a negative way. And so, bring up the UFO whistleblowers. We got a ton of hate about that, lots of hate. Whether those guys were telling the truth

or whether they were lying, that's not going to affect anybody's decision-making process on the day to day. It's not going to affect medical decisions, it's not going to affect legal decisions, it's not going to affect financial decisions. You can take that information and what are you going to do with it? Right. You either believe them or you don't or maybe you just in there for entertainment. I don't know, you know what I mean, but it's not going to affect anybody.

When it comes to something like like financial situations or or or medical stuff like COVID, I mean, with the with the vaccine, I mean, that's your plan with people's, your plan with people's wellbeing, especially if you have a reputable reputation like you, or I mean, I think I have a pretty reputable reputation. You know, and so what I would hate to do is actually put out information that is infactual, you know, whether it goes along with my agenda or my beliefs or not.

I don't want to manipulate the population and to do something that could potentially cause them harm on the day-to-day in their lives. It's a responsibility that I wish a lot more people, including the mainstream media, would take seriously. But when it comes to freedom of speech, I mean, there are a lot of people that are, I mean, they're master manipulators out there. And they're out there just to build a following or just to get some notoriety and just for a financial gain, whatever it may be.

And so it gets tricky. Yeah, I think it gets tricky. What do I mean? Well, first of all, it's great that you take it so seriously. That's a sign that you deserve the status that you've achieved with this podcast in the long form. Obviously, I agree, and it's really, I can feel the weight of it, even as you were talking,

I could feel it, you know, responsibility, right? Because what if you say something, you know, that's wrong and it results in someone's, you someone's harm to them or death or whatnot. And even on the UFO one, I think there's a way in which I agree. It's not obvious how somebody would be hurt by it, but I always emphasize what I know, try to understand what I know, what I suspect to be true, but can't prove And what I really have no idea on and and

You know if you take the vaccines the COVID vaccine as an example. There's danger on both sides, right? Clearly the I think the evidence shows the vaccines You know kept people out of hospital and likely prevented a significant number of deaths. We also have some evidence coming back of causing myocarditis, long-term heart problems. So that's there, too. The solution, in my view, is coming back to the thing we just talked about, slowing down and providing

the information for people. On the vaccines, for example, we saw people not really providing the full picture, and we also saw government officials saying things were safe, even though they really didn't have the science to show it, in part because the sample sizes were too small, in part because not enough time had passed. And it's complicated. I mean, vaccine science is challenging difficult science for lay people to do.

You know, I, I hired one of my colleagues, Alex Gutentag, who I think is one of the best journalists in America right now on COVID vaccines. You know, she was de-platformed from Twitter, I think for like 48 hours, it wasn't the worst. For literally repeating the information in a Pfizer press release about its own science. Are you serious?

Yes. And that's not the only case of that. We would see censorship of what they themselves would acknowledge was accurate information that they worried would cause a vaccine hesitancy. I think it's an important example because I see this on a lot of other issues. We would see the White House demanding this of Facebook saying, yes, that's accurate information, but we don't want it to get out there. We want you to censor it because it could lead to vaccine hesitancy.

Facebook came back to the White House and said, our research shows that if you censor this information and you prevent the conversation, it will make people more vaccine hesitant because they will be suspicious that they're not getting the full picture. And the White House said, do it anyway. Why did the White House say, do it anyway? Well, in part, I'm not saying it entirely, but in part, because the news media, the reporters were asking the White House why this accurate information was being allowed to be shared on Facebook and social media. And so I share that example because it's even worse than you think. There's some risk that people that care about the truth will get it wrong, and that's just

always going to be there. And we have to do our best. We have to prepare as you've prepared. You have to do a book with a lot of end notes and a lot of research. I mean, books are for me, they're a way of really slowing down your thinking. I mean, I have 1200 end notes in each of my books, a lot of research. Being very careful with what I say about and not misrepresenting my own certainty about certain things.

But then there's this whole thing going on where there's people that have a really clear agenda, which is to get everybody to take the vaccine. And they're going to just you know, bulldoze the truth in order to get that out there. And it doesn't have to be that way. I don't think. I think that we're capable. Some of this is the thing, the same thing I was talking about in terms of the the treating the public like children. I think people can handle the complexity that like older Americans, you know, people over 70 really are going to benefit from being the vaccine. It's really important, you know, and people with pre-existing conditions and whatnot. But that kids probably don't need it. Like I don't think that's that hard. So you had the Covidians just become very dogmatic. And so I think that, yeah, for people like

for us, they're trying to make sense of information and different sources. There's some tools you can use. I mentioned one of them on the UAP whistleblowers is having multiple sources, doing your research, providing the coffee ass, asking the hard questions, pushing back when it feels like somebody's overgeneralizing or going too far. But then I do think there's definitely people in the society that are engaging in influence operations, disinformation campaigns, aimed at advancing an agenda, kind of regardless

of what the facts are. Do you think that the US government has our best interest. Define US government. Do you think that mostly right now, my answer is no. I mean, I have very little confidence in our leaders. I mean, I can go through all the institutions. You know, I don't have a- I mean, let's just look at the FDA. Yeah. There's a, there's have money. I mean, let's just look at the FDA.

There's a bipartisan, I mean, there's, it's food and drugs. You know, and look at all the things that we, you mean, there's a, now the life expectancy for an American 76 years old our food is shit Canada I mean they have a what they have like another six-year life expectancy there are Whatever their version of FDA is is a lot more meticulous than ours look at all the shit in our food

The hormones and and and how did everything get approved? Right, I mean our toothpaste is, our deodorants poison, our shampoo's poison, our food is poison, our cleaning products are poison, a lot of our medicines wound up being poisoned. I mean, what did they do? Why, you know, what is the point of the FDA? Right.

I mean, obviously it's to make money. I'm not really sure I haven't dug in that much on how, but there is one organization that's pretty non-political. I think that the majority of people would agree if you look into it, yeah, this is, we've been lied to. Yeah, I mean, I think in the case of the FDA, we are seeing just too much power from the pharmaceutical industry, just too much power. I mean, it's not, it's supposed to check the power of the pharmaceutical industry. The purpose of the FDA is to make sure that the drug industry is not able to just sell whatever they want and misrepresent it. I point out that it was a huge victory to require the drug companies to have to list

the side effects of their drugs. When the guys start talking really fast on the TV shows and they're going to make all the things out of know, you see it in the, in the ads. Um, you know, if you're not going to ban ads, which I think might be the best thing to do, like I don't know why, like if it's a good drug, then let your doctor recommend it. I don't know why the advertise, why they have to advertise directly at consumers. That seems, that seems unwise to me, but nonetheless, that is the system we have right now. But it took us a lot just to name the side effects of those drugs. That was a big victory. Well, when people started talking about the side effects of the COVID vaccine on social media, there was an effort to censor them. That's

how crazy it got. You know, when you look at the big advertisers of the big mainstream news media, a lot of it was Pfizer. So it's the brokenness, it's includes the FDA. It's not limited to the FDA. I mean, even the stuff that they approved, though, I mean, everybody, I mean, I remember growing up, my parents, you know, just supplements that I would take because I want to get big when I'm 16 years old. Is that FDA approved? Is that now I, I don't even care because what is it so what it's FDA approved? How much did they pay to get that approval? Right. You know, who cares?

No, we looked at it. We did a piece on Remdyssevere, which was heavily promoted as a treatment for COVID. And it has a very toxic effects. We can't quite believe that it ever got approved. I was actually shocked by it. And we had multiple people working on it and went back and looked at the actual science of it. And mainstream science, raising serious concerns

around the impacts on kidneys from room dissivir. So, and it appeared that it was both sort of the influence of the pharmaceutical companies. It's also just the power of these government agencies. They get their, you know, they kind of get their brains oriental in a particular path. I think another thing is just, you know, we just probably rely too much on the pharmaceutical medical model, you know. I mean, we know when you look at what the factors for human health, it's the stuff that we've known forever. It's an exercise which just, I love always as an example because everybody knows that

exercise is amazing, both for your physical health but also for your mental health. I mean, for me, the mental health benefits of physical exercise are as great as the physical benefits eating right. You know, people were promoted, we promoted a high-carb diet that we now think is quite toxic for people. You know, the diets that our grandparents ate, you know, my grandfather lived to 101 and he ate animal fats and it was a traditional farm diet. He was thin as a rail. We know that, you know, community, sociality, having a purpose in life, a reason to get up in the morning, believing in something more important than yourself, whether it's

God or some other higher power. It's just civilization or in service of humanity, that these are the basics that we need. And so, kind of constantly looking for some medicine to make ourselves feel better, I don't think, is the right mentality. And that's another thing I think that needs to change if we're going to go through some sort of a transformation as a society. What switching gears here with back to X? I mean, I don't know how close you are with Elon, but what can we expect X to turn into?

It sounds like it's turning into the everything app. What does that mean? I mean, it's a good question. And obviously, I don't work for X and, you know, and in fact, I do have a subscriber is there, but X takes some of my subscriber money, so if anything, X works for me, I'm a content provider on it.

And so, I mean, I have text with Elon and, and it's been an interesting relationship with one of the richest people in the world. I guess he is the richest person in the world and controls his huge platform. I'm a skeptic of renewables and electric cars. And I've written about that and our relationship has been okay despite that. So he's kind of who he appears to be. I think, you know, sometimes people think who is he really and it kind of is what it looks like.

He's a gen-axeer, you know, I think he's very much oriented towards freedom. He's been, you know, I think he was a former liberal like me, left you G, as we say. That's a term. Left you G. A friend of mine, actually, I don't know, I didn't make it up, but somebody else made it up, and then as soon as I heard it all's like that that really describes

We're all refugees so um, I mean look I think that he's in the middle of a of a they're in the middle of a Information and economic war right now. I mean, it's it's I mean you see it on the platform. I mean he's having I mean, you see it on the platform. I mean, he's having, they're competing, so he's competing with the big newspapers over for advertisers. And so there's an economic incentives behind the war that's going on between X and the New York Times

Washington Post and other publications. Now, the New York Times is very profitable, very successful company. The Washington Post will lose $100 million this year. Both Facebook and X are sending fewer people from their platforms to the news media outlets. If I have the numbers correctly, I wanna say it was something like 180 million people

were being referred every month from each, or 100 million referrals each month back in early 2021. And I think today it's down to something like 40 or 45. Oh wow. So there's been a huge decline and the decline is due to different reasons. In the case of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg restricted news content from being shared on the platform just because he was under so much political pressure, mostly from the left, but a little

bit from both sides, I think he just said, hey, forget it, we're just going to not going to do as much news. We're going to double down on weddings and sharing photos of your grandkids and the VR stuff that he's doing. In the case of Twitter, it was also going down. I think just as a function of more people staying on X rather than clicking through to the news articles, and Elon has clearly wanted to encourage that.

So there's sort of a famous moment where Elon got into sort of a public spat with another one of the Twitter files author's Matt Taiibi. And I think Elon wanted, you know, Elon wanted Matt to come and publish at X. I think Matt felt like, hey, I'm already publishing at Substack, which, because your viewers know,

is a subscription newsletter. Same thing with me, I'm on Substack and Elon wanted me to also publish at X and I was like, well, I get paid to publish at Substack. I need to make my living. And then he said, oh, well, no, you can do, you can have subscriber-only content at X. And so I was like, that's fine

by me. I'll just charge the same amount to be a subscriber at X as at Substack. It actually ended up influencing our whole business model because my view is I went my content on every social media platform. I would like it at X. I would like it at Substack. I would like it at Facebook. I would like to be treated fairly by Facebook and Google and YouTube. And if they're gonna censor and engage in bias, then I'm gonna call that out. But I do think that there's been, there's an evolution that's happening very quickly now

where the social media platforms are becoming a little bit more like publishers. And the publishers are becoming a little bit more like platforms where the New York Times is so successful, I think in part because it's not just news, it's also got product reviews and sports and games and all sorts of other stuff that keep people on the platform where you can advertise to them. But I think that we're in the midst of a huge shakeup in the way in the whole news business. It's been there for a while,

but for a while, Twitter reinforced the older model, which was that there's some trusted sources like the New York Times and CNN and Washington Post. And then there were other sources that citizen journalists who were not as trusted. I think now that's all changing. and now we're on more level playing fields that are small news organization like my own public can compete with the New York Times. I mean, obviously not exactly level playing for

we're tiny. We have a million in revenue a year, New York Times is 2.3 billion. But on X, it's a much more level playing field, so you'll see our social media posts will get a lot more traffic than posts from the near times. Interesting. Where do you see the, I mean, where do you think this news stuff is gonna wind up? I mean, it's still, it seems like,

when I think Fox News, I think they have what 1.7 million daily viewers. Am I right on that? Are you familiar? Well, I mean, I think that sounds right. That's nothing. And yet it's bigger than the other cable stations. So what are you going to, and then on the flips, you know, you see all these really good investigative independent journalists and they're just, I mean, you never see them.

I don't see them very often on, actually, I don't really watch the news. So I guess that's not, I quit watching the news a long time ago. But I don't see, I interview investigative journalists all the time. They don't get any TV time. Every once in a while, I'll get one, but I'll give you an example. I got this guy, Luis Chaparro.

The best investigative journalist on cartel activity hands down. I mean, the guy embeds with the Sinaloa cartel activity hands down. I mean, the guy in beds with the Cinaloa cartel, he's, he's got, I mean, he brought, he brought one of my hats with my brand on it down to a fentanyl lab in Cinaloa and had the chemists wear my hats while they're cutting pills. Just approved to me that, okay.

He could get in there. Here it is. Wow. This is it. Here's the footage. You know, and nobody will touch him. Nobody will touch that guy. Amazing.

And he's put stuff out. He put it out on this show. I mean, what, I'm not bragging. I'm just trying to make a point. Two years ago, he's the what I'm not bragging, I'm just trying to make a point two years ago. He's the first person I ever talked to, ever heard talk about how China is sending in chemists. He had video of it and in supplies to make fentanyl.

The most deadly fentanyl imaginable. Two years later, today, it's hit the mainstream. This guy isn't anywhere. I mean, I had another interview. It's coming out. It'll have already been out by the time this. There's a former CIA analyst slash targetter. And she's been track. I had her on to talk to unpack some of the stuff that went on behind the scenes with Benghazi. And we got in, and she's been tracking these guys. I mean, she's a targetter. That's what she does.

Now, she works for DoD. Guess what? Oh, yeah, they're coming up through the southern border. She's still tracking them. And, but it's like, why is the media not talking to people like that? I mean, they're out there. They're trying to get in, and they're not giving them the time of day. It's like, why is the media not talking to people like that? I mean, they're out there. They're trying to get in and they're not,

they're not giving them the time of day and then the American public listens to some talking head when we got the real deal. We have a real central intelligence agency targetter, the best of the best, and nobody wants to hear what she has to say. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's frustrating because I know the experience of you'll work on a story that you think is super important and it doesn't get the audience the excitement that they that you wish that

they would show to it or then I might do something that's a lot easier and it gets a lot more attention. So that's definitely always been a part of journalism. It's not the attention though, that's not what I'm complaining about. I know the people want to hear it because Luis is one of my top up. I've had him on three times now. And every time he knocks it out of the park with the audience, it's the cartel subject, you know what I mean?

But the media won't touch it. That's interesting. I don't know why because it seems like Fox loves that stuff, so I'm not sure about that particular case. I think some of it's, you know, I will do think that that, I think some of it may just also be, I don't know, but I mean, my experience sometimes with the cartel story is that it feels like we've heard it before, it feels like, and it can be a little depressing.

Mm-hmm. Especially if you're like, oh, they've been fighting the cartels and whatever and they're like, oh, it's just as bad as always. I mean, I think that, you know, I, this, the old, the old rule was the contentist king. And I think that's still true. I mean, when we have something really new, you know, whether it's on COVID origins or UAPs

or, you know, DHS censorship and as genuinely has not been reported before, we get big numbers on it. You know, if you just take UAPs, you know, we're both time, but we just get a big audience when we do a UAP story. If we do the same story a year from now, it won't have as big of an audience.

I think the other thing that I'm excited about is, I mean, newcomers like you and me were relatively new. I mean, older than you, but we're both kind of new to having, in particular to this issue. And we're actually able to achieve some amount of success without, you know, mega-mass audiences, you know, I can still walk through the airport without being spotted, you know, and yet we can make a living, you know, even with, I mean, it's amazing, like, I can still walk through the airport without being spotted.

And yet we can make a living. Even with, I mean, it's amazing. We have about 10,000 paid subscribers, but a single person with a thousand paid subscribers can earn a living as a journalist. Arguably even with 500 subscribers to pay not how much you're charging and how much you want to live on, that's amazing. In the history of civilization, where it always used to be that you had to own the printing press, which was expensive, or you had to own the cable TV stations, or you had to own the satellites or something.

But now you can be a journalist and kind of work for yourself because the technology has evolved to the point where I can just report a story, put it on my sub-stack and charge you to read the last third of it or the last two-thirds of it, and people will pay. And I don't have to have a boss who just happens to own the printing press. You and I shouldn't have bosses just because they happen to own a printing press.

We should be able to publish, we want to publish and be able to capture most of the revenue. With like a sub-stack, we get 85% of the revenue. That's amazing. Like in the history of truth tellers or journalists or whatever we are, to be able to capture that amount of the revenue, it's incredible. It's a little bit less on YouTube obviously or maybe not obviously. So there's different ways of monetizing it, sub-stacking. Some some ways feels like the final frontier, where you're just paying substect 10% and you're paying stripe, the payment processor 5%,

a little bit less than 5%. That's amazing to be able to keep that amount of the money that people are paying for your newsletter. Yeah, I mean, I love doing this. I just wonder, what is mainstream gonna look like in the next, what's it gonna look like in the next year? Well, it's funny because I think Joe Rogan is, is what the new mainstream looks like. Yeah, who saw that coming? No kidding.

You know, 12 million Twitter followers, I don't know, just 10 million YouTube followers probably. Yeah. million YouTube followers probably. So you get guys like Joe Rogan or Russell Brand that are much bigger than any show on CNN or Fox and arguably more influential, you know, because I think people you trust Joe and you don't think that there's somebody else behind the curtain whereas I think it Fox you have a correspondent but you know that the Murdoch family is ultimately deciding what's gonna be the priority. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I mean, kicking Tucker Carlson off just,

what was that? And Tucker's landed at Twitter and done super well, right? Every time he does a broadcast, it has many millions of more views than he would have had on Fox. Yeah, yeah. So, well, Michael, I just wanna say, I know you got a dinner, you got to be at some,

I'll wrap it up, but one last question before you head out. And if there are, do you have three recommendations of people you'd like to see on my show? Yeah, absolutely. Have you had the FBI whistleblowers on? I have them. I think they're all wonderful. So if I were to single one of them out, then they then they might get mad at me. But there's, I think it's at least three and maybe four. That would be great. I would

definitely recommend one of them. We have to have an FBI that we can trust. And then we don't think is full of sociopaths that are abusing their police and investigative powers, particularly to entrap people. We've seen things that are very suspicious, including January 6th. We know that there was literally hundreds of undercover informants in January 6th. That's crazy.

There's a bunch of them at January 6th, we haven't properly understood. I might recommend Julie Kelly, as a journalist, particularly on January 6th, has done a really strong investigation as another journalist. Gosh, there's so many people I love and recommend. I mean, Matt Taiibi is incredible. I've tried to get him.

Yeah, try to get him. Let me know if I can help. Okay. And then I think the most important person on the most important researcher on UAPs is Jacques Valet. He's a bit older now, but I saw him on Rogan and he was very cogent. And then James Fox has done the best documentaries on UAPs. Perfect. The phenomenon and moment of contact and highly recommend him. I will hit you offline and ask for your connections.

I'm happy to connect you. But, well, Michael, I hope to see again, I really do. This was a great conversation that took a lot of turns that I wasn't planning on doing and And I just I love what you're doing. Thank you working people find you people can find me on X at Sheldon burger

No C and Sheldon burger and also my sub stack is public at dot sub stack dot com perfect. We'll link those below and in the meantime, I really hope you guys turn that state around. I appreciate it. Thank you, Sean. And thank you for your important work, particularly for championing veterans. Thank you.

You're a really terrific advocate. Thank you. God bless. God bless you. God bless. God bless you. Former Navy SEAL Mike Ritland keeps it real on the Mike Drop podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage Rudy Reyes. The ethics of martial art is why I joined the Marine Corps. I never thought I was going to join the military because I'd been around so much gun violence and I wanted to be the antithesis of that. I love fighting hand-to-hand, it's fair.

You don't have to kill your opponent. You can beat them with ability and skill. Mike Drop, raw, unfiltered, intellectually sound. Wherever you listen. them with ability and skill. Bike drop, raw, unfiltered, intellectually sound, wherever you listen.