Some More News - Even More News: Los Angeles Fires, The Misinformation Ecosystem, and a Free Medical Consultation

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Hi. On the first Even More News of 2025, Kaveh Hoda from "The House of Pod" is back to talk about the devastating fires threatening Los Angeles and how Mark Zuckerberg's decision to eliminate fact-checking on Meta will make our information environment even worse. Plus, we ask him a bunch of health questions since he's a doctor and it's easier than making an actual appointment. If you're able, here's where you can donate to support wildfire relief in Los Angeles: The California Fire Foundation gives short- and long-term support to communities impacted by wildfires - https://www.cafirefoundation.org/what-we-do/for-communities/disaster-relief The California Community Foundation's Wildfire Recovery Fund targets the most underprivileged communities to make their aid go farther - https://www.calfund.org/funds/wildfire-recovery-fund/ World Central Kitchen is on the ground distributing food and water to affected areas - https://donate.wck.org/give/654000/ DirectRelief - https://www.directrelief.org/emergency/california-wildfires/ Right now, Hungryroot is offering Even More New listeners 40% off your first delivery and one free item of your choice for life. Just go to https://Hungryroot.com/MORENEWS to get 40% off your first delivery and get your free stuff. Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code MoreNews at https://Mandopodcast.com/MoreNews! #mandopod

Well, hello, welcome back to Even More News, the first, the only news podcast. And might I add, Happy New Year. Oh yes, and I'm Katie Stoll. Woof. It's been a few weeks. Happy New Year. Thank yes, and I'm Katie Stoll. Woof, it's been a few weeks. Happy New Year. Thank you for introducing this show. I am Cody.

The end. Johnston, dang. Oh, we're doing great. We're dusting the dust off, folks. Things are cooking and we've got a Greek guest. Our friend, return guest. Oh gosh, I'm so good at intros. Nailing it.

It's Kaveh, Kaveh Hora. Welcome. Returning champ. Returning champion. What a great and uneventful couple of weeks. Nothing's going on. Fantastic time to come on the show. I'm so glad I could be the person you brought on. Glad to have you.

We're just gonna talk about like TV, what you've been watching and stuff like that? So that would be your holidays. Yeah. So far past the holidays, I was going to talk about holidays and chit chat. We can, but there is a lot. There is a lot going on. New Year's holiday.

Oh, my God. This is it. OK, Friday, January 10th. National Shareholders Day. Hell, yeah. Got them. Think of the shareholders. Honor them. Honor those shareholders.

This is like when you were a kid and you were like, when's kids day? And they're like, every day is kids day, your parents? Every day is National Shareholders Day in this country. I don't really have fun bits for this. God, National Shareholders Day is an American holiday observed on January 10th each year. No it's not. It is not celebrated.

No, don't read the thing, Cody. There's nothing there. I'm just like, what could they possibly? This one's better. Saturday, January 11th. Learn your name in Morse code day. Maybe it's helpful. I'd rather learn how to say help.

Yeah, if I am trying to do Morse code with my name, someone's gonna see it that doesn't know me and be even more confused. Yeah. They're gonna be like, it keeps coming out as cave. Maybe they mean comments? Maybe they mean call me? What are they trying to say?

It wouldn't help me in any way. That's a really good point. Unless it happened to be like a Farsi, fluent, you know, Morse code translator. So I'm gonna skip that holiday. If it happened to be like a Farsi fluent, you know, Morse code translator. So I'm gonna skip that holiday. If it happened to me. Get on that, make that app. Yeah, I think part of this is that

you need to teach someone else your name in Morse code too so that they know what you're saying. Then they know, yeah. I gave my nephew a little kid's Morse code thing. Oh, so he can learn? I don't know, it was a cute toy. He's a little outdoor guy. I'm like look Look, you can do Morse code and it's a flashlight and it changes to red or green kids love secret stuff

Yeah, like secret. That's true spy something that'll break really easily and be a waste of $20 But entertain them for an afternoon great. That's parenthood, just a series of. That's anthood. Entertaining, yeah. Well, I mean, it's probably anything revolving around kids, just trying to entertain them long enough to get something done. Well, we are all distracted because it's been quite a week. We had so many things prepared to discuss with you guys,

so much to catch up on, and we're gonna do our best to get to that. But if any of you have not heard, it would be surprising, but if you have not heard, L.A. is, Trump got reelected and L.A. is burning, yeah. Oh, that one, yeah. That checks out that sequence of events. Events have consequences.

Trump was elected and now L.A. isrelated events but still both won a metaphorical fire, won a real one. Lots of fires in LA I guess is the point. So that's kind of been all consuming for at least Jonathan, Cody and I this week. Heads up we will not be releasing a video next week. We were supposed to. We shoot on Wednesdays, and that's when the chaos really hit. The fires broke out Tuesday, and then Wednesday, it just started to really hit home.

It was unsafe for people to drive. It was unsafe for Cody to stay in the city. So he's safe. I'm not in the mountains. Jonathan's safe. But we did in the mountains. Jonathan's safe. But we did not shoot our episode for next week. So, sorry. Damn.

I don't know what to say. I haven't had a chance to ask you guys yet because we just started this like Zoom call and we started recording. But I mean, and I know this is sort of a dumb question but how how are you guys you have family you're there in LA and Katie I know you have a lot of connections in LA I mean how are you guys doing? I'm devastated personally I I'm safe and lucky I'm not devastated in terms of the effects on my own life, but except to see, yeah, the places that we have loved

for the majority of my 20s and 30s, and still I still consider myself a part-time resident of Los Angeles, but just destroyed, and more importantly, so many people I love have lost everything. And I'm inspired by people already getting to work organizing and trying to directly reach people who have been affected.

But the danger is so far from over. The two major fires are zero percent contained and there are more Santa Ana winds coming today and not as strong. They're not forecast to be hurricane force winds this time, but it's the Santa Ana wind. It's something that I think we all, fires are not uncommon in the Los Angeles area, but what none of us have ever experienced is a fire that is actually in an urban area that is creeping through majorly populated regions.

And it's something that you know that it can happen It's something that you know that it can happen, and it's hard to believe actually does. And so I think that's what everybody's reeling from. I mean, entire communities are just gone. Historic properties. It keeps seeing this shared. I'm not sure if anybody else has. Variations of this shared. I'm not sure if anybody else has variations of this sentiment.

When people lose all this stuff, it's hard to resist the urge to want to make it better somehow by saying it's just things, at least you have your life. And you're right, it is just things. And the most important is that you get out and you can rebuild and live and continue. But it's so much more than that. Yeah, you can replace those things, but there's history to it. But then just these historic regions of Los Angeles that have,

yeah, just so much history, architectural, you know, historical preservation sites gone. It's culture. It's just a lot to unpack. And I think everybody's grieving and still trying to figure out what comes next even, because we haven't gotten through this part. I say we. I'm not there. Reiterate that.

Yeah, everything you said. It's very devastating is the right word. It's very heartbreaking. I left. I had to go for various reasons from the Eaton fire area. It was very, there's this, what is this? This quote, I forget where it's from. Climate change will, and we'll talk about the reasons, not just climate change. Sorry, folks.

Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it. It's very surreal, being smelling the smoke and seeing the ash fall like in your yard, in your neighborhood. I was there yesterday with like a bunch of neighbors as they're packing up and stuff and it's just very, very surreal. And like Katie, you're saying like, it's just stuff, but it's not just stuff. It is like, there are these things and these memories that like you can hold onto for hopefully a long time,

but once those things are gone, that memory starts to fade too. And just sort of like going through and being like, should we grab this? Should we grab this? Like, you know, like, okay, yourself, kids, pets, those are the things that you go for. Important documents.

Right, like exactly. But then you're like this, oh, this, oh, we had this. Like you're kind of like cycling through like all these things as fast as you can to get out. So this is a good jumping off point to talk about some of this stuff and not get too, because there's off point to talk about some of this stuff and not get too, because there's other things to talk about

that's not just California related. If I might though, I mean it's a California thing, but just like Cody said, I mean it's gonna, eventually this is the kind of thing that is gonna affect most of the world. Absolutely.

I think it really is, I think it's totally relevant and I'm so sorry you guys are going through it. You're right, it is going to affect everybody in all of it. One of the topics I wanna talk about always and will come up in this is just insurance. There's people that have house, if you own your home and you have home insurance, then that's gonna be an incredibly dicey thing to navigate.

I don't even know what that's gonna look like. The amount of money that needs to be paid out. Well, it's billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars. But beside that, there are people that don't own their homes. There are just people that are renting who have also lost

everything and they are not going to get an insurance payout unless they've got renters insurance. Maybe they do. So when you think about it like that and we're also looking at the landscape of Los Angeles, the reality is that so many people have been out of work for a couple years between strikes, changes in the industry, tax credits elsewhere, business moving out of state. So people are at the bottom of the barrel as is and then dealing with this or we've talked about this with other disasters, the cost in evacuating. Climate change. If you don't have family.

Climate change. Mass displacement, even if it's, yeah, these neighborhoods. Yeah, this, like, climate change and the increasing natural disasters, the increasing cost of the natural disasters may influence how we think about, like, accruing wealth in this country. Because for my whole life, decades it's been you aspire to own your home, you want to buy a house, you work toward that for years and that's how because that that price goes up that's how you accrue wealth and if so many homes in the country become hard to insure uninsurable that's not going to be a way that people like get up into the middle

class anymore. Oh, yeah. Is it even the right? But I'll counter that, because I had this conversation last night, too. Even if you choose to rent and use your money in different ways to save, invest, become one of those shareholders, I don't know, someone's got to be the landlord. You know, you're renting from somebody, so somebody owns that house.

So while I agree with that, this issue of insurance is ever present and very real, not just in California, everywhere. There are reports, I don't know, one of the things we wanna talk about, especially in conjunction with other news, is misinformation. There's a lot of stuff being said about the fires

and blame being placed that might be true, might be partly true, might not be true, and it's not super helpful right now. It is vitally important to have honest conversations about it, but this goes beyond partisan It doesn't I don't give a fuck how you vote. This goes beyond that. Oh, but there's a lot Oh, this could be misinformation. I don't know but there are lots of reports about people losing their home insurance

within the last few weeks and Not even having time to shop around not that they'd be able to. And I don't know how that works out because you do have to have insurance to own a mortgage. I'm not sure the legality of that. I have a guess that some of these people might have owned their homes for decades, which also suggests that they aren't necessarily the rich people that you think they are in the palisades that bought a 20 million dollar house No, they've had this home for generations or something and those I have a suspicion that those are Probably more likely to be the people that lost their insurance, but we're gonna find more information out

But what happens now if you can't insure a property? How do you sell it? Not that that should be the main, but if you, if that's what you're caring about, like the housing market or whatever, what do we do? I mean, it's like we said in our housing episode from several years ago, there are just like incentives going in opposite directions. As soon as you become a homeowner, you now have an incentive to want the housing market to go up, to have housing prices increase.

Whereas a few months before when you were a renter, you wanted the opposite, right? You wanted housing prices to be low, so your rent was low, or so you could buy a home while home prices were low. I don't know how we get out of a system where housing is a commodity, right? How we move to housing being a human right.

But it's clear that we, by doing so, we have pit Americans against each other. Home owners insurance crisis, which is a real crisis, it's gonna affect everyone because it impacts the entire market, the entire how we go about it. Cause everyone needs housing. Yeah. Right? It's almost like it, because everyone needs housing. Yeah, you start to pull that thread.

So yeah, a lot of questions that remain to be seen as to how this specifically shakes out, but in my mind, give me anybody talking about this issue. Give me a politician, give me plans, give us a national conversation, because ignoring it isn't gonna make, it's just putting, pushing it down. Unfortunately, a national conversation

will not help either. Right, I mean look, Trump has been very quickly making this like a political, I mean, and there are some politics to be discussed with it, but I mean, he's using this strictly for scoring points against California liberals and Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newscombe. Yeah, oh, is that his new thing?

Gavin Newscombe. Yeah, oh boy. We would be having a tragedy if with a conservative governor, Democrat, everything in between, we'd have a tragedy here. This is so much bigger than a political party. It's so much bigger than one decision or another. This is a lot of-

And a lot of the decisions- Compounded. Right. But if this was slightly different, if this is slightly different, this is slightly different, it would still be devastating. There's degrees of devastation, but to instantly turn it into, and then, yeah, I see so many like right-wing accounts like, oh, this isn't a horror movie. This is real life and like videos of like, you know, palisades burning down and stuff.

It's like, don't you famously like hate these people? Like don't you have utter contempt for every single person who lives in California, but you like, you need to get your little points off to like, oh, we're so bad for these people. So many weird little graphics like, oh, the Palisades voted this way. Fuck the right out of here. What are you talking about? Also, not every neighborhood in Los Angeles votes the same way. No.

Wealthier communities are much more likely to vote differently than those of us who live, not to like squig in this whole thing, but those who live down here. And not that it should matter. Like I've lived in this city for 25 years. I'm very attached to it. I have a lot of romanticism about like LA and stuff. If I'm at a game and the Dodgers win,

I wanna sing, I love LA, all that stuff. So to see Malibu burning doesn't make me feel good because many of the people who live in Malibu are very wealthy. And the fact that some of them may have voted for Trump does not make me happy about it or they think that they deserve it. Even if they even if they believe like, if only Gavin Newscombe had

signed the water restoration declaration, whatever that is. Which isn't a thing. That wasn't that's one of the many lies that Trump has been. I get very I mean, his lies are always annoying, but when he does these obvious ones about California, which I live and talks about daily blackouts, or it's not true, and he talks about things like how Newsom wouldn't sign this declaration, which is not a thing, or when he says that FEMA has no money in it because Biden didn't put money in, that's not true. There's at least like $27 billion in there. I mean, that may not be enough, but it's not nothing. And all these little things that he does about California, I hate that we're a target. And I hate that this could be even worse if he were actually actively the president right now. I mean, I don't know what he would do

to hold Newsom to account, you know, quote unquote from him, but it would only be worse and it's going to keep happening, which is also really troubling. That's something that I mean, I care if you believe in climate change, but at the end of the day, what I really care about is, well, let's just all agree that these things are happening and we need to do something about it. I don't need you to... But that to me looks like infrastructure. That to me looks like really having serious conversation

about forest management, though this isn't necessarily the forest, which is a different conversation entirely. This is an urban area that's very lush. But what is your defensible space conversation? What are we doing about roads to make sure people are safe getting out? Communications so that people have access to information in emergency. What are we doing in a different situation?

Privatizer. It's also confusing because there's so much misinformation, but water storage, rain capture to best utilize our water. We did release a lot of water from dams during heavy water years because they were going to break and flood communities. But what do we do with this water? How about we put, you know, there are conversations again, not partisan. It doesn't help if you're saying it's this guy's fault for me. Fuck off. Fuck all the way off. That's not true. Gavin Newsom protected some fish, which is also important. Donald Trump is gonna make it look like Gavin Newsom was ignoring Southern California.

No, Southern California gets their water from Northern California, almost all of it. None, like not saving those fish wasn't going to make this not a problem. Like it's not like, oh, he saved so many. It's not the water, it's the dry brush. It's all that, it's the heat, it's the dry brush, it's all that, it's the heat, it's the wind.

That's what caused it. And I know, and we're gonna, I'm sure, learn more about this in the coming days. And they talk about like the Palisades not having water, but it seems like that's more of an infrastructure problem with how they had the water, but getting it there, because of pressure issues as it goes over the hills. And it was a temporary problem.

And that's a really good thing to bring up, Cave, that I wanted to highlight again in this misinformation. A lot of accounts and people talking about the fire hydrants being out of water. That's not accurate. Yes, they're emptying it. They couldn't refill from what I understand. And again, more information will come out.

But from what I understand, this was some hydrants, they couldn't refill because of the high winds, the same reason that they couldn't do water drops during the high winds, it wasn't safe, technically impossible. So calm down, think before sharing something that is. Okay, but Endwokeness told me that the fire hydrants did D.I.

And I think they did. Yeah, that's a different story. And so I think, OK, OK, OK, as long as we're on the same page. They're not just read in those hydrants. They're incredibly LGBT, ABC plus three. And you saw it down our throats. Yeah, they're shoving those fire hydrants or shoving D.I. down our throats. No, of course, that stuff is so incredibly stupid and I wish nobody would fall for it. And I think like, I mean with everyone kissing the ring over the last few weeks and Zuckerberg

this week, it's not doing fact checking on Facebook anymore. Sorry, sir. It will never happen again, sir. Perfect time. Perfect time. Seems like everyone should understand that the NWokeness account saying that it's DEI's fault or whatever is very, very stupid. But you have to put yourself in the mind of a boomer

who uses Facebook exclusively to connect to friends. Don't make me do that. Don't make me put myself there. It's a dark place. No, I'm not saying you. I'm not saying you. No, no, no, no, no. I can't put myself in that position.

I can't bring myself to think that way. Just imagine. We were talking before the show about how there were even things that we could not verify and we go to primary sources and look at it and try to debate it. We don't have to get into the LA Fire Department's budget or whether it increased or decreased, but it is very, very hard to find out because the reporters who would be telling you these things are stretched very thin right now because there's fewer of them than there used to be, and they're all standing in harm's way in

Altadena or Pacific Palisades reporting. And then there's, so it's someone like me at a desk who's trying to figure out going through budget documents, trying to get to the bottom of things in this completely overloaded information environment that is dictating what members of Congress government that is dictating what members of Congress will be putting up for a vote in a couple weeks, right? They might put up the no DEI and fire hydrants bill in a couple weeks or no sending fire equipment to Ukraine because that depleted the fire department. A surplus of fire equipment. And I know we're blending pieces of misinformation here, swimming upstream like the duct has

smelt. It is dizzying and we're still like, I still have a bag packed in case something happens and I gotta leave. Yeah, the wind's gonna get worse. We're in the middle of the crisis. We might be at the, I mean, we're at the beginning of the crisis on a grand sense, and I think we all know that. But just in this one, it's completely dizzying,

and we do a new show, a news comedy show, but a new show where we're trying to say, this is the fact, this is what you can show this to your conservative uncle. Here's the verifiable document that says that the budget did this or that. And it's very hard that we can't do that in the middle of a crisis. There are also a lot of conflicting primary sources too. And the details of it.

It's like, OK, this happened, but then they saved it for this. But then there's also this letter from the fire chief about how like, you know, we need more people, right? And is that, yeah, it's so hard to do. So I think I'll, it's very tempting in the midst of a situation like this with emotions running high and stress and people stuck inside again with their phones, updating and looking for information.

It's very, very tempting. Tempting to do what I'll do. To want to place blame on somebody or something. Yes, let's do it. And to get all worked up, but you don't have the answers. You're probably gonna end up looking foolish down the line. Not foolish, I'm sorry, that's too far.

Sure, I mean, I'm okay with that. You can regret. I feel deep shame when I've shared something that turns out to be not accurate, which is why I have trained myself to stop using social media like that. I do not want to be responsible for saying something that turns out with later information to not be completely accurate. And we're so quick to reshare the same stuff.

And so then it spreads like wildfire and it's not helpful. There are absolutely things that can and need to be addressed. Very difficult to assess what those are in the midst of the crisis. But yeah, there's there are so many conversations to be had. That is one of the things, you know, Twitter is always a problem and even at its best it still had misinformation. But you know, you could at some point, you found the sources you know you could trust and there were names that you could trust

and there was enough real time fact checking that it was kind of useful, it's not that anymore. And you know, Facebook's never been that, never been fantastic at that and that's only gonna get worse now and I'm on blue sky now, but that doesn't really do that. Well yeah, whatever it is. Calling it blue sky now. No, it's blue sky, I'm just Blue Sky now, but that doesn't really do that. Well, yeah, whatever it is. Calling it Blue Sky now.

No, it's Blue Sky. I'm just drawing out Blue Sky. That's good, I'm gonna go with that, it works. And, but it doesn't do that, that's not what it does. So it's like, it is the one tiny benefit that you could have found in social media is no longer there. When I was, when I first got on Twitter

was right when COVID was starting to break. And it was really helpful for me. Cause I was like following these accounts of doctors in China and Iran and Italy. And I was seeing firsthand accounts by people I knew I could trust and be able to communicate with them directly. And that was actually the one thing about it that kind of got me into social media.

Before that, I really wasn't that into it and it kind of helped. And now that's gone. Now that, I just don't see that being an option at all. I don't think it'll come back really in any meaningful way, but who knows, but it's not there right now. And we need it more than ever because now the misinformation is getting worse. There's AI pictures of the Palisade fires.

And is that a big deal? I don't know. Picture of fire is still a picture of a fire. But it's just a part of a bigger problem that you can't. Oh, big time, especially since there is less and less trust in traditional media, as there should be. And people are trying to source information from other avenues.

And there's so much that's just bullshit. Palisades, there's AI videos of the flames coming up, looking over to the Hollywood sign in the midst of all this. That's sowing panic. Yeah, it's malicious. It's malicious. It's trying, like there's obviously, you know, people are victims of misinformation and, you know you've got your your bubbles and so on

But there are just people out there who are like, yeah, I'm just gonna lie I'll get engagement from lying. I'll make a fake video I'll get the I'll get the likes and then maybe I'll get a hundred bucks from Elon every month or whatever And it's just this in there. There's so many I assume this is true of Facebook too. I haven't been on there so long But it's just these built in incentives to be malicious with your information now. And before, it happened before obviously, but now it's like, no, that's part of the model

is to do that now. And it's just, it's impossible. Even like, yeah, like blue skies, like you can find people. Blue skies, sorry. I can't support that, I'm sorry. I'll stop trying to make it happen. You can still do yeah, like Blue Skies. Like you can find people. Blue Skies. Sorry, I'll stop. I can't support them, sorry. I'll stop trying to make it happen. You can still do it, but I will not be participating

until I do and then, you know. It makes more sense for the skeet skeet thing. Well, I don't call them that, I call them tweets. Yeah, I call them posts. On Blue Sky, they're called tweets. But, and you can find people there, but like it doesn't have, you know, it's not the community notes, it's a great service,

but like they don't have anything sort of built in to do that and it's yeah. This is a bit of a digression I'll make it quick Here's what Facebook is like these days on Facebook. I am in a Group a group a page whatever. I don't know what they're called anymore. Yeah called I grew up in Irvine because I did Whatever. I don't know what they're called anymore. Yeah called I grew up in Irvine because I did In Orange County and it's people sharing photos of this is what Heritage Park looked like in the 1970s yeah, remember Northwood pizza that kind of stuff, but there was a post on the I grew up in Irvine page, which was clearly like not a bop, but like a scam of like a t-shirt like

clearly like, not a bop, but like a scam of like a t-shirt. Like, I grew up in Irvine in 1960, whatever. And it was like a shirt and it was like, and it was pretending to be a person saying, buy these shirts, right? To get people to click and then buy the stupid shirts that are like scammed shirts, whatever. The first comment on that post, this like scam post, was a person being,

used to be great until the Asians took over. Ah! Oh! And then below that were bots being like, your presence is charming and witty. And then below that, I mean, like racists and bots talking to each other is what.

That's it, that's all it is, everything is now. Moderation has gotta have to be so, anybody cares about their groups, that has to be so on point. That's what I was saying, there's still one section of Facebook that is decent and whole, and you guys don't know this yet because I'm older, but I realized I had reached middle age

when I realized how much Costco meant to me and how much I like to smoke meats. And so there are these wonderful smoked meat like groups on Facebook. Yeah. It's like men talking about smoking meats. That's where the real ones are. And it is a very wholesome place.

Very little, but outside of that, terrible. I agree, outside of that. Watch out, watch out, Kave. Until they start complaining about Asians in the smoke community. Instead internet stuff. That's where it is, is Facebook. I was off of Facebook, or I didn't officially delete it,

but didn't use it until I moved to the mountains. And it is a weird hub for all information. A lot of places just have their Facebook page instead of a website. And if you wanna hear what's going on, but it sucked me back in. But there are just so many weird niche groups that seem to be thriving.

But the only way that the groups here work is by content moderation and by everybody saying stop arguing There seems to be some understanding of like none of that anymore Deleting those comments deleting that but it's well, that's the brother Time job for people honestly. Oh, yeah to keep out the races in the box. It's too much and it's gonna I mean it's gonna get worse like John that you're talking about the dead internet. We did. This is a digression.

It is, in our episode, but like, we're not gonna have an episode next week. So in our recent episode about AI, we talk about this fake social app that is, it's like social AI, and it's like, you make an account and everyone you interact with is fake. And you can pick your audience.

Are they fans? Are they skeptics? They're all fake. It you can pick your audience. Are they fans? Are they skeptics? They're all fake. It's just an app for you and bots. And that person was hired by Meta to work on their AI integration. And then like literally a week ago, like four days before we aired the episode,

there were all these bot accounts on, I think it was threads, they were just fake, fake people, and proudly, like they're like, we're rolling out this new thing, where you have these bot characters that you can interact with, and then you have bots replying to those bots. And then people got upset, and they removed them briefly.

That is going to happen, they will be less obvious soon. But it's just everything now, and it's just bad. This is such a digression. But it's not everything now. And it's just bad. This is such a digression. It's not though. But you know what? We talk a lot about misinformation in the internet and how social media sucks now. But it is the information environment that impacts everything. The president figures out what he believes and is influenced by the stuff on his weird believe you say is influenced by the stuff on his weird, uh, like social corner of the internet. And it is a corner.

Like we would love to not talk about this, I think, but it just keeps. It's the other thing too. There's no, we would love to talk, not talk about it, but like there's this aspect of websites, websites of the social media sites. They've gotten so much worse. And I do not fully blame Elon, but he is a huge part of it. And he is leading the charge with obviously like a lot of the bot stuff and the community notes and the incentives, the verification incentive to like, just post whatever and get engagement.

We'll give you money, that kind of stuff. But also banning links to other places and forcing people to post onto the actual site, like your articles, your videos, everything has to go there. Social media, not that long ago, used to be a hub that was a portal to everywhere on the internet. You can go there and oh, it brings you here, it brings you there, it brings you there.

And you always go back to the site because you have your feed and your friends and everybody and your sources of information, but it goes other places. But now every social media site wants to be the place that you do everything. You have your page here, you have your website there, you have your videos there, you have your articles there.

And that creates even more of these like little bubbles where you're cultivating, here's my Twitter, like body of work, or X or whatever. And so it's just like all these things making everything worse, where you can't even have websites now, you can't write an article and post it here

because they make you upload it there. And so you have all these other incentives feeding into your page instead of, I don't know, it's just very frustrating to see. Instead of being a portal and hub to everywhere on the Internet, it's like, no, actually, this is the one place you go to. This is the it's the everything app. Everything at all. It sucks.

And it's like evil in a way. And it's damaging in a lot of ways. And I hate him so much for infecting every other social media site like that. Yeah, for sure. And this is separate, slightly, goes in the same conversation. I don't know what the answer to this is. More bots. Because new sites have to pay their journalists

and their people, but it is also galling that when you do go to most news sites, you're behind a paywall. And so when people are putting in the work to try to get more, bringing it back to the fires, talking about people trying to get information, accurate information about fires, and they're stuck behind a paywall,

you're like, well, this is a fucking emergency. It's obvious. It's a mess. I remember thinking about that a lot during COVID too. And again, I don't have a specific solution to it, but all of these different elements compound the problem, in my opinion, because obviously we need to, they need to make money somehow and in order to pay their staff to run the site.

And it is a detriment to actually getting information out, especially when the social media platforms are just such garbage. My goodness, every day we have to survive and cook and shop and clean and watch the movie changing lanes over and over and over again. It's hard, you know?

But what choice do we have? Well, listen, I want to tell you about Hungry Root. They make eating healthier a little bit easier by doing the shopping for you. They will send you fresh and high quality groceries, as well as vitamins and even recipes, right to your door. No more pausing the 2002 Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson thriller to run to the store. No way. Hungry Root will get to know your personal health goals and dietary needs and make you a personalized but customizable grocery cart. Everything a grocery store has like meat and produce and seafood and sweets.

Even vitamins. I love it. I do. I love it. I do. I love having my own personal shopper. Like in that movie. What's the movie? What is movie? Oh, personal shopper.

My life is just like that movie with all the ghosts. Also changing lanes, two movies. I like to cook at home. So it's nice not to have to go to the store beforehand and keep my energy for other things like watching those two movies and cooking at home. And right now Hungry Root is offering some more news listeners and watchers 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life of the subscription. So just go to hungryroot.com slash more news to get 40% off your first delivery

and get those free veggies. That's hungryroot.com slash more news. Don't forget to use our link so that they know we sent you. Not other people's links, ours. Thanks. Hey Smelly, it's a new year and a new you. Time to stop smelling like an old refrigerator

and check out Mando Whole Body Deodorant. That's what I do and I smell like a fancy man. You know, the kind of person that smells like they have their life together. I smell like that. Nobody knows I sleep in an old refrigerator. According to Mando, it's clinically proven to block odor all day and control odor for up to 72 hours.

You can get it as a solid stick or a spray. It's baking soda and paraben free and comes in scents like Mount Fuji, Pro Sport, Clover Woods, and my favorite, bourbon leather. Too long has bourbon and leather been apart and now finally together they be. And looky here, you can get Mando at many retailers like Walmart or Target, or for the best deals,

you can go to shopmando.com. In fact, as a special offer for our audience, new customers get $5 off a starter pack with our exclusive code. That equates to over 40% off your starter pack. So use code morenews at shopmando.com. That's S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-O.com. Please support our show and tell them we sent you.

Smell fresher, stay drier, and boost your confidence from head to toe with Mando. Speaking of misinformation and information, do we wanna talk about medicine since we got you here today? Yes, Mando. Speaking of misinformation and information, do we wanna talk about medicine since we got you here today? Yes, we do. Jonathan?

Jonathan, if you could answer our questions for us, please. Kaveh, you have many questions for Jonathan about medicine, right? I do. But also, Kaveh, you had thoughts about the air stuff and fires too, so give us your expertise. Yeah, I will weigh in a little bit on that. I think this is mostly obvious, but aside from the actual risk of fire and burning

and that, unfortunately, I'm sure that the number of people who die from these fires are, it's gonna go up, but it's not even just that. It's really the air quality is a problem. You have these shrubs, you have these trees, and you have these plants mixing with fire and from manmade things, which may contain toxic chemicals, and that's gonna be out in the air,

and that can travel like hundreds of miles. Oh, it's gonna be. The winds carry. And it can last for maybe a couple of weeks in there, and there's a real danger to people, and really to everyone, but in particular, like kids, elderly, people with immunocompromised, pregnant women. It's really concerning in LA in particular has already terrible ozone pollution. I don't know if you guys are familiar with ozone is you know when it's high in the sky and atmosphere helps protect us but when it you know it's on

here on the ground level and it can harm people's lungs it's you know, it's on here on the ground level and it it can harm people's lungs You know when you have like these toxic things like nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds that are reacting in the sunlight in the hot temperatures You inhale it sort of like a sunburn for your lungs is how a pulmonologist might describe it And so at baseline LA is not amazing for air quality. And then on top of that, this is happening. That really concerns me. I would put a plug in there, one, to not use rectal ozone. That's a totally different topic, Gwyneth, I hope you're listening. But two, for regular people, in terms of ozone stuff and what's happening with ozone pollution

and now with the fires, with these fires happening, if you have access to an N95 mask, if you can wear that when you're around it's probably a good idea particularly if you're in that group of people elderly or if you have any immunocompromised. So I would consider doing that and again maybe even keep it going for a week or so at least after the fires are hopefully contained. So that is a real concern I have about what's happening there. And for pulmonology issues that are gonna come down the road from this.

But that is also more or less gonna be true for most fires too. So if you have N95s left over from COVID, it's a good time to maybe bring them out. When can I take my son, who is almost two, to a playground outside again? Because keeping him inside for a day of play and energy expenditure is not easy to do.

Terrible for everybody, particularly a few people. I mean, it's a few very specific people. What specific person? It's a good question. Which I love, by the way. I love how it's terrible for me, but. I love how in the house. A few very specific people. Everybody in that house. What specific person? It's a good question. Which I love, by the way. I love how it's terrible for me. I love how terrible this is. It's awesome, and I don't want it to change. But if I did, what would I do?

Well, because he can't wear an N95 mask. He has little lungs. But he needs to be outside and climb stuff and run and all those things. And I keep checking the air quality on my weather app on my phone and it gives me a number and then it tells me what that number means. It goes 300 hazardous 86 moderate.

Okay, moderate, but is that not, I should wait till good. That doesn't sound good. Yeah, it's not good. But moderate, you're probably having more days that are moderate than you know, and you're not checking. So, yeah.

That's the point right there. He has to live in room then is what you're saying. Is I have to keep my son in room. You know, there's always gonna be a small amount of risk, you know, with a fire in the air, but it's pretty low. I think for short periods of time, you should still try to get out there. If he has gotten no underlying lung issues or asthma or bronchitis or anything like that, I think

he's still probably better served by getting some time out and playing and doing that. I would try to limit it maybe for the next week. I wouldn't do prolonged periods of time when you're out there. But you do have to balance that with him being like a normal kid and getting his energy out. So I think a little bit of time out there is probably not going to harm him. I wouldn't spend hours at any point if you can help it. And if you have HEPA filters at home obviously that's fantastic. Those are hard to get in a fire setting. They like they become unobtainable at your targets and Walmarts and that sort of thing.

But you can also make them at home. They have a lot of do it yourself, like people have done that, and they actually show that it works okay. So you can also do that as well if you need to. I also heard that a humidifier is gonna be good because it weighs down the particulate in the air, like it makes it heavy and brings it down lower,

but I'm not sure if that's true. Also, kids are lower to the ground. So that seems like maybe a bad idea. I've heard that about humidifiers as well. And that's, there's a lot of theories about, you know, COVID traveling a little bit differently in different climates and temperatures. I don't know how well that's been proven. I wouldn't worry about that too much. And air purifiers is probably the best way to go. Jonathan, let's give Kave the questions you prepared for him. Very exciting.

So we're gonna skip Kave's questions for Jonathan that he has. Oh yeah. We're skipping right over. We're skipping my questions for Jonathan. I mean, if there's anything you wanna know about Bob Dylan or football, I can answer them. Okay.

Or toddlers locked inside. So. I didn't know about that one. The last time. The football, I can answer them. Okay. Or toddlers locked inside. So. I didn't know about that one. The last time. The football, I don't know, yeah. Well, oh, let's abandon stuff again. Yeah, sorry, sorry, yeah. The last time you were on the show,

we talked about the rising rates of lower body cancers in young people, or relatively young people, as in under 50. And last month, a new study was released that suggested that one of the culprits could be excess seed oils that are used in ultra processed foods. I'm guessing this means like safflower oil or sunflower oil, but maybe not. That's right. What they call the hateful eight, what people have been calling the hateful eight is like

those oils. Yeah, no oil. what people have been calling the hateful eight is like those oils. But this potential cause didn't really come up the last time you were here. So I want to I mean, this was the inspiration initially behind you. So the cause is that seed oils are causing cancers is what this theory is. Yes. Correct. OK, I'm so glad. OK, I'm happy to talk about this. Very thank you for throwing something to me. By the way, I should be your fire guy.

I don't know why I wouldn't be your fire guy, but I'm also here to talk about this. So- Our doctor is fire guy. We can add you to the fire guy, it's okay. So like a lot of things that revolve around medical misinformation online, how it starts with is like there's a small study

and it shows something kind of interesting, a little interesting, and then it gets extrapolated to something far bigger and different than it was intended to be. So let's take a step back. First of all, colon cancer rates are going up in younger people, but it's still a pretty small number. I mean, because the number to begin with was very small. The number has the percentage has increased, but it's a small still number overall. So I don't want everyone who's under 40 freaking out that they have colon cancer. It's not the case.

But there was this study and it was in the GI journal gut, which is hell yeah. Yeah. It's a British medical journal. The BMJ. You like that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I do. And so it did come out. It was a really sort of dense, specific study. It was very hard to read. And it was like really molecular analysis of lipidomics, like looking at lipids. Let me take it from here, actually.

Sorry. Please continue. And here, let me pull up the title so I can read to you the title of the original paper and then we can maybe talk about how that was translated. So the original article was titled, Integration of Lipidomics with Targeted Single Cell and Spatial Transcriptomics defines an unresolved

pro-inflammatory state in colon cancer. Typical stuff that most young 20 yearolds have tattooed on their body. It's like this, and then it got translated into like seed oils cause colorectal cancer. And it wasn't, by the way, it wasn't even, you know, junk journals that did that. Scientific American did that. I mean, really emphasizing the American in Scientific American, but they went that way with it. And the truth of it is, it's kind of an interesting study. I won't go into the super nitty-gritty of it. I'll probably do an episode on my show where I go into a little more detail, but I don't want to bother all your listeners with

if they want to hear. But the long and the short of it is that like it kind of raised some interesting questions, but using a lot of, you know, methods that don't necessarily are necessarily proven, there was no real looking at whether or not seed oils were involved at all. It was kind of like there's this one thing that's kind of related to seed oils, and that one thing might be kind of related to what we're seeing in these cancer cells but there's no way to make connections between all these things. So could seed oils potentially be causing colon cancer? It's possible, I don't think it is, but it's possible. This study and all the hubbub around it certainly doesn't show it and that's not what this was meant to do. This study was basically meant to like raise

some questions and be like, okay, where are some studies we could go from here? And that's like 15, 20 studies away from saying seed oils, which are often used in processed foods, which I'm not, I'm a fan of processed foods for a lot of different reasons, but it's a long way to go from there to seed oils cause colon cancer. So, but it's a good example of how that works. Someone takes like a little tiny kernel of something that could be true and they make it much more exciting. And to be honest, it's not just the journalists that did this and these, the wellness influencers who'd love to go after seed oils. It's also like the author of the paper kind of was in a weird way, like saying, maybe their seed oils are related, we should limit them.

And I don't know if he got trapped into that in the interview where that was quoted in the Scientific American that kind of prompted all this. I don't know how that happened, but that was I think a mistake. And I don't think, I'm sure if we had a chance to discuss it with that author, they probably would walk that back

because it really doesn't make a lot of sense scientifically to say that. Right, to come out, like not often. They come out and like, oh, from this paper, we need to ban these things. Like that's not super common. Yeah, maybe I could ask them to come on. No, well, we're gonna be the guests on that episode.

Exactly. I mean, Jonathan, you're the guy I'm tapping for that one. You don't need to have them on. We'll have them on and they will ask us the questions. Right. Yeah. Head to head. As they do.

So the answer is no. Yeah, not to worry. Not to worry. Sorry, I will say this. I'm not saying that dietary stuff, dietary changes, stuff that we're eating isn't related to colon cancer. It very well could be. We think diet and environment are big factors in related to colon cancer. It very well could be. We think diet and environment are big factors

in what caused colon cancer, but this paper isn't showing it. So raw milk only going forward is what you're saying. It's like don't eat anything. Yeah, I mean, speaking of bird flu, which is I assume what you want to talk about next. Yeah, raw milk, the rarer the better. In fact, you know what?

Just get it straight from the teat, you cowards. Just go straight, just, nah. Get right up under there. Well, I wanted to, I do want to ask about bird flu. And I have a series of bullet points here that I wrote out because I think I understand where we are right now. And I want you to tell me if I'm wrong about this stuff. It's not a game. I will never tell you you're wrong

because I love you too much, Jonathan. You'll say that's not right. Well, if you love him, you'll make it clear. You could be more right. You could be more right. We're not doing a gig. We never tell you you're wrong because I love you too much, Jonathan. Aw. You'll say that's not right. Well, if you love him, you'll make it clear that he's wrong. You could be more right. You could be more right. You could be more right. It's such a woke ass way to say it.

So, okay, here are my bullet points. Bird flu kills about half of all the humans it infects, but it's only infected people so far who have a lot of contact with poultry. It could mutate to go person to person, but it hasn't yet, but it could. And we have a vaccine for H5N1, but we don't have hundreds of millions of doses if we needed to inoculate everyone and we're not really making them right now because we don't think we'll need them. That's not bad. Yes.

Not bad. There's a couple of things we could talk about a little bit more. One, you are right that scientists have been really worried about the bird flu because in the past it's killed about 450 people, I think, since 2003, since this sort of variation, since we started been following a little bit better. And this it's a little different. This is the first death here in the US. Unfortunately,

won't be the last. The most cases thankfully have been pretty mild. Here, they've been like mostly like conjunctivitis or pink eye, there's been some respiratory symptoms and a big part of that is like you're saying, it has the way we're getting affected is isn't as bad as the way people were affected in the past. So in the past, you know, in these wet markets, the thought was that like, you know,

people are really plucking out like the feathers of the fish is aerosolized, it's getting deep into the lungs, and that's where it was really affecting people. The people now, mostly where they're getting it from is contact with dead animals and cows and that sort of thing. We talked about that guy for a while. I have an issue or two with him.

Have him on the show. He won't return my calls. It's because of something with his wife. Coward. It's a long story. I said something about Caribbean enthusiasm once in the show, it was overrated and I don't like cringe humor, something like that.

Anyways, who remembers these things? You can't be saying stuff like that? Yeah, so there is a difference in the way that these people are now getting, now being exposed to it. It could very well mutate into a problem that is now much more transmissible from person to person. Once that happens, and that can happen,

that's not too hard to imagine it happening. If someone is infected with the influenza, the regular flu, what we call the flu, and they get this, those viruses are gonna get into your cells, and when you're in your cells they're going to recombinate, they're going to mix together and they could create the kind of virus that allows it to be more easily transmissible from person to person. And right now we're lucky because the

receptors that it's attaching to aren't causing the same sort of problems but that could change very easily. And even that being said, you know, even if it stays the way it is, unfortunately, it could create still some very serious issues and we could still see some more deaths because of it, but that is sort of the issue. And we don't have a good vaccine for it, unfortunately, because we don't know how that's gonna,

when it becomes that, we don't know what that's gonna look like. Because there is a, it was my understanding Because we don't know how that's going to, when it becomes that, we don't know what that's going to look like. Because there is a, it was my understanding that there is a, or there was a vaccine, but the, what it would become when it is able to go person to person, it would be so far away from what we have the vaccine for. Okay. That's right.

That's right. I do recommend getting your flu vaccine though. It's another good reason to get your flu vaccine. Because you don't want, if you get really sick and you have a lot of flu in your body and got a lot of virus replicating and then you get the bird flu, we're gonna be creating a great situation

for that virus to become a real bad one and a real problem. And having something like that in an RFK junior led healthcare system is gonna be a fucking nightmare It'll be so bad. It is really hard to wrap the mind around all the potential horrific outcomes, but No other words, but given the sentence So given the amount of pants shitting fear, you have instilled in us is it still okay to drink unlike what the surgeon general.

So alcohol. Question number three. Oh, better be. Ah, because real quick, because I thought for a second you were gonna say is okay to drink raw milk. No, no, no, no, no. I was like. Don't you fucking do that because it it probably, we haven't actually seen

the bird flu get into people through food, but if you're cooking it and you're pasteurizing it, you're pretty safe. If you're not doing those things, if you're not cooking your foods, I mean it's potentially there as an issue. So it's another good reason, among many good reasons, to pasteurize your milk and not drink raw milk.

But what you're referring to is the alcohol study. Yeah, the Surgeon General's new advisory on putting like cancer risk on like alcohol. It is a cancer risk. It is a real thing and that is a real concern. It's not totally shocking. I overall, this is- But what about red wine being good for my heart? Yeah, we kind of go back and forth on that, don't we? We do every day. You know, the pendulum goes back and forth on alcohol

and it's sometimes, it's like, well, if you do it here, it's good for you and then it's terrible. Right now we're at this like, generally there's no quote unquote safe level of alcohol. I mean, for most people, if they have it within moderation, not an issue, you know, but we can't technically say, as I don't technically say there's ever a safe amount or good amount of alcohol. That being said, I think, you know, occasionally use, I drink still occasionally in moderation, I try, you know, and I think that's still a small risk

that I'm willing to take because I think it's a relatively small risk if it's done appropriately. There is, there's associations with alcohol and all kinds of cancers, GI related cancers in particular that I deal with liver cancers, all the stuff you might imagine. Sure. There's, there's, there's, this is a new discussion amongst doctors and I don't, I can't speak to a lot of them, how other people will address this, but for me personally, I think it's a good thing overall. I do worry a little bit that like if we make everything terrifying then nothing's terrifying and there is a little bit of like you know warning fatigue that people can get, but I think it's

probably good to discuss and people need to know, because alcohol is a real issue. We did this with smoking, and I think that makes perfect sense because the risk is higher. The number of people that are gonna get cancer because of smoking, the risk of it's so much higher.

I think it makes a lot more sense. This one, I think there's an argument to be made, but I think overall I do agree with it. I don't agree with everything the Surgeon General has done. I actually got in trouble because I walked out of one of his talks he was giving here in the city and then I became a thing because it's like a stupid thing.

Anyways, so I don't, but like. Anything? I can tell you the story if you guys want to hear it. I can make it real quick, but I want to hear what Katie had to say about this. Well, I want to hear that story and I've got hear it. I can make it real quick, but I wonder what Katie had to say about this. Well, I wanna hear that story, and I've got several thoughts. I basically, I'm agreeing with you

about this delicate balance. I do know that specifically liver disease, liver cirrhosis can lead to liver cancer specifically. And cirrhosis is you can develop hepatitis, you can damage your liver in a variety of ways, but it's mostly linked to excessive alcohol drinking. So that shouldn't be a surprise. Not mostly, but.

Yeah, it's a real significant factor in developing cirrhosis, which is complete scarring of the liver. And when you have cirrhosis from anything, it can lead to cancer of the liver. And you're right, alcohol is a major risk. Yeah. When you have cirrhosis from anything, it can lead to cancer of the liver. To cancer. And you're right, alcohol is a major risk. Yeah. Yeah. Very major. But in general, I think part of what I agree with, like if you put a label on everything, then it dilutes it. Obviously, cancer from cigarettes is a very well-known and documented

risk. And I think it's important. This changed our conversation conversation about tobacco and maybe it is time to have a change conversation about alcohol. And not even however, and I have a feeling that there are more and more things that we're going to find out might cause cancer and things that we're ingesting. So that to me there's a delicate balance. I do not advocate for people abusing substances, but if that is your glass of wine at the end of the day, is the relief that you get and you enjoy it,

or socializing with your friends once a month. I don't want people to carry around a level of fear when truly I have no idea what are the things that I'm consuming on a daily basis. There're a little, I love an instant ramen. It's gotta be some cancer in that. Oh, it's worth it. Yeah, and you're always drinking like raw milk and stuff and like we just don't know. We just don't know. What if it's yogurt and pomegranates or what's the dessert? Yeah, pomegranate seeds. We're gonna, yeah it's not just a dessert but it is a very tasty snack that sometimes substitutes as a dessert. Yes, it involves pomegranate seeds. We're gonna, yeah, it's not just a dessert, but it is a very tasty snack that sometimes substitutes as a dessert.

And yes, it involves pomegranate seeds. You're talking to an Iranian guy, but that's like, I grew up on that stuff. That's good for you. It's fucking delicious. Eat that stuff, have more. Until you tell me it's gonna give me cancer. I'm not going to, it's good.

Yeah, even if it does. It's good, don't. Even if it does, just muffle through. There's a new study called integration of pomegranate lipidosis and it goes really deep into it. I wrote that. Thank you so much for reading.

I'm obsessed with pomegranates. I'm just going to do a digression quickly. When you crack open a pomegranate, you score it into pieces, right? I mean, there's so many different ways to do this. My favorite way is you got gotta take it from the top and it kind of is like a pentagon, pentagonal type shape. And so you carve along that until you find the heaviest rind pieces

and I cut along those. So that's the way I do it and I'm correct. So I think most people should try it that way. But like I get so obsessed with each and every little jewel. I'm like hello my little jewels. Yeah. Getting them out. They're so beautiful.

And then I'm stained in red and it's like a blood bath. So you get stained in red and it's a blood bath and you cut it in a pentagonal shape. This is the most like demonic. It's a ritual. Fruit. Yeah it is. It's what makes it so rad.

It's what makes it so rad. It's what makes it cause cancer. Wait Cave. Yeah. Tell us about piss's what makes it so rad. You're telling me it doesn't cause cancer. Wait, Kaveh. Yeah. Tell us about pissing off the surgeon general. I don't know if I pissed him off. Did you get a warning? Okay, so first of all I have to say he seems like a very nice guy.

Vivek Murthy. He seems like a very nice guy and we have some mutual friends. So I have like nothing particularly bad to say about him. You know, my friends, my family actually invited me to this city arts and lectures here in San Francisco where you like, they have like someone of note come in and he's interviewed by someone else and people just stand around asking questions. This was, you know, about, I don't know, six months ago and or maybe a little bit more and the the Gaza stuff was really on people's minds. It was becoming really clear that hospitals

were being targeted and there were a lot of people who had questions for anyone in the medical field, you know, particularly someone of note who is, you know, America's top doctor about it. And so we're in this lecture, he's talking about the epidemic of loneliness, which is like real, but I'm also like, you know, we also have a real pandemic that is not just loneliness, which is like real, but I'm also like, you know, we also have a real pandemic that is not just loneliness, which is a really important thing, I agree. I'm not saying it's not, it is, but I'm like, there's also other things.

But it also was a little bit weaponized at times, like what about people being lonely? Like, okay, well, just take care of each other and stay home and talk online for now. Anyway, keep going. Exactly, exactly agree. And it was a little bit like, I had a hard time with it. And he's again, nice guy, real nice guy.

But like he did this part where he was like, where else in this wonderful country could a son of an immigrant rise to a field such as this? It's just impossible. And I was thinking in my head, I was like, I mean, your dad was a doctor. My dad was a doctor and an immigrant and it was a lot easier because of the doctor part.

Right, right. I mean, here, this is not, I was kind of like the picture, like it was being painted at. And I didn't, there's part of me that didn't like that. And especially because I had a very similar story and I would feel kind of weird about painting it that way. And then people started to get up in the crowd. It was clearly this organized thing that went in phases

where people stood up and they were like, Dr. Murtha, why aren't you talking about what's happening in Gaza right now? And he was like, we'll talk about it at the end of the show. And they got escorted out. And they did it, we'll talk about it at the end of the show. And the guy escorted out. And they did it like in two or three waves. And I was kind of like, you know, kind of want to hear his answer. I mean, like the fact that he was like, we'll talk about it at the end when people ask questions. I was like, I have a feeling you're not going to give a very satisfactory answer

because of that. I was like, why not? Why not address it right then? You could say he could even say, look, I don't think it's my position to weigh in on that. I'm sorry. He could even, but why not address it at least, you know? Silencing it. Instead of like, we'll get to it at the end, which like maybe not actually. Right, and I didn't get the sense that there would be any convincing answer for that, you know? And it was about the third time when someone got removed

that I looked around and the audience was just like super homogeneous, like white, like looking at anger at these like young people who I thought were doing something pretty brave. And by the way, were like that had that whole multicultural coalition thing that, you know, I always kind of dig. And I was like comparing the people I saw

being escorted out, and they weren't being overly rude, but they were asking the question. And the people, I look back in the audience just looking at them with daggers for eyes and anger and booing at them and trying to grab their signs from them. And I was like, I think I'd rather be with those people. And so when they got kicked out, I was like, all right, I gotta go too.

And I walked out too. I didn't make a scene, I didn't mean to create a thing, but I walked out as well. The guy hosting the thing who was like, I get it, trying to put on a good show, made some comments about it after I left. After I left. After I left.

I think if I heard it, I probably would have stopped. Did he call out your name? Did he know who you were? No, I hope not. I mean, it was posted later and it might have gotten to him, but, and there were a lot of people who were mad about it and they said, you know, it's not his position. You shouldn't have done that.

It was rude, whatever. It's not totally incorrect. And I didn't do it to make a political statement, but it was more just like, I didn't want to be a part of what I saw. I just didn't like that. I think that makes perfect sense. Separate yourself from that.

Yeah, I wanted to not be there. It's frustrating to sit there and watch it happen over and over again. Yeah. It's like, well, this is actually, yeah. I know that you should get in trouble. Yeah, not something you wanted to be a part of or participate in.

And so you felt more solidarity with the people who kept getting kicked out. That makes sense? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that was that. So I was actually getting back to the original thing. I was actually, when I saw he wrote this, I was like, all right, now we're talking.

Now we're doing something. This is like, we're having a real, like something's going on here, okay. So for that, I give him credit because it's not a very popular thing to do. It's gonna make him the target of a lot of people. I'm sure there's an alcohol lobby out there that's gonna go against him. So I'll give him credit because it's not a very popular thing to do. It's going to make him the target of a lot of people. I'm sure there's an alcohol lobby out there that's going to go against him. So I'll give him credit for this.

And I think it was so I think it was kind of neat to see him do that sort of thing. But I'm still going to drink a little bit. And eat my ramen. Yeah, me too. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. They're not saying don't ever. I'm not even as a gastroenterologist, people think I say you can't put anything up your butts. I just say, don't put things that aren't flared.

Don't put things in there that aren't meant to be. Somebody, speak of Facebook. Speak of Facebook. Speak of Facebook. Speak of unflared out of there. Yeah. One of the. Dairy air.

There's something better. Facebook groups here is the incident report thing and there's people that like listen to scanners and report it So helpful only if there is a specific kind of emergency where there's information sharing other times. It's like nobody's names. It's private You know, it's not like but a couple weeks ago. Oh in New Year's. Oh I guess somebody got something stuck up their butt on New Year's Eve, but they didn't call. I think it's safe to say somebody's got things stuck

in their ears. Yeah, somebody's, but they didn't call the ambulance for like three or four days. Oh no. You gotta get that out of there. And it was all over the feed. I'm sorry, but I had to use that. No, it's my life.

I'm not supposed to be something. I'm glad my life amuses you. Glad my calling, my profession. I just couldn't imagine waiting so many days. You got something stuck. Get it out, get it out. I'll tell you this. So when I first started my podcast,

and I had a cohost back then, they wanted to do this a little bit and they even had a name for it. And then when we talk about like foreign objects and people's butts, and I'm not gonna lie, it's entertaining. It's like, you know, it's kind of fun, you know? But at the end of the day for me is like,

the reason they come in so late and the reason is it's their worst day of their life. It is. It's just so terrible and embarrassing. It's embarrassing and you don't wanna have that conversation. Exactly. And I can't do it anymore. I was like, I have to.

Yeah, it's scary and embarrassing. Exactly. And those are two big reasons people don't go to the doctor, yeah. Exactly right. And then I was like, I can't really be a part of that anymore. But yeah, these poor people. That's responsible. I feel bad for mentioning it.

I hope I'm so glad they got help. You know, it's a good time, because I'll tell you, the problem, the cases you see of that, is guys, it's not homosexuals. It's people who just want to experiment and have fun, which, you know, God bless them, but they don't know what to do.

And they're too afraid to ask. So all I'm saying is, there are specifically things made for that if you're interested, get the right stuff. Don't put things that aren't meant to be there in there. Get things that are meant to be there, then have a blast. There are lots of things that are meant to be there.

There's plenty of them. Yes, exactly. Flared. Well, we need to wrap this up so that we can get it edited by tomorrow. Dear audience, I have to acknowledge that there are a lot of things that have happened in the last few weeks that we did intend to talk about, but I've loved our conversation today.

Explosions. Can you get to everything? Tesla trucks. Golf of America. Jat GPT-designed acts of terror. H-1B visas. H-1B visas. I love the amount of terror. H1B visas. I love the amount of water.

H1B visas. Every single report about how old and incapable President Joe Biden was since 2020. So many stories. Green floods. Oh my gosh. But I do think that this, I don't think it's gonna slow down, so we'll be talking about stuff, a lot of stuff,

a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff, a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. We've got a hodgepodge we're gonna do to cover some of this. Anyway, we're gonna get to it is the point. But there's just a lot.

What are you gonna do? Yeah, I don't know why I'm getting a gossip now. Stay tuned, stay tuned is what you're saying. I was so flustered as I dove back into the world of podcasting after a few weeks off. I didn't properly introduce you or shout out the fact that you have a wonderful podcast called House of Pod. But now's your chance to plug all the pluggables please.

Yeah, thank you. You guys did a bang up job. There's a lot of stuff happening. So I don't mind that you didn't mention it. It is a podcast that I do. You can find it anywhere. It's relatively informal. And we look at health topics, and we

look where it intersects with the popular culture, the news. I'll have a musician on, and then I'll have a world-leading expert in the medical field on, and we'll talk about something together. So there's a little something for people in the world of medicine, but a lot for people who aren't and kind of want to peel back the curtain

on the world of medicine. And we take a lot of aim at, you know, medical quackery and grifters. So I think people who like your show will also enjoy it for that reason. And yeah, and you might even hear one of these fine hosts and producers on the show someday. When we're on to interview the Surgeon General.

Yeah, right, sorry Vivek. He's still banned. He's a nice guy. No, I'm sure he's a good guy. Good guy. Banned. All right guys, we've done it. We've arrived at the end.

I hope you're all having as good of a New Year's you can. Starting out with a bang. There's something I always say and I'm trying to remember what it was. It's been so long. Oh, that's right. What? We love you very much.

Much. Cody, much. I got there. Anybody else wanna say much? Much.