Ask Dr. Drew - Jennifer Sey (Ex Brand President at Levi’s) Turned Down $1,000,000 So She Could Fight COVID School Closures. Now NYT Confirms Her Fears About Learning Loss Were True – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 291

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Jennifer Sey spent over 20 years at iconic clothing brand Levi’s, rising from Chief Marketing Officer to Brand President. But when she fought against school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, she says the CEO told her “there’s just not a path for you here.” She resigned and was reportedly offered a $1 million exit package – presumably to buy her silence with an NDA – but turned it down so she could continue fighting for children’s education. Now, three years later, the New York Times has confirmed Jennifer Sey’s fears: the “startling evidence on learning loss is in” and pandemic school closures were a disaster for American children. “More than 3 years too late, the New York Times has now given permission to acknowledge what was obvious from the beginning,” writes Jennifer Sey. “But if you dared to say so in 2020, or 2021, or even 2022, you were smeared with all sorts of career-ending ad hominem attacks.” Jennifer Sey is an author, filmmaker, business executive and retired artistic gymnast. Sey began working at Levi Strauss & Co. in 1999, rising to Chief Marketing Officer and then Global Brand President. In January 2022, she was asked to resign because of her public opposition to the extended closure of San Francisco’s public schools. Previously, Jennifer Sey was the 1986 USA Gymnastics National Champion, and a 7-time member of the U.S. Women’s National Team. Follow her at https://x.com/jennifersey and find more at https://SeyEverything.com 「 SPONSORED BY 」 Find out more about the companies that make this show possible and get special discounts on amazing products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get a discount on your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew • COZY EARTH - Trying to think of the right present for someone special? Susan and Drew love Cozy Earth's sheets & clothing made with super-soft viscose from bamboo! Use code DREW to save up to 40% at https://drdrew.com/cozy • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician with over 35 years of national radio, NYT bestselling books, and countless TV shows bearing his name. He's known for Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Teen Mom OG (MTV), Dr. Drew After Dark (YMH), The Masked Singer (FOX), multiple hit podcasts, and the iconic Loveline radio show. Dr. Drew Pinsky received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his M.D. from the University of Southern California, School of Medicine. Read more at https://drdrew.com/about Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Warning. I've got this condition where I don't feel pain. You're a superhero. This is how intense Novocaine sounds. Oh, wow. Imagine how it looks. Is there more? Yeah, big time. Novocaine. Only in theaters March 14th. And today we have a great guest. Jennifer Say is here. Her new book, her recent book is Levi's Unbuttoned. She was a brand president at Levi Strauss and was essentially let go. She'll tell us the details about this because she dared raise her hand, much like Jay Bhattacharya and many of the people we interview here dared. How dare she raise her hand and say, I think we're doing something wrong here. And now three years later, the New York Times has come out and essentially confirmed everything she was worried about.

And any rational person should have been at least concerned about, if not in a panic about what we were doing to children. It was so obvious. And we'll talk about that. Jennifer has a great pedigree. She's an author, filmmaker, business executive. She was a gymnast and she competed, I believe, with Stanford. She was on the U.S. Olympic team, had a severe injury,

and that was the end of her gymnastic career. She was chief marketing officer and global brand president in January 22. When she stepped in, I'll tell you a little more about it after this break. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre. The psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic. Because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction. Fentanyl and heroin, ridiculous. I'm a doctor for **** sake, where the hell do you think I learned that?

I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Love Lineine all the time, educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you wanna help stop it, I can help. I got a lot to say, I got a lot more to say. I think everyone knows the next medical crisis could be just around the corner,

whether it comes in the form of another pandemic or something much more routine, like a tick bite. You and your family need to be prepared. That's where the wellness company comes in. You know the wellness company. We have their physicians on like Dr. McCullough frequently. The wellness company and their doctors are medical professionals you can trust. And their new medical emergency kits are the gold standard when it comes to keeping you safe and healthy. It's really, it's a safety net. It's an insurance policy that you hope you're not going to need. But if you need it, you sure as heck are going to wish you had it if you need it.

Be ready for anything. This medical emergency kit contains an assortment of life-saving medications, including ivermectin, Z-Pak. The medical emergency kit provides a guidebook to aid in the safe use of all these life-saving medications, including ivermectin, Z-Pak. The medical emergency kit provides a guidebook to aid in the safe use of all these life-saving medications. From anthrax to tick bites to COVID-19, the Wellness Company's medical emergency kit is exactly what you need to have on hand to be prepared. Rest assured, knowing that you have emergency antibiotics, antivirals, and antiparasitics on hand to help you and your family stay safe from whatever life throws at you next. Go to drdrew.com slash TWC. That is drdrew.com forward slash TWC to get 10% off today. Just click on that link.

And so let me give you some more details about Jennifer Say. You can follow her on X at Jennifer Say, S-E-Y, not S-A-Y, S-E-Y. Her sub stack is jennifersay.substack.com. Her website is sayeverything, S-E-Y, everything, one word,.com. The book, as I mentioned, is Levi's Unbuttoned. But really what we want you guys to go look at is her new documentary, Generation COVID. You can find that at YouTube backslash Generation COVID Film. There's also a Generation COVID Film channel. This is about what we have done to young people and what she and I are going to get into a little bit today. Let me tell you again a little more about her. She was a 1986 USA Gymnast National

Champion, seven-time member of the U.S. Women's National Team. Her first memoir was about gymnastics. It was called Chalked Up. And she actually did a documentary, Emmy Award-winning documentary, Athlete A, which connected the crimes of Larry Nassar to some of the broader abuses of the Olympic movement. As as i said in addition to author filmmaker business executive she began working at levi strauss in 1999 uh she all got to the level of chief marketing officer and then global brand president in january of 22 she was asked to resign because she dared to oppose it's so funny in her wikipedia it says say says that she as though they have to twist it they have to put some nonsense in every word they choose she was asked to stop down because step

down because she was concerned about public the the excessive extended closure of the san francisco public schools please welcome welcome Jennifer Tseng. Welcome, Jennifer. Nice to see you, Dr. Drew. Thanks for having me. Yeah, nice to see you as well. Do you ever read your Wikipedia? You know, I check every once in a while.

I actually checked, I think, about two days ago, and it was a lot less sort of conspiracy laden than it was before i used to be called a conspiracy theorist for thinking schools should open so they took that out whoever whoever edits so it's a little better we're making progress a little bit these and let's let's as long as it's on my mind let's address what happened at levi strauss you you did you say something publicly did you raise your hand just at the community there level, the community level? What happened? Yeah. I mean, I was very outspoken from the get-go, March, 2020, when I saw school closures coming and they came fast and furious in California,

where I used to live. I was opposed to it from the beginning, which as you are well aware, there weren't very many of us. But I was alarmed by it. And I didn't see an off ramp from the beginning. I knew, you know, they said it was two weeks. I knew it wouldn't be two weeks. I knew that the most vulnerable children would be harmed the most. You know, all the things that happened. Of course.

I saw coming. And I don't need to be a doctor. I'm grateful for doctors like Dr. Bhattacharya and you and scientists like Martin Kulldorff and doctors like Sunetra Gupta, but I'm sorry, I'm a mother of four. I don't need to be a doctor to know that isolating children at home alone on stupid Zoom school is going to be really harmful. And by the way, while you're doing that, you're telling them that they're selfish jerks for wanting to see their friends and for wanting everyday things and milestones like graduation. You're literally

telling them they're horrible people. So when you signal to children that their needs come last societally, because let's be real, bars opened, strip clubs opened, 60,000 person stadiums opened, and kids couldn't play youth sports and couldn't go to English class. So we sent the very strong signal that their needs come last. We expect them to take a bullet for us. And you know what? They listened. And now we're seeing record high absentee levels. I mean, there are some cities that have chronic absenteeism levels between 60 and 90% of children. That's 60 and 90% of kids that are missing more than 10% of the school days. Well, you know what? We told them their schooling wasn't important and they listened to us.

That's what happened. And I didn't need to be a doctor. Right. And what Caleb threw up there this is a another physician posted this uh this letter for the new york times pandemic learning loss not an emergency that was one year ago exactly yeah and now they publish a large editorial board article the startling evidence on learning loss is in. Startling, staggering, all those words they love using. Yeah. Well done. Startling. Not at all. Should have been predictable. Predictable would have been the word that they should have used. Were they honest? It makes me so angry. I mean, it makes me so angry. People say to me, oh, don't you feel a sense of redemption? And I didn't fully answer your first question, which is, did I speak up early? Yes, very early. I was vocal on social

media. I wrote op-eds. I led open schools rallies in my town of San Francisco. Schools were closed in California, the longest of any other state, 19 months. I was on television programs. I had the audacity to go on the Ingram Angle, which is what really was the nail in my coffin amongst my lefty circles in San Francisco and at my place of work. But even during that time, I continued to do a really good job. I got promoted. You said I was the chief marketing officer for eight years. I was a longtime employee, 23 years. So well-known, well-liked. And I got promoted during all of this, which I think is a testament to the fact that I was doing a good job. But it was, you know, pretty relentless. Every day I was told, you need to stop, people don't like it. And I would say,

no, thank you. I was very polite. I was very diplomatic. My own children go to public school, always have. And, you know, I knew what was going to happen. and I was astonished by it. And by the fall of 2020, Dr. Drew, when the private schools opened, I mean, that just set me on fire. I don't know how anyone could abide by that hypocrisy that the wealthy people screaming that we're all in this together are sending their children to $60,000 a year in-person private schools and yelling at everybody else to stay home? No. No. So I wasn't quiet about it. It was disgusting and incredibly classist. It's structural classism. It's structural racism. The irony is I was the one called a racist. The rationale there being, I don't care if black children die because I'm advocating for open schools so it was relentless

for two years and then eventually I was um you know ousted from the company and rather than you know take what was what was that conversation well can you talk about it or are you going to go after that or did you go after them a little bit for a wrongful discharge or? No, I walked away. I just walked away. I wanted to be able to walk away with my voice. Because in addition to how alarming these policies were, what became increasingly alarming, and you touched on this with the opening clip with Dr. J, was the censorship. There was literal censorship, you know, had the government pressuring Twitter, for instance, or X, I should call it now, blacklisting Dr. Bhattacharya from the day that he joined Twitter. But the social censorship was really intense as well.

And that prevented people from standing up. I mean, I have little patience now. You know, there's so many people now that this New York Times piece has come out and it's really definitively saying this is the most catastrophic thing that's ever happened to american public schooling and say oh finally and i want to say well where were you because i stood up along with my husband alone and took the bullet it it you know it's with this i'm seeing a lot of this lately well we didn't know what are you supposed to know how did we know how did we know how did we know one of my proudest moments was i was on a fox local channel here the fox 11 the fox think simpsons and family guy fox not fox news yeah and we did a nightly show to sort of try to bring people up to speed with things

and uh early into the program the la unified announced they were going to close, and we brought in a board member, and I said, who told you to close? Where did you get that idea that school closure is the right thing to do? Did you talk to an infectious disease consultant? Did somebody come in and advise you? No, it's just the right thing to do. That is how pathetic the decision-making was at the time. And of course, the decision, as you pointed out, to bring kids back, that got even weirder. I remember later, now we're six, eight months down the line, I talked to a LA Unified member, LA Unified Union, LA Unified School Teachers, LA Unified Teachers Union member.

Was it a union or was it la unified board member it was i can't remember to tell you the truth it was either la unified board i think it was a teacher's union member as a secretary for one of those groups and i kept telling she goes well we need you know we need plastic up we need plexiglass and we need we need gloves and we need this we need that i said okay i'll grant you that if that's what you need to go back to school let's do it right now how long is it going to take she goes what i said no no how long how long to get that material let's go what do you need two weeks three weeks good let's get back to school she accused me of being a sexist i was sexist for saying that of course

you were yeah yeah i mean la was terrible i terrible. I know Barbara Ferrer, I think is your county public health person. I hear someone laughing. She's one of the worst. I really long for the day when I don't know who the local public health bureaucrats are across the nation, but I followed it very, very closely. But a similar thing happened in San Francisco. Once the vaccine was available in early 21, the teachers demanded to be first in line. They got first in line and then still refused to open in 2021 in the spring. You know, and they had the audacity to open school for one day, one day in May of 2021 for high school students and declare victory that they had opened schools. I mean, are you kidding me?

And then, you know, I left San Francisco in, you know, February 21, because I gave up, they were threatening not to open schools in the fall of 21. And I think it's important to remember that even after they opened in 21, kids were still under onerous restrictions. You know, there's a there's a young man in our film who is from New York, and he lives, he lived in Queens, even after school opened, there were no sports. There were all sorts of prohibitions about who could play sports and how they could play sports. So, you know, there was still six feet of distancing, which we now know came out of nowhere. It was just sort of pulled out of, it's a number pulled out of the air.

And so the kids, you know, for well, a year more, we're dealing with really intense, onerous restrictions that impede their ability to learn. And of course, now we're seeing it's not just learning loss, there's all sorts of developmental setbacks for the youngest children who didn't kind of learn to be in the classroom. And you know, we spoke to teachers for the film high school teachers, the violence in the schools is out of control because kids didn't learn how to kind of move from a junior high mindset, a middle school mindset to a high school mindset. They're disengaged. They're on their phones all day because we told them to be on their phones all day. They're depressed. They're anxious. They're suicidal. And like I said, we told them they

didn't matter and school didn't matter. So what they're also not going to school they're not going it's it's utterly unsurprising maybe they yeah i and i was trying the the the academic and developmental outcome to me beg no conversation it was so obvious like i didn't even focus on that. What I was focused on was the, the, the damage, the emotional damage that you do to a child. And I kept saying eight to 15 year olds, because that seemed to me like the, the group that would be most affected by this. You say to them, you, their most important source of development is their peers. And you tell them you can't be with your peers you can't have contact with the outside world you're going to sit on a screen where your access

to pornography and whatnot is is heightened and people are sending around horrible things and a friend of mine's psychologist that studied all this and the the rate at which that was happening it will blow your mind uh but that data is available it's available uh and then we said should you dare to do anything else you're going to kill your family you're going to kill your family you tell that to an eight-year-old that if they do not shelter in place that was the term used down here the shelter in place which is the phrase used for an incoming nuclear missile. That's when you shelter in place. Otherwise, if you don't shelter in place, you're going to kill your family.

You're eight years old. Can you imagine the profound impact that would have? Yeah, I had a six-year-old. I had every age group, Drew. I had a college student, a high school student, a kindergartner, and a preschooler. Don't ask about the split in between, but I saw every age break. And even for the very youngest children, I will tell you, think about the speech delays because they can't see people's mouths. That's how they learn to talk.

That's how they learn to read. Think about children who are hearing impaired. Think about children with developmental disabilities. There's a child in our film who has Down syndrome. They were denied legally required services. She didn't understand what was happening. I mean, the isolation for this child, who was, I think, eight years old at the very beginning, was so intense, and she didn't know how to ask for help. And I agree with you.

I wrote about this pretty early on, the guilt we inflicted on these kids for wanting any sense of normalcy. They were made to feel as if they were bad people for wanting very basic things at that age, to your point, old. They're supposed to be with their friends, forging their own identities, and they were denied that opportunity. And here was the thing, the other thing that really pissed me off the whole time is every milestone that was missed, right? Whether it was a graduation or my son's preschool graduation outside that we could not have. Everyone, it was like, whatever. It's just a graduation. It's just a what whatever it's just a graduation it's just a dance it's just a homecoming you know what we offered them no hope for when that would end there's a there's a family featured in our film called generation covid they lost their son to suicide when you when you offer no hope as to when it might end and think about that think back when you were a kid those things were everything those milestones

you look forward to in school it wasn't just an education it was your community a kind word from a teacher or a friend could pull you out of the you know the dumps and you look forward to the dance or the game or the debate or whatever thing you did and you had none of that and you had no hope for it ever ending yeah and yeah and i i you're absolutely correct but but i i'm thinking right now about something else i was saying it's going to drive susan crazy maybe i'd put susan on camera for this also because turn your mic on because uh oh no what is it well because back when the the developmental and cognitive delays that were going to come from school closures were becoming so obvious and unending. If you remember, the Ukrainian war broke out in the middle of this.

And I would say every day, listen to the Ukrainian moms who are crossing the border into Poland, a language they do not speak. They're taking their kids. There are reporters waiting at the polish border the poland border talking to these ukrainian women going what do you think how is it what's going on they all said the same thing this is terrible we're leaving our sons and our husbands behind this is awful this is terrible but we're gonna we're gonna come over to poland and these kids they've been out of school for two weeks.

Two weeks. We've got to get back in school in a school system where they don't even speak the language. Two weeks seemed so outrageous that they were in a hurry to get to Poland to put their kids in school. Two weeks. Exactly. And it was 19 months. And the thing I hear from people all the time now is, what are you talking about? Why are you still on about this?

What are you on about? It was a couple of weeks. I'm sorry. Where did you live? Because on March 13th, when all of the public schools in America shut down, that's 50 million American students with very few exceptions, a few schools that went rogue and stayed open. They promised it would be two weeks, three weeks. A full year later, half of them, 25 million students were still in disrupted schooling.

And that went on for another six to eight months. And you're right. There was school during the London Blitz. I mean, school is a priority. Everybody knows we prioritize children and their education. Children are the future. It's a cliche. It's a song. I know it, but it's true. And we put their needs last. It's criminal. It's a song i know it but it's true and we put their needs last it's criminal it's a moral atrocity i'm telling you it really is and people will say things to go ahead finish your thought i you know people will say people will say well it's not all the kids some of the kids are fine yes some of them are fine but even if there is an increase of five percent or ten percent that do not graduate and cannot read,

and we know the reading numbers are horrible already. I mean, there's some cities in America where 0% of the kids in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade can read at grade level. But even if it's just an increase of 5%, that's a catastrophe, not just for this generation, but for all of us. Because if those kids can't work and be productive in the world, I mean, what happens to this country? It's a literal catastrophe. It's a catastrophe. And look at the incidence of depression, anxiety. It's off the chart, and it was predictable. So the reason you and I are pissed is I would have been more than willing

to look at that New York Times article and go, well, finally, everybody's agreeing and this is good. But I'm looking at my restreamed chat room here and people are still like, it was only a few weeks. What's the big deal? It's like, so still people don't appreciate what happened. Number one, that's disgusting. Number two, if it had been really a miscalculation, I would be very forgiving, but it was a, a hysteria that damaged young people. It's a moral and they destroyed lives of anyone who tried to stand up for the

wellbeing of children. That is disgusting. You lost your career. Many people that we do mention Jay Bhattacharya. Aaron Cariotti was kicked out of his job. People lost their professional livelihood for daring to say things like, I'd like to follow my patients more closely and try early treatment. I don't know.

Maybe it would work. Number one. Number two. I'm not sure school closures are a good thing. Let's get the kids back to school. That's number two. Number three was, I don't think you have the data to mandate vaccines for kids to come back to school.

I don't think it's there. Cancel. And kids don't die from COVID. Well, that is a whole other thing that finally- But then the teachers do. So the teachers unions were like, well, I could get sick and die. But they don't either. I mean, the data was there from the beginning on that as well, as you well know, Dr. Ju,

and Dr. J knows as well. From the very beginning, it was very clear that children are at thousands times less risk. And any age person, the elderly are at 3,000 to 4,000 times more risk. There are no elderly people in school, in elementary school. So there was never any reason to keep the children out of school. There never was. And Europe learned this very quickly.

Denmark reopened their schools three weeks in because, to your point, two to three weeks, and they saw the harms done not just to children, but to women in the workforce. There were all kinds of these sort of secondary knock on effects from not having, you know, the ability to send your children to school. And they called us lazy wine moms and all of this. But it's like it's a social compact that the public school system exists. You know, can I homeschool my kids? Am I capable? Probably.

But you got to give me warning and i was working a full-time job so having four kids at home yeah that was that was pretty difficult but the data was there and here's what the schools in denmark and finland and all the northern european countries including the uk you know what they did they opened the doors they opened the windows sometimes they opened the doors there were no fancy filtration systems. There was nothing. They literally opened the doors a month in and that was that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, listen, that is the... Should we tell Jennifer what's coming from China though now? Just to put her in her edge. After the break. But I've noticed there's all this chatter in the press. How do you stay safe during Thanksgiving? How do you stay safe? You stay safe by effing doing what you've always done

when your family gathered. Don't drink and drive. Don't drink too much and get in fights with your family. Maybe reduce your caloric intake on the holidays. You know what I mean? It's just, what do we do to stay safe during Thanksgiving? We need the government to come in and do that. That is a level of insanity that

I just can't even imagine that people have the temerity to put that in a newspaper or a report on television. It's a communist crime. Well, it's also we've just validated the height of neuroses. They used to be the people that were that scared to be around other people and did all the weird stuff and had hands on.

Those were people we felt sorry for. I'm not going to say make fun of them but we knew you know we were gentle with them but we didn't sort of validate their you know intense neurotic fears and by all doing forget validate subject everybody in the world to the same thing and look uh we are human being we are biological beings we get sick that's that's a truth now and and pandemics come and they are terrible let's not let's not let's not downplay how awful pandemics are that people die that's not the point at all lots of people died and we people and in the beginning i do understand that there was some confusion we were doing the best we could i get it i get it but then it became

absurd and they uh you know both the canceling of people who were trying to get the ship righted and the the time it took to get things and the kinds of there's still going on the weird sort of if you if you suggest something that's true you must be a member of one party or another it's like oh yeah what is that all about but yeah but that's that's very bizarre thankfully i'm independent and i've been for years so i just please give me a break i i saw somebody today going well it's a different different issue i gotta take a break jennifer say is here uh tell them uh again is the best place to see the movie we're going to talk about it after the break.

Jennifer, Generation COVID Film Channel at YouTube. Is that correct? I think if you go to YouTube backslash at generation-covid, then you'll find it. Sorry, that's complicated. Or you can go to my website, sayeverything.com. Perfect. All right, we'll be back with more Jennifer Say after this.

If you're trying to figure out the right present for someone, you will not go wrong with gifting the most comfortable sheets, clothing, and accessories that your friends and family have ever felt. Of course, I'm talking about Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth has the softest and most comfortable sheets, blankets, towels, PJs, joggers, and more guaranteed. Susan and I love them. In fact, we still have Cozy Earth sheets on our bed. I slept in them last night. I was thinking of how great they were.

And look at this. I'm wearing one of their super comfortable t-shirts right now. I don't get, I just can't get enough of Cozy Earth. Their sheets are durable, machine washable, and come with a 10-year warranty against defects. So no surprise that Cozy Earth's brand has been featured on Oprah's favorite things for five years in a row. Whether it's their luxury pajamas, super soft bedding, loungewear, or plush bath towels, you will love shopping and gift giving at Cozy Earth. Here's my gift to you this holiday season. Go to CozyEarth.com, enter code Drew to save 40%.

That's CozyEarth.com with code Drew. CozyEarth.com, code drew to save 40 that's cozy earth dot com with code drew cozy earth dot com code drew save 40 susan and i have been looking for nutrition pack great tasting greens drink for a while and then we tried our friends at paleo valleys organic super greens which is superior to what's out there on the market our friends at paleo valley well they think of everything and they've created what's been called a magical green powerhouse. All three delicious varieties, pure, unflavored, strawberry lemonade, and tropical contain 23 certified organic antioxidant-rich superfoods, including the highest quality spirulina. It's also free of cereal grasses, gluten, grains, soy, and dairy, and no added sugars or artificial sweeteners.

And what's more, it delivers digestive enzymes, polyphenols, which are believed to burn fat, and eight essential amino acids. Imagine the time, effort, and cost of trying to make this yourself. It's impossible. Head on over to drdrew.com slash paleovalley, and you will get 15 off your first order all the great products that have there 15 off at dr drew.com slash paleo p-a-l-e-o thanksgiving is almost here which means it's time for the best genucell sale of the year just in time for the holiday save over 60 off both of our personally tailored genucell skincare packages at at GenuCell.com slash Drew so you can look your very best

at all of your Thanksgiving gatherings. Look 10, 15, 20 years younger, guaranteed with the best natural skincare anywhere. Take advantage of GenuCell's best sale of the year and say goodbye to fine lines, crow's feet, puffiness, and dark spots. The GenuCell experience is like no other, but don't take my word for it.

You will look and feel your absolute best or your money back, no questions asked. So for results in 12 hours or less, GenuCell's immediate effects is included for free. Plus, if you go to GenuCell.com slash Drew, now you'll get a free upgrade to priority shipping. That is Genuel.com slash Drew, G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com slash Drew. Back with Jennifer Say again. The movie is Generation COVID. Do check it out. And breaking news, Jennifer, let me read it to you. Outbreak of unknown pneumonia strain hits Chinese schools.

500 miles northeast of the Liaoning ning province uh influx of six children schools being on the brink of closure i don't know where they got that data from children are showing typical symptoms lung inflammation high fever no cough uh no rsv highlighted in the pro-med uh sort of whatever that uh it's a it's an infectious disease thing early notification played a crucial role in alerting doctors scientists and the world health organization to the emerging emerging health crisis so i guess we can be thankful of one thing at least we don't have the who treaty in place so they can shut down the world again with fiat authority over all sovereign elected officials which is what they're looking for.

So I don't want to make light of a serious illness. I didn't hear anything about hospitalizations. I didn't hear anything about consequences. An outbreak of a respiratory virus wouldn't, since when is that news? Now, okay, now if I'm wrong, if it ends up being a more serious thing, I take back what I said and we'll know soon enough. when is that news now? Okay. Now, if it, if I'm wrong, if it ends up being a more serious thing, I,

I take back what I said and we'll know soon enough, but leave that to the infectious disease community before you panic the world. Do you agree? I do agree, but I, I'm nervous even about the infectious disease community because they were part of furthering the fear and panic on COVID. You know, we, we viewed the world through one lens, you know, through the lens of this single respiratory virus, which was mild in the vast majority of people.

And we failed to look at human beings as human beings. I mean, I focused on school closures and the harms to children. And I did that for a reason. I did that because I knew what I was saying was controversial, but I thought that children would be the bridge that I could sort of, you know, convince people through our children. No one wants to harm children or so I thought I was opposed to lockdowns. I was opposed to all of it, but you know, there were so many other horrific things that happened. People died alone. Women gave birth alone. We couldn't have

funerals. I had a very close friend who died in the summer of 2020, not from COVID. We were not permitted to have a funeral. This was a young woman. I mean, I'm still angry about it that we weren't able to have a funeral. I mean, the list goes on and on, as you well know. And this is what happens when you just become so myopic and we let infectious disease quote-unquote experts who are experts in one thing but not human psychology and not sociology and not philosophy and not sort of the poetry of life and you know the things that we need in our lives we let that run the show so I don't even want to listen to them right now to to be honest with you. I understand that. And my sense was it really wasn't the infectious disease physicians. That's why I kept asking, what are they saying?

They're not speaking up. They're not part of this chorus. It really was the politicians and these public health officials. And even, you should be aware of this, even when the public health officials were doctors, they were not infectious disease doctors. They were not interns. They were pediatricians. Because pediatricians historically dealt with the vaccine issues, and that was the public health focus. And so you have pediatricians

making extremely difficult decisions about adult medicine for which they have zero training. Zero training. And that to me was, I could see that having an effect throughout the pandemic. Yeah, I mean, you had Ferrer, your public health person. Well, she's not a doctor. Los Angeles isn't a doctor at all.

I know, she's not even a physician. But these were the voices that were elevated and the voices of doctors like Dr. Bhattacharya She's not a doctor. inning. That's when I kind of went down the rabbit hole when I started reading what he was writing about. They were suddenly shunted off to the side as sort of fringe. I'm sorry, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, this is not fringe. So you can imagine what happened to someone like me, the marketing, the jeans marketing lady who thinks she understands epidemi epidemiology well you know what i'm numerate and i can read the data and i understood that coming you know the data coming out of italy from the princess cruise ship the average age of death was over 80 it was after it was older than the average life expectancy yeah so yeah So, yeah, I wasn't worried about my children. I mean, that was the thing I kept trying to emphasize,

which was, look, yes, we did a horrible job of protecting patients in the nursing home. The group that we were supposed to protect, we didn't even do that. We damaged everybody else, and we didn't protect the people we were supposed to protect. However, I would remind people,

I would always bring up the fact that the average life expectancy for a male admitted to an institutional setting because they had progressed to the point they needed institutional support like a nursing home, average life expectancy is six months without COVID. Right. Six months. Right. Six months. Right. And in the meantime, you have years of life lost of an eight-year-old who you've damaged and induced psychiatric pathology and damaged their developmental cognitive ability. I mean, it's just like these are immeasurably different phenomenon. And by the way, I kept saying also, are you talking to the old people,

the grandparents? Are you talking to them? Are you asking them? Should we sacrifice their grandchildren for this? Should we do that? None of my patients would have said that. They would have asked for a much more reasonable approach. Yeah. I mean, think about it. When you're an older person, what do you have? You look forward to seeing your family and you look forward to seeing your grandchildren. I mean, ask them about themselves, not even about the grandchildren. And I'm sure they'd want what's best, not all of them, but many of them would want what's best for their

grandchildren. But I think for the elderly themselves, what are you locking them in the basement for? They don't have that long to live anyway. Let's just be realistic. Of course, if you said that, you were called a euthanasist. No, they would tell me that. They would say, you're taking away three years of contact with my family how many do i have one four left you're taking half my time remaining with my family away from me that's ask me about that don't don't demand that i give that up or we made them so afraid that they've chosen to stay in their basement still i mean i definitely know some older folks like this and that's really sad too because what are you you waiting for? And Drew, you're right. You know,

you go into the nursing home where you become elderly and you become compromised. A cold can be, you know, incredibly dangerous. So you either choose to live those years of your life out and see your family and enjoy your grandchildren, or you lock yourself in your basement and live them out very alone. That just seems so terribly sad to me and we just mixed up our priorities and we sort of prioritized lengthening their lives instead of enriching their lives so it's sad for the old folks too it's sad all around but we went insane and the reason i want to make the film is because as you said people are already trying to rewrite history and memory hole the whole the reason i want to make the film is because as you said people are already trying to rewrite history and memory hole the whole thing and i want people to hear from these

kids themselves it's not a you know it's not meant to be in any way partisan i do feel the left totally politicized this entire thing because you were accused look i come from the left i was not an independent my whole life i was a left of left of center. I no longer am. And I was accused of being, you know, an alt-right Trumper. I still, I was accused of being a Nazi. I mean, I don't even know what that has to do with anything. And so I want people who supported lockdowns, who didn't, like, I don't want to just preach the choir, right?

I want people to re-examine their priors and hear from the kids and what happened and hear from the parents who lost children, hear from the kids who were left home alone with three siblings and no adult supervision who dropped out of high school. These are the real life stories. Listen to these kids, understand what you supported and think about what you can do different next time, because this cannot happen again. It cannot happen again. And I fear to your point, it will happen again. Because even though there is some acknowledgement, hence the New York Times piece, this is catastrophic. There's still this sort of vibe that's like, well, COVID did it, not the lockdowns.

It was inevitable. It was COVID that did it. And us folks that supported it, whether it's Emily Oster and the Atlantic asking for amnesty or Scott Galloway on Bill Maher saying we need to offer grace and forgiveness for the people who supported closures. No. What about my grace and forgiveness? What about your grace and forgiveness? We were right, but the general theme is for those that were wrong and advocated for extreme measures, they did it for the right reasons, and so they want to be forgiven because their hearts are pure. I might have been right, but it was for the wrong reasons reasons and i'm still a very terrible person and i get no grace you know you are a dark black-hearted individual yeah you were you were trying to hurt people that that is the that was the conceit at the time something's wrong with you you don't care about people you want them to die you don't care murderer yeah and that still goes

on that's still that nonsense still kind of bubbles up here and there it's bizarre and frank again i'm disgusted by so many of these things. It really is a disgusting thing to see people do this. And ultimately, it is this mass formation, right? We were in a hysteria. And this hysteria keeps coming. And we're still in them. We're still locked into a certain amount of hysteria right now on a lot of topics. I mean, it's come up in the Israeli conflict. It's come up. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about what has happened to us that we're able to do this. And I ended up sort of giving up on the psychological sort of

interpretation of this. Although I do think the more narcissism, the more likely you are to see this kind of thing. but that this stuff happens in history. It happens a lot. And you got to really study your history to prepare for these things and understand how they play out. Yeah. I, you know, I, I came to that myself as well. I thought what is wrong with people at this point in time that is like, they've gone completely mad. And then I look back at, you know, across time and geographies and it happens all the time. And most people sadly would rather kind of be silent, stand with the group. In this case, you got to not just be silent and stand with the group, but wrap yourself to yourself in virtue. You know, if you advocated for staying home stay safe and sheltering

in place and all this nonsense um and very few people less than 10 are willing to sort of stand up when they see a thing and know that it's ridiculous and take the slings and arrows that comes with that very few are i think it's less than 10 and that is just true that is humanity across eras across geographies um that's just the way it is the milgram experiment for the same thing out we see it time and time again and somehow when i realized that i felt a little better i don't know why because i just realized i guess that's human nature yeah i i don't know that i felt better but i know what you mean because understanding things has a certain amount of relief associated with it. But my anxiety about what to do about it remains.

Do you know who Mark Cianchese is? I know Mark. You watch his stuff on Twitter? Yeah. Okay. So he really, he believes this is just happening all the time. And he's a very bright guy. And he's a physicist.

And he's a psychologist at the same time. And a physicist. And he's a psychologist at the same time. And I do recommend. He's a good follow on X. Do check it out. But he. Well where was I going with this. I have found myself. Obsessing about.

Yeah. Obsessing about early 20th century Russia. Later 20th century China. 1790 France. I mean I'm just reading reading reading reading about all this stuff i can't get enough of it and the the in addition to my sense of how these things happen and this being a little bit different i hope um but that you know the thing that is mathematically certain and again i know you study political science i think history at stanford um that if the if you pull out the guillotines there's a mathematical certainty you will end on the guillotine uh and so this cancel culture that

flies around people have to understand eventually it turns on you too. Well, I think we're seeing that now. And I think a lot of folks on the far left are experiencing a taste of it with the Middle East conflict. I think we can call it a war at this point. Hopefully there's a ceasefire coming. But you see folks on the far left chanting from the river to the sea and sometimes more violent phrases than that gas the jews we've even seen um and they're getting canceled they're getting job offers rescinded and now they're shrieking about free speech it's interesting now they found their free speech backbone um after demanding the firing and the doxing of people for the last however many years. So, yeah, you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

I don't support it. I mean, I think it's really different. I don't want to get into the Middle East conflict. That's a whole other thing. And I, you know what, March, say your stupid stuff. I don't agree with it. I'm glad I know who you are and what you think. Now, if you provoke violence and if you are barricading Jewish students in the library at Cooper Union College, that's different. That's a physical threat. That is not speech. That is not protected.

But speech, I find it vile. I think you have every right to do it. And that's what I've said from the beginning. I don't know why people couldn't defend my right to say a thing. And that was one of the most upsetting things is friends I had for 30 years. I mean, I lost all my friends. Mark Changizi is a friend now. Those of us who spoke out early and often, we found each other fast because we lost our friends, we lost our communities, and in some cases, we lost our jobs. And I say all the time, I might not agree with you, but I'll defend your right to say that to the death. And no one, colleagues I'd had for 20 plus years, did not defend my right to say a thing outside of work. Right. And so I was seeing a little thread or article, I guess this morning, where they were analyzing or looking at uh elon musk's tweets

over the last five years now look he's become so far right and i thought no no no he hasn't changed a bit he's just gotten louder and more strident on this particular issue which is freedom did you ever imagine that you'd be a freedom fighter at this stage of your life and that that would be something that you would be having to champion in this country? Did you imagine that? Goodness, no. I mean, I had somewhat of a history of standing up for kids. And I experienced a mini cancellation with my first book, which came out in 2008 in a much smaller community i wrote about the abuse in the sport of gymnastics physical emotional sexual abuse back in 2008 before anybody was really talking about it well i learned real fast you're not supposed to talk about it um this was in the

days before me too um you just didn't you know i was dragged i lost my gymnastics friends i you know it was crazy i was called a grifter and a liar. It was the early days of social media, so I didn't really get what was coming. I'm sure it hurt then too. You actually landed back then. You were less used to it. Yeah. It blew my hair back. It prepared me well, I will say, for this little bit of COVID dissension. But 10 years later, I was redeemed when Larry Nassar, the doctor for Team USA, who sexually assaulted over 500 athletes, he went to prison for life in 2018. And I was redeemed for about 37 seconds until I started opening my mouth about COVID. But it came from the same place.

Kids are voiceless. They will try to please the adults around them. And I was compelled to write that first book called Chalked Up because I knew that kids were still being abused in the sport. And as a 40-year-old, I was still suffering from the abuse that happened during my time as a gymnast. I mean, it was an insane world back then, and I knew it hadn't changed very much since the 80s. So I just, I felt it was important that other children not go through what I went through. And that is why I spoke up during COVID, because I knew the children were suffering, and I wish an adult had stood up for me when I was a child. Well, speaking to that point about the children suffering, I hope that those 8 to 15-year-olds that I was so concerned about that were harmed,

I hope they grow up to be adults that are pissed. They should be furious at their government, at all levels of government. And it might induce some change. Are they angry? Are they getting that reflective capacity yet, or are they just going on with their lives? I think there's a young man in the film, and the film is not done yet. At YouTube, if you go check it out at generation.covid,

it's a teaser for the film. It's about a five-and-a-half-minute teaser, and you'll get a sense of the impacts to these children. But there is a young man for the film. It's about a five and a half minute teaser, and you'll get a sense of the impacts to these children. But there is a young man in the film. He's in the trailer. His name is Bam, or he goes by Bam. His name is Garrett Morgan Jr., and he says,

our generation will not forgive and we will not forget. He lost so many opportunities. You know, he comes from a lower- Let's elevate that voice. Let's elevate that kid. Put him on a, that kid should be the poster child. Jay Bonachar is my poster child for the excesses of COVID. Let's let that kid be the poster child for the response to the excesses.

Yeah, it's interesting because Jay opens the trailer and Bam closes it. So that's our book. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, he's been very outspoken. He comes from a not very well-off family in queens he gained a hundred pounds uh from being locked at home depressed he played football he was counting on football scholarship to go to college his family can't afford college he didn't get that the public school kids were locked out of sports when the

private school kids were playing it goes on and on so you know Bayon is a kid he's amazing he is angry he is not going uh he's going to go into the world and he's going to make a difference but what worries me is that I think a lot of kids took the message of you don't matter to heart and they are not going to go into the world angry and raring to go. They're going to go into the world with low self-esteem and an inability to feel that they can actually make a difference in the world because we told them they didn't matter, that their needs didn't matter. And so I think there's going to be a lot of children like that. And then you just have the kids who don't have the basic skills. We have these two young women. They were both 15, maybe 14, 15 in Greeley, Colorado, large immigrant community here.

No role models in their family that had gone to college, even high school. They didn't have any high school graduates in their family. And they both just stopped going to school. They just stopped. They were caring for younger siblings. School wasn't sort of a priority. They were left home alone. I mean, their families, their mothers and their step-parents are all lovely, but the one mom worked a night shift. The teenage girl was left at home with three children to take care of. What is this kid supposed to do so i don't know what's going to happen to those kids

oh my god i'm so upset so um i hope this thing in china doesn't trigger another go ahead oh i wanted to say there are some amazing people that are trying to make a difference like there's this organization in colorado called zero dropouts they go door to door to get the kids to go back to school. Can we not have a national program that takes the Zero Dropouts model and just goes door to door and gets these kids to go back to school? The kids that have made it through have had inevitably some third party mentor, a coach, or someone from Zero Dropouts or a guidance counselor. There have been amazing people that have helped get some children back on track. And I would just like to see some sort of national program.

Oh, hell yes. Or at least statewide, for God's sakes, that states can pick up. But to your point, that actually bears out in the psychiatric literature, too, which is that a single positive sustained relationship outside the home dramatically changes the outcome for kids by adulthood. Yeah. So chalked up those. Chalked up. Yeah. Let's put the other book up, too.

Let's put up a more recent one, which is the Levi Strauss story. I'm so pissed at them, by the way. I'm wearing my non-Levi jeans today. Who is their biggest competitor? I'm going to go buy some jeans from them. Depends what your price point is. Lucky brand? Wrangler is actually the next biggest. Wrangler is still the next biggest. Buy your Wranglers because i really do think that uh that the pocketbook right now is about the only way you can really get people's

attention and i've noticed that kind of thing has started to happen a little bit and i now i feel like a moral duty to do that kind of thing to to make some points i i don't know i'm curious people i'm looking at the um rest here. There's a lot of I agrees coming by there. I wanted to point out too, Drew, that book Chalked Up, that was published in 2008, but USA Gymnastics didn't take action against Larry Nassar

until 2015. So there were quite a lot of bad stuff going on for many, many years, and people did not listen. I would like to add a point to that um the first reports of nasser's um criminal behavior came in 1997 and 1998 and were brushed under the rug so he was he went on for decades yeah it's pretty wild the rot it's funny i've gotten to know uh this is a this is now a joke i'm going

to tell you i'm going to this is to make light of some of this stuff not to not to undermine what you're saying but uh i've gotten to know nastia lukin very well and uh she and she was yeah and she was joking at lunch one time. We went to the Jordanian desert together and did this special forces show for Fox. And as we were sort of hanging out beforehand, she goes, I was asking about this stuff. And she goes, yeah, I was wondering, what's wrong with me that he didn't abuse me?

The guy did not abuse me. I don't understand. Is there something wrong with me? And she said there were a couple of them. They were joking, but they started asking those kinds of questions of one another. But as always, it always works that way with perpetrators, right? They pick the ones that, even if it's just instinctive,

that they know they can get away with stuff. All right, well, Jennifer, listen, I'm running out of steam because this gets so frustrating for me. It's just so fleeted. Susan, do you have anything you want to ask Jennifer? Hold on one quick second. We'll put Susan on. No, I think she's been very thorough, and she's a great mom,

and she's thinking about her kids first. And if I had kids her kid's age during this, I would have pulled my hair out. Yeah, you would have been the one in the hospital. I mean, my kids were 27 28 but they also were completely changed look at the camera look better if you look at the camera so um yeah but i i worry about the kids that were in middle school and high school and early college because it just it changed their lives and i yeah i've seen my kids change but they're adults but they're still changed yeah they've had to you know it rocked

everybody yeah and i feel so bad and now they're talking about this new virus in china and it's affecting children so you know it's it's just another panic horn moment so if it really the problem is if it really is something how do we know how we who are we going to trust for the information i don't know who to look to anymore i mean i guess jay badacharya let's go to jail let's go to the guys that were actually right to drink well it's it's right before the holidays too so they're trying to you know stir things up for us. It's just ridiculous. I feel like they tried with monkeypox, which I'm not supposed to call monkeypox. I know.

But that didn't really work. Yeah. Why didn't it work? They tried like crazy. Because we're learning. We're learning. And that was so obviously a certain thing. And it was just like any awake person could judge that to be the case. But Susan, didn't I say when the, oh, what is this now?

What are you putting up there? This is the timeline of the public health emergencies of international concern, how many they've just slowly added up including monkey pox yes they've suddenly ramped up the number of uh infectious outbreaks that are of uh international concern and yet none of them have been of international concern but susan didn't i say when the when the mom when the moms get worked up that's when things are going to change yeah the moms are going to change the world that's the only way it's going to happen. And so, Jennifer, I suggest you put on your torch and you get your pitchfork and lead them on, please. You know what?

I've had my torch and my pitchfork. Look, what else can they do to me now? Nothing else can be done. I've been outspoken from the beginning. I do have a cohort of mom and have been some other amazing dads as well. And we can't let them off the hook. Gavin Newsom is trying to rewrite history. Our governor, or your governor,

not mine anymore, is trying to pretend he had nothing to do with it. That's a blatant lie. That's a lie. It's disgusting. It's really, really gross and we can't let them get away with it because they will do it again in a heartbeat and we cannot afford to have that happen.

That's the problem. That is the problem. We need to learn from this. And I'm not one of these people that thinks people should be punished, but I do think they should be uncomfortable and they should be forced to apologize. But I don't want to see what happened to you and your place of employment happen to a bunch of other people because they were in a panic. Some people might want to see some real consequence, and I'm sure there will be some real consequences along the way. If your job is public health, which should be about total health, right? Not just the prevention of one infectious disease. If your job is about

population level health, then I think you probably did your job pretty poorly in this case. So I actually, it's not punishment. I mean, some people are sort of calling for heads, you know, kind of, but I don't really think you deserve to have your job. You're not very good at it. You really didn't care for the public's health. You in my case i led uh the world's biggest most famous and most beloved jeans brand my advocating for young children to get to go to school had nothing to do with my ability to perform that job and by the way i was right and by the way i worked for the brand that you know the campaign that i led was use your voice so apparently it was use your voice but not that voice right yes. Yes. That's what happened

to Aaron Cariotti. I found a few Aaron. He's a bioethicist who said, now I've got to walk the walk. I got to raise my hand and go, you don't have the quality. You don't have the ability to make these mandates scientifically. It's just not there. Fired. So here we are trying to put everything back together again and make sure this doesn't happen again. Caleb, I hear your voice in there. What's going on? Oh, no. I just wanted to say, Jennifer, I think a lot of very good, very moral people would have just taken the million dollars and shut up. And I think you've done an amazing job just sticking with it, putting your message out there. That was the harder path to go. My parents raised me well. I probably would have taken the million dollars and shut up.

I probably would have. But I'm not sure your wife would have if her kids were well-being was on the line. No, I'm not kidding. It's a mom thing. It's a mom thing. It's true. It's true. There are some things that are worth way more than that. So I applaud you for that decision. And I hope that you have many rewards in your future for making the right choice there. Thank you. I mean, people say to me all the time, why was that the hill you were willing to die on? And I say every single time, why weren't you? If you aren't willing to stand up for kids and our basic freedoms like speech, then I don't think you have a hill. And, you know, have a good time looking yourself in the mirror and living with that.

And I think one of your subtitles of one of your books was how I lost my job but found my voice, something like that, right? Yeah, that was for Levi's I mean I had my voice before but I really you know kind of and now I'm sort of known as I mean I obviously I found my I found my loud voice my my outdoor voice I found a very loud voice and I'm more of a platform you know so any attempt to silence me didn't really work and i just really last question look was yeah go ahead you really hope finish i was just gonna say the book is an exhortation to speak up i know it's scary i know there are risks uh but if we do it together we're not alone and they can't cancel us all they can't yes so stand with me they can try but it won't work i'm here i'm with you i'm with you last question is as someone that studied history do you do you have a sense of what this all is and

how this happens have you learned something about it now that we've lived through or living through these waves of mass formations oh goodness if i knew that um i mean i do think for whatever reason and i don't know if woke is a word you don't like or do like, but I'm going to use it as a shorthand. I think, you know, oppressors and oppressed. And the oppressed have a right to any behavior and the oppressors are always evil no matter what they do. And I was billed as an oppressor in all of this. And I do think that dynamic and wokeness is the name for it right now is a slow and steady move towards socialism, communism, and that. And, you know, history would bear that out as well. And so I think it's important that we do away with all of that. Or serious, serious conflict, which is the other place it goes. So, yes, I think you're absolutely right.

I think that's a great place to finish. I thank you for being here. Don't be afraid to say that either. A lot of people are afraid to say that they just they can't you know they kind of oh you know communism is right left of woke definitely but people don't appreciate there are something like 30 percent of uh gen zers are there millennials or have a favorable sort of a notion that maybe communism is the direction we should go kind of thing and it's that you really we're really not years are there millennials or have a favorable sort of a notion that maybe communism's with the direction we should go kind of thing and it's that you really we're really not we're not teaching history that's what that means we are not teaching history that's the thing that scares me the most

you know after decades of safe spaces and i mean i think a very significant percentage of gen z's and i have two of them actually don't believe in free speech they don't yeah yeah they think you and i shouldn't get to say what we think if it hurts their feeling yeah that's that is uh that's and after you send them through college they come back marxists so prepare yourself but so what i don't get and then I'll end here is like there was some of that when I was in college too and we're probably close

to the same age I'm a Gen X and it was like a thing you did in college and then you didn't do that anymore but that's not what's happening you know they come out

and they bring that to the workplace which by the way they're not actually communists they're working in corporate America and calling for the heads of you know the oppressors

so it's all sort of bullshit anyway and they don't really know what they're working in corporate America and calling for the heads of, you know, the oppressors. So it's all sort of bullshit anyway. And they don't really know what they're talking about. And they're screaming about river to the sea, and they don't know what river. And they're sort of, you know, looking at this current conflict as a brown or black and brown versus white conflict, which is not what it is. But you're right, we're not teaching history and they don't understand the perils of this orthodoxy. Just study your history, everybody. Study your history. Please, dear God, study your history. So funny because our kids were just out of college and we had to live with three Marxists. It was great. That must have been fun. They figured it out. Oh, it was great. They figured it out. Reality is a way of coming in all right well that's really funny

all right jennifer i thank you so much and it's a say anything uh sey or say everything say anything right say everything say there it is up there on our on our screen and there is the book and then the documentary trailer and i hope you'll uh not be a stranger thanks for having me happy thanksgiving okay you got it happy thanksgiving thank you so much and that susan you wanted a chance to say that so let's get susan on camera she wanted to wish everyone both everyone that works with us all of our guests all of our caleb and and uh thank you i'm thankful for our team here at Ask Dr. Drew. I'm thankful for my lovely husband who is always keeping me on my toes. And I'm very thankful that my family is healthy and happy. And we're all going to be together for Thanksgiving this year and not worry about wearing a mask.

We're so lucky to have a great audience and hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving. And our sponsors have been great. They really have been. Thanks to our sponsors and their families. Susan, I don't know about this shot, but I'm over your shoulder there on the computer screen. And so they can see me at the same time. I don't know if you can see that. That's cute.

That's interesting. I didn't even set the camera up how it should be. Caleb's moving me in closer. If you roll back towards the computer screen, then I'll be more prominent. It doesn't matter. I think Caleb's behind me, too. Oh, yeah.

Look, Caleb's on the screen there. No, that's you. That's you a second time. We just set up the studio. I'm very thankful for that. And we're going to be having in-studio guests coming up so that everybody can see the rest of the room. And yeah, everybody have a great Thanksgiving.

Yes, we really wish everyone a lovely Thanksgiving. Enjoy yourself. Live, everybody. I want people to live and enjoy. And enjoy is the word. And that's something that's a shared experience with people you care about. And just lean into that. This is what they were paying no attention to for the last several years

and still not concerned about when they tell you you have to be careful when you gather with your family at Thanksgiving. Stop it. Stop it. Yeah. We need to be together. We need human connection. Oh, boy, do we.

Everybody's looking forward to it. It's just so nice because we don't see everybody together except for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And next week we are back on Monday. Is Mark Garagos my guest on Monday? He's coming into the studio? Yes. We're going to have some new cameras set up. I hope we can get this all going. But I'm looking forward to it. Okay, that's 3 o'clock guest

and 28th noon with Kelly Victory and Seamus Bruner. December 4th, Tom Rents comes by. Nicole and Jemmy on December 5th. Ed Dowd back with Kelly on and Seamus Bruner. On December 4th, Tom Rents comes by. Nicole and Jemmy on December 5th. Ed Dowd back with Kelly on December 6th. So we'll see you. Have a great Thanksgiving. We'll see you on Monday with Mark Ergos.

Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be

sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. Call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.