Ask Dr. Drew - Snowflake Cops Lose To Afroman: The Pro-USA, Peace-Loving, Free Speech Hero America Needs w/ Stuart Brotman, Jay Dyer & EJ Antoni – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 602

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

Even the most pro-cop MAGA voter is celebrating Afroman’s total defeat of the Ohio police officers who flagrantly interfered with his Constitutional rights – and then whined like babies after bein...g caught on his home security cameras. Their attempts to censor a music video that Joseph “Afroman” Foreman produced from the footage simply triggered a national Streisand Effect – and united America behind a new mascot of free speech. First Amendment expert Stuart Brotman breaks down the legal magnitude of Afroman’s case. Author and geopolitics expert Jay Dyer exposes the elite’s plans to manipulate the masses – by citing the globalists’ own published writings. Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni reviews the newly released 2026 Index of Economic Freedom, detailing the massive economic rebounds in the United States and Javier Milei’s Argentina. Stuart N. Brotman has served in four Presidential administrations on a bipartisan basis and is Digital Media Laureate at The Media Institute. A former visiting professor at Harvard Law School, his analysis on free expression has reached over 500 million readers worldwide, along with audiences on major networks such as ABC, NBC, CNN, C-SPAN, and NPR. He is the author of Free Expression Under Fire available at https://a.co/d/0eB0B56h Jay Dyer is an author, comedian and TV presenter known for his deep analysis of Hollywood, geopolitics, and culture. His graduate work focused on psychological warfare. He is co-creator and co-host of the television show Hollywood Decoded. He has been featured on Tucker Carlson, hosted The Alex Jones Show for 3 years, and appeared on Timcast and in debates with some of the world’s top debaters. Follow at https://x.com/JayDyer E.J. Antoni Ph.D. is Acting Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, Chief Economist, and Richard Aster Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Follow at https://x.com/realejantoni 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 • STRONG CELL – If you want to feel more like your younger self, go to https://strongcell.com/ and use code DREW for 20% off. • AUGUSTA PRECIOUS METALS – Thousands of Americans are moving portions of their retirement into physical gold & silver. Learn more in this 3-minute report from our friends at Augusta Precious Metals: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/gold⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or text DREW to 35052 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/fatty15⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • 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 15% off your first order at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/paleovalley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • 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 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Executive Producers • Kaleb Nation - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://kalebnation.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • Susan Pinsky - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/firstladyoflove⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Content Producer • Emily Barsh - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/emilytvproducer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Hosted By • Dr. Drew Pinsky - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/drdrew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:03 A lot of good stuff today. Stuart Broughtman's going to be here. He has served under four presidential administrations, and we're going to talk a little bit about free speech. A lot in the news as he and I were discussing off the air right now. And of course, the headline is about Afro-Man, but there's money more things to be discussed today. Jay Dyer, author, comedian, TV presenter. His analysis of Hollywood, geopolitics, culture. He had graduate studies on psychological warfare. I'm very interested in listening to Jay. People are excited about hearing him. I'm seeing it on the restream now. And then finally, again, a pack show, Jay Antoni, acting director of the Thomas A. Row Institute for Economic Policy Studies. Amongst other things, we're going to talk about economic freedom and the effects of the war in Iraq on our economy and the markets after this. Our laws as it pertain to substances are draconian and bizarre. The psychopaths start this fact. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction. Fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous.
Starting point is 00:01:01 I'm a doctor for a sick. Where the hell 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 Loveland all the time, educate adolescents, and to prevent, and to treat. Do you have trouble?
Starting point is 00:01:16 You can't stop, and you want to help stop it. I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. One plus one equals more of the greatest stories. Hulu on Disney Plus. Stories about survivors. The most dangerous planet.
Starting point is 00:01:37 Family, retribution. Murder. Prophecy. Beer and propane Why are we doing? Blake Panney, Ultimate Soldier Chicago, all right.
Starting point is 00:01:49 The best of the best stories now with even more from Hulu. Amazing. Have it all with 3-1 Disney Plus. As I said, Stuart Broughtman joins me in just a second. The book is Free Expression Under Fire. We have a link to the book, I believe. I can't wait to read it. God knows, as I've said,
Starting point is 00:02:14 repeatedly as a result of the schooling of COVID pandemic. I came out of that uncanny experience saying, as you heard me say many times, I did not understand that at this stage of my life, freedom, and particularly freedom of speech would be a major concern of mine, and that the courage to stand up to tyrannical excess was not something I ever contemplated that would need to be necessary in this country. yet both those things have become terribly important to me at this late stage of the game. Stuart Brotman, thank you for joining us. Hi, Drew. It's great to be here.
Starting point is 00:02:57 So I have three topics I want to get into. Let's dispense with the headline that Caleb put out about Afro-Man. We're going to also talk about Section 230 in the recent meta finding, and then Missouri v. Biden. But I'll just give you my bias on Afro-Man, and then you tell me my bias is justified. First of all, I love this guy, Afro-Man. Whether the courts found his favor or not, I thought he's fantastic. I do think that courts made the right judgment. However, when the court was, when this case was underway, I thought, well, good that people
Starting point is 00:03:32 can go after people for libel and slander when it affects their lives. I mean, I feel like we need more of that, but I love Afro-Man. So tell me where you come down on this case. Well, let's just peel the onion back a little bit. then I can give you a little bit of perspective. So this is a case that fundamentally dealt with defamation. And defamation is not covered by the First Amendment, meaning that you could go to court and sue someone for saying something
Starting point is 00:04:03 or writing something about you that injures your reputation. And so in this case, the police officers who essentially broke into Afro-Man's apartment said that they had been taped by the security cameras, and obviously he did a number of things with the video, and they thought that getting those videos out there ruined their reputation. And so they sued for defamation. So defamation is sued on a state level. There's no federal law of defamation.
Starting point is 00:04:36 This case took place in Ohio, and so it had to follow the Ohio law. and this was a jury trial, and so essentially the jury had to hear evidence about what went on in the particular case and decide whether or not, in fact, the police officers had been defamed by Afro-Man. The judgment, as you said, was in favor of Afro-Man, which meant that the plaintiffs, the police officers, could not recover anything. They were ruled to be not defamed. And so clearly from the free expression standpoint, that might be positive. As you said, clearly we have the ability, still have the ability to go into court and sue for defamation, which of course protects reputation.
Starting point is 00:05:27 And so those two concepts sort of work hand in hand, and they were working hand in hand here as well. and the ultimate judgment, of course, was that these officers were not defamed because clearly Afro-Man had the ability to take his video and do whatever he wanted with those videos, including made music videos. So I'm very comfortable with what the jury found
Starting point is 00:05:57 of the decision, and I think clearly they followed the law. Yeah, me too, although I want to see more as somebody who's the object of defamation on a regular basis. And I understand public figures have a different sort of standard that they have to be arise to. I want to see more of that because people at least need to think about what they're doing to other people before they go after their reputations. And in a weird way, I would argue that public figure reputation is even more important.
Starting point is 00:06:29 And so, you know, the way that this has been so loose for so long, So my, again, my first thing was to champion the cops for doing this. And then I looked at it. I thought, oh, no, no, this is, I'm on, I'm on team Afro, man. And he, just call him a clever dude. I think he's a clever and entertaining guy. All right. Well, that's that case.
Starting point is 00:06:52 I think we have to. Yeah, and just getting back to your point here, the courthouse open, the courthouse doors are still open, which means that anyone can still go into a court in any state in the United States and sue for defamation. So that remains a continuing right. It is, and yet it isn't. It's not something that practically, in the entrance of prudence, you can actually, you know, spend your money on, expect to have satisfaction. You know, it's that kind of diathesis right now. Understood. Yeah. Okay. So the next thing, I'm very interested in these other cases. Now, you had brought up
Starting point is 00:07:33 the meta case where they were charged some $375 million or something. But my understanding is what's really interesting in this case, this was handed down today. It's not so much that they've got a smacking because $300 million is nothing to meta, but that they were able to get around Section 230 in order to find this judgment. So my question is A, is that true? Have they really broken, they found a hole in the dike on 230? And is that the end of this case or is it going to be appealed because of? of that very issue?
Starting point is 00:08:06 Well, certainly it's going to be appealed. And these cases, and there was one yesterday and one today, similar circumstances, but those were done under state law. And so the state law was product liability, saying that when Google or meta develops a product like an algorithm, they know what they're doing. And that means that they might be able to figure out this is addictive. kids. So it's a very interesting legal theory, which is not related to the content, but really related to the development of the algorithm. And I think the critical question there is going
Starting point is 00:08:47 to be whether or not Section 230 would protect them from product liability. And this is a very novel area. Section 230, as you know, was written into law in 1976. And, and it's a very novel area. And as part of the Communications Decency Act, which is part of the Telecommunications Act. And that essentially gives very broad liability for companies like Google and Meta when they are essentially the sort of the middlemen for content going through the internet.
Starting point is 00:09:23 And Congress felt that it was important to give them that liability in order for them to grow and for the internet to prosper. So that was a theory behind, what Section 230 is all about. And of course, it's been a lot of controversy subsequently regarding whether or not those companies should continue to have what's pretty much blanket immunity.
Starting point is 00:09:48 And so in this case, this is testing that immunity, but it's doing it from a little bit of a different route, which is product liability. And so my question to you is I want you to put on your crystal brain. and give me some prediction on is this going to be the beginning of not so much of a, what should we say, rescinding of Section 230, but a whittling down of some of their excesses? I think ultimately the answer is no. I think there are a lot of headlines today. And I think part of that is when we look at the Supreme Court. So the U.S. Supreme Court will be the ultimate arbiter of this. And the Supreme Court has had in the past couple of years the ability to whittle down Section 230. And they have totally ducked it. They don't want to deal with this. And part of it is because Congress, essentially passed the law, particularly the court now wants to defer to what Congress has done. The court doesn't want to say we're going to make the rules here.
Starting point is 00:10:57 So I would suspect if this goes up to appeal and it will go up to an appeal, then ultimately it could wind up at the Supreme Court. And then if we look at what the Supreme Court has done in the past few years, the Supreme Court will figure out a way to duck this in terms of saying we want to confront. Section 230. They don't want to do it. I don't think they will. Even from the product liability standpoint, because that could be their backdoor in to kind of narrow it a little bit? It could be if that was sort of their preference. But clearly what we've seen so far is they don't really want to deal with this whole area at all. And so I don't think they want to open up a little
Starting point is 00:11:40 bit of backdoor. And then even if you went back to the legislative history, which is what you would look at in terms of how this law was passed, there was no discussion of product liability. And if you look at the history of product liability law, it really has very little to do with Section 230 now. Ah, okay. So it's a, they might not even, if that's true, they might not even hear the case, it sounds like, right? As possible, they might deny what's called certiorari hearing the case, or they might confront it.
Starting point is 00:12:15 you're going to get a lot of headlines over the next 2448 hours saying this is the beginning of the dam breaking. I'm not sure it is. That's interesting to me. But I believe, I'm going to use my crystal ball and say, I believe the reason that they have been deferring is they couldn't understand it. They didn't have a context to make any change. It was too, went to the Wild West. And they wanted to err on the side of freedom and the legislation. But I think things are kind of clarifying themselves in terms of safety, you know, in terms of the public safety. And I don't know.
Starting point is 00:12:53 Again, I worry about that too because public safety is exactly how we end up with COVID. And it's also how we end up with Robespierre, right? Committee for Public Safety. That's what he was the head of. So I always worry when safety comes in as a priority. I think there's another political consideration, which is that Congress really doesn't want to do anything about. Section 230. And so the courts would say, gee, if Congress doesn't want to do anything, why are we stepping in to essentially substitute our judgment here?
Starting point is 00:13:24 It's really interesting because, as you know, both Biden and Trump have said that they wanted Section 230 reform and Congress essentially yawned. I'm not surprised at that, that's for sure, because it would be sort of, ooh, some of their sources of money. might dry up a little bit or might be restricted because that's that's not that doesn't seem the way of our representative government these days all right so the last case is the one i'm really interested in and was relieved to see you know the way they judge but of course as with i guess i'm learning with many free speech judgments it never goes all the way in one direction or the other um it's it's pretty good this is missouri versus biden uh and i had several friends in that case they actually tried to get me into that case and I wish for all the, you know, the transgressions against my own personal
Starting point is 00:14:20 freedoms, I'm glad I, I wish I had, but I'm glad I didn't. It would have been a, you know, terrible undertaking. But I'm glad that they found a historic settlement, as this headline says. Tell me what you think about it. Well, I think it's important to note that it's a settlement and that, and it's a long-term settlement. It's a 10-year settlement. So in terms of what that means long-term. So the issue here, obviously, is what role is government playing in suppressing different speech or different content on the internet by essentially jaw-boning private companies like Google and meta to take down or to suppress certain speakers? And in this case, the settlement essentially acknowledged that's happening. And as a result, the government has now
Starting point is 00:15:10 agreed for 10 years to essentially not have that sort of action take place. So that that is historic and it's a long-term settlement. On the other hand, it is not a precedent for anything. So it's not a court opinion, can't really cite it as a precedent. And if situations like this come up again, then essentially they would have to be negotiated and litigated all over again. And so what we may is potentially more lawsuits in this area if situations like this arise. And then, of course, people would be encouraged that the government now has settled here. And it might make the government a little more wary in terms of how much they want to join, you know, what I call jawbone, or essentially pressure some of these private companies from either taking down content
Starting point is 00:16:06 or not allowing the content to be on in the first place. I don't know. We've seen how the European governments fall in love with that stuff. I worry that somebody will get back in power who starts doing this again out of safety and carrying and all these crazy priorities that are misguided. Do you feel like there will be a precedent set? Not necessarily. Again, precedents are typically set because you have cases and cases can be cited. This is not a case. This is just a settlement between the government and obviously the litigants. And in fact, I would suspect that the settlement agreement actually says in the agreement that this is not precedential,
Starting point is 00:16:55 which means that it can't be used anyplace else. It doesn't mean that people might not be encouraged by it and say, gee, if the government settled here, I have a similar situation. Why don't we sue? and then try to reach a settlement. Obviously, in order to do that, you are going to have to go through that litigation process again. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:17 And then finally, tell me about the book. What is the book about it? While the book says it all, free expression under fire, I'm sure you're aware of the under fire part of it. The free expression part is a way to think about not just free speech, although we talk a lot about it, but free expression in its fullest form, which obviously under the First Amendment, includes freedom of the press as well.
Starting point is 00:17:44 And free press and free speech really go together. So part of what I want to do is to really open people's eyes and thinking about free expression as opposed to just these two little silos or two big silos of freedom of press and freedom of the speech. And the other part is how do we defend these? ideas across the political spectrum. Because we have so much politicization and essentially parties on both sides looking at this through their own lenses, I think we can begin to develop some better consensus around free expression. We can do that across the political spectrum. So in the book itself, I tend to be relatively optimistic in terms of saying we have people from
Starting point is 00:18:35 all parts of the political spectrum who agree of the importance of free expression, let's begin to have conversations about how we can achieve not only greater consensus, but in society itself a greater respect and value for free expression. You know, it's interesting when you mentioned free expression, I think, about Robert Mapplethorpe, And I always thought that the left brought us that those concerns and pushed our face to the mirror on them in ways that I thought were productive. And now they're trying to shut down free speech. I'm so confused. Help me.
Starting point is 00:19:20 Well, there is a lot of confusion. I think part of it which the book talks quite a bit about is the idea that what we really don't have a culture of free expression. and we like to talk a lot about it, but when we strip away as Americans, we don't have a common culture of free expression. I think one of the important parts here is we need to build a culture, not just a culture built around litigation or built around polarizing forces. And so there are so many things that we could be doing on a day-to-day basis to build that culture. It's going to take a while. I recognize that. We're probably not even going to be alive when a cultural change takes place.
Starting point is 00:20:05 But it's possible. Let's take the Second Amendment. 50 years ago, obviously, the discussion about the Second Amendment is far different than it was today because we have had a cultural change in this country around the Second Amendment. I think we could do that around the First Amendment, but again, it took about 50 years for us to move that needle with the Second Amendment, and you have to start someplace. So I have a number of ideas and suggestions about how to do that, and we can talk about that, or people obviously can go and get the book and read more about it. Am I getting it right that the Maplesorp stuff and the
Starting point is 00:20:49 pornography assessments or, you know, what is pornography? Isn't that where we were really fighting for that cultural change? And hadn't we been there before? Well, yes, but we weren't fighting as across the political spectrum. And that's really an important part. We need to have this consensus. So if you sort of thought about this as 100%, you probably have 15% on the far left and 50% of the far right. But you know, there's this big middle.
Starting point is 00:21:20 There's this 70% that we have. So let's try to talk about that 70%. And if we can begin. begin to move that 70%. Maybe that will affect the 15% either way. But even if it doesn't, I would take 70% has a good consensus for our country. And that 70% I've been very worried about
Starting point is 00:21:44 since the COVID hysteria, and they are the ones that we should be focused on. I agree. And as we say, from your mouth to God's ears. Thank you, Stuart, for spending time with us and thank you for the book. And it's great being here, Drew. Thanks so much.
Starting point is 00:21:57 You bet. Thank you. Right, next up, I'm watching the stream, and everybody's very excited about our next guest. I'm going to tell you where you can find him is at Jay Dyer, J-Y-D-Y-E-R on X, YouTube at J-D-J-D-Y-D-R-R-on-X. YouTube at J-D-J-Dier, and his book is, he has several, three books on esoteric Hollywood. The latest, the third is sex cult and apocalypse in films. Got a lot to talk to Jay about right after this. I've spent most of my career dealing with illnesses that shorten life.
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Starting point is 00:26:29 YouTube and X, it is at Jay Dyer and Caleb. I don't know if you're going to throw all three books up there or just the most recent one. I don't know how Jay has time to do comedy. He's been writing so many damn books and doing so much work in his own educational training. Jay, welcome to the program. Thank you, Dr. Drew. Glad to be here with you. I seriously, I don't know how you have time for comedy with all the writing.
Starting point is 00:26:53 and all the training you've been doing. But I'm glad you're here doing all of it. Thank you. Yeah, well, you know, that was not something that I really thought I would end up doing. But I think the way that media works now, you kind of do your own thing. And then the more of your personality that comes forth, you just kind of roll with it. And so I ended up kind of falling in line with a lot of the comedian podcasts and doing shows with them and enjoying it quite a bit. And so ended up writing for Sam Hyde the last year for his show.
Starting point is 00:27:23 It's been a roller coaster ride. It's a lot of fun, but I also like doing the educational stuff on the other hand as well. Sam is another bright guy, and that is not lightlifting writing for Sam, I assume. But let's talk about, Sam is a really smart guy. Let's talk about Hollywood and the concerns and observations you have. As somebody trained in certain kinds of psychology, to how people are manipulative, let's talk about that first. are you worried about as I am, I'll turn over my cards, the behavior of crowds. I feel like we have been a tendency to mob action that emerges periodically in history,
Starting point is 00:28:10 whether you start with 1790 France or, you know, 1932 Germany, whatever it is, we're in one again, it feels like. And there's lots of true believers flying around engendering chaos. is this what's happening? Are you concerned about that? Yes. You know, you say chaos. Chaos.
Starting point is 00:28:32 For chaos, you know. Don't you know? It's just chaos. Depends on what you mean, though. I couldn't help. I thought you were going to go into Maxwell Smart. I had to go straight, Jordan Peterson. The word chaos triggers Peterson in my head.
Starting point is 00:28:48 But, you know, like you, actually, I studied the French Revolution pretty in depth as well. when I was in undergrad, a professor who was a specialist in that. And you're right, I think, to make the parallels between mob psychology, which was really kind of, I guess a modern thought getting collated, I guess you could say, with socialism and communism and Marxism. But I just covered a book on my channel a few months ago by a, he was an allied psychologist during the time of World War II.
Starting point is 00:29:20 His name was Jus Merlou. and he wrote a book about mob psychology many, many decades before, you know, Dr. Malone talked about mass formation psychosis and this kind of stuff. And he said that he noticed that the socialist movements had really perfected this technique and quite a few chapters in that book that were applicable to Hollywood and the way Hollywood kind of forms attitudes and creates culture, culture creation is something we talk about a lot on my channel. But also kind of predicting what social media would do.
Starting point is 00:29:48 And then when you get this sort of melding of fame, internet fame, social media with the idea of Hollywood and influencers kind of being the new A-listers and this kind of stuff, it's a very toxic, dangerous mix. But it's also something that social engineers have studied to perfect in order to kind of control society. And are you seeing evidence of that kind of premeditated activity from Hollywood? Yeah, you know, one of the things that I focused on in my grad work and I ended up just kind of putting that work into more of a popular, readable book rather than something that was, you know, academic that nobody's ever going to read, you know, this master's thesis or anything like that. It's just going to sit there on a shelf. I thought, why not take this information and kind of make it accessible and readable? And I think everybody's probably familiar with the way Hollywood uses product placement. You know, that's a classic style of getting people to purchase a product because James Bond was associated with it or something like that. But it gets a little more nefarious as you get deeper into subliminals. I think everybody's heard of that kind of stuff. But beyond that, there's also war propaganda.
Starting point is 00:31:00 There are countless movies made in concert and in consultation with the CIA for many decades. That was something that was done a long time ago, more on the down low. So in the 1940s, even back to the 1920s, Howard Hughes, you know, he would make war propaganda films. the OSS would work with Hollywood to make certain screenplays and films. And even ALS actors have been famous spies all over the place. Ron Rangel was in those films. Exactly, absolutely. Jimmy Stewart was an FBI produced movies.
Starting point is 00:31:34 You have people like Julia Child, the famous chef, TV chef. She was actually an OSS operative, which people don't know that before she was a chef. Which is hysterical. Yeah, well, you know, in the third book, actually, It did a whole chapter just on this because it was so fascinating to see all these people that people didn't know about Sterling Hayden. He was an operative for the OSS. John Ford made films in concert with the OSS. And then as you get up into the 70s and 80s, same thing going on there.
Starting point is 00:32:02 Even to the point of, you know, Ben Affleck recently was touting the CIA and how glad he was to have worked with him to make films like Argo. You have films like Zero Dark 30 all being made openly with the CIA. So what used to be kind of a secretive, you know, behind closed doors things is now kind of an open. Sterling Hayden is Sterling Holloway is Winnie the Pooh. Who was Sterling Hayden? Well, he was one of the A-listers back in the 40s, a very, very prominent kind of, you know, up there with like Humphrey Bogart and Carrie Grant. And Kerry Grant, by the way, was a spy too. He would he would spy for the OSS. So hold on. I want to I want to push back a little bit and say, you know, because I've been around all this stuff. too for a long time. And whenever somebody's producing anything for media consumption,
Starting point is 00:32:52 they just, they get kind of captured by what works. They kind of A-B tests a lot. And then what works, they go and they launch into it and then they build momentum. So it's rarely, in my experience, premeditated. And the same thing with the CIA involvement. They get the CIA in and the FBI in and the military end to tell us how it really happens. To give us the deal. We want this to be authentic. And then they don't understand that with that authenticity comes a bunch of subliminal messages that the CIA makes sure they put into their films. So in a way, they're just useful idiots. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be overly, you know, simplistic as if it's all or nothing, as if everyone's part of a grand conspiracy. I certainly don't believe that.
Starting point is 00:33:37 I think there's a lot of different levels to this. But, you know, there's a lot of things on record that have come out, things that were declassified in the National Archives, things like that that I've covered in the third book. But you can look at, for example, Ian Fleming himself, what I focused on in my grad work was the way that the character of Bond was used as a Cold War symbol and as a form of Cold War propaganda. And so when Fleming was writing his stories, he was basing a lot of the Bond novels on real operations that he had been involved in, like Operation Golden Eye, which was an anti-Franco
Starting point is 00:34:11 anti-fascist operation. You have Operation Mincemeat, which he was involved in, which they've made films based on that. So there's different levels to this, but there's also that level of propaganda, which I think most people can kind of connect with. And a lot of times, that's the big blockbusters. Usually blockbusters have a decent amount of propaganda inserted into them. But like you said, it's not every director or every person being, you know, in some kind of agent or something like that.
Starting point is 00:34:37 I think it's more sparse than that. But, you know, Edward Bernays said that Hollywood is the greatest engine of propaganda the world has ever seen. And he put that in his famous book propaganda. So they've known this for a long time. And it's just a tool that I think has been utilized and often. But it's not, you know, something that always is making everybody an agent or something. No, listen, you look no further than how COVID, you know, how the news media and the various
Starting point is 00:35:07 outlets were used during COVID. and then they marched on into the social media world and tried to manipulate that. And now there's, thank God, some pushback. But it all seems like business as usual to me. And they get compliance by various speeds, paying people off, muscling them, you know, sort of inserting stuff, you know, without their knowledge into it. But be that as it may. I want to ask two things. What are the differences amongst the three books?
Starting point is 00:35:37 why did you need to write three and what am I going to learn from each? And then I want to go back to the juice Merlu and the madness of crowds. So let's talk about your books first. Yeah, thank you. So the first book was something that came about
Starting point is 00:35:52 that I didn't expect it to be a book. So I've been running a lot of essays and, excuse me, treatments of film from a more of an academic perspective or if you take a college class, you'll do what's called a close reading where you kind of read Dostoevsky or somebody like that at different levels and try to decode it and pick out the symbolism and the meaning. And so I sort of started writing movie analyses in the same way.
Starting point is 00:36:19 Eventually a publisher reached out and said, hey, you should do it. You should do a book with the style of analysis that you do. And that's turned to the first one, which mainly focused on the big director. So I focused on Kubrick. I focused on Hitchcock, Spielberg, a lot of the big names and their blockbusters. and what was good and what was bad. It's not all a critique. It's just sort of an analysis of the way that symbols are used in film
Starting point is 00:36:43 to program us both on a conscious and a subconscious level. So it's a lot of different things. There's Carl Jung-style union analysis comes into it at times, propaganda, the history behind this or that film in relationship to CIA consultation or whatever. So it's a lot of different things. The second film focused thematically on different topics within a bunch of different films.
Starting point is 00:37:05 So I talked about the relationship of Hollywood to organize crime, what's real and what's not real between various mob movies and how we kind of were sold the picture of the villain being the good guy through a lot of mafia movies and so now we kind of look to
Starting point is 00:37:20 Tony Soprano as the good guy and that kind of stuff. So a lot of inversion when it comes to morals and ethics. And then in the third book, because I had so many people say over the years, hey, you never did this movie. never did Christopher Nolan movies. You never did Marvel movies. I'm not a huge Marvel fan, but I decided that, well, they're the biggest blockbusters the last 20 years. So if I say
Starting point is 00:37:43 that blockbusters are a lot of propaganda, I guess I should cover them. So first 80 pages is Christopher Nolan and Union archetypes and Marvel analysis. I have a really extensive 60 page, 70 page critique of feminism in Hollywood and how there's a sort of a presentation that women are all now supposed to be what men typically are, which I think is kind of an intentional subversive approach to storytelling. And then I get into fun stuff. There's comedic stuff. There's B movies that we cover that I thought were kind of funny.
Starting point is 00:38:15 And then I get into relationship between CIA and Hollywood and how Hollywood is presented in times and apocalypse films, which I think is fascinating because Hollywood's kind of dying. It's in its own little apocalypse. and then it's turning into this other thing of influencers and, you know, basically gaming is kind of taking over, unfortunately. Yeah. So light lifting, like decoding Dostoevsky.
Starting point is 00:38:43 So that's, sounds monumental, just trying to read Dostoevsky's and penetrated is hard enough. So. But it's not that hard because I just thought of an example. I just thought of an example. It's not as bad as dust. It's not that hard. Not as hard as decoding dust.
Starting point is 00:39:03 That is a challenge. Yeah. But it all sounds very fascinating and worth, I mean sort of historically significant. I'm glad you're putting it down for the record because when people do look back at this time, film is one of these things that is, you know,
Starting point is 00:39:21 I look at it all as just these technologies that come along. And, you know, but before there was stage and then stage lights and then there was amplification, and then this celluloid thing comes along, and then this television thing comes along, and then vinyl records. And these are all technologies
Starting point is 00:39:39 that get exploited in massive ways by people that produce content for these things. What I find really interesting is they always tend to go towards, it's sort of performers that kind of use it to put their material out far and wide. And then it gets hidden or sort of protected under the sheath of art. It's art.
Starting point is 00:40:07 Don't you understand it's art? But it really, to me, just looks like, yeah, there's artists involved, but it's a commercial enterprise to taking advantage of a new technology. And then the computer and then the social media. And here we are down the road. Yeah, I think the artists are kind of like products. and they do, you know, sell what's on my bed? But they hide behind it.
Starting point is 00:40:32 Oh, something's on your bed? Did somebody say something on there? So I don't know. I don't see it. The other guest is asking you what's on the bed. It's a dead body back there, so I guess. Yeah, it's a, we'll put you on the travel channel as some sort of a phantom flying around. I can't quite see it.
Starting point is 00:40:50 Oh, good. All right. And, and, but I really think they. they use art as a, as a veil to do whatever they want to do. It's like, you can't, you know, it's, I'm creating art. It's creating art. You can't criticize it. It's art.
Starting point is 00:41:05 You don't understand. No, they're creating a commercial enterprise. But let me go back to Juice Marloub, because I, and I think, I'm sure you're aware there's a, there's a elaborate sort of cartoon online that goes through all of Juice Marlou's theories, right? You've seen that on YouTube. Have you seen that? No, it's very good. It's very good.
Starting point is 00:41:28 Yeah. Oh, well, there's somebody that did a whole sort of, it's not really Juice Merlou for dummies, but it is sort of that. And it has a whole visual attached to it if somebody's sort of sketching things out as his theories are presented. It's very good. It's very good. I recommend it just look up, go to YouTube, look up Juice Merlu. But it sent me, I guess I was, I already had read extraordinary popular delusions.
Starting point is 00:41:54 and the madness of crowds. It sent me back to read Le Bonnes the crowd again. And then I got downstream to a book called The True Believer, which I find is one of the most fascinating. Because I think you'll agree with me that these mass formations or whatever you want to call them, I have about 10 or 20% of the crowd that is true believer. They're really bought into this stuff.
Starting point is 00:42:17 And they're the ones that propagate some of these things. And this, I think the guy was like a, it's like an engineer or something. He was not trained in psychology. He was not trained in anything. He just wrote down his observations of the behavior of crowds. And man, I think he just nails the true believer. He just nails it and nails it and nails it.
Starting point is 00:42:36 I recommend it most highly. I've read it like three times now. But what are your thoughts on this construct and why is it coming up again? And why did the left grab onto it so hard since the Jacobins? Give me your thoughts. Yeah, I think that it's been perfected from the vantage point of social engineering and, you know, steering and controlling the crowd. And this is, again, what Walter Lipman wrote about when he talked about public opinion coming out of the Tavis Stock Institute. He figured out that you could really steer the masses by giving them the impression that, well, if you're not in with the end group with the, you know, high percentage, well, the majority of the public supports the war.
Starting point is 00:43:19 You don't want to be seen as an outsider. So they were really figuring this stuff out back in the 1920s. And then they perfected that technique with what we have today. And, of course, you know, after the coup, as I call it, from 20 to 20 to 2022, they were using as Harvard admitted Harvard-style psychological warfare techniques. The Canadian government admitted they were using sciops to really get everybody on board with the mass formation psychosis. So I think that they've applied these techniques to the way that A-listers and celebrities
Starting point is 00:43:49 had that type of power decades ago and now it's the influencer, now it's the social media person that's taking that role on and I think we've seen a lot of phony fake, you know, social media people that push whatever the
Starting point is 00:44:05 establishment wants. Sometimes these people are boosted in the algorithm. So that's where we are now is just the new instantiation of the same tricks and tactics. What's the antidote? What do we have to do here? I feel like raising awareness of calling it out, mocking it, works almost better than anything.
Starting point is 00:44:23 What do we do? Comedy? You're into comedy now. Maybe more imitations, more impersonations. Is this a love line? Is this Dr. Drew on the love line? Is this probably the best, probably the best love line on right now? We're going to make sex great again, Dr. Drew. You and I together probably going to make it great. Probably. Yeah, I mean, I think ridicule is a really powerful tool for, or mocking these types of things. You know, when you go back to 10 years ago,
Starting point is 00:44:54 one of the reasons that they really had to institute a lot of the censorship online was that the left was becoming so sensitive when they were being made fun of that they just had to shut down memes. They had to shut down anything that was perceived as mocking them because it's, quote, hurtful.
Starting point is 00:45:12 Of course, again, that's very subjective in terms of what's hurtful in regard to free speech. There's already laws in place for the, that. So they had to really, I think, clamp down. We saw that as well with the COVID mandates and Dr. Fauci's all constantly getting, you know, critiqued. I am science. I am the science. And then everybody just made fun of Fauci. Remember when they said that he was the sexiest man alive? I mean, it's like, what? It's like actually a poll. They were putting out a poll thing. He's the sexiest man alive. And it's like, people just made fun of this. And I think that was a huge, you know,
Starting point is 00:45:49 blow to the system. And so that was also why they needed the, you know, Twitter files collusion between government and big tech to shut this stuff down because they know the comedians are the tip of the spear when it comes to moving the Overton window back towards rationality.
Starting point is 00:46:06 Well, they were absent during COVID. That was one of the things I kept saying. If you look at my old streams or I was like, where are the comedians? What happened here? Corolla never stopped chanting. Yeah, I know. Carolla kept saying, you're a bunch of pussies, you're a bunch of a sheep, what are you doing? If we stop, do we stop following you? This thing would end tomorrow.
Starting point is 00:46:24 And he's been the same ever since and was the same before, trust me. But it's very interesting. And we live in a time we have to, you know, because persuasion works, even when you know somebody is hypnotizing you or persuading you or brainwashing you, we have to come up with techniques to kind of, you know, tie ourselves to the mast. We literally have to tie ourselves to the and we have to tie a bunch of people there with us. So we are not taken by the sirens song. And I agree. I think mockery is one of the antidotes,
Starting point is 00:46:56 but we got to come up with a bunch of others. Absolutely. I mean, I think just presenting, you know, logical refutations and critiques, which is something that we're big on on my channel. You know,
Starting point is 00:47:08 we do a lot of debate reviews, do a lot of analysis. And that has a lot of effect. I think it's very powerful with people who haven't lost their mind, who are still rational, who are still sensible, And so we really push learning basic logical fallacies to recognize when you're being propagandized, when the left is giving you bad arguments.
Starting point is 00:47:29 It's great. If we can just get that 70% in the middle there up to speed, it'd be amazing. Well, listen, I appreciate what you're doing. I love talking with you. I no doubt I'll talk to you again at some point. I am immediately subscribing to your YouTube channel because this stuff all fascinates me. That's at Jay Dyer or is there somewhere else I go for that YouTube? No, that's my YouTube.
Starting point is 00:47:50 And then you can find me in the same name everywhere else. Is it out as a pod also? Not that that really matters anymore. It is. It's on iTunes in terms of podcasts. But if you want to get the book, it's at my website, jaysanalysis.com. Great. Jay, thank you for joining me.
Starting point is 00:48:07 Let's talk to you soon. Thank you. Absolutely. You got it. Very, very interesting stuff. Speaking of interesting, next up, we're going to switch to economics, A.J. and Tony. He is an expert. He, uh, 2008. We're going to talk about the index of economic, 2006, rather, index of economic freedom.
Starting point is 00:48:27 How free are we economically? What is the effect of a war? There's a lot to get into here. Uh, you can follow EJ at real. Uh, oh, yes, real J and Tony, A, N-T-O-N-I. Talk to him after this. more of our audience is taking health and wellness into their own hands and they're doing it with the wellness company for a discount on the bestselling products and everything on their website for that matter go to dr drew dot com slash tvc the medical emergency kits are among the most popular items there are eight different kits each depending on your individual needs inside you'll find antibiotics antivirals antiparicic first aid antinousal skin treatments and a kid's kit with everything
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Starting point is 00:51:21 And we obviously know factory farms work against nature. They work against animal health and in many ways against human health. Regenerative farms work on taking the landscape or the ecosystem from a degraded state, which the environment right now needs a lot of rehabilitation. And we have a lower nutrient levels in our soil than ever before. We found that animal products from regenerative systems have nutritional benefits. benefits above and beyond other types of animal products. Paley Valley's beef sticks and bone broth protein powder are my favorites and they come from
Starting point is 00:51:52 regenerative farms. And the sticks also come in pasture raised chicken as well. We actually just went and visited one of our chicken farmers and we work with a lot of co-ops and people all over the country. We are such fans of autumn, her work and her extraordinary small business. Go to Dr.dor.com slash paleo valley for a 15% discount on your first order or get 20% off when you subscribe. Dr. A.J. Antony is the acting director of the Thomas A. Rowe Institute for Economic Policy Studies,
Starting point is 00:52:23 chief economist and Richard Astor Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. As I said, you can follow him on X, Real A.J. Oops, excuse me, Real E.J. Antony, A. N.T.O.N.I. Dr. Antony. Thank you for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Of course. I am fascinated by your work. I'm fascinated by this subject matter. it's a wild time in the world. Let's, I guess, start with economic freedom. Where does that index stand in 2026 and what is the progress you're tracking or lack therein? Well, the index covers a whole host of different topics, some of which you might think are very, very obvious and how they relate to economic freedom, I guess you could say. Things like how burdensome is the tax and
Starting point is 00:53:15 and regulatory structure in a country. Obviously, if those burdens get too high, they're going to impinge upon people's individual freedoms, and then you are less free as a society. And obviously, as economic freedom goes down, you also see declines in things like productivity, economic growth, standards of living, et cetera. But there are also things that might not be as intuitive when it comes to economic freedom. Things like your justice system, for example, does your justice system actually protect individuals' property rights? Is it also a system that you're really using to adjudicate disputes as opposed to just another arm of the government by which they can coerce people to do what the politicians want, a la North Korea, the Chinese Communist Party, etc.? And so the
Starting point is 00:54:03 index really is comprehensive, is what I'm trying to get at here. It covers a whole host of different topics and different ways in which economic freedom is either expanded, protected, or ways in which it is infringed upon by the government and by other entities within a country. And so the United States in this last year, due largely to the deregulatory efforts of the Trump administration, had its first annual improvement in five years. Sadly, the United States was actually becoming less free over the last five years. But again, it's nice to see we have finally made an improvement. And I should also note that some other countries like Canada, for example, which although it's ahead of us right now in the rankings, has been moving in the opposite direction as they increase, for example, their tax burden and their regulatory burdens as government spending there gets truly out of control relative to the size of their economy, you can see that they are going to continue falling on that index.
Starting point is 00:55:04 and the United States is eventually going to, if we continue on this track, catch up to and surpass them. I am shocked that Canada is doing better on the Index of Economic Freedom. That's really kind of wild to me, but okay. And you mentioned justice coercion and correlating justice coercion with North Korea. Our justice system gets very coercive. I'm just think of what they did to the policy committee for vaccine. analysis for, you know, they were, they were legislated. The legislation from the bench has been going on for a long time now. Have we backed away from that? You're absolutely right. And that was
Starting point is 00:55:48 actually one of the reasons why the United States did fall in the index over the last five years. And it has been one of the contributing factors as we get the justice system back on track. It is one of the contributing factors to the United States first rise on the index in the last five years. And it really is a vital ingredient here. It's really a vital piece of the puzzle. You can have all the natural resources you want in the world. You can be blessed with all the oil and gas that you want, for example. That is not going to make you a fundamentally free people.
Starting point is 00:56:25 That's why you can look at plenty of nations in the Middle East, for example, that, again, they're blessed with a lot of natural resources, especially when you compare the value of those resources to the level of the population. In other words, you look at the value of those resources on a per capita basis. It can be extraordinarily high, and yet they can be very restricted in terms of their economic freedom. So what's the nation that's number one on this index? Well, it's Singapore. Singapore has virtually no natural resources at all. It's a rock in the Pacific.
Starting point is 00:56:56 And it's not its gifted resources. That's not what makes it wealthy. That's not what makes it free. What makes it free is having the structures in place that, again, respect the rights of the individual, including property rights, and provide things like a judicial system that is there to adjudicate disputes of those property rights and not to, as you rightly said, try to legislate from the bench. Just because I have to ask, it's glaring at me as the graphs behind your head, is what is that of? I'm saying the thought bubble over my head is that GDP, is that the economic freedom index? Is that what is that? It does cover GDP and a whole host of other things, whether it's price indexes, measures of business activity, stock indexes, bond returns, you name it, a whole host of different things.
Starting point is 00:57:49 It actually dates back all the way to pre-colonial times and ends, in this case, the last publication of this particular run was in 1944. so ends with World War II still on going. Wow, interesting. So speaking of war, World War II, we have a series of conflicts in the world, one of which were, a couple of which we've been actively involved with. How is that affecting things? And what do you see? And I'm going to ask is, when I talk to anybody with economic training,
Starting point is 00:58:23 I'm always one to, I want their crystal ball. Also, I want them to give some predictions because, not because it's fair, it isn't fair at all. But it helps me understand. I'll be back for more if your predictions are accurate. Let's put it that way. Great, great, great questions. And I promise to give you the predictions. I'm just going to put a couple of caveats in there, right? I'm going to be that two-armed economist, right? On the one hand, on the other hand. So here's essentially what we're looking at in terms of the war, both the war in Iran and also the war in the Ukraine. It all has to do with energy and with disrupting energy supply chains. You're looking at several countries around the
Starting point is 00:59:03 world, particularly areas in the Pacific that are disproportionately dependent on the Middle East for their energy. Again, a Pacific nation like Japan, they get 95% of their oil from the Middle East. So when you're talking about the disruption essentially virtually shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, that represents a devastating impact to the Japanese economy if it's allowed to. to continue for too long, particularly, and this is, I think, a really, really important point. We are using energy less and less today for energy. In other words, if you look at something like natural gas, you use natural gas to synthesize a whole host of different products, both on the industrial level, but also on the consumer level. And so if you look at a nation like Japan,
Starting point is 00:59:53 where they are importing so much of this energy, again, it's not just for heating homes, not just for generating electricity, it's for creating all kinds of chemical blend stocks that are going to go into everything from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics and from auto parts to synthetic fibers and clothes. And all of these are things that Japan is then turning around and exporting to the rest of the world, including us here in the United States. Well, what happens when sections of the Japanese economy get shut down because they don't have enough access to energy? that's going to have big ripple effects here in the United States. So what I'm trying to get at here is the fact that the energy prices that we've seen so far here in the United States,
Starting point is 01:00:37 with diesel hitting record prices in California, for example, but even just gasoline nationwide, that average going up so dramatically in the last month. This is really the opening salvo in terms of the broader effects from the conflict with Iran. Now, where on earth do we go from here? some of it is just baked into the cake. For example, you're going to see higher food prices, sorry, you're going to see higher food prices in the fall. And the reason for that is because the disruption to energy markets have had a huge impact on fertilizer markets. Almost all fertilizer today is synthetic fertilizer, and we synthesize that from, again, chiefly natural gas, but also oil.
Starting point is 01:01:20 And so the disruption in energy markets has created a disruption of fertilizer markets. now going to have fertilizer shortages. So fertilizers more expensive. That's a higher cost to the farmer, which means the farmer's going to pass that cost on to the consumer, again, in the form of higher food prices. But on top of that, there's also, again, a fertilizer shortage so much so that both China and Russia so far have actually banned exports of certain types of fertilizers. And the reason for that is they're trying to ensure an ample supply in their own domestic market. That means we're looking at global shortages when it comes to fertilizer. Less fertilizer on the ground means lower crop yields. So now there's another thing putting upward pressure on food prices come the autumn.
Starting point is 01:02:04 You're going to have simply less of it available. Now, that's not to say we're at famine levels or anything like that. I certainly am not trying to be hyperbolic or get anybody scared here, but it is going to represent an uptick in food prices across the board. And that is going to affect us here in the United States. So again, that's an example of something that's just baked into the cake. The cost increases have already happened, and they're already working their way through supply chains. Now, where do we go from here, though? This is where things start to get hazy because the conflict in not just Iran, but even the Ukraine,
Starting point is 01:02:39 has been changing pretty dramatically. For example, in the Ukraine, one of the things that you just saw literally within the last 24 hours was the Ukrainians striking oil and natural gas export facilities in Russia. This represents another big blow to energy export markets because some of those facilities are now out of commission for an unknown period of time. That, again, is going to put upward pressure on energy prices. If those kinds of strikes on energy infrastructure continue, whether they're in Europe, whether they're in the Middle East, doesn't matter.
Starting point is 01:03:15 Additional strikes on energy infrastructure mean permanent damage to energy export markets. What I'm trying to get at here is the fact that every time you see, whether it's Iranian energy infrastructure destroyed, Kuwaiti, could be energy infrastructure in Iraq and Qatar, you name it, that represents facilities that are being permanently taken offline, or at least for several years. That's going to reduce supply of energy. and that in turn is going to result in higher prices. And so once the conflict in the Middle East does actually subside,
Starting point is 01:03:53 which we all pray to God, that happens very, very soon, you still are not going to see energy prices return quite as low as they were before the conflict began. Sure, they will come down absolutely as stability returns to the market. But again, it won't be quite as low as what we saw before. So if I summarize your short to intermediate term assessment, it is more inflation, intermittent supply chain, something, some sort of interruptions of somethings, maybe even pharmaceuticals, things like that. And then what? Do we get any benefit from all this down the road? You know, that's another really, really great question. I've heard a lot of people talk about this idea of a peace dividend, right? I'm not sure exactly what that's going to look like or how precisely that.
Starting point is 01:04:42 that would materialize because, you know, again, it's unclear how that situation would differ from the status quo ante. In other words, we were not seeing Iran or anyone in the Middle East, really, striking tankers as they were trying to navigate the Strait of Hormuz. And so if the situation after the conflict is that tankers are not being struck, again, it's difficult to see how that, how we can distinguish that from the, from, from, the pre-war conditions. Now, there might be other reasons for the war with Iran, right? There might be other
Starting point is 01:05:18 benefits that happened. But I just don't see it in terms of energy markets and therefore all of the many derivatives that come from energy markets. Come downstream. Got it. And as far as fertilizer, maybe we should go back down to the South American
Starting point is 01:05:34 Islands and start scraping off bird guano, as we had done in the early part of the 20th century, which was our original source fertilizer. I know the naturalist would sort of love that. Maybe they're worried about the birds. My question, I have two thoughts. Why aren't we ramping up our exports of oil and gas and becoming taking advantage of this international shortage? That's a great, great question. One of the problems that we're running into right now is the fact that a domestic supply,
Starting point is 01:06:09 And this has to do from everything from exploration to drilling to pipelines, you name it. Our domestic supply was really throttled for four years by both the Biden administration, but also by a lot of very left-wing governors here in the United States. And look, some of these were actually Republicans, if you can believe it. This is not strictly a party issue. This is a policy issue. And the anti-energy policies that are, I think, most associates. with the radical left, again, have really limited domestic supply of energy. So what I'm getting at here is the fact that what we are producing at now is very nearly our capacity. We don't have a lot
Starting point is 01:06:52 of excess capacity in our energy supply chains. We could have, I think, if we had continued on the trajectory we were on before COVID, we could have several million barrels a day of additional capacity and then we could have even more cubic feet of natural gas. I think we could have really gone gangbusters there, especially with LNG export facilities. And we could have been meeting the energy needs of the rest of the world. Not only would we not be dependent on other nations, but we could actually be replacing them, especially bad actors. No, I agree. The LNG thing was just pathetic. We just missed that opportunity. That was from 12 years ago, really. We really could ramp that up. But, okay, so what I'm hearing is we need to deregulate and roll up our sleeves and get the hell to work.
Starting point is 01:07:42 But that's sort of a, my grotesque way of assessing what we need to do. There's another thing that you didn't really touch on that I'm not sure there's, I'm not sure how we talk about it even. But I was watching Marine Le Pen being interviewed today. And the Rézambloméant Nacional just had a huge success in the local, what they call principal, they call it, what do they call it, municipal races in France. And so she was sort of touting the advances. But she had gone over to Hungary yesterday or day before. There was a bunch of people meeting with Victor Orban. And she was excoriated for daring to make nice to this guy who was not siding on, not interested in supporting the Ukraine.
Starting point is 01:08:29 And she pointed out, she goes, well, you, look, first of all, I'm not trying to make clones of France. I'm trying to make allies and friends. And because Hungary feels it needs to buy its energy from Russia, you're going to condemn Hungary and condemn any potential ally. You're that paranoid about Russia. And then I heard somebody else analyzing what she was doing. And he said, you know, Russia should not be such a top of mind concern. It's an empty gas station now. And yeah, We might not want to be their ally and we might need to be concerned about them. But I guess my point is so much of what's happening now in terms of the fossil fuel production and distribution is going to change a lot of the geopolitical kind of tectonic plates, it seems like, to me. Am I right in that?
Starting point is 01:09:22 And I think those are just starting to move around. Well, I think every time the human race makes another technological breakthrough, we've, become more and more dependent on energy as getting work done, whether that's physical work or intellectual work, as that relies less and less on humans' burning calories and more and more on machines burning calories, again, whether a physical machine or a computer doing calculations for us, whatever the case may be, we are becoming increasingly dependent on these different energy markets. Most recently, obviously, it's AI, right? Previously, you had things like the steam engine, and then the internal combustion engine.
Starting point is 01:10:05 Then you had nuclear reactors. But again, today, it's AI. It's about computers being able to do more and more of these calculations, so-called thinking for us, right? Even though obviously there's a clear distinction between humans thinking and computers thinking. But whatever the case may be, and to your point, it really is becoming a new world order where whoever controls energy markets, whoever controls energy supply, is going to be the one making the rules. And that's another reason why it's so imperative that the United States
Starting point is 01:10:40 not hold back on its own domestic energy productions. Because we really will have, I think, a sphere of influence in the world that is less based on just geography, just the Western hemisphere in the Monroe Doctrine, but is going to increasingly be who is dependent on us for energy, Who is buying our energy because energy is going to run the world? In a lot of ways, it already does. Of course. And do you think Elon Musk will have success in putting the solar source into space and beaming it back down to us?
Starting point is 01:11:16 I'm not sure. I think the technology might still be a bit beyond us. It reminds me in a lot of ways of Nikola Tesla. Obviously, the man for whom his car company was named. And the reason I say this is because Tesla had so many ideas that are in theory correct or you can, you know, it's possible to do these things, create these things. But we're limited by the technology of our time. And maybe we haven't yet devised the correct materials for transmitting this kind of energy, whatever the case may be. You know, Tesla famously had theories of how you can actually just transmit electricity right through the atmosphere and not need things.
Starting point is 01:12:00 things like wires. I would not be surprised if Elon is in a similar situation where we might just have to wait a few more years for the technology to catch up to his genius, if you will. We appreciate you being here. Where do you want people to go to find more? Best place to find me is going to be here on the X platform. Thank you for mentioning the handle. Once more, it's at Real E.J. Anthony. Hope to talk to you again soon. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. You got it.
Starting point is 01:12:32 You know, Dr. Antony mentions steam engines, and I recently was reading something, I'm just sharing with the audience. The first and second law of thermodynamics are so critical to biochemistry. And I didn't realize that they were discovered because of steam engines. My cable is speaking of ancient technologies. But the steam engine is where the first and second law of thermodynamics came from. and they are so applicable in biological systems. I just thought that was so interesting that we grew these things out of the pure mechanics of steam engine
Starting point is 01:13:08 and now they are profoundly important. Essentially, I'll just give a sketch, proteins and biological structures are always looking for the lowest energy state. That is the first law of thermodynamics. First law, yeah, first law. And they're also always decaying, which is the second law, getting more complicated. That's the second law of thermodynamics.
Starting point is 01:13:29 And life, some people would say, is the one exception in the universe of the second law of thermodynamics for a temporary period of time. Anyway, this is my own curiosity with this. Let me look at the restream while Caleb puts up the upcoming guests. Thank you guys. You're saying thank you. I agree. Good news that that is true. Hang on before I'm looking at your Rumble rants as well.
Starting point is 01:13:52 It's all about China. J. Twink's J. Twink's J. Wink says. J. Twink. Jessica Rose back tomorrow. Ken McCarthy in here, Naomi Wolf coming in with Mosnia Pulici. We've got Sean Spicer and Pat Patricia Heaton. You know if everyone loves Raymond, Dr. Kelly Victory,
Starting point is 01:14:08 makes a return, Brianna Wu. We've got a lot of very, very interesting guests coming. Just like today's, I was fascinated by today's conversation. I hope you were as well. And although I told you yesterday to please send suggestions to contact at doctoru.com, Emily Barsh, our crack booker, said, please don't, because you have so many people we want to get to. And as news comes up, we've been talking about more people in the short term here that we need to bring in.
Starting point is 01:14:34 So we thank you all for being here. Caleb, anything on your radar? No, just real excited for the guests. Yeah, I'm literally, I am just, I just got to get better. I'm just so pissed at the flu. I got to get better. I'm ready to start taking live callers on this show. As soon as I get better, we're taking live calls again.
Starting point is 01:14:50 We're getting there. We'll get there. I'd like to get some calls for the guest. Is that a possibility to not just me, but for the guests? We're going to have, it's going to be a 1833 number. It's going to be easy to remember. We're going to have people calling in to talk to the guests, talk to you. And then sometimes we'll even do call-or-only shows.
Starting point is 01:15:07 People can call in with all their questions for the entire show. Awesome. So that's all coming up. Okay. I will see you tomorrow at 2 p.m. Pacific. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. Emily Barsh is our content producer. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis
Starting point is 01:15:25 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.
Starting point is 01:16:06 You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at doctordrew.com slash help.

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