The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - How Woke Politics Is Corrupting Medicine with Psychiatrist and Yale Lecturer

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Dr. Sally Satel is a psychiatrist and a lecturer at Yale University. She has written widely in academic journals on topics in psychiatry and medicine, and has published articles on cultural aspects of medicine and science in numerous magazines and journals. She has testified before Congress on veterans’ issues, mental health policy, drug courts and health disparities. She is the author of numerous books including Brainwashed, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science.

Sally Sattel, you have the introduction. Yeah, well, Sally Sattel. Now, I'm sorry for making you sit through all that, although it might have been interesting. It was. Because we had a technical problem and it got all backed up. Go ahead. Well, Sally Sattel is a lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine,

senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a psychiatrist, I guess you would mention, too. I am. Which a psychiatrist is like a psychologist, but can prescribe medication. And charge more. Okay. Come closer to the mic. but can prescribe medication. And charge more. Okay. Come closer to the mic.

Although I had a friend who went to a nurse practitioner who charged $500 an hour for therapy. I wonder what kind of therapy that was. Well, I said it seemed a little outrageous to me. Does that seem right to you? No, that's exorbitant. I've never heard that. Okay. So we were going to have you on right before COVID started to talk

about all these people, armchair diagnosing Donald Trump for his... Oh, I did that. Yeah, we did that. And then there was something else and Perry and I can't... Maybe it was about the opioid crisis because that's something I work on too. What's your hot issue today?

You were on your persuasion not long ago. What's in your burning? Oh gosh. Well, it's the intrusion of social justice into medicine and psychotherapy. And actually antisemitism plays a big role in that as well. This is actually a fascinating topic because this came up when Dylann Roof

killed all those people in the black church. And the question is whether or not, you know, extreme racially motivated violence is a sign of mental illness or not. Yeah, but actually, you know, that goes back quite a ways to at least... Is Bill Cosby's psychiatrist guy... Chester Pierce? Poussaint, is that right? Alvin Poussaint. Yeah, I remember reading it at the time.

I remember sending that around at the time. I think that was in the 60s. And they tried, Dr. Poussin and colleagues, tried to get some variants of black rage into the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, for each of its additions. They tried to get that in. And they failed each time. And they even tried back in 2012.

2012 was the last edition, DSM-5. And again, some variant of it was proposed. And I'm so glad that they did not, because frankly, it's absurd. I mean, one can be psychotic, and one can be psychotic about black people or Jews or or anything. But but that's a different category. We have a label for that. But also, it seems to me if you are someone who's so worried and rightly so about any kind of white hostility towards blacks, you don't want to give people a pass.

Can you imagine in a in a litigation setting that that's an excuse or that's mitigating in some way? Oh, well, you know, judge, my client here murdered this black man because he was suffering from black rage. I mean, you don't want to set that precedent. It's absurd. The black rage was the claim by the – there was like a black serial killer. What was his name? In D.C. Oh, that was from Malvo.

That was right after 211. Then there was the Atlanta killer before, but that was children. It was black children, and I believe that killer. But is it not true that, because I seem to hear it in the rage of mentally homeless people and stuff. They do seem to start spouting out racist shit, anti-Semitic shit.

Well, that's partly because people are just disinhibited when they're psychotic. A lot of them are also probably drinking. So we all carry that, but they just say that a lot. No, no, no. Well, these people have so hard on the street. And for all you know, that outburst was targeted at the last person who assaulted them or tried to, you know, to rob something, to steal something.

But I was saying, I don't believe in free will. So I give everybody a pass. And yes, that includes Hitler. I'm sorry. But we still have to deal with them. We still have to keep them off the streets. And we have to provide deterrent. Oh, definitely.

So whether you're going to assign blame is a separate question. I don't assign blame really. I mean, I do because I'm a human and I react, but I don't really intellectually assign blame. Well, you have to assign, you have to have accountability. But you have to have accountability. You have to have containment if someone is really dangerous, and you have to have deterrence not just for them the next time.

You know, this is what can happen to you if you commit this transgression, you could go back to jail, but it's also a signal to the community that we, you know, this is what happens, and it's not tolerable. So even if you don't want to blame, even if you're not a retributivist, you don't want to blame people. Well, I can't because we're all robots. It's often the same when it comes down to practically how you work in the society, it would come down to the same when it comes down to practically how you how you work in the in the society it would come down to the same thing anyway you'd still have to i mean again we're talking about a criminal here not someone who's severely mentally ill and that's why they're you know hostile or violent those people um and this is i know a big ongoing discussion in new

york and and san francisco and other places i mean i'm a big believer in in New York and San Francisco and other places. I mean, I'm a big believer in benign paternalism. I mean, the commitment laws are there. They're on the books. It's a state issue. Some are more stringent than others. Stringent meaning you have to be an imminent danger of committing suicide or homicide. And imminent is usually defined vaguely as anywhere between one second and 24 hours from now. But then there's a looser definition, which is grave disability, which is you're so psychotic,

you really can't protect yourself. You can't satisfy your food and shelter, and you're going to stay out in the park and get frostbite because everyone's going to poison you. And then there's an even more generous definition, which is need for treatment. And I actually, I believe in that too. But this all goes through a judge. You know, there were certainly abuses of this in the past. If anything, now it's the mirror image. We have too high a threshold for intervening, and it's a horrible situation. Well, I've had both experiences in my life. You know, it's funny how I always say that a lot of times when people are having disagreements,

it's just a matter of priority. Quite often, they are both right. Both sides of the immigration debate are right about the things that they're focusing on. Both sides of the welfare debate were right about the things they're focusing on. So I had somebody in my family with serious mental illness, schizophrenia in the late sixties and seventies. And he was a victim of many of these horror stories, just the most horrible treatment. He died not long ago.

So I remember that in my family. And then much more recently, I had a friend who also was suffering mental illness and the state wouldn't intervene and he jumped off the Queensborough Bridge and is dead also. So on both ends, this failure to find the sweet spot, for lack of a better word, of policy, led to horrible outcomes.

And I don't think you're right when you say both sides have points. But I don't think that, but I've seen too often a person say, well, if we do this, you know, X will happen. And we should concede it. Yes, X will. But think of the larger universe of trade-offs. Isn't that worth it to save this life? Well, this reminds me, I don't want to guess, of the congestion pricing argument I'm having. Because what you're saying is exactly right.

Just admit, like I had this big argument with this lady, Catherine Wilde, is that her name? I'm like, can you just admit that the whole theory of congestion. Oh, yeah, I listened to that. Oh, the whole theory is predicated on the notion that we will price the poorer people off the roads. She wouldn't say yes, as opposed to saying, would you say yes, but I think it's worth it.

And if it were your kid, I mean, you can personalize when it comes to mental illness, and you often don't have to go too far to personalize it. You're just... But what if it's your kid? What if it's your kid on the street like that? Your kid who had a great promising career,

was at Queens College or whatever, at Harvard, and now he's psychotic, hallucinating on the street, begging, was a girl just raped last night. You still want them out there? Think about that. I'll fill in the details of the story. It was a very good friend. One of these classic things that you would know.

He was fine. He had his first episode with manic depression in his late teens or something. Then it went into remission. Then that's when I met him. I was very good friends. And then his 30s, it came back. He was in and out. He didn't want to take meds because he didn't like the meds.

Anyway, kind of a classic story as i've learned and he was home at his mother's house and he was acting in a way he never hurt anybody but he would get what appeared to be dangerous kind of like what you imagined was um the guy was acting like right before the the guy um what was his name who killed the guy on the subway? Like just Penny. Yeah. Like that situation. And so his parents or his mother and his sister called the police because they were afraid that he was dangerous.

And the police came and they, and they immediately wanted to arrest him. And then the, the very people, family who had begged the police to come help him say, no, do not take him to jail. He needs to go to the mental hospital. And they tried to show him. I said, I don't, they were trying to show him. Say, no, do not take him to jail. He needs to go to the mental hospital.

And they tried to show him, they were trying to show him his history, whatever it is. The police said, no. They took him before a judge. The judge issued an order of protection. So now he had no place to go. So rather than the consequence

that his family wants to help, help my son. No, we're going to give him an order. We're going to grant the order of protection. They didn't ask for it. And now he can't even go home. And he went to the bridge and he jumped off. As I understand it.

It's unbelievable. It's heartbreaking. As I understand it, in manic depression, the manic phase is where they don't take their meds. And thus becomes dangerous. Is that correct? Well, often that's how one becomes manic. That usually precedes the mania. is that sometimes people are doing so well, they don't want to take their medication. They think they don't need it anymore. And if it's medication for bipolar illness,

then that's when the mania can recur. Or the side effects are really objectionable of some of these meds, unfortunately. And they just don't want to tolerate them anymore. But it's a spiral, right? Or their doctors... It's a spiral each time, and each time it gets worse. Well, it's a little more refractory each time. That is true. So that, for example, if you have recurring, let's say, severe depression,

and it's treated, but it comes back, it will be, on average, a little more refractory each time, maybe harder to treat each time. What does that word mean? Refractive. That it's just hard to respond to intervention. All right. What are the other,

so what are the other, but this, I wish you'd be a regular guest because this kind of like quackery that passes it through the news all the time. You should have, if you want to have a show just on mental illness? I'd love to come back for it, but you can have him to yourself. Jonathan Rosen.

You've had him? No, I met him at a party. That book is a masterpiece. I'm halfway through that book. The Greatest Minds? The Best Minds. It's magnificent. He's brilliant. Yeah, yeah. He listens to this show. I'm sorry that I got the name of the

book wrong if you hear this one. But yeah, I really do want to have him on. So what are the other hot issues now? Is Trump mentally ill? Oh, again. Elon Musk mentally ill? No, but there's certainly a streak of grandiosity. And apparently, this is all by report, so of course I haven't spoken to him or examined him, but apparently, you know, he's quite a prolific taker of psychotropics. Ketamine. Who is? Elon Musk.

Musk. So that would fuel whatever kinds of grandiosity. Do you think Musk is on the autism spectrum? She's not permitted to say that. He has said he's on the autism spectrum because, you know. She's not permitted to say that. We had a, well. He has said he's on the spectrum. I mean, I recently met a kid who's a mild Asperger. And, you know, there's no ambiguity there.

I mean, you know, it hits you over the head like a ton of bricks. Where Musk is. There's a spectrum. I mean, that's a phrase goes now. It bricks. Yeah, well, there's a spectrum. I mean, that's a phrase goes now, it's spectrum disorder, but there's always a range. But if he is autistic, he's the mildest of autists.

So mild that it's not even worth bringing up. Be like me saying, I know karate and I'm a yellow belt. Okay, back to the... Okay. All right. Go ahead. I have to get the yellow belt. Okay, back to the... Okay. All right. Go ahead. Let's get the yellow belt.

All right. So that article, let's just get back to the persuasion. You want to go back to the persuasion? Yeah, yeah, please. Whatever you want to talk about. All right. Usually I know with guests,

whatever they're burning to talk about is the best thing they should talk about. All right, I'll talk about my near cancellation experience. Okay. Because this is an entree into the larger topic of how medicine, the medical profession, at least medical training, I should say, and the practice of therapy is actually being just steeped in progressive dogma. And it just represents a political intrusion into these professions where people really forget it's about treating someone. It's not about enacting your political causes or recruiting patients to them in one hospital.

Actually, doctors were to talk to patients, all patients, about voting. Who ever heard of such a thing? Admittedly, not who to vote for, but to vote. And I think it was in UCF, I don't want to get this wrong, but UCSF, doctors were, do you remember this was in the Times in June? They were wearing keffiyehs and screaming intifada, intifada, outside the hospitals. You could hear it in the patients' rooms. This is just stunning. And you wrote about how psychiatrists or psychologists were contradicting their patients for being Zionists and stuff like that. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. This was, I'll give you, I'll go back. We don't have to do my cancellation. No, no. Do cancellation. Do cancellation. Okay. But I wouldn't.

We love cancellation stories. Go ahead. Yeah. I call it a near cancellation story because the stakes weren't that high. I'm still a lecturer. Thank God that chairman allowed me to keep my title. But, yeah, I was giving a presentation on a year I'd spent in a small town in Ohio. This was 2018, 2019, you know, helping with the opioid crisis.

There was, do you know half of all counties do not have a psychiatrist in this country? So they didn't, the county it was in didn't have a psychiatrist anyway so i went there for a year and it was extremely interesting as you can imagine i i called it and i called my talk um my year abroad um ironton ohio which is in southeast ohio and the and the opioid crisis and uh and i talked i showed photos of the town. And, you know, it was just, of course, it was a very suffering and decaying place. And, you know, sometimes these photos almost look poetic, if you know what I mean. But they're certainly depressing when you think of the economic situation. And I didn't show pictures of anybody with a needle in their arm. There was no human in them. It was just, you know, rusted machinery and that kind of thing. And I talked

about, so I talked about the town. I talked about my theory of addiction, which involves agency very much, but also that people turn to drugs basically for two basic reasons. One is that there's a lot of inner turmoil that they're suffering, or they're in environments where they feel there's no hope. And of course, that's a classic deaths of despair. And that was, you know, relevant to my story. And then I talked about how, you know, you can blame the Sacklers, and you should. It's the Jews after all. And, you know, there was significant deception on their part. But if you want to understand an epidemic, you can't just blame a drug company.

But that's a good, that drug, by the way, OxyContin, can have some very, very good uses. It saves some people's lives. There's no question. You never know that from listening to people. It's an excellent drug. It's really just Oxycodone, but in an extended form. And that has its own advantages because then you don't get breakthrough pain. You can be on a medication for many more hours a day.

But in any case, it also was clearly abused and overprescribed and all that's true. And they, as I say, downplayed the addictive properties of it. But they didn't deny it. It's Schedule II. It says that on the bottle. It says that on the label. But in any case, my larger point was, you know, there's never, there was a web of derelictions to how this happened. And there was also a very,

very hungry population. What did you say that got you in trouble? That. That's it? That I didn't, yeah. So I thought you were just getting, setting the table. No, no. Why did that get you in trouble? Because this has to be a narrative of oppression. Ah. And so after the talk, which started late because it started late. That happens wherever you go. It does. This is about me. And so unfortunately it was Zoom because it was the beginning of,

it was, oh, this is a very important thing. It was my talks. The date of my talk was January 8th, 2021. Right after January 6th. So I'm finished with the presentation, and then I could feel wafts of chilled air coming off the computer. I just knew it didn't go over well. And sure enough, the first question was a young kid, I mean, one of the

trainees saying, well, I'm from rural Missouri, and I expect him to say, oh, things are different here, there, or the same in this way and different that way, or, you know, something of perspective that would complement what I've been talking about. I'm offended. And I'm offended. And I thought, oh, here we go. And so then he went on. He said that I otherized people because of the pictures, because of the title, My Year Abroad, which is kind of irony.

Was there any racial component to this? Well, it turns out there is a racial component. But we're still talking oppression because these are poor white people. And anyway, about a month later, I got an email from the chairman, who was actually a friend. We were interns together. He's a brilliant man, has done brilliant work on ketamine and other things. But that's his most recent big discovery. Anyway, and he says, I don't know, this is a hard email to write, and I'm sorry, but when you came, you offended so many people,

and here's the note I got from the, of course, unsigned, we don't know how many folks, it could be two really angry people or more, who wrote him this long letter that is almost a parody of these kinds of things about, you know, how I offended everyone and transgressed. How dare I talk about, yeah, responsibility in addiction. How dare I talk about, they read other things. They must have, I think someone primed them for this. What is the socially acceptable theory of addiction?

It's a brain disease and it's, that's it. You caught it. You basically, you catch addiction. Is it genetic or? Oh, no, no, no. Actually, it was very complicated as you can imagine. No, but their theory. Yeah.

Oh, their theory of addiction. I'm saying, is it a brain disease? Oh, is that? What does brain disease mean? It means that. A virus or? No, I'm theory. Yeah. Oh, their theory of addiction. I'm saying, is that a brain disease? Oh, is that? What does brain disease mean? It means that. A virus or? No, I'm sorry. Yeah.

It means that with continued exposure to a substance, fill in the blank, anything, cocaine, alcohol, that your brain undergoes changes, which it does. But those changes do not render a person impervious to, let's say, consequences. And they are going to say that, no, a person, there are breaks. In fact, one of the people who is a vigorous promoter of this will say the brain has lost its breaks. In other words, its frontal lobe is effectively... Well, let me ask you this. First of all, let me just stipulate. It's absurd that any disagreement about this topic

should ever be considered like you've crossed the line of decency. Like actually, you know, one of my beefs with this whole, that I forgot to mention with this whole other Dave Smith thing is that by saying engage with the facts, you kind of elevate, they're kind of elevating things into a reasonable minds can

differ argument because but but this is the opposite no they were actually saying they had a line they're saying reasonable minds can't differ they said this is beyond the pale yeah i feel i'm jumping all over the place that's right i feel like you just finished what i how i see okay then i have a question about okay sure Okay, sure. But yes, of course the brain changes. The question is, does it change the way a brain might change in Alzheimer's or something like that, where a person can no longer respond to rewards and consequences? So, for example, if you say, and there have been so many studies on this, it's called contingency research. And Carl Hart, I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he wrote this book

Drug Use for Grownups. It was very controversial. He's a psychologist at Columbia who takes heroin regularly and he does it in a controlled way. But in any case, don't try that at home. That's possible. It is possible. There's documentaries about that. Old junkies.

But in any case, we know that people with drug problems respond to consequences because everyone who walks into our methadone clinic is there because their wife was going to leave them, their probation officer is going to violate them, their boss is going to fire them, their kids can't stand them.

You know, they're able to take that in and process it and change their... But I do want to ask you a question about that. The fact that they need methadone, you know, illustrates that it is somewhat beyond their control. They need external help. Those, they know, they recognize that, yeah. And I give them credit for coming in.

But there's lots of spontaneous research, spontaneous remission as well. People who just stop on their own as well. I recognized very early in my life when I would hang out with friends and that we'd all be drinking. It was very clear to me that whatever the effect alcohol had on me, it was different on other people. I would be kind of fine and I could take it or leave it and I would have like three no no I couldn't bear to have another one and another friend of mine would be like I need to have another and another and another and their personality would change and even even so and I

and I observed that well this has to be some genetic yes I think so I think that's true and so that even though I have agency not to become an alcoholic, and that other person I'm referring to has agency not to become an alcoholic, he's still been dealt a bum hand. I agree with you. That's one of the lessons kids learn when their parents are alcoholics. It's either sometimes they go that way because there is the genetic predisposition, plus they probably grew up in a chaotic household, so may have a lot of problems and trauma that they want to medicate with alcohol, or they never touch the thing at all

because they've seen it. But in any case, yes, it's really a very complicated topic. I think the genetic loading is higher for some people than others. The environmental influence is higher for some people than others. The intrapsychic dimension is higher for some people than others the the uh intrapsychic dimension is higher for some people than others because this is one of my pet peeves of the whole theory of of uh you know brain of uh shrinks you you've just did you just said it yourself say let's say why why uh why i've said this on the show before well i'm so honest you want to know why i'm honest because my father never lied to me and i learned to be perfect no'm honest? Because my father never lied to me and I learned to be perfect. No, no, that's wrong.

My father always lied to me and I swore I'd never be like, it's just like be somebody alcohol. They never touch it because they were born alcoholics or they do touch it. But the thing is, you can explain anything. But I'm, no, I'm seeing one person. I'm seeing you, Dan. Hello. And you have your whole complicated, you know, childhood history, your whole developmental trajectory.

Well, then I'll charge you $600 an hour. But the point is, you're right. There are a lot of directions one can go in because humans do that. But when you have one human in front of you and that's the one you're devoted to um then you know then you don't have to deal so much with all these hypotheses because you're basing your you know i'm basing the opinion on the story of you so what was the racial thing oh well they looked at other um articles i had read so they finally did some research and And I'd written an article called, excuse me, it was a small booklet a while ago called. Famous Jewish sports legends.

No. It was the, that's my next book. It's a flyer. It's from the movie Airplane. It's called The Myth, The Health Disparities Myth. And I'm sure you've heard that. Oh, yes. Okay.

So the myth part was not that these don't exist. Cut the cameras. Go ahead. The myth part wasn't that. And this was clear at the introduction of this small book. It's not that these differentials between racial groups don't exist in terms of access to care, in terms of quality of care, in terms of the way doctors may even treat you. But, and this booklet was written as a response to these allegations that were very, very thick in the early 2000s, that doctors themselves were racist. Today, it's more systemic racism in

medicine. But this was that doctors themselves were racist. And so's more it's a systemic racism in medicine. But this was that doctors themselves were racist. And so what my colleague and I did was basically say, if you're going to conclude that, that's what we would call a diagnosis of exclusion. You have to explain every other reason why these differentials in health status or in treatment might exist. So explain, you know, the class element, you know, the insurance element, the access to good care, the, frankly, health literacy, the extent to which people take care of themselves. That's right. I mean, I've, yes, I can see why you got in trouble, but I have to say, as an employer over the years,

employing many different types of people, there's a huge difference in the way some people take care of themselves. There just is. And I've seen many, many people, I've had a lot of, I think 85% of the people I know who died in my life were black. And I could not say it was because of the way

the doctors were treating them. It had nothing to do with that. And it's, you know, the musicians, maybe that's, maybe the musicians, not the race, but at some point there was a pattern of just not taking responsible care. And of course this could be, maybe it is a kind of a legacy of racism

in the sense that things that are second nature to like my household or just not second nature to like my wife's Puerto Rican. Like she'll describe her family in a way they don't take care of themselves or just the things they might believe about what they should be, about diet. Like, you know, like this is all very tragic and And, and it's, you know, I mean, I don't know you that well, but I'm sure that as you broach this topic, you did not broach it with hatred in your heart. No, no. And you're struggling with it.

We weren't even concluding there is no race. And we're just saying, if you want to make statements like this, this is a, this is a methodological approach you have to take. And you haven't, so you can't assert that doctors are racist. Really, that was it. Probably some doctors are, but not the majority. Maybe not enough to show the system. I would suggest that patients might be, if not racist.

You know, a doctor-patient relationship is quite intimate, and would one not feel comfortable or more comfortable with somebody like themselves? I would think that there's some distrust from the patient side you know um well that's a very good question and that's very topical because um there's a big debate about the the term for that is race concordance should patients effectively have doctors who are their own race and this is one of the justifications for diversity in medical school. I think it's a good one.

Well, let's go through this. And it does make intuitive sense. And I certainly think that may be true for someone who doesn't speak the language. Can you imagine having a doctor who spoke your language? That would be incredible. That would be wonderful. And we have interpreters, but I think it would be amazing

for a person who didn't to have to have that or somebody um but that's language concordance not race well that makes perfect obviously you need to speak and then you know there's this whole idea that you know a lot of when we tried to get folks to take the covid vaccine you know going to the black churches going to the black churches, going to the black barbershops, this kind of thing. Yeah, there's something to that for sure. But the idea behind the diversity in medical school, and it's a major push. Affirmative action was very, very active in medical schools. But I just want to be clear. I'm not in favor of- Let her finish.

Oh, good. Yeah, no, there's more. Okay. Because when I said diversity is a good thing, I'm not in favor of lowering standards. I'm in favor of encouraging people that might not otherwise get into the field. That was the old definition I thought of affirmative action. I'm sure that's how I got

into my college. My parents didn't go to college. They weren't that savvy about it. They were wonderful. Had not reached out to Cornell, I would never out to by this Cornell, I would never have even applied to a place like that. So I'm grateful, and in a way, I'm an affirmative action beneficiary in that sense. But anyway, so there's so much pressure on having a

diverse workforce, which of course we would all like if, again, all things being equal. There's so much pressure on that, and it's based on this, I would say this theory, that patients will do better if they're treated by someone of their own race or ethnicity. But it turns out that research that's put forth to demonstrate that is really weak. And one of the first, I mean, one of the most high-profile ones, you've probably even heard of it, was the black neonate story. Does that sound familiar? This was a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, I think in 2023. I know it was 2023 because Katenji Brown Jackson had it in her decision, her

dissent from the affirmative action ruling. She brought this up as a justification for the diversity, for affirmative action, although they never say the lowering of standards, and unfortunately, that's just true. And there's good data on that done by Mark Perry when he was at American Enterprise Institute that whites and Asians have to have a much higher GPA to get accepted. But in any case, and so, wait, I just lost my train of thought for a second. Katanji Brown-Jackson. Yes, thank you, thank you. Lowering of standards.

Yeah, so this study said that when black neonates were treated by white doctors, they had a higher death rate than when they were treated by black doctors. Neonate meaning a newborn? Oh, yes, newborn. And, well, it turns out, and that really made quite a lot of headlines. Yeah, and she put it in her, I don't blame her, I don't expect her to read the paper. In fact, the AMA was the one who said, oh, put this in because.

I was jarred by that story when it came out to it. It always sounds, these things should be a little skeptical. But in any case, maybe it's true. So look at the data. And it turns out that the black babies, overall, we're talking averages here, but were lower birth weight babies. And that is probably one of the biggest predictors of whether a little baby is going to do well. They may have been born premature or they may have not had good thriving.

But in any case, they're already behind the medical aid ball when they're born low birth weight. And who treats the low birth weight babies? It's the neonatologists who are the, you know, who are the, you know, has taken the fellowships. This is a very sophisticated, you know, advanced form of pediatrician. Well, they're white. The majority of them are white. So in other words, the white doctors were treating the sickest babies. So it's not a surprise that they had a higher mortality rate. And in fact, when you really, a colleague,

Ted Frank of mine, really dove into the tables there. It turned out, unfortunately, that the black doctors, the patients, some of the white babies treated by the black doctors had higher mortality. But that was never mentioned. But in any case, it was told- Not only was it never mentioned,

it's going to be edited out of this show. Look, I- Well, that's how we almost got canceled. We almost have to wrap it up. I want to say- Wait, don't you want to hear the end of my cancellation story? Yes, of course. Okay, okay, okay. So, yeah. So I get this letter

from the chairman, and then he shows me the letter that these people, these folks wrote, which is really like a cultural artifact at this point. It was almost, you know, how dare you bring her in? You should check with us. Who you're going to have speak to us, and we need veto power, and we are re-traumatized. She re-traumatized us after January 6th, and the chairman. You took an oath not to do no harm. You're not supposed to traumatize people. You're a psychiatrist, but go ahead, go ahead. And luckily, I knew he would do the right thing.

He didn't follow through, but he was put in such a horrible position. He had to placate these students who had such irrational expectations of what a presentation was like. But this is insane that you're saying you don't know if it was two people or 100 people. I mean, this is... Never 100 people.

Of course not. But this is insane that they're not saying. Insanity is where it is revealed. It's pretty standard not to sign these things. I just want to say on the- I don't know how I could have any retaliation on them. That's ridiculous. And I wouldn't.

On our, to kind of wrap it up, on our racial predicament in this country, this is not going away. It's a terrible problem. And there is an inherent contradiction because if you look at the statistics of how poorly young minority students are doing in schools, reading five, six grades below level, you know, and these are the statistics which are cited by advocates of minorities and saying, listen, look how we're doing this. We need attention. We need progress. This and that.

Yeah. Roland Fryer seems to have a great answer. Yeah. But then there's an utter contradiction. And it's almost, you know, it's upsetting and maybe even angering that this is all true. The disparities in how children are doing are tremendous, and that's real. And from that, it's utterly predictable and almost a certainty

that you would expect to see huge disparities on the other end when they grow up. Why aren't there more black brain surgeons? Well, because you didn't take care of them when they grow up. And you know, why are there no more, aren't there more black brain surgeons? Why are there? Well, because you didn't take care of them when they were kids. It's definitely a pipeline issue. And medical school is not where you correct the pipeline. That's right.

So you don't go to a medical school. How come there's not more? Oh, you must be racist admissions here at this medical school. Why are there not more black doctors? We know the reason. The reason is because there's not more black children doing well because you've abandoned these kids when they're young. And that's where I've always said 100% of our attention needs to go to getting young minority kids to be basically indistinguishable from non-minority kids in like the seventh or eighth grade. And if we could do that, all these other problems disappear, poof,

gone, because that's what's causing them. And so long as that continues, how dare you, as I said, I'm going to repeat myself, how dare you set upon looking at Harvard and say, how come there's not more black kids? We know the reason, because you let them down. Of it being systemic racism.

You know, there was racism. It initiated many of these problems but right now it's not sustaining them so it's not sustaining those problems it was a causal element but now there are other kinds of interventions that don't require dismantling racism they require that's something that that's vague so vague it exactly what you said. To the extent it is sustainable, it's early in the pipeline. If you could measure with some sort of medical instrument levels of racism, the people being accused of racism here are the least racist people on planet Earth. The people in admissions offices and elite liberal institutions, there's nobody less racist

than these people. If they are having disparities in their outcomes, that is because of other things than their, God forbid, hatred of people who don't look like them. We have to wrap it up.

Can I just get back real quick to the Dave Smith stuff? I just wanted to give you, I wanted to ask you a question and give you a chance to address a common concern or common accusation leveled against you that you're using Dave for

your own self-aggrandizement. No, the accusation is I've been trying to get him on the podcast because I want the views. Anybody who knows me knows that to a on the podcast because I want the views well everybody I mean anybody who knows me knows that to a fault I don't care about the views much to my chagrin I might add no I don't care about the views

I feel like he's debating me now in absentia which is sleazy forgive me you know like I say come on the show and let's discuss it because I know a Twitter debate is going to go badly I know it gets it's like text messaging arguments it escalates and gets worse

than it might otherwise have been and it's not a it's not really a productive debate so I say come on the show and let's discuss it or invite me on your friggin show I'm not trying to get views we don't monetize a little but he's wrong come on the show and let's discuss it. Or invite me on your frigging show. I'm not trying to get views.

We don't monetize a little bit. He's wrong. But I realize I can't convince people of that. Well, I can. Well, what if he said, well, let's come hang out at the cellar and just debate it without a doubt? I've asked him that before. Most of the people I get into these things are like, why don't you just come meet me in the aisle if you don't want to do it like that?

I would just like to go on record and say, usually the biggest names of people who you are having these conversations with, you're doing it in private. And I'm like, why didn't you invite them on the show? I have no ulterior motives to try to get podcast views. I wish you did. And I'll leave it to speculation as to why he won't come to talk about it

he does a whole show about me it's not the first time he's discussed me it's the second time he went on to Jake Shielso and he misrepresented me are you in communication with him that he might come or it's over I think it's over

alright Dr. Sattel with him that he might come or it's over? I think it's over. All right, Dr. Sattel. I'm sorry that you had to sit through that rant, but hopefully it was interesting. I consider it a piece of sociology. Are you going to diagnose all of us? I was supposed to be somewhere at 7 and now it's 7.06 and I have to run. Oh, El Molino?

No, on 8th Street. So you're going to have, you're done, right? I mean, you're going to have Peter Beinart on? We talked about that at one time. I mean, that would be a good decision. I'm so tired of arguing. Oh, okay. I thought you wanted to.

No, I, I, I. I mean, not, you know what I mean. Okay. Questions, concerns, info. Podcast at commiesower.com. Podcast at commiesower.com. Podcast at commiesower.com. Good night. Okay.

I'm going to run out. I want that alloy thing cut out, please. The what? Where my. Oh, no. I'm not cutting it out. No, no. Come on.

I'm not cutting it out. No, I never ask for stuff to get cut out. It's embarrassing. I misspoke. That's the best part is that it's embarrassing.