The Joe Rogan Experience - #1889 - Dr. Phil

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

Dr. Phil McGraw is an author and psychologist. He hosts the television show "Dr. Phil" and the podcast "Phil in the Blanks." https://www.drphil.com/

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night! All day! Alright, we're up for money. What do you got there? Got detailed notes? Well, I got some statistics I might talk about, I don't know.

Maybe I will, maybe I won't. You're a voice of reason. How do we fix this world? We're in a mess. This is a weird time to be alive, isn't it? Yeah, it's getting weirder, too. I mean, it is getting weirder, don't you think? Certainly.

Well, it's highlighted on your show. You know, you've kind of exposed a lot of it to America. you've kind of uh exposed a lot of it to america you know every year in the in the summer we kind of work to reinvent ourselves uh about how we can tell our stories better and all that sort of thing and we really focus on what our viewers are asking about and i have to tell you this year the questions really changed because you know it's we still deal with human functioning, you know, marriage and family and all that. But in addition to that, the questions we got over the summer this year started really changing. Like, are we going to make it? Are we going to survive?

Are we safe? Are our kids safe? Are they safe in school? What are they being taught in school? Should we be going down there and seeing what they're teaching them? Are we, what's happening as far as values in this country? I mean, people started asking different questions. And so I changed everything. I, you know, I used to have that studio audience out in the bleachers out there. I moved everybody on stage and we're just having a focus group every day, like 110 people up there in a focus group and letting them talk and ask questions

because they're really concerned. And I, I, I just said, I can't take it anymore. I'm going to start talking about the social issues along with everything else. Because if you even took psychology in high school or you took Psych 101, one of the first fundamental principles you learned was you don't reward bad behavior. Right? Right. You don't reward bad behavior, right? Right. You don't reward bad behavior. I mean, the world is a meritocracy.

And we've somehow lost that. All of a sudden, we're paying people not to work more than they get if they work. And then we say, what happened to the supply chain? Well, you paid everybody not to work. That's what happened to the supply chain. And I'm stunned that we're running this country in so many areas where we're just violating the most fundamental psychological principles that you could ever imagine. And I'm watching that happen. I say, I just can't be silent about this anymore. So I'm talking about it. What do you think is the root cause of the shift?

I think it's been happening gradually. But like everything, you know, it's like if you start rolling a rock downhill, it starts getting faster and faster and faster. And I think it's happened for a lot of reasons. But I think we've got a whole generation of kids that are really smart, by the way. These kids are smart. But I think they've started living on their devices. It's kind of like along about 2007 or 8. think they've started living on their devices. It's kind of like along about 2007 or 8. It seems like airplanes flew over the country and just started dropping smartphones. And everybody's

head went from here to here. I mean, think about it. When you look, go anywhere, go to the mall, go just anywhere there's a group, and what do you see in their hands? You see a device. We didn't grow up with devices. When I started Dr. Phil 21 years ago, the first text hadn't been sent. There were no social media platforms. None of that stuff was going on. Technology is great. I'm not, listen, I love technology. But we've got generations that started living virtually. They're watching people live their lives instead of living their own lives. And that changed the metrics on everything.

Think about that. TikTok, Instagram, all of this. You're watching other people live their lives instead of living your own. And that changed everything. That seems like one factor, but that wouldn't explain this abandonment of meritocracy. Well, that is just one factor. You're exactly right. But there's something else that I think has come along with it, and we've got a generation of what I call concierge parents that are running interference for their kids. and look the way you learn about yourself the way you make attributions to yourself about yourself is the same way you make attributions about other people you have people that you have opinions of

right you you know you got people friends or staff that you watch what they do and you say, he or she is a go-to person. I know what they do. I can count on them. They're going to be there every time. They're going to show up on time. They're going to get everything ready. They're going to be buttoned up. They're like clockwork, right?

And you attribute that to them because you watch what they do. If they're problem solvers, you know, hey, go get Becky in here. Go get Jeff in here. They are problem solvers. You know that because you've watched them do it and you make that attribution to them. That's the same way we learn about ourselves. You watch ourselves master certain tasks, overcome certain things. And if we're cheated out of that experience, we don't learn that about ourselves. And if you've got parents that are out there smoothing out all the bumps for you,

then you don't learn that you can smooth out your own bumps. You don't learn that you can overcome obstacles. You don't learn that you can master your environment. And so as a result, you don't have the self-esteem. You don't learn that you can master your environment. And so as a result, you don't have the self-esteem. You don't have the self-worth. You don't make the attributions that, hey, I can do this shit. And when you don't believe you can do this shit, then you start saying, well, I don't want a meritocracy. I want everybody to just kind of go along the same. And so we started seeing in the universities, you start seeing kids that are complaining that something the professor said hurt their feelings.

It upset them. So they start going to the dean. They start going to the department head and saying, that professor said things that upset me. And we've had more professors disciplined, suspended, or dismissed in the last 10 or 15 years than we've had since McCarthyism because kids are going in there and saying, that hurt my feelings. He offended me and said things that were offensive. And so they complain about it and they get listened to. And so the professors, and some of them are assholes, I'm sure. Some of them are offensive by any standard.

But it's out of control. And these kids are sensitive to the point when I was in college, when campuses were where you went to hear the other side, right? That's how you rounded things out. There was a speaker coming that was totally on the other side than you were on anything, science or whatever. You went to listen to them because you thought, I'm going to learn how to shoot this full of holes.

Now anywhere from 15% to 30% of students think it's okay to shout down somebody you disagree with, to protest and run them off campus. You don't listen to them. You get rid of them. You don't want to hear it. You don't want to see it. You don't want to have anything to do with it. They protest and yell them down. What's that about? They don't want to hear it. And I think that we're coddling this whole generation. And when they get out of school and get into the world where that's not going to happen, they're going to be competitive, we're going to have a real problem. a real problem because in a global economy, we're going to fall behind. And we are behind right now. People say, well, we lead the world in math and science and reading. No, we don't. We don't lead it. I wrote down where we are, but we're not anywhere near the top. We're 13th in reading,

we're 18th in science, we're 37th in math in the world today. Where do we used to be? At any one point in time, we were number one? Yeah. How long ago? It's been a generation. We've been on the slide for a good while. We're 37th in math. So do you think this is coming from parents coddling their children, helicopter parents, those children going off to universities, universities instilling these ideas in them that they should be able to shout down ideas that they don't agree with, and that everything should be comfortable, and everyone should have everything they want and desire without any work. And then they go out into the workforce, and they invade corporations

with these same attitudes and become activists. Well, you hear some professors that venture to say, you know, we're not getting or turning out the best and the brightest for this whole variety of reasons. That means we're not competitive. And if we're not competitive, if we're not turning out the best and the brightest because we're caving, because we've got quotas to fill, or for whatever reason, then we're just – where's that going to leave us? And this wasn't caused by the pandemic. It was exacerbated by the pandemic.

And, you know, as I say, you're not going to get kids that have a lot of self-confidence, that have a lot of self-worth, that have made these attributions. And right now, the millennial generation is the loneliest, most emotionally impacted out of all the generations right now. They are lonely. They don't have friends. Followers aren't friends. And if you haven't gotten out in the world and you don't have the confidence to get out there you're not going to do well yeah it's uh it's a strange combination of factors that but one of the things that disturbs me the most about is i don't see

a way to turn it around other than some sort of a disaster where people are forced to come together. Like I remember the shift in the country after 9-11. And the only thing that I felt positive about was like, wow, all of a sudden America feels united. Like there were so many people driving down the street with American flags on their cars. I mean, it was almost more than there were not in Los Angeles, which is a very liberal place. And I remember thinking, maybe things like this are important just to sort of snap people back to a healthier baseline, to put people back into, to give them a perspective.

Like we are really all in this together. And if something like that does happen and it unites people and they get together and they realize, hey, we're all working together towards a goal. We want to keep our families safe. We want to keep the world safe. We want to be able to pursue our dreams and do what we want to do. And if something comes along that stops that, we have to kind of unite together to make sure we put everything back on track. So you think there has to be something to get people's attention?

I worry that it has to be something big. I worry that it has to be like a war or a natural disaster, something huge. something huge. Because I don't, I think if you, as long as you allow people to keep going, there's so much momentum in society going in the direction that we're going. People that want an equality of outcome, people that want a redistribution of wealth. But some people are waking up telling me, I saw a quote from Bono, of all people, that I read yesterday. See if you can find this, where he was talking about when he was young, he thought that the world's problems could be solved by a redistribution of wealth. But now he realizes that healthy commerce is the way to a better society.

Yeah, look, socialism doesn't work. You know, there's every cliche in the world it works great till you run out of other people's money you know all of those quotes yeah it it doesn't work and i've i've encountered those people uh in debates that think it does um i've i've had people in the focus group situation that say they shouldn't be prosecuting shoplifting because they're just going in there and taking what's rightfully theirs. What the hell are you talking about? They say, well, these corporations aren't paying enough. They're not paying a living wage. So they're just going in and taking what's rightfully theirs. And I'm saying, well, so, okay, if you're wanting equal outcome.

No, no, I'm just wanting equal opportunity. No, no, you're wanting equal outcome because you're saying everybody should just help themselves so they all can live. What if one person spent 15 years going to college and working their butt off to acquire what I call consequential knowledge, and the other person was sitting home in a bean bag eating Cheetos for 15 years? You think they should have the same outcome. Well, yeah, that's a right. Everybody has a right to a reasonable life. Well, go read The Little Red Hen. I mean, did they not go over that in grade school? I don't remember that one. You don't remember that one. That's a good book. I'll send you a copy.

What was the premise of The Little Red Hen? Well, she was going around saying, saying hey help me harvest the grain will you and and you know the grasshopper said i'm just basking in the sun here and then she goes to the next animal help me with this no hey i'm busy right now then it comes winter time and they all kind of wanted to come eat the bread and so well you didn't help when it was time to get the grain in but now you want to eat the bread. And so, sorry, I didn't get enough in to feed you all because you never helped. And so they're all out there freezing to death, and it just doesn't work that way.

You've got to pitch in if you want to be there when it's time to chow down. And people don't understand it doesn't work if you don't contribute it doesn't work and the scary thing is this idea that people have that the government should provide for them and that they they deserve it it just reinforces this and it just compounds it you know even i've worked a lot in rehab, and I don't mean drug rehab. I'm talking about all any, whatever it is. If you have a head injury, if you have someone that's injured on the job they can do every single time they face a task, you're cheating them because they'll never get to the next level. I mean, if a paraplegic takes 11 minutes to get across a room to flip a light switch and you don't require them to do that,

then they'll never do it in 10 minutes, 9 minutes, 6 minutes, and then where they can actually do it. Now, if they can't do it, they can't do it. But you need to require them to do everything they can do for themselves before you help them to do it. And we should always help them to do it, but you should let them do as much as they can do. And that's the same way with everybody in the world. They should do everything they're able to do. And if we have people on the government dole that aren't doing everything they can do to help themselves, whether they're among the homeless population or the drug population or the mentally ill population,

whatever. I'm totally understanding that you help people, but you give them a hand up, not a hand out. There's a big difference. And we're just not doing that. You've got to require people to do everything they can do to help themselves so they, again, observe themselves doing more and more. And they have pride in what they achieve and what they accomplish. And we've gotten away from that. We're not doing that. But it seems like, especially when you're talking about like the homeless population, you would need so many people to work with those people. Because you're talking about a psychological

shift, a way of viewing the world with discipline and accountability, that you're not going to just get people to adopt on their own. Very few people will. Most people will do the very least that they have to do. And if there's programs and different ways they can acquire money and food, they'll just stay in whatever state they're at. I was watching this video today of a guy who's in Hollywood who built a house on the street. He built a small house. and they were talking to all the people in the neighborhood about it, and they had the cops come and visit him, and they offered

to take him to a shelter, and he's like, no, I don't want to go. And they go, okay, and they just leave him there. So this guy's built a structure on wheels. It's like a small shed, but a wooden house, because he said that every time he had a tent, they took the tent away. Yeah. So he just built a house. Well, that's pretty industrious. Yeah. But why can't he apply that to other things, right?

Exactly. And he can. But he needs coaching. And I don't care how flat you make a pancake, it's got two sides. And the side where he says, I don't want to go to a shelter. If you go to a shelter, what do you do with all your stuff? Because there's nowhere inside that shelter to take all your stuff. He has things.

He might have an animal. That animal he's attached to, and you can't take that animal in the shelter. You can't take your things in the shelter. If you can't take your animal and your things in the shelter, they're not going to go. If they leave their things on the street, they'll be gone when they come out the next morning. So a shelter is not always the answer. So you've got to have empathy for those people. And he may be trying to do the best he can, but you've got to create alternatives where he says,

OK, look, if he's industrious enough that he's built a house on wheels and they're pirating electrical, some of them from service poles, some of them have 10-man tents and they've got flower beds in front of them. Yeah, this guy had plants hanging out in front of his house. Yeah, that's pretty industrious. Now, if that guy's got that much initiative and he could use that in other ways, find him a place where he can do that, where he can not be obstructing traffic, not be in front of somebody's business, be in an area where he can build that house. And maybe he can inspire somebody else to do the same thing. And then he can maybe, you know, it starts to snowball. You work with what you have. I'm not saying these people can start running their own business tomorrow. But build on what you have. But you don't just say, well, so he's what they refer to as experiencing homelessness.

Find something that you can build on. These people don't want to be homeless. They want to have a better standard of living. But once they become homeless, it's like, you know, inertia is the tendency for bodies at rest to stay at rest. And it's hard to get them moving. It would take so many. You can find leaders within those groups that can help the next level below and they can be helped by the next level above. There are ways out of that. But it seems like one of the first things that has to happen is you can't tolerate people just camping on the streets. Just like you can't tolerate people littering because it's not much difference.

You're interfering with all the other people that are following society's rules. And society's rules are there to preserve everybody and keep the world cleaner and a better place. So as soon as you allow someone to violate those rules because they're down and out, and then you have more, and then they compound, and then you have thousands of tents. Now you have a problem that's almost insurmountable. And then you have a whole industry that's based around that problem because you have hundreds of people that work for the city that get paid six-figure salaries and they're not fixing anything. They get paid for the homeless and some of them are making a quarter million dollars a year. We looked it up. It's wild.

The budget goes up every year. The problem doesn't go away. There's no incentive to fix the problem because if the problem gets fixed, then those jobs go away. Of course it does. The jobs go away. But those jobs can become different jobs if somebody holds them accountable. And so you can go in and just wipe all the tents off the street. But where are those people going to go? Right.

Well, in Austin, they moved them into hotels. They bought hotels. They moved them into hotels, and they had it set up where you have to be clean to go into these places. And they offered them counseling. But Austin's a smaller place. There's only a million people in this city. And I talked to the mayor about it before they fixed the problem. And it was his number one initiative. He's like, he goes, before I leave office, I have to fix this. And he goes, and I think we can,

because there's only about 2000 homeless people. He goes, when you get to the place where LA is, where you're dealing with like 100,000 homeless people, it's almost impossible. He goes, but right now we're like at the tipping point and we can fix it. But it is kind of fixed. There's still some homeless people, but if you go around Austin, you don't see the tents here that you see in L.A. Well, is that out of sight, out of mind, or is somebody going to those people in hotels and trying to get them to be self-sufficient? I mean, you can hide the problem or you can fix the problem, and you've got to find a way to fix the problem. You've got to get these people doing everything they can do to become self-sufficient. I mean, that's the dignity they're looking for, and we're not helping them to do it if we're just taking them out of sight. But don't you think there's a massive amount of energy and effort that has to be taken for each individual to change the way they view the world, to acquire discipline, to acquire initiative, to clean their act up, to stop doing meth and heroin and try to get their

life to a place where they're living a meaningful, rewarding life. I mean, how many people struggle with that on a daily basis? You need coaching and counseling, and you need slow, incremental steps towards acquiring a self-sufficient mentality. That's a very, very difficult thing to get people to accept en masse. It is, and the problem that I see with the approach to it now is the exit ramps out of that life

are not aggressively enough. They're not being pursued aggressively enough. It's just like, what are we going to do with these people today? Let's put them in a camping area. let's put them in a hotel, let's get them off the street, or let's get rid of the rules that say they can't camp. Well, okay, that's just warehousing. What are you doing to help this person become self-sufficient? Are you finding them a job? Are you creating a contingency where if they do A, they get B? If they do B, they get C? Or do you have somebody saying, hey, listen, housing is a human right? Well, okay. Let's just, for argument's sake, say that's a human right. I'm not saying you agree with that. I'm not saying I agree with that. Let's just, for argument's sake, say that's right. All right. What's the contingency to then say, okay, now what are you going to do next?

What are you going to do to get a job? What are you going to do to get off drugs? What are you going to do? Are you going to go to therapy? Are you going to get job training? What are you going to do? And you say you have all of, it's going to take a lot of manpower to do that. Well, we got a lot of manpower doing not shit now. They can do that. I mean, let's make sure they're training people and hold them accountable for how many people they're getting off the street into jobs that are self-sufficient. We're not holding them accountable. They need to be held accountable for are they reducing the population or are they not? It seems like the solution that most people have is to move out of the areas that are enforcing these ideas.

That's what most people are doing. Of course. Yeah, they're just like people that live in Santa Monica. They're just selling their houses. They're like, I've got to get the fuck out of here. There's tents in front of my car. I'm finding needles in the street. Yeah, it's the not in my neighborhood thing. Yeah, exactly. Do what you want to do. Just don't do it in the street. Yeah, it's the not in my neighborhood thing.

Yeah, exactly. Do what you want to do, just don't do it in my neighborhood. There was a video where one of these health officials was, they were showing needles that they pick up from the streets in Portland, and they had giant garbage bins filled with used needles. I mean, it was wild. Just like a room filled with garbage bins filled with needles that they cleaned off the streets. And like, this is the scope of the problem. This is the scale of the problem that people don't see. Yeah. And people see pictures.

They see it on TV. They see it, you know, on some site. They see it on TV. They see it on some site. What they don't get live adjacent to that. It's not working for anybody. It's not working for those in the tents. It's not working for those adjacent to where they're doing that. So the Austin mayor, he put a standard.

You've got to be clean, and you've got to keep your area clean, your room clean, all that. That's a step up, right? At least it's not rancid and horrible. He's requiring more. And if they enforce that, that's a step up. Now these people will start to have a sense of personal pride and dignity that they may not have had if they were in one of these areas that's so terrible. Then it's less of a leap to say, let's start talking about job interviews at entry level and see if you can get them back into that. Because those people weren't born homeless.

They slid down there. So it's a matter of getting them back up there. It's a whole lot harder to get back up than it is to slide down. It is. And a lot of them are mentally ill. And so you've got to help that in some way so they can actually have the focus and the mindset to contribute something to an employer somewhere. And that's not easy.

And we're not helping this right now in the school system. We've got a silent epidemic going on right now. We've got a silent epidemic going on right now, and it was exacerbated by the pandemic because it's amazing how many people in America right now. I just had a woman on recently that works nationally with the education programs, and she says 130 million Americans can't read at the most basic level and I said define basic level for me and she said basic level is they can't read a prescription label they can't read a prescription label. They can't read a simple story to their children at bedtime. 130 million. 130 million.

So that's more than a third of the whole country. Can't read a simple story to their children. That's insane. It's really that many? Yeah. And further to that, 32% of fourth graders can't read at even a basic level. And 24% of eighth graders can't read at a basic level, and 19% of high school graduates, according to the Department of Education, can't read. Graduates. Now, how does that work?

You're graduating high school, but you can't read at the most basic level. So what I'm saying, there's a silent epidemic. We've got some schools that are changing their grading standards to close the gap. So they're making it easier. Well, one of them that we looked at, a C is now 44% to 64%. You make 45%, you got a C. You take a test, get 45%, you made a C. Wow. Now, was that not an F when you went to school?

That was an F, yeah. That was an F. Now it's a C? Yeah, now 44% to 64% is a C. 70% was always a C. Right. That was a C-, because that was the bottom of the Cs, right? Right.

So now 44 to 64 is a C. 64 to 84 is a B. 84 to 100 is an A. You've got to drop below 24 to get an F. Wow. 24. Now that's how they're closing the gap and pushing them on to the next grade. Now, that's how they're closing the gap and pushing them on to the next grade.

So if you can make an average of 30, you get a D, that's passing. You move on to the next level. So instead of fixing things, it just made it easier for people to get through. Yeah. And I don't see how that's going to work. No. I mean, if you were a real conspiracy theorist and you really wanted to believe that there was someone that was trying to destroy America from within slowly, this would be the way to do it. All the things we talked about. Make it easy for people to be homeless. Make people think that the world owes them something. Equality of outcome is the desired result. Everyone who's wealthy is evil.

If you think there's something wrong with the world, throw soup at a painting and glue yourself to the wall. I mean, the stuff that we're reinforcing and the way that it's happening so rapidly. I mean, you're older than me. Has there ever been a time in your life where you thought that America could get to the point where it's at now? No. I have to honestly say no. further to that point, I've got to say that you get to a point where you start getting scared about whether or not this is something we can come back from. And I'm an incurable optimist. And I really do believe that if people will stop arguing and decide, look, I'm not here to win an argument. I'm here to solve a problem.

If people will just take that attitude, we can really change some things that are going on here. Because I'm an incurable optimist, and I do think we can solve this problem. And I do think we can solve this problem. And we've got a lot of kids right now that are experiencing anxiety, depression, and homelessness at the highest levels that we've had since we started keeping records of this kind of thing, which is not that long ago. It's not like since the 1700s. We've just been keeping these records. I think they really started keeping good records in the, maybe since 12, 10, 12, somewhere back in there. But these are the highest levels that we've seen. And the pandemic didn't cause that, but it really spiked it because these kids were out of school and they got really scared of the pandemic. They lost loved ones. They were

afraid of this invisible monster out there. We're going to have to deal with that. And we're going to have to deal with the fact that they lost a lot of time and a lot of learning that put them further behind than we already were. And we need, you said something's got to happen for people to come together. We need to come together for these kids. We need to come together for these kids. We need to come together and recognize that we're about to lose a generation here, and we can fix this. But we've got to stop trying to win an argument about who's got the right to talk about curriculum and who doesn't. We need to solve the problem. Look, I'm politically agnostic.

I say the pandemic was mishandled. I think it was mishandled. I said it was mishandled at the beginning publicly. And listen, this spanned the Trump administration, the Biden administration. So this is a bipartisan problem. I'm not – I don't know enough about politics to talk politics. I don't want to know enough about it. I'm talking about the culture.

And when I talk to people about negotiating, which I do a lot, the first thing I always tell people is the first thing you should do is let's talk about what we agree on. If we're on two sides of a table like this, we're negotiating, let's talk about what we agree on first. Because if you really spend time to do that, you're sometimes surprised at how little you really disagree on. Right. I find that all the time. Yeah. If you get to the left and the right and talk about what we agree on, everybody would agree we want America to be the number one country in the world. We want to be the leading superpower, the leading educational power, the leading in technology, everything, right? Everybody would agree to that.

We want to be the healthiest country. We want to be the best leaders. We want to be – everybody would agree on that. Everybody would agree we want our children to have a better life than we have. Everybody would agree that we want safety for our kids. We want advances in medicine. There's so many things we can agree on. And then when we say, let's talk about what we don't agree on, the next step you'd say is, how can I get the other side as much of what they want as I possibly can? That should be the second thing you should focus on, because oftentimes you find we have different

currencies. You might value different things than I do, so I might be able to give you everything you want. It's not likely to happen, but there's a lot I can give you because you value different things than I do. And I value different things than you do. We might be able to really help each other get what we want. And it narrows down to very little sometimes that we really disagree on and have to compromise on. But you can't do that if you're really focused on winning an argument and being a right fighter instead of saying, let's solve the problem. We can't come out of this room until we solve the problem. And it's hard to do that if you're kind of agreeing just with what your side beats the drum on versus this side beats the drum on

instead of being commonsensical and saying, how do we solve this problem? Yeah, I think very few people are able to argue without attaching themselves to ideas. So if their idea, when they have an argument about something, if you say something that they agree with, instead of accepting that you say something they agree with, they want to fight against it because they just want to be right. You know, very few people are good at ideas being discussed in arguments because the argument becomes very personal. Like they think about their own self-worth

and they attach it to being the winner of the argument. They want to use ad hominem attacks, insults, and trying to figure out a way to verbally joust with you to the point where they're successful? When people start assassinating character, it's because their ideas won't withstand challenge. This cancel culture bullshit, cancel culture should be counsel culture. If you say something that's offensive to my values, I should counsel with you about it. Not cancel. You're not getting everybody to hate you.

You see somebody that says something on Twitter or says something in an interview that is offensive to some group. And all of a sudden, you start reading the messages they get. It's like, I hope you get ass cancer and die, you son of a bitch. I'll cut your throat. I'll come to your house and kill your children. Are you kidding me? It's like boycott this person, boycott this company. Where did we get to this?

Now they're canceling each other. It should be council culture, not cancel culture. Let's sit down and talk about, let me educate you. Maybe you don't understand. Maybe when you do, you won't agree, but let's talk about this. I think it's social media. I think it's echo chambers. I think it's people having the ability to discuss things without any social interaction. They're not looking at each other. They're not feeling the other person's emotions and feelings, not looking into their eyes. It's a very inhumane way for people to communicate. It's very sterilized. And you can assassinate a person's

character or attack them or say horrible, insulting and threatening things. And you don't feel any response. Well, how many things do people type that they would not say to you in an elevator? Yeah. Like you said, they look you in the eye or they were in an elevator. Same thing with road rage. People blow the horn, yell stuff. They wouldn't say it to you if you step in front of them on an escalator. Right.

They wouldn't say, you rat bastard. But they'll say it because they don't have to own it. And so many of these people that jump on the bandwagon, they don't even know what they're talking about. They just see somebody jumping on somebody's ass. They go, hey, this is great. This will be fun. Pile on.

Yeah. And they don't even know what they're talking about. And people's lives get ruined. And that's not solving a problem. That's just being a keyboard bully. And that's a terrible misuse of social media. It's a terrible misuse of the internet. And if you would counsel instead of cancel, we could really make some progress. There's just very few people capable of thinking that way. And social media, unfortunately, reinforces this idea and it reinforces these tribal groups that connect to their ideology.

They support these people in this little tribal group. The problem is that they step out of line at all. These people that are canceling, they run out of people to cancel and they go after each other. You know, they go out, progressives in particular, you're not progressive enough. They'll go after you for enabling. Yeah, I just might write an article the other day, some site I've never even heard of. It says Dr. Phil's become a platform for right wing hate mongers or something. And they listed some shows where I'd had on people on the right giving them a voice. They went down through like six or eight shows.

And not one time did they mention that sitting right across from them was the other side. One of them was I had Lila Rose on, who's the Right to Life spokesperson. Very smart woman, and she was arguing that. I had the president of the National Organization of Women and Ben Crump sitting right across from her. They didn't mention that they were there. Yeah, of course they don't, because it's not a real article. The article's not a real thought.

It's an attack. It's not an unbiased, objective assessment of the conversation. It's horseshit. But they, objective assessment of the conversation. It's horseshit. But they did like eight out of eight. They did not mention one time that the other side was there. And it's because they don't want to hear anybody's side but theirs. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. And I'm not going to do that. I'm going to let both sides say what they have to say and let people make up their own minds about what they want to think and what they want to feel. Well, that's the way things are supposed to be held. That's the way things are supposed to be done. When you really want to solve a problem, you got to let

both people talk and you got to figure out who's right and who's wrong. And that's why censorship is so dangerous. Because the correct answer to censorship, like this whole Kanye West thing, you know, Kanye West is being canceled by all these organizations. And the best way to handle Kanye West is the way Lex Friedman did. Have a conversation with him and correct all the things that he's saying that you think are wrong, or that you think are generalizing, or you think that you think are misrepresentative of the truth. But that's not the world we live in today. The world we live in today, we want to erase people if we don't agree with them. And then the problem with that

is it scares people into communicating freely because they're worried that they're going to be erased next. So they'll conform. You're forcing people to conform to a very particular way of thinking and it reinforces these ideas that you have to be a part of this one particular group of ideas and thoughts. And if you're not, there's consequences to that. And so people self-censor. Well, I said I had a focus group every day on the show now, and I'll show you. We did a show, the title of which was You Can't Say That. And so I was putting up on screen all the things that you now can't say. These are the words that have been, you know,

people say these are offensive to people's sensibilities. And I'll find it here and show you what it was, unless Jamie already has it. Here it is. Mom and Dad? Yeah, there you go. You can't say Mom and Dad anymore? what it was unless Jamie already has it. Here it is. Yeah. Mom and dad? Yeah, there you go. You can't say mom and dad anymore?

Yeah, you can't say mom and dad anymore. And so we can talk about these, but I asked the audience at one point, I said, how many of you are reluctant to raise your hand and say anything? Because I asked the audience to participate and they do a lot. How many of you are afraid to say anything right now because you don't want to get targeted? And it looked like the wave. Everybody said, oh, yeah, I don't want to say shit. Peanut gallery?

Yeah. Why can't you say peanut gallery? That one, I always thought, and look, I'm here to learn. So I asked him, what, what, what is it? I thought peanut gallery was at the, like the cheap seats at the baseball game. Yeah. That's what I thought too. Like out in the outfield where the kids would go and get a $2 ticket or something and eat peanuts and have a great time. Isn't that what it is? Apparently not. Apparently it has some racial overtones. Peanut Gallery does? And Mom and Dad was, someone said, well, we don't have a mom and dad in our home.

We have a mom and mom, and so it makes my child feel funny if... Here it is. According to linguist experts, the origin of this phrase derives from the late 1800s vaudeville era. A popular style of entertainment included jugglers, comedians, singers, and more. The peanut gallery was the cheapest section of seats usually occupied by people with limited means. Yeah, the cheap seats. How is that offensive? Well, man, I've been in a peanut gallery a lot of my life.

Yeah. I've got to tell you. Well, I guess are they saying peanuts were a popular concession snack for vaudeville shows. Unpopular performers would often find themselves pelted with the easy-to-hurl edible projectiles. would often find themselves pelted with the easy-to-hurl edible projectiles. Others disagree in part with the preceding class-based rather than racial claim. They note that in the past, cheap balcony seats were often reserved for or largely made up of African-American patrons. Thus, since the phrase implies the opinions expressed by those from the gallery

were unsolicited, unwarranted, and unhelpful. The phrase also co-notes something negative about those giving them purported to be African Americans. Boy, that's a stretch. Well, you know, you don't have to be offended every time you can be. Right. Right? Right, but that expression doesn't have a racial connotation the way most people use it. I wouldn't think.

It's usually people in the back of the room. That's just how we use it. They said brainstorm. What? Was offensive to people that had brain injuries. Oh, my God. That it was an ableist thing. Well, if you have a fucking brain, if you move and walk, if you're

brainstorming, you're using your brain. Is running offensive? Is it offensive to people who can't run? Should the Olympics be canceled? Because the Olympics are ableist? What the fuck are we talking about? It seems to me and look,

maybe if you're in that situation, and I ask, and blindsided, I asked some people that had impaired vision, and they were like, what? They didn't understand about which phrase blindsided that you can't say blindsided or blind spot in your car like it was in my blind spot and they were like i don't i don't understand why i'm offended they i now that doesn't mean there aren't people that are but i couldn't find it and And I only talked to six or seven. I bet it's more people that are not blind, that are looking for things to be offended with. What about first world problems? How's that one? Well- How's that offensive? I think it's that third world is mostly black, is what one of the audience members said.

So that was racial. Well, third world encompasses a lot of different ethnicities, doesn't it? There's a lot of Latin America. There's a lot of Asia. There's a lot of Eurasia. That's what the audience member said. Yeah. And they didn't want it in the show so are we allowed to say first world second world and third world because that seems like that's offensive too then

just even to me that had to do with infrastructure right because i know like in the congo the entire country has the electrical infrastructure of a city the size of austin for millions and millions of people which is why they're so vulnerable to natural disaster and they don't have dams and they don't have electrical pumps and i always thought of second, third world having to do with infrastructure and technology and support systems and all that sort of thing. I always thought of it as it has to do with dictatorial governments and- Yeah. Yeah.

You could think of- Corruption and- Yeah. Yeah. Finding things to be offensive is a- it's recreation for a lot of people. I think that's what we've gotten to. Yeah. Recreational outrage.

I think that's where people have sat around and said, what can I be offended about today as opposed to saying, what can I do to contribute to unity? to saying, what can I do to contribute to unity? What can I do to come together and work things out, make things better? And that's just not constructive to me. Now, if there's something that somebody's doing, you know, we've done shows on hate crimes. I mean, where people are attacking people purely because they're Asian or Jewish or whatever in LA. And I get it. That's okay. That's not where you're looking for something. It's where you're sitting in the line at a fast food restaurant and somebody rear ends your car and starts mocking you for being Asian, which is what happened. This wonderful family we had on the show, they wound up in a parking lot rolling on the ground, getting the shit beat out of them by some guy. Okay. That's not looking for something to be offended about. It was purely because they were Asian.

And maybe that's not the right thing to say. I don't know. They were from the Philippines, as I recall. So Filipino, I guess. I get that. They're being attacked, and those attacks are on the vertical upswing. That's not looking for something to be offended about. That's traumatizing to them. But picking out words to get offended about,

I mean, I'm not going to get offended about ball jokes or somebody. I'm going to say, well, but you've not been oppressed. You've not, oppressed you've not okay i get it but you don't have to be offended just because you can well that's one of the things that social media has amplified social media has amplified recreational outrage and virtue signaling and the fact that if you call out these things you're somehow better than people that are ignoring them if you call out these ableist terms like blindsided or whatever one you want to focus on that's ridiculous,

it makes you better than the people that don't. Yeah. And I just think that's not helping our issues. It's not helping what we're trying to do, which we're very divided right now. what we're trying to do, which we're very divided right now. And I tell you, I did something that I thought was a really eye-opening experience for me. You know Frank Luntz. He's a pollster that has probably done 2,500 polls. He does surveys and he's conducted Republican presidential debates and stuff. Frank's kind of the guy for that. We did a focus group with 40 USC students.

20 were from the Republican organization at USC and 20 from the Democratic. And we brought them in, faced them, and boy, they were a lot of bad blood. Been a lot of things going on on their sides, arguing back and forth, bad things being said. And at one point, I just said, all right, time out. I want all of you to stand up, and I want you to pair up across from each other. And no small talk. You cannot speak.

And I want you to make eye contact. And just eye contact. You can't look away. Just look this person in the eye. Because we don't do that much anymore. As you were saying, particularly on the internet. I want you to look at this person. I want you to think about what's going on in their life. Did they lose somebody to COVID? How's their day gone? Do they have a mom? Do they have a dad? Does it hurt them when somebody says something bad to them? What do they think's funny? What are their challenges? What are they proud of? All of that. I just left them looking for way past comfortable.

all that I just left him looking for way past comfortable and then I asked him a couple of questions that they had exchanged about and then without saying anything I had him sit down and say okay just what's your reaction and absolutely to the person, they said, I'm really shocked. I had never thought about this as a human being before. But just spending that time with them, looking eye to eye, I have a completely different attitude. They all said that?

All of them, every one of them. They never thought about the other person with differing ideas as being a human being. It had gotten pushed off the table. It was all about ideology. And when they looked at them and they couldn't say anything, they couldn't talk about their ideas. They just had to make eye contact at a human level. Every one of them said it really changed my attitude. That's pretty wild. That's something just as simple as taking a few minutes to make eye contact. Yeah.

Now, these are young, fresh people. We actually videotaped that whole thing. I'll send that exercise to you, and you can look at it and hear their comments unedited. It was one of the reasons I'm pretty optimistic. I'm optimistic. I just think the momentum and the way the country's going and this problem that people have with social media, because people are very addicted to social media. I think social media definitely exacerbates the problem. And some people are recognizing that and they're trying to step away from it. And even the tech companies, they're showing you your screen time to try to let you know, give you a little indication like,

hey, maybe you're obsessing. Maybe you're addicted to this. Maybe take some time, go for a walk in the park, do something different. I'm optimistic because I know a lot of people that are exceptional. I know a lot of people that are exceptional. I know a lot of people that are inspirational. I know a lot of people that are truly extraordinary human beings who really help the world and just their mere presence and the way they live their life is inspiring and it opens up a lot of people's eyes to possibilities. But I'm also a realist when it comes to human nature. I like to do a lot of difficult things. And one of the things that I know about difficult things is it's very hard to get people to embrace being uncomfortable and suffering and struggle. I mean, like physical suffering and physical struggling. People, they seek comfort and they seek to avoid these uncomfortable moments.

But that's the only way you grow. You grow through being uncomfortable. You grow physically through difficult workouts. You grow mentally through psychological struggle, through intellectual struggle, through complicated things that you have to work your way through. And there's so many people out there that avoid those things. It's easy to avoid those things. And there's a pattern of avoiding those things, a pattern of just being complacent, being lazy, finding some sort of a distraction, whether it's video games or television or social media.

And it's very hard for people to break out of that. I know there's a lot of people that want to, though. Well, you know how uncomfortable cognitive dissonance is. You just really don't want to feel that friction of this other point of view. It's uncomfortable to consider it. But here's what's happening. And you'll experience this being in Texas now. But when we were kids, we used to go, have you ever heard of Mundy, Texas? Mundy. M-U-N-D-Y? Yes. Yeah. It's where my grandparents lived in Mundy, Texas, like 1,500 people.

And I used to go there in the summers and work at my grandfather's freight warehouse. And the big 18-wheelers would come in and drop freight at his warehouse, and we would deliver it around the county. It would be like those big plow discs and all this stuff. And we'd put it on flat bed and deliver it. And there ain't nothing in Mundy. It ain't in Mundy. It ain't headed that way. It's just nothing there. And we'd go around barefooted a lot. And sometimes, being stupid, we would start across an asphalt highway barefooted. And you get about halfway across and you go, holy shit. I mean, you're out there and you look down and your feet are just melting into the pavement.

All right, now what are you going to do? You're in pain and you're going to do one of two things. You're either going to turn around and run back or you're going to bolt to the other side. But you are not going to stand in the middle and just melt into the pavement. You're going to go one side or the other. And that's what people are. That's how people are. They get into a position of pain.

They're going to resolve one way or the other. And once you get to the side of that road, what's it going to take to get you to go back out on that highway to go over to the other side? It's really hard. And right now, we got people on the shoulders of this hot highway. And how to get them to come across to the other side or meet in the middle is very painful for people psychologically. They don't want to do that. It's painful for them to get out of there. They're in a bubble. They're talking to their own people.

They're not talking to the people on the other side of the highway. And it's painful to go over there. It hurts to get on that hot highway and go over there. It's psychologically painful. It hurts physically to go talk to somebody on the right if you're on the left or left if you're on the right. And that's what we're facing is getting them on that hot highway again because they know what's going to happen. It's going to hurt to do it. That's what we have to overcome. We got to get you out on a hot highway. And you'll see, psychologically, that's what we have to overcome. We got to get you out on a hot highway.

And you'll see, psychologically, that's what we got to overcome. And we've got to make it clear that those yelling the loudest don't deserve the most attention. That's the problem we got right now. We got small pockets of loud talkers, and they're getting the most attention. And that's not the way it should be. And all of this majority that's being too quiet need to speak up. They don't need to start yelling. They just need to start a chorus of common sense. I think people are afraid of doing that.

They are. They don't want to be singled out by the people that are extremists. But if they hang together, look, common sense is not common enough anymore. We've got to have a return to common sense. Some of the stuff we're doing right now is just not common enough anymore. We've got to have a return to common sense. Some of the stuff we're doing right now is just not common sense. It's just not. No, it's not. We have epidemics in this country right now that people aren't paying enough attention to.

Well, the fentanyl epidemic. That one scares the shit out of me. Man. That one scares the shit out of me. It. That one scares the shit out of me. It really does because people are accidentally dying of overdoses. It used to be if you died of an overdose, it's because you did a dangerous drug. You took a very risky chance to do something that you probably knew you shouldn't be doing, whether it's heroin or meth or something like that.

But now people are doing things they think are fairly innocuous, and it's laced with fentanyl, and they're dying. Well, just across the border, just south of San Diego, in October of 21, they busted a drug lab that was turning out 70 million counterfeit pills a month. One lab. 70 million counterfeit pills a month. Now, we don't know that they were all going to come to America, but we know a shitload of them were going to come to America. And the DEA's estimate is

that 40% of them are laced with lethal levels of fentanyl. 40%. 40% are laced with lethal doses of fentanyl. That poisoning, fentanyl poisoning, is the number one cause of death for people 18 to 49 in this country. Yeah. And think about that. And what these kids need to understand,

and I want people to understand this, and I don't care if you stop listening to Joe and I talk right now and go call your kid or go call your grandkids or your friends' kids, the chance of them, first off, all these pills you're buying on Snapchat, 100% of them are counterfeit. They're buying pills on Snapchat? Oh, they're buying. How does that work?

You can buy a pill on Snapchat, and I'll show you here. Let me pull this up. I know Jamie can't beat me to this. Let me pull this up. I know Jamie can't beat me to this. If you do, I'm going to really be impressed. He's got it. No, he doesn't either.

Bullshit. Snapchat drug dealers. How illegal drugs are being dangled at kids on Snapchat, Instagram, and other platforms. Scroll down. I was seeing if he was going to react. No, I'm not reacting. I'm not reacting. I'm looking because I've got something.

Okay, here we go. See these Xanax bars here yeah and uh maybe i can send this to jamie okay then here are the emojis that they use to advertise it with and then here is the menu so who is this cartels that are putting these things up on Snapchat and you order them on the internet? Yeah. Here's the deal. Fentanyl is synthetic and it's all being, uh, generated in China. So if you want to be a conspiracy theorist, this will get your conspiracy juices flowing. Are you AirDrop open over there? Yes.

Jamie's Airbook Pro? Yes. Okay. I just sent you four pictures, and they're gone. So now you have them. Okay. It's all being generated or synthesized in China. And then China is sending it to the Sinaloa cartel.

And the cartel is then turning it into these pills. And then these pills are coming into America. These pills are coming into America, and the DEA estimates that they are intercepting about 10%, and what they are intercepting is enough to kill every American. Jesus Christ. The fentanyl is enough to kill. So here's the menu. Every American. L.A. County delivery. It's like. Make it to that little. There it goes. So L.A. County delivery, nationwide shipping, low cost, low stress, highest highs, Dr. Don guarantee. Mr. Don 248. So look at all the stuff that they have here.

Perks, GMO, OG, gas, and edibles. What does that mean? That's probably weed. Gas? Really? Yeah. THC crumble, snow, Adderall, 20 milligram Scripps, 2.5 milligram Hulks. What are those? What's a Hulk?

That's the type of pill off the top of my head I wouldn't know, but I'm not. Pharmapram bottles, Ambien 10 milligram Scripps, Hydros, 10 milligram. What is a Hydro? Like a hydrocodone maybe. I don't know. I think. Jesus Christ. Yeah, now go to the emojis that I sent you.

It's one of the images I sent. And this is how they communicate. Percocet, oxycodone. So they have these different emojis in combination. Yeah. Mean different things. What is that little emoji next to those two pills that means Xanax? It looks like a truck.

What does that mean? Delivery? Yeah. I think that means they'll deliver that to your house. This is like Postmates. Wow. You order this, and they'll deliver this to your house in less than an hour. And I've had different sets of parents on who's – these are kids that – and we do pretty good background checks on these.

I'm talking about, and the title of the show we did was One Pill Kills, because these were not kids that were drug addicts. They weren't doing heroin and that sort of thing. And we checked because, like, one of the girls, we got her credit card information. We saw she ordered one pill. We went back, like, saw she ordered one pill we went back like months ordered one pill and she wanted to get some sleep before finals and we found three quarters of the pill in her top dresser drawer her parents found it and the police came and she broke it in half

and then broke it in half again so she took a quarter of one pill and they found her dead in the morning because it had so much fentanyl in it that it just killed her. And this isn't an overdose. This is poisoning. Do you think this is purposeful? Well, the reason they put it in there and put this one up, and the reason they put it in there is because it's so highly addictive. But they're not smart, or they don't care if they're killing a certain percentage of their customers.

But here's the deal. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin, 100 times stronger than morphine. So if you bite into this, you're dead when you hit the ground. And so she took a quarter of it. Boom. Gone. gone. And their estimate is that 40% of these pills that they're getting have lethal doses of fentanyl. And the ones that don't have enough in it that you are addicted like that.

So they come back for more and more and more and more. And now there are conspiracy theorists, including a former DEA guy, that believes that China is manufacturing this stuff, synthesizing this stuff, sending it to the Sinaloa cartel who's flooding it into America. And they're just trying to poison or drug Americans. It's just another attack. He believes it's a terrorist attack. And it's interesting. He has a demo that he does. He just takes a little packet of sweetener and dumps it in his hand, and he says that much fentanyl is enough to kill 500 people. It's just staggering. And we've got to get this message out to the kids.

Don't do it. Those pills look exactly like the pills that you get at the pharmacy. And what they're doing now, Joe, is they're putting them in these pastel colors. I think I sent you some of those, Jamie, in the pastel colors. They're making them look like these candies that the kids get. And kids are going to see these things around and pick them up and think they're like sweet tarts or whatever and bite into them. If I was a parent, I would go to the store and buy every kind of candy I could find. And as soon as my kids came home from trick-or-treating, I would take their pumpkin

and dump it into the trash and then fill it back up with candy I knew was good and hand it back to them. I wouldn't let them take a single piece of candy from trick-or-treating because you don't know what's in there. That was always the fear, right, when we were kids? That someone was going to sneak a razor blade into an apple or something. We thought there would be a razor blade in an apple or something. I saw this going around, but I heard a lot of people pushing back a couple days after this was made major headlines. Experts say no.

Who's the expert? I don't know. I'm just, there was a lot of hubbub about this viral picture because this went out, the DEA was talking about it. But then I read there was like no evidence that this was real. That's what I read. Well, let's scroll down and see what they say in terms of looks like Candy DEA Administrator Alan or Ann Milgram told CBS News. In fact, some of the drug traffickers have nicknamed it sweet tarts, Skittles. The DEA alert didn't mention Halloween, but fears about rainbow fentanyl and the holiday went viral. DEA warning meets skepticism from drug experts. Drug policy experts contacted by NPR

agree there's no new fentanyl threat this Halloween. Many are also skeptical of the DEA's original warning. They don't believe that Mexican drug cartels and street dealers have launched any new campaign targeting children. I don't see any evidence that the DEA has produced that supports that conjecture. I don't think they're targeting children. I think the fact that they are making these things in pastel colors make children vulnerable to picking these things up. You want to argue over the word targeting? If a child picks up something that, you know, I said that young girl that I was talking about took three quarters of a pill,

or one quarter of a pill, and three quarters of it was left in her drawer. Yeah. If she has a younger sister or something that sees that, picks it up and it looks like candy and eats it, she's gone. Right. Yeah. I'm not saying they're targeting. I'm not saying they're targeting.

Yeah. I don't care if you use the word targeting or not. It's dangerous. Yeah. word targeting or not, it's dangerous. And I'm just saying, you know my grandkids. They won't be getting any candy out of that. And it's not that anywhere they're going is going to be giving out fentanyl to kids. It's just they don't know where it's coming from. Yeah, you're not getting it from a store.

And that makes it dangerous. My point is, if you're in school and you're studying for finals and you're not a drug addict and you think, well, one pill's not going to hurt, that's no longer true. You maybe think, I'll get some Adderall, get me through my finals. That could be a fatal decision. It won't be an overdose. It'll be a poisoning. It's very dangerous. And if you're getting it from someone other than a pharmacy, there's a high possibility. than a pharmacy, there's a high possibility. Well, the DEA's belief is that all of the pills that you're getting on social media are counterfeit. And that as much as 40% of them have

fatal doses of fentanyl, lethal doses of fentanyl, because they're so unsophisticated in their mix. So it's not a matter of poisoning as much as it's a matter of they don't give a fuck and they're just, I mean, they're not like accredited labs. These people are just mixing shit up. They're making the stuff up in a bathtub. They're making it up in a, you know, mixing it up and then they're putting it in a pill press and letting it dry and shipping it over here

today on CNN they said they arrested some it was either CNN or Fox one of the two they arrested some 14 year olds coming across the border and they had a couple of thousand pills on them

and who knows where it came from who knows what else is in it and that will find its way to the market a fair amount of it through street dealers and the rest of it through social media

it's dangerous I wouldn't you couldn't hold a gun on me and get me to take something I bought on the internet. And I just think people need to be aware of it. And if you think that it's an overreaction, an overstatement- How could it be? How could it be when you're talking about the number one killer of people 18 to 49? Or 18 to 45, whatever the statistic is. Yeah, that's terrifying. It is terrifying. And this is not something that we had to think about just 10, 15 years ago.

No. And I don't know how much press that's getting. It's not getting enough. It's starting to get some attention and there's something called carfentanil and that is more powerful than fentanyl jesus christ and it's been around since the 50s and they were using that on animals jamie will pull up carfentanil fentanyl, I'm sure, in a fast hurry. My expertise in this is that I deal with the parents when they're heartbroken over a dead teen. I'm not a chemist. I'm not a physician. I can't tell you about all that. What I can tell you is I deal with the heartbreak of the families after the fact,

and so I know it's real. And I deal with these guys with the DEA and law enforcement that tell me that it is a major, major problem on the street. And it scares the hell out of me. As it should. Yeah. Yeah, it scares the hell out of me, too. And again, it's not like these things are going to get better.

These things seem to escalate. And, you know, we're talking about all these problems that we're facing in the world right now that didn't exist just a couple of decades ago. And you got to wonder a couple of decades from now, what does this look like? Yeah, it's, it's, it really comes down to we have big enough problems that affect all Americans, that those that you were saying, is it going to take something major for us to say, you know what, we're all in this together. And I think those things are here.

I just don't think they're being acknowledged. Because if I have somebody come on the show to me, they know I can't bring that child back. They know I can't stop their suffering. They come on as a cautionary tale. They say, I don't want my child's loss to be in vain. I'm here to tell this story because I want to save some lives. And that's why they're there. That's why they're talking through their tears and giving a voice to their loss, because they don't want somebody else to be there tomorrow. And they don't care.

They're not there saying, I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican, I'm left, I'm right. They're there saying, I'm a parent, and I don't want anybody's child to die from this. And we have enough of those things that I think we need to pay attention to. And every mother bonds over that. They understand the pain of that. And I really hope people hear us talking about it. Well, I'm sure people will hear it. And I think the message is getting out slowly.

But it's just not being magnified enough. You know, I mean, the crisis that we faced during COVID-19 was magnified to the point of hysteria, to the point where they're counting people dying of all sorts of diseases and calling them COVID deaths and elevating the amount of people that died to the point where people were absolutely terrified of it. If they had applied a similar attention to this, I think we could at least put a dent in it. But in terms of what the DEA is doing, in terms of what law enforcement's doing, I mean, they need more resources. They need more help to try to stop this shit from coming in. Well, they do. And are you familiar with a guy named Dimitri Christakis? No. He's a pediatric epidemiologist, and he really looks at the long run of pediatrics as they grow up and what affects them in later years, what happens early that affects them in later years.

And he's a brilliant, brilliant scientist. And he says what's happened with, he'd be a great, interesting guy for you to talk to. I've interviewed him three or four times. He says that what's happened with the handling of the pandemic is going to amount to millions of years of lives lost with these kids that are in school now. Millions of years of lives lost. What do you mean by that?

Well, what he's talking about is that because of the educational gap that's been created by the pandemic, because of the social developmental gap that's been created with the competitive gap that's been created, developmental, competitive, educational, that this generation is going to lag behind. And, like, for example, if you're not reading on grade level at the end of the third grade, your likelihood of dropping out is four times normal. And the reason for that is, with the first, second, and third grade, you're learning to

read. From the fourth grade on, you're reading to learn. So if you haven't learned to read in those first three years, you now don't have the tool to read to learn. And so you start falling further and further behind. And so your likelihood of throwing up your hands in frustration, falling further behind each year and ultimately dropping out. And if you're low socioeconomic or a minority and your parents don't support education, et cetera, it's six times normal. But he's saying that these kids that got so little and lost so much in math, reading, and science during the pandemic with this remote learning, which was a disaster, that they're going to have less educational attainment, which means they're going to get lesser jobs.

Lesser jobs are more dangerous jobs because they're more manual labor. are more dangerous jobs because they're more manual labor. They're doing construction work, things where you can get injured. They're going to have lesser insurance. And so you get less treatment, slower diagnosis, more injuries. And that as that and other factors. But as that obtains, that will take years off their life at the end. They might develop cancer, but because they have poor insurance, it might be slower to get it diagnosed, lesser treatment, so it advances further and takes years off their life. They get injured, stress, trauma, and so it may take two years, three years, four years off of each kid's life. And we've got 57 million kids in the public school system right now. I read something that confused me.

Maybe you can help me with this. Because they were saying about Los Angeles, people were criticizing the response to the pandemic in terms of remote schooling and making kids wear masks. They were saying that math scores went up. And I didn't understand how that could be possible. went up and I didn't understand how that could be possible I haven't heard anything like that about any school system in Los Angeles which was particularly draconian in their response they were trying to say that math scores went up have you heard anything like that I have not can you find something about that? I just typed in Los Angeles math scores, and all I see is it's down.

Yeah, well, are people just lying? Low math reading test scores. It's California, not Los Angeles specific, but it's lots of articles saying this. Yeah. Steep decline, sharp drop. That's what I thought. People were arguing about this on Twitter because some pundit was talking about the response to the pandemic and how it affected school kids. And, you know, all the, can I say peanut gallery?

They were chiming in and they were saying that scores were actually Los Angeles scores were going up. I can't see anything that says that. Results of California's first statewide test since COVID are, click on that, LAist right there. See what it says? Are back. Find out how your SoCal school fared. Oh, so it's just like individual schools.

Well, I've certainly not. Well, that looks like a decline in every single chart. Yeah, math results specific here is down. Yeah, in every one of them. In every county, there's a decline, a very noticeable decline from 2019 to 2022. So what the fuck are these people talking about? I'll check Twitter and see if I can find what they're talking about. It might just be fucking propaganda.

It's so dangerous, some of the gaslighting that you're seeing. I saw people gaslighting about, I'm sure you saw that debate between Dr. Oz and that guy Fetterman for the Pennsylvania Senate. And the gentleman Fetterman had a stroke five months ago, and he's clearly compromised to the point where while he's communicating, he's not just stumbling. He kind of lost in thought and can't form a coherent sentence and bounces around from my, he looks, he looks troubled. And I was watching MSNBC and they were trying to say, well, I mess up sometimes when I talk and, you know, I misspeak and I stumble on my words. Of course you do. Everybody does. We're human. I do it all the time. But there's a big difference between the overall one-hour debate.

You're looking at a guy who seems to have something really wrong with his brain. And for you to gaslight and pretend that's not the case just because it doesn't fit with your narrative, that's not news. That's propaganda, and it's fucking dangerous. Yeah. You know, I hate to see him do that. And look, I haven't done any testing on Fetterman or President Biden, but it seems to me that President Biden is not at his best and that Fetterman is not at his best. That's being very charitable.

And I don't hold that against Fetterman. He had a stroke. Exactly. But – Seems unfair to put him in that position. It really does. And I'm not trying to be unkind. He had a stroke.

I mean, the poor guy. Yes. He had a stroke and he's going to have to rehabilitate. And I hope he's able to do that. But why did they think that they could put him out there on a huge stage like that and not have those? Like there's interviews before that showed this where he used a teleprompter during interviews where when he was asked questions, he was allowed to look at a screen and read his responses off. And even then he struggled. He struggled to form coherent sentences while having the responses to each individual question laid out for him in a way that he could

read. And this is not against the guy. I don't know. I don't know anything about this guy. I really don't. I just know he's the Democrat candidate. But what you're seeing is a guy who's got a problem with his brain. That guy should be rehabilitating. He shouldn't be getting forced into an incredibly high-stress job in a public display where, you know, it's humiliating. Well, I think he shows great courage to get up there and do it. Most certainly. But, I mean, just ask yourself, let's say you were getting on an airplane and the airline pilot had had a similar cognitive impairment. Yeah. Would you get on?

No. Well, hell no. Is there some sort of, what do they do? Like, is there some sort of a protocol that's in place if someone is the candidate and something bad happens to them like this? You don't just have no one. Like, if he died from that stroke, would they have no Democratic candidate? I don't know what it is in Pennsylvania. Maybe they'd have a quick special election or something.

I don't know what the rule is. That seems appropriate in this case, doesn't it? I guess. Would the other guy run unopposed? That sounds crazy. That doesn't sound right. You can't have no one from the Democrats, you know, as a candidate for Senate. You have to have someone.

I mean, there's got to be a rule, right? There should be a rule. I don't know what it is. This is like not quite that, but close to it. It's not that he died, but the man had a stroke. This is not debatable. He's been open about it. And to force him into this sort of a situation while he's rehabilitating, I mean, you would be able to speak this better

than me. I would think that this would be counter to any rehabilitative treatments that he can have. It's high stress, public, humiliating. Well, stress is the worst possible thing that you can do when you're trying to recover from some kind of brain event like this. I don't know what kind of stroke he had. I don't know what part of the brain it was in. But I can tell you, you want to give the brain an opportunity to recover. And I don't know what his age is, but there's something called neuroplasticity. And that doesn't go up with age, it goes down. And you need to have time to recover and let different parts of the brain take over for parts of the brain that maybe have been impaired.

And I don't know how severe it was. I don't know what part of the brain it was in. But it can't be good to be putting him in this kind of situation. I'm talking about just being selfish on his behalf. Don't know what his politics are. Right, right. That's exactly what I'm saying. We're not talking about politics.

We're talking about a human being. Yeah. And they talk about President Biden all the time. I mean, he's 80. And he does make a lot of gaffes. I hope I'm that well at 80. A lot of gaffes. I hope I'm that well at 80, but I don't know that I would want that much stress of a job at 80.

At 80, I hope I'm out fishing or something. Yeah. spin certain things like that from my standpoint that does has in the past has in the past assess cognitive functioning i just shake my head and say you know what are you talking about right but it was painful to watch federmanman. I felt really bad for him. Yeah, I felt bad for him too. And again, I don't know anything about the guy. I don't know anything about his politics. He may be a great guy for Pennsylvania.

What? I have no idea what his... I think it's a little hokey that they keep trotting him out with a hoodie on. Where's like a Carhartt hoodie? Like, I'm a man of the people. Come on. Yeah. Wear a suit, buddy. How Los Angeles beat the national odds to overcome school shutdowns and make academic gains during the pandemic.

Well, that's not according to that fucking chart we just looked at. It said it was down across the board, but they had the most gains or something. Oh, horse shit. Oh, they're using horse shit fucking reasoning. It's compared to others. Well, you can't fall off the floor. It was terrible nationally. The losses in all of those areas.

Los Angeles scored below national average on the tests. But among the 50 states and 26 large city districts, it was the only place to post such gains on the exams, according to a federal analysis. The data was so good, the Los Angeles superintendent Alberto Cavallo referring to his district results. It bodes very well for our L.A. and is really a testament to our strategy. The fuck? Combination of makeup classes and high attendance rates for online lessons contributed to the resilience of his district.

Boy, that's a fucking which commands a budget of nearly $20 billion. Holy shit. Of course you want to say it's doing well. We're amazing. Los Angeles also fared relatively well with remote learning.

Relatively well is hilarious. Mr. Cavallo said, due to a program that gave internet hotspots to families who needed them during school shutdowns. This sounds like a rose-colored glasses view of the world. I don't want to be one of those people that criticizes and doesn't offer a solution. That's what I do. Look, I'm not a professional educator, but I do have an opinion, and people can shoot it full of holes if they want to. We've got a gap.

I don't think anybody would disagree that we have a gap. And the only way to close that gap is to put in the extra work. And the only way to put in the extra work is to put in the time. And what's going to have to happen is we're going to have to change the school calendar, and the kids are going to have to go to school during the summer, change the school calendar, and the kids are going to have to go to school during the summer, and they're going to have to have very concentrated focus protocol on reading and math and science. And if I was a kid, I would hate to hear what I'm saying because I lived for summer,

waited to get out of there so we could go do nothing. But I also remember after three or four weeks, we were kind of bored to death. But they're going to have to just put in the time. And there's a big problem right now because there's a huge shortage of teachers. And they're dropping out. Teachers aren't continuing to teach as long as they have in the past. We don't pay them enough to teach, and it's hard to recruit teachers. There are fewer teachers enrolling in education when they go in for their bachelor's degrees. Some states, like Arizona, are doing the stopgap measures where you don't have to have a teaching credential to go in and teach. You can just go in and teach. They're just getting anybody, not just anybody,

but they're getting people in there. Their theory is they're bringing in experts from computer technology and bringing in people from Microsoft and different areas to teach with their special knowledge. But I have a hard time thinking that somebody making seven figures at Microsoft is going to stop that and come teach for an average of $4 or $5 an hour when you compute a teacher's time in the classroom. The theory doesn't bode well for what you find online. The theory doesn't bode well for what you find online. I'm sure you saw that teacher in the shop class in Washington State that had the giant rubber boobs.

Yeah. That's what I'm talking about, common sense. First of all, you can't even wear a scarf if you're teaching woodworking. Yeah. You're going to get in a circle saw. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to either get strangled to death or get your face dragged into a saw.

Yeah. They always said we couldn't wear this or wear that because it was a distraction or whatever, but that's okay? That's insane. That's insane if it was actual breasts that were that large. Like, how did that happen? But if that's rubber prosthetic breasts that a biological male is strapping on like a Halloween costume and going in and teaching kids while wearing a mask, that's crazy. And then the school is defending it. Well, they're defending it because they're afraid not to. Yeah, which is, I mean, what has to happen? Do they have to be afraid to defend it? Does it have to be something where there's consequences to defend it,

where people start pulling their kids out of classes and defunding the school? Like what has to happen to let people know that, hey, you've gone way too far into crazy town? Well, what happens is phobic has become a suffix. And so you say, okay, if you don't defend that, you are transphobic. You are homophobic. You are this phobic, just blankphobic. You are homophobic. You are this blank phobic. And then you become

a target for the cancel culture. And I think that does not make common sense. I think you've got the tail wagging the dog and you're putting an individual's interest ahead of the group of children. What's fascinating too is that it's a small percentage of the

population that's engaging in this sort of activity and they're shifting culture because of people have this fear of going against them. It's not the majority. It's not the majority of people think that this makes sense. I can't believe that person, whoever that person is, thinks it makes common sense. They're making a statement. I think what I read, and I don't know if this is true, but that person is kind of trolling. And I think that person, what I i read was almost trying to get fired and did you read about that jamie i'm reading an update right now from a week ago it said they were before they went into this uh kayla lemieux is the name they're going by now they had been on leave and they and now and they showed up at a different school in this outfit. And so I'm reading through right now, like, what's going on with that?

So they had been on leave like they had been told to not come back? General leave during winter-spring semester of this year and was the last time he was seen by the Hamilton board. Did you say he? I'm reading what this says. I'm reading what this says. I'm just reading what it says in the article. this says. I'm just reading what it says an article Be careful. I'm just I'm quoting it's a quote

Life quote one of the girls who threw the soup at the the van go the other day they Patrick bet David interviewed her and he has masked your pronouns and she said she he they Was she trolling? No, she was fucking serious. The other one was they, them. And this one girl was she, he, they. I mean, this is the kind of logic that a person would throw soup on an incredibly valuable piece of art and then glue themselves to a wall to make a statement. You could be everything you want to be, kids.

You could be a she, he, they. Well, my question, I guess, for anyone that would be watching this is, is there a point that would be too far? Is there a point where the transgender community or the school or anybody would agree that something has gone too far, that now the children's interest has been violated, that it doesn't make common sense. If this is not it, what's too far? Right.

Yeah, what is too far? Has anybody asked that question? No, I don't think they do. I think that people want to be able to choose how they wanna be represented, how they identify, and they should have full freedom to do that in any way, shape, or form. Non-binary, he, she, they, they, them, all norms should be cast out. Well, I would just ask that question in that situation because I think it – does that not disrupt the learning process?

It does because it gives people extraordinary amounts of attention for something very simple. You just decide you want to be recognized as this and you make everybody else change the way they view you and communicate with you. You are now a they-them, which is plural. It doesn't even make sense. Like, if you can say that you're a girl, you're a boy, but you identify as a girl, yeah, gender dysphoria is a real thing. And we probably shouldn't have a problem with that.

You want to change your name? Probably shouldn't have a problem with that. If you want to be representative as a plural, that's very weird. Like, now you're fucking with the meaning of language. Well, is that person still employed? I think so. Really?

They're still going to? I don't know if they still have the big rubber boobs, but. Well, I hadn't followed it, so I didn't know. I don't know. But the school district or the school was, at least initially, was supporting they. Them. Where does this go, Dr. Phil? This is the question.

Like, how do we turn this ship around or right it? You know, the thing is like the pendulum effect. Things go too far one way and then they come back and it kind of makes sense in the middle somewhere. So how do we do that? How do we get more inclusive, open-minded society but also not completely tank civilization because of overindulgence? civilization because of overindulgence? Well, you know, I believe that there have to be people on both sides of that issue who would say, is this in the best interest of this segment of the population? That can't be good positioning in trying to get people to say, look, we're going to take this seriously. We're going to respect the transgender community. We're going to respect

that they're wanting to be respected and have their rights protected and to fit into the mainstream and flow with what's going on and to do something like this kind of example. I can't believe that there aren't people on both sides of that issue would say this isn't helping the discourse. That this is turning it into a – it's making it about this one person and detracts from the dialogue about saying is there some common ground here that everybody can live with, be who they want to be, and move on? That just doesn't make sense. And that's what I worry sometimes about taking such a militant approach of trying to win an argument instead of solve a problem. instead of solve a problem. And it doesn't make sense to me if anybody would go to a marketing company

or a PR firm and say, what's your objective? What do you want? Let's figure out how to get you what you want. I don't think this would be on the short list of approaches. No, I don't. But I think it's just individuals who are very self-indulgent, who want to stand out. And I don't think they're thinking about the greater good of any cause. That's what I mean. Yeah. It becomes about that person. Yeah. And I think there have to be those in the transgender community that would say, I don't think you're helping this.

Well, I think there most certainly are. But I think they fear standing out, too, and stepping out of line and criticizing this. I think it's important that you consistently test the rationality of your thoughts all the time. And there's four simple ways to do that. Is this in my best interest? Is it based on fact? Does it get me what I want? Does it prolong my life?

You have to test your thoughts all the time for rationality. I say that to people, if people would do that, I don't think they would be so prone to self-harm, suicide. We're not teaching these things in school. We're not teaching much in school. It seems like right now, we've got so many kids that can't read and other things, but you've got to teach people how to think sometimes. We're not telling you what to think. We're teaching you how to think. Test your thoughts. Is this rational? Is it in my best interest? I'm thinking here about going and telling my teacher to jump up my ass. Is that in your best interest? Does it get you what you want? Does it protect and prolong your life? I don't think people think like that. But we need to teach them to do that.

That's especially exacerbated by social media, I think. This world that we live in now, it's about getting attention. It's about doing TikTok stunts and pranks and finding a way to get likes and clicks. Yeah, we got too many people being quiet so other people can be comfortable. That's a great statement. We really do. That's a great statement.

Just look around. We got too many people being quiet so other people can be comfortable. That doesn't work for the big population. They're just caving. for the big population. They're just caving. And it doesn't seem like there's a real leadership in this country where someone stands out and says things like that and then offers up logical, rational solutions that maybe can affect and change the way people view these things. We don't have anybody like that.

It's certainly not Biden. And it's certainly not Kamala Harris or anyone else that's running the government currently. And it's not Trump either. I don't know who the hell it is. But we don't just not have a good leader in terms of economic policy and energy policy. We don't have a good leader in terms of the tone of the nation. One of the things that I loved about Obama was when that guy talked, you go, well, that's a statesman. That's a brilliant, articulate man who represents the best qualities of what we'd expect from the United States. Like that guy's measured and he's very calm, and when he talks, you go, well, that's a great president. He seems like what a president should be.

Yeah, he was very presidential. Yes. We don't have that. So we don't have someone who can speak logically to people and inspire them to sort of reassess the way they're addressing things. Yeah. them to sort of like reassess the way they're addressing things. Yeah. You know, it all starts with listening to other people. You know, if you, it's interesting, if you listen to the FBI and you listen to their negotiators, if somebody's taken hostages, they will tell you that the number one predictor of whether somebody

is going to release their hostages or not is if they believe that you have heard and understood why they took those hostages to begin with, particularly if it's for political, ideological reasons or whatever. You can come in there and what do you want? But until they believe that you actually understand why they took them to begin with, they want to be heard. They want to be seen. They want to be understood. And once they believe you get it,

your chances of ever getting them out of there alive go way, way up. That makes sense. And they'll tell you that. And that's what I've been saying is we've got to get people on both sides of this division to really listen and understand why the other side feels the way they do. Not just, you know, you're crazy, you're this, you're that. Just why do they feel that way so strongly? Right. And if you understand why they feel that way so strongly, then maybe there's another way to get them what they want.

But we're not doing that. It's spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin. That never closes the gap. Nobody's listening to each other. If that changes, then we've got a chance of closing the gap. But until we do, that's not going to happen. That's a great perspective. That's a great thought to put out there,

and that's something that very few people, even when they're saying things to people, they don't think about how the other person is receiving that. Like people love to say, like one of the things people love to say to people, they love to say, shut the fuck up. No one here has shut the fuck up and wants to shut the fuck up, you know? But if you tell someone the way you're talking to me right now makes me not

want to listen to you because you're being insulting and you're, you're expressing something in a way that makes me think that you don't care about me. So why should I care about you? Like that makes people pause. And if they're rational, maybe they'll say, okay, you tell me what you think and I'll tell you what I think. And let's try to find some sort of comfortable middle ground. Let's try to find things that we do agree on.

And we have to teach people to think and talk like that. Well, the biggest giveaway is if they start talking the second you stop, because that means they weren't listening to you while you were talking. They were thinking of what they were going to say when you quit. Yeah. And nobody's that smart. Nobody's that smart. They need to hear what you had to say. Right.

Then they got to weigh that. Say, okay, now here's what I have to say about what you just said yeah but if they're the second you finish talking as they say but no you weren't you were forming what you were going to say while i was talking you weren't listening to what i was saying right and but people kind of do both don't they you kind of also form what you're going to say at the same time as you listen. Only if you're on script. If you've got six or seven talking points and you're going to spit them out no matter what the hell they say, yeah, you can come back right quick. But if you're going to really listen to what they have to say and weigh it, take it apart, unpack that, and then respond, you've got to hear what they had to say. Yeah.

And you've got to do it with minimal ego, which is very difficult for people. Because as we were saying before, people attach themselves to winning an argument. And whatever their position is, they identify with that. That's a part of them. And if you pick apart their argument, you're actually picking apart a part of their being. And that's how they defend it. They defend it as if almost like their life depends on it. You can't be married to an idea. It can't be a thing that you you can't let go of. It has to be just an idea. You might agree

with that idea and believe in that idea or you might be educated by someone's perspective that's counter to that idea that makes you reassess. You got to be open to that just as a human being. You said something really smart in there because I was listening. You said something really smart in there, and it goes even beyond what you said. You said you can't be married to an idea. You sure as hell can't be married to an idea or a group who has ideas, some of which you may like and some of which you don't like, because you've got to be willing to say, you know what, you have some really good points here, and I can agree with those, and we can move a

little closer together here. And I hate it when people say, but, because but means forget everything I just said, I'm going to now tell you what I really think. Like, hey, that was a great point, but, but means that wasn't really a great point. Now I'm going to tell you what I really think about what you said. If people will really decide, look, I have some things that if we can agree with what each other is saying independent of everything that's behind it and just talk about right now, what's between us right now, then we could maybe come up with a whole new point of view that doesn't have anything to do with your party, your party, anybody's party. People are going to listen to what you and I have been talking about today.

And some people are going to listen to it and say, hey, you know, these are two friends talking, and they've kind of gone through some stuff. And then there are going to be people that are going to sit down, and they're going to transcribe this, and they're going to try to find ways to pick at it, attack it, and then there will be headlines tomorrow. Dr. Phil says this. Joe says this. They did it. And what good does that do?

It does good for them because it gets them to – you know, there's a lot of people listening, right? And a lot of people that are listening, they disagree, and they don't have a voice. That's why I understand those articles. What I don't understand is when people take things out of context or they abbreviate, they chop it up and take a slice of it and misrepresent the entirety of the conversation. Where you're trying to find solutions and you're trying to work through things and look at it from all sorts of different sides and say, what do we do? How do we do this? What's the problem? These are problems.

What causes these problems? And some people have differing opinions on that and they don't have a voice right now. And the problem with writing something is that it's a very singular voice and you get to write only the things that you think are going to be suitable to this argument that you're trying to make. Yeah, they ride coattails. Yes. We do have audiences. So if they can get us in a headline, then they get to be heard. Yes.

You know where I think people make big mistakes is, and not just us, on anybody. They will alienate people over one statement that actually might be basically an advocate. Yes. There might be somebody that might be an advocate. And sometimes it isn't what they say. It may be what they don't say. Like you might have said something about the big boob thing. about the big boob thing.

And somebody will say, well, when he said that, Dr. Phil didn't say A, B, or C. And so he's blah, blah. So they may dog on you or dog on me when, in fact, they're alienating or running off somebody that's not their enemy at all. I see them do that all the time. I've seen them do it in the homeless situation with people I've had on the show that I happen to know are very compassionate about those experiencing homelessness, very compassionate

about trying to find answers here in Austin. And they pick one sentence they said and just tear their ass up. And they just really alienate a big ally that could help them a lot. Why? You need all the help you can get. You do need all the help you can get. But again, I think part of the problem is that those people, they want to get eyes on the article and it's a good way to do it, make it click baby. But also again, like I said, they don't have, they're not here. They can't contribute. They can't, they can't jump in with their opinion. So this is the only way they can do it. They have to write something after the fact.

And I understand that. And I get it if you have a very rigid ideology and these thoughts and our opinions, they oppose that ideology. Listen, I'm never going to get, I hope, I'm never going to get too old to learn. I learn shit every day. That's healthy. Yeah. Somebody come educate me about something, tell me about something, I'm all ears. I'm all ears.

And there are some people that absolutely are not that way. And I give myself credit for that. Somebody wants to come teach me something I don't know, I'm all ears. Come tell me. But you better have your ducks in a row and you better have empirical science to support it. Don't just come give me some self-manufactured bullshit

because I'm going to want to know what the science is. Yeah. Because that's all I know. I need to see the science. Like if you tell me that L.A. school district just knocked it out of the park, you better have some numbers to support that if you expect me to stand up and salute it. That seems like a self-serving narrative to me. Yeah. While looking at those charts, that steep downward decline from 2019 to 2021, it seems like the pandemic in terms of the

educational system in particular was mishandled by everybody and if you're saying that la did a good job in bumping it up past what other people have done since then that's okay but that doesn't mean that they haven't mishandled the pandemic as well you can't change what you don't acknowledge and if they're if they're telling themselves that all of those kids in the L.A. school district are right there where they need to be, that's just not telling themselves the truth. And it's also not serving the best interest of the students, which is to try to – like a good narrative would be we've made some progress, but clearly there's been a sharp decline in averages of scores, and we need to do something to bring it back to baseline and elevate it past where it was in particular, because it wasn't substantial already.

You were talking about the decline in scores over the past decade or so already. It was already on the downward slide. And look, remote learning, come on. Did you sit in on any of that stuff? Yeah. I sat in on some of it with my daughter. I sat in the room and listened to this disinterested teacher trying to run this thing.

And it was, I felt bad for her her I felt bad for the kids that are there because that is not how kids engage with ideas and thoughts and it's like this lady was just doing the thing that she was supposed to do because that was her job and just barely engaged in it well they're not trained in that they're not trained in that. No, none of them are. They're not trained in how to engage those kids remotely. The kids don't know how to learn remotely. And think about where you've got three or four kids in a one-bedroom apartment in Philadelphia or Chicago or Dallas or somewhere, and they've got a crummy Wi-Fi connection and one device.

Right. And both parents have to work. They're in jobs where they can't work from home, so they've got to leave. And there the kids are there by themselves, and the Wi-Fi is not, it's freezing and going off and there's big gaps and it's just terrible. And also kids get so easily distracted. Yeah. It's so hard to get them engaged already

when you're making them sit in the classroom. When they're sitting alone in their room and they're bored and lonely and they just want to go play with their friends and they're not even allowed to do that. Yeah they got you know xbox over here on the side they're playing i mean it it was a terrible situation and you know i think people did the best they could with what they had but it just didn't work we need to acknowledge it didn't work and we need to get back in the classrooms and we need to close the gap. And if we don't, these kids – and look, this isn't speculation. This has happened in other countries before and they've seen what the results were.

And we know it doesn't work. We've got to close the gap. It's going to cost a lot of money and it's going to take extra time and it's going to take extra teachers and we don't have them. and it's going to take extra time and it's going to take extra teachers and we don't have them. What country, what cities rather, or what states did the best in education during the pandemic? Is there any data on that? Did anybody handle it the best? Was there any examples of students that didn't decline or didn't decline as much as others? Is there anybody that they're pointing to? I haven't heard anyone's argument on the right or the left

that we did it right, whether it's Florida or Texas or New York or anywhere. I haven't heard anyone say this was the correct response to doing that. I've heard economically, right? Like economically, Florida and some of the states that let things open, they had substantially lower rates of attrition in terms of people

moving out of the states, in terms of businesses closing. There's definitely states that handle that better. And those are the states that people are moving to. But in terms of education, I haven't heard any examples of someone who did it in a way that people are applauding or pointing to an example of how this should, this is how we should handle this in the future because this state did it the right way. Have you seen anything, Jamie? This is just looking at test scores and this is specifically about Los Angeles and trying to find out what they use for this data is not easy. I clicked on the link for the original article and it took me to find a paywall. So I'm trying to find another way.

Is there any articles that say that there's a state or a city that did it better than anybody else? Well, the end of this article is bringing up Florida and I'm trying to read why. That Florida did it better than anybody else? Well, the end of this article is bringing up Florida, and I'm trying to read why. That Florida did it better? Yeah, I don't know why Florida was used as an example, because it's not talking about any other state in this article. It's right at the bottom. It just starts talking about Florida. They reached out to someone in Florida.

But as I'm reading it, I see that it says eighth grade scores fell. Students scored an average of 241 out of a possible 500 in fourth grade math. Lower's Lumber. They earned higher scores this year in NAEP tests than those in Los Angeles, but saw more declines. Across Florida, eighth grade scores fell, but students scored an average of 241 out of a possible 500 in fourth grade math above the national public school average of 241 out of a possible 500 in fourth grade math above the national public

school average of 235 and an average of 225 in fourth grade reading above the national average of 216. mr diaz said maintaining the optimum of in-person learning contributed to the proficiency levels in florida especially for lower performing students and enabled the state to close achievement gaps between subgroups and students. You'd have seen tremendous differences in those categories for our students had there been another governor and other lockdown policies put in place. So they're using that data to point that in-school learning in Florida showed less of a decline. That's probably one of the only places that had it, right? Yeah. It says Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz Jr. said the decision in his state to open districts for in-person instruction

in the fall of 2020 was enthusiastically received by families at the time. Yeah. It said students in Miami-Dade and Hillsborough County schools earned higher scores on this year's NAEP test than those in Los Angeles, but also saw declines. I mean, I think just everybody's struggling during the pandemic. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It was a fucked up moment for the whole country. Yeah, and even before that, and this is Ingrid Haynes-Taylor, the director of National Literacy Institute.

That's where I gave you those numbers before. She said literacy data and impact on national economy, that's where the number came from. 130 million adults are unable to read a simple story to their children. 21% of adults are illiterate in 2022. 45 million are functionally illiterate and read below the fifth grade level. And 44% of adults don't read a book per year. Three out of four people on welfare can't read. Low levels of literacy cost the U.S. up to $2.2 trillion per year. Yeah. And 50% of unemployed between 16 and 21 can't read well enough to be considered functionally literate. That's crazy.

What is it in other countries? I mean, that's got to be very high globally, right? It's got to be. Especially in developed countries. So what do we do? Well, we've got to close the gap for these that are there now because they're already behind. Yeah. You see, they're already behind.

And then the pandemic just blocked them even further. And there's also the problem with people saying, well, you should move to a place where, you know, they're handling this better. But there's a lot of people out there that don't have the means. They can't move. Maybe it's the job that the parents have, whether it's families that they're connected to, they can't leave. It's not simple. And that's what, you know, I said that we got a lot different questions over the summer. It was about this kind of thing. We're struggling out here. How do we deal with this kind of thing?

The kids are getting more and more into the Internet, and it's kind of taken over life. It's kind of taken over life. So we've done shows on bullied to death and that sort of stuff because they get on there and they get bullied. You used to get bullied at school. When you go home, you were at least away from it. Now it follows you home. Kids can't get away from it. It's cyberbullying. That's what's scary.

And they're so connected to social media. It's not like an adult that can just ignore it and walk away. They also don't have the coping mechanisms that an adult who's been through a lot of adversity has acquired. These are young, developing people. Yeah, and they're not developing thick skins like I was talking about. Right. They're just hypersensitive to this and you got to let your kids your kid needs to go through getting teased some getting excluded some getting you know breaking up and all that so they learn

hey i came back from that it's okay i was able to get through it it's a part of the development process but some some kids don't come back from it. And it's terrible. Parents, they ask me a lot, how do I know if my kid's getting bullied? Well, you need to ask yourself two questions. How do you know if your kid's getting bullied, and how do you know if your kid's a bully? Because kids are bullying kids, so some parent needs to know that their kid's doing the bullying. You've got to ask those two things.

And the answer to that question, how do you know if your kid's getting bullied, every parent has a baseline for their child, right? You know how your child behaves. Their certain level of interaction, participation, certain moods, certain verbalizations, certain interest in activities. You got to watch that baseline. And if they depart from that baseline, that's when you need to pay attention. Now, kids are up and down. So I'm not talking about if they're a little moody on Tuesday versus Monday. But if they start not wanting to go to school, they start withdrawing from everything, they start regressing in their behavior, things they used to be competent at, all of a sudden

they're not competent anymore. They get clingy, whiny, lots of stomach aches, don't want to go to school. They just start really falling off that baseline across time, that's when you want to really pay attention because they very well may be getting bullied. And if your child, you start hearing them make jokes at other people's expense, Somebody that was around is all of a sudden excluded. They start showing up with things you didn't buy them, you know, book bags or any paraphernalia from school or whatever. Your child might be bullying somebody. And you need to find out on either end because because I did a show just last week. A girl was a terrific young woman involved in elite hockey, girls hockey. I mean national ranked team elite hockey. And the bullying started on day one.

She killed herself on day five. It went that fast. And this was not an unstable girl she was a rock star athlete and they all turned on her for what well she it appears that she dated one of the other's ex-boyfriends and that girl allegedly got offended and they started and started calling her names and excluding her and blah blah blah blah blah and she just panicked and thought there was just no future Everybody hated her and thought she was no good and disrepute. And she took her own life. God. It's so horrible when you're an adult and you've been through stuff and you know that this will pass.

But kids don't feel that. They don't know that. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to them. It's just four days. I mean, on the fifth day, she took her life. And she wiped her phone clean. She didn't. She said, look, I know you're going to blame yourself.

Don't do it. This was me. I'm sorry. I'm gone. Bye. And her parents were just heartbroken did he talk to any of the children that were involved in the bullying they they dug into it and as soon as it happened some of the other members on the team because all the messages had been erased. But as it was happening, some of the other members on the team

screenshotted those and kept them and sent them to the parents and said, here's what happened. And they have them. And so a lot of those girls have now been suspended from the leagues and all this league play and everything because they were a nationally ranked team. And they would have never known if those girls hadn't screenshotted those messages that they were sending around to everybody and sent them to the parents. They'd have never known.

But those girls came forward and said, here's what happened. Kids can be so fucking cruel too oh it's amazing there was uh an instance in one of my daughters when she was 10 where um one of the friends of her friend was getting bullied by this one girl and they got copies of the uh text messages and gave it to the mom and the mom didn't want to believe it and they had to say to the mom like look here's real clear evidence of horrible things your kid is saying to this other kid and this mother was sort of delusional and just didn't want to think that her kid was capable of this but they had it right there they're like look this is how this girl behaves then the kids

sort of ostracized her and i mean she was 10 at the time and i think she's kind of come around but there's people like getting an effect from other people and when people are angry people especially young kids they'll formulate sentences in a way that can have the most impact and be the most mean possible, especially if they see that kind of talk in their house. Like maybe if the parents are insulting and scream at each other and say horrible things to each other, that's how they learn. Yeah, and listen, you can't be in denial about your own kid. And listen, you can't be in denial about your own kid.

You know, I said a few minutes ago, I take pride in the fact that I'm willing to learn. I want to learn, but you better bring facts. Because people say, well, I think, I think. I don't really care what people think. I barely care what I think. I want to know what the facts are. We need to get back to the facts in this country. Is there anywhere to get news?

It's all propaganda. It's all propaganda. And parents, I don't care how much you think your child's a little princess, deal with the facts. As parents, we need to deal with the facts. As parents, we need to deal with the facts. As voters, we need to deal with the facts.

I'm watching all this right now. Both parties are saying, hey, get out and vote. All we care is that you get out and vote. No, that's not right. That's not what they really mean. What they really mean is we want you to get out and vote without thinking about what's been going on. What I say to people, I don't want you to just get out and vote. I want you to do some homework and get out and vote.

Ask yourself, and people should vote. I hate that people go in and vote, like, for the top of the ticket. Like, we're in midterms, so there's, like, senators and governors. That's where all the money's been spent. So they get in and check senator or governor and they check one of those boxes and then they just kind of go down the ticket. That's not what you should do. Your quality of your life is impacted a lot by your local races. Like dog catcher. I don't even know if we have dog catcher anymore. What do they call it? Animal control? If you've got people in your neighborhood getting mauled

by pit bulls or something, where's the dog catcher? Why are these pit bulls? If you've got somebody local that's not doing their job, you should find that out and vote their dead ass out of office. If you've got a judge who's not putting violent criminals behind bars, vote their ass off the bench. If you've got a water commissioner that's not cleaning the water, if you've got county commissioners that aren't doing their job, find out and vote them in or out based on they work for you. If you had an employee, you would do a performance review before you decided to give them a raise or not. That's what people should do. These parties are saying, all we care is that you vote. Yeah, that's right.

They just don't want you to check before you vote. You need to check and see if they've done what they said they would do and if they're doing what you value. And it matters, these local positions that you don't take seriously. That's what affects your quality of life. That's where it starts. Then vote for a governor that doesn't affect your life much. You need to find out locally who's doing their job. That's where you need to start. If you want to have an impact, it starts there.

I think so many people are so committed to their party, so committed to their ideology, that all they want, they think, well, maybe this part, they're not good at this, but at least they're on my side. Yeah. If they're doing their job, vote for them. If they're not, don't. People have been so brainwashed, though, to pick teams. And the way this party, two-party system in this country is set up, it reinforces that idea.

Of course it does. That's what they want. Yeah. That's what they want. Yeah. That's what they want, but, I mean, hell, are they doing their job? Yeah. If they're not. Even Obama says the same thing. He'll tell you,

pay attention all the way down the ballot. He'll tell you the same thing. Pay attention all the way down the ballot. He'll tell you the same thing. Pay attention all the way down the ballot. I think it's important. I don't know why I got off on that. No, it is important. How frustrating is it for you?

Because you have this show that's based around having discussions, common sense, and sort of getting to the bottom of things and you're very good at it. But it seems like the wheels are off the wagon and it's just it doesn't do you feel like do you feel frustrated at times you feel like it does it's not having an effect? Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes I do. But that just makes me feel like I need to do a better job. And I read these letters and it said, you're my last hope. I'm like, well, shit, why didn't you call me first? Why didn't you call me the first time you saw something wrong? Why not then? But I have a friend that has a problem with a daughter that was in college up north.

They tried to get some help and they went and sat for five hours in the hospital, waited, and nobody came. Went the next day, waited six hours, social worker came in, filled out a few little forms, and then said be back, came back, nothing. And didn't want to bother me, but then called and said, hey, I hate to bother you, but I'm really worried and so i said well you know come out here and let's get this done and you know i got dna tests and brain scans and all kinds of stuff and found out what was going on you know we got a plan and a program and everything's underway at this point most people this is a very affluent guy and a very intelligent daughter. It's hard for people out there to know.

What, are you going to just go on the Internet and look up mental health and find a psychologist or whatever? They don't know what to do, and it's hard sometimes to find your way through the maze and so I do think over the last 20 years I've been delivering common sense usable information to people's house houses every day for free that gives them kind of a road map through this stuff and I think it has had an impact on a lot of people and I think it's lessened some of the stigma about mental health I don't think I've revolutionized the the country on mental health but I think it's made a dent maybe and that it's okay to talk about some of this stuff and taught them some of the questions to ask when they get in front of somebody.

But yeah, sometimes I really get frustrated because it kind of goes in one ear and out the other. But I just resolve to keep charging at Machine Gun Nest. Do you still enjoy what you do? I do. We're still dealing with the same family and dynamics and all. And this year, because some of the questions have changed, they're dealing with some of these issues like school shooters, school curriculums,

internet bullying, things like that. There are different challenges, and that's revitalized me. And I was very excited to start this season because I think we've lost our way as a society. I think we've lost our way. But I don't think people say, oh, it's the worst it's ever been. Well, did you forget about the Civil War? I mean, shit, it's been worse than this. We killed a couple hundred thousand of each other in the Civil War. This, it's been worse than this. We killed a couple hundred thousand of each other in the Civil War. This has been a lot worse than this. We can fix this.

We can fix this. And I don't care what people say. I'm bringing both sides of these issues, and I'm telling the stories through families and its impact. And I's, I think it's, I think it's working out. I feel good about it and our audience feels good about it. So I, I like what I'm doing. I like what we're doing this season and we're still dealing with the same family values that we've always dealt with. I like the fact that you are adjusting things too. Like you said, well, let's change this into sort of a town hall type deal, a focus group. and let's reach out and talk to people and try to get more opinions. Yeah, and they go back and forth, and I try to show them how to find some common ground, and that models it for the rest of the people. And I hope it's going to have an impact because I'm going to keep swinging.

It certainly has an impact. Did you ever imagine you'd be doing it as long as you're doing it? No. What did you think when you first started doing it? Because Oprah talked you into doing this, right? Yeah. I never thought I'd do it to begin with. I was in the litigation arena, and all those years I never gave one word of

interview you know be it a big case people would say why are you at counsel table and what are you doing who are you I said I'm not even here goodbye I never gave a word of interview I had no desire to be on television at all. And so I never had any designs on it, never any idea of doing it. But then I started doing Oprah and did it every Tuesday for like five years and then started doing this and now we're in our 21st season.

I think we're the longest running show on Paramount lot. Been in the same stage for all that time. And, um, I, but no, I, I didn't, I had no idea how long it would go or how long I would do it. Um, but I, I enjoy it. I, you know, not every day. You know, some days you don't feel like doing anything. But I've got a great team. I really have a great team. I've got the same executive producer, Carla Pennington, that's been there since day one. The same supervisors. I've got the same seven cameramen I started with 20 years ago.

Wow. Same director, same everybody. They've all been there from the beginning. That's pretty incredible. So, yeah. Hell, I got the same secretary for 45 years. You can't call them secretaries anymore. I've got the same office manager.

Is that one of those words they put up, secretary? Yes, I think so. You're not allowed to say that anymore? No, she doesn't mind mind but I think whatever it's I got the same office manager for uh 45 years so it's um yeah we got a good team and it makes it really enjoyable uh the cameramen know where I'm gonna move or go or so before I even start I mean I how do you know I was getting ready to go over there? I've been here 20 years. I know what you're going to do. It makes it easy.

It makes it a lot better. During all this time, what do you think has caused the biggest change in culture? Because you've had a window into society in a way where you're examining problems and you're examining relationships and lives? It's clearly technology. It's clearly the Internet. It's good and bad. What's the good?

Information access. These kids that I'm saying are going to college and complaining about professors and all, these kids are brilliant. These kids, these college kids today, and a lot of them follow me on the Internet. I've got billions and billions of views on the Internet. And so I interact with those kids a lot. They're smart. They're not lazy.

They're smart. They just need some other experiences. But they're really, the stuff they can do in their heads is just, I mean, it's astounding. So their information access is like, you know, we're talking about stuff. He's pulling it up before we're at the end of the sentence. Yeah.

And he's throwing it up over here. You and I couldn't do that 20 years ago. Right. And we're at the end of the sentence, and he's got an article up and graphs and everything like that. It's amazing their ability to go down the rabbit hole and find stuff and put it in context in a meaningful way is we used to have to go to the library. And for some of you young people listening, that's a big building with books in it. They don't have to do that. And so that's a game changer.

There's more power in this laptop than they had for the moonshot. Yeah, a lot more. Yeah. Which is giant rooms of computers back then. But can you imagine doing a moonshot with this? The power we have in our hands is astounding. You can be anywhere and punch in an address and it tells you where to go and where the traffic is. Go left.

This chip transmits an Internet's worth of data every second. Holy shit. This laser-powered chip could meet faster broadband speeds for consumers and an internet that requires less electricity to run. Whoa. An internet's worth of data every second. I was at dinner with these friends in Dallas last night, Jamie Ribman and his wife Darcy, and he was telling me that, was it Moore's Law, that everything compresses and doubles up and everything. And he was talking recently about how long it would take to fill up Lake Michigan if it was empty, if you started with like a half an ounce of water or something like that,

and how long do you think it would be? And I said, oh, hell, never. And the answer was like 85 years. So that's like take a cup and then take two cups, then two to four, four to eight. Yeah, and it goes on. It was like at 10 years it would be damp a little maybe. And at 40 years there'd be some puddles.

And at 60 years there'd be four feet of water. And at 70 years there would be like four feet of water. And at 70 years, it would be, and all of the gain is in the last five years. And then it would be full. And that's what's happening right now. We have so much information that it's doubling up so fast. doubling up so fast, God only knows when your daughter and Jay's daughter are 21, what in the world's going to be going on? Because if you take everything we know now and double it up four times between now and then,

we won't even recognize the world. And so that's the positive, the ability to, and it's going to be in medicine and diagnostics and all that sort of stuff. Now, how we're going to pay for all these people that live to 150, I don't know. But that's the positive. And the negative is what we've talked about, you know, bullied to death and the predators on the internet and the scams and all that kind of stuff. You know, predators used to be the guy in the raincoat standing by the schoolyard, hey, little kid, you want some candy?

Now they're in the chat rooms or're really you know they call those anymore they're wherever the kids go and they've learned their patterns and they know what their favorite songs are what their favorite interests are what their jargon is and they can mimic a 14 year old just as well as anything and and they prey upon them. It's just, that's the downside. And the fact that they post pictures and stuff that are there forever. And you tell them and tell them and tell them, and they still, you know, that predator will steal a picture off the dark net of some 14-year-old guy and send it to the girl. And the girl reciprocates.

Now he's got that. And now they do sextortion and say, you do more or I'll show this to all your family. And it's just the downside is horrific. your family and it's just the downside is horrific so that's the biggest technology in the internet's the biggest change what do you think about elon musk buying twitter well it looks like he's going to do it yeah it's happened yeah i mean it goes down tomorrow yeah he showed up today with a kitchen sink or something. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what that means. He said, let that sink in. Is that what it was?

I didn't know if he was saying, I'm going to throw the kitchen sink at you or let that sink in. I don't know exactly what he's saying. But he showed up at the headquarters carrying a sink. Well, he's unpredictable. He said he's going to make it a friendlier place. Yeah, for all sorts of ideas. Yeah. So look at him there, walking in with the – he's such a character.

It doesn't look like a kitchen sink. That's a kitchen sink. It must be sink in. No, it does – well, it's a sink. Yeah, it's a sink. Not necessarily a kitchen sink. Yeah. Yeah.

Just what a funny gimmick. Yeah. Well, I guess if you're the richest man in the world, you can pull pranks and you don't care whether they work or not. Well, he doesn't care. I mean, he is a very unique individual for a guy that's that wealthy. He is a very unique individual for a guy that's that wealthy. You know, when he put a photo of Bill Gates up next to the pregnant man emoji,

and he said, if you want to lose a boner real quick. I mean, what billionaires dunk on other billionaires? Yeah. Especially, I mean, a guy who's a super genius tech billionaire. Yeah. It's really funny. It'll be interesting to see what he does with the platform. Yeah, very interesting.

I would hope he does something constructive with it. Well, hopefully to encourage people to do what we're talking about here and actually communicate and exchange ideas and not just insult each other and keyboard bully. Yeah. not just insult each other and keyboard bully. Yeah. You know, I just hope people take away from what we're talking about what you said in the beginning without having to have some catastrophic nuclear strike or something. We are all in this together, and we need to remember that. And we need to remember that.

And I remember I was born and raised a Baptist, and then I switched later in life to a different religion. But this pastor used to talk about how God talks to him and all that stuff. And I remember I was like 12 years old and I said, well, they never talked to me. And he said, well, you better listen really hard or he might do something to get your attention. And I thought, oh, shit, I wanna really start listening so he doesn't have to do something dramatic to get my attention. And I thought, oh, I want to really start listening so I don't have to do something dramatic to get my attention. I really hope we wake up before somebody,

something happens to really get our attention to remind us that we are all Americans. You know, let's, do we need to get shock therapy or can we all just say, you know what, enough's enough and too much is too much? We're all Americans. And even if we're not, we're all human beings. Yeah. I have no idea what your political leanings are. You have no idea. I could care less.

You're reasonable. You're commonsensical. And I hope I am. And it doesn't matter. We're in this together. I think you want everybody to be healthy and happy and prosperous. I want everybody to be happy and healthy and prosperous. Every time a new show launches in my space, I send them flowers and wish them well. That's beautiful. Come on in. The water's fine. That's great.

That's a great attitude. It is. Come on. Not everybody's going to watch me. There's plenty for everybody. I do. I send them all. I completely agree with that sort of thing.

Yeah. Good luck. Yeah. You know, it's a rising tide, right? Yes. It's all boats. I wish everybody success. As do I.

And I find it very disappointing when someone doesn't think that way, when they have that famine mentality. Yeah, it really shocked me when I got into this business and everybody was like, oh, here comes the enemy. Are you kidding me? I go, they ask me to come on the show. Sure. I'll go on the show.

I'll go talk to them. Come on my show. I don't care. We do stuff together. Steve Harvey and I used to split show. We'd do a half hour on his show and a half hour on my show. That's great. Yeah.

We'd do a half hour on his show and a half hour on my show. That's great. Yeah. We'd have competitions and stuff and do half on his show and half on my show and stuff. We were on different networks and competing shows. We didn't care. And got to be really good friends over the years. He's a lot funnier than I am.

He better be. He's professional. Exactly. Well, listen, Dr. Phil, it's always a pleasure to sit down and talk to you. I appreciate you very much. You're a very rational, logical thinker, and I think the world needs more of that, and I'm glad you're out there. I'm glad you're still swinging.

Yeah, I'm going to keep swinging. I'll go down swinging. They'll never take me alive. Joe, thanks for having me. Let's do it again sometime. Absolutely. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.

Bye, everybody.