The Megyn Kelly Show - McCarthy's Speaker Fail, and Alarming Decline in Sperm Counts, with Eric Bolling and Dr. Shanna Swan | Ep. 464

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Megyn Kelly is joined by Eric Bolling, host of The Balance on Newsmax, to talk about whether Kevin McCarthy will ever become Speaker of the House, Trump's statement supporting McCarthy and the lack of support for him, who could be the Speaker if not McCarthy, Sam Bankman-Fried's legal troubles ahead, SBF's theft and laundering, an update on the injured Buffalo Bills player, backlash over media coverage of him, and more. Then Dr. Shanna Swan, author of "Count Down," joins to discuss the alarming decline in sperm count and testosterone in men worldwide, how the trends are getting worse, the decline in sperm quality, the significance of "phthalates" on low fertility and declining sperm counts, how phthalates in plastic can also cause other health issues, the fertility rate difference between countries, how men in different locations can have massive differences in sperm count and quality, what you can do to reverse the trends, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Coming up, a fascinating deep dive into the declining fertility among young men and women worldwide. Men are losing their sperm, the sperm count, the sperm strength, and their testosterone is going down. And I will be speaking to one of the world's leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologists. This is the woman whose study has been revered since 2017

on why this is happening and how we can stop it. She has spent decades studying the impact things like household products, the food that you eat, and we'll get into the specifics, pharmaceuticals have on our reproductive health. And the numbers are not good. They're not good. We've got to reverse this trend. Just reading up on her research and advice was fascinating and alarming. And if you have children and would like to have grandchildren, pay attention. All right. First, though, new round of voting set to take place this hour, maybe for the next speaker of the House. This morning, former President Trump weighed in robustly for the first time, telling Republican holdouts to, quote, vote for Kevin, close the deal,

take the victory and watch crazy Nancy Pelosi fly back home to a very broken California. End quote. We will soon find out if that statement matters at all. Joining me now, Eric Bolling, the host of The Balance on Newsmax. Eric, my God, what a a mess so they did three votes yesterday 19 republicans voted against mccarthy on the first vote 19 voted against on the second vote 20 voted against him on the third vote now people who we both respect like our former colleague at fox chad pergram who's you know with respect to chad super smart little nerdy been covering capitol hill forever saying i don't think he's ever going to be i don't think he can do it. Like, he's extremely in doubt whether Kevin McCarthy can ever become the speaker now.

And Trump is telling these holdouts on the GOP side, who are all very Trumpy, people like Lauren Boebert, vote for Kevin McCarthy. You know, just my daughter, she always says, take the L, take the L. Trump's saying, take the W, just take it. And we get a statement from Matt Gaetz, who's one of the holdouts this morning, who says to Fox Digital, I have no intention to fall in line behind Kevin McCarthy, not to former President Trump to Karl Rove to just, I mean, Republicans up and down the line saying this is an absurd embarrassment. That's what Biden said. This is embarrassing. It's not a good look on the world stage. It's also not my problem, he said. So where do you stand on it? And how are people supposed to be thinking about this right now? Well, first of all, happy New Year, Megan. And yeah, what a way to kick off the new year with some infighting on the GOP side and the Dems just licking their chops saying, ha ha, look at them. They can't even get their act together. My comment

to the CNNs, Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, they're just loving it and making kind of fun of the GOP. Let's get it right on the right rather than doing it first. You and I used to work for a guy who said it's very important to be first, but it's more important to be right, even if it risks being first. And I think what happens is I feel McCarthy doesn't represent the MAGA wing. And I'm not saying the Trump wing, I'm saying the MAGA or the America First wing, because I'm not sure what's going on with Trump and Trump world right now. So you have Boebert, you have five Gates, Boebert, Bishop, Chip Roy, there's like five originals who said there are never Keviners and then a nine additional. So the vote, as you point

out, actually was first vote was 19. Second vote was 19. Then someone nominated Jim Jordan. Jim Jordan got 20. So it's going in the wrong direction. Here's the thing. I don't think Kevin McCarthy is going to be the speaker. I just don't think it's going to happen, especially since Gates, after Trump came out and said, vote for Kevin, he is probably going to be a great speaker. And Gates said, no way. It doesn't matter. I'm still not voting. If those coalition of five don't vote, which I think they're they're poised not to vote for McCarthy. It's gone beyond politics. Now it's personal. McCarthy is going to have to step away at some point, whether it's vote for or 40. At some point, he's going to have to say, I'm not going to get it.

And then there has to be some horse trading, some compromising on who it's going to be. My fear of what usually happens in DC, Megan, I wrote a book called The Swamp because it is a swamp. And my fear is that all the backdoor horse trading, the smoky back rooms where the guys are getting back there now, the guys and the gals are back there. Well, what do you want? What chairmanship do you want? What kind of budget can I give you for that committee to make you vote for me, Kevin McCarthy? I mean, if there's no other indication of why the man should not be the Speaker of the House, he moved his stuff in the day before the vote or the day of the vote. And I think that is just an absolute F you to the caucus that says we want to change. I'm a boy. I like these people. I like the disruptors,

the holdouts and not because the Trump, because I can't figure out what Trump's doing. Don Trump jr says vote for Kevin. Trump says vote for Kevin. Wait, the people who are holding out kind of represent what you were, Mr. Trump, but disruptor change of the guard draining the swamp. So regardless, I agree with Gates. Doesn't matter what you were, Mr. Trump, a disruptor, change of the guard, draining the swamp. So regardless, I agree with Gates. Doesn't matter what Trump wants right now. It's not about him right now. It's about getting the best speaker. And right now, one final thought, what happens if he is the speaker? What did he have to do to get the speakership? Will we ever

trust this guy as having the best interest of the country at hand or the best interest of Kevin McCarthy? Because right now, this is the first time in 100 years we're going to 150 years now if we go another vote or two. This has never happened before. Time to move on, Kevin. I feel like they're all like that. I don't just feel like politicians always do ultimately what's in their best interests. You know, that's why he flip flops and goes where the wind blows. It's like it's self-preservation in the role that he's chosen. I think the nine holdouts also are beholden to their constituents who put them in office and their biggest donors who have an agenda.

That's why it's so cynical for people like you and me who are on the outside but have to cover it. It's like, all right. In any event, if they replace Kevin McCarthy mccarthy what's gonna change right like the name you keep hearing as a possible replacement is steve scalese but he's not gonna is he really gonna run the house that much differently than kevin mccarthy would have i mean the republicans it's not like they're suddenly gonna back democrat agendas well all right look at it this way um I know what Jim Jordan represents. He represents small government. He represents going after, you know, Intel departments that are political. He stated it several times what he represents. The last thing Kevin McCarthy did before the changing of the House guard is he helped facilitate a one point seven trillion dollar omnibus bill that without any pushback at all from from the Republicans. And all of a sudden we spend another trillion, almost two trillion dollars of taxpayer money on what we're not really sure.

I don't know what McCarthy represents. I have a hunch with the likes of Karl Rove pushing for him aggressively on Fox News and Ronna McDaniel Romney pushing for him on Fox News. He feels to me like he represents the establishment wing of the party, what the conservative or the more right wing conservatives would call the rhinos of the party. But wait, let me ask you let me jump and ask you that so um marjorie taylor green is she's trumpy she's supporting kevin um trump trump is trumpy he's supporting kevin mccarthy um as you point out don jr and then elise stefanik she's supporting trump even kevin mccarthy is pretty trumpy at times right he out, for example, after January 6th and completely condemned Trump. But then within weeks was down there with his arm around Trump like my Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. So I don't know. But the point is, there are a lot of. Oh, and Jim Jordan, Jim Jordan supporting Kevin. Jim Jordan says, I don't want these votes. And I support. And he's the one who made the speech introducing Kevin McCarthy as the speaker candidate. Think for a second, Megyn Kelly and Eric Bolling, friends for life and forever. Do you think for a second any of those, Steve Scalise, Elise Stefanik or Jim Jordan,

or do you think for a second they wouldn't love to be the speaker of the House? I mean, this is a major position, so very powerful position. You lead the party. You, you, you know, you meet with the president regularly. You have the cushy office overlooking the national mall. You have the higher paycheck. I think they all do. And they just listen, Jordan's brilliant. He didn't look thirsty. I mean, if the biggest drawback for me with, with McCarthy, if I were one of them, the guys, he's he's too he wants so much. He's willing to compromise everything to get it. It's just creepy to me.

I don't like it's just another version version of a presidential candidate. I mean, they're they're like that, too. They're all narcissistic, self-aggrandizing. They say what they need to say to get elected. They all lie. I'm sorry. That is the truth. It's a sad truth of American society.

So he's a mini version of that seeking an executive. Does Nancy Pelosi not fit that bill? Hello? I don't know. You're right. Jim Jordan is probably playing the game correctly by looking like he doesn't want it. Could he get the support of the more moderate Republicans? I mean, he had a scandal of his own with his wrestling team at his university, kind of fell out of the news cycle because he kind of fell out of the news cycle. But I don't know. Could he could he get those? He might get those nine votes, but he's going to lose too many in the middle. Yeah, almost to a person.

You talk to Republican Congress people and they respect Jim Jordan. They like what he does. They like his aggressive. I mean, he's he's no holds barred in the hearings, in the committee hearings. He's amazing on the House Judicial Committee. He's the best cross-examiner. The best. And some of the pushback that I have been talking about Jordan for a long time, the pushback I get is, yeah, but we don't want to lose him as a chairman of the House Judicial, especially when they're going to go after Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and this huge agenda. But I think the speakership is so, I'm just thinking how many times you've talked about Nancy Pelosi over the years. That would be

whoever ends up being the speaker for the Republicans. That'll be Nancy Pelosi going forward. The power is incredible. You're meeting with the Senate majority leaders. You're meeting with the president. You're making decisions that affect the country. And the Congress has the checkbook. So you want to talk about rolling back some massive spending initiatives that Biden's signing away with executive order. The speaker starts that the speaker decides what the agenda is going to be. I just would like the best person as a conservative. I'd like the best person. I don't think Kevin McCarthy's it. I think Jim Jordan could be it.

I think Steve Scalise, maybe it. I don't know. Maybe there are others. At least Stefanik has a lot of a lot of checks, a lot of boxes for me because she's smart. She's in New York. She's fiscally conservative. I have to say, it'd be kind of cool to see a young female Republican speaker of the House. I mean, we've never had that before. So, you know, the Democrats are

obsessed with identity politics. Maybe some of them would would cross over and vote for Elise Stefanik. I doubt it. But it's kind of getting getting crazy here. I will say this. There's a reason that there's a vote. You have to see if the votes are there and the votes are not there for this guy. So I don't really understand the this is embarrassing. I don't really understand. Like, I'm not as close to it as a lot of these politicos. I don't you know, I'm not neck deep in that process, but I don't find it embarrassing. There's a reason we have a vote. He's not getting the votes. They're going to keep redoing it. By the way, the latest news, just as we came to air, was they may try to postpone the vote today to tomorrow, which means he hasn't shorn up his numbers any. So I don't know what's going to happen,

but I can see the media just absolutely relishing this. And you're right. Some of the sort of the more establishment Republicans. Little sidebars that could happen. And it'll be terrible that, you know, Democrats could vote for McCarthy. And we saw that little, there's some video of AOC talking to Gates and then talking to Gosar,

who are two holdouts, not never Kevin people. And she allegedly, and the word is that the videos of her talking back and forth rather aggressively saying, McCarthy has tried to kind of deal with the Democrats to peel off a few Democrats so that if they don't vote, the threshold for him becoming Speaker goes from 218 down to, let's say, I don't know, 205, and then he would have the votes, right? So she said, we're not on board with that. Even worse would be if McCarthy cut a deal for a Democrat to vote for him, then as a conservative, as a Republican, if you're dealing with Democrats already and you basically handed them the keys to the kingdom. Right. Like what power is he ceding in order to get the role? By the way, this just hitting now.

They're on the way to the floor. And McCarthy now says we will have another vote today. My gosh, the drama, the drama. OK, but no matter what happens in the house, no one's going to jail, at least not yet. Contrast that with Sam Bankman Freed, who is facing a massive, massive shitstorm of trouble. I mean, this guy, Andy McCarthy, had a great piece just talking about how bad it is. If you look at the federal sentencing guidelines and the charges against him, just how bad it is and how if this guy gets convicted, he's probably going to prison for life, for life, given the federal sentencing guidelines on fraud, on people who are in a fiduciary role, meaning one of trust and, you know, we're supposed

to be looking out for people. And he was arraigned in Manhattan federal court before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan pleaded not guilty to eight counts of fraud and conspiracy. They have set October 2nd as the tentative trial date. So there's speedy justice for you. It's actually pretty fast. And he's out now. He's out on $250 million bail, but somehow he managed to post it. What we're reading is that he was ultimately released on something closer to his own recognizance because while the prosecutors demanded his parents post their homeless collateral and

co-sign the bail deal, he didn't actually have to put up the cold, hard cash. And now this guy who's alleged to have defrauded people to the tune of over $2 billion, at least, that's the low end, is roaming about. I guess we're banking on the fact that he doesn't want to screw over his parents and have them lose their home. Who knows whether he's got other cash stashed elsewhere and whether that's a real concern. But what do you make of it? Because we now know that those two top executives have cut a deal. They've pleaded guilty. Carolyn Ellison, the ex-girlfriend, Eric, 28, she cut a deal. So did Gary Wang, 29, who co-founded FTX, this crypto exchange. They pleaded guilty to charges including wire fraud, securities fraud and commodities fraud. They have turned state's evidence and he is up a creek. That's a legal term. He's up a creek. Look, I don't get this sympathy. You're not showing it, but others are. My wife's like, oh, I feel so bad. I feel bad for him. He has this sympathetic look to him. But folks, if you rob a car, if you're a minority and you steal a car, you're going to go to jail for 25 years. If you smash and grab, you're going to jail. For some reason, it's almost like this guy's a white collar criminal. He stole $2 billion. And we're going, oh, well, it could

have been $32 billion. It wasn't as bad as Madoff. He stole $64 billion from friends. He defrauded people who trusted him with his money. He should go to jail. He should go to jail, as McCarthy points out, for a very long time. I saw Gasparino on Fox the day before yesterday when during the plea or right before the plea. He said, oh, you know, I don't know if he's going to go to jail. Are you kidding me? Send him away for a long time. He's rocking the trust in the financial system. He crushed trust in cryptocurrency single handedly. I think he's got to go. One of the things that no one's really pointing out, he gave that 28-year-old Carolyn Ellison, who's been with him for three years with FTX, he gave her Alameda Trading. It's a wing. He threw $2 billion and said, trade this. Now, I know what this is. I come from that trading world.

That's Sam Bankman-Fried laundering $2 billion. It's not her trading. She's a rookie trader. You don't give someone, a rookie trader, that kind of money to try and trade and make money with. She's never going to do it. It was a vehicle for Sam to run customer money through a trading vehicle, Alameda Trading, and come back and turn it into laundered money that he can loan to friends to buy real estate, that he could buy his $40 million- Oh, wait, let me stop you there because I don't understand. I don't understand laundry. I don't understand laundry in my own home, and I don't understand laundry at the crypto scene.

So explain why would he need to use Alameda, the hedge fund, to, quote, launder the $2 billion? Why couldn't he just kind of steal it from the FTX exchange and start going out and spending it? You know, he took it from the FTAF exchange. Why not just use it then? How does it get laundered over at the hedge fund? It's easier tracked when you just steal it. It's like the why, you know, if you've ever been to Vegas, I spent a lot of time in Vegas. Sometimes you see some very shady looking characters, you know, putting twenty, thirty, forty thousand on, on a wheel on black or on red or, or at a blackjack table. All they're doing is they're laundering the money because they're taking cash

illicit, probably drug money or prostitution money. Cash comes in big piles. They'll go to Vegas. They'll put it down and turn it into chips. They'll risk it. They'll lose two or 3% because the casino takes two or 3% on some of the games and they'll get back their chips and they'll get, turn it back into casino cash two or three percent because the casino takes two or three percent on some of the games. And they'll get back their chips and they'll get turn it back into casino cash. You can't track the money. That's exactly what Sam Bank and Freed did with customer money. He took it from FTX deposited customer accounts, ran it and said, oh, we're going to we're going to trade your money in Alameda trading. She trades, she loses. It comes back with whatever's left over after her

losses. And then it's not necessarily going back into FTX. He broke the rules, broke the law and turned it into his own slush fund and borrowed and loaned it to friends and bought stuff with it and spent lavishly on parties. Every employee at FTX had a $200 food Uber Eats allowance every single day, every employee. Every day? It's insane. He was just a fun thief. Wow. Okay. So this is very interesting because I will say in reading Andy's piece, he makes the point that you just made. He says the guidelines are severe and he says, I've always believed the point that you just made. He says the guidelines are severe. And he says, I've always believed the fraud guidelines are too harsh. Sam Bankman Freed may be a terrible person, but he didn't commit murders. Yeah, that's how a lot of people are looking at it. He didn't

murder anybody. So how could he be going to jail for life? But murder, like you can ruin somebody's life by taking their life. And you can also ruin it by taking away their fortune, their reputation, their life savings. I mean, just look at all the people who killed themselves after the financial crisis in 1929 and 2008. You know, this is a severe and very risky business, stealing people's life fortunes. Yeah, I mean, Madoff's going away for life and and other, you know, you need a reason not to do this. You need to show the world, hey, if he gets 10 years and walks away with the $250 million, whatever, whatever he's got stashed somewhere, if he's able to lose $2 billion somewhere, I'm sure he can put $50 million somewhere else. The guy's really smart. He figured out a way around all the bells and whistles, all the financial regulatory things he was supposed

to be doing. He figured a way around it the way Madoff did for a long time. He got caught. So he's got money probably stashed everywhere. So we're going to allow someone to go spend 10 years at a club fed and then get out and be a billionaire? At age 40? We need to have a reason to criminals. You don't want to do this or you're going to end up like Madoff and mini Madoff. Yeah, I tend to agree with you. All right, let's shift gears and talk football because one of your many hobbies is sports and football.

And I hosted a podcast with Brett Favre and talked all about sports and life. And now in the news is this horrific injury that happened on the Buffalo Bills. And the latest involves blowback on, forgive me, it's Skip Bayless of Fox Sports. Trying to find the exact, hold on hold on i'll find it the exact tweet okay here it is skip bayless is under fire because on his fox sports show that he co-hosts with shannon sharp after it i guess he tweeted in the middle of this debacle um that after damar hamlin got hurt and had a cardiac arrest now we know know, by the way, that he was resuscitated not once but twice, had to be resuscitated not once but twice, according to a family member,

once on the field, once in the hospital. Not good. Though the family member says his intubation is now only 50% necessary. Not exactly sure I understand that, but they're saying 50% of the breathing may be coming from him now and not all from the breathing tube. So they were marking that as a positive sign in his recovery you know we have no idea whether the recovery is robust or not in any event uh skip bayless tweeted out no doubt the nfl is considering postponing the rest of this game but how this late in the season a game of this magnitude

is crucial to the regular season outcome. That is a true statement of fact, by the way. Then he says, which suddenly seems so irrelevant. The regular season outcome, which suddenly seems so irrelevant. Well, I got to tell you, I sound like, OK, I don't I'm not offended. I see what he's trying to say. He's like they he's saying they must be considering postponing it. This is a critical game, but it seems so irrelevant. Like that's how is that controversial? Well, it is. My God. NFL players, NBA players, retired pro athletes calling for him to be fired regarding that tweet. Free agent NBA point guard Arzea Thomas replied saying, I hope they fire you, bro. For you to even think of the game is very sad.

ESPN NBA analyst Kendrick Perkins, you're a sick individual. Real talk. Hall of Fame wide receiver Terrell Owens, even I know that name, reposted his tweet to Instagram and said, this is the most despicable tweet ever, adding, I hope you lose your job, former NBA champion. Matt Barnes commented under that post, writing, someone going to slap the best out of Skip one of these days. And then today, Skip Bayless and his co-host Shannon Sharp got back into it. Keep in mind, Skip Bayless kind of apologized for that tweet already. He tweeted out afterward, saying, nothing's more important than the young man's health. That was the point of my last tweet. I am sorry if that was misunderstood, but his health is all that matters. Again, everything

else is irrelevant. I prayed for him and will continue to did not appease the mob. Here they are discussing it on their show today. Skip tweeted something. And although I disagree with the tweet and hopefully Skip would take it down, but I didn't want to... Well, time out, time out. I'm not going to take it down because I stand by what I tweeted. Skip, let me finish. Go ahead. No, you go. Go ahead. Let's go, Jan. Okay.

I mean, I cannot even get through a monologue without you interrupting me. You could have came back, Skip. Well, I thought, Skip, just let... I didn't know you were going to say, Skip, I didn't want to yesterday to get into a situation where DeMar Hamlin was the issue. We should have been talking about him and not get into your tweet.

That's what I was going to do. But you can't even let me finish my opening monologue without you interrupting. Okay. I was under the impression you weren't going to bring this up because nobody here had a problem with that tweet. No. Clearly, the bosses wanted you to offer explanations.

So clearly, somebody had a problem. No, they did not. Let's go, Jan. Thoughts and prayers remain with DeMar Hamlin. That's where the focus should have been and not on the football game. Yes, let's go, Jan. Thank you. Oh, boy.

I didn't know who Jan was. I thought Jan was the producer until, I guess, a reporter named Jan popped up. What do you make of this whole thing, Eric? So when he tweeted that, Megan, it was live. I was watching. I watched the game. And he tweeted that in my Twitter albums. I was trying to see what was happening.

DeMar Hamlin was still on the ground, on the field. He was on the turf, on his back. They were administering CPR. Basically, he was dead. They were playing God when Skip Bayless tweeted that. I immediately tweeted, I said, wow, you're really going to regret this, brother, soon. Big. And he did.

I thought it was disgusting. I thought it was horrible. Wait, why? Why is it disgusting? i thought it was horrible wait why why is it disgusting why is it disgusting because honestly i'm happy to find skip bayless disgusting if disgusting behavior comes but he's saying as a sports analyst to the audience they're they're going to consider postponing this game but how can they do it given that the season's about to end and the season suddenly seems so irrelevant. I get it.

It's not what he said. It's when he said it. The young man, a 24-year-old, is fighting for his life. And here's a guy, Skip Bayless, with a decent-sized audience, a nice-sized audience, it would be like you and I, making a comment because he wants to be first. He wants to get to the record first that he's going to make a comment on whether this game should go on or not.

Okay. I did a whole monologue on this yesterday. I think Skip Bayless was being an opportunist for doing it when this young man is trying to survive. I think the people on the right, some of my friends, some people I used to work with tweeting, questioning whether the vaccine, the NFL mandate on the vaccine had something to do with this young man laying dead on the field. I thought that was a political opportunism. I think Skip was a sports opportunism.

They all were doing it for their own good, not for the good of a young man dying on the field. And he did. He's flatlined twice, as you pointed out. He was brought back. He is alive. So I'm not having a problem with people speculating, having conversations about what the NFL should or shouldn't do, or whether or not he should or should not have had a vaccine or not. But just don't do it when his family is watching him from the stands, dead on the field, and they're administering cpr and that was happening simultaneous and that's why i had a problem with favors okay i get i get the timing makes it more insensitive in your view i mean i will say on the vaccine questions like i

talked to dr drew about this yesterday on his show and he is one of the people who tweeted out something to the effect of i don't want to misstate his tweet, but it was something to the effect of many athletes are, are dropping. And, um, like I do think it's okay. Again, timing is another question. I think it's okay to say what, what could have caused this? Cause we don't know whether it was that sudden cardiac death where you get struck in the heart. That's speculation too. Um, you know, we have to wait to hear from the doctors would actually. But like it could have been that. What else could it have been? You know, could it have been that he have some latent heart condition that we don't know about? Like, obviously, people ask questions about the vaccines because we know that they cause myocarditis and people have been dying as a result, even though the mainstream media won't

talk about it. And in some cases we've seen that affect athletes. So I like, I get uncomfortable when it's like, you're not allowed to raise any of those questions. You can only go into the lane of the, that he got hit in the heart and that's what caused it. We don't, we don't know that either.

That's also speculation. You and I both have an opinion on whether or not the NFL should have started the game or not, and whether or not the NFL should complete the game or not, or whether or not the NFL should mandate vaccines for their players or not. My point is, and should always be, if someone's life is hanging in the balance and there are tens of millions of eyeballs watching a young man struggle for his life, let's put all that other stuff aside just for a heartbeat and literally no pun intended or pun intended until he survives or doesn't we can find and then we can go and and jump into it my

problem is the media tends to be such vultures just to go out and pick the carcass as it's laying there and and see what we can do for our own respective side while someone's life is laying in the balance. But there's opportunism. There's opportunism in these commentaries is what you're suggesting. Yeah, that was it. That was all. So what do you make of it?

Because some people have taken it to football. It's dangerous. You know, speaking of vultures, we're vultures for watching it, for taking in, you know, sort of the abuse of these young men for money and for our own pleasure. I, you know, I just don't see this one injury the same at all as like the Tua concussion injury where they put him right back out there after he was clearly hurt the week before or days before. Like this is, this just seems like a once in a lifetime. Like this is not an injury if it is the sudden heart injury that comes with a blunt force impact at just the right moment when your heart's beating. That doesn't really happen in football. I'm not sure we can extrapolate anything from this situation to football writ large. But what do you think? Yeah, I don't think you blame football for it.

It's a violent sport. You know, if you make him sign the document says, hey, you might in a rare instance have this situation where, you know, a helmet could hit you as your heart in the middle of a heartbeat and it could it could kill you. Would you still you still want to play this game? You still want to try and be a superstar athlete? Of course, they're going to all say yes. It's a it's a they all know the risk of that. They also all know the risk of major brain injury. And that's far more common, as you point out. So it's a violent sport. It's a dangerous sport. It's getting safer every single year. They're taking precautions. Personally, I think they can soften the helmets. I think shoulder pads and helmets could be soft. You don't hear the hits like they love on TV, but it'll be a heck of a lot safer. I can't blame the NFL for this one one and i don't think anyone should you were a big baseball

player that's the sport in which this normally happens they say like where the baseball hits your heart i mean this is a this is a known and identified risk now these days in sports like baseball uh hockey where there's a puck and certain other sports but not football yeah because the the projectile in baseball and hockey is smaller and it hits you in the right spot at the right time in the heart. It creates this commode, commodio, whatever it's called. And it's a rare but can be fatal injury. The helmet is what hit or shoulder helmet is what hit the more Hamlin. It's a bigger it's a bigger projectile, maybe not as fast as a baseball or a hockey puck coming at you,

but hit him at the right or the wrong time. Exactly. So yeah, in baseball little leaguers are now some little, some leagues are having their little leaders where a chess play because of the risk of this. So again, it's not an uncommon, it's not an unknown. It wasn't a. Well, and there's so many other risks that are known that these world-class athletes accept. And it's not because they want to entertain us

or be our little play things. It's because that drive to succeed at sport in athletics is intense. It's cultivated by oneself, by one's society, whatever, by one's family from a very early age. And I think you either have it or you don't. Brett, speaking of Brett, you know him well. I interviewed him while on NBC about his CTE, which he's been very outspoken about. He's had, who knows, it could be, he said, thousands of concussions while playing in the NFL. I don't think he wants a do-over. You know, I think most of the, like, look at Brady. He's a quarterback. He knows very well the risks. You're the one everybody wants to hit on every single play. All these very strong guys wearing all those pads and helmets. He continues to play because, now, he doesn't need any more money. He lost his marriage reportedly over it. They do it because there's a drive

inside of that love of the game, of athletics, of winning, right? It's like, I don't think the blame for whether it's this injury of DeMar Hamlin or what happened to Brett or what happens to any athlete who happens to get hurt in the sport goes on the American people for being, you know, for being vulturesque in their intake of sports. Yeah, and we don't, you know, there are probably more people who die in construction accidents than football or baseball or any other sport.

And we're not saying we'll stop construction. Look, Tua, you mentioned Tua, a great example, has probably had five high-profile concussions in the last two years. I mean, that's a lot. That's crazy to the point where he'll seize up, his finger sees up, or he staggers and falls. Ask Tua if he wants to get back on the field. I'll bet you at dinner he'll say yes, knowing that the risk is that down the road he may have severe brain damage and he may not be able to remember his own name or feed himself.

I mean, look at Muhammad Ali after getting hit so many times, had later on in life couldn't even feed himself. But these people knew what the risks were, knew what the future may be like, but that drive and its choice, its personal choice. And again, give these young men the choice to leave. And I'd say 99.9% would choose not to, even knowing the risks of a Damar Hamlin or a Tua

or a Muhammad Ali or Brett brett carr for that matter and honestly like we just to remind the audience we don't know what happened to damar hamlin we don't know that's a speculation that it was this event where if you get hit hard in the heart at just the right moment in the beat cycle this thing this sudden cardiac arrest could follow who knows it could have been a cardiac arrest due to something else. We just don't know yet. So hopefully the hospital, the doctors will be in a position where they are able to and have the permission of the family to share more soon. And hopefully it's knowable. Yeah. I saw his uncle saying that he's, he's breathing 50% on his own.

He had lung injuries because of the two, um, the, the two times he flatlined and he's breathing 50% on his own. He had lung injuries because of the two, the two times he flatlined and he's breathing back to 50%. But just because he's breathing on his own, it's only going to be negative. It's how long his brain went without oxygen. How long did it take them to administer CPR and get oxygen into his brain? And how much damage did that do to see, you know, he may be able to breathe on his own,

but we don't know if he'll, he'll ever'll ever regain consciousness or to a level that he's functional. Well, that's an important flag. That's an important flag because while he was very lucky in that the paramedics were right there with a defibrillator, thank God, thank God, one never knows because sometimes one's body is so compromised that even once there's been a defibrillator and a doctor doing CPR, the body's not able to receive that input of oxygen in the way it used to be able to prior to the catastrophic event. So this is why we need to hear from the hospital. Again, when the family's ready, when the doctors are ready, we're just hoping that'll be sooner rather than later because everybody's rooting for Damar Hamlin to get better and to be 100% after this. Eric Bolling, such a pleasure, such an interesting conversation. Love seeing you. Love seeing you too, Megan. Happy New Year to you and the audience and Danny,

who's amazing. Our booker Danny is amazing. Thank you very much. All right. We are going to be right back with another fascinating guest talking about a very important topic, the decline in sperm counts and testosterone worldwide. Don't miss this. Oh, Canadian Debbie is upset. She is upset. She does not agree with our pal, Eric Bolling. She does not think the timing mattered on the Skip Bayless tweet. And her point is, and she's, you know,

she's like the Holly Hunter character in broadcast news. She's a ball buster. She's a balls to the wall, you know, television news producer. And she has been for many years. And her point is, we can't be this sensitive in covering a massive breaking news event. And it's literally Skip Bayless's job to ask questions like that, like what will happen with the game? I asked that question of Clay Travis yesterday. I think even Eric Bolling would say that was fine because it was after the event.

And I was saying to her, I can understand, though, as an on-air person, how you have to be somewhat sensitive when the person may be dying. You know, the audience may be experiencing the death of a beloved player. And you can see the distress on the faces of the other players. And her point was, that's not an excuse for you not to do your job, that the NFL officials the death of a beloved player. And you can see the distress on the faces of the other players. And her point was, that's not an excuse for you not to do your job, that the NFL officials would have been speculating about what to do. They would have had a decision to make. And I said, well, that's their job. And she said, well, it's also Skip Bayless's job to comment on the sporting event and what its consequences are. So we had a very robust discussion. I wanted to do it on the air, but she's worried her hair doesn't

look good. No, no, no. She doesn't like to be on the air. Only some of us enjoy that kind of weird, abusive position. She's not one of them. In any event, you all know Canadian Debbie and love her. So I would love to hear your thoughts on it. You can email me. Email me at Megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com. We're taking emails there. While you're there, you can sign up for my American News Minute. I just submitted my latest Stradwick story to Meg Storm, who produces it for me, and it's just terrible. It's just so naughty. My dog is so sweet, but so bad. Okay, now we're going to switch gears to discuss a very important topic, and that is sperm counts plummeting around the world.

Maybe you've heard about this, but it's not just sperm counts either. Testosterone too. And what is that causing? What is that doing? What does it mean for your children and the prospect of your grandchildren? The birth rate has been cut in half. These trends are not getting any better. And why is that?

Is there something you can do about it? And I can do about it. Here to answer some of these questions is the world's leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologist, Dr. Shana Swan. She's author of Countdown, How Our Modern World is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race. Doctor, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. So this was, correct me if I'm wrong, but this was really the seminal study in 2017 that you did taking like a comprehensive look at all the studies that had been done and the data as we knew it to determine what. Hi, Megan. First of all, thanks for having me.

And so what we were doing in 2017 was looking at all the world's data that's been published in English, actually, is what we were able to look at. And what we were looking for is what's happened to sperm counts over the close to know, close to 40 years that we looked at, as we can evaluate it in the published literature. And that came out a while ago. And it actually went kind of viral, because what we were reporting was that sperm counts have been going down consistently, and that they've been basically cut in half over this, say, 40-year period. And it has lots and lots of ramifications, as you pointed out. Other things go down, too, with it.

Testosterone is going down. Fertility is going down. And there are effects on the female side as well. So, yeah, these are kind of very dramatic changes that we have to pay attention to. And ask why. Now, as I understand it, for the last 70 years, fertility rates have decreased worldwide with a total of 50% decline. As you say, it's been cut in half. Up to 1965, the average woman in the world had more than five children. That's amazing. Up to 1965, globally, the average per woman is now below 2.5 children.

And what you're concluding is that's not by choice. There is a lot of choice involved. I won't deny that. OK, so there are many factors such as economic factors, the availability of contraception, education, women going, you know, into the workforce. And, but there are also other influences that we don't have control over. And one of the things I like to think about is humans are one species. There's lots of species on the planet. And there are many, many, many that are declining. Everyone knows about, you know, populations being endangered and diminishing and so on and the non-human populations don't have the choice that we have

they're not you know looking to the availability of contraception or uh you know wanting to go back into the workforce right they're not just not reproducing and so we have to recognize that we too will have a component of this trend which is not our choice and that's the one that i'm most concerned about okay right because right around there uh 19 in the late 1960s early 1970s we had uh birth control become protected by as a constitutional right abortion protected as a constitutional right and all those things might potentially lead to decrease in the number of children one decides to have. But you're saying that the animals were not using birth control and they were not taking advantage of abortion. And so this is this goes well beyond choice. You found that between 1973 and 2011 sperm concentration meaning the number of sperm per million

Per milliliter of semen dropped more than 52 percent among random men in Western Countries, that's crazy. That's like that's a huge drop and then you you took another look in November of 2022. So very recently 38 studies of men from South, Central America, Asia, Africa, and found that sperm decline, what, it had gone down even more? So that new study, which just came out a few weeks ago, actually, showed two things. One is that, yes, sperm count decline has accelerated so if you look at the studies after 2000 the rate is now 2.6 percent decline per year whereas before it was just a little over 1 percent per year so that's a doubling of the rate of decline pretty alarming but in addition to that we saw that in countries for which we didn't have sufficient information in the first publication in

2017 we now had additional information enough to say that this is a worldwide trend so it's not limited as the first one was to europe and north america and australia and new zealand we now have it including africa and asia and south america so we have it including Africa and Asia and South America. So we have all over the world, we see this decline and it's pretty alarming. Yeah, no, it matters because, okay, it's not ideal if no American man can produce a baby in 40 years, but there would be some comfort if we knew that other men in other parts of the world could still produce babies, thus the continuation of the human race. But the sperm counts are going dramatically down everywhere, which now we're talking about, you know, an existential problem potentially. average western man had a sperm count of 99 million sperms per milliliter of semen 99 million that that was the average in 1973 and now they're saying like normal it could be considered like

between 15 million and 40 million per milliliter of semen? Well, that trend, the number was right. You know, initially 99 million per milliliter at the start of our study. And at the end of the study period, we saw only 47. So it was cut in half. Cut in half. 47 million sperm per milliliter. By the way, maybe just a point of clarification. So in a sample, you can look at, the way you count sperm is you look at the sperm on a plate under a microscope, and the plate is divided into a grid, and then you count in these little squares on the grid, right? And so what you get is a concentration number per squares is actually number of per and then you multiply it and you can say how many sperm per milliliter because you know the volume

okay you can also talk about the total sperm count which is a different thing which is how many sperm are in the whole sample and for that you take the concentration and you multiply it by the volume of the sample, right? So both of those have gone down. The total sperm count has gone down actually a little faster, a little more than the concentration, but they're both reflecting the same thing. How many milliliters in a normal, you know, production of semen? Oh, gosh, you got me there. I don't remember. The point I'm going for is, you know, 99 million or 99. I'll look it up in the break for you. Yes, because the point I'm trying to get to.

Yes. OK, we have to take a break. But I do want the point I'm trying to get to is it's gone down, but there's still millions of little sperms. So a lot of us are thinking, well, it's not ideal. Right, but we all know like how many sperm comes out in a semen. It's a lot. It's unlike the women's egg. So how dire is it? That's the question I will leave permeating the air

while I squeeze in a quick commercial break and come back to Dr. Shauna Swan. Thank you, ma'am. Be right back to you. And don't forget folks, you can find the Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips at our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. It's en fuego right now. Go over there and

sign up if you want to be part of the visual fun. If you prefer an audio podcast, you can follow us and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you'll find more than 460 shows in our archives. So much fun for you to spend time with on a long trip, on a night you can't fall asleep. I'm there for you. Update for you from the House floor. Just to keep you up to date on what's happening with Kevin McCarthy. It's equally bad for him today as it was yesterday. New York Times on the as follows. McCarthy has not moved a single vote in

his favor now. Vote's ongoing. Leadership also worried about not being able to pass an adjournment resolution. I'm not sure what's worse, but things have not improved for McCarthy at all. Talks are fruitless. And it looks once again like Kevin McCarthy is closer than ever to never being Speaker of the House. The never Kevin crowd seems to be getting its way. What that means for the House, for the Republicans, for presidential politics, which will turn to probably the spring. In earnest, we don't know. But it's not a good day for Kevin McCarthy or those who think he should be the next speaker. We'll continue to watch it.

Meantime, as I mentioned before the break, we have a special guest today. Her name is Dr. Shanna Swan. She's author of Countdown, How Our Modern World is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race. And just to bring you a couple of the good doctor's qualifications, she's one of the world's leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologists. She is professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, very well respected. For over 20 years, she and her colleagues have been studying the dramatic decline in

sperm count around the world and the impact of environmental chemicals and pharmaceuticals on the reproductive tract development and neurodevelopment. Her July 2017 paper, Temporal Trends in Sperm Count, ranked number 26 amongst all reference scientific papers published in the world in 2017. I could go on. So she knows of what she speaks. So Dr. Swan, we were talking about sperm count. And all along, we women have been told, you know, you only produce the one little egg a month, if you're lucky, right, between a certain limited number of years, when you hit puberty to prior to menopause. We all know it's well prior to menopause, because, you know, from 40 to 51, 52, whatever, you're not really producing a whole ton of eggs that are capable of being fertilized. And so, but the guys, I mean, 99 million per milliliter of sperm, even if it's

fallen to 40, even it's 15 milliliter per milliliter of sperm, seems like they're golden. Why is it a problem? It's true that we have humans and excess of sperm. And how many? Let's go back to that question. What's the volume of a sample? So the volume of sample is between one and a half and five milliliters. And five milliliters is about a teaspoon. So we're talking about half to a teaspoon of sperm per sample, right? And in that, you've got maybe 50,000 in each milliliter. Multiply that by three or four, you've got a lot of sperm. However, studies have shown that when that number shrinks to below 50, 40. It's not an exact cutoff. Million per milliliter. Then it gets harder. It takes longer to conceive a pregnancy. And in addition to the count, we have to remember that these guys have to swim and they have to swim in a straight line circles don't get you anywhere and they have to be

shaped well um two heads don't make it and two tails don't make it and um there's lots and lots of criteria for what's a healthy shape morphology is called and then there's the chromosomes in there which is going to be so important for the next generation right and those chromosomes have to be normal so there's also the question of chromosomal abnormality. So there's a lot of criteria, you know, that these sperm have to, you know, satisfy in order to be successful. And it turns out that, like I said, when the number drops below around 45 million per milliliter, which is accompanied, by the way, by drops in motility and shape and morphology and also chromosomal damage. These things go together. So when the number goes down, the quality goes down.

And all of these imperil fertility. That's probably more than you wanted to hear, but there it is. It's not. It's not. It's not. I've joked. I've talked to my kids about, of course, how babies are made and how there's all these sperm and the one sperm makes it and fertilizes the egg. And my little guy is just so proud that the very strongest sperm found its way to the egg. He's the product of this incredibly strong, special sperm that beat out all the other sperms and found the egg against

all the odds. And I know you've written, it actually is against the odds, like conception. It is against the odds. We, as young women, were always told when we were, you know, when you were sort of coming of childbearing age and you're, let's say, 15, 16, 17, you're the most fertile person on earth. If you just look at a man the wrong way, you're going to get pregnant. And the truth is, even under the best circumstances with the two most fertile people, the chances are what that you would get pregnant, you know, unprotected sex during the right time of month. Well, in, let's see, in a good, you know, a healthy couple, you know, about 12% of them won't do it in a year, you know, and, and then first in the first month, maybe a third will do it and that's great. And there'll be, you know,

they'll be successful. And then it goes down from there. So, um, yeah, you gotta keep trying. So you gotta, you got about a 30% chance of, of becoming pregnant. You got a 70% chance of not becoming pregnant. And that anybody who's tried to get pregnant and has failed knows how disheartening those numbers are. And they only go down when you get older. And when the sperm count is low, and when the eggs are getting affected, and when the sperm quality is not ideal and all this. So quality and quantity. Can I ask, maybe this is a dumb question, but does sperm count and quality matter beyond continuation of the human race? Like, is there some other negative effect to that? Yes. There's a study just recently that showed that when a couple had to go to assisted reproduction to conceive, right? So there were problems without saying what the problems were. There were some problems. They had to get help, medical help to conceive the pregnancy. And they did. Their offspring will have impaired fertility. That's one example. Oh, that's not good.

And there are, you know, basically if things that mess up sperm mess up the entire body, because they depend on hormones, which drive the development of every system in the body, including the brain. And so it's not just reproductive function in and of itself. It's, you know, has impacts for the health of that person. And by the way, a man or a woman who are less fertile will, on average, die earlier. Oh, what? Why? Well, because it's a signal that something has gone wrong along the way to get to that point, maybe starting in pregnancy, even when they were in the womb. And the things that went wrong are often things with your hormones.

Because hormones, we know, are very intimately tied to reproductive success, right? Testosterone, you need that, estrogen, you need that, and so on. So if you mess that up, particularly very early in pregnancy, you're going to mess up a lot of things, right? And it takes a good amount of testosterone at the right time in this program development. Don't forget, it's kind of like a ballet. You know, there's a whole script for this, which is, you know, controlled by your genetic makeup. And when the genes are programmed to produce testosterone or estrogen, they got to do it at that time. Otherwise, you know, if you will, the ballet ballerina is not going to be caught. What do you say at that time?

This is going to be an accident. This is going to be a problem. All of these things have to follow the script. And so when that's messed up which i believe we can talk about why it can be better yeah we'll get to that then um you're gonna things will go awry but don't forget it's not just your generalists that need testosterone it's also your brain it's also many systems in your body and then other hormones can go wrong those that control appetite those that

control immune function those that control every system in your body can be messed up and when that happens you'll get disease or you'll get dysfunction and one of those ways you can get dysfunction is reproductive and that's what we're talking about today and when you made the reference at that time when things go wrong at that time the ballerina can fall do you mean when you made the reference at that time, when things go wrong at that time, the ballerina can fall. Do you mean when you're trying to conceive a baby, when you're pregnant with a baby? What is the relevant time? So for men, the relevant time is the 70 days before they conceive that pregnancy. So let me say why that is.

Men may sperm all the time. OK, they have these what are called germ cells that are like sperm generators. And then throughout his adult life, he will make sperm continually. And it takes about 70 days to make a sperm. So the sperm that produced your son, the good sperm that produced your healthy son, was in development about 70 days before he was conceived. So things that could go wrong in that run up, such as maybe the man smoking, men drinking a lot, men being heavily stressed, and so on and so forth, can make changes to that sperm, right?

Wow. So that's the most influential period for the man for the woman once that conception has occurred she's starting the program if you will the band is start playing the you know the script is running and every aspect of development is programmed to occur at a different point in gestation. And so for much of what I study, the critical time is in the first trimester. And we don't know exactly, but it's probably weeks 10 to 12 of gestation before you're even aware maybe that you're pregnant. All this stuff is being laid down. That's like my mom.

I always give her a hard time. It's like the brain is much later and so on. But for that, it's really scary, isn't it? Oh, well, I was telling my audience not long ago, but my mom, I was born in 1970, right? The science wasn't really that well known, but common sense told a lot of people not to do what my mom did.

So there's a picture of my mom smoking a cigarette, I mean, truly like out of a magazine, and with a martini with a pregnant belly. And I'm in there. I'm like, Ma. She goes, well, I never did that the first trimester. So you knew enough? She was on to something. She was on to something. Because the more rapidly the cells are developing, the more cells that

are developing, the more sensitive they are to these environments. And we know how quickly these cells develop in very early pregnancy. So she was onto something with worrying most about the first trimester. I wish more people did. The problem is that you don't know you're pregnant often, right? So you might not know until 10 weeks. And then it gets a little hard to, you know, cut out everything that you shouldn't be doing.

So, but in any case, all during pregnancy, you should be really careful. And then there are times later in life when cells are developing again, puberty and so on that are also quite sensitive. But the prenatal period is definitely the most sensitive. Okay. All right. And now you mentioned testosterone.

This is another piece of the story. It's not just lower sperm counts. It's also low T. We've come to know that term. You've got lower testosterone as a man. Now, first, can I just ask you, what does that look like in a man? If a man, let's say he's born with lower testosterone and he, whatever, for whatever reason, he's got low testosterone while he's young. It's not just like one of these older guys who has it. Will he, forgive me, these may be really stupid questions,

but will he appear more effeminate? Will he, you know, will that manifest in like a way we could see it? Um, so they're not stupid questions and they're good questions actually. Um, so testosterone, by the way, women have it also, but less. Okay. And in both men and women, testosterone is absolutely essential for healthy reproductive function, but it's also linked to muscle mass. It's also linked to brain function. It's also linked to libido, sexual desire, sexual satisfaction. And so it's not something that people want to go down once they're adults. And by the way, it isn't level across life. It changes over time. Everything does. So there's a peak of testosterone in utero, which we talked about in early pregnancy. Then there's a peak right after birth.

And then it kind of flattens out and stays low until puberty, and then it starts to come up again. And then it stays in men up their whole life, going down slowly. So it's there all the time. And by the way, there's a cycle over the day. Also, it's highest in the morning and lowest in the evening. And we know there's other things that influence it. But it's very essential throughout your life.

And it's essential for women, too. I'll just tell you a little anecdote. I study pregnant women, right? Our studies are, you know, bring a pregnant woman in early in pregnancy and measure a lot of things in her body. And one of the things we measure is chemicals that make plastic soft. Those are called phthalates and we'll probably talk about those because they're very important to the story. But it turned out that when a woman had higher levels of those chemicals in her body, she reported having less sexual satisfaction and frequency. Well, that makes sense if it affects testosterone.

That's right. That's right. That's right. And in the men, it's the same thing. And also other chemicals that may do various things to plastics and products can affect the man's testosterone. So we're making these all the time, but we're also sensitive to chemicals in the environment that can affect these all the time hmm not for nothing but the phthalates that you mentioned I read in your research they're problematic on so many levels you know causing potentially low sperm count decreasing female fertility causing low testosterone then

there's this. When I started looking at phthalates around 2000, phthalate syndrome had been shown experimentally in rodents, but not in humans. Mother rats given phthalates had male babies with a smaller penis and scrotum in addition to their sperm counts being lower and so on. So that's another thing. I mean, you know, that is something that men worry about. And I didn't realize that, you know, a lot of phthalates around you, and we'll talk about what those are, can lead to all sorts of problems, including aesthetic ones. Yeah. I wouldn't actually call them just aesthetic. I think there's functional effects. And this phthalate syndrome, which is really important.

And by the way, the only chemical that has a syndrome named after it is phthalates. You don't talk about the pesticide syndrome or the dioxin syndrome. You talk about the phthalate syndrome it's a very big problem and and um it affects the development and we can starting an early pregnancy of the male and then it will result in lower sperm count so let's get into that let's get it because we're talking about we're talking about phthalates right now because now we're into the, what's causing this? What the hell is causing all this low testosterone and low sperm count and decreased female fertility and the birth rate cut in half? What is it?

And this is where your area of expertise comes in. You've been studying. Well, actually, let me start with this. Just explain briefly, what does an epidemiologist do? Great. Well, you know, we're all familiar with COVID, and that's a kind of epidemiology I don't do. So epidemiology is kind of split into infectious, that's COVID, and other infectious diseases, and there's chronic disease epidemiology and that's includes cancer and includes reproduction and it's what i do so i'm a reproductive epidemiologist and what i do is actually examine reproductive function in relation to things that can affect it so So, and how I do that is to measure things in people, right? So the model

that I've used for a long time now is to go into clinics where pregnant women are being seen, prenatal clinics, and ask them if they'd like to participate in a study and if they agree and consent then we recruit them and then that they are in the study right and we've done that in states all over the united states and people do that all over the world it's a very standard model they're called pregnancy cohort studies. And so once the woman has agreed, she usually completes a questionnaire and she tells us about her reproductive history and her diet and her activities and her smoking

and her alcohol and so on and so forth. And then if she's willing, we collect a urine sample from her and sometimes a blood sample. And then we hope to repeat that in each trimester or even more frequently because things change all the time across the pregnancy. So and then once the child is born, we can examine that child. And that's where we see the phthalate syndrome. Okay.

Okay. So, so, so let me just advance it. So, cause we've discussed, you, you identified the problem and you identified it with men across the world. It's a, it's a legit thing and women too. And now the question is, as an epidemiologist, why, what's causing it? And you actually have real conclusions on that um and i mean correct me but the the short answer is plastics and modern chemicals i mean is that

is that the short answer i would say that is a significant piece of the short answer we should also talk about lifestyle factors because for example, your smoking isn't good for your sperm. Alcohol, binge drinking isn't good for your sperm. Stress isn't. Bad diet isn't. So these other factors which we can put in the bucket of lifestyle factors are also really important. But where I've, you know, worked hardest and, you know, is in these chemicals. So how do you know what your chemicals exposure is? Yeah. So, you know, you can ask somebody, how much do you smoke? You can ask them, did you take drug A or drug B? That's on the questionnaire. But actually, the best way to know what somebody is exposed to is to measure something in their body

that reflects that, right? And it turns out that many of these things are short-lived. They're called non-persistent. They don't stay in the body. They are dumped into the urine. And so that's good because it's easy to get a urine sample and store it safely. And then you can take that sample to the lab and ask the chemist, how many markers of these chemicals do you see? They have the technical name metabolite. So in the urine, the phthalate breaks down into these sub-particles and the chemist measures them. And by looking at those, the chemist can tell us what the level is. And then we know that the, what the mother was exposed to. So how long would they stay in there? If you see a lot in there, does it mean she,

if you see a lot in there in the urine, does it mean she must've had exposure to them within the past day or within the past 40 years? Yeah, that's a really good question. So there are sort of two big buckets of chemicals. There's a persistent and the non-persistent. And phallics are non-persistent. They leave the body very quickly. And so what you're seeing when you measure it is what she was exposed to in the last 12 hours, probably. If it is something like a pesticide that's persistent or a flame retardant or something that makes your pans nonstick for example these are called forever chemicals so they'll stay in the body and you can measure them but you don't know what period they're reflecting it that could have been

exposure a long time ago at least years ago and then there are some that stay around even longer those are banned now the dioxins and the pcbs and so on so the the the property of the chemical its ability to stay in the body or to stay in the environment um you know is a question you know and answers that question how long has it been since she was exposed um and by the way you can do that in a man too so if you want to know your son who you know healthy son um his you and his dad were probably not exposed to high levels of bad things um but the man can you know you can get his urine too and you can measure them in his urine well how do you know i mean this is one of my one of my fears but one of my fears is you know you grew up in the 70s my husband tells us a story about how down at the beach where we go his older brother and sister

used to chase the deet truck that was blowing huge wafts of deet all over the town. The chemical we're told to avoid in off, though we all use it if we get into the deep woods because it works so well. Like, okay, so you got that in the 70s. And then you come upon the microwave in or around 1980. And we all were putting lean cuisines in there and other things that are in plastic

and heating them up and then eating them, which I know from your research is a no-no. Don't heat plastic in the microwave and then eat out of it. And don't keep your food in plastic containers and then eat out of it. And nonstick cookware, my God, everybody's got that because it works so well. And that stuff you say you can't get. So I don't know if my husband and I would test low on this. I'm worried. Well, it was not too much evidently for your son, right? So you're going to feel good about that. But we can't really avoid these things. And by the way, not all plastics are created equal, I should say. If you want to sort of check it out, look at the triangle on the bottom of a bottle or a container. And there's a number.

It's a recycling code. So there's this little ditty, 4, 5, 1, and 2, all the rest are bad for you. And 7 is not good. And 6 is not good. 4, 5, 1, and 2 is good. 4, 5, 1, and 2 is okay the rest are bad for you. And seven is not good. And six is not good. Four, five, one, and two is good. Four, five, one, and two is okay. Even one and two you don't want. But you can feel better about using one and two. So four, five, one, and two maybe are less pernicious than the other numbers.

Right. Okay. Okay. Wow. So let's talk about it. You mentioned the nonstick cookware. I know that you use you can use stainless steel or cast iron. I know you like that. I like cast iron, too. And it actually doesn't stick that much. It's actually pretty good if you put some butter and oil in there. So what are like the worst culprits? Because when I read the list, I started to feel depressed. It was like no shampoo and toothpaste and hairspray and makeup. I'm like, well, that's my whole routine. It's gone.

It's overwhelming. And what I like to say to people, you know, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You know, you can't control it all. You can't limit it at all. I think what you can do is kind of once in a while just maybe take an inventory and think do we know what's in this? And often you don't because things don't have to be labeled. There's a organization called the Environmental Working Group. You can go there and you can put, you know, they have guides for different kinds of consumer products, you know, so you can put in sunscreen and you can put in different kinds of cosmetics and they'll,

they'll will have tested all of these things, which is amazing because the government doesn't do it. So if you go there and put your product in there and you'll get a score and you can try to buy things that have a better score. But in general, I would say if you can eat food that's unprocessed, right? We can talk about processing in a minute, but buy it at the supermarket. If you are living near a supermarket with fresh food, by the way, not everybody is, it's an economic thing. Buy it unprocessed, take it home, cook it and eat it.

That's the safest thing you can do. Once you have to store it, you're going to have to think about what your container is. Obviously, glass is preferable to plastic, but as I say, not all plastics are created equal. And I would say think about your average. Think about what you're doing on the average. Try to do okay most of the time and not be too hard on yourself because I don't want to give the message that everybody should be policing everything they do and everyone around them and what they do because that gets obnoxious right you can't do that but you can try to reduce your exposure by

being aware that everything including by the way our air our dust our water contain plastics and now we know microplastics the breakdown product of those plastics is everywhere so it's it's kind of a hard job to avoid these and i think we have to make changes much higher up rather than on the consumer level we can't really shop our way out of this or you know do it on our own we need help but like the government needs to start regulating things to to ban some of these destructive dangerous chemicals and right now they're not doing really anything they're not helping us at all and i'm not for big government but this really is a ubiquitous problem that every human never mind american American, is dealing with. And it's just the Wild West. Right. And we could do better. And I just want to give you one example.

The EU does better and they have much better regulations. They actually require that a product be tested before it's put in the market, which sounds kind of radical. You know, we don't do that. And now in the EU, something like 1,100 products are banned from cosmetics. Oh. In the US, 11. 11 versus 1,100. Now, those numbers may have changed since the last time I read that, but the idea is that we're doing very little and it is possible to do much more.

But is it teaspoons in the ocean, right? Is it teaspoons in the ocean? Like, I mean, would you guess that in 40 years, if you take the, if nothing else changes and you take the fertility rate of American men versus European men, it will have changed because of those solutions. Or no, because it's teaspoons in the ocean over there, and the ocean, they're still swimming in it too. Right. Both of those things, I would say. I think the countries that are being more careful with their plastics and with their products are probably doing better, but not well. Because as you say, air is mixed globally, water is mixed globally, things are shipped

globally. We don't know where the products in our house comes from usually. What country have they come from? What were the controls in that country so it's we don't see big geographic variations in sperm count of course we didn't have very fine data or you know enough data to say something about individual countries so that's possible that there are some places in the world that are really good we do know that there are some places in the world that are really good um we do know that there are some places in

the world that are having more problems um one way to look at that is the the fertility rate and in east asia it's extremely low extremely low so do you know what why would you say fertility rate is the is a demographic term and refers to the number of children that a woman or a couple can be expected to have in their lifetime. OK, and as you started this hour, you talked about a fertility rate that had declined by 50 percent, where we used to have five children per woman or couple. And now that's gone down. That's absolutely correct. And so you can look at that fertility rate by country. And if a couple reproduces themselves, they'll have two children, right? Two people, two children, and maybe 2.1 because occasionally, sadly, a child gets lost. So 2.1 children. We're below that now. And in East Asia, many countries are around one and the lowest i've

heard is south korea which is 0.89 that means that a couple will only produce fewer than one child on the average in their lifetime that's really low so So there are geographic differences. All right. So wait, that's a good place to pause it because I want to know why. Why is East Asia having that problem? And I know you did a study looking at the sperm count of men in part of Missouri versus part of Minnesota and found a vast difference. And we'll talk about what it was and why right after this very quick break. Dr. Swan stays with us. So, Doc, what explains the low fertility rate in East Asia and what happened when you compared men in rural Missouri with more urban men in Minnesota? So, Megan, the low fertility rate in East Asia is a mystery, I have to say. I can speculate that they have more products. They produce certainly many plastic products, but I have

not studied that and I haven't seen anybody who's actually looked into that in a deep way. So I have to say that's a mystery. The question of Missouri versus Minnesota, however, is less of a mystery, though, there's many mysterious things going on there too. So we, in our studies, I told you how we did these studies of pregnant women. And two of the places we included were Columbia, Missouri where I was living at the time which is semi which is agricultural right there's a lot of crops grown

there and we had another center which was in Minneapolis which is an urban center and we had other centers too but let me just focus on those. And what we found was that the men in central Missouri, Columbia, where I was living, had only half as many moving sperm as men in Minneapolis. Half. Which is huge, right? What could do that? So we started thinking about what could do that so we started thinking about what could do that and of course an obvious difference is that there is agriculture on a lot of it in Columbia Missouri and so a lot of pesticides a lot of spraying

and in Minneapolis not so much different kinds of pesticides and not growing a lot of you know soybeans in central Minneapolis. So we looked at that unfortunately we didn't have a lot of money to do that but we looked at a sample which was big enough to show us that men in Missouri first of all that men in Missouri had more significantly more pesticide burden in their urine. And again, you have to go to the urine and see what's dropped in there, you know, by these short-lived pesticides.

And much more in, significantly more in men in Missouri. But even honing in on that and looking at men within Missouri, we looked at one sample of men who had excellent sperm everything was good count motility morphology everything was good and a sample of men there who for whom everything was bad and there we found that for pesticides atrazine is a one that people may have heard of were significantly higher in the men with the bad semen quality. So although the sample wasn't very big, this went a long way to showing that pesticides commonly used in our environment do lower sperm count.

And this is not prenatal, by the way. These are adult men. You talk about how this might manifest at the grocery store for those of us as saying, if you can, and I know it's more expensive, try to buy organic, buy your fruits and vegetables organic. You don't really want them coming covered in pesticides, but most of us have no idea whether they are or they aren't. So for those who can't afford it or don't know, or who are still worried in any event, what should they do with their fruits and veggies well if you can as

i say you buy organic and and buy if possible unprocessed and i'd like to talk about that in a minute but um if you can't um you you can wash them unfortunately you know there are chemicals that are added to pesticides that help them go into the plant, including phthalates, by the way. Phthalates do this, this increased absorption, either of the hand cream on your hand or the pesticide into the plant. So things are put in so that the pesticide will go up into the plant, and that makes it something that you can't wash off.

So I would say for that reason, you give whatever possible you should buy organic. And beef and chicken too. So it turns out a very nice experiment in Eastern Europe where they milked a cow the old fashioned way by hand. And then they milked a cow with a milking machine. If you think about a milking machine, it's got lots of plastic tubes and those are soft plastic.

And guess what? They contain phthalates. They contain bad phthalates. They contain phthalates that lower testosterone. And so this study showed that you compared the phthalates in the milk of the hand milked milk, well, in the machine milked milk, the machine milking definitely added pesticides

to the body. And that happens anytime you have food going through a plastic tube, right? Because the plastic leaves, it's not chemically bound to the plastic, and the phthalate leaves the plastic, goes into the food. And if the food is warm, so much the better,

because more of it gets absorbed, and then it goes into the spaghetti jar or wherever and then it stays there until it goes into our body so as I say if you can buy organic food clean it process it yourself in the kitchen right away before you eat it eat it and then you're good to go I know I have to buy a cow now too. There's so much effort. Okay, wait, can we talk about process versus unprocessed? I mean, I'll say, I'll start by saying this. I always use my Nana as an example. I know she's probably an outlier, but she lived to 101. She was overweight. She was stressed out. She ate nothing but processed foods. But her first probably 40 years on this earth from 1915 forward, probably not, right?

And she wasn't much of a drinker or a smoker, but I'm just saying, like she always said, my sister Lily smoked herself to death. My sister Helen drank herself to death, and I'm going to eat myself to death in any event so she was right she was on the new york new jersey border she always processed food and she lived to 101 but the general rule is stay away from processed and and so why what what is it about the phthalate concern and all that that we're talking about in the processed foods well these chemicals this thing by the way is very important too that lines tin cans those have to be processed um these chemicals are needed for the product the tin can or the plastic container um for it to have the the properties that we need for it to be hard, to be soft.

And so they're necessary unless they can be replaced by something safer. That's a different question. But they're there, but they're not, they're hard and fast, if you will. They're not chemically bound. They can come out into the food, and they do. So, you know, floor coverings, just this is changing the subject a little bit, but if you know these floor coverings that are all shiny to begin with and then they get duller and duller and duller,

that's because the plasticizers, there are many kinds in PVC and other, you know, they leave the flooring, and then you have this dull looking floor and that's gone into the air and it's, we breathe it and it's gone into our body. So we get these things through breathing, through our skin, through eating and drinking every which way. So food and other things are giving us these products without our knowledge throughout our life can't be i want to get this in before we run out of time is there a website or like where can people go who are listening to this who like i want to know more i want to know what i can do what i what i should eliminate is there one website where they can go for this information i would say go to Countdown, go to my book, because we have an appendix which contains a lot of websites. There's not any one that is different for different products, but we have a lot of information there. The book is Countdown. That's two words.

It's important. If you put in one word, you won't get the book. Oh, that is important. Countdown. All right, let me switch to this because i have to get this in the gender confusion that we're seeing at epic numbers that could be related to some of this you say i actually didn't say that right out and then because this is really controversial and i know we're rushing and let me say this quickly We don't know whether gender confusion is increasing

The reason we don't know that is because we don't have a historical record. What we know is that Reports of it are are increasing and awareness of it is increasing but whether it is actually increasing is an open question Okay, so I want to be really clear about that. that secondly I have not said in the book or elsewhere that chemicals in the environment are related to this phenomena okay what they are related to is what's called disorders of sexual development So that's creatures that are born with, say, eggs and sperm in the same individual. That does happen and that can be caused by certain chemicals. And what also can be caused is homosexuality. But that's not to say that that's the main cause of homosexuality or the driving force is just that it can be caused in the laboratory by certain

chemicals. Okay. But gender dysphoria is a different thing. And it's about how you feel about your body and whether you think your, your assignment at birth based on your genes was appropriate for the person that you are and, and whether that's affected by chemicals, we have no idea we don't know hey i want to be really clear about that because it's not the same thing i got it it's yet another thing that we need more research on um you go through in the book about you know body weight smoking alcohol stress and so on i did this this nugget of goodness just for people worried um moderate alcohol intake defined as four to seven units per week,

like one glass of wine, whatever, here and there. Associated with higher semen volume and total sperm count, but high intakes, more than 25 units per week, hazardous to sperm. So there's just like a little silver lining there, Doc. I was glad to see you can still have some. Remove, I'm just going to tick through a couple of your recommendations here. Prepare meals at home as often as possible. When you eat out, you don't know what's going in there. They got rubber gloves, whatever plastic gloves they're using. Filter your drinking water. Upgrade your cookware. Get rid of the nonstick in favor of stainless steel or cast iron. Clean up your cleaning products, carpet shampoo, all-purpose household cleaners, window and wood cleaning products, disinfectants, and so on. In the bathroom, look at the labels on

personal care products. Scan product ingredients lists. Avoid products that contain certain harmful chemicals like triclosan. You can find this in the book dbp parabens preservatives so on sunscreens look for these ingredients and they're now paying some attention to that ditch the vinyl shower curtain banish banish air fresheners um remove wall-to-wall carpet prevent dust build up leave your shoes at the door clean out your closets say no to plastic. Can we talk about the carpet quickly? I have this very naughty dog. I just paid an exorbitant amount for plastic carpets, for a couple of plastic. They feel like wool. And now I realize I've got to get rid of them. But can you just tell me, is it an exercise in futility? Because the wool carpets that are probably coming have been treated with all the

fire retardant stuff that makes them just as hazardous to me as the plastic ones I now need to get rid of? I can't speak about your particular products, but I think there are safer floor coverings that you can use. So, you know, I can't, I don't know the details right now. I couldn't, you know, there's so many products to talk about, but there's always a range of choices. And so you need to explore that. I just wrote to a company asking them what kind of plastic they used in their product. You can do that. You can write and you can find out. So we shouldn't have to do that as consumers, but we do. So that's what I would do. So I read that you say, you told Axios, if you look at the curve on sperm count and projected forward which is always risky it reaches zero in 20 45 noting that the average man would have no viable sperm how likely

is that so that that actually is kind of metaphorical you can't actually have a zero mean sperm count because then you'd have negative, which is not possible. So that's just to say that zero is as low as we can go. And we seem to be going closer and closer to that, but whether we'll actually reach it, no, we won't actually reach it because like I say, then you'd have to have negative sperm. You understand?

Cause sperm is, there's a curve and actually long tail, but you'd have to have negative sperm you understand because sperm is there's a curve and actually long tail but you have to have if zero was at zero if the mean was at zero we'd have negative we can't do that but we can come lower and lower and that seems to be what's happening um however we can reproduce using assisted reproductive technologies and those are getting better and being used more frequently and um i think that men probably should bank their sperm um when they're young and when it's healthier more likely to be healthy and the question of egg freezing is more complicated it's so expensive but that's something that women who are concerned could consider wow okay yeah we need to fight that 2045 is uh right around the corner and this is

not something we want to deal with. All right. The book again is called Countdown, How Our Modern World is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race. Fascinating discussion, Dr. Swan. Thank you so much for your good work and your good explanations. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me on. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.