The Megyn Kelly Show - Secrets to Living Longer and Better, with Tony Robbins, and Hollywood Captured by China, with Erich Schwartzel | Ep. 259

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Tony Robbins, author of the new book "Life Force," and Erich Schwartzel, author of "Red Carpet," to talk about what inspired Robbins to explore the secrets to living longer and better, the truth about stem cells, the extraordinary power of the placebo effect, how fear of COVID can actually make you sick, new technology in heart health, and more. Then, Schwartzel on the way China began to capture Hollywood, censorship and self-censorship on behalf of China, the cost to Richard Gere for speaking out against China, how the "Top Gun" and "Red Dawn" remakes appeased China, Trump and Clinton's dealing with China, 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. Oh, we have an interesting program for you today. It's going to make you think and have fun and offer some promise while doing it. We've got two authors of new books, one whose name you know very well. We'll start with him in one moment. But later, we are diving into the way China has captured Hollywood. This is fascinating. You know how like Hollywood movies these days seem boring and scrubbed and designed to only appeal to one subset of our population? There are really

interesting reasons for that. and we're going to walk through it through them all. But my first guest today is a bestselling author, philanthropist, and all-around inspirational guy who everyone loves and people pay lots of money to go see because everyone just wants a piece of Tony Robbins' inspo, right? His wisdom. And he's written some of it down in a new book called Life Force, how new breakthroughs in precision medicine can transform the quality of your life and those you love. It's full of tips on how to increase energy, boost your immune system, and most importantly, and interestingly, I think, turn back your biological clock. Yes, you want to live longer,

but not if you can't live well. Well, he takes a hard look at how that's possible and says the notion of what it means to be old or middle-aged is about to change dramatically, that 80 will soon be the new 50. Tony, thank you so much for being here. Nice to see you, Megan. I've been a fan of yours for years and years, all the way back to Fox time. So thanks for having me on. You're amazing. That's so nice to hear. Thank you so much. All right. So you are here to do something really important, which is help us not just live longer, but live better and become CEO of our own healthcare. Let's start with why this is important to you. Why did you write this book?

You don't need the money. You don't have to be doing this. So why did you take on this cause? I'm also donating 100% as I've done with the last three books. We're going to feed 20 million people through Feeding America. I've been feeding, I committed to feed 100 million people a year for 10 years to a billion people. And the last seven years, we're up to 850 million. So I'm really proud of it. But I wrote it because there's a revolution that's happening right now in our medicine. There's something called precision medicine, and it's very different than anything we've seen before. It's being driven by technological changes. You know, most people know that technology basically doubles in its power about every 18 months, and it halves in its cost. And we haven't seen that very often in healthcare.

But it's happening right now by a group of scientists around the world. So I decided I want to interview 150 of the very best Nobel laureates, scientists, the best medical doctors. And none of the book is my opinion. It's bringing you exactly what they're showing in the areas, like you said, increasing energy and strength, vitality. What are the basic things you can do that don't take anything at all? Just a couple choices. What are some of the new tools and technology? And then if you're having a real challenge, if you've got something like cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, what are the best tools that are really available now? And I just wanted to bring

it to people in a way that would be accessible because, you know, my billionaire friends know most of these things, but the average person doesn't have access. So I really just try to bring you access and then also do it in a form that would really move you emotionally. The head of the Cleveland Clinic interviewed me yesterday and he was saying, it's the best book that I've literally read. He said, I normally scan books. I read it cover to cover. It's a large book. He said, but it also made me cry. He said, I've never had a book that showed me the science and made me cry.

Because you'll be moved by the stories of the people who've created these breakthroughs, who've worked 20 or 30 years of their life. What they almost all have in common, Megan, is they lost a husband or a wife or a child, and it pushed their brain to go beyond the standard of care and find new ways that can transform our lives it's just beautiful to see it's so great to your point i um my doctor's in new york but i need somebody i've moved to connecticut so i need like a local guy and um i went to this office the other day and it was like it's a concierge service concierge medicine it's an all cash business.

I basically just needed one shot, so I didn't really have to get into it. But I was thinking like this is next level health care. But of course, it's only for rich people. And so your point is, here's a book with all the information you would get from such a doctor and people well beyond such a doctor for everybody, for the average working Joe. And in particular, on how to live well and live longer and with more energy and better sex drive and all of it built into these 800-some pages. All right, so let's talk about you because you had an injury that inspired you to start taking a look at this.

One I think I can relate to a little bit. I didn't have as bad as you did. I had a roller blade injury. It was roller derby, believe it or not, that I did for NBC. Are you kidding? No, but you really hurt your shoulder, your rotator cuff, and it kind of changed the way you thought the remainder of your life would go. It really did. I want to first say that my desire to do this started much younger. When I was 19 years old, I started when I was 17 at what I'm doing. So I've been doing it for 45 years.

And I was obsessed with helping people. And I worked extremely hard. And I had a lot of grace in my life. So I got access to some amazing athletes. And I got great results and some CEOs. And then at 19, Megan, I found myself in a place, you know, that part of your brain that's kind of the fight or flight part, kind of survival part. I didn't know how to manage that. I had a tough childhood. And so my brain suddenly started to say, well, maybe I'm in this position at this young age because I'm going to die young. I'm successful now because I'm going to die young. And even though intellectually I know that was insane, I even started having dreams about it, obsessing about it.

And I thought it would be cancer, not some easy thing like hit by a car, walked away from cancer. And the reason I tell you this is because it was a huge part in what made me later on be able to deal with the injuries I had. Because I, you know, I'm obsessing on it. And of course you obsess on something that shows up in your life usually.

Unfortunately, the first time it happened was not a tumor with me. It was my girlfriend and it was her mom. And she came home and said, I'd sent her home to die. She's going to die in nine weeks. And even if it would have been me, Megan, I think, you know, I think most of us will do more for others we love than we'll do for ourselves.

If it had been me, I'd probably have gone into fear. But instead, it's like, wait a second, there are thousands of people that have been in stage four cancer and turned it around in their life today. Let's go study those patterns. That's what I've done my whole life, right? So I would, you know, I'd taken a speed reading course. I started reading all these books. And I found this book called One Answer to Cancer. Wouldn't be the

one I recommend today because there's much better tools, but it was written by this dentist who had pancreatic cancer, the most deadly cancer of all. And 12 years later, he was alive and he explained what he did. So I went to this woman, her name was Jenny in her early forties. And I said, Jenny, I said, I said, I think you can still live. This man lived, there are a lot of people. Why don't you read this and see if it's worth going for? I mean, you have no downside. If it doesn't work, you're just going to have the same outcome. And long story short, she applied it.

And she had a tumor on the back of her shoulder that was protruding. And she had one in her feminine organs. And within two weeks, three weeks, she started having more energy and feeling better. In about 10 weeks, you couldn't see the tumor anymore. You couldn't feel it even. And so finally, when she outlived the time they thought she'd die, they did exploratory surgery, and they found the end of my pinky's fingernail was all that was left of it. And then actually, this is just an absolute miracle. And she said, it is, but let me tell you what I did. And he's

like, no, it's just a miracle. She's, by the way, in her 80s today, totally alive. And that changed me from victim and fear to really being kind of a biohacker and transforming my life. And so, you know, I do events for four days, seven days with 12, 15, 20,000 people in a stadium and I hold them 12, 14 hours a day when they wouldn't sit for a three-hour movie. So what I do with my body is insane. But what happened to me later is I got a tumor. I was actually, I went for, I'm a helicopter pilot as well. And I went for, you know, a normal physical to stay qualified. You do it every two years.

And the doc there did some blood tests. And so he kept calling and I was going to South of France. And I said, well, just tell him to send the report. And I come home one night, there's a note that says, call the doctor. He says it's an emergency. Oh, no. And then, you know, my old fear just went crazy. You know, the mind goes nuts. I've been so healthy for all this time, but I do fly. Is it too much radiation? You know what the mind does. And then I, you know, I've learned to settle

myself and say like a coward dies a thousand tests, a courageous person once. Let me wake up in the morning and find out. Sure enough, doc tells me, you got a tumor in your brain. I'm like, what? I can't believe there was nothing wrong with me. He says, no, I noticed you have a lot of growth hormone i said how'd you figure that out my hands are bigger than your head and my feet are size 16. i grew 10 inches in a year i was 5 1 in high school i'm 6 7 now and he said well all i'm going to tell you is you have a pituitary tumor you need to come in immediately for surgery when i asked the prognosis he said well you know i have to tell you honestly you can die it's not an easy surgery but you're not likely to but your you know, I have to tell you, honestly, you can die. It's not an easy surgery, but you're not likely to, but your, you know, hormonal system will not be the same. And you probably have a lot less energy. And I was like, well, I'd love to get a second opinion. You know,

I'd seen the Mayo Clinic studies, you know, saying everyone should get one. And so long story shortened, I went off trying to forget about this. And of course the mind didn't let you do that, came and did it, found out I had the tumor, and then decided to try a different approach, a biochemical approach. And I saw this top doctor in Boston, and he said, don't do the surgery. That's crazy. He said, you go to Switzerland twice a year, take this injection. I have something called gigantism.

And he said, your heart valves won't get too big and you won't die. And I said, but my heart valves are normal. And he said, yes, they are. And I said, well, then why would I do this right now if I've had this for 10 years and I'm normal? He said, well, just to be certain. I said, well, there's a price to certainty, right? What if the drug has side effects? And which, by the way, his name was the sweetest man. He goes, you know, the baker wants to bake, the surgeon wants to cut. I want to drug you. He said, but you're right. You do have that option. So I went to six other doctors. The last one said to me, Tony, you recover from

basically two marathons in a weekend like no one I've ever seen. And he said, you know, I know bodybuilders that pay $1,200 a month to get the growth hormone you have. So that was when I'm 32. I'm now 52 or 62, I should say. And in 30 years, I monitored and I don't have a problem. So these things affected my psychology. So when I finally had this piece you described, being an idiot, going down the side of a mountain with chasing a 22-year-old professional snowboarder and discovering I didn't have that ability, the wreck was pretty bad. I thought I broke my neck. It was so painful, but I tore my roller derby. Okay, but just for the record, not as dumb as roller derby, but go ahead. Were you doing a story, Megan? Is that how you did it?

Yes, I do have that as an excuse. Well, I was going to say, I can't imagine you just doing it for fun. I was doing it for fun, so I would still say idiotic. But the bottom line is I'd live with pain zero to 10. It was a nine, nine, Megan. I mean, like I couldn't sleep. The nerve pain was so bad. So you go to your doctors. I went to four surgery, surgery, surgeon. I always ask, what's the prognosis? Well, you know, you may not be able to lift your arm above your shoulder. You know, it could tear again. How long does it take to rehab? Four to six months. So I'm like, picture me with one arm trying to do a seminar for 12 hours a day. So I asked about stem cells because as you know, I've worked with some of the greatest of all time and variety of sports, great goat athletes.

And some of them like Cristiano Ronaldo, he's supposed to have three months of recovery. It was two and a half weeks with stem cells. But all the docs said, no, they don't work. They won't make this happen. So I went to Dr. Peter Diamandis, who's a good friend of mine, rocket scientist and an MD from Harvard, and said, you know, everybody, who should I talk to? And he said, Dr. Bob Harari, who's now a partner and a co-author in this book. He's one of the people that discovered stem cells. He said, Tony, at your age, your stem cells drop off the cliff. I was 53 at the time. He said, you need the force of life. You need to get stem cells that are brand new, like four days old. And I said, well, I don't want to do fetal tissue. He goes, well, we never do that. But when we have babies, you know, the placenta and the cord come out and most people throw them away. And we discovered it

has the healing power like nothing else. So I went for three days of treatment. I had just an IV 20 minutes a day, a single injection, and I left out the most important part. The fourth doctor I talked to after telling me about this problem with my shoulder, turned to me and said, literally looked me in the face and said, now I need to be your doctor. I need to tell you life as you know it is over. I said, what? And he said, let me show you your spine. No more jumping, no more running, certainly no more snowboarding. He said one hit and you could lose the ability to walk. And I was used to a lot of pain, but I was used to that level. I came out of that and said, I got to find the solution. I went down, did the stem cells. On day two, I woke up not only with no problem, my shoulder, I have the MRI, my

shoulder's perfect, no surgery, perfect soldier. But the second thing that happened was I had no pain in my spine, Megan, for the first time in 14 years. So I became obsessed. I want to know everything about stem cells. And then I discovered it's not just stem cells. It's this regeneration revolution. And believe it or not, the Pope, and I'll finish with this, the Pope does every two

years the biggest regenerative conference in the world because he sees this as a gift to humanity. And he brings all these doctors together and they asked me to be the cleanup speaker. And I said, I'm happy to do that, but I want to go to the whole program with all the other docs. And I did. And I met some of the most genius scientists in the world. I met people, at least two dozen people that were sent home to die, you know, because their cancers were untreatable, but they met Dr. June with CAR T cells, or they met a new approach and they're alive 10 years later. I met Jack Nicholas, who's, you know, the greatest golfer of all time. He was told he was in so much pain, he couldn't stand for 10 minutes, literally without the pain being unbearable. Here's a guy whose whole life, athletic, playing golf, and missed all that. They were going to

fuse his spine, which only works about half the time. Thank God he didn't do that. He did stem cells and he's now 82 years old playing golf and playing tennis again. So that gave me the drive to say, I'm going to interview these 150 doctors. I want to bring those answers to people. And I have this healing in my own body as a secondary gift as well. Now, wait a minute, because, you know, when you give birth to a baby, they give you the option of sending all that off to be stored just in case your kid needs some life-saving thing, which I did. Would I need to use that or I can just get stem cells from, you know, any doctor? Does it have to be something that came from me? No, it doesn't.

That's called autologous. That's the legal term for what comes from you. And at this stage of life, that probably unless you have like a small change, like an elbow or maybe a little bit to a knee, but for something greater, you need what's called allergenic. It's just a fancy word from cells from someone else, but it's still valuable that, you know, I met an 11 year old child

that was supposed to die when he was four and they use his sister's stem cells because they forgot to, or didn't believe in, you know, saving the cord. And Dr. Bob Harari, by the way, was the first person who ever did that. He's the one who created the original companies that do that. I did that. I just now have a 10 month old daughter, have a 48 year old and a 10 year old, I have five kids and five grandkids,

but I saved it for the same reason. But today they can take even skin cells and turn them into something called pluripotent, which means cells that can become anything else in your body, any organ. So there are a lot more choices. But I still recommend for parents to save that because the match is so precise. It's still incredibly valuable. So it's not just the stem cells. I mean, I'm sure it sounds like it really helped you. But there's another effect that you write about in the book involving the placebo effect, which was fascinating to me.

So I wonder, I mean, do you, and we'll get it, I want you to explain it, but do you think that it was indeed the stem cells that helped you? Or do you think there was some element of just the power of positive thinking and believing that they would help you? I'm a very positive person. I was using every positive approach I could and trying multiple other approaches and they didn't make it happen. No, the stem cells both take down your inflammation, but they also send the signals to your body. They have the original signals that you're made from. There's actually a company that has something different. It's called, well, I think you know, your audience may not, that the FDA goes through three phases of approval on something. And stem cells have been approved. A million people have used them. But there's a

brand new company that if you have osteoarthritis, for example, when you and I are born, we have fetal tissue. But after that, there's something called the Wnt pathway, WNT pathway. And it's a signaling system that tells the stem cells what to become, become brain cells, become this many heart cells and so forth. Well, this company has created this breakthrough of being able to accelerate that natural process in your body. And they're in the third phase, which means they think they'll be approved if it goes through in the last part of this year, the beginning of next year, where you can eliminate osteoarthritis, which affects millions of people, single injection, and it stimulates your own WIMP pathway to make your own stem cells, and you regrow your own tendons over 11 months. I mean, it sounds like

science fiction. But the tendons you get, if you understandgrow your own tendons over 11 months. And it sounds like science fiction. But the tendons you get, if you understand a little bit about your genome, it's like Dolly the sheep, and then you make a brand new sheep when they did that. Well, the new genome allows you to have like 16-year-old tendons, even if you're 40, 50, 60, 70 years old. So these things are happening everywhere. But I don't think it was just the mind, based on what I've seen. I'm a big believer in the mind, as I think you know. Yeah, exactly. But there are limits to even what Tony Robbins can do with his mind. So that doesn't bode well for the rest of us.

All right. So wait, I'm going to squeeze in a quick break, but I want to get to the placebo effect. And I want to talk about the three things that you say everybody needs to focus on to improve their lives. And we'll walk through how they can do that more with Tony Robbins after this very quick break on the secrets to living longer and better. So Tony, what is the placebo effect? And talk to us about some of these studies that have looked at it because it's real. The one involving the veterans was just stunning, and the surgery they were doing, I think, on knees. Yes, it's amazing.

Well, first of all, most people don't realize the power of the mind to make you sick or to make you well. And in World War II, a surgeon who was very famous was trying to help people, and they're bleeding out, and so they needed morphine. Morphine keeps them from going to shock besides lowering the pain. And they ran out of morphine. And a nurse actually, she's really responsible for this because the doctor was freaking out and she said, oh, I found some more. And I don't know why she did it, but she just gave him saline and he thought it was an injection of morphine. So he had the total belief and told the patient, you'll be out of pain in a couple

minutes or less. You're going to be fine. He did it with each of them. Well, none of them went into shock. And 90% of them, the pain disappeared with no drugs being applied. And so when he went back to school after World War II to Harvard, he was the first person that started to make these studies that we basically do now. We compare drugs to a placebo and their substance to see their value. What a lot of people don't know is oftentimes a placebo is more powerful than the drug, but you don't make billions of dollars sharing that information. And as you noted, placebos are affected by your level of certainty that something's going to happen. It's like our brain can heal itself. And so if we give you a small pill, you get a bigger reaction. If I give you a big pill, if I give you a shot, even bigger reaction in terms of healing and speed. And the

one that's most powerful, Megan, you just alluded to, is what some people call a sham surgery, but it's a placebo surgery. So the Veterans Administration decided with knee pain or knee challenges, that they would do a third of the people where they would cut them open and do nothing and just sew them back up. So they would think they had the surgery. And a year later, the Veterans Administration stopped funding those types of surgeries because a year later, to a man and to a woman, the people who had no surgery claimed they had no pain, that they had extraordinary flexibility versus the ones who had the surgery. Large numbers of them still had pain and challenges. So literally that changed, but it's even more powerful than that, Megan. Harvard did a study where they didn't use

placebos. They used real drugs. So they handed somebody a large red pill and said, this is an amphetamine. Your body's going to speed up. You should be prepared for it. And they actually gave them a barbiturate, which would slow you through the floor. Every person exploded through the roof as if they'd given them amphetamine. And then they reversed it with a blue pill and did the other piece. It sounds like a movie, but they do this. Dr. Langer, who's kind of one of the co-founders of mindfulness at Harvard, is a friend of mine. And she's done these studies where you see changes like they go to people and take a group of people in their 70s and take them off for two weeks on this little journey for the CAT skills. And they inform them everything is from 35 years earlier, the imagery,

the television shows, everything. And they inform them talking first person as if it was 35 years later or earlier. What's amazing is after two weeks of this experience, they measured all their vitals before and afterwards. And the first thing happens, their eyesight improved. The second thing that improved was blood pressure dropped massively from the high blood pressure most of them did. Blood sugars balanced and they looked younger. And there are all these studies also about how we make ourselves sick with our mind. I had the privilege of meeting a man named Norman Cousins. Probably not many people know his name now, but he was really one of the fathers of psychoneuroimmunology, which is the study of how your brain, psycho, affects your immune system. And he was diagnosed with a deadly disease. And for whatever reason, he did not want to use the drugs that were available.

They had large side effects. And he decided that he thought his immune system would be stimulated if he wasn't in pain. And the way out of pain was to laugh. And so he would go spend, when he had this pain, two, three hours watching these old, silly movies and laugh his guts out. And ironically, what happened, science has now shown it, is he cured himself of the disease. He got out of the pain. But most importantly, he wrote a book called Anatomy of an Illness, which kind of launched this form of study around the world.

There are buildings dedicated to him at UCLA now. But this man told me, I interviewed him when I was 24. There were no podcasts. Then I had this cassette tape me, I interviewed him when I was 24. There were no podcasts. And I have this cassette tape program that I used to share with people. I'd interview people. And he told me a story. He says, Tony, not only can we make ourself healthy, but make ourself sick, but we can make our own fears viral to affect other people's health. I said, what do you mean? He said, I'll give you an example. He said, you know how you yawn and he said, don't yawn. You find yourself yawning or somebody's laughing hysterically. It's not

that funny, but they're having such a good time. You find yourself laughing. That's viral. It's psychological viral. He said, I went to a game, a college football game. And he said, here's what happened. He said, a person got really sick and were literally projectile vomiting. And they're in the stand. So people are kind of trying to get out of the way. They call the doctor. The doctor is trying to diagnose what happened, trying to find out what's different in this man's regimen. Was it food poisoning? And he found out he had gone to the vending machine and drank a Coca-Cola. And so the doc, just thinking, well, that's the only thing that's different. Maybe the thing is poisonous. Maybe there's some kind of chemicals that have gotten into it. So they made an announcement over the airwaves in the middle

of halftime to everyone to avoid the vending machines because they may be poisonous. Well, he said, Tony, it was like a movie. He said, projectile vomiting started happening within five to 20 minutes all over the place. 12 ambulances going to two different hospitals, taking people, shoveling people back and forth. An hour and a half later, they did tests and found out there was nothing wrong with the vending machine. And they told everybody and everybody got well. And so I'll give you the last piece, the CDC. When I put this, everything in my book is documented. It's not my opinion again, but it sounds ridiculous. The CDC, you know, what are people most scared about right

now? COVID-19 and dying of it. Now, the number one factor obviously is age, somebody in their 80s, because their immune system is often suppressed at that stage. But outside that, the number one factor most people know today is obesity, something we can actually do something about. 79.8, call it 80% of the people that died are obese. There's all kinds of comorbidities that come with that that make your body weaken. But you know what number two is? According to the CDC, fear and anxiety is the number two thing that will cause you to die because when you're afraid, you shut down your immune system. When you're afraid, it changes your heart rate. It can make an irregular heart rate.

It changes your breathing. It changes your oxygenization. So unfortunately, in our media and media people, you know, they're doing their best job they can. They're not trying to harm anyone. They're trying to inform people. But we all know if it bleeds, it leads. And so, you know, the death rates constantly in front of you has created so much fear. And that is, according to CDC, a factor that we want to avoid at all costs. Oh, yeah. The cable news model, and actually,

I can say firsthand, broadcast as well, is to upset you. That's what will get you to tune in, either anger you or upset you. And, you know, that's what will get you to tune in either anger you or upset you and you know it's funny tony because i'm listening to you talk my mom's mom died at almost 101 and um wait she was 101 yeah she was 101 anyway she um she was overweight she never exercised a day in her life she ate terribly only processed food i mean only processed food nothing fresh or healthy and i'm thinking of ice and she was kind of stressed out for part parts of her life so I'm like well I don't get it but you know what she laughed she was funny and she she was quick to laugh and she was quickly make

others laugh and I'm listening to you thinking I finally get it well I interviewed a woman named Alice summers was at this time she was the oldest living survivor of the Holocaust I think she was 108 at the time I interviewed a woman named Alice Summers. At this time, she was the oldest living survivor of the Holocaust. I think she was 108 at the time I interviewed her. Living on her own, Megan, swimming every day, and used her son as the hostage to say, you are going to perform for us because they made these films, the Nazis did, to try and make it look like they were treating Jews well. And we're going to kill your son in front of you if you don't look healthy, if you don't look happy, and if you don't play well. So imagine going through all of that and then surviving the Holocaust. And by the way, the music was the escape for not only her, but all the people listening in the camp. They talked about it. And the people in her

apartment still listened to her play the piano. But she went through all those things and everything was beautiful to her. The microphone was beautiful. I was beautiful. My wife was beautiful. What we're talking about is beautiful. And I really believe that it's a giant part biochemically of what makes somebody be able to manage through all the stresses we have, because we're all going to have extreme stress. We're all going to have time. I don't care. But you know, there are people sitting there right now listening to this who don't have the power of positive thinking like a Tony Robbins. And they're like, I can't. I'm genuinely stressed out. I know I shouldn't be

stressed out. It's like, you know, I've been told I have cancer and you want me to not be stressed. And I'm more stressed than ever. And I can't de-stress because no matter what I try to tell myself, I know the cancer is still there. That's what's stressing me. Yeah. I still have the tumor inside my head as well. But I understand some are more compelling or more scary than others. So I'm not suggesting that's an easy thing to do, but there are, you know, I, one of the things I was always, you know, I felt I could help anyone in any situation, but tell you honestly, the one place I didn't feel I could, it was somebody who was terminal. I think it's probably because I had my own sense of not wanting to die

or my own handle that within myself. So I went and I interviewed the professors at UCLA, Tony Atala, also a whole group of NYU who are doing research now and they use for people that are in a place where they're terminal, they use the equivalent of magic mushrooms, the ingredient magic mushrooms. And they've done these studies. And I said, you know, well, can people get addicted or something? They said, no, it's a one-time session. And they don't know which one it's going to be because it's done properly. And he said, Tony, they showed me a video of this woman. He goes, this woman, before I show it to you, to give you a sense of this woman, she's not a California atheist. She's a New York atheist. California atheists might say God might be in

the trees or something, but she's like, there is no God. There's never been a God. It's all BS. And she's really angry and scared. And then you see her afterwards and she says, I experienced God for the first time. And 92% of the people lose their fear. So I want an audience that is in that position, that there are solutions and they're not ongoing medication. That's what a drug is. It's a one-time experience that resets the nervous system. There's actually, for people that have PTSD, I've worked with 22 veterans, killed themselves every day. It's one of the saddest things in our world, in my opinion. And I've worked with 22 veterans, killed themselves every day. It's one of the saddest things in our world, in my opinion. And I've worked with guys.

I worked with a gentleman that had gone on, lost 42 of his buddies, been in both Iraq and Afghanistan, came to one of my programs with dark glasses because light would set him off, night sweats. I mean, anything you can imagine. He was holding a microphone that was shaking like this. And I've got a lot of tools. It took me about two hours to turn him around. I actually took them on CNN.

The producer cried when she saw him because she saw him before and then saw him two months afterwards. But if I worked 24 hours a day, I couldn't support all the veterans. So I was looking for a scalable solution. And there is one right now. The Army has done a study on this new injection. It's done to calm the part of your system that keeps you in this hypervigilant state. And so if you're really adrenalized and when people come back, so I sponsored a hundred vets and I'll just give you one example of how powerful it is. It works 85% of the time.

I had the first vet ever wrote me and I don't know these people. I just wanted to help and wrote me. They knew I've sponsored it and said, just want to thank you. And person described what they'd been through and described how when they came home, they couldn't be around their children or wife, that they were either, everything was black and white, or they were enraged. Those were only two years they had and that they tried to kill themselves twice. And after the first shot, 20 minutes afterwards, that's called the sympathetic nervous system, the part that makes you go, go, go like crazy versus parasympathetic, which is what allows you to relax and heal. And a person said, wrote to me me and said, I see colors for the first time. I went home and hugged my

wife and children for the first time. I have no fear of the future. I still have the memories, but I have none of the pain associated with those memories. And so I have that described in the book as well. And by the way, this person, that was three years ago, he's now helped me. He's helped, I think, four other people with a very similar response. So there are solutions when the fear is that extreme that are available to people where it's not just positive thinking. And by the way, I don't really believe in just positive thinking. I believe in intelligence.

I don't think you should go to your garden and say, there's no weeds, there's no weeds, there's no weeds. I believe you should see the weeds and pull them out and be proactive towards the solution. I'm not into rah-rah. I certainly believe in energy and enthusiasm because that one makes us feel alive. And when you have more energy, you tend to take action as opposed to just be afraid and do nothing. Well, what about that energy? I mean, because everyone would like to have a little bit more energy and just feel a little bit more youthful, a little bit more vibrant. How do we go after that? Is it just,

I mean, is there some sort of stem cell cocktail for those of us who just want to pick me up? And speaking of which, I said to my same doctor in New York, what do you got? I'm in the market for an upper. I need something. And he said, you're over 50. You got three kids and you work full time. Suck it up. Well, I like his attitude. But, you know, also, concierge doctor just means you get to the front of the line. It doesn't mean that you get the most unique in front healthcare because you have to get to a regenerative doctor to do that. So just so you know, there's a little difference there. I will tell you, there's all kinds of things you can do naturally.

Let me tell you the natural one first. It's so simple. I mean, basic ones like I sleep. My thing has always been I'll sleep when I die. I was actually working on that chapter at 6.15 in the morning. I had to be up at 9.30 for a meeting. I was like, what's wrong with this picture? But then, you know, I met Dr. Walker, who's a neuroscientist at UC Berkeley. He's kind of like the sleep Google doctor. And he convinced me to change my pattern. My wife lives eight hours, just loves it.

Come to bed. Oh, I'll be there soon, you know. But I've changed my pattern and I see a giant difference in the energy. And the reason he convinced me is he said, there's this study done on 1.6 billion people in the world on sleep. And I said, you couldn't have coordinated. What are you talking about? He said, Tony, I didn't have to. He said, it's daylight savings time in 70 countries. And all we had to do is look at the stats.

This is crazy. I remember this from your book. Yeah, tell us. Yeah. When we spring forward and you lose an hour, just one hour of sleep compared to what you're normally used to, on average in all 70 countries for the next three days, heart attacks go up 24% like clockwork. When we fall back and just get one more hour of sleep, right, 21% decrease in heart attacks.

And then he also shows you accidents and everything else. He also showed me that a man like me that sleeps four to five hours a night usually has testosterone levels that of a man 10 years older. If a woman in a family feels like, God, I don't feel intimacy, sleep is one of the first categories. But then there's the high tech pieces that are mind boggling that are coming. So I'd love to share that with you. And let me just tell you, there's a guy named Dr. David Sinclair. He's one of the greatest longevity experts in the world from Harvard. He's become a good friend. And he took his himself, and he's 53 years old chronologically, but he's 33 years old biochemically. Our body doesn't all age at the same level.

And he does these forms of triggers to the body using natural substances that literally moves the body, slows the aging process, and he's beginning to show that it actually can begin to reverse it for the first time. That used to sound like science fiction. He's done it with animals, and he's now doing it with humans. His father is 80 years old. When he was 72, he couldn't walk anymore. Now he normally walks two miles a day. He outlifts David in the gym. His cognitive capacity has gone through the roof. Now, how's this happen? Well, one, I'd love to give your audience an education without being too technical. So let's just think of it this way. We all know our DNA. Your DNA is not your destiny. Your DNA is instructions from

your mom and dad, 3.2 billion of each. They're these letters, and they form genes and so forth. And what's interesting, though, is which genes get turned on or off is what determines your destiny. And that's called your epigenome. Your epigenome, epa means above. And the epigenome can be affected by your diet, your sleep, your exercise, radiation, chemicals, and so forth. But here's the really cool breakthrough they found. There are seven master genes. They're called sirtuins. You don't have to remember the name. It's in the book if you want it. But these seven master genes do two competing things that are critical for your life and energy. First, they get the epigenome to turn on or off certain genes. It will determine how quickly you age, how well you deal with poisons or toxins in your body, etc. Second, it reduces

inflammation, which is the basis of a lot of disease. And third, or toxins in your body, etc. Second, it reduces inflammation, which is the basis of a lot of disease. And third, the energy of your body is called mitochondria. It's in every cell of your body. And it stokes those mitochondria. It provides the conversion of food so we have energy. If you're really efficient there, you have a lot of energy. If you're not, the energy is lower. COVID steals from that energy in your mitochondria, for example. So these sirtuins also do a separate competing task. As we age by exposure to radiation, bad foods, lifestyle, et cetera, our DNA starts to break down and get corrupted. These master genes, sirtuins, go in and clean that up for you. But when you, they need a fuel. So one more word, okay, NAD.

This is a natural substance in your body that your body makes, and it makes these sirtuins have the fuel they need. Well, when you turn towards the end of your 40s to early 50s, these NAD drops off the cliff. So there's no fuel. So now the sirtuins have to decide, am I going to clean up your DNA and make you great? Or am I going to give you energy or inflammation? And so that split focus, imagine like you had a mansion and you had this great staff and they're young. In the beginning, anything breaks down, they fix it. Everything looks perfect, but they get older and older and a little senile. And all of a sudden you don't have the raw materials and now your mansion's gone. That's aging. So there's one more factor. Those factors that NAD only becomes possible by a precursor. And I'm sorry for all the language, but NMN, like never mother never,

is something your body creates, but it also drops off the cliff. So you can supplement it. And that's what David does. And that's why 53 versus 33. That's why his dad's doing these. Like when you say supplement, was that a pill or what? Yes, it's a pill now, but here's the challenge. We went, David's office did it. I was with them. They checked out seven of these on the market. Some sell for like $30, some $120 a month.

Not one had any NMN in it. I said, how's this? Ask the lab guy, how's this possible? Are they all cheating? It all comes from China. And he goes, well, some people do cheat. But he said, more likely, it's taking so long to get here to your door, it breaks down in 30 to 45 days. So David has a special NMN that holds up well, but here's the most exciting thing. In the book, I show you what you can do right now,

and then what's coming short term, 12 to 36 months. So you know, and you're prepared for it, and you can take advantage of it. There's a company called Metro Biotech, and they have created a new form of NMN that does not break down. It's crystallized, but it's better than that. So let me give you two examples. If they give this NMN to an old mouse, the equivalent of a 70-year-old person is a 20, 24-month-old mouse. An old mouse can go a quarter of a kilometer without going into exhaustion. A young, strong mouse can go four times that, a full kilometer. When they give 14 days of this NMN to an old mouse, it runs after that two to three kilometers, 200 to 300 times as much as the strongest mouse. You might say,

well, Tony, that's interesting, but does that transfer to humans? That was my question. Well, we got the answer. The Daily Mail got a scoop. And also in Boston, for two years, they've been working top secret with our special forces, with our military. And the commander, they just finished the two-year study, and the commander got so excited, he kind of blurted it out somehow to somebody in the news. And so they know some of it. I know more.

I invested in the company because I wanted first access to this for me and for my family. But here's what's really fascinating. Here's what the commander said. I can tell you that. He said that the results they've gotten previously with mice, they're seeing in the strongest, fittest people in the world. So these are people that are already fit. There's not much room to improve. He said their endurance has exploded through the roof. Their strength has increased from the same stimulus, same exercises. And most importantly for special forces is you get exhausted. Can you keep your cognitive ability together? And their cognitive scores have gone through the roof. So now there's a phase three tile on COVID that's going on in the hospital right now

for prevention and for long-term COVID because it steals from my chondria, right? It affects you. And there's one for kidneys because it's another challenge with COVID. And then there's all these ones for performance. One of the gentlemen who's the founder of this company introduced me a friend of his issues. He was 60 when he stopped playing competitive chess because he just cognitively couldn't do it.

And your brain needs more energy than anything else. Well, this provides that at a cellular level, including in your brain. He's now 72 playing world-class competitive chess. So there's some pretty exciting things that are coming as well as the things that you can do right now. And you're saying soon, you use the term 12 months potentially, like we could get this at the store within a year potentially? This would be 18 to 24 months for this one, where they are in the FDA process for this one. When I told you about growing your tendons, that's the one that we think they'll have by the end of the year or the beginning of next year, but it won't be a nutraceutical. They'll break down. This is being approved by the FDA. So you'd go to your doctor,

your doctor there, and he could provide it for you. But you then be cleaning up your DNA at the time you need it most because when you're 20, you don't have as much exposure. By the time you're 50 or 60, you've accumulated a lot more and you're getting more energy and you're reducing inflammation and you're turning on and off the right genes. So it's one of the greatest breakthroughs that's coming forward that also is not invasive. It's not a surgery. It's nothing of that crazy thing. You're not putting something in your body. This is reminding me of, I was getting this, there's this laser that I liked called Skin

Tight. It didn't do anything other than just like heat through your skin to stimulate collagen. And if you had five treatments, it was supposed to take off like five years or something like that. And I was telling my husband, Doug, and he goes, well, how many treatments are you planning on getting? Because if you go back too far, this relationship is going to start to feel inappropriate. I like your husband already. He's a good man. All right, let me pause it there. Sounds like he keeps you laughing.

I'll pay a bill. We'll come back and we'll do much, much more on how you can live well. And what about the sex drive? Let's get to it. Stand by. More with Tony Robbins right after this. 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 by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash

Megyn Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you leave me a comment on the Apple comments, I will read it. I read them in the mornings. I read today's. I read every single one. There's over 22,000. And that's how I hear back from you guys. And it also helps our show. So it works both ways. And by the way, you'll find our full archives there with more than 250 shows, which I think you'll find fascinating. All right, so can we talk about peptides? Because I don't know anything about peptides, but I'm looking at this book. I'm looking at the list of stuff it can do for me.

Reduce appetite, promote fat loss, strengthen immune system, boost sexual arousal and satisfaction, heal the gut, increase muscle mass, revive skin and restore. I'll do it. What is it? How do I get it? Well, first of all, these are not some new thing. They were made in the 1960s in Russia. They were trying to figure out what to do. They're trying to compete with America with nuclear submarines and these sailors are dropping like flies. And so a gentleman there who became very famous discovered these small chain amino acids can change how your body responds. And he healed the sailors, but then he also was responsible for a lot of the athletes during the Olympic time. But there's one, there's a whole list in them here. So there's one, for example, called PT-141. These are hard to remember, but I have a chart in the book so you can decide what

are we interested in. You can talk to your doctor or you can talk to a telemedicine doctor we recommend and you can listen to. We do it as well. But what's really interesting is, you know, men have, for example, blue pills because it's a blood flow challenge in most cases. But for women, it's not usually a blood flow challenge. It's the desire itself. Women are taking on so many things, thinking about all the people they care about and all the management and their brains work differently. So this actually has been proven. It stimulates that desire.

Men use it as well, but it's pretty extraordinary. And there's some for healing the body. There's so many different ones in this. It's a science within itself. But I'd like, I know we're going to run out of time if I may. There's one thing I'd love to make sure, because I really want people to know about, you know, the big fears that people have. There's all these great things you can enhance with. But cancer and heart disease are the two

big killers. And I just want people to know that in the past, you know, getting a diagnosis, going to your doctor, and having tap on your knee and maybe do a blood test doesn't sound like very much. But today, there's new tech. And so for example, everybody in the book who's a hero, you go on the journey with them, their stories, and they broke through because somebody, like I said, died in their family, and they just were pushed to another level. One of those created a cancer breakthrough people need to know about. The Cancer Society described something really interesting, a study of 100,000 people, and they found that if you're in stage three or four when they find the cancer, you have an 80% chance of dying. I prefer the 20% chance of living and focusing on that. But their point is, it's really hard to turn it around. If you're at stage one or two,

you have an 80 to 99.9% chance of living. It might even an outpatient situation. But most of the cancers that get us are not mammograms. We don't have tests for them. So this gentleman lost his wife. He's from Google. He's very wealthy. And he put together this project called GRAIL. And it's just come out in the last four or five months. And it can do a simple blood test and find 50 different cancers even before they're showing up in your body. And this is so important. We had a gentleman that came to one of our Fountain Life centers.

His wife pushed him to go. And he said, I've already had my physical. And they did my blood and urinalysis. And we did the GRAIL test with him. And sure enough, he had kidney cancer. But it was just the beginning of it. And so guess what? It was an outpatient process that took 20 minutes and he's free of cancer. So you got to know that along with MRI, there are these tools that are priceless today. You want to catch it when it's young. And then the other one, just want people to know about is heart disease kills number one

for both men and women. And traditionally, maybe if you've got a CT scan, it's hard to tell what's going on. They're trying to see, have you built up plaque that's going to cause a heart attack or a stroke? And it's really hard to read. And sometimes there's false surgeries, even there are problems with it. There's a brand new tool. Again, last six months came out. It's called a CCTA test, and it has an AI, artificial intelligence, that digitally opens your arteries goes through and says is this calcified because if it's calcified it means it's hardened it means you've actually healed you're not going to have a heart attack or is this something that can break off it's soft plaque and it can cause you to have a heart attack they can predict a heart attack

five years in advance megan and they can show you what to do so i'll just give you an example my partner's called me up so you got to do this test. And my father-in-law's with me and he's just turned 80. And he's a really beautiful man. And he, you know, he was in the lumber business, but you know, when people get older, people start saying, Hey, you got to get ready, prepare for, you know, the inevitable. You see him lose that edge. So I said, dad, I'm going to go do this test. We're both at a stage of life. We're going to have some soft, you know, plaque there, but they'll tell us exactly where it is and what we can do to clean it up.

And so he came. My father-in-law does this test and he has nothing wrong. It's all calcified. He is completely healthy as can be. His entire mindset changed. I was better than five years ago, but he was better than me. And then, you know, you have this hip problem and there are these tools now I have done on my ankle where they can scan your body now with ultrasound see where the problem is open up the tissue with amnio fluid and release a nerve or

release what's stopping you and so my ankle's perfect so my father said i said well as long as you're here why don't you see these guys well they've done 30 minutes with them and now his hips perfect so now you know what makes you old feeling pain feeling like can't do things he's walking perfectly his heart's perfect so it gets on the plane with me. I'll never forget this. Closes his arms. He says, you know, Tony, those people that talk about living to 110, 120. I don't know if I buy that, but my heart's perfect. You know, I'm walking perfect. I could live another 20 years.

I could live to 100. You've only been married to my daughter 22 years. That's like another lifetime. And he's completely transformed. So this doesn't have to be the negative that people think about. With technology today, the breakthroughs are extraordinary. And by the way, if you're concerned about cancer, go get yourself some broccoli sprouts just to plant a little seed with you. There are

thousands of studies, and for breast cancer specifically, it reduces 80% of cancer for breast cancer. There's some little things you can do, but you got to know where you are and then figure out where you want to go. And then you can navigate that, whether you want performance or great energy or you're trying to avoid some kind of challenge. I'll steal the last word because one thing you mentioned or recommend in the book is something that I believe in too, which is get yourself, if you're 50 or older, a bone density test. It's really just an x-ray.

It's like an x-ray of your wrist. It's such a non, it's a nothing. And it can tell you whether you are going into osteoporosis or whatever. And they have these amazing meds now, or if you, they basically get a shot and you can get your bones back to youthful strength. I mean, it's crazy. So much is reversible now in terms of the aging process. So it's like- And for women, as you know, that's critical in their fifties, really critical. There's also something called OsteoStrong, which is a 10-minute exercise a week

at a local place that has been shown to produce the strongest changes in bone density. And you can wear your clothes and do it. It takes literally 10 minutes. A lot of athletes do it because your muscles are limited to your bone strength. So it's not just people breaking down that are doing this. So it's the best 800 pages you will ever read in your life. It could literally add quality years to your life. Why wouldn't you check it out? Life force. And as Tony points out, all the profits go to help feed people in need. What a pleasure, Tony Robbins. Thank you so much. Please come back. I will. Thank you so much, Megan. Take good care of yourself. Lots of love. You too. Coming up next, we're going to take a deep dive into Hollywood's deep, weird and destructive relationship with China.

My next guest is Eric Schwartzel. He's a reporter who started covering Hollywood over a decade ago. Right away, he noticed something weird. Everywhere he looked, he saw the presence of China, the influence of China. Why? How did that happen? What's going on? He says it was eye-opening to see a foreign country so blatantly using our film industry to spread its values abroad in casting, in financial deals, in marketing, in box office tallies, and so on. And he's got a new book out that explains it so well. It's called Red Carpet. Nice. I like that. See the play on words? Red Carpet, Hollywood China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy. Eric, thank you for being here.

Megan, it's my pleasure. Thank you. I didn't think you're so good at explaining this. I mean, I've listened to you on some podcasts and the book is just so educational. So you kind of break it down in a way that's very easy to understand. And as I see it, you know, you talk about first sort of acts, first act, second act of the book. In the first act, you've got China opening up to American movies. Hey, maybe we'll show some American movies in China. This is interesting. Okay, we'll do that. Then there comes China becomes our student. China says, would you teach us how to make the movies? This is actually a really cool industry. We'll be the little tutor and you be the mentor American Hollywood people.

And we'll learn from you. This is so interesting. And then suddenly, you know, that's that's happening. And it moves on to China begins its own movie industry and now is at the phase of that's booming. And now they're trying to export their values to us. And not just that, but the central theme of the book is not only they're exporting their values to us in their movies, but they have effectively kidnapped the Hollywood filmmakers into not offending the Chinese, self-censoring, explicitly censoring to please the Chinese. Not just in the movies that they're going to release over in China, but even the ones they're going to release here. And it has to do with way more than just ticket sales. It has to do with large international relationships that are very big business. And boy, oh boy, Hollywood has surrendered. It explains so much. Anyway,

so you've studied it all. Let's walk through it because it's a fascinating story. Let's start back. And it was what you said, like the 90s, I think, when when they first were like, oh, gee, Hollywood's fun. Maybe maybe, you know, we will start showing American movies in China. Exactly. And Hollywood wasn't the only Western industry moving into China at the time. China's economy was modernizing rapidly. And this is when we started to see the real rise of the Chinese middle class. So Hollywood kind of frankly followed behind aerospace, auto tech, a lot of American sectors that were moving into China.

And at the time, despite having this massive population, China had very, very few movie theaters. And so the box office was really something of an afterthought. There really wasn't a lot of money to be made there. But that started to change in the early 2000s. And by 2009, 2010, it became clear that China's box office was going to be number one in the world. And it was going to be a market too big to ignore and one that you really couldn't politically anger because that would mean shutting off access to all of that revenue. And with God forbid, the Hollywood filmmakers do that.

But at the same time, they they were suffering back at home in terms of ticket sales and box office and so on. And so they saw this very lucrative market overseas that indeed would become the number one market for them. But it was bigger than that because there are these companies are stacked in a way where they really can't tick off China because it could affect so much more than just their their ticket sales. Can you explain that? Exactly. So over the past 20 years or so, there's been more of a corporatization of Hollywood where studios that once may have

been independently owned or even family owned are now smaller pieces in a much bigger corporate pie. And China, through some very high profile examples, made it clear that any infraction that it identifies threatens that entire corporate whole. So this means that when in 1997, Disney makes a movie about the Dalai Lama called Kunten. China isn't mad just about the production of that movie. It's not like they're saying, we're not going to let that movie in. No one even thought that movie was ever going to get into China. They say, no, but that theme park that you're already talking about and all those toys you're talking about selling here, those could be jeopardized by the production of this movie in a subdivision of a subdivision. So you start to see how any comment, anything that will cross a tripwire in China threatens much bigger holdings. And

especially because the studio chiefs are answering to larger corporate interests, they have to worry about much bigger investments than just losing the budget on a single film. You write in the book, there's a saying in Chinese which roughly translates to kill the chicken to scare the monkeys. The chicken is the person who could be made a public example of. The monkeys are everyone who watched and learned from that person's mistake. Like Sony, you said China threatened the disruption of the electronic supply chain that would cost billions to rebuild if they released a movie that that China didn't like that didn't make China look the way China wants to look. Right. That was also back in 1997. You

might remember the Brad Pitt movie Seven Years in Tibet. Oh, that was when it was released. Sony really had to do quite a behind the scenes charm offensive to get back in China's good graces and preserve that supply chain you just mentioned. And the chicken monkeys dialectic, whether it's because a map on their website recognizes Taiwan, or there's some kind of border dispute that is that Chinese authorities think that this person is mischaracterized. Oftentimes, you can think about that person as the chicken who is, you know, teaching the other monkeys, because these public examples kind of teach everyone a lesson. And really, what I think is fascinating is all the better if the offense, I'll say, quote, unquote, the offense doesn't seem like that big of a deal at all, because then it lowers everyone's tolerance for risk. And then they start to self censor, which is even better than having China have to do it

explicitly. And that leads us, of course, to John Cena, who was promoting last year's May of 2021, one of the Fast and Furious movies. And he said, I think that Taiwan is a country, right? He said that was, if I'm not mistaken, that's what he said. And man, did the hammer drop on him. Just for fun, we're going to play his little apology. It's actually in Mandarin, right? It's in Chinese. Okay, listen, listen, just to just remember. All right, you get the picture. There he is. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Self-flagellating. Boy, I really stepped in it. And I mean, most people back here threw up a little in their mouths watching him do this now actually having read your book i have more a little bit more empathy for the guy because it's like he was made to i mean they there is there was no way he was

going to get away with that you're absolutely right and it wouldn't have been that much of a surprise if we saw the next six john Cena films never play in China. And not only that, but that the studios affiliated with those movies start to see larger corporate interests threatened in the country as well. And you're right, when I was reporting the book, I started to realize that no, John Cena is not the first to run into this problem. It's happened many, many times. And now actually, in fact, when Hollywood actors and actresses go to China, they're often sent with binders of what comments they are allowed to make. If certain topics come up, these are the this is the wording or phrasing to avoid. Really, they've been trying to train actors and actresses to avoid just that problem. Oh, my gosh. All right. But enter Richard Gere, who's basically middle finger up saying, I don't care. And to his credit, you know, I mean, he's like, I'm an American. I'm going to make the films that I want to make. And I'm gonna take a stance. We have a clip of him.

He was, what was he testifying before Congress? I think we have taken a stand on this before Senate committee. Okay, let's just listen to him. I'm not allowed to go to China. I don't even know now if I'd be allowed in Hong Kong. I asked point blank to very well-known actress, friends of mine, Chinese actresses, if I could work with them. And they said, absolutely not. Their careers would be over in China.

They'd never be allowed to work again. I've had other circumstances with very talented Chinese directors that one was in tears with me, having to call me up and say that he couldn't work with me, that his career would be over and his family could not travel. So I mean, this is personal to a lot of people. So what was his original sin in the eyes of the Chinese? It starts in the 90s as well. I mean, actually, it's interesting. He, starting in the early 90s, really became the Dalai Lama's number one cheerleader in Hollywood and spoke out repeatedly

about human rights abuses in Tibet and China's treatment of Tibetans, even interrupting an Oscar ceremony before that was cool back in the early 90s to talk about it. And he starred in a movie in 1997 called Red Corner about China's legal system. Certainly didn't make the country look good. And, you know, but things hummed along for a while. And he was able to kind of balance that advocacy with his stardom. But then as China's box office started to grow at a clip, it was growing, I mean, 15, 20, 25 percent a year. He became radioactive to a lot of studios because casting such a public supporter of the Dalai Lama might mean your movie doesn't get released there. And at the very least, it just might create more noise than you want to generate and more questions and uncertainty than you want to have. So the last major studio movie that he made was in 2009. And when I started out reporting this book,

I wanted to figure out if what he just said was true. Is it true that he has been blacklisted because of his public stance on Tibet and against China? And, you know, everyone here in Hollywood, they can be really nice and generous, Megan. And so some people, everyone here in Hollywood, they can be really nice and generous, Megan. And so some people said, oh, no, no, no, no, that that's crap. He's he's difficult to work with. Or, you know, I remember one person said he was he was getting John Travolta's sloppy seconds anyway. So some people kind of disputed that he he's had this this consequence laid upon him. But it turns out, my reporting shows that it is true. I spoke to an executive at Warner Brothers who said, you know, it wasn't like a

memo went around saying don't hire Richard Gere. But the thought just became, if you can get someone else, just get someone else. Because why take on that problem? And so if you really need Richard Gere to star in this role, let's have a conversation. But if you can call Michael Douglas, you can call Gary Oldman, you know, let's get them on the line. It really makes me want to do a crowdsource funding thing to get Richard Gere more movies right now so that we stand behind Americans who have the guts to speak out about these abuses. Right. I mean, there's a reason that they go on for so long because the international community has turned the other cheek. They have decided we don't care about the genocide going on in China right now with respect to the Uyghurs or

any of these other abuses that they've committed. And and the blackballing, as you point out, OK, so maybe it's not expressed, but isn't it true that Brad Pitt cannot work in China? Like you forget. I mean, he's like next level. He's past Richard Gere on the band list. You know, it's interesting. It's always hard to say because really, you just have to essentially see what Chinese authorities do, what movies they let in, what movies they don't let in and see if if a de facto ban has been lifted. I mean, Brad Pitt, that was back in the 90s. And, you know, it's interesting that the juxtaposition of the two, because Brad Pitt's movie, Seven Years in Tibet, came out the same year as Richard Gere's much more critical movie,

Red Corner. And while Richard Gere was giving interviews far and wide, talking about why he thought it was so politically important to take a stand, Brad Pitt was trying to run in the other direction and say, you know, I'm just an actor who cares what I think, you know, don't don't bring me into this. And nonetheless, it took I think, 15 years before he went back to China, he went with Angelina Jolie when they were married, and she was promoting a film. And since then, it's I have to say, it's, it's probably for his career been a little touch and go. Now, he's making the kinds of movies that aren't necessarily going to get into China anyway. I guess the question would become, you know, history against the fun rom-coms? Where are the fun little things that we grew up with? Where are the John Hughes type things?

And it's all franchises, series, superheroes, which is great if you're an 18-year-old boy, but I'm not. And I just thought they didn't sell here. So I guess people have different tastes now. It's actually more layered than that. The Hollywood studios have basically sold out. And now all they care about is generating big box offices. The art piece of it is kind of gone. You know, I have to say, I don't know if this is any consolation, but you sound a lot like the studio executives here in Hollywood. A lot of them are asking the same questions, though, which is where are the

rom-coms? Where are the movies that we grew up with? Where are the movies that made us fall in love with Hollywood? And the fact is that they're just not good business anymore. I mean, if you were running one of these studios, I mean, per our earlier point, you're really running a corporate animal. And you have to make sure that you are sort of giving up offerings to the corporate gods. And increasingly, that means making the biggest possible movies that not only sell ticket sales around the world, i.e. in China, but also sell toys, can service theme park attractions, can generate sequels and prequels and spinoffs. I mean, this is the playbook that's been established and really the one that everyone has to follow. Now, I will say, I think there's probably some refuge to be found in the rise of streaming. We've seen that introduce different kinds of movies.

Well, you got me excited about Netflix and then you dashed my hopes about Netflix with the stuff about Saudi Arabia. So tell us about Netflix and how they've avoided the China problem. I guess, I mean, this book sounds

like it was a real emotional roller coaster for you. It was just so illuminating. It just explains so many things that you kind of know at a gut level, but you haven't necessarily, at least I hadn't, taken the time to really understand how we got to this point. I appreciate that. And you're right about Netflix, because Netflix several years ago tried desperately to get into China.

The list of countries that Netflix isn't in is really quite small and illuminating. It includes China, North Korea, Syria. I mean, it is a real crew there. And China said, we don't want Netflix to come in because we have our own streaming services and we want to have some protectionist measures in place to preserve their business. And after Netflix pretty much figured out that it was a lost cause, it was not going to get into China. It did give filmmakers and producers there a little bit more license. And so that's why of the few movies or documentaries

that have come out in the past couple of years that present more of an unvarnished look at China or have plot details that Chinese authorities would not appreciate, they are often on Netflix because they don't have to have that same consideration plot details that Chinese authorities would not appreciate, they are often on Netflix because they don't have to have that same consideration that a studio like Universal or Paramount does. And because they don't have a revenue stream upstream from them. They're not like Sony with an electronics arm that can be punished. Exactly, exactly right. Exactly right. Now,

so you're right. So while Netflix has in a number of high profile cases, censored content for countries where it is operating China, just by virtue of the country not letting it in is not one of them. So walk us through some of the censorship that China does now with respect to American movies that appear in China. There's sort of that piece, they change our movies. And then with respect to their own movies, it's it reminded me the way They change our movies. And then with respect to their own movies, it's it reminded me the way you wrote about it, the way we used to portray every Russian back in the Cold War or every, you know, sort of Muslim country right after 9-11. You know, we sort of pick the groups that we want to have appear as the bad guy or the enemy.

They're doing that to us right now. But start on what they're doing to our movies. Exactly right. And I think it's over the past decade or so. It only takes a couple of high profile examples for everyone to to learn what will fly and what won't in China. And the first thing to understand is that before an American movie is released into Chinese theaters, it has to pass approval from Chinese censors. And they're looking for things big and small. So it can be something very cosmetic. Like there was a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that was filmed in Shanghai, and it featured laundry drying outside of apartment buildings, which is a very common

sight in Shanghai. But China didn't like the idea of audiences around the world seeing an image of their country that looked more backwards than they would have liked. So they asked the studio to edit it out. But then there are also deeper, more thematic issues with some movies. There's an example of a sequel to Men in Black being released. And I don't know if you remember, but in that movie, any time a civilian sees one of the secret aliens, there's a memory wiping device that the agents

can use to essentially scrub their brains of what they just saw. And Chinese authorities didn't like that plot detail too much because it just seemed too much, a metaphor that hit too close to home in a country that controls the media and the narrative as the Communist Party does. So it ranges from the cosmetic to the thematic. But you're absolutely right that if you go to the movies in China, which I would try to do every time I was over there, I'd try to just go see a movie. And it really does remind you quite a bit of those 1980s rah-rah movies about the evil Soviets. I mean, really black and white, any portrayal of an American is often a pretty negative one.

I met a young guy who moved over to China and soon started getting cast in some of these movies. And he said, you know, he said it with a laugh, but he was like, you know, I'm typecast all the time. I'm either an American soldier who gets shot or an evil businessman or the guy who's trying to steal the girl from the hero. I mean, it's not there's not really a lot of flexibility there. And what's fascinating is, especially after COVID, when tensions between the US and China really rose, we started to see a bunch of movies about the Korean War rushed into production. And so right now, some of the biggest Chinese blockbusters in China today have been Chinese movies that are about Chinese victories over American troops. So while Hollywood has had to scrub its product of Chinese villains, China's been casting America as the villain time and time again.

Okay, I'm going to squeeze in a break. After this break, we're going to talk about why the Chinese communist leadership apparently loved Titanic and managed to change Top Gun. Okay, so stand by for that because there's a remake of Top Gun that they were involved in. More with Eric right after this. So Eric, apparently, is it President Xi who likes Titanic? It was his predecessor back in the in the late 90s. Titanic. I mean, this was this was a fascinating story to to revisit when when Fox released Titanic, obviously, this worldwide

global phenomenon. China's box office was still relatively small, but this was its first real breakout hit. And what was so fascinating was that Chinese leadership, the leadership of the Communist Party, actually encouraged party members to go see the film. And there were several reasons why, one of which was they thought it was a very good commentary on class issues, right, because of the lifeboat situation and all of that. But there also was a speech given by the leader of the party saying, we have to go see this so that we can sort of understand just how you can emotionally move people through art like this. It was one of the first real moments we see Chinese leaders

understand the power, the soft power, frankly, that narrative and spectacle and the movies can provide. And I think it's one reason why Chinese influence on Hollywood hits Americans a little different than Chinese influence on tech or aerospace or some other industry. It's because over the past hundred years or so, we've really treated these films and these companies like hearts and minds factories. And we've come to expect them to sell America to the world like a movie like Titanic did. Yeah. And I know you wrote that they particularly liked the scene with the musicians staying on the deck of the Titanic as it went down. I mean, who doesn't, right? It was on TV the other day, actually.

I think it meant something different to them. It meant something different. It meant something different. You're right. But we see that actually throughout history sometimes where an American movie just kind of hits a little differently in China because of some kind of cultural reasons. And you're absolutely right that in Titanic, the bandmates who were sort of doing their job and sort of fulfilling their duty, even as the ship sinks, they were held up as heroes among the Communist Party members.

It's all about subjugation of the self and performing for the masses, the better of the masses. So what happened with Top Gun? Because I know you say, if you just, if you sort of look at what happened with Top Gun and then the remake of Top Gun, it gives you a good insight into China's growing power. Yeah, I think it's I think it's an appropriate bookend because here you have the original Top Gun released in 1984, really just like the perfect emblem of

Reaganism on screen. Enlistments in the armed services jump after the movie comes out. I mean, the movie does a better job of getting people to enlist than traditional enlistment campaigns do. I mean, who's ever looked cooler on screen than Tom Cruise flying those jets? Right. So when Paramount decides they're going to reboot the film many, many years later, in 2018, they start to release some marketing materials for this new film. And the marketing materials show just how much has changed to the economics of Hollywood in the 30 years between the two films.

Because you might remember that in the original film, Tom Cruise has got his sunglasses and he's got that bomber jacket that has the patches on the back that symbolize the tour of the USS Galveston. And there is a Taiwanese flag and there's also a Japanese flag among the patches on his back. And when the new movie was made and the new poster was released, those two flags were gone. And the reason why was because of China's influence over the film industry, because a Taiwanese flag, you know, to our earlier conversation is a reminder of territorial issues and a bit of a challenge to the one China policy that Beijing wants to enforce. Tensions between China and Japan have lasted for several decades. So Chinese financiers on the new Top Gun pointed out that this might be a problem or it might just be something to avoid, a risk not worth taking. And so before Chinese authorities could even say a word, Paramount removed those two patches from the jacket of the new film. And there just is something so deeply ironic about this happening to a movie as American and is sort of distinctly American as Top Gun as a change coming to a character named Maverick, of all things. You know, we're such bootlickers now. We're bootlickers. Well, I mean, I think what it means, and then the ultimate irony is that

doing this doesn't necessarily guarantee the movie will be released in China. It's still possible that Chinese authorities decide they don't want their audiences to see a movie that valorizes the U.S. military to such a degree. So it might have all been for naught. Ugh. Okay, tell us what happened with the

movie Red Dawn, because this was, this was one of the big films when I came of age, Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen. And when you were first saying it was problematic, I was like, I don't get it. That was about, that was about the Soviets, right? I mean, like that wasn't about the Chinese. So what was the problem they had with Red Dawn? It was, it was a similar situation to Top Gun. When they remade Red Dawn in 2009, MGM thought, you know, just as you said, it has a lot of fans who grew up with the original film. So they said, let's remake it. And they said, well, you know, a Russian invasion of the US doesn't make a lot of sense. So why don't we do China? Why don't we make it a Chinese invasion? So they write the script, they film the movie. And it's very similar to the 1980s version where instead this time we have Chinese paratroopers landing on the front lawn. And this is a problem for MGM for a number of reasons. One of which is

MGM releases James Bond movies, and they release a lot of big budget features that rely on the Chinese box office. And those releases might be jeopardized if this Chinese version of Red Dawn was released. So MGM did something extraordinary. This is back in 2011. They send the movie, the completed movie, to a secret visual effects company here in Burbank. And they pay them a million dollars to go in and frame by frame, remove every Chinese flag, every line of dialogue referencing China, and replace it with North Korea. And the movie is released as a Red Dawn remake

about a North Korean invasion of the US. And the screenwriters on this film were not happy. As one of them pointed out, this is the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard in his life. It's, I mean, we can have issues with the plausibility of the original Red Dawn. A North Korean version of Red Dawn makes even less sense. And audiences

also rejected the idea outright. But what was fascinating to me is when I went back and I did research on this, I didn't find there to be a lot of outrage or consternation. People knew that MGM had done this before the new movie came out, but there really wasn't a lot of backlash. And I think it was probably because relations between the U.S. and China were at a different point than they are now. And what's interesting, though, is that the movie did come up back in 2018 or 2019. Trump administration officials would cite that as one of the examples of, in their eyes, how Hollywood had helped fuel and support China's rise.

Yeah, you point out in the book, Trump, William Barr, our old AG, Pompeo, they all pointed to this movie as evidence of something else. But consciousness about China and its problematic nature and its relationship with us and that weirdness is rising, a point you get to and I want to get to with you in one second. But first, a couple more movies that I think are they'd help tell the story. Transformers kind of went a different way. It wasn't about scrubbing scenes from Transformers. Tell us what that movie did that shows China's power. So this was this is this is one of the movies that that you reference is all you see. It's one of those big budget franchise titles. And Transformers, this is one of the movies that you referenced is all you see. It's one of those big budget

franchise titles. And Transformers, this is the fourth film in the series. It's a film called Age of Extinction. It was coming out in 2014. And this is really the heyday of Hollywood chasing Chinese money, because the box office is growing and the US box office is flatlining. And so Transformers became this case study in how much can you try to appeal to Chinese audiences in a single American movie while keeping it in an American movie? So there are Chinese actors and actresses in it. There are scenes filmed in China. There is product placement up the wazoo. I mean, there is a scene where Mark Wahlberg is using Chinese protein powder in the middle of Chicago. There's another scene where a character has to use an ATM in the middle of Texas. It turns out to be a Chinese ATM. I mean, really some illogical choices in this film.

But what was fascinating is that there was one scene that the Chinese authorities specifically requested and that ended up in the final product. And it's a scene at the end, it's one of the classic, like, you know, third act, whole cities being destroyed, and the city being destroyed is Hong Kong. And in the original script, Mark Wahlberg and the American heroes arrived to help save the day. And the Chinese authorities said, you know, it would be better if Beijing came to the rescue first. Oh, my gosh. And the executives working on the film thought, well, it's probably not something that a lot of audiences are even going to clock. And the fighter jets in Beijing would be closer than those in the US. So it might make sense. And so in the final version of the film, you can still see this today, there is a scene of Hong Kong being destroyed. And then there's a rather random cut to a Chinese defense minister, who says, we will defend Hong Kong at all costs.

And this was in 2014. And when I caught up to people who worked on the film from Hong Kong, many years later, they said, you know, in retrospect, it feels like it was one of the first signs we had of how China was going to exert a heavier hand over Hong Kong and really try to cast itself as Hong Kong's benefactor, protector, you know, overseer. And they were complicit. This isn't a Hollywood movie starring Mark Wahlberg and robot guns. Yeah. And they were complicit instead of being the America we've always known and love that stands up to bullies. We we bowed. We bowed over and over these Hollywood companies over and over and over for the reasons we're discussing. Is the is the box office now

officially bigger in China for most movies made in America than it is here in the States? It is. But COVID had a lot to do with that because theaters in China reopened far faster than they did in the U.S. So even though we expected the Chinese box office to eventually become number one in the world, COVID accelerated it by probably three or four years. OK, so I guess it's not a huge surprise. But, but can we talk for a minute about Kung Fu Panda? I mean, my kids love that movie, Jack Black, right? He does the voice. What's the deal with Kung Fu Panda? This was another turning point in the relationship between China and the US because it came out

in 2008, which is the year of the Beijing Olympics, a really fascinating moment to look back on because I think it was a moment of optimism and potential, you know, more cooperation between China and the US and DreamWorks Animation releases this movie Kung Fu Panda that really had been conceived of almost not by accident, but in that kind of random way that stories come together, they thought it would be funny to combine Kung Fu with pandas. And they released this film, and it's this global hit. And it really prompts some existential soul searching among Chinese authorities, because they say, wait, why did an American company take our national mascot and our national tradition and make this global soft power tool, turn it into this kind of cuddly

hero for kids and families? Why didn't we do that? Why didn't our filmmakers do that? And we started to see this fascinating, it was one of the first realizations that I think Chinese leaders had, that whenever you're making movies and you're trying to use movies to win people over to your cause, it can't feel like medicine. And it can't feel like propaganda, that the most effective propaganda doesn't feel like propaganda at all. And so they started asking officials from DreamWorks Animation, they would have them come to China and say, you know, how did you do that? Why did you decide to make his father a duck? Was that a commentary?

Were you trying to make a message here? And I think it was one of the first realizations that a lot of people in Hollywood had that China was still approaching cinema as a primarily or purely messaging tool, that it actually also could be entertaining. And sometimes if it were entertaining, it could be even more effective. And I think over the next decade or so, what we saw was China learn

how to do that. As I say, they learned how to put the pill in the peanut butter. I have a golden retriever. That's what we have to do when he has medicine. You put the medicine inside something that kind of helps it go down a little bit more easily. And that's what a lot of the more recent Chinese movies have managed to do. And it's not just Hollywood. I mean, you point out the book, there's something that I don't know if Hollywood was the was the canary in the coal mine, but it was certainly one of many industries and sort of areas in the United States that would eventually succumb to Chinese influence or go seeking Chinese influence. Can you put it in the United States that would eventually succumb to Chinese influence or go seeking Chinese influence. Can you put it in the broader perspective?

Yeah, I think in many ways it was an early student. It's funny, though. I said that to someone who worked in Hollywood and worked or tried to work with China a few times, and he used the same analogy you did. He said, no, it was more a canary in the coal mine. But at the very least, I think this happened quite a bit with the NBA. When the NBA had its own issues of sort of seeing an economic backlash to political problems with Chinese authorities or taking a stance that China didn't like, really what the NBA was doing was learning the lessons that Hollywood had several years later. And I think every time you see a company, whether it's Intel or H&M or Tesla, have to thread the needle between maintaining that access, but not incurring the wrath of

critics here at home. They're really trying to sort of follow a playbook that Hollywood had to learn, you know, 20, 15 years ago. You've got brand new reporting in the book, breaking news on companies like Apple with respect to deals that they struck, like Tim Cook, that we didn't know about that help put their relationship in perspective. I mean, they Apple, obviously very beholden to China and is in no position to lecture anybody on the protection of human rights. It's we've been talking about it lately because all these sort of folks who want to see joe rogan kicked off of spotify is saying like go over to apple it's like read this book apple's got some problems too well apple is apple's an interesting case because they i mean they've been moving into hollywood quite aggressively um with movies and tv shows And I think sometimes whenever we talk about these studios being so beholden to maintaining access to the Chinese market, sometimes people say, well, you know,

with these tech giants, they've got more money than God. They don't have to care about that. Well, it turns out it depends on the tech company because Apple has not only a deep customer base in China, they sell millions of iPhones in China, but they also have a supply chain that can't be disrupted as well. So as we see Apple move in to Hollywood, their executives have been quoted as saying, look, the two things we're not going to do are hardcore nudity and anything that crosses China. Wow. And by the way, you point out in the book that after Red Dawn and the censorship of that, right, to make it North Korea, the invaders, that no, I want to get my note, no major studio release had cast Chinese characters as villains since then. And

no major studio release portrayed China's government as a bad actor. I mean, truly, it's when the bully gets in your own head that he's really won. I think that detail there about Red Dawn, that came out in 2012. So it's been a decade. I mean, I think it gets all the more glaring as the US-China relationship becomes the clear story of the 21st century. It is a story that I think we haven't been able to explore in all its complexity. And I mean, more than just casting, you know, China as the villain, I think that it's flattened a lot of Americans' understanding of China in general, because studios are either afraid to touch something they think is too sensitive, or really, they've been blocked from

portraying China with any nuance or complexity. All right. Let's talk about how Hillary Clinton ran against Donald Trump in 2016 for the presidency. Trump won. You write in the book that her husband's presidency was a time that may have laid the foundation in some ways for people like the Teamsters and so on to wind up voting for Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. It's a fascinating story and connection. Explain what you're talking about. Yeah, I was fascinated by this as well. This was back in the 90s. The Clinton administration really was the spearhead of getting China to join the WTO. And it's what allowed China to really see the economic rise that we've had over the past two decades. And what was fascinating was at the time, because I had to go back and read all these

articles that were written at the time, and there were of of union members and really influential democrats saying this is going to destroy our base this is going to lead to job losses that really turn democrats against the party um and sure enough in 2016 as you said counties that had lost more jobs to china because of that deal were more likely to have voted for Trump. So you're right. It is one of the interesting things we see sort of like just when you go back and you look at history and sort of unintended consequences, you know, Bill Clinton's support for China's entry into the WTO, which then was moved through under George W. Bush, was seen at the time as one of the best ways to bring China to reform. There were speeches that Bill Clinton would give in

which he said, if we open up China's economy, if we allow the internet in, it's only a matter of time before democracy and reform will follow. And that has proven to be not the case. In fact, it's there have been several steps backwards in that respect. It's gone the other way. Exactly. Anything that's gone the other way. Right, right. And then at the same time, you know, the decision seems to have really cost the Democrats some of the core constituencies that they'd relied on reliably for several election cycles. I know we all sort of laughed a little with Trump with China, China, China. He was onto something and he was so disciplined in his message. That's the craziness of Trump,

right? It's like he's smart and he's wily. And there was a reason he kept saying China. He understood that sort of white working class that makes up the Teamsters and so on in a way that Hillary did not and she should have. And boy, oh boy, did it cost her. You do get to the sort of present day realities, though. In 2022, as we're seeing now with the record low ratings with the Olympics in Beijing. Americans are waking up to China's serious problems and to the problems with our having received so much of their culture and embraced it and gone with it and let them, we've let them buy up so much land and so much of our industry and from pigs and meat and so on, like their power grows

daily here. And Americans, I think, are starting to see this is problematic. So how have things changed and how does that affect, do you think, Hollywood? Well, Hollywood is really had a very weird six months with China because starting last year, several major movies that traditionally would have had no problem getting into Chinese theaters like Black Widow, The Eternals, The New Spider-Man, none of them were accepted into Chinese theaters and it's left a big fat zero on the balance sheets of studios that were expecting releases there.

And no one really knows why. There are theories, but there's no answer. No one gets a memo from Beijing saying, this is why we're not accepting your movie. And it's really led to a lot of consternation here in Hollywood because it looks like we now have more uncertainty than ever in a business plan that has been essentially calcified over the last 20 years. A business plan that's come to expect those Chinese grosses has been thrown out the window. And it could change tomorrow, China could just start letting movies in again. But it's a degree of uncertainty that I think has bred quite a bit of resentment here in Hollywood, and even a sense that the industry

may have gotten played that over the past 20 years. Well, I mean, it's something that I think it's something that other industries have said, you know, they experienced too. You run in, you rush toward Chinese access. And then whenever the wall goes back up, there's little recourse or nothing you can do. And that seems to be a moment that Hollywood is in right now. And I'll be curious to see what people do, because like I said, this really disrupts the way that Hollywood what they've done without us necessarily noticing in the films we watch and the entertainment we seek for decades now. because it is such a bookend to the 2008 games, right? In 2008, George W. Bush attended the opening ceremony. Here we are 14 years later in the middle of a diplomatic boycott. And I do think that it's, I think NBC and others covering the games

knew going into it that there would have to be some conversation around the human rights abuses, the issues of free expression in China, and that it really does feel like, at least from the American perspective, like this has been part of the conversation. I'm curious to see, though, how it's playing in China, because I think within China, oftentimes party leaders want the Olympics not just necessarily because of some kind of victory on the world stage, but to bolster support internally as well, and to signal to the Chinese people that this is their moment, this is their moment in history. And I would hear that time and time again, when I went to China, when people would say, you know, back in the 80s, when you talk about this Hollywood

heyday, that was America's time. But now it's China's time. And why shouldn't we have our own heroes? Why shouldn't we have our own blockbusters? And why shouldn't we be able to show our movies around the world like you did? And I think, so sometimes I think the Olympics, even if it looks like it's taking a reputational cost here in America or other countries that are willing to have these conversations and explore China in those kind of darker and more complex ways. I think sometimes in China, though, it might not matter as much. And there actually might be the reverse effect of bolstering support and bolstering. It's not China's time. It's not. I mean, they're very good at propaganda, less so actual economic rewards in this communist country. I will say this. You know, Ben Shapiro was on yesterday of The Daily Wire talking about this movie that they just put out. It's on YouTube today. It's called

Shut In. It's really good. It's a thriller. And I was saying it's really important to support them because they are independent and they're not woke and they're not controlled by sort of far left people on in Hollywood. They're not controlled by China either. And if we don't start supporting companies that aren't controlled by them, we deserve what we get. Eric, you're brilliant. I love the book. It's called Red Carpet, and it's out right now. Highly recommend it to everybody. Thank you for being here. Hey, it was my pleasure. Thank you, Megan. Wow. What a good read. So I've extended your lifespan. I've made it more healthy for you, and I've helped you understand how not to support the Chinese propaganda machine. You're welcome. Tomorrow on the show, we've got Dave Smith, fascinating guy, comedian, libertarian,

and possible candidate for president. Download the show in the meantime, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.