The Press Box - Streaming Censorship and More Bad Blood | Damage Control (Ep. 557)

Episode Date: January 4, 2019

Netflix removed an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s show ‘Patriot Act’ in Saudi Arabia after the country claimed that it violated its anti-cyber crime law (2:08), and now Netflix is facing accusations of censorship (8:09). The Huffington Post published an investigation last week into the medical company Ambrosia (28:49), a flashy blood-based startup that doesn’t appear to be all it is cracked up to be (35:38). Read the Huffington Post investigation here. Hosts: Kate Knibbs and Justin Charity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy New Year and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Liz Kelly. The NFL playoffs are officially here, and that means tons of coverage up on the site. Robert Mays is writing about Philip Rivers' legacy. Danny Kelly discusses Russell Wilson and the Seahawks offense, and Danny Hyfitz gives us his wildcard weekend viewing guide. On the pop culture side, we have a live Golden Globes wins pool featuring Sean Venise, Amanda Dobbins, Chris Ryan, Micah Peters, and Kate Hallowell. You can check that out on YouTube. I'm Justin Charity. And I'm Kate Nibbs. Welcome to Damage Control on the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we impact what upsets, excites, and divides us in popular culture. It's a new year. New me! Ooh! Time for resolutions.

A time to make positive changes. And hopefully a year to finally stop falling for weird wellness startups in Silicon Valley's strange promises. We're going to discuss the story of Ambrosia, a company selling transfusions of young blood to people. The Huffington Post published an investigation into the company. last week, and we're going to talk about how it fits into a larger trend of sketchy wellness companies getting way overhyped. But first, we're going to talk about the bad blood between the Saudi royal family and the comedian Hassan Menhaj. And it's dragged Netflix into the center of an argument over censorship in countries with repressive media regulations, such as Saudi Arabia.

Just a few months ago, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, was hailed as the reformer, Arab world needed. But the revelations about Khashoggi's killing have shattered that image. And it blows my mind that it took the killing of a Washington Post journalist for everyone to go, oh, I guess he's really not a reformer. Meanwhile, every Muslim person you know was like, yeah, no shit. He's the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Kate, are you familiar with Hassan Minaj? I know that he's a comedian, but refresh my memory about the specifics. He's a stand-up comedian.

He is a former Daily Show correspondent, which I feel like that's where a lot of people would know him from. And he did the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Yeah, yeah. Right. And that was like a few years. It was the, I believe it was the first Trump era, White House Correspondent's Dinner.

And currently he's the host of Patriot Act, which is a show, sort of like stand-up comedy meets explainer journalism. Meets Daily Show journalism show. Okay. It's a one-man show, at least on stage, and it's on Netflix. Basically, like, Patriot Act is like if the Daily Show had a host, but they didn't have any of the correspondence, and they didn't do the interview segments. And they just, the whole show was just sort of a long, focused monologue about, like, the most distressing news items of the week or of the month or of the year.

Right. And so, like, for the purpose of this story, I just want to note up front that Hassan is an Indian American Muslim. I've seen his comedy live a few times. And he often makes a point of addressing fellow Muslims and fellow brown people. And his comedy can feel like it's sort of a discourse, a global discourse, about Islam and about brownness. So that's important because the very first episode of Patriot Act is all about Saudi Arabia. And we, I mean, you and I have spent a couple episodes of damage control talking about Jamal Khashoggi and human rights in Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Salman. A lot, a lot going on in Saudi Arabia at the moment. Right.

And a lot that has a lot of Americans paying attention to Saudi Arabia at the moment. Well, Hassan uses Jamal Khashoggi's death as a springboard in that series premiere episode of Patriot Act. He uses it as a springboard for this like broader, exhausted sort of whirlwind, kind of. condemnation of the Saudi royal family, right? And specifically, he spends like a great deal of like this, this, I want to say it's like 15 to 20 minute segment characterizing the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman as a thug and a fraud. It's harsh. It's like very joky, but it's also very like the tone of Patriot Act is very like, like, fuckless. You're not pulling any punches. Right. Totally. Totally. So inevitably, the Saudi royal family cited the Saudi Arabia episode of Patriot Act as a violation of basically there's a public morals provision in Saudi Arabia's cyber crime laws.

Can you not talk shit about the royal family? It's not just that. It's even more vague and broad than that. It's like about the royal family, but it's really specifically worded as public morals. So anything that would cause like civic or moral. panic, right? And that just gets to be interpreted as dissent. Gotcha. Right? Descent against the government against the Saudi royal family. So basically, the Saudi government pressures Netflix to pull the episode in Saudi Arabia. And that's what Netflix does. They pull the episode in

Saudi Arabia. And I think surprisingly, quickly, people in America complained. They accused Netflix, not to mention the Saudi government, but they accused Netflix. of censorship. So what was his response like? Well, okay. So, like, Asson's response is pretty good. He says, clearly the best way to stop people from watching something is to ban it, make it trend online, and then leave it up on YouTube.

Let's not forget that the world's largest humanitarian crisis is happening in Yemen right now. Please donate. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's sort of like answering the Saudi government by way of, like, the stric sand effect, right? Yeah. The Saudi Arabian strisand. It was a Saudi-Southi-South effect. Yeah.

Yeah. There was an initial tweet I remember reading, and the tweet sort of characterized this whole thing is Netflix pulled this episode. And I had watched the episode about Saudi Arabia, and I was like, whoa, that's crazy. But the wording of the tweet seemed to suggest that Netflix had taken the episode down, right, and had, like, basically retracted it, which is not really what had happened. Well, so did it just, so it's not available in Saudi Arabia anymore? Right.

That's what actually happened. So it's sort of firewall. from a specific nation. Right. And that's sort of why I think it's surprising that there is this U.S. viewer, U.S. critic backlash to Netflix. Because what Netflix specifically did

was they cut off access to the episode about Saudi Arabia in Saudi Arabia. You can still, I think, contrary to a lot of the headlines about the story, like you, Kate Nibbs can still log into Netflix and watch the series premiere of Patriot Act on Netflix. They didn't actually take that. episode down. But if you were wanting to watch it in Saudi Arabia, you'd have to use a VPN.

Right. Totally. And I think that Netflix seems very surprised by the backlash to this. And I frankly am actually kind of surprised by the backlash to this because I find myself in this uncomfortable position of on the one hand thinking that censorship is bad. Well, yeah. Right? But also thinking that like Netflix is hardly the first. and only mass media company based in the United States to have a global business where they find themselves in this uncomfortable position of having to adopt to the media regulations of authoritarian regimes that do not share human rights outlook with the United States.

Yeah. And so I think it's interesting. And I think Netflix probably thinks it's frustrating that people are acting like Netflix invented censorship. I mean, hopefully this will be a jumping off point for people to think more about how difficult it is and how to proceed when it comes to American-based companies dealing with how, like, should we even be in Saudi Arabia at all? I feel like it sort of opens up this moral question of like, if you disagree with

the regime, should you not even be doing business there? Right. Like, that's been sort of a big discreet. about how companies like Google should approach China. I mean, I understand why people are upset about this. It is upsetting. I think the blame is with the Saudi government because I think Netflix didn't really have a choice, right? Like, it was.

Well, I think people feel like they could have paid a fine, right? Because I feel like the penalty specified is like, I was talking to Alison Herman, who's our TV critic at The Ringer. And the way she phrased it. I think she was the person who shared the tweet, and that's why I first saw this story. but like she phrased it in terms of like well why didn't netflix just pay the fine right now i should specify that i believe the fine is like 80 million dollars so i you know i think on the one hand like i i used to work in public relations and i can tell you that like a single day like again if maybe this story gets worse for netflix but a single day of bad press for a company as big

as Netflix is not worth paying 80 dollars to avoid if you're just looking at it as like a public relations thing. Like, that's insane. Like, no one's paying $80 to, like, avoid having, like, Vox run one critical article about Netflix. You know what I mean? But, yeah, I would say that since the death of Jamal Khashoggi, right? Like, one interesting element of the response from the American side has been, like,

Congress, strangely enough, right? Because while Trump has sort of been, Donald Trump is close to Saudi Arabia, he's close to Muhammad bin Salman, so is Jared Kushner. Like, he has this interest in sort of cultivating, like, good feeling between the United States and Saudi Arabia. But then you have, you know, all of these senators and Republicans and Democrats who, after the Jamal Khashoggi murder, you know, they were sort of openly musing about, like, what does it mean for Americans to be doing business in Saudi Arabia and be doing businesses

with the Saudi royal family? Like, they seem to be having a sort of prototypical version of this, like, quote, unquote, awakening of, like, what it means to do business with this country. And, like, the Netflix, this Netflix fiasco with Patriot Act feels like the pop culture Twitter version of that. You know what I mean? And it's strange because I don't know that I, it feels like you can only, if you pose that question in Netflix, I don't think that there is some. Like, what is a Netflix viewer supposed to do right now? Like, I don't think anyone's necessarily threatening to, like, cancel their Netflix subscription over the fact that Netflix pulled this episode of Patriot Act. Well, I mean, no, this is not the only regulation it has to follow.

Like, when I lived in Canada, there's Canadian content laws. So it had to put a bunch of Canadian shows on its Netflix Canada streaming. this is just a part of Netflix negotiating with different countries and like Netflix, Thailand couldn't have shows criticizing the Thai government either. You know what I mean? Like this is just part of a thing that's been going on since these companies went global. Right. Totally. Let's talk about like the episode itself.

So I've watched this Saudi Arabia episode in question. I watched it like, right, like win the series. premiered on Netflix. And I will say that the thing that maybe has led to this international incident is the fact that the episode is pretty hard. Like the episode almost seems designed. It's almost that episode is very, it's very critical of Muhammad bin Salman. It's very cathartic. So for instance, I've seen like, uh, Hassan was doing a sort of stand, it wasn't like a properly like build comedy tour, but just, as promo before Patriot Act came out, he was doing shows.

And I saw him at Carnegie Hall. And he was doing, before I even knew that there was a Saudi Arabia episode. Wait, so are you suggesting that he purposely tried to get banned? No, no, no, no. I'm just saying that, like, he did comedy about, he was doing comedy about Islam. And he was doing, I remember, like, part of his Patriot Act standup bit was about Saudi Arabia. And I just, I have this sense with him that, like, he is interested. in shit kicking about like religious conservatism and this sort of like religious conservatism

embodied by the Saudi regime. And it's just like when I finally saw that episode of television, yeah, I don't think it's designed to like provoke the Saudi government. But it, it did seem to be the most overtly politically antagonistic thing I watched on Netflix. That is nonetheless like a super normie mainstream thing. Like it's a daily show alumni. You know what I mean? And yet it just seemed like a very for Netflix. Again, for a piece of exclusive Netflix content, it seemed to have an edge.

Even though again, it's like I otherwise think of Hassan is like he's this is like cute comedian with like nice hair. It definitely that episode of television seemed to like in retrospect, it seems like maybe it's something that like Netflix just was not designed to handle if it. like considering the effect it had in the response it sort of. I think that any other service would have handled this the same way. Like if this show was on Hulu, if the show is on NBC or HBO, they would have pulled it too. Okay.

But then I have a question, which is, do you think? It wouldn't have even been available if it was in. That's my question, though. My question is, is there, like, would it have been better if, okay, Netflix, hires Hassan, they pay to produce this show. Hassan says, I want to do this episode about Saudi Arabia. They let them do the episode and they just never release it in Saudi Arabia to begin with. Do you think morally, like, is that better?

Is that worse? Like, I can't even wrap my head around like whether that's like an ethically preferable course. If Netflix had just never released the episode in Saudi Arabia. No, because I think they were trying to put it up in Saudi Arabia and then they got fined and took it down. Yeah. So at least people could have seen it for a little bit. Yeah. But again, I think that the real bad guys in this situation is the Saudi Arabian government.

Right. And Netflix is obviously morally compromised for like a billion reasons. But I don't really think that them, I think this was probably a tough decision, but I don't, I don't know. I'm not really worked up about this towards Netflix. Right. And that's actually what I want to bring this to, right? It's like there's a version of the backlash to Netflix that could be the beginnings of a sort of broader, like, among media critics or, you know, among, like, arts critics, like, commercial, like, movie, TV critics. It could be the beginning of, like, a rethink of what it means that, like, American media companies and studios, like, make these compromises so that they can operate in international markets.

Yeah. Or it could just be like a bad news cycle for Netflix and then all the TV critics forget this ever happened and never pay attention to any global markets ever again. I mean, it's probably going to be the second one, but I hope it's the first one. But why? Like, why do we, because I think it's probably going to be the second one. But I also don't know why I just assume that no one's actually going to care about this in the long term. And we're never going to. Well, okay.

So I think people do care about tech companies making compromises when it comes to dealing with oppressive regimes. I don't think they're going to get super. worked up about streaming services because in my mind that's it's obviously not good it's bad but censorship is bad yeah but there are like way more disturbing scenarios like i was just i just saw a tweet like two days ago and it was about how Microsoft was censoring the account of an activist in China who had, you know, been agitating for democracy for a long time because they were trying to abide by the Chinese government's rules. Like that's, that's way more horrifying. And I think that Microsoft is way more culpable in that instant because it's like silencing an individual.

Right. That's an example that I think we should be getting more viled up by or prioritizing higher. It's like how do we stop American companies from collaborating with oppressive regimes to silence dissenters? That's a bigger priority. Right, right. Then how do we stand up for political comedy? But then I guess on the flip side of that, I just, I think, at least ideally, I think, okay, but getting worked up like in support of Hassamunage, maybe that's a gateway drug to getting worked up in favor of like dissidents. Like true dissidents. It could be.

I hope it is. Yeah. Possibly. Because it is, you know, I don't know what the answer is. I don't know if these, like, if Google and Facebook and all of the big tech platforms should just not engage with China, should not engage with Saudi Arabia. Because that's not very helpful for the citizens of those countries who aren't, you know, it's not their fault that they're living under such. oppressive regimes. I don't know what the answer is, but I think we should all be talking about it more because it's really disturbing. But this particular incident is less disturbing to me than a lot of others because Netflix

changes its content based on regions for like a ton of different reasons. And this reason sucks, but like I would worry about Google and China before I would worry about this. Wait, Kate, we're going to launch a coup against our intrepid producer right now to talk about Netflix just like a little bit more just a little bit I'm down with that Kate have you seen the critically acclaimed movie bird box I'm a human being so yes a Netflix exclusive everyone saw it everyone saw it Netflix actually publicized how many people have watched it they did billions of people were like I don't know if I trust them because they I don't I certainly don't but it's It seemed like a lot of people watch it. There's a lot of memes. Yeah. We're going to talk about memes. I'm going to briefly, I'm going to try to explain to listeners with birdboxes.

They've probably all seen it. They've all seen it. Seven billion people watch Birdbox. It is a movie starring Sandra Bullock. Mm-hmm. It is a horror movie of sorts. There is a monster of some sort that is on the loose and that everyone in the world is hiding from And apparently it's like, it's this beautiful monster that if you look at it.

I don't think it's beautiful. But people describe it as beautiful. Okay. So it's a monster. And the whole effect is that if you look at the monster. You go crazy and kill yourself. No, you go crazy and you start raving about how beautiful the monster is and how other people need to see it. And you start like all the people around.

But only some people did that in the movie. Only some people did that. Were you paying attention? The movie is inconsistent. It's so inconsistent. It's inconsistent. Some people, they see the monster, they go crazy, they start raving. And this is a very gradual change, some of them undergoes for some other people.

It's very immediate. Most of the people, they just killed themselves. Yes. They do. But I'm just saying that certain plot important people don't just kill themselves. Instead, they start preaching the gospel of the monster. I had a lot of questions when I finish this movie. This movie is weird.

It's a weird movie. I kind of think Netflix should have banned Birdbox from everyone. Oh, my God. Well, but there's a reason we're talking about this. It's not just we saw a movie on Netflix and we're perplexed by it. So Netflix is hyping the hell out of this movie Bird Box. Not just through marketing it, but through insisting that, like, an unprecedented number of Netflix users have watched it, that this is basically like a hit box office success for a movie that did.

didn't even have like a theatrical run, right? And the reason that's remarkable is because Birdbox is not, it would be one thing if Birdbox were just like this amazing movie and it had this word of mouth and it's like everyone loves Birdbox and it's like if it were like Stranger Things. Like Stranger Things is a good example of a Netflix thing that the people who watched all of it loved it and you sort of believed its word of mouth and that's how it became the phenomenon that Stranger Things season one was. Birdbox is a critically reviled movie in the tradition of other critically reviled.

I thought it was mixed reviews. I think that, I think relative. I think a lot of critics have savage that. Maybe it's just that the critics who don't like this movie have been very articulate in their dislike for this movie. What was dumb as hell? It's weird. I don't think it's dumb. I kind of like it was dumb.

Okay. So the bird box problem is this. If you look online, if you look online, you will see lots of like memes about Birdbox. You will see like, it's a movie in which people wear blindfolds to avoid seeing the monster. It's a movie that has so many weird, almost like the room level, absurd moments of just acting and like plot. And people are meming this movie. And a lot of these memes have a lot of online traction. And they're so disproportionate to how kind of like janky and unbelievably like, I think, disagreeable the movie is, that it feels like there's some weird online conspiracy to pretend that Birdbox is a thing.

I just think that it was Christmas weekend. Everyone needed a movie to watch with their family. Sandra Bullock's a crowd pleaser. People like horror. I think bird Like I think When it comes to like what came first The Birdbox being watched by everyone

Or the memes Was Birdbox being watched by everyone? Right. Yeah. But that's like that's where I am. I sort of agree with you. But I feel like we work with a lot of people Who alternatively think that

That hype was manufactured by Netflix And it's all part of this sort of obscured marketing rollout For this movie and that like online there's a sense that like Netflix is behind all of the meme accounts and they've single-handedly launched like lovingly crafted every bird box meme and released it and they're just really trying to make fetch happen with this movie. I would be very impressive if they did that. Yeah, that would say a lot about like the power of marketing if that were true. Because I'm like the most skeptical person. Like in covering rap music, I am the first person who will unjustifiably with no evidence whatsoever.

just accuse every, like, slightly overproduced rapper of being an industry plant. Yeah, I was going to say you love industry plans. And that's the thing. It's like, Birdbox is the Netflix movie that people look at and are like, this movie is an industry plant. Yeah, and I don't think that's true. I remember I was reading Emily Ishida's review of it and she said it was as though it was designed by an algorithm to, like, appeal to the broadest possible audience. And I think that people just were like, yeah, I'm going to watch this mediocre movie starring Sandra Bullock because why not? I did.

I suspected it would be stupid and it was. But I was along for the ride even though I was like, why can't they go through walls? Yeah. Why is Machine Gun Kelly in this? Yeah, Machine Gun Kelly, I almost left the room in which my mom was watching this movie because Machine Kelly. I didn't take it seriously. And by the end of it, I really liked it. But yeah, I guess I just wanted to get out our sort of thoughts about Birdbox just because it seems to be a weird, like, marketing is gaslighting thing that played out on the internet for all the holiday break.

Yeah. And I do think a big part of its success was Netflix's, Netflix just inundating you with it was always on the top of the feed. you felt like it was the marquee thing Netflix was presenting this Christmas. I think that was a big part of its success. But I don't think that there was like a really sophisticated like bot seating on Twitter fake meme situation. Which your favorite part of BirdBox? Oh, when the monster was in surrounding the SUV. That was scary.

Okay. My favorite part. Well, I can't talk about my favorite. part without spoiling it. Am I allowed to spoil Birdbox? I don't know. I feel like everyone's seen it, but... I'm spoiling Birdbox. Skip ahead, like, 60 seconds, if you don't want spoilers.

My favorite part is when Sandra Bullock's boo in the movie, Tramante Rhodes, has to sacrifice himself. No, I was sad. I was like, Tom, IP! I thought it was the one point where they, like, had a coherent idea about what the monster was, and it's like,

it's like, again, you look at the monster, you go crazy, you, you you kill yourself. And it's the moment in the movie where, like, he has to create a distraction because all these weird people who have already been turned by the monster have swarmed the house and they're trying to turn

Trevante Rhodes and Sandra Bullock and the two kids. And Trevante Rhodes creates a distraction for Sandra Bullock and the kids to escape. And there's a moment at which he, like, he's shooting the people that are trying to overtake their last stronghold. And he sees the monster. And you think that,

like him seeing the monster is going to prevent him from killing the last person who might go get Sandra book but he sees the monster and he has a tear all down his face and then he shoots the guy anyway and it's like him overcoming the power of the monster only briefly before he dies

and I thought it was beautiful. That was nice. I agree. That was nice. Herbox is beautiful. Literally billions of people have seen this movie. It is the biggest billions. It's one of the biggest success. It's Oscar hype, even though it's not even eligible for the current Oscar year.

I can't believe you're such a bird box fanatic. Sandra Bullitt, though. Yeah, she's great. The movie is stupid. Why would they not name the children? That was dumb. It's, you know. You're asking me to believe that she just called them boy and girl for years.

That's psycho. Yeah. Some people name their kids Apple. Like, you know what I mean? Like, everything in perspective, Kate. Everything in perspective, Burbucks is good. Okay, so Charity is obsessed with Birdbox. We're going to talk about something I'm obsessed with.

Oh, God. This is so weird. You have weirder obsessions than me. Yeah, I mean, this is, this is weird. So, yeah, I want to talk about, about blood-based wellness. Absolutely not. We're not talking about this. Start-ups.

No, pick something else. Transfusions with young blood from teenagers, some claim it can reverse the aging process. It's being tested in patients over the age of 35 as part of a clinical trial called Ambrosia, where people paid $8,000 to get the rich growth factors found in blood plasma platelets. Okay, listen, so 2018 was a like banner year for blood-based startup scams in Silicon Valley because reporter John Kerry Roo, John Kerry, I always pronounce his name wrong, which is bad because I interviewed him.

John Kerry, you, I don't know. Anyways, he's a great, he's a great reporter. He wrote this book called Bad Blood. It's wonderful. about Theranos, this blood testing company that was once, you know, supposed to be this Silicon Valley unicorn, like huge investors involved, like all these different drugstores wanted to partner with them. And then so he basically traces how its founder Elizabeth Holmes is like scam the shit out

of people. Great read. It's going to be turned into a movie. Can't wait to watch it. But so the saga of Theranos was like a very 2018 stories. that demonstrated what happened when Silicon Valley gets too caught up and too good at selling its own hype. And it ignores stuff like whether the product or service it is selling makes any goddamn sense. And I kind of thought that we were moving on.

We were moving away. We had evolved as a culture away from believing in dubious Silicon Valley blood-based wellness startups. But I read this really great Huffington Post investigation that came out last week. I think it didn't get that much attention just because it was like Christmas time. But it was about another very questionable blood thing. And I wanted to talk about it because it's called Ambrosia. I first heard about it in 2016 because so it kind of got hyped as a company that Peter Thiel was somehow interested in. He later denied that he had ever been a client, but initially it was sort of hyped as this company that Peter Thiel like wanted young blood from.

Why do you think he denied being a client of the young blood? Because then people kept making fun of him for being like a vampire. Why didn't he lean into that? I mean, I don't know. I can't pretend to know what's going on in his mind. But so the company basically it was was selling and currently is still selling blood transfusions from. young people. So say, you're an old guy, or, you know, even our age, you could pay $8,000 and then get a bunch of young blood put into your body. And that was, it's supposed to make you healthier.

But the Huffington Post investigation really laid out how despite all the hype around the company, there's really not much evidence that its services do any good. You don't say, putting young blood in your body is not necessarily. Well, okay, there is some research that's like shown that like mice or rats it can help but like people not so much and so the investigation really laid out that ambrosia's claims were thin and it also sort of laid out some some weird stuff going on with like the company on the personnel side like it turned out that the founder who portrays himself as a doctor like isn't allowed to practice medicine he He's explicitly prohibited from practicing in Massachusetts.

The doctor's pitch em in situation? Yeah. So it's just it doesn't go far enough to call the company an out and out scam or anything like that. But it just, it ceded a lot of very substantial doubts about it. And it just sort of, I loved reading the story because I'm all about making resolutions this year. And I just want us to resolve as a nation to stop getting bamboozled by startups. promising to make our health better by doing unbelievable sounding things. Because this happens all the time.

Yeah. In fairness. If I could be devil's advocate, in fairness. Do you have young blood? No, but it's just, I feel like predating Silicon Valley. Humans, especially wealthy humans, I feel like have a historical obsession with immortality. And like just falling for quackery for sure. Right.

But I do wonder why this sort of thing. this sort of bizarre health, like, dystopian health enterprise, I so specifically associate it with Silicon Valley culture. Like, it's not like I think Chuck Schumer is into Youngblood. You know what I mean? I mean, well, maybe, right? But, like, I specifically, if you were to, if you were to cold, if I didn't, if we weren't co-hosts of a podcast and, like,

you were just describing this to me, like, the idea of, like, selling young blood, I'd be like, yeah, that's totally a San Francisco idea. That's totally some San Francisco Silicon Valley shit. I feel like there's this, there's a real obsession in the tech industry with like biohacking and sort of hacking and doing quantified living your way into a better lifestyle. And so this kind of company really like fits in with that. I wonder if it's like the fault of journalists for not being more. aggressive in investigating these companies. Like the Huffpo piece is excellent.

It's coming out several years after this has been around, though. Like several years. I actually interviewed the Ambrosia CEO in 2016 because I was thinking about doing a ringer piece. I just didn't, it sounded fake. I couldn't. And then I didn't have the wherewithal at the time to do an investigation. Now I'm like, shit, I probably should have pursued that. But it's just, I don't know, you know, I think maybe I wish that we had more aggressive regulating bodies looking into these companies before they can start selling these services.

Right. Like Therano scammed a lot of people for a lot of years before things kind of fell apart. It's interesting to see how, how like our longstanding obsession with hacking into or taking shortcuts into like great. greater health has just evolved and hasn't really gotten any more. Well, it's gotten more expensive. Yeah. But it hasn't gotten any more effective. I don't think snake oil costs that much back in the day.

Right. Totally. Well, okay, I think if you mentioned two things. You mentioned like the idea that it would be nice if they're greater and more prohibitive regulatory scrutiny to avoid things like this. And then you mentioned something that I think is closer to our hearts, which is like the journalistic wherewithal. to detect stories like this earlier in the course of these companies or in the course of these trends.

And I don't know, I guess on the journalism side, I just always, I think of like science journalism is really hard to do. And it also just seems like, I don't know, like if I'm thinking of like mainstream journalism, like headline making journalism, it's hard for me to think of like the publications that are equipped even. like to have the resources and to just have the like have the the sense of like how to read medical studies and shit like that to to be as aggressive in policing this as as journalists are policing like politics for instance you know what I mean yeah I wish I really wish we had that because I think that this is just as serious an issue as a lot of a lot of the politics stuff because it involves people's health. Right. Even if it just involves Peter Thiel's health, it's just, even in that hypothetical, I don't know. It seems kind of strange to me. Okay.

So, Kate, let's say hypothetically. Mm-hmm. Let's say hypothetically, I personally started humoring the CBD oil trend, the canniboid. I don't actually. Canabinoid. Yeah, cannabinoid oil trend. CBD oil is like basically processing hemp into an oil that sort of like has, it doesn't like get you high, but it has certain effects for treating like anxiety and pain and stuff like that. And it's become this booming industry. It's huge. It's huge. Like the latest farm bill seems to be. Pets getting CBD oil left and right. I swear to God. Like every. I know every pet owner I know in Brooklyn is giving their dogs, their cats, they're giving a little CBD pills. Oh.

Yeah. Well, I'm a pet too then. I got some CBD oil. But it's like this boom industry. The latest farm bill is like one of the first to relax sort of federal regulation of like hemp, which seems like it'll be in 2019, like a sort of even larger boom for this emergent like cannabis industry. But that's a thing that like I spent like.

two months just like reading about different companies and also just reading Reddit let's be honest um trying to get a sense of like why this is a thing my CBD oil for instance is a thing and like as much as I have I have some I have favorable thoughts about my first uses of CBD oil and yet everything about it down to the sort of like the hype uh I want to say it it seems like one of those industries that's like, is this just sort of a health and wellness like fad that exists for a lot of people to make a lot of money very quickly by sort of like overselling the health benefits of something that even the people who swear by it, it sort of admit that like the effects very wildly among like, you know, brands and among like people who take it and

it depends on sort of your brain chemistry and stuff like that. And it's like, even I'm susceptible to something because it seems so harmless and it's not super expensive. I'm not buying like virgin blood or anything like that. But yeah, I don't know. I feel like a sucker. Am I a sucker, Kate? No, I mean, I do. So I wrote a piece about CBD last year and because I was trying to figure out whether there was like real or just way overhyped.

And like my conclusion out of it was that it's kind of both like there are actual benefits in certain contexts when you use certain. types of CBD. Like I talked to some researchers who were using it as an epilepsy treatment and, you know, they had peer reviewed research backing up their claims. But then you get, there's like tons. I think one of the big problems is that, again, there's not much regulation over like what is being sold. So you can get some products that have like active ingredients in them. And then you have some products that are, you know, made in industrial factories with a bunch of other nasty stuff in them. And they're both being sold as CBD. Right.

So I just think that the CBD market is a complete mess right now. And like 80% of the products are overhyped. And it's really hard to figure out which ones are genuine or not. And I don't think you're a sucker, but I do wonder if it's the placebo effect or not, depending on what you took. Is this your roundabout way of just asking if you can have some of my CD oil? It's fine. I'm happy to share it with you. You don't have to be mean.

I mean, hello. We're co-hosts. I might, yeah, I might have some. I can't help but get to the end of the segment and reflect on the fact that thousands of years of human history and a century and a century of exponential medical advancement have brought us to the point of CBD oil and the blood of children. That is. That's it. That's all we got. That's the only relief for anything is weed and blood of 12-year-olds.

Yeah. So basically we wouldn't mind living longer. We wouldn't mind living better. But I think we need to be very skeptical about the services and products offered to us promising to help us do those things because it's just a mess out there. All right. I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibs. Happy New Year, everyone.

We're glad to be back. You'll hear us again in two weeks. Don't drink children's blood.