The Ricochet Podcast - A Kerfuffle or a Brouhaha?

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Don’t matter what you call it. Ricochetti are a passionate bunch, and sometimes the fighting spirit takes over. Our first guests are Andrew Gutmann (hosts of the essential Take Back Our Schools podcast) and Ricochet member Michele Kerr who’s had some strong criticisms of the fellas’ takes on public education over the years. For those of you who like a little scrappiness on the flagship podcast... Source

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Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie All right, good luck cutting that down. Although I wouldn't. I'd just let the tape roll because fur flying is fun. I have a dream. This nation will rise up.

Live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. If you show up at a crime scene, they can't be traced. Law enforcement is sounding the alarm. Our communities are paying the price. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and myself, James Lalex. We talk education with Andrew Gutman and Michelle Kerr and COVID with Dr. J. Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. It's the ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 589. I'm James Lilacs. Peter Robinson is not with us this week.

He's either off doing an interview or finishing his book or hand-washing with Woolite, his sweater, so the arms are simple enough to be tied around his neck in the fashion. long is here in gotham i believe and i am and suitably hardened by the experience welcome ron thanks for uh again i don't know i almost said thanks for having me it's all the rote things that we say when we're doing no this is your show you don't have a nice trip says the guy driving me off the airport you too yeah uh-huh well maybe we won't have a nice trip because the Biden administration now wants to have some sustainable aviation. They want to bring the airplanes down to carbon zero. Right.

Which I don't think is possible. I don't want to be in this rate. It is. They're not. They're half a fight. You canceled. Right. And the other half are people who don't want to get on the board because they have to wear a mask for the next 15 days after which the spread will

be slowed i find that interesting too they you know what they really want to do is to increase the carbon tax on the on on the flights make it unaffordable for most people to go to the places that they want to go to for vacation because they shouldn't they shouldn't be doing that it's bad for the earth um i mean they'll all go stay at whoever happens to pick up epstein's island but that's different that's entirely different uh so there's that the other thing that i find do you do you not think that watching this uh is it a kerfuffle do you think or a brouhaha i don't know over even elon musk trying to take over twitter should ought he not be their hero to the left i don't think he is is he i don't know he's not at all no he's not at all

they're terrified i mean yeah they don't like they don't they don't really like a solution that's market-based so elon musk says you know what i think with all of his money which was not which was he was a rich person uh before he started Tesla, but he wasn't the richest person in the world. And I don't think he was among the richest people in the world, top 10, maybe not even the top 50. And he says, okay, look, I think I can build an electric car that's actually cool and works and people want to buy, which he does. And you'd think that he would be the solution you'd think that he would be you know at at you know weird craft fairs with al gore he would just be famous but instead they don't like it because they don't like solutions the solution is not the problem fixing the problem is not the not the issue the issue is how can we get inside your world a little bit more?

How can we boss you around a little bit more? How can we get it so you just stay home? I mean, that is always the argument. The argument isn't, well, we just need better cars that take less gas. It's that you shouldn't be driving. Where are you going anyway? Where do you think you're going, James? Stay home.

Right. And now we have to come up with charging stations everywhere, which you would think they'd be happy about it. But, I mean, they have to build a network out over the country so people can drive these electric cars wherever they wish and top off like that, which isn't going to happen for a while. And you'd think they'd be thrilled by this. But, again, it seems to be like he's an annoyance. But it's really because of what he believes. He believes in that awful thing called free speech robert reich had a piece in the guardian i think of all places who would have thought that where he's talking about that elon musk's idea of a free internet is an authoritarian tyrant's dream the most counterintuitive

piece of nonsense i read an awful long time did you see the piece i did not see the piece but i've heard the argument it's based on um here's the logic i don't know whether this is it i don't like elon musk because he seems conservative although he's much more libertarian so i don't think he should have any power or say at all people who i don't agree with should not have the reins of any form of media at all. That's essentially the Robert Reich argument, which we've heard before. I mean, you hear it all the time. But the idea that he's trying to buy Twitter, that Twitter would become more restrictive and not less, is just bonkers on its face. It may become more of a swamp.

I mean, one of the reasons we started Ricochet was because Twitter and the internet in general is a swamp. It may become less civil. That's possible. There may be more loonies on there propagating idiotic views. That is also possible. But the idea that it'll become authoritarian is just dumb. That's just a dumb position.

Right. I don't see eye to eye with robert rationalist of course i'm on my knees but that particular article struck me as as nonsense i'm stilt meaning four foot eight for him but you know here but here's a larger thing right if you if a survey of the horizon as they say of you know the way the world looks today this morning mid-april 2022 there's a war in in in ukraine uh there is a break we can talk about this later sort of a gigantic i think breakdown in people's confidence in the schools there is a uh a raging inflation going on um because of craig crackpot monetary policy,

but it's still happening. Car 54, where are you? Which includes gigantic, gigantic leaps in gasoline, which people need to get to work. And then just notice what, and in New York City, I would say, there was a madman with a mass shooting on the subway where the cameras didn't work. Took a day to get him. Cameras didn't work, and there weren't any cops there to help.

So what are people talking about in government? Climate change, of course. Ghost guns. Ghost guns. Natural gas. natural gas, you know, get the governor of, of, of, of New York is obsessed with lead or, or, you know, carbon neutral buildings also in schools that don't really, which we'll get to, I'm sure I'll get it handed to me by our guests.

One of our guests, the schools, which, which don't really teach math effectively or reading effectively or American history effectively now want to teach sort of kind of very sophisticated, ornate, eccentric sexuality to children. Nobody wants to do the job, right?

Planes aren't part of it. But Biden wants to adjust the planes, right? Fix the problem. Here's my point. As your reward, I would say to any government bureaucrat or elected official or teacher, is your reward for doing the simple job really well. You get to your cherry on top.

Your chocolate sundae is you get a month of political indoctrination, right? You can indoctrinate any American school child you want who demonstrates that reads at grade level or above, is doing grade level math or above. If you've accomplished the mission, then you get to do the stuff you like, right? First, get gas prices down. Then we can talk about climate change. Well, you know, Rob, the way you've phrased all of these things just shows that you're not of the body and that you really need to be reeducated.

First of all, when it comes to the gentleman in New York who did those things, we have to understand what drove him to it. We have to understand what created the ideology that he felt prey to. We really do, because it was not his fault once he came in contact with it the ideas were simply too seductive and powerful and three we cannot look at the fbi which apparently has had this guy on the radar as they say since 2019 because it's more important for the fbi to not talk to the person like that and to constantly refresh the facebook pages of parents in virginia who want the school board to something differently when you talk about gas prices coming down or going up, they're coming down, Rob. They're coming down at least four cents, and that's because of Joe Biden's leadership. Joe Biden has been historically

pro-energy. He wants America. Why? He had a car himself. He had a truck once. He drove a truck. He backed up a truck once. He knew an old lady who drove a truck. He's always been pro-energy. Ergo, the idea that Joeiden has fallen into the mindset of those people who want to decrease the american mobility and decrease the american consumption in order to save the planet is preposterous joe biden is mr camaro he wears mirrored sunglasses it's true that's true when it comes to the schools and the schools seemingly wanting to teach these kids what you called a nice turn of phrase or these bizarrely baroque and ornate sexualities. It's not that at all. They're simply teaching reality, and they would doing so have exposed

the parents who themselves are part of a culture war the right started. Everything was going fine until for some strange, bizarre reason, the right decided to go on a war against teachers who are doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary and they started it so that's that's how that issue has to be framed well we're talking about i know we're going to talk about that coming up i i just feel like the general that that you know and i'm doing this now james so you can throw this in my face later because i always complain when you do it but you know that it when they found that guy in New York City, his name was Frank James, 62 years old, and they found the crackpot nonsense Twitter posts and Facebook posts and YouTube videos. know and and it's actually you have to you have to you really have to look to find it by the way um you know that if this guy was the q anon shaman or something or he was one of the proud boys for clansmen i would have woken up this morning and my new york times would have had a five page

insert in the front section with pictures and questions and who are, it would have been an actual cultural investigation into that wing battery instead of this, which was it took a while to get a picture of this guy that we were all looking for around New York city. It took a while. The New York post did it. The New York times sort of reluctantly

did about 12 hours later um you know when you're looking for somebody who's on the loose a picture would help uh and it took a uh andy no who is a reporter and as controversial reporter i mean i'm not defending oh i mean i really know much about him except i kind of like what he does but i know there are some people who have some reservations, whatever. Okay, fine. Reservations. They think that he feeds antiphonemes kill lists to Nazis is what they think. Okay.

Go on. Okay, all right. Yeah. I defer to you. But he was the first guy to be interested in to find this person's, Frank James's web footprint that i found he was the only he he was the first person in uh in new york city which is a uh many many things and i don't think he's even here many many things about new york city but one thing about it is there's a lot of media here you think that somebody here would be the first which shows some curiosity but instead it was

sort of like well you know but but i guarantee with, had that guy been a proud boy or something like that, or I don't know what they were in January 6th. Um, there's another name for it. I forgot. Uh, we, we would certainly hear about it. There's also the question of the cameras that were working in the subway station, which is unusual. Yeah. Every single convenience. It's not really unusual. A thing not working in the subway is not unusual, but okay. I know, I know. But the idea that they have all of these CCTVs everywhere and from the jail cells to the subways where they're needed, they actually don't seem to be working, which makes you wonder when you look at the entirety of people who are supposedly in charge of running these apparatuses. What is it exactly you do here and can you do it any better? I wanted to get to Ukraine, though, because the interesting thing to me is that some people are really invested in that big ship not going down because the U.K. hit it. It really bugs them if you suggest that maybe the U.K. pulled that off because that valorizes what they believe to be a corrupt state and we're being pushed into war, which we've somehow avoided for the last five.

I just want to know when when do theians do they insure their ships i'm sure that they do and i'm sure that the guy in charge of paying the premiums on that ship pocketed the money himself and the policy lapsed and now he's thinking oh crap which is probably the case but you know you personally here in the states if somebody oh man that was a segue i was about to talk about insurance yeah literally i know and as i'm realizing this and and this is i think this is a new a new um If somebody... Oh, man, that was a segue. I was about to talk about insurance. Yeah, I know. Really, literally. I know. And as am I. And I'm just realizing this is... And I think this is a new sponsor.

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And we thank Policy Genius for sponsoring this of the Ricochet podcast. And now let's get ready to, oh, I'm sorry, I can't do that. That's trademarked. Let's prepare ourselves for contention. Our guests are Andrew Goodman and Michelle Kerr. Do I have that right?

It's Kerr, not Carr, Kerr? No, it's Mangy Fleabitten Dog. Mangy Fleabitten Dog Do I have that right? It's Kerr, not Carr? Kerr? No, it's Mangy Flea Bitten Dog. Mangy Flea Bitten Dog. Thank you. Right. It's spelled. Andrew Goodman is a concerned parent whose civil protest against his daughter's school,

specifically its incorporation of woke education, started a firestorm that brought him reluctantly into the public eye. He's since become, among other things, the co-host of Ricochet's Take Back Our Schools podcast. Michelle is a Ricochet member, second career teacher with a single subject credentials in math and English, social science, information systems, and communications, and soon will have a fifth in engineering and architecture. Oh, we could talk architecture all day. She has a master's in education from Stanford, a master's in information systems from UC Berkeley, and 13 years of teaching experience in the Bay Area. Welcome to you both. Michelle, I'll start with you. What's wrong with the way conservatives talk about education? What are we missing? What tees you off as a conservative when

you hear us go on and on? Well, first off, apologies, everybody listening for the sound. I can't use headphones on this laptop. What's wrong is what Rob was just talking about. What he said was that basically we can't do a simple job. Well, teaching isn't a simple job. Second, he asked. No, I didn't say it was simple. Oh, you said you want credit for doing a simple job.

That's all. No, no, no. I didn't say that. I didn't say that i didn't say that oh okay there are very clear things that the school should do got it before they start teaching uh woke trans whatever got it and my my offer to them is achieve those goals and then you know then we can talk about the other elaborate stuff you'll toss a kid into Moloch's mod. Hang on. So, okay, fine. Fair enough.

But it's not true that we're not teaching all those other things. We are. Second thing, and this is important, is that. I'm not saying you're not. Wait, here's why I'm interrupting. I know it's rude, but I'm doing it anyway. It's okay. Because you quit Ricochet.

You were a member, and then you quit. But you stayed a member because you didn't like the way we talked about teachers. Right. And what I'm really, the way we talked about teachers. Right. And what I'm really, I'm not talking about teachers. It's not personal. I'm simply using the metrics of whether they are accomplishing the mission. So stop making, stop acting like I'm being mean to teachers because I'm not. Okay.

First off. The difference is, there's a difference between teachers and teachers unions. Oh, everybody makes that. No, this is important because I just listen to you. OK, now I'm a Republican. OK, so what I'm trying to say is if you don't mean to slur all teachers, then you need to change your rhetoric because I'm about as friendly an audience as you're going to get. OK, so if I interpret what you're saying and here is what you said, you said teachers aren't teaching math, English history, everything else. Schools aren't teaching math history. First off, that's flatly untrue. We are now what you actually means is hang on. Don't interrupt this time. Kids aren't learning. And I think one of the things you have to realize is, is that that we don't have a given standard.

There's no research on what kids can actually learn. Don't give me charters. They skim, they sort, they do all sorts of things, as well as kick out the kids who aren't going to make them look good. So my point is simple, is that if you want to say, first off, that there are schools, which are not all schools by any means, and I live in one of the bluest areas of the country, and none of the stuff you're talking about goes on in any significant way in my district.

And I live in the Bay Area. OK, so it's not all schools. You guys are definitely like shiny object people. You're looking at the stories. But you could totally say that that should stop without ever getting to the point that, well, schools suck. And that that conflation is a huge problem every time you say oh my god these you know teachers are indoctrinating their students in some place

and it's like and they're not teaching math english and it's like well no keep it limited i have to stop i have to stop you right there and hand it to andrew andrew ding we uh do you have your uh your segment well i've look at my background is is the school world, which I know better than the public school world. But having been this accidental activist in the last year, I've learned a little bit about the public school world. I think there's a difference between teaching and teaching well. And I'm not saying there aren't terrific teachers out there that are teaching well, but as a system, and I think, and I didn't hear Rob's segment before, but I'm guessing this is probably what he was getting at. We're not teaching kids well in math, English, and especially in

history. I mean, you can look at all sorts of data that says that, you know, how well kids are learning, what kids are at grade level nationwide. And again, that doesn't say there aren't specific school districts around the country that are better than others. But as a whole, we are not teaching children very well in English, math or history. Once again, I would just push back and say, what do you define? Well, I mean, look, can we can we just. I'm a conservative, right? I'm a free market conservative. I'm looking at an industry providing a service, and I see the customers are dissatisfied with the service. That's not true. I mean, no, seriously.

The pandemic, we just came through a pandemic. I will speak only about what I know, which is New York City school system, a very large school system, or even LA Unified school system, which I know a little less than. The parents who send their children to these school systems are deeply, deeply unhappy. It has never been better politically in every poll I've seen, in every focus group I've seen, to suggest people that a voucher system is the solution. Your argument is they're wrong, it's actually doing great, and the customer is making a mistake? No. My argument is that, first off, polls don't support what you just said. I'm not saying everything's great. What I'm saying is that schools are more responsive to their

market than you would imply. I disagree. In New York City, they are not. Parents wanted to go back to school. No, they did not. They did. No, look, excuse me. They had the choice. Okay, there was hybrid. And the fact is, is that only 25% of parents of kids went back to school. In New York City. That clearly, in New York City. That's because they weren't open. And they were going to, no, they were going to school and sitting in classrooms and looking at Zoom. Wait a minute, hold on.

Andrew, I want an opinion. Sorry, Andrew. Because if you have a head of an organization that represents it for the teachers and they say a variety of ridiculous things, it's going to be illustrative of the group that puts her out there. So I'm going to pay attention to it, just as if AOC is saying some preposterous things about economics. I'm going to pay attention to her because she carries some weight and gets the mics. Andrew, let's go. Well, yeah, I mean, my understanding is Randy Weingarten is enormously influential, including in covid policy and setting. OK, I mean, that's

oh, you mean the CDC thing, CDC thing and the teachers unions were enormously influential in whether schools open or close or remote. OK, first thing, first thing's true. But so what? Because governors didn't have to follow the CDC. And again, was she influential as a teacher or as part of the left? Which teachers? You know. Second thing, no, categorically. And by the way, I refer you to an article written by Andy Smarek of the Dispatch who made this clear a year ago. It's flat out. Unions were not influential. Parents were influential in whether or not schools open. And again, this is look again, you can't have 70 percent support of teachers and schools during the pandemic without an

acknowledgement that that means that most schools were open where parents wanted them open and not open. This is nonsense, because in the private school world where parents supposedly have more influence, they stayed open in the public school where they did not. And that not not Not in California, they didn't. And by the way, there's a demographic issue here that people aren't talking about. White parents, as a rule, from the beginning, and this was supported in all the polls, they were much more ready to go back to school. But if you live in a district with majority non-white, you're going to have more parents who are worried about going back to school, many times for good reasons. Hispanics were very, in California, Hispanic mortality from COVID was huge. There was much more reluctance. You have to look at the demographics, okay? Teachers unions

are incredibly strong in Vermont. Vermont was open, okay? New York City was open. California wasn't open until March at all. Teachers unions do not hamper reform. That's that's a true statement. Teachers unions have relatively little power. One of the things that I don't understand about how conservatives talk is their focus on teachers unions, particularly on Randy Weingarten. You should have entire conversations about education without ever mentioning Randy Weingarten. If teachers unions are not are not influential, if they're powerless and well, OK, well, you know, whatever. If they have if they have very little power, they are not worth talking about. Put it that way. They're trivial. And parents are 80 percent happy with their schools.

Right. This is just all this is like all a delusional conflict that conservative parents or parents in general have. And they are they are deluding themselves and thinking that they're unhappy, the ones who are unhappy. And they shouldn't be arguing about what's taught in schools. And they shouldn't have any kind of I don't know what it is, any kind of sense. I mean, I don't have kids. So to me, it's all academic. They shouldn't have any feeling that the schools are doing a poor job. Your argument is that schools are doing a great job. Teacher unions are not schools are doing a great job, teachers' unions are not powerful, and I don't know what. We should just move on?

Okay, let me address those quickly, because I know I'm going to give Andrew some time here. My points are threefold. First, by and large, and this is well supported in polls, parents are happy with their own school. That's been a consistent finding for a very long time. I agree with that. That is true. Okay, so it's not delusional to say that parents are happy, nor is it delusional to say the parents who are unhappy are unhappy.

I mean, I'm not saying that they're deluding themselves. Second, but but it's very important to remember that by and large, the parents are happy with public school. That's an important thing to keep going. Parents, when polled in general, are satisfied with the school their children go to correct that is not the same thing as being uh that is not the same thing as there is the choices that they're making the choices they're forced to make the ways they have to gain the system to get the product that they want that's not the same thing well i i would i would disagree with some of those but apart from that what i'm saying is i agree that the everybody is kind of like politics if everybody compares everybody likes their own congressman but they don't think

politics are working but my point is is that school boards are responsive to their schools their their um their own parents so if school boards are giving parents what they want to the point that they're getting a's and b's in grades then it's hard to say you're going to have trouble fixing a system what everybody's incentive is there to fix it well what in grades, then it's hard to say you're going to have trouble fixing a system. What incentive is there to fix it? What needs to be, look, I'm going to ask you, what do you think needs to be fixed, if anything? Okay, well, a couple things. First off, I absolutely think that what's going on with the gender ideology, I think the simplest way to fix that is it should be mandated that if a kid says to a teacher, you know, I think I'm, you know, male or, you know, the opposite gender, it should be mandatory notification to parents. And by the way, that single fix would fix a lot of things. Right now,

teachers are, like in California, are not allowed to tell parents. They are not allowed. It's legally, it's not something that unions put in place. It's legally not allowed. And the federal government is doing the same thing. Some of the state laws are changing that. So take that aside. I don't care how much it's happening. It shouldn't be happening at all. But should we teach this to K through three? No, absolutely not. That's what I'm saying. All of those, you know, I'm pretty much in Lopset. My only argument is I think you guys overstate how much it's being done, but it doesn't matter in terms of fixing it. I'm totally in favor of anything

that says, you know, look, we don't need to be discussing this with kids. I would even go K through five. I'd say you shouldn't even start it until sex education in like fifth grade or something like that. So I'm completely on board with that. Also, by the way, notice that's an elementary school problem. This is not a general problem that hits high schools where we do have transgender kids. Second is CRT. Once again, this is primarily an elementary school problem. And again, it's going to be hard to fix. I don't oppose trying to fix it. I think the problem is overstated in that teachers who violate community standards will be found and generally fired quickly.

So I just don't think it's a problem. You can't fire a teacher. You can absolutely fire a teacher. It's very easy to fire a teacher. Has there ever been a teacher fired in New York City? No, they have a rubber room for them. They have the rubber room. They have a rubber room for them in L.A. Unified.

They did the rubber room away, but the point is it's not true. It's very easy. Why do we have this? Why are we so wrong, Michelle? Why do we believe that you can't fire teachers? Why do we believe that there was such a thing called a rubber room? Why do we believe any of this nonsense? You're giving us the red pill here. Why do I have to take the red pill? No, I'm not. I'm not. It's easy to fire a teacher who violates community standards on curriculum. It's very hard to fire a mediocre teacher. I totally agree. And by the way, I don't think you'll ever be able to fix that. But it's very easy. Like if a teacher goes in front and says

something like that, in fact, if you look at all the story about CRT violations where the teacher said that white students are evil or they had some sort of thing where they said you guys are less intelligent this guy's in pretty much every case the teacher got fired okay if you violate certain rules it's very easy to get fired what's hard to get fired for is things like being drunk because it's a you know it gets treated as an illness uh hard to get fired for simply not being a very good teacher I agree I'm not there's absolutely no protections that's not a big issue. When you talk about things like having sex with students, gone. You talk about doing drugs with students, gone.

You talk about saying something racist or you talk about writing. If you have a blog or write on social media and complain about your students, you're going to be gone real quick. Just recently, one of our teachers in a class was ranting, recently, three or four years ago,

was ranting, and she was just mad, and she told the kids they were stupid, and the kids filmed it. She was gone in three months. Okay, so it's very easy, and this is in California, which is a strong people. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you.

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18plusgamblingcare.ie. Looking at all these cases, usually it's parental pressure. Somebody films it. Somebody puts it up. Somebody notes it. And that's what they do. It's not that they find out about this without any social pressure, media pressure or whatever, and say,

oh my God, we're so appalled that this person is teaching this, you know, this this nonsense. We have to do something. It's when it's brought to them and they don't have a choice. Which is precisely what I said. Community pressure. Schools are local. They respond to community pressure and that's as it should be. OK, that's what I'm trying to get to you. So we can only be able to fire teachers. But when there's a when there when some kid has a phone camera going? No. I mean, first off, they get fired for other reasons. In New York City, just because I looked it up, it takes six years to fire a teacher.

It takes six years to fire a teacher for being not particularly good at their job. True. I agree. Strong union, as they say in the old cartoons. Because there's a... Well, first off, there's a different... Well, I don't know if it's six years. But I mean, my point is there's a difference between, and it's easier to fire in California. If you're a bad, if you're a bad airline pilot or you're a bad ambulance driver or you're a bad, I don't know what, you get fired.

You don't take, doesn't take six years. Well, first off, if you are, for example, continually late to school, you will get fired a lot sooner. But you're making the point, you're making the point that everything matters about teaching and education except education. No, that's not true at all. Because what I'm saying is that it's very hard to define what a good teacher is. And there's a great deal of disagreement about it, which you guys tend to ignore and say that there's no disagreement about.

But there is quite a bit of difference between what people think makes a good teacher it's also by the way there is a teacher shortage there has been for years and even though we spend more and more money per pupil well increasingly more and more new york city more than almost i think more than any other country but it doesn't get to the students because it's because you have this enormous educational bureaucracy that hoovers up enormous amounts of money hey if you guys want to i mean mean, I, I, what, what conservatives and Republicans should be doing is looking at that infrastructure. Okay. The, the, all, all of the, all of the administrative staff, we don't need a lot of that. And a lot, but a lot of it comes because of federal mandates, federal law of what, I mean, first off, you said you said that teacher uh students cost a lot more

money student costs a lot more money because special ed every special ed on average student costs twice as much as a non-special ed student and um uh ell you know in other words when we get like for example all the kids that are just coming here from afghanistan and any kid that comes across the the border claiming asylum where do you think they get put? They get put into a public school. Okay. And every time you put those kids in a public school, you have to make sure that you have at least two to three English classes set aside for them every day. Okay. You have to put them in there. You have to usually have special math classes. A lot of them don't speak any English at all. All of that takes money.

Special ed. I want you to think about the fact that when we put idea into effect, which was back in the seventies, our notion of special ed was a kid with Down syndrome. Today, you have kids that survive birth at four months. Okay. And they are blind and completely incapable i think that's why schools spend so much money though yes it is no no excuse me yes it is there are enough

i think michelle's exactly right here i mean i i think this is exactly true that in general these federal mandates but especially special ed which is a federal state mandate um have are expensive i think that's really true and that is probably one of the extra burdens that we didn't that the public school system was not designed currently as it's designed or is actually currently to to solve i think that is that's a absolutely legitimate point but i interrupted somebody interrupting no it's i guess because james said that's not a big chunk that's not true special ed is an enormous special ed may indeed be an enormous cost but it's not because we have

it's not because we have more four-month-old kids who survive who survive birth well no the second part of that is the ada because remember what happened was is that special uh the idea was originally designed for so can we agree let me just finish this because it was originally designed for. Can we agree? Let me just finish this because it was originally designed for Down syndrome kids. Nobody was anticipating that. And first off, you say it's not. But a kid, one kid who can't walk and needs a permanent aid all day. And I'm not by the way, I'm not saying they shouldn't be covered. I'm just giving an example.

That's going to be $50,000 per kid right away. OK, New York has a lot of kids like that and then on top of that you have the uh ada which redefined what a disability was and that right okay so go ahead so so are we in agreement that there's a problem with the system but you just don't want to blame teachers is that right what i'm no what i'm saying is is that that i mean we haven't even gotten into the educational stuff. But what I'm saying is that when you say kids aren't learning, you're basically saying, here's the standard that we're setting and kids aren't at that standard. Worldwide rankings.

In math. No, worldwide rankings. How do we keep lowering standards? No, we actually raise standards. And by the way, the parents didn't like it okay common core why was common core ripped out in most places wasn't because of teachers unions okay that was parents why was no child left behind uh which was a 2001 esea law uh the the 2016 um or 15 i forget what year every essa which was a new version of it, ripped out pretty much 20

years of reform. That wasn't unions. Help me out. It's not the teachers' unions. They're not powerful. It's not the teachers. They're great. Not the parents. The parents are happy. Right. So what's all the agita? Why are we worried? Why are we talking about this? Well, first off, that's a good point is that that to say what you just said if that's true what is it that we want from education and i would contend that people don't really know and if your answer is well i want kids to learn to read write everything else then i'm saying okay then we have a semantics problem because let's go into it because are you you keep avoiding the question. What question?

What reforms, if you believe there should be any reforms, should we have to end the schools? I still don't understand. I'm still trying to get to the disconnect between the vast perception in America that the teachers' unions are powerful, with your argument that they're not, they're trivial. The vast preponderance of people in America think that American education is going in the wrong direction. Your argument is going in the right direction. I'm saying, okay, what, what, what, what would you fix in education in the classroom, in the teachers, among your colleagues, doctors, pilots, all professions occasionally engage in self-criticism.

So engage in it, if you would. Just help me out. What do I want to change? The first thing I would change is the expectation that we're failing. That is not a reform of the system. Now you're blaming the customer. You're telling me that parents in general,

if I'm a politician and I'm running for general election in the country, that if I run and say, hey, listen, the way the public school system works, I know you're all happy with that. I'm going to apply that standard of success to the rest of the federal bureaucracy, you think that'd be winning? You think it'd be a winning argument? Because people would say, according to you, well, great, because I'm really happy with the school system. No, I'm really happy with my school system. That's what makes it hard to change. How do you explain the Virginia gubernatorial election?

First off, there's two things. One, as I just said, the parents most likely to want to be back in school were white parents okay so therefore there was a shift towards that and again i'm not denying that democrats are in trouble in november and i'm happy about it okay so but but that wasn't against the the the issue in virginia had nothing to do with covid it was that terry um mccall have said parents shouldn't be telling teachers what they can teach in the classroom we we know that when he said those words um that his challenger went up in the polls and we know that they cut commercials to to to publicize those statements

and we know that mccullough raniffe ran away from that statement. I mean, I think it's pretty fair to say that what the issue in Virginia was that one candidate said, I think everything's fine. I don't think parents should have anything to do with what goes on in the classroom. The other candidate said, that's crazy. Our schools are in trouble. And the one who thought the schools were in trouble won. Was he mistaken? Do I think that he's in trouble? Do I think that Virginia in general, again, if you poll Virginians on their current schools,

that they're happy? Yeah, but you guys are, I want to be clear, you guys are pasting me in a position that I am not adopting. Can I say something? People who, like in the New York City community, people who, the parents who value education, for example, the Asian community, are the most upset.

The ones who value education less maybe aren't aware of what's going on. Excuse me, are you saying, I mean, seriously, because this is the perception problem. The ones who value education, did those words really just come out of your mouth? Yes. Because let me tell you something, from a Republican standpoint, that's a really stupid thing to say about parents. Let me just say that. Very few parents value education. I can speak this from coming from one of the most elite schools in the country, that very few people there were there for the education.

Excuse me, sorry, Bob, can you just jump over Andrew? Because I'm pretty sure Andrew just can criticize the consumer there. Okay. He just said very few parents care about education. So if that's true i'm not against i'm not i'm i'm taking as written your argument that the consumer's thrilled and even andrew's argument contradictory that there are some consumers who don't care i'm fine we got to define what we're talking about education okay but they want their kids

in school which they weren't allowed to be for the last two years. But that's a separate issue. What I'm saying is, once again, once again, you finish your sentence. If you if you if you pull parents, I would say the ones that do care about education the most are the most upset. For example, the Asian community in New York City. Right. Well, all I can say is this this is that we have now shifted the discussion between uh and and and rob i think fairly you're saying well what do i want to change i what i want to start with is right now if you start with the premise that schools are failing and that everybody's unhappy we can't have a discussion because it's not true if you want to go into what we could talk about that we have now for 40 minutes 30 minutes i've asked over and over again what would you what do you

think teachers should do better and you have wait wait wait wait you have said uh parents are happy with the schools teachers unions are have no power at all um they're actually the teachers are actually doing a fine job. We aren't slipping behind. The school systems are fine. At no point have you bothered or even come up with any kind of argument, reform, for the teacher's profession, for what they do and what they expect from themselves. That, to me, is absolutely the problem with the public school system. If I were a parent of school-age kids, I would say that's the problem. Every school board meeting I go to, what I hear are excuses and blame. We're doing our brief closing. We're doing our quick closing arguments here before I walk over and pull the plug. is, is that the whole premise of your debate is why Republicans aren't successful in changing

the discussion. It does not mean that I don't think there's some things we could do differently. But you have to start by accepting something that you guys are unwilling to accept, which is that, by and large, it's hard to change things when your underlying people are happy. For example, you want to hold higher standards, and then teachers will start flunking a lot of parents. You think a lot of kids, you think the parents will be happy. OK, these are real issues. And so what I'm trying to say is to start with, think about whether or not things are as bad as you paint them. And if you start there, we could certainly there are things I would change.

I really want to be straight with you. You have named what you have. Let's stop. Rob, you said that we know that's not going any further i want to give andrew a chance to go before we go because otherwise we're going to be at this for the next six hours i understand okay so just so i understand the perception that we have is wrong that schools are fine because parents are happy is that is that a fair summary of your not not the not the schools are fine but the schools are far better and not in crisis the way that you present how come almost no like 90 percent of people can't pass a citizen can't pass a citizenship test?

So we're teaching history. Well, could they pass it 60 years ago? The answer is yes. No, no, no, no. They could not. And there's plenty of there's tons of evidence on that. You guys have a very, very false view of what education was like 60 years ago. I was there. I was absolutely there. I looked at my children. I looked at what my kid was studying. I was there. We're going to stop right there, Miranda. It's been great. And thank you so much. We've got an exhaustive amount of stuff.

Michelle, I'm sorry, Michelle. What am I thinking here? I've had too much coffee. My brain starts. It's that weird M name. No, it's the probably, it's just that I didn't retain my lessons from the start of the podcast. Anyway, thanks, everybody. Wow. Phew.

And let's do it again sometime soon. Thank you guys for having me. I had fun. It was a lot of fun. I'm glad. Bye-bye. Here's the thing about that, though. When you go back and look at the schools of the past, I grew up watching Room 222, and I'll bet that's somewhere still there, uh, floating around on television somewhere.

I don't know, maybe it's in Portuguese Netflix. Good luck trying to find that, right? Hey, you know what's not fair, really? You know, the fact that Netflix will hide thousands of shows and movies based on what your location happens to be. Then they have the noy of the increase your prices. That's right. They've just raised prices once again. Well, you could cancel your subscription in protest. That's right. They've just raised prices once again. Well, you could cancel your subscription

and protest. Sure, right. Or you could be smart about how you access them and make sure you're getting your full money's worth by using ExpressVPN. See, it might not know what's on Netflix in your country. It's completely different

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Now, I happen to come from Fargo. I lived in Fargo. So I know Fargo, right? No, Fargo, the television show, is completely different. And if you missed out on it, you missed out on a great show. But like I say, it's not on U.S. Netflix. So what do you do? Ah, one tap of the button, ExpressVPN lets you change your location to France,

to La France, where you can watch Le Fargo. Here's the best part. It's not just for Netflix. You can use ExpressVPN to unlock shows on other streaming services, too. Use it to watch BBC iPlayer. It's free, and it's only available in the U.K., and there's lots shows on other streaming services, too. Use it to watch BBC iPlayer. It's free, and it's only available in the UK, and there's lots of great stuff on there, too. ExpressVPN is also super fast. It works on your phone, your laptop, even your smart TVs.

You can start watching on the big screen with zero buffering. So stop paying full price for streaming services and only getting access to a fraction of the content. Get your money's worth at expressvpn.com slash ricochet. Don't forget to use our link so you can get three extra months of ExpressVPN free. That's expressvpn.com slash ricochet. Expressvpn.com slash ricochet. And we thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Before we go, I know we have Dr. J's coming on. Before we go, we should just say that I kind of hogged that conversation I shouldn't have. Because we have Andrew Gutman there, and I should let Andrew talk because he's much more calm about this than I am.

And Andrew has a great new podcast, Take Back Our Schools, which Michelle doesn't think you need to do. But Andrew thinks you need to do, but Andrew thinks you need to do. And if you're interested in, in schools and education and education policy and, um, all that, uh, the constellation of those things, you should, um, subscribe and listen to his excellent, excellent podcast. He's doing some incredible, incredible, having some incredible conversations. So, uh, I want to make sure I'm going to plug this again at the end. So, because I really feel like if you're, if you're not listening to his podcast,

you're missing, you're really missing out. It's like a time capsule where you're seeing the trouble we're going to have in the future. If we don't listen to Andrew's podcast today, is that, does that constitute your ricochet promo? No,

another ricochet promo coming up, but I mean, okay, great. But first, first we have to go to bench capacity capacity denier, Dr. J. Dr. J. Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University, holder of four degrees from the school, including MD, PhD in economics.

He's a co-author of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated letting the virus spread in lower risk groups with the aim of herd immunity with focused protection of those most at risk. And he's been our go-to doctor since the pandemic began. Welcome, Dr. Jay. I say bench capacity denier because you posted a tweet the other day, and you've been getting hammered on Twitter and holding up well. It's good to see you holding up well, where you had a picture of a bench that had a sticker on it that informed people. This is two years old, two years on, that the capacity of this bench is one and you asked a preposterous uncaring question that it would only come from a stone-hearted man unmoved by human

tragedy how many lives did this save and some people took it to heart and and and said probably the the cost the psychological cost was greater but some people were very angry at you and said, well, if you'd sat down on that bench, Jay, coughing, spreading, shedding next to an 85-year-old immunocompromised man with one lung and stage four cancer, you would have been guilty. Again, two years on, and what you proposed at the beginning is still as contentious as it was. So now we've got mandates coming back, even though the caseloads and the risks are nowhere near what they should be to trigger these things. And we have this XE virus variant, I think. Give us a lowdown of what's going on and what you think about it. So let me start with the bench. I mean, the virus does not seem to spread very efficiently outdoors. We know that for a fact, or else it would have been, everyone would have had the virus

during the BLM protests in the summer of 2020. So I don't think looking at this, it's actually disheartening. What's happened is we have miseducated a huge number of people who still don't understand the very basics of how the virus spreads. It spreads by aerosols indoors, primarily, in poor ventilation environments. So the bench outdoors, even if I'm sitting next to 20 people on that bench, that would be pretty uncomfortable. I'm not next to 20 people on that bench, although that would be pretty uncomfortable.

I'm not a big bench. And you know what? The other thing is the number of livesaves could actually be negative. Being outdoors is good for you. Vitamin D deficiency actually makes you more prone to a bad outcome with COVID. And being in the sunlight helps. So I think we've just given the public, I mean, this is a failure of public health. I don't blame the Twitter trolls.

I mean, they're just miseducated. So I just, and I think it's, we have to like look in public health, look ourselves in the mirror and say, how did we get to this point where we have induced not just undue panic, but also you've given us the wrong advice about how to manage people's your own health. What we did was we gave our life over to a series of experts. But when we look at the Great Barrington Declaration, you guys were experts, too. Why didn't we listen to this set of experts, but instead chose this set of experts who wanted to reduce freedom more?

Or did we even have a choice to be, or was there even a choice to be made? So, James, after we wrote the Great Barrier Reaction Declaration, it was October 4th we wrote it, 2020. On October 8th, 2020, four days later, the head of the National Institute of Health, Francis Collins, he wrote an email to Tony Fauci, you know, that actual Tony Fauci, calling me, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, probably the world's best epidemiologist, and Martin Kulldorff, one of the world's best biostatisticians,

Harvard, Oxford, Stanford. He called me, of the three of us, fringe epidemiologists. Nice fringe, by the way i ran for it i gotta say i'm gonna put on a business card someday rob because that that's um and so he and then then he called for a devastating published takedown he actually asked yes fauci has there already been, four days later, a devastating published takedown? And Tony Fauci sent him a Wired magazine article in response. There was essentially a campaign by the top people in science bureaucracy and government to

delegitimize debate around the Great Barrier Reaction Declaration. I started getting calls from reporters asking me why i wanted to let the virus rip when that that those words don't appear in in that document i never even thought about it the central idea of the great barrington declaration is focused protection of the vulnerable i wanted to protect the vulnerable better we did such a poor job at that james we did such a poor job at that, James. We did such a poor job. It's like saying the separation of church and state isn't the Constitution.

We all know that's the case. I mean... Okay, so here's what I'm worried about. That they're not done. That masks are coming back. That I can see it. Some friends of mine, the more COVID terrified, more you know covid terror

terrified uh what's happening now in philadelphia two two two bad things could happen really one is uh we could just all go back to pretend it's two years ago and just go through this endless cycle where there's a year where we're inside wearing masks on zoom and then there's a year where we're kind of cautiously let outside and then we had to go right back inside again. Another bad outcome would be that people just decide that everyone is lying and they're just not, there is no truth, right?

Is there a third path that I don't know? I mean, I have to say I'm usually an optimist Rob about most things as you probably know. But I don't, I don't know i mean i have to say i'm usually an optimist rob about most things as you probably know uh but i don't i don't see i don't see a scientific resolution in this problem this is no longer truly just a scientific problem so for instance the efficacy of mass right we now have i mean we had decades of of randomized trials before on how whether the mass stopped the flu um and they were all i And they were all negative. I mean, they were primarily negative.

They don't. We also have like these two randomized trials, which show very low efficacy of mask zero in one of the randomized trials for COVID. We have an enormous amount of observational evidence that despite two years of haranguing people to wear the mask, COVID seems to come and go with the seasons, you know, different places. So at this point, it's not, I don't think it's primarily a scientific problem. There's some very, like, strange, it's almost become a political totem, where if you

wear the mask, you're a good guy, if you don't wear the mask, you're bad. Right. But I mean, I thought we were getting out of that. I actually really thought that maybe I'm naive that that was ending. And now I see in the signs, I start seeing now bigger articles, New York Times from before, bigger graphs in the news that in Philadelphia, there's a mask mandate. I start seeing all this stuff and I'm thinking to myself, my God, is this happening again? And my my question to you is, is it happening again? It does seem like it, but I don't know. So I think that there's a decision that essentially the CDC and the Biden administration need to make, whether they're going to do this again or not. I think that what I see inside is an attempt to shift people inside the Democratic Party away from that. But at the same time, there's still a very substantial faction of people.

Again, this is just inside the Democratic Party that are still COVID scared and think that all you have to do is if we just adopt these policies, if everyone did the right thing, COVID will go away. That miseducation is at the center of the problem we face. But okay, so I mean, just for the record, because there's only one expert I listen to, that's you. Although you did say, I think you did, I think when I got COVID in 2020, December 2020,

you said, yeah, take the hydroxy, what the hell. Which I did, by the way. Yeah, you said, yeah, take the hydroxy. What the hell? Which I did, by the way. Yeah, you were kind of pushing that. Not really. But I was going to say, all right, so just help me out just so I know that I'm not insane. Which is not, that's a tall order for you, for anybody. But cases are on the rise, but the combination of vaccines and treatment and the general weakness of the virus in general

has made it obvious that hospitalizations and infected fatality rate, all that is way, way, way down to a manageable, un-terrifying, even not even scary number, and that COVID is now a name that we're going to give for a seasonal, for one of our many seasonal viruses.

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. So, and I would add to that, a very large fraction of the population has already had COVID and recovered from it. So what that means is that in March of 2020, against severe disease, so hospitalizations and deaths. We have COVID recovery. A very large fraction of the American population, like the world population, has been exposed to COVID and recovered from it. And so it's no longer immune-naive. And as you say, Rob, we also have treatments for people, early treatments, and also later on in hospitalization treatments. By the way, I think we are unsung. I mean, the, the, the, not just the vaccine, the treatments that we have, the, the, the medication that we have now is incredibly you've heard almost nothing about

this pill that was supposedly developed to just, you know, that, that after infection produce prevents hospitalization in some extraordinary percentage of cases, you would think that that had not been brought to the market at all. But I mean, one of the reasons that the eternal Covidians seem to be concerned now is they've got long COVID that they can use to terrify people. You don't want long, you don't want interminable COVID. You don't want seven season COVID.

So you better wear a mask. It's very simple. And if you don't, it's funny. So the, the, the long COVID issue is that is, is, is, is interesting because the scientific literature on this is okay. So let me just start. There are people who, when they are in the hospital and the ICU, you're going to have a long recovery. I mean, that's just a fact. Right. And you know, that's a real thing. And there are legitimate, like some viruses do produce long-term fatigue and things like, so if you've ever had mono, that's produced by virus, Epstein-Barr virus. The recovery from

mono sometimes takes months. I mean, it's just, it's a long, it's a long mono, if you will. So this is, that's not unique. The question is how frequent is it with COVID? And the answer to that, you have to look at studies that actually have control groups. So there's some studies that from early on where they measured the long COVID rate said where long COVID is like a, one of like 12 different mishmash of symptoms. Are you tired? Are you depressed? You know, that kind of thing. The only ones that are specific to COVID is if you've lost your sense of smell and taste. So when the early studies said like 30% people at three months,

the thing is when they went back and checked, it turned out that many of those people had never had COVID. They just thought they had, and when they looked, they couldn't find evidence that they had COVID. So now there have been a series of studies that have had a control group where they compare people who've had COVID versus who didn't have COVID and look over the three months. And for children, the rate of those long COVID symptoms is about 5% in both the treatment and control group. Treatment meaning the

COVID group and the non-COVID group. In adults, it's a little higher, and there's a difference, but it's higher on the order of 7%, 8%, 9% versus 6%, 7%. So there is long covid um there is long covid but it's not um but it's not uh at near anywhere near the rate that we're talking about the other thing is like how do mass prevent it the mass don't prevent you from getting covid we don't actually have a technology to prevent you from getting covid unless unless you want to hide in your cave forever which case that's pretty bad for your health long covid actually sounds like a scotch that i should try single malt i should try that's pretty bad for your health long covet actually sounds like a scotch that i should try single malt i should try that's true um so i'm just trying to get to like i'm i'm worried about my own summer okay i'm worried about what's going to happen here

do is there a sense i i think i know the answer the first part of the answer, but I don't know the second part. So is there a sense in the COVID community, the COVID brain trust community, that the widely, wildly divergent number here, a graph, you draw it on a graph, the number of infections and the number of hospitalization series, effective mortality rate, whatever you want to call it, these are now widely divergent. They always have been, but they're even more. effective tally rate whatever you want to call it is these are now widely diverged they always have been but they're even more there is no spike even a tiny little bump to match the spike in cases is there a sense in the scientific community or in your community or among your colleagues you know friend and foe that this is a sign that it's over um and do you think there's i mean this is a harder question is there is is that feeling echoed in the population in general do you know what i'm asking yeah i mean i think within the scientific community there's an increasing realization that we do not have a technology to stop the spread of covid that the covid is here to stay and we must figure out good ways to manage

it as opposed to pretend like we can eliminate it with these kinds of interventions that we've adopted over the last two years there are still members of the scientific community that believe the the the the that it's somehow these these interventions are are necessary or wise or something um and so there's still a fight but i think that that number is diminishing inside the scientific community pretty rapidly um and whereas there's the set of people who are, who want to essentially like turn COVID into something, a disease that we manage, we research, think about, continue to protect the vulnerable

because there still are some. You know, I think there are still folks who are older who haven't been vaccinated, especially not just in the US, but around the world, right? So those kinds of priorities, I think, are really still quite important. So COVID is not gone. It will never be gone.

But the key point is one that you made, Robin, which I entirely agree with. The cases are not the thing to look at. The thing to look at is hospitalizations and deaths. And at this point, in most places in the world, certainly in the U.S., we're seeing a divergence between cases and hospitalizations and deaths. And at this point, in most places in the world, certainly in the U.S., we're seeing a divergence between cases and hospitalizations and deaths. In the past, you saw a rise in cases, and two weeks later, there's inevitably an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. That's not happening quite the same way now. Right. And so it feels like celebration. And instead, and maybe I'm overreacting, but I just have this horrible, horrible intuition just from walking around New York City and reading the newspaper that they're trying to get us back indoors.

They're trying. They're using the rising cases, which, of course, I agree with you. But four months ago, I was reading the New York Times on the front page front page hey you know the rise in cases is probably not the way what to look at three months later we have this amnesia where suddenly people are freaking out about the rise in case and by indoors you mean at home not bars and restaurants bars and restaurants bars and restaurants it's the killing pits exactly i mean are mean, you, you're much more, are you sensing that? Do we need to start like getting prepared for the pushback or is this just kind of like the last gasp of the, of the COVID crazies?

I think it's the last gasp. Although that doesn't mean they won't win, but at least temporarily. That's true. I think, I think like what I'm seeing again, I think so. I mean, it's a weird, this is a weird thing for someone like me to say, but it is, I think it's the end of the pandemic is a political question, not an epidemiological question. The end of the, and the question is how much risk are we willing to additional risk of willing

to put up with? And what you have is I think it's really a fight inside the democratic party. You see people like David Leonhard, who is a New York Times writer, saying, look, we have to manage the disease. He's actually been quite sensible. And you see Lena Wen, who was very much a panic monger on CNN, completely turn. And it's so clear to me that it's political in nature well to that point what the hell is going on in shanghai is this all g attempting to backstop this is covid zero policy it's insane what you see when you be when you look when you watch a video of people who have taken to their balconies to wail in the night at the at the deprivation and the isolation that's remarkable well j, it's the first order human rights catastrophe. They're separating children from parents. Killing pets. They're killing dogs and cats.

They're starving people. They can't order food. They can't go out at all. They found they can order birthday cakes, though. They can't get the staples, but they found that if they order a birthday cake, it'll show up because they have lots of those until somebody figured out the birthday cake. And they take them off to these facilities, which seem like ideal places to have a mass transmission of the virus. Because everyone's walking around and coughing everywhere. There doesn't appear to be fans or great ventilation.

It's insane. But then, I mean, when you see something like this on Twitter, you will always have a contingent of people who say, well, if we'd done that at the start, we wouldn't have had the problem that we had. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is that the Shanghai experience has essentially embarrassed the zero COVID people. I think zero COVID at this point is a dirty word. If that's what they wanted... Is it really, though? I mean, I know people here, normal people, who are like, well, people are still getting sick. We've got to stamp this out. We have to stamp it out.

How do we change that? Rob, I think it's not... It's the Democratic... It's the political fight inside the Democratic Party that is really, and you all know better than me about those kinds of fights. But it seems to me from the outside that there's one faction, the Lena Wins and David

Lainhearts, that are saying very sensible things. And then on the other hand, you still have a few diehards who won't let go, who look at the facts and can't interpret the, can't embrace the idea, cannot accept the idea that we don't have a technology to get rid of this disease. 80% of white-tailed deer have antibodies in September 2021. I mean, I just, there's dogs and cats. Once you accept that reality, then the next question is what to do. Like, well, we now treat it like we treat other diseases.

We invest in technology to improve the treatment of it. We invest in better vaccines. We protect the vulnerable. That's how you manage disease. You don't turn it into the central principle of your life to do something that's impossible to do. But you become, but people become so obsessed by it that they won't let their kids watch bambi because the white-tailed deer in that movie will make them think of because because because covet has come to dominate and restructure and rewires rewire

people's social brains it's the damnedest thing i mean we're finally getting back to the office where i am now a couple of days a week and it's marvelous people are around but a couple of people are still got they you know have the alien face hugger N95 strapped to their face because lord knows what might happen look we gotta let you go and we could talk forever about this but we don't want to have a nine hour podcast again I mean we'd like to

I would I could have an hour can I before you say can I ask you one I know this is one question and it's you know I'm hoping to do a longer version of this with you at some point um did we learn anything new here's my premise my premise is that if we had simply behaved like covid was a virus using all of the knowledge and information we had about generic viruses in october 1919 so state of of play, October, 1919, everything we know,

we had simply executed upon that information and no other information, not about what we think the public would do or have public, no focus groups, no trying to massage, just here's what we know about viruses and how they spread. Here's what this means. It would have been very different, right? It wasn't that we learned more. It's that we forgot.

Yeah, we basically abandoned a century of knowledge on how to manage pandemics. I mean, if there's anything genuinely new is this idea that we could, in a year, develop and disseminate an effective vaccine for a new virus. That is amazing, actually. That's a new thing that we did. But we got the key lesson that we don't actually... Society is a complicated thing.

It's a very complicated network of connections. The idea that we could manage it so that we force people into a cave until the virus goes away we knew that that wasn't possible we knew that wouldn't happen right yeah it was the is the easy thing it was the easy thing to do to make it look like we were doing something and it took on a self perpetuating one other really important fact about this is if if zoom didn't exist we wouldn't have

had the lockdown that That's right. It's basically like 30% of the American population. That's so true. That's the most depressing thing I'm going to hear all day. Right. In 1919, all business consisted of carrier pigeons and telegraph messages and shadow lamp pictures that people used. You're right. Zoom.

Thank you, China, for that program. But thank you, Stanford, for Dr. J. It's been a pleasure as always. And like I say, we could go on for nine hours about this because you know, they say, you may be done with COVID, but COVID isn't done with you. Well, no, I'm done with COVID. Come at me, bro. Thank

you, Doc. Thank you. Pleasure as always. Thank you, Jay. See you soon. The great thing about being around the office, of course, is that we are maskless for most of us. And some people, you wonder if they're wearing the mask because they haven't been brushing and flossing. And that's why they don't. That's such a complicated, difficult thing to do. Oh, absolutely not.

Now that we're face-to-face again, of course, dental routine is good. Going to the shops, et cetera. What were you saying, Rob? I'm sorry. Just all the things you have to do and go to the store and you're're not doing it right etc etc and it's exhausting it's a real generic ad spoil yeah but i'm i was scrolling to try to link screw link screw you know you have no idea exactly actually that isn't even true i do that's not what do i not know i think i do know right but i thought it would have been a little bit more tailored than that a little bit more

effort there's a low effort spoiler. Here's what I was going to do. I was going to say, boy, you know, all that talk about our COVID response left a bad taste in my mouth, James. But I guess there's nothing you can do about that. But, you know, that's your

job. I was just interrupting. That's my job. The thing is, you can get a good taste in your mouth after you've been brushing. It doesn't mean you brush correctly, though. No, no, no. You have to know what to do. Good health starts with good habits, and Quip makes those habits easy by delivering all the oral care essentials you need to care for your mouth. The Quip electric toothbrush is loved by over 7 million mouths, and I'm one of them. It has, shall we begin, a timed sonic vibration system with 30-second pulses to guide a dentist-recommended two-minute clean, a lightweight, sleek design for adults and kids with no wires or bulky charges to wear you down, a multi-use travel cover that doubles as a mirror mount for less clutter in your bathroom,

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to bring up first before we we close i would okay let me bring this up because i want to i want to make sure i say it the proper way besides besides listening to andrew gutman's um podcast which is fantastic uh no if you are listening to this on may 14th that's saturday 3 p.m in new york city at a place called city vineyard which is gorgeous it's like it's right on the river it's right on hudson river uh if it's a nice day we'll all be outside we are going to do a uh ricochet new york city pub crawl next month with a group called america's future they were sort of um connecting with them a lot of ways. The it'll be at city vineyard,

which is two, three, three West street, New York, New York, but that's not really going to help you. It's on the Hudson river park down kind of close to financial district, but easy to find easy to get to Saturday,

May 14, 3 PM. Come I'll be there. I'm going to get some other people here. If James is in town, he's going to come i'm considering actually what i almost went you should start to make reservations when it was the 30th which i'm glad that i didn't i'm glad you didn't yeah we had to move it but but it

is the 14th that's set so please come and i'm going to see if i can get some other people there um and we're not gonna we're not doing anything we're just hanging out and uh that is well as you could tell from my conversation with dr j i i think we all need to do that as a political act. From pub to pub to pub, the pub crawl implies a variety of destinations. Yeah, a variety of destinations. We'll either gather people or we'll lose people as we move. I suspect that depending on whichever hearty souls want to continue, we'll continue until the last dog dies, as they say. But to come and to enjoy it you gotta be a member so please join ricochet right now we're offering 50 off our

annual membership just go to ricochet.com slash special and use the coupon code future future that's based because we're doing this in partnership with america's future at the checkout you get the discount as well as a free pass to this event. And I would love to see. Like, I think we've got to do more of this. I want to do it. I really do. And I'm curious to see how you'll be able to tell whether or not people are Ricochet members.

We're going to have, you know, incredibly, incredibly intimidating security walking around. I mean, look. Yeah. You're on your honor. I mean, please don't i mean join i mean if you're come on right so before we go then last thing of import the war um i want to say how do you think it's going rob but you're probably like me you read a lot of stuff you have the illusion of knowledge which may be true it may be better than utter ignorance um but we don't know fog war all that but it seems to be that there's a that that russia is is minus one ship minus one slava class i believe which they have three and this is a big

deal um a very big deal it would seem to me that's a hard i mean i was looking at this and saying you know what who knows they could have just steamed away they could have been having a cookout in the deck and somebody saw the smoke i don't know i'd like to think i keep telling myself not to jump to what i would like to think you know trust but verify but then the you know yeah itself says yes there was an incident so that pretty much tells me that, yeah, what we were hearing before about the U.S. training, probing, figuring out how to send a drone over there and get their attention while they knock them. There seems entirely likely. So when Moscow itself has admitted this, it seems to be the sort of thing that you can't domestically give away. You can't domestically wave away arresting a whole bunch of FSB guys

and saying that there are wreckers at home. I know. God, can you imagine how terrifying it would be? But it's like a movie, right? It felt like a movie. When I read the account of that, all these FSB guys, basically the...

The Ukraine advisors. Yeah. Suddenly, they're rounded up. One of the lead guys in prison like a really bad prison i don't think there are any good prisons in russia but whatever it's the it's the love one yeah it's yeah so this is the scary one not the lube but the love yeah um it i mean i guess i would say that this is, you know, not to sort of rehearse past conversations on this podcast, but when the metric for performance is your adherence to either an ideology or to an autocratic leader, that can work in a lot of endeavors. endeavors it can't work when you need to have um performance in important places like the battlefield for for for lack of a better term well there's the old line about but financial crashes when the crashes when the tide goes out you see who's been swimming naked right in this case when the tide goes out you see who is wearing a gilded speedo that they bought in paris that

they you you know that they purchased with the money that they siphoned off from the state. If this exposes the weakness that the corruption has done in every single sector, it's fascinating. 2019, from what I was reading, there was some trials and arrests because some guys who were supposed to be doing the very things that protect the ships, they gave a billion rubles to protect the Slava class i believe you fix the signals fix the intercepting i'm you all this technical stuff i'm really getting technically here you know what i mean and 700 billion 700 million of it was siphoned off into private pockets leaving 300 million for this well if the end result is your ship is unable to deal with a

neptune streak in three feet above the water then there's this but it's with a communication system with the tires with the you know the lack of palletized munition i mean all of these things that we've learned are all a result of a completely inert civilization and society that has just been mired in its own corruption complacency and fear for however many years and this is the result but then again that's sure you propaganda go on can i can i try a theory on you and the suit premise here is this is that um actually you know in in america the incredible left-wing bias creates create in the media creates this bubble and if you're in this bubble you don't notice it

and it actually is harmful and damaging to put to politicians and leaders who are trying to run and get people who are outside of the bubble to vote for them so it hurts democrats because they watch msnbc and cnn read new york times and they think that's what the world is like and then they forget that they kind of lose a whole part of america of of all ethnicities of all races and creeds who kind of live in more of a real world right um i read yesterday somebody said it's a very interesting thing was me josh barrow or maybe maybe it's matt neglesius who's like was a big lefty for a long time and it's kind of nice to see him moving to the center and he said look the uh but student loan, either student loan cancellation.

He said, look, the number of people who are burdened by student loans in America of all ages is much, much smaller than the number of people who have zero. The number of people who have zero student loans is much, much higher of all demographics. But if you read the liberal papers and liberal media you would have a very opposite perspective people who don't have student loans tend to think that people who do have student loans should pay back their student loans and they sort of accurately assess that the people who do have student loans are doing pretty well they have student loans because they're doctors lawyers something like that, which is true. But if you only read the,

only on MSNBC or the progressive sort of Twitters or progressive papers, you think this is a big universally supported notion that student loans should be canceled. So you go around the country talking about how student loans should be canceled. And you wonder why each time you do that, you get farther and farther away from reaching a majority of Americans. So, I'm sorry, so long-winded, but liberal media hurts Democrats. diet of you know authoritarian pro-putin propaganda which uh continually says the west is weak and decadent and disunified and easily pushed around and they don't really stand up for anything and as far as he's concerned the world's going to nod and shrug and let him take over

ukraine that europe is not going to, that the prime minister of Austria is going to be in his pocket. And he finds that because he's been reading, he's been in a bubble, a media bubble. He's got it all wrong. That's not my theory. My theory is bubbles tend to hurt the people inside them

more than the people on the outside. I agree. Now I say that it sounds like a complete tautology, but I think it's true. The thing of it is, if we go back five, six weeks or so, and if Putin had just said that he is marching to Kiev to cancel all the student loans, this would have been an entirely different operation. It would have been viewed by the press in a much, much different way. Hey, this podcast was brought to you by Policy Genius, by ExpressVPN, and by Quip.

Please support them for supporting us. And you can join Ricochet today and buy all those great things in life. It's better. And also, you can go to Apple, the podcast thing. Give us five stars. Give us a great review. We wouldn't mind that at all. We'd love it, as a matter of fact.

And join because we hope to see you in New York. Really? I'm thinking again. Yeah, you should come. Yeah's do it it's been a while the last time i tried to make reservations i was thinking about this for april and i just looked at all the airports i could come into and i thought what a hassle it is to get from the airport into manhattan like no other city in the world from the airport to the city just is just anance. But you know what? Suck it up. Live with some stress. LA, you take the bus. Anyway, so there we go. Long podcast,

but good. Peter will be back next time, so it'll be even thicker. Longer. Oh, I'm saying it won't be longer, but there'll be more Peter, so it'll be thicker than the rest of it. And R.E.P. Gilbert Godfrey. That's it. So see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0.

Next week. Next week. You had to know You've been messing around With your boyfriend Maybe better left alone There's a wise guy That you know could fix you right And the life, boy, that I can find Doesn't wrap your heart Cause it's over and over

The five seats there with you And the long haul And the great war Is gonna split apart Bye. What we need is no education. We brought the school into a bad situation. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What's the power of design? I don't know. Education.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. talking about it later than I do cause life at the high school that's what school everybody's got bad reputation oh yeah oh yeah what we need

is no education go back to school it's a bad situation oh yeah oh yeah what you want is a good education Oh, yeah. Thank you. The boys are busy in the mirror Trying to imitate their heroes You make it with a false surrender

Or memories you won't remember The senior with the junior I wonder what the junior wishes You graduate too, don't you? You graduate too, right? Don't you, kid? Thank you. Education. Education. Education.

Education. Thank you.