The Ricochet Podcast - If It Pleads, It Leads

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

It's a milestone episode! Number Eight Hundred. That calls for a celebration. Not only does Ricochet co-founder Peter Robinson join to host, but our dear pal Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is able to take a moment away from running both the NIH and CDC to talk about the downfall of Anthony Fauci and his team's work to restore public trust in America's leading public health and scientific institutions. With the disarming humility we've always known him for, Dr. Jay explains what he found most striking about Fauci's journal entries and evastions before Congress. The gang then pivots to what must be done to prevent a bureaucrat from acquiring such dictatorial powers and taxpayers from having to fund their own pandemic. Plus, Robinson, Hayward and Lileks wish the DNC luck in staving off the DSA; they find in our techno-innovators things to be hopeful for despite a generation that knew not the Soviets; they have a friendly debate over the triviality of pop-culture; and they say farewell to a departed Ricochet member.Sound from this week's open: Senator Rand Paul questions Anthony Fauci before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.Closing Music: "Center of the Universe" by Markus Little, via MotionArrayBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ricochet-podcast--5817275/support.

Boys, all I can say is this had better be a very good show to top the pre-show chatter. Oh, you missed our discussion of the cavity magnetron, Peter. Oh, I did miss that. The gas station did blow up once, he said, as I was pouring hot water over the grounds. Just the loading dock. At any point between January 1st, 2014, and January 19th, 2025. Did you destroy any federal record or tell anyone else to?

Under the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Given that you have a unlimited presidential pardon, what is your specific objection that you are making? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. It's the Rickashay podcast. I'm James Lillick. Stephen Hayward is with us, and Peter Robinson is back, and we're all going to talk to our old friend Dr. Jay, Dr. Jay Botacharya. So let's have ourselves a podcast. My question was limited to the period of your pardon only. I find your objection unsupported and direct you to answer the question.

On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution. Because you refuse to answer, citing a privilege that is unsupported because of your pardon, and after being denied to do so, this committee has scheduled a vote next week on a resolution certifying your contempt. Welcome, everybody. It's the Rickashay podcast number, oh, I don't know, 800.

800 cast your eyes across the podcast landscape and find me somebody else who's been that high in numbers. Yes, we're very proud to be here for number 800. We intend to be here for nine and a thousand as well

and it's apt on this day that we have on this, you know, big, important number show. One of the founders, Peter Robinson joins us. And we've got Stephen Hayward, of course.

Note that I'm James Lylex here in Drisley, Edina, Minnesota. Welcome, gentlemen. Peter, welcome back. Thank you. A great pleasure to be here, although 800. Oh, my goodness. Could we roll back the odometer? Could we just say 80?

I remember once we did a panel with Dennis Prager and Pat Sejack and myself and Rob, and I believe you in Los Angeles somewhere. That was like number 200 or 250, and we were pat-and-a-and-the-back for that. Yes, that's right. And here we are at 800. We thought that was worth celebrating. here we are just crawling across the line to 800. Just casually shrugging our shoulders at this momentous number.

I think maybe the rest is history will probably lap us because they put out about 15 a week. But anyway, so here we are. Here we are. Glad to be here. Much to talk about. Let's go straight to it. One of the things that was popping along in politics this week was apparently the DNC is looking around and saying this DSA thing, contagion, is not good for us.

Channeling their inner Carville, who I can just sort of imagine somewhere in a trailer, house, splitting himself in two like Rumpel Stiltskin, fuming and spitting over what's being done to his party. But then again, of course, this is the natural result and outgrowth of their ideas, isn't it? The people who believe that the party somehow is still in 1992 and will always be in 1992 and should always be in 1992. Longman laughed with the people who want more, more, more progressive policies.

And so what we have is the DSA, which is people, I love the memes and say, please learn the difference between socialism and communism. Okay, well, I have, and I'm looking at what they're all about, and I say it's communism into hell with it. So, Peter, tell us what you think about the attempts by the DNC to separate themselves from a radical wing that seems to be taking over with purity tests here, there, and, oh, gosh, everywhere. The attempts of the Democratic Party to separate themselves from Mamdani and his like, good luck. Good luck. The money, the energy, and the interest of the press. AOC is just a better, more colorful, more vivid story.

Mamdani is just a better story than Chuck Schumer or Josh Shapiro will ever be. These people are going to remain front and center in the public eye. They will fascinate the press, and Democrats everywhere else are just going to have trouble with them. The midterms should have been shaping up as a catastrophic defeat for Republicans. You look at the generic battle, a ballot rather, the generic polling. The unnamed Democrat is now polling a number of points above the unnamed or generic Republican. That alone would indicate a wipeout for Republicans in the midterms. You look at President Trump's polling.

It's down into the 30s now. He's moving into George W. Bush territory. This war is unpopular. He's unpopular. People are sick of him. The Democratic enthusiasm is up over Republican enthusiasm. these markers suggest a blowout in the House of Representatives. And yet as you count it, as best I can tell, there are only roughly 20 seats in the House that are really truly at play. The Democrats would

need to win about 15 of them to retake control of the chamber. But the only prospect, the only real prospect is for a narrow Democratic victory. If they do take control of the chamber, it now looks as though it would be only by a few seats, probably single digits. But even that is now in doubt because of the socialists in the Democratic Party. That's the way it looks to me. Well, how does it look to Steve? Well, I was tempted to ask you, Peter, what's the bad news in all this for Republicans? Yes, yes.

All those markers are correct and normally, I think, probative. But I think we may be about to see for Democrats what happened to Republicans in 2010. Remember, that was the Tea Party year. Yes, yes, yes. For the Senate and some House races. Republicans nominated some real turkeys, and the Democrats are doing the same thing. So the latest numbers out of Michigan I saw this morning are that this El-Sayed guy who's very radical, what did he just say a few days ago?

He wants to put John Federman's head on a pike and on other people will fall in line. Gee, you wonder why people think Muslims might be violent. Never mind that. The latest polls show that if he wins and he's runaway favorite right now, Mike Rogers beats him by 10 points. If the conventional Democrat, the woman is named I now forget, if she's nominated, it's a dead even race. So you can see that in Michigan, a swinging state, it's a 10-point handicap as of right now to be one of these DSA crazy people. Excuse me, did you call Michigan a swing state or a swinging state?

Swingy, swingy. Oh, swingy. Oh, I see. I've been to Michigan a number of times. I've not noticed too much swinging going on. No, no, I don't. I don't put a pineapple on your hotel room door. Right.

right so i mean we'll see but i think uh what what what the democratic establishment such as it is needs to happen is they need for a lot of their candidates to lose uh the same way republic you know look we're 2010 was a mixed bag you got marco rubio that year who's really the breakout star of that class right ted cruz i think in texas that same year um against a conventional republican i remember the guy because i met him once david de courst who was lieutenant governor and he was Yes, yes. Right. That guy was awful. Oh, was he awful? Oh, yeah. He was completely awful. Some other time will tell you about

why he was awful. And so that was, you know, but on the other hand, you had, you know, Sharon right angle in Nevada, who was a terrible candidate and Christine O'Donnell and Delaware, remember some of these names from the past, and they were kind of nutty. And Republicans kicked away seats they could have won. Just as Democrats, I think, in Maine

still have a problem, I think. Michigan, they're going to flip that seat to Republicans. Republicans might gain in the Senate, and then we'll see about the House. Well, this is sort of the normal back and forth midterm stuff we always talk about. But presumably there's something new here because instead of just saying, oh, they got to lose because people are sick in one party and they want change, et cetera, that usual old tired trope. But what's different here is the nature of the change. I don't think we've seen anything that is ideologically as radical

as the DSA. And again, I'm not just saying because they're on the left, they're radical. I'm going by what they say themselves about what they wish to do. We're talking abolition constitutional structures. We're talking abolition of the Constitution for that matter. It's one of the things that stands in the way of the brave, new, wonderful, perfect world that they want. And nobody seems to worry about this because it's, oh, you know, it's the same. They'll get into power.

They'll moderate. I remember them saying that about somebody else with a funny little mustache. Yeah, exactly. Could I ask you to a question about the nature of history, the nature of transmitting lessons across generations, particularly in a democracy? See, here we are, we are old enough. I barely remember it, of course, but you two are old enough to remember easily the 1970s, and what a mess it was.

I'm a doy-eyed little pup here, but you withered, ancient, bent, stooped men may recall. Go on. Go on. So, and now here we go in Britain. I just did an interview yesterday for Uncommon Knowledge with Andrew Roberts, who is a little younger that, but still, Thatcher's victory in the 1980s, remaking

England and driving back socialism and England prospered. And now what do we have? We have a new prime minister Andy Burnham who just gave a speech the other day. Essentially, he didn't use the word socialism because that polls badly. But he called for all the old socialist aims, reassertion

of state power over the central means of production. Here in this country, you said the bad news, this really is bad news. for America. It's bad news for the Democrats, which makes me chortle, but it's bad news for America, which does not make me chortle. A third of Democrats under the age of X, whatever it is, 32, 33, 35. A third call themselves socialists. Now here is, here's the bit that's going to sound even more pompous than I usually am, but I'm going to read it because I just want to see what the

two of you do with this. Abraham Lincoln, his 1838 Lyceum address, He is responding to outbursts of mob violence, of lynching in the Midwest. He's 28 years old, and he is concerned about the death, the dying off of the revolutionary generation. When he was a boy, there were still soldiers around who had fought in the American Revolution. Now they're gone, and the people who remember them are dying off. At the close of that struggle, the revolution, nearly every adult male had been a participant, in some of its scenes. The consequence was that of those scenes in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or brother,

a living history, a living history is to be found in every family, but those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. What the invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done. They are gone. Are we destined to have to relearn the fundamental, histories, the fundamental lessons of history, every two generations,

a third of Americans, could never describe themselves as socialists if they had even the slightest knowledge of what took place early in our own lifetimes, of what we saw and experience. What do we do with this? Are we destined to a kind of eternal

return? I think so. Alas. But the 70s weren't... Next topic. But the 70s weren't consequence of socialism. The 70s were a consequence of a whole bunch of other stuff. Well, the Cold War, the Cold War was, the Cold War, I mean, the whole epoch involves the Cold War,

which of course, the Soviets. Right. Right, but communism, socialism in Britain? What's happening now in Britain? I mean, Burnham is going to be popular for a while because he's got a certain bloke's appeal. Unlike Kier-Starmar, who was just a cold fish and a weird duck, he's got that

that, you know, that Mank sort of charm to him. He likes the right bands, he'll hoist a pint but at the same time he'll be cheerfully endorsing all sorts of policies, which are the ruination of the very country that supposedly he loves. More taxes that will drive the pubs out of business. Nationalization of the rails, which is only going to make them worse.

I mean, right now I can pretty much count on being able to go from Liverpool Street Station up to Darsham on the hour, every hour. But some bean counter is going to look at that and say, no, we can cut, we can cut, because we have to pay increased salaries for the train guy, so it's only going to run twice a day. And Britons, I guarantee you, we'll put their heads down and grumble and just simply put up with it as they put up with everything else. As Charles will tell you, there doesn't seem to be anything left in the national character

to fight their own decline, only to mourn it and then move along and close the telegraph and turn on the television set. But I'll leave Stephen to the rest of it as to whether or not you think we're doomed to revisit. The answer to your question, Peter, is yes, we do have to revisit all that. And here I want to put a pin in something. And we might even make us a podcast or something together or maybe you'll have to have me on your show. Someday I want you and maybe Peter Thiel to sit down with me and explain Renee Gerard to me, because I don't quite get him. But in return, I'm going to finish making you understand Harry Jaffa, who we've talked about a few times. Why I would love to understand Harry Jaffa. Well, for one thing, you go find his chapter on Lysseum speech and

his great book, Crisis of the House Divided. But more important to this point is in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and we were celebrating the end of history and socialism has been vanquished forever, Jaffa wrote an essay where he said, oh, huge. mistake to think either thing is true. Things are about to get worse. And explain it in great to tell why. I'll skip over it, except his concluding paragraph was, understand that socialism has now been liberated from its association with a tyrannical foreign foe. So it's going to come back. It's going to come back in new and more dangerous forms. That was 1991. Within 15 years, we started seeing it all in spool with identity politics and all the rest of it. And now suddenly a generation

that knew not the 70s. What's the old King James line about the generation that knew not Joseph, right? We now have a generation that knew not the Soviet Union, which might as well be the crusades of the Middle Ages for people who are now 25 years old, right? And, and, you know, finally, I mean, Peter, I mean, you remember a guy, I think you knew him, who said freedom is only one generation away from being lost, right? Well, here we are. And fight we must. We're already retconning the past and saying that what happened in 2020 didn't really happen. And those people who think that it did are raving bad lunatics. No, 2020 happened. And one of the people who was at the center of it at the time is our next guest.

Our old friend Dr. Jay, Dr. Jay Batachari, the 18th director of the National Institutes of Health and the acting director of Centers for Disease, Control, and Prevention. He was the co-author of a declaration that wasn't just a good Barrington declaration. It was a great Barrington declaration. He wrote that in October 2020 that called for adjustments to the federal response to COVID-19 that in retrospect, look rather wise. But at the time, he was demonized and dragged through the mug that was one of those crazies

who wasn't buying the official wrote knowledge. so we're happy to have them on here. Dr. Jay, welcome. Hi, nice to be here. Okay, you know, when you first started showing up in the show, you know, you were just some wacko on the fringe. Now here you are to, you're in the center of it all. Now he's a wacko in power. Yeah. Power is a very strong word, Peter. So you've looked on this last week with the release of the Fauci Diaries and the testimony,

I'm sure, with interest and observations, conclusions, thoughts, on what you've heard over the last week? I mean, so yeah, I read the Faichi Dires with a lot of interest. I haven't got through all 1,100 pages. And that's just two years, I think, of his notes. I didn't even know where to start. So first, there were a lot of instances where Tony Fauci would record him, his private thoughts about various substantive items,

you know, should schools close, what's his role in, in, like, recommending COVID vaccines for children or whatever. where he, there's clear public record of him contradicting exactly the things he's telling himself in his diary. Right. So there are clips of him floating around where he's challenged about, well, did you, did you have a role in incidenting school closures? But no, I never ordered any school closures. Well, yeah, okay, you never order any school closures. But in the diary, it's very clear that he paid a pivotal role in pushing for school closures at times when it was up for grabs,

whether the schools should close or not in 2020 and so on, right? And there's this all through the diary, which are just, I mean, just it's dispiriting because like when you have that kind of power and the power that, Peter, you started with, to ask me a power, that he had tremendous power. Some of it was formal. He was the head of NIAD, the Nationalist Rivalogy Effects Disease. But that power enables him to decide what the research agenda of NIAD should be. But much more broadly than that, he had a sort of almost moral power that to persuade very large. of groups of people that had had actual formal power to decide what should happen to the country during the pandemic. And the way he used that power, it just, it just leaps out at you when you're

reading this was essentially, I mean, I don't have to characterize other than status to abuse of power, right? He abused that sort of more, more sort of like informal power that he knew he had as, you know, the advisor to seven presidents and so on, in ways that silenced opposition to his ideas. Overriding, even people, during the Biden administration, he effectively overrode the CDC director who was saying, well, look, the COVID vaccine doesn't seem to be stopping transmission. That would have then led to a whole range of things,

including, you know, it would be much more difficult to impose mandates on the basis of that, if that's a scientific point in the CDC. He essentially overrides that. He overrides a CDC director. So I'm now the NIH director, the NIA director works for me. And I'm trying to envision the NIA director essentially getting to tell the CDC director what to do. It was too much power on the hands of a single individual. And if you read the diary, it's very clear that it just went to his head.

Like it was like he was due to all the deference because he alone knew what science has said. And it led to tremendous damage to very large number of people across the country. I was depressed just reading it. Jay, the aspect of the diary entries that's getting all the publicity are his constant. I did all five Sunday shows this week. I'm the most famous man in America and so forth. But I have to admit, I was struck by the number of passages in which he is thinking like a scientist, like a deliberate. I went to this meeting today.

We discussed this and this and this. Eight of the ten people agreed that the source of the virus might have been a leak from the lab. Nine, nine. It was nine. It was nine. Nine, nine. So again and again, you do see this man. He is capable.

He continues to think like a scientist. And yet, then he goes out in public and behaves like, well, like a buffoon. Well, I don't even want to say that. What I'm trying to say is I was shocked about the diary entries. I sort of got used to the idea that he was crazy. He'd lost his mind about the press. He'd become a giddy about the press and stayed giddy for all this period. But what I found dispiriting was that there is still a scientist there.

He's still capable of reasoning properly. He just refuses to do it in public. Maddening. Am I reading that correctly? I mean, you know, I would have, I guess, some, like, quibbles about some of its scientific reasoning. But I agree with you. Like he's, he is a scientist and he can think like one. Obviously, I mean, the man, I, Peter, I remember of one of our, you dragged me into this whole business in 2020 with a, with a, with a conversation.

And you asked me point blank, I was very uncomfortable what I thought of Tony Fauci at the time. This was like in March of 2020. Yes, right from the get, right of the get go, our first recorded. I told you, and I still think this, that in many ways, I admired them. man is my entire career. Like he wrote the textbook of internal medicine. He was one of the major editors of textbook in internal medicine I studied from. He was, you know, during HIV, he played a pivotal role in making sure that the resources

were in place to like make big advances. I admired the man, but that no person deserves so much deference that you just say, yes, no matter what, that even Tony Fauci could be wrong, especially about a virus that's going around that's brand new, right? there's a lot more I know now today than I didn't know that I didn't know at the time but I think that my answer to you is still correct I think he there is something real there um the problem is like you know like in I I was that for whatever reason I was reading heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad I was trying to plug a hole in my and and you know you have in reading the diary I's like

getting this like idea of like we're going down river looking for for Kurtz and we keep hearing about the great man that he is and he's like you know in in In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, he's like figure out how to like exploit the ivory trade. And all of the natives have like come to worship him. And finally, Marlow goes down the river, finds him. And he's like a hollow shell of a man who dies in his presence saying the horror, the horror of. And, you know, I think there's some element of like the fame that Tony Fauci had had, it got into his, like gotten into it and it sort of transformed him.

And it comes across in the diary. It's just, I guess I'm just extremely sad because I think he is a very capable man. Now I have a vision of Martin Sheen talking to a swollen, obese Tony Fauci, sweating in some hut in a, he had Francis Ford Coppola movie. That'll stay with me all day. Only Jay could go from Tony Fauci to Joseph Conrad. But it's actually, that is a beautiful parallel. Jay, gain of function. Back in the news, because of Rand Paul's, Senator Paul's questioning of Fauci and

And this seems to be the point on which Paul is more insistent than any other. Gain of function research was taking place in the Wuhan lab. The United States of America was for reasons that I still don't quite understand funding some part of it. What, A, this is a two-part question, and this is a question for you as NIH director. What do we now know about the origin of COVID? How much is still speculation and how much do we know about whether the last, lab in Wuhan had anything to do with it. And two, honestly, because of the Tony Fauci hearing, your huge announcement of what you're doing at NIH to end gain of function came, I think,

48 hours before the Fauci here or 72 hours before the Fauci hearing, and it's received very little attention in the press because it got blotted out by Fauci. So I want to, just please tell us what you've done about gain of function. But start with Wuhan, if you would. What do we actually know. Okay, so I should say first that I believe, I'll tell you what I believe is true, and I'll tell you what's still controversial, where other people may disagree and what we can't yet know. I believe that what happened was that not just the U.S., but almost all of the world sort of research infrastructure, including the U.K., the Europeans, including in Germany, the in Germany and the Netherlands, work together in a sort of utopian paradigm to deploy very dangerous

scientific methods where the aim was to end all pandemics. The idea you go out into the wild, find viruses, bring them in the lab. And the reason you make them more dangerous is to experimentally is to see do these viruses in the wild, trillions of them, which of them are most likely to make the leap? To humans. And you have to do the, yeah. And then then you develop vaccines. and countermeasures in advance of that. That's the paradigm. There was a big fight in 2011 about whether this was a safe paradigm. What if there was a lab league?

The bunch of scientists came up, the Cambridge Working Group came up and said, look, this is a really dangerous. We shouldn't be doing this. Tony Fauci and Francis Collins, then the head of the NIH, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, I think 2011, that said with the headline, a flu risk worth taking. Because back then it was about flu viruses,

making those more dangerous, especially avian flu. And the question that the line that sort of stands out in my head, I'm sure I'm not quoting it verbatim right, because my memory's bad. But it's effectively said that even if this kind of research leads to a lab leak that causes a pandemic, the knowledge gain will have been worth it. They make that argument in 2011.

they essentially lose that argument. Obama puts in place in 2014 a pause on all dangerous gain of function work. But then Tony... In the United States. In the United States. Obviously. Right. So it goes.

But that that kind of work kind of still goes on. Nevertheless, Tony Fauci figures out a way around it. There are loopholes in the policy that get around it. What we did, and we meaning the federal government, and really it's president. President Trump that I want to give credit for, because he's the one that signed the executive order in May of 2025, directing the government to do this, to develop a strategy so that not only that we will not fund it gain function again, but that scientists funded by the United States and the cooperate, and that would cooperate with American funded scientists will never again have an incentive to do this

kind of work again. And with an independent sort of oversight where the NIH isn't grading its own homework, whoever other parts of the government are not grading their own homework, where the analogy for this policy is to think about Enrico Fermi, who was a great physicist in, and he's, he's, in 1942, he's sitting in the university, you know, in Chicago, and he launches the nuclear age by starting the first nuclear chain reaction on a squash court at the University of Chicago. A very dangerous thing to do potentially, right? Because what if that chain reaction doesn't end, It engulfs the entire world in flames. Before he does that experiment, he does a calculation.

And he's a great mathematician and a great physicist, and he calculates that there's zero risk, that this chain reaction will cause a worldwide, you know, turn the earth into a sun or something. Zero risk of that. And then he does the experiment. That's the structure we put in place in, and that was announced, you know, a couple days ago,

a few days ago, to make sure that every scientist, before they do any kind of biological work that might pose them catastrophic risk to human populations, they have to do that calculation. And if it's more than zero, they have to report it up the chain. And then an independent team will also do that calculation, decide if it is more than zero. And if it is more than zero probability of catastrophic harm to human populations, then they're not allowed to do that experiment.

It's just plain stops. It's just plain stops. And we don't fund it, even if it's taking place. in China or elsewhere. This is not just with regard to the United States. It's regard to think with regard to research we fund. And actually that's a that's another sort of a little overlooked and kind of overlooked aspect of the policy. It's even broader than that, Peter. The policy essentially is that the U.S. government will no longer fund our adversaries and companies and and people that are working with our adversaries. The State Department will

determine what they are. So it won't be the NIH deciding who. sort of what entities are our adversaries, but like the, that's, you know, we, the U.S. is now facing a tremendous challenge from the Chinese biomedical research enterprise. If you look at that enterprise, it's Americans that funded a large chunk of that enterprise. Almost every single biomedical research scientists of note in China has, did work in the United States or were funded in some part by the United States, not everybody, but a lot of it. We helped build the Chinese biomedical research enterprise. And there's a lot of bad actions where there's essentially like transfer of materials that shouldn't be transferred, IP rights that are violated.

And this new policy essentially says the U.S. is going to fund scientists, primarily Americans, but allies, but we're not going to fund our adversaries. Now, I'm sorry, but before, just Wuhan Lab and the origins of COVID. You've explained what you've done to end. Oh, yeah, sorry. So I should have finished. What do we now think about the virus in the first place? Yeah, I mean, so I think there's a raging scientific debate going on. In my view in that debate, I'm very clearly on one side.

I think that there's enough evidence from, but not just from the sort of the biology of the virus, but also from other related sort of lines of evidence. You know, for instance, there's a proposal that wasn't funded by the Defense Department, but was proposed by this EcoHealth Alliance group to essentially, they proposed an experiment that looks to me like if they had gone through with it, could have resulted in something like COVID becoming into existence. And the Wuhan lab that we know for a fact, there were people in the Wuhan lab that were conducting experiments that looked very much like things that might have led to COVID. Here's that way I put it. The U.S. and the rest of the world,

built the gun and the Chinese pulled the trigger. That's my view. Or did they drop the gun and it went off? That's the question as to what I mean. Oh, yeah, you're right. Your analogy is better, James. Everybody doing the, you know, this is all to release it so Bill Gates could put microchips in our bloodstream.

That's stuff. That's, the intentionality to this has never seemed likely to me. It just seems more likely with human beings that somebody, that there was an error. Yeah, but careful, James. You're going to give people a new argument for gun. control if you keep using indulges. So Dr. Jay, I have to say you and Peter are more charitable about Fauci than I'm inclined to be because I remember, I take your point about him in the 80s, trying to deploy resources quickly and effectively on AIDS. But he was also early on and a lot of,

I think, politicized claims that heterosexuals were just as greater risk of extracting AIDS as gay people in the bathhouses of San Francisco. And I formed a bad impression of him 40 years ago. Leave him aside for now. I think, I'm going to ask a big sweeping question. You may not have had time to think about because you're a busy guy. It seems to me that the scientific community in America and maybe the world, to the extent you can speak of it as a singular thing, is that a crisis moment?

Like Peter, I like long story arcs. And, you know, I think of the Sputnik moment. And the scientific community has had such prestige in America, really since after World War II. And I'm scratching my head thinking in vague terms, we need another Vannever Bush. somebody or some effort to come along and try and, you know, fix the, I think the fallen prestige of the scientific community. I mean, by the way, I think, and you don't need to come on this

at all, but I think that there's been collateral damage from the, I think, correct reaction to the mistakes of COVID on science and policy that's translated over to the whole climate science world that I've followed for my sins for 20 and 30 years. There has also been in force conformity and politically driven scientific findings and so forth. And an erosion of confidence in the research project at major universities as well. Exactly. Exactly. This is catastrophic for the whole enterprise.

Right. So that's my question, Jay. That's a big one. And if you want to punt, that's fine. But what do you think the scientific community needs to do to restore its reputation and correct from its errors? So, I should start by saying I agree with you about the diagnosis that there is, in fact, in my Senate confirmation hearing, I made reference to this crisis. But like, just to back off, that while I am critical of much of what happened during COVID and some of the leaders of the scientific community in the way they behaved, it's more important than ever that the scientific community, that we scientists actually deliver the promises that we've made to the American people, right? So just the agency that I lead, the NIH, the mission is research in biomedicine that extends

life and improves health. That's a great mission. And I think it's a mission that most of the scientific community that support of the NIH fully embraces. Like we have now, of cures for sickle cell anemia, for cystic fibrosis, for a whole range of conditions that I thought never in my lifetime would we have. And it's because of the sustained investments by and in sustained effort and brilliance of so many scientists working together to make discoveries that actually improve lives. I believe the vast majority of the scientific communities like that. Michael Kratzio is the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The president's main science advisor just wrote a fantastic new book, essentially calling for a golden age of science, an update essentially to Banner of Bush's Endless Frontier. And the theme is that we are in a Sputnik moment. We also have tremendous, because we face challenges for my adversaries, but we also have a tremendous opportunity, given the brilliance of the American scientific enterprise, to actually recommit science to the good of the public, to move past the pandemic.

I mean, it was such a sad thing to watch Tony Fauci in front of Congress, essentially saying he wasn't going to answer the, questions the American public has for him over and over and over and over again. But I kept thinking to myself. I was watching it. I didn't get to watch the whole thing, but like the part of the snippets of it, that he doesn't represent the NIH anymore. Right. We've turned the page from him. There's new leadership, a new desire to recommit the scientific enterprise for the good of the public. And we have a great story to tell over the last couple of years of how we've we have new leaders we have made a commitment to bring in new and

early career scientists we have we've committed to uh to removing ideology from our portfolio so no more DEI and instead take that the money and put it toward real science that advances health fundamental biological knowledge um that's a great story to tell it's not getting out there because of all the the nonsense politics but that's the reality Tony Fauci is not the leader of the NIH he was the facto leader, it seemed to me, from reading his diary, not just the NIH, but the entire, you know, CDC and huge chunks of the, all of the, yeah, but, but, but that's no longer the case. He's not, he's no longer, uh, in charge. And we're putting in structures so that there's oversight. So that kind of abuse can't happen again. And instead we can stay focused on things that would

actually work for the American people. Quick, uh, more specific follow up question to that big roundhouse I just gave you. Um, what else do you think Congress ought to do in a way of investigating or probing the matter. I think, by the way, that Rand Paul and Republicans made a mistake. Not a mistake. They overlooked an opportunity. I think they should have immunized Fauci for all of his testimony. Then he couldn't have taken the Fifth Amendment. He would have had to answer questions. And I think that kind of airing out is what we really need to have. What we got instead was that, I think, very embarrassing for Fauci. But anyway, is there something you think of the next steps that Congress ought to pursue in trying to illuminate the whole matter?

So, Steve, I'm not sure if it's Congress who should do this, but I wrote a very naive op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2021 calling for a COVID commission. Like an honest, you know, sort of. Truth and reconciliation commission. I have that written down on my notepad here is a name for it, Peter. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's like, you remember when the Challenger blew up? There was like, there was a congressional hearing. And, you know, Richard Feynman comes in with the cup of ice water.

and then he like sticks the O ring in and then shatters it, right? In a dramatic moment. And it was like, that's what caused it, right? And the issue there was like you had a community of people who really took their work seriously. Like they had an obligation to, like the American Space Mission was tremendously important. A huge tragedy just happened. It could very easily have tried to like fallen into this like, you know, defensive crouch. But instead you had this like embracing of the, of the opportunity to figure out what went wrong and then try to fix it.

We've not had that in the context of COVID. And the, it's just been, you know, it's just, it's hard to like, it's hard to, I mean, there's a lot of, like, reasons why we haven't had that. In part because, in part because I think the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, if we had a real reckoning with Vietnam yet. I mean, it's still, it's still, some of these things may take, may take time. The commission meets, the commission finals, their finalizes their decision and tells us that Lee R.V. Oswald is responsible for the COVID buyer, which people might, you know, people might, no matter what the government comes up with, people are going to say, well, you would say that. I don't believe you. I have no reason to trust you anymore, which leads to me to,

exit question here, unless Peter wants to leap in when I'm done. At the end of the end, Adromeda strain, a wonderful movie and book. They've, you know, the peril from out of space, the viral peril has mutated out of existence and no need to worry about it. But they're asking the guy who's testifying before the Senate, you know, what about the next time? That's what he said. Exactly.

What about the next time? And that's what I'm worried about. All of the tools that were, that they had to fight COVID have been delegitimized by the overreaction or what some people call an overreaction. Is anybody going to trust them the next time? Well, I mean, most of those tools turned out to be useful. list. Like closing schools were was harmful and didn't actually do much to

protect people from the virus. Masks. The cloth masks with the Paw Patrol cloth masks. I mean those those turned out to not be especially for the Paw Patrol. Actually if you had Paw Patrol. Especially no. Yeah. You're more likely had. Yeah. But I think

I think because we have a lot of great tools and we to but they're subtle and different than you think they are right. So the way that you can help make the population more resilient in the face of novel threats is by making the population more like just address the chronic disease crisis. Then when you have a novel threat, you're more physiologically capable of managing it, right? So, okay, I'll give you a couple

examples. I've had to deal with as acting CDC director, right? So the Andy's virus, Hanta virus crisis that happened, happened because there was a variant of that Hanta virus that had had a couple of outbreaks before, but it was a rare form of it. And so the tools we had to like deal with it weren't tailor made for it. But these were viruses that were known to infect human population. Same thing with the Ebola outbreak. It's a variant that was relatively rare. We have a vaccine for the more common form of Ebola, but not for this rare variant. If we focus our scientific attention rather than utopian projects to end all pandemics by making viruses more deadly, and instead focus our attention on pathogens that we know already pose risk to humans and focus on those,

then we have a chance of like actually improving outcomes for people. We shouldn't be doing these utopian things. We should instead be taking the legitimate brilliance of the scientists and focusing on problems that people actually have. And will it be perfect? No, but no world is perfect. Will it be, will it guarantee that there will no or ever be another pandemic? No. But, you know, we as conservatives know that those kind of utopian dreams never, very often lead a disaster, whereas figuring out way to muddle through with the things we have often produce much better results.

I think that's the sort of the right philosophy toward this. Jay, here's my last question. How are you doing? in your new life. I remember, well, you remember this. This is one week before you let me buy this suit. I know. I was, that's exactly. One week before Jay left for Washington, I stopped by his office. He had, he was wearing torn jeans. I said, Jay, did you fall on your bicycle? He said, yes. And I said, when? He said, oh, about three years ago. He was still wearing torn jeans from three years before. He owned two suits. One of them his mother had bought for him. By the way, I'm very sorry to hear of the loss of your mom, Jay.

one of them his mother had bought for him for debate in high school. So Jay and I got in a car and went off and bought three suits so he would have one for each day of the week. So Jay, this is an entirely new life for you. How are you doing? Other than my mom passing away, I'm doing okay. I mean, it's a very busy, very busy job, and it's a very different kind of challenges than I dealt with as a professor. And frankly, I do miss teaching students, but, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of good that can be done if you just build the coalitions people are doing, and you have

a North Star for what you're, what you're aiming at. I'm trying to do my best. I mean, it's not that I haven't made any mistakes, but I'm trying to figure out how to, how to, uh, my life will be a little better after, after the Senate votes for Erica Schwartz and confirms her as, uh, has the, as the, as the, as the, the, for the actual CDC director rather than the acting. Actually, uh, Peter, I have a really strange title. It's not actually acting CDC director. It's, uh, senior official acting in the capacity of CDC director. It's like, you know, assistant to the regional manager. Yeah, I mean, it's, it'll be, it'll be better that if I can just focus on just the NIH. Are you, are you enjoying yourself or is that the wrong way question to ask? Is there some

gratification in this? There's gratification. Enjoyment is the wrong word. I mean, I've not had, I watched, for instance, my friend Mehmet Oz, and he looks like he's having fun and everything he's doing. I can't say, I can't say I'm having fun. fun. But I do feel fulfilled. I mean, there's some good element of like I get, I don't know how, but somehow I got all the, all the work that I did before in many ways prepared me for this. And I do feel that. So, you know, again, I'm not, I'm not claiming I've done a perfect job, but very far from it. But it's been, it's been a very, you know, fulfilling to be able to, to be able to play

this role for the, for the time I've been able to play it. And we've been happy that you're there. And please that you've come back to the show. I know you're a busy guy. We really appreciate you taking time on for this. And we're glad that you're not having fun because, you know, the concept of some bureaucrat who's rubbing his hands because, oh, there's a wave of M-pox rolling out. Anthony Foucho was having fun. And he was having fun. And he had his tailored suits and the rest of it.

Now, we're happy with you at the helm. And we hope to speak to you at some point in the future. And we hope that it has nothing to do with anything that's happening other than, you know, what's going on and how you're doing. Because if we have to talk about something that's roiling through the body politic, disease wise. No. So good luck. And we're happy to have, happy to have you at the helm, Dr. Jane. Thanks, James. And thanks to you. Thanks, Peter. So good to talk all three you. You know, one of the things that I loved about the Fauci pieces was, you know,

the whole power thing. The, I did a column about this for National Review on Saturday coming up where he just casually says to the president that we should, we should cancel the all of garden unlimited. bread bowl and then watches the stock drop 50% and sort of rubs his hand and happiness over this I've never done this before what's next AMC they have sticky floors it's cold in there anyway so yeah that was that was interesting and he's a straight shooter it's what I like about the guy probably because he hasn't been you know steeped in government all his life and and a trained in bureaucratic obfuscation so anyway casting our eyes elsewhere on the landscape gentleman has

thing as any particular news story caught your eye made you shiver, shudder, scowl or something of the sort or amused you in that, in that, you know, distant way that we on the right sometimes have when we see folly on the left. It's like, so it shall always be. Peter, what is? Yeah, okay. Well, I'll tell you what I find striking in the last, I guess it's sort of a theme of life out here in Silicon Valley, although I'm the only one who, even I haven't talked to it.

It's just in my head that for a long, long time here in Silicon Valley, all the rich guys were on the wrong side. Now, some of them tried to play it as centrists that really didn't participate in politics, but some of them, Mark Zuckerberg, was clearly a man of the left, funded political campaigns on the left. And they were sort of internationalists instead of patriots, citizens of the world, which made sense.

There was a period in 2000. when I looked this up, I can't remember the years now, but in any event, Apple, Google, and Facebook now made meta, all began making more than half of their profits abroad. So you think, oh, let's make it. But what has happened since, Elon Musk is intensely patriotic. Mark Andresen, intensely patriotic. Mark Andreessen and I've become pretty good friends lately,

and he tells me that in his head, Now he's made billions. He's a central figure out here. He's an astonishing figure. In his head, he's still a boy from a farm town in Wisconsin. Peter Thiel, again, intense. You can go down the list. There's been this sea change in tech figures where they've become patriots.

And I'm just struck by this because it coincides with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. that declaration, that said of somehow, a quarter of a millennium later, there's something in that that still compels men who are building an, you could argue, are building an entirely new world. And I find that much very reassuring. Well, by patriots, of course, you mean Nazis. Well, I mean, Peter Thiel, immigrant. from Germany and of course, Musk is actually an African-American, but he came from South Africa,

because it doesn't count, right? But is Mark Andreson an immigrant, Peter? I don't know. I don't, I never met him. No, no, he grew up in Wisconsin. His family were not farmers, but he grew up in a small town I shouldn't, up in the north, I believe, it wasn't Appleton, but it was a town sort of that size, as I recall. Well, I'm still talking about, I'm sure you saw the interview that Ross Doutha did with him about more than a year ago now, the New York Times, where he said Silicon Valley is waking up. We've been blind to, you even say progressivism. He said, and I'm quoting from memory now. He said, I know a CEO of a major company. He said, I won't name it. I believe it's Mark Zuckerberg, by the way, and I can tell you why. He says, CEO told me that we're hiring all these young coders,

and we discovered that they actually want to destroy our companies. We can't fire them because we need all the coding talent, but it's created a crisis for it. So this has been part of, plus the, the Biden administration did and lots of other things, the censorship and so forth. But I think that the revolution has been taking place there in Silicon Valley. You're closer to it than I am, but I keep hearing whispers of things. But the discouraging thing,

we're running out of time, but did you, Peter, see the latest poll from Mark Baldessari? It shows Steve Hilton trailing two to one to Xavier Bacera. It shows huge majorities in favor of California's climate energy madness. It's very discourage. It seems to me that California is pretty much hopeless. And, you know, not even all Silicon Valley money may be enough to turn that around. I don't know.

Well, I was going into the weekend on a high, but Steve took care of that. Sorry, Peter. Maybe I'll just, let's see, it's not quite 10 o'clock out here. You can't say you've been drinking all day unless you start in the morning. Maybe I'd better have a whiskey right now. Good grief. Two to one. Yeah.

Two to one. Steve has run the best campaign. In fact, better than I'm not. He's done better than I. He's a friend. He lives nearby, and I've known, we've known each other for years and years, and he's done better than I imagined he could in running the campaign. He's gotten, uh,

you have an electorate that is, you have an electorate that is either the beneficiary of the largesse of the state, or you have people who as yet have not had their lifestyles affected by the confiscatory efforts of the state and can indulge in their election. Rebelief as long as they, want. And if they do see something that abrades their consciousness like homeless people or fentanyl people zoned out in the street, they can blame it on all the proper things, insufficient funding, capitalism, and all the rest of it and feel better about themselves for holding those opinions.

So when you have no middle, when the middle gets hollowed out, nobody can afford to live the California dream of a rambler house and a car and the rest of it. That's what you get. You either get the patrons of the state or you have the people who indulge it because it makes them feel better. That's a simplistic way of looking at it, but I don't think I'm particularly wrong. And of the figures I just named, David Sacks now lives in Texas. Elon Musk now lives in Texas. They've moved the residency to Texas. Peter Thiel has moved to Miami. Mark Andreessen is still here, and God bless him for that. But part of the reason, part of the trouble here, I once asked Pete Wilson, this was some years ago. I said, how did the Republican Party get defeated? And Pete said, no, no, no,

the Republican Party has never been defeated in California. It just moved out. Yeah. Yep, yep. And now we have Chicago, we have New York, we have the greatest cities in the country that are being, and Minneapolis, might I add, being ground down into a paste by the various elements that we wish we could do something about. But one feels powerless. Nevertheless, you know, I don't mean to end this like Winston Smith looking out the window with Julia and saying, oh, no, the proles. You know, that's a, that's a salvation. We have to look to them. There's always hope in this great country.

I keep saying there's a lot of ruin in a country as the saying goes, but there's also a lot of global. and potential impossibility, and I haven't given up yet. But California, I don't have particularly sympathy for what it's done to itself, and the same goes for New York. New York is, by the way, I just read this, is considering there's a law now being under consideration that would force grocery stores to give a 10% discount to anybody who uses the self-checkout. Because you're doing the stores' labor for them, you must be compensated for your

unpaid labor. They're a socialist idea. I just think that's just a hilarious example of the things that they come up with. Grocery stores have to be. We already have margins of about 0.5%. It's not enough that they have to compete with Mondami's state-funded 30% cheaper enterprises in New York City. They're going to be required to give 10% off the people because they bagged their own groceries. It's insane.

And did you see that just the other day, Momdomy's administration published a list. Right. Excuse me. I think that it has to be a database because it's 970. 70,000 dwellings in New York. Right. That may be subjected to the out-of-town tax. So they put up a list of almost all the private dwellings in New York.

I read somewhere that it's 85% of the non-rental dwellings in New York. They're naming names and posting addresses. And boy, I feel the chill of Bolshevism of class warfare. I mean, that's serious. Isn't it? Doesn't it feel somehow? how that crosses a line of some kind. Well, I think the fact that the type of...

That they call these people Koolocks and Rekers may have given away the game. Gentlemen, before we go, we have to say goodbye to Percival. If you're a friend of the Rikoshae podcast and the Rikerset site, you know that one of the most prolific, I think, 71,000 comments or something like that, was Percival, and Percival died, passed away. And we just wanted to say, you know, had been with us since 2011, listen to the podcast, would come to the... live stream recordings of the show.

And he had this great night from a hospital, a hospital-lis-night night with a nice crusadey vibe. And we'll miss that avatar. But more than that, we'll miss the jokes, the width, the ability, what he brought to the site. His record shay profile, by the way, read like this, quote, I'm a real-time embedded software engineer originally from the People's Democratic Republic of Illinois.

If you came back here because I wrote something that was out of line, please know that you are probably taking it more seriously than I did unless I specifically called you a duty head in which case. It's on. He got ricochet. He got it right down to the, right down to the poems. So if you go to the main feed, you will find some send-offs. And when you do, you will realize exactly what sort of community ricochet is. And I'm not going to, I don't know if Percival would like, if I made a membership pitch here. I don't know what brother Rob would say theologically about such a thing.

So I won't accept to say he was a perfect example of what Rickachet is and was and will be. And so we will all miss Percival. Last thing is that Stephen Hayward has done the Charles CW Cook Challenge. And if you're watching this on the live stream, he has placed two album covers.

Apparently half the distance of a football field away and he's asking me to figure out what they are. And I'm here to tell you that I don't know, but I'm going to guess. The one on the right looks me to be, it looks like Steve Jobs, who's has got his fist on his chin.

And I thought, well, that's not likely. I think it unlikely that Stephen has solo crooning guys. So it's probably not a singer. The only thing I think of is it looks like it could be a Steve Hackett album cover. Is it? It's not. No, you know, a logical guess, but it's actually Lowell George. So it is actually a singer, right?

From, you know, who died a long time ago, but it's still very much worth listening to. And to the left, George? I thought he was a prime minister. No, no, no. To Lowell, George. He was the front man for little feet in its glory days. And to the left, I can't... Little feet.

God, Peter. Little feet. I know. Oh, dear. I know. And I'm probably going to go... I'm going to be a strikeout here and with completely the one. To the left, the only thing I can think of is David and David with Welcome to the Boomtown.

No, it's sparks. It's their album, Mad. Oh, God. Well, sparks. There you go. Okay. So no more. I've never heard of any.

Sparks. I've never even heard of Sparks. Sparks with two. Lloyd George I have heard of. Lloyd George, but no, please. Yes, Lloyd George with Gladstone on Bongoes. How do the two of you who know so much, you know so much history and politics and how do you have time to fill your heads with good things when you spend so much time filling it with nonsense? You know, it's very interesting. There was the show about the assassination of Zaschen. assassination of Garfield by Guteau.

Garfield, right? And the theme music was... President of Garfield, not the cat. No, no. Although we could wish. The theme was, I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you. And they had changed the lyrics very slightly to accommodate the era. And I was showing my wife at the time, my ex-wife now, how they did this. And I was pointing out this old Louis prima tune where he said, I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you. You come and hear, you take my lasagna.

and the version that Louis Armstrong, or that Cab Calloway did, was you come in here and you eat my fried chicken. And how each of these artists throughout the era had changed it according to the ethnicity and the recipe and the rest of it. And that's why I found it interesting that they were using this tune, which was anachronistically because it wasn't around during the Garfield. And she looked at me and she said, how do you know this? Yes, yes.

And she was irritated by it. And I couldn't explain. It's just like, well, you just, you do. You just absorb, you know, like, you know, You know, like those things that you put in a wet room that pick up the excess moisture. I mean, you're just kind of like that. You either have got parts of your brain open to the various frequencies with culture running around you or you're not. And she used it as proof, of course, that I didn't have, you know, wasn't doing anything.

And hence, you know, was wasting all my time researching Cab Callaway lyrics. So, Peter, look, it's like when you hear the old Doors record where he says, no time to wallow in the mire. I always insist you make time to wallow in the mire. A firm grasp of popular culture is necessary to function. I don't know how you function, Peter. It's being awesome. Plain people who say, don't quite, but all right. Well, here's the thing, Peter, and this is where Stephen and I have it over you,

is that you may suspect that pop culture is worse, his music is worse today. We know that it is because we have the empirical backing and knowledge set to be able to look at what's going on today and say, no, it is insuperior for a variety of reasons. So there's that. But, you know, if you ever want to, you know, some help on these pop culture matters, we're here to assist. But, of course, I have my own big, glaring blind spots.

I see never seen an episode of Game of Thrones. Never care to. Never watched an episode of Breaking Bad. I don't want to hang around with these people. Never will. So everyone has their gaps. So don't know. But better call Saul?

Which I hear is an absolutely fantastic show. And I love Bob Odenkirk. But again, it's like, do I have to, do I have to know anything about Breaking Bad? or can I watch this? Sometimes you're presented with like seven seasons of something, and it feels like your heart hardens and gets heavy because of the work required to come up to speed.

It's like, no, this is a brilliant television show. And people just like, I've got so many. I just can't. I can't. I'll tell you what I do watch, and I do advise this, and this is going to sound like the ultimate sort of old man YouTube thing. I watch an awful lot of television commercial, compilations from the 80s and the 90s.

Not because I want to sit there and say, I remember Sprite, but because they are fascinating examples of what the culture was. And compared to advertising today, you can see why kids look back and say, what a bright, colorful, wonderful, confident, happy,

sexy world it is. I mean, when I say sexy, I mean, you will see a commercial where you hear the sacks and you see the gauzy curtain stir and some woman comes out and she's dobbing something behind her ear and the man in a tuxedo and velvet envelopes or and it's for Dr. Scholl's footpants.

I mean, it's wonderful stuff. Of course, it's not what the culture was necessarily, but it's a strange, wonderful, perfected reflection of it. So, that's what I watch. Which on YouTube today. Some ads.

I remember Bosco syrup. Can I drop in just a little in the risk of doing some overtime and provoking Peter? If you remember back to 1983, the big run is text. Over time, it's untaxable now. If you go back to 1983 and you remember the ruckus over ABC running that TV movie the day after,

which was really an attack on right? And if you know the story, Peter, I think you were there by that point. I was in the White House. I remember David Gergen came in and called the speechwriters together. You've got to see this. You know, what you heard was is they screened it ahead of time.

We're very depressed seeing it. But then a couple people told me when it aired on TV, it didn't have the same heart of any effect. Why? Because, by the way, ABC had to give away ads because none of the advertisers wanted to pay rates even for the Super Bowl-sized audience. And they said was all the ads were these happy, you know, Pepperidge Farm remembers and, you know, Chevrolet for America. And all the ads went against the mood of the movie and interrupted it, right? Yes, yes, yes.

And I thought, so it was still very bad, a big controversy at the time. I thought this is to James's point, that the ads then were different and tell us something about that time. So the advert, that reminds me of a story. at a dinner with Bill Buckley, this is a thousand years ago, during the 80s, John Kenneth Galbraith was there, and he told the story. One of his first books was a history of the Depression called, and the title of the book was The Great Crash, the Great Crash. And soon after the book came out, he did what many authors do. Every time he saw a bookstore, he'd go in and look for his own book. He was at an airport waiting for his flight. He saw a bookstore. He went in for

was to look for the book. It wasn't there. And it had become a bestseller. It was everywhere else. So he went to the lady behind the counter and said, you don't seem to be selling a current bestseller, the great crash. And the lady said, oh, sir, we couldn't carry a title like that in an airport. James saw that coming. James saw that one coming. That's absolutely true. You know, and it may be, as Stephen was saying, because I remember where I was when I saw the day after I was at the production facility for the Minnesota Daily, and we watched it and we were all duly horrified and the rest of it, there was another movie that was made that was actually more effective, I thought, than the day after. The day after, it was, you know, on a grand scale, big thing,

multi-threaded, all these different personalities. There was a show called Special Report, which was supposedly a live broadcast of a terrorist incident in Charlottesville and Savannah, Georgia, I believe. It turned to... Is it there during the 80s? What was... Oh, yes, very much. And it was, we interrupt this program to bring you breaking news and then they went back to the cop show, but then it became apparent that this was a nuclear hostage incident by somebody who wanted to, by a professor and academic who wanted to get everybody revved up about nuclear war by blowing up a city.

And it's far more harrowing than the day after was. It's just on point. It's just drilling down. And it's played like, you know, are they going to storm it? Are they going to negotiate or the rest of it? It's played like a television show. two anchors, one of whom doing the Linda Ellarby model, and then the other guy doing the Eminence Greece, it's highly recommended.

But Peter, you're English friends. Next time you interview any of them, if they're of our generation, my generation, a little younger, perhaps, ask them about a movie called Threads, which was a UK end of the world, day after movie that traumatized entire generation of people. I mean, I'm listening to a British podcast, and they were talking about things that bothered them when they were a kid and I and I all I had to say to myself was threads and it was the next word that they said

it was it is the perhaps the worst of the mall it really is it's just unsparing and that also came that's also during the 80s yeah we're that was 80 84 and it's you know it's a docu drama but it's it's just it makes the day after

it just look like a speedy Gonzalez movie you know really so I mean they could have taken the day after and run it in reverse where a completely depopoe Littered world actually, you know, comes back to life as the missiles go in the silos, but they didn't. Anyway, we're past that now, aren't we? We have new things to worry about. One of which is, of course, whether or not you're going to subscribe to Rick-Rick-Sachey, the other of which is whether or not you're going to go and give us a five-star review. And you can solve all those things by going to Ricochet, seeing what it is and saying, where has this been all

my life? Why have I listened to 800 episodes of this podcast without once checking out the site? We forgive you. Join up. It's cheap, and you'll have access to a community you've been looking for all these years. Peter's been great to have you as well. Stephen, a pleasure next week. I have no idea what we'll do, but we'll be here for episode 801. That's all. See you in the comments at Rickochet 4.0. Bye-bye. A pleasure, boys. Take care. Conversation.