The Ricochet Podcast - Playing In Our Sandbox

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

The news cycle is shifting profoundly, and it seems to go from bad to worse. Since we’ve got no Rob Long to try to cheer us up this week, we’re thankful to have two wise men for guests: First up is Glenn Loury on the CRT epidemic, contrasting media coverage of Larry Elder versus troubled youths, and advise for the good life. ( Be sure to check out his podcast, The Glenn Show... Source

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Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. James, putty in your hands. That's me. Putty in your hands. I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident

that all men are created equal. Let me be clear. Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home. 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 Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex, and today we talk to Professor Glenn Lauer about the Glenn Show and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya about COVID. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. It is the Ricochet Podcast, episode number 559. How did we get this far? Well, thanks to people like you, as they say in public radio.

And you can be one of those people who makes Ricochet what it is by going to Ricochet.com, joining up, and you can be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. I'm James Lavix in Minneapolis, which is facing a ballot initiative on getting rid of the police and replacing them with something. And Peter Robinson is in California, where I assume that the recall election is dominating the news. We all know that Afghanistan seems to have fallen off the front page because of Ida and other things. And the administration is probably a little bit happy about that. How are you doing today, Peter?ad i'm fine i'm puzzled you are not in your accustomed tank top you're wearing a tie i i no this is my preferred mufti thank you i haven't worn a tank top since the picture was what i have

but yeah yes yes yes try to do all my life for 10 years. Because I had the audacity to actually wear something colorful on a cruise ship. I guess I should have worn a burlap sack around there in the Caribbean every day. Canary colored tank top. Eternally. Yes. Yeah. At least the camera didn't pan down to the canary colored Speedo. When I mentioned about Minneapolis and we're having a ballot initiative, our paper has been doing stories on who funds it.

Now, we all know, right, that the big... Wait, wait, wait. you're serious about that there's actually a ballot initiative in which the question before the public is should we or should we not abolish the minneapolis police department and replace it with the department of public safety which may or may not include some policing functions in like it also changes the language of the constitution so that there doesn't have to be a set ratio between the number of citizens and the number of police. It's a dream of the progressives entirely. And there have been constant court challenges going on to this day about the actual wording on the ballot because the people say it's not exactly clear what this does. It's not very clear.

Intentionally so, I think. What's interesting to me is that, as I said, the bugaboo, the bet noir on the left is always dark money, right? The money that flows in from these mysterious, unaccountable sources. of this 468 000 of that comes from moveon.org george which is the last last no oh no um you know which is the last time i checked is not exactly based here in minneapolis it's it's in kind of donations they say which means flyers and phone banks and the rest of it seems an awful lot of money for that sort of thing but half a million dollars 500 500,000 came from George Soros, from the Open Society, the minute this organization was founded. And the people on the city council who want, of course, to do this are members of an organization called, I think it's called Local Progress or something, which is also funded by Open Society. And the thing is, is when you say to people, look, Soros is pouring money into this, they look at you like a nut because they got, you know, an email from their grandma, re, re, re, re, re, George Soros' plan to destroy America. And if you mention this guy, it automatically discredits you because people think, oh, you followed into some strange conspiracy Fox News rabbit hole.

But it's not irrelevant the organization has been funding organizations and and uh the elections all over the country to replace prosecutors with people who say eh you know crime what is it socioeconomic problem let them out let them go they'll be better next time james if it has the effect here in minneapolis of of doing what they say it's going to do i despair so let me ask you a question or two out of sheer stark ignorance oh i'll answer it out of the same well you're a professional journalist journalism has been your career your entire life well you've done i've been i've been in journalism i wouldn't say that i necessarily i always reserve that term for the people who go and report you're not a

reporter you're not a reporter your opinion and color and we know that. Nevertheless, you've been a newspaper man. You've done other things, but you've been a newspaper man as well for throughout your career in one way or another throughout your career. Here's the question. Black Lives Matters, lockdown, riots that did a great deal of damage, riots, protests, I don't know what the word of choice is, that did a great deal of damage to your town of Minneapolis. At this moment, as this ballot initiative goes before the people, is it being fully

and genuinely covered? Is there enough between the Strib and the town radio stations and bloggers and the websites by the organizations on each side of it could a citizen who cares about this piece together what's actually happening yes okay all right i wouldn't say i wouldn't say local radio i'm not sure how much of a going concern that is anymore but i mean our paper today has a piece on this very question about the and they can't ignore it not saying that they would but they can't because you have actual lawsuits going on about the the ballot wording so if somebody wished yes to interrogate what this is about they could from the newspaper or powerline.blog or some other local bloggers

figure out what's going on but they shouldn't it shouldn't be so opaque is the point that I make. Right, right, right, right. Anyway, so I don't mention this because I live here and therefore the issue is of great importance. I think it's important on a national issue because the defund the police wave seemed to crest and fade away in the last X number of months as other things supplanted it. But here is an example of what happens when you have dedicated people who want

to do precisely that and change policing in Minneapolis for good. We just had our, you know, across the river in St. Paul. And again, this happens in other cities. This isn't just here. The St. Paul police chief said, you know, we're taking all of our traffic enforcement guys and we're putting them on 911 because we have too many calls to make. So consequently you have the streets in the last year have been more lawless than anything i've ever seen which really regarding the oh god it's it's gone from general you know i've always said that civilization depends on somebody sitting at a red light in a deserted small town at three

o'clock in the morning waiting for it to change that internal absorption of the rules and the idea that this is here for a reason. I'm not going to push through just because it's three o'clock in the morning. Right. It's now high noon with people disregarding stop signs and rolling wherever they are. You needn't worry about being pulled over for tabs or busted lights because that's had a disparate impact so they've gotten done away with that and consequently the streets

just feel jangly i there's more there's much more but i mean the oh yeah and we've we have intersections that are taken over by hot rodders who will sit there and peel out and do circles um you know for for an hour on end and the police do nothing about it the you know they're down 250 officers and they're responding to things out of a total force shooting people up roughly uh i can't remember i think it's um i'll get you the number in a bit but anyway so yes there's been a general feeling of that we're sort of on their own. Now, we had a carjacking just a block and a half away. And when the person who lived in the house called the city council person to complain about this, told my wife that she was lectured by the city council person, that this is happening all over the city. Why did she think it shouldn't happen here?

Wait a minute. Could I just, for listeners, i've been to your neighborhood you live in a really i'm not going to say your neighbors are billionaires but you live in a beautiful established older neighborhood you have their historic homes meaning a century and more older like your own home a car this is not as if you live on the on the fringe of of an urban dystopia no you live in a beautiful established neighborhood on the fringes of minneapolis a city settled by scandinavians and germans people of good order and a carjacking took place a block and a half from where you live yeah they they carjacked a housekeeper who was coming to do morning cleaning oh my god to get with the car they they shot at

her car as she drove away. And the city council person is right. Just because you live here doesn't mean you shouldn't have to. Someone discharged a firearm in your neighborhood? Yes. Yes, absolutely. But the person who complained to the city council person was dressed down essentially for being upset about it and saying that we need fundamental changes in our whole structure, that to focus on something like this is selfish and privilege. Consequently, every single neighbor and every lawn in the city now sprouts ads for the person who is running against him. So we'll see. We will see. And again, you know, when you look at Afghanistan, you look at other trouble spots in the world, you say, you you know but this is where i live and i

care deeply about it and i want it to thrive but let's look elsewhere let's as i mentioned afghanistan has fallen off the front page have you paid any attention to it or are you looking at ida new york and thinking oh climate change or oh bad infrastructure what me personally i have yeah what are you looking at this week well i have friends at colleagues i should say at the hoover institution i won't name names because they didn't know i was going to talk about this but i have colleagues at the hoover institution i'm thinking of a couple in particular there are a number of military and former military at the hoover institution and um in the past this is in the past three days i ran into a couple of them and both of them did exactly the same thing they pulled from i said how do you think about afghanistan what's what's

happening how could this have happened and instead of going into the strategy or here was the breakdown in the chain none of that each one separately two days apart they pulled out their iPhones and showed me a string of text messages in which they were struggling to get interpreters and other people who had cooperated with our effort over the years out of Afghanistan. And one happened, one of the military men that I'm discussing, they do happen both to be men, that I'm telling you about right now, happened to know someone who's an ambassador in a country in, let's just say, Southern Europe, and was able to arrange to get some Afghan people whose lives were in danger. Neither one had any doubt about that, and was able to arrange to get them to a country, not into this country, that's too hard to do, but through the goodaces of of diplomats into a country in southern europe that's the it's not

strategy it's something like it's something like you're talking about a carjacking a block and a half from where you lived i asked these guys what do you think about afghanistan expecting a comment or two on strategy and they pulled out iph said, look, I know these people. I'm struggling to get people to save people's lives. That's what they thought about Afghanistan. So it's beyond the level of oh, Biden should have done this and the military. No, it's if I'm in touch with people,

if I'm only a couple of degrees removed from the sheer human tragedy of the thing, there are millions of Americans who are only a couple of degrees removed. Are you worried that the administration now seems to be saying that we're going to use the Taliban as a partner, that we're going to work with them to get our citizens out and work with them to fight ISIS? Translation. Translation. ISIS-K. Right. Translation.

We intend to permit ourselves to be shaken down. Yeah. Exactly. We intend to buy a few more people out of the country. That's all that's going on. The whole thing is, it's beyond disgraceful. It really, Victor wrote a piece the other day, Victor Davis Hanson. And he said that there are a lot of Americans who really suddenly feel that the wheels are coming off the whole project that our safety that the fundamental

operations the the kinds of things we were talking about just a moment ago that in a in a beautiful neighborhood and the outskirts of minneapolis you see crime taking place just down the street that this country can't is failing to function. Um, there's, I do feel I talked to certain kinds of people. I have a certain kind of outlook, but again,

I believe that if I feel this, if I sense it in the air, a lot of people sense it in the air that there's a kind of new anxiety, which isn't, isn't, isn't even partisan. It's just an anxiety about the fundamental operational competence of the people who are running the country from the Minneapolis Police Department to the Joe Biden White House. Right. Now, we've been through this before. We remember when there was malaise in the 70s we remember when there was a general feeling america can't build

anything we can't do anything our sky labs fall out of the sky our economy isn't we just we weren't good at anything anymore but that's correct to be different than this i agree to be and i can't exactly say what was the origin of the feeling then, other than we just taken so many hits. Now it seems to be as if, and I've said this before, we have a managerial technocratic elite that is mulishly refusing to do what needs to be done because they are so locked into their own systems and their own beliefs that there's no room for self-recollection. There's no room for thinking there's a different way to do it. There's no enthusiasm. Take your business international. Enterprise Europe Network is

the world's largest network providing free support and advice to SMEs with global ambition. With over 450 partner organizations worldwide, we bring together unparalleled expertise to serve businesses like yours. We can help you discover partners in new markets, advance your digitization and gain valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. Enthusiasm for saying that we have to do this because that somehow implies a whole set of things that they're not allowed to believe about people, about human nature, about what needs to be done. It is better for them to continually say we will incrementally attempt to do something

about drug addicts living on the street and defecating in the corner. We'll show up once a week with shovels. We'll show up once month with hoses, as opposed to root and branch doing what people know can be done to make cities safe and to make economies work and to make schools prosper. Instead, there's something, it's like they've doubled and tripled down on the very thing that got us to this point. And we don't seem to be able to figure out. I couldn't agree. Yes, yes, yes. Actually, that is a very powerful insight, I believe.

You and I were both kids back in the 70s. But I do recall Jimmy Carter goes into office with one set of ideas, but he was an engineer. As reality begins to overwhelm that set of ideas, he gave a speech at Notre Dame early on talking, said, we're now free from the inordinate fear of communism. military operation that had taken place anywhere on earth since the second world war and jimmy carter gave an interview in which he said his view of communism had changed joe biden is not going to give an interview in which he says my view has changed he's just doubling down just as you said he's doubling down the feeling george meanie was still running the afl-cio and he had supported that they were open to supporting Republicans when it came right down. There was a kind of bipartisan, there was a sort of fumbling on the

Democratic side. How do we find our way out of this? And Reagan came along and sort of swamped them for the time being. But there was a kind of bipartisan recognition, things weren't working, we all need to figure this out people offer different solutions but biden pelosi no things are working just fine pass another 3.5 trillion in federal spending do this do that yank him out of afghanistan sure a few people die it's messy but no no no things are just fine not everything is delusional. It's delusional. But one of the things I have to say is that, you know, I have this little wonderful little post office in my neighborhood.

It sort of looks like an embassy from the JFK era. And everybody behind the counter is friendly and everything works. And when I go there, it's great, except sometimes there's a long line. And oftentimes there's the still social distance stickers. And there's still the masking and the rest of it. You know, we're getting back to normal. A lot of us, summer's showing a lot of welcoming signs of more normal life ahead. You can get back enjoying life's little pleasures, like smiling at your neighbor without a mask,

seeing a movie and going to that post office that I've described. Well, I like to, but there's a lot of times when I wish I didn't have to. Some normal parts of life like standing in line are not so great, but with stamps.com, you can skip those trips to the post office and save on postage to mail and ship anytime, anywhere from your computer, send letters, ship packages, and pay less, a lot less with discounted rates from USPS and UPS.

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sponsoring this the ricochet podcast now we welcome back to the podcast glenn lowry the merton p stolz professor of social sciences and professor of economics at brown professor lowry is published mainly in the areas of applied microeconomic theory game theory industrial organization natural resource economics and the economics of race and equality. He's got a podcast, The Glenn Show. Where's it going to be? The only place you need to go for your podcast, and that is the Ricochet Audio Network. It debuts now, and we thank you for joining the show. Tell our listeners about The Glenn Show. Oh, well, I'm just holding forth over there. I used to be at the blogging heads that tv platform robert

wright is the proprietor there and we both fancy ourselves trying to save the world i'm trying to save it from wokeness and he's trying to save it from zero-sum thinking where everybody competes themselves into a dead end but uh you know i'm uh i'm an economist uh with an interest in philosophy and politics and try to keep it at a high level interview people uh more or less across the spectrum but uh i have a ongoing conversation with john mcwarder the linguist at columbia uh who is is every other week a guest on the Glenn Show. And our beat is race. It's we call ourselves the woke busters because there's so much nonsense as we see it. And we try to try to dispel some of that. But that's a weekly show.

It's a weekly show. I just want to make sure. Weekly show. uh but that's it's a weekly show it's a weekly show weekly show so if you go to um uh apple or uh stitcher or any look or you can download it on ricochet.com it's a weekly show it's called the glenn show glenn i have a question i've never put this question to you your view is that the country is in all kinds of ways in serious trouble. And I have seen you get angry, and I have seen you, heard you become really passionate. But your fundamental mode of discourse and presentation, your default mode is cheerfulness.

Why is that? Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I don't know what to say to that, Peter, but except that thank you and gratitude, because that's how I would have myself to be received in that way um and uh my creative director he's a russian named nikita petrov who helps me produce the glenn show very talented young man uh has remarked to me in our conversation he says you just seem to be happy despite all of the madness you seem to be happy now i'm in my 70s but i i don't look at it and I don't feel it. I'm a widower who remarried four years ago to a wonderful woman who happens to be a Bernard Sanders supporter, a point of which I've made a lot of hay at The Glenn Show because it creates a kind of literary situation. You know, this is epic.

This is epic. This is right. But we're happy. So maybe I'm happy. I don't know. I'm not optimistic, Peter. I mean, you know, if I allow myself to dwell on where we are with riots in the streets and the trashing of what I think are fundamental values. I mean, people proud to denounce capitalism, people running around talking about America is a, you know, white supremacist, racist empire. I don't know. Miscreants who find themselves in trouble of their own making with law enforcement become heroes. They get state funerals and presidents speak to them at their bedside.

These are troubling things. People want to get rid of the test, as if the test of proficiency of someone was itself the enemy. The tail wags the dog here. I could go on. So I'm not exactly optimistic, but I'm trying to live each moment as fully as I can. The moment this happened, I thought of you, and now here we are talking, so I'm going to ask you about it. We're having a recall election here in California. Early voting has already begun. I've already cast my ballot.

The voting begins on September 14th. According to the polling, it's too close to, there are two questions on the ballot. Question number one is whether the current governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, should or should not be recalled. Yes, recall. No, don't recall. Question number two is if he is recalled, which of the following 45, and there are 45 names on the ballot, which of the following 45 people should succeed him? One of those 45 people, so on question number one, the polling indicates it's just too close to call.

It's up and down, and it's going to be very close. It'll all depend on actual turnout, and pollsters don't quite know how to poll turnout in recall elections because they happen so infrequently. But one point on which the polls are unanimous is that if the recall does go through, the very likely winner will be Larry Elder, who of all the 45 candidates is the only person who's polling in double digits. All right. Larry is a conservative. He's running as a republican he is also an african-american i don't know whether you know larry i'm sure you know i know of him i don't know in person all right and i don't know him well but he's on the air out here in california and we've we've had him on ricochet and i voted for larry i'm very happy to say I voted

for Larry. But I thought, what a wonderful thing that in this moment of Black Lives Matters, and we've had riots, here we have an African American man running for governor and looking as though he has a real chance to win and you know what happens the press has attacked him savagely and here's the black face of white supremacy that's exactly right the la times headline the la times the black face of white supremacy so what are we to you may have no i i don't know whether we haven't talked about this before, you may have noticed, I'm white. Yeah, I did notice. I was just talking to friends down in Pasadena, which is a pretty white place, and Orange County.

And they said I just had the most fun filling out a ballot that I've had in years because I voted for Larry Elder. Never even comes up in our conversation because he's conservative, because he has a chance to shake up the state. And the LA Times calls him the black face of white supremacy. What do we make of this? Well, they're playing the cards that they've got. And I think it's probably a good thing that they're forced into that particular corner because he could seriously win. And they're frantic to try to prevent that from happening. I think it's an outrage. I mean, first of all, suppose there were an African-American Democrat, let's call him Barack Hussein Obama, and somebody were to call him the black face of, name it, socialism, anti-Americanism or whatever it is, they would obviously be identified as a racist. What could be more racist?

I mean, I'm not a racism monger. I don't grind that ax often. But what could be more presumptively racist than to characterize a serious person who could end up being governor of the state? Governor of the biggest state in the union. In such a manner i mean and moreover it's those absolute contempt for the people who support him like you i mean who are you to vote for him then if indeed he is what they propose him to be you yahoo so so they they are simmering in their supercilious contempt for the people of California.

I hope he wins. Frankly, I don't have a vote. Yeah, but I hope he wins. It's a form of racial essentialism to say that because Larry Elder believes these things, these are things associated with whiteness, not just with whiteness, but with white supremacy. And ergo, these tax policies indicate that he's abrogated his authenticity in order to align himself with something that is contrary to his melanin concentration. It's nuts. But that's what we're getting when you mentioned the schools the other day, a little while ago, that the tests are being rejiggered around so that now proficiency need not be a reasonable standard for graduation. Let's game this out. How does this work down the line when you have schools that turn out all of these populations who cannot read and can't do math and have no history? We all know that there's going to be a parallel set of institutions that will train the next generation of managerial elites, right?

So how do the people who are attacking the schools today, what do they do to that to make that the equity machine that they want it to be? Or do they just have to sit back and wait for the people who run those institutions to go woke and destroy them themselves? Oh, James, that was a mouthful. I guess I think a couple of things. I think the Chinese are not waiting for us to sort out our various culture war things. They're actually mastering the skills that you need to have a 21st century economic dynamo run the world. We're not doing that. We're playing in our sandbox here. I think here's the thing. Too many of us are prepared to sacrifice the very institutions that allow us to be prosperous and free because some of us are not keeping up. I hate to be as blunt as this, but to the extent that the Blacks are failing,

some people would prefer to disavow the very standards that we have for measuring achievement rather than to acknowledge that the Blacks are failing. And I'm Black. It's nothing. Take your business international. Enterprise Europe Network is the world's largest network This is Nardic. valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit EEN-Ireland.com and take your business global today. Anti-Black statement that I'm making. So getting rid of the test is one of those things. Not enforcing the law is another one of those things. I don't know if you saw what came out of Chicago the other day, where people were attacked on North State Street, a mile from Rush Street and a mile from North Michigan Avenue, viciously by black kids who were just idly roaming around on the street in the tourist intensive entertainment part of the center of the city. and just cold cocking people, cars having to swerve around the white people, lying prone in the street, having been beaten into subconscious unconsciousness by black people. Now, again, I'm black. I'm not grinding a racial axe.

But how can America fail to notice? That cities like Chicago are unwilling to enforce the law against black people who are acting incivilly. Maybe that's why Larry Elder is on the verge of getting elected governor of California. Glenn, James and I were talking about this. You certainly don't look and you certainly don't behave like a man who's in his 70s, as you yourself said. But what your age means is that you're going to be in a good position to comment on this question. James and I were talking about it before you came on. We both remember back to the 70s when everything seemed to be going wrong.

And this country seemed almost to be doing its best to lose the Cold War. And then came a revival. in all kinds of ways. It was partly political, and I'm a Reagan guy, so of course I'm very happy to say that Ronald Reagan had something to do with it. But even take him out of the picture. There's an economic revival. There's a restoration of a kind of national sense of morale. There's an economic revival in which, incidentally,

African Americans benefited disproportionately. They did better on average than the rest of the population during that revival, made more gains. Okay. And so in some way, it seems as though it's the most important question in the world. What's it going to be for this country now are we stuck in a permanent 70s or do we still have the cultural and intellectual and even

spiritual resources for another revival another restoration gosh that's a good question uh peter and i you're honoring me even by asking as if i was having to answer to such a question i was there by the way in 1978 9 80 81 82 83 i remember that moment i mean i actually was a jack kemp uh jude waniski george gilder kind of uh conservative had been traded mit MIT, which is a, you know, mildly left of center, but very serious economic program. So I came predisposed to a kind of Keynesian, you know, kind of great society. But by the time I woke up in 1980, 81, 82, I was I was, you know, Jack Kemp was calling me his favorite economist because of the supply

side stuff in the social policy area and uh i was reading all these guys and they were mostly guys uh who were saying you know well what about the market i mean even arthur left i say even with respect with yes because uh you know they were glenn you and i were in the same circles in those days we i i can't remember whether we met but if we we must have been at some lunch to jude waniski and george yeah we i know what you're talking about yeah but that was only one part of it morning in america you know mr gorbachev tear down this wall and all of that that was you know you're you're you're right and i i don't know i don't know if uh that can be replicated we're so polarized and it's gotten so vicious. So I don't know.

I'm I'm I'm little to to just talk for the sake of talking because it puzzles me how we're going to get our ourselves back on track. Might the problem be that back in those days, at least you could feel a common devotion to the American experiment? I mean, I was a good liberal in college. I read the the new republic but the new republic was on the side of america charles crothammer and right it had people who believed it believed in the classical liberal project and now we have a side of the politics that is increasingly devoted to the idea that america is inherently corrupt and evil it's's very marrow, is illegitimate. And that so you can't stitch everybody together if one side of the debate believes that the country should not have, like Howard Zinn said, the world would be better off if we'd

never been founded. No, I think you're making a really interesting point, James. I know the Republicans. I used to write for them. I mean, I remember when Martin Peretz was the publisher there, when Leon Wieseltier was the literary editor. I remember when Fred Barnes would write for the New Republic and Charles Proudhammer would write for the New Republic. I wrote for the New Republic. And it was a left of center magazine.

So you're making a very interesting point. It's like, you know, I.F know if stones weekly is all of a sudden what the New Republic used to be and no I have another question because I I've no I've been thinking I this is this is the show that you and I are going to do when you get out here to Hoover I'm going to put you on my show but I've been thinking I've been thinking more and more of a story that I'm about to tell and I've been, I just want to interview some people whom I consider wise, not about this or that specific subject, but just ask them questions about this moment in history, because I

consider them wise. And you're on the list, baby. Oh, thank you. So here's the story. Back in the this is the late 70 70s when things were looking bad. Somebody visited my college campus. I went to Dartmouth. I know at Brown, you may not care to hear the word Dartmouth uttered, but the rivalry between those two institutions is of long lasting. Malcolm Muggeridge, the great British journalist, now long dead, but Malcolm Muggeridge visited. And again, it was the 70s. Margaret Thatcher hadn't even appeared.

And he said that he felt he was in the position of St. Augustine and other Romans. But St. Augustine is the figure he used because there's Augustine in North Africa looking across the Mediterranean in 410, if I recall, and Rome is sacked for the first time. So the civilization in which Augustine is raised and trained and that he loves is falling. And yet he comes down to us in history as St. Augustine, because even in that moment in history, he lived a good life. Things don't have to go well for individuals to lead good lives. So the question is, what does Glenn Lowry say to his students at Brown? Of course, you being you, you're one of the few who would keep politics out of the classroom. But during office hours or over a beer, when students ask in one way or another, at that age, the bright students are always asking the same question,

how do I lead a good life? How do I lead a meaningful life? And Professor Lowry says what? Well, I love teaching. And you're making me think about some of my students. You're making me think about Philip Trammell, who is now doing a PhD in economics at Oxford, but who, when I met him, was a freshman here at Brown. This would have been eight years ago or so. And you're making me think about David Sachs, who I just finished teaching a great books-oriented course on free speech. We start with Plato's Apology of Socrates, and we get to Milton, the Areopagitica, his invective against the licensing of books. And John Stuart Mill, we spend a lot of time in the 20th century, we read Orwell and Havel and Alan Bloom, you know. But this kid, who is a classical piano virtuoso

and a student of the Greek and Roman classical texts, reading in the languages, comes to me, you know, in this moment of political crisis. I'm sitting in the economics department. He says, I can't breathe here intellectually. Please help me. And we begin a conversation. And we talk about a lot of things.

We talk about Donald Trump in ways that he would dare never have talked about. And I don't reveal his political orientation in saying this, nor do I reveal my own in terms of electoral voting. I simply say there was a very important question to the country between 2016 and 2020, which was what did that presidency mean? And David and I managed to find a way of having a conversation about that. That wasn't him dead and limited by his fear, which you would naturally feel any place else in my university, that were he to say anything affirmative to the uprising, which was the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, that he would be, you know, canceled, run out of town on a rail or whatever.

I'm not answering your question exactly, Peter, what do I say? Because I don't have a doctrine. But I think the building of relationships, of trusting, nurturing relationships, and the nurturing is both ways. One reason that I look as young and vital as I do is because I have David Sachs in my life. He's an example. He's an example, but a splendid example. And it's at Brown, at Brown that i that i encountered this kid i don't know i say slow down i say you don't know everything i mean come on a little bit of intellectual modesty at the age of 20 would be a good idea you know i i say be serious because there's so much from froth and and foam and insubstantial stuff that goes on in the academy. There's serious books to be read.

There's serious people to talk to. There's serious ideas to engage. Don't waste your time here. This is a precious opportunity. Four years of reflection, of unfettered access to everything that's been written and set my god i say find the right people because there's some clowns in this place i mean you know there's some people who are not worth your time uh who are you know holding down sinecures around here and uh you might want to be you know scrupulous about who

you decide to spend your time with i'm talking about faculty members but i don't name names i don't say it quite so bluntly but i try to point out that there are gradations that are worthy of being respected oh name the names all right we'll leave that for the show listen i think ethnic studies is a dead end. I think people should study sociology. They should study philosophy. They should study politics. They should study economics.

And to the extent that they're interested in ethnic questions, they can apply those things to those questions. I think when you made an end run around the gatekeepers at the head of the disciplines to create separate channels of inquiry called ethnic studies you made a profound mistake that has debased the currency of the university there was a reason that it was a history department because they did history there they're the ones who should be the arbiters of what is good history to be done in the university not someone who does black history and thinks themselves therefore exempted of course it could be latino history it could be women's

history etc it's almost as if history and literature contain ideals and lessons that transcend the uh the politics of the day i know it's a strange oh no that couldn't be true glenn show coming on the ricochet audio network we advise everybody to listen to it to his cast of woke slayers and sinecure scoffers and the rest of Audio Network We advise everybody to listen to it To his cast of Wokeslayers and Synecure Scoffers and the rest of it Thanks for being with us to push the show today Can't wait to listen to it and again I hope that your duties on that show

Don't keep you from coming back here From time to time and talking with us It's been a pleasure as ever Well thanks very much for the opportunity I'll definitely be back to Hoover Because I had a great time and I was out there a few weeks ago I can't believe we missed you. I learned the day after. Somebody said to me,

did you realize Glenn Lowry was here yesterday? I have bald spots because I pulled my hair out, Glenn. That won't happen again. Thank you, Peter. Very good to be with you guys. Great fun. Take care. Bye-bye. You know, and the thing is, the more sometimes that the

podcast gets into issues of the day, the more agitated you get, unless, you know, and the thing is the more sometimes that the, uh, podcast gets into, uh, issues of the day, the more agitated, the more agitated you get, unless of course you're listening to smart and sensible voices. And then, you know, you feel better about things, but that's just politics. That's just ideas. There's lots of stuff going on in your life that sometimes all accumulates and you can't really figure out a way to clear the decks at the end of the day. Well, wouldn't it be great if there was a pocket-sized guide that helped you sleep, focus, act, frankly, just be better? There is. And if you have 10 minutes, Headspace can change your life. Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy-to-use app. Headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research. So whatever

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Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. Meditation practice with mindfulness that works for you on your schedule, anytime, anywhere. You deserve to feel happier in Headspace's meditation made simple. So go to headspace.com slash ricochet. That's headspace.com slash ricochet for a free one-month trial with access to Headspace's full library of meditations for every situation. It's the best deal offered right now. Head to headspace.com slash ricochet today. And we thank Headspace for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Dr. Jay is a professor of medicine at Stanford University,

a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow with the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and at the Stanford Freeman Spolge Institute. His research focuses on the economics of healthcare around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. And he's been published in peer-reviewed journals that range from health policy to medicine and economics and the law. And thankfully, he is a frequent guest of the Ricochet podcast. And also, he is a COVID hero, right? Well, some people call me something very different about COVID, James. So you had it, and you're okay.

I had it. I was a breakthrough case. Didn't notice a single symptom, possibly because I was slightly flushed for a day long before I took the test and tested positive. We assume you're a breakthrough case as well i'm hearing that up to 30 of the new cases may indeed be breakthrough cases what does this tell us about delta what does it tell us about the efficacy of the vaccines the booster and the rest of it look like we're getting back to normal where are we now yeah so uh i for source like my personal story, I was vaccinated in April with the Pfizer thing. And I had a case basically three weeks ago.

I returned from an international trip, tested negative before I flew home. But three days later, I got the sore throat. Then three miserable days with a fever. Lost my sense of smell. It was a classic case. But then, basically, after a week, I was 100% better. I was tired, but now I'm back to normal. I do wonder how bad it would have been if I hadn't had the vaccine.

So it felt like pretty much the worst cold I've had. So yeah, I'm kind of glad I got the vaccine. So it felt like pretty much the worst call I've had. So yeah, I'm kind of glad I got the vaccine. Okay. So here's what, and by the way, while you were sick, I happen to know because we're buddies and you mentioned this, you joined Twitter and within seconds, you got tens of thousands of followers. So here's what people are going to be saying on Twitter now that you've had COVID. Ha, ha, ha. Here's a man who spent the last 18 months saying, okay, old people are at risk. We should be taking care of them, but everybody else should be going to school, carrying on their own lives. And now he got it. He's also been saying the vaccinations work pretty well.

And four months after getting his second vaccination, Dr. J, know it all, don't worry about the COVID, Bhattacharya, got really sick. And he's not in any at-risk group. If he'd been a little heavier or a little older, he might be dead. He certainly has a lot of public penitence to perform. And Jay says what? I didn't realize I was going to be grilled here. Holy moly. So there's a few things.

One is I do think people should live their life. I think that's the basic choice we have. It is either you don't live your life and you eventually get COVID or you live your life and you eventually get COVID. I don't think it's possible for anyone to actually avoid getting COVID at this point. It's too widespread in the human population. It's trying to avoid getting a cold. Of course, it's much more serious than a cold, but you are, especially if you're older, but it's not, it's a fantasy thing you can protect yourself from getting COVID for the rest of your life. That will not, that is not within the realm of human possibility. So I think, so I think I'd say that. Second, I think,

I don't think we should ever shame anybody that gets a disease. We talked about this with Rob when he got COVID last year or a few months ago. It's just a mistake to shame people for getting a disease. It doesn't make any sense, right? Especially a disease that's so obviously unavoidable. James, I didn't realize you'd had it too. I mean, I do think that for vulnerable people especially, it's very, very important to protect themselves. And the vaccine is a great way to protect yourself against it. The vaccine, so this is a mistake that I made that I'll admit.

So when the vaccines came out, I thought they would protect against disease spread. And the early evidence suggested that was true. But I think the ability of the vaccine to stop disease spread diminishes over time. But on the other hand, the vaccine, I think, continues to protect, even over many, many months and probably longer than that, against severe disease and against death. So it's still a very worthwhile thing to do, but for personal protection rather than protection of spreading the disease. We do not have a technology that stops the spread of this disease.

Lockdowns don't do it. Who needs the technology when we have masks? Like I said, we do not have a technology that stops the spread of this disease. So we don't, I mean, that's just a reality we have to face. The vaccines don't do it. The lockdowns didn't do it. Mandatory, 90 plus percent masking in the United States didn't do it. Once you accept that we don't have such technology, then you can decide, do I hide in the hopes of protecting myself against the disease or do i live my life and i think everyone's

going to need to make that choice but because but they should know that if they hide they'll they'll hurt i think in general they'll it is a general matter they're going to harm their lives like what's life for if you're just hiding um and uh and ultimately still not be protected against covid well you said everybody's going to get it, and you're right. It's out there. We can't do anything about it. But that's evidence for people who say, well, then let's just mask in perpetuity. Because what's the harm? How can it help? I mean, there was just a study that was released yesterday, I think 600,000 people in Bangladesh,

which said that the efficacy of surgical masks actually cut spread by 10% or something like that. And this is being touted as a sign that masks are good and we should all continue to do so. By the people who are in the back of their minds, there's maskedness that to some people is just an assault on civil society and the fact that we ought not to cover swaddle half of our faces all the time in public, that something's amiss when society has moved to that as the default. So it isn't, I'm not sure there's a question here or a rant, but. I mean, I think we have to be kind to each other i mean i still remember probably the first time i was on on with you all you taught asked me about mass and i thought well i didn't know what i mean the literature at that

point was non-existent like there were no rcts um rct stands for oh sorry randomized controlled trials um and uh for in the context of covid in the context of of flu there was like 14 rcts mostly negative um so i was like okay well but on the other hand many people wanted some degree of control over their fate right and so i don't i just i didn't want to i didn't want what has happened which is to turn mass into a political issue where we fight with each other about it. But that's where we currently are. I don't think the solution is to tell people who believe that masks are a reasonable thing to not wear them. I think that's fine. I think it's a very, very modest effect in terms of the disease spread. I don't think it actually protects entirely. And I think if there's some danger, right? So if you think you are protected by wearing a mask, you may go out in public

more than you probably ought given your risk profile. So there's some danger to it. But on the other hand, you can mitigate that danger too. Someone who wears a mask may say, okay, I also don't want, I also want to hide. I'm not trying to denigrate someone that says that or does that or thinks that. I think a lot of that has to do with the fear of COVID, which has been a part of the policy of public health to spread, I think, undue fear of COVID in young populations and in many ways underplaying it in older populations. Now that the vaccine is here, there wasn't a good reason to spread fear to begin with as a matter of policy. But now there's literally no reason. Because with the vaccine, it's defaying the disease. Older people with the vaccine have a much lower risk of dying from COVID than they once did.

Young people remain at low risk, vaccinated or not. And if they're nervous about COVID, then they should get vaccinated. So I think, you know, cause I mean, there's no, and there's no reason not to, if that, if that's the case, I mean, you know, you always, when you do have a vaccine, you have a vaccine, there's always some trade-offs in terms of side effects, but the side effects, unless you're a very young male, where you get this increased risk of myocarditis, I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty, I mean, it's, it's looked,

it looks like a relatively safe vaccine. I wish there was more time that it had been evaluated, but we're in the middle of a pandemic, right? So I guess standards can slip. So I think the right way to think about where we are with COVID is you have to accept at least a large part of the population, half the population maybe has accepted that it is just a fact of life and we're going to learn, just have to live with it, with the tools we have. The other half of the population is still living in fear and in the delusion that they can protect

themselves and others from COVID. Jay, a couple of short questions that I'd like to sum up. You had COVID. You got pretty sick for three days. Did that experience change your thinking? I mean, so I'm going to write a little piece on this, but I felt like there's a few things that I was curious to me when I was in the middle of this. First of all, I gave interviews when I was this. Like, I don't know, whoever I gave interviews to, please forgive me because my probably was delusional. But the experience of having COVID made me understand the frustration of people who want a early treatment.

But yet there's this enormous controversy over many of the early treatments that potentially could, you know, we just haven't been tested with randomized controlled trials. So it made me wonder more why we have not invested publicly in more randomized trials for off-patent drugs, for instance. Like the enormous controversies over ivermectin, over hydroxychloroquine, over fluoxamine. Why has the NIH not invested in high-quality randomized trials to resolve that issue. It's a massive... Because they're political markers. That's why. You can't not think that it's because the wrong people said things about them at an early point. But it's a major health condition that many people are worried about. It is the job of the NIH to test these things. And to resolve... I ended up not taking any of those drugs because I just don't know if they

work. So I just, I wish I had known it was in the midst of my fever. I wish I'd known if they were working. We do have one drug that works very well, which is this these, these monoclonal antibodies, but I live in a state which hasn't made those quite as easily available as

say like Florida has. And I think missouri has and nebraska has um so so it's one of it's one of these so it's it's a funny thing it's like we have done so little we've done great with the vaccine to try to like develop it quickly but we've done so little on early treatment i think that also if we developed good early treatment made it widely available it would also help help very much to sort of defang the fear around the disease. So I think that's one thought I had when I was in the midst of my fever, Peter. I think, again, the vaccine, I'm really glad that you asked me earlier if I do

regret sort of arguing for telling people to take the vaccine. I don't at all. I think the vaccine very likely made my disease more much milder than it wasn't. James, I'm so glad to hear yours was, you know, almost nothing. I mean, I think that's pretty typical. You can get breakthrough infections with the vaccine, but it's much less likely to kill you and much less likely to land you in the hospital than it would have if you had not taken the vaccine. Jay, by the way, I'm going to come sit next to you for a few hours because I want to get this thing and get it over with. Last question for me. Oh, sorry.

Go ahead. I've got another couple and I'm not going to let him go until I get him in. But go ahead. No, right. Good. This will be my last thing because it comes from, it comes from our very producer who has a great observation. Matthew Iglesias, who has been all over the map recently, tweeted out with mRNA technology, weren't there supposed to be variant optimized revisions to the vaccines? What happened to that plan? I thought we're going to be able to tinker these things and fix them and aim them precisely.

So this talk about the boosters has me utterly mystified. I have seen not one speck of clinical evidence in favor of them. I see Dr. Fauci on the air talking about them. I see Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDC, on the air talking about them. I see President Biden on the air talking about them. But I have not seen one speck of clinical evidence. I pay very close attention. So I don't understand what data they're looking at where they make a recommendation about you need a booster six months later or five months later or eight months later. There's literally not one speck of publicly available clinical evidence to justify that that I have seen to date. I think it's irresponsible of them

to make those kinds of recommendations without showing the public what evidence they're basing it on. But wouldn't the booster be pre-out, pre-delta? Yes. James, you are absolutely right, and you're right to ask that question. It is a mystery. Explain that. I didn't follow James's question. The two of you know what you're talking about, and I'm not following. Sure. So let me explain. So the virus is an RNA virus. RNA viruses mutate all the time. A few of them

of the mutations gain a selective advantage, and the one that currently has that massive selective advantage is the Delta variant. The Delta variant... Take your business international. Enterprise Europe Network is the world's largest network providing free support and advice to SMEs with global ambition. Delta variant. and gain valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. It has some mutations on the spike protein

that the virus uses to attach to human cells compared to the original Wuhan virus. The vaccine was developed against the spike protein of the Wuhan virus, not against the Delta. It still works against the Delta, mind you. It still works very well against severe disease and death. So that's good. But it's very clear that it doesn't stop the disease

from spreading when you have this Delta variant. You still can get infected, obviously, right, from James and my experience. So it's possible, since you're using this mRNA technology, instead of putting a Wuhan-era spike protein that your body reacts to and causes and gets an immune reaction to and instead you could put a delta variant spike protein and have a more tailored immune reaction to the through to the vaccine and protect it more against the delta variant i don't know why they're not doing that james i mean i mean again they made no clinical data available at all about any of the boosters. That promise of the MRI technology to be able to adjust it is a great thing if you use it, but you also still have to back it with clinical data.

I've seen none of that, and it's a mystery to me. Jay, here are my—I'm going to wrap this up into into one question and you deal with it as you wish. I hear all this stuff. Joe Rogan said he was taking ivermectin and Twitter erupted into people and NPR and CNN both denigrated him for taking horse deworming medicine. And in fact, it's clear that it's not just horse deworming medicine. It's been prescribed in tens of thousands of humans. And particularly there's some horrible eye disease. I think it is in or parasite cases.

Yeah. Thank you. In Africa where tens of thousands of people have taken ivermectin. So it is used in humans. It's been known that it's used in humans. The press is okay. Two questions. One.

If, and, and I've spoken to a couple of physicians in addition to you that may strike you as surprising but i actually do have a physician friends exactly and one of them said you know i spent a little time reviewing the literature on ivermectin and it's ambiguous it you can't prove that it doesn't work. There's some evidence that in some cases administered early it would. All right, two questions. One, shutting down the economy cost hundreds of billions, maybe a couple of trillion dollars. It's been more than 18 months. Why haven't our much vaunted high priests of public health spent a little money testing ivermectin? Why don't we know whether that works or whether hydroxychloroquine works? Why haven't they put some money into testing therapies, if only to prove conclusively that they're useless,

if only to prove their own position? That's the first question. And the second question is this. When all of this started, the public health officials said, two weeks to end the curve. We're going to shut down for some very limited period of time. And it was a plausible and easy-to-grasp goal that they had in mind. We don't want hospitals to get swamped by more people than they can treat. All right, that was months ago. Hospitals didn't get swamped, and they're not getting swamped now. Even in Florida, where the press for a couple of weeks was trying to say that the ER rooms in Florida were at 90% capacity. You got the feeling

there were certain channels, certain cable news that wanted them to go to 110% capacity. They were hoping that people would be lined up in hallways and hospitals in Florida. It didn't happen. Why are they telling us to wear masks? What is their end game? You just said we can't stop the spread. We don't need to slow the spread for hospitals. What are they trying to accomplish? And why have they, public health officials, unless I've missed something big, why have they not articulated their reasoning? What is the end game?

What are they trying to accomplish done fantastic two questions peter so let me let me take the first about the the testing of drugs so uh they we've tested drugs um drugs like remdesivir which are which are on patent held with patents held by firms like gilead. We have, and a lot of the, a lot of that has happened because they, the, there's a residual claimant. You have a drug company that has a very strong interest in testing, you know, convalescent plasma or, or monoclonal antibodies and, or whatnot, because you can sell it and make a pro and you know, sort of, it's, it's a,

you have a patent, so you can sell it at make a pro and, uh, you know, sort of, it's, it's a, you have a patent, so you can sell it at a pretty high profit. Um, and that's not necessarily bad. Like the development of monoclonal antibodies is actually a real advance. It's good that there are people with a interest in testing it and checking to see if it works. Uh, it's good that regulators to see whether the, the, they did a good job checking if it worked. And that's a success story. On the other hand, there are many drugs like ivermectin, which are off patent. Nobody owns them. And there's almost no private interest whatsoever in checking. I mean, there's, you know, I might... But that's why the NIH exists, right? Yes. It's to solve that market failure. So the fact that the NIH has not invested in high quality randomized trials, and I'm sitting there with a fever wondering, well, does this, I really wish there was a drug I knew worked or not. That's a failure of the NIH. Tens of billions of dollars we spend in order to have the NIH answer questions like that. Look, this drug doesn't work. Look, this drug might work.

In the case of ivermectin, there's a lot of trials that find, I mean, it looks like a miracle drug in some trials and looks like a complete dud in other trials. We need a very high quality trial to resolve the question. What's the right dosing? In what circumstances does it might work or doesn't it work, depending on the stage of the disease? You know, a whole bunch of questions you can ask um that should be answered with high quality studies randomized studies it is the job of the nih when you have a drug that is not off patent

to test and answer those questions and it has utterly failed to do so uh i mean the the group in the nih is responsible for that is the niaid the national institute for the NIH that's responsible for that is the NIAID, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. That's Fauci's outfit, right? Yes. And it has not made those investments. Even the one high-quality, the one drug, the off-patent drug, dexamethasone, which saved so many lives, the studies there were not sponsored by the NIH. It was essentially like med school faculty, I guess, who cobble something together. So I think it's a failure of government, is the answer to your question, to not have invested in

answer to those basic questions 18 months of the pandemic. It's inexcusable. Okay, so your second Your second question was about what's the end game? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's very difficult for the public health community, which has worked so hard to tell people what it means to be safe, which essentially their message has been to hide with the implicit message that we can escape from COVID, to turn around and say, look, we failed. It's the same kind of dynamic as in, you know, a war that goes on and on, where everyone knows we've lost, but no one can admit it. And we have the resources to continue it, but it doesn't accomplish anything to continue it. Right? It's literally the same thing. I think there's very many people that told everybody a story about how we could get rid of covid how we could keep people safe from covid when um that's no longer that was obviously not true wasn't true in april of 2020 it's certainly not true now and it's obvious and clear for anyone to see that's not true so you mean we are now in trench warfare with COVID. We can't win, but the generals don't have the guts to bring it to an end.

Yeah. We don't have the technology. As I was saying earlier, we do not have any technology to stop the spread of COVID. The vaccines don't do it. The lockdowns don't do it. And masks are very minimally effective, only if you're wearing the right kind of mask in the right kind of setting, very tightly. And Jay, you really believe that Anthony Fauci and Collins at NI,

I mean, there are six guys, six, I think, no, no, the new CDC director is, all right, so men and women, that makes it politically more palatable. They could call a press conference, three or four of them on the stage, and Fauci walks to the microphone and says, we've been in this for 18 months now, 20 months. Here's what we know. Masks are minimally effective. Older people should take care of themselves. There are certain comorbidities that you ought to watch. But ladies and gentlemen, everybody's going to get COVID. And we need to learn to live with this. And that means opening schools and going back to work. And the only reason that press conference isn't happening is because those half dozen people who would stand on that podium

are what? Concerned about their reputations? Is it really that the whole country is being held hostage to the vanity of an octogenarian Dr. Fauci? Is that really what you're saying? I don't think it's just him. I think that he is a symptom. I think that there's a delusion shared by many, many people in the public health community, he included, that still cling to the idea that we can stop the spread of COVID, that we can protect population from being infected with COVID. I just don't think that, I think that they're just wrong. They've been wrong on that for a long time, and they maybe have not admitted it to themselves that they're wrong. And they remain blind to the enormous

harms of the lockdown. The harms include mainly to young people in terms of their life opportunities, to everybody in terms of the diminished investment in other kinds of health, you know, cancer screening around the world, that's just devastating poverty caused by the lockdowns, including hundreds of hundred million people thrown into starvation, hundreds of thousands of young children dead from starvation from the lockdowns that they remain blind to those harms and remain still in the with this continuing illusion that we can stop the disease from spreading. at home, did not have to dress up, shine their shoes, put on a tie, dye their hair, drive to the office and type. They like to be sitting at home, have everything delivered and know that those people were out there making sure that the gas stations and the grocery stores were working. That was very- Focus protection of, yes, the focus protection of the laptop class, right? Of the laptop class, exactly so. And now it's all about the children. We have to protect the

children. The children are going to get it in school. Then they're going to take it home to grandma and breathe on grandma. Of course, grandma's vax. It just never seems to end. And like you, I don't believe that there's some nefarious act here that this is all about control and getting everybody intoference and inertia and all the rest of it. In other words, like every other institution that we have seen in the last couple of years, a failure at the top that sinks all the way through the institution and makes you wonder if the answer isn't to break it all up or to just get some people in there who will admit they were wrong. I'd be more willing to trust somebody who admitted he was wrong than somebody who just pushed forward every time and had a different shifty set of things to say, et cetera. Anyway, it's enough of me. Jay, sorry, we kept you a long time. And thanks for joining us. Glad you're feeling better. And I had such a minor experience with it. I thought, I wonder if I had a false positive and I hope not. I hope I bought proof at this point. Superman. Tiger blood. Winning. All right, Jay. Thanks. Talk to you later.

Thank you. We'll talk to you. Jay, thanks. And the reason, by the way, that I think that NPR and the rest of them are calling it horse dewormer, which they like to, is I think that if they put out stories that say ivermectin, they'll be blocked by Twitter and they'll be blocked by Facebook. Or they get a little asterisk that say you shouldn't say that because that's the way things are these days. You got to watch what you say. You got to watch where you go. You got to watch where you go.

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that would be cafes and hotels and airports, et cetera, your online data is not secured. It is not secured. Any hacker on the same network can gain access to and steal all kinds of data. This is valuable information, but it doesn't take a genius level like you to do it. Just the right hardware and a criminal mind. And there are lots of those around. But ExpressVPN keeps you secure. They create a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. The encryption is so thorough, it'd take a supercomputer over a billion years to get through it. All it requires is that you just fire up the app on your computer, phone, tablet, make one click, tap. First rate security on the go. I was just up to Fargo and that's where Express

VPN came in really handy. I'm not saying that Fargo is a hotbed of hackers and that there are people sitting around the Starbucks in West Fargo waiting to get my stuff, but you never know, do you? Why, when I can just tap one button and get onto my ExpressVPN, would I not want to do so? I do, and I did. You can too. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash ricochet. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash ricochet.'s e x p r e s s vpn dot com slash ricochet and you can get an extra three months for free that's three months free expressvpn.com slash ricochet and we thank express vpn for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast we've got about 90 seconds left peter so i have to ask you uh have we settled the abortion debate or is it going to continue to bubble? We have not settled it.

No, not close. 87 seconds. You got 85 seconds. I don't need it. Really? I thought this. Charles C.W. Cook had a great piece in National Review saying that the problem is Roe. It was just bad law in the first place.

Oh, there's no doubt about that. Yes. Judge Bork used to say that the decision in row contains not one sentence of legal reasoning and even even honest legal figures on the other side cast sunstein comes to mind for that may it matter you know who thought row was a bad decision and said so in writing ruth bader ginsburg the patron saint of the other side keen minds can see exactly what it was saint of the other side. Keen minds can see exactly what it was. One of the quotes in the piece that I loved was describing the legal reasoning behind it as a cloud in a box. For some reason, I just like that. Well, we don't want to be boxed in by the constraints of time.

This is a podcast. We can go on for another couple of hours or so. But, you know, Peter's got stuff to do. I've got stuff to do. And we want to leave you hanging and say, gosh, I wish there was more. That'll be next week when Rob Long returns and, I hope, tells us tales of Alaska. Peter's been fun. Thanks, everybody, for listening, and we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 4.0.

Next week. Next week, James. Nobody on the road. Nobody on the beach. I'm feeling in the air, the summer's out of reach Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone I'm driving by your house, though I know you're not home I can see you, your mask is shining the sun

You got your hair coming back and your sunglasses on, baby I can tell you that love for you will still be strong After the boys of summer have gone I never will forget those nights I wonder if it was a dream Remember how you made me crazy Remember how I made you scream Now I don't understand What happened to our love

But baby when I get you back I'm gonna show you what I'm made of I can feel you Your breath keeps shining so I see you walking real slow and you're smiling at everyone. I can tell you my love for you will still be strong after the fall is up, summer have gone. Ricochet.

Join the conversation. We'll be right back. Out on the road today I saw a black flag sticker on a Cadillac A little voice inside my head said Don't look back, you can never look back I thought I knew what love was What did I know? Those days are gone forever, I should just let them go But I can see you, your breath keeps shining so

You got the top hold down and the radio on, baby Now I can tell you that love for you will still be strong After the four days of summer have gone I can see you, your blood's been shining so You got that ass like black and white, there is a baby I can tell you my love for you will still be strong After the boys of summer have gone I can tell you my love for you will still be strong After the poison's on my heart