The Young Turks - Part 3: Dr. Cenk

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Part 3: Dr. Cenk in the House: You've got questions and by gum, Cenk has answers. Cenk on the air to field your burning, itching, or otherwise nagging questions. Cenk is not an actual doctor. All advice given is for entertainment purposes only. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, back on Young Turks. I've been forgetting to read donor names. Sorry about that. So let me try to make up for that now.

And these are folks who gave at t.yt.com slash go. Jennifer H in Asheville, North Carolina, $15. Erica W. in Flagstaff, Arizona, $15. Seth C. in Bellingham, Washington, $50. Michelle B. in Saunderson, Rhode Island, $100. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you to all of you guys. And Benedict O in Staten Island, $27.

Thank you guys. Look, if you want to see, if you're going to give a big amount, you know $127 gets you the press on T-shirt with a really cool TYT, Mike. And at a thousand bucks, you get a hoodie version of that, you go on the donor wall. But if you're going to be over the top generous as some of you have been, make sure you go to t-y-t.com slash press on to see the different things you can name in the studio. And almost, well, not almost everything, but a lot of things are named here. There's a couple of things left. And I just walked by the synapse control room.

And I remembered that it was called that in an earlier campaign. And actually Ashley Wilkes has sent in a video too and just I kind of covered it earlier. So let me just really quickly say and Ashley gave a lot to thank you brother. I really really appreciate it. He asked the difference between contentment and happiness. And as we talked about earlier, I view happiness, enjoyment, whatever you want to call it, as the big umbrella, right? And within that umbrella or bucket, however you want to do it, the buckets this way, the

that way. Under the umbrella, you have different ways of being happy. And one of those is contentment or fulfillment. Very similar. And I think that's probably the biggest one and the one that's talked about least, as we mentioned earlier. But don't like, just like I said a little while ago to Jenna, don't overfocus on any one particular thing. Like, I'm going to get contentment So I don't have to worry about being happy for 80 years until I accomplished my mission. But the more common mistake is people not realizing that contentment gives you the best feeling in the world and not going towards that. I can't recommend it high enough to you guys, especially the way I'm built, my hardware. The more I see people happy and that we're helping folks, the better I feel about it.

So that's, that's your overall answer, Ashley. And thank you for all to help you've given at tyt.com slash go. And by the way, if you miss any part of this show and you really want to hear me talk for three hours straight, you could become a member and get it anytime you want. You can start anywhere you like and watch for as long as you want. TYT.com slash join to do that. If you're watching on YouTube, you just hit the button below. In order to get specials like this, you got to do it at the premium level.

level and that gets you all of our videos and all of our content. Okay, so girl inked wrote in on the member section, thank you, this is making me feel better. I'd have put my pup to sleep today. So now it's not really a question, but I want to say something about that. So many of us are so close to our pets these days, especially dogs. I mean, people going nuts, Anna, with Charlie and Haas had this great dog named Fish. And Fish passed away, and Hassan was, you know, very, very broken up about that, as I'm sure you are, et cetera. Number one, it's okay to be broken up about it.

That's a good thing. That means you love them. And just don't worry about wallowing in it for the first day, week, whatever it. it is, right? It's okay. Feel that emotion. That means you guys were close and he was wonderful to you. And it's a great thing that you had him or her in your life. The second thing is focus on the positive, all the moments you spent, whether it's honestly a pet or a person in your life, all the moments that you spent with them. In fact, that leads to me to Pauline Mcahill, who wrote, I lost my daughter seven years ago, I still choose to be happy for her and for me.

Now, Pauline, you're doing the hardest thing in the world. That is literally number one hardest thing. And I can't imagine that pain. And it pains me to even think about it. And so, but I love that you're focusing on the positive. Think about all the wonderful moments that you had. because that person, whoever it is, and this is the hardest one of all, they didn't have to be in your life.

Life could have gone in a different direction. And if you said to me, hey, let me take an example of, well, this is a good example. It's a little bit easier to deal with because it's my grandparents. So when my grandfather died, and I say easier than your kids, obviously. So when my grandfather died on my mom's side, you know, I was very broken up about it. 16 at the time. And we had a really good relationship and he was a really funny guy, really charming guy. And I loved him. And it was really hard. On other hand, my dad's dad, my grandfather on that side, I never met. My dad actually never met him. He died when my dad

was six months old. My dad's a hero in a thousand different ways. And again, I'm so lucky in that regard and I'm so appreciative and I should make it super important side note asterix here of all the things that I've talked to you about here we are in the third hour and I tell you one of the most important things appreciating things makes you way happier because what it does and this is the part that that sometimes folks don't tell you is it makes you concentrate on the that good moment or that good feeling or those good emotions, right? And just that very active concentrating it and appreciating it has makes you soak it in

and thereby makes you happier. And so I'm super lucky that I have great parents who were wonderful to me, but I compound that by really appreciating it and telling them all the time how much I love them and how much of a difference they made in my life. And that doesn't just make them feel better. It makes me feel better. So but now back to my grandparents. So I never got to meet my grandfather on my dad's side. So as painful as it was when I lost my grandfather on my mom's side, that was a thousand times better than never meeting my grandfather on the other side. So I got to at least live 16 years with my grandfather, 16 wonderful years. And every time I think about it, yeah, it makes me a little sad. But it also makes me happy that at least I

got those 16 awesome years with him. And I remember all the great memories. And especially when it's your kids, it is impossible not to be sad about it. Like I said, step one is it's okay. Don't be yourself up over being sad about it. And step two is focus on all the positives and the wonderful moments. And that is the one that is much easier said than done, hardest thing in the world to do. But Pauline, let me just say on behalf, not just me, but everybody watching, We love you, and we're all in this together. And the more we're in it together, the more we're going to lift each other up. Okay, so hang in there.

Okay, look, that's heavy. I got more heavy stuff, but let's break it up a little bit with a video. Ben, no, Ben from Knoxville is the undercover progressive. Let me go to my friend who asked the question about hunting. Oh, I got a fun George Clooney story for you guys. It's actually related to happiness. I'll tell you in a second. But let me go to Travis.

Travis Dunn on hunting. Let's watch. Hey, Dr. Jank. This is Travis Dunn. I'm a progressive living in Texas. And I have a question about conservation. We all like to talk about the Green New Deal and how to get clean, renewable energy into the economy, into the world.

But my question is, how do you feel about hunting? You'll never really talk about it on y'all show. Y'all talk about gun control, and as a Texan, I own a couple of guns, but they're not for self-defense. They are for hunting. And I believe in conservation, like I said earlier, and I believe contravation comes through hunting. And I would just like to see what y'all think about that. Hashtag dragon squad. I love that end.

It's just hunting's okay, dragon squad is great, just don't mix the two. Don't hunt dragons, okay? Besides which they'll be hunting you. So anyways, in all seriousness, I'm pro hunting. And one of my brother-in-law's is a big hunter, and it's all good. Now, you get a little bit into the politics about, yeah, but then what do you do with the weapons,

and where do you keep them, blah, blah, blah, but I don't want to get into the politics of it. I want to talk about balance, because I think that's where that question really goes towards. If you're doing it right, there's no question that it adds to the balance, doesn't subtract from the balance. There is a wrong way to do it. For poachers do it, obviously in a way that does not add to anything is very destructive. You've seen the Trump kids, you know, with holding up severed tails and severed parts of these animals they hunted. Like it's a big deal to shoot an elephant.

How do you shoot an elephant? You just shoot it. And poor creature doesn't have a gun to fight back with. And like, that's like when you do it with deer, you, if you don't have to do it every time. But if you're doing it great, you actually eat the deer, right? And you could use the leather and my brother-in-law does do that, right? And they go through a lot of effort to do that because they think that's part of the ritual and the enjoyment that they get out of hunting, being one with nature, et cetera. And I love that.

And doing it wrong is, ha ha, I killed an elephant with an oozy. I'm so tough. Here, here's a sever tail. Okay, Jesus Christ. And they give hunters a bad name. So I don't know if you've ever seen this, but you should check it out. I almost brought it for you guys because I knew this question was coming. But I don't know if we got copyright issues, blah, blah, blah.

The video, it's easy to Google how the wolves, when the wolves, when the wolves, when the wolves, were reintroduced into Yellowstone. Wolves are predators and it turns out they fixed Yellowstone. Why? Because without that balance, to oversimplify, the deer were eating too much of the vegetation because they had known predators left because we had removed the wolves in Yellowstone. And so they ate up all the vegetation and things started to dry up and then the other animals started dying and then somebody had a genius idea.

Is it time for wolf pack? And in that case, it was. They reintroduced the wolves and they thin the herd of the deer. And the vegetation came back. And then things started flourishing so much. They literally moved the river. The river became more plentiful. It moved in a certain direction and it just improved the park a thousand percent.

So if you're doing it right, hunters can also restore that balance in a way that's helpful and not hurtful. helpful and not hurtful and obviously some folks are vegan and think or vegetarian and think that's not the right way to go. But for both of you, you do you boo. And if you're going to hunt, please do it the right way. And in which case, that's awesome. So, and look, guys, everything is a game. Life is a game in a sense, right? And so all the things we've been talking about balance is how are you playing the game of life? And whether you acknowledge you're playing the game of life or not, you're playing it. And you're just either playing it poorly or well. And ignoring it doesn't mean that you're playing it any better. And playing

it is not necessarily a bad thing. I actually think it's a good thing. As long as you can get that fulfillment, et cetera, and all the things that we discussed. You know what? You You guys have so many great questions, but I'm going to go to the Clooney story because it's a good segue to it. So there's this rumor that got confirmed just today. That's why I'm bringing it up now, that George Clooney had given 14 of his friends a million dollars in a suitcase. Okay, each of them 14 suitcases with a million dollars each. And Randy Gerber is one of his friends, and he told his story a long time ago. He's the guy married to Cindy Crawford, tough life he has.

They had Gerber and Clooney had started a Casamigos, which is a drink. They sold that company for a billion dollars because both of them didn't have enough money. But I'm not Hayden because they're good guys. So that's great. More power to him, right? And so instead of hoarding it all, it turns out Clooney confirmed today. Yeah, I did do that. Part of his point was, well, what else was I going to do with the money?

And so let me quote them for you guys, because I think these are great quotes. He said, oh, and then he had made another killing out a movie. You're not surprised by that. So he said, at that point he had it was a single guy. He hadn't gotten married yet, and he didn't think he was going to have a family. So he said, and I thought, what do I have, what I do have are these guys who we've all over a period of 35 years help me in one way or another. I slept on their couches when I was broke. They loaned me money when I was broke.

They helped me when I needed help over the years. And I've helped them over the years. We're all good friends. And I thought, you know, without them, I don't have any of this. And we're all really close. And I just thought, basically, if I get hit by a bus and they're all in the will, so why the half am I waiting to get hit by a bus? Exactly. Exactly. My God, if you have money, help other people. Don't wait to get hit by a bus because you'll be helping them and helping yourself. So he explained how he went and got these duffel bags. And there's apparently a money place in downtown L.A. where they have cash. Now I'm worried about their safety. But he said he got like security. He got like a florist van to disguise it. And he literally put a million dollars of cash into each. duffel bag and brought it to his friends and gave it to him.

And that was this way of paying them back and making sure that they had fun. This dude is living my dream. Because one of the reasons, and I've said this on the show a thousand times, there's nothing wrong with getting rich. There's something wrong with using it in the wrong ways. And there's something wrong with being obsessed by money and being greedy and and leading in the wrong direction, right, with that money. and having your greed take you over, there's a lot wrong with that.

But Clooney's a good guy. He made money in the perfectly good ways, and then he spent it in perfectly good ways. And one of my dreams is to make enough money where I could then give back to all my friends. The friends just like him, I slept on their couches. I had a friend who's such a wonderful guy. I went and stayed with him in Baltimore for six months, and he's like, No, you sleep on the bed. I'll sleep on the floor.

I really don't mind. Who does that? I mean, who does want to pay that guy back? So, and it doesn't have to be just financial. I'd love to be rich so I could help my friends and my family. And, you know, rich folks don't know how good they have it. You're supposed to spend it, but not on stupid stuff like on your 11th yacht. You're supposed to spend it in a way that actually gives you joy.

Yes, it's hokey to say the number one way is probably is charity, right? But you don't have to just do the number one way. Just think about like, hey, you know what? Doing X would make me really happen. It always costs a lot of money and I couldn't do it. And now I have it. So screw it, I'm going to do it. Yes, yes, that's the point.

Don't just hoard it. Be like, oh, I now have more. And what happens? On the day that you die, you know, all the money that you accumulated other than giving it to your kids, which if you have too much is just spoil them anyway. But other than that, well, then you played it wrong. You kept too much of it. You see what I'm saying? You should have spent a lot on yourself and you should have spent on a lot on others.

But now that's a good segue to thanking the people who spent it on us. So let me read more names. Don C in Baltimore, 50 bucks. Natalie, these are people who gave through t.com slash go. You don't have to do this to make yourself happy. Okay, it's optional. Okay. If it does, great.

It's a win-win for everybody. If it doesn't, don't do it. Natalie Ann and Peterborough, New Hampshire, 15 bucks. Fergus M. in Chocopy, Massachusetts, 15 bucks. Gene P. In Desert Hot Springs, California, 27 bucks. Margarita H.

I always say it wrong. Marguerite H. In Portland, $50. Caroline C. In New Hyde Park, New York. Five bucks. Cody F and Moorhead, Minnesota, 10 bucks. Todd H. in Coral Springs, Florida, 15 bucks.

Michael B. in Winter Springs, Florida, 15 bucks. And Peggy C. in Tallahassee, Florida, 27 bucks. And every one of those dollars made a difference. And thank you guys. All right. So let me go to another comment here. So Des emailed us in and sincerely, signed it sincerely floating along in Florida.

So let's find out why she's floating along. She says, hi, my name is Des, and I'm a 30-something-year-old progressive who's happily married with three wonderful children. I've been watching TYT for several years now and was thrilled when I saw your request for questions to your new upcoming segment about how to better our quarantine quality of life. So my question to you is, how do you keep sorrow from overtaking you on a daily basis? You seem to always have so much energy, but especially positive energy. I seem to have lost the fight against pessimism, as well as in keeping my pre-COVID-19 figure.

Even some of that loving feeling seems gone. Please help, and thanks so much in advance for your help. Okay, so Des, you're wonderful. Thank you for writing in. So the weight question we really handled earlier, but let me focus on the more important stuff here, which is the feeling of pessimism and how do you overcome it? And again, never take it personal, I'm not criticizing you, I'm trying to help. So sometimes, and by the way, I always have to give this a caveat.

If you're actually depressed, please go see a therapist. It could make a giant difference in your life. Obviously, we're kidding around here. I'm not a real doctor. And especially if you have clinical depression, make sure you see a doctor for that. Okay, now, if it's assuming that it's normal pessimism for a second. second, does you're choosing to focus on the pessimism? And I'm not saying that you're wrong in what might happen.

So for example, bad things do happen. Donald Trump did win in 2016. I was a little pessimistic about that and it turns out, unfortunately, I was right. And if you use that to try to counteract the bad thing that's coming, so you make a pass pathway to make it better. So in my case, that was screaming into partly the abyss, partly into a camera to try to influence the outcome. And that's why we did a hundred loser Donald segments. And if the Democrats had done something similar, he might have lost. He barely, barely, barely won in 2016. So I

tried to help in every way possible. And in that case, it didn't work. But But if you try to help in every way possible and you try and you're relatively sure that you're on the right path to fixing the things that aren't going wrong, then for God's sake, give yourself a break. What else can you do? If you're not doing not everything, we're all human, but most of the things that you can do to try to help it or fix it, okay, then try to get on that path. And if you get on that path, you might feel better about it because at least you're giving

it your all or as much as you can give it with three kids and a job. or whatever else that's happening in your life. Again, never beat yourself up over not doing enough. I mean, first of all, you got three kids, period, it's already enough. Everything else on top of that is gravy. And if you've added a little bit of gravy to try to make the world a little bit better, oh my God, give yourself a break, what more can you do? And now if you're at the point where what more can I do, well then we're all in it together

and we're all trying to fix it. But there's no sense in feeling bad about it as you're trying to fix it. You should feel good about whatever you've done to help in trying to fix it. Now this again is a little self-aggrandizing, but I'm giving it to you as an example. And you could find a thousand other examples in your life. But let's say you liked something we said in a video and you thought that might help your crazy Uncle Bob and talk him out of it. Let's share the video with him. What does that take?

That takes one second, five seconds, 10 seconds, I don't know. Boom, there, you did something. Okay, go back to your kids and feel good about it. Okay, or you know, give five bucks to Red Cross. Whatever charity you like, whatever thing that is easy to do, you found a tweet from another progressive and you thought it was great. Share it, retweet it. Is that enough? I don't know, it's better than nothing, right?

And so then the second part of it is after you've done whatever you can do to get on the right path and to help, whether it's your own personal issues or, or macro national issues. Then the second thing is, then focus on the good stuff and not the bad stuff. Because if you spend all of your mental energy worried about things that you can't control, you're still not gonna be able to control them

so it doesn't really help. And all you're doing is bumming yourself out. You could say, hey, here's what I can do about that and I've done that, great. Now let me focus on all these wonderful things in my life. You know, one of my kids did this. One of them got a, I'm such an immigrant. Immediately, I think like got a good grade.

He got A plus. I am very proud, right? Anyway, whatever it is that your kid gave you a hug this morning. My daughter came and gave me this wonderful bear hug for no reason. I focus on that. I'm ecstatic. It's just a choice. I know it sometimes feels like a really hard choice does, but at the same time, it is a choice.

And you can make the right choice. And it does, it's not magic and it doesn't magically make the pessimism go away. But if you work on those, and that leads to another really important question or point. And this one comes from my wife, who's the actual therapist. That's why I tell you to go see therapists if you're having significant issues. She said, your mind is just like a muscle. And so if you want to make your muscles, you know, get bigger, be in better shape, what do you do? You work it out and you continue to work it out.

You don't just go to the gym once, you go to the gym 10 times, 100 times, right? And your mind is the same way. So if you want to get in a good habit of focusing on the positives, you exercise that muscle. And you don't beat yourself up every time you don't get it right. You just say, hey, you know what, today I spend an extra minute, five minutes thinking about how much I love my kids.

Boom, check, you worked out that day, okay? The next day, hey, maybe you spent 10 minutes thinking about how much you enjoyed that casserole. It's like basically going to the gym of happiness. And that's the guys, if I can get anything across to you would be this. There's no one else in your head. You can go to the gym of happiness for as long as you want. There's no one there to judge you. And especially for me, I don't believe in religion.

So there isn't some sky god, sorry for all the religious folks. But, and I love your faith, don't get me wrong. Your religion, but your faith great. Anyway, so for me, and I used to be religious. So I used to think there was a sky god who was judging me all the time. You didn't do this right, Jank. You didn't do that right. And he was sitting in my head.

Maybe he wasn't in the sky, but he was in my head. Maybe he was a head god. Okay. And once I got rid of that, oh my God, I'm free. I'm free. And it turns out I'm the only one in my head. So I can choose to, and sometimes when I get high, I do actually make this choice. I can sit there for a couple of hours on the couch with or without food.

Starts with food and then just goes to just the happiness gym. And I can sit there. And other people, as we talked about with Anna in the first hour, can say, oh, Jack, that's ridiculous, right? You're sitting there thinking about good memories and how much you love your kids and good food. and you're sitting there all happy, ridiculous. Really? Or just sitting there being miserable might be a little bit more ridiculous.

Just think about it, which one's the ridiculous one? And so, and again, if you can't go two hours straight thinking of good memories or good things that make you happy, you're normal. It's okay. Let's exercise and get there. One step at a time, one step at a time.

All right, speaking of which, let me go to an email from Ryan Hinch. Dr. Justice Dragon Jenk. Well, I already love this, so of course I'm going to read this. He or, oh, it's Ryan, so he, he says, you always have the most inspiring and uplifting fundraising messages. You've managed to keep that same energy up for years. And as someone in the nonprofit space, fundraising is my lifeblood as well. So first of all, how do I do it?

T.y.com slash go. Okay, let me keep going here. Lack of federal hemp policy decisions in COVID have left our members and my non-profit in dire circumstances. How do you find the stamina to keep inspiring fundraising action when times get tough? P.S. 2 thirds of our staff are TYT members. We effing love you guys. We press on. Ryan, well, I love you too. We all do. So, Ryan, now we're going to go back to a familiar theme, which is you can only do the best that you can do. your cause, you think it's a good and righteous cause. That's why you do it. So give them what's in your heart and tell them why you think it's important and righteous. So in our case, we,

there are three different things that we try to do. And I believe in them with every fiber of my being. So that's why it's easy to tell you about them. And so step one is we try to deliver the news honestly to you guys. Not in a partisan way. Obviously we're progressive. That's part of being honest. In my opinion, the establishment media isn't honest with you guys. They say, oh no, we don't have a bias. I mean, we think that bipartisan centrism in Washington is awesome. We don't have a bias. No, you just told me you did have a bias. A bias towards bipartisan centrism in DC, which isn't even centrism. But even if it was actually the center of the country, it would still be a bias, but they don't acknowledge it.

It drives me nuts. So instead of just having it drive me nuts at home, I started a show where I could actually do it without that bias. And so we never mess with the facts, otherwise I can't sleep at night. So we tell you what the facts are, good or bad, and then we've delivered the news on us to you. So I feel passionate about that. So it's easy for me to tell you, help us do that at t.yt.com slash go, right?

Or by being a member. Step two is we want to bring our perspective. And in our case, the progressive perspective, especially when we started, there was almost nobody doing it. There was Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, and there were a couple of liberal talk shows throughout the country, Tom Hartman, Ed Schultz, Randy Rhodes. It was just a handful. I met all, literally all of them in the year 2004, the Democrats invited

whatever scraps of liberal talk shows they could find to DC. and we all met each other. And it was a dozen max at the time. And all tiny little shows in different cities, Amy was the only one who was a national show at the time in us, because we were on Sirius Satellite Radio. We were smaller than Randy Rhodes and Tom Hartman at the time. But at least we were on a national platform like Sirius Satellite Radio.

So for me, delivering that progressive message that almost nobody else was delivering at the time. And now, still not as many people as need be, deliver that message and delivered in a strong way. That's awesome. Somebody's got to do it and I love that I'm the guy that does it. And I love that you guys back us up. And when you back us up, I get, we all get stronger. I get stronger. And I hope you get stronger because I'm amplifying your voice, right? And then the third part is trying to create change in the world, positive change in the world. Well, if you can't get excited about that, you know, you're in the wrong job. I'm talking about myself. And I am, I'm genuinely excited about it. So it's easy for me to share

Now, you're excited, Ryan, about what you do. So give it everything you got and then give yourself a break. If it turns out you push and push and you do it with all your heart and you get a certain result. And by the way, that means not just pushing in the same direction, try different things. Don't be afraid to fail. I fail all the time. I failed thousands of times. Now I've said this on a couple of occasions, but if anybody ever asked me to give a graduation speech hadn't happened.

yet. But if anyone does, I'm going to tell them the secret to my so far non-success, but whatever success I have is failure. If I had been too scared to fail, we never would have tried any of the stuff that we tried, and we wouldn't have gotten to where we are. And so, yeah, we, you know, look, keeping it real without too much of the BS modesty that you should have, but you shouldn't overdo it is, look, we guys, all of us together, we built something where we get about a half a billion views a month. That's a lot of the progressive message going out there. That's a lot of positive change we're trying to drive when we're doing it together.

You should be proud of that. And I should be proud of that. And Anna and everyone else here and Craig and Bard and Jesus and everybody that worst here should be proud of that. And so we wouldn't have been able to do any of that if we didn't first go, all right, let's give it a shot. I'll give you the smallest examples and I'll give you the largest example. So smallest example is I remember when me, Jill, Jesus, and JR and Dave would sit around after the show and we would try putting our videos in all sorts of places and almost everything

failed. We're like, is there a way we could put it on Yahoo Messenger? I don't know, let's try it. We try it and people are like, what, what are you doing? Get out of here. Or nobody would watch it and it would fail. We put it on MySpace. You know how that story ends. So that didn't work. And then one day, Hesu's like, hey man, this YouTube thing, you got like 100 views. We get seven views on MySpace. We got 100 on YouTube. I'm like, oh, let's put another one up on YouTube. Holy cow, that one got 220 views. We thought we were famous, right?

And that's how you learn that these days, the professional class calls it AB testing. In the old days, we called a trial and error. But you can't do trial and error if you're afraid of failing. So, and the very last step is trial and error, do all the things that you love, put your heart into it. And sometimes when you do all that, it still doesn't work. Then for God's sake, for the 18th time, do not beat yourself up over it.

You did the best you could. So a good, big example of that for me is the campaign that I ran. I really, really thought we could do it. Did I think we had a 51% chance of winning? No, I was honest with you guys. I was honest with everybody in my personal life. I said, you know, at best, 25%. And we'd be lucky to have a 25% chance.

And I knew that the loss could be significant, in which case people would hold that over my head for the rest of my life, which is basically what happened, okay? But I was willing to risk that because I thought it was so important to be able to fight for change inside Congress where they would pay more attention to it. So for example, if I had won, right now I'd be running for Speaker of the House. Why? Because I know Nancy Pelosi is not the right leader. And I know that none of the other progressives who are better than her and would be better than me at doing it aren't going to do it because Washington got into their head and told them it's impolite. And that if you do that, you're a pariah in Washington. So tomorrow they're going to have the vote. And my guess is none of the progressives are going to challenge Pelosi. Well, I would have. And so when I did it, people would have said you were a barbarian. You're terrible, et cetera. And I would have said, no, no, brothers and sisters, you didn't send me here.

They sent me here, okay? All the folks that wrote in, all the people watching, all the people who donated to my campaign on all the people in that district. They sent me there, okay? And so then what would have happened? They would have had me on TV. And they would have said, this is an outrage. Why are you challenging the master legislator Nancy Pelosi? And I would have got to make the progressive case.

Here's what Nancy Pelosi didn't get right. but it isn't about her. Here's what progressives can do better. Here's how we can fight Republicans better. And for example, today, since the voters tomorrow, if I was in Congress, I would have likely been asked to go on TV or gotten to speak on the floor of the House. Well, in that case, not yet because they don't get sworn in until January 5th. But I would have said, why aren't we doing an ethics investigation to Lindsay Graham?

So I want to be Speaker of the House because I want to fight Republicans and the Republicans have been vicious to Democrats and it's about goddamn time somebody fought back. And what would have happened? People would be like, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then all of a sudden it would have become acceptable, a little bit more acceptable to fight back against Republicans or even against Establishment Democrats the next day. And when I did it again the next day, it would become a little bit more acceptable and a little bit more acceptable until others started going, yeah, wait a minute, me too,

me too, me too. And we would have built something. Would I have won the vote for Speaker of the House? Of course not. I would have lost probably 434 to 1. No, the Republicans would have voted for someone else. But I would have gotten only one vote. It would have been mine. I would have even I love Jamal Bowman, Corey Bush, I love the original squad, etc. But they likely wouldn't have voted for me because every advisor would have told him, no, no, no, no, you're going to deeply offend Pelosi and the leadership and you'll never get the committee assignment you want blah blah blah blah blah right but I'm not afraid to fail because I'm on a mission. I'm on a mission for you guys. And so whatever your mission is, go for it. And then at the

end, if you didn't make it, say, all right, we'll get them next time. Okay, man I can talk. All right, let's keep going. So Australian Observer Rice in in the member section. I'll go through more of your comments here. This is really funny, actually. Thank you for writing in. He wrote in, it must be exciting for so many Americans to finally be able to afford to talk to a doctor. Ooh, that hurts from Australia.

So that means any other civilized country has universal health care. And obviously we don't. So for unfortunately, for a lot of folks, this is as close as they get to a doctor, a fake doctor on an online show. Anyways, Tina has a very nice comment. See this story, referring to a story we told earlier, makes me appreciate Jenk even more. This is one of the many reasons I love TYT. But Tina, comments like yours are the reasons we love you. So thank you for being a member.

And let me go to Funk in For Fun. Ambition is just a desire for growth. And the U.S. ambition is usually linked to money and power. But there are obviously other ways to grow. I can be ambitious about learning. I can be ambitious about being a better person. Bingo, I love it. See, now other doctors are in the house and we do this together.

So, for example, in my case, I have a part of me that is both a good thing and a bad thing. I love to win. And so that's positive when we're pushing for things like change in the world, things like just Democrats winning or Wolfpack getting money out of politics or rebellion pack, which is about to kick the living crap out of David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia. And that's what I view positive change in the world. So when my drive to win is helpful in those places, sometimes it's not helpful because you could overfocus on yourself. But funk and for fun, funk and for fun, I get it now, is exactly right. You can take that trait, whether it's ambition or your drive to win, and you could use it for positive things in the world.

So learn yourself, think about it, know who you are, and then take whatever traits you have and try to use them for positive things in the world. Because again, it makes other people feel better, but mainly it makes you feel better. So you guys are doing amazing, wonderful contributions to this conversation. Just a nice note here, and I'm reading as we go. Zayem Ansari writes in, TYIT has come such a long way, absolutely amazing. Love you guys so much. You guys are an island of sanity in a world of insanity.

Keep up the great work. Well, Zayem, it's funny you say that. One of the first blogs I ever wrote at Huffington Post was about how sane people or in that case It was about honestly, it was about non-religious people or in an island of sanity in a ocean of insanity. And it was because I had that epiphany all the way back then 15 years, 14 years ago, because I always assumed that everybody was relatively logical and come to find out that's not really true.

And so that and boy, did we find that out in a big way. Now turn it to politics. in the year 2020, it turns out we found that 73 million Americans voted for insanity and thought it was the right thing to do. So, well, thank you for all of you guys, members, people who do super chats, t.com, go donors, et cetera, for building this island of sanity so that we at least have a place we can all call home. Allison Macklin writes in cathartic A.F.

As in as F. Thank you. It's a really funny way of putting it. That's why I'm reading it. Thank you, Allison. And she says, thank you guys, your fierce, compassionate, and tireless. Move from New Jersey, New York City to Texas to help turn Texas blue soon guys and gave a blue heart. I'm right there with you, but we gotta go get the Latino vote.

But I don't want to get into politics. And the way you do that is economic populism. All right, I submitted a new op-ed about that. Hopefully that will come out soon. So I keep looking doing this because I'm looking at the clock behind the light. So actually speaking of which, let me take a one-minute break here so I can read more of these comments and then share them with you guys in a relatively sane order. So come right back.

We'll just take a one-minute quick break here. All right. Young Turks, let me read some more names of folks who made this show possible and all the young tricks possible at t.com slash go. John Jayne Harbor, Beach, Michigan, 15 bucks. Mukti S in Lubbock, Texas, five bucks. Michael D. And you know, I'm going to stop for a second. I don't know why, but when I read a name like Mukti in Lubbock, Texas, I visualize your life for a second. And I love connecting to you guys that way. And it does with, I try it with almost all the names. Anyways, let's keep it going. Michael D. in Tucson, Arizona, 50 bucks.

Dean, you and Honolulu, $127. So you get the press on t-shirt. Timothy J. in St. Paul, Minnesota, 50 bucks. Christine M. in Chicago. 10 bucks. Barheen, W. in Paoli, Pennsylvania, 20 bucks. Christopher Kevin S. in Astoria, New York, five bucks. John Jay in Harbor Beach. Oh, there's Harbor Beach. Oh, that's John Jay again. Another 15 bucks. And so you get it. All right. So, Now, let me read you some comments and questions. Let's start with Super Chat. Ariel Apuque, sorry, I'm sure I butchered the last name, right? Sin, got to say, I was a bit cynical about this at the beginning,

but hearing how you both chose your careers was very enlightening, loving this so far. There you go, Ariel. Love it. See, now you just made me happy. Now let's go to, this is a really interesting question. Jacqueline Ross asks, how did you navigate family, friends in life after becoming non-religious? After a few hard deaths in my life, I'm getting past my Christian upbringing to find my happiness. How do you manage feeling lost after this transition? Thank you.

So Jacqueline, for me, it was an interesting transition. So I grew up a secular Muslim, so which means really non-religious, right? So before I was 20 years old, I probably went to mosque three, four times in my life. And being Turks, we're known for being secular or we used to be before Erdogan. So it's ingrained in Turkish culture that you must separate church and state. So long historic story behind that. But I love it, and I'm glad, and it formed a big part of my identity. But in a summer year, I took a class on Islam and by a great Irish professor, funny enough.

And he really sold me on the religion. See that these liberals are brainwashing people into believing in Islam. No, he was just a good guy and he taught it in a way that was really positive. And so I became more religious that year. And I think I was trending in that direction anyway. And I used to fast, but like a Turk, whenever I could, right? So anyways, but when I did, I started reading the books. And so I started reading the Quran outside of what Professor O'Brien was teaching

because he was teaching only the good stuff. So I started reading everything else and I'm like, wait a minute, Professor O'Brien didn't teach this part and this part doesn't sound so good, right? And then I read more, I'm like, that part doesn't sound so good either. Wait a minute, now this part, it doesn't make any sense. Okay, and the thing I would run into most often was that doesn't make any sense. So I was like, and I did the same journey as my dad did. He actually did it a couple of years after I did.

And he's way more open-minded. And he did it in his 60s. So, and so I was like, okay, so the Quran has a lot of issues. But, you know, a lot of Christians in the world, so the Bible's probably got to figure it out. So I pick up the Bible. I start reading. I'm like, whoa, I didn't see that coming. I mean, I've known it in bits and pieces, obviously living life and being a curious person.

But when you sit down to really read the Bible, you start in the Old Testament because that's what's in the beginning. Boy, the Old Testament is drenched in blood and sacrifices and goats and wars and circumcisions and prostitutes. But don't eat the shellfish and don't do this. And now you're like, I mean, it is overwhelming in its, again, if you're, Christian or you're Muslim, I'm sorry, brothers and sister. I'm just telling you what I think, okay? It just doesn't make any sense at all. It, it, there's one point in the Bible where our God loses to another God. I remember reading that when I was religious going, wait a minute, then why aren't we praying to that God, the one that won? It's in the Bible. You

could look it up, okay? And so by the time I got to this Tower of Babel story or Babel, I don't know why I always called it Babel sounds funnier. And I was already teetering on the edge and it was a straw that I broke the camel's back. So if you haven't heard this story, Tower Babel, humans worked together, they built this big giant tower and then God gets jealous. So instantly I'm like, wait, why would an all-powerful, entity get jealous of these little ants running around on planet Earth and they built a little bit of a tower. Who cares? He controls the whole universe. What a weird thing. Like that doesn't compute at all. And then he's also all knowing. So didn't he know we were going to build a

tower? And then finally he knocks it down and he makes us all speak different languages and spreads us throughout the earth so we can't cooperate together. And that's, That was a straw that broke the camels back for me. Because I thought, well, if this is true, which just seems unbelievable, but even if it is true, well, then I'm on the opposite side. I'm not for a God that separates human beings and makes us fight each other and doesn't bring us together. And I know other parts of the Bible are great, I know other parts of the Quran are great,

but it logically cannot be true if some parts are clearly wrong. Then there's something went wrong in the printing process here, right? So these books in their entirety are just not factual. So now again, I'm sorry if that gives you offense, and that's not my intent here. It's a long way of answering the question. Once I had that piece of mind, then I didn't care what anybody else thought. So I was absolutely sure of my principles and my philosophy and my way of thinking about it. And so that night, we went to a fraternity party because remember I'm a sophomore or, no, at that

point I was a junior in college. And I said, no, no, wow, I was a senior. It took me a while to have the beer. So I'm getting the timeline. It's totally irrelevant, but a little wrong. It was actually a while back after I had let go of religion that I built up the courage to have my first beer, because remember, Muslims don't drink. I tried a little bit when I was secular and I didn't like to taste anyway. But anyway, so I was at a party and I said to one of my friends, get me a beer and they thought it was a joke, right? So they got me a beer. I opened and I drank it. They're like, wait, is there a false bottom? What's going on? Is it actually too strong coffee? Did I get that plug in? Kind of. Anyway, and I was like, no, I'm done with

it. That's it. I'm done with it. And the one thing that's me and my dad differed on for a long time was that he didn't have a talk show. So, and I didn't back then either, but we had a different strategy on how to appeal to people. He would do the frontal assault. So he would go talk to his friends who were also in their 60s and later in their 70s and 80s. He would say, it is all wrong. You are crazy. There is no heaven. There is no hell. It is all junk. Right. And I'm like, dad, you're wigging him out. Stop. No, no, no. This is not the right strategy. So, like, he doesn't mean any harm by it. He's a good, we're all friends. He's your friend. Like, you don't realize you're wigging him out. He didn't mean to wig him out. And he loves

his friends. But they were like blown away by it. And so that's why I said you earlier to you guys on the political strategy too. If you got Trump supporting family members and stuff, plant a seed. Move on. Plant another seed. Plant another seed. But do it nice and easy. So I took that route. So I would just ask questions of my religious friends. So, I mean, for religious folks, you could ask a thousand different questions. You know, why? For Muslims, they are particularly not true for all of them. It's a little bit of a generalization. But at least in my culture in Turkey, if you say anything against the Prophet Muhammad or the Quran or God, they get very offended on behalf of God. So a simple question of if, again, if God is all powerful, why would

he get offended? I mean, why on God's green earth would he care what an ant on earth thinks of him? He already, first of all, he already knows what I think. And second of all, he can do whatever he wants. He's all powerful. So what do you get an offended on his behalf for? And when you say that, they're like, huh, and he say, wait, is it, is he all powerful or is he not all powerful. I'm just trying to understand. When you phrase it as I'm trying to understand, it gets them to think a little bit. So that's my strategy. And remember, like the happiness gym, all of these things are just one step at a time, just exercise that muscle a little bit in terms of you feeling good about your decision. And then if you want to help others,

but don't do it in a way that's confrontational. If you're truly trying to help them, don't yell at them, pose it as a question to get them to start thinking about it. And remember, all those folks, most of them, if they're in your life, are actually great people who are trying to help with their faith. Okay. So now let me go to the next one. Well, these are, okay, there's a couple that are about business, and that's too big a topic for the little time we have here. Let me read this one. Taylor Walsh asked a Dr. Jen question, what's your process for starting big projects like Wolfpack. I'm currently considering post-COVID just driving around Wisconsin and giving talks to drive up voter turnout for local elections. Thanks. So it, now that's another

big topic. Let me try to do it quickly because I'm not sure that it helps you deal with your own happiness too much. But there I had a process. Every story I was doing on the show, I know you know what it does relate pretty well so every story I was doing on the show was leading to if you have more money you win you win in elections before we started Wolfpack before we started just Democrats it was 95% of the time if you had more money you wouldn't know election period so 19 out of 20 times so if you show me who's got more money I'll show you who's gonna win the race period now secondly on legislative battles it was even worse show me who has more money and I'll show you with almost

100% of the time who's going to win that bill, that legislation, that vote, right? So while I got tired of it, I didn't want to come tell you guys every day, oh, by the way, it's depressing and there's nothing you do about it, whoever has more money wins. So I decided, why don't we change it? Why don't we try to get it so that money is not the only factor in democracy, call me crazy, right? And they did, they called me crazy. And they called everybody who works. They still call them crazy. All the other groups, even the money out of politics groups, not all of them, but a big chunk of them are like, Oh, Wolfpack, they're trying to get big change, get an amendment in a convention to get an amendment.

That's crazy. They're crazy the way that they're trying for change, right? Well, if that's crazy, I love it. And so I, the reason I did it is because I know that unless we change that, we're never going to be able to get you the change that you desperately need, whether it's healthcare for everybody higher wages ending the endless wars. You go down the list. We're not going to get it unless we get the money out. So that's why I've always said, as impactful as just as Democrats have been, and I hope rebellion pack will be soon, and has already been and helped to win Nebraska's second district for Biden, helped a little bit in Michigan. I think at the end of the day,

Wolfpack's the most important group. Because if you don't solve that, it's all in service of solving that, getting money out of politics, because then we regain our democracy. Now, is in terms of what your thing you're doing. One step out of time, brother. So if you think, look, think it through first, how can I have the most impact? Is it by joining a group that already exists? Is it by starting my own group? Or is this by starting to just drive around without a group?

Who cares? I don't want the pain of NAS of having a group. Whether it's somebody else telling me what to do in a different group or the pain of NASA of starting my own group. Every little bit helps. If you talk to your family members, good. Check. You drove around and talked to other people, even better.

Check. You start a group great or you join a group even better. You start your own group even better, right? As long as you're doing it in a productive way in a way that helps. And if it turns out, you tried it for a number of years and, you know, it just didn't materialize in the way that you wanted. Well, then you have great peace of mind that you tried it more than almost anyone else. So thank you, brother, on behalf of everyone. Even if it didn't work, thank you for at least having the decency to try.

try. So, all right. Now let me go here in the small time. There's so many good comments here in the member section. Let me read Naudius Maximus first. He says, oh man, so true, Jenk. I appreciate every person in your life that you live, like, love like you like your grandparents. I mean, really, really appreciate them. It sounds cliche, but when my wife had breast cancer last year and beat it, thank you. I mean, thank God for that. Oh, or whatever. I just told you I don't believe in God, but I know, but what I do believe in is appreciating the lucky breaks that we catch. I was reminded yet again, he continues, that in this life to savor each moment with the people you love and live each day, one moment at a time,

again, mindfulness, savor each bite, the clock is ticking. So guys, don't wait for that bad moment to come for it to jolt you into the reality that every minute counts. Also don't stress about every minute balance, right? But realize today is just as important as the last day. So that's why one of my favorite songs of all time is O Death. That's a folk song here in the U.S. And it tells the story of the Grim Reaper comes for your soul. And it's a wealthy man. He tries to negotiate with the Grim Reaper. And he's like, You're not getting it, brother. It's over. I'm here for you. Okay, and it's over. There is no extra day. And he keeps saying, can I give you more? Can I give you more of my money?

Can I give you all my money for one extra day? And if you think about it, wouldn't you? I mean, outside of what you would leave for your kids and your family, et cetera, whatever was left over, wouldn't you give it all for one extra day? Because what are you going to do with it when you're dead? You're gone. Lights are out, right? now think about how precious that last day is hey congrats you have one a day just like that tomorrow and the day after and the day after so soak it in like that all right i'll end on this one because i promise to you guys i'm out of here rodin thank you for doing this special it's better and less expensive than therapy that's true it doesn't have to cost you anything at all I totally agree that we choose to be happy.

A couple of days ago, I was waiting and drive-through line at Starbucks. First of all, we're gonna make you drink Starbucks every day when Biden wins. Or too strong coffee, second plug of the day. All right, anyways, he says, yes, my occasional chai latte makes me happy. When a car cut right in front of me in line, I was furious and I used a few expletives about the person driving. And then I spent the next 10 minutes waiting behind her and fuming and being angry with myself about not doing something about it. And when I finally got to the window, I felt like an idiot, that took a turn, when the person in the car in front of me had paid for my order, she felt awful about not seeing me waiting and going in front of me, what a waste of time being unhappy. There you go, brother. You got it exactly right. So, and don't get me wrong, I get mad when somebody cuss me off, right? It's human. It's human. You don't have to be like this 24-7. But then let it go, maybe he was in a hurry, maybe he's got to get to the hospital.

And when I'm driving to the studio, I'm in a hurry. Sometimes I cut people off. Let's just exchange back and forth. You cut me off, I cut you off. And we have our human emotion and then we let it go. And don't assume the worst in people. Sometimes you'll be surprised to find the best in people. All right, love you guys to pieces.

If you watch this all the way through, you're awesome. And we hope, as with politics, in this case of life, we help just a smidge. And then that would make all of our lives a little bit better. Love you. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.