Transcript/887: Jon Ronson Returns
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N-N-N-N-N-N-N-Knowledge Fight
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Dan and Jordan, I am sweating.
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Knowledgefight.com, it's time to pray.
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I have great respect for Knowledgefight.
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Knowledgefight.
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I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys.
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Knowledgefight.
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Dan and Jordan.
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Knowledgefight.
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Riddle her.
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Riddle her.
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Riddle her.
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Need.
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Need money.
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Riddle her.
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Riddle her.
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Riddle her.
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Andy and Kansas.
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Andy and.
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Andy and.
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Stop it.
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Andy and.
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Andy and.
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Andy and.
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It's time to pray.
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Andy and Kansas, you're on the air.
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Thanks for holding.
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Hello Alex, I'm a first time caller.
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I'm a huge fan.
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I love your work.
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Knowledgefight.
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N-N-N-N-N-Knowledgefight.com.
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I love you.
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Hello everyone, welcome back to Knowledgefight.
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This is Jordan, unfortunately without my co-host Dan.
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But today we are joined by John Ronson, who has inexplicably agreed to come back on the
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show.
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Thank you very much John.
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It's always a delight to be with you and or Dan.
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How are you doing?
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What's your bright spot?
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Oh that is delightful that you would ask.
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Well my bright spot was going to be that Rafa Nadal is back playing tennis.
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And I woke up at 4 a.m. to watch his match this morning.
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But unfortunately he lost and might be injured again.
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So well, not my bright spot.
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But how about yours?
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My bright spot is I'm watching for the first time Friday Night Lights and I'm about to
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find out whether or not Coach Taylor can get East Dillon up to snuff enough that they can
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compete in state.
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I mean I will admit I've never seen it.
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I've never seen it but I say clear eyes, full hearts can't lose, and variations of that
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all the time.
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Absolutely.
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And what I just told you really summarizes it and you know.
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Actually I've got to say I kind of like it.
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I've been living in America for nearly 12 years and you know I think I'm ready to understand
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and appreciate small town Texas life.
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You know I don't know if anybody is.
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I watched Varsity Blues when I was way too young and I just quit after that.
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I mean they're supposed to be 17 and they look like they're 40 going to strip clubs.
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I don't understand the world anymore.
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Well I'm thoroughly enjoying it, we're binging it except for season two which goes completely
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off the rails.
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And the unlikely event that anybody listening to this is now inspired to watch Friday Night
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Lights skip season two.
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I can tell you you really don't need to watch season two.
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All the terrible narrative bad decisions they make in season two are never mentioned again
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in subsequent seasons.
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That's fascinating.
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Yeah it was just this kind of dark secret season two of Friday Night Lights.
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Just skip it.
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What is the best thing from season two that makes it impossible to or like makes it pointless
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to watch?
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There's a murder.
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There's a murder!
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There's a high school murder!
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This is a small show about football that's what's so great about it and there's a murder
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and also there's a murder in self-defense that they then try and cover up.
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This is Texas where if you kill someone in self-defense in Texas they give you prizes.
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So this whole narrative of like covering up this self-defense killing is just absurd.
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Yeah I mean I played high school football in the Midwest so admittedly it wasn't quite
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set in the same area but every Friday we did not murder somebody.
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Right exactly it was a terrible miscalculation what's so wonderful about that show is the
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smallness of it so to to bring in something huge was just a ridiculous mistake.
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Yeah I think that's probably why I never watched it is because I lived too much of that high
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school experience and I just wanted to yeah I don't need it again.
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I don't like football I don't like high school and my wife's a high school teacher I don't
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need it I got plenty of my life.
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Right you know who else's wife's a high school teacher?
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Coach Tanya!
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I knew it!
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I knew you were gonna get me with that!
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Rodson!
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Yes.
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Well I suppose it's time to get into why I've trapped you here.
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You have by the time this has come out your new season of Things Fell Apart will be out.
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Will it be the whole season or just the first episode?
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The whole season I'm happy to say they're going to be playing it week you know week
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by week on BBC Radio 4 but they're also putting the entire thing out all at once on Tuesday
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January the 9th which is in the past as we speak yes yeah so I'm so pleased I've you
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know the weird thing for some reason with with me every time I've done a podcast it's
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always been released in a slightly complicated way yeah which is always slightly frustrating
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for me so I'm so pleased that this is just being released in a kind of bingy what do
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they call it like when they put everything out at once there's a word I forgot it anyway
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it's being released in that way it's a German I said that's why you can't remember it yeah
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yeah liebenschaum and so I'm very pleased it's being released in such an easy way everybody
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could listen to all of it all at once come Tuesday yeah that's and they they really should
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because I'll let people know you I pitched you this that we would do three interviews
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because I you graciously gave me an advance copy which makes me feel real special and
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like I'm an actual member of the media instead of a clown well I'm very pleased and it's
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funny because you you helped that there was one episode where there was what there was
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one episode that needed a little bit of kind of deep cut Alex Jones information so yeah
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you were done with a kind to provide it so you were contractually obligated to come back
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on the show I got you is that a copyright thing in Britain it's a it's just it's reciprocity
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principle of reciprocity well the thing is as I was listening to all of them I realized
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that we can do a kind of we could do a quick little promotional interview where we say
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oh it's great and all the stories are interesting and did you know that America's weird we could
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do that or we could really really kind of dig into it and there's eight episodes which
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means I mean considering that the last time we talked there was about three hours of content
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and our interview was about three hours yes I know it does give me pause and it takes
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me a year to do what like you and dad or Joe Rogan on the other end of the scale could
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do it like a day yeah I wish a little different I don't well I should say as a fan as a fan
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of you and various other podcasts and as a fan and a subscriber you know I want constant
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content I want the feed to be updated twice a week or whatever so but I can't do that
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myself I'm all about the minutiae I'm all about you know polishing and polishing and
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polishing so you know I fear that my way of telling stories is is you know slightly disappointing
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to people who want constant content oh I mean imagine how I feel I have to continually remind
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myself like so I put out a book in 2020 and I've been working and right now I've finally
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gotten to the draft process of the second one right and I have to keep reminding myself
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it's okay people often take years between books because surrounding that is Dan churning
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out a novel every two days so it's tough it's tough I get it yeah I mean these are you know
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like work that takes a long time to get right it's like our children you know you you want
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to you know these are these are hopefully the things that will live on after after we're
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dead and and so you do want to put the hours in to make it as good as possible so I don't
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regret it but in the end we're slaves to our brains right we could only do what our brains
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allow us to do and and for me my brain operates that I want to tell a story in kind of intricate
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detail whereas you know three hours of it's just hard for me it's hard oh yeah you're
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really good at it other people are really good at it and I'm not I'm good at the smoke
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I'm good at the minutiae well I find I find that fascinating especially because you managed
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to put so much minutiae into what relatively is a is a small amount of time you know we
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cram a lot of minutiae but that's still into two hours I feel like after listening to a
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half hour of you know one of these episodes there's there's a lot inside of it that is
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not even necessarily explicit but by having done all of this detail work you can put a
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little bit in there that implies all of the rest of it without having to go too hard leaving
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things unsaid that is such an important part of of storytelling of non-fiction storytelling
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I you've you've got me onto one of my favorite subjects here I think one of the bad things
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that have not right you know one of the next I don't sound like an old you know an old
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idiot but you know one of the things that kind of changed a little bit in the culture
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about 2013 2014 I think was there was much more of an impetus for people to say exactly
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what they mean lest they be misunderstood and they get into trouble for being misunderstood
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but I've always been a really big fan of leaving things unsaid because if you leave things
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unsaid then the storytelling process becomes like a kind of partnership between the author
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and the reader and I've always loved that you know I love shows that don't spell everything
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out or musicians or whatever so yes that's exactly what I try to do and I've tried to
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do in this series like like everything I do yeah I mean it's it is kind of always funny
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to me that people don't often share the same definition of words and yet somehow people
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assume that cramming more of them into the same space will make it easier for people
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to understand you know like yeah if you can if you are confused about the same definition
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of one word imagine 40 of them in the same it's a whole mess totally to me it's so there's
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nothing about this process that's more kind of you know joyful to me than going back to
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a sentence and realizing you could you could say it in fewer words and the more words you
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take out the more it becomes like that partnership between between writer and reader it's my
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favorite it really is I yeah I've told the story but I I before I like my final product
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of my book was about 50,000 words and I it's I had a hundred thousand that I took scissors
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to and like my red pen was bleeding at the end of it you know I got tore it to shreds
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and that was my favorite part of the process you know absolutely that was hard yeah I'd
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go as far as to say it's the only part of the process I enjoy the rest of it's the rest
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of it's a nightmare but taking taking out superfluous words is just couldn't be more
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but could be more pleasant yeah I would say sometimes it comes out again you've been you
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just keep chasing that feeling you know where you go oh oh my god look at all that that
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I put down and then you never see that much again well so what I wanted to talk to you
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about in a way respecting exactly what you described you know these are this is something
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that you put in a lot of work on this these are your kids so let's get into them and treat
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them like that instead of just being like hey listen on your own so I wanted to talk
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about the first two episodes as kind of a diptych to begin totally can I say that you
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know we're going to be giving away like everything right in this interview all the twists yeah
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probably I don't know so much if we're like because here's part of what I want to do is
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a lot of my questions really aren't necessarily about the content so much as they are I think
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if you compare these two stories together there's a lot of weird things that kind of
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pop up on the side right because well let me well let me ask you in that case Jordan
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that do you think it would be better for people to pause and listen to the episodes and then
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come back to this or do you think it'll be okay for them to listen to this without having
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heard the episodes I think it'll be okay for them to listen to this because a lot of this
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also is going to be content that our listeners are going to be if not like intimately familiar
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with this will all be in the realm of stuff that we've covered too in a way you know not
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the same way and not in a not in that kind of narrative non-fiction sort of way so it's
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a lot of times far more enjoyable right especially episode two right which which really feeds
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into kind of stuff that you do absolutely and yeah so but the the two things that make
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or no the the thing that makes episode one and two tied together for me so closely is
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that I think at the heart of both stories is a doctor a lie and how much trust we put
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into the word doctor yes I think that's really yeah yeah you're right yeah so the first story
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the first episode I would say begins you know in the 80s with a with a killer and then is
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compounded by another one yes although we don't know at first that it's a killer basically
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in the 80s in Miami 32 women are found dead in mysterious circumstances they are all black
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sex workers which is probably the reason why this story is way less well-known than you
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know that it ought to be yes they were they had a couple of things in common as well as
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that they were all found naked from the waist down in exactly the same position the detective
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Frank Wazowski said to me that you could superimpose their bodies on top of each other and they
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all had low levels of cocaine in their systems so that's the beginning of the mystery like
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what happened yeah because nobody could figure out the cause of death there was no gunshots
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no stabbings nothing no blood it was just a mystery the the detective said in fact was
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asked he said at the time that it was the most mysterious case he had ever come across
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so then enter into the story miami dade county's deputy chief medical examiner a man named
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dr charles wetley uh yeah the the second murderer that we're about to discuss have you by the
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way had you heard of dr wetley or this miami story i had not heard of this miami story
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and i i think what's fun again what's fun about uh being from uh from our show and then
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listening this is you brought that doctor that name up and i immediately went this guy's
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uh this guy's trouble and then i've been and then i went off on a whole thing and now i'm
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gonna and now there's information that i'm gonna share with you then you probably don't
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know totally yeah i mean i i went far down a rabbit hole but i didn't go all the way
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you know i'm sure there's things about dr wetley i don't know i'm sure there are uh
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so so dr wetley uh examined the women's bodies and announced that he had determined the cause
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of death he said the women had all spontaneously dropped dead as a result of a combination
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of cocaine and sex when i said this to a friend of mine by the way she said um she said well
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how come i'm not dead you know when they when they say oh they found uh small amounts of
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cocaine in their body i would be like well it's the 80s i defy you to find less than
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some of that in 50 of the american population at that point in time you know like especially
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miami yeah right miami was cocaine central in the 80s i know for miami vice yeah um yeah
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uh and uh yeah so he gave this diagnosis a name he said it was called excited delirium
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um and but then there was some some other things happened firstly another body showed
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up of a 14 year old girl called antonette burns who wasn't a sex worker and she hadn't
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taken any cocaine but she was found in exactly the same position as all of the others so
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this was the first kink you know in the in the theory no cocaine in her system at all
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and then another woman showed up who was alive and said that she was a sex worker and she
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was you know with a guy and he went from being a gentleman into a damn maniac and started
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to choke her and so they got a description of the guy and they did some more investigating
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and his name was charlie williams and it turned out of course that it wasn't excited delirium
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it was a serial killer no it might as i mean yeah i i read the two words excited delirium
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and that is where it was like in the back of my mind i'm just hearing copaganda and
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then it's like it might as well he might as well have said oh they died of a broken heart
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uh you know like you're so full of shit what are you talking about they oh they uh you
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know they had too much fun right so then naturally you go how is it possible that this guy can
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get away with saying oh all of these women had too much fun to death right there was
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undoubtedly a misogynistic element to this but there was also a racist element maybe
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not least because he was he was promoting a corresponding theory of male deaths from
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excited delirium he said women die in relation to sex whereas men just go berserk they run
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through traffic they rip their clothes off and then they spontaneously dropped out of
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excited delirium after taking cocaine and i read that in the 1919 world's fair they
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released a thing about uh uh yeah right everybody all right that one was okay fair enough okay
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so um at one point dr wetley addressed the fact that most cocaine users were white whereas
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70 of the men who died in police custody and were then diagnosed as having excited delirium
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were black and his answer wasn't maybe this was racism maybe this was police brutality
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his answer was maybe black people are just more prone to spontaneously dropping dead
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of excited delirium maybe it's genetic what you're gonna do hey it's not me i'm not a
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racist the lord just made black people have too much fun and so they had to die yeah i've
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read the bible that is kind of the message i think right so yeah so you would think after
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the um i'm not sure at what point to stop this story whether you want to go all the
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way to the end or whether you think it's worth stopping on a cliffhanger and letting people
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listen to the episode see i think that is the the part where we should switch over to
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the second episode okay because let me just say one thing is that what i do in the rest
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of the episode well we're gonna get back to it but i want to say that because we go from
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we go from there to the future uh you know we skip so we've stayed in this 1980s era
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situation where there is a doctor who is allowed to say these things not just because he's
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a doctor but because everyone around him is just like oh the passive racism that's there
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that says well yeah i mean obviously black uh sex workers they're just gonna die from
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having some cocaine and who really cares um so yeah and very little media about it almost
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none uh fox did something in 1989 abc did something i think in 1984 and i from what
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i could tell that was basically the only contemporaneous media about the the mysterious deaths then
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murders of 32 women in in miami kind of extraordinary yeah yeah and and putting that into the context
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of uh medicine at the time you know with uh as as our you know next kind of character
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that pops up is going to be involved with around this time uh with the aids epidemic
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uh with all of these people and the medical establishment at that time could not have
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been more white men are the only people that matter right right there's just no other way
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to describe it uh white male christians straight yeah i mean when you look at kind of true
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crime i mean the cliche about true crime podcasting today is that it's white women that's this
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idea of uh you know the the damsel in distress that you know and and you know obviously people
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of many people before me have pointed out that all the most popular true crime podcasting
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tends to be about white women not not black women everybody likes a white lady in trouble
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yeah that goes back and that goes back to fucking knights and shit yeah yeah indeed
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anyway i got i i dragged digressed away from the second story um yes so around this same
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time we have uh we've got uh the second story which is about dr judy mikeovitz uh including
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conversations with her of course uh plandemic uh judy mikeovitz and yeah which he'll have
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covered on on knowledge facts right because yeah yeah uh we've talked about her quite
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a bit uh and uh and her her uh buddy her co-author on uh play uh what what is it the plague of
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corruption of corruption uh kevin or something he's the he's the co-author of the great american
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awakening or whatever with alex so that guy yeah right okay i didn't know that um that
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i i episode eight of things fell apart is about mickey willis who is the man who interviewed
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judy mikeovitz for plandemic so we returned to plandemic at the end of the series but
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no i don't know i didn't know anything much about her co-author of plague of corruption
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well that's that's just a that's just a nice little fun fact uh it's easy in our world
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too uh how's that um so what i find what i find interesting here is that in one case
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we have the uh you know respected this is just a medical examiner this is a doctor we
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just take this guy's opinion uh and how that spirals out into a professional career for
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him that lasts uh a good long while uh and then we have dr judy mikeovitz uh who has
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her i would say almost similar origin story and then follow-up career right like yeah
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i think that's a really interesting parallel which to be honest i never really thought
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of i mean that's why you come on our show baby that's what you do i have the connection
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of the consequences of untruths that's happening in like every episode this this season uh
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somebody tells a lie or something that isn't quite true and the ripples are kind of extraordinary
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but yeah this this kind of doctor connection i didn't really think of until until just
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now um for me judy mikeovitz is really the reason why i wanted to make things fell apart
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right from the beginning of season one because i'm really interested in this phenomenon of
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you know why so many people are just you know just falling down rabbit holes that they can't
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get out of yeah um and so many of them are smart people judy mikeovitz is a very smart
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person and and that's always been at the forefront of why i wanted to make things fell apart
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because i've got friends who it's happened to i think everyone by now has got friends
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who it's happened to that between this tweet and that tweet a week later they've gone insane
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and um so i've been fascinated by that and so so finding you know stumbling on judy mikeovitz
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his story was perfect because this is a perfect story about somebody who who who tumbles down
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a rabbit hole and and as a consequence i think you know um influences many many people to
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tumble down their own rabbit holes yeah i think i think that's uh i think that's something
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that i find really fascinating about her and and the way that these two stories kind of
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do injure uh or uh weave together is that um how how is it that people can trust her
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that kind of how is it possible and yet in the first story my question is how is it that
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people don't go into a rabbit hole on dr wheatley how is it possible that people will accept
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dr wheatley saying it's just this without going into a rabbit hole but dr judy will
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say nonsense and then people will go i find it i find it so fascinating that's interesting
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well of course back in wetly by the way we said wheatley but oh my apologies apologies
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that's okay but back then of course it wasn't the internet i mean this was late 80s early
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90s so he managed to escape the scandal in miami and start going to forensic pathology
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conferences around america promoting his theory of excited delirium and nobody knew about
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the scandal in miami because it just hadn't there was no media there was no internet it
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just it just stayed in miami to this day i mean the miami connection to excited delirium
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is still totally unknown i interviewed this woman called um julia sherwin who's a civil
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rights lawyer and she said that she gave a talk at a forensic pathology conference in
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2020 where she talks about the miami murders and the junk science origins of excited delirium
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and she said they still didn't know even in 2020 a room full of forensic pathologists
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so so it's an extraordinarily unknown story yeah well and that's that's one of the things
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that i i think uh you probably don't know is because uh at the end you are very clear
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that excited delirium is no longer accepted medical science and all that stuff um but
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in in about 15 to 20 minutes i've got studies from 2011 all the way up until uh one in 2016
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of well he's saying that excited delirium is the cause uh right yeah and you know what
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i i gave a talk in belgium at a podcast festival in austin belgium in november and i told a
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little bit of the excited delirium story on stage and afterwards a woman from de standard
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which is you know the big paper in belgium came up to me and said there was two cases
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of people having died in police custody uh that were ongoing that are ongoing now in
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belgium and excited delirium is listed as a cause of death in in both of them so even
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though you know the american medical association the american psychiatric association don't
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recognize excited delirium there are places in the world where it's still being used yeah
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yeah absolutely i mean and if it's not excited delirium in the united states now it's some
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other propaganda term you know to get away with agitated delirium some people have started
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to call it sure absolutely um yeah and by the way yes can i just say one thing like
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i there might be some people listening to this thinking okay you know i've seen videos
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of some guy in florida who's clearly you know on drugs ripping off his clothes and running
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down the street like is that not excited delirium and i had that thought too so i put that to
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uh forensic pathologist joy carter and her answer was it could be all sorts of things
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it could be it could be diabetes mellitus it could be an overdose it could be intoxication
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it could be these spice drugs that come from asia and her point was they're putting it
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all in the same box and calling it excited delirium with all of the implications that
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this is like a thing that happens to black men because they have superhuman strength
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and they're impervious to pain you know that's where the problem starts sure yeah i mean
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for me uh any bipolar type one person will just look at that and go yeah i mean yeah
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that can happen right what you all of you were weird for thinking that that's just crazy
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instead of being that could happen any couple of weeks now right that's just how it is yeah
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yeah i and and that's the that's the other thing that i come back to with these two stories
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is there are people still publishing obviously bogus uh studies about how excited delirium
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is the cause that are deliberate that are you know commissioned by either law enforcement
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or taser uh the the companies that make those specifically for the purpose of obfuscating
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and lying about police murder and allowing it to continue right it's happened yeah oh
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yeah it's happened hundreds of times that uh somebody has died in police custody after
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being tased now you know the one thing i would give taser is that you can't say most often
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you can't you can't pinpoint exactly why the person died because when somebody's been tased
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they've also often been you know beaten up by several police officers and so on but on
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i think 276 occasions in recent times i'm not going back to the 90s i'm going back to
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like the 2000s somebody has died in police custody after being tased and excited delirium
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was listed as a cause of death yeah i i've my my personal feeling on that is uh with
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so many laws like people are being put into jail for life for being in the same car as
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somebody who shot somebody later and yet we're still like splitting hairs on well the cops
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also beat him to death it wasn't just taser like i don't care i don't give a shit about
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disambiguating whether or not it was exactly taser's fault the whole purpose of taser is
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to facilitate shit like that right yes you know when i was wrestling the benny stare
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at goats they offered to tase me at one point and and i was like oh maybe i should because
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they all said oh we all we all tase each other as part of the training of course do you want
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to get tased yeah and i did i almost said yes and i've got to say i'm very glad that
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i said no i i find it so fascinating how often if you just sniff out dude behavior you should
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just shut something down like if you hear a bunch of dudes being like yeah we tase each
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other to be strong you're like okay shut down the whole project these idiots gotta go there's
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this is stupid what are we doing here right so we've got this we've got this uh uh story
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of people trusting this guy and people not knowing anything about it without the internet
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then we have judy mikeovitz and she is publishing her study in science magazine uh and this
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is all the way back in 2007 or i think it is it's around that i can't remember the exact
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somewhere between like 2007 and 2009 i can't totally remember but somewhere around there
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yeah she um i'd said below the scientists too i think there were 15 authors on the paper
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but she was the lead author uh announced that they had determined the cause of chronic fatigue
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syndrome and it was a little known mouse virus called xmrv and science published this and
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it became like an enormous thing because uh her point was not only um was xmrv found in
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the samples of all of these people with chronic fatigue syndrome it was also found in a in
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a large proportion of asymptomatic people walking around so the point she was making
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was that you know huge numbers of people millions and millions of americans were walking around
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with an infectious disease asymptomatically uh which was a mouse virus called xmrv uh
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did you know look the uh did you see that i did see that is it is there a demon what
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just happened this happens from time to time i i make some sort of move and a thumbs up
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speech bubble appears in my zoom and i and whenever i've tried to replicate it it's never
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happened so i have no idea how it happens all right it's happened it's happened to four
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or five times in the last couple of months um if you have a person in your life who thinks
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it would be hilarious to slowly drive you insane they are the person doing that to you
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right now remotely making thumbs up on your face that's what's going on it's so weird
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just make you think oh my god am i being like hacked into by playful people uh and yeah
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so anyway so yes science published this paper and then it was huge the government spent
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millions trying to replicate the study because this was like a big deal because you know
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and nobody could replicate judy's judy's findings and judy doubled down
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um and refused to retract the paper and then things went crazy i think people who
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know a lot about judy makovits know what happened with her ending up being a fugitive from justice
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and hiding out on a boat and science on the phone you know saying retract you've got to retract
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and she's like no i'm not going to retract and she's hiding and she's you know all these like
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charges or you know fugitive from justice and then she ends up going to prison like um i think
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if you're kind of a knowledge fight listener and you're really in the weeds about this stuff you
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may know this but i think most most people don't know this story yeah yeah i would say i would say
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most people are are somewhat familiar with judy makovits's general like but in alex's term they
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would rather hear it from you because you'll be telling as far as you know the truth whereas
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whereas alex's version is uh she she was trapped by the fbi after they uh got a fraudulent warrant
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and then there's blood you know it's a whole thing you know so yeah alex's version is the
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super evil telephone version of the truth so maybe give a rundown of exactly what happened
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sure and you know bad things happen to judy she she was arguably treated unfairly i would say
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uh at this moment because you know so after she refused to retract the paper then she's hiding out
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on a boat and she's charged with because what happened was you know she gets into a terrible
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conflict with her employers they want her to hand over what's called a cell line this is like the
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materials that she was using in her experiments now from what i could understand the reason why
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they wanted her to hand over a cell line was because a theory was forming among the people
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who couldn't replicate her findings that this xmrv this mouse virus was there in the cell line
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yeah um and so and it was just a genuine mistake like it had infected the cell line and she
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genuinely mistakenly thought it was in the blood samples and not the cell line but she was refusing
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to hand it over yeah and in a very angry way um from what i could tell so she was fired and then
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a colleague of hers i think one of her interns or co-workers took her notebooks from the lab
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the quote from your story just because i i appreciated this one from a uh judy and lying
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thief uh max is a quote resourceful young man uh so i think it's very clear that he broke into the
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building and stole all the crap back right yeah basically got her stuff back she said she wanted
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it back because she was worried that people would like tamper with her notebooks and she wanted to
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preserve them but she got she got her notebooks back from the lab and now she was being you know
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you know under and sort of charged charged or whatever but basically she was being accused
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of theft because she was stealing her own notebooks which belonged to the lab sure because
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if you're writing your notebooks it's the lab's property and a fugitive for justice because she
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was hiding out on a boat so then she ends up uh i remember she turned herself in or she ended up
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anyway getting going to prison yeah for five days and i gotta say going to prison for five days
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for taking your own notebook for the lab is pretty rough you know that's that's we've talked about
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that and that was something we talked about that on our show and that was something that i was
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like i listened to again and i was i was still like uh well first of all it's easy to kind of
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overlook that uh or at least overlook looking into it too deeper beyond saying well yeah the
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cops are fucking awful that's the type of shit they do to people uh and we're all just gonna
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live with it until we die uh but um the more i looked into it the more i thought why did this
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happen that seems so strange to me that there would even be this scenario for stealing notes
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right like people steal way more stuff with way less consequences all the time you can steal a
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car in chicago and and have fun uh it's great um so i looked into it and i was trying to find
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uh okay well where did all of this stuff come from and it said the warrant came from the university
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police uh the university place yeah that's well that's what one place said and i and then i followed
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up and then i kind of looked at i don't even know if they can do that are rent to cops able to issue
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warrants no idea yeah and then then there's some people that then it says that it's from the
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district attorney of wah ho or wahoo county um but that seems even crazier right why would the
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district attorney specifically do that right it does seem odd i i've got to say that aspect of
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things seem odd how employers uh net and harvey whittemore were you know were were big parts of
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society like okay so were they wealthy connected people who might know the district attorney
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well they were certainly wealthy people and they were certainly connected whether or not like i'm
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not at all alleging that they sort of tried to pull strings or anything but i do know that they
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were wealthy and they and they were connected but i've got no idea how how she ended up being treated
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in such a traconian way right and that seems and that's one of those things like again i think that
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is part of our story here is that we could look over that because we're so inured to the cops
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being the worst human beings on the planet i'm so annoyed with what judy did next yeah absolutely
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so that's that seems something that is so crazy to me that we're with that that is not fully
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understood that i feel like should be something that's fully understood is how she got to five
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days in prison in the first place yeah i i agree with you it's it's it's you know as an outsider
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to america who's been living here for 12 years like i i do really notice how sometimes the
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american law enforcement you know can be very sometimes it's it's you bad eggs come on
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you know i mean i've britain is far from perfect but you do seem to be very prison happy in this
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country love them yeah can't stand people walking around put them in a box right um so yeah so and
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and that experience you know wounded her deeply clearly uh irreparably perhaps or certainly
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profoundly wounded her um now if you're narcissistically minded and i think this is a
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and i think this is a really important thing about all you know everything that you do and knowledge
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fight yeah uh i think narcissism plays an enormous part in all of this yes like why does alex at the
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way he did why did you know so many people yeah and i think one of the you know one of the sort of
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symptoms of narcissism is if you're wounded i'm not saying this is true in alex's case i really
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don't know but i think in other cases undoubtedly if you're narcissistically inclined and then
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you're wounded it's really hard for you to get over it you you lash out and lash out and lash
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out in a sort of tireless way and and i think judy was so wounded by that whole experience
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understandably i don't think she should have gone to jail for five years for having her own
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notebooks stolen absolutely not that's that that is that is the one part of this that is like
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i can't get i can't get over why we all don't know more about that that seems i mean if you're
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because because i mean i i am assuming it's true right i'm sure it's true i you know we did a
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whole load of fact-checking and didn't find anything to the country sure sure so assuming
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that is true then there are people involved who we can talk to and nobody's talked to them like
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i feel like i want to talk to the district attorney yeah uh annette whitmore didn't want
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to talk to us you know obviously we approach for the interview and she declined yeah but um but
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yeah so so she was wounded and it was a wound you know namey klein talks about this in doppelganger
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that when somebody's ejected from the community yeah they don't just vanish they're just dissolve
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they join a different community where you know frequently they're more popular
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more successful well yeah that's obviously um no i mean i'm looking at the at the timeline here and
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and her her meteoric rise includes words from people seeming like she seemed like a savior
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that kind of thing and if you are even slightly narcissistically inclined the moment someone
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calls you a savior you're gone for good yeah you're gonna yeah yeah you're not coming back
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from that because that's the other part of this that people with chronic fatigue syndrome
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you know rightly uh uh you know disillusioned by the mainstream medical establishment because
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they've been told for years that it's all in their heads of course that well and and i mean
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that's that's where we get back to dr wetley you know it is it is asking myself over and over and
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over and over again uh we or or all too often the narrative is is like oh how do these people go
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over to the other side you know how is this possible and then and in your first two episodes
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i feel like you've definitively proven a conspiracy between the government uh big weapons
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and a captive medical establishment to maintain the uh process by which they murder american
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citizens uh often and in your thank you and in your second episode
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you've proven all all too much the the reason behind all of this stuff is not like oh why do
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people believe outlandish stuff it is like well we believe the wrong stuff in every direction
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people shouldn't have believed dr wetley for a second that's insane they had too much fun right
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right i know it's it's insane and i'm so racist you know because you know we we mentioned this
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sort of in passing but the fact is you know dr wetley and other exponents of excited delirium
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say that you know these primarily black men because even though excitedly started with women
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right it's pretty much entirely about men now um it's almost like the male sometimes i think
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it's almost like the kind of male version of hysteria you know i wrote down like hysteria
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and physiognomy both on my notes right here i've got those on my bingo card just right right
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because yes taking these male traits you know these sort of cliched male straight traits and
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especially the kind of racist black you know male traits of superhuman strength imperviousness to
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pain and then they say these are symptoms of excited delirium so you have to restrain them
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you have to you know treat them treat them harder than you otherwise might have done and so on yeah
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what isn't justified when you're fighting the hulk right yeah yeah literally the hulk is used
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as in yeah in the slideshows of like you know police training slideshows a picture of the hulk
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right and a picture of jack nicholson in the shining as well great yeah good stuff you know
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and that was that was another thing uh about excited delirium that i was interested in in your
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uh in your piece uh one of the lines you have i believe is uh uh you know excited delirium is not
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recognized by the dsm or the ma or anything these things and i'd be interested to know
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would it matter if it was um well the dsm is i think i mean this is why this was the starting
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point for my book the psychopath test that the dsm is so hilariously useless it's useless to the
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to the point of ridiculousness yeah yeah you know i diagnosed myself immediately with like 12 mental
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disorders from reading it including parent-child relational problems which by the way i blame my
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parents for uh so i know right um so you get no sense of relapse from me sir but the fact is there
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was 374 mental disorders if i remember rightly or um over 886 pages of dsm4 and excited delirium's
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not in it um so that when you know that they don't shy away from well actually i interviewed
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robert spitzer um who uh was the the architect of you know the expansion of the dsm and i said to
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him were there any proposed mental disorders that you rejected and he had he named two see if i can
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this is a long time ago see if i can remember this one of them was um masochistic personality disorder
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uh which was women who stayed in abusive relationships and he said uh i got into terrible
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trouble with the feminists so we put that one in the appendix and the other one that's a great
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answer to that problem wow why don't people trust the medical establishment john right i think they
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changed the name to self-defeating personality disorder and the other one which really made me
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laugh was um atypical child syndrome and i said so what would like the common characteristics of
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atypical child syndrome and he said well that's very hard to say because the children were very
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atypical so that one got rejected too so so it's not nothing that excited delirium doesn't make it
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into the dsm that is so much the long dark tea time of the soul i think there's a there's a
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moment where uh kate shector is going through a mental hospital and it is yeah i mean it is it is
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so much like these people are so banal in their absolute nonsense sayings like well they might be
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able to see the future but and who knows we'll find out next tomorrow like i yeah i don't know
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absolutely absolutely um yes oh no no go for it no all i was going to say was the way that dsm
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i come up with this was dsm3 or dsm4 but with one of them the way because dsm1 and dsm2 were
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tiny they were like pamphlets there was almost no mental disorders in the 50s and 60s and then just
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grew and grew and grew they didn't have mental disorders back then i mean of course well this
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goes into a whole other thing about you know the the when it's when a diagnosis is good and why
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when a diagnosis is not good and that's something that i look at a lot in the psychopath test and in
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my live show psychopath night which i'm doing next october november in britain ireland in australia
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next october it's 2024 now so do you mean this october yes um but um you know because obviously
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it goes without saying there's an awful lot of new diagnoses that came along which have been nothing
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but good like nothing but beneficial but then there's other occasions where you could argue
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not so good um but yeah the way that a lot of these new diagnoses happened was that spitzer
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rented out a room at columbia and all these people were like yelling you know all these
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different psychologists with their special interests were like yelling and the person
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like the new york stock exchange yeah like yeah it's like the new york stock exchange and spitz
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is in the middle with this little typewriter and that's how adhd you know came to be named and all
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of these other i mean oh they didn't create it there by being so nuts it's like the person
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their energy metastasized and infected the world like in cytology not like that right no no no but
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the way it was described to me was that it was like a noisy free-for-all and the people with
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the loudest voices got listened to the most and out of this kind of cacophony all of these new
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mental disorders emerged yeah these new definitions yeah i was uh i i spent too much time reading about
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all of the uh therapy and psychology gurus of the 60s and 70s to to trust anybody for a long time
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right oh no it's fascinating i mean honestly if there's any particular subject that i'm more
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interested in than any it's it's this it's it's you know when do mental health diagnoses
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when are they good when are they not good you know how do they come to be etc etc oh i mean
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yeah i've been fascinated since i mean i i diagnosed myself as bipolar type one uh when i
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was 16 uh i was pretty sure for a long time but i couldn't go to a doctor because my parents were
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so super religious uh i wasn't going to get an accurate or even close to accurate diagnosis
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right so but did you subsequently get a get a well so uh because uh things went great seven
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years later i went to a psychiatrist uh the appropriate amount of time between when you know
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something and it was something that um has kind of informed this conversation and this it's kind
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of what i've gone back to a lot while thinking about this is that at first i put a lot of trust
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in the idea of the doctor you know doctor knows um and it is through the the experiences that i've
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had with psychiatry and with uh this type of uh medicine in the the economy built around it
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that makes me uh question so much of like well i get why people don't believe you you know
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because we put a lot of people to put too much trust in a doctor's expertise uh you know not
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every not every doctor is an a-plus student uh you know totally and you've got some doctors who
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have like a special interest they're interested in one particular disorder or or illness and they're
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much more likely than i guess to diagnose everyone with it yeah uh confirmation bias and so on
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totally and my my first experience my first experience and this is not something that i want
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to like say is everybody's experience or is a um often experience but it's a common one and it was
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my first which was the doctor prescribed a drug that was rep the rep was there last week who
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bought everybody lunch and who told them about this brand new super exciting drug and yes it's
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not covered and sure it's not generic and sure all this stuff but i guarantee you you give this to
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your patients you're going to get good results that kind of thing and i trusted that guy because
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he trusted the rep not because he went to school for good stuff you know yeah yeah and and what
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happened did the drug i was i mean within two weeks i had spent uh you know hours paralyzed
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i i lost some vision you know it was just an absolute disaster um and and it had it had to be
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and it had it had to be for a long time uh me kind of like growing out of that trust and just saying
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i'm going to direct this and we're going to work together as as two people and not as a doctor and
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uh an authority figure and not an authority figure do you know what i mean yeah yeah totally um and
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by the way robert spitz i know we've veered away from from things fell apart here but you know
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i find it's an interesting i think mental illness is right on board with things well i think that's
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that is true i mean but robert spitz was very unambiguous about this he said to me when somebody
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says to me uh you know i i couldn't control my child you know ruined my life ruined my child's
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life then we put them on medication and it was night and day that's good news for a dsm person
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so robert spitzer was like unambiguously linking the dsm with with with the pharmaceutical industry
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like it wasn't ambiguous right um and for good and for all like i'm not going to be like you know
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all bloody Scientologists about this like you know i take i i take meds i i've worked it out but
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that's that's kind of what i'm saying with the and this is what gets us back to things fell apart is
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we've got doctors we've got authority figures and people just assume so much about them even
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while they're looking up other stuff you know like all of this stuff about judy yeah well yeah well
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something happened to well something happened to me i this is a diversion again but actually
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something happened to me which i haven't really told anyone but now it's the perfect time to to
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say it perfect time so okay so midway through making um things fell apart i needed to have
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surgery for this condition uh called diverticulitis oh yeah so i had so i took a couple yeah oh it was
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horrible but now i'm completely better like the surgery i had yeah the surgery i had for this was
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like american health care at its best like they they chopped out a foot of my colon and now i'm
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better so that was a that's a good news story but in the process of it i had all of these other
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tests and they i'm not going to be all i'm going to you know i don't want to be a cliffhanger about
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this they falsely told me that they thought i had prostate cancer which meant that i then had
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to go and have like a biopsy which was an invasive thing you know shoving a whole bunch of fucking
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needles into my prostate and i didn't have prostate cancer now i'm not saying that people
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shouldn't believe doctors when they say you need to have a biopsy however i i don't think i should
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have had the biopsy and i think you know all of the doctors were like you know you've probably
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got it you've got to go and have the biopsy and i think this was an occasion of like over testing
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and over medicalization and i won't go into like the weeds of it but basically i i never thought
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i had it and i shouldn't have had the biopsy and that's an example of over medicalization
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i and i i think everybody every i mean reasonable people look at this and go yeah yeah and there's
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it doesn't get more complex and ridiculous than the human body and anybody who's got a
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you know if you're a c-plus doctor that means three out of four times you're doing a good job
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uh right right who want who can really expect better than that when you're dealing with uh all
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kinds of blood and guts everywhere right yeah yeah yeah and let me say again by the way because the
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last thing i want to do is is is say that and somebody listening decides not to have a biopsy
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and then the next thing they know they die of prostate cancer like don't take my story as any
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sort of guidance for what you should or shouldn't do but that is what happened to me and it was a
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real thing it's it is it's the type of story that people it's the type of anecdotal story you know
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that is so notable you tell it the the story where everything went fine and you didn't have
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like not only did nothing happen but nothing really notable happened is so common but you know
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i forgot about it i can't remember the last time i had an unnotable uh you know thing right whereas
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if i was still in britain i think the chance of me having like there was you know the chance to
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be having the surgery for diverticulitis wouldn't have happened like the waiting list on the nhs
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would have been so long and so on and people have to sort of suffer in silence more in britain so
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you know there's a lot to be said for american health care too oh no i'm i'm the problem that
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i have with so many conversations about health care has nothing to do with region and everything
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to do with if you want you know like if you want to bake an apple pie you have to create the
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universe you know what i'm saying like if you want to fix health care you have to start from
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no borders you know you know you have to you have to start away so far back that uh yeah good luck
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i i don't know what to do with it yeah anyway that was a big long diversion but but it's true
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that episodes one and episodes two are about when you can and can't trust doctors and scientists so
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i suppose it wasn't like a massive diversion well no and that's but that's that's kind of the thing
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is you've you've just explained dr judy mikeovitz you know what i mean like yeah unfortunately i
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don't mean like you are the cause or or anything along those lines and the way you have reacted
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to this stimulus is like a reasonable person where you say shouldn't have fucking happened
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what are you gonna do it's better that i found out that i don't than if i died tomorrow right
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like at the end of the day that's kind of the answer yeah i guess it has to be the answer
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right um yeah totally if you reacted like this like the the hospital wanted an extra blank blank
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thousand dollars from my ass you know like and as a result we can't trust the medical establishment
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at all and they're lying to us about covid and they're lying to us about lockdown etc etc which
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is clearly what's what's you know what happened i mean the reason i first knew about plandemic
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actually judy mikeovitz was up here in upstate new york a friend of mine who like lives in a
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you know farmhouse a mile that way said to me like six weeks into lockdown like have you heard about
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plandemic there's this really eminent scientist uh called judy mikeovitz and she's telling us that
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everything we're living through is is a lie and he was completely like into it um and that's how
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i first heard about it from her you know a smart good friend of mine up up here in the new york
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countryside yeah uh and so yeah and and million tens of millions of people watch plandemic and
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and huge numbers of them believed what judy mikeovitz was saying now you know but what the
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what the episode of things fell apart you know looks at is whether or not
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she was doing this to get revenge on a on a medical community that that you know that that
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wounded her was that at the root you know that personality time you know i will i will say this
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uh in in looking this up um so i don't know if i don't know if you saw this uh
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weirdly enough but there was an episode of nevada newsmakers uh in 2007 uh i'm a huge nevada
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newsmakers fan uh i got all got all the the uh but but here's here's something so fascinating
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about that all right so uh dr judy and the whitmore's were being reviewed yeah they were
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being they were on it there's actually a clip from that in in the show yeah um yeah yeah yeah
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uh god god sorry no and the the thing that i find so interesting about it uh is at one point she
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says um they were telling me about stuff and i said i knew it was a virus and then i went to
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nevada right and i find that fascinating because that suggests to me that i don't think she even
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did the study at all right yeah like not even not even the fake one that's i think that's the real
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reason she's not giving the samples is there's not even a fake virus in there there's not even
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anything well thing is a lie the thing is there was it wasn't just judy makovitz on that xmrv
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um uh the paper that got published in science there were people from the cleveland clinic
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there were people from the national cancer institute so there were definitely legitimate
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scientists involved in that study right but that's the next part of this if those people were
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involved why is it that she's the only one who has a sample i don't know how they um wrote their
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paper like i don't know the answer to that like i don't know um i don't know whether or not all of
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the testing was done within the whitmore peterson institute and then the paper version of it was
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then sent out to the cleveland clinic i mean maybe or maybe not like i honestly don't know but see
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that's the that's where i keep coming back to why was she in jail for five days this is the
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this is stuff that it's like there are these little assumptions that i feel like are being made
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that are like lies that are covered up by the surface lies if that makes sense you know so
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much so that you don't even ask the question like there's no way there's no way that she would just
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make up the whole thing right oh no and and nobody's accusing her or even you know martin
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ensig who's the guy at science who was you know heavily involved in debunking her her studies
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he doesn't think she made it up he thinks it was a genuine mistake i disagree i am the one person
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that is telling i believe wholeheartedly she made it up from the jump i think she was scamming
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these people from the jump that's my theory on this i i yeah go i just i'm not sure that i agree
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with you there it's a big it's a huge leap it's a yeah i i didn't see any evidence to to support
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that theory uh you know basically you know the conclusion i came to was the the xmrv you know
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this mouse virus ended up contaminating the materials that she was using in her experiments
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and that's why she mistakenly thought that the xmrv was in the blood samples right that makes
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sense that sounds like a reasonable series of events that would take place that would happen
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to a reasonable person that leads to stuff happening right that's to me that sounds crazy
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you're telling me that the person who is in plandemic who's lied about her biography over
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and over and over again who's lied over and over and over and over and over again
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is somehow telling the truth about one thing
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i i mean i also don't know what her life was like when she worked at the national cancer institute
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in virginia like i i don't know that she could have been unimpeachable there totally well i and
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i looked into it and it says she she has this thing in her biography where she thinks she's
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fought against bovine growth hormone stuff you know like yeah yes that there's something about
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her kind of overselling you know the aids research i mean obviously now she's been
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all of this stuff about anthony fauci that's all you know sort of you know extreme and
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but i'm talking like back then back in the early 2000s yeah i mean yeah okay so counter to you
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know let me counter what you just said please please no that's the whole idea okay i've got
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a friend okay former friend we really don't get on anymore at all who's a brilliant comedy writer
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graham linahan graham has become subsequently famous for being an extreme gender critical
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activist he basically goes on twitter every day and goes on for you know for you know hundreds
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thousands you know he's tweeted about me thousands of times oh i know glitter because i yeah i love
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black now too that's the worst part i loved black books well that's where i'm going with this right
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yeah i've known graham since we were practically you know certainly in our 20s we've been friends
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for decades i was in the audience for his first show paris i was in the audience for his second
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show father ted his third show the it cloud graham you know for much of his life was a genius a
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comedy genius now i think he had some difficult personality traits back then i remember one time
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he got really angry with me actually i wrote something in time out magazine that he took
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offense to about him and he got very angry with me and i had to apologize to him over the phone
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so he definitely had that easily wounded side to him all the time but you know but now you know
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his behavior on twitter now doesn't mean that he wasn't brilliant for most of his life he was and
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you know so could you not say the same thing about judy mike of us like i'm not saying you know
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it's the truth but i'm saying it's a possibility oh no no absolutely that's i mean obviously i'm
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i'm me so i'm very stridently and confidently saying something that i'm only about 40 sure of
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but but there is something to me listening to that uh nevada uh newspaper newsmakers interview
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what is so fascinating about that is that she's a liar she's lying in that interview
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she's doing a lot of lying in that interview and it reminds me so much of when we go back to 2004
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alex we have been told this narrative our entire that you know from the jump like alex was different
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back then alex wasn't this alex wasn't this alex wasn't this back then and i think the reality is
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he absolutely was we were the different people back then or maybe it manifested like the
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it manifested like with graham getting really upset if he got like a bad review sure for
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instance maybe it just manifested in in less obviously nefarious ways well i mean and i've
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i've watched his i've watched his comedy shows his attitudes towards women were not the specialist
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kind uh uh that even then you know right um yeah i'm thinking about what you're saying about kind
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of the 2004 alex because i've been guilty of that like i've said many times the alex i knew in 1999
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is a different alex to the alex of today but then i did that story for this american life which
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looked at how alex was in middle school and high school before i knew him when he exactly was the
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alex of today so so yeah maybe maybe it just sometimes maybe it lies dormant or manifests
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itself in more likable ways or as you say maybe we're different we've changed it's super
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interesting though yeah i mean well that's i i just find i keep i keep finding her so interesting
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because i feel like the first two episodes of your show are almost so closely interconnected in a way
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like it is uh and our my last interview was with brandy collins dexter and you know what we talked
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about is so many conspiracy theories we all go back to well there is a kernel of truth to these
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conspiracy theories but usually that kernel is the united states government killing black people
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and this is that kind of situation in the 80s in miami and i understand that we uh that cops and
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the government are disambiguated somehow now but they are not in my head the government is killing
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black women and covering it up you know like that is what is going on and then we get to dr judy
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mike of it i see so much of we're not going to be able to talk about her until somebody deals with
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what happened in the 80s you know maybe what happened in the 2000s yeah yeah well yeah yeah
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yeah you know like yeah it goes it started before we met her if that makes sense yeah undoubtedly
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um yes i mean the fact is the way she describes that conflict that she has when she's refusing
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to hand over the cell line like you know when i listen to her tell that i'm on the whittable side
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like hand over the cell line like just hand over the fucking cell line so so yeah so she was clearly
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the diff you know she was clearly difficult so so but i mean that's such that's such a big question
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why if ever if everybody's worked on this paper are you saying that nobody else has a copy of this
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cell line and if nobody else has a copy of this cell line that says some scary things to me
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that is a really interesting point you raised there jordan like there were 15 authors to this
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study and as i'll say i don't know how you know i i don't know how that study came to be written
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like i don't know who was involved in the experiments who just checked the paperwork
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i think you make a very good point i'm not i mean i'm not i'm not trying to i'm just i just find it
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so fascinating these little things that are are connected to the past you know like we're we're
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not you know like and that's why i really really enjoy the series and i'm looking forward to we're
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already at an hour and blah blah blah i'm looking forward to uh so we're gonna do this again with
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subsequent if you if you don't mind we cannot do it again if this has been awful for you that's
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totally fine now it's been fun i'm happy to do it again um uh yeah that'd be that'd be amazing
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um but i i find it so fascinating because it is like your premise or your your framing starts as
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this is the culture wars exploding in lockdown and i see so much of like um if you look at this
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thing that happened what a what you're looking at happened 30 years ago you're just seeing it like
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like a star exploded 30 light years away you're just seeing right now yeah yes yeah absolutely
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that's something i love about things fell apart is that you go back to these and i love also working
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for the bbc because they don't you know they allow me to do these sort of experiments with with
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narrative that that you know um eighty percent of some of these episodes have got nothing to do with
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lockdown nothing to do with the culture wars it's only at the end that you understand the the
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significance of the relevance of the story that you've just heard which i love you know as a
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storyteller so um yeah no absolutely and and uh i don't know how much you want to spoil any more
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from your first two episodes uh i think we've covered quite a bit um yeah i think i've spoiled
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enough i think people should go and listen to to to the storytelling that's kind of where i figured
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we'd uh that's kind of why i figured now is being a great time to kind of let this one be uh if you
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haven't stopped your recorder and listened to the first two episodes the moment we said hi
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go do it now um john definitely this is i will get together again in like a couple of weeks and do it
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again perfect this is always a delight i'm i'm still shocked uh that you you submit yourself to
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uh so much screaming in such a short period of time oh no it's so much fun it was elizabeth from
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uh for elizabeth williamson from the new york times who first told me about about you and dan
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and and was just raving about you like you've gotta hear these guys they're so funny they've
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dedicated their life to such a strange yet noble pursuit but i'm putting words into her mouth
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but i'm so glad she did because yeah i've had so much fun listening to to knowledge about you know
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the one i really actually loved was very i've completely forgot about this episode eight is
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of all about mickey willis and oh no i'm gonna get confused have you ever have you done an episode
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that's all about mickey willis um i we've done an episode i would assume i i genuinely don't know
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i don't know you may not have you know too many episodes in my memory is notoriously the worst
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right well no what i was listening to that i really really loved was the one about glenn
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greenwald and i think dan was dissecting the speech that glenn greenwald gave when he was
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introducing alex and i don't know there's something about that particular episode which i just thought
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god you know you guys are so like on point you know you're so you know no you know your area so
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well that you can stop the tape yeah my my art my contention is and always has been uh there's just
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it's just there's nothing sexier than dan when he's angry when he's really taken somebody to
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task oh people get people get riled there is riling going on yeah yeah uh yes uh okay so
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there you there you go i'm very happy to very happy to come back uh thank you so much and uh
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i i can't wait to do this again yay bye andy in chansas you're on the air thanks for holding
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hello alex i'm a first time caller i'm a huge fan i love your work i love you