All media.
For it's the face that I'm winning reward of patience given to her politics with pride. Uh man, I'm in a good mood. I'm glad to start the show here, got a great show for you today. I don't know why I'm starting like that, but glad to talk to you. So let me tell you about today and how things gonna be is going zon It's like what the licks reads you feel me like, this is what we're picking up throwing damn take you about the black black whoop woop.
I'm gonna catch you on the fifty third. I don't know why I just became my uncle Edges now rest in peace, but essentially that here's the thing, dude, what we tried to do this year, if you ain't figured out, was to stay more current with our episodes what I
did most of last year. That was like kind of my plan to kind of be more professional about my podcast and was like I want to be like at least four episodes ahead every month so that like if I don't know, I gotta go on tour or something like something like that happens, where like I can I'll be good. Like I could like skip recording because there's
there's enough in the tank. What kept happening last year was like life just kept moving so fast, Like the news kept moving so fast that it was like, by the time I'm ready to talk about it, it's like old news, you know. And I appreciated y'all like riding with me, but ultimately it was like, man, you kind of gotta you gotta stay on point, bro, Like you gotta stay where where we are. In the episodes that were I'm plugging my headphones in because I realized I
can hear myself. But the episodes where we were, okay, see now I can hear myself, the episodes where we were like right on top of like what was happening, ended up being you know, the more higher downloaded you may or may not know. By now, I have yet to reach the numbers of the other Cool Zone series to where I'll be able to like actually make some residuals off this show. So what we're trying to do is get them numbers up, So please like subscribe and share.
Dot makes bread out this mug. I feel like I'm doing the Lord's work. But anyway, I did not get sent No. One hundred thousand subscribers to YouTube channel. I ain't salty, feel me, and I'm not salty Like congratulations to the to the Kendrick Lamar of the Cool Zone Media te oh Man, that joke has levels, especially because were gonna talk about Kendrick in a little bit. But yeah, So I've been trying to like make sure that these episodes are much more current and visually stimulating and all
that good stuff. But there's such a panoply a good good word right there, of a plethora of things we could cover every week. So much happened, trade wars, tariffs, USAID, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Consumer Affairs, like the people that make sure that a car company kids can't sell you a card that don't work, you know what I'm saying, Like they gonn like so much
to cover. But in that that made me have to scrap the first episode I made that was supposed to be for the beginning of this year, about the cars driving into the French quarters, about the Tesla catching on fire, which clearly was a metaphor and foreshadowing. I didn't get to talk about South Korea impeaching, like impeaching there there there president or Prime minister about that food, trying to
call nat you know, martial law. Like, there's so much I didn't get to talk about because life just happened so fast, you feel me. I even did a whole episode about Nikki Giovanni, but like that'll probably see never see the light of day because like I didn't have my camera set up then and too just so much has happened, but a dope thing fell in my lap today and it's about the RFK of it all. So we got to talk about the likelihood of an entire
generation having Measles and Ricketts again. Hood politics, y'all. Okay, you may or may not know our play cousin pod, the House of Pod doctor cave Holda who's been on I've been on his show many times. A lot of us on our team have been on his show, and he's also been on The Bastards Pod many times. We
love kave Man. I feel like for me specifically, his show is really much like the medical science version of mine, to where it's like he's taking things that are truly complicated, truly, I mean it's it's medical science, you know what I mean, and explaining it in a way that us who don't have you know, degrees in that stuff could like really understand.
And I feel like it's so important because it's like sometimes I feel like I have to have I have to jump a hurdle to convince people that, like, yo, you should you should, you should care about politics, like it really affects you, you know, And I have to try to like walk people through as to why this affection, why it's important for you to know what you're talking about, Okave, is like I mean, I don't have to convince you that you should understand medical medicine in the medical field,
like you should understand the medical field because it obviously affects you. I know. My premise is these people aren't smarter than you in the political spectrum, They just use a different language. I can't say that about them doctors. They are exactly they are actually smarter. But he has
a way of bringing it, bringing it to us. So I was on an incredible show with an incredible human being who is freakishly smart, and I am not gonna double introduce it because it's gonna get introduced when you guys listen to this episode and I'll put some sort of visual on that you could watch if you on YouTube while you're listening to this episode, it'll probably be some sort of performance video of me doing a show at some point, So you can just watch me perform
music at poetry while the sound is not synced up, and just listen to these really smart people talk now. But before we get into that.
But look, it's like this. Bulldok is like this.
Buldeok is like this.
It's been quite a week, y'all. Like I mean, it's not like y'all don't know, it's been quite a week. Tariffs, boy, Trump Trump ignited, no sweet little tariffs. Like, if you're from DC, Maryland, you Trump talk about tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. Here a tariff, There're a tariff. You get a tariff. Now, you may or may not know what a tariff is. It's a tax. It's an international tax. Basically, if you want to sell here, you got to pay me more
to be able to sell here. If you're gonna sell your stuff here, I'm gonna charge you for access basically, and we have what's called a trade deficit. What does that mean? Well, it means the opposite about China, which I'm gonna have to do a whole show about this. But China got a trade surplus. This is all about tariffs, trust me. And in the what that means is this is that China and US sells more than they buy the products they export. They they're making so much more
than they're spending because everybody buy China stuff. And Trump don't like that because we have the opposite. It's called a trade deficit, meaning we buying more from everybody else then we're selling. And Trump's response is rather than or it's two parts. It's like, we need to get our weight up. But the only way to get our weight up is to try to like make it harder for them to sell. And what he's going to do is raise the prices on being on having access to all
these buyers, right because clearly America likes buying. Now, he was using that as leverage to the North American countries like Canada and Japan, or Japan, like Canada and Mexico. His reason is, well, y'all got to show up them borders. You got to stop all this fentanyl from coming. Canada, like sir, we represent less than one percent of your fentanyl problem. Mexico, like sir, fentanyl is coming from legal citizens going through legal ports. It's not they're not codes.
Why with someone trying to flee a wartorm country looking for asylum bring a drug in? It doesn't make any sense. But whatever, what do you want? And Trump's like, whoever did this last trade? Was a dumb dumb who set up this deal last time? Deal's awful. He set up the deal in twenty eight it's his trade deal. I love it, dude. My man turned in his homework from his junior year as if it was a new essay. I love it. Mexico like, this is what you said,
this is what you wanted last time. Well, how about I agree it is? And basically they agreed to what they already agreed to. They said, if not, I'm gonna send ten thousand troops to the border. Mexico like, there's already ten thousand troops. You've already sent them. I don't know, what do you what are you talking about? Anyway, So depends on what channel you watch. It worked because you know Canada and Mexico big old air quotes back down.
I don't know, we'll see our groceries are more expensive. And because according to him, you know, it's hard to bring down grocery prices. I oh, man, I don't know. It's just so funny to me. And now you know, the maga folks is like, that's right, you should pay more. It's patriotism. These are patriotisms. These are these are patriot eggs. You know what I'm saying, Like you post them. These are patriot prices. You're support You're willing to pay higher
prices for your groceries because you love our country. It's like putting your finger on jello man. Anyway. Yeah, the Consumer Protection Agency shut down. Get him to people that make sure the consumers are protected. Yeah, they gone. According to the Department of Government Deficiency or Efficiency, the douge man got yourself security and I'm gonna tell you that
right now. Yeah. And the guy that's been put in place to run it for now, this guy named Russell Boight, who you might know from previous hits such as Project twenty twenty five. You know that thing that Trump said he had nothing to do with that. He has his own plan. Yeah, the guy that wrote that is now in charge of the consumer It's absolutely amazing. We got two additions to the State of the Blackness address that will happen in June, one of which is Ye is
officially in the gone ahead Bruh season. Look, you got a Chief. It ain't even no point in us hashing out his tweets the Nazi. You got it, Chief, it's all you And like I've talked y'all before, and this is black speech for you're so dumb and it's not worth our time explaining to you or trying to save you from whatever damage you're doing. Like Kanye West is the Kanye West of hating Kanye West. He's the best at destroying himself. But you know what, you're a genius. You got it.
Bro.
Trump kind of subtly, not so subtly, absolutely suggested colonial takeover. Oh Gaza man, does it? Like does net y'allhoo understand that this man is not your friend? Then he don't understand. He even got to talk about that costco costco keeping it real. Them fools said, not only is we not ending our DEI we raising our are wages thirty dollars an hour. Listen, go get you a job. Okay, you could eat your dollar fifty slices of pizza for lunch.
You can have twenty five pounds of mayonnaise. At a discount, which you won't need because you make thirty dollars an hour gonna get it costco. I don't know about their I know nothing more than that about them, and the fact that my wife goes there, tries to go at least once a month. It's a lot of food. But
then we're a family. For with the sports ball that happened during Kendrick Lamar's concert and the Eagles put a whooping, just this is just a bad day for light skins, you know, because yeah, yeah, there's a bad day for the light skinned folk. And I tell you what, the Eagles whooped them boys the way the Democrats got booked, whooped in the election, ran the skull up on them and speaking to run the score up on them. Corn roll Kenji k Lama, pg Lang, you know what I'm saying,
Pull it, sir Kenny. Just that was high art. I saw my favorite My favorite post from this was like Kendrick Lamamar's performance was for people who understand tariffs. It's high art. The symbolism, it's just beautiful at Samuel L. Jackson being Uncle Sam and also a stand in for America being a menstrual show. Knowing how to play the game, the game being over, just so many levels. The revolution we will be televised. You pick the right time, but the wrong guy. This is just so I don't know
what your faith is. I don't know how you understand higher powers. But listen the way, the way, the way, the way my blackness is set up. There's there's a piece of us that just kind of says, you know what, some people are just God's chosen person, right man for the right time, chosen as the Bible would say, for such a time as this. I look at Kenny, I look at Kendrick, and I'm like, you're just God's choice. You were, you are the right person for this moment.
There's no like, no one, there was no These ruby red slippers don't fit nobody but your foot. And as an artist from California that wants to see political change, I'm like, I'm not the right guy for this. Kendrick was the right guy for this. And it's like and it's performances like that that remind you of it. Right man,
right time? Boy did he deliver. There's gonna be think pieces forever about all the symbolism, but know that the I know y'all saw the PlayStation remote as like the floor buttons the middle of it was a prison yard, and then him saying, you know, I want to play y'all favorite, but you know these people like to sue. And then it turns it looks at him directly say Drake oh man, you can't Serena krip walking, the guy
sneaking out the gaza flag. Just everything was beautiful. And even more beautiful was the response from the Conservative's worst halftime show ever, Lauren Bober talking about not only one that needs subtitles and you just couldn't think of nothing to tweet except for I don't understand him and you know these songs, so stop playing around. Madison Calthorne talking about halftime show should have been Donald Trump just singing
to YMCA boy. I want to believe he's kidding. Charlie Kirk talking about this is not my style of music at The Daily Mail, kench Klamar getting slammed for the worst halftime performance ever. Joe Budden's even talking about why you choose these songs? It was a w care what you say? Y'all ready to get into this episode, so allow me to introduce you to our friends. Please go support their pod to the House of Pod. So listen to this science stuff while you watch me do a rap performance.
It's like this, and welcome back to the House of Pod. My name, I'm told is doctor kave Hoda. I hope I'm saying that correctly. Thank you for joining our fun little uh humor adjacent medical podcast or medical adjacent podcast. I'm not even sure anymore. We're gonna look at public health, We're gonna look at medicine. We're gonna look where it meets the news and pop culture today. It meets the
news hard. It's always right into the news and it's a nasty fender bender and everyone's gawking at it out side of the road because there's blood and guts and it's terrible and it's people are slowing down traffic for it. It's been about two weeks since President trump second term has begun, and there's been what seems like a large scale attack on the public health infrastructure here in the
United States. It's been focused mainly with online information that doctors, scientists, healthcare professionals use to take care of our patients and our communities, but also feels like more than that, we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about what's been happening, get the latest updates, talk about what that means, maybe if there's any good news to mine out of what's happening these days as well. To do that.
I have two good friends and I'm excited to have them both on because they're both friends from different parts of my life and I like them meeting and introducing. I like doing this. This is exciting for me. I hope they get along. I'm really worried that they're not and they're going to fight, and which would be great air, would be great audio, it'd be a great podcast, but it would be weird for me because I love them both.
Let's start with the guests with the most appearances. We have Jason Emmanuel Petty, known as Propaganda aka prop He is an MC, a teacher, a host of the very popular Hood Politics, which is one of my favorite podcasts, and all around swell fella, prop Welcome back to the show Man.
Thank you, And I'm really mad that I didn't think of saying the House of pod is in effect, y'all in every body steps up is getting wrecked. I can't believe I've never thought about that the House of Pain's classic album starts with the House of Pod is in effect, y'all. I'm like, why have I never thought of it? I don't know why I've never said House of Pain puns every time I saw you.
I don't know, because looking at me, I feel like I would be a shoeing for one of the House of Pain.
Could have joined you, could have jumped around with him. You know what I'm saying.
I do jump around, jump up and get down. You feel like less of these days jumping these days exact more like rocking back and forth rhythmically. You know, you are very attuned to politics, and you follow things very carefully, and your show, as I mentioned, covers a lot of these issues. I love having you on to discuss this stuff. I also brought on someone else that can help us dive in to the public health aspect and what's happening
someone who's been following this very closely. My friend, doctor Jeremy Faust. He's an er doctor. He does a lot of health policy work. He's got a very good sub stack called Inside Medicine. Jeremy, welcome back to the show. Buddy.
Good to be here.
Is is it good to be here. How do you feel.
I feel terrible, but it's better to be three less company. Yeah right, it's less terrible when you're with me, right exactly.
Yeah.
Also, your your whole social media avatar is always you high in the air, jumping up. Literally you like jump Yeah, no, it really does follow that you should be jump up and jump up, jump up and get down.
Yeah. I had decent ups when we played basketball. I had decent I mean, it's got you a whole Yeah, I mean I was a below the rim guy. Let's be fair. But if I had to get up, I could. I just became so much harder, so much harder. All right, right, breakaway. We'll get back to that later. Let's talk a little
bit about what's happening, Jeremy. Let's start with sort of an overview of the organizations before we go into what the Trump administration is doing to these important health policy organizations. Maybe we could get like a one liner on what these organizations do, or at least historically have done, like, for example, the NIH. Everyone's talking about the NIH these days. For our listeners who may not be totally familiar with that, what is the NAIH? What do they do?
So the NIH is the United States federal governments.
It's the National Institutes of Health, So it is a bunch of institutes.
Within a bigger.
Organization, and they study science, they study medicine, they do research internally, so we have scientists professionals who work there to advance.
Knowledge for us all.
And for example, it was a scientist at the NIH who took the sequence of the coronavirus, the novel coronavirus that was published online in January of twenty twenty, and she put that into a experiment essentially to create the first vaccine that was going to be tested. So someone had to take that information and get that vaccine up and running so Maderena Andfizer could do that. It was an NIH scientist who was entrusted with that work. We
owe her Kisi Korbett, you know, a detO gratitude. So they do everything from science that benefits us and saves lives today to research on chronic diseases cancer HIV that's internal. And then the NIH also is a grant giving body, so scientists in academics Stanford University, UCSF, Harvard, where I'm at, any place anywhere, apply for grants and I say, hey, we want to study X, Y Z, and here's how
we're going to do it. And the NIH is essentially where where those where decisions on those grants are made, and how federal funds are distributed. So there are NIH funded researchers at literally one hundreds, if not thousands, of institutions around the country. So the NIH does its own research, and it funds external research extraordinarily powerful.
Would it be safe to say that, like, it's where a lot of the new good ideas revolving around science come out of, Like when we're looking for new cures, when we're looking for something serious, when when a family member says, isn't there anything that can be done? Is it safe to say that's really where the NIH comes in.
Yeah, absolutely, Because the NIH funds projects that might seem a little far afield, like oh, why are we putting money into that? And the answer is, you just never know what's going to materialize in an unexpected way. For example, again,
I'll use them, I'll use the COVID experience. There were NAH funded studies back to the nineties and two thousands that someone figured out, oh you know this little mRNA strand, that's a strand of genetic material that our bodies used to make anything, your eyebrows, your finger nails, whatever it is.
The mRNA is.
Like the little messenger that tells our body how to make stuff. But that little molecule is really fragile. And so some project I think it was nah funded, was, oh, you know what, we figured out a way to stabilize that molecule to make it's less fragile. We don't know really how that's going to help in the future, but isn't that cool We can actually take a thing and make it less fragile and make it more robust.
Well, fast forward twenty years.
You need that technology to make the vaccines that we used in COVID. So no one knew in the nineties or two thousands when they funded that project where it was going to lead. And a lot of things are dead ends. But that's kind of how it works, and it's sort of a venture capital approach. And cave to your point, like, there are a lot of diseases that affect very few people, so there's not going to be an industry model for that. If a thousand people have
a deadly disease, it's very tragic. But I'm sorry Fizer just not going to care because they need they need a patient. But the NIH government research can say, you know what, we have the resources to look after these forgotten things.
So yeah, and it's hugely important.
I think I think you you you nailed something that I feel like if you if any person is like works in a field to where they've gotten to they've done their ten thousand hours, it's like I've read the level of nerdery that I know I can't really talk about at cocktail hour, Like nobody's going to get this,
you know what I'm saying. Like, So when you hit that level in your field, I feel like when you're reading someone else or listening to someone talk about their field that you you don't know shit about, you can tell if like you're like, okay, nah, I'm just I know that you know what you're talking about.
Yeah, you know when you see it, you know what I'm saying.
So Like, and one of the things you just brought up right now, which is something that I've tried to say on my podcast, I'm like with when it comes to medicine, especially during the pandemic, it's like you you want me to tell you you want these you want these scientists to tell you, oh, it's this, and I'm like, any scientist that knows what they talking about is going to be like, I don't know. I think it's that. You know, we're still looking at this. We guessed in
the nineties, we thought it was this. Turns out there's nothing. Like you said, it's like some stuff. You research it, You're just like, oh, yeah, it was, it was nothing. And I'm like the only reason I know it was nothing is because we spent twenty years on it, you know what I'm saying, So like, so to me, to the it's almost like to the degree for which you can't give me a yes or no answer, especially in that field, is makes me go, this will knows any persons they're talking about.
That is so important because a lot of the people on what I would call the anti science side, who put forward things that are not scientific. They love to lead with so much certainty, and then we say, well, here's what we think we know, and we couch it around all this language like you're saying, and we're trying to be humble and we're trying to adhere to that scientific principle which you just you just you just described but some people will say, oh, they're not even sure
it's a theory. It's not it's not a fact, and we don't even know, like the theory of gravity is a theory, you know, that's I'm pretty sure exactly so and so. Yeah, but there is this whole thing about about how to communicate uncertainty, and we struggle. We struggle with it because we don't want to say something. We don't want to downplay what we how strong we feel, how strongly we feel. But we also don't want to be you know, eating our eating.
It when if something is wrong.
And that's, by the way, one of the things I said during the pandemic was the difference between an expert and a non expert is an expert will change their mind. An expert will say, we just learned something.
Yes, right, No, that's a very good point. I don't totally agree with the gravity thing, because, as we discuss, my ups defy it. But other than that, I absolutely agree. Whenever there's like a gray zone, it's a vacuum and it's filled by all these bad actors, and no matter how hard we try to educate, it's always more appealing to the mass. If someone says, here's the answer. It's this versus here's what we think so far, like that's always more appealing. It fits our brains better. It's that
little rush that people want. All right, let's talk about some of the other organizations that are big in the news. The CDC. What does the CDC do.
The Centaers for Disas Control and Prevention is in Atlanta, and they are It's a massive organization. Does a lot of important work, ranging from just pure epidemiology, meaning they keep statistics like how many people die, what did they die from? That's something that they do. The CDC studies disease. It helps scientists and physicians like me and you know what the latest recommendation is. So they have a vaccine committee that says, okay, what should the scheduling for pediatric
vaccinations be? And we know that that has saved so many lives the past century.
So they do that.
They and they also partner with other organizations, both in the United States, so it could be nonprofits, it could be state public health officials, but also around the world in detecting and combating outbreaks. So I'll give you an
example of that. Right now, there is an outbreak of ebola virus in Uganda, and I wouldn't recommend getting ebola, but CDC scientists in general would hear about this, and they would and there, their experts would be on a plane the next day to go to Uganda and say, how can we help, What do you have, what do you need? How can we augment your resources, your expertise. They're not there to tell them how to do it. They are there to see where our resources can plug
holes and be of assistance. And that is the work that we do with the w WHO, the World Health Organization, and our in our in our own foreign aid. Trump put a pause on that last week, so we do not have those people on the ground helping that outbreak. So that's an example of things that the CBCD is. They track down outbreaks. They'll send out literal they call
them disease hunters, just like the nickname. Someone says, oh, there's something happening in rural Washington, these kids are getting sick. Someone goes out there and looks into it and figures out, oh, oh gosh, there's like there's a poisoning in Salmonila. You know, we got to make sure that people know about it.
So they do everything from keeping.
Track of big, big data sets, tracking debts, COVID hospitalization, tracking disparities and outcomes, and how to treat diseases to responding to crisis.
And just remind the world again for those who may have forgotten, why is it important for us, the United States to have involvement in infectious disease elsewhere in the world? Why is that important for us?
So even if you yeah, you could just say why do I want to help anybody? You could, you could say why should we be saving lives? And you know, I don't freaking know Slovenia pop new game.
They give us basketball players who get traded and make a big headline. We're not going to talk about that because props a Lakers fan, I don't want to deal with. Yes, we are sorry, Yes, it's a different podcast.
Listen, listen. Don't you lose your train of thought. Please, don't lose your train of thought.
Talk about it. I'm an, I have to talk. I can get I can get interrupted and go right back.
Yes, listen, have you ever listened? My way I think about this is like if you've if you've ever been hit on by somebody incredibly out of your league, super hot, and you're like, what am I missing? Why are I?
Like?
I feel like I'm decent, like I'm like a good catch, but I'm like what what am my business of it? Why are you? Why are you talking to me? That's the way I feel about us getting Luca, because I'm like, what.
Am I why? There's less of a stretch. It's less of a stretch for you. You're a handsome guy, you're artist, the Lakers.
I get it, you know, And like you said, like you know, I'm a pretty talented brother. You know what I'm saying. But still like you.
Don't, you don't get them. No, I'm a I'm a Warriors guy, so a personality guy.
That's how I hear. This is how I felt when Cave started, you know, damning me a little bit. I was like, oh, coved holder.
Yeah, you're saying I slipped into your DMS? Is that what you're trying to say?
I'm not sure which way I went. It was a romance.
Anyway, Yeah, Yeah, go on, sorry, let's le'll get it back to time.
So why do we want to help people? That's the question you wanted to ask? Why would we do that?
So you could you could take.
The humanitarianis side and say why do we care about people in Papa, New Guinea wherever? But there's actually a geopolitical reason that we help people. One is our own security and one is soft power. So our own security is if we can go help a novel outbreak get controlled, it won't reach our shores and we don't have that problem,
that would be lovely. Another one is for HIV for example, we provide up until recently, although the question is whether it's back online or not, it's very unclear, but up until recently, we since the Bush administration, which always shocks people, George W.
Bush started this, we.
Have been We had this program called PEP Farm, which has provided HIV medications to poor nations and has saved twenty five million lives. Twenty five million lives, which is pretty substantial.
It's it's a government project that worked.
Actually, it's like amazing, and so yes, you could make the argument like why do we care? But when people actually have their HIV controlled by medications, there's less likely for resistant bad strains to emerge again, which can come here and make our lives more miserable. So it could be selfish. Could you can make the altruistic argument, but there are selfish reasons to save lives overseas. And then the last one is I would say that that I could think of is this soft power thing we why
as America? Why does America have a positive reputation or why did it? And a lot of it has to do with things you don't always think about. It could be literally things like we make the best movies, we have the best music, we we have great writers. Culture, right, culture is a way to express that a society is doing well.
But another way.
To do it is to to do the kind of work in public health that we've done. And so people actually say, oh, the cash the Americans, they really screwed it up on this thing in this war, this foreign policy. But on the other hand, they did save twenty five million lives, so maybe we shouldn't be complete jerks to them. So it's it's actually, there's a lot of reasons why we do this work.
This is this again. Now we're crossing into my world because of the soft power, cultural power and how to be just how to be the man, you know what I'm saying, Like, this is how this is how you run this is how you run a city. You be the guy they go to, no matter how much of a jerk that you are. If I'm the dude you got to go to, then then if I'm to put up with a lot, you put up with a lot. Number one, you put up with a lot because you
have to come to me. And then number two, if if you're the guy that you got to go to and you're a good dude, then like when you're in need, you're gonna be the first person they think of, right when when it's when it's my turn, or if there's like if we're lobbying for something like okay, I could sell you know, we could give this ten million gallons of crude oil to this country, or we could give
it to them. Then again, they did save twenty million lives, and maybe we should sell it to them first and maybe at a discounted rate. You know. So yeah, there's that, there's that. But I think the best part to me is what you're saying as far as the selfs side of Like you act like there's a force field at the forty seventh parallel that just stops the air from flowing. Like what is you talking about? Like is one planet? Like why would it not get here like like, there's
no we don't really have a wall, guys. And even if we did, like if COVID taught.
Us nothing else, it should be that what's happening in other countries will impact us. There is no way we're going to be able to plan with that. Oh it's it's mental. But you know what else is unavoidable and inevitable. It's the commercials that are coming right into your ears. Stay tuned, we'll be right back. We're going to talk about what's happening to these organizations. We'll be right back,
and we're back. That break was also brought to you by my favorite hot sauce in the whole widest world. It's called Lucky Dog Hot Sauce. It's super, super, super delicious. And you know what, My guests are gonna go home with a four pack of my favorite sauces from Lucky Dog because I love them, I love Lucky Dog, and I love the combination of them having Lucky Dog in them. So that's what's gonna happen. If you're out there in the world and you want to check out Lucky Dog,
please do that. Lucky Dog Hot Sauce dot Com. Anyways, Okay, we are back and we're going to talk a little bit more about what is happening to these organizations. So the CDC, let's start with that. Jeremy, what is happening online? It's what do we make of a federal Health and Disease agency deleting pages of their website and censoring words? What the This was my question.
I was like when he said, I was like, can somebody tell me why? Like this?
This?
Are we in a movie?
Like?
This is a movie. That's what you're doing a movie? Mortal scientists did not say to science shit, Jason?
Has this ever happened before? I mean, I feel like you study history. Has there ever been a time in our world where they've limited what the scientists can say?
They've sid I just want to It's on the tip of my tongue.
Oh, Jeremy, what's going on?
Yeah?
I read this book.
I read this book a bunch of years ago called How Democracies Die, and they were like, check check check check, check check check, you know, and this is just right on that playlist and our checklist, and yeah, it's what's funny to me? It's not funny, None of it's funny, but what's funny to me is if you look at what they're doing, is how how sensitive they are. Oh no, oh, oh gosh if someone were to say this word, what would your virgin, precious eyes do with that information?
Really, I can't say gender, like come on, grow up?
Like what what is wrong with these people? So I get that they have a particular agenda that I don't agree with, But what I think is just worth noting is what a bunch of snowflakes, you know, Like, come on, if we talk about these issues, is the world going to stop turning? And so what they've done is there's been a couple levels of censorship with the CDC. It's been escalating and then a little bit of de escalation
and then escalation again. So at first Trump said there was a complete gag order on all communications from any federal agency but including public health agencies, so they couldn't get anything out.
So the CDC's usual.
Scientific journal gone, the CDC's weekly emails about whatever they follow, whether it's COVID or whether it's how many people died of opioids this week gone, There was do comms freeze. And then on Friday of just three four days ago, and I say that because it feels like about sixteen years ago, three or four days ago, they actually wiped their websites of like tons of stuff, and some of it would fall under the I roll my eyes, but
I understand what they're doing. They don't think trans is a thing, so they're gonna scrub the CDC data website of websites that I think are at at minimum they're harmless and at best they're helpful, So like how to help people who are who identify as transgender get their healthcare or get their the medications they may need to prevent HIV, the prep that's called right, So they got rid of all those and I kind of I would I roll my eyes and just like, you know, have
a seizure when they do that, because I think it's just so silly and cruel that they would do that. But it kind of matches what their worldview is, and they think that that's what the election gave them sort of a mandate to do. But they also took down
vaccine recommendations. They took down data dot CDC dot gov, which just has just statistics on stuff like heart disease and car accidents and just things that aren't political, and also they could scrape it of this langue and that one political appointee has to approve before it goes back.
That is the there's so many crazy parts about this, and I will get back to how they're planning to do this, But why, I mean, what what is even their reasoning for like scrapping things like information on maternal morbidity or opioid use. What is the what is their long term gain from that? Are they just trying They don't want people to know about it, They don't want people to know what the racial disparities in like maternal health outcomes that like African American women are doing worse.
What is what is their reasoning for it?
Well, their stated reasoning is to get rid of wok ideologies, whatever that means.
So what the yes, that's what I'm still like, what does that mean? What do you mean? What do you mean by that?
But anyway, finish, I mean, it's it's a really important question for the lawyer is to tear apart like what the hell does that mean? So that's their stated reason and but then it's so wide that people don't know how to apply it. So why on earth would they take down. Oh, here's one who should what kind of contraception women should should have after pregnancy?
And you think, oh that, why is that complicated?
Well, actually, it turns out that if you were just pregnant, you just gave birth, and now you're going to get back on contraception, it actually matters that you don't use certain things. Maybe you developed a complication during pregnancy and now you're on a medication and the contraception that you used to use could actually really harm you. Okay, that is something that is not easy to memorize. So the CDC has a chart for that. And so why did they get rid of that chart because it had the
word gender on it? Oh my god, gender, you know gender. And again I'm like, god, y'all, it's not a bad word. I mean, it's just a you know gone.
And it's also in his executive order you said there's two genders. Mm hm, So you can't say gender just so you mean we're so you mean we're genderless.
They're trying to make this sex gender. They're trying to make this whole sex gender thing like tex is what you're born, you know, what your chromosomes are, ok, And gender is how you present, and that's what they're trying to do. But the but the crazy thing is that even CDC epidemiologists who I've worked with, I've published papers with them once in a while, like they'll just put like sexual gender interchangeably. They don't actually like don't think
about it too much. And so they're like, Oh, we don't have to change anything. We just have to go We literally have to take this website down until we change the word sex gender to sex. And there's thousands of pages and it's and there's no way to do it with AI.
There's no FQ, right, yeah.
And so it's it's it's that kind of thing. Another one is they got really up up in arms about pregnant people versus pregnant women. And I'll just say, as someone who was like born a long time ago, pregnant people is one of the terms that like I have to remember to say because I think of pregnancy as
something that happens to women. But then I'm like, oh, but there are these educations and you can tell me like, oh, this person was born this way and they have a uterist but they're a man in terms of their gender, So I get it. I'm woke okay, but it's still hard for me to always get the words out the first time, you know, just because that's how I'm from here.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, but it makes me want to say it more than ever. Totally, This makes me want to be I'm not I don't even consider myself like necessarily woke. I don't, but like I don't even know what that means anymore. But like, I don't even consider myself that like progressive, But this makes me want to use pronouns. This makes me want to do that stuff. It's ridiculous. They don't understand, like adults are doing this.
Yeah, I first of all, am like, I refuse to succeed the definition of woke to these people. Like, that's not what it means, right, My granddaddy said woke. What he's what he means is are you aware for which are you? Are you awake to the ways for which you're being subjucated? Are you aware of your politics? You
have to stay awake, so stay woke. And I'm like, if anything, I'm like you just as wek as we are, because what you're saying is you being subjugated and your way of life is being taken from you, and you are staying aware and fighting back. I'm like you just as well as I am, so I don't understand what
you're talking about, right number one? And number two, I think to your point about just I've always said that, like privilege makes you brittle man, And I'm like, I just and then and then the weird mixture of that and just this whole like masculinity man of sphere of stuff, and I'm like, I don't. I don't, like you said, I don't carry a lot of your a lot of their views of like what it means to be a masculine man. But there's one thing that I do have is most of the time, I really don't care what
that man's doing over there. That's not my concern. You want to you want to say gender, what do I care? What do I care? If you want to say pregnant people? I don't like.
I got shit to do.
You know what I'm saying, Like, I don't like, why is you so worried about?
To me?
That sounds pretty and to be you know what I'm saying. And they claim that they're doing this to defend women. And my problem with that is that they don't do things that actually defend.
I mean. Also, no one's ever gotten mad at me for not saying pregnant people like, you know, I should use the term. I agree I should use it. I'm gonna be much more mindful about using it now because of this. But no one ever got mad at me in the past. Ever. You know, maybe what someone would correct you. But like they make it sound like there's this army of quote unquote woke people online, scientists and doctors like, no, man, no one's gotten mad at me that.
I've missed a few days, then a couple of times. Yeah, And like you said, no one blinks because we've shown we actually care that other. I care about how you feel. Like, if that's important to you, I'm gonna try to do something that's important to you. You understand that. That's the way I feel. It's no skin off my Like, that's not a hill I need to die on. What are you talking about? They wanted to call you this, I just forgot.
Yeah.
And there's also this whole thing about the extreme, the extremes of this. So the Trump administration argument against all this stuff, or against DEI is that on the liberal progressive side, these things are requirements to get grants or to get hired or whatever, and that's just not true. What is true, but is true, is that on that side of the spectrum, there's interest in those things so that we have representations, so that we serve the communities
that we are trying to serve. And there's so there's interest in that. And I think I'll know that that's not only true, but it's important that there's interest in that. But there's no there's They have this fantasy that people get hired or things happen one hundred percent only because they check those boxes and when in fact it's a piece of the pie. On the flip side, they're banning
it one hundred percent because of that. Yeah, they so they are actually taking something that is a part of the pie and saying thou shalt not do that, and they're making it the whole pie.
I think I get. I think to your point, I get the The real the sinister part about that is like that the not so subtext is you are either qualified or diverse, right as if to say that if I am of a diverse group, I am not qualified. And then and out of that same subtext is the idea that like, well, you've just you've defined what you mean by diverse.
You know what I'm saying.
So you're saying, that's everybody except right. If you not a white dude, you part of diversity, you know what I'm saying. And like a straight white dude, then you part of diversity. So you're saying, no one is qualified.
Yeah, it's a fundamental, fundamental misunderstanding of how it works. Yeah, fundamental understanding how it works.
Yes, And then I'm saying, but like I'm saying, if you were just a pure evil capitalist, just the worst version of a late stave capitalist, you would be like, I'm I am going to fish in the largest ocean possible to find the best person. But instead you saying I Am not gonna find the best person possible. Is what you just said. That's what you're actually saying is you're removing this, You're eliminating an entire pool of people that are probably better than you because you don't want
to diverse higher. That's what you're saying. Just like I'm like, I thought you liked money.
Just the fact that our science is going to be limited in any way is not good science. Our science should be open, and as Jeremy said earlier, sometimes you may not see the importance of one small study. Maybe they did a study on squid neurons twenty years ago, and you're like, why would you study squid neurons? Fast forward to thirty years down the road, people are using it for paraplegics in studies there that you did an
expensive study on coffee stains. Someone could joke about that and laugh about that, but looking at that helps us with signs somewhere down the road that you can't even imagine. It's yeah anyways, and it's not like it's any random schmuck can just get a study funded by the NIH or do work with these things. It's a difficult process. You have to go through steps, you have to prove
things to get there. It's absurd to think that they just get it because they're using these terms that are quote unquote woke.
Jeremy, I have a question actually based on that. Like, so obviously, the what we're discussing right now is the reasons that things are being scrubbed from the website. And it's it's not because it's junk science, is because as you words, you don't like, where are there any instances that you can think of in your time as a professional where you were like, yeah, we should probably pull that down because that's actually bad science.
You know what I'm saying, good question, the great question. I think that an example of science changing and websites responding to that change is the degree to which COVID spreads through the air word that is like and by the way, this example is one of my favorites because it does actually show why content moderation is really really tricky. Because I'll give this example because it's what's great about this example is it kind of it goes in the
pendulum in all these different directions. So if in twenty twenty I went on Twitter and I said COVID is airborne, somebody would be really a lot of really smart scientists would say that is false information, that is misinformation, Get that out of here. And so the concept moderation that people actually think they want would have actually suppressed that information.
And at the time I really didn't know what to do with it, because you know.
I thought we knew what we knew, and I was wearing a mask because I'm like, look, I don't know how airborne this thing is or isn't, but it's airborne enough, you know, it's like it's gonna get in my mouth or something.
So I wasn't sure.
And then the argument in the data came forward and then we realized, yeah, it's much more spread through droplet and air than anyone ever realized. And so then we had scientists and public health organizations had to say, oh, we gotta we have to change this. Actually yeah, yeah, so you go with it. So I think that's an example of both. Like everyone got really freaked out about CONCEP moderation a few weeks ago because Meta and all of them took away there a fact checking. But I
always use that example. It's not so easy because they would have absolutely censored covid is airborne back in February twenty twenty. And just like they and they could have, by the way, if they if they said that, I know, norovirus is airborne, that's wrong. You know, it's still that's still wrong. So it's really it's it's hard, but yeah, the answer is we do it. We do change our minds. And I think that's a really important thing. And I it drives me crazy when people won't admit it. You know,
when they'll stick. They'll stick to what they know, regardless of the of the of the data.
Well, it came back to like this concept of all this information in the CDC being censored. How are they going to do that? Are they just running some sort of program that's gonna AI look through every paper or is it gonna be one person? Because to my knowledge, there's only been one political point thus far to the CDC. Is this one person the new acting director? Is that the person now responsible for looking at every study that comes their way? Yes, that is all mental answer.
Do you think that's good?
Be well it's slow, yeah, yeah, yeah, or clunky?
How many papers would you estimate? Just a rough estimate.
I really can't tell you that. I don't know, but it's a lot. And it's also these data sets, right, A lot of these data sets went down because if you had a data set that was saying, how many people here's the one this is a real example, how many people have gotten their vaccine against RSV, a virus that is a seasonal respiratory virus, and the CDC tracks that and they report it pretty much as close to
real time as they can. That went away because I think they had women as one of the metrics eighteen to forty nine women, fifty to sixty four women, sixty five plus women men. Oh no, that had to come down, and now it's back on. It's back live because now I think it's as females because that's sex versus gender. That is the level of creepy obsession they have. They're
obsessed with something that nobody cares about. And so that so and literally one person at the top has to have to reprove that there might be some degree of devolving, meaning the top person saying, okay for issues that are gender sex.
That one I just gave you.
That can be done by people below me, and I'm gonna sign off on that. But I have not heard that happening. So that's literally what is what it takes. And it's not, by the way, this is not conjecture, this is design. The Trump administration said anything that goes out of these agencies have to be approved by a political appointee, and that's a Trump administration person.
That's one Person's just.
Gonna be such a terrible time, such a terrible time the next coming years in terms of getting new information out and learning about anything new, anything new, it's gonna be. It's really I don't know if it's getting enough. I don't think it's getting enough attention. I you know, last week there was a lot of confusion with all our friends in academic medicine or anything resembling academic medicine about
the freeze spending freeze. Can you explain a little bit about why there was so much confusion and has that cleared up at all?
Yes, the administration an ount through a memo that all federal grants had to stop not.
Judging new ones. That had to stop.
We knew that, which is stupid enough, but existing ones had to be frozen. So spending couldn't happen until they made sure that the terms that they don't like were not involved D whatever, transgender, And the issue there is that the scientists at these institutions could be whatever. The University of Massachusetts are funded by the NIH and they don't want When they get NAH funding, it's so audited.
Everything is checked. You have to justify every dollar you spent, and that's how they make sure that there's no corruption and whatever. So if they spent money during that last week, they were people were worried that they would be accused of having violated a federal action in an executive order and that their grant, their million dollar grant for five years to support ten researchers, whatever it is, would be
canceled tomorrow. So that meant that, for example, someone who just pays for like some software that they used for statistics and it is five ninety nine a month and it's just on an auto pay, if that wasn't canceled, they violated the agreement. Some people. Yeah, so some people felt like felt like panicked to that level, and they were literally trying to figure out how do I make
sure I don't lose my grant on a technicality. Others were like, no, they're not going to be that crazy, But I don't know how they knew because there was no guidance. So then fortunately the American Public Health Association and a few other nonprofits.
Sued it got to stay.
That bought pause. Then then the Chump administration said, okay, just kidding that we're pulling that memo. Turned out that maybe they claimed it hadn't actually been their intention, which I'm like, okay, that's just in competence, and so.
They're fine if that really wasn't competent. Yeah, yeah, massive level that.
You can't just be like oh wait I was just playing or wait not. I mean what I was trying to say was like, you don't like this talk about I'm like, this is a CBS receipt, like the list we're talking about of things that you shut down on some I mean to do that.
Yeah, it's crazy.
It was Actually it was actually really even more bizarre than that, because they pulled the memo and they said, oh, sorry, that memo was not cleared.
Uh, it came from the Office of Management and Budget.
We didn't do that. But yeah, yeah, I was like, somebody press, you know, send And and then at the press conference where they announced that, they're like, oh so that means that the freeze is over right, and the press secretary said, oh no, the freeze still but wait,
can you just tell us? How can you please just tell us what you want to be happening, Like we don't have to agree with it, like we may hate it, but can you at least just do us the service of letting us know the oppression that you're trying to do.
Yes, do effective at your fascism? Please?
Am I gonna get paid on the fifteenth and that Yeah, right, Like what are you saying?
Yeah? Can I just say that what you just said is actually the most important thing, because what's happening here, whether it's the NAH grant recipient at whatever Rutgers University, or whether it's the CDC scientist who has to pull their paper because it says the word woman not female, everyone is complying because can I pay my rent? Yeah, because they may they may be right, and some lawyer may sue for them, and they may retroactively be told, oh,
you can't be fired. You get your job back. But in the meantime, the payroll stops and you're going to mis rent and you're going to be evicted. And so everyone is being forced to pick their battles so that they don't become homeless. And that and that is that is so to me just just disgusting. Yeah, yeah, it will.
Other than rescinding this memo, has there been any other bits of good news you referred maybe to something with that pep FAR if you could also explain what pep FAR is.
Yeah. Pep FAR is the President's Emergency Relief Plan for HIV AIDS that was announced by President George W. Bush when he was president. It was such an amazing amount of funding for the United States to commit to fighting HIV AIDS globally by giving less wealthy nations inexpensive HIV drugs. It was so massive that I remember this. All these liberal progressive activists were like, what George, but now this can't be read.
Yeah.
They were literally like, we're being We didn't have the turn back then gas lit and it turned out no. He just believed that this was something that was important to do and it saved twenty five million laps so far, and so that was halted last week. That was the one that really just like turned the knife in a lot of our hearts, because it's one thing to do
something that's going to affect science down the road. This is like someone in you know, South Africa going to their clinic on Monday to get their HIV med and maybe there's someone whose immune system really got to the brink where they almost died a month ago, but now they got on meds, they're just reconstituting their immune system. These meds are a bridge to their life. If they don't get their meds this week, they're going the other direction.
They're dying and so for that to stop, I mean, we just people lost in the United States health care help with health we lost our minds. So that apparently was reversed, and so supposedly the aid's coming out, But then we don't even know because a lot of the organizations that that work on this rely on our funding and that funding is frozen from other ways, so we're a little unclear on what's actually happening.
It's amazing, It's it is really amazing. I you know, in regards to you know, sometimes these presidents from the past that we had lower you know, lower esteem for these I still do. I'm not gonna say that George W. Bush is by any means a good dude or a good president. We're not gonna that's not gonna happen on the show, on any of our shows. But it is such an amazing contrast to see what we're seeing now, yea, and to see the the direct impact this sort of
thing we'll have on patients. And it's funny because you you can imagine someone a Republican arguing, well, why waste that money and not take care of the person here who needs medicine, And the answer is obviously yes, you're almost there. Let's do that too correct.
Well, no, there's also this idea of it's kind of at this point a term of dis bastardized but effect of altruism, which is like doing the most with what you have. And so if you have one hundred dollars to spend to save a life, like what is the best way to spend that? Is it on yourself or
is it on someone else? And it might be something like a mosquito net for malaria will save twenty lives, you know, and so but also for our own thing again, like giving HIV meds to a country that wouldn't have them, even though it doesn't seem like it directly helps us, probably a thirty day supply of those HIV meds going to that place actually saves more American lives than directly giving it to the American.
Person who didn't need it anyway.
So in a way it actually you have to do like the second order effect.
Yeah, that's a funny story about Pep far Well maybe it's not funny, but just a little bit of color there. I got a chance to like do some lobbying through the one campaign that gets a lot of his like one campaign kind of started around this time that Bush was doing this thing. And the story goes, Bush was such a Bono fan, Bono gets hip to all this stuff, and then Bono invites just like Christian rock artists. So this dude named Michael W. Smith in this other group
called the Newsboys. So they come and they sit down and they meet like just Christian rock. They just come and sit down and talk to it, and they convince him that this is the godly thing to do. And fast forward, fifty percent of AIDS in Africa's has been eradicated. You know what I'm saying off of just bringing just a youth group band.
That's wild.
It's so bonkers, right, so wild.
But there's nothing like that for Trump, Like what does he care? Obviously he doesn't care about religion. He is not, Like I mean, George W. Bush might have actually believed in the stuff, but Trump clearly doesn't.
That's crazy, right, Yeah, that story.
Is a good example of how we change minds and we and I'm really mindful of this in my work, but I don't always stick to it. I try, which is that if you want to change minds, dunking is not the way. The way is to reach across and try to make a connection. But there is clear, clear data and experience showing that people trust people on their own side. And so what you want to do is is work talk to someone like that. You know, so Bono found the Christian Rockers so they could talk about books.
Find someone you know who voted for Trump and say hey, this is why this one matters, and try to make that difference because they're not going to hear it from you, but they might hear from your friend who is on their side or who was or who has connections.
That's actually I.
Think what's happening with pep far now is like the roller coaster we're on with pep far has a lot to do with people who are sort of peripheral Trump World individuals who are trying to say, hey, look to the extent that you haven't completely gone off the rails, this one really matters. And even Marco Rubio, who's the Secretary of State, he co authored the bill to renew pep FAR. In twenty eighteen, he wrote a Fox News op ed saying pepfar is one of our greatest achievements
as a nation. So for him to sort of be in there it tells you how small the circle is that they did this, But I still think that that their hearts and minds are in play a little and we have to just try. Well.
That brings me to my last question for you, which is that you and I have both bumped heads online with some people who are going to be getting some pretty important positions within the NIH and HHS, and you more so than me, And you're very diplomatic and you know fair and balanced way I feel much much much more so than me. But these are now people who don't necessarily like all of us. They don't like me
that much. Some of them they don't love you because you've been outspoken and you've been critical of their some of their stances on vaccines and masking, et cetera. How are you going to work with these people? How do you feel you're going to approach this coming going forward? Because you do have a very vocal voice. People look to you people they don't know already. They can watch you on like the news all the time or interviewing you know, important people on your your sub stack and
your your channels. So how are you going to approach this going forward?
I have to be honest this is something that's in flux. I had a plan, and in the words of the Great Mike Tyson, everyone's got a plan until someone punches you in the face. My plan had been, Okay, I have a few connections in Trump world who respect me.
We have a sort of an understanding that we don't agree, but we can work on things, and that if the Harris had won, I would have had a red phone that they would call me and say, hey, just we want to flag this is one thing, and would you help us with this, and sort of in exchange if their side one, I got a red phone and say hey, look, so there's a certain amount of clout. And my plan had been, all right, I'm gonna go write a book
about something else. I'm gonna do my usual work. I'm gonna keep my head down, but I'm going to work behind the scenes with people that I think are in play and choose wisely. When I tried to make the call and say hey, maybe on this one could we do something that was plan at And then the last two weeks happened and I like had to speak out.
So now I'm worried that those calls aren't going to be easy to make But I'm trying even now, even now, I'm trying to do it in a way that doesn't doesn't like bastard, it doesn't like dunk on someone's intent, or it doesn't say anything about about individuals. And I'll give you just like a very you know, cave is kind of dancing around. There's a very specific example is
the guy who might run the NIH. Not too many people can say that the nominee to run NIH has written a hit piece on them in the Wall Street Journal, But I can say that I could say that he did that. He did that to me and uh and I responded by email to say, you know, you might want to correct this just literally wrong. It's a fact check. I watch to tell your editor and he's like, okay, thanks. You know, was like a number he got wrong.
I was like, actually it's twenty exactly like it was.
Really you got the number wrong, just in case you care. He's like, got it.
But you know, a power that's a power move.
That's hard. I love that, Like that's that's look, that's that's that's a g move. I actually really like that.
Yeah.
So and and you know, I responded the journal, let me write a little thing saying like why he was wrong and and I've debated him on a podcast one time, and you know, we we you know, he butt heads and we I don't think there's a lot of love, but you know, uh and I but I I twice this past two weeks I mentioned him in my in my newsletter, and I did it in ways that I again,
I they're meant. It's meant to highlight a disagreement, but not to say that this guy is evil or that he can't get nothing redeeming about him.
And I'm not sure.
You know, he's got a pretty you know, I've heard, I've heard rumors he's got a little bit of a thin skin. But yeah, maybe it's not true. Maybe he wants to work. Who knows. And so I'm trying my best, even while I'm calling this out more than I thought I would, being much more of a public voice in the past couple of weeks than I intended to, and put in my neck a little higher.
I'm still hoping that even with doing that, there.
Will be ways to do Plan A, which is to work behind the scenes to make some differences.
But I don't know, We'll see.
I have a question about maybe him specifically, Like, so, but let me, I'm gonna back into this question. Uh okay, I'm born and raised in California. We just saw the Grammys. The fact is Kendrick is the superior rapper. It is what it is. But Drake is a cornball to me. But it's not like he can't rap, like he's a great rapper.
He's just a.
Cornball and he's just not better than Kendrick. So my professional opinion again is I mean, Drake's a great rapper, you know. So my question is if you can't see where I'm going here is.
And I do, and I'm terrified because I don't have.
No because you are you are clearly the expert in this in this scenario, in the scenario, you're the Kendrick like you clearly know what you're talking about. Yes, So my question is when you look across the table with somebody like him, are you like, bro, what the hell are you talking about? Or is it like, No, he's smart. I mean, I just added I don't. I think I think he's misinformed on certain things. But no, he's I mean, he's you know, he knows he's you know, Yeah, it's fine.
You know what I mean, it's so complicated. It's a great question because I do see some people who over the past number of years, they've gone increasingly from where I was at to much more in the in the extreme category, and it's and watching that's very depressing and sad. But then there are people who you just disagree on certain issues. I'll give you an example for him, like, I know he is not I know he has he has intelligent neurons in his brain.
I know that in fact.
They He wrote a paper in twenty twelve that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which is like one of our top journals, that measured the mortality effect of pepfar Wow. And it was. It was. And there's two things that blew me away about this. Number One, of course, it showed the incredible early effects that pep bar was already having in twenty twelve. So now it was a very very well done study. It
was very rigorously done. And the second thing that was so interesting to me about that was it used a lot of the theme statistical techniques that a lot of COVID researchers did to show that mitigation worked. But when it came to that he didn't agree, So I thought it was interesting, like, oh, it's interesting. He used difference in different techniques, which is a statistical technique to look at pep far and slam dunk, just the way people use that technique to look at some COVID outcomes.
But when it came to that, he wasn't on board.
Because he felt that we overdid it with our COVID response. Yeah, and so I look, I look at that, and I'm just I'm just really kind of just puzzled by it because I know that he's a smart guy who can do great work. But I also know that, like everything in the world, your priors, your bias you bring into something just changes how you how you process knowledge. So I said across if I remember across the table from him,
I'm gonna take it on an issue by issue basis. Literally, I'm just gonna be Okay, how do we are the neurons doing their thing or not? Are they firing or are they misfiring?
Yeah, you totally answer the question. That's exactly what I was asking. Thank you.
You're looking for internal consistency. And speaking of consistency, you know what's consistently great your substack let's plug it right now so people can find you there.
Thank you so much.
My substack is called inside Medicine Inside Medicine dot substock dot com. It used to come out twice a week for free during the week and then a paywall about my life as an er doctor on the weekends.
Currently is coming out more than once.
A day because I can't stop.
That's that's not sustainable, but I'll do it until I collapse. And you know other places blue Sky and Threads and Instagram actually Instagram my full name.
My mom's very happy. Jeremy Samuel Faust.
Yeah, it's a sweet boy, that Jeremy Samuel Faust. It is a great substack. I do read it. It is where I get a lot of my up to date information keeps me going on this show and it helps me. It's a real source of information for me. So it's really it's really well written. It's not so long that it's not manageable. You can read it in like one easy sitting. You get a lot of information. It's a very high impact and it's well ritten. So I highly recommend it. Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on.
I appreciate it, you know, prop Yeah, there's so much that you do, and you do very well at a very high level. I'm not sure what to plug, but let's start. Let's start with the show a Hood Politics for those who are listening to Hood Politics right now and are listening to the House of Pod where can people find Hood Politics? And can you tell us again a little bit about that show, which again I love?
Yeah, yeah, so the politics for PROP is on all the pods, It's on the video versions on my YouTube, which is just prop hip hop. And yeah, the ideas that, like the cornerstone premise is like if you've grown up in an urban area, you understand politics more than you think you do, and that it's just more of a
just a language thing. Like so, like, so what I'm trying to do on the show is use what you already know to help show you that the stuff you think you don't know, you actually know better than you think you do. So we covered, you know, from filibustering all the way to what's happening with the CDC. You know what I'm saying, and just try to like explain it in a way that's like not so much analysis and commentary but more like translation, Like this what that means.
They're saying this about this, and you would probably feel the way I feel about that because you grew up like I grew up, you know so, uh so that's kind of the idea.
Uh.
I also do music and poetry. All that's on prop hip hop dot com and probably shutting down the coffee thing because I'm out of money. I love coffee, But just running a business turns out that's I don't know if you know that's hard.
I've heard, yeah, I've heard things.
Starting a business is hard and clearly not my skill set.
Well, let me listen. You can't be amazing at everything. It's just not fair. Okay, it's all right to take a take a hit on this one. Take a one. It's okay, okay, because honestly, uh you are an amazing I use teacher in your introduction specifically, and if you look at your page up on Wikipedia, doesn't have that, I don't think, but like, to me, that is such an important part of what you do, how you make things relatable. Jeremy's never been related to Kendrick Lamar before.
But actually that's not true.
I say that is not true.
Let's go ship.
That is not true.
So I actually wrote a Slate article when he won the Pulitzer Prize about about the politic because the Polser Prize is a very classical music kind of thing usually, and I'm in that world and actually had been involved with a Politzer Prize winning piece from a year or two before that, and so, and I actually had the privilege of informing somebody that they won the Politzer Prize for music, and so when it was such a great moment and when and so when Kendrick won it, I
went and listened to that album a handful of times, and I was like, I get why this one. Let me write about from a classical perspective, why.
I think the Poltic committee kind of did its job here.
Well, it proves my point even more. He nailed that in like just not even knowing that, just meeting you for this short period of time.
Anyway, when he got to the whole Drake thing, I was like, I know there's beef, I know there's tracks, but I'm out of my element.
So well, there's other podcasts for that. But again, hood politics amazing. The music also very good, underrated really my opinion, it's fantastic stuff. And I really enjoyed it. If you haven't already rate and review this show the House of Pod you can find us anywhere you find your podcast. Thanks again to Lucky Dog Hot Sauce, and thank you both so much. This was super helpful and I learned a time. All right, bye bye bye bye.
All right, all right, now don't you hit stop on this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need you to finish this thing so I can get the download numbers. Okay, so don't stop it yet, but listen. This was recorded in East Lost Boyle Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at prop hip hop dot com. If you're in the cold Brew coffee we got Terraform Coldbrew. You can go there dot com and use promo code hood get twenty percent off get yourself
some coffee. This was mixed, edited and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski killing the beat softly. Check out his website Matdowsowski dot com. I'm a speller for you because I know m A T. T O S O W s Ki dot com Matdowsowski dot com. He got more music and stuff like that on there, So gonna check out The Heat Politics is a member of Cool Zone Media, Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network. Your theme music and scoring is also by the one
and Overly Mattowsowski. Still killing the beat softly, so listen. Don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you. We'll see y'all next week.
But the