Latest / The Matt Walsh Show / Debunking The Most Absurd Anti-Alcohol Propaganda

Transcript

Debunking The Most Absurd Anti-Alcohol Propaganda · The Matt Walsh Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: For the first time since the temperance movement of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: 19th century, which led to the catastrophe of prohibition, alcohol
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: has once again become a very dirty word in the
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: United States. And it happened pretty suddenly too. No matter
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: where you look from podcasts to television news to WebMD,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: you'll find the same message, which is genuinely insane. They'll
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: tell you that any amount of alcohol, no matter how small,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: will poison you. They'll tell you that You'll get cancer
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: if you drink in addition to destroying your sleep cycle
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and your will to live. And this message is everywhere.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Watch.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: But of course alcohol is worse than pot. Alcohol is
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: worse than pot. Everything, right?
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Basically, isn't alcohol worse than everything?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Zero alcohol is better than any. Right. Two drinks maximum
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: for an adult non-alcoholic per week. It's kind of the
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: upper threshold.
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: Week.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: Per week. Week.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: What you can do without starting to increase your risk
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: for cancer. You know, about 5% of all cancers. Business week.
• 1:01
  Speaker 5: About 100,000 cases of cancer each year in the United
• 1:05
  Speaker 5: States are due to alcohol consumption. And about 20,000 deaths.
• 1:09
  Speaker 5: This isn't a small problem.
• 1:11
  Speaker 6: Mayo Clinic's Dr. Donald Hendred says alcohol is the third
• 1:15
  Speaker 6: leading preventable cause of cancer in the U.S. behind tobacco
• 1:19
  Speaker 6: use and obesity.
• 1:20
  Speaker 5: The risk starts with actually relatively low intakes of alcohol
• 1:25
  Speaker 5: over a long period of time. Assuming it once in
• 1:27
  Speaker 5: a while probably isn't going to increase the risk that much,
• 1:30
  Speaker 5: but there are many people who consume it regularly, and
• 1:33
  Speaker 5: there are many people who assume that there are health
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: benefits on the heart. And these benefits probably aren't as
• 1:39
  Speaker 5: strong as what we used to believe.
• 1:42
  Speaker 6: He says when drinking alcohol is combined with tobacco use,
• 1:45
  Speaker 6: the risk of cancer increases significantly.
• 1:48
  Speaker 5: Studies have suggested the optimal amount of alcohol for people
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: less than 50 is zero. We need to dial back,
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: I think, a little bit on our alcohol consumption.
• 1:57
  Speaker 7: It's one of those areas where you don't understand the
• 1:59
  Speaker 7: hidden cost until you really give it up for a while.
• 2:02
  Speaker 7: And I think about my own relationship with drinking and
• 2:05
  Speaker 7: I stopped drinking at 30 years old. I'm now 33.
• 2:07
  Speaker 7: And I had just drank because I just drank. I'd
• 2:09
  Speaker 7: never ran the experiment of just giving it up for
• 2:11
  Speaker 7: a while. And then like, I don't know, maybe I
• 2:13
  Speaker 7: was at 31. I thought, you know, I'll have a
• 2:15
  Speaker 7: drink again because now I could really AB test it.
• 2:17
  Speaker 7: I had a year of not drinking, decided to have
• 2:19
  Speaker 7: a drink again. It ruined three days of my life.
• 2:22
  Speaker 7: I had a couple of glasses of wine, didn't get drunk.
• 2:24
  Speaker 7: It ruined three days of my life because of the
• 2:26
  Speaker 7: domino effect it caused. So it meant that I got
• 2:29
  Speaker 7: worse sleep that night. And then because I got worse
• 2:31
  Speaker 7: sleep that night, I ate more poorly the next day
• 2:33
  Speaker 7: because my dopamine system or whatever, the cortisol system was
• 2:36
  Speaker 7: all messed up. And then I podcasted worse. I didn't
• 2:40
  Speaker 7: go to the gym the day after, that day or
• 2:43
  Speaker 7: the day after because of that, because I felt really bad.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Now, we played that last clip before a few months ago,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: but it truly never gets old. I mean, you'd have
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: to waterboard me for like a month to get me
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to talk like that.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: And I still probably wouldn't.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, he says he podcasted worse and that three
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: days of his life were ruined because he drank a
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: couple glasses of wine. I mean, it couldn't have been
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: anything else, like maybe a virus, food poisoning. Couldn't be
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the fact that he's really a woman in disguise. No,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: it was definitely the two glasses of wine that somehow
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: caused a debilitating three-day hangover in this otherwise healthy young
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: adult man. Then there's the claim on Bill Maher's show
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and from the Mayo Clinic that alcohol causes cancer, which
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: sounds scary until you realize that everything you consume, literally everything,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: including bacon, red meat, coffee, tea, Chinese food, so on,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: also increases your risk of cancer. There are studies on
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: all of this. And I could sit here for the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: next hour listing foods that might cause cancer. Beef, pork chops, cereal,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: white bread, cookies, ice cream, and on and on and on.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Do you enjoy barbecued chicken cooked over charcoal?
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I do too. Well, guess what?
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: The high temperature and the smoke creates chemicals that stick
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to the surface of the chicken and might cause cancer.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Have fun at the cookout. Like I said, we could
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: be here all day. And it's not just stuff you eat,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: by the way. Scented candles, household cleaners, plastic bottles, mattresses, furniture.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Every day you are surrounded by seemingly innocuous objects that,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: according to research, can increase your risk of cancer to
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: some degree. And that's to say nothing of the cell
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: phone you're currently holding in your hand or in your pocket.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Life itself increases your risk of developing cancer. Everybody will
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: get cancer eventually if they live long enough, like Commissioner
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Gordon or whichever character set in The Dark Knight. You
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: either die a hero or live long enough to see
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: yourself get cancer or words to that effect.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: I don't really remember. I think it was something like that.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Now, of course, amid all this fear mongering, nobody ever
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: really explains, you know, when they tell us about increased
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: cancer risk from alcohol or anything else. They don't really
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: explain that they're talking about relative risk, not absolute risk.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I explained this also on the show a few months ago,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: but it bears repeating. When it's announced that, for example,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: moderate drinking increases a woman's risk of breast cancer by 23%,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: which is what they'll say, what they mean, though they
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: rarely explain it, is that it increases her relative risk
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: by 23%. But what that means in real life depends
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: on the absolute risk. So you have to know the baseline.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: And for women, the baseline chance of developing breast cancer
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: is 13%, which is already way too high, but that's
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the baseline, without drinking anything. Moderate drinking reportedly increases that
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: 13% risk by 23%. So it's not 23% of 100%,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: it's 23% of 13%, which means that the actual risk
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: increase is about 3%. For another example, we're told that
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: heavy drinking, which is obviously not healthy, increases your risk
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: of esophageal cancer by, I think they say 400%.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: But the absolute risk of esophageal.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Cancer is less than 1%, which means that 400% increase
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: brings you up to a risk of about 2.5 to
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: about 3%. Now, you might feel that any increase in risk,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: even a percent, is too much for you. And certainly,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: as I said, heavy drinking is not a good idea.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: consuming basically any substance immoderately is not a good idea.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: But it's important to put these things into perspective, and
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: perspective has been entirely lost in this conversation. For the
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: media and for the so-called public health experts, there is
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: no value in perspective. People will just get confused, they think.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: You know, you bog them down with too many details.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: It's much simpler to just tell people that alcohol is
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the main threat to their health.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: It's poison.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Even one sip can cause cancer, which is what they
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: actually say now. Even though in the entire history of
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: the human race, there has never been a documented case
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: of somebody getting cancer from one sip of alcohol or
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: from one drink or from two drinks or from 50.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: But it's technically possible, I guess, maybe. So that's what
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: they'll say. Then, as an added benefit, they'll have a
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: much easier time selling millions of Americans on other drugs
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: that they can use to solve their problems, from SSRIs
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: to weed to mushrooms. Big Pharma would prefer you to
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: take SSRIs. Podcasters would generally steer you towards the weed
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: and the mushrooms. Even when it's not so heavy-handed, the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: full-on propaganda campaign is hard to miss. And it's hit
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: a fever pitch lately, as evidenced by the following segment
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: that just aired on ABC News, which claims to be
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: a news network. Now, there was a time many years ago,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: and if you're a younger person, like, say, under the
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: age of 50, you're not going.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: To remember this. I don't either.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: But there was a time when ABC News would cover
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: stories of importance to the average American. And today, ABC's
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: biggest story, I hope you're sitting down for this, is
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: the scandalous news that Brad Pitt, the actor, recently consumed
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: an alcoholic beverage. Just one, or maybe it was two. Yeah,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: if you can believe it, a famous Hollywood actor decided
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: one day to drink a moderate amount of alcohol. This
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: is a story that's so shocking in the minds of
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: ABC producers that they included various self-help resources at the
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: end of the segment just in case any of their
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: viewers were, you know, thinking of following Brad Pitt's example.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: They're treating this news as if Brad Pitt just went
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: on a rampage in Beverly Hills, leaving no survivors in
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: his wake. So behold, the ABC News report entitled Brad
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Pitt says he drank again after seven years of sobriety.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: This is a full length segment that was actually broadcast
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: by a major news network in the United States.
• 8:49
  Speaker 6: Watch.
• 8:50
  Speaker 8: Brad Pitt is pulling back the curtain on his sobriety.
• 8:53
  Speaker 8: He says he began drinking again after seven years of
• 8:56
  Speaker 8: being sober.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: It's OK.
• 8:58
  Speaker 7: Come on.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: Just a bad dream.
• 9:01
  Speaker 8: In a candid new interview with Esquire discussing in part
• 9:04
  Speaker 8: his upcoming movie, Heart of the Beast, the 62-year-old actor-producer saying,
• 9:09
  Speaker 8: I was sober for seven years, and then I got
• 9:11
  Speaker 8: back off the wagon in a more restrained manner. In 2020,
• 9:16
  Speaker 8: Brad Pitt gave credit to his friend Bradley Cooper for
• 9:18
  Speaker 8: his sobriety.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: I got sober because of this guy, and every day
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: has been happier ever since.
• 9:24
  Speaker 8: The F1 and Fight Club star.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Fight Club.
• 9:27
  Speaker 8: Like so many non-celebrities, is among a growing number of
• 9:31
  Speaker 8: people who've been public about being caught up in the
• 9:33
  Speaker 8: pattern of alcohol abuse and recovery in Hollywood. And if
• 9:37
  Speaker 8: you or anyone you know needs help with substance abuse,
• 9:40
  Speaker 8: call 800-662-HELP or visit FindTreatment.gov.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: So it's quite a scoop.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Brad Pitt gave up drinking for a while and now
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: he's drinking again.
• 9:52
  Speaker 8: Okay.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Did he get a DUI?
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Did he run a family of four off the road?
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Did he vomit all over a clerk at the Cracker Barrel?
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: As far as I know, no. Brad Pitt didn't do
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: any of that. He just had a couple of drinks
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: in moderation. What a horrifying prospect. It's only a matter
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: of time before he gets cancer. In perhaps the least
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: surprising development of all time, this anti-alcohol panic originated in
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: or at least has been heavily pushed by the World
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Health Organization, or WHO. Now, the WHO, as we all know,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: assisted the Chinese government in covering up the fact that
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: their lab, which was funded by Tony Fauci and the
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: US government, had created COVID in the first place. And additionally,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: the WHO pushed the COVID lockdowns, which ruined tens of
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: millions of lives and served no legitimate purpose. This is
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: easily the least reputable, least ethical public health organization on
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the planet, which is saying something. But after COVID hysteria
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: died down, they didn't miss a beat. They went right
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: back out there issuing new commandments that they expected everybody
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to follow without question. So in particular, in 2023, WHO
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: published a statement declaring with absolute certainty that, quote, no
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: No level. One sip even is not safe.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Here's how one WHO official named Karina Ferreira Borges said,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: delivered the news, quote, We cannot talk about a so-called
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: safe level of alcohol use. Doesn't matter how much you drink,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the risk to the drinker's health starts from the first
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: drop of any alcoholic beverage. The only thing we can
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: say for sure is that the more you drink, the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: more harmful it is, or in other words, the less
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: you drink, the safer it is. We need cancer-related health
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: information messages on labels of alcoholic beverages, following the example
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: of tobacco products. We need empowered and trained health professionals
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: who would feel comfortable to inform their patients about alcohol
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: and cancer risk And we need overall wide awareness of
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: this topic in countries and communities.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: The first drop.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Even one drop is not safe. This is what the
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: global health organizations are saying. And the media repeats it uncritically.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: And pretty soon the podcasters repeat it. And pretty soon
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the mass of people are also repeating it uncritically. Never
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: mind the fact that it is not true.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: It's not true.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: This is obviously a totally irrational, indefensible claim that simply
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: is not true. But we're supposed to accept it anyway
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: and offer no protest or correction because although they're lying,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it's all supposedly for a good cause. But I don't
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: really believe in lying for a good cause, and I
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: don't actually agree that this is a good cause. So
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: I must remind you again that aside from maybe the
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: extremely rare case of somebody having like an ethanol allergy
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: or something, There are no documented cases anywhere at all
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: of anyone ever suffering measurable harms to their health from
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: a sip of alcohol. Telling everyone that no amount is
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: safe and the harms begin at the first sip obviously
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: implies that drinking alcohol is like drinking gasoline or sipping
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: a nice glass of battery acid. When they say that
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: one sip is not safe and there is no safe
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: amount of alcohol, they are defining safe in the strictest
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: way imaginable. Indeed, they are defining it in the way
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: that like a paranoid, obsessive compulsive who washes his hands
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: a thousand times a day until they bleed might define it.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: They are not defining safe in the way that you
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: define it, in the way that normal human beings who
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: desire to live functional lives and don't want to be paranoid.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: Obsessive compulsives describe it.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: So you can only make the claim that no amount
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: of alcohol is safe If you are defining safe as
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the total absence of risk, that is for certain the
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: only definition of safe that would make no amount of
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: alcohol is safe a true statement. But the problem is
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: that this definition of safe, if applied to your daily life,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: would utterly incapacitate you. It would render you unable to
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: do basically anything or eat basically anything. or perform any
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: of the functions necessary to be a human being in
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: a human society. Because virtually everything you do carries some
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: kind of risk. By this definition, there's no safe level
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: for sun exposure either. There's no safe level for breathing
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: the air outside, particularly if you live anywhere near a
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: major city. There's no safe level of cake to eat
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: on your birthday. There's no safe level of working out
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: you can do at the gym. There's no safe level
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: of any recreational activity or anything you do for fun.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: There's no safe level of exposure to whatever device you're
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: using right now to listen to this podcast. By this
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: definition of safe, you certainly could never drive a car.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, in a world where no amount of alcohol
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: is safe, driving a car is like it's tantamount to
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: skydiving without a parachute.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Driving a car then is like suicide.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: And yet we all consider driving to be relatively safe
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: as long as we are attentive and obey the rules
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: of the road.
• 15:15
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: If somebody came to you and said, hey, don't go
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: driving today, it's not safe.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: You would assume they mean.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: That there's something really bad happening out there, like there's
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a tornado tearing the road apart or it's the middle
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: of a hurricane or a blizzard. You would assume that
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: there's something else happening, there's some other huge factor that
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: would make it unsafe to go drive right now. And
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: that's because as functional and mentally stable humans, we define
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: a safe thing not as a thing carrying no risk
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: at all, because all things carry risk, but rather we
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: define it as a thing which carries a reasonable amount
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: of risk. And if that is how you define safe,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: then actually, in fact, there is a safe amount of alcohol, okay?
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Having a beer with dinner or a glass of wine
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: or a pour of whiskey, God forbid, is by this definition,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: which is the only sane definition, safe.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: It is safe. You can go have a drink. It
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: is actually safe. It's safe. You'll be okay.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: But when WHO puts out a statement and they don't
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: provide this context at all, they don't attempt to explain
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: what they mean by words like safe and words like risk.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: This is what they do.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: The experts demonstrate no interest in educating you or informing you.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: They only want you to panic.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: And that's by design.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: This is a corrupt institution that specializes in creating mass hysteria.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: They're not actually concerned about public health. They are European
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: globalists who want power over other countries, especially the United States,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and they see public health hysteria as a.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: Way to gain that power.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: In this case, they want to push Americans away from
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: alcohol and towards SSRIs and other psychoactive drugs. So they
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: release these marching orders which decree that no amount of alcohol,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: not even a single drop, is safe. Major hospitals, the media,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: various podcasters then immediately begin parroting whose message, just as
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: they did during COVID. Something called the Canadian Center on
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Substance Use and Addiction issued guidance stating that if you
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: consume just two drinks a week, you are endangering your health.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: If you have a glass of wine after dinner or
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: with dinner on Saturday and then again on Sunday, you
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: are endangering— it is dangerous— By the way, not safe means dangerous.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Does anyone really believe that it's dangerous to have two
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: glasses of wine in a week? Would any sane person
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: describe that behavior as dangerous? If I came up to
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: you as a normal person, I said, oh, this person
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: has a dangerous drinking habit. What would you assume I mean? Oh,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that be careful, watch out for that person. They've got
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: a dangerous drinking habit. Yeah, I wouldn't spend a lot
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: of time around them. I wouldn't, you know, certainly never
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: get in a car with them or, you know, let
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: them around your kids. They have a dangerous drinking habit.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: If I said that and then you said, oh, wow, man,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: that's pretty bad. Like, what's going on? And then I said, oh, they,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: get this, they drink two glasses of wine a week.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Who would you think is dangerous in that case, the
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: person drinking the wine or me as a total nutcase?
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Are there any documented cases of any human anywhere ever
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: in history being measurably harmed by two drinks in a week?
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: I'm not aware of any.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: But don't ask questions. Yeah, they're fear-mongering, but it's for
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: your own good. Only an alcoholic would dare question any
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: of this. And then in January 2025, just before the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Trump administration took over, Biden's outgoing Surgeon General Vivek Murthy
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: issued an advisory demanding cancer warning labels on alcoholic beverages.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: He said alcohol is linked to various cancers, including breast, colorectal, esophageal, liver, mouth, throat,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: and others, and described alcohol as a leading preventable cause
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: of cancer, third after tobacco and obesity. Now, what was
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: amusing about all these claims is that not too long ago,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: every major medical association was saying the exact opposite. So
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: here's a paper I pulled from 1999 from a doctor
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, for example. This was published
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: in a peer-reviewed medical journal. So this is not just
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: some random guy rambling, like me. It says, quote, moderate
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: drinkers are at a lower risk of the most common
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: form of heart disease, coronary artery disease, than either heavier
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: drinkers or abstainers. Evidence supports a direct protective effect of alcohol.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: This association has been demonstrated in large-scale studies from many countries.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: All alcoholic beverages protect against coronary artery disease. Alcohol's protective
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: effect may result from favorable alterations in blood chemistry and
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: the prevention of clot formation in arteries that deliver blood
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: to the heart muscle. Because coronary artery disease accounts for
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: a large proportion of total mortality, the risk of death
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: from all causes is slightly lower among moderate drinkers than
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: among abstainers. Now, that was the dominant way of thinking
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: for many years up until about 15 minutes ago when
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: the global health organizations decided to weigh in. Moderate drinking,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: we were told, was clearly good for you as demonstrated
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: by multiple peer-reviewed independent studies. And now we're told that
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: any amount of drinking, even one drop, is dangerous. Now,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: of course, if all of the health experts were wrong
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: for decades, dangerously wrong apparently, when they said that moderate
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: drinking was safe, even healthy, then why should we believe
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: they aren't also wrong now when they say that no amount.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Is safe at all?
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you were totally wrong completely in your
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: peer-reviewed studies and these long-range studies, global studies with all
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: this data, and you were totally wrong, and you said
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: for decades that not only is it safe to drink alcohol,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: but it actually will lower your risk of mortality up
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: to a point, And then it turns out that literally
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: one sip is dangerous. Well, if that's true, then we
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: can't trust anything you say. If that's true, then like
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: whatever you're saying right now, 10 years from now, you
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: could just say the opposite again. There's no reason to
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: trust anything you say. And the so-called health experts do
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: this a lot, you'll notice. They declare something with utter
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: certainty and then they declare the opposite With equal certainty.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And the only consistent message between all of this wild
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: careening back and forth is that we, the rubes and
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the general public, are supposed to follow whatever they say
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: blindly without asking any questions. So now alcohol is poison.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: It's just too risky. It'll ruin your entire week. You
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: won't be able to podcast. In short, anti-alcohol hysteria has
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: entered the domain of self-parody. It is reminiscent of the
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: worst of the anti-smoking campaigns from the 90s, except somehow
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: this is even more shameless. But I have to admit,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: when you zoom out and look at how most Americans
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: are responding to the propaganda campaign, it has been very effective,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: just like the anti-smoking propaganda was very effective. Many of
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: us who are millennials and grew up in the 90s,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: went to public school in the 90s, we remember this
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: very well. I mean, the amount of fear mongering they
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: did about smoking was insane. They would drill this into
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: our heads from like kindergarten. And they had, I can
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: remember being in third grade and thinking that, you know,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: smoking one cigarette could get you addicted right away like heroin.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, we were told this in school.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Even casual secondhand smoke exposure can kill you, which isn't true,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: by the way. But this is what they told kids.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: It was terrifying, but it also worked. And now there
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: are many fewer people smoking cigarettes. And so if you're
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: of the opinion that public health experts can just lie
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and scare the hell out of you with stuff that
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: is only partially true or not true at all, and
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: that it's okay for them to do it for a
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: good cause, then I guess you have no problem with this.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: You're also just a total puppet in that case. a sheep.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: As recently as 2018, just 28% of Americans told Gallup
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: that in their view, consuming one or two drinks a
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: day is bad for your health. The vast majority of
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Americans saw no problem with having a couple of beers
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: every single day.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: Okay, that was in 2018, right?
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: By 2025, just seven years later, that number had increased to.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: 53% of Americans.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Two-thirds of Americans under the age of 35, 66% of them,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: now believe that consuming just one drink a day will
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: harm their health. For comparison, in 2018, only 34% of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: young adults held that view. Now, these attitudes, as you expect,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: are affecting behavior. Gallup has found that the U.S. drinking
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: rate is at its lowest level in recorded history. They've
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: been tracking it since 1939. Quote, the percentage of U.S.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: adults who say they consume alcohol has fallen to 54 percent,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: the lowest in Gallup's nearly 90-year trend. This coincides with
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: a growing belief among Americans that moderate alcohol consumption is
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: bad for one's health. Now, the majority view for the
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: first time from 97 to 2023, at least 60 percent
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: of Americans reported drinking alcohol. That figure fell to 62
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: percent in 2023, 58 percent in 2024, before reaching 54
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: percent today. Drinking has also declined 11 points among non-Hispanic
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: white adults, while it has been fairly steady at around
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: 50% among people of color. Young adults have already become
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: less likely to report drinking alcohol a decade ago, but
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: that trend has only accelerated with the rate falling from
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: 59% in 2023 to 50% today. This puts their drinking
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: rate below that of middle-aged and older adults. There's also
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: been a sharp drop in reported drinking among Republicans, falling
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: 19 points to 46%, but not Democrats. holding fairly steady
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: at 61%. Now, on the surface, these numbers might appear
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: to be a victory for society at large. After all,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: even if the negative effects of alcohol are being overstated,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and they are vastly so, it still sounds like a
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: good thing for Americans to consume less alcohol. That means,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: you would think, less domestic abuse, less drunk driving, and
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: so on. But the problem is I have a major
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: problem with the idea that fear tactics and dishonesty and
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: manipulation from the media and health organizations can be a
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: good thing if it scares the public into acting in
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: an arguably healthier way. This line of thinking has gotten
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: us into a lot of trouble, especially recently. This is
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: how they locked down the whole world during COVID. But
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: the real point here is that the fear tactics and
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: manipulation actually aren't causing the public to behave in a
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: healthier way. People are simply migrating to other substances. Alcohol
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: is being replaced with psych meds and weed and other
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: psychoactive substances. And people who are taking these drugs are,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: in general, much less sociable and pleasant than people who
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: are drinking alcohol. So take a look at this chart
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: showing how many Americans are drinking alcohol as well as
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes and marijuana. The data is from the National
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Survey on Drug Use and Health. There's been a massive
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: increase in marijuana use, huge increase, which has corresponded with
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: a decline in cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption. Marijuana went
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: from being a drug that only around 5 to 8
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: million Americans were using, and now it's well over 20
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: million Americans who are smoking it. Weed, which is obviously
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: a carcinogen in its own right, is now more popular
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: than alcohol or cigarettes. It's not even getting into the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: explosive increase in SSRI prescriptions, which we discussed yesterday. More
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: than a third of mothers in this country are taking
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: some kind of psychoactive medication. These are drugs that have
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: dramatic effects on the brain that no one even really
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: totally understands. Pretty much every school shooter has been taking
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: one of these drugs. SSRIs have been shown to increase
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: violent behavior in control groups that have no diagnosed mental illness,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: which means the overprescription of these drugs is a major problem.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: And some of the most common side effects of SSRIs
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: includes a flat effect, as well as a general loss
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: of passion and excitement. You lose your ability to care
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: about anything, including sometimes members of your own family. In
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: some cases, people report losing the ability to feel any
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: emotions at all.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: They become kind of zombies.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Which, needless to say, is probably the exact opposite of
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: what happens when you have a couple of beers. So
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: our public health experts have an obligation to answer the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: following question. Why is it healthy to use powerful and
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: unpredictable psychotropic drugs to help you function, but it's not
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: healthy to drink a beer to calm your nerves at
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the end of the day? Can anyone explain that? Has
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: anyone ever bothered to explain that? As a country, we've
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: traded one drug for many others, including drugs that happen
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: to line the pockets of big pharma. Has there ever
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: been a thorough explanation of whether this trade was worth it?
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Are we a better and stronger country now that everyone's
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: high all the time and incapable of feeling pleasure? Was
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: the booze really that bad? And if part of the
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: trade is that people will drink less but also be
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: much less social, not hanging out with friends, not sitting
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: at the pub, not going to parties, rather isolated in
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: their homes, interacting with people if they interact at all
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: through a screen, Is that worth it? I mean, there's
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: no question that we have become a much, much less
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: social society over the past several years. The research on
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: that is unanimous. And as we've become less social, we've
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: also migrated away. from social substances like alcohol and towards
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: substances that are more isolated and isolating, like weed and
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: psychiatric drugs. Is that actually a good thing? Is it
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: worth having a society where people drink a little more
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: if it means that people will spend more time around
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: other people? I would say the answer to that question
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: is a resounding, unquestionable yes. Take a look at your
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: phone bill. Not because it's interesting. It obviously isn't. Look
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: at it because there's a decent chance you've been paying
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the same company every month for years without asking, am
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I paying too much? Pure Talk is currently making that
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: question very easy to answer for your first three months.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Any Pure Talk plan is only $ 15 a month. Not
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: their cheapest plan. This is for any plan. Unlimited high-speed
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: data included in this. Even their top tier $ 65 plan
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: is $ 15 a month for your first three months. That's
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: $ 150 in savings. And you're not signing your life away
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: either to get it. There's no service contract. There's no
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: cancellation fee. Pure Talk also has 100% US-based customer service
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: if you need help. So you can keep automatically paying
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: the wireless bill you've stopped thinking about Or you can
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: spend about 10 minutes looking at whether a $ 15.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: A month plan makes sense. And it does. Spoiler.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: For a limited time, you can get any Pure Talk plan,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: including unlimited data, for just $ 15 a month for your
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: first three months. Simply go to puretalk.com slash Walsh to
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: claim this offer again. That's puretalk.com slash Walsh to start
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: saving today. If you own a business, you're thinking about payroll, hiring, equipment,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: whether it's time to expand, whether you should have expanded
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: six months ago, where you should get the capital, all
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: extremely useful questions. When you finally do decide it's time
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: to make a move, the last thing you want to
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: do is spend weeks waiting on a bank. And that's
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: where Cardiff comes in. Their loan application takes less than
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: five minutes with no impact on your personal credit. You
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: can potentially get approved in minutes and funded the same
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: day for up to.
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: $ 500, 000.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: So if you want bank-level rates without the bank-level delays...
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you need to check out cardiff.co.walsh. Cardiff has funded more
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: than $ 12 billion for businesses since 2004.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: So when you.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Finally decided to hire, buy equipment, add inventory, or expand,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: the funding doesn't have to become another thing that keeps
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: you awake at night. Banks try to lock out small businesses.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Cardiff has the key. Big banks may not want to
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: approve your business loan, but Cardiff does. If you've been
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: in business for at least a year and are pulling
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: in $ 20, 000 a month in revenue, Apply now for up
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: to $ 500, 000 in same-day business funding at cardiff.co slash walsh. Again,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: that's cardiff.co slash walsh. Real growth, fast funding, Cardiff.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: Borrow better.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: And this gets us to the larger point. You know,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: we could talk about the individual impact of alcohol on
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: a personal scale. As we've established, the negative impact on
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: that scale is at the very least overstated. But What
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: about the societal, even civilizational scale? Is there reason to
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: believe that a society will function better, be more productive
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: by ditching alcohol? And that becomes a hard case to
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: make when you look at the history of basically every
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: successful country in the world, starting, of course, with our own.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: As it happens, there's a very well-researched book on this topic.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: It's called The Alcoholic Republic, and it was written by
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: a historian named W.J.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: Orrbaugh. the 1970s.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: And what you learn when you read this book is
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: that America would not exist, as we know it today,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: without the significant and widespread consumption of alcohol. So from
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: 1790 to 1830, obviously a pivotal period in the history
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: of the United States, Americans drank more alcoholic beverages per
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: capita than at any other point in history, before or since.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: The average adult male was drinking roughly a half pint
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: per day, which Keeping track qualifies as heavy drinking that
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: could cause cancer under today's guidelines. And in particular, men
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: were drinking much more than women. Half of all adult
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: males in the country were drinking two-thirds of the total
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: amount of distilled spirits that were consumed. In 1829, Rohrabach writes,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: the Secretary of War estimated that three-quarters of the nation's
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: laborers drank daily at least four ounces of distilled spirits. Meanwhile,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: the Surgeon General warned that if the army wanted to
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: ban drunkards, then there'd be no army left. Now, from
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: our perspective, the amount of booze our ancestors were putting
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: away every day seems scandalous. One wonders how they even
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: managed to do any podcasting with all the alcohol they consumed.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: But from the perspective of the early American colonists and
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: our founding fathers, alcohol had obvious benefits. For one thing,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: it was a currency. We were sending much more gold
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: and silver out of the country than we were taking
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: in due to a.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: Trade imbalance with England.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: So in the absence of hard currency, American merchants turned
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: to rum and later whiskey and to trade with each
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: other and the Indians and foreign nations. The importance of
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: the rum trade can't be overstated. It created vast wealth
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: in the colonies, wealth that was used to pay for
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: the rebellion. And when the British tried to tax the
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: ingredients to make rum, thus threatening the American economy, we revolted.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Alcohol also helped the colonists bond long before the United
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: States existed. It also allowed politicians to run successful campaigns.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: In 1755, when George Washington was running for a seat
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: in the Virginia House as part of the colonial government,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: he refused to buy alcohol for voters at the polls,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: which was a custom that was known as treating. So
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: he lost in a landslide. And three years later, in 1758,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Washington pulled out all the stops. He ordered his campaign
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: manager to buy 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: rum punch, and 38 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and two gallons of hard cider, coming out to around
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: a half gallon of alcohol per voter. They rolled the
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: barrels of alcohol to the polling place, and what do
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: you know? Washington received 307 votes out of 400. So
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: he won decisively. Now, all this drinking and generosity and
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: hospitality brought the colonists together, which would obviously be important
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: in the rebellion against Britain. And it would give them
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the courage to carry out some very daring acts of insurrection,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: including the Boston Tea Party, which was conceived, planned, and
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: organized at a tavern in Boston by the Sons of Liberty.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: It's one of those historical facts they don't really emphasize,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: but the Sons of Liberty were hammered out of their
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: minds when they came up with the idea of throwing
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the tea in the harbor. And it turned out to
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: be a very effective idea. Might be something to the
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: fact that a population where people are more likely to
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: drink tends to be.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Less docile.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Now, if all those people were sitting around smoking weed,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: is it likely they would have conceived of this idea
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and then gone and done it? As we discussed before,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: the founders were also drunk while they were drafting our Constitution,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: or at least immediately before signing it.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: They went on a bender at the end of.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 as they were finishing the document.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: For 55 men, they consumed more than 45 gallons of
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: alcohol plus food That means each man consumed around three
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: bottles of wine, beer, or cider in addition to some
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: punch from the bowls over a six to 10 hour period.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: And this was the atmosphere that led to the formation
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: of our government. To the modern public health experts, this
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: would be a super spreader event. Everybody's vastly increasing their
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: risk of developing cancer. So it's a good thing that
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: no public health experts existed at the time. We might
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: not have our constitution otherwise. After the colonies became the
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: United States, Worbaugh notes that alcohol directly contributed to the
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: industrialization and economic advancement of the United States, as well
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: as many other countries. We had more grain than we
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: knew what to do with. And the most efficient use
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: of this grain, because it could be done quickly without
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: the need to transport it too far, was to convert
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: it into whiskey. And because whiskey became so plentiful, the
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: labor force began to change. So it is true to
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: say that alcohol helped to build the country. Now, that
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: alone doesn't prove that alcohol is healthy or that you
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: should drink. I'm not saying you should drink. I don't
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: really care if you do or not. The point simply
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: is that basically every flourishing civilization you can name, very
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: much including our own, has been a civilization where people
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: drink alcohol. That doesn't mean that you need alcohol to flourish,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: but it does seem to strongly indicate that alcohol collectively
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: on a societal scale does not prevent flourishing.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: And that is the weakest framing.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I think you could probably frame it even stronger than that.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: You know, when you have a large family, as I do,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: you become very aware of just how many people are
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: counting on you.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: I have a.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Wife and a lot of kids, six the last time
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: I checked, which means there are a lot of people
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: whose lives would be dramatically affected if something happened to me.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: It's not exactly a pleasant thing to think about, but
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: it is part of being a husband and a father.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: My job isn't just to provide for my family today.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: It's also to make reasonable preparations for the possibility that
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: I won't always be here to do it. That's one
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: reason life insurance makes sense for me. And PolicyGenius makes
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: it pretty easy to figure out what kind of coverage
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I actually need. PolicyGenius is a free online marketplace where
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: you can compare quotes for some of America's top insurers
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: side by side. Their license teams helps you to, uh,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: understand the coverage, the prices, the terms, answer your questions,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: handle the paperwork, advocate for you every step of the
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: way throughout the process. Thousands of customers have given Policy
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Genius five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot, and you can
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: find them on our website. 20-year life insurance policies starting
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: at just $ 276 a year for a million dollars in coverage.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Go to policygenius.com slash Walsh to compare life insurance quotes
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: and see how much you can save. That's policygenius.com slash Walsh.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Last year, researchers in New Zealand and Germany wrote a
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: paper in Nature, which is a journal, and they wanted
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: to know whether there's any kind of causal link here,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: whether or not alcohol has facilitated the evolution of complex societies,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: facilitated it, not just failed to prevent it. So they
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: looked at a global sample of 186 societies, mostly non-industrial ones,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: including the Kazakhs and the Japanese. They ranked all these
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: societies based on the number of distinct jurisdictional levels recognizable
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: in the society, meaning they checked if the society had
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: any kind of centralized political authority, and if so, how
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: developed it was. They also built a data set tracking
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: the presence or absence of indigenous low-alcohol fermented beverages, like
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: early beers and meads, in those same societies. And then
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: they looked in particular at societies that weren't heavily dependent
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: on farming so they could be sure that the alcohol
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: was shaping their political development, not just the agricultural industry
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: in general.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: And here's what they determined.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Quote, we find a positive relationship between the presence of
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: indigenous alcoholic beverages and higher levels of political complexity measured
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: by the number of administrative levels. The effect holds even
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: after controlling for several potential confounding variables, including common ancestry,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: spatial proximity, environmental productivity, and agricultural intensity. Our results support
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: the idea that the group-level social benefits of traditional non-distilled
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: fermented beverages may outweigh their disruptive effects and that alcohol
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: may have facilitated the evolution of human society. Now, obviously,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: we should be skeptical of any finding in any academic publication,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: but this one makes sense based on everything we know
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: about the development of our own country. Alcohol, in many
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: different ways, enabled the creation of the United States. By contrast,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: no civilization has ever been founded because everybody was smoking
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: weed or taking SSRIs. So we know that great societies
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: can be formed and built up and flourish as the
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: booze flows freely. Can any great society exist where the
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: substance of choice is weed or psychoactive drugs? I mean,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: there are no examples anybody can name. And the early
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: returns on our own society, as we've recently made that switch, are,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: to say the least, not encouraging. Now, those are drugs
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: that affect the mind in ways we don't fully understand.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: They suppress creativity and passion. They promote isolation rather than
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: social bonding. That's precisely the reason why every mainstream media
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: outlet is running scary segments about alcohol while they ignore SSRIs,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: which are created by Big Pharma, their biggest advertiser by far.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Here's one more of those segments, which was actually pretty
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: entertaining because at the end of it, after the spiel
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: from the health reporter about how alcohol will kill you
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: in 5,000 different ways, George Stephanopoulos brings up the fact
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: that these new recommendations contradict the old ones. And listen
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: carefully to how that goes.
• 42:52
  Speaker 9: Back now with our GMM cover story, which is making
• 42:55
  Speaker 9: us have a big discussion here on the couch. A
• 42:57
  Speaker 9: lot to say about the new research that's out this
• 42:59
  Speaker 9: morning that suggests even small amounts of alcohol may increase
• 43:03
  Speaker 9: the risk of developing several types of cancer.
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: They found it is a complex relationship, but one key
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: finding is that alcohol was absolutely associated with an increased
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: risk of cancer. and chronic liver disease. And that was
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: for any level of alcohol that we're talking about. They
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: also found that the alcohol was associated with 10 types
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: of cancers in terms of increasing risk. And those things
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: range from pharyngeal cancer, larynx, lip and oral, esophageal, stomach, pancreas, liver, prostate, breast,
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: and colorectal cancer. So the risk did seem to increase
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: with the more alcohol you consumed. However, many of these
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: cancers were even associated with risk when you're talking about
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: less than one standard drink per day. So not a
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: lot of alcohol. They found that alcohol was associated with
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: chronic liver disease, pancreatitis, lower respiratory tract infections, tuberculosis, and
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: arrhythmias like atrial fib and atrial flutter. Now, where it
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: becomes a little bit complicated is when they looked at
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: the link between alcohol and cardiometabolic diseases. So with low
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: to moderate drinking, there did seem to be a little
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: bit of a reduction in type two diabetes, Alzheimer's and
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: other dementias and cardiovascular disease like heart attack and stroke. However,
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: if you drank heavily, that risk then increased.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: So that's the old study. One glass of red wine
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: a day is healthy. for your heart, is that out
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: the window now?
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: I think that when you're talking about the fact that
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: alcohol is a known carcinogen, right? There's an increased risk
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: of cancer. How can you possibly say that any alcohol
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: is healthy? You're always gonna be weighing that risk with
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: maybe the little bit of the cardiovascular benefit. So no
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: one's going to say you should drink in terms of
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: improving your health. In fact, we would discourage heavy drinking.
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: And if you are going to make that decision to drink,
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: you should be aware of the risks, especially if you
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: have underlying risk factors for these certain types of cancers.
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: And also drink, you know, in the least amount you can.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: I mean, clearly some people are going to continue to drink,
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: but we just want them to be aware of the risk.
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: What are you doing?
• 44:56
  Speaker 9: Literally everyone is sitting here going.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: So you don't see too many segments like that where
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: the couch erupts in laughter after the expert is done talking.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: None of them are taking her seriously. Half of them
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: are probably drunk during the segment. So if you're following along,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: she says alcohol can potentially cause all kinds of serious problems.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, alcohol can also reduce your
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: risk of dementia, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease. And then when
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: she's asked about the previous recommendation from the experts, which
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: is that people should drink some wine because of the benefits,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: she stammers a bit and implies that those benefits are
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: minor compared to the cancer risks. So we have a
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: total reversal on a core piece of medical guidance. which
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: has been issued for more than a decade, and they
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: can't offer a convincing response as to why they changed
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: their minds. There's actually no scientific basis for her response.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's are two of the most common
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: ways to die, and cancer in general tends to be
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: more treatable than Alzheimer's, which has no cure. So cancer
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: has no cure either, but it's more treatable generally.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: Generally.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: So who's to say that we shouldn't stick with the
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: old recommendation where we drink wine every night?
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's a trade-off here. Which way is better?
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: Who knows? These people are kind of just making it
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: up as they go along.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Now, what they can't fabricate, at least not effectively, is
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: the historical record, our own experience as a society.
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: That's not to say that alcohol can't be abused. Obviously,
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: it can be. and often is.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: It's not to say there are no risks. It's not
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: to say there are no downsides or trade-offs. It's simply
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: to say that the ancient Greeks, also big fans of booze,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: by the way, got it right, as they often did.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Nothing in excess was the ancient Greek motto. All things
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: in moderation, as we say today. And that really is
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: the answer here. If you drink in moderation, you'll probably
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: be fine. If a society drinks in moderation, or frankly,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: even sometimes not in moderation, it can thrive. In fact,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the alcohol may even help it thrive in some ways.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: So tune out the public health experts who've done more
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: than enough damage to last a lifetime and take it easy.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: Be reasonable.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Be moderate. It will probably be okay until one day
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: you die of cancer or something else. But that's going
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: to happen anyway. So relax and.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: Have a drink. Or don't. I mean, it's really up
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: to you. That'll do it for the show today.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you on Monday.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: Have a great day. Godspeed.
• 48:07
  Speaker 7: Your country is beneath contempt.
• 48:10
  Speaker 8: We who love and serve Allah fought back against the
• 48:15
  Speaker 8: Americans and the Zionists from the scourge of secularism and
• 48:19
  Speaker 8: the lands of unbelief. Anyone gonna listen to Captain Saunders tomorrow?
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: The retired Delta Force soldier with the new book out.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: He's the polar opposite of those brain-dead protesters.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Given the current climate, should Clay Saunders even be allowed
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: on campus?
• 48:38
  Speaker 7: Mr.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: Saunders is a close personal friend of Chancellor Friedman. This
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: is a decision I cannot fight.
• 48:44
  Speaker 9: There are three ways Islam will conquer the West.
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: Through immigration, through the wombs of our women, and by
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: using our nation's freedoms against us.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: Are you paying attention? Listen carefully. The great Satan America
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: will fall. You are infidels.
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: The bodies of women are not pure and the men's
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: souls are unclean.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: What makes them so dangerous? Their goals are not in
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: this life, but the next. I got friends here. I
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: can't just leave. Listen to me.
• 49:44
  Speaker 9: In the law, we cannot run or hide from what
• 49:48
  Speaker 9: is coming.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: We have to fight. I will be rewarded 10,000 times
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: in the next life. When you die, you're nothing. Only
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: one way to find out. That's the American way.