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The Joe Rogan Intervention · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: I was taking a road trip not long ago, listening
0:23
Speaker 2: to the Joe Rogan experience, as I like to do sometimes.
0:26
Speaker 2: It was an old episode he'd done with Robert F.
0:28
Speaker 2: Kennedy Junior, before he became US Secretary for Health and
0:32
Speaker 2: Human Services, the man responsible for running a massive medical
0:36
Speaker 2: science administration. By the way, I was once on Joe Rogan.
0:40
Speaker 2: It was a while back, and from my experience that day,
0:43
Speaker 2: I came up with a theory, which is that all
0:46
Speaker 2: the good stuff happens in any Rogan interview as you
0:49
Speaker 2: approach our three, when the guest has finally adapted to
0:53
Speaker 2: Rogan's particular seductive rhythms, and when all thoughts of the
0:57
Speaker 2: outside world have evaporated. If you listen to Rogan, in
1:01
Speaker 2: other words, you have to commit. And so on that
1:05
Speaker 2: car ride I did, and at the one hour and
1:08
Speaker 2: fifty two minutes mark, right on schedule, came in exchange
1:12
Speaker 2: which I found so fascinating, so peculiar, so downright weird,
1:19
Speaker 2: that I pulled my car over to the side of
1:21
Speaker 2: the road and said to myself, oh man, RFK was
1:27
Speaker 2: talking about measles, and he essentially tells Rogan the kids
1:31
Speaker 2: who die for measles don't die because of measles. They
1:34
Speaker 2: die because they're malnourished.
1:37
Speaker 3: And you know, it's hard for a disease to kill
1:40
Speaker 3: a healthy person. It's hard for an infectious disease to
1:42
Speaker 3: kill a healthy person with a rugged immune system.
1:45
Speaker 2: And then Rogan says evidence, well, not.
1:48
Speaker 4: The Spanish flu though, right, which.
1:50
Speaker 1: Is a good question.
1:52
Speaker 2: The nineteen eighteen Spanish flu was one of the most
1:54
Speaker 2: devastating pandemics in history. It killed as many as one
1:58
Speaker 2: hundred million people, and an overwhelming number of its victims
2:01
Speaker 2: were healthy and relatively young adults, in sharp contrast to
2:05
Speaker 2: the normal influenza mortality pattern on preying on the old
2:09
Speaker 2: in the infirm Rogan is asking, if it's so hard
2:13
Speaker 2: for a disease to kill a healthy person, then how
2:15
Speaker 2: do you explain the most devastating viral epidemic of all time?
2:20
Speaker 3: And Kennedy says, well, the Spanish flu was not a virus. Oh,
2:26
Speaker 3: and even Fauci now acknowledges that, and they you know,
2:30
Speaker 3: there's there's good evidence that the Spanish flu. There's there is,
2:33
Speaker 3: you know, not not a definitive, but very very strong
2:37
Speaker 3: evidence the Spanish flu was vaccine induced flu the deaths
2:42
Speaker 3: were vaccine induced.
2:44
Speaker 2: Three bombshells all in a row. One the influenza epidemic
2:50
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighteen was not caused by influenza. Two Anthony
2:54
Speaker 2: Fauci longtime had the National Institute of Infectious Disease at
2:58
Speaker 2: NAH and established. Of all defenders of the medical science
3:02
Speaker 2: orthodoxy agrees with me on this and three the real
3:07
Speaker 2: cause of the nineteen eighteen pandemic was a population wide
3:11
Speaker 2: reaction to a vaccine. I mean, my name is Malcolm Gladwell.
3:19
Speaker 2: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked
3:23
Speaker 2: and misunderstood. I already knew this about RFK JR. He
3:29
Speaker 2: says crazy things all the time. That's what our last
3:32
Speaker 2: episode was all about. It's his m o. He's a
3:35
Speaker 2: disciple of the obscure French nineteenth century biologist Antoine Beauchamp,
3:39
Speaker 2: whose claim to fame is that he completely misunderstood the
3:42
Speaker 2: foundational idea in modern medical science. I didn't pull over
3:48
Speaker 2: because of RFK JR. I pulled over because of Joe Rocn.
3:55
Speaker 2: This episode is devoted to the lost art of the interviewer,
4:01
Speaker 2: because some of us apparently have forgotten how to ask questions.
4:11
Speaker 2: When I went on Joe Rogan, it was before he
4:14
Speaker 2: had moved to Austin. He still lived in southern California
4:17
Speaker 2: and operated out of what seemed like an old airplane
4:20
Speaker 2: hangar somewhere deep in the Los Angeles suburbs. I can't
4:24
Speaker 2: tell you where exactly because I had to sign an NDA,
4:28
Speaker 2: but it was a vast open structure full of weights,
4:31
Speaker 2: monster trucks, dogs, and exceedingly fit young men clutching energy drinks.
4:38
Speaker 2: The studio was in the middle of the room, inside
4:40
Speaker 2: what looked like a repurposed boxing ring. It was so
4:45
Speaker 2: much fun that if Rogan's people want to be back,
4:48
Speaker 2: I would jump on a plane this evening, packing only
4:51
Speaker 2: a muscle shirt and a case of Red Bull to
4:53
Speaker 2: bring as a housewarming gift. I tell you all this
4:57
Speaker 2: just so you can imagine a scene. RFK Junior is
5:00
Speaker 2: a weightlifter himself, barrel chest, biceps like big chunks of
5:05
Speaker 2: hormone free non GMO ham boxing ring mano Amano. There's
5:11
Speaker 2: a tantalizing scent of testosterone in the air, and Kennedy
5:17
Speaker 2: just talks about all the things he likes to talk about, bautism, vaccines,
5:22
Speaker 2: refrigerated trucks the Hudson River. Then he gets to the
5:27
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen flu full disclosure. The nineteen eighteen flu is
5:33
Speaker 2: one of my very favorite subjects. Many many years ago,
5:37
Speaker 2: I heard that a scientist had discovered that they were
5:39
Speaker 2: victims of the nineteen eighteen flu buried deep in a
5:42
Speaker 2: cemetery in a small town in Norway, high above the
5:46
Speaker 2: Arctic circle. So there was a chance that they had
5:49
Speaker 2: been frozen ever since, meaning they could be dug up
5:52
Speaker 2: and intact samples of the nineteen eighteen virus could be extracted.
5:57
Speaker 2: This fact made me so deliriously happy that I convinced
6:00
Speaker 2: my editors at the New Yorker to fly me to Norway,
6:04
Speaker 2: New York to Oslo, Oslo to Trompso, then across the
6:07
Speaker 2: Norwegian Sea from trumps So delng you're bin, just so
6:11
Speaker 2: I could walk across the tundra and see the cemetery,
6:15
Speaker 2: which I did, although I didn't linger because the guy
6:18
Speaker 2: at my hotel told me to watch out for polar bears.
6:21
Speaker 2: My point is I'm down for any nineteen eighteen flu
6:25
Speaker 2: virus talk.
6:26
Speaker 4: What are you saying that the Spanish flu was so?
6:29
Speaker 2: Rogan asks his question about the nineteen eighteen flu. So far,
6:33
Speaker 2: so good. This is what an interviewer is supposed to do.
6:37
Speaker 5: What is the documentation the you know I you said
6:43
Speaker 5: that Fauci HASGIVAUGI.
6:46
Speaker 3: Wrote an article in two thousand and eight and that
6:51
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure it's two thousand and eight in which
6:54
Speaker 3: he acknowledged that it was not the flu that was
6:57
Speaker 3: killing those people, it was a back geological infection and
7:02
Speaker 3: a back geological infection. These days, you could one hundred
7:06
Speaker 3: percent you're all of it with an.
7:10
Speaker 2: The article in question is immediately googled.
7:13
Speaker 5: This is important to cover, right, So let's see if
7:15
Speaker 5: we can find this predominant role of bacteria pneumonia has
7:18
Speaker 5: caused death in pandemic influenza implication Yeah, of a pandemic
7:23
Speaker 5: influenza preparedness. So what this is saying is that bacterial
7:28
Speaker 5: pneumonia was the cause of death.
7:30
Speaker 4: What's three? What he says?
7:31
Speaker 5: The results conclusions The majority of deaths from the nineteen
7:35
Speaker 5: eighteen nineteen nineteen influenza pandemic likely resulted directly from secondary
7:40
Speaker 5: bacterial pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory tract bacteria.
7:47
Speaker 2: A proposition has been advanced. Google has been summoned, the
7:51
Speaker 2: proposition has been verified. Oh my god, mister virus himself,
7:56
Speaker 2: Tony Fauci is peddling this a line of bs. Fauci
8:01
Speaker 2: goes on and on about viruses, but then you actually
8:04
Speaker 2: read one of his papers and he admits the biggest
8:07
Speaker 2: viral pandemic wasn't caused by a virus at all. It
8:12
Speaker 2: was caused by a runaway bacterial infection. Did you hear
8:17
Speaker 2: that sigh from Joe becauseau was a moment on Joe
8:22
Speaker 2: Rogan where someone in a position of power really really
8:25
Speaker 2: bumps Joe out. But wait, did Fauci actually say that?
8:32
Speaker 2: When I heard Rogan read that conclusion, the word that
8:35
Speaker 2: jumped out for me was secondary. One of the things
8:40
Speaker 2: that a respiratory virus, like the flu or covid for
8:43
Speaker 2: that matter, does is attack the cells that line the
8:46
Speaker 2: walls of your lungs. The cells die, they can become leaky,
8:51
Speaker 2: your lungs fill with fluid. In severe cases, you come
8:54
Speaker 2: down with viral pneumonia, and in that state you often
8:58
Speaker 2: get hit by a second round of pneumonia, this one
9:03
Speaker 2: caused by a bacteria. That's the secondary infection which follows
9:08
Speaker 2: as result of the primary infection.
9:11
Speaker 6: An analogy that I've used when I've been trying to
9:15
Speaker 6: talk about this phenomenon is trauma.
9:19
Speaker 2: This is Benjamin Singer, a pulmonary specialist at Northwestern University.
9:24
Speaker 6: So, a motor vehicle trauma that occurs as a primary event, right,
9:29
Speaker 6: it happens many, many times a day. And in severe trauma,
9:33
Speaker 6: you have hemorrhage, you have blood loss that can become
9:35
Speaker 6: life threatening. Patients will go to the operating room to
9:38
Speaker 6: try to prevent the hemorrhage from causing death. But in
9:41
Speaker 6: some cases patients, unfortunately, if the trauma is severe enough,
9:44
Speaker 6: do die from hemorrhage. But you wouldn't say that there
9:49
Speaker 6: is a problem with hemorrhage just befalling people. Right. It
9:55
Speaker 6: ultimately was the car crash. It was the trauma that
9:58
Speaker 6: was the initial cause.
10:00
Speaker 2: Singer published a study not long ago showing that in
10:03
Speaker 2: many COVID victims, it was that second bacterial infection that
10:08
Speaker 2: killed them. In the absence of viral infection. Would what
10:13
Speaker 2: would your odds of having a bacterial pneumonia be?
10:16
Speaker 1: Would they be?
10:17
Speaker 2: I mean, are you getting the bacterial pneumonia in large
10:19
Speaker 2: part because your body is so weakened by the viral attack.
10:22
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a key point. These are not bacterial pneumonias
10:26
Speaker 6: that would have occurred on their own.
10:28
Speaker 7: They aren't.
10:29
Speaker 6: They are occurring only because of the heightened susceptibility of
10:32
Speaker 6: the host having had the viral numoonia.
10:35
Speaker 1: To begin with.
10:36
Speaker 2: The Fauci study that Rogan googles and reads during the
10:39
Speaker 2: Kennedy interview involved looking at tissue samples from the lungs
10:43
Speaker 2: of people who had died during the Spanish flu, and
10:45
Speaker 2: what Fauci found was exactly what Singer found with COVID,
10:49
Speaker 2: that the virus so weakened the lungs of people in
10:52
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen that they were vulnerable to a second fatal
10:55
Speaker 2: round of bacterial pneumonia. Kennedy somehow read that paper and
11:00
Speaker 2: completely missed its point. Fauci wasn't denying the role of
11:04
Speaker 2: the virus in nineteen eighteen. He was doing the opposite.
11:07
Speaker 2: He was explaining how the viaris did its damage. It's
11:11
Speaker 2: safe to say, isn't it. Kennedy does not understand the
11:13
Speaker 2: difference between of primary and a secondary infection.
11:16
Speaker 6: I think that's right.
11:19
Speaker 2: Rogan is a very smart guy. He's one of the
11:21
Speaker 2: biggest podcasters in the world. Rogan does mixed martial arts
11:25
Speaker 2: for fun. He's not afraid of anyone yet. RFK Junior
11:29
Speaker 2: goes on his show and says something so dumb that
11:33
Speaker 2: you couldn't get away with it in a high school
11:35
Speaker 2: biology class. And what did Rogan do? He just sighed
11:40
Speaker 2: and moved on. Joe, dude, what's wrong with you? The
12:00
Speaker 2: most natural form of human interaction is the conversation. Two
12:04
Speaker 2: people talking, unscripted, improvised. It ends when it is the
12:09
Speaker 2: roles of listener and talker are fluid. The endpoint can
12:12
Speaker 2: be any number of a million different things, consolation, admonishment, encouragement, seduction, joy.
12:19
Speaker 2: An interview is very different. It's two people talking with
12:22
Speaker 2: a purpose. One person asks questions of another with the
12:27
Speaker 2: intention of revealing something of consequence. Conversation is easy and natural.
12:32
Speaker 2: Interviewing is an acquired art. There are weeks where I
12:36
Speaker 2: might do ten interviews each an hour or more, with
12:39
Speaker 2: even more time devoted to preparation. I've been doing that
12:43
Speaker 2: my whole career, and only in the last five years
12:45
Speaker 2: or so do I think I've gotten any good at it.
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Speaker 2: Interviewing is much much harder than conversation, but you know,
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Speaker 2: it's even harder performance, the interview conducted for the benefit
13:00
Speaker 2: of someone else, an audience. This is what Oprah does
13:04
Speaker 2: better than anyone else. I recently rewatched Oprah's famous interview
13:09
Speaker 2: with Megan Markle, and oh man, that's a masterclass. You
13:13
Speaker 2: have an actress, that is, someone trained in the art
13:16
Speaker 2: of deceptive self presentation, who wants to air a carefully
13:19
Speaker 2: scripted grievance about her position as a royal princess, and
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Speaker 2: the whole world intends to watch. The degree of difficulty
13:27
Speaker 2: on this one is through the roof. How do you
13:30
Speaker 2: get someone to leave behind their carefully created self. Oprah
13:34
Speaker 2: nails it.
13:37
Speaker 8: You certainly must have had some conversations with Harry about
13:40
Speaker 8: it and have your own suspicions as to why they
13:44
Speaker 8: didn't want to make Archie a prince.
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Speaker 2: This is halfway in. Markle has revealed that the royal
13:52
Speaker 2: family is declining to give her firstborn son Archie, a title,
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Speaker 2: and when she hears this, Oprah's eyes light up. I've
14:00
Speaker 2: been interviewed by Oprah before, and let me tell you,
14:03
Speaker 2: when she sees a moment coming, she climbs inside your
14:06
Speaker 2: head and starts to direct traffic.
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Speaker 8: What are what are those thoughts. Why do you think
14:12
Speaker 8: that is? Do you think it's because of his race?
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Speaker 1: That's sign And.
14:19
Speaker 8: I know that's a loaded question, but.
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Speaker 9: But I can give you an honest answer.
14:26
Speaker 10: In those months when I was pregnant, all around this
14:29
Speaker 10: same time. So we have in tandem the conversation of
14:34
Speaker 10: he won't be given security, it's not going to be
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Speaker 10: given a title, and also concerns and conversations about how
14:44
Speaker 10: dark his skin might be when he's born.
14:50
Speaker 4: What and.
14:53
Speaker 1: Who?
14:54
Speaker 8: Who is having that conversation.
14:58
Speaker 1: With you?
14:59
Speaker 8: So there is a conversation, can hold it?
15:03
Speaker 9: Hold up the several conversations.
15:06
Speaker 8: There's a conversation with you who with Harry about how
15:13
Speaker 8: dark your baby is going.
15:14
Speaker 9: To be potentially and what that would mean or look like.
15:17
Speaker 8: Ooh, And you're not going to tell me who had
15:20
Speaker 8: the conversation.
15:23
Speaker 9: I think that would be very damaging to them.
15:25
Speaker 2: Okay, Megan gets evasive. She says Harry was the one
15:30
Speaker 2: in those conversations, not her.
15:32
Speaker 10: It was really hard to be able to see those
15:34
Speaker 10: as compartmentalized.
15:35
Speaker 8: We're concerned that if you were too brown that that
15:41
Speaker 8: would be a problem. Are you saying that.
15:44
Speaker 9: I wasn't able to follow up with why.
15:48
Speaker 2: It's that last comment, of course, that is the most telling.
15:52
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to follow up with why Michael has
15:56
Speaker 2: thus far presented an artfully constructed narrative of trivial grievances
16:01
Speaker 2: designed to turn her into a punzel locked in the
16:04
Speaker 2: lonely tower. But at that moment, Oprah gets her to
16:07
Speaker 2: give us a glimpse of something real. Somebody high up
16:11
Speaker 2: was worried that her child would be too brown, and
16:14
Speaker 2: Meghan wasn't able to follow up with why even the
16:18
Speaker 2: choice of words follow up like there was a brief
16:21
Speaker 2: call with the Queen about Archie's potential blackness, but Megan
16:24
Speaker 2: wasn't able to get the queen's people to schedule assumed
16:26
Speaker 2: to provide more details, so she let the whole thing slide.
16:30
Speaker 2: Oprah is so good, and she's good because she knows
16:34
Speaker 2: how to keep pulling on a thread to get past
16:37
Speaker 2: what seems like an obvious revelation to a second, deeper one. Okay,
16:45
Speaker 2: now let's listen to Joe Rogan interviewing Elon Musk. This
16:49
Speaker 2: was just after Musk had given what looked an awful
16:52
Speaker 2: lot like a stiff armed Nazi salute at a Trump.
16:55
Speaker 5: Rally and now the same idiots are calling you a Nazi.
16:59
Speaker 5: It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life.
17:02
Speaker 5: I mean, there's so many examples of people saying, my
17:05
Speaker 5: heart goes out to you get a little enthusiasm that
17:08
Speaker 5: probably wouldn't be with hindsight.
17:10
Speaker 11: Yes, but I was obviously meant in the most positive
17:14
Speaker 11: spirit possible.
17:15
Speaker 4: Yes, obviously obviously.
17:16
Speaker 5: But it's so strange where people want to think that
17:19
Speaker 5: you are openly public publicly doing secret Nazi se Kyle
17:25
Speaker 5: hand motions.
17:26
Speaker 11: And now I can never pointed things diagonally. I can
17:28
Speaker 11: only pointed things there and there, and then actually you
17:31
Speaker 11: have to divide that, yeah, because that's where the spaceship
17:34
Speaker 11: is over there.
17:36
Speaker 4: It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous, it's absurd. It's so it's delivery propaganda.
17:42
Speaker 2: Imagine for a moment what Oprah would do. In that moment,
17:46
Speaker 2: Oprah would ask, if you didn't want to be called
17:49
Speaker 2: a Nazi, then why did you give a Nazi salute
17:51
Speaker 2: in front of thousands of people. You'd ask that question
17:54
Speaker 2: because that's what everyone was wondering when they saw the
17:57
Speaker 2: offending image. Oprah would have put Musk on the couch,
18:00
Speaker 2: elon We all know you're a genius, but we also
18:03
Speaker 2: know you're super sensitive. You spend all day on Twitter
18:06
Speaker 2: responding to your critics, So why would you do something
18:09
Speaker 2: so perfectly designed to be misunderstood? Can't you just hear
18:13
Speaker 2: Oprah saying that, but not your Rogan? With Musk sitting
18:17
Speaker 2: across the table from him, Rogan chooses to have the
18:20
Speaker 2: kind of conversation that you would have with a close
18:22
Speaker 2: friend late at night to console them after they have
18:25
Speaker 2: done something really stupid. You know, what they did was stupid.
18:29
Speaker 2: They know what they did was stupid. But what are
18:32
Speaker 2: friends for to help us sustain the pretense that what
18:35
Speaker 2: we did wasn't stupid at all?
18:38
Speaker 11: It was obviously not meant in a negative way. That
18:42
Speaker 11: it was that I literally said, my heart goes out
18:44
Speaker 11: to you, and it was very positive. The entire speech
18:46
Speaker 11: was very positive. I was being very enthusiastic about the
18:50
Speaker 11: future in space, and that, you know, was great.
18:56
Speaker 1: Crowd.
18:57
Speaker 11: You know, so you got a little popped up, Yeah,
19:01
Speaker 11: it go popped up exactly.
19:02
Speaker 4: Ye, that's all it is. Obviously Obviously, obviously.
19:05
Speaker 2: Who among us has not inadvertently given a Nazi salute
19:08
Speaker 2: in front of the whole world after getting just a
19:10
Speaker 2: little pumped up, listen to Rogan long enough and you realize, oh,
19:15
Speaker 2: this is a pattern. Here's Rogan doing an episode with
19:18
Speaker 2: Matt Walsh, big figuring conservative media blogger podcaster. He was
19:23
Speaker 2: on Rogan to talk about a documentary he just made
19:26
Speaker 2: called Am I a Racist? Where he made fun of
19:28
Speaker 2: the way that progressive see racism around every corner, and
19:32
Speaker 2: at a key point in the conversation, Walsh says.
19:35
Speaker 12: This, there was no one who lived on Earth one
19:37
Speaker 12: hundred years ago who we would not consider racist anywhere
19:41
Speaker 12: of any race. If you go back two hundred years
19:44
Speaker 12: or earlier than that, almost everybody either owned slaves or
19:49
Speaker 12: was okay with slavery as an institution. You go back
19:52
Speaker 12: five hundred years, and there was nobody on the planet
19:57
Speaker 12: who considered slavery to be wrong fundamentally. They might have
20:01
Speaker 12: had issues with how slaves are treated in some context,
20:03
Speaker 12: but it took like thousands of years for it to
20:06
Speaker 12: ever even occur to a single human on Earth that
20:09
Speaker 12: slavery is actually fundamentally wrong, which is a crazy thing,
20:13
Speaker 12: and that's actually an interesting thing we could you could
20:15
Speaker 12: talk about and think about, like why is that.
20:19
Speaker 2: You go back five hundred years and there was nobody
20:22
Speaker 2: on the planet who considered slavery to be wrong. Now,
20:26
Speaker 2: once again, let us imagine Oprah in this moment. Oprah
20:31
Speaker 2: would have sat up straight. Oprah would have stopped him
20:34
Speaker 2: right there, Matt. There were lots of people five hundred
20:38
Speaker 2: years ago who considered slavery to be wrong, millions of
20:41
Speaker 2: them slaves, exactly right. You think Moses led the Israelites
20:49
Speaker 2: out of slavery in Egypt just because he thought the
20:52
Speaker 2: schools were better in the Promised Land. You think the
20:54
Speaker 2: millions of people who were brutally rounded up in West Africa,
20:58
Speaker 2: torn from their families and communities, marched onto slavery ships
21:02
Speaker 2: and shipped overseas in brutal conditions, were ambivalent about the
21:06
Speaker 2: social institution they are being forced to join. And why
21:10
Speaker 2: would Oprah have stopped Matt Walsh at that moment? Not
21:13
Speaker 2: just because she would have felt compelled to correct this
21:15
Speaker 2: spectacular bit of foolishness, but because her job, as she
21:20
Speaker 2: sees it, is to reveal something of importance about her
21:24
Speaker 2: subjects to her audience. And here was a golden opportunity.
21:30
Speaker 2: Do you want to know who Matt Walsh is? He
21:33
Speaker 2: is someone who constructed a history of slavery and forgot
21:37
Speaker 2: all about the slaves. But Joe Rogan, when presented with
21:43
Speaker 2: that same opportunity, just wants to sit and chat.
21:47
Speaker 5: Well, I've had friends that have a different perspective on
21:50
Speaker 5: the Obama situation. And my friend Willie was talking to
21:53
Speaker 5: me about this, and he was saying that what happened
21:56
Speaker 5: was when you look one thing that we can be
22:00
Speaker 5: sure of, is it racist, surreal? And when Obama became president,
22:04
Speaker 5: those people became more embolden Obama.
22:09
Speaker 2: What does Obama have to.
22:10
Speaker 1: Do with this?
22:11
Speaker 2: And who's Willie Willie Nelson? But of course we never
22:14
Speaker 2: find out. It's none of our business. All of which
22:19
Speaker 2: is to say, the warning signs were there from the
22:21
Speaker 2: very beginning of the RFK Junior interview.
22:25
Speaker 4: And so then we run into each other and Aspen.
22:30
Speaker 3: Just Randa is the weirdness moment because we were both
22:33
Speaker 3: staring at each other.
22:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then we almost did it like a full three.
22:37
Speaker 5: Six Yeah, yeah, yeah, I noticed you walking.
22:42
Speaker 4: I'm like, that's it is, So I said, hey, what's up.
22:48
Speaker 2: It was just going to be the two of them
22:49
Speaker 2: in the room. The rest of us weren't invited, Do
23:06
Speaker 2: I like evesdropping on Joe Rogan's conversations. I do, That's
23:10
Speaker 2: why I listen to his show. But there are times
23:12
Speaker 2: when the conversational mode doesn't work, and when you have
23:16
Speaker 2: RFK Junior on, that's definitely one of those times. So
23:19
Speaker 2: let's start from the beginning and redo the RFK Junior conversation,
23:23
Speaker 2: only this time with an eye to all the things
23:26
Speaker 2: that a conversation between friends does not cover. Okay, Kennedy
23:31
Speaker 2: now elaborates on his theory of the nineteen eighteen influenza epidemic,
23:36
Speaker 2: what caused all those bacterial infections that he believes with
23:40
Speaker 2: the real source of all those millions of deaths.
23:43
Speaker 3: You know, I read an article reasonably, and you can
23:45
Speaker 3: look up these articles pretty easily. But the article that
23:51
Speaker 3: I read made a very strong case that the illness
23:55
Speaker 3: came from testing a new vaccine in Kansas at a
24:00
Speaker 3: military base in Kansas.
24:03
Speaker 2: What should the interviewer do in this moment, or at
24:06
Speaker 2: least before letting this kind of thing go out into
24:09
Speaker 2: the world. Well, since this is a pretty dramatic claim,
24:13
Speaker 2: they should figure out what Kennedy is referring to. What
24:17
Speaker 2: are these articles that led him to such a radical
24:19
Speaker 2: reinterpretation of one of the most famous viral epidemics in history.
24:24
Speaker 2: It turns out finding them is not that hard. It
24:27
Speaker 2: took me five minutes on Google and two phone calls.
24:31
Speaker 2: The first article I found is by Kevin Barry, an
24:34
Speaker 2: attorney based out of Siast on Long Island who wrote
24:38
Speaker 2: a two part series for vaccine impact dot Com in
24:41
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen called did a military experimental vaccine in nineteen
24:45
Speaker 2: eighteen kill fifty to one hundred million people? Blamed a
24:50
Speaker 2: Spanish flu? I was listening to rfk's appearance on Joe
24:58
Speaker 2: Rogan and they have that moment when they start talking
25:00
Speaker 2: about the nineteen eighteen flu, which is super fascinating, and
25:07
Speaker 2: RFK says, well, in fact, i've quote so he says,
25:11
Speaker 2: you know, well, you know well, the Spanish flue was
25:13
Speaker 2: not a virus. It was he says, even Foucing now
25:18
Speaker 2: acknowledges that. But then he says, and you know, I
25:22
Speaker 2: read an article recently, and you can look at these
25:24
Speaker 2: articles pretty easily. The article that I read made a
25:27
Speaker 2: very strong case. He onlyess came from testing a new
25:29
Speaker 2: vaccine in Kansas at a military base in Kansas. Is
25:33
Speaker 2: that your article?
25:34
Speaker 7: He's referring to I'm not sure it probably as far
25:39
Speaker 7: as I know that I wrote this in twenty eighteen
25:44
Speaker 7: and I circulated it to my friends, and Bobby would
25:48
Speaker 7: have been on the list.
25:49
Speaker 2: Barry's article focuses on a trial for an experimental meningitis
25:53
Speaker 2: vaccine run by doctor Frederick Gates, a first lieutenant in
25:58
Speaker 2: the Army's Medical Corps during the First World War serving
26:02
Speaker 2: at Fort Riley, Kansas.
26:04
Speaker 7: That antiminingitas study that they published came out and that
26:11
Speaker 7: started me down the path of digging into it.
26:14
Speaker 2: Barry is convinced that the meningitis vaccine caused the Spanish
26:18
Speaker 2: flu and that every scientist who has ever studied the
26:22
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen pandemic has just missed this. I asked him
26:26
Speaker 2: what role, if any, he thought the influenza virus played
26:30
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighteen influenza epidemic.
26:34
Speaker 7: Not a role that was a killer. But I think
26:38
Speaker 7: that the killer was the bacterial meningitis. You know that
26:42
Speaker 7: there's something level of the conventional that literature calls it
26:44
Speaker 7: a secondary infection.
26:46
Speaker 2: Oh right, remember the Fauci paper that Rogan googled and misunderstood.
26:50
Speaker 1: Barry read it too.
26:52
Speaker 7: But like if you have the sniffles and a bullet
26:54
Speaker 7: cust of your head. Did the sniffles kill you? What
26:57
Speaker 7: did the thing that rapped apart your locks?
26:58
Speaker 4: Right?
26:59
Speaker 2: This is source number one, Source number two as far
27:03
Speaker 2: as I can tell. It's a chiropractor from Melbourne, Florida
27:06
Speaker 2: named sal Martin Gano, who wrote in his book that
27:10
Speaker 2: this same rogue meningetis vaccine somehow got sent around the
27:13
Speaker 2: world in nineteen eighteen, and then the whole thing was
27:16
Speaker 2: covered up by the pharmaceutical industry.
27:18
Speaker 13: You know, they twisted and turned it around, but the
27:21
Speaker 13: bottom line was they killed They just killed half the population.
27:25
Speaker 13: I did deep dives with this stuff to try to,
27:27
Speaker 13: you know, put it in perspective, but there's no way
27:29
Speaker 13: to put this in perspective. It was just downright ugly.
27:32
Speaker 2: So the conventional line about nineteen eighteen is that it
27:34
Speaker 2: was an H one N one virus, and we have
27:38
Speaker 2: we I'm curious of what so, and we we've isolated
27:43
Speaker 2: this virus from people who died in the pandemic. What
27:47
Speaker 2: role do you think that virus was playing in what
27:50
Speaker 2: happened in nineteen eighteen?
27:52
Speaker 1: Probably nothing.
27:55
Speaker 13: The detailed reports on what was actually found are buried
28:01
Speaker 13: This is like the Kennedy Files. You know, you try
28:04
Speaker 13: to find good luck on that you're not going to
28:07
Speaker 13: find it.
28:12
Speaker 2: If a friend tells you in private conversation that they
28:15
Speaker 2: have a nutty idea about the nineteen eighteen Spanish flu,
28:18
Speaker 2: maybe it's okay just to not unsmile, because a friend
28:22
Speaker 2: is a friend, and we all have to tolerate the
28:24
Speaker 2: eccentricities of those closest to us. But when you have
28:28
Speaker 2: an audience in the tens of millions, and your friend
28:31
Speaker 2: is someone of real power and influence, then maybe it's
28:34
Speaker 2: not a bad idea to stop them and say, hold on,
28:38
Speaker 2: where are you getting this whole Kansas theory from? Because
28:42
Speaker 2: the way that Urka Junior answers that question will tell
28:45
Speaker 2: us a lot about the way his mind works, and
28:48
Speaker 2: we're all very interested in the way his mind works.
28:52
Speaker 2: And then when he tells you, you might just want
28:54
Speaker 2: to say something like, just so we're clear, Bobby, we
28:59
Speaker 2: have a century of biomedical science on one side of
29:02
Speaker 2: this question, and we have Kevin from Long Island and
29:05
Speaker 2: South from South Florida.
29:06
Speaker 1: On the other.
29:07
Speaker 2: And you're going with Kevin and si out. But Joe
29:11
Speaker 2: Rogan doesn't come close. He just rolls over in the
29:16
Speaker 2: middle of the road like a giant, tattooed, tightly muscled powsome. Joe,
29:25
Speaker 2: you're breaking my heart. When I was on my book
29:36
Speaker 2: tour for Revenge of the Tipping Point, I did an
29:38
Speaker 2: event at a theater in downtown San Diego. My interviewer
29:42
Speaker 2: was a guy named Michael Gervais. He's a psychologist who
29:45
Speaker 2: works a lot with elite athletes. He writes books. Nice guy.
29:49
Speaker 2: The interview began much like the dozens of other interviews
29:53
Speaker 2: I did on my book tour. So, when you think
29:55
Speaker 2: about it, and I'm going to come back to the
29:57
Speaker 2: original question, but when you think about the future, do
29:59
Speaker 2: you see it through an optimistic, a cynical or a
30:01
Speaker 2: pessimistic lens? Oh, I'm an optimist. I come from Glavels
30:06
Speaker 2: are optimists. My mom I was talking to my mom.
30:09
Speaker 2: My mom is ninety three and she just turned night
30:13
Speaker 2: three and I was talking to her and it was
30:16
Speaker 2: her birthday, and she just she's twin. She was talking
30:19
Speaker 2: to her and so she just called her twin sister,
30:20
Speaker 2: who lives in Jamaica, and she said to me, she
30:25
Speaker 2: was a little emotional, which is rare for Glad was
30:28
Speaker 2: also not terribly emotional.
30:29
Speaker 13: Huh.
30:30
Speaker 2: And she said to me, you know, I look back
30:34
Speaker 2: on my life and I cannot believe how improbable it was.
30:38
Speaker 2: She was born in like a house that was probably
30:42
Speaker 2: a third the size of this a quarter of the
30:44
Speaker 2: size of this stage, with no electricity, running water, in
30:48
Speaker 2: the middle of Jamaica, and she ended up, you know,
30:53
Speaker 2: living this wonderful life. And she's like when I was
30:57
Speaker 2: born in she said to me, when I was born
30:59
Speaker 2: in Jamaica, and then early inteen thirties, twins rarely survived,
31:04
Speaker 2: so that even that I survived was a miracle. Then
31:07
Speaker 2: came this, you parents who think of their lives as
31:13
Speaker 2: my parents have. Also my dad is not dad but
31:17
Speaker 2: deeply religious in I think the best possible way, and
31:20
Speaker 2: think of their lives as a gift from God. And
31:26
Speaker 2: when you grow up with that, it is very, very
31:28
Speaker 2: hard not to participate in that spirit. Well, I'm getting
31:34
Speaker 2: a little emotional to you. I'm in danger. When I
31:37
Speaker 2: talk about my father, I start crying.
31:39
Speaker 4: So, yeah, what is that about. I don't know he was.
31:57
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
32:03
Speaker 2: I'd encourage you to open it wide open. There I
32:07
Speaker 2: was on stage in front of hundreds of people, perfectly happy.
32:12
Speaker 2: Then my dad came up, and all of a sudden,
32:14
Speaker 2: I became overwhelmed, and I was embarrassed. It wasn't what
32:18
Speaker 2: I intended. I wasn't there to bear my soul, didn't
32:21
Speaker 2: I just say ten seconds before, the Globels are not
32:24
Speaker 2: emotional people. I want to move on, but Jervase won't
32:29
Speaker 2: let me. So off we go in an entirely new direction.
32:35
Speaker 2: I mean, I do cry every time he's been He's
32:39
Speaker 2: been gone five years. And a friend of mine said,
32:49
Speaker 2: two friends of mine said two very beautiful things that
32:53
Speaker 2: I've always remembered. One was a friend of mine who
32:57
Speaker 2: was writing something about his father, and he said, my
33:01
Speaker 2: father died twenty years ago. Today, I know him better
33:06
Speaker 2: today than I did back then. And I think about
33:10
Speaker 2: that nearly every day, and because I think I know
33:14
Speaker 2: him better now. And another thing a friend of mine said,
33:20
Speaker 2: in trying to console me, was that grief is the
33:25
Speaker 2: way we keep someone alive. Yeah, and it's a gift
33:32
Speaker 2: in other words. Yeah, And I think that I can't.
33:39
Speaker 2: I think I continue to grieve because I can.
33:44
Speaker 7: I can't let it go.
33:47
Speaker 2: Subjects come to interviews with prerehearsed narratives, stories that have
33:52
Speaker 2: been told so many times that the ruts on the
33:55
Speaker 2: road have become deep and narrow. In a conversation, our
33:59
Speaker 2: partner gives us the freedom to follow the familiar path.
34:03
Speaker 2: They encourage and support with nods and smiles. But the
34:07
Speaker 2: performance is but the audience, the third party demands and deserves,
34:13
Speaker 2: is something more a departure. I have a friend who's
34:17
Speaker 2: a screenwriter who always says, the job of the storyteller
34:21
Speaker 2: is to defy the audience's expectations. That's absolutely right to
34:26
Speaker 2: take the audience somewhere they didn't know they were going.
34:29
Speaker 2: And that's what Gervais was doing when he interrupted me.
34:33
Speaker 4: So what did your dad teach you?
34:37
Speaker 2: I don't think he had that question in mind when
34:40
Speaker 2: he prepared for the interview.
34:42
Speaker 11: He was.
34:45
Speaker 4: So he's an Englishman.
34:47
Speaker 1: That's a big, pushy beard.
34:49
Speaker 13: And he was.
34:52
Speaker 2: Such a stereotypical englishman.
34:54
Speaker 4: He was.
34:55
Speaker 2: He liked going for long walks in the rain with dogs.
35:00
Speaker 2: He was a gardener. That's what he loved to do
35:06
Speaker 2: above all else. He uh, he only ever cried when
35:10
Speaker 2: he was reading Dickens to his children. He uh. He
35:17
Speaker 2: was a mathematician, and a very good one. I think,
35:19
Speaker 2: although I have no idea because I could never follow
35:22
Speaker 2: what he was doing.
35:24
Speaker 1: He was a.
35:28
Speaker 2: He was completely indifferent to what the world thought it did,
35:31
Speaker 2: just did whatever he wanted to do, which was I thought,
35:33
Speaker 2: as a kid, was the most magnificent thing I had
35:37
Speaker 2: ever seen. You know that, You see everyone in this
35:40
Speaker 2: room right now because oh that's where he got it from.
35:44
Speaker 1: Yeah he was.
35:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's that's the big gift that he passed you.
35:51
Speaker 1: There you go. That's how it's done.
36:09
Speaker 2: Revision's History is produced by Lucy Sullivan, Nina Bird Lawrence,
36:13
Speaker 2: and bendedaf Haffrey. Our editor is Karen Chakerji. Fact checking
36:17
Speaker 2: by Kate Furby. Original scoring by Luis Gara, Jake Korsky
36:21
Speaker 2: and bendedaf Haffrey. Mixing and mastering on this episode by
36:25
Speaker 2: Jake Gorsky. Production support from Luke LeMond. Our executive producer
36:30
Speaker 2: is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix and el
36:34
Speaker 2: Hefe Gretacone.
36:36
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Glappo. Where have you gone?
36:55
Speaker 2: Joe Rogan Experience? Our nation turns its lonely.
37:00
Speaker 1: Eyes to you.
37:01
Speaker 2: Woohoo, what's that you say, mister Kennedy? John Joe has
37:08
Speaker 2: left and gone away? Hey, Hey, hey hey, hey,