AI transcript
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0:00:58 For a long time, there’s been a pretty clear
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0:01:03 Are you guys ready to listen?
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0:01:11 But this week on Unexplainable, recent research has scientists wondering
0:01:14 whether some of the most basic things they took for granted are wrong.
0:01:18 I thought I understood metabolism, but I realized I didn’t.
0:01:20 And I really wanted to know, what is it?
0:01:22 Like, what is this really about?
0:01:25 Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Monday and Wednesday.
0:01:32 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:33 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:01:35 And I’m Jessica Tarlow.
0:01:37 Jess, how are you?
0:01:39 It’s time for banter.
0:01:41 Shana Tova.
0:01:41 Yes.
0:01:42 Let’s Jew it up.
0:01:44 Right back at you.
0:01:49 I did not know this, but our producer, David Toledo, grew up near me in the valley.
0:01:51 Oh, I didn’t know that either.
0:01:57 Yeah, I went to school with all my buddies who ended up populating my fraternity at ZBT,
0:02:00 where I ended up rushing because I heard they had live-in spaces,
0:02:02 and I didn’t want to live with my mom the rest of my life.
0:02:05 And it ended up being a Jewish fraternity.
0:02:08 And anyways, David, is David Jewish?
0:02:08 He doesn’t look Jewish.
0:02:09 He looks a little too cool.
0:02:10 No, he’s not.
0:02:11 Honorary, though.
0:02:16 So David’s like an employee and kind of a second son,
0:02:21 because he comes from this area that your friends populated.
0:02:25 Yeah, I immediately think of him as his son I never had.
0:02:26 You put words in my mouth.
0:02:30 Yes, David, you’re a huge disappointment to me,
0:02:32 and the best part of you ran down my leg.
0:02:35 That’s what I tell my sons.
0:02:36 Is that wrong?
0:02:38 Don’t say that during Rosh Hashanah.
0:02:38 Is that wrong?
0:02:39 Yeah.
0:02:40 You had to bring religion into it?
0:02:42 Well, yeah, we started with Shana Tova.
0:02:46 Yeah, no, if he’s going to be my son,
0:02:48 I’ve got to figure out a way to constantly communicate
0:02:50 what a disappointment it is to me.
0:02:51 As long as you leave him money,
0:02:53 which I think is what we’re all working towards.
0:02:56 Yeah, I plan to spend it all.
0:02:59 And I think I’m tracking.
0:03:02 I think I’m kind of leaving with almost nothing.
0:03:04 Do they know that?
0:03:07 My kids, well, your kids are too young.
0:03:09 My kids are shockingly,
0:03:11 I don’t know where they got it.
0:03:13 They have really good values around money.
0:03:14 I took my son.
0:03:16 You know, I want to live my life.
0:03:19 The bad news is talking to my kids for a minute,
0:03:21 and I think you’ll find this, or I found it.
0:03:22 I have a favorite.
0:03:23 That’s the bad news.
0:03:24 What?
0:03:25 Yeah, I have a favorite.
0:03:27 You know we’re in public.
0:03:27 Yeah, I know.
0:03:28 I know.
0:03:28 Whatever.
0:03:30 At this point, you know, whatever.
0:03:31 You’re going to counsel me, Bob Iger.
0:03:35 So, but that’s the bad news.
0:03:36 The good news is it switches.
0:03:40 Like, I go through phases where I’m really into an Alec phase,
0:03:41 and I’m really into a Nolan phase.
0:03:49 And the reason I think I’m so fond of my oldest is that he’s a mini me.
0:03:54 I mean, literally, like, when I hug him, it’s like hugging my 18-year-old self.
0:03:56 And he just looks like me.
0:03:58 He kind of acts like me.
0:04:00 He’s just me as a younger man.
0:04:05 And then the reason I’m so sort of just fascinated by his younger brother, Nolan,
0:04:08 is it’s as if we’re from a different species.
0:04:12 He’s just so, he couldn’t be more different than me, and I just find him.
0:04:13 Is he just your partner?
0:04:16 Like, is he a total reflection of her?
0:04:18 Or he’s an alien to everyone?
0:04:23 Yeah, he’s, I guess, but I didn’t know her as a child.
0:04:26 So, he’s just so different.
0:04:28 I mean, I’m just, he doesn’t look like me.
0:04:31 He doesn’t, in no way, behaves like me, interested in different things.
0:04:35 And it’s just kind of fascinating to watch someone see the world
0:04:37 with a totally different perspective than yours.
0:04:39 So, but, yeah, I’m…
0:04:40 It’s the fun of this, right?
0:04:41 It is the fun of it.
0:04:42 Yeah.
0:04:46 Anyways, this has been an unusual banter,
0:04:50 but I think we should get to the actual news of the day.
0:04:51 Slow news day.
0:04:54 We’re going to talk about why Jimmy Kimmel returned,
0:04:57 Trump’s unproven medical advice on autism,
0:04:59 acetaminophen, you fucking idiot,
0:05:03 and how the White House is being remodeled in Trump’s taste.
0:05:05 All right, let’s get into it.
0:05:07 On Monday, we got a Rosh Hashanah miracle.
0:05:10 There’s that, there’s that David Toledo.
0:05:11 That’s right.
0:05:13 There’s that Judaism creeping in.
0:05:18 ABC and the Walt Disney Company announced Jimmy Kimmel would return after a brief suspension
0:05:20 that set off a nationwide backlash.
0:05:24 Media critics, Hollywood unions, celebrities, and even some Republican leaders,
0:05:29 including Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, condemned it as an attack on free speech.
0:05:33 Online, fans threatened boycotts of Disney, Next Star, and Sinclair Station,
0:05:37 streaming the decision as a dangerous precedent for political pressure on the media.
0:05:41 Jess, what do you think of Disney’s walking this decision back?
0:05:43 Brendan Carr really fucked up, huh?
0:05:49 I mean, the need to run to get in front of a camera
0:05:58 will always be the downfall of these Trump appointees and people in Trump’s orbit.
0:06:02 If he had just kept his mouth closed, he perhaps could have gotten away with it
0:06:10 and found some other way to signal to, you know, Sinclair and Next Star what was being planned.
0:06:16 But I think there’s a good pro-democracy message laced in here, which is you are not powerless.
0:06:21 And that has been the big concern since Trump came back into office.
0:06:23 Like, what can we do?
0:06:26 And you can cancel your subscription.
0:06:30 If you’re one of those adults that wants a Disney wedding,
0:06:33 you can cancel your $150,000 wedding.
0:06:33 And guess what?
0:06:35 They’re going to pay attention to that.
0:06:40 I also think, you know, it’s a very bad day for those folks who were arguing that
0:06:46 this was just a straight-up business decision because it’s very clear that that is not the case
0:06:53 and that Brendan Carr played such an important role in pulling Jimmy Kimmel off air
0:06:55 and then getting him back on air.
0:06:59 So net-net, you know, good day for democracy, good day for the First Amendment.
0:07:01 A lot of pressure on Jimmy Kimmel, though.
0:07:06 It’ll be interesting to see, you know, what he has in his monologue.
0:07:10 And when we recorded that rapid response video, organic plug for our YouTube.
0:07:15 Please subscribe to the Raging Moderates YouTube channel because Scott and I are posting there
0:07:15 all the time.
0:07:20 You know, I said, what’s been nice about this is it’s really felt like a grassroots movement.
0:07:27 I think that that letter that the ACLU organized with over, you know, 400 artists and entertainers,
0:07:32 actors, et cetera, that signed on Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Selena Gomez, et cetera, made a big impact.
0:07:38 And things like Zoran Mamdani saying that he wouldn’t participate in a town hall that would
0:07:41 be televised on ABC because ABC doesn’t support the First Amendment.
0:07:45 You know, people hear about those things and they take stock of it.
0:07:50 And ABC has already capitulated to Trump once in paying the settlement over George Stephanopoulos.
0:07:54 And hopefully this is the start of, you know, saying I’m not so fast.
0:07:56 I’m not going to bend the knee that easily.
0:07:58 What’s what’s your updated thinking?
0:08:06 Yeah, I just I’m fascinated by corporate communications and corporate communications has been one of the
0:08:09 greatest ROIs for corporate America.
0:08:15 And that is they are spending money on AI, obviously increasing that, increasing money, you know,
0:08:17 on direct to consumer technologies, what have you.
0:08:23 But the greatest increase on a percentage level across corporate America has been in corporate
0:08:24 comms.
0:08:31 And that is they recognize that increasingly companies used to a stock that was in the steel
0:08:37 sector or in the weapon sector or in the technology sector would trade within a fairly narrow bound
0:08:38 of a multiple in EBITDA.
0:08:45 And who traded at the high end usually had better positioning, better brands and a CEO who’s a
0:08:46 little bit more charismatic.
0:08:54 Now, the band of the multiple on EBITDA or earnings is so dramatic and much of it is
0:08:56 about the storytelling capabilities of the CEO.
0:09:00 Amazon was essentially a company built on a story.
0:09:05 And that is, if you read Amazon’s or Jeff Bezos 1997 letter to shareholders, you just wanted
0:09:07 to go out and buy stock.
0:09:10 And you did, which gave them access to such incredibly cheap capital.
0:09:16 They could buy more planes, build more warehouses, hire more logistics people and get you basically
0:09:20 anything in the world for free with Amazon Prime within 48 hours.
0:09:24 And no one else had the capital to go to war with Amazon.
0:09:26 And they just kind of blew everyone out of the water.
0:09:34 So you’re sort of your storytelling capabilities here have become incredibly powerful.
0:09:39 And so corporate communications departments have been just booming and hiring more people.
0:09:40 It’s all about the story.
0:09:43 And then when Alexander Karp, is that his name?
0:09:48 The CEO of Palantir does this really innovative thing where he walks around his office doing
0:09:49 the earnings call live on Instagram.
0:09:52 Everyone’s like, wow, this company is so innovative.
0:09:56 And the company trades at a hundred times revenues, which makes absolutely no sense.
0:10:05 So, and also Elon Musk commands one to $3 billion in earned media by just being crazy and being
0:10:06 on Twitter all the time.
0:10:11 And as a huge advantage versus General Motors, and no one really cares what Mary Barra says
0:10:13 or threads or tweets.
0:10:19 So Tesla gets all this incredible free advertising because of, in some ways, storytelling or just
0:10:20 having a blow horn.
0:10:26 So, this press release from Disney, it can go wrong, though.
0:10:32 And this press release I would describe as being gangbanged by what must have been two dozen
0:10:38 crisis management experts who were parsing every word and ended up with a press release that
0:10:41 was milquetoast and totally disingenuous.
0:10:47 They said after discussions with Jimmy Kimmel, we further understand, you know, we decided to
0:10:48 bring him back.
0:10:51 They don’t give a flying fuck what Jimmy Kimmel thought.
0:10:51 I mean, what?
0:10:54 They didn’t think to do this before they fired him.
0:10:59 And then they’d also said that because of some ill-timed and insensitive comments, they decided
0:10:59 to bring the show.
0:11:02 Ill-timed and insensitive.
0:11:10 We have said, there isn’t a, I don’t think there is a progressive media personality or even
0:11:15 a conservative comedian who hasn’t said things much more, quote unquote, insensitive.
0:11:21 And here’s the thing, you don’t need a First Amendment when people say things slightly insensitive.
0:11:25 You need a First Amendment when people say really stupid, provocative, angry shit.
0:11:26 There are some limits.
0:11:27 You can’t incite violence.
0:11:32 You can’t spread lies about somebody that hurt their economic livelihood.
0:11:33 That’s defamation.
0:11:38 But other than that, a hallmark of a free society is you can pretty much say anything about pretty
0:11:41 much anyone at pretty much any time.
0:11:48 And so the infraction here of not even a speeding ticket and then firing him and then pretending
0:11:54 that after speaking to him and that these were ill-timed comments, they’re not, they continue
0:11:54 to lie.
0:11:56 This is the bottom line.
0:11:58 This is about money.
0:11:59 Full stop.
0:12:05 And that is they recognized, someone called and said, our site is crashing because so many
0:12:09 people are trying to cancel Hulu, ESPN, and Disney+.
0:12:13 We are getting calls from our cruise line saying people are canceling.
0:12:20 We just heard from, I don’t know, Zendaya that she doesn’t, she’s, her agent is worried that
0:12:25 she should pull out of a movie because of what is going on here.
0:12:28 And they got together and said, oh, it’s costing money.
0:12:30 Let’s backtrack.
0:12:38 This is a prime example of how societies continue a downward spiral into fascism.
0:12:40 They have a strong man.
0:12:45 And this isn’t the first time Bob Iger has really fucked up.
0:12:51 You know, he’s the one who initially started this bullshit by settling with, you know, over
0:12:54 the whole George Stephanopoulos, settling with Trump.
0:12:58 And when you throw, you know, when you think the alligators around you and if you just cut
0:13:01 off a finger and give it to them, be clear, they’re going to come back for the arm.
0:13:03 And so they started this.
0:13:05 They were the first ones.
0:13:10 They could have been the front lines and said no and sent a signal.
0:13:16 And just FYI, Jess, I’m going to buy $10 million in equity and then be the beneficial
0:13:22 owner of another $10 million in Disney stock, file a 13D to replace the entire board and fire
0:13:27 Bob Iger, who has shown that he is not only a terrible fiduciary for all Americans, has
0:13:32 no fidelity to the principles that have made him a billionaire so he could walk around in
0:13:35 cashmere sweaters and go to the Oscars.
0:13:37 But he should be fired.
0:13:39 They fired the wrong guy.
0:13:41 This guy.
0:13:42 OK.
0:13:45 Any one of these things you could say, all right, he made a mistake.
0:13:52 This guy is clearly the 73 year old Bob Iger clearly doesn’t understand the atmosphere.
0:13:56 Let’s let’s ignore the fact that he is a terrible American.
0:14:01 Bob Iger, you are a terrible American.
0:14:05 You have turned your back on the ideals and the principles that have made you a fucking
0:14:09 billionaire and have given you an extraordinary life.
0:14:16 But in addition to that, he clearly has lost all ability to read the room and read the culture
0:14:23 and understand new technology and new platforms and what it means to be in the business of media.
0:14:25 There has never been.
0:14:31 I can’t think of a CEO in the Fortune 500 that is more ripe to be fired.
0:14:37 There absolutely is someone at Disney right now that should be canceled and it should be the
0:14:40 CEO and also there should be more scrutiny on the board.
0:14:48 A board is there to save the CEO from him or herself to go, this could be really bad for us.
0:14:53 And instead, they were listening entirely to their what they thought were their consumers.
0:14:59 And that is the broadcast station, Sinclair and Nextar, who distribute Jimmy Kimmel across
0:15:00 local TV stations.
0:15:07 But this indicates to me that Bob Iger absolutely needs to go.
0:15:14 A terrible American, a terrible fiduciary for shareholders and someone who has whose
0:15:19 judgment that expiration date has clearly passed.
0:15:20 Your thoughts?
0:15:23 Well, I mean, you made a pretty clear case there.
0:15:29 I wonder if there’ll be some scrutiny of Dana Walden as well, who I think is the one that has
0:15:35 really the close relationship with Kimmel and was the one who went and met with him right after the
0:15:41 Brendan Carr comments, etc. But I’m sure, and I don’t know Bob Iger personally, but he’s been
0:15:47 rumored to have pretty thin skin. And seeing Michael Eisner, the ex-CEO of Disney, coming after him and
0:15:53 saying, you know, what a capitulation. How could you possibly do something like this? Really stung.
0:15:59 I’m curious to get your take on the fact that Sinclair is saying that they are not going to
0:16:04 start airing Jimmy Kimmel again. And they’re in charge of 31 of the affiliates, right, that would
0:16:10 normally air it. When they took Jimmy off air last week, they aired a Charlie Kirk kind of documentary
0:16:17 that made him out to be a prophet. The CEO of Sinclair donated a quarter of a million dollars to
0:16:25 turning point and I believe is waiting on Kimmel’s donation, which I imagine is not coming. I could
0:16:32 see a world in which Kimmel makes a donation to a cause in Charlie Kirk’s memory or something like
0:16:37 that. But I assume that he’s not going to just say, oh, yeah, you know, you said jump. I say how high and
0:16:43 now I’m going to give, you know, gobs of money to an organization just because you said so versus it’s
0:16:49 something that I really believe in. What do you think the future is of the deal that actually set
0:16:54 all of this off? Because, you know, Brendan Carr was speaking on Monday at the Concordia summit and
0:16:59 tried to backtrack and say, you know, I wasn’t, you know, right out of Goodfellas, as Ted Cruz put it.
0:17:03 I was just saying that the hard way is when you have to actually lodge an FCC complaint.
0:17:08 Everyone sees through it. Donald Trump sees through it, I’m sure, as well and knows exactly what’s going
0:17:14 on here. But do you do you think the merger will still go through or what are the kind of business
0:17:19 implications of Sinclair saying we’re not going to be airing Kimmel? I think the merger will likely go
0:17:24 through because the merger is a function of consolidation and cost cutting, which is happening
0:17:31 across this industry because, you know, their audience is literally dying. Local TV stations, people
0:17:37 tune into local TV stations to see a guy who’s in his 60s or 70s that they trust and a hot woman in
0:17:43 her 30s in a sleeveless dress to find the weather, basically, you know, to get the weather. And the
0:17:50 only reason these things have survived is that two or three out of every 24 months, they quintuple their
0:17:56 ad rates and they get a tsunami of political spending because political campaigns are under the impression
0:18:02 that old people vote and that old people still watch the local news. So these things get sold out and
0:18:09 they basically lose money 18 to 21 months a year. It’s like specialty retail. The dirty secret of
0:18:18 special retail is that they lose money for basically 20, 50 weeks, 48 weeks a year. And then from
0:18:23 Thanksgiving to Christmas, they just make a ridiculous shit ton of money. The same is true or becoming true
0:18:27 these local news stations. And that is they make a lot of money during the election. However, however,
0:18:34 I think Trump has changed that. And that is, and it’s the same reason MSNBC and CNN are dying. And that is
0:18:43 a 70 year old white woman. She knows who she’s voting for. She’s driving her old, you know, she’s driving
0:18:51 her, you know, her 2012 Audi A6, which is just fine for her. She doesn’t need a car and she’s spending
0:18:57 money on healthcare some time with her grandkids and saving money. Advertisers hate those people.
0:19:04 The politicians used to love them. And since Trump showed that you can win presidency by going on
0:19:12 podcasts and ignoring cable news and broadcasts, ad supported broadcast, you’re now seeing, and I’m
0:19:17 talking my own book here, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true. Ad rates have gone through the roof and ad
0:19:23 spending on podcasts have gone through the roof. And I think you’re going to see a dramatic transfer
0:19:29 of capital from these local news stations to, as always, Google, Meta, but also podcasts, which are
0:19:34 growing faster than any ad supported medium out there. So what do you have to do when you’re in a
0:19:39 declining business? They can still be good businesses, but you have to consolidate. So Sinclair
0:19:46 and Tegna will merge. And then there will be two CFOs and whoever plays golf with the new CEO will get
0:19:50 to hold his job. And the other will get a decent package and get out of there, but they will basically
0:19:56 go in and they will have, you know, if there’s 2000 people of corporate at one and 1500 and other
0:20:03 3500, that’ll go down to 2400 or 2300. It’s what happens to mature industries that are in decline. It’s
0:20:08 consolidation and cost cutting. So that’ll still happen. The question is, and this goes back
0:20:13 to what I find most encouraging about all of this is, you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about a
0:20:18 national economic strike where consumers, especially wealthy consumers make a concerted effort to slow
0:20:25 their spend or target the slowing of their spend. This was exactly that. It wasn’t that Bob Iger or
0:20:29 anyone on the Disney board woke up one day and say, you know, I’ve rethought this decision. I’ve listened
0:20:34 to our customers. I’ve talked to some people and I realized what we did is wrong. And to step back from
0:20:38 the wrong decision or the wrong direction is a step in the right direction. No, it was none of that.
0:20:44 It was, oh, fuck. People are flexing their economic muscles and canceling Disney plus.
0:20:52 So people and also artists could say if Jerry Seinfeld raised his hand and said, and he may not
0:20:56 have the ability here because he’s probably sold his rights and I don’t want Seinfeld on Sinclair
0:21:03 or Tegna stations, you know, or Nexstar or whatever it is that would scare the shit out of them.
0:21:07 They’d be like, OK, maybe we should get out of the business of censorship.
0:21:13 So the the the most exciting thing about this, the most heartening thing about this
0:21:19 is that people, consumers are starting to flex their consumer muscles. And at the end of the day,
0:21:25 everything these people do. And this is one of the reasons we love private companies and capitalism
0:21:32 is that they are totally focused on nothing but the value of their shares. Full stop, full stop.
0:21:40 And the unfortunate thing is that I don’t think they recognize that they haven’t read World War II
0:21:46 history. They haven’t read, you know, basically how people are perceived. And that is people are
0:21:54 actually more hostile towards the cowards than the strong man themselves. And that is, you know,
0:21:58 you hate Trump or you love him. That’s not changing. The people who are really going to ruin
0:22:05 their reputations are the people who are seen as cowards that facilitated this slow burn to fascism,
0:22:12 the people who enabled it, the people who who their whole lives pretended to give a flying fuck about
0:22:17 America and American values and wrap themselves in the flag when it was convenient. And then when they
0:22:20 were tested, they failed.
0:22:26 I hope you’re right. And we’re going to take a quick break so we can talk about this war on Tylenol.
0:22:33 But I think that same sentiment will be very valid in discussing all of those Republican senators that put
0:22:42 Bobby Kennedy Jr. in one of the most important roles in America and the vast implications for the
0:22:47 health and safety of Americans, especially American women. So let’s take a quick break. Stay with us.
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0:25:21 Americans are notoriously unhealthy. Why? And what can we do about it? I’m Henry Blodgett,
0:25:28 and this week on Solutions, I put that question to Dr. Jessica Nurik, a dietician with a PhD in
0:25:33 nutrition science who has gone viral for her criticism of the Maha movement.
0:25:41 The movement is really focused on corruption and ingredient swaps, like changing the color additive
0:25:46 in candy or fruit loops is not going to make a meaningful difference on health.
0:25:51 So what would make a difference? And what can you do to be even healthier now?
0:25:55 Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett wherever you get your podcasts.
0:26:07 Welcome back. Trump announced Monday that the FDA will alert doctors that acetaminophen used during
0:26:12 pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism, urging women to use Tylenol only
0:26:18 when medically necessary, such as for a fever. Experts caution that autism has multiple causes and the
0:26:24 science linking Tylenol to the disorder is far from settled. Acetaminophen remains the safest
0:26:29 over-the-counter option for pain or fever in pregnancy, while alternatives, including ibuprofen or
0:26:37 aspirin can be risky and untreated fevers can also harm mother and baby. Tylenol maker Kenview said
0:26:42 there is no credible evidence linking the drug to autism and urged pregnant women to consult their
0:26:47 health care providers before taking any medication. Let’s listen to what Trump had to say.
0:26:52 But there’s a very strong recommendation, maybe stronger for me than from the group, because
0:26:58 they’re waiting for certain studies. I don’t, I just want to say, I want to say it like it is.
0:27:06 Don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it. If you just can’t, I mean, it’s just fight like hell not to
0:27:12 take it. There may be a point where you have to and that you’ll, you have to work out with yourself. So
0:27:21 don’t take Tylenol. I hate him. I just, I mean, I don’t really mean that. I’m not a hateful person, but
0:27:33 the anti-science angle, the stupidity, the cruelty. I mean, have you ever witnessed a group of people so
0:27:41 hell-bent on making the lives of women harder than the Republican Party right now? You know,
0:27:45 between the Dobbs decision and just kind of saying, if you, you know, if you live in a state that doesn’t
0:27:51 really care about women’s reproductive health, that’s on you. Cutting people’s Medicaid, millions
0:27:58 of kids born every year on Medicaid, rural hospitals closing. I mean, I’m watching all these men. There
0:28:03 was one woman in there and I don’t know how she didn’t just say like, F you all. But I’m thinking
0:28:10 about that drive uptown to go and deliver. My water had broken. I’m sitting in the front seat on a towel
0:28:17 and Brian is trying to find the perfect song, right? Like for our ride up the West Side Highway,
0:28:24 as if I care that I like, you know, drive into the hospital listening to Fleetwood Mac and like it
0:28:30 crescendos at exactly the right moment. And I’m just thinking you have never in your life experienced pain
0:28:36 like what I am feeling at this moment. And you play D1 football like you’ve had the shit kicked out of
0:28:40 you a lot and you still don’t understand what’s going on. It’s not like Brian didn’t understand
0:28:45 that he was very generous and kind through the entire pregnancy. But you’re watching these guys.
0:28:54 It’s like Tylenol is the one thing that a woman can take during this nine month period where you have to
0:29:03 give your body over to somebody else. And it’s all that you think about is caring for this little
0:29:08 person that you are going to love more than anything else in the entire world. The guilt that women feel
0:29:16 for eating a piece of salami on a charcuterie tray. I, you know, I had to, I went to my doctor to say,
0:29:21 is it okay if I have a diet Coke? Right. Because that that’s my vice. You know, some people like
0:29:27 Javi, I wanted one diet Coke a day and she had to sit down with me and say, yes, it’s fine. You know,
0:29:31 and I said, but what if, but what if, you know, women don’t have a glass of wine in America, even
0:29:36 though all over Europe, they’re more comfortable with it. But the anxiety about what could happen
0:29:42 and that God forbid something is wrong with your baby. And you think back to that night where you had
0:29:47 a glass of Chardonnay just because you needed it while you were watching love is blind and the
0:29:54 implications of that. And these guys just stand up there with nothing grounded in science. I mean,
0:30:00 every medical association has to release a statement right after saying, do not believe your government
0:30:06 about what they’re telling you. I mean, there’s a much higher risk to the mother and the baby if you
0:30:11 have a fever. And again, you can’t get rid of a fever any other way during pregnancy than taking
0:30:17 Tylenol. And they just stand there. They’re so smug and that Trump is vacillating between don’t
0:30:22 do this. And also, I don’t really know, like I’m not a doctor, his usual. And of course, they’re not
0:30:29 mentioning that the drug that they’re, uh, they’re the cure that they’re pushing this Luvachorin as a
0:30:36 cure for autism, not borne out by any studies, by the way, is sold by Dr. Oz’s supplement company,
0:30:42 Hyherb. So again, there’s always a grift element to it. So he’s going to get a kickback. Bobby
0:30:46 Kennedy Jr. probably going to get a kickback because he loves all of these trial lawyers,
0:30:52 right? You know, he’s made millions of dollars off of bringing frivolous lawsuits against drug
0:30:56 makers. And Elizabeth Warren, rightfully so, grilled him in his confirmation hearings about
0:31:02 it. He had nothing to say, stammering through it. I’m, I’m upset. How do you feel?
0:31:06 Yeah. Obviously you have more personal experience here.
0:31:11 No, but you’ve loved somebody that’s going through this. I mean, can you imagine if someone
0:31:16 had said, Oh no, you tough it out. Just tough it out.
0:31:22 I don’t know. I mean, it was weird when my partner’s water broke.
0:31:24 Yeah, it is weird, right?
0:31:30 Well, I don’t know. It’s like my first dog, I never actually believed this dog was ever going
0:31:35 to die. I couldn’t imagine it. And the same with my partner’s water breaking. I just never believed
0:31:41 it was actually going to happen. And then when it happened, we had been told that, that rookies
0:31:48 during a first time pregnancy often showed up way too early that they, that they, the thing takes a
0:31:54 while, relax, you’re going to be fine. So she broke her water. So the first thing I did was I ran a bath
0:31:59 for and said, all right, let’s not be those idiots and jump to the, get to the hospital too early.
0:32:00 And get sent home.
0:32:09 Yeah. I’m like, let’s relax. And I made, you know, candles did my best, nice bath. And I heard
0:32:17 her let out a scream and it was all I could do to stop shaking, to turn the bath off. Cause we were
0:32:23 going straight to the fucking hospital. And then we went downstairs and in one of those New York moments,
0:32:28 there was a cab and a bunch of young people jumped in the cab and I screamed at them. I said, get out.
0:32:34 But my wife’s in labor and they immediately got out. Yeah. And that’s the one time you can kick people
0:32:42 out of a cab. And my only value add was when we got there, it was like, she was screaming. And they said,
0:32:48 and I said, get the epidural. And they said, it’s too late. The baby’s coming. And I’m like, get the fucking
0:32:56 epidural. I don’t care. I don’t care if the baby’s already out. Drug her up. And they said, fine.
0:32:59 Good stuff. And they went in, in the spine or whatever it is. And I think that was a good,
0:33:07 that was a good move. And then being the man I am, I couldn’t stand. I was so nauseous. I had,
0:33:11 they were more worried. At one point I felt like they were more worried about me than about, and they
0:33:15 kept saying to me, if you, you need to sit down. They said, because if you pass out, we’re, we’re,
0:33:21 we’re not going to do anything. We’re not, we’re focused on, we’re focused on the mother and the child
0:33:30 because they could tell, uh, I was, I was in a very, very, um, bad way. But anyways, as usual,
0:33:35 I’ll turn this back to me. There are currently, the studies are inconclusive. There have been some
0:33:39 large observational studies that have shown the prolonged acetaminophen use during pregnancy
0:33:43 is associated with higher rates of neurodevelopmental disorders in children,
0:33:47 but these studies aren’t controlled, meaning this hasn’t actually been proven yet.
0:33:52 Researchers at Yale are currently doing extensive research on the topic. And currently there’s no
0:33:57 safe alternative to Tylenol for pregnant women. Until more definitive research is published,
0:34:02 the FDA and the CDC will continue to recommend acetaminophen as the safest OTC pain reliever for
0:34:09 pregnant women. In 2006, one out of every 110 children was diagnosed with autism. Now it’s one
0:34:19 out of every 31. My thesis is here is that every wealthy family whose kid is, is a kid and is not
0:34:24 getting straight A’s and playing the violin by the time he’s 13 is clearly autistic. And I don’t mean to
0:34:32 diminish the real issue of autism, but every parent I know from a wealthy household has had their kid
0:34:38 tested for autism. I, I, it just feels to me like, and maybe you would say, well, that’s good. It’s
0:34:46 better. It’s better recognition. But I think a lot of it is just massive, a massive increase in
0:34:53 diagnosis, um, across the whole ecosystem. I mean, the answer, the treatment for autism when I was a kid
0:35:00 was sit the fuck down. I mean, it was just, there was no, I never heard the term anyways. I don’t, I’m,
0:35:05 I’m doing what you’re not supposed to do. I’m doing what RFK does and making assumptions with
0:35:10 having no credibility here. No, but it’s true. You know, in 2013, they expanded the definition of what
0:35:15 falls into the category of autism. So it used to only apply to people with really extreme cases,
0:35:21 you know, kids who are, let’s say nonverbal, who would never live independently, you know, like the
0:35:28 most severe cases. And now it includes Asperger’s. So like Elon Musk, right, is now on the spectrum.
0:35:33 And you hear this and people use it to describe anyone from like a guy you went on a date with who
0:35:38 didn’t make great eye contact to someone who has to live with their parents or in a group home for the
0:35:43 rest of their lives. So of course, you’re going to have a huge uptick in the number of people that
0:35:48 are being diagnosed with quote unquote autism. I also think there is an over-testing and over-diagnosing
0:35:54 problem, which we have, you know, across medicine generally. But in terms of the study on this,
0:35:58 So yes, there’s no causal relationship. What the administration is doing is they’re running with
0:36:04 the study and not noting the fact that they then took the results, which was a preliminary 5% risk,
0:36:09 but then they checked it by adjusting for siblings within the same family. So the same mother who’d
0:36:15 had the same kind of pregnancies. And then the outcome completely disappeared. It got the 5% risk
0:36:22 went down to 0%. So completely vaporized. That’s kind of floating all over social media. So you should go and
0:36:27 look at it in the Journal of American Medical Association. And they looked at over two and a
0:36:33 half million kids. It’s not that like they looked at 10 kids, you know, in Amish country. And we should
0:36:39 note that the Amish have autism and also they do have some vaccines. They also have it in Cuba. Those
0:36:45 were the examples that he was using yesterday. Also, we know some things about what causes autism
0:36:52 and it’s old dads. So are we banning Viagra or Cialis? Because like I dropped my daughter.
0:36:55 Those are fighting words. Those are fighting words, Jess.
0:36:57 I’m not trying to ruin your weekend. Oh my God.
0:37:03 But I dropped my kid off at pre-K and there are plenty of 65 year old dads there, you know, saying,
0:37:08 oh, your first day of the threes. And I’m thinking like you’re more of a risk than the fact that
0:37:11 I had a Diet Coke and some Tylenol. But no one talks about that.
0:37:14 It’s true. No, it’s it’s.
0:37:17 I’m not trying to take your drugs. I think you’re also not having more kids.
0:37:17 Yeah.
0:37:19 So not a problem for you.
0:37:26 But the store is closed. I think at the end of the day, what this is, is one Trump likes this sort of
0:37:34 kind of Maha movement and likes the attention and the controversy that RFK Jr. foments.
0:37:43 And more than anything, again, there are five or six people armed with AI in a room going over
0:37:50 every possibility to every day, release, announce something. It can be stupid. It can be crazy.
0:37:57 It might be a trip to hang out with the royal family. It might be a 50% tariff today on Brazil
0:38:05 to do one thing. And that is get him to mispronounce acetaminophen. And that’ll be that’ll dominate
0:38:12 the new cycle and push out the word people can easily understand and pronounce. And that is Epstein.
0:38:19 This is nothing but an attempt, my view. I mean, it does. Let me be clear. Let me give RFK Jr.
0:38:25 credit. He is an idiot. He is a dangerous man who will likely create, you know, with poor,
0:38:31 uninformed medical advice, has the potential to create more death, disease, and disability than
0:38:39 any cabinet member in history. But their job right now, everyone’s job, oh, good. You know, and they
0:38:43 weren’t happy about Kirk’s murder. Many of them were friends with him. I think there’s genuine concern
0:38:48 there. But this is great. This will keep Epstein out of the news for three, maybe four days. Oh,
0:38:53 we need something new. Let’s announce we’re banning or people shouldn’t take Tylenol.
0:39:00 Also, the lawsuit that’s coming their way is going to be absolutely massive. Talk about your crisis
0:39:10 comms situation from the Disney thing. Like what what must be going on in Kenview HQ right now?
0:39:16 So just as a side note, because I do think it’s relevant in my brand strategy course, we spend an
0:39:21 entire session on crisis management. And there’s really only three things you have to remember in
0:39:25 crisis management, but they’re difficult to do. They’re easy to say, but they’re difficult to do.
0:39:31 The first is to acknowledge the problem, to say we screwed up. This is an issue. Two, to have the top
0:39:37 guy or gal, take responsibility and be out in front. And then three, and this is the hard part,
0:39:45 overcorrect. And the case study that we always cite is Tylenol. And that is, I think it might’ve been in
0:39:52 the 80s in Illinois. Some madman had altered the bottles or, or perverted the bottles of Tylenol
0:40:00 and stuck in cyanide. And a family, someone took the cyanide, died. And then where this really gets
0:40:05 horrific is the family, after taking this person to the emergency room and then them being declared dead,
0:40:11 went home and took more Tylenol and they died. This is what Bob Iger would have done.
0:40:19 This is a limited instance, isolated instance, you know, madman. This is what Tylenol did.
0:40:27 They cleared the shelves within hours, if not days of every box of Tylenol nationally.
0:40:34 That must’ve been so expensive. And also when you walk up and you see no Tylenol on the shelf,
0:40:39 you think what’s wrong. And then you read the story. This was them saying, this was Johnson and
0:40:49 Johnson saying our brand is about trust. And even if it costs us shareholder value, we are fiduciaries
0:40:58 for Americans. Fucking Bob Iger. We have a responsibility to other people, not just our
0:41:05 shareholders. Stakeholders actually has meaning here versus shareholders. And what happened?
0:41:14 Tylenol was eventually not only recovered, but people started switching their pain relief to
0:41:17 Tylenol because they said, I like Johnson and Johnson. By the way, it’s a great company. It’s
0:41:23 one of the most valuable companies in the world. And I trust these guys. I trust these guys. It’s just
0:41:30 ironic. The ultimate example of crisis management, how to do it well, is Johnson and Johnson and
0:41:34 Tylenol. Anyways, with that, we’ll take one more quick break. Stay with us.
0:41:59 That’s weird. What if you aren’t any good at your job? What if they demo you instead? Okay. Don’t be
0:42:02 silly. You’re smart. You’re driven. You’re going to be late if you keep talking to the mirror.
0:42:08 This promotion is yours. Go get them. Starbucks. It’s never just coffee.
0:42:13 Sometimes it feels like people don’t know how to act anymore.
0:42:19 Post pandemic, I feel like people like are still like, oh, human contact. How do we do this?
0:42:24 People openly scrolling on their phones in movie theaters, like not even trying to hide
0:42:29 it anymore. I’ve seen someone like smoking a cigarette on the subway.
0:42:33 Like get away from me is the energy right now. I’m not even getting the pleasantries no more and
0:42:40 it hurts. If people seem less polite now, it all goes back to, yes, you guessed it, the pandemic.
0:42:45 Nearly half of the country believes that people’s behavior is more rude than it was before the
0:42:51 pandemic. This week on Explain It To Me, why we’ve become a nation of jerks. New episodes on Sundays,
0:42:53 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:43:00 Hey there, I’m David Pierce, and I’m going to tell you about our new show. It’s called Version History,
0:43:05 and on it every week we get together to remember the best, the worst, the weirdest, and the most
0:43:10 important technology in history. So if you were the person in your friend group who had a Zune instead
0:43:14 of an iPod, or if you’ve ever fallen off of a hoverboard, or if you just still have a bunch of
0:43:19 vines on repeat in your brain, you’re going to love this show. We’re launching in video on YouTube and
0:43:24 in audio wherever you get podcasts. That’s Version History. Check it out starting Sunday, October 5th,
0:43:25 and every Sunday after that. See you there.
0:43:34 Welcome back. Before we go, since returning to the White House, Trump has been busy redecorating and
0:43:40 remodeling. The Oval Office now gleams with gold, from the 18-foot ceiling to cherubs in the door frames.
0:43:46 Speaking to Fox News this spring, he said the room needed a little life and that no paint could match real
0:43:52 gold. The updates don’t stop there. Trump is planning a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, the first of its kind at the
0:43:59 White House, capable of hosting 650 guests. It will replace the East Wing and is funded by Trump and
0:44:03 private donors. Here’s a clip of Trump giving donors a tour of some of the renovations.
0:44:12 Thousands, actually, of pictures, beautiful paintings, some of them in the vault for over 100 years.
0:44:18 And we added a lot of 24-karat gold, and it’s very expensive and I think very beautiful. You know,
0:44:25 when you look at the fireplace, when you have a leader sitting on the one side and the other side, and you look
0:44:31 at what’s behind with the lights beaming, and that’s all 24-karat gold, and that’s why it just beams.
0:44:33 Was it not gold before this was?
0:44:38 No, it wasn’t. They didn’t have really any gold. They didn’t have gold.
0:44:48 I just, in those moments, it’s so clear to me that he really liked his life as a reality TV host.
0:44:56 And real estate developer. And it would have been nice if he had just stuck it out. And then he could
0:45:06 talk about the Liberace vibe for hours, and it wouldn’t have vast implications for the global order.
0:45:12 Because that’s really what’s going on here. And like, I’m always struck by, well, A, how
0:45:19 I don’t want to just say his taste is bad. It’s not my vibe. I’m like a mid-century modern type of gal.
0:45:27 That’s part of it, that’s part of it, that it’s so gaudy, and it’s so gold. But also that he has no sense of
0:45:36 history or desire to be part of presidential history. You know, this rewriting of everything and this
0:45:54 it’s so lacking in perspective on what role he’s actually playing in our history. I mean, people will
0:45:59 be studying him, obviously, for the rest of time. But the real giveaway is obviously that this is being
0:46:06 funded by private donors. So another way that you can gain access to Trump and to his family. You know,
0:46:11 we’ve obviously been talking about the $3, $4 billion that he’s made off of crypto. But I was
0:46:19 looking at how much his kids have made now since he’s been in. Eric Trump, $40 million last year to an
0:46:26 estimated $750 million. That’s a lot of crypto. Don Jr. is up to $500 million. He was at $50 million last
0:46:32 year. Barron Trump, even worth $150 million on his own at $19 million. And then obviously Jared Kushner,
0:46:39 he’s a billionaire now because of the investments coming in from the Mideast into his private equity
0:46:44 firm. They’re taking us to the cleaners. They are just laughing. They’re sitting on the set of CNBC,
0:46:51 you know, fielding these questions, just blatantly laughing at us that we are allowing this to happen and
0:46:59 that our ethics laws and our norms and frankly, our metal sometimes is not strong enough to meet the
0:47:05 moment of this level of grift. And that’s more disturbing to me than the gold-plated everything.
0:47:11 Yeah. So we know what happened here. He sat down with the interior decorator that they hired and he
0:47:20 said, I have a vision for this thing. I want it to look like an Iraqi whorehouse. And this thing is so
0:47:26 tacky. And he has violated the first rule of interior decoration. There was clearly no gay man involved in
0:47:35 this process. This was some straight white woman out of Bob Jones University whose husband is a donor.
0:47:43 This thing is so tacky. And by the way, Bosch, it’s not your house. It’s your residence for the next three
0:47:49 and a half years. And it’s supposed to be steeped in tradition such that people in 20 years from one party or the
0:47:57 other, that when people come into the house, they, they feel as if they’re in an embodiment of America and
0:48:05 American culture. And some people might say, well, gold is part of American culture. But again, this was, this came up
0:48:11 from AI. Give him a tour of the house. People will talk about it for a day and they won’t talk about
0:48:17 Epstein. Have you seen these TikToks and architectural digests? I hate them. I love art digests. I love
0:48:19 interior design. Oh, the welcome to my home?
0:48:25 Yeah. I’m going to pretend that I did this and not, not, not my hairdresser who became an interior
0:48:31 decorator. I’m going to pretend that me, David Schwimmer, depict out the, this painting and the,
0:48:37 I went to Spain to pick out the right fabrics and find, give me a fucking, I carry the Calcutta
0:48:42 marble myself on my back. I just, you know, I love the veining in this marble. I do like seeing in
0:48:47 their homes though. Oh, it’s totally. Yeah. It’s like great porn. It’s wealth porn, but it just
0:48:54 strikes me. I just think, do you think anybody, come on, do you think really anybody believes that
0:49:01 David Hasselhoff just has incredible taste around, you know, definitely not Hasselhoff around mid-century
0:49:08 modern architecture. So those things, I just wish they were forced to have the person or the people
0:49:15 who actually did this stuff. Um, anyways, but like you had to go around with your decorate. I mean,
0:49:22 some of them do give the appropriate shout outs, but yes, uh, they’re probably way too busy, uh,
0:49:28 to have played that level of a role in creating their abode. Um, it does not stop me from watching
0:49:33 it, especially ones around the New York city area where I’m like, Oh my God, if I just had
0:49:39 $12 million, that could be my brownstone in Brooklyn. I just want to say there are, you know,
0:49:44 it’s fun to make fun of him, uh, you know, and I enjoy it, but real implications of the fact that
0:49:51 this is the kind of stuff that Trump is focused on and the Tylenol ban. He is down 19 points on
0:49:56 handling the economy and 30 points on handling tariffs, even minus 10 on handling crime. And
0:50:02 Democrats are up nine on the generic ballot in the latest Washington post poll. So the house is on fire
0:50:08 while he’s caking it in gold. And, you know, I, I don’t want to get over my skis. I don’t know what
0:50:13 is going to happen in the midterms. I feel good going into it can always feel better. Democrats
0:50:18 keep working on the messaging, but they’re paying absolutely no attention to the things Americans
0:50:24 actually care about. A hundred percent. All right. That’s all for this episode, Jess. Thank you for
0:50:29 listening to Raging Moderates. This is a production of Prop G Media and the tribe, David Toledo.
0:50:37 That’s right. David Talodowski, our associate producers, Eric Jenicus, our technical directors,
0:50:42 Drew Burrows. Our engineer is William Flynn and our executive producer, as always, is Catherine Dillon.
0:50:47 Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts. You don’t miss an episode. Jess,
0:50:49 have a great rest of the week. You too.
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0:00:58 For a long time, there’s been a pretty clear
0:01:00 narrative around metabolism.
0:01:02 Wake up, America!
0:01:03 Are you guys ready to listen?
0:01:06 Or you want to get fatter and sicker?
0:01:11 But this week on Unexplainable, recent research has scientists wondering
0:01:14 whether some of the most basic things they took for granted are wrong.
0:01:18 I thought I understood metabolism, but I realized I didn’t.
0:01:20 And I really wanted to know, what is it?
0:01:22 Like, what is this really about?
0:01:25 Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Monday and Wednesday.
0:01:32 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:33 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:01:35 And I’m Jessica Tarlow.
0:01:37 Jess, how are you?
0:01:39 It’s time for banter.
0:01:41 Shana Tova.
0:01:41 Yes.
0:01:42 Let’s Jew it up.
0:01:44 Right back at you.
0:01:49 I did not know this, but our producer, David Toledo, grew up near me in the valley.
0:01:51 Oh, I didn’t know that either.
0:01:57 Yeah, I went to school with all my buddies who ended up populating my fraternity at ZBT,
0:02:00 where I ended up rushing because I heard they had live-in spaces,
0:02:02 and I didn’t want to live with my mom the rest of my life.
0:02:05 And it ended up being a Jewish fraternity.
0:02:08 And anyways, David, is David Jewish?
0:02:08 He doesn’t look Jewish.
0:02:09 He looks a little too cool.
0:02:10 No, he’s not.
0:02:11 Honorary, though.
0:02:16 So David’s like an employee and kind of a second son,
0:02:21 because he comes from this area that your friends populated.
0:02:25 Yeah, I immediately think of him as his son I never had.
0:02:26 You put words in my mouth.
0:02:30 Yes, David, you’re a huge disappointment to me,
0:02:32 and the best part of you ran down my leg.
0:02:35 That’s what I tell my sons.
0:02:36 Is that wrong?
0:02:38 Don’t say that during Rosh Hashanah.
0:02:38 Is that wrong?
0:02:39 Yeah.
0:02:40 You had to bring religion into it?
0:02:42 Well, yeah, we started with Shana Tova.
0:02:46 Yeah, no, if he’s going to be my son,
0:02:48 I’ve got to figure out a way to constantly communicate
0:02:50 what a disappointment it is to me.
0:02:51 As long as you leave him money,
0:02:53 which I think is what we’re all working towards.
0:02:56 Yeah, I plan to spend it all.
0:02:59 And I think I’m tracking.
0:03:02 I think I’m kind of leaving with almost nothing.
0:03:04 Do they know that?
0:03:07 My kids, well, your kids are too young.
0:03:09 My kids are shockingly,
0:03:11 I don’t know where they got it.
0:03:13 They have really good values around money.
0:03:14 I took my son.
0:03:16 You know, I want to live my life.
0:03:19 The bad news is talking to my kids for a minute,
0:03:21 and I think you’ll find this, or I found it.
0:03:22 I have a favorite.
0:03:23 That’s the bad news.
0:03:24 What?
0:03:25 Yeah, I have a favorite.
0:03:27 You know we’re in public.
0:03:27 Yeah, I know.
0:03:28 I know.
0:03:28 Whatever.
0:03:30 At this point, you know, whatever.
0:03:31 You’re going to counsel me, Bob Iger.
0:03:35 So, but that’s the bad news.
0:03:36 The good news is it switches.
0:03:40 Like, I go through phases where I’m really into an Alec phase,
0:03:41 and I’m really into a Nolan phase.
0:03:49 And the reason I think I’m so fond of my oldest is that he’s a mini me.
0:03:54 I mean, literally, like, when I hug him, it’s like hugging my 18-year-old self.
0:03:56 And he just looks like me.
0:03:58 He kind of acts like me.
0:04:00 He’s just me as a younger man.
0:04:05 And then the reason I’m so sort of just fascinated by his younger brother, Nolan,
0:04:08 is it’s as if we’re from a different species.
0:04:12 He’s just so, he couldn’t be more different than me, and I just find him.
0:04:13 Is he just your partner?
0:04:16 Like, is he a total reflection of her?
0:04:18 Or he’s an alien to everyone?
0:04:23 Yeah, he’s, I guess, but I didn’t know her as a child.
0:04:26 So, he’s just so different.
0:04:28 I mean, I’m just, he doesn’t look like me.
0:04:31 He doesn’t, in no way, behaves like me, interested in different things.
0:04:35 And it’s just kind of fascinating to watch someone see the world
0:04:37 with a totally different perspective than yours.
0:04:39 So, but, yeah, I’m…
0:04:40 It’s the fun of this, right?
0:04:41 It is the fun of it.
0:04:42 Yeah.
0:04:46 Anyways, this has been an unusual banter,
0:04:50 but I think we should get to the actual news of the day.
0:04:51 Slow news day.
0:04:54 We’re going to talk about why Jimmy Kimmel returned,
0:04:57 Trump’s unproven medical advice on autism,
0:04:59 acetaminophen, you fucking idiot,
0:05:03 and how the White House is being remodeled in Trump’s taste.
0:05:05 All right, let’s get into it.
0:05:07 On Monday, we got a Rosh Hashanah miracle.
0:05:10 There’s that, there’s that David Toledo.
0:05:11 That’s right.
0:05:13 There’s that Judaism creeping in.
0:05:18 ABC and the Walt Disney Company announced Jimmy Kimmel would return after a brief suspension
0:05:20 that set off a nationwide backlash.
0:05:24 Media critics, Hollywood unions, celebrities, and even some Republican leaders,
0:05:29 including Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, condemned it as an attack on free speech.
0:05:33 Online, fans threatened boycotts of Disney, Next Star, and Sinclair Station,
0:05:37 streaming the decision as a dangerous precedent for political pressure on the media.
0:05:41 Jess, what do you think of Disney’s walking this decision back?
0:05:43 Brendan Carr really fucked up, huh?
0:05:49 I mean, the need to run to get in front of a camera
0:05:58 will always be the downfall of these Trump appointees and people in Trump’s orbit.
0:06:02 If he had just kept his mouth closed, he perhaps could have gotten away with it
0:06:10 and found some other way to signal to, you know, Sinclair and Next Star what was being planned.
0:06:16 But I think there’s a good pro-democracy message laced in here, which is you are not powerless.
0:06:21 And that has been the big concern since Trump came back into office.
0:06:23 Like, what can we do?
0:06:26 And you can cancel your subscription.
0:06:30 If you’re one of those adults that wants a Disney wedding,
0:06:33 you can cancel your $150,000 wedding.
0:06:33 And guess what?
0:06:35 They’re going to pay attention to that.
0:06:40 I also think, you know, it’s a very bad day for those folks who were arguing that
0:06:46 this was just a straight-up business decision because it’s very clear that that is not the case
0:06:53 and that Brendan Carr played such an important role in pulling Jimmy Kimmel off air
0:06:55 and then getting him back on air.
0:06:59 So net-net, you know, good day for democracy, good day for the First Amendment.
0:07:01 A lot of pressure on Jimmy Kimmel, though.
0:07:06 It’ll be interesting to see, you know, what he has in his monologue.
0:07:10 And when we recorded that rapid response video, organic plug for our YouTube.
0:07:15 Please subscribe to the Raging Moderates YouTube channel because Scott and I are posting there
0:07:15 all the time.
0:07:20 You know, I said, what’s been nice about this is it’s really felt like a grassroots movement.
0:07:27 I think that that letter that the ACLU organized with over, you know, 400 artists and entertainers,
0:07:32 actors, et cetera, that signed on Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Selena Gomez, et cetera, made a big impact.
0:07:38 And things like Zoran Mamdani saying that he wouldn’t participate in a town hall that would
0:07:41 be televised on ABC because ABC doesn’t support the First Amendment.
0:07:45 You know, people hear about those things and they take stock of it.
0:07:50 And ABC has already capitulated to Trump once in paying the settlement over George Stephanopoulos.
0:07:54 And hopefully this is the start of, you know, saying I’m not so fast.
0:07:56 I’m not going to bend the knee that easily.
0:07:58 What’s what’s your updated thinking?
0:08:06 Yeah, I just I’m fascinated by corporate communications and corporate communications has been one of the
0:08:09 greatest ROIs for corporate America.
0:08:15 And that is they are spending money on AI, obviously increasing that, increasing money, you know,
0:08:17 on direct to consumer technologies, what have you.
0:08:23 But the greatest increase on a percentage level across corporate America has been in corporate
0:08:24 comms.
0:08:31 And that is they recognize that increasingly companies used to a stock that was in the steel
0:08:37 sector or in the weapon sector or in the technology sector would trade within a fairly narrow bound
0:08:38 of a multiple in EBITDA.
0:08:45 And who traded at the high end usually had better positioning, better brands and a CEO who’s a
0:08:46 little bit more charismatic.
0:08:54 Now, the band of the multiple on EBITDA or earnings is so dramatic and much of it is
0:08:56 about the storytelling capabilities of the CEO.
0:09:00 Amazon was essentially a company built on a story.
0:09:05 And that is, if you read Amazon’s or Jeff Bezos 1997 letter to shareholders, you just wanted
0:09:07 to go out and buy stock.
0:09:10 And you did, which gave them access to such incredibly cheap capital.
0:09:16 They could buy more planes, build more warehouses, hire more logistics people and get you basically
0:09:20 anything in the world for free with Amazon Prime within 48 hours.
0:09:24 And no one else had the capital to go to war with Amazon.
0:09:26 And they just kind of blew everyone out of the water.
0:09:34 So you’re sort of your storytelling capabilities here have become incredibly powerful.
0:09:39 And so corporate communications departments have been just booming and hiring more people.
0:09:40 It’s all about the story.
0:09:43 And then when Alexander Karp, is that his name?
0:09:48 The CEO of Palantir does this really innovative thing where he walks around his office doing
0:09:49 the earnings call live on Instagram.
0:09:52 Everyone’s like, wow, this company is so innovative.
0:09:56 And the company trades at a hundred times revenues, which makes absolutely no sense.
0:10:05 So, and also Elon Musk commands one to $3 billion in earned media by just being crazy and being
0:10:06 on Twitter all the time.
0:10:11 And as a huge advantage versus General Motors, and no one really cares what Mary Barra says
0:10:13 or threads or tweets.
0:10:19 So Tesla gets all this incredible free advertising because of, in some ways, storytelling or just
0:10:20 having a blow horn.
0:10:26 So, this press release from Disney, it can go wrong, though.
0:10:32 And this press release I would describe as being gangbanged by what must have been two dozen
0:10:38 crisis management experts who were parsing every word and ended up with a press release that
0:10:41 was milquetoast and totally disingenuous.
0:10:47 They said after discussions with Jimmy Kimmel, we further understand, you know, we decided to
0:10:48 bring him back.
0:10:51 They don’t give a flying fuck what Jimmy Kimmel thought.
0:10:51 I mean, what?
0:10:54 They didn’t think to do this before they fired him.
0:10:59 And then they’d also said that because of some ill-timed and insensitive comments, they decided
0:10:59 to bring the show.
0:11:02 Ill-timed and insensitive.
0:11:10 We have said, there isn’t a, I don’t think there is a progressive media personality or even
0:11:15 a conservative comedian who hasn’t said things much more, quote unquote, insensitive.
0:11:21 And here’s the thing, you don’t need a First Amendment when people say things slightly insensitive.
0:11:25 You need a First Amendment when people say really stupid, provocative, angry shit.
0:11:26 There are some limits.
0:11:27 You can’t incite violence.
0:11:32 You can’t spread lies about somebody that hurt their economic livelihood.
0:11:33 That’s defamation.
0:11:38 But other than that, a hallmark of a free society is you can pretty much say anything about pretty
0:11:41 much anyone at pretty much any time.
0:11:48 And so the infraction here of not even a speeding ticket and then firing him and then pretending
0:11:54 that after speaking to him and that these were ill-timed comments, they’re not, they continue
0:11:54 to lie.
0:11:56 This is the bottom line.
0:11:58 This is about money.
0:11:59 Full stop.
0:12:05 And that is they recognized, someone called and said, our site is crashing because so many
0:12:09 people are trying to cancel Hulu, ESPN, and Disney+.
0:12:13 We are getting calls from our cruise line saying people are canceling.
0:12:20 We just heard from, I don’t know, Zendaya that she doesn’t, she’s, her agent is worried that
0:12:25 she should pull out of a movie because of what is going on here.
0:12:28 And they got together and said, oh, it’s costing money.
0:12:30 Let’s backtrack.
0:12:38 This is a prime example of how societies continue a downward spiral into fascism.
0:12:40 They have a strong man.
0:12:45 And this isn’t the first time Bob Iger has really fucked up.
0:12:51 You know, he’s the one who initially started this bullshit by settling with, you know, over
0:12:54 the whole George Stephanopoulos, settling with Trump.
0:12:58 And when you throw, you know, when you think the alligators around you and if you just cut
0:13:01 off a finger and give it to them, be clear, they’re going to come back for the arm.
0:13:03 And so they started this.
0:13:05 They were the first ones.
0:13:10 They could have been the front lines and said no and sent a signal.
0:13:16 And just FYI, Jess, I’m going to buy $10 million in equity and then be the beneficial
0:13:22 owner of another $10 million in Disney stock, file a 13D to replace the entire board and fire
0:13:27 Bob Iger, who has shown that he is not only a terrible fiduciary for all Americans, has
0:13:32 no fidelity to the principles that have made him a billionaire so he could walk around in
0:13:35 cashmere sweaters and go to the Oscars.
0:13:37 But he should be fired.
0:13:39 They fired the wrong guy.
0:13:41 This guy.
0:13:42 OK.
0:13:45 Any one of these things you could say, all right, he made a mistake.
0:13:52 This guy is clearly the 73 year old Bob Iger clearly doesn’t understand the atmosphere.
0:13:56 Let’s let’s ignore the fact that he is a terrible American.
0:14:01 Bob Iger, you are a terrible American.
0:14:05 You have turned your back on the ideals and the principles that have made you a fucking
0:14:09 billionaire and have given you an extraordinary life.
0:14:16 But in addition to that, he clearly has lost all ability to read the room and read the culture
0:14:23 and understand new technology and new platforms and what it means to be in the business of media.
0:14:25 There has never been.
0:14:31 I can’t think of a CEO in the Fortune 500 that is more ripe to be fired.
0:14:37 There absolutely is someone at Disney right now that should be canceled and it should be the
0:14:40 CEO and also there should be more scrutiny on the board.
0:14:48 A board is there to save the CEO from him or herself to go, this could be really bad for us.
0:14:53 And instead, they were listening entirely to their what they thought were their consumers.
0:14:59 And that is the broadcast station, Sinclair and Nextar, who distribute Jimmy Kimmel across
0:15:00 local TV stations.
0:15:07 But this indicates to me that Bob Iger absolutely needs to go.
0:15:14 A terrible American, a terrible fiduciary for shareholders and someone who has whose
0:15:19 judgment that expiration date has clearly passed.
0:15:20 Your thoughts?
0:15:23 Well, I mean, you made a pretty clear case there.
0:15:29 I wonder if there’ll be some scrutiny of Dana Walden as well, who I think is the one that has
0:15:35 really the close relationship with Kimmel and was the one who went and met with him right after the
0:15:41 Brendan Carr comments, etc. But I’m sure, and I don’t know Bob Iger personally, but he’s been
0:15:47 rumored to have pretty thin skin. And seeing Michael Eisner, the ex-CEO of Disney, coming after him and
0:15:53 saying, you know, what a capitulation. How could you possibly do something like this? Really stung.
0:15:59 I’m curious to get your take on the fact that Sinclair is saying that they are not going to
0:16:04 start airing Jimmy Kimmel again. And they’re in charge of 31 of the affiliates, right, that would
0:16:10 normally air it. When they took Jimmy off air last week, they aired a Charlie Kirk kind of documentary
0:16:17 that made him out to be a prophet. The CEO of Sinclair donated a quarter of a million dollars to
0:16:25 turning point and I believe is waiting on Kimmel’s donation, which I imagine is not coming. I could
0:16:32 see a world in which Kimmel makes a donation to a cause in Charlie Kirk’s memory or something like
0:16:37 that. But I assume that he’s not going to just say, oh, yeah, you know, you said jump. I say how high and
0:16:43 now I’m going to give, you know, gobs of money to an organization just because you said so versus it’s
0:16:49 something that I really believe in. What do you think the future is of the deal that actually set
0:16:54 all of this off? Because, you know, Brendan Carr was speaking on Monday at the Concordia summit and
0:16:59 tried to backtrack and say, you know, I wasn’t, you know, right out of Goodfellas, as Ted Cruz put it.
0:17:03 I was just saying that the hard way is when you have to actually lodge an FCC complaint.
0:17:08 Everyone sees through it. Donald Trump sees through it, I’m sure, as well and knows exactly what’s going
0:17:14 on here. But do you do you think the merger will still go through or what are the kind of business
0:17:19 implications of Sinclair saying we’re not going to be airing Kimmel? I think the merger will likely go
0:17:24 through because the merger is a function of consolidation and cost cutting, which is happening
0:17:31 across this industry because, you know, their audience is literally dying. Local TV stations, people
0:17:37 tune into local TV stations to see a guy who’s in his 60s or 70s that they trust and a hot woman in
0:17:43 her 30s in a sleeveless dress to find the weather, basically, you know, to get the weather. And the
0:17:50 only reason these things have survived is that two or three out of every 24 months, they quintuple their
0:17:56 ad rates and they get a tsunami of political spending because political campaigns are under the impression
0:18:02 that old people vote and that old people still watch the local news. So these things get sold out and
0:18:09 they basically lose money 18 to 21 months a year. It’s like specialty retail. The dirty secret of
0:18:18 special retail is that they lose money for basically 20, 50 weeks, 48 weeks a year. And then from
0:18:23 Thanksgiving to Christmas, they just make a ridiculous shit ton of money. The same is true or becoming true
0:18:27 these local news stations. And that is they make a lot of money during the election. However, however,
0:18:34 I think Trump has changed that. And that is, and it’s the same reason MSNBC and CNN are dying. And that is
0:18:43 a 70 year old white woman. She knows who she’s voting for. She’s driving her old, you know, she’s driving
0:18:51 her, you know, her 2012 Audi A6, which is just fine for her. She doesn’t need a car and she’s spending
0:18:57 money on healthcare some time with her grandkids and saving money. Advertisers hate those people.
0:19:04 The politicians used to love them. And since Trump showed that you can win presidency by going on
0:19:12 podcasts and ignoring cable news and broadcasts, ad supported broadcast, you’re now seeing, and I’m
0:19:17 talking my own book here, but it doesn’t mean it’s not true. Ad rates have gone through the roof and ad
0:19:23 spending on podcasts have gone through the roof. And I think you’re going to see a dramatic transfer
0:19:29 of capital from these local news stations to, as always, Google, Meta, but also podcasts, which are
0:19:34 growing faster than any ad supported medium out there. So what do you have to do when you’re in a
0:19:39 declining business? They can still be good businesses, but you have to consolidate. So Sinclair
0:19:46 and Tegna will merge. And then there will be two CFOs and whoever plays golf with the new CEO will get
0:19:50 to hold his job. And the other will get a decent package and get out of there, but they will basically
0:19:56 go in and they will have, you know, if there’s 2000 people of corporate at one and 1500 and other
0:20:03 3500, that’ll go down to 2400 or 2300. It’s what happens to mature industries that are in decline. It’s
0:20:08 consolidation and cost cutting. So that’ll still happen. The question is, and this goes back
0:20:13 to what I find most encouraging about all of this is, you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about a
0:20:18 national economic strike where consumers, especially wealthy consumers make a concerted effort to slow
0:20:25 their spend or target the slowing of their spend. This was exactly that. It wasn’t that Bob Iger or
0:20:29 anyone on the Disney board woke up one day and say, you know, I’ve rethought this decision. I’ve listened
0:20:34 to our customers. I’ve talked to some people and I realized what we did is wrong. And to step back from
0:20:38 the wrong decision or the wrong direction is a step in the right direction. No, it was none of that.
0:20:44 It was, oh, fuck. People are flexing their economic muscles and canceling Disney plus.
0:20:52 So people and also artists could say if Jerry Seinfeld raised his hand and said, and he may not
0:20:56 have the ability here because he’s probably sold his rights and I don’t want Seinfeld on Sinclair
0:21:03 or Tegna stations, you know, or Nexstar or whatever it is that would scare the shit out of them.
0:21:07 They’d be like, OK, maybe we should get out of the business of censorship.
0:21:13 So the the the most exciting thing about this, the most heartening thing about this
0:21:19 is that people, consumers are starting to flex their consumer muscles. And at the end of the day,
0:21:25 everything these people do. And this is one of the reasons we love private companies and capitalism
0:21:32 is that they are totally focused on nothing but the value of their shares. Full stop, full stop.
0:21:40 And the unfortunate thing is that I don’t think they recognize that they haven’t read World War II
0:21:46 history. They haven’t read, you know, basically how people are perceived. And that is people are
0:21:54 actually more hostile towards the cowards than the strong man themselves. And that is, you know,
0:21:58 you hate Trump or you love him. That’s not changing. The people who are really going to ruin
0:22:05 their reputations are the people who are seen as cowards that facilitated this slow burn to fascism,
0:22:12 the people who enabled it, the people who who their whole lives pretended to give a flying fuck about
0:22:17 America and American values and wrap themselves in the flag when it was convenient. And then when they
0:22:20 were tested, they failed.
0:22:26 I hope you’re right. And we’re going to take a quick break so we can talk about this war on Tylenol.
0:22:33 But I think that same sentiment will be very valid in discussing all of those Republican senators that put
0:22:42 Bobby Kennedy Jr. in one of the most important roles in America and the vast implications for the
0:22:47 health and safety of Americans, especially American women. So let’s take a quick break. Stay with us.
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0:25:21 Americans are notoriously unhealthy. Why? And what can we do about it? I’m Henry Blodgett,
0:25:28 and this week on Solutions, I put that question to Dr. Jessica Nurik, a dietician with a PhD in
0:25:33 nutrition science who has gone viral for her criticism of the Maha movement.
0:25:41 The movement is really focused on corruption and ingredient swaps, like changing the color additive
0:25:46 in candy or fruit loops is not going to make a meaningful difference on health.
0:25:51 So what would make a difference? And what can you do to be even healthier now?
0:25:55 Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett wherever you get your podcasts.
0:26:07 Welcome back. Trump announced Monday that the FDA will alert doctors that acetaminophen used during
0:26:12 pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism, urging women to use Tylenol only
0:26:18 when medically necessary, such as for a fever. Experts caution that autism has multiple causes and the
0:26:24 science linking Tylenol to the disorder is far from settled. Acetaminophen remains the safest
0:26:29 over-the-counter option for pain or fever in pregnancy, while alternatives, including ibuprofen or
0:26:37 aspirin can be risky and untreated fevers can also harm mother and baby. Tylenol maker Kenview said
0:26:42 there is no credible evidence linking the drug to autism and urged pregnant women to consult their
0:26:47 health care providers before taking any medication. Let’s listen to what Trump had to say.
0:26:52 But there’s a very strong recommendation, maybe stronger for me than from the group, because
0:26:58 they’re waiting for certain studies. I don’t, I just want to say, I want to say it like it is.
0:27:06 Don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it. If you just can’t, I mean, it’s just fight like hell not to
0:27:12 take it. There may be a point where you have to and that you’ll, you have to work out with yourself. So
0:27:21 don’t take Tylenol. I hate him. I just, I mean, I don’t really mean that. I’m not a hateful person, but
0:27:33 the anti-science angle, the stupidity, the cruelty. I mean, have you ever witnessed a group of people so
0:27:41 hell-bent on making the lives of women harder than the Republican Party right now? You know,
0:27:45 between the Dobbs decision and just kind of saying, if you, you know, if you live in a state that doesn’t
0:27:51 really care about women’s reproductive health, that’s on you. Cutting people’s Medicaid, millions
0:27:58 of kids born every year on Medicaid, rural hospitals closing. I mean, I’m watching all these men. There
0:28:03 was one woman in there and I don’t know how she didn’t just say like, F you all. But I’m thinking
0:28:10 about that drive uptown to go and deliver. My water had broken. I’m sitting in the front seat on a towel
0:28:17 and Brian is trying to find the perfect song, right? Like for our ride up the West Side Highway,
0:28:24 as if I care that I like, you know, drive into the hospital listening to Fleetwood Mac and like it
0:28:30 crescendos at exactly the right moment. And I’m just thinking you have never in your life experienced pain
0:28:36 like what I am feeling at this moment. And you play D1 football like you’ve had the shit kicked out of
0:28:40 you a lot and you still don’t understand what’s going on. It’s not like Brian didn’t understand
0:28:45 that he was very generous and kind through the entire pregnancy. But you’re watching these guys.
0:28:54 It’s like Tylenol is the one thing that a woman can take during this nine month period where you have to
0:29:03 give your body over to somebody else. And it’s all that you think about is caring for this little
0:29:08 person that you are going to love more than anything else in the entire world. The guilt that women feel
0:29:16 for eating a piece of salami on a charcuterie tray. I, you know, I had to, I went to my doctor to say,
0:29:21 is it okay if I have a diet Coke? Right. Because that that’s my vice. You know, some people like
0:29:27 Javi, I wanted one diet Coke a day and she had to sit down with me and say, yes, it’s fine. You know,
0:29:31 and I said, but what if, but what if, you know, women don’t have a glass of wine in America, even
0:29:36 though all over Europe, they’re more comfortable with it. But the anxiety about what could happen
0:29:42 and that God forbid something is wrong with your baby. And you think back to that night where you had
0:29:47 a glass of Chardonnay just because you needed it while you were watching love is blind and the
0:29:54 implications of that. And these guys just stand up there with nothing grounded in science. I mean,
0:30:00 every medical association has to release a statement right after saying, do not believe your government
0:30:06 about what they’re telling you. I mean, there’s a much higher risk to the mother and the baby if you
0:30:11 have a fever. And again, you can’t get rid of a fever any other way during pregnancy than taking
0:30:17 Tylenol. And they just stand there. They’re so smug and that Trump is vacillating between don’t
0:30:22 do this. And also, I don’t really know, like I’m not a doctor, his usual. And of course, they’re not
0:30:29 mentioning that the drug that they’re, uh, they’re the cure that they’re pushing this Luvachorin as a
0:30:36 cure for autism, not borne out by any studies, by the way, is sold by Dr. Oz’s supplement company,
0:30:42 Hyherb. So again, there’s always a grift element to it. So he’s going to get a kickback. Bobby
0:30:46 Kennedy Jr. probably going to get a kickback because he loves all of these trial lawyers,
0:30:52 right? You know, he’s made millions of dollars off of bringing frivolous lawsuits against drug
0:30:56 makers. And Elizabeth Warren, rightfully so, grilled him in his confirmation hearings about
0:31:02 it. He had nothing to say, stammering through it. I’m, I’m upset. How do you feel?
0:31:06 Yeah. Obviously you have more personal experience here.
0:31:11 No, but you’ve loved somebody that’s going through this. I mean, can you imagine if someone
0:31:16 had said, Oh no, you tough it out. Just tough it out.
0:31:22 I don’t know. I mean, it was weird when my partner’s water broke.
0:31:24 Yeah, it is weird, right?
0:31:30 Well, I don’t know. It’s like my first dog, I never actually believed this dog was ever going
0:31:35 to die. I couldn’t imagine it. And the same with my partner’s water breaking. I just never believed
0:31:41 it was actually going to happen. And then when it happened, we had been told that, that rookies
0:31:48 during a first time pregnancy often showed up way too early that they, that they, the thing takes a
0:31:54 while, relax, you’re going to be fine. So she broke her water. So the first thing I did was I ran a bath
0:31:59 for and said, all right, let’s not be those idiots and jump to the, get to the hospital too early.
0:32:00 And get sent home.
0:32:09 Yeah. I’m like, let’s relax. And I made, you know, candles did my best, nice bath. And I heard
0:32:17 her let out a scream and it was all I could do to stop shaking, to turn the bath off. Cause we were
0:32:23 going straight to the fucking hospital. And then we went downstairs and in one of those New York moments,
0:32:28 there was a cab and a bunch of young people jumped in the cab and I screamed at them. I said, get out.
0:32:34 But my wife’s in labor and they immediately got out. Yeah. And that’s the one time you can kick people
0:32:42 out of a cab. And my only value add was when we got there, it was like, she was screaming. And they said,
0:32:48 and I said, get the epidural. And they said, it’s too late. The baby’s coming. And I’m like, get the fucking
0:32:56 epidural. I don’t care. I don’t care if the baby’s already out. Drug her up. And they said, fine.
0:32:59 Good stuff. And they went in, in the spine or whatever it is. And I think that was a good,
0:33:07 that was a good move. And then being the man I am, I couldn’t stand. I was so nauseous. I had,
0:33:11 they were more worried. At one point I felt like they were more worried about me than about, and they
0:33:15 kept saying to me, if you, you need to sit down. They said, because if you pass out, we’re, we’re,
0:33:21 we’re not going to do anything. We’re not, we’re focused on, we’re focused on the mother and the child
0:33:30 because they could tell, uh, I was, I was in a very, very, um, bad way. But anyways, as usual,
0:33:35 I’ll turn this back to me. There are currently, the studies are inconclusive. There have been some
0:33:39 large observational studies that have shown the prolonged acetaminophen use during pregnancy
0:33:43 is associated with higher rates of neurodevelopmental disorders in children,
0:33:47 but these studies aren’t controlled, meaning this hasn’t actually been proven yet.
0:33:52 Researchers at Yale are currently doing extensive research on the topic. And currently there’s no
0:33:57 safe alternative to Tylenol for pregnant women. Until more definitive research is published,
0:34:02 the FDA and the CDC will continue to recommend acetaminophen as the safest OTC pain reliever for
0:34:09 pregnant women. In 2006, one out of every 110 children was diagnosed with autism. Now it’s one
0:34:19 out of every 31. My thesis is here is that every wealthy family whose kid is, is a kid and is not
0:34:24 getting straight A’s and playing the violin by the time he’s 13 is clearly autistic. And I don’t mean to
0:34:32 diminish the real issue of autism, but every parent I know from a wealthy household has had their kid
0:34:38 tested for autism. I, I, it just feels to me like, and maybe you would say, well, that’s good. It’s
0:34:46 better. It’s better recognition. But I think a lot of it is just massive, a massive increase in
0:34:53 diagnosis, um, across the whole ecosystem. I mean, the answer, the treatment for autism when I was a kid
0:35:00 was sit the fuck down. I mean, it was just, there was no, I never heard the term anyways. I don’t, I’m,
0:35:05 I’m doing what you’re not supposed to do. I’m doing what RFK does and making assumptions with
0:35:10 having no credibility here. No, but it’s true. You know, in 2013, they expanded the definition of what
0:35:15 falls into the category of autism. So it used to only apply to people with really extreme cases,
0:35:21 you know, kids who are, let’s say nonverbal, who would never live independently, you know, like the
0:35:28 most severe cases. And now it includes Asperger’s. So like Elon Musk, right, is now on the spectrum.
0:35:33 And you hear this and people use it to describe anyone from like a guy you went on a date with who
0:35:38 didn’t make great eye contact to someone who has to live with their parents or in a group home for the
0:35:43 rest of their lives. So of course, you’re going to have a huge uptick in the number of people that
0:35:48 are being diagnosed with quote unquote autism. I also think there is an over-testing and over-diagnosing
0:35:54 problem, which we have, you know, across medicine generally. But in terms of the study on this,
0:35:58 So yes, there’s no causal relationship. What the administration is doing is they’re running with
0:36:04 the study and not noting the fact that they then took the results, which was a preliminary 5% risk,
0:36:09 but then they checked it by adjusting for siblings within the same family. So the same mother who’d
0:36:15 had the same kind of pregnancies. And then the outcome completely disappeared. It got the 5% risk
0:36:22 went down to 0%. So completely vaporized. That’s kind of floating all over social media. So you should go and
0:36:27 look at it in the Journal of American Medical Association. And they looked at over two and a
0:36:33 half million kids. It’s not that like they looked at 10 kids, you know, in Amish country. And we should
0:36:39 note that the Amish have autism and also they do have some vaccines. They also have it in Cuba. Those
0:36:45 were the examples that he was using yesterday. Also, we know some things about what causes autism
0:36:52 and it’s old dads. So are we banning Viagra or Cialis? Because like I dropped my daughter.
0:36:55 Those are fighting words. Those are fighting words, Jess.
0:36:57 I’m not trying to ruin your weekend. Oh my God.
0:37:03 But I dropped my kid off at pre-K and there are plenty of 65 year old dads there, you know, saying,
0:37:08 oh, your first day of the threes. And I’m thinking like you’re more of a risk than the fact that
0:37:11 I had a Diet Coke and some Tylenol. But no one talks about that.
0:37:14 It’s true. No, it’s it’s.
0:37:17 I’m not trying to take your drugs. I think you’re also not having more kids.
0:37:17 Yeah.
0:37:19 So not a problem for you.
0:37:26 But the store is closed. I think at the end of the day, what this is, is one Trump likes this sort of
0:37:34 kind of Maha movement and likes the attention and the controversy that RFK Jr. foments.
0:37:43 And more than anything, again, there are five or six people armed with AI in a room going over
0:37:50 every possibility to every day, release, announce something. It can be stupid. It can be crazy.
0:37:57 It might be a trip to hang out with the royal family. It might be a 50% tariff today on Brazil
0:38:05 to do one thing. And that is get him to mispronounce acetaminophen. And that’ll be that’ll dominate
0:38:12 the new cycle and push out the word people can easily understand and pronounce. And that is Epstein.
0:38:19 This is nothing but an attempt, my view. I mean, it does. Let me be clear. Let me give RFK Jr.
0:38:25 credit. He is an idiot. He is a dangerous man who will likely create, you know, with poor,
0:38:31 uninformed medical advice, has the potential to create more death, disease, and disability than
0:38:39 any cabinet member in history. But their job right now, everyone’s job, oh, good. You know, and they
0:38:43 weren’t happy about Kirk’s murder. Many of them were friends with him. I think there’s genuine concern
0:38:48 there. But this is great. This will keep Epstein out of the news for three, maybe four days. Oh,
0:38:53 we need something new. Let’s announce we’re banning or people shouldn’t take Tylenol.
0:39:00 Also, the lawsuit that’s coming their way is going to be absolutely massive. Talk about your crisis
0:39:10 comms situation from the Disney thing. Like what what must be going on in Kenview HQ right now?
0:39:16 So just as a side note, because I do think it’s relevant in my brand strategy course, we spend an
0:39:21 entire session on crisis management. And there’s really only three things you have to remember in
0:39:25 crisis management, but they’re difficult to do. They’re easy to say, but they’re difficult to do.
0:39:31 The first is to acknowledge the problem, to say we screwed up. This is an issue. Two, to have the top
0:39:37 guy or gal, take responsibility and be out in front. And then three, and this is the hard part,
0:39:45 overcorrect. And the case study that we always cite is Tylenol. And that is, I think it might’ve been in
0:39:52 the 80s in Illinois. Some madman had altered the bottles or, or perverted the bottles of Tylenol
0:40:00 and stuck in cyanide. And a family, someone took the cyanide, died. And then where this really gets
0:40:05 horrific is the family, after taking this person to the emergency room and then them being declared dead,
0:40:11 went home and took more Tylenol and they died. This is what Bob Iger would have done.
0:40:19 This is a limited instance, isolated instance, you know, madman. This is what Tylenol did.
0:40:27 They cleared the shelves within hours, if not days of every box of Tylenol nationally.
0:40:34 That must’ve been so expensive. And also when you walk up and you see no Tylenol on the shelf,
0:40:39 you think what’s wrong. And then you read the story. This was them saying, this was Johnson and
0:40:49 Johnson saying our brand is about trust. And even if it costs us shareholder value, we are fiduciaries
0:40:58 for Americans. Fucking Bob Iger. We have a responsibility to other people, not just our
0:41:05 shareholders. Stakeholders actually has meaning here versus shareholders. And what happened?
0:41:14 Tylenol was eventually not only recovered, but people started switching their pain relief to
0:41:17 Tylenol because they said, I like Johnson and Johnson. By the way, it’s a great company. It’s
0:41:23 one of the most valuable companies in the world. And I trust these guys. I trust these guys. It’s just
0:41:30 ironic. The ultimate example of crisis management, how to do it well, is Johnson and Johnson and
0:41:34 Tylenol. Anyways, with that, we’ll take one more quick break. Stay with us.
0:41:59 That’s weird. What if you aren’t any good at your job? What if they demo you instead? Okay. Don’t be
0:42:02 silly. You’re smart. You’re driven. You’re going to be late if you keep talking to the mirror.
0:42:08 This promotion is yours. Go get them. Starbucks. It’s never just coffee.
0:42:13 Sometimes it feels like people don’t know how to act anymore.
0:42:19 Post pandemic, I feel like people like are still like, oh, human contact. How do we do this?
0:42:24 People openly scrolling on their phones in movie theaters, like not even trying to hide
0:42:29 it anymore. I’ve seen someone like smoking a cigarette on the subway.
0:42:33 Like get away from me is the energy right now. I’m not even getting the pleasantries no more and
0:42:40 it hurts. If people seem less polite now, it all goes back to, yes, you guessed it, the pandemic.
0:42:45 Nearly half of the country believes that people’s behavior is more rude than it was before the
0:42:51 pandemic. This week on Explain It To Me, why we’ve become a nation of jerks. New episodes on Sundays,
0:42:53 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:43:00 Hey there, I’m David Pierce, and I’m going to tell you about our new show. It’s called Version History,
0:43:05 and on it every week we get together to remember the best, the worst, the weirdest, and the most
0:43:10 important technology in history. So if you were the person in your friend group who had a Zune instead
0:43:14 of an iPod, or if you’ve ever fallen off of a hoverboard, or if you just still have a bunch of
0:43:19 vines on repeat in your brain, you’re going to love this show. We’re launching in video on YouTube and
0:43:24 in audio wherever you get podcasts. That’s Version History. Check it out starting Sunday, October 5th,
0:43:25 and every Sunday after that. See you there.
0:43:34 Welcome back. Before we go, since returning to the White House, Trump has been busy redecorating and
0:43:40 remodeling. The Oval Office now gleams with gold, from the 18-foot ceiling to cherubs in the door frames.
0:43:46 Speaking to Fox News this spring, he said the room needed a little life and that no paint could match real
0:43:52 gold. The updates don’t stop there. Trump is planning a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, the first of its kind at the
0:43:59 White House, capable of hosting 650 guests. It will replace the East Wing and is funded by Trump and
0:44:03 private donors. Here’s a clip of Trump giving donors a tour of some of the renovations.
0:44:12 Thousands, actually, of pictures, beautiful paintings, some of them in the vault for over 100 years.
0:44:18 And we added a lot of 24-karat gold, and it’s very expensive and I think very beautiful. You know,
0:44:25 when you look at the fireplace, when you have a leader sitting on the one side and the other side, and you look
0:44:31 at what’s behind with the lights beaming, and that’s all 24-karat gold, and that’s why it just beams.
0:44:33 Was it not gold before this was?
0:44:38 No, it wasn’t. They didn’t have really any gold. They didn’t have gold.
0:44:48 I just, in those moments, it’s so clear to me that he really liked his life as a reality TV host.
0:44:56 And real estate developer. And it would have been nice if he had just stuck it out. And then he could
0:45:06 talk about the Liberace vibe for hours, and it wouldn’t have vast implications for the global order.
0:45:12 Because that’s really what’s going on here. And like, I’m always struck by, well, A, how
0:45:19 I don’t want to just say his taste is bad. It’s not my vibe. I’m like a mid-century modern type of gal.
0:45:27 That’s part of it, that’s part of it, that it’s so gaudy, and it’s so gold. But also that he has no sense of
0:45:36 history or desire to be part of presidential history. You know, this rewriting of everything and this
0:45:54 it’s so lacking in perspective on what role he’s actually playing in our history. I mean, people will
0:45:59 be studying him, obviously, for the rest of time. But the real giveaway is obviously that this is being
0:46:06 funded by private donors. So another way that you can gain access to Trump and to his family. You know,
0:46:11 we’ve obviously been talking about the $3, $4 billion that he’s made off of crypto. But I was
0:46:19 looking at how much his kids have made now since he’s been in. Eric Trump, $40 million last year to an
0:46:26 estimated $750 million. That’s a lot of crypto. Don Jr. is up to $500 million. He was at $50 million last
0:46:32 year. Barron Trump, even worth $150 million on his own at $19 million. And then obviously Jared Kushner,
0:46:39 he’s a billionaire now because of the investments coming in from the Mideast into his private equity
0:46:44 firm. They’re taking us to the cleaners. They are just laughing. They’re sitting on the set of CNBC,
0:46:51 you know, fielding these questions, just blatantly laughing at us that we are allowing this to happen and
0:46:59 that our ethics laws and our norms and frankly, our metal sometimes is not strong enough to meet the
0:47:05 moment of this level of grift. And that’s more disturbing to me than the gold-plated everything.
0:47:11 Yeah. So we know what happened here. He sat down with the interior decorator that they hired and he
0:47:20 said, I have a vision for this thing. I want it to look like an Iraqi whorehouse. And this thing is so
0:47:26 tacky. And he has violated the first rule of interior decoration. There was clearly no gay man involved in
0:47:35 this process. This was some straight white woman out of Bob Jones University whose husband is a donor.
0:47:43 This thing is so tacky. And by the way, Bosch, it’s not your house. It’s your residence for the next three
0:47:49 and a half years. And it’s supposed to be steeped in tradition such that people in 20 years from one party or the
0:47:57 other, that when people come into the house, they, they feel as if they’re in an embodiment of America and
0:48:05 American culture. And some people might say, well, gold is part of American culture. But again, this was, this came up
0:48:11 from AI. Give him a tour of the house. People will talk about it for a day and they won’t talk about
0:48:17 Epstein. Have you seen these TikToks and architectural digests? I hate them. I love art digests. I love
0:48:19 interior design. Oh, the welcome to my home?
0:48:25 Yeah. I’m going to pretend that I did this and not, not, not my hairdresser who became an interior
0:48:31 decorator. I’m going to pretend that me, David Schwimmer, depict out the, this painting and the,
0:48:37 I went to Spain to pick out the right fabrics and find, give me a fucking, I carry the Calcutta
0:48:42 marble myself on my back. I just, you know, I love the veining in this marble. I do like seeing in
0:48:47 their homes though. Oh, it’s totally. Yeah. It’s like great porn. It’s wealth porn, but it just
0:48:54 strikes me. I just think, do you think anybody, come on, do you think really anybody believes that
0:49:01 David Hasselhoff just has incredible taste around, you know, definitely not Hasselhoff around mid-century
0:49:08 modern architecture. So those things, I just wish they were forced to have the person or the people
0:49:15 who actually did this stuff. Um, anyways, but like you had to go around with your decorate. I mean,
0:49:22 some of them do give the appropriate shout outs, but yes, uh, they’re probably way too busy, uh,
0:49:28 to have played that level of a role in creating their abode. Um, it does not stop me from watching
0:49:33 it, especially ones around the New York city area where I’m like, Oh my God, if I just had
0:49:39 $12 million, that could be my brownstone in Brooklyn. I just want to say there are, you know,
0:49:44 it’s fun to make fun of him, uh, you know, and I enjoy it, but real implications of the fact that
0:49:51 this is the kind of stuff that Trump is focused on and the Tylenol ban. He is down 19 points on
0:49:56 handling the economy and 30 points on handling tariffs, even minus 10 on handling crime. And
0:50:02 Democrats are up nine on the generic ballot in the latest Washington post poll. So the house is on fire
0:50:08 while he’s caking it in gold. And, you know, I, I don’t want to get over my skis. I don’t know what
0:50:13 is going to happen in the midterms. I feel good going into it can always feel better. Democrats
0:50:18 keep working on the messaging, but they’re paying absolutely no attention to the things Americans
0:50:24 actually care about. A hundred percent. All right. That’s all for this episode, Jess. Thank you for
0:50:29 listening to Raging Moderates. This is a production of Prop G Media and the tribe, David Toledo.
0:50:37 That’s right. David Talodowski, our associate producers, Eric Jenicus, our technical directors,
0:50:42 Drew Burrows. Our engineer is William Flynn and our executive producer, as always, is Catherine Dillon.
0:50:47 Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts. You don’t miss an episode. Jess,
0:50:49 have a great rest of the week. You too.
Scott and Jessica break down Jimmy Kimmel’s return after a suspension that drew bipartisan backlash, Hollywood outrage, and pushback from TV affiliates. What does it mean for free speech—and the future of late-night as ratings slide? They also tackle Trump’s unproven claim linking Tylenol use in pregnancy to autism, as the FDA issues warnings despite inconclusive science. Plus, Trump’s White House remodeling—from gold ceilings to a massive new ballroom. What message does it send when the “people’s house” starts looking more like Mar-a-Lago?
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