Matthew Souza (00:00):
Hopefully not
Sevan Matossian (00:01):
At all. Bam. We’re live. We’re live. Uh, I, I was thinking this morning, um, I was like, oh, Emily’s kind of a little bit like a fixer, but you know what, you know what’s wrong with, um, calling you a fixer is, um, did you ever see the show Ray Donovan? It’s, it’s basically a show about a guy who, um, he works in the Hollywood scene and like, if you’re caught, let’s say you’re an actor, and like, you don’t want the world to know you’re gay, but there’s some pictures floating around out there with, you know, a dick in your mouth or something. He tries to hide those pictures. Right. But that’s, and I was thinking, that’s not what you do, because we don’t live in that era anymore. It’s basically you’re like a real life fact checker. I, I think maybe like, you’re one of the only ones I know you’re not like a fake fact checker. You’re like a real fact checker. Like people can, there, there’s so much lying and ambiguity out there in the world, and if people don’t have the time to like, to protect their name or to make sure that people aren’t lying about them, um, you help them. Yeah.
Emily Kaplan (01:04):
I mean, I appreciate that distinction because honestly, like, I feel like when people ask me what I do on the sort of like Cleo side of my life, I’m like, what’s
Sevan Matossian (01:12):
That called? What’s the word you used?
Emily Kaplan (01:14):
The firm I have, it’s called the Cleo Group. Cleo was music. So I like the idea of like, you’re sort of correcting the record of history,
Sevan Matossian (01:22):
Right? What’s Wait, say that again. I talked over you. What’s the background of that word, Cleo? What’s it mean?
Emily Kaplan (01:26):
She’s the muse of history, the Greek
Sevan Matossian (01:28):
Muse of, okay.
Emily Kaplan (01:29):
And I think, like, I feel like I’m, a lot of that work is doing the same stuff that I did as an investigative reporter. It’s giving voice to the voiceless. Only the voiceless now are the canceled people who nobody wants to talk to. Right? Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (01:43):
Nobody wants. Exactly.
Emily Kaplan (01:45):
And you know, as a reporter, when I was coming up, we spent, I mean, I got a master’s from Northwestern. We had to take classes in law. Like we had to learn how to fact check. The joke was always like, if your mom tells you that she loves you, you’ve gotta check it out. Like you don’t believe anything. Right,
Sevan Matossian (02:01):
Right, right.
Emily Kaplan (02:02):
And now people are ripping like 10 stories a day. They don’t have time to fact check anything. And I don’t know what my dog sees out the window, but she’s better
Sevan Matossian (02:09):
<laugh> your dog is totally fine. This, this, your dog is totally fine. Is that statue cloth? As long as that statue has clothes on it, we’re fine.
Emily Kaplan (02:15):
Yeah. No, there’s no, no. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (02:17):
<laugh>. Okay. I dunno what
Matthew Souza (02:19):
No background YouTube checks.
Emily Kaplan (02:21):
Um, yes. The, the statue has a,
Sevan Matossian (02:26):
Hey.
Emily Kaplan (02:27):
Um, I think like, you know, there’s a lot of work that goes, like when I was a young reporter coming up, I wrote, I wrote for a daily newspaper. I wrote one story a day. I would’ve three weeks to work on a wrong longer story. And the other big point that I like to make is that like the average age in a newsroom was 45. Now it’s like 27. Right. So I had a bunch of like,
Sevan Matossian (02:47):
They’re not even newsrooms anymore. Right. That’s a misnomer. No.
Emily Kaplan (02:50):
Yeah. And it’s like, I mean, I just think, like, I had all these angry old dudes yelling at me all the time, like, you didn’t think of this, or like, you didn’t talk to this person. Now it’s like how many stories? Like they’re writing like 10 stories a day. They’re not hanging out with cops, they’re not going through court records. They’re not fact checking anything. There’s not even really any editing happening. Right. So they’re like ripping, I mean, I see this in the New York Times all the time. I’ll get a press release on some health related thing, and like, they’re literally writing off the press release. Like, you’d get fired if you did that when I was a young Cub reporter. Right. It’s just like so different. And so, I mean, I feel like one of the things that I’ve done, I mean, you know this like obviously with Greg, but also with all, a lot of people who, with Covid who got kicked off of Twitter was go around and basically say like, how the hell are you saying that this person is misinformation?
(03:34):
Do you even understand, you know, the difference between absolute risk and relative risk? Or like, why are you saying this is misinformation and not at least covering this side of it? And it, I mean, it’s profoundly dangerous for this country, I think, to not have a free press and not have an independent voice of people who are smart enough to recognize when they’re being misled. I mean, we saw this profoundly with Greg, right. Um, which will, uh, hopefully we’ll get into all of that. But I think, you know, I don’t think of myself as a fixer. I think of myself as a healer, <laugh>, you know? Right. I like bringing people together. And I also, I don’t want ’em align the press. I mean, I think a lot of people think like, oh, they’re on the take or whatever. They’re just young and untrained and no one’s helping them, but they’re getting paid shit.
(04:18):
Right? Like, they’re not doing this because they’re evil or they’re trying to push some agenda forward. They’re just easy to manipulate. And people are doing that and no one’s pushing back. I mean, I think like, part of what I try to do is say like, the nature of research is such that you only know it’s in front of you. And so if you apologize, then it’s an admission of guilt. Right. And if, whereas if you say like, hold the phone. Like, that’s not what I did, or that’s not what I said, or I was simply questioning this thing and now you’re trying to like malign me. Like reporters get that on some level because they went into the field because they wanna expose and they wanna tell truth to power, but no one’s giving them that and teaching them how to do it. So, I mean, I try really hard to work with young reporters because I think they’re in it probably for the right reason. So they don’t have anybody mentoring them. Right. They don’t have any of those angry old men anymore. They’ve all been canceled and kicked out of the newsroom. So there’s no one, there’s no grownups at the table. Right. And that, that really does a disservice to the industry. And then none of us trust them. Right. So like, even when we read really good reporting from my perspective, I’m like, fuck, I don’t know.
Sevan Matossian (05:25):
That’s, um, you know what’s, you know what I really liked what you just said when you say sorry, it validates it, it validates them. You know what else it does? On the other side of that too, it, um, it validates the victim, meaning that, like, it justifies like you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re actually being a co-dependent. So when Joe Rogan apologizes for this whole slew of, uh, racial slurs that he says, and they edit ’em together, they’re ba all the people who were offended by it, they’re saying they’re, when he says, sorry, he’s not, he’s also telling them, oh yes, you should play the victim. Oh yes, you should play the victim. When they were all, every single one of ’em taken outta context. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like they were never meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. And if your feelings were hurt, that’s your problem, is the truth. It’s, it’s not his problem. And so yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy. The misuse of the word. Sorry. It’s, it’s pathetic. It’s sad.
Emily Kaplan (06:11):
A and I also think it’s one of these things where like, are we assuming that the public is so dumb they can’t contextualize things, right?
Sevan Matossian (06:19):
Well, that’s where we’re at, right? Mm-hmm.
Emily Kaplan (06:21):
<affirmative>. Yeah. We’re taking the norm of 50 years ago and we’re somehow applying modern day judgment to that action a long time ago without any of the nuance of like, well, you know what? It wasn’t such a big deal before. Right? And if it’s a, I mean, this is like the whole, there’s a lot of this with the me too stuff that I find really, I mean, I think Me Too has been completely weaponized, right? So like, that’s a totally different thing. But I think even in the nuance of like, how, I mean like watch, like Mad Men, right? I mean, like, these are accurate depictions of how women were treated in the workplace. They’re not treated that way anymore. Right? Are we gonna go back and like, you know, take the statues down of like all the, you know, titans of industry because they mistreated women.
(07:00):
Well, wasn’t mistreating women at that time. You have to understand that. And I think there’s so much to be said for the progress we have made, right. On race, on gender, on all of these things. Like that should be celebrated. I feel this way about like a lot of the stuff being taught in schools right now, right? It’s like if you’re teaching kids about slavery or whatever, like, that’s great. But you know what the big takeaway is? Is that we’re the only country really in the world that has been a superpower without it. Right? For two thirds of our history, we have not had slavery. We have not colonized other land. We wanted Alaska, we bought it. Right? Like that’s per, that changes the, like, literally the history of the world was about conquering land. And it, part of that was taking people, because labor is an asset. Right? And like what? That it’s a power dynamic.
Sevan Matossian (07:48):
There’s more, and the abolitionists won. Let’s not forget who won.
Emily Kaplan (07:51):
That’s right. And that’s my
Sevan Matossian (07:52):
Point. The Republicans won. The Republicans won, and the Democrats lost. It was, it was a, it was a clean split. 1860. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican c uh, president of this country’s ever had. Not a single, uh, Republican slave owner. They won in The Democrats lost That’s
Emily Kaplan (08:08):
How long ago was that right? Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (08:09):
Yeah. 200 we’re approaching 200 years.
Emily Kaplan (08:12):
Individual rights have never been stronger than they are today.
Sevan Matossian (08:16):
Right. Biggest melting pot in the world. Yeah. Biggest melting pot. There’s no other experiment going on like the United States. None.
Emily Kaplan (08:22):
And that’s the take. I mean, that’s what I feel like kids should be taught, right? Yeah. Is like, yeah, of course. Like we, we made some mistakes. We learned from them and we’re constantly revising and getting better because the individual is the most important thing in this country. Right? Then I think it’s lost.
Sevan Matossian (08:37):
What should people read who don’t know that? What do you think? What book should people read to understand? Actually
Emily Kaplan (08:43):
You met Roger Kimball at our last party, right?
Sevan Matossian (08:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was great. The guy with the funny hat, the the, the, the art critic genius.
Emily Kaplan (08:51):
Yes. And he, so he’s become like a good friend. And he’s so funny cuz when he came the party, he was like, what’s the dress code? And I was like, casual, like super California casual. So his outfit was his casual outfit,
Sevan Matossian (09:02):
Right? Awesome. Awesome. <laugh> the only thing casual about him was maybe like the drink he had in his hand. But I loved him. I loved his Li
Emily Kaplan (09:09):
<laugh>. He’s so, he’s brilliant and he’s so easy to talk to. He’s just a lot of fun. But he published a book that was called Land of Hope, um, and DeSantis actually adopted it and made it a mandatory part of the Florida curriculum. And it’s now it’s becoming a very popular, um, you know, sort of antidote to like what’s being taught in regular history curriculums. And he doesn’t shy away from the, you know, other stuff, the bad stuff. Right. The history that we’ve learned from. But he doesn’t create a victim mentality. He allows all Amer, I mean, he sort of tells the story of like, Americans are the land of hope, right? And there’s a reason for that. Um, so I really like that. And what Roger did was he, he published that book and then when it became something where schools really wanted to use it, they um, basically turned it into a curriculum. So there’s teacher stuff. So like anybody who’s trying to teach their kids who’s in a school system where they’re not getting this kind of education, I would suggest that because they have student resources now and they have teacher resources. So it actually makes it really easy. Um, which is exact, like Greg and I are hoping to actually copy that exact model with him for our program.
Sevan Matossian (10:18):
Um, I read the long March. Mm, actually that’s not true. I didn’t read it. I listened to it. That’s one of Roger Kimble’s books. And if you and I, and you know, I was a huge, uh, hippie and read all the hippie, uh, books, the Jack Kerouac books, and if you want to have, uh, all of that shit ruined for you read the long march. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, man, he really lifts up the skirt on that thing. Whew. Or, or sorry, I don’t mean to attack women. Uh, he really pulls the pants down on that thing. <laugh>. Yeah, it’s, it, um, what an honest, what an another honest man. Yeah. Okay. So if you wanna learn about individualism, it’s important that people learn that because there’s a, a selfish component, right? When you hear that, you’re like, oh, those, that, that means you’re selfish.
Emily Kaplan (10:58):
What individual rights.
Sevan Matossian (11:00):
Yeah. Individual rights. Sorry. Individual rights. You
Emily Kaplan (11:02):
Know what’s funny is that I think there is this, like, again, I, and this is like more of a philosophical conversation, but like, I think there’s something that’s really interesting about this idea, which obviously Greg and I are sort of obsessed with, with like consensus opinion taking over, right? Rather than like rational fact. Mm-hmm. Hmm. <affirmative> and like the founding of this country was really based on this idea of individual rights will produce a better collective. Right? So the founding fathers are really clear, like, if we don’t have an educated public, we’re not gonna have a democracy, right? You have to be able to think for yourself and you have to be able to think for yourself critically in order to make good choices, including like who you elect into office, right? And you can’t have that if people aren’t well-informed. And so I think they actually go together even though they sound really different.
(11:40):
I think it’s like if you’re about, you know, an individual’s right to freedom the pursuit of happiness, you’re not guaranteed happiness, but you have the right to pursue it. Right? We’re not gonna put roadblocks in your way. If you wanna work hard and you wanna contribute to your community, you have the right to do that. Right? And the state can’t get in your way and religion can’t get in your way. Right? And that creates a social contract. I mean in the enlightenment sense of like, we do give up certain rights in order for the collective, but we’ve agreed to that, right? I would argue that we’re actually at a point, we’re pretty close to a point where that social contract needs to be rewritten, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it’s been taken away from us and actually individual rights are being taken away that we didn’t agree to. Like, I didn’t agree for all these people that I know who are brilliant scientists and public health experts to not be allowed on Twitter, right? Right. I didn’t agree to give up my right to assembly when you canceled my kids’ school and you told me I couldn’t go to my job anymore. Like, those are big deal rights that we all just sort of surrendered, right? Because what we were told to, like, that’s about as like
Sevan Matossian (12:45):
Terrible. You have to take, your kids have to take drugs to go to public school in California, you have to have a sign on your bathroom that says if you have an individual toilet bathroom, you have to have a sign on there that says, um, uh, gender neutral. What about, what about as things as simple as, um, uh, not parking in front of fire hydrants? Is that social contract shit? What? That’s social contract, right? We
Emily Kaplan (13:07):
Agree to give up certain rights,
Sevan Matossian (13:09):
Pull over for an ambulance is behind you with its lights on.
Emily Kaplan (13:12):
Yep. Right? I mean, those are part of
Sevan Matossian (13:16):
Don’t don’t litter. Don’t litter.
Emily Kaplan (13:18):
Yep.
Matthew Souza (13:19):
<laugh>,
Emily Kaplan (13:20):
You know, I mean like, the idea behind it really goes to this idea that like the more good we do collectively, the safer we are as individuals, a lot of it is safety based, right? Like we agree to have force, we agree to have laws, right?
Sevan Matossian (13:32):
Like take the injection so everyone’s safe,
Matthew Souza (13:34):
<laugh> Well, that’s where the critical component of thinking comes in, right? Because if you, if you’re not able to critically think about the issues or process them, then you end up using that to turn against it. Now all of a sudden I’m saying, well, you’re eliminating my safety cuz you are not following this agenda and you need to, and there’s no critical thought or education about what’s actually happening. There’s just a narrative that’s being pursued, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Sevan Matossian (13:57):
Emily, what about, uh, dick butter says, what if you drive faster than the ambulance? Is it okay to not pull over <laugh>? No, that’s the problem, right? People like this guy, this guy’s too much of a critical thinker.
Emily Kaplan (14:07):
I like to drive behind the ambulance. So you get through the traffic <laugh>
Matthew Souza (14:11):
Critical thinking dick butter. See,
Sevan Matossian (14:13):
Hey, what’s, what’s interesting Emily too is we have the most well-informed society in the history of mankind too. And yet we also have the most, um, there’s some people are just drinking, I guess from the wrong, well they’re drinking the poison water. I mean,
Emily Kaplan (14:28):
I don’t know, I think we were way more educated when we had just sort of like a basic rubric of a like curriculum, right? Like everybody, like you look at math standards, right? Like, kids were able to do much harder math right? 50 years ago than they can do today. And like we, I think that’s actually part of this victim mentality. We keep dropping the standards saying like, oh, you know, women don’t score well on the s a t, right? So it’s a, it’s a gender thing. The test is a, you know, is bad for women. Like, whoa, wait a minute, maybe we’re not doing a good job teaching girls math, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it’s not that girls can’t do math and they’re,
Sevan Matossian (15:05):
Was that really a thing about the s a t? Cuz don’t women dominate the college scene now?
Emily Kaplan (15:10):
Well, I know more women are going to med school than men. Okay. But I think there has been a more of an emphasis on, but you know, I mean the other thing like, I don’t, we could get into this. I actually, when I, I, so Tom Siegfried right? Who’s a friend of ours, um, who we have dinner with sometime, we were, we had dinner with him recently and he was talking about how some schools ha colleges have their own, um, like basically like number of Chinese students that they’ll limit, right? Because they pay in cash and they’re good students and they come and they’re great, but it’s pushing out slots for Americans. And I had a conversation with somebody who we all know.
Sevan Matossian (15:47):
Oh, so when you say Chinese, let’s be real clear here. When you say Chinese, you mean Chinese citizens? Yes. Not Chinese. The ethnicity most of ’em are, but versus Americans. This is different than affirmative action. Affirmative action is strictly based on skin color, ethnicity. Right? This is based on nationality. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. Okay. Important distinction. Just say everyone knows Thomas Siegfried is a friend of Emily’s who I got to meet and a friend of Greg’s who is the on the forefront and these foremost expert on planet earth today on cancer as a metabolic disease, meaning, uh, lifestyle choices. And, and he knows his books. What’s his book? His book’s Crazy.
Emily Kaplan (16:28):
Cancer As a Metabolic Disease.
Sevan Matossian (16:29):
Cancer As a Metabolic Disease. Yeah. And Save Your Money if you want to try to buy it.
Emily Kaplan (16:33):
He also has a lot of really great YouTube videos. Okay. Uh, what’s interesting about him, and I know this is like tangential from the Chinese thing, we’ll get back to that. But like he, um, you know, it’s actually, that’s how I met Greg. I don’t know if you know that, but Tom introduced us.
Sevan Matossian (16:47):
I think I, uh, oh, I, I, I think I was there the very first time. Y you and your husband met Greg and Thomas was there and we hung out just in those couches in the hotel lobby just like where, like where the restaurant bar and lobby met and we hung out like for hours there. Thomas was cool as shit.
Emily Kaplan (17:04):
He, so I was working on a story about his work because I thought it was just like profound. I mean he has the, for people who don’t know, he has these really simple experiments that are called the nuclear transfer experiments where he takes the nucleus of a cancer cell and he moves it into a healthy cell because theoretically the modern, you know, sort of version of cancer is that it’s all in the nucleus, right? It’s a genetic disease. And what happens is you look at the healthy cell and it doesn’t develop cancer. So then he does the same thing where he moves the mitochondria from a cancer cell to a healthy cell and sure enough it develops cancer. So like, just like if that’s all he did, that would be profoundly upsetting to the status quo.
Sevan Matossian (17:44):
Right? How come he didn’t win the Nobel Prize for that?
Emily Kaplan (17:47):
I hope he still does. I mean, I think he, it, it’s remarkable how his ideas are now being adopted and no one’s giving him credit for it. But I feel like there’s a whole history of scientific discovery that goes along with that, um, trend. But I was working on a story about him and he was so funny cuz he was like, at the end of, you know, hours talking to him in his office, I was like, what’s, what does it take to solve this? Right? Like, what do you need? And he was like, I don’t know, like 3 million. And I was like, 3 million, like, can’t we get that tomorrow? Like what’s, what’s the hold up?
Sevan Matossian (18:17):
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Emily Kaplan (18:18):
He, I’m in a lab, I’m like, I’m not a fundraiser. Like I don’t know how to do any of that. He’s like, but this guy Greg Glassman, he gave me some money and I was like, Greg Glassman the CrossFit guy. And he was like, yeah. And I was like, that’s random. And he was like, yeah, he is. Like, his dad called me and had me on the phone for like two weeks rerunning all my math and like making sure I had
Sevan Matossian (18:37):
Everything. Oh, that’s right. I remember Greg’s dad went through that book and Reid, his math for him, <laugh>,
Emily Kaplan (18:43):
He was like, put his savage, right? And um, and then, and Tom was like, yeah, and then he sent me some money. He goes, but actually I’m not really interested in his money. I’m interested in the idea that he has a community of people who don’t accept just conventional advice on stuff. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And he was like, this is gonna get solved through that. It’s not gonna get solved because like the drug that he recommends using is off patent. No one’s gonna make any money off of it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, right? Cancer is like by far, you know, the I C U is the highest generating part of a hospital in terms of revenue and cancer treatment is like the big apple. So Tom does grand rounds at hospitals and people come up to him afterwards and they’re like, you know, what you just said would bankrupt us. Like, we can’t have you talk here anymore.
Sevan Matossian (19:26):
So people hate him. Yep. That’s
Emily Kaplan (19:28):
A, that’s, yep. So then I sent an email to like info CrossFit and I was like, I just talked to Tom Siegfried and he said that like, you’re working on this stuff and I would love to talk to Greg if he’s available or whatever. And it was like five minutes later my phone rang and it was like, hi, I’m Greg Glassman. And I was like, what the
Sevan Matossian (19:44):
<laugh>. Oh wow. <laugh> What year was that? Do you remember what year That was?
Emily Kaplan (19:47):
Like 2017.
Sevan Matossian (19:49):
Okay.
Emily Kaplan (19:50):
And I recorded that call and I joke with Greg all the time, it’s like the funniest call cuz I knew Gary Tabs from like 2005. Right. And we were just like, kind of like comparing notes on like who we knew and what we knew and it was like a really fun first conversation. He was like, I’m coming to Boston in a couple weeks, like, I wanna hang out with you. And then I met all of you and that was a lot of fun. Um,
Sevan Matossian (20:11):
But okay. But so ba back to the Chinese, uh, ch the Chinese on, uh, the s a t that only certain amount of Chinese are allowed into.
Emily Kaplan (20:18):
So some colleges sort of like as a, you know, independent decision limit, say 10% of their students can come, but because of all of the student loan problems and because all these colleges are in a lot of trouble, everybody’s starting to rethink that. So I was at the Brownstone event, um, in Miami, which was, I had gone to the original one because I’m connected with all of those people. And, um, and so I was invited to this one a year later, which was really fun because now people are starting to realize like we weren’t all walking around with tinfoil hats, right? Like there some of those objections were pretty spot on and the event was much larger because there were so many more people interested now in the Covid stuff. Um, and somebody there, I was talking to them about, I had never heard of this like sort of limit on Chinese people.
(21:02):
And obviously with the gain of function stuff, it’s really interesting to think like, are we teaching students that are going back and doing this research? Was this research happening in the lab, like completely funded by the us Why is the US working on potential bio weapons with our probably largest adversary? Right? And so we were having this conversation and apparently Stanford doesn’t have that, so Stanford will just take as many as they can. And I was like, doesn’t that pose a real problem? And the person that I was talking to who’s a professor was like, and like, I hate this conversation because like my Chinese students are some of my favorite. Like, they work so hard and we have to have partnerships with other people. And I was like, well, I’m not trying to say that like we don’t do that, but like, if it’s replacing the American brain trust that’s gonna stay here.
(21:48):
Right? I mean, this was a big thing in nuclear technology a long time ago. I’m in Boston obviously and grew up with a lot of people who worked at M I T and there was a whole thing about like sort of training young Iranian scientists on nuclear stuff after everything sort of fell apart. And how do you basically discriminate right? Against students who are coming from other places where they may be well intentioned and we don’t know if maybe they’ll stay here and work here. Right. It it does create this sort of interesting friction, which I mean I suppose somebody could say is racist or whatever, but it isn’t, I mean, like we are living in a global world where we have enemies
Sevan Matossian (22:21):
Where it’s more nationalist. I think we, we solve that problem. It’s nationalist.
Emily Kaplan (22:25):
Yeah. But you know, it’s interesting is like even when you see with this balloon bullshit, right? Yeah, yeah. Like people aren’t, you know, they’re closing all of these, um, police, Chinese police stations. Have you guys heard about this? They just closed a big one in New York.
Sevan Matossian (22:38):
No. No. What? No,
Emily Kaplan (22:40):
The secret Chinese police stations that are going around trying to get Chinese Americans to work for them and they’ve been cracking down. There was one in Texas, they just, there was a big story this weekend and
Sevan Matossian (22:50):
One, what do you mean Chinese police station? Like public, like, just like, what is that?
Emily Kaplan (22:54):
They’re secret, but they’re basically like Chinese authorized military on us soil.
Sevan Matossian (23:03):
Are you kidding me?
Emily Kaplan (23:04):
No. Now why isn’t this story being talked about? Oh
Sevan Matossian (23:07):
My god, this is crazy.
Emily Kaplan (23:09):
What I’ve heard about from people in the media is if we do this big story on this stuff, they’ll be backlash against Chinese Americans. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right? And I’m
Sevan Matossian (23:18):
Sure there, uh, not, not from me,
Emily Kaplan (23:20):
But there would be, right? There’d be well
Sevan Matossian (23:21):
That’s, that’s just, that’s a
Emily Kaplan (23:23):
Person who would decide to attack. But it’s like, wait a minute, the
Sevan Matossian (23:26):
Media, so what
Emily Kaplan (23:26):
Weighing what to say and what not to say about truly what is a national threat Right. On our soil. Right? I mean, I don’t know if you and Dale King got into this, but the whole fentanyl thing is like, that’s all coming from Mexico
Sevan Matossian (23:40):
Up here. Oh, I, by the way, I just talked to our Chinese friend, um, who three years ago defended his country and now is basically begging to come live in the United States after going through Covid there. You know who I’m talking about, right?
Emily Kaplan (23:52):
I do. And I didn’t, I don’t think he should go home. I think he should stay here.
Sevan Matossian (23:55):
But yeah, he’s basically begging to stay and, uh, not only, yeah, his whole opinion of his country has changed in the last two years. He says they’re close to civil war there, that they, that they’re, that they’re having serious issues. I can’t, but I mean, there’s so many of ’em, right?
Matthew Souza (24:10):
That’s why Apple’s moving. They manufacturing too, isn’t it? All the covid restrictions and everything else, that’s why they’re picking up and leaving and go into India to get out in front of it?
Sevan Matossian (24:19):
Or, or are you hearing this story about, uh, um, an eminent war in 2025? Have you heard that Emily? Mm-hmm. I’ve heard it now twice. That, that based, say that again?
Emily Kaplan (24:30):
Tell me more.
Sevan Matossian (24:32):
Uh, I heard it from a guy who’s in the military who, uh, spoke to a general saying Yeah, the, the the open talk around here is that we’re heading towards conflict in 2025. And then yesterday I saw something quick about it on some on, on on. I don’t remember where it was, but I saw, I saw another data point on it. It was probably, it was, it must have been YouTube or Instagram. It’s the only place I get my information. I was like, wow.
Emily Kaplan (24:54):
I mean, I think we’re already at war. I I don’t like, I don’t have any
Sevan Matossian (24:57):
Problem between fe Yeah, between Fentanyl, the virus and opening up police stations in the United States. Yeah.
Emily Kaplan (25:02):
I mean, I was TikTok
Sevan Matossian (25:03):
You know better. Hey, isn’t it the same? Like we all know that obese people are the leading, um, chronic disease and let’s just face it, obese people are the leading cause of economic, uh, uh, collapse challenge. They’re, they’re the anchor on this country, right? Are are whole medical e everything that an obese person participates in is, is, is is causing this country more trouble and it’s gotta be the leading indicator that we’re in deep, deep shit. And, uh, but, but we, and we talk about that all the time and there’s no hate crimes against fat people. There’s no one out there just like shooting down fat people might be, I mean most people
Emily Kaplan (25:44):
Are fat. I don’t know. It’s
Sevan Matossian (25:45):
Like <laugh>. Right? Right. Okay, gotcha. Because they’re the majority. Okay, well, well, right. That, that’s fair.
Emily Kaplan (25:50):
I mean, I don’t know. Like I feel like Ben and I were having this, Ben Allen and I were having this conversation about, um, the fentanyl problems, the military’s facing, and they’re
Sevan Matossian (26:00):
Facing it too.
Emily Kaplan (26:01):
You just look, well, what’s happening with them is that it’s not people shooting up, right? It’s somebody wants a Percocet, they go online, they order it, it arrives, it’s not Percocet and the kid dies and the family, everybody’s like, he wasn’t a drug addict. Like what the hell is this? And these bases are starting to talk about it now. But I started because of that conversation with him, I started looking things up and I was like, wow, the leading cause of death for 18 to 45 males, which is basically what, who we go to if we need to draft Yep. Is suicide number one. Number two, fentanyl, overdose. So if I’m China, theoretically, how am I gonna best attack the us? I’m gonna go after their mili, their that age population that would be fighting and they’re doing it directly with the military, with these overdoses through I think it’s like, um, Adderall and Percocet that are laced with fentanyl that you’re buying on the internet. And then obviously just the general population. It it’s like profound if you think about like how they’re act. And I said to Ben, I was like, why doesn’t somebody create a campaign where they say to the troops, look guys, we’re at war. They’re here. When you’re ordering those pills and you think it’s something else, they’re attacking you. These are American casualties on in the homeland. I feel like that would rally people to be like, fuck, I’m not buying that shit online anymore.
Sevan Matossian (27:24):
<laugh>, right? Hey Snap, we had a guy come on, um, who made a movie about fentanyl. It was, it was so it was 26 minutes. I’ll send you a link. It was so hard to watch. I cry. I had to stop the movie like four times. I was crying so hard. But basically in the, every last year they imported enough fentanyl into the United States to kill everyone in the US 300 times. And another thing is two point, if, if there’s like, I don’t know, 3 million people being born every year in the United States, 2.6% of that population dies from fentanyl. Not the babies, but just that’s how many people are dying in the United States from fentanyl overdose. And the vast majority of ’em, Emily aren’t even doing fentanyl. Do you know what I mean? So like, they got some weed or they bought a Xanax on Snapchat and they died from Fentanyl. They’re not even trying to get fentanyl and they’re dying from fentanyl. Yeah. It’s crazy. That and that and that is all Chinese too, huh? Everyone just knows that that’s just the Chinese
Emily Kaplan (28:13):
That’s what I heard. I don’t, I mean I, I don’t know that there’s any way to really confirm it, but that’s, I’ve definitely heard that from multiple sources that I trust.
Sevan Matossian (28:20):
Um, uh, wad zombie. My younger cousin doesn’t know his timestables and just graduated from high school. So, so you, so you met, um, you met Greg and with Thomas Siegfried.
Emily Kaplan (28:35):
Well, so Tom like sort of put the spark of like, you should talk to Greg and I knew of Greg, right? I mean like Bob and I have both been doing CrossFit for a long time.
Sevan Matossian (28:44):
Oh, you had been doing CrossFit up to before then? Yeah,
Emily Kaplan (28:46):
I was at cf n e after Max was born. So that was like 2012 maybe.
Sevan Matossian (28:51):
Okay. Um, what was it? CrossFit? What?
Emily Kaplan (28:54):
New England.
Sevan Matossian (28:54):
Okay, that’s, is that Ben Berg’s gym? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. It
Emily Kaplan (28:57):
Is. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. Um, and I got a bad neck injury. <laugh>.
Sevan Matossian (29:02):
Oh, I’m sorry. My
Emily Kaplan (29:03):
Fault.
Sevan Matossian (29:04):
CrossFit’s very dangerous wall
Emily Kaplan (29:05):
Ball to the head twice. Um, yeah, no, it was a really, you
Sevan Matossian (29:10):
Know what it is? It’s that giant brain ears. You, you were, you, it started up thinking and you forgot to look up and you got hit what? I
Emily Kaplan (29:15):
Used to be an athlete and I’m not anymore, but I like can’t stop. Right? Like I keep going. I literally, like, I threw the wall <laugh> and it hit under the target.
Sevan Matossian (29:24):
Oh,
Emily Kaplan (29:24):
Oh, T flew back at me, right?
Sevan Matossian (29:27):
Yes.
Emily Kaplan (29:27):
I kept going cuz I was like, I’m not gonna fucking stop.
Sevan Matossian (29:30):
Right? Yeah. Good on you. Fine.
Emily Kaplan (29:31):
Yeah. And then it, I did it the exact same thing again. And Cheryl, who was one of the coaches, was like, you’re done, you sit down like what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. And I was like, fine, I like I to finish. And she’s like, you need to sit down. And then I like literally couldn’t move my neck more than this.
Sevan Matossian (29:46):
I’d pay to see that video, I’d pay to see that video.
Emily Kaplan (29:48):
That was brilliant. So Sean Telley, who did the onboarding for me at CF n e I just hired to have him come training me. And so like he would train me at home for years. Um, and then after Ben canceled Greg, I would never go.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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