 It incenses me how they write about you. This is the New York Times. And this is, again, this is not the op-ed page. Okay, if it was the op-ed page, I get it. In Chat with Musk, Kennedy pushes right-wing ideas and misinformation. Right away I'm pissed off because misinformation, okay, who's... How about you're in the newspaper, just tell me what he said and I'll decide what's misinformation. This arrogance of, we know what the misinformation is about science. I read an article in the New York Times, so you know it must be true. That's where the doctor said, I think I remember it was Navarro, and she said, nothing in medicine is fixed or precise, unlike other sciences. I thought, ah, that says it exactly how I feel. Nothing in medicine, it's not like other sciences, like some others. I mean, okay, anyway, here's... So this is their headline. Already you're into misinformation. So you're on with the increasingly rightward-leaning chief executive, Elon Musk. So now we have him painted. Do you consider Elon Musk right-wing? No. I consider him like an ultra liberal. I love him. I consider him a genius. Well, that's obvious. I'll be a totally unsurprising Elon Musk dick writing that they shoehorned in there. Bill Maher also stated that he was, quote, incensed that the media would dare suggest that RFK Jr. of all people is a conspiratorial crank. I just don't know how they'd come to that conclusion about somebody so reasonable who said so many normal things. But sarcasm aside, Bill Maher argues that the media should just tell people what that person says and not tell them what is and isn't misinformation and just let them decide for themselves, which really begs the question, what does Maher actually believe the media's role is? Should they just present every argument no matter how absurd it is, neutrally, so as to not offend the skeptics, or should they actually be informing readers about what is objectively true so people come away more educated and not dumber? Well, Bill Maher, in theory, shouldn't disagree with the notion that media should be objective and not neutral given his own criticism of Fox News. He criticized them for their lies about the 2020 election, but by his own new standards, didn't Fox News just do what he said media should be doing? They platformed Trump's lies about the 2020 election and they let viewers decide whether or not it was true. And the viewers collectively decided that it was not misinformation that the election was indeed stolen. But somehow that's not the conclusion that Bill drew from Fox News. He said they should be more responsible and actually tell viewers the facts. But when it comes to vaccines, however, it's not really the media's job to present us with evidence and objective facts. They're supposed to pretend to be neutral all the time. Sure, Bill, maybe you're just a hack. Maybe you're a hack and you don't realize it. Maybe you don't realize that you're seeking confirmation bias. But it gets better because he's also mad that the media is supposedly extrapolating my words, not his, from RFK's anti-vax positions to draw broader conclusions about his beliefs. So let's listen to what he has to say. Kennedy, who announced, is himself a leading vaccine skeptic and has promoted other conspiracy theories. I love this. They go right from, he's a vaccine skeptic and other. See, if you're a skeptic, everything else is a conspiracy theory right along with it. Yet he has consistently hovered around 20%. Like, that also, the arrogance of, huh, what could be going on in the minds of these morons who are gathering to his candidacy? Right. You see, there's a reason why they pointed out that he's promoted other conspiracy theories. It's because he has literally promoted countless conspiracy theories. For example, here's what he said about HIV and AIDS. Tony Fauci won a power struggle with Broder. And he said, this is an infectious disease. We've proven it. With Bob Gallup proved this is being caused by a virus. There's a lot of people that said it's not a virus. The virus is a passenger virus. And these people are dying mainly because of poppers. 100% of the people who died in the first of the first thousand what AIDS were people who were addicted to poppers, which are known to cause carposid sarcoma and rats. And, you know, they were people who were part of the gay lifestyle where they were burning the candle at both ends. And they were taking a lot of injectable drugs and methadiene. And there were poppers on sale everywhere at the gay bars on the day. I remember growing up in that era in the gay bars, it would be last call for poppers and last call for alcohol at 2 a.m. And all the gay bathhouses sold poppers and it became a ubiquitous. And but for Tony Fauci, it was really important to call it a virus because that made it an infectious disease. And it became I and it allowed him to take control of it. Yeah. See, it's not really a virus. It's a passenger virus, which is different. And it only affects gay people in the gay lifestyle who take poppers. And Anthony Fauci only wanted to push this idea that it's a virus so he could take control of it. Makes perfect sense to me. Gee, I just can't understand why people are calling him a loon. Now, there's countless examples of RFK juniors saying deeply idiotic things. But according to Bill Maher, he's being treated so unfairly by the media. No, they actually got this one right. Now, look, I have my criticisms of the mainstream media myself. You've heard them before. But this is one of the few instances where I'd argue that they're doing a good job at calling out the lies that he's telling. Not in every single instance. And perhaps they're covering him too much. But I do think it is important for them to debunk the lies that he's spreading. But things got even dumber on this podcast when the subject of guns came up. Because they both just started to make a bunch of things up about the reasons why mass shootings are happening. And none of them, aside from guns, which they do cite to their credit is actually factual. But I mean, this gets really deranged. Just just watch. See, this is something I also agree with you with. He said pharmaceutical drugs were responsible for the rise of mass shootings in America. Yeah, I didn't actually say that. I'm sure you didn't. No. But the general... I said it should be looked at. It should. And it's... You know what? I don't even have to look at it. It is part of the issue. The gun issue is a number of things. If people could wrap their head around more than one thing at once. Yes, it's about too many guns in the Second Amendment. It's also about violence in movies and TV shows and seeing every fucking... Or how about video games? And video games. Yeah. But having a 12-year-old boy see every issue solved by way of a gun. No, that has no effect on it. And yes, the kids are on fucking drugs. They're on Prozac. Is that the main one that... Well, that's one of these pharmaceutical... There's been lawsuits. There's been the Columbine lawsuit, which was settled. There was five kids who sued because their shooter was on SSRIs. And that is... SSRIs. Those are serotonin inhibitors. I see. And though the serotonin inhibitors have black box warnings on them that says suicide and homicidal ideation. So it's an obvious culprit. Thank you for putting it. It's an obvious culprit. It is treated in this paper as if it's an idea that we need to kill in the crib. And then you also add in 2010 when... Is that when everybody got a smartphone? Yeah. That is also... We've seen a thousand articles about how it's rewiring the brain. Yes. So all these things are responsible. But it's... I guess the question for you again... What NIH should be doing because they're supposed to... Their portfolio is to protect human health. It's to actually do real studies on this stuff. And they won't. But Bobby... Because they don't want to offend the big shots. The video game companies, the cell phone companies, the telecommunication industry, or the pharmaceutical industry. They instead have... And that's why they won't study vaccines either. Vaccines save your vaccine risk. Because they do not want the answer. Man, if only the experts could study vaccines, that'd be great. Can we get at least one study, guys? I genuinely don't understand how somebody so stupid can cultivate such a large following. But when everybody has had their brains broken by COVID and everybody is conspiratorial and uninformed in media, ironically does fail oftentimes to do its job. This is what you get. It's like the perfect storm of stupidity that has caused us to devolve into full-blown idiocracy. Now, after what we watched there, that conversation devolved into a full-blown conspiratorial discussion about how vaccines cause autism. And Bill Maher said that he's sympathetic towards that argument. Yeah. Now, there were a lot of claims made there by the both of them. First and foremost, RFK Junior claimed that violent video games cause gun violence, and it hasn't been studied. Which, again, not true. It has been studied. Okay, there's been numerous studies showing that video games and violent movies and violent music does not cause people to be violent. And even if he didn't have the studies to confirm this, which he does, but even if that wasn't something that has been studied, other countries have violent video games and violent movies. But yet, we're the only ones who consistently deal with the issue of gun violence. Now, they also blame smartphones. But again, America doesn't exist in a fucking vacuum. Believe it or not, other countries have smartphones too. But suddenly, gun violence didn't increase in all of these other countries that saw a rise in smartphone use. It is just so frustrating that they don't take two seconds to think about the things that they're saying to hundreds of thousands of people. Now, when it comes to SSRIs like Prozac, Bill Maher went further than RFK, believe it or not, and said, I don't have to even, what did he say specifically? I don't even have to look at it. It is part of the issue. He later said that it was an obvious culprit when it comes to gun violence. So he's trying to out Alex Jones, RFK Junior here. Now, the thing about facts, Bill, is that they can be misconstrued to suit an agenda. But Bill Maher isn't even dealing in facts here. He's saying, actually, feelings in this instance are sufficient for me. I base causality on vibes and vibes alone, baby. Now, he might not see how what he said there was harmful, but it is. And I've got an anecdote and evidence that I'm going to talk about here with regard to that specific claim about SSRIs. But first, let's get to the evidence. So in a 2017 journal article by Drs. Cole and Anna Staywright, approximately 13% of persons aged 12 and older take antidepressants, which makes them one of the top three most commonly used medications in the U.S. Four years ago, we reviewed the literature and found no statistically relevant evidence that antidepressant medications cause violence or criminal behavior. In contrast, we found reliable research that showed that antidepressants were associated with a significant decrease in lethal violence and a reduction in irritability and aggression. So there's evidence that the opposite of what they're saying may actually be true. But Dr. Daniel Stalter eloquently explained in a piece published by Psychology Today that SSRIs kind of get this bad rap probably due to what he calls illusory correlation between SSRIs and mass shootings. And he basically argues that we make this broader connection because news stories publicize the fact that mass shooters have been on SSRIs, leading people to think that correlation equals causation when there isn't a sufficient amount of evidence to deduce that that is indeed the case. But having said that though, there are side effects associated with SSRIs as is the case with all medications. Some cause weight gain or dry mouth or worse. As of 2004, the FDA actually began requiring pharmaceutical manufacturers to place warnings on antidepressants about the increased risk of suicidal ideation that they may cause. And this one is actually a bit controversial because some studies like this one published in Neuropsychopharmacology in 2022 shows that there's actually a decrease in suicidal ideation from antidepressants. But regardless, I'm not an expert and you shouldn't take what I say based on my own research. Because again, I'm not an expert. I am not informed about these medications. I am not capable or qualified to read these studies that are conducted by experts. And you shouldn't be learning about this from me. So if you're concerned, speak with your doctor. Speak to an expert, an actual expert. And that's how you should get your information. But the point that I'm trying to make here is that every medicine is going to have side effects. It's going to be a balance between the pros and the cons. But what they're doing here is they're overemphasizing the significance of potential risks and that causes harm. Fear mongering causes a real world harm. And I've seen how fear mongering over SSRIs in particular can cause actual pain and suffering firsthand because I've experienced it. And that brings us to the anecdote. So this affected me because when I was four years old, I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. And by the time that I was about 14 or 15, it got so bad that it was nearly crippling. Like it was debilitating and it literally prevented me from living a normal life. Monday in tasks, like turning on the light switch or turning on the faucet to get water, took minutes, literally, because every single thing was a ritual. I couldn't walk 10 steps without having to turn around and go back five if I walked through things, in between things. And for those of you who don't know what obsessive-compulsive disorder is, it's hard to explain why somebody would do this, but basically it turns every single thing that you do into rituals. I was suffering, basically. During story short, I was suffering and my mom wanted to get me treatment, but one, my dad thought that I was faking it for attention, so he didn't take it seriously until it really took a toll on me and he could see that. And two, other adults talked my parents out of getting me treatment because they were certain that I would be prescribed antidepressants, which, according to them, was bad. So the TLDR version of my life story was that I was finally given treatment and I was prescribed antidepressants. My doctor recommended Prozac. And I remember my mom being lambasted by other grown-ups who told her that if she allowed the doctor to give me Prozac, I would turn into a violent mass shooter. And the reason why they said this was because at the time, well, we just saw the Columbine mass shooting where one or both of the shooters were on Prozac. That was a fact that was publicized. And I remember they even scared me as a kid who feared that this wouldn't make me violent. And I thought, well, maybe I shouldn't get treatment. I was fearful that the treatment would be worse than the illness itself. But guess what happened? My mom listened to the doctor and not dipshits. And I was prescribed Prozac. And within a year, I was a completely different person. Completely different. I could actually live a normal life and be a teenager. By the time I turned 18, my OCD was almost non-existent. And this all happened because I was given Prozac. I was able to drive. I was able to work and live a fairly normal life when my parents didn't think that that was possible. Now, not everyone who takes Prozac is going to have the same outcome or experience as I did, right? But this is a very personal decision. And it was a decision between myself, my doctor, and my parents. And it was based on very specific circumstances. Because of fear mongering about SSRIs and sensationalist stories about how Prozac turned the Columbine mass shooters' violence. Well, that delayed and nearly prevented my own treatment, which I desperately needed. Now, this doesn't mean that medical experts still don't have concerns about Prozac or SSRIs or specific drugs. But the point is that people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about can end up unwittingly causing a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering under the pretense of being concerned for others. So, in conclusion, Bill Maher might not see RFK Jr. as the charlatan that he is, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a huckster pushing half-baked medical advice that could actually harm people in real life. And that is important, and that does need to be called out by media. If media has a responsibility to do anything, it is to educate people.