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The news cycle is shifting profoundly, and it seems to go from bad to worse. Since we’ve got no Rob Long to try to cheer us up this week, we’re thankful to have two wise men for guests: First up is Glenn Loury on the CRT epidemic, contrasting media coverage of Larry Elder versus troubled youths, and advise for the good life. (Be sure to check out his podcast, The Glenn Show, right here on Ricochet!)
Then our old friend Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is back to reveal that he is now a COVID Hero® and as such, he is even more qualified to defang CoViD fears. He gives us an update on what researchers know about the Delta variant, vaccines and the never-ending masking debate. Also James updates us on the calamity befalling Minneapolis, and he and Peter contemplate the new American malaise.
Music from this week’s podcast: The Boys of Summer by The Ataris
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Glenn Loury. Wow!
I find myself wondering why it’s been 2 months since James had a Member Post Of The Week.
Malaise for SOME Americans, perhaps.
Easy: we’ve been jammed up with guests. We’ll bring it back at some point, but there is also nothing stopping @jameslileks from posting an LPoW rather than podcasting it.
I’m really happy to say that I agree with everything Jay has to say about Covid and vaccines. Fear will not prevent you from dying, but it will prevent you from living.
Doesn’t the vaccine’s diminishing of symptoms make it more of a therapeutic than a vaccine?
In case you could not be with us during the live Zoomcast here is the interview with Glenn Loury:
Sshhhh!!! Do you want to get cancelled?
No Rob? I’ll listen to this one.
Where Leftism is concerned, Peter’s default seems to be to play down the extent of it — to deny the fact that Wokeness has become a religion for many people (because he’s too cosseted — too stuck in his own bubble — to fully believe it) and instead to implore … beseech … plead with his guests to tell him something — anything — that preserves the integrity of his own preconceptions. If only for another day.
Must … protect … bubble!!!
Thus we have Peter shoveling words into the mouths of guests at the end of their conversations. “America was in a terrible state at the end of the seventies,” he’ll say, “and we came out of it then, didn’t we?? I mean, we did, right??!! Right??!! Right??!!”
The sweat of his desperation fairly drips through the speakers.
This is very good on mask policy at the aggregate level. He is a doctor. They don’t do anything. This has been very well received on other threads, here. Very understandable.
Another inspirational podcast…
I look forward to the Ricochet Podcast not because I crave a booster shot for my very conservative views but rather because I wish to be made better informed–by three (for me) young men of extraordinary good sense and by their fine guests. I really don’t understand the hostility towards Rob Long. He has made fun of himself as a RINO–of course, an unfair label. Even when I (mildly) disagree with him, I regard him as eminently sane, a quality we very much need these days.
It seems to me he was saner before he started micro-dosing the LSD and such.
Also, never forget that Rob was among those who declared Trump “unfit to be president.”
Which is how we got Biden.
Everyone else seems happy to a Russian.
What do you think those “preconceptions” are? If you’ve ever seen Uncommon Knowledge, you will have seen (I hope) what a superb interviewer Peter Robinson is: extraordinarily well prepared, never making himself the center of attention, modest–perhaps to a fault. As I said to my wife, who needs to be reminded just who all these strange “foreigners” are: When Peter Robinson expresses indignation, it really means something, so when he spoke up about the current occupant of the Oval Office, I was reminded of how grave the current situation is.
Perhaps you underestimate Peter, whose extraordinary modesty and humility he has successfully weaponized under everyone’s noses, creating a veritable typhoon of undetected, gravitational narcissism whose attractive power leaves few in its wake, and demonstrates he has sailed over the edge of silently delivering a whole new theory, Critical Interviewing Theory (CIT), currently infiltrating educational and political institutions to overthrow CRT and establish Peter as the head of a New World Order.
Or, perhaps, you are simply correct.
Peter talked about the close connection people have to people in Afghanistan. I know a young man from the country who matter-a-factly said, “My sister will be a sex slave.”
What gets me is how often he is repeatedly “shocked” when bad things happen over and over, often from the same people who “shocked” him the previous 50 times.
I haven’t decided yet if his problem in that area is more or less serious than Andrew McCarthy’s.
@peterrobinson, you know why else we remember him as Saint Augustine, not just some guy who represented Roman civilization? Because he wrote for the future. And because he wrote for the church, not for Rome.
And those were the right questions about the drug research!
And what an answer that was!
I thank Dr. Jay a thousand-fold for his work to push back against policies that would cause severe collateral damage (e.g. lockdowns). I would love for him to consider 1) since the “facts” about vaccines keep changing (e.g. no longer thought to prevent transmission, efficacy keeps falling), 2) perhaps the vaccines don’t work much at all and he would have survived COVID just fine without vaccination? The vaccines were tested during summer 2020, and the main lesson is that almost no one in *either* group (vaccinated or control) contracted COVID. Perhaps we should have tested the vaccines during the actual season of prevalence, over several years? Rushing through this testing was really a mistake on so many levels.
Since regulators already bulldozed their standards to issue the vaccine EUAs, we should not be surprised that the government is demanding boosters on little to no data. We used to have standards for that, but not anymore…
Re the periodic updates on the brouhahas over COVID restrictions, vaccines, etc., it seams that the same guests (Dr. Jay and Scott Atlas) are brought back time and again for a check in. Has there been an attempt to get others very knowledgeable on these matters on the program, such as any of the following officials from the Trump Administration: former HHS Secretary Alex Azar, former Secretary of Health Brett Giroir, former CDC Director Robert Redfield, or former HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Robert Kadlec? I think any or all of them could offer new or different insights that would round out the discussion.
Journalist Josh Rogin, who has done the best work out there on the Wuhan lab leak will be our guest on the show this week.
Scott Atlas has never been on this show. Not once.
Maybe he finds it too …
…
…
… lightweight …
Don’t know, because we’ve never invited him to be on.
Because you figured an Atlas would be occupied with … weightier matters? (Mythological humor is not for all tastes.)
My mistake. I saw he had been on Ricochet programs and confused it with the Ricochet Podcast. https://ricochet.com/tag/scott-atlas/. Would you consider inviting any of the men I mentioned to be guests?
🥁
Sure, although the reason we have Jay on is because many of the people you suggested come to their views from the research and writing that Jay does.