April 22, 2025 • 30 mins
Today’s episode is about RFK Jr., a man who has a completely baffling political trajectory. How does a guy go from “champion of the environment” to joining the most anti-environment administration ever? Thanks to our guest, Derek Beres, that pipeline becomes much clearer, as RFK Jr’s worldview has a lot of overlap with science that is at best, shoddy, and at worst, straight up disinformation.
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Original music for this episode produced by Zeno Pittarelli
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm manny, and this is no such thing. The show
where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually
doing the research. On today's episode, does RFK Junior have
a point?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
There's no no such thing, no such thing.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Such than such than such. Thank you?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
All right, how's it going, guys? Good as you can see.
I'm set up it with all these boxes around me.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
How is the move?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
It was fine. I think I went through like all
of the classic moving processes where you think you don't
have that much until it's the day before, and then
you're like, how the hell do I haven't touched any
of this in a year? The move was fine, but
I still do have like a deep layer of resentment
(01:00):
towards the previous landlords for selling the building and course, yeah,
and making me move. I really liked that place. Speaking
of someone who also inspires deep layers of resentment, that's good. Yeah,
thank you. This episode is about RFK Junior. Obviously. RFK
(01:22):
Junior is the head of the HHS, the Health and
Human Services Department, which has a stated goal of enhancing
the well being of all Americans. I think we're in
a bit of a cliffhanger in regards to that mission,
because RFK Junior has pushed and promoted a lot of
problematic theories and ideologies as it pertains to our health.
(01:44):
But at the same time, he's captured the adoration of
millions of people in the so called Make America Healthy
Again movement, And so I thought this episode would be
a good opportunity to ask two questions. One, how has
he taken these ideas and resonated with so many people?
And too, what should we as trusters of science do
(02:05):
about his influence and reach? And so, similar to the
episode we did about the rise of political violence and
assassination attempts a couple months ago, I think we're going
to keep our intro here pretty short because we just
want to get straight to the expert. But first I
just wanted to ask you, guys, where do you think
(02:26):
his explosion and popularity comes from?
Speaker 5 (02:29):
If we're being honest, the reason RFK came unto my
radar is because of Curb your Enthusiasm, Shara Hines, right,
And that was you know, he wasn't really on my
radar until people are like, oh my god, Cheryl's dating
at Kennedy.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I remember working on a show and they were covering
the anti VAXX movement, and RFK was obviously figured into that.
And then just in his background, I knew he was
an environmental lawyer, and that gave him some sort of
legitimate See. Obviously, also being a Kennedy, people assume you're
probably not going to be totally crazy, even though yeah,
(03:07):
it's kind of a cursed family. He was always kind
of careful, careful enough in his phrasing for things to
kind of have one foot in and foot out. I
think we still see that today.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I think years ago, I remember, like years like before
I got to New York, like in college. Maybe I
remember hearing about some of the things he was doing
for the environment, for the cause of the environment. I
remember he got arrested, I think, and I remember thinking, wow, like,
this is a Kennedy who's part of this like very
(03:37):
established apparatus of politics. But here's one of the family
members who's kind of going out getting arrested because he
cares about the environment so much.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Tell us why you got arrested yesterday, Bob. We were
protesting the Xcel pipeline or demonstrating.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah, he's arrested for a keystone Excel oil pipeline protest
at the White House seeing.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Wow, that's incredible considering the people he works for. Now,
fast forward, fast forward years and years and years, he's
running for president. He's got all these scandals. The one
thing I remember sticking out the most in terms of
like controversy was this measles vaccine moment that happened in Samoa.
Have you guys heard of this.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
There's an update from the Samoan government latest. Over three
thousand measles cases reported, one hundred and ninety eight recorded
in the last twenty four hours, fifty three measles related death.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Basically before this outbreak, two kids died after getting the
measles vaccine, not because the vaccine was dangerous, but because
the nurses accidentally mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxant
instead of water, which is how you're usually supposed to
do it. RFK Junior kind of saw that as an
opportunity to be like, hey, look, the measles vaccine is
(04:47):
killing kids, and he visited the island and drummed up
all of this anti vaccine rhetoric. The vaccination rates dropped
on the island, and then when there was an outbreak,
so many people died, and he denies any involvement of
getting fewer people vaccinated. But if you talk to people there,
(05:07):
if you've talked to experts about it, they see a
pretty clear correlation between his rhetoric in Samoa and the
drop in vaccination rates during an outbreak that killed people.
Here's Senator Elizabeth Warren confronting RFK Junior about this at
his confirmation hearing.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Do you accept even a sentill, just even a sliver
of responsibility for the drop in vaccinations and the subsequent
deaths of more than seventy people, anything you do differently?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
The Samoa incident was years ago, But today RFK Junior
is still going on about measles, talking about how vitamin
a is a good enough treatment for the measles outbreak
happening in Texas, and now kids there are overdosing on
vitamin a, which I didn't even know was a thing,
learning so much about this, about how dumb all of
this is. All right, we have established the kind of
(06:15):
healthcare risks that AREFK junior poses. But sometimes I struggle
with how to process him, because, you know, like ten
percent of the shit he says, you do kind of
go like, oh, okay, man, that kind of makes sense.
He's talking about like ultra processed foods and how bad
they are for you, and it's like, yeah, okay, these
(06:35):
like forever chemicals that are in the water. In the
water doesn't sound good to me. He wants to do
he wants to do universal HSA's, which is great but
weird because he's like gutting all of hhs. You know,
he talks about childhood obesity, being anti big pharma. If
I didn't know exactly who RFK Junior was and I
(06:58):
only listened to what he said in speeches, I could
pretty easily see someone getting caught up in that.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
It's funny because we were stunning around the clip and
I saw it for a few days before I actually
listened to what he said in the clip. But like
the headline of the clip was like r K. Junior
is like, we need to take the phones out of
the schools because they're not good for kids.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
I was like, oh, yeah, I agree, agree, And then
you played a clip and then he's talking about, you know,
like how it fucks with their brains because of some
way I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The cell phones also produce electric magnetic radiation. It has
been shown to damage to neurological damage to kids when
it's around them all day.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Yeah, the five gives actually what arget was, which is
like a new spin on it.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
And I was like, all right, you know, not the
reason why I would say take the phone out of
the schools. But I've heard people talk about Michelle Obama
try to get people to eat healthier and people are
picking out so it's like some of this stuff, Like
I don't think everything he's saying is out right, like
this is dumb and bad, which I think, from my
(08:15):
point of view makes it harder, right, Like it would
be a lot easier for me to know how to
approach this guy if everything he was saying was just
sort of crazy and like I could just basically ignore it.
But the fact that like, yeah, we should be eating
less ultra processed foods, but like the way that he
wants to tackle it is like not allowing for snap
(08:36):
benefits to cover ultra processed foods, and it's like, Okay,
what are these people going to eat? And a lot
of these ways they don't have fresh fruits and vegetables,
and as we all know, fresh fruits and vegetables are
a lot more expensive than ultra processed foods, So are
you gonna make you know, are you gonna get people
more snap benefits? And they're talking about cutting snap benefits right,
So it's like there's always I feel like, oh yeah,
(08:58):
that kind of makes sense. And then and either the
way it's going to be executed or the reason for
some of this stuff kind of throws you off, So
it makes it makes it harder to sort of navigate.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, I think he gets into a universally human problem,
which is like, we're so good at being able to
point out something that's bad, but it's when it comes
time to like figuring out how to fix it or
having any kind of like meaningful discourse about solutions, that's
just garbage.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Listen, if he can solve autism by September, like you said.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
That's great.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
We recognize obviously autism is famously a spectrum, you know,
certainly livable, but it's like, you know, okay, this is
concerning if it is rising this much, or is it
diagnosing whatever.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
What drives me crazy about this shit is like there
have been doctors who've been studying this stuff for decades.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And in just so we don't get demonetized. The CDC
data shows that there is no correlation between vaccinations and
an increase in autism. But RFK Junior is here to stay,
and like I said at the top of this episode,
I want to figure out how he's been able to
resonate with so many people and what we should be
(10:10):
doing to deal with this kind of a figure that
high up in office. So after the break, we're going
to talk to Derek Brez. He's a writer, an author,
he's the co host of the Conspirituality podcast, and he
has been covering RFK Junior extensively for the past few years.
(10:35):
All Right, we're here with Derek Berez, co author of
the Conspiratuality book and co founder of the Conspiratuality Podcast.
We want to talk to you, Derek, not just because
you've reported extensively on RFK Junior, but also because you've
reported on the wellness environment that surrounds basically everything that
(10:56):
he does. But first, on the day of this recording,
actual RFK Junior announced at a cabinet meeting that he's
going to figure out what's behind the quote autism epidemic
by September of this year, by.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
September, we will know what has caused autism an epidemic
and will be able to elimit those exposures.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So, Derek, I just want to get your reaction to this.
Can RFK Junior figure this out by September?
Speaker 6 (11:23):
He figured it out years ago when he decided that
he was going to start suing a lot of pharmaceutical
companies around vaccines. So he's doing science in the exact
way that science is not done, meaning he's already come
to a conclusion, and now he's been systematically putting the
pieces into place to come to that conclusion in some
sort of official manner, even though the science is likely
(11:47):
not to hold up.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So that's interesting because I consider RFK Junior to be
a peddler of misinformation. But do you think there's enough
of an argument to be able to call this disinformation
where where he is being intentionally misleading?
Speaker 6 (12:03):
It's always hard for a lot of reasons, especially in
a litigious society like America, and RFK Junior being a
lawyer who knows how to navigate that. But I would
say that if you were intentionally saying things in order
to monetize them or to sway people to your side,
and to your opinion, I would call that disinformation.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
So, Derek, you and two other people, Julian Walker and
Matthew Remsky wrote this incredible book called Conspiratuality. It talks
about influencers in the wellness space who kind of pedal
misinformation and conspiracy theories. And so I thought you would
(12:44):
be a great person to ask about how RFK Junior
and his ideas have resonated with so many people. So
I'll just put the question to you, how the hell
did this happen?
Speaker 6 (12:58):
We live in a for profit healthcare system that does
not look out for people, and the idea that pharmaceutical companies,
in alignment with insurance companies and medical systems would not
be looking out for our best interest has affected tens
of millions, hundreds of millions of Americans for a very
long time. People don't go to preventive screenings or get
(13:22):
tests done because they can't afford them. So that that
is the root cause of so many people's frustration with medicine. Now,
on top of that, we have a longstanding wellness quote
unquote community in America that has always looked to alternative medicine.
In our book, we go back two hundred years finding
examples of this and probably goes back even further. And
(13:44):
I was a yoga instructor for decades of my life.
I was very heavily involved in the wellness community, working
with food companies, and I know that community very well,
having spent time there, and they are mostly well intention people.
But the problem is a lot of them are scientifically illiterate.
And that really is what happens is that RFK Junior
(14:08):
takes a feeling that people have about their being distrust
in the government and with healthcare specifically, but then they
do not really understand how the scientific process works, and
he exploits that gap in people's knowledge, and he appeals
to this idea that nature at some point was healing
(14:29):
and that everyone was just in great shape all of
the time, which is a complete fallacy, but he exploits
those sorts of gaps and.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Knowledge you mentioned earlier. Being a part of the wellness
community as a yoga instructor for my whole life, that
kind of community has always been adjacent to, like a
lefty liberalism. These days, I feel like that kind of
community has been pretty successfully branded as closer to the right.
(15:00):
Could you explain that shift from the left to the right.
Speaker 6 (15:04):
So conspirituality is this sort of blending between new age
liberalism and right wing conservatism. But where the connective tissue
in my feeling is that it's an individualism. These sorts
of spirituality that we practice in America is very self
focused and self centered. It's always about healing the individual.
(15:25):
It's very rarely about talking about community, and usually when
community is invoked, it usually only is my community, the
people who already believe the way that I do. So
while on its face it seems like how did these
communities come together, it's really a form of protectionism, of
self protectionism that has united them because a lot of
(15:48):
so called Latte liberals, you know, they are also people
who are involved in nimbi movements. They want to solve homelessness,
but they don't want it built on their block. So
that's kind of a feature of liberalism in America.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So I was recently watching one of those twenty versus
one YouTube videos from Jubilee, and the topic for that
episode was anti vaxxers versus a doctor. One of the
sentiments that kept coming up from the anti vaxxers was
this idea that we are actually glowing away from nature,
(16:24):
and the further we get away from nature, the more
diseases we will see. I was wondering if you could
respond to that sentiment, because I feel like nature could
kind of kill you in a heartbeat. So what is
the science behind that.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
It's called the naturalistic fallacy, and it actually is another
parallel with the right wing, because the right wing glorifies
the nineteen fifties post World World War two. America is
this ideal time because it is when we became a
global superpower, but there was a lot going on that
was not good in the nineteen fifties. The same things
happens in the wellness perspective, whereas this idea that we
(17:01):
were once in harmony with nature, which is just total bullshit.
Before antibiotics, vaccines, and then measures like hand washing, you
could very easily die of a cut. Infectious diseases killed people.
You know. One thing that RFK Junior does is he
goes we have a chronic disease epidemic. Now, we do
have problems with chronic diseases. But the reasons that chronic
(17:24):
diseases are more prevalent than infectious diseases right now is
because We've solved a lot of problems with infectious diseases
through vaccines and antibiotics, So this is just a different
example of how we've been grappling and fighting against nature
for a long time. Becoming an apex predator doesn't just
(17:46):
happen without a long struggle, and that struggle continues. But
in some senses, we're victims of our own success. We
can pretty much eat any food anytime of the year
from wherever we want, if we have things that would
have killed us just a few generations ago. I'm a
cancer survivor and I had a relatively and I'm putting
(18:09):
this in quotes easy time with it because the technology
and the science has advanced so much. Whereas one hundred
and fifty years ago, I would not be here right.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Now, Derek, I feel like so much of how RFK
Junior resonates with people has to do with the fact
that he is the person introducing people to a given issue.
(18:39):
I find myself being introduced to a lot of these
topics by r of K Junior, and then I have
to go figure out, you know, what's right and what's wrong.
So I'm hoping we can just throw some r of
K junior claims at you and get your reaction. Where
do they come from? Is it bullshit or not? So
(19:01):
how about we start with this idea that vitamin A
is a sufficient enough treatment for measles. Where does that
come from?
Speaker 6 (19:09):
It comes from studies that were done on malnourished children
in Africa, and it's very specific to malnourished children, and
they had good efficacy with megadoses of vitamin A too,
megadoses to be specific, given over the course of something
like forty eight hours. They had good results from that.
(19:30):
But what often happens with anti vaxers or wellness people
in general is they'll cling to a study, extrapolate from it,
and then pretend that it's good for everyone. Vitamin A
toxicity is a known problem, and we've seen some children
now have to go to the hospital in West Texas
because of that toxicity. But there is a little bit
(19:53):
of truth to a very specific community that they pretend
will we'll affect everyone in the same way, and that's
just not how biology works.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Okay, what about the claim that seed oils are bad
for you. Seed oils, of course the oils that are
extracted from vegetable crops, so we're talking canola oil, corn oil,
flax seed oil. Are those things bad for you?
Speaker 6 (20:18):
That started with or at least was mainstreamed by someone
named Paul Saladino, who was formerly known as the Carnivore
Doctor because he was an early carnivore diet devotee, who
now incorporates fruits and vegetables because he knows that sort
of diet can't last, and he's moved on to another stick.
Seed oils, like canola oil, they're used in ultra processed
(20:41):
foods a lot because they are inexpensive. The problem is
the sugar and the carbs, and then different things, the
excess carbohydrates that are in ultra processed foods and just
the manufacturing process. They've isolated one of the components that
is extremely well studied, is known to have cardiovascular benefits
(21:03):
and is known to have other health benefits, and they've
taken that and pretended to that that is the actual problem.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
And the anti seed oil rhetoric has been pretty successful
because you have franchised restaurants like Steak and Shake making
a big deal out of switching from seed oils to
beef tallo for when they make their French fries.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Yeah, it's audience capture. I mean, any sort of company
is going to look for what can give them a
leg up and to get into the news cycle. And
I don't know much about Steak and Shake, so I've
never lived in an area what that has one, So
I don't know their policies. I don't know their politics,
but it doesn't surprise me that if they perhaps have
(21:43):
a conservative bent to their politics, then they want to
appeal to that crowd. It does not surprise me that
they jump on the bandwagon.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I am actually from a state that has Steak and Shake,
and I can confirm that it has a conservative leaning. Okay, okay, okay,
what about fluoride in the wall? Good or bad?
Speaker 6 (22:01):
First off, I'll just say that this feeds into another
aspect that RFK is really good at exploiting. I brought
up the naturalistic fallacy. There's also chemophobia, and that's people's
fear of chemicals. So the idea that something is synthetic
and that it's put into something skivs people out. My
understanding is that the benefits have largely been around the
(22:23):
enamel of teeth and people have gotten less cavities. We've
seen instances for example in Canada, where one province took
the floride out and the childhood cavity rate shot up,
so they put it back in and it went back down.
I happen to live now in the largest city in
America that does not fluoridate its water, which is Portland, Oregon.
There's a strong hippie culture here that runs with some
(22:45):
of its politics. But from my understanding and from the
experts that I've talked to, it is a net positive
to have fluoride in the water at the levels of
point seven no leaders, it is not going to have
any harmful effects.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Earlier, Devin Noah and I were talking about some of
the things that RFK Junior says that we actually agree with,
and I'm curious, has he said anything that you actually support.
Speaker 6 (23:21):
Well, Unfortunately, the changes that he's proposed that I would
love to see happen, I don't think he has the
power to do. And that's things like ending the pharma
lobby in DC and ending direct to consumer advertising of
pharmaceuticals on television. We are one of two countries in
the world that allow that. He campaigned on those things,
(23:45):
and since he's been installed at the AHHS, he has
not brought them up once, And that is what I figured,
because the pharma lobby just has too much power with
both Democrats and Republicans. It is the largest lobby in DC.
The idea that he would get that through was always
a misnomer.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Right as anti establishment as RFK Junior seems, he doesn't
seem to be immune from the classic politician behavior of
making promises that he knows he can't keep. But Derek,
we have learned so much in this episode. However, before
I let you go, I wanted to ask you what we,
(24:22):
as individuals have the power to do in the face
of this movement of shitty science. What would you say
to someone who perhaps has dipped their toes in the
worldview of someone like RFK Junior, but hasn't quite gone
off the deep end yet? How would you approach someone
(24:44):
like that?
Speaker 6 (24:50):
I would do my best to try to get that
person to adhere to a heuristic that I came up
very early on with conspirtuality, which is, watch what they
say and then watch what they sell. So if you
look at not just RFK, but if you look at
the people in his inner circle, all of them sell
branded supplements, books, or protocols that go against mainstream medicine
(25:15):
in some capacity, every single one of them. So if
you can help someone say why are these people fomenting
distrust and conventional medicine at every turn but then selling
you their own branded products, that should be your first
signal that something isn't right here?
Speaker 4 (25:44):
All right?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
That was Derek Barris, co host of the Conspiratuality podcast. Yeah,
what did we think? I mean? I really I liked
the point about like approaching people in a reasonable manner
instead of like what's been the average liberal response to
things we don't agree with, which is just to like
(26:05):
completely shit on someone.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
This is going to be a tough four years for
me because I feel like I have very little patience
for this stuff in that like, I don't want to
spend time explaining to people you don't like basic things
that experts are saying, because it feels like we are
living in a world right now where it doesn't really
matter what the facts are or what actually happened.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Right. Yeah. I have family members who, I mean, at
peak COVID were you know, kind of spousing all the
same kind of stuff, and I went into a mode
of like, you don't know what you're talking about, and
it's an understandable reaction, like I still feel the need
to be like that. But then yeah, the result is
not that they're like understanding your position better. It's more
(26:51):
that like, what the hell I'm being antagonized for the
way that I think, and and it probably makes them
double down, like get even deeper into that avenue of information.
But like Devin said, there does seem to be just
like two different worlds of information happening. We saw that
(27:13):
this week with the Supreme Court decision that was nine
to zero against Trump about bringing the mistakenly deported guy back,
and they immediately were like, actually it was nine to
zero in our favor, and then and that was it.
Conversation's over. So it's like, all right, yeah, this is
(27:34):
going to be a fair like an incredibly frustrating era
to live in. And I feel like, you know, I
do feel like the classic like MSNBC like mom now
where it's like, you know, in the first Trump administration,
I'm like whatever, like this is very all, very stupid,
but it's gonna be okay. And now I'm like, holy shit,
I can't I can't believe what I'm seeing. And so
(27:59):
I want to be able to practice more patience and tolerance,
but then this is like the worst era to be
trying to practice that. In the part of the appeal
of RFK is of course that in this kind of
what the whole episode has been about is like, there
will be these things where it's like you want to
hear them out on certain things, or attacking big pharma
and you know, advertisement on TV and these sorts of
(28:21):
things which are obviously way harder goals because there is
money and other factors.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Right. I guess like my approach if someone I knew
was kind of dipping their toe into some of this stuff,
my approach would be to try to take it on
a case by case thing and not just like, oh well,
everything RFK or you know, insert anyone in this realm
is totally off base and wrong. The seed oil thing,
if you don't want to eat that, I don't really care.
I don't think kids aren't gonna die, but that obviously
(28:48):
there's stuff where it's like, Okay, we're trying to get
rid of the polio vaccine. That's pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Thanks for listening to no such thing by Manny, Noah
and Devin. This was our second news oriented episode. Let
us know if you liked it and if we should
do even more of them, or let us know if
you're like, uh, this sucks. Stop doing news. You guys
are idiots. Our guest today was Derek Barris, author of
(29:21):
the Conspiratuality book and host of the Conspiratuality podcast. Definitely
visit the substack for today's episode at No Such Thing
dot Show. It's going to have a list of resources
for people who want to learn more about all the
issues we talked about today. The theme song for No
Such Thing is produced by me Manny certain self is
(29:44):
on the beat for the song you're listening to right now. Finally,
if you liked what you heard today, please leave us
five stars on wherever you're listening to this podcast. It
helps us so much and I'll talk to you guys
next week.
I'm manny, and this is no such thing. The show
where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually
doing the research. On today's episode, does RFK Junior have
a point?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
There's no no such thing, no such thing.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Such than such than such. Thank you?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
All right, how's it going, guys? Good as you can see.
I'm set up it with all these boxes around me.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
How is the move?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
It was fine. I think I went through like all
of the classic moving processes where you think you don't
have that much until it's the day before, and then
you're like, how the hell do I haven't touched any
of this in a year? The move was fine, but
I still do have like a deep layer of resentment
(01:00):
towards the previous landlords for selling the building and course, yeah,
and making me move. I really liked that place. Speaking
of someone who also inspires deep layers of resentment, that's good. Yeah,
thank you. This episode is about RFK Junior. Obviously. RFK
(01:22):
Junior is the head of the HHS, the Health and
Human Services Department, which has a stated goal of enhancing
the well being of all Americans. I think we're in
a bit of a cliffhanger in regards to that mission,
because RFK Junior has pushed and promoted a lot of
problematic theories and ideologies as it pertains to our health.
(01:44):
But at the same time, he's captured the adoration of
millions of people in the so called Make America Healthy
Again movement, And so I thought this episode would be
a good opportunity to ask two questions. One, how has
he taken these ideas and resonated with so many people?
And too, what should we as trusters of science do
(02:05):
about his influence and reach? And so, similar to the
episode we did about the rise of political violence and
assassination attempts a couple months ago, I think we're going
to keep our intro here pretty short because we just
want to get straight to the expert. But first I
just wanted to ask you, guys, where do you think
(02:26):
his explosion and popularity comes from?
Speaker 5 (02:29):
If we're being honest, the reason RFK came unto my
radar is because of Curb your Enthusiasm, Shara Hines, right,
And that was you know, he wasn't really on my
radar until people are like, oh my god, Cheryl's dating
at Kennedy.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I remember working on a show and they were covering
the anti VAXX movement, and RFK was obviously figured into that.
And then just in his background, I knew he was
an environmental lawyer, and that gave him some sort of
legitimate See. Obviously, also being a Kennedy, people assume you're
probably not going to be totally crazy, even though yeah,
(03:07):
it's kind of a cursed family. He was always kind
of careful, careful enough in his phrasing for things to
kind of have one foot in and foot out. I
think we still see that today.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I think years ago, I remember, like years like before
I got to New York, like in college. Maybe I
remember hearing about some of the things he was doing
for the environment, for the cause of the environment. I
remember he got arrested, I think, and I remember thinking, wow, like,
this is a Kennedy who's part of this like very
(03:37):
established apparatus of politics. But here's one of the family
members who's kind of going out getting arrested because he
cares about the environment so much.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Tell us why you got arrested yesterday, Bob. We were
protesting the Xcel pipeline or demonstrating.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah, he's arrested for a keystone Excel oil pipeline protest
at the White House seeing.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Wow, that's incredible considering the people he works for. Now,
fast forward, fast forward years and years and years, he's
running for president. He's got all these scandals. The one
thing I remember sticking out the most in terms of
like controversy was this measles vaccine moment that happened in Samoa.
Have you guys heard of this.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
There's an update from the Samoan government latest. Over three
thousand measles cases reported, one hundred and ninety eight recorded
in the last twenty four hours, fifty three measles related death.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Basically before this outbreak, two kids died after getting the
measles vaccine, not because the vaccine was dangerous, but because
the nurses accidentally mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxant
instead of water, which is how you're usually supposed to
do it. RFK Junior kind of saw that as an
opportunity to be like, hey, look, the measles vaccine is
(04:47):
killing kids, and he visited the island and drummed up
all of this anti vaccine rhetoric. The vaccination rates dropped
on the island, and then when there was an outbreak,
so many people died, and he denies any involvement of
getting fewer people vaccinated. But if you talk to people there,
(05:07):
if you've talked to experts about it, they see a
pretty clear correlation between his rhetoric in Samoa and the
drop in vaccination rates during an outbreak that killed people.
Here's Senator Elizabeth Warren confronting RFK Junior about this at
his confirmation hearing.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Do you accept even a sentill, just even a sliver
of responsibility for the drop in vaccinations and the subsequent
deaths of more than seventy people, anything you do differently?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
The Samoa incident was years ago, But today RFK Junior
is still going on about measles, talking about how vitamin
a is a good enough treatment for the measles outbreak
happening in Texas, and now kids there are overdosing on
vitamin a, which I didn't even know was a thing,
learning so much about this, about how dumb all of
this is. All right, we have established the kind of
(06:15):
healthcare risks that AREFK junior poses. But sometimes I struggle
with how to process him, because, you know, like ten
percent of the shit he says, you do kind of
go like, oh, okay, man, that kind of makes sense.
He's talking about like ultra processed foods and how bad
they are for you, and it's like, yeah, okay, these
(06:35):
like forever chemicals that are in the water. In the
water doesn't sound good to me. He wants to do
he wants to do universal HSA's, which is great but
weird because he's like gutting all of hhs. You know,
he talks about childhood obesity, being anti big pharma. If
I didn't know exactly who RFK Junior was and I
(06:58):
only listened to what he said in speeches, I could
pretty easily see someone getting caught up in that.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
It's funny because we were stunning around the clip and
I saw it for a few days before I actually
listened to what he said in the clip. But like
the headline of the clip was like r K. Junior
is like, we need to take the phones out of
the schools because they're not good for kids.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
I was like, oh, yeah, I agree, agree, And then
you played a clip and then he's talking about, you know,
like how it fucks with their brains because of some
way I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The cell phones also produce electric magnetic radiation. It has
been shown to damage to neurological damage to kids when
it's around them all day.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Yeah, the five gives actually what arget was, which is
like a new spin on it.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
And I was like, all right, you know, not the
reason why I would say take the phone out of
the schools. But I've heard people talk about Michelle Obama
try to get people to eat healthier and people are
picking out so it's like some of this stuff, Like
I don't think everything he's saying is out right, like
this is dumb and bad, which I think, from my
(08:15):
point of view makes it harder, right, Like it would
be a lot easier for me to know how to
approach this guy if everything he was saying was just
sort of crazy and like I could just basically ignore it.
But the fact that like, yeah, we should be eating
less ultra processed foods, but like the way that he
wants to tackle it is like not allowing for snap
(08:36):
benefits to cover ultra processed foods, and it's like, Okay,
what are these people going to eat? And a lot
of these ways they don't have fresh fruits and vegetables,
and as we all know, fresh fruits and vegetables are
a lot more expensive than ultra processed foods, So are
you gonna make you know, are you gonna get people
more snap benefits? And they're talking about cutting snap benefits right,
So it's like there's always I feel like, oh yeah,
(08:58):
that kind of makes sense. And then and either the
way it's going to be executed or the reason for
some of this stuff kind of throws you off, So
it makes it makes it harder to sort of navigate.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, I think he gets into a universally human problem,
which is like, we're so good at being able to
point out something that's bad, but it's when it comes
time to like figuring out how to fix it or
having any kind of like meaningful discourse about solutions, that's
just garbage.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Listen, if he can solve autism by September, like you said.
Speaker 6 (09:33):
That's great.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
We recognize obviously autism is famously a spectrum, you know,
certainly livable, but it's like, you know, okay, this is
concerning if it is rising this much, or is it
diagnosing whatever.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
What drives me crazy about this shit is like there
have been doctors who've been studying this stuff for decades.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And in just so we don't get demonetized. The CDC
data shows that there is no correlation between vaccinations and
an increase in autism. But RFK Junior is here to stay,
and like I said at the top of this episode,
I want to figure out how he's been able to
resonate with so many people and what we should be
(10:10):
doing to deal with this kind of a figure that
high up in office. So after the break, we're going
to talk to Derek Brez. He's a writer, an author,
he's the co host of the Conspirituality podcast, and he
has been covering RFK Junior extensively for the past few years.
(10:35):
All Right, we're here with Derek Berez, co author of
the Conspiratuality book and co founder of the Conspiratuality Podcast.
We want to talk to you, Derek, not just because
you've reported extensively on RFK Junior, but also because you've
reported on the wellness environment that surrounds basically everything that
(10:56):
he does. But first, on the day of this recording,
actual RFK Junior announced at a cabinet meeting that he's
going to figure out what's behind the quote autism epidemic
by September of this year, by.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
September, we will know what has caused autism an epidemic
and will be able to elimit those exposures.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So, Derek, I just want to get your reaction to this.
Can RFK Junior figure this out by September?
Speaker 6 (11:23):
He figured it out years ago when he decided that
he was going to start suing a lot of pharmaceutical
companies around vaccines. So he's doing science in the exact
way that science is not done, meaning he's already come
to a conclusion, and now he's been systematically putting the
pieces into place to come to that conclusion in some
sort of official manner, even though the science is likely
(11:47):
not to hold up.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
So that's interesting because I consider RFK Junior to be
a peddler of misinformation. But do you think there's enough
of an argument to be able to call this disinformation
where where he is being intentionally misleading?
Speaker 6 (12:03):
It's always hard for a lot of reasons, especially in
a litigious society like America, and RFK Junior being a
lawyer who knows how to navigate that. But I would
say that if you were intentionally saying things in order
to monetize them or to sway people to your side,
and to your opinion, I would call that disinformation.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
So, Derek, you and two other people, Julian Walker and
Matthew Remsky wrote this incredible book called Conspiratuality. It talks
about influencers in the wellness space who kind of pedal
misinformation and conspiracy theories. And so I thought you would
(12:44):
be a great person to ask about how RFK Junior
and his ideas have resonated with so many people. So
I'll just put the question to you, how the hell
did this happen?
Speaker 6 (12:58):
We live in a for profit healthcare system that does
not look out for people, and the idea that pharmaceutical companies,
in alignment with insurance companies and medical systems would not
be looking out for our best interest has affected tens
of millions, hundreds of millions of Americans for a very
long time. People don't go to preventive screenings or get
(13:22):
tests done because they can't afford them. So that that
is the root cause of so many people's frustration with medicine. Now,
on top of that, we have a longstanding wellness quote
unquote community in America that has always looked to alternative medicine.
In our book, we go back two hundred years finding
examples of this and probably goes back even further. And
(13:44):
I was a yoga instructor for decades of my life.
I was very heavily involved in the wellness community, working
with food companies, and I know that community very well,
having spent time there, and they are mostly well intention people.
But the problem is a lot of them are scientifically illiterate.
And that really is what happens is that RFK Junior
(14:08):
takes a feeling that people have about their being distrust
in the government and with healthcare specifically, but then they
do not really understand how the scientific process works, and
he exploits that gap in people's knowledge, and he appeals
to this idea that nature at some point was healing
(14:29):
and that everyone was just in great shape all of
the time, which is a complete fallacy, but he exploits
those sorts of gaps and.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Knowledge you mentioned earlier. Being a part of the wellness
community as a yoga instructor for my whole life, that
kind of community has always been adjacent to, like a
lefty liberalism. These days, I feel like that kind of
community has been pretty successfully branded as closer to the right.
(15:00):
Could you explain that shift from the left to the right.
Speaker 6 (15:04):
So conspirituality is this sort of blending between new age
liberalism and right wing conservatism. But where the connective tissue
in my feeling is that it's an individualism. These sorts
of spirituality that we practice in America is very self
focused and self centered. It's always about healing the individual.
(15:25):
It's very rarely about talking about community, and usually when
community is invoked, it usually only is my community, the
people who already believe the way that I do. So
while on its face it seems like how did these
communities come together, it's really a form of protectionism, of
self protectionism that has united them because a lot of
(15:48):
so called Latte liberals, you know, they are also people
who are involved in nimbi movements. They want to solve homelessness,
but they don't want it built on their block. So
that's kind of a feature of liberalism in America.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So I was recently watching one of those twenty versus
one YouTube videos from Jubilee, and the topic for that
episode was anti vaxxers versus a doctor. One of the
sentiments that kept coming up from the anti vaxxers was
this idea that we are actually glowing away from nature,
(16:24):
and the further we get away from nature, the more
diseases we will see. I was wondering if you could
respond to that sentiment, because I feel like nature could
kind of kill you in a heartbeat. So what is
the science behind that.
Speaker 6 (16:39):
It's called the naturalistic fallacy, and it actually is another
parallel with the right wing, because the right wing glorifies
the nineteen fifties post World World War two. America is
this ideal time because it is when we became a
global superpower, but there was a lot going on that
was not good in the nineteen fifties. The same things
happens in the wellness perspective, whereas this idea that we
(17:01):
were once in harmony with nature, which is just total bullshit.
Before antibiotics, vaccines, and then measures like hand washing, you
could very easily die of a cut. Infectious diseases killed people.
You know. One thing that RFK Junior does is he
goes we have a chronic disease epidemic. Now, we do
have problems with chronic diseases. But the reasons that chronic
(17:24):
diseases are more prevalent than infectious diseases right now is
because We've solved a lot of problems with infectious diseases
through vaccines and antibiotics, So this is just a different
example of how we've been grappling and fighting against nature
for a long time. Becoming an apex predator doesn't just
(17:46):
happen without a long struggle, and that struggle continues. But
in some senses, we're victims of our own success. We
can pretty much eat any food anytime of the year
from wherever we want, if we have things that would
have killed us just a few generations ago. I'm a
cancer survivor and I had a relatively and I'm putting
(18:09):
this in quotes easy time with it because the technology
and the science has advanced so much. Whereas one hundred
and fifty years ago, I would not be here right.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Now, Derek, I feel like so much of how RFK
Junior resonates with people has to do with the fact
that he is the person introducing people to a given issue.
(18:39):
I find myself being introduced to a lot of these
topics by r of K Junior, and then I have
to go figure out, you know, what's right and what's wrong.
So I'm hoping we can just throw some r of
K junior claims at you and get your reaction. Where
do they come from? Is it bullshit or not? So
(19:01):
how about we start with this idea that vitamin A
is a sufficient enough treatment for measles. Where does that
come from?
Speaker 6 (19:09):
It comes from studies that were done on malnourished children
in Africa, and it's very specific to malnourished children, and
they had good efficacy with megadoses of vitamin A too,
megadoses to be specific, given over the course of something
like forty eight hours. They had good results from that.
(19:30):
But what often happens with anti vaxers or wellness people
in general is they'll cling to a study, extrapolate from it,
and then pretend that it's good for everyone. Vitamin A
toxicity is a known problem, and we've seen some children
now have to go to the hospital in West Texas
because of that toxicity. But there is a little bit
(19:53):
of truth to a very specific community that they pretend
will we'll affect everyone in the same way, and that's
just not how biology works.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Okay, what about the claim that seed oils are bad
for you. Seed oils, of course the oils that are
extracted from vegetable crops, so we're talking canola oil, corn oil,
flax seed oil. Are those things bad for you?
Speaker 6 (20:18):
That started with or at least was mainstreamed by someone
named Paul Saladino, who was formerly known as the Carnivore
Doctor because he was an early carnivore diet devotee, who
now incorporates fruits and vegetables because he knows that sort
of diet can't last, and he's moved on to another stick.
Seed oils, like canola oil, they're used in ultra processed
(20:41):
foods a lot because they are inexpensive. The problem is
the sugar and the carbs, and then different things, the
excess carbohydrates that are in ultra processed foods and just
the manufacturing process. They've isolated one of the components that
is extremely well studied, is known to have cardiovascular benefits
(21:03):
and is known to have other health benefits, and they've
taken that and pretended to that that is the actual problem.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
And the anti seed oil rhetoric has been pretty successful
because you have franchised restaurants like Steak and Shake making
a big deal out of switching from seed oils to
beef tallo for when they make their French fries.
Speaker 6 (21:23):
Yeah, it's audience capture. I mean, any sort of company
is going to look for what can give them a
leg up and to get into the news cycle. And
I don't know much about Steak and Shake, so I've
never lived in an area what that has one, So
I don't know their policies. I don't know their politics,
but it doesn't surprise me that if they perhaps have
(21:43):
a conservative bent to their politics, then they want to
appeal to that crowd. It does not surprise me that
they jump on the bandwagon.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
I am actually from a state that has Steak and Shake,
and I can confirm that it has a conservative leaning. Okay, okay, okay,
what about fluoride in the wall? Good or bad?
Speaker 6 (22:01):
First off, I'll just say that this feeds into another
aspect that RFK is really good at exploiting. I brought
up the naturalistic fallacy. There's also chemophobia, and that's people's
fear of chemicals. So the idea that something is synthetic
and that it's put into something skivs people out. My
understanding is that the benefits have largely been around the
(22:23):
enamel of teeth and people have gotten less cavities. We've
seen instances for example in Canada, where one province took
the floride out and the childhood cavity rate shot up,
so they put it back in and it went back down.
I happen to live now in the largest city in
America that does not fluoridate its water, which is Portland, Oregon.
There's a strong hippie culture here that runs with some
(22:45):
of its politics. But from my understanding and from the
experts that I've talked to, it is a net positive
to have fluoride in the water at the levels of
point seven no leaders, it is not going to have
any harmful effects.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Earlier, Devin Noah and I were talking about some of
the things that RFK Junior says that we actually agree with,
and I'm curious, has he said anything that you actually support.
Speaker 6 (23:21):
Well, Unfortunately, the changes that he's proposed that I would
love to see happen, I don't think he has the
power to do. And that's things like ending the pharma
lobby in DC and ending direct to consumer advertising of
pharmaceuticals on television. We are one of two countries in
the world that allow that. He campaigned on those things,
(23:45):
and since he's been installed at the AHHS, he has
not brought them up once, And that is what I figured,
because the pharma lobby just has too much power with
both Democrats and Republicans. It is the largest lobby in DC.
The idea that he would get that through was always
a misnomer.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Right as anti establishment as RFK Junior seems, he doesn't
seem to be immune from the classic politician behavior of
making promises that he knows he can't keep. But Derek,
we have learned so much in this episode. However, before
I let you go, I wanted to ask you what we,
(24:22):
as individuals have the power to do in the face
of this movement of shitty science. What would you say
to someone who perhaps has dipped their toes in the
worldview of someone like RFK Junior, but hasn't quite gone
off the deep end yet? How would you approach someone
(24:44):
like that?
Speaker 6 (24:50):
I would do my best to try to get that
person to adhere to a heuristic that I came up
very early on with conspirtuality, which is, watch what they
say and then watch what they sell. So if you
look at not just RFK, but if you look at
the people in his inner circle, all of them sell
branded supplements, books, or protocols that go against mainstream medicine
(25:15):
in some capacity, every single one of them. So if
you can help someone say why are these people fomenting
distrust and conventional medicine at every turn but then selling
you their own branded products, that should be your first
signal that something isn't right here?
Speaker 4 (25:44):
All right?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
That was Derek Barris, co host of the Conspiratuality podcast. Yeah,
what did we think? I mean? I really I liked
the point about like approaching people in a reasonable manner
instead of like what's been the average liberal response to
things we don't agree with, which is just to like
(26:05):
completely shit on someone.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
This is going to be a tough four years for
me because I feel like I have very little patience
for this stuff in that like, I don't want to
spend time explaining to people you don't like basic things
that experts are saying, because it feels like we are
living in a world right now where it doesn't really
matter what the facts are or what actually happened.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Right. Yeah. I have family members who, I mean, at
peak COVID were you know, kind of spousing all the
same kind of stuff, and I went into a mode
of like, you don't know what you're talking about, and
it's an understandable reaction, like I still feel the need
to be like that. But then yeah, the result is
not that they're like understanding your position better. It's more
(26:51):
that like, what the hell I'm being antagonized for the
way that I think, and and it probably makes them
double down, like get even deeper into that avenue of information.
But like Devin said, there does seem to be just
like two different worlds of information happening. We saw that
(27:13):
this week with the Supreme Court decision that was nine
to zero against Trump about bringing the mistakenly deported guy back,
and they immediately were like, actually it was nine to
zero in our favor, and then and that was it.
Conversation's over. So it's like, all right, yeah, this is
(27:34):
going to be a fair like an incredibly frustrating era
to live in. And I feel like, you know, I
do feel like the classic like MSNBC like mom now
where it's like, you know, in the first Trump administration,
I'm like whatever, like this is very all, very stupid,
but it's gonna be okay. And now I'm like, holy shit,
I can't I can't believe what I'm seeing. And so
(27:59):
I want to be able to practice more patience and tolerance,
but then this is like the worst era to be
trying to practice that. In the part of the appeal
of RFK is of course that in this kind of
what the whole episode has been about is like, there
will be these things where it's like you want to
hear them out on certain things, or attacking big pharma
and you know, advertisement on TV and these sorts of
(28:21):
things which are obviously way harder goals because there is
money and other factors.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Right. I guess like my approach if someone I knew
was kind of dipping their toe into some of this stuff,
my approach would be to try to take it on
a case by case thing and not just like, oh well,
everything RFK or you know, insert anyone in this realm
is totally off base and wrong. The seed oil thing,
if you don't want to eat that, I don't really care.
I don't think kids aren't gonna die, but that obviously
(28:48):
there's stuff where it's like, Okay, we're trying to get
rid of the polio vaccine. That's pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Thanks for listening to no such thing by Manny, Noah
and Devin. This was our second news oriented episode. Let
us know if you liked it and if we should
do even more of them, or let us know if
you're like, uh, this sucks. Stop doing news. You guys
are idiots. Our guest today was Derek Barris, author of
(29:21):
the Conspiratuality book and host of the Conspiratuality podcast. Definitely
visit the substack for today's episode at No Such Thing
dot Show. It's going to have a list of resources
for people who want to learn more about all the
issues we talked about today. The theme song for No
Such Thing is produced by me Manny certain self is
(29:44):
on the beat for the song you're listening to right now. Finally,
if you liked what you heard today, please leave us
five stars on wherever you're listening to this podcast. It
helps us so much and I'll talk to you guys
next week.
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