October 22, 2025 • 20 mins
In this episode, Karol sits down with filmmaker Natalya Murakhver, producer and director of the powerful documentary 15 Days, to uncover the lasting effects of pandemic school closures on children and families. They dive into the role of teachers’ unions, the importance of media literacy, and why diverse perspectives are crucial in understanding what really happened. Natalya shares compelling stories from parents and students, behind-the-scenes insights from her documentary, and her vision for bridging political divides in education. The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carrel Markwood Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Natalia Barrocker. Natalia is the producer
and director of Fifteen Days, a documentary about the pandemic
school closures, and the co founder of Restore Childhood, a
nonprofit that was formed during the closures to defeat the
school mask and vaccine mandates.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
So nice to have you on, Natalia.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Thanks so much for having me, Carol.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So on my other podcast, normally, Mary, Katherine Hamm and
I have a segment called Still Mad, Bro, and it's
about things that we are still mad about, and a
lot of them are pandemic era things. The fact that
schools haven't bounced back, the fact that you know, they
admit things in retrospect very very casually, that oh, we
(00:52):
all knew that masks didn't work outside, like did we
because you kept kids in masks outside till like twenty
twenty two.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Are you still mad?
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Bro?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Am I still mad?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah? I guess so.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I mean, I think what they're doing now is far
more nefarious.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
It felt like they were just distracting us.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
It was very very obvious masks did nothing, and in fact,
Randy Weingarten didn't wear masks herself.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Oh I know, yeah, because she needed to be understood.
But the kids did me that.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Do you remember when she was at some teacher convention
in Puerto Rico just before in the mayoral election New
York and she was busted without a mask on, and
we were like masked, our kids were masked, and she
just covered up and said, oh, you know, I felt
uncomfortable having Yeah, I mean, so.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Am I mad? Sure? But mad is only good for fuel.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Like I really prefer to be active, and I'm too
busy to be mad.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Randy is going around the world.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Like selling her book and this false narrative, trying to
to feign compassion for Charlie Kirk or victims of extremist
political violence, when in fact she is inciting it every.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Single day at the day.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, she calls people who disagree with her fascists. Yet
that's not inciting it somehow.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
One of the.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Things about her is that now she says that she
was fighting against school closures, And my question always is
who was on the other side of that fight, Who
was she fighting to open schools? Because all I remember
is her blocking the door. I remember her being the
major blockade to her, of course altering CDC policy, but
(02:40):
more than that, she got so many of the marks
in the mainstream media to go along with her that
I remember her trying to keep schools closed in Florida
for twenty twenty two, and you know, she got these
stories placed about teachers dying. They all died during summer break,
but she made it seem like they died in schools
(03:00):
and schools weren't even open yet. So you know, I
have a lot of bitterness. I am still mad, bro,
and it does spur me to action. So tell us
about your film. What do you hope people get out
of it?
Speaker 4 (03:15):
I hope people get critical thinking skills, because I think
we've lost all critical thinking skills and we're certainly not
transmitting into our children and they're not going to learn
it inside those like red brick doors or schoolhouses. Rather,
I want people to know that this happened, that there
were bad guys keeping schools closed. We know who they are.
(03:38):
We had extortion happening right in front of our eyes.
The kids don't go back until we get these relief funds.
Think we have Randy Becky, all of these union heads
talking about resources.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
What are resources? Their dollar signs And in.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
The middle of the pandemic, Randy Winegarden was demanding a
trillion dollar and one hundred billion to reopen school doors
that are ours.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
We are the taxpayers, They're not her schools.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
There are schools, right, So I would like people to
know what happens. I'd like them to see what propaganda
looks like. I would like to make sure that what
happened to Jay Badiitaria and people who spoke out and
challenged the narrative with evidence based facts never ever get
silenced again. And I would like us to be able
to get our news sources and our information from a
(04:30):
multiple multiple varieties, not just one place.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
The New York Times, the Washington Post, the MSM.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
That can't ever be the single source of news again.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Right, They've failed on such an epic level during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I mean the New York Times.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
You know a porva at the New York Times was
there was their health reporter, and her corrections were legendary.
There were paragraphs long corrections because she would frequently make
tons of mistakes.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Had no business writing this at all.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Do you feel any kind of optimism over where we
are now And the fact that say, Jay Bodicharia, who
was you know, labeled a villain during the COVID years,
is now head of the NIH. Is that a point
of optimism for you?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Oh? Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
I mean so many of the parents that we were
you know, working with at that time, including people like
Tiffany Justice, are now in Washington and are trying to
change things. And these are really good people. Jay as
the head of the NIH, Marty McCary, Tracy Hogue. You know,
Jay talks about replicability. He believe science should be replicable.
(05:37):
That is like the paragon, that's the ideal. Yeah, yeah,
so yes, I think there's a lot of reason to
be optimistic.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
And also the fact that Elon Musk.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Bought Twitter, I mean, act whatever, you know, whatever we
want to call it. The reality is citizen journalism is flourishing,
very white and the free press. What she did in
just a few short years, I mean she talks about
needing to build something, She's building things. I think there's
a lot of optimism.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Does your film stand as a historical record or is
it a warning to people?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Did you mean it to be both?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
That's a great question. Most certainly the historical record. I
was really inspired by Steven Spielberg's Showa project and how
he realized that there was only a certain finite window
during which time he could capture those stories, and once.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
They were gone, they were gone.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
And while this is not a holocaust, these children, I mean,
it's the film is dedicated to a boy who unfortunately
took his life this past May, whose mother was a
plaintiff on my open schools case here in.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
New York City.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
She was screaming from the rooftops in twenty twenty, twenty
twenty one. And this is an affluent woman who was
a psychiatrist at a Brooklyn medical center, who had all
the resources and tried everything, still was unable to save
her son. Can you imagine all the stories we don't know?
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Right?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
How do we find out those stories? That's the other thing.
It's like, you know, when a child horribly, you know,
kills himself in twenty twenty five, it's hard to tie
it back to what happened in those years, but it
easily could stem from those years of you know, real
pain and isolation and the unnecessary things that they did
(07:25):
to kids at that time. How do you tell that story?
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Yeah, Well, I mean it's suicide is of course the
worst case scenario, or maybe we could argue that shooting
other people. Yeah, it's the worst case scenario. And all
these shooters are pretty young, right, they were in high school,
you know, maybe the last year of high.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
School when schools shut down. Right, we had an impact
on them.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
You isolated these people, You put them into online communities
where there were predators waiting for them everywhere and no guardrails.
Of course it had an impact. How do you find
the stories? I mean, there are so many different stories.
I mean, for one thing, the gender critical space. I've
(08:11):
spent enough time now with young people who have detransitioned
or desisted, who were lured into this very, very terrible
world where they go through irreparable damage. I mean, they're
you know Chloe Cole's breasts cut off, right, you know,
so many, so many stories, and a lot of those
(08:31):
kids fell into this during the pandemic when all they
had was the Internet and a lot of predators who
said we see you, we know you, we know your
authentic self.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Here are rainbows, come join us.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Right, did you find anything that surprised you during the
making of this film? I think people think that people
go into projects.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
When Bethany Mandel and I wrote.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Still Youth that we already know everything, I was shocked
by some stuff that we learned in the writing of
the book. I didn't know, like I knew the teacher's
colleges were a problem. For example, I didn't know they
were using Marxist textbooks like that seemed like a conspiracy
theory to me. Did you make any discoveries like that
during the making of this film, Well.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
For one thing, I had no idea that the teachers'
unions were demanding that much money, or that.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
They got that much money.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
And how triple what their normal operating budget was for
the year. Like, I mean, it's just hard because it's
a lot of zero's.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Like I don't know what that meant.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah, yeah, I was told there'd be no math.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
But beyond that, I mean when we discovered that in
March twenty twenty, Randy Winngarten and Jane fondam Jane Fonda
like what does she have to do with school closings,
but that they were having meetings with other progressive NGOs
to try to figure out how to weaponize this crisis
against you know, the entire world basically to get money
(09:51):
for their climate, social, racial, gender justice agendas.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
March twenty twenty. I was sanitizing groceries, right right.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
We believed it. I mean, it seems like they didn't.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
It's like they knew this was a giant opportunity for
leftism to be pushed on all of us, and they
took that opportunity.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Randy said that it was her opportunity to change society.
They wanted to get rid of Trump, they had villainized him,
but they weren't able to get rid of him.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So this was a way to get regime change. But
also they.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Saw, you know, James Fonda says in the film, she goes,
we have one crisis and then we have another crisis.
The one crisis is COVID, which they didn't seem to
think was that big of a crisis. But the other
crisis was the racial, social justice, whatever, free Palestine agenda.
Because they're all the same thing. And that's what Martin
Goury talks about all of this in our film. Martin
(10:43):
Goury is an experienced CIA media analyst. He's written a
book that talks about the coming of Trump and the
eroding of faith in MSM and.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
He talks about the fact that this is all the
same thing, it's all propaganda.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Well, yeah, yeah, it really opened the door to that
omni cause in such a way that it became obvious
to a lot of us that I think didn't maybe
didn't see it before. But those twenty twenty years where
everything is heading in one direction, where you're not allowed
to say certain things and leftism is being pushed so
(11:18):
hard on the people, did you ever think that we
would climb out of it and you'd be able to
make a film like this, Like I wouldn't have said
yes five years ago.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
You wouldn't have said yes.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I wouldn't have.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Thought that you'd be not you specifically, but that we
wouldn't as a society have moved past it kind of
so quickly where you'd be able to make a film
like this talking about what happened and not have like
I mean, I'm sure your life they target you in
a lot of ways, but you know, to be able
to be out there and say the truth.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
I mean, we just released it less than a week ago,
so who knows.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
They still can Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Hopefully not, But yeah, I mean I was going to
do it regardless. I met so many parents, doctors, advocates
all around the country.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
So my resources were human resources, not financial resources.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
There was no dark money, unlike some other organizations that
won't name them. But we just went on the road.
It was Stephanie Edmonds and I. We didn't have any money.
We had like a very shoe string budget, and we
just went and started interviewing people because we knew that
if we didn't get these stories on we would never
get them. And did we think we'd finish it?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I thought so.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
I didn't think it would be as good as it is.
But thank god Eli Steele joined us, Hawk Jackson joined us.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
We had people who had conviction.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
They didn't have money, they didn't have the resources that
the Teachers' Union has, but they had the resources of conviction,
which are invaluable.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
How do you get people who maybe are not politically
aligned with this to watch this film and to see
what really happened.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Well, that's a challenge right.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
First, you need coverage and trusted media sources, whatever those
are at the moment. But the reality is, I'm a Democrat,
I was, I'm a registered Democrat. I'm an issue oriented voter.
I don't vote blindly for any party. I still expect
to vote for a Democrat at some point in the future.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
I have hope for my party, but.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
In this place, this place.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
But but you know, I just saw a clip of
President Clinton talking about immigrants and illegal migration and from
like nineteen night from the State of the Union in
the nineties.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
I mean, so that was the Democratic Party that I
was part of.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Maybe I would have issues with it now, but I
agree with most of the things President Clinton had said.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
And I voted for him.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
But I think that given the fact that we interviewed
people across party lines. I mean, Carol Vidal is a
psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
She's very progressive.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Monica Gandhi is an AIDS researcher at UCSF progressive.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
We don't agree on all the issues.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Morgan Polakov at the USC Education School, super progressive, and
Anya Kamenetz, who was writing for NPR an education policy
at that time, also super progressive. They all said the
same thing. There's not much different between what they said
and Scott Ellis said, so, I don't know. I mean,
we prevent a balanced story. If the parents want to
(14:25):
listen to us, they can.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It's there, right.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I'm not sure, all of those said it at the time,
but I'll give it a pass in the in this interview.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
They were better than others, you know.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
I mean, I think they all advocated for open schools.
Maybe some of the other issues were a little bit
more fraud and we don't addrest. The other thing is
you asked how to get parents to watch it. The
film is just about opening schools. It's not about masks,
it's not about vaccine mandates. We knew that those would
be really like third rail issues that may divide people.
(14:59):
You know where I stand on all of those things.
But the film really is just about opening schools. And
even the New York Times now agrees that it was
a bad idea to close them.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Right a little late again, but yes, they finally have
gotten around to that. We're going to take a quick
break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
What are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Probably I was thinking about this, my past and the future,
my parents, what they did. I don't think I ever
really fully appreciated, you know what my parents, what your
parents did by coming to this country into a completely
unknown place where you don't speak English, you have no money,
you have no stability. You're just taking a big leap,
(15:46):
and it's because you have a vision for something for
the future, for your child, so for your children, for
next generations. I'm so proud of them. And I was
not an easy kid growing up. I was super rebellious.
I was a self hating Russian whatever it was like.
I didn't want anything to do with the community. I
didn't want anything to do with them. I wanted to
just be an American. And now all I think about
(16:09):
is how grateful I wish I could have.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Been then and I am now.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Hopefully they're still alive so I can end healthy and
I could thank them personally by making this film, and
then from my family, from my husband.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Who's supported me.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
He's also an immigrant, came from the UK about twenty
years ago, so he understands how precious democracy is. He
sees his country falling in the background. It's heartbreaking that
we're watching the Ukses succumb to this insanity. But my
husband and my children, because they're the future.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I love that give us a five year out prediction
can be about the country, the world, whatever you want.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
That's a tough one. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Five years ago, I saw a lot of darkness and
living in mom Donnie's New York.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
It's hard to make a prediction.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I are you stay if he wins.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I'll try to stay. I'd like to.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
I predict that it will be a year of sheer hell,
and then we'll have a least Staphonic as the governor
to rescue in New York State, and we're going to
have a renaissance because after the worst of times, we
have to rebuild.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Oh, that sounds like a really good prediction. Actually, if
Alice Stephonic could pull out the governor's race, I think
New York has a real chance. I you know, I
we're recording this and it's funny because I record these
several weeks in advance.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
My audience knows it's a lag time.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
But we're recording this after Eric Adams dropped out of
the race, and it hasn't really moved the needle yet.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Maybe it will a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But it's very tough to root for Andrew Cuomo to
win the mayoralty. But that's kind of what we need
right now, you know, I say on TV, like root
for the guy that bungled COVID.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
It's important.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
But he's sort of the best option. Is that weird
to you? Like he is the villain in a lot
of our COVID stories.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Is it odd? I assume you're rooting for him.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
I was rooting for Adams.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I thought, yeah, no, same listen.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, but now that he's out, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I know, like my Jewish friends and most of my
you know, conservative and common sense friends in New York
really want Pomo over Mom Donnie.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But I wonder if it's an illusion of choice.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, I hear that, I really do.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
I think Nanni's not going to be able to do
a lot of the things that he wants to do.
Of course, worry that when he isn't able to do
the things that he wants to do, it'll be a
moment of stirring up jew hatred because you'll have no
nothing else kind of to get the people going. But yeah,
you're right, I don't know that Cuomo is wildly different
(18:58):
and is such a better option. But you know, I
root for New York from afar, and I hope that
New York pulls itself together. But your your prediction the
least to phonic that wouldn't be bad at all.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
That's actually that's what I tell everyone. I'm like, it's okay,
it's going to be a year of hell.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Write your apartment out, come back, We'll have a last
staphonic and she's going to clean things up.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I hope so well.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
I've loved this conversation. I can't wait to see the movie.
Fifteen Days end us here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Stop listening to the experts. Listen to their grandma. She
had all the answers.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
They know nothing, Bobishka knew all. Really, the experts absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Need to be taken with a large grain of salt,
especially after the last few years.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I really like that.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I haven't I haven't gotten that tip yet. Where don't
listen to the experts? Is that the kind of the
theme in the film as well.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
It's not exactly theme, but I think that it's it's
the subtext, right, like looking to the CDC or these
government bodies that are supposed to be looking out for you.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Well, sometimes it.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Works, but ultimately you have to have agency. It does
mean a lot of responsibility, it does mean research, it
does mean that you're going to fail at times, but
you have to take charge. And that is no more
true than when we look at our children. They only
have us if we don't advocate for them, if we
don't choose their paths when they need us, then you know,
(20:33):
then we leave them floundering.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
She is the Italian We're recover.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Check out her film fifteen Days fifteen daysfilm dot com.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Thank you so much, Natalia for coming
Speaker 3 (20:42):
On having me
Hi, and welcome back to the Carrel Markwood Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Natalia Barrocker. Natalia is the producer
and director of Fifteen Days, a documentary about the pandemic
school closures, and the co founder of Restore Childhood, a
nonprofit that was formed during the closures to defeat the
school mask and vaccine mandates.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
So nice to have you on, Natalia.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Thanks so much for having me, Carol.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So on my other podcast, normally, Mary, Katherine Hamm and
I have a segment called Still Mad, Bro, and it's
about things that we are still mad about, and a
lot of them are pandemic era things. The fact that
schools haven't bounced back, the fact that you know, they
admit things in retrospect very very casually, that oh, we
(00:52):
all knew that masks didn't work outside, like did we
because you kept kids in masks outside till like twenty
twenty two.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Are you still mad?
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Bro?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Am I still mad?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah? I guess so.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I mean, I think what they're doing now is far
more nefarious.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
It felt like they were just distracting us.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
It was very very obvious masks did nothing, and in fact,
Randy Weingarten didn't wear masks herself.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Oh I know, yeah, because she needed to be understood.
But the kids did me that.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Do you remember when she was at some teacher convention
in Puerto Rico just before in the mayoral election New
York and she was busted without a mask on, and
we were like masked, our kids were masked, and she
just covered up and said, oh, you know, I felt
uncomfortable having Yeah, I mean, so.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Am I mad? Sure? But mad is only good for fuel.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Like I really prefer to be active, and I'm too
busy to be mad.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Randy is going around the world.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Like selling her book and this false narrative, trying to
to feign compassion for Charlie Kirk or victims of extremist
political violence, when in fact she is inciting it every.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Single day at the day.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, she calls people who disagree with her fascists. Yet
that's not inciting it somehow.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
One of the.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Things about her is that now she says that she
was fighting against school closures, And my question always is
who was on the other side of that fight, Who
was she fighting to open schools? Because all I remember
is her blocking the door. I remember her being the
major blockade to her, of course altering CDC policy, but
(02:40):
more than that, she got so many of the marks
in the mainstream media to go along with her that
I remember her trying to keep schools closed in Florida
for twenty twenty two, and you know, she got these
stories placed about teachers dying. They all died during summer break,
but she made it seem like they died in schools
(03:00):
and schools weren't even open yet. So you know, I
have a lot of bitterness. I am still mad, bro,
and it does spur me to action. So tell us
about your film. What do you hope people get out
of it?
Speaker 4 (03:15):
I hope people get critical thinking skills, because I think
we've lost all critical thinking skills and we're certainly not
transmitting into our children and they're not going to learn
it inside those like red brick doors or schoolhouses. Rather,
I want people to know that this happened, that there
were bad guys keeping schools closed. We know who they are.
(03:38):
We had extortion happening right in front of our eyes.
The kids don't go back until we get these relief funds.
Think we have Randy Becky, all of these union heads
talking about resources.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
What are resources? Their dollar signs And in.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
The middle of the pandemic, Randy Winegarden was demanding a
trillion dollar and one hundred billion to reopen school doors
that are ours.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
We are the taxpayers, They're not her schools.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
There are schools, right, So I would like people to
know what happens. I'd like them to see what propaganda
looks like. I would like to make sure that what
happened to Jay Badiitaria and people who spoke out and
challenged the narrative with evidence based facts never ever get
silenced again. And I would like us to be able
to get our news sources and our information from a
(04:30):
multiple multiple varieties, not just one place.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
The New York Times, the Washington Post, the MSM.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
That can't ever be the single source of news again.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Right, They've failed on such an epic level during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
I mean the New York Times.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
You know a porva at the New York Times was
there was their health reporter, and her corrections were legendary.
There were paragraphs long corrections because she would frequently make
tons of mistakes.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Had no business writing this at all.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Do you feel any kind of optimism over where we
are now And the fact that say, Jay Bodicharia, who
was you know, labeled a villain during the COVID years,
is now head of the NIH. Is that a point
of optimism for you?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Oh? Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
I mean so many of the parents that we were
you know, working with at that time, including people like
Tiffany Justice, are now in Washington and are trying to
change things. And these are really good people. Jay as
the head of the NIH, Marty McCary, Tracy Hogue. You know,
Jay talks about replicability. He believe science should be replicable.
(05:37):
That is like the paragon, that's the ideal. Yeah, yeah,
so yes, I think there's a lot of reason to
be optimistic.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
And also the fact that Elon Musk.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Bought Twitter, I mean, act whatever, you know, whatever we
want to call it. The reality is citizen journalism is flourishing,
very white and the free press. What she did in
just a few short years, I mean she talks about
needing to build something, She's building things. I think there's
a lot of optimism.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Does your film stand as a historical record or is
it a warning to people?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Did you mean it to be both?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
That's a great question. Most certainly the historical record. I
was really inspired by Steven Spielberg's Showa project and how
he realized that there was only a certain finite window
during which time he could capture those stories, and once.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
They were gone, they were gone.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
And while this is not a holocaust, these children, I mean,
it's the film is dedicated to a boy who unfortunately
took his life this past May, whose mother was a
plaintiff on my open schools case here in.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
New York City.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
She was screaming from the rooftops in twenty twenty, twenty
twenty one. And this is an affluent woman who was
a psychiatrist at a Brooklyn medical center, who had all
the resources and tried everything, still was unable to save
her son. Can you imagine all the stories we don't know?
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Right?
Speaker 1 (07:05):
How do we find out those stories? That's the other thing.
It's like, you know, when a child horribly, you know,
kills himself in twenty twenty five, it's hard to tie
it back to what happened in those years, but it
easily could stem from those years of you know, real
pain and isolation and the unnecessary things that they did
(07:25):
to kids at that time. How do you tell that story?
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Yeah, Well, I mean it's suicide is of course the
worst case scenario, or maybe we could argue that shooting
other people. Yeah, it's the worst case scenario. And all
these shooters are pretty young, right, they were in high school,
you know, maybe the last year of high.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
School when schools shut down. Right, we had an impact
on them.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
You isolated these people, You put them into online communities
where there were predators waiting for them everywhere and no guardrails.
Of course it had an impact. How do you find
the stories? I mean, there are so many different stories.
I mean, for one thing, the gender critical space. I've
(08:11):
spent enough time now with young people who have detransitioned
or desisted, who were lured into this very, very terrible
world where they go through irreparable damage. I mean, they're
you know Chloe Cole's breasts cut off, right, you know,
so many, so many stories, and a lot of those
(08:31):
kids fell into this during the pandemic when all they
had was the Internet and a lot of predators who
said we see you, we know you, we know your
authentic self.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Here are rainbows, come join us.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Right, did you find anything that surprised you during the
making of this film? I think people think that people
go into projects.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
When Bethany Mandel and I wrote.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Still Youth that we already know everything, I was shocked
by some stuff that we learned in the writing of
the book. I didn't know, like I knew the teacher's
colleges were a problem. For example, I didn't know they
were using Marxist textbooks like that seemed like a conspiracy
theory to me. Did you make any discoveries like that
during the making of this film, Well.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
For one thing, I had no idea that the teachers'
unions were demanding that much money, or that.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
They got that much money.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
And how triple what their normal operating budget was for
the year. Like, I mean, it's just hard because it's
a lot of zero's.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Like I don't know what that meant.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah, yeah, I was told there'd be no math.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
But beyond that, I mean when we discovered that in
March twenty twenty, Randy Winngarten and Jane fondam Jane Fonda
like what does she have to do with school closings,
but that they were having meetings with other progressive NGOs
to try to figure out how to weaponize this crisis
against you know, the entire world basically to get money
(09:51):
for their climate, social, racial, gender justice agendas.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
March twenty twenty. I was sanitizing groceries, right right.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
We believed it. I mean, it seems like they didn't.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
It's like they knew this was a giant opportunity for
leftism to be pushed on all of us, and they
took that opportunity.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Randy said that it was her opportunity to change society.
They wanted to get rid of Trump, they had villainized him,
but they weren't able to get rid of him.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
So this was a way to get regime change. But
also they.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
Saw, you know, James Fonda says in the film, she goes,
we have one crisis and then we have another crisis.
The one crisis is COVID, which they didn't seem to
think was that big of a crisis. But the other
crisis was the racial, social justice, whatever, free Palestine agenda.
Because they're all the same thing. And that's what Martin
Goury talks about all of this in our film. Martin
(10:43):
Goury is an experienced CIA media analyst. He's written a
book that talks about the coming of Trump and the
eroding of faith in MSM and.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
He talks about the fact that this is all the
same thing, it's all propaganda.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Well, yeah, yeah, it really opened the door to that
omni cause in such a way that it became obvious
to a lot of us that I think didn't maybe
didn't see it before. But those twenty twenty years where
everything is heading in one direction, where you're not allowed
to say certain things and leftism is being pushed so
(11:18):
hard on the people, did you ever think that we
would climb out of it and you'd be able to
make a film like this, Like I wouldn't have said
yes five years ago.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
You wouldn't have said yes.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I wouldn't have.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Thought that you'd be not you specifically, but that we
wouldn't as a society have moved past it kind of
so quickly where you'd be able to make a film
like this talking about what happened and not have like
I mean, I'm sure your life they target you in
a lot of ways, but you know, to be able
to be out there and say the truth.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
I mean, we just released it less than a week ago,
so who knows.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
They still can Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Hopefully not, But yeah, I mean I was going to
do it regardless. I met so many parents, doctors, advocates
all around the country.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
So my resources were human resources, not financial resources.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
There was no dark money, unlike some other organizations that
won't name them. But we just went on the road.
It was Stephanie Edmonds and I. We didn't have any money.
We had like a very shoe string budget, and we
just went and started interviewing people because we knew that
if we didn't get these stories on we would never
get them. And did we think we'd finish it?
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I thought so.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
I didn't think it would be as good as it is.
But thank god Eli Steele joined us, Hawk Jackson joined us.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
We had people who had conviction.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
They didn't have money, they didn't have the resources that
the Teachers' Union has, but they had the resources of conviction,
which are invaluable.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
How do you get people who maybe are not politically
aligned with this to watch this film and to see
what really happened.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Well, that's a challenge right.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
First, you need coverage and trusted media sources, whatever those
are at the moment. But the reality is, I'm a Democrat,
I was, I'm a registered Democrat. I'm an issue oriented voter.
I don't vote blindly for any party. I still expect
to vote for a Democrat at some point in the future.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
I have hope for my party, but.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
In this place, this place.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
But but you know, I just saw a clip of
President Clinton talking about immigrants and illegal migration and from
like nineteen night from the State of the Union in
the nineties.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
I mean, so that was the Democratic Party that I
was part of.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Maybe I would have issues with it now, but I
agree with most of the things President Clinton had said.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
And I voted for him.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
But I think that given the fact that we interviewed
people across party lines. I mean, Carol Vidal is a
psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
She's very progressive.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Monica Gandhi is an AIDS researcher at UCSF progressive.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
We don't agree on all the issues.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Morgan Polakov at the USC Education School, super progressive, and
Anya Kamenetz, who was writing for NPR an education policy
at that time, also super progressive. They all said the
same thing. There's not much different between what they said
and Scott Ellis said, so, I don't know. I mean,
we prevent a balanced story. If the parents want to
(14:25):
listen to us, they can.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It's there, right.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I'm not sure, all of those said it at the time,
but I'll give it a pass in the in this interview.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
They were better than others, you know.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
I mean, I think they all advocated for open schools.
Maybe some of the other issues were a little bit
more fraud and we don't addrest. The other thing is
you asked how to get parents to watch it. The
film is just about opening schools. It's not about masks,
it's not about vaccine mandates. We knew that those would
be really like third rail issues that may divide people.
(14:59):
You know where I stand on all of those things.
But the film really is just about opening schools. And
even the New York Times now agrees that it was
a bad idea to close them.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Right a little late again, but yes, they finally have
gotten around to that. We're going to take a quick
break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
What are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Probably I was thinking about this, my past and the future,
my parents, what they did. I don't think I ever
really fully appreciated, you know what my parents, what your
parents did by coming to this country into a completely
unknown place where you don't speak English, you have no money,
you have no stability. You're just taking a big leap,
(15:46):
and it's because you have a vision for something for
the future, for your child, so for your children, for
next generations. I'm so proud of them. And I was
not an easy kid growing up. I was super rebellious.
I was a self hating Russian whatever it was like.
I didn't want anything to do with the community. I
didn't want anything to do with them. I wanted to
just be an American. And now all I think about
(16:09):
is how grateful I wish I could have.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Been then and I am now.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Hopefully they're still alive so I can end healthy and
I could thank them personally by making this film, and
then from my family, from my husband.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Who's supported me.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
He's also an immigrant, came from the UK about twenty
years ago, so he understands how precious democracy is. He
sees his country falling in the background. It's heartbreaking that
we're watching the Ukses succumb to this insanity. But my
husband and my children, because they're the future.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I love that give us a five year out prediction
can be about the country, the world, whatever you want.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
That's a tough one. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Five years ago, I saw a lot of darkness and
living in mom Donnie's New York.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
It's hard to make a prediction.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I are you stay if he wins.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I'll try to stay. I'd like to.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
I predict that it will be a year of sheer hell,
and then we'll have a least Staphonic as the governor
to rescue in New York State, and we're going to
have a renaissance because after the worst of times, we
have to rebuild.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Oh, that sounds like a really good prediction. Actually, if
Alice Stephonic could pull out the governor's race, I think
New York has a real chance. I you know, I
we're recording this and it's funny because I record these
several weeks in advance.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
My audience knows it's a lag time.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
But we're recording this after Eric Adams dropped out of
the race, and it hasn't really moved the needle yet.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Maybe it will a little bit.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
But it's very tough to root for Andrew Cuomo to
win the mayoralty. But that's kind of what we need
right now, you know, I say on TV, like root
for the guy that bungled COVID.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
It's important.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
But he's sort of the best option. Is that weird
to you? Like he is the villain in a lot
of our COVID stories.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Is it odd? I assume you're rooting for him.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
I was rooting for Adams.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
I thought, yeah, no, same listen.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, but now that he's out, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I know, like my Jewish friends and most of my
you know, conservative and common sense friends in New York
really want Pomo over Mom Donnie.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But I wonder if it's an illusion of choice.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, I hear that, I really do.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
I think Nanni's not going to be able to do
a lot of the things that he wants to do.
Of course, worry that when he isn't able to do
the things that he wants to do, it'll be a
moment of stirring up jew hatred because you'll have no
nothing else kind of to get the people going. But yeah,
you're right, I don't know that Cuomo is wildly different
(18:58):
and is such a better option. But you know, I
root for New York from afar, and I hope that
New York pulls itself together. But your your prediction the
least to phonic that wouldn't be bad at all.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
That's actually that's what I tell everyone. I'm like, it's okay,
it's going to be a year of hell.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
Write your apartment out, come back, We'll have a last
staphonic and she's going to clean things up.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
I hope so well.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
I've loved this conversation. I can't wait to see the movie.
Fifteen Days end us here with your best tip for
my listeners on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Stop listening to the experts. Listen to their grandma. She
had all the answers.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
They know nothing, Bobishka knew all. Really, the experts absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Need to be taken with a large grain of salt,
especially after the last few years.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
I really like that.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I haven't I haven't gotten that tip yet. Where don't
listen to the experts? Is that the kind of the
theme in the film as well.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
It's not exactly theme, but I think that it's it's
the subtext, right, like looking to the CDC or these
government bodies that are supposed to be looking out for you.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Well, sometimes it.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Works, but ultimately you have to have agency. It does
mean a lot of responsibility, it does mean research, it
does mean that you're going to fail at times, but
you have to take charge. And that is no more
true than when we look at our children. They only
have us if we don't advocate for them, if we
don't choose their paths when they need us, then you know,
(20:33):
then we leave them floundering.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
She is the Italian We're recover.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Check out her film fifteen Days fifteen daysfilm dot com.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Thank you so much, Natalia for coming
Speaker 3 (20:42):
On having me
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