CONTROVERSIAL: Catholic or Protestant? Is Marijuana Dangerous? Is Taylor Swift an ANTI-Feminist?

Alright, Liz Wheeler Show episode 421, take one. Hannah Claire Brimelow is with me today on the show. Hannah Claire is a writer at Timcast.com. You probably recognize her because the last couple times that I’ve appeared on Tim Poole’s, IRL show, she’s sat right next to me. She’s a regular cast member on IRL Hannah Claire, thank you for joining me. It’s so good to see you. 

Thank you so much for having me. It’s fun to be sort of in your neck of the woods, so to speak and be on your show. 

That’s right. That’s right, because it’s been opposite the other couple of times. So I had a fun idea for us today. Instead of talking about news of the day, I thought we would talk about what people in our industry in media and politics and culture often do off camera and that is kind of compare and contrast controversial opinions. It’s sort of actually like what university campuses were supposed to be where you’re supposed to take edgy positions and kind of debate and dissect them. Of course campuses aren’t like that anymore, but I thought it would be fun if we compared and contrasted our controversial opinions. So just for the audience’s edification, what Hannah Claire and I did to prepare for this before the show is I wrote five of my most controversial opinions. Hannah Claire wrote five of her most controversial opinions. We did not look at each other’s list. 

I have no idea what’s on Hannah’s list. She has no idea what’s on mine. And I thought that we would compare. I don’t know if they’re going to be similar, maybe we’ll disagree with each other, but I thought it would be fun to discuss. So let me lead off because I think once you hear this one, you will feel no qualm about sharing edgy opinions because this is perhaps my edgiest opinion. My edgiest opinion is that people who took the mRNA covid jab were wrong. Not only were they wrong, they should now be ashamed of themselves for having done that. And they need self-reflection on why they were so gullible because the information existed back then. They should have known better at the time. Am I wrong? 

I agree with you. I would say 90%. I mean, I think the hysteria around the jab was sort of insane and it’s strange to me that we were this country founded by rebellious people. Yet the default question when you said, oh, I’m not getting the vaccination was, but why don’t you care about this, that and the other? Why don’t you want to get it? I mean, where is the free thought in all of this? I dunno if I’d go so far to say they should be ashamed. I do think that there was a lot of fear mongering and I know people who got the jab because they felt like they would be to blame for their loved one’s death, which of course is hysteria. But on the other hand, I’m empathetic to the terror that you could feel, especially in a country where getting medical bills is essentially a financial death sentence. I would not envy being any of these people who don’t feel as though their bodily autonomy is more important than the potential debt that they could go into. 

Well, you’re not wrong when you say that you feel empathy for people who were coerced. I mean, my family was in the position, my husband’s a medical provider, he lost his job over a covid vaccine mandate, but the only reason he was able to do that is because we are fortunate enough to be in the financial position that we’re secure enough that he could walk away from that. I understand that there are people who aren’t, and I know this is a harsh opinion. I think my opinion is based on this collective reaction that conservatives and Republicans have where they excuse their bad opinions at the beginning of the pandemic by just saying, well, nobody knew what the facts were. No one really knew. And I don’t quite believe that. I think that if you were a discerning person, you could determine right from the get go that the World Health Organization, Tedros Fauci, the case fatality rate, all these things weren’t true. Children weren’t dying right from the get go. And so I don’t quite buy into the whitewashing that like, okay, your decision is totally excused and you guys can send me everyone watching listening. You can send me all the angry emails and justify it. I am like Hannah Claire empathetic to a certain extent, but I don’t know. I can’t get past the fact that it’s like, well, there was information that you could have used to be able to tell at the beginning and a lot of people didn’t. For 

Sure. And also if people need to email you and justify their opinion, they obviously don’t feel very secure in your decision. If I have to argue to you online that that’s something that you had nothing to do with is a good call, then obviously I am sort of insecure in what I chose to do. I mean, I think the reality is that people who got the Mr mRNA vaccine took a risk. And look, sometimes that’s how science works and you get to be on the run on the front line of a great thing, but sometimes that’s a terrible idea and you shouldn’t have done it. And in this case, I agree with you, I think that there is a level of accountability that needs to be had, right? You can’t look back and say like, oh, well we didn’t stop Covid or whatever we were supposed to do with the vaccine. 

I honestly have lost track of that end goal because you guys didn’t get the vaccine. No, the vaccine was not effective and you guys took a risk and in my opinion, might have poisoned yourselves. And I just think that that’s ridiculous. And like I said, I have empathy, but I’m not going to pretend like there was no choice in this. You ultimately decided to go and get the vaccine. I mean, do you remember the phase when they were like, come get a Chick-fil-A gift card if you’d like to get the vaccine. We had to bribe people to do it. And if that means today they need to email you and say, no, it was a good call, then they are just as in need of affirmation and incentive as they were before. And that’s the dangerous part. 

And by the way, guys, I do like your emails, even the ones where you’re contradicting me sometimes those are the most interesting ones. So send them along. Alright, that’s my number one most controversial opinion. Hit me with yours, hcl. 

Okay. I loved this idea, by the way, except all of my opinions are extremely rational and not controversial. Everyone should think like me. No, I’m just kidding. Maybe that’s my controversial opinion. No, my first one is, and I realize that there are going to be some cons here, but I think the right needs to embrace reality TV if they really want to win the culture war. I think that we have these moments where we see it because if I say, when was the last time you saw a conservative family on television? I know what you’re going to say. And it’s 19 kids accounting. It’s the duggars. And that is not the vibe. I think we need to be in some ways pursuing whoever occupies the space of trashy reality television. Obviously, I hope you guys aren’t trashy. I hope you guys don’t have your drama out, but one of my favorite segments that you have done recently is talking about how the Kardashians, there is the drama, there is the glitz, but ultimately they are selling family. And I think there are moments when conservative leaning people could occupy the space. I mean, I did not watch it, but I know what happened in this season of Vanderpump Rules simply by existing on Instagram in my age demographic. Where is the right lane media company to occupy the space and subtly sneak in better values to culture? This is the tool that we don’t have. 

No, this is fascinating. First of all, this is an idea you should pitch to Tim because your guys’ house where you film seems like the perfect place for a reality TV show, a right-leaning reality tv. It’ll 

Be like the office office, but weirder. 

Yes, exactly. This is correct because you bring up the duggars, which is a really interesting point because the problem with what the Duggars did, aside from the sex abuse and the scandals and the religious cult, aside from all of that is, and this is an error that a lot of conservatives make actually, they reject pop culture because pop culture’s influences are bad and destructive. I mean, I reject pop culture for my daughter as well, but they forget that while you’re shielding a child from that pop culture, you have to still fight in the trenches of pop culture, otherwise you’re surrendering that whole area to the other side. And so we’ve created this alternative culture in very conservative, very Christian circles, and the cost of that is the Kardashians are now this famous and Vanderpump rules. But I’d probably watch a reality show of a really conservative family. I know growing up we didn’t have scandal like the Kardashians. Obviously we were normal, but we like to think we were pretty fun and entertaining. I think if it’s a show well done, it’d be cool. 

Sure. And will aid educated, conservative, religiously minded people would be entertaining. Think of reality TV meets Gilmore Girls meets conservative values. I would watch that all day long and I’m tired of trashy people basically being able to spin off very successful businesses where conservatives tend to have these gaps. I mean, I know there are people, I can’t remember the show, but they were like, they made the duck calls and oh 

Yeah, duck 

Dy a terrible job. They 

Were wildly successful, 

They were wildly successful. They had some controversial moments. Some cast members went through early stages of cancel culture. But as far as I know, several of the children have successful brands, they have social media influencers, they tend to leave more openly devouted Christian. And it’s not that I’m opposed to that, but I think that we could have a reality TV show that has conservative values doing kind of things that young conservatives might be interested in doing that has religion it being all about. Because I know that can be sort of isolating to some young people. They want pop culture, but also they don’t feel as though they are Christian enough themselves to fully immerse themselves in pop Christian culture. 

And the point about the Kardashians, for anybody who missed that episode, it’s actually the same point about the Bachelor. These are two of the most famous reality TV show franchises in history. And you don’t necessarily think of them as conservative, but if you put away the promiscuous sex and the drug and the divorce and the Kardashians, their opulent lifestyle, they’re actually selling this idea of a tight-knit family where sisters are best friends and they’re always having birth announcements and gender reveals and birthday parties and weddings and engagement, all these things that young women specifically who are the primary demographic that watches their show really want the same with The Bachelor. I mean the bachelor’s gotten pretty salacious. It’s a lot more like a drunk frat house now than it used to be. But the idea of it is what young women want that they want to find. Mr. Wright, get engaged, have a fairytale proposal and a wedding. I think it would be great. Okay, my next controversial opinion, this is the one that whenever I post on X, formerly known as Twitter about this, it lights it up. R i p Twitter, my opinion is marijuana is dangerous and it should be illegal. 

Am 

I wrong? 

This is so interesting. I dunno. I think there are parts of society right now where, yes, it’s totally dangerous. We’ve got the argument that it’s not addictive, but it is habit forming. People base their entire social lives and their habits, their health around marijuana. I am skeptical of big pharma and so there is a part of me that would like to see marijuana explored in a potentially for medical use, but recreational marijuana is I think ultimately a dangerous route. I don’t know that I would make it totally illegal though because I want to see it studied. I don’t know that I trust Purdue to be whipping up whatever they want in the lab when I would like to see potentially more holistic or more natural options on the market. 

Theoretically. I agree with you. I don’t trust big pharma and I’d like to see more plant-based things. My mind has totally changed on this topic. If you’d asked me this five years, years ago, I would’ve taken a very libertarian stance. I would’ve been like, well, I mean it’s not like meth, right? It’s not like fentanyl. People want to be potheads. I don’t endorse that. I think it’s a waste of life, but whatever. How is it different than alcohol? It kind of like the classic conservative libertarian position. But then I read Alex Besson’s book. You guys all know Alex Berenson. We talked to him a ton about his reporting on Covid. But before he wrote on Covid, he wrote a book about marijuana. And the premise of this book is he’s married to an emergency room physician who would come home and tell him that her basically psychotic patients were all on marijuana and that there was definitely a link between psychosis and marijuana. 

And he scoffed at her to the point that he was like, I’m going to do the, I’m going to dig into here and I’m going to prove you wrong. And what he did is he accidentally proved himself wrong. He dived into all these studies and he found there are links between marijuana use and psychosis, psychotic breaks between marijuana use and schizophrenia between marijuana use and violent crime. Really, really horrendous stuff. And these studies have been completely discarded by the medical community, not because they’re wrong, but because the medical marijuana lobby stands to profit if marijuana was normalized first as a medical remedy versus just recreational. And so once I saw those studies, I couldn’t unsee them. And I was like, well, if this is as dangerous as these studies show, then it should be regulated the same way that meth is and that fentanyl is. 

Yeah, and it is interesting. I think research is the key to most things. And unfortunately we don’t get accurate numbers and schizophrenia, especially for young men, tends to hit in their late teens or early twenties. And that tends to be, I’m totally going anecdotally here, but when people start using marijuana the most, right? So people who are at risk of a schizophrenic break, it would bear out, would be adversely more at risk if they started using marijuana. But they’re never informed of these risks because we don’t tend to acknowledge it. And I’ll say, I grew up in a rural part of Connecticut and I had great upbringing. It’s a nice area, but our school nurse told me after I graduated that the number one issue that they battled was heroin addiction, which is not completely uncommon. I went to school with less than 400 kids. 

It was very small, but one of the big issues was that marijuana was less, or that heroin was less expensive than marijuana in the area a lot of the time. And that has to do with drug trafficking and stuff like that. And so if you are a depressed teenager, which how could you not be in today’s America where you’re told that you’ll never be able to buy a house, you’ll never be able to do anything. I don’t think that making marijuana recreational would necessarily stop you from potentially going for the next big high. And that’s the danger. I don’t like to simplify it to marijuana as the gateway drug, but it opens the door for not dealing with your mental health issues and potentially moving on to more abuse and more substance dependency. Yeah, 

That’s an interesting point actually, because there’s always the intentional implications of a policy and the unintended implications of a policy and maybe one of the unintended implications of illegalizing, it would be basically more trafficking, which means that it can be laced with something else. I don’t know. Okay. Your next controversial opinion, lay it on us. Okay, 

Well, it’s sort of a question because I am not Catholic, but I ask all my favorite Catholics this, I don’t understand why Catholic priests can’t get married. It just seems bizarre to me and seems to not be a strength of the church. And I’m always looking for clarification. I don’t know if you have an opinion on this. 

I would love to give my opinion on this. Actually. One of my controversial opinions is on religion as well. So the reason Catholic priests can’t be married is because it’s the same reason that a married man can’t be married to more than one woman because when you are married to someone, you are supposed to dedicate your whole being to the service of that person, to sanctify that person, to make them holy. So like my husband is married to me and no one else, a Catholic priest has dedicated his life to essentially being married to the church to serve that church. We also know in the gospels that young people are told if they can, to stay chased and to stay single in service of God. And it’s born out. It’s borne out in over now two millennia that this has been the way the church has done it and this has been a good thing. 

Now you can make arguments, and I know that is a very common argument from Protestants and evangelicals. Well, what about when these men aren’t having sex? Doesn’t this drive them towards sex abuse? Doesn’t this drive them towards homosexuality and seminaries? And I don’t think that bears out. I don’t think if you remain a virgin or you’re celibate, it drives you to be a child sex abuser. I don’t think that there’s a connection there. I do think that there is a discernment process that the church has neglected in selecting candidates for the priesthood who struggle with these things prior to entry into seminary that could probably eliminate a lot of the problems. And I think that what used to happen in Catholic church is there used to be a community of priests that would live together. So you always had community, you were never lonely, you were never on your own. 

But because there’s such a priest shortage now, especially parish priests oftentimes live in an apartment by themselves. So they lack that community, which again, I’m not saying that living by yourself and being lonely drives you to horrible sex crimes, but there is an element of community that serves as a bulwark against evil. So you’ll have to count me as a traditionalist on Catholic priests being married. I can’t picture honestly as a lifelong Catholic, I can’t picture some of the holiest, most influential priests. They’re busy dawn to dusk. They would have to cut their ministry in half in a third if they also had the primary duty of providing for their family and protecting their wife and children. So I don’t know if that’s as detailed of an answer as you’re looking for, but that one I do have to call with the church on this. 

No, I think it’s so interesting. I asked Shane Cochlan of Free Freedom Tunes a similar question. He basically said they don’t have the time. They’re devoted to the church and that’s where their priority needs to be. And I grew up Episcopalian, so I’m familiar with Catholicism. I have Catholic family members. I’m happy to, it’s not a question of the Catholic church, but it is a cultural part of the Catholic church that I have always been really interested in, especially because we know that fewer men are seeking the priesthood. And I think it’s so interesting to hear that you point towards discernment, which is again similar to a conversation I had with my Irish Catholic from Chicago Shamus Coghlan, because I think that is something that people lack in all parts of their life right now. There are so many people who are unsure of their direction, and one of the priest at the Catholic church that my family attends now is brilliant, interesting. 

I could definitely understand where he’s pretty young. There’s isolation and he talks about having to decide between this wonderful girlfriend he had and this calling that he felt. And I think it is interesting as much as I always go back and forth on it, because again, I grew up with priests that could get married and could have families, and I felt there was a value in living through the faces of life that your parishioners were also going through. I can see how being a representation of sacrifice and this calling are actually something that we’re sort of hungry for as a culture. And so it’s not something that I, I’m not going to topple the Catholic church over it. I just never totally understood it because it seems like there are other options, especially when you’re trying to recruit young Catholics. 

I understand that. I think one of the reasons the Catholic church is struggling with the vocations, meaning young men aren’t discerning the priesthood, is not because young men want to be married. I think young people are actually getting married in the smallest numbers ever before since it’s been recorded. I don’t think that it has even to do with the decision like, oh, if I’m a priest, I’m not going to have sex. If I’m married, I’ll be able to have sex. I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that the Catholic church has been negligent in their catechesis. They have not fostered faith in the younger generations. And it is a huge sacrifice. I mean, it’s a calling, it’s a vocation. It’s a wonderful thing to be a priest, but it is a lifestyle that only a minority of people in our country choose to do, choose to commit to. And you have to be so alive in your faith and so surrounded by a solid faith community to even lead you to the point that you can envision that as a reality or that you can hear that calling that I would say, and this is just my opinion thinking about this, that is where I would say the Catholic Church has been negligent in trying to foster those vocations. Not because young men are like, oh shoot, I just really wanted to have sex, but as a priest you can’t. I could be wrong 

Though. Sure, sure. I dunno. I think there is something to be said. I don’t know that it’s about whether or not they can have sex. I think it’s more about the sacrifice and I see the spirit worn out in other things. I mean, there are so many women who say, well, I’m not going to have children. I want to put it off because I want to be selfish. I don’t want to have to sacrifice. I think there is an aversion to personal discomfort in the pursuit of something greater. And so in that sense, I could see one of the reasons that having a strong priest in your community who has made that choice, and maybe you’re not discerning the priesthood, maybe you’re just discerning what to do with your life and there might be sacrifice involved is a good role model. It was one of the things that I found interesting for a while. 

I knew a lot of people who were raised either Catholic, Christian, maybe nothing, and they were all pursuing Eastern Orthodoxy. And I found this really interesting because often they told me, one of the things I like is that the priests can have children and that they are encouraged to get married because then they are living out the life that their community is experiencing. They are parenting alongside other people and that they’re aware of those challenges. And I felt similarly growing up in an Episcopalian church. I mean our priest, I think his son was on my brother’s little league team, and so I didn’t just see him at church, I saw him in my community, but I could see the Catholic priest that my family goes to now. He definitely just goes to all the Christmas party. He’s around all the time. So everything life is what you make of it. 

It’s, and I think that that might be a difference in perspective from a Protestant viewpoint. A Catholic viewpoint too is that Protestants view their ministers as a pastor, right? It’s a leader of the community. He’s there to preach sermons, to guide to counsel, and Catholic priests are viewed a little bit differently. They’re not there just to be living the same life beside you. They actually are holy. They’re set apart. They’re supposed to be different than parishioners because they’re supposed to act in persona Christie, which is as God’s representative on earth, especially during the sacrifice of the mass. So maybe that’s somewhat of the difference as well. There actually are a couple of married Catholic priests. Father Dwight Longnecker, I don’t know if you know him. He’s active on conservative Twitter. He was a Protestant minister or an evangelical priest or some other denomination, some other Christian denomination. He converted to Catholicism, and that’s the one exception the Catholic church allows. If you were a priest in another Christian religion, you convert to Catholicism, you’re allowed to receive holy orders and become a Catholic priest. And so he’s one of the few married priests, which to me, coming from a different background than you on, this is strange to me. It’s hard for me to picture a priest as being married 

Because so used not see they’re ing our priests. Yeah, 

Yeah. 

Okay. Okay. Let’s move along to the next one. Although this is really interesting. We’ll come back to religion in a minute because one of my next ones, this is about religion, but first, this is my next controversial opinion that indoctrination in public schools is not bad. Conservatives often say, oh, it’s in a center of indoctrination. That’s bad. I don’t think that that’s bad. I think we should be indoctrinating children with the public school system. I think that whether indoctrination is a bad thing or a good thing depends on what is being indoctrinated, and I think something will always be indoctrinated in the public school system. It’s never going to be a neutral playing field. So I think as conservatives, we should take advantage of this, use the institution of the public schools to indoctrinate students in American values and Christian values. 

Yeah, I think that’s really interesting. I think you’re totally right. There’s no way to have a neutral public school. I mean, compare this to France where they’re a secular country, so they have basically freedom from religion and they are struggling to keep up with all of the dress code regulations because obviously they have a growing Muslim population. And so if you’re not allowed to wear across the school, you’re not allowed to wear yamaka. You obviously can’t wear a headscarf to school to abide by the country’s original founding in America. I think I would be, indoctrination is a scary word, and there are things that I would obviously be opposed to kids learning in public schools, but taking out, let’s say gender theory or different things just leaves a vacuum for something else to fill. And that’s why I would love to see indoctrination, so to speak, although I wouldn’t qualify it as indoctrination for more patriotic feelings. 

I mean, Oklahoma just okayed pr you introducing some of their curriculum as supplemental material, and I love that. I think that there is this desire, especially among that middle school to high school age bracket, it’s just developmentally normal for them to be seeking purpose, to be figuring out who they are as individuals, what their values are, and I would love for them to be surrounded by Christian values or just pro-America values. Values that say that this is a good country and that you are surrounded by optimism and people who are encouraging you rather than what tends to be victimhood. These are all the things that our founders did wrong. This is why you’re weird. This is why unless you pick out crazy pronouns, no one will like you. I mean, it’s a very part of a very trying time for young adolescents, and if we were indoctrinating them with encouragement and hope, I would be for it. Unfortunately, I just don’t think that it’s likely to happen in this country. I think we have a lot of powers that will not see the public schools, and that’s why ultimately you’re going to see a continued rise in homeschooling and alternative schooling, and that’s why the school choice movement is so important because if your public school is never going to be neutral, you should find a school that is, like you’re saying, indoctrinating them with values that will give them a positive and healthy lifestyle. 

And by the way, you will find no bigger proponent of homeschooling than me. I think everyone, if you possibly can homeschool your children, if you can make it work by any means, homeschool your children, they’ll be better off. I just think we should take back the word indoctrination. It is not an inherently bad word. A lot of people feel like recoil. They recoil when they hear it, and we should just reclaim that. We should say no. Indoctrination is literally just teaching someone something right from wrong. Okay, that’s great. Let’s use that. Let’s take that word back to take away from the left. 

Yeah, that’s how I feel about the word hate crime. I just feel like I should be able to use it for anything I don’t like because it just doesn’t make any sense. If you hate it what you’re talking about, you don’t know what my motivations are, so and hate crime. We’ll reclaim the words. 

We’ll reclaim both of ’em. Okay. Hit us with your next controversial opinion. 

Okay. I think I wrote a whole long list. It’s hard to decide. I think that what happened at Burning Man over this last weekend is God testing the pagans. We’re going to stick to my semi-religious theme here. I think it’s so fascinating that there was this storm that apparently no one predicted at the big event with all of the anarchists and the pagans who have, what was it, the Cathedral of Babel, that they are trying to promote an anti-Christian viewpoint, and instead they got flooded and tens of thousands of people got stuck in the mud with dwindling food and resources. Obviously, human suffering is bad. I don’t encourage it, but you chose to be at a pagan semi anarchist event that’s also filled with elitist. I wonder if God is trying to send you a message. 

Let’s just say I wouldn’t be opposed to it if that were the case. I would think that our God is a God of mercy and a god of justice. It seems to me, who am I to define justice? But it seems to me that would be relatively just, I mean literally an altar to a peg in God. I mean you are asking for the proverbial strike of lightning 

For sure, and also perhaps he was protecting them from themselves. He made it so it was a very difficult event to carry out. Why would he do that if it wasn’t for an act of mercy? I think community events are interesting, and I try not to be too, your culture is bad and mine is better. Who am I to say? Except I’m right, but I think God doesn’t like Burning Man, and I think he made that very clear. 

I think we should leave that one right there. I agree with you a hundred percent. I hadn’t thought of it like that, although I did laugh. I think we did a segment on the show earlier in the week where I kind of laughed. I was like, well, as long as people aren’t actually, I think there were a few people that lost their lives, and I’m sorry about that. I’m not trying to laugh at that. That’s tragic. No, that’s not. But overall, 70,000 people there. It wasn’t an overall deadly event. It was a little funny to see these drug addicts and sex orgies disrupted by mud, 

And these tickets are thousands of dollars. This isn’t just like a community event where we hang out. It’s for super wealthy people who want to cosplay as pagans. For a while, I’m sorry, but I just don’t think that this is the event that probably its founders wanted it to be, which maybe God is happy about that. 

I would hope you would hope he would be. Okay. Here’s my next one, and this one is this one. I diverge a little bit from conservatives on. I know that this is actually traditionally a more leftist opinion, although post covid, I think more conservatives have opened their eyes to this and liberals have maybe become more dogmatic towards technocracy, so maybe they’re moving away. But up until a couple of years ago, this was a more leftist opinion here it’s the C’S recommended childhood vaccine schedule is both dangerous and largely unnecessary. Am I wrong? 

Well, this is the thing that I thought would happen before I’d be like, no, I totally agree with you. I will say, if you said that to any one of my young progressive mom friends, they would have a heart attack because why would the C d C lie to them? I want to be open to the history of vaccines, right? Smallpox seems very bad. I know polio, that was a negative, right? There are things that vaccines theoretically cured, but I don’t really understand why children have to have this insane amount of vaccinations, especially so I’m based out of West Virginia. West Virginia is one of five states in the country that you can’t get a religious exemption. And so to go to public school, which you have to send your kid to school, you have to vaccinate your child, which is complete coercion. I don’t really understand why this is necessary, so I wouldn’t say you’re wrong, but I would say there are a lot of people who would feel as though you are trying to actively harm children by saying that, 

Oh, and that’s certainly the case. That’s what everyone says every time I bring this up, because I’ve been open about the fact that I didn’t think about this too much until I was pregnant with my daughter, my daughter’s two and a half. So I was thinking about this. About three years ago, I decided to do my own research because even before covid, I was a skeptic of big pharma and the collusion between the C D C and the F D A. So I was doing my research on are all 70 shots recommended for children necessary? Can’t we base this on individual risk, both individual risk of the disease and individual risk of the vaccine? It seems to me that a child living in a tent in Africa is at a very different risk for certain diseases than my daughter who lives in suburbia, upper middle class suburbia with access to freshwater food, nutrition, medical care, a hospital, the risks are very different. 

So why do we have this blanket schedule for even just in the United States for every single child in the United States? The recommendation is the same. And the deeper I dug into it, the more that I realized that at least a large percentage of these vaccines that are recommended, the Covid playbook wasn’t new, that a lot of the data behind these studies and the risk of the disease weren’t accurately portrayed and aren’t accurately portrayed to parents. And they use fear-mongering, oh, you’re going to kill your child if you don’t comply with this. And it was one of the hardest decisions that I make deciding what we would ultimately do, what my husband and I would ultimately do with her. It feels like a lose lose if you don’t give some vaccines or you’re going to harm them if you do give some vaccines or you’re going to harm them. And my conclusion was I did a whole thread on this on X, formerly known as Twitter, about all the books. I read like 20 books on this, and I did a whole thread showing people exactly what books that I read, and I highly recommend that any current parent or future potential parent read them because I don’t want to call myself an anti-vaxxer, although labels like that no longer bother me. It’s kind of like being called a conspiracy theorist, but my views have definitely changed on whether they’re all safe and necessary. 

Yeah, that’s interesting. Maybe anti-vaxxer should go on or reclaim the word list because I think maybe being anti-vaccine is a good choice, right? I mean, you’re totally right. Why would we have 70 vaccinations that every kid in America is supposed to have while they’re simultaneously telling us that certain underprivileged kids have the same access to nutritions, that they’re at risk of different things. I mean, kids who grew up in cities are more prone to asthma. There are all kinds of differences both socioeconomically and regionally, environmentally, that kids are exposed to. I think what makes me the most irritated is, and I’m sure you experienced this, is that parents aren’t respected in this. I don’t have any children, but I have younger siblings, and if you chose not to give your daughter one vaccine or any vaccines or whatever it is, often you won’t be able to, from what I know, work with certain pediatricians. 

They’ll be like, well, you can’t be our patient. They’ll deny access to medical care based on vaccines. I’m pretty sure they profit off of giving you, right? I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me why they’re able to strong argue you into doing something when they don’t see your child all the time. I’m happy to acknowledge that I’m not a medical doctor, and I think there is a place in the world where people with more expertise on issues than I do, but they don’t know anything except for what they see in the what? 10 minutes you’re at the doctor’s office, they don’t know how your child eats. They don’t get to observe them. If there were to be any adverse effect from any of the vaccines, you would be the first person to see it because you’re with your child. It seems like lazy medicine to me. 

It seems like we are selling things and we are not thinking about the patients and we are hurting and blaming parents because obviously there are well-intentioned parents who try to know as much as they can who don’t have the capacity to do the research that you did. And so they’ll say, I trust my doctor. My doctor wouldn’t lead me astray. My doctor wouldn’t put their bottom line above my child. But isn’t that what doctors do all the time? And that’s not to be mean to all doctors. That’s how their system works. It’s not meant to actually empower people to pursue health on their own. It’s meant to make people comply so that everyone feels like they are getting the same amount of money at a certain point. 

And listen, there’s no one on earth more critical of pediatricians than me. I fired my first pediatrician because he was essentially bullying me about making decisions about breastfeeding and co-sleeping and vaccines. So degrading tried to get me to sign a document saying I was endangering my child, and I was just like, you’re fired. However, I will say, not every pediatrician is like that. The problem is that they’re actually not educated about the vaccines themselves are about the disease. They’re just told, this is the schedule, here’s how you administer it. And they’re told the same talking points that parents are. So you walk in there and you try to have this discussion with the pediatrician. They aren’t trying to hide information from you. They just aren’t taught it in medical schools because medical schools are co-opted by big pharma and the F D A and the C D C, that whole conglomeration. Okay, hit me with your next controversial opinion. 

Okay. I think that seltzer water is garbage, and I do not understand why people drink it. 

Oh, I’m going to have to rate this one. A total zero out of 10 at I live on, is this our 

First fight list? Oh my gosh, 

Look what I have sitting next to me right now. Look at this. This isn’t even going 

To look 

Product placement, this isn’t even an ad. It’s a soda stream. I make my own sparkling water my kitchen every day so that I can drink it. It’s so delicious. 

Why isn’t carbonation supposed to be terrible for your teeth? We be moving away from fizzy beverages altogether. I think this is one of these things that it was just a trend. I think this is something that people were like, oh, my friend drinks this and it’s good, and it’s kind of like soda, but it’s healthy. And so people pretend to like it, but no one actually likes it. They just think it’s like a healthier alternative. It’s like when you say something is gluten-free, people are like, oh, that makes it healthy. And you’re like, no, that’s not actually what that means. 

I mean, I actually do like it, but I don’t drink soda, to be fair. I don’t drink soda. I eat pretty clean. So adding a little fruit juice to sparkling water actually does make it taste good to me. I have heard, and this is an argument against what I do, I have heard that sparkling water actually wrecks your electrolyte balance. I’m not sure how, I didn’t look into it further than that, but I have heard that it’s not as healthy as drinking regular water, but that has yet to stop me yet to stop me until my soda stream breaks. 

We all have our vices. And I’ll say it’s one of these things that I think is on the market to create other problems because I’m so skeptical behind seltzer water lobby. I think that it throws off your electrolytes. I totally believe it. If it hurts your teeth, I believe it. But it’s a product that they present as if it’s healthy. And they say, and this happens to so much of our food, that this is something that you can have and it’s nice and whatever else. Of course, everything you do in life has risks. I’m not going to shame you about your disgusting choice of beverage. I’m just kidding. But I think that this is something that was collective group think, because I worked in this office at one point and we’d have a snack closet, and all of these people would be like, I love LaCroix. I love the coconut water LaCroix. No, that’s terrible. Why would you drink that? And yet, we all do it because we think it’s a thing that people do. I don’t know, man. 

Yeah, I will say coconut is gross in anything and everything, and it should be eliminated as a flavor from all foods cannot stand coconut. Okay. This is my final controversial opinion of the day. This is back to religion. I think all Christians should be Catholic. 

Interesting. I mean, Catholics get extra points in heaven when you convert people. So that makes sense to me that that would be your 

Phase. 

I’m just teasing. I’m just 

Teasing. Not that I’m aware of. I wish. I wish, actually, that would be great. 

Well, don’t, here’s the reason. 

I think all Christians, yeah, you would never know. I mean, hopefully you would just have the gratification of helping a soul get to heaven’s. Why I say this. I don’t say this to trigger Protestants and evangelicals. I say this because I believe as a Catholic, that the Catholic religion is the true interpretation of the Bible, the true interpretation of the church that Jesus Christ established on earth. And my biggest issue with Protestant and evangelical doctrine, and I know that there’s nuances with different denominations, but my biggest issue is in the gospel of John when Jesus is talking about he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. And it seems to me that Protestants and evangelicals dismiss this. They don’t view it as being literal, which Jesus did when he was teaching his disciples because some of them were vols by it walked away and he didn’t correct them, which he would have had. 

He meant it symbolically. And Protestants and evangelicals oftentimes dismiss the historical context of such a statement being literal. Because if you look at the Jewish traditions at the time, especially the Passover lamb, which is what Jesus was, the new Passover lamb part of Passover. Passover wasn’t complete until you ate the flesh of the Passover at Lamb. So Jesus being the new Messiah and the fulfillment of the new manna and the fulfillment of all of these Jewish prophecies, of course, was going to be in alignment with what Jews religious experiences and religious traditions at the time were. So I feel like Protestants, even evangelicals are missing a huge part of what Jesus offers us to know him and love him and serve him by not interpreting this correctly. But I’m interested to hear as, because you’re a Protestant evangelical, I’m interested to hear your response to this. 

Yeah, well, I never even knew. I guess now I would consider myself, I don’t even think I’d be considered an evangelical because I grew up Anglican, so I grew up Church of England, which is obviously more related to the Catholic church. And Ians 

Very classic Protestant then, 

Right? And so Christianity is so interesting. I obviously believe deeply in Christianity. I’m a Christian today. I go to church and I think I’ve mentioned this, that I have Catholic family members. My stepmom who I’m extremely close to is Catholic. And at Christmas I’m at Catholic mass. And that exposure to Catholicism has been really interesting to me because I haven’t converted. So I guess I disagree with you, but I think Catholicism is strong in a way that Protestantism and even the evangelical movement as it is in modern America is not. I think that there is a culture and there is a richer text that they’re able to offer that will ultimately make it so that most Americans in the us, more Americans in the US convert Catholicism. In my opinion. That’s my prediction. Maybe that’s my hot take for you. I found it really interesting that with growing up Anglican, and again, the mass is just much more similar than if you were to go to just your Baptist church or anything else, that still the church lost people and they also were much more open to progressive ideology than the Catholic church was. 

And I think that’s a weakness. So my example here is always that the Church of England is consistently taking really progressive stances on issues like gay marriage and the issues of having a potentially transgender or transgender identifying people in the clergy or serving in the church in some way. And that obviously goes against doctrine. And I think part of it is because the Anglican church doesn’t have a strong culture to back it up the way Catholicism does. So I don’t know if everyone should be a Catholic. I feel like I can’t commit to that opinion until I myself convert. But I will say I think more, I think Catholicism has so much to gain that it is almost inevitable to me that more people are drawn to the religion. I mean, you can maybe name some Anglican Episcopal schools. They exist, but they are not as structured as basically Catholic schools. And then if you’re in certain regions of the country, Mormon institutions tend to be very community-based. They have strong networks. And I would pick Catholics over Mormonism. 

Yeah, I think that’s interesting. I also think the reason that a lot of Protestants and evangelicals are not just not Catholic but anti-Catholic is because there was a concerted effort in our country specifically over the past 200 years to brand Catholicism as things it is not. So there’s a lot of, most of the time when I’m talking to a Protestant or evangelical friend and they’re making accusations against Catholicism, it’s a misunderstanding. They say, oh, you worship Mary. No, we don’t. You worship saints. No, we don’t. You believe that good works can get you to heaven? No, we don’t. It’s very elementary misunderstandings of Catholic doctrine, which in my opinion was more or less of a political campaign, A political campaign to make sure for Protestants in this country to make sure that they didn’t convert to Catholicism. Maybe we’ll have to do a whole episode on religion sometime because it sounds like it could be interesting episode. We’re almost out of time, but hit me with your very last controversial opinion. 

Okay. Well, my controversial opinion is that Taylor Swift ultimately represents femininity and she doesn’t want to, but that’s the way it is. And her culture craves that. And I roadmap at about this for Tim Cast a couple weeks ago. I think that her entire career is based on traditionally female values and virtues, and she plays feminist when it’ll make her money. Or my personal, I wish this was true, to get feminist moms to let their daughters listen to her music. So I’m not just writing about boys, I’m denouncing the patriarchy. I think I grew up with Taylor Swift’s music around, we’re similar ages. She was just on the radio, even if you were not hunting out her stuff, she was around and she talks about love. Her music is about friendship and relationship. She’s obviously very perceptive, very detail oriented. These are very feminine traits, and she’s consistently talking about getting married, having children, and I think that’s good. I think this idea that all female pop artists are ultimately drawn to feminism is only true on the surface. And if you look at what they are saying underneath, they are preaching, they’re screaming, they’re singing that they want a traditional life, they want to be married, they want to find love. 

Yeah, I think you’re a hundred percent correct in this I would call Taylor Swift accidentally authentic. So even if she doesn’t think that she’s a traditional woman or a feminine woman, or she was trying to listen to what she wanted, her own desires so authentically that she accidentally portrayed a traditional conservative version of womanhood, the true version of womanhood, and it’s only her mind that’s been captured by the ideology that’s like, wait, isn’t there some contradiction in this? But how can it be contradictory when this is what I’m authentically feeling, but this is what the politics tell me to believe. I think you’re correct, and I think, I mean, isn’t this one of the reasons why her Eras tour is so successful because this, the Kardashians is what young women want to hear? 

And I think that was one of the interesting things about her music was that she was releasing music about a period of time that she just went through. So her audience who grew up alongside her, hear their own heartbreak or confusion or their own desires to find a life partner or whatever else, these very authentic, real things that women feel, instead of being told, ignore them. Pursue your career. Be really tough, be brittle. Be like a man. We had a pop star that all along was telling us being uniquely feminine is good. And by the way, she made a ton of money off of doing this, and she’s going to continue to be successful because she is selling what in a lot of women’s hearts, they acknowledge to be one of the big challenges of their life. Finding someone to marry and serve a family with. 

That’s right. That’s right. See, I don’t even know why I call these controversial opinions. These all are perfectly sane and rational opinions that we are. This was really fun. Hannah Claire, where can people find you if they want to follow you online, 

They can find me on Twitter, what I guess is now called X. I’m HC Olo, and I’m on instagram@hcl.be. And I, of course really want to direct them to tim cast.com. If you click on our read tab, you see my work and you see work from the other awesome journalists here. I’m really lucky to be a part of this company, especially because I got to meet you through it all. So thank you so much for having me. That’s 

Right. That’s how we became friends. Yeah, it was my pleasure. This was really fun. Guys. Go to tim cast.com, click on Hcl Brimelow’s work, follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter and on Instagram. Thanks for being here. We’ll talk soon. 

Thanks so much. Bye. 

Alright guys, thank you for watching today. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.