The INSANE Hoax in Your Child’s Classroom, Plus, MrBeast Was ALMOST on Titanic Submarine

I binge watched an entire binge, listened to an entire podcast series over the weekend. It’s like six full episodes. Each of them are like an hour long, very, very long. I listened to every single episode over the weekend because I got obsessed with it. It was so, so good. It’s called Sold a Story. It’s like a docu-series, an investigative series. And it actually surprised me a lot because it is yet another example of an institution that has been captured and corrupted completely. And this institution is now targeting our children. Now, this is something that we talk about often on this show, right? First we went through public schools are a captured institution and pediatricians are a captured institution. The trans ideology, vaccines, whatever, all these different things we in the conservative movement, but also people outside the conservative movement have been red pilled. Our eyes have been opened. 

In fact, over the weekend, I had my daughter at the park. We spend a lot of time at the park these days, and I was talking to another mom at the park and she had an almost four year old, she was pregnant with her second. And she tells me, just volunteering, you know, what their family life is like, how she’s raising her children. She volunteers to me that she wasn’t that based of a mother with her first child. She wasn’t that red pilled on some of these issues. But the second time around, she is. So we were talking about vaccines. We were talking about co-sleeping, we were talking about breastfeeding. We were talking about public schooling. She was even telling me about birth, how she had had a ho, a very traditional hospital birth the first time and the second time she was gonna have a home birth. 

And she said, what changed her mind in the past couple years? I actually asked her, I was like, oh, what changed? She said, COVID opened her eyes to all of these things, and particularly the COVID vaccine, and I’m happy for her. And it was an interesting interaction that I had with this woman. But the part that really got me thinking even after I left the park is how prevalent this story is. I cannot tell you how many of my mom friends have been red pilled. I don’t know a better way to describe red pilled except they’ve become awake. They’ve, they’ve zoomed out from the reality that they were living before and they see things differently. How many of my moms ha mom friends have been red pilled on yes vaccines, on parenting, on public schooling, on Critical Race Theory, on queer theory, on the transgender ideology, on all of these different things. 

Sometimes even on being a working mom versus staying home. So many women have had their eyes open. And remember when we’re coming into this election cycle in 2024, these suburban moms are one of the swing vote demographics that sometimes impacts the outcome of an election. They’re the proverbial suburban women who are supposed to be socially liberal, but economically conservative because their husbands are, and yet they swing a little bit towards the Left because of those social issues. Well, they’re swinging towards the right on these social issues. I feel very encouraged by this. It’s not just anecdotal, it’s more than anecdotal. Because when you have a group of women, moms, especially moms of very young children, so toddlers and primary grade, primary school grade children, when these moms are looking at the world and they are looking at the institutions that many of us were raised with, many of us were used to deferring to, we thought, oh, they’re the experts. 

They know best. We will operate according to what they must know. When these moms are looking at those institutions and they’re thinking, watch out institutions, we don’t trust you anymore, then those institutions better watch out. And that is a good, good thing. So back to this podcast for a second. It’s called Sold a Story, and it is yet another institution that’s been corrupted. So the cdc d is maybe the example that is the most black and white example of the CDC was viewed by a lot of people, even in the Republican party, even in the conservative movement as an institution to be trusted. These were the medical experts. These were these are the scientists, these are the people that know about health. You defer to the CDC on really big decisions about yourself and your family. Just three or four years ago, the majority of people in our country believed that the people who questioned the CDC were really in the minority. 

It was like the moms who questioned vaccines cuz their children had a vaccine injury or naturopaths who thought that you could do a little more functional lifestyle medicine. And not so much prescription, but really preventative medicine. There were, there were really just a few factions of people that questioned the CDC. Most people didn’t. And now it’s the reverse. It’s completely the reverse. The same thing with pediatricians. A couple years ago you had a question about parenting. You went to your pediatrician, and now moms aren’t even taking their kids to the pediatrician because the American Academy of Pediatricians has been captured by trans ideology and DEI, Critical Race Theory, poisonous ideology, dangerous, harmful ideology to our children. And I mean, this is, we don’t even have to get into the public schools, right? The public schools with the same thing. The trans ideology and Critical Race Theory, all of these institutions are, they’re not crumbling, but our eyes have been opened to the fact that they have been captured. 

Well, this podcast called Sold a Story, exposes another institution, one I didn’t even realize was captured, but an institution that touches literally almost every one of our children and our children when they are at very, very young ages. So what is this institution that has been captured? Let me tell you a little bit about what I listened to on this podcast. So it’s called Sold the Story podcast. I highly recommend you look it up. I think it’s probably everywhere that you can find your podcast. I listened to it on Apple Podcast. It’s a six part series put on by a reporter by the name of Emily Hanford, probably you’ve never heard of her. She’s an education reporter. I had never heard of her until I listened to this podcast. This podcast was sent to me by my friend Lauren, my friend Lauren. She didn’t send it to me for any political reason. 

She is a homeschooling mom. She has four beautiful little girls. She sent it to me because I’m planning to homeschool my daughter, my husband and I are gonna homeschool our daughter. And she thought that it was fascinating. And it is the premise of this podcast is that 67% of fourth graders in the United States are below grade level for reading proficiency. That’s two thirds, two out of every three fourth graders read below grade level. And this doesn’t go away after fourth grade. It’s not just something that they ultimately learn to compensate for in eighth grade. 64% of eighth graders are at or below grade level for reading proficiency. This is a significant problem. It’s a problem for if you wanna zoom all the way out, it’s a problem for our country as a whole, as we continue to try to compete on the global level economically and scientifically and militarily, we need really smart, really well educated people to be able to do that, to innovate, to grow. 

Well, we’re not, we’re not training our school children to be competent readers. How are we going to have competent thinkers and people who can be leaders in, in the world, let alone in our country, let alone in our businesses, let alone in our family life? This is a big problem. Big problem. Parents understand that. So the idea is this education reporter Emily Hanford investigates, well, what happened? Why are we failing children even? And this, by the way, this statistic is not just, it’s not just inner city schools, right? Or black children that are failing while affluent neighborhoods with white children are doing well. This has nothing to do with racial divide. This has nothing to do with socioeconomic status. This is consistent across the board, which you could argue, especially as it relates to socioeconomic status, makes it even stranger. Because oftentimes you’ll have failing schools in areas that are poorer, whether it’s a rural area maybe Appalachia, or whether it’s an inner city school in Chicago. 

These, these poorer schools with children that come from lower socioeconomic status, do worse than public schools and richer areas, but not with reading. With reading it is pretty consistent across the board. So Emily Hanford investigates and finds that this idea, this idea has infiltrated or an idea, has infiltrated our public school system about how to teach children to read. Now, you and I might be thinking, okay, well, like phonics, right? Like, ah, oh, that’s how we all learned to read ball. That’s how we learned to read. That’s how we became proficient readers. Well, evidently that is not how children are taught to read in the public school system anymore. Phonics is not in school. Phonics is not a thing. You are not taught to sound out words. You are not taught how to read in school anymore because an idea has infiltrated this institution an idea without any basis whatsoever. 

That, and prop probably won’t be surprised about this idea that is without science, without basis, that is ineffective, has profited certain people to the tune of over a billion dollars. So this idea was first birthed by a woman named Mari Clay. Mari Clay was an education expert. I mean, you can hear the tone of voice that I’m using to say that an education expert actually from New Zealand. And she came up with an idea or a theory that said that children shouldn’t be taught to sound out words. If they’re struggling to read, they should be taught to use contextual clues to figure out what the word might be. Now, you might be thinking, that sounds really bizarre, and it is. When I was listening to this podcast, it’s hard to believe that this is in almost every public school in the United States where children, if they’re sitting there and they can’t read, Jane kicked the ball instead of being taught, okay, well what is that letter? 

And how do you sound it out? They are taught to look for context clues. What is the overall meaning? Can you decipher the meaning of the sentence without the word that you’re struggling with? What might the word mean? Can you guess what you think that word might be? What does the picture tell you about what that word might be? Yes. They actually tell children to look at the picture instead of trying to decipher the word with phonics. This theory that Mari Clay, this education expert came up with is called the queuing theory, where teachers are supposed to give students or points students towards cue context cues about what the word is instead of teaching them to read that word. It’s so insane. It’s so insane. I could not believe this as I read this podcast. So no sounding out, no phonics. The actual science behind this queuing theory is non-existent. 

This was just an idea a random bizarre woowoo idea that Mari Clay had, that she was from New Zealand. She imported this idea to the United States through a group of professors. Oh, shocker, right? College professors bringing a poisonous theory here to the United States through higher education. Where have we heard that before through Ohio State University? And these professors latched on to the queuing theory without even asking, well, what’s this based on? Like, what scientific evidence do you have that queuing children about context helps them eventually learn to read the words that they’re struggling with? There is no science. In fact, the science shows the opposite. The sh the science shows that children who are proficient, readers, who are good readers actually look at every single letter of a word when they’re trying to decode that word. Conversely, poor readers look for context clues. 

So readers that are struggling try to figure out the word without actually reading the word. And so what this queuing theory that Marie Clay invented she was actually teaching all, all children in schools to read the way that that that children who were failing at reading were learning to read. So she was teaching them to be bad readers. Again, you’d think that this would’ve not caught on at all. You’d think that parents and teachers and students and education lobbyists and experts in this field would’ve been like, well, this is the dumbest thing we’ve ever seen. It’s not teaching children to read. We can see the outcome of this. And it’s not based on anything you would, you would think that this would have been rejected, but it wasn’t. It not only wasn’t rejected, it was pushed by Bill Clinton and the Clinton administration. You might have heard of it, it’s still in public schools today. 

It’s called Whole Language. one of the most famous programs that push this queuing theories called Reading Recovery. I’m sure many of you listening to the show have heard of that. If you have, if you’ve, if you’ve, if you’re a teacher and you’ve experienced this, if your child has experienced this, I’d be interested in hearing about it. So go to liz wheeler.com, drop me a comment if you’ve experienced that. So this was pushed by Bill Clinton, and then it became just a little bit of a partisan thing, right? Because when Bush, when George Bush took office, one of his big initiatives was reading First. It was part of the No Child Left Behind Act. So George Bush picked up on the fact, or rather, Laura Bush picked up on the fact that when you teach children to read or quote unquote teach children to read without phonics, it doesn’t work. 

And so part of George Bush’s reading First agenda was incorporating, or Reincorporating phonics into public school curriculum. Now, the interesting part of this is he was just, Bush was just getting started with this initiative. in fact, he saw his new curriculum in a second grade classroom. He went to Florida and was in a classroom hearing a reading demonstration from these children who were using his reading First curriculum. and in the middle of it, as, as is detailed in this podcast, you see Bush get a little bit distracted. And the reason for that is because his chief of staff had just notified him that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. This demonstration of his new reading program happened on September 11th, 2001. So obviously the agenda of the Bush administration focused on anti-terrorism following that, and not so much on the reading, but it became, the point of this is it became a little bit of a partisan thing where those on the Left were pushing, were pushing this anti phonics, this queuing theory that don’t sound out the words. 

And those on the right, were saying, well, wait a second, this doesn’t work. So the question then is, what happened? What happened? And why did the queuing theory end up winning? Why is that still pushed on our children? Okay, so I know that this is a little nerdy. I know that this is a little wonky. I got totally obsessed with this podcast over the weekend because I had no idea that this was happening in schools across the country. It wasn’t just happening in blue states, it wasn’t happening in select public schools here and there. This isn’t a hypothetical, well, it’s called the reading wars, I guess for the people who were aware of it. This isn’t just happening in academia. This is happening. This experiment is being inflicted on our children in the name of politics and profit. And yeah, I don’t like any game that is being waged in the name of politics and profit when it hurts people. 

But you aim it at our children, game over, game over. So what’s happened is there’s several so-called experts, several teaching experts, education experts, at least that’s how they’re billed in the field, who have written curricula, who have written books, and one publisher who has published all of this curricula and all of these books acting as if the queuing theory, this anti phonics theory is the answer to reading struggles in the United States. And it’s not based on any science. It actually ignores the science that says that phonics works and that children that are good readers sound words out. And the the question that I had the entire time I was listening to this podcast is, what on earth motivated these people to perpetuate this hoax when it was obviously demonstrably failing our children? And maybe that was a naive question to ask, because the answer is profit. 

The answer is, these individuals, these, these women, these teachers who were writing this curricula are now extremely wealthy. They’re incredibly rich. I mean, one of the women is maybe rich to the tune of like 20 million Rich. And the publishing company that published all this curricula is like billion dollar rich from selling all this curricula and this curricula, you guys are gonna recognize this curricula. Anybody who’s had children in school in the past two decades, three decades, will recognize the names of some of these curricula. So some of the curricula is like leveled literacy intervention. So any of the leveled reading books, that’s this queuing theory, curricula balanced literacy, that’s the queuing theory, curricula, all of this reading recovery is the queuing theory. It doesn’t help children, it actually sets them further back. There’s like an immediate, the studies that these that these queuing theory proponents pretend substantiate their works shows this tiny little immediate like, oh, if you put your child through the queuing program in first grade, at the end of first grade, it shows that it’s helped. 

But by the end of second grade, they’re far behind. Again, because it didn’t teach them to read, it just taught them to pretend to read based on these cues. But as soon as you advance to a different level, the pictures aren’t there. You can’t just tell what the words mean just by looking what the painting looks like on the page. Well, the kids not, it’s not their fault, but the kids were just faking it. The kids were taught to fake it. And the same with the teachers. The teachers, some of them see that this doesn’t work, but this is what the teachers are taught to teach their children. This is what school boards give teachers curriculum wise to teach children. This is what teachers colleges are teaching teachers to teach children. And it’s all based on a lie. It’s based on a lie that profits a handful of education experts and an education publishing company. 

And our children are harmed by it. It’s anti-science. And when these, when these women, these, these, this is the name of some of the education experts, Fountas, Irene Fountas and Gay Sue Pinnell are two of the most famous authors. Lucy Calkins is another author. Any teacher who’s listening is gonna be like, yep, yep, yep, yep. I recognize those names. Parents are gonna say, oh yes, I do recognize those names. anybody who challenges these women on this anti-science, anti phonics, look at the picture to guess what you think the word might mean. They’re just told, well, no one has a monopoly on science. You have to, sometimes you have to just believe. And all of these women have based their curricula on that original theory invented by the woman from New Zealand, Marie Clay. And none of it is based on science. Like this is such woowoo stuff that our children are taught, that there are first graders in our country that are given a stack of books in school and told to participate in a reading and writing workshop before they can read, before they can write. 

They’re given this opportunity to create a reading nook. They’re told, they’re basically told to cosplay avid readers. And the t-shirt goes, I don’t need to tell you what an avid reader is because you guys are embodying what it means to be an avid reader. But the kids can’t read. They’re not reading and they’re reading books. They’re not reading their books. They’re pretending to read, they’re pretending to be readers, which might be fine in kindergarten to get a kid motivated to do phonics, but it doesn’t work in real life. It doesn’t work to educate a child to teach them to read. Only phonics can do that. Only sitting down and doing the hard boring work can do that. And if you’re thinking this is so crazy that it is in almost every school system, every elementary school, you should, if you have a child in elementary school right now, you should ask your school what reading curriculum that they use. 

Since this podcast came out, I guess this podcast came out about six months ago, eight months ago, there have been states across the country, a dozen, two dozen states, I believe almost a little over two dozen states that have passed laws or changed their curriculum standards away from this queuing theory of reading. Because they see the light, they see that the science says that this is absolute baloney. This is pseudoscience. It’s literally snake oil, but it’s harming our children. So that’s what I spent almost my entire weekend doing, listening to six plus hours of this. I highly, highly recommend that you go check it out. It’s called Sold A Story, and it’s by reporter Emily Hanford. She does, she does an amazing job telling this narrative and exposing yet another institution, right? We’re familiar with the cdc, we’re familiar with public schools as controlled by teachers unions with Critical Race Theory and revisionist history and queer theory. 

We’re familiar with the American Academy of Pediatrics and Pediatricians and the medical industry, all of these different institutions that we used to rely on. We are reorienting ourselves to understand that we can no longer rely on those institutions. They are captured, they are corrupt. They simply are not the experts that they claim to be. We are now as parents taking on this responsibility ourselves to research and learn and make decisions based on our best judgment and not deferring to the so-called expertise of someone else. And this is just another example of it. If it seems overwhelming, well it is and it isn’t. It’s overwhelming to hear new information, but it’s also a good thing. Now, you know, if your child has a problem reading that this is probably the reason why. And a quick, a quick remedial course at home through a phonics book will probably solve the problem for you. 

Or if you can just pull that kid right out of school. We are going to talk about Hunter Biden next, hunter Biden and his text message that the IRS whistleblower gave us, who knows if we ever would’ve seen this, if the American people would’ve ever seen this had it not been for this whistleblower? Let’s read this text message from Hunter Biden. Shall we? We wouldn’t know about this text message if it weren’t for IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley. He said, well, you guys should see this text message for yourself. And since the federal government wasn’t allowing the American people, the voters to participate in our own self-government, thank goodness someone shared it with us. This is what the text says it is from Hunter Biden. It was sent on July 30th, 2017 to Hunter’s Chinese business partner, Harry Zao. It says, I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand and now means tonight and z if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you Zang or the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you’ll regret not following my direction, I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father. 

So what did we learn from this text message we learn, most importantly, that Joe Biden was in fact aware of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, something that Joe Biden has long denied something that Joe Biden now owes the American people. a an explanation about under oath. Were you involved in Hung Up Biden’s business dealings or were you not? If you say no, then are you lying? Are you committing perjury under oath? What did you know about Hunter Biden’s business dealings? Because every piece of evidence that we have paints us a picture or builds out a picture showing us that Hunter Biden was paying or was being paid to give foreign nationals access to Joe Biden when he was vice president, after he was vice president, when he still was an extremely powerful person. 

And when did it stop? Did it stop? Is it happening now when Joe Biden is president of the United States? Is Hunter Biden selling access to his father to foreign nationals? Not just foreign are nationals that would be bad enough, but citizens of nations that are hostile to the United States of America, the Chinese Communist Party wants to unseat the United States. They’re not going to buy off Hunter Biden for Hunter Biden’s expertise because they want him as a business partner. Give me a break. It’s a pay to play scheme. This is a hundred times worse than everything that Hillary Clinton should have gone to jail for when she was Secretary of State. A hundred times worse, because Joe Biden is something that Hillary Clinton will never be. He’s the president of the United States. 

We only know about this because of an IRS whistleblower by the name of Gary Shapley who said that this text, it’s a WhatsApp message that was unearthed during the IRS’s investigation of Hunter, the one that resulted in two misdemeanor, two misdemeanor charges against Hunter Biden for failing to pay a hundred thousand dollars in taxes. And I think 2017 and 2018 respectively. And by the way, just days after Hunter Biden sent this text that sounded like a mafia shakedown because that’s exactly what it is, 5.1 million was wired into bank accounts owned by Hunter by this is corruption. It’s hardly necessary that I say that because this is the textbook definition of corruption. But here’s the thing. We’ve known about this corruption for a long time. This kind of corruption where foreign nationals tied to foreign governments. And as, as we’ve talked about so often on the show, every powerful business person in communist China, even if they are a ostensibly a private business person, is tied to and thus controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. 

That’s how their social credit score system works. They, the Chinese communists are the ones that pioneered an ESG style system where private business owners have to operate as communists first and business people second, which means that every business operation has to survey Communist mean. So even if you’re a private business owner, a private investment banker, whatever you are in China, you are captured by the Chinese Communist Party. So I don’t care if this is a private business person in China, this person is still operating on behalf of hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party, and they’re giving money. Tora Biden, Peter Schweitzer wrote about this in his book years ago about how foreign nationals pay the family members, especially the children of powerful politicians and the siblings of powerful politicians, because there is no law on the books in the United States, no anti-corruption law that prohibits this because we’re a free country, right? 

We don’t want to punish or or restrict the liberty of family members of politicians because those family members can’t help that their, that their parents or their sibling or politicians. They’re not the ones that ran for office. Why should they not be able to do whatever business deals they want just because their father or their uncle or their brother is a senator or vice president or president of the United States? And so foreign adversaries take advantage of this. They know that there’s no law against this, and they crack family members of existing corrupt politicians. And I’m not even trying to make a pun when I say crack a politician’s son like Hunter Biden. I high highly doubt he was very difficult to crack 5.1 million wired into his bank accounts in exchange for what did Hunter Biden have to give in return? What did Joe Biden have to give in return? 

At what cost to the United States did Hunter Biden profit 5.1 million? Here’s the real scandal. The real scandal is not that these big political families are corrupt. That’s actually, unfortunately tragically the rule and not the exception. If you have powerful po powerful political families, you can almost assume that they’re corrupt. This is true of the Clintons, this is true of the Bidens. This is true of the McConnell’s. This is true on both sides of the aisle. The real scandal here is not the corruption, the corruption’s a crime and it should be dealt with accordingly to the fullest extent of the law. The real, the real scandal here is that the Department of Justice knew about this and hid it. That Merrick Garland and his underlings at the D o j who are sworn to execute the laws of the United States and to prosecute crimes such as this didn’t do it because Hunter Biden is Joe Biden’s son. 

If this is not grounds for impeachment, then nothing is. If Merrick Garland is allowed to maintain his position as Attorney General, then we are no longer a free nation. We are no longer a nation of laws. We are a nation of oligarchs no better than Russia. And the compounding parts of this scandal is that Republican politicians continue to do nothing. That Republican politicians who have the power to file impeachment articles against Merrick Garland and against Joe Biden can’t be bothered to do that because it’s too controversial. It’s too polarizing. It wouldn’t work. The Senate wouldn’t convict. We don’t wanna do that to the United States. It’s too divisive. They don’t wanna lose their position. They don’t wanna become targets of leftist ridicule and mockery. They don’t want primary challenges to their seats. 

What are these people even doing in Congress if they’re not serving our interests and rooting out corruption? That is not a rhetorical question. The answer to what these people are doing in Congress, if they are not serving their constituents and rooting out corruption, is that they are participating in it. They are complicit in it. They don’t care because they don’t want the mirror turned on them. This is one of those moments that we as American voters should look and listen very, very closely to what our elected representatives are doing in this moment. This is one of those litmus tests moments that you can judge a politician. How is this politician reacting? What are they doing? How are they trying to hold this criminal cartel in charge of our nation accountable for the laws they broke? And if you’re elected representative in Congress and in the Senate is shrugging their shoulders or saying, let’s wait and see no one’s above the law, let’s trust the system, then you should ask yourself why they’re acting like that. I think we all know the answer to that. I had an additional thought about the Titanic submarine, the Titan. First of all, Mr. Beast posted this tweet. I wanna bring this to tweet up. 

Mr. Beast posted the following tweet. It’s a screenshot or partial screenshot of a text message conversation he had with someone. He didn’t say who this text message was with, but he said, I was invited earlier this month to ride the Titanic submarine. I said, no. Kind of scary that I could have been on it. Now, Mr. Beast is the most followed person on YouTube for anybody who was unaware of this. He, I mean, look at how many impressions are on that tweet alone. 50 million people saw this tweet. This is, this is actually very typical of a Mr. Beast’s tweet. It’s very typical of a Mr. Beast YouTube video. He has the second most viewed YouTube video of all time after the will Smith slap of Chris Rock, I believe holds the all time record on YouTube. And the screenshot of the tweet or the screenshot of the text message that Mr. 

Beast tweeted was from someone that said, also, I’m going to the Titanic in a submarine light this month. The team would be stoked to have you along. And I have to imagine that that is really jarring to be in Mr. Beast’s position, to see the tragedy of the loss of the lives of those people that were on that submersible. And to realize that, dang, that could have been me. That I, we, we in the West often feel invincible because we live pretty safe, secure lives, and we don’t suffer tragedy that often. I think that’s one of the reasons why pretty much every person in our country was just watching riveted to see the updates on whether this submersible would be rescued, whether they could find contact with it, or whether it had imploded at it as it did, and the people died as they tragically did. 

But the thought that I had about this is they’re, I find what these people did in this, in by, by going on this submersible. And I mean this with all due respect. I know that they’ve died. I find it to be incredibly foolish. I said this last week, I can’t fathom looking at that submersible and thinking that it was a safe and wise and prudent decision to go on this. Right? It seemed incredibly reckless. And not just, not just reckless, like, oh, I am in a jackass movie. If I, you know, flip over my motorcycle, I might break my leg. Not just reckless like that, like reckless with human life, like all the way to the extent of life and death, like very reckless. They had a whistleblower at Ocean Gate quit because he said the stuff that they were doing was not safe. 

There was James Cameron of Titanic, of the director of the movie, Titanic said, and he’s like in the submersible industry. He said, people in the industry wrote letters to Ocean Gate warning them about the safety criteria that they were failing to meet, and warning that they would have a tragedy like this. And Ocean Gate neglected. They ignored it. And this is what happened. So it seems incredibly reckless to me that you would go on a journey like this that you would get into a vehicle like this and go into the deep sea, which is a very dangerous place without any safety and security protocol. And there were some people on Twitter, it was Matt Walsh specifically that I saw. and he was, he was scolding those of us who were saying that this seemed really reckless and foolish that anyone would get into a submersible like this. 

He was saying what happened to the respect that we used to have for exploration, the respect and reverence we used to have for explorers who are willing to risk their lives just for the sake of exploration. And I kept thinking about that over the weekend because I thought, is that, is that accurate or is that not accurate? And I realized that’s not only inaccurate, it’s actually wildly, wildly wrong. Because two things, first of all, explorers of old, like say Magellan, right? Did not embark on their dangerous journey without first spending sometimes years preparing for every contingency to mitigate the risk to himself and his men should something terrible happen. And they anticipated that the terrible things would happen. So these explorers that went on these journeys, or take NASA for example, right? NASA’s probably the most modern equivalent to the explorers of old. How many years do these astronauts trained for every contingency? 

How often are these rocket launches canceled over the slightest thing wrong in order to protect the human life that is being risked in this, in this exploration effort? So it’s not the same thing, it’s not equivalent in and of itself because this submersible did the opposite. This was not a highly trained crew. This was not, this had not been pretested. This was not something that was a safe vehicle. And the idea of exploration is not actually what was happening with this submersible exploration like NASA or exploration like Magellan or exploration, like one of these explorers of old was exploration in pursuit of something that would serve the greater good. Something that would be in the interest of society at large that would better people’s lives. It was a sacrifice, not recklessness. It was a sacrifice of, well, it could have been a sacrifice of people’s lives. 

And sometimes it was, it was a sacrifice for something greater than oneself. That is something to be admired. That is something to be respected. We need people who are courageous and prudent and understand that there are things bigger than the individual. But that’s not what happened on the submersible. These people were not prudent, they were not prepared. It was not secure. They were not anticipating contingency in a way that or anticipating stumbling blocks and bad things happen. Friction. They weren’t anticipating friction in order to preserve human life. They were being reckless with that. But they also weren’t exploring for something that would benefit society. They weren’t risking their life in pursuit of something that would serve the greater good. They weren’t doing something bigger than themselves. Opposite of that. They were going just for fun. They were going so that they could have a story around at a cocktail party. They were going perhaps actually to inflate their own ego so that they could say they did something that not a lot of other people could do to serve their own vanity. And again, I don’t mean any, I don’t mean this with any disrespect because I know that they died and it’s tragic and I’m sorry that they died. But it’s also not correct to label these people and what they did as heroic when what they did was reckless and foolish and perhaps even selfish because it ultimately cost them their lives to do so. 

Okay, we have one more cool thing to talk about today. Let’s bring it up on the screen. 

Yeah, I’m good enough in my suit. We’re with my hoodie up. Just listen to this verse folks. They say that I’m good enough grabbing my da da da. Think about that. I shouldn’t. so I tell him it’s one of me. He making fun of me. Ha his girl is a bum to me. Like that boy is a cap sandy home. But I know where he at, like Betty blowing her back thinking about me cuz he know that ass fa damn. And it’d been what it’d been calling his phone like, yo, send me your pin fucking cause he know what I’m on, but when he hit me, I’m not gonna respond. But I don’t sleep enough without you and I can’t eat enough without you if you don’t speak. Does that mean we’re through? Don’t like sneaky that you do? 

Oh my Lord. Okay. This was a surprise. For those of you who are listening to the show, this is a TikTok of Joe Biden’s superimposed into a rap video. My favorite aspect of that was Joe Biden sitting up on the basketball hoop. that was a surprise from my, from my producer. So you guys are welcome for that. If you didn’t, if you didn’t get to see it, if you’re just listening on audio, you should go watch it at the end of, at the end of the rumble version of the show. Just go to rumble.com/liz Wheeler and that will be your treat for today. Joe Biden’s superimposed into a rap video. Oh, that was completely AI generated. Well, it looked like it could have been Joe Biden in real life. The only thing missing from it was Joe Biden like sniffing everyone over the back. Alright guys, if you haven’t signed up for my email newsletter, please do so. Go to liz wheeler.com, drop me your email address. Our email newsletter is, I don’t wanna brag, but it is fire right now. Get you all the stories, all the information, all the data, all the research that you need to know about everything that you need to know about so we can fight back against all this institutional capture. Thank you for watching today. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.