474: Jeff Childers—Coffee & Covid

Well, here we go again. It's the way I heard it. I'm Mike Rowe, and he is Chuck Klausmeyer.

And our guest today, and dare I say, Charles, is somebody we both have been enjoying slash

admiring for the last couple of years?

Let me just tell you, I was really excited knowing that Jeff Childers was coming in to spend

time talking to you.

Jeff is a lawyer, but don't hold that against him. He has a practice and has had one for

many years in the Gainesville area in the great state of Florida. And he was just being

his lawyerly self, you know, minded his own business and the world went crazy and there

were lockdowns and there were mask mandates. And Mr. Childers Esquire had objections.

Yes.

And he began to voice those objections and he was right there at the very beginning of

the craziness. And he filed a suit against the county where he lives in Northern Florida.

Long story short, started a Sisyphean battle. And you'll hear how it turns out early

on in our conversation. I really didn't invite him here to talk too much about lawyerly stuff,

although as I think about it, it was really important and it's a really interesting backdrop

for what he's become.

Well, it's how he got involved as well because there were these cases where he had, you

know, as a lawyer does, you have people come to you and say, Hey, I need a lawyer because

I want to sue the county because I don't believe I should have to get this vaccine. And

so it forces him as a lawyer, if he takes that case, to look up stuff. And he said he was

never political. He said, I may be voted in every other presidential election. And I didn't

have a political bone in my body. And then I started researching this stuff and started

going, huh, this is really weird. Like he looked into the mask studies, the studies that

say or the studies that were determined if masks were useful. And as it turns out, there

were tons of studies that suggested that they weren't right. Yeah. Well, anyway, he didn't

have a client. He was the client, but in order to file the suit, he needed somebody who

wasn't him. And so he didn't have a hard time finding someone who shared his view. And

so they go forward with this suit. And what happens from a legal standpoint is super interesting

and we'll talk about it. But what happens from a literary standpoint is even more interesting.

This guy, for the last four or five years, has been writing a blog called Coffee and COVID.

He did it initially to keep a few people on Facebook updated. He had some science and some

charts that he had he had designed and found that proved the points he was making in his brief.

Yeah. And that kind of turned into a very engaged, very loyal following. And then he just started

to elucidate and write more and more. And today, on average, he'll do 3,500, 4,000 words a day,

seven days a week. And for those of you who have never written before, trust me when I tell you,

that is an extraordinary output of content. Not only is it a great output of content, but that

content itself is engaging, interesting, and he does it with a sense of humor. He's very sarcastic.

He is. He's also a man of faith. And he has a sense of humor. And he has a real abiding conviction

that he's on the right side of this. But it's not haughty. It's not arrogant at all. It is just

matter of fact. And like you said, I've shared hundreds of his blogs with friends, not because of

their political nature. And yet, spoiler alert, he's coming from a very specific place on the

spectrum. But it's the place on the despair optimism spectrum. That's the most interesting. He's

super optimistic. This is a glass half full kind of guy. The first blog I read of his was in,

I think it was late in 2021, right after he started this. It was among the darkest,

right? I mean, it was just, it was dark. The country was spellbound and frightened. And we had

this disease racing through us. And we had these cures that many thought might be worse.

We were just petrified and paralyzed as a people. And this lawyer was just writing with

a weird level of joy. And he was saying from the darkest moments, it's going to be fine. In fact,

I don't know when you guys are, I don't know what today this is, but we recorded this on the 23rd

of February. And his column on that particular day, which I encourage you to read was called,

I told you so. And it just happened to be a really delicious roundup as all his blogs are of

current events. But in this one, he takes a four year look back and just said, this is what we

said was going to happen. And here's what happened. So column Cassandra, column a prognosticator,

I call him a very prolific lawyer and author of coffee and COVID, which you should check out. You

can subscribe to it, but you can also read it for free. He makes the vast majority of his material

available for free. And just to put it into perspective, the writing every day, four to six thousand

words a day is like over the course of the six years that he's done it, or five years,

is the equivalent of writing 10 Bibles. Millions of words. Yes, over eight million words.

But the words are good. And he groups them together in a way that's going to make you think and

going to make you smile. Yeah. And probably going to make you want to share it. Anyway,

it's Jeff Childers. And he's up next.

Seven years ago, Ben Spell was a musician with no interest in running a food company. He was

annoyed, though, that so much imported meat at his grocery store was being deceptively marketed

as domestic. So Ben decided to fix the problem. The result was good ranchers, a completely honest,

totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American farms and ranches and promises

to deliver high quality American-made meat for a fair price. I was seven years ago. Today,

thanks to that promise and Ben's determination to keep it, good ranchers has been propelled into

the top tier of meat delivery companies. Full disclosure, that's the reason I became a customer. I

like Ben's story. But if I'm being honest, I wouldn't have stayed if the quality hadn't been so

exceptional. Every single cut I've devoured from good ranchers has been straight up delicious.

And every morsel was raised on a small American ranch or farm from the pasture to the final seal

on every box. Their entire packaging and fulfillment process takes place right here in America.

That's important to me. If it's important to you, give them a try. Subscriptions are affordable

and flexible. In fact, drop my name and you'll get an additional 25 bucks off your first order.

That's Code Mike for an extra $25 off your first order. On top of the hundreds of dollars,

you will save this year by having the best meat money can buy delivered straight to your home.

GoodRanchers.com American Meat Delivered.

If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a far-end ranch.

Get good ranchers now.

Be hall!

All right, first of all, full disclosure. I have not yet subscribed to coffee and COVID,

but I'm going to because for the last three years, have I been cheating?

Like, you make this stuff available. It seems like for free, but you also have a subscriber base

and you have hundreds of thousands of engaged, voracious readers, and yet the content appears

to be available to any scofflaw like me who wants to consume it on the cheap. What's up?

Six days out of seven. It's 100% free.

Ah, all right? So I write a daily blog that it's not in substantial. It's at least five hours

of work per episode. Every day, seven days a week, I just had my AI count them up.

So since I started during the pandemic in 2020, I've got 1,641 posts.

That's, I mean, the word's prolific, but I don't know that that does it.

I did a word count today on the plane. I came down, I read your column today.

Like, man, this is really long. How many were there?

No, well, it was your most recent column, which is called, I told you so,

which is just a love letter to, I've been biting my tongue for a long time.

I don't bite it anymore. When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong, but when I'm right,

gosh, there's just a lot of pent up. So like, you just took a really fun victory lap

with this column. And it was 3,500 words. And people, people should understand, man, 3,500 words

is a meaty chapter in a meaty book. And you're doing this at least to that level

four, five times a week, six, seven times a week. No, every single day. I take off major holidays.

That's about it. Michelle is here. Long-suffering wife. Is that fair, Michelle?

My business partner. Well, and look, let me just get it out of the way. I'm so flattered that you came.

I didn't think you would when I invited you because I know you're on the other side of the country.

And I know you're busy. But I stumbled across coffee and COVID, I guess in 21, maybe 22.

And it resonated with me on so many levels. And I want to talk to you today about

many of those levels. We won't get to all of them. But because it's not that I agree with every

single thing that you write. But every single thing that you write is interesting to me,

because I can't decide if you're really, I mean, you're so sarcastic sometimes. And I know that

you're such a big-hearted guilty man of faith. But you're funny and you're sarcastic. And mostly

you're just relentlessly optimistic. So let's start there as a writer who's also a lawyer.

Or are you a lawyer who's also a writer? How do you even think yourself, Jeff?

Boy, that is an excellent question. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would be

a blogger or a social media influencer or anything like that. I stayed off of social media

until the pandemic. So I'm a lawyer who's blogging. And that's how I think of myself.

If you actually figured out how much time per week I put into blogging versus

lawyering, it's probably more blogging. You have your own practice? I do. What's it called?

Children's Law, LLC, in Gainesville, Florida. Prior to the pandemic, we're a boutique commercial

litigation firm. What kind of case is typically? So it's all business cases. In Florida,

there's a lot of land development. So a lot of land development related cases,

developers who get in trouble with the bank or vice versa, things like that, contract disputes,

but involving litigation. So I go to court. The riveting stuff? Well, I have ADHD. So I can't,

I can't handle reading the, you know, contracts forever. I got to be in front of people

making arguments. But it's really, I mean, that kind of law is such, you know, how the sausage

gets made. You know, it's not law and order. It's not the Lincoln lawyer. It's a daily grind.

It's research. It's study. It's patience. It's all of the things that never make it into the

prime time hits that make firms actually work. It's the glue that holds society together. It's the

way we resolve conflicts without violence. And I liked commercial litigation because it's just

about money, right? Nobody's going to jail. Nobody's dying or has died. There's not some horrible

injury involved. You know, it's just superficially smart people arguing about their...

They're superficial things. They're superficial things, right? And so, but not to say that money's

important to people. I mean, they get pretty exercised about it. Well, superficiality is only a concept

in a relative world when you compare it as you just did to death and calamity and truly mortal

stakes than right. But if there's nothing else going on in your world and your entire business

really hanging by a thread on the ruling of a judge, you don't really know and you've put all

your faith and all your hope and a fair amount of money in a guy like you to make your case.

I've been there and the stakes, you know, are extraordinary and the faith that people have to put

in their attorneys. I think it's impossible to overstate that because it is... I mean, is faith the

right word? Yeah, because you don't have any control. You don't know. All you know is what your

lawyer tells you. Your lawyer tells you you have a good case or a bad case. What are you going to do

with that? You can go get a second opinion, but if that lawyer says something different, then you

have to decide which one you believe. You don't have any independent way to evaluate your case.

Forgive me for hopping around, but isn't that sort of the state of play right now? If you try

and distill the cause of so much collective angst, isn't it because we've put ourselves in a world

where the experts around us don't agree? It's like the wisdom of a second opinion,

medically anyway, is time immemorial and in law, I would oppose. But the third opinion and the

fourth and then the fifth, none of them seem to agree. It feels to me like these last five years

as much as anything else has been an experiment of living with a front row seat to the demise of the

expert class. 100%. I mean, I rag on experts all the time, as you know, having read coffee in COVID,

and I was prepared for that because it's a litigating lawyer. My case is often involved experts,

right? So you got some kind of land dispute and there's an environmental problem. So the county

hires an environmental expert and I hire an environmental expert. And guess what the two experts

always do? They disagree. They disagree. Now, which one's right? Mine is right, of course.

But the truth is that in every lawyer knows this and every judge knows this, the experts will say what

you pay them to say. That's how it works. And this is really important. In our legal system,

who makes the decision at the end of the case? The jury. The jury does. And is the jury an expert?

No, there are peers. They're just some random, that guy will get in. The unemployed guy,

the student, you know, the stay at home mom, those are the people who make the decision. And that was

the way the founders built our legal structure because we can't trust experts. They're paid

mouthpieces. And I don't care. And you know, we're so far along this, this railway line now,

away from where we were before the pandemic, which is this sort of consensus that the experts

knew what they were doing. Right? So we're like, well, the CDC says it says you have to cut up a

t-shirt and wrap it around your head. So, you know, obviously, that must be true because they're the

experts, right? So. Well, don't you think our credulity, our skepticism diminishes. There's

probably some formula that articulates this better than I can. But the more frightened we are,

the more venerated our experts become, the more desperate we are for a smooth,

sure, steady, believable, consistent voice. Only when you're outsourcing because you're

afraid and you're afraid to make a move. So you'd rather turn over the decision making to somebody

else. And that's always a mistake, right? Because whoever you're turning the decision making over

never has your incentives. And I don't care if that's your lawyer, you should never delegate your

whole lawsuit to your lawyer. You should never turn your whole medical treatment over to your doctor.

What I'm getting at, Jeff, is it's well and good, I think, for the average person to look around

and find elected officials and experts who they agree with and who they admire.

But Anthony Fauci was turned into a saint. People had his edifice in their front lawn. They had him

in their window. Literally, they'd beattified him. It couldn't have just been because they agreed

with him. It must have been because they were scared right out of their minds and they were looking

for something messianic, almost a savior, really. Let's just get to it. You're a lawyer doing

this thing, property disputes and whatever. COVID happens. And suddenly you're filing a whole

different kind of suit and you're entering a whole different life. And it almost begs belief.

But if you're not sick of telling them the story, how exactly did this happen?

Yeah, so picking up where we left off, I left the safe world just fighting about money with

relatively low stakes. People don't like to lose money, but again, it's not like your child

died or something. And then I transitioned into this extremely high stakes world.

It happened in an instant in late March so that the declaration of emergency was on March 11,

2020. It's a day after my birthday, so it's easy to remember. By the end of March,

my county, Alachua County in Florida, which is one of the bluest counties in the state.

It's up north. It is up north. Arguably bluer than the South Florida counties.

And they were following LA County. So LA County passed a mask mandate. And so Alachua County decided

a mask mandate. And we all got wind of it. And so everybody tuned into the county commission

meeting where they debated the next emergency order in this series of daily emergency orders

they had been signing. And it was the first county commission meeting I had ever seen.

I had no idea how bad it was. It's like the sausage. It's worse than the sausage making.

I always kind of thought that our elected officials were smart. They had a lot of experience

in management and in politics and all this kind of stuff. And then I find out that they're just

random people with some kind of questionable ideas. I'm being generous. And so they debated

this mask mandate thing. And Mike, I am not making this up. They spent 15 minutes debating

whether to include in that order a requirement to wear your mask inside your own house.

And the only reason they didn't is because the county attorney told them that there be no way

to have police spot check because you need probable cost to enter. They debated that.

They were trying to find a way to get around it. And what I was watching was the exact opposite

of everything I thought I understood about our constitutional system. And it was a profound

challenge on a spiritual level. I feel like it was almost a spiritual event.

Every now and then I like to visit a website called consumeraffairs.com where thousands of

people rate and review the top wireless providers. I do this because I like to see what people

are saying about pure talk. And I'm never disappointed here for instance is a nice note from

Gregory in Tower, Minnesota. He writes and I'm quoting, I recently retired and had to set up my

own phone account as my previous one was on the company. I contacted pure talk. The setup was

easy. The signal is strong everywhere I go. And the company's values are in line with my own.

And now with micro doing your commercials, I've named my phone my microphone.

Thank you. Gregory, as a rule, I take care of the jokes, but I do appreciate the shout out.

May you and your microphone have a long and satisfying life as for the rest of you.

Pure talk really can offer you unlimited talk, unlimited text and plenty of data for just

25 bucks a month on the same 5G service. The big guys are currently overcharging you so

egregiously for go to puretalk.com slash row and do what Gregory did. You'll save an additional

50% off your first month. Why not turn your current phone into a microphone? It's easy.

At puretalk.com slash row, that's puretalk.com slash row.

Can you describe the meeting a little bit so people understand the

setting, the number of people? How many are on this committee? And I assume it was open to the

public? Was it crowded? No, because it was all locked down. It was five people sitting on a

long table wearing masks, right? So this is like the perfect metaphor for faceless bureaucracy.

Yeah. You couldn't see anybody's face. You know, it was all like this and I'm talking.

One of the five county commissioners crocheted her own face mask.

Crochet? Good. Shade. And 95. Great.

Yes, back, you know, when we were wearing the, you know, those neck things that you pull

up over your face and all that kind of stuff. So what do they call those things like balaclavas

or something? Yeah, it's like a, like a kerchief and you would just pull it up over your face,

like the old bank robbers wore and like the Wild West, right? And like that, that'll save you.

Anyway, go ahead. So the upshot is that they wind up passing it. And so we got the first indoor

outdoor mask mandate in Florida. And I looked at Michelle and said there's no way that's

constitutional. They can't tell us what to wear. I mean, imagine if they said we all have to wear

a uniform walking around the county. How is this possibly constitutional? Now, mind you, I do commercial

litigation, not con law. The last time I had any constitutional law experience was in law school

first semester. It's been that long. So I think the same day I wrote my demand letter to the

county. And I sent them a seven day demand to drop the mask mandate, which of course they ignored.

Like, yeah, I mean, what do you, what do you mean you demand? How does that? Who cares,

Jeff Childers has thought it over and he has some demands now. So this is like, how does that work?

Yeah. Well, you know, this is one of those privileges of being a lawyer, I guess, is that you can

throw demand letters everywhere, covering yourself accordingly. Yeah. Did you insist? I insist

that my demand be, it wouldn't have mattered. It's illegal threat. It's basically if you don't do

it, I'm going to see you. And that's what I told them. And so I immediately got to work trying to

find a plaintiff because I needed to represent a client to represent. And I had this great guy who

runs a nursery, you know, and I saw a blue collar hands work. And he's like the way out here on

the libertarian scale. And I called him up and I was like, Justin, you know, hey, do you hear about

this mask mandate? Yeah. Like, would you be my plaintiff if I sue the county? Hell yeah, he said.

So we were off and running. Now he didn't realize that he'd be getting death threats and people

picketing his nursery and all of that kind of stuff, which happened later.

And so I sued at the peak of mask hysteria. I sued the county over the mask mandate. I went there.

And never having done any constitutional law before and never having sued a government entity

before. I didn't even know like, you know, the basic mechanics. Like, where do you serve the law

suit? Yeah. Do you slide it in that little slot at the library where you put the books? I mean,

insert lawsuit here. Especially with the county locked down. I mean, you couldn't get into a

county office. Where am I supposed to send the process server? Right. Anyway, so I'm calling my

network appears. And, you know, when the lawyers have this thing called the bar and that's like,

you know, we have the big bar and you have the local bar and you have even like little commercial

litigation bars and stuff. So I've got contacts and mentors, you know, lawyers older than me who

were smarter and more experienced and that kind of thing. And I'm calling them up and every one of

them said the same thing. Now it's a blue county. So these are, you know, not conservatives.

Now I wasn't really political to start. That shocks a lot of people reading the blog. I probably didn't

vote, but every other presidential election. So I'm calling my contacts in the local bar and

they all said, Jeff, why are you throwing your career away over this? I said, the mask mandate

is temporary. It's only going to last a few weeks. And then this thing's going to be over. And,

you know, you're going to get a reputation and then there could be bar implications.

Right? Meaning, so lawyers are professionally credentialed by the bar and the worst thing that

can happen to us is having our bar license revoked or be disbarred. And there really is nothing

lower in our society than a disbarred lawyer. I mean, really, if you think about it,

that's like somebody that you would be crazy to hire. You don't even need to know the circumstances,

the poor guy. He just sued the county over the mask mandate. That's all he did. No, it doesn't

matter. He's a disbarred lawyer, right? So we, you know, obviously lawyers are already trained in

CYA. And so we most of us do everything we can to stay far away from any kind of conduct that could

potentially be turned against you to disbar you. So that was a very serious issue that I had to

think about carefully. Not to belabor it, but people should understand even, I mean,

in this little office, like if I want an opinion, if I want a lawyer to give me a legal opinion,

could be a copyright issue, could be a clearance issue, could be clearance, could be any number of

things to get these guys to affirmatively own an opinion. Really, truly would take an act of

Congress. They've got no problem generating the invoice. But when it comes right down to saying,

based on this, don't do it or based on this, do it. You never get that. People should understand

that level of clarity, that kind of legal clarity is very rare, you know. So what you wind up

paying for typically is just a lot of ambiguity in my experience. I call them two handed lawyers

on the one hand, but on the other hand, right? And so when I work for my clients in those kinds of

situations that you just described, because that's right in my wheelhouse, I try to give them,

you know, some firm guidance at the end. Here's what I would do. Right? Sure. Here's the

ambiguity. Here's the gray area right here. But here's the risk reward matrix. Here's your

exposure. And so I would, if I were you, this is what I would do now, you can take that and make

your own decision. I just pointed out because the irony is delicious. Now here you are on the other

side of this, trying to make sense of the risk reward matrix. And your friends, your legal peers

are telling you, this is an act of self sabotage. What's Michelle thinking? Like you're non-lawyer

friends who are around you, were they worried for you? Well, I think Michelle was more fired up than

I was. I mean, you know, as I recall, I don't know, maybe she'll tell me different, but as

I recall, she was saying, you've got to do something about this. So I had. There's your client.

Yeah. And you know, and that's what's great about my marriage is on all the big stuff. We always

agree. You know, what a blessing that is. You fight about the little things. Okay. So it's late

2020 and you decide to go to the mattresses. You've got your client, you file it, you serve it,

and you're off to the races. What next? Makes local media, crazy lawyers,

sues county over mask mandate. We start getting calls, usually the drunk dialers and the,

you know, leaving the voicemails on the firms. Sure, voicemail system in the middle of the night.

But it was low key because I was one of the first to file the mass lawsuit, but there was

about 40 that I counted keeping track of to see, you know, what mistakes other people were

making and how it was going. I filed mine under an emergency basis. I asked for a preliminary

injunction, which entitles me to a hearing within 30 days, which is what I wanted. I had to make some

strategic decisions and I wound up making really good ones. I don't know how much detail do you want?

Well, I'm cute. Like what was your argument around the idea that this is an emergency. We're

being forced to wear these things on our faces. And is it a constitutional emergency? I get that

it's a clear violation of the constitution. I mean, we can see that I think pretty clearly today.

But what were the stakes like the practical stakes in your mind of being compelled to do this?

So our constitution is unique in many ways. One way that it's unique,

unique, thank the heavens, is that it does not include an emergency clause.

Now, the Weimar constitution in 1930's Germany had an emergency clause that allowed you to go

extra constitutionally in emergencies. And that's what Hitler used to basically remake the

government in his own image. We don't have that. And in fact, as I argued, the constitution was

drafted in an emergency. They could have put emergency language in there if they wanted to.

They didn't want it. So the government can't just start making stuff up to address some

urgent need of a pandemic or a nuclear war or a nuclear meltdown or you name it. You know,

all these hobgoblins that they always trot out. You know, well, what if there was a UFO invasion?

Well, fine, but that's not in the constitution. So you're acting extra constitutionally. Now,

there's Supreme Court doctrines that allow government to do things that are in the gray area,

but they have to meet super high standards. And none of those standards could be met by the mask

mandate. For one thing, there was, you know, all the evidence that I found when I searched,

now this is the first time I'd ever even searched PubMed, which is the online database where they

put the studies, the scientific studies and the medical studies and stuff. I didn't even know it

existed. But there I am, you know, late at night, searching PubMed for studies about masks.

And there's tons of them. They've been studying this for decades because of flu in hospitals.

So they want to, you know, protect health care workers from passing sicknesses around the

patients bring in. They want to protect other patients from, you know, a doctor goes into the

flu room and then comes into your operating theater and they want to protect you from, you know,

getting the flu. So they study all kinds of stuff. And they studied masks and every one of those

studies found that it didn't stop transmission of flu. So, okay, good. Yeah. And I mean, you can

imagine what I'm thinking, right? As I'm pulling this stuff up and what I've got to, you know,

on the other hand, I've got this lady who crocheted her own mask who made the decision for the rest of

us that we have to write. And so I'm studying, you know, all this science and I haven't had science

since college and, you know, the flu virus is like 300 times bigger or maybe even more than the

COVID virus particle. And that can pass through. Right. So, you know, the, and I was calling

OSHA engineers, right, who, who like, there were consultants who, you know, help companies that

dispose of environmental waste, you know, how to protect workers and stuff and they're laughing

about the masks. One guy told me it was like trying to stop mosquitoes by putting up a chain

link fence. And you probably remember all those videos that were going around social media with

people like blowing their cigarette smoke through their mask stuff like that. So it was obvious

if you would just stop and look at it. This year, the MicroWorks Foundation has set aside $10

million in scholarships to help train the next generation of skilled workers and if history is

any indicator, some of those scholarship recipients will attend an excellent trade school called

Northwest lineman college. Maybe you or somebody you know will be among them. I sure hope so because

America needs lineman desperately by 2030. We'll need to generate and transmit an additional 55

gigawatts of energy. That's enough to power 46 million homes every year. We need more power lines,

more rebuilds, more recovery work and mostly more lineman on the job. These are AI proof six figure

jobs that offer something more than a paycheck and you see it every time there's a wind storm or

some kind of calamity snow most recently all over the east coast. It was the lineman who saved the

day. It's always the lineman. These are jobs that offer real purpose and meaning visit lineman.edu

and poke around. If you like what you see apply for a work ethic scholarship from MicroWorks. We

can help pay for your training and nobody can train you better than Northwest lineman college. Check

them out at lineman.edu that's lineman.edu. Northwest lineman. If you would just

you know put aside your fear and hysteria and everything and just look at the data and the evidence

it was obvious that the stupid things didn't even work which is bad enough but then ordering

everybody to do it is like ordering people to walk on their hands. I mean it's totally irrational.

So the more I got into the details of masking the worst it got and the more

impassioned I became about you know this has to stop and meanwhile just in those few weeks before

my hearing the other lawsuits the four-year-old lawsuits were failing one by one.

And these were also in Florida or all of them? Just in Florida just in Florida yeah and just in

that three-week period and part of the reason is because the lawyers like me who like and I don't

want to say real lawyers that are like litigating regular litigating lawyers with real litigating

practices we're not bringing these suits for the same reason you know I'm just stubborn or

bullheaded and I didn't listen to my peers but no big law firms got into it right the initial

resistance was all small firms like mine and at the very very beginning it was firms that didn't

have anything to lose and so those were lawyers that usually drafted wills and did things like this

and they were totally unprepared for dealing with government lawyers and they were losing and of

course the judges were awful and by the way I strategically I knew I was going to lose at this

circuit court level I deliberately did not file in federal court because one advantage that I had

over everybody else is I have the most conservative pellet jurisdiction in the state of Florida the

first DCA that's the one where the governor brings all his cases and so he appoints rock solid

you know hard court constitutionalist of that court and I had that's where I am I'm in the first

DCA so that's where I wanted to go judges at the circuit level are elected I just knew even if I

got one of the good ones in my area they still are going to be thinking about the reelection campaign

sure so I always plan for the appeal I designed my whole case for to appeal to the first DCA

because you knew you were going to lose I knew I was going to lose at the at the trial court and she

gave me one hour and by the way I did get one of the good judges judge you're one of the good ones

and still she didn't say a word except for procedural things go ahead Mr. Childers go ahead you

know city attorney and then at the end she said well I'm ruling against you I'm dismissing your

case Childers I'll write an opinion as quickly as possible that was it which again and it was

on zoom which might have been the first zoom hearing as a lawyer I've ever done not to be there

in person and to be able to read body language and just get that interaction he was totally alien

and half the people on the zoom were wearing masks so you can't even see their facial expressions

or anything so anyway we took it up on appeal and the following April I had a favorable decision

and I won the only appellate level decision in the entire country finding that mandatory masking

is unconstitutional in the whole country as far as I know and I've looked

that nobody else even made it to the appellate level so what happened as a result of that ruling

everywhere in set 33 counties in Florida out of 67 all dropped their mask mandates

schools municipalities whatever 2021 at this point yeah early 2021 so we were on the front wave

now of course they all did it voluntarily and by their own decision and the emergency has

receded to the point and you know that kind of thing but all in the wake of that of that decision

ruling and I know for a fact there were bigger players involved behind my county that were helping

them the quality of their lawyer and when we got to the appellate level shot up sure like a rocket

well they I mean the stakes are enormous it's another kind of contagion that kind of decision

they had to stop it no matter what and then here's the funny thing they didn't appeal me to the

state Supreme Court I was praying Mike that they would appeal me to because if I could have got to

the state Supreme Court and if the state Supreme Court had affirmed that the whole state of Florida

would have been free and they stopped they took their licks in the first DCA they didn't try to

overturn me at the Florida Supreme Court and they just stuck let me ask you something do you

you put as we look at the other side to what degree do you think and to what percentage do you

think the people who were firmly in favor of these mandates meant well in other words how much good

faith do you believe the other side had because I mean to this day I talk to people who shrug and say

look Mike why are you making trouble on your podcast why are you bringing in Gavin de Becker and

Dell big tree why are you talking to Jeff Childers it's like it's it's it's almost in polite

because the way they remember it the way they heard it is that a lot of really well intentioned

people met got it wrong at a time of extraordinary unrest and they were just trying to do what was

right does that hold any water with you let me answer by way of a story so during that period of

three weeks before my hearing I I'm an experienced litigation lawyer and I knew I had a lot of tools

like discovery available to me and I can get limited discovery before an emergency hearing like

that so I asked to depose the the counties main expert who was the head of the Emerging Pathogens

Institute at the University of Florida so super credentialed expert guy who flies all over the

world and you know does all this stuff he just happens to be in my little town of Gainesville

Florida because that's where the University of Florida is he also just was you know the one who

always showed up at school board hearing to explain why I'm asking the kids two-year-olds is

necessary to you know save the universe or whatever and so anyway I arranged to take his deposition

and they didn't want obviously they did not want to produce him but it was still early and my

judge like I said I got a good judge and they knew the judge was going to let me do it because they

they got an affidavit from this guy and they were using his affidavit as part of their evidence

so I have a right to ask him questions so it's really an extraordinary deposition

but the there was this one question that I think answers it so much of what you're asking

and so you know he's doing a good job he's you know he knows how to talk he's good at tap dancing

I'm asking him probing questions about the mass and he's giving me acronyms and you know

ten syllable words and you know all that kind of stuff and so I get to this point I've

been waiting for for a while I might deposition outline and I'm like well doc

are you an independent researcher that is do you do your own research yes you don't just

track behind anybody else and and adopt their position do you you make up your own mind based

on your own research your own thought oh yes yes as a word about like a big agency like the CDC

well if the CDC says it is that you become your position or do you make up your own mind no I make up

my own mind he says do my own research so even if the CDC was wrong you would then come out and say

I disagree with the CDC oh yes of course I would like alright give me an example of the time

in your career that you disagree with the CDC and it was dead air we went around and around after

that and he couldn't come up with any examples of ever disagreeing with the CDC and that's the

problem I'm not saying that he's adopting the CDC's position universally in bad faith

he's probably doing it out of self-survival he didn't get to be the head of the Emerging Pathogens

Institute by not playing politics he knows how it works and he likes that job and he wants to keep

that job so there's a bigger problem right there is an institutional architecture that forces these

experts down certain channels whether they want to or not it discourages skepticism it absolutely

discourages skepticism but it also makes them even go further and adopt a position that they might

disagree with and they have to maintain a kind of cognitive dissonance to do it right I don't believe

that they secretly you know sometimes they probably do have doubts but you know they convince

themselves that you know well of course masking is you know cut up t-shirts is makes scientific sense

right and then oh later the CDC's as well it's got to be a you know a surgical mask and then

boom they just you know reprogram and suddenly you know it's like they never said that about the

t-shirts you know they've always known it was surgical masks but you know they were hard to get

in the early pandemics so that's why we went with the t-shirts it was better than nothing yeah you

can't say something is critical to your survival if it's not available I mean you were just

that's time for a riot you know you're gonna be if you don't have it and you can't have it all right

so I mean gosh I think that makes a lot of sense like the same pressure that you were feeling as

an attorney to not push this forward it mutates right the surely a doctor would feel the same

pressure right not to blow his own career up by running a foul of the governing authority you

know these appeals to authority they're they're everywhere and they're almost always acronyms it seems

but by the time it trickles down to my neighbors and to my friends and to people who don't have

professional skin in the game but who do believe that the stakes are mortal you know I tell

that I've told the story before on the podcast Chuck was up around that same time visiting me in

northern California I had a pretty like we had just come out of the phase where all the neighbors

would go out onto the deck at night and how all like wolves they would do this every night at 8 o'clock

in solidarity with and support for health care workers and at that time wow yeah I mean it was a

little weird but truly that whole first two weeks how does howling help health care workers well

this is a see its science Jeff you know as I said it's years of science is brutal I mean I think

really it's community you know what I mean just the idea that you're banding together with other

people cheering on it's just because we were all separated and not yeah it was a kind of connective

tissue like a reminder that okay you can't see people okay some social engagement that you weren't

getting anywhere else right and and oddly and again this this window wasn't open a long time

but there was this moment where you like you know what it's scary we're all in it and this simple

expression of gratitude toward first responders is something that anybody can get behind for a period

I first became acquainted with pesty a couple years ago during the lockdowns what a plague of ants

descended upon my pantry from out of nowhere actually that's not true they came from the ground

where they live in numbers so vast it boggles the mind fire ants carpenter ants sugar ants pavement

ants Argentine ants they're all out there and given the opportunity they'd all prefer to be in my

pantry anyway pesty was the perfect solution for me they offer pro grade treatment at a fraction

of the cost it's customized from my location and the types of pests that I typically deal with

including spiders by the way which are no less determined than ants to set up shop in my home with

pesty you can create an outdoor barrier around your house in just 10 minutes to protect your home

from over a hundred different types of bugs it's kid friendly it's pet friendly you can get started

it's just 35 bucks a treatment with a customized plan based on your location your climate your bugs

that's important pesty is used in schools and hospitals all over the country comes with a full 100

percent money back guarantee if the bugs don't go away you'll get a full refund each kid includes

a sprayer a mixing bag pesticide gloves instructions everything you need to complete the task

in less than 10 minutes keep the bugs away with pesty go to pesty.com slash mic at an extra 10

percent off your order at p-e-s-t-i-e.com slash mic for an extra 10 percent off

but the curve didn't flatten in two weeks went to two months and then the court cases built up

suddenly Chuck and I are just walking around this quiet little bucolic neighborhood we're not in

the city or anything it's a suburb walking the dog and this guy on the other side of the street

eyes probably in his early 70s he had at least one mask on and he looked at us we're on the

other side of the street we're outside we have masks we're just walking and talking Chuck give me

your best imitation of what we heard there shouldn't you be wearing a mask yeah yeah he was shaking

yeah he was shaking and this is why I was asking before you like it's like that guy I know who that

guy is you know I'd seen him around and I don't want to think badly of him he's my neighbor

and the reason I'm able to not think badly of him is because I don't think about how wrong he was

or how aggressive he was I think about how scared he was he was scared man and so many people were

scared and I think the reason I'll get blowback for the conversation we're having now most of it's

going to be from people who say don't you remember how frightening it was and I'll say yeah I do

remember it but just because you're scared doesn't mean you can wrap a t-shirt around your face

and say science maybe as a child you know who's putting his faith in you know the fat man down

the chimney or the Easter bunny or some other thing but where adults and the stakes are awfully high

and you know we were being told something it's just so fascinating most of us bought it most of

us took a deep breath and said okay I'm not gonna I'm not gonna rock the boat you didn't that makes

you weird and interesting so what you just described is completely understandable this gentleman

thought that you were a threat to him and he felt out of control as all of us did I mean what are

we gonna do right I mean that you got the president coming on TV every day given us the latest

brief they're shutting down air travel to all these different countries they're keeping the country

under lockdown you're watching videos on YouTube with the you know Chinese people in the white

spacesuits spring stuff in the air and all of that and and you're trying to decide okay and what

should I do to live through this to survive yeah it was a survival thing and not kill my mom and

dad right not kill my grandparents don't kill grandma once the conversation became about how to

protect the people around you and not yourself that's when things tipped I think for a lot of people

I don't know okay so you win the case 30 some counties right rescind the mandate

at what point do you sit down and start writing so it all kind of happened at the same time because

remember that county commission meeting I was just telling you about the star chamber I like to

think oh my gosh it's indescribable the here on my arms is standing up right now thinking about that

just because of how I mean it was like something out of Monty Python that's what it was like I

mean it just reached George Orwell yes you know bizarre and kind of dangerous but one of the evidence

that they used was one of the county commissioners who was a failed real estate broker before he

went into politics local politics right and then that was his career for the rest of his adult life

during that meeting as evidence to support the indoor outdoor mask mandate

he held up a little scrap of paper with writing all over it looked like a cocktail napkin or something

and he says I've been doing my own calculations this guy should have been nowhere near a

calculation but he's doing his own he did his own great that's what I knew we were really in trouble

and he said you know at the rate yeah and remember how you know I don't know if they did it here but

our county had a dashboard a code of dashboard yes and every day they would update the dashboard

in the new numbers and you know number hospitalizations and cases and blah blah blah and they're

making everybody test and the test results and you know I did my own calculations and according

to my calculations he said the cases are doubling every two days which means by the end of this

month the entire county will be infected yeah that's the difference between math statistics

probability logic wait you can't I mean it just doesn't work that way and yet you know

everybody became and I who was this guy doing his own calculations like not only in his name

but like the the county commissioner he used to come oh my god oh who is one of the five people

making the and he's trying to convince the others to be afraid right because if they don't do

something it's going to wipe out the count it'll just be like a smoking crater where a

ledger County probably a sinkhole that's what it a ledger means sinkhole in the native Indian

it's not very flattering but a smoking crate let's go with crater a smoking crater where the

county used to be unless they passed this man and the mask mandate was going to save us right for

sure now I'm a lawyer a litigator everybody lies to me the other side obviously lies the whole

time my own clients lie to me you know they want me to work hard so they give me the good polished

up version of what happened right so I can do a good job telling their side of the story so I never

take anybody's word for it no no good lawyer does I let me see the numbers so I pull down the the

numbers into my little spreadsheet and again you know I'm a lawyer not I'm not a mathematician and

I'm not a doctor or anything right so here I am in my house locked down downloading the CSV file

into Excel and you know putting the numbers in there and looking at it and it it was no way

where the cases doubling every two days I mean only if you took like the first three or four days

so like on day one there was two and on day two there was four you know because they were out

there beating the bushes to find the cases right but then it leveled off so when I finished I had

this little spreadsheet that I made for myself and I'm like well damn it I need to do something

with this I mean I got to show it to someone but I'm locked down right so I guess I'll just let

me see if my Facebook account still works and so low and behold I still had apparently those are

permanent by the way I don't think you can get rid of it yeah yeah so I just posted up on my

Facebook and I think at that time I had like 200 accidental friends you know people who had

friended me for I mean I never posted anything there and I miracle of miracles like 10 or 12 people

responded and they're like oh that's very interesting so I decided for purposes of my litigation

and because you know some people seem to be interested in this I would keep my little spreadsheet

updated so I updated my spreadsheet every day and I would post it on the the Facebook and then I

started putting some little comments you know like well if you look if you notice this number is

lower than it was and if you divide that by this number it's actually going down and that's good

that kind of thing and again you know I'm just a hopeless optimist so I was finding it looked a

lot like the flu to me this look exactly like a seasonal flu maybe a bad flu but within the boundaries

of you know historically what we've seen now you weren't allowed to say it was like the flu

back in those days so then I started like well then I realized something I realized that

the market for bad news at that time was completely saturated and there was no market for good news

so I decided I'm just going to gather up all the good news that comes like the diamond princess

they figured out that you know it wasn't as bad as they originally thought right and except that

it was that that story was on page a 16 and you know underneath the local sports column

and so but I would find those cases and then I would profile them I would say hey so we you know

this is new and I only use because remember now on the in those days I don't know if you ever got

like thrown in Facebook jail or Twitter jail or whatever right so you know one wrong word

in your post and that could be it you know they'd lock you down for a week or a month

maybe even cancel your account I sold masks around the same time to raise money for the foundation

the masks said safety third which was an ongoing bit of shorthand from the dirty jobs days that

attempted to remind people that safety first came with all kinds of unintended consequences

and oh I was a big riff I wrote a bunch about I thought it was clever we raised like $100,000

for the foundation but the Facebook hated that hated that yeah what do you mean safety third

like well where would you put it well it's first and that opened up this whole conversation

that brown the same time Cuomo was saying Andrew you'll remember this no measure no matter

how draconian can be deemed excessive if it saves a single life just one life

and that's when I I'm not a lawyer or a doctor but I can be a jagged little pill and I had

eight nine million people on the socials and I just felt like you know what I don't need the

trouble either but that's a crazy thing to say and and to nod in agreement it's demonstrably false

of course it's false and but is it more or less false than a t-shirt over your face being

science I think they're equivalent one is a rhetorical a front to common sense and the other

is just scientific lampooning you know but I felt like we were surrounded like we were being

double dog dared to question and I honestly feel like we've been living in a a version of that

ever since you can fill in the topic right you know the border is secure never mind the images

of thousands coming over it you know just pick your topic and so that's really why I called you

it felt and feels as if the country is grappling with some kind of existential all-encompassing

blanket of fraud right from the kind we're talking about now all the way up most recently

to the most literal kind we're seeing and so so much of what you write about is that it's the

sort of debunking sometimes pre-bunking looking through the emperors you know got no clothes

lens at all of these different things and yet it's always optimistic on that that's a heck of a

thing and so that is just what I wrote about this morning yep I was optimistic at every stage and by

the way just to finish that thought I to get around the sensors I only sourced the mainstream

papers I quote the New York Times the Washington Post the Wall Street Journal I have a studies

published I find it in one of those outlets and I use their story because Facebook can't cancel

me for citing the New York Times but I would write it in a sarcastic way that was open to two

interpretations right you could read it non-sarcastically but my people who read my stuff new

they know better yeah and then when it got to that's today's this is great when it got to the

point where it was becoming you know you I'm using it quoting the New York Times and then I I

draw the logical conclusion but I don't say it I just would just say so yeah and that's where

the so thing came from right so dot dot dot so so yeah so anyways um I was just doing I was there

was no market for good news sorry nobody was taking advantage of this demand people were desperate

for good news hungry they were they were starving for it and listen I at first I you know was

doing this because of the lawsuit and because you know I'm just stubborn and you know a little bit

of a contrarian and but then I got my first of several direct messages on Facebook

and it was really sobering and this one it was long and I usually I mean I get tons of them

right and I don't usually but I'll just like skim it and see if there's something in there but it

gripped me right away because it's you know dear Jeff I know you don't know me but I live in

New York City my mom died in the pandemic I don't have anybody I haven't been out of the

apartment in six months and I was thinking about ending it but then somebody sent me your coffee

and covid and it kind of made me feel a little bit better so I'm gonna wait and see how things go

and like I said I got I don't know probably two dozen like that over 2001 or 21 and 22

which means there are hundreds more yeah the ones that don't right yeah and then I realized that

I was doing something that was more than just like messing with Facebook you know what I mean

and more than just a method of self-expression in a time of pandemic it was reaching people in a way

that I hadn't even realized and it was important and in that category now that's probably the most

important one I mean I've never forgotten that and I remember it to this day I mean I'm talking

to people who are in all different places in their life and I'm trying to to bring them some hope

my buddy got called Dave Hinman sent me your column late in 21 maybe I don't know 21 or 22

but his ray line simply said this guy's a lifeline and it was a link didn't tell me anything about

it I just clicked on it and and read the first thing and laughed through most of it yeah heavy

stuff but it was funny right adding the humor sometimes I have to listen I'm honest if there's

bad news and it's legit I'm gonna deliver the bad news but I'm gonna give it in with the most

optimistic frame I can and with some humor so it's easier to swallow how do you think about

your audience then what I'm getting at is I think there this audience for instance is probably

right of center the majority but there's a big number that's center or left of center

and the reason I you know try and stay mindful of that is that it's I can either evangelize

right if I'm in a room where I know everybody agrees with me I can talk

one way if I want to persuade I have to talk another way and if I want to do both well I'm still

not quite sure how to do that but you know sometimes you I think like I imagine a lawyer might

like I ask questions what's persuasive do you do that when you write are you trying to persuade

or are you trying to spread the good news I mean I've never said what I'm about to say a lot

before it's much bigger than persuasion but you're right a lawyer's job especially litigate her

my job is to persuade people I got a persuaded jury I got a persuaded judge that's my whole job

I mean that's where the rubber hits the road if I can't do that well I'm not a good lawyer

you don't want me and persuading judges is hard because they always give you a hard time

and they play poker so that you don't know what they're really thinking and they try to mislead you

about what they're thinking all the time so it's especially challenging and the jury

I love jury trial work I don't get to do a lot because it's not a big thing in commercial litigation

but I do some and I love them because I've got the jury there not a judge and they're regular people

I can talk to but even that is different than like ordinary persuasion like sales it's not like

sales because the jury sits there like statues they have this idea in their head they're not allowed

to show preference or anything they can't smile at one of my jokes or whatever I'd get no

feedback from them whatever so you're talking to a wall why is that by the way I mean could it be

like that heisenberg uncertainty principle like they've seen it they've seen jurors for years

on TV just sitting there quietly no they're trying to do a good job and be unbiased

every jury I've ever had I can see they're really trying hard to be good jurors

okay so you could say well all right Jeff so you took your persuasive abilities from being a good lawyer

and you put it in the blog which is true but that's not the whole thing and this is this is what I

haven't ever said before because it's kind of like secret sauce in a way but at some point

I reached a critical mass of readers I don't remember what the number was maybe a hundred

thousand I don't know but I noticed that if I put a really well formed idea out there that was

stated simply and just made sense that it would propagate across social media and then

because I'm an I understand what the newspapers are doing understand their propaganda they're

making arguments too the newspapers trying to persuade you the New York Times is they're not

unbiased they have a point of view and they want you to agree with them and so everything

every word choice every picture where they put it on the page the whole thing is designed to

convince you to to go along with their point of view and so that you know especially during COVID

the propaganda was relentless and I could see because I get up first thing in the morning and I read

all the papers I see where they're going with their stupid narratives that they're coming up with

some new propaganda trick and then my job is to come up with the antidote to that

and if I can do a good job of that I have enough readers that it will squash their stupid narrative

well what like chapter as the worst is it the existence of a narrative that you believe is

genuinely fallacious or is it the absence of the truth

so lying is one thing I mean like I said before everybody lies so lying per se it's bad

I'm a Christian I try not never to lie if I can possibly help it and you can be look the best

lawyers are Christian lawyers that's a whole other discussion and we can have that but it's the

destructive lies yeah it's the ones that hurt people to like I mean a lie of omission versus

an affirmative like this morning so you did a I thought a masterful thing this morning so in real

time today where are we Chuck February 23rd 23rd okay so over the weekend all hell broke loose in

Mexico I mean so by the time this drops who knows what the headlines will say but right now

in real time nobody has written about what seems like an obvious link between Venezuela and Mexico

correct between this guy with three unpronounceable names in Mexico what's his name he's dead now

El Mencho El Mencho right which basically the tough guy tough guy okay so tough guys dead

former cop by the way correct who goes profoundly rotten I called him the Walter White of Mexico

it's gonna be great great so I mean can it be some sort of coincidence that a month after

Maduro is relocated to some you know prime real estate in Manhattan vacation fed that this guy's dead

I mean you've got two of the biggest drug king pens in the same hemisphere

who's connecting the dots in the mainstream media their narrative was chaos in Mexico right

because that's what the picture showed so you should be afraid and these portourists are you

know they can't get out and they're you know watching burning Costco right and stuff like that right

so you should be afraid too because what if the chaos spreads and bad yeah but that's not the story

at all the story is Trump's down there kicking butt against some of the most powerful central and south

american characters to have come along in our lifetimes and he's taking names and the media just

won't even touch it irrespective of your feelings on Trump it wouldn't matter who's in the oval

those two things are massively related those two they're almost identical right and they're

happening in the same time and they're happening in some kind of domino like order and so you

can look at that and conclude that it's all just a crazy coincidence right which your point was

that's what I meant by a lie of omission it's not the false story that's screaming from the headlines

it's the true story that's nowhere to be found and if you can find a way to present that you know

with the touch of irony or a little bit of rhinus or some optimism that I mean good on you man

because purely as a mercenary and a capitalist I look at that that's the reverse commute nobody's

doing that certainly nobody's done it on the left I've never seen anybody even attempt it you know

but I don't think anybody's doing it anywhere how many subscribers do you have now how big is your

little empire become so formally on the list I've got I don't know 230,000 but I know that it's

read much beyond that oh yeah they're people who like don't want to put their name on it because

they're yeah in an important position somewhere and they don't want to get connected to me because

I'm just crazy you're crazy man you're something yeah local as they say

but I don't want it let's not leave that the real narrative is it's not chaos it's the opposite

of chaos the idea that it's chaos in Mexico is a lie it's not a lie of omission it's a lie of

commission they're lying on purpose they're calling it chaos so that you won't understand

that your government is finally working effectively for once in your stupid life that this war on

drugs it's been going on since we were a fetus is finally getting somewhere and not just

well you know watching the fentanyl death chart get higher and higher and higher every year

it's not chaos it's organization and plant I mean think about what an operation like that

requires to pull off tell me what do you think like how did this happen and but what's her name

the president shine shine shine bomb shine bomb nice mexican it's so classically mexican I can't

believe it won't stick I mean when I just see a wawa shine bomb she will shine yes that's you can't say

that dude um I mean her own about face in just the last couple of months since what happened

since madora that's right since prior to madora she was on the record as saying we will not

cooperate with the us in any way we're not I mean it's just like a list of things that she

went on the record yeah headline after headline right every one of them's upside down opposite

right and so even in the new york times to reduce morning about chaos in mexico there's

one sentence that says it was a joint operation with a new us military intelligence division

nothing about how shine bomb suddenly cooperating with the us military yeah right even though

they reported on how she wouldn't cooperate with the military a dozen times or hundreds of times

they don't even mention they just leave it on the cutting room floor go back to you were saying

that you when you hit a critical mass 50,000 80,000 100,000 talk more about that because

were you saying that when you structure a story in a certain way you can be assured that it's

going to find traction or I mean you call these guys it's it's basically the coffee and covid

which I love because I've you know in relative ways I've used my following from time to time

to help with the fundraiser for instance you know I do some of that too I saw it I saw it

multiplier effect yeah yeah the four small supplier yeah so I think what I like to hear you talk

about is how critical does the mass have to be I think the numbers smaller than most people

realize you don't need millions and millions of people you need thousands of engaged people

who care that's the name of the game it's engagement always engagement I gotta keep them engaged

and boy you do back to my earlier point you're writing today's column was 3,500 words

column I call it a column blog whatever it is some have been over 5,000 you've probably

written 6,000 before but seven days a week that's over 40,000 words a week it's 160,000 words a month

that's close to two million words a year yeah you know how many pages a book is with two million

words it's ridiculous so I don't know I don't want to reduce the impact of the content that you're

churning out by just pointing to its extraordinary volume but what are you doing here man how did

you have time to fly across the country to do this how do you have time to run a law practice how do

what is your life like right now um I'm so blessed and God has blessed me for following where he

led me you know making that decision to ignore my peer's advice and file the mask lawsuit and go

out not nobody was paying me don't you mean listen to your wife is that what you were trying to say

Jeff of course especially she's sitting in the room that was like totally unfair what a setup

yeah sorry um but uh so when I travel I have to have an extra day on both sides so I've got to leave

you know the day before I need to be there and then I have to wait till the next day because I

got to leave room for blogging right I got to get the blog out we're staying in the same hotel

did you do the blog from the hotel yeah I was down in the coffee shop this morning

that crazy bright coffee shop well starting at six because they don't open until six o'clock so

they have a business center on the second floor oh okay yeah yeah and we usually try to get a room where

there's you know space for me to go work without waking Michelle up but the rooms are a little bit

smaller they're intimate I mean how much noise do you make on your computer well what inevitably

happens is I clicked the wrong link and it's some loud video right yeah it doesn't take that

happening many times and before you learn your lesson right so uh um so that's how I organize my

travel the law firm I I already had a mature law practice I have terrific staff I mean just like

you could not ask for better assistance and paralegals and stuff that I have I have a a new partner

um who joined the firm last year and he's young and terrific and you know wanting to slay giants

and stuff so you're still doing it so oh yeah I have a staff huddle twice a week we've got cases

I'm suing the federal government into we're representing Maya Kowalski who there's a Netflix

documentary take care of Maya yeah a horrible hospital kidnapping case and um you know so I

did my staff so good I don't have to do the routine stuff just you know come into court and make

the big appearances and and do some review and guidance and make decisions and stuff like that

um going back to this sort of what I thought might be a unifying theme fraud

you know I want to ask you about that because there seems to be a I mean in so many ways the

masculine was fraudulent so much of what's happening with immigration feels fraudulent people

are afraid that the AI is really ushering in an age of artificiality which is a kind of fraud

we're beset deception maybe sure you know it's something that's not as advertised not real

is something malignant and now of course you know we've got the actual literal mind-boggling

financial fraud in Minneapolis and I don't know I mean as one of your loyal readers that's what

strikes me I go to your blog because I think you I think you get that you just reminded me at

don't let me forget I want to talk to you about who investment opportunity it's probably not the

right time but listen hear me out okay daycare centers yeah yeah daycare centers right next to

the leering facility right what did you think when that whole Minnesota thing broke were you

surprised at the at the depth of it well the scale of the fraud is mind-boggling I mean I suspected

there was fraud I was pretty sure but not that it could be $1.5 million or trip $1.5 trillion

a year trillion with a T yeah out of a $4 trillion budget it's like mostly fraud yeah

and it took the Minnesota story to convince me that that was possible and I am convinced now

and I think a lot of other people are too and so the Minnesota story was was just masterfully done

the fraud had been going on for years right but it was this kid Nick Nick Shirley who

the month before was at the White House on a panel about Antifa so I wanted I mean do you see

parallels I mean it it feels if your thesis is right and I don't want to put words in your

mouth but the mainstream media is not doing its job journalists are not doing their job

pending with a broad brush apologies but when that happened not doing journalism they're doing

their job they're doing a job yes it's a different job than you think but the vacuum that's been

created people will fill it you're filling it citizen journalists fill it the whole rise of

whether it's Shellenberger or you can go down the list of people that independent media yeah

they're filling a void you know how big is independent media gonna get

how influential is independent media going to get how influential is the New York Times anymore

most of my readers I get comments a lot of times you will say Jeff thank goodness you're reading

the New York Times because I wouldn't get near that rag you know and well you're true I mean

you're using it as as fodder really yeah it's it's a gift that keeps on giving yeah another

example is of how I can defuse these narratives is that they'll run some story like about I don't

know COVID origins right and and they'll run some story about how it really they it's been

disproven that it couldn't have possibly been from the lab in Wuhan and then I'll just look at

that long form magazine style report that the New York Times something exclusive that they did

and point out to my readers that every single citation is from an anonymous person

it's 100% anonymous yeah nobody was willing to go on record that's a valuable service a lot of what

you do works as a kind of compendium for how to read critically but I that's why it's commentary

and and what is it commentary and I guess news and commentary that's a whole hard to call

the essential news and commentary essential because there's a lot of you don't need to know about

I'll tell you about the stuff you need to know about you can listen anybody that wants can unplug

and just read coughing COVID because I promise I will let you know about anything important

that happens have you been approached by mainstreamish entities larger more established entities

at this point um like to buy me or partner up or something yeah no I think I'm I'm too toxic

I do have a pretty good relationship with the epic times so I would say I correspond with them

and you know they'll have me on for interviews and things and quote me in articles how did they

uh how did they come into your orbit I'm curious because they've they've written three or four

stories on me and my foundation and I told you I've become friends with Jan Ekelek whose new book

is coming out next month you'll be here in a couple of weeks but how did they get on your radar

well let me just say first I think epic is great um I think if people want a traditional they

deliver a paper version to your house and if you want a real paper that like the old style with

like real news and a comic section and puzzles and you know and all that stuff get the epic times you

can't go wrong that's my plug so they hired a uh journalist who lived in Alachua County she had

moved out there with her family onto a farm to get away from it all and somehow they recruited her

because epic is growing like crazy and she had been involved in some of the the local pushback

stuff that I have been doing I did some political organizing and you know went to work on my school

board and county commission and everything on top of everything else that I was doing so she rose

she was incredibly gifted journalist and rose pretty quickly and the epic's ranks and so um that

was my connection do you think we'll see uh more newspapers come back do you think there'll be some

kind of revival I mean is there any hope for old media I think it's already happening um

did you see the news was it last week a week before about all the layoffs at the Washington Post

oh yeah half yeah like they had something like 13 climate reporters

all gone now so there's a natural course correction and it's the uh it's the cycle of business

right so the cycle of business is that you know new scrappy new businesses come in and they

get successful and they start building they get bigger and bigger and then you know they do

something wrong and they die and they don't go away though this is the great thing about the cycle

is they get financially distressed and then they get bought by a scrappy new

entrant and the wheel goes around again and so that I think is what's going to happen with

traditional media we see CBS right Barry Weiss came in she's poor Anderson had to leave

60 minutes I know it's a tragedy missing uh Cuomo it's how these guys go into podcasting

it's happening so fast Jeff I mean that's that to me is that an AI combined yeah I think

the big one yeah you've written a lot about it um how do you think about it in the future I just

talked to Tony Robbins about this he's he thinks I mean he thinks if we don't get in front of this

vis-a-vis the meaning of work then we're going to have a kind of crisis that we can't even really

contemplate um I'm more of a mind that I feel like we're all going to be forced real quick

to constantly discern the the artificial from the authentic if in fact we even care that's

the bigger question remember the scene in the matrix where yeah give me the steak that's the Jeff

that's the moment more so than any of the terminator stuff and more so than any other moment

that's the moment when the when the guy is out of the out of his bubble but knows he knows

it's fake but he knows it tastes great and he just has to decide if he wants to live with the

pleasant fake thing or the difficult real thing there's another scene in the matrix that goes

the other way and maybe is more optimistic than that in the context of what we're talking about

and I have a lot to say about AI but so the scene is um agent Smith has captured Morpheus

and he's tied in a chair and they're torturing him right and Smith starts talking about how he

you know hates the stink of humanity yeah and he says you know the first matrixes that we design

were utopian they gave you humans everything you could want and we lost crops in the millions

and so we had to come up with this he says disgusting yeah you know filled with suffering and

this is what you want and the takeaway from that is that utopia maybe isn't what we want

that we already have the perfect environment for humans and that we're not going to thrive in a

you know just living in a video game all day long that's it's not going to work we need the

struggle we need the stakes we need the risk we need reality well 45 minutes later in that same film

my favorite scene happens when Smith has Neo around the neck on the subway tracks and they're

struggling and Neo is failing and Smith says as the train is approaching do you hear that Mr.

Anderson that's the sound of inevitability so the question is what does inevitability sound like

to you what's coming at us I have made AI my top priority I built my own AI computer

it's called open claw which is a whole nother phenomenon I've written about it it's it's hard

to describe succinctly and I can you know go into as much detail as you want but so the chat

bots that we've been used to chat GPT grok and that kind of thing you know you get on there and you

say hey Chad I've only got some cucumbers a radish and some tomato sauce what can I make and then it

you know gives you some recipes or whatever right so it's this interactive process but the the

AI doesn't do anything it waits for you to ask a question and then it says would you like me to

find you the nearest grocery store yeah so in December this retired programmer sorry but am I

conflating things or did you just write about this vis a vis a vis a weird mark on your leg that

you discovered in the shower yeah yeah so I had a you know this this rash on my leg

sorry to take it there Michelle but we're going to talk about your husband's rash like oh here we go

and so you know I procrastinate it I'm a guy all right I'm not and it's getting bigger and

uglier and everything so finally I take a picture of it with myself on and I give it to Chad

GPT and Chad GPT says oh it's this this is what you need to get telling what you got yeah

what would you like me you should probably do it quickly Chad GPT said

I mean why can I tell people what you had I don't want to know yeah sure yeah so this

happened to me too like you're you're in the shower and you're just taking an inventory of things

and you're like mmm not one there two weeks ago now it's there and then two weeks later it's

twice the size and you take a picture of this thing on your leg in US Chad GPT and it says oh

that's ringworm yeah and you go huh huh and then it says this is probably what you want to take yeah

would you like me to call the nearest CVS so you can go pick it up and so I think your point

and that story was never mind how you got the ringworm that's interesting too but maybe for another

visit but it's like what didn't happen as a result of that right you didn't have to wait four

weeks for an appointment you didn't have to spend half a day waiting for a 15 second diagnosis the

doctor would have figured it out pretty quick but Chad did it for us and eliminated hours and hours

maybe even days of medical layers so that's like a happy AI story yeah and I think that that tracks

with the optimistic take that AI is just a tool right and and I'll probably say this wrong this

is more in your wheelhouse but when they invented what do they call those little mini diggers the

ditch witch or something yeah that's exactly the ditch witch yeah so they invented ditch witches and

so you don't need three guys you only need two guys right and so oh it's gonna put people out of

work well no because that guy just goes and now you can do more projects and be more ambitious

about your projects and so on right so the ditch witch was a good thing and it's a labor saving

device and so that's one way to look at AI is that we're gonna have to change I mean you had to

change the way you did you dug ditches when you got the ditch witch and so we're gonna have to

change a lot of white collar work as a result of AI that's one thing but we're past that now

and that's what this open claw phenomenon is and the only reason we're talking about open

claws right now it's the only option but the big guys are gonna get in it they already are that

somebody's already the open AI is already made a deal with him we don't know the details yet

so it's gonna go mainstream it's it's absolutely like a rocket ship at what open claw does

which was just a weekend project by this Australian programmer New Zealand I think but

same thing it runs 24 seven and it doesn't wait for you to ask it questions so if you teach it

about your whole life who you're married to what your job is what your goals are

what social media accounts you have your email and everything it will like start doing things

on its own to help you advance your projects are we excited by this or freaked out both

I mean it's not what claw did wasn't that the whole anthropic thing no it was doing things nobody

told it to do well so I have to say this because at bottom this is the most remarkable thing about

the whole AI phenomenon which is they still don't understand how it works it's just not reassuring

it was originally designed by this is the official story I'm not saying I believe the official

story but a team of Google engineers was creating a word prediction engine so you know how when

you type your Google search bar and you know it starts to see where you're going and it suggests

things so that's it's guessing what word you're gonna type next and being helpful in trying to

supply it for you so you hit tab and it fills it in or whatever well that's what the Google

guys were working on supposedly is this prediction model so they were trying to see how far out they

could predict what you were trying to say and then one of them decided hey we've been doing this in

right to left sequential order just like humans read what if we let the computer look at it

both directions and what if we in longer text if we let it look up and down so like what words are

near that word above it and below it in different sentences and then predict things that way and

what happened was it started answering questions they never expected that they were just trying to

get better at predicting the words it's a relatively short piece of code and it was open source

they were working on you know what open source is so that's where the programmers just you

know posted online and anybody can look at their source code and that's why every country in the

world has AI because it's not really that complicated but nobody understands how it works Mike

nobody does nobody it's all theoretical it I know it's as hard to believe you'll have to

to search and confirm what I'm telling you is true hey who am I going to ask hey I

you can ask yeah but you're going to have to push it okay um so that's weird

okay it's weird look I can get the you know magical accidental discovery right like they came up with

posted notes and you know velcro right and all that stuff they invent stuff accidentally that's fine

but inventing it accidentally and then not understanding what you just invented

is different it's just different it's not surprising that the AI does things that we don't expect

you you with me I'm looking we don't understand how it works in the first place so we're learning

what it does well I guess my question to that would be what's the relevance of not understanding

how a thing works that you rely upon I mean most of us can't really explain the mechanics of a

combustion engine we can't really explain the mechanics of a plasma screen or the electronics

in this microphone but we don't need to really because by and large we've been conditioned to

to accept the fact that understanding a thing and using a thing are not the same thing here I'm

guessing you're going to say it's different because the stakes are so extraordinary now the difference is

you don't understand how a combustion engine works but somebody does somebody does

so no human understands how the AI works that's the point now I'm not saying it's bad I'm not trying

to be sinister about it but that's going to freak people out are you really say like so nobody

walking around Elon Musk you know which is the Alex Carp all the big brains in the space really

put the screws to him and they're not going to be able to tell you here's how it works not at the

fundamental level so the way they've been but you know they're improving it right so yeah keeps

getting better and it hallucinates less and you know stuff like that and that's because they're

just layering on top of it so they're they're like having multiple AI's check each other's work and

and things like that that basic set of code the original open source thing that the Google guys

allegedly came up with they don't understand why that starts answering questions and not just

predicting words it is what it is again I'm not saying you know AI's demonic or whatever it

might be but that's not my argument it's a tool it's a different kind of tool than we've

had before for this reason it's almost Promethean you know what I mean when I say that

primal for sure but it's like the gods give fire to the humans the humans don't understand

fire they don't know what it is but they set the work figuring out how to use the fire that's

the what the original Oppenheimer book was it American Prometheus right yeah heck of a thing

so we're armed with the thing that you say nobody can explain on the most fundamental level

and that thing is growing and there's no stopping it the genie's out of the bottle look

for whether it was intentional or unintentional or accidental or coincidental or whatever every

country got it at the same time so even if we lock it down this is why the efforts to lock it

down are going to fail the Chinese won't right and then what that's that old Chinese proverb we

can't put the poop back in the goose right yeah Google that Chuck I'm not sure it's Chinese that's

sure I'm not sure it's a proper honestly I think you just made that up I may have but I think the

implications are so vast that people they I keep coming back to that moment in the matrix because

that to me is the thing that we're all going to have to reckon with like I got a court case going

on now I have a legal matter that's been going on for a couple of years I asked and I think I use

some pretty good prompts for an analysis of my position and what came back with respect to my

attorneys was just extraordinarily comprehensive thoughtful some new arguments that I hadn't seen

and way more concise so I don't know what this is going to do to your profession and I know most

people listening probably couldn't give it to him because they're they're not going to be it in

that world but you know what world they're going to be in it was like with the impossible burger

right okay I'll give it a shot what is it again and then you you dig in and you realize no you

know what it doesn't taste right and I don't like what's in it and no I choose the authentic burger

but what if it tasted just like the authentic burger and or better than the authentic burger or

better what do you do if that painting you've been looking at that Picasso that's been handed down

is not a Picasso if if we learn that it's it's been a forgery or if that favor your new favorite

song was just dreamt up by open claw or down the listed goes you know we need umpires we need referees

I think I think the average person is going to need some source unless I'm wrong and we don't care

in which case that's the part of the map that truly is uh here be dragons yeah I'm I'm concerned

about non-Christians or I should say concern for non-Christians the advantage that we Christians have

is we have a sole source of truth and we already think that everything else is deception

so there's the word of God in the bible and that's all we believe is true everything else

we're skeptical about right Disney world that one's still frame from the cartoon right you know

I'm talking about true uh it's all potentially the work of the adversary um except for that one

thing so we're we're already armed against AI we're inoculated if you want against the AI virus

but what about people who don't have a source you know something to hang on to now

well leave aside the spiritual part you know I believe that that is the word of God but but

forget about that even if I was wrong about that I still have something to hang on to sure

and so if you're just sort of you know drifting and finding your own spirituality and you know

that kind of thing and communing with God in the at the beach and in the mountains and in the forest

and you know all that kind of stuff then what is your truth you don't have one you're gonna take

whatever seems the best and most attractive and most believable you're gonna accept that

it's very Pontius Pilate of you what is true what is true it's truth on changing law

we both have truths are am I the same as yours crucify crucify crucify that's used

Christ superstar by the way 1973 Tim Ross Andrew Lloyd Webber yeah um wow well it's a lot Jeff

I mean it's a lot to think about do you see Prager's new book by the way now I saw him interviewed

last night Mark Levin talked to him you know he had that terrible accident yeah and he's basically

paralyzed from the shoulders down and he wrote a book Chuck might check me on it I think if not God

what something like that but it makes your point you know in the end we're gonna have to put our faith

in something something all right and you just talked about how the AI advised you on your lawsuit

yeah well what happens when the AI advises you on everything it's giving you good advice

at what point do you surrender your your will and just say you know what the AI is gonna do a better

job of managing my life than I am all right look this is a good place to land the plane let me tell

you what let me show you what I asked Chuck to do actually well Prager's book is called if there

is no God the battle over who defines good and evil right right it's just another attempt to

ask the question you know what are you what are you betting on um look at this I got two pages

of stuff here basically ask the AI you know what sort of insightful questions might you have for

Jeff Childers based on the millions of words he's written you got 20 questions here they're great

well I didn't read any of them maybe I should have I mean look at just random one uh you've covered

exploding fraud cases that involve everything from nonprofit food programs to medical provider

billing scams often with ties to political figures or campaigns if you could design one bold

nationwide policy or legal mechanism short of a full audit of every federal program to root out

and deter this kind of systematic fraud in the future what would it look like and why do you believe

it hasn't been implemented already despite the obvious scale of the problem now it's a good question

posed by a tool that no one on the planet understands uh what's my obligation to ask it

and as a podcast host you're trying to come up with a engaging and entertaining podcast that will

both inform and you know uh be humorous and need to hit all these points for your audience

and AI is doing a better job coming up with questions than you are so yeah but I didn't use them

so what's that is that good or bad I don't even know I don't want it cheat I want to have a

conversation and I'm still arrogant enough to think that I'll I'll get enough good questions out

but I also want to be engaged and informed and and the times we're living in so I can't ignore it

so I ask it these things you know and I'm you know I if I look this my own arrogance because I didn't

hesitate to ask about my legal case but I'm like I don't know if I want to read these questions

you know it sounds like I'm just not doing my job in your defense I mean a question like that

you can't spring a question like that on somebody cold you'd have to send it to me at a time

so I could have a smart answer well I wouldn't have to but you know what would happen I'm not as smart

as your AI so this is making assumptions what about this you know what's going to happen okay so I

send you these questions and you ask the AI for good answers and then we just sit down here as two

pods and basically I pretend to ask a question I thought of and you pretend to answer it with AI's

solution what is that man what that's impossible meet so that's the impossible burger I spend five

hours a day on the blog 35 hours a week of extra curricular time on top of my job if I use

AI to write it I could knock it out in an hour tempted I don't want to do it I don't think I

don't think my readers tune in to hear what the AI says I think the readers read it to hear what

Jeff says and so as long as I can I'm gonna tell him what Jeff thinks in Jeff's voice and if it

takes me five hours to do it that's what I'm gonna do now can I use AI to you know help me find

stories and you know stuff around the edges yes but I'm not turning over the writing to the AI I won't

you can't make me no I'm not doing it I can't but I can ask the uncomfortable question which is

we're still in the bottom of the first inning right so now we're in the top of the fifth

whatever that means and now it doesn't take an hour it takes five minutes and the answers

are not only you they're better than you but they feel like they feel so much like you that your

readers don't care and now you're reaching so many more now you've got two million never mind

200 thousand and millions of people hanging on to every word and it's back to the matrix do they

care this is why I think look this is a classic micro macro problem macro is just the

hugeness of it all micro is just like what does this mean for me what am I going to do with this

I ran into a neighbor the other day had a little dog little Havanese named Vivian right I got

a little dog named Freddie we have this conversation on the street about this thing called Suno

s-u-n-o it's a songwriting AI app okay right so I say um watch this and I I hit the Suno and I say

Suno write me a song in the country western style about a young terrier who falls deeply in love

with a Havanese and tell me about the life they spent together and how much fun they have on this

earth and then what happens when that sad but inevitable day comes that's my prompt right 15 seconds

later what comes back is a song called Havanese heaven it's completely original and it talks about

Freddie and Vivian's life affection balls and just you know just living the best dog life and then

and then she goes to Havanese heaven and poor Freddie just walks around lost for a couple of weeks

and finally puts his head down and goes to sleep where he can join his his love in Havanese 7 and now

they're Jason Baldwin I'm crying like a baby my neighbors devastated and we're sitting here it's

like a really good country song I mean I didn't tell it that's the title I didn't say right a song

called Havanese 7 so just tell me a story about a terrier and a Havanese and that's it man okay now

what am I supposed to do with this song do I put it on my playlist do I share it with people or

do I just pretend it didn't happen okay you're looking to the next stage that we're headed for

and the next stage that we're headed for is going to change everything I'm telling you first

people aren't going to consume music the old way there's not going to be any more Taylor Swift's

you're just going to have songs that you ask for and are perfectly tailored for you and nobody

else is going to react to it the way you do we're not going to have software anymore

software is a service every every use Microsoft word oh sure how many features in there do you not

use 99% of them and they just get in the way and the your formatting gets weird and wonky because it

thinks you're trying to do something you fat button the thing and now you're enough now you're

in just another alien hit the wrong style or something and you don't even understand styles right

yeah you're not good you're just going to say AI I need some I'm going to write an essay on this

and I need something to write it in and it's just going to make it and it's just going to be a one-off

for that purpose and that moment for you and then when it's done it's just going to go away forever

and you're never going to buy another word processor so it's all bespoke everything that's going

to be a bespoke experience all media and software everything electronic is going to be bespoke yes

meat movies why would you go watch somebody else's movie you say I like what kind of movies do you

like do you like you know a game of throwing style do your unit romances yeah whatever and you

always want a happy ending but you want the heroes to go through you know I like Bruce Willis right

I want more Bruce Willis I want to see you know 10 more like the last Boy Scout yeah let's see the

last Boy Scout 2 and it's going to make it for you and you're going to watch it and you're going to

love it and know everybody else will hate it to be fair a lot of people hated the first one yeah

that was that's a controversial one right we can argue about that but I know Chuck wouldn't wait

two hours 15 minutes or something it doesn't matter really it was a New Year's resolution to try

and you know keep these things manageable but here's my ask for you can I you add an okay time

you don't regret I would say yes recommend I'm not and thankfully not unsubscribe no I mean I

think it would be fun long distance you know just to check in with you like on zoom or riverside or

whatever the tech is because honestly oh I have a question why aren't you reading your blogs why

isn't some mechanized voice reading them why am I forced to read the things on planes when I'm

walking around without my glasses if you use the sub stack app it has a reading mode that works

90% of the time hey there you go which is which is better than nothing yeah and people seem to like

it I mean you're not going to get my voice and you're not going to get you know that I'll land on

a certain word a certain way you won't get that but it but people who use it like they complain

when it's not working so it must be doing something right if I told you that tech existed

where you could just talk for five minutes and give the software the AI okay you know a sense of

exactly what you sound like and then if it did a good enough job would you make that available I

would in the heartbeat because that is probably the number one ask is people want the podcast version

or the red the audible version see this is it gets so personal because about six months ago somebody

sent me a link and said good click on it you're not going to like it but you should know and the

prompt was narrate my corporate film in the style of micro narrating deadly as catch and honestly

had you sent that thing to me under different auspices I would have just assumed that was something

I'd done yeah years ago yeah if I listened for it you know I could hear certain hitches but again

it's the bottom of the first yeah so Jeff Childers and Micro 2.0 are coming and I doubt that either one

of us are going to be able to discern the difference never mind the rest of the the rest of the

species who's going to be up there in Havanese heaven right now playing fetch with my dog at this

point but I just don't know man it's it this is stupid question but fundamentally fundamentally

are you still optimistic about all of it oh yeah look here's your problem you ready

your problem is you think you need to know where it's going let loose of that think about it more

like going on an adventure where you don't know where the planes going your friends surprising you

if you think about life that way then you'll realize we're living in an amazing moment that no

other human beings ever got to experience we don't know where it's going there is no spoon

back to the matrix yeah yeah that's when your mind gets blown there you realize and there and

there isn't a spoon here and I think to a large extent Mike it's going to be what we make it

what human beings do with it well here's what I know for sure you have made an incredible

second career out of your first you've made an extraordinary blog you've made an extraordinary

footprint in the noisy and cluttered landscape you have hundreds of thousands of people

who really do look forward to your stuff it's a balm a balm and gilead you know to heal the sin

six soul if you want to wrap it up with the good book but man I just I love second acts if this is

what you're having and and I love the fact that you felt called to break a few eggs and I love

the fact that you did it and you're still doing it and you're still doing it with humor and so

you know shameless plug it's coffee and COVID where did people subscribe ideally what do you want

them to do so all you have to do is go to www.coffee and COVID all the people still say www Michelle

is this is it just your husband it does is such a lawyer www look I can't keep up with everything man

I know it's a lot and they can sign up there it's on sub-stack I think if you Google

coffee and COVID it should come right up yeah but now let me say this you were the original

heterodox thinker long before COVID you put yourself out there challenging big academics

and your predictions long before I predicted anything everything you predicted was 100% true and

it's turning out to be exactly you told people don't learn to code go to trade school and what's

happening to programmers right now they're getting fired in droves the AI is taking their job

they're the first ones to go after all that learned to code nonsense and what do they need they need

welders they need construction engineers site supervisors ditch which operators sure

right and so everything that you remember people had listened to your the people who took your

advice are sitting pretty right now after all and and you I can't imagine how many slings and

arrows you took for taking those those positions and a couple you know it's funny I got I got

permission at a weird level of permission to mouth off and it came from dirty jobs you know it

came from literally 350 of those I won't say humiliations but you needed to be humble you're

an apprentice every it's groundhogs day every day that's what made it so engaging and so over time

I think people cut me a lot of slack so as I got older and when I started reading your stuff and

I started mouthing off during the lockdowns and I started doing things that you know I disappointed a

lot of fans I think not because of what I said but because it felt like I had veered outside of my

lane you know but come on there no lanes anymore I mean there's nothing but lanes your way outside

of the lawyer lane right you way you way out there man it's very nice of you to say and it is

gratifying when the headlines catch up to you in fact this is how we land the plane it's the

ultimate I told you so can you find this column again I'm gonna look at the last uh the last

couple of paragraphs today because it just made me it made me snort I was on a delta flight I was

landing and I was laughing and the guy next to me was like oh yeah what do you read I'm like that's

you probably don't want to know it's this thing go all the way down yeah it takes a minute yeah there's

a lot I mean look you got to scroll through like thousands and thousands of words oh Canada oh

that was a great bit too an amazing yeah off the weekend am I getting close yeah yeah yeah yeah

one one more I think now keep going one more one more there you go

yeah today's final I told you so moment appeared courtesy of science according to a new major peer

reviewed Harvard scientific study reading C&C might literally add years to your life here's the

tweet from Sahil Bloom summarizing the findings and here's the study titled quote optimism is

associated with exceptional longevity in two epidemiological cohorts of men and

women a massive study out of Harvard and Boston you published in the proceedings of the national

Academy of Sciences followed over 70,000 people that's a huge control group for up to 30 years

and found that the most optimistic people live 11 to 15 percent longer than pessimists

they also have a 50 to 70 percent greater chance of living to 85 these astonishingly strong

results held even after controlling for diet exercise smoking alcohol use chronic diseases depression

and socio economic status in other words it's not just that optimists happen to eat better or exercise

more all by itself the expectation that good things happen independently extends your life

here's where it gets all Jeffy if a drug produced of 50 to 70 percent improvement in your odds

of reaching 85 Pfizer would charge 40,000 dollars a dose and the FDA would fast track it and people

would pay for it but C&C is 85 percent free and even a C&C supporter subscription is nothing

compared to what people would pay for that remedy just saying back when I started this blog in 2020

I made a big bet the bet was that everything would be okay not because I had inside information

not because I was ignoring the data but because the data if you read it honestly kept pointing in

the same direction toward optimism and now I want to take just a moment not to gloat much but to

remember because we optimists turned out to be right about everything yeah let's just keep going

we were right the covid wouldn't kill 2 percent of the population we were right that lockdowns

wouldn't stop the virus and would devastate everything else we were right that school closures

would damage a generation of children for a disease that barely affected them we were right

that natural immunity was real durable and at least as good as vaccine induced immunity a position

that got you banned from social media in 2021 and published in the Lancet by 2023 we were right

that the vaccines didn't stop transmission something Pfizer eventually admitted it had never even

tested for we were right that masking children was pointless and cruel we were right that two weeks

to flatten the curve was alive we were right that the virus almost certainly came from a lab

another quote conspiracy theory that eventually became the u.s. government's official assessment

we were right that bears signals were worth investigating not dismissing we were right that the

pandemic of the unvaccinated was a political slogan not an epidemiological epic epidemiological fact

we were right that the experts who demanded our obedience were often wrong conflicted were both

and we were right about the most important thing of all that the American people would finally

figure it out that the truth would surface that the institutions demanding blind trust would eventually

have to answer for what they did it took longer than any of us wanted but it happened it is happening

so when Harvard publishes a study showing that optimism adds 11 to 15 percent of your lifespan

I don't take that as news I take that as confirmation this blog has been a longevity program

since day one we just didn't know there was a 30 year long clinical trial underway to back it up

so you're welcome it's been my great pleasure to serve you now let's keep the project going

optimistically relentlessly and now with peer-reviewed actuarial prospects

you're welcome

he's a wist

well that was Jeff Childers here with his victory lap I sure hope you'll have many others down the

road and I hope our paths cross again sometime soon what a delight it's been to be here with you

thank you for making the trip Michelle thanks for bringing them out here I know behind all of it

it's you pulling the strings Jeff Childers everybody coffee and covid you'd be a fool not to subscribe

five lousy little stars

at IUP grad school works with my life and my career goals with 60 programs online on campus full

or part time Indiana University of Pennsylvania will open doors for your career

visit I UP dot ed you