In this 230th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we talk about the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.

In this week’s episode, we discuss air quality in Los Angeles, and how California led the way in making catalytic converters standard in cars across the United States. Now, that regulatory apparatus is being used for less honorable ends, as legislators consider mandating the inclusion of folic acid in all tortilla products. We discuss pre- vs post-industrial diet, what mother’s milk is for, whether adult Americans are sleeping well, and how reductionism helped get us into this mess. Collectively, we have a complicated mindset, mapped on to a complex system. Then: the Pentagon funded an anti-vax campaign in the Philippines during Covid. At the same time that Americans who were hesitant about the Covid vax were demonized and targeted, the government was creating vaccine hesitancy in other parts of the world. The Cartesian crisis continues.

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Mentioned in this episode:

LA Times: California wants to mandate folic acid in tortillas to help babies. Why that’s bad: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-22/tortillas-folic-acid-corn-masa-california

Reuters Investigation: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

Robinson et al 2022. Factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy and reduced vaccine confidence in rural underserved populations. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1): 1-8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9702767/

General Dynamics IT: https://www.gdit.com

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