Transcript of Michael Shellenberger on The Tucker Carlson Show

So but that they knew on January 1st, January 2nd, that the fires were coming like it was inevitable that there would be fires. Like there was like zero doubt among anybody that knows anything about fire in Los Angeles that the fires were coming, the fires were coming. So like the governor should have been, the mayor should have been there.

You should like — literally it’s all about — but it’s all about prevention in part because by the time the fire trucks are having to weave their way up those little hills of —

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: The Pacific Palisades, it’s over. I mean, so the thing to keep in mind is that, OK, well, that’s the first thing is that they just have to mobilize and —

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s a feature for people who aren’t aware of the geography of L.A.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, it’s just incredible. I mean, it’s why it’s so beautiful, beautiful places are. So that’s like the main event. So I mean, because I knew I did. My first thing I did is I was like, look, they’re going to come out and say it was inevitable. And that’s just a total lie —

TUCKER CARLSON: Because of global warming.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. Because of global warming. And I mean, anyway, we get so there’s so many places to go here. But just on the most practical sense, they knew the fires were coming and they didn’t do anything. The mayor leaves the country. She flies to Ghana after having promised not to leave the country, by the way. As mayor, she’s traveled six — at least six times out of the country and she promised not to travel.

Why is it important the mayor be there? You know, aren’t other people in charge? Because it’s a command. It’s an emergency command situation. She has to be able to issue orders and to, you know, waive regulations and make things happen. The governor has to be doing that. They didn’t do that. They should have had, by the way, they should get the fire trucks up into the fiery areas right away. They can also start, you know, they can start clearing brush. They can start, you know, but literally they could just be in those neighborhoods just sitting there for days at a time waiting for the fires to happen. Put them out as soon as they happen.

I’m not saying that they would have been able to prevent all the fires from happening. But you remember, like the big fire in 1993, I think it was Laguna Beach or maybe it was Malibu as well. But it was like 700 homes — we’re at 10,000, you know, structures at this point, homes and buildings gone, you know, 200,000 people evacuated. I mean, it’s like it’s madness. It never needed to get that level.

OK, so that’s the first thing. They just needed to have been there before the fire started. And they didn’t do that because the politicians are just — they’re focused on themselves. They’re focused on the next political office they want to get. So that’s the first thing.

Water Reservoir Issues

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: The second thing is the water runs out. Right. So everybody is. And then you hear people go, oh, it’s something you can do, because like once the homes are burned down, like the water lines, you see the pictures, you know, the water like will be spilling out, you know, of the homes. And so that lower the water pressure. That was a total lie.

There is something called the Santa Inez water reservoir, which is the potable water, meaning the drinking water that also goes into the fire hydrant system. The fire hydrant, you know, the fire hydrant system is the drinking water system. It’s the same thing. It’s the exact same system. That reservoir was empty and it was the second largest of the 10 water potable water reservoirs that serve L.A. County there.

Let me make one distinction here, because there’s actually two kinds of reservoirs. There’s the reservoir with the snowmelt water, these really big lakes, basically. And then there’s the and that’s the unpurified water. And then those and then they purify it and then they feed into these reservoirs where they store the water for all sorts of reasons, for emergencies. So that is an absolute crime that that Santa Inez reservoir.

Why? Because, first of all, it was it’s right next to the Pacific Palisades. So for people that don’t know, Pacific Palisades, of course, is like right near it’s on your way to Malibu. It’s like the last big neighborhood before you get to the Palisades.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Water.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: That’s right. And so they have a reservoir. You look at the Google Maps and you look at where the Santa Inéz reservoir is. It’s right next to like a few thousand feet from Pacific Palisades and it’s above. It’s really high up. And so if you had had water coming from that, the firefighters would have had plenty of water. It would not have. They would have had the water pressure, even if you had lost some homes and had those the water out.

So, I mean, so two major failures. The first was the failure to aggressively respond days in advance, even though they had very clear warnings. The second was the reservoir was empty. One reporter has reported that the firefighters had not been warned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power that that reservoir was empty. If that’s true, that’s just additionally scandalous.

But one of the things that we think probably happened is that they had been required to build, have a cover for the clean, for the Santa Inéz reservoir, which is the potable water, the cover to prevent the water from being contaminated. In the old days, like the 50s and 60s, you know, birds would poop in those reservoirs and they would just put a bunch of chlorine in them. Right. And then we decided, well, that the water was still had a lot of, you know, it still was not it was not particularly clean. So we wanted to be cleaner.

So you just put a cover over it, which is a kind of plastic or rubber lining. It appears that there was a tear in that they had to repair it. They should not have removed that water ever during the fire season. If you need to make that repair, you do need to drain right, you know, right before you do the repair. But you would make that drain. The people that I interviewed said, look, it would take, you know, days, if not a couple of weeks to repair it. It was empty for at least a year. So it was sitting there for a year.

And the person I interviewed who works as a senior executive at a different water utility in California said, if we had any of our reservoirs empty, we would be like super nervous the entire time. And you would also then have backup water systems. So it’s like any catastrophe. You know, you just have multiple errors occurring in advance and at the moment.

Preventing Ignitions

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: And then the fires, and then the actual ignitions. You can’t completely prevent ignitions, but you can significantly reduce them. One would be to not allow people to camp outside all over Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, with somewhere around, I think it’s 40 to 60 thousand homeless people in the whole county madness. And then the other is the electrical wires that brush up against the vegetation and create fire.

With that, you want to clear the vegetation from around the wires, that’s obvious. And then you can also just stop. I mean, this is a not great solution, but you could certainly do it in a pinch if you need to. You just stop the electricity from going into those homes for some period. I mean, it’s a drag. We haven’t. I live in the Berkeley Hills, which is also a dangerous fire zone. And when the winds are really strong, they’ll just cut off power as a precaution so that if they’re so that to prevent an ignition.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So I think the thing that — the reason I wanted to come on your show, even though I’m in the midst of a huge book deadline, is because I’m really concerned about this nihilistic discourse that there’s literally nothing that could be done. I mean, that is exactly where the politicians want to go. I worry that, you know, ordinary people have that idea. The problem is, I mean, it’s absurd.

I mean, this idea that you couldn’t live in Los Angeles. Right. And it’s like — it’s like you can say it about anywhere. You know, oh, there’s snowfalls in this place during winter, you know, or hurricanes. I mean, we’re in an area that’s Hurricane Valley. Right. Huge amounts of hurricanes. That’s not how humans roll.

Like, we’re capable of living in many different environments, including with extreme weather conditions. And it’s like saying, —

TUCKER CARLSON: I can’t stop my kids from dying of tetanus. Right. Starving to death. Right. I mean, what? Yes. Right.

The Nihilistic Ideology

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So there’s no nihilistic agency. It’s so nihilistic. And you trace it back. I mean, the best, the most articulate advocate of that view is a Marxist named Mike Davis, who wrote this book called “City of Quartz.” It’s a crazy nihilistic book. But he had an essay and also this chapter in that book called “Let Malibu Burn.” I mean, it’s classic kind of radical left politics, is classic sort of envy or sour grapes. I mean, sour grapes goes I can’t remember the parable, but basically it’s like some animal wants to eat these grapes, but they’re up too high. And he says, oh, well, those grapes were sour anyway. It’s a consolation for your own personal weakness and failure.

That’s just “let Malibu burn.” I mean, you know, you have an ideology of Marxism that is based on resentment and envy. And so then you go, well, yeah, those — all those rich houses should go up in flames. It’s a fantasy. I mean, it’s a left wing. I should know. I was on the radical left, like the fantasy. You hate the rich people because you want their wealth and you admire them on some level. But, you know, you can’t get it. I mean, this is how envy works.

So you end up constructing this whole political ideology. I mean, this is what Marx has done. And it’s infected like the citizenry. I mean, it’s infected the politicians. And so there’s this — I think that even though it’s not consciously the politicians aren’t consciously saying, oh, let’s let Malibu burn. That is the — that is the the behaviors they have taken have had that impact.

So I think that what you’re seeing in real time in these fires in Los Angeles, these fires is the manifestation of a nihilistic ideology. It’s an emergent quality. It happens through a million small steps. But this heavy focus on left wing ideology, whether it’s DEI or E.S.G. or climate apocalypse or just class resentment manifests itself in like the most spectacular, beautiful neighborhoods just being turned into ashes and cinders.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s also on a more prosaic level, a violation of like the most basic agreement there is between citizens and their government, which is I send you more than half of what I own, but you keep my house from burning down and methods from scaring my children or whatever like you provide public safety, fire protection, you know, water, sewer, electricity, like just the basic stuff seems to be totally ignored.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Absolutely.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, why is anyone paying taxes? Why isn’t there a revolution? There should be.

Political Dynamics in Los Angeles

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, because, of course, they’re all trapped by this ideology. I mean, these are the neighborhoods that voted overwhelmingly for Kamala, that voted overwhelmingly for Gavin Newsom, that voted overwhelmingly for Karen Bass. I mean, Tucker, I I watched folk. I saw focus groups in 2022 with two Latinos, men and women separated Latino group and a white group.

And the Latinos were great. I mean, they were just like when they start talking about the mayoral race, they were like, well, what are their positions and like what are their policies and what do they want to do and whatever? They’re very rational about it. They’re very as you would hope you would. They were self-interested.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. What do I get out of it?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: What do I get out of these?

TUCKER CARLSON: Fair question.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: The white — the whites. I mean, it was amazing. Like they first of all, they every focus group when the moderator was like, oh, hey, you know, just how’s it going around here? They don’t even try to lead the conversation anywhere. And everybody just starts talking about the homeless situation and the crime, you know, which is basically continuous with homelessness. And then they would be like, oh, yeah. OK, well, about the remedies.

Oh, there’s a mayoral race coming up. I think it was in the mid — like in the summer, you know, that the focus groups were held in Caruso versus Bass and they hadn’t really been thinking a ton about it. But there’s a moment there where you see it dawns on the white focus group participants and they were not like recruiting like leftists or Democrats or anything. It was just supposed to be a mixed group of swing voters.

And they just as soon as it dawned on them that there was a black woman running, they were like, oh, well, I mean, that’s I mean, got to vote for the black woman. Like it was the most racist like you would think, like in the most racist moments in American history, you know, the stereotypes that we would have, you know, about the South or whatever, you know, reconstruction or something like people would not be as open and honest about it.

So they were like openly like, well, we have to vote for the black woman. And then in the rest of the focus group, when they — a lot of them knew who Caruso was because he’s famous for these really spectacular, you know, housing developments. And also they’re kind of calling the malls is the kind of just beautiful, like an outdoor shopping center with like lawns and you can get like a fantastic restaurants and you can like have the kids can play freely on these lawns. I mean, it’s sort of tragic because, of course, it’s all private. It’s not public spaces, but nonetheless, you feel safe. You go in there. It’s amazing place.

So they knew that I want these white participants. I was watching them through basically over the next hour, hour and a half explaining why Caruso was a bad guy for just running against this black woman like it was just outrageous. And what is he trying to do? He’s trying to make money. I mean, which is just crazy because, of course, it’s just, you know, like he’s like a billionaire. I mean, he’s self-made and extraordinarily successful person and clearly running for mayor is an altruistic act. So it was just appalling.

The Phenomenon of White Self-Hatred

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So, of course, I mean, I have to say —

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, what is that? I mean, I’ve been to every big white country in the last year, Australia, Canada, UK, U.S., obviously. And that very specific brand of self-hatred, nihilism, that brain disease is everywhere. It’s not just here. It’s throughout the Anglosphere. What? And it’s history changing and it’s effects like what is that? Why is the white world determined to kill itself? Do you have any idea? It’s really noticeable.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. I mean, there’s so much in that. I mean, it seems like there’s like multiple levels. I mean, at one superficial level or at least a kind of psychological sociological level, they’re all competing with each other to show who’s a better person. Yeah. The more I the more hatred I express towards white people, the better I am as a human being.

TUCKER CARLSON: Destroying your own kids is like the measure of virtue.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, yeah. The nihilism. Obviously, this is a very old story about decadence and of, you know, comfort. And you start to kind of believe — I mean, there’s something really checked out from reality about the whole thing. I mean, first of all, it’s the stories that get told are just, you know, like absurd, like 1619 being the founding of America. That’s just obviously wrong. The country was founded. You know, our constitution, 1789, Declaration of Independence, 1776 and like that, but like slavery was never at the heart of the United States.

It was always — it was the whole place committed to. It was English Americans or the American English, as they were referred to, wanting to create a country the first time that was just founded on the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and of free expression. I mean, so important. They put it’s the First Amendment. They insist on Bill of Rights. So you get this completely twisted, you know, disinformation story about the United States that gets embraced. Yeah, it’s nihilism.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, but but embraced by whites. It’s aimed. So it is. I mean, leaving us. In fact, it’s false. But, you know, a lot of creationists are false. But this one is false in a specific way, which is like you suck and you should die and all the way. It’s like, hey, you’re right. I should. Right. What?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: It’s I mean, end of civilization sort of ideology.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, that’s it. So I don’t — I’ve never seen anything like it.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No. And when you read the old —

TUCKER CARLSON: It is the whites, too.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, yeah. No, because the Latinos, I mean, they’re like, what? Yeah. For sure. They’re like working. They’re like more working class. They’re more Christian. They’re more. They love America more. They remember where they came from or. So yeah. I mean, it’s also. Yeah. So it’s just in some ways that’s an old story of a civilization just at its end. I mean, including all the transgenderism. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s the Camille Paglia is famous, right? Now that that shows up at the end of civilizations.

And so, you know, every time it’s like one of the characteristics is when the elites stop the creative class of elites, which is, I mean, Los Angeles. They stop identifying with their own working class and they start to identify with, you know, with outsiders, basically with with people from foreigners from outside the country. And that’s another sign of a civilization at its end.

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The Affluence Factor

TUCKER CARLSON: You alluded a minute ago to its cause being affluence, just generational affluence. It feels that way to me, too. I’m not an expert.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, it’s a cliche, but I like a lot of cliches, to tell the truth to it, is the good times make soft men, and soft men make bad times. So there’s obviously been a huge correction in the United States, which is welcome, which is a sort of re-embrace of the ideals of the United States. Let’s hope that this has been a wake-up call for the people of Los Angeles. They are reaping what they sowed, and the people of California are reaping what we sowed. That is …

I mean, it’s really quite symbolic. It’s like the neighborhoods of the elites in Los Angeles that have really got the most effective that are having to flee. But again, part of the reason I wanted to come on, I’ve been writing about it every day and trying to surface the stories of the water utility executives, and I’ve got a story coming out later today from a firefighter who basically just described … I mean, the firefighters, of course, the men and women on the ground doing the hard work, they’re blameless.

Fire Departments in Los Angeles

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: The destruction, there’s 29 fire departments in Los Angeles, including L.A. County Fire Department. There’s 88 cities. People don’t realize, Los Angeles is a city, but then there’s a much larger county around it with 88 cities in it. Not all of them have fire departments. In fact, most of them don’t. So the ones that don’t have their own fire departments, they depend on L.A. County Fire Department. Anyway, it’s been this way for a long time, so it’s not like it can’t work, but it definitely introduces a level of complexity into it.

The priorities of these fire departments, it’s not just like a social media meme. It really has been DEI. It really has been the priority of these fire departments. The first priority of the fire departments should be to put out fires and keep people safe and save lives, but the first priority has been DEI. That is clearly …

TUCKER CARLSON: Is there evidence? Do we have social science that shows that lesbians are better firemen than non-lesbians?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: What are the chances, right, that all three of these executives are … I mean, it’s funny because the way that the defenders of it sort of talk about it is as though they’re imposing equality. Actually, they’re demanding that it not be based on merit. I mean, first of all, there was never any evidence that the fire departments were systematically or structurally excluding qualified people. I mean, it’s not to say that never happened or there wasn’t some racism. I mean, of course there is, but it’s like they got into a situation where people are getting promoted who were not as qualified as other people on basis of race.

I mean, that is anathema to the American system. And by the way, the people of California have now twice rejected racial preferences, one of them in 1996, I believe, and then the other, again, in 20 … Was it 2018, I believe?

TUCKER CARLSON: They also rejected gay marriage, but they’re not allowed to get what they want, actually, it turns out, because whenever you think of gay marriage or racial preferences or whatever, if you believe in democracy and you have a referendum system, you have to abide by the results. And they don’t.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, yeah, and they haven’t. No, they haven’t.

The Spirit of California

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, the spirit of California … I mean, there’s a true spirit of California that I do think is very American, which is really egalitarianism. I mean, the American creed, if you believe Daniel Bell’s analysis of it, it’s liberty, it’s laissez-faire, it’s individualism, and it’s egalitarianism.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the state I grew up in. It was the most American of all states.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: That’s right. It’s not equity, it’s equality of opportunity. That’s what egalitarianism is.

TUCKER CARLSON: It doesn’t matter who your family was. We used to say, when I was a kid, no one in California used his last name. Now, why would that be? You know, you go back east, as we called it, we’d go in the summertime, I’d be like, hi, I’m Michael Shellenberger. In California, it’s like, I’m Mike. Well, my father would always say, that’s because in California, it’s not about the legacy of your family, it’s not about caste, it’s about you, whether you do it or not. That seemed like a great system to me.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: It’s great. Yeah. That’s what I love. That’s the part I love about California. I lived on the East Coast for like a year. It was a traumatic experience. You’d go to parties and someone would be like, oh, what school did you go to?

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, totally.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: And then they’d be kind of looking over your shoulder and you’re like, well, what, like, who cares what school I went to? Like, you know, who am I?

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: What are my passions? So that was like, I was like, wow, that is great. Like, that is weird. You know, in California, it’s like, what’s your jam, dude? You know, it’s that’s like the best of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Who are you as a person? Yeah.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, it’s the human, you know, it’s like, obviously there you can get culty and whatever, but I mean, it is the best of that human potential.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re not held responsible for the sins of people you’re related to. Well, I say, and you know, I come from a complicated family, so I always love that idea. You’re judged on you, the choices that you make and the character that you have, right?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Which is actually radical individual responsibility.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s what I always thought.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. I mean, it was for me, it was like, you know, Viktor Frankl, who wrote “Man’s Search for Meaning,” is this incredibly Holocaust survivor. The whole thing was, was like, you know, being in a death camp shouldn’t control how I think about the world. I mean, that’s about as radical of an individual mentality point of view. And now, of course, that’s viewed as very right wing and very unsympathetic and whatever. But Viktor Frankl was just loved by the existentialist California left in the 60s.

I mean, he would sell out these huge auditorium in Berkeley and they would, you know, they’d go to Esalen. And so, I mean, you go from that to basically nobody taking responsibility. I mean, it’s incredible.

TUCKER CARLSON: And everyone living under the crushing burden of history, most of it misconstrued in a lie anyway. But still, the idea that the past is determining the present and the future, that’s like the least Californian, least American idea ever.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: That’s so well spoken. No, no, it’s totally brilliantly well spoken. Absolutely. And I mean, it’s like we in our next book, we’re doing we were working on this idea of these singularities, meaning like these just awful events in the past, the Holocaust, slavery, indigenous genocide. And they become like gods for secular people. They become like super present, like, you know, there’s — it’s just everything that we do is affected by slavery and, you know, everything. This is indigenous land.

I mean, I was going through the — I was just going through all of the various documents over the years of like water and fire and disaster in Los Angeles. And they like all open with land acknowledgements. You know, you’re like, well, yeah, but like literally you think that white people don’t belong here. Like, that is literally what you’re saying, those land acknowledgments. You’re saying we don’t belong here.

Controversy Over Fire Department Priorities

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: And you may have seen — there’s a clip that went viral on social media with the deputy police, the deputy fire chief of Los Angeles, where she’s sort of saying, oh, yeah, people will ask me, you know, can you carry my husband out of a house, you know, in danger? And she’s like, well, you know, your husband got himself in a place that he shouldn’t have been. That was her response. It was like —

TUCKER CARLSON: I saw that video. And my first thought was that can’t be — was that real?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I know. It looks like a parody. It’s crazy. You’re like, yeah, that’s literally your job is to be able to carry someone. Can you imagine like someone be like, oh, yeah, your father, your elderly father, you know, we couldn’t carry him out of the house. He shouldn’t have been in that house when it was —

TUCKER CARLSON: Or your daughter gets raped walking to school. Well, she shouldn’t have been wearing a skirt.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Right. Yeah. We don’t. But that’s like the left campaign. Like when I was in college, like that was the whole. Don’t blame the victim. That was the whole thing. Of course, they’re all —

TUCKER CARLSON: Which I would kind of agree with, by the way. I mean, you should be able to look attractive and not get raped.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’d be allowed to be old and immobile and not die in a fire. Right. What are we even saying?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: That’s civilization.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s civilization. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What’s the point of civilization? Civilization is to protect the vulnerable, to make it possible for people to reproduce and continue. To make it possible for you to have kids and your kids to have kids like there’s no reason to have it. Other than that. So the most basic level. Yes.

And so I don’t understand, like, how could she say something like that and not get fired or arrested?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: She should have been fired as soon as that came out. I mean, Gavin Newsom should have called for her to be fired. The mayor should have called for her to be fired. She’s still in that job. I mean, she’s that — that’s dangerous. Like it’s a violation of firefighter ethics. That person is a danger. In other words, she’s going around suggesting to all of her people that work for her that they’re not responsible for saving.

Nihilism and Anti-Civilization Ideology

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: But I think it reflects the mentality, which is a nihilistic mentality, which is that we don’t belong here. You know, we stole — we stole this land. And so you so and this is, you know, let Malibu burn. I mean, it is definitely definitionally nihilism. I mean, it’s anti-civilization nihilism.

You know, there’s sort of two forms of nihilism. One of them is basically anti-civilization, anti-human, anti, you know, modern life. And it stems from this earlier nihilism, which is that life has no meaning. We’re just like animals in the famous Russian novel, “Fathers and Sons” by Turgenev. You know, the nihilistic character dissects a frog and says, we’re just like this.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: You know, we’re just matter. You know, we’re just dead matter. Just this assembly. It’s a very dark, nihilistic story that then leads to this just, yeah, nihilistic anti-civilization ideology, which became very fashionable. I mean, “City of Quartz,” the Mike Davis book, I mean, it was a very fashionable book to read in places like Pacific Palisades and Hollywood and Santa Monica and Venice.

So yeah, I think it’s, you know, I hope it’s a wake up call. I don’t know if it will be, but it is a completely preventable disaster. Fires are definitely not completely preventable, but that level of destruction absolutely is. And anybody who says that it’s that it is not preventable should be as far away from power as possible. Like anybody who believes that it was inevitable to lose ten thousand homes and buildings in Los Angeles over a week. They should not be in. They should be very far away from political power. They should not be in charge of any fire department because it ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Climate Change and Los Angeles Fires

TUCKER CARLSON: So I’ve taken you right to 50,000 feet, the future of the whites and all this stuff, which I’m grateful that you addressed. But just back to the and I’m sorry for digressing so much back to the court with the first question. How did this start? You gave a great explanation. Did climate change play a role? Was this caused by climate change?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, it’s not caused by climate change. I mean, certainly warmer weathers, all else being equal, makes the wood, you know, drier. But there is no change in precipitation over — since 1877 they’ve kept very good records of rainfall, annual rainfall in the Los Angeles basin. And it’s unchanged.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: There are. I know. It’s incredible. There’s wet years and dry years. You know, you look at it. I just posted on X. It’s just people can go look at it. It’s from the Almanac. No change in precipitation at all in Los Angeles. There have been Santa Ana winds in January many times in the past. There have been, you know, and by the way, like this is a dry year now, but the last two years were very heavy rains — too heavy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. So it’s light, heavy.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. And so, you know, it’s extremes. I mean, it’s what you know, that’s why California is so beautiful. It’s a place of extremes. And so we you know, we adapt to that. I mean, you know, like —

TUCKER CARLSON: But there’s been no in the aggregate change in rainfall in a hundred and forty years.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, absolutely not. Not not. Yeah. No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why are they?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: It’s actually a remarkably stable climate.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it is. I mean, anyone who’s lived there can tell you that’s that’s its appeal.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: It is a pretty stable climate, actually.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. I mean, it’s stable climate with these amazing extremes.

California’s Weather and Climate

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So like, you know, I mean, the best I mean, for my favorite weather is like after like, you know, three days of just intense rains and you’re just like trying to make sure that your house isn’t flooded and, you know, the mud’s everywhere. It’s just the dogs are bringing in mud and then the sun comes out and it’s just heaven on earth. I mean, that’s why we’re in California. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re just like.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So we love those. We love those extremes. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s part of the I mean, it’s so funny because it’s like you the reversion back to these people are cursing the weather, you know, they’re blaming the weather.

TUCKER CARLSON: So, you know, sacrifice.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

California’s Political Priorities

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, another one was literally just before I got here, the legislature got to its very important work of passing a bill just now that sets aside 50 million dollars for California to sue Trump, like literally. And they were in a special session that they kept going. They were in a special session to figure out how to sue Trump while L.A. is burning.

And meanwhile, Gavin’s going out there all the time, being like, oh, well, boy, be really terrible if, you know, if Trump, you know, withheld disaster aid or heaven forbid, you know, required that we, you know, get our shit together. I’m not sure what I was saying. Your podcast, get our things together and then like literally like we’re going to sue him for implementing the agenda he was elected on by a majority of the American.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s just an MSNBC agenda, just a silly rich white liberal agenda. And I will say, I’ve thought for 20 years that California will only be saved by like Naibu Kelly type figure, some authoritarian Latino in a cape is going to show up and just impose order on the state. And I’m not — I’m not saying I am white. I’m not against whites. I love whites. My children are white. But the fact is they can’t do it in that state. Gavin Newsom can’t do it. The burden of guilt and self-hatred is too heavy. And you’re going to get some guy from Oaxaca who’s smart is going to be like, we’re not putting up any of this bullshit at all. And no, you can’t camp in L.A. No, you can’t do meth in L.A. And yes, we are going to have like full reservoir. I mean, you know what I mean?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: It would be amazing. It would be amazing if we had that. We I mean, there would happen. There was sort of an idea that Karen Bass, because she was black and because she came from the left, would be able to do things that a white guy wouldn’t be able to do. That was part of the reasoning for her. She didn’t do it. I mean, she’s just I mean, look, she’s very — you have to remember, she’s very rad. Radical.

I mean, and I get it. I mean, it’s like I was there. I left it. But, you know, she went to Cuba a bunch of times and, you know, like admired Castro. And you kind of thought, well, maybe that was behind her. But it’s not. You know, it really isn’t. I mean, the thing where like you’re literally get a warning that the whole city’s going to go up in flames and you’re like, oh, I really got to be in Ghana for the inauguration of the new president. I mean, look at where your head’s at. I mean, she talks about she loves going to Africa all the time. I love going to Africa.

TUCKER CARLSON: But I do, too. And it’s like you’re like the mayor of like just silly and selfish.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: It’s really narcissistic. It’s really vapid.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I could have people kiss your ass your whole life and tell you, I mean, that is just bad as if it ever when it happens to me, it’s bad for me. Yeah, it’s bad for anybody. And if some people are always being like, you’ve got black girl magic like after a while it. No, I’m sure. There is no black girl magic. There’s no white man magic. It’s all bullshit, actually. But if you start to believe it, having people kiss your ass, having had many people because I know corrodes your soul and makes you into a bad leader. And I really think that’s part of we’re seeing it not just in L.A., but like the black girl magic thing has been bad for a lot of people. You know what I mean?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: As the white man magic would be, too.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, she gets I mean, they so the other thing was she did cut the fire department budget. OK, she just cut it. I mean, she just it just happened. And then literally denying it.

Fire Department Budget Cuts

TUCKER CARLSON: I know.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So she literally goes up at a press conference and it was word salad. I mean, it was quite impressive. I mean, she was just sort of like like you were like, what did she just say? I mean, she’s kind of she goes, she goes, well, that was, you know, it was kind of like, well, that was different because we just approved this other money. And she would basically just was a non sequitur. I mean, she’s describing a totally different salary negotiation.

They cut seventeen point five million from the budget and all of that. But then they had this internal memo that leaked that said they were looking to cut another forty eight point eight million, another forty nine point a million from the fire department, which had already was already decimated. I mean, the whole story is it’s like famous for fires.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it’s crazy.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So then like so they do that. And of course, the L.A. Times and Politico and other people, they all come out and they go they go, did she cut the budget? You know, it’s complicated, you know, I mean, it’s amazing. It’s complicated, which is like, yeah, yeah, she did. She did cut the budget. But nobody the media was not being honest with people about what was really going on until the fire chief, the lesbians, L.A. County Fire Chief, to her credit.

She was being — actually she was being grilled by a local Fox television reporter who was just doing a great job, actually. I mean, just to be here to the local TV, actually, some of the best reporting still —

TUCKER CARLSON: Only in L.A. L.A. has always had local television. I don’t know why.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, I think I agree with you. It’s falling off in the Bay Area, though they did a little bit better on Oakland when things get really crazy.

But she just kept going after her. She just kept asking her over and over again about the about the budget cuts. And she was kind of having a high five. She was just like, yeah, yeah, she did. She cut that money. And she’s like, did it matter? Yeah, yeah, it mattered. You know, she had sent on she had sent a letter. I mean, there was a letter from I think it was December 4th that the chief, the fire chief had sent, which said specifically, this is going to reduce our ability to deal with wildfires. She said it twice. Yes. She said it twice in the letter. So it was a little bit like, OK, you were on the record saying it was going to hurt you. So but then she was like, yes, yes, it did hurt our ability to deal with it. Then she just was like, I think at that point, the fire chief, she was just like, all right, you know, like the gloves are off.

So she goes on CBS and on CNN and reiterates that and with very strong language, I was able to get into this piece that will come out shortly. I was able to get into the weeds a little bit on it, but basically there’s a hundred fire trucks that are currently in the maintenance shop that are just need to be fixed. There’s a hundred fire trucks missing. The person I interviewed was like, we could go buy. We could have bought for one hundred million dollars. We could have bought, you know, like a hundred or two hundred, you know, kind of used fire trucks or whatever. Maintain them and just put them in different points all around the city.

You wouldn’t necessarily have the staff to deal with them, but you could then as soon as you get that fire warning again on January 1st, January 2nd, you can just fly in firefighters from around the country, from around the world. You just be like, look, we’re just going to bring everybody in. We don’t know what’s going to happen. And then they can just go. He was this person was like, you know, we could put like 30 of them at Dodger Stadium. You know, you could just like put these fire trucks that are well-maintained, you know.

And so she was like, because I didn’t quite understand it either, because she was like, we didn’t have the money for the mechanics. And you’re like, well, why do you like what do you need the mechanics for? Well, you need the mechanics to maintain the fire engines. Right. So, I mean, this is what, you know, it’s like when civilization breaks down, it breaks down in like a million small ways, you know.

Issues with DEI and Budget Cuts

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So, you know, is there some DEI part of it? Yeah. There was they were promoting people not based on merit. Is there budget cuts? Absolutely. I mean, they didn’t you know. I mean, what goes wrong when you don’t have those budget cuts, everything, you know, I mean, the other complaint I’ve heard, you know, it’s just that it’s just the advanced thinking. It’s just getting people that can kind of be thinking in advance. That’s where their focus is. That’s what a priority is.

So the problem with the DEI is that when you’re just orienting an entire organizational culture towards racial and sex quotas rather than towards, OK, you know, what about the Santa Ana winds and the fire risk and whatever, it’s just we all know that like it’s not just time in the day. It’s also mind time. It’s like, what do you think about when you take a shower? What do you think about when you’re putting on your shoes? Like where is your head at? Their head has been in the clouds around, you know, DEI, the larger society, E.S.G., climate, homelessness. I mean, I mean, the list goes on and on.

Homelessness in California

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: But the you know, it was on homelessness. We now know because the state audit came out twenty four billion dollars on homelessness since since Gavin took office in twenty nineteen. Tucker, homelessness in California increased by 40 percent under Gavin. Can you believe? I mean, 40. So because everyone goes, it’s such a curious — it’s such a curious mystery as to we spent all this money on homelessness and yet it just increased. It’s like, well, yeah, because you spent money incentivizing and subsidizing homelessness. You spent all this money to attract people from all over the United States. I mean, I interview people in California that are on the streets and it’s like nobody’s from California. I mean, you come in.

TUCKER CARLSON: The only reason I feel like I have any understanding what homelessness is, is because of the interviews that you did several years ago, which the most I’d never heard of you before I saw these interviews and you did. And I would recommend to our listeners to go find them because they’re on YouTube. You did the thing that nobody — I’ve never seen anybody do it before. Others have followed since you did it, but you just went and interviewed the homeless and like, what are you doing here? Tell me your story. And they were remarkably honest.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, they’re, they want to be, they see the thing is like homeless people, they’re always lonely, you know? And so they, they’re, um, obviously these are people in really bad way and they’re eager to tell their story. They have a lot to say. They’re not, most of them are not dumb.

TUCKER CARLSON: Some of them are not dumb at all. Shocked by it.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh no. And they do lie. Like at the beginning. So I mean, you have to, um, the secret to all great interviews, as you know, more than anybody is, is you need to have a long time because people tell the, they lie at first and then the truth comes out. So like you’ll interview people and you’ll be like, you’re like, where are you from brother? And they’ll be like, oh, I was raised here. And you get like 30 minutes in the interview.

Interviewing Homeless People

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: They’re like, oh, I’m from Arkansas, you know, I’m from Texas or whatever. So yeah. I mean, um, so yeah, they’re from all over. They came here, they come, you know, the most famous one I did was, was with James Church. He had tattoos on his face and he was just an incredible, I just love that interview so much. I think it was like, it’s not like an hour, hour and a half with him just holding my iPhone up to him while he’s talking. And he was the one who was like, um, you know, if I’m being honest, you know, they pay people to be homeless here. And I was like, I was like, what do you, what do you mean by that? You know? And he’s like, well, he’s like, I get 650 bucks a month, you know, um, in cash welfare to be homeless here. Plus a couple of hundred bucks more in food stamps. It’s a great deal.

And he was like, I got Netflix on my phone. I watch Amazon, you know, I watched Amazon Prime TV on my phone. You know, I still have Electric City from the, from the, the, the light pole right here. Um, that video, I will say is very satisfying. I do think that played a pretty big role in the voters of San Francisco voting to get rid of cash welfare, um, for homeless people.

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The State of Journalism

TUCKER CARLSON: But why did it? I know I’ve asked this before, but why did it fall to you to do that?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: It’s well, it’s because, well, we know why. I mean, —

TUCKER CARLSON: Because you weren’t a reporter, you weren’t working for a newspaper or a TV station.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No. I mean, look, it’s for me, this is the golden age of journalism, but it is so much fun. Basically, I can go into every story and you discover that people aren’t really doing reporting. I showed up at the guy, I showed up at the house that the guy lived in, the guy that assaulted Nancy Pelosi’s husband, just to give you a sense of where journalism is at. I show up and I’m like, I’m just happy to be there and there’s all these journalists there. There’s like a bunch of local TV news and the local print wherever, and I was like, I was like, oh, hey, what’s going on?

TUCKER CARLSON: He lived out in Berkeley, right?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, he’s in Berkeley. Yeah. He lived in a, you know, Black Lives Matter flag and, you know, abandoned school bus. They were really, it was really terrible environment. But, and I was like, oh, I was like, so I was like, if you guys already, I was kind of like worried. I was like, I got here late. I was like, so you guys already like knocking all the doors of the neighbors and they were just like looked at me and they were like, no, we’re like not, we’re, I can’t remember one of them said, like, we don’t want to be like rude or something, or that would be like inappropriate.

I was like, I was like, and at that moment I was like, oh, oh God, this is going to be great. And I just like went and knocked on all the doors and I get all the information like, oh yeah, they would around naked out there and they would be on drugs all the time. And yeah, they were like all left wing and it was like, you know, I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like, there’s no competition.

Like, it’s, you know, I got on the, I got on the White House briefing just recently, the White House briefing on UAPs, which you and I are both interested in on the drones. And I was just like, you can kind of go into these stories, you just start talking to people and you just realize journalists aren’t really, they’re not really journalists. They’re more like kind of the people that would run for like class president or something. They’re kind of goody two-shoes.

TUCKER CARLSON: They’re ass kissers.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. They’re actually very authority. I mean, they’re the ones that wanted all the censorship, so they’re not that old picture of journalists. It’s like this kind of cantankerous and like, you know, crabby and they got rid of all those people. Anti-authoritarian.

TUCKER CARLSON: Anti-authoritarian. Yeah. Difficult people. I’m the son of one of those.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. Yeah. Classic. Classic. Right. That’s like the greatest. I mean, there’s like, and you realize it’s essential to the functioning of civilization to have a bunch of disagreeable people running around asking impertinent questions.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So with this one, it was like, yeah, so I mean, you basically get, like when you just look at the coverage of the fires, I mean, it was like the, the reporters that are going out and doing this, like their whole thing is like, oh, we’ve got to make sure that the right wing doesn’t take advantage of this situation to push their, like literally that’s how they think about it. So they’re out there running cover for the politics.

I mean, it’s amazing, you know, somebody did like a little meme on it, but it’s like that thing where it’s like, yeah, it used to be that the reporter would like be holding the microphone up to the politicians and being like, answer my questions. And now they’re like demanding that the people defend themselves for their terrible votes. You know, it’s like a complete reversal.

TUCKER CARLSON: True. Well, they’re the Praetorian guard for the powerful.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. Yeah. True.

Homelessness and Drug Addiction

TUCKER CARLSON: One of your, your interviews with the homeless, which I just cannot recommend strongly enough as a primary source of information, actual information is the degree to which the narcotics fuel homelessness. So you can’t really disaggregate homelessness from drug addiction.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, of course. I mean, I mean, of course, but like, no, I know. Well, no, I know. I wrote San Francisco because it was literally like, because I knew drugs, like, you know, I know drugs. You know, I made three friends from high school that became homeless addicts, two are dead. It’s like, you know, um, I’m, you know, I happily avoided personally all the hard ones, but you saw your friends, like, you know, you leave your, wow, you guys are doing meth, you know? It’s like meth bag.

TUCKER CARLSON: What, what time did you go to high school?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Guerrilla, Colorado. Yeah. You know? Um, so, um, you know, my parents are psychologists. I remember just being around my, my aunt had schizophrenia, you know, um, I’ve told the story a million times, so I don’t want to bore you. But basically it was like, it was just kind of like, so wait, everyone just thinks that there’s like a housing problem, like that’s just crazy.

So you know, you sort of needed to, I needed to go do all those interviews, but I mean really the first homelessness epidemic, the first time that we’re modern homelessness was in the early eighties and it was just, uh, it was basically all it was, was a combination of the emptying the final closure of all the mental hospitals where they literally, literally dumped people on the streets. Like I thought that that was, that sounds like an exaggeration when I first started. You know, they literally were putting, you know, schizophrenics and stuff on the streets and then the crack epidemic. Like that’s all it was. It was just those two things.

And then of course then, you know, left wing mayor of San Francisco and others are like, oh, well we can’t like, we can’t like require that people not camp outside, they’re poor. The left in reaction to Reagan then took up homelessness as something that they claimed was caused by Reagan. Like I mean he’d been in office for like whatever, two or three years and they would just make ridiculous claim. You know, the Reagan budget, you know, that’s why he’s on the street.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So it really gets used. So it becomes viewed by the left early on as a political propaganda tool. I also blame the comics by the way. I mean, and just I’ll name them Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg. They did this whole thing. You may remember comic relief where they framed the whole thing as a pot as a problem of poverty, which is just, you know, it’s just, it’s just such a disservice to the people on the street who need an intervention.

There’s a natural, like when you — for addicts, there’s a natural progression where you, you know, whether from trauma or just because you enjoyed getting high, your addiction gets in the way of your job and you stop going to work and you often, you know, live at home with your parents or with friends. You lie, steal and cheat from them repeatedly. They give you multiple warnings. They finally kick you out. That’s often the route to homelessness. You end up on the street. That’s the moment where the society, the parent, the family and friends were not able to impose an intervention.

So the way it should work is that you end up, you go out, camp on the street and the cop goes, Hey, you can’t camp here. It’s illegal to camp here. And they go, what am I supposed to do? And they’re like, well, we’re going to take you to jail or you can go to rehab. Like those are your two choices, two choices and natural intervention is imposed in that situation.

What progressives and Democrats did for 40 years is they just removed the intervention in the name of compassion. The most compassion I think is to impose the intervention. I mean, the thing that’s most common, I’ll even find this with like harm reduction workers. I was just with some harm reduction workers in Skid Row and one of them was telling me the whole usual thing, Oh, you can’t make somebody get clean. They have to hit their own bottom, like whatever. And I was like, and they were like, I used to run around here, you know, on meth. It was an Asian American woman who was doing this and I was like, I was like, Oh, wow. I was like, what did it finally take for you to get clean? She’s like, well, I went to prison, you know, it’s like, well, right.

TUCKER CARLSON: So I have a really close friend you had who’s lived that same trajectory. I have a couple of friends, but a very, I have a legit close friend totally out of control on drugs and lost kids and all the things that happen when you’re addicted and got sober in prison and rebuilt a life, a wonderful life.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yes. And they’re like the, by the way, the recovering addicts are like the greatest people. I mean, they’re the funniest, most honest people. They have an equanimity about that.

TUCKER CARLSON: I go to AA meetings when I can, not because I’m in danger of partying again, I’m not after 20 years, but because I like the people because they’re so honest and they, they’re honest about the one thing no one’s ever honest about, which is themselves. It’s super easy to be honest about you. I don’t like your sweater, Mike. That’s disgusting. Like, that’s not hard. You’ve gained weight. That’s not hard.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve gained weight. I’m wearing an ugly sweater.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I find among those people, the recovered people, like a true honesty about themselves.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s like the greatest church service there is.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Right. Because they’re all born again in an important sense. 100%. They’ve all died.

TUCKER CARLSON: 100%.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. No, I, so that’s the.

TUCKER CARLSON: But to deprive people of that and to encourage them to continue to use drugs and alcohol is like, I mean, don’t even, I mean, whatever, it’s an interview of you, not me, but I just feel like sobriety has to be the goal, not just for the individual, but for the society. I really believe that. So sobriety is the greatest gift, A, B, use of drugs and alcohol causes mental illness, which nobody ever says out loud. I’ve seen it to some extent, experienced it. I know you can cause severe mental illness.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: By using drugs and alcohol. Like, right. Is that even controversial?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: It shouldn’t be.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right. I mean, you’ve done more on this than I have much more —

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: But it’s sort of coming back a little bit. We’ll talk about meth and do psychosis now more, but yeah, it’s it’s really psychosis. Oh yeah. And the weed now it’s just so potent and dangerous and yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: So, but you, as someone who still lives in California, does anybody, do you ever hear people say that? Like, why are we paying people to use drugs? Like should it surprise us that things are falling apart?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, I do think, I do think that the conversation has changed a bit.

Changing Perceptions of Homelessness

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I’ll take some credit for it with San Francisco and the videos in particular. But yeah, it’s just still that thing where it’s like they kind of go, but yeah, but there’s a black woman running for mayor and it just, it’s like the singularity. It’s like when I always say that it’s like this, just, it’s just hovering over people and of course, race thing. Yeah.

It’s really, it’s really about race in a really important sense. And then the guilt.

TUCKER CARLSON: The dealers are all immigrants from Central America. We can’t do anything about it. Right.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, sanctuary state, sanctuary city. That’s part of what they’re going to sue on. Um, yeah, I mean, I think that it’s just, um, yeah, it’s a big trap.

Guilt Culture and Christianity

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, I think that it’s funny because, you know, we’re a guilt culture. And so, you know, like, you know, Japan’s a shame culture and guilt is this, um, incredibly important part of the Christian tradition.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, you stop believing in original sin and you stop believing in Christianity. You still, apparently there’s still this deep desire to feel that guilt and to sort of show it as well. In other words, it is a social part of it. People wanted to see in that focus, they wanted other people to see in that focus group that they, they felt guilty. You know, it was very important to them.

TUCKER CARLSON: But what’s interesting is so in, you know, traditional Christianity, other religions, you know, the guilty person repents, atones, dons ashes, those sackcloth and covers himself in ashes as a way of saying, you know, I am worthy of the degradation.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: But we’ve kind of transferred that. It’s almost like the homeless are in sackcloth and ashes. Do you know what I mean? Like, I live in the United States, I produce music videos, I’m doing pretty well, but I still feel guilt. So, but like seeing somebody like, you know, writhing on the sidewalk, I’m like displacing my atonement.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Wow. That’s really interesting. Yeah. He, well, then they talk about it that way. Even when you talk to the activists that justify it, they’re like, well, that’s a, you know, those people are suffering because of capitalism and, you know, slavery and white supremacy.

TUCKER CARLSON: But the whole point of Christianity is no, no, you suffer, you like confess your sin. You don’t like to put it off on some junkie.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Right. Well, it’s the part of it that’s just really satanic. I mean, not to be theological about it, but it’s just a complete reversal of the traditional Christian process. It’s just, yeah, it’s exactly, it’s making other people atone for your sin.

Yeah. It’s crazy. It’s so bad. And they’re sort of on display, you know, but it’s the, it’s really, if you kind of read it, I mean, it’s like, they want to, they want it to be on display. They want to sort of show it. And that’s why they insist that they not be arrested or, mandated treatment. It’s wild. It is like, you know, like you go to Skid Row and it’s still like a Hieronymus Bosch, is it?

You know, it’s just like, you just can’t, you still can’t believe it. I mean, you still can’t believe there’s a person lying there, you know, sweating profusely passed out. You can’t tell if they’re alive or dead. I don’t know. Like, do I do an intervention and it’s just, it’s, it’s really breaking down. These are human beings.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know. That’s it. I’m not a particularly compassionate or a kind person. I’m kind of a dick actually. But even I like whenever I see that, I feel such deep sadness.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh yeah. Person. It’s like, Oh yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course. Don’t allow. If that was my child, would I allow it? Not for one second. I would take that child and take him to the fucking radiator until he got better. I would not allow that. My child.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: That’s a healthy response, by the way. Absolutely. It is. Absolutely. Those are the people that end up getting off the street. You raise the bottom instead of lowering the bottom.

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Fire Department Organization in LA County

TUCKER CARLSON: God, we’re so far afield from that. So, okay, so there are in LA County, 78, how many fire departments?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, there’s 88 cities and there’s 29 fire departments in the county. No, no, that’s fine. But yeah, so like literally, like once the fire starts, I didn’t even understand this until I started investigating it. The county fire chief has to call all these cities and be like, hey, can you send a couple of trucks? We’re putting together a strike team. Can you send some engines or whatever?

And they have to call around and they’re like, okay, we’re all going to meet. The fire is like blazing away. And they’re like, okay, well, we’re all going to meet, you know, wherever, you know, Sepulveda or whatever the streets are in LA. You know, we’ll meet in this place and we’ll get together and we’ll sync the radios and we’ll develop a plan. I mean, this is all happening like while the city’s burning. I mean, it’s madness, right?

The other thing is that, I mean, there’s like —

TUCKER CARLSON: They didn’t have any preparation for this. There’s nothing, man.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, there might’ve been something that we, but obviously if there was, it wasn’t enough. I mean, it’s a little bit like when they go, when the people that are like that, when the nihilists are defending what happened, they’re like, well, there was nothing else we could have done or we did everything we could have. It’s like, well, no, obviously you didn’t like, it doesn’t matter what it is. It obviously wasn’t.

There’s only one right answer, which is that you didn’t do enough. You know, the fatalism, you know, it’s a way to disavow responsibility on the one hand. Again, I think it expresses that nihilism, but I think it’s like people just have been out of practice, but you have to, this is part of the journalism too. You know, it’s that you kind of, it has to be like, no, no, we’re, we’re not accepting that as an answer.

Like the right attitude for the journalist is to basically be no excuses. It makes for like, I mean, maybe the journalists are being too much of a hard ass and too much of a dick about it. Maybe they need to be a little bit more whatever. That’s fine. That’s their role. I mean, I think your role is to be the prosecutor against — on the case of the failure, your role to be the investigator, public defender, the public, the public defender of the prosecutor of the Paul, you know, but your point is to be like, Oh no, that, that can’t be right.

So because when they go, well, we ran out of water, well, why’d you run out of water? Well, there wasn’t enough. What? No. Well, why wasn’t it? Well, because actually it turned out one of the reservoirs didn’t have any water. Isn’t it your job to make sure there’s enough water? You know, I mean, and this is what they do when they go after Trump and stuff. Is that like, because Trump will often be like directionally correct, you know, like, Oh, but Trump was referring to the wrong kind of reservoir, you know, the other reservoirs were full. It’s like, okay, fine. But the reservoir right next to the Pacific Palisades was empty.

Physicalism in Worldview

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So you know, his basic, the basic intuition, which is, I think, uh, I often talk about the importance of, you know, like if you’re defending civilization, it’s a physical thing, right? And I always think of myself as like, like there’s a physicalism in my worldview, which is like, okay, that’s a person, that’s a body you need to, they need to, they’re in somewhere they shouldn’t be. They need to be somewhere else so we can have a debate about how to move them somewhere else. That’s totally reasonable to me to have, but they can’t be there. They can’t be there because they’re creating fires, they’re breaking the law, they’re hurting themselves and others.

Similarly, there wasn’t water there. There needed to be more water. So if you go, okay, well we actually, let’s say, let’s say that they had all the reservoirs, the potable water reservoirs, let’s say they had all been full and they still ran out of water. Well, then there was some other problem you needed to solve. Maybe you needed more reservoirs or maybe you needed, you know, you needed the preparation there. So you just have to have, I mean, you know, the Bukele type that we, that you’d want to see or somebody, you just have to assess for me, there’s just like literally no excuses all the way down the line.

TUCKER CARLSON: But when you say there’s a, I feel like you’re on something super important. If you could flesh it out. You say there’s a physicalism to your worldview, contrast that with the worldview currently in power.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, well this is, yeah, this is exactly, it’s like, um, it’s this, first of all, it’s like, I mean, it’s just so symbolic. It’s the city of angels, you know? So it’s like, we’re up here and you want it, like the wealthier you get in LA and like it’s with some exceptions like Venice Beach, but mostly you’re getting up higher, up, up, up, up. Um, you’re trying to get away from the cliffs of Malibu. Yeah. And you end up in the heavens and people talk about, I live in a little tree house. I mean, I get it. I love it. It’s like, I live in the Berkeley Hills. I’m not like, you know, but it’s like, I’m, you know, I’m above all that, I’m away from all that. Like I’m connected to nature up here, but also, you know, away from all the bleeds.

And so you actually, I think they do, it’s that whole thing. We talk about people being a bubble, you know, I mean, it’s like the most bubbly place in the world, except for that it’s not. And you’re in a massive fire zone that must be constantly managed. There’s consequences of living in these spectacular places, but you’ve got people that are, it’s there, the whole industry is a fantasy industry. I mean, it’s just exist to construct a fantasy reality. And yeah, you would hope that, that people would be able to compartmentalize.

Yeah. My day job is constructing fantasies that we charge, you know, $20 to stream. But I know that when I go home that like all the brush has to be cleared around my house and I have to vote for candidates that are physical lists. I mean, look at this.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. I mean, I don’t, I mean, I don’t know if that’s the right word. There’s something there though, right? Yeah. Important. They’re fantasies. I mean, the other people, I mean, I don’t want to use the word idealist because there’s too many other connotations to it, but there’s just, it’s just a difference between being your head, your heads up in the clouds and also, and then as opposed to just being really, you need the firefighter view of the world. You need the cop view of the world. Frankly, you need the homeless guys because the homeless people like live in a, I mean, they’re high a lot, so they’re switching in and out, but they have to get their physical needs met. You know, there’s just a, yeah.

The Importance of Order and Physical Reality

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s, um, when we first had kids, I remember my wife being, and I had much lower standards, but insistent on the house being clean and orderly. And I remember saying like, you know, the point of having kids is to instill values in them. She goes, yeah, but one of the values is like order and cleanliness. And like, they will feel like things are out of control if the house isn’t clean and orderly. And she’s really insistent on that. And we’ve lived that way our whole lives.

And I, it’s a version of what you’re saying. It’s like, you can tell your kids about honesty and decency and compassion and high achievement or whatever, but like someone has to make the bed and vacuum the floor. And if there’s dog shit in the kitchen, like it has to be cleaned up. Right. Like that’s, she understood that and has imposed it to great effect, I would say.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I’m sure. No, I think that’s right. And also like parents, we all, I did it too, so I’m not like judging, but like, we talk too much to the kids. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And you see like new parents talking to their kid and the kid’s like, what? It’s like the penis is right. Like the whole, what they hear is a wah, wah, wah, wah.

As opposed to like, could you, could you set the table? You know, um, could you, you know, like the kids like, I mean, we, the kids like to have a job. They want to have a chore. Chores are super, like kids love that, you know? And um, so you’re teaching the kids to clean the classroom every morning. I mean, the problem is the specialization and the wealth, they sort of get disconnected from it. You talk too much to the kids. You know what I mean?

The Problem with Excessive Communication

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: That’s why I’m laughing. And dogs too. People do it with their dogs. You ever see people with like, they’re like, you know, whatever I live in the Berkeley Hills. It’s like, you know, older ladies and their dogs and the, you know, and they’re just like saying blah, blah, blah, blah… And I’m like, I don’t care about the dogs. Well, you’re not holding the leash tight enough, lady. You know, you rewarded the dog when he did something bad, he should have rewarded it when it came to you anyway.

TUCKER CARLSON: All these things break down. All these norms. So deep and true. You said you’re a physicalist. I want that to become an intercommon usage because I think it’s, that is like really, really important.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. I think it is because it’s like people say things like practical, which is good and pragmatic, but some pragmatic.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. Yes. So they’ll, you know, you’ll clean up these homeless encampments and you’ll be like, Oh, wow. Like they’re not minimalist.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, no. They’re not living the Zen lifestyle. Bang and Olsen life. Right. Like, no, no, it’s very cluttered, you know? And so they’re probably over. But so yeah, I mean, they need, you need to, we need to reimpose some limits.

Nationalism and Hannah Arendt

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: You know, there’s a, I’m also, I just became really obsessed with the scholar I just discovered who wrote a trilogy on nationalism named Liah Greenfeld, highly recommend her books. Her first book is called “Nationalism.” Second book is called “Spirit of Capitalism.” And the third book is called “Mind, Madness and Modernity.” And these books are just incredible.

But basically Liah, it’s actually L-I-A-H and then Greenfeld, um, common spelling. Yeah. L-I-A-H. Yeah. She’s a Russian, I think she’s a Russian Jew who went to Israel, lived in Israel for a long time. And then her, and then her, and then her mentor was Edward Shils, the sociologist. Um, so she’s sociologist, but the nationalism book is beautiful. I mean, it’s like the, the, the famous book on nationalism is a guy by, it’s called “Imagined Communities” by Benedict Anderson and it’s, he’s a Marxist and so it’s all the whole things like him trying to explain how nationalism, why it’s so powerful when Marx thought it should wither away and, but she describes now, so she defines nationalism.

The picture that people have of nationalism is completely wrong. Yes. She describes nationalism as a sovereign community of fundamentally equal individuals who have a shared identity. And so she’s like, nationalism is fundamentally democratic. Now you might have some systems that are nationalist, but they don’t have proper democracy. But really the basic idea is that egalitarian idea that we’re Americans. We live here, we have the same solidarity.

I’ve also was, um, I’ve also become, I’ll come back to the Greenfeld, but I’ve also been obsessed with Hannah Arendt who I had never read until recently and she, I don’t think you’re allowed to read her anymore and why no, well she was canceled.

TUCKER CARLSON: I know. I discovered she was canceled. I love her. And so I, but I didn’t realize just like Freud, who was also a huge figure in my childhood. Everyone talked about Freud, alluded to Freud, um, and then he just kind of disappeared one day and Hannah Arendt, same thing.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh yeah. Totally canceled. Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. She was very, well, it’s really in, um, there’s, I read her two books. One is the “Origins of Totalitarianism” book and the other one is “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” “Eichmann in Jerusalem” is, it’s rough cause she describes how the Jewish councils participate in the Nazis. I mean, that was what was really controversial. Um, but what, what really blew me away from reading, um, Hannah Arendt, cause I was coming to the nationalism conversation. I mean, I should, I, uh, self confession cause I should have been reading nationalism starting in 2016.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I know.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: But, um, but you know, I finally was reading on it and it was like, she was like, nationalism is a barrier to totalitarianism because totalitarianism is, is attempting to destroy all relationships between people other than the relationship with the state.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. And so, so religion, nationalism, you know, um, you know, the classic de Tocqueville, associative tie.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Exactly. You know, all of that is a threat to totalitarianism. Yeah. And, um, so that would really struck me and, and Liah Greenfeld kind of, she has a, I just interviewed her, so she has like a difference of opinion with, um, with, um, um, Arendt on this issue. But, but nonetheless, I was just struck by how, I don’t know what the right, I must like, like for me, like nationalism, cause I’ve come from the left, you know, radical left and we would, we would code our socialist yearnings as the public interest.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. And then Nader kind of took all of the Chomsky and left-wing views of the early sixties and packaged them for moderate. You kind of made it all seem very reasonable, you know, um, and the environmentalists did the same thing.

The Left’s Strategy of Disguising Radical Ideas

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So, so the brilliance of the left in general, but the radical left in particular was of just cross-dressing as mainstream issues.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. So, um, so, so it became, so really what is the socialist movement became a consumer rights public interest.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Exactly. It became a socialist movement. Yep. And you get these really radical ideologies. I mean, I’m just obsessed with this, um, the ways in which like, so Marxism look back on it. I was like, wow, I can’t believe the things I believe in. Marxism has this idea that the capitalists, like what’s distinct about them is that they’re just super greedy and they’re thieves and that they’re stealing from their workers. And there’s really no difference between the entrepreneur, the capitalist entrepreneur, like Elon Musk or Thomas Edison or Henry Ford and their workers, they’re just meaner and they steal from them. And it’s like, it’s just an amazingly audacious lie because whenever you go and actually study an entrepreneur, what’s incredible is that it’s not just that they are doing, it’s not like they’re the best at what they’re doing. They’re the best at like 12 different things.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. You may remember when, when Trump and Elon were beginning their bromance, um, Trump goes, he goes, you know, I asked you, I was like, I was like, what is that you’re really good at? I mean, that’s probably a question that Trump is used to asking people that he interviews for a job. And he goes, turned out it was a lot of different things, you know? And it’s like, well, yeah, like, I mean, cause of course, like with Thomas Edison told, oh, we invent the light bulb. He didn’t invent the light bulb. Um, he improved it. He invented a viable economic model for electricity production. I mean, he invented the electrical grid. He found the customers.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, one of the things that impresses me so much with, with Elon is like, I’ll see him, you’ll see him out there and he’ll be selling, you know, which is kind of, I mean, it’s selling the sort of the worst part of our jobs in some ways. I mean, you can do it with pleasure and you can do it with verve and stuff, but, but you know, you kind of like, I do it. I mean, I’m always like subscribe now, you know, and you’re like, you have to do it. Like it’s part of the work. But I’m always like, wow, Elon is, he’s the richest man in the world. He’s probably, he may be the greatest innovator in American history. Certainly top three. Um, and he’s still out there having to hawk his products and, but, and he does it great. He’s an amazing job of it. He’s like, he, one of the innovations was, you know, he just become the biggest user of Twitter rather than buying paid ads.

The Flaws in Marxist and Feminist Ideologies

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: But so this gigantic lie from Marx, which is that the, the, first of all, the entrepreneur, the capitalist is, is just a meaner version of the worker as opposed to this genius, you know, this Schumpeterian genius. And Schumpeter comes along and then his, the other thing, the big, the big lies and then Schumpeter points it out is that the owner of the company and the workers have the same fundamental interest. In other words, Elon Musk’s employees and Elon have the same interest. They want to expand their markets and expand their products. Um, so to put them opposed is just so, it’s just so dishonest and it’s so reminiscent of what you can say feminism or radical feminism, but this idea that the interests of women are opposed by men, that the, that women and men have different interests.

And of course you’ve traced it back. It goes, it all goes back to Simone de Beauvoir, who’s a Marxist writing in the post-war period. I guess it was, was like the forties, her book came out the second, but she’s just taking this totally idiotic Marxist framework and, and applying it to women and men.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s the biggest lie? Cause I mean, it ignores the very obvious symbiosis. It’s just, it’s not possible for them to exist apart and it’s not possible to continue the species. It’s just so dumb that they, they need each other. That actually power is exerted in very subtle but powerful ways within a relationship between a man and a woman that are not at all described or even acknowledged, right?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: It’s the basis of life itself. Of course. So it is like really you trace back like the emergence of nihilism that really is in Marxism. It’s in feminism. And then they successfully cross dress for, for decades and they get so good at it. This is the famous long march through institutions or what they call cultural Marxism. But they basically dress themselves up as civil, you know, basically civil rights. I mean, cause once you get equal rights, the work is done. Same thing with gays and lesbians, but then the radical left activists then go and grab all those trappings.

Cause we started the conversation. This may seem like a digression, but it’s important, I think, for normies and everybody to understand that. I mean, it’s, it dawned, it took a long time for me to get it, but it was like, Oh, right. Like the people that call themselves environmentalists are actually just radical leftists, slightly different from Marx because they’re actually into Malthus, this totally dystopian anti-human view. But the genius of the left is that they are so successful at masking their real agenda behind something else. You know, we just want equality for people of color. We just want to create equal opportunity for migrants. No, their agenda is the destruction of civilization.

TUCKER CARLSON: I know. And you see on the environment, it’s working in LA.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, it is. It is working. And I always thought, um, on the environmental movement, there was a woman called Julia Butterfly Hill spent more than a year in a Redwood. And you know, I always thought, you know, if you were sincere about environmentalism, like she would be like, whatever happened to her, nobody knows. And that was to your point about physicalism, like I like Redwoods and like, if there’s a reason to cut them down, okay, but like, maybe don’t because they’re just so beautiful. That’s my personal view. I always have felt that way.

So like, here was someone who was, she saved a tree. That’s got to be the highest level of what they claim they’re trying to do, but they totally ignored her. They don’t give a shit about her at all. She died in a tree, probably better for them. What they really wanted to do was disconnect people from nature with the opposite, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: So why is it that every single person I know who really spends a lot of time outdoors, into, you know, the sporting life or whatever, lives in a rural area, man, their goals are the opposite of those of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club. Right. Do you know what I mean?

The Physical Reality of Fires vs. Climate Change Rhetoric

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, and also, I think the physicalist distinction works on that as well. I mean, here you have, I did an interview with a terrific, the scientist I mentioned, and he’s just like, you know, when you’re like dealing with fires, the main event is what is happening on the ground. And the climate extremists are out there basically saying, no, no, no, ignore, ignore this whole physical reality. We just need to reorganize the entire global economy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. Exactly. We can’t stop these fires, let Malibu burn, but give us control over the driver of the economy. I mean, it’s such madness.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Exactly. And it’s the opposite. And they don’t care. I mean, what, what’s the pollution generated by these fires?

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, it’s, oh, it’s so much. I mean, I can’t, I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but it’s massive now. I mean, I will say, well, yeah, I mean, oh my gosh, the air in LA now, I mean, it is my daughter’s in college there. I’m worried about her. I mean, it is absolutely toxic air. I mean, of course it is, you know, and you have a lot of electric cars and you have a lot of batteries going up. We don’t know what that stuff is playing out in terms of particulate matter. So no, it’s awful.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, you know, ostensibly you’ll get, you know, tree growth and the carbon will be reabsorbed But yeah, no, I mean, I’m not talking about carbon. I mean, like, yeah. Poison in the air and water.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, for sure. I mean, all the, I think of all the, all the, all the houses with all the plastic and electric burn. It’s terrible.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, for sure. I mean, yeah, we, it’s a chance to get regrounded. I think a chance to, I mean, you know, it is also interesting moment, right? Because Hollywood, it’s just producing garbage. It is just, it is incredible how bad the cultural production is just at a straight, like, you know, if you’re someone that just loves pop culture, like you just love Steven Spielberg, we’re not getting that level of quality. I mean, we tried to watch something on Netflix. It’s just, it’s just awful.

The State of Art and Civilization

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: And it’s because they’re all trying to fit it in artistry and creativity is transgressive. It’s supposed to be, it’s supposed to be breaking. I mean, that’s actually where you want your, I want my transgression in my art, not in my civilization. I want a really boring civilization and really transgressive art, but it’s become the opposite. The art has become boring and conformist and authoritarian, and the civilization has gotten completely transgressive. So people are not where they need to be. The laws are not being enforced.

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Looting and Law Enforcement

TUCKER CARLSON: So what I’m speaking of the law is not being enforced. Tell us what you know about looting.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, I mean, it’s that’s kind of the standard. That’s like the norm in Los Angeles, isn’t it? I mean, even when there’s not a fire burning.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, of course, it’s terrible. I mean, I guess they had a couple of guys and they they found a couple of guys looting Kamala’s house and then they let them go.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Of course. Of course. They got the guy. They found the guy that set one of the fires. The homeless guy that set one of the fires. They let him go. I mean, it is. It’s amazing. I mean, the comedians like all their best materials, you know, in the news already. How could they let your you’re stealing from people in the middle of a of a profound disaster that’s going to bring down and you’re stealing people are dying and you’re stealing. Aren’t you? You’re like a true villain.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, yeah, for sure. And then and then they let them go. And then that became widely publicized.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, guess what? You know, this is the thing that people have to understand, you know, criminals, you know, they read the news like criminals are very online. It’s not like criminals don’t know what’s going on. And we have these amazing there’s these amazing like I think it’s like phone calls between people in the Oakland jails and their friends and they’re like basically Auntie Pam, the name of the D.A. They’re like the Auntie Pam’s going to make sure we, you know, get off. You know, they all know where the laws are not being enforced.

TUCKER CARLSON: Their job. Oh, of course. Yeah. They’re rational actors. You know, the irrational ones are the rest of us. They’re the ones trying to, you know, live there. But if you’re Gavin Newsom or Karen Bass, like you’re all in on the climate change explanation, right? That’s that’s all you’ve got.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, they did. I think they are backing off a little bit from it. I think that they’re in a they’re a little trapped, which is great, which is that on the one hand, they they they can’t accept responsibility because they know that if they accept responsibility, then it’s just then then their political futures are doomed. On the other hand, by not accepting responsibility and passing the buck, that also becomes obvious to people. So, you know, they should all go. I mean, remember, like, you know, New Orleans, like that mayor was out of there. I mean, like Reagan.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. They’re for that. Yeah. So that should be what happened. But New Orleans has that just accelerated the decline of the city.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. I mean, it’s I was there for Katrina. I covered that. And I thought at the time, 20 years ago, I guess it was 20 years ago.

TUCKER CARLSON: Incredibly. Yeah. Twenty five. Mm hmm. I thought, well, you know, it’s obviously tragic, but Bush is spending over a billion dollars to rebuild it. I’m sure the city will be better. And it’s been much worse ever since.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, that’s depressing. But L.A. is not New Orleans. That’s our second biggest city. It’s the in a lot of ways, the greatest city we’ve ever built. And in my opinion, and like so what happens to it now?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, there’s no vision for it at all, you know, and we don’t have anybody visionary in there. You know, they did. I mean, I think we had this guy, Rick Caruso, as you were mentioning, who ran for mayor. I mean, someone found, you know, there is a video of him calling for increasing the fire department budget. I mean, kind of like that. What else do you need to know at this point?

The Changing Media Landscape

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Can that overcome the I do think that the woke trance was broken. I mean, Trump. I do. For sure. And look at that. I mean, look at the catastrophe that the news media is in and the success that people like you and I are having. And Joe Rogan being the most influential.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I mean, he’s like the new Walter Cronkite. He’s where he’s where Mark Zuckerberg goes to confess his sentence.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So it’s a different world. I do have some hope for it. I mean, the thing about the United States that’s so different from Europe is just that literally they I’m becoming like an old man because I’m talking about how great the founding fathers were. But but it’s like, look, they created this incredible system that if you have free speech, if you can, if you can protect your free speech, which we’ve, I think, succeeded in doing, you bake it in, you remind people of its importance. You then are, I think, going to be able to self-correct in ways that places that allow higher levels of censorship are simply not going to be able to do. I mean, just look at this impact that Elon is having right now.

It’s incredible. I was on some social media chat group and somebody was like, how come we’re all talking about the British grooming gangs? It’s like because Elon decided that that was an issue. The AFD in Germany may end up, you know, be I mean, I think they’re they’re going to come in at least second elections next month because Elon has mainstreamed them.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course. So that gives me a lot of hope. You’ve got a platform now that is still just the I mean, we always knew that the media had that agenda setting power.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yes. But it’s amazing to sort of see it’s so dramatic. We only can really see it when it shifts from the mainstream news media. We were we were writing last summer about how the sovereign in the United States, meaning like the true power center in the United States was the news media. That is now, in my view, clearly shifted to to access. I think you said something recently. I think I saw a clip of you saying the same thing. I mean, it’s just clear like that is where it dominates everything. It’s just everything, you know, and like Blue Sky gave it a they gave it a shot, but nobody can go on there. It’s too mad. It’s too insane.

The Impact of New Communication Technologies

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So I think it’d be very, very positive. You know, I always compare X to, you know, it’s like when the printing press was first shows up in the end of the 15th century for like about 100 years. The Catholic Church is like the printing press is great. You know, we can print Bibles and give them out to all the priests is very cheap. The Catholic Church loved the printing press. And then Martin Luther got a hold of the printing press. And it was just for the next, you know, five centuries was game over.

I mean, the best history of the printing press. She goes back. I think it’s an Oxford history. She goes back and just looks at its impact. And she comes back and she’s just like, you know, a few years of study or whatever. And she’s like, oh, we knew it was a big deal, but it’s a much bigger deal than we thought. It’s not just the Protestant Reformation is that it’s also the scientific revolution. It’s the Industrial Revolution. It’s nationalism and it’s democracy. I mean, so you get a huge ethical change with this shift of communication technologies and social media.

We knew it. We, you know, Martin Guri famously wrote this book, Revolt of the Public, about the game changing aspects of social media just on the Arab Spring, you know, which is now 14 years ago. But in some senses, it really didn’t get its power until Elon came in, bought it and held strong against people calling them a racist anti-Semite for two years. I mean, it was just crazy. It was like two years of the media just making him out to be the devil incarnate. And he held strong and he ended up breaking the news media. I mean, they’re just not getting the traffic. They’re done there. It’s over.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it’s over. So where does it? I mean, so it couldn’t have happened to a worse group of people. I spent my whole life and I can tell you that’s absolutely true. And they’re, you know, they’re terrified. I was I was watching John Carl, who I on CBS, who I’ve known, someone sent me a clip this morning. John Carl, I’ve known him for over 30 years. Nice guy, you know, reasonable guy. And then Trump comes, the business starts to collapse, and he realizes I’m speaking for him. But he realizes, oh, shit, you know, I’m a middle-aged white guy. I better go along. And he becomes just this cheerleader for every stupid, woke idea ever. It was you feel sorry for him. He’s a nice guy, actually, and not a stupid guy.

Someone just sent me a clip of John Carl, like basically defending Trump.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Wow.

TUCKER CARLSON: And and it’s like, I’m again, I’m not the weather. I’m the wind. The wind. Then you realize that most people just kind of, you know, they they’re easy to to control. You just tell them what the program is and they go along with it.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. It’s Kent Brockman. No, you’re totally right.

Media Shifts and Power Dynamics

TUCKER CARLSON: I welcome our new alien overlords. I mean, the first they’re the first ones to shift. No, you’re right. Right. You’re right. Yeah. Because they’re covering the news like they know they’re the first ones to know when the winds are coming. Principal plays no role.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Most people just couldn’t go along with what they think. The marching orders. Amazing. It really reveals, doesn’t it? The herd animals. So, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did I see CBS? I think he’s at ABC. Whatever. They’re all the same and they’re all going away. Yeah. But if you’re true and trench power, which does exist, particularly in the intel agencies, I mean, that’s where it really resides, as far as I can tell. I don’t know. It’s like pretty threat. You’ve just there’s been a massive movement in power from the news media, which you control. That’s a fact. I would say, in effect, control is being controlled by the intel agencies, in fact, to something you can’t control. So that’s a huge loss of power for you. So, like, how can you let this continue?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, yeah. I mean, how can they stop it, though? I mean, I don’t know. I’m just feeling a little paranoid right now.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no, I am, too. It’s too much freedom. No, I know. No, I totally do, too. You’re like, where’s that? When’s the penny going to drop?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, kind of. Well, yeah. And I also kind of go, are they really going to disclose all the stuff that they have? I mean, we were going down. We just did. I don’t know if we published it yet, but we’re going down the list of all the all the files that we want.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. People are like, oh, can we have a Twitter files for the government? You’re like, yes. So what? I mean, there’s so much in there. Right. The Russiagate, you know, the Russia collusion hoax, covid origins, covid vaccines, Hunter Biden laptop.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. I mean, I’m assuming there’s just a bunch of stuff on Russia, Ukraine that’s there. I mean, remember, because they keep leaking. They go they go. There’s no bio labs in Ukraine. They’re like, well, there were some we were doing some help with the bio.

Ukraine and Weapons Concerns

TUCKER CARLSON: Not only are there bio labs in Ukraine, there are a lot of bio labs in Ukraine which are working on chemical and biological weapons. That’s what they’re not there for livestock vaccine. Sorry. And, you know, the thing that people don’t in this country understand is that the Ukrainian military is selling about half of the arms they get from the United States into international black markets.

And they’re winding up in some case with the drug cartels in Latin America. This is a fact. It’s a fact. And you can you can buy them. And I spoke to someone who did buy some, actually. So I know I know this is a fact. And they’re bragging about it. So they’re selling conventional weapons, including weapon systems that are very dangerous and very destabilizing. It would make commercial air travel impossible, for example. Right. And so what are they doing with the pathogens in those bio labs? And does the Biden administration have a manifest? Do they know exactly what’s in those labs? And will they turn it over to the Trump administration so we can keep track of these things? And the answer is no. Actually, the answer is no. I know this.

And so that’s like the scariest thing that’s ever happened. And it’s like, you know, I think the Ukraine war has the potential to destabilize the world more than anything that’s happened in my lifetime, just because of the scale of the weapon systems and biological agents involved in the most corrupt country in the West, which is you are not attacking Ukraine. I feel sorry for Ukraine. But what the hell?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. So we could use some just we could use a that’s why I’m saying this right now, because I hope this is widely disseminated, because I think it’s like the scariest thing I’ve heard in a long, long time.

TUCKER CARLSON: That is scary. But it’s all flowered in secrecy. That’s the point.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. The only reason this stuff has happened, like this end of the world stuff has happened is because there’s no disclosure at all. Everything is right. Oh, it’s so much pent up stuff. So much. I mean, we’re still.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. We have the JFK files, the UFO files, the UAP files, so to say. Yeah. Someone about the UAP thing now we’re so far afield, but do you think it’s all connected?

UFOs and Government Secrecy

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, it is connected, though. It’s like none of this stuff happens except in secrecy. And I said, let’s stop playing like you’ve been talking to people for years now. And the answer was the public is not ready for this information because it’s, you know, it’s just too it’s too much. And what’s your view of that? And I someone who’s pushing disclosure, by the way, this is not. I know. I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I’m worried that it’s bad news.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, that’s the point. It’s bad. I’m worried it’s bad. Really bad news. Yeah. Do you think that’s true?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I don’t know. I’m not even saying it because I don’t know if it’s true. And it is bad. It’s super bad. I mean, it seems like the it seems like the dominant two theories are now that it’s non-human intelligence or that we or our adversaries have mastered anti-gravity technology. The other scenarios of, you know, some kind of new plasma or, you know, it’s just kind of the phenomenon doesn’t seem to be showing up in that way.

Well, the core idea seems to be that it’s that there is non-human intelligence, whether all these manifestations of it are that or whether their government programs are Chinese or whatever. It’s probably a pastiche of all of them. But the core idea seems to be that there is non-human intelligence, which is plausible and that it’s been in interaction with the US government for quite some time and that plays a role in the point. I mean, well, there are all these things that I don’t know what is true or what’s not true. Do you think any of that is true? I know you’ve done work on this.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. I mean, you know, and it’s hard. I mean, you know, they I covered the New Jersey drone situation. I went to Jersey and interviewed a bunch of people. I mean, the weirdest for me, the weirdest moment is where you have John Kirby, the defense department spokesperson and my York is basically on the same day or at the same 48 hours just when they were asked about it. They just came out affirmatively. And they’re like, well, we’re definitely not getting any drones over the military bases or other sensitive sites. And you’re like, I was like, why would you lie about that?

I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Because, of course, you know, all else being equal, I think that they don’t people don’t want to lie. Politicians don’t want to lie because it just creates more work or hassle for your life. You know, obligate your life. Honesty is the best policy. So why would they lie about that? Because the Wall Street Journal had like they did this huge piece about all of the drone so-called on it by way unidentified anomalous drone flyovers over the military bases and sensitive sites, which includes nuclear plants.

I mean, I part of my interest in this was always, you know, I was trying to save Diablo Canyon in California. They kept getting drone flyovers. Also Palo Verde, which is our biggest nuclear plant, three beautiful reactors there in Arizona, like a lot of drone flyovers. I’m also from northeast Colorado, which is where, you know, the ICBMs are a lot of the whole. They have this exact same drone situation. I believe it was just I want to say December 2019. And they had this whole interagency task force and they were like they were like, oh, we’re going to put a plane up and they kind of put a plane up and you’re watching me like you’re like, well, why are they not scrambling jets? Like what are we like? What are we doing here? Like this is really bizarre.

TUCKER CARLSON: It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t. I can’t figure it out because I think the other issue is that they may not know.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, OK, well, so to finish that story, so then drone migrants do that. I go out and I’m just like like that’s the weirdest lie, because like it was just it’s been heavily reported. I mean, the drones, I mean, the drones over sensitive military bases is really well reported. And some of the best reporting was by a publication called The War Zone, which I highly recommend. Very good, serious investigative reporting. They don’t believe it’s aliens at all. Like they’re just openly like anti alien. They’re like this is and I think it’s well, anyway, for whatever reason, they’re just like this is Chinese or Russian or whatever. They’re not taking it seriously, but they do some of the best reporting because they’re kind of because they can’t figure out why the military is being so weird about it.

So then Trump comes out and he goes, they know what it is. I don’t know why they’re not telling anybody. And I’m going to tell everybody on the on the 20th. I mean, first of all, I’m really happy that they’re going to disclose and I want to raise expectations about what the Trump administration is going to do. We want the data. And I mean, if someone was criticizing me because they were like, oh, because I can I said, oh, I’m confident the Trump administration is going to share the data. And they’re like, that just shows that Shellenberger is, you know, it’s like pro Trump and whatever. And I was like, no, I’m just like pro disclosure. I want the expectations to be high because they should be high. There is so much information they’re not releasing.

TUCKER CARLSON: So, you know, they were over Bedminster and he’s talked about it twice now, by the way. So look, we’re stressed about it. I was worried about it. So we’re either headed for a pretty epic moment of disclosure. There’s another part of me that worries. So OK, so it seems like, yeah, they could do disclosure and we could find out what it is. You know, is it if there’s could be aliens, if it’s aliens, that’s just a whole can of worms. And then you have to be like, is there like, do we talk to them? And if so, who who’s doing that? Do you think we have?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I genuinely don’t know. I genuinely don’t know. I mean, there’s there’s this guy named I can’t remember his first name, Stringfield. He wrote this incredible thick book of UAP crashes, crash retrievals, and he started doing it. I want to say 50s or 60s. I mean, I think he went for like multiple decades and you sit down with that book and it is like. It’s impressive. I mean, if it’s a hoax, it’s just one of the greatest hoaxes of all times, you know, like other hoaxes, you know, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or whatever. They’re really bad. Like they’re really you’re just like this is like the dumbest hoax ever. Like most hoaxes are not that sophisticated with all these details unless we were interviewed. Of course, Roswell is the big case, but it’s only apparently one of the others, others.

So there is this incredible, you know, gray literature never published by any academic press by really a little bit of commercial nonfiction. Obviously, you have David Grush and Lou Elizondo. I testified in front of Congress on this in I guess I was in December or November and, you know, two people, the two guys from the military when we when we were asked, what are they? Two guys said non-human intelligence. And then me and the NASA guy said, we don’t know because I just don’t. I mean, I just.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you think the drones in Jersey were?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, look, here’s let me tell you, let’s just let’s just let’s just let’s just look at the possibility that they’re human. They didn’t get a single one of them. They didn’t down a single one of them, not a single one of them crashed. And there was a lot of them. And there was a lot of look, there’s a lot of mistaken sightings. You know, it is easy to mistake things is totally natural. But there was also I mean, I interviewed mayors, two mayors were like one of them. It was like I had an SUV sized drone flying over my house. Another one said he was going to a Fox News interview in New York. The car came for me, walked out his door and there’s one hovering right over him. And he said that, you know, felt like it was watching him like it was there monitoring him.

I mean, that’s weird stuff. So we can’t get a single drone down there over military bases. They can’t seem to get any of them. You know, do I think the Chinese could be behind or the Chinese? I mean, when the Chinese decide to like encroach and you in like in the South China Sea, when they decide, you know how to like the like war in the United States, you’re flying over our airspace. It’s all super calculated. And like, you know, like they’re making their their it’s like a performance. The Chinese are like, we’re messing with you. Like you all kind of know and they’re doing it in ways where they don’t want it to escalate, but they want to get a little bit more of that space. It’s all super calculated.

Now there was the balloon. You know, are there Chinese balloons? Yeah. But I mean, to be buzzing air, our military bases, it’s just so aggressive. Now I’ve I’ve said it before, I’ve had other people point out, they go, well, they’re aggressive with the cyber attacks. I guess that’s true. As a physicalist, I guess I kind of go flying your drones over U.S. military bases and nuclear plants. That is just a level of aggression.

Chinese Drones and Military Aggression

TUCKER CARLSON: That just doesn’t seem characteristic of the China unless you were. Why? Of course, I agree with you. An Intel person told me that that this person believed that they were, in fact, Chinese and that a Chinese satellite went down, was visible to the naked eye. There were some news stories about it. It evaporated, burned up. And this person told me that was taken down by the U.S. government. That was a command and control satellite for these drones. The belief was the Chinese government was sending the following message. We’re moving on Taiwan and maybe other things. You can’t do anything about it. OK, so, you know, I have no idea if that’s true or not. Zero.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. That just doesn’t it just that’s just got to say it’s just it’s so aggressive and and also but the other thing is that, like, you know, reckless actually seems really reckless. And the Chinese have not been seeking confrontations like that for the most part.

Historical Context of UAPs

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Now, Jesse Michaels, who is doing some of the best reporting on this issue of UAPs, he’s doing YouTube videos. He just did a documentary that was incredible. I think it’s like an hour, a couple of hours, highly recommended that goes through the very long history of unidentified anomalous phenomena over U.S. military bases, including all these cases of, you know, several cases of them shutting down missile system like a 65 year long history.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Yeah. And there was this famous press conference with, like, missile years and others from military bases in Washington, D.C., I want to say in the 90s, maybe maybe 80s.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So, you know, like that predates any of the Chinese stuff by far predates all the drones. So that was going on for a really long time. I mean, if you just kind of if you step back and you look at it, it looks like a very like what is it communicating a very basic level? It’s definitely communicating dominance. You know, it’s it’s you can read a lot of different ways. And that’s similar to what the the Navy pilots said around the Tic-Tac interactions off both coasts is that these were phenomena or, you know, or objects, whatever you call them, or craft that were just demonstrating dominance over our craft. They were able to do things that our craft weren’t doing. So yeah, I mean.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that was from their perspective, the point of the behavior was to say, we can do things that you can’t.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. And so then then then then the question would be, so if it is an NHI, then the question is, are they communicating something? And if they are communicating something, why would they only be doing it in that way? Like you would you would like if you’re like if you’re trying to demonstrate your strength as an adversary or something, you’re trying to send some message. Why would you just do that? Because there’s nothing that we can do with that information. So then you have to wonder, OK, if it is an NHI and it’s behaving in that way, an intelligent, yeah, not human intelligence, then is there some is there actually some other communication going on that we don’t know about?

Speculation on the Nature of UAPs

TUCKER CARLSON: And of course, there’s just a long history and there’s all these crazy stories of, you know, presidents. I mean, going back to Eisenhower should just just to bottom line your view after reporting on the lights over New Jersey and Pennsylvania, New York, Mid-Atlantic drone hysteria. Do you think they were human made drones?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I genuinely don’t know. I mean, I will be I’ll be I might be more shocked if they were human made because of their behaviors and they never able to get one. I did have somebody tell me recently that they had heard. I mean, again, it’s always second hand. It’s always so untrustworthy. But somebody told me that that the military got one of the orbs, the famous orbs, and opened it up and it was Chinese. I mean, if that’s the case, then somebody has mastered anti gravity. And that’s almost harder for me to believe than that. It’s an NHI because I mean, it’s just I mean, I don’t know. I mean, look, we have I mean, here’s the I literally I go back and forth. You see me doing it in the same conversation.

We have these huge black budgets in the military. I mean, just gigantic. And they’ve been there for decades. So is it possible to cover up something like that? I think it might be. I mean, I’m much more after having covered the Hunter Biden laptop and I mean, Russiagate, too, but really the Hunter Biden laptop. I was just impressed by how many people were involved in the conspiracy to cover it up. I mean, you had the FBI getting it, covering it up, basically working with working with Aspen Institute to run a disinformation campaign.

Disinformation Campaigns and Government Involvement

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: By the way, this is Vivian Schiller and Garrett Graff run the disinformation campaign aimed at persuading journalists in advance of the release of the Hunter Biden laptop that it was a Russian information operation. Garrett Graff is the guy that goes and does the big UFO book. So these things all I mean, this was very weird. So he comes out with a big book on UFOs. I think it was last year’s called UFO. Garrett Graff. This is somebody that is famously close with the intelligence community. His other books were on Watergate and on 9-11.

TUCKER CARLSON: The book, both of which are totally legitimate. No, for sure. And I’m sure the official story is everything we need to know. So, you know, you sort of go. And what was his conclusion?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, it was very it’s the the narrative is that they don’t know what they are. So he doesn’t fully he’s not like a debunker like these guys who are like, oh, we can explain everything. So he’s much more sophisticated than that. But it’s basically a debunking. It’s basically that. It’s basically that it’s it’s just all the typical explanations and then maybe some U.S. military programs, but he also just says that he just argues that the U.S. military doesn’t know what it is.

I don’t believe Garrett Graff. And the reason I don’t believe Garrett Graff is because I saw him participate in a disinformation campaign on Hunter Biden laptop. And I know for a fact there’s something else going on at that Aspen Institute program. And Aspen Institute, of course, is a massive U.S. government funded NGO that cause plays as a kind of bourgeois gab fest.

So there I mean, so I’m like that was for me, that was all came out of Twitter files. I discovered that in the Twitter files. And for me, it was like pulling back the curtain. And you actually have as a journalist like you, we have the e-mails, you know, like you have the documents, you have the tabletop exercise where they’re brainwashing journalists into believing a lie about the Hunter Biden laptop. That was so sophisticated that because they basically go and brainwash journalists before the story comes out because they know they’re listening to Giuliani, you know, their FBI tap on Giuliani. You’re listening to Giuliani. They know we had to go brainwash the journalists. They go get all the journalists from all the major outlets, plus the social media platforms in these seminars where they program them. I mean, that was like for me, it was like, wow, there’s like a secret government. Like it was like there’s some there’s like a whole there’s like a whole it’s a very and it was very just sophisticated. I don’t know how else to describe it.

The Nature of Covert Operations

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Like it was very everything seemed very careful. Also, with all the censorship stuff, you see these limited hangouts, right, where limited hangouts are kind of like the public relations of a covert operation of like a covert propaganda operation where like after they get caught, they can be like, oh, no, we were totally honest about what we were doing. We were talking about it. But they do these weird limited hangouts. You’ll see these people that clearly look like either directly intelligence community or their intermediaries having these conversations they put on YouTube. And like they’re like, but it’s like, you know, a couple hundred views, like they’re not promoting them in any way. And so you just kind of go, wow, there’s like a whole creepy like world of disinformation. What you realize is that the covert operations are really not covert, like all the all the information is out there, actually.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. But it’s just discredited or unnoticed or no one collects it. Have you noticed that?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, no, I know. And you only can understand it when you see the whole big picture, because there’s no smoking guns ever. So there’s never something you can I mean, a hunter buying a laptop got us about as close to as a smoking gun as you can get. And it helped because it was what helped to expose it was that it was partisan. And so it was a particular partisan weaponization.

My concern with the UAPs, I mean, it’s now I guess to strengthen a weakness is that it’s become bipartisan in terms of the desire. I mean, it was really I mean, Tucker, the weirdest experience I’ve had, I’ve testified now like 12 times or 13 times in front of Congress last few years. The weirdest experience I’ve had was on UAPs, seeing the Democrats and Republicans basically being aligned in wanting to get to the bottom of the UAP thing. I mean, it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen it. I was like, I this is I’ve never I’ve heard of bipartisan.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, never thought I would see it in, you know, in the wild.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So that is exciting. On the other hand, I suspect that there is also some bipartisan group that’s trying to prevent that information.

TUCKER CARLSON: No doubt about that reason.

The Secrecy Surrounding UAPs

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: So, I mean, look, I mean, it is. I mean, what is going to happen? I mean, I mean, part of me is, you know, maybe it’s my defensive pessimism on it because like everybody else, I want the information. Part of me is like, there’s just no way they’re going to let that information out. It’s just something is too. There’s something about the UAP thing, like the JFK thing, where there is some secret there that they are really there is some group of people that really don’t want us to know.

TUCKER CARLSON: So, you know, that’s that’s a fact. Yes. Bumped up against that personally several times on both of those issues, which appear to be related. Yes. But I don’t know the answer.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, it’s almost like seeing something in photographic negative. All I know for a fact confirmed is that they are willing to go to extreme lengths to keep it secret. And so that’s just to tell that it’s something profound there. It’s not just a bureaucracy covering its own ass. It’s more than that.

I mean, how about the clip where Pompeo is being interviewed about the JFK files? And then he like literally mid-sentence goes, but I mean, I’ve also seen the UFO files and it was like, well, why why did you just switch from like what made you think of the UFO files on the JFK files? I don’t know. I mean, so anyway, is there a secret? Has there have we developed anti-gravity? Have we developed I mean, we know that in the 50s there were like there was there’s a whole book on it’s very fascinating. But there was like there was an anti-gravity program in the U.S. military with our defense contractors. It made the cover of one of the aerospace magazines. It was like it was like a cover of it. And then it just disappeared. And so you can kind of go, I mean, the first time you go, yeah, we tried that and it didn’t work. It’s like, well, how that’s never stopped you before, right? Like it not working like that’s like, you know, like like you would keep working on it if you can do anti-gravity. So the other possibility is that it just went dark and they just they kept doing it.

Speculations on Technology Transfer

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I wonder, though, about like the possibility that there is or has been technology transfer from some other realm to this realm, because there are, you know, just in the study of history, there are like there’s really no understanding at a bunch of different points in human societal evolution. Like where did that technology come from? And you see that on a bunch of different technologies. So but nuclear anti-gravity, that kind of stuff, like are you open to the possibility that. That there has been like a transfer of that technology from some other, I mean, that is definitely there’s definitely that is that is what a lot of people talk about.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, I mean, the problem with this issue is just it’s very frustrating because it’s just all secondhand. Of course it is. And so like the Hunter Biden laptop is not secondhand, like it’s firsthand and I have the documents. Now, there are a bunch of really fascinating, you know, alleged U.S. secret U.S. government documents on UFOs on on alleged alien spacecraft crashes. They’re called the Majestic documents or the MJ-12 documents.

And so the story is that, you know, that that one or two of these craft crashed in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico. And that sort of begins and, you know, and there’s a whole cast of characters that allegedly, you know, including Oppenheimer, were involved in that program. You know, the would Oppenheimer be involved? Well, why? I mean, because he was the man, you know, like he was like he was our greatest scientist, obviously the father of the atomic bomb. And and, you know, Roswell’s where the where we launched the the flights to bomb Hiroshima Nagasaki. So it’s very symbolic.

TUCKER CARLSON: In that sense, maybe more than symbolic.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, maybe more than symbolic. I mean, they keep flying over nuclear, like as my wife says, she’s like your aliens really they don’t like the nuclear, you know, because I love nuclear. So and I’m kind of like I’m like, well, yeah, I mean, like and also the most ridiculous thing is when people are like, oh, yeah, they want us to give give up our, you know, the people that believe in them, they go, the aliens are here and they want us to give up our nuclear weapons. It’s like doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.

Majestic Documents and Government Secrecy

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: The foreign space invaders would like you to give up your most powerful weapons. But those documents, I spent a bunch of time on them and I couldn’t figure out how to report anything on it because, of course, of course, FBI was like, these are all debunked. They’re all frauds. But there are first of all, there’s a lot more of them. You go to MajesticDocuments.com and you can look at them. They’re amazing. I mean, if they are.

And I’ve also had the other and they’re, by the way, in those in the graph book there in that book, there are some another debunking book called by Mark Pilkington, um, I’m blanking on the name right now, um, but they, they, they all, all the people that are the debunkers deal with these documents. And their story is not that they were all hoaxes. Their story is that they were what’s called counterintelligence passage material documents that were created by the US government, but leaked to people to ostensibly be able to smoke out double agents or people like you would see them, I guess you would trace these documents.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. Like putting dye in the water to find the leak.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, but the thing is, I mean, it is like, there’s like one of them is a handbook of crash retrieval, like for like to like that, that the soldiers would ostensibly read to retrieve these crash. I mean, it’s the, the, if they’re hoaxes, they’re incredible. I mean, like they have, like, they have like the people like they have, I forgot what it’s called, but like basically like a manifest where they show who’s checked it out and read it and they have all these different names and they’ve checked those names. And those were like real people at those airbases that had these documents.

So and then, you know, there was one document in particular where it was a memo from JFK to the CIA director, Dulles, where he says, I want to see you on this particular day. It’s like July 62 or 63, I can’t remember which. And again, I was like, oh, that’s a forgery. It’s part of the NJ-12 documents or whatever. It’s not real. But then they released the JFK files. And then sure enough, we see the Dulles calendar and he had met with JFK twice that day and nobody had known that they had had those meetings until we had that JFK memo and until we had the confirmation of the memo.

So that would suggest that at least either that document is real, that JFK memo to Dulles or whoever forged it knew that he had met with Dulles that day and nobody else had known that. So, you know, you’d be sort of like, I guess I guess you could still put it in. This is why this is the problem with this issue is you can still there’s still plausible deniability for a lot for all of these things. You know, you can make up a reason for why these documents are all counterintelligence passage material.

I don’t know, that’s why I just have to kind of go, I don’t know, I mean, I talk to a lot of people and, yeah, it’s just a lot of secondhand information and the documents are secondhand. So you kind of go there’s like my world of like the Hunter Biden laptop, which still a bunch of my progressive and Democrat friends and family don’t believe, you know, they still they still think the Russians were somehow involved. But like I actually have the documents and we can prove what happened there on the UAP stuff. It’s just still just surrounded in.

Trump’s Statements on UAPs

TUCKER CARLSON: But the incoming president has said he just said, I’m going to tell you what those drones were about. He was very relaxed about it, too. I mean, I was struck that when he said it twice, he said it again recently, like last week.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Right. And then he said it in December. He goes, I don’t know why the Biden’s like I don’t know why they’re not telling people what they are. They know what they are. And I was like I was like, I mean, it was a really he made it sound like it’s no big deal. Like we should just tell people what it is. But if Trump knew what it is and if he if it’s NHI and Trump knows that he seemed very relaxed about that because, of course, the I mean, the main. The dominant the conventional wisdom on people that follow this who think it’s NHI is that it’s bad news, that it’s not a great that it’s not a great story, that if it were good news and that they were just friendly space brothers, you know, offering us, you know, advanced tech, then and they’d be like, and there’s no strings attached or whatever, that would be a much easier story to sell. But if there’s some bad news in that story, then that might explain why there’s so secret.

TUCKER CARLSON: Clearly, there’s some bad news. My theory is that the reason that permanent Washington or deep state or whatever, people who administer the system hate Trump is not because of any of his policies, which is probably agnostic on, but because they fear that he will disclose information. I think it’s everything’s about disclosure. If you look at the federal government, what’s its defining qualities? Secrecy, right?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yes. Really unclassified documents.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why is that? Right. It’s not good. It’s never good. Your kids behave like that. It’s not good.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, they’re using drugs or whatever. You know what I mean?

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. They’re having sex they shouldn’t be having. There’s never a good reason for that kind of secrecy. It’s not privacy. It’s secrecy. So, right.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yes. And there’s something about Trump that makes everybody nervous that he might say more of what he knows than he should.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, they don’t control him. That’s right. Obviously. So that’s that’s very nerve wracking. I mean, how much do you think that they’re just worried that he’s going to pull out of NATO? How much of it is that?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: That’s I mean, I of course, that’s that’s in my daily prayers that he would do that. I don’t think he’s in danger of doing that. I certainly hope so. But I think it’s even more fundamental. It’s like this guy could say the truth. Because Trump is not much of a liar, actually, by Washington Sanders. He’s an exaggerator, of course, but actually is defining quality is like saying the truth and being honest about issues. The big issues.

Speculations on UAP Knowledge

TUCKER CARLSON: So what do you so you think he knows what it is? The UAP stuff?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah, I do think that. Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you think it’s an NHI?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: You know, he hasn’t told me, but yeah, I do think he knows. I’m pretty sure. Pretty sure he knows. And I’m pretty sure that everybody I’ve ever spoken to who I think knows a lot more than I do. I mean, what does it mean to know? Like, do we really know anything? I don’t know. I’m not sure anybody fully understands this or even partially understands it. But the people who who I’m confident have a lot more information than I have to a person are very, very uncomfortable about it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Since not in public, in private, which is another tell that I’ve just you’ve talked a lot of people.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, yeah, no. I mean, it’s there. It’s very. Yeah. I mean, I say my prayers. I’m still Christian. I mean, you know, it’s interesting. Joe, when I was on Joe Rogan’s podcast last time, I mean, here, you know, Joe was like, I think that they’re extraterrestrials. You know, he’s openly saying that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. So you kind of got the case. Well, OK. Or NHI, I guess, NHI.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. But I mean, here you and Joe are like the two big, most influential podcasters in the country. And you both think that it’s not just a government secret tech or it’s not just plasmas. And Joe’s very close with Elon, loves Elon, you know, like me. And I think probably like you believes that Elon deserves a huge amount of credit for saving free speech in this country. Elon says there’s nothing there, never sees anything. And they’ve got an amazing rocket system that sees a lot of things.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not sure. I’ve talked to Elon about this a number of times, and I’m not sure he says that.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: OK, I thought he did say that.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I thought he said, if I see if there’s any aliens, he jokes about it, which is a tell. Trump does, too. And they all they joke in the same way. I mean, I, of course, I love them both, obviously. And I feel like, you know, I feel like they both have really been great for this country, you know, net net, as they say. But no, they joke about it in the same way that a lot of people joke about. They’re like, no, there are no flying saucers from Mars.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course, not from Mars. They’re not from another planet. They’re from here. They’ve always been here. These are spiritual entities. This is my view. And I sincerely believe it. Can’t prove it. But since you asked, so he is I’ve never heard Elon say that’s not being dismissive, that there’s nothing there. He just said, right, we monitor space. That’s what they do.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: And this is self-evident. If there were there been so many sightings in this country and around the world that if they were from another galaxy far, far away, there would be some satellite evidence of that. They’d be picked up coming into our atmosphere. And of course, that’s not as far as I know.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, we do have some photos. I mean, there’s that one photo of the one I can’t remember. It’s like it’s in the James Fox documentary. So there are some of those apparently coming from space in here. And certainly I’ve been told there’s a lot more of those photos and images. But yeah, I mean, it’s also surprised me, though. I mean, it’s clear that these things reside, you know, deep in the earth, under the water and in the in the atmosphere. So I mean, why the elusiveness, man? Why the secrecy?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s the question. That is the question. I mean, why is everybody who again, I don’t know what anybody really knows. I don’t know anything. I just want to start every sentence by admitting I don’t know anything. I don’t know what happens when you die. I don’t know how the brain works. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what sleep is for. None of us do.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: That’s a really interesting one. That’s a surprisingly interesting one, actually.

TUCKER CARLSON: But it’s such a it’s so revealing of the limits of human knowledge. It’s like, oh, science has solved this. Really? What’s sleep for? Tell me how that benefits us. Sleep, really? But anyway, so I just always want to say and remind myself of the limits of my knowledge, which are profound. I don’t know anything. But once again, every person I’ve talked to who I believe has deeper knowledge on this question than I have has seemed burdened by it. Have you noticed this?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Yeah. Yeah. And these are not people who are making money from it.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, these are not people trying to get famous from it. These are people who just seem to have this knowledge and they’re they’re bothered by it. So that’s and I don’t think it’s I don’t think it’s to cover up a secret weapons program. I mean, in other words, like I don’t think that’s how you would do it. It’s so like, yeah, I don’t believe it.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: A secret weapons program. Yeah. Sorry. It’s much deeper.

TUCKER CARLSON: The weapons programs come and go. Right. Weapons that we thought were fearsome when I was a child are a joke. Now we’re watching weapons technology change so fast in the Ukraine war that people can’t even get their brains around. And you wouldn’t need this elaborate. And also, like if you’re doing passage material, like just to go back to those cases, like why would it be that? And why would there be so much of it? Why would it why wouldn’t it be something?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Anyway, it’s a very curiously large body of passage material.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. On this particular topic. Well, that’s right. Well, that’s what I’m saying. Like, I do think all the puzzle pieces are sort of in plain sight. Did you ask Putin about it?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I did not ask Putin about it. I would never have done it on air because I did ask him a bunch of questions off off camera about, you know, he has access to, of course, he controls the Soviet archives, which and the Soviets are great archivists. And we know that from the couple of I’m interested in Soviet leadership and government and all that stuff. There have been a couple of amazing books written. The Court of the Red Czar being, I think, the greatest of them about Stalin, for example.

And one thing you learn from reading the book is they kept records on everything, almost like the Nazis, like crazy level records. And, you know, most of them have never been as close. So I had I did have some questions for Putin about that, about Rudolf Hess specifically. It’s one of the great stories in history that doesn’t make any sense at all. The number two guy in Nazi Germany flying into Scotland in a plane by himself and bailing out, you know, right before the U.S. entry into the war and had at least things to say that were wild. And one of the things he apparently said in his debriefs was he believed that Hitler was being influenced by demonic spirits that he had summoned through the occult.

TUCKER CARLSON: Huh. That’s not worth doing more about a lot of stuff on. There’s a lot. There’s a lot. But Hess said that. So I immediately asked Putin about that off camera. I don’t want to seem like a wacko having unauthorized questions, but I did ask you about that. He did not get a satisfactory answer, but I did not ask about UFOs.

Government Secrecy and Advanced Technology

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, I thought also, you know, you may have seen Marc Andreessen recently said that when he met with White House officials who said that they wanted to take all day, they wanted to take control over all A.I., that they said to him something like we’ve we’ve declassified whole areas of science since the 1950s. And I was like, that just seemed like a reference to this stuff, at least at least to the at least the anti gravity, if not to some of the UAP stuff.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think the modern Western mind, the post 1945 Western mind is incapable of understanding some of the stuff because we lack the language of metaphysics. And I think that’s just been a feature of human thinking from the cave period. Right. Until we drop the atom bomb, in which case it just like turned off and like, oh, only the material world is real. But no one else has ever thought that because it’s not true.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, for a hundred years. Right. Really? From Darwin, nearly 150 years. Yeah. But I don’t think I mean, even before before the war, before dropping those bombs. Which really I mean, I do think that’s like the pivot point in history more than anything else.

TUCKER CARLSON: But yeah, there have been secular movements, you know, rich people always think they’re God. And so they want to eliminate any rivals from the public, from the conversation. But those bombs, man, everything changed, I don’t think.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, it sure seems like it. I mean, there’s a really positive side of it, though, which is that we haven’t had these awful wars. Yes. Brutal. I mean, when you look at the death toll that was going up from up and up and up from wars all throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, it’s awful. So they’ve spared us that. But it took something apocalyptic.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s been 80 years. We’ll see.

Recent Events and Potential Foreign Interference

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. So last question. Sorry. Can you imagine sitting next to me at dinner? And you’re, I think, one of the most knowledgeable people in the country on like all the most interesting topics of the two kinds. No, it’s just it’s just a fact. In fact, if there’s anything this conversation, I think, is like provoked in people’s desire to hear more Michael Shellenberger. So do you think it’s possible that what we’re seeing in L.A., which does feel like the destruction of our second biggest city from which maybe there’s no recovery? I don’t know. I hope. But do you think it’s an act of war in some sense?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: You mean from a foreign power or?

TUCKER CARLSON: I do. Oh, like what’s the evidence for that? It happened and it happened between Trump’s election and his inauguration. And it’s crazy. Yeah. The second Trump got elected, I had this instinct like, oh, man, I bet a lot just going to be bad, bad stuff that happens.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: I mean, I was more struck by that on the UAP, on the drone.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, well, exactly. It’s of a piece. Yeah. Bizarre Tesla explosion in Las Vegas. Very weird. Mass shooting. Like there’s just. Yeah. If there’s a two month period in my whole life, 55 years where more more weird shit’s been packed into two months, I can’t think of it. Yeah. Can you?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, it’s freaking me out a little bit, honestly. I mean, I spent much time on the levels burger. That’s the guy that killed himself in the Tesla in Las Vegas. I mean, you definitely have cases of PTSD causing people to do things. And people are surprised by suicides. But, yeah, it was a weird one. You know, and I was skeptical of his emails because, you know, I sent these emails to Sean Ryan, another excellent podcaster. And I think you’ve had him on or you’ve been on there.

TUCKER CARLSON: I was a friend of mine. I can just for the record, I consider him an honest.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Oh, no, I didn’t think Ryan is an honest man. No, no, for sure. A operative. Oh, shut up. No, no, no. I was like I was like, enjoy it because because I believe in Sean. And and I’m sure he did not fake that. So, you know, and then they and then the FBI did confirm that those emails were real. On the other hand, you know, that was a weird one, too, because I felt like he was like, oh, the Chinese those were Chinese drones. They’ve mastered gravitic. It just felt like he didn’t really know he’s talking about either. So there’s just a lot of.

TUCKER CARLSON: A lot of people talk the word gravitic before. I mean, I thought it was anti gravity is what I’ve heard. But I’d never.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Well, you’re a writer. You’re a word person. I’d never heard that word or word. I think I like he was using it wrong. That was my thing myself, too. I looked it up. Yeah.

Philosophical Perspective on Current Events

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: No, I mean, I guess I look at it. I just think Nietzsche really nailed it, which is that when people, you know, when people stop believing in traditional religions, they become they unconsciously, you know, develop. You know, they develop a new sense of guilt, a new vision of the apocalypse. They invent a new soul. I mean, people think that there’s this thing called gender, which is separate from your body, it’s kind of like a soul. My friend Abigail Schreier pointed that out. And so we just end up recreating Christianity, but in a deformed and deranged way. And and the emergent quality of it is this destructive fire.

Like you don’t it’s actually more powerful because nobody got out there and said, you know, let’s let me. Somebody did say, let’s let Malibu burn. But that was never like the explicit policy of the government of L.A. It’s just something that emerges after years of budget cuts, after years of self hating ideologies like D.I., like climate apocalypse, like the homeless apocalypse. It’s just emerges kind of deep from deep within us, from some from some self-destructive part of us.

So for me, if there’s a foreign invasion, it came through the human psyche, not from outside of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Michael Shellenberger, how can people find you?

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Public.news and at Shellenberger on X. The best. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it very much.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Thanks for watching our YouTube channel. We hope you’ll subscribe to it. And by the way, you can also hit the little bell icon and get a notification every time we produce a video. We hope you’ll do that, too.

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