The Real Reason So Many People Don’t Trust Doctors Anymore | Leslie Manookian

He knew that his new drug that was their new blockbuster drug was going to kill some people. But the good news was they still thought they could do $7 billion in peak sales. They want you afraid of your neighbor. They want you afraid of your family members because then you're much more obedient to authority. One of the biggest solutions is unplug from the matrix.

What's something you've learned that completely changed how you see modern society?

I have to answer that with 2 questions, 2 answers. One is I was working on Wall Street and I was responsible for the European growth portfolio management business and research businesses of Alliance Capital. And in that capacity, I was responsible for picking all of our European stocks and seeing companies that were from all around the world. So American companies, European companies, others that would come through our London offices. And I had the CEO of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world come into my office and tell me That he knew that his new drug that was their new blockbuster drug was going to kill some people. And he knew this because some people had died on the phase 3 clinical trial. And the bad news was that the FDA was going to make them put a black box warning on the packaging. But the good news was they still thought they could do $7 billion in peak sales. This was like literally one of the catalysts for my true awakening to the reality of this world that we live in, that there are people in positions of extraordinary power, CEO of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world willing to let people die so he could sell a lot of his drug. And I have to say, some of us have known about it for more than 25 years, but other people have known about it for even longer. It's based on a scientific fraud that dates back many, many decades. So not only was his drug gonna kill people, but he was gonna do it on the basis of literally a manufactured fear. That ripped the veil from my eyes. And I Said to myself, you know, listen, you are playing for the wrong team, Les. You have got to use your education and your experience and your skills and talents and all these great gifts that God has given you for good. And that was really one of the catalysts for my awakening and for me leaving Wall Street. I'm not a lawyer. I just play one on TV. I joke.

Are you serious?

This whole time?

I've always thought you were a lawyer 'cause you have like, you have this knowledge and this kind of confidence that you bring into the room.

The other thing that I wanted to say that was really interesting to me and what's life-changing was when I first learned that there was a vaccine controversy. That happened in September of 2001. I had no idea there was a debate, there was any kind of controversy or anything like that until then. And then I was becoming a homeopath and it was orientation, first day. And the guy leading orientation says, we're gonna learn about all these things over the next few years, the mind-body connection, obstacles to cure, vaccine damage. And I was like, what are you talking about? Vaccines are the greatest invention of humankind. And he just like smirked at me and said, well, that's one perspective. We're gonna learn another. And I literally was just like, oh, come on. What a nut job. This guy's just crazy. Well, after the class, he gave me a book to read called Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? And it rocked my world. And because I'd already had that experience with the CEO, I think there was a certain openness in me that this was possible. And that was actually what precipitated, and it was the impetus behind me making my award-winning documentary on vaccines called The Greater Good. And that came out in 2011. So basically my whole world just started to change in that sort of 1999, 2000, 2001 world. And I was like, okay, I'm actually playing for the wrong team and I need to use my skills. And so what ended up happening was in 2020, when the whole COVID era began, the debacle began, I knew right away what was going on, which was that they were going to try and impose mandates, medical mandates of all kinds on the public under the pretext of a public health scare. And so I started Health Freedom Defense Fund. And ever since then, I mean, it's just baptism by fire. I've had to learn all this stuff about the law in order to make the right choices for cases, pursue the most promising cases, the ones that are surgically designed to actually affect change, those kinds of things. And yeah, some of our attorneys have joked, you know, that I should sit for the bar now, which is ridiculous because I don't know near Nearly enough to sit for the bar, but I definitely know certain aspects of constitutional law and can talk about them fairly confidently. But I mean, I know a fraction of what a really well-educated and experienced attorney knows.

Well, you know enough to have written and presented the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, which is a revolutionary act. I mean, this is, uh, for those that don't know, this has helped to make Idaho the first state in the nation to outlaw medical mandates. So what is true medical freedom to you?

Well, that's really interesting. That's an interesting question. And it's so funny because people ask all the time, well, what if a child has pink eye? Can they be sent home? This is what some of the— what if they have super lice? This is what the legislator said to me. So in 2024, I had watched the aftermath and seen the fallout from COVID and how people were very disgruntled and upset about the fact that they'd been misled by public health authorities at the federal and state level. As someone who had been trying to educate myself about all of these kinds of medical mandates that we see, especially for school, I had been focused on trying to, and this is the main reason that I founded Health Freedom Defense Fund, to try and shift the kind of public consciousness surrounding medical freedom and then to codify that in law. And so I started thinking about this and what had happened was in Idaho, they'd passed a bill called the Coronavirus Stop Act. I had been thinking about this way before they'd passed that bill in 2023, and it outlawed COVID shot mandates in the state of Idaho from public and private Entities. So you cannot mandate COVID shots in the state of Idaho. And I thought, well, if they're open to doing that, why do they accept any medical mandates? And this is something I've been thinking about since the making of my movie. You know, this is just so wrongheaded, this idea that some bureaucrat or school superintendent or legislator or business owner has any say In your medical treatment, your medical decisions, your medical choices, or anything like that. And so for me, I just thought, listen, we're not really free unless we are able to drink clean water, breathe clean air, eat the food that we wanna eat, pesticide, GMO-free. So eat whole food that existed 150 years ago. And then to keep ourselves well with Whatever supplements and other health interventions we might choose. I'm a homeopath. I've raised my family exclusively on homeopathy, but maybe you wanna take supplements or herbs or fermented cod liver oil or butter oil or a lot of these things. And then what do you do when you become ill? We actually don't know what is in our air. And so we don't actually have pure medical freedom because people like Bill Gates are shooting all sorts of toxins up into the stratosphere, 50,000 to 60,000 feet over our head, which are then raining down on us. And we also know that jet fuel has all sorts of adventitious additives and just ingredients like sulfur dioxide and aluminum. Sulfur dioxide converts into sulfuric acid and rains down on us as acid rain, which is a big thing when I was young. That's a bigger ball of wax, right? And so we're still addressing that. The Idaho Medical Freedom Act doesn't address that. You asked, what does medical freedom mean? So to me, it means actually being able to control all those things. And then being able to make the choice of how you, one, keep yourself well, and two, treat yourself when you're sick. And so the Medical Freedom Act, what it does is it prohibits medical mandates for almost all Idahoans, and we're gonna extend it to all Idahoans this session.

You know, you bring up this point of like how, okay, when you were on Wall Street, you learned something you didn't know. Is there a certain level of like, there's always something that we don't know? Like, can we truly be in control of these things?

The world is not perfect and it's never going to be perfect, right? That's just part of life. Life is messy. Life is painful. Life is volatile. It's all these things. And so I think it's incumbent upon us to do our best physically to try and take care of ourselves, but we also have to take care of ourselves mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And there is no health without addressing those other aspects. I'm on the board of the Weston A. Price Foundation. You may eat a fully Weston Price diet and prepare your food properly and eat whole foods and, you know, tremendous nutrient density, you may still have issues because you know why? We bring stuff in and we have also training and wounding and other issues that impact us, which cause problems on a different level than the physical level and can manifest in the physical. So I think it's just imperative that each and every one of us really view our health and wellbeing holistically. And I really mean mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. We can't compartmentalize this at all. We are integrated beings and every single aspect has an impact on how we show up in life every day. And you've got to take care of those things and only you can do those.

We talk about medical freedoms and why I was so curious about what that means to you is because I think that the mindset around what a medical freedom is, I don't think everyone's on the same page about it, clearly, because you hear things like, well, I want to have free choice to have an abortion, not to have abortion. But then you'll also hear from the exact same person, they'll say, but I also want to force everyone to get vaccinated. There's so many things in life that are gray, but isn't medical freedom black or white?

Well, I think it is because You know, first of all, Health Freedom Defense Fund does not weigh in on abortion at all. There are many organizations that deal with that, and so we don't address it. We do not consider it a medical freedom issue, and I think in the vast majority of instances, it is not a medical freedom issue. I think that the hypocrisy that you just noted is quite profound, that there are people who say my body, my choice, except If they think it would theoretically help them, then they want to be able to force their opinion on you. And I think that's unethical and immoral and really kind of a, you know, a beautiful illustration of cognitive dissonance.

But I guess then the question becomes, it's like, well, if there's that disconnect and then we're not all really on the same page of like, well, what does medical freedom really mean? Like the fact that you should have the right to choose what food you put in your body and not have someone else dictating it. Like, that's serious. Like that's That's primal. This is like, this should be a non-negotiable. Everyone should have these options. But then someone will say, well, yes to this, but no to that. And so if we're not on the same page of what it means, then how do we actually fix it? Like, how do we actually convince people that, like, no, you really should be able to choose whether you have a vaccine in your body. You really should be able to choose whether you get raw milk or not.

I don't really think that there's a problem with getting people on the same page except for the abortion issue. That's the only issue that I think is some kind of a carve-out for some people. Most people understand that we come into this world with one possession only. Well, maybe 2 possessions, I would say. One is our body and the second thing is our soul. There's a clear differentiation there between what you're putting, being forced to put something into or onto your body, altering your body for someone else. That's very, very different than the other argument. I mean, when I was young, I thought, ah, you know, what's the big deal? I really did. I was not someone who thought about it very thoughtfully. I didn't understand it at all. But now I really fully believe that no one else, no business, no government, no one has the moral authority to force you to put something into, onto your body to change your Biological functioning to monitor, test, track, diagnose anything in you against your will or your parents' will when you're a minor. This is about stopping anyone from intruding into your physical space. And that's why I think it's so common sense and simple because nobody knows your medical background. No one else knows what's best for you. And so importantly, no one has to live with the consequences of your medical choices. So how dare they Actually suggest, pretend, presume that they have some authority to tell you what to do, to dictate what you eat, what you put into your body, what you inject into your children. It's outrageous. It's really coming to a boiling point because in recent years there have been so many cases where, for instance, children have been kidnapped by CPS when a parent refuses or Declines an injection or declines a cancer treatment or something like that and says, you know what, I wanna explore another avenue. I wanna try something different. I wanna do a little more research. There are these kinds of instances all the time. And children are literally kidnapped from their parents, from loving parents on these false pretexts because some bureaucrat decides that they think they know what's best for your child. And you know, the Supreme Court has actually ruled repeatedly in recent decades That each and every one of us has, number one, a zone of privacy around us into which the state may not intrude. This stems from a case in the 1950s, I think it was, it's called Griswold versus Connecticut. It was all about, it's hilarious if you ask me, but the Griswolds wanted to use a condom in their bedroom and the state of Connecticut outlawed condoms. Seriously. And so they sued and it went all the way to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said, hey, you know, we are not gonna be going into individual American bedrooms and policing whether or not they're using, you know, a condom. You have a zone of privacy around you into which we cannot intrude. So that was like the first kind of major barrier. And then in the '70s, '80s, and in particular 1990, there was a case about someone who was incarcerated and didn't wanna take a psychiatric medication. And so it went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled that each and every one of us have a liberty interest. I think that was Washington versus Harper, a liberty interest In refusing unwanted medical interventions. And there was another case where someone who was arrested had swallowed evidence and the police wanted to pump the suspect's stomach, the arrestee's stomach. And it went to the courts and the court said, you can't do that. You cannot violate the sanctity of someone's body. And then what happened was in 1990, you had Cruzan versus Missouri, which was about a young woman who died, who was in a car crash and she was in a vegetative state for quite a bit of time, but she didn't have a living will. And so there was a battle between the hospital and her parents about what to do. And the parents wanted to pull the plug, but the hospital's like, what do we do? We're not really sure what's right. And it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said that you have the right to refuse unwanted medical interventions, unwanted medical treatment, even if it might save your life. And so this is how it's evolved. And then what's happened is you've just had this totally inverted by the courts in recent years with respect to COVID, where they're saying, we can force you to take COVID shots. Now, thankfully, most of this has gone away, but not all of it. And we have, I think, what is one of the most important cases in the nation right now. We just petitioned the Supreme Court to take this case because the Ninth Circuit, which is all the Western states, a bunch of the Western states, issued a ruling in our case against the Los Angeles Unified School District, which mandated the COVID shots for their employees. It doesn't matter whether the shots stop transmission or not. An infection. Doesn't matter. That's what the Ninth Circuit said. All that matters, they said, is that a state official could have believed, could have believed that the shots would help some individuals. Well, this opens the door to all manner of forced medical interventions as long as someone says it's for public health. I can't comprehend a scenario in which the Supreme Court allows this to stand because the Supreme Court, as I mentioned, has been ruling for decades that we have a liberty interest, and that also that there's a balancing test between our liberty interests and state action, and that there must be such a compelling state reason for intervening in someone's life, and it must be the least intrusive way of doing it in order for the state to have the authority to intrude into our lives. Well, COVID shots didn't stop transmission or infection. This is admitted. This was known in the summer of 2021. And yet, you know, they still mandated the shot. And then the other thing that's really interesting is that, so the Supreme Court has been ruling this way for decades, that there's this balancing test, but so has the Ninth Circuit. And the Ninth Circuit basically turned a blind eye to its own precedent in issuing this ruling. And so we're petitioning the Supreme Court to review the case because we think it's so outrageous. And if they let it stand, it opens the door to, let's just say there's another public health crisis. And President Trump decides that in 2027 that We're gonna condition discretionary funds to the states on the basis of the states mandating ivermectin. They think it's horse paste. It's a veterinary medicine, but that's what the president says. So this cuts both ways, right? I just talked to a reporter from the New York Times. She's like, well, do you wanna come back to the time when, you know, when we had polio? And I was just like, oh my goodness, are you being serious? Of course I do not wanna see a return of polio. I don't wanna see anyone get sick or injured or die. But it is a fact of life. We get sick. People die from illnesses. My point is that the healthier we are, which generally means having fewer medical interventions, then the better our society is in general. And so that's what I want to see. I want us to be able to make all of our decisions and choices on the basis of accurate information and on what's best for us because it's best for society in general.

It still goes back to the question of how do we get there? Because The line between public safety and personal autonomy, it's continually getting blurred specifically by the people that profit off of it.

100%. They have shifted the goalposts very significantly. So CDC is specifically authorized to inspect, disinfect, fumigate, isolate animals and articles. brought into the country or across state lines. It doesn't say anything about the authority on individuals. And the Supreme Court case from 1905 called Jacobson versus Massachusetts, Jacobson said that in an extreme emergency, the state had the right to mandate the smallpox vaccination. The smallpox vaccination was the only vaccination in existence in 1905, in the early 1900s. And The court accepted, because it had been around for 100 years, that it was safe and effective. It wasn't safe and effective, but leaving that aside for now, the court did not say that an employer could coerce you into getting the shot. Didn't say that the state could plunge a needle into your arm forcefully. In fact, Jacobson said that if you believed that it was an imminent threat to you, that you didn't have to submit to it. And the court said that That Pastor Jacobson had to pay a $5 fine in order to not take the shot. That's what it upheld, a $5 fine, which is about $180 today. It didn't say anything about intruding really into your private medical decisions. And this is what I think has really shifted. So what's happened is we have somehow allowed our society and these health authorities to go from public health, which is about the commons, To intrude into our private health. And there should be a very clear line. I have no problem with CDC or the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare ensuring that we have proper sanitation systems in all of our communities, that we have clean drinking water, that there's no effluent coming out of corporations and factories and being discharged into our rivers, that our air is clean. And it's been allowed very just sort of incrementally to intrude into private. And there's a difference between what's public and what's private. So to me, the real argument should be that if it's in the public domain, if it's a public commons issue, then there is power and authority. If it's about my personal private medical matters, then you don't get any say, only I do.

Either way, whether it's personal or public, we're still relying on someone's definition of what is healthy and how they're applying that definition definition to a majority of people. What is it that you are seeing that the public isn't?

I just want to address upfront that I think that the idea that it's okay to sacrifice few in service to the theoretical greater good is one of the most evil notions ever put forth by human beings.

Agreed. Right.

It is never acceptable to risk one person in order to theoretically protect another. It's an entirely different proposition if a person chooses to risk themselves. And I have no problem with that. Okay? Some people may wanna give their kidney to somebody else, but for you to force someone to give their kidney to another person, that's insanity. And utilitarianism is this whole notion that, well, this is why we have the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which compensates the victims of vaccine injury. The idea is that, well, we're gonna keep the vaccine program going in order to protect the pharmaceutical industry. In the late 1970s, there were all sorts of lawsuits against the pharmaceutical industry because so many children were injured and killed by, in particular, the DPT shot, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus. Okay? Lots of kids. And there were huge awards from juries to the victims' families. And so the pharmaceutical industry started trying to threaten Congress and say, we won't make vaccines anymore if you don't indemnify us, if you don't protect us from lawsuits. And They basically obliged the pharmaceutical industry and they passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which Reagan signed, which provides a liability shield to the pharmaceutical industry for almost all vaccine injuries. You basically cannot sue the vaccine industry even if you're injured or killed by a vaccine. Basically, you can't. And the Supreme Court upheld this in 2011 in a case called Brusewitz versus Wyeth. They stated that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe. So even if it was a design flaw, you still can't sue them. And the Vaccine Act accepted, acknowledged that some recipients are injured and killed. And the reason they did this was because, you know, the pharmaceutical industry is so powerful. It's the biggest lobbyist, bigger than any other industry. And they spend $35 billion just on advertising their products around the world each year. Just like, I mean, that's a huge amount. That's the GDP of a lot of countries. You know, they are the ones who are also pushing this utilitarian ethic. That it's okay to sacrifice some because you know what? They don't care 'cause they don't have any liability. They have zero incentive to make a safer product because they don't have liability. In fact, it was only since passing the 1986 Act that we saw the vaccine schedule in the United States explode, which proves the point. Okay? So there's all these things. Federal law recognizes that vaccines injure and kill some recipients. Federal research done, gosh, how many years ago was it done? Maybe 15 years ago. under HHS determined that 2.6% of vaccine recipients are seriously injured by a shot. This is not rare. That's a huge number. It's like 1 in 41 or 42. And then secondly, about 1% only or fewer of these injuries are ever reported. So no one even knows. And so my point is that this is so shocking. And if you look at what happened in 2011, 2012, 54% of American school kids had a chronic illness, injury, disability, something like that, neurological problems. So it could be asthma, allergies, food allergies, speech delay, learning disability, autism, obesity, all these kinds of things. And there is science connecting all of these things to vaccinations. What's happened is kids have only gotten sicker. So it was 54% 14 years ago, and now it's like 75% of all American kids have some kind of chronic illness. And like I said, there is science connecting all of these things to shots. Of course, it's not only to shots, it's also the pesticides and who knows what else. There's so many other factors here. But the point is we are not exhibiting health in this country. Look at the measles shot, for instance. 6 to 7% of measles vaccine recipients will never ever mount an immune response. It's called primary vaccine failure. And then another chunk will have what's called secondary vaccine failure, meaning that any immunity derived wanes. So this idea they keep telling us, we just need 95% of the population of the children to be vaccinated in order to ensure herd immunity. It's a lie. And this is the problem. They lie about saturated fat. They've lied about the safety of aluminum. They lied about Vioxx and x-rays, and they've lied about Thalidomide, and they've lied about cigarettes. And you can dig deep on all these things and you can find out that no, GMOs are not as safe as they're claimed. No, these Roundup and these other pesticides are not safe as they're claimed. No, aluminum is not safe to inject into the human infant or into the human adult. In fact, it causes cognitive impairment in healthy adults. Imagine what it does in children. And but what really has to happen, James, is that People have to take responsibility for themselves. And that's the purpose of the Medical Freedom Act, to put the power back in the hands of the individual. And then I'll just share one other thing that really reinforces this. So all we hear about in the media is how, oh, there's a measles scare, there's a measles outbreak. Oh my gosh, this is so terrifying, right? You never hear about far bigger disease outbreaks with whooping cough, mumps, and there've been Tens of thousands of cases of these in the last 20 years. The reason you don't hear about it is because it doesn't support the narrative. Why? Because the vast majority, in fact, in some cases, 100% of the populations were vaccinated. So what they do is they try and frighten you with this measles thing, but don't even mention the blatant vaccine failure that we're seeing elsewhere because it doesn't serve the narrative. They want you to think The vaccines are safe and effective, even though that's not true. One of the biggest solutions is unplug from the matrix. You just have to. You have to watch independent media and podcasts like this. If you're getting it from the mainstream, it's being fed to you because it serves a purpose, an agenda, and a narrative. It's not there to inform you, to empower you, to educate you. That's not what it's about. It's about keeping you shackled mentally.

Really, it's like keeping you in fear, right? Yeah, of course. Fear from resilience, fear from your own strengths, fear from other people. I mean, it's fascinating since COVID seeing how many people are still wearing masks. This is a symptom of living in such a fragile society. This is not just, uh, oh, I'm trying to protect myself. It's like, no, no, no, this is actually now mental to a degree. Why does fear work so well, even on smart, well-intentioned people?

Well, fear works on everybody for the most part, okay? It really does. It's not an accident. Look at 9/11. What did they show over and over and over again on the news? Hundreds of times, the planes flying into the buildings over and over again. Why? Because this is essentially installing a trauma pattern on the psyche of every person watching it. And that trauma can be reactivated when there is some kind of another traumatic event or shocking event. How did Bush talk about the invasion of Iraq? This is Bush 2 in the second invasion. How did he depict it? Do you remember what the words were he used?

Was this the mass weapons or which?

Shock and awe.

Oh, shock and awe. Yeah, sure.

Well, what happens when you're shocked?

True.

That's like the ultimate manifestation of fear. All the war.

Yeah.

And then what happened during COVID and what happened during swine flu and during, you know, SARS-1 and all these things? They've been building up to this for over 20 years, right? What happened? Constant ticker tape of cases and deaths, cases and deaths. Oh my gosh, you're asymptomatic. I'm sorry, but asymptomatic? You're an asymptomatic carrier? No, I'm a well person. Just because your test detects something doesn't mean I'm sick. But this is how they terrified people. And why do they do that? When we are at peace, then there's this relationship between our left brain and our right brain. And there's something called the corpus callosum, which goes down the middle and facilitates communication. But our more kind of base brain, At the base of the skull is our reptilian brain. And this is what takes over when we're in fear. And what happens is the higher cognitive functioning up here, in particular here, shuts down when we're frightened. They know exactly what the response is going to be from most people when they scare the heck out of 'em. And so they do this over and over and over again. Remember when it was like, what's the code? It's code orange. We're at level orange. After 9/11, there was all those different things. If you see something, say something, tell someone, right? They want you afraid. They want you afraid of your neighbor. They want you afraid of your family members because then it shuts down your higher cognitive functioning and you're much more obedient to authority. They know this.

You know, something I've been thinking about today, I know Noam Chomsky used to talk about how sports obsession is a distraction from you know, human awareness, really. It keeps you preoccupied. In many ways, it's what used to happen with gladiator, you know, games, right? Those were actually designed to get people to stop thinking about the fact that their lives sucked, basically, right? That they were slaves.

It's called bread and circus. That's what it is. Yes, it goes back thousands of years. I think it's the primary purpose behind sports is to keep people Divided, keep people hoping that their team is gonna win. When they do win, they're like jubilant for a week and then it's back to the grind. And to distract them and occupy them with all, I mean, think about it. We are just overwhelmed with media. It's not just bread and circus in that it's sports, it's circus in terms of celebrities, right? Think about all the crazy, ridiculous things they're doing and people are like scrolling and finding out like how outrageous this is. Rather than actually pondering, well, what's the meaning of life? Why am I going through what I'm going through personally? Why am I repeating this pattern? And so to me, it's about doing a bunch of things, occupying us with trivial, frivolous, ridiculous inputs, distracting us from our own self-awareness and awareness of our environment, and then just sort of hypnotizing us with all of this stuff. It's extremely deliberate and it's just being pushed on us. And then the other facet of it is, of course, The fire hose of information that is literally shooting at us every single day. How can any human being possibly keep up with the deluge of information and conflicting reports and things like this? And then there's of course the siloing of us into our individual echo chambers. Most people I know, they either are totally bought into what the left is saying or they're totally bought into what the right is saying and they don't see the gray and they don't see how they're being manipulated in the same way. And I think that this is what the purpose is, to keep us from stepping back and thoughtfully reflecting on our lives, on what we're seeing, on our lived experience, on what we're feeling, and having that inform our thoughts and our actions and how we show up in our world.

Yeah. And I mean, I think for the person listening as well who's taking this in and And doesn't want to live in that paranoia, doesn't want to live in the fear that we're being taught, what habits or questions do you recommend that people start practicing to stay in that sovereignty or without being cynical?

I firmly believe that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience and that it is important to stay connected to that. However that appears in your life and whatever that means to you. For some people, they'll be a Buddhist, For some people, they'll be a Christian. For some people, they'll be a Hindu or something else. You know, like it's just different for all people. We are being brainwashed into believing that we are these just mechanistic, that we are these machines, these material machines. And if we're material machines, then it doesn't matter if they tell us, you know, what to do, right? It's only because I believe in a higher power that I answer to and that I serve that I I really truly believe that they don't have any moral authority over my body. And then I think it's also important for each of us to acknowledge and accept that not everybody wants to wake up. Not everybody wants to take responsibility for their lives. Do you wanna take the red pill or the blue pill? Some people wanna take the blue pill. A lot of people wanna take the blue pill. They prefer it. Then for the others who actually wanna take the red pill, I think it's about doing inner work. I really injured my back last year and it was from pushing myself so hard after we got the Idaho Medical Freedom Act passed. You know, I was invited to, I mean, just so many conferences and speaking engagements and things like this. And it was wonderful. And I just reasoned that, you know, you gotta make hay while the sun shines. And so I just pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed all those things. I mean, I was gone 75% of the time for August, September, October, and November. And by Thanksgiving Day, I had a back issue kind of brewing for weeks, if not months. And I woke up on Thanksgiving Day and I couldn't walk. Literally couldn't walk. I was in such agony. I couldn't take more than a few steps. Like, that's how bad it was. I was in just brutal, brutal pain, agonizing pain, writhing, crying pain every night for hours and ended up in the ER 3 times. Like, that's how bad it was. And I don't even have a primary care doctor. But I found out that I had ruptured a disc and had 2 bulging discs on either side of that ruptured disc causing excruciating pain. And so I was told, you know, bed rest. Well, I could only lie on my right side. I literally could not lie on my back, could not lie on my front, could not lie on my left, couldn't sit, couldn't stand, couldn't walk. So I spent 7 and a half weeks like this on my right side. For me, what I've experienced in my life is if I have something going on, whether it's a sore throat or an illness or something like that, and if I'm not getting better as I normally would, That's a cue to me that there's something deeper going on here, that there's something on a mental, emotional, or spiritual plane that I have not acknowledged, brought into awareness, and released. And so what happened was after about, it was about 4 weeks in and I'm like, something's not happening here. What is it that I'm not seeing? I started to feel tremendous pain flare up in my leg and in my back. What was going on was that I was carrying around fear about what was going on. And what's gonna happen in the next few years. As I let the fear come up in me, so felt it emotionally, as I let it rise up in me and wash through me, the pain in my back and leg spiked like to extraordinary levels. And then after, it dissipated. I think his name is John Sarno, and he wrote a book called Healing Back Pain. And it's all about how we put our stuff in our weakest place, our stuff meaning our emotional wounds and baggage and traumas and stuff like that. And that we actually can heal these things. You know, from a different plane than physically. But then the next day, I did more of this work where I basically go into this place and ask for guidance and help and pray and ask to be shown what I need to see and what needs to be released and to bring it up. I welcome it, I invite it. And this is how we do this inner work. You know, some people call it inner work, shadow work, whatever. There are lots of terms for it. And then what came up was like all sorts of unresolved Emotions around my parents' divorce when I was 8. After doing the stuff on Saturday and then the 2 sessions on Sunday, my pain was down 50%. It wasn't gone, but the point is I was making progress. This has been true throughout my whole life. When I have something and it's plaguing me and I can't get through it, I'm not just like getting a cold and then get over it in a few days, then I know it's something deeper. This is something that happened too, So I'm a homeopath. And when I first started out practicing homeopathy 24 or 25 years ago, I had this woman come to me with her baby who was 7 months old. And her baby had developed eczema from here down. So from the neck down, about a week or so, 7 to 10 days after birth. And so I talked to the mother and I said, well, you know, how was your pregnancy? She had changed her diet. She'd cut out, you know, like All the alliums, the onions and the garlics and all these kinds of things. She had cut out nightshades. She'd cut out gluten and dairy. She'd done all these different things and it hadn't had an effect. Then the doctor had told her to like put certain kind of soothing creams and different things on it, and that didn't do anything. And then they did steroid creams and that didn't do anything. So like they tried everything. Nothing worked over all these months. How was your pregnancy? And she said, oh, it was totally normal. And I'm like, nothing happened?

Nothing.

Well, how was his delivery? How was your labor and his delivery? And she said, oh, it was totally normal. I said, well, what does that mean? And she said, well, I went in, I was induced. And I didn't say this to her, but I was like, well, that may be the norm, but it's not normal. It's not normal to be induced. The baby's not ready. Your body's not ready. And what often happens is that there are complications from it. So this baby was induced. The mother was given Pitocin to start labor and basically initiate contractions and then push the baby out, okay? What happens is the body's not ready and it actually can cause the baby to be pushed. Well, the baby ended up getting stuck in the birth canal and had to be forceped and ventoused, which is a suction on top of the head. So they had to suction the baby out and use forceps. And she said, and he had some bruising and scabs on his temples, but it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't anything. Oh my gosh. And I'm just thinking to myself, oh my gosh. Maybe this baby just has birth trauma. Maybe that's all it is. Total beginner's luck, but I gave him a very high potency of a homeopathic remedy, the most commonly known one, Arnica. You've probably heard of Arnica, right? People put it on bruises and things like this in the cream form. Well, I gave him a pill of a really, really super diluted dose of Arnica. Come to find out, all the eczema was gone. I reasoned that he was just stuck in birth trauma. Arnica is the number one remedy for trauma, for bumps and bruises. And so I'm like, I'm just gonna give him that and see what happens. Well, all of his eczema was gone in 36 hours.

Incredible.

And it just illustrates, right, that this baby was not injured on the physical plane. They did everything physically and it wouldn't resolve because it was emotional, maybe spiritual. There was something else going on in this child that homeopathy addressed on a different layer. And this is why I think it's so important for us to all understand that we need to integrate all of those facets of our lives. We need to really reflect. And this is another thing about the bread and circus. It keeps us from being still, from being quiet, from me lying in my bed, crying in pain and being like, okay, help me out here.

What's going on?

Help me out.

Asking for help. Yeah. Are you Christian Science or do you know much about Christian Science?

I know about it, but I'm not, no.

Everything you're saying is very Christian Science based, very much so.

Yes and no. I don't think so. Christian Science, it's more about mind over matter. What I'm actually trying to communicate is that it's about releasing our mental, emotional, and spiritual blockages, and physical, in order to heal. You know, there's a saying in the healing arts that what you resist persists. So I was blocking the fear that I was carrying, Had those wounds from childhood still there. I hadn't fully released them until my back. And now I feel lighter than I've ever felt from having done all this work in the last 6 weeks, 8 weeks.

To your point earlier, like a lot of why people accept the fear, a lot of why the messaging is absorbed by so many people is from that trauma.

And we don't see it. We don't see it, James, unless we go within. So, you know, I remember when my son was young and I never ever timed him out or sent him to his room or hit him or did anything. I would honor his feelings, meaning, or I would affirm his feelings is I think what I would say, is that if he fell down and bumped his head, I would say, oh, you bumped your head. Did that hurt? Do you need to let it out? And I would take him on my lap and let him cry and let it out. I was hit a lot when I was a kid. And when my son was about 7 months old, I was giving him solids and I'm giving him some food and he starts playing with it and smearing it on his like high chair. And my gut reaction was to smack his hand. And I went to smack his hand and I was just like, what am I doing? And this is the kind of thing, right? We need to bring it into consciousness. I never had that impulse again because I realized that that was my programming, my training, and I didn't have to yield to it. I brought it into awareness. I realized what I was doing and I was like, I will never ever like react that way again. Or they, you know, they do something and spill something, break something, and your reaction is anger when like they didn't do it on purpose. I mean, if they're messing around or whatever, then you wanna say, hey, you need to be more conscious, right? You're not aware of your surroundings. But the point is we do all these things because of our wounding and our training and out of the unconscious. And we have to actually— Recognize what those motivations are, and then we can release them. And once we do, then they no longer actually hold any sway on us.

We have to assume that there are things that are being presented to us that's not the full picture. Look inward and actually have agency around, well, what actually works for you? In a sense, like you have to assume we are in the matrix, that the answers of what you need and what you want and what's best Or you are inside. My final question is, if you could wave a magic wand and bring back one ancestral practice, what would it be and why?

Oh, wow. One ancestral practice. I think probably midwifery, because it used to be that people in our community who knew us acted as midwives and helped us through that whole process and then were there for us because they lived in our communities. And what's happened is, now there are certain situations where you absolutely need modern medicine. My son was an emergency cesarean and I'm thankful for it, let me tell you, because he wouldn't have survived. He had the cord 3 times around his neck and twice around his shoulders, what the doctor told me. But the thing is, in the vast majority of births, that's not the case. And what's happened is it's been overmedicalized. And I think that the true wise woman, Mm-hmm. who understands what's going on and who's been through it themselves and has seen lots and lots of births is much more adept and better placed to actually help the woman to work through the whole laboring process healthily and naturally in a way that allows them to bond with their baby as quickly as possible. You know, being born vaginally is the way that nature, God, whatever you wanna say, intended. It It releases a huge amount of hormones into the body that facilitate the bonding between mother and child. And it does all these things. It actually flexes the bones in the brain. It does all these things that actually benefit the immune system. It triggers this whole cascade of biological physiological changes and there's a huge benefit to it. And we have so medicalized it that like 30% roughly of births in this country are cesarean and they shouldn't be and they needn't be. And so I think this would do so much to help with the bonding process, helping mothers and to stop the medicalization of pregnancy and mothering and childbirth. It doesn't have to be the way that it is.

And I have to wonder too, is if we went that direction, if maybe it would start to also promote not medicalizing our food, you know, not looking at things so like from that nutritional science perspective, but more like, well, how does my body feel when I eat it?

And I have to say, I mean, this is the most important really. I hope that what everybody takes away from this is that you are the answer and that you and you alone are responsible for your life and for your choices and the consequences of those. And that's for everything that you do. And it's imperative and incumbent upon each and every one of us to stand up And show up and take that responsibility. Am I gonna choose to get another, a new iPhone, or am I gonna choose pastured eggs? Am I gonna forego some of the sort of niceties of the luxuries of modern living so I can have a more grounded family life? And it's really up to us. We cannot expect the people who are running the show to make these choices for us. Only we can do that. You are the answer, and it's up to you to take charge and take responsibility for your life. And that means everything from your car seat to your shots, to your food, to your education, to the media you consume, to the politics you consume, to everything. It's up to us. If we make choices that are good for us, it's good for everyone because we're happier, we're healthier, we show up better in our communities and in society. The rising tide lifts all those boats. And so It's actually really to everyone's benefit, but it's up to you and up to every single person to make those choices. No one else can do it for you.

You have been the answer to this episode. So I'm so grateful that you were willing to come on and share your wisdom and share your experiences and share your heart. I love that we started out on like policies and like talking about that. And then it all leads back to the inner self and the heart and just That, that humanness. How can people get involved with the Health Freedom Defense Fund? I know it's a nonprofit. Can they donate? Please share how people can either get in touch with you and/or support what you do.

So you can find us at healthfreedomdefense.org, and you can sign up for our newsletter, which we don't send out all the time. It's not like a daily or even weekly thing. You can become a member for a small fee. I think it's $10 right now. You can donate to us through that page. You can follow all of our work. You know, I don't even know if we mentioned this, but HFDF was the group that was responsible for taking the masks off of airplanes and trains and buses in 2022. And well, I did mention our lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District. You know, we do everything we can to educate and advocate for people's rights and then to litigate in defense of them when necessary. I've just started a Medical Freedom Act coalition with a bunch of other organizations to get the Medical Freedom Act, including Stand for Health Freedom, which is the co-lead To get the Medical Freedom Act passed in as many states as possible. Because really, ultimately, like I've said, it's up to every one of us to stand in our power and to defend our most sacred and basic of human rights, the right to make these choices for ourselves. So all of this work needs the support. I work for free, James. I have for over 20 years. It's my honor and pleasure to serve humanity. And so anybody who wants to support us, I'm super grateful for.

Thank you for doing that work. Living in Massachusetts, I know that they're always trying to remove many medical freedoms here. And so I'm hoping that you can pass that act in every state. Well, thank you all. Thanks for joining us on this episode. If you're enjoying the podcast, there are a few easy ways to support us. Number one, tell a family member or friend, hey, you should check out the Everyday Ancestral Podcast. You can leave us a rating, a review. You can subscribe, and you can also go to our guests' and/or our sponsors' websites and support them. Thank you again for joining us, and most of all, moving forward, stay curious. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.