LeBron’s Record, Meta Glasses Chaos, RFK Jr. Shock & More

A 41 year old LeBron James just broke another NBA age record. And the real story may be what it teaches about longevity. A 50 year old Minnesota lawyer. 54 year old Minnesota lawyer balanced courtrooms and curling stones to become America's oldest winter Olympian. Meta's AI smart glasses are quietly changing classrooms. And not everyone feels safe. Goldman Sachs just lost its top lawyer amid newly released Epstein emails. Switzerland is about to vote on capping its population at 10 million people. And the US health secretary is making headlines after saying he's not scared of a germ. And you won't believe where he's not afraid of this germ. Explaining it in a way and no one expected. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hi and welcome. Thanks for joining me today. Let's dive right in. LeBron James, at 41 years old, became the oldest player in NBA history to to record a triple double, posting 28 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds in a Lakers win over Dallas. The milestone came in his 23rd season, surpassing a record previously held by Karl Malone. James said, quote, I've never been sorry at basketball. Any given night, if I need to turn it on, I can turn it on. What stands out isn't just the stat line, it's the durability. James has reportedly invested heavily in recovery, sleep, strength training and nutrition. While some of his methods involve elite level resources, the foundation remains consistent. Consistent sleep, disciplined conditioning and long term commitment to the process. At 41, he doesn't seem to be fading. He's redefining what a prime looks like. Let's go into this a little deeper. It's very easy to say, well, of course these athletes can do it. They've got millions of dollars for their private chefs and all that. Let's dig a little deeper here. Now these are fantastic statistics even if you're 21, but to be 41 playing at this level of professional athletics is truly astounding. It is record breaking again, his 23rd NBA season. And he's not, he's not sort of hanging on on the bench, getting five minutes every other game. He's playing a lot. He is still dominating. Let's look at some of the reasons why. So this is what intrigues me as it relates to you because frankly, I don't really care that much about professional basketball. If you're one of our many viewers or listeners in India, Asia, other parts, you maybe don't follow it as passionately as a lot of Americans do. That's okay. We all have an interest Though in living not just to an old age, but living in a way that makes us feel good, alive, thriving, vital, healthy. Clearly, LeBron James is exuding health. So let's look at how he does that. So first of all, there are the things he does that most people can't afford to do. I can't even afford to do some of the things he does. He spends one and a half million dollars every year on his body. Okay, that instantly is out of reach of, of all but a tiny subset of the top 1%. Let's look at what he does, but let's also learn lessons of what he does that anyone could do. He does travel with a personal chef. He travels with personal trainers. He has a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. He uses cryotherapy sessions, which I now do that. I have a cold plunge, so I might not travel with a personal chef. But some of these things are obtainable. He has advanced biomechanical analysis. He has custom recovery equipment, personal massage therapist. He strictly controls his travel schedule, so he's not catching the red eye to save a few bucks anytime. And he has a team of nutritionists and performance specialists. So this is elite. You can say, well, I can't afford to do that, T.J. why are you wasting my time? Okay, let's look at some of the things LeBron James does that you can do and I can do, because some of them are just plain old good habits. Top of the list, he sleeps a reported 8 to 10 hours a night and he takes midday naps. Now you say, well, T.J. how can I do that? Stop watching Netflix. As much as I appreciate you watching my show or listening to it, don't do it at 10 o' clock at night when you should be going to bed. So to me, this is, this is the cornerstone of his health, how he's able to regenerate. Because if you look at other top performing athletes like Tom Brady, this is very much what they did. Tom Brady, notorious for going to bed at 8:30 at night throughout most of his career. Because when you take a pound, I mean, you take a pounding on the NBA basketball court, but you really take a pounding on the NFL gridiron. And so Tom Brady was a huge, huge fan of lots of sleep. Many of us say, well, I got eight hours of sleep. And what you really mean is you were looking at your cell phone until midnight, you turned it off, you went to bed, Maybe it took you a half an hour to fall asleep. And then your snooze alarm goes off at 7, 7:30, you kind of hit the snooze. Maybe you get up 7, 45, woke up 1. You're really only getting 7 hours sleep. If you add it up, that's not what top performers are doing. Midday naps. Now, there was a time when if you took a nap, people said, oh, you're an old grandpa. Look at this old guy. People used to make fun of the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, who liked taking naps. Winston Churchill took naps. So a lot of very successful people are big believers in naps. LeBron James does it. Now, I personally can't really fall asleep very easily during the afternoon unless I got almost no sleep. But you certainly may try it. Consistent strength training. Now, you might not have a personal trainer who charges $10,000 an hour or whatever LeBron James trainer does, but that doesn't mean you can't lift weights. I mean, you can go to Goodwill and buy some dumbbells for 10. You can fill up milk jugs with water and lift weights. All of us can lift weights. Here's the thing. He doesn't just do it during the season and then take five months off to get fat and do nothing the way so many professional athletes used to do, whether it was football, baseball, or basketball. He is training year round with weights. He preserves and protects his muscle. He has a strict diet discipline. He's not eating junk food. Arguably, it's easier if you have your own personal chef traveling with you and you never even have processed sugar, artificial sugar, excessive sugars, putting food in front of you. It's obviously easier if you've got your own personal chef and they're creating delectable traits that are totally healthy. But it doesn't mean that you and I can't actively eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. Eat food that is less processed. Avoid packages or food that is in a package. If you're getting food in a package with a box and you see 89 ingredients, it almost doesn't matter what the ingredients are. The fact that it has so many means that it's heavily processed and it's generally bad for you. You go to the produce section when you're buying broccoli and you look at the ingredients. There's one ingredient, broccoli doesn't matter if it's organic or not. It's going to be better than virtually anything you find in a box. So strict diet discipline is something he, he does that you can do. Now, part of that limited processed foods he's limiting. That's a part of his diet process. Is he's limiting highly processed food. Now, it is true a veggie burger is highly processed, but it's generally considered pretty healthy. So not all highly processed food. And let's face it, unless you're eating a raw stock of celery, everything has some processing. A broiled piece of fish is processed in the sense that the cooking is processing it. It's about how you're processing it. How much sugar are you adding? How much fat are you adding, how much salt are you adding? All of these things make the food less healthy for you. A hydration focus. You might not have $1.5 million to spend on your healthcare each year, but you can do what I just did right there. And for our podcast listeners, I'm drinking tap water from a glass. That is something absolutely anyone can do. And guess what? It's free. If you live anywhere where the water is drinkable, it is free. It's less expensive. You don't need Gatorade. You don't need some special hydration drink. You don't need magic berries pressed by your own personal chef. You can just drink water. That's something LeBron James spends a lot of time on. He does stretching routines. We can all do that. I try to stretch every single day. He's a big believer in year round conditioning because the problem is many athletes used to face is, you know, you take the whole off season off, then you get going again, you get in shape for the new season. You're never quite at the same high level you were at the end of the previous season. By conditioning year round, you don't have those dips, you don't have a permanent notch downward. The next thing here he puts a lot of attention on is mental commitment to the process. He has a process where his health, his body is extremely important to him. He simply doesn't sacrifice. He avoids late night lifestyle chaos. You probably noticed when you're picking up the tabloids, when you're picking up the People magazines and watching TMZs, you don't see stories about LeBron James at 3am in the, in the morning getting in a fight at some nightclub. Why? Because he's in bed asleep. That is something you can do at any age and this helps recovery. He treats his recovery as non negotiable. Now if you were going to pick just one of those things, I think the biggest thing to really try to emulate is sleep. When you, when you look at LeBron James move and just walk across the floor, for that matter, even Tom Brady, they appear to be decades younger than they are. And they both, you know, they give credit to their trainers and consultants and masseuses and chefs and all that, but both of them spend a lot of time praising sleep, which is absolutely free. Yeah, there are things you can do to increase your ability to sleep more, but it does not cost money. You don't have to have a huge staff the way you do, like when traveling with a personal chef. So those are the real lessons. We can't all become professional athletes and play competitively for 23 years. That's just not going to happen. I know for me, forget 23 years. I didn't make my junior high school basketball team. But all of us can aspire to maintain a high level of fitness at any age. Because as much As I think LeBron James is super talented and uniquely talented and physically gifted, I don't think he is such a genetic aberration that he's able to just magically play this well into his 40s because of freakish genetics. I think it's because of his daily habits. Now, the daily habits didn't get him into the NBA, but the daily habits for his health have kept him in the NBA. And his career isn't just twice as long as the typical NBA player. It's more like 400% as long as the typical NBA player. To me, that's inspirational because I'm not trying to be a professional athlete, but I would certainly love to be healthy and energetic and strong. Twice as long as most people or four times as long as most people. I hope you do as well. So let's learn from LeBron James. Again, regardless of whether you are a fan of his or basketball, his daily habits appear to be exemplary. And you don't hear him talking about doing all the sorts of extreme things that Brian Johnson does of, you know, taking 140 supplements a day. James may take some, but that's certainly never anything he's put a spotlight on. So what are the fundamentals? Eight to ten hours of sleep. Does it cost anything? No. Is it easy to do in our modern culture where everyone wants a piece of you and your cell phone is begging you to watch another video? No. It's not easy, but it costs nothing and the benefits are tremendous.

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Rich Ronan, a 54 year old personal injury lawyer from Minnesota, became the oldest American to compete in a Winter Olympics when he stepped onto the ice for Team USA curling in Italy. He wakes at 5am three days a week, drives 30 miles to train, works a full day at his law practice and then returns to practice again. He competes in tournaments Thursday through Sunday while juggling court hearings on Zoom. He said to the Times, quote, I get up three days a week at 5 in the morning, drive 30 miles to work out and train. It's a reminder that you don't always quit your job to chase a dream. Sometimes you build both at the same time. So congratulations to this guy, 54 years old and competing at the international arena of high level arena of the Olympics. Why do I spotlight this? Am I the biggest curling fan in the world? No. Do I assume you and everyone loves the sport of curling? No. It's something I do watch a little bit every four years. But to me what's fascinating is here's a guy who didn't put himself in a box and say, I either have to be a serious adult and be a lawyer or I'm going to follow my dreams and follow my passion and devote full time to being an Olympic athlete. Too often people think you have to put yourself in one box or another. Do I take the safe, serious job at the bank or do I become a tiktoker or write movies for a living? And the reality is you don't have to make that choice. In fact, often making the choice is the worst choice of all. We live in a culture that glorifies the person who's 100% into something. The person you know, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, people who quit Harvard, work full time 20 hours a day on their startup and boom, they're billionaires. Yeah, that works for some, but that's not really the way it works most of the time for most successful people, certainly in the business world. So I want to take just a moment to reflect on some of these things so that you and I can figure out how to plot our own career in a smart way, a strategic way, without giving up our dreams first. Some more facts about this Olympian. As I mentioned, he's 54 years old, oldest ever Olympian in the winter sports. But by day he's a personal injury attorney in Minnesota. He wakes up at 5am Three days a week, which when I was younger would have seemed like a real sacrifice. These days I can't sleep past 5am so that doesn't seem like a big deal. He competes Thursday through Sunday in tournaments. He's a father, he's got a 21 year old son, a 24 year old daughter, and he's committed. He says, I came from the days when guys were smoking cigarettes out on the ice. You don't see that anymore, okay? But he appears to be having the time of his life and presumably making a nice living too. Personal injury lawyers usually do pretty well. So again, what's the real lesson for you and for me? We live in a culture that glorifies the visionary, all in working 20 hours a day to make something or the athlete who never focus on anything other than their sport. And the problem with that is success bias. We only hear about the successes for every athlete. Who says, I'm not going to worry about a regular career, regular job, regular friends, family, I'm just going to focus 100% of my sport. From the age of 10 to 25, 99.99% of them never make a penny. They don't make it to the Olympics or the pros. They just end up with dead and broken dreams. Again, I'm not trying to discourage anyone from athletic success. It's exactly the same thing when it comes to entrepreneurialism. We are all fed the success. There's success bias. The media focuses on the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Jeff Bezos, the Bill Gates of the world, and meanwhile the thousands and thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs who start work full time, give up all outside income and end up five, seven, sometimes 10 years later with nothing in their pocket but debts. We don't hear about them because they can't afford a publicist. So what's my real message to you? Let's learn from this guy. He had a skill, he had a passion for this sport. He spends a lot of time on it. He has so much passion, he's willing to get up at 5am he has so much passion for it, he's willing to spend evenings, free time, weekends on his sport, pursuing his sport. But he also has a job that pays the bills, that allows him to have a family, that allows him to have comforts in life. I think that's a good thing. Gary Vaynerchuk, the well known Social media Maven is an excellent example about this. He always tells people, don't quit your job. You really care about some new project, some new YouTube channel, some TikTok, then do what he did. He was he was stocking his dad's liquor store 14 hours a day when he started his TV wine library 15, 20 years ago. And he would do that from 8pm to 2am he didn't just say dad, I'm leaving the family business to follow my passion. Oh no. He was there bagging the bottles, stocking the shelves, answering Questions from customers 12, 14, 16 hours a seven days a week. And he started his whole media career in the evenings he was answering people's questions on what's the best wine to go with fish at 2am in the morning. Building a following, building relationships with people. And these days he's one of the most famous marketers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, agency owners in the world. Commands public speaking fees in the hundreds of thousands, multiple book deals and clients from the NFL, the NBA. You name worked out for him pretty nicely. It could work out for you. Let's look at someone like Joe Rogan, number one podcaster in the United States, arguably the world. He's gotten paid hundreds of millions of dollars in some years from companies like Spotify and whether you love or hate his show. And we could debate the merits of how factually based his show is another day. But he in by no doubt highly successful in his media career, terms of audience reached acclaim, wealth, money generating, he's wildly successful. How did he do it? Did he just say I'm leaving Hollywood, I'm leaving the sports world, I'm leaving stand up comedy, I'm just gonna focus on my podcast all day long and do it every day till I'm success. No, that's not what he did. He started dabbling with the podcast, he was still doing stand up comedy, he was still doing shows, he was still doing. Was it wrestling or mixed martial arts or whatever he did? He was doing all sorts of other things. He just did the podcast kind of on the side. Apparently didn't even worry about making money the first, not three months, not the first three weeks, but the first three years. Didn't really make any money. He let it percolate, he let it grow. He didn't put all his eggs in one basket and because of that he now has a lot of baskets out there with arguably his podcast being the biggest basket of all in terms of the wealth generation for him. Much more so than his standup comedy or appearances hosting TV shows. So that's really what I want you to think about, is if you have a passion or a dream, you don't have to quit your day job. Start working on it right now, Use every bit of free time, use your evenings, use your weekends on it. And all of a sudden you find, you know what? I'd just much rather sit at home and relax and watch Netflix tonight. Maybe that thing isn't your true passion after all. Maybe it was simply an interest and not a very powerful compelling interest. And that's okay. But at least you learned there's something to having real staying power for your projects, your passion projects that only comes from having a steady income. Unless you come from a fabulously wealthy family or you have a trust fund. Some people do. I'm assuming you don't. I had a great family, but I wasn't given any trust fund, which is why I'm a big believer in establish revenue streams, keep your day job, continue trying new things, continue trying new businesses, try new passions, try new sports. I didn't pick up pickleball until about four years ago, and I love it. I play it all the time. I'm not planning on going to the Olympics in pickleball or playing at any serious high level, but I enjoy it and I try it. So that's my real message to you. Especially not especially if you're a young person, but also if you're a young person. So many people feel like, well, I'm in college and I have a passion for art or a passion for movie making, but my parents are telling me I have to major in business, so I get a job. You could still major in business and spend all of your free time making funny little videos on YouTube and honing your craft, building audience, generating revenues slowly, and maybe have a boring job at a bank from age 22 to 25. And then it 26. All of a sudden you're making more money from your hobby than you did from your banking career. And at that ca. At that point, you can transition full time into your main passion. So let's learn from this Olympian. By the way, I didn't even get to the point of isn't it inspirational? Someone who's 54 doesn't tell himself, I'm too old to even try out on an Olympic team. No, you're not too old. If you are enjoying what you're doing, you're achieving success, you're working hard every day, and you're going to be a part of a team that's doing well. Let other people tell you you're too old. You don't have to arbitrarily buy into it and exclude yourself. Keep putting yourself out there until someone else cuts you from the team.

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Meta's Ray Ban AI smart glasses are creating anxiety across college campuses and high schools. Students report feeling constantly recorded without consent, while professors say classroom participation is changing because students fear being filmed. One student said, I feel like I'm being recorded every day, all the time. The glasses can take photos and record video, and future versions are expected to add even more features. One update that came in just as preparing for this show is it's in some versions, it's going to start identifying who people are. Facial recognition schools are banning wearables and tightening tech rules in response. The concern isn't just cheating, it's the chilling effect of constant surveillance in spaces that depend on vulnerability and open discussion. Okay, I have some real mixed feelings about these meta Ray Ban. I'll share them with you. I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist trying to understand how we can all make progress, how we can all improve, how we can all make the pie bigger. So I don't reflexively say all technology is good and all technologists are great. No, I've been a harsh critic of Facebook in the past, but I'm certainly not a Luddite. I love technology and as some of you know who've heard me talk on this show before, I have done some exploitation. I don't have these Ray Ban metaglasses yet, but I've been thinking about getting them and for members of my family. And I have spent a fair amount of time talking to the Salespeople at the LensCrafters at local malls here in Florida because they are some of the places that sell these. And I have to tell you, the response has been uniformly positive. Now you can say, well, tj, of course a salesperson is going to say that. No, I asked them, really, what do people think of these? Are they returning them do they seem disgruntled? And without a doubt, every single time a Sales representative at LensCrafters has answered my question, they've said, everybody seems to really like them. Nobody's returned them. We have a long way wait list to get these meta glasses. Now, I thought about getting them because when my family travels together, my wife loves to take pictures. And there's always that awkward moment. We're having an enjoyable moment. She's like, hang on, let me pull out my phone and let me do this and let me frame it with the glasses. All you have to do is touch it. And there's probably a way of just saying take photo as well. Now, these are. These are regular glasses that I'm wearing, those of you on the podcast. I do wear glasses, and these are reading glasses and for distance, but these are not meta glasses. So I'm not spying on anyone. So I see the value of it. I can also imagine that, let's say you are a politician. Let's say you're a member of Congress, you're going to a fundraiser. Wouldn't it be nice to have the facial recognition where you see somebody five feet in front of you? It tells you the person's name, it tells you how much they contributed. It tells you their spouse's name, their children's name. And you can go up to someone you've maybe only met once and say, hi, Jim, how are you? How's your wife Mary? And what's new with your kids, Billy and Sandy? And the person had just given you $20,000, for example, or let's say the legal limit for the US Congress, which I believe is more in the $3,500 range, it would really be helpful to politicians. I can't imagine a lot of them not wanting that. So those are the positives of this. Also, if you're driving, seeing your directions right there in a way that doesn't distract you, one of the things that they're not doing it yet is you could use it as your own teleprompter. Right now, I'm using a traditional teleprompter. It is mounted on a tripod. It's in front of a camera. It has clear piece of glass that reflects. And in my case, I'm using an iPad underneath it for the text. But if everything could be right here on my glasses and I see it and you don't, that would be really easy. Because right now, when politicians are giving speeches with a teleprompter, you've got to get there early. You have to have them standing in one spot. You have to have the two different large panels about 10, 12ft away on each side of the person. They can't move around that much. If you had a teleprompter right on your glasses, everyone could be Oprah or Anthony Robbins roaming the stage and they would know exactly what they want to say. So there are numerous, numerous possible advantages to having glasses like this. So I'm trying to be fair here. I'm going to give the other side in just a moment. Let's look at a few more facts. So right now the glasses take photos and they do video capture. I believe it's short, like 10 to 15 seconds of video capture. You can't just go to the movies, hit, click, and then have the entire movie in a file that you can watch later. It doesn't work like that. The wait lists are surging. Reality labs layoffs. They are laying people off, which seems odd considering there's so much demand for this. Some schools are already banning these. They're so concerned about privacy rights and these possibly being used for cheating. So there, there is a lot of controversy right now. It is structured so that if someone takes a picture, you hear the sound of like an old timey camera. So you can't necessarily secretly take someone's picture. Although if you were in a loud disco, something I haven't been in years, you would be able to take the picture they wouldn't be able to hear. Also has a little light turn on when you are recording a video. So Facebook is at least making an effort to try to make it harder to violate people's privacy or at least to give them notice you're taking their picture. But some students apparently are fearing humiliation. Oh, if I ask a dumb question, this is going to be on tick tock and 10 million people are going to watch it and I'm going to have to live this down the rest of my life or I'm going to be mocked on a Fox News channel or some political news channel because I said something that offended somebody. So students apparently are using this as an excuse to not participate in class. According to a student named Josiah, who is a Florida State student, he revealed to the New York Times he says, quote, I feel like I'm being recorded every day all the time. A SUNY professor, Jamie Cohen said Gen Z are far more quiet and reserved and implying this may be why. And some students just feel like they're now living in this media bubble kind of divorced from reality. So what else is going on here? What are the public policy concerns? If you feel like you're being recorded at all times, it could chill your sense of freedom of expression. Yeah, I could say whatever I want. But if, you know, 2% of the population in 10 states away from me or offended by it, they could get angry and dox me. They could try to destroy me on social media. It's not worth. Used to be in many places that there was a. It wasn't necessarily a legal issue, but there was a perspective, a sense that you needed to ask permission, you need to get legal permission to record someone. Some television shows still do. I remember once I was on the old Montel Williams show and I had to sign like contract after contract, consent form after consent form saying, okay, I'm here on your show, I'm a guest on your show. I'm giving you the right to use my image on your show. That may have been too far, but now the idea that every single time you're anywhere in public, even if it's a restaurant, a cozy little back room of a restaurant, the idea that every single thing you do can become content for someone else's social media drama is disquieting to some. It's annoying. It's seems weird to a lot of people. Now, according to this survey, women feel disproportionately targeted. Immigrant students fear surveillance misuse. They feel like, okay, I may be a citizen, but maybe I have a family member who isn't. And I see people with cameras around. What if they start following me home? So it's having a chilling, chilling effect. Now technology profits from all of this because every second a Facebook set of glasses is on, it's capturing more data. Every image, every video clip can be digitized, mined. The data can be sold, chopped, sliced, diced, repackaged, and sold. More money for Facebook. But how does that benefit everyone else? Now, there are those who are in the laissez faire school of thought for society that basically say, hey, you're in the public, you're consenting to be recorded. That's part of the deal. If you go to the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Day parade and you're out in public and TV cameras come by and show pictures of the crowd, you can't complain because you're in public. Now, few people would say it's wrong or bad or awful for NBC to show a crowd shot during a parade. You're in a public place. There's an expectation that, okay, not only am I in a public place, but there's going to be cameras around. Similarly, if you are to attend. If you were to attend the super bowl or the World cup, you're in an arena and you know, okay, that cam could come on you at any point. Preferably if you're not like the kiss cam couple from the recent Coldplay concert. But it can happen to anyone at any time. Is this a good thing? Do we want to live in a world where anything you do can be made public? Now, I'll be the first to concede. Just because I like something and I'm comfortable with something doesn't mean it's normal or that you should like it. I'm one of these people, I guess you could say weird. I've actively sought out media attention for most of my life. I did my first on camera video news presentation more than half a century ago. When I say that, it makes me sound old. But in 1975 I did my junior high school newscast and I had a blast with it. I've continued with it. That doesn't mean it's right for you and for everyone. It just means I I. Maybe I'm aberrational and maybe I'm weird. A lot of people, arguably most people, want to live anonymous lives and don't want Mark Zuckerberg necessarily being able to capture them in a moment when they're eating a dessert and chocolate sauce is dribbling down their face and it's mocked and ridiculed on social media to the point of 3 million views. I can understand that society's going to have to grapple with that. There are clear cut pros and cons for both sides of this issue. I don't purport to tell you at this point exactly how our society should handle that. If I do get these glasses, I will report to you. I will try to be respectful of other people not wishing to be secretly or even openly video recorded. I would want to use it for, you know, my own family and things I'm doing, perhaps in nature, but we'll see. I would love to hear your opinions on this post, your comments in the chat, in the discussion below, on YouTube or any social media platform where you are watching or listening to this, there's lots more to come.

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Goldman Sachs general counsel Katherine Rumner resigned after Justice Department releases revealed extended emails and personal correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein. Documents showed what she once described as a friendship. Contradicting earlier claims that the relationship was strictly professional. She was mentioned in more than 10,000 released documents. In a statement, Ruemmler said, quote, my responsibility is to put Goldman Sachs interests first. The episode underscores how quickly reputational risk can escalate when private communications conflict with public narratives, especially at the highest levels of finance. Okay, this is a little bit different from what we typically see when it comes to executives. Superstars in Hollywood media academia see their careers destroyed by Jeffrey Epstein. This is a woman that's a bit unusual. And it's yet another testament to this guy. I don't mean to sound like I'm glamorizing it, but wow, is this guy world class connector, world class social climber to the point where other people saw him as a vehicle for climbing socially and professionally as well. Now, there's no allegation, there's no hint in any of these emails between this woman, Katherine Rumler and Jeffrey Epstein to suggest that she was somehow involved with molesting young girls. So let, let me be clear about that. No one's, no one's alleged that. There hasn't been any documentation of that. She's not certainly in the category of a Ghisan Maxwell as far as someone who should have opprobrium heaped on her by society. But there's just a lot of icky stuff. I mean, she's, she talks about, she's wearing all these gifts given to her by Jeffrey Epstein. The day she went for her interview at Goldman Sachs, there was all sorts of communication back and forth. There's her talking about her own social life, complaining about, oh, men don't want women my age. There were things of a very intimate nature and a lot of it happening after the time when Epstein had already been convicted as a pedophile. So it does raise questions about her judgment. Now, interesting, one of her titles at Goldman Sachs is to be she's in charge of reputation management. And here she is besmirching her own reputation and Goldman Sachs getting caught into it. Now, interestingly, this has been talked about for quite a while, and Goldman Sachs was saying, we're standing by her, we're standing by her, we're standing by her. And then apparently one more blip came out, like, bye, bye. At that point, she decided she couldn't take it anymore. So this is what's fascinating to me anyway, that we live in a time when some people. I won't mention his name, but he lives in the White House and he's orange, seems to have zero capacity for shame. Thankfully, that's not how the rest of the world yet lives. This woman, Catherine Rumler, apparently does have shame. She's ashamed of what she did, and she's ashamed at all the attention. Some people take the attitude, hey, people are talking about me. This is the greatest thing ever. Who cares if it's negative? All publicity is good. Most human beings aren't like that. And according to various reports in mainstream media, she basically cracked under the pressure. She simply can't take the constant pounding of the media questioning her judgments, questioning her ethics, questioning her morality of knowingly associating with this pedophile. It's not like someone said, okay, you were friends in junior high school with Jeffrey Epstein, and he hadn't committed any crimes yet, and you used to play basketball with him after school. I haven't seen anyone get caught up in any sort of controversy like that. It's typically there are these electronic paper trails of them saying wildly inappropriate, wildly nasty things. In her case, it wasn't particularly nasty, but it just showed an intimacy. And her referring to him as Uncle Jeffrey, like it's just this warm, loving relationship with someone who had already been convicted of crimes, abusing young girls. That's the big problem. Now, I often teach people in my media and crisis communications training courses and seminars and workshops how to handle yourself in a crisis. I got to tell you, this is a tough one. Katherine Remmler is not my client. And whoever is working with her, well, they've essentially thrown in the towel. You resign your position at Goldman Sachs, everyone can sort of say, okay, we got her scalp, we can go home now and focus on the next target, what she does next. I mean, she's only about 54 years old, so presumably she wants to work another 20, 30 years of her life. Where will she surface next? I don't know. Sometimes it's good to just be quiet and stay away for a while, let people forget. Sometimes you have to overtly make amends. Sometimes you go on Oprah, sometimes you write a whole book giving your perspective and apologizing. So I'm often asked, tj, what would be your advice as a crisis communications counselor? Not as an ethicist or a moralist, but as a crisis communications counselor to someone. Let's say it's a man who is involved through email, implicated through email with someone, not someone like Jeffrey Epstein. With Jeffrey Epstein, what would be your advice? Well, the standard play, and at this part I do agree with standard conventional wisdom, would be be the first one out. Get yourself every email you ever sent to him. Do a search in the database of any emails that have come out so far, put it all together in one place, highlight the most negative damning ones, hold a press conference and say, yes, this is all true. I use poor judgment. I wish I had done more. And perhaps the reality is you simply didn't know the person had been convicted of crimes. You met the person at a party, seemed interesting. You didn't know. Let's say that's the case. State that. Say you were wrong for not doing more due diligence. Say if at some point someone did whisper a rumor to you, say, I heard a rumor of something, I didn't take it as seriously as I should have. I didn't follow up. But if you're the first one out and you dump the absolute worst information right up front and you make it seem like you want media attention, you're courting media attention, and you have quotes ready where you explicitly say you were wrong, you explicitly apologize, Perhaps you're ready to make a $100,000 donation to a victims rights group, you are making amends. And then you tell people, I will stay here all day long, all night long, until every last question is answered. Then you don't look like you're hiding. What the media love is the chase. Oh, we got this scared animal cornered. Let's get them. Or let's. If you're there, here I am. Takes all the fun out of it. In the media, it's not as interesting to put you on the front page. You can't get front page after front page story the way you can. I give you Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, or Dr. Peter Attia if there's new dribs and drabs coming out. If it's, oh, this is bad, person deals with it, has a quote, and then two days later, more emails come out that make you look even worse. It's an ongoing story, so you want to figure out how can you get every possible negative damning thing out all at once. That way you take away the fun of the investigative journalistic pursuit of what's nasty about you. You then admit that it is in fact true. That takes away all the fun of the reporters saying, gotcha. Oh, yesterday you said this and now you say that, therefore you're lying. We got you again. You remove all that from the issue. So dump every negative thing out on your terms at a press conference Monday morning at 9am you're not trying to do this at 8pm On a Friday night. You make yourself available, you put it all out there, you apologize, you do something to make amends, and you let people know you are going to answer every single question and be a hundred percent accountable. If you do that, quite often, you can transcend that crisis and go on to another day. That is essentially the strategy that Senator John McCain did when he was caught up in the Keating 5 and the savings and loan crisis. That is precisely how he handled it. He put it out there. He admitted he was wrong, he apologized, he held a press conference, and he practically chased reporters into the parking lot wanting to continue talking about it to the point where they say, okay, enough already. We don't even want to talk about it anymore. That's the best way to handle a crisis. I won't kid you though. This is a tricky one. You could follow my exact strategy there. I don't think you'd still be the President of Harvard and you would still lose a lot of status, but could you still be a public force and go on to contribute in the world? Yeah, I think you could. But you'd have to follow that strategy exactly like what you heard.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Appeared on Theo Von's podcast and discussed his recovery from substance abuse. In explaining why he wasn't personally fearful of germs during the pandemic, he said, quote, I'm not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats. And I know this disease will kill me if I don't treat it, which means for me, going to meetings every day. He added, for me it was survival. He's talking about why he was so committed to recovery program to get over his various addictions. The comments were delivered casually in a discussion about recovery. But because Kennedy oversees federal public health policy, they've drawn attention and scrutiny. When the nation's top health official speaks about germs, even in anecdote, the public listens carefully. I gotta tell you that this is from a reporter's standpoint, from a media standpoint, this is the perfect soundbite. It doesn't get much better than that to hear a cabinet official saying, I'm not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats. Who does that? I guess if you have a lot of experience with addicts, I guess anything goes. But let me analyze it first from a pure structural media sound bite construction standpoint. I'm not scared of a germ. It's emotion, it's personal. That makes it quotable. I used to snort cocaine. Well, you don't hear many people talk about that in public in general, but especially when they are high ranking political officials in a White House administration. But it gets worse. Off of toilet seats. That's visual, it's disgusting, it's vivid, it's an example. So you've got basically half a dozen sound bites there. Extreme, emotional, action oriented emotion, vivid examples. So it's soundbite gold from a reporter standpoint. Look, I'm not saying someone had a drug problem at some point in their career, therefore they should never hold public office or be given authority. Sometimes that can make them a greater authority. But this Robert Kennedy guy who seems to not really care about science, he's always debunking some mainstream medical theory. And do we really want to take advice from a guy where all we really know about him is three things. He has a worm in his head, by his own admission, that is eaten part of his brain. He was a heroin addict, among other things, and he liked to snort cocaine off of toilet seats. Oh, and he's famous because he had a famous father. I mean, that's all we really know about this guy. And he's the guy telling the rest of the world how to have healthy life, setting policy. So it's yet another reminder that we live in bizarre times. Now you've heard me and other commentators say, wow, if Obama had said this, talking about almost anything that has come out of the White House in the last year, he would have been impeached instantly. And yet it's instantly forgotten because there's 10 other things more extreme that have come out in the last hour. We live in that world. So given that the fact that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Doesn't lose his top health post for something like this is not surprising at all. In fact, there have been almost no firings of high ranking officials in this current administration in the last 14 months. It's been remarkably stable from that standpoint. But it does make you wonder and question the judgment of all the people in the world, of all the medical doctors, of all the researchers who could be in charge of health for America to oversee thousands and thousands of scientists, public health officials. Is this really the best person? Is this the best and brightest? Someone who isn't worried about germs because he used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats? Well, maybe you got lucky. Maybe you've got some superhuman immunity, but that's not really transferable to the rest of us. I'd feel much more comfortable if we had some people overseeing the health care for Americans who did have a concern with germs, who did respect germ theory and the theory of vaccines being effective and the theory that science is something that doesn't know everything it wants, but it evolves because there's self correcting mechanisms in it. And that when everyone does their own research and they start parroting whatever tiktoker or social influencer as the hottest costume or hottest body that can lead to a lot of health problems. I'm T.J. walker. I want to thank you for spending time with me today. I hope you have a great weekend. I'll be back again with you live on Monday. We're here five days a week, Monday through Friday, typically right here on Filtered with TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me. Have a great weekend.