Today we discuss childhood, fitness, and self-defense; the through-line is freedom. First up: Illinois has become the first state in the Union to mandate mental health screening for children in grades 3 – 12, so that conditions from trauma to anxiety can be detected early. How mandatory will these screenings be? How confidential? What is anxiety, and why are children better off learning to experience and solve their own anxiety, than to be coddled at every turn? We argue that anxiety—like pain, and sadness—are signals from your brain and body that should be listened to rather than erased. Also: childhood is a time of exploration, of mixing reality with fantasy, and should not be a time when adults’ fantasies are imposed on children. Then: the New York Times cannot abide that anything that RFK Jr. does or says makes sense. Finally: do people have the right to defend themselves inside their own homes? Have we forgotten habeas corpus? Are the foundations of democracy coming apart at the seams?
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Mentioned in this episode:
Governor Pritzker signs bill mandating mental health checks for schoolkids: https://news.wttw.com/2025/07/31/pritzker-signs-legislation-implement-universal-mental-health-screenings-illinois-schools
Illinois Bill 1560: https://trackbill.com/bill/illinois-senate-bill-1560-mental-hlth-kids-beacon/2645551/
NYT on the fitness challenge of Kennedy and Hegseth: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/style/hegseth-rfk-jr-fitness-challenge.html
Breaking and entering report from the Kawartha Lakes Police Service: https://kawarthalakespolice.com/media-releases/media-release-august-18-2025-break-and-enter-assault
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Holding Screen
00:06:14 August is Ending, School is Starting
00:18:32 Illinois Mandates Mental Health Screening for Children
01:03:14 The New York Times on the Pete and Bobby Challenge
01:08:52 Why Are Rights Being Chipped Away in the West?
We have "cartesian blinders being put on us so that we are trying to make sense out of scraps of information and hints." - @bretweinstein
WEINSTEIN: I mean, even if you have your villains who are engaged in the behavior that motivated this war in Iran, even if that's the story, presumably most of the people in the path of these ferocious bombings that he is describing are not deserving of going back to the Stone Age.
In fact, I distinctly remember him telling us that part of what we were up to was liberating the people of Iran from their tyrannical regime.
So if it's the tyrannical regime that justifies the ferocious bombing, then it's a tragedy that other people are going to be sent back to the Stone Ages with them. Right?
HEYING: It's it's not a narrative. It's an incoherent set of talking points.
WEINSTEIN: Yeah, it's a kind of cheerleading that is completely inappropriate from the perspective of the president.
Bret Weinstein discusses the Trump administrations "back to the stone age" recent remarks in the latest episode of The Evolutionary Lens, Episode 320 "Are we back in the stone age?" on DarkHorse.
Bret Weinstein explains, "If you stop businesses from starting here, and if you drive people so that they move elsewhere—even though it's difficult to do—then the point is the tax base dries up, which then forces you to become even more predatory for the people who stayed.
And that's really the thing, right? They're setting themselves up so that they have to go after more and more people, because the people who are starting new businesses are not going to do it here."
