Dad Saves America

French Riots and Campus Degeneracy: Is the West Too Far Gone?

John Papola — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 22:50:31 GMT

France is still on fire. A town hall nearly 200 years old has burned to the ground, and police are now drawing the line at the Louvre. Back home, the Cornell 7 case has become a Rorschach test for what’s left of feminism. This week, I’m responding to your comments on both.

From Paris to Cornell, the West has the same disease: a culture too permissive to judge anything, institutions no one can trust, and a generation raised without shame.

Does the West still have the backbone to say “No” to our spiritual decline?

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Bryan Callen: "The Experts" Are Paid to Manufacture Truth

John Papola — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 22:19:42 GMT

I sat down with comedian Bryan Callen, who directed and stars in our new comedy pilot, “The Experts,” to discuss why outrage pays better than nuance, how he found his way to God, and why boys need resistance to grow into men.

Watch “The Experts” pilot episode: https://youtu.be/dc1B5aKNmKw

We get into:

What it was like directing for the first time
The ruthless capitalism of Hollywood
What happens to masculinity when drones replace warriors
Why having all the facts on our phones doesn’t help us find the truth
The criticism of Joe Rogan over the 2024 election
Making sense of the world in 2026

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 971-571-6444 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/dad - *Paid partnership

Take control of your water quality today. Head to https://covepure.com/DAD and you’ll get $250 off your CovePure water filtration system for a limited time.

Follow Bryan Callen on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/bryancallen

Watch Bryan on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BryanCallenComedy

Outline:

[0:00] “The Experts” pilot

[2:03] Religion should mean sacrifice

[5:59] Why do some societies work and others don’t?

[11:20] Why every conspiracy theory blames the Jews

[16:30] Why is a generation going all in on communism?

[23:44] Hollywood is as capitalist as it gets

[28:37] The world went crazy

[31:57] Masculinity became a liability

[39:51] Facts are not the same thing as truth

[47:21] What losing everything taught him about faith

[58:26] Human beings need resistance

[1:09:27] Can AI write comedy?

[1:12:17] The creative valley of darkness

[1:16:48] Does suffering have meaning?

[1:20:46] You can’t outrun aging

[1:24:53] Joe Rogan’s role in Trump’s reelection

[1:32:32] Will the world ever “go back to normal’?

[1:41:20] Directing a TV show for the first time

[1:44:47] How to educate yourself outside of school

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The Wall Around the Waiting Room

John Papola — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 23:02:01 GMT

You don’t build a wall around a paradise, at least not to keep people in. East Germany put up the Berlin Wall in 1961 because its own people were fleeing by the millions, and the only way to keep them was concrete, barbed wire, and guards with orders to shoot.

The East Berliners knew exactly what they’d been kept from, which is why the second that wall came down, they were rushing to buy groceries. They knew very well what communist grocery stores were like and were ready to finally enjoy free market abundance on the other side of the wall.

A system people would choose doesn’t need a wall. A system that can’t satisfy people eventually has to stop them from leaving. Remember that, because it’s the whole story of government healthcare.

“All We Want Is Healthcare”

The people who want the government to monopolize healthcare have learned not to lead with communism. They couch the underlying evil in warm and fuzzy terms. They just want to guarantee everyone healthcare, and they definitely don’t hate America… even while castigating America as backwards and cruel for “denying people healthcare.”

Nobody is against people getting care. The question is whether we accept a government monopoly.

Having monopolized K-12 education and wrecked it, they now need a total, single-payer monopoly of the healthcare system too. They practically have it now. Most of the problems with US healthcare are the fault of the government controlling, through various mechanisms, 84% of healthcare spending. But that’s not good enough. You need to build that wall. You need to keep people in. You need to ban competition. And so it’s time for Medicare for All.

When Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the rest of the gang say “Medicare for All,” they don’t just mean expanding Medicare in its current form. Sanders’s own bill would replace almost all private health insurance with one government plan. One plan, one payer, no way out.

We know what that vision looks like because we have it to the north, and it’s actually also called Medicare. The Canadian single-payer system is what the progressive left wants us to emulate, so let’s give it its due.

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Canada does have relatively cheaper drug prices than the US. Of course, that’s because we invent and pay for the development of most new drugs. Reproducing drugs that already exist and are proven to work is basically free, so the rest of the world replicates them generically for nothing.

If you want medicines to keep being invented, somebody has to pay full price, and that somebody is America. You can’t scale this to include America without breaking it for literally everyone.

Canada also has long waiting times. According to a 2016 Commonwealth Fund survey, wait times for specialists of two months or longer are five times as common in Canada as in the US. For elective surgery, wait times of four months or longer are also five times as common. At least along those metrics, the Canadian system is literally five times worse.

In the US, we spend 18% of GDP on healthcare, government and private combined. Spending 18% of your income to preserve your health doesn’t strike me as being completely crazy as long as you’re getting your money’s worth, not that I’d say our system is nearly as efficient as it should be.

But in Canada, the “getting your money’s worth” is entirely out of your hands. If the system covers a treatment, you generally can’t buy it privately. For Canadians, the only unforgivable sin is “two-tier medicine.” Even if you can afford to pay for private care without waiting in line, you’re denied that option. Their public healthcare sucks, so the solution is to trap you in the system. That’s East Berlin economics. Canada is a poorer society that gets worse healthcare overall, but as long as it’s equally bad, it’s good. Envy is a virtue.

The Wall Goes Up

This is what single-payer really means. When the government pays, when it has the power to deliver everything, it has the power to take everything away.

Canada legalized medical assistance in dying, MAID, in 2016. In 2024, 16,499 people were killed by doctors in the Canadian healthcare system, about one in every twenty deaths in the country. That’s more than the 15,364 Americans killed in gun homicides that year, and that’s not per capita. It’s in raw numbers, from a country with less than an eighth of our population. The MAID program started with elderly, terminal patients. It hasn’t stayed there. Since 2021, you don’t have to be dying to qualify, and the country has since made moves to expand the program to people suffering solely from mental illness.

Many Canadians don’t realize that for eligible patients, doctors are expected to suggest death as a “treatment option.” This policy is extreme even among the countries with legal euthanasia, where that conduct is not even legal, never mind encouraged.

Think about the incentive. A system that carries the bill for your care also keeps the savings from your death. That doesn’t take a conspiracy. It only takes a bureaucracy with the power to say no and a budget that’s better balanced when it does.

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One story about Canada’s MAID program went viral last month. A Canadian man said that three years ago, when his wife was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer, the system left her with no hope and mailed her a pamphlet on MAID. At the last minute, they fled to Texas. Today she’s hiking two hours up a mountain peak while still in treatment. Her doctors here encourage her to live her life, not end it.

Advocates for MAID call it “medical care.” The same people often talk about abortion the same way. Killing is not care.

This is the inherent nature of utopian progressivism. The vision of utopia is set forth. Of course, it’s impossible, so you have to force it. Everything that is not mandated is forbidden. And what does it result in? Horror.

There’s one reason why the state takes control of healthcare. It’s not equity, justice, equality, or whatever other buzzword you want to insert here. It’s to control the population at its point of maximum vulnerability. The people selling you warm and fuzzy “free” healthcare don’t actually care about care. It is always and everywhere, without exception, about control. If you rely on me for your health, I have control over you.

The Cornell 7 Scandal Exposed the Biggest Lie of Feminism

John Papola — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:10:00 GMT

Hey there friends! Below are some resources I referenced in preparation for this week’s video commentary. Enjoy!

Victor Davis Hanson: The Left REALLY Hates the Middle Class

John Papola — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 23:03:24 GMT

I sat down with Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of the “The Counterrevolution”. Victor is a Stanford Ph.D. who still lives on his family’s Central Valley farm that five generations of Hansons have called home, giving him a rare view of both the academic elite and the working Americans they look down on.

We get into:

Trump’s counterrevolution against 50 years of progressive rule
Why America still dominates the world economy
The 2016 dinner where Peter Thiel predicted Trump’s win
Why the fall of Iran’s regime could be another Berlin Wall moment
How the DSA took over the Democratic Party
The battle between the credentialed class and middle America

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 971-571-6444 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/dad - *Paid partnership

Follow Victor Davis Hanson on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/VDHanson?s=20

Watch Victor’s show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273

Purchase a copy of “The Counterrevolution”: https://a.co/d/0aP3kpUP

Outline:

[0:00] What is Trump’s counterrevolution?

[9:18] Obama created a new Marxist racial binary

[15:44] Trump is a nationalist, not an ideologue

[24:12] The tragedy of Canada

[30:04] Mexican-Americans pay the price for illegal immigration

[36:51] Is AI the new Manhattan Project?

[43:07] Silicon Valley thought we were all yokels

[52:12] Middle class solidarity vs racial politics

[55:57] Why did Trump go to war with Iran?

[1:05:15] The Middle East is being remade

[1:12:15] Mossadegh, the Shah, and the Iranian Revolution

[1:20:08] The Democratic Party’s Jacobin takeover

[1:32:08] Has college failed the rising generation?

[1:43:32] Never be intimidated by credentials

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Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/p-DKvccyAEw

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Parents Are Not the Problem

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 23:44:37 GMT

I was a supervisor at school-based counseling programs for ten years. It feels strange for me to say, but I would not allow my child to see a school counselor in 2026.

As a licensed therapist, my goal is to help inform and empower parents so they can get the best mental health care for their children. School counselors are notorious for shutting parents out because they aren’t physically present to manage their child’s care, but the problem isn’t limited to schools.

In fact, child therapists across the board are increasingly shutting parents out. In some instances, this is simply due to laziness. Talking to parents is a lot more work. However, there’s also a push to divide children from their families. Many therapists believe that children know themselves in every context and adults should “let them lead.” They often view families with traditional values as ignorant, and so they push their own worldview onto their young clients without consulting the family.

If what I just described doesn’t sit well with you, I suggest you stay diligently involved with your child’s counseling to ensure your values are reflected. Here are the ten most important reasons why.

The Long Haul

You are your child’s parent for life. Your child’s therapist and mental health team are only in their lives temporarily. An inexperienced therapist may forget this. She may feel she “understands” your child better and try to shut you out. This is no excuse. If a therapist reacts this way when you ask to be involved, remind her that it’s you and your family who your child needs to communicate with and live with.

Your Child’s History

It’s impossible for a therapist to do an effective assessment of your child without talking to the family. You must be involved for the therapist to understand what she is treating. A child will not know pertinent health information from when he or she was a baby. A child is not likely to know important history about extended family or previous generations. If a therapist doesn’t want medical and family history from you, she is not doing her job effectively.

Supporting the Family System

It has long been understood that treating the adults in the family has a direct impact on the children. However, in recent years, this idea has been less emphasized in training. Often parents hope a therapist will “fix” their child, but this is nearly impossible if a parent’s stressors are part of the problem. The family is best seen as an interconnected system. If a therapist is treating a child, she is treating the family too.

Parent-Child Communication

One of the most common reasons for childhood struggles is parent-child communication. This is especially true with adolescents. If communication is one of the main reasons for psychological issues, it must be addressed with family therapy and/or collaboration with the parent. Without collaboration, progress is unlikely.

Getting the Full Story

I’m not sure if it’s ever feasible to take a child’s report at face value. A child may hide information or de-emphasize it. The best therapeutic work requires collaboration with as many important adults in that child’s life as possible to get all sides of the story. An unskilled therapist may align with the child without getting all of the facts and thereby reinforce problems.

Future Emergencies

The worst time for a therapist to first meet a parent is during a crisis. It’s best to establish rapport ahead of time so you can work together to get through the crisis as smoothly as possible. Without that prior relationship and trust, handling a crisis is much more difficult.

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Understanding Your Values

One way to get to know a client is to get to know their family’s culture and values. A therapist who skips this step is more likely to impose her own values onto your family. By working with you, the parents, the therapist will learn about your values and work with your family accordingly.

Connecting Families

Unfortunately, too many therapists are dividing families rather than helping them build stronger bonds. This may be intentional or unintentional, but either way, it’s not quality therapy. This is a general problem in the field, but it’s become especially common around gender issues. Ideological therapists will reinforce the idea that a parent is a “bigot” if they do not agree with affirming a new gender identity. This is unacceptable.

Your Insights Matter

Your child’s therapist may see your child for an hour a week. You see your child every day. You must stay involved so you can report on progress and setbacks as they happen. When a therapist talks with you regularly, she is also getting to know you, including your strengths and weaknesses, and this insight helps her understand what needs to be treated.

Accountability

Parents can help reinforce therapeutic goals, maintain appropriate boundaries, and support consistent expectations outside the therapy office. Parents are part of the solution, not the problem, and the therapist should be working together with them to support the child.

If your child’s therapist didn’t involve you with the assessment and continues to shut you out in treatment, this therapist is not doing his/her job appropriately.

In summary, parents should be active participants in their minor child’s mental health treatment, not sidelined from the process. A therapist needs the family’s history, perspective, values, and ongoing observations to understand the child’s struggles and provide effective care. You don’t need to be in the room for every session, but weekly or bi-weekly check-ins are appropriate and necessary. Your minor child does not have the right to “confidentiality.” It’s true that a degree of privacy is age-appropriate for adolescents, but you should still understand the goals in therapy, receive updates on progress, and be consulted about your observations and concerns.

Therapy should not divide families or impose a clinician’s personal worldview. It should help children and families understand their challenges and work toward healthier outcomes together. Regular communication and meaningful parental involvement are essential parts of responsible care.

France’s "Mostly Peaceful Jihad” Threatens the Whole Christian West

John Papola — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 23:50:15 GMT

Hey there friends! Below are some resources I referenced in preparation for this week’s video commentary. Enjoy!

How White Guilt Became the Most Powerful Weapon in Politics - Eli & Shelby Steele

John Papola — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 22:32:59 GMT

I sat down with Shelby Steele, an author and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and his son Eli Steele, the filmmaker behind “What Killed Michael Brown?” Together, they’ve produced a new documentary, “White Guilt,” that brings Shelby’s 2006 book into the present political climate. Shelby has lived the whole story, from segregation to Black Power militancy to now decades as a fearless dissenter on race.

We get into:

What white guilt really is, and why it became a source of black power
How the left used collective guilt to claim moral innocence
Shelby’s journey from black radicalism to conservatism
How American racial politics were grafted onto the Israel-Palestine conflict
Eldridge Cleaver’s transformation from Black Panther to Reagan voter
Why BLM denies the racial progress of the past 60 years
Why courage is the only way past racial identity politics

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 971-571-6444 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/dad - *Paid partnership

Take control of your water quality today. Head to https://covepure.com/DAD and you’ll get $250 off your CovePure water filtration system for a limited time.

Follow Eli Steele on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/Hebro_Steele?s=20

Watch the trailer for “White Guilt”: https://youtu.be/5Pg_bJJMsAU?si=IEGFrMQgE-eZsKPv

Check out Shelby Steele’s books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B000APMQK2?ingress=0&visitId=79e14454-f6e3-4082-8099-6ced90b8df71&ref_=aufs_ap_ahdr_dsk_ab&ccs_id=6508d6f9-e2e2-438f-a4d0-2a7a00b62cde

Outline:

[0:00] What is white guilt?

[12:59] The symbiosis of black power and white guilt

[16:53] How the third world coopted black activism

[25:59] Race isn’t a black-and-white issue

[33:25] Black radicalism and the breakdown of the family

[48:30] Western man vs anti-Western man

[55:26] Why are black Americans so politically unified?

[1:03:46] BLM pretends there’s been no progress since 1965

[1:11:04] Eldridge Cleaver’s path from Black Panther to conservative

[1;27:13] How YouTube is spreading black conservatism

[1:33:58] Black America vs African perspectives on race

[1:40:06] How do we move past white guilt?

[1:49:18] We need to learn to laugh things off

[1:55:38] Children need a father to wrestle with

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Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8rGYha-Dce4

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AI Doesn't Need Regulators. It Needs Underwriters.

John Papola — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:00:48 GMT

Last Tuesday, I wrote about the ideology driving the AI doomers. I tried my best to take their fears seriously, since I share some of them myself. Even if you haven’t read that one yet, you’ll probably be unsurprised to learn that I landed where I usually land: a decentralized, competitive market is the only safe path. Centralized “solutions” lead to tyranny every single time.

To those of you worried about AI, that might sound more like blind optimism than a real solution. It’s one thing to say the market will handle it, and another to actually show how.

Coincidentally, the very day I published that essay, a more fleshed-out answer was being drafted at the White House. The Accord on Super Intelligence, signed by President Trump, the CEOs of Anthropic, Google, Meta, and Nvidia, the president of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, laid out a framework for “self-policing” within the industry.

The Not-So Voluntary Accord

On Friday’s episode of the All-In podcast, former White House AI czar David Sacks broke down what exactly went down during last week’s AI summit. As he reported, Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang proposed the four-part framework that the group ended up voluntarily signing onto.

First, each company will establish “robust internal controls” regarding AI safety. Second, an internal team will oversee the implementation of those controls. Third, an “independent external auditor” will validate their internal control systems. Finally, an “independent committee of the board of directors” will receive and act on reports from the auditors.

Still, this might sound to you like an overly complicated way of saying, “Don’t worry. We promise we won’t do anything bad.” But, as Sacks explained on the show, signing onto an agreement like this comes with real consequences. The FTC and the SEC have “the ability and the responsibility to enforce the public commitments of these companies.” If they don’t follow through on the terms of the agreement, each board risks losing its Directors and Officers liability insurance, opening them up to all sorts of problems when something goes wrong.

President Trump described the Accord as “morally binding” when asked about enforcement, but frankly he was underselling how effective this approach could be. I’m sure there are lots of lawyers ready to pounce if any of these companies drop the ball. The stakes are high for everyone involved.

We’ve Done This Before

If an insurance policy doing the work of a regulator sounds like a clever new idea, it isn’t. It’s how America has kept dangerous new technology in check for more than a century.

The progressive story about safety goes something like this. Left alone, companies race to the bottom and cut every corner for profit until their misdeeds are exposed and the government steps in to save us.

That story ignores the actual history. In 1893, MIT-educated electrical engineer William Henry Merrill was tasked with inspecting the electrical installations at the Chicago World’s Fair for fire risk on behalf of the Chicago Fire Underwriters’ Association. The following year, he opened a lab to test the safety of electrical products and fire protection equipment.

In 1906, the lab started labeling products that passed its tests. You’ve almost certainly seen it. Check your refrigerator or your microwave and you’ll probably find two letters in a circle: UL, for Underwriters Laboratories. The underwriters in question are insurance underwriters. If you’re going to insure against risk, you need to actually know what the risks are. UL provides that information.

Nobody passed a law to make any of this happen. The people who would pay for the fires had every reason to prevent them. Manufacturers wanted the label because customers and insurers trusted it, and insurers trusted it because UL’s entire business depended on never rubber-stamping junk.

It’s not a theory. It’s not wishful thinking. It’s a chain of incentives to not kill your customers or burn down their homes that’s doing the work.

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Problem Solved?

UL isn’t just a historical model for free-market AI regulation. It’s already on the case. In 2025, UL Solutions, the for-profit arm of the original lab, launched its first AI safety certification.

Progressives insist that the only way to hold a company accountable is with government force. They dismiss market discipline as “self-regulation.” Of course, President Trump didn’t do himself or AI companies any favors by referring to the Accord as “self-policing,” but that doesn’t change reality.

Mr. President: Next time you host a summit on AI safety, invite UL too. Maybe the left will learn a thing or two about markets.

Trump's Going All-In on AI. Will His Midterm Gamble Pay Off?

John Papola — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:38:35 GMT

Hey there friends! Below are some resources I referenced in preparation for this week’s video commentary. Enjoy!

Bad Therapy, Gender, and Lindsay Clancy Psychosis - Andrew Hartz, Ph.D.

John Papola — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 22:35:19 GMT

I sat down with Andrew Hartz, a practicing clinical psychologist and the founder of the Open Therapy Institute. His organization is working to filter out the political bias that has become endemic in mental health care and connect patients with therapists they can trust.

We get into:

The woke insanity inside the American Psychological Association
How to find a therapist who will actually help you
Why disability benefits prove the role of agency in mental health
What the Lindsay Clancy case revealed about the legal system
Mass formation psychosis and social media addiction
Why our culture overlooks male strengths, and what that’s doing to boys
The rush to affirm gender dysphoria without evidence

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 971-571-6444 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/dad - *Paid partnership

Follow Andrew Hartz on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/Hartz_PhD?s=20

Learn more about the Open Therapy Institute:

https://www.opentherapyinstitute.org/

Outline:

[0:00] Therapy went insanely woke

[14:14 14:18] Psychology vs psychiatry vs therapy

[15:48 5:52] How to get the most out of therapy

[25:45 25:49] Can we trust the data behind therapy?

[34:14] What does trauma really mean?

[40:31] Mortality and existential anxiety

[45:24] Agency is central to mental health

[57:56] We’re accommodating bad behavior

[59:44] Unconscious bias and microaggressions

[1:03:06] Did women ruin psychology?

[1:08:58] Lindsay Clancy’s insanity defense

[1:19:32] Has psychosis become a legal loophole?

[1:31:38] Is neuroscience useful for psychology?

[1:33:12] Mass formation psychosis and social media

[1:44:15] Should women worry about postpartum psychosis?

[1:46:03] We’ve lost the ability to talk about men positively

[1:58:23] Why young men turn to Andrew Tate

[2:08:53] The rise in narcissism throughout our culture

[2:11:43] What does it mean to be “mentally healthy”?

[2:15:29] The psychology of homosexuality and gender dysphoria

[2:33:17] Conservatives can’t give up on institutions

[2:47:04] America needs the best of psychology right now

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store:

https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TEphiy46LSM

Make a tax-deductible donation to Dad Saves America: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://secure.anedot.com/emergent-order-foundation/dad-website?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Why the People Building AI Think It Might Kill Us All

John Papola — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:02:41 GMT

Three weeks ago, AI researcher Jacob Coxon announced in an X thread that he’d quit his job at Anthropic because he thinks Anthropic and OpenAI, where he’s also worked, might be building the machine that ends humanity. His former Anthropic colleague, Evan Hubinger, backed him up on X, saying that he believes that there’s a greater than 10% chance of the doom scenario becoming reality in the next decade. Two days later, Anthropic put out a 154-page report on the dangerous ways its models are already being used.

Whether or not Coxon is correct, he’s not the first AI-insider to voice these concerns. Elon Musk was saying the same thing over a decade ago, and now he runs one of the major players in the industry. Something very weird is going on in AI, especially at Anthropic, but it might not be about the technology.

Here are the three questions we need to answer:

Do the whistleblowers really believe what they’re saying?
If so, why do they believe this?
Are they right?

Do They Really Believe What They’re Saying?

Jacob Coxon probably means what he says. At just 27 years old, he walked away from a career in the most important industry today, leaving behind not just a job but also his equity stake in Anthropic not long before his shares would have vested.

There are some odd details about how this played out, with the Wall Street Journal dropping an exclusive with him just before he posted his now-viral X thread. This was a thought-out PR strategy, not an impulsive resignation announcement, but none of that changes the basic fact that he seems to have paid a real price to push his AI doom narrative.

While doing damage control in an interview with Anderson Cooper, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei both claimed to mostly agree with what Coxon had said while also distancing himself from his own past reliance on “unconditional probabilities” when discussing the chance of the doom scenario. In other words, he was happy to spread fear with sciencey-sounding but still unscientific predictions when it served his interests, but now that it’s backfired, he’s seen the light.

One plausible explanation for Dario’s past fearmongering is good old regulatory capture. When you’re one of the biggest players in your industry, that’s the perfect time to lock out your future competition. However, now that AI regulation is gaining momentum, Dario may feel that he’s lost control of a monster he helped create. Bernie Sanders is pushing for a complete halt on frontier AI development, which would go further than just locking out competition and could start chipping away at Anthropic’s own bottom line. So now Dario wants to rein in some of the more hyperbolic language around AI safety.

Why Do They Believe This?

Whether or not the fear is justified, the culture at Anthropic was always bound to create a Jacob Coxon. Anthropic was founded by a group of former OpenAI employees who, not unlike Coxon, felt like the company didn’t take safety seriously enough. Caution when dealing with technology whose potential capabilities are still unknown is reasonable enough, but there’s an ideological component as well, and that’s where things get weird.

The AI safety crowd is dominated by a group of people who call themselves “effective altruists.” Their worldview is pretty straightforward: “Figure out how to do the most good, and then do it.”

Effective altruism is a form of extreme utilitarianism that attempts to optimize for not just all living people, but also all future generations. Rather than rely on localized knowledge to decide how to do good in the world, which would lead you to “unfairly” prioritize the people around you, effective altruism aims for maximum universal impact.

The problem is, in order to do that, you’d need to actually know what is going on everywhere right now and have the ability to reliably predict the future. You see how this is starting to sound like communist central planning, just with better branding?

Possibly the most famous, or infamous, effective altruist is none other than convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. That isn’t to say that the movement should be judged guilty by association, but his involvement actually is relevant. He made risky, and illegal, bets with other people’s money because he’d run the numbers and the probabilities were in his favor, or so he thought. Of course, he rationalized his behavior with the effective altruist logic that, if he made more money, he’d have more money to donate to important causes. Maybe he really meant that or maybe it was a lie, but either way, it led him to ruin.

That’s exactly how the effective altruists think about AI safety. If there’s even a small chance of an AI apocalypse, the downside isn’t just the generation that’s wiped out. It’s the potentially infinite generations of future humans that otherwise would have followed. Therefore, they can justify just about any action or policy if it might improve our odds of survival.

These are the waters Jacob Coxon is swimming in. If this results in more caution as frontier AI labs develop the most powerful technology in human history, then that’s not so bad. But if it means that ideologues with no sense of the limits of their own knowledge get to radically change our society “for our own good,” then I have some concerns.

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Are They Right?

Even if effective altruism is a dangerous ideology, that doesn’t prove the AI doomers wrong. Any powerful tool in the wrong hands can be a big problem. The question is, do we have to worry about an AI taking matters into its own hands?

Look at the most recent incident people are pointing to. An OpenAI model breached Hugging Face, a site that hosts open source models. That sure sounds like a machine going rogue. In reality, the model did exactly what it was built and instructed to do: test its own hacking capability. It succeeded.

When people worry about AI creating some kind of super-virus and unleashing it on the world, they should take a step back and remember that humans (probably) already did that. It’s called COVID-19. Again, powerful tools in the wrong hands are extremely dangerous, but that doesn’t make AI some totally unprecedented threat.

So here’s where I land, even granting the potential risks. The only way to protect ourselves is with open-source models that we can run from our local computers, and there’s a precedent for this.

Before the internet, our financial lives relied on cash and checks. Then along came e-commerce. And then immediately after came cyber attacks, with organized mafias all around the world trying to get your bank account. Not just Nigerian princes defrauding your grandmother, but oligarch-backed Russian mobsters trying to rob Bank of America. The solution was to embrace the arms race, with companies protecting themselves from cyber attack using the very same tools as the cyber attackers.

I believe that decentralized competitive power is literally the only path. The centralized government path leads to tyranny every single time.

Big-Government Progressivism Is a Su*cide Pact

John Papola — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 01:07:49 GMT

Hey there friends! Below are some resources I referenced in preparation for this week’s video commentary. Enjoy!

Ben Slivka Predicted the Internet Era. He Doesn't Buy the Hype About AI.

John Papola — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 22:46:05 GMT

I sat down with Ben Slivka, an early Microsoft executive who led the team that built Internet Explorer, served 20 years on Northwestern University’s Board of Trustees, and has spent decades since as an angel investor across biotech, space, and software startups.

We get into:

How cowardice became the norm in university leadership
Why the public school model fails so many students
His 1995 Microsoft memo that correctly predicted the internet revolution
The truth about the Microsoft antitrust case and why “monopoly” is a misleading term
Why he believes that we’re in a massive AI bubble
His investment in Stoke Space, SpaceX’s real competitor for reusable rockets
What he calls the “four horsemen of the woke apocalypse”
America’s historically unprecedented capacity for innovation

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 971-571-6444 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/dad - *Paid partnership

Follow Ben Slivka on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/BenSlivka?s=20

Learn more about Ben’s work: https://benslivka.com/

Outline:

[0:00] What’s going on with universities?

[15:40] Cowards are running the show

[29:27] Flexible vs. rigid approaches to schooling

[39:15] Teachers’ unions want to destroy good schools

[42:52] The “expert class” is anti-human and anti-reality

[58:05] Building Internet Explorer

[1:06:49] The reality of anti-trust law and “monopolies”

[1:13:21] Is AI a miracle, a bubble, or a real threat?

[1:31:18] Space travel is about to get a lot cheaper

[1:39:42] We’ve lost historical perspective in our lives

[1:55:30] Can we afford to have sympathy for the other side?

[2:04:49] Universities have abandoned their purpose

[2:11:47] We know less about biology than we think

[2:14:03] Can Western civilization work without religion?

[2:20:45] Expose your kids to the real world

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Your Child Just Declared They’re Trans. Ask These Questions First.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 23:01:23 GMT

When a child says they are transgender, parents can feel as though the ground has shifted beneath them. They may be afraid to ask questions, worried that expressing concern will damage the relationship or drive their child further away. But silence and immediate affirmation are not the only options. Parents can listen, remain compassionate, and keep the lines of communication open without abandoning their questions or their understanding of reality. This article is adapted from my book, A Practical Response to Gender Distress: Tips and Tools for Families, and is based on my experience as a licensed therapist.

Below you will find recommended questions which can spur your own ideas, but please use your judgment as every child and family is different. No one can have a “script” of the perfect thing to say or ask. Don’t expect to be able to ask these questions in one sitting, but in small doses over time. Remember to come from a place of compassion with an open and curious tone. Your child is hurting, and this is how she/he is expressing it. Keep in mind that when a young person takes on a new gender identity, it is rarely about gender but rather other underlying issues. My goal is to help parents look beyond the label, explore what their child may be experiencing, and stay connected through a difficult and confusing time.

What does “trans” mean to you?

Being “trans” currently has so many meanings and seems to be open-ended on purpose. It also continues to change. What does your child understand “trans” to mean? This may help you know your child better and help your child recognize that their ideas are incoherent. It is likely your child will not be able to articulate it or say something general like, “I just am.” You are prompting them to think about it more because you really want to understand. The goal would be to better understand your child, while simultaneously helping them realize they aren’t thinking rationally. (Be patient, this is not likely to happen quickly.)

What makes you believe that you are a different gender?

Listen to the answer and ask open-ended follow-up questions without being confrontational. Keep in mind that they may be parroting what they saw online or heard from their friends, so draw from what you know of your child and their history and try to ask specific individual questions. Validate some of the real feelings they express such as not feeling comfortable as a girl or boy, not fitting into stereotypes, hating their body, fear of sex, fear of puberty, or not getting along well with other girls or boys. You can share a story from your adolescence that is relatable. Be open and listen, and help your child not catastrophize the changes around puberty. It’s also possible that this question will shut down the conversation because your child isn’t ready to face the inconsistent ideas this question brings up.

When did you start having these feelings?

Ask them if they can relate their feelings to any specific incidents. It is likely that influence from friends, school, and social media played a part, but see if you can get your child to personalize their reasons. Sometimes learning when the feelings started can help connect “dysphoric” feelings to another distressing event such as a divorce, a sexual assault, a move, a painful loss, or exposure to graphic porn.

What does it mean to be a boy or a girl?

Talk to them about what they may perceive as social pressure and gender roles. Explore the fears they may have of growing up. They may be afraid of sex, or sexual assault after being exposed too early to sexualized images, such as internet pornography. Boys may be afraid of the idea that they aren’t manly enough or good with girls, so becoming a man may come with a lot of pressure. Girls may be afraid of what it means to become a woman. Help them understand that there are different ways to be boys and girls and they can have varying interests. Explore what is most uncomfortable about living in the body they are in and what pressures they may be feeling.

How do you imagine your life living as a new gender?

Teens don’t tend to be great at future-thinking. That’s why your fully developed, adult guidance is needed. This question can help give insight into your child’s fantasy of being trans. It can also shed light on what she/he might feel is missing in their life. When you feel they are ready, you can try to help your child find ways to achieve their goals as the boy or girl they were born as.

Explore possible underlying mental health issues.

Much of “gender dysphoria” is related to a person’s relationship with their body. If that relationship is compromised, it is difficult to know the root causes for distressed feelings without exploration. Provide reflection for those issues and focus less on gender distress. Gender often becomes a way to be seen. If you relate to what is happening with your child, she/he may not need to cling to her gender identity as hard. Think of a new gender identity as a signal that there is another underlying issue or unmet need. Many parents have said they have recognized that when their child came out as trans, it became an opportunity to learn more about their child and strengthen their family.

Or… you can be direct.

Some mothers like Laura Wiley Haynes, who has shared her strategies on X (Twitter), have had success with a more direct approach with questions like, “Did you know that you can never actually become a man? You can look more like a man, but that’s the limit.” Depending on your communication style or relationship, you can state the truth about what happens when taking hormones and from other medical interventions. For example, “Did you know that T [testosterone] can make it painful to talk?” “It causes many health issues like joint pain, cancer, blood clots, and difficulty having sex, why not just be a healthy masculine girl?” “Who gives a sh*t what sex a stranger thinks you are?” “You will always know the truth and strangers don’t matter more than your fertility and health.”

A few things to remember:

Do not let empty threats of suicide manipulate you. This is something young people are being coached to do by online influencers, trans activists, or even trusted adults such as teachers and therapists. If you feel a child is truly in danger of hurting themselves, call 911 or take them to the hospital, but stay actively involved in the process. If you already have a therapist you trust, and you determine the child is not an imminent danger to themselves but at moderate risk, call the therapist.

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Always tell your child how much you love them, even if they are confrontational. Your child may currently feel they have a new family now and don’t need you, but they will eventually learn that their online friends are not real, and they need to know they can turn to you later when they feel lost, alone, and confused. Gently remind your child that you are their true family. If possible, surround your child with extended family who love them as they are. The ‘chosen family’ that they are engaging with is conditional on their trans identity and can never be there for them the same way you can. They will remember you love them when they begin to recognize that superficial “glitter” love isn’t real.

Remember that you are not a “bigot” or “transphobe” if you have questions and concerns about your child. Believe in yourself as a parent. If you were a competent parent before gender came up, you have the intuition you need. Being grounded as a parent will help your child. Many other adults in positions of authority, such as school personnel, therapists, or doctors, may undermine your judgment. However, remember that these people do not love your child and could never love your child the way you do. Simply questioning your developing child’s view of themselves does not make you a bad parent or crazy. Setting limits with teenagers isn’t new. This is just a different spin on an age-old parent-child phase.

Your child may not want to talk at all. Many of these questions can easily backfire depending on how deep your child is into gender ideology. Your goal is to reverse the isolation and disconnected relationship your child developed with their body. You also want to help your child feel less isolated so they do not need the superficial sense of belonging that the trans “community” offers.

You do not have to choose between loving your child and questioning the idea that they are transgender. Your child needs a parent who can listen without panic, ask difficult questions without hostility, and remain grounded when emotions run high. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, the relationship may become strained or even disappear for a time. You may not be able to change your child’s mind or prevent them from pulling away, but you can make sure they know you are still there. If doubts eventually emerge, your child needs to know there is a safe place to turn. Keep the door open, stay grounded, and remember that sometimes the most important thing you can do is simply be there when your child is ready.

The Anthropic Whistleblower Is Not Who You Think He Is

John Papola — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 01:08:29 GMT

Hey there friends! Below are some resources I referenced in preparation for this week’s video commentary. Enjoy!

Catholic Historian: Here’s Why We Know That the Bible Is True

John Papola — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 22:08:41 GMT

I sat down with historian of early Christianity Matthew Larsen, Ph.D., fresh off his shoot in the Middle East tracing the life of Paul the Apostle, to dig into the evidence for Jesus, the biblical canon, and the Catholic Church.

We get into:

How historians actually know what’s true about the ancient past
Why the “Jesus never existed” theory keeps resurfacing online
Where Wes Huff’s viral apologetics differ from real historical scholarship
Why the idea that “Paul invented Christianity” is a 19th century German myth
How the Apostolic Fathers reveal a strikingly Catholic early church
What actually happened at the Council of Nicaea
Matt’s personal journey from evangelicalism to the Catholic Church

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 971-571-6444 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/dad - *Paid partnership

Learn more about Matthew Larsen’s work: https://www.matthewdclarsen.com/

Check out August Media: https://augustmedia.co/

Outline:

[0:00] How do historians know what’s real?

[12:40] Debunking the “Jesus myth” argument

[20:45] Wes Huff is an apologist, not a historian

[26:50] Who wrote the Gospels?

[32:52] The strongest argument against Christianity

[36:22] Who was the Apostle Paul?

[54:35] What we know about early Christian martyrs

[1:00:27] Scripture and tradition in the early church

[1:08:20] Going from evangelical to Catholic

[1:20:41] Where did Catholic church structure come from?

[1:30:20] Calvinist predestination doesn’t make sense

[1:32:29] Who were the Apostolic Fathers?

[1:38:12] Sacraments and the Jewish Temple system

[1:50:10] The power of physical rituals

[1:53:51] Roman persecution of Christians

[2:03:03] Why did God send Jesus at that moment?

[2:06:52] Modern comfort is a trap

[2:13:35] The Council of Nicaea

[2:30:55] Grappling with Mary and the Book of Revelation

[2:46:15] The development of Catholic doctrine over time

[2:54:14] The history of Marian apparitions

[3:01:04] Why should you consider Catholicism?

[3:09:43] American ideals are worth fighting for

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Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NOm_b7l3lyI

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Some Problems Can’t Be Negotiated Away

John Papola — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 22:01:09 GMT

“This Labor Day, sh*t’s too expensive.” That’s how AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler decided to open her Labor Day message to union members.

“This economy isn’t working for working people, so how do we build a better one? The answer is growing the power workers have, joining together, building our numbers so we can demand more.” What a shock. A union president thinks complex economic problems can be solved by… expanding the union that pays her salary.

The union theory of wage growth is all about bargaining power and negotiation, and at any particular moment in time, it’s not wrong. If my employees unionize and demand my salary be cut to zero and redistributed among them, that could be a successful negotiation.

The problem is that the union approach is a zero-sum game. Negotiation can redistribute a fixed pie, but it can’t make the pie bigger. My newly-unionized employees would still be limited by the income constraint of the firm. The same problem exists at the scale of an economy. A society can’t internally negotiate its way into wealth. Somebody has to actually produce more for there to be more to go around.

The Zero-Sum Debt Spiral

A side effect of this zero-sum thinking is the normalization of transfer payments as go-to public policy. If someone sympathetic is getting help from the government, the money must be coming from someone else who can spare it, right?

Our national debt, recently surpassing $40 trillion, tells a different story. The federal government spent $6.81 trillion so far in fiscal year 2026, up 2% from this time last year. Social Security is the largest line item in the federal budget, with Medicare and interest on the debt battling it out for second place.

The whole premise of old-age entitlement programs is that there will be a lot more people paying into than withdrawing from the system. Social Security was established not long before the Baby Boom, and Medicare came just after its peak years. Population growth was necessary for any of this to work longterm, but fertility rates were rapidly declining through the 60s and 70s and have never recovered since. Now we’re stuck with a growing population of retired and elderly Americans, funded by a shrinking population of working ones.

There’s a striking way to see how this has played out geographically. In 1970, only a small handful of the poorest counties in America relied on government transfers for more than 25% of local personal income. The vast majority of counties were under 15%. By 2022, a majority of counties relied on transfers for a significant share of income. Counties with low transfer dependence have gone from the norm to nearly extinct.

If this were about poverty, you wouldn’t see dependence spread from very specific areas to the whole country. This is the disastrous combination of old-age entitlements and fertility collapse playing out in real time.

The Debt-Based Burrito Economy

There’s a key difference between borrowing to consume and borrowing to invest. Let’s say I borrow $20 to buy a burrito. I eat the burrito. The burrito’s gone. The $20 is with the person who sold me the burrito. How am I going to pay back my debt?

I haven’t gotten better at anything by eating the burrito, so if I had to borrow money to buy the burrito in the first place, I sure don’t have any spare money to pay back my debt, plus interest. I guess I’ll have to borrow more money, at a higher interest rate, to pay back the original lender.

Now imagine that instead, I invent a machine that cuts out 90% of the cost to make a burrito and borrow $20 to build it. I can sell burritos for $3, undercut everyone else, pay the loan back with my profits, and enjoy a cheaper burrito myself as well. I’ve increased my productivity by using technology to increase the overall supply of burritos.

That is what investment looks like, and it is the only mechanism that’s ever made humanity wealthier. Fire, the wheel, the printing press, the tractor, the assembly line. Every leap in living standards came from figuring out how to produce more with less.

The first method of eating a burrito is how our system of debt-funded transfer payments work.

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Is There Any Way Out?

We had a chance to build some of that investment logic into Social Security when President Bush tried to reform the program in 2005. Letting workers direct a portion of their contributions into productive assets would have helped dismantle the pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme and replace it with something that could actually grow in value over time. It did not happen and now seems even more politically implausible in the current landscape.

The only other option, and the one President Trump and Treasury Secretary Bessent have been advocating for a while now, is to outrun the debt through unprecedented economic growth. It will require a large dose of optimism, but it’s not as unrealistic as it may seem.

OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-6 Astra, has jumped from roughly 8% to nearly 100% on a key benchmark for artificial general intelligence. I am not going to pretend I know exactly how this all shakes out, and I understand why people are unsettled by it. But if the fundamental problem is that we are not producing enough to support the fiscal obligations we’ve written into our laws, the smoothest way out is to radically upgrade our technology to allow us to make more with less.

This transition won’t be costless. Every leap in productivity has come with real disruption for real people and pretending otherwise is its own kind of dishonesty. But discomfort is baked into our current predicament, one way or another. We can either aggressively cut spending, which is politically impossible, let the inevitable debt crisis play out, which will force those cuts on even worse terms, or brave the AI revolution.

There may yet be some hope for fiscal sanity. Florida has four million more residents than New York and still runs on less than half of New York’s budget, with one of the lowest per capita tax burdens in the country. It has paid down more than half of its state debt and has a smaller government today than when Governor DeSantis took office, proving it can at least be done on the state level. Canada did something similar in the 1990s when its bond market forced the issue, before backsliding under Trudeau.

However, the reality is that our federal government is a different beast, with unmatched bargaining power in the global economy. Let’s hope that innovation will come to the rescue before our bills come due and we lose that privilege.

25 Years After 9/11: How “Never Forget” Became “We Deserved It”

John Papola — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 00:07:22 GMT

Hey there friends! Below are some resources I referenced in preparation for this week’s video commentary. Enjoy!

I Interviewed the 9/11 Mastermind’s Family. Here’s What I Discovered. - Richard Miniter

John Papola — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 22:17:59 GMT

I sat down with investigative journalist and author Richard Miniter to reflect on the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Richard has spent decades reporting national security and foreign policy issues and has interviewed Islamist radicals, intelligence officials, and others across the globe.

We get into:

Why political radicalism and terrorism attract elites
How Western life radicalized Mohamed Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Osama Bin Laden’s trajectory from construction tycoon heir to jihadist
How terror cells use hazing intermarriage to lock in commitment
The problem with Ron Paul’s “blowback” theory of Islamic terrorism
How bureaucratic turf wars left America vulnerable on 9/11
The PATRIOT Act and the limits of 4th Amendment rights

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 971-571-6444 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/dad - *Paid partnership

Protect your privacy on the cellular level with Cape at https://cape.co/dadsavesamerica. Use code DADSAVESAMERICA33 at checkout for 33% off your first 6 months.

Check out Richard Miniter’s work at Zenger News: https://zenger.news/

Check out Richard’s books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001JOWHF2?ccs_id=dcb9f8b6-c904-4dfb-b199-cc8d15600bca

Outline:

[0:00] Why do people become terrorists?

[7:56] Who was Mohamed Atta?

[17:48] Who was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

[26:58] Ramzi Yousef and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing

[32:27] 9/11 wasn’t as ideological as we think

[36:00] Who was Osama Bin Laden?

[42:53] Work, terrorism, and a sense of purpose

[47:44] What really motivated Bin Laden?

[49:43] The psychology of terrorism

[1:03:29] The rise of the Red-Green Alliance

[1:11:47] Theology is the center of every civilization

[1:22:14] Terrorism is a political technology

[1:25:40] Living through 9/11 and turning to Ron Paul

[1:34:32] Did our government allow 9/11 to happen?

[1:48:29] The American and Soviet fight over Afghanistan

[1:52:33] America’s longterm conflict with Iran

[2:02:13] Bureaucratic tenure makes bad policy

[2:07:56] Is the PATRIOT Act unconstitutional?

[2:22:01] COVID permanently changed our society

[2:26:52] What did 9/11 mean for American society?

[2:33:03] Do young people really hate the country?

[2:39:39] Pragmatism, ideology, and incentives

[2:46:19] Can we avoid religious war?

[2:50:30] Utilitarianism contradicts human nature

[2:56:19] Can Islam be compatible with America?

[3:07:30] Immigration and assimilation in 2026

[3:12:31] Dad’s job is to tell kids the truth

Purchase a T-shirt, hoodie, and more over on our merch store: https://shop.dadsavesamerica.com/

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wK85AT87m_k

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Visit our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.dadsavesamerica.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠