American Thought Leaders

In this episode, we sit down again with Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist, military historian, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and author of two dozen books, including most recently “The End of Everything.”In this interview, we dive into the multifaceted dimensions of what he describes as Trump's “counterrevolution” in the foreign policy space, from Canada to China to the Middle East to Ukraine and Russia.What might the end of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza look like?Should Trump have accepted a plane from Qatar's royal family? Was it a good idea to lift U.S. sanctions on Syria's new leader? Is there any truth to rumors of friction between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?Is it possible that Trump actually, in some sense, wanted Mark Carney to win and become Prime Minister of Canada?And how can the United States ensure the Chinese leadership upholds their commitments in a trade agreement, given their track record of not following through?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

There are few people who understand the workings of Chinese espionage as well as Nicholas Eftimiades.After a 34-year government career—including time at the CIA, Department of State, and Defense Intelligence Agency—he's now a professor at Penn State University's Homeland Security Program and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.“China uses what we call a whole-of-society approach to conducting espionage. … We're not talking about thousands [of people]. We're talking about tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people engaged globally in carrying out the CCP's will,” Eftimiades says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“One of the major driving factors of the extreme polarization that we're living through right now is that most news consumers can very easily … tune in somewhere where they are just being force fed worldviews and perspectives that confirm all their priors,” says journalist Isaac Saul.“Think about what media outlets are really making their audience uncomfortable on a regular basis, and there's very few of them,” he says.After writing for a wide variety of media outlets and seeing some disturbing trends, Saul decided to found Tangle, a newsletter that puts viewpoints from both the left and the right side by side.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“This system I had been turning to for help through all of these years, through the most formative years of life, that I had been assuming existed to take care of me ... was actually a system of control. And I just hadn't seen it for what it was, because I had never said no to it before,” says Laura Delano, author of “Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance.”For 14 years, Delano was a “professional mental patient,” as she puts it, after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was a teenager.Now she wonders whether the dominant, medicalized approach to mental illness is actually making us as a society sicker.“Sixty-five million American adults and 6 million American children are currently on psychiatric drugs, and there are zero off ramps for getting them off these drugs safely within the mental health industry. Zero,” she says. “This is not about being ‘pro' or ‘anti.' This is about using straightforward, honest language to talk about what these drugs are, to talk about our limits of knowledge around what these drugs are and how they actually affect us, and then to let people make their own decisions from there based on their own life circumstances.”In this episode, we dive into Delano's story and discuss the dangers of relying solely on medical treatments to treat mental health issues and of rapidly withdrawing from psychiatric drugs.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Donald Trump is looming so large in the Canadian consciousness right now,” says Brian Lee Crowley.“And I have seen a lot of my compatriots running around like chickens with their heads cut off, saying, ‘Oh my God, Donald Trump is a mad man. You can't understand what he's doing. There's no rhyme or reason to it.' And I looked at what Donald Trump was doing, and I thought, ‘Okay, I don't have to like it. That's a separate question. But if the question is, 'Can I understand it?' The answer is yes.”Crowley is the founder and managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a Canadian think tank whose work is often cited by the Canadian Parliament.“What exactly is the difference between Canada and America, or Canadians and Americans? It's not that it's difficult to answer because there aren't differences. It's difficult to answer because the differences are subtle and hard to express,” says Crowley.“Remember that America broke away through a violent revolution from the crown and the United Kingdom—from Great Britain. Canadians never experienced that.”In this episode, we dive into the recent election in Canada, Trump's comments about Canada as America's 51st state, and what the future of United States–Canada relations may look like.“Canada exports 50 percent of everything made in the private sector, and the vast bulk of that, like 90 percent, goes to the United States. But [in] the United States, by contrast, foreign trade, or international trade, only represents barely 25 percent of the amount of the American economy, and that's diversified across all of its trade partners. So, while for Canada, the relationship with the United States is existential, for America, the relationship with Canada is convenient, nice—not existential.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Dr. Paul Marik is a pulmonary and critical care specialist and a founding member of the Independent Medical Alliance, formerly known as the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.“Our healthcare system is completely and utterly broken. From the top to the bottom, it's a broken, dysfunctional system,” says Marik. “If you do an experiment, it should be reproducible. And I think that's the most important qualifier of good science; the results are reproducible, because then, it's likely to be true.”Best known for his revolutionary, lifesaving protocol for Sepsis and for being the second most published critical care physician in the world, Marik is now focusing his efforts on the treatment and prevention of cancer.“Intermittent fasting, in which the body was designed to eat for a while and then to starve for a while, is not a difficult concept. The human body wasn't designed to snack and eat all the time, which is what people seem to do. And that has serious metabolic consequences, with high insulin levels and insulin resistance,” says Dr. Marik. “Vitamin D is effective in preventing cancer, but it's also very effective in the treatment of cancer.”Views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

How is the Trump administration transforming the Department of Justice's civil rights priorities?Joining us today for a deep dive is DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the civil rights division.Their jurisdiction includes a wide range of constitutional issues, from religious freedom to Title IX protections, race-based discrimination, and enforcing voting rights laws.The views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Never before in history have two great trading entities ever engaged in outright economic warfare, like is being engaged today. And that's why I say we're living in historic times,” says Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist during President Donald Trump's first administration and host of the “War Room” show.“It's not just tariffs. They're a tool. [Trump]'s reorganizing the world system of commerce and of trade,” Bannon says.In this episode, we dive into the U.S.–China trade war, Trump's tariff strategy, his first 100 days in office, and where America is headed in the weeks and months to come.“The next 100 days is going to be three times more intense, dramatic, and meaningful than the first 100 days,” Bannon says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“They picked me up, and I'm hopping on one leg. And I saw Commander Griffin, Major Gray, Major Kennedy, and then USAID [officer] at the time, Ragaei Abdelfattah, were all killed by the same bomber that didn't kill me,” said Florent Groberg.Groberg is a retired U.S. Army Captain who fought in Afghanistan and was severely injured attempting to thwart a suicide bomber. For his actions, he received the Medal of Honor, America's highest award for military valor.“Everything that we have in this nation is because of men and women who put their lives on the line and didn't come home. And their families—they have to live with the consequences of that,” he said.I spoke with Captain Groberg on a wide range of topics, from DeepSeek AI and swarming drones to the war in Ukraine and the threat from China's communist regime.“When I first heard about DeepSeek and its battle with Open AI ... I saw it as an opportunity for the Chinese government to have free access to all of our data as they see fit,” said Groberg. “The Chinese have been developing the majority of the world's small drones. I believe that the majority of the Russian [drones] come from China. ... I know that Ukrainians are also using their own specific drones, and they're creating as much chaos on the other side. So, it really has changed the landscape of warfare.”Views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“What happened during COVID is exactly a perfect illustration of the harms of sacrificing some for the many,” says Leslie Manookian, founder and president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund.She played a pivotal role in getting her state of Idaho to pass the first legislation in the United States banning most medical mandates, including vaccines and masks.“One of my missions at Health Freedom Defense Fund, in founding this organization, was to educate the public and raise awareness about the importance of medical freedom, because I think it's the most basic and fundamental of human rights—and then to codify that in law. And the Idaho Medical Freedom Act is the first step in that process,” says Manookian.In this episode, we dive into the volatile process of getting this bill signed into law, and discuss why Manookian believes Americans must be protected from being forced to undergo medical interventions—even if they are potentially lifesaving.“On the last day of the legislative session, we were able to insert … that no healthy, unvaccinated individual may be excluded from any educational entity or any business entity on the basis of a disease outbreak. So just because you're unvaccinated, if you're healthy, they can't kick you out,” says Manookian. “In the last 50 to 70 years, somehow public health has started to intrude into private health, and I think that's a mistake.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

A recently leaked directive details the Chinese Communist Party's strategy to respond to Trump's tariffs.How is the CCP trying to leverage this moment? Will this be the end of China as the “factory of the world?”And what's behind the purges in the military, the apparent removal of two Xi Jinping loyalists, and recent changes in top CCP leadership? Why did two top CCP officials recently swap positions?Joining us today is longtime China analyst and commentator Heng He.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

David Zweig is a journalist and author of “An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions.” His book is a searing criticism of the policy to close schools across America during the COVID-19 pandemic. The result: Major lags in education achievement, a mental health disaster, and so much more that simply cannot be easily quantified.“How do we track what happened to that kid who could have gotten into college and instead is doing something else now? We don't know exactly the kids who were lost, who just stopped going to school entirely.”And what was it all for?“They were sacrificed for nothing,” Zweig says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“I felt like I was a Rip Van Winkle therapist. I left my profession due to a health condition in 2017 ... In 2021, I came back, and it was radically different,” says licensed clinical social worker Pamela Garfield-Jaeger. “All the teens that I had worked with before had never talked about being trans, and then the new program I was working at, half the girls were identifying as trans.”Known as “The Truthful Therapist,” she is the author of “A Practical Response to Gender Distress” and is featured in the Epoch Times documentary “Gender Transformation.”How has the mental health profession changed in recent years? What's behind the spike in teens identifying as transgender? Why has “affirmation” become the norm? What alternatives exist? What impact is the widespread prescription of antidepressants and other drugs having on teenagers?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I sit down with Mikki Willis, an award-winning filmmaker and producer of the Plandemic Series. His new film, “Follow the Silenced,” tells the stories, over the course of three years, of individuals injured by the COVID-19 genetic vaccine.“We followed the science, we got harmed, and now Facebook won't even let us have a group where we can talk to each other? What is happening here in this country? And so, we have made this film to give them a voice, and to make sure that their story and their sacrifice doesn't go unnoticed,” says Willis. “The game we're playing as citizens is a very different game than is being played by the policy makers.”We also discuss his views on spirituality and how human beings have become disconnected from the brilliance of nature and their divine intelligence.“We have the fables of the devil in the crossroads or meeting the devil and signing away for fame and fortune or whatever it might be—giving a piece of your soul. After 30-some odd years working in Hollywood, I saw a lot of people that I will say most definitely came in with a soul and left without one, incrementally giving away a little piece of themselves,” says Willis.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Dr. Joseph Varon is a critical care physician, medical professor, and president of the Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), formerly the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). Their mission is to provide and advocate for patient rights, informed consent, and medical transparency, and they've played a major role supporting Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.“Hopefully, now with the new NIH director, we'll be able to fund some of these studies for these repurposed drugs that are really going to cut on cost of health care expenses,” he says.Varon has contributed to more than 950 peer-reviewed journal articles and is the editor-in-chief of multiple medical journals, including the newly launched Journal of Independent Medicine. In this episode, we dive into the IMA's recent work.“When you have, let's say, a paper that has 20 authors and out of those 20 authors, more than 90 percent of them are on the payroll of a specific pharmaceutical company that makes a product that you are studying, that's a conflict,” says Dr. Varon. “If we don't do something about the current state of medicine in our country, we're doomed. We're really doomed.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

As the U.S.-China trade war continues to escalate, I'm sitting down with China analyst Gordon Chang.“Jamie Dimon said this: ‘Why don't you just pick up the phone?' Well, the reason is we've had that attitude for five decades … and look where it's gotten us. So, if the Chinese want to do something about our tariffs, it's up to them to pick up the phone,” says Chang.What is the current state of play when it comes to Trump's tariff strategy? Is it working in America's favor?“The only way China wins this trade war is if it gets Trump to preemptively surrender,” says Chang. “This is an existential struggle. It's more than just a trade war. It's more than just a tariff war. And we better win it.”And how is Xi Jinping's leadership being challenged inside China?“General He, I think, was sacked not by Xi Jinping, but by the adversaries of Xi Jinping in the Chinese military ... we have seen all these unexplained and unusual disappearances of military officers, especially since the middle of 2023,” says Chang. “I think this is the most dangerous moment in history.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“More and more Iranian-supported, anti-American, Islamic terrorist cells are established on U.S. soil with the aim of eliminating key American personnel, and eliminating key American institutions and installations. This has been the ayatollah's vision from day one,” says former Ambassador Yoram Ettinger.In the 1980s and 1990s, Ettinger held a number of high-profile positions within Israel's government, from minister of congressional affairs in D.C. to director of its press office. A now retired insider and expert on U.S.–Israel relations, he regularly advises Israel and America's legislators, and produces a weekly newsletter challenging conventional wisdom on Middle East affairs.“The State Department probably still is under the delusion that the U.S. has a choice between Arab countries that abide by human rights and Arab countries that do not abide by human rights,” says Ettinger. “The choice is between pro-American Arab regimes that violate human rights or anti-American Arab regimes that violate human rights.”In this episode, we dive into key realities of the U.S.–Israel relationship that are poorly understood, and the global threat posed by the Iranian regime.“The early pilgrims and the Founding Fathers, to a large extent, viewed themselves as the modern-day chosen people. They viewed this country as the modern-day Promised Land, and they considered the manner in which Moses governed the Jewish people to be the foundation for the system which they established: the separation of powers, and later on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” says Ettinger.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

David Mansdoerfer served as deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the first Trump administration. Now, he's chief strategist at the Independent Medical Alliance and describes himself as the MAGA-MAHA Connector.“We have seen a complete reset of a federal agency within 60 days of Secretary Kennedy getting there. To me, that is unprecedented, and it is going to be one of the most impactful approaches to public health and the health economy in the United States,” he says. “We have not won this fight. We've begun the fight. And we have industry forces, which I would say [have] unlimited money, that are going to try to do everything to protect their bottom line, but also limit good policy ideas of a Secretary Kennedy and a President Trump.”What reforms are already underway since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over HHS? What pushback has he faced? And will the administration be able to reconcile and even merge the disparate agendas of the MAGA and MAHA movements?“You basically get to put an entirely new, fresh face of career leaders that are aligned to the president's agenda and the secretary's agenda in positions of authority that could be and will be longer lasting than just this administration,” says Mansdoerfer. “Even in terms of the unknown, it is better to have leadership that's willing to take these bold actions than it is to continually lead Americans down a poor health outcome path.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Find showtimes for Shen Yun at https://www.shenyun.com/ticketsUse the code JAN25 to get ticketing fees waived.“The United States depends on China for 95 percent of the key components that are necessary to make our generic drugs, and if China shut the door on exports, within months, our health care system would begin to collapse.”Rosemary Gibson is a national authority on health care policy and patient safety, and the author of “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America's Dependence on China for Medicine.”“How come we don't know that our medicines are being made in China? And this has been going on for a long time, and for years, there was actually zero regulation. How do we outsource production from a country with the highest standards in the world to places with no standards?” she asks.In this episode, we dive into the realities of China's control of America's medical supply chain, the increasing problem of contaminated medications, and what the current administration can do to fix it.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

After Beijing retaliated to U.S. tariffs, President Donald Trump has now announced a tariff hike to 125 percent on Chinese products—and a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs on other countries.To understand what's really going on, we're speaking with one of the world's leading experts on the Chinese economy.Christopher Balding was a professor at Peking University's HSBC School of Business until 2018 when he was fired for pushing back against censorship. Now, he is a senior fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and the founder of New Kite Data Labs.“I think President Trump wants to push a very deep, ongoing decoupling from China, and I think he wants to promote that decoupling, not just with China, but [by] drawing at least a secondary moat around near allies like Mexico, Canada, parts of Europe, Japan, and South Korea,” Balding says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Joel Salatin is one of America's most revered regenerative farmers. At Polyface Farms, he avoids synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and vaccines. He doesn't take any government subsidies. And he's been a major source of inspiration for many seeking to build farms of their own with symbiotic, sustainable ecosystems—ones that enrich rather than deplete the soil.For decades, he's been fighting government overregulation of small food producers.Salatin is featured in multiple documentaries and is the author of 17 books, including “Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front” and “Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times

Find showtimes for Shen Yun at https://www.shenyun.com/ticketsUse the code JAN25 to get ticketing fees waived. Dr. Eithan Haim said he was working as a resident surgeon at the Texas Children's Hospital when he discovered that doctors were secretly continuing and expanding their program of transgender medical procedures for minors—after publicly shutting it down.He blew the whistle, and ended up under federal investigation. After three indictments and 148 legal files, his case has now been dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Tens of millions of Americans are unwittingly investing in Chinese companies involved in military weapon production, surveillance technologies, and egregious human rights abuses, says former Reagan adviser Roger Robinson.Through a complex web of investment vehicles and regulatory loopholes, Americans are pouring trillions of dollars into companies that directly threaten American national security, including ones blacklisted by the U.S. government—often without even knowing. Chinese companies often make up the bulk of index funds like emerging markets funds that many Americans invest in.“You have ... companies that are responsible for manufacturing China's most advanced weapon systems,” Robinson says. “We're funding, in some ways, our own demise.”During the Reagan administration, Robinson served as senior director of international economic affairs at the National Security Council, where he played a linchpin role in Reagan's economic strategy against the Soviet Union. He's the co-founder of the Prague Security Studies Institute.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Emma Reilly worked as a human rights lawyer at the United Nations. She discovered that for years, the Human Rights Council had been handing over the names of Chinese dissidents slated to attend the U.N. to the Chinese regime. Included were the names of U.S., Canadian, and European citizens.“The CCP demands get listened to because the U.N. takes them seriously, whereas they believe that the money from the U.S. will always flow, no matter what the law says in Congress, and that's a problem,” Reilly says. “You see the way that individuals who are willing to prioritize China's influence and China's comfort over their own mandate managed to rise and rise in the U.N., whereas people that object get fired.”After speaking out and informing the United States of what she says was a “criminal” practice at the U.N., she lost her whistleblower protection status and was fired.“I was one of the 2 percent of people that are recognized as a legitimate whistleblower that found a dangerous policy and reported it. So, I should have been protected, but the U.N. decided to ignore its own rules. It was very blatant,” Reilly says. “You see just the sheer number of sex abuse scandals within the U.N., even by their own reckoning. There are—and this is literally according to their own figures—there are 800 cases of sexual harassment or abuse. No NGO could sustain that.”Views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Caroline Glick is a journalist, author, and recently, adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.“The discussion that we've had about the war itself is just sort of blind to the basic realities of the situation. And that, to me, is the ground zero of all of the problems,” she says.“The stronger Israel is, the more secure the United States is. I think that the more Israel is able to project its power in the region, the more stable the region is, because Israel is a fundamentally peaceful country that doesn't seek war and does everything to avoid it. The more powerful Israel is, the less likely there are to be wars in the region.”Glick breaks down Israel's perspective on various developments in the region, from resuming wartime operations in Gaza, to the situation in Syria, to U.S. President Donald Trump's strikes on the Houthis in Yemen.“When somebody tells you that they want to kill you, you have to believe them—like, you have no choice. You have to take them at their word,” she says. “By showing [Gazans] that the only thing that they get from being with Hamas is death and destruction, and giving them an alternative, which is what the Trump plan does ... you have this opportunity to build a life in a different place.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

From cutting programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development to putting Voice of America employees on paid administrative leave, the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been aggressively seeking to reduce government spending on international initiatives.But some such spending may be worth keeping.Cleo Paskal, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, breaks down how certain U.S. measures in the Pacific are vital to deter increasing Chinese encroachment in the region, but they may not be well-understood.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Fifteen or 16 percent of the population [is] now taking antidepressants … When they've gone out and asked people who actually use these medications whether they're experiencing sexual dysfunction, approximately 60 percent of people will [affirm] it.”Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring is a board certified psychiatrist, former FDA medical officer, and director of the Taper Clinic. He treats patients suffering from post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD), and protracted withdrawal—two conditions becoming more common, and in some cases permanent, in people who have stopped taking antidepressants.“SSRIs and antidepressants are really popular drugs. Some people just don't want to believe that they could potentially cause something so catastrophic,” he says. “We should only be using these medications after we've done everything else.”In this episode, we discuss how patients can safely discontinue psychiatric medications and regain control of their mental health, and why there needs to be more awareness about conditions that arise after people stop taking their drugs.“What I saw going through all of that ... as a drug safety officer ... was essentially that we really were practicing outside of what the psychiatric clinical trials and the evidence showed,” says Witt-Doerring. “Doctors have been led astray about the drugs to the point where they overestimate the benefits and minimize the harm.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Michael Lucci is the founder, CEO, and chairman of State Armor. He helps states enact policies and solutions that protect their assets from foreign adversaries like communist China.“They're trying to invade our homeland, and they likely have developed the capacity to make life very difficult, to create crises within the United States—whether it's power, whether it's wastewater treatment, whether it's telecommunications,” he says. “They have laws that require those companies to engage in espionage. So why are we letting them sell connected devices of any type into the United States?”In this episode, we dive deep into how the Chinese regime has managed to infiltrate our critical infrastructure and communications systems at the local, state, and federal levels.“It's the largest military buildup since World War Two is what China is doing right now,” says Lucci. “If they're just in our back doors, listening, reading, following everything we're doing, following the pattern of life for important officials across the country, that's a pretty deep problem.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Over the years, Pano Kanelos, the founding president of the University of Austin, observed a growing “homogenization” and “bureaucratization” of higher education. He saw school programs becoming more and more similar, administrators outnumbering students and young adults being taught that the pathway to success is dependent on censorship and adherence to the status quo.“We've created a culture of conformity at universities—a culture of conformity in higher education,” he says. “This just flattens out, I think, the potential for higher education to do great things and be dynamic.”So, in 2021, along with a group of similarly concerned individuals, he started the University of Austin, a private liberal arts university in Texas that emphasizes curiosity, risk-taking, and moral agency.“We're trying to generate graduates who themselves are builders and creators. This is an important part of our curriculum,” says Kanelos.Three years later, he is the president of a fully operational freshmen class and a diverse faculty.“If anybody visits the University of Austin, they will see that it's probably one of the most intellectually alive environments you'll ever encounter,” says Kanelos.The views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect those of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, we sit down with Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), a decorated veteran who served over 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy as a helicopter pilot and a medical corps officer.As a lawmaker, he has co-sponsored legislation to challenge the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rampant economic espionage and tech influence campaigns, and a resolution supporting formal recognition of Taiwan.“We now are in a new evolution of warfare where we're heavily reliant on technologies. This has changed conventional warfare forever,” McCormick says.Three U.S. Army soldiers were recently indicted for stealing top-secret information for the Chinese regime. The U.S. has also charged 12 Chinese hackers and officials for cyber operations targeting U.S. agencies and media outlets, including The Epoch Times.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, we dive into President Donald Trump's multi-pronged strategy to revitalize America's economy, from aggressive reciprocal tariffs to massive DOGE cuts, and a large-scale deregulation effort to promote business growth.The Code of Federal Regulations is now over 190,000 pages long. A 2017 Auburn University study found that each federal regulator effectively “costs the U.S. economy the equivalent of 138 private sector jobs per year.” The researchers said that equated to a $11 million annual loss for the U.S. economy for every additional regulator.What will be the impacts of the Trump administration's policies? Will they usher in economic prosperity or will America have to head into a recession first?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Half a million unaccompanied minors entered the United States between 2019 and 2023, and experts fear many of them have been trafficked. And that does not include the children who crossed the border with individuals falsely claiming to be their family members. So where are all these children now?Alina Habba, who is currently serving as counselor to the president, says she's working with the different agencies involved to identify and rescue trafficking victims and prosecute the perpetrators.“I am drafting a couple executive orders regarding that currently that I think will be important to properly get this moving for those kids,” she says.In her role advising the president, Habba says she's focused on human trafficking and Iraq. Habba is the daughter of Chaldean Catholics who fled Iraq in the 1980s.We dive into her work today and get an update on the status of the long-awaited Epstein files.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

There are few people who have played a more important role in broadly supporting the rights of religious believers in China than Marco Respinti, director-in-charge of the Bitter Winter magazine.“In the first six to eight months of our existence online as a magazine, some 40 people who were connected to us on the ground were arrested in China. … Half of them simply disappeared,” Respinti says.During the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, I had the great pleasure of finally sitting down with Respinti to discuss how the Chinese Communist Party systematically infiltrates, coopts, and destroys religious movements in China.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump has promised that he will bring back American manufacturing during his presidency. What if there aren't enough Americans who want to work those jobs?“Every year for the last decade or so, for every five tradesmen who retire, two replace them,” says Mike Rowe, Emmy Award-winning TV host of the Dirty Jobs series.“If we don't have a workforce who is disabused of the stigmas and the stereotypes and the myths and the misperceptions that have kept millions of kids from giving these jobs an honest look ... you're going to wind up in a pretty nasty feedback loop,” he says.“People still don't believe me. Even when I show them, not just the stats, but the actual humans who are making $150-grand a year welding with an $8,000 certificate, they just don't believe it,” he says.Rowe is the founder of mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which awards millions of dollars in work ethic scholarships for young people to learn a skilled trade.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump has been widely criticized for his “transactional” approach to diplomacy. But is that really such a bad thing?In this episode, I sit down with China expert and retired U.S. Marine Col. Grant Newsham, a senior research fellow with the Center for Security Policy, to discuss Trump's approach to diplomacy and negotiations and how America can leverage what he describes as the “kryptonite” of the Chinese regime.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the President Santiago Peña of Paraguay. He shared why Paraguay is one of only 12 countries in the world that recognizes Taiwan instead of communist China and one of only six countries that have moved their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.Now I'm sitting down with his foreign minister, Rubén Ramírez Lezcano, to learn more about Paraguay, the region, and Lezcano's candidacy for secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS).“Paraguay matters in the agenda of the United States. Why? Because Paraguay is a very important and key partner for the United States,” says Lezcano. “I think that America abandoned for a long time Latin America. In the last year, the United States lost a lot of markets, a lot of investment, and a lot of opportunities. I think that [now] is the time to work closely again.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“When I got my COVID vaccine, my reaction started within an hour, and it started with tingling down the same arm as my injection. It moved to my other arm, then it moved to my legs, and then it moved to my head, into my brain, and I had this horrific electrical, pulsating sensation through my body 24/7.”Brianne Dressen was left severely injured after participating in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trials. She's the co-founder of the nonprofit React19, which helps people impacted by COVID-19 vaccine injuries. React19 now advocates on behalf of over 36,000 people.“We can't be found in any kind of database that the public or anyone beyond the government can access,” she says. “All of the programs that we've developed, they work together in concert to build an avenue for healing for the people that literally have no avenue.”She's the subject of the new book “Worth a Shot?: Secrets of the Clinical Trial Participant Who Inspired a Global Movement.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Joining me today is Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana. Since he took office last year, he's implemented sweeping changes in public safety, tax policy, and education.We discuss gains made in the state's educational rankings, as well as his plans for boosting election integrity, increasing manufacturing, and ensuring fiscal responsibility.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, we dive into China's influence and the communist regime's propaganda efforts worldwide. Joining us is Piero Tozzi, a longtime China expert and staff director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.What are some key misconceptions we have about China and the Chinese regime? And are we finally seeing a real “pivot to Asia” as the Trump administration signals a dramatic reduction in U.S. military presence in Europe and demands that NATO allies pitch in more for Europe's defense?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In January, the western province of Alberta in Canada released a 269-page report—the first of its kind—examining the information and data that informed its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.“Doctors felt pressure to do things they didn't agree with. We need to have good autonomy where a physician is doing things safely, but they're allowed to treat their patients in what they believe is the best for them. It still has to be regulated. You can't just have everybody off on their own, but it has to be done,” says Dr. Gary Davidson, an emergency physician and primary author of the report.“I was asked to form a task force. There's people on the task force that are more aligned with how I saw it or how I think, and then there were people invited to join who are not aligned with how I think or see it.”The report found that pandemic lockdowns, masking mandates, and vaccine mandates all failed to achieve their intended results.“There's just so much data out there. The Nordic countries did a huge study—millions of people, showing that if you're under 50 years old, and if you don't have any really good reason, you probably shouldn't get this vaccine,” says Davidson. “And so that's what we recommend doing in Alberta.”The views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Andrew Hale is a senior trade policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. In this episode, we discuss how Trump is using various trade tools to strengthen alliances and weaken adversaries.“I look upon what he's trying to do as a negotiating tactic. He's using tariffs as an instrument of statecraft, and also for economic coercion, to achieve matters that sometimes go well beyond trade policy,” Hale says.Hale says that tariffs should be used against America's foreign adversaries, but not necessarily against its allies.“Among [those on] the protection side, there's a knee jerk reaction saying a tariff is the panacea to all of our problems. And actually, a lot of these problems we created right here in Washington. And we can fix them right here in Washington, with dealing with some of the stupid and foolish regulations that we have,” he says. “What we cannot go back to is what we had during the Clinton years, what we had during the Bush years, the Obama years—which was this seamless trade with China, where we treat them as a market economy. They're a non-market economy. They're a foreign adversary.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“We had a case of a little cell of Christian believers who were all converts from Islam, and they were meeting secretly. And they were infiltrated by a radical terrorist group called Al Shabaab, and they burnt down the house. They captured some of them, they took them onto the beach, and only two of them managed to survive, because they killed the rest of them.”Charmaine Hedding is the founder and president of the Shai Fund, a humanitarian organization that aids, protects, and even rescues persecuted minorities throughout the Middle East and Africa.“In 2014, I watched as the Islamic State swept over Syria and Iraq. And I watched as the Yazidi and the Christian women were taken as sex slaves and sold in the markets of Raqqa and in Turkey and across the Middle East. And I thought to myself, ‘Who's going to do something about this?'” she says. “The greatest struggle in the Middle East and in Africa, at the moment, is this concept of freedom of religion and belief.”Hedding was born and raised in South Africa, where her father and grandfather were outspoken anti-apartheid activists. Because of their activism, they were eventually forced to flee to Jerusalem when Hedding was a child.“By the time I was 12, we were harassed by agents. And we had agents in the church. We were followed,” she says. “The question that I remember asking myself as a child after reading the stories of the Holocaust is: If I was a European, what would I have done? And would I have put myself at risk to save a Jewish family? And that's what motivated me, that question.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“In the last four years, we've seen an aggregate inflation of about 26 percent. So that's a quarter of your purchasing power—phoosh gone—just disappeared across the board,” says Stefan Rust, founder and CEO of Truflation, a blockchain-based financial data service that provides real-time economic and inflation data.What will be the impact of DOGE's aggressive cost-cutting? Could it cause a short-term reduction in the size of the U.S. economy?Some people have been talking about risks of deflation—is that really a concern? And what will be the economic impact of Trump's tariffs?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I sit down with John O'Sullivan, a former policy and speech writer for British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and former editor-in-chief of National Review and executive editor of Radio Free Europe. Today, he's the president of the Danube Institute, a Hungary-based think-tank.A “unified national identity is an absolute essential for a successful democracy,” he says. “If we continue on a multicultural path, it's a path which is going to go in the directions of ever more aggressive and hostile identity politics, and people will feel that their neighbors are their enemies.”O'Sullivan's latest book is titled: “Sleepwalking into Wokeness: How We Got Here.”“The idea of post-nationalism is unachievable if you're a state. You don't remain just a post-national state, what you become is something else,” he says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The Chinese AI app DeepSeek recently became the most downloaded iPhone app in the United States and caused U.S. tech stocks to plummet. President Donald Trump described it as a “wake-up” call for American companies.So what's really going on? Is DeepSeek as powerful as people think? Or is there a bigger story here?In this episode, we sit down with AI expert Nicolas Chaillan, former chief software officer for the U.S. Air Force and now founder of the generative AI company Ask Sage.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“The fires themselves are pretty much out. There's a few smoldering remains, but the trouble has just begun,” says Edward Ring, director of Water and Energy Policy for the California Policy Center. “It's going to be very hard to get everything rebuilt in Los Angeles.”In this episode, we do a deep dive on the California wildfires. How did they originate? Why was the devastation so horrific? Could they have been prevented? What is the scope of the damage? And in the aftermath, what should be done?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“They're at war for the American mind. That's why you have TikTok out there. That's why you have DeepSeek. That's why you have the China Daily. They're out there trying to control information and your perception of reality,” says Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.), who was recently elected for his first term.His first bill seeks to ban the widespread distribution of the China Daily in the House of Representatives. China Daily is a registered foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In 2020, the newspaper was among many Chinese state media outlets designated as foreign missions in the United States.“It's propaganda by a foreign government that's trying to influence the highest echelons of the United States government. It's unacceptable,” Hamadeh said.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Michael Pack is a documentary filmmaker and the president of Palladium Pictures. During Donald Trump's first presidency, he led the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees America's state-funded news networks, including Voice of America.“The budget is something like $900 million,” he says. “It's only a mid-sized government agency, but it's one of the largest broadcasters in the world. They're broadcasting over 70 languages to hundreds of millions of people a week. So it's really a potent tool, and it's designed to promote American ideas and values abroad.”In this episode, we discuss his recent films, the future of media, and how the U.S. government can better leverage public diplomacy as a tool against its adversaries.“We could do nothing better, really, than to knock [China's internet] firewall down. I think if people in China had a chance to hear the range of ideas out there, it would change the country more than almost anything else. And it's not expensive,” he says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Eric Berg, popularly known as Dr. Berg or “The Knowledge Doc,” is a nutritionist and chiropractor specializing in weight loss and alternative health care. He has published more than 6,000 videos and amassed 13 million followers on YouTube, and has trained more than 2,500 doctors and health care practitioners in how diet can impact your health.“When you reduce carbohydrates, it then forces your body to go after your own fat as fuel. So for weight loss, it's great. And for other things, it's good too,” says Dr. Berg.In this episode, we discuss Dr. Berg's approach to health, why he advocates for a keto diet and intermittent fasting, and his thoughts on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary.“If we are going to make some changes, we have to, first of all, make people aware of these hidden ingredients and start to get them out of your diet,” he says. “They find these loopholes and they try to cheat the system. And it's called ‘organic,' but is it really organic?”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Suella Braverman is the former home secretary of the United Kingdom, and a conservative member of the British parliament. While she was in Washington for President Donald Trump's inauguration, we sat down to talk about what's been happening in the U.K., and what Trump's election means to her and her constituents.“We need to learn a lot from the MAGA movement, from the success of the Republicans under Donald Trump, and really try and apply some of those lessons to U.K. politics right now, because we are mired in the depression, the recession, and the doom and gloom over socialism,” said Braverman.We discussed the grooming gangs scandal currently making headlines in Britain, in which predominantly migrant gangs of men have been sexually assaulting and abusing young girls for roughly two decades.“The Pakistani men who were involved in this abhorrent behavior were targeting white girls for a specific reason—that they have an outdated, unacceptable view of women. And the authorities failed to act because they were scared of the charge of racism,” said Braverman. “It's one of the biggest national scandals in our history.”We also discussed issues related to anti-Semitism and free speech.“We've got this problem in the U.K. of hate marches, where extremism, antisemitism, and Islamism can be paraded on our streets, and the police won't take any action. And it's caused a real increase in antisemitism, and it's made parts of our streets and our public realm no-go zones for Jewish people,” she said.“We have a crisis of free speech in the United Kingdom, and I use that word deliberately. We have a situation where the police have the powers to record your information and log your details, if you've said something that might be offensive to someone. It doesn't matter about the objective nature of what you've said. If someone, somewhere, happens to be offended by what you have said, and it relates to a personal characteristic, race, gender, religion, or sex, then that's it. The case is closed. You will be considered guilty of what we call a ‘noncrime hate incident.'”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

At a young age, Cooper Davis was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed a low dose of Ritalin, which helped his ability to focus but caused unwanted side effects. To counteract them, he was prescribed other medications. By age 30, Davis was dependent on six different psychiatric drugs at any given time, what's commonly known in the mental health community as a “prescription cascade.”“It's complicated enough that the scientific consensus will generally say, ‘We don't quite understand why these drugs work,'” says Davis.Today, he is executive director of the Inner Compass Initiative, where he addresses America's mental health crisis and overmedication problem by helping people make informed choices about prescription drugs, diagnoses, and withdrawal.“Once people experience withdrawal symptoms, they get back on the drug. They treat it as confirmation that they are still mentally ill,” says Davis. “Experiential expertise, expertise gained from your own life, is just as valid—and probably more useful in many, many cases than clinical expertise.”Davis says that one out of four adults in America and 6 million children are currently taking at least one psychiatric drug.“That's going to be inclusive of teenagers, but it is certainly the trend that more and more kids that are younger and younger are being diagnosed and prescribed earlier and earlier.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.