American Thought Leaders

“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, a documentary filmmaker and former head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, dives into the world of state-funded media as a powerful tool for public diplomacy. He discusses the staggering impact of a $900 million budget and its reach across 70 languages. Pack advocates for promoting American values globally, particularly emphasizing how breaking down China's internet firewall could transform public discourse there. Additionally, he shares insights on the evolving media landscape, censorship, and the importance of balanced storytelling in documentaries.

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.

In this episode, we have a special guest: Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña.Paraguay is a unique country. It is one of only 12 countries in the world that recognize Taiwan instead of communist China.It is also one of only six nations in the world, alongside the United States, that have moved their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Peña said he made the decision despite immense opposition from other world leaders.An economist, Peña served as Paraguay’s minister of finance before he was elected president. He assumed office in August 2023 after a landslide victory. During his tenure, Paraguay has seen robust economic growth, outperforming many other Latin American nations. Last year, Moody’s awarded Paraguay an investment grade rating.In this episode, I ask President Peña about what President Donald Trump’s return to the White House means for Paraguay and Latin America more broadly, his hopes and economic strategy for Paraguay, why he’s concerned about communist China’s influence in the region, and what he thinks about Trump’s recent comments about controlling the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico.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 Trump says he wants the United States to control the Panama Canal and other regions and waterways that he says are crucial to America’s national security interests.“The question we would have to have with Panama is: Do you truly, verifiably know everything that China is doing in regards to your canal for national security concerns? And unless they could give us an answer of ‘100%, we do,’ I think that we’re going to have to have more transparency on that. And I think that’s where the conversation is at today,” says Joseph Humire. He is an expert on Latin America, specializing, in foreign policy, national security, and asymmetric warfare.“Worst case scenario for the United States would be that [China] would find a way to disrupt the Panama Canal so that the United States no longer has rapid reaction capabilities to be able to move from the Atlantic into the Pacific,” he says.In this episode, Humire breaks down the context of Trump’s recent comments and explains how vulnerable the United States is to increasing Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence in the region.“The United States has not had a grand strategy for the Western Hemisphere arguably in 100 years—arguably since the Monroe Doctrine,” 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.

“In America, we really don’t have a health care system, even though we call everything ‘health’ insurance, ‘health’ care, and this and that,” says Dr. Jingduan Yang.“We’re not healthy as a nation because we allocate all resources trying to deal with consequences of problems or disease, rather than to prevent [them] and find the root causes that cause those problems,” he says.Yang is a specialist in psychiatry and integrative medicine, and is a fifth-generation practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. He’s the CEO of Northern Medical Center and founder of the Yang Institute of Integrative Medicine.Western medicine could learn a lot from the approach of Chinese medicine, he says, which emphasizes prevention before problems become structurally damaging and looking at every part of the body as part of an integrated system.“In Chinese medicine, every organ is connected. ... Therefore, there’s no way you could address any part of the body’s issue without looking at the whole system,” Yang 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 UK has now banned puberty blockers—probably will ban cross-sex hormones too, is my prediction, in the next few years,” said Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.He has been following the massive increase in children identifying as transgender and undergoing what’s known as “gender-affirming care” treatment—from puberty blockers to double mastectomies.“[The World Professional Association for Transgender Health] commissioned systematic evidence reviews as part of the process of developing [Standards of Care Version 8]. When it found out that the evidence reviews, specifically for minors, were unimpressive and did not get them the results that they wanted—that would support their medical approach, they suppressed them. They basically instructed the researchers at Johns Hopkins University who were doing these systematic reviews to not publish them,” said Sapir. “Any way you look at it, WPATH greatly deviated from how responsible, trustworthy medical guidelines are supposed to be developed.”His current area of focus is the pushback to gender interventions for minors, including state bans, lawsuits, and a landmark case now at the Supreme Court.“This case has tremendous consequences for what’s going to happen in the 26 states that have banned these interventions in minors,” said Sapir.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 Communist Party (CCP) is stepping up its efforts to destroy a religious group in America that it sees as a threat to its rule, according to leaked information from multiple CCP insiders.Tactics include lawfare, bomb threats, smear campaigns, impersonation attempts, and bribing U.S. officials. The Department of Justice sentenced a Chinese agent for trying to bribe an IRS agent to target practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline.So what’s going on exactly? And why would this be a priority for the Chinese regime?Today, I’m sitting down with Erping Zhang, president of the International Falun Dafa Association.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.