American Thought Leaders

America is facing an epidemic of loneliness, and it’s as bad for people’s health as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, says U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy.In the past two decades, there’s been a marked rise in suicides and “deaths of despair.”What’s fueling these trends of social fragmentation, isolation, and atomization? And how are they linked to broader political and social trends?In this episode, two of the world’s leading thinkers on bioethics and group psychology join together with me for the first time.Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a former psychiatry professor and director of the medical ethics program at the University of California Irvine Medical School. He’s the author of “The New Abnormal.”Mattias Desmet is a professor of psychology at Ghent University and author of “The Psychology of Totalitarianism.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2Kyle Bass is the founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management, and he’s known for his prescient bets on major global economic events.In this episode, we dive into why he believes China’s economy is collapsing, why Bytedance hasn’t sold TikTok despite a looming January deadline, and what he believes the big economic and financial priorities of the incoming Trump administration should be.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 Turning Point USA’s AmFest conference in Phoenix, I sat down with former TV anchor Kari Lake, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head Voice of America (VOA).VOA is an international broadcaster funded by Congress that releases content in nearly 50 languages to more than 300 million people weekly around the globe.It was founded in 1942 to combat Nazi propaganda and share the “policies of the United States clearly and effectively.” VOA later played a major role in the ideological fight against communism during the Cold War.The director of Voice of America is officially nominated by the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. After Senate approval, the candidate must also be approved by a majority vote of the International Broadcasting Advisory Board.What would Voice of America look like under Kari Lake?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2As part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I’m sitting down with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).In the next Congress, Johnson will become chairman again of the homeland security committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has uniquely powerful subpoena powers to investigate crime and corruption within the U.S. government and beyond.In this wide-ranging episode, we dive into the future of the Make America Healthy Again movement; what Johnson believes key steps are for the incoming administration to restore transparency, scientific integrity, and small government; and why Congress needs to retake its oversight authority.“Our oversight authority is probably our greatest authority and greatest responsibility. ... We’ve got to fund government. But then once we funded it, we need to take a look at what we funded. … What we passed, did it actually work?”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 part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, Sebastian Gorka breaks down the complexities of recent events in Syria, and what the incoming Trump administration’s foreign policy may look like when it comes to NATO, the Middle East, Russia, and China.Gorka will serve as Trump’s deputy assistant and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2Forty-five key figures in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement were recently sentenced to up to 10 years each. More than 1,900 political prisoners have been convicted and imprisoned in Hong Kong in the last five years. Thousands more are simply being held without bail for years on end. About 40 percent of Hong Kong’s entire prison population is being held without a conviction.“They haven’t even taken the trouble to convict these people in a kangaroo court,” says Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.Clifford has lived in Asia since the late 1980s and witnessed Hong Kong’s transformation from a largely free society in 1997, to an increasingly repressive one. He previously served as editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post and executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council.He’s the author of multiple books, including “Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World” and most recently “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Hong Kong, once celebrated for its economic freedom and rule of law, has now become a key node for authoritarian regimes to evade sanctions, Clifford says. According to a report by Samuel Bickett, Hong Kong has become an indispensable location for the transfer of money, military technology, and prohibited products to Russia, Iran, and North Korea.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“Despite decades of a US Department of Education, we’re not doing any better in educating our students. If anything, we’re now doing worse ... I think the question is how the American people can best be served. The goal shouldn’t be to preserve jobs of bureaucrats. The goal shouldn’t be to preserve the status quo. We should ask, how can we best serve students and their families?”As part of our special series on the U.S. presidential transition period, I’m sitting down with Kenneth L. Marcus, former assistant secretary of education for civil rights and the founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Stephen Blackwood, the founding president of Ralston College, champions the revival of a transformative humanities education. He critiques modern universities' focus on job training and the rise of ideological nihilism, calling for a return to deep, meaningful learning. Blackwood emphasizes the importance of community in education, the dual mission of universities in preserving and discovering knowledge, and the significance of graduation rituals in marking personal transformation. He advocates for fostering human dignity through shared cultural values.

There is an unprecedented child trafficking crisis in America today. Large numbers of unaccompanied migrant children are being released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to sponsors that are not thoroughly vetted, including individuals associated with dangerous criminal organizations like MS-13 and the 18th Street gang, whistleblowers say.Many migrant children now work backbreaking shifts in slaughterhouses, restaurants, or factories. Others are being sold for sex.From 2019 to 2023, immigration authorities transferred more than 448,000 unaccompanied minors from the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the HHS. A recent watchdog report found that ICE is unable to account for more than 32,000 unaccompanied children who failed to appear for court hearings. Another 291,000 unaccompanied children simply did not receive notices at all.So how many children in America have fallen victim to trafficking? To what extent are international actors facilitating this? What can the incoming administration do to stem child trafficking? What will be the greatest challenges they must tackle?Join me for this special live crossover episode with NTD’s International Roundtable program, hosted by Cindy Drukier. The two of us will be sitting down with three key individuals who have been at the forefront of exposing child trafficking and demanding policy change.Guests:Tara Rodas, HHS whistleblower and 20-year public servant, primarily working in the federal inspector general communityAaron Stevenson, DHS whistleblower and former intelligence research specialist for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration ServicesMary Flynn O’Neill, executive director of the America’s Future nonprofit

Drew Pinsky, popularly known as Dr. Drew, is an addiction medicine specialist and host of the TV series “Ask Dr. Drew.” For decades, he has been studying public health and drug addiction in America, exposing its ongoing challenges in nationally syndicated television and radio programs. He saw early on during the COVID-19 pandemic that the response from the authorities would cause unnecessary harm and suffering.“A member of the school board came in and said, ‘We’re going to lock the schools down.’ And I said, ‘Why? Why are you doing that? Who did you consult with? Did an infectious disease doctor come in and say you’ve got to do this?’ ‘No, it’s just the right thing to do.’ ... I knew then that was big, big, big trouble,” says Pinsky.He says that how authorities reacted to the pandemic followed a similar playbook to how they responded to the opioid crisis. And in both cases, he argues, the physician-patient relationship has degraded.“The physician-patient unit is so badly encumbered and so badly adulterated right now that it’s hard for it to function,” says Pinsky. “There are some of us that can’t get over COVID—not the virus—the way our country dealt with the COVID, just mind-boggling.”Pinsky is particularly concerned about the centralization and algorithmizing of medicine.“The young folks are being taught to look at the computer and just fill out forms, do an algorithm, look things up if you don’t know—I mean, I don’t know how you develop judgment. I don’t know how you think about a risk-reward if all you’re doing is following an algorithm on your electronic medical record. It’s really disturbing,” 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.