American Thought Leaders

💰Protect your wealth with precious metals! Call American Hartford Gold today & get up to $20,000 in free silver on your 1st order! Call 855-862-3377 or text AMERICAN to 65532 or click here: https://ept.ms/ATL-AHGThere’s one place in America where Chinese nationals can enter without a visa.It’s called the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a U.S. territory in the Pacific, right by Guam. And it has become a major security loophole for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence operations as well as Chinese organized crime and birth tourism ventures, said Cleo Paskal, a senior fellow at the Compass Institute.Yet there has been little political will in Washington to close this loophole, Paskal argues.In this episode, Paskal breaks down the CCP’s aggressive influence and gray-zone warfare operations in this region—areas critical to U.S. defense in any Taiwan conflict—and why this matters for U.S. security.Every U.S. president who served in the Pacific theater in World War II understood that the security of the American mainland depends on a secure Pacific perimeter, Paskal said.As such, in addition to two U.S. territories in the region, the United States has maintained Compacts of Free Association with Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands since the end of World War II.These treaties give the U.S. military exclusive defense and strategic access to these countries in exchange for U.S. security guarantees and economic support.But the Chinese Communist Party has sought to aggressively expand its influence in these islands through pressure, gray zone warfare, and disinformation campaigns. Amid all this, U.S. funding for these compacts nearly lapsed in recent years, because many in Washington apparently have forgotten their importance.In this episode, Paskal walks me through a key question: if the security of America’s mainland has always depended on control of the central Pacific, what consequences will we pay now that so few Americans know these islands—or their citizens—even exist?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

It is becoming increasingly common to hear the American Dream is dead, with young people today often citing housing prices, the difficulty of finding jobs, and tax burdens.Forbes Media chairman Steve Forbes has a very different take.“A free people always finds ways to move ahead, even though times and circumstances change. The problems we face today are not anything inherent in America, but in mistakes made by government. And the nice thing about that is mistakes can be undone,” Forbes said.He’s the editor-in-chief of Forbes Media and the co-author of “Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and How to Fix It.”In this wide-ranging episode, filmed at the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas, we dove into the rise of democratic socialist candidates, DEI hiring, inflation, how the United States should approach Taiwan and Iran, and the basic truth about prosperity that no one is teaching today.At the heart of this conversation is an extremely hopeful message: “Human ingenuity is unlimited. Have faith in the future.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Nigeria has become perhaps the deadliest place on earth for Christians, accounting for the vast majority of Christians killed worldwide for faith-related reasons.Beyond the killings, millions more have been displaced into camps, where many now die slowly from malnutrition rather than violence, says Judd Saul.He is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, entrepreneur, and Christian missionary based in Iowa who founded Equipping the Persecuted, an organization dedicated to helping Christians facing jihadi violence in Nigeria.Saul first traveled to Nigeria in 2011 on a mission trip with his grandfather, Duane Wessels.It was an experience that reshaped the direction of his life and work. Since then, he has visited Nigeria multiple times a year.In our interview, Saul explains what forces drive the violence against Christian Nigerians, who make up about 50 percent of the population.“This is a well-organized and funded Fulani Islamic militia who are hell-bent on turning Nigeria into a caliphate,” he told me.According to Saul, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 Christians are killed each year, averaging about 35 deaths per day.Roughly 800 Christian communities have been wiped off the map over the past three decades.Views expressed in this video are the opinions of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

🔥IMMERSED: Round closes July 30. Invest before the round closes. Learn more about Immersed here:https://ept.ms/4yurClsFreya India is the author of “Girls: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything.”In this episode, India unpacks how the rise of social media has radically transformed how young women view themselves and the world. She argues that an increasing number of young women no longer view themselves as human beings, but as products competing in a marketplace of likes and followers.India describes the pressure she felt growing up in the age of social media.“I really felt like I had to sell my life to strangers constantly,” she said.From Snapchat’s public friend rankings to TikTok’s algorithms that flood vulnerable users with more of what destabilizes them, many various social platforms are engineered to exploit the very insecurities almost all young people have, she argues.In this episode, we dive into many important questions: Why are so many young women today anxious or unhappy? How has the messaging of modern feminism affected young women—and what are the true consequences? How has ubiquitous pornography altered relationships, and how is it especially impacting young men? And what may help shrink the growing rift between young men and women today?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

China’s new ethnic unity law has taken effect, and it’s going to be used to justify and expand transnational repression overseas in combination with existing laws on promoting “separatism,” said Guermantes Lailari, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and longtime China researcher.“In this new ethnic law, they encourage people to report on other Chinese who are not promoting ‘unity.’” Lailari said.“So if you’re a Chinese person in the United States promoting Taiwan, they can prosecute you in absentia, and the court will have a ruling. And they can put out a red notice or Interpol notice on that person who’s overseas, and if that person ever travels to a country that China has bilateral extradition laws with, that person can be detained and transferred to China,” Lailari added.Lailari moved to Taiwan a few years ago to study the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) up close.“This place,” he said, “is being attacked every day, whether it’s cyber, cognitive warfare, media warfare, economic warfare, diplomatic warfare.”In our interview, he argues that the CCP poses the most serious long-term threat to Western civilization—not just militarily, but through a combination of legal, economic, psychological, and intelligence operations.In this episode, we dive into why the CCP is fixated on taking Taiwan, and what the global fallout of such a takeover would look like.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Young men have been under attack by popular culture for the last 20 years, argues Nick Freitas, a former Green Beret and Virginia state legislator. They have been told that masculinity is toxic, the future is female, that they are responsible for the world’s problems, and that they no longer have a place, he says.Despite this onslaught, Freitas shares a hopeful message for the young men of today: “God has created men for a particular purpose. We are supposed to be strong. We are supposed to be capable. Why? So we can honor God, protect our families, and protect our civilization.”Freitas recently wrote a book entitled “The Manbook: A Point-by-Point Guide to Sucking It Up and Getting the Job Done,” where he shares hard-won lessons on how to be a good man despite resistance, or outright attacks, from the prevailing culture.In this episode, Freitas reveals why a whole generation of men are flocking to radical ideologies—and how to prevent it.Perhaps surprisingly, Freitas puts the onus on the men of older generations, arguing that young men desire good role models and guidance. Older men, therefore, must live the kind of lives that young men would want to model.“The best argument you make is not just the one that you articulate through your words,” Freitas says, “it’s the one that you articulate through what you do in your own life.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

💰Protect your wealth with precious metals! Call American Hartford Gold today & get up to $20,000 in free silver on your 1st order! Call 855-862-3377 or text AMERICAN to 65532 or click here: https://ept.ms/ATL-AHGThere are few people who understand America’s history—both political and artistic—better than Matthew Mehan.Mehan is an associate dean and associate professor of government for Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, as well as a best-selling author of children’s literature.His recent book, “The American Book of Fables,” is a beautiful collection of fables celebrating the landscapes, virtues, and enduring principles that have shaped the American story.In honor of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, we discuss some of these timeless lessons on freedom, friendship, and the development of moral character.On the importance of stories, he said, “American educators from the colonial period forward spent a great deal of effort to try to help people to have these virtues of civility, politeness, civic life, independence, rule of law, justice, truth telling, candor. In one sense, you can have a kind of ‘dark age’ version of these morals, but you have to have a much more adept, technologically advanced moral vocabulary and moral praxis, and that’s what fables and stories can do.”Through adept storytelling, Mehan tackles important questions such as: What is true patriotism, and why is it a virtue? How ought we practice the art of civic friendship when there is so much to divide us? What was the Founders’ vision of American republicanism, and what practices ought we implement in our daily lives to foster love of country?As Mehan argues, there is no better time than America’s semiquincentennial to reflect on the laws, the beauty, the places, the people, and the principles that gave rise to this great nation.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Rob Henderson grew up in poverty in Los Angeles moving from foster home to foster home, seeing addiction, instability, and family breakdown all around him. He joined the U.S. Air Force at 17, entered Yale University at 25 with help from the GI Bill, and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He climbed “every rung on the American class ladder,” as he describes it.But at Yale and other elite universities, he saw the spread of radical ideas—abolish the police, empty prisons, dismantle marriage, decriminalize all drugs—ideas that he understood would be devastating to the communities he grew up in.And that’s how he came to develop his now famous concept of luxury beliefs: “Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the affluent … while inflicting costs on the less fortunate members of society,” he says.How is it that these ideas came to be so pervasive? And what are their true consequences for society?Henderson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor of City Journal, and bestselling author of “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

💰Protect your wealth with precious metals! Call American Hartford Gold today & get up to $20,000 in free silver on your 1st order! Call 855-862-3377 or text AMERICAN to 65532 or click here: https://ept.ms/ATL-AHGIt’s been over six years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, yet much of the scientific establishment still seems unwilling to acknowledge or openly debate where this virus came from.In this episode, Matt Ridley, co-author of “Viral,” breaks down the significance of newly declassified documents released by Homeland Security Secretary Tulsi Gabbard and the evidence of a coordinated cover-up of COVID-19’s origins.Ridley delves into a key paper, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published by Nature Medicine, exposing how the authors themselves believed that a lab leak was a likely possibility while publicly pushing the opposite narrative.Troubling questions arise: Why hasn’t the international community held China accountable for what happened at the Wuhan lab? Why is America so attentive to cybersecurity, but completely blind to biosecurity? And why are there such close ties between Western scientific research and Chinese dual-purpose facilities like the lab in Wuhan?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 will not let Communist Party of China define who we are,” said Taiwan’s Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim, who has been sanctioned by Beijing and labeled a “separatist.”Despite Beijing’s ever-growing hostility toward Taiwan, she is not deterred.In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has escalated its “gray zone” operations, naval aggression, large-scale encirclement drills and missile tests, and aircraft incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has promised to seize Taiwan—including by force if necessary.Beijing has also aggressively sought to isolate Taiwan internationally and peel away its allies. Only 11 countries and the Holy See still maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan as of 2026.“China’s cognitive warfare, psychological warfare, political warfare, legal warfare, and very aggressive interventions in our domestic society and politics [have] become an increasingly serious problem,” Hsiao said.Born to a Taiwanese father and an American mother, Hsiao previously served in Taiwan’s legislature and as the island’s top representative in Washington, where she became known for her “cat warrior diplomacy.”Although Taiwan is only about the size of Maryland, it plays a pivotal role in the global economy, producing more than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors—the chips that power artificial intelligence, smartphones, cars, and much of tomorrow’s technology.It is also America’s fourth-largest trading partner, and nearly half of all global container ships—dwarfing even shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—sail through the narrow Taiwan Strait, carrying trillions in trade.“Everything we’re doing today in strengthening Taiwan is to prevent an invasion, to prevent that scenario from happening,” Hsiao said.Recently, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau established a secure information-reporting channel for Chinese nationals to submit intelligence tips—a unprecedented move for Taiwan.In this episode, I sat down with Hsiao in the presidential office of Taiwan to understand what’s really at stake here and how Taiwan is working to strengthen its whole-of-society resilience and deter a greater conflict.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

💰Protect your wealth with precious metals! Call American Hartford Gold today & get up to $20,000 in free silver on your 1st order! Call 855-862-3377 or text AMERICAN to 65532 or click here: https://ept.ms/ATL-AHG With Chinese leader Xi Jinping repeatedly stating his plans to take Taiwan by force if necessary, many are wondering: What might such an invasion look like, and how prepared is Taiwan to defend itself and withstand such an assault?Enoch Wu is working to tip the balance in Taiwan’s favor. Born in Chicago to Taiwanese parents, he decided to quit his lucrative career as a finance executive in Hong Kong to join Taiwan’s special forces in his early 30s. And he’s since devoted his life to preventing Taiwan from being wiped from the map by its large totalitarian neighbor.In 2020, he founded Forward Alliance to train ordinary Taiwanese in trauma medicine, search and rescue, establish communication networks, and organize shelters during a crisis.The group has now trained tens of thousands of ordinary Taiwanese to become de facto first responders through partnerships with local churches, schools, and other community groups.Wu explains his philosophy: while the military serves as a country’s sword, societal resilience serves as its shield.At the heart of our conversation is an urgent message: “The whole point of living in a democratic society,” Wu says, “is that we are all owners, and we have to take responsibility. We can’t treat democracy like a heritage that’s just passed down. You can’t take it as a given. You have to continue to nurture it. You have to invest in it. You have to improve 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.

Leonardo da Vinci once wrote that the key to developing a “complete mind” was to “study the science of art. Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”In 2009, Sherry Zhang and a group of dedicated California parents who were disillusioned with the schools in their area decided to co-found an academic institution that would put this philosophy into practice.A former Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory postdoctoral chemist, Zhang shares her unexpected journey from working in a garage tech start up to being a founding member of a classical academy.In this episode, Zhang discusses the core philosophy behind classical education—built upon three tenets: truth, goodness, and beauty. She reveals how intensive training in classical Chinese dance, ballet, visual arts, and music causes students to develop habits of perseverance, focus, and attentiveness that transfer to academics.In an age dominated by instant gratification and digital distraction, Zhang explains how the structure of classical arts provides order that children long for.One student, Hugo, came to the San Francisco High School of the Arts unable to focus and with failing grades. After one year at the school, he began to prosper academically, and his mother was stunned. His story is just one among many, Zhang 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.

🏆Sponsor: FreedomProject Academy enrollment open now!10% discount on tuition w/code: EPOCH10Click here: https://ept.ms/ATL—FPEU.S. federal investigators recently discovered a sophisticated tunnel 55 feet underground between Mexico and California—among the largest ever found—with electricity, a rail system, ventilation, reinforced walls, and a complex hydraulic lift system.White House “drug czar” Sara Carter estimated that it was used to transport narcotics worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This is just one of the over 200 tunnels of varying sizes and sophistication that have been discovered in the last four decades, with many more likely still undetected, she said.As Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), Carter is fighting to end the narcotic epidemic killing Americans, seize cartel finances, and make a drug-free life the new norm in America.Deaths from illicit narcotics in America have been rising for decades and reached an all-time high in 2022, with 112,000 Americans dying in a single year. Since the Trump administration took office, that number has dropped to about 68,000 for the 12-month period ending in November 2025. But Americans of all ages are still dying.In this episode, Carter breaks down the complex pipelines that are driving this epidemic and how the Trump administration has been going on the offensive to attack both the supply and demand sides of this crisis.How exactly do illicit narcotics and precursor chemicals make their way into the United States? How have America’s enemies weaponized these deadly drugs? And how can we begin to comprehend the truly devastating human cost—the many young lives that were abruptly cut short and the families left behind?Carter revealed that she always thinks to herself, “This could be my child.”On the evening of our interview, she told us she would be heading to meet an Angel family who recently lost their son, a recent law graduate, to a line of fentanyl-laced cocaine.“His parents had all the hopes in the world for him. … He went to a party after law school in Miami and made a huge mistake. He did a line of cocaine that had fentanyl in it, seized, had a heart attack, and died in an instant in the party,” she 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.

“We are definitively, with no debate, in a demographic winter in the history of the United States of America. We have never had a lower marriage rate, and we’ve never had a lower fertility rate,” says Timothy Goeglein, vice president of External and Government Relations at Focus on the Family.Goeglein is the author of multiple books, including most recently “What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family.”In our interview, we explore how America ended up where it is today. Why are millions of prime-age men neither working nor seeking a job? Why do women find it so hard to find a good partner? What is the antidote to America’s high rates of suicide, drug overdose, pornography addiction, and family dysfunction?“The biggest single challenge facing America in its 250th year … is a spiritual crisis of a pretty substantial order,” Goeglein said. He believes we are witnessing in America “the practical ramifications of destroying an objective moral code … of saying you can’t really define good and evil.”Luckily, this is not the whole story. In this interview, Goeglein explains the signs of hope he sees and what he calls “a quiet Renaissance.”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: FreedomProject Academy enrollment open now!10% discount on tuition w/code: EPOCH10Click here: https://ept.ms/ATL—FPEThere are few people who understand the machinery behind modern disinformation and censorship better than Jacob Siegel. He’s a special features editor at Tablet Magazine and author of the new book “The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control.”In this episode, we trace the origins of modern information control, from President Woodrow Wilson’s propaganda office during World War I and President Barack Obama’s “whole-of-society” framework, to the policing of information during the COVID-19 pandemic.He breaks down how government agencies, major tech platforms, and large nonprofits can work together behind the scenes to control who gets to speak and who does not, and what ideas are expressed and which are obscured.“If you can control the information, you can control the society,” Siegel said. And the digital age makes this possible to a degree never reached before, he added.So, how has this transformed our society and our liberties?“The principles of the constitutional order, the principles of the liberal nation state have begun to be profoundly eroded by this new kind of information-based political regime,” Siegel said.“Those rights are relocated into the digital code, so the question of who can speak, who can express their ideas, is no longer clearly defined and delimited by these print-era documents. Now it becomes a question of who controls the digital code.”According to Siegel, the transition to the digital era has resulted in a vast “sweeping away of previously existing local organizations [and] civic organizations.” And more recently, we have been witnessing, whether we are aware of it or not, what he calls the “vast acceleration of the erasure of core remnants of civil society.”So how do we navigate this new digital arena, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Hungary is undergoing a major transformation with the election of a new prime minister.After 16 years in power, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party was swept from office in a historic landslide election in April and with an equally historic turnout of almost 80 percent.The new Tisza party, led by Peter Magyar, won the largest super-majority in Hungary’s post-communist history with a platform focused on anti-corruption and national renewal. They’ve promised major changes to Hungary’s constitution, known as the Fundamental Law.So what does this election mean for Hungary and how might the new leadership reorient its relationship with America, the European Union, Russia, and China?Orban was known for his pro-family and pro-tradition domestic policies, while at the same time cultivating close ties with Russia and communist China and distancing himself from the EU.Joining us today to break all this down is Hungarian constitutional law scholar Marton Sulyok, a visiting researcher at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution.Sulyok is, notably, also the son of Hungary’s current President, Tamas Sulyok.Magyar has demanded the resignation of Sulyok and other Orban allies. It remains to be seen whether they will be forced out by constitutional amendment or other means.Despite his family ties, the younger Sulyok has remained strikingly detached.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Ahead of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, New York Times bestselling author and talk show host Eric Metaxas is publishing his latest book, a 600-page volume titled “Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World.”In the book, he argues that the American Revolution is the “only genuine revolution in the history of so-called revolutions.”So what separated the American Revolution from other revolutions? What made it succeed? And what critical aspects of the American Revolution are no longer being taught in schools today?Metaxas argues that America is currently facing its third existential crisis, after the American Revolution and the Civil War, and understanding the core principles behind America’s founding story is critical to preserving the liberties of this nation.In the interview, we confront some key questions: How is the erosion of spiritual faith transforming American society? How does self-government work without the “moral and religious people” that John Adams described as a prerequisite for self-government? What is the proper role of a good citizen?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Could communist Chinese infiltration of Canada become an existential threat to American security—or is it already one?Scott McGregor has spent decades in the Canadian military and Canadian intelligence studying the threat that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) poses to Canada and North America more broadly. He has known about the CCP’s infiltration of Canada for many years and briefed major intelligence agencies in both Canada and the United States about it.According to McGregor, the strategic partnership between Canada and China is extremely detrimental to Canada’s interests—and also poses a major security threat to America.McGregor, who is the co-author of the book “The Mosaic Effect,” told me the partnership “came as quite a shock. ... This strategic alliance ... cuts the legs out of the people that have been trying to bring awareness to the threat of China to Canada and North America.”U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments last year about Canada becoming America’s 51st state alienated many Canadians to such a degree that they are eager to distance themselves from America. But McGregor says the reality is that Canada very much depends on the United States. It’s by far Canada’s most important trading partner and an indispensable military partner.“Canada relies on the United States as a partner in logistics support, especially militarily. When I deployed, we had Canadians that were saved because Americans had helicopters that could operate in regions that we just couldn’t. We didn’t have the capability. The same goes for weaponry,” he says.Without American military support, McGregor warns, “We are left on our own. ... Canada needs the United States.”But do Canadians want to hear such warnings? Do Canadians perhaps tend to overestimate their country’s military strength? Do they understand the depth of the threat from a China under CCP rule? Are they aware of the extent to which Canadian society has already been undermined over the last half century?And are Canadians perhaps too trusting to realize that the CCP has a plan for Canada and is executing it?He tells me: “China has a goal, an objective. It’s not destruction at this point. It’s disruption, and the disruption is working. They’ve outflanked us. We’re fighting amongst ourselves—exactly what they want.”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 China analyst Gordon Chang to understand his view of the recent Trump–Xi talks in Beijing.Who had the upper hand? Why did President Donald Trump take 17 CEOs of America’s largest corporations with him? And what was accomplished?While Xi Jinping tries to present America as a declining power and China as an ascending one, the reality is that China faces several grave problems, Chang says: a collapsing demography, an ailing economy, and a military in disarray after a series of purges.But China also holds two strong cards: a near-monopoly on rare-earth processing and on critical pharmaceutical precursors.At the same time, China is winning the information war, Chang argues.“Xi Jinping has been beating the crap out of us in the information warfare space, and that’s our fault,” he said.Where is the future of U.S.–China relations headed? Will Trump call Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te—something no U.S. president has done in 47 years? How are shifting alliances in the region reshaping the geopolitical chessboard? And how close are we to a major confrontation? Is the “Thucydides Trap” narrative real?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Rosi Orozco is one of the world’s leading voices against human trafficking. She has been working in human rights advocacy for over three decades, and as a member of the Chamber of Deputies of Mexico, she was the driving legislative force behind Mexico’s famous anti-trafficking law.“There are 50 million people in the world in slavery,” Orozco tells me. And that, she believes, is a low estimate.She was recently involved in helping three rescued girls, who are now at secure shelter in Mexico. “These three girls were minors, and a cartel was training them to kill, to sell drugs, and to [engage in] prostitution.”What happened to those three minors—only 14, 15, and 17 years old—is fairly typical, she says. They saw an ad on TikTok that promised them “work in the tourism industry, and [promised] very good payment.” When they arrived at the Mexican tourist resort, they were captured.Over the years, Orozco has helped more than 400 rescued people, mostly minors, slowly begin to rebuild their lives. But, she says, “400 is nothing compared with the people that haven’t been rescued.” The rescue is just the beginning of a long journey: “It’s difficult work because these girls were completely broken ... to see a smile on their face was really a big victory.”Many people who rescue trafficked children or work in the security shelters where they are protected often risk their own lives. The theme of Orozco’s 5th International Summit Against Human Trafficking this year is “Heroes Wanted.”Orozco also serves as president of the Houston-based “United Against Human Trafficking” nonprofit and created the Trafficking in Persons hotline in Mexico in 2013, giving citizens a direct channel to report trafficking.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“People have lost sight of what education is supposed to be,” said Caylan Ford. In 2022, she founded Canada’s first tuition-free classical charter school, the Calgary Classical Academy, with just a dozen faculty members.Since then, it has grown to 1,500 students across three campuses in Calgary and Edmonton, with thousands more on the waitlist, and has changed its name to Alberta Classical Academy.For Ford, classical education is all about, as she put it, “turning around the soul so that it’s oriented toward things that are actually eternally true and good and enduring.”Canadian parents crave the classical education Alberta Classical Academy provides. “A lot of the parents who come to us are absolutely desperate. … The existence of this school is like an answered prayer,” Ford said.Surprisingly, Alberta is the only province in Canada that allows charter schools. Just as in America, Alberta’s charter schools are public schools that do not charge tuition. They are statutorily barred from having a religious affiliation.Students study Latin beginning in Grade 5, with additional language options like French in high school. Much emphasis is given to the coherent study of history.“Our students read a lot of primary source material; they’re not judging the past through current prejudices. They’re trying to understand it on its own terms,” Ford said.The school also has a rich world literature curriculum where students memorize a lot, for example, poetry.“We do a lot of memorization work, partly because we want to help them furnish beautiful inner worlds. We want their minds and their souls to be places into which they can retire and find themselves refreshed and renewed,” Ford 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.💰Protect your wealth with precious metals! Call American Hartford Gold today & get up to $20,000 in free silver on your 1st order! Call 855-862-3377 or text AMERICAN to 65532 or click here: https://ept.ms/ATL-AHG

It’s time to fundamentally rethink America’s approach to the Chinese Communist Party, argues Sam Brownback, former U.S. senator, Kansas governor, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, and author of the new book “China’s War on Faith.”Ahead of President Donald Trump’s high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, I’m sitting down with Brownback to understand what’s really at stake and why he believes America is wasting the greatest leverage it has had.“I think we’ve just got to recognize: ... This is an evil regime. They’ve killed more of their own people than any other regime in the history of mankind, and we’ve been treating them like a normal country,” Brownback says.Brownback lays out the case that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is currently conducting three genocides—against the Uyghur Muslims, Falun Gong practitioners, and Tibetan Buddhists—through mass detention, torture, cultural eradication, and forced organ harvesting. At the same time, the regime is escalating its war on Christianity, arresting pastors, and crushing underground churches, Brownback says.Now, the CCP is also exporting the technologies it uses to surveil and persecute dissidents to at least 80 other countries, he says.For decades, human rights and religious freedom has been a “red line” for the Chinese regime that American leaders and diplomats have tiptoed around.But the reality is that human rights and religious freedom are the CCP’s deepest vulnerability and insecurity—and America’s most potent weapon and leverage against this regime, Brownback argues.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Paola Brown first turned to homeopathy, a form of alternative medicine based on the principle of “like cures like,” after many years of suffering from unbearable bladder pain. She had been diagnosed with interstitial cystitis, a disease with no known cure.She jokes that homeopaths are called “the doctors of last resort,” and for her, they were exactly that.When she went to see one for the first time, among the first things she asked her doctor was: “‘Do I need to believe in this? Because I don’t.’ And my homeopath says: ‘No, you don’t have to believe in this. I just need to find the right remedy.’”During the interview, she breaks down what homeopathy actually is, where it originated, and why it’s faced regulatory barriers.In the United States, homeopaths are nationally accredited through the Council of Homeopathic Certification. But the FDA has increased restrictions on homeopathic remedies over the last decade, just at a time when many Americans are starting to seek out new treatment options.“We are so sick that we are looking for alternatives, and when we find those alternatives, we’re finding that those alternatives are harder and harder to get access to,” Brown says.Earlier this year, lawmakers introduced the Homeopathic Drug Product Safety, Quality, and Transparency Act. Supporters say it would protect access to homeopathy by creating clearer rules.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

An island nation only one-third the size of Virginia, Taiwan produces more than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chips and more than 90 percent of the servers powering the AI revolution. And last year, Taiwan became the United States’ fourth-largest trading partner—after Mexico, Canada, and China.More than one-fifth of global maritime trade goes through the Taiwan Strait, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis, and any conflict over Taiwan would be devastating for the global economy—and likely far worse than the economic disruptions caused by the Iran War.Chinese leader Xi Jinping has told the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready for a successful Taiwan invasion by 2027, the PLA’s 100th anniversary.In this episode, I sit down with Taiwan’s representative to the United States, Ambassador Alexander Yui, to understand why Taiwan matters and what’s at stake as the Chinese Communist Party has ramped up its campaign to isolate, intimidate, and encircle Taiwan in recent years.Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s recent visit to Eswatini—Taiwan’s only African ally—had to be abruptly postponed when Seychelles, Madagascar, and Mauritius revoked overflight permissions—presumably due to pressure from Beijing.“They are constantly harassing our naval and air surroundings, trying to create panic and uneasiness,” Yui says.Since 2013, Beijing has built more than two dozen militarized outposts in disputed waters in the South China Sea and has recently been militarizing yet another artificial island known as Antelope Reef.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 what was the third major attempt on President Donald Trump’s life in an era of escalating political violence, this year’s White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) dinner was abruptly cut short when multiple shots were fired, and a man was apprehended for trying to breach security.The 31-year-old suspect, Cole Allen, could face up to life in prison.Joining us today is Sean Spicer, who previously served as White House press secretary and White House communications director during the first Trump administration. Now, he’s the host of the Sean Spicer Show and author of the newly released book, “Trump 2.0: The Revolution That Will Permanently Transform America.”Spicer is known for being a vocal critic of the WHCA for over a decade and has long refused invitations to attend its events. At the time of the shooting incident, he was on his way to the Renwick Museum Gallery to attend Substack’s annual alternative to the WHCA dinner called “The New Media.”In this episode, we get his reaction to what happened, his new book “Trump 2.0,” and why he argues the second Trump administration will be far more consequential for America than the 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.

A recent landmark Jamestown Foundation report maps Chinese United Front operations, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) effort to co-opt and weaponize civil society against the CCP’s enemies.The report, titled “Harnessing the People” and authored by researcher Cheryl Yu, identifies more than 2,000 such organizations operating in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany. More than 1,000 are operating in the United States.They span a wide range, including student, business, professional, cultural, and “friendship” groups as well as media outlets.In this episode, I sit down with Peter Mattis, president of The Jamestown Foundation. Few understand this complex web of Chinese influence and espionage operations as well as he does.His storied career includes roles such as senior fellow with the U.S. House Select Committee on the CCP, staff director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), and counterintelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency.The United Front has two distinct areas of operation: inside China and outside China. Basically, every Party committee in China has a United Front department, Mattis said. But, he said, “the big part of the work that really matters to us happens outside. ... This is a system that involves hundreds of thousands of people.”“Mao Zedong described United Front work as a tool to storm and shatter the enemy’s position,” Mattis said.One key task of United Front operations overseas is to find people, in particular scientists and engineers, who “are susceptible to recruitment,” Mattis said.Many seemingly innocuous civic groups in Western countries—for example, the China Overseas Friendship Association—are used to observe, identify, and then target people who could be useful for technology transfer or even intelligence purposes.How are targeted people approached? Typically, it’s through one of the estimated 600 talent programs that Beijing has created for this objective, Mattis said.Programs include the Young Thousand Talents Program, which targets early-career STEM researchers, and the Hundred Talents Program, which targets scientists under 45.Out of the four Western countries explored in the report, Canada has by far the largest number of United Front organizations per capita, five times as many as the United States.Why, I asked Mattis, is Canada so important to China?“It is a soft underbelly to the United States [and] to the rest of NATO,” he replied.In Canada, he told me, there has been far less pushback against United Front organizations than in the United S

Subpoenaed documents released by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) reveal that American public health officials were well aware of COVID-19 vaccine safety signals for myocarditis and ischemic stroke in people over 65—well before they alerted the American public.Last year, as chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Johnson issued a subpoena to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeking six categories of COVID-related data, including vaccine safety surveillance data and myocarditis records.From the subpoenaed data—enormous dumps of what has ultimately become about 11 million pages—Johnson’s team found that the CDC was well aware of the myocarditis risk even in early 2021. Yet they downplayed it instead of alerting the public, Johnson said.Johnson’s team also found that the White House modified wording about a safety signal for ischemic stroke with the bivalent booster for people over 65, changing “moderately elevated” to “slightly elevated,” according to records.In our wide-ranging interview, we dive into what Johnson and his team discovered after sifting through millions of documents. What did America’s public health agencies really know about the COVID-19 vaccines back in 2021 and 2022? What was hidden from the American public? And what has compelled Johnson to make this issue his number one priority?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

For decades now, we’ve been told the biggest questions of how life and our universe came to be were settled. But what if they’re not?Stephen Meyer has spent his career digging into the deepest mysteries of our existence. A philosopher of science, he is the founder of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture and the author of the New York Times bestseller “Darwin’s Doubt” and “Return of the God Hypothesis.”“Many leading evolutionary biologists today are calling for a new theory of evolution, because they recognize that the mutation-natural selection mechanism has limited creative power,” Meyer says.While Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection can explain small-scale variations—for instance, finch beak size changes, moth wing color changes, or bacteria developing antibiotic resistance—it cannot explain the origins of new species or new body plans, Meyer contends.Now, in a new film, “The Story of Everything,” coming to theaters April 30, Meyer lays out a case that could reshape how we think about life itself.“The scientific discoveries of the last one hundred years and right up to the present are pointing in a very different direction than people thought in the late 19th century,” Meyer 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.

“Pornography is like a silent epidemic ... but nobody wants to talk about it much,” says child protection advocate Kristen Jenson.She’s the author of the “Good Pictures Bad Pictures” series of read-aloud books that teach children how to recognize and reject pornography.In America, kids are encountering porn at younger and younger ages—often without their parents knowing, Jenson says. Once a child has a smartphone, it is only a matter of time until the child is exposed to porn—often by other children. And it’s having a devastating impact on their impressionable young minds, Jenson says.“Every school bus in America is a triple X theater because children are showing pornography to other children in buses. I’ve heard so many stories of five-year-olds getting shown hardcore pornography on a school bus,” she says.Retroactive studies found that the average age kids first view pornography is around 11 years old, but Jenson concluded from her work and research that the average age is much lower.In our in-depth interview, she walks me through many aspects of porn consumption and how children are impacted by it: How does porn affect children’s overall development and their chances of meaningful sexual relationships later on in life? How does porn affect children’s mental health? How does it affect their sexual health? Do children get addicted to porn? How are girls impacted by porn? How do sexual predators use porn as a grooming tool for kids?Violent porn, in particular, is a huge problem in itself, Jenson said. By the age of 18, the vast majority of teenagers—about 80 percent—have been exposed to violent porn: “That’s the main fare out there. It’s violent porn. It’s hitting, it’s slapping, hair-pulling, strangling.”Many children’s perception of sex is poisoned by violent pornography. She told me a story of a girl who was kissed by her 12-year-old boyfriend for the first time: “And he strangled her because that’s what he'd seen in porn.”It is perhaps unsurprising then that there has been a steep increase in what is called child-on-child sexual abuse over the last decade. In fact, about 70 percent of all sexual child abuse cases are now child-on-child, she said: “Kids love to imitate. When you add in the factor of pornography ... it is not surprising that some of these children want to go ahead and act out what they see in pornography,” Jenson says.So what should parents do to protect their children?Simply telling your children that porn is bad is not good enough, she said. Children need to be given three basic things: a vocabulary to talk about pornography, a warning against it, and a plan of what to do when they are exposed to it.To help parents in this endeavor, she wrote her book series “Good Pictures, Bad Pictures.” These books, geared to different age groups, are meant as a tool to help parents with such conversations: “The point is to model parents talking to their

For two decades, investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann has been researching how the Chinese Communist Party secretly harvests the organs of prisoners of conscience and kills them in the process.He authored the groundbreaking 2014 work “The Slaughter” and, more recently, “The Xinjiang Procedure.”In his latest book, he gathers evidence of how the regime—which has long targeted Falun Gong practitioners for their organs—is now exploiting captive Uyghurs for this same macabre industry.Gutmann traveled to Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkey to interview dozens of Uyghurs and Kazaks who had managed to escape after being imprisoned in camps in Xinjiang, China, also known as East Turkestan. Many spoke to him at great personal risk to themselves and their loved ones.What they revealed to him was nothing short of horrific.A central witness named “Samal” described working in one of four medical labs located several stories below the concentration camp. One of the clinics—the one she worked in—was used for intestinal removal.“The other three clinics were there to remove organs. You couldn’t see them, but occasionally the door would open. You‘d see somebody handling a kidney, a liver, and so forth. Every day that she worked there … there’d be eight or nine bodies. Sometimes it was as many as 20,” Gutmann said.During his research, Gutmann realized a disturbing pattern. Many of those who disappeared in the middle of the night from the camps were typically 28 or 29 years old.He believes the CCP has made this age demographic its primary target for forced organ harvesting.“You are at the peak of your health. At that point, your organs have stopped growing,” Gutmann says.In this episode, he breaks down the devastating evidence he’s uncovered—and the failure of Western institutions to address these crimes.The spread of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) technology—which keeps organs oxygenated and viable for many hours—has made the CCP’s organ trade even more lucrative than before.“Suddenly,” he told me, “you can pull a lot more organs off a single person and get them to distribute them around. And so the profit margin goes way up on a single human being from $100,000 up to almost a million dollars, if they were selling to foreigners.”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 series of devastating inquiries have documented how networks of men—primarily of Muslim Pakistani heritage—groomed, trafficked, and gang-raped thousands of children, mostly white girls, in English towns such as Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford for decades.Independent reviews found that local authorities downplayed allegations and failed to crack down on these crimes in large part out of fear of being accused of racism or Islamophobia.At the same time, dozens of sharia councils have emerged across the United Kingdom that run an informal legal system handling divorces, inheritances, and family disputes within Muslim communities. But they often leave women with virtually no rights and protections, especially if the marriage was not officially recognized by UK civil law in the first place.British converts from Islam to Christianity, such as Nissar Hussain, describe years of targeted harassment, demonization, and even brutal physical assaults simply for choosing to change their faith, an act branded as “apostasy.”Many are now asking: Have we witnessed the failures of the multiculturalism experiment in the United Kingdom? To what extent should immigrants be expected to integrate and assimilate into the cultural and civic norms, such as equal protection under the law and gender equality? How should police and other authorities enforce the laws impartially when cultural and religious sensitivities are involved?These questions are all coming to a head in the United Kingdom—and the cultural clashes there serve as a cautionary tale for America, says Peter McIlvenna, co-founder of Hearts of Oak.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Artificial intelligence is radically reshaping the workplace, the digital ecosystem, the way we interact with each other, and the future of crime, surveillance, and warfare.But conservatives in particular, argues Wynton Hall, risk falling dangerously behind in navigating this new world. Nobody will get to opt out of the AI revolution—whether conservatives like it or not, Hall said.Hall is the social media director at Breitbart News and author of the new New York Times bestselling book “Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI.”He’s spent two years researching what drives America’s tech elite to build ever more powerful, faster AI systems. The questions he wanted to answer, he told me, are: “What is their ultimate goal? What is the world that they foresee their technology creating?”In our in-depth interview, we dive into the impact that this supersonic AI transformation will have on pretty much every facet of our lives: Will white-collar jobs disappear over the next few years? Will blue-collar jobs be lost to billions of robots? Will people live on Universal Basic Income? And, if so, how does that affect the structure and meaning of people’s lives?Could AI companions replace humans as friends, partners, family? How and what will children learn—or will they only learn to cheat? Will AI-powered brain implants or chips become widespread?And what are the national security implications of ever more powerful AI?“Whoever achieves superiority in AI is going to have full-spectrum battlefield dominance in things like encryption, cybersecurity, hacking of missile systems, and hacking of infrastructure,” Hall said.When it comes to the U.S.–China AI race, the problem that Americans have to figure out is “how to beat China without becoming China,” Hall said.“We do not want to emulate a techno authoritarian CCP surveillance state,” he added.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Recently, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) reached a major settlement concluding the landmark Missouri v. Biden lawsuit against government-induced social media censorship.I sat down with Mark Chenoweth, president and chief legal officer of the NCLA, to discuss what this settlement actually means.The 10-year consent decree blocks the surgeon general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from pressuring social media companies to censor speech.“The federal government has now admitted that it was engaged in a very systematic operation of social media censorship,” Chenoweth says.So what does this mean exactly? What legal precedent does this set? What happens after the 10-year mark ends?And why a consent decree at all? Why was the lawsuit settled?We also discuss several other important cases that the NCLA has currently pending at the Supreme Court. One of them, Powell v. SEC, seeks to put an end to what Chenoweth calls the SEC’s “gag rule.”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’m sitting down with Frank Bisignano, who oversees not one, but two of America’s most consequential institutions: the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).Before stepping into government, he built a career at the very top of finance as the youngest senior vice president in American Express history at just 25, co-COO of JPMorgan Chase, and CEO of the fintech company Fiserv.Now, he’s taking on a different kind of challenge: bringing, in his words, “accuracy” to massive federal agencies that impact every American.He’s cleaning up records—including moving records of 12.4 million people aged 120 and over into the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File—and digitizing records to streamline systems.“There wasn’t really a routine to reconcile data. ... It wasn’t that people who weren’t alive any longer were getting paid social security. It was that there was a live social security number which could be used throughout the whole system,” Bisignano said.How is he transforming these agencies? What new benefits are there in this year’s tax season?How are the newly rolled out “Trump accounts” doing? And will Social Security be able to resolve insolvency challenges in the decades ahead?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Have Gen Z and Gen Alpha lost touch with the real world? Gen Z entrepreneur and founder of Touch Grass Together, Adnan Alkhalili, thinks so.“I grew up very natively online, scarily so ... I grew up on the Discord world. I grew up on the gaming world as well ... and even the friends I had in real life, we would end up not even spending time together. We would spend all of our time online. So they‘d be in their house, I’d be in my house,” Alkhalili says.The online world traps Gen Z into an escapist reality that their parents do not comprehend. Even good parents, he said, have no idea what their kids are doing online and to what extent they live online: “If you talk to any Gen Z and have them explain it to somebody that’s not Gen Z, the person who’s not Gen Z—maybe a later millennial and older—will actually have no idea what they’re talking about. It sounds like another language.”Gen Z and Gen Alpha, he said, spend most of their time indoors on their devices; they don’t move much. They eat addictive processed food and drink lots of addictive energy drinks to combat tiredness.“My metabolic health was destroyed,” he told me in our interview. “I felt like my life was over. ... I was so tired of life that I felt like I was in my 70s or 80s.”Now he’s helping other young people exit this lifestyle with Touch Grass Together, a health and wellness initiative focused on metabolic health and real life community experiences: “We’ve come up with a framework called the touch grass moment. And ultimately, we’re trying to recreate human ritual.”This framework, he explained, is based on four core components: light, movement, nourishment, and human connection. The goal? Getting Gen Z off their devices and out of their rooms, getting them to do things together outside such as touching grass or jumping into leaf piles and eating healthy food.But how to achieve that? In our interview, Alkhalili talks about the constructive role technology can play in helping Gen Z to escape “brain rot” online. Is there also a constructive role for AI? What about social media? And should schools forbid smartphones?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

National security expert T. Casey Fleming is the CEO of BlackOps Partners, a strategy and cybersecurity consulting firm that he founded in 2008. He’s also the author of the new book, “The Red Tsunami: The Silent Storm Killing Your Freedom.”“It may look like a book, but it’s a whistleblower’s exposé and survival guide. … It basically tells you what to do to protect yourself,” Fleming said.“Number one: Stop buying Chinese products and services and stop investing in companies that are investing in China,” he said.The Chinese Communist Party has been using what are known as unrestricted warfare tactics against the United States for decades, and on multiple fronts, he said. Its purpose is to weaken the enemy from within—without firing a single shot.There are dozens of tactics, including, for instance, cognitive warfare, drug warfare, and biological warfare. These manifest in the deployment of TikTok—which remains a powerful cognitive weapon in the CCP’s arsenal, Fleming argued—as well as the spread of both COVID-19 and fentanyl addiction in America.For years, Americans have largely failed to notice this pattern of unrestricted warfare and how the pieces fit together. “The mosaic effect is you see bits and pieces and you don’t connect them, and so it doesn’t really mean much to you. … When you connect the dots… it becomes the mosaic. You now see what your enemy is doing and what the end goal is, and how you need to protect yourself.”Casey said he believes this silent, unrestricted war is the final war: “The world will be won or lost within the next 10 years or less.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“You can’t abandon the concept of normality, or societies will just completely fall apart,” said developmental psychologist and social science scholar J.D. Haltigan.There has been a tremendous push in mental health to destigmatize mental illness, he said, and people are encouraged to regard themselves as “some sort of heroic person for having [mental] disorders.”This is true especially for mood disorders like depression and anxiety. People nowadays increasingly define themselves through mood disorders—especially women, who often are more prone than men to depression and internalization of anxiety, he said.This apparent valorization of mental illness is closely linked to a growing feminization of society, Haltigan said. Males, he told me, “tend to systemize more,” while women “tend to be more empathetic.”But in recent decades, that empathy has been weaponized, he argued: “We’ve come to basically hijack the feminine ethic of care, the feminine impulse to be empathetic.”He said this may explain why anti-ICE protests tend to skew disproportionately towards females.At the same time, he said, masculinity and the enforcement of laws and standards became demonized in society.Haltigan’s departure from the University of Toronto in 2023 coincided with his growing concerns about what he described as increasing ideological pressures in academic research and restrictions on what researchers could say about mental health and early child development.In our wide-ranging interview, we discuss these shifts in society, their impacts, and the role of social media in fueling these changes.Now, Haltigan is an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

To understand the significance of the sweeping military purges in China and how Beijing is reacting to America’s war with Iran, I’m sitting down with eminent China scholar Robert Suettinger, a former CIA and State Department intelligence analyst, a senior advisor at The Stimson Center, and author of “The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer.”“There’s no question of the fact that Xi Jinping is now less of a dominant leader than he was six or eight months ago,” Suettinger says.Earlier this year, Xi purged two top generals from the CCP’s military brass, on the heels of earlier purges last year. Now, only two of the originally seven members of the Central Military Commission remain. One of them is Xi himself; the other one, General Zhang Shengmin, is a political commander and has, like Xi, no combat experience.After the January purges, Xi issued an order to the military demanding that everyone acknowledge him as the head of the military commission. “The silence from all those military commands has been deafening and has been noticed by everybody,” Suettinger says.In the Chinese Communist Party itself, Xi is also facing trouble.The CCP is not a monolithic party, he told me, but a complex entity with many competing factions: “There’s a Shanghai group, there’s a Shandong group, there’s a Shaanxi group, and they all don’t like each other,” Suettinger says.Suettinger believes that Xi’s many purges have unified opposition against him not only in the military but also within the Communist Party. “Xi is hated by almost everybody in China,” he said.Another reason the cracks in the system, as he put it, are beginning to be more evident, is that the Chinese economy hasn’t been doing well in many years: “The Chinese people are very unhappy that their wealth opportunities are disappearing. Graduates coming out of colleges are not able to find good jobs. People who have good jobs are losing them. People who are operating in the gig economy are losing their jobs. The farmers don’t have anything to do when they go back home.”People outside of China don’t usually know how poor vast numbers of Chinese citizens still are, Suettinger told me. China’s Premier Li Keqiang himself stated in May 2020 during a press conference that 600 million people live below the poverty line and don’t even earn enough to rent a room in mid-sized Chinese cities.Where is China’s totalitarian system headed? The system, Suettinger argued, is way more fragile than it looks. “It is brittle, and when it breaks, it tends to break hard, and it tends to melt in ways that are not predictable,” he said.Notably, the CCP has not come out to meaningfully support its longtime ally, Iran. The CCP has long utilized Iran to distract America and keep its focus on the Middle East, Suettinger says, but now, to Beijing’s chagrin, America is effectively neutralizing this longtime CCP proxy.Views expresse

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb is not your typical astronomer. For many years, he’s been scouring the universe for the abnormal and the unknown. “Brushing anomalies under the carpet of traditional thinking,” as he puts it, is anathema for him.“One way to learn more,” he told me, “is to pay attention to the anomalies, because they may lead us to something that we’ve never thought about … Maybe they will open up our eyes to extra dimensions … or new physics.”In 2021, Loeb founded the Harvard-based Galileo Project to speed up the scientific search for evidence of extraterrestrial objects. Since then, Loeb has been supervising the construction of three state-of-the-art observatories in the United States: one in Massachusetts, one in Pennsylvania and one in Nevada. They make use of machine learning models to identify unexplained anomalies and use triangulation to infer the distance of objects from Earth.“Instead of waiting for the U.S. government to release its data, we just look up and ask, are there any objects up there that are not human-made? And of course, anything that is human-made is boring, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.Did his observatories find evidence of objects that might be extraterrestrial? Perhaps. They detected objects that, as he said, “arrive in our backyard from outside the solar system.” Such interstellar objects were purely theoretical before 2017, when the first one was discovered. Since then, two more have been found. This, he told me, is the new frontier in astronomy.But are these interstellar objects of natural origin? Many astronomers believe they are, but Loeb is not so sure. Take, for example, Oumuamua, the first recognized interstellar object ever discovered: Its core features are undisputedly abnormal. Oumuamua moved very quickly without a recognizable method of propulsion. And as it left the solar system, it accelerated to a degree that could not be explained by gravity alone.Loeb has been arguing that Oumuamua might be an artificial light sail propelled by solar radiation pressure and built by ancient civilizations that exist or existed beyond our solar system.“Most of the stars formed billions of years before the sun. The sun formed only 4.6 billion years ago … There was plenty of time for Voyager-like probes to arrive in the solar system. And so we are searching for any technological artifacts, objects very different from traditional SETI,” he said.SETI stands for “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” and refers to a project dedicated to detecting advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.Here are some of the many other topics we discussed in our wide-ranging interview:-What is the origin of hypervelocity stars that race through the universe at a significant fraction of the speed of light? -Are there other dimensions beyond our own? -How would the discovery of extraterrestrial life impact religious views? -Is AI a form of alien intellig

Pastor Bob Fu was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement and later led an underground Chinese house church. In 1996, he was imprisoned for “illegal evangelism.”He later fled China and came to the United States, where he founded ChinaAid, a Christian human‑rights organization that documents cases of persecution, provides legal aid, and advocates for religious freedom in China.In this episode, we dive into the escalation of religious persecution in recent years in China, including the growing dehumanization of Christians.Echoing Mao Zedong’s targeting of “five black classes” during the Cultural Revolution, in 2012, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders labelled Christian underground churches as one of five new “black classes” or black categories.Fu says that the CCP’s leadership is determined to destroy the positive image that Chinese people have of Christian believers.“Xi Jinping wants to play God,” Fu says. “The Communist Party treats these people as a threat to the regime’s existence. The goal is to eradicate Christian faith from the map of China.”We also discuss a case now at the Supreme Court, Cisco v. Doe, which could have important repercussions for American companies that enable China’s human rights atrocities.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 U.S. went to war in Iran because Iran made itself a Chinese weapon,” argues policy analyst Zineb Riboua, a research fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East.Riboua is the founder of the “China in MENA Project,” which tracks communist Chinese expansion and influence across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).Is there a bigger dimension to the Iran war that people are missing?“We have this tendency to just look at the countries involved ... but there’s a big player, and the big player here is China,” she says. “China has been investing immensely in the region in the last two decades, in courting, in coordinating, in cooperating with Gulf countries, with Iran itself, and also with its proxies.”And why, I ask her, has China been so keen on gaining strategic influence over the Middle East?It’s because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) understands that “China cannot rise without having the United States weakened in one of the most important regions in the world,” she said.“Iran has been that tool. China has built Iran’s military arsenal. It has collaborated extensively with Iran’s proxies, especially the Houthis.“And reversing that calculus is what Operation Epic Fury is doing.”In our interview, we delve deep into the symbiotic relationship between the two countries—why China needs Iran and why Iran needs China:Which role does Iran play on China’s geopolitical chessboard?Why did China turn Iran into one of its strategic allies, and how did the Islamic Republic benefit?How dependent is the Iranian regime on China’s military support and surveillance infrastructure?How dependent is China on Iran’s oil?The goal of America’s military operation, Riboua believes, is to dismantle the whole structure of the Islamic Republic. “The United States is destroying ... every single launcher, every single missile facility. Their whole Navy has been absolutely crushed. ... It’s 2,000 targets so far, and they’re hitting even more.”We also discuss what the Chinese regime will do if the Islamic Republic disappears.How will its geopolitical strategy be impacted? What will happen to the CCP’s Belt and Road initiative, in which Iran played a central role? And how will China’s economy and its relationships with its Middle Eastern and North African proxies be affected?Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Dozens of Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been killed in U.S.–Israeli joint strikes on Iran.In this episode, I’m sitting down again with seasoned China analyst Gordon Chang, author of “Plan Red,” to understand how this is changing the global geopolitical landscape—especially for Beijing.Including the Venezuela raid that captured regime leader Nicolás Maduro, this is the second time President Donald Trump appears to be neutralizing a key ally of Beijing.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessari

For twenty years, I’ve investigated a crime almost too horrific to name—now documented in my new book: “Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary.”In America and other free countries, patients wait months or even years for an organ. But in China, transplant wait lists are measured in weeks—or even days.In this episode, the tables are turned, and I’m in the guest seat this time.I invited my good friend, actor and comedian Rob Schneider, who has become deeply personally invested in this issue, to be the guest host for this special episode.This is the dark reality: When someone decides to go to China and pay a hefty sum for a scheduled transplant, then on the other side, an incarcerated prisoner of conscience, who has already been blood-typed and tissue-typed, is likely being killed to order.China’s transplant industry began its exponential expansion at the exact same time as the state launched its aggressive, nationwide campaign to eradicate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong. There is growing evidence of Uyghurs being targeted as well. There is even an underground global market for what are called “Halal organs,” which means organs from Muslim donors.And it’s not just wealthy foreigners who travel to China for organ transplants.China’s super elite have access to a secretive longevity program dubbed “Project 981” with eerie ties to this macabre organ industry. This project entered the spotlight last year after the revealing hot mic exchange between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, where they talked about extending lifespans in part through repeated organ transplants.American institutions have, wittingly or unwittingly, helped facilitate the rise of China’s transplant system through partnerships with Chinese transplant centers, the training of hundreds of Chinese surgeons, and the supply of China’s organ preservation solutions, surgical instruments, immunosuppressive drugs, and transplant diagnostics.The stories I share in this episode are disturbing, but we cannot afford to look away.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. Daniel Monti is the founding chair of the first integrative medicine department at an American medical university.Rather than treating symptoms in isolation, integrative medicine takes a holistic approach to health, combining conventional Western medicine with mind-body therapies, nutritional medicine, and traditional practices such as acupuncture and herbal medicine.“Integrative medicine,” Monti told me, “has become a subspecialty of medicine with its own board certification. ... To become an integrative medicine doctor, you have to first do your residency in something like internal medicine, neurology, OBGYN, and then do a fellowship in integrative medicine.”Monti, who holds board certifications in both psychiatry/neurology and holistic/integrative medicine, said that integrative physicians “take a deep dive into whole-person health and understanding who the person is.” They look, for example, at genomics, the patient’s microbiome, and maximal oxygen consumption.A powerful technique Monti studied in depth is the neuro-emotional technique (NET), developed in the 1980s. It’s a mind-body therapy designed to release emotional stress from within the body. And through advanced brain scans, they can see how the brain changes after applying the technique to alleviate distress.NET merges principles from conventional medicine with traditional Chinese medicine and psychology, he says. The goal is to “get at what is underneath the issue that’s bothering the person. ... Most of the time I’m experiencing a block in my life in some way. And then we have to kind of figure out what the life experiences were that are contributing to that present-day block.”During the interview, Monti used me as a test subject to demonstrate the integrative medicine technique.We also discuss additional integrative medicine therapies, such as vitamin infusions and stress-reduction treatments. We also dive into a recent study into a powerful antioxidant’s power to benefit Parkinson’s patients.Monti is the founder and CEO of the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health and chair of the Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University. He’s the co-author of “Brain Weaver” and “Tapestry of Health.”He’s also the host of “House Call with Dr. Dan Monti.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“What’s important for people to know is that the majority of California is actually not to the far left. We’re a very purple state,” says Elaine Culotti, a self-made entrepreneur, star of Discovery’s reality TV series “Undercover Billionaire,” and founder of the Mayors Matter project.On a mission to understand the root causes of California’s challenges, Culotti recently went on a state-wide tour and talked to 50 out of California’s almost 500 mayors as well as countless regular Californians on the way.“I’ve talked to people from Humboldt County, which is the very top of California, to Chula Vista, all the way into the Central Valley ... to Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades. ... And it does not matter if you have an R or a D,” Culotti said.The fifty mayors she spoke to—on both sides of the aisle—have two overarching priorities for their cities: security and economic development, Culotti said.But no matter how hard they try, they find it difficult to achieve either one. Why? Because of Sacramento, Culotti said.Most taxpayer money goes to the state government with its over half a million employees, Culotti noted. The cities receive little money but lots of crippling orders from Sacramento, and fraud at the state level is rampant, she said.When California’s top politicians “are pushing downstream what’s called unfunded mandates onto people, you create war in those city halls. You create war with those mayors because they are saying, ‘No, no, stop oppressing us with your mandates. We don’t want to do it,’” Culotti said.“We’re all being boiled to death by Sacramento,” she 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.

In this episode, I sit down with Grace Jin Drexel, the daughter of detained Pastor Ezra Jin, the founder of one of China’s largest underground house-church networks.Last October, Pastor Jin was arrested along with 27 other pastors and church leaders from Zion Church. It was one of the largest assaults on independent Christian congregations in China since the Cultural Revolution, said Drexel. She has since become a prominent voice speaking out against religious persecution in China.State repression of Zion Church began in 2018 amid a broader wave of Communist Party efforts to subjugate faith communities, Drexel said.“You saw the tearing down of crosses [and] putting portraits of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong on church buildings,” she said.Zion Church was deemed an illegal business operation, forcing them to shift to a hybrid online model of worship. Authorities also placed an exit ban on Pastor Jin.“There’s so many parts of our lives that he has missed out on. He was not able to walk me down the aisle at my wedding. He was not able to attend my baby’s baptism,” Drexel said.She sees her father’s detention as part of a new wave of persecution targeting not only her father’s church but also many other underground churches and religious groups as well. As in 2018, authorities are again installing pictures of Xi in churches again, sometimes even replacing crosses, to “showcase who is the true leader of the church,” she said.Another sign of a new wave of suppression is the sentencing of Jimmy Lai, the 78-year-old founder of Apple Daily and a practicing Catholic. He was recently given 20 years in prison, which marks the longest sentence handed down to date under Beijing’s national security law.Since Pastor Jin’s arrest, he has not been allowed any family visits, phone calls, or even letters from his loved ones. He is also suffering from severe Type 2 diabetes, and Drexel is deeply concerned about his wellbeing.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

How polarized are Americans really? Are we really on the “brink of civil war” as some suggest?That’s what I wanted to find out when I sat down with Jonathan Butcher, author of the recently released book “The Polarization Myth: America’s Surprising Consensus on Race, Schools, and Sex.”“When we hear the term polarization, it makes us think that there’s 50% on one side and 50% on the other side. But that’s not what’s going on,” says Butcher, who is acting director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.Butcher conducted a survey of more than 2,000 Americans and asked participants for their opinions on contentious cultural and political issues.What did he find? Contrary to what Americans are constantly told on social media and in legacy media, there is no deep divide on the issues that drive the so-called culture wars, he says. His survey found the following:-Biological sex: A majority of respondents maintain that sex is unchanging -Gender and schools: 61% oppose teaching young children that they can change their “gender”​ -Sexual content in schools: 69% do not support access in schools to books that depict sexual activity -College admissions: 52% oppose the use of racial preferences in college admissions, which are central to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs​The culture war, Butcher concludes from his survey findings, is a narrative propagated by a small faction of radical activists and amplified by the media to instill fear.“It’s really like a majority of Americans and … a small minority of activists on the other [side] that just have a very loud voice,” he says.The survey responses, he told me, also show a surprising degree of consensus among Americans on basic principles and core beliefs.For example, he found that a large majority of survey respondents want their children to be taught about virtue and character at school. More than half favor increased civics education.“The important thing to remind Americans is that on the issues, they’re not alone. If [you] think that individuals should be judged, promoted, accepted to school based on their merit instead of their skin color, right, you’re not alone. You’re not alone if you think that we should be protecting women from men accessing their bathrooms or locker rooms,” 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.

“People have misunderstood that [Greenland] is somehow a President Donald Trump issue, and it’s not,” says Alex Gray, who previously served as National Security Council chief of staff and deputy assistant to the president.So why does Greenland matter? And why has it become such a massive issue?In fact, Gray explained to me, multiple American presidents have tried to purchase or acquire Greenland over the last 160 years. Andrew Johnson was the first in 1867. Woodrow Wilson tried during the First World War. And Harry Truman tried right after World War II, Gray says.In my deep-dive interview with Gray, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and co-founder of American Global Strategies, he lays out Greenland’s geostrategic importance to America’s national security and what it would mean if Greenland became dependent on China.In 1952, the United States signed a treaty with Denmark, still in effect today, that provides America with extensive military access to Greenland. Gray’s overarching concern is what will happen when Greenland is likely to become independent in five or 10 years.For many years, China has shown great interest in establishing dominance over the Arctic region and is regularly moving its submarines up to the North Pole.Gray is convinced that after independence, Greenland is likely to fall prey to the Chinese Communist Party’s “well-worn playbook” to gain influence and eventually control the island. He calls it the “Solomon Islands scenario.”“They start offering Belt and Road projects. They start buying dual-use facilities. They buy ports. They’re taking over airfields. Next thing you know, we’re hearing conversations about potentially having [China’s People’s Liberation Army] naval access to ports in the Solomons. … This is a well-worn Chinese playbook,” Gray says.Beyond Greenland, we also dive into security threats related to America’s northern neighbor and the implications of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s overtures in Beijing.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Xi Van Fleet grew up in China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. She was too young to be a real revolutionary Red Guard, but old enough to observe the astonishing scenes of violence and ideological fervor around her during those terrible years.I sat down with her to discuss her new book, “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.”She says she felt compelled to write this book to help Americans understand the true nature of communism. Over the past hundred years or so, the United States has made one grave mistake after another because of this major blind spot, she says.In our deep-dive interview, Van Fleet takes me on a tour of China’s history starting in the late 19th century and explains how America—over and over again—made decisions that helped the Chinese Communist Party: first to gain influence, then to defeat the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, and eventually to rescue the CCP from certain collapse in the 1970s.By visiting Beijing and re-opening US-China relations at a time when China’s economy was in shambles, President Richard Nixon effectively “saved the CCP from the ruins,” she says.The history of how the United States helped the CCP survive is “hidden history,” as she calls it, one that is not taught in the schools and not discussed publicly: “A lot of people want to hide it. But in order for us to understand, we have to learn this very, very important piece of history that my book is all about.”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 no-holds-barred interview, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, breaks down how the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research is changing under his leadership.Bhattacharya, a former professor of Stanford University, public health expert, and coauthor of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration, was sworn in as director of the NIH in April last year.With an annual budget of almost $50 billion, the NIH sets the direction of research at universities, medical centers, and research institutes across America.It encompasses 27 institutes and centers that cover different areas of health and employ some 20,000 people. One of those is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci for nearly 40 years.The NIH, Bhattacharya told me, “really hasn’t had a change in leadership in decades. ... We’ve had new directors, but the fundamental structure and direction of the NIH has been basically the same until last year.”Bhattacharya says his top priority is to end the practice of “funding the scientific enterprise for the sake of funding science” and ensure that NIH-funded scientific research actually produces better health outcomes for the American people. The goal should be improvements in health and longevity, not just more scientific papers, he says.During our interview, we covered a lot of ground, including:-Has the NIH completely stopped funding gain-of-function research?-Is the NIH continuing to fund research with China?-How has funding for international research institutes been restructured?-Has the NIH stopped funding all research grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives?-What is being done to reverse the politicization of science?-What is the NIH doing to help those who suffered injuries from the mandated COVID-19 mRNA vaccines?-What can the NIH do to alleviate the massive replication crisis in research?-How does he view the controversy surrounding vaccines and autism? Is the NIH looking into potential links?-How is the NIH restructuring the allocation of funding?What America needs, Bhattacharya told me, is a “second scientific revolution,” saying: “The NIH has the capacity to induce that second scientific revolution. That’s what I’m going to work toward for the next few years.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.