This Christian celebrity's new gym offers health for normal people — not superhuman biotech



Silicon Valley’s self-appointed gods have money and power. They also have an almost religious faith in their own genius. They want to hack human biology, outsmart aging, and, in ever-growing numbers, cheat death. They seem less interested in the possibility that human beings need more than fancy technology and an inflated sense of their own importance.

The average tech billionaire looks in the mirror and sees an immortal deity trapped in a temporary meat suit. Some of these guys are borderline insane, even pumping their teenage son's blood into their veins. They pop 50 custom supplement pills before breakfast and drop $35,000 on rather questionable boutique longevity clinics. They treat the human body like a dodgy software update that they can fix with enough cash and constant hacking. They are terrified of the one thing their wealth simply cannot buy: death and departure from this earth.

Good health shouldn’t be a luxury status symbol.

Enter Mark Wahlberg, the Catholic actor and fitness fanatic. A self-made businessman, he offers a markedly different vision: faith, discipline, hard work, and the belief that ordinary citizens deserve access to better health without having to sell a kidney to afford it. While the tech elite indulge their deluded fantasies of human perfection, Wahlberg is building a gym. Unlike fashionable cultural tastemakers who lecture people on how to think, speak, and live a “better” life, he forged a remarkable career doing things his own way and makes no apologies for it.

Wahlberg approaches the problem from a completely different angle. He wakes up at four in the morning to pray, hit the weights, and get a head start on an almost always hectic day. He credits his Catholic faith and a Boston priest who pulled him out of a tailspin for saving his life. The tech gurus believe they are their own creators. Wahlberg knows he answers to a higher power, which automatically makes him far more realistic about human limits.

Keeping health human

That grounding shapes his whole business model. His Municipal Gym initiative aims to bring the high-end perks of elite wellness clubs — like detailed blood analysis and high-tech recovery treatments — to regular Americans at an affordable price. Today, the modern wellness industry operates like a country club where the initiation fee is a down payment on a house. Everyday working families are left with overpriced processed food and memberships for crowded, often unsanitary gyms. Wahlberg’s setup tries to bridge that gap. Good health shouldn’t be a luxury status symbol reserved exclusively for hedge fund managers and tech CEOs who drink green juice from a gold chalice.

This whole effort comes from a guy who actually knows what it means to start at the absolute bottom, with absolutely nothing to his name. Long before he starred in blockbuster movies or built multimillion-dollar business empires, Wahlberg was a troubled kid on the dangerous streets of Dorchester. He racked up criminal charges as a teen and easily could have ended up dead or behind bars for life. He didn't blame others for his problems, nor did he turn his life around through a government handout. Instead he took personal responsibility. He sought out mentors who refused to sugarcoat reality and set out to rewrite the entire narrative. He has been married for 17 years, has four children, and is worth about $400 million. Wahlberg embodies the American dream in every way imaginable.

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Modern culture loves to give people permanent excuses for truly terrible decisions. Wahlberg’s life story rejects the victim mindset entirely. He proves that past mistakes don't have to dictate a person's future destination. Instead of preaching to young kids from the back of a limousine, he designs physical spaces where at-risk youth can show up and build self-respect through real effort.

The brand's name might not be the catchiest, but it points back to the public basketball courts and golf courses of his youth. Those sacred spots were the original equalizers in American life. You showed up and played hard. Whether you won or lost, you shook hands and were thankful for the opportunity to socialize and meet like-minded people. Nobody cared who your daddy was or how much money sat in your bank account. The Silicon Valley crowd seems to have forgotten that basic principle, or deliberately rejected it. They prefer gated communities. They absolutely adore private islands and exclusive medical labs designed to keep the general public far from their impregnable bubble.

The contrast grows when you look at how both sides view basic biology. Tech moguls want to spend billions chasing a digital fountain of youth while ignoring the simplest daily habits. Wahlberg’s advice is far more practical. Get off the couch, put on pants, and start lifting heavy stuff regularly. Sure, his gym concept uses advanced testing and modern supplements, but he isn't selling miracles that ultimately end in misery. He is sensible and brutally honest.

No excuses

That lesson hits particularly hard for young men today. Society spends an inordinate amount of time telling young men what they shouldn’t be, while offering almost no positive outlets for their natural drive. A weight room is an unforgiving environment where excuse-making gets you nowhere. As someone who spends a lot of time in these training areas, I know how intense they can be. If a man doesn't do the work, the barbell stays on the floor, and everyone else takes note.

It helps that Wahlberg isn't presenting himself as some genius who has all the answers. He took a massive financial beating when his investment in the F45 fitness chain went south and got delisted from the stock exchange in 2023. Most Hollywood celebrities would have buried the story under a mountain of PR spin and fake news. Wahlberg took the hit on the chin. He admitted he learned hard lessons about choosing the right business partners, and he immediately picked himself up to launch his next project. That is admirable, and it is very much the American way.

That willingness to dust off and try again is what makes his message resonate. It’s simple and effective: Go to bed early, wake up early, say your prayers, stay fit, and do your utmost to ensure your loved ones have the best life possible. While the self-anointed wizards of Silicon Valley spend billions trying to live forever, Wahlberg is giving regular people both the opportunity and a place to live better right now.

Apparently, we need experts to teach us how to walk now



Every day, tens of millions of Americans walk. Some walk to the kitchen, others walk to the bathroom, and plenty make the familiar trip back to the kitchen after forgetting what they went there for in the first place. The more adventurous, in search of a little exercise, head outside for a stroll around the block.

I enjoy a good walk myself. But after reading about the latest method, I have to ask a critical question: Have we all been walking wrong this entire time?

By next spring, expect the arrival of Scandinavian Sitting Down, a Nordic method that involves placing your buttocks on a chair when your legs feel tired.

You see, researchers in Japan have found that deliberately alternating between slower and faster walking can improve aerobic fitness, leg strength, and blood pressure more effectively than simply walking at a steady moderate pace. Hence the latest viral craze sweeping the West. Japanese walking involves three minutes of relaxed walking, followed by three minutes of faster, more vigorous walking. You repeat the process for about 30 minutes.

It’s formally known as Interval Walking Training, which makes it sound infinitely more impressive than “walk normally, then go a bit faster.”

The saber-tooth protocol

Humanity has survived famines. It has endured plagues and savage wars without a digital timer strapped to its wrist, telling it when to put one foot in front of the other. Yet today, millions of supposedly sane adults in America and beyond subscribe to services that tell them to speed up for 180 seconds. Our ancestors accelerated when a saber-toothed tiger chased them and slowed when the tiger disappeared. They called it staying alive.

The absurdity extends far beyond walking. The entire self-improvement industry rests on taking an ordinary human function, giving it a very fancy name, and selling it as a revolutionary lifestyle breakthrough.

When you eat smaller portions, you're not practicing moderation. No, you’re engaging in the fine art of portion control. If you skip breakfast because you slept through your alarm, you’re practicing intermittent fasting. Should you fall asleep on the couch on a Sunday afternoon, you’re not taking a nap. Instead, you’re practicing a form of Non-Sleep Deep Rest.

The obsession with rebranding even the most basic things stems from deep-seated collective insecurity. Modern culture distrusts anything that lacks an instruction manual or a monthly billing cycle.

Linguistic inflation

When you step outside your front door to observe an oak tree, you’re forest bathing. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator is known as incidental exercise. Drinking a glass or two of water when you feel thirsty has evolved into a hydration protocol, complete with a gallon jug marked with motivational quotes to ensure optimal cellular fluid retention.

Going to bed at 10 p.m. on a weeknight used to be called common sense. Now it’s called sleep hygiene. And naturally, getting a good night’s sleep requires blue-light-blocking glasses, a weighted blanket, and enough magnesium to stock a small pharmacy.

Sitting near a window at 7 in the morning is circadian activation. Taking a 10-minute break from your computer screen is deliberate recovery.

In the 1920s, if a laborer needed a breather, he sat down on a crate and smoked a pipe. A century later, an office manager hires a certified consultant to teach him breath work, which involves inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.

The linguistic inflation is out of control. Sitting on a chair without looking at your phone for a few minutes is mindfulness. Writing about your annoying boss and even more annoying neighbor in a notebook is journaling. Drinking a mug of black coffee before going for a jog is pre-workout supplementation.

Vacuuming the living room and carrying heavy laundry baskets down to the basement is functional fitness. Throwing a ball around with your son in the back yard is active family bonding. Jumping into cold water is aquatic cardiovascular conditioning. Staring at nothing in particular for 10 minutes is dopamine detoxing.

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Wellness wordsmiths

Influencers have built multimillion-dollar digital empires by doing little more than glancing at the dictionary, grabbing an everyday word, and replacing it with something that sounds like a medical diagnosis.

The goal is to make you feel fundamentally incompetent at simply existing. If breathing, sleeping, walking, and drinking water require a life coach and a six-week online seminar, you’re permanently broken without their intervention.

Things are bad now, and they’ll likely get worse. By next spring, expect the arrival of Scandinavian Sitting Down, a Nordic method that involves placing your buttocks on a chair when your legs feel tired. By autumn, wellness retreats will charge exorbitant fees to teach corporate clients the ancient art of Korean Going to Bed. This esoteric eastern practice involves shutting your eyes in a dark room until you fall asleep.

The solution to this nonsense is pretty simple. And more importantly, it’s entirely free. Put away the stopwatch. Delete the tracking apps; ignore the snake-oil salesmen online. Go outside. Put one foot in front of the other, and walk at whatever speed feels comfortable until you decide to stop.

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I finally understand why everyone loves going to the dentist



How do you feel about the dentist? Do you look forward to your appointments? Do you enjoy the cost of cleanings and whatever work needs to be done? Do you enjoy the shaming the hygienist thrusts upon you when you tell her you have been flossing twice a day and she looks at you like you are lying?

I think I know your answers without even knowing you.

In the middle of the procedure this past summer, as my tooth was being hollowed out with vibrating steel, my dentist said he loves doing this kind of work the most.

We all basically feel the same about the dentist. We begrudgingly go because we have to. The consequences of not going are more frightening than lying on your back with your mouth open for 45 minutes while someone picks away at your teeth with little metal tines. A toothache is worse than an hour in the chair numbed up, and a bad smile is worse than a couple hundred bucks a year for regular cleanings.

But still, we all kind of hate the dentist.

Tooth hurty

Though I have to say that lately I have been coming around to the guy behind the mask who comes in for five minutes at the end of the appointment just to tap on a couple of teeth before telling me what I need fixed next. I suppose it’s because over the past few years I have been giving more thought to the benefits and blessings of modern medicine.

When I was younger, I kind of thought they were exaggerating at the dentist’s office about what needed to be done or how crucial it was to fix something. And while I still think there are probably dentists out there who recommend more than is necessary and very much enjoy clients willing to pay for whatever they suggest, I trust dentists more than I have at any other time in my life.

It might sound crazy, but I actually look forward to going to the dentist these days.

I had a crown done this past summer. I ate a lot of candy when I was a kid and never brushed quite as much as I should have. I guess I thought my teeth would last forever. (Narrator: They don’t.) So over the years I had fillings where I had munched on Gobstoppers, Skittles, Shock Tarts, M&Ms, Laffy Taffy, and Now and Laters a little too enthusiastically. Then those fillings cracked and I had them replaced. Finally, this past summer, one of those fillings reached the end of the road, and a crown was necessary.

Crowning achievement

You might not believe me when I tell you I was excited to get that crown done, but I was. I had a crown done by the same dentist for the same reasons a few years earlier, and it went great. He numbed my mouth, went to work, and I left with a beautiful white tooth a few hours later.

The same thing happened this past summer. He numbed me, drilled out the remainder of the filling, had the crown made in their on-site lab, and then fastened it on top before sending me on my way with another beautiful tooth.

Lying there with my mouth open, with vibrating drills rattling my teeth, I thought about how amazing the technology is that makes this kind of operation possible and painless. The assistant used some sort of laser technology to scan my mouth after everything was cleared out, and the crown was finished less than 90 minutes later.

Imagine telling our ancestors that.

I shudder to think about what it was like sitting with a toothache 200 years ago. I don’t need a degree in dental history to imagine it was rather unpleasant, to put it mildly. And so, as much as I naturally want to hate the dentist and his menacing tools, the more I think about the world before the modern DDS, the more I realize I quite like him in 2026.

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Drill, baby, drill

In the middle of the procedure this past summer, as my tooth was being hollowed out with vibrating steel, my dentist said he loves doing this kind of work the most. As a naturally inquisitive person, I asked him why.

He told me he loves the transformation. He loves carving out all the decay and old filling and making it better than it was before. It was the most excited I’ve ever seen him.

Being at the dentist is an intimate experience. We lie there and let a couple of people we don’t know very well hunch over us and get really close to our faces while they dig around in our mouths, and we are helpless the entire time. It can be kind of embarrassing.

“Oh God, they are looking in my mouth with magnifying glasses. Did I brush enough this morning?”

In some way, needing a crown feels like a failure. I didn’t brush well enough, and now I need my tooth fixed. It’s almost like you want to apologize to the dentist.

But hearing my dentist talk about how much he loves doing this kind of work was enlightening. It humanized the man behind the mask.

He’s not a psychopath, despite his love for drilling into teeth all day long. There’s a beating heart inside the DDS. He wants to help. It took me a long time to realize it, but I think I might like the dentist more than any other doctor I see.

Sure, he bears bad news. But he can fix almost all of the problems he diagnoses. That’s more than most doctors can say.

Thirteen-year-old me wouldn’t believe it, but 39-year-old me actually likes the dentist.

Go ahead and take a seat. It’s not going to kill you.



I quite like to sit down. Sometimes you will find me folded into an armchair with a bowl of cereal, reading about Mongol savages, convinced this is the absolute pinnacle of human civilization.

The medical establishment considers this exact activity a suicidal ritual akin to swallowing rat poison. Somewhere around 2010, academic researchers decided that resting your gluteal muscles against a soft cushion carries the same lethality as huffing two packs of unfiltered Lucky Strikes before breakfast.

The true goal of the anti-sitting crusade, I suggest, is to eliminate guilt-free leisure.

Chair scare

The "sitting is the new smoking" campaign remains one of the most absurd public health exaggerations of the modern era. Tobacco smoke deposits thousands of chemical compounds directly into pulmonary tissue. It paralyzes cilia and mutates cellular structures until tumors bloom like bad weeds.

Chair usage, by contrast, involves resting your skeleton on furniture so your knee joints don’t turn into sawdust. Equating a plush sofa to a habit that systematically destroys internal organs requires a complete detachment from objective reality.

Wellness brand PR teams latched onto this ridiculous metaphor with ruthless efficiency. Fear sells foam rollers. It sells treadmill desks and squatty potties. The human brain panics when it thinks a routine daily comfort threatens to shut it down completely. And panic prevents us from seeing things clearly.

In 1953, British epidemiologist Jerry Morris published a famous study comparing London bus drivers to bus conductors, noting drivers suffered more heart attacks. The medical industry extracted a single hysterical conclusion from that data, completely overlooking the fact that drivers dealt with heavy traffic and nasty fumes all day long. Yes, conductors moved more, but they also faced far fewer physical and psychological stressors.

Same old sit

This modern panic relies entirely on the illusion that our ancestors lived lives of continuous, unrelenting activity. My grandfather spent decades farming in Ireland, a vocation urban health gurus idealize as the gold standard of natural human movement. But after a long morning of plowing fields, he also sat in his rocking chair and didn’t move a muscle for hours on end. Medieval peasants sat on dirt floors for hours mending nets, weaving wool, and waiting out brutal European winters. The historical record is clear: Humans have always taken advantage of the opportunity to park their posteriors on the nearest stable surface.

In 1880, industrial factory workers put in 14-hour shifts standing on wooden planks. They suffered massive joint degradation and chronic physical exhaustion. Only the most deluded back then claimed standing was a magical fountain of youth. Rest was considered a hard-earned luxury that kept the body from breaking down prematurely. The modern obsession with perpetual motion recasts a basic act of recovery as a moral failing.

Panic peddlers act as if the human frame dissolves into liquid sludge the moment butt meets bench. They publish studies claiming that six hours of daily sedentary behavior will trigger a catastrophic metabolic meltdown while conveniently ignoring the bigger picture. A person who sits for a few hours at a time, eats actual vegetables, and lifts heavy objects three times a week possesses a very different cardiovascular profile than someone who inhales fried dough while playing video games for hours on end.

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Rebranding rest

The proposed solutions to this imaginary crisis are far more punishing than the supposed ailment. Corporate wellness managers continue to install standing desks in offices, forcing countless poor souls to endure varicose veins and lower back pain. Standing perfectly still on a concrete floor for eight hours, day in and day out, doesn’t sound very appealing, and for good reason. It damages the lumbar spine and pools blood in the ankles.

Sellers of high-tech ergonomic gear profit handsomely from this artificially generated terror. They pitch thousand-dollar mesh office chairs guaranteed to align your vertebrae to micro-millimeter precision, as if a standard dining room chair is a torture device. Consultants charge massive hourly fees to adjust monitor heights by two inches, promising these micro-adjustments will save you from an early grave. It’s an elaborate commercial ecosystem built on top of a completely fabricated health crisis.

Fixing the physical stiffness of a long afternoon takes remarkably little effort. Walking to the kitchen to fetch water every 60 minutes gets your blood flowing and helps reset your circulation. Taking a 10-minute stroll around the block after dinner clears blood glucose far more effectively than standing like a statue in front of a screen for five straight hours. The body is remarkably resilient.

The true goal of the anti-sitting crusade, I suggest, is to eliminate guilt-free leisure. A society obsessed with relentless, measurable productivity views an unmoving human body as an economic failure.

Rest must be rebranded as a perilous path toward an early grave so people feel compelled to buy walking pads and smartwatches that alert local authorities whenever they come within 100 meters of a chair.

You are allowed to enjoy a book, finish a film, or eat a meal without calculating your immediate mortality risk. So please, sit down, stay still for an hour, or two, or three, and ignore the health prophets who profit from your panic.

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Christian men: God wants us to be meek, not weak



On August 15, two Americans on a UFC fight card said the quiet part out loud.

Prelim winner Tresean Gore had just secured a decision that cost him two front teeth. With a mouth full of blood, he told Joe Rogan that he no longer smoked weed, drank, or watched porn and that Jesus Christ had saved his life and soul.

King Solomon foresaw the day of physical failure: 'If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.'

On the main card, winner Jalin Turner’s first statement to Rogan was also a profession of faith.

Professing athletes are not new. Tim Tebow, Harrison Butker, and the Oklahoma women’s softball team have all said the same thing in public: Prowess and its rewards are not solely their own doing.

Toga-clad therapist

Gore and Turner moved us for a narrower reason. During our Bible study, we had been talking about the decline of masculinity among Christian men. When those men surrender responsible, loyal, trustworthy headship — as Scripture defines it under God the Father and His Son — instead of becoming humble, they disappear, leaving a hole that the spirit of the age fills.

American Christian men have forgotten, or were never taught, that their King was the strongest man who ever walked the earth, physically and spiritually. Jesus is the pattern for both. Following Him should produce men who pursue strength of body as well as strength of soul. Too many church leaders have taught the opposite. They have offered a Jesus who is only mild, never mighty: a toga-clad therapist who affirms all and judges none. That is not the Christ of the Gospels, and it is not the men who preceded and followed Him.

Other than Christ, no man in the Bible is without sin. God shows us these men so we will learn that Christianity requires faith, repentance, and obedience — not a clean record. Adam shifted blame. Samson and David yielded to lust. David’s sin was worse than just appetite: he deceived, murdered, and committed adultery. Scripture hides none of it.

Restored to strength

It also does not hide what these men were and what they did. Blind Samson pulled down a Philistine temple with his hands. David defended his flock against wild animals, then dropped Goliath with a stone. His elite guard, the Gibborim — Josheb, Eleazar, Shammah, Abishai, Benaiah — were remembered in 2 Samuel because they could fight. Four times God tells Joshua to be “strong and courageous.” Joshua then defeats 31 kings on the way to the promised land. God preserved Moses’ vigor at 120 (Deuteronomy 34:7); fed Elijah strength for the desert road (1 Kings 19:7-8); and promised through Isaiah that those who wait on the Lord will not faint (Isaiah 40:29-31).

The God of mercy and love is the same God who trained David’s hands for war and his fingers for battle and helped him bend a bow of bronze (Psalms 18:32-34 and 144:1). In 1 Peter 4:11, the apostle directs all who serve God to do so with the strength that God provides. All these men knew sin, fear, and confusion. Faith restored them to strength and courage for God's glory. It did not restore them to softness.

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The weight of the cross

Then there is Jesus. He walked the land for three years knowing His own people would reject Him and kill Him, and He finished the work. The distances of that ministry are measured in thousands of miles, on foot.

On His last day, He was beaten and scourged, and He marched the Via Dolorosa under a patibulum that likely weighed 65 to 110 pounds. He fell because of pain and blood loss that would put most modern men on the ground before the first step. The contrast is not cute. A church that cannot tell the difference between meekness and weakness will baptize the second and call it discipleship.

We would rather live in the world Jesus describes: among people who worship without shame, who speak of Him as plainly as Tresean Gore and Jalin Turner did, and who pursue the holiness He demands. He is not playing. In the wedding parable of Matthew 22, the man without the garment of faith and repentance is bound and cast into the outer darkness. That is the same Lord who walked those miles.

'Act like men'

So the question is not whether Christian men should be kind. It is whether they will be men. No more porn. No more anesthesia by weed and liquor. No more sexual chaos. Less devotion to entertainment that mocks the faith and more time in churches where men teach what Paul taught: Put your house in order (1 Tim. 3:1-5; Titus 1:5-9 and 2:1-2 and 6-8), and “be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).

Drawing on the Old Testament, Jesus does tell His followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27, from Proverbs 24:17 and 25:21 and Exodus 23:4-5).

That command is real. It covers the neighbor who hates you, the official who slanders you, even the man who would harm you. It is not a mediation tip. It is imitation of the Father. It is also not a ban on strength. Prayer for a human enemy does not mean pretending he is harmless, refusing to restrain him, or talking to Satan as if he were your neighbor. Scripture never asks anyone to treat the devil as a prayer partner. It does ask men to resist him, to protect the innocent, and still not let hatred become their creed.

King Solomon foresaw the day of physical failure: “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small” (Proverbs 24:10). The next two verses are the gut punch. If you stand by while people are led away to death, God sees, and He will weigh your cowardice.

This is a day of adversity. American Christian men will come up big or small. They will find their strength in God, or they will keep drawing upon a smaller Jesus who demands nothing of their bodies and their nerve. They should pick up where Tresean Gore and Jalin Turner left off: Believe and profess the truth with blood still in your mouth, and then live as if the truth has hands.

Ron Johnson amplifies voices of vaccine-injured Canadians in COVID reckoning



For years, Canadians who say they were seriously injured by COVID-19 vaccines have sought recognition from their government. This week, some of them are getting the opportunity to tell their stories on Parliament Hill — with a powerful U.S. senator joining them.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and one of Washington's most persistent critics of the government's pandemic response, appeared Tuesday at the opening of the Allison Inquiry in Ottawa.

'By the time the COVID vaccines obtained their emergency use authorizations, the cartel was firmly in control of the narrative.'

The four-day inquiry is chaired by Conservative Member of Parliament Dean Allison and organized with the Covid Testimony Association. Its stated purpose is to hear testimony from Canadians who attribute serious injuries to COVID-19 vaccination. It is being held on Parliament Hill, although it is not an official parliamentary inquiry.

Questioning the narrative

Johnson opened his testimony by questioning fundamental elements of the public health response to COVID-19, including the treatment of natural immunity and doctors who advocated early treatment.

“Haven't we always believed that early disease detection prompts early treatment and produces better outcomes? Why was that fundamental tenet of medicine not only ignored but sabotaged?” Johnson asked. “Why were frontline doctors who had the courage and compassion to treat COVID patients from the start of the pandemic censored, vilified, and had their careers destroyed?”

“How could health officials deny the effectiveness of natural immunity when approximately half of the people testing positive for COVID were asymptomatic?” he continued. “Isn't that a sign that your natural immunity is preventing you from getting ill?”

Johnson's war

Johnson has been pursuing many of the same questions in Washington as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

In April, the subcommittee released a 38-page interim report alleging that FDA officials failed to act on a newer data-analysis method that identified previously undetected safety signals that the agency's existing methodology had failed to detect.

The investigation drew renewed attention in July as Johnson's committee continued examining how federal officials handled reports of possible vaccine side effects and whether potential safety signals were adequately disclosed to the public. Later that month, Johnson requested transcribed interviews with Dr. Anthony Fauci and four former FDA officials about their roles in the pandemic response, including vaccine safety and efficacy

In August, Johnson's investigation obtained Fauci's government-issued cell phone, containing more than 34,000 text messages and 500 voicemails. Johnson and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) subsequently began releasing material from the phone as part of their continuing investigation into the government's pandemic response.

Follow the science?

Johnson brought that investigation to Ottawa on Tuesday, where he used his appearance at the Allison Inquiry to deliver a broader indictment of the pandemic response.

“By the time the COVID vaccines obtained their emergency use authorizations, the cartel was firmly in control of the narrative,” Johnson said, using his term for the government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, media organizations, and technology companies he blames for suppressing dissent during the pandemic.

He recalled slogans including “follow the science,” “safe and effective,” and “no one is safe until everyone is safe.”

“Which, by the way, if the vaccines were that effective, why would you care whether somebody else is vaccinated?” Johnson asked. “I mean, it never made sense to me. ... These phrases were used ad nauseam to bludgeon the public into submission.”

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From 'injury' to 'impact'

Canada does have a federal program to compensate people who have suffered serious and permanent injuries following vaccination. The Vaccine Injury Support Program began in 2021 and was initially administered by a third party before being taken over by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The program itself has faced scrutiny. PHAC terminated its contract with the original administrator after an audit found serious problems with its handling of claims. The agency subsequently took over administration of the program and renamed it the Vaccine Impact Support Program in April.

The Allison Inquiry says it received more than 1,400 applications from people willing to testify about alleged vaccine injuries.

Johnson also alleged that federal regulators failed to adequately investigate vaccine safety signals.

“A few months into the vaccine rollout, my investigations have shown that the FDA and CDC were not doing sincere safety surveillance,” he said. “And it appears this willful ignorance was a worldwide phenomenon.”

What about Dr. Tam?

That question of what Canadian health authorities knew eventually brought the hearing to Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's former chief public health officer.

During questioning, Conservative MP Ellis Ross asked Johnson whether Tam's name had surfaced in the millions of pages of federal documents obtained by his investigation.

“I've not heard of Dr. Tam. I may have, but, you know, the name didn't register,” Johnson replied. “What I will do is I'll have that as a search term with the emails and texts and I'll see. We'll check it out.”

Johnson then addressed his staff, telling them to add Tam's name to their searches.

“We'll put that in. We'll see if there's any [mentions],” he said.

Johnson went on to say his investigators were finding what he described as “a great deal of cooperation between Fauci and federal health officials and Chinese officials,” but said he was not yet prepared to disclose specifics.

“As we get more and more information, we'll start releasing that,” Johnson said. “We kind of got to put the whole package together, but stay tuned on some of those things.”

Are antidepressants zombifying American culture?



Why are things the way they are?

Why does it feel like things were better before?

Having a society of people walking through life in a drab stupor will, believe it or not, have strange impacts on the way the world goes.

No, that’s not exactly right. Everything — emphasis on thing — wasn’t better before. Well, maybe it’s the people then. Yes, that’s it — the people. Why does it seem like people were better before? No, that’s not it either. Not quite. People weren’t better before. There have always been the wicked and the evil and the lazy and the annoying. The world has always had problems.

Well, what is it then? What is it that I am feeling, you are feeling, and we all are feeling? Why does everything feel “off” for lack of a better word?

There’s a lot of answers, and a lot of them are pretty good. Answering questions this big is like looking at an object at a table from different directions. There are multiple correct descriptions of what is sitting in front of everyone, and all the answers help paint a clearer picture.

Ostinato of apathy

But is there an answer, a detail, a fact, or an X factor that sits under all the other things and runs like an ostinato through seemingly unrelated domains connecting the dots in a strangely unifying way?

Perhaps.

And if I were to try to list a single X factor that weaves like a thread through all the various forms and domains of decline, descent, malaise, and dysfunction, I might conclude that the fact that connects all these problems is something insurance covers, doctors prescribe, and we are all supposed to nod along with.

SSRIs and other forms of antidepressant medication.

I saw a video recently of an extended family. In a self-satisfied, joke-y sort of way, they all listed the medications they were on. It wasn’t a real joke, it was clear they were all actually on these things, but the video was joking about how funny it is, or something. Like many things TikTok, the tone was a plain, mundane, nihilistic, uncapitalized “lol.”

Of course, TikTok isn’t real life. But it isn’t exactly fake life either. This family of drug-dependents might be a bit of an exaggeration, though not necessarily a fabrication. Spiritually, the video is correct. More people are on these drugs than ever before, and that’s an undeniable fact of reality.

Drugs not hugs

This kind of thing didn’t exist when I was young. Drugs existed, both legal and illegal ones. Prescription drugs to help you be less depressed existed too. There were jokes and themes about Prozac in the 1990s, and before my time, in the midcentury, they were juicing disturbed people up on all sorts of stuff too. But the prevalence of them, overuse of them, and unabashedly flippant taking of them was nowhere near what we see today.

When I was young, the only people who were on this stuff were people who were decidedly “messed up.” Those who had genuinely tried to commit suicide or were really on the brink. And it wasn’t a good thing, and it wasn’t used flippantly. It was serious stuff. Somewhere in the last few decades, this attitude changed.

SSRIs and other antidepressants are the X factor under so much of the general malaise and dysfunction in our perplexing and seemingly decaying culture. At first, it doesn’t really make sense, or it just seems like a bit of a stretch because people think these drugs just “make people happier,” but that’s not exactly what happens. Even if they do seemingly “make people happier,” or at least less depressed, that isn’t the only thing they do.

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Dead inside

Listen to people who have been on these drugs describe how they make you feel. The picture isn’t exactly a rosy one. It’s better than suicide, but it isn’t normal. A very common observation you hear from people is that they make you feel dead or like you don’t care about anything. They also lower libido and what might be described as general drive.

These drugs don’t only impact one’s happiness. They bleed out and into all these other things, and when you have people taking them at the scale we do in the U.S., the culture shifts in ways that are unintelligible and confusing to those of us not on anything. Having a society of people walking through life in a drab stupor will, believe it or not, have strange impacts on the way the world goes.

Because of all this, our society is more full of de facto zombies than ever before. No wonder young people feel listless. No wonder achievement and striving for greatness seem naive or corny.

No wonder people aren’t partying.

No wonder the birthrate is in the tank.

No wonder the Democratic Party has become what it is when so many of its voters exhibit depression and anxiety.

No wonder everyone dresses like slobs.

No wonder there is a general apathy that bleeds through everything we see and hear.

No wonder the interior design is bland and factory-like.

No wonder everyone feels like tomorrow is going to be worse than today.

No wonder — to answer our first question — things are the way they are.