Michael Shellenberger
speaker
1,228 appearances
6 recordings
4 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard 18 Feb
Michael Shellenberger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You know, and he's like, well, he's like, I get 650 bucks a month, you know, in cash welfare to be homeless here, plus a couple of hundred bucks more in food stamps. It's a great deal. And he was like, I got Netflix on my phone. I watch Amazon, you know, I watch Amazon Prime TV on my phone. You know, I still, Electric City from the light pole right here, That video, I will say, is very satisfying.
I do think that played a pretty big role in the voters of San Francisco voting to get rid of cash welfare for homeless people.
I mean, because it's – Because you weren't a reporter. You weren't working for a newspaper or a TV station. No. I mean, look, for me, this is the golden age of journalism. It is so much fun. Because, like, basically, I can go into every story – And you discover that people aren't really doing reporting. I showed up at the guy.
I showed up at the house that the guy lived in, the guy that assaulted Nancy Pelosi's husband. Yes. Just to give you a sense of where journalism is at. And I show up and I'm like, I'm just happy to be there. And there's all these journalists there. It was like a bunch of like local TV news and like the local print, whatever. And I was like, I just kind of like, oh, hey, what's the call?
He lived out in Berkeley, right? Yeah, he's in Berkeley. Yeah. Black Lives Matter flag in front, you know, you know, abandoned school bus. They were really, it was really terrible environment. But, and I was like, oh, I was like, so I was like, have you guys already, I was kind of like worried. I was like, I got here late.
And I was like, so you guys already like knocked on all the doors of the neighbors. And they were just like, looked at me and they were like, no, we're like not ready. I can't remember what one of them said. He was like, oh, we don't want to be like rude or something, or that would be like inappropriate. I was like, and at that moment I was like, oh God, this is going to be great.
And I just like went and knocked on all the doors and I get all the information like, oh, yeah, they would around naked out there and they would be on drugs all the time. And yeah, they were like all left wing. And it was like, you know, I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like, there's no competition.
Like it's you know, I got on the I got on the White House briefing just recently, the White House briefing on UAPs, which you and I are both interested in on the drones. And it was just like, you can kind of go into these stories, you just start talking to people and you just realize journalists aren't really, they're not really journalists.
They're more like kind of the people that would run for like class president or something. They're kind of goody two-shoes types. They're ass kissers, yes. Yeah, they're actually very authoritative. I mean, they're the ones that wanted all the censorship. Of course. Of course. So they're not that old picture of journalists. It's like this kind of cantankerous and like, you know, crabby.
And they got rid of all those people. Anti-authoritarian. Anti-authoritarian. Yeah. Difficult people. I'm the son of one of those. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up on this. Classic. Right. That's like the greatest. I mean, there's like and you realize it's essential to the functioning of civilization to have a bunch of disagreeable people running around asking impertinent questions. Exactly.
So, with this one, it was like, yeah, so, I mean, you basically get, like, when you just look at the coverage of the fires, I mean, it was like the reporters that are going out and doing it, it's like their whole thing is like, oh, we've got to make sure that the right wing doesn't take advantage of this situation to push their agenda. Like, literally, that's how they think about it.
So, they're out there running cover for the – I mean, it's amazing, you know. Somebody did, like, a little meme on it, but it's like that thing where it's like – Yeah, it used to be that the reporter would be holding the microphone up to the politicians and being like, answer my questions. And now they're demanding that the people defend themselves for their terrible votes.
It's like a complete reversal.
No, of course. I mean, it's really... I mean, you say of course, but like... No, I know. Well, no, I know. I wrote San Francisco because it was literally like... Because I knew drugs. Like, you know... Me too. I know drugs. You know, I made three friends from high school. I became homeless addicts. Two are dead. It's like, you know, I'm, you know, I happily avoided personally all the hard ones.
But you saw your friends, like, you know, you'd leave you. Wow, you guys have the same math. You know, it's like, that's bad. What time did you go to high school? Greeley, Colorado. Yeah. You know, yeah. So, you know, my parents are psychologists. I remember just being around my aunt had schizophrenia. You know, I've told the story a long time, so I don't want to bore you.
But basically, it was like it was just kind of like, so wait, everyone just thinks that this is like a housing problem. Like, that's just crazy. So, you know, you sort of needed to I needed to go do all those interviews. But I mean, really, the first homelessness epidemic, the first time that we're modern homelessness was in the early 80s.
And it was just, it was basically all it was was a combination of the emptying, the final closure of all the mental hospitals where they literally, literally dumped people on the streets. Like I thought that that was, that sounded like an exaggeration when I first started. They literally were putting, you know, schizophrenics and stuff on the streets. And then the crack epidemic.
Like that's all it was. It was just those two things. And then, of course, then, you know, left-wing mayor of San Francisco and others are like, oh, well, we can't, like, we can't, like, require that people not camp outside. They're poor. The left, in reaction to Reagan, then took up homelessness as something that they claimed was caused by Reagan.
Like, I mean, he'd been in office for, like, whatever, two or three years, and they would just make ridiculous claims, you know, the Reagan budget, you know, that's why he's on the street. Yeah. So it really gets used – so it becomes viewed by the left early on as a political propaganda tool. I also blame the comics, by the way. I mean, and just I'll name them.
Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg. They did this whole thing. You may remember Comic Relief. Yeah. Where they framed the whole thing as a problem of poverty, which is just – it's just – It's just such a disservice to the people on the street who need an intervention.
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