Okay, good evening. I hope you're all doing well. Thanks for joining me. Last update on the Battle in Spen by-election campaign for obvious reasons, that today is election day. I think one of the most controversial, probably one of the most more interesting by-elections to take place for a while. A couple of things I want to take you through. We'll go back and have a little look at the campaign. Let me just fix this camera here first. We'll go back and have a little look at the campaign. I want to focus on a couple of things. And the things I mentioned when we started this, when we went into this, was to look at how the media would treat this and how, crucially, other parties and, crucially, other new parties, the parties that have come along and presented themselves as the alternative to the frightened, complicit, more obedient, obedience to certain communities who pretend to be different or who portray themselves as different, but aren't. And that was one of the things I wanted to highlight during this campaign. Let's start with other parties. Now, to be clear about a couple of things. This is the area, of course, of the Batley Grammar School and the teacher. And we all know the story. This teacher showed a picture of Mohammed and had to go on the run and his life was threatened and we saw the protest outside the school. One feature of this, of this election campaign is that it has, this has been mentioned. Batley Grammar School and this teacher has been mentioned in this campaign. It's come up in various arenas, areas, online hostings and what have you, various arenas. But what hasn't come up is the Islamic issue in Batley and Spen more broadly. We've reduced it down to this teacher, this one incident, this one instance when actually it is so much bigger than that. That's just an example of a much, much wider problem, not just in Batley and Spen but across the country. I've started reading today a book, I've just published last week or the week before. Among the Mosques, it's called by Ed Hussain. I'm on chapter one and already I know, I can see already the future that awaits us. Unless drastic change happens and unless drastic political change happens, the future that awaits us is very, very dark. And one noteworthy point that is in chapter one is that the Muslim population of this country has doubled in 10 years and is expected to be around 12 million by 2050. Perhaps even sooner than that. What will it look like? What will Britain look like with a 12 million Muslim population? The Muslim population of Batley and Spen is around 20%. Look at the corridors of all the big parties in refusing to talk about the Islamic issue in Batley and Spen. Look at the leaflets that went out from the Labour Party. I'll show you some of them again. And look at George Galloway vying for this Muslim vote. Leaflets are going out about Kashmir and Palestine in a West Yorkshire constituency with only a 20% Muslim population. So what is it going to look like? What are the politicians going to be doing when we have a 12 million Muslim population? Which I suspect will come a lot sooner than 2050. They'll want formalised sharia, sharia to be applied to all of us. And on the basis of what's happened in this by-election they're going to get it. So we have a very dark, very dark future ahead of us. And I'll read this book among the mosques and tell you how it goes. Just to give you an overview, this is a person who has gone around the country to large mainstream mosques and spoken to the people within and reported back on his findings. Before I go into the other political parties in any detail, there's one thing I want to read to you. This is from Guido Fox from a couple of days ago. Kim's link to extremist badly charity is the headline. While the badly by-election is whipping up racial tensions, it's easy to forget. Anger already reached a fever pitch two months ago after a teacher showed his classroom a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. As of the 19th of June, the teacher remains in hiding. Partly thanks to a charity called Purpose of Life who were responsible for publishing his name online. They were subsequently reported to the charity commission. So to be clear, a charity called Purpose of Life was the one that named this teacher publicly. Therefore it was the one that put this teacher's life in danger. It goes on, despite this scandal, the Joe Cox Foundation still found it appropriate to donate £1,000 to Purpose of Life a month later. So a month after they published this teacher's name, putting his life in danger, the Joe Cox Foundation donated £1,000 to that charity. But here's the kicker it says. Kim Ledbetter, who, if elected MP today, would represent the under siege teacher, was an ambassador at the Joe Cox Foundation when the donation was made and wouldn't go on to step down from the role under her candidate selection on May 13. Now, this charity that put this teacher's life in danger was given money afterwards by an organisation involving the Labour candidates when they have been asked about the issue. And as I said, it's only about this teacher and the Batley Grammar School. The socialisation of society hasn't been mentioned. When it is put to them, on the rare occasion that it is put to them, they've said that they believe in freedom of speech. This is Labour and Tory. They believe in freedom of speech, but we have to be sensitive to the cultural and religious sensitivities of others if we're all going to live together peacefully. What that means is we believe in freedom of speech, but only as long as it's not offensive to Muslims, and in order to live in peace, we have to not be offensive to Muslims. The implications there are obvious. And basically what I'm saying, in order to live in peace with Muslims, we have to adhere to Islamic rules, but they're basically saying, well, I'm saying, the only difference is I'm saying, let's not adhere to Islamic rules. Let's fight back and demand that wider British culture is respected by Muslims and not the other way round. Labour and Tory are saying the opposite. They're saying we must capitulate. Now, the school in question changed its curriculum in order to bear down to the Sharia mob just in the same way that both Labour and Tory have bowed down to that mob. So those are the two main parties. Now, I suspect, actually, I don't know how tonight is going to go. It could, the Tories are most likely, I think, to win it. Not, I don't think, with the majority or the strength, if you like, that they won Hartlepool, but the Tories, I think, are most likely to win it. However, Labour could still win it. And outside possibility is George Galloway. But either way, it's going to be very interesting. Let me show you the first clip that I want to show you tonight on Labour's response to the Buckley Grammar School and the teacher in hiding. This is Kim Ledbetter being questioned today. The main focus now, as somebody who has worked in this community, bringing people together from different backgrounds, is that we pull together as a community. We focus on the children's education. I think that's what everybody wants. And we make sure that this teacher is not put under the spotlight any more than he already has been. He needs to be able to get on with his life. Do you want to see that teacher back in the classroom at Buckley Grammar? I think that has to be a decision for the teacher. And I'm sure those conversations are taking place. And I think that has to be a matter for him. If he feels his life is under threat by going back to his job, there's a problem, isn't there? Well, I think, again, that's up to him to decide. And I would imagine that he'd probably appreciate having the time and the privacy to do that, which I think is what people should be very respectful of. I mean, that's incredible. That is absolutely incredible. She's not condemning the people threatening his life. It's up to him to decide. Well, it's not really up to him to decide. Not if he wants to be safe. It's not really up to him to decide, but you have the same politically correct, evasive rubbish, which is we must bring communities together. And, well, if he wants to go back to school, it's up to him. No real address of what's actually happening here. No discussion as to why it's happening. And no mention of the wider Islamisation of that society and the Tories exactly the same response. So what about the other parties, the new anti-woke, we're all about free speech parties? Here's an interesting tweet. And this has been sort of across the board in this election. I'm the only one speaking about it. I'm the only one who's addressing it. Nobody is addressing this. Nobody is talking about this, so I think I better. Here's an interesting tweet. So there we have Laurence Fox of the Reclaim Party saying that A, nobody is talking about the teacher. Well, that's not true. A few people are talking about the teacher and the force to. They're coming out with the usual platitudes. Nobody but us is talking about the wider problem here, which is the submission to Sharia by the main parties, by society in general, and frankly by him. Now I mentioned on my live stream on Monday an article by Robert Spencer how Laurence Fox had made this speech about freedom of speech, about how terrible it is that this teacher has to go in to hide in, but no mention of the word Muslims or Islam. And in this tweet he's going to pretend nobody's doing it.  Nobody's saying anything. Well, they are. We are. We're not invisible. As much as you might like us to be, we're not invisible. We are actually here. And we are actually the only ones talking about the issue, the real issue, which is the Islamization of British society. But what's really, really, but frankly shocking about this is Laurence Fox's reclaimed party didn't stand in this by-election. Despite him saying what someone has to stand up for this teacher, they decided to stand down in order to assist the Tories. There's even an acknowledgement in that tweet that the Tories will do nothing about this issue. And yet they stand aside in favour of the Tories. I have an article here from the Reclaim Party's website. Commenting on the Batley and Spen by-election, Laurence Fox, leader of the Reclaim Party said, the events at Batley Grammar School are a blight on our free, tolerant, fair and democratic society. A man's life is now at risk and he has had to go into hiding with his family. As a nation we should be ashamed that this has happened. The school, the teachers union, the government and the Labour Party have shown abject cowardice in their refusal to address this issue. Over the past few weeks I've been working closely with Paul Halloran who understands more about Batley and Spen than any of the opportunistic candidates standing in the by-election. I have also spoken with many others from across the Batley and Spen constituency about what happened at Batley Grammar School. Paul and I have decided we will not stand in the by-election. It has been made clear to both of us that many people in Batley and Spen are fed up with the Labour Party. The Labour Party has lost their way. We cannot in good conscience stand and risk splitting the vote and condemning Batley and Spen to any more years of Labour control. The Labour Party is one of the most divisive and intolerant political parties in the UK. The Reclaim Party is a young party.  We will be spending the next weeks and months introducing ourselves to the electorate and we do not wish to further our own ends in the short term by engaging in what will become an arena of false promises who you won't see again after the election. Opportunistic. The language used there is very dismissive of those of us who will mention the real problem here and who are going into this in order to mention the real problem here which again has not been mentioned in this statement. Expect this from these new parties so far and no further. Yes again for Britain is the only party and we in our case it's actually true. I mean other parties are claiming we're the only ones who are going to say anything. I think UKIP claimed we're the only ones who are going to say anything. I'm not sure what they've said but I'm guarantee you they haven't said what needs to be said. Everyone's claiming to be the only one talking about it but in our case and only in our case is it true. We are the only ones talking about what this actually means and represents. It's the Islamisation of British society. Let me show you as a reminder just a recap of what has been dominating a parliamentary by-election in West Yorkshire and what the Labour Party have been putting out in their leaflets. Clearly, very very clearly the non-Muslim population of battalion spent don't matter at all and that's with a 20% population. Remember what I said about there being a 12 million Muslim population in this country in the next couple of decades. This is however the leaflet that Labour put out to non-Muslims. The non-Muslims are given platitudes less traffic, greener spaces it is absolutely clear absolutely clear that politics and not just Labour that politics is already bowing down to the Muslim population across the board and because they're afraid of it. The new anti-woke parties are also afraid of it. But this battle is coming. Sharia versus our liberty is coming and the whole lot of them are afraid of it afraid of it. And just one more example of the we're the only ones standing up are the social democrats here's a tweet from Patrick O'Flynn and again this is their leaflet which as a final point at the very end says defend free speech in schools and public debate no mention of Islam no mention of Sharia not dealing with this issue at all. So let me remind you of leaflets that we put out in battle in Spain So that's a little overview of the political parties the main ones and the newer ones and we see and can discuss and expose what we set out to do when we came into this which was to show you with absolute clarity no uncertainty that the big parties are not going to deal with this at all, in fact one of the two big parties is vying for shamelessly vying for the Muslim vote the Tories are no better the other new pro free speech parties are either pretending the problem's not there or framing it as a general free speech issue without ever naming Muslims or Islam or Sharia and making it clear very clear that while everyone is claiming to be the only one talking about this in our case it's actually true this is not about a teacher in Buckley grammar school it is about the Shariaization of Great Britain that's what it's about and that's what has to be opposed and you can't do something about Sharia unless you name it as Sharia you have to call it out you have to say what it is can't fight something if you won't identify it so onto the media and the media as you can probably guess my what's the word what's the appropriate word contempt for the media has only grown and grown during this like the newer political parties the media is pretending that nobody is talking about this issue first of all it will only talk about it in terms if it does at all if the question is asked it will only talk about it in terms of this one teacher the wider issue isn't mentioned Islam isn't mentioned, Sharia isn't mentioned but the media that pretends to be anti-establishment the media that pretends to be pro free speech the media that claims it is on this side, our side if you like of the fence is pretending we don't exist it's pretending it is presenting something to the voting public that is shaping the voting public and what I mean by that is they only ever focus on the big parties if you get a mention at all it will be just your name or it will be something that dismisses you as far right it is a self fulfilling people will continue to vote for the main parties because the main parties are the only parties that the media ever talks about this is how it will go the media won't mention us or if it does it will lie and smear in a tiny little paragraph somewhere then you get few votes and then the media says look everyone hates your message that's why you're not getting voted for because everyone hates what you represent they're not voting for us because you are telling them A that we don't exist and B if we do you're lying about what we stand for it's like when Antifa get our events closed down we have to organise events or covertly and then they attack us for doing things covertly it's the same thing the media won't give us a platform and then tells us when we don't get votes that we're not getting voted for because people don't agree with us it's not it's because the media won't give us any platform if they did people would vote for us the media knows this that's why it presents the status quo as the only option they only talk about these big parties and then they wonder that we wonder why everything always stays the same it's the media the media is at the heart of it the media is a large large part of why this country is in the state it's in if you look at it why are politicians so afraid to take a principle stand on issues like Islam or immigration because they're afraid of being called racist they're afraid of attack by whom? by the media so they bow down to the media they don't want the kind of treatment that I get from the media so they don't take a principle stand about controversial issues because of the media people don't know that they have options other than more of the same from Labour and the Tories because of the media if people do look into other alternatives social media which is the media will lie to them and tell them that we are something that we're not people don't then vote for us in large numbers and the media says they're not voting for you because you're full of hate it's this circle that just goes around and around and around and the alternative media is proving itself to be little better here's another clip I want to show you this one is from Spiked this is talk radio Julia Hartley Brewer speaking to Brendan O'Neill of the editor of Spiked now these remember are apparently anti-establishment on the right side of the argument just have a listen to this conversation let's talk to Brendan O'Neill who's the editor of Spiked online about this good morning to you Brendan one of the key things about Ben Spen is that maybe we wouldn't have heard of the constituency but we'll have heard the name Batley in recent months and this of course after a teacher was forced to go into hiding suspended from his job by the head teacher simply for teaching a lesson religious studies lesson which he ended up with death threats and for some reason this issue which you would think was a pretty big issue has failed to rear its ugly head in the Batley and Spen by-election if you would have just explained what actually happened with this teacher and then we'll talk about you know why this is bizarrely not a feature of this by-election yeah it's horrendous actually the fact that it's not a feature of this by-election and what happened is that this school teacher by all accounts a very good school teacher a very decent school teacher he showed a picture of Muhammad in a religious studies discussion about blasphemy and offence and those kinds of issues and those kinds took offence and words spread and soon there were mobs off religious fundamentalists at the school gate and then what happened next was the most shocking thing of all virtually the entire educational and political establishment capitulated to the mob the school suspended the teacher the political commentary didn't say very much at all the teaching unions didn't stand by the teacher with much support and politicians basically turned away and all looked at their feet there was this horrendous capitulation and this abandonment of the teacher I think it casts a black mark across this country that this actually happened well indeed and especially as we would certainly expect to take those death threats seriously given what happened last year to Thomas Patey a French teacher in Paris who was quite literally beheaded because he had done a similar thing in a class in his school that's right you know this is a very serious situation this teacher in Batley was subjected to death threats and huge amounts of abuse to such an extent that he's now he and his young family have now left their home in Batley they've moved they're still in hiding according to the teacher's father the teacher is crushed he doesn't know what to do with his life he feels that his teaching life is over this is an incredibly serious situation a man has been hounded into hiding by religious fundamentalists and people are not speaking up about it so the fact that this isn't a feature of the by-election in the area in which this horrible event took place that really needs some analysis we need to have a reckoning with this situation and this is the thing isn't it because there is a very large Muslim community there now of course no one is in any way saying oh just because somebody's Muslim someone would agree with these death threats from Islamist extremists absolutely not however very conservative with the school C local Muslim population seem to have not had an issue with this and it would seem an awful lot in some of the local parties you say haven't had an issue with these death threats this hasn't been raised and there have been accusations that actually there's been an awful lot of decision making by the main parties not to talk about this issue so that they don't offend those conservative the small C voters from certain ethnic minority groups because they think that that would be an popular move now this is effectively to all terms of purposes kowtowing to the mob is it not yeah let's not beat around the bush you know the fact that the main parties are not talking about this issue in battalion spend is a disgrace it is a real indictment of how they view issues like freedom of speech freedom of conscience and the right of teachers public servants arguably the most important public servants of all the right of teachers to teach critical thinking to their kids that's what's at stake in this issue and the fact that the main parties aren't talking about it is really really disgraceful so what we have is a situation where a teacher has been hounded out of a local area and the people who want to represent that local area are not saying anything they have capitulated to the mob and what we now know is that these parties the main parties at least they value identity politics and the politics of grievance more than they value freedom of speech and freedom of conscience and this teacher's safety that is the choice they've made whether they know it or not that's the choice they've made and I think the voters should bear that in mind absolutely I do find it absolutely extraordinary that every single candidate is not stood on the same platform and said they condemn this and demand that the teacher has a right to come back and condemn those who have argued against that but if you genuinely want to live in a country with your board in Britain or you've come to Britain I don't care which heaven I don't care whatever colour you are your politics I'm sorry this isn't the country for you there are plenty of current countries with blasphemy laws go and live there I don't live in certain countries I don't agree with the laws that they have this country does not have a blasphemy law well it does now I suppose by the back door can I also ask you Brennan because you what is also disgraceful I mean both of them are agreed that it's disgraceful that every candidate isn't coming to the defence of the teacher and unequivocally demanding free speech and that we don't want blasphemy laws but it's also disgraceful is the pretense that nobody is addressing this and that nobody including them are addressing the real issue the underlying issue here which is the imposition of sharia law on this country it is happening rapidly it is serious this issue with the teacher is very serious but what's also serious is halal meat is terror attacks is the gang rape of girls all over the country child marriage forced marriage on a violence the police doing nothing that's serious and it's serious that we have mobs of left wingers in the streets threatening anyone who dares to speak up about this stuff and being presented as the moral faction in politics the defenders of all of the horrors I've described are presented as moral as the moral defenders they're called anti-racists and anti-fascists they're protecting the most violent totalitarian hateful ideology in the country today and the media is complicit in it so I've had a message to say that my internet we've got some issues with quality on this I don't know why that is I am going to bring this to a close because I do have to actually go back to batley this evening I will be posting my youtube account won't allow me to post there's no, I was banned for a while that ban ended but I still can't post anything it's not giving me any message or I'm just not able to post anything on my youtube account but I will put up a few if you mention not allowed to record anything inside counts but I will let you know as much as I can when I can throughout the night but as far as I'm concerned we've done what we set out to do which was to show you finally and without question without doubt for Britain is genuinely the only party registered, established functioning branches the only party in this country that will deal with Sharia we will fight Sharia, we know what it is we know that we're living through the imposition of Sharia on Great Britain and we will fight it we will I want to thank the members who supported me throughout this campaign we've come together as a party in a way that I am so so proud of I want to thank everyone for their generous donations it's been great for the party, it's brought us together after not being able to see each other for a year and a bit it's brought us together again it's really energised us there's momentum with the party at the moment and I'm really pleased about that and I'm so grateful to everyone who donated please continue donating we now are going to take this momentum forward we have a new person on board an expert in making us improving our presence improving our output improving the professionalism of the whole outfit so please continue donating I've got a meeting with this person tomorrow, myself and Ed and this person I'm meeting again tomorrow to start to put building blocks to completely improve every aspect of the party and focus on reaching a wider audience in the next coming up to the general election but also for myself getting elected locally next year the party has been completely re-energised and revitalised by this and one of the reasons for that is because it's become abundantly clear who is really, really going to stand up to one of the biggest, most serious issues Great Britain has ever faced and that is it's being consumed by a alien ideology which has no place in the Britain that people fought and died to keep free, no place at all it's us that will take this on it's for Britain and this battling and spend by election prove that beyond any doubt job large part of what we have job done frankly okay, like I say I'll keep you up to date as much as I can throughout the night it's going to be an interesting night thank you thank you everyone thank you for joining me this evening, thank you for all your incredible support there is just one thing I want to show you before I leave this is a fake leaflet that has been doing the rounds and battling and spend the leaflet may be fake but it's content is absolutely true this one made me laugh whoever did this well done whoever did this this is fantastic, let me show you this brilliant, love it like I say it may not be a real labour leaflet but it is labour and every word of it could, every word of it is actually true it's just that labour themselves are not going to admit or acknowledge that every word of that is true whoever did that, well done, absolutely brilliant okay I'll be back later on this evening to let you know and I'll be back on Monday with my live stream at half seven and I'll give you an update on some of the things we're going to do to take the party to the next level and grab the momentum that we have right now and keep it going thanks very much everyone quite looking forward to this okay see you on Monday thanks again take care thank you for watching if you agree with what you hear on four Britain videos remember 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Good evening and welcome to depression to expression Tonight we'll be doing a guided meditation together One meant before bed so before we really get started. I'd like you to get comfortable This can mean puffing up your pillow Putting the sheets over top of you Having one foot out of the comforter and one in Whatever makes you comfortable now, it's best for this exercise if you lay on your back And you can put your hands on your side Put your hands on your chest Whatever is comfortable for you Now let's keep our eyes open for the time being and let's take a big deep breath together Let's start inhaling through the nose and And exhaling through the mouth on the count of three one two Three inhale through the nose To do that one more time inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth I'll feel free to close your eyes Let's take another deep breath together now with your eyes closed Let's inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth and once more Inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. Now what can sometimes happen? When we place our head on the pillow is our thoughts Start to race and we think about our day And what we did right what we did wrong What we could have done better and this is perfectly normal to have these thoughts at the end of the day Now whether you had a good day Or a bad day Whether things were going your way Or nothing seemed to go right I want to acknowledge the fact that you made it through the day and if you were in pain You got through it if you were depressed or anxious at any point in the day or sad or missed someone Missed a deadline made a mistake It is now over And you made it through the day, and I'd like you to try to smile Knowing that you made it through the day knowing that you gave it your all And you did the best you could given your circumstances Now let's begin to feel our body on the mattress Beginning with our neck how we hold tension in our necks let it soften Onto the pillow and same with our heads Let's move down towards our shoulders and let them sink into the mattress Notice how it's so soft to focus on our Upper arms and forearms Let your arms just become heavy and focus on your back and let it sink into the mattress as we move All the way down the spine vertebrae by vertebrae that our pelvis Sink into the soft mattress As we work our way down our legs our thighs Our knees and let them soften and your calves let them soften Down to your ankles the soles of your feet and Your toes You are in a safe place at this moment You are in a safe place at this moment now. We may be thinking about our days It's hard not to you've been conscious for many hours And experienced many new things today. What I'd like to do Is think of three things That happened today But not just any three things three amazing things Three things that you can think about that made you happy. I walked to work today, and I took a longer route But that's because the Sun wasn't blocked by any buildings. I Walked to work in complete sunshine. That's my amazing thought. I want you to think of three things That made you happy today Just three and these can be the smallest things that you may have overlooked in the moment Let's think about three things now as long as we focus on these little things in life That brings small sparks to our days we can feel Truly happy we can feel like we did Something right today. We can feel as though today did have purpose if there were just three moments today Where you noticed something different When you noticed something amazing when you had a small smile on your face That means today was worth it as we enter into sleep Let's acknowledge the fact That today was a blessing and we were alive today We were conscious today, and we made it through if the day was easy if the day was difficult We made it through and again.  Good night


Greetings from the National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Nacotchtank peoples. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual author lecture by Robert M. Smith, author of Suppressed. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Monday, May 10th, at 5 p.m., Bob Drury and Tom Claven will tell us about the true saga of Daniel Boone and the conquest of the frontier, the subject of their new book, Blood and Treasure. And on Thursday, May 13th, at noon, historian Jonathan Zimmerman and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Signa Wilkinson will present their new book, Free Speech. This brief but bracing book tells the story of free speech in America and makes the case for why we should care about it today. For more than 120 years, The New York Times has proclaimed that it publishes all the news that's fit to print. At some point, someone is deciding what is fit to print, and the results of those decisions are the subject of our featured book, Suppressed. Robert M. Smith spent years as a reporter with The Times, and in his new book he examines how some stories make it to print, how some do not, and how the filters work. The First Amendment to the Constitution declares that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. With that freedom comes responsibility, and this book reminds us that news outlets approach that responsibility in different ways. Robert M. Smith is a former New York Times White House and investigative correspondent who has witnessed some of the most important stories in modern history, including Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the MyLy Massacre. He began at The Times in his 20s, quit, went to Yale Law School, and was rehired by The Times. He became a lawyer in a prestigious firm served in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, and worked as an international commercial mediator in England and in the United States. He won an award for news writing from the United Press International, won several awards while at The New York Times, and has written a comprehensive legal treatise on mediation and arbitration. Now, let's hear from Robert M. Smith. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Eric Fox, and I am speaking today with Robert M. Smith, author of the soon-to-be-released Suppressed Confessions of a Former New York Times Washington Correspondent. Bob is a graduate of Harvard College, and he has advanced degrees in Foreign Affairs from Columbia, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and Yale Law School. He has had a wide-ranging career, which includes journalism, the law, both in the United States and England, and serving in the Jimmy Carter presidency. Bob received many accolades as a journalist and as a lawyer, preparing a case for the world court, and serving as a mediator for multinational corporations. Bob, you've written a lot in your career, and now you're publishing a book whose central theme is the First Amendment and the role of the press. What do you think is the most important lesson from your book? I think that the most important lesson is that in a time of a badly, totally divided country, the normal role of the press is to be able to show folks on the right what those on the left are like and thinking and so on and vice versa and playing a role perhaps and having them understand one another and knitting the two together. That's not possible now because the press is not trusted by a very large part of the population. Advocacy journalism has to some extent replaced neutral journalism and people don't trust the press, which means the press cannot help stitch the country back together, and the press cannot speak. Your book starts with a critical moment in American history, the lead up to the Watergate investigation. What happened when you were an investigative reporter in the Washington Bureau of the New York Times and met with the director of the FBI? Something quite remarkable happened, and it's still stupefying to me. The day before I was to leave the Bureau and go to Yale Law School, I had lunch with the then acting director of the FBI. We had lunch at a French restaurant and sat at the table, and he told me about Watergate and some of its participants, and I was incredulous. I couldn't take my notebook out because here we were in a crowded Washington restaurant at lunchtime, and so I sat there trying to remember the names. He gave me a Segretti's name, for example, and I used the mnemonic spaghetti, the spaghetti Segretti. Anyway, he told me this story to some extent with detail, and after lunch, I knew it was my last day, I cornered the editor, the news editor of the Washington Bureau of the Times, and asked him to go to his office, shut the door there, put up a Scotch tape sign that said, do not disturb, turn on a small tape recorder, gave him one of the reporter's pads and pen, and asked him to take notes, which he did, and I told him about what had just happened and gave him what the FBI had about Watergate, and then at the end of my briefing or debriefing, we left the room and I went to my desk to finish packing up, and he went into the newsroom. Now the newsroom had, I don't remember exactly, but 30, say 35, really good reporters, and I went off to New Haven and read the paper and saw nothing, nothing, and I didn't understand what was happening, and then a few months later, the Times began getting very badly beaten by Woodward and Bernstein, and I was just amazed, and subsequently I asked the editor years later what had happened, and he said he had no explanation, and I said that essentially that's not credible, and he said, well, we were going off, my wife and I, on an Alaskan cruise, and I said that cruise wasn't for a week. I mean, for goodness' sake, in journalism, a week is a vast amount of time. You had plenty of time, so what really happened? He said, I don't know. Do you want me to take a truth serum? And I said, if it would help, yes. How do you address claims that the media has always been biased? Well, it depends, I suppose, on what you mean by biased, but there are degrees of bias just as at law school. We've learned there are degrees of evidence or evidentiary solidity. Some things are more solid than others. This table here next to me is quite solid. The jurors could see it, the judge could see it. Rainbow is somewhat more ethereal and some may see it and some not, I suppose, but in any event, there are degrees of objectivity. No one, I think, would, no one in the newspaper business or craft would argue that reporters and editors are without their own personal political views or partisan bias, and that's true. But that doesn't mean that they inject it into their stories. So at some institutions, premier among them probably the New York Times, which has said and still says and how says and runs in the paper that it is telling the truth. Well, again, of course, putting aside the relativity of the truth of different versions of the truth, that is absolutely not what happened with regard to the Times and the Trump administration or the Times on other topics now, and I think any fair-minded reader knows this. And certainly President Trump felt correctly he wasn't getting a fair shake and the Times correctly said it wasn't getting a fair shake from him. They were both right in a sense, but the Times stepped into the ring and then punching it out or slugging it out with the president. That wasn't the role of the press. And it had one really, quite a part from principles, one really awful effect. If you're in there slugging it out with the person you're writing about, the president, then people are not going to find you credible. After all, you're in the ring. And that has had the effect I mentioned earlier and that is so far to answer your question from any view of journalistic neutrality that I don't think one needs to say a lot more about it. What other evidence can you point to in terms of bias and how do you compare the Times to other news organizations? Well, you know, when I showed up on the doorstep of the New York Times, I was very young. I was in my mid-late 20s. And naive, I suppose. But I saw other examples that they're in the book. They're laid out. You know, the Times coverage of President, then President Trump is compared in the book in detail with coverage by the Associated Press. Excuse me. The Associated Press is hundreds, probably thousands of client media outlets around the world. Some left, some right, some in the middle. So it doesn't want to lose clients. It does play the news down the center and give, I think, a quite objective view. And that is not what is occurring generally. In my stay at the Times, one of my first assignments when I was, I don't know, 27 or something like that, I was sent back to Harvard College where I myself got to college, which is probably where they sent me. And I mean, because I knew the place. And there were riots by the students at Harvard. All right, there were these big riots. And I was there to cover the riots. And I wanted very badly everybody in the media want very badly to have an interview with the president of Harvard, Nathan Pusey. And President Pusey wasn't seeing anybody, no one in the media. Well, one day I happened to be in Harvard Yard and where the administration is and freshman laboratories and so on. And I saw President Pusey walking across the yard. So I went over to him and I was holding my notebook. I identified myself as a Times reporter and I asked him questions and he gave me answers to my surprise. I hurriedly wrote a story and filed it and was very proud of myself that here I was, young reporter, I'd gotten this interview, which no one else had been able to get. Around, well, I don't know, late afternoon, four o'clock, five o'clock, whatever. I got a call from God, that is to say, Scotty Reston, a journalistic icon of great magnitude and importance, who was, I think, then running the paper. And he said, hello, Bob. So I've been looking at the interview of President Pusey and don't you think we ought to pass on this one? I don't think we were a bit hard with him. I said, I have no idea what you're talking about, Scotty. No, I don't think we were hard on him. I told him I was a Times reporter. I had my notebook out. I asked him absolutely normal questions. He gave me answers, which were not Earthshaking answers. But he did give substantive answers and it was the first interview that he had given to anybody. And Reston said, well, don't you think he's under a lot of pressure and under a lot of stress? And I said, yes, he is. He said, well, why don't we just let this one pass? And so my story, one of my first, I suppose in the sense at the Times was spiked. That is to say it never got to see the light of day for this reason. And there were many or several other episodes like this where stories were killed or not covered or whatever, which are also laid out in the book. For example, I covered the Mealy massacre and the Pentagon reporter who sat next to me in the Washington of the Times would not cover the massacre at all until finally near the very end of the story, the Pentagon decided to have a news conference and then for the first time he wrote about that, that is the Army's view of the massacre. Or I covered a story about problem banks. This list of problem banks, the government thought these banks were problem banks. I think it's the control of the currency. And I did a story. Well, the financial business financial reporters at the paper wouldn't touch the story. Or finally, just to give you just one of the series of examples, another one, I had agreed to me, as I recall, a letter from a lawyer from Lockheed who was writing on Hotel Stationary from Geneva, Switzerland, or somewhere in Switzerland, talking about the bribes he was paying to co-ordered recipients and talking about how he had to pay more to compete with the Italians in the French or whatever it was. And it was a short piece because it is what he had written, he spoke for itself with references to code words, code books, antelope, and things like that, code words. And at the end it was rather funny because he said, I asked the bribe intermediary, essentially, why he trusted me and the fellow said, because you're a lawyer. So I thought it was sort of an important piece at a time when overseas bribery was being featured and investigated in Congress and the Senate. And I filed it and the business and financial pages didn't run it. I got so upset that it weren't running it that I took the piece and submitted it to the Sunday Weekend Review where I was a frequent contributor at the time and the Weekend Review ran it. And then the following Monday, an editor in the Washington Bureau came over to me and said, Bob, the editor of this business financial has called and asked why you gave this piece to Sunday Weekend Review and not to the business section. And I opened the drawer of my desk and showed him the duplicates, the carbons of the story that I had sent to business financial. So I hope that gives you a sense of what I'm talking about and what I lived through. Your book is not afraid of exploring topics where neutrality is often hard to find. You've mentioned the Trump presidency and your viewpoint on the media's treatment. What shapes your own mindset in politics? Well, I'm not going to go into, frankly, my own politics, although I don't think they're any secret. I mean, my view from my perspective is irrelevant as it should be in the case of reporters covering the White House or anywhere else. But it's no secret that I served as special assistant to the Attorney General under President Carter. So one can imagine what my politics at least were. But I do think that's not relevant. And the whole point I'm trying to make is about not to be relevant. I lived in France for a while. And in France, in a small town I lived in, I had to read three newspapers just to find out what was happening because of this partisan or ideological partiality. I read Le Monde for the conservative right-wing view. I'm sorry, for the left or liberal view. Le Figaro for the right-wing or conservative point of view. And then once a week, I would read a publication called Canal au Chine, which is a terrific investigative reporter with all kinds of sources in the French government. But we've kind of reached that stage here now. You have to watch, I gather, MSNBC and Fox and so on to get some sense of where the truth might lie. What were the harder stories for you to cover? The ones that involved investigating those in power that had something to hide or the ones dealing with the lives of otherwise ordinary citizens? Clearly, Eric, ordinary citizens. You know, the stories that really made me personally extraordinarily sad were covering the shooting of the students at Kent State or covering integration with school buses bringing, I don't know, five or six or seven-year-olds into South Boston where the South Boston mothers, the Irish and American mothers there were screaming at these children. It's just a terrible sight to see. Or to take one, for example, Harlan, a photographer in his 80s sitting on the stoop of the house in the brownstone in Harlem. Sorry, from which he was being evicted and all of his negatives, photos, glass sides, going back 50 years were being loaded by sheriffs, New York city sheriffs on trucks to be taken heaven knows where. I mean, these things are really, obviously, very troublesome. Put yourself in shoes that report covering them. They're much harder on you, I think, than being at the White House and covering Nixon and saying something about foreign policy. You were a commended journalist in one of the most prestigious news organizations in the world and working in its Washington bureau, no less. Why did you leave journalism for law school and why did you return to the times after law school? That's a complicated question. I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer it, but Eric, excuse me, I think I may have an all fairness Pete too soon. I think it was a combination of factors. You know, here I was in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, which at the time was the, in some ways, the pinnacle of Washington journalism, I suppose. And I was quite young when I was covering the White House and State Department and Pentagon and so on. So I think if I hadn't been able to do that until I was in my late 30s or early 40s or mid 40s, I might not have left. Secondly, I had always some feeling that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and thirdly chance, you know, I applied to only one law school, to be honest, to Yale. And I took all the tests and gave my transcripts and all the usual drill. And I thought that they probably wouldn't take me. And if they didn't, I would say at the paper, but they did take me and I went to Yale and I found that school, particularly the first year, a remarkable intellectual experience. I'm not an intellectual, but the experience of the way in which the things could be analyzed was amazing and made me certainly want to finish law school and ultimately to be a warrior and then for the last, I don't know, 29 years or so to be a mediator, a commercial mediator. Have your post-journalism careers helped shape your viewpoint on journalism or your career in journalism? And is there a thread between your varied careers? Well, again, Eric, I'm not sure. I think so. I think, you know, Loose, the founder of Time Magazine said that journalism prepares you for everything, which I think is true. It does. It has extremely ground-level, practical education involved in it. So I think that's true. In terms of law, it certainly changed the way in which I at least analyzed life and events. And mediation I just found was, in my mind, remains a better way of solving conflicts than slugging out and recording with a jury or a judge. And I think the thread among them is that some of the skill sets are involved in all of them. I mean, in journalism, you have to be believed. Your sources have to find you credible, honest and willing to keep their confidence even if it means you go to jail. And that's a high standard of trust to gain.  Certainly as to those things that seem credible. And I always told jurors I was an advocate, which is true. And finally, in mediation, you have to absolutely have the trust of the parties and the lawyers too. But mainly, I suppose, the parties in the dispute. I mean, I've been a mediator in the United States and in England, where I'm also a barrister. And so I've had different cultural experiences. I've mediated cases in the German language, for example, and in French. The bottom line is that there are some skills that are similar in all three areas. And I've been fortunate in being able to bring, I hope, some of those skills from one craft to another. You once prepared a case before the world court. Can you share some of that experience? No, I'll show you the government in action, bureaucracy in action, how these things really look from behind the curtain. This is in the book. It's one of my favorite, in a sense, episodes, because it was my idea. This was during the period when the Iranians were holding hostage Americans, you would call, perhaps. And we were going, the United States, that is when I was special assistant attorney general, to the world court in the Hague, to ask the world court to say, tell the Iranians to give us the hostages, let the hostages go. So I thought this was something for the attorney general, not for the State Department, legal office. And the attorney general is supposed to represent the United States in all courts everywhere. But in any event, the matter had already reached the point where the State Department had prepared the brief and so on. But the White House agreed with me, and we were to toot off the very next day to Holland and to get into the world court, and the attorney general would present to the world court the case. Well, we got on the plane, and I looked at the brief, and all modesty aside, all kidding aside, the brief was a good legal brief, but this was not meant really for legal consumption only or mainly. This was an exercise in public international diplomacy. And in a way it was like journalism, in a way it was like trial law, you know, and the brief was very dull, or at least I found it so, you know, filled with legal references and legal languages. And I didn't think the way this should be approached. This matter should be approached. So I rewrote the brief, I stayed up all night on the plane surviving with the kind help of the KLM Stortices on Dutch Coco, right? And I rewrote the brief, and I knew that we needed some sort of soundbiter, some something that would capture media attention, international media attention. And I came up with, as the lead, the beginning of the brief, let my people go, which is in both the Islamic and Christian and Jewish religions. So that's the way that the brief started and the attorney general started in the court. So I arrived, or we all arrived, in Holland, and I had to get the brief retyped since it was rewritten. And I went to a secretary in the embassy around noon and said, can you please type this right away, because the attorney general is going to be giving the brief in a couple of hours in the world court. And she looked at me and said, well, you know, it's lunchtime. I was so tired and so staggered. I went to whoever, the highest person I could find in the embassy and said, can you please help me get this type? And we did and went to the world court, where by that time I had a splitting headache from not having slept and so on and so on. And a very kind bailiff gave me some white powder and like a tea and hot water for the headache. And it did its work, but it was some pain involved in being under a massive amount of lights as this argument unfolded. But the notion that we almost fail for, in my mind, at least a variety of reasons, including a secretary who simply wanted to go to lunch, was somewhat revelatory and funny. You were negotiating with the New York Times as part of the union and something shocking happened. What was it? Well, the Times had offered me a few jobs when I went back to work for it after law school. And one was running a subsidiary publication. So one was being the Times labor negotiator. I turned it down. I went back to Washington as a correspondent. But I did take on the pro bono activity of being a, the newspaper guild, the union representative in the Washington Bureau of the Times, which led to a number of results, but in terms of the Times and the union, or the reporters. But the event that I think I remember most in a way was this. We were negotiating with the Times and with the fellow who took the job I had turned down across the table from me and asking for different things for the reporters and editors. Forgive me. And the Times that I kept saying all night into the morning, into 3 a.m., they didn't have any money, they didn't have any money and they couldn't give us, they couldn't pay us any more money. And finally, I said, look, I understand that your position is you don't have any money and you can't give us any more money. But here's an item that doesn't cost you anything that you should give us and we need. And the item was this. When a reporter wrote a story and the Times changed the story, some editor or editors changed the story, then the reporter should have the right to have his or her byline taken off the piece. And in fact, there's an international treaty about this to which the US is party. Anyway, the Times to my amazement said, no, we won't give you that. And I was so taken aback that because it was a non-monetary item, it was the absolute right thing to do by any standard. Certainly it seemed to me by the Times's standard. And I had, you know, as I mentioned, just recently finished law school. And I feigned anger, I suppose, and said, look, if you cannot give us this non-economic item, I'm going to recommend to our team that we strike. And I walked out.  But the very notion that the paper would change your story and keep the reporter's byline on it when it didn't say what he or she had said was troublesome. And I was very glad we won that one, Eric. Where do you find hope for a better future with the US media? I'm not sure that's for me to say. There are so many different theories as to what will happen with the media in a digital age with multiple channels, many of them completely unreliable, some of them partially unreliable, with journalists braiding to revere advocacy journalism as opposed to neutral journalism. I don't know where we're going. I'm hoping that the Times as an industry leader, if not the industry leader, will find its way back to its traditional path and say that stay there. And find that as both the most helpful, the fairest, and in the end probably the most profitable way for it to roll forward. The very fact that the New York Times had to take, felt obliged to take, House ads paid for itself, of course, and ran on its own behalf at times saying how attached it was to the truth I think tells you something. Why would it feel impaled to say that? Well, thank you, Bob. That was an interesting and insightful discussion. And there is so much more that is in the book. I'm very glad your experiences and perspectives and wisdoms are documented for all of us. Thank you very much.


Last year I made the college degree tier list right before a certain health event happened in the world and of course a lot of things have happened since then. And after posting that video I got endless amounts of requests to redo the video and add on a bunch of different majors. So in this video we are going to be ranking college degrees at the bachelor level so four year college degrees and we're going to be ranking them from S tier which is the best all the way down to F tier which is the worst. And if you are someone who is trying to choose the best possible college degree for you or you just want to get the most out of college with the least amount of time, sacrifice and money or if you're trying to get your first entry level job right after graduating college check out my college degree course college 101 down in the description below. It will make your entire college experience 10 times easier and it's going to be available at a discount for a very limited amount of time so check it out while you still can. And by the way guys the way I'm going to be categorizing these degrees is the same way that the US Census Bureau categorizes them so if you don't like the way that I categorize them which categories I put them in then go and talk to your local congressman or congresswoman because this is the way the US Census Bureau categorizes these. Alright so first on the list we're going to be talking about art degrees at the bachelor level and unfortunately I can't rank this one very high. There are a few art degrees out there that are decent you might have a decent chance of getting a job you know graphic design isn't too bad it was probably a lot better about 20 years ago but when it comes to art degrees I highly recommend that you either you know double major in an art and then something else something that's a little bit more you know marketable that has skills that are actually going to be employable or just maybe take extra classes in it or go a completely different route and try to do your art career as a side hustle. So a great example was this guy named Beeple you probably heard of him he recently sold what's known as an NFT or non-fungible token for $69 million and all the way up to his success as an artist he had a day job right so he had a day job that paid the bills that supported him and then he did his art on the side he did it as a side hustle and now of course he doesn't have to work his day job because he's worth probably like a hundred million but I think you get the point here a lot of the time you're going to have to get creative with it when it comes to making money from art so art degrees at the bachelor level are going to go into F tier next on the list we're going to be talking about biological sciences so this is going to be any type of science that deals with living organisms so for instance you know biology microbiology and food science would all fall into this category and of all of these STEM degrees because everybody knows that STEM degrees are all amazing right that stands for science technology engineering and mathematics everybody knows that if you get a STEM degree you're going to be successful but unfortunately that's not true and out of all of the STEM degrees the science one and specifically biological science degrees especially at the bachelor's level are the least good these probably used to be much better you know 20 30 years ago but right now so many people are going into biology for instance thinking that they're going to be able to get a job thinking they can become a scientist with just a bachelor's degree and that just isn't going to happen 99% of the time and so many of them end up going back to school getting a master's or a doctorate spending another you know four to eight years in school just to be able to get a job so this one is going to go into C tier although I will give it high C tier next we're going to be talking about business degrees at the bachelor level and these are really great especially for certain types of people the great thing about business degrees in general is that they're extremely flexible right you can get a business degree you can work in just about any industry in the world for just about any company they also teach you a lot of basic personal finance skills which are incredibly valuable and so many people don't end up learning them until they're you know already deep in debt or they're in their 30s or 40s on top of that business degrees are going to translate very well into somebody after getting some experience and learning some skills becoming an entrepreneur and starting their own business now when it comes to purely just the numbers if you just look at the pure numbers business degrees are not going to be as good as you know engineering degrees technology degrees or health degrees however the fact that they're so flexible gives them such a huge advantage in my opinion and so for that reason i'm going to go ahead and put business degrees into a tier next one on the list is going to be communications degrees so we're going to be talking about communications of course but also degrees like journalism communications degrees of course are extremely general and unfortunately they teach you certain soft skills that can be valuable but in terms of teaching you employable skills a communications degree is kind of a joke but in terms of the numbers they're not as bad as some of the other degrees on the list and so for that reason i'm going to go ahead and put communications into c tier although i will say it is low c tier next on the list is going to be education related degrees so these are degrees that you would get in order to become a teacher talked about this before you know teachers are you know worked really hard they are paid very well unfortunately here in the us and other countries it's different but here in the us that's just you know the sad reality now the great thing about an education degree is you will very likely get a job okay there's not that many people out there who have education degrees that don't have a job unless they chose to not have a job the bad thing about them is pretty much everything else you don't get paid very well they're not very flexible the job satisfaction does tend to be relatively low you also have to deal with a bunch of brats let's be honest so i'm going to go ahead and put education degrees in c tier see just for the fact that you will very likely get a job if you get a bachelor's however it's probably not going to be the best job in order to get a better job that pays higher you're probably going to have to get a master's or a doctorate next on the list is going to be engineering degrees and i got so many hate comments so many triggered engineers because i put engineering degree in a tier instead of s tier and i tried to explain my logic behind that you know basically i just tried to explain that the average person like just the average person out there is probably going to have a tough time getting through an engineering curriculum and so for that reason it doesn't go into s tier goes into a tier for this list i'm assuming that you are somebody who's kind of done your due diligence a little bit and you're not going to go into like a math related career if you aren't somebody who likes math and is reasonably good at it and if you look at the statistics engineering degrees consistently pay the highest on average and we're talking about the highest in terms of just the salary but also how much they make over a lifetime on top of that engineering degrees are relatively flexible they get hired in just about every industry and by every company a lot of the time they get hired for doing jobs that are completely unrelated to the engineering degree itself just because of the fact that they're so well respected when companies hire an engineer they know that they're getting a very smart problem solver that's also a hard worker engineering also gives you a very good chance of becoming a ceo or someone who owns your own business just because at the end of the day engineering is basically just practical problem solving and that's the same thing that entrepreneurship is so engineering curriculum very difficult you're going to feel like you went through hell basically if you get through an engineering curriculum but if you can do it this one is absolutely clearly s tier next on the list we're going to be talking about health degrees at the bachelor level and I always say this one is really weird to compare to other degrees just because of the fact that the timeframes are kind of weird so for instance you've got degrees and certifications that take six months all the way to like 18 years right so becoming a medical doctor if you go all the way through that system getting past residency and fellowship sometimes that's going to take you you know 12 to 15 years sometimes even longer than that on the other hand I was able to finish my farm d degree over two years faster than average because I basically skip the line by using accelerated routes and that's something that I talk about in my course down below so it's not really fair to compare like a normal four-year degree to health degrees that take around four years you know some of them might take three years or two and a half years or five years it is kind of an apples to oranges comparison so keep that in mind but with that being said there are amazing healthcare related degrees on just about every level no matter if it's you know the two-year four-year six-year or eight-year level healthcare degrees are extremely solid all across the board they also tend to have really good work-life balance and on top of that healthcare degrees tend to score really high when it comes to job satisfaction as well as meaning and if you think about it you know the word essential has become kind of a buzzword over the last year but there is nothing more essential than healthcare related careers even if it was the end of the world if it was the apocalypse there would still be doctors and nurses taking care of people in the last hour of existence so there's never going to be a time that these careers get fully automated or outsourced or anything like that there's always going to be demand for healthcare professionals so for that reason healthcare is going to go into s tier next on the list we're going to talk about language related degrees so these are going to be things like English of course but also learning other languages like Spanish or Mandarin etc so in my opinion when it comes to getting a language degree if that's the only degree you get this is not such a good idea i think it can be okay if you combine it with another degree and you double major but if it's the only degree you're getting unless you really know what you're doing and you've really planned things out probably not the best idea there are ways of becoming a translator or an interpreter for instance without getting a bachelor's degree you can learn the language on your own take specialized training and then get certified in order to become an interpreter for instance so you absolutely do not need to get a bachelor's degree spend $80,000 go $40,000 into debt in order to become like a language teacher you know someone who tutors people in different languages or an interpreter or a translator there are other routes in order to get into that in most cases and so you should definitely seek those routes out in my opinion with that being said the world is becoming more global it's becoming more valuable to know multiple languages and so if you are someone who knows multiple languages especially if they are certain types of languages that are highly you know profitable and lucrative like german, mandarin, arabic, russian etc it can be worth it for you so overall i'm going to go ahead and put this one into D tier next on the list is going to be liberal arts degrees at the bachelor level and again with this one you know take extra classes in it minor in it maybe even double major in it but do not do a liberal arts degree on its own most of the time this is going to be an absolute waste of your time and money now with that being said liberal arts degrees are very interesting to me i think they do teach you certain soft skills that are going to be hard to learn in other cases i think a lot of the skills they teach you like critical thinking being able to formulate an argument being able to give a speech and just communication in general is something that you can learn outside of college but with that being said a lot of people don't learn those skills outside of college so there is something to be said for learning these soft skills but if you look at the numbers these ones are just horrible i've gone over this in other videos i'm not going to bring up the numbers in this one you know this one clearly goes into F tier next one on the list is going to be math degrees and this one is interesting because it's basically you know the difficulty of an engineering degree without having all of the positives of an engineering degree right so when we talked about engineering you know high paying flexible a lot of positive things with engineering right with mathematics it's just as difficult as engineering if not more difficult however it's not going to have nearly the upside and i think the reason for that is because it's not as practical as engineering right it's just as difficult but it's a little bit more theoretical but with that being said people do value and covet mathematical related skills and so you might end up getting hired for a job that doesn't necessarily have all that much to do with math so for instance some companies like to hire mathematics and physics majors just because they think that they're the smartest people available and they are willing to train them later on so they're okay with kind of training them and molding them into what they want however other companies a lot of other companies want somebody who already has those real world skills and so for that reason math is just going to slip into a tier next on the list we're going to be talking about physical science degrees so this is any type of science that doesn't have to do with living organisms so we're talking about chemistry and physics here for instance and physics does kind of fit under the mathematics category and also the science category so i just kind of put them in both right so this one has a lot of the same issues that the mathematics degrees have where they aren't really practical they don't really teach you employable skills the skill set that you learn is pretty niche and doesn't necessarily translate to other types of work however with that being said you still have a decent chance of getting a job here it probably is not going to have anything to do with physical science unless of course you get like a master's or a doctorate but other than that i mean you still are probably going to have a somewhat decent chance of getting a job this one is going to go into b tier next on the list is going to be psychology degrees and this is one that's extremely popular i believe it is actually the most popular degree that people graduate with and because of that is is also extremely oversaturated now i can see why so many people are interested in psychology super interesting stuff i actually took extra psychology classes just because i thought it was so cool however with all the propaganda going around where you know oh just go for your passion right just just pursue your passion and then people end up you know going into psychology and they can't find a job and that happens so often people go into psychology and there's just basically zero chance of getting a job at the bachelor's level they have to get minimum a master's degree in order to be considered for a job and a lot of them still can't even get a job at the master's level many of them end up doing something completely unrelated and their psychology skill set pretty much goes to waste and i have seen this happen firsthand personally over and over again right and on top of that i get email after email of people telling me about their experiences and how much pain they went through going through this you know college system and so i know people get really mad at me when i bag on psychology a little bit you know i don't have any problem with uh psychologists i think you know what they're doing with mental health that's great but at the same time i think the school system is taking advantage of people and this one is one of the biggest culprits there's clearly not all that much need for people who have a psychology degree at the bachelor's level so this one is going to go into d tier next is going to be social science degrees and again the reason i separated psychology from social science is because the uh you know us census bureau separates them to me they're kind of in the same category but because of the fact that psychology is so popular i think they decided to just group it into its own category but with that being said especially at the bachelor's level in this particular case social science degrees are pretty much on the same level you know a couple examples here would of course be criminology and sociology very interesting stuff it's just that you know with these types of degrees they're interesting and so therefore a ton of people go into them and they get saturated quickly and so in order for you to have even a chance of getting a job you got to have a master's at minimum that means going back to school for at least two years a lot of the time if you get a doctorate for instance it's going to be more like eight plus years so this one is going to go into d tier as well next on the list is going to be technology degrees at the bachelor's level and there are a lot of really good ones out of all the different types of careers technology may be growing the fastest it's really close between technology and healthcare on top of that technology related careers tend to be really high paying and there's also a lot of demand for technology and one awesome thing is you see so many people for instance that are in the fire movement which is financial independence retire early that work in the tech industry and the reason for that is because not only is it really high paying but a lot of the time you're going to get really good incentives like stock options and on top of that I think technology makes a great segue into either starting your own business or moving into more of a management and a higher paying role so technology is going to go into s tier next on the list is going to be any degree that ends in the word studies I honestly didn't even know where to categorize these I guess they're kind of like liberal arts degrees but you're seeing more and more of these pop up all the time and yes there are a few exceptions here and there of degrees that end in the word studies that are you know still somewhat okay but for the most part if the degree ends in the word studies it's not good all right so it's going to go into f tier check out my other videos right here I made them just for you go ahead hit that like button hit the subscribe button ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts comments criticisms etc that you had on the video and I'll see you in the next one