The Josh Philipp Show

Do you remember when you’d walk into school in the morning and everyone had watched the same new episode of The Simpsons? When the latest movie was the only thing people talked about at work? When MTV played the same bands. When Dave Chappelle dropped a skit, and the entire country was quoting it the next morning? We played the same games. We knew the same sports. We laughed at the same jokes. We had a common sense of humor. And a common idea about the world. And then... it just went away.

What if the new trend, is that trends no longer exist? What if the defining feature of the new world is the lack of commonality? A world where we have less and less in common with those around us. Communities of strangers.

The Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, is in a panic. Top generals of the regime are being purged under the banner of anti-corruption. Weapons systems that were paraded around the world as “U.S. killers” have failed embarrassingly in actual combat. The twin pillars of China’s economy—real estate and manufacturing—are in free fall. New laws are being rushed through to stop Western companies from leaving. And the multi-year war plan the CCP developed over the last decade to trap America in multiple simultaneous crises—before the regime launched its own conquest—that plan was just shredded in the streets of Venezuela and the deserts of Iran.

Imagine a world where political prisons no longer exist. Abusive regimes no longer need frozen gulags. Re-education through labor is a far-off memory. But tyranny isn’t gone. It’s pervasive. Everywhere. Mass surveillance keeps tabs, from roadside cameras, to online trackers, to the phone in your pocket. You hesitate saying what you think, even if it’s true. You weigh your actions based on social trends. What you risk by stepping out of line is that the system itself – society as we know it – will just lock you out. You can’t work because you can’t get paid. You can’t rent a home because you can’t digitize the payments. You can’t buy food because cash isn’t accepted, and you have no bank account.

You might say you don’t believe in sci-fi dystopias like this. But you better start believing. Because this reality is already here.

Therapy has gone from being a stigma to becoming a social norm. COVID-19 is partly the cause of this. All that paranoia and isolation. That social experiment where we all journeyed into the cave. Around 13 percent of adults have sought therapy. And in some ways it’s never been better. We have tele-health from the comfort of our homes. Online therapy groups. And just about every flavor of self-help imaginable. In a lot of ways, it’s a good thing. Society is reflecting. But some argue this may also represent a different trend – that maybe we’re becoming so used to digging up past harms that we’re re-living old traumas again and again.

Kids who never learned to read are graduating from high school. Illiterate students are heading off to college. And, while facing criticisms of failing American kids, the Department of Education is being folded. Authority on public schools is shifting back to the states.

All of this is stirring a new debate. Where did public schools go wrong? How can they be fixed?

But an even bigger issue hangs overhead: What if the foundation of the public school system was meant to fail in the first place?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

By now, you’ve probably seen the memes saying chemicals in our water, and all around us, are turning men into women.

While a lot of these are exaggerations, at the same time, there’s a lot of truth in the narrative.

Testosterone levels are falling. Toxins in our environment are messing with people’s hormones—not just in men, but in women also. And it’s also true that common chemicals, including those in our drinking water, are making men less masculine.

A huge part of this is caused by chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, which have come to saturate our environment. The really hard part is that they’re so common, avoiding them and the side effects they cause hasn’t been easy.

But things may be changing, and there are pushes, including from the government level, to ban many of the materials responsible for these chemical toxins.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

For decades, the U.S. government outsourced huge chunks of its foreign policy and even domestic influence to NGOs—nongovernmental organizations that sounded independent but often ran on your tax dollars with almost no accountability.

Then, in 2025, the whole system was exposed.

Some of the largest video games on the market, from Fortnite to League of Legends, have fallen under the ownership of a Chinese company. Tencent now owns not only some of the biggest games, but also many of the top studios. And the company could soon be forced to divest, in a move on par with the TikTok deal. While it may seem harmless at first – video games are just for fun– it’s actually pretty serious. What’s not as well known is what video games have come to represent on a broader level. They’re not just for entertainment anymore. They’re about data. They’re about access. Pervasive technologies that can see nearly every drop of data flowing through your laptop or phone. And behind the Chinese gaming industry overall, is something possibly much more nefarious: loyalty agreements to the CCP to carry out its bidding.

Have you noticed how much more you’re now paying for that burger or steak? The cost of meat in the United States is soaring. Demand for meat is up, but for some reason, cattle herds are shrinking, ranchers are going out of business, and the industry is facing some serious trouble. Behind it all may be something bigger. A cartel is being accused of effectively causing these problems artificially – using a global monopoly to set prices and squeeze the industry.

Why do medications cost so much in the United States? You’ll get a radically different answer to this, depending on who you talk to. Some say it’s the lack of socialized medicine. Others say it’s the fault of greedy CEOs. But others say it’s caused by something else entirely—that global policies have worked to squeeze the prices so that people in some countries end up shouldering the costs for others. But is this really the case? Well, it’s undeniable that we pay a lot more for prescription drugs than people in other countries. Even among first-world, high-income countries, we pay a lot more. And this isn’t about socialized medicine or anything like that. It’s about what the companies themselves are charging us.