What We Can't Not Talk About

Dr. Fauci’s pleading of the Fifth 111 times in a recent Senate hearing outraged many Americans. Far before the Senate, in Missouri vs. Biden (2026), in which Dr. Kheriaty was a plaintiff, Dr. Fauci pleaded the Fifth 168 times; the Justice Department recently ruled in his favor. It is understandable, then, that many have had cause for outrage for many years. Some paid for COVID lockdowns and irrational mandates with their livelihoods, including Dr. Kheriaty, who was fired from UC-Irvine’s School of Medicine after he challenged their COVID vaccine mandate in Federal Court. Others, unfortunately, paid for these pandemic-era policies with their lives. What these hearings revealed is something that can’t be unseen: the U.S. healthcare system rests on an enormous amount of unchecked power. A solution is needed. Drs. Kheriaty and Orlandi discuss this and more on this episode of What We Can’t Not Talk About.

Timeline Summary

[0:00] – Introduction and welcome; Dr. Orlandi welcomes back Dr. Aaron Kheriaty of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. [1:48] – Seeing American medicine with an outsider’s eye, and why this conversation could not wait. [3:35] – Challenging UC Irvine’s vaccine mandate in federal court, and being fired for it. [5:22] – Censored for saying true things: what could and could not be said about the COVID shots. [7:07] – Missouri v. Biden, the government’s own admissions, and Fauci under oath for the first time. [8:53] – “I don’t recall”: amnesia for the most consequential decisions of the pandemic. [10:42] – Why no credible scientist says “The Science”: conjecture, refutation, and the method itself. [12:28] – What Fauci’s government records actually show, and why they are fair game for the public. [14:14] – Scott Atlas’s memoirs, and the pattern that was clear long before the Senate hearing. [16:03] – The New Abnormal: a man used by the media, the biosecurity apparatus, and financial interests. [17:49] – Refusing responsibility, and the more controversial point Dr. Orlandi wants to make. [19:37] – Why this must not happen again: honest scientists, royalties, and the temptation of power. [21:22] – The NIH’s grip on American medical research, and what the purse strings buy. [23:12] – Doctors who harboured private doubts and would not say in public what they wrote in email. [24:59] – “Prove me wrong” in an age when nobody can be proved wrong, and dogma dressed as science. [26:48] – Flattery and flatterers: why people in authority must sift what their critics say. [28:37] – Weak leaders and strong leaders; Lincoln, and surrounding yourself with better people. [30:23] – The despair crisis that predated COVID, and what isolation actually did to patients. [32:11] – The Other Pandemic: the lockdown mental health crisis, and the CDC’s own evidence. [33:58] – The disingenuous framing that critics of lockdowns put money ahead of public health. [35:43] – All-cause mortality at record highs, and the data that was suppressed at the time. [37:29] – Propaganda’s cruellest trick: the guilt that stops you looking again. [39:15] – A suggestion for anyone willing to revisit what they believed, and a turn towards medicine. [41:02] – Gain-of-function research, lab leaks, and why staying calm is the first thing to do. [42:49] – Mask theatre on the way to the table: do not outsource logic or common sense. [44:34] – Targeted advice, monetised data, and health guidance that does not look like selling. [46:20] – Trust your instincts and the people who care about you; simple advice patients can follow. [48:06] – Why medicine chases weight loss, and the money in treatment rather than prevention. [49:52] – A competing theory of cancer, available since the 1930s and largely ignored. [51:37] – Ozempic, Botox, and the message that there is a magic pill for every problem. [53:23] – Where these drugs do make sense, and why cosmetic use fails the risk-benefit test. [55:11] – Cheap toxic food, expensive healthy food, and why obesity is not simple laziness. [56:58] – Contraceptive estrogens in the water supply, fertility, and the costs pushed onto families. [58:45] – Courage, staying in the fight, and having someone in Washington you can call. [1:00:32] – “Social distancing” rather than physical distancing, and the bonds it broke. [1:02:18] – Turn the screen off: getting away from rage bait and doom scrolling.

Links & Resources

Dr. Kheriaty’s New Book, Making the Cut: https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510784215/making-the-cut/ Dr. Kheriaty’s Recent Article on First Things: https://firstthings.com/icarus-descending/ Dr. Orlandi’s Review of Making the Cut on Substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-172888363 Dr. Kheriaty’s Previous Appearance on WWCNTA: https://youtu.be/AfANnnwNmzA?si=_drMqtSP1HTKslz_ Missouri v. Biden/Murthy v. Missouri Summary: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/missouri-v-biden-consent-decree-2026/ Austin Institute: https://www.austin-institute.org/

A brilliant author, Ida Friederike Görres went the majority of her life without the recognition her writings deserved. Daughter of a German Diplomat of the Habsburg Empire and of a Japanese woman who withheld motherly love, Ida Görres wrote on matters spanning from the beauty and fruits of marriage to the lives of Saints, and on deep challenges facing the Church in the 60s and 70s: challenges that persist, aggravated, to this day. Along the way, she developed a friendship with the man who later became Pope Benedict XVI. He gave the eulogy at her funeral in 1971.

Dr. Jennifer Bryson spent years translating her works, including The Church in the Flesh (2023) and Bread Grows in Winter (2025), helping modern English-speaking audiences rediscover this long-lost author. Her latest translation, What Binds Marriage Forever (2026), brings to life Görres' writings on the importance of marriage in a time in which it is increasingly seen as something purely optional, not permanent, and solely a matter of feelings. In this episode, Dr. Orlandi leads a discussion on this latest book, today's misleading perception of marriage, and its effects on society and culture at large.

Links & Resources

Dr. Jennifer Bryson: https://www.jenniferbryson.net/

Dr. Orlandi’s Review of What Binds Marriage Forever: https://iwasnttold.substack.com/p/unbreakable-the-nature-of-marriage?r=4je44n

Austin Institute: https://www.austin-institute.org/

What Binds Marriage Forever by Ida Görres, translated by Dr. Jennifer Bryson: https://www.cuapress.org/9780813240398/what-binds-marriage-forever/

The modern script for women seems to contemplate exclusively two options: either the feminist and childless virago, or the homemaker and mother of as many children as possible. While neither path may be “wrong”, and while we won’t tell anyone how to live their lives! - a real problem may lie in the way both conservatives and progressives understand women more broadly. As important as motherhood may be, does women’s generative nature “define” them? Are children a woman’s “job”? If so, for how long? Even more radically, to what extent are men and women “different”?

Biology provides some answers without a doubt. It is only with the help of lady philosophy, however, that both men and women can appreciate what to do with their differences and how to understand their common human nature. In this episode, we discuss these issues with Dr. Angela Knobel, professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. Dr. Knobel’s forthcoming book deals precisely with these questions, and with the unexplored territory of Aristotle and Aquinas' ethical naturalism applied to motherhood. Links & Resources Dr. Angela Knobel: https://udallas.edu/academics/programs/philosophy/faculty/knobel-angela.php Dr. Knobel’s Book, Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues (2021): https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268201104/aquinas-and-the-infused-moral-virtues/ The University of Dallas: https://udallas.edu/ Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture: https://www.austin-institute.org The Austin Institute: https://www.austin-institute.org/

As we approach the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the question of what defines an American remains at large. Is it tied to our shared civic history, or is there something more? Why should students still read the classics, from Socrates to Nathaniel Hawthorne, and how are ancient ideas still relevant in a postmodern society? And, why found a new University when thousands already exist, much less in a city that already has a world-class University?

Dr. Jacob Wolf joins Dr. Orlandi to discuss why we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, the American Cultural Canon, the educational void filled by the University of Austin, and the specifically “American” brand of Individualism.

Happy Birthday, America!

Links & Resources:

Dr. Jacob Wolf: https://uaustin.org/people/jacob-wolf/

The University of Austin: https://uaustin.org/

Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture: https://www.austin-institute.org