TRANSCRIPT
When I think of dishonesty on television, I think there may be no more dishonest area than nature shows. Last night, I was watching TV. I don’t watch too much, but I turned it on, and I was watching a show on lemurs, the very primitive primates from Madagascar, and how much they are different from one another and how amazing they are. All true, really amazing. And I was really into the show. I’m fascinated by primates, I’m fascinated by lemurs, and I’m fascinated by Madagascar. I’ve never been there, but what an unusual place, this island, this ancient, ancient island.
Well, as the show went on, about 15 or 20 minutes into it, I suddenly realized that they were leaving out the most important thing. They weren’t telling the truth, and that is something that I’ve read. I’ve read about lemurs, and that is that lemurs are profoundly going extinct. I think there’s over a hundred species, and quite a few have already gone extinct. And something like what, ninety percent of all lemur species are destined probably to go extinct very, very soon—15, 20, 30 years, something like that, if humans don’t change their ways. I already knew that going into the show, but watching it, I realized they weren’t saying that. And why weren’t they saying that? They weren’t saying that because it’s not comfortable. People don’t want to watch that on prime time television.
And then I realized another thing. This show, which puts itself out as a science show, a science, an educational show, really isn’t that at all. This is not science. This is entertainment, and entertainment is there to make people feel comfortable. And I think, who is behind this? Who is responsible for these lies? And then I think, well, definitely the producers of the show. The narrator of the show is a liar. The person who wrote this show—it’s like, are the people who film it, the camera people, are they liars also? And I think, no, they probably know that this show is going to be manipulated for entertainment purposes. But it’s like, these animals are going extinct, and they barely mentioned even a hint at that. They did say, yes, there are some problems in Madagascar. There’s some problems with the potential, you know, survivability of some of these animals, but they make it so light, just basically hinting at it. And then they ended up with, but there is hope. We are learning how to protect these animals. But that’s not actually what’s really happening. These animals, so many of them, are critically endangered.
Now, I didn’t come here to rail. I didn’t come here to go off and have a rant about this, but it’s like, then why did I come to talk about this? It’s like, I often find it even difficult to read about this stuff. It’s so painful. I actually started reading just Wikipedia alone about lemurs as the show was going on, such that I was like, puke! I don’t want to watch the show anymore. I’m just going to watch it enough to realize I am watching people who are lying. The people who made this show are lying. They’re here to make us feel like the world’s gonna be all okay, and it’s not.
And then I think, in so many other areas of life, if they lied on television like this, took some big problem and made it out like everything was going great, they would never be able to get away with it. They wouldn’t be able to get away with it if they talked about gay or lesbian issues or racial issues or the economic divide or the state of the economy. They have to be more honest in those areas. But around nature, they’re allowed to lie a lot, lot, lot more. And to me, actually, these problems with nature, it’s so much more important than all these other areas, as far as I’m concerned. This also speaks about us as a species. I mean, right now, yeah, it’s like lemurs are going to go extinct more than likely, or a lot of species are, the way things are going. But this is us also as a species. This is our own future. If we kill nature, we eventually are killing ourselves. We’re committing suicide as a species.
And then I think, Daniel, you’re talking about this. Who wants to watch this? Who wants to hear it? And then I think, well, I guess that’s part of my YouTube channel. That’s why I’m not on prime time television. That’s why I’m not so popular. This is the bad news channel. This is not entertainment. But I want to talk about reality. I want to talk about something that can be watched in 100 years, and someone can come back and look at this and say, yes, it was true. And that show about lemurs was lies. It was there to comfort people. It was not there to afflict the comfortable. This was not journalism. This was there to just comfort the comfortable, to make everyone think, oh, nature is doing so great. And so many of these nature shows are about that. They’re just there to give people comfort, to make people think the world’s doing great, and lions and tigers and whales and dolphins, they’re doing great, and all these primates are doing great. And it’s just not true.
And I think about what is the world going to be like in 30 years or 50 years? And what’s going to happen if we go back in 30 or 50 years and watch these quasi-scientific, pseudo-scientific nature programs? People are going to watch these in 30 or 50 years. If they watch that show on lemurs that I watched last night, they’re going to say, beautiful cinematography, true in a way about the biology, but profoundly dishonest about the bigger picture. That was an unethical television program. And my hope is that in 30 or 50 years or 100 years, people will come back and watch these videos, if they do, and say that guy was being honest, and he was right.