The following article is being republished from Dr. Madhava Setty’s Substack, “An Insult to Intuition,” which we encourage you to subscribe to. Dr. Setty is science advisor to the International Center for 9/11 Justice.
Chris Martenson earned a PhD from Duke University in Pathology and an MBA from Cornell. His post-doctoral research was in the field of neurotoxicology, and he had a career in the corporate world as a strategic consultant in finance.
He’s been on a decades-long crusade to educate the public around financial matters first through his “The Crash Course” video series and then the “Peak Prosperity” organization. The platform has since branched out to other matters. I was lucky to stumble upon his work during the darkest months of the Covid era. Peak Prosperity consistently approached the pandemic crisis with an objective and rigorous perspective that was absent from the so-called “expert” opinions trumpeted by legacy media and our institutions of public health. His YouTube channel has nearly six hundred thousand subscribers.
We both spoke at the Turning the Tide event in NYC last month. I highly recommend watching his presentation on Day 3 here. Warning: it’s not for the squeamish. Chris made a robust argument that energy consumption drives a nation’s prosperity, and this country has been tapping into its strategic oil reserves to mitigate a two month long gap (now three?) in energy supply with no resolution in sight. Bottom line: an economic downturn is inevitable; it’s a matter of how big.
This week he published a recording of a conversation between us on his new podcast series, “Is It Too Late?”
I had been looking forward to an opportunity to speak with him for some time, not because of our close alignment of world views, but because I admire his curiosity, his willingness to recognize what cannot be known while remaining determined to get to the bottom of things and especially the way he engages with people with whom he disagrees. I’m very pleased that our first conversation was in front of a camera.
If you weren’t already aware, Martenson had dismantled the official story of the Charlie Kirk assassination last year. Like me, he rejects the idea that Kirk was struck by a .30-06 Springfield round fired from a Mauser Model 98 bolt-action rifle. But Chris took it further than I have—he went out on to his property and actually shot some guns to prove that the gun aficionados on the internet weren’t lying when they asserted that such a bullet would have decapitated the young Kirk (and his immensely influential conservative political organization).
Martenson’s working theory is that Kirk was struck by a smaller caliber weapon fired from a different position than Tyler Robinson’s purported perch on the Losee Center rooftop. How does he come to that conclusion? His own analysis of audio recordings, an examination of ballistics and a survey of the buildings around the courtyard where Mr. Kirk uttered his last words. Martenson doesn’t take others’ word on these things. He tests his theories himself. It results in content of this “caliber”:
I still think Charlie died from an exploding shaped charge propelling a casing across his chest and through his neck. I base my opinion on the coroner’s report which mentions bilateral pulmonary hemorrhages, cardiac hemorrhage, high spinal injury and transection of the great vessels of the Left neck. One bullet could not have done all of that, in my opinion.
Some months ago, I reached out to Chris and asked him why he dismissed the “exploding mic” hypothesis. He did carefully consider it. And, he favors a gun shot explanation. Why? He put the greatest weight on the acoustics, not the videos or autopsy report. That’s fine. He wasn’t rude or dismissive. We both understood why we have different working theories about what happened and realized in the end we were in agreement about what didn’t happen. That’s the most important thing because it unifies rather than separates us.
The general arc of our conversation was around linking the lack of accountability around 9/11 to the transgressions against our individual rights during the pandemic, but we went further, landing on the question which I find most important and interesting: how do we cultivate more discernment in the public? This is a job for all of us, which is why this discussion was so important. Here’s how he broke down our long-form conversation (with timestamps):
00:00 How Do We Return To Sanity?
04:43 Truth, Science And Accountability
05:25 Knowing Versus Believing
07:45 The Scientific Method And 9/11
10:29 When The Model Doesn’t Match Reality
16:20 Why People Reject Contradictory Evidence
19:27 From 9/11 Surveillance To COVID Censorship
28:50 The Reality Behind The COVID Narrative
33:27 How 9/11 Changed His Worldview
38:59 Why Education Doesn’t Guarantee Discernment
50:22 The Expert Class And Its Ego
55:20 When Medical Consent Disappears
01:01:29 The Power Of A Grassroots Awakening
01:06:17 How To Judge Competing Experts
01:09:42 The Evidence Hiding In Plain Sight
01:13:12 When Experts Discover They Were Wrong
01:17:31 Why Change Must Come From Below
01:19:56 Educate Yourself And Take Action
I thought our conversation was refreshing and productive. That’s what happens when both parties are more interested in getting it correct than being right. Chris was a gracious host, allowing me time to recount personal anecdotes to make the case that one does not have to be an expert to navigate complex information and propaganda. In the end, we all have to trust our own judgement around what or who to believe. There’s simply no way around that.
