Episode 295- GLP-1, Obesity, And The Cost Of Change. With Dr. David Harlan

What if blockbuster weight-loss drugs and a broken food system are two sides of the same story? We sit down with Dr. David Harlan—physician, researcher, and former NIH diabetes branch chief—to trace the unlikely path from the “incretin effect” to GLP-1 therapies that are transforming care for type 2 diabetes and obesity. Along the way, we ask harder questions about incentives, access, and why lifestyle still matters even when the medicine is powerful.

Dr. Harlan breaks down how GLP-1 receptor agonists amplify insulin release, quiet cravings, and drive meaningful weight loss—often alongside better blood pressure, improved A1C, and fewer heart events. He explains the Gila monster connection, why weekly injections replaced multiple daily shots, and what the latest safety data actually shows. We get candid about what happens when people stop these drugs, why genetics complicate the “just try harder” narrative, and how brain chemistry shapes appetite, compulsion, and energy.

Then we zoom out to the policy level: the rise of food deserts, cheap ultra-processed calories, and the paradox of publicly funding both the problem and the fix. We explore practical steps that work in the real world—SKU-controlled health savings accounts, everyday movement campaigns, healthier default options in public spaces, and community gardens and sidewalks that make active living normal again. The throughline is simple and human: use the science to help people now, and rebuild the environment so fewer need the medicine later.

If you care about diabetes, obesity, prevention, or the economics shaping our plates and prescriptions, this conversation offers clarity and a path forward. Support the show by subscribing, sharing with a friend, and leaving a review with the one insight you’ll apply this week.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Credentials

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to season seven of the Common Bridge, hosted by Richard Helpie, a leading analyst, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. Now expanded with healthcare education, finance, science, and world affairs bridges, the podcast now in its seventh season, with an audience of over 7 million worldwide, explores issues in a fiercely nonpartisan way. Find us at the Common Bridge at Substack.com, YouTube, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

This is Rich Helper, your host of The Common Bridge, and we have a returning guest today, Dr. David Harlan. Dr. Harlan has a very extensive career with the United States Navy, with prestigious hospitals, and he is a specialist in diabetes. Well, last week there was a press conference at the White House, and it was announced that there was going to be price supports for two drugs. They're known as GLP1 drugs needed to treat diabetes and obesity. Lots of claims made during that press conference, like one in three Americans is obese. And not being a clinical person myself, my good friend Dave Harlan, I said, Dave, this is something to be willing to come on the common bridge and talk about. So thanks for jumping on with me today.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

It's my pleasure, Rich.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Dave, for the folks that don't know you, tell us about Dr. Harlan and a little bit about your qualifications and what your current practice is, particularly as it pertains to diabetes and obesity and things that might relate to these new compounds.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Well, I'll I'll try to do this in 90 seconds or less. But I grew up in the Midwest, uh in a state south of Michigan that we don't like to mention.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Not during this month, we don't.

Lifestyle Versus Medical Intervention

SPEAKER_01 1:46

And uh knew pretty early that I wanted to be a physician. I went to the University of Michigan and I was an independent major in a field called physiology, which is how it's the engineering of biology, how systems work. I spent four years at Duke Medical School, stayed on for my residency there, and then I was in the Navy. And while I was in the Navy, uh it dawned on me that a lot of things that we treat, we don't really understand. We're just putting band-aids on illnesses. And I won't share the whole epiphany story, but I had an epiphany out there that I wanted to understand diabetes sufficiently well that we could come up with curative therapies for the disease. So that meant going back to Duke, learning how to do molecular biology, transgenic mice for people who know what that means. And that uh led me back to the research institute in Bethesda, Maryland, Navy, where we developed an immunotherapy that was a big thing for a while. I was on CBS Nightly News one night describing our new approach. And the NIH invited me across the street. So for 10 years, I was the diabetes branch chief at the National Institutes of Health. And the final corner of this story is that when I was at the NIH, I had a second epiphany, and that is we were treating people with complicated diabetes. And so I would travel around the country and say, if if you have someone with uncontrollable diabetes, send them to us because we can try experimental protocols for them. And we found out that three-quarters of the patients referred to us from the very best places for their uncontrolled diabetes had what I called controllable diabetes, which set off cognitive dissonance in my brain. How can these be referred from the very best places for uncontrollable diabetes when it's not uncontrollable at all? And that uh led me slowly to the conclusion that we have a really terrible healthcare system for chronic diseases. It's terrible. What people needed was somebody to talk to, and our system doesn't do that.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

Is it as simple as what RFK Jr. said as a candidate for president, and as he said as Secretary of Health and Human Services, I'm not sure when he said this, but part of his stump speech was for the price of these drugs, we can give everybody organic food and a gym membership. Though those are the things that would control diabetes.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Gotcha, Rich. Going back even, so I graduated from Duke Medical School right after they invented dirt. I think you remember when they did that a long time ago. Uh but I had a professor of medicine there that said if if everybody quit smoking, didn't gain weight, wore their seatbelt, didn't drink to excess, they'd put medicine out of business. You're saying basically if people leave healthy lives, then we wouldn't have to do all these complicated things. And that's very true. The trouble is, especially in our society, where we don't we try not to tell anybody what they can't do to the to the delimited degree that our constitution allows. There's things that you can't do. You can't murder somebody, you can't steal. But we leave people to their own devices, and it and I'm afraid it's just human nature that it's easier to take a pill than to go out and exercise and watch what you eat.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

It's that same medical ethics thing that, you know, if you have a lifelong smoker with emphysema, should they be treated? Exactly. And you know, we're a compassionate country, and people do get dealt a genetic hand that we know specifically that Pacific Islanders, Polynesians exposed to a Western diet, will be rampant with diabetes and hypertension, heart disease, stroke, cancers, and gout. I want to just try to shed some light that if people cleaned up their diets and did a little bit of exercise, would it obviate the need for dramatic drug interventions for most people? I believe it would.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

But that it's almost uh it but it that's not going to happen in anything shorter than 20, 30 years. Look, you know, we knew since 1960 that cigarette smoking caused it heart attacks and lung cancer, and yet it took 40 years for the number of smokers to come down. It just societal change occurs very slowly.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

So this GLP one class of drugs, what does GLP stand for? How were they developed? Was it targeting obesity and uh diabetes, or was it, oh, hey, look what happened?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

It's more it's a lot of serendipity. And uh Rich, give I'll give me a subtle signal if I'm going into too much detail, like Dave, shut up for a second. Goes back several decades, in that we've known for decades that if you raise the blood sugar of a human or an animal, insulin comes out of the pancreas to lower the blood sugar level. So high blood sugar, insulin comes out of the pancreas, lowers the blood sugar. Well, several decades ago, people noticed that if you raised the blood sugar by infusing glucose into the into a vein, you got a certain amount of insulin out of the pancreas. If you raised the blood sugar exactly the same, but by feeding the sugar, more insulin came out of the pancreas. So the it was a it was confusing. Why should it matter how you give the glucose as to how much insulin the pancreas makes? And somebody came up with a hypothesis. Well, maybe there's a hormone released by the gut that goes to the pancreas and tells the pancreas, I need you to make a little bit more insulin than than just what's present in the blood sugar. So they ground up pancreases or intestines and and they found these hormones that are called glucagon-like peptides, GLP. There's one and there's two. And they found that if they infused GLP1 into the bloodstream of an animal along with some sugar, the pancreas made more insulin. So that's what they are. Now that was 40 years ago that those observations were made. And here's another bit of serendipity. Do you have any questions about what I've said so far? Is that no?

SPEAKER_02 8:00

That's a great explanation. So they were trying to figure out something to deal with blood sugar, blood glucose, and diabetes control and balancing the insulin. So here they are now with this class of drugs, GLP1, GLP2. And that was 40 years ago. Then what happened next?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Well, they they looked at GLP1, and unfortunately, if you give it by a shot, the body breaks it down almost immediately. It has it lasts in the bloodstream for about five minutes. Well, they said, well, that's not going to be a very good drug then. And here's another, this is an example of why basic scientists say, just let me answer questions. I I don't know why I'm doing it. I just want to understand this phenomenon. Because now, 20 years later, some scientists were studying the Hela Monster. You know what the Helomonster is?

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Of course, yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

The Hila monster eats about one to three times a year. One to three times a year.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

That's taking intermittent fasting to a completely new level. When you think about it.

From Gila Monster To Medicine

SPEAKER_01 8:59

It's true. And you know, large snakes in in South in Africa and eat even fewer. They'll eat once a year. It's just that they eat a huge meal when they do pythons. So, anyway, between meals, the Gila monsters gut atrophies, you know, basically saying, why would I have a gut if I'm not eating anything? But if it catches a mouse and starts chewing on it, the saliva secretes uh a hormone called extendon. And so people and that causes the gut to regrow. So scientists studied extendon. And then somebody noticed, you know, the Gila monsters extendin' looks an awful lot like human GLP1. Maybe we could give Gila monster spit to people, and it would help, it would raise, it would help their pancreas make more insulin. And lo and behold, that's basically how the field got started. Excendon, the first GLP1 receptor agonist, is Helomonster spit that you know you grow in a test tube, it's not the actual spit, but it helps the pancreas make more insulin. And those observations were made in the late 90s. So why is it 20 years hence that there's this explosion of interest? Initially, with any new therapy like the GLP1 receptor agonists, you worry about side effects and you know cost and tolerability. And furthermore, it's hard to take by ATA, like Sendon, you had to inject uh twice to four times daily, and it just was a pain in the neck. Why do that? But the scientists and in big pharmaceutical companies figured out how now you can give it once a week. And with larger use of the drugs, initially for type 2 diabetes, they noticed, my gosh, these people are losing weight and their appetites are down, um, and their sugars are much better. And then later than that, by decreasing insulin doses, decreasing weight, uh, decreasing blood pressure, we began to note it's it's causing fewer heart attacks and it's it's causing fewer strokes. And you know, it they the more we studied them, the more we were finding very beneficial effects from the drugs. And the weight loss now is what really complicated things because now people without diabetes want to take the medicines just because they are so effective at weight reduction.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

You know, this sounds in a very scary way like amphetamines, you know, in the 70s, right? They were diet pills, and people are going, hey, you know what? I can stay up all day on these things, and they're kind of fun, and they're speeding their brains out when really we're not built to do that as human beings. We're we're not really meant to intervene, and we're being in harmony, it seems, that we, you know, like some of the high uh sugar content generates uric acid, is my understanding, which raises your blood sugar, which then leads to inflammation, which then explodes into diabetes and cancers and heart attack and stroke. And instead of going back and interrupting the consumption of uric acid, it's let's give some is it a pill or a shot that these drugs come in?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

99% of them now, and it's you're putting uric acid at the center of all of it. And I wouldn't put it there, Rich, but everything else you said I agree with. But 99.9% of the GLP1 receptor agonists, and that's their proper name, GLP1Rs, are by injection. There are um some pills that you can take. They're kind of a pain in the neck to take, but you can take them by pill. And the drug companies are developing uh small molecule pills that'll be easier to take that will replace these shots within the next few years. That's coming. Now, and I agree too with your philosophically, I mean, you know, what if we came up with a cure for lung cancer? Should everybody start smoking again because now we can cure lung cancer? I I, you know, I don't think so. I I like you, I think it would be much better for people to lead healthy lives. But good luck getting people to do that.

Weight Loss, Heart Benefits, Demand

SPEAKER_02 13:02

That is a terrific point right there, is that if we had an instant cure for lung cancer, oh great, light them up if you've got them. And now we're saying, well, look, we've got this cure for obesity, and we want to get into a little bit about that. Uh, so therefore, go back to your Doritos and your Pop Tarts and your Coca-Cola. Again, I'm a computer guy, right? Garbage in, garbage out. And this is kind of starting to look like that pattern right now. But let's say a person is on this, and I remember reading this is four or five years ago. They said, well, we've got to treat obesity like anything else in the medical field. And I'm like, oh, here it comes. Here we are now four or five years later, we have drugs that they're trying to push that can arrest obesity. But what happens if people stop taking it? I understand that if you do take it, you will lose weight, but like bariatric surgery and so forth, that once you stop it, you know it's coming back. Am I right about that?

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Or is you absolutely right? And I've had countless patients say, I hated it when I was obese. I hated it. And I get it now. I get how important it is to watch my diet and exercise, but I don't want to take these medicines anymore. Trust me, I'm not gonna gain weight. And guess what happens? They stop the medicines and they gain weight. Now, some of that, Rich, we were talking about genetic predisposition. Most people, and it's perfectly logical to think this way, view obesity as a willpower problem. It's it's, you know, you're just eating too much, you're exercising too little. But there is another way to look at it, and there are a lot of people who believe it. There's a strong genetic component to obesity. You take identical twins that are reared apart from the, you know, from from birth, and look at their body weight 60 years later, and they're very close. It's a very strong genetic thing. And look at it this way. Let's say you and I eat the, well, not you and I, because we're both lean. We're blessed to be lean, but somebody that's obese and you or I eat a hamburger. The obese person's fat cells, for reasons that we don't completely understand, basically suck up those calories very fast and turn it into fat. And then their brain says, Well, that may be fine for my fat tissue, but I still need some energy for my brain too. That doesn't happen with you and me. Our our calories are more efficiently distributed.

Shots, Pills, And Long-Term Use

SPEAKER_02 15:28

So, what you're saying, everybody's guts are a little different. Yes. And that medical science can't really look into brains or guts yet, although we are beginning to understand that there is a connection. And I can say that A, I'm not that lean, and B, I do watch what I eat because of how my body would react. But that gets us into two other elements of this. And one of them is the definition of obesity, which I on my BMI, I might be that, but I'm certainly not by any by measurement of my waist or physical fitness and ability to run and all that kind of good stuff. And then the other one, it has to do, frankly, with level of affluence. So I watched the presser. I was actually on an airplane. And the press conference, they kept repeating there's one in three Americans is obese, one in three of Americans are obese. And my data mind went to uh oh, define obese. Because if you can define it low enough, people get on it, don't get off of it. Then I looked around the first class cabin. There's 20 people in the first class cabin, all of them look lean and fit. And then I recall back in Hurricane Katrina that one morbidly obese woman after another being pulled out of the flood waters in one of the poorest places in America. And I remember at that time the epiphany was there's something wrong with the food supply. And there is. And so the two big things here that go into this whole equation the definition of what's obese, and why is it today affluent people are lean and low-income people are obese? Remember, it used to be if you were poor, you were emaciated, and the affluent people were fat cats because they ate too much. So I'm on I don't even know if I were on topic here anymore, but I'm just observations from a lay perspective.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

They're fair observations, they're broad generalizations, and you know as well as I do how those can be, you know, misconstrued. But I do have some comments.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

So, how long do these things last? Uh, I mean, are you you're good to go once you start taking them, and but you stop and you gain weight again.

Genetics, BMI, And Equity

SPEAKER_01 17:32

People can take them, is as people have taken them now for 20 years, Rich. I was one of the first people to ever prescribe them uh in when I was at the NIH. And it all the data so far says the safety signal is great, along, you know, really good, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the the risks. But let me say a couple things about what you said. You you may want your readers or your listeners should fact check this, but the it what the generalization I'm about to make is basically true. That when Pearl Harbor happened and young men went to sign up for the military, I think about a quarter of them couldn't qualify because of their weight. And it was because they were underweight, not overweight. Oh my. They weighed too little. Now, fast forward the 80 years since then, now it's it's a third. And you say, how do you measure it? There's really good ways to measure it, but the expedient way is what the the BMI, how tall are you, and what's your weight. By that criteria, uh, you know, Muhammad Ali in his prime would have been considered obese when you know he wasn't obese. He just had so much, but for most people, that excess weight is fat. And we arbitrarily say anybody with a BMI greater than 30 is obese. And if you went back 60 years ago, it wasn't, it wasn't like it is today. It really has changed. Now, what's changed? That's the million-dollar question. The current way of thinking about it is that, especially in those areas like New Orleans, where I was stationed as a public health service officer right after Katrina, so I saw that stuff firsthand. They're food deserts. And the the the cheapest food you can buy is the ultra-processed carbs and stuff that you know they store forever, they taste good, and they're cheap. And that's what those people eat. I don't know what your diet is, but I I try to eat, you know, things that grow out of the ground and you know, not so processed foods. So here's where we are as a country, then.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

We are now creating a new permanent class of pharmaceutical customer. Yes. That we are going to meet that price point with the taxpayer dollars. And it's not only our taxpayer dollars, it's the children and grandchildren. And then over here, our taxpayer dollars are going to nutritional support, but there's no guardrails on the nutritional support. So all of the high sugar content, the high fat content, the ultra-processed stuff, we're subsidizing that. So, in effect, as a country, we're subsidizing people putting harmful things into their body, and then subsidizing a pill or a shot that will help offset some of the damage done by that bad stuff we put in.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

I don't disagree with anything that you've said. There was a study done in Boston by a guy named David Ludwig, smart guy, good guy, uh maybe 15 years ago. And now what all he did, he went into homes where there were morbidly obese adolescents, and he got them to agree that they would no longer have any sweetened sodas or juices in the house. That's all. Just get those out of the house. Promise you won't bring them in. The adolescents lost something like 15 or 20 kilograms in one year. So, yes, we're poisoning ourselves. There's no question about it. But how do you I think the solution would be don't tell people you can't drink soda, but do something like JFK did in 1960 and have a president president's council of physical fitness and make it cool to be out exercising and walking around in the cities, uh uh use government funds to build gardens and you know, have healthier food available to people and build up the family unit again and things like that. Those are those are the better long-term solutions for our country and for our for our species.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

We had Dr. Ken Cooper on the Common Bridge some years back, the father of aerobics, 90 years old, still amazingly fit and strong. And I remember when I asked him if he had any final comment, he said, yeah. He said, Everyone should get out, get moving, go walk the dog, even if you don't have a dog. Like go walk your dog, even if if you don't have one. So now we're we're in this political economic dilemma where we are funding pharmaceutical companies to basically get people addicted to a product. Can you think of any policy solutions that we could go upstream with as a people, as a government, and say, look, here is an incentive or a support to and and by the way, availability to wipe out the food deserts so that we can get people nutritious food.

Food Deserts And Perverse Incentives

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Well, food is very important, but I think exercise and just a healthy living style. I think whatever we do, it has to, it has to align us and incentives, is what the way I describe it. And one way to incentivize patients, or people, not patients, I I think President Trump proposed something like this the other day. Quit giving all the money to the insurance companies who make medicine or make money, by the way, by denying care. That's what um but give it all to the people and and say, you know, you make your decisions. You can spend your money to buy food and it'll cost you this much, or you can develop problems and then you're gonna have go on medicines and it's gonna cost you more.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Nate Kaufman have been delving into this, but what the record shows, if you give the segments of the population and individuals across all segments of the population money, they'll go buy a TV and then they'll still be on Medicaid and still needing to get treatment. And look, nobody wants to see anybody in this country suffer with a disease, and we all get dealt a genetic hand, and all of us are gonna have an issue someplace somehow with the genetic hand. But just like most people will get lung cancer or some other type of cancer if they continually expose themselves to cigarette smoke. Doesn't mean everybody will, but the vast majority will. Similarly, there are people that can eat highly processed foods and drink a lot of sugary sodas and and the like, and they'll be fine. But still, we're kind of that same level of statistics that don't do it. It's like playing Russian roulette with five rounds and a six-chamber gun.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

I I think so. And you know, I I I I saw part of your common bridge with uh Nate Kaufman is his name. What about putting the money in a in a health savings account where it can only be spent on certain things? That would get around some of that. But people will still make bad decisions, Rich. They have for since we became a species. You know, make people make bad decisions.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Well, I look, I like the idea of a health savings account and the technologies out there now that about right down to what SKU, what stock keeping unit you can buy with that. So there would be a way to control that. And of course, there's ways to go around that. And anything that's got cash value on a street can be abused. But I I'm also, you know, an optimist. And I think most people, given the choice, given the resources, would make good decisions for their health. Nobody wants to be sick, and most, I guess most people don't want to be sick. So I think we just need to give them the education, the means, and then you know, strive, get moving, eat better food, stay off of these drug products because you're going to be chained to them for life. What do we know about the side effects? Is there lethargy or I mean, do people feel great when they're on them? What do we know about the side effects?

Policy Ideas And Incentives

SPEAKER_01 25:22

In general, Rich, when people lose weight, here's another interesting thing. I've done some monkey studies before. If you feed a monkey a high-carb diet and let it get obese, and then you go and watch what it does, you'd swear it was a human, except it doesn't have a remote control for the TV. They just sit there. So there's something about obesity that saps your energy, and people lose weight, and lo and behold, they start getting up and they're more active. So, what do I think? I I alluded to cigarette smoking, and you know, it was 1960 when the Surgeon General first came out and said they're dangerous. That's an example, but we also, as a society, hated drunk drivers. Uh, we uh we've advocated seat belts, all these things that we know help. And if you look over decades, you begin to get behaviors to change. So I would have public service announcement after public service announcement, every athlete, every actor, actress, any influencer saying, you know, lead a healthy life. Do these things that we know help, they're cheap, and they just make people happier and healthier. And yes, people feel better when they most people. The main side effect with GLP1 receptor agonists is nausea, some constipation, some bloating. This is intriguing to me. Even people with compulsive gambling, those agents do something to the brain. I've had patients say it used to be when I'd walk by the refrigerator, I could hear it calling my name. I could barely pull myself away from it. Now I just walk by and I don't care if there's food in there or not. Compulsive gamblers will tell you that they don't feel the compulsion to gamble. Alcoholics, drug addicts will say it it's taking the edge off, that does something to the brain.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

A lot more study that needs to go on and a lot more caution. And you know, I like the idea of public service announcements, but also if you're going up there against the advertising budgets for a pharmaceutical industry, I mean, you know the jokes, right? That I watch them, they're singing, they're dancing, they're traveling to Europe, they're on a boat, and I'm like, I want that disease. Because it looks it looks like a lot of fun, you know, whatever they're up to. So, you know, in the BMI, the jokes around there, too. It's like, no, my weight's fine. I'm four inches too short, you know. It's one of those things. But I mean, we have to get to some gross measure with that until all of the diagnostic tools are available to everybody. And if we continue to develop things, we can. But again, let's face it, a downside of capitalism is companies like Coca-Cola. And one of their former CEOs wrote a book, and his view was everything a person drinks, every liquid, he considered it competition. He looked at soup as a competitor to Coca-Cola Company, and that's the kind of power that we're looking at versus the socially responsible thing of you know, enjoy a Coca-Cola, right? From time to time. But it you shouldn't be having one every day and certainly not every week as well. But I don't know how we get that information out there. Maybe people listen to this show. We'll tell them.

Side Effects And Behavior Change

SPEAKER_01 28:31

I think communication is key. And, you know, as the Pogo comic strip said decades ago too, we have met the enemy and it is us because we we buy stock in Coca-Cola because it views every other drink as a competitor, you know, makes money. So somehow there needs to be in medicine. I always say, yes, there's the profit motive, but then there's also the profession of it. And it's true that I could come up with the best thing, best treatment for everything, but if it made people lose money, it wouldn't work. So you need to find a way to do both. People have to make money and do the right thing. And that's where the friction comes.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

No margin, no mission. Dr. Harlan, Dave, I appreciate you spending the time here. What didn't we cover about these new drugs and any closing comments for the listeners, readers, viewers of the common bridge? They came to your office today, either as a fit-lean person or a person with morbid obesity. What would you want them to know?

SPEAKER_01 29:29

I would conclude with where I started, what I learned in medical school 50 years ago, that if you lead a healthy lifestyle, that will reap benefits more than anything else that we do. Don't smoke, stay active, stay lean, don't drink to excess, wear a seatbelt, get the vaccines that have been demonstrated to be safe. But if you're one of these people that is really, really just crushed by obesity and its complications, these medicines are safe and effective, very effective, unlike anything we've ever seen before. And let's hope that something better comes along in the next uh years and decades. Those are my final comments. But I always appreciate the opportunity to talk to you, Rich, and you know that.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Well, I love the fact that we're staying on brand for the Common Bridge, which is to inform versus influence. I believe we have a very intelligent audience that does want to sort things out for themselves. And if we can't provide good sources, we're going to do that. And with our guest today, Dr. David Harlan, this is your host, Rich Helpie, signing off on the Common Bridge.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Thank you for joining us on the Common Bridge, where we continue to seek clarity across divided lines. Subscribe and support the Common Bridge on Substack, YouTube, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Until next time, we invite you to stay informed, stay engaged, and help build a bridge of common understanding.