are looking forward to, you are losing your entire voting base. i want to ask about education here in new york city. the current mayor bill de blasio will do away with the current gifted and talented program which you have to test into it at age 4. people at age 4 you are taking a standardized test to figure out the rest of your educational career? . right. but on the other hand it s something that a lot of people think should exist so their kids can be pushed and educated the way they should be. where are you? we re having the wrong conversation. number one, we should allow all children to opt out taking the test. that s number one. number two, we need to expand. the gifted and talented program was isolated to certain communities. that created segregation in our classroom. then we need to test our children throughout their educational experience. not only at age 4, 6, 10. let s continue to test them as
open-minded about hearing additional information. and we just had really a debate and an exchange of ideas with mutual respect for each other. and i think in the end it was just communication with the goal of really understanding the other person s point of view, not necessarily trying to convince or persuade them of anything different. that ultimately made a difference. what was the specific thing, mark, that made you say, okay. so, honestly, we sat there and we were getting ready to go. and i mean, every negative conversation around the vaccine, protein spikes. you just name it. adverse side effects. i asked all the questions. i literally exhausted all of my questions and he had answered everything, every single thing to an extent to where i understood it. on a simple level but also on a scientific level. using his expertise.
friends. you d hear something new every day, and then i started diving in further to protein spikes and the pcr testing and all the other types of stuff surrounding not only the vaccine but the actual covid disease. so it s just a lot of all over the place, and a lot of uncertainty which really kind of just made me withdraw, and i was like well, we ll see how this plays out a little bit. and then maybe we ll talk more. and low and behold, i met dr. mitchel. i found it fascinating, mark, though, that while you were unvaccinated, your wife was actually vaccinated. that she wasn t able to do what dr. mitchel did. absolutely. we re a small family of three. i was under kind of playing both sides. she got vaccinated. she felt strongly she should do it. and i m not going to disagree with her on that.