00:01:24.900He gets right up next to the microphone.
00:01:26.160I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other.
00:01:29.580You've never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween.
00:01:35.060Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:42.540I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast,
00:01:48.180the true crime comedy podcast all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it.
00:01:52.580Each week I bring on an amazing guest.
00:07:45.680to get through the day. And they're afraid that if they say something at work, people are going
00:07:48.580to come down on them, destroy their lives, try and have them fired. That's really not good for
00:07:52.800the country. We at least have to see each other as common, as friends, right? We have to see each
00:07:56.600other as Americans if we want to have those conversations. So to me, and it's happening
00:08:00.720on the right and the left, I think right now it's happening more on the political left than the
00:08:04.180political right because of the sort of woke nature of politics and the new rules that are constantly
00:08:09.240changing. And you cross a line, you didn't even know it was there. And suddenly something you
00:08:12.880said back in 2010, if you're Kevin Hart, it means you lose a job at the Oscars, right? And this is
00:08:17.080how I end up on the same side as Dave Chappelle. I'm sure that Dave Chappelle and I disagree on
00:08:20.940a lot of stuff, but on this stuff, we are on the same page. That's because the lines are being
00:08:25.940drawn in harsh and terrible fashion. There's no such thing as repentance. There's no such thing
00:08:29.940as an honest conversation where you just go to somebody like, you know, that thing you said 10
00:08:32.960years ago, I thought that was really offensive. And the person's like, you know, me too. Like,
00:08:35.980I wish I hadn't said that. That's just kind of gone. And that's really dangerous and bad. So
00:08:40.040That would be problem number one that I see facing the country.
00:08:42.420We've talked about that a lot in this show.
00:08:44.060You've actually said almost verbatim that you think that's the most dangerous thing affecting.
00:08:48.640I think in conversation, it's huge when it comes to entertainment.
00:08:55.440But I also believe it's the biggest obstacle we face from a legislative standpoint is the inability of the right and the left to come together and make any meaningful change through compromise.
00:09:04.960We just have separate aisles where the left may even know, and I'll use the left, just
00:09:33.620If you want to have a bad conversation with someone, start with the problem.
00:09:36.100And what you see in politics these days is that the easiest way to get people to love you and to be interested in you is you label a problem, and then you say, it's a big problem.
00:09:44.520And the other person says, well, but I don't like your solution.
00:09:46.380Well, that's because you're not taking the problem seriously enough.
00:09:48.840If you really were serious about the problem, well, I think we can all acknowledge that we're all serious about the same problems.
00:10:00.600No one wants to see innocent kids gunned down in a classroom.
00:10:03.140We have different solutions to that, and we should be clear about what we think those solutions are.
00:10:06.940But politicians aren't in the business of trying to be clear or be specific because then we can either think it's a good idea or a bad idea.
00:10:13.320They're in the business of trying to castigate, to hit the moral character of somebody on the other side for political gain.
00:10:19.040And that does hold true for both sides.
00:10:20.880I've been railing against this for a long time, the sort of we disagree, therefore you're morally inferior point of view.
00:10:35.500Do you think that that ideology and that polarization from political candidates was what kind of led to the Trump presidency?
00:10:44.880And do you think that Trump as a president is more divisive than than those that came before him, less, more polarizing?
00:10:54.720I mean, he's definitely more divisive and polarizing, but I think that he's a symptom, not the cause.
00:10:59.200So I don't think the world started spinning in November of 2016.
00:11:03.080In other words, I think that Trump happened for a reason, and it happened because a lot of people were supremely pissed off because they'd been told for years, your voice doesn't matter.
00:11:12.720You can't be part of this conversation.0.74
00:11:14.840And those people got sick of it, and they were like, okay, F you, and F you came in the form of Trump.
00:11:18.300I mean Trump is not a person who knows anything about policy.
00:11:20.840He doesn't have a conservative philosophy.
00:11:22.640He brags that he's written more books than he's read.
00:11:24.260I mean this is not somebody who people elected because they were like, oh, what amazing ideas he had.
00:11:28.320They elected him because he was a giant pulsating middle finger to the establishment in a variety of ways, to an establishment in the media that said we can't have conversations, to an establishment that established these kind of rules of political correctness that he was constantly railing against.
00:11:44.000And listen, I think that Trump fails to make the distinction, and I talked about this a lot in 2016.0.97
00:11:49.000I think he fails to make the distinction between being politically incorrect and just being a jackass.0.98
00:11:53.820Right. There is a difference. Like being politically incorrect is saying things that have to be said because they have to be said.0.97
00:12:00.080And if it offends people, so be it. Being a jackass is saying things that don't need to be said just to be a jackass.0.99
00:12:04.480And there is a difference between those two things. And it's easy to conflate them.0.99
00:12:07.840And you see Trump do this on a fairly regular basis. But he is a result of people feeling hemmed in.
00:12:13.860And the result of that is that he busts loose a lot of things.
00:12:17.620I think some of that busting loose was necessary and good.
00:12:19.900I think that he's also unleashed some real – the kind of Freudian id in American politics, and everybody's ramped it up.
00:12:28.300I mean you've seen it – I thought it was bad in 2015, 2016.
00:12:33.120But I think that you're seeing it ramp up and ramp up and ramp up to the point where it feels like something has to give.
00:12:39.820I mean I think everybody has that feeling, like something has to – this has to calm down somehow, right?
00:12:44.200And it's not calming down, unfortunately.
00:12:46.320Before we move on to number two, regarding your number one, that you think the inability to converse is one of the biggest problems we face as Americans.
00:12:57.480Do you have a solution to that or a proposed solution that maybe people listening here could grow up and put it in the back of their mind?
00:13:05.840Number one, I think that the number one solution, ironically, is for people to say F you to people who want them to stop having conversations.
00:13:12.380because right now there's a lot of pressure,
00:13:15.100a lot of pressure on people not to have conversations.
00:13:17.900You had major figures in Hollywood just this week
00:15:11.480I mean I think that the real solution is we actually have to spend some face time with each other and we have to have conversations with each other and we don't penalize people for engaging in the conversation.
00:15:22.380How you deal in the conversation could be a problem if you give too much credence to a terrible idea or if you give a bad idea a signal boost.
00:15:29.200And again, you have to be careful of that.
00:18:05.300And the tweets that get all the retweets, the incentive system is structured so that the funnier you are, which very often coincides with the nastier you are, the more likes and retweets you get.
00:18:15.060And so the people who are most successful on Twitter, myself included, are people who spend long hours dunking on people.
00:18:20.420and it's one of the reasons why and and and simultaneously being dunked upon yeah exactly
00:18:25.640you get and you've been dunked on too a thousand times i trend about once a month now and and
00:18:30.520honestly i've disengaged in tremendous ways from twitter i used to i used to be much more involved
00:18:35.200i used to think it was more fun there's also been kind of a mood shift on twitter and that is that
00:18:39.30010 years ago it was basically like a chat room with kind of your friends and like people you
00:18:43.000would hang out with and so you'd make irreverent jokes and dumb jokes and everybody knew they were
00:18:46.280jokes. And now it's, you know what we're going to do? We're going to go through your entire history0.95
00:18:50.260and we're going to dig up some dumb ass thing you said 10 years ago. And we're going to take it out0.99
00:18:54.500of context and say, this is your actual view on the thing. And this is exactly what happened to
00:18:58.280Kevin Hart, right? And it's happened to a bunch of people. It happened to Sarah Jong at the New York
00:19:01.240Times from the right. It happened to James Gunn from the right. It happened to this kid, Kyle
00:19:06.660Kashuv from the left. I mean, it's this constant attempt to destroy somebody with something they
00:19:14.280said 10 years ago, none of us have a time machine. A lot of us said stuff that we wouldn't say now
00:19:18.480because guess what? Some social standards have changed in the last 10 years. Some of us have
00:19:22.200changed along with them. And sometimes what we said 10 years ago was a joke and you're now taking
00:19:26.040it out of context. What do you hope to gain? Are you actually trying to elucidate and figure out
00:19:30.620what I think? Or are you just trying to dig something up to demonstrate that I'm an idiot1.00
00:19:35.100or that I said something bad? Or I should be canceled. Cancel culture is the worst. Listen,1.00
00:19:39.640When Sarah, again, I'm, I'm, I think it is fair to say that one side of the political aisle has gone too far when I'm now on the same side of this issue as Sarah Silverman.
00:22:17.000Basically, it was a date that got awkward and the girl got pissed and then she wrote about it.0.82
00:22:20.320It was really obnoxious and they decided to run him through the ringer.0.98
00:22:23.000And because we now live in this idiotic culture, he was like, okay, now I'm going to have to go on my apology tour and all this nonsense.0.98
00:22:27.580But most of his special is about like how annoying the woke left is, how they're constantly trying to signal at you.0.99
00:29:47.360It's so funny when you watch it too because people like my mom, right, or even certain people that I've worked with in the past, they will have this always on fiery agenda.
00:29:57.940Like I'll be like, hey, how was your weekend?
00:29:59.660well it was good until I saw that new truck that never fucking existed until 2016 yeah and now0.81
00:30:06.420thanksgiving sucks nowadays every every time and now and you go and you're like and I finally0.93
00:30:11.680personally because I was on that same tip for a while too I was watching everything he tweeted0.98
00:30:15.820every little thing and eventually I got to a point where I said to myself why the fuck am I
00:30:20.400watching all of this stuff yeah I don't as much as it all is very concerning and all the different0.65
00:30:25.320topics are the, the majority of the attention you pay to it is because you are against the other
00:30:31.180side and you're trying to, to, to win in some way. It's like an ego thing. I think this is right. I
00:30:36.300think that what, what has happened, you know, is a, is a deeper after effect of a collapse of what
00:30:41.000I called the social fabric earlier. That's a term that was coined by a sociologist at Harvard named
00:30:45.340Robert Putnam. He has a great book called Bowling Alone. And in this book, he talks about the fact
00:30:49.300that in the fifties and the sixties, pretty much everybody in America was a member of a bowling
00:30:52.300club. Like if you see in LA bowling alleys all over the place, what the heck? Who bowls, right?
00:30:57.480Like, that's something you did when you dated and you were 17. But like, is that like, is there a
00:31:00.560huge crowd of people bowling? And the answer is that in the fifties and sixties, this was the
00:31:04.080growth industry in America, something like 70 or 80% of Americans bowled with other Americans.
00:31:08.280And, and that has, and now when was the last time that you spent time now with the people you work
00:31:15.040with, but time with just a group of people that you enjoy on a regular basis. The answer is,
00:31:20.220unless you go to church or synagogue probably never probably never outside the only places
00:31:24.560where we see other human beings now because of social media and because of travel time
00:31:28.020and because frankly we don't have a lot of reasons to get together anymore the only times we see each
00:31:33.180other are in church or in synagogue or at work that's why we have the mother tree right right
00:31:37.200boys this is actually the brothership the brothership we've got we've got some meeting
00:31:42.000places here in the uh here in la that encourage that type of neighborhood behavior we like we
00:32:01.180Everyone's looking at their Instagram and who's texting who and all this.0.98
00:32:03.980And technically, that friendly discourse, that involvement with people of like-minded or, by the way, not like-minded people and the ability to have those healthy debates is completely absent from today's society.
00:32:16.000You do have to have a core of commonality with the people that live around you or you're not going to have a community.
00:32:20.640I mean there has to be something that you share in common, and it used to be that we shared at least I think more in common, at least aspirationally.
00:32:26.600I mean American history is replete with suffering and people excising the other and treating gay people badly and treating black people horribly and treating lots of people horribly, treating women horribly.1.00
00:32:36.120It is also true that the aspiration, which was we believe in freedom of speech and debate and discussion, and we also believe that the government should not run every aspect of our lives.
00:32:44.540And we also believe that when we get together in church, that we can worship together.
00:32:47.240Like these were all social institutions that were actually fairly strong.
00:32:50.280And as they began to break down, people didn't replace them with other social institutions.
00:32:54.940They replaced them with a sense of alienation and upset and anger and feeling alone and feeling isolated.
00:33:02.100He says a diverse society can only hold together when you have common aspirations.
00:33:06.660So he says, you know, his line in the book is, as the diversity of a census tract goes up, he's speaking of ethnic diversity.
00:33:12.780As the diversity of a census tract goes up, the only two things that you know is that you will have an increase in protest marches and television watching.
00:33:19.680That's not a case against ethnic diversity.
00:33:21.340It is a case against his original presupposition, which was that diversity is our strength.
00:37:37.340They found that physiological effects have been observed in a human being subject in response to simulation of the skin with weak electromagnetic fields that are pulsed with certain frequencies near half a hertz or 2.4 hertz, such as to excite a sensory resonance.
00:37:53.540so the tv is actually when you look at the patent it's designed to do that it's designed to
00:37:59.760like you said have kids zombie out have a zombie out and just tune into that frequency that that
00:38:04.540television's emitting well also i think that evolutionarily we are built to watch what the
00:38:09.060creatures around us are doing mainly for adaptive reasons right you don't want to get killed by the
00:38:12.520guy sitting next to you but if you have interesting things that other people are doing in front of
00:38:16.420you 24 hours a day i mean we were built to do that we were built to watch that and get but those
00:38:20.920People aren't coming out of the TV, right?
00:38:22.160But we still have that same reaction, which is the people are going to come out of the TV.
00:39:47.480then frankly you don't believe in the first amendment you don't believe in basic american
00:39:51.300principles if you can't take an argument you don't like and just deal with it at least to
00:39:55.400the extent of not trying to shut it down you are the fascist do you do you think that you uh
00:40:00.580do you think that you poke the beehive sometimes i saw you last night calling a uh i saw you last
00:40:08.460night calling a transgender uh woman sir in a debate it was that it was that's the NHLN debate
00:40:14.620and the reason i bring it up is because it almost led to violence right and it was it was speech and
00:40:20.840it was it was i mean it did lead to a physical assault i mean so he reached over grabbed me by
00:40:24.700the back of the neck and said if if you don't cut that out i'll send you home in an ambulance
00:40:28.580to which i have to say my my first mental response was that doesn't even make sense you don't go home
00:40:32.840in an ambulance but but why did you say that you should have said why did you say that i'm sure i'm
00:40:42.220sure your whole domain changed right it was it was so shocking honestly like to be physically
00:40:46.880accosted on national tv was kind of a shocking thing what i mean what i did say is that doesn't
00:40:50.940seem you said it's particularly appropriate it's mildly right i mean so the okay so here is my
00:40:56.540perspective on the on the transgender use of the use of transgender pronouns so obviously i'm not
00:41:02.620going to do the i have transgender friends thing because it's stupid i will say that if i am in a0.62
00:41:06.260room with a transgender person we're at dinner together i call them by whatever pronouns they0.96
00:41:09.360want to be called. Why? Because I would do that for pretty much anybody. We're having a polite
00:41:12.660conversation. If the topic of the debate is the use of the pronouns, I'm not going to call you
00:41:18.160by your preferred pronoun because that's me losing the debate before the debate even starts.
00:41:21.580So if the entire topic of the debate is, should I be forced to say he about a biological woman?
00:41:27.800And that's the entire topic of the debate. Then the moment I say he about you, I've lost the
00:41:31.440debate. So the answer is no. So, I mean, the Zoe Turthing, what happened there, to be honest with
00:41:36.440you, it was not, it sounds ridiculous, but it was not even a conscious thing. Zoe Turr,
00:41:42.480his voice, he's a man, he's a biological man. His voice is lower than mine. And Zoe Turr was
00:41:47.100sitting next to me and saying, you don't know anything about biology, little boy. You don't
00:41:50.280know anything about biology, little boy. And I said, so what is your biology, sir? And this
00:41:53.920prompted the entire blow up. Now, if I were out to dinner with Zoe Turr, I'd call Zoe Turr by
00:41:58.780whatever Zoe Turr wanted to be called by. But the entire debate was whether biological women are in1.00
00:42:03.720fact, men and should be called such or vice versa. And so I make a very stark distinction
00:42:09.320between public debate and public fora and how I treat people privately because they are very
00:42:14.280different. The entire argument is not made for the benefit of Zoe Turr. The entire argument is
00:42:17.620made for the benefit of the viewer. And Zoe Turr's biology was relevant to that debate because
00:42:21.560presumably the reason Zoe Turr was on the program was specifically to discuss his biology, right,0.99
00:42:26.680to discuss why he is a woman despite the fact that he's a biological man. So I was not willing
00:42:31.260to give up that point and my unwillingness to give up the point became the issue i you know
00:42:35.820it looks like i'm trying to poke the bear there i really and there are certain situations where
00:42:40.080obviously i have i i really when it happened i didn't think to myself i'm deliberately trying
00:42:44.360to be provocative uh it was i i should have seen it coming frankly because the producer backstage
00:42:49.800before the thing starts says i used to produce for jerry springer i should be at that point
00:42:53.480We, we, when we talk about, um, cause we watch you by the way, like we'll, we'll, we'll pull
00:43:02.040up your stuff, watch, watch your things. And by the way, I will say, I hope that you also watch,
00:43:05.600you know, people on the left, right? I always say on my own show, I always say people should
00:43:09.860watch Pod Save America. I don't think they return the courtesy, but you should always watch both
00:43:13.320sides and then make up your mind. And, and I think one of the most polarizing, you know,
00:43:17.420conversations that you have is this is this transgender transphobia gender dysphoria
00:43:23.260conversation and the question uh we landed on I'll speak for myself I landed on and and and
00:43:31.540discussed a lot last night in preparation for this was um why do you care it was a question
00:43:37.500we kept coming back to why why do you care if um Johnny wants to be Susie or by the way 10 years
00:43:44.180from now, Susie wants to be a cactus. Okay. So I don't care if you're an adult. I really don't
00:43:49.220care. I mean, if you're an adult, I have never stumped against anybody getting a surgery they
00:43:53.160want to get or a homeowner treatment they want to get as an adult. That's a you issue. I mean,
00:43:56.460that's your decision. You're a responsible adult. I'm a libertarian. Do whatever it is that you want
00:44:00.780to do. If you are now mandating that I misuse the English language in order to flatter your sense
00:44:05.820of self, the answer is no, I'm not going to do that. And I don't think anyone should be forced
00:44:09.360to do that because if we do not share common definitions of words, we cannot have conversations
00:44:13.500with one another. If you want to say I am a trans woman, but a biological male, we are on the same
00:44:18.060page. If you want me to call you a she in the same way that my wife is a she and use the same0.87
00:44:22.360pronoun to describe you and my wife and you're a biological male, the answer is no, because you0.98
00:44:26.100are not similar to my wife. My wife is a biological female. So I think it kind of the image that
00:44:32.580comes into my mind is when you go to a restaurant, there's now gender neutral. And what I see is
00:44:37.480there's these people who have this identity, like I need to be everybody needs to conform to my0.58
00:44:42.260identity instead of how about if you're a transgender become successful open up your
00:44:47.660own restaurant and start to you know have gender neutral signs on your own establishment isn't that0.81
00:44:53.540more active than just complaining about it you know expecting a person to go into business if0.92
00:45:00.660they want to be a gardener to have their own establishment to uh justify their use of bathrooms
00:45:05.600it's one example it seems a little bit of a stretch no it's me there spence but i see what
00:45:09.960You're basically making a route for yourself.
00:45:11.920I'm just saying there's action, right?
00:45:13.780Instead of walking into a place and getting offended.
00:45:15.960You're trying to separate between governmental action and private action, which is an important thing, right?1.00
00:45:19.820I mean I think that businesses should be – by the way, if you're transgender, you should be allowed to boycott whatever business you want to.1.00
00:45:25.080You should be – I'm not telling everybody you've got to listen to my show.1.00
00:45:27.800I don't think you have to agree with me.
00:45:29.160What I am saying is you don't get to point a government gun in my face and threaten to throw me in jail if I refuse to pretend that a biological man is actually a woman.
00:45:35.920That's not something I'm willing to do.
00:45:36.940Are you unwilling to compromise on terminology that is inflammatory, whether or not the government says you should or society says you should?
00:45:47.120So, for example, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, the N-word was heavily used in everyday conversation.
00:45:55.600I don't know, maybe a little bit further back.
00:45:56.840Let's not get into exact numbers, right?
00:45:58.300But of course, there's a very large difference between using the inherently derogatory term, the N word, which is obviously a term that goes all the way back to slavery and is offensive on every level.
00:46:24.780And by the way, I'm with you on it. But based on their belief system, you are deriding them or making a derogatory inflammatory terminology towards them by not by by not, I guess, to a point by by not seeing things the way they see things.
00:46:40.720Well, frankly, by seeing things in an objectively based way, meaning that it's not that I am making a different argument about the nature of he and she.
00:46:48.340I am making a biologically, factually, objectively verifiable argument about he and she, namely that there is such a thing as biology, that all mammalian species are dichotomous in terms of sex.
00:46:58.280There are people who are intersex.0.73
00:46:59.720If you wanted to create a different pronoun for people who are intersex, that makes some sense to me because those are people who are intersex.
00:47:04.220But if you're saying, if your argument is that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, Caitlyn Jenner is not a woman.
00:47:09.540Now, I'm happy to call Caitlyn Jenner Caitlyn Jenner. People can change because what you what your name is, what we call you, that's subjective, right? You get to define that for everybody else. But you do not get to redefine fundamental terms of human biology simply because you have a subjective feeling about yourself. This is this is my main objection.
00:47:25.720Beyond pronouns and what people expect you to address them as, do you have an agenda per se?
00:47:34.940I guess, like, what's the win here?0.93
00:47:37.960Because, like, you've also said you've referred to being transgender as some sort of delusion, a mental disorder.1.00
00:48:05.140I mean it's just we are debating right now whether facts are even allowed to be stated.
00:48:10.940This is my main issue here is that if you even say these things, then this is considered so controversial that you should be excised from polite society.
00:48:19.600But say we get past that, to LP's point, and say you win, not that there has to be a winner, but what's the end game for?
00:48:28.500That people can say what they want, particularly when it happens to be true.
00:48:32.520And also that people, I mean, there are some actual practical ramifications to this.0.83
00:48:36.640So legally speaking, for example, right now there's an attempt to take Title IX and apply it to transgender people, which makes no sense at all.
00:48:42.520Okay, so Title IX obviously was established to create more opportunity for female equality in a variety of industries, including in college sports, for example.
00:48:50.940Okay, so to take the most obvious example, let's say that now we redefine female to mean you define yourself as female.
00:49:00.020Okay, when a biological male decides to fight MMA like Fallon Fox with a biological female, it does not end well for the biological female because it turns out that biological females are not built the same way on average as biological males.
00:49:09.960We've seen this happen in high school and college sports where you've seen male athletes who perform pretty well as males but they aren't top-notch suddenly go into female sports, and they're dominating.
00:49:20.800I mean you do see this sort of stuff happening, and I don't understand how you can simultaneously claim that you are a feminist standing up for women and also claim that a man can be a woman.
00:49:34.520There are a lot of internal contradictions here, logically speaking.
00:49:36.800And when it comes to public policy, which is what I talk about most days, it depends on, you know, the ramifications that you're asking about depends on the policy that is sought, for example.
00:49:46.100So, for example, take the separate bathroom issue.
00:49:48.440So, frankly, I don't really care where people go to the bathroom.
00:49:52.620What I do care about is that when my five-year-old daughter is in a bathroom with my wife and a biological male walks in, not even – let's take the most obvious example.
00:50:02.680Not even a male who has had surgeries or hormone treatments to look like a woman, which at least it argues to me that there should be a different level of threat perceived by the people in the bathroom.
00:50:11.340But let's say that you, Logan Paul, decide that you are going to identify – that you are now transgender, and I'm not being facetious.0.66
00:50:17.520And you walk into a restroom with my wife and my daughter, and my wife suddenly feels a threat.
00:51:57.980But I think when we lock it away and say there's no like improvements we can make to that system, that's where it can kind of become very segregating.
00:52:07.020No, I mean frankly, if you want to come up with solutions that make sense, all for it.
00:52:10.000You want to create – I mean I'm saying.
00:52:11.880I think if you want to create bathrooms where the – frankly, I prefer this.
00:52:15.300right i mean bathrooms where the doors are floor to ceiling great i mean more privacy in bathrooms
00:52:18.560that's what they are and the doors are floor to ceiling oh really yeah so you're in a locked
00:52:22.100off room nobody can smell your poo it's a it's a beautiful place all right it's a great it's a
00:52:26.920great that's like a dream world for you yeah that's like no do you do you ever uh are you more
00:52:33.520worried this is a thing i i come to a lot i am i am completely at peace with the majority of
00:52:40.400new age, uh, identification systems with gay marriage, with like, I'm at peace with, I love
00:52:46.880it. I support it. I'm a huge fan. The, where I start to worry a little bit is, um, are you more
00:52:53.960worried about where we are now or where this potentially leads? Uh, well, I think that we
00:52:57.640are getting very close to where it potentially leads. So I, I was in favor of the legalization
00:53:03.000of same-sex marriage before Obergefell. Um, and the reason I was is not because I'm not a
00:53:07.720traditional marriage advocate. I think that traditional marriage and same-sex marriage
00:53:11.060were designed for different purposes. I think traditional marriage was designed for the
00:53:14.000creation and rearing of children, whereas same-sex marriage obviously is not primarily
00:53:19.220designed for that for biological reasons. It's designed for two people who love each other to
00:53:22.420live with one another. That's fine. The problem that I see is that once you start encoding that
00:53:26.720in state law, the next move is to call everyone who agrees with that distinction a bigot and then
00:53:36.080to remove their tax-exempt status from them.
00:55:26.160Then I think that we're in very, very dangerous territory.
00:55:28.380Do you see any echoes of the past here, or do you once again say that there are vast differences between a same-sex marriage situation and a situation that we dealt with during the segregated 40s, 50s?
00:55:40.920I mean, I think there are pretty significant differences between, again, the very nature of same-sex marriage and traditional marriage.
00:55:46.040So I see pretty significant differentials in that, whereas a marriage between two white people and a white and a black person, I don't see any difference at all because skin color is irrelevant to the operation of the marriage, obviously.
00:55:57.920Not quite the same thing when you're talking about the biology of the people who are involved and particularly the reproductive parts.0.51
00:56:04.460I mean that's really what we're talking about.
00:56:06.400But when you are talking about do I think that businesses should be allowed to be bad, to do bad things that I don't like?
00:56:13.980The answer is I do think they should be allowed to do bad things that I don't like so long as they're not forcing me to do anything.
00:56:19.640So I'm actually more libertarian than a lot of libertarians are on these issues.
00:56:23.840Like I think that the best solution to a discriminatory – let's take the worst-case scenario.
00:56:27.220You got a business, and they say I'm not serving black folks today or ever.0.91
00:56:30.860I'm a racist. I'm not serving black folks today. That's their case.1.00
00:56:33.800My argument is that it is not the government's business to force that person to serve black folks.1.00
00:56:37.780That person should be boycotted. We should never go to his store.1.00
00:56:40.600We should wreck his business by opening up a store across the street that services black folks.1.00
00:56:46.060That you don't actually want a government big enough to do the things that you like because it may turn out that the people who control that government are doing things that you don't like.1.00
00:56:54.860But are you cool with the cancel culture or the woke Twitter left coming together to boycott a business based on their non-desire to serve transgenders or gay couples?0.96
00:57:09.480They have a hundred percent right to do that.0.68
00:57:11.060They have a hundred percent right to do that.
00:57:12.220I may disagree with the boycott, right?
00:57:14.160I may, I may think the boycott is based on your, based on your political belief, right?
00:57:19.240And in fact, I think that that's a good part of American discourse.
00:57:21.940So you would applaud, you would applaud.
00:57:23.600I think, and so I like take, take a race example, because again, I think these are the best examples because they're the most obvious morally.
00:57:29.920So in 1960, the Woolworths was a segregated, was a segregated outlet, a segregated restaurant.
00:57:35.540And a bunch of black students, including James Meredith, went into the Woolworths and they sat at the counter and they were viciously treated and people poured drinks on them.0.95
00:57:49.820I think that's the way that things should work.
00:57:51.180So if you wanted to go to that bakery that didn't participate in the same-sex wedding, you say, listen, I'm not going to go to that bakery.
00:57:59.180My friends who love same-sex marriage aren't going to go to that bakery.
00:58:01.860No gay person I know is going to go to that bakery.1.00
00:58:06.620But to point the government gun at that guy and say, you must service the same-sex wedding, that I got a problem with because then you get into this really weird situation where let's say that I walk into a gay bakery and I say, you know what I would love?0.77
00:58:16.940I would love for you to make a cake that has Leviticus 18.22 on it.0.98
00:58:20.140That is the verse in Leviticus that talks about the so-called abomination of homosexuality.1.00
00:58:24.540I walk into a gay baker and I say, I want that on a cake right now.1.00
00:58:27.120You put it on a cake right now or I'm going to sue you.1.00
00:58:29.000Do you really want that lawsuit to win?
00:58:32.380I don't think that that guy has any obligation to bake me a cake.
00:58:35.120And I don't think I have any obligation to bake anybody else a cake.
00:58:38.340I think that we – but again, this goes back to if you think that the people in your community are bad people, then you want the government to force them to do all the things that you want them to do.
00:58:46.360If you think that they're basically good people and you have disagreements about this sort of stuff, then you can live with the fact that there's a baker who lives down the street who may think that you're involved in sin.
00:58:53.960Like frankly, I've always been puzzled.
00:58:55.500There is this wide gap between people who are – who understand the religious conception of sin and people who are irreligious trying to see what religious people think like about sin.
00:59:05.120People who aren't religious, people who are secular, when they think of religious people thinking about sin, they think, oh, those religious people are so judgmental.
00:59:11.040They're sitting around all day just sitting around going, oh, you're a bad person because you sin.
00:59:15.540I do not know a religious person who does not believe that they themselves sin, who does not believe there are a wide variety of sins, who does not believe that it is imperative for them to try and avoid sin, but that you fall short.
00:59:27.020Everyone falls short of the grace of God.
00:59:30.920I can also think that somebody has a right to commit that sin.0.79
00:59:33.120And again, I'm not anti same sex marriage from a governmental perspective.0.99
00:59:37.420I don't think you should force my synagogue to perform one, but I don't think that the government should should stop gay people from getting married in any way or something like that.0.96
00:59:44.200So it sounds like it sounds like number two other alone, leave each other alone.
00:59:47.280It sounds like number two on your list would be it's it almost boils down to big government.
00:59:51.900So we had we had cancel culture and this SJW wave.
00:59:55.460We've got big government. And then what is what is number three feel like to you?
00:59:58.760I think that number three is lack of ability to look into the future at all, to think about consequences of any of the things that we do.
01:00:06.620So we tend to do the thing that is convenient to us.
01:00:09.080This is true, obviously, when it comes to government policy.
01:00:11.460On the left, I think people see it when it comes to climate change more.
01:00:13.820But on the right, when it comes to government spending, there's no capacity to see five minutes beyond our own nose.
01:00:19.780We just don't think about what's going to happen 10 years in the future.
01:00:21.940And we tend to think that whatever we believe is the most right thing that has ever been in history, and you can just willy-nilly make changes to the system that pre-exists, and everything will be fine.
01:00:33.660This is scary to me, like not understanding how history has progressed to where we are.
01:00:37.660There's this belief that we can just shape the system, change it in dramatic ways, and everything will be good from there on in.
01:00:42.860And that demonstrates a true lack of respect for the people who came before you.
01:00:47.520Because the fact is, we live in this pathetically self-aggrandizing and arrogant world where people sit around and they're like, Thomas Jefferson, really bad guy because he held slaves, right?
01:00:56.860And they're like, yeah, slavery was really bad.0.97
01:00:58.600And he was probably raping Sally Hemings.0.76
01:01:00.620I mean, just really bad, bad, bad stuff.0.93
01:01:03.000And they're like, well, I'm smarter than Thomas Jefferson.
01:01:05.200So all that stuff in the Declaration of Independence, I mean, I'm smarter than he was.
01:01:08.860The answer is you were not smarter than Thomas Jefferson.
01:01:10.740You're not a product of Thomas Jefferson's time.
01:01:41.080But do you think not believing that people are – certain people can use examples from the past and make better decisions forward-facing without that data that guarantees it moving forward, do you think that puts us in a bad place where we're not preparing for something that some people are saying is guaranteed to happen?
01:01:58.340Well, again, I think the data should always be the foundation of any political argument and most arguments that you make generally.
01:02:03.920In fact, the person who's trying to stop you from disseminating data is usually the problem in the conversation.
01:02:23.620But to go back to sort of the general point that I'm making about the past, we have to treat the past with enough respect to try and keep the stuff that was good while getting rid of the stuff that was bad.
01:02:33.500And instead it's like we want to remake the world every generation.
01:02:38.580G.K. Chesterton, this famous Catholic theologian, he famously suggested that the difference between sort of the left and the right politically is that if you're on the left and you come across a fence in the road and you don't know why it's there.
01:02:49.740It's just a fence in the middle of the road.
01:02:56.540If you're on the right, your first instinct is I don't know what this fence is doing here.
01:02:59.900I better go down to the library, figure out what the fence is doing here, and then if it turns out that the fence isn't there for any reason, then we can talk about removing it.
01:03:07.100I think that that shouldn't be a left-right thing.
01:03:08.640I think that should be a reasonable person, not reasonable person thing, meaning like we should just try and figure out exactly maybe why these social institutions were in place before we take a wrecking ball to them.
01:03:17.880But at the same time, you do have to have an eye to the future, and you have to try and discern why we did stuff in the past a certain way, and maybe we did it for the wrong reasons.
01:03:26.040Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Do you think do you think at times both the right and left bullets use the right for this example finds out that that fence was actually mistakenly built in the middle of a main throwaway? And they say, we're still not ripping it out. Do you know what I'm saying? We are we we just because out of spite and we talked about this earlier out of spite for the left, we're going to keep that fence there. I guess I guess it happens on both sides.
01:03:51.800No, I think it does happen on both sides.
01:03:53.480I think that because the right inherently tends to look to the past more as a model, and the left tends to look at the past more as a model of what not to do, then there's just different levels of reluctance to get rid of the fence generally.
01:04:06.420Because very often on the right, what they will say is, okay, well, yeah, okay, so I still don't know why the fence is there.
01:04:12.600But I know that the fence has prevented X, Y, and Z from happening.
01:04:17.080And if I remove the fence, I'm kind of afraid of what's going to happen, meaning we know the past.
01:04:21.160So we're hesitant to remove it even if we don't know the exact reason behind it.
01:04:24.980So I guess what I would say is we have to treat the people who came before us with enough respect to try and get into their heads for a moment and say, okay, what were they thinking?
01:04:33.440Why was that wrong when it was wrong so that we understand why it's wrong now?
01:04:36.460It's not just wrong because you feel like it's wrong today.
01:04:38.600And then when it comes to thinking of the future, then we have to do actual database thinking about what's going to happen down the road.
01:04:48.360And my problem with a lot of the climate change debate is that I don't think that on either side there's an honest discussion going on.
01:04:55.180So on the right, I think that there are a lot of people I see who are like, well, I just don't think climate change is happening.
01:05:06.340I've talked to climate scientists from Caltech, and they know this stuff better than I do.
01:05:10.180And their suggestion is that the climate is going to warm somewhere between 2 degrees Celsius and 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
01:05:15.820Now the question becomes, what sort of damage does that do?
01:05:19.240And you actually can – and so here's where the left goes off the rails.
01:05:21.500So what the left does is they go, that means every major city in the United States will be underwater undoubtedly.
01:05:26.860Also, the polar ice caps are going to melt, uncovering mammoths that have within them the dark plague, and that will wipe out all of humanity.
01:05:33.140It's like, well, we have to do some sort – like the kind of disaster talk, like if we don't get this done in 10 years, we're all going to die.
01:08:12.080I watched a documentary called Gasland that I talked about on HBO a few years back where the people in Pennsylvania are able to light their water on fire as it comes out of their faucet.
01:08:19.900There are some significant questions about that documentary, but beyond that, the question of carbon emissions, which is what we're talking about here.
01:08:27.840Sure, you should take into account the other effects.
01:08:29.400When you say you're going to ban fracking in a time when the two best solutions to carbon emissions are nuclear power and fracking, and you're going to ban nuclear factories and fracking.
01:09:01.780Which I wouldn't doubt him, I mean, for what he's able to do.
01:09:04.920I think that's some of what Elon Musk does.
01:09:06.880But when it comes to – this is the case for the carbon tax.
01:09:10.600The case for the carbon tax is that you're going to artificially boost the price of energy such that a lot of formerly non-competitive energy sources become economically competitive, right?
01:09:19.680That it still is really expensive to produce wind or solar.
01:09:22.500But now in comparison with gas, which you've artificially made expensive, then it's going to look cheaper than it was.
01:09:27.860But what if it – theoretically, what if it scared people away a little bit from investing more and more and more energy into getting oil and burning fossil fuels, and it put much more of an opportunity cost on building solar, building alternative ways of energy, where without that pressure, we're not going to switch anytime soon.
01:10:25.580The people who will pay that price are typically not at the upper end of the income spectrum.
01:10:28.660There are people who are middle class or lower class who are now paying more for the electricity because the vast majority of carbon emissions in the United States are not driven by cars.
01:10:37.460They are driven by industry and by electricity.
01:10:41.000That represents about 60 percent, 50 percent.
01:10:44.060represents about 50% of all carbon emissions in the United States come from heavy industry
01:10:48.620and from electricity, which we all need. And the cost gets passed on to us. So assume there will
01:10:53.260be economic damage. Like let's, let's be realistic about the assessments. When you hear people say
01:10:56.920we're going to invest trillions of dollars, it's going to create tens of millions of new jobs.0.99
01:11:00.940Bull crap. Okay. If the government could create billions of new jobs and millions of new jobs,0.98
01:11:05.120just by throwing money at it, everything would be hunky dory. Everything that was called
01:11:08.920communism. They tried it. It failed. Okay. Like you can't, of course, you're talking about your
01:11:11.840favorite person of all time, AOC, right? And her Green New Deal. Well, her Green New Deal is0.73
01:11:15.480insanity. I mean, they actually assessed the cost of what she was talking about. And she was talking
01:11:18.940about a jobs guarantee for everybody. And she was talking about getting rid of jets. And she was
01:11:21.920talking about killing all the cows. And it was assessed by the Competitive Energy Institute at
01:11:25.960$93 trillion over 10 years. OK, the entire GDP of the United States is not $93 trillion over 10
01:11:32.740years. So that's that's just patently insane. But so are you saying it's kind of jumping the gun
01:11:36.340then? It's assuming that, you know, technology is not at that point yet. Well, what I'm saying
01:11:41.380is that you have to actually factor in the downside risk
01:20:32.740I mean, that's pretty much how it goes
01:20:34.220in terms of like the privilege hierarchy.
01:20:35.680They just reversed that and called the privilege hierarchy.
01:20:37.300So that really is not saying anything super controversial.
01:20:39.020They would say that in terms of privilege, those people at the bottom that I'm putting there are actually at the top because they're the most privileged people in America.
01:20:45.160And the people at the bottom right now are transgender.0.87
01:20:47.000The least privileged people are transgenders.1.00
01:25:21.080I mean, you know, who used to agree with this was Elizabeth Warren in 2003.
01:25:24.000She wrote a book called The Two Income Trap.0.98
01:25:25.620And in that book, Elizabeth Warren said that one of the big problems in America is that if you're stuck in a crap school district and you can't move your kid, you're stuck in a crap school district and you can't move your kid.0.98
01:25:33.480And you can't afford to move to the suburbs because you're poor.0.99
01:25:36.920Well, the answer would be that we give you some sort of school voucher so you can move your kid out of the crap school and into a better school.0.97
01:25:43.820But wouldn't everybody then just move their kid out of the crap school into the better school?0.99
01:25:47.000And then wouldn't you just have crap schools in the suburbs?0.99
01:25:49.120Well, no, because the question is what made the crap school a crap school?0.99
01:25:53.040Was it was the crap school a crap school because the parents' population was not doing enough, in which case it won't matter where you move your kids?0.98
01:25:59.840Or was the crap school a crap school, this is the supposition, because the teachers were not as good, because it was underfunded, because it was not run well, because the administration was a problem, because the rules were set differently.0.97
01:26:29.040I mean, this is super important stuff.
01:26:31.120When you're talking about increasing opportunity for people, the fundamental thing that you can do is stop trapping them in systems that are failing.
01:26:38.180And this is why it drives me nuts when – I don't know if you've been watching what's been happening in New York right now with Bill de Blasio and the education system.
01:27:39.520If you're making above 60 grand in Denmark,
01:27:40.920you're paying like 60% of your money in taxes.
01:27:42.760In the United States, you really don't start paying heavy taxation until you make six figures.
01:27:47.280And then once you get up into the upper levels, you're paying like 50 percent of all the money that comes in.
01:27:51.240Now, to me, does that spell the rich somehow screwing the poor or does that sound more like the rich are footing nearly in the entire bill for everything?
01:27:59.260The tax burden in the United States is wildly disproportionately placed on people who are at the top of the income spectrum.
01:28:04.800I think that is wrong, and I do think that's wrong actually.
01:28:08.880But it certainly puts the lie to the idea that the rich aren't paying their fair share.
01:28:12.660I mean, I don't know how you're defining fair share, but when you pay 95% of all the net revenue to the government after you take out the benefits that you also receive from the government because the rich don't get any benefits.
01:28:21.360And if you're middle class, you do get some government benefits depending on the governmental programs you're taking advantage of.
01:28:26.400According to the American Enterprise Institute, I don't know what the fair share looks like if you're paying virtually all of the tax burden.
01:38:17.680I mean, this is – Rick Perry did not run a good campaign in 2012, but the one thing he said that I liked was he said, my job is to make Washington irrelevant in your lives.
01:38:32.700Because the truth is that that's really how life should work.
01:38:34.880You shouldn't care what some person 3,000 miles away is thinking about that morning or what he's tweeting about.
01:38:39.300I feel like England got that way with the queen partially, right?
01:38:42.040Yeah, she's pretty – I mean, she's powerless too.
01:38:44.040I mean, there's a prime minister obviously.
01:38:45.700Right, of course, but I'm just saying like they moved away from that model.
01:38:49.620Well, this is one of the problems in America.
01:38:51.620There's a case for a monarchy in America mainly for ceremonial purposes because the president has become a ceremonial monarch, and the president should not be a ceremonial monarch.
01:39:39.360He's like, he's got, like, there's been, like, probably five Category 5 hurricanes, and each time one comes out, he's like, we've never seen one.
01:45:08.720OK, now the other Democrats, it's a bit more dicey because if it's a referendum on Donald Trump, who is very off-putting versus Kamala Harris, who is radical and also off-putting, or Elizabeth Warren, who is radical and not quite as off-putting as Kamala Harris, but certainly pretty radical, then it becomes a lot more of a competitive race.
01:45:27.440All the Democrats – I've been saying this since the day Trump was elected.
01:45:30.520If Democrats want to win, all they have to do is one thing, not be crazy.
01:45:37.300They do a seven-hour climate change town hall in which they declare that they're going to stop you from eating meat and they're going to ban plastic straws.
01:45:44.000Like, is that your path to victory, guys?0.79
01:45:47.300Do they think that since Trump's path to success was going full – going fucking nuts, do you think that that – do you think that that's inspiring them?0.98
01:46:00.120Yo, we're going to fight fire with fire and go insane.0.97
01:54:31.440I have this reputation as this guy who's constantly brutalizing people, and all the exchanges of me on the internet are me being fairly cordial with somebody and them just not liking my answer very much.
01:55:34.980But my daughter is beginning, I think she's old enough, she's beginning to sort of get a sense that something is different about our household.
01:55:41.040So like the fact that we have 24-7 security.
02:01:09.920He has a perfect picture of millennial conservatism, a movement predicated on the belief that appearing correct is more importantly than actually saying things that are true.
02:01:18.020I've always thought of you as a factually-based debater.
02:01:47.060So let's forget that part, but the storm out.
02:01:49.280Right, so that interview, basically what happened is that I was booked for a book interview.
02:01:53.240The interviewer proceeded to ask me zero questions about the books and then do the routine where he was going to read my old tweets at me to suggest that I was a bad person.
02:02:00.240I actually stuck around on that interview for, I think, 16 and a half minutes.
02:02:02.980I was wondering why you stuck around for so long.
02:02:05.320I thought you gave him a lot more time.
02:02:06.580I mean, I gave the dude 16 and a half minutes.
02:02:08.920What you see is the BBC clipping the last minute and a half where I just say, like, I'm done.
02:02:13.640And honestly, I don't feel bad about walking out.
02:02:16.620My big mistake – so there were a couple of mistakes I made in that interview.
02:02:19.020The mistake that I made, number one, is I didn't know who was interviewing me.
02:02:21.620I literally had no idea who this guy was.
02:02:23.200And apparently his shtick is to be really adversarial and confrontational.
02:02:26.580So I assumed that he was being adversarial and confrontational because he was politically disagreeing with me, not because that was his shtick.
02:02:32.620And so I said that, and that was incorrect.
02:02:34.620And I immediately apologized for that on Twitter because you get it wrong, you get it wrong, right?
02:02:37.900And then the second thing that I did was I assumed that because I had no idea who he was, that he was not a person of prominence.
02:02:48.820I don't feel it's my obligation to stick around while somebody reads my old tweets at me and then refuses to allow me to explain them.
02:02:53.800I don't feel like it's my obligation to stick around an interview when somebody's sole goal is apparently to assault my character.
02:02:59.080And so me getting up, taking off a mic, and walking off, I fail to see how that amounts to quote-unquote storming out when confronted by arguments.
02:03:08.120That was me saying I'm not going to be insulted and derided and taken out of context repeatedly for nearly 20 minutes and just continue this indefinitely.
02:03:17.880So if you want to read it that way, listen.