Louder with Crowder - EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Jordan Peterson and the LATEST on the COVID Pandemic | Louder with Crowder

00:00:00.000 🎵 Outro Music 🎵 🎵 Outro Music 🎵

00:00:36.000 🎵 Outro Music 🎵 By the power of Crowder Shop, I have the power!

00:00:52.000 Ah!

00:00:52.000 Oh Dave, you're not wearing pants.

00:00:56.000 Tis true. 0.99

00:00:59.000 Where'd Dave get those cool threads?

00:01:02.000 Wouldn't you like to know?

00:01:04.000 It's a mystery.

00:01:05.000 But you can start your treasure hunt at CrowderShop.com.

00:01:10.000 I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, Browder Shop.

00:01:48.000 Mmm.

00:01:50.000 Half the moist in the palate.

00:01:51.000 That, I just realized, that is stale water.

00:01:54.000 Oh yeah, it is.

00:01:55.000 Tuesday morning, which for most people means uneventful.

00:02:00.000 Wednesday's hump day, Monday, is a horrible day.

00:02:02.000 Tuesday doesn't feel like anything.

00:02:04.000 But I'll tell you what it feels like today.

00:02:06.000 Saying hello to an old friend who we have not seen.

00:02:09.000 Now, full disclosure, I've spoken, of course, with our next guest behind the scenes, but a lot of you have been asking why hasn't he been here on the show.

00:02:17.000 Well, look, we'll talk about that with him.

00:02:19.000 Usually we've been doing guest segments.

00:02:20.000 I think this one warrants long-form sit-down because, well, first off, you're not going to get him to answer a question in anything other than You know, a novella.

00:02:32.000 Well thought out, though.

00:02:33.000 Very smart man.

00:02:35.000 We actually, I think this was the first show to really have him sort of stateside, because originally we wrote about him at livewithcrowder.com with the free speech laws from my homeland of Canada, and this guy really was.

00:02:47.000 Look, I think some people may not appreciate, and I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do this with him here because he'll get embarrassed, but the truth is, This man took a big risk and I want people to really appreciate.

00:03:02.000 The limb he stepped out on, the reason you know who he is right now is not because of Joe Rogan and not because of this show, but he was a public enemy in Canada.

00:03:12.000 Free speech doesn't exist in Canada.

00:03:14.000 And so now he's talked about a lot of other things and he's brilliant.

00:03:17.000 He's a professor.

00:03:18.000 But the whole reason he came to the forefront is because he was one of the few people in academia in a country where you are not allowed to go against groupthink.

00:03:29.000 And he took a stand at great risk to himself, and so I think that warrants, as his first time back here, doing a long-form interview, talking about everything.

00:03:36.000 The whole world is different, so I'm curious to see what he has to say, what's going on right now in his world, because we haven't spoken since the pandemic.

00:03:44.000 Yeah.

00:03:45.000 This is a totally different interview.

00:03:48.000 A whole new world.

00:03:49.000 A whole new man, a whole new world.

00:03:51.000 Let's get to it with Dr. Jordan Peterson.

00:03:59.000 Alright, here he is.

00:04:00.000 I mean, I can give him an introduction.

00:04:04.000 Uh, you know.

00:04:04.000 Does he need one?

00:04:05.000 Does he need one?

00:04:06.000 I mean, I can say doctor, because he'll make a whole big thing about it.

00:04:09.000 But, uh, I don't know if he's been on since this new book has been out, but, uh... You could say professor, but it's three syllables.

00:04:14.000 Well, you know, listen, you're asking a lot of me, sir, what with the sinus infection and the soft palate effect therein.

00:04:21.000 The new book is Beyond Order 12 More Rules for Life, so a lot of rules.

00:04:26.000 You follow him on the Twitter, Jordan B. Peterson.

00:04:29.000 Professor, thank you for being here, sir.

00:04:31.000 How are you?

00:04:34.000 I'm quite well at the moment, actually.

00:04:39.000 I'm so happy about that.

00:04:40.000 I can't believe it.

00:04:42.000 That's good.

00:04:42.000 Murray, I'm talking to you, and I'm looking forward to it.

00:04:46.000 You know I'm well, if that's the case.

00:04:47.000 I was going to say, yeah, I don't know, you must have had to rally for this.

00:04:52.000 So let me do my very best to shoot that down.

00:04:54.000 Do you think you're feeling so well because of all your... it wouldn't be because of all your rules now, would it, Professor?

00:05:00.000 Oh, you can't have too many rules, man.

00:05:03.000 24, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

00:05:05.000 Isn't that kind of funny, though, that you, and I would say myself, a lot of people who've sort of had run-ins with big tech, you're sort of seen as an anti, certainly an anti-authoritarian figure, I just have a general problem with authority, full stop, but then you really are a big believer in rules and order.

00:05:25.000 Is that more so personal rules and boundaries as opposed to something being enforced externally?

00:05:29.000 Do you think that's a big difference?

00:05:32.000 Yeah, well, I'm not interested so much in what people should and shouldn't do in some rural sense.

00:05:38.000 I'm more interested in trying to discover and discuss with people what principles we should live by, each of us as individuals, that would serve each of us and the collective best.

00:05:52.000 And I can't see why you wouldn't want that.

00:05:55.000 I mean, if you're bitter and cynical and resentful and you want things to go to hell, And I can understand that, and I understand how people get there, but I'm not really interested in stopping people from misbehaving because what they're doing is wrong.

00:06:09.000 It's that I'm interested in investigating what are the principles that help you live a life that justifies itself, and even more than that, you know, if you're fortunate.

00:06:22.000 And maybe it's because I'm not finger-wagging in some sense that people are willing to put up with the fact that I'm writing about rules.

00:06:29.000 And they're for me, too, right?

00:06:30.000 I'm not saying these are for other people.

00:06:32.000 And I'm also not saying that I can abide by them all the time.

00:06:36.000 No, there's no way to.

00:06:38.000 I mean, that's the only person who can abide by all the rules that are set is Jesus, and that was kind of the great irony of it.

00:06:44.000 It's like, yeah, you guys can't do this, only I can.

00:06:47.000 And then anyone else coming around... But let me ask you this, this is something, and this might be a bit of a smart-ass question, but, um, so you wrote the first book, and there's 12 rules.

00:06:54.000 What point did you go, s***, and you realized that you missed 12?

00:07:00.000 Oh, well, ha, I do have an answer for that. 0.89

00:07:03.000 That isn't what happened.

00:07:04.000 I wrote 43 rules.

00:07:06.000 Oh, all right.

00:07:07.000 Okay, so this is the original.

00:07:09.000 Exactly.

00:07:10.000 That's right.

00:07:11.000 I haven't thrust all my rules upon anyone yet.

00:07:13.000 So, well, I wrote an answer to a question on Quora.

00:07:17.000 I wrote like 50 answers.

00:07:18.000 I had a Quora fit there for a while and wrote a bunch of answers.

00:07:22.000 And some kid had written in saying, you know, what What principles help you live a meaningful life, let's say.

00:07:29.000 Right.

00:07:30.000 So I cranked out 43 rules, just very fast, you know.

00:07:34.000 And then that answer became very popular on Quora.

00:07:39.000 It was way more popular than any of my other answers.

00:07:42.000 And so then I talked to my first agent, Sally Harding, about a more popular book.

00:07:49.000 I wrote this book called Maps of Meaning, which is a hard book.

00:07:55.000 Though the audio version is probably more accessible.

00:07:57.000 And we were talking about how some of these ideas might be made more publicly accessible.

00:08:02.000 And I remembered this list of rules and the fact that it was popular.

00:08:05.000 And I thought, well, you know, it's been market tested already.

00:08:08.000 And I don't mean that in a cynical way.

00:08:10.000 You know, I mean, look, if you're going to write a book, a popular book, you want people to read it.

00:08:10.000 No.

00:08:16.000 Otherwise you're a fool. 0.99

00:08:18.000 And if you don't pay attention to what people are interested in, then you're not meeting your audience halfway. 1.00

00:08:22.000 Right.

00:08:24.000 That's how it came about.

00:08:25.000 And so I picked 12 that I kind of thought went together thematically, and that struck me as interesting and meaningful.

00:08:31.000 And I wrote the first book, and then, well, I did the same.

00:08:34.000 And then I grouped them.

00:08:36.000 Yeah.

00:08:37.000 Well, I think that one was an antidote to chaos, and one was a warning about the danger of too much order.

00:08:45.000 So that kind of covers the political landscape in some sense.

00:08:48.000 Yeah, it definitely is. I wonder too, you just touched on something, if that's why you have more,

00:08:51.000 you know, there's some people like yourself who have more staying power. And that's because,

00:08:55.000 like you said, you're not, you are meeting your audience halfway. But then on the flip side,

00:08:59.000 you have people who are just sort of, who are what I would consider trend chasers, right? They throw

00:09:02.000 bombs, they look at the trend, they throw something in there, some red meat, get people riled up.

00:09:06.000 But then once that trend goes away, they go away.

00:09:09.000 And we've always said, look, if we're talking about subjects that don't interest people or don't matter to people on this show, we're not really serving our audience.

00:09:15.000 But a perfect example might be last week, you know, the FBI, they were having to deal with the sex scandal of the Olympic gymnasts and not reporting this for 17 months and 40 more women having come forward being raped, you know.

00:09:26.000 And I use that to segue into something that I've wanted to talk about regarding the difference between field agents and corruption in our intelligence agencies for a long time.

00:09:35.000 But that just wasn't really an in, and how are you going to get people to go, long history of FBI and CIA corruption, and I'm not talking about insane false flag operations, I'm talking about things that have been determined in a court of law where people have already been tried and convicted that most people don't know about, but we said this is a perfect opportunity because now eyes are on the FBI's transgressions and kind of, you know, you feather it into what matters to people so that you buy yourself some leeway so that you can say, well, may I offer this up?

00:10:01.000 Perhaps this might be of interest.

00:10:03.000 And I noticed that you do that, and I think it's an important delineation between what people like you do, and certainly what I try and do, versus someone who's just, you know, Trump 2024.

00:10:13.000 Well, I'm trying constantly to talk about things that I think are true in some sense, regardless of time and place.

00:10:20.000 I mean, I'm not trying to make some claim that I've managed that, but look, the 12 Rules for Life, the first book, It hit the number 10 spot on the London Times bestseller list again this week.

00:10:32.000 It's four years later.

00:10:34.000 And so it's been perennially in the top 10 on Amazon.

00:10:37.000 And the reason for that, I think, is that I didn't bind it to anything specifically political that was topical at that moment.

00:10:47.000 And I didn't want to do that.

00:10:49.000 And I'm trying not to do that with my podcast as well.

00:10:53.000 And in terms of meeting the audience halfway, I mean, I really try to do that in my lectures, too, when I go on tour, when I went on tour.

00:11:01.000 I don't use notes, and part of the reason for that is that I'm looking at audience members all the time.

00:11:07.000 I always pick someone out and talk to them, and then I pick someone else out, and I'm talking to that person.

00:11:13.000 I'm not lecturing.

00:11:16.000 I'm not lecturing, and I'm meeting people You meet the whole audience if you concentrate on one person.

00:11:23.000 And that's much... well, that's working, and it's a good thing to do.

00:11:28.000 It's a dialogue that way, because the audience then informs you as well, right?

00:11:32.000 Right.

00:11:33.000 And you feel like you get inspiration from your... you know, it's funny, I don't use notes just because I can't write them.

00:11:39.000 I'm dyslexic, so it reads sans. 0.99

00:11:42.000 See, this is just a penis. 0.99

00:11:42.000 I don't know if you can see. 0.99

00:11:43.000 That's all I did on here.

00:11:44.000 There's nothing useful.

00:11:46.000 It's not a very good one, either, really.

00:11:48.000 Well, it's a self-portrait, thank you, Professor.

00:11:52.000 Yes, well, lots of people would agree with that.

00:11:54.000 Yeah, well, look, not the least of all my life.

00:11:57.000 Hey, speaking of things that you like and meeting people, we were just talking about this not long ago.

00:12:03.000 One of your guilty pleasures, I hope I'm not outing you, I think people will be thrilled to hear this.

00:12:07.000 It shouldn't be a surprise because you're Canadian, and I know you to have a sense of humor, but sometimes, you know, people see you as this more of a father figure.

00:12:14.000 I'm just going to come out.

00:12:15.000 Trailer Park Boys.

00:12:16.000 You've seen every episode, right?

00:12:18.000 Oh, I've seen every episode a number of times, yes.

00:12:22.000 Yeah, I find that.

00:12:25.000 I grew up in a working class community in Canada, in the north.

00:12:28.000 I mean, that's all Atlantic Canada humor, the Trailer Park Boys, but it's the same thing.

00:12:34.000 Yeah, I think those three characters are comic geniuses.

00:12:38.000 I really do.

00:12:38.000 I mean, it's filthy, and it's obscene.

00:12:42.000 It's way too much.

00:12:43.000 Yeah, it's inexcusable.

00:12:45.000 It's way too much.

00:12:46.000 And it reminds me of FUBAR, which is a Canadian movie, and it's about the same sort of people, except in the West.

00:12:53.000 It's even more deadly aimed at the sort of people that I grew up with and they were working class people and they they were smart and they were bonded to each other and they were witty and and Well, I'm trying to rationalize this.

00:13:06.000 I think it's funny.

00:13:07.000 I think they're funny. 1.00

00:13:09.000 The honky episode when the Bubbles character pulls out this damn puppet. 0.98

00:13:15.000 I mean, I think that's one of the funniest 30 minutes of television that's ever been produced. 0.99

00:13:19.000 It's really work of terrible, awful, unforgivable, obscene genius.

00:13:25.000 And so more power to them.

00:13:27.000 And yeah, I'm big fans.

00:13:28.000 I haven't seen that in years.

00:13:33.000 I don't know if you remember Anthony Hopkins' film Magic where he was sort of a serial killer through a ventriloquist dummy.

00:13:38.000 That's exactly it. They have a pretty good imitation too. 0.96

00:13:40.000 That was a, you know what? That was actually, and I, maybe perhaps I was reading into it too much.

00:13:44.000 I thought that was a send up of, I don't know if you remember Anthony Hopkins, a film Magic, where he was sort

00:13:48.000 of a serial killer through a ventriloquist dummy.

00:13:50.000 And maybe they hadn't made that connection, but every time, you know, someone is sort of a cinephile, and I've seen,

00:13:56.000 the only other person who I know who's seen more is Dave, who's not here right now.

00:14:00.000 I always go, oh, wait, maybe there's a connection there.

00:14:02.000 And you know what?

00:14:03.000 I might want to tell you – maybe let me turn you on to a show.

00:14:05.000 It's not a Canadian show, but it's – you will see, you can just hear the Canadian accent.

00:14:10.000 It's all shot in Vancouver, even though it's set in Seattle.

00:14:12.000 It's called Louder Milk, and it's about a 12-step program.

00:14:15.000 Ron Livingston heads up a 12-step sort of Alcoholics Anonymous program.

00:14:20.000 Um, in Seattle, he's a former music critic, and I don't want to give it away, but I will say Brian Regan, who's just known not only as a comedian, but an ultra clean, kind of goofy dad-like comedian, but really well respected, deserves an Emmy.

00:14:32.000 He will rip your heart out.

00:14:34.000 Louder Milk. 0.99

00:14:35.000 Louder Milk.

00:14:36.000 Yeah, there's three seasons, and I hope to God they make a fourth, but it is a really, really good show, and there is definitely a Canadian bent there, just because, you know, It absorbs.

00:14:45.000 It's a character in and of itself.

00:14:46.000 Even though it's set in Seattle, we all know what it's like out there in Western Canada.

00:14:49.000 I kind of only have heard tales, because I grew up in Quebec, where we're not really witty and bonded. 0.99

00:14:54.000 They're mostly just loud assholes. 0.99

00:14:57.000 And they speak French, too, which is really unforgivable. 1.00

00:15:00.000 It really is unforgivable.

00:15:01.000 In this day and age.

00:15:02.000 It's like, get on board, guys.

00:15:03.000 It's like, you know...

00:15:05.000 Join the rest of the world.

00:15:06.000 Oh, it absolutely, it absolutely, see I'm not even joking though when I say that.

00:15:10.000 People used to get furious when I would point to Quebec as an example of multiculturalism

00:15:14.000 versus the melting pot and the United States gone wrong and I would talk to Americans when

00:15:18.000 I lived in New York and I would say, do you realize you can just go 30 minutes north to

00:15:21.000 the border and you can go into a country with its own culture.

00:15:26.000 Different language.

00:15:27.000 They don't speak a word of your language.

00:15:28.000 You can't read a word of your language.

00:15:30.000 They don't watch the same shows.

00:15:32.000 They don't know your same celebrities.

00:15:33.000 And they are a part of an English country known as Canada.

00:15:37.000 But you will have gone to Quebec and you won't know that it's Canada.

00:15:40.000 And by the way, they have a nationally representative party whose only interest is to separate from Canada.

00:15:46.000 I said, this is part of the political—and these were a conquered people who the English said, you know what, all right, we'll let you have this, and we go through the plains of Abraham.

00:15:53.000 And I tell Americans, I go, you just don't know.

00:15:54.000 That's why you say, okay, look, French folk, time for you to feather in Canada's English. 0.99

00:16:00.000 And then you have the referendums to—it'd be like, it'd be like Texas separating because they wanted to just be Spanish.

00:16:05.000 It doesn't make any sense. 0.98

00:16:07.000 Americans aren't understanding this, but Quebec's a silly place. 0.99

00:16:09.000 That's my point. 0.97

00:16:11.000 I should say, in Quebec's defense, that Montreal is a great city.

00:16:17.000 If people in the U.S.

00:16:18.000 want a quick taste of Europe, Montreal is a great place.

00:16:23.000 It's truly one of the world's great cities.

00:16:25.000 It really is.

00:16:26.000 I lived there for like eight years.

00:16:26.000 I love Montreal.

00:16:29.000 It's such a great city.

00:16:30.000 It's so fun.

00:16:31.000 It's got such a dynamic culture.

00:16:33.000 The street life is amazing.

00:16:35.000 It's really, really safe.

00:16:36.000 Like, you could wander around anywhere at three in the morning.

00:16:39.000 It's no problem.

00:16:39.000 It's beautiful.

00:16:40.000 Well, I can't.

00:16:41.000 I was mugged twice.

00:16:43.000 In Montreal?

00:16:44.000 Yeah.

00:16:45.000 I was mugged over a set of Interpol tickets by a small Haitian. 1.00

00:16:48.000 Incidental.

00:16:49.000 I only say it because the story was one that I've told on air.

00:16:52.000 Yeah.

00:16:53.000 I was mugged for Interpol tickets.

00:16:56.000 He was a scalper anyway.

00:16:57.000 Mugged me for the money for the Interpol tickets.

00:16:58.000 And anyway, the whole point is... That's really humiliating.

00:17:01.000 That's really humiliating.

00:17:03.000 Especially because he was small and it was Montreal.

00:17:05.000 It's like, how did you manage that?

00:17:07.000 And twice!

00:17:08.000 Do you know how he got away?

00:17:09.000 He screamed, I swear to you, this is true, he screamed out that I was racist and I stopped chasing him.

00:17:20.000 That's good, that should have happened to you, that absolutely should have happened to you.

00:17:23.000 This is the true story, okay?

00:17:25.000 You can see God up in the clouds for you.

00:17:28.000 Yeah, because I was going, why isn't anyone stopping him?

00:17:30.000 I was going to see Interpol that night with my friend Carl.

00:17:33.000 It was a band, sort of an indie rock band.

00:17:34.000 I was going to see them at, I believe it was Metropolis or Spectrum, and I was going to what I knew was a scalper.

00:17:41.000 Well, he didn't have Interpol tickets, but another guy who, you know, he presented himself as a scalper.

00:17:45.000 Turns out, not all... I don't know if you know this, you have to be choosy with your scalpers.

00:17:50.000 They're not all... Oh, you mean not all scalpers are honest? 0.93

00:17:52.000 Not all legitimate.

00:17:54.000 Isn't that something?

00:17:55.000 Though, ironically, you'll hear at the end of this tale, it was all redeemed through an honest scalper.

00:17:59.000 So this small Haitian man says, oh, you want Interpol tickets? 0.95

00:18:02.000 I'm not even going to try and do his accent because people get all mad.

00:18:04.000 But rest assured he had one.

00:18:06.000 Sounds like most people who are Haitian immigrants in Montreal.

00:18:09.000 And he said, I got Interpol tickets.

00:18:11.000 And I said, OK.

00:18:12.000 He gave me the price.

00:18:13.000 And I said, it seems a little steep, but OK.

00:18:15.000 So he goes to, I can't remember which hotel.

00:18:17.000 I just remember it wasn't the Queen Elizabeth.

00:18:18.000 It wasn't a hotel I was familiar with.

00:18:19.000 He goes, I got to go pick them up at the front desk.

00:18:21.000 Right away, I'm thinking, this is weird.

00:18:22.000 He just said he has Interpol tickets.

00:18:24.000 Why would he go to this hotel front desk?

00:18:26.000 So he goes there, and then he goes into the restroom.

00:18:28.000 again should have given me a red flag. I'm 16 years old, mind you.

00:18:31.000 Uh, okay, well that's a bit more... Yeah, yeah, 16 years old and he comes out

00:18:37.000 and then he has, uh, I see him putting, stuffing what's like toilet paper in this

00:18:41.000 envelope and he goes, all right, here are the tickets, give me the money.

00:18:44.000 And I said, uh, no, that's not, those aren't tickets.

00:18:47.000 He said, what do you mean?

00:18:48.000 I said, those are toilet paper.

00:18:50.000 Those are toilet paper envelopes.

00:18:51.000 And he goes, how do you know that?

00:18:53.000 I said, well, I saw you put toilet paper in there.

00:18:55.000 And he goes like, man, he walks out.

00:18:58.000 So I go, OK.

00:18:59.000 He walks out the revolving door.

00:19:00.000 And then when I walk, I was waiting for him.

00:19:01.000 He's like, no, no, you mistook it.

00:19:04.000 These are the tickets.

00:19:04.000 And he shows what actually looks like tickets at this point.

00:19:07.000 I said, oh, OK.

00:19:08.000 So then I hold my money, but I see that he's covering up the name on the ticket.

00:19:12.000 And I said, let me see the ticket.

00:19:13.000 And he goes, whoa, whoa, you don't trust me?

00:19:14.000 You don't trust me?

00:19:16.000 Making his accusations.

00:19:17.000 And I said, no, no, no, just show me the ticket.

00:19:18.000 He grabs the money from my hand.

00:19:21.000 But the good thing is, he ripped the $20 bills in half, so it was of no value to him.

00:19:26.000 So I find solace in that.

00:19:27.000 Then he runs out in the middle of the street, and I'm going, hey, hey, that guy just took my money!

00:19:31.000 And I'm at this point 6'1", 6'2", but very skinny.

00:19:34.000 But this guy is all of 5'3".

00:19:37.000 And he's running through the street, and I go, why isn't anyone doing it?

00:19:41.000 French?

00:19:41.000 Of course, no.

00:19:42.000 Tabarnak!

00:19:42.000 Hey, ferme ta gueule!

00:19:43.000 They're not friendly at all.

00:19:44.000 And this guy just goes, what?

00:19:45.000 You're saying it because I'm black? 0.55

00:19:46.000 You're racist? 0.96

00:19:47.000 And I stop him like, what?

00:19:49.000 No!

00:19:50.000 And he just ran into an alleyway.

00:19:52.000 And I thought, well, now the alleyway has him now.

00:19:55.000 I'm 16 and it's an alleyway.

00:19:57.000 And then finally I told the story to another scalper who was right outside the Interpol concert.

00:20:01.000 At that point, the show had already started.

00:20:03.000 And he said, man, there are some really rough people out there here.

00:20:07.000 And he gave me the tickets because they were of no worth at that point.

00:20:11.000 The show had already started.

00:20:11.000 He gave me Interpol tickets, which was very nice.

00:20:14.000 But then he said, don't trust the Haitians. 0.96

00:20:15.000 And I said, you're racist. 0.98

00:20:17.000 So it could have been full. 0.99

00:20:18.000 You met the devil scalper and the saint scalper the same night.

00:20:22.000 Right.

00:20:22.000 Yeah, so the point is, not as safe as you make it out to be.

00:20:26.000 But yes, Montreal is a wonderful city to visit.

00:20:29.000 I don't know that I would ever want to live there again with the taxes, and I don't know that I could raise kids there at this point.

00:20:36.000 I mean... I loved living there.

00:20:37.000 I loved living there, so... Our Times Square is Club Supersex in Montreal. 0.99

00:20:41.000 When I tell people that, I go, our Santa Claus parade is going back giant, flashing, neon, purple tits. 1.00

00:20:47.000 It's not like there's a red light district. 0.95

00:20:49.000 It's the whole city.

00:20:50.000 And Americans are like, you're exaggerating. 0.62

00:20:51.000 I go, just go visit.

00:20:52.000 But, unbelievable restaurants, a lot of fun.

00:20:55.000 So, Trailer Park, boys, okay.

00:20:57.000 This is something that might surprise quite a few people.

00:21:00.000 A lot has changed since we last spoke.

00:21:02.000 I want to talk with you about this because I know you're eating some jerky right now, right?

00:21:06.000 Am I seeing that?

00:21:07.000 Lamb?

00:21:09.000 It's beef with lamb fat.

00:21:09.000 Uh, yes.

00:21:11.000 It's beef with lamb fat.

00:21:12.000 Well, I know you've talked about, you know, sort of the carnivore diet.

00:21:15.000 I accidentally went on the carnivore diet after my surgery recently.

00:21:19.000 For, like, hardline, accidentally, nothing but red meat for about five weeks.

00:21:24.000 What happened?

00:21:25.000 Well, I had surgery and then I gained 30 pounds in a week and a half.

00:21:31.000 Now, I didn't know at that time that it was, I had a gallon and a half of fluid in my, well, for the Canadians out there, five and a half liters of fluid in my thoracic cavity.

00:21:40.000 So I said, oh, I'm getting, I'm really gaining weight.

00:21:43.000 I mean, I looked like I was, you know, looked like Macaulay Culkin after he found out he was allergic to bees and my girl.

00:21:47.000 And I said I should cut out sweets.

00:21:51.000 Well, that didn't do anything.

00:21:52.000 I still kept gaining weight because, you know, I didn't know what was going on, internal bleeding and such.

00:21:55.000 I said, well, you know, now I'll just cut out carbs.

00:21:57.000 And it didn't work.

00:21:58.000 But at that point, once I had been drained, you know, surgically, I had already gotten into that rhythm, and I was kind of by myself after five days in the ICU to recover.

00:22:08.000 And I kind of enjoy grilling.

00:22:09.000 It's something I've always done.

00:22:10.000 You know, my wife will make the sides if we do a grill night, and then I'll make the meat. 1.00

00:22:14.000 But at this point, my wife was across the country preparing to have twins, because we didn't foresee these complications, so I'm recovering by myself, and I'm grilling like a porterhouse, and I'm saying, I don't want to learn how to make the sides, that's my wife's thing.

00:22:28.000 So it was born out of laziness. 0.99

00:22:30.000 You are a sexist, you're a sexist person, and lazy too. 1.00

00:22:33.000 Yes, yes! 1.00

00:22:34.000 And you're a carnivore, you're carnivorous. 1.00

00:22:36.000 You're really a bad person. 1.00

00:22:37.000 I am an awful human being. 1.00

00:22:39.000 Sounds like it. 0.97

00:22:40.000 Yes, yes.

00:22:40.000 Did you lose weight when you started eating just meat?

00:22:43.000 Or was that still, like, were you still being affected by the surgery?

00:22:46.000 No, so, so I lost, I lost, uh, like the 30 pounds in about six days because they actually drew weight.

00:22:52.000 So I went in about 230 and I came out about 232.

00:22:55.000 Um, so yeah, but it was, I tell you what, I didn't feel bad.

00:22:58.000 Uh, I was surprised that there was just sort of born out of, All right.

00:23:02.000 At this point, I was doing one meal a day, and I've just always preferred red meat.

00:23:07.000 I'm not saying that I'm a doctor.

00:23:08.000 I wouldn't advocate it necessarily to anyone, but it was accidental, and it was a fun little experiment.

00:23:12.000 In other words, there were no side effects.

00:23:15.000 Sometimes people are like, oh, I go through this.

00:23:17.000 I was like, I think it could be a blood type thing.

00:23:19.000 Because when I was a kid, my mom used to call me her carnivore. 0.64

00:23:22.000 I'd go to McDonald's, and I'd say, could I not get the fries?

00:23:24.000 Just double up on the burger patties.

00:23:26.000 And she'd lock me in a closet. 0.99

00:23:30.000 That accounts for some of your weird personal characteristics, I guess.

00:23:34.000 Well, I've been eating basically nothing but meat.

00:23:38.000 I don't like to talk about this much because I'm not a dietitian and it's really weird.

00:23:41.000 In some ways, I just hate this diet because I love to cook and I love to go out to restaurants.

00:23:45.000 It's very restrictive.

00:23:46.000 But when I went on this diet to begin with, because of autoimmune issues, as far as I could tell, I lost like 50 pounds in six months.

00:23:57.000 It was ridiculous.

00:23:59.000 Really that much overweight. 0.52

00:24:01.000 I'm about 6'2", but like eight pounds a month.

00:24:05.000 It was unbelievable.

00:24:06.000 I just couldn't believe it.

00:24:08.000 And that is permanent.

00:24:09.000 I've never gained the weight back.

00:24:11.000 And so now I'm down to the same weight I was when I was like 26.

00:24:13.000 I've never seen you overweight, though.

00:24:17.000 Well, even back, that was in 2015.

00:24:19.000 I was up to about 2'12", and I'm at 165 now.

00:24:20.000 I was up to about 212 and I'm at 165 now.

00:24:24.000 You know, I wasn't in great shape, but I was tall enough to carry it, but

00:24:33.000 losing that much weight was quite the, it was a real shock to me, a conceptual shock.

00:24:37.000 I couldn't believe it.

00:24:39.000 I still can't believe it.

00:24:40.000 For me, it was different gaining the weight so quickly.

00:24:41.000 I mean, I think this is something people realize psychologically, and I would imagine it happens to a varying degree, but long term, you know, right now we've sort of talked, I've talked about this on the show to kind of go back to something a little, a little more philosophical.

00:24:52.000 You know, the fat pride movement, for example, and this sort of ties in obviously with as 0.87

00:24:57.000 we're struggling with an international pandemic and the signal being as preventative, you

00:25:01.000 know, comorbidity is an obesity, but we're not allowed to talk about it because we've

00:25:05.000 declared that it's beautiful.

00:25:08.000 You know, when I gained that much weight very quickly, I felt it on my joints.

00:25:12.000 Now, keep in mind, this was obviously fluid in my thoracic cavity was basically, you know, medically induced.

00:25:17.000 It was a complication.

00:25:18.000 But I felt like a very different person.

00:25:20.000 And it was amazing how much it also affected my psyche.

00:25:23.000 And I've got to imagine that even if that's happening over the course of a long period of time, sure, physiologically, you adjust more, you know, the connective tissue, but it's got to have an effect on your mental state.

00:25:33.000 And like you've talked about even losing the weight.

00:25:36.000 I mean, right now, this is right... Have we bound ourselves in such a knot to kind of go here with, to make COVID and the fat... And we need to delineate.

00:25:44.000 People who are overweight and want to lose weight, and that's an entirely different situation than someone saying, you will declare me beautiful and healthy at the same time that we're told to follow science.

00:25:56.000 Well, one of the things I've really been thinking about lately, and I'm going to write the next book that I'm going to write about this, I think, at least in part, is that It seems to me that if we don't have a delineated space, conceptually and socially, for the sacred and the religious, and that it's put in its proper relationship to the other things that we're concerned about, then what happens is not that we become pure rationalists, as people like Dawkins and Harris, for example, might hope, but that

00:26:33.000 Much that should never be religious instantly becomes contaminated with it.

00:26:38.000 Right.

00:26:38.000 And so, an issue like body size, relative obesity, starts to take on this intensely moral element.

00:26:49.000 And the people who are pushing hard against shaming someone if they're fat, they have their point, but it shouldn't be a moral issue to begin with.

00:27:01.000 If you're overweight, it's not because you're a bad person.

00:27:05.000 There's all sorts of reasons that you might be overweight, and we should be able to have a discussion about that without it becoming moral, and we can't, and part of the reason for that is, well, we don't know what's sacred and what isn't, and we don't even know that some things have to be, and we certainly don't know what things should be, and so everything in our political landscape is becoming contaminated, as far as I can tell, with What are essentially religious concerns, and I mean that psychologically, not theologically.

00:27:33.000 Yeah.

00:27:34.000 So, and that's not good.

00:27:35.000 It's very bad.

00:27:37.000 It also means that we're going to be more tempted to elevate our leaders, our political leaders, into spaces of treatment that should be reserved for the sacred, and that's not a good thing either.

00:27:51.000 I mean, politicians are basically administrators, and that's the proper sense.

00:27:56.000 That's the proper conception.

00:27:58.000 Right.

00:27:58.000 Yeah, as opposed to leaders who are really almost executive decision makers.

00:28:02.000 That's not necessarily what they're supposed to be empowered to do.

00:28:05.000 Well, they're not kings!

00:28:06.000 No.

00:28:07.000 They're not kings.

00:28:07.000 I mean, one of the weaknesses, I think, of the American political system, which I admire greatly, is that it's not a monarchy.

00:28:14.000 It's not a constitutional monarchy.

00:28:16.000 And I think the advantage to a constitutional monarchy is that you have someone carry the weight of the symbolism of the state.

00:28:24.000 And so, because you see this, and you really see this in the US, And you see it manifest itself in celebrity culture, too.

00:28:30.000 It's very hard for Americans not to turn the president and his family into something like the royal family.

00:28:37.000 And Americans place a tremendous amount of attention on the first family.

00:28:42.000 It's very foreign to Canadians, because we never do that in Canada for one reason or another.

00:28:46.000 But, you know, your president has to carry all that symbolic weight, and that's not good.

00:28:52.000 I think it's a problem.

00:28:54.000 It's a stark contrast.

00:28:55.000 You know, we have assassination attempts in Canada.

00:28:57.000 They have successful pyings of the Prime Minister, where they will get pied in the face.

00:29:02.000 And that has happened many times.

00:29:04.000 Now I tell Americans that, they go, you mean like your president? I go, yes, like our president.

00:29:08.000 They go, like what? Like a Boston cream pie.

00:29:10.000 Right in the face. On a podium.

00:29:12.000 On national television. It has happened multiple times.

00:29:14.000 They go, you can't be serious.

00:29:16.000 I say, yes I am.

00:29:18.000 And I had someone on this show, it's interesting that you bring up sort of discussing

00:29:23.000 I don't remember who it was, and so please, if this person remembers, I don't want to miss giving them credit, or maybe they were quoting a philosopher, said, you know, the one thing that people sort of fail to realize about the monarchy is, unlike pure democracy, at least in the sense with the monarchy or royal family, they had some kind of attachment to To their legacy and wanting to be remembered fondly wanting to be remembered Well, because really there wouldn't be this capability of passing the buck that you voted for this.

00:29:51.000 This is a democracy.

00:29:52.000 So some in some ways they were actually More beholden to some kind of at least self-governing Moral moral compass moral guidance code of ethics.

00:30:03.000 He said that's one of the sort of the great attributes that people often Miss out on, I thought, very introspectively on the monarchy.

00:30:11.000 The worst part, the fruity hats.

00:30:15.000 You're not a fan of the hats?

00:30:17.000 Not a fan of the hats.

00:30:18.000 Yeah, but I'm just, the first part was true.

00:30:20.000 The second part, that was just my editorializing.

00:30:22.000 But it is interesting, though, too.

00:30:23.000 I mean, it is true.

00:30:24.000 It's given to us a king.

00:30:25.000 This is as old as time.

00:30:26.000 I mean, this is really one of the original sins of the Bible.

00:30:29.000 And one thing, going back to what you're talking about, sort of not keeping our sacred institutions separate, I see a lot, when I grew up, Not even noticing that we actually need a space for the sacred, and we need to figure out what that is.

00:30:42.000 It isn't optional, and this is one of the problems I have with the atheist-rationalist types.

00:30:46.000 The mistake they're making, I believe, is that they treat religion as if it's a set of propositions about the nature of reality, like a scientific theory.

00:30:56.000 And religious people make a huge mistake because they react to the scientific criticisms also as if that's the case.

00:31:03.000 But the religious is... This has nothing to do with an argument for or against the existence of God, by the way.

00:31:07.000 That's a separate issue.

00:31:09.000 Right.

00:31:10.000 It's that the religious covers all sorts of elements of experience that aren't propositionalized.

00:31:17.000 They're not statements about the structure of reality.

00:31:19.000 So, architecture has a religious element.

00:31:22.000 You certainly see that in the cathedrals.

00:31:24.000 Music.

00:31:27.000 Ritual.

00:31:28.000 Yeah.

00:31:30.000 All of that.

00:31:32.000 It's more in the domain of the arts, let's say.

00:31:34.000 So that's technically speaking.

00:31:37.000 But then also within the domain of human experience.

00:31:40.000 So we all have the capacity to experience awe, for example.

00:31:44.000 And we can experience that to a greater or lesser degree.

00:31:47.000 And I would say The more profound the experience of awe, the more it shades into what's always been described in religious terms.

00:31:55.000 And so you can say, well, we'll dispense with religion, but, well, what about the experience of awe?

00:32:01.000 That's not a proposition.

00:32:02.000 It's not an argument.

00:32:03.000 It's something that happens to you.

00:32:04.000 And it takes you unaware, right?

00:32:07.000 You don't necessarily expect it to happen, although sometimes you'll seek it out.

00:32:11.000 And you Experience awe when you're in the face.

00:32:14.000 And it seems to me that this is the case.

00:32:16.000 You experience awe when you're faced by something that calls you.

00:32:21.000 It's beyond you.

00:32:21.000 It's greater than you.

00:32:23.000 So you see that, and you experience that.

00:32:25.000 But then it also calls to you, in some sense, to be better than you are.

00:32:29.000 And that seems to be an intrinsic part of the experience.

00:32:33.000 And there's no just rationally dispensing with that, atheist or not.

00:32:38.000 You can experience this.

00:32:39.000 I think you experience it when you look up at the night sky, if you're somewhere extraordinarily dark.

00:32:44.000 And maybe it's a problem that modern people often don't have that experience now.

00:32:51.000 So the argument I'm formulating, I suppose, like I said, this is part of the next book I'm planning to write, is that we need to have a really serious conversation about The psychological reality of the religious, and how it exists in relationship to, let's say, the political or the ideological.

00:33:09.000 Because if that's all mangled together, incautiously...

00:33:12.000 All sorts of things happen that we don't want to have happen.

00:33:16.000 And that's the issue of rendering unto God what is God, and unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

00:33:20.000 And that's also the idea that church and state need to be separated, not only politically and constitutionally, say, but also conceptually.

00:33:30.000 Otherwise we get muddied up.

00:33:32.000 And so the atheists, the atheist types, what they haven't grappled with, as far as I can tell, is, well, There is a hierarchy of values.

00:33:41.000 Some values are lesser than others.

00:33:43.000 Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to pursue what you believe to be the most important.

00:33:48.000 So some things announce themselves as more important than other things.

00:33:52.000 There's a ranking of those.

00:33:54.000 The most important issues, they're in the domain of something approximating the religious.

00:34:00.000 And whenever you touch on them, you elicit from people religious experience, religious reactions.

00:34:05.000 And like I said, that has nothing to do with an argument for or against the existence of God.

00:34:09.000 It's a philosophical and conceptual issue.

00:34:11.000 And part of the problem that we're facing in our society is that we're muddying the lines.

00:34:17.000 And that means all sorts of things get inflated beyond their...

00:34:22.000 They're necessary importance, and it also means that the arguments aren't about what we're arguing about at all.

00:34:27.000 They're about something underneath that's hidden.

00:34:30.000 Yeah.

00:34:30.000 And that pops up everywhere.

00:34:32.000 I think no more apparent than actually, to sort of piggyback on that, but explain a little bit of a difference in where I was raised.

00:34:38.000 I was on YouTube in 2006, right, and then 2009 doing every week, and there were no conservatives,

00:34:43.000 there were no real Christians, no one of significant note, not like today, like yourself or other 1.00

00:34:49.000 even Christian and political channels out there, self-help, whatever we wanted, however

00:34:54.000 we want to describe them.

00:34:55.000 It was the edgy atheist territory, right? 0.99

00:34:57.000 It was you were an atheist or bust. 1.00

00:34:59.000 And I watched them sort of always trying to attack Christians, and I wouldn't say in a

00:35:05.000 way that's completely unfounded with, well, how do you reconcile your religion in the

00:35:09.000 face of this scientific data?

00:35:11.000 You know, that's what they would often be arguing, or the evolution argument was very

00:35:14.000 big back then.

00:35:15.000 Whereas now, I see it on the flip side, where especially in this sort of era of COVID, where, like you're talking about, in muddying the lines, sometimes science has tried to insert itself and almost replace religion.

00:35:28.000 And people, not necessarily science itself, but people have tried to turn to science as a religion for, for example, things that are unexplainable sometimes.

00:35:37.000 Well, the other problem that comes up there, as far as I can tell, and Sam Harris has tried to address this, although I don't think he's done it successfully, is that we're always faced with the problem of perception and action.

00:35:52.000 We have to see the world, we have to hear the world, we have to interact with the world through our senses, and we have to act.

00:35:58.000 None of that's optional.

00:36:01.000 And even to perceive something, you have to Select what's important and what isn't.

00:36:05.000 So if you listen to someone in a crowded room, you focus in on their speech and not on the speech of the people in the background.

00:36:13.000 Right.

00:36:13.000 And so you prioritize that person's speech in the hierarchy of value that guides your perception.

00:36:21.000 Well, so you're stuck with existing inside a system of value.

00:36:26.000 There's no way out of that.

00:36:29.000 Well, it isn't obvious at all that science can provide us with guides as to what constitutes

00:36:36.000 the appropriate values.

00:36:37.000 And it's not obvious to scientists.

00:36:39.000 In fact, I would say that science in some sense was designed so that that was something

00:36:43.000 it didn't even try to do.

00:36:45.000 Right.

00:36:46.000 Because it's trying to present an objective viewpoint, devoid of, to the degree that it's

00:36:50.000 possible, devoid of a priori value judgments.

00:36:53.000 But then you have this whole domain of, well, we need to make judgments of value.

00:36:56.000 Well, okay.

00:36:58.000 And when I point out, for example, that there are things that call to you experientially that are outside of rationality, I would say to the atheists, well, why don't you look at the science of religious experience, let's say, or that domain, and try to account for that from within your particular perspective.

00:37:19.000 If you criticize the religious people for not following the science, what are you going to do with this fact that human beings are wired, for example, Right.

00:37:28.000 admire and to imitate that which they Which they find calls them to a greater self, right?

00:37:36.000 That's the the instinct for imitation. And so what is it?

00:37:39.000 We're imitating and and why do we imitate that particular value? And so that the whole that

00:37:46.000 Well, that's a domain of unexplored mystery that has to be taken seriously

00:37:52.000 This isn't a matter of mere rationality, by no means.

00:37:55.000 And I think you make a great point about the hierarchy of values, and so you end up looking toward a messianic figure.

00:38:00.000 I mean, this is kind of what was supposed to be beautiful to me about the scientific process.

00:38:05.000 I hate the word the science now.

00:38:06.000 The science is the equivalent to—it is an equivalent to religion, just like Scientology in a certain way.

00:38:11.000 They put science in the name, the science, especially if someone says that with Fauci pillow in their office, which Governor Whitmer did at

00:38:18.000 my wonderful home state of Michigan.

00:38:19.000 Science, what was beautiful about it, is that it wasn't determined by consensus. Like you said, that was by design.

00:38:25.000 It was determined by truth.

00:38:26.000 It didn't necessitate, and as a matter of fact, it rejected people saying, this is the right science because of

00:38:32.000 consensus.

00:38:33.000 No, no. If the consensus is the world is flat, but it's wrong, the science says that you're wrong.

00:38:38.000 And now we're at this point where people don't even understand they're making these same religious judgments and saying, when we say trust the science, we're saying Fauci.

00:38:47.000 Well, hold on a second.

00:38:48.000 What about when Fauci goes against the World Health Organization?

00:38:51.000 What about when the World Health Organization doesn't actually correspond with the CDC?

00:38:55.000 What about the fact that you have other scientists at the time, for example, who've come out and said Fauci was wrong while he was talking about the fact that if you lived in a home with a parent who had AIDS, you could catch it from a cereal box?

00:39:06.000 This is all on the record.

00:39:07.000 You had all kinds of other scientists who are more qualified who said, this is not the guy.

00:39:11.000 And people, in not understanding that they've made this value judgment, have said, no, no, I've decided he's the guy.

00:39:18.000 And this is a real problem right now because You know, this kind of brings me, and I hope that this all makes sense, and you can just tell me if I'm stammering.

00:39:27.000 I've always had my litmus test for a conspiracy theory, when you have to kind of dismiss it, right?

00:39:31.000 You can't go through every conspiracy that someone brings up.

00:39:33.000 You'd have too much to debunk.

00:39:36.000 You do have to start with, how many people is they?

00:39:40.000 How many people is they in this conspiracy theory?

00:39:42.000 How many people have to be involved?

00:39:44.000 Okay, so one of the things you're suggesting implicitly is that one of the ways we establish value judgments Is through consensus.

00:39:51.000 But that isn't how we do science.

00:39:53.000 And fair enough, but it does point to some mechanism for the establishment of value.

00:39:57.000 So if you're trying to figure out what's important, what isn't, well, one way you can do that is to see what people in general think, and that might be a reasonable thing to do.

00:40:06.000 But, as you pointed out, that's not part of the scientific process.

00:40:10.000 Certainly not.

00:40:11.000 It'd be very weak if it was.

00:40:12.000 Right.

00:40:13.000 And now I guess my point that I was going to, sort of, in where we live, the domain, you know, big tech, this sort of sphere where we One point we're really grateful that there weren't gatekeepers the conspiracy now when we say hold on a second We're talking about Fauci the CDC and scientific guidelines that fly in the face of other scientific guidelines the they and this conspiracy is really only about five heads of organizations people have decided about five you're talking about five companies in

00:40:39.000 in about two or three international governing bodies who determine what is allowed to be spoken,

00:40:44.000 regardless of your scientific qualifications, for it to be considered proper or misinformation.

00:40:49.000 And by the way, they can change that a week from now, and they have, we've documented at least

00:40:54.000 20-something times. That, to me, is religious dogma.

00:40:58.000 I talked to John Anderson last week. He was the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia

00:41:04.000 a variety of years ago, a number of years ago.

00:41:06.000 He was Finance Minister when they ran something like five consecutive budget surpluses nationally.

00:41:14.000 That's a hell of an accomplishment for a Western democracy man.

00:41:17.000 So he's a very sensible guy.

00:41:19.000 And we were talking about what was happening in Australia underneath this, as a consequence of the COVID pandemic and various other causes.

00:41:30.000 His point, essentially, too, was that, well, because politicians, in some sense, are abdicating their responsibility, we're forcing medical people to make what are essentially political decisions.

00:41:40.000 And so, just as much of the dialogue that, much of the problems that beset us politically are a consequence of the bleeding over of religious concerns into the political domain, we now have bleeding over of the scientific concerns into the political domain, because politicians are using these experts as proxies for their own particular, for pushing forward their own particular ideological positions.

00:42:03.000 And that's a very dangerous misuse of science.

00:42:05.000 And so you see that in the climate change discussion too, where The insistence is, well, here's the problem, and this is the magnitude of the problem, and it's a moral issue, and you have to accept that, or you're not a good person, or you're ignorant, or you're malevolent, you're a bad person, fundamentally.

00:42:22.000 But part of the reason that that insistence is there is because there's a pack of solutions at hand in that person's imagination that are usually ideological in nature, and if the first proposition is true, then That the imposition of that particular set of solutions is a fait accompli, and so not examining that is extraordinarily dangerous, because if you have that ideological set of solutions, then you're going to be extraordinarily tempted to co-opt the force of the scientific endeavor as a justification for your political ambitions.

00:42:58.000 It's very difficult for people to separate those sorts of things out.

00:43:01.000 Like, I believe, personally, I believe this, is that It's very, very probable to me that massive solutions to the climate change problem

00:43:16.000 Global-scale solutions, even national-scale solutions, are going to cause far more trouble than the problem itself will cause.

00:43:23.000 I really believe that.

00:43:25.000 So... Yeah, no, I don't think there's any question about that.

00:43:25.000 Of course.

00:43:27.000 I mean, I learned that again when I was 20 years old and I went to the Cancun Climate Summit and I watched Ted Turner propose China's one-child policy to thunderous applause.

00:43:36.000 Everyone had flown into Cancun.

00:43:38.000 They hadn't heard of Skype.

00:43:40.000 I was there.

00:43:42.000 I was there, and I said, oh.

00:43:44.000 You know what?

00:43:44.000 For me, that's when I stopped trying to feign being a centrist.

00:43:48.000 I said, oh no.

00:43:50.000 Why did that strike you so hard, do you think?

00:43:52.000 How old were you?

00:43:53.000 And so why did that hit you so hard?

00:43:54.000 I would have been 21 or 22.

00:43:57.000 I just started at Fox News.

00:43:58.000 I think it struck me so hard because it was sort of funny.

00:44:01.000 You know, you always see the hypocrisy. 0.99

00:44:04.000 Everyone's a hypocrite. 0.99

00:44:05.000 I always say, don't focus on the hypocrisy. 0.99

00:44:06.000 Focus on whether it's genuine. 0.99

00:44:09.000 For example, Nancy Pelosi was a hypocrite when she went and had her air vortex blown out. 0.99

00:44:13.000 It's not that she's a hypocrite, it's that she doesn't believe about COVID, 0.99

00:44:16.000 what she tells her constituents, or she wouldn't be going out in public 0.98

00:44:19.000 and putting her head into a particle accelerator. 0.98

00:44:23.000 So the issue there is I had seen the hypocrisy, it was kind of funny.

00:44:26.000 They all really were all a bunch of climate scientists finding an excuse to vacation in Cancun.

00:44:31.000 This is when it was still the CODA protocol.

00:44:33.000 And then it hit me when about as bad of a policy as you can think of, right?

00:44:38.000 Almost a policy that would be considered a strawman if you were to say to an environmental, almost paganist, which is what I would determine some of these people to be now who worship at the Altar of Gaia, if you were to say, well, how far does it go?

00:44:50.000 Like China's one-child policy?

00:44:51.000 They would have said, oh, okay, strawman, red herring, and rightfully so! 1.00

00:44:55.000 I would think many of them would have agreed with it in their heart of hearts. 0.80

00:44:58.000 It's like, yeah, you know goddamn well there's too many people on this planet.

00:45:02.000 It's like they have to go somewhere or other. 0.98

00:45:03.000 We're a cancer on the surface of the planet.

00:45:05.000 Well, I guess I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and then hearing Ted Turner say it, and I thought, that's as extreme as it gets, and that's not a problem.

00:45:13.000 Okay, I'm out.

00:45:14.000 I'm out with any... I'm not on board with any... I'm not going to feign being a centrist here, because this guy wants to... Okay, so why did you think that was a bad idea?

00:45:20.000 So, like, why not?

00:45:21.000 Why not have fewer people?

00:45:23.000 And why wouldn't that be better for the planet?

00:45:25.000 What do you see as a danger in that?

00:45:27.000 Well, that comes from a fundamental worldview, where I don't believe that basically our role here is to be subservient to the planet.

00:45:35.000 Our role here is to go forth and subdue the planet.

00:45:38.000 And that we were created in the image of God, and not the wildebeest, not the beast of the field, nor the fish of the sea.

00:45:44.000 I think we need to be good stewards of the planet.

00:45:46.000 But the minute you start getting into the territory of eliminating human life for the betterment of the planet, to me, that's a pagan religion diametrically opposed to not only, obviously, the Christian worldview, but a pro-human worldview.

00:46:02.000 I just don't think you can do it.

00:46:05.000 You're killing babies, right? 0.99

00:46:08.000 We talk about taxes. 0.75

00:46:10.000 Who's going to enforce... Hey, hold on a second.

00:46:12.000 Is that child number two?

00:46:13.000 I mean, we know what happens in China.

00:46:15.000 I've made jokes about them.

00:46:20.000 That's a straightforward route to walk down.

00:46:22.000 It's like, yeah, you really want to cede that much power to your governmental structure?

00:46:25.000 Right.

00:46:26.000 And you're not worried about authoritarianism?

00:46:28.000 Are you sure of that?

00:46:29.000 And are you so sure that your motives for positing that Have nothing to do with anything but your saint-like devotion to the long-term well-being of the entire planet?

00:46:39.000 You're really sure of that?

00:46:41.000 And why?

00:46:41.000 Are you?

00:46:43.000 And how come you're not sure that maybe you're not a bit bitter and maybe you just don't like people that much because life is hard and you've suffered a lot and you're angry and this is a bit of revenge?

00:46:54.000 And like, if you don't think you have motivations like that, then I don't think you've thought very much because If you put someone in a vice president and make them suffer, they're going to produce all sorts of bitter ideas.

00:47:06.000 We have to watch out for that.

00:47:08.000 We have to be very careful about that.

00:47:10.000 Well, I think that's an interesting parallel, right?

00:47:12.000 The climate situation, because I've always said this.

00:47:14.000 Look, I'm not saying that there is no impact, of course, in humans and climate change.

00:47:18.000 And I'm not a scientist.

00:47:19.000 I don't work for NOAA, even though they get their predictions wrong every single year.

00:47:22.000 But my point is, I don't hold myself out to be an expert.

00:47:25.000 However, I can say it doesn't pass a sniff test when I read the entire 16-page Green New Deal and it says, And social justice and equity in there.

00:47:40.000 You just added everything into this bill.

00:47:42.000 This doesn't make sense, right?

00:47:44.000 I don't have to say, hey, here are my scientific qualifications to say, I don't believe that AOC or the UN have a shot in fixing it, getting China to play in line.

00:47:55.000 When you look at the policy proposals, Way, way down the trail.

00:47:59.000 Policy proposals.

00:48:00.000 No way they work, so it doesn't matter if your science leads to those policy proposals.

00:48:04.000 You can't enact it.

00:48:06.000 So let's try and be better and not throw our sh** out the window, you know, when we're... Well, you have to be a pretty damn incautious scientist to posit that the science necessarily elicits a given policy approach, because One of the things you learn as a practicing scientist is that you set up your experiment to test the micro details of your pet theory and it's highly probable that

00:48:30.000 The experimental results will turn out some other way than you predicted, even when you're trying to predict small things.

00:48:36.000 And so, to say we can go from the science to the policy as if there's no intervening mystery, and as if, as a scientist, you're 100% certain that the imposition of your policy is only going to produce the results you intended and nothing else, none of that's science.

00:48:52.000 Right. 0.93

00:48:53.000 A scientist with any sense would never, ever make a claim like that, having learned through painful laboratory experience that everything will go wrong with your stupid theory that you can possibly imagine, and then a whole bunch more, too. 0.98

00:49:05.000 So there isn't a direct line from the science to the policy. 0.82

00:49:09.000 When anyone ever tells you that, They're not speaking as a scientist, except perhaps in, you know, extraordinarily limited cases.

00:49:17.000 Moving from what the situation is to what we should do about it to bring a given future into being, that's an unbelievably difficult proposition.

00:49:27.000 And science can only solve that in micro-domains.

00:49:33.000 And so that's the problem with saying, well, you know, the science is settled.

00:49:36.000 It's like, yeah, why are you telling me that?

00:49:39.000 Like, why is it so important for you that I believe that?

00:49:43.000 Oh, well, it's because I need to do these things.

00:49:45.000 It's like, yeah, that's exactly why.

00:49:47.000 Because the science just sits there as a set of facts.

00:49:47.000 Right.

00:49:50.000 A set, in some sense, if it's properly done, as a set of disembodied facts.

00:49:54.000 Right.

00:49:55.000 Well, what do we do about that?

00:49:57.000 Well, that's a different question.

00:49:59.000 How do we decide what to do about it?

00:50:00.000 That's a different question, too.

00:50:02.000 Those aren't scientific questions, as far as I can tell.

00:50:06.000 I think we all see sort of the art world mirrored in science a little bit, and this goes right to sort of what you were talking about and how this is happening in real time.

00:50:13.000 If we want to know what will happen with the climate proposals long term, take a long-term version of what's been accelerated with COVID and the radical changes in proposals.

00:50:22.000 We didn't take that first step, at least not in a multitude of ways.

00:50:26.000 Okay, where are we?

00:50:27.000 What is actually happening?

00:50:29.000 We rushed to, you have to do this.

00:50:31.000 This is what has to be done.

00:50:32.000 This has to be the proposal.

00:50:33.000 Wait, hold on a second.

00:50:34.000 Put that back.

00:50:34.000 We're going to change it.

00:50:36.000 And as a comedian, I've talked about this with comedy.

00:50:38.000 I think there's Objectively funny.

00:50:41.000 Objectively funny. You put people there, maybe people don't find them, but like Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Norm MacDonald,

00:50:47.000 right?

00:50:47.000 You may not love them, but they're objectively funny.

00:50:49.000 Objectively unfunny, which is people who've been open-miking for 20 years and never made a dime.

00:50:54.000 They're obviously not very good. And then they're subjective.

00:50:56.000 This is with most art, right?

00:50:57.000 Some art will appeal to some people.

00:50:59.000 I think with science there is the objective facts, data.

00:51:02.000 At some point something is settled, otherwise we'd never get anything done.

00:51:06.000 For example, if I say the room temperature is 67 degrees right now, I know that it is, otherwise someone will be fired if it's not.

00:51:12.000 I'm a tyrant.

00:51:13.000 Now there's the objectively incorrect.

00:51:16.000 I know the room is not 63 degrees because I can look at the thermometer.

00:51:20.000 But then there's the subjective of how do we most effectively, let's say, get 267 degrees.

00:51:25.000 And it seems as though we've really just blurred that line.

00:51:29.000 in COVID with the objective and that whole subjective or in science yet to be determined

00:51:35.000 and we've altered everyone's lives because of it. And that's not to say that it's not a pandemic and

00:51:41.000 that it's not a virus that is particularly lethal to certain groups of people. But it seems like a

00:51:47.000 right now, especially in big tech, asking the why we've done what we've done and if this is the

00:51:52.000 correct course forward is really scary and a lot of people are afraid to speak out.

00:51:57.000 This is something you and I haven't had a chance to talk about because I haven't spoken in a while.

00:52:01.000 The world has changed dramatically.

00:52:03.000 Has it changed your view of where the world is going fundamentally than when we last spoke maybe a year and a half, two years ago?

00:52:14.000 Well, I have been shocked to see how As fragile our civil liberties have turned out to be across the West.

00:52:23.000 I mean, we basically, China put the first lockdowns into place.

00:52:29.000 And we mimicked, so we mimicked the actions of a totalitarian state instantly.

00:52:34.000 Now, you know, we didn't know what to do exactly in some sense.

00:52:38.000 So it's a complicated problem.

00:52:40.000 We didn't know the magnitude of the problem.

00:52:44.000 And it's hard to criticize people In some sense for jumping to conclusions prematurely.

00:52:54.000 Right.

00:52:55.000 But it's a long while later and the danger of using danger as an excuse for social control is making itself more and more manifest.

00:53:12.000 Yeah.

00:53:13.000 I've been very, very sick through most of this, so I haven't had a chance to think it through as much as I might have wanted to.

00:53:19.000 And I've been criticized for that, too, for, you know, not adding my voice to the general clamor.

00:53:24.000 I mean, I spoke again with, well, the leader of a new political party in Canada, Maxime Bernier, after I spoke with John Anderson about the COVID issue.

00:53:36.000 My sense is that with the proper policy move, essentially, I think, is something like Well, we've got the vaccines.

00:53:47.000 We think they're useful.

00:53:48.000 You can get one whenever you want.

00:53:50.000 Now.

00:53:51.000 And so, and lots of people have got them.

00:53:54.000 So, January 15th, everything's open.

00:53:59.000 And if you don't, if you're not vaccinated and you have your reasons for that, well, then we'll still do what we can to make sure the systems are in place to take care of you if you get sick, but It's time to get back to normal and I think an approach like that would actually convince a lot more people to get vaccinated because when you push and you push and you force and you mandate then

00:54:22.000 All you do is increase the skepticism, radically increase the skepticism of those who are skeptical of pushing and forcing and shoving and mandating.

00:54:31.000 And I just see that, I see all of that mandate, all of that force as a admission of the failure of policy.

00:54:40.000 Well, you didn't convince as many people as you think you should have that the vaccine was a good idea.

00:54:45.000 Well, whose fault is that? 1.00

00:54:46.000 Well, it's the anti-vaxxers, those sons of bitches. 1.00

00:54:49.000 No, no, no. 1.00

00:54:50.000 You didn't formulate your argument properly.

00:54:53.000 You didn't formulate your argument carefully. 1.00

00:54:56.000 It's not so clear that all those idiots, it's their problem, and they're just stupid and malevolent compared to you. 1.00

00:55:02.000 It's a policy failure, and you don't admit that, you won't admit that, and so now you think you're justified in the use of force. 1.00

00:55:11.000 And you're justifying that because, well, you're doing the right thing.

00:55:14.000 It's like, are you?

00:55:15.000 Are you doing the right thing, exactly?

00:55:17.000 I remember when the vaccine first came out.

00:55:20.000 It was unanimous, right? 1.00

00:55:21.000 The insult du jour was, oh, you dumb anti-vaxxers. 1.00

00:55:26.000 OK, Republicans will kill off their own base. 1.00

00:55:28.000 Problem solved, right? 0.99

00:55:30.000 I thought, great!

00:55:30.000 Darwin Awards.

00:55:32.000 If you believe that, then let them win it.

00:55:34.000 And then it became, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

00:55:36.000 You said you didn't care. 1.00

00:55:37.000 Let them kill themselves off. 0.74

00:55:38.000 That is proof positive that the argument they presented was that someone not being vaccinated didn't affect them. 0.98

00:55:43.000 And I don't even want to get into the whole main, anyway, people know where I line up on that, but I will say this.

00:55:47.000 Well, you see weird, you see very weird things happening in Australia right now.

00:55:51.000 And so, for example, there, and I hope I've got this right, but the police, they're using an app that Works on your cell phone, which so conveniently happens to know where you are, which perhaps turns out to not be such a good thing.

00:56:07.000 And maybe you have to send the police a photograph of yourself with something in the background that proves you are in fact right there.

00:56:14.000 It's like, okay, are you so sure that that app isn't more dangerous than the virus?

00:56:20.000 Right.

00:56:21.000 You know, because it's not obvious.

00:56:23.000 Like these, you look at an app, like you look at this technology.

00:56:26.000 This technology is stunningly, overwhelmingly, cataclysmically powerful.

00:56:31.000 And you think, well, it's just an app.

00:56:31.000 Right.

00:56:33.000 It's like, yeah, and Tinder was just a dating app, too.

00:56:36.000 But it completely transformed the psychological dynamics of Human sexual interactions.

00:56:43.000 Now whether that's how permanent that is, is a whole different question.

00:56:47.000 But we're faced with these radical technologies every day and we don't even notice how revolutionary they are.

00:56:52.000 Like this app, this is quite something that you have to send, that the technology is already there to establish a system that makes it the case that you have to take a photograph of yourself and send it to the police so they know where you are so that you can go and do your business.

00:57:09.000 Are you sure that's not more dangerous than the virus?

00:57:12.000 Yeah, and uh... Because it isn't obvious to me!

00:57:15.000 No, it's not obvious, and I would take that one step back, you know, because I was accused of being a conspiracy theorist when I said, uh, red lights, uh, red light cameras are unconstitutional.

00:57:22.000 Same exact argument.

00:57:23.000 Because a red light camera can't, it's not a human being, it doesn't present context, these things can be faulty, and you don't have the right to monitor me at any point at any intersection.

00:57:32.000 So, I think... Worse than that, worse than that, are you so sure that establishing the precedent that enables a machine To find someone and elicit the force of the state is a good precedent.

00:57:46.000 Right.

00:57:46.000 Because, remember, these things are getting twice as smart every year or so.

00:57:53.000 It's like, where exactly do we want them to go? 0.94

00:57:55.000 Well, if nature's kind, that Australian app technology will be relegated to yet another pile of a mechanism for d**k pics. 0.92

00:58:03.000 That would be our greatest hope. 0.86

00:58:05.000 We'll see, won't we?

00:58:06.000 It's terrifying to think of, and I would say this, what scared me most is not just policy, not that, I've always believed that civil rights, certainly the government would see them as Riddle.

00:58:17.000 What struck me the most, and then we'll go to Mug Club only a little bit here because we've been going along on YouTube and I want to show a clip of you sort of talking about authoritarian regimes and their relation with infectious diseases, which may be a little difficult on YouTube.

00:58:32.000 We never know what they'll think about that.

00:58:34.000 But I will say this.

00:58:34.000 What's scared me the most And as someone who's far more thoughtful than myself, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

00:58:41.000 What scared me more is not what the government would do.

00:58:43.000 I never realized how willing half of the country, half of the world and now even more, but my fellow countrymen are willing to rat me out.

00:58:55.000 Even knowing that it could come with dire, violent consequences.

00:58:59.000 We're going, I want to flag this person.

00:59:01.000 Look, this person's breaking the rule.

00:59:03.000 This person can't be allowed to go in public.

00:59:05.000 This person doesn't have a passport and revel in it.

00:59:09.000 Yeah.

00:59:09.000 Well, you also want to ask yourself, are you so sure you want to set up policy that rewards that kind of behavior?

00:59:16.000 Because you think, well, it's for a good reason.

00:59:17.000 It's like, yeah, well, you train, people do what they practice.

00:59:23.000 And they practice what you incentivize.

00:59:25.000 Are you sure you want to incentivize that?

00:59:28.000 And so, I mean, we have these liberties, in some sense, to distribute decision-making power so that cataclysmic errors aren't made in the name of doing the best thing.

00:59:38.000 Right.

00:59:40.000 And so... So I think, well, I think the vaccines are there, I'm vaccinated for what it's worth, and I'm not stating that as some badge of moral superiority, but I'm still I, it seems to me that the right policy move is, here's the vaccines, they're available, we're opening up, take your chances, and away we go, and let's get back to our free life.

01:00:06.000 Now the problem is, what's scary, is the fact that you just said something entirely reasonable, and I go, yeah, that sounds, and I don't even necessarily know that I agree, I think that I would take it more extreme, you know, being the right-wing extremist, I would say they had no authority to do any of this in the first place, and take it a step further, but the point is, Either one of our views could result in this being removed because the policies, and this goes to the First Amendment, right?

01:00:26.000 It doesn't just involve the government.

01:00:27.000 Now you have people who meet with the federal government, who meet with international governing bodies.

01:00:31.000 I mean, it's not, again, it's not a conspiracy to say, Mark Zuckerberg, Susan Wojcicki, Jack Dorsey, that these people are in a meeting, a closed-room meeting, and come out with agreed-upon terms of what you're allowed to say.

01:00:42.000 Look behind us.

01:00:44.000 There's the Orwellian doublethink.

01:00:46.000 And I will say that has accelerated exponentially since the last time we've spoken.

01:00:53.000 And it is scary.

01:00:54.000 That's what scares me, not a new disease or even the next pandemic.

01:00:57.000 What scares me more is my fellow countrymen.

01:01:00.000 Well, the next pandemic worries me, too, because now we've established a precedent, which is if the health risk is severe enough, Then your civil liberties are optional.

01:01:15.000 Okay, so, well, exactly how severe?

01:01:18.000 I mean, exactly.

01:01:20.000 And then I think about other freedoms that we have, like the freedom to drive.

01:01:25.000 That's actually pretty dangerous.

01:01:27.000 And it's not that good for the planet.

01:01:30.000 And so just what makes you think that you should be doing that exactly?

01:01:36.000 Like the safety issue, the impact issue, It's very disturbing to me to see those issues being hijacked for what are essentially political purposes.

01:01:52.000 Yeah.

01:01:53.000 And it's worrisome.

01:01:54.000 Remember that shocking moment when you first get behind the wheel of the car by yourself when you're 16 or 17 and you're like, what?

01:02:01.000 Two tons of steel glass and gasoline and I can point it anywhere?

01:02:04.000 No kidding.

01:02:07.000 It's no kidding.

01:02:08.000 There's nothing that embodies individual freedom more than a 550 horsepower internal combustion engine sports car in the hands of a young man.

01:02:18.000 Well, now you're just showing off.

01:02:25.000 It's bloody amazing that that was ever allowed.

01:02:28.000 I know.

01:02:29.000 I know.

01:02:29.000 It is absolutely insane.

01:02:30.000 And you know what?

01:02:31.000 The same thing can be said for the first time I ever shot a gun when I moved to the United States.

01:02:34.000 I said, oh, oh, oh, this is the finality.

01:02:37.000 This isn't a film.

01:02:39.000 And that's why I've always encouraged people to take proper shooting lessons and just go understand what it is to respect the power of anything mechanical, whether it be an automobile or be a Be a gun.

01:02:52.000 And with our kids too, I will have my kids shooting very, very young just to make sure they respect it.

01:02:57.000 Because I tell you what, I knew, I think I was 20 years old when I first fired a firearm, I said, you know what?

01:03:02.000 Had I never shot a gun, I don't know that if I walked into the magical closet of mystery and stumbled across a gun, let's say a friend's father's gun, that I would have respected it.

01:03:12.000 But I know if I would have shot this gun when I was a kid, I absolutely would have.

01:03:16.000 And so I spoke to my wife.

01:03:18.000 I said, we're going to get them to a shooting range with us, supervised, as young as they can so that they learn respect for it.

01:03:24.000 Because I had no respect at all for that.

01:03:27.000 And very little respect for my parents' paneled Windstar.

01:03:32.000 It was an awful, awful, awful vehicle.

01:03:34.000 You couldn't get a less cool car.

01:03:36.000 Actually, no wait, that was the upgrade.

01:03:38.000 It was an old Aerostar, which was shittier.

01:03:41.000 Okay, we're gonna go to a mug clip because I want to show a clip talking about authoritarian regimes and infectious diseases, but the book, the new one if people don't have it, as I say new because you haven't been here in a while, Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life.

01:03:54.000 There might be some bonus rules in there because he likes them.

01:03:57.000 Where can people get it there, Professor?

01:04:00.000 They can get it anywhere.

01:04:01.000 Any bookstore, any bookseller, online at Amazon, it's round.

01:04:06.000 And so, if you like the first book, well, hopefully you'll like the second book.

01:04:10.000 The online consensus seems to be, on Amazon, there's thousands of reviews, that it's an improvement over the first book.

01:04:16.000 So, I hope that's true.

01:04:18.000 Well, you tease me, as the professor knows I can't read.

01:04:22.000 YouTube, thank you very much.

01:04:23.000 We're going to go discuss things that you may not allow, we don't know, not gonna chance it.

Louder with Crowder - September 21, 2021

EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Jordan Peterson and the LATEST on the COVID Pandemic | Louder with Crowder

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