The Ben Shapiro Show


Dave Rubin | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 2


Summary

In this episode of The Rubin Report, host Alex Blumberg sits down with Dave Rubin to talk about his journey from being a hard-left ideologue to a full-on progressive voice in American politics. They talk about how he got started in his career, why he decided to leave the New York Times, and how he ended up on the other side of the political aisle. They also talk about what it means to be a "hard-left" ideologue, and why it's important to have a seat at the table when it comes to politics. And, of course, there's a lot more. Thanks to our sponsor, PolicyGenius, for sponsoring this episode. Thanks also to our listener-submitted questions and comments, and thanks to the folks at The Young Turks for their support of the show. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our companies. We don't own the rights to any of the music used in this episode, and we do not own any of it unless otherwise specified. Thank you for supporting the show, it helps make it possible for us to produce this podcast to be heard and share it with the world. It helps us make a better listening experience for other podcasting and social media. Thanks again for listening and sharing it with your friends and family! - Alex and Alex and I hope you enjoy it. - Your support the show and your support it helps spread the word about what we're doing it. Thank you're listening to it! -- it helps us spread it around the word and spreading it everywhere. -- Thank you, Alex and everyone else can do it better than that we can spread it everywhere we can do more of it, everywhere we get a chance to spread it, more like that, more of that, everywhere possible. Love you, thank you, folks! -- Alex and thank you. -- -- Matt and Alex - Thank you. - Matt, Matt, Caitlyn and Alex, -- - Sarah, Kristy, Thank you and much more! Thanks, Matt and Sarah, Caitie, Amy, John, Sarah, Rachael, Ben, Evan, and Matt, Brian, and Ben, Rachel, and Mike, etc., etc., -- and more! -- -- -


Transcript

00:00:00.000 If you truly believe in freedom, not just because you say you believe in freedom, but if you really want people to think for themselves, they're gonna start thinking some things you don't like.
00:00:16.000 So welcome.
00:00:17.000 I am here today with Dave Rubin, and we're going to jump in with Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report, one of, I would say, my best political friends out there and a real inspiration to a lot of folks who are trying to open their minds about politics.
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00:01:28.000 Okay, so I could not be more excited to welcome my friend Dave Rubin here.
00:01:31.000 Dave, good to see you.
00:01:31.000 Good to see you.
00:01:32.000 I like that line, if you die, it's too late.
00:01:35.000 That is how I live my life, basically.
00:01:35.000 It is.
00:01:38.000 I better get it done now because you never know.
00:01:41.000 Well, one of the great things about Dave Rubin is that the first time I was introduced to you, I think it was probably on your show.
00:01:45.000 I don't know if we knew each other before I was on your show.
00:01:48.000 And you are, I think, one of the best interviewers in the business.
00:01:50.000 So people normally see stuff like this and expect us to see the chairs reversed.
00:01:54.000 It's a full on cultural appropriation.
00:01:54.000 Yeah.
00:01:54.000 No question.
00:02:12.000 Oh yeah, and then just like America, we're going to culturally appropriate from others and then we're going to make the best of it and make more money.
00:02:17.000 So I mean, that's our actual plan.
00:02:19.000 Listen, if you make a better interview show than me, to me that truly, and I'm not kidding, that would be great because that would make me do better.
00:02:25.000 I love competition.
00:02:26.000 I'm not even saying we're in competition.
00:02:28.000 No, it's awesome.
00:02:44.000 Yeah, it's really exciting.
00:02:45.000 So, okay, before we get to, you know, what you referenced there, the so-called intellectual dark web, a term coined by our common friend, Eric Weinstein, I first want to ask you about your own personal journey toward being where you are.
00:02:55.000 Because if you look at your YouTube channel and you look at the videos that have the highest hit count, there's still some from your Young Turks days, you know, from the days when you were in league with our good friend, Shank Iger.
00:03:06.000 And so I want to ask you, sort of, for people who don't know about your journey from being pretty hard left
00:03:13.000 Yeah, I mean look, there's a lot there.
00:03:36.000 I always find it funny, and I just tweeted something about this, that people will look back on the way you thought a couple years ago, or something you tweeted a couple years ago, or what you said a couple years ago, and then you say, or do, or think something different now, and they think you're a flip-flopper, or you've sold out, or some incarnation of that.
00:03:51.000 And I always think how ridiculous and sad, actually, that is.
00:03:54.000 The one thing that separates us from the animals is that we can think, we can learn, we can actually change our minds.
00:04:00.000 And I'm impressed when people go, you know, I used to think that way.
00:04:04.000 And
00:04:20.000 A lot of it had
00:04:41.000 We're good.
00:04:59.000 Much that I how I thought that the left really made sense that the state really made sense the collectivism made sense But I do think partly what happened was at least for a couple years I was hijacked in a way my mind was hijacked by that one issue Yeah, because if you're not treated equally in some way then that can become something that colors everything else So it's not totally about that, but I think that was a large part of it and then look gay people are equal now
00:05:25.000 Everyone in this country is equal.
00:05:27.000 I mean, that's the truth.
00:05:28.000 There are no laws on the books right now that cause inequality.
00:05:32.000 That doesn't mean inequality doesn't exist, that we don't live in a utopia.
00:05:35.000 And thank God we don't live in a utopia, by the way, because it's not real.
00:05:39.000 And on the way to utopia, you get dystopia.
00:05:41.000 And I think that we might be heading there right now, but we're trying to fight it, right?
00:05:46.000 So I would say, basically, once I woke up and I started really seeing what the left was and
00:05:51.000 Endless hysteria.
00:06:10.000 We're good.
00:06:28.000 Let's do it.
00:06:49.000 So I want to talk about your interview style in just a second, because there's been some controversy associated with some of the folks that you interview.
00:06:54.000 But I think that, you know, of all the people that you're talking about, the one thing that I've said that I think that all these folks have in common is that they actually like examining ideas and we're not ripping on each other's motives.
00:07:02.000 We're not constantly suggesting that we're coming from a bad place, trying to do bad things.
00:07:07.000 And that more than anything is, I think, what unifies this group of people.
00:07:10.000 That and the fact that there are a lot of people out there who cut against their prevailing audiences to say particular things.
00:07:15.000 Absolutely.
00:07:16.000 I mean, think about this.
00:07:17.000 I take positions that... I mean, we did it on my show just a couple of months ago, right?
00:07:22.000 You know I'm pro-choice, begrudgingly pro-choice, and I talk about the 20-week thing, and you made an interesting argument where you said, you know, if you're saying it's a life at 20 weeks, but, you know, it can feel pain.
00:07:31.000 That's my argument.
00:07:33.000 Well, I conceded to you, yes, it is obviously a life at 18 weeks.
00:07:36.000 It's one of those issues that whether we agree or disagree, we should be doing that.
00:07:41.000 We should be having that argument.
00:07:43.000 And I think out of this whole crew of people, whether it's Eric or his brother Brett Weinstein or Christina Hoff Summers or Sam Harris or whoever it is, we're all taking some unpopular positions that go against what our base, if you want to call it, believes.
00:07:58.000 That shows a little bit of character.
00:08:00.000 That shows a little bit of a desire for truth.
00:08:04.000 And that's all we're trying to do here.
00:08:07.000 And really, to your point, though, I think, how often do any of us really attack people?
00:08:11.000 Now, look, me and you are big on Twitter, and we fight with specific people now and again.
00:08:15.000 Going out of your way to attack somebody for who they are is something that I don't think any of us do.
00:08:21.000 None of us do it.
00:08:22.000 And have we ever done it and slipped up and you can word thing a certain way or whatever?
00:08:25.000 Yes, of course.
00:08:26.000 But if you really look at the breadth of work of these people and all the times we've come together and now a bunch of us are doing public events and all that, we consistently are talking about ideas.
00:08:36.000 We are not talking about people.
00:08:37.000 And that simply does not happen with most of what's going on with the left these days.
00:08:42.000 They attack motives.
00:08:43.000 They attack your
00:08:44.000 We're good to go.
00:09:05.000 So they can go, like, it's easy for them to hate you, you know what I mean?
00:09:08.000 Like, it's easy for them to hate Glenn Beck, it's easy for them to hate Prager and all that, because, like, we've always hated the conservatives.
00:09:15.000 But wait, here's one of us.
00:09:17.000 Right.
00:09:17.000 And not only that, I mean, they look at folks like you and they say, OK, here's a gay guy who's not towing the party line.
00:09:22.000 Well, that means that he must not legitimately be gay.
00:09:25.000 I mean, secretly, he must be subscribing to Playboy or something.
00:09:28.000 Pretty gay, man.
00:09:29.000 I don't want to make you blush right now, but I assure you that I'm gay.
00:09:33.000 I mean, it just, but even that, it doesn't matter.
00:09:37.000 We can talk about that if you want, but it's just, to me, it's so irrelevant.
00:09:39.000 No, but it's the tokenism of the left, right?
00:09:41.000 Yeah, it's the tokenism.
00:09:42.000 And this is one thing that does bother me on both sides, is the sort of tokenism that adheres to both sides.
00:09:46.000 So on the one side, you'll see from the left, this idea that if you are gay, then you cannot be conservative.
00:09:50.000 Or as you saw with Kanye West, if you're legitimately black or you care about black folks, then you can't actually be a fan of President Trump.
00:09:56.000 You can't be an independent thinker in any way.
00:09:58.000 And then I do think that there are some folks on the right, and there's a question about the right too, which they'll look at somebody like you or like a Kanye, and instead of saying, okay, that's an individual who agrees with me, that's really awesome, they'll say, ooh, look, a gay guy agrees with me.
00:10:10.000 Yes.
00:10:10.000 And all of a sudden it's like, ooh, totally different.
00:10:12.000 Whereas I think the proper response to that is, okay, so he's gay, you know, whatever.
00:10:17.000 Like, we agree, that's the important thing, right?
00:10:18.000 Yeah, I mean, look, this is where nobody's fully right all the time.
00:10:23.000 You know what I mean?
00:10:24.000 Like we all have our internal biases.
00:10:26.000 We all are constantly trying to figure it out.
00:10:29.000 If you're an honest thinker, you're trying to figure out what's going on.
00:10:31.000 So yes, to both sides kind of pick and choose when they want to play identity politics and all that.
00:10:36.000 For me, as someone that came from the left,
00:10:40.000 I know it so well, that line of thinking.
00:10:42.000 And it basically spread like a virus throughout all of the left.
00:10:46.000 If you look at my show, like the first time I had you on, which was almost three years ago already.
00:10:50.000 And again, we did not know each other.
00:10:52.000 And I think you came in very ready to fight.
00:10:54.000 Like you were like, oh, I'm sitting down with a lefty.
00:10:57.000 You were ready to fight.
00:10:57.000 And I really was there like, you know, this guy, yeah, let's do it.
00:11:01.000 And look what's happened in these last couple of years where we've become allies in this space.
00:11:05.000 So people say to me, well, you don't attack the right enough.
00:11:07.000 Now, first off,
00:11:09.000 By and large, I've been welcomed for all of my differences.
00:11:12.000 I go to events that you've been to.
00:11:14.000 I go to the Turning Point event that we did in West Palm Beach.
00:11:18.000 It was the biggest college conservative gathering I think ever, basically.
00:11:23.000 I went up there.
00:11:23.000 I talked about being gay, married, and pro-choice, and for euthanasia, and a whole bunch of things that are
00:11:29.000 We're good to go.
00:11:50.000 They are, you guys, genuinely are the tolerant ones.
00:11:54.000 And the left, this thing that I was talking about, has taken over everywhere.
00:11:58.000 I mean, from top down, from Bernie to the Women's March and however low level you want to go.
00:12:03.000 Does that not mean that, of course, there are decent lefties?
00:12:06.000 I think there's a lot of misguided people.
00:12:09.000 But I don't believe these are all bad people.
00:12:10.000 What I do believe is that we can show them that, actually, if you really care about live and let live, if you really care about
00:12:17.000 Gay people are black, people are Muslim, people are the rest.
00:12:20.000 The only way to do that is let people live free.
00:12:23.000 And how do you do that?
00:12:23.000 It's through libertarian laws.
00:12:34.000 We're good to go.
00:13:03.000 As a religious person, I still think homosexual activity is a sin, but who cares?
00:13:07.000 You can believe that I'm an idiot, right?
00:13:07.000 We live in a free country.
00:13:09.000 Let's not gloss over that point.
00:13:11.000 I really mean this.
00:13:12.000 I really want to focus in with you here.
00:13:14.000 I genuinely don't care.
00:13:17.000 I mean, I really mean that.
00:13:18.000 Like, I hope, look, hopefully Ben will be friends for another 50 years and we'll change the world.
00:13:24.000 And hopefully we'll live long enough, but we'll change the world to be a freer place and all that.
00:13:28.000 And maybe when we're 80, we'll do this again.
00:13:31.000 And he'll go, you know, Dave, after all these years, maybe, maybe you're not a sinner.
00:13:35.000 It doesn't even, and I don't even think you really view me that way.
00:13:37.000 And it truly doesn't matter to me as long as you're not coming onto my property and trying to harm me or anything.
00:13:43.000 And people really need to understand that.
00:13:46.000 And people need to understand that I think in general about religious folks is that just because religious people think something is a sin doesn't mean they think the government should get involved or that it's my job to lecture to you about the sort of sin in which you are participating, particularly if this is something that you're involved in or you're set on.
00:14:01.000 There's actual counterproductive things that are being done.
00:14:03.000 Yeah.
00:14:03.000 Yeah.
00:14:34.000 I think so.
00:14:53.000 And also, I mean, this is the case that I make to religious people.
00:14:55.000 If you're a religious-leaning libertarian, right, who believes that certain things are sins, so what?
00:15:00.000 Meaning that here's the real problem.
00:15:01.000 Don't do them.
00:15:02.000 Ben, don't sleep with a dude.
00:15:02.000 Right, exactly.
00:15:04.000 Done.
00:15:05.000 We're there.
00:15:06.000 Yeah, I mean, we're good to go, but that's the point.
00:15:09.000 Right, exactly.
00:15:10.000 And I think one of the things that I've made the case to with religious people is if you're a religious person and you don't want the government cracking down on you from the reverse side, if you don't want the state of California saying same-sex marriage is now the law of the land and your church has to perform same-sex marriages, well then you should be in favor of the government getting entirely out of this business.
00:15:24.000 Because whatever the government touches, it now has the power to wield the gun on behalf of
00:15:28.000 So in a second, I want to ask you more about your interview style, which has become super popular, obviously, and in some ways controversial.
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00:16:53.000 Okay, so let's talk about the popularity of your show, because obviously you went from nothing to a million miles an hour very quickly.
00:16:59.000 I mean, you have an enormous audience now.
00:17:02.000 Huge numbers of people tune into your show.
00:17:04.000 I know that the interview that you and I, it was really more of a conversation.
00:17:07.000 That's what's great about your show, is it's not even an interview so much as it is a conversation with the person that you're talking about.
00:17:12.000 Which is great.
00:17:13.000 And the interview that you and Jordan and I did together has, you were saying, 3 million views on YouTube now.
00:17:19.000 So you guys have become wildly popular.
00:17:21.000 So the area where you're getting criticized a lot from some folks is that you'll have not only a wide variety of people on, but people who they consider outside the Overton window.
00:17:29.000 And I want to talk in a minute about kind of the constriction of the Overton window and how dangerous this is.
00:17:33.000 Sure.
00:17:33.000 But what's your philosophy when you decide how to have a guest?
00:17:37.000 Who do you think it's worth sitting across from?
00:17:38.000 Because obviously not all ideas are created equally valuable.
00:17:41.000 And who do you think, OK, I'm not having that dude on.
00:17:43.000 That guy's just a jackass.
00:17:44.000 Yeah.
00:17:45.000 So it's a great question.
00:17:46.000 I'm glad you asked it.
00:17:47.000 And I've been trying to address this, but hopefully this will be the cleanest one that I can do.
00:17:52.000 So my general belief is if you are saying something that is relevant and it's starting to percolate up and I start seeing, oh, there's people talking about you, this idea is sort of interesting, this or that.
00:18:04.000 It's just a little bit of just like a general gestalt of things, like I just start feeling something.
00:18:09.000 And suddenly I get a burst of people saying, you gotta look this way, look this way, look this way.
00:18:13.000 So that's usually where it starts.
00:18:16.000 Look, there are cases, so for example, Mike Cernovich is a good example of this.
00:18:19.000 When I had Mike Cernovich on, it was about,
00:18:23.000 Two years ago or so, it was right at the beginning of the Trump thing.
00:18:27.000 And on Twitter, I'm seeing all these people that are these big MAGA Trump people, but they were all anonymous, and I couldn't find anyone that was like a somewhat legit human, like a published author or a television, like an actual face.
00:18:40.000 I couldn't find anybody.
00:18:41.000 And then suddenly, Cernovich started popping up more and more, and I looked, and he had this book, and I was like, all right, he's a published author, seems kind of interesting.
00:18:50.000 I think he was verified on Twitter, so I was like, alright, there's something here.
00:18:53.000 And then I interviewed him.
00:18:54.000 By the way, in my interview, we talked Trump, basically, for an hour.
00:18:58.000 We talked some frustrations with the left, and just blah blah blah.
00:19:00.000 There was nothing that was racist that I could figure out.
00:19:04.000 It wasn't about Pizzagate?
00:19:05.000 No, it was before Pizzagate, by the way.
00:19:07.000 So this is also a funny thing, where you interview someone, then someone does something a year later, and then people think,
00:19:13.000 How could you have interviewed that person?
00:19:14.000 Yeah, or they'll literally tweet the interview to me and say, you didn't ask about Pizzagate.
00:19:18.000 And I'm like, I don't have a freaking time machine.
00:19:19.000 You know what I mean?
00:19:20.000 But really, everyone just wants to get you all the time and all that stuff.
00:19:23.000 Now look, has Cernovich done some things that I think are somewhat shady like Pizzagate?
00:19:27.000 Yes.
00:19:27.000 At the same time in the last year or so, has he done some interesting actual reporting?
00:19:31.000 Yes.
00:19:32.000 And at the same time, has the media absolutely collapsed and become a completely unethical cesspool of evil?
00:19:38.000 Yes.
00:19:39.000 And I don't consider him to be the worst part of that cesspool.
00:19:42.000 So I have no problem doing that interview when you, especially when you take the context of everything else.
00:19:47.000 I think the one that people seem to be more annoyed about.
00:19:50.000 So, so realistically, look, I've done, I don't know, 300, 400 interviews.
00:19:53.000 Yeah.
00:19:53.000 So people point to like two or three and I'm like, all right, that's always the way it was.
00:19:57.000 All right.
00:19:58.000 Two or three.
00:19:58.000 So I think, uh, look, people were upset when I had Milo on.
00:20:01.000 I do not regret having Milo on.
00:20:02.000 He was a big personality at the time.
00:20:04.000 Yes.
00:20:04.000 He was a cultural phenomenon for good or bad.
00:20:07.000 And look, where is Milo now?
00:20:10.000 We're good to go.
00:20:28.000 No, that one was good also because it was clarifying.
00:20:30.000 I mean, there were certain things that he said.
00:20:31.000 I mean, I remember writing a column about something that he said about, you know, the value of political correctness and saying, OK, well, if this is what he thinks, here's why he's wrong.
00:20:37.000 And clarification is a useful, a useful tool for sure.
00:20:40.000 I mean, people like, obviously, it's well publicized that Milo and I do not get along.
00:20:44.000 And our not getting along began long before the actual, you know, the actual move by the alt-right, you know, involved with Milo.
00:20:44.000 Yeah.
00:20:51.000 It started off when Milo was saying that political correctness had to be combated by saying things that were utterly vile.
00:20:56.000 Yeah, and I'm glad you said that because that gets to a little bit of why I interview the way I do.
00:21:00.000 The only way I could get him to that place, right, was if I let him speak.
00:21:14.000 Not if I just browbeat him the second he said something that I disagree with or I found odious.
00:21:19.000 But you got to let him speak and then smart people will look at it and then hopefully write an article about it and say, OK, this is what's wrong about this or or that or the other thing.
00:21:28.000 I think the one, though, that that people seem to latch on to the most is when I had Stefan Molyneux, who's a YouTuber.
00:21:34.000 He's really interested in this race and IQ stuff.
00:21:37.000 Look, a lot of people wanted me to have him on.
00:21:40.000 I had done his show once or twice where we basically, it was unedited, I made sure it was unedited, and I basically talked about classical liberalism.
00:21:46.000 I talked about the individual and limited government and all that, and we had a perfectly fine exchange.
00:21:51.000 Do I know every bit of this guy's work?
00:21:53.000 No.
00:21:54.000 If you were to add up all of the time that I've ever watched of all of his videos, I don't even think you'd get to an hour.
00:21:59.000 And it's probably significantly less than that.
00:22:02.000 The obsession with race and IQ is odd to me.
00:22:05.000 It's an extremely uncomfortable topic.
00:22:07.000 I mean, look what just happened with Sam Harris and Ezra Klein because of the Charles Murray interview.
00:22:11.000 Sam being completely right and Ezra being completely wrong, of course.
00:22:14.000 Yeah, and that's a whole other thing.
00:22:16.000 And it also goes to show why the media is just so awful once they get infected by social justice.
00:22:20.000 Because Ezra and Vox have just been completely
00:22:22.000 How the hell did I end up on the same side as Sam Harris, man?
00:22:24.000 I mean, like, this is what's happened now.
00:22:26.000 But, you know, almost every speech that I give now, I give a shout out to you and to Sam because I always say, this is the incredible time we're living in.
00:22:33.000 The first video that I did of 2018, this is going to be the year of unusual alliances.
00:22:37.000 You and Sam Harris disagree on everything, literally on everything, from the most existential questions of the universe and God and meaning and all of that, to taxes, to abortion, to da-da-da-da.
00:22:48.000 Yeah, we're good to go.
00:23:14.000 The last thing I would say about this, because I don't think it's worth belaboring too long, is that, you know, my friend and mentor Larry King, you know, in his heyday, picture 1989.
00:23:22.000 He looks exactly the same as you did that day.
00:23:26.000 And I love Larry.
00:23:27.000 The fact that he even thinks I'm remotely decent at doing this is the most incredible thing ever.
00:23:32.000 But peak Larry King.
00:23:33.000 Back in the days when he was introducing me at the Israeli Bonds Banquet.
00:23:36.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:23:37.000 Playing the violin.
00:23:38.000 Let's go 94, peak of O.J.
00:23:40.000 Simpson, Larry King.
00:23:41.000 On any given week, Larry King, five nights a week on CNN, could have had the cast of Friends on Monday, Farrakhan on Tuesday, David Duke on Wednesday, an animal guy on Thursday, and, you know, Lucille Ball at 80 years old on Friday.
00:23:56.000 No one in their right mind would have thought he endorsed all those ideas, or he thought all those people were friends, or whatever.
00:24:03.000 For some reason now, if you sit with someone, if you chat with someone, if you just listen to someone, you automatically endorse their ideas.
00:24:10.000 It's such a dangerous, slippery slope, Pat.
00:24:12.000 And I believe you just have to let it be.
00:24:14.000 If people don't like what I do, you don't have to watch.
00:24:15.000 So here's the obvious follow-up question, just to clarify.
00:24:17.000 So are there people who you wouldn't have on?
00:24:20.000 Well of course there's people I wouldn't have on.
00:24:21.000 I'm talking about people in the conversations.
00:24:23.000 Let's say Richard Spencer wanted to come on your show.
00:24:25.000 Would you have Richard Spencer on?
00:24:26.000 Because obviously he's prominent.
00:24:27.000 So I'm glad you asked that one.
00:24:28.000 He's actually not that prominent anymore.
00:24:30.000 And who made him prominent, by the way?
00:24:32.000 It was the left that kept propping him up as if he was somehow the standard bearer for conservatism or for the right or something like that.
00:24:41.000 There were very few
00:24:42.000 Good to go.
00:24:59.000 Those are so absolutely, ridiculously counter to all of our founding documents, to everything that is great about this country, that there is no reason to give that air at all.
00:25:11.000 Now, could someone say, Dave, you just said this thing about Molyneux.
00:25:14.000 You gave him air?
00:25:15.000 Possibly.
00:25:15.000 Like I'm willing to entertain that.
00:25:17.000 And if at the end of this you say, you know, Dave, you really did drop the ball on that one.
00:25:20.000 All right.
00:25:21.000 You know what?
00:25:21.000 You're not gonna believe this, but I'm not perfect.
00:25:23.000 It's crazy, right?
00:25:24.000 So I would say that those ideas are so ridiculous, but it's not just that they're ridiculous.
00:25:29.000 Those ideas are so out of power in any way.
00:25:34.000 You can say whatever you want about Trump and whatever, but he's not a white nationalist.
00:25:38.000 He's not a white supremacist.
00:25:40.000 The ideas of white supremacy don't have power in mainstream media.
00:25:43.000 They don't have power in the halls of politics or any of those things.
00:25:47.000 So to focus on that would just be giving it strength.
00:25:50.000 Right, exactly.
00:26:11.000 Well, I think that's a pretty good rule of thumb.
00:26:12.000 If you don't want them in your home, then you probably shouldn't have them on your interview, right?
00:26:16.000 We've had that debate internally about some things.
00:26:20.000 Have you found it harder since you've made this shift?
00:26:23.000 You're very open with the number of people and the kinds of people you interview.
00:26:26.000 As you say, you've had people left and right.
00:26:27.000 Have you found it harder to book particular guests because of your reputation?
00:26:31.000 Meaning, was it easier to book people from the left before and now you find that they're avoiding your calls?
00:26:36.000 Well, it's funny because people say, oh, you have all these libertarians on.
00:26:39.000 That's usually all these.
00:26:40.000 Well, they always call them far right.
00:26:42.000 They're just basically libertarians.
00:26:44.000 And it's like, man, if you think Shapiro and Prager and the rest of these guys and Larry Elder are far right, whatever you mean by that, like you actually don't want to have a conversation.
00:26:53.000 You know, you truly don't.
00:26:54.000 Look, most of my guests, I think, actually have leaned a little bit left.
00:26:59.000 But they've all been purged from the left.
00:27:01.000 That's what's consistently happened.
00:27:02.000 So let's talk about that, because I wrote a column recently about the reduction of the Overton window.
00:27:08.000 I was talking specifically about Kevin Williamson at National Review and the Atlantic hiring him and then firing him within three weeks when they found a tweet they didn't like.
00:27:15.000 And what the left, it seems to me, has done, and this is why you and I are now in the same camp, and Sam and I are now in the same camp, we're all in the same camp together, is what the left has done is they've created, the Overton window, for people who don't know, is this term that was coined for acceptable
00:27:27.000 I think so.
00:27:43.000 You are now no longer in the Overton window.
00:27:44.000 So for Sam, he gets cast out of the Overton window for saying on national TV that Islam is a more dangerous religion than Christianity, because he's looking at the numbers of adherents who are actually violent.
00:27:53.000 And Ben Affleck calls him crazy, and suddenly Sam's outside the Overton window, and he does an interview with Charles Murray, and suddenly Ezra Klein is calling Sam Harris a racist for talking about obviously well-substantiated IQ studies in a rational, reasonable way, in which he's not saying that all IQ differences are biological, and he's still getting cast outside the Overton window.
00:28:11.000 So do you think that there's a way to open back up the Overton window?
00:28:14.000 Or is the only way to do this just by changing the gatekeepers of the Overton window?
00:28:18.000 Or does it need to be destroyed altogether?
00:28:19.000 Because there are a lot of people who are saying, well, it seems like there's three perspectives.
00:28:22.000 One, the Overton window is too small and needs to be broadened a little bit.
00:28:26.000 One is we need to change who gets to decide who's in the Overton window.
00:28:30.000 And the third is no Overton window whatsoever.
00:28:32.000 Everybody gets to talk.
00:28:33.000 Every perspective is, to a certain extent, equivalent in terms of what should be heard and what should not.
00:28:38.000 Where do you stand on that?
00:28:39.000 So it's a great question.
00:28:40.000 I just did a video a couple days ago where I said the Overton window hasn't just shifted, it's shattered because that's what that's what's happened right now.
00:28:46.000 The left controlled the narrative for so long that if you if you were a lefty who dare say some unpopular things, and Sam really is the best example of this, you will be purged.
00:28:46.000 You're right.
00:28:55.000 Who hates Bill Maher now?
00:28:57.000 Is it Ben Shapiro?
00:28:57.000 Is it the right?
00:28:58.000 I'm quoting him on my show now.
00:29:00.000 Yeah, even though you disagree with probably all of his, all of his policy solutions are probably the complete reverse.
00:29:06.000 And his stakes on religion are wildly... Oh, right, all that religion thing.
00:29:08.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:29:09.000 You know, like the thing about me being crazy for everything on my head, yeah, all that, yeah.
00:29:13.000 Okay, but, but, right, but yet you're quoting him all the time.
00:29:16.000 Right.
00:29:16.000 Because your basic premise of where you guys are starting from is, because Bill really is a libertarian, but he's gotten sort of lost, I think, in some leftist stuff.
00:29:24.000 And by the way, I would love to have this conversation with him at some point.
00:29:26.000 Oh yeah, because he called himself libertarian.
00:29:27.000 I would love you to have this conversation.
00:29:28.000 Oh, it would be great, because he called himself libertarian, then he moved to the left while still calling himself libertarian, and now he's finding that he actually is still libertarian in his mind, even though he'd moved to the left.
00:29:37.000 But his audience is left now, so he's trapped.
00:29:40.000 The best thing is him yelling at his own audience on his show.
00:29:43.000 It's an incredible thing.
00:29:44.000 So it's funny, so for all the... What happens with Bill now?
00:29:48.000 He says some unpopular thing and then the left now calls him racist and a bigot, but that's the same thing he was doing to conservatives all those years.
00:29:55.000 So he's become sort of a victim of his own creation.
00:29:59.000 But putting him aside for a second on the over-the-window question,
00:30:02.000 Look, it needed to be bigger.
00:30:04.000 There is no doubt about that.
00:30:06.000 It needed to be broadened so we could have some honest conversations.
00:30:09.000 But we simply could not, so that every time a decent conservative spoke up, you were labeled far-right and alt-right and everything else.
00:30:16.000 Look, even with the Kanye tweets, what happens?
00:30:19.000 He sends out a couple videos of Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, best-selling author, BuzzFeed, Mediite, a bunch of others.
00:30:28.000 They all wrote that Scott Adams is far right.
00:30:31.000 Candace, I mean, the Twitter Moments thing happened when Candace Owens, when Kanye tweeted about Candace Owens.
00:30:37.000 Twitter Moments, the lead thing.
00:30:38.000 Far right Candace Owens.
00:30:40.000 Candace is a friend of mine.
00:30:41.000 I've had her on the show.
00:30:42.000 I have a lot of differences with her, which, by the way, we talk about publicly.
00:30:46.000 I was at Berkeley with her a couple weeks ago.
00:30:48.000 I'm going to be with her next week doing something.
00:30:51.000 The idea that she's far right.
00:30:53.000 You may not like her.
00:30:54.000 But this is what they do.
00:30:55.000 So the window did need to expand.
00:30:59.000 If it shatters, if it truly shatters, well then we're in this odd place where everything is equal and everything should be entertained and that could be dangerous.
00:31:10.000 But as a free speech guy, I'm all for those things being said.
00:31:13.000 Right, if you have to have a choice between there being no Overton window and an Overton window that's this small.
00:31:17.000 Yeah, look, for people like us that take on popular positions and say what we think all the time, we need that Overton window to be as wide as possible.
00:31:26.000 But that's the risk of freedom.
00:31:27.000 I mean, this is the risk consistently if you truly believe in freedom, not just because you say you believe in freedom.
00:31:33.000 But if you really want people to think for themselves, they're going to start thinking some things you don't like.
00:31:38.000 But then what's the answer?
00:31:39.000 Get people to be educated.
00:31:41.000 Get them to read some stuff.
00:31:42.000 Get them to listen to some interesting podcasts.
00:31:44.000 You know, Greg Gutfeld, who I think is doing a great job of bouncing between mainstream media on Fox News and kind of getting this intellectual dark web thing.
00:31:53.000 He wrote a great piece on how, you know, you barely have to go to college at this point because you can go on YouTube and listen to lectures by Jordan Peterson and Kristina Sommers and Gad Saad and a whole bunch of other people.
00:32:05.000 You'll learn.
00:32:06.000 I think there's some issues with that because you need college, I think, for some of the socialization and, you know, fun and some other stuff.
00:32:11.000 Didn't work for me.
00:32:12.000 I lived at home, so I'm so unsocialized.
00:32:13.000 I'm working on, you know.
00:32:14.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:32:15.000 You're taking me to the parties.
00:32:16.000 Yeah, that's why I'm
00:32:18.000 You know, that's why I've got you doing videos with with Blair White.
00:32:21.000 But really, I mean, even that the fact that we had that conversation about trans issues, and that you, you admitted that you had to sort of public position and a private position on this.
00:32:32.000 And then you had the conversation with Blair.
00:32:35.000 And now I've still got these crazy people on Twitter telling me what a homophobe you are.
00:32:39.000 Yeah.
00:32:40.000 And that's why they need to be ignored.
00:32:42.000 We don't need to give them oxygen.
00:32:44.000 If you truly want to make a better world, if you truly want to live in a country with 300 some odd million people that are all going to have differences of opinion, and that's actually what makes us stronger, then those people just have to be ignored.
00:32:55.000 And they're running out of steam, by the way.
00:32:56.000 So I want to talk about the technological reduction of the Overton window.
00:33:00.000 We'll talk about YouTube and Facebook and what they're doing over there in just a second.
00:33:03.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Blue Apron.
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00:33:24.000 It sounds delicious.
00:33:25.000 And Blue Apron delivers fresh pre-portioned ingredients and step-by-step recipes right to your door that can be cooked in under 45 minutes.
00:33:31.000 Everybody at our office is using Blue Apron.
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00:33:57.000 Blue Apron is a better way to cook.
00:33:59.000 Okay, so...
00:34:01.000 David, you've had some bad experiences with YouTube.
00:34:03.000 YouTube has been constantly demonetizing your videos, which obviously has to cripple your income, considering that you're largely a YouTube-based platform.
00:34:12.000 You're moving into new areas of revenue, which I'm really excited about for you, because I think it'll just expand your capacity to do all the things you're already doing, which is awesome.
00:34:19.000 What we've seen is that, and I've been talking openly about this with members of Congress, what we've seen is that there were these gatekeepers to the media, and it used to be NBC, ABC, CBS, and then the internet destroyed all of that, and you could get information from wherever you wanted, and then there were these new platforms, Facebook, and YouTube, and Twitter, and they said, you know what?
00:34:35.000 We're just platforms.
00:34:36.000 We're places where you can gather your audience and expand your audience, and you don't have to worry about us shutting it down, because we're not ABC, NBC, CBS.
00:34:42.000 We don't have an editorial board that decides what people can see and what people can't see.
00:34:47.000 And then they lied.
00:34:48.000 It turns out that they are all activist publishers and they are shadow banning or they are demonetizing.
00:34:53.000 So you've had videos with me that have been demonetized.
00:34:55.000 You had a video with Thomas Sowell.
00:34:57.000 I can't make a dime off you, Shapiro.
00:34:58.000 Right, exactly.
00:34:59.000 I don't know why I'm making a dime off of you.
00:35:01.000 So we figured it out.
00:35:01.000 This is the whole cultural appropriation thing that we were talking about.
00:35:04.000 But, you know, with the orthodoxy comes greater earning power.
00:35:08.000 So I'll bring you back eventually.
00:35:09.000 That's what you really judge before the secular Jew thing.
00:35:11.000 We should talk about that.
00:35:12.000 Okay, we'll talk about that in just a second.
00:35:14.000 But how have you been dealing with that?
00:35:15.000 And what do you think is the solution?
00:35:17.000 Because there's some people saying, you know, regulate YouTube as a public utility.
00:35:20.000 I'm always troubled by the idea of additional regulation in this space.
00:35:23.000 Do you think it's possible to build a competitor or something like a YouTube or Facebook, considering the market share dominance that these companies actually have?
00:35:29.000 What do we do about this?
00:35:30.000 Because again, you had a conversation with Thomas Sowell that was automatically demonetized with Thomas Sowell.
00:35:36.000 I don't even know how that's humanly possible.
00:35:38.000 Ben, as a guy in a yarmulke, you know the story of David versus Goliath.
00:35:41.000 I've sort of become Dave versus YouTube.
00:35:43.000 I mean, I've been one of the most outspoken people on this because it's impossible to tell what's going on.
00:35:50.000 If, let's say they just had a clear one pager, this is what we monetize, this is what we don't, this is our policy.
00:35:57.000 Well, nobody forced me to be on YouTube.
00:35:59.000 I'm voluntarily there.
00:36:00.000 They don't have to monetize anything, by the way.
00:36:03.000 I truly, I mean, I tweet this all the time.
00:36:05.000 They can do whatever they want.
00:36:06.000 The only reason I'm screaming about it all the time is I can only use my voice to influence things.
00:36:11.000 I don't want government involvement.
00:36:12.000 The idea that the government, that the United States government is going to somehow regulate a tech company properly is bananas.
00:36:20.000 First of all, those guys don't even know what a computer is.
00:36:22.000 I mean, if you watch that hearing with Zuckerberg, it was just like, what is the Facebook?
00:36:26.000 Is it a book full of faces?
00:36:28.000 Ben, I just paid my property taxes a month ago on a government website.
00:36:32.000 It looked like it was AOL from 1996.
00:36:34.000 The idea that these people can do this, or that middle management regulators can figure out... What makes you hate taxes even more?
00:36:42.000 Because they take all your money and then they build these crappy websites.
00:36:45.000 The hour that I lost in my life just watching the thing slowly.
00:36:48.000 Yeah, I mean, I was really just like dial-up prodigy, like ridiculous.
00:36:52.000 So the idea that the government could do it is not the answer to me.
00:36:55.000 What I think we can do, and I think you're doing it too, is we can influence them by leveraging our audience to know what's going on.
00:37:02.000 It's the lack of transparency that's the problem.
00:37:04.000 And it's also, look, the only reason I keep
00:37:06.000 I don't
00:37:26.000 Use my voice, because that's what you're supposed to do as a citizen.
00:37:29.000 I'm not asking the government.
00:37:31.000 And yes, do I think competition can come in?
00:37:33.000 Yes.
00:37:33.000 Now, the one counter argument to this, and I think it's a legit one, and I think perhaps our friends at Prager University view this a little differently than us, is that Google, which owns YouTube obviously, controls so much information, has so much power now, that it is possible that by
00:37:51.000 Default.
00:37:52.000 That competition can never really arise against them.
00:37:54.000 Now, I actually don't take that position, but I think there's an interesting argument to be had there.
00:37:59.000 I believe they'll ultimately crumble under the weight of their own nonsense.
00:38:02.000 If you're going to say, well, and we know this because of the DeMora lawsuit, well, we're not going to hire white or Asian engineers.
00:38:07.000 You're going to start getting not the best engineers.
00:38:07.000 Guess what?
00:38:10.000 And that's not a knock on anyone's ethnicity or anything, but you should be hiring... If your only standard is merit, it's different than if that is not your only standard, obviously.
00:38:16.000 Precisely.
00:38:16.000 So they will crumble on their own.
00:38:19.000 And if we have to push them a little bit so that ultimately something else can arise, then so be it.
00:38:25.000 But I would be, look, if tomorrow it all gets fixed, every time I email them, I'm like, guys, I want this to work.
00:38:31.000 You think I'm enjoying this?
00:38:33.000 I assure you, every time we see the demonetized thing and we request a view and one of my guys tells me,
00:38:38.000 I mean, I'm not going to repeat, because I know this is a family show, what I usually say at first.
00:38:42.000 But then I'm like, I mean, I got to do it again.
00:38:44.000 And then I got to take the screenshot and I got to tweet.
00:38:46.000 It's like, this is not what I want to put out a show.
00:38:49.000 Get people to check it out.
00:38:50.000 Let the ideas fall where they may and then move on.
00:38:53.000 But no, I don't think the government is the answer.
00:38:55.000 And I think what you're doing, what I'm doing, what
00:38:58.000 We're good to go.
00:39:21.000 We're good to go.
00:39:44.000 I don't know.
00:40:06.000 Right, so of course.
00:40:09.000 So I read your piece on that and I think it's a perfectly sound argument.
00:40:12.000 I'm still worried, even granting you all of that, I'm still worried about where that would lead if they were to be viewed as a publisher instead because it still creates a problem with the government and I just don't think the government can solve this thing.
00:40:25.000 I think competition is the only thing they can.
00:40:27.000 But very quickly on that, we know that they have partners.
00:40:31.000 I mean, with the groups that they've decided that are monitoring content, they're all far left groups.
00:40:36.000 The channels that they whitelist, like the Young Turks, I mean, the Young Turks is a far left
00:40:41.000 By every estimation, they're a far-left news organization.
00:40:45.000 Now, because the media never calls anything far-left, they just call anything far-right.
00:40:48.000 Bernie Sanders is mainstream-left.
00:40:50.000 Bernie is far-left.
00:40:50.000 Right, exactly.
00:40:52.000 I mean, that is the truth, but they never call him far-left.
00:40:55.000 He's a hero, and you're far-right.
00:40:57.000 So, again, I mean, that gets us back to the Overton window thing, but I would say competition is the answer, and we just have to keep putting out good stuff, and we will survive.
00:41:05.000 I mean, this is exactly why I'm on Patreon, because YouTube Rev, it just makes no sense,
00:41:09.000 And, you know, I'm working on some other things, partly because you hooked me up with something, and we'll go from there.
00:41:14.000 I can survive.
00:41:15.000 I can survive.
00:41:16.000 Oh, no, you're doing great.
00:41:17.000 And the fact that your audience continues to grow is presenting a real threat to a lot of these outlets because, again, if they don't get to choose which outlets have the viewers, the money will find the viewers.
00:41:25.000 I mean, that's just the way advertising works.
00:41:27.000 So eventually they're going to look and they're going to say, Dave Rubin has enormous numbers.
00:41:30.000 And whether we get you the money another way or whether we get you money through YouTube, the money's coming.
00:41:34.000 What a funny thing that is.
00:41:35.000 I mean, you said this on the sit-down we did with Jordan when you were like, man, we're the best we got.
00:41:41.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:41:42.000 Like, how did this happen where there's this like 20 of us that, you know, I think we're all good at different things and whatever.
00:41:49.000 But like, how did it all suddenly fall on these 20 people?
00:41:51.000 And now Kanye's actually given a lot of oxygen to this.
00:41:54.000 Even forgetting his politics.
00:41:54.000 Yeah.
00:41:56.000 Forgetting the crazy of him.
00:41:56.000 Yeah.
00:41:57.000 The bottom line is that
00:42:00.000 There are a certain number of people who are willing to treat other people as individuals, and those people are all being kind of placed into the same category.
00:42:07.000 I mean, I've written about this now a bunch of times for National Review.
00:42:11.000 Just the idea, again, that if you look at the panoply of people who are now friendly with one another, it's people like Sam and you and me and Jordan and Brett Weinstein and Eric.
00:42:19.000 I mean, look, I don't know if you can have a more polarized set of people politically than that.
00:42:23.000 Yeah.
00:42:39.000 We're good to go.
00:42:55.000 So it's interesting.
00:42:56.000 So first, uh, I'll start kind of with the end here and then I'll go backwards.
00:43:00.000 You know, it's funny.
00:43:00.000 I, I, because I interviewed a lot of atheists in a row and when we started my show as the interview show on aura TV, the first interview I did was with Sam and then subsequently I got on a lot of the skeptic community, the atheists and whatever.
00:43:13.000 I love having those conversations.
00:43:14.000 I know you like having them too by the way.
00:43:16.000 And I think the most important conversations in many ways.
00:43:19.000 So yeah.
00:43:20.000 Whether we agree or disagree, that's what it's all about.
00:43:22.000 Like, what is going on here?
00:43:23.000 Let's figure it out.
00:43:24.000 Why do you think it?
00:43:25.000 It's a wonderful conversation to have.
00:43:26.000 But anyway, I had a whole slew of them.
00:43:28.000 Guys that I really, really like from wide ranges of backgrounds.
00:43:31.000 From Gad Saad and Pete Boghossian and Michael Shermer and a whole slew of people all over the place.
00:43:36.000 Politically, ethnically, etc.
00:43:38.000 And because of that, people started saying that I was an atheist.
00:43:41.000 I had never said I was an atheist, but people kept saying it.
00:43:44.000 Then I was on, I think the first time I had Milo on, and Milo was ripping atheism.
00:43:49.000 And it basically, I felt he kind of put me into a place where I kind of had to say that I- Defend it, yeah, exactly.
00:43:53.000 Yeah, I had to defend it, but even more, I felt that I sort of had to say I was an atheist.
00:43:58.000 And I said it, and I don't think I had ever said it privately to anyone, or even, I didn't think it quite summed up what I believed.
00:44:06.000 But because of that,
00:44:07.000 Then about a year and a half goes by, and I went off the grid last August, and I'm trying to do it every year now, and when I was off the grid- You could do it every seventh day.
00:44:16.000 That's funny.
00:44:17.000 Shabbat's a great idea.
00:44:18.000 I'm doing this, you know, I'm trying to do this off social media on the weekends, things that you tweeted.
00:44:22.000 Yeah, it's like, we have a whole religion built around this just for you, Dave.
00:44:27.000 You guys need to extend, you guys.
00:44:29.000 It needs to be extended into a 48-hour period.
00:44:31.000 That's how evil Twitter is, but that aside, that aside,
00:44:35.000 I came back, and I had been off the grid for a month, and I suddenly, I just had this feeling when I was away, and away from the nonsense, and I literally didn't look at the news once, I did not watch TV once, I didn't look at social media, nothing, that I really, the word atheist did not sum up my beliefs.
00:44:52.000 It just didn't.
00:44:53.000 It felt too limiting to me.
00:44:55.000 So I basically said, I don't like that word anymore.
00:44:57.000 And then all hell broke loose, because they were all pissed at me, and like.
00:44:59.000 Right, now it turns out you're from Jew, and you know.
00:45:02.000 Yeah, so...
00:45:20.000 What I would say is this, just quickly on my background.
00:45:22.000 I grew up in a conservative Jewish home.
00:45:25.000 We did Shabbat on Friday night, so I'm with you, I get Shabbat.
00:45:28.000 Aren't we due for a Shabbat?
00:45:28.000 What's happening there?
00:45:30.000 Well, I mean, first my wife has to get out of, like, she has to cook dinner at one point.
00:45:33.000 Why is this woman always working?
00:45:34.000 Because she's a doctor.
00:45:35.000 You've heard, she's a doctor.
00:45:36.000 I know, I know she's a doctor.
00:45:37.000 And I know people are now saying, why don't you cook dinner, Shapiro?
00:45:39.000 Because I refuse to cook dinner.
00:45:41.000 That's the answer.
00:45:41.000 I want Shapiro cooking me a Shabbat dinner.
00:45:43.000 Wow.
00:45:44.000 Yeah.
00:45:45.000 I don't know.
00:45:46.000 That feels, now I know what women feel like.
00:45:48.000 That feels so like, ah, how dare you?
00:45:51.000 But I was brought up in a conservative Jewish household.
00:45:54.000 New York, you know, it was the stereotypical Jewish household of people fighting over politics all the time, fighting over everything, and then the meal would finish and we'd be fine.
00:46:02.000 And, you know, I would be at the... when we'd have holidays, you know, Passover, whatever, Rosh Hashanah, you know, huge tables of people, and I'd usually be at the kids' table when I was young, but I always wanted to be at the adults' table because I wanted to be...
00:46:14.000 Arguing and fighting and you know all of that stuff and talking politics with everybody.
00:46:18.000 I did a semester in Israel.
00:46:20.000 I didn't know that, okay.
00:46:21.000 Yeah in junior year of college.
00:46:23.000 97 at Be'er Sheva University or Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva.
00:46:23.000 Nice.
00:46:27.000 I would say this in terms of religion.
00:46:30.000 I have a huge cultural identity to the history of the Jewish people.
00:46:34.000 These are my people.
00:46:35.000 This is the story of my people.
00:46:36.000 And by the way, it's a very depressing and sad and painful history.
00:46:39.000 I mean, that's the irony.
00:46:41.000 You know, it's my favorite line about Jewishness is from Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye says, you know, we're the chosen people.
00:46:47.000 I wish he just could have chosen someone else.
00:46:49.000 You know, it's a painful history.
00:46:51.000 We are sitting here.
00:46:52.000 Three thousand years of horror punctuated by the occasional triumph.
00:46:54.000 Yeah, and some humor that got mixed in.
00:46:57.000 I mean, that's what happened.
00:46:58.000 A lot of horror creates a lot of humor.
00:47:00.000 I mean, you know, comedy is tragedy plus time.
00:47:00.000 Yeah.
00:47:02.000 Yeah.
00:47:03.000 That's what it is.
00:47:04.000 I mean, it's not a coincidence that Jews are generally funny.
00:47:07.000 I mean, it actually isn't a coincidence.
00:47:10.000 So I would say I have a huge affinity and cultural attachment to that.
00:47:15.000 And I understand the history of my people.
00:47:16.000 And even if I had no
00:47:19.000 I think so.
00:47:30.000 That set of ideas, because it's not about just saying a word, but the set of ideas that this comes from, that the idea that that has nothing to do with what I think right now is completely crazy.
00:47:40.000 But I would also say this, that on the God front, you know, a lot of Jews, there's a huge amount of secular Jews, I would say, like a Steven Pinker really falls into this.
00:47:49.000 Or even, well, Sam, you know, I don't know if Sam technically, I don't know what he technically considers himself at this point.
00:47:56.000 But I would say a Steven Pinker, Eric Weinstein would be example is people who are, they're really skeptics, atheists, but absolutely Jews.
00:48:04.000 They identify with, and I think Ben-Gurion sort of had a take on this too, that if you identify with the history of these people, that that sort of is enough.
00:48:04.000 You know what I mean?
00:48:12.000 I mean, it says in the book of Ruth, right?
00:48:13.000 Your people are my people and my God and your God, my God, but it's people first and then God, which is really interesting sort of transition biblically.
00:48:19.000 Yeah.
00:48:19.000 So I didn't know that line, but, but there you go.
00:48:21.000 That, that makes some sense to me.
00:48:22.000 So, but I would say all of these people have a certain
00:48:26.000 There's a certain wrestling with God, a certain... Well, that's for sure true.
00:48:30.000 And there's so much of that in Judaism.
00:48:31.000 Orthodoxy, that too, right?
00:48:32.000 I mean, the word Israel literally means struggle with God.
00:48:35.000 I mean, Yisrael, it means struggling with God.
00:48:38.000 So this is certainly nothing new.
00:48:38.000 It says right in the Bible.
00:48:40.000 I want to talk more about Judaism, but first, let's make some money.
00:48:42.000 With our friends over at Zeal.
00:48:44.000 So Zeal is a, this service is honestly fantastic.
00:48:48.000 Okay.
00:48:48.000 I've used Zeal for my wife, for my parents, for my in-laws.
00:48:51.000 It will buy you some really good ins with your in-laws.
00:48:54.000 Because here's what Zeal does.
00:48:54.000 Okay.
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00:49:06.000 So you go to zeal.com.
00:49:07.000 We're good to go.
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00:49:28.000 So seven days a week, 365 days a year, a Zeal massage therapist can be at your door in as little as an hour.
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00:49:39.000 I always say you don't actually have to be rich to feel rich.
00:49:41.000 And one of the things about Zeal is it makes that happen for you.
00:49:43.000 Find out for yourself why Zeal has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times.
00:49:47.000 I'm good to go.
00:50:13.000 Back to the religion question.
00:50:14.000 So, okay, let's get down to brass tacks.
00:50:16.000 So, where are you on God knows?
00:50:17.000 You're not an atheist, and you're also not coming to Shul with me.
00:50:21.000 You know what?
00:50:22.000 I will gladly go to Shul with you and see what's going on.
00:50:22.000 I will.
00:50:24.000 Oh, it'll be wild.
00:50:25.000 I'd be happy to do it.
00:50:26.000 Honestly, it's a lot of mumbling and a lot of chuckling, as you know.
00:50:30.000 I know what's going on.
00:50:31.000 For real, I will be more than happy to go with you.
00:50:33.000 Yeah, and you know, Prager does the Yom Kippur service, I think.
00:50:36.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:50:37.000 Yeah, I'm happy to do those things.
00:50:39.000 I like, you know, Eric Weinstein, by the way, who's in effect a secular non-believer.
00:50:44.000 I've been to his house for Shabbat, and he does it.
00:50:47.000 So that's why, that's the confusion generally around Judaism, whether it's a culture.
00:50:52.000 I identify with the culture.
00:50:54.000 Right.
00:50:54.000 So no, I don't like the word atheism related to what I believe.
00:50:58.000 I don't know that I can fully tell you what I believe.
00:51:01.000 I just don't.
00:51:02.000 And I know some people will say, oh, that's some sort of cop out here or something.
00:51:05.000 But I have a belief in something.
00:51:09.000 I would say I'm far more of a Zionist than I am religious.
00:51:14.000 Easily.
00:51:15.000 I think you can make, you know, Sam wrote a piece a long time ago, which was people on the left hate him for, about a secular argument basically for Judaism.
00:51:24.000 Or for Israel.
00:51:25.000 He's not making an argument for me.
00:51:28.000 The religious part, whether you were wearing your yarmulke or not, doesn't matter to me.
00:51:33.000 We happen to be taping this on a Friday, whether you light candles tonight or not doesn't matter to me specifically, but that there is this absurdly tiny oasis that is a place on earth for this group of people who have been slaughtered throughout time, who, by the way, are just returning to their homeland of thousands of years ago.
00:51:54.000 You know, all these people say, well, the Jews just took this place.
00:51:56.000 They just came in and took it.
00:51:57.000 There's an awful lot of old Hebrew in this place.
00:52:00.000 You know what I mean?
00:52:00.000 Go to Jerusalem.
00:52:02.000 I don't know where all this Hebrew came from.
00:52:03.000 Right.
00:52:03.000 So I would say I'm a much bigger believer in that, that I believe every people have a right to self-determination.
00:52:11.000 And Jews finally got it.
00:52:13.000 And who hates it the most?
00:52:14.000 It's the left.
00:52:15.000 I mean, it's so sad.
00:52:16.000 The one place that defends any of their beliefs, any of their beliefs in the Middle East, that is by far the most tolerant place.
00:52:25.000 That's the place they hate the most.
00:52:27.000 Yeah.
00:52:47.000 And there's this one place that is a tiny bastion of freedom that is absolutely imperfect, like every other state, but that has to be under endless assault by not only just physical assault, but has to be under assault by these crackpots at the UN all the time.
00:53:02.000 I'm a much bigger and what am I defending?
00:53:03.000 I'm not defending.
00:53:05.000 I'm not defending people that want to convert people or expand people.
00:53:09.000 I'm defending people's right to live in freedom.
00:53:12.000 That's it.
00:53:13.000 I don't even want to get into how that is related to just the Peace Prize and all that, because we could do a whole other show on that, but I'm happy to do that.
00:53:19.000 I think that we're moving toward the end of the show, unfortunately, but I want to ask you, where do you think that you are going in the next five years?
00:53:25.000 Obviously, you've been doing this for three or four years with all the interviews.
00:53:29.000 What do you think is the future for Dave Rubin?
00:53:31.000 Fast forward five years down the line.
00:53:32.000 I mean, I get all kinds of crazy offers and fortunately, because my audience has been good to me and what we're doing on Patreon, I've said no to things that would make me a lot more money than I'm making right now.
00:53:42.000 And I know that I'm in a great position to figure out what I truly want to do.
00:53:48.000 I mean, look, I built a home studio.
00:53:50.000 My commute
00:53:51.000 It's a nice studio, yeah.
00:53:51.000 Yeah, but my commute is 10 steps, not 10 minutes, 10 steps from my bedroom.
00:53:56.000 That's pretty good.
00:53:57.000 We've built a small, lean, strong business.
00:54:01.000 We pay all of our employees health insurance and all kinds of other benefits and all that.
00:54:05.000 And I'm so proud of what we've built.
00:54:07.000 And it's so consistent with the ideas that I'm constantly talking about.
00:54:10.000 So look, people ask me all the time, like, one of these days is it's most likely going to be Fox, I would guess, because CNN and MSNBC don't seem to want to do anything.
00:54:18.000 Yeah.
00:54:18.000 Well, CNN will put you on every now and again.
00:54:20.000 Only then I knock one of their hosts over.
00:54:22.000 No, no, no, I know you're smacking on a stelter, which is pretty sweet.
00:54:26.000 Look, could one of these places make me an offer that it would be crazy for me to say no to?
00:54:31.000 And I don't mean that just because of money, because it's not about that.
00:54:35.000 I'm happy, really.
00:54:36.000 I'm content with what I'm doing.
00:54:37.000 I want it to grow, but I'm in a good spot.
00:54:40.000 But yes, if you really believe in what you're doing, you want it to get to as many people as possible.
00:54:44.000 So could one of those offers come?
00:54:45.000 And then I'm going to have to make some kind of Sophie's Choice or something.
00:54:48.000 Yeah, it could come and I look forward to it coming and we'll see what happens.
00:54:52.000 But I would say, in terms of what I really want, I want these conversations to continue.
00:54:57.000 I truly, truly believe this.
00:54:59.000 We, Ben, are now part of something that is resetting the system.
00:55:04.000 I really believe that the whole country, the dialogue, social media, everything got so out of whack.
00:55:11.000 So haywire that Trump possibly was the only thing that could have rebooted it.
00:55:15.000 But we're now in the reboot phase.
00:55:17.000 That's not a commentary on Trump.
00:55:18.000 I believe we're in the reboot phase now.
00:55:20.000 You know, it's like when you press reset on Nintendo and you get back to the beginning and now you got to play again.
00:55:24.000 I think we've hit that button.
00:55:26.000 And now it's like, holy cow, there is fertile ground for good ideas.
00:55:30.000 So if I can continue being part of that conversation, keep finding allies where three years ago I would have found enemies.
00:55:36.000 Keep it up!
00:55:53.000 Exactly.
00:55:53.000 So we've got three minutes left.
00:55:54.000 Speaking of fixing it, give me the one thing that the right needs to do and then give me the one thing that the left needs to do if we want to have a country in five years.
00:56:17.000 Look, what they've needed to do is exactly what I was trying to get them to do, was please rein in your most extreme forces.
00:56:25.000 Unfortunately, they're simply unable to do it because of the oppression Olympics, because of how identity politics works, and because of grouping people based on immutable characteristics in a constant competition.
00:56:35.000 They have the idea that intersectionality makes them stronger, like it's going to be like, you know, a couple of Decepticons forming Devastator, right?
00:56:41.000 It's going to be a bigger, better robot.
00:56:43.000 But that's not how it works.
00:56:44.000 It becomes a bigger crippled monster.
00:56:48.000 And that's so I don't know at this point if there's anything that they can do right now.
00:56:52.000 I would love.
00:56:52.000 Believe me, if there was a decent Democrat out there, if there was a blue dog Democrat like an old school, if Ed Koch magically reappeared or Daniel Patrick Moynihan or JFK, you know, they all in common, they're dead.
00:57:03.000 But if those people actually reappeared and said, we're going to try to fix what is wrong with the Democratic Party instead of going the Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris route, I'd be freaking thrilled.
00:57:13.000 I would be thrilled.
00:57:14.000 It's not going to happen.
00:57:15.000 What the right can do, and I think you can be a big part of this, there is such an opening for you guys right now where all of the same people that have just had it with this nonsense are going to start pushing your way.
00:57:26.000 I think you've done a really nice job of sitting down with these people.
00:57:30.000 And I think the more that that can take root in conservatism, the agree to disagree, which I think is pretty much happening, but the more that truly takes root, where you guys go, you know, we're gonna have to be okay with the idea of pro-choice.
00:57:46.000 We don't have to put it in our party platform or whatever, but we're gonna have to find some allies that believe some different stuff as us.
00:57:53.000 And the more that you guys do that, I think you will have incredible
00:57:58.000 An incredible ability to build something new.
00:58:01.000 And that would be something that I would be proud to be part of.
00:58:03.000 And at this point I think you're going to find it very easy to do actually.
00:58:06.000 So that's what I hope will happen.
00:58:08.000 And then suddenly there'll be this new party or new movement that will be the widest tent and it will only be the widest tent because the other guys pushed us all out.
00:58:17.000 Exactly.
00:58:17.000 Well, this is the part where we grip our hands like Rocky III and form giant biceps.
00:58:23.000 And it's incredible.
00:58:23.000 When we do Rocky IV, we'll go to Russia and fight on Christmas Day.
00:58:26.000 We'd get serious numbers.
00:58:27.000 Oh, my goodness.
00:58:28.000 Well, I'm not sure I could take you.
00:58:29.000 You've been working out, I hear.
00:58:30.000 I've lost 17 pounds.
00:58:31.000 That's amazing.
00:58:32.000 Good for you, dude.
00:58:32.000 I'm off the off the bread.
00:58:34.000 Living clean.
00:58:35.000 Huey Lewis in the news.
00:58:36.000 Well, it's great to have you, David Rubin, my friend.
00:58:40.000 Good luck with your show.
00:58:41.000 You don't need luck.
00:58:42.000 You're doing great.
00:58:43.000 So it's great to see you.
00:58:44.000 I'll see you soon.
00:58:45.000 Thanks so much.
00:58:52.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay, Executive Producer Jeremy Boring, Associate Producers Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingara, audio is mixed by Mike Karamina, hair and makeup is by Jeswa Alvera, and title credits by Cynthia Angulo.
00:59:06.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
00:59:10.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.