The Ben Shapiro Show - Joe Rogan | The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special Ep. 4

00:00:00.000 We're trying to strengthen the way we view the world and take in as much information as we can and see that information for what it truly is, not what we want it to be.

00:00:16.000 Well, here we are on the Sunday special with Joe Rogan.

00:00:19.000 We're going to jump into the interview in just a moment because this is awesome.

00:00:22.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at MVMT.

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00:01:03.000 OK, so here we are on the Sunday special with Joe Rogan, the granddaddy of us all in the podcast space.

00:01:08.000 I mean, this dude made the podcast space the podcast space, and he's awesome also.

00:01:12.000 So thanks so much for stopping by.

00:01:13.000 I don't think I did that.

00:01:14.000 I think Adam Carolla did it.

00:01:16.000 Well, I'll have to have you guys fight it out.

00:01:18.000 I came in after.

00:01:19.000 I love Adam too, so I'll have to, but there's no question that right now you're dominant in the space.

00:01:23.000 And it's an amazing thing because you're a really gifted guy.

00:01:26.000 I mean, you can sit there for three hours with somebody and talk about the most random topic and make it really interesting.

00:01:31.000 So I need the backstory.

00:01:33.000 So all of my listeners and people who are fans of mine might not know your work as well, might not know kind of your story.

00:01:39.000 So how did you get to be doing what you're doing right now?

00:01:42.000 Like give us the whole history.

00:01:43.000 Well, with the podcast thing, it just started out doing a video thing with just Ustream.

00:01:51.000 We're just doing Q&A, like people would tweet questions, we'd answer questions, just for fun.

00:01:57.000 I did it once.

00:01:58.000 And I actually did it a couple of times backstage in between shows years before that.

00:02:03.000 There was a thing called Justin TV.

00:02:05.000 Which I'm not sure what that is now.

00:02:06.000 It became a new company.

00:02:07.000 But we would just show backstage.

00:02:10.000 We'd have like a webcam going and would just play around and talk to people and have fun.

00:02:16.000 And then we did the one Q&A and I said, all right, I'm gonna do it again next week.

00:02:19.000 We'll try to do it regularly.

00:02:21.000 So I did it again the next Monday and then it became a weekly thing.

00:02:25.000 Then we started uploading it to iTunes and then we started getting guests and then

00:02:30.000 I said, OK, I got to get out of my house.

00:02:32.000 All these weirdos were coming over my house.

00:02:34.000 Like, I'll just get a studio somewhere.

00:02:36.000 So I got a studio.

00:02:37.000 And then after the studio, I'm like, well, the studio's kind of little.

00:02:39.000 Let's get a bigger studio.

00:02:40.000 So then I got a bigger studio.

00:02:41.000 And then now it's somehow or another it's a business.

00:02:44.000 And you've got a monster studio you were telling me about now that's just awesome.

00:02:48.000 Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

00:02:49.000 It's indoor archery range and a full gym.

00:02:51.000 And it's pretty nuts.

00:02:53.000 I've totally gone wrong with this studio.

00:02:55.000 There's no question about it.

00:02:56.000 So what got you all the way to the podcasting?

00:02:59.000 I mean, like, start from the beginning, from childhood, from birth.

00:03:01.000 Like, what's your whole backstory?

00:03:03.000 Well, from high school on till I was 21, I was competing in martial arts tournaments.

00:03:11.000 That was my background.

00:03:12.000 I was a taekwondo instructor.

00:03:15.000 I taught at Boston University.

00:03:17.000 I competed in all these different national tournaments.

00:03:19.000 I traveled all around the country.

00:03:21.000 Most of my formative years were spent

00:03:23.000 Traveling around the country fighting in martial arts tournaments.

00:03:26.000 That was basically all I did with my entire day.

00:03:30.000 Like, I was obsessed from the time I was 15 until I was 21.

00:03:33.000 When I was 21, I started doing stand-up comedy.

00:03:36.000 And I went from- Pretty big shift?

00:03:38.000 Yeah, well, you know, I was realizing that fighting was really bad for your brain.

00:03:43.000 And I was realizing that from, I was getting a lot of headaches and there was a lot of sparring.

00:03:49.000 I was getting into kickboxing.

00:03:51.000 I had three kickboxing fights.

00:03:52.000 And I was realizing that this was going to definitely have a negative effect on my consciousness.

00:03:58.000 There was no way around it.

00:04:00.000 And the quality of my thoughts and the way I think about things was always

00:04:05.000 It's one of the most important things to guide you through life and I'm like I am putting my future brain in jeopardy and I was seeing it around me from a bunch of other people that were in the gym that were professional fighters and that were getting brain damage.

00:04:18.000 I was essentially seeing them starting to slur their words and I was seeing this effect.

00:04:25.000 And I knew I had to get out somehow or another.

00:04:27.000 And luckily, one of my friends, my friend Steve Graham, who I'm good friends with to this day, talked me into doing stand-up comedy.

00:04:34.000 Talked me into going up on an open mic night when I was 21.

00:04:36.000 That's amazing.

00:04:37.000 And you've been doing that ever since.

00:04:38.000 I mean, you're still doing shows today, right?

00:04:39.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:40.000 So you've got the special that's on Netflix, which is awesome.

00:04:43.000 Yeah, I have one special that's on Netflix.

00:04:44.000 Well, two of them that are on Netflix now, but then a new one that I just filmed that'll be on Netflix in September.

00:04:49.000 Which is really exciting.

00:04:50.000 So I want to ask you, actually, a little bit about the MMA stuff.

00:04:53.000 Because you still cover MMA.

00:04:54.000 You're still big into MMA, obviously.

00:04:55.000 You're a big analyst over there.

00:04:57.000 Do you think that there is... I'm worrying about this about the NFL, and I wonder if it also applies to MMA.

00:05:02.000 Do you think that there is always going to be MMA?

00:05:05.000 There's always going to be NFL boxing?

00:05:07.000 Do you think these things are always going to exist, or do you think that as a society we're going to transition away from those as people start to become more concerned about brain injury, for example?

00:05:15.000 Like, I've seen the NFL's ratings decline because people seem to be really worried about concussion levels.

00:05:20.000 Yeah.

00:05:21.000 I think in the recent future we're going to have these things, but I think in the distant future we're probably not going to.

00:05:27.000 I think we're going to move away from them because of the damage that they do.

00:05:30.000 Unless there's some radical new medical technology that can regenerate brain tissue to the point where you don't have to worry about brain injuries, which is not outside the realm of possibility.

00:05:40.000 Medical science, what they're doing with stem cells and exosomes and all the different

00:05:45.000 I think so.

00:05:57.000 Until then, until some radical new technology comes on, I think it's probably going to be less and less people that are interested in having their kids sign up to play football.

00:06:06.000 You're seeing that now.

00:06:08.000 Definitely have less and less people interested in fighting since traumatic brain injuries have been revealed to be, you know, really

00:06:17.000 Prevalent in kids that are involved in, like, football, even at, like, Pop Warner and high school levels, and in fighting, I mean, just from the time a kid can hit hard, you know, like, you're in, you know, like, one of the good things about martial arts, teaching kids young, is when you teach them young, they can't really hurt each other yet.

00:06:35.000 So even when they're hitting each other, it's all very light, and they're learning technique and movement before there's real consequences.

00:06:42.000 And then as they get older though, you know, if you're sparring when you're a teenager and you're sparring when you're, you know, in your early twenties, you're absolutely giving yourself brain damage.

00:06:51.000 It's just part of the package.

00:06:53.000 You have to just be able to figure out, okay, when have I, when have I suffered enough?

00:06:57.000 When, when am I getting out?

00:06:59.000 And that is the big question for a lot of fighters.

00:07:02.000 When do I jump off this ride?

00:07:03.000 Because it's so exciting and what they're doing is such a incredibly thrilling and glory filled

00:07:12.000 We're good.

00:07:25.000 And that's really the best way to describe it because you're trying to do something to someone who's trying to do something to you and genetics and knowledge and technique and discipline and drive and focus, these are all factors that are mixed up in this thing and you're trying to figure out who's going to come out on top.

00:07:42.000 I mean, I wonder if maybe that's the reason that MMA is going to keep growing as the NFL declines, is honesty in marketing.

00:07:47.000 When you watch MMA, you're watching people get the crap kicked out of them. 0.90

00:07:50.000 You're watching people bleed and your bones get broken. 0.96

00:07:53.000 The NFL has been promising for years that basically everyone's fine, that it's all just watching people hit pillows.

00:07:57.000 And then you see them later and they can't walk and they're falling apart.

00:08:00.000 MMA, I do wonder if there is a certain element of channeling just the human drive, particularly the male drive, for aggression in watching these kinds of sports.

00:08:08.000 Because I know a lot of genteel dudes who

00:08:10.000 Yeah, it's genetic.

00:08:11.000 It's definitely in our core.

00:08:12.000 It's what led people to...

00:08:22.000 Overcome being invaded by, you know, foreign villages that snuck in in the middle of the night. 1.00

00:08:27.000 You had to be able to fight with your hand.

00:08:30.000 How people fought over mates.

00:08:32.000 How people fought over territory and property.

00:08:34.000 It's just a part of the human experience.

00:08:37.000 And to have it boiled down into a martial art.

00:08:42.000 Then it's like you get all the satisfaction of watching combat, but at the end of it, people are friendly, they hug.

00:08:48.000 You know, they shake hands, they raise each other's arms up, the audience cheers and claps, and it's very thrilling.

00:08:55.000 And, you know, some could say it's actually cathartic that it actually releases this desire for aggression and violence.

00:09:02.000 I think there's a good case to be made for that, especially because you do see that in the animal kingdom.

00:09:05.000 You see chimpanzees sparring with each other basically just for a show of dominance, and you certainly see it among young boys.

00:09:09.000 I can see it with my two-year-old now.

00:09:11.000 Sure.

00:09:11.000 Like constantly just wants to fight.

00:09:13.000 Like the four-year-old girl, she wants to sit there and be nice and play with her toys and read. 1.00

00:09:19.000 And my two-year-old boy wants to kick some ass. 1.00

00:09:21.000 I mean, he is hardcore. 0.99

00:09:23.000 And which gets us to, you know, one of the topics that you and I have talked about before, which is sort of these gender differences between male and female.

00:09:30.000 As you've been watching the last, it's been probably a year and a half since we last talked.

00:09:33.000 What do you think of sort of the movement that's continued to pace to get rid of these gender differences that you've been seeing in society more broadly? 0.78

00:09:41.000 It's very strange because it's science denialism.

00:09:45.000 And the left is all about science until it comes to gender.

00:09:50.000 And once it comes to gender, they don't want to hear about studies, they don't want to hear about genetic differences between males and females, they don't want to hear about preferences or any studies that show that

00:10:02.000 People with higher testosterone tend to go towards certain activities.

00:10:07.000 People with lower ones tend to... They don't want to hear about that.

00:10:09.000 They want this weird thing where you're not even having the Boy Scouts anymore.

00:10:14.000 You just have the Scouts.

00:10:15.000 Like, there's this bizarre desire to eliminate gender as even...

00:10:22.000 Even a variable.

00:10:24.000 Very weird.

00:10:25.000 And I don't know why.

00:10:26.000 I don't know where it's going.

00:10:28.000 I don't know what's causing it.

00:10:30.000 I suspect it's people that don't enjoy certain aspects of male versus female competition or male versus male competition.

00:10:40.000 And the way that they feel like they can sort of diminish that is to try to make the whole subject seem like as if it's fruitless and there's nothing there.

00:10:49.000 Let's leave it on.

00:10:50.000 There is no difference.

00:10:51.000 It's a weird, weird time when it comes to discussing gender.

00:10:56.000 Gender all of a sudden, which was something that was just, oh, there's a boy, there's a girl. 0.91

00:11:00.000 I mean, our whole life.

00:11:02.000 Within the last half a decade, it's become this hugely politically charged subject where you, what, like I saw, my wife was reading this thing that she had to fill out today and she goes, look at this.

00:11:16.000 She goes, it says, what do I identify with?

00:11:19.000 Male or female?

00:11:20.000 She's not, it's like, state your sex. 0.99

00:11:22.000 It used to be state your sex.

00:11:23.000 Now it's what do you identify with?

00:11:26.000 And I'm like, okay, what percentage of the people are we placating with this?

00:11:32.000 And it's so bizarre it actually has medical consequences.

00:11:34.000 So I know a lot of doctors because I've said many times my wife is a doctor and there are cases now where doctors are walking into a room and it says on the chart that somebody is of a particular sex and they're not of that sex because they're writing the sex they perceive themselves to be.

00:11:46.000 Well that changes your diagnosis.

00:11:48.000 You have a completely different body.

00:11:49.000 So you know I heard a story about one patient who came in and was having lower abdominal pain.

00:11:54.000 Well, if you're a boy versus you're a girl, that's going to make a pretty large difference into how that diagnosis goes.

00:11:59.000 Shouldn't at least a doctor know what sex you're born with? 1.00

00:12:02.000 It's totally wild and it's all this attempt to level, I think.

00:12:06.000 Everything, the attempt to just get rid of natural differences between human beings and pretend they don't exist.

00:12:12.000 Like, we all want everybody to obviously have equal rights and equal liberties, but that's not the same thing as saying that everybody is going to be equally strong in a fighting ring.

00:12:21.000 What do you think is causing all this?

00:12:23.000 I mean, I think what's causing all of this is that there's a deep desire right now in a free society to try and figure out why some people succeed and some people fail, and we're never allowed to say that there are natural issues at stake.

00:12:34.000 And I understand the resistance to it based on race, right?

00:12:38.000 So for example, you see a lot of people who will say you can't ever talk about racial differences in IQ because 0.53

00:12:43.000 That is going to lead toward this racist conclusion that your race defines your IQ, which is, you know, a silly conclusion.

00:12:48.000 Like, there are racial differences in IQ based on kind of group statistics, but that has no relevance to the particular individual standing in front of you. 1.00

00:12:55.000 And so you saying this black guy is stupid because he's black is racist. 0.97

00:12:58.000 You saying there are group differences in IQ because every study ever done has shown group differences in IQ, not even based on racial groups necessarily, but based on different groups generally between 1.00

00:13:07.000 Between, you know, age groups.

00:13:08.000 There are differences in IQ, actually.

00:13:11.000 If you show that, at least from young age 2 to like 12, if you mention any of these things, then you're overriding the idea of a tabula rasa human being who can be created in whatever image you want.

00:13:23.000 Like, what people really want is to correct the cosmic imbalances, as Thomas Sowell says.

00:13:27.000 I don't know, what do you think is behind it?

00:13:28.000 I think you're hitting the nail on the head, and I think there's a tremendous amount of white guilt involved in it as well.

00:13:35.000 I mean, because basically what the IQ tests are showing when they do study differences in IQ and races, you're showing the rise of the superiority of the Asian race. 1.00

00:13:46.000 I mean, Asians dominate those things, and everybody is sort of just like, well, let's not talk about that. 1.00

00:13:53.000 Let's talk about white and black, because that's more convenient, and it's easier, and they could find a victim, and they could find a perpetrator. 0.75

00:13:59.000 And what you're also seeing, like, there's a lot of Asian groups that are furious because they're getting discriminated against about getting into colleges and universities.

00:14:07.000 They have higher standards, because they have such a high percentage of Asians that are getting into the universities.

00:14:13.000 It's very strange because they're not vocal about it, and they're not publicizing it, and they're not screaming racism in the streets, but they're the victims of it.

00:14:22.000 They actually are the victims of hard work and success and excellent genetics.

00:14:27.000 That's a great question.

00:14:28.000 And the differences in culture are really the place where we should be putting most of our focus, because when it comes to natural imbalances, there's only so much that you can do, right?

00:14:36.000 I'm not going to be fighting you in a ring anytime soon because I'd just get destroyed.

00:14:39.000 But when it comes to cultural differences, that's the stuff that we can correct for.

00:14:44.000 And instead of doing that, what we tend to do is we tend to pretend that the cultural differences are not brought about by immediate decision-making by parents.

00:14:51.000 Or by immediate communities.

00:14:53.000 It's something out there, right?

00:14:55.000 It's racism in the ether, or it's discrimination writ large.

00:14:59.000 It's something.

00:14:59.000 It's something out there.

00:15:00.000 We can't put our heads around it exactly, but it's something that's making us imbalanced.

00:15:04.000 And so the way to fix that is by getting rid of all imbalances that we see.

00:15:09.000 And so if there's an imbalance between men and women, we'll just pretend that that doesn't exist anymore, and that it must have been caused by something that we can't quite control.

00:15:15.000 Yeah, it's definitely not an objective way of approaching the issue.

00:15:19.000 I think there's a host of different factors that play into every community, right?

00:15:24.000 There's the echoes of the poor behavior of the people that live there before you, all the consequences of other people's actions that have affected all the people around you.

00:15:33.000 People going to jail, people that have experienced racism, people that have experienced poor treatment by law enforcement, massive distrust around you, very difficult to excel in those environments.

00:15:45.000 You're constantly like running away from gangs and headed home.

00:15:48.000 I don't think we should hold those people up to the same standards as we should.

00:15:52.000 People that grow up in very safe middle class communities where they don't have to worry about all this stuff.

00:15:57.000 I think there's a bunch of different factors and everybody's looking for one.

00:16:01.000 Exactly.

00:16:02.000 The one factor that appeals to their ideology.

00:16:05.000 Yeah.

00:16:05.000 And that's a real problem.

00:16:07.000 It's a problem also anytime you mention IQ everybody goes nuts.

00:16:10.000 Yeah.

00:16:10.000 Because immediately they suggest that what you're saying is racist.

00:16:13.000 And the truth is that

00:16:15.000 Whatever IQ differentials there are, it's unclear how much is explained by genetics and how much is explained by environment.

00:16:20.000 But some is clearly explained by genetics and some is clearly explained by environment.

00:16:23.000 As soon as you say that, everybody suggests that you are operating in a racist space.

00:16:27.000 So it's as you say, when it comes to data, like this happened with Sam Harris when he was being interviewed by Ezra Klein.

00:16:32.000 Right, Ezra Klein just went after him for suggesting that science is science.

00:16:36.000 Well, science is still science, even if you don't like the science, and it seems like the same thing should apply when it comes to biological differences.

00:16:42.000 In a second, I want to ask you about the comedy world, because that's obviously the other area in which you exist.

00:16:46.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Policy Genius.

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00:17:30.000 Go to Policy Genius and check it out. 1.00

00:17:31.000 Okay, so, John, I want to ask you about the comedic imbalance.

00:17:34.000 So, I know that later this week you're scheduled to have on Roseanne.

00:17:37.000 We're pre-taping this a little bit.

00:17:38.000 So, you're scheduled to have on Roseanne.

00:17:40.000 What do you make of the Roseanne follow-up?

00:17:41.000 Do you think that ABC was right to dump her show after her bizarre tweet about Valerie Jarrett?

00:17:47.000 Well, what's interesting is just saying that she was going to be on my podcast, she said it, and then I got all these tweets that were saying, boycott Joe Rogan, the UFC should fire me for having this racist on my podcast. 0.97

00:17:57.000 Like, no, I'm going to have a conversation with one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time, a person who I deeply respect, who I think is mentally ill. 0.96

00:18:06.000 She is on a host of different medications. 0.96

00:18:09.000 She's taking Ambien and drinking.

00:18:11.000 She was pushed to the brink of exhaustion doing that television show and she's made some very poor choices with some of the things that she said.

00:18:19.000 She would be the first to tell you that and I don't think that you, I don't think you could get an understanding of her from a tweet or from, you know, a one sentence

00:18:32.000 description of what she did, I think you need to hear her and hear her talk. 0.95

00:18:37.000 She's going to be the first person to tell you she's crazy. 0.97

00:18:40.000 And she is. 1.00

00:18:41.000 She's essentially, at least functionally, mentally ill. 0.99

00:18:46.000 You know? 0.99

00:18:46.000 But it's also why she's such a brilliant comedian. 0.99

00:18:49.000 And she's always been what you would call a sh** stirrer. 1.00

00:18:52.000 You know, if people don't remember, like when she used to, when she sung the national anthem and grabbed her crotch and spit on the ground and everybody went crazy, that's Roseanne. 0.99

00:19:01.000 You know, and I think people wanted to turn her into this lovable mother. 0.65

00:19:06.000 There's this, like, thing that people do when life gets weird, which is, like, where it's at right now, where they want to look back to the past, where things just made sense.

00:19:16.000 Can't we just bring back the Roseanne of old?

00:19:18.000 Look, John Goodman's there too.

00:19:21.000 This is amazing.

00:19:22.000 Everything was safe when I was a kid.

00:19:24.000 And that's what they're trying to do. 0.99

00:19:25.000 And they don't realize, like, she's tweeting crazy shit about someone looking like they're from Planet of the Apes, which, by the way, she said she didn't even know that that woman was black. 0.99

00:19:35.000 And she's just telling this to me on the phone. 0.99

00:19:37.000 She goes, I'm not stupid. 0.99

00:19:39.000 Do you think I would say that about a black person? 0.99

00:19:41.000 She goes, I thought she was Jewish.

00:19:42.000 She goes, look at her.

00:19:43.000 She looks like my relatives.

00:19:44.000 It's what she said to me on the phone.

00:19:47.000 I believe her.

00:19:48.000 I believe she makes some terrible choices. 1.00

00:19:53.000 Someone sent me some stuff this morning, like, look at this crazy shit she's tweeting. 1.00

00:19:57.000 It was something about George Soros. 0.99

00:19:59.000 As soon as I read Soros, I just put the phone down and walk away, because it's all, like, lizard people, and Alex Jones, and interdimensional child molesters, and George Soros is patrolling the marijuana.

00:20:11.000 I can't.

00:20:13.000 I'm out.

00:20:13.000 George Soros, to me, is the line that I will not cross.

00:20:18.000 My DMZ of conspiracy theories.

00:20:22.000 As soon as you get into Soros, Soros is hiring those Women's March people. 1.00

00:20:26.000 They don't even want to be there.

00:20:27.000 They're all being paid.

00:20:28.000 I'm like, how much money does this guy have?

00:20:30.000 There's a million people in every city.

00:20:32.000 What's he paying them?

00:20:33.000 A dollar?

00:20:34.000 Even if he paid them a dollar, that's a significant amount of money.

00:20:37.000 And they're not going to do that for a dollar.

00:20:38.000 You're going to have to pay them a lot of money.

00:20:40.000 Are you sure they're being paid?

00:20:42.000 But it's like that Soros guy.

00:20:43.000 As soon as you start tweeting and talking about Soros, my brain just checks out.

00:20:47.000 Is there a big problem with Roseanne?

00:20:49.000 A lot of celebrities, the attempt to mainstream them as normal human beings, and you see this from both sides.

00:20:54.000 I think to a certain extent, you saw the Republicans did this with Kid Rock, where suddenly Kid Rock was going to run for Senate in Michigan.

00:21:00.000 We're good.

00:21:17.000 I mean, I've lived out here my entire life. 0.93

00:21:19.000 The fact that entertainers and show people aren't a bunch of crazy people is just nuts.

00:21:23.000 Thank you.

00:21:24.000 The level of nuttiness in this town is so high, and yet the halo effect that we have about celebrities is that, well, if they're famous and I see them on TV, that must mean that they're smart in real life.

00:21:35.000 No.

00:21:36.000 Well, it's a biological trick.

00:21:39.000 And what it is, is when you evolved, when all of us lived thousands of years ago, we'd look to the most successful member of the tribe, the one who was older, the one that everybody revered.

00:21:51.000 He was the best hunter.

00:21:53.000 He was the smartest warrior.

00:21:55.000 He was the one with the scars in his face that had survived battle.

00:21:57.000 And he could relay to you the lessons of a life well lived.

00:22:01.000 This is what I learned.

00:22:02.000 This plant's poisonous. 0.98

00:22:03.000 That snake will kill you. 0.97

00:22:05.000 And all of this stuff now gets relayed to someone who's on a giant screen. 0.98

00:22:10.000 Now we see Brad Pitt.

00:22:12.000 His head is 20 feet tall.

00:22:13.000 There's music playing when he talks.

00:22:15.000 His lines are all carefully constructed by a team of writers.

00:22:19.000 And we get sucked into it like he's a real hero.

00:22:21.000 And we do that for anybody that gets attention.

00:22:24.000 We're good.

00:22:40.000 It's perpetrated through, and this is not by a grand conspiracy, but through media.

00:22:44.000 Through being able to put them on a YouTube screen, or on a television, or a laptop, or wherever you're digesting it.

00:22:53.000 And the knowledge that when you're watching a clip where Kanye West is talking about running for president, and you look down at the number and it says, oh my god, 24 million people have watched this.

00:23:02.000 And there's 15,000 thumbs up. 0.99

00:23:03.000 What the fuck? 0.99

00:23:06.000 And this is the world that we're living in today. 1.00

00:23:09.000 So you say, well, it must be, God, Kanye's going to win.

00:23:12.000 Kanye's going to win.

00:23:13.000 And this is exactly how Donald Trump got into office.

00:23:16.000 We have a popularity contest to see who becomes president, and we have the very first ever popular person.

00:23:22.000 We're good to go.

00:23:40.000 This is what's strange about taking the word of celebrities over the word of professors or of public intellectuals or of people that have actually carefully considered all these things that they're discussing and have a lot of information.

00:23:57.000 And they're basing these conclusions and these statements on a long history of research.

00:24:04.000 And this is not what you're going to get from Kanye.

00:24:06.000 He's a guy who doesn't even read.

00:24:09.000 He doesn't read.

00:24:11.000 And they're like, he's our guy.

00:24:12.000 He uses your incorrectly all the time.

00:24:16.000 He uses the wrong your.

00:24:19.000 Like, Piers Morgan, I mean, we both have our thoughts on Piers Morgan, but one of the things he wrote, like, he corrected him, and he's like, no, you're never going to be president, you know?

00:24:30.000 He shouldn't tweet that, because that's exactly what Barack Obama said about Donald Trump.

00:24:34.000 Exactly!

00:24:35.000 And then now Donald Trump's president.

00:24:36.000 Exactly!

00:24:37.000 So give me your take on, last time I talked to you was before the election, I think.

00:24:41.000 Yeah.

00:24:41.000 So what's your take on President Donald Trump, since we now have a year and a half of Donald Trump in office?

00:24:48.000 Everyone sucks at that job. 0.99

00:24:49.000 Hillary would have sucked at that job too. 1.00

00:24:51.000 It would have been a disaster. 1.00

00:24:52.000 I think her health would have failed.

00:24:53.000 I don't think she would have made any difference in the world.

00:24:57.000 I don't think he's going to make any difference in the world for the positive.

00:24:59.000 I think what we need is a council of wise people.

00:25:03.000 And I think that this idea of one alpha chimp that runs the whole thing based on a popularity contest is crazy. 0.70

00:25:10.000 I think it's a terrible idea.

00:25:11.000 I think it was a good idea in 1776.

00:25:14.000 It's a terrible idea in 2018.

00:25:16.000 I just don't think it works.

00:25:19.000 And I think you should be able to vote online.

00:25:21.000 I absolutely think you should be able to vote online.

00:25:23.000 If you could do your taxes online, if you could bank online, and do all the different things that people do online, you should be very easy to register, and you'd get a much more balanced

00:25:35.000 We're good to go.

00:25:56.000 I don't know.

00:26:13.000 What he's doing with the financial institutions and how he's opening up doors for businesses.

00:26:18.000 That's debatable, good or bad.

00:26:20.000 You know, whether it's good for the economy, is it bad for the middle class?

00:26:24.000 These are good questions.

00:26:26.000 But I think what's good about having someone who is widely regarded as being incompetent as president is that it's entirely possible that we might come to a point where we have to rethink the way we run and structure our government.

00:26:42.000 So I'm actually more encouraged by his presidency than you are.

00:26:44.000 I think one of the reasons is because the checks and balances worked.

00:26:47.000 So I think when last we talked, we said, you know, is Trump going to just run roughshod over the entire system of government?

00:26:52.000 And the reality is that no, he's done some stuff at the executive level, but the stuff that he's done at the executive level should never have been at the executive level anyway.

00:26:59.000 It should have been all legislature stuff.

00:27:01.000 So when you talk about what he's done with the EPA, my feeling is that we should have a Congress that makes the actual law on the environment.

00:27:08.000 We shouldn't have a group of unelected bureaucrats who make the actual law on the environment who we can't get rid of if we don't like. 0.95

00:27:12.000 It's a good point.

00:27:13.000 And so having them write these broad laws that are then delegated to Donald Trump's friends over in the executive or Barack Obama's friends over in the executive to then interpret and change and do all this stuff with takes power out of the hands of

00:27:25.000 The human beings who are actually elected to do it and who we can throw out.

00:27:28.000 I can't throw out the EPA administrator.

00:27:30.000 So one thing that's been good about Trump is, and this is the argument I've made to people who don't like President Trump is, you don't like President Trump?

00:27:37.000 Totally fine.

00:27:37.000 I didn't like President Obama.

00:27:38.000 Thought he was garbage. 0.99

00:27:40.000 Here's a great idea. 0.99

00:27:40.000 How about none of these people have a lot of power? 0.99

00:27:43.000 We're good to go.

00:28:06.000 I've been encouraged by the fact that the system is more durable than I thought it was.

00:28:10.000 I think that the founders were smart enough to build in a bunch of checks and balances that the president, as much as we tend to think of him as the guy who runs everything,

00:28:18.000 I mean, let's be real about this.

00:28:19.000 President Trump is sitting on the second floor of the White House.

00:28:22.000 He's not even in the Oval, right?

00:28:22.000 He's on the second floor of the White House, watching Shark Week.

00:28:26.000 And everybody downstairs is actually doing a lot of the work, trying to put together policy with Congress.

00:28:30.000 Some of it gets done, some of it doesn't.

00:28:32.000 And even a lot of those people are spending a lot of their time online, trying to figure out how Kim Kardashian can visit the White House.

00:28:37.000 So, the question, I guess, really is, for your money, do you want to see a more active government or a less active government?

00:28:43.000 Because I'm kind of happy with the gridlock, I'll be honest with you.

00:28:45.000 I kind of like the fact the government isn't doing anything.

00:28:47.000 There's definitely some pros to that.

00:28:49.000 I think it would be better if we had a more competent system.

00:28:52.000 And I agree with you that the checks and balances have... We've shown that he can't just throw everything out and just run Trump mania all across the country.

00:29:03.000 I think there's definitely some positive to that gridlock.

00:29:07.000 All the above.

00:29:07.000 I think if you have opinions on things, I mean first of all

00:29:23.000 This is really unpopular.

00:29:25.000 I think you should have to show that you have an understanding of what you're voting on.

00:29:30.000 You should probably have to take a test.

00:29:31.000 I'm fine with this.

00:29:32.000 If you want to get rid of the ID requirements and retain the actual you need to know what you're talking about requirement, I think I could live with that.

00:29:38.000 I think you should take a test.

00:29:40.000 And if you understand what the consequences of your decision are, you understand what

00:29:45.000 What is being voted on?

00:29:47.000 Then you can vote on it. 0.97

00:29:48.000 But if you just read, if you just go check yes, check no, just do it haphazard just because you're a crazy person and you happen to be 18. 0.99

00:29:56.000 I think that's pretty ridiculous. 0.93

00:29:59.000 But to have a test and have someone say, well, you have to be required to understand, have a rudimentary understanding of what you're talking about in order to make an opinion that could literally affect 300 million people. 0.73

00:30:13.000 A lot of people would say that's bad because then what about, are you saying that people have to have a certain intelligence level in order to vote?

00:30:21.000 Is this like, are you at the door of eugenics?

00:30:23.000 Like, where are you going with this?

00:30:25.000 Well, I think it's not a bad idea to say that if you're going to vote on really important issues, like whatever those issues are, whether it's funding the military or abortion or whatever it is, you should have an understanding of the subject.

00:30:40.000 I don't think that's unreasonable.

00:30:41.000 But people don't want any extra work, and they want things to be very, very convenient.

00:30:50.000 They want the virtue signaling also.

00:30:51.000 Being able to vote.

00:30:52.000 Half of voting right now is just virtue signaling, like demonstrating to the public at large, to people at large, what this vote means to you.

00:30:58.000 So as Hillary Clinton campaigning on, if you vote for me, you'll show that you voted for a woman. 0.85

00:31:01.000 And if you vote for Barack Obama, you've shown that you vote for a black guy. 0.76

00:31:04.000 If you're voting for Donald Trump, you're sticking a middle finger to the system. 0.69

00:31:07.000 It's all symbolic voting.

00:31:08.000 Very little of it seems to be about, like, what's this guy actually going to do once he's there?

00:31:11.000 Yeah.

00:31:12.000 And that's a serious problem.

00:31:13.000 Okay, so I want to turn to kind of the political correctness.

00:31:17.000 How do you do your job in a politically correct universe?

00:31:19.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Lending Club.

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00:32:02.000 That's LendingClub.com slash BenGuest.

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00:32:09.000 Okay, so you make jokes for a living, right?

00:32:11.000 You make lots of jokes for a living.

00:32:12.000 How are you going to survive in this environment making jokes for a living?

00:32:16.000 Piss people off?

00:32:17.000 I mean, you're gonna always have people, you're gonna have more people upset with you and there's more righteous indignation, I think, than I've ever seen in comedy.

00:32:25.000 I've had more people furious at me for what are clearly jokes than ever at any other time in my career.

00:32:32.000 And this is the hardest thing, right?

00:32:33.000 Because you make something that's clearly a joke and then somebody writes down the transcript of the joke and now you have to explain the joke.

00:32:38.000 Well, that immediately kills it because as soon as you explain a joke, it's no longer a joke.

00:32:42.000 So if you make a joke that's politically incorrect, and then they write it down, and everybody who heard you at the time knows that you were making a joke, if they write it down and then you have to explain it, you've automatically exited the realm of jokes, and so now you're trying to explain the statement as true or decent, and that's not the point of the joke in the first place.

00:32:58.000 Yes, exactly.

00:32:59.000 And you miss the context, you miss the way it was delivered, you miss the tone, you miss everything.

00:33:06.000 But what they're doing is they're just trying to find targets.

00:33:09.000 And I think that's one of the things that's happening with Roseanne, that's one of the things that's happening whenever anybody screws up in the media.

00:33:17.000 You just get these people that they want a target.

00:33:20.000 It's a game.

00:33:21.000 And the game is take someone down.

00:33:23.000 The game is call someone out, take someone down, shame them, you know, get the Twitter mob and the Facebook mob.

00:33:31.000 Get them after them.

00:33:32.000 Let's go.

00:33:32.000 Let's move.

00:33:33.000 Let's start a hashtag.

00:33:35.000 Let's attack Morgan Freeman.

00:33:36.000 I heard he told a joke.

00:33:37.000 I mean, this is like... I mean, did you read the woman's account on CNN?

00:33:43.000 With her interview with Morgan Freeman?

00:33:46.000 I think we covered it, but I can't remember it.

00:33:47.000 He was playing God in a movie.

00:33:49.000 You know, he's played God in a movie.

00:33:51.000 And she asked him, if you had magic power, what would you do with it?

00:33:54.000 And he said, you wouldn't have a stitch of clothes on.

00:33:57.000 That was the joke.

00:33:58.000 That was it.

00:33:58.000 And she was like, God, you mess with the wrong girls.

00:34:01.000 And I'm number 17 out of all these girls that have come after you.

00:34:04.000 And it's like, wow.

00:34:06.000 You know, like, he was on the spot.

00:34:07.000 He's being interviewed.

00:34:09.000 He's on a red carpet. 0.60

00:34:10.000 He tries to crack a joke about you being naked.

00:34:13.000 Like, is this really the worst thing that's ever happened to you?

00:34:16.000 Is this really this, or is it just a joke? 0.64

00:34:18.000 And when I'm looking at it, even in text, I find it to be silly.

00:34:23.000 But just a joke is dying, obviously.

00:34:24.000 Just a joke is still just a joke!

00:34:27.000 It's just a joke!

00:34:28.000 Well, I think there is that backlash happening.

00:34:30.000 It's one of the reasons why you've become incredibly popular, because you just don't care, right? 0.98

00:34:34.000 Well, I feel like if you have f*** you money, and you don't say f*** you, then who's going to? 0.98

00:34:45.000 Who's going to? 0.98

00:34:46.000 I'm a good person.

00:34:47.000 I'm a nice guy.

00:34:49.000 I pay my taxes.

00:34:50.000 I have a bunch of great friends and loved ones.

00:34:53.000 You have kids.

00:34:54.000 I have kids.

00:34:55.000 I try to be nice to people.

00:34:56.000 That's what I try to do.

00:34:57.000 But if I see something that's ridiculous and I make fun of it and people get mad at me for that, that's on you.

00:35:04.000 That's on you.

00:35:04.000 So there's a picture of you along with the rest of the intellectual dark web in this big New York Times piece by Barry Weiss.

00:35:10.000 I don't know, were you standing in a bush or something?

00:35:11.000 Like, for some reason everybody was in foliage taking these pictures.

00:35:15.000 So what do you make of the whole intellectual dark web contingent?

00:35:18.000 And there's been this now huge backlash by a lot of folks, particularly on the left, saying, what's up with this intellectual dark web?

00:35:23.000 It's just a bunch of unacceptable, deplorable people talking with each other and they don't have anything to say.

00:35:28.000 What do you make of the whole phenomenon?

00:35:29.000 Well, the name is all Eric.

00:35:32.000 Right, Eric Weinstein, yeah.

00:35:33.000 Yeah, Eric is crazy and he loves like all the cloak and dagger and all the hidden... just the name of it. 0.86

00:35:44.000 Intellectual dark web. 0.98

00:35:46.000 It's like he concocted that.

00:35:47.000 Soros, yeah.

00:35:48.000 Oh, was it?

00:35:49.000 Is he behind it?

00:35:50.000 But Eric, he's brilliant.

00:35:51.000 I love him.

00:35:52.000 I love his... Eric is the smartest person I have ever met and I can't understand half of what he's saying.

00:35:58.000 Yeah, he's a very intense guy, but he loves all this stuff.

00:36:03.000 He gets a kick out of it.

00:36:04.000 And I think there's a certain amount of silliness in calling it the intellectual dark web.

00:36:10.000 I mean, you and I are essentially in some sort of a super group.

00:36:12.000 What are we in?

00:36:13.000 We're super friends.

00:36:14.000 Exactly.

00:36:15.000 Yeah, and what I felt was fascinating was that a lot of people were trying to label us as like deplorable conservatives.

00:36:23.000 And like when they were saying this is a group of renegade conservatives.

00:36:27.000 I'm pretty liberal, like pretty liberal across the board.

00:36:31.000 If you want to talk to me about gay marriage, you want to talk to me about gay rights, women's rights, drugs, you go down the line. 0.88

00:36:39.000 Universal health care, universal basic income.

00:36:42.000 I mean, I'm pretty liberal, but it doesn't fit the narrative.

00:36:47.000 I look like a Trump supporter, right?

00:36:51.000 Is it white and buff or what?

00:36:53.000 Yeah, I'm a white, bald guy.

00:36:54.000 It works out too much.

00:36:55.000 There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of need to label someone into an easily dismissible category.

00:37:04.000 And that category is conservative. 0.86

00:37:06.000 Like, ruthless, nasty, mean. 0.90

00:37:11.000 A person who's not kind. 0.88

00:37:14.000 You're not a person who's caring about other people.

00:37:17.000 You're a conservative. 1.00

00:37:18.000 You're a mean bully. 1.00

00:37:19.000 Mean mad white man. 1.00

00:37:21.000 What was his name that said that to Jordan Peterson in the monk debates? 0.95

00:37:26.000 Michael Dyson, I think his name was.

00:37:28.000 Oh, Michael Eric Dyson.

00:37:28.000 Yes, that's who it was.

00:37:30.000 Oh, Michael Eric Dyson. 0.98

00:37:31.000 He called Jordan Peterson a mean mad white man. 0.97

00:37:35.000 Or Mad Me, one of those. 0.99

00:37:36.000 But there's this need to categorize.

00:37:39.000 Right, except for Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christina Hough Summers and half the people who are members of the club.

00:37:45.000 Maajid.

00:37:46.000 Exactly. 0.83

00:37:47.000 Dave Rubin, who's gay, right? 0.85

00:37:48.000 Yeah, it's hilarious.

00:37:49.000 It's this really bizarrely diverse group. 1.00

00:37:51.000 And really ideologically diverse, too.

00:37:53.000 Because it's a bunch of people, like Brett Weinstein, who's a member of our secret group.

00:37:58.000 He's a socialist.

00:37:59.000 He backed Bernie Sanders in the last election cycle.

00:38:01.000 Dishonesty.

00:38:02.000 It's dishonesty.

00:38:02.000 It's the same thing that led to what happened with Brett Weinstein at Evergreen.

00:38:16.000 We're good to go.

00:38:34.000 People of color stayed home voluntarily and weren't chastised if they didn't. 1.00

00:38:39.000 Instead of that, it was, no, white people have to go away. 0.98

00:38:43.000 And if you don't, you are a racist. 0.99

00:38:45.000 And this is what happened with Brett.

00:38:47.000 And it's a terrifying story.

00:38:48.000 And when I interviewed him on my podcast, it was before he had left Evergreen.

00:38:53.000 He was still employed there.

00:38:54.000 And he was talking to me about mobs that were wandering the parking lot with baseball bats.

00:38:59.000 And they were looking for him.

00:39:00.000 And it was terrifying.

00:39:01.000 He had to take his family out of the state.

00:39:04.000 And who is this?

00:39:05.000 Are these Nazis?

00:39:08.000 Are these the KKK? 1.00

00:39:09.000 Are these these right-wing thugs? 0.98

00:39:11.000 No, they're extreme progressives with pink hair who are, you know, non-binary sexually. 0.98

00:39:17.000 Like, it's very bizarre.

00:39:20.000 And there's a lack of reality that you have to adhere to this narrative.

00:39:26.000 And if you're not adhering to this narrative, then you are some horrific person who is a product of the past, and you're a part of the patriarchy, and it's not an honest discussion. 0.83

00:39:42.000 If you see all the people that are involved in this, you know, air quotes, intellectual dark web, the one thing they have in common, all of them are going, what in the f*** is everybody talking about?

00:39:52.000 Like, what is this?

00:39:53.000 What's happening here?

00:39:55.000 Like, why are we pretending that men and women aren't different things?

00:39:58.000 Why are we pretending that to tell people that you have to stay home because you're white? 0.99

00:40:03.000 It's f***ing racist. 0.99

00:40:04.000 That is absolutely racist, by definition. 0.98

00:40:07.000 That's what racism is.

00:40:08.000 You're discriminating against someone based on their race.

00:40:10.000 Not based on their character or their job position or anything else.

00:40:14.000 You're just white people. 0.78

00:40:16.000 Totally agree.

00:40:16.000 I mean, I think that the concepts that seem to have united this group of people, who again are all over the place on everything from religion to free will to politics, is one, we all like data and we're interested in data.

00:40:27.000 So if you present us with data, we're all happy to take a look at it and maybe change our opinions based on the new data that you're presenting to us.

00:40:33.000 That's very important.

00:40:34.000 And two, that we're willing to have conversations about those data without regard for the political niceties.

00:40:39.000 Yes.

00:40:40.000 And three, that we're all, I think, big into the idea of treating people as individuals.

00:40:44.000 That if you're going to treat me as a member of a group, I'm really not interested in talking to you, and I'm not interested in being labeled as a member of a group either.

00:40:50.000 So we're a group of people who don't like groups, basically, which is kind of hilarious.

00:40:55.000 That is exactly what it is, a group of people who don't like groups.

00:40:58.000 But we're also very friendly and kind.

00:41:01.000 And I'm sure you and I disagree on a bunch of things, but we agree on a lot of things as well.

00:41:06.000 But what I like about you is you're a very reasonable, intelligent person.

00:41:11.000 You're a very polite person.

00:41:13.000 The way you talk to people is very polite.

00:41:14.000 Thank you.

00:41:15.000 I think

00:41:30.000 We want to demonize people that disagree with them.

00:41:32.000 Instead of just sitting down and talking with them and saying, well, why do you think this?

00:41:36.000 Okay, let me try to look at it from your perspective.

00:41:38.000 This is why I disagree.

00:41:40.000 And have a polite exchange of ideas.

00:41:45.000 Instead, everyone's fighting for their life. 0.99

00:41:47.000 As if, you know, whether or not trans people can use the f***ing girls room is going to change the course of history. 1.00

00:41:53.000 It's strange. 0.99

00:41:54.000 It's strange. 0.97

00:41:55.000 Like these battlegrounds, the lines that people are drawing in the sand, and if you're on the other side, you're the f***ing enemy and you need to be shut down and stopped.

00:42:03.000 It's a very weird time.

00:42:22.000 The last three years, I now have to have at least a two-man security team at every college campus, and usually it's more than that, based on what the police are telling us about reports in advance.

00:42:30.000 Now, half the time nothing materializes, but a few times things have materialized, and it's been trouble, and that sometimes happens.

00:42:37.000 Where do you think this level of anger is coming from?

00:42:40.000 Because it appears to me that that's what's new.

00:42:42.000 Like, these political divides have always existed.

00:42:44.000 These political divides between right and left, or political divides between people who are more interested in collective solutions versus individual solutions.

00:42:51.000 Why do you think people are so pissed all the time?

00:42:54.000 I mean, they're just... You can feel it in the air.

00:42:56.000 Like, the eagerness to stomp on somebody's face is really strong.

00:43:00.000 That's why when the Roseanne thing happens, it can't just be like what you're saying, where, okay, she's a mentally ill person, maybe you have to take the show off the air, maybe that's the proper response, but... 0.93

00:43:07.000 She might actually have a problem here. 0.86

00:43:10.000 She certainly does.

00:43:12.000 What I think it's coming from is toxic tribalism.

00:43:14.000 That's what I think.

00:43:15.000 I think people, they're on a team, they want their team to win, and they want their team to win by any means necessary, and they feel disenfranchised because we have a president

00:43:27.000 You know, Donald Trump, I mean, he is who he is, and he stands for a lot of things that they find abhorrent.

00:43:33.000 And you have a lot of people now that are calling themselves Antifa, and they're literally by their own actions acting in a fascist manner, and they're calling themselves anti-fascist, and they're putting bandanas in their face, they're hitting people with bike locks, and they're engaged in violence.

00:43:50.000 And the left is using violence as a means to solve

00:43:55.000 These differences that we have in ideas and opinions.

00:43:57.000 They're shutting people down like Christina Hoff Summers. 0.99

00:44:00.000 Just yelling out at her.

00:44:01.000 A woman who's, her whole life has been a feminist. 1.00

00:44:05.000 Her whole life.

00:44:05.000 And she calls herself a factual feminist.

00:44:08.000 Because she wants women who are empowered and who are intelligent to be held accountable for the actual facts behind what they're saying. 1.00

00:44:16.000 And, you know, to discuss this, to empower people with reality.

00:44:20.000 And by doing that, she's become an enemy.

00:44:23.000 I mean, it's very strange to watch her get shouted down by other feminists that think that she's the wrong kind of feminist. 1.00

00:44:31.000 It's really bizarre.

00:44:33.000 But the anger and the vitriol and the violence that's attached to it is something that's completely new and was always associated with right-wing thuggish mobs.

00:44:43.000 It was always associated with hate groups, like the KKK or something along those lines, you know, neo-Nazis. 0.99

00:44:51.000 But you're seeing this level of violence from the left now, these weird, like, university professors and these dorky people that are saying, burn this motherfucker down, and people are cheering in the streets, and white people are the problem, and there's so many people that are tenured professors. 1.00

00:45:09.000 That are getting away with saying, like, ridiculous, crazy sh** and calling out for violence. 1.00

00:45:15.000 And it's completely irresponsible. 1.00

00:45:17.000 And it's, it's, it's foolish. 0.89

00:45:19.000 It feels weird, too, because, you know, back in the 1960s, at least there was something to fight over. 0.96

00:45:23.000 At least back in the 1960s, if you were gay, you said, okay, I don't have my rights, there's something to fight over.

00:45:27.000 Or you're black, and you say, I don't have my rights.

00:45:29.000 True, there's something to fight over.

00:45:31.000 Or you're female, and you say, well, feminism hasn't, hasn't done what it needs to do yet, there's something to fight for. 1.00

00:45:36.000 But right now,

00:45:37.000 Country's pretty good.

00:45:38.000 Like, things are pretty good for the vast majority of people in this country.

00:45:41.000 Put aside the economics for a second, because people always fail or rise in economics.

00:45:45.000 It just happens.

00:45:45.000 And some of that is natural and some of that is stuff that's fixable.

00:45:49.000 But one thing that is certainly true is that the notion of a governmental invasion of rights against any of these groups, this is not something that is commonly happening.

00:45:56.000 It's not that the government is cracking down on black people or Hispanic people or, at this point, even gay people.

00:46:00.000 And yet there's this level of anger that feels like riots in the 1960s.

00:46:04.000 I want to talk a little bit more about that in just a second.

00:46:06.000 First, I want to make some money.

00:46:07.000 So first we're going to say thanks to our sponsors over at stamps.com.

00:46:10.000 So these days you can get practically everything on demand.

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00:46:57.000 All right, so we're talking about sort of the levels of chaos, and I have a theory.

00:47:01.000 I'll lay it out for you.

00:47:02.000 So my theory, and I don't know where you stand religiously.

00:47:05.000 Are you agnostic, atheist, religious?

00:47:07.000 More agnostic than anything.

00:47:09.000 I grew up Catholic, and I abandoned it when I was a young boy.

00:47:13.000 I went to Catholic school, and that cured me. 1.00

00:47:15.000 So here's my theory.

00:47:16.000 My theory is that everybody has broken down into tribalism because it used to be that we were a larger tribe.

00:47:21.000 Meaning that the way that you defeat local tribalism is by creating a larger tribe that everybody feels a kinship to and a membership to.

00:47:28.000 So in the United States, you had people who've had tribal kinship to state governments.

00:47:32.000 And then after the Civil War, that basically went away because the federal government stepped in and stopped slavery through war making power.

00:47:39.000 And then people felt a general kinship to the federal

00:47:42.000 We're good.

00:47:59.000 And it used to be that the tribe for America was called America.

00:48:03.000 And that tribe was bonded by a certain set of creedal values, values of individual rights, values of personal virtue, that these things had to be combined.

00:48:11.000 You had to be a good person to your neighbors, but at the same time the government had no right to come in and take your stuff and force you to be a nicer person.

00:48:18.000 So the idea was that

00:48:20.000 You voluntarily were going to be a nicer person to your neighbors because you thought that was the right thing to do, but it wasn't the government's job to come in and force you to be nicer to your neighbors because that would be fascistic and overbearing and tyrannical.

00:48:31.000 And that's gone away because people don't feel like they have to be nice to their neighbors.

00:48:35.000 And I think part of that has to be connected with lack of communal institutions that, you know, I'm not saying everybody has to go to church, but people who are in churches tend to get along better with each other in the church.

00:48:45.000 And people who are outside the church and people inside the church.

00:48:48.000 Doesn't mean that you got to pick a church, but it does mean that we have to have some sort of communal institutions.

00:48:52.000 And right now we are savagely tearing apart each of our communal institutions up to and including things like the NFL, where suddenly things where we would bond over that, like Super Bowl Sunday was a bonding time for the country.

00:49:02.000 And now we can't even bond over that.

00:49:03.000 We can't bond over anything right now because all of these creedal values have been dissipated by our own personal malevolence toward each other.

00:49:11.000 I think that's a great point.

00:49:12.000 I think it's a great point, too, about the benefit of religion is that you do have these ideas and values that are shared amongst this community and group.

00:49:21.000 And when you are an atheist or an agnostic, I mean, you don't really have that group other than, like, what you're getting from a lot of atheists.

00:49:30.000 You get this really hardcore, progressive ideology that is, in many ways, like a religion.

00:49:36.000 And I think there's probably some real merit to what you're saying.

00:49:40.000 Robert Putnam makes this point in his book Bowling Alone.

00:49:43.000 He talks about this new fascination with diversity, and diversity is our strength, and this whole line.

00:49:50.000 And he was a big believer in this, Robert Putnam, this professor of sociology, he's a big lefty, and he says that diversity was our strength, it was his guiding kind of

00:49:58.000 We're good to go.

00:50:15.000 was in the context of a broader group.

00:50:17.000 So in the army, for example.

00:50:18.000 Then ethnic diversity is great, because then you get a bunch of people who are fighting for the same purpose, and the guy next to you is your brother, doesn't matter if he's black or white.

00:50:24.000 You see this with people who you talk to who are in the military all the time.

00:50:26.000 When they talk about people of different races in the military, this is usually the way they talk about people of different races in the military, which is very different than the way people talk about race in the United States more broadly.

00:50:35.000 You also see this in churches, but communal institutions have declined so markedly

00:50:40.000 That the only way I think that we're going to be able to have a system where we can all live with each other is to reestablish some sort of, some form of communal talking with each other.

00:50:47.000 Even if it's just forums like this one, where we're talking with each other and, you know, if we did this live, we'd get thousands of people to show up just to hear us talk to each other.

00:50:55.000 Even those sort of communal institutions need to exist.

00:50:58.000 Otherwise, we're going to completely polarize.

00:50:59.000 I mean, I think it's one of the dangers of the Internet.

00:51:01.000 I love the Internet.

00:51:02.000 I've made my living on the Internet.

00:51:03.000 You make your living on the Internet.

00:51:04.000 But one of the dangers of the Internet is that it's all personal to you.

00:51:07.000 You don't actually have to go out and be with other human beings.

00:51:09.000 You get to hide behind the screen and tweet nasty things at each other.

00:51:12.000 Yeah, you also can find this group of like-minded people and you share an echo chamber.

00:51:16.000 That's another real issue for confirmation bias.

00:51:20.000 I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense and I think that we do need community.

00:51:26.000 And I think the more people like you and like Sam Harris and Eric and Brett Weinstein

00:51:34.000 People who are open-minded, people who are willing to discuss things politely with people and not shove their ideology down other people's throats.

00:51:44.000 The more we exchange information with each other, the more this idea of being able to communicate like this becomes popular.

00:51:50.000 And I think there's real benefit in that.

00:51:52.000 I think there's real benefit in these kind of podcast-style discussions because of that.

00:51:57.000 Because you can sit down with a person that maybe doesn't share the same opinions with you and you can talk things out and maybe disagree, maybe argue, but be polite to each other and realize that a lot of these ideas that we have, we have these predetermined notions of the way we think things should be.

00:52:16.000 And if you don't fit with my predetermined notions, then there must be something wrong with you.

00:52:21.000 It's never just

00:52:23.000 Examining these notions and finding out where are these ideas coming from and why am I so married to them?

00:52:28.000 And what is the solution to make everybody comfortable?

00:52:32.000 Is there a solution?

00:52:34.000 Can we stop demonizing people that disagree with us?

00:52:36.000 I think the principle that I think also unites everybody, and this is why everybody's getting labeled conservative really,

00:52:42.000 Because everybody that we've been talking about here, in the end, actually does believe in personal responsibility.

00:52:47.000 Believes in taking responsibility for your own actions.

00:52:49.000 And you can be on the left and still believe in taking responsibility for your own actions, but it seems like so much of the left has dumped out of that.

00:52:55.000 And you're seeing that increasingly on the right, too.

00:52:57.000 I think that a lot of President Trump's appeal during the actual election cycle is him saying, I'm going to come in and solve all your problems.

00:53:03.000 Yeah.

00:53:03.000 No, that's a very good point.

00:53:03.000 Yeah.

00:53:03.000 Yeah, why are we all considered conservatives?

00:53:05.000 I mean, Jordan Peterson is an interesting example, too, because as much as he calls himself a classic liberal,

00:53:25.000 You know, people have a hard time deciphering what that is.

00:53:28.000 They don't even bother looking it up.

00:53:30.000 And he is, more so than I think anybody in that whole group, is getting attacked.

00:53:37.000 Oh, he's getting destroyed right now, yeah.

00:53:38.000 And his words are getting taken out of context, his positions are getting distorted, even in debates, during the month debates.

00:53:46.000 That Kathy Newman debate.

00:53:46.000 Oh, that was amazing.

00:53:47.000 Oh my goodness.

00:53:48.000 That was amazing!

00:53:49.000 Did you read the New York Times profile on Jordan?

00:53:51.000 I read a little bit of it, but it was a hit piece.

00:53:53.000 That piece was so astonishing.

00:53:55.000 My favorite part of that piece was there was a part of that piece where they suggest that Jordan Peterson is in favor of what he called enforced monogamy.

00:54:02.000 And so their suggestion was that Jordan actually wants to shackle women to men.

00:54:06.000 It's like you're...

00:54:08.000 Like, use Google.

00:54:10.000 It's an anthropological term.

00:54:12.000 It's talking about the difference between biological monogamy and socially constructed monogamy.

00:54:17.000 That's not what he's talking about.

00:54:18.000 But the left is so out to destroy him that they're willing to take him out of context at any level.

00:54:22.000 It's just nuts.

00:54:23.000 Well, he's also willing to engage with people and discuss things that he's talking to reporters that are looking to get him.

00:54:32.000 And he's openly discussing intellectual ideas and puzzles.

00:54:39.000 Like, how do you fix this?

00:54:40.000 I don't know.

00:54:40.000 Maybe it's enforced monogamy.

00:54:41.000 Like, this is not... I mean, this is like a weird way of engaging with the press, but he's so comfortable with these idea puzzles and bouncing them around and using them almost as intellectual exercises that he'll do it publicly with someone who is looking for flaws in his armor.

00:55:01.000 This is what you do so well, by the way, on your show.

00:55:03.000 I was trying to explain to somebody why your show is so popular, because it's a unique thing, what you do.

00:55:09.000 And what I said to them is that when I look at you as a host, or when I look at you as a thinker, you're somebody who's taking people along an intellectual journey, and you're taking the journey with them.

00:55:18.000 It's like being on a road trip of ideas with you on your show.

00:55:21.000 Do you think that's a pretty good description of what you do?

00:55:23.000 It's what I try for, in a way.

00:55:25.000 I want to know how they think.

00:55:27.000 It enriches the way I think.

00:55:29.000 When I have smart people on and I go through their thought process, I feel like I get a little rub from that.

00:55:35.000 I understand the way they're viewing the world with their completely different life than me.

00:55:40.000 I think there's a great value in that.

00:55:43.000 I think that's one of the things that people get out of the podcast, is they're getting the same thing that I'm getting while I'm sitting there talking to these people.

00:55:51.000 So what's your big plan here?

00:55:53.000 You can continue what you're doing, obviously, but where do you think you are in five years?

00:55:57.000 There's no plan.

00:55:59.000 There's no plan to get here.

00:56:00.000 There's no plan to stay.

00:56:01.000 I have zero plan.

00:56:03.000 I mean, I might abandon it.

00:56:04.000 I don't know. 0.82

00:56:05.000 I might decide people are too crazy.

00:56:07.000 It's just too difficult.

00:56:09.000 I really don't know.

00:56:09.000 Golf hunting in the wilderness?

00:56:11.000 Yeah, I'll probably just get a shack somewhere and just bow hunt.

00:56:15.000 I don't know.

00:56:16.000 I really have no idea where it's going to go.

00:56:19.000 But I am enjoying the fact that because the podcast is popular, I can get really interesting people on, like Howard Bloom, or Jordan Peterson, or you, or all these fascinating people and have these great conversations.

00:56:33.000 And I really enjoy conversations.

00:56:35.000 It's taught me a lot about the

00:56:40.000 The way to communicate with people, allowing people to talk, actually listening to what they're saying, engaging them on their ideas, not just waiting for my time to talk, which is what so many people do.

00:56:49.000 I mean, it's also led me to understand how rudimentary most people's conversation skills are.

00:56:56.000 When I'm watching people, even in really important meetings, just talk over each other and disregard what each other is saying, there's no lack of...

00:57:06.000 Solid communication skills that I think you really foster on a podcast.

00:57:11.000 And these conversations that we have, I think one of the best things about them is that you're getting an insight into how other people think and it allows you to examine the way you think.

00:57:26.000 And you, just by virtually listening to this person through your headphones or in your car, you're comparing your thought process to their thought process.

00:57:34.000 And I think, ultimately, we're trying to strengthen the way we view the world, and strengthen our clarity, and take in as much information as we can, and see that information for what it truly is, not what we want it to be.

00:57:49.000 So in that journey of what you're doing, you have a very wide variety of guests.

00:57:52.000 I know you've gotten flack for a lot of the guests that you've gotten on various sides, including flack for having me on your show.

00:57:57.000 How do you perform the gatekeeper function?

00:57:59.000 How do you decide who is just not worth having on your show?

00:58:01.000 Or is there anybody who you think is just not worth having on your show?

00:58:03.000 I just I like talking to people you know I mean if I want to talk to someone I want to have on my show I'm gonna like I told you I'm gonna have Ted Nugent on my show that's probably gonna be the most pushback other than Alex Jones of anybody that I've ever had but I don't think it's my job to not talk to people that I want to talk to I think it's my job to even if someone's

00:58:24.000 I mean, there's got to be some horrible people out there that I would never want to talk to.

00:58:28.000 That I just don't like the way they speak.

00:58:30.000 I don't like what they stand for.

00:58:32.000 And maybe Ted's one of them.

00:58:33.000 I don't know.

00:58:33.000 I have to sit down and talk to him.

00:58:35.000 But as long as I feel that I'm interested in having a conversation with that person, I'll air it.

00:58:42.000 And look, there's a lot of them out there.

00:58:43.000 I mean, I do three-hour podcasts and I do four or five a week.

00:58:46.000 If you don't like one of them, good.

00:58:48.000 Don't listen to that one.

00:58:49.000 I mean, I have ones on with MMA fighters, and I'll get, like, people always like, oh, I hate those ones.

00:58:54.000 So I said, OK, let me just take those, and I'll have a separate podcast.

00:58:58.000 I'll label them the MMA show, the JRE MMA show.

00:59:01.000 So now you know.

00:59:02.000 You know, if I have Kat Zingano on, or George St.

00:59:04.000 Pierre, we're going to talk about fighting for a lot of the time.

00:59:07.000 And then if I have on Jordan Peterson, or Sam Harris, or whoever else I might be interviewing, or Robert Shock, or you, we're going to talk about different things.

00:59:15.000 You know, you can like it or you don't like it, but there's plenty of people that like it, so I don't care.

00:59:21.000 Again, you have that eff you money, so you're in good shape, so who cares?

00:59:25.000 But having that, the wherewithal to understand that if you're enjoying it, if you like what you're doing, that's contagious.

00:59:36.000 You know, these conversations, interesting conversations are contagious.

00:59:40.000 Like, I am interested in people that are engaged in interesting conversations.

00:59:45.000 And when I listen to podcasts and I listen to people discussing things, and I know that they're really locked into this conversation, it's fascinating to me.

00:59:52.000 I mean, and we don't get enough of that.

00:59:55.000 In this world, we are dealing with, you know, you're in offices, you're in cubicles, you're dealing with human resources, and there's demands on the type of things you can discuss and what you can get in trouble for.

01:00:09.000 And most people, for at least eight hours out of their day, they are locked down with this rigid, conformed way of communicating and speaking.

01:00:19.000 And it's very frustrating.

01:00:20.000 It's very frustrating and it doesn't represent your thoughts.

01:00:23.000 It represents these patterns that you're expected to follow in the world of business and commerce and, you know, office space, you know, politics.

01:00:33.000 And I just think it's very, very frustrating for people and it's not natural.

01:00:37.000 And I think that's one of the reasons why people yearn for uncensored conversations.

01:00:41.000 Well, I mean, that's what you're going to get if you go to the Joe Rogan Experience, and it is amazing.

01:00:46.000 If you haven't listened to it, first of all, if you're listening to this, I'm sure you've listened to Joe's show.

01:00:49.000 But if you haven't, go check it out.

01:00:50.000 It's the Joe Rogan Experience.

01:00:52.000 Joe, thanks so much for stopping by.

01:00:53.000 It's amazing to have you here.

01:01:01.000 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 Zingaro, audio is mixed by Mike Karamina, hair and makeup is by Jeswa Alvera, and title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

01:01:15.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

01:01:19.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - June 03, 2018

Joe Rogan | The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special Ep. 4

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