The Glenn Beck Program - December 08, 2018


Ep 14 ｜ Dave Rubin ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour

Words per minute

190.87566

Word count

11,627

Sentence count

795

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

16

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Comedian and radio host Amy Poehler joins Jemele to discuss the importance of being present in the moment, and why being present is the most important thing you can do in a world that seems to be getting crazier and crazier every day.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 The Blaze Radio Network, on demand.
00:00:22.400 I was taught when I was a kid, but my daddy drilled it in my head over and over and over and over and over again.
00:00:30.000 What you follow the two most powerful words in any language with defines you.
00:00:38.020 And they are creative words.
00:00:41.240 And be careful every time you say, I am.
00:00:48.820 Follow those words with who you are.
00:00:52.100 Who are you?
00:00:54.040 Well, here was the word that popped into my head.
00:00:57.080 I am here.
00:00:57.780 And although that sounds sort of...
00:01:00.180 So present?
00:01:01.760 Yeah.
00:01:02.220 I was going to say, it sounds sort of cheesy, right?
00:01:04.280 I am here.
00:01:04.960 What does that actually mean?
00:01:06.160 Does that have any real value?
00:01:07.560 But that was what popped in my head when you just said that.
00:01:09.860 We didn't sit down and record any of this.
00:01:11.840 You actually said to me, let's not talk for a minute before we start here.
00:01:16.000 But yeah, present.
00:01:17.100 I am really trying in this crazy time that we live in that seemingly is getting crazier constantly.
00:01:24.480 And then when you add the technological component where everything seems to be getting sped up faster and faster, where we used to talk about a 24-hour news cycle.
00:01:32.960 Now it's almost a minute-by-minute news cycle.
00:01:35.420 The way we want to destroy people and things and institutions that have been with us forever.
00:01:40.300 The way we want to just sort of ransack history and think that we can build everything new.
00:01:45.480 And as if you just have ideas today that have been born of nothingness and all of history was meaningless and all of these things.
00:01:52.300 I really try to be present.
00:01:55.360 I mean, even when I'm doing this, right?
00:01:56.900 So you're interviewing me now.
00:01:58.360 But I interviewed you earlier today.
00:02:00.140 And we've done it a couple times on each other's shows over the last couple of years.
00:02:03.860 I really try to just sit in that room with that person and forget everything else.
00:02:10.920 Now, you can't do it all the time.
00:02:12.520 Because sometimes life just gets in the way.
00:02:14.980 And, you know, there could be on any given morning.
00:02:17.740 And it's fatiguing.
00:02:19.400 Oh, yeah.
00:02:20.300 Oh, it's really.
00:02:20.920 Well, look, life is tough, right?
00:02:23.540 Life, you know, I'm on tour with Peterson.
00:02:25.320 Life is suffering.
00:02:26.680 Life is not easy.
00:02:27.740 There is no easy way out of this thing.
00:02:29.480 You can figure out ways, I think, to mitigate some of the madness.
00:02:35.100 And hopefully you can pilfer some happiness along the way and find someone or some people that you love and enjoy some good food and sex and whatever it is that makes you happy.
00:02:45.180 And play video games if that's what you want.
00:02:46.480 Or play sports or read or whatever.
00:02:48.440 But life is tough.
00:02:49.680 And I think it's supposed to be tough.
00:02:51.900 You know, I don't know what the real purpose is other than you have to find some use and utility for your own life.
00:02:59.940 So I think if I figured out one thing, it's that I know that I wake up every day with a purpose.
00:03:05.280 There is not a day at this point in my life at 42 years old after, you know, having all the 12 years of struggling as a stand up comic and a couple radio shows and Sirius XM and being on the Young Turks and and personal struggles and being in the closet for a long time.
00:03:20.940 And a whole slew of things that I wake up every day and the second day starts, I'm like, there is so much to do.
00:03:28.540 There will not be enough hours in the day.
00:03:30.960 You know, I still want to have time to walk my dog and just, you know, do some human things, too.
00:03:37.600 But I think being present is the most important piece of that, because that's where you'll find some honesty.
00:03:42.540 And I think generally, I think what is sort of put me on the map with a lot of people is that I've been honest about my political evolution, my personal evolution.
00:03:52.440 You know, it's funny.
00:03:53.180 I'm surrounded by this group of people.
00:03:56.740 You know, I've got really the public intellectual of our time, Jordan Peterson.
00:04:00.560 I'm on tour with him.
00:04:01.560 Right.
00:04:01.800 And he's a clinical psychologist and bestselling author and all that.
00:04:04.900 I've got Eric Weinstein, who's a world renowned economist and Brett Weinstein, who's an incredible biologist and Sam Harris, who's a neuroscientist and sort of the most
00:04:12.420 outspoken atheist we have in a slew of other people.
00:04:15.280 Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's who's lived through more than than any of us can possibly imagine.
00:04:20.220 One of the bravest people on the planet.
00:04:21.680 You know, she absolutely.
00:04:23.860 You're absolutely right.
00:04:24.820 But not only brave.
00:04:25.660 She to me is the is the the the marker for what side of things you're on.
00:04:32.500 If I say Ayaan Hirsi Ali to you and you don't immediately say I love her or I admire her, you know, maybe you don't know who she is.
00:04:40.100 So I'll throw those people aside for a second.
00:04:41.740 But if there's a moment where you have to think about what you think of this woman, if you know who she is, you something is really whacked with your moral compass.
00:04:50.200 She is.
00:04:50.580 I've I've interviewed presidents, prime ministers.
00:04:55.100 I've interviewed everybody you could possibly think of.
00:04:59.000 She is the only person that had a at the time, a secret service man stand at the lens of the camera.
00:05:10.060 Is she still that bad? 0.99
00:05:11.720 It's still that bad.
00:05:12.460 I don't know that I can say exactly what.
00:05:15.100 But I can tell you that I've been at private homes with her where security where no one could have possibly known where we were and security guards have to be outside.
00:05:22.180 But anyway, I'm surrounded by this level of incredible intellectual, deep, meaningful people who are who are doing incredible things.
00:05:31.340 And I feel very blessed by that.
00:05:33.400 It's like I'm I'm someone that's that's interviewing them usually.
00:05:36.520 And now I'm I'm thought of as someone that's in this group with these people.
00:05:40.320 And it's like, wow, what if what a freaking gift.
00:05:43.760 Yeah, that is.
00:05:45.160 So I guess I did something right along the way.
00:05:48.520 Well, Twitter is the journal from hell, I suppose.
00:05:50.860 I don't journal enough, but I am writing.
00:05:53.980 I'm finally writing my first book right now.
00:05:56.100 What are you writing?
00:05:57.780 So I don't want to give away too much at the moment, but it has a lot to do with I think some of the things we're going to talk about here a little bit about my political evolution.
00:06:03.700 Yeah.
00:06:04.000 Sort of the way I see the world sort of shaking out now and what really are the issues that we can't talk about and why can't we talk about them and how if we're going to start talking about it, we can go ahead and do that.
00:06:15.340 And really how I've been able to have these really tough conversations with a guy like Ben Shapiro, you know, who will not only not bake me the cake, but said that he wouldn't even come into if I had an anniversary party for me and my husband.
00:06:29.700 We've been married over three years.
00:06:30.900 If I had an anniversary party, Ben said he probably wouldn't come.
00:06:33.940 And yet I can consider this guy a friend.
00:06:36.380 Now, he may not be a friend the way my true my truest friends in the most accepting, decent way people that I go way back with are.
00:06:46.120 But I don't need to make the world bend to my will and I can find room for people that I think differently.
00:06:52.660 And more importantly, and I said this to Ben when we got into this and we both got a lot of hate for it, by the way, he got a lot of hate from people on the right that aren't happy with gay people.
00:07:00.880 And I got a lot of people hate from people on the left that thought I was being a pushover or something to him.
00:07:05.760 But I said, you know, Ben, hopefully we'll do this for another 50 years and we can do it in public.
00:07:10.540 You know, we'll do these conversations and we'll talk about these things.
00:07:13.020 And I think I'll move you.
00:07:15.060 I think when when I'm 90 and he's a little younger than me, he's 80 or whatever it is.
00:07:19.120 I think that over time I will have moved him on on certain issues.
00:07:25.120 Not that I want to change what his religious beliefs are.
00:07:27.980 I don't.
00:07:28.560 I don't want to change them, but I think that over the course, the only way we are going to get anywhere, period, in this world is by doing this.
00:07:37.680 Will your relationship be worth it if you don't move him?
00:07:40.760 Yeah, it would still be worth it.
00:07:42.160 It has to be worth it.
00:07:43.120 Right.
00:07:43.380 It's like because otherwise, what is it?
00:07:45.600 Otherwise, it's an agenda.
00:07:47.140 It's an agenda, but it's also nothing.
00:07:49.220 You will never engage with people who think differently than you.
00:07:52.440 And we're, you know, as we just discussed on my show, it's like we are veering to that place in many respects, but I'm hopeful because of the amount of people I see in real life, not in 140 characters, but in real life who are trying to grapple with some of these issues, who are realizing in many cases that their allies are the same people they thought were their enemies a couple of years ago.
00:08:13.720 You know, the first time that we sat down, I said to you, I thought you were, I think, I thought a half genius, half crazy, half entertainer.
00:08:23.320 And I know that's three halves, but there was a lot going on there.
00:08:25.600 Right.
00:08:25.920 And it's like, I don't know that five years ago I would have thought, wow, I can sit down with Glenn Beck and have no agenda other than, you know, look each other in the eyes and figure it out.
00:08:35.600 And I think I'm a better person for that.
00:08:38.020 And I just see no, you know, there's this idea that if you talk to somebody, that automatically means you endorse their ideas.
00:08:43.720 Or you're giving air to whatever thoughts they have that, you know, are untoward or something.
00:08:50.060 And I just don't buy it.
00:08:51.500 I don't believe it.
00:08:52.560 And I'll keep fighting to make sure that that's not the world that we live in.
00:08:57.080 That's really amazing that, I mean, so I, I was invited to go to interview Assad in Syria.
00:09:10.480 And turned it down because it had too many restrictions.
00:09:16.820 Because I knew what he wanted, you know, he wanted me to tell his story.
00:09:21.640 I'm not going to go into something.
00:09:24.480 And somebody asked me, well, you can't talk to him.
00:09:27.920 I mean, what would you talk to?
00:09:29.900 Would you talk to Hitler?
00:09:31.260 Yeah.
00:09:32.060 Yeah, I would.
00:09:32.840 I would.
00:09:33.300 And I would ask honest questions.
00:09:35.420 I wouldn't try to get him.
00:09:36.660 I would just ask honest questions and let them hang themselves.
00:09:40.620 You know, let them be exposed for who they are and speak honestly about it.
00:09:46.860 I don't understand how, um, I don't understand how me being friends with you, you being friends
00:09:56.640 with me or Ben or something, how that hurts us, how that, how that's your, even if we weren't
00:10:04.820 friends, you being on my show, I'm not endorsing you.
00:10:08.500 You're not endorsing me.
00:10:09.680 I'm exploring.
00:10:11.220 Yeah.
00:10:11.380 Well, this shows how people have conflated people and ideas, right?
00:10:15.660 So of course, I mean, this is the most rudimentary, simple thing that people need to understand
00:10:19.940 if we're going to function as a, as a society, you have to be able to talk about ideas and
00:10:25.820 separate that from people.
00:10:27.940 I mean, this is sort of the age old thing about the, the artists and the art.
00:10:31.080 Can you separate the art from the artists?
00:10:33.060 And you're going to have all sorts of flawed people are going to have all sorts of flawed
00:10:36.200 conversations and create all sorts of brilliant art and, and all sorts of things.
00:10:40.840 Yeah.
00:10:41.060 Yeah.
00:10:41.760 And if we can't separate those two things, you'll never imagine if, if we couldn't do
00:10:48.200 that.
00:10:48.580 What we're North Korea, I mean, or worse. 0.98
00:10:51.440 I mean, we're really something worse.
00:10:53.120 But what kills me is the, the much of this now is coming from the left and you were the
00:11:00.400 one that said, no, art should challenge you.
00:11:05.380 You know, you go to a play, you read a book, you see a piece of art.
00:11:10.360 It should challenge you.
00:11:12.020 It should, it should push you maybe into uncomfortable places.
00:11:16.520 Well, where is that now on something much more important ideas?
00:11:22.220 Yeah.
00:11:22.500 I mean, good art is an idea.
00:11:25.660 Where is that?
00:11:26.880 Yeah.
00:11:27.280 It's so weird because, you know, it's kind of funny.
00:11:30.500 It's like, if I asked you to tell me your political journey, you can picture certain
00:11:33.860 markers along the way, but it's really hard to truly remember what you were thinking at
00:11:39.340 that time.
00:11:40.120 Really, really what you were thinking.
00:11:41.980 So even though my journey has been, been pretty quick in the last, let's say three years,
00:11:47.340 that's a pretty quick space to have a pretty big evolution.
00:11:51.880 It's still hard to remember exactly what was going on, but I know that, look, I was a lefty,
00:11:57.220 I was a progressive.
00:11:58.020 I always considered myself liberal and I wasn't really one of the people that was always screaming
00:12:03.040 racism and bigotry.
00:12:04.180 I was, and I'm sure I did it more than I'd be happy to remember, but I wasn't sort of
00:12:09.080 full on in that.
00:12:11.380 That being said, I was also at the time because so much of it was related to gay rights a couple
00:12:15.940 of years ago and marriage.
00:12:17.820 And because that directly affected me, I think I did get caught up in it.
00:12:22.180 So I think that that's partly, maybe I use that as a little bit of an excuse now, but
00:12:28.220 I think that's a pretty honorable position in that all I wanted was equality.
00:12:32.360 I wanted equality under the law, nothing more.
00:12:35.240 And I think once, once everyone has equality under the law, which we have right now, well,
00:12:39.700 then, then the rest is on you.
00:12:41.640 It's a little bit of luck and it's a little bit of hard work or probably a lot of hard
00:12:44.600 work and everything else.
00:12:45.820 And you're still going to run into bad people.
00:12:47.720 And there's going to be bad people and there's going to be racists and there's going to be
00:12:51.160 bigots and there's going to be cheaters and liars and stealers.
00:12:54.360 And, but there's also going to be great helpers and teachers.
00:12:57.480 And sometimes those teachers are the bad guys.
00:13:00.540 They don't know they're teaching, but they're teaching.
00:13:03.160 Yeah.
00:13:03.340 You know, one of the things that Peterson, who I'm on this tour with says all the time
00:13:06.700 is that, that this is just an adventure.
00:13:09.180 Make it your adventure.
00:13:10.920 And I think if you really take that, you know, you really think about like what makes a great
00:13:14.980 adventure, you know, like you've got Darth Vader's helmet in there.
00:13:18.520 Why is the adventure of Star Wars?
00:13:20.260 Why is Luke's story an adventure?
00:13:21.940 Why is Frodo going to that wherever the hell he went?
00:13:25.860 And I'm more of a Star Wars guy, whatever, Mount Doom or whatever.
00:13:30.100 Neo's adventure in the matrix.
00:13:31.420 Why do we care about stories?
00:13:33.500 Because it's on you.
00:13:34.880 The stories are what's giving us the map.
00:13:37.840 And this is where you can take this to a religious level if you want.
00:13:40.860 But, but I don't think you have to only discuss it in a religious sense.
00:13:44.500 It's on you in this world to figure something out and, and do something that's not easy.
00:13:50.360 If you do something that's easy, I have a lot of friends right now who are, you know,
00:13:54.180 I'm 42.
00:13:54.960 So most of my friends are, you know, let's say within five years of that, a lot of them
00:13:59.160 are sort of getting to this place where the rubber's meeting the road, where it's like,
00:14:02.100 we're not young anymore in a traditional, you know, we're not, we're not in our twenties
00:14:05.880 anymore.
00:14:06.260 You know, we play basketball and it's a lot slower.
00:14:08.620 Usually someone has a career ending injury every week.
00:14:12.060 And yet we're not, we're not old, but like now our lives are ours, you know?
00:14:16.780 And I'm, what I'm finding is a lot of my friends who never really challenged themselves.
00:14:20.300 They just kind of got a job that was relatively meaningless.
00:14:25.600 Maybe they're married, but it wasn't the person that they were really supposed to be with.
00:14:29.760 It was just somebody that was there sort of thing.
00:14:33.040 They're kind of having their midlife crisis right now, which I think is a little earlier
00:14:36.680 maybe than a traditional midlife crisis would kick in.
00:14:39.180 But I think this also goes to the things are speeding up and technology speeding up and the
00:14:42.700 rate that we change and think is speeding up.
00:14:45.080 And I'm not there because I, I have purpose every day and I feel like there's an adventure
00:14:51.440 here.
00:14:51.720 I'm about to go on to, I think, eight countries in Europe in 16 days with Peterson and find
00:14:57.340 out what all new people are thinking and, and have those conversations.
00:15:00.900 And I get to go out there and talk to all kinds of people and they tell me all sorts of things
00:15:06.920 and, and they're, they're all different.
00:15:09.360 And that, that's incredible.
00:15:11.720 But, but to the earlier point of this group of people that I'm surrounded by with, with
00:15:15.880 Harris and the Weinsteins and, and, uh, and Peterson and everybody else, and you, I included
00:15:20.280 that.
00:15:21.520 These are really great intellects.
00:15:23.660 And look, I'm, I'm a comic.
00:15:26.080 I was a poli sci major, but I'm a, I'm a comic and I'm a talker.
00:15:29.340 And I, you know, I, I like to think about these issues, but I don't think my place is to
00:15:33.780 necessarily, uh, be the hardcore intellect, not that I can't do it, but I, I'm not a
00:15:39.560 trained biologist, let's say, or neuroscientist or something, but I come more from, from your
00:15:44.920 school, which is I want to connect with these people.
00:15:47.440 I want to understand these ideas.
00:15:49.160 I think the thing that I'm probably best at is distilling some of these really complex
00:15:54.140 ideas into language that, that regular people can understand because I consider myself
00:15:59.500 a regular person.
00:16:00.820 And when I sit there with Eric Weinstein, who rifles off five math mathematical theories
00:16:05.560 that I can't even pronounce.
00:16:07.220 Well, if I can get one of them into something that makes some sense for people that they
00:16:12.340 can use, you know, one of the greatest minds of our generation, you know, he's using a
00:16:16.840 mathematical theory to explain something that's happening on social media, you know, a
00:16:20.980 trend related to speech and everything.
00:16:22.700 And he's going, there's a reason for this.
00:16:24.260 There's a mathematical certainty reason for this.
00:16:27.720 And he, and he does this.
00:16:28.540 He's done this repeatedly on my show.
00:16:29.780 If I can get a couple of people to understand that a little bit better, and it cleans up
00:16:33.360 their thinking a little, it's awesome.
00:16:35.900 It's powerful.
00:16:36.620 It's real.
00:16:44.620 Diane.
00:16:45.140 So, you know, Diane, so Diane Sawyer, I said I'm 42, not, not, not 22, you know,
00:16:51.140 she invited me to lunch one day when I was at CNN before I went to the evil empire.
00:16:56.760 Yeah.
00:16:57.680 And, uh, and, uh, and she invited me to lunch and I was, I was about your age and I was on
00:17:06.340 tour and I, I, I mean, I just was not stopping.
00:17:09.480 And I came in and the first thing I noticed, she wasn't in stage makeup and TV makeup.
00:17:15.040 So she, she looked tired and I must've looked exactly the same because I sat down and she
00:17:21.660 said, you look tired.
00:17:23.240 And I said, I don't know how to do this.
00:17:26.660 I know I am so tired.
00:17:28.740 And she said, Oh, you have to look at it differently.
00:17:33.600 And I would give you the same advice.
00:17:35.700 She said, you will come home every day if you can come home.
00:17:42.660 And when you're finished with the day, you will be bone tired.
00:17:46.880 And I remember bone tired.
00:17:48.460 Cause that's the way I felt my bones hurt.
00:17:51.300 I was so tired.
00:17:52.580 And she said, you will be bone tired, but in exchange, you will get to witness and see
00:18:00.440 things that no one else sees.
00:18:03.560 And you're just in that part of your life.
00:18:06.780 That is just, you're, you're a witness.
00:18:09.800 That's why I asked you if you kept a diary, you're a witness to something that nobody else
00:18:14.040 gets to see.
00:18:14.840 It's weird.
00:18:15.800 You know, it's, I've never had it sort of explained that kind of clearly to me, but it
00:18:20.840 is weird.
00:18:21.540 I'm tacitly or maybe not tacitly is probably not the right word.
00:18:25.020 I'm subtly, I guess, aware of that behind myself sort of like there are moments when I'm
00:18:30.320 on stage and you know, whether I'm with Peterson or doing standup and I'm, I'm really, I'm
00:18:36.320 doing my best to say something that is true that I believe or in standup.
00:18:40.100 Sometimes it's like, you're saying something that's mostly true and trying to make people
00:18:42.980 laugh at the same time, you know?
00:18:45.020 Um, but then when I see the way people react to me after and want to share their stories
00:18:51.380 with me and all of these things, it's like, it definitely, I can tell you this.
00:18:56.100 I am a better person even right this second than I was four months ago than when we started
00:19:00.260 this tour because not only because of sort of just being around Jordan, who I think
00:19:04.680 is, is as close to consistently saying something true as anyone I can really imagine on earth.
00:19:12.420 He is trying so freaking hard using all of the incredible tools that he has attained.
00:19:18.740 He is so slow in his speech and people have said to me, he's so slow.
00:19:24.520 No, he's exact.
00:19:26.500 He's weighing every word to make sure it's right.
00:19:29.340 He is so responsible.
00:19:31.500 One of the analogies that he uses about the way he approaches these talks.
00:19:34.660 And I love this because this is where he can take a very complex idea and get it into something
00:19:39.500 that, that you can just, that a regular person can understand.
00:19:42.660 He'll say, well, you know, when I'm, when I'm thinking through an idea on stage, you're
00:19:46.140 watching me do it.
00:19:47.140 I want to get it to the edge of where my intellect can get it.
00:19:50.160 And then I have to sort of put it down so I don't, you know, just completely lose it
00:19:54.660 right in front of you.
00:19:55.480 And he likens that to his daughter climbing the tree in front of their house when she was
00:20:00.620 young, that he would watch her.
00:20:02.500 She could get to a certain branch and then, you know, a couple of times put her leg over
00:20:07.160 or try to reach, try to reach, couldn't do it.
00:20:08.960 But then a couple of days later it could get a little bit further and a little bit further.
00:20:11.980 And before he knew it, she was at the top of the tree.
00:20:13.960 And I see him doing this.
00:20:15.620 I genuinely see it.
00:20:16.980 The guy's doing hour and a half lectures that are different, basically every, I mean,
00:20:22.240 I haven't heard the same one twice.
00:20:23.620 I mean, you know, sometimes there's some themes obviously that are similar, you know, I'm sure
00:20:26.660 the, I'm sure the publisher would be happier if he was just talking about the book the whole
00:20:29.860 time, but he's using this to expand his knowledge.
00:20:33.400 And I think, and I've never seen him, I've never seen him lie or say something that he doesn't
00:20:39.220 believe or intentionally mislead the audience or anything like that.
00:20:42.840 Really, I've never seen it.
00:20:43.680 I've seen him, uh, you know, if I, if during the Q and a, when I ask him something that
00:20:49.840 maybe he doesn't want to fully address at the moment, um, he'll say it, he doesn't, you
00:20:54.420 know, I mean, you know what it's like all these people that get on TV all the time and they
00:20:57.200 have an answer for everything and they know everything.
00:21:00.260 And you know, you're never going to see a real human there.
00:21:03.380 I see presence and human with him all the time.
00:21:05.980 So I think I'm better from that just in these last couple of months, I still got a long way
00:21:10.420 to go.
00:21:10.720 It's a work in progress every day.
00:21:12.160 Right.
00:21:12.440 None of, none of us, I don't know anyone that's, that's fully there, but as soon as you stop
00:21:16.480 working, you die. 0.97
00:21:17.380 Yeah, you're done.
00:21:17.980 Right.
00:21:18.200 That's it.
00:21:18.660 So it's like, I want to keep working.
00:21:21.100 I want to keep being on the adventure, but also knowing that, that people think that
00:21:24.760 I've done something good here just because I just started saying what I think.
00:21:28.760 That's all I did.
00:21:30.140 So to get back to the original question, I just, I was a lefty.
00:21:33.900 I was one of these people.
00:21:35.100 And I saw something early on that now pretty much everyone sees.
00:21:39.440 I mean, everyone, whether you're conservative libertarian, you're an old school liberal,
00:21:43.620 even most of the progressives, I think actually see it now that there is this truly horrific
00:21:48.700 authoritarian strain that has just encompassed the modern left.
00:21:54.280 And I mean that from the academic perspective to the media, to the political establishment,
00:21:58.880 it has just infected everything.
00:22:01.500 And for some reason, I was one of the first people that saw it.
00:22:04.460 And I tried the best I could as an insider to say, let's wake up or it's going to lead
00:22:08.880 to really terrible things, not only within our party, but within the other guys, you will
00:22:13.660 get Trump, the guy you think is a Nazi and all of these things.
00:22:16.520 And guess what?
00:22:17.140 He's not the Nazi.
00:22:18.300 And then you won't be able to see the Nazi when the Nazi comes because the Nazi might be
00:22:22.480 you.
00:22:22.840 And I think that's a lot closer, although I don't like playing those word games, of course.
00:22:28.500 And all I did was tell my story.
00:22:30.380 And because of that, an awful lot of people suddenly, I guess, were in the recesses of
00:22:35.640 their mind thinking similar thoughts.
00:22:37.740 And now they're on that journey with me.
00:22:42.180 You don't, I don't think, I don't think people are born brave.
00:22:49.980 Um, I don't think people, in fact, I don't think there's any, I don't think there's anybody
00:22:55.480 in history, unless they were insane, that did something great that wasn't terrified.
00:23:00.740 They just did it anyway.
00:23:02.840 Um, but it's a muscle.
00:23:05.780 And unless you've had to exercise that muscle on smaller things all throughout your life,
00:23:11.220 you're just not going to do it.
00:23:14.160 Yeah.
00:23:15.840 Let me start early with you as a kid.
00:23:18.240 Yeah.
00:23:21.080 First time you thought I'm different.
00:23:23.620 Well, I, if, if this is sort of leading to something about sexuality, is that kind of
00:23:34.580 where you're trying to go with this?
00:23:35.640 Yeah.
00:23:37.180 I mean, I probably, maybe around.
00:23:40.060 I mean, unless there was some other thing that would have been different that would have
00:23:42.800 went, Oh no, wait, wait, I don't know what this is.
00:23:45.140 Well, no, I mean, I always, I think I, you know, it's so funny.
00:23:47.480 People say, Oh, I always thought I was different.
00:23:48.900 And then everyone says it.
00:23:49.860 And then it's like, well, we all couldn't have been different, you know, what are we?
00:23:53.100 So I was always, you know, I was always kind of funny and quippy, even when I was in kindergarten,
00:23:58.100 you know, I was always like sort of the, I wasn't the class clown, but I was kind of
00:24:02.240 in the back, like making fun of the class clown or like, so I always saw the world a little
00:24:06.760 bit differently.
00:24:07.380 Now that may be a precursor to, uh, to talking about sexuality a little bit, I would suppose
00:24:13.000 maybe around third or fourth grade, something like that.
00:24:18.380 But, but I would say in a, in a more, when, uh, what I'm looking for is, um, the first
00:24:25.120 time you thought I, I'm different and this is a bit scary.
00:24:32.900 Yeah.
00:24:33.100 So that I think probably around 10th grade or something.
00:24:36.820 And I don't even know that I've ever talked about this publicly before.
00:24:39.740 I remember thinking that like, I seem to be attracted to guys, but I didn't think I was,
00:24:45.880 I didn't think I was gay.
00:24:47.320 Gay was like, you like show tunes and you like dancing. 1.00
00:24:50.700 I mean, that's really gay. 1.00
00:24:51.820 Right.
00:24:52.040 Then you're gay. 0.95
00:24:52.620 Well, that's, that, that's the funny thing.
00:24:53.920 I mean, people say this all the time.
00:24:55.340 People say to me, you don't seem gay.
00:24:57.420 And it's like, well, what do you, what do you really say?
00:25:00.220 Like, you know, there's pretty much one thing that makes you gay and then everything else
00:25:03.840 is, is something else.
00:25:04.880 But I still don't really like theater and I'm a horrible dancer.
00:25:07.880 You know what I mean?
00:25:08.280 And I'd, and I'd much rather play basketball and video games or whatever, but I assure you
00:25:12.900 I'm gay.
00:25:13.340 You know what I mean?
00:25:13.880 Like, so I, so that's what made me feel weird, I think, because I didn't act the way you were
00:25:19.060 supposed to act if you were gay. 0.79
00:25:20.560 And I think there's a lot more people like this than, than we see at all because we still
00:25:25.160 sort of do even now for all the progress that's been made.
00:25:27.780 And I say progress in the, in the true sense of progress, um, mostly what you get on television
00:25:32.720 or in mainstream media from, uh, gay people is still sort of a minstrel show.
00:25:37.080 You can get a lot of them on Bravo talking about fashion or you can get some over the
00:25:40.700 top, you know, sort of clown on some other show or whatever, but it is, there are people
00:25:45.560 like that.
00:25:46.280 Sure.
00:25:46.460 And I don't begrudge them.
00:25:47.560 If anything, there was a time in my life where in a weird way I was actually jealous of
00:25:51.420 them because I thought, Whoa, you so are who you are.
00:25:54.460 And it's just out there while I kind of felt like a freak because people would say, even
00:25:58.340 after I came out and people would say, we don't seem gay and I, and they meant it as a
00:26:01.940 compliment.
00:26:02.460 That's really what they meant.
00:26:03.480 They meant you seem normal, but I didn't feel normal.
00:26:07.520 So the more people tell you you're normal and you don't feel normal, that's when you really
00:26:11.100 start feeling crazy.
00:26:12.760 So it was like this really odd.
00:26:16.140 So I don't want to compare the two at all, but I'm an alcoholic, but I had certain rules.
00:26:21.460 I wouldn't drink until 5 PM, but I would stand at a place at five and I would literally, I
00:26:27.360 would watch the second hand.
00:26:28.900 Okay.
00:26:29.220 Because I was not an alcoholic.
00:26:32.100 Alcoholics are drunk.
00:26:33.140 They're all day long.
00:26:35.040 And so it's a weird thing because you're convinced.
00:26:39.320 No, no, that's not, that's not me.
00:26:41.440 Yeah.
00:26:41.940 Is it kind of like that?
00:26:43.000 It is kind of like that.
00:26:44.080 It really is kind of like that.
00:26:45.360 You know, one of my policies when I, so I actually, I don't know that I've ever, I think
00:26:49.720 maybe I've said this once or twice, but the first night that I ever came out to someone,
00:26:53.980 believe it or not, was, uh, nine, 10, September 10th, 2001, 2001 at about 11 30 PM in the
00:27:04.940 Times Square subway station.
00:27:06.340 And I told my friend, Mike Singer, who was a comedian, uh, he was gay actually.
00:27:11.260 And he was the first person I ever came out to.
00:27:13.340 And then, and he didn't really realize that it was like something major for me.
00:27:16.580 He, he thought I was just telling him like, I'm gay, you know, like zippity doodah, whatever.
00:27:20.300 And we separated.
00:27:21.080 He went to Queens.
00:27:21.680 I went back to the Upper West side, uh, Upper East side at the time.
00:27:25.600 And, uh, and I woke up the next morning and obviously the world had changed.
00:27:30.300 And I remember, I mean, this is what being closeted is sort of like, it's an inside job.
00:27:35.260 The reason they call it is the closet.
00:27:36.900 There's only room for one in there.
00:27:38.520 And when you are that isolated and that disconnected and not being real with, with your reality
00:27:43.460 and not being truthful, you, you become paranoid, you become duplicitous.
00:27:48.780 I could lie like that.
00:27:50.220 Not even that I was trying to lie.
00:27:51.220 Like people would say, well, you know, who are you dating or what?
00:27:53.100 And it's like, you could just come up with a lie.
00:27:54.800 It wasn't, I wasn't walking around thinking I'm going to lie to people all the time, but
00:27:57.540 lies and that, that probably, yeah, that's probably very similar to autism or abusing
00:28:01.380 a drug or whatever.
00:28:02.640 Um, but I remember I woke up the next morning and I know this sounds completely insane.
00:28:06.020 I was also smoking a lot of pot at the time.
00:28:07.740 I woke up the next morning and I honestly thought it had something to do with what I said that,
00:28:13.280 that I truly thought that shut up.
00:28:15.660 Yeah.
00:28:16.060 I truly thought that that's how sort of twisted the world had become to me.
00:28:20.880 Like, because when you, when you were so cut off from reality.
00:28:24.300 Was that a religious thing or what, what, what, where did that come from?
00:28:27.660 You thought the.
00:28:28.680 I thought I had had this horrible, horrible secret for so long and I finally said it.
00:28:35.680 I finally actually said it.
00:28:37.340 I released it into reality.
00:28:38.960 And then I woke up the next morning in the city that I lived in.
00:28:42.420 How long did it take before that went away?
00:28:46.860 Probably.
00:28:47.340 I mean, I think at some point over the next couple of days, then the true nature of the
00:28:50.860 reality of what was happening with 9-11.
00:28:52.760 Gosh, that must've made it a thousand times worse.
00:28:56.180 I mean, I can't imagine that, you know, anything that would make it a thousand times worse,
00:28:59.460 but, but, you know, within, within an hour of, or maybe two hours of the attack, I was
00:29:05.280 on, I lived on 90th and 1st.
00:29:06.940 So if you know Manhattan, I mean, that's really the polar opposite of where the towers were.
00:29:11.100 And, you know, within two hours, the, the smell and the soot and the, and the air.
00:29:17.120 And then, you know, I had friends that couldn't get out of the city that stayed with me.
00:29:21.800 And my grandma actually lived in Manhattan. 0.95
00:29:24.240 My dad couldn't get out of the city, stayed with her and some of his coworkers and just
00:29:27.040 all that chaos.
00:29:28.260 So I think I probably broke out of that paranoia quickly, but I mean, it was a real thought
00:29:34.100 in my mind for a little while, but that's what happens.
00:29:36.400 I think when, when you are so closed off to reality and you can't deny your truth.
00:29:43.480 I mean, you know, I didn't, I'm pretty sure I'm not the guy who came up with the truth.
00:29:46.280 It'll set you free, but you can't, you can't deny your nature.
00:29:49.980 You can, you can, you can be the best person you can be and you can always work at that.
00:29:55.280 But.
00:29:56.920 So my favorite, uh, line is not the truth shall set you free.
00:30:04.200 It's, and I don't remember who said this first, the truth shall set you free, but it
00:30:11.180 might make you miserable first.
00:30:13.520 Most likely it will.
00:30:14.640 Yeah.
00:30:15.220 Yeah.
00:30:15.380 So when you started, how did your parents take it?
00:30:19.520 Did you.
00:30:20.540 So I was still, so what I did was, so after that, I thought my policy, I, despite this
00:30:26.740 psychotic and really paranoid thought that the world was ending because of me, I mean,
00:30:31.880 I'm not, you know, I'm really not kidding when I say this.
00:30:34.180 It really was.
00:30:34.800 After I got past that, my policy was if I tell one person and I feel better, then I'll
00:30:42.860 tell someone else.
00:30:43.980 And that's what I did for the course of like two years.
00:30:46.480 And by the way, in 2001, I was already 25, 26.
00:30:49.640 So I was not a young person relative to figuring out who you are.
00:30:55.060 And I regret the, you know, not, I don't have regret in that.
00:30:58.200 I know I'm here now and I'm supposed to be here now.
00:31:01.140 Um, but I know I did a lot of undue damage psychologically to myself and probably physically
00:31:07.540 at some level and I did drugs and, and all sorts of things because I was coping the
00:31:11.680 way anyone, anyone would cope.
00:31:13.720 So my policy was if I tell one person and I feel better, then I'll know that that's sort
00:31:18.940 of the right path.
00:31:20.000 And what I would do is I would tell one person I'd feel better for a little while, and then
00:31:25.680 I would start feeling worse again because I needed to tell someone.
00:31:28.560 And then when it would get to the breaking point again, I would tell someone else.
00:31:31.140 And the more people I told, what I realized was the, the, the time before I'd feel bad would
00:31:36.160 start getting shorter and shorter because of the more reality I stepped into, the less
00:31:40.240 I could tolerate the, the, the lie.
00:31:45.200 And so that, that was, it was like I was testing myself in a way I was testing.
00:31:50.440 Well, I don't feel gay, whatever that means, or the world doesn't see the person that I
00:31:55.660 am as, as this thing.
00:31:57.880 And I was doing a little test on my own.
00:32:01.760 And, uh, you know, it's not even something that I talk about a lot or think about a lot
00:32:05.640 that much anymore because I just am, I just am here.
00:32:10.980 And, uh, the back to the, what my dad said, I am, I mean, that's really a complete sentence
00:32:18.960 by itself.
00:32:20.040 You know, it can be followed by something, but when you are whole, that's all it needs
00:32:26.260 to be said.
00:32:26.980 Yeah.
00:32:27.460 I am.
00:32:27.900 Um, I would say the, the piece that I do think about is that, you know, you always do
00:32:34.600 yourself, like no matter how good or whole, uh, Glenn Beck might be in 2018, you know,
00:32:41.800 the guy that was standing there at the bar counting those minutes down.
00:32:45.160 And I know the sort of damaged person that I was for a while.
00:32:49.300 I don't dwell on it.
00:32:50.140 I don't, I'm too busy to dwell on it now, which is nice, right?
00:32:52.660 Like, it's like, I'm doing something right now.
00:32:54.460 So I don't, but some of the vestiges of that still haunt you, haunt me at least.
00:32:59.760 And I don't know that you fully can ever escape that.
00:33:03.140 And maybe there's a reason for that.
00:33:04.440 Maybe there's a fuel in that, that you need as a, as a, either a creative person or just
00:33:09.420 an aware person.
00:33:10.940 As a, as a Christian, you know, we believe in the atonement, we believe in forgiveness.
00:33:18.020 And so if you really accept that and you can give that to whatever, um, but it does change
00:33:25.180 you.
00:33:25.520 Uh, cause it was when I was, uh, you know, 30, I was completely out of control and, uh, I
00:33:34.340 just, I couldn't live this way anymore.
00:33:36.440 And I couldn't live with the mistakes that I'd made.
00:33:38.620 They were just crushing.
00:33:40.600 And, um, uh, you could look at this as a spiritual thing or a mental thing.
00:33:48.420 It doesn't matter.
00:33:49.000 Um, but when I finally made the, I took the step and said, this is what I believe.
00:33:59.300 And this, I'm going to give this package to him and he's going to take it and I'm not
00:34:05.140 going to do it.
00:34:06.140 That's why I don't understand.
00:34:07.380 Well, well, why people argue about religion?
00:34:10.660 Does it work for you?
00:34:12.700 Yeah.
00:34:13.080 If it works for you, I don't care.
00:34:14.500 I don't care.
00:34:15.440 But I had blinding, crippling migraines twice a week.
00:34:21.640 And I know it was just from the mental beating inside the day I made that commitment last
00:34:29.280 migraine I had, I mean, and I had them for years and you can give it away, but it's almost,
00:34:39.100 I think it's a constant renewal of let it go.
00:34:45.340 Let it go.
00:34:46.320 I think hell is not being able to forgive yourself, not being able to put your past
00:34:54.240 in the past.
00:34:55.320 Well, think how powerful that is.
00:34:56.800 I mean that, so that's like saying, well, hell is here and heaven can be here too.
00:35:01.180 If you line this stuff up correctly, whatever your mission is here and you do it forthrightly
00:35:06.880 and honestly and treat people well and, and truly do the best you can, which we all fail
00:35:12.860 at all the time, every single day.
00:35:15.220 Like if you don't think you do, then you probably do more than, more than most.
00:35:18.160 Right.
00:35:18.580 So if you do that, then you could be, then heaven could be right here because otherwise
00:35:23.640 what's better than what you can imagine.
00:35:25.340 It can all be right here.
00:35:26.560 It doesn't mean you're going to have 50 million bucks tomorrow and you know, and on this.
00:35:30.280 But that's not, but that's not, that's not it.
00:35:32.420 That's not it.
00:35:33.240 So anything that I think that we can imagine as human beings can happen here and now.
00:35:39.540 And if you really believe that, if you really strive to achieve that, I think you have a
00:35:46.560 pretty decent chance at it.
00:35:48.200 You might not, and you might screw it up, right?
00:35:51.120 You might get it for, I think what you probably, I think probably at the, at the end, if, if
00:35:56.220 you all, if everyone goes across a life, that's a full healthy life to 90, let's say, I suspect
00:36:01.580 that the people that, that do this, the best that live the truest, most honest, decent life
00:36:07.600 possible.
00:36:08.280 I suspect there's very few people that live in that place of heaven for a long time.
00:36:12.560 You kind of can dip, you can dip in and out, you can dip in and you might have a run.
00:36:17.500 You know, it's like, you can look back on your life.
00:36:19.100 I can think of certain moments in my life, certain summers or whatever it was, man, that
00:36:23.460 was good.
00:36:24.000 You know, like I was on it.
00:36:25.180 I was, I was there.
00:36:26.340 I was present.
00:36:27.060 I was, you know, whatever it was, whatever I was doing, you know, like I can even think back
00:36:31.320 when I was doing standup and like, I, even though I was a lot of my repression was what
00:36:36.740 was leading me to be on stage.
00:36:38.520 Right.
00:36:38.840 Like I was, that's the interesting thing, actually.
00:36:40.860 I, it really fueled a lot of good comedy when I was younger because pain usually does pain
00:36:46.820 does.
00:36:47.260 But then, you know, I heard George Carlin say this, um, and I love this.
00:36:50.240 It's like, you got to have a certain amount of pain to be a comic, but then at some point
00:36:55.300 you better own that pain and get rid of it.
00:36:57.820 Otherwise it'll destroy you.
00:36:58.840 And again, there's a great analogy to an alcoholic here.
00:37:01.900 It's like, you, you may need it for a while or you may have a good time on alcohol for
00:37:05.920 a while.
00:37:07.020 It will not last forever.
00:37:08.220 And I think this is why so many great comics die of drug overdoses or alcoholism or, or
00:37:12.780 otherwise do all sorts of crazy things because they never get to the point where the pain
00:37:17.360 is secondary because they need the fix to be funny.
00:37:20.180 And I definitely remember thinking that my life was sort of like, uh, it was like two tracks
00:37:25.260 that weren't lined up sort of.
00:37:26.860 So like I was really on a good career track, but my life was miserable and I was alone and
00:37:32.860 I was lying and all sorts of stuff.
00:37:34.740 And now my life is pretty, you know, it's pretty close and there'll be moments when it's disjointed
00:37:42.720 again.
00:37:43.100 And hopefully I'm just aware enough to, to get it lined up when it needs to be.
00:37:47.640 Tell me the moment that is crystallized in your head of this is hell not being me.
00:38:16.420 Not being me.
00:38:16.800 Yeah, I know it for sure.
00:38:18.000 For sure.
00:38:18.780 The moment that I remember that I sort of hit rock bottom, so to speak.
00:38:21.940 I remember, so I lived on 90th and 1st.
00:38:24.460 And if you know the New York subway is a little bit, the closest subway is 86th and Lex.
00:38:28.680 That's a pretty far walk for a subway because you got to go 89th, 88th, 87th.
00:38:32.660 Then you got to go 1st to 2nd to 3rd to Lex.
00:38:35.500 New York City time.
00:38:36.340 That's a big walk.
00:38:38.080 Rain nor sleet nor snow.
00:38:39.220 I was working, I was doing standups at, uh, standup at night, but I was working just some
00:38:43.320 job at a, I don't even, I honestly don't even really remember what it was.
00:38:47.200 I had some desk job really.
00:38:48.740 I think at a PR company or something.
00:38:49.960 I have almost no recollection of it really because I was so disconnected from my reality
00:38:54.720 that there's a certain, there really is a certain part of it.
00:38:57.260 My husband, David, who's named, same name as me.
00:38:59.280 It's amazing.
00:38:59.760 People go crazy.
00:39:00.360 Uh, he asks me often about my early twenties and I always say, I can't really remember
00:39:06.560 because I think my day to day life was so disconnected from whatever was going on in my head that
00:39:13.260 I can't really, like I have a vague recollection of the office, but I don't really remember what
00:39:18.880 I was doing or anything.
00:39:20.020 Yeah.
00:39:20.280 Like truly.
00:39:21.080 That wasn't that long ago.
00:39:22.400 It's not that long ago.
00:39:23.240 I mean, this is, this is, you know, 20 and it's not that long ago, 20 years or something.
00:39:26.560 This isn't, you know, 70 years ago.
00:39:27.860 Anyway, I remember walking that commute one day to just to get to the subway station in
00:39:33.200 the morning and I'm walking down the street and everything was shaking.
00:39:39.640 The buildings were shaking.
00:39:41.560 The street was shaking like an earthquake like this around my head.
00:39:45.440 But I was still, so I was walking and I felt still on the street, but the entire, it felt
00:39:50.840 like the entire world was, was shake, not spinning like this.
00:39:55.600 It was shaking like this, like this, like a globe that you were like doing this.
00:40:00.360 And that's when I remember this for sure.
00:40:02.680 I haven't thought of this in a long time.
00:40:03.800 I remember this.
00:40:04.780 Like, I was like, whoa, I have got to fix this.
00:40:07.580 Like, that's when I finally was like, something is not right here.
00:40:10.760 And, and it is, it's what you said before.
00:40:13.400 It's like when your reality is so disconnected from real reality, man, your world will shake.
00:40:19.620 You will, you will do things you shouldn't do.
00:40:22.660 You will act out in all kinds of crazy ways.
00:40:24.780 But that for me, I guess that was really the rock bottom moment that then I started getting
00:40:30.640 a little bit of it back.
00:40:33.200 Ooh, I forgot about that.
00:40:35.420 Sorry.
00:40:35.880 I didn't mean to.
00:40:36.340 No.
00:40:36.660 I mean, that's what it's all about, right?
00:40:37.900 It's good.
00:40:38.180 It's good to go, you know, because some of this also is the more you talk about this.
00:40:41.260 I don't talk about it that often, but that is how you get some closure on some of this
00:40:45.140 stuff and it, and it, it is, it renews some of the things that, wow, how did I get here
00:40:49.900 now?
00:40:50.120 Why am I tolerant of other opinions?
00:40:52.360 It's amazing to me.
00:40:53.660 I remember at the time I said the worst thing about me, somebody had called up and at the
00:40:58.880 time I was on radio, I'd been done radio for, I don't know, 25 years and, uh, and had
00:41:05.260 a big audience and I was Mr. Goody two shoes.
00:41:07.940 I was known as this, you know, clean cut guy.
00:41:11.280 My marriage was a wreck.
00:41:12.880 I was an alcoholic and somebody, uh, I was, I was trying to clean up my life and I had
00:41:21.560 stopped drinking, but I wasn't sober yet.
00:41:24.560 And, um, somebody had called in on this morning show and said, you know, Glenn Beck, you know,
00:41:32.080 you might have the perfect life, blah, blah, blah.
00:41:34.040 That's all I heard.
00:41:34.780 You might have the perfect life.
00:41:36.460 And I don't even know what they said.
00:41:37.860 And I stopped and I said, you know, let me tell you something.
00:41:46.700 Nobody here knows who I really am.
00:41:49.800 And the room just stopped and everybody was like, Oh dear God, play a record, man.
00:41:55.020 What are you doing?
00:41:55.620 Right.
00:41:56.360 And, uh, and I said, uh, let me tell you who I am.
00:42:01.400 And I just bore my soul and I turn off the mic and I looked at Steve, Stu, my, now still
00:42:11.380 my producer.
00:42:12.260 He was an intern at the time.
00:42:14.300 Turn off the mic.
00:42:15.340 And I said, well, write this day down.
00:42:17.780 This is the day Glenn Beck destroyed his career.
00:42:21.040 The opposite happened.
00:42:22.560 It's so empowering because you have lived with this secret and it's destroyed you.
00:42:31.320 And you just want to say, this is who I am and I'm struggling and I'm, you know, I am
00:42:37.540 vulnerable here.
00:42:39.200 And all of a sudden, all these people would, would come up to me or in the days when we still
00:42:46.180 wrote letters would write and say, I can't believe you said that.
00:42:52.760 That's exactly how I feel.
00:42:54.940 This is exactly what I'm going through.
00:42:57.080 And it's amazing to me how, it's why I believe when somebody says, you know what?
00:43:02.720 Don't read that.
00:43:03.620 That's the first thing I read.
00:43:05.840 Don't say that.
00:43:06.900 Don't think that.
00:43:07.980 Don't talk to that person.
00:43:09.740 That is so damaging because when you keep that secret, you're not only crushing it,
00:43:16.180 you're crushing yourself.
00:43:17.940 Everyone around you has their own secret, whatever it is, you're actually crushing the
00:43:22.640 nature of reality.
00:43:23.800 You are.
00:43:24.260 I really believe that the more that you operate in some sort of alternate reality because of
00:43:29.740 your own crap, whatever that crap might be. 0.76
00:43:31.860 And however you act out because of that crap.
00:43:34.360 Well, that's just what everyone's doing.
00:43:36.540 Every we're all doing it to different levels.
00:43:38.500 So maybe as the two of us sit here right now, we're doing the game a little bit better than
00:43:42.740 than we used to, let's say, right?
00:43:44.240 Like something like that, right?
00:43:45.820 Of course, not to say we don't have struggles and deficiencies and all of those things,
00:43:49.740 of course.
00:43:50.940 But if everyone's doing that at some level, well, then the reality that we're all co-building
00:43:56.660 together becomes this really strange, tenuous thing.
00:44:00.660 And I think that that's really where we're at right now.
00:44:02.520 We sit online all day long.
00:44:04.540 We sit online all day long yelling at people and pretending as if we've got all the answers.
00:44:09.840 You know, all of these writers at all of these ridiculous publications.
00:44:13.280 It's like you people, none of you have created anything.
00:44:16.760 You know, I got into it once with, you know, Jonathan Chait at, is it New Yorker magazine
00:44:21.960 or New York magazine?
00:44:22.980 Okay.
00:44:23.080 I don't even, I don't even like mentioning names because I try to talk about, I try to
00:44:26.000 talk about ideas instead of people, but he's either in New Yorker or New York magazine.
00:44:31.180 And he said something to the effect of on Twitter, something about how small business, the phrase
00:44:36.240 small business is just a Republican catchphrase.
00:44:41.340 No, no small business really exists.
00:44:43.440 It's just a way that they trick you into being for big business, something, something to that
00:44:47.840 effect.
00:44:48.340 And I wrote, I retweeted him and I wrote back, well, Jonathan, just FYI, I have a small business
00:44:53.520 with a couple employees and I'm very proud of what we've built here.
00:44:57.220 And I think you're wrong about this.
00:44:58.320 I mean, I did it pretty respectfully, not on the attack.
00:45:00.300 And then he wrote back immediately and he said, see a couple employees.
00:45:06.240 And I thought, this is, this is pretty interesting.
00:45:09.520 I have a couple employees.
00:45:10.920 I built a company that I'm incredibly proud of.
00:45:12.880 We pay all the benefits, a hundred percent for all of our employees.
00:45:15.940 We're growing a little bit right now, but we're doing it within our means.
00:45:18.620 All the ideas.
00:45:19.720 In California.
00:45:20.280 In California.
00:45:21.180 Yeah.
00:45:21.420 I'm a crazy person.
00:45:22.140 Yeah.
00:45:22.340 Right.
00:45:23.280 I may move in with you, by the way.
00:45:24.680 We'll get to that at the end.
00:45:26.280 Did you go to a soup kitchen at night?
00:45:28.100 Um, but, but he mocked the idea of a couple and I thought this is really interesting.
00:45:34.780 So you guys, you hate big business.
00:45:37.300 Now you have somebody saying I'm a small business.
00:45:39.520 Now you're mocking them.
00:45:40.400 So what is your reality?
00:45:42.120 That's right for you.
00:45:43.340 I know that I've employed people.
00:45:44.920 I'm suspecting he never has.
00:45:46.460 He works in a giant company for a lot of money.
00:45:48.940 And it's like, well, if I had 16 employees, would that be the number that now you're okay
00:45:53.260 with?
00:45:53.620 Because I know if I had a hundred employees, you'd say I'm big business and I'm bad.
00:45:56.520 I have a couple, so I'm small business and I don't exist.
00:45:59.500 What's the number for you person who's created nothing?
00:46:03.520 You know, you write some things, but do you do?
00:46:05.920 I don't know.
00:46:06.460 Again, I don't want to make this too much about specifically, but I relate this back to what
00:46:11.780 we're talking about that.
00:46:12.360 It's like, we're all playing these imaginary, um, intellectual games that somehow we know
00:46:19.000 what is best for everyone.
00:46:20.900 And if only we could control everything, everyone would be okay.
00:46:24.000 And that's actually pretty tyrannical and not very horrible.
00:46:28.400 It's totally fascistic.
00:46:31.460 Um, but does it, does it come from arrogance or fear or both?
00:46:39.860 I mean, we're, we're all watching Facebook.
00:46:42.320 I mean, come on.
00:46:44.400 You look at Facebook and the pictures, my pictures of my Facebook.
00:46:48.540 I post pictures of me.
00:46:50.720 My favorite pictures of me are when I get up in the air in the morning and my hair is
00:46:54.720 standing straight up.
00:46:55.640 You know what I mean?
00:46:56.640 Cause that's what's real.
00:46:59.260 Yeah.
00:46:59.460 But you look on Facebook, you look on everything is fake.
00:47:04.480 You, you take a picture now and you color adjust, you color correct.
00:47:10.460 You make sure that no, that, that product is there or this cup is there or my favorite
00:47:15.660 blanket is there.
00:47:16.920 It's crazy.
00:47:18.760 It's crazy.
00:47:19.900 No one is reflecting actual real life.
00:47:24.020 Yeah.
00:47:24.280 Well, this is why I try to take these breaks because you really, especially if you do what
00:47:28.320 we do where people really are paying attention.
00:47:30.900 It's not just like I'm taking a picture of food and my five friends are commenting on it
00:47:34.840 or something like that.
00:47:35.440 I mean, we're, we're really trying to engage in ideas in an honest way.
00:47:39.240 So people really do care about what we say.
00:47:42.240 And yet there are moments where even I, as someone that's really aware of this and I
00:47:45.760 try to take the weekends off.
00:47:46.940 And as you know, I did the August off the grid thing and all that.
00:47:49.560 I still get caught up in the madness of it all, or, or I'll be on Instagram.
00:47:53.840 And if I took a picture of my ice cream cone, I suddenly realized it's five minutes
00:47:58.200 later and I just adjusted the color of the mint chocolate chip.
00:48:00.560 And I'm like, what the hell did I just do?
00:48:02.140 Right.
00:48:02.540 You know, what did I just do?
00:48:03.960 That's a mint chocolate chip.
00:48:05.020 It's usually a very nice green.
00:48:06.100 You feel good about it.
00:48:06.760 It's like, this doesn't need to be colored anymore or saturated or structured or whatever.
00:48:11.640 So we're all doing all of these things.
00:48:13.680 And this is what I mean.
00:48:14.380 We're not giving ourselves the space to just kind of be anymore, but it's to ourselves.
00:48:18.500 We're all doing it to ourselves.
00:48:19.920 But I think there's going to be a big anti-technology movement building.
00:48:22.780 I mean, I think there's, there's the roots of it now.
00:48:25.940 Well, I think there's a, there's now camps for adults where there are anti-technology
00:48:29.820 camps that are springing up all over the place.
00:48:32.120 And you can, you know, technology, not anti-technology tech, a response, a balancing of technology.
00:48:38.840 Well, I think the camps are designed to really get you off the devices and be present and
00:48:42.380 yoga, meditation and things like that.
00:48:44.360 But it's not like technology is bad.
00:48:46.220 Well, I think eventually we'll get to some of that.
00:48:48.120 I mean, I think there will be really, there will be radical anti-technology people.
00:48:52.800 Really?
00:48:53.240 There will be.
00:48:53.680 I'm sure there are some now, no, I don't think I will be because, because everything
00:48:58.440 that humans have created can be good and it can be bad.
00:49:01.860 Everything we've ever created.
00:49:03.300 We split the atom.
00:49:04.360 We make clean energy and we blow things up.
00:49:07.720 We learned quickly.
00:49:09.460 Let's not blow things up.
00:49:11.240 Yeah.
00:49:11.420 But you know what?
00:49:12.280 We've used them.
00:49:13.200 Yes.
00:49:13.480 And they will be used again.
00:49:14.760 Correct.
00:49:15.220 And anything that we create, anything that humans can do.
00:49:20.000 I mean, that's the irony.
00:49:21.440 It's like, you know, you see people that are either forced themselves or against themselves
00:49:24.920 or all of these things.
00:49:26.120 And it's like, if something can be done, it will be done.
00:49:30.620 Yes.
00:49:30.860 So I don't believe in just stopping things because of the potential for evil because it's
00:49:37.560 going to happen.
00:49:38.260 And you don't want to just, I would say, you don't want to just, if all the good people
00:49:43.040 stop because of all the potential bad things, well, then you're just going to leave it to
00:49:46.640 all the bad people who are going to do all sorts of awful things.
00:49:48.780 Correct.
00:49:49.240 Like, for instance, I do not want the federal government to have AI.
00:49:54.840 I don't want them to have it.
00:49:56.220 I don't want Google to have it.
00:49:59.000 Well, I hate to tell you, the ship has sailed, my friend.
00:50:01.180 No, I mean, AGI, but I don't want, I certainly do not want China to have it or Russia to 0.99
00:50:08.580 have it.
00:50:09.020 Yeah.
00:50:09.260 So you're kind of sitting here and you're like, okay, well, we better, but what if
00:50:13.520 the ship already sailed?
00:50:14.660 I mean, truly already sailed.
00:50:15.760 I don't mean it just metaphorically.
00:50:17.280 I mean, what if, well, it's still a metaphor, but what if, what if it really has happened already?
00:50:21.860 Because I am starting to think that that might be where we're at, that these algorithms
00:50:25.680 now, you know, the people that came up with the Google algorithms that now control so much
00:50:29.780 of our information, a lot of them aren't even there anymore.
00:50:33.220 Right, right, right.
00:50:33.580 So, so that, so we have AI, are you familiar with AI, AGI, ASI?
00:50:38.760 What's ASI?
00:50:39.540 Okay.
00:50:39.880 So artificial intelligence we have.
00:50:42.600 Yeah.
00:50:42.920 Okay.
00:50:44.340 And artificial intelligence is good at one thing.
00:50:47.320 So I can sort through Facebook and I can find these things.
00:50:51.000 I can play chess and beat any human.
00:50:52.620 I can do jet play Jeopardy and I can beat you.
00:50:56.480 I can look at, uh, uh, uh, cancer, uh, tests and I can diagnose it, diagnose it better than
00:51:03.280 any human.
00:51:04.020 Yeah.
00:51:04.660 That's AI, but it can only do one of those things.
00:51:08.680 It cannot do general things.
00:51:12.120 It can't be good at many things.
00:51:14.120 So we have AI.
00:51:16.640 The next step is a GI. 0.85
00:51:19.620 When we hit a GI, the world completely changes. 0.99
00:51:23.680 What does the G stand for?
00:51:24.680 General.
00:51:25.260 Okay.
00:51:25.680 Artificial general intelligence that will work like the human brain.
00:51:29.420 So it can do everything.
00:51:32.260 When it gets into AGI, the next step is ASI.
00:51:36.480 That could be an hour in the transition.
00:51:39.380 It could never happen.
00:51:40.680 We don't know.
00:51:41.360 And the S is?
00:51:42.600 Super intelligence.
00:51:43.560 That puts us in a position of, it has been described as, we are a fly on a plate in a
00:51:55.300 kitchen.
00:51:56.400 That fly has absolutely no idea.
00:51:59.640 That's a plate.
00:52:00.320 That's a kitchen.
00:52:00.960 And what those people are even, what they are, let alone what they're talking about.
00:52:04.320 We are the fly.
00:52:06.540 ASI are the people.
00:52:08.860 Okay.
00:52:09.680 That, you know, some people say 2040, 2050.
00:52:15.220 Ray Kurzweil says we will get to AGI by 2028, I believe.
00:52:21.900 You haven't seen anything yet.
00:52:23.680 And the problem is, is that you should never fear the technology.
00:52:31.040 You have to fear the goal of the technology.
00:52:34.020 Because when it hits AGI, and especially AI, whatever its goal is, it will accomplish it.
00:52:43.280 Okay.
00:52:43.720 It will accomplish it.
00:52:45.860 Well, that's why the, right now, if you were to just take this into where we're at now,
00:52:49.220 when you see the James Damore memo at Google and you see the way social justice and this,
00:52:55.140 this faux diversity has been, uh, has been injected into the algorithm.
00:53:00.500 I mean, we know, yes, we know the way search results are manipulated.
00:53:03.720 Yes.
00:53:03.940 So we actually are now manipulating truth in the name of diversity.
00:53:07.660 This is so now, so if you just play along now with these next two phases that you've
00:53:12.340 mentioned here, eventually this AI, if it has been manipulated properly, properly by
00:53:19.080 by the bad people, the way they want it manipulated, there's going to be an awful lot of people
00:53:22.920 that that AI is going to turn against.
00:53:25.080 Oh my gosh.
00:53:25.660 Yeah.
00:53:25.900 Now we're in every dystopian movie ever, right?
00:53:28.220 It's already happened.
00:53:29.460 They did a study, um, on, um, releasing people from prison.
00:53:34.120 Okay.
00:53:34.840 How do we tell who should be on parole or not?
00:53:37.140 So they fed all of this information into AI, um, and it's just cold and calculated.
00:53:43.520 And so what it did is it spat out who should go on prison release and who should not.
00:53:51.140 Well, they did it for a while.
00:53:52.580 Everything was working out until somebody noticed, wait a minute, this is letting more white people 1.00
00:53:58.460 out than black. 0.88
00:53:59.980 So then the scientists said, is the AI racist?
00:54:06.860 Wait, well, if you programmed it to take in race, perhaps, but if you took it in to look
00:54:12.700 at just these numbers, so what did they do?
00:54:15.680 They adjusted it.
00:54:17.060 So they, they unbiased it.
00:54:18.740 They unbiased it, which was the bias, right?
00:54:22.820 You have to define, we are in a place where nobody knows what any word means anymore.
00:54:28.040 We don't know what it means to be a racist.
00:54:30.840 We don't know when people say a safe zone, it drives me out of my mind.
00:54:34.740 You are safe.
00:54:36.620 You're uncomfortable.
00:54:38.060 Yeah.
00:54:38.280 There's a huge difference.
00:54:40.500 What we are programming right now is only going to get worse because it will just, it's
00:54:46.920 the baseline and it keeps building on that.
00:54:49.660 So what I would say that the saving grace, because when we go down this rabbit hole of
00:54:53.860 the conversation, people start freaking out.
00:54:55.740 And I know guys like us are going to think about this all the time and worry about it.
00:54:59.600 And okay, fine.
00:55:00.360 We can, we can be the canary in the coal mine, all that.
00:55:03.720 The saving grace is that I believe that this, this social justice idea and these terrible
00:55:10.740 ideas of diversity and unbiasing where you're actually, you're then putting in systemic bias.
00:55:17.080 So if, you know, they're the, the one that everyone talks about is that if you search,
00:55:20.820 um, something like American scientists, um, or famous American scientists, you now get
00:55:27.880 a disproportionate amount of black scientists.
00:55:30.060 Now nobody is saying there aren't black scientists or shouldn't be black scientists, of course.
00:55:36.900 But if you were to search famous American scientists, most of them would be white. 0.87
00:55:41.240 Now we can discuss all sorts of reasons why that is, but it is just the truth.
00:55:45.520 Now, what you realize is that the, all of these, these trickeries that all of these, that
00:55:50.900 the AI is doing and that these people are putting into the system, they can't stand forever.
00:55:56.980 I believe, I honestly believe, and this is why I think that, that the individual can win
00:56:02.360 still ultimately is that it will, it will destroy these companies.
00:56:07.480 If Google says, you know, we're not going to hire Asian engineers anymore because they're 1.00
00:56:11.780 disproportionately represented at our company and in the engineering field.
00:56:15.660 Well, then what you're going to say is, well, first off, you're now putting in systemic racism
00:56:19.220 there, right?
00:56:19.780 There's no systemic racism that's stopping anyone from any color working anywhere.
00:56:24.480 If you now, as a company, Google say, well, we can't have Asian, Asian engineers here because 0.83
00:56:28.640 we want to be more diverse, you're actually injecting systemic because now it's in the
00:56:33.340 system.
00:56:33.860 It's a, it's a, it's a, uh, not, not a law at Google, but it's part of your company policy.
00:56:38.480 Now it's systemic.
00:56:40.540 Ultimately what that will do, and I mean, this not just at Google, but at every place that
00:56:44.500 buys into these ideas of this faux diversity, they will start hiring worse people, not because
00:56:50.420 these people are minorities or gay or transgendered or whatever they are in a wheelchair or whatever
00:56:56.840 they are, but because you will not be taking the best of the best and forcing people to
00:57:00.760 strive to be the best of the best, you will be taking people for lesser reasons.
00:57:04.480 And ultimately over time, that means your company will start faltering because there
00:57:10.440 will be someone out there who is smart enough to go, this is nonsense and I'm going to fight
00:57:17.100 for a better thing.
00:57:17.740 So that's a little bit different than totally fighting the AI and the evolution of all of that.
00:57:22.640 But that's still where humans can make a difference.
00:57:24.600 It's stop buying into this nonsense because it will, it will come for everyone.
00:57:44.940 Okay.
00:57:45.620 We're at the end of, I have to, last question.
00:57:48.920 Yeah.
00:57:49.260 End of your life.
00:57:50.140 Oh, you're because of, because of AI's life-saving technology, you're 300 years old and you're
00:58:02.400 thinking back, what do you hope you will fill that blank in after I am at that moment?
00:58:14.500 I'd say I am okay.
00:58:20.880 I hope at the end, wherever that end is, whether it's 86 or 329. 0.59
00:58:27.840 329.
00:58:27.920 329.
00:58:28.080 329.
00:58:28.280 329.
00:58:28.420 Yeah.
00:58:28.620 That, that does sound quite horrific.
00:58:30.240 Whether I'm just a, you know, a head in a jar.
00:58:31.840 Yeah.
00:58:32.100 If it's, if it's 386, it would be, I'm tired.
00:58:35.000 Yeah.
00:58:35.020 I'm really exhausted.
00:58:36.140 I think I'm okay that, that whatever it is that I did here, that at the end that I felt
00:58:44.140 okay with whatever I created, whatever, whether, whether I have kids or don't have kids, whether
00:58:49.520 I, uh, whether, whether nothing, where there are all the things that we've talked about
00:58:55.120 here, whether I'm irrelevant in a year for some reason, or whether this is just the beginning.
00:58:59.640 Again, I always feel like I'm at the beginning.
00:59:01.800 Um, I hope that at the end I'll go, I did everything I could do.
00:59:06.180 I really did.
00:59:07.360 You know, within the constraints of being a human, I, I did everything that I possibly
00:59:13.260 could do.
00:59:13.600 I, I had a good friend, my best childhood friend since I'm four years old.
00:59:17.200 I remember the day we met in kindergarten, literally, uh, we've been, we've been best
00:59:20.920 friends for now almost 40 years.
00:59:22.980 Um, his father died suddenly last week.
00:59:25.420 His dad's 80 years old.
00:59:26.460 He had a heart attack in the middle of the night.
00:59:28.020 He was, he was dead two days later.
00:59:30.280 He had, uh, four great sons, whole bunch of grandchildren, been married, I think 60
00:59:36.860 years, really good man.
00:59:39.000 I can only picture this guy smiling every time I went over to my buddy John's house.
00:59:42.700 Dad was there having a great time with us and messing with us.
00:59:45.700 And, you know, it was a good father, obviously a good grandfather and everything.
00:59:48.940 And I went to the, I went to the funeral last week and, you know, people were crying,
00:59:53.780 but they were also laughing and, and all of the things that happened and the feeling
00:59:58.520 that I walked away with, I hadn't seen his dad in probably about 10 years, but the feeling
01:00:02.860 I walked away with was that was a life that was full.
01:00:07.000 And I think that's all you can want that you did something, you know, whatever it was, whether
01:00:14.100 for him, it was, you know, having kids and having grandkids and being around for everybody
01:00:18.900 or whatever else he did in his life that I don't know about that.
01:00:22.080 You just hope that you did something that was real.
01:00:24.720 And then at the end you go, all right, I did it.
01:00:29.140 And now let's see what happens after this.
01:00:34.060 I think you can leave the stage saying that.
01:00:38.980 Thank you, sir.
01:00:39.820 Thank you, my friend.
01:00:40.520 You bet.
01:00:40.860 Thank you.
01:00:41.140 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend
01:00:52.220 so it can be discovered by other people.
01:00:53.840 Thank you.