The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1139 - Jordan Peterson

00:00:03.000 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Hello, Jordan Peterson.

00:00:09.000 Hello, Mr. Rogan.

00:00:10.000 How are you doing?

00:00:10.000 You look very spiffy today.

00:00:11.000 Thank you, sir.

00:00:12.000 This is a new look for you.

00:00:13.000 You've been rocking these a lot, these big, gigantic...

00:00:16.000 What do you call those things?

00:00:18.000 These concerts that you guys are doing?

00:00:20.000 Speeches?

00:00:21.000 Well, lectures.

00:00:22.000 Discussions is really what I think of them as, yeah.

00:00:25.000 Because I'm discussing...

00:00:27.000 I mean, you might think it's kind of perverse to be discussing with a 3,000-person audience, but...

00:00:32.000 It's not, because if you pay attention to the audience, they're constantly, and the individuals in the audience, they're constantly providing feedback.

00:00:39.000 So it's a discussion as far as I'm concerned.

00:00:42.000 Feedback in applause, laughter, sometimes they shout things out too, right?

00:00:48.000 Shuffling.

00:00:49.000 Yeah, well, really what you want, if you're on track, if you're where you should be, then it's dead silent and everyone's focused and listening.

00:00:49.000 Shuffling.

00:00:57.000 And so if that's not happening, I mean, you know, there can be laughter and that kind of thing, but generally speaking, you don't want to hear noise from the audience.

00:01:05.000 So if you're pursuing a complicated topic and you're paying attention, and I'm always looking at individual people in the audience, you know, in the first few rows, because that's all I can see because of the lights.

00:01:19.000 I'm trying to make sure that everyone's on track with the talk and, you know, there's people gesture with their face and they gesture with their eyes and they shake their head and they nod and there's lots of things to pick up.

00:01:31.000 And if you're not speaking with notes, you can really pay attention to the audience and then you know if you're in the dialogue and that's where everyone wants to be.

00:01:38.000 Yeah, it's an interesting thing you're doing because you have experience in doing that with lectures and colleges and universities, but now it's the general public and people just pay to see it and you fill up these huge...

00:02:02.000 Yeah, back to back.

00:02:03.000 Yeah, so it was about five hours of intense discussion over two days.

00:02:08.000 And, you know, we were supposed to talk for an hour each night and then go to Q&A. But we asked the audience...

00:02:15.000 Brett Weinstein, who was moderating, asked the audience if they wanted to go to Q&A or continue the discussion.

00:02:21.000 And the response from the crowd was, definitely continue the discussion.

00:02:25.000 And so we ended up talking for about two and a half hours each night.

00:02:29.000 And again, it was, the audience is along for the ride.

00:02:32.000 And they were good discussions, as far as I'm concerned.

00:02:35.000 You know, it was kind of marketed as a takedown in some sense, Harris versus Peterson.

00:02:41.000 Right.

00:02:41.000 But the discussion itself was an attempt on Sam's part and my part to further our thinking about the topic and to bring everyone along for the ride, you know, for the journey, so to speak.

00:02:55.000 Yeah, well, you guys had two podcasts that you did over the phone.

00:02:59.000 So these were the first meetings that you guys had in person.

00:03:02.000 Yeah, it was the first time I'd met Sam.

00:03:04.000 The first one that you two had was marred by this discussion about what is truth.

00:03:11.000 And it was like a strange sort of a...

00:03:15.000 You got stuck.

00:03:17.000 You guys got kind of stuck in that first conversation.

00:03:19.000 But I felt like the second one was much better.

00:03:22.000 Both of you kind of recognized that there were some errors made in the first podcast.

00:03:26.000 Yeah, we augured in on a definition and couldn't let it go.

00:03:30.000 And so that wasn't so good.

00:03:32.000 And I wasn't in tip-top shape for that first discussion, well, or for the second one for that matter.

00:03:37.000 But each discussion I've had with Sam has been getting better.

00:03:41.000 So as far as I'm concerned, I think he feels the same way.

00:03:45.000 And I mean, we're trying to sort something out that's really, really difficult.

00:03:48.000 And it's the relationship between facts and values, which is parallel to the relationship between, say, objective truth and narrative, or parallel to the distinction between scientific fact and religious truth.

00:04:01.000 All of those things sort of are layered on top of each other, and it's an extraordinarily difficult topic.

00:04:06.000 And so it's not surprising that it's taking all of this discussion to even vaguely get it straight.

00:04:11.000 It's been a central bone of contention among philosophers for, well, probably forever, but certainly since the time of David Hume, several hundred years.

00:04:20.000 Well, one of the more fascinating things that's coming out of the realm of podcasting is these kind of discussions, these long-form live discussions in front of enormous groups of people where you go over very complex issues.

00:04:32.000 It's a new thing.

00:04:33.000 I mean, and it's something that's greatly received by the public, which is really interesting.

00:04:39.000 I mean, you guys are selling out all over the place.

00:04:41.000 Yeah, well, I've really been trying to make sense of this, because I'm thinking, well, what the hell's going on?

00:04:47.000 Why am I selling out 3,000-person auditoriums?

00:04:51.000 But not just me, obviously.

00:04:53.000 Sam is doing it, and you're doing something on a larger scale.

00:04:57.000 But very similar with your long-form podcasts.

00:05:00.000 And then there's this whole rise of what Barry Weiss described as the intellectual dark web.

00:05:06.000 That's actually Eric Weinstein's coinage.

00:05:08.000 And so there's a group of us that have been sort of clumped together for reasons that aren't obvious.

00:05:14.000 But I've been trying to figure that out as I do these lectures.

00:05:17.000 Another thing I'm doing with the lectures or the discussions is trying to continually further the development of my ideas.

00:05:22.000 I use the stage, let's say, as a...

00:05:27.000 Opportunity in real time to think.

00:05:29.000 I've been thinking, well if you're surfing, you don't confuse yourself with the wave, right?

00:05:35.000 That's a real mistake.

00:05:36.000 You might be on top of the wave, but you're not the wave.

00:05:38.000 And I think this long-form discussion and the public hunger for that is best conceptualized like that.

00:05:44.000 There's a technological revolution.

00:05:45.000 It's a deep one.

00:05:47.000 The technological revolution is online video and audio, immediately accessible to everyone all over the world.

00:05:54.000 And so what that's done is it's turned the spoken word into a tool that has the same reach as the printed word.

00:06:01.000 So it's a Gutenberg revolution in the domain of video and audio.

00:06:05.000 And it might be even deeper than the original Gutenberg revolution because it isn't obvious how many people can read, but lots of people can listen.

00:06:14.000 And now it turns out...

00:06:15.000 So, I mean, you got a little bit of that with TV, right?

00:06:17.000 And you got a little bit of it with radio.

00:06:20.000 But there was bandwidth limitations that were really stringent, especially in TV, where you could get 30 seconds if you were lucky and six minutes if you were stellar to elucidate a complicated argument.

00:06:31.000 So you can't do that.

00:06:32.000 Everything gets compressed to a kind of oversimplified entertainment.

00:06:38.000 But now, all of a sudden, we have this forum for long-form discussion, real long-form discussion, and it turns out that everyone is way smarter than we thought.

00:06:48.000 We can have these discussions publicly and there's a great hunger for it.

00:06:51.000 And I see this parallel, and this would be, what would you call it, supporting evidence for this hypothesis.

00:06:57.000 The same things happened in the entertainment world because, you know, TV made us think, well, we can handle a 20-minute sitcom, right?

00:07:05.000 Or maybe we can handle an hour and a half made-for-TV movie.

00:07:09.000 But then Netflix came along, and HBO as well, with the bandwidth restrictions gone, and all of a sudden it turned out that, no, no, we can handle 40-hour complex, multi-layered narratives where the characters shift, where the complexity starts to reach the same complexity as great literature,

00:07:24.000 and there's a massive market for it.

00:07:26.000 And so it turns out that we're smarter than our technology revealed to us.

00:07:30.000 And I think those of us who've been placed in this intellectual dark web group You know, there's some things we have in common.

00:07:37.000 We more or less have independent voices because we're not beholden to any corporate masters except peripherally.

00:07:43.000 And we've been operating in this long-form space and the technology has facilitated that.

00:07:50.000 And so all of a sudden it turns out that there's more to people than we thought.

00:07:54.000 And thank God for that.

00:07:56.000 I'm struggling with...

00:08:00.000 I don't want to use the word hate.

00:08:02.000 There seems to be a non-acceptance or a resistance to the idea that anything of quality could come out of this group of people.

00:08:13.000 It's really interesting to me.

00:08:14.000 And I'm wondering why.

00:08:16.000 When I listen to you speak or Sam or Eric or any of these people, Ben or Dave, and I hear very interesting points.

00:08:25.000 And I'm like, why are people resisting that these are interesting points?

00:08:28.000 Why are they resisting this?

00:08:30.000 And I think there's a lot of people that are beholden to mainstream organizations, whether it's newspapers or magazines or television shows, that feel trapped.

00:08:40.000 I think they feel trapped by this format that they're stuck in.

00:08:45.000 It's a very limiting format.

00:08:47.000 And it's a format that, in my opinion, is like...

00:08:51.000 I mean, it might as well be smoke signals or ham radio or something. 1.00

00:08:54.000 It's fucking, it's dumb. 0.99

00:08:56.000 You know, this idea that you're gonna go to commercials every 15 minutes and, you know, and in between you have 15 people arguing. 1.00

00:09:03.000 I mean, I watched a panel on CNN once and I think we counted 10 people.

00:09:08.000 That we're trying to talk during this five-minute segment like who what genius thought that it would be a good idea to get ten people struggling for airtime Barking over each other.

00:09:20.000 No one's saying anything that makes any sense because everybody's talking over and trying to stand out and trying to say the most outrageous things and I'm seeing, like, some of the resistance to this.

00:09:32.000 When we span, I mean, pretty far, you know, from Sam and I lean more left, and Ben leans more right, and you're what you would call a classic liberal, and Eric's very difficult to define, and Brett is fiercely progressive.

00:09:47.000 I mean, Brett, in particular, is a very left-wing guy.

00:09:51.000 But this...

00:09:53.000 This desire to label and to have this diminishing label is like alt-right or, you know, right-wing or fascist.

00:10:02.000 It's very strange to me.

00:10:04.000 Yeah, well, there's a couple of things going on.

00:10:05.000 I think one of them is that the technological transformation that I laid out, and then the other is that I do believe that, especially for the radical leftist types, the whole notion of free speech among individuals is not only anathema,

00:10:21.000 but also something that isn't possible within their framework of reference.

00:10:25.000 I've been trying to think this through very carefully, because, you know, free speech in some sense has become identified as a right-wing issue, and I thought, well, how the hell did that happen?

00:10:35.000 And then I thought, oh yes, well...

00:10:37.000 If you're radically left and you're playing the identity politics game, there's actually no such thing as free speech because you're only the mouthpiece of your group, whether you know it or not.

00:10:46.000 So you don't get to talk as Joe Rogan, you get to talk as like Joe Rogan, patriarchal white guy, and that's it.

00:10:52.000 And your utterances aren't a reflection of your own opinions as an individual, but they're an attempt on your part, whether you know it or not, to justify your position in the power hierarchy.

00:11:03.000 And so everything right now, and this is where the technology and the death of the mainstream media and this political polarization all unite, everything is turned into a political conversation in the mainstream media, and it has to be cast as left versus right.

00:11:21.000 And if you're criticizing the left, then all of a sudden you're right, and right-wing, and it has to be about politics.

00:11:27.000 It's like, well, it doesn't have to be about politics.

00:11:29.000 It could be about philosophy.

00:11:30.000 It doesn't have to be cast in political terms. 0.98

00:11:33.000 And then it's also subject to a form of, well, it's made more stupid than it has to be by these terrible bandwidth limitations. 0.87

00:11:44.000 Like, I mean, I've been on mainstream TV talk shows, and it's a very strange experience because you're definitely content. 0.89

00:11:52.000 You know, Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message, right?

00:11:55.000 The medium shapes the dialogue, and it does in a tremendous way, powerful way.

00:12:02.000 You go on a TV talk show, and maybe it's an hour long, something like that, and there's five guests, and you've got your eight minutes, something like that, and you have to be bright and chipper and entertaining and intelligent and sort of glitzy, and it puts that facade of momentary charisma on you,

00:12:17.000 and if you don't play that out, you actually fail.

00:12:20.000 Because you can't start a long-form discussion when you've got six minutes.

00:12:23.000 And if you're trying to talk about something that's deep and difficult, well, you want to talk about it because you've got the access then and the opportunity, but you've got your six minutes.

00:12:33.000 You can't help but turn into sort of a glitzy entertainer.

00:12:36.000 And so it cheapens everything.

00:12:38.000 And then the other thing that I think is happening is that as the mainstream media, television in particular, dies, The quality people are starting to desert, like rats leaving a sinking ship.

00:12:50.000 I guess they're good rats if they're quality people.

00:12:53.000 And then there's ever more enticement to use clickbait journalism to attract a diminishing portion of the remaining audience.

00:13:02.000 It's like one of the things that's happened.

00:13:04.000 So if you look at the five major indices of violent crime in the United States...

00:13:09.000 They've declined by 50% in 25 years.

00:13:11.000 It's absolutely beyond comprehension.

00:13:13.000 It's so good.

00:13:15.000 This includes violent gun crime, by the way.

00:13:17.000 And yet, the reports of violence in media have gone up and up and up and up.

00:13:21.000 You think, well, what's going on?

00:13:23.000 It's like, well, it's clickbait.

00:13:25.000 It's the equivalent of clickbait.

00:13:27.000 And then to turn everything into a polarized political discussion takes no real intellectual energy.

00:13:32.000 But it's also driven by the death spiral of the classic media, I think.

00:13:37.000 And I think that's actually why the polarization seems to be so acute now.

00:13:41.000 Some of it is genuine, but some of it is the consequence of this underlying technological transformation and the death throes of the smoke signalers, fundamentally.

00:13:52.000 What you're talking about when you're saying people, especially radical leftists, have to concede certain points whenever they discuss things, this is so true and so important because you see that play out over and over again.

00:14:05.000 There's very little variation from the official narrative when they talk about important subjects or controversial subjects, whatever they are, whether it's transgender rights or whatever's in the news that's big and It's very popular right now.

00:14:23.000 There's these certain things that you're not allowed to deviate from.

00:14:28.000 And that's an insanely restrictive perspective.

00:14:32.000 And who's establishing these norms?

00:14:35.000 That's a good question, man.

00:14:37.000 Yeah, who is?

00:14:37.000 Well, I blame the universities in large part for this, the activist disciplines.

00:14:41.000 But that's only a partial answer.

00:14:43.000 I think I'm going to go.

00:15:07.000 Equality of outcome essentially across every possible dimension in the universities and it's been used as a weapon by the radical left.

00:15:14.000 But you know some of that's driven by legislative necessity.

00:15:20.000 What's happening, the reason that I think this is coming from the universities is because I don't think that this could, well there's all these activist disciplines that are essentially subsidized by too high tuition fees and also by state funding and they've produced an entire substructure of activists and those activists are doing everything they can to lay out the theoretical structure for the radical left and that's a That's a structure that involves,

00:15:44.000 there's buzzwords, right?

00:15:46.000 Diversity is one, but that means diversity by race and ethnicity and sexual preference, for example, as if those have anything to do with genuine diversity of ideation, and they don't, and there's no evidence that they do.

00:15:58.000 Inclusivity, I'm never even sure what that means.

00:16:01.000 Equity.

00:16:02.000 Which is a marker for, what would you call it, it's a code word in some sense for equality of outcome, which is an absolutely deadly doctrine.

00:16:09.000 I think of all the mistakes that the radical left are making, and the moderate left for not calling them out on it, the equity doctrine is at the top of the list.

00:16:16.000 And then there's other associated things like white privilege, that's a good one, and systemic bias, which is a It's an absolute embarrassment from the perspective of a reasonable academic psychologist, because psychological tests have been used to prove that there's this implicit bias that lurks everywhere,

00:16:34.000 and the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to make that claim.

00:16:38.000 Even the people who've made the test, the implicit association test, have admitted, except for Mazarin Banaji, who's the chairman of the Department of Psychology at Harvard, they've admitted that the tests aren't reliable and valid enough to be used Is there any benefit

00:17:08.000 in having these conversations, talking about implicit biases, and recognizing that There's an extreme pushback against racism or sexism and all these different things and that even though these things these These these ideas that they're pushing might not be tested and proven the idea of putting it out there in the mainstream that there's a shift in consciousness in terms of like how people will or won't accept racism

00:17:39.000 or sexism or homophobia or whatever else is being discussed that Maybe it's far left, but maybe it's moving the needle towards where it needs to be.

00:17:49.000 Well, I think that happens.

00:17:51.000 I mean, I certainly believe that there's space and necessity for a constant dialogue between the left and the right.

00:17:58.000 This is also something that I've been developing more particularly during these lectures.

00:18:02.000 So I'm going to lay out a couple of propositions.

00:18:05.000 Imagine that you have to move forward in the world.

00:18:07.000 You have to do things.

00:18:09.000 And the reason you have to do things is because, well, if you just sit there and don't do anything, then you suffer and die.

00:18:14.000 So that isn't an option.

00:18:15.000 You have to move forward.

00:18:16.000 You have to move forward towards valued things.

00:18:18.000 So you have to have a value hierarchy.

00:18:20.000 It has to be a hierarchy because one thing has to be more important than another or you can't do anything, right?

00:18:26.000 You're too split with your choices.

00:18:28.000 So you have to do things.

00:18:29.000 You have to value.

00:18:30.000 You have to value some things more than others.

00:18:32.000 Then you have to act out what you value in the social environment because you're a social creature and you're not going to do things alone.

00:18:39.000 Then as soon as you start to act out things of value in the social environment, you inevitably produce a hierarchy.

00:18:45.000 And the reason you do that is because no matter what you're acting out, Some people are way better at it than others.

00:18:51.000 And it doesn't matter.

00:18:52.000 It doesn't matter if it's basketball or hockey or plumbing or law.

00:18:56.000 It doesn't matter.

00:18:57.000 As soon as there's something valuable and you're doing it collectively, there's a hierarchy.

00:19:01.000 Okay, so then what happens?

00:19:02.000 Well, the hierarchy can get corrupt and rigid and then it stops rewarding competence and it starts rewarding criminality and power.

00:19:11.000 And so there's always the danger the hierarchy will become corrupt.

00:19:15.000 The right-wingers say, we really need the hierarchies and we should abide by them.

00:19:19.000 That's sort of the motif of patriotism and positive group identity.

00:19:24.000 And the left-wingers say, yeah, but wait a second.

00:19:27.000 There's a problem here.

00:19:29.000 A, your hierarchy can get corrupt and might, and B, because some people are way better at it than others, you're going to produce a bunch of dispossessed people at the bottom.

00:19:37.000 And that's not only not good for the dispossessed people, it actually threatens the whole hierarchy. 1.00

00:19:43.000 So you have to be careful.

00:19:45.000 You have to attend to the widows and the children, let's say. 0.97

00:19:48.000 The widows and the orphans.

00:19:50.000 Okay, so now you can think about that as an eternal problem.

00:19:54.000 You can't do without hierarchies, but, and that's the right wing claim in some sense, you can't do without hierarchies and they're valuable, but they're also prone to corruption and they dispossess people.

00:20:05.000 Okay, so now that's an internal problem.

00:20:07.000 The question is what do you do about it?

00:20:08.000 And the answer to that is there's no final answer to the problem.

00:20:13.000 So what you have to do is you have to have a left wing and you have to have a right wing and they have to talk all the time about whether the hierarchy is healthy and whether or not it's dispossessing too many people.

00:20:23.000 And then the problem with that is that discussion can go too far.

00:20:26.000 Because the right-wingers can say, hierarchy uber always, right?

00:20:30.000 That the state is correct and everything's right.

00:20:33.000 And so that's the right-wing totalitarian types.

00:20:36.000 And the left can say, we'll flatten everything so there's no inequality.

00:20:40.000 And so both the left and the right can go too far.

00:20:43.000 Now, the problem is we know how to define...

00:20:45.000 I think one of the problems is we know how to define when the right goes too far.

00:20:49.000 I think we learned that after World War II. I think if you're making claims of ethnic or racial superiority, you get to be put in a box and put off the shelf, right?

00:20:57.000 You're not in the dialogue anymore.

00:20:59.000 It's obvious that the left can go too far, even though there are necessary participants in the discussion, but we don't know how to define when they've gone too far.

00:21:09.000 We don't have an obvious example.

00:21:10.000 No, and you might think, well, that's the moderate leftists' problem.

00:21:14.000 It's their moral responsibility to dissociate themselves from the radicals, just as it's the moral responsibility of reasonable conservatives to dissociate themselves from the John Birch and Ku Klux Klan types.

00:21:26.000 That's a very important point.

00:21:27.000 But it isn't just the moderate left's problem because even the people on the right don't know what to point to when they say, no, you've gone too far as a leftist.

00:21:37.000 Now, I've tried to...

00:21:39.000 It's complicated because I think it might be more than one policy.

00:21:43.000 I think the really deadly leftist presumption is equality of outcome.

00:21:47.000 I think as soon as you start talking about equality of outcome, you should be put in a box and put off the shelf.

00:21:52.000 But it isn't obvious why.

00:21:54.000 That doesn't sound like white people overall.

00:21:57.000 It doesn't have the same guttural punch that the excess of the right has.

00:22:03.000 It's, well, you're for equality of outcome.

00:22:05.000 Why is that bad?

00:22:06.000 Well, it's bad because when you play it out in society, and there's endless evidence for this, It's an instantaneously murderous doctrine.

00:22:14.000 And I think it's because it shifts so quickly into a victim-victimizer narrative.

00:22:19.000 I've had a great opportunity in the last month and a half.

00:22:22.000 I got asked to write the preface to the 50th anniversary edition of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.

00:22:29.000 And so I've been writing that.

00:22:30.000 And one of the things Solzhenitsyn did, which was one of the things that made that book Arguably the greatest work of non-fiction of the 20th century, I mean, it's in the top 10 anyways, was to point out very clearly that the excesses of the Russian Revolution started right away.

00:22:48.000 It wasn't that Lenin was a pretty good guy and then Stalin came in and corrupted everything.

00:22:51.000 It was like Lenin was not a pretty good guy.

00:22:53.000 The revolution got bloody really fast.

00:22:56.000 And what seemed to happen, so imagine you started to divide the world up into oppressor and oppressed.

00:23:01.000 Right?

00:23:02.000 And you're gonna do something about the oppressors.

00:23:04.000 The problem is, is that you can define people multiple ways.

00:23:08.000 This is the intersectionality problem.

00:23:10.000 And almost everybody can be defined, in terms of their group identity, in some way that makes them an oppressor.

00:23:16.000 So, like, if you're a black man, well, you could argue that you're oppressed because you're black, but what about the fact that you're a man?

00:23:24.000 And so does that make you an oppressor or someone who's oppressed? 0.97

00:23:27.000 And the answer is, as the revolution progresses, if there's any dimension along which you can be categorized as oppressor, you end up dead.

00:23:36.000 And so that's part of the pathology of the equality of outcome doctrine.

00:23:38.000 What do you mean by that?

00:23:39.000 Like, you end up dead?

00:23:40.000 You end up rounded up.

00:23:41.000 You ended up being put into the oppressor camp.

00:23:44.000 But there's only so far you can go with that, right?

00:23:46.000 I mean, you can't put all men in the oppressor camp.

00:23:48.000 There'd be no men left.

00:23:50.000 So you really think that's how it plays out?

00:23:53.000 Well, it is how it plays out.

00:23:55.000 When you look for equality of outcome.

00:23:56.000 Well, it is how it played out in the Soviet Union and China.

00:23:59.000 I mean, in the Soviet Union, we don't know how many people died.

00:24:02.000 The reasonable estimates look like about 25 million.

00:24:06.000 That's dead.

00:24:07.000 That's not in prison.

00:24:09.000 That isn't families destroyed.

00:24:10.000 That's just dead.

00:24:11.000 And in Mao's China, it might have approximated 100 million.

00:24:16.000 That's just internal repression.

00:24:18.000 And so what seems to happen as soon as you decide that the hierarchy is unfair because there are oppressors and oppressed, then you can go after the oppressors with moral virtue.

00:24:29.000 But the problem is that there's almost no limit to the number of ways that you can categorize someone as an oppressor.

00:24:36.000 The category just starts to expand.

00:24:38.000 Like the communists killed all the socialists. 0.98

00:24:41.000 They killed all the religious people. 1.00

00:24:43.000 They killed most of the students. 0.92

00:24:44.000 They killed all the productive farmers.

00:24:46.000 And they killed the productive farmers because they owned land, you know, and maybe a little house and a few cows, you know.

00:24:52.000 I mean, to be a successful farmer in Russia at the turn of the 20th century didn't mean you were rich, right?

00:24:57.000 It just meant you weren't starving.

00:24:59.000 It's like they killed all those people because they were oppressors, because they had more than someone else.

00:25:03.000 That's how they defined it in order to get the people to rally against it.

00:25:06.000 Yes.

00:25:07.000 Yes.

00:25:08.000 And the definition kept slipping because, well, look, even now, it's like, well, let's say we rally against the 1%, you know, and those would be the money owners, let's say.

00:25:17.000 It's like, okay, who's in that group?

00:25:19.000 Well, everybody in North America is in that group.

00:25:23.000 Worldwide, yeah.

00:25:24.000 Well, but who sets the parameters, right?

00:25:26.000 It's $34,000 a year sets you in the 1% worldwide.

00:25:32.000 Right, right.

00:25:33.000 So does that make all of us oppressors?

00:25:35.000 Basically, everybody who lives above poverty in America is in the 1% of the world.

00:25:39.000 And also by historical standards.

00:25:39.000 Right, right.

00:25:41.000 And so the problem with the oppressor-opressed narrative is that you can multiply the oppressors endlessly.

00:25:47.000 And there's no end to going after them.

00:25:49.000 Right.

00:25:49.000 And as soon as you make a definition, you can move the boundaries, and then the next person is the oppressor.

00:25:56.000 And then you keep going.

00:25:57.000 Well, and you also see the interesting thing, too, is that this is complicated.

00:26:01.000 So I've been thinking about this proclivity of the left to destroy members of the moderate left.

00:26:08.000 It's like part of the game that's being played, as far as I can tell, the ideologically pathological game is, I'm more virtuous than you.

00:26:17.000 Now, look, if you're on the radical left and you say, well, you're more virtuous than a right-winger, it's like, well, who cares?

00:26:24.000 That's obvious, because the right-wingers are, you know, pathological.

00:26:28.000 So being more virtuous than them, that's not much of an attainment.

00:26:32.000 But if I have my moderate leftist compatriot standing right beside me, and he's pretty damn virtuous, but I'm even more virtuous than him, Then that's a real attainment on my part.

00:26:44.000 It's a moral attainment with no effort on my part.

00:26:46.000 If I can figure out some way of classifying that previously virtuous person as an oppressor along some dimension, then all of a sudden I get an increment in my moral virtue.

00:26:56.000 And that happened all the time in these leftist revolutions run amok.

00:27:00.000 That was just a constant feature.

00:27:02.000 So it's not good.

00:27:03.000 It's not good.

00:27:06.000 Why is it, and this is something that's always puzzled me, why is it that the left is defined by, there's certain values, and one of them is when you look at the right, you automatically think of racism,

00:27:22.000 potential racism at least, dislike for gay people, homophobia, there's certain qualities that are always attributed to conservatives, and then there's certain qualities, and these are social things.

00:27:36.000 I'm not quite sure I understand.

00:27:38.000 Like, why is it that the left is always associated in support of gay rights?

00:27:43.000 The left is always associated in support of all races and all genders?

00:27:50.000 Well, I think it's the dispossessed issue again. 0.94

00:27:53.000 So imagine that...

00:27:57.000 We make these hierarchies, and they're hierarchies that are devoted towards a goal, and that the sum total of all those hierarchies is something like the patriarchy, even though I hate that word, and I don't think anybody should use it.

00:28:08.000 I don't like that word at all, but we're speaking within the confines of that theory.

00:28:13.000 Just define it how you're using it.

00:28:15.000 What do you mean by the patriarchy?

00:28:16.000 Well, the patriarchy is the sum total of all Western hierarchies, let's say.

00:28:21.000 It's the radical leftist vision of the sum total of all Western hierarchies.

00:28:26.000 But it's always male.

00:28:27.000 Well, that's the theory, is that it's male-dominated. 0.95

00:28:31.000 What is patriarchy is a male-dominated word. 0.92

00:28:34.000 Well, and it's a funny thing, because, of course, there's lots of elements, there's lots of sub-elements of the patriarchy that aren't male-dominated.

00:28:40.000 So healthcare, for example, universities, the education system in general, there's lots of places where these sub-elements are female-dominated. 1.00

00:28:50.000 But do you think that they're defined as the patriarchy?

00:28:52.000 Do they define healthcare...

00:28:54.000 Well, that's a good question, Joe.

00:28:55.000 I don't know what happens.

00:28:56.000 If you have a sub-element of the patriarchy that's dominated by women, is that still the patriarchy? 0.67

00:29:02.000 It's like the structure's still intact.

00:29:04.000 It's still performing the same function.

00:29:06.000 Well, now the women are running it. 1.00

00:29:07.000 Well, is that the patriarchy?

00:29:08.000 And the answer to that is, well, we're all vague about what the definition is, so we don't need to address that issue.

00:29:14.000 That's the answer.

00:29:15.000 Here's some clear ones, right?

00:29:16.000 Like major corporations, the vast majority of CEOs are male.

00:29:20.000 We think of that as part of the patriarchy.

00:29:22.000 Government.

00:29:23.000 Never been a female president. 0.90

00:29:26.000 A vast majority of senators, congressmen, etc.

00:29:29.000 Male.

00:29:30.000 Yeah, so I guess we could say, well, the patriarchy is all those elements of hierarchical structure that are still dominated by men.

00:29:36.000 Law enforcement, military, male, mostly male.

00:29:39.000 Right, but it's a peculiar definition because it means you have to fractionate the patriarchy into pieces.

00:29:48.000 You can no longer talk about it as a uniform structure if you're going to take out all those pieces that are dominated by women and say, well, that's not the patriarchy. 1.00

00:29:55.000 But the thing is that the whole concept is so ill-defined that it's It's always power, though, right?

00:30:02.000 Well, that's the other thing.

00:30:03.000 That's the claim.

00:30:04.000 The other claim is that all hierarchies are predicated on power, which is a claim that's absolutely appalling.

00:30:09.000 It's like, plumbers?

00:30:11.000 Are they part of the hierarchy?

00:30:13.000 You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door saying, use our service or else. 0.90

00:30:21.000 That's not how it works.

00:30:23.000 When you're going looking for a plumber, you go look for a massage therapist, or a surgeon for that matter, or a lawyer.

00:30:29.000 You go look for the person who's most competent.

00:30:32.000 And one of the things the left can't tolerate is the idea that hierarchies are predicated, in part even, on competence, which they clearly are.

00:30:40.000 The best predictors for success in Western hierarchies are intelligence and conscientiousness.

00:30:46.000 Those are the best psychological predictors of success.

00:30:48.000 They only account for about a third of the variation in success.

00:30:52.000 Maybe a third is probably about right.

00:30:54.000 So there's still lots of room for randomness and even for systemic discrimination.

00:30:59.000 But the notion that our Our systems aren't predicated in part on competence is clearly wrong.

00:31:06.000 Now, you asked a question about the left.

00:31:08.000 It's like, why are the left always on the side of the people who don't fit in, let's say, or don't fit so easily in?

00:31:13.000 And I think that is a matter of the consequence of hierarchical structures.

00:31:17.000 So imagine in every hierarchy there are some people who don't do very well in any given hierarchy.

00:31:22.000 Then imagine a Then imagine across all the hierarchies that there's a subset of people who are very likely to not do well in any of them.

00:31:31.000 So you might say, well, they're systemically discriminated against.

00:31:34.000 The left would be on their side because they're on the side, even temperamentally, of the people who are dispossessed.

00:31:40.000 And the thing about that is that it's valid.

00:31:43.000 Look, we need a spokesperson, politically, for the dispossessed. 1.00

00:31:50.000 That's what the Democratic Party used to do when they worked for the working class. 0.99

00:31:54.000 Because the working class needed a political voice. 0.96

00:31:56.000 It's like, okay, that's the Democrats.

00:31:57.000 Well, why do they need a political voice? 0.98

00:31:59.000 Well, to keep the hierarchy from degenerating into rigid tyranny.

00:32:04.000 It's part of the political discussion.

00:32:06.000 But now the problem is, and this is the problem with the left, is that, well, what's the hierarchy?

00:32:12.000 It's a tyrannical patriarchy.

00:32:13.000 It's like, no, it's not.

00:32:15.000 It's partly corrupt, like every system, but it's less corrupt than most systems, and there's a lot of elements of it that are devoted towards self-improvement and self-monitoring.

00:32:25.000 You have to be a little nuanced and subtle about these sorts of things, and you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

00:32:31.000 And the leftist rhetoric has got so intense that the idea is, and people believe this, while the world is going to hell in a handbasket, everything is getting worse in all possible ways, and there's systemic racism everywhere, and it's utterly unfair, and it should be torn down and rebuilt.

00:32:44.000 It's like, no, it's actually functioning unbelievably well, even though it still has its problems.

00:32:51.000 You know, and there's a big difference between saying there's systemic racism everywhere, and the reason that there isn't perfectly equal outcomes is because of prejudice, and saying, no, no, look, the system is functioning, let's say, at 75%.

00:33:05.000 It's doing all right.

00:33:07.000 It's got some problems, including systemic prejudice, which hopefully will work themselves out across time and which show every bit of evidence of doing so.

00:33:15.000 And so we don't need a radical solution.

00:33:20.000 One of the things I've started to do with my Twitter account is to tweet out Good, non-naive news.

00:33:26.000 Because one of the things that's happening in the world, and there's been half a dozen books on this or more written in the last five years by credible people, is that the distribution of the idea of individual sovereignty and property rights and free market economies, etc., out into the rest of the world,

00:33:43.000 the non-Western world, is making the non-Western world rich really, really, really fast.

00:33:49.000 So between 2000 and 2012, the rate of absolute poverty in the world fell by half.

00:33:56.000 Half.

00:33:57.000 It was the fastest period of economic development in human history.

00:34:00.000 We beat the optimistic UN target by three years.

00:34:05.000 Staggering.

00:34:07.000 You know, the rates of child mortality in Africa are now lower than they were in Europe in 1950. The fastest growing economies in the world are in sub-Saharan Africa.

00:34:19.000 Many, you know, millions of people, millions of people a month are getting access to this incredible technology that's embodied in cell phones.

00:34:27.000 People have access to fresh water like they've never had access before.

00:34:33.000 Kids are getting immunized at a rate that's unprecedented.

00:34:39.000 And yet we have this idea that's become rampant in the West that there's something ultimately corrupt about the patriarchal tyranny and that it has to be dismantled right down to its core.

00:34:51.000 And a lot of that's being taught by the activist disciplines and universities and I just don't get it.

00:34:56.000 It's not acceptable.

00:34:57.000 So they see these hierarchies and their proposal to level everything off and to take away the insane power at the very top is a quality of outcome.

00:35:10.000 It's unproven in terms of it's never been done successfully to a utopian Right.

00:35:18.000 Well, and I also don't even think you can do it in principle, because if you accept the proposition, the propositions I laid out, which is you have to pursue things of value, and if you pursue things of value in a social space, so you do it cooperatively and competitively,

00:35:33.000 you do it with other people, then you're going to produce differential outcome because people will be differently good at it.

00:35:38.000 Yes.

00:35:39.000 Well, it's like, okay, you don't believe that?

00:35:40.000 It's like, okay, do you listen to random selections of music online?

00:35:45.000 Yes.

00:35:45.000 Or do you do what everyone else does?

00:35:47.000 You go for the one-tenth of one percent of songwriters, and you only listen to them.

00:35:51.000 You only read the productions of one-tenth of one percent of writers.

00:35:57.000 You only listen to the podcasts of one-tenth of one percent of broadcasters.

00:36:03.000 When you watch sports on TV, you only watch the athletic contributions of one-tenth of one percent of athletes.

00:36:10.000 So, like, where's the equality exactly?

00:36:12.000 Where's that in your life?

00:36:14.000 You people who are pushing for equality of outcome.

00:36:16.000 You manifest that in anything you do?

00:36:19.000 You're unbelievably selective, just like everyone else.

00:36:19.000 You don't.

00:36:22.000 And the reason you're selective is because there are things that are happening that need to happen or that are entertaining and interesting, and you want the best in all of those realms.

00:36:33.000 That's how it works.

00:36:34.000 And there is a best.

00:36:36.000 That's the other thing that's so painful.

00:36:38.000 And that actually is painful.

00:36:40.000 You know, here's a problem of dispossession.

00:36:43.000 A real problem.

00:36:46.000 One way to not do very well in any hierarchy is to have a low IQ. And so, IQ is normally distributed.

00:36:55.000 And if you have an IQ of less than 85, it's hard for you to read well enough to follow instructions.

00:37:01.000 That's about 10% of the population.

00:37:03.000 It might even be higher than that.

00:37:05.000 Okay, so, given that lack, how are you going to compete?

00:37:09.000 And the answer is, you're not.

00:37:12.000 Because low IQ is a good predictor of poverty.

00:37:15.000 Now, they spiral because, you know, if you're cognitively...

00:37:19.000 If you're less cognitively gifted, then...

00:37:25.000 And you have children, they're going to be in a less enriched environment.

00:37:27.000 These things spiral, but you still have the essential problem.

00:37:30.000 That's the essential problem of the dispossessed. 1.00

00:37:32.000 It's like hierarchies are complex tools to attain necessary goals, but they dispossess people.

00:37:38.000 What do we do with the people that they dispossess?

00:37:41.000 The answer is, we don't know.

00:37:44.000 So we have to talk about it constantly to figure out how to solve it, because it's an ongoing problem that transforms, and that's the reason that political dialogue is necessary.

00:37:51.000 And then the danger is that the political dialogue will polarize into the radical left, no hierarchies whatsoever, or the radical right, our hierarchy is 100% right at all costs.

00:38:02.000 And so those are the, we have the eternal problem and those are the two poles that we have to negotiate between.

00:38:08.000 It's interesting because the accusation has always been that what the left is trying to do with this equality of outcome thing is sort of an infantilization of the populace, right?

00:38:20.000 And the best example of that is sports.

00:38:24.000 When you look at sports, clearly the best people win, right?

00:38:28.000 The fastest runners win the race.

00:38:30.000 The people that have the best strategy win the game.

00:38:35.000 That's a weird word.

00:38:37.000 Infantilization.

00:38:37.000 I never get it right.

00:38:38.000 But of that is what we do with children where you get participation trophies and no one wins.

00:38:44.000 You know, when my daughter was three years old, she was in soccer.

00:38:48.000 And they didn't keep score.

00:38:50.000 But everyone knew.

00:38:51.000 Everyone knew these kids scored, and they didn't.

00:38:53.000 At the end of the game, they didn't announce a winner.

00:38:55.000 You can't have a soccer game without keeping score.

00:38:58.000 It's not a soccer game anymore.

00:38:59.000 It's something else.

00:39:00.000 But the score was kept.

00:39:02.000 Of course.

00:39:02.000 It just wasn't discussed.

00:39:03.000 Well, of course.

00:39:04.000 It was the strangest thing.

00:39:05.000 But this is to treat these little kids, because they couldn't handle it.

00:39:09.000 You know, she cried when the other team scored.

00:39:11.000 I'm like, it feels bad when they score, so it feels good when you score.

00:39:18.000 Right.

00:39:40.000 The idea of the left is the demure, the soft, the people that are kinder and gentler.

00:39:47.000 The idea of the right is the conqueror. 1.00

00:39:49.000 The people that work hard, play hard, go kick ass, go America, that kind of shit. 1.00

00:39:55.000 And so these are the type of people that are going to be crueler. 1.00

00:39:58.000 They're going to do what it takes to win.

00:40:00.000 And the people that you would consider that would like equality of outcome are the people that are trying to slow that down.

00:40:07.000 Does this make sense?

00:40:09.000 Yes, absolutely.

00:40:10.000 And I think that's how it lays itself out temperamentally, too.

00:40:12.000 Psychologically.

00:40:13.000 This is the motivation for all this.

00:40:15.000 Yes, yes, yes.

00:40:16.000 And the radical left is compassion going mad, although it's also envy.

00:40:21.000 Let's not forget about that.

00:40:22.000 Envy.

00:40:23.000 Well, absolutely.

00:40:24.000 One reason to stand up for the dispossessed is because you're empathetic.

00:40:29.000 And empathy is not an automatic good.

00:40:32.000 This is something we make a big mistake about.

00:40:33.000 We think, well, I'm feeling sorry for you, therefore I'm good.

00:40:37.000 It's like, no, I might be feeling too sorry for you.

00:40:40.000 I might not be demanding enough of you.

00:40:42.000 So, and that's the terrible devouring mother, you know, from a psychoanalytic perspective.

00:40:46.000 Oh, everything you do, dear, is okay.

00:40:48.000 It's like, no, it's not.

00:40:49.000 Right.

00:40:50.000 So, one of the things that Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist, he was very interested in figuring out a way out of this, and it's very much relevant to your concept, your talk about athletics.

00:41:00.000 Okay, so imagine this.

00:41:02.000 Because this is also something that points the way to a proper morality, which was actually something that Jean Piaget was very concerned about.

00:41:08.000 He wanted to reconcile the distinction between religion and science.

00:41:12.000 That's actually what drove him.

00:41:14.000 Even though he was, people don't know that, he was arguably the world's greatest developmental psychologist.

00:41:19.000 So, here's the idea.

00:41:21.000 You know how you tell your kid to be a good sport?

00:41:24.000 You say, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it matters how you play the game.

00:41:28.000 Okay, so I've been unpacking that in my lectures because it's really, really complicated.

00:41:32.000 It's like, you tell your kid that and they look at you and they think, Well, what do you mean by that?

00:41:37.000 Aren't I supposed to try to win?

00:41:39.000 It's a soccer game.

00:41:40.000 I'm supposed to win.

00:41:41.000 And you say, well, yeah, you're supposed to win, but it doesn't matter whether you win or lose.

00:41:45.000 It matters how you play the game.

00:41:47.000 You know that that's right, but you don't know how to explain it to your kid.

00:41:50.000 You say, well, you want to be a good sport.

00:41:52.000 Okay, so imagine this.

00:41:53.000 This is how it works.

00:41:54.000 And this is crucially important.

00:41:56.000 So, first of all, life is not a game.

00:42:01.000 Even a game is not a game.

00:42:03.000 Because a game is, most of the time, a game is the beginning of a series of games.

00:42:09.000 So let's say that you're on a soccer team.

00:42:11.000 Well, there's winning the game, but the game isn't the issue.

00:42:15.000 The game is the whole series of games.

00:42:16.000 So maybe the game is winning the championship.

00:42:18.000 And winning the championship and winning a game are not the same thing.

00:42:22.000 And the reason for that is, well, maybe if you want to win a game, the best thing to do is to let your star player make all the moves.

00:42:28.000 But if you want to win a championship, maybe the best thing is for your star player to do everything he or she possibly can to develop all the other team members.

00:42:36.000 That's a different strategy, and the reason it's different is because it iterates across time.

00:42:40.000 Okay, so I'll tell you a quick story.

00:42:42.000 So when my kid was playing hockey when he was about 12 or so, he was in the championship game, just at a local arena, you know, and it was really fun to watch.

00:42:51.000 The teams were pretty equal, which is something that you want, so that everybody can...

00:42:56.000 Expand their skills while they're playing.

00:42:58.000 And it was like five seconds to the end of the game and the other team made a breakaway and the guy came down nice and scored.

00:43:05.000 It was a beautiful goal and it was 4-3 and that was the end of it, right?

00:43:08.000 And on my kid's team there was the kid who was the star and he was a pretty good hockey player.

00:43:12.000 He came off the ice and he was very annoyed about what had happened.

00:43:16.000 He smashed his stick on the cement and was complaining about the refereeing and acting as if he'd been robbed.

00:43:22.000 And his father came up and instead of saying, get your act together, kid, that's no way to display yourself after a loss.

00:43:28.000 He said, oh yeah, man, you were robbed that the referees didn't ref right and you played the best and you should have won. 1.00

00:43:34.000 And I thought, you absolute son of a bitch. 1.00

00:43:38.000 You're ruining your son. 1.00

00:43:40.000 And then the question is, why?

00:43:41.000 Because his son was the star and was trying to win.

00:43:43.000 Why was he ruining his son?

00:43:45.000 Well, you're trying to train your son not to win the game.

00:43:49.000 You're trying to train your son to win the championship.

00:43:53.000 And so that's a series of games.

00:43:55.000 But then, life isn't the championship.

00:43:57.000 Life is a whole bunch of championships.

00:44:00.000 It's a whole sequence of them.

00:44:01.000 And so what you're actually trying to train your son to do is to be a contender in the entire series.

00:44:08.000 And the way you do that is by helping him develop his character.

00:44:12.000 And the character is actually the strategy that would enable him to win the largest number of games across the largest possible span of time.

00:44:19.000 And one way you do that if you're a kid is like, well, what do you want to do with your kid?

00:44:23.000 You don't want to teach him to win.

00:44:25.000 You want to teach him to play well with others.

00:44:28.000 And that's to be reciprocal.

00:44:29.000 So that means to try to win, but also to pay attention to developing the other people around him and not to put winning the game above everything at all times.

00:44:39.000 So then he's fun to play with.

00:44:41.000 And this is absolutely crucial.

00:44:42.000 You can help your kid become fun to play with between the ages of two and the age of four.

00:44:48.000 If your kid is fun to play with, then what happens?

00:44:52.000 Kids line up to play with him.

00:44:54.000 And adults line up to teach him.

00:44:56.000 And if kids line up to play with him, then he'll have friends his whole life, and he'll be socialized, and he'll be invited to many games, some of which he'll win, all of which he'll be able to participate in.

00:45:05.000 And if he's fun to play with, then adults will teach him things, and then he wins that life.

00:45:10.000 And so when you say to your kid, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it matters how you play the game, what you're saying is, don't forget, kid, that what you're trying to do here is to do well at life.

00:45:19.000 And you need to practice the strategies that enable you to do well at life while you're in any specific game.

00:45:25.000 And you never want to compromise your ability to do well at life for the sake of winning a single game.

00:45:31.000 And there's a deep ethic in that, and it's the ethic of reciprocity in games.

00:45:36.000 Part of the reason that we're so obsessed with sports...

00:45:39.000 It's because we like to see that dramatized, you know?

00:45:42.000 Like, the person we really admire as an athlete isn't only the person who wins.

00:45:47.000 We don't like the narcissistic winners.

00:45:48.000 They're winners, and that's a plus.

00:45:50.000 But if they're narcissistic, they're not good team players, they're only out for themselves, then we think, well, you're a winner in the narrow sense, but your character is suspect.

00:45:59.000 You're no role model, even though you're a winner.

00:46:01.000 And it's because we're looking for something deeper.

00:46:04.000 We're looking for that, the manifestation of character that allows you to win across the set of possible games.

00:46:10.000 And that's a real thing.

00:46:11.000 That's a real ethic.

00:46:12.000 It's a fundamental ethic.

00:46:14.000 I think what you're pointing out that's very important is we're searching for the person who's got it all nailed.

00:46:20.000 Someone who tries their hardest but is also...

00:46:24.000 Honest enough about the circumstances to not cry foul when it's gone the other person's way.

00:46:32.000 Yeah, well that's part of resilience.

00:46:33.000 It's right like look you're not gonna win it You're not going to you're not going to score on every shot, right?

00:46:38.000 Doesn't mean you shouldn't take the shots doesn't mean you shouldn't try to to hit the goal but part of part of being able to continue to take shots is Is to have the strength of character to tolerate the fact that in that instance you weren't on top.

00:46:52.000 It's more trivial in games than it is in fights.

00:46:55.000 And the response is much more negative from the fans if you lose a fight and complain about it.

00:47:05.000 It's ruthless.

00:47:06.000 Because they understand that you've made a huge character error.

00:47:10.000 Yeah, so why do you think it's more important in fights than it is in games?

00:47:14.000 Why do you think it's even highlighted there?

00:47:15.000 Because the consequences are so grave.

00:47:17.000 Because you recognize that the high is much higher and the lows are much lower.

00:47:21.000 To lose a basketball game sucks, but it's nothing like losing a fight.

00:47:25.000 There's no comparison. 0.98

00:47:26.000 It's not even close.

00:47:26.000 So what do you think it is that damages the fighter If he complains about losing, why is that a mistake?

00:47:34.000 Why do the fans respond so negatively to that?

00:47:36.000 Because they know.

00:47:37.000 They know that you lost.

00:47:39.000 They know that you're complaining for no reason and you're not a hero.

00:47:42.000 They want you to be better than them.

00:47:44.000 They want you to be the person that has the courage to step into a cage or a ring or whatever the format is you're competing and to do something that's extremely difficult.

00:47:52.000 And when you do that, they hold you to a higher standard.

00:47:55.000 To lose with grace.

00:47:55.000 Right.

00:47:56.000 Yes, and when you fall, especially if you were a champion, that is one of the most disappointing things ever, when a champion complains, and its response is horrific from the audience.

00:48:06.000 Okay, so that's a great example.

00:48:08.000 So let's imagine, what does the person who loses something important with grace do?

00:48:13.000 And the answer is fairly straightforward.

00:48:16.000 He accepts the defeat and thinks, okay, what is it that I have left to improve that will decrease the possibility of a similar defeat in the future?

00:48:24.000 So what he's doing is, because the great athlete and the great person is not only someone who's exceptionally skilled at what they do, but who's trying to expand their skills at all times.

00:48:36.000 And the attempt to expand their skills at all times is even more important than the fact that they're great to begin with, because the trajectory is so important.

00:48:43.000 More important in particular to the audience.

00:48:46.000 It's extremely important to the audience because the person who's competing, you are expecting them to live out this life in a perfect way or in a much more powerful way than you're capable of.

00:48:56.000 Yes, and so part of that is the skill because they put in the practice, but part of that also is the willingness to push the skill farther into new domains of development with each action.

00:49:05.000 And that's really what people like to watch, right?

00:49:07.000 They don't like to watch a perfect athletic performance.

00:49:10.000 They like to watch a perfect athletic performance that's pushed into the domain of new risk.

00:49:15.000 They want to see both at the same time.

00:49:17.000 You're really good at what you do and you're getting better.

00:49:19.000 Okay, so you lose a match, which is not any indication that you're not good at what you do.

00:49:23.000 You might not be as good as the person who beat you.

00:49:26.000 But if you lose the match and then whine, what you've done is sacrifice the higher order principle of constant improvement of your own skills.

00:49:32.000 Yes.

00:49:33.000 Because you should be analyzing the loss and saying, the reason I lost, insofar as it's relevant to this particular time and place, is the insufficiencies I manifested that defeated me.

00:49:44.000 And I need to track those insufficiencies so that I can rectify them in the future.

00:49:48.000 And if I'm blaming it on you or the referees or the situation, then I'm not taking responsibility and I'm not pushing myself forward.

00:49:55.000 And so then you also take the meaning out of it.

00:49:57.000 Like, one of the things I've been doing on my tour People are criticizing me to some degree for saying things to people that are obvious.

00:50:05.000 Well, first of all, it's not like I didn't bloody well know they were obvious.

00:50:08.000 When I wrote those rules, well, the rules in my book, for example, stand up straight with your shoulders back, you know, treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping.

00:50:16.000 It's like, I know perfectly well that those can be read as clichés.

00:50:20.000 The question is, cliché, let's say, is something that's so true that it's become, that it's become, it's widely accepted by everyone.

00:50:30.000 Well, but we don't know why it's true anymore.

00:50:33.000 And so this issue, the issue that we're talking about here, the issue of being a good sport, we need to figure out why that's true.

00:50:40.000 And the reason that it's true is that you're trying to push your development farther than you've already developed at every point in time.

00:50:47.000 And now that's the proper moral attitude.

00:50:50.000 So...

00:50:56.000 When you see an athletic performance where someone is pushing themselves beyond what they are, you see someone dramatizing the process of proper adaptation.

00:51:04.000 It isn't the skill itself, it's the extension of the skill.

00:51:07.000 And when you see someone acting like a bad sport, then they're sacrificing that.

00:51:10.000 And so they're sacrificing the higher for the lower, and no one likes that.

00:51:13.000 In the fights, it's got to be...

00:51:16.000 See, the question is, that's the thing I can't quite figure out, is why that would be even exaggerated in a fight situation.

00:51:22.000 And you said it's because the stakes are so high.

00:51:24.000 Yeah, the consequences of victory or defeat, they're just so much greater.

00:51:30.000 Your health is on the line.

00:51:32.000 It's one of the rare things that you do where your health is on the line, your physical health.

00:51:38.000 So there are more extreme victories and more extreme defeats.

00:51:38.000 Right.

00:51:41.000 So the morality that's associated with defeat is more extreme.

00:51:44.000 Exactly.

00:51:44.000 Because there's more on the line.

00:51:45.000 Yeah, that makes sense.

00:51:46.000 And the way people treat the champions, it's a very different thing.

00:51:52.000 It's the respect and adulation that a champion receives.

00:51:57.000 It's the pinnacle of sports in terms of the love from the audience when someone wins a great fight.

00:52:05.000 There's nothing like it, and this is one of the reasons why these people are willing to put their health on the line, because that high, the high of victory, and it's not just a victory, it's a, you know, who is it, who said the victory is really the victory over the lesser you.

00:52:24.000 It's the victory over...

00:52:25.000 That's always the victory.

00:52:26.000 The victory is over, you've got to realize, a guy like Stipe Miocic, who defends his heavyweight title this weekend, In the UFC. He's the heavyweight champion of the world, but he's not undefeated.

00:52:26.000 Yes.

00:52:40.000 He's lost in his career.

00:52:41.000 He's lost a couple of times.

00:52:43.000 And I'm sure he's lost wrestling matches and sparring sessions in the gym.

00:52:48.000 He's a product of improvement.

00:52:51.000 He's a product of discipline and hard work and thinking and strategy and constantly improving upon his skills.

00:52:58.000 And because of that, he's the baddest man on the planet.

00:53:01.000 So in my book, Rule 4 is—this is 12— Excuse me.

00:53:06.000 This is from 12 Rules for Life.

00:53:08.000 Rule 4 is compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

00:53:13.000 Yes.

00:53:13.000 Because you need to have a hierarchy of improvement.

00:53:17.000 You need to be aiming for something.

00:53:19.000 And that means you're going to be lesser than people who've already attained along that dimension.

00:53:23.000 And that can give rise to envy.

00:53:23.000 Yes.

00:53:25.000 So the question is, who should you defeat in the final analysis?

00:53:28.000 And the answer is, you should defeat your former self.

00:53:30.000 You should be constantly trying to do that.

00:53:32.000 And you're the right control for yourself, too, because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages.

00:53:38.000 And so if you want to compete fairly with someone, then you should be competing with you.

00:53:42.000 And it is the case, and this is what we were talking about, too, with regards to the self-improvement of the fighter, is, well, if you're improving yourself, then what you are doing is competing with your lesser self.

00:53:53.000 I think?

00:54:12.000 So, it's very necessary to understand that this is why, you know, I've been stressing this idea of personal responsibility.

00:54:19.000 It's like, well, personal responsibility is to compete with yourself, is to be slightly better than yourself the next day.

00:54:24.000 And it better in some way that you can actually manage, and that's humility.

00:54:28.000 It's right, like, well, I'm a flawed person, I've got all my problems, could I be as good as person X? It's like, not the right question.

00:54:36.000 The right question is, could you be slightly better tomorrow than your currently flawed self?

00:54:40.000 And the answer to that is, If you have enough humility to set the bar properly low, then you could be better tomorrow than you are today.

00:54:48.000 Because what you also have to do is you have to say, well, here's all my flaws and my insufficiencies, and the best that someone that flawed and insufficient could do to improve and actually do it is this.

00:55:01.000 And that's not worth going out in the street and celebrating with placards, you know?

00:55:05.000 It's like, well, this is why I tell people to clean the room.

00:55:07.000 So you're not going to brag to someone that you did that.

00:55:09.000 But someone as insufficient as you might be able to manage it.

00:55:12.000 And that means you actually are on the pathway to self-improvement and you're transcending your former self.

00:55:17.000 And you might say, well, what's the right way of being in the world if there is such a thing?

00:55:21.000 And it's not acting according to a set of rules.

00:55:24.000 It's attempting continually to transcend the flawed thing that you currently are.

00:55:29.000 And what's so interesting about that is that the meaning in life is to be found in that pursuit.

00:55:34.000 So I've been laying that out in these discussions too, because I say, well, the fundamental issue is that life is tragic and difficult, very tragic and difficult for everyone.

00:55:44.000 And it's also tainted by malevolence, because no matter how... 0.80

00:55:49.000 Things are tragic and difficult, but there's always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else could do that could make it even worse than it has to be. 0.97

00:55:56.000 So that's life. 0.98

00:55:57.000 And you need an antidote to that because that can embitter you.

00:56:01.000 Constant contact with that.

00:56:02.000 Just the tragedy, but the tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence, that makes it even worse.

00:56:09.000 Especially if it's self-induced.

00:56:11.000 Okay, so you need something to set against that so you don't get bitter and resentful.

00:56:14.000 Well, what do you set against that?

00:56:16.000 Doing something worthwhile, by your own definition, say.

00:56:19.000 You need some reason to get the hell out of bed on a terrible day because you've got something good to do.

00:56:24.000 Well, what's the best thing you can do? 0.99

00:56:26.000 Transcend your current wretched and miserable self.

00:56:29.000 There's meaning to be found in that, and that's a meaning that's associated with responsibility.

00:56:35.000 One of the things that I've been trying to lay out clearly is that Life is hard.

00:56:41.000 It's tainted by malevolence and betrayal.

00:56:43.000 That can make you bitter.

00:56:44.000 You need a meaning to offset that.

00:56:46.000 Where's the meaning to be found?

00:56:48.000 Not in rights, not in impulsive pleasure, but in responsibility.

00:56:51.000 You take responsibility for yourself.

00:56:53.000 So you take care of yourself. 1.00

00:56:55.000 If you're good at it, you have some excess left over to take care of your damn family. 0.99

00:56:59.000 If you're good at both of those, then you have some excess left over to take care of your community. 0.99

00:57:03.000 Those are heavy burdens.

00:57:04.000 You pick up the burdens, you find that's meaningful.

00:57:07.000 The best way to pick up the burden is to continually improve yourself.

00:57:10.000 And that's where the meaning is to be found.

00:57:12.000 And so that meaning is in the continual self-transcendence.

00:57:15.000 That's letting your old self die and the new self be reborn.

00:57:19.000 Did you watch When We Were Kings?

00:57:22.000 L.E. and Frasier?

00:57:23.000 Yeah.

00:57:24.000 God, that's an amazing, amazing, amazing movie.

00:57:26.000 Right at the end of it, so L.E. defeats Frasier basically by letting him defeat himself, right?

00:57:31.000 Because Frasier is angry and he's got a chip on his shoulder and he doesn't conduct the fight properly.

00:57:35.000 So he exhausts himself chasing L.E. And Ellie has basically just trained himself to take the damn blows, right? 1.00

00:57:40.000 And to wear Frazier out. 0.99

00:57:42.000 That's his plan.

00:57:42.000 Then right at the end of the movie, he knocks Frazier down.

00:57:45.000 And it's pretty much the end of the fight.

00:57:47.000 But Frazier sort of struggles to his feet.

00:57:49.000 You know, he's just getting up off the mat.

00:57:51.000 And Ellie's got his hand pulled back to just nail him because he's completely laid open. 0.96

00:57:55.000 And he puts his gloves down and turns away.

00:57:58.000 That's the end of the fight.

00:57:59.000 And Frazier said, and this is true as far as I know, that that fight tamed him.

00:58:05.000 Like, Frazier had a big chip on his shoulder, and he was kind of a dreadful guy up until that fight.

00:58:09.000 And afterwards, he was affable, and he was civilized.

00:58:12.000 L.E. civilized him.

00:58:14.000 But that gesture that L.E. made was that great gesture, because he could have...

00:58:19.000 Flattened him, right?

00:58:20.000 And he had every reason to, man.

00:58:21.000 He got taken apart.

00:58:23.000 Ali took punches like mad in that fight.

00:58:25.000 And then in the final analysis, when he had Frazier down and he was struggling to his feet, he just let him go, man.

00:58:31.000 Nobility of character right there.

00:58:33.000 Something impressive to behold.

00:58:35.000 So... 0.94

00:58:39.000 Why are you defining people, like, when you're saying this, why are you saying your miserable, wretched life?

00:58:46.000 Because there's a lot of people that don't have miserable, wretched lives that also just want to improve.

00:58:50.000 Like, why does it have to be the worst case scenario in order to warrant improvement?

00:58:53.000 Because it has to work.

00:58:56.000 The theory has to work in the worst case scenario.

00:58:58.000 Okay.

00:58:59.000 So you're using the worst case scenario as an example.

00:59:02.000 But do you think that that perhaps may alienate someone who doesn't have the worst case scenario and just wants improvement?

00:59:07.000 No, I don't think so.

00:59:08.000 Well, it depends on how much time you have to outline the ideas.

00:59:13.000 Because even if things are going really well for you now, there's going to be a time in the future where things are rough.

00:59:19.000 You're going to be ill.

00:59:20.000 Family member's going to be ill.

00:59:22.000 A dream is going to fall apart.

00:59:24.000 You're going to be uncertain about your employment status.

00:59:28.000 Like, the flood is coming, right?

00:59:30.000 The apocalypse is coming.

00:59:31.000 It's always the case in life.

00:59:32.000 And you have to be prepared for it.

00:59:34.000 And the question is how to prepare for it.

00:59:36.000 And the answer to that is to find a way of being that works even under the direst of circumstances.

00:59:41.000 That's the issue.

00:59:42.000 And so you outline...

00:59:43.000 I mean, I am pessimistic about this in my approach in some sense, because when I'm talking to my audiences and the same thing happens in my book, Maps of Meaning and in 12 Rules for Life, I'm laying out the worst case scenario.

00:59:54.000 And that's sort of like hell.

00:59:56.000 It's things are going really badly for you.

00:59:58.000 And there's just chance associated with that sometimes. 1.00

01:00:01.000 And you and the people around you are doing stupid things to make it worse. 0.99

01:00:04.000 It's like, okay, what have you got under those circumstances? 1.00

01:00:07.000 You've got the possibility to slowly raise yourself out of the mire.

01:00:11.000 You've got the possibility to do just what the fighter does when he's defeated, which is to say, well...

01:00:17.000 Regardless of the circumstances that might have led to my defeat, even if there were errors on the part of the referee, this is no time to whine about it.

01:00:26.000 This is a time to take stock of what I did wrong so that I could improve it into the future.

01:00:31.000 And that's the right attitude.

01:00:32.000 You know, in the Old Testament, one of the things that's really interesting about the Old Testament stories is in the Old Testament, the Jews keep getting walloped by God.

01:00:39.000 It's like they struggle up and make an empire and then they just get walloped.

01:00:44.000 And then it's all crushed and they're out of it for generations.

01:00:47.000 And then they struggle back up and make an empire.

01:00:49.000 And then they get demolished again.

01:00:52.000 And it happens over and over and over.

01:00:53.000 And the attitude of the Old Testament Hebrews is, we must have made a mistake.

01:01:01.000 It's never to shake their fist at the sky and curse fate.

01:01:04.000 It's never that.

01:01:05.000 The presupposition is, if things aren't working out, it's my fault.

01:01:11.000 And that's a hell of a presupposition.

01:01:12.000 And you might say, well, of course, you know, that underestimates the degree to which there's systemic oppression, etc., etc., and the vagaries of fate.

01:01:22.000 It's like it doesn't underestimate it.

01:01:24.000 It's not the point.

01:01:26.000 The point is your best strategic position is how am I insufficient and how can I rectify that?

01:01:33.000 That's what you've got.

01:01:34.000 And the thing is, you are insufficient.

01:01:37.000 And you could rectify it.

01:01:39.000 Both of those are within your grasp.

01:01:41.000 If you aim low enough.

01:01:43.000 That's another thing you keep saying.

01:01:45.000 Have a low enough bar.

01:01:45.000 Aim low enough.

01:01:47.000 Why do you mean that?

01:01:48.000 Well, let's say you've got a kid and you want the kid to improve.

01:01:50.000 You don't set them a bar that's so high that it's impossible for them to attain it.

01:01:54.000 You take a look at the kid and you think, okay, this kid's got this range of skill.

01:01:58.000 Here's a challenge we can throw at him or her that exceeds their current level of skill, but gives them a reasonable probability of success.

01:02:06.000 And so, like I'm saying it tongue-in-cheek to some degree, you know, it's like, but I'm doing it as an aid to humility.

01:02:12.000 It's like, well, I don't know how to start improving my life.

01:02:15.000 Someone might say that.

01:02:17.000 And I would say, well, you're not aiming low enough.

01:02:20.000 There's something you could do that you are regarding as trivial.

01:02:23.000 That you could do, that you would do, that would result in an actual improvement.

01:02:29.000 But it's not a big enough improvement for you, so you won't lower yourself enough to take the opportunity.

01:02:34.000 Incremental steps.

01:02:35.000 So this is also what is achieved through exercise.

01:02:35.000 Yes.

01:02:38.000 It's one of the most important...

01:02:40.000 Well, what do you do when you go and lift weights? 0.99

01:02:42.000 Like, if you haven't bench pressed before, you don't put 400 pounds on the damn bar and drop the bar through your skull. 0.72

01:02:48.000 You know, you think, look, when I started working out when I was a kid, I weighed about 130 pounds and I was 6'1". 0.98

01:02:55.000 I was a thin kid and I smoked a lot.

01:02:57.000 I wasn't in good shape.

01:02:58.000 I wasn't in good physical shape. 0.99

01:03:00.000 And I went to the gym and it was bloody embarrassing, you know, and people would come over and help me with the goddamn weights. 0.97

01:03:04.000 Here's how you're supposed to use this. 0.99

01:03:06.000 You know, it was humiliating.

01:03:08.000 And maybe I was pressing 65 pounds or something at that point.

01:03:12.000 You know, but what am I going to do?

01:03:13.000 I'm going to lift up 150 pounds and injure myself right off the bat? 0.99

01:03:17.000 No, I had to go in there and strip down and put my skinny goddamn self in front of the mirror and think, son of a bitch, there's all these monsters in the gym who've been lifting weights for 10 years, and I'm struggling to get 50 pounds off the bar. 0.99

01:03:28.000 Tough luck for me. 1.00

01:03:30.000 But I could lift 50 pounds.

01:03:31.000 And it wasn't very long until I could lift 75. And, well, you know how it goes.

01:03:36.000 And I never injured myself when I was weightlifting.

01:03:39.000 And the reason for that was I never pushed myself past where I knew I could go.

01:03:44.000 And I pushed myself a lot.

01:03:45.000 You know, I gained 35 pounds of muscle in about three years in university.

01:03:49.000 I kind of had to quit because I was eating so goddamn much I couldn't stand it.

01:03:53.000 I was eating like six meals a day. 0.89

01:03:54.000 It was just taking up too much time.

01:03:56.000 But there's a humility in determining what it is that the wretched creature that you are can actually manage.

01:04:02.000 Aim low.

01:04:03.000 And I don't mean don't aim.

01:04:04.000 And I don't mean don't aim up.

01:04:07.000 But you have to accept the fact that You can set yourself a goal that you can attain, and there's not going to be much glory in it to begin with.

01:04:15.000 Because if you're not in very good shape, the goal that you could attain tomorrow isn't very glorious.

01:04:21.000 But it's a hell of a lot better than nothing, and it beats the hell out of bitterness, and it's way better than blaming someone else.

01:04:27.000 It's way less dangerous.

01:04:28.000 And you could do it.

01:04:30.000 And what's cool about it...

01:04:33.000 There's a statement in the New Testament, it's called the Matthew Principle, and economists use it to describe how the economy and the world works.

01:04:39.000 To those who have everything, more will be given.

01:04:42.000 From those who have nothing, everything will be taken. 1.00

01:04:44.000 It's like what's very pessimistic in some sense, because it means that as you start to fail, you fail more and more rapidly.

01:04:50.000 But it also means that as you start to succeed, you succeed more and more rapidly.

01:04:54.000 And so you take an incremental step and, well, now you can lift 55 pounds instead of 52.5 pounds.

01:05:01.000 You think, well, what the hell is that?

01:05:03.000 It's like it's one step on a very long journey.

01:05:07.000 And it starts to compound on you.

01:05:09.000 So a small step today puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day.

01:05:14.000 And then that puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day.

01:05:17.000 And you do that for two or three years, man.

01:05:19.000 You're starting to stride.

01:05:20.000 You know, and I have so many people coming up to me now.

01:05:23.000 This is one of the things that's so insanely fun about this tour, which is so positive.

01:05:27.000 It brings me to tears regularly.

01:05:30.000 It's mind-boggling.

01:05:31.000 Because people come up to me, and this is happening wherever I go now, and they say...

01:05:36.000 They're very polite when they come and talk to me, you know, and they're always apologetic for interrupting.

01:05:40.000 And so it's never narcissistic and it's never annoying.

01:05:44.000 I'm really happy to see people.

01:05:46.000 And they come up to me and they say, well, I know you've heard this lots of times before, but I've really been putting my life together since I've been watching your lectures.

01:05:54.000 Then they tell me a story about where they were in some dark place, too much alcohol, too much drugs, not getting along with their father, not getting along with their mother, not having a vision for their life, being nihilistic, playing too many video games, you know, like being suicidal, that happens a lot,

01:06:10.000 having post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes as a consequence of combat, whatever little slice of hell they were occupying.

01:06:16.000 They say, look, I've been listening to your lectures, and I've been developing a vision for my life, and I've been trying to take responsibility, and I've been trying to tell the truth, and things are way better.

01:06:26.000 And so that's absolutely perfect.

01:06:28.000 It's the right way forward as far as I'm concerned.

01:06:31.000 And those are people who, they took stock of themselves.

01:06:33.000 They said, I'm in a dark place.

01:06:35.000 And I'm a dark person.

01:06:36.000 And here's some things that this dark person in this dark place could do.

01:06:41.000 Little things that they could actually do. 0.99

01:06:44.000 I'll clean up my damn room. 0.99

01:06:45.000 I'll make my bed. 0.99

01:06:46.000 I've had, I don't know how many people have come and told me.

01:06:49.000 It's so strange.

01:06:50.000 They said, well, I started making my bed and that made all the difference.

01:06:53.000 It's like, well, yeah, you decided to aim up, man.

01:06:55.000 And the first concrete instantiation of that was that you made your bed.

01:06:59.000 And you think, well, that's nothing heroic.

01:07:00.000 It's like, no, but aiming up is heroic.

01:07:03.000 That's something.

01:07:04.000 And then lowering yourself to the point where you're not above the mess in your room.

01:07:09.000 You know, you're not superordinate to that.

01:07:12.000 You lower yourself so that you straighten up.

01:07:14.000 You're grateful for what you have right in front of you, and you take care of it, and you put it in order.

01:07:18.000 It's like all of a sudden things start to get better.

01:07:20.000 It's so wonderful to be doing this.

01:07:23.000 Tour, because I see so...

01:07:25.000 That's what this tour has been about for me.

01:07:27.000 It's not political.

01:07:29.000 I never talk to people after the talks, for example.

01:07:32.000 I talk to about 150 people a night.

01:07:33.000 We never talk about anything political.

01:07:35.000 It's always this.

01:07:37.000 I wasn't doing very well.

01:07:38.000 I'm putting my life together.

01:07:40.000 I'm getting along better with my father.

01:07:41.000 I'm getting along better with my wife.

01:07:43.000 I'm getting along better with my kids.

01:07:44.000 I've got some meaning in my life.

01:07:46.000 Thanks a lot.

01:07:47.000 It's way better.

01:07:48.000 It's like, yes.

01:07:49.000 That's...

01:07:51.000 That's the right thing.

01:07:53.000 It's very beneficial for people and they need to hear that and there's something that comes along with that that's critical and what that is is an honest assessment of yourself.

01:08:05.000 An honesty That type of honesty, honesty with yourself, it's very difficult for some people, and they don't have the tools for it, and they haven't been explained how to do this.

01:08:15.000 Or why you should.

01:08:16.000 Or why you should, yeah.

01:08:17.000 One of the things that happens when you go through school, you're told what to do, you're never told how to think.

01:08:22.000 You're also told that you're okay the way you are.

01:08:24.000 That's self-esteem, man.

01:08:26.000 You're okay the way you are.

01:08:27.000 It's like, no, you're not.

01:08:28.000 And this is another thing.

01:08:29.000 Well, you are and you're not.

01:08:31.000 You're okay as a human.

01:08:33.000 Look, if you want to be a black belt in jujitsu and you just started your first class, you're okay as you are.

01:08:38.000 You're a human.

01:08:39.000 But in the goal, you're not okay.

01:08:42.000 In the greater goal.

01:08:43.000 The incremental improvement is important.

01:08:43.000 That's right.

01:08:45.000 You have to honestly assess your position and move forward.

01:09:04.000 But, you know, the self-esteem movements and all of that will accept yourself the way you are.

01:09:08.000 It's like, no, because you need a trajectory.

01:09:11.000 And one of the things that I think, one of the reasons that audiences are responding to what I've been saying in my lectures and what I've been writing about is that I don't tell people that they're okay the way they are.

01:09:22.000 No, I say, no, no, you could be way more than you are.

01:09:24.000 And they're relieved about that, you see, because if you're in a dark and terrible place, and someone says you're okay the way you are, then you don't know what to do about that.

01:09:32.000 It's like, no, I'm not.

01:09:33.000 I'm having a terrible time, and I'm hopeless.

01:09:36.000 You're okay the way you are.

01:09:38.000 Well, then what?

01:09:39.000 That's it?

01:09:40.000 That's it?

01:09:41.000 And what do you want to tell a young person?

01:09:41.000 That's where I am?

01:09:43.000 You're 17. You're okay the way you are.

01:09:45.000 It's like, no, you're not.

01:09:46.000 You've got 60 years to be better.

01:09:48.000 And you could be way better.

01:09:49.000 You could be incomparably better across multiple dimensions.

01:09:53.000 And in pursuing that better, that's where you'll find the meaning in your life.

01:09:56.000 And that will give you the antidote to the suffering.

01:09:59.000 The way I always describe it to people is there are disciplines that you can pursue and those disciplines are a vehicle for developing your human potential.

01:10:07.000 And if you get better at these things, you can get better at anything.

01:10:10.000 And if you figure out what it takes to become better at whatever sport it is or whatever art it is or whatever you're pursuing, the same principles you can apply to the way you treat people, you can apply to the way you educate yourself, you can apply to the way you keep your body in shape.

01:10:26.000 All those things are connected.

01:10:28.000 That's why you have to impose order.

01:10:30.000 People have asked me in my book why I wrote it as an antidote to chaos, you know, because, well, there isn't anything technically wrong with chaos.

01:10:39.000 Chaos is a place of great potential.

01:10:41.000 Well, the question is, what's the proper balance between chaos and order?

01:10:45.000 Chaos, potential, and order.

01:10:48.000 Well, the answer is, look, when you're a kid, you're all potential.

01:10:51.000 It's chaotic potential.

01:10:52.000 It can manifest itself in any number of ways.

01:10:54.000 And maybe you don't want to give that up.

01:10:56.000 So you're like Peter Pan.

01:10:57.000 You want to be a kid forever because you don't want to give up the potential.

01:10:59.000 And you look out in the world and all you see are Captain Hooks, you know, who've lost a hand, who are chased by death because that's the clock and the crocodile.

01:11:07.000 It's already got a taste of him.

01:11:08.000 He's terrified by death and he's a tyrant.

01:11:10.000 Well, I don't want to grow up to be that.

01:11:12.000 So I won't be disciplined at all.

01:11:14.000 Well, that's no good, because the way the potential transforms itself into actuality is through discipline.

01:11:19.000 And so then, as you said, this is the trick, though.

01:11:22.000 You have to pick a path of discipline.

01:11:25.000 What path of discipline you have to pick is a different issue.

01:11:29.000 There could be a rule.

01:11:30.000 The rule could be The rule might not be, follow this rule.

01:11:34.000 The rule might be, you have to follow some rules.

01:11:38.000 So it's a meta-rule.

01:11:39.000 And the meta-rule is, you have to discipline yourself.

01:11:42.000 And the issue is, well, how?

01:11:44.000 That's not really the relevant question.

01:11:45.000 You can pick a disciplinary path.

01:11:47.000 That's why I often tell my clients, especially young people, they say, well, I don't know what to do.

01:11:51.000 It's like, that's okay.

01:11:52.000 Nobody does.

01:11:53.000 Go do something.

01:11:55.000 Do the best thing that you can think of.

01:11:57.000 Put the best plan you have into practice.

01:11:59.000 It's not going to be perfect and it will change along the way.

01:12:02.000 But it will change partly because you become disciplined pursuing the path.

01:12:06.000 And as you become disciplined, you become wiser.

01:12:08.000 And as you become wiser, you become able to formulate better and better plans.

01:12:12.000 So you can start vaguely and confused and develop a plan that's not so great and you start to implement it and then you accrue incremental wisdom as you implement your flawed plan and that enables you to fix the plan.

01:12:24.000 And so that's part of that process of incremental self-improvement as well.

01:12:28.000 One of the more difficult aspects of that is personal honesty, like being honest with yourself.

01:12:33.000 Being honest with yourself about what you're doing.

01:12:35.000 Self-assessment.

01:12:36.000 It's very difficult for people.

01:12:37.000 They're never taught it.

01:12:39.000 It's not something that's encouraged.

01:12:40.000 No, and it's dismal.

01:12:42.000 Imagine you only have $100,000 to go buy a house.

01:12:46.000 And so you go look at this house and it's like, Jesus, this house, man, it needs a lot of work.

01:12:52.000 It's like, well, that's all you've got.

01:12:54.000 Well, are you going to pretend that the house is okay the way it is?

01:12:56.000 Or are you going to look for where it's rotten and where the plumbing doesn't work and where the stove doesn't work?

01:13:00.000 You have to go and look and see where everything needs to be fixed.

01:13:03.000 And that's like, that is harsh, man.

01:13:06.000 And then in order to do that properly, someone has to have taught you, look, you aren't your problems.

01:13:11.000 Well, you are.

01:13:13.000 You're most fundamentally that which, if it confronts its problems, can solve them.

01:13:19.000 And that's the hero myth in a nutshell, by the way.

01:13:21.000 The hero is the person who confronts horrible, chaotic potential and tames it and makes something of it, right?

01:13:27.000 That's the fundamental human story.

01:13:30.000 But the problem is that you have to face what you don't want to face in order to fix it.

01:13:34.000 And so you look at all the things about yourself that need to be burned off, that need to be dispensed with.

01:13:39.000 And that, man, especially at the beginning, especially if you're screwed up, that may be like 95% of you just has to go up in flames. 0.69

01:13:46.000 And it's painful.

01:13:47.000 Even some of that stuff that you have to burn off doesn't want to die.

01:13:50.000 And it'll scream in agony while you're burning it off.

01:13:53.000 It's not pleasant.

01:13:55.000 But if you know that you're the thing that can transcend your problems, most fundamentally, if you know you're the thing that, if it faces the problems, can transcend them, then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you are.

01:14:07.000 And you have to do that in small steps because most people don't have experience in transcending their problems, so they really don't know what it even feels like.

01:14:13.000 It seems like an alien concept.

01:14:15.000 It seems like something other people can do.

01:14:17.000 But if you do it incrementally, you can show yourself that you can do it.

01:14:21.000 I mean, it's one of the reasons why they have belt systems in martial arts. 0.94

01:14:25.000 You start off slow.

01:14:26.000 Oh my god, I got a stripe on my white belt.

01:14:28.000 Oh my god, I'm a blue belt.

01:14:29.000 You feel improvement.

01:14:31.000 And for some people, it's the first real improvement, marked absolute improvement in their life.

01:14:38.000 Right, well then that's an interesting thing too because right there you've got a bit of a measurement system.

01:14:43.000 We have this system set up online called the Future Authoring Program and we've implemented, last time we implemented it because we've tested it three times, we implemented at Mohawk College in Canada and we had people write about their ideal future and also to put in measurement strategies.

01:14:58.000 It's like okay here's your ideal future, here's how you're going to break it into goals, here's how you're going to mark progress towards those goals.

01:15:05.000 Because you've got to be playing a fair game with yourself, right?

01:15:07.000 Because when you make progress, you want to reward yourself.

01:15:10.000 So you have to identify what the progress is, and you have to reward it.

01:15:13.000 The consequence, we had people write a future plan for only an hour when they came for their school orientation in the summer before going to its community college.

01:15:23.000 And it dropped the dropout rate among young men by 50%.

01:15:27.000 And it's, yeah, no kidding, 50%.

01:15:30.000 Yeah.

01:15:31.000 And what that meant was, to me, what that meant was, just think about that.

01:15:34.000 What that means is that these kids had been educated for 12 years and no one had ever sat them down and said, okay, what the hell are you doing and why?

01:15:43.000 Where do you want to go?

01:15:44.000 Why do you want to get there?

01:15:46.000 How are you going to get there?

01:15:47.000 How are you going to mark your progress?

01:15:49.000 They've never walked them through that exercise.

01:15:51.000 You walk people through that exercise just to get them to do that increases the probability that they'll stay on track by 50%.

01:15:58.000 That's incredible.

01:15:59.000 Well, it's one of the things I've always complained about is that people teach you facts.

01:16:04.000 They don't teach you how to approach life.

01:16:06.000 They don't teach you how to think.

01:16:08.000 They don't teach you how to confront insecurities and Different traps that your mind will set up for you.

01:16:15.000 Yeah, well, that's what partly what's so fun about doing this lecture tour because that's exactly what I'm talking to people about.

01:16:21.000 One of the things I talk about is, well, why do you think?

01:16:23.000 Why bother thinking?

01:16:25.000 It's like, you think, well, that's obvious.

01:16:27.000 It's like, no, actually, it's not so obvious.

01:16:29.000 It's like the issue that I discuss with my students at university a lot is, well, why write a good essay?

01:16:35.000 Why bother?

01:16:36.000 Well, to get the grade.

01:16:37.000 It's like, no, that's not why.

01:16:40.000 And if you think that, well, that's better than not thinking that there's any reason for writing, but it's a bad reason.

01:16:45.000 Why write?

01:16:45.000 Well, writing is a form of thinking.

01:16:47.000 It's actually the most demanding form of thinking, I would say.

01:16:51.000 There's other forms that are demanding.

01:16:54.000 So how do you write a good essay?

01:16:56.000 Pick a topic that matters to you.

01:16:58.000 Because if you're not writing about something that matters to you, it's like you're not living something that's meaningful.

01:17:04.000 It's wrong.

01:17:05.000 You're not going to write a good essay because you're wrong right to begin with.

01:17:07.000 It has to matter to you.

01:17:09.000 Well, why does it matter?

01:17:10.000 What does it mean that it matters?

01:17:12.000 Well, it means that it's going to affect how you make decisions in your life.

01:17:17.000 Something that matters affects how you make decisions in your life.

01:17:19.000 Well, why does it matter how you make decisions in your life? 1.00

01:17:22.000 Because if you make some stupid decisions... 1.00

01:17:25.000 You're going to increase the sum total of suffering a lot. 1.00

01:17:29.000 You're going to do stupid things to yourself. 1.00

01:17:31.000 You're going to do stupid things to other people. 1.00

01:17:33.000 And you're not going to be as good a person as you could be. 1.00

01:17:36.000 So not only will you do stupid and terrible things, but you won't have manifested the good in the world that you could have manifested. 1.00

01:17:42.000 So that's the lack. 0.99

01:17:43.000 So you write an essay so that you can think.

01:17:45.000 And you think so that you can live properly. 0.97

01:17:47.000 And so you write damn carefully. 0.97

01:17:48.000 You make sure that every single bloody word is a word that you want to use. 0.97

01:17:52.000 And you make sure the phrases that you put the words in are as solid as they can be.

01:17:56.000 And you make sure the sentences are well constructed.

01:17:58.000 And that they're organized into proper paragraphs.

01:18:00.000 And the paragraphs are sequenced.

01:18:02.000 And the content of the thing matters.

01:18:04.000 And you put your soul into it.

01:18:05.000 And you know when you've done that because it's gripping when you write.

01:18:09.000 It's meaningfully engaging.

01:18:10.000 And this is another thing that I've been sharing with my audiences.

01:18:13.000 Meaning is actually an instinct.

01:18:15.000 Like, you think, okay, so we already decided that incremental self-improvement is the proper route.

01:18:22.000 Okay, so how do you know when you're incrementally self-improving properly?

01:18:26.000 And the answer is it's deeply engaging.

01:18:28.000 It's deeply meaningful.

01:18:29.000 And the reason for that is you're actually adapted neurologically to identify the pathway of maximal incremental improvement.

01:18:36.000 That was a discovery conceptually by a guy named Vygotsky, who was a Russian neuropsychologist who coined the term zone of proximal development.

01:18:43.000 You hear now and then people say they're in the zone.

01:18:46.000 That's the zone of proximal development.

01:18:48.000 And that's that place that you occupy when you're improving at the rate that's optimal to you.

01:18:53.000 And your sense of intrinsic meaning signifies that. 0.99

01:18:57.000 That's how your bloody brain is wired. 0.97

01:18:58.000 And so then you might say, well, what's the antidote to the tragedy and malevolence of life? 0.81

01:19:03.000 And the answer is to put yourself in the zone of proximal development, because that's where the maximal meaning is.

01:19:08.000 And that actually does prepare you for life.

01:19:10.000 And so the question, why think, is, well, you think before you act, and you act to put yourself in the zone of proximal development, and you do that as an antidote to the catastrophe of life.

01:19:21.000 Well, that's the answer.

01:19:24.000 And the thing that's cool about that, and this is, I think, part of what I've been telling people that's sort of novel, is, well, where's the meaning?

01:19:32.000 The meaning is in responsibility.

01:19:34.000 You know, because people avoid...

01:19:36.000 That's Peter Pan again.

01:19:37.000 Avoid responsibility.

01:19:38.000 It's just a burden.

01:19:39.000 It's like, no, it's not.

01:19:40.000 It is a burden.

01:19:41.000 But voluntarily hoisted.

01:19:43.000 It's the place of maximal meaning.

01:19:45.000 And the more responsibility you take, the more meaning you have.

01:19:48.000 And that's the antidote to the catastrophe of life.

01:19:50.000 And everybody also knows this.

01:19:52.000 Because, just look, it's so simple.

01:19:56.000 When are you sick of yourself... 0.99

01:19:58.000 Well, that's when you're being useless and irresponsible for yourself and for your family and for your community. 0.99

01:20:04.000 You're not even taking care of yourself. 0.99

01:20:06.000 Well, you can't sleep with a clean conscience unless you're psychopathic, if you're not taking care of yourself.

01:20:12.000 And then when are you not awake in the morning at three in the morning, tearing yourself apart with a guilty conscience?

01:20:17.000 It's when you've done something useful, at least for you, You know, and you can say, oh well, check one on my side.

01:20:24.000 You say, okay, so fine.

01:20:26.000 You adopt a little responsibility for yourself and you can sleep with a clean conscience.

01:20:29.000 What happens if you adopted full responsibility for yourself?

01:20:32.000 And then for your family.

01:20:34.000 Lots of the people who are coming to talk to me say now, I've been really trying to put my family together.

01:20:39.000 I've made that a goal.

01:20:40.000 I'm trying to heal my family and bring it together, and it's working.

01:20:44.000 So here's a story.

01:20:45.000 I love this story, man.

01:20:46.000 It just killed me.

01:20:47.000 I was in L.A. at the Orpheum.

01:20:49.000 You know, it's rough downtown in L.A. and places around the Orpheum, too. 0.99

01:20:53.000 And Tammy and I, my wife, because she's traveling with me, and is a big help, by the way, We were wandering around downtown LA the morning after the talk, and we were walking down the street, and we were on streets we probably shouldn't have been on, but in any case, because what the hell do we know, being stupid Canadians. 1.00

01:21:09.000 And so we were walking down the street, and this car pulled up beside us, and this kid hopped out, and this good-looking Latino kid, 20, 21, something like that, he jumped over, and he said, he's all excited, he said, are you Dr. Peterson? 0.77

01:21:20.000 I said, yeah, yeah.

01:21:21.000 I'm really, really happy to meet you.

01:21:24.000 I've been watching your lectures for like a year and a half, and I've been trying to put my life together, and it's really working.

01:21:29.000 I'm really doing way better.

01:21:30.000 I really wanted to thank you.

01:21:31.000 And so, it's lovely, eh, when you're walking down a kind of rough area, and somebody pulls up beside you, and they jump out of the car to tell you how much better their life is.

01:21:40.000 That's a pretty good morning.

01:21:41.000 And so, but then, that isn't all that happened.

01:21:44.000 He ran back to his car.

01:21:45.000 He said, wait a minute, wait a minute.

01:21:46.000 Went back to his car, and he got out his dad, and They came over together, and his dad was just smiling away, like a real smile, you know?

01:21:54.000 And so was the kid, and they had their arms around each other, and they said, look, like, we've really been working on our relationship for the last year and a half, and it's going just great.

01:22:02.000 We want to thank you.

01:22:02.000 And the father said something like, I'm really happy that you got my son back to me.

01:22:06.000 It's like, yes, that's what this bloody tour has been like.

01:22:10.000 It's great.

01:22:11.000 And everybody that's coming to these talks, that's what they're trying to do.

01:22:15.000 You know, I got 3,000 people in each audience, and what they're trying to do is figure out, how can I take maximal responsibility for my own life?

01:22:22.000 How can I imbue it with the meaning that helps me withstand tragedy and suffering?

01:22:26.000 How can I be a better person?

01:22:28.000 And wouldn't it be great if that was of optimal benefit to my family and the community?

01:22:32.000 You're getting very emotional about this.

01:22:34.000 Well, it's something, Joe.

01:22:35.000 Jesus, I've seen like 150,000 people in the last two months.

01:22:39.000 You know, and this is what it's...

01:22:40.000 Well, you'll have a chance to talk to Ruben about this, too.

01:22:43.000 This is what it's been like.

01:22:44.000 It's so positive.

01:22:45.000 I can't believe it.

01:22:46.000 And it's just one person after another saying, like, look, I was having a rough time.

01:22:51.000 I'm really happy that I've been encountering what you've been talking about.

01:22:54.000 I've really been trying to put things together, and it's really helping.

01:22:58.000 Yeah, Ruben was pretty blown away by it.

01:23:00.000 We had a long conversation about it.

01:23:01.000 He just feels like there's some crazy movement going on and something's changing in the world because of this.

01:23:06.000 This new avenue of learning and developing is opening up for these people.

01:23:11.000 Well, and I've been thinking about that too because, you know, like I said at the beginning, if you're surfing, you don't want to take responsibility for the wave.

01:23:19.000 You know, I mean, first of all, a lot of what I've been telling people are things that I've gleaned from the clinical and the psychological literature.

01:23:25.000 It's not like I'm coming up with this of my own accord, right?

01:23:28.000 I'm transmitting information that I've learned from very, very wise people.

01:23:31.000 And so there's that.

01:23:33.000 But also, we don't want to underestimate the utility of the technology, right?

01:23:37.000 Because we have this long-form technology now, and it's enabling us to have this discussion.

01:23:42.000 And so we can get deeper into things publicly and socially than we were able to before.

01:23:49.000 I see this as a manifestation of that.

01:23:51.000 And I'm hoping too that maybe what's happening, because we're going to have a lot of adaptation to do in the next 20 years as things change so rapidly we can hardly comprehend it.

01:24:01.000 And hopefully the way we're going to be able to manage that is to think.

01:24:06.000 And hopefully these long-form discussions will provide the public forum for us to actually think, to actually engage at a deep enough level so we'll be able to master the transformations.

01:24:18.000 And I think that's possible.

01:24:19.000 Part of the reason that I wrote this book, well, part of the reason that I've been doing what I've been doing for the last 30 years is because I really have believed Since 1985, something like that, that the way out of political polarization, the way out of the excesses of the right and the left, is through the individual.

01:24:36.000 I think the West got that right.

01:24:38.000 The fundamental unit of measurement is the individual.

01:24:41.000 And the fundamental task of the individual is to engage in this process of humble self-improvement.

01:24:46.000 I believe that's the case and that's where the meaning is and that's where the responsibility is and I think and I'm hoping that if enough people in the West and then and then the rest of the world for that matter but we're very polarized in the West right now if enough people take responsibility for getting their individual lives together then we'll get wise enough so we won't let this process of political polarization put us back to the same places that we went so many times in the 20th century.

01:25:11.000 I don't see another antidote for it.

01:25:13.000 It's not political.

01:25:14.000 It's ethical.

01:25:16.000 This is the message that I always hear from you.

01:25:18.000 And this is you as a friend.

01:25:21.000 This is the you that I understand.

01:25:23.000 But this is not how you're commonly represented.

01:25:26.000 You are the most misrepresented person I've ever met in my life.

01:25:30.000 I have never seen someone who has So much positive that gets ignored and where people are looking for any little thing that they could possibly misrepresent and switch up and change.

01:25:46.000 And I'm kind of stunned by it. 0.65

01:25:48.000 I mean, I'm really not sure what it is about you that's so polarizing with all these different people that are Deciding that you are some sexist, transphobic, evil person that's this right-wing, 0.78

01:26:06.000 alt-right figure.

01:26:09.000 You know, even to the point where it's kind of humorous to me sometimes when I read some of these takes on you.

01:26:19.000 What do you think that's from?

01:26:22.000 This is a new thing for you?

01:26:25.000 I mean, it's only been the last few years that you've gone from this relatively unknown professor in a university in Toronto to being this worldwide figure where people, obviously your message is resonating with people in a very huge way,

01:26:43.000 but the people that are opposing you They're vehemently opposed.

01:26:49.000 What do you think that is?

01:26:51.000 Collectivists don't like me.

01:26:53.000 Collectivists.

01:26:54.000 What do you mean by that?

01:26:56.000 People who think the proper unit of analysis in the world is A, political, and B, group-oriented.

01:27:01.000 The identity politics types don't like me at all, and they have every reason not to.

01:27:06.000 Because I'm not a fan of identity politics.

01:27:09.000 Do you think that's why you're misrepresented?

01:27:11.000 Fundamentally.

01:27:12.000 There's other reasons.

01:27:13.000 I mean, I came out against this bill in Canada, Bill C-16, that hypothetically purported to do nothing else but to increase the domain of rights that were applied to transsexual people.

01:27:25.000 But there was plenty more to that bill, man, let me tell you.

01:27:28.000 And I read the policies that went along with it, and it was a compelled speech bill.

01:27:33.000 And so I opposed it on the grounds that the politicians are not supposed to leap out of their proper domain and start to compel speech.

01:27:40.000 It's not the same as forbidding hate speech.

01:27:42.000 I think hate speech should be left to hell alone, personally, for all sorts of reasons.

01:27:47.000 To compel the contents of speech is a whole new thing.

01:27:50.000 It's never been done before in the history of British common law, English common law.

01:27:54.000 And it's actually the Supreme Court in the 1940s in the US said that that was not to be allowed.

01:27:59.000 And so it was a major transgression.

01:28:01.000 And they said, well, we're doing it for all the right reasons.

01:28:03.000 It's like, no, no, you don't get it.

01:28:05.000 You don't get to compel speech.

01:28:07.000 I don't care what your reasons are. 0.99

01:28:08.000 And why should I trust your damn reasons anyways? 0.99

01:28:11.000 What makes you so saint-like? 0.98

01:28:13.000 So that you can violate this fundamental principle and I should assume that you're doing it for nothing but compassion and that you're wise enough to manage that properly.

01:28:20.000 It's like, sorry, no.

01:28:21.000 I read your policies.

01:28:22.000 I see what you're up to.

01:28:24.000 I don't like the collectivists.

01:28:26.000 I think they're unbelievably dangerous and I have reason to believe that.

01:28:30.000 So I think that when push comes to shove, if your unit of analysis is the group, and your worldview is one group, and it's power claims against all other groups, that that's not acceptable.

01:28:42.000 It's tribalism of the worst form, and it'll lead to nothing but mayhem and disaster.

01:28:47.000 And part of the reason you're doing it isn't because you're compassionate, it's because you're envious, and you don't want to take responsibility for your own life, and I'm calling you on it.

01:28:54.000 And so you don't like me, so I must be an alt-right figure.

01:28:57.000 I must be a Nazi. 0.91

01:28:59.000 I'm saying, your house needs a lot of work, man.

01:29:01.000 There's a lot of rot in the floorboards.

01:29:04.000 The plumbing is leaking.

01:29:05.000 The water's coming in.

01:29:06.000 You're not the sage and saint you think you are.

01:29:09.000 There's so much work you have to do on yourself that it would damn near kill you to take a look at it.

01:29:14.000 Do you honestly think that that's why people are responding to you in a negative way?

01:29:18.000 That they only have their own personal problems that they're avoiding?

01:29:21.000 It can't possibly be that you represent to them something that is either...

01:29:37.000 Well, I think it's certainly the case that the vision that's been generated of me is that.

01:29:44.000 But that's what I'm getting at.

01:29:45.000 Oh yeah, there's that too, but there's layers.

01:29:48.000 Well, part of it's the political polarization.

01:29:52.000 You know, at the moment, we're viewing almost everything that happens in the world through a political lens, at least the journalists.

01:29:57.000 At least, first of all, first of all, I've got to make this clear.

01:30:02.000 First of all, I've been treated well by lots of journalists, really well.

01:30:08.000 Like, the best journalists in Canada have been on my side since about two weeks after the Bill C-16 thing erupted.

01:30:13.000 And those would be the journalists that have an independent voice and that have created their own following.

01:30:19.000 And they're in a number of different media places, mostly in print.

01:30:24.000 And there's a coalition of newspapers in Canada, the Post Media Group, 200 newspapers.

01:30:30.000 They came out fully in support of my stance on Bill C-16.

01:30:34.000 And so there's lots of times that I've been treated properly by journalists.

01:30:38.000 There's a small number of journalists, very noisy, and a small number of activists, very well organized, who've been on my case right from the beginning.

01:30:46.000 And those are people who are generally driven by a very radical leftist progressive agenda.

01:30:51.000 And I am not on their side.

01:30:54.000 I'm on their side as individuals.

01:30:56.000 I'm on their side as people who could struggle forward.

01:30:58.000 But the collectivist vision, it's deadly.

01:31:01.000 But you seem to be the poster boy for this very simple...

01:31:07.000 Just characterization like almost a caricature of what the the the alt-right figurehead is it's it's to me as a person who knows you it's very strange to watch this take place and Then when they can find anything that you say that could without further explanation or definition be misconstrued as Appealing to this definition of you like for instance When all this,

01:31:36.000 I guess they call themselves incels, involuntary celibates, when all this stuff went down, when this guy drove his car into a group of people, it's a horrible tragedy.

01:31:49.000 One of the things that you talked about with incels is that, and this was a part of the New York Times hit piece.

01:32:00.000 You said one of the cures for this is enforced monogamy. 0.98

01:32:04.000 People decided, and I had never heard that term before, quite honestly, and I was like, what the fuck does that mean?

01:32:10.000 It's a psychological term, and what it means is enforced by culture, that it is a good value. 0.96

01:32:17.000 Monogamy, yeah, because polygamous societies tend to become ultra-violent. 0.93

01:32:21.000 And that's been known in the anthropological literature for a hundred years.

01:32:25.000 And certainly, leftist anthropologists were among those who discovered it.

01:32:30.000 The journalist knew perfectly well what I meant by enforced monogamy. 0.98

01:32:33.000 She's not stupid.

01:32:35.000 You use it as if everybody would understand it because you're an intellectual and because you're a professor and this is what you do. 0.97

01:32:41.000 It was also two minutes out of a two-day conversation.

01:32:46.000 But that's all she needed.

01:32:48.000 Well, that was funny in some sense because my sense is if you want to pillory someone, you should attribute to them views that someone somewhere has had. 0.96

01:32:58.000 And the implication of that part of the New York Times article was that I wanted to take nubile young women at the point of a gun under state enforcement and deliver them to useless men. 0.96

01:33:08.000 It's like no one has ever believed that. 0.92

01:33:10.000 But it sounds like that.

01:33:13.000 The optics of that statement are very bad.

01:33:16.000 But the question is, why wasn't there follow-up questions?

01:33:20.000 And if there was follow-up questions to get you to define what you mean by enforcement on me...

01:33:24.000 Well, there were.

01:33:25.000 They just didn't make it into the piece.

01:33:26.000 Well, that's a real problem.

01:33:27.000 Yeah, it's a real problem.

01:33:28.000 That's a real problem.

01:33:29.000 Because that is... 0.99

01:33:31.000 It's so ridiculous. 0.99

01:33:32.000 It's an inaccurate definition of who you are. 0.99

01:33:34.000 Well, one of the things I've said continually, and this is on record in multiple places, it's like, okay, so you're a young man, and all the women are rejecting you.

01:33:46.000 Who's got the problem?

01:33:48.000 It's not all the women.

01:33:50.000 That's a bad road to go down.

01:33:52.000 If all the women are rejecting you... 0.58

01:33:54.000 It's you.

01:33:55.000 We both agree on this, but why is enforced monogamy the solution for people that are involuntary celibates?

01:34:02.000 Well, it's the solution to the relationship between men and women, fundamentally, is monogamous social norms. 0.91

01:34:09.000 Yeah, but these men are unattractive.

01:34:10.000 Oh, well, the solution to them.

01:34:12.000 But if these men are unattractive to women, I don't mean just physically unattractive, I mean women aren't seeking them as mates.

01:34:18.000 Mm-hmm.

01:34:19.000 They need to become men.

01:34:21.000 Yes, they certainly do.

01:34:22.000 That's the solution.

01:34:23.000 Absolutely, man.

01:34:24.000 And we both agree on this.

01:34:25.000 Yes, but they need to do that in a society where monogamy is the social norm. 1.00

01:34:29.000 But isn't it the social norm anyway?

01:34:31.000 Well, that was partly my point, although to the degree that we deviate from that, we tilt towards a more violent society.

01:34:38.000 I was making a very minor point.

01:34:41.000 I don't think they're related, quite honestly.

01:34:42.000 I don't think that involuntary celibates, I don't think that having enforced monogamy as a part of our cultural norm is going to help those people.

01:34:51.000 I really don't.

01:34:52.000 It does.

01:34:52.000 How's it going to help them?

01:34:53.000 Well, because what happens is if a polygamous society develops, which is the alternative, then a small minority of men get all the women. 0.79

01:35:00.000 That's what happens. 0.99

01:35:01.000 Okay, I could see that in this theoretical world where polygamous societies exist en masse and then you do have this problem where there's a small group of men that are fucking all the women. 0.99

01:35:16.000 But that's not what we're talking about. 0.99

01:35:18.000 And also making the women unhappy, right? 0.99

01:35:20.000 Because the women don't have any access to a genuine, intimate, one-to-one relationship over any long period of time. 1.00

01:35:25.000 So it doesn't work well.

01:35:27.000 The whole idea is that the women want that. 1.00

01:35:30.000 Sure, if you have children.

01:35:32.000 But I still don't think that that is why these men are involuntary celibates, and I don't think it's the solution to that.

01:35:38.000 I think the solution is that they need to become attractive to women. 0.91

01:35:42.000 There's no doubt about that.

01:35:42.000 Yes, that is the solution.

01:35:43.000 I don't think the two are related.

01:35:45.000 Well, I was making a minor point.

01:35:47.000 The minor point was that one of the ways that societies around the world have figured out That you keep young male aggression under control is by enforcing monogamous standards, because it gives everyone a chance in some sense.

01:35:59.000 It gives everyone a chance, meaning it clears more women will be available for one-on-one relationships, rather than one guy who is some, you know... 0.80

01:36:15.000 Whatever, for whatever reason, some large figure in society.

01:36:18.000 Yeah, well, you see this happening in universities where women outnumber men. 1.00

01:36:22.000 So the men, hypothetically, have more sexual opportunity.

01:36:25.000 But that isn't what happens.

01:36:26.000 What happens is that a small minority of men have all the sexual opportunity.

01:36:30.000 A fairly large minority of men don't.

01:36:32.000 The women are unhappy because they can't find a committed relationship. 1.00

01:36:35.000 It's bad for most of the men.

01:36:36.000 And the men who have all the sexual opportunity get cynical.

01:36:40.000 But isn't this in some ways against your whole idea of equality of outcome?

01:36:45.000 Because you're talking about equality of sexual outcome now. 0.97

01:36:48.000 If these men, if you have a guy like a LeBron James that's a dominant basketball player that just kicks everyone's ass, this is a guy who succeeded at the highest level, right? 0.99

01:37:00.000 Well, there's going to be people like that sexually. 0.98

01:37:04.000 There's going to be people that are better at finding mates, and this is what they enjoy.

01:37:09.000 They enjoy having many mates.

01:37:11.000 They enjoy being...

01:37:12.000 Yes, but if this is what they enjoy, if it's a man who doesn't want a family and enjoys dating multiple women, why is that bad?

01:37:24.000 Well, I think the fundamental reason it's bad is because it's bad in the long run for children.

01:37:28.000 It's bad for children if he chooses to have children. 0.99

01:37:31.000 Yeah, but that's it.

01:37:32.000 That's the fundamental issue as far as I'm concerned.

01:37:35.000 And I think it's the answer.

01:37:36.000 Look, to give the journalist credit, that is the point she was making.

01:37:40.000 You know, apart from pilloring me and caricaturing my perspective, that was the point she was making.

01:37:46.000 Well, first of all, I'm not in favor of unbridled hierarchies.

01:37:50.000 Like I already said, the proclivity of a hierarchy is that all the spoils go to the person at the top, and that can destabilize the whole structure.

01:37:57.000 So we have to have a dialogue about how to rectify that.

01:38:00.000 But how could you possibly rectify that if one man is...

01:38:03.000 Like, say if we've got one...

01:38:07.000 Six-foot-five, beautiful man, who's got a perfect body, and he's brilliant, and he just wants to date a bunch of women.

01:38:14.000 And all the rest of the people are five-foot-one, and they're fat, and they're lazy, and like, this guy's gonna, if this is the competition, he's going to win.

01:38:24.000 There's no way around this.

01:38:26.000 And even if you decide to have...

01:38:29.000 In forced monogamy, where it becomes a popular thing, the women are going to be more drawn to him if he chooses to date them. 0.78

01:38:36.000 They might decide, I would rather have him sometimes than never at all.

01:38:41.000 That is actually what does happen.

01:38:42.000 But what is wrong with that?

01:38:44.000 Well, what's wrong with it is that it destabilizes society and it's bad for children.

01:38:49.000 You said that.

01:38:50.000 But what if they don't want to have children?

01:38:52.000 There's a lot of people that don't want to have children.

01:38:53.000 There's a lot of people that choose to go their entire life without having children.

01:38:57.000 There's men in their 30s.

01:38:58.000 Some of my friends have vasectomies.

01:39:00.000 They don't want children.

01:39:02.000 So why would that help in any way, these involuntary celibates?

01:39:09.000 Well, I think you tilt the society so that it serves the interests of...

01:39:12.000 Well, that's a good question.

01:39:14.000 But do you see my point?

01:39:16.000 I didn't look.

01:39:16.000 I do.

01:39:17.000 There's no doubt about it.

01:39:17.000 I see your point.

01:39:19.000 You're almost forcing an inequality of outcome.

01:39:23.000 I know.

01:39:24.000 That was her point, too.

01:39:25.000 To the degree that she had a point, that was her point.

01:39:29.000 But it doesn't run contrary to my opinions that the issue of outcome has to be addressed.

01:39:35.000 I already said there needs to be a reason for the left and the right.

01:39:38.000 And the problem with hierarchies is that they can get too steep and destabilize everything.

01:39:43.000 That does happen.

01:39:44.000 That particularly happens in the sexual domain. 0.86

01:39:46.000 And there's plenty of anthropological evidence for that.

01:39:48.000 But you still might say, well, who cares?

01:39:50.000 Because the men who are winning should be allowed to win and the women should be allowed to choose. 0.53

01:39:55.000 It's like, yes, except...

01:39:57.000 That there's the problem of children.

01:39:58.000 And so society steps in on behalf of the children.

01:40:01.000 And you can say, well, lots of people don't want to have children.

01:40:04.000 Yes, and that's truer now than it used to be, although many of those people end up having children anyways.

01:40:09.000 You know, the guys who are sleeping around all the time, so that doesn't circumvent the problem.

01:40:13.000 But the issue here for me isn't the men or the women, it's the children.

01:40:17.000 We're trying to set up societies where the probability that children will be raised in something approximated in an optimal environment is optimized.

01:40:24.000 And that's going to mean sacrifice of opportunity and choice on the part of adults.

01:40:28.000 It's necessary.

01:40:29.000 I agree with you, but I think that what we're talking about mirrors what we're talking about in sports.

01:40:34.000 It mirrors what we're talking about in business.

01:40:36.000 It's everything else.

01:40:37.000 There's going to be people that are better at all different aspects of life.

01:40:42.000 There's going to be people that are talented in terms of like getting women to like them.

01:40:46.000 Yes.

01:40:46.000 That's true.

01:40:47.000 Well, that's why also, look, you see this.

01:40:49.000 Women are hypergamous, which means they mate across and up dominance hierarchies. 1.00

01:40:54.000 And so if you're a male who's successful in a given hierarchy, the probability that you're going to have additional mating opportunities is exceptionally high.

01:41:01.000 It's an unbelievably good predictor of that.

01:41:03.000 That hypergamy is a very uncomfortable discussion for some people.

01:41:08.000 It doesn't matter.

01:41:08.000 Yes, it certainly is.

01:41:09.000 Well, there's plenty of uncomfortable discussions to be had.

01:41:11.000 That's a big one, though.

01:41:12.000 The idea that it defines women's sexual choices by the fact that they want bigger, better.

01:41:12.000 It is.

01:41:18.000 They want someone who's more successful, someone who's higher on the social ladder.

01:41:25.000 Than what they're accustomed to or what they have now.

01:41:27.000 Yeah, well, what women do is, like, mate choice is a very difficult problem. 1.00

01:41:31.000 So how do you solve it?

01:41:32.000 Well, here's how women solve it. 1.00

01:41:33.000 Throw the men in a ring, let them compete at whatever they're competing at, assume that the man who wins is the best man, marry him. 0.99

01:41:40.000 It's a brilliant solution.

01:41:40.000 Yes.

01:41:42.000 It's a market-oriented solution.

01:41:44.000 It's actually the solution that appears to have driven our evolutionary departure from chimpanzees.

01:41:48.000 It's a biological solution.

01:41:50.000 It's a biological solution, but it has a cost.

01:41:53.000 What is the cost?

01:41:54.000 Well, the cost is polygamy. 0.81

01:41:58.000 And so we rein that in with enforced monogamy. 1.00

01:42:00.000 And we do that in order to provide stable circumstances for children.

01:42:05.000 Is a polyamorous society just as unattainable as this utopian Marxist idea?

01:42:14.000 I think so, because it looks like, and this is another point I was making that didn't get covered in the article, although I wrote about it somewhat extensively on my blog, is that societies tilt towards monogamy across the world.

01:42:14.000 Yes.

01:42:27.000 It's human universal.

01:42:28.000 Now, that doesn't mean that people don't have polygamous or polyamorous tendencies, because they certainly do.

01:42:33.000 And it's certainly also the case that one of the ways that women gerrymander this system is that the number of children who are in a... 1.00

01:42:43.000 Say you're married and you have children with your husband, but you also have an affair.

01:42:49.000 So you have a child by another man.

01:42:51.000 That's more common than anyone suspected.

01:42:53.000 So part of the way that women solve the problem that you're just describing, and I'm not saying anything for this or against this, this is a purely factual biological claim, is they pick a monogamous marriage and they cheat with high-status guys. 0.87

01:43:07.000 Now, you know, obviously in the confines of the marriage, that's a terrible thing, but...

01:43:12.000 That's a very uncomfortable subject, though, for women in particular.

01:43:15.000 Well, it's an uncomfortable subject for everyone.

01:43:17.000 It's a terribly uncomfortable subject.

01:43:17.000 Right.

01:43:19.000 They don't like the idea that this is a common thing, that women choose a safe man that is willing to be monogamous with them and perhaps maybe they're above him in a social class or sexually, and then they'll cheat with someone who is...

01:43:36.000 Well, it's common, but it's not the norm, right?

01:43:39.000 It's still the norm not to do that.

01:43:41.000 The norm is fidelity.

01:43:42.000 Right.

01:43:42.000 But there's plenty of exceptions.

01:43:44.000 And this is enforced monogamy, culturally, the norm.

01:43:47.000 This is the very definition of it.

01:43:48.000 Well, enforced monogamy is this.

01:43:49.000 It's like, okay, so my son's getting married in September.

01:43:53.000 And so let's say he comes to me in a year and he says, Hey, Dad, guess what?

01:43:57.000 I've had three affairs in the last year and they've all been successful.

01:43:59.000 I haven't got caught.

01:44:01.000 Aren't I a good guy?

01:44:02.000 What am I going to say to that?

01:44:04.000 No! 0.98

01:44:05.000 What the hell are you doing?

01:44:06.000 That's not what you're supposed to be doing.

01:44:08.000 That's enforced monogamy. 1.00

01:44:11.000 Enforced monogamy meaning the people around you try to guide them in a way that you think is going to lead to a harmonious family life.

01:44:18.000 Yes, it's built deep into the cultural norms, and if that starts to destabilize, then there's trouble.

01:44:23.000 And that doesn't mean that it's not prone to all the problems that you laid out.

01:44:27.000 Look, there isn't a bigger problem than successful reproduction.

01:44:31.000 It is the big problem.

01:44:33.000 And all of the solutions that we've generated for it are full of flaws.

01:44:38.000 Like, here's an example.

01:44:39.000 The gender pay gap.

01:44:41.000 Okay, there's no gender pay gap. 1.00

01:44:43.000 There's a mother gap. 0.79

01:44:44.000 There's other reasons too, but women really take a hit when they become mothers. 1.00

01:44:48.000 Okay, that's unfair.

01:44:49.000 Fair enough, man.

01:44:51.000 What the hell are you going to do about it?

01:44:52.000 It's not just that, though, right?

01:44:54.000 And this is also...

01:44:55.000 I'm sorry to interrupt you here, but this is one of the things that I wanted to bring up, but I kind of lost track of it.

01:45:01.000 The misrepresentation of you mirrors the misrepresentation of the gender pay gap.

01:45:06.000 Because it's a convenient misrepresentation that upon further inspection and understanding, you realize there is no gender pay gap.

01:45:12.000 The gender pay gap, when people discuss it that don't understand it, and I've had these conversations with really intelligent people that just listen to what's in the news or read some very quick article talking about this problem that we have, and they assume that a man and a woman are working the same job,

01:45:29.000 but the woman is unfairly paid 79 cents to the man's dollar. 1.00

01:45:33.000 That's not the case.

01:45:34.000 It's not even close to the case.

01:45:36.000 The case is women choose different professions that don't pay as much, they work less hours, and they oftentimes get married and have children, and because they have children, they take paternity leave, and they make less money because of that. 1.00

01:45:49.000 So there's about 10 reasons or 20 reasons for the gender pay gap, one of them being motherhood, but there's a whole slew of them. 0.89

01:45:55.000 Men work more dangerous jobs, men work outside, men are more likely to move.

01:45:59.000 But it's never discussed.

01:46:00.000 Well, that's because people don't like multivariate problems.

01:46:03.000 Well, it's not just that.

01:46:04.000 It's a willful misrepresentation of a reality.

01:46:06.000 Yes, it certainly is.

01:46:07.000 And I think it mirrors this willful misrepresentation of where you stand.

01:46:12.000 And I think these are all tied in together where people want bad and good.

01:46:17.000 They want a one and a zero.

01:46:19.000 They want things to be very binary.

01:46:20.000 Yeah, they want them to be binary in the way they already understand.

01:46:23.000 They want everything to fit their ideological lens and things are more complicated than that.

01:46:27.000 This is a complex discussion that you're not going to get in a five-minute segment on a talk show.

01:46:34.000 You're not going to get this on a radio show.

01:46:36.000 You're not going to get this in an article that gets edited by someone with a biased opinion.

01:46:40.000 And this is the problem with mainstream media, and this is the problem with ideas, period.

01:46:45.000 Warren Farrell's book on, he wrote a book called, Warren Farrell is the guy who's most, what would you call, been most pellered for pointing out the real reasons for the gender pay gap.

01:46:54.000 He wrote a book called Why Men Make More. 0.52

01:46:57.000 Who'd he write it for?

01:46:58.000 His daughters.

01:46:59.000 Why?

01:47:00.000 Because he wanted to help provide, now obviously he was doing it for public consumption as well, but one of the motivations was, well men do make more.

01:47:07.000 Well why?

01:47:08.000 And if women want to make more, well, could they learn from the men who make more how to make more? 0.92

01:47:13.000 The question is whether or not they'll do it, and the probable answer is most women won't, because how much you make isn't the only hallmark of success in your life. 1.00

01:47:13.000 And the answer is yes. 1.00

01:47:23.000 You know, it's like, it's one measure, and it might be a measure that really competitive men compete for, and they do, and that's partly to provide access to increased mating opportunities, because that's built into the structure, something we never talk about either, although we could.

01:47:39.000 So, Warren wrote this to lay out all the reasons that men make more, but it was so that his daughters, at least in part, so that his daughters could figure out how to be socio-economically successful.

01:47:48.000 It's like, yeah, but that's not the only hallmark.

01:47:50.000 How much socio-economic success are you willing to sacrifice to spend time with your kids before they're three years old?

01:47:55.000 Well, the answer to that shouldn't be none, right?

01:47:55.000 Right.

01:47:58.000 Because what makes...

01:47:59.000 Look, we already know this.

01:48:00.000 For example, once you make enough money to keep the bill collectors at bay, So that's kind of lower, upper working class, say something.

01:48:09.000 Even centrist working class.

01:48:10.000 Keep the bill collectors at bay.

01:48:12.000 Additional money doesn't improve your quality of life.

01:48:16.000 Other things do.

01:48:18.000 So maybe it's a rational response when you're like 30. See, the irrational men.

01:48:24.000 Here's the irrational men. 0.85

01:48:25.000 Maybe they drive the world, but they're the irrational men.

01:48:28.000 More success is always better along this unidimensional axis of achievement.

01:48:34.000 Gordon Gekko, greed is good.

01:48:36.000 Well, there's a tiny percentage of men who are hyper-competitive along those single axis of competition.

01:48:42.000 And maybe they drive most things.

01:48:44.000 They probably do.

01:48:46.000 But that doesn't make them right.

01:48:47.000 It also doesn't make them most people.

01:48:49.000 And it doesn't make them happy.

01:48:51.000 Well, happy is a whole different issue, right?

01:48:53.000 That isn't what they're after.

01:48:54.000 But it's a big part of it, because everyone is...

01:48:55.000 Well, you are, though.

01:48:56.000 In pursuit of success, it's implied that happiness goes with that success. 0.99

01:49:01.000 Otherwise, why the fuck are you doing it? 0.99

01:49:02.000 Yeah, well, domination, power, charisma, prestige. 0.99

01:49:07.000 That's implied.

01:49:08.000 It is, it is.

01:49:09.000 Success and happiness, they're inexorably connected in our perception.

01:49:14.000 Yeah, well, it's often a flawed equation.

01:49:17.000 You know, like...

01:49:19.000 Look, I worked in law firms, with law firms, for a very long period of time.

01:49:19.000 What happens?

01:49:23.000 And I worked for lots of high-end women. 1.00

01:49:25.000 Lots of them.

01:49:25.000 And they were, like, they were usually extremely attractive.

01:49:28.000 They were extremely intelligent.

01:49:29.000 They were extremely driven.

01:49:30.000 They were very, very conscientious.

01:49:32.000 They varied in how agreeable they were.

01:49:34.000 Some were disagreeable, litigator types, and some were more agreeable.

01:49:37.000 They often had a harder time in the law firms.

01:49:39.000 But the law firms lose all their women in the 30s. 1.00

01:49:42.000 They all bail out.

01:49:44.000 At partner level.

01:49:45.000 A lot of them.

01:49:45.000 Well, Jesus.

01:49:47.000 Yeah.

01:49:48.000 It's a good percentage.

01:49:49.000 It's a huge percentage.

01:49:50.000 And it isn't because the law firms don't want them.

01:49:52.000 The law firms want them because you can't find people like that.

01:49:56.000 They're really rare, especially if they're also rainmakers, if they can bring in money.

01:49:59.000 So the law firms bend themselves over backwards trying to keep the women. 1.00

01:50:02.000 They can't keep them.

01:50:03.000 Why?

01:50:03.000 Well, the women decide that, oh, I'm working 18 hours a day, flat out, all the time, seven days a week.

01:50:12.000 My husband makes a fair bit of money.

01:50:13.000 If I made half as much money as I made we'd still have plenty of money.

01:50:17.000 Why am I working 18 hours a day?

01:50:20.000 Well, that's not the question.

01:50:22.000 The question is, why would anyone work 18 hours a day?

01:50:27.000 That's the mystery.

01:50:28.000 And the answer is, a small minority of men are driven to do that.

01:50:32.000 And so they'll do that.

01:50:33.000 No matter where you put these guys, that's what they do.

01:50:35.000 Yes.

01:50:36.000 Okay, but does that mean it's correct?

01:50:38.000 I think there's something wrong with these women. 1.00

01:50:40.000 They hit 30. They've hit partner.

01:50:42.000 They've hit the pinnacle.

01:50:43.000 I mean, they could keep going if they wanted to, but they've accomplished their goal.

01:50:47.000 They've definitely shown, man, they're bloody well in the game.

01:50:49.000 And they wake up at 30 and they think...

01:50:52.000 Oh, wait a minute!

01:50:53.000 I want to have a relationship, and also I want to have some time to put into that.

01:50:57.000 I'd like to have kids, and I'd actually like to see my kids!

01:51:00.000 It's like, is that irrational?

01:51:02.000 This is another thing that you and I are in agreement on, but when I see people talk about the way you discuss women, they misrepresent what you're saying and paint you in what I think willfully paint you.

01:51:18.000 They do it on purpose, they paint you as a misogynist.

01:51:21.000 I don't understand why.

01:51:22.000 I don't understand if it is because they disagree with you on things, so this is a convenient way to demonize your position by demonizing you as a human being.

01:51:32.000 But...

01:51:32.000 Well, it's partly, too, because I've made the case that there are differences between men and women.

01:51:36.000 Yes.

01:51:37.000 But, like, why that isn't a feminist case is beyond me.

01:51:40.000 It's like, no, they're exactly the same.

01:51:42.000 It's like, no, they're not. 0.97

01:51:42.000 It's ridiculous. 0.97

01:51:43.000 It is. 0.99

01:51:43.000 It's ridiculous. 0.99

01:51:44.000 And it's ridiculous. 0.99

01:51:45.000 It's confusing. 0.56

01:51:46.000 Purposefully confusing.

01:51:47.000 Yeah.

01:51:47.000 And then the thing is, the data are in.

01:51:49.000 So, look...

01:51:51.000 And people have accused me of pseudoscience, you know, which I really think is quite comical because the studies that I'm reporting aren't...

01:51:57.000 Who's accused you of pseudoscience?

01:51:59.000 Oh God, journalists.

01:52:00.000 Journalists of all stripes, especially when I talk about differences between men and women.

01:52:04.000 It's like, oh, that's pseudoscience.

01:52:05.000 It's like, actually, no, it's not.

01:52:06.000 It's bloody mainstream science, both biology and psychology.

01:52:09.000 But why do they like to do that?

01:52:11.000 Well, because it seems to be there's a reason that goes along with the radical leftist agenda that if there are...

01:52:16.000 that a world of equality of outcome could not be achieved, and that's the desirable world, if there are actually differences between people, actual differences, like that aren't just socio-culturally constructed so that you can gerrymand it.

01:52:29.000 There's also something as well.

01:52:30.000 If you're really power-mad...

01:52:32.000 You want to believe that human beings are infinitely malleable, because then you can mold them in whatever image you want.

01:52:37.000 And if you say, no, they actually have a character, right?

01:52:40.000 There's something built in.

01:52:41.000 Then that interferes with the totalitarian regime.

01:52:44.000 But here's what's happened.

01:52:45.000 It's like, look, we've got a good personality model.

01:52:48.000 We've had it for about 40 years, something like that, the big five model.

01:52:51.000 Five dimensions of personality.

01:52:53.000 And they were established statistically, a-theoretically, by left-leaning psychologists.

01:52:58.000 Okay?

01:52:58.000 And I'm not saying that they're ideologically contaminated.

01:53:01.000 But what I am saying is there's no evidence whatsoever that right-wing, leaning psychologists produced the Big Five, because there are no right-leaning psychologists.

01:53:10.000 So enough of that.

01:53:11.000 That isn't why the Big Five came up.

01:53:13.000 Okay, so once you have a good personality model, you can say, okay, well, do men and women differ?

01:53:17.000 And the answer is, yeah!

01:53:19.000 It turns out they do.

01:53:21.000 There's quite a few differences, but the biggest ones are women are more agreeable, because that's one of the traits, agreeableness, and it's the compassion, politeness dimension, and they're more prone to negative emotion, anxiety, and emotional pain.

01:53:33.000 And that mirrors a psychiatric literature that shows worldwide that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression and anxiety, just like men are more likely to be imprisoned for antisocial behavior, which is the reflection of low agreeableness.

01:53:46.000 This is true worldwide.

01:53:47.000 Okay, so there's no evidence of any bias.

01:53:50.000 Unless you say everything's biased everywhere in the world.

01:53:52.000 Fine.

01:53:53.000 Could be.

01:53:54.000 But we've also controlled for that.

01:53:56.000 So now, there are personality differences between men and women.

01:53:59.000 Now, the first thing we might point out is they're not that big.

01:54:03.000 So if you draw a random woman and a random man out of the population, and you had to bet on who was most aggressive, least agreeable, and you bet on the woman, you'd be right 40% of the time. 0.84

01:54:13.000 Which is actually quite a lot.

01:54:15.000 You'd be right quite a lot.

01:54:16.000 But if you take the one in a hundred person who's most aggressive, Least agreeable.

01:54:23.000 There's an overwhelming probability that they'll be male because the differences get more extreme at the ends of the distribution.

01:54:30.000 People don't understand the statistics.

01:54:32.000 You can have two populations that are quite similar and still have radically dissimilar outcomes if only the extremes matter.

01:54:40.000 So, like, who are the most powerful physical fighters in the world?

01:54:45.000 Men.

01:54:46.000 All of them.

01:54:47.000 Well, does that mean that there are no women who can beat a man in a fight? 1.00

01:54:51.000 No.

01:54:52.000 It also doesn't mean that there are...

01:54:54.000 There's plenty of women who are more aggressive than men. 1.00

01:54:56.000 But if you take the most aggressive, physically powerful people, they're all men.

01:55:01.000 All of them.

01:55:02.000 Because they're like one in a thousand people.

01:55:04.000 Or one in ten thousand people.

01:55:06.000 So you can have walloping differences at the extremes despite most similarity at the middle.

01:55:11.000 People don't understand that.

01:55:12.000 But then the next thing is, okay, well, there are differences between men and women, personality-wise, apart from the biological ones.

01:55:18.000 Are those caused by cultural differences?

01:55:22.000 Hey, turns out we can answer that.

01:55:24.000 How?

01:55:26.000 Rank order countries by how egalitarian their social policies are.

01:55:30.000 Does everyone agree?

01:55:31.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:55:32.000 The Scandinavians are at the top. 0.99

01:55:34.000 Everyone agrees.

01:55:36.000 Left, right, doesn't matter.

01:55:37.000 Everyone agrees.

01:55:38.000 It's like, okay, so you stack up the cultures by how egalitarian their social policies are.

01:55:43.000 And then you look to see how big the differences are between men and women up that hierarchy of egalitarianism.

01:55:49.000 And if as the societies become more egalitarian, the differences between men and women disappear, then it's sociocultural.

01:55:58.000 That isn't what happened.

01:56:00.000 What happened was, is that as the societies got more egalitarian, the differences between men and women got bigger, not smaller.

01:56:09.000 It means the sociocultural construct people, and I'm talking to you sociocultural construct people, you're wrong.

01:56:16.000 You're wrong.

01:56:18.000 You make the societies more egalitarian, men and women get more different. 1.00

01:56:22.000 Who makes the argument in opposition to this?

01:56:24.000 All the social constructionists, all the radical left-wingers.

01:56:27.000 And what do they use as fact?

01:56:28.000 They don't have facts, but then they criticize the whole idea of facts.

01:56:31.000 Then they go after the whole idea of science as a Western patriarchal construct.

01:56:36.000 What's their motivation?

01:56:38.000 The motivation is that if people are different, then equality of outcome isn't neither desirable nor achievable.

01:56:44.000 And why do they want equality of outcome?

01:56:46.000 Why is this so attractive to them?

01:56:48.000 That's a good question.

01:56:49.000 Well, part of it is actual compassion.

01:56:52.000 Look, man, it's not good that people lose, and it's certainly not good that some losers lose all the time.

01:56:59.000 Who wants that? 1.00

01:57:00.000 You happy when you walk down the street and see homeless people?

01:57:02.000 It's like, hey, look, the hierarchy's working.

01:57:04.000 Look at these homeless people.

01:57:06.000 No one's happy about that.

01:57:07.000 Right.

01:57:08.000 Right.

01:57:08.000 Okay, so the fact of failure within a hierarchy of value is painful.

01:57:13.000 And so to give the devil his due, you give the left its due, just like you do the right, is like, yeah, it's painful that hierarchies produce dispossession.

01:57:21.000 Bloody right.

01:57:22.000 Okay, what's the cure?

01:57:23.000 Get rid of the hierarchy.

01:57:24.000 Hey, well, wait a minute, man.

01:57:26.000 You get rid of the hierarchy, you get rid of the value structure, you get rid of the tools that allow us to generate absolute wealth and stop people from starving.

01:57:33.000 It's a catastrophe.

01:57:35.000 Okay, so there's the problem, you have to have the hierarchy.

01:57:37.000 But then also, it isn't just compassion on the left.

01:57:41.000 It's envy.

01:57:43.000 It's like, okay...

01:57:45.000 If I'm standing for the dispossessed, what makes me so sure that I'm not just standing against the successful? 0.81

01:57:52.000 And maybe that's because I'm bitter and jealous and envious and resentful.

01:57:56.000 And certainly it's highly probable.

01:57:57.000 If you look at what happened in the leftist societies that tried to pursue utopia, and you don't read envy and resentment into that, you don't know the history.

01:58:06.000 Because that's clearly the case.

01:58:07.000 Why else did they become murderous?

01:58:09.000 This is the question.

01:58:11.000 It's like, it's clearly the case that the Soviet Union, for example, was motivated by the desire for equality of outcome as a primary motivation.

01:58:19.000 What happened?

01:58:20.000 25 million people were killed.

01:58:22.000 Why?

01:58:23.000 Why?

01:58:24.000 Well, was it all compassion and love for the dispossessed?

01:58:28.000 Or was it absolutely bitter resentment and hatred for anyone who had any shred of success whatsoever on any possible dimension of evaluation?

01:58:37.000 So this compassion for people that aren't doing well when utilized the wrong way or when approached the wrong way leads to attacking people that do well.

01:58:49.000 That's the danger of compassion.

01:58:51.000 That's exactly.

01:58:52.000 Well, look, what happens if you think, oh, look, isn't it lovely that the mother grizzly bear takes care of her cubs?

01:58:58.000 Yeah, it's lovely, man, till you get between her and her cubs.

01:59:02.000 Then it's not so damn lovely.

01:59:03.000 And that's the flip side of that affiliative agreeableness.

01:59:07.000 It's like if you're on my side, you know, if you're the infant who's sheltering under my wings, it's like I'm the absolute epitome of maternal love and care.

01:59:18.000 But if I've identified you as a predator, you better look the hell out.

01:59:22.000 And that's playing out in our political landscape at a very, very rapid rate.

01:59:26.000 That's the female side of totalitarianism as far as I can tell, the feminine side of totalitarianism. 1.00

01:59:31.000 It's not just that.

01:59:32.000 It's not just that agreeableness motivates aggression, because it certainly does.

01:59:36.000 It's also that the envious and the resentful can use compassion as a camouflage for their true intent, which is to tear down anyone who has more than them.

01:59:48.000 That's the why...

01:59:49.000 You notice, like, when there's discussions about the 1%, we already talked about this.

01:59:54.000 Well, who's the 1%? 0.92

01:59:56.000 Well, I'm in the park in New York demonstrating against Wall Street.

02:00:02.000 Down with the 1%. 0.98

02:00:03.000 It's like, wait a second.

02:00:05.000 You're in the 1% there, Mr. Protester.

02:00:07.000 No, no, you don't understand.

02:00:09.000 The rich are those who have more money than me.

02:00:13.000 Yes.

02:00:13.000 Right.

02:00:13.000 That's the definition.

02:00:14.000 Who's rich?

02:00:15.000 Someone who has more than me.

02:00:16.000 Not me.

02:00:18.000 It's like, well, why isn't the 1% North America? 0.84

02:00:22.000 Why not?

02:00:23.000 Because it's inconvenient.

02:00:24.000 That's an inconvenient fact.

02:00:27.000 So, that's part of it.

02:00:28.000 But there's the envy and resentment.

02:00:31.000 This is the real pathological end of the full compassion that motivates the radical left.

02:00:37.000 It's like, yeah, you like the poor, do you?

02:00:39.000 What makes you think you just don't hate the successful?

02:00:43.000 And that's a question.

02:00:44.000 It's like, because you're not perfect, man.

02:00:46.000 There's hatred in you.

02:00:47.000 And the probability that it's more powerful than love is pretty damn high.

02:00:51.000 So...

02:00:53.000 So look to your own viewpoint before you go out there and try to fix the hierarchies of the world.

02:00:59.000 Just exactly what it is.

02:01:00.000 And it's worse, like, look, in the Russian Revolution, for example, let's say, just for the sake of argument, that the first rung of revolutionaries were only driven by compassion.

02:01:10.000 Maybe they were.

02:01:12.000 They all got killed.

02:01:14.000 They got killed by the people who came after, and they weren't so interested in compassion at all.

02:01:18.000 They were interested in ferreting out everyone who had a modicum of success on any dimension and doing them in.

02:01:24.000 And that happened in wave after bloody wave.

02:01:28.000 They killed all the successful farmers. 0.71

02:01:31.000 Those were the kulaks. 1.00

02:01:32.000 They killed all of them, rounded them all up, killed them, raped them, stole all their property, sent the remnants to Siberia, froze them to death. 0.98

02:01:39.000 Ten years later, six million Ukrainians died because they couldn't raise crops.

02:01:44.000 Why do you think that people are so opposed to discussing these things or to challenging cultural norms?

02:01:51.000 Because one of the things that I've seen, especially in terms of the differences between men and women, this reaction to some of the things that you've said has been It's very strange to me.

02:02:08.000 It's very strange that people aren't recognizing that these are unbalanced approaches and that there's Well, some of it's just complicated, Joe.

02:02:17.000 It's like, well, let's say there are differences between men and women, just for the sake of argument.

02:02:20.000 The biggest differences seem to be in interest, by the way.

02:02:23.000 And so what's going to happen is that if we let men and women sort themselves out, there aren't going to be very many female engineers and tech types, and there's going to be a lot of female nurses. 1.00

02:02:31.000 There's not going to be many male nurses and healthcare types. 0.99

02:02:34.000 There's not going to be very many male elementary school teachers.

02:02:37.000 But is this a bad thing?

02:02:38.000 Well, that's the question.

02:02:39.000 Who knows?

02:02:39.000 Do we know?

02:02:40.000 I don't know.

02:02:42.000 Well, the idea of having an equal society where gender inequality is completely knocked down.

02:02:48.000 Gender pay gap is non-existent.

02:02:50.000 Yeah, well, that's a problem because that's a measure.

02:02:54.000 The equality of outcome thing is a non-starter.

02:02:56.000 Whether it's okay, like if men and women sort themselves into different occupations, which looks highly probable, I don't know if that's okay.

02:03:04.000 And then it's also like, okay, compared to what alternative?

02:03:08.000 Right.

02:03:09.000 Like, should every elementary school teacher be female? 1.00

02:03:12.000 Should every psychologist be female? 1.00

02:03:14.000 Because that's what's happening.

02:03:15.000 And the answer to that is, well, I don't know.

02:03:17.000 But there's another answer, which is...

02:03:19.000 Well, what do you propose as an alternative to free choice...

02:03:24.000 That isn't going to cause more trouble than free choice.

02:03:27.000 Because I would say, well, okay, let's say I'm a feminist, for the sake of argument. 1.00

02:03:31.000 Alright, so I think, well, there are differences between men and women.

02:03:33.000 There are actual differences.

02:03:35.000 And so, some of those are biological.

02:03:37.000 Some of them are strategic, in some sense, because...

02:03:42.000 Women pay a bigger price for reproduction, and so that's going to lead them to make different choices. 1.00

02:03:46.000 That's just rational based on biological differences, so it's like a second-order biological difference.

02:03:52.000 There's differences in temperament and interest.

02:03:55.000 It's going to lead them to make different choices.

02:03:57.000 Is that a pro-feminist stance or an anti-feminist stance? 0.81

02:04:00.000 It's only anti-feminist if you assume everyone has to be exactly the same and the outcomes have to be exactly the same. 1.00

02:04:06.000 If your goal is, no, leave people the hell alone as much as possible, let them make their own informed and free choices, then you let the differences manifest themselves in the world and you take your knocks because of that.

02:04:20.000 The problem with that is this narrative of equality.

02:04:23.000 The equality of outcome, yeah.

02:04:24.000 And just equality of human beings.

02:04:26.000 Just looking at people as we're all equal.

02:04:28.000 We're not.

02:04:30.000 Some people are better at different things.

02:04:32.000 We're equal in terms of our rights.

02:04:34.000 We're equal in terms of the way we should treat each other.

02:04:36.000 We're metaphysically equal.

02:04:37.000 Yes.

02:04:37.000 Right.

02:04:38.000 But in every other dimension, we're radically unequal.

02:04:40.000 And there's pain in that.

02:04:42.000 That's the problem.

02:04:43.000 That's the problem.

02:04:44.000 The pain in that is real.

02:04:46.000 The only thing that's worse than the pain of inequality is the pain of forced equality.

02:04:52.000 And I'm not being facile about that.

02:04:54.000 It's like, look, I see the IQ issue is the killer one for me.

02:04:59.000 It's like, look, if you have an IQ of less than 83, you can't be inducted into the American military by law.

02:05:05.000 Why?

02:05:06.000 Because there isn't a damn thing you can do that isn't counterproductive, despite the fact that the army wants you because they can't get enough manpower.

02:05:12.000 That's what they decided. 0.79

02:05:14.000 It's like, okay, so you're on the low end of the cognitive distribution.

02:05:17.000 What are you going to do?

02:05:19.000 Not much.

02:05:19.000 And it's going to get worse.

02:05:21.000 Is that good?

02:05:22.000 It's not good.

02:05:23.000 It's horrible.

02:05:24.000 Do we know what to do about it?

02:05:26.000 No.

02:05:26.000 Right.

02:05:27.000 And we can't have equality of outcome amongst people with lower than 83 IQs.

02:05:31.000 Right.

02:05:31.000 No one's advocating for that.

02:05:33.000 No one's asking for that.

02:05:34.000 Well, people will say, well, the IQ tests aren't valid.

02:05:37.000 It's like, well...

02:05:39.000 One of the conversations that you had that I found to be shocking, and it started a trend of misquoting and misrepresenting you, was you did an interview with Vice, and they use a snippet of one of the things you said and tried to pretend that you had made these very curt statements.

02:05:57.000 And one of them was...

02:05:58.000 Well, he was annoying, so I got kind of curt, and that was probably my strategic error.

02:06:02.000 Makeup?

02:06:03.000 Is that the one you're talking about?

02:06:04.000 Yes, yes.

02:06:04.000 Makeup and the way people dress, you know, and...

02:06:07.000 Well, I was trying to draw, first of all...

02:06:10.000 How was he annoying?

02:06:11.000 He knew everything.

02:06:13.000 He knew everything.

02:06:15.000 Well, it was just in his attitude.

02:06:17.000 So he was challenging you.

02:06:18.000 He wanted this from the very beginning.

02:06:21.000 This was him.

02:06:22.000 Arms crossed.

02:06:23.000 Right, right.

02:06:24.000 Eyes up.

02:06:24.000 It's like, A, I know more than you, and B, you're probably that reprehensible person that I've thought about, and it's my job to reveal you.

02:06:31.000 He was signaling.

02:06:32.000 He's left-leaning.

02:06:33.000 He was deciding that what you were doing was representing the patriarchy, or you were representing male-dominant structures that he was saying that are not correct.

02:06:45.000 Is that an accurate assessment?

02:06:47.000 Yeah, but it wasn't even that it was left-leaning.

02:06:49.000 I've talked to reasonable left-leaning people.

02:06:51.000 It was built right into his attitude, and so it made me a little testier than I might have been, which was my strategic error.

02:06:56.000 And, you know, you asked earlier, well, why do I get pilloried with some regularity?

02:07:00.000 And some of it is probably my own inadequacy.

02:07:03.000 You know, it's not...

02:07:04.000 It isn't that I've handled all the opportunities that I've had perfectly, you know, and I can get hot under the collar.

02:07:11.000 It's a mistake.

02:07:12.000 It's a mistake because the right approach in these situations is to use minimal necessary force and to allow myself to get Irritated, let's say, even minorly, when I'm faced with someone who's doing this, is not productive.

02:07:26.000 Doesn't work well.

02:07:27.000 And so I really need to keep that under control.

02:07:29.000 And when I do keep it under control, it works better.

02:07:31.000 The makeup one was particularly annoying to me because I think it's a valid conversation.

02:07:35.000 It's an interesting conversation.

02:07:37.000 I said, and they didn't put this in their initial cut, I said, I'm not saying that women shouldn't be allowed to wear makeup in the workplace. 0.99

02:07:45.000 I said that explicitly.

02:07:46.000 Well, that was why people were so angry when they saw the full version of it.

02:07:50.000 I mean, the full version was released.

02:07:51.000 Someone leaked it, right?

02:07:53.000 Someone who felt like you were being misrepresented and that the editing was unjust decided to leak it, and people were absolutely furious.

02:08:02.000 Yeah, well, I think the Vice people actually released it, but other people took the full release and clipped it with the clipped release and showed how it was being misrepresented.

02:08:11.000 Is that what it was?

02:08:11.000 Yeah.

02:08:12.000 But so, okay, so the makeup thing, it's like, all right, look, here's the, first of all, I make a mistake sometimes in treating journalists like I would treat my graduate students.

02:08:22.000 So when I'm having a conversation with my students and we say, well, here's a problem.

02:08:26.000 It's an intellectual exercise.

02:08:27.000 How do we regulate?

02:08:31.000 What are the norms around sexual behavior in the workplace?

02:08:34.000 So that's the question.

02:08:35.000 It's a question.

02:08:36.000 We don't know.

02:08:38.000 Okay, here's a bunch of possibilities.

02:08:40.000 Possible rules, right?

02:08:41.000 No flirting, no hugging, no eye contact for more than five seconds.

02:08:44.000 That's Netflix, right?

02:08:45.000 No hugging, that's NBC. Is that what they have?

02:08:47.000 Damn right. 0.67

02:08:48.000 They have no eye contact for more than five seconds? 0.97

02:08:50.000 For more than five seconds?

02:08:50.000 That's right.

02:08:50.000 Holy shit.

02:08:51.000 NBC, no hugging. 1.00

02:08:53.000 Was that real?

02:08:54.000 It's real.

02:08:54.000 What if you're having a conversation with a woman who's your boss and she's asking you questions about things?

02:09:01.000 Then you look down every five seconds. 0.99

02:09:03.000 Oh, fucking Christ. 1.00

02:09:04.000 Is that real? 1.00

02:09:05.000 Yes, yes, it's real.

02:09:06.000 It's real.

02:09:06.000 That's so bad.

02:09:08.000 That's such a terrible idea.

02:09:10.000 Yes, it's...

02:09:11.000 Yeah, it's a terrible idea.

02:09:12.000 But there's a lot of women that I'm friends with that I've never had any sexual interest at all, and we look at each other in the eye. 0.99

02:09:19.000 That's what you say, but you're a potential rapist and you're a manifestation. 0.98

02:09:22.000 Yes, you get the whole picture. 0.98

02:09:25.000 So if you have a discussion, you say, well, look, what are the rules governing sexual behavior in the workplace?

02:09:30.000 Okay, can you come to work in a negligee?

02:09:33.000 No.

02:09:33.000 How about boxers, if you're a man?

02:09:35.000 No.

02:09:36.000 Okay, so there's some...

02:09:37.000 What about a short skirt? 1.00

02:09:38.000 Well, this is the thing.

02:09:40.000 The devil's in the bloody details, right?

02:09:42.000 It's like, okay, you can't come to work naked.

02:09:45.000 You can't come to work in boxer shorts.

02:09:47.000 You can come to work in a suit.

02:09:49.000 Okay, so the line is somewhere between boxers and suit.

02:09:54.000 Where exactly is the line?

02:09:57.000 Exactly.

02:09:57.000 Can a man wear shorts?

02:10:00.000 If he can't, why can a woman wear a dress? 1.00

02:10:03.000 The way that men, in professional organizations, the way that men solve this problem was that everyone wore a uniform.

02:10:11.000 And a uniform makes you uniform.

02:10:14.000 That's why you wear it.

02:10:15.000 And the uniform is the suit.

02:10:17.000 And it's a derivation of a military garb.

02:10:20.000 And so the idea was, well, we want to...

02:10:23.000 Get rid of excess diversity in clothing. 1.00

02:10:27.000 Wear your damn suit. 1.00

02:10:28.000 Then we know you're playing the game and we don't have to be distracted by what you're wearing. 1.00

02:10:32.000 Okay, so that's what men did.

02:10:33.000 Okay, so now women come into the workspace. 1.00

02:10:35.000 It's like, hmm, what do they do?

02:10:37.000 Well, there's business professional dress, right?

02:10:39.000 And there's some rules around that.

02:10:41.000 But what are the rules exactly?

02:10:43.000 Exactly.

02:10:44.000 And I was thinking, well, we're worried about sexual misbehavior in the workplace.

02:10:47.000 You can't look at someone for more than five seconds.

02:10:49.000 You can't give them a hug.

02:10:50.000 Okay.

02:10:51.000 What about makeup?

02:10:52.000 Do we have a discussion about makeup?

02:10:54.000 Oh, well, no, we can't have a discussion about that.

02:10:56.000 It's like, well, is makeup sexual signaling?

02:10:58.000 It's like...

02:10:59.000 Well, if you're an evolutionary biologist, the question, is makeup sexual signaling?

02:11:05.000 That's not even a question.

02:11:06.000 It's like, well, obviously that's what it is.

02:11:09.000 That's why that conversation was frustrating, because he was saying, because they want to do it.

02:11:13.000 They want to wear it.

02:11:13.000 They want to look good.

02:11:15.000 What does that even mean?

02:11:16.000 Well, that's right.

02:11:18.000 That's right.

02:11:19.000 What does that mean?

02:11:19.000 But he wouldn't think, well, everyone knows what that means, Joe.

02:11:22.000 Well, no, he has to say that.

02:11:23.000 No.

02:11:24.000 He has to say that because in his tribe, you have to communicate that way, right?

02:11:28.000 Well, he also thinks he knew.

02:11:30.000 Oh, women wear makeup because they want to look good. 1.00

02:11:32.000 But do you think he's doing that because that's his take or because he's trying to rile you up like you're getting riled up right now?

02:11:40.000 Both.

02:11:40.000 As a journalist, it's kind of his idea or his job to challenge you in some way.

02:11:45.000 And at the very least, offer the devil's advocate opinion.

02:11:49.000 Sure.

02:11:49.000 Like, explain yourself better.

02:11:51.000 Why shouldn't they wear makeup? 0.59

02:11:53.000 They just want to look good.

02:11:54.000 You need to explain yourself better.

02:11:55.000 Why are you saying there's something wrong with makeup?

02:11:56.000 Oh yeah, but the way he did it was like, oh, Dr. Peterson, it's obvious what it means for them to look good.

02:12:00.000 Like, everyone knows that.

02:12:02.000 Do you think that he felt like perhaps he was intellectually sparring with you and he was being aggressive about it?

02:12:09.000 I think he felt that.

02:12:11.000 I think he felt that it was necessary to challenge me, that that was his role as a journalist.

02:12:16.000 But fundamentally, he was smug.

02:12:18.000 He thought he came at the entire conversation with an air of intellectual condescension.

02:12:22.000 It was built right into the discussion right from the beginning, and he never dropped it at all.

02:12:26.000 It's like, well, I know what you're doing, and I know what's up, and I know how to take you apart, and I know that whatever you're talking about is just an attempt to defend your actually reprehensible opinions.

02:12:36.000 How long did you guys talk for?

02:12:36.000 Oh God, about an hour?

02:12:37.000 Something like that.

02:12:38.000 How much did they use?

02:12:39.000 Oh, in the clips, hardly any of it.

02:12:41.000 I don't even know.

02:12:42.000 A couple of minutes.

02:12:43.000 So, yeah.

02:12:46.000 Yeah, so your tendency to get riled up can be exploited.

02:12:50.000 Yes, of course.

02:12:51.000 And it's the problem of deviating from the doctrine of minimal necessary force.

02:12:56.000 Like, the best times, the best interactions I've had with contentious journalists is where I've absolutely kept my cool, you know.

02:13:04.000 Like Kathy Newman. 0.83

02:13:06.000 Yes, exactly, exactly.

02:13:07.000 So what you're saying is...

02:13:10.000 Well, that's what he was like.

02:13:11.000 He's like, I know who you are and I know you're covering it up.

02:13:14.000 It's like...

02:13:15.000 Well, it's these concepts.

02:13:19.000 These are complex situations when you find men and women who are sexually attracted to each other and they're working in confined environments for long periods of time and they essentially spend more time with the people they work with than they do with their lovers and their wives and their husbands.

02:13:33.000 It's weird.

02:13:34.000 Men and women interacting with each other in closed-in boxes is weird. 0.99

02:13:38.000 That's what an office is.

02:13:39.000 It's a closed-in box.

02:13:40.000 They're all together.

02:13:41.000 And if they find each other attractive and they're interacting with each other socially, especially if there's any interaction that deviates outside of the work discussion, they start talking about different things.

02:13:52.000 You also don't want them to find each other unattractive.

02:13:55.000 Right.

02:13:56.000 Like if you're taking someone out for dinner, on a business dinner, it's like even if it's guys going out together, let's say, it's not like they're working to find each other unattractive.

02:14:06.000 And I don't mean sexually.

02:14:08.000 You want to manifest yourself as attractive.

02:14:10.000 You want to enjoy each other's company.

02:14:11.000 Yes, you do.

02:14:11.000 And you want to be charismatic and you want to be witty and all of those things.

02:14:15.000 And that shades, especially when you add...

02:14:18.000 Assuming a heterosexual environment, you add a heterosexual component to that, the borders become fuzzy.

02:14:24.000 And so I was talking about border conditions.

02:14:27.000 So, well, if we're going to have a conversation about this, let's talk about the border conditions.

02:14:30.000 Oh, no, we can't do that.

02:14:32.000 It's like, I thought that's the discussion you guys wanted.

02:14:35.000 Why do you continue to agree to have these conversations that are going to be edited?

02:14:38.000 Oh, well, that's a good question.

02:14:41.000 The Jim Jeffries one was another one.

02:14:43.000 Yeah.

02:14:43.000 Jim's a friend of mine.

02:14:44.000 But, I mean, he gave you a good question, and you actually gave a good answer.

02:14:47.000 You said, actually, I'm probably wrong about that.

02:14:50.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.83

02:14:50.000 When you were talking about whether or not gay people should, whether someone should be forced to bake a cake for gay people. 0.83

02:14:58.000 Yeah. 0.94

02:14:58.000 And you said, forced to? 0.94

02:14:59.000 Probably not. 0.97

02:15:00.000 And they said, well, what if they don't want to bake a cake for black people? 0.95

02:15:03.000 Yeah. 0.96

02:15:03.000 And he said, well, actually, probably, they probably should be forced to. 0.96

02:15:07.000 Yeah, well, I was probably wrong in everything I did in that part of the discussion because I hadn't thought that issue through enough to actually give a good answer.

02:15:17.000 You didn't expect that issue because it's not something you talk about commonly.

02:15:20.000 No, and it's actually complicated, right?

02:15:22.000 Yes. 0.99

02:15:23.000 Obviously, the whole I won't serve you because you're black thing is not good. 1.00

02:15:26.000 But then again, you also have the right to choose who you're going to affiliate with. 0.79

02:15:31.000 But then that's complicated because it's a commercial circumstance.

02:15:33.000 And then if you're making a cake, is that the same as serving or is that compelled speech?

02:15:37.000 It's like, oh my god, these are border cases that cause a lot of controversy.

02:15:41.000 I don't mean serving black people, obviously. 0.99

02:15:43.000 That's not a border case.

02:15:44.000 But these cases that cause a lot of controversy is where two principles are at odds and it isn't exactly clear where to draw the line.

02:15:51.000 And I'm not happy with...

02:15:52.000 You know, I'm not happy with my answer to that, but I hadn't spent the week it would take to think through the issue and really have a comprehensive perspective on it.

02:16:01.000 And you didn't expect that to be a subject anyway?

02:16:03.000 No, no.

02:16:04.000 How long did you talk to Jim for?

02:16:06.000 Oh, I think about 45 minutes, maybe an hour, quite a long time.

02:16:10.000 And they used two minutes.

02:16:11.000 Yeah.

02:16:12.000 Well, my daughter has told me, and my wife as well, my son as well, in these discussions, we've been thinking about how to handle the media, which is, oh God, a very complicated question.

02:16:22.000 And one hypothesis being, don't do interviews that will be edited.

02:16:28.000 And I've thought about that and been thinking about it, and that might be the right answer.

02:16:33.000 It might be the right answer going forward.

02:16:35.000 I think it is the right answer.

02:16:36.000 Well, it could easily be.

02:16:38.000 That's the only way you can't be misrepresented.

02:16:40.000 True.

02:16:40.000 Because all of the problems that I've seen with you, all of them, come from you being edited.

02:16:45.000 Yes.

02:16:46.000 I mean, there's complex subjects that people would disagree with you on, but when you look at complete mischaracterizations of your point, these have been established because of editing.

02:16:57.000 Yes.

02:16:58.000 Well, I guess the only counter-argument is this.

02:17:02.000 I mean, a lot of these opportunities come.

02:17:05.000 I've had opportunities that are coming at me at a rate that doesn't allow me to think them through as much as I could optimally.

02:17:12.000 But then there's another thing, which is it isn't necessarily a mistake to lay yourself open to attack.

02:17:22.000 Because sometimes it reveals the motives of the attackers.

02:17:26.000 Like, that's what happened in the Kathy Newman interview.

02:17:29.000 Now, that could have gone really sideways.

02:17:31.000 Like, I was lucky there, to some degree, because she interviewed me for 40 minutes or whatever, and something like that.

02:17:37.000 And then they did chop it down to seven minutes or three minutes, and it was exactly what you'd expect.

02:17:43.000 And that is what I expected after I walked away from the interview.

02:17:46.000 I thought, oh my God, they're just going to chop this into reprehensible segments and pillory me.

02:17:51.000 But I walked away from it because there was 50 other things to do.

02:17:54.000 But then, it was so funny because they did do that, and then they put up the whole interview.

02:17:59.000 And the reason they put up the whole interview was because they thought the interview went fine.

02:18:05.000 It isn't that they knew that that was going to cause commotion.

02:18:07.000 Not at all.

02:18:08.000 Not a bit.

02:18:09.000 And I know this for a fact.

02:18:11.000 So, they put up the whole interview, and then, well, what happened was what was actually happening revealed itself.

02:18:18.000 And that was very, very effective.

02:18:20.000 Now, that...

02:18:21.000 Having that happen meant that I had exposed myself to substantial stress and risk, because that was stressful.

02:18:27.000 I mean, first of all, there was the interview.

02:18:30.000 Second, afterwards, I thought, oh my God, I'm going to get pilloried for that.

02:18:34.000 Then they did release the cut.

02:18:36.000 Then they released the whole thing.

02:18:38.000 Then there was all this response to it.

02:18:39.000 And then the Newman people, who were absolutely flabbergasted by the negative response, said, Peterson has unleashed his army of trolls and poor Cathy had to go into hiding.

02:18:51.000 It's like, There's no evidence of any credible threats.

02:18:53.000 They said they called in the police, but you can do that without there being reason.

02:18:57.000 You can just say that, which is what they said.

02:18:59.000 They played a victim narrative instantly, although one thing Cathy Newman is not, even though she might play it at the behest of her employers, is a victim.

02:19:07.000 She's one of the most powerful people in Britain. 0.80

02:19:09.000 She's no victim.

02:19:11.000 So to play the victim card in a situation like that is absolutely reprehensible.

02:19:14.000 But that's what they did.

02:19:15.000 And then like a dozen newspapers did it and said, well, Peterson's trolls are attacking poor Kathy. 0.96

02:19:20.000 And I thought, oh, now I'm really screwed. 0.83

02:19:22.000 You don't own your fans. 1.00

02:19:23.000 The idea that people that are interested in the things that you have to say, that you have control over them, like you can give them marching orders is foolish. 0.94

02:19:31.000 And you're not the person that does that. 0.93

02:19:32.000 Well, and how many million people do there have to be before they're not all trolls?

02:19:38.000 Yeah.

02:19:39.000 Because that was the real issue there.

02:19:40.000 It's like, okay, 10,000 people commented on the video. 0.89

02:19:43.000 Trolls.

02:19:43.000 Okay, what about 150,000?

02:19:46.000 Well, what about 10 million?

02:19:47.000 Well, now, if you look at the video, which is about 10 million, plus all the clips, it's like 50 million.

02:19:54.000 And the comments, the pro, the comments that are critical with regards to Kathy Newman's conduct are running about 50 to 1. So that's all trolls, is it?

02:20:03.000 I don't think so. 0.94

02:20:04.000 It's preposterous.

02:20:05.000 That narrative is preposterous.

02:20:06.000 But you see, that was a good example of taking the risk.

02:20:11.000 And I'm not saying it's justified.

02:20:12.000 And I think that it's very, very stressful.

02:20:16.000 But you take the bad along with the good.

02:20:19.000 And maybe it's time for me.

02:20:21.000 It might be time for me just to disappear to some degree altogether.

02:20:25.000 Do you worry about being overexposed?

02:20:27.000 Oh, definitely.

02:20:28.000 I've been worried about that for...

02:20:30.000 A long time.

02:20:31.000 Yeah, and is there any benefit in that?

02:20:33.000 Is there any benefit in more exposure?

02:20:35.000 Are we talking about the same thing we were talking about earlier with regards to men working insane hours?

02:20:41.000 I mean, is your message out enough that you don't have to do these ridiculous interviews constantly?

02:20:49.000 Maybe, maybe.

02:20:50.000 Well, and I don't want to turn into a parody of myself and all of that.

02:20:54.000 I mean, I think, and I am trying to handle this, and I've got people who are advising me.

02:20:58.000 We're trying to figure it out.

02:21:02.000 I think that this tour is a good thing.

02:21:05.000 Yes.

02:21:06.000 But that's very controlled.

02:21:08.000 Well, it's also completely unedited.

02:21:11.000 Yes, exactly.

02:21:11.000 It is.

02:21:12.000 And long-form conversations.

02:21:14.000 Yes, and I think that coming on your podcast and talking to Ruben on his shows and so forth, I think that's good.

02:21:21.000 The interaction with the journalists, I'm certainly not taking anywhere near the number of opportunities that I have in front of me.

02:21:28.000 We are trying to be very careful in picking and choosing, but that doesn't always go well.

02:21:32.000 And it could be that I shouldn't do anything that is edited at all.

02:21:39.000 That's certainly possible.

02:21:42.000 Well, this is the problem.

02:21:44.000 You speak in these long-form podcasts and interviews and you get a chance to extrapolate and unpack some pretty complicated issues and compare them to other complicated issues and try to find meaning and middle ground and try to illuminate certain positions.

02:22:07.000 When you expose yourself to editing, you expose yourself to someone's idea of what the narrative should be and how to frame your positions in And dishonest way.

02:22:20.000 And you're seeing it time and time again.

02:22:22.000 And it exposes the problem with media.

02:22:24.000 Look, I went to the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, which is a whole story in and of itself.

02:22:29.000 But I was interviewed there by a journalist from the Atlantic Monthly.

02:22:32.000 And it was a relatively long-form interview.

02:22:35.000 I think we talked for 40 minutes, something like that.

02:22:38.000 And it's going to be edited.

02:22:39.000 Now, I trusted her.

02:22:40.000 I trust her.

02:22:41.000 Now, how that will play out in the final edit, I don't know, because she won't be the only one making the decision.

02:22:49.000 Well, the question is, should have I done it?

02:22:51.000 Well, look, it was the Aspen Ideas Festival.

02:22:54.000 It's a different audience.

02:22:55.000 It's left-leaning.

02:22:56.000 I thought, well, maybe I'll go talk to a left-leaning audience.

02:22:58.000 People are always criticizing me for not doing that.

02:23:01.000 I usually don't do it because I don't get invited.

02:23:03.000 But so I went and talked to them.

02:23:04.000 And Barry Weiss interviewed me in front of the Aspen Ideas Festival, and that was long-form, uncut, and put on the web.

02:23:10.000 And so maybe that was useful.

02:23:11.000 The Atlantic thing?

02:23:13.000 Well, it might be good.

02:23:15.000 We'll see.

02:23:16.000 It does expose me to the risk, though, because it'll be edited.

02:23:18.000 So, and was it wise to do it?

02:23:28.000 Look, I've been fortunate so far.

02:23:31.000 Despite the fact that I've been taken out of context at times, and a fairly significant proportion of times, but not the overwhelming majority of times, the net consequence of all of that has been to engage more and more people in a complex dialogue,

02:23:48.000 as far as I can tell.

02:23:49.000 Yes.

02:23:51.000 That's the good.

02:23:52.000 That's the good.

02:23:53.000 It doesn't mean that the strategy that I've implemented so far is the only strategy that will work into the future.

02:23:59.000 We can also clearly establish that you didn't plan any of this to happen.

02:24:02.000 This whole thing that happened from you opposing that bill.

02:24:07.000 Then going to where you are how many years later now two years two years almost that's fucking crazy Yeah, I mean you think about the transformation of your life and your your public image I mean it's unprecedented I don't I can't think of a single public intellectual that has gone from being a universal University professor to being essentially a household name I mean you get brought up with at least my circle of friends all the time and And people that I run into all the time.

02:24:34.000 I can't tell you how many people I've run into after comedy shows or in an airport that talk to me about you.

02:24:39.000 So this is a mainstream thing.

02:24:43.000 Yeah, well, so that conceivably...

02:24:45.000 There's no precedent.

02:24:46.000 No.

02:24:46.000 Well, it's partly, you know, that's also partly the consequence of this technology.

02:24:50.000 It's like, you know, like in 2013, I thought, huh, wonder what'll happen if I put my lectures up on YouTube.

02:24:57.000 It's like...

02:24:59.000 Beware, man.

02:25:00.000 And that's what I thought when I made the Bill C-16 videos.

02:25:03.000 I got up at like 2 in the morning.

02:25:04.000 I thought, this is bloody well driving me crazy. 0.99

02:25:06.000 That damn university is going to force unconscious bias retraining, which is not a validated process by any stretch of the imagination, on its employees. 0.99

02:25:15.000 And I work for the university, and I'm a psychologist. 1.00

02:25:19.000 Why are they doing that?

02:25:20.000 Why would they do that?

02:25:21.000 Do they do that to silence people that are protesting?

02:25:24.000 Are they doing that because they want to enforce a certain type of behavior?

02:25:28.000 Well, I think there's two reasons.

02:25:30.000 I think that there's some genuine concern for the dispossessed I think?

02:25:52.000 And forcing them to admit that they're racist by making them agree to participate in the training.

02:25:57.000 I don't think that...

02:25:58.000 But for me, that wasn't even the issue, although it was an issue.

02:26:02.000 The issue is, we can't measure unconscious bias reliably and validly.

02:26:07.000 I'm a psychologist and a research psychologist.

02:26:09.000 I know the literature.

02:26:10.000 That's a misuse of it.

02:26:11.000 It's a misuse of it. 1.00

02:26:12.000 And the damn university was doing it. 1.00

02:26:14.000 They were hiring consultants who didn't know what the hell they were talking about. 1.00

02:26:17.000 Let me ask you this.

02:26:18.000 This is a university.

02:26:20.000 This is an establishment for higher learning.

02:26:25.000 How can they possibly act on something When there's no clear evidence that it's real, that it works, that it's effective, and they're doing it just to make people happy, or just to make themselves happy, or just to reinforce an idea that they want to be true.

02:26:41.000 Well, that's the thing.

02:26:42.000 That's the thing.

02:26:42.000 For me, it was part of the hegemony of the radical left.

02:26:46.000 It's like, no, no, you're not going to do that at the university I work at without me telling people that there's no warrant for that from the psychological community.

02:26:57.000 So anyways, I got up at 2 in the morning and made these videos.

02:27:00.000 I thought, well, let's see what happens if I make these videos.

02:27:02.000 It's like, well, this is back to the technology issue.

02:27:05.000 It's like, I didn't know what YouTube was when I put my videos on it.

02:27:09.000 You didn't know what YouTube was?

02:27:10.000 Well, you know what?

02:27:11.000 No one knows what YouTube is.

02:27:13.000 That's the thing.

02:27:14.000 Well, look at what happened to you.

02:27:15.000 You have a million, billion and a half downloads a year.

02:27:18.000 It's like, you're definitely riding a giant wave.

02:27:21.000 Like, would have you predicted this 15 years ago?

02:27:24.000 No.

02:27:25.000 So, you know, you're in the right place in the right time, and you're a very interesting interviewer, because, well, especially for long form, because you're very, very curious, but also very, very tough.

02:27:37.000 Like, it's interesting watching you, because if you don't understand something, you will go after the person.

02:27:42.000 And you're not doing it in a vindictive way.

02:27:44.000 But you're quite a formidable interviewer, and I've been trying to figure out why you're so successful.

02:27:48.000 And, like, you're a lot smarter than anyone might think, which is quite interesting.

02:27:52.000 So you're a weird combination, because... 0.75

02:27:54.000 You know, your persona doesn't shout intellectual, but you're damn smart and you're tough as a bloody boot and you ask really provocative questions and not because you're provocative.

02:28:04.000 And so your personality in this long form seem to suit each other really well. 0.69

02:28:07.000 You're also really good at pursuing things you don't understand instead of assuming that you know what you're talking about.

02:28:12.000 So you take the listeners on a journey, right?

02:28:15.000 It's an exploratory journey.

02:28:17.000 But fundamentally, what's propelled you to superstardom in some sense is not just your ability, which is non-trivial, but the fact that you're on this giant technological wave and you're one of the first adopters.

02:28:28.000 And I'm in the same situation.

02:28:30.000 We're first adopters of a technology that's as revolutionary as the Gutenberg printing press.

02:28:36.000 And so that's all unfolding in real time.

02:28:38.000 It's like, look at what's happening.

02:28:40.000 Yeah, well, the spoken word is now as powerful as the written word.

02:28:44.000 That's never happened before in human history.

02:28:46.000 And we're on the cutting edge of that, for better or worse.

02:28:49.000 That's a very good way to put it.

02:28:50.000 The spoken word is just powerful.

02:28:52.000 Yeah, and maybe even more so.

02:28:53.000 Because it's so accessible to people that don't have the time to read.

02:28:56.000 Stuck in traffic, you know.

02:28:58.000 Or, and here's another possibility.

02:29:00.000 Maybe ten times as many people can listen to complex information as can read complex information.

02:29:06.000 In terms of their ability to comprehend.

02:29:09.000 Sure, could easily.

02:29:10.000 We don't know.

02:29:11.000 Maybe it's the same number.

02:29:12.000 It's certainly easier to listen to a book on tape for me than it is to read a book.

02:29:16.000 Yeah, well, so the question is, for how many people is that true?

02:29:19.000 And I would say it might be true for the majority of people.

02:29:22.000 And then people are doing hybrids, you know, because you can sync your book with Audible, right?

02:29:28.000 So they'll read when they have the time, but then when they have found time, which is also a major component of this, that's the time when you're driving or the time when you're doing dishes, is now all of a sudden you can educate yourself during that found time.

02:29:40.000 This is a big revolution.

02:29:42.000 And blowing out the bandwidth makes a huge difference because, well, we talked about that at the beginning.

02:29:47.000 Looks like people are more intelligent than we thought.

02:29:50.000 And you and I are both, and the rest of this intellectual dark web, that's kind of what unites us.

02:29:55.000 Everybody has an independent platform, virtually everybody.

02:29:58.000 They have an idiosyncratic viewpoint.

02:30:00.000 They're interested in having discussions and pursuing the furtherance of their knowledge, even though they might have a prior ideological commitment.

02:30:07.000 Sam does, and I suppose I do, and Ben Shapiro certainly does.

02:30:11.000 But they're still interested in having the discussion.

02:30:13.000 But more importantly, they're capitalizing on the long form.

02:30:17.000 And the fact that that's possible is a reflection of this technological transformation, and the technological transformation might be utterly profound.

02:30:25.000 It looks like it.

02:30:27.000 And so that's, you know, I've been trying to sort this out because I keep thinking, why the hell are these people coming to listen to what I'm saying?

02:30:33.000 It's like, well, I'm a guru, you know, I'm a sage, it's something like that.

02:30:36.000 It's like, don't be thinking that first.

02:30:40.000 Think if there's situational determinants first. 1.00

02:30:43.000 Take your damn personality out of it. 1.00

02:30:45.000 Okay, what's going on? 1.00

02:30:46.000 Oh yes, this is all fostered by YouTube and fostered by podcasts.

02:30:50.000 What's so new about that?

02:30:52.000 No bandwidth restrictions.

02:30:54.000 No barrier to entrance.

02:30:56.000 Possibility of dialogue because people cut up the YouTube videos into chunks and make their own comments on it.

02:31:02.000 It's a whole new communication technology.

02:31:04.000 Also a lack of interference by executives and producers and all these different people that have their own bias.

02:31:10.000 It's unmediated.

02:31:10.000 Yes, unmediated is giant.

02:31:12.000 Well, and that's all part of the reason you're so popular too.

02:31:15.000 It's like you just put this on.

02:31:17.000 So you've got exactly the right balance of...

02:31:21.000 Competent production, because there's nothing excess about it.

02:31:25.000 It's competent, but no more than that.

02:31:27.000 I know that's by design, but you also don't edit it.

02:31:30.000 It's like what you see is what you get.

02:31:31.000 It's like everyone's relieved by that. 0.99

02:31:33.000 We can make our own damn decisions. 0.99

02:31:35.000 I think that's very important. 0.98

02:31:36.000 If you're going to have a conversation with someone that's honest, you can't decide what to leave in and what to take out.

02:31:43.000 Well, that's partly also why I deal with the press the way I do.

02:31:46.000 It's like if I'm going to have a full conversation, it's like I'm willing to take the hits.

02:31:50.000 Yeah.

02:31:51.000 I understand what you're saying, but that's one of the reasons why it frustrates me so much is that I see what they're doing, and I'm like, what you're doing is ancient.

02:31:58.000 What you're doing is, this is what people did 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

02:32:02.000 You can't really do that anymore.

02:32:04.000 You can't misrepresent people. 0.90

02:32:06.000 You used to be able to, if you were in the press, you could take people, quote them out of context, do whatever the fuck you wanted, put an article about them, and they couldn't do a goddamn thing about it. 0.93

02:32:13.000 It happened to me in 19... 0.98

02:32:16.000 Boy.

02:32:18.000 It was like 99 I had a comedy CD that came out and this woman wrote an article about it and she just lied. 0.95

02:32:26.000 She lied about my perspective.

02:32:29.000 She lied about the bits.

02:32:30.000 She misquoted the bits.

02:32:32.000 She didn't just paraphrase them.

02:32:35.000 She changed what the bits were to make them misogynist or hateful or whatever it was.

02:32:42.000 And in doing so, There was no recourse.

02:32:46.000 There was nothing that I could do about that.

02:32:47.000 I'm like, wow.

02:32:48.000 I'd never experienced that before.

02:32:50.000 I was like, this is stunning.

02:32:51.000 And then I found out this person did that a lot.

02:32:53.000 And this is what she did.

02:32:54.000 And there's ultimate power that comes with being the person that has the pen, being the person that has the typewriter.

02:32:59.000 And you're the person who works for the Boston Globe or whatever the publication is.

02:33:04.000 That is something that existed forever.

02:33:08.000 And that you had to be either a friend of the press, you had to play ball, you had to bend to their will.

02:33:15.000 You had to do what they wanted you to do.

02:33:17.000 And they could misrepresent you and choose to paint you in any way they like.

02:33:21.000 And it's one of the reasons why I don't do anything anymore.

02:33:23.000 I don't do any interviews anymore.

02:33:24.000 I don't do anything.

02:33:25.000 I don't want to do anything.

02:33:26.000 I do enough, man.

02:33:27.000 You want to know about me? 0.99

02:33:28.000 Fucking, there's a thousand podcasts. 1.00

02:33:31.000 There's more than a thousand. 0.99

02:33:32.000 I think there's...

02:33:35.000 There's 1100 and there's a bunch of other ones too.

02:33:37.000 It doesn't make any sense.

02:33:39.000 Yeah, well that may also be the position that I increasingly find myself in.

02:33:44.000 I think it's the right position because then the misrepresentations don't exist anymore.

02:33:49.000 So then the only problem is the dispute over the actual ideological conversations or the actual concepts.

02:33:56.000 But you know, the thing is you made a point there that's quite interesting.

02:33:59.000 It's like we are in a new media landscape so now if someone comes out as a As a media figure with some institutional credibility and misrepresents, it's exposed.

02:34:11.000 And so then the question is, how much risk should you shoulder to expose the proclivity for media misrepresentation?

02:34:18.000 And the answer to that might be some.

02:34:21.000 Now, it might be moving, you know, maybe I've done enough of that.

02:34:24.000 I mean, it would be easier for me in many ways if I just stopped doing it.

02:34:28.000 But...

02:34:29.000 But there's some utility in having it play out.

02:34:32.000 And so, well, so I'm trying to only take those opportunities that appear to have more benefit than risk.

02:34:42.000 And when I'm defining benefit, well, the question is then what constitutes benefit?

02:34:47.000 And I guess what constitutes benefit is...

02:34:51.000 Well, that would further the attempts that I'm making to bring information to a vast number of people that could conceivably help them stabilize and improve their individual lives.

02:35:02.000 That's worth a certain amount of risk.

02:35:04.000 Well, it certainly increases your profile, increases your profile, and even if, you know, you have 60% of these people are going to get a bad perception of you, 40% of these people that never heard of you, now are going to understand who you are because they do further investigation.

02:35:17.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:35:17.000 So there's some benefit in that, but the negative, I mean, I get text messages from random people that I was friends with years ago that say, this Jordan Peterson is just such a lying sack of shit, and he's this and that. 0.99

02:35:27.000 I'm like, I don't even know who the fuck you are. 0.99

02:35:29.000 And then second of all, like, why are you contacting me? 1.00

02:35:32.000 You're not even saying hi.

02:35:33.000 You're saying Jordan Peterson is a this.

02:35:37.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:35:37.000 Well, there's an emergency at hand.

02:35:39.000 He's a scam artist. 1.00

02:35:40.000 He's a fraud. 1.00

02:35:41.000 And I'm like, wow.

02:35:42.000 And so they'll see an interview, you know, like the Jim Jefferies clip, which is a minute long or whatever it is, or the Vice piece or the initial Kathy Newman piece.

02:35:53.000 And they just form this determined position on you and then read hit pieces on you.

02:35:59.000 And then this is where they take their opinion on.

02:36:02.000 This is where it's from.

02:36:04.000 And it's...

02:36:06.000 I feel like these are the last gasps of a dying medium.

02:36:10.000 I really do.

02:36:11.000 I think too.

02:36:12.000 I don't think that people appreciate it.

02:36:15.000 I think the people that are listening to this that do appreciate long-form conversations, and with all warts and all, all the ugliness and the mistakes and the critical errors, the people that appreciate that, they have a real hate for being lied to. 0.99

02:36:34.000 Also for being treated as if they're stupid. 0.99

02:36:37.000 Yes. 1.00

02:36:38.000 Which they aren't.

02:36:39.000 Yeah.

02:36:41.000 It's deceptive.

02:36:44.000 When you edit someone and take their words out of context and change them around, you're being deceptive.

02:36:50.000 The New York Times did that again this week.

02:36:52.000 They had some philosophy professor from Hong Kong University write a piece on me.

02:36:55.000 He took, they quoted me, eh?

02:36:57.000 It was a sentence.

02:36:58.000 There's like the first phrase was in quotes and then there was some joining words and then the second phrase was in quotes and there was some joining words and then the third phrase was in quotes and the three quotes added up to a statement that bore no resemblance whatsoever to what I was saying.

02:37:11.000 How can they do that in the New York Times?

02:37:13.000 That seems to me to be something that should be the antithesis of what they stand for.

02:37:18.000 I don't think they can, Joe.

02:37:19.000 I think they're killing their brand so fast that they can't...

02:37:23.000 But it's so disturbing to me as a person who's been a fan of the New York Times forever.

02:37:27.000 I just don't understand how they could allow that to happen.

02:37:29.000 How could you allow your...

02:37:31.000 What is the gold standard for journalism?

02:37:35.000 How could you allow it to become something that willfully misrepresents someone to push an ideology?

02:37:41.000 They never did put my book on the New York Times bestseller list.

02:37:44.000 It's quite comical.

02:37:45.000 How's that possible?

02:37:46.000 Oh, they have rules, which they don't disclose, but one of them apparently is, well, if the book is published in Canada and distributed in the United States, then it doesn't count, even though they've had books like that on the New York Times bestseller list before.

02:37:58.000 And I think, okay, well, is this bad or good?

02:38:01.000 It's like, well, it's bad because to the degree that I might want to be on the New York Times bestseller list, although I haven't been losing any sleep over it.

02:38:07.000 But you're selling, I know how many books you're selling.

02:38:10.000 Yeah, it's basically been the best-selling book in the world since January.

02:38:13.000 You know, it's gone up and down to some degree, but fundamentally...

02:38:16.000 Right, but it should be the number one New York Times best-selling book.

02:38:19.000 Yeah, so they have their reasons, but I look at that and I think, oh, well, you can only do that ten times until you're done.

02:38:26.000 Because it's a fatal error.

02:38:28.000 You have the gold standard for measurement.

02:38:30.000 You're not measuring properly.

02:38:32.000 You're burning up your brand.

02:38:34.000 You think, well, we're the New York Times, so we can burn up our brand.

02:38:37.000 It's like, no, you can't.

02:38:38.000 Newsweek is gone.

02:38:40.000 Time magazine is a shell of its former self.

02:38:44.000 Like the big things disappear, and they disappear when they get crooked and ideologically rigid.

02:38:49.000 And so that's what's happening at the New York Times.

02:38:52.000 Not with everyone there, but with plenty of them.

02:38:56.000 And it'll die faster than people think.

02:38:58.000 But it's so confusing to me that...

02:39:01.000 It didn't used to be that, and now it is.

02:39:04.000 Are they just responding to this new world where you have to have clickbait journalism, and where people are struggling to find people to actually buy physical newspapers, which is a different thing?

02:39:16.000 It's hard to say.

02:39:17.000 See, it's weird, because you don't have to resort to clickbait, because these long-form discussions are the antithesis of clickbait.

02:39:26.000 But are they struggling in terms of how many people buy their newspaper?

02:39:30.000 Oh, absolutely.

02:39:31.000 The newspapers in Canada went cap and hand to the federal government for subsidies about six months ago because they're dying so fast.

02:39:38.000 And so some of it is they're being supplanted by technology.

02:39:42.000 That's a huge part of it.

02:39:43.000 But as they are supplanted, they get more desperate.

02:39:46.000 They publish more polarizing stories.

02:39:48.000 That works in the short term to garner more views, but it alienates people from the brand and speeds their demise.

02:39:54.000 Classic death spiral of a big organization.

02:39:58.000 And that's going to clean things out like mad.

02:40:00.000 I mean, I don't know where CNN is in the cable news rankings now or cable show rankings, but it keeps falling.

02:40:05.000 But it's falling in the rankings as cable itself disintegrates and dies.

02:40:10.000 Why do you need cable TV? Right.

02:40:13.000 No one needs cable TV. The only people who have cable TV are the people who haven't figured out yet that you can replace it entirely online for like one-tenth the price with much less hassle.

02:40:22.000 But the irony is people want a location they can go to to find out what's going on in the world.

02:40:37.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:40:49.000 And I would just be laughing.

02:40:50.000 I'd be like, what is really happening in the world?

02:40:52.000 Because I'm getting two different stories.

02:40:54.000 I'm getting Russia and I'm getting Hillary's emails. 0.99

02:40:57.000 I don't know what the fuck is what. 0.99

02:40:59.000 What is happening? 1.00

02:40:59.000 I'm getting pussy grabbing and I'm getting Benghazi. 1.00

02:41:04.000 This is what I'm getting. 1.00

02:41:05.000 And I don't understand why.

02:41:07.000 This is obviously ideological.

02:41:10.000 This is not just— Look, it might be that as the technology is supplanted, The ideological polarization increases as the thing dies.

02:41:18.000 Right.

02:41:19.000 They're struggling for anyone to pay attention and this is the way they have to do it to ensure.

02:41:23.000 And I think what's happening on the other side, which is the side you occupy, say, is that a new technology that's long form That deals with many of those problems is emerging.

02:41:33.000 And it's going to emerge.

02:41:34.000 It's going to be victorious.

02:41:35.000 But in the meantime...

02:41:36.000 It might already be victorious.

02:41:38.000 In the meantime, yes.

02:41:39.000 The clickbaity stuff still exists in the digital world.

02:41:42.000 Yeah.

02:41:42.000 You know, and then you're getting a lot of the articles that are written about you.

02:41:45.000 People are absorbing these articles, not from a physical form, but getting it from digital.

02:41:50.000 Yeah, well, okay.

02:41:51.000 So then the sense is, well, do you have fundamental trust in the judgment of your fellow...

02:41:56.000 Man, let's say.

02:41:57.000 And my answer to that is yes, because although I've been pilloried to a great degree by the radical types in the commentariat and in the classic journalists, the comments with regards to me on YouTube are 50 to 1 in my favor.

02:42:14.000 And that's even the case when the ideologues put up videos about me.

02:42:18.000 They're designed to discredit me.

02:42:19.000 And I've sold a million and a half books.

02:42:22.000 It's going to be published in 40 countries.

02:42:24.000 And thousands of people are coming to my lectures.

02:42:27.000 And so I would say the attempts to discredit me aren't working.

02:42:32.000 So, and I think that's because that even, like, even if you go to YouTube, you can see Jordan Peterson smashes leftist journalist, you know, as a clickbait thing.

02:42:41.000 Someone's taken a two-minute clip from a video and they put it out and they're using that clickbait headline to attract attention.

02:42:46.000 It's like it does attract attention.

02:42:47.000 And that probably even furthers polarization.

02:42:51.000 But I think that most people, enough people, that's the prayer, enough people are going for the long-form, thorough discussion so that the sensible will triumph.

02:43:03.000 That's what I'm hoping for.

02:43:05.000 The sensible will triumph.

02:43:07.000 No, I agree.

02:43:07.000 And I think that is what's happening.

02:43:08.000 I think that's why this 50 to 1 number exists.

02:43:11.000 But the number 1 in that 50, the 50 versus the 50 people that are actually...

02:43:19.000 Understanding what's going on and agreeing with you versus the number one that are trying to willfully misrepresent you.

02:43:24.000 They still exist and they're loud.

02:43:26.000 And they're fighting to be right.

02:43:28.000 And this is one of the things that people love to do.

02:43:30.000 They love to fight to be right.

02:43:32.000 Instead of examining their position and wondering whether or not they are taking you out of context and misrepresenting your positions to the world willfully and doing so in order to paint a negative picture of you that does not accurately represent who you are and what you stand for.

02:43:47.000 But by doing this, they're destroying...

02:43:50.000 The guy is a virtue without any of the work.

02:43:51.000 They're also destroying their own credibility.

02:43:52.000 Yes, well, that's the thing.

02:43:53.000 This is what's devastating about it.

02:43:55.000 It's like they're trying to win, they're killing themselves.

02:43:58.000 Right.

02:43:59.000 And that's a good motif for the entire conversation.

02:44:03.000 It's like, you try too hard to win, you kill yourself.

02:44:06.000 You were talking last night when we were over dinner.

02:44:08.000 You said that one of the most deadly things for a fighter to do is to overestimate his own position. 0.82

02:44:14.000 You're going to get slaughtered for it.

02:44:15.000 Underestimate your abilities, yes.

02:44:16.000 If you overestimate your abilities, you're in deep, deep trouble because you're going to get a wake-up call.

02:44:22.000 Right.

02:44:22.000 And objectivity is one of the most critical aspects of development.

02:44:26.000 You have to be objectively assessing your strengths and weaknesses at every step of the way.

02:44:32.000 And that's bravado, right?

02:44:34.000 I'm trying to prove how powerful I am.

02:44:36.000 I'm so powerful.

02:44:37.000 I'm so powerful.

02:44:37.000 It's an ego shield.

02:44:38.000 And that's why I was saying that the ego is the enemy.

02:44:40.000 We're talking about...

02:44:41.000 You know, I want to get into this because I think this is a fascinating thing with you personally.

02:44:48.000 Your diet...

02:44:51.000 You're on this carnivore diet now.

02:44:53.000 Okay, so I want to preface that with something.

02:44:55.000 I am not a dietary expert, so I'm now speaking as an uninformed citizen.

02:45:00.000 Yes.

02:45:00.000 This is anecdotal evidence from a human being that has dealt with autoimmune issues your whole life.

02:45:06.000 Yes.

02:45:06.000 You have done this for how long now?

02:45:09.000 I've been on a pure carnivore diet for about two months and a pretty, a very, very low-carb, greens-only, modified carnivore diet for about a year.

02:45:20.000 So, in the year...

02:45:22.000 And a low-carb diet for two years.

02:45:24.000 So, from the time that I've known you, I've known you for, what, two and a half years now, something like that?

02:45:28.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:45:28.000 When I first met you, you had much more weight on your body.

02:45:32.000 Yeah.

02:45:32.000 You looked different.

02:45:33.000 Yeah.

02:45:33.000 And you were, back then, you were eating, like, the standard diet, right?

02:45:37.000 Like normal people do.

02:45:38.000 Yes.

02:45:39.000 Pasta, bread, meat, chicken, whatever.

02:45:43.000 You shifted over to only meat and greens.

02:45:47.000 I saw you and I'm like, you look fantastic.

02:45:49.000 I'm like, what are you doing?

02:45:50.000 And you're like, I changed my diet.

02:45:51.000 I only eat meat and greens.

02:45:53.000 And I was like, wow, that's fascinating.

02:45:54.000 Well, I felt like, okay, what you're doing is cutting out refined sugars and all these different things that are problematic. 0.97

02:46:01.000 Preservatives, all the bullshit, processed foods, and you're having this extreme health benefit. 0.97

02:46:05.000 I was like, wow, that's really excellent. 0.99

02:46:07.000 You're showing great discipline.

02:46:08.000 Then you decided to take it to another place and cut out the greens.

02:46:13.000 What was the motivation for cutting out the greens?

02:46:15.000 Well, all of the motivation for this has been my experience with my daughter because she has an unbelievably serious autoimmune disease.

02:46:22.000 I just talked to her this morning.

02:46:23.000 What is it called?

02:46:24.000 Well, it's arthritis, but there's way more to it than that, but the arthritis was the major set of symptoms.

02:46:30.000 She had 40 affected joints, and she had to have her hip replaced and her ankle replaced when she was 15 and 16, and so she basically hobbled around on two broken legs for two years in extreme agony, and that was just a tiny fraction of the whole set of problems.

02:46:45.000 I just talked to her this morning.

02:46:46.000 She's in Chicago.

02:46:47.000 Looks like she has to have her ankle replacement replaced. 1.00

02:46:50.000 So that's next on the horizon.

02:46:52.000 But apart from that, she is doing so well now.

02:46:55.000 It is absolutely beyond comprehension.

02:46:58.000 So she's very trim.

02:47:01.000 She had a baby, but she's very trim.

02:47:03.000 She's down to about 118 pounds. 1.00

02:47:05.000 She's about 5'6".

02:47:06.000 She's just glowing with health.

02:47:08.000 All of her autoimmune symptoms are gone.

02:47:11.000 All of them.

02:47:12.000 And she was also seriously depressed, like severely depressed, way worse than you think.

02:47:17.000 She couldn't stay awake for more than about six hours without taking Ritalin.

02:47:21.000 And she was dying.

02:47:22.000 And I had a cousin, my cousin's daughter.

02:47:25.000 She died when she was 30 from an associated autoimmune condition.

02:47:28.000 So there's a fair bit of this in our family.

02:47:30.000 It was bloody bleak, I'll tell you.

02:47:33.000 And my wife always had a suspicion that this was dietary related.

02:47:38.000 Why?

02:47:40.000 Well, we did notice that when Michaela was young, if she ate oranges or strawberries, that she'd get a rash.

02:47:47.000 And then when she developed arthritis, if she ate oranges in particular, that would definitely cause a flare.

02:47:53.000 It was the only thing we could see.

02:47:54.000 The problem is that in order to identify a dietary component, the response has to be pretty quick after you eat the thing.

02:48:00.000 Like if it's two days later, how the hell are you going to figure that out?

02:48:03.000 A lot of these responses appear to be delayed for four days.

02:48:07.000 And last a month.

02:48:08.000 So good luck figuring that out.

02:48:10.000 Anyways, Michaela noticed about three years ago, no more than that now, five years ago, she was at Concordia University and struggling with her illness and all the associated problems.

02:48:21.000 She noticed that around exam time she was starting to develop real skin problems.

02:48:26.000 And my cousin's daughter, who I mentioned, had really bad skin problems and wounds that wouldn't heal. 0.58

02:48:31.000 And that was partly part of the process that eventually killed her.

02:48:34.000 And she thought, oh, it must be stress.

02:48:36.000 And then she thought, wait a second, I really changed my diet when I'm studying.

02:48:40.000 All I do is eat bagels.

02:48:41.000 All I do is eat bread, sandwiches, she thought.

02:48:44.000 Maybe it's the bread.

02:48:45.000 So she cut out gluten first, and it had a remarkable effect, like a really remarkable effect.

02:48:52.000 And then she went on a radical elimination diet all the way down to nothing but chicken and broccoli. 0.59

02:48:57.000 And then her symptoms started to drop off one by one.

02:49:01.000 And one of the things that happened is she started to wake up in the morning.

02:49:04.000 She started to be able to stay awake all day.

02:49:06.000 And when you're only staying awake for six hours with Ritalin, staying awake all day?

02:49:09.000 That's like having a life.

02:49:11.000 And so a whole bunch of things improved.

02:49:14.000 Then her depression went away.

02:49:16.000 And I've had depression since I was 13, probably, and very severe.

02:49:20.000 And I've treated it a variety of ways, some of them quite successfully.

02:49:23.000 But it's been a constant battle.

02:49:25.000 And my father had it, and his father had it.

02:49:27.000 And it's all just rife in my family.

02:49:29.000 And my wife has autoimmune problems in hers.

02:49:31.000 When you say depression, define it.

02:49:33.000 Oh, oh, how would you define it?

02:49:36.000 Because that's a blanket term.

02:49:38.000 Yeah.

02:49:39.000 Well, imagine that you wake up and that you remember that all your family was killed in a horrible accident yesterday.

02:49:44.000 You would feel that even if nothing was wrong?

02:49:46.000 Yes, yes.

02:49:48.000 Just dread.

02:49:48.000 It's actually worse than that.

02:49:50.000 Really?

02:49:50.000 Well, one of the things Michaela told me was she thought, well, what's it like to be depressed?

02:49:54.000 Imagine you have a dog and you really love the dog and then the dog dies.

02:49:57.000 And then about three years ago, our dog died.

02:50:01.000 And that was Michaela's dog, and she really liked that dog.

02:50:04.000 And she said, that was bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as being depressed.

02:50:08.000 And I asked her, too, at one point, when she was about 15 or 16, I said, look, you've got a choice, kid.

02:50:13.000 Here's the choice.

02:50:14.000 You can either have depression or arthritis.

02:50:17.000 Which one?

02:50:18.000 I'll take the arthritis.

02:50:21.000 Well, that was after she'd lost two joints.

02:50:25.000 So, it was no joke.

02:50:26.000 It's no joke, man.

02:50:27.000 There isn't any...

02:50:29.000 No, I wouldn't say that.

02:50:30.000 I wouldn't say there's nothing worse.

02:50:32.000 Because worse is a very deep hole.

02:50:34.000 Right.

02:50:34.000 But it's bad.

02:50:35.000 Yeah, people will prove you wrong, right?

02:50:37.000 Oh yes, definitely.

02:50:38.000 Worse is a deep hole.

02:50:39.000 Anyways, her depression went away.

02:50:41.000 All these symptoms went away.

02:50:42.000 And like, radically.

02:50:44.000 So what changed her from chicken and broccoli to carnivore?

02:50:47.000 Well, she kept experimenting, and she got very sensitive to all sorts of foods in the aftermath of that, too.

02:50:54.000 So this is why I wouldn't recommend that anybody does this casually, because we don't understand much about it.

02:50:58.000 But the upshot was that, well, she kept experimenting, and she started to add things back and take them away.

02:51:06.000 And sometimes when she added things, the results were devastating.

02:51:08.000 She was like, done for a month.

02:51:10.000 She ate the wrong thing, done for a month.

02:51:12.000 All the symptoms came back.

02:51:13.000 The depression came back.

02:51:14.000 She thought that her whole dietary theory was wrong because it lasted so long and was so extreme.

02:51:20.000 It took her two years to figure out that really what she could eat was beef and greens, and then she figured out that she could only eat beef.

02:51:26.000 So the greens themselves.

02:51:28.000 Well, look, so what happened?

02:51:30.000 Okay, so two years ago she said, Dad, you have to try this diet because you have a lot of the same symptoms as me.

02:51:36.000 Now, I didn't have arthritis, but I had a lot of the other symptoms.

02:51:39.000 And I thought, oh, Christ, okay, Michaela, I can try anything for a month.

02:51:43.000 She said, try it for a month.

02:51:44.000 I thought, okay, whatever.

02:51:45.000 I can hang by my fingernails from the windowsill for a month.

02:51:48.000 It's like, it's just not that big a deal.

02:51:51.000 And so I eliminated, I went on a really low-carb diet.

02:51:54.000 Okay, so this is what happened.

02:51:57.000 I had gastric reflux disorder, and I was snoring quite a lot.

02:52:02.000 I stopped snoring the first week.

02:52:04.000 I thought, what the hell?

02:52:06.000 That's supposed to be associated with weight loss, because I had gained some weight.

02:52:09.000 I weighed about 212 pounds, and I'm about 6'1 1⁄2", so that was my maximum weight.

02:52:14.000 I stopped snoring, which was a great relief to Tammy.

02:52:16.000 That just quit, and that's a big deal, right?

02:52:18.000 Because if you snore, you have sleep apnea, and then you don't sleep right, and it's like not a good thing.

02:52:22.000 Okay, next.

02:52:24.000 I started waking up in the mornings.

02:52:25.000 I'd never been able to wake up in the mornings my whole life.

02:52:28.000 I always had to stumble to the shower and then maybe I could wake up.

02:52:32.000 It took me an hour and I felt terrible.

02:52:34.000 And so all of a sudden I woke up and I was like, oh, look at that.

02:52:37.000 I'm awake in the morning and I'm clear-headed and things aren't gloomy and horrible.

02:52:41.000 It's like, well, isn't that weird?

02:52:43.000 Then I lost seven pounds the first month.

02:52:45.000 I thought, Seven pounds, that's a lot in a month.

02:52:48.000 And I'd already gone for a whole year on a sugar-free diet and I didn't lose any weight.

02:52:51.000 And I'd been exercising.

02:52:53.000 Sugar-free, but did you cut out bread and gluten?

02:52:54.000 No, no.

02:52:55.000 It was just no desserts, no sugar.

02:52:56.000 And I thought that might do it.

02:52:58.000 It didn't make any difference at all.

02:52:59.000 Seven pounds.

02:53:01.000 Well, then I lost seven pounds the next month.

02:53:04.000 Then I lost seven pounds the next month.

02:53:06.000 I lost seven pounds every month for seven months.

02:53:08.000 It's like I'd throw away all my clothes.

02:53:09.000 I went back to the same weight that I was when I was 26. And my psoriasis disappeared.

02:53:14.000 And I had floaters in my right eye and they cleared up.

02:53:17.000 And then the last thing that went away for me, I was still having a bitch of a time with mood regulation and that sucked because when I changed my diet, I didn't respond to antidepressants properly anymore.

02:53:27.000 They weren't working.

02:53:27.000 And so although I was getting better physically on a variety of ways, like radical ways, I was really having a bitch of a time regulating my mood, and I was having sporadic, really negative reactions to food when I ate something I shouldn't.

02:53:40.000 So that took about a year and a half to clear up, and I was still really anxious in the morning up to three months ago, like horribly, and then it would get better all day.

02:53:47.000 People said, well, you're under a lot of stress, and I thought, yeah, yeah, I've been under a lot of stress for like ten years.

02:53:52.000 It's like, it's a lot, but it wasn't any more stressful than helping my daughter deal with her illness, that's for sure.

02:53:58.000 That, no, this is something different.

02:54:00.000 And she said to me...

02:54:02.000 Quit eating greens.

02:54:03.000 And I thought, oh, really?

02:54:04.000 Jesus, Michaela, I'm eating cucumbers, lettuce, broccoli, and chicken and beef. 0.99

02:54:11.000 It's like, I have to cut out the goddamn greens? 0.98

02:54:13.000 It's like, try it for a month. 0.99

02:54:15.000 Okay.

02:54:17.000 Within a week, I was 25% less anxious in the morning.

02:54:21.000 Within two weeks, 75%.

02:54:22.000 And I've been better every single day.

02:54:24.000 I'm better now, probably, than I've ever been in my life.

02:54:27.000 And I haven't been taking antidepressants for a whole year.

02:54:30.000 So, I don't know what, and I weigh 162 pounds, like I have no, I'm, I'm, and I've actually gained musculature.

02:54:38.000 I've been doing some working out, but not a lot.

02:54:40.000 And so, I can sleep six hours a night, no problem, I wake up in the morning, I'm awake.

02:54:45.000 If I take a 15 minute nap, that used to take me an hour to recover from, that's gone.

02:54:49.000 Here's the coolest thing.

02:54:51.000 I've had gum disease since I was 25. That's been serious enough to have...

02:54:55.000 I've had to have minor surgical interventions, scraping and that sort of thing, to keep it at bay.

02:55:00.000 It's gone.

02:55:01.000 I checked with my dentist before this last tour.

02:55:03.000 No inflammation.

02:55:05.000 And that's associated with heart disease, by the way, gum inflammation and gingivitis.

02:55:09.000 It's a good risk factor for heart disease.

02:55:10.000 It means the systemic inflammation is gone.

02:55:12.000 And it's not supposed to happen.

02:55:14.000 You're not supposed to recover from gingivitis.

02:55:16.000 And my gums are in perfect shape.

02:55:19.000 It's like, what the hell?

02:55:20.000 So here's what happened.

02:55:21.000 I lost 50 pounds.

02:55:22.000 It's like, that's a lot!

02:55:25.000 Right?

02:55:26.000 I'm nowhere near as hungry as I used to be.

02:55:28.000 My appetite's probably fallen by 70%.

02:55:29.000 I don't get blood sugar dysregulation problems.

02:55:34.000 I need way less sleep.

02:55:36.000 I get up in the morning and I'm fine.

02:55:37.000 I'm not anxious.

02:55:38.000 I'm not depressed.

02:55:39.000 I don't have psoriasis.

02:55:41.000 My legs were numb on the sides.

02:55:43.000 That's gone.

02:55:45.000 I'm certainly intellectually...

02:55:48.000 At my best at the moment, which is a great relief, especially doing this tour.

02:55:52.000 Depression is gone.

02:55:55.000 I'm stronger.

02:55:56.000 I can swim better.

02:56:01.000 And my gum disease is gone.

02:56:02.000 It's like, what the hell?

02:56:03.000 And you've done no blood work, so you don't know what your lipid profile is?

02:56:08.000 No, I'll get that done again when I go back to Toronto.

02:56:10.000 Do you take any vitamins?

02:56:11.000 Nope.

02:56:11.000 No, I eat beef and salt and water.

02:56:14.000 That's it.

02:56:15.000 And I never cheat.

02:56:17.000 Ever.

02:56:17.000 Not even a little bit.

02:56:18.000 Nothing.

02:56:19.000 No soda, no wine?

02:56:20.000 I drink club soda.

02:56:22.000 Well, that's still water.

02:56:24.000 Well, you know, when you're down to that level.

02:56:26.000 No, it's not.

02:56:27.000 Joe, there's club soda, which is really bubbly.

02:56:31.000 There's Perrier, which is sort of bubbly.

02:56:33.000 There's flat water, and there's hot water.

02:56:35.000 So those are your varieties?

02:56:36.000 Those distinctions start to become important.

02:56:38.000 That is crazy.

02:56:39.000 Well, we ate last night, and I ate what you ate.

02:56:42.000 We both had that giant tomahawk.

02:56:45.000 I had wine, though.

02:56:48.000 I'm curious about this.

02:56:49.000 I'm very curious.

02:56:50.000 Yeah, me too.

02:56:50.000 And I think I might try it.

02:56:52.000 But I eat a lot of vegetables.

02:56:54.000 Yeah.

02:56:54.000 But I don't have any problems.

02:56:55.000 Like health problems.

02:56:56.000 Hey man, like I'm not...

02:56:59.000 Disclaimer number two.

02:57:00.000 I am not recommending this to anyone.

02:57:02.000 However, I have had many, many people come up to me on the tour and say, look, I've been following your daughter's blog and I've lost like 100 pounds.

02:57:13.000 I think, what?

02:57:14.000 You lost 100 pounds?

02:57:16.000 Yeah, I lost 100 pounds in six months.

02:57:17.000 I talked to a woman yesterday.

02:57:18.000 She lost 15 pounds in one month.

02:57:20.000 She was 70. It's like, this is...

02:57:23.000 Here's a question. 1.00

02:57:25.000 Why is everyone fat and stupid? 1.00

02:57:28.000 That's a question, man. 1.00

02:57:30.000 Because it's new.

02:57:32.000 Is it?

02:57:33.000 Yes, it is.

02:57:34.000 It's new.

02:57:34.000 And it's not a sedentary lifestyle.

02:57:36.000 That hypothesis doesn't seem to hold water.

02:57:39.000 There's something wrong with the way we're eating.

02:57:41.000 And what's wrong is that we're eating way too many carbohydrates, I think.

02:57:45.000 But remember, I'm no expert.

02:57:46.000 It's made a big shift.

02:57:48.000 The elimination of most carbohydrates has made a big shift in my life.

02:57:52.000 And I do cheat.

02:57:53.000 Occasionally with bread, occasionally with pasta.

02:57:56.000 I will go off with ice cream and things along those lines.

02:58:00.000 But most of the time, I'm just eating meat and vegetables.

02:58:04.000 Most of the time.

02:58:06.000 And then I'll have a cheat day, like, you know, once a week or something like that.

02:58:09.000 Especially if I go to dinner, I'll have a little pasta.

02:58:11.000 And it doesn't seem to mess me up too bad, but I do feel shitty after I do it.

02:58:17.000 It's like for simple mouth pleasure, I'm allowing myself to feel tired afterwards.

02:58:22.000 Tired, yeah, that's a big one, man.

02:58:24.000 Yeah.

02:58:24.000 But like, yeah, like, well, really, I can go in about six hours of sleep now.

02:58:28.000 And it's so interesting.

02:58:29.000 I can't believe I can wake up in the morning.

02:58:33.000 That's never happened to me in my whole life. 0.51

02:58:35.000 And when I was a kid, 13, 12, I had a bitch of a time waking up in the morning. 1.00

02:58:39.000 It was just brutal. 0.86

02:58:41.000 I just thought that's how it was.

02:58:43.000 This is what, I mean, again, I'm not a nutritionist either.

02:58:46.000 But what's fascinating to me is I haven't heard any negative stories about people doing this.

02:58:51.000 Well, I have a negative story.

02:58:53.000 Okay.

02:58:53.000 One of the things that both Michaela and I noticed was that when we restricted our diet and then ate something we weren't supposed to, the reaction to eating what we weren't supposed to was absolutely catastrophic.

02:59:06.000 What did you do?

02:59:07.000 What did you switch to?

02:59:08.000 Or what did you eat, rather?

02:59:10.000 Well, the worst response, I think we're allergic to, or allergic, whatever the hell this is, having an inflammatory response to something called sulfites.

02:59:18.000 And we had some apple cider that had sulfites in it, and that was really not good.

02:59:22.000 Like, I was done for a month.

02:59:23.000 That was the first time I talked to Sam Harris.

02:59:25.000 You were done for a month.

02:59:27.000 Oh yeah, it took me out for a month.

02:59:28.000 It was awful.

02:59:29.000 Really?

02:59:30.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:59:30.000 So I would say, look...

02:59:31.000 So this is right before this whole truth conversation with Sam Harris that got stuck in the mud.

02:59:36.000 During.

02:59:37.000 I think the day I talked to Sam was like the worst day of my life.

02:59:40.000 Not because of talking to Sam.

02:59:42.000 Just physically?

02:59:44.000 Oh, Jesus.

02:59:44.000 I was so dead.

02:59:45.000 But I didn't want to not do it.

02:59:46.000 Apple cider.

02:59:48.000 Like, what was it doing to you?

02:59:50.000 Oh, it produced an overwhelming sense of impending doom.

02:59:55.000 And I seriously mean overwhelming.

02:59:57.000 Like, there's no way I could have lived like that if that would have lasted for...

03:00:01.000 See, Michaela knew by that point that it would probably only last a month, and I was like...

03:00:05.000 A month? 0.99

03:00:05.000 From fucking cider? 0.99

03:00:07.000 I didn't sleep that month. 1.00

03:00:09.000 I didn't sleep for 25 days.

03:00:11.000 I didn't sleep at all.

03:00:12.000 I didn't sleep at all for 25 days.

03:00:14.000 How is that possible?

03:00:16.000 I'll tell you how it's possible.

03:00:17.000 You lay in bed, frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours, and then you get up.

03:00:23.000 Oh, my God.

03:00:24.000 Oh, yeah.

03:00:24.000 Not good.

03:00:25.000 And this is from fucking cider. 1.00

03:00:26.000 From cider. 1.00

03:00:27.000 That's what we thought, yeah.

03:00:28.000 I mean, look, again...

03:00:31.000 I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

03:00:33.000 Okay, this is all a mystery to me.

03:00:35.000 The fact that my daughter was so sick...

03:00:37.000 See, the one thing that I did know, because I scoured the literature on arthritis when she was a kid, the scientific literature, because we were interested in the dietary connection, and the only thing I could find that was reliable was that if people with arthritis fasted, their symptoms reliably went away.

03:00:52.000 And that's actually a well-documented finding.

03:00:55.000 But then if they started to eat again, then their symptoms came back.

03:00:59.000 And I thought, well, what the hell?

03:01:01.000 Does it not matter what they eat?

03:01:02.000 They can't be reactive to everything.

03:01:04.000 It's like, no, but they can be reactive to almost everything.

03:01:09.000 And the difference between everything and almost everything, that's a big difference.

03:01:13.000 And so Michaela seems to be, maybe me too.

03:01:16.000 And Tammy's on the same diet because she has autoimmune problems on her side of the family. 0.99

03:01:20.000 So Michaela seemed to inherit all of them.

03:01:22.000 Your skin looks better.

03:01:23.000 Oh, Jesus, Joe.

03:01:24.000 I'm way better.

03:01:25.000 This is what's weird.

03:01:26.000 Yeah, yeah.

03:01:26.000 You look like more vibrant.

03:01:29.000 It's very strange.

03:01:30.000 Thank you.

03:01:30.000 Thank you, dear.

03:01:31.000 You're welcome.

03:01:32.000 My point is that you're saying that there is problems with this diet, but that doesn't seem to be a problem with the diet.

03:01:39.000 It seems a problem with deviating from the diet, that your body becomes accustomed with it.

03:01:43.000 Well, one of the hypotheses that we've been pursuing, and there's some justification for this in the scientific literature, is that the reason that you lay on layers of fat is because the fat acts as a buffer between you and the toxic things that you're eating.

03:01:56.000 Because fat is actually an organ.

03:01:58.000 It has functions other than merely the storage of calories.

03:02:02.000 And maybe when you strip out that protective layer, then you're more sensitive to what you shouldn't be eating.

03:02:07.000 This is all speculative hypothesis, right?

03:02:10.000 Or maybe you sensitize yourself by removing it from your constant diet.

03:02:13.000 I don't bloody well know.

03:02:15.000 Well, I would think it would be much more likely that because you think about people who are alcoholics, they develop a tolerance to alcohol.

03:02:21.000 You get off of that and then you have a drink and your tolerances are shot and then you immediately have an adverse reaction to the alcohol.

03:02:28.000 Same thing with marijuana. 0.56

03:02:29.000 When people do it all the time, your body becomes tolerant.

03:02:33.000 Well, I think that the layering of fat on might be part of the tolerance mechanism.

03:02:39.000 So it's not merely a matter of caloric intake, it's a matter of toxic caloric intake, buffered by whatever it is that fat is doing as a neuroendocrine organ.

03:02:48.000 But again, like I said, I'm out of my depth here, but, you know, the whole...

03:02:53.000 Everyone's out of their depth. 0.99

03:02:55.000 The goddamn food pyramid was made by the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of Health. 0.99

03:02:59.000 It wasn't predicated on any scientific studies whatsoever. 0.99

03:03:01.000 We shouldn't be eating massive quantities of corn syrup.

03:03:05.000 We eat way too many carbohydrates.

03:03:08.000 Michaela posted a paper the other day, a doctor has successfully treated type 1 diabetes with a carnivore diet.

03:03:15.000 Type 1, not type 2. So that's bloody impressive.

03:03:20.000 Yeah, it's very curious to me because you're talking about the one adverse reaction, which is when you deviated from the diet.

03:03:28.000 What I'm talking about is when I read people's accounts of trying this diet, it's almost universally positive.

03:03:36.000 Strength gains is a big one.

03:03:38.000 Well, it's a problem with anecdote, right?

03:03:40.000 And it's the same with all these stories that I'm collecting as I'm touring.

03:03:44.000 You know, lots of people have come up to me and said, look, I lost 45 pounds in the last three months.

03:03:50.000 I think, well, it's shocking to me.

03:03:53.000 I think, well, what do you make of that?

03:03:55.000 You say, well, I can't believe it.

03:03:56.000 Well, I couldn't believe it.

03:03:58.000 50 pounds.

03:03:59.000 It's like, first of all, I didn't know I had 50 pounds to lose.

03:04:02.000 You know, I thought I was maybe 20 pounds heavier than I should have been.

03:04:05.000 I should have been 185, something like that.

03:04:06.000 I guess that's 25 to 30 pounds.

03:04:09.000 That was the maximum.

03:04:11.000 I thought, no, no, I lost.

03:04:11.000 I'm at 162 and I was at 212, so what's that?

03:04:16.000 50 pounds.

03:04:18.000 That's a lot of weight.

03:04:19.000 Jesus, I had to throw all my clothes away.

03:04:22.000 I can't believe it.

03:04:24.000 When I saw you last night, I was like, you're so slim.

03:04:26.000 Like, your stomach is completely flat.

03:04:30.000 I'm a lean, mean, fighting machine, man.

03:04:32.000 And you're not an exercise fanatic.

03:04:35.000 It's not like you're starving yourself.

03:04:37.000 It's not like you're running five miles a day.

03:04:39.000 That's another thing I should say to people.

03:04:40.000 If you want to try a diet like this, You eat enough meat and fat so you're not hungry.

03:04:45.000 You can't get hungry.

03:04:47.000 You're not eating enough if you're hungry.

03:04:48.000 And if you're hungry, you're going to cheat.

03:04:50.000 And it's going to drive you stark raving mad.

03:04:52.000 The other thing that was really cool is, like, I really liked sweets.

03:04:55.000 Like, I kind of lived on peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate milk.

03:04:58.000 Not really.

03:04:59.000 But that was my go-to food, you know.

03:05:01.000 Both of which were terrible for me.

03:05:04.000 But after I stopped eating carbohydrates for a month, the carbohydrate cravings went away.

03:05:10.000 Last night when we were out for dinner, somebody ordered bread pudding, and I bloody love bread pudding with caramel and ice cream.

03:05:17.000 So it was sitting there, and I could smell it, and I thought I could go all fantastic Mr. Fox on that bread pudding and just tear it down in about 15 seconds.

03:05:26.000 But it wasn't as intense as a craving for a cigarette if you're an ex-smoker.

03:05:30.000 It was like, well, it'd be really nice to eat that.

03:05:32.000 But my appetite declined by about 75%, and that's been permanent.

03:05:37.000 So there's a perverse thing for you.

03:05:39.000 I eat way less and now I'm not as hungry.

03:05:42.000 Okay.

03:05:43.000 Well, how does that make sense?

03:05:44.000 Well, you're not eating way less.

03:05:46.000 You're eating way less things.

03:05:47.000 Yes, yes.

03:05:47.000 Because you had a 30-ounce steak last night.

03:05:49.000 Yes, yes.

03:05:51.000 I'm doing my best not to be hungry.

03:05:53.000 Although it didn't look like it was 30 ounces.

03:05:54.000 No, no, no.

03:05:56.000 It was a small 30-ounce steak.

03:05:57.000 Well, I think it starts out 30 ounces before they cook it, and it loses a considerable amount of volume.

03:06:01.000 It's very fatty.

03:06:02.000 Right.

03:06:03.000 But that's the other thing, too.

03:06:04.000 You must have to get a lot of fat.

03:06:07.000 Yeah, well I eat fatty cuts of steak and Michaela is buying fat directly from the butcher store and we cook that up, cut it into small pieces and fry it up until it's crispy.

03:06:16.000 Wow.

03:06:16.000 It's actually quite delicious.

03:06:18.000 It's not bread pudding with ice cream, but it's...

03:06:21.000 Isn't that funny? 0.97

03:06:22.000 I know, it's so ridiculous. 0.92

03:06:23.000 Well, I want your blood profile.

03:06:25.000 I want to find out what's going on with you, because one of the big misconceptions when it comes to cholesterol and saturated fat and food is that if you eat dietary cholesterol, that it affects your blood cholesterol levels.

03:06:37.000 It's not...

03:06:38.000 It's a super common misconception.

03:06:40.000 Clinical studies with diet are virtually impossible to conduct because you just can't conduct a proper, randomly distributed, controlled experiment.

03:06:50.000 It's too hard.

03:06:51.000 So a lot of what we're trying to do is pull out information from correlations.

03:06:54.000 Right.

03:06:55.000 You can't do it. 0.99

03:06:56.000 Which is one of the real problems with correlating meat with cancer and diabetes and all these different diseases is because people are eating a bunch of shit with that meat. 0.98

03:07:04.000 Oh yeah, and they have different lifestyle profiles. 0.99

03:07:07.000 Sure.

03:07:07.000 There's just endless numbers of confounding variables.

03:07:09.000 You only need one confounding variable that's relevant to screw up the study.

03:07:14.000 Right.

03:07:14.000 You can't get that information with correlational studies.

03:07:17.000 We try because it's impossible to do the studies.

03:07:19.000 How many people are incredulous?

03:07:22.000 How many people, when they're hearing about this...

03:07:24.000 Oh, everybody.

03:07:26.000 Everybody.

03:07:27.000 Well, you're not, but you're interested in this sort of thing.

03:07:29.000 But they should be incredulous.

03:07:30.000 Like, when people make absurd claims, it's like, oh, well, I had 50 health problems and I stopped eating everything but meat and they went away.

03:07:36.000 It's like, oh, sure.

03:07:37.000 It's like, yeah, well, it wasn't you dying.

03:07:42.000 So, and I see the results.

03:07:43.000 And I know it's an anecdote.

03:07:45.000 I bloody well understand that.

03:07:46.000 And I'm highly skeptical about all of this.

03:07:48.000 But I'm telling you, so that's why I'm telling you what happened to me and what happened to my daughter and also what happened to my wife.

03:07:53.000 Because she's, Tammy was always in good shape and she's exercised a lot. 0.75

03:07:57.000 And she reduced to the pure carnivore diet about a month ago. 0.76

03:08:02.000 She lost like 12 pounds.

03:08:04.000 And she was already slim.

03:08:06.000 She's back to the same weight she was when she was 21. She's like 58. You know?

03:08:13.000 And she doesn't look 58, I can tell you that.

03:08:16.000 It's really fascinating.

03:08:18.000 It's really fascinating because I just...

03:08:21.000 As a person who's studied diet for many years, I would assume that you need phytonutrients.

03:08:27.000 I would assume you need vitamin supplements.

03:08:30.000 Like vitamin C, for example.

03:08:31.000 Turns out if you don't eat carbohydrates, you don't need vitamin C. Huh!

03:08:34.000 Who would have guessed that?

03:08:35.000 How does that work?

03:08:36.000 I don't remember.

03:08:38.000 Michaela outlined a paper for me.

03:08:39.000 Vitamin C is necessary for carbohydrate metabolism.

03:08:42.000 But if you don't...

03:08:43.000 Again, remember, everyone listening, I am not an expert in this field.

03:08:47.000 Right.

03:08:50.000 But I want you to get your blood tested because I think if...

03:08:54.000 It'd be pretty funny if it was in good shape.

03:08:56.000 Yeah, it would be.

03:08:58.000 I'd like to find out what your nutrient levels are and where they're coming from.

03:09:01.000 How much nutrients are you getting?

03:09:03.000 I'm getting a little cramping in my toes from time to time, so I'm not sure about magnesium.

03:09:08.000 That's a possibility.

03:09:10.000 That's all easy to supplement.

03:09:11.000 It's very easy, which is why I'm concerned about, and also minerals.

03:09:16.000 Certain minerals you're getting from vegetables that you're probably not getting.

03:09:19.000 Yep.

03:09:20.000 Well, this is all...

03:09:21.000 Look, it seems impossible...

03:09:22.000 It's not hard to supplement that stuff, though.

03:09:24.000 Colloidal minerals, you know, there's some mineral pills.

03:09:27.000 You could take plenty of vitamin supplements.

03:09:28.000 Well, there are people who basically lived on meat.

03:09:32.000 You know, the Inuit did. 0.97

03:09:33.000 The Maasai basically did.

03:09:34.000 There's some supplementation, but not a lot.

03:09:37.000 Yeah.

03:09:38.000 And apparently, if you do a carnivore diet, you're supposed to eat more organ meat, and I do some of that, but not a lot.

03:09:43.000 But I can tell you, like, I'm in...

03:09:46.000 Well, look, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't producing positive results.

03:09:50.000 It's not like it's fun.

03:09:51.000 I mean, for a while, well, it makes you a social pariah.

03:09:55.000 It's like, let's invite the Petersons over.

03:09:57.000 Oh, yeah, they don't eat anything.

03:09:58.000 Oh, we have other friends.

03:10:00.000 It's like, well, that's how it works.

03:10:02.000 It's not malevolence, right?

03:10:03.000 It's just if you're a pain, no one invites you out. 0.96

03:10:05.000 So I'm a social pain and an ideological pain, and now I'm a nutritional pain. 0.96

03:10:10.000 So it's like I have no friends.

03:10:11.000 How difficult is it when you're trying to get breakfast?

03:10:14.000 Like, what do you do when you...

03:10:16.000 Well, lots of times when we're traveling, we cook.

03:10:19.000 So we usually stay in places where you can cook.

03:10:21.000 Oh, okay.

03:10:22.000 But most places you can get a steak, and so that's mostly what we do.

03:10:26.000 We've been traveling in a motorhome, and so we've been cooking in the motorhome.

03:10:29.000 Oh, okay.

03:10:30.000 And I carry beef jerky with me, which we make.

03:10:33.000 Wow.

03:10:34.000 Yep.

03:10:35.000 It's crazy.

03:10:36.000 You make your own beef jerky.

03:10:37.000 Well, it's easy.

03:10:38.000 We have a dehydrator, and you just basically put salt on it and throw in the dehydrator, so that works pretty well.

03:10:44.000 Do you anticipate continuing this?

03:10:48.000 Well, cod forever is a long time.

03:10:50.000 I'd like to be able to eat more things, but I'm going to experiment with that very, very, very, very, very cautiously.

03:10:56.000 I'm going to add mushrooms next because maybe I could eat them.

03:10:59.000 Well, this is why I'm asking.

03:11:02.000 There's...

03:11:02.000 Positive benefits that a lot of people achieve and experience when they switch to a vegan diet.

03:11:08.000 And one of the things it is, is you get off of the standard American diet with lots of refined sugars and a lot of preservatives and bullshit, and then you find positive benefits.

03:11:20.000 Chris Kresher has gone into depth about this, but then over time, the nutritional deficiencies in that start to wear on your health.

03:11:29.000 And I'm wondering whether or not you're going to experience...

03:11:32.000 Well, and who knows?

03:11:32.000 Well, it's certainly possible.

03:11:33.000 Well, certainly, eventually this diet will kill me.

03:11:36.000 No, life will.

03:11:37.000 Well, you're right.

03:11:39.000 Biology will. 0.98

03:11:40.000 Yes.

03:11:40.000 Unless science intervenes.

03:11:42.000 It might be that for some people a vegan diet is a vegan diet is preferable.

03:11:47.000 Well, certainly to a standard American diet.

03:11:49.000 Well, for sure to a standard American diet.

03:11:52.000 But also there's so much biological variability.

03:11:54.000 Yeah.

03:11:55.000 You know, the things that bother some people don't bother other people at all.

03:11:58.000 And that's something that we've got to take into consideration.

03:12:01.000 Right.

03:12:01.000 Yeah, well, that's why I don't want to universalize from my experience.

03:12:04.000 But this is what's happened to me, and this is what's happened to my wife and my daughter.

03:12:09.000 And all of it's been...

03:12:10.000 Well, with Michaela, it's miraculous.

03:12:12.000 I cannot believe it.

03:12:13.000 The last time I saw her, it made me cry.

03:12:15.000 I've never seen her look like that.

03:12:17.000 She looks so good.

03:12:18.000 She's so healthy and so with it.

03:12:20.000 And all of her other joints are not experiencing any problems anymore.

03:12:22.000 And she's taking no... 0.75

03:12:24.000 Immunomodulators at all.

03:12:25.000 No medication.

03:12:26.000 None.

03:12:27.000 And she was on them forever?

03:12:28.000 Oh, Jesus, yes.

03:12:29.000 More medication than you can shake a stick at.

03:12:31.000 Methotrexate, which is basically, they use it to treat cancer.

03:12:34.000 It's, what's the cancer-treating drugs called?

03:12:38.000 Whatever.

03:12:38.000 I don't remember at the moment.

03:12:40.000 She was on Enbrel, which really, really helped, but later opened to bacterial infections, so she always had pneumonia in the fall.

03:12:48.000 But Enbrel really helped.

03:12:50.000 And then heavy doses of antidepressants and Ritalin and Jesus.

03:12:55.000 And how long has she been on this carnivore diet?

03:12:58.000 Oh God, she's only been eating meat.

03:13:00.000 It's got to be at least six to eight months now.

03:13:04.000 Wow.

03:13:04.000 And does she get blood work done?

03:13:07.000 Yep.

03:13:07.000 And her blood work, I won't comment on that.

03:13:10.000 I don't know the details of her blood work.

03:13:14.000 So I don't know the answer to that.

03:13:16.000 It's fascinating.

03:13:17.000 I'm curious.

03:13:19.000 I'm considering trying it for a while.

03:13:20.000 The problem is I eat so much game meat.

03:13:23.000 There's not a lot of fat in that.

03:13:24.000 Well, get some fat.

03:13:25.000 That's the trick there.

03:13:26.000 Try it for a month.

03:13:27.000 See what happens.

03:13:28.000 What the hell?

03:13:28.000 A month, you know?

03:13:30.000 Just a month.

03:13:31.000 Yeah.

03:13:31.000 No, a month's not hard.

03:13:33.000 Yeah.

03:13:34.000 Interesting.

03:13:37.000 All right, let's wrap this up.

03:13:38.000 I already did three hours.

03:13:39.000 It's already 2.20, believe it or not.

03:13:41.000 Crazy.

03:13:41.000 Listen, it's always a pleasure.

03:13:43.000 One more thing I want to bring up.

03:13:45.000 How weird is this whole association to you?

03:13:49.000 Because it's weird to me.

03:13:50.000 The IDW? Yeah, the IDW. Just that intellectual dark web.

03:13:56.000 I don't know what the hell it is.

03:13:57.000 It's like I've been trying to puzzle it out.

03:13:59.000 I mean, I think what it is is a loose collection of early adopters of a revolutionary technology.

03:14:04.000 That's what it looks like to me.

03:14:05.000 And we found each other because we're all doing the same thing.

03:14:08.000 But it's also a bunch of people that are honest intellectually.

03:14:12.000 Honest about...

03:14:13.000 And maybe don't even agree on things.

03:14:16.000 Oh yeah, well definitely don't agree.

03:14:17.000 But honest about perceptions.

03:14:18.000 Well, and also I think interested in long-form discussion.

03:14:21.000 Yes.

03:14:21.000 Right?

03:14:21.000 And able to engage in it because otherwise we wouldn't be having the relative success that we're having in the...

03:14:27.000 In the milieu.

03:14:28.000 You know, and it got a name, and that's kind of interesting.

03:14:31.000 That's Eric, though.

03:14:32.000 Yeah, that's right.

03:14:32.000 That's Eric.

03:14:33.000 He loves it.

03:14:34.000 Oh, yeah, he certainly does.

03:14:35.000 He loves all this spy versus spy stuff.

03:14:38.000 Oh, definitely.

03:14:38.000 Definitely.

03:14:39.000 And he denies that he loves it, which is what's most interesting about it.

03:14:43.000 I love to rib him.

03:14:44.000 Yeah, well, it's got this funny conspiratorial element there that's sort of true and sort of mostly dramatic.

03:14:50.000 Well, as a mathematician, he's always looking for patterns and codes.

03:14:54.000 I don't know what to make of it.

03:14:56.000 I mean, things get a name, and then you think, well, why did that get named?

03:14:59.000 And well, someone named it.

03:15:00.000 But yeah, but the name stuck, so it seemed apropos to some degree.

03:15:04.000 Well, what do we have in common?

03:15:06.000 Most of us are entrepreneurial.

03:15:07.000 Most of us have our own platform so we can speak independently.

03:15:11.000 Most of us are interested in long-form philosophical discussions, primarily not political, but bordering on political.

03:15:18.000 Well, Ben's more political, obviously.

03:15:20.000 Yeah, he's the most.

03:15:21.000 Yeah, but he's also a very sophisticated political commentator, so he borders on both the philosophical and the religious.

03:15:27.000 And then we're all...

03:15:31.000 The new adopters of this new technology.

03:15:34.000 So that's enough to put us in a group.

03:15:35.000 And then, well, it turns out that we've all been talking to each other.

03:15:38.000 But part of the reason for that is, well, we're all doing the same thing on the net.

03:15:41.000 So it's not surprising that we're talking to each other.

03:15:43.000 So I always go for the simple explanations first.

03:15:46.000 You know, it's not a movement exactly.

03:15:48.000 What it is, it's the manifestation of a new technology.

03:15:52.000 And then, well, do we have anything in common that's worth discussing that would make this a viable group, let's say?

03:15:58.000 And the answer to that is, I don't know.

03:16:01.000 You know, I've been touring with Ruben.

03:16:03.000 That's been good.

03:16:03.000 It's been good to have a comedian along.

03:16:05.000 And he's also a good interviewer.

03:16:06.000 He does the Q&As with me.

03:16:08.000 And it's nice to have some levity in the mix because the discussions with the audience are very serious.

03:16:14.000 Although I can crack a joke.

03:16:16.000 And I can't tell a joke.

03:16:18.000 But if something funny occurs to me, I can say it.

03:16:21.000 And sometimes it's funny.

03:16:23.000 So that's something.

03:16:25.000 You know, and we've been discussing a fair bit, and I've had good conversations with Shapiro, and Harris for that matter, so there is lots of interplay between us, but I think that's more because we inhabit the same technological space more than the same ideological space,

03:16:41.000 apart from the fact that we are actually interested in dialogue, fundamentally.

03:16:48.000 So, we'll see.

03:16:49.000 I mean, I'm watching it with curiosity.

03:16:52.000 Are you apprehensive?

03:16:53.000 Do you think that there's any potential downsides?

03:16:56.000 Well, there's lots of downsides to it.

03:16:58.000 Sure, there's lots of downsides.

03:16:59.000 I mean, first of all, you know, most of us are on an individualistic path.

03:17:05.000 I'm not really much of a group guy.

03:17:08.000 You know, so am I in this group?

03:17:10.000 It's like, well, I'm pleased to be associated with you guys, that's for sure.

03:17:15.000 But I don't really know what it would mean, or if it should mean anything, or if it'll screw up what I'm doing, or if it's...

03:17:19.000 I don't know anything about it.

03:17:21.000 But mostly I'm curious.

03:17:22.000 It's like, huh.

03:17:25.000 This is a group.

03:17:26.000 I thought, this is the Rat Pack.

03:17:27.000 I thought when I walked into the restaurant last night, because we were out last night, it was Ben Shapiro, Sam Harris, Eric Weinstein, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, and me, right?

03:17:36.000 And my wife, Tammy.

03:17:37.000 And so we're all walking in there, and I thought, well, this is kind of like being in the Rat Pack in the 1950s.

03:17:42.000 I thought, well, I know maybe it isn't, but that's what came to mind.

03:17:45.000 So I thought, that's funny, and it's kind of cool, and it's interesting, and it's edgy, and all of that.

03:17:50.000 But I'm not...

03:17:52.000 I'm not taking it seriously.

03:17:54.000 I'm not taking it not seriously either, but I'm just watching.

03:17:59.000 I'm watching everybody interact because it is a very motley crew of people.

03:18:03.000 It is.

03:18:04.000 And they're very different.

03:18:07.000 But it was very enjoyable.

03:18:08.000 What did you think?

03:18:08.000 Well, you were okay.

03:18:09.000 So why did you think it was enjoyable?

03:18:11.000 It's a good conversation.

03:18:12.000 I mean, everyone that was in that group has been on my podcast or I've been on theirs.

03:18:17.000 And, you know, it's a fun group of really honest, interesting people.

03:18:23.000 Peculiar.

03:18:23.000 Very peculiar.

03:18:24.000 Peculiar people. 0.59

03:18:25.000 Especially Eric. 1.00

03:18:26.000 He's listening right now, so I'm fucking with him. 0.99

03:18:29.000 I love that guy. 0.98

03:18:32.000 Everyone's different, but everyone's also unique, and they all bring a lot to the table, and that's what's interesting about it.

03:18:37.000 The weird collection.

03:18:40.000 I don't know what to think of it.

03:18:42.000 When Eric called me up about the whole New York Times thing, I'm like, what are you talking about?

03:18:46.000 We're all together in this?

03:18:47.000 Yeah, and you did that.

03:18:48.000 Why did you do that?

03:18:49.000 Why did I do what?

03:18:50.000 Why did you be part of the New York Times article?

03:18:52.000 I barely was.

03:18:54.000 I just answered a couple questions.

03:18:56.000 But they took a picture of you.

03:18:57.000 You got a picture.

03:18:58.000 Yeah, they asked me to take a picture.

03:18:59.000 They didn't take a picture of me.

03:19:01.000 They shouldn't have taken a picture of me.

03:19:02.000 I was dressed like I was going on stage at the Comedy Store.

03:19:04.000 I didn't wear anything any differently.

03:19:06.000 They were trying to make a big deal of it.

03:19:07.000 I'm like, look, I don't have any time.

03:19:09.000 You want to take a picture of me?

03:19:10.000 This is what I'm wearing.

03:19:11.000 And we did it on the parking lot above the Comedy Store.

03:19:15.000 And it started to rain.

03:19:16.000 I go, we're done.

03:19:16.000 I gotta go.

03:19:17.000 I gotta go on stage.

03:19:18.000 I can't be soaking wet.

03:19:20.000 And then go on stage.

03:19:21.000 And that was it.

03:19:22.000 It was just...

03:19:23.000 Okay, so your take on it is that it's interesting.

03:19:27.000 Yes.

03:19:28.000 Well, this is probably another thing that unites that group of people.

03:19:33.000 Everyone in that group of people is likely to get in trouble because they find too many things interesting, right?

03:19:39.000 And it's trade openness.

03:19:40.000 That's another thing that unites all of us.

03:19:42.000 Yes.

03:19:43.000 And, you know, curiosity killed the cat.

03:19:46.000 And so...

03:19:47.000 Yeah, but we're not cats.

03:19:48.000 True.

03:19:49.000 Curiosity also built the pyramids.

03:19:51.000 It did.

03:19:52.000 And it saved a lot of cats, too.

03:19:56.000 Let's end it with that.

03:19:57.000 All right.

03:19:57.000 All right, Jordan.

03:19:58.000 Always a pleasure, my friend.

03:19:59.000 Hey, Joe.

03:19:59.000 Good to see you again, man.

03:20:00.000 Good to see you always.

03:20:01.000 That's it, folks.

03:20:02.000 See you soon.

The Joe Rogan Experience - July 02, 2018

Joe Rogan Experience #1139 - Jordan Peterson

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Transcript