The Joe Rogan Experience - February 14, 2020


Joe Rogan Experience #1427 - Melissa Chen

Topics
Ideas Beyond Borders Huawei government connection social cohesion in singapore Enlightenment vs. Theocracy affirmative action woke activism sam kinnison's bit on world hunger hit pieces on Andrew Yang clickbait
Hosted by
Joe Rogan
Guests
Melissa Chen
Mentioned
Eric Trump Bernie Daryl Davis Steve Perry Ben Shapiro Andrew Yang Daryl Morey Jimmy Dore Antifa Django Francisco Bustamante Tom Petty Jamie Klan Sam Kinison Mike Pence Obama Pete Crazy Rich Asians Peter Boghossian Tucker Carlson and 78 more
JRE MMA Show #91 with Radio Rahim JRE MMA Show #92 with Angela Hill

Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 24 minutes

Words per minute

174.03

Word count

25,167

Sentence count

2,813

Harmful content

Misogyny

46

sentences flagged

Toxicity

354

sentences flagged

Hate speech

74

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Singapore is a country that has a zero tolerance policy on drugs. They hang people who are caught with even a tiny amount of drugs. It's a strange place to grow up, but it's a place that has done a lot in terms of nation building and has a lot of great things going on in it's history. I talk about it with my friend Joe, who grew up in the city-state, and we talk about what it's like growing up there and what it means to be a Singaporean. We also talk about how it went from being a third world country to being a first world country in a blink of an eye, and how it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever lived. I hope you enjoy this episode, and if you do, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend about what you think of the podcast! I'll be looking out for the next episode next week. Timestamps: 3:00 - What do you think about Singapore? 4:20 - How did it go from Third World to First World? 5:30 - What does it mean to be Singaporean? 6:40 - How does it feel like to live there? 7:00 What is it like to be an Asian? 8:15 - How do you feel about it? 9:00- What is the culture here? 10:30- How does the country look like in general? 11: Is it a strange country? 12:00 What are the culture? 13:00: What do they do to me? 14:00 Caning? 15: How do I feel about the culture in my generation? 16:00 Is it weird? 17:00 Do you think it s a weird place? 18:00 Does it seem like it s expensive? 19:00 How did I feel like it's better than China? 21:00 Are they have a good place to live in my lifetime? 22:00 Why do I like it better? 23:00 Should I go to Singapore now? 24:00 Would you like to go back to my hometown? 25:00 More? 26:00 Have a question or suggestion? 27:00 Will you like the country I'm going to come back to Singapore again?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:01.000 What's up, Melissa?
00:00:01.000 How are you?
00:00:02.000 Hello, Joe.
00:00:03.000 We were just talking about caning and hanging in Singapore.
00:00:06.000 Hanging now, is that the new one?
00:00:07.000 No, it's always been...
00:00:08.000 That's how they always do it?
00:00:09.000 Caning is one of the forms of capital punishment, but they actually hang for drugs.
00:00:14.000 What is Singapore like?
00:00:16.000 I've never been.
00:00:17.000 It seems like a strange place because it's relatively wealthy, right?
00:00:22.000 Yes, very much so.
00:00:23.000 And upscale and very nice, but also ruthless.
00:00:27.000 But you know what happened in my generation?
00:00:29.000 I've witnessed it go from third world to first world in my lifetime.
00:00:33.000 Really?
00:00:33.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:00:34.000 So it's one of those success stories of nation building.
00:00:37.000 But it's kind of like, you know those snow globes, the perfect snow globes?
00:00:42.000 Yeah.
00:00:43.000 Yeah, when you turn it over and everything kind of sprinkles.
00:00:45.000 That's what it feels like living in Singapore.
00:00:47.000 For me, at least.
00:00:48.000 I had to get out.
00:00:49.000 It's just, it's a bit sterile.
00:00:50.000 It's perfect, but it's too perfect.
00:00:52.000 It's almost like, there's a, somebody called it once, Disneyland with the death penalty.
00:00:57.000 Which is a pretty good description.
00:00:58.000 And you get the death penalty for things like drugs, right?
00:01:01.000 Just possession past like maybe 25 grams or 25 milligrams or something.
00:01:06.000 Marijuana, trafficking.
00:01:07.000 So if you have an ounce of marijuana.
00:01:10.000 How many grams is an ounce?
00:01:11.000 What's the conversion?
00:01:12.000 I don't know.
00:01:13.000 I haven't converted to...
00:01:14.000 20?
00:01:15.000 Your system.
00:01:16.000 28. 28 grams in an ounce?
00:01:18.000 Yeah, 28. So, like, an ounce is a good amount of weed, but two ounces of weed, you're dead. 0.55
00:01:22.000 Yep.
00:01:22.000 Oof.
00:01:23.000 Yeah.
00:01:24.000 By hanging.
00:01:25.000 Oof.
00:01:26.000 Two ounces.
00:01:27.000 Wow.
00:01:29.000 That's weird.
00:01:30.000 You can go down the street and buy that at a store. 0.75
00:01:33.000 Show your driver's license that you're over 21 and you can buy that at a store and in Singapore they'll kill you for it.
00:01:40.000 How many people have they killed for pot?
00:01:42.000 I don't know about that.
00:01:44.000 But I do know one time they actually executed an Australian citizen who was on transit.
00:01:50.000 So he didn't even get out of the airport.
00:01:52.000 He was just kind of carrying the drugs on transit.
00:01:55.000 Whoa, and they executed him?
00:01:57.000 Oh yeah, it was hanging.
00:01:58.000 It's always hanging.
00:01:59.000 Do you remember what kind of drugs?
00:02:01.000 Was he selling drugs?
00:02:02.000 He was caring quite a bit.
00:02:04.000 He was definitely trafficking it.
00:02:05.000 Jesus Christ.
00:02:06.000 They just hung him.
00:02:07.000 Yep.
00:02:08.000 Zero tolerance policy.
00:02:10.000 Yeah, that's crazy.
00:02:11.000 How did it go from third world to first world so quickly?
00:02:14.000 I guess the founder, you know, of the country.
00:02:17.000 Well, not the founder.
00:02:17.000 The founding prime minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, was probably one of the world's most famous modern statesmen.
00:02:24.000 He was resolute, like, you know, weeded out corruption.
00:02:28.000 He was kind of like very, very tight controls on free speech, but very much sort of neoliberal economic policies.
00:02:37.000 So it attracted a lot of foreign investment, right?
00:02:39.000 Because the highest income tax bracket is like maybe 13%.
00:02:43.000 It's very low.
00:02:44.000 There's almost no welfare, at least in the sense of how we understand welfare.
00:02:50.000 But it's a hybrid system, so there's a lot of zero capital gains taxes, zero state taxes, very easy to set up a business.
00:03:00.000 So he managed to attract a lot of foreign businesses to set up their multinational corporation headquarters in Asia, because the other alternative would be maybe China.
00:03:10.000 But China would probably end up stealing all your corporate secrets, your intellectual property. 0.67
00:03:16.000 But Singapore was billed as this is the country that protects rule of law.
00:03:21.000 Also English.
00:03:22.000 He kind of made everybody speak English.
00:03:25.000 It was the working language.
00:03:27.000 So if you wanted to set up business in Asia, that was your place to go. 0.99
00:03:31.000 If you want to attract investment, you have to say, okay, what's in my region and how can I have a competitive advantage?
00:03:41.000 So that was how Singapore really developed and just gained a lot of traction as a state.
00:03:49.000 The average American knows Singapore because of that kid that got caned. 1.00
00:03:53.000 Now it's that stupid movie. 1.00
00:03:55.000 Which movie? 1.00
00:03:56.000 Crazy Rich Asians.
00:03:57.000 Oh, Crazy Rich Asians. 0.92
00:03:58.000 Right, right.
00:03:59.000 I never saw that.
00:04:00.000 Was it good?
00:04:03.000 I didn't like it because I don't like rom-coms.
00:04:05.000 Oh, okay.
00:04:06.000 And, like, come on.
00:04:06.000 The premise is, like, an American Asian girl is, like, dating this guy from Singapore.
00:04:12.000 She doesn't know he's rich and she finds out on the plane there. 0.99
00:04:15.000 It's, like, the most bullshit thing. 0.99
00:04:18.000 It's just conspicuous consumption. 1.00
00:04:20.000 I mean, it's got some, you know...
00:04:23.000 The city looks beautiful, and in fact, I kind of grew up with some people that lived that lifestyle.
00:04:31.000 But I just don't like that kind of movie.
00:04:33.000 It's a chick flick.
00:04:34.000 A chick flick.
00:04:36.000 Got it.
00:04:36.000 You're not into chick flicks.
00:04:37.000 Your Instagram is hilarious, by the way.
00:04:39.000 Instagram?
00:04:40.000 I don't have Instagram.
00:04:42.000 Your Twitter.
00:04:42.000 Okay.
00:04:43.000 I get them confused sometimes.
00:04:45.000 Your Twitter feed is really good.
00:04:47.000 I try.
00:04:47.000 It's both insightful but also very funny.
00:04:50.000 Yeah, I try to play both sides, but the problem is like, you know, I think today there's a bit of a, if you're a girl and you're kind of funny, there's a bit of a sense that people really take you that seriously.
00:05:03.000 So I've been told to tone down on jokes.
00:05:05.000 Who's telling you that?
00:05:06.000 Well, I'm also, you know, I run a major non-profit organization.
00:05:11.000 Do you want to tell everybody what it is or keep it on the down low?
00:05:15.000 No, it's a really, well, it's kind of right up your alley.
00:05:18.000 You know, it's an organization that really tries to promote pluralistic thinking and, you know, basically exporting ideas to part of the world that it's often censored.
00:05:30.000 And you have narratives that are just not, you know, not exposed to, people are not exposed to the Middle East.
00:05:37.000 So, you know, we thought, you know, we spent like, what, $8 trillion on the war on terror?
00:05:42.000 And what was the result?
00:05:44.000 We marched in and said, okay, we're going to bring freedom and democracy to people.
00:05:48.000 But if there were no cultural institutions to kind of nudge people to understand why they should value freedom and democracy, is it really a surprise that it failed to take root there?
00:06:00.000 So that's what we basically, the organizations call Ideas Beyond Borders.
00:06:06.000 And it's kind of self-explanatory.
00:06:08.000 We basically acquire the rights to books that are not available there, translate them into Arabic for free, and then we just load it up on the library site.
00:06:21.000 Anyone can basically access that, download it.
00:06:24.000 And we do Wikipedia, too.
00:06:26.000 So like 10% of all Wikipedia is in Arabic, English Wikipedia.
00:06:31.000 And so we basically try to, you know, like, for example, George Orwell doesn't exist in Arabic, right?
00:06:38.000 So like, if you look it up, would you even understand what the word Orwellian means?
00:06:43.000 Right.
00:06:44.000 Yeah.
00:06:45.000 So how did you get involved in this?
00:06:48.000 My co-founder is an Iraqi refugee, and he grew up under Saddam.
00:06:54.000 I met him when I was in grad school, and I was really compelled by what he was talking about.
00:07:01.000 As somebody who grew up in Singapore, too, we don't really have freedom of speech, right?
00:07:06.000 So the issue was that, for me, I just felt like growing up, I was kind of like, alright, you know what?
00:07:17.000 My issue is that there was no freedom of thought, freedom of speech in Singapore.
00:07:22.000 The government just kind of controls everything.
00:07:24.000 Sorry.
00:07:25.000 Give me a second.
00:07:26.000 My heart rate is like so high because I've been drinking.
00:07:28.000 Because you've been drinking this stuff?
00:07:30.000 Is that what it is?
00:07:31.000 I was worried that you were nervous.
00:07:33.000 So let's tell everybody what you're drinking.
00:07:35.000 It's called Bang.
00:07:36.000 How many did you have?
00:07:37.000 This is my second one.
00:07:38.000 You weigh eight pounds.
00:07:40.000 I don't. 1.00
00:07:40.000 What the fuck are you doing? 1.00
00:07:41.000 I don't. 0.99
00:07:41.000 Sorry. 0.99
00:07:41.000 You're so tiny. 0.99
00:07:43.000 This is so much.
00:07:45.000 I know, I know.
00:07:46.000 Are you going to be the first person to die on the show?
00:07:48.000 No, no.
00:07:49.000 Please don't.
00:07:50.000 Sorry.
00:07:51.000 I mean, this stuff is like...
00:07:52.000 Yeah, put it away.
00:07:53.000 It's got a lot of caffeine. 1.00
00:07:54.000 Stop fucking with it. 1.00
00:07:55.000 Sorry, it was my second one. 1.00
00:07:56.000 I had like a really heavy workout.
00:07:57.000 You can't have second ones of those.
00:07:59.000 You probably weigh like 80 pounds.
00:08:01.000 Like seriously.
00:08:02.000 105. Come on, stop lying.
00:08:03.000 105 pounds, yeah.
00:08:04.000 No, I got muscle.
00:08:05.000 You're a tiny person.
00:08:06.000 No, no, I got muscle. 0.57
00:08:06.000 Right, but you're very small. 0.57
00:08:08.000 That is a lot.
00:08:09.000 It's also heating me up right now.
00:08:10.000 Sorry.
00:08:11.000 Yeah.
00:08:11.000 Your heart rate's pounding.
00:08:12.000 It's kind of crazy.
00:08:12.000 No, I know.
00:08:13.000 I can feel it.
00:08:14.000 It's like...
00:08:14.000 I can see words.
00:08:15.000 Yeah.
00:08:18.000 What do they look like?
00:08:19.000 What color are they?
00:08:20.000 I don't know.
00:08:21.000 Red.
00:08:22.000 It's getting crazy.
00:08:23.000 Sorry.
00:08:24.000 Sorry about that.
00:08:24.000 Just take some deep breaths.
00:08:25.000 Calm yourself down.
00:08:26.000 I know.
00:08:27.000 Did you drink that to get pumped up for the show?
00:08:30.000 This is my pre-workout.
00:08:31.000 So when I did my morning workout, I drank one.
00:08:34.000 And then I was like, you know what?
00:08:35.000 I didn't really sleep that much last night, so I might need another one.
00:08:37.000 Oh my God.
00:08:37.000 What a bad idea.
00:08:38.000 Sorry.
00:08:39.000 I've had people come in here that are on Adderall, and that's always the weirdest one.
00:08:42.000 Why?
00:08:42.000 Because you've got to slow down.
00:08:45.000 We're on different paces.
00:08:47.000 Not you.
00:08:47.000 I need a downer.
00:08:48.000 I definitely need a downer.
00:08:49.000 Want a pot?
00:08:50.000 Pot doesn't work on me. 1.00
00:08:52.000 Oh, right.
00:08:53.000 What kind of pot?
00:08:54.000 I bet the pot we have will work on you. 0.96
00:08:57.000 Up to 50. I've done 55 milligrams edibles.
00:09:00.000 That's ridiculously low.
00:09:02.000 I do 200 every time I go to the airport.
00:09:04.000 Wait, 200 milligrams?
00:09:05.000 Yes.
00:09:06.000 Okay, but I'm like a quarter away.
00:09:07.000 Joey Diaz takes a thousand.
00:09:09.000 All right, maybe I just haven't up my game yet.
00:09:13.000 You can't say pot doesn't work on you.
00:09:15.000 Okay, but I so far have been unable to respond to it.
00:09:18.000 Really?
00:09:19.000 Yeah.
00:09:19.000 And smoking it or eating it or both?
00:09:24.000 Both.
00:09:24.000 Jamie is with you with the eating.
00:09:26.000 He's got some weird genetic disorder that doesn't work with him.
00:09:31.000 He can take a thousand edibles and just hang around with people.
00:09:34.000 So that's a thing.
00:09:36.000 Some people are immune to THC. Some people get withdrawals too.
00:09:41.000 I've talked to people that get actual physical withdrawals from marijuana.
00:09:45.000 I used to be really skeptical about that, but these are people that I actually trust.
00:09:49.000 And they're like, wow, I would, you know, when they would go on tour, like if they have to go places and they didn't have pot, they'd get, literally, they'd get shaky, they'd feel weird, and then they realize, like, oh, this is, my body's withdrawing from THC. Apparently it's very rare,
00:10:04.000 but common enough so that it's in the literature.
00:10:08.000 They really, they've documented people that have, like, a physical response to withdrawing from marijuana.
00:10:13.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to more research being done on this stuff anyway.
00:10:18.000 Yes.
00:10:19.000 Yeah, we're headed there.
00:10:20.000 Yes.
00:10:20.000 But then Trump recently said something about trying to...
00:10:24.000 I know.
00:10:24.000 I'm surprised.
00:10:25.000 He was comparing the way they handle drug dealers in China with a swift fair trial.
00:10:33.000 Yeah.
00:10:33.000 Was he saying Singapore?
00:10:35.000 No, but...
00:10:35.000 But that's how they do it in Singapore.
00:10:37.000 Swift fair trial and the death penalty is what he said.
00:10:41.000 There's a resurgence of this in Asia.
00:10:43.000 You see it in the Philippines as well.
00:10:45.000 Duterte has this extrajudicial drug war that he's been launching.
00:10:51.000 I understand the concern with the plight I understand that people are really worried that people getting addicted to drugs ruin their lives.
00:11:03.000 It devastates families, people dying of overdoses from fentanyl and all these different hazards that are associated with drug use and drug dealing.
00:11:11.000 I understand that.
00:11:12.000 But this sort of archaic way of handling it, death penalty talk in 2020. I know.
00:11:20.000 And one country completely decriminalized all drugs, right?
00:11:25.000 Was it Portugal?
00:11:26.000 Portugal, yeah.
00:11:26.000 And they had spectacular results.
00:11:28.000 Low everything.
00:11:29.000 Lower incidence of HIV infection, lower drug addiction, lower overdoses, lower everything, lower crime.
00:11:37.000 Right.
00:11:37.000 I just don't...
00:11:39.000 It's just messy.
00:11:41.000 If there was one thing you could do, like, hey, if we do this thing, then no one gets addicted to drugs and no one dies from overdoses.
00:11:48.000 Well, then you do that thing.
00:11:49.000 And that's legalization?
00:11:51.000 That no one would die from overdose?
00:11:53.000 They certainly would, though.
00:11:54.000 People definitely will die of overdoses.
00:11:56.000 If you make drugs legal across the board, the one thing that you do that's good is you stop all the flow of money into illegal drug sales.
00:12:07.000 Right.
00:12:07.000 So all the people that are selling drugs, or most of it at least, all the cartel money, all that stuff goes away.
00:12:13.000 Because the cartels are making billions and billions of dollars selling to the United States and other countries they can sell to.
00:12:19.000 And they're doing it because it's illegal.
00:12:21.000 Because it's a business they can capitalize on that American businesses are not capitalizing on.
00:12:26.000 And violence goes down too, I'm assuming.
00:12:27.000 Right?
00:12:28.000 Related to crime.
00:12:29.000 There's a correlation.
00:12:30.000 I mean, if you go back to what happened in the United States during Prohibition, what it did is pop up organized crime.
00:12:37.000 It propped up organized crime in a pretty spectacular way.
00:12:40.000 And it was because there was a massive amount of money to be made selling alcohol.
00:12:45.000 The desire for alcohol didn't go away.
00:12:48.000 The legality of it went away.
00:12:49.000 Right, right.
00:12:50.000 So illegal sales went through the roof and the people that were selling it were criminals.
00:12:55.000 I just think it's part of the human spirit, you know, that if you say you can't have something, there's an old Arabic proverb, that which is prohibited is always wanted.
00:13:05.000 And whatever you kind of like, you just drive it underground if you try to ban it.
00:13:10.000 It's the whole spirit of punk rock, of like, F you to the system.
00:13:14.000 And that just lies in almost every human heart.
00:13:17.000 We actually see that with our books, for example.
00:13:21.000 A lot of books are actually transmitted on these telegram groups in Arabic.
00:13:27.000 Books that Sam Harris writes, Richard Dawkins, these kinds of ideas that are really super censored in the Middle East.
00:13:36.000 So that's kind of the gap that we're trying to plug right now.
00:13:42.000 It's that since books are not available in that language, I think there's this crazy statistic.
00:13:48.000 More books are translated between English and Spanish in one year than English and Arabic in a thousand years.
00:13:55.000 Wow.
00:13:56.000 It's kind of crazy.
00:13:57.000 That is kind of crazy.
00:13:58.000 So the exposure to those ideas Yeah, exactly.
00:14:02.000 Yeah.
00:14:02.000 Right?
00:14:03.000 The only other option is get these people to learn English, which is a far more difficult task.
00:14:07.000 Of course.
00:14:08.000 Of course.
00:14:08.000 And, you know, your average person living in, say, a Syrian refugee camp isn't going to learn that quickly.
00:14:14.000 Right.
00:14:14.000 You've got to meet people where they are, right?
00:14:16.000 So I think the statistic when we first started, 10% of English Wikipedia was actually in Arabic, which means that every time, like, for example, let's say you're like, oh, Jamie, go Google this, right?
00:14:27.000 And you expect an answer.
00:14:29.000 It's just at the tip of our fingertips.
00:14:32.000 It's so baked into modern life now, we don't even, like, think twice about it.
00:14:36.000 But imagine if, like, you live in, I don't know, Saudi Arabia, and like, okay, let's just Google it.
00:14:42.000 10 out of every 10 times, one time, there's no answer.
00:14:47.000 Because the page doesn't exist, or, you know, it just, the word feminism doesn't exist in Arabic. 1.00
00:14:53.000 So you can't look it up, or secularism doesn't exist.
00:14:58.000 How do you expect people to break out of their mindset, of their indoctrination?
00:15:05.000 We're not saying this is a top-down thing.
00:15:08.000 You have to read this. 0.74
00:15:09.000 I just want to live in a world where being ignorant is a choice for everyone.
00:15:13.000 Because it's a choice for us. 1.00
00:15:15.000 Let's say right now you're dumb and basically you spend your nights watching The Bachelor or whatever it is. 1.00
00:15:23.000 It's like... 1.00
00:15:24.000 I know some people.
00:15:25.000 I do, too.
00:15:26.000 I do, too.
00:15:27.000 I know.
00:15:29.000 I'm judging, but I know.
00:15:30.000 Oh, listen.
00:15:31.000 They also are into interesting things, but I know some people do consume mindless nonsense.
00:15:36.000 My friend Cam, he watches The Bachelorette.
00:15:37.000 But exclusively.
00:15:38.000 He does.
00:15:39.000 I'm calling you out, Cam.
00:15:40.000 He's shaming him?
00:15:41.000 Yeah. 1.00
00:15:41.000 You know you watch that shit. 1.00
00:15:43.000 Which one? 1.00
00:15:43.000 The female one? 1.00
00:15:44.000 Bachelorette?
00:15:45.000 He watches both of them.
00:15:46.000 Oh, God.
00:15:47.000 Oh, God.
00:15:48.000 I only know that's still going on because I'm at the checkout line in the supermarket.
00:15:52.000 I'm like, why is that there?
00:15:53.000 It's so strange that people are even interested in that.
00:15:55.000 I know.
00:15:56.000 I know.
00:15:57.000 It's a weird thing.
00:15:58.000 Very weird thing.
00:16:00.000 Yes, that ignorance would be a choice, would be nice.
00:16:04.000 Right.
00:16:05.000 Yeah, so what you're saying is that these parts of the world...
00:16:10.000 One of the problems of getting them to shift their perception of the world is that they're not exposed to all the great works.
00:16:16.000 They're not exposed to the different ideas and different debates.
00:16:21.000 And they have a monoculture.
00:16:22.000 So monoculture because of, you know, society is, they have religions, they have ways of life that are just so deeply entrenched, right?
00:16:30.000 And then you also have a really, really heavy censorship, both from your authoritarian government and also from your religion.
00:16:37.000 You know, the first word, for example, the first word in the Quran is actually read.
00:16:41.000 Really?
00:16:42.000 But they really mean just read this one thing.
00:16:45.000 And, you know, just the sort of like habits of a free mind are not really cultivated.
00:16:52.000 And also when you're taught, I mean, growing up, not to question things.
00:16:55.000 And in part, I understand because I think when you grow up in an Asian household with, like, you know, tiger parents, there's this sense of, like, you don't question my authority, you know. 0.98
00:17:06.000 So it permeates culture from a very, very young age.
00:17:08.000 And imagine, like, if you kind of grow up in that environment, you're going to internalize all those things.
00:17:15.000 And that's why it kind of, you know, It follows you over time.
00:17:20.000 So when you were in school, you're taught no questions. 0.99
00:17:23.000 It's not like here where it is like, there's no such thing as a stupid question, Chad. 0.99
00:17:27.000 There are in Asia. 1.00
00:17:29.000 There's definitely stupid questions over here too. 0.99
00:17:31.000 But you're told, you're at least told that. 0.99
00:17:33.000 We're giving Chad a break.
00:17:35.000 But I understand what you're saying and that must be really interesting for you to go from this one fairly restrictive environment to a fairly open environment.
00:17:45.000 Correct.
00:17:45.000 And did that shift that happened in you and being exposed to all these different ideas, did that spark this desire to help other people sort of expand their ideas and what they're exposed to?
00:17:58.000 Yeah, because, well, I felt like a fish out of water growing up in Singapore.
00:18:01.000 I was always the person that, like, the teachers had a call.
00:18:03.000 Like, you know, your daughter's asking too many questions, she's disrupting the class.
00:18:07.000 What kind of questions?
00:18:08.000 I don't know.
00:18:09.000 I went to Sunday school too.
00:18:10.000 I was that kid who was just like, you know, excuse me, but why do the dinosaurs, why is it in the Bible that the dinosaurs and human beings walked, you know, basically like days apart when like we know from science that, you know, it was millions of years and fossils.
00:18:27.000 Did they get mad at you?
00:18:28.000 Of course.
00:18:28.000 Of course.
00:18:29.000 Yeah.
00:18:29.000 No, they were like, just keep her out of, we just rather her not come to Sunday school.
00:18:33.000 Really?
00:18:34.000 Yeah.
00:18:34.000 Yeah.
00:18:35.000 No answers.
00:18:36.000 There was no one that tried to like sort it through and say, listen, must be that God was testing people and this is why...
00:18:46.000 That's what my mom would say.
00:18:47.000 Really?
00:18:47.000 But in class, it's just, you know, there's no culture of dialectics, of having dialogue and refining your positions.
00:18:57.000 It's that it comes from authority, right?
00:18:59.000 This is a very Confucian culture.
00:19:00.000 So it's like, well, I am your teacher, so it is the way it is.
00:19:05.000 And, okay, that's one level of it.
00:19:08.000 And if you, say, grow up in the Middle East, asking a question could be death, right? 1.00
00:19:12.000 If you even remotely, like, say in Saudi Arabia especially, remotely reveal that you might be having atheistic thoughts, that's death.
00:19:19.000 So it's like we're talking about different scales and degrees of censorship and consequences for that.
00:19:24.000 And I think when I met my co-founder, Faisal, I was like, okay, I guess I had issues with the country I grew up in.
00:19:31.000 But for him, it was – he ended up almost being killed by al-Qaeda for just like starting a blog talking about the importance of secularism and countering violent extremism.
00:19:42.000 Really?
00:19:43.000 Yeah, that's how he came here as a refugee. 0.99
00:19:45.000 So I'm like, oh shit, maybe they are – How did he almost get killed by al-Qaeda? 0.96
00:19:50.000 Well, because when the US invaded Baghdad, and he was living in Baghdad at the time, and Al-Qaeda took over his neighborhood, once there was a void, Saddam was ousted, right? 0.97
00:20:02.000 And he was kind of like...
00:20:06.000 You know, roaming around and kind of telling the U.S. Army certain things.
00:20:10.000 Like, okay, you know, this is where Al-Qaeda is.
00:20:12.000 This is a cell.
00:20:13.000 My friend here has been radicalized.
00:20:16.000 And Al-Qaeda knew.
00:20:18.000 They put him on a hit list, you know, because he was not sympathetic to their cause.
00:20:24.000 And so he ended up on a death list.
00:20:27.000 His brother was killed.
00:20:29.000 Just horrible story.
00:20:31.000 Bridget actually recently interviewed him on her podcast. 0.97
00:20:34.000 And I get the sense that like, oh shit, like the consequence of saying what you think there is like, at least in my case, it was just like, hey, maybe I might go to jail in Singapore. 0.98
00:20:46.000 But in Iraq, it was death. 0.98
00:20:49.000 I think it's hard for people in America to really grasp what that environment must be like because we're so accustomed to this idea of freedom of speech and it's so ingrained.
00:21:02.000 Yes, it's so ingrained.
00:21:05.000 Rebels are appreciated and tolerated here.
00:21:07.000 You know, they're rewarded.
00:21:09.000 Yeah, it's the whole Maverick thing.
00:21:10.000 I think, you know, as long as America still can celebrate Mavericks and not just tolerate them, but actually celebrate them, we're going to be fine, right?
00:21:20.000 Yeah.
00:21:21.000 Hopefully.
00:21:22.000 The thing is that if it exists the way it exists in other parts of the world, it can exist like that here.
00:21:29.000 Like, the worst cases...
00:21:31.000 Of human behavior when you see, you know, any form of dictatorship or control or propaganda or controlled by the state or by industry, that stuff that you see in other countries is human beings in 2020. I mean,
00:21:48.000 we would like to think that our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and all of our ideals and what this country was founded on is going to keep it from deteriorating like that, and most likely it will.
00:21:58.000 But the reality is, those people in Iraq are human beings in 2020, and they are living in a completely different way than we're living right now, on the same timeline, because things did not go well there, and they're stuck in this horrible situation.
00:22:15.000 Where they are controlled by these religious fanatics and they are stuck and there's not a lot that they can do other than escape.
00:22:24.000 Right.
00:22:25.000 And, you know, right now also like with the rise of China, they're also, you know, starting to use like basically some form of like electronic tyranny, right? 0.83
00:22:35.000 They're able to just really censor the internet in a way that's been unprecedented.
00:22:40.000 You can't access Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter.
00:22:44.000 None of these things that you and I can just open on our apps can be accessed in China.
00:22:49.000 So the way they just control information and now exporting those same tools to other authoritarian countries around the world, that part to me is dangerous because I think both Faisal and I came to America with this like, all right, this is the place that we can finally be ourselves and think for ourselves,
00:23:05.000 right?
00:23:05.000 And we're starting to see that the whole world seems to be kind of going in the other direction.
00:23:11.000 So there was a shift in China and the shift was it was initially a completely communist society and now capitalism, at least in a monetary sense, is embraced.
00:23:26.000 So there's this giant shift in what China actually is, which corresponds to this huge growth.
00:23:35.000 Is it possible that in the future this shift could move on to other aspects of Chinese culture like discourse or the way they view the government or even some form of democracy?
00:23:48.000 That was what we expected.
00:23:50.000 That's what we expected.
00:23:51.000 That was the theory.
00:23:52.000 But the way China has behaved now, you know, they call it socialism with Chinese characteristics.
00:23:58.000 That's the official name of this long-drawn game to, you know, institute market reforms, usher in riches for the middle class, lift a lot of people out of poverty.
00:24:10.000 But in a very controlled way, in a way that's like...
00:24:14.000 See, that's the thing about Asian culture that people don't understand.
00:24:16.000 It's that the...
00:24:19.000 There's a fundamental difference between the China dream and the American dream, right?
00:24:24.000 And Xi Jinping has outlined what he thinks is the China dream.
00:24:28.000 It's basically a top-down way.
00:24:32.000 It's a goal.
00:24:33.000 It's a national goal.
00:24:34.000 And basically what they're trying to say is that, okay, we're going to lift a lot of people out of poverty, but your generation has to make sacrifices.
00:24:41.000 It's not about the individual.
00:24:43.000 It's about building a strong China and implicitly also about, you know, ensuring that the CCP stays in power, the Chinese Communist Party stays in power.
00:24:52.000 But it's that you might have to give up, you know, personal sacrifices for the sake of China versus the American dream is bottom up.
00:25:01.000 It's about...
00:25:03.000 You're right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:25:06.000 That's it.
00:25:06.000 And if you do that, that's the American dream.
00:25:08.000 And if you achieve a certain level of happiness, if you achieve, you know, it's all like, it's bottom up.
00:25:12.000 It's not centralized and it's not something that the Chinese government is kind of trying to stuff down your throat.
00:25:18.000 And China's willing to play the long game. 0.51
00:25:22.000 It is still a Leninist Marxist government.
00:25:27.000 Xi Jinping still believes in all of that.
00:25:29.000 That's why it's still so totalitarian.
00:25:31.000 But they know that the way to gain power in the world is to get rich.
00:25:38.000 And they did it on the back of trade with other countries through very unfair practices, actually, in many cases.
00:25:47.000 I think there are a lot of estimates of how much they've actually stolen from the United States in terms of intellectual property, corporate espionage, now even academia is being infected.
00:26:00.000 How so?
00:26:01.000 They just arrested the head of the chemistry department at Harvard.
00:26:06.000 Oh, that's right.
00:26:07.000 Yeah.
00:26:08.000 But wasn't that...
00:26:09.000 Didn't they think that that guy was in connection with some weaponized...
00:26:14.000 What's that article?
00:26:16.000 The virus thing?
00:26:16.000 Yeah.
00:26:16.000 No, no.
00:26:17.000 Am I thinking of something else?
00:26:19.000 There was an article linking some Canadian researchers to the virus.
00:26:24.000 That's what it was.
00:26:24.000 No, but this was different.
00:26:26.000 The head of the chemistry department at Harvard was found to have lied about receiving money from the Chinese government.
00:26:32.000 So there's this program called the Thousand Talents Program in China.
00:26:36.000 Basically, they're offering a lot of money.
00:26:38.000 The New York Times did a really good expose on this program.
00:26:41.000 They basically offer money to, like, academics.
00:26:43.000 Because, you know, it kind of sucks to be one here in the sense of, like, you're not paid that well.
00:26:48.000 But China's dangling, like, a lot more money and say, okay, if you do research here in China, there's going to be, like, less bureaucracy.
00:26:57.000 So that's their way to lure these people in.
00:26:59.000 So he was hiding the fact that he was getting income from them?
00:27:02.000 Correct.
00:27:02.000 How was he hiding it?
00:27:04.000 He just – he didn't report it.
00:27:06.000 Oh.
00:27:07.000 But he put it in the bank anyway?
00:27:08.000 Right.
00:27:09.000 And so at the end of the day, when you do – when there's a relationship there, China owns your research.
00:27:14.000 And if you're researching something sensitive, that's a big issue.
00:27:18.000 There was an article today where they've confirmed that Huawei has some sort of third-party backdoor with a lot of their electronics.
00:27:26.000 Yeah.
00:27:27.000 There was a lot of speculation to why the United States was banning Huawei from the major providers.
00:27:33.000 Because they were very close to releasing some.
00:27:36.000 And they have some amazing phones.
00:27:37.000 And they were really close to...
00:27:39.000 I always used to use them.
00:27:39.000 Yeah.
00:27:40.000 Yeah, just in principle.
00:27:41.000 In fact, one of my girlfriends, she's kind of sponsored by Huawei.
00:27:43.000 She's European. 0.96
00:27:44.000 I wanted to take a selfie with me and I was like, there's no way that my face could ever be in your phone.
00:27:51.000 Really?
00:27:51.000 No.
00:27:52.000 Absolutely not.
00:27:52.000 Tell me why.
00:27:53.000 What are your thoughts on it?
00:27:55.000 Huawei is really another apparatus of the main party, the government.
00:28:03.000 I really think that Huawei, with respect to the next era of the digital world, is the next Sputnik.
00:28:11.000 It is the Sputnik issue of our time.
00:28:13.000 We should be doing everything we can to not allow Huawei to have this big market share.
00:28:22.000 And the person who started it was somebody that had a lot of party connections to the general or something.
00:28:30.000 And they really operate in a way that's very opaque.
00:28:35.000 And anyone doing business in China will have to have connections to the government, especially when you're that big.
00:28:43.000 And because it's a government that has such totalitarian control over everything, You can expect that whatever information or that they would have to answer to the government, whatever the government wants.
00:28:56.000 If you're willing to put your privacy in the hands of an entity like that, you know, go ahead.
00:29:02.000 But know also that the Chinese government has enacted all these mass surveillance policies.
00:29:10.000 I just wouldn't trust.
00:29:12.000 I just wouldn't trust them.
00:29:14.000 So what is different between Huawei and...
00:29:17.000 There's many Chinese manufacturers of cell phones and...
00:29:22.000 Like Xiaomi.
00:29:23.000 Yeah.
00:29:24.000 It's the government connection.
00:29:27.000 And Huawei's the only one that has that deep government connection?
00:29:30.000 Well, the founder at least was the general.
00:29:32.000 That much I know.
00:29:34.000 And just a lot of party connections and...
00:29:39.000 It's also heavily subsidized by the government, which is one of the ways that China has been competing unfairly in global markets.
00:29:48.000 You can drive out innovation in the United States by making sure that Your local version is so competitive on prices that they can't match you.
00:29:58.000 So in a way, it's like a form of economic warfare, which is one of the issues that Trump has really pushed back on.
00:30:05.000 It's the China trade issue.
00:30:08.000 And he's been criticized about that.
00:30:10.000 Do you think he's correct?
00:30:13.000 On China?
00:30:14.000 Yes.
00:30:14.000 On China, yes.
00:30:15.000 I do think he's correct.
00:30:17.000 He's been pushed back on.
00:30:18.000 It's interesting because I think the Democrats were a lot more protectionist when it came to trade.
00:30:24.000 The Republicans and the Libertarians are always like, free trade, free trade, everything.
00:30:29.000 Globalize the world.
00:30:30.000 It was the whole Thomas Friedman position when he wrote about it in Lexus and the Olive Tree, that if we globalize the world, that you lift a lot of people out of poverty, your economic pie grows, but your politics shrink.
00:30:46.000 That was the idea, right?
00:30:47.000 No two countries that have McDonald's would fight a war or something like that.
00:30:50.000 That was his theory.
00:30:52.000 And in the case of China, obviously that didn't happen.
00:30:57.000 The part about the politics changing.
00:31:00.000 There was this quote by a Tiananmen protester.
00:31:03.000 He said, if the free world doesn't change China, China will change the free world. 0.97
00:31:08.000 Whoa.
00:31:08.000 And if you think about what happened with the NBA, you know, the whole Daryl Morey tweet.
00:31:15.000 Yeah, explain that because that was shocking to me because the way they were capitulating to China, I was, you know, I was a little stunned because it was so open.
00:31:23.000 Yeah.
00:31:24.000 And can you explain what happened?
00:31:25.000 So, Daryl Morey, who is the GM of the Houston Rockets, he tweeted out basically a little picture that showed that he supported the Hong Kong protesters.
00:31:38.000 And the Hong Kong protesters have been at it since July of last year, 2019. They have been protesting the incursion of Chinese control into their supposedly autonomous region.
00:31:51.000 China promised them that there would be two systems, one country, two systems after the handover in 1997 from the British to China.
00:32:00.000 They've slowly kind of eroded that in many ways.
00:32:05.000 And their freedoms have been kind of, you know, diminishing over time.
00:32:09.000 The straw that broke the camel's back was actually this policy that they passed, this law they passed that said that anyone can be extradited to China for trials, basically.
00:32:19.000 It was after a case that happened, a criminal case.
00:32:22.000 And the Hong Kong people knew that this law, if it goes in effect, basically gives the Chinese government legal right to Disappear or kidnap anyone and bring them for trial in some sort of kangaroo or show trial in China.
00:32:35.000 And that has happened.
00:32:35.000 So booksellers, it's always the booksellers in Hong Kong have been kidnapped because they were publishing these insider accounts like Dirty Secrets of the CCP whenever there was a leak.
00:32:47.000 Because the Chinese Communist Party is huge.
00:32:49.000 The Politburo is huge.
00:32:50.000 And so there was a bookseller called Causeway Books.
00:32:53.000 And they were publishing all these accounts from within the Chinese Communist Party.
00:32:58.000 And the owner of that bookshop one day just disappeared.
00:33:03.000 And he ended up in China.
00:33:05.000 It was basically a forced kidnapping.
00:33:07.000 And he was released.
00:33:09.000 I think he did his jail time.
00:33:12.000 And now he's setting up another bookshop in Taiwan.
00:33:16.000 But that law...
00:33:18.000 Basically, it would just have allowed China to do that legally this time.
00:33:22.000 So the Hong Kong youth were up in arms.
00:33:24.000 They were tired of all the ways that their way of life had changed since the British handed it over.
00:33:32.000 And in a way, they were kind of pining for the good old times, the good old times when they were under an English colonial master, which was one of those moments for anyone on the left.
00:33:44.000 And so Daryl Morey tweeted this out.
00:33:47.000 And of course, you know how big the China market is for the NBA, right?
00:33:52.000 Like all these players have contracts with them.
00:33:54.000 In fact, the Houston Rockets had a lot of contracts with the Chinese CCTV for broadcasts.
00:34:00.000 They also had like merchandising opportunities, sneakers that were made there.
00:34:06.000 And that caused a huge, huge outcry in China.
00:34:10.000 They were just like, oh, he's disrespecting us.
00:34:13.000 And they were able to force him to basically make a groveling tweet that said, oh, I'm sorry for hurting the feelings of The Chinese people.
00:34:22.000 And then like all the other, some NBA players actually came out and, you know, kind of took the side of the Chinese government.
00:34:30.000 Like, oh wait, who are we to, you know, they kind of like did this backpedal thing when they're so strong on other forms of activism here.
00:34:38.000 Like the NBA when it came to the North Carolina, the bathroom bill, you remember? 0.68
00:34:42.000 Like the transgender bathroom bill? 0.92
00:34:43.000 They were always on the side of the woke.
00:34:46.000 But then when it came to the China-Hong Kong issue, they stood with the biggest, the oppressor.
00:34:53.000 Yeah, it's always hard when someone does side on the woke.
00:34:57.000 Like, are you doing this because you think this?
00:35:00.000 Or are you doing this because you think it'll make people think more highly of you if you do it?
00:35:06.000 It's such a contrived thing today.
00:35:09.000 It's so difficult to figure out why people are acting the way they're acting.
00:35:12.000 So when they were acting in that way, It was so transparent.
00:35:16.000 There was no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
00:35:19.000 They were pressured.
00:35:20.000 And they were worried about the money.
00:35:22.000 They were worried about economic, you know, whatever.
00:35:24.000 The fallout.
00:35:25.000 Yeah, whatever fallout would happen.
00:35:26.000 Right.
00:35:27.000 It was really obvious.
00:35:28.000 It was like, whoa, this is not like trans people using the bathroom. 1.00
00:35:32.000 This is like, you guys are threatened.
00:35:35.000 Right, exactly.
00:35:36.000 But the number of companies that have kowtowed to China's orthodoxy, there should be a list.
00:35:44.000 Somebody should be keeping track of all of this.
00:35:46.000 There are companies like Marriott, even like luxury brands.
00:35:50.000 So I think Versace or Dolce& Gabbana got in trouble because I think on their website they listed countries.
00:35:57.000 That we're in, and it was like they put Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
00:36:02.000 And China said, no, no, no, what are you doing?
00:36:05.000 This is all China. 1.00
00:36:07.000 If you don't change that website, you're not going to be allowed to do business.
00:36:11.000 And everyone wants a share of the Chinese market.
00:36:13.000 That's the problem.
00:36:14.000 It's like the biggest market in the world.
00:36:16.000 Maybe India's bigger. 0.96
00:36:19.000 Well, at least in the future, India will get bigger. 1.00
00:36:21.000 But everyone wants access to Chinese markets.
00:36:24.000 So they're able to use that as leverage to basically bully Companies, even movie execs to produce the content they want.
00:36:33.000 I think World War Z was affected.
00:36:36.000 The other movie was Doctor Strange, the Marvel movie, where the character played by Tilda Swinton was supposed to be a Timan monk.
00:36:45.000 But you can't, like, Tibet is this, like, hot bun issue for China, right?
00:36:49.000 Like, people have been fighting for independence for a while.
00:36:51.000 The Dalai Lama was exiled.
00:36:52.000 So they changed the character.
00:36:54.000 It wasn't a Tibetan monk.
00:36:55.000 They changed it to a Celtic monk.
00:36:57.000 And they made it to be a woman playing the character instead to appease the Chinese government.
00:37:03.000 So they changed it in the American version as well?
00:37:07.000 Yeah.
00:37:08.000 So that woman wasn't supposed to be... 1.00
00:37:11.000 The American version is...
00:37:11.000 Right.
00:37:11.000 Because the studios, they're all going in on these deals with China.
00:37:14.000 China's financing all these movies now.
00:37:17.000 Wow.
00:37:18.000 So that woman in Doctor Strange was initially supposed to be a Tibetan monk.
00:37:21.000 A male, yeah.
00:37:22.000 Wow.
00:37:23.000 Yeah, but they rewrote it to reflect a Celtic female monk.
00:37:29.000 Yeah.
00:37:30.000 Whoa.
00:37:30.000 Whoa.
00:37:31.000 And then I think the recent, the Top Gun, the movie that's coming out with Tom Cruise too, partially financed by China, and they have these, like his jacket, people noticed that there was a patch that was like missing, and it turns out like that patch, it was like a,
00:37:47.000 for some reason China was just triggered by it, and it was gone.
00:37:52.000 So they did digitally remove it?
00:37:54.000 No, no, just in the costume.
00:37:56.000 Oh, this is it.
00:37:59.000 Yes.
00:38:00.000 What was the problem?
00:38:01.000 Was it a Japanese flag?
00:38:02.000 That's the Taiwanese flag.
00:38:03.000 The red and blue.
00:38:05.000 The USS Galveston.
00:38:08.000 Wow.
00:38:09.000 But that's what makes it so scary that they're able to pressure people to change their behavior from afar without no bullets.
00:38:18.000 This is just money.
00:38:20.000 Money.
00:38:20.000 There's just access.
00:38:21.000 Whores. 1.00
00:38:22.000 Chinese market. 1.00
00:38:22.000 I know. 1.00
00:38:23.000 So many whores. 1.00
00:38:25.000 But that's why I think one of the solutions to this is to really start... 0.99
00:38:28.000 I don't know.
00:38:28.000 Somebody should really start a website.
00:38:30.000 Maybe it should be me.
00:38:31.000 To just track all this stuff.
00:38:33.000 All the companies that are kowtowing to China.
00:38:35.000 All the ones who are standing on the ground.
00:38:38.000 And so you can decide where to put your money.
00:38:40.000 So it's just a giant part of the market.
00:38:42.000 That's the problem with these films.
00:38:44.000 It's probably Top Gun over in China.
00:38:47.000 First of all, China invests, and then they sell those movies over there, and it's an enormous part of their overall budget, right?
00:38:54.000 The largest, in terms of the box office, outside of the United States, the second largest market is China.
00:39:01.000 The third one is Japan, and it's like one-fifth of China, basically.
00:39:07.000 So it's nowhere close.
00:39:10.000 And, you know, we're all driven by profits.
00:39:13.000 It's capitalism.
00:39:14.000 I think they tried to get Quentin Tarantino to change his movie for China.
00:39:17.000 I told him to go pound sand.
00:39:18.000 I think so.
00:39:19.000 I remember.
00:39:19.000 Was it the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?
00:39:21.000 Yeah, the new one.
00:39:22.000 Yeah.
00:39:23.000 Well done.
00:39:24.000 Yeah.
00:39:24.000 Well done.
00:39:25.000 It's weird that it's that easy.
00:39:28.000 Just throw some money around and people change their culture.
00:39:32.000 Right.
00:39:32.000 I mean, Google was developing a search engine for China.
00:39:37.000 Well, I knew some people at Google while that was going on, and their position was, if we don't do this, they're going to copy our search engine and just steal all the intellectual property.
00:39:49.000 Or we can work with them and provide a censored version of Google.
00:39:54.000 And I remember sitting there going, this is almost like legalizing drugs.
00:39:58.000 Like, it's messy.
00:39:59.000 There's no good way here. 1.00
00:40:02.000 They both suck. 0.99
00:40:04.000 It sucks if they steal the intellectual copyright, if they steal the ideas and create their own version of Google. 1.00
00:40:12.000 It also sucks if Google goes over there and self-censors. 0.95
00:40:16.000 Right.
00:40:16.000 And provides them with, you know, the ability to filter out information.
00:40:20.000 But I think also that if there's also an argument that if it was Google, at least maybe they have one tentacle in China, and so therefore it might be able to change things or keep a pulse, you know, have their pulse on something.
00:40:32.000 There's the argument.
00:40:34.000 Well, at least they blocked Huawei, or I shouldn't say at least, but it's interesting that they blocked Huawei from using all of their apps.
00:40:42.000 So Huawei no longer has apps.
00:40:44.000 They no longer have access to the Google Play Store.
00:40:49.000 So their new phones, they have to have their own apps.
00:40:54.000 Yes.
00:40:55.000 This is with the Mate P40. I think it's what it's called.
00:41:01.000 Their newest, latest flagship phone.
00:41:02.000 They don't have access anymore.
00:41:05.000 There's some apps you can sideload from the web and you can download them directly to your phone.
00:41:12.000 But for the most part...
00:41:13.000 Their access to the Google Play Store is completely shut off.
00:41:17.000 So the thousands and thousands of apps.
00:41:20.000 For a lot of people, apps are everything.
00:41:23.000 It's not the phone itself.
00:41:24.000 It's the apps. 0.92
00:41:25.000 If you don't have Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and whatever the equivalents are in different countries, you're kind of shit out of luck.
00:41:36.000 I think reciprocity is a good policy to abide by, right?
00:41:39.000 So if China can influence us, if you want, because the Chinese, they always use their market as like, we'll shut you out of our market if you don't do this. 1.00
00:41:47.000 Well, we should be doing the same, which I think is what Trump had tried to do with the tariffs.
00:41:51.000 We're going to shut you out of our market.
00:41:52.000 We're going to penalize you unless you open up some things.
00:41:56.000 There have been unfair trade practices for a while.
00:42:00.000 It's hard for us to understand what's really going on because the news will show this anecdotal story of a farmer who's upset because he's losing money because of Trump's tariffs, and then people go, oh, tariffs bad.
00:42:13.000 I think to have a really comprehensive view of it, it's going to take a lot of studying.
00:42:18.000 You're going to have to dive deep and really try to understand the economics behind it all, and I think most people aren't willing to do that.
00:42:24.000 So we get sort of sold a narrative on the news.
00:42:28.000 I think the same thing happened with so-called industries that were important to our national security, like steel.
00:42:36.000 Those are things that we want to be careful how much we actually do outsource to overseas because there might come a time when we'll need those.
00:42:45.000 I mean, what happens if you globalize to the point that China's producing all your steel and then we have a war?
00:42:51.000 And where's all steel going to come from?
00:42:52.000 It's just so easy to be cut off.
00:42:54.000 Are you really worried about a hot war?
00:42:57.000 Um...
00:42:59.000 We're definitely in a Cold War right now with China, it feels. 0.99
00:43:03.000 But, you know, China does have military ambitions.
00:43:07.000 I mean, their actions in the South China Sea have shown that they do want to be at least militarily strong.
00:43:14.000 They haven't, you know, to their credit, haven't taken any...
00:43:17.000 They didn't go into Hong Kong with tanks or anything, right?
00:43:19.000 So no bloodshed on that account yet.
00:43:24.000 But it's one of those things also that in 2047, Hong Kong is going to return to China fully anyway.
00:43:30.000 Oh, it is?
00:43:30.000 It's 50 years?
00:43:31.000 Yeah, 2040. Because the handover was only like four or 50 years before.
00:43:35.000 This is just a transition.
00:43:36.000 So the long game belongs to China, and they know that. 0.99
00:43:41.000 They know that.
00:43:43.000 Oof.
00:43:44.000 This is not good.
00:43:45.000 It's not.
00:43:46.000 It's not.
00:43:47.000 And there's no hope in your eyes of China eventually becoming what they hoped it would be once capitalism was sort of introduced?
00:43:56.000 If people got information, if there were ways to resist the encroaching tyranny, especially digital tyranny, in all forms, so it's not just mass surveillance, all this AI stuff, they're sort of collecting people's facial scans.
00:44:15.000 It's such a dystopian nightmare.
00:44:17.000 It feels like it's a science fiction film, frankly.
00:44:22.000 If, I don't know, unless the revolution kind of comes from within and enough people woke up, maybe it can be averted.
00:44:30.000 But otherwise, we're just going to, you know, it's going to be headed towards this weird bipolar world where there's a new axis and a new allies.
00:44:43.000 That sucks. 0.98
00:44:44.000 That will suck. 1.00
00:44:44.000 That sucks already. 1.00
00:44:45.000 It sucks already if it's happening. 0.99
00:44:47.000 You've seen like Russia has taken the side of China. 0.97
00:44:50.000 Pakistan has taken the side of China now. 0.88
00:44:52.000 So there is an alliance kind of forming.
00:44:57.000 You can see it in – you know what happened with the UN passed this resolution condemning China's treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
00:45:05.000 And the signatories to that bill, that UN bill was basically the United States, New Zealand, a lot of European powers.
00:45:16.000 These are countries that are often accused of being Islamophobes because they won't accept Muslim refugees or that many Muslim refugees.
00:45:24.000 But you have Pakistan and even some majority of the Gulf countries siding with China, defending China on their treatment with Islam. 0.88
00:45:32.000 With the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. 1.00
00:45:34.000 And it's one of those things that's just like, what?
00:45:38.000 How is this happening?
00:45:39.000 You know, it doesn't make sense.
00:45:41.000 Does anybody have a roadmap of how they expect all this to play out?
00:45:47.000 Because it seems that this could be a real problem in the future.
00:45:51.000 And most Americans, up until this whole...
00:45:55.000 Up until this...
00:45:59.000 Trade issue with the Trump administration.
00:46:01.000 Most Americans didn't even think about China.
00:46:05.000 I think Hong Kong was the thing that kind of lit the whole barrel.
00:46:08.000 Just seeing the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets every day for weeks after months.
00:46:13.000 Really young people too.
00:46:16.000 I think the thing that has kind of descended to protests against police brutality now.
00:46:22.000 But it's still going on.
00:46:24.000 And now with the whole coronavirus flaring up there, it's highlighting a lot of issues with the Chinese government.
00:46:33.000 Taiwan is another issue still.
00:46:35.000 There are three Ts you can't really talk about in China now.
00:46:38.000 Tiananmen, Tibet, Taiwan.
00:46:39.000 These are three things that absolute no-go zones.
00:46:45.000 Now, what year did you come over here?
00:46:47.000 How old were you?
00:46:48.000 17. 17. Yeah.
00:46:49.000 What was the shift like going from Singapore to the United States?
00:46:53.000 You live in New York then?
00:46:54.000 No, no.
00:46:54.000 Boston.
00:46:55.000 Your hometown, right?
00:46:57.000 Yeah.
00:46:57.000 Yeah.
00:46:57.000 I lived in Boston for 10 years.
00:47:00.000 Really enjoyed it, actually. 0.99
00:47:01.000 It's cold as fuck. 0.99
00:47:03.000 No, I like it. 0.99
00:47:05.000 I don't know.
00:47:05.000 I'm a skier, so I really like it.
00:47:07.000 But there was a huge culture shock.
00:47:10.000 In a way, I knew what I was signing up for.
00:47:13.000 It's actually easier for Singaporeans to plug and play into any of the Commonwealth countries because it was a former British colony.
00:47:19.000 So all your credits would just transfer more easily to a university in England, for example, or Australia.
00:47:26.000 But I chose America precisely for the First Amendment.
00:47:30.000 It was a very strong motivating factor for me.
00:47:34.000 And also just the culture of, like we said, celebrating weird people.
00:47:39.000 Yes.
00:47:40.000 Because I was weird.
00:47:41.000 So I wanted to be in a place where I thought I would be accepted.
00:47:43.000 What made you weird?
00:47:46.000 Um...
00:47:49.000 So, Singapore is pretty conformist in terms of, you talk about monocultures.
00:47:54.000 There is a conformist drive.
00:47:57.000 Like, there is the right schools you go to, the right paths you take.
00:48:00.000 Very entrenched.
00:48:02.000 And I really rebelled against that.
00:48:05.000 Like, you know Singapore chewing gum is banned, right?
00:48:07.000 Yeah.
00:48:08.000 I have a hero.
00:48:10.000 Do you always bring chewing gum because it was banned in Singapore?
00:48:12.000 It's one of those things that's just stuck in my mind.
00:48:15.000 Had I grown up here, I probably wouldn't be chewing this right now.
00:48:18.000 It just wouldn't matter.
00:48:21.000 But when somebody says, do not touch wet paint, I'm like...
00:48:25.000 Yeah.
00:48:27.000 This has always been a part of your personality from the time you were young?
00:48:30.000 Yes.
00:48:31.000 It's always been kind of disagreeable.
00:48:33.000 Was this nature or nurture?
00:48:35.000 Don't know.
00:48:36.000 I don't know.
00:48:38.000 So when you came to America when you were 17, you said?
00:48:41.000 Yeah.
00:48:41.000 Was that like...
00:48:42.000 Yes, it was.
00:48:44.000 But there were a lot of culture shocks that I had to adapt to.
00:48:49.000 For starters, it definitely felt like a bit of a step back for me in terms of comfort, like standard of living.
00:48:59.000 The United States was kind of a third world country compared to Singapore.
00:49:02.000 Really?
00:49:03.000 Boston?
00:49:32.000 So many Singaporean kids, in fact, 90% of all the kids I know growing up, all grew up with maids.
00:49:40.000 Picking up after them, doing their laundry, everything.
00:49:43.000 So Singapore has no minimum wage.
00:49:47.000 No minimum wage.
00:49:48.000 No minimum wage.
00:49:48.000 And so if you measure employment in that country, in some economic measurements, the way they do it, it's almost like it's over-employed.
00:49:57.000 We don't have an unemployment problem.
00:50:00.000 Everybody has a job.
00:50:01.000 Pretty much.
00:50:02.000 No minimum wage, but how do people be taking advantage?
00:50:07.000 How are people taking advantage because of that?
00:50:09.000 Well, that's why wages are on average low in Singapore.
00:50:16.000 They're not that high.
00:50:17.000 The United States practices what you call efficiency wages, which is, you know, they kind of pay people a little bit more to extract a better performance, right?
00:50:26.000 Incentives matter.
00:50:27.000 Right.
00:50:28.000 But in Singapore, that's not the case.
00:50:30.000 But in Singapore, the streets are taken care of better, the bridges, all that stuff, infrastructure.
00:50:36.000 You know, I tweeted maybe like last week saying something like, especially now we're in like political debate season.
00:50:43.000 I'm so tired of this whole left-right argument, like small government, no, big government, government's a problem, government's a solution.
00:50:49.000 It's about effective government.
00:50:51.000 And I think that's something that the Singapore government had really perfected.
00:50:56.000 It's effective governance.
00:50:58.000 It's not about the size.
00:51:00.000 I don't care whether this is a policy that came from the right or the left.
00:51:03.000 It's what works.
00:51:04.000 People respond to incentives, right?
00:51:07.000 And if you want to encourage a certain kind of behavior, there's carrots and sticks to basically encourage that behavior.
00:51:15.000 And so there are things that the government would do in a way that just would never fly here.
00:51:21.000 We treasure civil liberties too much in a way, which I personally came here for that reason.
00:51:26.000 But I'll give you a good example.
00:51:28.000 Social cohesion is engineered in Singapore.
00:51:31.000 So it's a very, very multicultural, multi-ethnic society.
00:51:36.000 You have Malay Muslims, Indians, Hindus, Chinese who are Buddhists, Christians, and, you know, Caucasians all living on an island city-state that's about 5 million in terms of population.
00:51:50.000 And how the government manages this multicultural project is that 80% of people actually live in public housing.
00:51:57.000 That's very high.
00:51:58.000 It's like a socialist thing, right?
00:51:59.000 Public housing that the government builds for you.
00:52:02.000 And each block has to mimic the racial demographics of the whole country.
00:52:08.000 So you don't have ghettos. 0.68
00:52:10.000 So you imagine like a housing state that basically mirrors like, okay, if the total makeup of the country is 60% Chinese, 20% Malay Muslims, it has to follow. 0.97
00:52:22.000 So you can't have basically an area like Birmingham in the UK where all the Muslim immigrants or something like Dearborn, Michigan or Minnesota with all the Somali immigrants. 0.92
00:52:34.000 You are forced to integrate.
00:52:36.000 It's a way to force people to integrate and have neighbors that are just not your own kind. 0.97
00:52:44.000 And that's how they've created this national identity that's very strong.
00:52:49.000 That's interesting because everybody would want that, but they wouldn't want it engineered.
00:52:56.000 Correct.
00:52:56.000 You know what I'm saying?
00:52:57.000 Exactly.
00:52:58.000 It's like everybody would love if the country, if all of our neighborhoods were integrated and everybody just got along with everybody.
00:53:04.000 I think I've always felt like that's one of the things that New York has a large advantage over Los Angeles is interaction.
00:53:10.000 People are constantly on the subway and walking on the streets with everybody of all different classes, all different backgrounds and I think that's really good.
00:53:20.000 I think it's good, too.
00:53:21.000 It's the contact hypothesis.
00:53:23.000 I feel like if kids grew up with...
00:53:25.000 If you had a black friend growing up, since you were three or four, you would never think to be racist.
00:53:34.000 It's just one of those things.
00:53:35.000 It's early contact with different people.
00:53:39.000 That's what I feel about ideas, too.
00:53:40.000 Early contact with different ideas really helps.
00:53:44.000 And that's, I don't know, I've kind of devoted my life to that cause almost.
00:53:50.000 Do you know who Daryl Davis is?
00:53:51.000 Yes, of course.
00:53:52.000 I wrote about him in one of my articles.
00:53:54.000 Oh, did you?
00:53:54.000 Yeah.
00:53:55.000 I was at that conference that he, we were speaking at the same conference, and that's the conference that Daryl Davis was called neo-Nazi.
00:54:04.000 Did he talk about that on your show?
00:54:05.000 That someone called him a neo-Nazi?
00:54:08.000 Yeah.
00:54:09.000 Yeah.
00:54:10.000 How did they, how?
00:54:12.000 Let me explain to people who he is if you didn't listen to the podcast that I did with him.
00:54:16.000 Daryl Davis is a musician and he was doing some shows at this country western bar and met some people from the Klan and through just communicating with them and being friendly with them over a period of many months he got them to quit.
00:54:32.000 They quit the Klan on their own.
00:54:33.000 He didn't even request it and then over the course of several years he's gotten more than 200 people to leave the Klan Leave neo-Nazi organizations and they give him their robes and their flags and he brought them all in here.
00:54:47.000 He's an inspirational human being.
00:54:49.000 Very much so.
00:54:49.000 But he essentially was reinforcing what you were saying, that these people were never around anyone.
00:54:57.000 Like one of the guys that he met initially was saying, I've never had a drink with a black man before.
00:55:02.000 And he's like, how's that possible?
00:55:04.000 And he's like, I'm in the Klan. 0.86
00:55:05.000 And he's like, I've never had a drink with a black man. 0.92
00:55:08.000 And so he's like, this is the first time I've ever had a drink with a black man. 0.71
00:55:11.000 And we're making this big deal out of it.
00:55:13.000 And then eventually, Darrell was going to his house and eating dinner with him and hanging out with him.
00:55:19.000 And then the guy's like, I can't do this anymore.
00:55:21.000 Like, why am I in the Klan?
00:55:22.000 And he quit.
00:55:23.000 Wow.
00:55:24.000 And he quit just from Daryl being this really friendly, articulate, brilliant guy who clearly didn't fit their narrative of what they thought, their racist depiction of what a black man is.
00:55:39.000 Right, right.
00:55:40.000 So the incident that happened was this group called Mythicist Milwaukee had organized a conference.
00:55:47.000 What is it called?
00:55:49.000 Mythicists.
00:55:50.000 Mythicists?
00:55:50.000 Yeah, that was the name of the group.
00:55:52.000 But they were kind of like a secular, so the mythicists believed that Jesus Christ was, like, he didn't really exist as a historical figure.
00:56:01.000 That's what a mythicist is.
00:56:02.000 But in any case, it's a secular group that put on a conference, and they've been doing that for years.
00:56:09.000 And they had, alongside people like Sargon of Akkad, Count Dankula, the guy who taught his pug to do the salute.
00:56:19.000 So these people all came for a conference, and so was Daryl Davis.
00:56:23.000 It was a bunch of people, but on the political spectrum, basically.
00:56:30.000 And it was about promoting discourse, civil dialogue, that kind of thing.
00:56:34.000 Andy Ngo was there as well.
00:56:36.000 Basically because, you know, when the conference was happening and Tifa kind of found out about it, they started protesting the conference.
00:56:45.000 They called the venue to basically, you know, get it canceled.
00:56:50.000 They said it was a neo-Nazi rally, Klan rally.
00:56:54.000 Ironically, you know, the greatest irony was that Daryl Davis was there, and he got tainted as well.
00:57:01.000 So I started calling this the political one-drop rule, where it's like kind of what happened to you.
00:57:07.000 If you are associating or talking to somebody that—or just a whole range of people, like normal distribution of people— You will be tainted by the most right-wing person that you're in orbit with.
00:57:20.000 That's just how it goes.
00:57:21.000 And that's what happened to Daryl.
00:57:22.000 So when we had the after-party to the conference, and Tifa was gathered outside the bar, the Pittman, New Jersey people, because Tim Pool was there too, the Pittman, New Jersey police had to station themselves outside of the bar, and they were kind of protecting this event.
00:57:39.000 It's ridiculous because You know, yes, you might find Sargon's politics objectionable, but why is everybody who's associated, you know, with the conference also lumped in with this?
00:57:52.000 And why is the response that this needs police protection?
00:57:56.000 It's just we're just talking about it.
00:57:58.000 It doesn't make any sense. 1.00
00:58:00.000 No, this desire to shut down speech is very dangerous, and it's very stupid. 1.00
00:58:04.000 It's childish, and it's this thing that it gets... 0.99
00:58:09.000 It just gets reinforced in that culture, the culture of either Antifa or people that support Antifa.
00:58:15.000 They don't understand the consequences of shutting down speech.
00:58:17.000 You think you're just going to shut down speech and de-platform people that have marginally offensive views?
00:58:23.000 And the problem with that is, first of all, you close the door for them to be influenced in a positive way or for other people to learn from them being influenced in a positive way.
00:58:33.000 And second of all, the way to shut down ideas is not Stop the person from talking.
00:58:39.000 It's to combat those ideas with better ideas.
00:58:42.000 And then everyone around them gets to see the discourse.
00:58:45.000 When you have these debates online and people discuss these things online, it benefits millions of people.
00:58:51.000 When you shut that down, it benefits nobody but your cause.
00:58:54.000 And your cause is probably incorrect.
00:58:57.000 Your ideas are probably wrong.
00:58:59.000 In the case of Daryl Davis, you're definitely wrong.
00:59:01.000 He's not a Nazi.
00:59:02.000 So if you're shutting that down and saying these people are Nazis, well, you're wrong and you're censoring people that are trying to get to the bottom of things.
00:59:11.000 And getting to the bottom of things means discussing things and trying to figure out tenable solutions or comfortable middle ground.
00:59:18.000 That takes forever.
00:59:20.000 This is not like you have Christina Hoff Summers and she has this discussion and they pull fire alarms and yell that she's a Nazi. 1.00
00:59:29.000 She's a feminist. 1.00
00:59:30.000 You guys are crazy. 0.96
00:59:33.000 Everyone has to comply with woke ideology 100% with no deviance whatsoever and everyone has to take an impossible to pass purity test. 1.00
00:59:43.000 This is a dumb way to communicate. 0.79
00:59:47.000 But you ever notice something, too? 0.98
00:59:48.000 It's always that—why is the concern always that if we have this battle of ideas, that the person would shift to the right?
00:59:57.000 Yes.
00:59:57.000 Why are you not concerned about the other way, right?
01:00:01.000 It kind of reminds me of—because I grew up pretty evangelical.
01:00:04.000 My mom was very religious.
01:00:05.000 It was that she tried to— It's that, okay, if you're a good Christian, you might get corrupted by bad ideas, so we have to ban, I don't know, like Harry Potter books are banned in my household.
01:00:16.000 It's like we had to ban all these because it encouraged witchcraft.
01:00:20.000 So I wasn't allowed to celebrate Halloween.
01:00:22.000 Encouraged witchcraft? 0.89
01:00:23.000 Wow, that's heavy.
01:00:24.000 Yeah, it's pagan stuff.
01:00:26.000 It's satanic.
01:00:26.000 But that's what I mean.
01:00:28.000 It's like, this is satanic, this is evil, and it has taken on this religious dimension, this liturgical dimension, because they're always so concerned that the corruption is just going, like, they're going to drift to the right.
01:00:41.000 Of course.
01:00:41.000 They're never concerned that somebody might be convinced by their arguments and go to the left.
01:00:46.000 Why?
01:00:46.000 I don't get that.
01:00:47.000 Well, the drifting to the left, first of all, they think would be a good thing.
01:00:51.000 The problem is...
01:00:54.000 Well, they don't worry about it.
01:00:55.000 They're not worried that someone would drift to the left.
01:00:57.000 You mean by looking at someone's offensive views and that they would be more likely to drift to the left?
01:01:02.000 Is that what you mean?
01:01:03.000 That like, okay, it's like, let's say we expose everybody to all ideas.
01:01:08.000 Right.
01:01:08.000 Why are we so concerned that the individual that they're, you know, the target, I guess, would be shifted right and not shifted left?
01:01:16.000 Yeah, I know what you're saying.
01:01:17.000 Yeah.
01:01:17.000 If there's an equal.
01:01:18.000 I think they have an infantile perspective on ideas, and they're worried about people being indoctrinated.
01:01:23.000 They're worried about, but they're not worried.
01:01:25.000 Look, if you have someone talking And this person is preaching some ridiculous thing and someone starts becoming indoctrinated and gravitates towards that. 1.00
01:01:36.000 The real problem is that these people that are being indoctrinated are gullible and they're foolish. 1.00
01:01:43.000 That's the real problem. 0.99
01:01:44.000 And in your eyes, they're going in the incorrect way.
01:01:49.000 So it's infantilizing.
01:01:50.000 Yes.
01:01:50.000 It's actually patronizing.
01:01:52.000 It is patronizing.
01:01:53.000 Yes.
01:01:54.000 I think that's what I couldn't stand. 1.00
01:01:56.000 Those people are dumber than you. 1.00
01:01:58.000 You're smarter. 1.00
01:01:59.000 You know better.
01:02:00.000 You need to stop these people from being tricked into this right-wing ideology.
01:02:06.000 I mean, I've heard intelligent people.
01:02:09.000 Make this conversation about other intelligent people that disagree with them, like Ben Shapiro.
01:02:13.000 Ben Shapiro should be deplatformed because Ben Shapiro is indoctrinating people towards right-wing ideology by having these salient points.
01:02:24.000 And articulate sentences and these rants that he goes on.
01:02:29.000 He speaks very fast.
01:02:31.000 He's got a great grasp of the English language and it's very compelling.
01:02:34.000 And the idea is that he's indoctrinating young people.
01:02:38.000 Well, no, he's speaking with passion.
01:02:42.000 I don't agree with him on a lot of things, but I certainly agree with his right to express himself.
01:02:47.000 And he's not convincing me.
01:02:49.000 Who is he convincing?
01:02:51.000 When Ben Shapiro...
01:02:53.000 Here's an area where we deeply disagree. 0.96
01:02:56.000 Gay people. 0.97
01:02:56.000 He thinks it's immoral. 0.97
01:02:59.000 He thinks he would never go to a gay person's wedding. 0.93
01:03:01.000 He wouldn't have... 0.85
01:03:03.000 He wouldn't even go to the celebration, the after party of a gay wedding. 0.68
01:03:08.000 And I'm like, well, this is all for religious reasons. 0.99
01:03:11.000 I'm like, I think that's ridiculous. 0.81
01:03:14.000 That's not convincing me.
01:03:16.000 So who is it convincing?
01:03:18.000 Is it convincing someone that's a baby?
01:03:20.000 Are you dealing with children?
01:03:22.000 Are we dealing with uneducated people?
01:03:23.000 Are we dealing with people that don't have positive influences?
01:03:26.000 Right.
01:03:26.000 What's wrong with letting him express these ideas?
01:03:29.000 Right.
01:03:29.000 These ideas are hot.
01:03:31.000 I mean, he and I had like a long conversation about it on the podcast where I was like, I think it's ridiculous.
01:03:36.000 Like, what do you care?
01:03:37.000 My perspective is what do you care?
01:03:39.000 And his perspective is he couldn't support that because of religious reasons.
01:03:42.000 So then we go deep into the hole with why.
01:03:45.000 Moral objections here.
01:03:45.000 What are these religious reasons?
01:03:47.000 How deep do you go with this?
01:03:49.000 Do you think Jesus came back from the dead?
01:03:51.000 He doesn't.
01:03:51.000 He's Jewish.
01:03:52.000 It's a different perspective.
01:03:53.000 Do you really think that God thinks that homosexuality is some sort of a carnal sin and terrible?
01:04:04.000 If so, God made everything. 0.94
01:04:06.000 Why did he make homosexuals? 1.00
01:04:08.000 Please explain that. 0.99
01:04:09.000 What kind of a weirdo is God? 0.98
01:04:11.000 That he gives people this urge to be gay, but then he tells them, fight that urge. 0.99
01:04:17.000 And then he makes this comparison that's like murder. 0.99
01:04:19.000 Sometimes you want to murder people.
01:04:21.000 I'm like, okay.
01:04:22.000 I think that's different, because you don't want to murder people all day, every day. 1.00
01:04:25.000 I know a lot of gay dudes who want to fuck dudes all the time. 1.00
01:04:28.000 It's like God did a crazy thing to their system. 1.00
01:04:31.000 And for you to believe in God, but have a problem with that, to me, is ridiculous. 0.97
01:04:37.000 So now we're banking on these really ancient words that were written by people with no grasp of science, no understanding of biology, no understanding of the culture of the world, no understanding of the sheer number of these people and taking into perspective that you're literally dealing with I don't know what percentage of the population is gay, 0.98
01:04:55.000 but it's a significant percentage. 0.98
01:04:56.000 So you're saying all of them are frying in hell. 1.00
01:04:59.000 Do you know how dumb that is? 1.00
01:05:01.000 That's really fucking dumb. 1.00
01:05:02.000 Like if they're your neighbors and they're just happy and loving, what do you care? 1.00
01:05:06.000 The goal should be a cohesive society where people are comfortably being around each other with all their differences and just nice.
01:05:13.000 People just nice to each other.
01:05:14.000 Exactly. 0.99
01:05:14.000 It doesn't matter if you're gay or straight or trans or black or white or Asian or fucking whatever. 0.99
01:05:19.000 It shouldn't matter. 0.99
01:05:21.000 The individual should matter.
01:05:22.000 And the way we interact with each other, that should matter. 0.88
01:05:45.000 Ignorance. 0.94
01:05:45.000 You're applying these ancient ignorant rules to a modern world where we have a vastly expanded understanding of human beings. 0.94
01:05:56.000 Right. 0.67
01:05:56.000 But to Ben's credit, I mean, he's friends with Dave. 0.67
01:05:59.000 He doesn't let that – Sort of, but he wouldn't go to his wedding.
01:06:01.000 Yeah, but he says he's going to – I cut him off.
01:06:04.000 Right. 0.92
01:06:05.000 If I invite him to my wedding, he's like, I can't, you're a sinner. 1.00
01:06:08.000 I'm like, fuck off. 1.00
01:06:09.000 But you know what? 1.00
01:06:09.000 A lot of us who have parents who are super Christian, I understand. 1.00
01:06:14.000 At the end of the day, you know where that's coming from?
01:06:17.000 She... 1.00
01:06:17.000 My sister is gay. 1.00
01:06:19.000 And at first she didn't accept that.
01:06:22.000 And the reason for that was that It was coming from a good place.
01:06:26.000 Like, for her, it was, I don't want my daughter to go to hell.
01:06:29.000 So it's like, it's like, it's again, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right?
01:06:34.000 And so the only reason she was objecting to it was because of this belief that she's going to end up burning in hell.
01:06:39.000 So it's coming from, ironically, a place of love.
01:06:42.000 It's judgy, yes, and it's based on Bronze Age ideology.
01:06:47.000 Yeah.
01:06:48.000 But I don't think that either of us ever doubted that she loved her.
01:06:53.000 So I kind of understand where Ben comes from in that sense, even though it makes me angry.
01:07:00.000 I reject all that stuff. 0.82
01:07:02.000 It's just silly.
01:07:03.000 What's interesting is he's so smart. 0.98
01:07:06.000 And when he talks about that, it's all of a sudden you see stammering and he gets weird because he knows it's nonsense.
01:07:12.000 I don't know if he knows.
01:07:14.000 I wouldn't embrace it.
01:07:16.000 He's just deep.
01:07:17.000 He's just balls deep in his religion. 1.00
01:07:19.000 I like the guy a lot.
01:07:20.000 I really do.
01:07:21.000 And I've gotten so much shit for saying that I like the guy. 0.97
01:07:24.000 We need more of that. 0.99
01:07:26.000 We need more of the hate the sin, not the sinner. 0.93
01:07:29.000 And practice on both sides.
01:07:30.000 But I think he and I only – we disagree on some issues and some political issues.
01:07:36.000 But he's a decent person.
01:07:38.000 He's a nice person.
01:07:39.000 He's very friendly.
01:07:40.000 He's funny.
01:07:41.000 I enjoy his company a lot.
01:07:42.000 I like Ben Shapiro.
01:07:43.000 I really do.
01:07:44.000 I think he's a brilliant guy.
01:07:46.000 Right. 0.98
01:07:47.000 I mean, the gay thing is the biggest one. 1.00
01:07:49.000 Because to me, that's the dumbest one. 1.00
01:07:51.000 It always comes back to, why do you care? 1.00
01:07:56.000 That's all it is to me.
01:07:57.000 Why do you care?
01:07:58.000 I don't care.
01:07:59.000 Why do you care if someone's gay? 0.99
01:08:01.000 Does it affect you?
01:08:03.000 How can it?
01:08:04.000 How can it affect you?
01:08:06.000 Do you have your fingers in everybody's business?
01:08:08.000 It's crazy.
01:08:09.000 It doesn't make any sense to me.
01:08:11.000 I mean, that was the argument against gay marriage.
01:08:13.000 Why does it affect your heterosexual marriage?
01:08:15.000 Exactly.
01:08:16.000 It shouldn't.
01:08:16.000 Well, the sanctity of marriage.
01:08:19.000 It's so dumb. 0.99
01:08:20.000 The sanctity of marriage. 1.00
01:08:21.000 How about Vegas? 1.00
01:08:22.000 You could go to a fucking drive-thru. 1.00
01:08:24.000 You can get married at a drive-thru movie theater. 1.00
01:08:27.000 I mean, that's really what it's like.
01:08:29.000 You can get married anywhere. 1.00
01:08:31.000 It's so dumb. 1.00
01:08:32.000 It's so ridiculous. 0.99
01:08:35.000 I feel like at this stage of civilization, we have to figure out what stuff we're going to abandon from the old days and what stuff we're going to keep.
01:08:46.000 And we've already abandoned a lot of things, right?
01:08:50.000 In Christianity, if you leave, they don't kill you anymore.
01:08:54.000 They got rid of some of the things during the Enlightenment.
01:08:57.000 They changed a lot of the aspects of Christianity that we associate today with more repressive religions.
01:09:03.000 Exactly.
01:09:04.000 Yeah, that used to be Christianity. 0.73
01:09:06.000 Yeah, I'm a huge fan of the Enlightenment in general.
01:09:10.000 In fact, Stephen Pinker wrote that book, Enlightenment Now.
01:09:13.000 That was the first book we chose to translate into Arabic.
01:09:17.000 And then it became the...
01:09:19.000 Like, recently, there were a lot of protests in the Middle East, and we started distributing that book.
01:09:23.000 It was actually...
01:09:25.000 The person who was coordinating some of the protests that was telling us, we want to give this book out to the people, because a lot of these youth, they're really...
01:09:33.000 Jaded by theocrats in the region, by authoritarianism.
01:09:38.000 And they're like, you know what?
01:09:39.000 You know what our religion had never gone through?
01:09:41.000 Not the Reformation. 0.71
01:09:42.000 We don't want the Reformation. 0.80
01:09:43.000 We want the Enlightenment.
01:09:44.000 Because Enlightenment was what could constrain Christianity in a way.
01:09:48.000 Yes.
01:09:51.000 One of the greatest intellectual achievements of Europe came out of there, right?
01:09:56.000 This idea of the social contract, of, you know, eroding monarchy, absolute monarchy, separating church and state, all these wonderful innovations and ideas came out of the Enlightenment.
01:10:10.000 And it was, you know, promoted this idea of, like, maybe people should be free to have their own conscience and think differently.
01:10:18.000 And that's something that really, really is needed in the Middle East.
01:10:23.000 Well, I think the way that your organization is going about it is probably the best way to get books translated, get ideas translated to people that maybe weren't ever exposed to these concepts before.
01:10:37.000 And maybe that'll help.
01:10:39.000 Yeah.
01:10:41.000 But that's the thing.
01:10:42.000 So, you know, pluralism, I see that as, you know, that's what we're doing, promoting pluralism, this idea that you can have all these competing narratives.
01:10:51.000 And so you asked me what my culture, you know, like when I came to America, like how, what was my experience just moving here?
01:10:58.000 Yes, it was very freeing and liberating because I felt like I went to a place that was pluralistic, that tolerated all the weirdos.
01:11:05.000 And then, maybe in like 2014, you know, things started to change, at least on campus.
01:11:11.000 When pluralism wasn't tolerated, you started to see the rise of this sort of more intolerant, you have to kind of kowtow to this intersectionality and critical race theory.
01:11:28.000 So that was an interesting experience and I think was ultimately very detrimental to the actual project of liberalism.
01:11:38.000 It's working against that.
01:11:40.000 Exactly.
01:11:41.000 That's the really frustrating part of it.
01:11:43.000 What you're claiming to be preaching, your ideology is actually working against it ultimately behind the scenes and you just can't seem to see the pattern where it's going.
01:11:54.000 You can't stop people from discussing things and say that you support free speech.
01:11:58.000 That's not free speech.
01:12:00.000 One of my favorite things with Ben, with Ben Shapiro, is watching him talk to those people.
01:12:05.000 He is one of the best at taking questions and just decimating these social justice warriors.
01:12:12.000 Go and watch Ben Shapiro.
01:12:15.000 Destroy his lip tart.
01:12:17.000 He's so good at it, though.
01:12:19.000 I know, but I just hate the way they're captioning.
01:12:20.000 Well, the captions are terrible.
01:12:22.000 It's very click-baity, and it's not him.
01:12:24.000 He doesn't make those captions.
01:12:25.000 I know, I know.
01:12:26.000 It's his supporters. 1.00
01:12:26.000 But goddamn, is he good at it. 1.00
01:12:28.000 I secretly laugh at it. 0.99
01:12:29.000 I know it's kind of bad for discourse.
01:12:31.000 I do it right out in the open.
01:12:33.000 He's great at it because he's logical and very intelligent.
01:12:38.000 So when these kids are saying these things that they just learned last month in their gender studies class and they're yelling it at him and he breaks it down.
01:12:47.000 It's just one of my favorite things.
01:12:49.000 But those kind of discussions are important, first of all, so that these kids realize that, hey, there is this brilliant right-wing guy that can decimate your argument really quickly.
01:13:00.000 He talks quickly, too.
01:13:03.000 He'll smash your argument.
01:13:04.000 He's very smart. 1.00
01:13:05.000 And so you need to know that your argument sucks. 1.00
01:13:08.000 It's like having bad kung fu. 1.00
01:13:10.000 You know, you're running around the world thinking you're going to kick everybody's ass because you've never really been tested. 0.97
01:13:14.000 And everybody who you're training with says your kung fu is amazing. 0.99
01:13:17.000 And then you go into a gym where someone doesn't believe in your kung fu and fucks you up. 0.99
01:13:22.000 And you go, damn, that's important. 0.99
01:13:24.000 I needed to know. 0.99
01:13:25.000 That's one of the culture shock things for me when I first moved to America.
01:13:28.000 It was that, you know, I think a lot of American kids were told, like, participation trophy culture, a lot of them were told that they were the best, like, you know, like, Tommy, like, you know, there's nothing you can do.
01:13:38.000 Tommy, you're amazing.
01:13:39.000 Yeah, you're just, like, so amazing.
01:13:42.000 And I'm like, do these people?
01:13:43.000 It's like American Idol, you know?
01:13:45.000 We used to get the seasons in Singapore, too.
01:13:48.000 And it's like, these people can't sing.
01:13:50.000 And that's actually why they're putting them on.
01:13:52.000 They're awful.
01:13:53.000 And nobody told them, like, are you telling me that, like, they've been telling their friends, oh, I'm practicing, I'm going on American Idol. 0.71
01:13:59.000 Did nobody tell them that, bro, like, you should just be singing in the shower?
01:14:04.000 Nobody told them.
01:14:05.000 Well, there's a couple things going on. 0.93
01:14:06.000 First of all, some of those people are trolls. 0.99
01:14:09.000 They're going on that they know they suck, and they're going on because they're going to get on TV, and the best way to get on TV is actually to suck. 0.99
01:14:15.000 American Idolists, you don't have any talent? 0.99
01:14:17.000 There's no concept of shame?
01:14:18.000 They want to do it.
01:14:19.000 They want to be on TV. Look, I used to host Fear Factor.
01:14:22.000 Don't talk to me about shame.
01:14:24.000 There's no shame in that. 1.00
01:14:25.000 There's no shame in attempting to eat bull testicles. 0.99
01:14:28.000 Actually, I think that's heroic. 0.98
01:14:30.000 It's definitely not heroic.
01:14:31.000 And it's now a show on Food Network, right? 0.98
01:14:34.000 Well, bull testicles are actually a common food. 0.99
01:14:37.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.95
01:14:37.000 Rocky Mountain oysters. 0.95
01:14:38.000 Gross stuff is.
01:14:39.000 They don't taste bad. 1.00
01:14:40.000 Bull testicles do not taste bad. 0.94
01:14:41.000 They're actually, the way they cook them, they cook them well, they're actually delicious. 0.96
01:14:45.000 Okay, but there's no shame in doing something that most people are fearful. 0.97
01:14:49.000 The singing thing, what's going on is, first of all, there's a lot of those people that are mentally ill. 0.97
01:14:54.000 That's part of the problem. 0.95
01:14:55.000 A lot of those people are delusional, they're mentally ill, they have like legitimate mental health issues. 0.85
01:15:00.000 And then they go and sing and they sound terrible and no one tells them because they don't have any friends. 0.90
01:15:05.000 It's one of the reasons why.
01:15:06.000 I think there's a happy medium. 0.98
01:15:08.000 See, the thing is, you know, if you grow up in Asia, you're told that you're just a dumbass all the time and you're kind of constantly beat down. 0.88
01:15:15.000 You know, if you come home with like 99 over 100 for your math exam, your parents are not going to say, pat, pat, well done. 0.94
01:15:20.000 They're going to say, where was that one point?
01:15:22.000 What did you do wrong?
01:15:24.000 And again, you do not doubt that they love you and care for you.
01:15:27.000 That's just how it is.
01:15:28.000 They're just hardcore.
01:15:29.000 And so you kind of internalize that and have very low self-esteem in general.
01:15:34.000 But you kind of know your limitations, right?
01:15:36.000 That's the problem.
01:15:37.000 When I moved here, I realized a lot of the kids I went to school with, man, I wish they had that confidence.
01:15:45.000 Their inflated sense of self-worth was just so big.
01:15:50.000 But sometimes it allowed them to get the good jobs.
01:15:52.000 It allowed them to ace the interview. 1.00
01:15:54.000 They don't have to do stupid things like drink this and get nervous. 0.99
01:15:57.000 You don't have to do that either. 0.99
01:16:00.000 I grew up around a lot of Koreans because I did taekwondo from the time I was young.
01:16:05.000 I did two foot well.
01:16:06.000 And they are, I mean, I thought I knew what hard work was until I was around these people.
01:16:12.000 Oh, you can never outwork, yeah.
01:16:14.000 Koreans. 0.64
01:16:16.000 And my friend Jungsik, who was on the U.S. national team when I was younger.
01:16:22.000 Was in medical school.
01:16:24.000 So he was going through his residency and training to be on the national team.
01:16:27.000 So while he was studying, he would put his backpack on, fill his backpack up with books and run up the stairs of the university.
01:16:36.000 Run up and down the stairs to get some additional workouts in.
01:16:39.000 He was trying to train for the U.S. team while he was doing his residency.
01:16:43.000 That's very impressive.
01:16:44.000 It's insane. 0.96
01:16:45.000 He was crazy.
01:16:46.000 He would sleep three hours a night, and he was like one of the best Taekwondo fighters in the world.
01:16:50.000 And it was all through sheer will and determination.
01:16:53.000 But he was explaining that to me about what it was like growing up.
01:16:56.000 It's like, you are never good.
01:16:59.000 There's nothing ever good enough.
01:17:01.000 No matter what you do, you could have done better.
01:17:04.000 You could work harder.
01:17:05.000 You could always do more.
01:17:06.000 Yeah.
01:17:07.000 No, I mean, it's unforgiving, but it's one of those things that it's a good illusion.
01:17:12.000 It's, I think, a very healthy illusion to have that, like, work equals success, right?
01:17:18.000 And that's why I think, you know, people of Asian descent generally are pretty primed to...
01:17:23.000 To buy into the Republican politics, right?
01:17:28.000 Of pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
01:17:29.000 You don't need handouts.
01:17:30.000 The harder you work, the more likely you're going to achieve something.
01:17:33.000 That's why there's just such a natural ally in terms of to rely on this group block as a political group.
01:17:42.000 That's the undiscussed racism in academics, is the way Asian people are treated when they're applying for major universities, particularly for Harvard.
01:17:52.000 Like, they literally, you have to score higher if you're Asian, because there's so many Asian people that get in, they made it more difficult. 1.00
01:18:02.000 Yeah, they're trying to manage that.
01:18:04.000 It's not a meritocracy anymore. 0.93
01:18:06.000 You've decided that they have to do better than white people. 0.99
01:18:11.000 They have to do better than everybody else, which is crazy.
01:18:14.000 I think the insidious thing in particular about the Harvard case was that they started downgrading Asians on personality.
01:18:20.000 I mean, that's the part.
01:18:21.000 It's like, okay, fine.
01:18:22.000 You want to say that maybe we want to lower the scores a little for other groups.
01:18:29.000 But why?
01:18:30.000 But then to downgrade this personality, that's the part that bothered me.
01:18:34.000 How did they do a downgrade personality?
01:18:35.000 What was the method that they used to do that?
01:18:38.000 So they said, okay, we're not just going to rely on standardized tests.
01:18:40.000 Because that's the thing.
01:18:42.000 Standardized tests, they can be easily gamed.
01:18:47.000 That was the idea.
01:18:48.000 You can just go for more tuition, extra classes, and you'll do well.
01:18:51.000 Well, we care about the holistic package of the applicant.
01:18:56.000 So you want to see more personality.
01:18:58.000 Ultimately, this is about what Aristotle called the telos, right?
01:19:02.000 What is the telos of higher education?
01:19:04.000 What's the ultimate goal or essence of higher education?
01:19:07.000 Is it to just produce perfect cogs in the machine of the global economy?
01:19:12.000 Or is it, you know, to produce engaged citizens or whatever it is, right?
01:19:16.000 So however you define that question, what's the purpose of higher education?
01:19:20.000 You could tailor your entrance methods to meet that.
01:19:24.000 And in Harvard's case, they decided, well, you know, we're going to, instead of just looking at your GPA, your We want to interview the person.
01:19:36.000 We want to see what your personality is like.
01:19:38.000 Can you thrive at Harvard?
01:19:39.000 Are you going to be a good contributing member of this university?
01:19:42.000 So sure.
01:19:43.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:19:44.000 And this is one of the areas in which consistently it looked like the Asian population that was applying to Harvard.
01:19:51.000 Was downgraded in that score.
01:19:54.000 They scored really high when it came to extracurriculars, academics.
01:19:58.000 They were so strong on SATs and all these other standardized tests.
01:20:02.000 But when it came to personality, they were very consistently downgraded.
01:20:06.000 So do you think that that characteristic, the seeking out that was applied specifically to try to limit the amount of Asian people?
01:20:14.000 Because that's the argument, right? 0.53
01:20:16.000 Um, you know, I don't know if it was done specifically for that, but I think Harvard has a, again, monocultures suck in general.
01:20:27.000 So, you know, if you're gonna, even for me, like, I was coming to study in America, like, you know, 10,000 miles away, right, from the place I grew up.
01:20:35.000 I don't really want to go to school without a lot of Asians. 1.00
01:20:38.000 Because I could have just stayed there, frankly.
01:20:40.000 But I was looking for something that wasn't a monoculture.
01:20:45.000 You have to just expand your mind, right?
01:20:47.000 So at the end of the day, the issue with Harvard is that it was taking federal money.
01:20:52.000 And if you see Harvard as a stepping stone to a career, to a future...
01:20:56.000 It is unfair.
01:20:58.000 It is kind of unfair if they were penalizing you based on race.
01:21:02.000 That's the hard part to prove.
01:21:03.000 Whether or not this was personality or race or some sort of other thing that they were selecting for that happened to correlate with race.
01:21:10.000 That's the part that's hard to prove.
01:21:12.000 So is it possible that they were just trying to enhance the way people communicate on campus, and so they sort of emphasized personality and emphasized social interactions, and in doing so, they penalized Asians without being aware of it?
01:21:28.000 Yeah, kind of.
01:21:29.000 I mean, to be honest, when I was in college, I only did my first Jell-O shot a couple weeks ago.
01:21:36.000 A couple weeks ago now?
01:21:37.000 Yes.
01:21:38.000 Okay.
01:21:39.000 Well, I was that typical...
01:21:40.000 But you don't need to do gel shots to be in college.
01:21:42.000 I don't know if any...
01:21:43.000 Okay, not that.
01:21:44.000 But I didn't have the typical college experience.
01:21:47.000 You didn't party?
01:21:47.000 I didn't party.
01:21:49.000 And I think a lot of international students who come from Asia will probably fall under the same habits.
01:21:57.000 We're kind of like...
01:21:58.000 We've been told that there's only one way to succeed.
01:22:01.000 Work hard.
01:22:02.000 Summa cum laude and all these things.
01:22:04.000 So a lot of us kind of are culturally aligned on that.
01:22:09.000 And do we contribute to campus in the same way that your active student union leader would, who's involved in other curriculars?
01:22:19.000 I don't know.
01:22:20.000 So would Harvard want a diversity of behaviors and interests?
01:22:25.000 Yeah.
01:22:25.000 Probably yes.
01:22:26.000 You don't want all these boring STEM people walking out.
01:22:29.000 But you want all kinds of different stuff.
01:22:31.000 And you also want people that raise the bar really high in terms of performance.
01:22:36.000 You do, yeah.
01:22:37.000 Yeah, I mean, that enhances other people's understanding of what's possible.
01:22:42.000 But as a private institution, you can make your student population up the way you want, right?
01:22:47.000 That's why you have Liberty University, which is Jerry Falwell's, and it's for Christians. 1.00
01:22:52.000 But it's a private institution.
01:22:53.000 They're not taking money from the government, so that's fine.
01:22:56.000 Unlike UC Berkeley, state institution, they abolish affirmative action.
01:23:01.000 UCLA, all the UCs did.
01:23:03.000 Look at the population.
01:23:05.000 It's 70-80% Asian.
01:23:07.000 Interesting.
01:23:07.000 In California.
01:23:08.000 Yeah.
01:23:09.000 Why is that?
01:23:12.000 This is the uncomfortable, you know, this is the part where we just, you know, like, I don't want to say.
01:23:18.000 Do you?
01:23:19.000 I don't know. 1.00
01:23:20.000 Because they kick ass? 1.00
01:23:21.000 They work harder? 1.00
01:23:23.000 Yeah.
01:23:24.000 They're more dedicated, more disciplined?
01:23:26.000 People are very uncomfortable to talk about differences in group outcome because we have to kind of make everybody the same or else there must be some sort of systematic thing.
01:23:35.000 But I think that Asians, because they're so hardworking and because they don't complain, people get away with this stuff, where they get away with discrimination against them.
01:23:46.000 I think they're starting to complain.
01:23:48.000 That's why the lawsuits were filed.
01:23:50.000 So they are starting to.
01:23:51.000 But it's like it took that. 1.00
01:23:53.000 They're like, all right, you fucks. 0.98
01:23:55.000 And there's actually quite a big pro-Trump Asian-American voting bloc. 0.99
01:24:01.000 Interesting.
01:24:02.000 This particular issue of affirmative action has really driven a lot of Asians rightward. 0.58
01:24:07.000 In New York City, that has happened too under de Blasio.
01:24:11.000 Really?
01:24:12.000 Yeah, because of the public school situation there.
01:24:15.000 Same thing.
01:24:16.000 They want to lower, you know, basically, in terms of the public high schools, they want to institute the same policies.
01:24:25.000 Affirmative action.
01:24:26.000 So that's become an issue.
01:24:28.000 I think, I read an article recently that Andrew Yang was kind of dragging Asian Americans back to, you know, to the left.
01:24:36.000 But, I don't know, remains to be seen.
01:24:38.000 He just dropped out, so.
01:24:39.000 Yeah, now that he's out, I wonder what's going to happen.
01:24:41.000 Yeah, I was bummed about that.
01:24:43.000 He was my guy.
01:24:45.000 He has some really interesting ideas and he's so open-minded.
01:24:50.000 His perspectives are so uniquely non-politician-like.
01:24:54.000 And how refreshing to finally have somebody who's scientifically and technologically literate in government.
01:25:00.000 That was really my big attraction to him. 0.86
01:25:03.000 I know it was the basic bitch intellectual dark web choice. 1.00
01:25:06.000 Either him or Tulsi was. 1.00
01:25:08.000 Basic bitch intellectual dark web choice. 1.00
01:25:11.000 But I really, really liked him. 0.97
01:25:13.000 Yeah, this whole thing is so strange. 0.96
01:25:16.000 It looks like they're trying to fuck Bernie over again, just like they did in 2016. We watched that coin flip over and over again yesterday from Iowa. 0.97
01:25:25.000 We were like, arrest that kid.
01:25:27.000 Put him in jail.
01:25:28.000 That was an illegal coin flip.
01:25:30.000 That was a terrible coin flip.
01:25:32.000 The whole thing is just so weird.
01:25:34.000 It's just seeing it play out and seeing it play out so transparently.
01:25:39.000 So many different...
01:25:39.000 Some of the conspiracies are like about...
01:25:42.000 Because now they're kind of like pitting Mayor Pete against Bernie.
01:25:47.000 Mm-hmm.
01:25:48.000 Well, he's doing it. 1.00
01:25:49.000 He's talking shit about Bernie. 1.00
01:25:50.000 He is too. 1.00
01:25:51.000 And he got booed.
01:25:54.000 Yesterday, right?
01:25:55.000 And then Bernie was talking about how many billionaires...
01:25:57.000 So many billionaires donate to Mayor Pete.
01:26:01.000 That was a pretty good Bernie.
01:26:02.000 It's not that good.
01:26:03.000 Andrew Yang 2020 dropout fuel speculation on NYC. Oh, I would be so happy if he did that.
01:26:08.000 Oh, mayor of NYC. Holy shit. 1.00
01:26:09.000 He could do that. 1.00
01:26:11.000 He could win that. 1.00
01:26:12.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00
01:26:13.000 Actually, he would. 1.00
01:26:14.000 How is Mayor Pete, is he still a mayor?
01:26:16.000 Yeah, he is.
01:26:17.000 How do you do that?
01:26:18.000 That's a bit of a complaint among us.
01:26:19.000 That should be a giant complaint.
01:26:21.000 Did he do a great job as a mayor?
01:26:22.000 Did he clean up all the problems of that city?
01:26:25.000 He's done enough to make people notice, but I think the African-American community is not happy about some issues that He talks really well, and he's handsome, and he's a veteran.
01:26:35.000 Those are good things. 0.99
01:26:36.000 They're like, fucking run him! 1.00
01:26:37.000 Run him! 1.00
01:26:38.000 Run him! 0.90
01:26:38.000 But, you know, people are really raking him over the coals for apparently, like, his, you know, again, he's checked all the right boxes. 0.90
01:26:45.000 Harvard, McKinsey.
01:26:47.000 Like, he's too perfect.
01:26:48.000 Like, he was 3D printed in the DNC's headquarters, you know?
01:26:52.000 Yes.
01:26:52.000 So people are very concerned about that.
01:26:54.000 It's so funny how this whole optics and authenticity really...
01:26:57.000 For me, that's why I like Andrew Yang.
01:27:00.000 If you hate politicians, which I generally do, he's the least hard to hate.
01:27:04.000 Yes.
01:27:06.000 Talking to him, he's so normal.
01:27:08.000 He's like a guy who runs some tech company or something.
01:27:11.000 That's what he feels like when I talk to him.
01:27:13.000 Yeah.
01:27:15.000 And that's the thing.
01:27:16.000 With 24-hour exposure, social media and news cycle, this kind of signal is so obvious in a way that was never before.
01:27:24.000 We can see normal people now.
01:27:27.000 And we know the difference between grandstanding, posturing, and just being a normal person.
01:27:34.000 But also, normal people don't want to do it.
01:27:37.000 Yeah.
01:27:38.000 It's like the whole thing of it is just so invasive.
01:27:41.000 Right.
01:27:42.000 It should disqualify anybody who wanted to do it.
01:27:45.000 Exactly.
01:27:46.000 But, you know, this is a system we have.
01:27:48.000 We've got to do what we've got to do.
01:27:50.000 It's better than China, right? 1.00
01:27:52.000 Of course.
01:27:52.000 Yeah.
01:27:53.000 Right.
01:27:53.000 Yeah.
01:27:54.000 Absolutely.
01:27:54.000 As dirty as it is over here, it's still better.
01:27:58.000 Than the alternatives that we see elsewhere around the world.
01:28:01.000 Right, exactly.
01:28:02.000 I'm hoping things just continue to get better.
01:28:04.000 I'm hoping more people understand the mechanisms behind the scenes and how all this stuff works.
01:28:11.000 I have a question for you, though.
01:28:13.000 You do talk a lot about woke stuff kind of going amok, right?
01:28:20.000 Does it not bother you, though, about Bernie that he aligns himself with some characters who are super woke?
01:28:27.000 And woke activists in particular.
01:28:29.000 Yeah.
01:28:29.000 Well, I mean, he also aligns himself with people at Cornel West, who is brilliant and has some amazing ideas about that and looks at it from an accurate and educated perspective.
01:28:42.000 I think a lot of the wokeness is a sign of a cultural shift in the right direction.
01:28:50.000 Less racism.
01:28:51.000 Less homophobia.
01:28:52.000 Fill in the blank.
01:28:53.000 All the things that trouble us about evil behavior.
01:28:58.000 And even greed.
01:29:00.000 Corporate greed.
01:29:01.000 All these things that trouble us about the influence that money has on politics.
01:29:06.000 And Bernie clearly stands against all that stuff.
01:29:09.000 And I think that when you see this woke stuff, even though it goes amok, you have to look at it on a spectrum.
01:29:16.000 It's like the crazy Antifa people who demand 100% compliance with woke ideology or they'll hit you in the head with a bike lock versus people who want single mothers to be able to have free education and free healthcare and give them the economic support that they have to raise their family. 0.98
01:29:36.000 And hopefully give their children a chance at achieving a successful, comfortable life in this world, versus suppress them, versus keep them in this fucked up system that just throws them in the meat grinder with everybody else. 0.94
01:29:50.000 Treat this country like a community. 0.53
01:29:53.000 Like, try to do our best to help the people that are in a disenfranchised position, because there's so many.
01:29:59.000 Try to do our best to, in some way, We're good to go.
01:30:12.000 We're good to go.
01:30:21.000 It is fringe.
01:30:25.000 There's nothing wrong with being conservative fiscally.
01:30:28.000 There's nothing wrong with being conservative in the way you dress or the way you behave.
01:30:33.000 It's like when you go far right, then things get ugly.
01:30:38.000 The outside edges on both parties are the mess.
01:30:42.000 Most people, reasonable people, if they could have conversations with folks, Even if they disagreed on certain things, they'd find themselves somewhere in a comfortable Discussion where you could at least sort through the ideas and try to figure out why you think the way you think and why I think the way I think,
01:31:04.000 how we disagree, and are you right or am I wrong?
01:31:09.000 Like, I want to know, you know, and most people don't.
01:31:12.000 These kind of conversations, like trying to figure out if the person who opposes your philosophy or your perspective is right and you're wrong, it's very uncomfortable for people.
01:31:22.000 Right.
01:31:23.000 So what do they do? 1.00
01:31:23.000 They just fucking shit on anybody who's on the other side. 1.00
01:31:26.000 And they don't talk to them. 1.00
01:31:27.000 There's very little exchange of ideas in between the right and the left.
01:31:30.000 One of the guys I really like talking to is Dan Crenshaw, who's a right-wing guy.
01:31:34.000 I like him, too.
01:31:35.000 He's very reasonable.
01:31:36.000 Very reasonable.
01:31:38.000 He's open-minded.
01:31:38.000 So much respect for doing that thing on SNL, too.
01:31:40.000 Yes, yes.
01:31:41.000 That was great.
01:31:42.000 It was great.
01:31:43.000 I mean, that was such a nice me a couple to see.
01:31:45.000 Yes.
01:31:47.000 And it's so rare nowadays, this dividing line between Ryan and Lev.
01:31:51.000 Things are just so hyper, hyper-polarized.
01:31:55.000 Guys will go on a Fox News show and people scream at them, how dare you use that?
01:32:02.000 Like Jimmy Dore just did Tucker Carlson's show and people were just shitting on him all over the place for doing that and using his platform.
01:32:11.000 Of course he's using his platform.
01:32:13.000 He's getting good ideas out there.
01:32:15.000 Who, Tucker?
01:32:16.000 Jimmy Dore.
01:32:17.000 Oh, Jimmy Dore, too.
01:32:17.000 Jimmy Dore has an amazing YouTube show.
01:32:19.000 I've seen him. 0.97
01:32:20.000 It's fucking amazing. 0.98
01:32:21.000 And the way he breaks down things. 0.98
01:32:22.000 It's hilarious, but also accurate.
01:32:25.000 He's funny.
01:32:26.000 And from the far left, too.
01:32:28.000 Yes.
01:32:29.000 I mean, I disagree with him a lot politically, but he actually entertains me.
01:32:33.000 Yes.
01:32:33.000 He's an angry, far-left guy who's funny.
01:32:36.000 And he laughs like – wasn't Mutsy the dog that has the asthma laugh?
01:32:41.000 Oh, he's got a crazy laugh.
01:32:42.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:32:43.000 I like people with crazy laughs because their laugh just makes me laugh.
01:32:46.000 So I just watch for that purpose alone.
01:32:48.000 We need more discussions.
01:32:49.000 We need more people that – and the thing is if you like – Right.
01:33:16.000 But like I said, this is another example of the political one-drop rule.
01:33:21.000 You interviewed one far-right person.
01:33:25.000 Ignore Jimmy Dore.
01:33:26.000 Ignore that you have had Abby Martin, Edward Snowden, and all these people on.
01:33:29.000 You've done this far-right person.
01:33:31.000 Your whole show is far-right.
01:33:33.000 Therefore, Rogan is an alt-right person.
01:33:37.000 Well, it's easy, too, because I look like one.
01:33:39.000 I look like I should be an alt-right person.
01:33:41.000 No, you don't.
01:33:42.000 Yes, I do.
01:33:42.000 Why?
01:33:43.000 Because you work out?
01:33:43.000 Yeah.
01:33:44.000 Yeah.
01:33:45.000 I'm a bald cage fighting commentator.
01:33:48.000 You know?
01:33:49.000 You know what?
01:33:50.000 That's a terrible...
01:33:51.000 I don't know why this correlation has really started to exist, but it has.
01:33:54.000 I saw an article.
01:33:55.000 I think it was on The Guardian that said something like, if you exercise too much, you're...
01:34:00.000 There was an article about that.
01:34:02.000 Like, exercise is kind of like a...
01:34:05.000 Again, they're lumping all these concepts.
01:34:06.000 Toxic masculinity? 0.98
01:34:07.000 Yeah, they're lumping all these concepts together. 1.00
01:34:09.000 I bet that article was written by a weak bitch. 1.00
01:34:12.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:34:14.000 Right, right.
01:34:15.000 Just feeding the fire, sorry.
01:34:16.000 Yeah, it's silly.
01:34:18.000 There's a lot of really brilliant people who exercise all the time.
01:34:21.000 Right.
01:34:22.000 They just enjoy it.
01:34:23.000 They enjoy having a body that works really well.
01:34:25.000 There's a lot of brilliant people that like racing cars, too.
01:34:27.000 They just enjoy the mechanical aspect of racing a car.
01:34:32.000 It's kind of the same thing.
01:34:33.000 When you do something to your body to juice your body up to make it stronger and faster and work better.
01:34:38.000 It doesn't mean you're dumb. 0.97
01:34:39.000 It doesn't mean you're toxic masculine. 0.99
01:34:41.000 But this stuff is insidious because it's bad enough to be in political silos.
01:34:45.000 We're now in cultural silos and they're mapping on each other, right?
01:34:48.000 So one of the things that happened when I first moved here was that, you know, so...
01:34:55.000 Because I didn't grow up here.
01:34:56.000 I didn't know what I shouldn't like.
01:34:59.000 So people would say like, oh, you're Boston, like, you know, educated, liberal, coastal elite, right?
01:35:05.000 But then I was like, I love WWE. And so they're like, that's that.
01:35:09.000 Of all people, like, you know, I'm surprised you watch WWE. And I, you know, this was the time of like Hardy Boys and Lita.
01:35:16.000 I grew up with that stuff.
01:35:17.000 So people will be surprised and they will push back on it.
01:35:20.000 And it's increasingly become that way.
01:35:24.000 Like from a person's consumption habits, what they like, hobbies, you're now able to map what politics they will have or likely to have.
01:35:33.000 And that's dangerous.
01:35:34.000 We shouldn't be going down this route.
01:35:37.000 It's been very comforting for me to see how many left-wing, intelligent, well-read, educated people actually enjoy watching the UFC. I've talked to so many of them, like, you're a fan!
01:35:47.000 Like, oh, alright!
01:35:49.000 And then they want to have these conversations with me about fights and about this matchup and that matchup.
01:35:53.000 I'm like, wow!
01:35:54.000 This is really interesting.
01:35:56.000 Like people that you would never have associated with being a fan.
01:35:59.000 Like Robert Downey Jr., UFC fan.
01:36:02.000 And we're talking to him about it.
01:36:03.000 I was like, wow!
01:36:04.000 Matt Damon, UFC fan.
01:36:05.000 And I'm like, whoa!
01:36:07.000 Anybody breaking moles really should be... 1.00
01:36:10.000 Elevate it.
01:36:11.000 Because it's so rare.
01:36:12.000 We just get more and more entrenched in these clusters.
01:36:14.000 Right, and people are scared to like things like WWE or like anything they like. 0.99
01:36:18.000 Some people love fucking mosh pits. 0.97
01:36:22.000 Yeah, they're like, you know it's fake. 0.99
01:36:23.000 I'm like, of course, but it's entertaining.
01:36:26.000 Did you not see what Vince McMahon did?
01:36:28.000 It's just entertaining.
01:36:29.000 Yeah, but they don't want you to like what they don't like.
01:36:34.000 It's thought bubbles.
01:36:36.000 It's what it is.
01:36:37.000 People love when you're predictable.
01:36:42.000 It's one of the reasons why people love when people dress up in suits.
01:36:45.000 You dress in a suit and you act like a business person.
01:36:49.000 You say words that are, you know, you speak in a very similar way to the other people that you work with.
01:36:56.000 And it makes it easy to map out what you're probably going to do and how you're going to react.
01:37:00.000 There's a very narrow band that you're operating in.
01:37:05.000 When you're wearing a suit and a tie and you're in an office, there's a narrow band. 0.99
01:37:09.000 You could be the asshole suit and tie guy, or you can be the standard work language human being, gentleman. 0.98
01:37:17.000 That kind of stuff is... 1.00
01:37:20.000 People like that because they know that they can kind of predict you.
01:37:24.000 They know where you're going from.
01:37:25.000 But when you're eccentric and when you're outside the box and you're unpredictable and you have an eclectic taste, they don't like it.
01:37:33.000 You have interesting ideas that are completely irreverent and don't fit into these patterns.
01:37:39.000 What is she up to? 0.99
01:37:41.000 What the fuck's going on in her head? 1.00
01:37:42.000 She's out there watching wrestling? 1.00
01:37:44.000 Pro wrestling.
01:37:45.000 She actually likes it.
01:37:46.000 No, it's not.
01:37:47.000 Yeah, it's pro-fake wrestling.
01:37:48.000 Entertainment.
01:37:49.000 Yeah, entertainment wrestling.
01:37:50.000 Right, exactly.
01:37:51.000 Yeah, but some people don't like when you're unpredictable.
01:37:54.000 And they also don't like their own ideas being challenged.
01:37:57.000 It's one of the things that I think that people love about other people that are deeply religious.
01:38:01.000 If you're deeply religious and they're deeply religious, they know that they can talk to you in a certain way.
01:38:07.000 Well, the Lord has a way of making things work out.
01:38:09.000 Yes, it does, Tom.
01:38:10.000 Yes, it does.
01:38:11.000 And they know that you're going to think...
01:38:13.000 Yeah, amen.
01:38:13.000 You're going to think in this narrow bandwidth.
01:38:15.000 You're not going to get outside that box.
01:38:17.000 You're a good Christian.
01:38:19.000 Well, I know Mike, and Mike's a good Christian.
01:38:21.000 And all that stuff I hear about him just doesn't make any sense to me.
01:38:24.000 But that's why it's a good control mechanism.
01:38:27.000 It's easy to hurt people who you know exist within this narrow band.
01:38:31.000 Well, that's why politicians almost always adopt some form of religious ideology.
01:38:35.000 Even Trump.
01:38:36.000 Trump was basically never religious his entire life.
01:38:41.000 And now he's got a religious...
01:38:43.000 That lady who has... 1.00
01:38:45.000 Paula White or something? 0.95
01:38:47.000 Crazy! 1.00
01:38:49.000 Crazy!
01:38:49.000 But that lady is amazing.
01:38:51.000 But she's so crazy that it's... 0.98
01:38:53.000 WWE. That's what it is. 0.96
01:38:56.000 I mean, Trump used to be in the WWE. I know.
01:38:58.000 I totally remember those days.
01:38:59.000 This lady is basically like a wacky manager. 1.00
01:39:02.000 She's like a wacky manager in the WWE that talks to God and helps Trump out. 1.00
01:39:07.000 That's how I look at it.
01:39:08.000 I'm like, this is his wacky manager.
01:39:10.000 He's got a character now.
01:39:12.000 I mean, look. 1.00
01:39:12.000 He's got the fucking crazy hair. 1.00
01:39:14.000 He's got this spray tan that doesn't go all the way to the outside edges. 1.00
01:39:17.000 And he's got this wacky lady who, I don't want to say he's banging her.
01:39:21.000 But I wouldn't be shocked.
01:39:24.000 No, I'd be shy.
01:39:25.000 She's kind of hot. 1.00
01:39:25.000 She? 1.00
01:39:26.000 Yeah, kind of in a dirty old crazy religious lady way. 1.00
01:39:30.000 I don't know. 1.00
01:39:31.000 Dirty, milfy religious lady. 1.00
01:39:32.000 I know she's fairly pretty. 1.00
01:39:33.000 Isn't she?
01:39:34.000 Look at that.
01:39:35.000 Not bad looking.
01:39:37.000 Listen, you tell me.
01:39:38.000 I like her, yeah, the way she presents.
01:39:39.000 But she's got the Karen hairstyle, which is not attractive. 0.96
01:39:42.000 The Karen hairstyle? 0.96
01:39:43.000 L-O-L. Look at that.
01:39:46.000 Look at him.
01:39:47.000 He's not even...
01:39:48.000 He's deeply in thought.
01:39:49.000 No, it's so obvious it's fake.
01:39:51.000 Come on.
01:39:51.000 How dare you?
01:39:53.000 You don't know.
01:39:54.000 He might be a changed man.
01:39:56.000 Yeah.
01:39:56.000 Someone sounds as close-minded.
01:39:58.000 I don't like how you're thinking.
01:39:59.000 You know what?
01:39:59.000 I think that's the thing that kind of ties all the threads of my life.
01:40:02.000 It's just that I definitely oppose ideological conformity.
01:40:04.000 You know who I believe in that picture?
01:40:05.000 Go back to that picture, please.
01:40:07.000 You know who I believe in that picture?
01:40:08.000 Mike Pence.
01:40:09.000 No, he's not there.
01:40:10.000 No, that's not the picture. 1.00
01:40:11.000 You fucked me, Jamie. 1.00
01:40:13.000 Wait, what picture? 1.00
01:40:14.000 The picture that we were just looking at.
01:40:16.000 Doesn't matter.
01:40:17.000 See that lady in the leopard skin? 1.00
01:40:20.000 I believe her face.
01:40:21.000 She's barely into this.
01:40:23.000 That's a lot of contour.
01:40:24.000 She's like, what am I doing?
01:40:26.000 What is this nonsense?
01:40:28.000 And Trump is like, I can't believe I'm president.
01:40:30.000 I won.
01:40:31.000 I'm going to win again. 0.88
01:40:32.000 All I have to do is listen to this crazy lady talk to me about Jesus and people got to buy into it. 1.00
01:40:38.000 It's a great move. 0.71
01:40:40.000 I mean, he didn't go secular at all, right?
01:40:44.000 But if you look at his past and his history, he's not a religious guy.
01:40:47.000 And all of a sudden he is.
01:40:49.000 And nobody even questions it.
01:40:51.000 It's just lip service, though.
01:40:52.000 He's in the WWE. She's his manager. 0.89
01:40:56.000 She's the wacky manager. 1.00
01:40:57.000 I think Obama was similar.
01:40:59.000 I think it was performative.
01:41:01.000 His church-going.
01:41:02.000 I don't think he for the moment was...
01:41:04.000 Is that her?
01:41:04.000 Yeah.
01:41:05.000 Oh, yeah.
01:41:07.000 Okay.
01:41:07.000 They get down.
01:41:09.000 I guarantee you.
01:41:10.000 They go back.
01:41:11.000 They do Adderall together.
01:41:13.000 They listen to ACD scene. 1.00
01:41:15.000 They fuck like rabbits. 1.00
01:41:18.000 She's got a crazy story. 1.00
01:41:20.000 Does she?
01:41:21.000 Yeah.
01:41:21.000 Like addiction.
01:41:23.000 Oh, she used to be addicted? 0.88
01:41:24.000 Yeah.
01:41:24.000 Oh, she used to be addicted.
01:41:26.000 Good.
01:41:26.000 Even better.
01:41:27.000 I think that's the singer for Journey.
01:41:29.000 No.
01:41:29.000 Yeah.
01:41:30.000 The new singer?
01:41:31.000 What do you mean?
01:41:33.000 Which singer?
01:41:34.000 Journey's Jonathan Cain.
01:41:36.000 No, not the singer.
01:41:37.000 The singer is a Japanese gentleman.
01:41:39.000 Do you know that Journey...
01:41:42.000 What was his name?
01:41:44.000 Stephen...
01:41:45.000 What was the original guy's name?
01:41:47.000 Steve...
01:41:49.000 Steve Perry.
01:41:50.000 Steve Perry from Journey.
01:41:51.000 Beautiful voice.
01:41:52.000 You know that?
01:41:52.000 Yeah, of course.
01:41:53.000 Don't stop!
01:41:54.000 Well now, there's a Japanese guy who does it.
01:41:57.000 And he was a Journey cover band guy.
01:42:00.000 And he's so good that when Steve Perry stepped away, they hired him to sing the songs. 0.98
01:42:06.000 And he's fucking amazing. 0.97
01:42:09.000 That guy. 0.99
01:42:10.000 Wait, which guy?
01:42:11.000 That's the guy that was Paul, the spiritual advisor, the far right.
01:42:13.000 That guy's the singer, the one in the middle.
01:42:15.000 Oh, wow.
01:42:16.000 He's amazing.
01:42:18.000 He's very racially ambiguous.
01:42:20.000 In that picture.
01:42:22.000 But you said he's Japanese.
01:42:24.000 I believe he's Japanese.
01:42:25.000 Isn't he?
01:42:26.000 Am I wrong?
01:42:27.000 I don't know about Japanese.
01:42:28.000 I'll find out exactly.
01:42:29.000 I thought I read he was Japanese.
01:42:32.000 Anyway, he's a guy from a...
01:42:35.000 What's his name?
01:42:40.000 Okay, maybe something else.
01:42:41.000 That's Filipino, it sounds like.
01:42:43.000 Oh, he is Filipino. 0.55
01:42:44.000 Okay, sorry, I'm wrong.
01:42:46.000 Chances are.
01:42:46.000 Anyway, this guy sounds exactly like Steve Perry.
01:42:52.000 Maybe even a touch better.
01:42:54.000 Wow.
01:42:54.000 Maybe even a touch better.
01:42:55.000 You want to hear a little?
01:42:56.000 Yeah, I haven't heard it.
01:42:57.000 Let's play a little bit of it.
01:42:58.000 Give me a little bit of it, Jamie.
01:42:59.000 Wait, when did he...
01:43:00.000 A few years back.
01:43:01.000 Steve Perry...
01:43:02.000 Five years ago?
01:43:02.000 Yeah.
01:43:03.000 Steve Perry wanted to bail.
01:43:04.000 He's like, I can't do this anymore, man. 0.97
01:43:06.000 And this guy's like, I'll fucking do it. 1.00
01:43:07.000 And they listen to him like, damn, dude, you can do it. 0.99
01:43:10.000 He sounds exactly like Steve Perry. 0.99
01:43:13.000 Okay, I gotta hear this.
01:43:14.000 Give me some.
01:43:20.000 Come on.
01:43:26.000 Brings me back to high school, baby!
01:43:29.000 He's amazing!
01:43:31.000 Wait, that was not...
01:43:32.000 No, that's him!
01:43:33.000 That's this dude!
01:43:34.000 Okay.
01:43:34.000 How good.
01:43:35.000 I'm convinced.
01:43:36.000 A little, maybe a little better.
01:43:38.000 Maybe a little better.
01:43:39.000 I like the intensity, yeah.
01:43:39.000 Just a touch.
01:43:40.000 Just a touch better.
01:43:41.000 Or maybe just sound technology has improved.
01:43:43.000 I'm not sure.
01:43:44.000 That could be.
01:43:45.000 You're being very generous.
01:43:46.000 Yeah.
01:43:47.000 Give me a little more.
01:44:02.000 Come on! 0.61
01:44:03.000 That guy's awesome!
01:44:04.000 I had no idea.
01:44:04.000 It's amazing!
01:44:05.000 He's so good!
01:44:07.000 I love that.
01:44:08.000 That's a great story.
01:44:09.000 That's a human story.
01:44:11.000 You know, I love a story like that. 1.00
01:44:12.000 Guy's in a fucking cover band. 0.99
01:44:14.000 Right. 1.00
01:44:14.000 All of a sudden he's a lead singer at Journey. 1.00
01:44:16.000 I'm not surprised he's from Pino though.
01:44:18.000 They're really good at singing.
01:44:19.000 Oh, okay.
01:44:20.000 They love Carrie.
01:44:21.000 They're really good at pool.
01:44:23.000 Who?
01:44:24.000 Filipinos? 0.93
01:44:25.000 Some of the best pool players of all time.
01:44:27.000 You see on my wall out there, I have two signed photos of Filipino pool players.
01:44:32.000 Efren Reyes and Francisco... 0.99
01:44:35.000 Fuck, what is this? 1.00
01:44:37.000 Goddammit. 1.00
01:44:39.000 I can't remember his last name.
01:44:40.000 Bata.
01:44:41.000 Bata is Efren Reyes' and Django Francisco Bustamante.
01:44:45.000 Francisco Bustamante.
01:44:47.000 They're probably two of the top ten.
01:44:49.000 Efren's probably number one ever, Efren Reyes.
01:44:52.000 Most people agree with that.
01:44:53.000 And Bustamante is probably top ten of all time.
01:44:56.000 I'm not sure we should be even positive racial stereotypes now or not.
01:44:59.000 Those are positive.
01:45:01.000 I know, but now they're not kosher anymore. 0.95
01:45:02.000 Yeah, that's silly.
01:45:04.000 The reason is, what happened is, in the 1950s, when American GIs were in the Philippines, they introduced pool to the Philippines, and they started playing under really bad conditions, because it's very moist outside, humidity, the tables roll really slowly,
01:45:20.000 and so they developed a lot of really good skills under bad conditions, and then they would go to good conditions.
01:45:27.000 And they also have a gambling culture.
01:45:29.000 So there's a lot of gambling involved in pool.
01:45:31.000 And pools everywhere.
01:45:32.000 They have all these outside cafes with terrible pool tables.
01:45:36.000 And these people just got really, really good at pool.
01:45:38.000 And to this day, some of the best players in the world come from the Philippines. 0.99
01:45:43.000 Like when guys would see guys in tournaments and they would have to play a guy from the Philippines, they'd be like, oh, fuck. 0.99
01:45:48.000 Here we go. 1.00
01:45:50.000 Wow.
01:45:50.000 Yeah.
01:45:51.000 So it's like Chinese and ping pong. 0.84
01:45:53.000 Probably.
01:45:53.000 I don't know about that, though.
01:45:55.000 I don't know too much about that.
01:45:56.000 That's definitely true of even skiers, right?
01:45:58.000 So people that kind of learned on like...
01:46:00.000 Actually, East Coast skiers, they're highly represented in the Olympics because they trained on ice.
01:46:05.000 Oh, okay.
01:46:05.000 So you got to get like...
01:46:06.000 Again, it's the tough conditions that kind of forges this like fortitude.
01:46:10.000 Then you can adapt to any terrain.
01:46:12.000 Versus like if you kind of, you know, grew up skiing the south part of Colorado, you can't really switch that way.
01:46:19.000 I know.
01:46:20.000 That's the thing.
01:46:21.000 We're making things easier for people.
01:46:23.000 We're making easier people.
01:46:25.000 That's why I have a, you know, one of the solutions I have for, you know, one of the questions of our time is how we fix journalism, right?
01:46:34.000 Yes.
01:46:36.000 One of the things I really think we need to do, because I'm not one of those people that thinks like the MSM or like the media is the problem.
01:46:41.000 I mean, I'm kind of part of the media now.
01:46:44.000 I write for Spectator USA, which is, so does Bridget and some of the other people that you've had on your show as well.
01:46:50.000 Bridget Phetasy.
01:46:51.000 I love her.
01:46:52.000 Yeah.
01:46:52.000 She's the one that actually pitched me.
01:46:53.000 She's hilarious.
01:46:54.000 She is really funny.
01:46:55.000 I wish I had the freedom to be as inappropriate and hilarious as well.
01:46:59.000 You say that.
01:46:59.000 I wanted to get back to that because you were talking about, well, we'll go ahead with this thing about how to fix journalism and get back to that.
01:47:04.000 Some of the best reporting that the New York Times really does is on the international stuff.
01:47:10.000 They've sent journalists into these areas in Xinjiang to see what's up.
01:47:16.000 They will be surveilled by government officials and things like that.
01:47:21.000 Or even the ISIS files where this reporter, New York Times reporter, Rukmini, had gone into Baghdad and she just went in and collected all these documents by herself.
01:47:31.000 And then they came back and they analyzed it and they reverse engineered how ISIS was running their entire operation.
01:47:38.000 This is really good journalism. 0.97
01:47:40.000 And when you kind of focus on the shit that's going on in other parts of the world, it gives you a lot of perspective. 0.96
01:47:47.000 You realize that a lot of woke stuff is actually very America-centric. 0.97
01:47:53.000 And if you had zoomed out, you would see that this wasn't a problem.
01:47:58.000 The thermostat issue of thermostats, office temperatures being sexist, for example, because they're too cold for women, that's not a problem when you have seen how the women in Iran, what they have to deal with.
01:48:12.000 And if we just did a rotation in the newspapers where everybody from the lifestyle or culture desk has to do a stint in Saudi Arabia, something reporting from the – like maybe they'll just – maybe they'll have some perspective on this.
01:48:27.000 Sure.
01:48:28.000 Well, it is all a perspective issue, right?
01:48:29.000 I mean when in the absence of any real oppression, you find oppression everywhere.
01:48:33.000 Right.
01:48:34.000 Try to find it in pencils and – Yeah, like progress is the victim of its own success in a way.
01:48:39.000 And, you know, it's one of the things that...
01:48:41.000 Because I had a big imposter syndrome when I first joined Spectator.
01:48:45.000 And what they told me was, I was like, you know, I'm not trained as a journalist.
01:48:49.000 And they're like, yeah, we know that.
01:48:51.000 But that's actually, you know, the chairman said, like, that's why we want you.
01:48:54.000 It's because you didn't go to the same schools.
01:48:56.000 You didn't go to the same journalism school.
01:48:57.000 So you're not going to think like...
01:48:59.000 All the kids are graduating from, say, like, Columbia, you know, in journalism.
01:49:03.000 So we want different perspectives.
01:49:06.000 And it's like, in fact, it's a policy that we don't even ask for where you go to school.
01:49:10.000 We don't even ask what you study.
01:49:12.000 We don't care.
01:49:12.000 So don't even tell us.
01:49:13.000 And that's how I got, like, you know, on board.
01:49:16.000 So did they just read your writing and say, we just like how you think?
01:49:19.000 Exactly.
01:49:20.000 Isn't that refreshing?
01:49:21.000 It is very refreshing.
01:49:22.000 It's wonderful.
01:49:24.000 Spectator USA. Congrats to them.
01:49:26.000 Why do you think that you can't joke around about things and why do you think that that in some way is going to make people take you less seriously?
01:49:32.000 I think people put you in bins, right?
01:49:35.000 So professionally, there's just, like you said, it's this signal of how you're going to act, how you dress, how you come across.
01:49:45.000 And in professional settings, there's an expectation of you behaving a certain way.
01:49:52.000 Now, when you're funny, the problem is that people don't know.
01:49:58.000 You could say something, but be... 0.97
01:50:01.000 It's totally ridiculous and it's a joke. 0.99
01:50:04.000 But then other people might take that seriously and now you're a racist. 0.99
01:50:08.000 Welcome to my world.
01:50:10.000 Right, right.
01:50:11.000 But you work for yourself.
01:50:14.000 You're Joe Rogan.
01:50:15.000 It's very different if you are tethered to an organization that you have to represent.
01:50:21.000 At the end of the day, people can't separate that.
01:50:24.000 So, you know, part of my job is negotiating deals with many of the authors that you have on your show, right?
01:50:32.000 People who write best-selling books, trying to ink deals with them.
01:50:37.000 I want your Arabic digital rights for free.
01:50:40.000 You know, I want to make videos of your books too, video summaries and all these things.
01:50:43.000 We ink contracts with them, working with publishers, agents.
01:50:47.000 And then also fundraising.
01:50:48.000 I have to go to individuals to say like, hey, you know what?
01:50:50.000 It's going to cost us $20,000 to translate this book.
01:50:54.000 Would you want to sponsor it?
01:50:56.000 You're a fan of this book.
01:50:57.000 Can we get this in Arabic for free?
01:51:00.000 When you're handling those things and going into offices and sometimes you go to Penguin Random House, it's a certain expectation set of you.
01:51:10.000 I don't know if it's even more true of women, though, that They don't expect you to be funny. 1.00
01:51:19.000 Or like, the funnier you are, the more they take you less seriously.
01:51:24.000 Versus men. 0.98
01:51:25.000 I don't know.
01:51:26.000 There seems to be a bit of a gender divide there. 1.00
01:51:28.000 I can see that.
01:51:29.000 I can see how that would be an issue, but I would like it to be their problem, not yours.
01:51:33.000 I like funny people.
01:51:34.000 So whenever someone says they're discouraged from being funny, and that's one of the things that I like about your Twitter page, is that it's funny.
01:51:41.000 You're very funny.
01:51:42.000 So like, discouraging you from being funny to me is like, why would you do that?
01:51:46.000 You can't separate...
01:51:47.000 Because you're not serious commentators.
01:51:48.000 Like, you know, no one's going to get you on...
01:51:50.000 I don't think that's true.
01:51:52.000 How could that be true?
01:51:53.000 How is it true that someone who's just making jokes also can't be a serious person with a really well thought out perspective?
01:52:02.000 Obviously, I agree with you, but it's just one of the feedbacks I've gotten.
01:52:07.000 If you want to be taken seriously...
01:52:08.000 Who are these people?
01:52:09.000 People that are running things.
01:52:11.000 Maybe you need your own show.
01:52:13.000 Maybe you need to stop working for people.
01:52:15.000 No.
01:52:16.000 I mean, I still believe in institutions.
01:52:19.000 That's why I'm not super...
01:52:20.000 I don't want the revolution.
01:52:22.000 I still believe that the way we're going to change things is through – right now there's just too much power.
01:52:28.000 My heart would like a revolution maybe.
01:52:30.000 What kind of revolution?
01:52:31.000 No, I'm just saying I'm not the kind of person that wants to tear down institutions.
01:52:34.000 I kind of want to work within it to change things because they have the best shot at changing things.
01:52:39.000 So in that sense, I'm not that much of an outsider.
01:52:43.000 I love this quote.
01:52:44.000 Actually, Elizabeth Warren said it.
01:52:46.000 She said, in life, you have to choose.
01:52:48.000 Are you going to be an insider or an outsider?
01:52:51.000 An insider doesn't have the freedom of speech, but he has the power to change things.
01:52:55.000 An outsider can say whatever he or she wants.
01:52:57.000 You can bitch about the system, you can be a whistleblower, but you have no power to change anything.
01:53:02.000 And you have to choose. 0.70
01:53:05.000 You do?
01:53:06.000 That was her quote.
01:53:07.000 Is that an ancient Lakota quote?
01:53:11.000 Actually, it came from Larry Summers.
01:53:13.000 I don't know if that's accurate.
01:53:15.000 I don't know if you have to be an insider or an outsider.
01:53:18.000 I think you have to have financial freedom so that you don't worry about someone taking away your ability to make a living so you suppress your own thoughts.
01:53:25.000 Correct.
01:53:26.000 That's the big one.
01:53:27.000 But it takes a very, you know...
01:53:29.000 A lot of things have to be aligned circumstantially to have financial freedom in the first place.
01:53:33.000 But a lot of that does come from even working within the institution.
01:53:36.000 A lot of people who have, you know, huge financial back.
01:53:39.000 And that's why somebody, I think it was Sarah Hader, who tweeted something like, the one thing that's not really talked about is the classist implications of cancel culture.
01:53:48.000 Because it's going to affect the lower class more drastically.
01:53:53.000 If you don't have the money, if they're cancelled, there's a huge class implication to this.
01:53:58.000 Yeah, that's true.
01:53:59.000 It's also just a frivolous way of treating human beings and there's no path for redemption.
01:54:05.000 It's like the thought process of it is so limited.
01:54:08.000 Because you're not considering the fact that these are humans and these are people and people learn and grow and they get better.
01:54:14.000 This not offering any path to redemption and lumping all digressions and all mistakes into the same sort of pile.
01:54:22.000 Right.
01:54:23.000 It's just, it's a childish way of treating human beings.
01:54:27.000 Right.
01:54:28.000 And it's also there's a fear to it.
01:54:30.000 That it's going to come back on you, so you go after them.
01:54:33.000 Like, some of the biggest creeps are also male feminists, right? 1.00
01:54:36.000 They're the ones who are, like, really...
01:54:37.000 How do you say that?
01:54:38.000 You know what I mean?
01:54:39.000 It's true.
01:54:39.000 I already sang that of Andrew Doyle the other day.
01:54:41.000 That was funny.
01:54:41.000 Yes, I love that guy.
01:54:43.000 He's amazing.
01:54:43.000 That book, Woke, was fantastic, too.
01:54:45.000 Titania.
01:54:46.000 Titania McGrath.
01:54:47.000 I love retweeting those Titania posts because so many people are like, What? 0.99
01:54:51.000 What the fuck is this? 1.00
01:54:53.000 Who is this bitch? 1.00
01:54:54.000 People get so mad they think she's real. 1.00
01:54:57.000 Oh, it's so wonderful.
01:54:58.000 But she could be in the sense that sometimes she ends up predicting actual commentary.
01:55:03.000 She's so close to real.
01:55:05.000 If you had a television show, like one of them After Midnight episodes, is that what it is?
01:55:11.000 What's the David Spade show called?
01:55:14.000 Lights out?
01:55:15.000 I'm thinking of the other one.
01:55:16.000 The one that Chris Hardwick used to host?
01:55:18.000 Anyway, you have a talk show.
01:55:20.000 Let's say Jimmy Kimmel.
01:55:21.000 If he had, is this Titania McGrath or is this a real activist?
01:55:25.000 And you had the quotes back to back.
01:55:27.000 A lot of them are close.
01:55:29.000 You would be hard pressed.
01:55:30.000 You'd get a lot of it wrong.
01:55:31.000 We're at the point, though, in our history and culture that we can't even write better satire than reality.
01:55:39.000 Right.
01:55:39.000 And that's a problem.
01:55:41.000 It is a problem.
01:55:42.000 When our satirists actually end up writing better stories or even predicting what's happening, that's... 1.00
01:55:50.000 Well, people are losing their fucking minds. 0.99
01:55:52.000 There was a video from the University of Phoenix, I think it was, where there's this kid on campus and there was some pro-Trump group. 1.00
01:56:01.000 Did you see that video? 1.00
01:56:02.000 The kid screaming and saying, you're all fucking fascist, you're all fucking Trump, your throat's cut. 1.00
01:56:09.000 And he's screaming. 1.00
01:56:10.000 And he's walking away from them screaming and making this, you should not have your throats cut, just completely unhinged.
01:56:17.000 And I was watching this and I was like, imagine if this was some kid yelling about Obama and the Obama administration and the liberals.
01:56:27.000 I mean, because he's not saying anything.
01:56:29.000 He's not saying, the reason why I hate you is because you detained children at the border in cages.
01:56:35.000 Play this so I can hear it.
01:56:38.000 Play it and give me some...
01:56:40.000 Okay, I saw that circulating.
01:56:41.000 Listen to this. 0.99
01:56:43.000 Slash his throat! 1.00
01:56:45.000 Every fucking Republican! 1.00
01:56:47.000 Suck my fucking balls! 1.00
01:56:49.000 Say that one more time. 1.00
01:56:51.000 Slash Republican's throat! 1.00
01:56:53.000 Slash his throat! 0.99
01:56:58.000 Okay, that poor kid needs a hug. 0.83
01:57:00.000 Yeah.
01:57:01.000 But imagine if he was saying that about Democrats. 1.00
01:57:03.000 Every Democrat can suck my balls. 1.00
01:57:07.000 Every Democrat slashed their throat. 1.00
01:57:10.000 That would be crazy. 0.98
01:57:12.000 Right, right.
01:57:13.000 I mean, he's doing that because there's this pro-student Trump organization there.
01:57:18.000 And so he's screaming that unhinged.
01:57:21.000 That's one of the problems.
01:57:23.000 I think we should not give the right legitimate reasons to be complaining about disparate coverage, right?
01:57:30.000 So one of the things that Eric Trump tweeted yesterday was, which I didn't even know happened, like apparently a van was driven into a GOP tent or something at one of the primaries.
01:57:41.000 And it got no coverage.
01:57:44.000 I didn't even see it until...
01:57:46.000 I don't know.
01:57:48.000 But there was a story about this.
01:57:50.000 And Eric Trump basically tweeted saying that, imagine if the labels were turned.
01:57:55.000 It was just the other way around.
01:57:57.000 That's right.
01:57:57.000 We would hear nonstop.
01:57:59.000 There would be analysis of the far-right problem in America.
01:58:04.000 So the responsibility is on the media to make sure that these people don't have the argument.
01:58:09.000 Right.
01:58:10.000 The media has to be open.
01:58:12.000 And they have to be unbiased in their depictions of these things.
01:58:15.000 And we don't really have that kind of media anymore.
01:58:18.000 We have left-wing media and right-wing media and everybody else is going, what's going on?
01:58:23.000 Who's right?
01:58:23.000 Who's telling the truth?
01:58:24.000 You flip back and forth from CNN to Fox News.
01:58:26.000 It's like you're in a vortex of space and time.
01:58:29.000 You don't understand what's what.
01:58:30.000 Right.
01:58:31.000 Yeah.
01:58:31.000 No, I agree.
01:58:32.000 It's weird.
01:58:33.000 But that kid, screaming, that poor kid?
01:58:35.000 Like, what happened?
01:58:37.000 Where'd you get this?
01:58:38.000 Every Republican slashed their throat?
01:58:40.000 I know.
01:58:41.000 Come on, man.
01:58:42.000 Who are you?
01:58:43.000 What happened to you?
01:58:44.000 And you're in school?
01:58:45.000 So you're learning something?
01:58:46.000 I'm so wary of sort of dogpiling on this stuff now.
01:58:50.000 I think when I first started on Twitter, too, I was always inflaming or retweeting something that was like, oh, look at this super woke person that's on the fringe.
01:59:00.000 And I'm like, no, no, maybe I shouldn't.
01:59:03.000 You know, amplify that signal.
01:59:04.000 Maybe this really is a French in that, you know, I'm just kind of making it seem like it's a bigger issue.
01:59:11.000 Because I notice I fall into that trap sometimes.
01:59:14.000 Like, there was this one story that came out, I think, when Apple released the new iPhone, there was like, New York Post was like, you know, iPhone 10X or something was cited as, was criticized as being sexist.
01:59:28.000 And I was like, What?
01:59:29.000 Why?
01:59:29.000 How?
01:59:30.000 How?
01:59:30.000 And apparently because the phone was kind of big, they expanded the dimensions, and so it doesn't fit into women's hands as neatly as the old version did.
01:59:39.000 And then I was like, so I tweeted that angrily, like, yeah, of course, everything's sexist again, like checks, notes, iPhone's sexist.
01:59:46.000 And then I realized I was kind of part of the problem, because when I looked into this whole issue, it was literally just like two Twitter egg accounts.
01:59:55.000 And so an article was written based on what somebody who's anonymous said on Twitter that it was sexist. 0.97
02:00:00.000 And it could have been the Internet Research Agency in Russia just fucking with everybody. 0.99
02:00:04.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.99
02:00:06.000 Or Titania.
02:00:07.000 Yeah, or Titania.
02:00:08.000 Another version of Titania.
02:00:10.000 It's clickbait.
02:00:11.000 It is, it is.
02:00:12.000 So I kind of stopped doing that stuff.
02:00:14.000 I decided to become a bit more responsible with my own Twitter account.
02:00:19.000 And yeah, focus on different things.
02:00:21.000 I mean, we already have a lot of good commentators who are fighting this fight, right?
02:00:24.000 People like James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, they're doing it very rigorously.
02:00:28.000 And they're doing it, in Peter Boghossian's case, they're doing it at great peril.
02:00:32.000 Like, that university is trying to get rid of him.
02:00:34.000 Yeah.
02:00:34.000 And his papers that they did, those grievance papers, are hilarious.
02:00:39.000 I know.
02:00:40.000 The heteronormative and queer behavior in dog parks, whatever it was called. 0.63
02:00:44.000 Canine dog parks, yeah. 0.99
02:00:46.000 Fucking brilliant. 0.99
02:00:47.000 Right. 0.92
02:00:48.000 And then they got called up for apparently manufacturing data.
02:00:51.000 Yes.
02:00:51.000 Which, of course, that's the whole point of a hoax.
02:00:53.000 Yes.
02:00:55.000 Yeah, I know.
02:00:56.000 It's a political hijab. 0.86
02:00:58.000 Yeah, but they don't like that mirror of mockery. 0.99
02:01:02.000 They don't like the spotlight being on them to realize how ridiculous. 0.97
02:01:07.000 You guys are supposed to be some higher institute of higher education. 0.90
02:01:13.000 But that's what, you know, this is mirroring what happened when, like, the atheists, the new atheists started debating the religious Christians.
02:01:22.000 It's like the new atheists were kind of mocking, right? 1.00
02:01:26.000 Like, people like Christopher Hitchens. 0.99
02:01:27.000 That was a bit of a mocking tone, like, what you'll believe is kind of silly. 0.96
02:01:31.000 Yes.
02:01:32.000 But the way they reacted to it was that, like, you're not allowed to laugh about this stuff.
02:01:37.000 Right.
02:01:37.000 You know, it's always the question is, which side can tolerate humor?
02:01:41.000 You're going to be on the right side.
02:01:43.000 Right, I agree.
02:01:44.000 Yeah, as soon as you can't be mocked.
02:01:46.000 And, like, no one hates being mocked more than left these days.
02:01:52.000 No one more than woke people.
02:01:54.000 Right.
02:01:55.000 When I called my 2016 Netflix special Triggered, just calling it Triggered got so many people mad.
02:02:03.000 Right. 0.99
02:02:03.000 I'm like, you fucking dummies, do you know? 0.99
02:02:05.000 I just did it. 1.00
02:02:05.000 I just did it to you. 1.00
02:02:07.000 Right.
02:02:07.000 But I called it Triggered and you were mad.
02:02:09.000 Yeah, that's funny.
02:02:11.000 Yeah.
02:02:11.000 It's just, we're in a weird space right now where there's so many voices.
02:02:17.000 So many people have social media and so many people have access to complaining.
02:02:22.000 And so you get this bizarre signal.
02:02:25.000 It's like you've got to kind of let it die down a little, figure out how much of this is real and how much of it is that kid screaming, slamming.
02:02:32.000 Blast their thoughts!
02:02:33.000 How many of those people are on Twitter?
02:02:34.000 How many of this is?
02:02:34.000 Yeah, because we would never have seen that, right?
02:02:36.000 Right.
02:02:36.000 So I used to say the same thing, because, you know, you would see medical journals reporting cancer rates are going up, and it's like, cancer rate, is that really the case?
02:02:45.000 Are we having more and more, you know, incidences of cancer?
02:02:48.000 Or is it that our detection methods have gotten better?
02:02:51.000 Like, diagnostics have gotten better, and we're just able to catch it at a much earlier stage, so it's kind of inflating the case number.
02:02:57.000 Yes.
02:02:57.000 So it's really hard to tell.
02:03:00.000 And, you know, it seems, it seems, I'm so, you know, buoyed by the fact that in the last few months, it seems like mainstream culture, even comedy is starting to push back.
02:03:10.000 You have more and more people who are saying, okay, okay, enough of this stuff.
02:03:13.000 Well, come to the Comedy Store.
02:03:14.000 That's the front line.
02:03:16.000 The Comedy Store is the least woke comedy club in the history of the universe.
02:03:19.000 Is it related to the seller?
02:03:20.000 No.
02:03:21.000 Okay.
02:03:21.000 Because the seller is really least woke, too.
02:03:23.000 Yes.
02:03:23.000 The one in New York.
02:03:24.000 Stand-up is pretty unwoke.
02:03:26.000 And the thing is, the audiences want to hear this stuff. 1.00
02:03:29.000 They want to hear mocking all this shit. 1.00
02:03:31.000 They want to hear it. 1.00
02:03:32.000 And they enjoy it.
02:03:33.000 And, you know, you get pushback sometimes.
02:03:35.000 People get up and get mad because you said the wrong word and they'll leave.
02:03:38.000 But you're missing the point.
02:03:39.000 The point is to say the wrong word.
02:03:42.000 You know, like, what stand-up is supposed to be is mocking everything that can be mocked.
02:03:46.000 And if it can be mocked, it will be mocked.
02:03:49.000 And if it's funny, the audience will laugh.
02:03:51.000 And if you're like, you shouldn't mock that, but it just did, and it worked.
02:03:54.000 Or you shouldn't punch down.
02:03:55.000 That's another thing you hear quite a bit.
02:03:58.000 That's a weird one, too, because you shouldn't punch down if it's not funny.
02:04:01.000 But if it's really funny and you're punching down...
02:04:04.000 There are exceptions, yeah.
02:04:05.000 Sam Kinison, one of his greatest bits ever, was making fun of people starving in Africa.
02:04:10.000 Yep.
02:04:11.000 It was a bit about those television late-night commercials where you're sitting at home, cooking, eating your dinner, and Sam Kinison's bit is a real classic.
02:04:22.000 You know, it's like, would you help?
02:04:23.000 Would you please help?
02:04:24.000 And he's like, why don't you help?
02:04:25.000 You're right next to him.
02:04:27.000 And he goes, why don't you, instead of sending him money or sending him food, he goes, send him something like me.
02:04:31.000 Send him someone who's going to go down there and go, hey, we just drove 5,000 miles with your food and we realized we wouldn't have world hunger if you people would move where the food is! 1.00
02:04:40.000 You live in a fucking desert! 0.99
02:04:42.000 It's like this long, crazy bit of Sam Kinison mocking starving people. 1.00
02:04:48.000 Right.
02:04:49.000 But it's hilarious because it's done the right way.
02:04:53.000 He navigated that minefield where you don't feel bad.
02:04:58.000 He goes, you see that?
02:05:00.000 See that?
02:05:00.000 You know what that is?
02:05:01.000 That's fucking sand! 1.00
02:05:02.000 You know what's going to be 100 years from now? 1.00
02:05:03.000 Fucking sand! 0.99
02:05:05.000 We got deserts in America, too! 1.00
02:05:07.000 We just don't live in them, asshole! 1.00
02:05:09.000 And he's doing, obviously, that's not real. 1.00
02:05:12.000 These people are stuck.
02:05:13.000 They don't have the ability.
02:05:15.000 They don't have the resources to get out.
02:05:17.000 There's a real problem.
02:05:18.000 They've been there.
02:05:18.000 The climate has changed.
02:05:19.000 There's all these real issues.
02:05:21.000 Right.
02:05:21.000 There's all real issues.
02:05:22.000 But it's horrible.
02:05:24.000 But you're dying laughing.
02:05:26.000 Particularly in 1986 when he did this.
02:05:28.000 But there has to be like a theory of humor, like why that's funny versus another case where he's punching down and it's not.
02:05:37.000 Good luck with your theories.
02:05:39.000 Here's the thing about theories.
02:05:40.000 Theories are like – theories are – you probably could – You could do a post-mortem on a joke, and you could accurately dissect why it worked.
02:05:55.000 I don't think you could predict how a joke will work, because too many jokes are dependent upon the personality, the irreverence of the perspective, cultural context, time, yes, timing.
02:06:08.000 The personality of the person doing it is giant. 0.99
02:06:10.000 Kennison always had this little smile and this devious smirk and he could get away with more fucked up shit because that was his brand. 0.99
02:06:20.000 That wouldn't work with Stephen Wright. 0.99
02:06:22.000 Stephen Wright who has this sort of absurdist perspective and non sequitur one-liners.
02:06:27.000 If he had a joke like that, it wouldn't work. 0.94
02:06:30.000 But with Kinison, with the yelling and the anger, and he was fat and ugly, and he's always angry. 0.95
02:06:36.000 That's like, you know, we talk about marriage and getting divorced. 0.70
02:06:39.000 You felt bad for him, right? 1.00
02:06:41.000 If Brad Pitt was out there screaming about getting divorced, he'd be like, that beautiful fuck. 1.00
02:06:44.000 He should shut his mouth. 1.00
02:06:46.000 He's beautiful. 0.99
02:06:47.000 But Kinison is like five feet tall and fat and balding, and he's got a beret on.
02:06:52.000 It's like, let him yell.
02:06:54.000 Yeah, I know this analysis, like the anatomy of humor really fascinates me.
02:06:57.000 Like, why somebody can get away with it, why somebody cannot.
02:07:01.000 And, you know, I think I remember when, just recently, because Ari Schaefer did that joke about Kobe, like, right after he passed away.
02:07:08.000 And, yeah, he was...
02:07:13.000 That wasn't necessarily a joke, which is also part of the problem.
02:07:17.000 It was a mocking of someone, and the joke is in his mocking.
02:07:21.000 If people knew Ari, they would know that he does that whenever anyone dies, including people he loves.
02:07:27.000 That's Ari's thing. 1.00
02:07:29.000 And it's fucked up. 0.98
02:07:31.000 If you don't know Ari, but even if you, like, well, I read it. 0.99
02:07:35.000 I was like, oh, Jesus, Ari.
02:07:37.000 But that's, it's, I've come to expect it.
02:07:39.000 Like, he did it when Tom Petty died.
02:07:41.000 He loved Tom Petty.
02:07:43.000 He mocked Tom Petty mercilessly when Tom Petty died.
02:07:46.000 When Aretha Franklin died, he mocked her mercilessly.
02:07:50.000 You know, it's what he does.
02:07:51.000 It's sort of his signature move, and he takes pleasure in it, and his fans think it's hilarious.
02:07:58.000 But the best way to describe it is the way he looks at it.
02:08:01.000 He has a very niche audience when it comes to that.
02:08:04.000 And then that joke or that thing that he does that's funny to him and his crazy fans hit a broad audience.
02:08:12.000 And that's when it became a problem. 0.97
02:08:14.000 It takes a lot of balls to do comedy.
02:08:16.000 I really respect that so much.
02:08:18.000 It's a strange way to make a living.
02:08:20.000 Especially today.
02:08:21.000 Ari had a great point about that too.
02:08:24.000 Ari's a brilliant guy.
02:08:26.000 I used to love his amazing racist stuff.
02:08:29.000 You're not supposed to say that.
02:08:32.000 It's old.
02:08:34.000 The one with the Asian driving instructor thing was so funny.
02:08:39.000 It drives me hysterical.
02:08:41.000 I show that to a lot of people.
02:08:43.000 He's a brilliant stand-up, too.
02:08:44.000 He's a very, very funny guy.
02:08:46.000 Yeah.
02:08:46.000 I forget what I was going to say about him, but...
02:08:48.000 Oh, yeah.
02:08:48.000 He had this point about comedy.
02:08:50.000 He's like, this is a great time for comedy right now because comedy is dangerous again.
02:08:53.000 Like, it's really dangerous again.
02:08:55.000 There's actual consequences.
02:08:56.000 Yeah.
02:08:57.000 Yeah.
02:08:58.000 It was...
02:08:59.000 You could get away...
02:09:00.000 It wasn't...
02:09:01.000 There wasn't as many consequences.
02:09:03.000 People could not like it, but now with social media and the cancel culture and everything, like, people get really angry at comedy now.
02:09:10.000 Like, woo! 0.93
02:09:10.000 Right. 0.93
02:09:11.000 You can feel it.
02:09:13.000 Oh, so... 0.95
02:09:13.000 Okay, he's a masochist then. 0.95
02:09:15.000 No, it's not that he's a masochist.
02:09:17.000 It's just that he's an artist.
02:09:19.000 And he loves the fact that, you know, it's like, it's very punk rock now.
02:09:24.000 It is.
02:09:24.000 You know, wild comedy is very punk rock.
02:09:26.000 Like, you're bucking a trend.
02:09:28.000 But you're also doing it to the light of audiences, you know?
02:09:32.000 Yeah.
02:09:32.000 I mean, if anybody thinks that you shouldn't say some of the things I say, come see me in an arena.
02:09:39.000 Come see 15,000 people screaming, laughing at that.
02:09:43.000 I don't think you're right.
02:09:44.000 I think people understand what a joke is.
02:09:46.000 I think people understand that you're saying things that if you took them out of context and put them in a blog, it looks horrible. 0.62
02:09:54.000 But if you're saying it in the context of comedy, when you know that someone's just fucking around, It's really funny. 0.83
02:10:00.000 And it's funny because people want to release from all this nonsense. 0.96
02:10:04.000 They want to release from this restrictive way of thinking and talking.
02:10:06.000 They want to release it from being told what to do. 1.00
02:10:09.000 They want to release from these fucking kids yelling, slash their fucking thoughts! 1.00
02:10:12.000 It's like, goddammit, what are we doing here? 1.00
02:10:15.000 And that's where comedy comes in.
02:10:16.000 Yeah, my release was just moving.
02:10:19.000 I just moved to a place that all this stuff was possible and that we could laugh at ourselves again.
02:10:25.000 But that's probably why you have this really interesting perspective.
02:10:29.000 It's because of the fact you came from real suppression.
02:10:32.000 You understand real suppression, real consequences.
02:10:37.000 You left that and then you're seeing these minor consequences and you're like, okay, you guys, this is a problem.
02:10:44.000 You need to go to Afghanistan for a couple of weeks.
02:10:47.000 You need to see what it's like in really suppressive cultures.
02:10:50.000 Exactly.
02:10:51.000 How it changes your mind.
02:10:53.000 You end up self-censoring.
02:10:55.000 You don't even need the government to do it anymore after a while.
02:10:57.000 Because you're scared.
02:10:58.000 But does it matter if it's the government or the Twitter mob after a while?
02:11:02.000 The result is going to be similar.
02:11:04.000 Even though the consequences are different and we should definitely separate that.
02:11:07.000 I'd rather lose my job than lose my life.
02:11:10.000 Well, it's also, with wokeness in particular, like in the propagation of wokeness, in the promotion of wokeness.
02:11:21.000 And the very strict adherence to this ideology and the aggressive takedowns of people that don't comply.
02:11:32.000 You're essentially instigating a sort of totalitarian way of thinking But it's just in a way that you think is good.
02:11:43.000 But it's still a totalitarian way of thinking.
02:11:47.000 You're implementing this very rigid ideology.
02:11:50.000 And you're demanding compliance.
02:11:52.000 Purity.
02:11:53.000 Yes.
02:11:53.000 And if people don't comply, you're going after them.
02:11:56.000 That is everything that is against being a liberal progressive thinker.
02:12:01.000 Exactly.
02:12:01.000 You're supposed to be a person who promotes discourse and open-minded communication.
02:12:08.000 And if you run, like, Daryl Davis is the best version of that ever.
02:12:11.000 I know. 1.00
02:12:11.000 He's the best version of it because all he is is a musician who is a very eloquent and articulate person who had the patience to sit down with people that believe in a really fucking stupid thing. 1.00
02:12:24.000 And just through his mere existence and who he is as a person, he changed the way they thought. 0.98
02:12:30.000 That is so powerful.
02:12:31.000 And that's been more powerful than all the punch-a-Nazi people. 0.88
02:12:34.000 Yes. 0.66
02:12:35.000 The punch-a-Nazi people. 0.92
02:12:36.000 It's such a problem.
02:12:37.000 My friend Kurt was talking to this guy who's a very prominent left-wing thinker, a very powerful person.
02:12:44.000 And my friend Kurt was talking to him, and the guy was saying to him, what's wrong with punching a Nazi?
02:12:49.000 He goes, here's the problem.
02:12:51.000 Who's going to decide who the Nazi is?
02:12:54.000 We're not talking about real Nazis.
02:12:56.000 When you say punch a Nazi, you might be talking about your granny who's a Republican because she likes Trump because Trump believes in God. 0.95
02:13:03.000 Is granny a Nazi? 0.99
02:13:04.000 Right.
02:13:05.000 Well, Antifa thinks that – well, at least the New Jersey Antifa thinks that Daryl Davis is a new Nazi.
02:13:10.000 So, yeah, you're right.
02:13:12.000 The concept creep.
02:13:14.000 Concept creep is a great word. 1.00
02:13:23.000 Are there to make it seem like the enemy is really that big.
02:13:28.000 Because then you can implement all the solutions you want.
02:13:32.000 The population gets cowered into fear, basically.
02:13:36.000 Again, it's another totalitarian tool.
02:13:38.000 Yeah, it's almost like you're creating intellectual false flags. 1.00
02:13:41.000 You're propping up any divergence from this rigid ideology, some horrible fucking thing that needs to be attacked and squashed and poisoned and lit on fire. 0.99
02:13:53.000 Right. 0.99
02:13:54.000 But ultimately, at the end of the day, what we really need to do is just be nicer to each other.
02:13:58.000 And part of our problem is lack of communication.
02:14:01.000 And if you go to these things, like when you see someone trying to close down a Christina Hoff Summer's speech, what you're seeing is them yelling.
02:14:09.000 It's yelling.
02:14:10.000 It's like screaming, setting off fire alarms, screaming that people are fascists.
02:14:16.000 That's not communication.
02:14:17.000 That's just like, if you're talking to someone, they're like, blah, blah, blah, not listening to you, blah, blah, blah.
02:14:22.000 It's childish.
02:14:23.000 Right.
02:14:23.000 Right.
02:14:23.000 And the fact that this is all taking place at universities is so discouraging.
02:14:27.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:14:28.000 And the fact that people think it's supportive.
02:14:30.000 And here's another problem.
02:14:31.000 The people on the left that aren't that way but think that these people like Antifa are probably good because they're like the bulldogs. 0.95
02:14:39.000 They're like the attack dogs of the left.
02:14:42.000 And they'll go after the right and they'll reinforce our ideas.
02:14:46.000 You don't I don't understand the consequences of this.
02:14:50.000 With all the energy that goes in a negative way from the left, you're getting more energy that goes in a negative way from the right.
02:14:58.000 It's a yin-yang thing. 0.93
02:15:00.000 It shifts.
02:15:01.000 Exactly.
02:15:01.000 It's a Hegelian dialectic.
02:15:03.000 Pendulum swings.
02:15:04.000 Pendulum swings, yes.
02:15:05.000 And it's inevitable.
02:15:06.000 It's been a part of human interaction forever.
02:15:09.000 The best way to communicate with someone is never yelling at them and screaming at them.
02:15:14.000 The best way is to listen.
02:15:16.000 Listen to their ideas and wear them out with logic.
02:15:19.000 Wear them out with long conversations.
02:15:22.000 Like, the best way for two people who have A separate view of the world. 0.74
02:15:31.000 Put those separate views of the world together.
02:15:35.000 Sit down.
02:15:35.000 You tell me your view of the world.
02:15:37.000 And particularly if we can keep it in a narrow scope, we're both educated about what we're talking about and we're not talking about something when the other person has really no data to draw from.
02:15:47.000 Have a conversation.
02:15:48.000 Sit down.
02:15:49.000 Talk her through.
02:15:50.000 It's possible.
02:15:51.000 We can get back to doing that.
02:15:53.000 The problem is we're so accustomed over the last 10 years to communicating digitally.
02:15:58.000 We're so accustomed to blaring our ideas out and then checking to see who agrees every five seconds, checking our likes and checking our comments.
02:16:07.000 This is a non-social way of interacting through social media.
02:16:11.000 Social revolves cues.
02:16:13.000 People sitting apart from each other, looking into each other's eyes, being in the same space as each other.
02:16:18.000 That's how humans are designed to communicate.
02:16:21.000 That's how we evolved to communicate.
02:16:23.000 So we're basically spending the vast majority of our time debating issues in an unnatural way. 0.98
02:16:30.000 I would say it's a bit of a luxury now because it feels like it's very easy and very popular to kind of shit on social media in general. 0.92
02:16:39.000 It's got great aspects for sure. 0.94
02:16:41.000 Without it, we couldn't be reaching part of the world that censors things.
02:16:48.000 Without it, you and I would have never talked.
02:16:49.000 Exactly.
02:16:50.000 We would never have this conversation in person.
02:16:52.000 It allows you – I think Steven Pinker once wrote about this.
02:16:54.000 It was like the difference between common knowledge and shared knowledge.
02:16:57.000 Common knowledge is like we both know something to be true.
02:17:01.000 But shared knowledge is that we know – I know that you know that I know something.
02:17:05.000 So it's recursive.
02:17:07.000 And that creates a very different environment.
02:17:10.000 Like, you know, imagine if you are the one lone atheist in Saudi Arabia, and there was no way for you to reach other people.
02:17:16.000 You would think you're completely by yourself, that you're the only one that thinks different.
02:17:19.000 But in a world where you can reach out and you can read other perspectives, all of a sudden you realize that, wait, I know that.
02:17:26.000 I'm not alone.
02:17:26.000 I know that you know that I know that I'm...
02:17:28.000 And it changes how you feel in terms of just ideologically, just safety.
02:17:36.000 And it creates real change.
02:17:38.000 One of my favorite quotes of all time was in this manifesto written...
02:17:43.000 I can't remember the name now, but it was about a free internet.
02:17:46.000 And he said, the problem is that we cannot separate the air that makes wings beat from the air that chokes. 0.99
02:17:53.000 I was like, it's so poetic because you remember these cases of these girls that were escaping Saudi Arabia and then she got locked up in Thailand and she was saying, I'm trying to escape from my father.
02:18:05.000 I don't want to wear the hijab anymore. 1.00
02:18:07.000 I want to break out.
02:18:09.000 My family would kill me if they find out I'm, you know...
02:18:12.000 I don't want this arranged marriage or whatever.
02:18:14.000 And the only reason she can reach the outside world and that activists, you know, lawyers heard her story and could help her and she got asylum in Canada is because of social media.
02:18:23.000 So it's like the more we want to regulate these things, the more we're making it hard for a lot of these people who live in still close societies because the only way to get in is through the internet.
02:18:36.000 I think the internet in general is like most things.
02:18:42.000 It's not binary.
02:18:43.000 It's not one or zero.
02:18:45.000 It's not great or bad.
02:18:47.000 It's both those things all together.
02:18:50.000 There's amazing aspects of social media.
02:18:52.000 I mean just the distribution of information is so radically increased over the last ten years.
02:18:58.000 Right, but right now we're focusing so much on the bad.
02:19:01.000 Yes.
02:19:01.000 We're focusing too much on the way it's used negatively and really not accounting for the things that it has brought.
02:19:10.000 Yeah, I think you're right.
02:19:11.000 Yeah.
02:19:12.000 I think all of it is moving in a good direction.
02:19:15.000 This is one of the reasons why I don't completely hate this whole woke ideology.
02:19:19.000 No, I don't either.
02:19:23.000 When I say I'm in support of a lot of people like Bernie and people that go with him, because I think they want good things.
02:19:31.000 I think they want a society that's more kind and inclusive.
02:19:37.000 To be fair, Bernie, himself personally, wasn't a big identity politics guy at all.
02:19:45.000 In fact, in 2016, not at all.
02:19:49.000 Times have a bit changed.
02:19:50.000 It's just easier to do it now.
02:19:52.000 You slide right in, you get more support.
02:19:55.000 It's a weird battlefield now.
02:20:00.000 Ideological battlefield.
02:20:01.000 And it's causing the Democratic Party to split.
02:20:04.000 Yeah.
02:20:05.000 It's kind of hilarious. 1.00
02:20:07.000 I love fake shit. 1.00
02:20:09.000 I love when people are obviously fake. 1.00
02:20:11.000 I love when they give fake speeches and they do fake political things with their thumb and their hand like that.
02:20:16.000 I love that stuff.
02:20:17.000 I just love when they fall into those patterns.
02:20:19.000 But it's so obvious now.
02:20:22.000 Yes, it's obvious.
02:20:22.000 But that's why a guy like Andrew Yang stands out in such stark contrast.
02:20:27.000 Like, who's that guy doing there?
02:20:29.000 Seems like a regular guy.
02:20:30.000 I'm just really upset that we'll never get the image of Andrew Yang doing the whipped cream bukkake thing in the White House.
02:20:37.000 Did you see that?
02:20:38.000 What is he going to do?
02:20:39.000 Did you not see the story?
02:20:41.000 No.
02:20:42.000 Oh, with his followers, yes.
02:20:44.000 The whipped cream.
02:20:44.000 No, he was christening his New Hampshire office.
02:20:47.000 Right.
02:20:48.000 And then he was squirting whipped cream in people's mouths.
02:20:50.000 Exactly.
02:20:51.000 His staffer's mouth.
02:20:52.000 Right.
02:20:52.000 And what's the funniest thing?
02:20:55.000 That's how he christens him?
02:20:56.000 Nobody told him what the optics were on this.
02:20:59.000 Right. 0.74
02:20:59.000 That's white cream and you're shooting in people's mouths. 0.74
02:21:02.000 And he's on his knees.
02:21:03.000 Yes.
02:21:04.000 That's the funny part.
02:21:05.000 Oh, that's wrong.
02:21:05.000 But I'm just upset that this is not going to happen in my house.
02:21:10.000 It's probably happening right now with Trump and his WWE manager.
02:21:16.000 They're probably in the White House right now doing that exact same thing.
02:21:19.000 That was a really bad hit piece on Andrew Yang and the New York Times.
02:21:22.000 Was it?
02:21:22.000 That was so bad that people started – like they had to disable the comments.
02:21:25.000 Why did they do that?
02:21:26.000 Why did they do those hit pieces? 0.99
02:21:27.000 They were finding disgruntled ex-employees of his to basically shit on him. 0.98
02:21:32.000 Right. 0.98
02:21:32.000 And like one of the complaints was that he pressures people to do karaoke. 0.98
02:21:37.000 Well, what a monster. 0.73
02:21:38.000 I know.
02:21:39.000 I'm like, that's the worst you could find in 20 years of employment history.
02:21:43.000 No one is going to pass your purity test.
02:21:45.000 No one.
02:21:47.000 No one.
02:21:48.000 I totally agree.
02:21:49.000 Especially if you've actually turned the light on them.
02:21:51.000 Everybody's flawed. 0.95
02:21:52.000 And especially if you only highlight those flaws outside of the context of whatever the fuck they were talking about and the conversations they were having and what was going on. 0.76
02:22:03.000 You could make a very distorted perception of someone by just snipping and piecing together. 0.83
02:22:08.000 That's why it's so insidious.
02:22:09.000 Yeah, well, it's also why it's weird when it's coming from journalists.
02:22:12.000 Like, you should know what you're doing.
02:22:14.000 You should know that this is not an accurate or objective analysis of who this person is.
02:22:20.000 But that's what I mean.
02:22:21.000 The person who wrote this article who was saying, oh, he's uncomfortable with language.
02:22:26.000 There was some implication in the piece that he's clumsy with how he deals with women staffers.
02:22:33.000 And it's like, yeah, okay, this guy is a tech nerd.
02:22:37.000 Maybe he's got some social cue reading issues.
02:22:41.000 I mean, I do too.
02:22:42.000 And it's like to drag someone to basically sling mud at somebody like that, it's horrible.
02:22:49.000 The thing is, though, they're doing it because that's what sells.
02:22:52.000 You know, these magazines and newspapers have become sort of slaves to clickbait.
02:22:57.000 They kind of have to get clicks.
02:23:00.000 I mean, you talk to people that are actual journalists now and the pressure that's on them to get a bunch of clicks for each article.
02:23:05.000 And, you know, they'll have editors that change the title of their articles to make it more salacious.
02:23:10.000 But that's why they did the whole paywall thing, right?
02:23:12.000 So the New York Times transitioned to subscription completely for that purpose.
02:23:17.000 It's that they won't be subject to the whims of- But they still are.
02:23:21.000 They still are, because a lot of those things, you get through your Google News feed, and you have to click through to the paywall if you want to read it, but the initial titles, which gets you to click the link, and then you realize it's paywall.
02:23:33.000 You don't just sign up without reading anything.
02:23:36.000 You go there because there's an article that's interesting to you.
02:23:39.000 Right.
02:23:40.000 Or that confirms your worldview, which is the worst.
02:23:43.000 Yes, or goes against it, and you get angry.
02:23:46.000 Yeah.
02:23:46.000 Yeah, I don't know.
02:23:47.000 I mean, I have to say in that regard, I'm lucky that I don't have that pressure.
02:23:51.000 Yeah, it sounds like you don't.
02:23:52.000 They just let me write whatever, you know.
02:23:54.000 There's no, yeah, there's no intention of that.
02:23:57.000 That's awesome.
02:23:57.000 Listen, I gotta wrap this up, but I appreciate what you're doing.
02:24:00.000 I think it's wonderful, this idea that you're getting these books to these people and converting it, converting the languages so that they can understand some of these great works.
02:24:08.000 Yeah.
02:24:09.000 I mean, it's a step in the right direction.
02:24:11.000 And again, your Twitter feed's awesome.
02:24:12.000 Thank you.
02:24:13.000 Could be more.
02:24:14.000 Tell people where they can get a hold of you on social media.
02:24:19.000 Twitter, at Ms. Mel Chen, M-E-L-C-H-E-N. My own website.
02:24:26.000 Do you do Facebook?
02:24:27.000 I do, but like, no, that's my rebellion, my millennial rebellion for the world.
02:24:31.000 No Instagram.
02:24:32.000 Okay.
02:24:33.000 Yeah.
02:24:33.000 Well, thank you.
02:24:34.000 I enjoyed talking to you.
02:24:35.000 Thank you.
02:24:35.000 This was a lot of fun.
02:24:36.000 A lot of fun.
02:24:36.000 Thanks, Joe.
02:24:37.000 Okay.
02:24:37.000 Bye, everybody.