The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1732 - Ben Shapiro

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:13.000 Well, hello, Joe Rogan.

00:00:14.000 Good to see you, buddy.

00:00:15.000 It's good to see you outside L.A. I know!

00:00:17.000 I'm a free man now, and as are you.

00:00:19.000 Oh, yeah.

00:00:20.000 We've escaped the criminal communist state of California.

00:00:24.000 We both look about 25% happier.

00:00:26.000 I'm definitely happier.

00:00:27.000 It's way easier to live here.

00:00:29.000 It's like less traffic. 1.00

00:00:31.000 Just forget about all the draconian COVID restrictions and dealing with an inept bullshit government. 1.00

00:00:38.000 Yep. 1.00

00:00:39.000 Which is what it is.

00:00:40.000 You saved yourself some money, too.

00:00:41.000 It's that, but people are nicer.

00:00:43.000 It's like you're living in a regular folks. 0.96

00:00:48.000 California is so polluted by show business.

00:00:51.000 It's hard to really reconcile it.

00:00:55.000 It's hard to really understand how bad it is until you leave.

00:00:57.000 And then you go, oh, okay.

00:01:00.000 That's not normal.

00:01:01.000 This is normal.

00:01:02.000 Just regular people.

00:01:03.000 It's crazy.

00:01:04.000 So I grew up in LA, right?

00:01:05.000 I mean, I was in LA all the way up until last year, basically.

00:01:08.000 And the only three years I wasn't in LA, I was in Boston for law school.

00:01:11.000 So I've only been in, like, big blue cities my entire life.

00:01:14.000 And when you grow up in LA, it's like there's no other place.

00:01:17.000 It's like growing up in New York.

00:01:18.000 There's no other place that exists in the country.

00:01:20.000 And then you leave.

00:01:20.000 You're like, whoa.

00:01:21.000 The rest of this country is kind of fantastic.

00:01:23.000 And people are.

00:01:24.000 They're way nicer.

00:01:25.000 Just way nicer.

00:01:26.000 Like...

00:01:27.000 In LA, there's a thing you do where you walk down the street, if you're not driving, you walk down the street, you spot somebody who you don't know, you kind of lock eyes with them.

00:01:34.000 The first thing you do is you look away, right?

00:01:36.000 You don't catch eyes with somebody and have a conversation with them just in the normal course of business in LA or New York.

00:01:41.000 You move outside LA or New York, you're walking down the street, you lock eyes with somebody, like, hey, how are you?

00:01:46.000 Yeah, they say hi.

00:01:47.000 It's crazy.

00:01:48.000 It's like a crazy thing.

00:01:49.000 Well, there's a thing that happens when you just get too many human beings living together where people become a nuisance.

00:01:57.000 The population density of Los Angeles is replicated in rat population density studies that they've done.

00:02:02.000 Have you ever seen those?

00:02:03.000 No, I haven't seen these.

00:02:04.000 They're really fascinating because what they do is they've taken rats and they take them and they have a certain number of these rats together.

00:02:11.000 And they behave fairly normally.

00:02:12.000 And then as they increase the population of rats, you start seeing what you see in large cities. 1.00

00:02:18.000 You start seeing rats huddled in the corner nodding and shit. 1.00

00:02:22.000 You see mental illness. 1.00

00:02:23.000 You see violence.

00:02:24.000 You see all kinds of stuff that you see in populations of humans.

00:02:28.000 And it's just...

00:02:30.000 They become a factor and a negative factor instead of, you know, obviously rats aren't communicating like people do where it becomes a community and you look forward to seeing those people, but they have some sort of a communal relationship with each other.

00:02:44.000 It feels like there's sort of a background level of threat that just exists when there are tons of people who you don't know who are around you all the time.

00:02:50.000 And in small communities it's not replicated that way because you actually know your neighbors, you know the people you're dealing with on a regular basis, but if you're walking around a big city, It's crazy. 0.94

00:03:16.000 If you were a real conspiracy theorist, if you're a real tinfoil hat, dyed in the wool conspiracy theorist, you would look at the LA district attorney and you would go, what the fuck is going on here?

00:03:26.000 Like, is this a plot to ruin the city? 0.97

00:03:29.000 I mean, is this like, has China hired this guy?

00:03:32.000 Like, what is going on?

00:03:33.000 That Gascon guy?

00:03:34.000 Between that and San Francisco, yeah.

00:03:35.000 Between that and San Francisco, taking beautiful cities- It's wild!

00:03:38.000 Destroying the cities.

00:03:39.000 Destroying them. 1.00

00:03:39.000 And by the way, not doing anything good for the people who are actually mentally ill and drug addicted. 1.00

00:03:43.000 Just leaving them out on the street and pretending that sleeping on a street corner is the highest form of freedom and definitely have to leave their shit just lying around on the streets while they poop on a corner. 1.00

00:03:51.000 It's just, it's unbelievable. 0.99

00:03:53.000 And at some point, you would imagine that people would have to wake up to this.

00:03:56.000 And you see this a little in New York, right?

00:03:57.000 I mean, Eric Adams is a big change from Bill de Blasio.

00:03:59.000 A big change, yeah.

00:03:59.000 And you hope that at some point, you know, for their own good, people in LA wake up to this.

00:04:04.000 But in the meantime, I'm not going to be there.

00:04:05.000 I'm out.

00:04:06.000 I don't care.

00:04:06.000 Yeah, I'm not interested in helping.

00:04:08.000 I read this article that called me and Elon cowards for not trying to fix it instead of leaving.

00:04:14.000 How are you going to fix this?

00:04:16.000 When did you leave?

00:04:18.000 We bought in Florida last June.

00:04:22.000 So the June before last.

00:04:23.000 Okay, you were barely before me because I started looking in May.

00:04:27.000 Right, exactly.

00:04:28.000 Both of us were like, I see the writing on the wall.

00:04:31.000 Oh, yeah.

00:04:31.000 Well, that was my argument to my wife.

00:04:33.000 So she wanted to stay for a long time.

00:04:35.000 And I'd been saying for a couple of years, look at this tax bill.

00:04:38.000 Look what we're getting in public services.

00:04:40.000 Look how bad things are getting.

00:04:41.000 And she's like, no, it's fine.

00:04:42.000 You're making a lot of money.

00:04:43.000 You pay a lot of taxes.

00:04:44.000 That's fine.

00:04:44.000 I said, right, but we're not getting anything back.

00:04:46.000 And in five years, you think this place is going to be better or you think this place is going to be worse?

00:04:49.000 And then you got the COVID lockdowns where LA just went out of its mind and they shut all the parks and they put the yellow tape on the turnoffs off Mulholland.

00:04:56.000 Like people are going to gather on the turnoffs off Mulholland, just mack on each other and spread COVID like crazy in those three foot square turnoffs off Mulholland drive.

00:05:04.000 And so she was already like, this is getting crazy.

00:05:08.000 And then, during the riots, when they locked everybody in their house at 6pm, you remember this?

00:05:12.000 They just curfewed the entire city at 6pm. 0.97

00:05:14.000 And then, on Rodeo, they curfewed it at 1 so people could just run up and down Rodeo Drive, breaking shit. 0.98

00:05:19.000 And we heard gunshots at night. 0.97

00:05:22.000 We were not in a bad area.

00:05:23.000 We heard gunshots at night.

00:05:24.000 Like, they hit a footlocker half a mile this way and a Walgreens half a mile that way.

00:05:27.000 She's like, okay, I guess we can check out Florida.

00:05:29.000 Yeah, once the riots hit, that's when the mass exodus really started.

00:05:33.000 Because when people started realizing that there's this weird idea that some politicians had, de Blasio was the worst example of it, to let the people just break the law and get it out of their system.

00:05:47.000 Like, I don't understand.

00:05:49.000 Apparently, there's some sociological theory behind this.

00:05:54.000 I hadn't heard that one.

00:05:55.000 I've heard there's some theory about, and it was a widely dismissed theory from the 60s, and the idea about, like, letting people rioted out of their system, almost like letting a child throw a temper tantrum.

00:06:08.000 So when you saw people on Saks Fifth Avenue smashing windows and all that, the idea, and the cops were literally told to stand down.

00:06:15.000 Oh, yeah.

00:06:16.000 I mean, we saw the pictures.

00:06:17.000 They burned the cop cars on Melrose, right?

00:06:19.000 They were just burning every cop car on Melrose.

00:06:21.000 De Blasio is the worst example of a mayor I've ever seen in my life. 0.99

00:06:24.000 He's a stunningly incompetent person. 0.67

00:06:27.000 When I see him talking, when I see what's important to him, and when he was eating cheeseburgers, talking about the vaccine, I can get a free vaccine. 0.91

00:06:36.000 I understand that fries are with this as well.

00:06:39.000 You're eating terrible food.

00:06:41.000 This is what makes people sick. 1.00

00:06:43.000 What the fuck, man? 1.00

00:06:44.000 There was a running gun battle for the last couple of years over who was the worst mayor. 1.00

00:06:47.000 You had like Jenny Durkan in Seattle who was allowing Chaz Chop to happen, and then you had Garcetti in LA who was allowing riots to happen in de Blasio, New York. 1.00

00:06:54.000 You had Lori Lightfoot in Chicago.

00:06:55.000 It was like a running gun battle over who was going to be the worst public servant.

00:06:58.000 Yeah, I don't know who's better.

00:07:00.000 You know, Lightfoot's in the lead.

00:07:02.000 She's right there with de Blasio. 0.97

00:07:03.000 She's terrible.

00:07:05.000 I mean, she let me, like, all the worst of de Blasio.

00:07:07.000 Plus, I'm only gonna do interviews with people who look like me.

00:07:10.000 Yes.

00:07:10.000 Like, I don't even know how you could say that.

00:07:11.000 That's so crazy.

00:07:12.000 Yeah.

00:07:13.000 And then she repeated it. 0.74

00:07:14.000 She's only doing it with brown and black people. 1.00

00:07:15.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:07:16.000 Only interviews with brown and black people, which is absolutely racist.

00:07:19.000 And it's just, it's, it's, you hear about the gunfight that happened in Chicago where they let everyone go because it was mutual combat?

00:07:27.000 No, this is...

00:07:28.000 You don't know about this?

00:07:29.000 No, I miss this.

00:07:30.000 I'm happy to show Ben Shapiro some news that's going to make you angry. 0.98

00:07:33.000 Pull this up because it's so fucking crazy. 0.98

00:07:36.000 One person was dead. 0.93

00:07:38.000 I believe two other people were shot.

00:07:40.000 They expelled 70 rounds. 1.00

00:07:44.000 So 70 shots were fired on a fucking street. 0.99

00:07:47.000 There's video footage of this happening where people were just driving by freaking out. 1.00

00:07:52.000 There's a dead body on the ground where a guy got shot.

00:07:54.000 No charges.

00:07:56.000 No charges, because they said it was mutual combat. 1.00

00:07:59.000 Chicago's lost its fucking mind. 0.99

00:08:01.000 Prosecutors reject charges against five suspects in deadly gun-related gunfight, gang-related gunfight. 1.00

00:08:08.000 Now scroll up so you can see what it says.

00:08:10.000 Where it says about mutual combat.

00:08:12.000 See if you can find where Suspects have been released without charges. 0.90

00:08:17.000 Cook County State's Attorney's Office explained the prosecutors had determined that the evidence was insufficient to meet our burden of proof to approve felony charges for a fucking gunfight where 70 rounds were shot on a public street.

00:08:32.000 The state's attorney spokeswoman said, adding that the police officials agreed with the decision. 0.98

00:08:36.000 I think the cops just threw their fucking hands up in the air and they're like, we're done. 0.98

00:08:40.000 But they used the term mutual combat in one of the articles that I read. 0.99

00:08:45.000 Which is usually related to...

00:08:47.000 There it is.

00:08:47.000 Mutual combatants.

00:08:49.000 Wait, I thought that that's what a gang war is.

00:08:52.000 Anytime there's a fight, I thought it's like two people fighting.

00:08:55.000 That term is supposed to be used for fistfights. 0.96

00:08:59.000 Mutual combatants was cited as the reason for rejection.

00:09:02.000 Mutual combat is a legal term used to define a fight or struggle that two parties willingly engage in.

00:09:08.000 That's a fist fight.

00:09:10.000 That's two people hitting each other with their hands.

00:09:11.000 It's like the plot of the last duel right here, right?

00:09:13.000 It's a public safety danger.

00:09:16.000 When you have a fist fight, there is very little danger that your fist is going to fly through a window and kill a baby.

00:09:20.000 You know what I'm saying? 1.00

00:09:21.000 But when you're just shooting guns in the street, these fucking people are criminally incompetent. 1.00

00:09:27.000 You know how many people are becoming Republicans? 1.00

00:09:28.000 I think you do.

00:09:29.000 A lot.

00:09:29.000 I do.

00:09:31.000 I have friends.

00:09:31.000 My new home state, Florida, that was a 50-50 state.

00:09:34.000 That ain't a 50-50 state no more.

00:09:35.000 No, it's probably 75-25 or something.

00:09:37.000 I mean, right now, it's moved.

00:09:38.000 It's never going to be a 75-25.

00:09:40.000 It should be.

00:09:41.000 But right now, there's news that the Democratic Governors Association, which funds all these gubernatorial races.

00:09:48.000 Remember, DeSantis only beat Andrew Gillum by like 40,000 votes in the last election cycle.

00:09:52.000 DeSantis is just going to wipe the floor with his opponent.

00:09:53.000 The DGA just pulled out.

00:09:55.000 They said, we're not going to spend any money in Florida.

00:09:56.000 Really?

00:09:57.000 Yeah.

00:09:58.000 They're not going to win.

00:09:59.000 What he's done is amazing because he's changed a lot of people's ideas about the way this should be handled.

00:10:06.000 Because so many people, even people that came on my podcast today were talking about criminally incompetent, not today, but in the past rather, were saying how criminally incompetent he is and people are dying on the streets.

00:10:15.000 Now you look at the COVID cases.

00:10:17.000 He has less COVID cases than most other states.

00:10:20.000 I think it's only second to California.

00:10:23.000 If you look at the overall deaths, people were talking about the deaths, but when you make it...

00:10:27.000 Age-adjusted.

00:10:28.000 Age-adjusted.

00:10:29.000 It's an old state.

00:10:30.000 It's the second oldest state in the country after Maine.

00:10:32.000 Maine has like seven old people in a moose.

00:10:34.000 This is, by the way, coming from someone who got COVID in Florida.

00:10:37.000 I got COVID in Florida.

00:10:38.000 And you're not dead?

00:10:39.000 No.

00:10:40.000 Unbelievable.

00:10:40.000 No, it was okay.

00:10:41.000 I mean, you took the horse warmer and everything?

00:10:43.000 I did.

00:10:43.000 I thought that would kill you, too.

00:10:44.000 You look like a horse now. 0.98

00:10:45.000 I don't know what happened.

00:10:46.000 CNN told me.

00:10:48.000 CNN never lies.

00:10:50.000 Ever.

00:10:51.000 No.

00:10:51.000 Ever.

00:10:52.000 They were very fair with their coverage.

00:10:54.000 I just thought that you were in the back.

00:10:54.000 You went over to the barn and you were just grabbing some random pills and just...

00:10:56.000 Well, I can't afford people medicine, so I had to go to a feed store.

00:11:04.000 I knew that they lied in the news, but when you see it about yourself, you're like, wow.

00:11:08.000 And you see this concerted effort.

00:11:10.000 This clearly...

00:11:12.000 They've managed this.

00:11:14.000 They've thought about this.

00:11:15.000 The headline was the equivalent of...

00:11:17.000 You know, Joe Rogan just had a swig of liquid used to wash cars.

00:11:21.000 Yeah.

00:11:22.000 Like, you drink water over there.

00:11:23.000 That's liquid we used to wash cars.

00:11:25.000 All these things for a variety of purposes.

00:11:28.000 But meanwhile, in the middle of a pandemic, when you see someone who's...

00:11:32.000 I'm not young.

00:11:32.000 I'm 54 years old.

00:11:34.000 And when you see someone who's better in three days making a video and then tested positive or tested negative, rather, two days later...

00:11:41.000 I was working out a day after that.

00:11:43.000 Fine!

00:11:44.000 I felt fine.

00:11:45.000 I did ten rounds in the bag seven days after I tested positive.

00:11:48.000 And I was fine.

00:11:49.000 Like, really fine.

00:11:50.000 Like, didn't feel anything. 1.00

00:11:51.000 Right, but I've heard, though, that ever since then, Shank Weger can kick your ass. 1.00

00:11:55.000 That's what I hear. 1.00

00:11:55.000 That's what I heard, too. 1.00

00:11:56.000 I heard that.

00:11:56.000 That's very terrifying.

00:11:58.000 Apparently, he's been fighting his whole life.

00:12:00.000 Wow.

00:12:01.000 That's some scary stuff.

00:12:02.000 Yeah.

00:12:03.000 You had to run all the way to Texas just to avoid him.

00:12:04.000 It's unbelievable.

00:12:05.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:12:06.000 You're cowardice, sir. 0.96

00:12:06.000 I don't have to run that fast, but, you know, I can kind of, like, speed walk. 0.96

00:12:11.000 It's a strange time because I don't know why people are behaving the way they are, why they are not just actively engaging in conflict but encouraging it, nonsensical conflict, why people have gotten so tribal that they branched off into these These groups that,

00:12:30.000 you know, our group can do no wrong and that group can do no right.

00:12:34.000 And we've abandoned this idea that we're supposed to be all in this together.

00:12:38.000 I thought the pandemic was going to bring people together.

00:12:41.000 I really did.

00:12:42.000 I thought it was going to be like 9-11 and that people were going to recognize like, hey, this is a threat to all of us and let's all try to work together and figure this out.

00:12:51.000 And I thought that if people got better, And if people took a certain medication and it helped them or they had certain lifestyle choices that were better, like things like vitamin supplementation and exercise, all these different things that I've always been talking about, that maybe we would look at that and go,

00:13:06.000 hey, we should probably look into this because it seems like there's some people that get hit really hard by this and there's some people, like Aaron Rodgers, who just...

00:13:16.000 Brush it off like it's nothing.

00:13:18.000 I mean, total shock that Aaron Rodgers, one of the healthiest human beings on planet Earth. 0.99

00:13:22.000 The best fucking quarterbacks alive. 0.99

00:13:24.000 That I can't believe COVID didn't take him down. 0.99

00:13:26.000 I mean, he was a 75-year-old man with diabetes.

00:13:28.000 So clearly, COVID was going to kill him.

00:13:31.000 But the amount of hatred for Aaron Rodgers so far outweighs the amount of...

00:13:36.000 Upset over a member of the Las Vegas Raiders allegedly running a person over at 150 miles an hour, right?

00:13:42.000 Then you got like booted from the team the next day.

00:13:44.000 But like the amount of public outrage is kind of insane.

00:13:47.000 And again, like every adult in America, I know every child in America has had the opportunity to get vaccinated.

00:13:52.000 If you want to get vaccinated, get vaccinated, right?

00:13:53.000 I did.

00:13:54.000 You didn't.

00:13:54.000 I don't care.

00:13:55.000 I don't care.

00:13:57.000 Once everybody's had the opportunity to protect themselves, We're done.

00:14:00.000 But I think this goes to something deeper, which is, I used to think there were two types of people with regard to what they thought of human nature.

00:14:08.000 You know, some people think human nature is good.

00:14:09.000 Some people think human nature is kind of sinful.

00:14:10.000 I think that's still true.

00:14:11.000 But I think there's another distinction that the pandemic really exposed.

00:14:15.000 There are two kinds of people.

00:14:17.000 People who are okay with living with a certain level of risk and people who just are not.

00:14:22.000 And think that if they delegate all their power to people to make decisions for them, that all risk can be mitigated.

00:14:27.000 And if that means controlling all the people around them, that's totally fine.

00:14:31.000 That's a good point.

00:14:32.000 Because it really is, you know, I think all of our society is built on the notion of risk seeking.

00:14:37.000 People who build societies tend to be, people who build companies tend to be risk takers and people who are willing to fail, right?

00:14:43.000 Most people who take a risk in business fail.

00:14:45.000 They don't succeed.

00:14:47.000 We feature guys like you or people like me or people like Jeff, people who build big companies and win.

00:14:52.000 Those are the people who make the covers of magazines or get ripped up on CNN for no reason.

00:14:56.000 But the people who fail, I mean that's most of the people who try to take a risk.

00:14:59.000 Risk is risky.

00:15:00.000 There's a whole group of people in America who no longer want to take a risk and they've been sold a lie.

00:15:05.000 I saw a really good piece by Scott Alexander who used to write for Slate Star Codex before they outed him and now he runs something called Astral Star Codex and he was reviewing a book.

00:15:13.000 And the basic thesis of the book is that since the beginning of the 20th century, there's been a big promise made to Americans, and that is there are authorities, and they live in Washington, D.C., or in your city, and they have a big button right here that they can hit that solves all your problems.

00:15:27.000 And if they just hit it hard enough, it's going to solve all your problems.

00:15:29.000 And for a long time the media kind of went along with that because the media were part of an elite group that agreed with a lot of those ideas.

00:15:35.000 And then the rise of the internet basically shattered that.

00:15:38.000 People could get their own information, you could see through the screen that actually that button didn't exist.

00:15:42.000 And so then the elites in the society had to make a choice.

00:15:45.000 They could either admit that that button never existed and they couldn't smash that button and fix all your problems, which would destroy their power, or they could say it's actually your neighbor.

00:15:53.000 If it weren't for your neighbor, I could hit this button.

00:15:55.000 But your neighbor is in here making me not hit the button.

00:15:58.000 And so you have to hate your neighbor.

00:16:00.000 This is why it's been so bewildering to me.

00:16:01.000 So I am, again, I took the vaccine.

00:16:04.000 My wife took the vaccine.

00:16:05.000 My parents took the vaccine.

00:16:06.000 I have young kids.

00:16:07.000 I have no intention of them taking the vaccine.

00:16:08.000 They're seven, five, and one.

00:16:09.000 There's no track record of the vaccine for kids.

00:16:11.000 I think?

00:16:31.000 I'm free and clear.

00:16:32.000 And by the way, I can get a mask if I'm all that worried about it.

00:16:34.000 But there's a whole group of people who never want to think like that.

00:16:36.000 They want to mask up forever.

00:16:37.000 You're starting to see it morph now.

00:16:39.000 It's like we can't give each other flu, so we have to make sure that we mask forever.

00:16:42.000 I'm not doing that.

00:16:43.000 Well, I think that what you said is very important, that there's a bunch of people that don't like risks in life, period.

00:16:51.000 And then when this came along, all of a sudden, everything was a risk.

00:16:56.000 Yeah.

00:17:12.000 They're comics and nice people in general, but are terrified of everything.

00:17:17.000 And I'm watching them completely implode because of the fact that this is a real risk, that getting sick from this disease is a real risk.

00:17:27.000 And so they look at everyone's individual choices as being something that can impact their lives in a negative way.

00:17:35.000 And they're looking at it completely disproportionately.

00:17:37.000 Yep.

00:17:38.000 They're not looking at it in a realistic sense.

00:17:41.000 They're not willing to look at the idea that there's other options.

00:17:46.000 There are treatment options.

00:17:48.000 Like this is the only time ever in our life where you have to do one thing and you have to ignore all evidence that other things are effective.

00:17:57.000 Monoclonal antibodies are radically effective.

00:18:01.000 I took them.

00:18:01.000 I was better in 24 hours after taking them.

00:18:04.000 I have told a bunch of my friends, including Aaron Rodgers, like, you know, the news is talking about all this crazy shit with Aaron. 0.92

00:18:10.000 What they're not talking about is exactly the same thing they're not talking about with me. 0.93

00:18:13.000 He got better really quick.

00:18:15.000 And he got better with a drug that's approved for emergency use authorization.

00:18:19.000 And that's what it is.

00:18:20.000 But if you take that and you're sick, then you don't need a vaccine. 0.99

00:18:25.000 And that is driving people fucking crazy. 0.89

00:18:27.000 Because they took it, they took the risk to take the vaccine, and they know that a certain percentage of people do have an adverse reaction. 0.99

00:18:35.000 I don't know what the percentage is because I think VAERS underreports.

00:18:38.000 I think there was a Harvard study that said it was between 1 and 10% underreported.

00:18:42.000 I don't know what that number, I don't know if that's real.

00:18:43.000 But the reality is that there's some sort of a risk and people took the risk and they're angry if other people don't take that risk.

00:18:52.000 And then they want to point out that there's also a risk for COVID. And you're fucking up and you're making a poor choice. 0.98

00:18:57.000 And they made a good choice. 1.00

00:18:58.000 Because their choice is to take this approved vaccine.

00:19:01.000 And your choice is to just take your chances with this virus because you're worried about the risk of the vaccine.

00:19:07.000 So people like Keith Olbermann will call you a coward. 1.00

00:19:09.000 Like, have you seen those unhinged rants from that fucking maniac? 0.99

00:19:12.000 One of the things I think that really is important to note also is that when it comes to the risk calculation, most of the people who are really paranoid about COVID are people who live more like me than like you. 0.99

00:19:22.000 What I mean by that is you're a guy who's kind of in the fight arena.

00:19:25.000 You do physical conflict, right?

00:19:26.000 You put yourself at physical risk all the time.

00:19:28.000 Most people who are deeply afraid of COVID are people like me.

00:19:31.000 They're in air-conditioned offices, right?

00:19:33.000 They have security.

00:19:35.000 They've spent their whole life in a bubble.

00:19:36.000 And if you spend your whole life in a bubble, then any risk penetrating that bubble...

00:19:40.000 Looks just unbelievably outsized.

00:19:43.000 Exactly.

00:19:43.000 And the human brain is not, we're not set up to calculate relative risk, right?

00:19:47.000 We just tend to think of things as risky or not risky.

00:19:49.000 We don't tend to think of things as like, it's a one in 10,000 chance.

00:19:52.000 How do you even calculate that in your head?

00:19:53.000 Does that mean like every 10,000 times I step out the door, I might die in a car accident?

00:19:56.000 What does that mean exactly?

00:19:58.000 We just tend to think of activities in one of those two binary categories.

00:20:01.000 And so if COVID goes into the risk category, and then the media just keep pounding away every day that you are probably going to die if you get this thing.

00:20:08.000 Which is not true.

00:20:09.000 That's not even true for old people, right? 1.00

00:20:11.000 Even for old people, the chances of death if you're above 75 from getting COVID with nothing else, they're high.

00:20:16.000 It's like 1 in 20. It's like 5 in 100. But if you are a 20-year-old guy who's healthy, your chances of dying from COVID are extremely low.

00:20:22.000 And if you are an unvaccinated child, your chances of dying of COVID are lower than that of a vaccinated adult.

00:20:27.000 And so this notion that all this is the same level of risk, which is peddled by the media to try and pay.

00:20:33.000 It's all the platonic lie.

00:20:34.000 You can't control your own life, and so we are going to tell you what's best for you by scaring the hell out of you.

00:20:39.000 And then, when it turns out people get the actual facts, when the fact shield that they've created is broken, when it turns out that it was not true, then people lose all faith in the institutions, and then the only way that they can try and reestablish the faith in the institutions is to keep doubling down.

00:20:52.000 They have to keep doubling down and keep trying to control you.

00:20:54.000 They can't let go and say, we made some mistakes here, we shouldn't have lied in the first place, we overestimated our ability to know what was going on.

00:21:01.000 Instead, it's No, no, no.

00:21:02.000 Why don't you just listen to us?

00:21:03.000 We're the science.

00:21:05.000 That's not a thing.

00:21:06.000 No person is the science.

00:21:07.000 The science is the science.

00:21:09.000 That's all.

00:21:09.000 Not only that, they're ignoring some of the science.

00:21:12.000 You don't hear a peep out of any of these officials telling people, hey folks, you've got to lose weight.

00:21:18.000 This is very important.

00:21:19.000 We look at the numbers of people that are obese that catch COVID. It's very high.

00:21:23.000 Here's another one.

00:21:24.000 Vitamin D. You've got to increase your level of vitamin D. Either get regular sun exposure or take a supplement.

00:21:31.000 They literally told you stay in your house and don't go in the sun for the vast majority of the pandemic.

00:21:36.000 Well, you can take supplements.

00:21:38.000 I mean, it's not as good as being in the sun.

00:21:40.000 No, but they kept saying, like, don't go outside, right?

00:21:42.000 It was, like, at the beginning.

00:21:43.000 Right.

00:21:43.000 And we knew within the first month people were not catching this outside.

00:21:46.000 Right.

00:21:47.000 We sort of knew.

00:21:48.000 There was some concern. 0.99

00:21:49.000 There was Chinese data, and the Chinese data was showing that, like, nobody in China had I don't trust shit that comes out of Chinese data. 0.99

00:21:55.000 That's fair. 0.97

00:21:55.000 I don't trust any of it. 0.97

00:21:56.000 I think there's so much nonsense coming out.

00:21:58.000 I mean, look at what we know now about the Wuhan leak or whether or not it came from a lab.

00:22:04.000 What we knew a year ago versus what we know now.

00:22:07.000 It's amazing how much we opened up to the lab leak idea as soon as Donald Trump was out of office.

00:22:12.000 It's like, hey, guys, we've been going over these papers and it seems like that's kind of possible.

00:22:17.000 Yep.

00:22:17.000 Now, monoclonal antibodies is the same thing, right?

00:22:19.000 DeSantis was saying monoclonal antibodies, and then Biden said it.

00:22:22.000 And then it was like, oh, monoclonal antibodies work, guys.

00:22:24.000 Well, they're restricting the use of it.

00:22:25.000 They're trying to stop people from getting it.

00:22:27.000 Well, they rejiggered the supply, right?

00:22:29.000 It was being done at the state level, and then they federalized the supply chain.

00:22:32.000 And they said, okay, now we're going to distribute it.

00:22:34.000 And they said, that's not because we were trying to punish Florida, but it's a little because we're trying to punish Florida.

00:22:37.000 It's not just trying to punish Florida.

00:22:39.000 It's trying to make it far more difficult to get this stuff because it discourages people from getting vaccinated.

00:22:45.000 It's the same thing that we were just talking about.

00:22:47.000 It's one treatment option.

00:22:50.000 This is it.

00:22:50.000 The vaccine.

00:22:51.000 This is one binary option.

00:22:53.000 And that's how people are looking at it.

00:22:55.000 And they're not taking into consideration all these other points of data that show that obesity is a factor, that diet and exercise are a factor, that vitamin supplementation is a factor.

00:23:06.000 There's a lot of factors that are involved in keeping your body healthy.

00:23:10.000 But it's not conducive to this brought to you by Pfizer.

00:23:14.000 It's not conducive to that narrative. 1.00

00:23:16.000 This fucking narrative is scary. 0.99

00:23:19.000 The lack of willingness to expose information is totally crazy. 1.00

00:23:23.000 And again, this is coming from somebody who's very pro-vaccine and thinks the vast majority of adults should get it.

00:23:27.000 Well, I am very pro-vaccine.

00:23:29.000 This is not a vaccine.

00:23:31.000 This is essentially a gene therapy.

00:23:33.000 They've changed the term, what a vaccine means, because of this.

00:23:38.000 You know that, right?

00:23:39.000 Yeah, you know.

00:23:39.000 The mRNA is a relatively new technology compared to the way they used to do vaccines, yes.

00:23:43.000 It's relatively new and there's no long-term safety data.

00:23:47.000 It doesn't exist.

00:23:48.000 And we're in the middle of...

00:23:50.000 Obviously, it's important to do something, right?

00:23:53.000 And so we're essentially in the middle of an experiment.

00:23:56.000 This is a long-term experiment with people.

00:23:59.000 And we're going to find out...

00:24:00.000 Whether it's five years from now or ten years from now, but if you look at the vast majority of FDA-approved drugs, if you look at all of them, who knows how many thousands of drugs have been approved, do you know how many have been pulled out once they found out there's adverse side effects after years and years of use? 0.97

00:24:20.000 It's fucking nuts. 0.91

00:24:22.000 It's a crazy number. 1.00

00:24:23.000 Let's find out what the number is.

00:24:26.000 FDA-approved drugs That were, how would you Google this?

00:24:31.000 Withdrawn, maybe.

00:24:32.000 Withdrawn after finding adverse effects.

00:24:35.000 I was reading an article about this because the article was a pro-vaccine article, but they were saying, you've got to understand how these things work.

00:24:44.000 There's a reason why they do these trials over five, ten years.

00:24:48.000 There's a reason for this.

00:24:49.000 So everybody that's saying, you know, safe and effective, safe and effective.

00:24:52.000 For most people, yes.

00:24:54.000 For most people, safe and effective.

00:24:55.000 So was Vioxx.

00:24:57.000 So was Vioxx.

00:24:58.000 I have a friend who had a stroke from Vioxx.

00:25:01.000 And he was in his 30s.

00:25:02.000 Well, again, the notion that it's great for everyone, or that it is, wow.

00:25:06.000 There have been 12,787 drug recalls issued by the FDA. On average, 1,279 drugs are recalled every year.

00:25:20.000 Understand this. 0.92

00:25:21.000 We don't know what the fuck is going to happen in 10 years. 0.98

00:25:25.000 We don't know. 0.97

00:25:26.000 But that's why it was always, for me, about relative risk of COVID versus whatever you think the risks might be of the vaccine, which is why for people who are old, you really needed to get it.

00:25:34.000 If you're 65 and up, it was you do whatever you have to do to get it.

00:25:37.000 And then once it got to lower ages, it was like, use your own best judgment.

00:25:40.000 And I encourage my parents to get vaccinated.

00:25:43.000 I encourage people that are in high-risk groups to get vaccinated.

00:25:46.000 I think it does.

00:25:47.000 And the data on third shots is really, really sketchy unless you're really old and really immunocompromised.

00:25:55.000 And they're pushing it anyway.

00:25:56.000 The thing about the COVID vaccine that's interesting is that the adverse side effects are less frequent in older people.

00:26:03.000 For whatever reason.

00:26:04.000 It's interesting.

00:26:06.000 Worse immune response, maybe?

00:26:07.000 Maybe.

00:26:07.000 Because a lot of this stuff is driven by the strength of the immune response.

00:26:11.000 Well, also, you're seeing people administer it incorrectly all the fucking time, including when they did it to the president. 0.95

00:26:17.000 When they jabbed the president and I said, I don't even think they gave it to him. 0.98

00:26:20.000 I was joking around and everybody was outraged. 0.91

00:26:21.000 Joe Rogan is a conspiracy thief.

00:26:23.000 What is he saying? 0.93

00:26:24.000 Well, you're supposed to aspirate. 1.00

00:26:26.000 You fucks. 1.00

00:26:27.000 When you see someone get injected and they just go like that right into his arm, that is an incorrect way of vaccinating the fucking leader of the free world. 1.00

00:26:36.000 Okay? 0.99

00:26:36.000 If you're going to do it to the leader of the free world, maybe you should pull it back to make sure you didn't hit a goddamn vein and then push it through because that's what you're supposed to do. 0.99

00:26:45.000 I'm not a doctor. 0.99

00:26:46.000 Your wife's a doctor.

00:26:47.000 I'm sure she could tell you the same thing.

00:26:49.000 I'll ask her about it.

00:26:50.000 I mean, the good news for Joe Biden is he's been dead for at least 15 years. 0.98

00:26:54.000 Well, he's definitely a zombie. 0.83

00:26:56.000 I don't know if he's technically dead because he's moving around and farting all over the place, apparently.

00:27:01.000 Yeah, that was not... 1.00

00:27:02.000 How crazy is that lady, fucking Prince Charles' wife? 1.00

00:27:06.000 Yeah, she's going around talking about him farting all over. 1.00

00:27:08.000 Is it proven that she said this, or is this one of them Republican rumors?

00:27:11.000 Oh, it's from the Daily Mail, right?

00:27:13.000 So the Daily Mail was saying that she was going around telling everybody that he had really unleashed the beast.

00:27:18.000 Daily Mail's a tad sketchy.

00:27:20.000 I don't know if you know.

00:27:21.000 Fair.

00:27:22.000 Didn't Johnny Depp, didn't he duke it out with the Daily Mail?

00:27:25.000 Was it the Daily Mail?

00:27:26.000 I can't remember if it was the Daily Mail.

00:27:27.000 There are some tabloids over there.

00:27:30.000 Tad sketchy.

00:27:32.000 Tad sketchy over there.

00:27:33.000 I mean, it is pretty incredible how, yeah.

00:27:36.000 So he's over there, and the only thing he came away with was a story about How loudly he farted.

00:27:41.000 That's not a great appearance.

00:27:43.000 It's kind of the worst thing since H.W. barfed in somebody's lap at a dinner in Japan.

00:27:47.000 It's just not a great presidential look.

00:27:48.000 Did he do that?

00:27:49.000 Oh, that's right!

00:27:50.000 That's right!

00:27:51.000 That's right!

00:27:52.000 What did he have, food poisoning or something?

00:27:54.000 Yeah, he just kind of leaned over and vomited.

00:27:55.000 Oh, that's hilarious.

00:27:57.000 That's hilarious.

00:27:58.000 What happens?

00:28:00.000 Because he's not going to make it.

00:28:01.000 And this is one of the things that I said.

00:28:03.000 I mean, you know, you and I are kind of on different sides of the fence politically.

00:28:09.000 But we're not with everything.

00:28:11.000 I am very pro-police.

00:28:15.000 I'm very pro-military.

00:28:16.000 I'm very pro-Second Amendment.

00:28:18.000 I'm very pro-protecting families and people.

00:28:23.000 And I'm very pro-choice.

00:28:25.000 I'm very pro...

00:28:26.000 You know, you gotta...

00:28:27.000 I'm a person of...

00:28:29.000 I believe in nuance, and I'm not a person that's interested in subscribing to tribes and ideologies.

00:28:35.000 But when I look at where we're at right now with this country, with this administration, This is what I said during the election.

00:28:44.000 I said I would vote for Trump before I'd vote for...

00:28:47.000 I didn't wind up voting for either one of them.

00:28:48.000 I voted for Joe Jorgensen.

00:28:50.000 It was just sort of a throw my hands up in the air vote.

00:28:52.000 But I would vote for Trump, I said, because I don't think Biden is there.

00:28:58.000 I think he's having real problems.

00:29:00.000 And I got people messaging me, you're wrong, he's got...

00:29:04.000 he stutters.

00:29:04.000 And I'm like, listen, I've seen...

00:29:07.000 I know old people. 0.96

00:29:08.000 You do too.

00:29:08.000 You're lying to me.

00:29:09.000 You know what this is.

00:29:11.000 This guy can't talk.

00:29:12.000 It's falling apart.

00:29:13.000 He's intermittently lucid, right?

00:29:15.000 And that happens a lot when you hit that age.

00:29:18.000 He's probably on Adderall, let's be honest.

00:29:19.000 They're probably juicing him up.

00:29:20.000 They're probably doing something when it's important.

00:29:22.000 I mean, he is just sometimes there, and he's mostly not, and he's losing his train of thought in the middle of press conferences, and he's getting very cranky and crotchety with people.

00:29:32.000 Yeah, come on, man!

00:29:32.000 Yeah, and he's yelling at people.

00:29:34.000 Like, in the space of a week, he went from yelling at Peter Doocy on Fox News...

00:29:38.000 For saying that he was paying illegal immigrants or thinking of paying illegal immigrants like almost half a million dollars per person for the family separation stuff.

00:29:45.000 He's like, we would never consider that.

00:29:47.000 That's terrible.

00:29:47.000 How could you report that to his own administration having to walk it back and then yelling at another reporter for saying that it's bad to pay people.

00:29:56.000 Did you see Ducey with the press secretary?

00:29:59.000 No, I missed this one.

00:29:59.000 Did you see this beautiful setup?

00:30:00.000 He said, are you going to pay people that come over to this country legally?

00:30:05.000 And she's like, this is the substitute press secretary.

00:30:10.000 Yeah, because Jen Psaki got the COVID. So she's out, and this new lady is in, and she goes, why would we pay people who come over here illegally? 1.00

00:30:22.000 Ducey goes, why would you pay people who come over here illegally?

00:30:26.000 And the thug life glasses come down.

00:30:29.000 Have you seen that?

00:30:30.000 No, I missed that one.

00:30:31.000 I'll have to see that.

00:30:32.000 It's pretty interesting.

00:30:33.000 But yeah, no, Biden's not there.

00:30:34.000 And he's now in the upper 30s, low 40s.

00:30:37.000 Remember, the thing about Biden is that he was elected.

00:30:40.000 Everybody's misreading their mandate.

00:30:41.000 You mean about approval rating?

00:30:43.000 Yeah, his approval rating.

00:30:44.000 Yeah, maybe his heartbeat.

00:30:47.000 No, that would be good.

00:30:49.000 Yeah.

00:30:50.000 Upper 30s would be like a marathon runner. 0.95

00:30:52.000 Oh, really?

00:30:52.000 Okay.

00:30:52.000 Yeah.

00:30:53.000 Okay.

00:30:54.000 You know more about this than I do, again.

00:30:56.000 That low resting heart rate is awesome.

00:30:58.000 If you get into 30s, that's like Michael Bisping in his prime.

00:31:00.000 Wow, okay.

00:31:01.000 So he's not that.

00:31:02.000 Okay, so in any case, he is, you know, he's falling apart.

00:31:06.000 He's in the high 30s, low 40s in approval rating.

00:31:08.000 But Kamala is lower.

00:31:10.000 She's at 28%, which I don't even know how that's possible.

00:31:13.000 It's wild.

00:31:13.000 Like, they've been hiding her.

00:31:14.000 They've, like, got her in a closet somewhere, and they just hide her there, because every time she comes out, she weirdly...

00:31:18.000 Like, one of my life aspirations is to play poker with Kamala Harris.

00:31:21.000 I'm not good at poker, but she has got to have the best poker tell of all time, right?

00:31:26.000 I mean, she just cackles randomly.

00:31:27.000 Yeah.

00:31:28.000 As soon as you ask her, I mean, she makes Hillary Clinton just look charming and personable. 1.00

00:31:32.000 It's unbelievable.

00:31:33.000 She's at 28% and she's missing.

00:31:35.000 She's completely MIA and people just can't stand her. 1.00

00:31:38.000 And so if you're a Democrat and you're looking at 2024, you got to be thinking to yourself, what do we do?

00:31:43.000 And then, you know, if you're a Republican, there's kind of Trump just waiting, biding his time, just waiting.

00:31:48.000 What do you think happens?

00:31:49.000 That's the worst Trump impression ever.

00:31:51.000 I know, it's horrible.

00:31:51.000 You were talking earlier about your impressions.

00:31:54.000 That one's not good.

00:31:55.000 Yeah.

00:31:55.000 Do you have one that's good?

00:31:57.000 My Obama's not bad.

00:31:58.000 Let me hear your Obama.

00:31:59.000 Well, let's talk a little bit about what's going on in America tonight.

00:32:04.000 It's not bad.

00:32:05.000 It's not horrific.

00:32:06.000 I have to kind of get into it.

00:32:07.000 Can I get a glass of water?

00:32:09.000 Remember that one?

00:32:10.000 Come on.

00:32:12.000 I will say, America is not red states.

00:32:14.000 It's not blue states.

00:32:15.000 It's the United States.

00:32:18.000 They need work.

00:32:19.000 They're not great.

00:32:20.000 Remember when you drank the Flint water?

00:32:21.000 Can I get a glass of water?

00:32:23.000 This is not a stunt.

00:32:24.000 I'm actually thirsty.

00:32:28.000 We're talking about the Kamala Harris thing.

00:32:31.000 Who wins?

00:32:33.000 How does that work?

00:32:35.000 Or who takes over?

00:32:38.000 If Biden...

00:32:39.000 He can't make it.

00:32:40.000 And I don't think he's going to make it.

00:32:41.000 I don't think he's going to make it to 2024. And if they run him again in 2024, there's no fucking way. 0.98

00:32:48.000 There's no way. 0.98

00:32:48.000 It's a layup for whoever's on the other side. 0.98

00:32:50.000 The only thing that the Democrats are praying for, really, just on a political level, is they want Trump to come back because he has high-the-negatives.

00:32:55.000 You know what I think it's going to be?

00:32:57.000 I think it's going to be Kamala and Pete Buttigieg.

00:32:59.000 I think that's who they're going to try to push.

00:33:00.000 Yeah, I mean, I think that's right.

00:33:02.000 I think that...

00:33:03.000 He's a really good speaker.

00:33:05.000 He's very articulate.

00:33:06.000 Handsome guy, you know, and he checks a lot of the boxes.

00:33:09.000 He's gay and married.

00:33:10.000 It allows the media to suggest, again, that anybody who opposes the agenda is anti-gay and anti-black if you have that combined ticket. 0.96

00:33:17.000 They've been having trouble with that, right? 0.73

00:33:18.000 They keep saying that if you oppose Biden's agenda, it's because you're racist.

00:33:21.000 And it's like, that guy is whiter than any person on earth.

00:33:24.000 Right, but here's the thing.

00:33:25.000 Who would be the lead?

00:33:27.000 Would it be her as the president and him as the vice president? 0.98

00:33:29.000 Because that's not going to fucking work. 0.94

00:33:31.000 Yeah, I think it's hard to say that they're going to supplant her at the top of the ticket with Buttigieg because then what do you do with the whole intersectional coalition of all of it, right? 0.99

00:33:41.000 You're supplanting a black woman. 1.00

00:33:43.000 I'm not sure what the current math is on intersectionality. 0.96

00:33:46.000 Like, who ranks higher, the gay man or the black woman? 0.96

00:33:48.000 He would have to be trans. 1.00

00:33:51.000 If he was trans, he would get a leg up. 1.00

00:33:53.000 Right, but then is he a straight woman?

00:33:55.000 And then he goes down on the intersectional scale, or what? 1.00

00:33:58.000 Yeah, he's a trans woman, you fucking bigot. 1.00

00:33:59.000 Right, but then he's married to a man, right? 1.00

00:34:01.000 Then she's married to a man, so then she's a straight trans woman, right? 0.91

00:34:04.000 Isn't that how it works?

00:34:05.000 I don't think so.

00:34:07.000 It depends.

00:34:08.000 It's like a bad algebra problem.

00:34:09.000 Yeah, we have to, it's like 2 plus 2 is 5, you know, because math is racist.

00:34:14.000 It's true.

00:34:14.000 California, man.

00:34:15.000 I think if you look at her approval rating, I think she might get abducted by UFOs.

00:34:22.000 That's the plan. 0.99

00:34:23.000 They might say, and I'm not kidding, if I was her, I would be fucking terrified. 0.97

00:34:27.000 I would be legitimately terrified for my life, and I'm not kidding. 0.79

00:34:31.000 Well, I mean, she should certainly be terrified that they're not going to let her run for president.

00:34:35.000 They're not going to let her run for president. 1.00

00:34:36.000 Honestly, if I'm the Democrats, I've been saying this since the last election cycle, if I were the Democrats, I'm praying for Michelle.

00:34:42.000 Michelle's very popular.

00:34:42.000 Michelle Obama?

00:34:43.000 Yeah, Michelle's very popular. 1.00

00:34:44.000 She could win.

00:34:45.000 She could win.

00:34:46.000 100%.

00:34:46.000 She's cultivated this very kind of crossover, I'm a nice person image.

00:34:51.000 She's very likable.

00:34:53.000 She's fun. 0.93

00:34:53.000 She's cultivated that for sure. 0.93

00:34:55.000 I think that's a good move.

00:34:57.000 I think that Kamala Harris has got to figure out a way to step out. 1.00

00:35:00.000 She won't, though.

00:35:02.000 How could she?

00:35:03.000 How could she?

00:35:03.000 She just keeps failing up.

00:35:05.000 She's going to get sick. 1.00

00:35:06.000 She's going to get a booster, and the booster's going to wreck her. 1.00

00:35:09.000 You just go missing for 10 days.

00:35:11.000 Like who?

00:35:12.000 Like, I don't know.

00:35:13.000 Who's that guy that's missing?

00:35:14.000 Oh yeah, where's he?

00:35:16.000 What's his name?

00:35:17.000 I heard a rumor.

00:35:18.000 The guy from California, right?

00:35:22.000 I don't know what's going on with him.

00:35:23.000 I don't know either.

00:35:24.000 Yeah, no one knows.

00:35:25.000 Anyway.

00:35:27.000 Yeah, they've got problems on that side of the aisle.

00:35:31.000 But the problem for everyone, really, is that they keep misreading what the mandate is.

00:35:35.000 When Biden was elected, he was elected with basically two mandates.

00:35:40.000 Be dead and don't be radical.

00:35:43.000 And he was dead, but he's also being kind of radical. 0.91

00:35:47.000 And Americans are just not into it.

00:35:48.000 The mandate wasn't be dead because they rolled him out for the debates.

00:35:52.000 It was be not Trump.

00:35:52.000 It was be barely alive.

00:35:54.000 Like, be barely sentient.

00:35:55.000 Don't make trouble.

00:35:56.000 He was pretty good in the first debate.

00:35:58.000 Yeah.

00:35:59.000 He was pretty good.

00:35:59.000 For him?

00:36:01.000 God love me.

00:36:01.000 I defended him against Kamala Harris who I thought was awful in that first debate when she attacked him as a racist.

00:36:05.000 He was really dishonest.

00:36:06.000 It just shows you how politicians are, right?

00:36:08.000 Now he's the greatest thing since sliced bread for her, but...

00:36:10.000 Yeah, not just that, but she said she believed the woman who accused him of sexual assault.

00:36:14.000 Right, but now she's the vice president, so they're best friends again.

00:36:17.000 We should definitely believe these people and trust them with all of our life decisions.

00:36:21.000 Well, that's what's so crazy.

00:36:22.000 It's like they expect you to have a really short memory, to forget, like, this was just a month ago.

00:36:27.000 You guys were at each other's neck.

00:36:28.000 I mean, I think that was the plan with Afghanistan. 0.67

00:36:29.000 I think that's the plan with everything.

00:36:30.000 I think everybody is under the misimpression that there is no long-term memory.

00:36:34.000 And there isn't a long-term memory, but it's almost like T-cell memory, like it exists back there and when it gets activated, like the immune system spins up, you know?

00:36:42.000 I think they're accustomed to having complete control over the media narrative, and they don't have that anymore.

00:36:48.000 That's the difference.

00:36:49.000 They've always had Fox News, which they have labeled as racist and homophobic and sexist and, you know, homophobic. 0.99

00:36:59.000 Horrible warmongers and horrible greedy corporatists and all the terrible things that they could associate with Fox News. 0.97

00:37:06.000 And they felt like most of the media they had a control of. 0.95

00:37:10.000 They had control of CNBC and MSNBC and...

00:37:14.000 CNN and ABC. All the networks.

00:37:17.000 Everything.

00:37:18.000 But they don't...

00:37:18.000 That's not impactful anymore.

00:37:21.000 That's what's crazy.

00:37:22.000 Something happened and there's this new wave of media like your show and like Breaking Points.

00:37:29.000 There's so many shows out there now where people actually talk about the real facts in a nonpartisan way and explain what's going on and what moving pieces are in play and how these bills are getting passed and what are the special interest groups that are forcing this through and What's happening?

00:37:47.000 This is what's happening.

00:37:47.000 And that didn't exist before.

00:37:49.000 But I think that, again, until people let go of the core notion that government is going to solve their problems, it's just going to keep bouncing back and forth.

00:37:57.000 Because if you're on the right, you think the federal government's going to solve your problem if Trump is president again.

00:38:01.000 And if you're on the left, you think that as long as Biden's in control, federal government's going to solve all your problems.

00:38:05.000 And so we can be as dissatisfied with the system as we want to be on all sides of the aisle.

00:38:10.000 But until we recognize that really we need to stop pretending that these people are capable of solving our problems and just they should leave us the hell alone in the main, it's just going to get worse.

00:38:19.000 Some people don't want that though.

00:38:20.000 Some people want daddy. 0.99

00:38:22.000 They want daddy to come along.

00:38:23.000 I mean this is what Benjamin, wasn't it Benjamin Franklin that had that quote about people who choose- Surrender liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.

00:38:33.000 I mean that's literally what you're saying.

00:38:34.000 Yep, and I think that that's true.

00:38:36.000 I mean, there are polls in Britain right now showing that a majority of the population in Britain wants to just keep masks forever.

00:38:42.000 Forever?

00:38:42.000 Forever.

00:38:43.000 But meanwhile, my friends were over there, like Chappelle was over there.

00:38:45.000 He told me that no one wears a mask.

00:38:47.000 So you're walking around London, everybody's just acting like there's no COVID. Well, that's the other thing.

00:38:51.000 I think that what people say to pollsters, and even how they vote, and then how they act in their daily lives are just not connected.

00:38:57.000 I think you vote how you want to perceive yourself very often.

00:39:00.000 It's like, I perceive myself as a good person, therefore I voted for X. Keep those masks forever.

00:39:05.000 And then in your personal life, I mean, this is what you see from Democratic mayors.

00:39:08.000 They're like, yeah, we're going to push mask mandates.

00:39:10.000 And then if the spirit moves you and you're London breed, the mayor of San Francisco, and you're at a concert and the spirit moves you, then off comes the mask. 0.53

00:39:17.000 Meanwhile, you're masking up my five-year-old in class.

00:39:19.000 Like, it's just...

00:39:19.000 Well, not only that, they're forcing five-year-olds to be vaccinated and go into restaurants.

00:39:24.000 That's insane.

00:39:25.000 It's insane.

00:39:26.000 And we don't have, again, no long-term safety data, especially with children.

00:39:32.000 It's wild.

00:39:33.000 Also, they're not at risk.

00:39:35.000 If the parents are vaccinated, they're supposed to be protected.

00:39:38.000 And if the children catch COVID, they're not at risk.

00:39:41.000 So we're done.

00:39:42.000 Unless this is a money-making scheme.

00:39:44.000 People get mad at the data.

00:39:46.000 So we were having this kind of knock-down, drag-out fight in our local area about some institutions that had mask mandates. 0.96

00:39:52.000 And my wife, who's very anti-mask mandates, particularly for kids, She is a doctor and she was talking to some people who are part of this institution and she wrote up this long document with all the links and all the data about how mask mandates for kids are ineffective, how they don't do anything, how they're really stupid,

00:40:07.000 how they're counterproductive, how there's no data to back them.

00:40:09.000 And I said to her, if you send that, they're going to get madder at you.

00:40:12.000 They don't want the data.

00:40:13.000 The data makes them angry.

00:40:14.000 And she was like, no, no, no, they'll want the data because she's a nice person and naive.

00:40:18.000 And she sent it and sure enough, people got madder because the idea is that once the data come up And kind of bite the perspective.

00:40:26.000 People get very angry if their perspective is the one that got bitten.

00:40:29.000 And so they have to suppress it.

00:40:31.000 I honestly think that's part of what's happening with big tech right now.

00:40:33.000 I think that there's almost two battles with regard to big tech.

00:40:38.000 One is just the size and scope and the social effect of big tech and all of that.

00:40:41.000 But the other one is there's a group of people who really don't like alternative viewpoints being out there.

00:40:45.000 And so they are going to stump as hard as they can to get people deplatformed and to use big tech as a way of siphoning off perspectives.

00:40:53.000 Well, you see that in those Project Veritas videos where the people who work for these organizations are so nonchalant about the way they're discussing.

00:41:02.000 Look, they're at dinner discussing how they suppress conservative voices.

00:41:06.000 And if you're a person who has an understanding of the importance of free speech, which is one of the cornerstones of this country, You know that free speech works both ways.

00:41:17.000 You have to hear an other person's perspective and then you argue your perspective and you see which perspective makes more logical sense.

00:41:27.000 This is what free speech is all about.

00:41:28.000 This is what growth is about.

00:41:30.000 This is how we understand each other's Points of view and we learn about other other people's opinions and ideas and this is how you change your own opinions ideas You encounter some that enter into your mind that you go I never considered that that's actually a good point and then you shift your judgment you shift your perspective This is important for humans. 0.90

00:41:50.000 It's always been important for humans echo chambers are fucking terrible They're terrible in every way shape and form and this idea that We're giving up these echo chambers. 0.96

00:41:59.000 We're giving control of them to these fucking wokesters that work for corporations that can arbitrarily just decide, oh, this person talks about that. 0.99

00:42:10.000 Let's fucking shadow ban her. 1.00

00:42:11.000 This person talks about this. 0.99

00:42:13.000 Let's ban their YouTube page.

00:42:14.000 This person says data that's inconvenient for our narrative.

00:42:18.000 Let's silence them. 1.00

00:42:19.000 That is fucking crazy. 1.00

00:42:21.000 And it's completely un-American. 0.99

00:42:22.000 There's something perverse that's happened, too, and that is, you can spot it in the language.

00:42:26.000 So, until 2016, remember, social media was everybody's friend.

00:42:29.000 Everybody loved social media until 2016. The media were, like, big on social media.

00:42:32.000 It was great.

00:42:33.000 It had been used to reach out to new voters, and it had helped people in the Arab Spring, and all this kind of stuff.

00:42:37.000 And then Trump wins.

00:42:38.000 And all of a sudden, on a dime, everybody switches to social media facilitated the spread of Russian disinformation.

00:42:44.000 Now, my company is an online company.

00:42:46.000 We spend a lot of time on places like Facebook, so we know what the numbers look like when you have high engagement.

00:42:52.000 The number of people who are actually affected by so-called Russian disinformation over the course of the 2020 election, the number of people who access those posts is less than the number of people who access posts from my personal Facebook page over the course of maybe three weeks or a month.

00:43:05.000 Okay?

00:43:05.000 It was not a massive...

00:43:08.000 Huge wave of Russian disinformation that shifted the 2016 election.

00:43:11.000 There had to be some excuse for why Trump had won.

00:43:14.000 And so it was Russian disinformation.

00:43:16.000 And then you saw there was this really interesting linguistic shift.

00:43:19.000 They went from disinformation, which is an active thing, right?

00:43:21.000 That's like the Russian government spreading things that are not true in order to subvert our politics, to misinformation.

00:43:27.000 It's only one letter different, but it's completely different.

00:43:29.000 Disinformation is a state actor or a terrorist group or some organized group pushing a perspective that is false in order to undermine the comedy and cohesiveness of a community.

00:43:38.000 Misinformation is just, it can be true, but if it's missing context or if it's presented in a way I don't like, it's misinformation.

00:43:46.000 And so now we have to target misinformation and that can be anything.

00:43:49.000 And not only that, we will set up A group of fact checkers, fact checkers who all happen to align with one political point of view, and these fact checkers will determine whether or not you have violated the ban on misinformation, and then we'll downgrade you on that basis.

00:44:03.000 And it doesn't matter if the fact checkers shift their own opinion on this sort of stuff, right?

00:44:08.000 We'll ban you for six months from social media if you talk about the Chinese leak.

00:44:13.000 But then, if everybody flips on a dime, then, well, you know, the fact checkers are okay with it so long as it's the right people who are saying it now.

00:44:20.000 And the same monoclonal antibodies or hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, right?

00:44:23.000 It's all the same kind of stuff.

00:44:25.000 It's misinformation when it's deemed inconvenient for a particular narrative.

00:44:29.000 And then as soon as something is convenient for the narrative, it's not misinformation.

00:44:32.000 So that shift has been really dangerous and really ugly.

00:44:37.000 And again, if they think that it's going to end well for them, that somehow this is going to reestablish social capital, that people are going to get back together because you force them to only listen to one point of view, good luck with that.

00:44:46.000 I don't think they're thinking that, but I do think that intelligent people are waking up to the reality that being a part of these groups that are doing this, that are silencing opposing views, there's no long-term future in this.

00:45:01.000 Because people recognize what is actually happening now.

00:45:05.000 A growing number of people.

00:45:06.000 There's still a lot of people that watch CNN that think I actually took horse dewormer.

00:45:10.000 But there's a lot of people that recognize, like, oh my god, this is just a lie.

00:45:13.000 Like, oh my god, the news is lying.

00:45:15.000 About all kinds of things, and they're pushing a very limited perspective, a very limited point of view, and they're demonizing anything that has an opposing perspective.

00:45:25.000 You're seeing more and more courageous journalists step out, and then you're seeing things like Substack, and you're seeing podcasts, and shows like yours, where people have the ability to express themselves without any worry about editorial control from all these other companies.

00:45:40.000 And this is where the legacy media, they try to jump in and they try to put boots on the throat, right?

00:45:44.000 So, you're over at Spotify.

00:45:45.000 And the minute you signed over at Spotify, the legacy media went and tried to find a couple of malcontents over at Spotify to try and get them to say, oh, we're going to walk out.

00:45:52.000 It's going to be blood in the streets over at Spotify.

00:45:54.000 Now, in reality, it's like a couple of people who are bitching. 1.00

00:45:57.000 Well, they actually did bitch. 1.00

00:45:59.000 I mean, it's not the legacy media didn't orchestrate that. 0.93

00:46:03.000 There was people that worked there.

00:46:04.000 No, I'm sure it was, but the legacy media decide which malcontents at a particular company to magnify.

00:46:09.000 Well, it's not even just legacy media.

00:46:12.000 A lot of online websites did that, but they did that because it's good clickbait.

00:46:16.000 It's good for the news.

00:46:18.000 This is part of the problem with journalism today, is that There's no money in print anymore.

00:46:24.000 So people aren't just buying newspapers.

00:46:26.000 You can't look for the New York Times to be this complete unbiased source of information with very clear and concise headlines.

00:46:33.000 Now it's about what kind of engagement do you get online?

00:46:37.000 Well, the way you get engagement online is things have to be outrageous. 0.99

00:46:40.000 Do you know how many people write really good articles and then their fucking editor comes along and writes some bullshit headline for it? 0.98

00:46:46.000 And so it gets submitted with something that has... 0.97

00:46:49.000 It's completely different than the tone of the actual article itself because this is the way you can get people to click on it and they'll change things.

00:46:56.000 I do think there's something else though and it's why I mentioned the legacy media and that is I do think that there are actors in the legacy media who want to see their sources of competition cut off at the knees.

00:47:04.000 I think so too, but I think...

00:47:06.000 They started talking about regulating podcasts not all that long ago.

00:47:09.000 People like Kara Swisher at the New York Times talking about, you know, why can't the same rules that apply to journalism apply to podcasts?

00:47:15.000 Why doesn't Facebook crack down on the dissemination of podcasting information?

00:47:20.000 Like, I don't think it's a coincidence that you have the Kevin Rooses.

00:47:23.000 Every single day, Kevin Roos over at the New York Times puts out a list of what he says are the top traffic links at Facebook.

00:47:30.000 Okay, and he does that specifically because it names like me or Dan Bongino or a few other people on the right, the idea being that Facebook is pushing really hard right-wing propaganda content.

00:47:40.000 The only reason he's doing that every day is to try and pressure Facebook into not doing that anymore, right?

00:47:44.000 That's the whole goal.

00:47:45.000 I think there is a real concerted effort by legacy media to basically say the only approved sources should be us and anybody else who's out there is not an approved source.

00:47:56.000 I agree with you on that.

00:47:57.000 I definitely agree with you on that.

00:47:58.000 But I think that there are a growing number of people that are connected to legacy media that realize that you can get much further being independent.

00:48:08.000 And it's a much clearer path.

00:48:10.000 And you don't have to deal with editors that change the titles of your stories. 0.97

00:48:14.000 You don't have to deal with these bullshit narratives that you're being forced to push. 0.96

00:48:18.000 You don't have to be a cog in this machine. 0.96

00:48:22.000 I don't know if it's maybe moving out of California that's made me more optimistic because I don't live kind of in the center of this anymore.

00:48:27.000 But I do feel more optimistic.

00:48:29.000 I only saw that announcement about the University of Austin.

00:48:32.000 Did you see that today?

00:48:33.000 Yes.

00:48:33.000 It's a cool thing.

00:48:34.000 Yeah.

00:48:34.000 It's a bunch of people from a bunch of different sides of the political aisle.

00:48:37.000 You've got Larry Summers and Aideen Strossen.

00:48:39.000 Then you've got Barry Weiss and Andrew Sullivan and Saurabh Amari, who's very right wing.

00:48:43.000 And you've got all these people who are founding a university.

00:48:45.000 It'll take them years to build.

00:48:47.000 But they're trying to provide an alternative to a sort of propagandistic worldview that's being taught in a lot of college campuses.

00:48:53.000 Like, the possibilities for building alternatives have never been higher.

00:48:56.000 And that is the thing that makes me optimistic.

00:48:58.000 And again, I think part of that is just living around people who don't Think of themselves as reflections of the federal government every day.

00:49:05.000 I was trying to explain this to people who are from Florida who think of themselves as Floridian.

00:49:09.000 Same thing in Texas.

00:49:10.000 If you talk to Texans, they think of themselves as Texans.

00:49:12.000 In California, you think yourself as a Californian kind of culturally, but it's not like the state of California stands against the federal government.

00:49:19.000 The state of California has its own prerogatives.

00:49:21.000 If you live in LA, LA and the federal government are kind of just the same.

00:49:25.000 I mean, they just mirror reflections of one another.

00:49:27.000 It would never occur to you that there's sort of a separate cultural identity that exists as California versus the federal government.

00:49:33.000 It's so transient.

00:49:34.000 Right.

00:49:35.000 The state's so transient.

00:49:36.000 And it's also that the involvement of government in your everyday life is so great in California, but minimal in other parts of the country.

00:49:47.000 That your points of contact in Florida or Texas with the federal government, or at least federal government-like policy, are fairly minimal.

00:49:54.000 So when the federal government starts actually exerting pressure, you start feeling it more than in California.

00:49:58.000 But don't you think that before the pandemic, the way that you interacted with the government in California was minimal?

00:50:05.000 Not with the local government.

00:50:06.000 Well, it was less invasive than it was, and soon...

00:50:09.000 Well, yeah, post-pandemic, it's crazy.

00:50:11.000 Post-pandemic, it went nuts.

00:50:12.000 Let me just talk from my personal perspective. 0.99

00:50:14.000 For me, I didn't even give a fuck who the mayor of Los Angeles was. 0.98

00:50:17.000 It didn't matter. 0.98

00:50:17.000 Until they shut down restaurants and comedy clubs. 0.98

00:50:20.000 And then I was like, what are you doing?

00:50:22.000 Like, who are you?

00:50:23.000 Who are you to tell people what they can and can't do?

00:50:26.000 And especially when you're talking about, like, outdoor dining and outdoor shows and things that don't have...

00:50:30.000 Any risk associated with that?

00:50:32.000 Oh yeah, it was so obtrusive.

00:50:33.000 You're right.

00:50:33.000 I mean, that was a...

00:50:35.000 That changed everything. 0.96

00:50:35.000 I had seen it happening because, again, I'm conservative, so I feel that kind of stuff maybe more deeply, but as soon as the pandemic kicked in, and they started doing just crazy shit, right? 0.96

00:50:45.000 Like, I could not take my kids to a public park. 0.94

00:50:47.000 I couldn't take them to school, and I also could not take them to a public park.

00:50:50.000 They closed the beach.

00:50:52.000 Right, they put sand all over the skate park, right?

00:50:56.000 Like, I'm not going to skate there, but I'm just telling you, like, when you dump sand all over the skate park, because you think that people who are skating past each other at 15, 20 miles an hour are going to...

00:51:03.000 Exactly!

00:51:05.000 When we went to Florida, and then we were visiting, and the first couple nights we just went to an outdoor restaurant, because they're eating outdoors at the restaurants, and you couldn't do that in LA. My wife and I looked at each other and we hadn't been out to dinner with each other for two months because of this.

00:51:17.000 We're like, this is a different thing.

00:51:20.000 This is nice.

00:51:21.000 This is better.

00:51:22.000 Yeah, this is better.

00:51:23.000 And I think the more people realize that this is better thing, I think that there's going to be, like the great sort, the big sort is happening.

00:51:31.000 People are leaving the blue states.

00:51:33.000 They're coming to the red states. 0.92

00:51:34.000 It is a sort ideologically.

00:51:36.000 There's still people digging their heels in. 0.99

00:51:38.000 There's, you know, California still has 40 million fucking people. 0.99

00:51:41.000 It doesn't have population growth though. 0.99

00:51:43.000 No.

00:51:44.000 California is losing congressional seats.

00:51:45.000 New York's losing congressional seats.

00:51:47.000 It's interesting, isn't it?

00:51:48.000 Yeah.

00:51:48.000 I mean, this is, I think, was it 2019 was the first year that California had less people?

00:51:55.000 Mm-hmm.

00:51:55.000 Yeah.

00:51:56.000 Yeah.

00:51:56.000 They've started losing people.

00:51:57.000 That was actually before the pandemic.

00:51:59.000 They were doing that just because of taxes and the homeless situation.

00:52:02.000 Right. 0.99

00:52:03.000 But the homeless situation, boy, that's like fucking... 0.99

00:52:07.000 And you weren't allowed to complain about it. 0.99

00:52:08.000 That's the thing. 0.94

00:52:09.000 In California, if you are not a homeless person, Then you're a horrible person.

00:52:12.000 They changed it to the unhoused too, which was amazing.

00:52:15.000 The unhoused?

00:52:16.000 Yes.

00:52:16.000 Interesting.

00:52:17.000 The de-housed or the unhoused?

00:52:19.000 Unhoused.

00:52:19.000 Oh, the unhoused, okay.

00:52:20.000 They started calling them the unhoused, which is always a red flag.

00:52:23.000 As soon as they tried to use a more innocuous term, To deal with like, which is a public health crisis.

00:52:29.000 It's a mental health crisis.

00:52:32.000 It's a public health crisis. 0.99

00:52:33.000 I mean, it's also like a wheelchair access crisis because these poor people that are in wheelchairs, like they can't get through the fucking sidewalks because they're covered in tents. 0.97

00:52:42.000 Like the ADA should deal with something like that, right? 0.99

00:52:46.000 Well, I mean, for years in California, the rule has been that you weren't allowed to take people's shit off the street.

00:52:52.000 Because there was a ruling from the federal courts, the ACLU was the one that did the case, there was an ordinance on the books in LA that the police were not allowed to move the quote-unquote personal property of people who were living on the streets. 0.91

00:53:04.000 It was like garbage bags just filled with garbage and you weren't allowed to take them away because this was the personal property.

00:53:08.000 of the people who are living on the streets.

00:53:11.000 How in the world this is seen as some sort of empathetic move on behalf of the homeless is beyond me.

00:53:16.000 And you saw, I mean, it was kind of incredible, like the power of human innovation.

00:53:19.000 I mean, people have built like two-story buildings, like tents, and I was amazed sometimes at the creativity.

00:53:25.000 I mean, you'd see like, I remember we drove past and there was a guy there with a turntable.

00:53:28.000 He had somehow hooked it into one of the light posts, like he'd actually broken into the The light post on the street.

00:53:34.000 He was using it for electricity, and he had a turntable.

00:53:36.000 I was like, kudos to him for really liking his vinyl.

00:53:38.000 But I just wonder if that's the best way that you want people to live in California, is on the street with an old turntable so they can play their authentic music without the perversion of digital.

00:53:48.000 Well, my thought is, if he's that innovative, why doesn't he just figure out a way to apply it to an actual life? 0.87

00:53:53.000 Like, get the fuck off the street, and you might be able to actually do something. 0.97

00:53:57.000 Right. 0.96

00:53:57.000 Like, if you're the type of guy who figures out how to tap into the electrical wires. 0.96

00:54:00.000 That's what I thought.

00:54:00.000 I was like, that's kind of like, he knows more about engineering than I do.

00:54:03.000 I saw a video of a guy welding.

00:54:04.000 Somebody put it online.

00:54:05.000 There was a guy welding inside of his tent.

00:54:07.000 Someone should tell him there's like a million open welding jobs in the United States right now.

00:54:11.000 There are a lot of open welding jobs right now.

00:54:12.000 You know, you're dealing with people that have a lot of mental health issues.

00:54:15.000 No, that's the issue.

00:54:15.000 And no one will talk about that.

00:54:17.000 No one will talk about that.

00:54:18.000 Because what's incredible about that is that is one place where you would assume that people in a left-wing state like California would put all their focus, right?

00:54:25.000 I mean, like, that's a place where I'm a super right-wing guy.

00:54:30.000 The state does have a role in making sure that people who literally cannot take care of themselves have a place to go and get their medication.

00:54:37.000 How in the world has that been the big failure in California?

00:54:41.000 Why is it that we are not making it easier to involuntarily commit people who are actually a danger to themselves and or others living on the street?

00:54:50.000 It's insane to me.

00:54:51.000 But involuntarily committing people, a lot of them are just drug addicts.

00:54:57.000 And involuntary commitment of drug addicts...

00:55:01.000 No, it's different.

00:55:01.000 I'm talking about people who have serious schizophrenia issues who are living on the streets of California.

00:55:07.000 It's a real thing.

00:55:07.000 But how do you determine?

00:55:10.000 They have court hearings for this sort of thing.

00:55:12.000 If you're going to be involuntarily committed, typically there's a court hearing.

00:55:14.000 So we would have an insane amount of cases in front of these already bogged down courts where we try to figure out whether or not we should put people in some sort of a cage.

00:55:25.000 So we'll spend tens of millions of dollars on random trains that go to nowhere in California, but you can't spend some money on the court system?

00:55:31.000 That's a misallocation of resources.

00:55:33.000 Well, yeah, I'm not a fan of those trains that nobody uses.

00:55:36.000 Yeah, we definitely needed to train that goes the exact same route as the I-5.

00:55:39.000 Definitely necessary.

00:55:40.000 Well, the idea was that you're going to get people in California to behave the way you get people in Connecticut and New York to behave.

00:55:45.000 Where all the cities are five minutes apart on the East Coast?

00:55:48.000 As opposed to like Fresno and LA? Well, it's just no one's going to take those fucking things. 0.99

00:55:52.000 Who takes a train to Fresno? 0.99

00:55:53.000 It's a culture of people driving.

00:55:55.000 And the idea, I guess, is like if you can change that culture slowly but surely, it'll be better for the environment. 0.96

00:56:01.000 They're all such liars.

00:56:02.000 I remember Gavin Newsom was on... 0.97

00:56:04.000 I did a morning radio show.

00:56:06.000 Is that that guy that is...

00:56:07.000 Wait, he's missing, right?

00:56:08.000 I heard he's missing.

00:56:09.000 Yeah, I don't know what happened to him.

00:56:11.000 Anyway, so Gavin Newsom was on this morning radio show.

00:56:13.000 Is he missing right after he got his booster shot?

00:56:16.000 I don't know. 0.98

00:56:20.000 Anyway, he was on this morning radio show that I was doing, and I asked him, this is when Jerry Brown was still the governor, and he was lieutenant governor, and I said, so, you know, this whole bullet train thing is really stupid and a waste of money, right? 0.94

00:56:34.000 And he's like, yeah. 0.90

00:56:35.000 And like a year later, he's like, we need a bullet train.

00:56:37.000 We really, monorail, right?

00:56:39.000 We really need the bullet train.

00:56:42.000 It's interesting.

00:56:44.000 Your voice and your opinions are – during this pandemic in particular, your profile has become magnified.

00:56:53.000 And what's fascinating to me is there's people who love you.

00:56:57.000 And then there's these moms who get super upset that their son is into Ben Shapiro.

00:57:05.000 I've encountered many of these women, these very opinionated, always liberal, college-educated women who are furious at their sons. 1.00

00:57:16.000 Well, Ben Shapiro says, and they do not want to hear it.

00:57:19.000 What is it about these liberal women and Ben Shapiro? 0.99

00:57:24.000 Like, why is this oil and water?

00:57:26.000 What is going on?

00:57:28.000 I don't know.

00:57:29.000 Honestly, I don't know.

00:57:30.000 I'm telling their sons to get married, lead responsible lives, go get a job.

00:57:36.000 I know.

00:57:37.000 But it resonates with these boys, which is fascinating to me.

00:57:40.000 Well, in a certain sense, Jordan Peterson and I are coming at it from very different angles.

00:57:46.000 Jordan's coming at it from a kind of spiritual and psychological angle, and I'm coming from it from a very practical angle, like what's going to bring you success in life.

00:57:53.000 Yeah.

00:57:53.000 But we're saying the same thing, which is...

00:57:55.000 Well, I am as well, though.

00:57:56.000 I'm saying that in an interesting way as well. 1.00

00:57:58.000 Get your shit together. 1.00

00:57:59.000 Yes. 1.00

00:57:59.000 I mean, but there are a lot of people out there who feel like... 1.00

00:58:02.000 I thought Jordan had a great point on this.

00:58:04.000 Somebody was asking him, they were saying, oh, you know, Jordan Peterson, he's speaking just to young, white, disaffected males.

00:58:10.000 And Jordan's like, wouldn't you rather that I speak to them than nobody speak to them?

00:58:13.000 Or are you just saying that you don't want anybody to speak to them?

00:58:15.000 Right.

00:58:16.000 Exactly.

00:58:17.000 I mean, that's kind of the thing.

00:58:19.000 As a society, we sort of have said to young men that you...

00:58:23.000 We actually don't want you to be responsible.

00:58:26.000 Responsibility is somehow connected with toxic masculinity and maybe you're assuming too much. 0.99

00:58:32.000 It's part of the patriarchy and I think that's bullshit. 0.96

00:58:36.000 I think that one of the chief obligations in life for a young man is to become a provider, is to become a protector of their family. 0.96

00:58:42.000 The way that I judge masculinity And maybe it's self-serving, it's not by how many push-ups you can do, but by how you provide for your wife, how you provide for your children, what are you doing for your community, right?

00:58:52.000 These should be pretty simple things, but people get like super pissed when you talk about that because you're speaking up against the notion that I guess the chief and core of all human aspiration ought to be your individual identity.

00:59:06.000 If you just are solipsistically looking at how do I feel today and what do I feel about myself and my identity, that that's actually a really bad way to live your life.

00:59:15.000 And I think that that's seen sometimes as, if I'm trying to kind of steel man my opponents, that's seen as unempathetic.

00:59:20.000 It's unempathetic because what I really should be focused on is how do you make people feel the most authentically them that they can feel?

00:59:27.000 And my answer is my...

00:59:29.000 My definition of what a healthy human identity constitutes I think is fundamentally different from a lot of people who oppose me.

00:59:36.000 I don't think that human identity is in chief just your feeling of internal subjective authenticity about what you're doing today.

00:59:44.000 I don't think that it's all about your feelings.

00:59:46.000 I think that it's very much about how you interact with society.

00:59:48.000 It's about the things that you do.

00:59:50.000 What kind of accomplishments are you taking part in?

00:59:52.000 How are you building your community?

00:59:53.000 How are you innovating?

00:59:54.000 What kind of risks are you taking?

00:59:55.000 What kind of obligations are you undergoing?

00:59:57.000 And once you do that, then people see that as judgmental because we're in a society where the thing you're supposed to care most about is what you feel here and then if everybody else accepts that.

01:00:08.000 We're supposed to be a society that's chiefly built on us all accepting our own internal self-definition and I'm saying there's an objective reality out there and it's unpretty.

01:00:18.000 That objective reality is filled with things you're not going to like and then the question is how do you deal with that objective reality while acknowledging that no one has the utopian capacity to magically wave a wand and fix all those problems.

01:00:27.000 Well, there's also the issue, look, I think your feelings are important, but I also think that people have a tendency towards self-indulgence.

01:00:34.000 And if you deny that tendency, if you ignore that fact, you're going to create a bunch of people that think that the world does revolve around every single nuanced feeling that they have.

01:00:57.000 Not just toxic masculinity, but cruelty.

01:01:01.000 That, you know, you're cruel if you impose discipline or if you encourage discipline.

01:01:06.000 And I say, you know, I follow Jocko Willink's advice.

01:01:10.000 Discipline equals freedom.

01:01:11.000 And I think that's real.

01:01:13.000 And I think that if you can figure out a way to work hard, you will feel satisfaction from the results of that work.

01:01:20.000 It makes you feel better.

01:01:23.000 For a society that's so concerned with feelings, You should be looking at all the different ways that the life that you choose affects the way you feel about things.

01:01:35.000 And if you have really accomplished goals and actually exerted discipline, done things that were difficult to do that you didn't necessarily want to do but you knew had long-term benefits, that is a part of being...

01:01:50.000 Like an actualized human that's a part of being a man.

01:01:53.000 It's part of being a woman.

01:01:54.000 It's a part of being a person who accomplishes things in life and People don't want to hear that sometimes because they want to hear that you've done enough.

01:02:04.000 You're amazing You're a winner.

01:02:06.000 You're a perfect person.

01:02:08.000 You don't need to work harder.

01:02:10.000 People need to accept you, and we need the government to step in and fill in all the holes, fill in all the blanks.

01:02:16.000 And this income inequality idea, like there's an income inequality problem in this country.

01:02:21.000 Well, guess what else there is? 0.98

01:02:23.000 There's a fucking effort inequality problem in this country. 0.99

01:02:26.000 Some people don't put forth as much effort. 0.99

01:02:28.000 Does that mean that everybody should work 12 hours a day, seven days a week?

01:02:31.000 No, it doesn't.

01:02:32.000 It doesn't mean that.

01:02:33.000 But it does mean that you probably You probably can do more.

01:02:37.000 You can probably work harder or think harder.

01:02:39.000 And if you do that, you will be rewarded with success.

01:02:44.000 Not always, because there's a lot of complications to life and you've got to figure your way through these things and a lot of times you're going to try things and fail.

01:02:50.000 And this is what we were talking about earlier when it comes to risk.

01:02:53.000 Yep.

01:02:53.000 No, I was just thinking the risk kind of throwback to the conversation because I was talking to some students recently and I was saying that most of the decisions that are important that you make in your life are big risks and the ones that you don't think about are really big risks.

01:03:05.000 So people tend to think that, you know, when people say you lead a risky personal life, what they tend to mean is that you're, you know, having profligate sex with a lot of people.

01:03:13.000 The actual riskiest decision you can make in your personal life, there's two.

01:03:15.000 One, getting married.

01:03:16.000 Two, having kids.

01:03:17.000 These are very risky decisions.

01:03:18.000 They're risky decisions because you are foregoing current benefits for future benefits.

01:03:24.000 When you get married, you're saying, I'm foregoing all these other possibilities that are out there, and I'm putting all my chips in the center of the table with this one person, that this one person is the person I'm going to want to spend the rest of my life with.

01:03:34.000 That's a very risky decision, and you have to make it on incomplete information because who the hell knows who you're going to be in 20 years or who this person is going to be in 20 years.

01:03:41.000 But you're making that decision because in order to gain anything in life, you have to take that risk.

01:03:45.000 The same thing with kids.

01:03:46.000 Kids are a huge source of risk.

01:03:48.000 I mean, I've said to folks before that, you know, as life progresses, you take on sort of broader risks emotionally.

01:03:54.000 So when you start off and you're single, I would say that your emotional range is like a 10 to maybe a negative 10. Like, happy is like a 10. Bad is like a negative 10. Then you get married, and the emotions now are like 20 on the upside, like when you're very happy with your spouse, and then negative 20 when something bad happens to your spouse, right?

01:04:09.000 And then you have kids and all limits are removed.

01:04:11.000 The worst things that happen in your life are with your kids, and the best things that happen in your life are with your kids.

01:04:15.000 That is broadening your scope of risk.

01:04:18.000 Having a kid, not knowing what that kid is gonna turn out to be like in 18 years, It's a disaster.

01:04:23.000 When you get pregnant with a kid, you have no idea what that kid is going to be like when they're born. 0.66

01:04:28.000 It's a huge risk.

01:04:29.000 And that's true in business.

01:04:30.000 That's true in education.

01:04:31.000 Every time you plan for the future, you're taking a risk.

01:04:34.000 And people who are risk-averse say, well, I don't really want that risk.

01:04:37.000 I want to be cared for.

01:04:38.000 I want there to be something without me taking.

01:04:40.000 But it's the risk-taking, it's the choice that makes you a fulfilled human being, even if the risk fails.

01:04:44.000 Even if the risk fails, if you took the shot, You still get credit on, I think, a certain moral and even on a subjective self level.

01:04:52.000 I think you get credit for taking the risk and for taking the shot.

01:04:55.000 And I think people sometimes resent that.

01:04:58.000 And so that's why we speak about, to take it to economics for a second, when people, it drives me up a wall when people describe people who have made a lot of money as the privileged.

01:05:07.000 That drives me up a wall.

01:05:08.000 Because you don't know their life story.

01:05:10.000 Maybe they really weren't privileged.

01:05:11.000 Maybe they were super not privileged.

01:05:13.000 And maybe they just invented a really cool product that a lot of people wanted to take advantage of.

01:05:17.000 Maybe they weren't born rich.

01:05:18.000 The vast majority of people who got rich in the United States were not born rich in the United States.

01:05:21.000 Is that true?

01:05:22.000 Yep.

01:05:23.000 The vast majority, really?

01:05:24.000 Yes.

01:05:25.000 If you look at the Forbes top 400, the number of people who are in the top 400 because of inherited wealth is actually really, really low.

01:05:32.000 There's high turnover in the Forbes top 400. Look at the people who are the richest.

01:05:37.000 Bezos was not born wealthy.

01:05:39.000 Bill Gates was not born wealthy.

01:05:42.000 Didn't Elon Musk's family have a lot of cash?

01:05:44.000 I don't know about Musk's personal background.

01:05:48.000 But I don't think that he inherited...

01:05:49.000 Most people are not like Trump.

01:05:50.000 They didn't inherit a shitload of cash and then they ended up being worth a lot of money.

01:05:54.000 I don't know about your personal story or where you came from when you were a kid.

01:05:57.000 I was like...

01:05:58.000 Lower middle class, middle class.

01:06:00.000 Like I grew up in a house with three sisters.

01:06:02.000 It's like 1,100 square feet.

01:06:04.000 I shared a bedroom with all three of my sisters.

01:06:06.000 One bathroom for six people.

01:06:07.000 Fun.

01:06:08.000 Right?

01:06:08.000 Like, yeah, it was great.

01:06:09.000 For the first 11 years.

01:06:10.000 And then we were like middle, middle class.

01:06:11.000 And then my parents worked their way up.

01:06:12.000 And over the course of your life, you work yourself My family was similar.

01:06:16.000 We were poor when we were children.

01:06:18.000 Me and my sister were children.

01:06:20.000 We were on welfare, food stamps, the whole deal.

01:06:23.000 You're a good example.

01:06:25.000 You're privileged in the sense that, as I am, in the sense that we're blessed by living in a system where hard work and innovation...

01:06:33.000 We're blessed because, yes, there's some luck to life, for sure, and we're blessed by that luck.

01:06:38.000 But the notion that it's all luck, or that it's all privileged, and that it's just a matter of being...

01:06:44.000 It's like drawing a lottery ball.

01:06:46.000 It's not like drawing a lottery ball.

01:06:47.000 You can increase the chances that you hit.

01:06:49.000 It doesn't mean you will.

01:06:51.000 It can certainly increase the chances that you will.

01:06:54.000 And right now I'm hearing a lot of people who are ripping on the so-called meritocracy.

01:06:58.000 Meritocracy is super bad.

01:06:59.000 Meritocracy is undermining communal values and it's really ugly.

01:07:02.000 Who's saying that?

01:07:03.000 You get it from right and left, actually.

01:07:05.000 There's a philosopher named Michael Sandel who has a new book out called The Tyranny of the Meritocracy in which he basically argues that there's a cadre of people who, because they got wealthy, they believe that they get to rule the rest of society because they merited being wealthy.

01:07:18.000 Don't you agree with that?

01:07:20.000 That I agree with.

01:07:21.000 But that's actually definitionally not meritocracy.

01:07:25.000 Once you've decided you're going to set the rules of the game so that you are in control, it's no longer a meritocracy.

01:07:31.000 If you've bubbled yourself off from the possibility of falling off the top of the pyramid, That's not meritocracy anymore.

01:07:37.000 It's a financial oligarchy.

01:07:53.000 The meritocracy.

01:07:53.000 It was supposed to be.

01:07:54.000 Really?

01:07:54.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:07:55.000 It was supposed to be.

01:07:56.000 He wrote a book that was, I'm trying to remember the name of it.

01:07:59.000 And the basic gist of the book is a sci-fi book.

01:08:01.000 And it was that there would be a future in which people who considered themselves the most intelligent and most hardworking would rule society on behalf of everybody else.

01:08:10.000 And I think that the mistake that we've made is that, and there's truth to this, there are people who believe that they are morally better because they are richer, for example.

01:08:18.000 That definitely exists.

01:08:19.000 But there's a distinction to be made between a skillsocracy, which is really what a free market economy is.

01:08:25.000 It's a skillsocracy.

01:08:26.000 And a meritocracy, which says that you're more moral because you have these skills.

01:08:31.000 Not necessarily.

01:08:32.000 I wouldn't think it's moral.

01:08:33.000 I would just think you accomplished more.

01:08:35.000 You've put in the work, you have more merit.

01:08:37.000 So there's two aspects.

01:08:37.000 I don't think it's moral.

01:08:38.000 When it comes to hard work, yes.

01:08:40.000 When it comes to, like, there's certain baseline things where if you're a hardworking person who happens to have been born of mid-IQ, You'll do better than the mid-IQ person who is not as hardworking, but you probably won't do as well as the guy who has two standard deviation IQ ahead of you who worked like mildly hard.

01:08:56.000 And you didn't earn your intelligence, right?

01:08:57.000 That's sort of the point of the critique of meritocracy.

01:09:00.000 That's not necessarily the case either because there's a lot of people that do have a very high IQ, but they're not motivated.

01:09:06.000 Right, who fail.

01:09:07.000 Yeah, but they don't have a desire to succeed.

01:09:11.000 So I guess what I'm saying is I think there's some connection, but not total connection.

01:09:14.000 So there's some connection, gives you a better shot.

01:09:17.000 Right.

01:09:17.000 But there are certain inborn, look, I'm a smart guy, I'm very hardworking, I'm never going to play in the NBA. Right?

01:09:21.000 There are certain inborn qualities in human beings that are not the same.

01:09:24.000 And so we can say two things at once.

01:09:27.000 One, it is better to be hardworking.

01:09:29.000 Second, we need a system that rewards intelligence, innovation, and hard work.

01:09:33.000 Because those have excellent externalities.

01:09:35.000 Even if not, it's good for me that Bill Gates does well.

01:09:38.000 And then third, that there's a moral component to life that is separate from those things.

01:09:42.000 And we reward people in different ways.

01:09:44.000 As a society, we tend to think the only reward is a financial reward.

01:09:48.000 But living in a community, that's not true.

01:09:49.000 But this is what I'm getting at.

01:09:49.000 This is what the problem is.

01:09:51.000 I think that when you have a community, you have needs for all these values of compassion and this connection with your neighbors and the idea that you're all in this together.

01:10:06.000 And when you're just ruthlessly competitive, The problem is you abandon all of those in seeking a path for yourself, a selfish path.

01:10:16.000 This is what people on the left are terrified of, about people that use the term meritocracy and people that are in this pursuit of business and of success and monetary gain.

01:10:28.000 But I don't think that they're mutually exclusive in other words.

01:10:30.000 I don't think so either.

01:10:30.000 And this is where I think the mistake is made on both the right and the left.

01:10:33.000 The people who say meritocracy undermines social capital on the right and the people who say that meritocracy undermines your ability.

01:10:39.000 Kind of the same critique.

01:10:41.000 Meritocracy undermines you getting along with your neighbors and makes you ruthlessly selfish and non-altruistic.

01:10:47.000 I don't think those are the same thing.

01:10:48.000 I mean, I think that you can be meritocratic, believe that intelligence, hard work, innovation should all be rewarded.

01:10:54.000 And then on a moral level, Honestly, the way that we repay people on a moral level for doing what we think are moral things, it's typically not financial.

01:11:02.000 It's typically in terms of honor.

01:11:04.000 It's typically how we treat people with honor and respect in your community.

01:11:08.000 How many people go to somebody's funeral is a good way to sort of judge that.

01:11:13.000 And so there are a lot of people in, I think, every community who are not the wealthiest, but the most people will show up at their funeral because those are people who were good people, who helped out their neighbors, who really worked hard at doing that.

01:11:24.000 And I think that we have to work on both tracks.

01:11:26.000 I think that there's a temptation right now in society to...

01:11:30.000 Say that because there are people who are wildly successful and people who are less successful, that the entire system by which success is charted monetarily is wrong.

01:11:39.000 I think that's incorrect.

01:11:40.000 And at the same time, I think we can't forget that the way that we actually measure human value is not only by how much Monetary success you have and the kind of transactional value you create in a society, which is a big thing, but also by how you treat other people.

01:11:54.000 Don't you think that people do get obsessed with quantifiable things, though?

01:11:58.000 For sure.

01:11:58.000 When you look at numbers on a sheet and it shows, oh, you've made X amount.

01:12:04.000 Next year you should try to make Y. And this is one of the problems with corporations, right?

01:12:08.000 This diffusion of responsibility that happens of being a part of a gigantic group that's just set out for universal and continual growth.

01:12:16.000 Like this idea that you're going to continue to make money and this is what you focus on and if you do that you're a winner and if you don't do that you're a loser.

01:12:22.000 And when people obsess on something that's as simple and as singular as the amount of money that you make, That's the mark of excellence.

01:12:32.000 It's very difficult to quantify how well you're doing for your community.

01:12:36.000 It's very difficult to quantify whether or not your employees are loved and feel happy and you feel like you provide an environment where they feel like they're a part of something.

01:12:44.000 I agree, but I think that the mistake that we're making very often Is we try and solve what...

01:12:51.000 I think, honestly, what you're describing, there's a spiritual problem, and we try to fill it with economics or with monetary recompense or something like that.

01:13:00.000 And this is the value of religion, in your opinion.

01:13:02.000 Yeah, it's certainly a huge value of religion.

01:13:04.000 I don't think it only has to be done through religion.

01:13:05.000 I think traditionally it's been the largest driver of social cohesion, but it's certainly a major thing, right?

01:13:11.000 But those decisions are made every single day, right?

01:13:13.000 You decide on a given day whether you want to do a show or whether you want to stay home with your family.

01:13:18.000 And sometimes you probably reject the show and you give up the money and you say, I'd rather be home with my family because it's more important for me to invest in the time with my family.

01:13:25.000 I do this a lot too.

01:13:26.000 I will not speak.

01:13:27.000 I will not go out of town for Sabbath.

01:13:29.000 I just won't.

01:13:30.000 So I give up gigs on Friday afternoons if I can't get back home in time for Sabbath or on Saturday nights if I can't get out after Sabbath in time.

01:13:37.000 And it's just important to me to build the social capital at home with my kids and with my wife and with my parents who live in the same community and with the other members of my community.

01:13:46.000 And you put the phone down.

01:13:47.000 Oh yeah, there's no phone, there's no computers, nothing.

01:13:49.000 No electricity, right?

01:13:50.000 Yeah, you can leave a light on or leave a light off or whatever, but you're not allowed to.

01:13:54.000 How does that work?

01:13:54.000 You leave it on before Sabbath.

01:13:56.000 Oh, so you don't touch it.

01:13:57.000 Right, you can't touch it.

01:13:58.000 Yep, yep.

01:13:59.000 It's good times.

01:14:00.000 But the truth is that all of society is going to end up adopting this if we don't wish to get eaten by the metaverse.

01:14:05.000 We're all going to have to have days where we just disconnect from all this stuff.

01:14:09.000 Let's talk about the Metaverse because I'm really fascinated by this decision of Facebook to change the name of Facebook to Meta and to the Metaverse, which I think people are just going to...

01:14:24.000 They're gonna realize that this is a crazy idea, that you're gonna give your life to some sort of augmented or virtual reality world that's created by a guy who's involved in this Company whose algorithms are sowing the seeds of distrust and hate although But now we're gonna fucking let him take over what you see and feel Because you're gonna have a new company and this new company is gonna be virtually reality based where

01:14:54.000 he's literally he Reenacted a scene from black mirror Yeah.

01:14:59.000 Which is unironically.

01:15:01.000 I know.

01:15:01.000 And you know what makes me a little sad?

01:15:03.000 I think that it's going to happen.

01:15:06.000 You think it's going to happen?

01:15:07.000 Yeah.

01:15:07.000 I think that you and I are of a different generation, dude.

01:15:09.000 I think there are a lot of kids who are growing up in Fortnite world and spend a lot.

01:15:13.000 And I think the pandemic really accelerated this.

01:15:15.000 There are a lot of people who lived online for the entire pandemic.

01:15:17.000 And so for people like me and for people like my parents, not seeing other humans for a long time was actually quite painful and terrible.

01:15:24.000 Like we actually did want to get out and be with the community and see friends and do that sort of stuff.

01:15:28.000 What if you spend your entire life from the time you're a little kid interacting with screens?

01:15:31.000 What if those screens are getting increasingly sophisticated so that they are interacting with you in ways that humans would?

01:15:36.000 What if you get to be whatever, like we're a society, we're just talking about this, where you get to be whatever you want to be.

01:15:41.000 What if there's a world where you actually can be and everybody sees you the way you want to be seen?

01:15:46.000 Would you rather live there where you're rich and good looking and everybody likes you, or would you rather live in the real world where you're disconnected from all that and you end up with Ready Player One world?

01:15:55.000 It's gonna happen.

01:15:57.000 As long as it can become indistinguishable from reality, which it will be able to be.

01:16:03.000 It's going to take time, whether it's five years or ten years. 0.72

01:16:06.000 If you go back and look at Pong, which was the first game that I ever saw when I was a child, it's ridiculous.

01:16:12.000 It's like a white ball that bounces across and you have a straight line that's a paddle. 0.99

01:16:16.000 And it's the dumbest game you could never convince a child to play today. 1.00

01:16:21.000 They'd be like, get the fuck out of here with that stupid game. 1.00

01:16:23.000 I can go play fucking Halo, right? 1.00

01:16:26.000 But back then when I was a child, that was a big deal. 0.95

01:16:28.000 If you extrapolate, if you just go in the future from now, what they're available, what they have available now with these insane video graphics, the Unreal Engine, and then move yourself 20 years in the future, yeah, it's going to be indistinguishable.

01:16:41.000 And the AI is getting better and better in terms of being able to imitate human behavior, in terms of being able to innovate on its own.

01:16:46.000 And haptic feedback suits and all these different things.

01:16:49.000 And all these video games that they have that emulate sports, they're getting so close.

01:16:55.000 When you watch these basketball games and the UFC has a game, when you watch the players, the fighters move around, like, God, it's so close.

01:17:03.000 It's not quite there, but they're getting better and better with each iteration.

01:17:07.000 And it's just a matter of time.

01:17:08.000 And what I wonder is if we are...

01:17:12.000 When it comes to this stuff, we're innovating ourselves out of existence as a civilization.

01:17:15.000 But don't you think that's probably where this goes no matter what?

01:17:19.000 No, I think then the barbarians come to the gate. 0.95

01:17:21.000 I think that's what happens.

01:17:22.000 Really?

01:17:22.000 Because the real world still exists.

01:17:24.000 So if you innovate an entire generation of people, And let's just take this on the most baseline demographic level.

01:17:30.000 None of them get married.

01:17:31.000 None of them have babies.

01:17:32.000 In two generations, the same kind of matter.

01:17:33.000 You're going to have a good time in the virtual reality, and then there are going to be no babies to carry this on.

01:17:37.000 And the only people on earth are going to be religious Jews, religious Catholics, and religious Muslims. 0.76

01:17:40.000 And that's it.

01:17:41.000 The vulnerability lies in the power grid.

01:17:44.000 The power grid is so vulnerable that if someone just detonated the power grid, all this stuff stops and then you have no life.

01:17:52.000 Your life is completely, you've invested it completely in this augmented world, this virtual world.

01:17:59.000 But this virtual world, all you have to do is pull the plug and it's out.

01:18:02.000 And it's out for millions of people.

01:18:04.000 It's like the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on a culture.

01:18:08.000 Like, if you really all live inside of a computer system, some sort of a...

01:18:14.000 VR, yeah, it's virtual reality, yeah.

01:18:16.000 No, that's right.

01:18:17.000 And what I fear is that when you do that to a civilization, it's basically the equivalent of you bring in a wild animal and you put it in a cage for a long time, and now you can't release it back in the wild, right?

01:18:26.000 It's gonna get eaten.

01:18:27.000 What happens to you is a civilization.

01:18:29.000 What happens if you've taken an entire generation of people, told them that their entire life exists online, they don't have to interact with other humans, they don't have to interact in human ways with other humans, and then there's like an entire other earth out there that isn't doing any of this.

01:18:41.000 By the way, China's not doing this.

01:18:43.000 China is banning it.

01:18:45.000 China's saying you're not allowed to go online certain days of the week if you're a kid.

01:18:49.000 We're going to ban the kind of stuff that you can see.

01:18:51.000 So, in the long run, which civilization is going to be more durable?

01:18:54.000 The one that actually understands the vulnerabilities of human nature or the one that says, we're going to use those vulnerabilities to make you feel subjectively happier?

01:19:04.000 I'm amazed at the level of conditioning.

01:19:06.000 Here's what killed me about the pandemic, honestly.

01:19:08.000 What killed me?

01:19:09.000 The level of conditioning that it took in order to rejigger how people think was so low.

01:19:13.000 It shocked the hell out of me.

01:19:15.000 It really shocked me.

01:19:16.000 I was talking to my business partner, Jeremy Boring, about this, and early on in the pandemic, he was like, people aren't going to stand for this.

01:19:21.000 Like, when they shut everything in, it's like, three months from now, people are going to be losing their minds.

01:19:25.000 They're going to be out on the streets protesting to get rid of the masks, and they're going to be out at ballgames again.

01:19:29.000 I was like, that's not right.

01:19:30.000 I think it'll take a year.

01:19:31.000 We're like a year and a half in, and half the country's still like...

01:19:34.000 Oh, you know, what if this just continues?

01:19:36.000 Like, all right, I guess.

01:19:37.000 Like, the amount of dependency that was bred by people saying, just go back to your house.

01:19:43.000 And people, like, human beings are really adaptable.

01:19:46.000 And this is something that Brett Weinstein and Heather Heiden talk about, right?

01:19:49.000 That's our superpower.

01:19:49.000 We're super, duper adaptable.

01:19:51.000 Yeah.

01:19:51.000 So, we're super adaptable.

01:19:53.000 To our own detriment.

01:19:54.000 Sometimes to our own detriment.

01:19:55.000 So if we change our social circumstances radically in a way that's unhealthy for us, and we are now interacting with technologies that were built to take advantage of our lizard brain, then what happens when there are people who are just not engaging in the same, they're not playing the same game that we are,

01:20:11.000 right?

01:20:11.000 We're essentially drugging ourselves.

01:20:14.000 Robert Nozick is the libertarian philosopher.

01:20:16.000 He talks at one point About what he calls the experience machine.

01:20:20.000 It's the thought experiment.

01:20:21.000 And the experience machine is basically VR. He's writing this in the early 1960s.

01:20:25.000 He says, what if there was a machine where you could plug into it, you'd feel the illusion of choice, you'd feel as though your choices had some sort of significance, and it would give you the dopamine hit that you get in regular life.

01:20:33.000 Would you plug into it or would you not?

01:20:35.000 And his theory was you wouldn't plug into it because you still want to feel like your life has real-world consequences.

01:20:39.000 But what if everybody you know is in that experience machine?

01:20:44.000 Then you're the one who gets left out if you're not in the experience machine.

01:21:07.000 I don't think you're going to be able to stop people from doing it because I think it's going to be so overwhelmingly addictive.

01:21:14.000 You look at how many people are just addicted to looking at their Instagram.

01:21:17.000 Yep.

01:21:18.000 It's so simple.

01:21:20.000 It's nothing.

01:21:21.000 I mean, it's nothing.

01:21:22.000 The dopamine hit you get off this little phone.

01:21:25.000 It's minimal.

01:21:26.000 But people are completely all in on it.

01:21:28.000 Yep.

01:21:29.000 And I think that what that's going to...

01:21:31.000 I do wonder if there's going to be, and I wonder what you think about this, if there's going to be a bifurcation in the same way there's been a bifurcation about so many issues between the people at the top of sort of the elite spectrum and the rest of the population, where the people at the elite spectrum are making the metaverse, but their kids aren't actually in the metaverse.

01:21:47.000 Right, like Steve Jobs didn't let his kid use an iPad.

01:21:50.000 Exactly.

01:21:51.000 I'm on the internet.

01:21:52.000 My kids are 7, 5, and 1. We don't have the TV on in our house.

01:21:56.000 My kids don't watch TV. My kids don't get internet access until they're like 18. That is not a thing I want.

01:22:01.000 18?

01:22:02.000 They can be out of my house and they can get internet.

01:22:04.000 They're going to rebel.

01:22:04.000 They're going to do drugs.

01:22:05.000 They're going to be in the street.

01:22:06.000 These kids are going to turn tricks.

01:22:08.000 It's going to be a real problem.

01:22:09.000 It's going to be a problem.

01:22:10.000 That's a pretty wild ride you took me on there, Joe.

01:22:13.000 That's really upsetting.

01:22:14.000 That's what I do.

01:22:15.000 Yeah.

01:22:15.000 Sorry.

01:22:16.000 We went straight from my kids aren't watching Cocomelon to they're turning tricks in the streets of Florida.

01:22:21.000 Turning tricks is such a great term.

01:22:23.000 It sounds so cute.

01:22:26.000 For what it actually is, you know?

01:22:28.000 It's a terrible thing, but it sounds like cute.

01:22:31.000 Oh, they're turning tricks.

01:22:32.000 Like, if you didn't understand English, you'd be like, oh, they're magicians?

01:22:35.000 You know, like, no, no, no.

01:22:36.000 Of a sword.

01:22:38.000 Yeah.

01:22:39.000 But, yeah, no, I mean, we're going to limit...

01:22:41.000 But I think that that's one of the stories...

01:22:43.000 If we're talking about the elite kind of versus everybody else gap...

01:22:45.000 Maybe.

01:22:45.000 Everything that gets created is- If they're that concerned about their children.

01:22:48.000 Basically everything, right?

01:22:50.000 Yeah.

01:22:50.000 I mean like people promulgating technologies and value systems they don't actually live in.

01:22:54.000 Right.

01:22:55.000 And then everybody who is watching is like, I will do that.

01:22:58.000 Right.

01:22:58.000 And then those people themselves don't do it.

01:23:00.000 Have you been paying attention to how little coverage the protests in Europe get?

01:23:05.000 Because there's incredible lockdown protests in Europe that have been going on for essentially 17 months.

01:23:11.000 And you see very little coverage of it.

01:23:14.000 Yeah, the media locks it well down.

01:23:16.000 It's amazing.

01:23:17.000 Because it is a big story and it would sell papers.

01:23:20.000 So there's some sort of a concerted effort to suppress it.

01:23:23.000 Yeah.

01:23:25.000 Again, all I can say is I think that a lot of the media, whether it is in the United States or whether it is abroad, works in cahoots with whatever government is in power.

01:23:32.000 And if the government says, jump, a lot of the media say, how high?

01:23:35.000 I wonder what the conversation is.

01:23:38.000 Like, what are they doing with Italy?

01:23:39.000 Because, you know, Italy has protests and they literally have like these cameras where you can see the area where the protests are.

01:23:46.000 And either they're shutting these cameras off, or they're using old footage.

01:23:50.000 Like, if you look at where these protests are taking place, see if you can find that, because some people have done, like, a deep dive on that, Jamie, where there was a large-scale protest in Europe, and then there were some cameras where you could watch it online, and they weren't showing any of it.

01:24:06.000 That's unbelievable.

01:24:07.000 It's wild.

01:24:09.000 In Australia, they basically criminalize protests, right?

01:24:11.000 I have a good friend of mine who lives in Australia and he's freaking out because he lives in Western Australia.

01:24:20.000 There's no COVID cases out there.

01:24:22.000 And they are essentially telling everybody they have to be vaccinated or he can't work.

01:24:27.000 And he's like, I'm moving to New Zealand.

01:24:29.000 I'm going to get out of here.

01:24:30.000 Well, it's...

01:24:31.000 I mean, listen, my company is suing the Biden administration over this vaccine mandate.

01:24:35.000 Are you?

01:24:35.000 Oh, yeah.

01:24:36.000 Like, the day they announced it, we sued them in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

01:24:39.000 The...

01:24:40.000 What court...

01:24:43.000 Fifth Circuit.

01:24:44.000 Temporary stay.

01:24:45.000 The Fifth Circuit, yeah.

01:24:45.000 Yeah, Fifth Circuit, like, day after.

01:24:47.000 They basically said there are grave constitutional issues.

01:24:49.000 It was like a one-paragraph order saying, national hold, grave constitutional issues...

01:24:53.000 And again, I don't know.

01:24:54.000 How's that stand right now?

01:24:55.000 So, my understanding is that it's not going to be put in place for the moment while it gets adjudicated.

01:25:00.000 And it's going to get adjudicated all the way up to the Supreme Court, I would imagine, pretty damned quickly.

01:25:06.000 I'll be honest with you, I don't think that Biden has any actual feeling about it going into place.

01:25:11.000 Come on, man! 1.00

01:25:12.000 Yeah, I think that is bullshit. 0.99

01:25:13.000 In the same way that the CDC eviction moratorium was just like... 0.99

01:25:16.000 I tried.

01:25:17.000 I tried.

01:25:17.000 And then we're done.

01:25:19.000 I think that's this.

01:25:20.000 Because it makes no logical sense.

01:25:22.000 He promulgated it under the emergency temporary standard.

01:25:25.000 He said he was going to do it two months ago.

01:25:27.000 And then it doesn't go into place formally until January 4th.

01:25:30.000 So if I said to you, there's an emergency, Joe.

01:25:31.000 Your house is on fire.

01:25:32.000 In two months, we'll start taking care of it.

01:25:34.000 And we'll announce a plan.

01:25:35.000 And then two months after that, we'll arrive with the fire trucks.

01:25:37.000 You would say one of two things.

01:25:38.000 Either I'm the most incompetent person alive or there's not really a fire at your house.

01:25:42.000 So if you're going to promulgate an emergency temporary standard, you have to do it under emergency conditions.

01:25:48.000 So if you say it's an emergency, you got to do it now.

01:25:50.000 You can't wait two months and then wait another two months to put it in place.

01:25:53.000 So that's one problem with it, legally speaking.

01:25:55.000 And then there are a bunch of other problems, including the fact the federal government doesn't actually have the power under OSHA to do this.

01:26:01.000 So how does the state government have the ability to say that children have to be vaccinated before they go to school?

01:26:06.000 So states have a lot of power.

01:26:07.000 States have a lot of power.

01:26:08.000 They have enough power to do that?

01:26:09.000 Yeah.

01:26:10.000 So states' localities have public policing power and public health power, and that is very much out of proportion with the federal government.

01:26:18.000 The federal government has very little of that.

01:26:19.000 They have to connect it with interstate commerce constitutionally.

01:26:22.000 Do they have any discourse?

01:26:23.000 Do families have any discourse?

01:26:24.000 Any recourse?

01:26:25.000 Do they have any recourse in stopping something that could actually...

01:26:31.000 I mean, that could impact their life in a huge way.

01:26:35.000 If the child has an adverse reaction to these...

01:26:38.000 They could file a lawsuit.

01:26:39.000 They could theoretically say that it's a violation of civil rights and then it would be reviewed probably under rational basis review, if I'm getting this correct, meaning that all the city or state would have to show is that there's a rational basis for what they're doing because they are given really broad power.

01:26:53.000 Typically, courts don't like to step in. 0.99

01:26:55.000 They like to say it's a political issue.

01:26:56.000 What kind of rational basis could you give when you're looking at the incredibly low mortality rates when it's children?

01:27:03.000 And not only that, the children that have died, I think- They're all unhealthy, virtually all.

01:27:09.000 Yeah, according to Marty McCary, who's my guy on this over at Johns Hopkins University, the epidemiologist, he says, grand total, the entire pandemic, the number of kids who have died who are healthy is between 10 and 20. Over the course of the entire pandemic, 700,000 people have died in the United States.

01:27:23.000 That's kids under 18, by the way.

01:27:24.000 That's not five-year-olds.

01:27:25.000 That's kids under 18. 10 to 20. That's a subgroup of 73 million people in the United States.

01:27:30.000 So why the push?

01:27:32.000 I mean, again, I think that people have scared themselves out of their wits.

01:27:34.000 But no, but from the top, why the push?

01:27:37.000 Do you think it's a financial push?

01:27:39.000 No, I really don't.

01:27:41.000 I mean, I can see why it might be a push from Pfizer or something, but I don't see why government actors would go along with that.

01:27:45.000 Don't you think they have an influence on government actors?

01:27:48.000 No, I think bribery is rarely the reason why people in government suck at what they're doing.

01:27:52.000 But it's not bribery.

01:27:53.000 Even influence.

01:27:54.000 I think usually it's just people believe that if they can end this...

01:27:58.000 Like, all the incentive structures this entire pandemic were in favor of crackdowns and mandates.

01:28:02.000 That was all the incentive structures.

01:28:04.000 It was very easy to be Andrew Cuomo.

01:28:05.000 When people are scared, they're willing to basically do anything.

01:28:09.000 And in a lot of blue areas, they're way more...

01:28:11.000 I mean, you know this.

01:28:12.000 In LA, they are way more scared of COVID than they are in Austin or than they are in where I live in Florida.

01:28:17.000 It's not close.

01:28:18.000 Or Nashville.

01:28:19.000 It is not close at all.

01:28:20.000 Not at all.

01:28:21.000 It's a completely different thing.

01:28:22.000 And because of that, if all your constituents are scared out of their minds and you say, we're going to do everything we can, that means vaccinating the kids, that means making sure everyone wears a mask, even post-vaccination, that everybody wears a mask everywhere...

01:28:33.000 They'll do it, right?

01:28:34.000 They will.

01:28:35.000 And if you're in a red area, conversely, it actually takes some balls to say, listen, I'm not going to do what that guy's doing.

01:28:41.000 He's saying he can protect you.

01:28:42.000 I think he can't.

01:28:43.000 I think that you're just going to have to assess the risk on your own and make a decision yourself.

01:28:48.000 It's actually kind of a ballsy decision.

01:28:49.000 It was amazing.

01:28:50.000 Like in the early days of the pandemic, when the media were trotting out Andrew Cuomo as the greatest governor in America and Ron DeSantis as Satan, The one who was actually making a ballsy call was DeSantis, not Cuomo.

01:29:00.000 Yes.

01:29:00.000 The easiest thing in the world is to say, everybody stay in your home.

01:29:03.000 I, the great and mighty, will save you.

01:29:05.000 I will mitigate all risk.

01:29:06.000 And because then, if somebody dies, you can say, well, it's because they didn't listen to me, right?

01:29:09.000 I mean, I could have cracked down harder.

01:29:11.000 You remember when he was on television, DeSantis had this whole chart of what they were going to do.

01:29:15.000 Their plan was to protect the elderly and the vulnerable.

01:29:17.000 Right.

01:29:18.000 And people were freaking the fuck out.

01:29:20.000 They're like, what are you doing?

01:29:21.000 Like, how are you doing this?

01:29:23.000 Like, this is horrific.

01:29:24.000 And the problem was that it didn't jive with the actual results of the virus itself.

01:29:29.000 Like, it didn't...

01:29:30.000 Like, the reaction to the pandemic, it didn't make sense.

01:29:36.000 From the earliest days, when I thought that...

01:29:37.000 I thought like everybody else that they would take 10 years to approve a vaccine, right?

01:29:40.000 That was like the going wisdom for...

01:29:50.000 Right.

01:30:05.000 Go back to school because they're very, very low risk.

01:30:07.000 And then they get natural immunity, right?

01:30:09.000 Then you tranche in the next healthiest group of the population.

01:30:11.000 But the fear was the parents and the fear was also the people at the school that work with the kids.

01:30:15.000 Right, understood.

01:30:16.000 But you could Zoom the teachers in.

01:30:19.000 The parents could wear N95s.

01:30:20.000 What?

01:30:21.000 Wait a minute.

01:30:22.000 Zoom the teachers in? 1.00

01:30:23.000 Zooming the teachers in, you leave that fucking class filled with children with no one there to supervise them? 0.99

01:30:28.000 Yeah, you'd have like an 18-year-old supervisor. 0.99

01:30:29.000 All the college students were off.

01:30:31.000 Oh, boy.

01:30:31.000 They could have done that.

01:30:32.000 I have a question.

01:30:34.000 How is it better?

01:30:35.000 No, Jamie's...

01:30:35.000 How is it better?

01:30:36.000 Listen, I had kids who were being at...

01:30:38.000 I had kids at home.

01:30:40.000 So did I. Right.

01:30:40.000 I mean, like, there are a lot of people who had jobs who couldn't go to their jobs because the kids were home.

01:30:44.000 It was the worst.

01:30:45.000 Like, having...

01:30:46.000 Watching...

01:30:47.000 I sat down, and my kids went to a nice school.

01:30:49.000 A private school. 1.00

01:30:50.000 And I watched the fucking lazy-ass teacher teach the Zoom class... 1.00

01:30:54.000 And I was like, this is bullshit. 1.00

01:30:56.000 I can't believe I'm paying for this. 1.00

01:30:57.000 It was so bad.

01:30:58.000 A lot of parents felt that way, by the way.

01:30:59.000 Oh, my God.

01:31:00.000 A lot of people took their kids out of school.

01:31:01.000 But if you just sat and watched, and the teacher didn't know that you were in the room, like I did, you'd be furious.

01:31:07.000 I'm like, this is...

01:31:08.000 I mean, some of them were good.

01:31:09.000 Some of them were trying to engage with the children, and they put forth a lot of effort.

01:31:12.000 But, my God, there was a lot of lazy teachers that liked to teach in their pajamas.

01:31:16.000 And they were worried about coming back.

01:31:19.000 They did everything in their power to keep from coming back into class.

01:31:23.000 I mean, the revolt over schools is like a very, very real revolt.

01:31:26.000 But the point is that if you were going to do something rational without the vaccines, what you'd have to do is tranche the healthier percentages of the population back in.

01:31:34.000 Even if you don't start with kids, you start 20-year-olds.

01:31:36.000 You start 25-year-olds, under 30, right?

01:31:38.000 And that's what Sweden did, essentially.

01:31:40.000 Sweden was like, okay, if you're above 65, you should stay home.

01:31:43.000 You should wear a mask.

01:31:44.000 If you're young and you're healthy, you should probably just go about your life and live like normal.

01:31:48.000 We forbade that from the outset.

01:31:50.000 I mean, I got just ripped up on Twitter for suggesting that we ought to treat people differentially based on age with regard to COVID. Because I was saying, like, it's kind of absurd that we are treating 20-year-olds the same way that we're treating 80-year-olds.

01:32:02.000 Like, the risks are not the same.

01:32:04.000 And to treat this as a disease that's supposed to shut down the entirety of human society because you refuse to treat people differentially based on age is totally crazy.

01:32:13.000 But people were unable to do that.

01:32:15.000 Well, in the beginning, we weren't exactly sure how this was going to pan out and what this disease was.

01:32:22.000 But now that we're 18-whatever months in, we know.

01:32:25.000 We have an understanding.

01:32:26.000 By the way, when it came to age, like two, three months in, we knew.

01:32:29.000 When it came to age, it was very early.

01:32:30.000 We knew that if you were old, if you had diabetes, if you were fat, it was going to be a problem.

01:32:34.000 We knew you were more vulnerable, but there was all these anecdotal stories about young people that got really sick and were hospitalized and died.

01:32:40.000 Right.

01:32:40.000 And you still see those.

01:32:42.000 Usually it's people that were unvaccinated.

01:32:44.000 They love to show those.

01:32:45.000 You know, they didn't believe in the virus.

01:32:47.000 Now they're dead.

01:32:48.000 Well, then the media does take that angle.

01:32:50.000 I love that.

01:32:50.000 They do love to take that angle.

01:32:51.000 They don't like my angle.

01:32:53.000 Right.

01:32:53.000 My angle's not good.

01:32:55.000 Unvaccinated, better in two days.

01:32:56.000 Not a fun angle.

01:32:58.000 No, I noticed that when you got better, they stopped covering it.

01:33:00.000 Well, they just covered the ivermectin.

01:33:03.000 They're just saying that I'm pushing a dangerous conspiracy theory.

01:33:06.000 It is amazing how...

01:33:07.000 Which I wasn't.

01:33:08.000 It's unbelievable how they...

01:33:09.000 It is a thing.

01:33:11.000 It's almost like there's a pagan god of COVID out there.

01:33:14.000 And if you appease the pagan gods by listening to your health authority, then even if you get it, truly are you to blame.

01:33:20.000 But if you don't get it, and if you do get it and you are unvaccinated, then...

01:33:25.000 Man, the world just deserves to...

01:33:26.000 I made this point on my show and people lost their minds.

01:33:28.000 Because they're talking about, you know, if you...

01:33:30.000 Maybe we should just make it a standard that if you're unvaccinated and you have to go to the hospital, that we won't care for you. 0.93

01:33:35.000 Or you have to pay for your own care.

01:33:37.000 There's some people talking like this.

01:33:38.000 And I said, okay, well, first of all, welcome to libertarianism.

01:33:41.000 Second of all, like, I wonder if you would apply the same standard to, say, obesity.

01:33:45.000 Right.

01:33:46.000 And obesity caused diseases.

01:33:47.000 And people were like, how could you compare the two?

01:33:50.000 How could you not...

01:33:51.000 Compare the two.

01:33:52.000 You're saying that my failure to get a vaccine would mean that my health is in my own hands.

01:33:58.000 And I'm saying that if you have avoidable obesity, then your health is in your own hands.

01:34:03.000 One of those things is very unpopular to say.

01:34:04.000 Essentially all obesity is avoidable.

01:34:07.000 Unless you have some sort of severe genetic condition as far as I'm aware.

01:34:09.000 There's no severe genetic condition that makes you take in calories.

01:34:14.000 They don't exist.

01:34:15.000 Again, you're the expert on this stuff.

01:34:17.000 I mean, look at us, clearly.

01:34:19.000 It's just, you know, there's obviously the people that have a higher propensity.

01:34:23.000 There's people that have a tendency to gain weight.

01:34:26.000 There's people that have real issues with their immune systems, real issues with their endocrine systems, real issues with their thyroids, and it's easier for them to gain weight.

01:34:35.000 They have a slower metabolism.

01:34:36.000 All that's real.

01:34:37.000 But it doesn't force you to eat.

01:34:39.000 And it also doesn't force you to seek medication to take care of yourself.

01:34:43.000 So it is similar, because you're saying to people that, you know, you could have taken this medication, you could have avoided this problem, so we're not going to treat you.

01:34:50.000 Well, same thing could be said for obesity.

01:34:54.000 And even easier, because, like, exercise is free.

01:34:58.000 Like, you can just walk around the block.

01:35:00.000 There's a lot of things you could do. 0.98

01:35:02.000 You know, I'm not saying that you should not be treated because you're obese, but there are so many fucking problems that people have when it comes to risk-takers, when it comes to alcoholism. 0.95

01:35:14.000 There's a lot of injuries that could be avoided if you just stayed home. 0.99

01:35:17.000 If you're a BMX rider who's had 15 broken bones, why the fuck should that hospital take you into the emergency room? 0.99

01:35:25.000 You're on your own, buddy. 1.00

01:35:26.000 You're the guy who decides to do backflips off of a fucking ramp somewhere. 0.99

01:35:30.000 You could apply these perspectives. 0.99

01:35:33.000 Once that logic applies, it applies all the way across.

01:35:35.000 But it wasn't applied all the way across.

01:35:36.000 It only applies to a certain type of disapproved activity.

01:35:39.000 Well, it's because we're in the middle of this thing and the idea is that...

01:35:43.000 Well, first of all, here's another part of the problem.

01:35:45.000 The reality is the vaccines only work...

01:35:48.000 They don't work exactly how they were advertised.

01:35:51.000 The original take on the vaccine was this is going to be 95% effective and there's an extremely rare incidence of a breakthrough case and even in those cases you're going to be fine. 0.84

01:36:02.000 I know 15 fucking people that have had breakthrough cases. 0.83

01:36:06.000 They're not rare at all. 0.97

01:36:07.000 Especially not after five, six months, and then with variants, you know?

01:36:11.000 So the idea is that you're going to be able to give it to other people.

01:36:14.000 But if the vaccines were effective, that wouldn't be a problem.

01:36:17.000 Right.

01:36:18.000 Well, the vaccines are effective at preventing hospitalization and death.

01:36:21.000 They're not even, though.

01:36:22.000 I mean, they're a lot more effective than not, right?

01:36:24.000 Right.

01:36:25.000 More effective than not, but there's a lot of other things that people could be doing, too, that would make them even more effective, and those aren't even encouraged because they're easy and free, like exercise, losing weight, vitamin D. There's a lot of factors that aren't taken into consideration at all.

01:36:42.000 Again, it's this binary approach.

01:36:44.000 Exactly.

01:36:44.000 Why not all of the above?

01:36:45.000 Why not exercise and then Because you don't make money off of those.

01:36:50.000 So there's no push.

01:36:52.000 I think there's something else.

01:36:53.000 If you're a politician, I don't think it's about the money.

01:36:54.000 I think if you're a politician, you want to be really unpopular as a politician.

01:36:57.000 Tell people to lose weight.

01:36:58.000 Correct.

01:36:59.000 You want to be unpopular as a doctor, by the way, tell people to lose weight.

01:37:02.000 True. 1.00

01:37:02.000 Tell people to stop being a fat ass and stop eating so much food and get off your couch and move. 1.00

01:37:07.000 Yeah, that's a giant factor, right? 1.00

01:37:09.000 I mean, if you're a politician, your chief mechanism of staying in power is by telling people things they want to hear. 0.99

01:37:15.000 The number one thing no one has ever wanted to hear is you need to eat less and you need to get off your ass and move. 0.99

01:37:20.000 Right. 1.00

01:37:21.000 Nobody likes hearing that.

01:37:22.000 Right.

01:37:23.000 Right. 1.00

01:37:23.000 Stop eating shitty food. 1.00

01:37:25.000 Yeah, it's such a strange time for sorting out what's the best way to approach life. 0.98

01:37:35.000 Because, as you said before, there's some people that just are completely averse to taking risks.

01:37:39.000 They don't want to take any risks and they want the world set up for them.

01:37:44.000 I mean, I've seen this argument that, you know, the government should provide essentially everything for you.

01:37:48.000 It should provide food and shelter.

01:37:50.000 The government, if they care about you, there's enough money in the world to provide food and shelter to every person on this country, if not the entire planet, and that's what we should do, and that's how we should redistribute wealth.

01:38:02.000 I've seen that argument.

01:38:02.000 I'm sure you have too.

01:38:03.000 It's a big argument.

01:38:04.000 It's a strange argument, right?

01:38:05.000 Well, it destroys the incentive structures.

01:38:08.000 Well, I've seen during this pandemic, it's changed my opinion on unemployment because I've seen people abuse unemployment.

01:38:14.000 I always thought unemployment's great because it gives you a nice little safety net, and I believe in safety nets.

01:38:19.000 I believe in universal basic income.

01:38:21.000 I believe in universal healthcare.

01:38:22.000 I think it could be applied in a way that would work and benefit people and benefit our society and make people less desperate.

01:38:28.000 But... 0.97

01:38:30.000 Then I see what the fuck is going on during this pandemic with healthcare. 0.99

01:38:33.000 I have a friend, and he owns a bar, and his fucking bartender told him, I'm not willing to work more than 20 hours a week. 0.99

01:38:40.000 Yep. 0.98

01:38:40.000 And he goes, why? 0.98

01:38:41.000 He goes, because then I lose my unemployment.

01:38:43.000 So this guy's making $80,000 a year working 20 hours a week, and this is what he wants to do. 1.00

01:38:48.000 And my buddy's like, shit! 0.99

01:38:50.000 And he just has got to wait until unemployment runs out, and then he can get his full-time bartender back. 0.99

01:38:55.000 Well, you saw actually that the good economic stats from last month, that was not a coincidence, right?

01:39:00.000 The federal unemployment ran, and then all of a sudden there were a bunch of people who wanted to get back in the workforce, because when you pay people to stay home, they will stay home.

01:39:06.000 That is always going to be the case.

01:39:08.000 The fact that this is somehow controversial is beyond me.

01:39:11.000 If you pay me to stay home, I will stay home.

01:39:14.000 I would go crazy.

01:39:15.000 I don't think you would stay home either.

01:39:17.000 I think this is another part...

01:39:19.000 That may be fair.

01:39:19.000 There's another factor when we talk about people with anxiety and depression and all these different things that haunt people today.

01:39:27.000 I don't think it's a coincidence that this society has made it where we don't value Trying to work hard and solve things and do things that are difficult.

01:39:41.000 Because I think in the pursuit of doing things that are difficult, your mind becomes engaged, you have a lot of commitment to these tasks, you have a lot of investment in it, and if you succeed, you feel great.

01:39:54.000 I mean, this is a real factor.

01:39:55.000 No, this is totally right.

01:39:56.000 I'm not dismissing genetic predispositions for depression and anxiety and a lot of things.

01:40:02.000 No, there are some people who need medication for sure.

01:40:04.000 Yes, 100%.

01:40:04.000 For sure.

01:40:05.000 But working hard and doing something that's difficult is actually good for you.

01:40:10.000 It makes you feel better.

01:40:11.000 I totally agree with this.

01:40:12.000 And I think that as a society, one of the things that we've done is we've demeaned duty.

01:40:16.000 We've said that duty is bad.

01:40:18.000 If you have an obligation or a duty, that's because something in society has put something upon you.

01:40:22.000 Because duty and obligation are placed upon you.

01:40:24.000 But here's the thing.

01:40:25.000 If you willingly undertake a duty or obligation, or even if you don't, Even if there's just a duty or obligation that is put upon you by life, not by like some evil person out there who's trying to hurt you, but by actual life because life is filled with hardship and terrible things.

01:40:39.000 You actually facing up to a problem and then defeating the problem or fighting the problem, it makes you stronger.

01:40:44.000 It makes you more confident.

01:40:45.000 It makes you a better person.

01:40:46.000 Exactly.

01:40:46.000 It does make you a better person because very often you have to become a stronger and more capable human being in order to overcome those problems.

01:40:54.000 Eliminating problems doesn't make people happier.

01:40:56.000 There's this...

01:40:58.000 Weird idea out there that if we just cared for everybody, we just gave everybody what they need, we'd all sit around and we'd just create art and we'd just like be poets in our free time.

01:41:07.000 If we got rid of jobs, it's not true.

01:41:09.000 I've had that argument with a guy.

01:41:10.000 He was telling me that we should tax First of all, he's saying there should be no inheritance.

01:41:16.000 And I was like, what are you talking about? 0.93

01:41:18.000 He goes, it just creates douchebags. 1.00

01:41:19.000 And I go, it doesn't always create douchebags.

01:41:22.000 I go, it can, but if you're a good person and you develop good values in your child, and then that child inherits money and uses it to create a great business and actually creates value for the community and for people around you, that's possible too.

01:41:37.000 And he's like, they should do it on their own.

01:41:39.000 I go, well, what would you propose that that money go to?

01:41:42.000 And he said, the arts.

01:41:44.000 And I go, look, people sell art. 0.95

01:41:46.000 Any art that you can't make any fucking money off of means nobody finds value in it. 1.00

01:41:52.000 Like, if you're talking about doing Shakespeare in the park and making $100,000 a year, how about fuck you? 1.00

01:41:57.000 You know? 1.00

01:41:59.000 Go get a job, hippie. 1.00

01:42:00.000 By the way, who do you think is actually giving the money to the Shakespeare in the park?

01:42:03.000 It's all the kids of the rich people.

01:42:05.000 Yes.

01:42:05.000 That's who's actually funding Shakespeare in the Park.

01:42:07.000 Right.

01:42:07.000 But, I mean, Shakespeare in the Park's not even the best example.

01:42:09.000 It's probably, like, that fucking... 0.99

01:42:11.000 Modern art. 0.99

01:42:11.000 Remember that video that de Blasio made where he was talking about bringing arts back to New York City and had people doing this, like, expressive dance? 0.99

01:42:18.000 Yes, yes, yes. 0.99

01:42:19.000 Like, the worst fucking music, and they're doing this horrible dance. 0.99

01:42:23.000 We're going to bring back the arts. 0.99

01:42:24.000 We're going to bring...

01:42:25.000 We're going to, as the city opens back up, we're going to bring back the house. 0.99

01:42:28.000 And you're like, what the fuck are you saying? 0.99

01:42:30.000 That video was so insane. 1.00

01:42:33.000 Yeah, the real estate values in Florida went up that day.

01:42:35.000 Oh my God.

01:42:35.000 People were like, get me out of here.

01:42:37.000 But he's a lame duck mayor, so he's just going fucking... 0.97

01:42:40.000 Well, the stuff that he's doing, that he was trying to do with the schools, that Adams is going to walk back, this is like case in point, where he's trying to get rid of the magnet schools because they're not racially proportionate. 0.98

01:42:50.000 Adams, I think, is going to be good for that city because he's a Democrat, but he's also tough on crime.

01:42:55.000 He's like Ed Koch, right?

01:42:55.000 He's a former cop.

01:42:57.000 He's like Ed Koch.

01:42:57.000 He's coming in after the Lindsay administration in the 70s, and they screwed up the city beyond all recognition.

01:43:02.000 You got someone who came in with kind of left-wing credentials, but he says, I'm going to bring the cops back.

01:43:07.000 I'm going to make sure that the streets aren't dirty, like doing the basic things mayors are supposed to do.

01:43:12.000 Yes.

01:43:13.000 I know, it's a crazy idea.

01:43:14.000 It's crazy.

01:43:14.000 He's so strange when I see de Blasio.

01:43:16.000 He's so strange that I can't understand how he got elected in the first place.

01:43:20.000 I'm like, was there no other choices?

01:43:22.000 Like, what?

01:43:23.000 He's so odd.

01:43:25.000 Even the way he communicates is so disconnected.

01:43:28.000 But when the disconnect gets so big, then people are just like, oh, I'll take a chance on the idea guy.

01:43:34.000 Right.

01:43:34.000 He says diversity.

01:43:35.000 He says intersectional.

01:43:37.000 He says all these words that I like to hear.

01:43:39.000 He's gonna change the world.

01:43:40.000 We gotta give it a chance.

01:43:41.000 Well, he gave it a chance.

01:43:42.000 Didn't work out all that great for it.

01:43:43.000 Did you see that story in California, by the way, about how they're gonna try and reteach math?

01:43:47.000 Did you see this one from the New York Times?

01:43:48.000 What?

01:43:49.000 Yeah, Sal.

01:43:50.000 Reteach math?

01:43:51.000 So they're gonna figure out how to teach math differently.

01:43:53.000 They said that they don't want to have...

01:43:55.000 They're getting rid of some of the objective standards with regard to math because math is...

01:44:00.000 And they want to get rid of the idea that there are naturally gifted children.

01:44:02.000 They said they're not allowed to say that there are naturally gifted children anymore.

01:44:06.000 Isn't that the case with New York as well?

01:44:08.000 Yeah, they're trying to get rid of the magnet schools over there too.

01:44:10.000 But gifted programs, right?

01:44:12.000 Yes, the gifted programs because there's too many Asian kids. 1.00

01:44:15.000 America is white supremacist, so all the Asians are succeeding. 1.00

01:44:18.000 I love that narrative.

01:44:20.000 So what are they trying to do with math?

01:44:22.000 So it was this article in the New York Times, and I'm trying to remember all the details.

01:44:24.000 They said, you're not allowed to talk about naturally gifted kids.

01:44:28.000 You're not supposed to reward right answers or punish wrong answers.

01:44:34.000 What?

01:44:35.000 Yeah, so there's like a big kind of parents' revolt going on in California over this, because the idea was that There was too much racial disparity in math performance in California.

01:44:46.000 And so, changed the standards.

01:44:48.000 Which, by the way, I can't think of anything more racist than that.

01:44:51.000 That is so super racist. 0.97

01:44:53.000 It's like, not enough black kids are scoring well on the test. 1.00

01:44:55.000 That means that black kids, I guess, are too dumb to do well on these tests. 1.00

01:44:58.000 Get rid of the tests. 1.00

01:44:59.000 Or, alternatively, there's an explanation where kids need to study more.

01:45:04.000 Well, you only find out if someone knows things if you test them.

01:45:07.000 It's the only way you find out.

01:45:09.000 How else do you find out?

01:45:10.000 You have to say, show me how to do this problem, and then the kid tries and you go, oh, that's not how you do it.

01:45:16.000 By the way, I think the scam that is college is predicated on society trying to get around the basic truth that you just said, which is we can tell by test scores whether you know things and are good at things.

01:45:26.000 Well, I mean, obviously there's some tests that favor people that have grown up in certain environments because you have more access to certain kinds of information.

01:45:34.000 But once you teach people and then you test them, there's only one way to find out.

01:45:41.000 Whether or not they know the information.

01:45:43.000 They have to be tested.

01:45:44.000 The idea that you're going to eliminate tests and somehow make things more equitable or more even is kind of crazy.

01:45:50.000 Actually what you're going to do is you're going to make people more racist is what you're going to do.

01:45:53.000 And the reason for that is because Thomas Sowell talks about this.

01:45:56.000 He talks about different types of discrimination.

01:45:58.000 And he says there's group discrimination where you base your perception of an individual on the group data that is available.

01:46:05.000 And then there's like discrimination, discrimination, which is you know that a person is smart and they're a group you don't like and so you just ignore the fact they're smart because they're from that group.

01:46:13.000 So the two examples that he gives, right, is let's say that you're walking down the street at night and it's in an inner city neighborhood and there's a black guy walking down the street and he's wearing a hoodie and he's a young guy, 17 years old.

01:46:27.000 Are you going to cross the street or not if the opposing example is an 80-year-old white woman? 1.00

01:46:33.000 And he says, well, you know, based on the group statistics, you're probably going to cross the street more often if it's the 17-year-old black kid than if it's the 80-year-old white woman.

01:46:39.000 Now, let's say that that 17-year-old black kid you know.

01:46:42.000 You know the kid.

01:46:42.000 He's a nice kid.

01:46:43.000 If you still cross the street, that's what makes you like a supergiant racist.

01:46:46.000 In the former case, you're just using the group data available.

01:46:49.000 The problem is that using the group data available very often is wrong, right?

01:46:52.000 What if the 17-year-old kid is a nice kid, right?

01:46:54.000 You shouldn't be doing that either.

01:46:55.000 You need specific data.

01:46:57.000 Test data is specific data.

01:46:58.000 So, let's say now that you are an administrator at a college, and you're not allowed to use test data.

01:47:03.000 All you know is that, on average, black kids score lower than white kids.

01:47:07.000 So who do you let in? 0.79

01:47:08.000 How do you make that decision?

01:47:10.000 Wouldn't it be better for black kids for you to have the test data because you know which black kids definitely deserve to get in as opposed to which ones don't deserve to get in? 1.00

01:47:17.000 So you start using stupid generalizations. 0.99

01:47:19.000 The whole point is more specific data is better. 0.97

01:47:22.000 More specific data fights discrimination.

01:47:24.000 And yet we have this whole weird idea that if we get rid of specific data, if we get rid of test data, objective data, this is going to end discrimination, precisely the reverse will occur. 0.97

01:47:31.000 People will start using stupid stereotypes.

01:47:33.000 Yeah, I think the real problem is the disproportionate amount of schools that are good that are in places where people have money. 0.99

01:47:42.000 Schools where people don't have money aren't funded as well and a lot of them suck and that's a real issue.

01:47:48.000 Also the crime issue.

01:47:50.000 If you're terrified of going to your school because your school is riddled with gang violence and like something needs to be done about that because you have to create an environment where children feel safe enough to go to school and learn.

01:48:02.000 And I think there is a disparity that needs to be adjusted and accepted and approached in a way where we're realistic about it.

01:48:11.000 I mean, we've said this. 0.97

01:48:12.000 You and I have had this conversation before about what do you do with gang-ridden neighborhoods like what we talked about earlier with that fucking scene in Chicago, which is so insane. 0.98

01:48:22.000 And you made a really good point. 0.97

01:48:24.000 And the point is...

01:48:26.000 More police presence is actually better.

01:48:28.000 More police presence actually lowers crime, makes things safer, and gives people an opportunity to do things that they don't have.

01:48:35.000 And that point is very hard for people to grasp, but I talked to a cop about this, and he was explaining to me that statistically, when you look at it, more cops, and Michael Schellenberger talked about this as well, more cops actually make an environment where you have less police brutality.

01:48:54.000 Less cops Make more stress on the cops, it's more difficult for them to do their job, and you actually wind up with more police brutality.

01:49:03.000 So by having this idea that you're going to defund the police because of police brutality, you're actually increasing the opportunity or the possibility.

01:49:11.000 Of police brutality.

01:49:12.000 It's totally counterintuitive, but this is what needs to be done. 0.99

01:49:16.000 Like, we need to figure out a way to establish law and order in these communities where a lot of these folks, they don't want to be in a fucking gang. 0.88

01:49:24.000 They're just hardworking families that are trying to get by and these kids are growing up in this environment where that seems to be the only realistic option. 0.95

01:49:31.000 For sure.

01:49:34.000 I mean, between the need for police officers in these communities and then this is a growing problem across all demographic groups, but it is not even by demographic groups.

01:49:42.000 Single motherhood is a major problem in the United States. 0.97

01:49:44.000 If you want kids to be better educated, if you want them to take school more seriously, if you want them to do better in school, what every study shows, every single one, so far as I'm aware, is that it's not even the presence of a father in the home.

01:49:56.000 It's how many fathers are in the neighborhood.

01:49:58.000 So this is a Roland Fryer study.

01:49:59.000 He did a study on this.

01:50:00.000 And what he found is that a father in the home makes a huge difference, obviously, but it's percentages of fathers in homes in the neighborhood that makes a huge difference for kids.

01:50:08.000 So you have role models.

01:50:09.000 Right.

01:50:09.000 People that you can associate with.

01:50:11.000 A hundred percent.

01:50:12.000 I mean, and again, this is not a racial thing because there are parts, this is something Charles Murray talks about a lot when he talks about white Appalachia versus, for example, rich white areas.

01:50:19.000 Like, there are huge cultural differences with regard to education between white Appalachia and rich white areas.

01:50:25.000 It's not a race thing.

01:50:26.000 Right.

01:50:26.000 That's, like, how people are taught thing.

01:50:28.000 Yes, it's an environment.

01:50:29.000 I mean, you can have...

01:50:29.000 There are a lot of poor Asian communities where kids are studying their ass off, and that's why they're doing amazing in school is because they're studying their ass off.

01:50:35.000 Like...

01:50:36.000 That's a cultural thing, right?

01:50:37.000 That is a cultural thing.

01:50:38.000 I grew up around a lot of Koreans because I did Taekwondo, and so it's a Korean martial art. 0.99

01:50:42.000 And the hardest working people I've ever met in my fucking life were Korean. 1.00

01:50:46.000 Like, I couldn't believe. 0.99

01:50:48.000 My friend Jungsik, I still think about him to this day.

01:50:51.000 I haven't talked to him in more than 20 years. 0.99

01:50:53.000 This fucking guy was on the U.S. national Taekwondo team while he was going through his residency. 0.99

01:50:58.000 Whoa. 1.00

01:50:59.000 Whoa. 1.00

01:50:59.000 How the fuck? 1.00

01:51:00.000 Like, he was studying, and in the middle of studying, he would take all his books, throw them in his backpack, and he would run up the stairs of the school. 0.99

01:51:07.000 And that's how he'd get his cardio in.

01:51:09.000 I mean, the point- He was always tired.

01:51:12.000 He always looked like this. 0.99

01:51:14.000 When they would come and kick everybody's ass in training. 0.99

01:51:16.000 I'm like, Jesus Christ, man. 1.00

01:51:18.000 Like, he was so hard.

01:51:19.000 And he was a medical student.

01:51:21.000 I mean, he was telling me the way he grew up.

01:51:25.000 And I'm not saying that this is healthy, because I don't think it is.

01:51:28.000 But nothing was ever good enough.

01:51:30.000 Like, his father was never happy. 1.00

01:51:32.000 If you got an A-minus, you piece of shit, you know, you need to get an A+. Like, if you got a 90, you need to get 100. Fuck Bs. 0.99

01:51:38.000 Bs are for pussies. 1.00

01:51:39.000 Like, there was no Bs. 1.00

01:51:41.000 It had to be As. 0.99

01:51:42.000 And this is just how he grew up.

01:51:44.000 And it's...

01:51:45.000 I don't think it's good.

01:51:46.000 I don't think it's healthy.

01:51:47.000 But it's fascinating.

01:51:49.000 Well, it's more likely to...

01:51:50.000 And you see this cultural attitude.

01:51:51.000 It's more likely to have you value the things that you're being told to value.

01:51:54.000 For sure.

01:51:54.000 I mean, this is Amy Chua's point, right?

01:51:55.000 Yes.

01:51:55.000 Amy Chua's talked a lot about this in Tiger Mom and...

01:51:58.000 Yes.

01:51:59.000 He's second generation.

01:52:01.000 You know, his family were immigrants and they came over here and like, we have an amazing opportunity to try to make it here in America.

01:52:08.000 And they're well aware that South Korea was right next to North Korea. 1.00

01:52:12.000 North Korea is fucked. 1.00

01:52:13.000 And South Korea is better. 1.00

01:52:14.000 America is the land of opportunity.

01:52:16.000 They took a big chance taking their family over to America and And then you're watching this sort of insane discipline and work ethic applied to life.

01:52:28.000 And it's applied in such an effective manner that you see schools actively discriminating against Asian people.

01:52:34.000 It's unbelievable.

01:52:35.000 It's wild.

01:52:37.000 I don't know how people don't see that as incredibly racist. 0.95

01:52:40.000 Racist!

01:52:41.000 That Asians are too successful, therefore we must not admit enough of them. 1.00

01:52:45.000 Well, they calculated like what are the ways that we can sort of make it more difficult for them to get in.

01:52:52.000 Right.

01:52:53.000 If we can't apply it to just scores, we'll have to like have some sort of a social thing.

01:52:58.000 I also just have questions about the general way in which we determine what is now quote-unquote equitable in terms of how we break out groups.

01:53:06.000 So, for example...

01:53:07.000 Too many Asians getting into college because they only comprise, what, 5-6% of the American population and therefore, and they comprise 20% of the degree holders or whatever it is. 1.00

01:53:15.000 And it's not proportionate.

01:53:17.000 Whereas black people comprise 13% of the population, but they only comprise 6% of the degree.

01:53:21.000 That's very unequitable.

01:53:23.000 And so they have to be a reflection of the general population.

01:53:26.000 What about the fact that women who are 50% of the population now represent a vast majority of degree holders and graduate degree holders? 0.95

01:53:32.000 You never hear the opposite.

01:53:33.000 You never hear- Women are smarter than men. 1.00

01:53:35.000 Just say it.

01:53:37.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:53:38.000 Sometimes, yeah.

01:53:39.000 I mean, it depends on the degree sometimes.

01:53:41.000 I mean, like, it depends on...

01:53:43.000 Are you denying women are smarter than men?

01:53:45.000 Are you a sexist?

01:53:46.000 What I am saying is that...

01:53:47.000 If it's clear, the data shows women are smarter than men. 0.74

01:53:51.000 Well, the IQ data show that they're pretty much even.

01:53:55.000 But they get more degrees, so they work harder?

01:53:58.000 Yes.

01:53:59.000 Yes.

01:54:00.000 I mean, yes.

01:54:01.000 The answer is that more men drop out of college and don't work it all the way through.

01:54:07.000 But why do you think that is?

01:54:08.000 And why is there a disparity of wealth, then, when the women enter the workforce? 1.00

01:54:11.000 Well, so women tend to make different decisions as time goes on. 1.00

01:54:15.000 Oh, you're a sexist.

01:54:17.000 Yeah, right. 1.00

01:54:17.000 You're a sexist. 1.00

01:54:18.000 Yeah, like my wife. 0.98

01:54:19.000 My wife is my wife. 0.80

01:54:21.000 She made different decisions, right?

01:54:22.000 So she went to college.

01:54:23.000 She took off a couple of years and worked, and then she went to medical school.

01:54:27.000 And then she's taken a bunch of time off the workforce, take care of our kids, because she wanted to. 1.00

01:54:30.000 I have a very good friend who's a very smart guy, but he made the mistake of making that argument.

01:54:36.000 We were actually talking about divorce, and he was saying maybe the reason why women get more money in divorce, maybe the reason why it's fair is because of income inequality.

01:54:45.000 And I go, what do you mean?

01:54:47.000 And he goes, well, you know, women and men work together, and women make 75 cents to every dollar a man makes.

01:54:53.000 I go, do you know that they have different jobs?

01:54:55.000 Do you know how that's calculated?

01:54:56.000 And he's like, no.

01:54:58.000 I go, yes.

01:54:59.000 And he's like, is that really it?

01:55:00.000 I go, yeah. 0.99

01:55:01.000 And then I sent him a bunch of shit, and he's like, oh. 0.99

01:55:04.000 I'm like, but you're arguing it. 0.99

01:55:06.000 And Obama argued it.

01:55:07.000 Remember that?

01:55:07.000 Obama argued it on top.

01:55:09.000 But they knew that wasn't real.

01:55:11.000 When Obama did it, he knew.

01:55:12.000 He's a lawyer.

01:55:14.000 He knows that's not true.

01:55:15.000 He knows that that's not true.

01:55:16.000 It's a slippery thing to say, right?

01:55:19.000 Everybody in politics knows that it is not true.

01:55:22.000 That if you just aggregate the stat...

01:55:24.000 Just without regard to how many hours are worked, how many years in the workforce, what types of degree, what jobs have been chosen.

01:55:29.000 Like, it turns out that engineers get paid more than teachers.

01:55:32.000 Women tend to outnumber men when it comes to teaching degrees, but men vastly outnumber women when it comes to engineering degrees. 0.98

01:55:36.000 One of my favorite conversations is Jordan Peterson having a conversation with a feminist where she brings up male privilege, and he's like, well, for God's sake, what privilege?

01:55:45.000 We get murdered more?

01:55:46.000 We go to war?

01:55:47.000 And he just starts rattling off all these different things.

01:55:50.000 And you see this woman not prepared for this conversation, and Well, again, this is one of those things where it's like, your ideas of what the world should be are not in any way reflective of what the world is.

01:56:00.000 Like, one of my favorites along these lines is when you talk about, people will talk about, you know, women and men, and they really have exactly the same interests.

01:56:08.000 Like, first of all, have you ever met a woman?

01:56:10.000 Have you ever met a woman, right? 0.98

01:56:11.000 So they'll say, the fact that there are not enough female engineers is evidence that there's discrimination in society against female engineers. 1.00

01:56:19.000 Does anybody actively say that?

01:56:20.000 Yes.

01:56:21.000 I mean, this is why they have essentially affirmative action programs for females in places like Google. 1.00

01:56:25.000 The idea is there are not enough female engineers. 1.00

01:56:27.000 This is an act of discrimination and it must be rectified.

01:56:30.000 And then when Larry Summers says, well, no, it probably is not about that.

01:56:34.000 It probably is about job selection, whether women want to go into engineering, maybe test performance. 1.00

01:56:38.000 Then he gets thrown out as president of Harvard University over that.

01:56:41.000 I was there when that happened.

01:56:42.000 But the stat that I love the most is that if you go to the much vaunted Nordic countries, right, where they have all sorts of great social welfare benefits and all of this, the gap in earnings between men and women is larger than the gap in earnings.

01:56:56.000 In like a developing country like Latvia or Lithuania.

01:57:00.000 And the reason is because when women work in countries where income is highly prized and you don't have a big social safety net, they choose the high income jobs. 1.00

01:57:09.000 And when they are in a social safety net country, they get to choose what they actually want to do, which is not engineering, generally speaking.

01:57:15.000 They tend to pick the stuff they like to do, which are more...

01:57:19.000 Human connection oriented jobs women tend to like those men like machines women like people This is just a general for every woman true on average obviously this goes back to what we're talking about before that the we put so much value unfortunately in this country on success being quantifiable by bank accounts and Many people don't look at the world that way and when you force people to look at the world that way because you say this is our own only metric that we count and The metric that we count is how much money you're earning.

01:57:47.000 Well, we're looking at men and women, and we're saying, well, men are making more, so we have an inequitable society.

01:57:52.000 Right.

01:57:53.000 But it's only based on this one metric.

01:57:55.000 Right, exactly.

01:57:56.000 Like you were saying about these Nordic societies, if you give women the opportunity, when you have more equality, they tend to take more gender-specific roles. 0.52

01:58:08.000 The stuff they like to do, yes.

01:58:10.000 Yeah, what you would think of as being more stereotypical.

01:58:13.000 Female-oriented nurses, teachers. 0.95

01:58:15.000 Yes.

01:58:15.000 All the sorts of stuff where you have a lot of personal interaction.

01:58:18.000 And they feel more rewarded by those jobs.

01:58:20.000 But we think in this country that there's something wrong with that because there's not the same amount of money involved.

01:58:27.000 Right, and so we're thinking about it wrong, and then the corrective mechanism is wrong.

01:58:30.000 Because then we're like, okay, what if we just redistribute the income?

01:58:32.000 Then is everybody the way it should be?

01:58:34.000 It's like, well, no, that didn't fix anything.

01:58:37.000 That's communism.

01:58:38.000 And there's a real fear of mine that there's this push towards communism as country.

01:58:44.000 And as I've said before, this idea of income inequality is always addressed, but not the idea of effort inequality.

01:58:52.000 We're all engaged in this weird idea.

01:58:54.000 And this weird idea is that you work and you get a certain amount of money for that, but the money's not proportionate to effort.

01:59:02.000 It's proportionate to your thought process, how you Find your way through things.

01:59:10.000 Problem solving.

01:59:11.000 It's basically a puzzle.

01:59:12.000 And some people find an easy path to that puzzle, you invent something amazing, and then you're insanely wealthy.

01:59:19.000 And people say, well, that's not fair.

01:59:21.000 But it's not about fair.

01:59:23.000 It's about reality.

01:59:25.000 There's a thing that happened.

01:59:26.000 And this one thing that this person created, he sold a billion units of this thing, and now he's got a shit ton of money.

01:59:33.000 If you want a shit ton of money, you should figure out how to sell a billion units of something.

01:59:39.000 And people are like, but that's... 0.60

01:59:40.000 That is reality.

01:59:43.000 It's an uncomfortable reality for a person with no money and no success and no idea for a product that you're going to sell a billion units.

01:59:50.000 It's also, it's not just reality, it's the only reality that provides positive externalities.

01:59:55.000 So what other metric are we going to use for success?

01:59:57.000 So the way that we measure success in terms of monetary exchange is the most goods, services, products that you provided to somebody else and they paid you for willingly.

02:00:06.000 Which is why you can be an NBA star and you're really not producing anything except your own skill level on TV and we pay you lots and lots of money for this.

02:00:12.000 You've created something that is non-replicable and we will pay you for that.

02:00:18.000 You've created a good product or service that's not replicable and so we'll pay you money for that.

02:00:24.000 We're good to go.

02:00:46.000 That's because of all that innovation.

02:00:48.000 The positive externalities of us rewarding innovation and effort and intelligence are very high.

02:00:54.000 So you say that's not fair.

02:00:55.000 On a moral level, maybe it's not fair.

02:00:56.000 Maybe if you were God, you could figure out a different way that would make it more fair where it was based purely on how many hours of sweat labor you put into a thing.

02:01:03.000 The problem is that if you actually try to create a system where you reward people based on the pure number of sweat hours they put into things, It's a wildly negative externality because now you're incentivizing people to just put in work at the thing that is the easiest for them to do without regard to pleasing anybody else,

02:01:20.000 without regard to trying to create a product, good, or service that somebody else will willingly buy from you.

02:01:24.000 This is why when people say that capitalism is selfish and it's non-altruistic, I've been ripped by the Ayn Rand crowd for saying this, but it actually is a form of forced altruism.

02:01:33.000 If I create a product, a good, or a service, and nobody wants to buy it, but I really satisfied myself, That's selfish.

02:01:40.000 What's not selfish is I now create a product or service.

02:01:43.000 I now have to provide something to you that you want and you have to provide something to me that I want, right?

02:01:49.000 This is mutual altruism.

02:01:51.000 You've provided me something I want.

02:01:52.000 Here's an argument against it.

02:01:53.000 Sure.

02:01:53.000 The stock market.

02:01:55.000 What about it?

02:01:56.000 Speculation.

02:01:57.000 There's a stock market like manipulation, hedge funds, people moving money around, moving numbers around, getting insanely wealthy by betting on companies failing, things being public.

02:02:07.000 The ability to manipulate stocks and find a way to skirt the system and use computers to make these little quick transactions back and forth and back and forth and generate insane amounts of wealth, essentially doing nothing.

02:02:21.000 But you've created massive amounts of fluidity and liquidity in the system, right?

02:02:25.000 How many companies now get funded?

02:02:27.000 Lots of companies get funded.

02:02:29.000 How many companies were funded 200 years ago?

02:02:31.000 Right.

02:02:31.000 None.

02:02:32.000 So you think that it's good that these companies get funded because they could, in turn, provide goods and services that people want and appreciate and we should tolerate all these fucksters. 0.99

02:02:44.000 Who are figuring out how to get insanely wealthy and do blow off the assholes of Russian strippers because they've figured out a way to use this system to generate money. 1.00

02:02:55.000 Yes. 1.00

02:02:56.000 They're the grease in the engine.

02:02:58.000 So you need the grease in the engine.

02:02:59.000 I'm not saying that that's more...

02:03:00.000 This isn't a moral question.

02:03:02.000 Right.

02:03:02.000 The question is, does it create positive externalities for there to be a system where you can do an IPO tomorrow?

02:03:08.000 And it used to be that if you had to retail a company, right, you actually had...

02:03:11.000 It was a lot harder to go public with a company.

02:03:13.000 Right.

02:03:14.000 50, 100 years ago than it is now.

02:03:16.000 Yes.

02:03:17.000 It was much harder to raise money for a company 50 or 100 years ago than it is now.

02:03:20.000 By having these people around that will raise capital because of the stock market, because of the fact that there's an amazing opportunity for people that have no business being in that company.

02:03:30.000 You have nothing to do with that company other than the fact that you're funding them and you're moving capital around.

02:03:37.000 And in some cases, you are hedging against the possibility of loss in the company, which allows other people to read the signal and then allocate their capital elsewhere.

02:03:44.000 You're short-selling a company.

02:03:45.000 You're saying this company is not worth as much as people are saying it's worth.

02:03:48.000 People are going to draft off of you, presumably, and then they're going to sell their stock, and maybe they're going to put their money in a more successful company, which allows the company to raise more money, buy back its stock, reinvest, do all that sort of stuff.

02:03:58.000 So it's an imperfect system, but it has a net positive effect.

02:04:01.000 Correct.

02:04:02.000 Correct.

02:04:02.000 And when I say imperfect, perfect compared to what?

02:04:05.000 Right, what is perfect?

02:04:06.000 Right, exactly.

02:04:06.000 Nothing is perfect.

02:04:07.000 Right, there's no centralized allocative resource that is capable of doing that sort of work.

02:04:11.000 So do I think that, like, on a pure level, this goes back to the whole difference that we were talking about earlier between meritocracy and skillsocracy that I was trying to make.

02:04:19.000 We tend to think of, like, does that guy deserve it?

02:04:21.000 I mean, he's just sitting in a room and he's playing with numbers.

02:04:23.000 Does he really deserve it?

02:04:24.000 On a moral level, no, I don't know whether he's going to heaven or hell.

02:04:26.000 I mean, like, I don't know.

02:04:28.000 But on a skills level...

02:04:31.000 I suppose he deserves it because he's adding positive externalities to the system.

02:04:34.000 And that's the only way that income gets generated anyway.

02:04:38.000 Right.

02:04:39.000 I mean, how else are you going to do that?

02:04:41.000 Right.

02:04:41.000 Now, what about Bernie Sanders' concept that you could take a very small amount of each of these transactions, these speculative transactions, like a fraction of a penny, and you could apply that To free college education,

02:04:59.000 universal basic income, or universal healthcare at least, that you could use, like this is his concept of democratic socialism, that you would apply this in a way that's not punitive to these companies.

02:05:10.000 It's a small amount in each transaction, but overall does a net good for the culture, for society, for the communities.

02:05:18.000 So I think it really depends on how much grit you're adding to the grease in the engine, right?

02:05:22.000 I mean, assume that the transaction costs he's adding are now the sand that you're adding to the grease that's in the engine.

02:05:27.000 So all these things are just designed to grease it.

02:05:29.000 Right.

02:05:29.000 So now you're adding sawdust.

02:05:30.000 So how much sawdust can you add before you clog up the engine?

02:05:35.000 I mean, so you could probably add some.

02:05:37.000 Can you add tons?

02:05:38.000 Probably not.

02:05:39.000 But we're seeing just this tiny amount, less than the penny.

02:05:42.000 But I don't know how large the transactions they're pulling are or how frequent they are.

02:05:45.000 So...

02:05:46.000 I like what you're about to say. 0.98

02:05:47.000 I like how these, that's how these people, you were saying that's how these people, these fucking democratic socialists, that's how they slippery slope. 0.83

02:05:56.000 I don't know how large the transactions that we're talking about are on average and what percentage of that transaction he's trying to grab. 0.58

02:06:03.000 So until I know that, I don't know, are we talking about very marginal amounts or are we talking about not at all marginal amounts that are crucial to how that business operates?

02:06:11.000 I don't know the answer to that.

02:06:12.000 By the way, I don't agree with free community college, period, because I think too many people are going to college.

02:06:15.000 So I think that's a bad example.

02:06:16.000 I think he should pick something better to spend on if he wants to spend the money.

02:06:20.000 Do you think people should pay a lot of money for college?

02:06:22.000 And if so, do you think the government should continue to subsidize it?

02:06:24.000 I don't think the government should subsidize college.

02:06:26.000 I think the private loans should subsidize college.

02:06:28.000 And we have a lot more engineers and a lot fewer liberal arts majors.

02:06:31.000 Do you think that if we did not subsidize college, and private loans did, do you think the same...

02:06:39.000 Rules should apply that are currently in place where you can never get out of your student loans.

02:06:44.000 It's one of the weirder things.

02:06:45.000 You take a child that's essentially, their brain is not fully formed yet, and you saddle them down with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan that they have to pay for the rest of their life.

02:06:55.000 There's people today that are getting their Social Security docked because they owe student loans. 1.00

02:07:01.000 You want to talk about being at the end of the game and realizing you're a fucking loser? 0.99

02:07:04.000 When you get your social security docked, the money you're supposed to live on, and the country's like, no, fuckface, you owe us money because you have to pay for that school you didn't use. 1.00

02:07:16.000 Right. 0.91

02:07:16.000 So I think that if you are a private institution, just like any other loan, you should be forced to take the risk of the loan. 0.91

02:07:23.000 So education is a little weird in that there's no collateral, right?

02:07:26.000 I mean, like if you get a loan on a house- Can't take the house back.

02:07:29.000 It wouldn't even take the degree.

02:07:30.000 Right.

02:07:31.000 But that's why you're going to get a lot more loans in areas where people expect high income return.

02:07:37.000 And a lot fewer loans.

02:07:39.000 There was a study that came out recently and it said that something like 28% of all degree holders end up significantly financially worse off for having had the degree than for getting the degree.

02:07:47.000 Really?

02:07:48.000 28%?

02:07:49.000 Yeah, it was in the Wall Street Journal like two days ago.

02:07:51.000 Based on what?

02:07:52.000 Because you take out a loan, you get a degree in something useless, you get a job in something that didn't require the degree.

02:07:58.000 What if you didn't have the degree?

02:07:59.000 But are people more likely to hire someone who has a degree?

02:08:03.000 Depends on the industry and it depends on the major.

02:08:05.000 So majors make a huge difference.

02:08:08.000 You major in ed, that's not going to do you a lot of good.

02:08:10.000 You major in engineering, it's going to do you a hell of a lot of good.

02:08:12.000 So one of the big problems is trying to treat all degrees as equivalent, which they are not.

02:08:17.000 We also have a major credentialing problem in the society where a lot of people are now requiring a college degree where they shouldn't have to have a college degree.

02:08:25.000 There are a lot of jobs in the United States that do not require a college degree, and we'll only take a college graduate.

02:08:30.000 So at our company, we don't screen for a college degree.

02:08:32.000 What's fascinating is the goodwill hunting approach, right?

02:08:35.000 Is that you really can get an education without a college degree.

02:08:39.000 You really can, but in order to be considered a person who's a serious thinker.

02:08:45.000 I agree with this.

02:08:46.000 This is what I was saying earlier about the testing, where I was saying that colleges are kind of a scam because we won't just use tests.

02:08:52.000 So if you give me an 18-year-old kid's SAT score and his grade and his GPA, and you say he's going to major in a liberal art...

02:09:00.000 I can tell you from his GPA and his SAT score whether he's probably going to be a good employee or not.

02:09:05.000 I don't need four years of having him debted himself for 150 grand at Wellesley to figure that out.

02:09:10.000 But isn't the idea that during those four years he's going to learn about life and have a more nuanced perspective of the world because he's going to be educated in all sorts of different things like history.

02:09:19.000 Nah. 0.97

02:09:20.000 They don't do that crap anymore. 0.99

02:09:21.000 They don't? 0.99

02:09:22.000 Nah.

02:09:22.000 Colleges are worthless unless you're what we call the UCLA South Campus major.

02:09:26.000 Well, they're really good at indoctrinating communists.

02:09:29.000 Right.

02:09:31.000 True.

02:09:32.000 True that.

02:09:35.000 There's got to be some sort of coming-of-age ritual that involves education.

02:09:43.000 It used to be a high school graduation.

02:09:44.000 That was the coming-of-age ritual, right?

02:09:46.000 Yeah, but it's not anymore.

02:09:47.000 It could be again.

02:09:48.000 Why not?

02:09:49.000 Will something make high school better?

02:09:51.000 How about we just have apprenticeship programs?

02:09:53.000 You finish high school, you get an apprenticeship.

02:09:55.000 Yeah, I think there's something to find if there's something that you're really actually interested in, you know, and then we start developing apprenticeship programs in all these different industries.

02:10:05.000 I mean, if you want to talk about how other countries do it, there are a lot of countries that are tracking kids a lot earlier than 18. It's a stigma at 14, 15, saying what are you interested in, getting them sort of – are you into math?

02:10:15.000 Are you into history?

02:10:16.000 So, but what about – I mean, if these people do do that, don't you think there is some sort of a benefit to the education that colleges provide?

02:10:23.000 Because they do provide – At the very least, they provide an environment where ideally your ideas are questioned and your concepts are- Yeah, no.

02:10:36.000 No.

02:10:36.000 You don't think so anymore?

02:10:37.000 Not anymore.

02:10:37.000 No.

02:10:38.000 No.

02:10:38.000 I think that most colleges, you go there to get the degree and then you get out and then you do what you're going to do with their life.

02:10:45.000 And I think the idea that you're going there and you're learning about...

02:10:48.000 You're separating from your family, you're getting away from your neighborhood, your hometown.

02:10:53.000 There's got to be some benefit to that, right?

02:10:55.000 Yeah, but you could do that working, right?

02:10:56.000 And then you'd actually be useful.

02:10:58.000 I mean, if you ever hire people who are fresh out of college with a poli-sci degree...

02:11:02.000 I mean, I don't think they're significantly more useful than hiring...

02:11:04.000 What about gender studies?

02:11:06.000 That's huge.

02:11:07.000 I mean, I need to know what somebody's pronouns are before I hire them.

02:11:10.000 Or if they know all the proper pronouns.

02:11:12.000 We give like a 56-question test on proper pronouns.

02:11:14.000 Surely there's got to be some...

02:11:16.000 I mean, maybe that's what they're trying to do here in Austin with this university that they're trying to establish.

02:11:19.000 I think that's what they are trying to do.

02:11:20.000 They're trying to reestablish some sort of kind of...

02:11:22.000 Classical theory of how education is taught, you know, and civics and having debates and presenting different sides of the aisle.

02:11:31.000 But in most colleges, I don't think that's necessarily a high priority.

02:11:34.000 They're diploma mills. 1.00

02:11:36.000 There's a little bit of that, but we've lost the value of actually just being educated, of learning things, of expanding your understanding of the world itself.

02:11:48.000 Like, that's not that valuable to people anymore for some strange reason.

02:11:52.000 So for me, it was actually, listen, I went to UCLA and then I went to Harvard Law and I really enjoyed both of them, both very liberal colleges.

02:11:59.000 But I think the reason I enjoy them is because I'm not liberal.

02:12:02.000 So for me, it was learning about a lot of ideas that I didn't know anything about.

02:12:05.000 So I got to like test out those ideas and think about them and read the countervailing point of view.

02:12:09.000 But if I'd been on the other side of the aisle, I'm not sure I ever see much of the other point of view at all.

02:12:14.000 Interesting.

02:12:15.000 Because you came into them as a conservative.

02:12:17.000 Yeah, I was already conservative going to college.

02:12:18.000 When did you decide you were conservative?

02:12:22.000 I mean, I can't remember when I wasn't, probably, would be the fair answer there.

02:12:27.000 So as soon as I realized I was political.

02:12:29.000 This is just growing up in a religious household? 0.98

02:12:32.000 Yeah, religious and then obviously very pro-Israel household.

02:12:34.000 And so you go on campus, that's a big issue there.

02:12:36.000 And so when you go up in a religious household, that comes along with certain values like hard work, reward and punishment.

02:12:43.000 There are certain things that are sort of baked.

02:12:45.000 The value of education is very big in the religious Jewish community.

02:12:48.000 And then when it comes to foreign policy issues, when you get on campus, and campus is a lot more variable when it comes to Israel, for example, then you realize that you might not be in friendly territory on some of those issues.

02:12:59.000 Well, it's shifted over the last few decades, right?

02:13:01.000 And the percentage of people that are pro-Israel has probably shifted away, and the support of Palestine has become more favorable.

02:13:11.000 Yeah, it's been linked in with the sort of broader dispossessed people's narrative.

02:13:16.000 Yeah.

02:13:17.000 Like the idea that there's victims and victimizers in the world. 0.85

02:13:19.000 Israel's a victimizer. 1.00

02:13:20.000 Its enemies are victims. 0.85

02:13:21.000 Right.

02:13:22.000 And you can tell because Israel's successful and its enemies are not. 0.83

02:13:24.000 So therefore, Israel must be super bad. 0.99

02:13:26.000 You saw a lot of this rhetoric, actually, during the last Gaza War, where people were saying things like, well, the Palestinians are just like Black Lives Matter.

02:13:33.000 And it's like, well, they're not exactly like Black Lives Matter. 0.85

02:13:35.000 Like, as much as I dislike Black Lives Matter and as much damage as they did, they weren't firing like 10,000 rockets into the middle of populated areas.

02:13:41.000 Right, but that's Hamas. 0.90

02:13:42.000 That's not the actual people that are trapped in Palestine themselves, right?

02:13:46.000 Right, I mean, I'm talking about the government.

02:13:48.000 Yeah, I mean, the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, yeah, which presides over a couple million people.

02:13:52.000 Do you have sympathy for the people that are trapped under the regime?

02:13:56.000 Of course.

02:13:57.000 I wish the regime would go away.

02:13:58.000 I wish they would overthrow the regime.

02:13:59.000 That'd be great.

02:14:00.000 The problem is that they haven't had an election since 2006 in Hamasistan, in the Gaza Strip.

02:14:05.000 They haven't had an election in the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank since 2005, 2006. Mahmoud Abbas is in the 15th year of a four-year term in the West Bank.

02:14:17.000 And Hamas took over the Gaza Strip after Israel completely pulled out in 2005. So Israel completely pulled out of the Gaza Strip.

02:14:24.000 Israel has no military presence in the Gaza Strip, right?

02:14:26.000 They have people along the border.

02:14:27.000 They don't have internal presence.

02:14:29.000 Have you debated people about Palestine versus Israel?

02:14:33.000 Yeah, sure.

02:14:33.000 I've talked about it.

02:14:34.000 Are these available online?

02:14:36.000 Because I haven't seen you debate that.

02:14:39.000 Not too much.

02:14:40.000 I should probably do one.

02:14:41.000 Yeah, you should.

02:14:42.000 I've done some informational videos.

02:14:44.000 I did a fairly long, actually a 45-minute informational video about the history of Israel going all the way back to biblical times, all the way forward through the Roman period, through the Ottoman Empire, through the British Empire, etc., To the modern era as well.

02:14:58.000 It's one of the sadder things in modern life is to see the rubble of those houses after they get missiled, you know, after they get smashed and, you know, you see the difference in the firepower that Israel has and the Iron Dome and all these things.

02:15:15.000 By the way, thank God for the Iron Dome.

02:15:16.000 Just as far as optics.

02:15:17.000 Thank God for the Iron Dome.

02:15:18.000 Let me just put it this way.

02:15:19.000 If there were no Iron Dome, there'd probably be a lot less of the Gaza Strip left.

02:15:23.000 Because the Iron Dome is the only thing that prevented mass casualties in Israel.

02:15:28.000 If Mexico started firing 10,000 rockets into San Diego, the American flag would be flying in Mexico City within 24 hours.

02:15:35.000 So no state worth of salt can allow that kind of assault, except if you have, apparently, Iron Dome shooting down 10,000 rockets above your cities.

02:15:43.000 When AOC and all these people that didn't want the Iron Dome to be funded, when there was this sort of...

02:15:51.000 So backwards.

02:15:53.000 It's really backwards.

02:15:54.000 That's a defensive technology.

02:15:56.000 I mean, you're actively arguing that you want the rockets to fall into the middle of Israeli cities at that point.

02:16:01.000 That is a purely defensive technology.

02:16:02.000 I think their argument was that there's a disproportionate amount of firepower in Israel's side.

02:16:09.000 I would certainly hope so, considering that they're opposing an actual terrorist group.

02:16:12.000 I hope there's a significant differential of firepower between the United States and Al-Qaeda as well.

02:16:15.000 And what was the argument that they – because I've heard her discuss the whole Israel versus Palestine thing, and she seems about as educated about it as I am.

02:16:27.000 Yeah, and I don't think she's particularly versed in it.

02:16:30.000 Which is fascinating that she has an opinion about it that's so strong.

02:16:33.000 It's turned into a bit of a wokeness issue.

02:16:36.000 Well, again, I think it goes to there's this feeling broadly writ on the hard left that whenever there is an imbalance of power, that means that some deep injustice has been done.

02:16:46.000 If somebody is powerful and somebody has less power, the person who's powerful must have victimized the person with less power.

02:16:52.000 Again, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 in its entirety.

02:16:56.000 Well over 90% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank lives under complete Palestinian control in Area A of the West Bank, right?

02:17:03.000 Under Oslo, there's Area A, there's Area B, there's Area C. Area C is the area that's still under total Israeli control, right? 0.73

02:17:08.000 And if the Oslo Accords had proceeded with the Palestinians not pursuing terrorist attacks, then that would now presumably have been in the process of further negotiation.

02:17:18.000 It's not.

02:17:19.000 Area A has been under complete Palestinian control for a while, right?

02:17:23.000 If you actually drive in Israel, there's signs on the roads in Israel and the West Bank where it says the Israeli government can no longer guarantee your safety if you drive off this road and into this Palestinian city. 0.95

02:17:33.000 This is now Palestinian Authority-controlled territory.

02:17:34.000 You're taking your life in your hands if you drive into this area.

02:17:38.000 So it's a very difficult situation.

02:17:41.000 All I can say is that the number of Arabs living inside Israel, Israeli Arab citizens, who wish to be members of the Palestinian Authority-ruled areas or the Gaza Strip, is nearly zero.

02:17:53.000 Israeli Arabs want to live in Israel. 0.99

02:17:55.000 They do not want to live in Palestine. 1.00

02:17:57.000 And there's a reason for that.

02:17:58.000 The regime in Palestine is awful.

02:17:59.000 Are they allowed to emigrate?

02:18:01.000 Sure.

02:18:01.000 So they can leave Palestine if they're allowed to leave and get into Israel and Israel will take them in.

02:18:07.000 Well, sorry, the other way.

02:18:09.000 20% of Israel's population is Arab.

02:18:12.000 Right?

02:18:12.000 There are zero Jews living under the Palestinian Authority.

02:18:14.000 There are zero Jews living in the Gaza Strip.

02:18:16.000 But what I'm saying is, can people from Gaza that are Palestinian move to Israel?

02:18:22.000 Can they try to immigrate? 0.93

02:18:23.000 Yes.

02:18:24.000 You could put in an application.

02:18:24.000 It would probably be fairly difficult.

02:18:27.000 You'd have to demonstrate certain prereqs, like you would if you were immigrating to the United States, presumably stricter, because they have to have security concerns.

02:18:36.000 Right.

02:18:36.000 Because Gaza is really riddled with terrorism problems.

02:18:39.000 But what about people that move into Palestinian territory?

02:18:44.000 What about settlers that take over people's homes?

02:18:48.000 I've seen these videos where people are complaining or having these mass grievances that Israel— So if we're talking about Sheikh Jarrah, that was the one that came up most recently.

02:18:58.000 Mm-hmm.

02:19:00.000 To be fair, these are called disputed territories, really, meaning that Israel has a claim to them, the Palestinians have a claim to them.

02:19:06.000 There's a lot of dispute as to who owns them in most cases.

02:19:09.000 In some cases, you actually have Israelis who are going into undisputed Palestinian areas and the Israeli government clears them out.

02:19:16.000 That happens in the West Bank sometimes.

02:19:18.000 Why is that?

02:19:19.000 Because those would be under Area A or Area B. They're understood to be Palestinian territories.

02:19:25.000 But if you're talking about Sheikh Jarrah, Sheikh Jarrah is a different thing.

02:19:28.000 So the Israelis go into these Palestinian territories and they take them over? 0.67

02:19:31.000 Well, not permanently.

02:19:32.000 I mean, it depends where we're talking about.

02:19:34.000 So there are a couple different cases, I think, that we're talking about here.

02:19:37.000 Okay.

02:19:37.000 One is the big one that resulted in the latest Gaza war, supposedly.

02:19:41.000 So there's the real reason for the Gaza war, and then there's the public reason for the Gaza war.

02:19:44.000 What's the real reason?

02:19:45.000 The real reason for the Gaza war is because Mahmoud Abbas, who's the dictator slash president of the Palestinian Authority, who hasn't been up for election since 2006, Mahmoud Abbas He said that he was going to have an election in March, the first election they'd held in 15 years.

02:20:00.000 It became very clear to him that if he held an election, he was going to lose.

02:20:04.000 And he was going to lose to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who are both terrorist groups.

02:20:07.000 He was going to lose to that coalition.

02:20:09.000 And so he canceled the election.

02:20:11.000 And then to misdirect from the fact that he had canceled the election, he decided to essentially gin up an enormous controversy over the Temple Mount.

02:20:19.000 Now, I've been up to the Temple Mount.

02:20:21.000 The Temple Mount is the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, okay, and the Dome of the Rock.

02:20:24.000 It's also the holiest site in Judaism.

02:20:26.000 The Western Wall is not the holiest site in Judaism.

02:20:27.000 The actual Temple Mount is, because that's where Solomon's Temple used to be.

02:20:30.000 And that area is essentially run by the Islamic waqf.

02:20:35.000 So if you're a Jew, you're not allowed to pray up there.

02:20:37.000 By Israeli law.

02:20:39.000 If you go up there and you pray, you have to do it quietly or surreptitiously.

02:20:42.000 They have sort of a wink-wink, nod-nod situation going on.

02:20:44.000 But only Muslims are allowed to pray openly up on the Temple Mount.

02:20:48.000 And that's in Israeli territory because they wish to prevent further conflict.

02:20:53.000 So there are two issues that happened.

02:20:54.000 One was Sheikh Jarrah.

02:20:55.000 Sheikh Jarrah is a little outskirt of Jerusalem.

02:20:57.000 And there's a big legal controversy over essentially two apartment buildings.

02:21:03.000 Back in 1948, these had been Jewish-owned apartment buildings.

02:21:06.000 And then in 1948, there's a big war between the Jews and the Arabs.

02:21:09.000 The Jordanians end up in control of that area. 0.93

02:21:12.000 These apartment buildings are then lived in by some of the Palestinians.

02:21:16.000 No legal deed is ever granted to them by the Jordanian authorities.

02:21:19.000 Okay, if the Jordanian authorities had given them legal deed, they would have retained that sort of deed after 67. So in 67, there's another war.

02:21:25.000 There's like a war every 10 years in Israel.

02:21:27.000 In 67, there's another war.

02:21:29.000 Israel wins back all of Jerusalem. 0.96

02:21:30.000 They unify the city of Jerusalem, right?

02:21:31.000 That's why old and new Jerusalem are now in Israel. 0.90

02:21:33.000 So Sheikh Jarrah, a lot of the people who had owned the apartment buildings prior to 48, they now come in.

02:21:39.000 You have basically a legal dispute in which the Palestinians who have been living there for 15, 20 years because of the war, they say, we live here, we own it.

02:21:49.000 And the Jews say, here's our deed of property, we own it.

02:21:51.000 This goes through the Israeli court system.

02:21:53.000 There was an agreement that was reached where the Palestinians would have to pay rent to the Jews because the Jews still had the legal deed. 0.94

02:21:58.000 The Jordanians had transferred.

02:21:59.000 I know this is very complex, but this is how everything is over there.

02:22:01.000 Okay, and so bottom line is that the Palestinians there stopped paying rent and there's a court ruling that comes down saying you haven't paid rent in 10-15 years and now you're going to be evicted. 0.66

02:22:12.000 That started a war.

02:22:14.000 Okay, that's really what we're talking about.

02:22:16.000 Okay, and then there are a bunch of people who went up to, quote unquote, pray and also protest up on the Temple Mount.

02:22:22.000 They started assaulting Israeli soldiers from the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

02:22:24.000 There's video of them throwing rocks from the Al-Aqsa Mosque at the soldiers.

02:22:27.000 This turns into a major issue.

02:22:28.000 And then, again, all generated, at least in part by the Palestinian Authority, trying to distract from the fact they hadn't had an election.

02:22:35.000 And then Hamas gets in on the act because they have to be kind of louder than the Palestinian Authority. 0.93

02:22:41.000 They start firing rockets in the middle of Israel.

02:22:42.000 So this is what you're saying is the real reason.

02:22:46.000 Now, what is the public reason?

02:22:48.000 So the public reason, what they said is Israel is attempting to evict Palestinians from Palestinian territory, and this is just the beginning of the Judaization of all of Israel.

02:22:56.000 Now, again, if this were the Judaization of all of Israel, you'd have to explain why there are some... 0.84

02:23:02.000 Four million Palestinians who are living in this area?

02:23:05.000 Like, what you'll hear from critics of Israel is, Israel's engaged in some sort of genocide, Israel's trying to wipe out the...

02:23:09.000 It's the worst genocide in human history.

02:23:10.000 Like, the number of people who are living in the Palestinian areas is a multiple of what it was.

02:23:15.000 The criticism is that it's like essentially an open-air prison.

02:23:18.000 Well, then they should talk to the people who administer that prison, namely Hamas. 0.86

02:23:22.000 The warden of the prison is Hamas. 0.83

02:23:23.000 Israel pulled out all military in 2006. But the people are not allowed to leave Palestine and immigrate into Israel.

02:23:32.000 Because of security concerns.

02:23:33.000 They can work in Israel.

02:23:35.000 They have to pass checkpoints because of security concerns.

02:23:38.000 So these security concerns are the reason why the people are trapped, and then Hamas is the reason why they're controlled. 0.73

02:23:47.000 Yes, because if Hamas wished to make peace with Israel, then Israel would be perfectly willing to have an open economic relationship with the Gaza Strip.

02:23:56.000 It seems like your perspective...

02:23:57.000 I mean, Hamas's charter openly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.

02:24:01.000 It's not like this is a big secret.

02:24:02.000 Your perspective, the way you're describing it, is not...

02:24:05.000 I don't hear it anywhere.

02:24:07.000 What I'm hearing from the mainstream is essentially the narrative over the last few years, and even by some of my guests...

02:24:14.000 Has been that Israel is imposing its might on the Palestinian people.

02:24:19.000 They've created this open-air prison.

02:24:21.000 And the reason why Hamas exists in the first place is because the people feel powerless and they need something to counter this regime of the Israeli government that's controlling them and keeping them in this spot.

02:24:34.000 And they continue to encroach on Palestinian land and move their city and their people closer and closer to the point where they're going to eventually wipe out the Okay, it's crazy to think they're gonna wipe out the Palestinians. 0.52

02:24:46.000 There's been no evidence of that whatsoever.

02:24:47.000 And Israel made an offer in 2001 to give the Palestinians essentially all of the West Bank with some land swaps, because there's a lot of very populated areas in the West Bank, right?

02:24:56.000 So right now, again, not to get technical, Area A is about...

02:25:00.000 Area A is essentially...

02:25:02.000 Well, it's all Palestinians, and it's about 90% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank.

02:25:06.000 Area B is sort of jointly governed.

02:25:08.000 Area C is solely Israeli control and there are actually more Jews than Arabs living in Area C of the West Bank.

02:25:13.000 It's like 365,000 Jews, about 300,000 Arabs living in that part of the West Bank.

02:25:17.000 It's very complex.

02:25:18.000 Everything is very like right on top of each other, territorially speaking.

02:25:22.000 Israel in 2001 offered a full peace deal including shared control over the old city of Jerusalem, or at least parts of the, over East Jerusalem, I should say, not the old city, East Jerusalem.

02:25:32.000 Israel offered in 2008 a similar deal under Ehud Olmert.

02:25:36.000 Mahmoud Abbas got up and walked away from the table without a counteroffer.

02:25:39.000 Israel has multiple times offered to settle the conflict with a separate Palestinian state.

02:25:44.000 It has never materialized because the problem is that when you promise people what is promised in the actual Palestinian Authority original charter, which is the destruction of the state of Israel, havesies won't do it. 0.96

02:25:54.000 The fact is that the Palestinian Authority, which is the governing authority in the West Bank...

02:25:57.000 These are the moderates.

02:25:58.000 The Palestinian Authority is supposedly the moderates against Hamas.

02:26:00.000 It was founded in 1964. It's called the Palestine Liberation Organization.

02:26:05.000 1964, you'll notice, before 1967. In 1964, Jerusalem was under the control of the Jordanians.

02:26:11.000 The West Bank was under the control of the Jordanians.

02:26:13.000 So when you say you're going to liberate Palestine... 0.72

02:26:15.000 In 1964, you don't mean Jerusalem.

02:26:18.000 You mean Tel Aviv.

02:26:19.000 You mean Haifa, right?

02:26:20.000 You mean full Israeli cities.

02:26:22.000 So the notion that what you have here is an intractable conflict in which if Israel put down all of its guns tomorrow, there would be no Jews.

02:26:29.000 And if the Palestinians put down their guns tomorrow, there would be a Palestinian state.

02:26:33.000 This has been the state on the ground since Oslo.

02:26:36.000 So their position is that all of Israel is illegitimate because it used to be all Palestinian owned?

02:26:42.000 It used to be Islamic territory.

02:26:43.000 And that's their position that it should go back to that?

02:26:46.000 That is the position of the Palestinian, I mean, of the Palestinian Authority, that was Yasser Arafat's position, that's certainly Hamas' position.

02:26:51.000 Like, the Palestinian Authority hides the ball a little bit, Hamas does not hide the ball. 0.99

02:26:54.000 It's a fascinating conundrum because we spend so much time in America thinking about it and concerned about it, but very few people know the actual complicated details of it.

02:27:05.000 I mean, the bottom line is this.

02:27:07.000 There are civil and human rights inside of Israel.

02:27:10.000 If you are living in the Palestinian authorities, there are not.

02:27:13.000 And when it comes to the domestic rule, I'm not talking about the foreign policy, the travel, or the ability to deliver weapons in or something, which again, Israel keeps control of that because they're afraid of the terrorism.

02:27:22.000 When you're talking about domestic law inside the Gaza Strip, you're talking about a place where gay people are literally dragged around the streets on the back of ropes.

02:27:30.000 I mean, it operates more like the Islamic Republic of Iran than it does like a full functioning Western democracy.

02:27:35.000 In Israel, one of the governing parties right now in the coalition is Arab.

02:27:39.000 There are Arab judges who sit on the Israeli Supreme Court.

02:27:43.000 Arabs comprise about 20% of the entire population of Israel.

02:27:45.000 Arabic is one of the official languages of the state of Israel.

02:27:47.000 So when people talk about discrimination, what they should note is that there are well over a million Arabs who live inside the state of Israel and are Israeli citizens.

02:27:55.000 And in the Palestinian areas, where they would hope to be a Palestinian state, there are zero Jews, and there is a reason for that. 1.00

02:28:01.000 I really want to see you debate someone about this because I would love to see the counterpoints that aren't available to me that I don't understand.

02:28:07.000 I would love to see someone.

02:28:08.000 Yeah, I'd be happy to do that.

02:28:09.000 I think it would be good for everybody because I've learned a lot just here talking to you about this.

02:28:13.000 I'll take you on a visit also.

02:28:15.000 You should go with some of the- No.

02:28:17.000 You don't want to go.

02:28:18.000 It's fun.

02:28:18.000 Barry Weiss tried to get me to go too.

02:28:20.000 I'm like, listen, you Jews are always trying to get me to go to your motherland. 1.00

02:28:23.000 Settle down. 0.99

02:28:25.000 Right now you have to come to Florida.

02:28:26.000 We'll get to Florida first.

02:28:28.000 I know.

02:28:29.000 It's the motherland.

02:28:30.000 This is the motherland for barbecue.

02:28:31.000 That's about it.

02:28:33.000 You have a flight, so I know you have to leave very shortly.

02:28:36.000 Is there anything else that you feel imperative that you need to get off your chest while we're here?

02:28:41.000 No.

02:28:41.000 As long as I'm here, go buy my book, Authoritarian Moment.

02:28:44.000 Oh, you have a book.

02:28:44.000 Another one.

02:28:45.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:28:46.000 How do you have time?

02:28:46.000 One a year, man.

02:28:48.000 How do you have time to write all these books?

02:28:49.000 I write fast.

02:28:50.000 I write fast.

02:28:50.000 I also enjoy it.

02:28:51.000 You know, you said before, like, if I had free time, I wouldn't sit around on my ass. 0.99

02:28:54.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:28:55.000 It's true.

02:28:55.000 Like, if I have free time, I write.

02:28:56.000 I love writing.

02:28:57.000 So, between the time I finished that book in March and when it was released in July, I wrote a novel.

02:29:02.000 This is what I wanted to talk to you when you cover subjects.

02:29:06.000 I know you're running short on top.

02:29:07.000 But when you cover subjects that you discuss and you have these rants on your show, are you, do you write these out?

02:29:13.000 Do you write out your points and your perspectives?

02:29:15.000 Or do you just know them and then just run with it?

02:29:17.000 I mean, I know them and I run with it, but I'm constantly writing.

02:29:21.000 Right?

02:29:21.000 So, like, some of the stuff we've talked about today is stuff that I'm writing about currently.

02:29:25.000 Or certainly thinking about and reading about.

02:29:27.000 So that's why people will say, like, how long does it take to get ready for your show?

02:29:30.000 And it's like, well, there's the short answer, which is maybe an hour at night and a little bit of time in the morning.

02:29:34.000 And then there's the long answer, which is, like, all the time.

02:29:37.000 Right?

02:29:37.000 Like, just sit there, read, write, think.

02:29:40.000 Hopefully come up with something interesting.

02:29:43.000 Okay.

02:29:43.000 Well, I'm gonna let you go.

02:29:44.000 You're a good man, Ben Shapiro, and I appreciate you.

02:29:46.000 Well, it's good to have you outside of California, my friend Joe Rogan.

02:29:49.000 And don't let the horsey warmer get to you.

02:29:51.000 I won't.

02:29:52.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - November 10, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1732 - Ben Shapiro

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