The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1816 - Gad Saad

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.

00:00:12.000 You look like you've lost a large child from your body.

00:00:16.000 86 pounds.

00:00:18.000 That's right.

00:00:18.000 That's a large child.

00:00:19.000 I know that you want to take credit for it because...

00:00:22.000 Fat shaming works.

00:00:24.000 Exactly.

00:00:25.000 But I can't give you all the credit.

00:00:26.000 No, you deserve all the credit.

00:00:28.000 I didn't do anything.

00:00:30.000 So, because...

00:00:31.000 I just was concerned for your well-being.

00:00:33.000 And so I was just saying, if you really are saying that you want to get healthy and you really are saying that you want to play soccer and do all these things again...

00:00:42.000 A friend has to be brutally honest with you.

00:00:45.000 Well, that's a hard one.

00:00:47.000 That's a hard one because nobody wants to hear they're gaining weight or they've gained weight or that they have to make radical changes to their life.

00:00:52.000 I'm actually at the lowest weight since I think 88. That's incredible.

00:00:58.000 Size waist 33. How much better do you feel?

00:01:01.000 Phenomenal.

00:01:02.000 Outrageous.

00:01:03.000 Isn't it incredible?

00:01:04.000 Like if they could give you that in a pill, just the feeling, how it feels to be 86 pounds lighter?

00:01:09.000 Exactly.

00:01:09.000 Oh my god.

00:01:10.000 I mean just to give you a sense so that we could put it into metrics.

00:01:13.000 When I was overweight, our lovemaking session was only an hour and a half of vigorous sex.

00:01:18.000 Whereas now, I've doubled it.

00:01:20.000 Congratulations.

00:01:21.000 Thank you.

00:01:22.000 How do you have so much time?

00:01:23.000 It's incredible.

00:01:24.000 My wife is Lebanese.

00:01:26.000 She's spicy. 1.00

00:01:26.000 She demands a lot of me. 1.00

00:01:27.000 What did you do other than exercise?

00:01:31.000 How did you shift your diet?

00:01:33.000 So, two things.

00:01:35.000 Number one, 15 to 20,000 steps a day, no matter what.

00:01:39.000 No matter what.

00:01:40.000 So it's been almost now two and a half years that I haven't done a single day of less than 10,000 steps.

00:01:46.000 Now the steps could be treadmill, it could be walking outside, it could be running vigorously on the, you know, whatever.

00:01:52.000 It could be biking.

00:01:53.000 But I always have with me this actually...

00:01:56.000 Is it one of those pedometers?

00:01:58.000 It's one of those pedometer things.

00:01:59.000 And I'm obsessive about maintaining.

00:02:01.000 So just by having this clear objective that I have to reach makes it that no matter what, I've got to get off the proverbial couch and walk around.

00:02:11.000 It's minus 20 in Montreal.

00:02:13.000 I'm walking outside until I reach that.

00:02:15.000 Wow.

00:02:16.000 But I was always quite physically active.

00:02:18.000 Of course, much of your weight loss comes from keeping this guy closed, right?

00:02:22.000 Yeah.

00:02:23.000 That's the thing that people need to...

00:02:24.000 It's very, very, very, very difficult to exercise your way to weight loss.

00:02:29.000 Exactly.

00:02:29.000 And so what I did...

00:02:31.000 So my wife, who's here, who you've known her for many years...

00:02:34.000 She's an amazing woman.

00:02:35.000 She turned into the Diet Gestapo. 1.00

00:02:40.000 She's got this MyFitnessPal.

00:02:43.000 They're getting, I guess, free publicity on the number one show in the world.

00:02:46.000 So through MyFitnessPal, she enters, till today, every single thing that goes into this gorgeous body.

00:02:53.000 Wow.

00:02:54.000 So at the end of the day, she says, don't have any snacks.

00:02:57.000 You're at $1,727 and you were supposed to get under $1,700.

00:03:02.000 So by having that feedback loop that's always keeping you in check.

00:03:07.000 So the third thing...

00:03:09.000 I weigh myself once a week so that the autocorrective mechanism comes in not when I'm now 227 in terms of weight, but if I've come to Texas and then I go on the scale and I've gained three pounds, well, now I know that I need to correct the following week.

00:03:26.000 So these little changes, I mean, there's nothing magical.

00:03:29.000 Just doing that I guess if I can add a fourth thing, I removed the all or nothing mindset.

00:03:34.000 In the past, I mean, the highest weight I reached, Joe, can you, and you won't offend me, can you, from knowing me for many years, do you know how heavy I got?

00:03:43.000 I guess you can calculate.

00:03:44.000 Well, if I look at you now, you look like you weigh about 165 pounds, am I right?

00:03:50.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:03:50.000 I'm 170. Ah, see, I'm pretty close.

00:03:51.000 170, very good.

00:03:52.000 I'm good at weight classes.

00:03:53.000 A lot of years of calling fights.

00:03:55.000 Exactly.

00:03:57.000 And I would imagine the heaviest you got was probably close to 300 pounds.

00:04:02.000 256. Yeah.

00:04:04.000 Okay, so that's the 86 pounds.

00:04:06.000 So 256 for a guy...

00:04:08.000 That's the heaviest.

00:04:08.000 That's the heaviest that maybe I could have been more, that I'm aware of, that I've actually seen it on the scale, was 256. I had gone for my yearly physical, and I got on the scale, and I was 256, which is the average weight for a 6'4 middle linebacker who's, you know, 8 inches tall,

00:04:24.000 you know, Right, that's scary.

00:04:26.000 And so I removed the all-or-nothing mindset in that I need to lose all the weight by next Tuesday.

00:04:31.000 My mindset was, as long as every day I'm a bit better, eventually, you know, the old baby steps thing.

00:04:38.000 And so I get on, I'm now 10 pounds less, 20 pounds.

00:04:41.000 Hey, let me try to get under 200. I am.

00:04:44.000 And then bit by bit, magically, here I am.

00:04:47.000 If you have a message to anybody out there that's trying to do it, what would it be?

00:04:52.000 What's the most important thing?

00:04:54.000 It's that there are 1,000 different temptations in a day for you to violate your goal, and you can almost never fail.

00:05:03.000 You don't have to be so punishing, but 997 out of the 1,000 bifurcations in the road, you have to take the right road.

00:05:12.000 And so do that enough days, enough times, get 997 out of 1,000, And suddenly you'll be 30, 40, 50 pounds lighter.

00:05:20.000 Just trust the process.

00:05:21.000 Trust the process.

00:05:22.000 And that's what's hard for people to do because they really do want immediate results.

00:05:26.000 And the way I always describe it, there's a gambling term that you have to get better the same way you get sick.

00:05:32.000 It's like if you're gambling, say if you and I were playing pool and I was ahead 100 games and you said double or nothing, I would say, no, no, no.

00:05:39.000 You got to get better the same way you got sick.

00:05:41.000 Right.

00:05:42.000 Because I'm up 100 games.

00:05:43.000 Why would I risk losing it all in one shot?

00:05:47.000 No, no, no.

00:05:48.000 And that's how it is with weight loss.

00:05:50.000 You've got to get better the same way you got sick, slowly, over time.

00:05:54.000 And it's been now, you know, the usual thing is that you put it back on.

00:05:58.000 I've now had it off for quite a while, so I'd like to think that I'm in my steady state now.

00:06:04.000 Well, you've become aware now of the value of being thin and healthy, and you've become aware of how good you feel.

00:06:13.000 Yeah.

00:06:14.000 I don't think...

00:06:15.000 You're a smart man.

00:06:16.000 You're not going to go back.

00:06:17.000 Exactly.

00:06:17.000 Did you ever have any trouble with your weight?

00:06:19.000 I mean, I've been like 5 pounds overweight before, 10 pounds overweight before.

00:06:24.000 That's it. 1.00

00:06:24.000 Yeah, and then I always go, oh, you fat fuck, and then I lose the weight. 1.00

00:06:27.000 Now, is that because of your... 1.00

00:06:29.000 Gluttony.

00:06:31.000 No, no, no.

00:06:32.000 Why didn't you ever put on more weight?

00:06:36.000 It's not an option.

00:06:37.000 I'm not getting fat.

00:06:39.000 Is it literally a vanity issue?

00:06:41.000 No, it's a health issue.

00:06:42.000 I work out.

00:06:43.000 I do martial arts.

00:06:44.000 If I'm fat, I can't work out.

00:06:47.000 If I can, I feel it.

00:06:49.000 It's like I put sludge in my engine.

00:06:52.000 The fattest I ever got.

00:06:54.000 I think I got to 207 one time.

00:06:58.000 For me, it goes right here.

00:06:59.000 It goes on my sides and in my belly.

00:07:01.000 Also, I was eating a lot of pasta.

00:07:03.000 Which is just not for me. 0.99

00:07:05.000 Whenever I do that, I always feel like shit. 0.98

00:07:08.000 And I just overeat. 0.98

00:07:10.000 But I work out a lot.

00:07:11.000 So it keeps it in check for the most part. 1.00

00:07:13.000 But it can get away from me if I'm stupid. 0.99

00:07:16.000 Because I still eat like a teenager. 0.99

00:07:19.000 I eat as much as I want.

00:07:21.000 I eat large amounts of food.

00:07:23.000 But you do mainly the protein stuff, right?

00:07:26.000 Yes.

00:07:26.000 Mainly I eat meat.

00:07:28.000 But I eat mostly meat and fish and fruit.

00:07:32.000 That's mostly what I eat.

00:07:33.000 So I guess the fifth element of when you ask me how to lay this weight, I also removed all the carbs, almost all of it.

00:07:40.000 Once in a while, I have a bit of something.

00:07:42.000 So what is a daily meal for you like?

00:07:44.000 So breakfast, I may have one or two boiled eggs.

00:07:48.000 Lunch might be my wife and I go to the Peruvian rotisserie place that we probably go to four times in a week, which I'll get a quarter of a chicken with a bit of coleslaw, vinegary coleslaw, not creamy coleslaw.

00:08:01.000 I might have one or two snacks around mid-afternoon, which might be things like 100 grams of frozen raspberries, a little yogurt of 70 calories, and then dinner will be a fantastic salad that if you looked at the volume, you'd think,

00:08:17.000 my God, how are you losing so much weight?

00:08:18.000 But it only has five, six ounces of protein, but it's voluminous so that I feel full.

00:08:24.000 I may have another little snack at 8 o'clock, 70, 80 calories, and I've reached my 15, 16, 1700 calories, and I'm Mr. Slim Man.

00:08:35.000 Are you trying to lose more, or are you going to maintain this?

00:08:38.000 Yeah.

00:08:38.000 Because you look great.

00:08:39.000 Thank you.

00:08:39.000 That's very kind.

00:08:41.000 I just want to see a 1 and a 6. I haven't reached it.

00:08:45.000 I've gotten to 170.4.

00:08:48.000 Last time I checked, I was 171. I just need to see a steady state of 165, 167. Now, the actuarial tables, by the way, for a guy my height, they put me at 155, which strikes me as a bit...

00:09:02.000 That's pretty thin.

00:09:03.000 That's pretty thin.

00:09:04.000 Yeah, those tables, the BMI tables, they don't account for mass and weightlifting, and also you did soccer for many, many years, so you have strong legs.

00:09:13.000 Exactly, yeah.

00:09:14.000 Yeah, I think that one thing that can help you, I don't know if you've done intermittent fasting, have you tried that?

00:09:20.000 Yeah.

00:09:21.000 So what kind of window?

00:09:23.000 16-8?

00:09:24.000 I like 16. Yeah, I like 16. So I've done that for three days, just because I'm trying to recover from having gone on a trip.

00:09:33.000 But I'm guessing you're suggesting that I do it for a longer period, correct?

00:09:36.000 Well, that's what I do.

00:09:39.000 Always?

00:09:39.000 Yeah, I do 16. I mean, I occasionally violate it if I feel like it, but it's only because I know I can get away with violating it because I'm so consistent.

00:09:49.000 But that's my move.

00:09:51.000 Are you as disciplined in other aspects of your life as you are in your weight management?

00:09:56.000 I mean, certainly in your work ethic you are, but other things?

00:09:59.000 Or do your punctilious nature only manifest itself in a few domains and you're completely carefree in others?

00:10:05.000 No.

00:10:07.000 No, I can't.

00:10:09.000 This is me.

00:10:10.000 This is me with everything.

00:10:12.000 Your exact thing.

00:10:12.000 Yeah.

00:10:13.000 I mean, I take days off.

00:10:14.000 I relax.

00:10:15.000 I know how to relax.

00:10:17.000 I'm good at that.

00:10:18.000 But I think discipline is a very important thing for a person.

00:10:23.000 I think it's a very important thing to take care of the thing.

00:10:27.000 It's like not taking care of the things causes you so much more pain and anxiety than taking care of the things.

00:10:34.000 Right.

00:10:34.000 So take care of the things, no matter what it is, whether it's your body or your work or whatever you got to do.

00:10:39.000 Fucking off is not good for you. 0.97

00:10:41.000 It's like you need, if you're a professional, just do your work. 0.99

00:10:44.000 And you should be a professional with your body.

00:10:47.000 There's a great book called, I think it's called Going Pro.

00:10:52.000 It's Steven Pressfield, the same guy who wrote The War of Art.

00:10:54.000 I'm in the middle of his second book, which I don't like as much as The War of Art, but Turning Pro.

00:10:59.000 And the whole idea is about approaching your work.

00:11:03.000 Decide that you're a professional.

00:11:05.000 Show up when you're supposed to show up.

00:11:07.000 You put in the time.

00:11:08.000 And this is in regards, he's a writer.

00:11:10.000 But I think it's applicable to almost anything, whether you're a painter or, you know, like yourself, an intellectual.

00:11:16.000 You could be whatever it is.

00:11:18.000 Whether you're dealing with your physical body, whether you're dealing with hobbies.

00:11:21.000 Just do the work.

00:11:23.000 Put it in the discipline.

00:11:26.000 Yeah, I think.

00:11:45.000 It's not a priori determined, but the template is clear.

00:11:48.000 When you write a book, you're going on an open-ended journey.

00:11:51.000 I mean, you do have an outline.

00:11:53.000 You have a book prospectus of the things you want to say, but how you fill these in, you have no idea.

00:11:57.000 And so one of the things that I tell people when they write to me and say, how did you become a successful author?

00:12:02.000 Discipline.

00:12:03.000 Every single day, rain or shine, I decide that I have to write, no matter what, 300 words.

00:12:09.000 They may be great words.

00:12:10.000 They may be things that I edit.

00:12:12.000 But there is no, I'm not feeling good today.

00:12:14.000 There is no, my throat is itching.

00:12:16.000 I feel a bit down.

00:12:17.000 No matter what, I'm writing 300 words.

00:12:20.000 And so if you have that grit, I think it's a path to success.

00:12:23.000 Yeah, Pressfield talks about that very same approach and he describes the muse as like a thing that will show up when you show up, that if you show up every day with respect to the muse.

00:12:33.000 He even says a prayer to the muse.

00:12:35.000 I don't remember if he gives you the prayer, tells you what the prayer is, but he'll sit down and say a thing, like out loud, Right.

00:13:02.000 You know, there is nothing more orgasmic to me, I mean, other than sex, literally, but than the process of creation, right?

00:13:12.000 There is a day when I open the laptop where that Word document has zero syllables struck.

00:13:20.000 And 12 months later, 16 months later, there is an entire book that's written that hopefully is going to be consumed by many thousands of people, many of whom are going to send selfies.

00:13:31.000 And that process is addictive.

00:13:34.000 And so a lot of academics don't write books.

00:13:39.000 They tend to focus on the peer-reviewed scientific papers.

00:13:43.000 Well, it doesn't have to be entertaining.

00:13:44.000 That's the difference between a peer-reviewed paper and what you write.

00:13:47.000 Which, by the way, I want to give you a copy of The Parasitic Mind with an autograph.

00:13:52.000 Please don't sell it on eBay.

00:13:53.000 I will not sell it on eBay.

00:13:55.000 Thank you very much.

00:13:56.000 Cheers.

00:13:57.000 Enjoy it.

00:13:58.000 Please read it.

00:13:58.000 I think a lot of the woke stuff that you talk about is all covered in this book.

00:14:02.000 And you covered it years ago, too, by the way.

00:14:05.000 You were one of the first people to sound the alarm many years ago.

00:14:09.000 There's a real problem both in academia and the way students are interacting with ideas and the way people online were interacting with ideas and you were a long time ago saying that there was something going on with people where these these essentially mind parasites It really is what it's like.

00:14:30.000 It really is.

00:14:30.000 Because they're actually a contagion.

00:14:33.000 They spread throughout communities, and people accept them as standard.

00:14:37.000 Exactly.

00:14:38.000 And it becomes very hard to debate ideas, and it becomes very hard to talk about subjects objectively and honestly, because some things are triggering, and some things are offensive, and some things are...

00:14:51.000 It's just like they can just decide.

00:14:53.000 Like, what cannot be discussed?

00:14:56.000 Because these things are offensive.

00:14:57.000 Just like the whole idea of fatphobia.

00:15:00.000 Like, I was watching this video today, and this woman was talking about how people going on a diet, and she was saying, you don't even know yourself, but going on a diet, you're being fatphobic.

00:15:13.000 And let me break this down.

00:15:14.000 And she breaks this down with this pseudo-intellectual nonsense, because I guess she was an educator. 0.93

00:15:19.000 And so here you got this sloppy, overweight, lazy educator telling people that it's good to be lazy because if you're not lazy and if you try to become healthy, then you're a bigot. 0.99

00:15:31.000 You're a fat phobe. 0.98

00:15:33.000 Body positivity, right? 1.00

00:15:34.000 It's nonsense. 1.00

00:15:35.000 Body positivity is stupid. 1.00

00:15:37.000 We are the only time, this is the only time in this world we're living in in 2022, this era from like whatever it was, maybe 1970, 1980 on, where poor people are fat. 1.00

00:15:49.000 Right.

00:15:49.000 This is crazy.

00:15:51.000 Where it's not just wealthy people who are just sitting there getting fed grapes while they're lounging.

00:15:56.000 It's poor people.

00:15:58.000 Everybody's eating bad food.

00:15:59.000 But, you know, so earlier you asked me about how did I lose all the weight.

00:16:03.000 Well, it's a daily grind to be able to lose it.

00:16:06.000 It takes a lot of discipline.

00:16:07.000 Isn't it easier for me to construct an alternate universe that basically says...

00:16:12.000 That Joe Rogan and my physician saying that I'm overweight is going to reduce my longevity.

00:16:17.000 They're just part of the fat complex that is trying to marginalize differently-weighted people.

00:16:24.000 Yeah, differently-weighted.

00:16:25.000 You like that, huh?

00:16:26.000 I coined that trademark.

00:16:28.000 But really, from an ego-defensive perspective, it's a lot easier for me to adopt that ideology than to do the daily grind that's going to require for me to autocorrect, and therefore I buy into fat phobia and I buy into body positivity.

00:16:45.000 Yeah, the daily grind is legitimately hard, but there's support out there.

00:16:50.000 The thing that I would say to people that are on the fence, and it's easy to just decide to be body positive, and it's easy to decide to tell everyone you're beautiful no matter what, and to look at someone who's morbidly obese and say, you're amazing.

00:17:04.000 Yeah.

00:17:05.000 You're so special.

00:17:06.000 You're incredible.

00:17:07.000 It doesn't matter. 1.00

00:17:08.000 And fuck those people that say you need to lose weight. 1.00

00:17:10.000 You just need to be you. 1.00

00:17:11.000 I love you.

00:17:12.000 You're amazing.

00:17:13.000 And any man who looks at you for your beauty rather than what's on the inside is not a man that you want to be with.

00:17:20.000 Yeah, well, he doesn't want to be with you either, so I don't know what to tell you.

00:17:23.000 So if you want to just, like, call it first and say, I don't want to be with him because he judges me.

00:17:29.000 Do you remember the book The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf?

00:17:32.000 Do you know that book?

00:17:33.000 I do remember about that book.

00:17:35.000 I did not read it.

00:17:36.000 So she's kind of come around a bit because she's now been more on the rational side of the whole COVID thing.

00:17:43.000 You know, more nuanced, more tempered.

00:17:45.000 Isn't she recently suspended from Twitter? 0.99

00:17:48.000 Was she?

00:17:48.000 I didn't know that.

00:17:49.000 See if Naomi Wolf was suspended from Twitter. 0.90

00:17:52.000 I believe I might be right.

00:17:55.000 Is Jamie part of the Ministry of Truth?

00:17:58.000 Jamie's on the ball.

00:18:00.000 Don't worry about Jamie.

00:18:02.000 The Ministry of Truth?

00:18:03.000 Is that the Biden administration?

00:18:05.000 Yeah, here it is.

00:18:06.000 Look at this.

00:18:07.000 Suspends Naomi Wolf after tweeting anti-vaccine misinformation.

00:18:11.000 There you go.

00:18:12.000 Yeah, but this is on the BBC. What is the actual anti-vaccine misinformation?

00:18:16.000 What did she say?

00:18:18.000 Oh, the beauty myth.

00:18:19.000 There it is.

00:18:19.000 That's what I was going to talk about.

00:18:20.000 Yeah, this is her.

00:18:21.000 So what did she say?

00:18:22.000 She was duped into tweeting a made-up quote of an image of an American adult film star dressed up as a doctor.

00:18:29.000 Most recently, she tweeted that the urine and feces of people who had received the jab needed to be separated from general sewage supplies while tests were done to measure its impact on non-vaccinated people through drinking water.

00:18:42.000 What?

00:18:42.000 She said that?

00:18:43.000 Has she gone crazy?

00:18:44.000 I don't know about that.

00:18:47.000 She claimed that vaccines were a software platform that could receive uploads.

00:18:52.000 Jesus, Naomi.

00:18:54.000 This is what happens when you don't lose weight quick enough.

00:18:57.000 She also compared Dr. Anthony Fauci to Satan to her more than 140,000 followers.

00:19:04.000 But that's not misinformation.

00:19:04.000 That's correct.

00:19:05.000 Well, you could do that.

00:19:06.000 You're allowed to say that someone's Satan.

00:19:08.000 But you can't say that they're separating the sewage.

00:19:11.000 Like, there's some sort of a program that, like, separates vaccinated from unvaccinated poop. 0.60

00:19:17.000 Well, you've got to fill this out so we can detail which pipe your poop should be sent through.

00:19:22.000 We'll talk about the idea of Ministry of Truth if you want in a second.

00:19:25.000 But just to finish the point about the beauty myth, she had written a book in the early 1990s where she argued that women are now winning in all facets of life.

00:19:35.000 And the only place where men can still exert control over women is by promulgating the idea of a beauty myth whereby there are universal standards of beauty And so now women, even though they're not literally chained by the patriarchy, 0.94

00:19:50.000 they're chained by those expectations.

00:19:54.000 And so I had tackled that book in my first book in 2007 as a bunch of gibberish that was part of sort of the victimhood narrative.

00:20:04.000 I don't know.

00:20:05.000 Apparently she hasn't done any better recently.

00:20:07.000 She blew a fuse. 1.00

00:20:08.000 She blew a fuse. 1.00

00:20:08.000 It seems like she... 1.00

00:20:09.000 If that's all true, Jamie, see if there's anything that's more...

00:20:13.000 The BBC is very sketchy lately, especially when it comes to COVID stuff.

00:20:17.000 Maybe there's something that has a detailed depiction of why she was suspended, with the actual tweet itself.

00:20:26.000 Because I remember people were outraged on Twitter because she posted some really rational things and somebody reposted it.

00:20:34.000 She posted it somewhere else.

00:20:35.000 And they were like, she needs to be brought back.

00:20:37.000 But I don't know what it was.

00:20:39.000 It's...

00:20:41.000 The problem with beauty is that it's not fair.

00:20:44.000 That's what the problem is.

00:20:46.000 So when someone says, you know, the beauty myth, and men who want you to be held to certain standards of beauty, those men are bad people.

00:20:56.000 It's like, no.

00:20:57.000 It's a tyranny.

00:20:58.000 It's a short-lived tyranny.

00:20:59.000 A tyranny of beauty.

00:21:01.000 And it is reality.

00:21:02.000 And you know who doesn't talk like that?

00:21:04.000 Really hot women. 1.00

00:21:05.000 Exactly. 1.00

00:21:06.000 It's fucked. 1.00

00:21:07.000 They are a drug. 1.00

00:21:08.000 When you're around a truly gorgeous woman, it's stunning how people fall in line and they don't know what to do and they stumble over their words and men insult each other in sort of a joking way to try to get a one-up socially over each other in front of the woman.

00:21:27.000 It's bizarre to watch.

00:21:29.000 It's bizarre.

00:21:29.000 But here's the thing.

00:21:30.000 So to give some people who may not be gorgeous some light at the end of the tunnel, mating is a compensatory process.

00:21:38.000 What do I mean by that?

00:21:40.000 I'm not six foot four.

00:21:42.000 Height is a beautiful trait.

00:21:43.000 But I can make up for my lack of height by being charming, by being funny.

00:21:50.000 By being exceptionally good looking, which is just the genetic lottery, by having academic status and being an accomplished person.

00:21:57.000 So I can compensate for traits on which I'm lacking, in this case, physical height.

00:22:03.000 And so there are ways by which you can improve your lot on the mating market.

00:22:09.000 Men can.

00:22:11.000 So you're right that physical beauty, well, we talked earlier about being 500 pounds and somebody telling you, but people should love you the way you are.

00:22:21.000 All other things equal, any person who doesn't weigh 500 pounds and instead weighs within the normal range is going to improve their looks.

00:22:27.000 You're not going to turn into Beyonce if you don't have the facial morphology to be gorgeous.

00:22:32.000 But we can all improve even on things that seem to be immutable, no?

00:22:36.000 Well, we certainly can.

00:22:37.000 And men are certainly attracted to women's personalities and certainly attracted to their energy and how they approach life.

00:22:44.000 But the unfortunate truth about sexual attraction is it's largely a body shape and the way, the structure of the face, the geometry of the face.

00:22:59.000 Clearly, some people are repulsive because of their personality, even though they're gorgeous.

00:23:03.000 That's true, too.

00:23:04.000 But it's stunning.

00:23:06.000 I'm sure you're watching this Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial.

00:23:09.000 I watched a bit of it, yes. 0.96

00:23:11.000 There's no way a fat woman can get away with what that lady did to him. 1.00

00:23:15.000 Right? 0.97

00:23:15.000 There's no way an unattractive woman who's overweight could ever talk to Johnny Depp the way she did. 0.97

00:23:21.000 She's genetically gifted and she's got an amazing face structure. 0.99

00:23:27.000 I think at one point in time she was voted the most beautiful woman alive.

00:23:30.000 She has a perfect face.

00:23:32.000 It's kind of fading a little now because of craziness and drugs.

00:23:35.000 And she's toning down her beauty to appear as a victim. 1.00

00:23:37.000 She's not showing up.

00:23:39.000 Well, yeah, she's not dolled up.

00:23:41.000 She's not dolled up.

00:23:42.000 I mean, she's vain. 1.00

00:23:43.000 She's not gonna not wear makeup.

00:23:45.000 She's wearing makeup.

00:23:46.000 She's also been doing coke for decades. 1.00

00:23:48.000 You know, it's like that shit wears on you. 1.00

00:23:50.000 I think the melange, the combination of their two personalities was the perfect combustible, you know. 1.00

00:23:57.000 Fire, right?

00:23:59.000 I didn't follow it closely, but from what I gather, he was pathologically jealous because he's much older.

00:24:05.000 She's the super hot girl who's not very homely in her interactions with other men.

00:24:11.000 She probably can trigger jealousy in even the most secure guy. 1.00

00:24:15.000 So you take...

00:24:17.000 A rather narcissistic girl with a guy who is maybe fading in terms of his qualities as a man. 0.71

00:24:24.000 He's much older than her.

00:24:25.000 And so they feed off each other.

00:24:27.000 One of the things, for example, I love...

00:24:29.000 I've been married to my wife for 23 years.

00:24:31.000 We've been together.

00:24:32.000 I think, I hope you agree, she's a beautiful woman.

00:24:35.000 She's beautiful.

00:24:35.000 Thank you.

00:24:36.000 I know it's weird that you would pick this guy.

00:24:38.000 That's maybe my biggest accomplishment.

00:24:40.000 You're beautiful too.

00:24:40.000 Thank you.

00:24:41.000 But anyways, she's never once that I can remember triggered...

00:24:47.000 A jealousy response from me.

00:24:48.000 Not that I don't have the capacity to be jealous.

00:24:51.000 I think even the most secure of people can be true.

00:24:53.000 But it's because she has those wonderful qualities whereby we both know the code.

00:24:59.000 We never try to test each other's love by triggering each other's jealousy. 1.00

00:25:04.000 That's dark shit. 0.98

00:25:05.000 When you see that in a relationship, I mean, I've been in relationships where that happens and it's not fun. 0.99

00:25:11.000 But when...

00:25:12.000 You see that happen, you just go, this is not going to end well.

00:25:16.000 They're not going to learn. 1.00

00:25:18.000 That type of personality that does that, like one of the things in the trial, she called him an old fat ass. 1.00

00:25:24.000 There you go. 1.00

00:25:25.000 They insulted each other, and it's just like...

00:25:28.000 They're actors. 1.00

00:25:30.000 Look, they're crazy people. 1.00

00:25:32.000 That's just what it is, man. 1.00

00:25:34.000 That business...

00:25:35.000 First of all, you've got to think that the reason why someone wants to do that in the first place, the reason why someone wants that exorbitant amount of attention was they didn't get enough when they were young, almost always.

00:25:45.000 Or they obviously couldn't possibly realize the perks, and maybe that's why they do it.

00:25:50.000 But for the most part, it's someone that's making up for something that was missing in their childhood.

00:25:54.000 Then you get them in this bizarre system where you have to audition for everything.

00:26:00.000 So you have to be chosen.

00:26:02.000 So you have to bend your personality to whatever you think.

00:26:06.000 And it's not on objective metrics, right?

00:26:08.000 There isn't a clear A, B, C that would result in me being picked.

00:26:12.000 It's the vagaries of the casting director.

00:26:15.000 There's also an ideology attached to it.

00:26:17.000 You must be progressive and liberal.

00:26:19.000 You must be. 1.00

00:26:20.000 If you walk in there with a fucking Make America Great Again hat on and a Turning Point USA t-shirt, they'll kick you right out of the fucking room. 1.00

00:26:27.000 You literally won't be allowed to speak. 1.00

00:26:30.000 Right. 0.99

00:26:30.000 If you went into the average casting agent, if you were the best, if you were Daniel Day-Lewis, and he walked in with a MAGA hat on, they always thought, get the fuck out of here. 0.99

00:26:40.000 They don't want you, because there's a gatekeeper role that's a function of the casting directors and the producers and executives. 0.55

00:26:48.000 It's part of the weirdness of Hollywood.

00:26:51.000 So that accentuates the crazy in these people. 0.69

00:26:53.000 So you have crazy people, and then they're massively insecure already, and then you have them be chosen.

00:26:59.000 So then they bend their personality around.

00:27:02.000 It's like, you know, water finds its way.

00:27:05.000 You know?

00:27:05.000 You gotta figure out what do I have to do to get in?

00:27:07.000 And then, you know...

00:27:09.000 Look, I've been exposed to that.

00:27:11.000 I've been around that for decades because I've lived in Hollywood for a long time.

00:27:14.000 But now that I'm out here, I realize how much better it is to not be around that kind of a community because it shapes...

00:27:21.000 Everything around it, because you don't realize it, whether you realize it or not.

00:27:24.000 A lot of the people that are executives in these entertainment companies wanted to be actors, but they just didn't have the talent.

00:27:31.000 A lot of people were waiters.

00:27:32.000 They want to be actors.

00:27:34.000 A lot of people who have zero talent and recognize it, they want to be reality stars.

00:27:38.000 So they try to be influencers online.

00:27:40.000 So they try to do...

00:27:40.000 Like you find out one of your kid's moms is a TikTok lady.

00:27:44.000 And you're like, oh, Jesus Christ.

00:27:45.000 And she's doing TikToks and asking to take selfies with you. 0.99

00:27:48.000 And you're like...

00:27:49.000 Have any celebrities from that world entered your innermost friendship circle in your life?

00:27:56.000 Yeah, there's good ones.

00:27:57.000 There's people in that world that are very good people.

00:28:00.000 Yeah.

00:28:01.000 That are not in any way like what you would expect from like a movie star.

00:28:05.000 Like Chris Pratt is a great example.

00:28:07.000 He is the most normal.

00:28:09.000 Down-to-earth, friendly guy you could ever meet.

00:28:12.000 Oh, that's great.

00:28:13.000 He's wonderful.

00:28:14.000 He's a great guy.

00:28:15.000 I've run into him multiple times.

00:28:18.000 I've been in a hunting camp with him.

00:28:21.000 I ran into him in Lanai on the beach.

00:28:23.000 Just randomly ran into him.

00:28:25.000 I didn't know he was going to be there.

00:28:26.000 He didn't know I was going to be there.

00:28:27.000 And he was there with his, at then time, I think newlywed.

00:28:30.000 I think they had just gotten married.

00:28:31.000 And he was there on his honeymoon.

00:28:32.000 He's the best.

00:28:33.000 He's so nice.

00:28:34.000 And I'm going to make a prediction as to the number one personality trait that sorts people into the Chris Pratt's and not.

00:28:40.000 Ready?

00:28:41.000 Yes.

00:28:42.000 Authenticity.

00:28:43.000 Authenticity is certainly a factor.

00:28:46.000 Another factor is he's very religious.

00:28:50.000 So he has a core set of values and ethics and morals that he thinks are above everything else.

00:28:58.000 So, a guy like that is not going to get sucked into the Hollywood lifestyle.

00:29:03.000 Yes, very grounded.

00:29:04.000 But I've met some other people that are really cool.

00:29:06.000 I met Robert Pattinson recently, the new Batman guy. 0.98

00:29:10.000 He's fucking great. 0.97

00:29:11.000 He's a great guy. 0.99

00:29:12.000 He was so normal.

00:29:13.000 He was fun to hang out with, great sense of humor.

00:29:16.000 You know who's my fantasy interviewer on my show?

00:29:18.000 Who?

00:29:19.000 Clint Eastwood.

00:29:20.000 He's a fantastic character.

00:29:22.000 Here's another one.

00:29:23.000 His son.

00:29:24.000 His son, Scott.

00:29:25.000 Great guy.

00:29:26.000 Great guy.

00:29:27.000 But is he in the business?

00:29:28.000 Yes.

00:29:29.000 He's a famous actor.

00:29:30.000 He stars in a bunch of movies.

00:29:32.000 Scott Eastwood.

00:29:32.000 Yeah.

00:29:33.000 Should I be ashamed that I've never heard of him?

00:29:36.000 Nah, you're not young enough.

00:29:38.000 He's in, like, God, he was in that recent Guy Ritchie movie.

00:29:42.000 What was the recent movie?

00:29:44.000 He was great.

00:29:44.000 He played a bad cop in the Guy Ritchie movie.

00:29:47.000 He's in a lot of shit, man. 1.00

00:29:50.000 He's always in movies. 1.00

00:29:51.000 You know what I love about Clint Eastwood?

00:29:53.000 So my first exposure to him was as a young kid in Lebanon with the Spaghetti Westerns.

00:29:59.000 So you're five, you're six, and there's this quiet guy who's ominous, who comes in, who saves the day.

00:30:06.000 And it's playing on all of the evolutionary-based archetypes that we're programmed to respond to, right?

00:30:12.000 So I'm looking at this guy and say, I like this guy.

00:30:15.000 I want to be this guy.

00:30:16.000 And then throughout his career, as I got older and as he progressed in his career, he's become a great filmmaker.

00:30:23.000 And plus, he's not woke.

00:30:26.000 And so he just seems like the type of guy, obviously he's now quite elderly and so on.

00:30:31.000 He'd be the kind of guy that I'm sure I'm unlikely to meet him and not say, my God, what a cool guy.

00:30:37.000 He just exudes those qualities, right?

00:30:39.000 Yeah.

00:30:39.000 He seems very fun.

00:30:41.000 Yeah.

00:30:41.000 Very interesting.

00:30:42.000 I mean, look, his career has been incredible.

00:30:46.000 He was, you know, he's doing those westerns in the 1960s.

00:30:50.000 Kind of like maybe one of the last old school movie stars that is still around, right?

00:30:55.000 Well, also old school movie stars who's still working on a regular basis in his 90s.

00:31:00.000 Unbelievable.

00:31:01.000 Yeah.

00:31:01.000 And directing as well as acting.

00:31:03.000 Yeah.

00:31:04.000 Here's another one I would love to have on my show.

00:31:07.000 I don't quite have your reach, so I can only fantasize about some of these guys.

00:31:12.000 Burt Bacharach.

00:31:13.000 Do you know who that is?

00:31:14.000 No, I don't.

00:31:14.000 Burt Bacharach is arguably the biggest music composer, song composer of the 20th century.

00:31:23.000 Pop songs that were big hits in the 60s and 70s from the Carpenters, from Diane Warwick, is this, I think he's Jewish, this Jewish guy who you would never imagine could produce this kind of soul if you're going to be stereotypical.

00:31:36.000 He's now into his 90s.

00:31:37.000 Check him out.

00:31:38.000 He even sang himself with Barbra Streisand.

00:31:43.000 He just seems like one of those old school guys who you could sit with and he's going to tell you stories that are going to blow your mind.

00:31:50.000 I'm not really too much into celebrities, but if I had to pick two guys I'd like to sit down with, Clint Eastwood, Burt Bacharach.

00:31:55.000 Well, you have a great podcast, and when you move out of that communist country you're stuck in, maybe you will be able to get those people on your show.

00:32:03.000 Well, aren't you lovely?

00:32:04.000 I remember I was actually telling someone earlier this morning, I was meeting with some people from UT Austin and the president of University of Austin earlier today, and I was basically saying that Joe told me long ago when I used to do your show in California, he used to say,

00:32:20.000 Why don't you just move to California and do your podcast?

00:32:22.000 And I think I told you at the time, well, it's not quite as easy for me.

00:32:25.000 I'd have to give up my tenure.

00:32:27.000 But I think at some point, you just have to take the risk and get out of the golden cage that tenure is.

00:32:34.000 Well, it is a great cage.

00:32:36.000 But you're popular online to a point where you have this literature career.

00:32:43.000 You write.

00:32:44.000 You do your podcast.

00:32:45.000 You're...

00:32:46.000 You comment on things, and you have a very valuable perspective to a lot of people.

00:32:52.000 At some time, sometimes being connected to an institution, even though it provides you with security, and it's wonderful in terms of the benefits and guaranteed money, That can sort of hold you back.

00:33:07.000 And I don't know exactly if it is holding you back.

00:33:10.000 It is.

00:33:10.000 We can talk about that.

00:33:11.000 So first let me address the communist part.

00:33:13.000 Sure.

00:33:14.000 Five minute of venting and then we can continue.

00:33:16.000 Please do.

00:33:17.000 So last week, you know, I'm by temperament unbelievably jovial.

00:33:21.000 I wake up in the morning, I'm happy, I'm excited, I'm going to do Joe Rogan.

00:33:25.000 Then I'm doing, just life is beautiful.

00:33:27.000 Right.

00:33:27.000 A week ago, I went through a momentary depressive existential crisis on May 2nd, Monday, May 2nd, when it was the deadline to do your taxes.

00:33:40.000 So I have basically two main sources of income.

00:33:43.000 One is my professor's salary, and then the other is anything else. 0.59

00:33:47.000 Much of the anything else this past year was the parasitic mind.

00:33:51.000 The book royalties came in.

00:33:52.000 And so, you know, I don't make...

00:33:54.000 $100 million Spotify money.

00:33:56.000 So the royalties of that book are enough that, oh, now I can buy a home and retire if I wanted in Austin or Florida.

00:34:05.000 If you take that money from me, now I've got no money.

00:34:09.000 It's really that different.

00:34:11.000 So...

00:34:13.000 How impersonal the exchange was is kind of what hit me as an existential crisis.

00:34:18.000 I quietly, like a good little boy, entered my password into my bank account.

00:34:23.000 The box for Quebec government and Canadian government are ticked.

00:34:29.000 I put in a very large number in each of those two boxes that corresponds to a large majority of the book royalties that are coming from my neuronal firings.

00:34:40.000 You're not taxing me because I sell cups, which I understand that everybody doesn't want to be taxed.

00:34:45.000 But this is the most personal form of taxation.

00:34:47.000 It's a taxation of my personhood.

00:34:49.000 I'm telling you my story growing up in Lebanon, what happened to us.

00:34:53.000 I'm sharing with you my experiences as 30 years of a professor.

00:34:57.000 And the Quebec and Canadian governments say, hey, great job, Dr. Saad.

00:35:01.000 55% of the proceeds of your book are mine.

00:35:06.000 55%?

00:35:07.000 Yeah, it ends up being about 55. So there's a progressive taxation system.

00:35:11.000 And at the highest end, it gets about 53, 54. The highest rate for the federal government is 33. The highest rate at the provincial is 25. So I end up with about 58% just on the income that I made.

00:35:28.000 We didn't get into the sales tax, which is both at the provincial and federal level.

00:35:33.000 And then all the other, the property tax...

00:35:35.000 So I'm left with roughly about a third.

00:35:37.000 Now, it's not as though I discovered taxes yesterday.

00:35:40.000 I knew about taxes and I've always accepted it.

00:35:43.000 It's part of the institutionalized scam.

00:35:46.000 But when it's the money that you had taken ownership over it, because it hadn't been taxed at the source, right?

00:35:52.000 So that money had gone into my bank account.

00:35:54.000 It's there.

00:35:55.000 I'm now feeling as though I've built a little nest egg that can allow me to retire early from Concordia, to move to Austin and hang out with Joe and have my podcast here.

00:36:05.000 And then very, very coldly, in a dispassionate way, just like a Nigerian prince were speaking to me, I press two buttons and it all goes into a magic cloud. 1.00

00:36:18.000 Really hit me hard.

00:36:19.000 And I've never been someone who's interested in pecuniary things like money.

00:36:23.000 I've never cared about it.

00:36:25.000 But now I do because I do want an exit strategy.

00:36:28.000 I want to move on to the next stage of my life.

00:36:30.000 So money does matter.

00:36:32.000 So when you tax, though, my thoughts, my neuronal firings, my personal history, I can't imagine a higher form of existential rape.

00:36:41.000 I mean, let me just analogize one more thing.

00:36:44.000 When you torture someone, say, in a political prison, you will often hear the victim saying, they could torture my body as much as they want, but they could never get my mind.

00:36:54.000 Well, the Quebec and Canadian government Got my mind.

00:36:58.000 They said that the proceeds of my writing belongs to them, certainly more than it does to me.

00:37:04.000 That's insane.

00:37:06.000 That's an incredible rate of taxation, but I always knew that Canada was really high.

00:37:10.000 It used to be that Canada was high, but crime was lower.

00:37:14.000 The United States people were friendlier.

00:37:16.000 It seems like a great system because you have socialized medicine, you have some sort of a healthcare system up there, although there's a lot of complaints about that as well.

00:37:24.000 Your education system, it seems like it's more accessible to people to go to college and things like that, so you're contributing into this pile, which is fine. 0.93

00:37:33.000 But then, when you have what's a creepy fucking dictator for a prime minister, and that's what he is, the way he behaves, the way he behaved during this thing, and just the disingenuous way that he communicated, it freaked me out, 0.87

00:37:49.000 because I never thought that guy was like that. 0.97

00:37:51.000 We had a conversation a few years ago where you were sort of more positive about him.

00:37:55.000 I thought he was a handsome fellow with a good vocabulary and seems like a nice guy.

00:37:59.000 And before he really leaned into the woke stuff, I just thought he was a kind, sensitive guy.

00:38:04.000 And I was like, that's probably a good disposition to be a leader.

00:38:08.000 But just the way he labeled those truckers as racist...

00:38:15.000 For no reason.

00:38:15.000 The people that were protesting against mandates, he decided they were misogynists and racists.

00:38:21.000 Transphobic. 0.94

00:38:22.000 Yeah.

00:38:23.000 But the way he did it was just like, he just cast a pejorative label on them with no evidence.

00:38:30.000 With no provocation.

00:38:32.000 It was just like, I'm going to label them this so that I can impose laws to stop them from doing what is essentially a peaceful protest against something that- So let me tell you about the draconian measures we've had in Quebec.

00:38:45.000 Oh, I know.

00:38:47.000 You know about it.

00:38:48.000 Yeah, I have friends. 0.99

00:38:49.000 I have friends that live in Quebec and they're fucking furious. 0.97

00:38:51.000 So we still have, by the way, masks. 0.98

00:38:53.000 I think they're removing them on May 14th, right?

00:38:56.000 So the first time that I came to the US after COVID was to Texas in December, to San Antonio.

00:39:03.000 I was at a speaking engagement.

00:39:05.000 The second one was in Naples, Florida.

00:39:07.000 And having now habituated so much to being masked under the dictatorship in Quebec and in Canada, it took us a day or two for us to kind of fall into step with everybody in Florida, where I had gone to an event that Dave Rubin had invited me to the first day that I was there,

00:39:26.000 and everybody was unmasked, and yet here were the Canadians who were still masked because we had a difficult time letting it go.

00:39:36.000 Now, I don't see anybody masked here almost.

00:39:39.000 But till today, you can't go into a cafe in Montreal and not be masked.

00:39:42.000 A few months ago, we had a nighttime curfew where after 10 o'clock, you weren't allowed to walk your dog.

00:39:50.000 Yeah, there was a politician in Canada that just said the science is settled and he's going to mandate if he wins COVID vaccines for young children.

00:40:01.000 And it's going to be a part of their normal vaccination process like measles, mumps, rebellion, required vaccines.

00:40:06.000 Well, that science is not settled.

00:40:08.000 Exactly.

00:40:09.000 Not only is it not settled, there's clear evidence that it's more dangerous.

00:40:12.000 Right.

00:40:13.000 And, like, you looking at children getting COVID, it's not dangerous.

00:40:17.000 Like, if you really want the settled science, you're going to encourage people to lose weight.

00:40:20.000 Right.

00:40:21.000 Because that's the settled science.

00:40:22.000 Yeah.

00:40:22.000 The settled science is obesity is a massive factor, a massive factor, a risk factor in COVID outcomes.

00:40:29.000 Right.

00:40:30.000 Yeah, I mean, this kind of points back to what we were talking about earlier with getting Naomi Wolf off Twitter, this idea of a ministry of truth.

00:40:39.000 Look, science, as I think you well know and your listeners know, the beauty of science is that it truly is epistemologically humble and that anything that is settled in science is settled with an asterisk.

00:40:51.000 It is provisionally true.

00:40:53.000 If in a hundred years someone comes up with compelling evidence that suggests that the theory of evolution is false...

00:40:59.000 Then, with complete humility, we will go back to the drawing board, right?

00:41:03.000 So to speak of settled science is literally an epistemological attack on the scientific method.

00:41:10.000 Nothing is ever settled, even though we now have an overwhelming evidence.

00:41:15.000 I mean, short of gravity, there's no theory that is as, you know, We're good to go. 1.00

00:41:41.000 There is always room for racists, imbeciles, idiots, false spreaders to exist. 1.00

00:41:48.000 That's what it means to be true. 1.00

00:41:49.000 And I've said this a million times and I'll say it again on your show.

00:41:52.000 I'm Jewish, as you know.

00:41:53.000 There is no greater, more offensive lie that you can say than to deny the Holocaust. 0.60

00:41:58.000 There's nothing more offensive, right?

00:42:00.000 The most documented historical event that has led to the systematic eradication of a people in the most industry-level way So there's nothing more offensive than to deny it, yet I support the right of Holocaust deniers to exist.

00:42:16.000 I may not invite them on my show because I think that it is fruitless, pointless for us to debate what is in it, but they have a right to exist.

00:42:25.000 So what does it mean that someone is going to adjudicate misinformation, disinformation?

00:42:31.000 No, let the autocorrective process of debate and the scientific method decide that.

00:42:38.000 Yeah, and people should know also that your life experience was far more extreme than the average person's.

00:42:47.000 When you're saying this, you're coming from Lebanon where you literally fleed for your life, your family fleed for their lives because you're Jewish. 0.99

00:42:56.000 Exactly.

00:42:57.000 It's not as simple as I'm Jewish and denying the Holocaust is offensive to me because I'm Jewish.

00:43:03.000 No, you fleed for your life because you were Jewish. 0.98

00:43:06.000 Bingo. 1.00

00:43:06.000 And yet I support the right of those idiots. 1.00

00:43:09.000 So what greater commitment to absolute freedom of speech can you exhibit? 1.00

00:43:14.000 So I hate all this stuff.

00:43:16.000 I hate this idea that there should be hate speech laws. 1.00

00:43:18.000 You can get on the pedestal and say, Jews suck. 1.00

00:43:23.000 And you know what? 1.00

00:43:24.000 You're an idiot, but that's cool. 1.00

00:43:25.000 What you can't do is say, let's go to the corner of 7th Street and 8th Street, whatever, 8th Avenue, and kill every Jew that's at that synagogue. 1.00

00:43:34.000 So short of incitement to violence, short of defamation, everything goes. 0.97

00:43:38.000 Yes.

00:43:39.000 No, I couldn't agree with you more.

00:43:40.000 And I do also agree with you more about Holocaust deniers. 1.00

00:43:44.000 And there's a lot of people that say really ridiculous shit online. 0.97

00:43:47.000 And what we need is people that correct them and do it with a sounder argument and a more convincing argument. 0.99

00:43:54.000 And then you allow people to debate.

00:43:56.000 What people are concerned with, and I think people have this... 0.97

00:44:00.000 Naive perception about disinformation that there are people out there that are dumber than them and they'll get talked into things that aren't true. 0.95

00:44:10.000 That's what it is. 0.99

00:44:10.000 It's protecting people that are dumber than them because they're not getting sucked into it. 0.99

00:44:14.000 Say if you have a bunch of people that believe the earth is flat. 0.99

00:44:17.000 You know, who are we protecting by not allowing people to make videos about the Earth being flat? 1.00

00:44:25.000 We're protecting morons. 1.00

00:44:27.000 That's it. 1.00

00:44:28.000 Because it's not going to trick you, and it's not going to trick me, and it's not going to trick most people.

00:44:32.000 And the beautiful thing about someone coming out and saying the world is flat is that other people would say, Actually, they proved the world was around a long time ago and this is how they did it.

00:44:42.000 Not only that, we have satellites that fucking rotate around the earth and they go very specific miles per hour.

00:44:48.000 You can actually time them. 0.97

00:44:50.000 You know when they're gonna pass by.

00:44:51.000 Not only that, We've had satellites that are in space that look back and take photos of Earth. 0.98

00:44:58.000 Not only that, every fucking planet is round. 0.93

00:45:02.000 So the likelihood that Earth is this weird flat thing that's shaped like a Frisbee, while everything is round like a ball, doesn't make any sense, does it? 0.98

00:45:12.000 No.

00:45:12.000 Well, that's what the process of spreading correct information to counteract this information looks like.

00:45:19.000 The problem is, we have these...

00:45:32.000 Yeah.

00:45:33.000 Yeah.

00:45:34.000 Yeah.

00:45:40.000 That this thing, this machine of spreading information and also this process of picking a new person every four years, it gives people this sense of urgency, that they have to stop information immediately, right now, which is what led people to make sure that the Hunter Biden story,

00:46:00.000 the laptop story, was removed from Twitter, which is pure insanity.

00:46:05.000 Insane.

00:46:06.000 Pure insanity, because it's a 100% legitimate story.

00:46:08.000 It's now been substantiated.

00:46:10.000 It's now being openly discussed in the New York Times and the Washington Post and all these other liberal newspapers.

00:46:15.000 They wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole before the election for fear that Donald Trump was going to get elected again.

00:46:21.000 So, through their own fear of this process of truth, that their truth wasn't going to be convincing enough, they decided to censor fact and news and real information. 0.99

00:46:35.000 And they did it for the good of the people that were too dumb. 0.97

00:46:40.000 Look, those people are not going to vote for Donald Trump. 0.97

00:46:45.000 If you look at the hardcore left people in this country, they're not going to vote for Donald Trump just because Hunter Biden is corrupt, and just because it appears that Joe Biden is corrupt as well, and that they were getting bribes from Ukraine, and he did have a job that he was completely unqualified for, and it was paying an exorbitant amount of money,

00:47:01.000 and he was smoking crack. 0.99

00:47:02.000 And was a sex addict. 0.99

00:47:06.000 Maybe. 0.99

00:47:07.000 Maybe just likes to party.

00:47:09.000 I don't know.

00:47:10.000 But the point is, this is all real information that was pertinent to our understanding of who Joe Biden is and who his son is and what kind of business dealings were they involved in.

00:47:21.000 And shouldn't this demand an examination?

00:47:24.000 But they wanted Trump out so bad, they decided to censor. 0.99

00:47:27.000 Well, this is a fucking slippery slope. 1.00

00:47:30.000 A terrible slippery slope. 0.99

00:47:32.000 So let me give you the academic analysis of what you just said.

00:47:36.000 So in ethical systems, there are two systems of ethics.

00:47:41.000 There's what's called consequentialism, right?

00:47:43.000 So is it okay for me to lie?

00:47:46.000 Well, it depends if the consequences of that lie protect someone's feelings.

00:47:51.000 So for example, if my spouse says, do I look fat in those jeans?

00:47:55.000 Then I better put on my consequentialist hat really quickly and say, my God, you've never looked better, sweetie, right?

00:48:01.000 Therefore, in this case, the consequences of the lie are noble, and therefore it's okay to do it.

00:48:07.000 Deontological ethics operates in the absolute realm.

00:48:12.000 It is never okay to lie.

00:48:14.000 Now, the reality is, for most things in life, we typically are consequentialists, and that's fine.

00:48:19.000 But when it comes to the truth or foundational principles, Then you should be completely deontological.

00:48:26.000 So let me give you an example.

00:48:27.000 We both know someone who's been on this show, who maybe remains a friend of yours, less so of mine for reasons that are unrelated to me, who violated deontological ethics when he went on Twitter and...

00:48:43.000 He celebrated the fact that Jack Dorsey had taken out Donald Trump's Twitter account.

00:48:51.000 Not that it's literally Jack Dorsey, but he had kind of tagged him.

00:48:55.000 Thank you, Jack, for doing this.

00:48:56.000 So what did he do there?

00:48:58.000 He was a consequentialist.

00:49:00.000 He violated a deontological principle which says that you never violate a freedom of speech thing.

00:49:07.000 But in his case, Orange Himmler is so dangerous That if I have to violate this deontological principle only for this one time, then it is worth doing it.

00:49:19.000 It's not unlike Brett Kavanaugh, right? 0.79

00:49:21.000 What people said, well, sure, he may technically not be a gang rapist when he was 16 going up and down the East Board, raping every single woman in sight.

00:49:30.000 But the presumption of innocence here doesn't apply because this isn't a court case.

00:49:35.000 It's only a job interview.

00:49:37.000 So let's not grant him that courtesy of presumption of innocence because it's too dangerous to have a guy.

00:49:45.000 So that's where all of those cases come from.

00:49:48.000 When it comes to truth, when it comes to foundational principles, be deontological.

00:49:54.000 For all other things, be a consequentialist.

00:49:56.000 Yes, and it's so important for the dissemination of information.

00:50:00.000 It's so important for our collective understanding of what's true and what's not true.

00:50:05.000 And when you violate that, and as soon as you make these decisions based on ideological principles rather than based on the true desire to understand objectively the facts,

00:50:21.000 And that's where we find ourselves today, which is grossly highlighted and exaggerated by social media because these echo chambers that people get in and then they seek approval and they seek validity from all these other people that share the same ideology and then they all support each other and they virtual signal to each other and then you develop these bizarre Like,

00:50:45.000 groups of humans, like, I love following certain people just because I know they're going to tweet ridiculous shit, and then I can go into their little hive mind and look at all these people in their echo chamber agreeing with them. 0.66

00:50:57.000 And I'm like, this is crazy. 0.99

00:50:59.000 Right.

00:50:59.000 But it's so, it's so fat, and some of it is of things like fatphobia.

00:51:03.000 Yeah.

00:51:03.000 And some of it is things like men can get pregnant, like that kind of stuff.

00:51:06.000 Yeah.

00:51:06.000 It's like, it's crazy.

00:51:07.000 Like, if you had told me that there was going to be a pregnant man emoji on my iPhone just five years ago, I would have told you to get the fuck Do you remember, I don't know if I've ever said this story on this show, but I think even if I have, it's worth repeating. 0.98

00:51:20.000 It's something that I discuss in the parasitic mind. 0.97

00:51:22.000 Did I ever tell you this story with my interaction with a woman with whom I had a battle about men getting pregnant? 0.53

00:51:28.000 I don't believe so, no.

00:51:29.000 Let me tell you this.

00:51:30.000 So this, of all idea pathogens that I discuss in the book, the granddaddy So social constructivism is an idea pathogen.

00:51:38.000 Biophobia, the fear of using biology to explain human affairs, is a pathogen.

00:51:43.000 Cultural relativism is a pathogen.

00:51:45.000 Identity politics, right?

00:51:47.000 So postmodernism is the granddaddy of all idea pathogens because it removes the most fundamental epistemological premise of reality, which is that there are universal truths that we can regularly count on.

00:52:00.000 That's the whole premise of science.

00:52:01.000 There are natural laws that we're trying to discover.

00:52:04.000 Postmodernism says there is no absolute truth.

00:52:06.000 Everything is shackled by subjectivity, by personal biases, by relativism.

00:52:10.000 So in 2002, one of my doctoral students had just defended his PhD.

00:52:16.000 So he calls me and says, you know, or maybe I've called him, whatever, let's go out to dinner to celebrate.

00:52:22.000 So it was myself, my wife, we didn't have kids then, 2002, 20 years ago.

00:52:28.000 This is going to speak about your emoji with the pregnant man. 0.80

00:52:32.000 So it's myself, my wife, him, and he's bringing along a date, a female date. 0.98

00:52:39.000 He calls me up to say, I just want to give you a heads up that my date for the evening is a graduate student in postmodernism, women's studies, and cultural anthropology, to which I answered, ah, the holy trinity of bullshit. 0.98

00:52:55.000 LAUGHTER And then I said, okay, I get what you're saying. 0.97

00:53:00.000 You want me to be on my best behavior.

00:53:01.000 This is about you.

00:53:02.000 We're celebrating you.

00:53:03.000 So mom's the word.

00:53:05.000 You can count on me.

00:53:06.000 I'm going to be good.

00:53:06.000 Of course, it was a complete lie.

00:53:09.000 About halfway through the evening, I turned to the lady in question and I said, you're a postmodernist graduate student. 0.97

00:53:16.000 Yes?

00:53:16.000 Yes.

00:53:17.000 Do you mind?

00:53:18.000 I mean, I'm an evolutionist, evolutionist psychologist, so I do think there are, for example, human universals that we can rely on. 0.95

00:53:24.000 Do you mind if I propose a universal and then you can tell me how I'm an imbecile? 0.96

00:53:29.000 She said, go for it. 0.97

00:53:31.000 I said, is it not true that within Homo sapiens only women bear children? 0.99

00:53:37.000 Is that not a universal? 1.00

00:53:39.000 So she looked at me kind of baffled by my stupidity and said, absolutely not. 0.99

00:53:43.000 I said, no, how is that? 0.99

00:53:45.000 So she said, well, there is some Japanese tribe off some Japanese island whereby within their folkloric mythological realm, it is the men who bear children.

00:53:55.000 And so by you restricting it to the biological realm, that's how you keep us, you know, barefoot and pregnant.

00:54:02.000 Mythological?

00:54:03.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:04.000 Wow.

00:54:05.000 Once I recovered from the mini-stroke... 0.98

00:54:08.000 Having been exposed to her imbecility, I said, okay, well, let me take an example that's perhaps not quite as corrosive and as contentious as only women bear children. 1.00

00:54:20.000 I realized that was too dangerous ground. 0.97

00:54:22.000 Is it not true that since time immemorial, sailors have relied on the premise that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west?

00:54:30.000 Is that not true?

00:54:32.000 So there she used a variant strain of postmodernism called deconstructionism.

00:54:38.000 And the founder is Jacques Derrida, who basically says that there is no reality outside of language.

00:54:45.000 Language creates reality.

00:54:47.000 So there she deconstructed She said, what do you mean by east and west?

00:54:51.000 And what do you mean by the sun?

00:54:54.000 That which you call the sun, I might call dancing hyena.

00:54:58.000 I said, well, fine.

00:54:58.000 The dancing hyena rises in the east and sets in the west.

00:55:01.000 And then I see your perplexed face, but that's postmodernism.

00:55:06.000 So she said, I don't play label games.

00:55:08.000 And that ended the conversation.

00:55:10.000 Oh, my God.

00:55:10.000 How is this guy dating her?

00:55:12.000 Are they married with children now?

00:55:13.000 No, they're not.

00:55:14.000 They're not.

00:55:14.000 I don't think it lasted much longer.

00:55:16.000 Exactly.

00:55:17.000 So bad.

00:55:17.000 Exactly.

00:55:18.000 Wouldn't you like to interview her again?

00:55:19.000 I would.

00:55:20.000 20 years later?

00:55:21.000 You know, and I wonder, by the way, if...

00:55:22.000 Because I've told this story on a few occasions, it's in the book. 1.00

00:55:26.000 I've always fantasized about whether she read that story and says, what an idiot I was. 1.00

00:55:32.000 Or whether she reads that story and says, what an idiot he is. 1.00

00:55:36.000 He's never come around to seeing the truth. 1.00

00:55:38.000 Well, she was in her 20s, right?

00:55:39.000 She must have been in her 20s.

00:55:40.000 And now she's in her 40s.

00:55:41.000 So maybe she's a Republican. 0.97

00:55:43.000 Yeah.

00:55:43.000 Maybe she got red-pilled.

00:55:45.000 That happens a lot.

00:55:46.000 Well, that was in Canada, by the way.

00:55:48.000 Yes, but I mean, whatever you have, whatever your version of that is.

00:55:51.000 Conservatives.

00:55:52.000 What's your conservative?

00:55:53.000 So it would have been Harper, the last prime minister who was conservative.

00:55:56.000 Right, but what is your party, the Conservative Party?

00:55:59.000 The Conservative Party.

00:56:00.000 Oh, it's just the Conservative Party.

00:56:02.000 And then there's the Liberal Party and there's the NDP. Those are the three main ones.

00:56:06.000 Well, at least you have three.

00:56:08.000 Yeah, we don't have a two-part institution.

00:56:10.000 We have a joke.

00:56:11.000 But the point, I mean, just to wrap up that story, she wasn't an escapee from a mental institution.

00:56:17.000 She was a graduate student in postmodernism.

00:56:20.000 Maybe you can't tell the difference between these two.

00:56:21.000 But she wasn't an outlier.

00:56:23.000 She was just aping what you learn if you're a graduate student in postmodernism.

00:56:28.000 So what's the goal?

00:56:29.000 It's staggering, right?

00:56:31.000 It doesn't...

00:56:32.000 People often think that when I attack some of those disciplines, it's because I'm placing a value judgment on sociology or on art history.

00:56:40.000 I'm not.

00:56:41.000 I think you can study all those things in a very rational, in a very enlightened way that can enrich the human spirit.

00:56:48.000 What you can't do is to be so parasitized by idea pathogens That it becomes a form of intellectual terrorism.

00:56:56.000 It becomes a form of nihilism.

00:56:58.000 Up is down, left is right.

00:56:59.000 So I could have predicted the whole men can get pregnant from that story from 20 years ago. 0.99

00:57:03.000 It's pretty incredible that she was willing to deny east, west, north, and south.

00:57:09.000 And the sun!

00:57:10.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:57:11.000 Well, we have a fucking compass, okay? 0.99

00:57:14.000 As far as what is East and what is West. 0.99

00:57:17.000 What is hot and what is cold?

00:57:18.000 You deny those labels?

00:57:20.000 If you ask for tea and they give you an ice cube, are you cool with that? 1.00

00:57:23.000 What the fuck are you talking about? 0.99

00:57:25.000 Listen, I come from a background in mathematics before I got into the behavioral sciences. 1.00

00:57:29.000 There is no field that is as axiomatically free of your identity bullshit than mathematics. 0.98

00:57:37.000 The distribution of prime numbers is the distribution of prime numbers whether you're Latinx or transgender or two-spirited, right? 0.98

00:57:44.000 Now, about five, six years ago, on my show, I did one of my satirical pieces where I donned a social justice warrior wig with red coloring because, of course, it shows that I'm ideologically fierce if I have blue-haired color or red-haired color.

00:58:01.000 And I facetiously stated that I was introducing, coining a new field called social justice mathematics.

00:58:09.000 We don't say the word irrational numbers because that marginalizes mental illness.

00:58:13.000 I just went through the whole litany of mathematics.

00:58:16.000 Five, six years later, my prophetic satire catches up.

00:58:21.000 I mean, reality catches up.

00:58:23.000 So now we have math is white supremacy.

00:58:26.000 So why is it that I'm able...

00:58:29.000 It's not because I'm a prophet. 1.00

00:58:30.000 It's because I have the ability To look for the stupidity where it is and then extrapolate how far you can take that stupidity. 0.99

00:58:40.000 That's what I satirize and then I wait with my arms folded until reality catches up to my satire. 1.00

00:58:45.000 It's insane.

00:58:46.000 It is insane and I don't know where it's going.

00:58:49.000 Do you have any predictions about five years from now?

00:58:52.000 Is there any satire that you have thought about releasing on the world?

00:58:58.000 Not that I could think off the top of my head, but for example, I have another series of satirical clips where I do the hiding under the desk.

00:59:06.000 Have you ever seen any of those?

00:59:08.000 Hiding under the desk?

00:59:09.000 Why?

00:59:11.000 I remember once you very kindly said that you really appreciated that the professor of my standing could be such a regular guy and joke around and so on.

00:59:22.000 So what I do is I mock the hysteria of the woke people by releasing clips where I'm hiding under the desk because I'm so fearful.

00:59:31.000 So for example, Donald Trump is inaugurated.

00:59:35.000 I hide and I literally do it I don't know if my acting is very good, but I pretend that I'm so fearful because I'm satirizing the insane hysteria.

00:59:45.000 So for example, when he was inaugurated, on my personal Facebook page, you'd have endless professors saying, well, I'm a woman of color.

00:59:55.000 Will I be able to still go safely on campus now that he's been elected?

00:59:59.000 Well, what do you think?

01:00:00.000 There's going to be militia roadblocks where they veer the women of color to gang rape centers? 1.00

01:00:06.000 Like, what kind of hysterical response is that?

01:00:09.000 I mean, you don't like Donald Trump?

01:00:10.000 Fine.

01:00:11.000 But it's not going to lead to the eradication of professors of color.

01:00:15.000 And so I have a whole series of clips where I feign hysterical fear hiding under the desk.

01:00:22.000 The most recent one might have been, or one of the recent ones, I think you'll enjoy the story, So my wife and I go to a cafe every morning after a one-hour walk.

01:00:34.000 The barista that was serving her looked like a transgender person. 1.00

01:00:39.000 So she came to me as we were waiting for our order to be delivered to us.

01:00:44.000 And she said, you know, I felt quite...

01:00:46.000 I didn't want to make an error in how I was addressing the person because, you know, I didn't know should I... And so I put out a tweet that was meant to be a testimony to how sensitive and kind and empathetic my wife is, that she was very, very concerned to not get the address wrong.

01:01:04.000 It was meant to be something aligned with the pronoun Taliban, right?

01:01:09.000 But it turns out, about 28 million tweet impressions later over two days, All egged by Valerie Bertinelli, because somehow she's an ally to the LGBT community,

01:01:25.000 so she came after me.

01:01:27.000 Anyways, it doesn't matter.

01:01:28.000 Valerie Bertinelli, the lady that used to be married to Eddie Van Halen?

01:01:31.000 Exactly.

01:01:32.000 Exactly.

01:01:33.000 You can probably go find all the tweets.

01:01:35.000 They're still up there.

01:01:36.000 So then...

01:01:37.000 I'm a little lost here.

01:01:39.000 What is she upset at?

01:01:42.000 She couldn't have said, hello, may I have a coffee without using pronouns?

01:01:47.000 Is she mentally ill that she doesn't know how to address someone without a pronoun use? 0.98

01:01:52.000 But there was... 0.87

01:01:53.000 I explained then what happened.

01:01:55.000 There was a colleague of the barista who my wife turned to that colleague to say... 0.91

01:02:01.000 Because it was the first day that the transgender person was working and was having a hard time with the cash register. 0.60

01:02:06.000 So she wanted to say, oh, it's only his first day.

01:02:09.000 He'll get the hang of it.

01:02:10.000 So there was a need to use a pronoun, right?

01:02:13.000 It was her first, but she didn't know.

01:02:15.000 So she didn't want to presume that this female presenting person was her.

01:02:19.000 Maybe that will offend her.

01:02:20.000 She didn't want to use the...

01:02:23.000 And so it was a very innocent thing.

01:02:27.000 And so I tweeted about it as a measure of how lovely my wife is, that she was so concerned.

01:02:33.000 So, I mean, literally millions of tweets of hate.

01:02:37.000 Now, of course, if I were Drew Brees, I would have gone on the record apologizing for having exhibited patriotism towards the flag, and I didn't know that the U.S. flag hurt some of my colleagues.

01:02:50.000 I'm a honey badger.

01:02:51.000 I don't apologize to anybody.

01:02:53.000 But what I did is I released a satirical under the desk clip where I said that all of the stuff that I faced in the Lebanese civil war from Islamic extremists is nothing as scary as the pronoun Taliban.

01:03:08.000 That got them more angry.

01:03:10.000 And I just kept egging them on and on till they went away.

01:03:13.000 So lesson is life lesson. 1.00

01:03:16.000 Never apologize to the assholes. 0.99

01:03:18.000 But that seems like you have a lot of free time. 1.00

01:03:21.000 You're willing to engage with those people all day long like that.

01:03:23.000 You know what it is?

01:03:24.000 It's a pressure valve release for me.

01:03:26.000 Yeah?

01:03:27.000 I always do these things with a sardonic smile and a twinkle in my eyes.

01:03:32.000 I just enjoy it.

01:03:33.000 Now, sometimes I'm too busy and I don't do it.

01:03:35.000 Plus, I'm combative in that if you attack me, I'm going to attack you and anybody who's ever known you.

01:03:43.000 It's just part of my temperament.

01:03:45.000 So it's not a question of I have free time or not.

01:03:47.000 It's just I can't walk away from a fight.

01:03:50.000 Well, I don't know if that's healthy either.

01:03:52.000 It's not.

01:03:53.000 And I've tried to modulate that by being less on social media.

01:03:57.000 But this pronoun thing is so strange.

01:03:59.000 I never would have imagined that gender would be such a hot topic.

01:04:03.000 I mean, there's always been, you know, look, go back to Rocky Horror Picture Show.

01:04:09.000 It was transvestites back then. 1.00

01:04:13.000 And then transvestites somewhere along the line, you heard transsexual now. 0.80

01:04:20.000 And then transsexual became a new thing. 0.99

01:04:22.000 And it's like, okay, now people are transsexual. 0.98

01:04:24.000 And then you had drag queens, which were not necessarily transsexual.

01:04:29.000 Sometimes it's people that just have some erotic connection or some fantasy connection with dressing up like a woman.

01:04:37.000 Sometimes they were heterosexual men, and they just liked to dress occasionally like women.

01:04:41.000 But then somewhere along the line, it became like a major fixation for culture.

01:04:48.000 The pronoun thing.

01:04:50.000 And putting your pronouns in your bio.

01:04:52.000 Like grown men with beards. 0.83

01:04:54.000 Say he, him. 1.00

01:04:56.000 Like what the fuck do you think you are? 1.00

01:04:57.000 Every single professor I know on LinkedIn has to put it. 1.00

01:05:01.000 That's insane.

01:05:02.000 I talked to a professor about that, and he said, I reluctantly put it in my bio because if I don't, I'll be attacked for it. 0.99

01:05:08.000 The day that you see me putting it on my thing, send out one of your security guys to put a bullet in my head. 0.97

01:05:14.000 No, I'll send them back to kidnap you and take you to Texas. 1.00

01:05:18.000 We don't have to do that here.

01:05:19.000 But even places like Austin is very progressive.

01:05:22.000 It's probably the most progressive place in Texas.

01:05:26.000 Where would you put it in the continuum of wokeness compared to, say, the Mecca of Portland, Oregon?

01:05:32.000 Not close.

01:05:33.000 Not close at all.

01:05:34.000 So still way ahead?

01:05:35.000 Way, way, way more normal.

01:05:37.000 It's tolerant, which is beautiful.

01:05:39.000 I like tolerance.

01:05:40.000 Look, I don't have any problem with someone who has gender dysphoria.

01:05:46.000 I wish that everyone was happy.

01:05:50.000 I wish everyone, whatever clothes you wear, whatever name you like, whatever...

01:05:55.000 Identity you choose, it doesn't bother me.

01:05:59.000 What bothers me is when you enforce it on other people and then you promote it.

01:06:05.000 And then you make it seem as if it's more...

01:06:09.000 For young kids, I've had conversations with kids that are in high school, and one kid was like, it's not just tolerated, it's preferred and rewarded and you're looked down on if you're heterosexual.

01:06:24.000 Like, he has friends that are queer, and he has friends that are... 1.00

01:06:27.000 This is...

01:06:28.000 One of the things we were talking about, he was saying that there's people that just claim non-binary.

01:06:34.000 Yeah.

01:06:34.000 And you can get away with non-binary and still have sex with girls and date girls, but you just call yourself non-binary, and you can say, I'm a they-them.

01:06:41.000 And as long as you don't dress with, like, tank tops and, you know, fucking yoga shorts... 0.99

01:06:47.000 And so where it's really obvious you're male, you can get away with it. 0.99

01:06:52.000 It was the weirdest conversation because I was like, what is it like in school these days?

01:06:56.000 And he was like, man, I know so many trans people.

01:07:00.000 And I go, are they really trans? 1.00

01:07:01.000 He goes, I don't know.

01:07:02.000 He goes, some of them are being trendy for sure.

01:07:05.000 And a lot of them, it's girls that they didn't fit in before. 1.00

01:07:08.000 Perhaps they have...

01:07:11.000 They're awkward socially or whatever, and then they decide to be either non-binary or trans, or they don't want to specify, or they come up with some other gender, or they're pansexual is another one, which is like,

01:07:27.000 I guess you're attracted to everybody.

01:07:28.000 To everything, yeah.

01:07:29.000 Yeah, but just...

01:07:30.000 So that speaks, by the way, to the earlier point where we talked about deontological ethics versus consequentialism.

01:07:35.000 Look, both you and I, I think, are very socially liberal.

01:07:39.000 So I support transgender rights in the strongest of ways.

01:07:43.000 Everybody should live free of bigotry and so on.

01:07:54.000 Right.

01:07:56.000 Right.

01:08:11.000 When it becomes a problem is that in the service of that goal, we end up creating the premise that men and women are interchangeable, indistinguishable, that all differences between men and women must be due to social construction and other idea pathogen.

01:08:28.000 So we're murdering truth for a higher noble goal.

01:08:32.000 No, I never cede one millimeter of truth for any goal.

01:08:37.000 I have to be deontological in the defense of truth.

01:08:39.000 Well, that's very brave of you in your line of work because that's not something that is common in professors.

01:08:46.000 No.

01:08:46.000 Professors, they give in to, for the most part, they give in to the will of the crowd.

01:08:53.000 And it's very strange.

01:08:55.000 You know, I've made the following analogy.

01:08:57.000 When we choose Navy SEALs, we're choosing them based on certain traits.

01:09:03.000 They have to be courageous.

01:09:04.000 They have to be physically fit.

01:09:06.000 They have to have bravery.

01:09:07.000 So imagine if we were to choose our professors in a way that we're not only choosing them based on their IQ, but on intellectual Navy SEAL-ness, if you'd like.

01:09:17.000 I mean, on Navy SEAL-ness and their intellectual courage, right?

01:09:21.000 Yes.

01:09:22.000 But we don't pick people.

01:09:23.000 As a matter of fact, most professors are invertebrate castrated individuals. 0.99

01:09:29.000 So they don't have a spine, nor do they have testicles. 0.99

01:09:32.000 Irrespective of whether they're male or female. 0.97

01:09:34.000 So they may have all the intelligence in the world.

01:09:37.000 As a matter of fact, all of these parasitic ideas originally were spawned by professors. 0.99

01:09:42.000 So being intelligent and educated does not inoculate you against stupidity, since many of the ones who originated those ideas are the anointed professors. 0.99

01:09:52.000 What they don't have is intellectual courage. 0.97

01:09:55.000 And so actually on this trip that I'm meeting you here, I've met some folks that are associated with University of Texas, Austin, and now the new University of Austin, that not only do we share intellectual affinity, but more importantly, we share intellectual courage metrics.

01:10:14.000 That's what is required to change the system.

01:10:17.000 You know, history is not shaped by fence-sitters. 0.99

01:10:20.000 It takes bold people, intellectually bold people, and we certainly don't choose our professors based on that trait.

01:10:26.000 No, I think that's a great point, that intellectual courage should be a requirement, and that it should be something that we celebrate and cherish and reward people for, based on an objective analysis of truth.

01:10:41.000 Exactly.

01:10:42.000 Because there are facts.

01:10:43.000 There are some things.

01:10:44.000 And like you said, saying that someone who's a biological male cannot bear children is just a fact. 1.00

01:10:54.000 It's just a fact.

01:10:54.000 And if you deny that, that's cowardice.

01:10:58.000 You're just scared of the crowd. 0.88

01:11:01.000 You're not denying that it takes a double X chromosome and a womb and eggs, and eggs fertilized by sperm inside this viable womb in order for you to conceive and ultimately give birth to a child out of your vagina. 0.89

01:11:16.000 But no, they're teaching people...

01:11:18.000 There was a story about a university that is... 1.00

01:11:23.000 Facetiously teaching people how a biological man would give birth out of his penis. 1.00

01:11:29.000 I've heard about that. 1.00

01:11:30.000 Yeah, this is fucking insanity. 1.00

01:11:32.000 This is the ultimate cowardice, the ultimate intellectual cowardice. 1.00

01:11:37.000 Because they're so terrified of the madness of the crowds, as Douglas Murray would put it, that they're literally saying, well, when a man gets pregnant, the baby must come out of his penis. 0.99

01:11:48.000 Are you teaching people this? 1.00

01:11:50.000 Like, you're out of your mind!

01:11:51.000 It's unbelievable.

01:11:52.000 But this weird place that we find ourselves in where truth is not as important as adhering to these ideological principles that are clearly inaccurate.

01:12:03.000 But the reason why they're parasitized in this way is because they're trying to adhere to a higher noble goal, which is Don't hurt someone's feeling.

01:12:13.000 Don't attack their personhood.

01:12:16.000 Celebrate their personhood.

01:12:17.000 So again, we go back to consequentialism.

01:12:19.000 If I have to murder truth so that I appear empathetic and loving and accepting of all people, goodbye truth, it was nice knowing you.

01:12:28.000 That's wrong.

01:12:29.000 I can chew gum and walk at the same time.

01:12:32.000 I could be very socially conscious, as I think I can speak for both of us, but I am a dogged defender of the truth, and I will never concede an inch of the truth in the pursuit of not hurting your feelings.

01:12:44.000 I remember one time on a previous show, and I actually took that quote in this book, where you said, but if you pursue forbidden knowledge in your research and it hurts someone's feelings, what then?

01:12:55.000 Do you remember what I answered you?

01:12:56.000 I don't remember what you said. 1.00

01:12:58.000 I said, well, fuck your feelings, right? 1.00

01:13:01.000 Yeah, your feelings are... 1.00

01:13:03.000 That's the problem.

01:13:04.000 There's a lot of people that get offended by things very easily, and if we start catering to them, we're not going to get anything done.

01:13:11.000 There's people that get offended by alarm clocks. 0.99

01:13:13.000 They don't want to have to be somewhere on time, because they're offended by the idea that they don't need as much rest as you do, or you need less rest than that, whatever the fuck it is. 0.93

01:13:23.000 The point is that anything can fall into that category as something that hurts your feelings. 0.59

01:13:29.000 If you have more money than the next person, that could hurt their feelings.

01:13:33.000 You should have less money, and we should have even distribution of income.

01:13:38.000 It's called Quebec.

01:13:39.000 Yeah, well, yeah.

01:13:40.000 Well, that's the dangers of quality of outcome, right?

01:13:44.000 I mean, that's literally communism.

01:13:46.000 That's how it gets going.

01:13:48.000 So let me apply what you just said in the context of, you know, when you do research in a university, you first have to send it to an institutional review board or an ethics board, right?

01:13:59.000 That ensures that the research that you will do adheres to certain ethical principles, right?

01:14:05.000 Mm-hmm.

01:14:05.000 So now let me give you the historical background to this and then tell you how insane it has become.

01:14:11.000 So in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which has been referred to as sort of the golden era of social psychology, you could damage a person's sense of self in the pursuit of science, but there was no ethical oversight over that because it was for the betterment of science.

01:14:30.000 So let me give you an example of that.

01:14:33.000 Suppose I bring you into the lab.

01:14:34.000 This is, let's say, in the 1960s.

01:14:36.000 I'm going to do what's called a false feedback paradigm.

01:14:38.000 I'm going to ask you to do an IQ test, and I'm going to falsely give you one of two experimental conditions.

01:14:46.000 I'm going to say, hey, Joe, you scored in the 99th percentile of the most intelligent people, and then I'm going to see how you solve a math problem based on this glowing feedback.

01:14:56.000 Or I'm going to say, oh, Joe, based on this IQ test, you basically score lower than a newborn pigeon.

01:15:05.000 Oh, okay, never mind.

01:15:06.000 Let's move on to the math test, right?

01:15:09.000 So I'm giving you false feedback, either glowing or not, and then I'm seeing how it affects your performance on some subsequent task.

01:15:15.000 Well, now, after you finish the experiment, I debrief you, right?

01:15:20.000 I say, actually, it was wrong.

01:15:22.000 It was false.

01:15:23.000 I just randomly put you in this condition.

01:15:25.000 We didn't even do an IQ test.

01:15:27.000 Now, this, by the more recent standards of ethics, which is still fine, would be considered unethical because even if I now tell you I was not truly giving you an IQ test, You'll walk away not knowing for sure whether what I just said is untrue,

01:15:44.000 right? 0.98

01:15:45.000 So did he now tell me that I'm not a newborn pigeon because he's just trying to assuage my feelings, but I truly am dumb as a doorknob?

01:15:53.000 So it made sense that at some point we erected some ethical mechanisms to make sure that people were not damaged.

01:16:00.000 But now we've taken that to your earlier point.

01:16:04.000 To such an extreme whereby I can't ask you, are you male or female?

01:16:09.000 I have to have a 740 page list of all the different possibilities.

01:16:13.000 I can't ask you about your cultural background because I'm going to offend you. 1.00

01:16:19.000 I can't ask you about your income because that marginalizes maybe some people who don't have good income.

01:16:24.000 So basically, I can't ask you anything on an experimental study or a survey because there is no way by which there isn't going to be some road by which some participant may or may not be offended. 0.88

01:16:35.000 So now when I go through these ethical review processes, that's probably the thing that causes me more stress than actually conducting the study because I know I have to jump through 900 hoops before some moron says, okay, you're now cleared to do your studies. 0.73

01:16:51.000 And it seems like the academic world rewards this sort of intellectual cowardice. 0.98

01:16:57.000 Like, if you comply, then you're a part of this group, you're a part of this system, and you're allowed to continue spreading bullshit and getting a check for it. 0.64

01:17:08.000 And then your new coming group, your incoming students from the 2023 year and 2024 year of the freshman class, they're going to be more extreme. 0.62

01:17:18.000 With each year, they're going to get more things are going to be on the list of offensive topics, offensive answers, offensive reactions.

01:17:27.000 And it makes me wonder where this is going because this is accelerating.

01:17:31.000 This is not slowing down.

01:17:32.000 And even though there's a lot of people like yourself and myself who are older who realize how preposterous this is, the young people don't.

01:17:40.000 And they seem to think that not only is this better, that it's required in order to make the world a better place.

01:17:48.000 So here's some optimism along those lines.

01:17:51.000 I'm hearing from a lot of teachers, meaning teachers at the high school level and so on, who write to me and say, my latest batch of students strike me as being less woke than previous generations,

01:18:07.000 as if now the fulcrum is starting to shift.

01:18:09.000 So I don't have incontestable empirical evidence, but I'm increasingly hearing that we've kind of reached the singularity, peak wokeness.

01:18:19.000 What do you think is causing this shift back?

01:18:22.000 It might be that there's been some people who've been fighting this, and now they're getting bigger platforms, so things are changing.

01:18:28.000 It might be that more...

01:18:29.000 I mean, take, for example, someone, and I'm happy to use this platform to give him a kudos, Christopher Ruffo.

01:18:35.000 Do you know who that is?

01:18:36.000 I know his name.

01:18:37.000 So Christopher Ruffo is a guy who came out of nowhere, was a journalist, who became the kind of central repository of all things anti-critical race theory.

01:18:48.000 He's a journalist.

01:18:49.000 And now he has spearheaded.

01:18:52.000 It was a serendipitous thing.

01:18:55.000 He had never planned on being an anti-CRT activist, but through the serendipity of life, he has become sort of the honey badger of anti-CRT. And now there's all kinds of battles that are being won by parents who are finding their spine,

01:19:10.000 who are going to these school board meetings, who are saying, I'm tired of this bullshit, right? 0.97

01:19:15.000 And so it doesn't take much for people to be ignited and find their courage. 0.96

01:19:20.000 And so I'm getting the sense, again, this is just from the trench that I'm, you know, the reports that I'm getting, that more and more people are now willing to speak out.

01:19:29.000 It's a domino effect, right?

01:19:31.000 This one speaks out, so I speak out.

01:19:32.000 And so my feeling is that if we're able to ignite the silent majority into speaking, as you know, The blue-haired Taliban are a minority. 0.86

01:19:42.000 It's not as though there is millions of them on every campus.

01:19:45.000 They're just very vocal, very committed.

01:19:48.000 They have the ear of the administration.

01:19:50.000 So very few committed people can keep the rest of us in check.

01:19:54.000 Most people are not on board with all that nonsense.

01:19:57.000 And I receive millions of emails that attest to that.

01:20:00.000 Well, we see that, I'm sorry, but we see that with Disney, the stock crushing.

01:20:04.000 I think so.

01:20:05.000 With Netflix, their stock crushing.

01:20:06.000 So there's all kinds of little evidence that's coming out to suggest that we might have reached peak wokeness and we're going to, you know, there are now a lot of institutions that are trying to position themselves as a bit less woke.

01:20:20.000 And, you know, the University of Chicago Declaration, the Princeton...

01:20:25.000 So my feeling is maybe I'm being too optimistic.

01:20:28.000 I think we've reached the maximum of the parasitic infestation and may reason rain again.

01:20:34.000 Well, may reason reign again and may debate take place again, too.

01:20:38.000 Let's let opposing sides discuss things.

01:20:41.000 You know, come up with a champion for your left-wing idea and allow that champion to debate someone from the right.

01:20:48.000 And then if the person from the right wins, do better.

01:20:53.000 Come back with a better argument.

01:20:54.000 Let's do it again.

01:20:55.000 And maybe you're wrong.

01:20:56.000 Maybe it turns out that this guy's going to convince you of certain things.

01:20:59.000 Or maybe he's wrong.

01:21:00.000 Maybe you're going to convince the audience of things.

01:21:03.000 When I was a child, when I was in high school, Barney Frank, who was a liberal in Massachusetts, was debating someone from the moral majority.

01:21:12.000 And the moral majority was like this- He was the first openly gay congressman.

01:21:18.000 He wasn't openly gay at the time.

01:21:19.000 Oh, I see.

01:21:20.000 Yeah, he is now, and he was the first openly gay, but at the time he was not open.

01:21:26.000 So anyway, Barney Frank, who's this brilliant man in my high school, is debating this guy, and I found it fascinating because I got a chance to see two different perspectives, and Barney Frank was just much better. 0.98

01:21:40.000 He was just more rational, more well-read, and the other guy was sort of this cookie-cutter, rah-rah, conservative, God, liberty, justice for all, that kind of shit.

01:21:51.000 He was reading off of a playbook, whereas Barney Frank had a much more nuanced and much more convincing perspective, and it was great. 0.95

01:22:00.000 It was great because me and all these other kids that were 14, 15 years old got to sit in this class and watch these two people debate.

01:22:08.000 Now today you can't have that.

01:22:09.000 You can't have that. 0.77

01:22:11.000 The other guy who thinks that abortion is against God and that homosexuality should be outlawed, and that was like one of his perspectives, his anti-homosexual perspective, which was ironic because Barney Frank is gay, but nobody knew that.

01:22:23.000 But when that all took place, it was very beneficial.

01:22:29.000 To watch it play out.

01:22:30.000 And the crowd let it all play out.

01:22:32.000 There was claps when people did well.

01:22:34.000 But you're watching this intellectual discourse.

01:22:38.000 You're watching a sparring match.

01:22:40.000 And Barney Frank was the more skilled at that.

01:22:44.000 And that's how it's supposed to go.

01:22:47.000 That's what's beneficial for everybody watching.

01:22:50.000 And beyond the philosophical arguments for why we should have open debate, let's link it to your personal reality.

01:22:57.000 The Joe Rogan show is in large part popular, other than your infinite charisma and so on, is because of...

01:23:06.000 I'm undoubtedly sure that you score very high on the open-mindedness trait, right?

01:23:12.000 And it is that open-mindedness that created this, quote, safe space of deferring ideas.

01:23:18.000 That's what resonates with people.

01:23:19.000 Today you can bring Gad Saad, and tomorrow you can bring someone who is completely anti-Gad Saad, and you'd have a great conversation with both, and people reward you for that with a big Spotify deal.

01:23:32.000 So there are even very concrete, earthly, non-philosophical reasons to be Open-minded.

01:23:39.000 It results in...

01:23:40.000 I guess, though.

01:23:41.000 You can't fake that, though, I don't think.

01:23:42.000 I think it would come out eventually.

01:23:44.000 But you know what's interesting to me is that when I have progressive people on the podcast, I get no pushback at all.

01:23:51.000 From them or from the audience, you mean?

01:23:53.000 From the right.

01:23:54.000 From the right.

01:23:55.000 Now, when I have someone from the right on, whether it's Dan Crenshaw or Ben Shapiro, I get accused of being a fake left-wing person, a fake progressive. 0.99

01:24:04.000 I get all this hate and you moved to Texas and you became a fucking, you're red state and all. 0.97

01:24:10.000 It's only he's captured by the right. 0.99

01:24:13.000 He doesn't even realize it.

01:24:14.000 It's hilarious.

01:24:15.000 The mental gymnastics people will go through, even if I argue with them, even if I have them on and I don't agree with what they're saying about many things.

01:24:23.000 Which oftentimes is the case.

01:24:25.000 It does not matter.

01:24:27.000 The tolerance level from the left has evaporated.

01:24:31.000 So I've got a theory for this.

01:24:32.000 It's actually in my, forgive the shameless plug, my next, my next, this is not this book.

01:24:37.000 This is the next book.

01:24:38.000 The next book which I'm just finishing wrapping up.

01:24:41.000 It's tentatively titled A Recipe for the Good Life.

01:24:44.000 And so I look at all different metrics that have been studied relating to well-being and happiness and I infuse it with personal anecdotes.

01:24:51.000 So at one point I talk about, does political ideology affect your well-being and your happiness?

01:24:58.000 And so I look at the literature and a lot of the literature finds that conservatives score higher on happiness, to your point, score higher on happiness and well-being as compared to the liberals.

01:25:10.000 And so I was trying to...

01:25:11.000 I'll tell you why.

01:25:12.000 So you go ahead and then I'll tell you my reason.

01:25:14.000 The liberals are unhappy that the conservatives exist.

01:25:17.000 So how can they be happy?

01:25:18.000 Right.

01:25:18.000 So I'm going to add to what you just said.

01:25:21.000 The conservative, at the root of the word conservative and the etymology, is to conserve, right?

01:25:26.000 So there's a set of...

01:25:31.000 I think?

01:25:45.000 Is looking for the magical utopia, unicornia that's around the corner. 0.99

01:25:51.000 The current world sucks. 0.98

01:25:52.000 I need to burn it down so that I can start fresh. 0.98

01:25:56.000 And so I think that's why you get the deferring venom from the two.

01:25:59.000 The conservative is happy with the status quo.

01:26:03.000 The blue-haired Taliban wants to burn it down.

01:26:06.000 This is interesting because conservationists, a lot of them tend to be liberal.

01:26:10.000 It's true.

01:26:11.000 They're trying to conserve nature.

01:26:12.000 Yeah.

01:26:13.000 Well, cognitive consistency is not a hallmark of the left, unfortunately.

01:26:16.000 But conservationists who also participate in outdoor activities like hunting and fishing tend to be more Republican.

01:26:23.000 On the right.

01:26:24.000 That's right.

01:26:24.000 Yeah.

01:26:24.000 It's interesting.

01:26:26.000 And they really are conservationists because they actually contribute financially.

01:26:29.000 The vast majority of the money that goes to wildlife habitat conservation, that goes to wildlife biologists, it goes to making sure the populations of wild animals are healthy, vast majority comes from hunters.

01:26:43.000 Is that true?

01:26:44.000 Billions of dollars.

01:26:45.000 Anecdotally?

01:26:46.000 Yes.

01:26:47.000 No, the real data.

01:26:48.000 Yeah, the Pittman-Robertson Act.

01:26:50.000 It's an act that was created that...

01:26:52.000 So it's not just hunters, it's also gun owners.

01:26:55.000 So people who buy ammunition, firearms, people who are just gun enthusiasts who never hunt, they contribute...

01:27:02.000 Find out what the exact amount is.

01:27:05.000 I believe it's 10%.

01:27:06.000 So 10% of this act goes to conservation of wildlife habitat.

01:27:12.000 It goes to setting up these structures to make sure that these wetlands are preserved for migrating birds and all these animals that require certain populations in order to be healthy.

01:27:26.000 They'll either import new animals into these areas.

01:27:29.000 Or they will cull some of them so they'll increase the amount of tags that are available.

01:27:35.000 All that is paid for by hunters.

01:27:38.000 By hunters.

01:27:39.000 By people that are trying to shoot the animals and eat them.

01:27:43.000 Do we know what is the ratio of avowed Republicans to Democrats who are hunters?

01:27:51.000 It's staggering.

01:27:54.000 90, 10?

01:27:55.000 It's probably somewhere in that range.

01:27:56.000 Wow.

01:27:57.000 Yeah.

01:27:57.000 I would like to know.

01:27:59.000 I wonder if anybody's ever done that study.

01:28:01.000 It has to be.

01:28:01.000 The ones that I meet- Are all Republican.

01:28:04.000 It's like 80%.

01:28:06.000 Right.

01:28:07.000 There's a few that are liberal that become concerned with regenerative farming, and then some of them become vegetarians, but their body doesn't go well with it.

01:28:19.000 It's like they have problems with their health.

01:28:22.000 And so then they reluctantly start reintroducing meat, but they want to do it in an ethical manner.

01:28:27.000 So then they start hunting.

01:28:29.000 That's happened to quite a few friends that I have that are liberal, but that do hunt.

01:28:34.000 But most of them are conservative.

01:28:36.000 Very interesting.

01:28:37.000 Yeah.

01:28:43.000 Republicans to Democrats, certainly within academia, and as you can imagine, it's overwhelmingly tilted to the left, depending on the discipline.

01:28:51.000 And some disciplines could be 120 to 0, the ratio.

01:28:55.000 I mean, literally not a single Republican.

01:28:57.000 What is the discipline where it's more balanced?

01:28:59.000 What's the most balanced?

01:29:00.000 So the most balanced in this particular study I have in mind, which is probably the most exhaustive one that's been done, engineering was 1.6 to 1. Now, 1.6 to 1 is actually very lopsided according to the metrics of stats.

01:29:14.000 You know, I mean, there's something called the odds ratio when you're calculating the efficacy of a drug.

01:29:18.000 If you get 1.2 to 1, that means the drug is effective.

01:29:20.000 It's 20% more effective.

01:29:22.000 So 1.6 to 1 is already quite lopsided.

01:29:25.000 That's the least.

01:29:26.000 You start getting into 5 to 1, 10 to 1, 15 to 1, 30 to 1. And then as you get into the more activist fields, it turns into 60 to 1, 120 to 0. So again, it's not that there is anything inherently less scientific about sociology.

01:29:43.000 Sociology could be as scientific as physics.

01:29:45.000 The problem is that sociology is more prone to be parasitized by ideology, whereas physics is less prone.

01:29:53.000 So the pursuit of these disciplines either makes them more amenable to adhere to the scientific method or less.

01:30:01.000 So oftentimes people, again, to go to an earlier point, people think that I am denigrating sociology as a lesser than.

01:30:07.000 No.

01:30:08.000 As a matter of fact, it's probably harder to study social systems involving human beings than to study the chemical structure of a particular compound in chemistry that is a lot more deterministic.

01:30:20.000 So there is nothing unscientific about the endeavor of sociology.

01:30:24.000 What makes it unscientific is that it doesn't adhere to the scientific method.

01:30:28.000 It becomes an activist field rather than a scientific field. 0.98

01:30:32.000 So if we can get rid of the activism and leave it out of the university, we'll get rid of a lot of this bullshit.

01:30:37.000 It's just stunning for a person who's not an academic to see so much intellectual, ideological capture that's involved in so many of these disciplines. 0.54

01:30:46.000 The Pittman-Robertson Act, did you Google that?

01:30:49.000 Like with the pretendants?

01:30:49.000 It's 10% for handguns, 11% for long guns and ammo.

01:30:52.000 Yeah, so that's a large amount of money.

01:30:55.000 And how much money does it generate per year?

01:30:57.000 7 billion.

01:30:58.000 In the 76 years since its inception, over $7 billion has been collected from manufacturers and has been made available to states, including over $106 million in Mississippi, this partnership of hunters and sport shooters with firearms and ammunition.

01:31:11.000 By far, America's largest contributor to wildlife conservation and public access to our natural resources.

01:31:18.000 Now, isn't that...

01:31:19.000 So if you were to ask people their perceptions of which of the two parties is more committed to environmentalists, I'm willing to bet that almost everybody would say it's the Democrats, right?

01:31:29.000 Occasional Cortex AOC is someone who, you know...

01:31:33.000 Occasional Cortex!

01:31:34.000 And by the way, someone told me that...

01:31:36.000 That Michael Savage uses it.

01:31:38.000 And that pissed me off because they were saying, oh, you stole it from him.

01:31:42.000 I only found out independently that he uses it.

01:31:45.000 So I wanted to give him the kudos.

01:31:48.000 But I came up with that joke.

01:31:49.000 I studied the brain.

01:31:50.000 Occasional cortex.

01:31:52.000 So occasional cortex.

01:31:53.000 I'll go to war with you on that one.

01:31:54.000 Aren't you sweet?

01:31:57.000 So I'm maladaptively honest to a fault, so I would never do that.

01:32:02.000 So occasional cortex is the linchpin, right?

01:32:06.000 She's the new Green Deal, right? 0.98

01:32:08.000 So I'm willing to bet that even Republicans would probably not know of this, don't you think?

01:32:14.000 A lot, no.

01:32:15.000 The ones that hunt, no.

01:32:17.000 What percentage of hunters are Republican versus Democrat?

01:32:20.000 I was trying to find that out.

01:32:21.000 I couldn't get accurate data.

01:32:24.000 I found a poll of a thousand hunters, and they were answering other questions that didn't say, like, I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat.

01:32:31.000 I bet it's sociologists, but the other way.

01:32:34.000 So earlier I was saying about the distribution of Democrats to Republicans in academia, but I found a study that was looking at within medicine.

01:32:44.000 So you are an anesthesiologist, you are a surgeon, you are a psychiatrist, you are a dermatologist.

01:32:52.000 Does the likelihood of you being Republican or Democrat change across disciplines of medicine?

01:32:59.000 And there are profound differences.

01:33:02.000 I thought that was fascinating.

01:33:03.000 This is not my study.

01:33:04.000 It was someone else's study.

01:33:05.000 So psychiatry, pediatrics scored very, very high on the left.

01:33:15.000 Orthopedic surgeons scored Oh, and infectious disease also scored very high on the left, which we might presume from some of the COVID interventions.

01:33:24.000 Orthopedic surgeons were a lot more right.

01:33:27.000 Isn't that interesting?

01:33:28.000 Well, it's a structure thing, right?

01:33:30.000 Like there's no room for funny business and shenanigans and mandates when it comes to fixing your knee.

01:33:36.000 Fixing Achilles tendon, exactly.

01:33:38.000 Yeah, it's just like this is what it is.

01:33:39.000 I bet military, very high on the right.

01:33:43.000 On the right, exactly.

01:33:43.000 Very high on the right.

01:33:44.000 Well, the thing about hunting in particular that I think leads it to be very high, it's not just the use of guns, which is of course that alone, just firearm laws and regulations, like the people on the left overwhelmingly want to restrict those because it's part of the ideology.

01:34:03.000 But it's also the hard work.

01:34:05.000 Hunting is very difficult, especially mountain hunting.

01:34:08.000 I would imagine that the people that do elk hunting and the people that do the real high mountain stuff, it's overwhelmingly conservative people. 0.99

01:34:17.000 It's fucking hard, man. 0.98

01:34:18.000 There's no equity in hunting. 1.00

01:34:22.000 You have to fucking put in the work. 0.99

01:34:25.000 And if you're a part of a hunting party and everybody only eats if you do your work, you know, you can't say, you know, you're being fat phobic. 0.99

01:34:33.000 Like, no, you have to get up and fucking go. 0.93

01:34:36.000 And if you're 100 pounds overweight, people are going to look at you like you're a problem for the rest of the tribe. 0.98

01:34:41.000 The fact that we have gotten to a place where there's so much comfort and so much leisure time and people are so protected and insulated by the overwhelming amount of resources that we have that you can make that argument that it's okay to be fat and it's okay to be body positivity.

01:35:02.000 That only exists because of excess.

01:35:05.000 Forgive me, I don't mean to be psychoanalytic on you, but your disdain for obesity has come across in many of, at least our chats.

01:35:15.000 Is it because you ascribe a particular trait to someone who is willing to let themselves go that is kind of a personal injury to your sense of...

01:35:27.000 I'm afraid of seeing it in myself.

01:35:29.000 One of the things that people are upset at something they see in other people, it's things that they would never want to see in themselves.

01:35:40.000 I don't like liars because I'd never want to see myself lying.

01:35:43.000 I don't like people that are weak.

01:35:45.000 I don't like people that just give up.

01:35:47.000 Drives me crazy.

01:35:49.000 Right.

01:35:49.000 Because I don't ever want to see that in myself.

01:35:52.000 That's the thing I fear the most.

01:35:54.000 So what is obesity?

01:35:56.000 It's like, are you blind?

01:35:58.000 Do you not recognize that you've done something horrible to your body?

01:36:01.000 Of course you know.

01:36:02.000 Right.

01:36:02.000 You've just chosen that it's too difficult to act and do something.

01:36:07.000 But I have a slow thyroid.

01:36:08.000 Oh, me too.

01:36:10.000 Really, I have hypothyroidism.

01:36:11.000 Do you?

01:36:12.000 Okay.

01:36:12.000 I was being facetious about that.

01:36:14.000 No, I really do.

01:36:14.000 Okay.

01:36:14.000 Yeah, it doesn't matter.

01:36:15.000 Yeah.

01:36:15.000 Yeah, when I found out about it, I had 8% body fat.

01:36:18.000 Yeah.

01:36:19.000 Wow. 0.99

01:36:19.000 I was fucking ripped. 0.99

01:36:20.000 And I was still, I was like, why am I getting headaches? 0.99

01:36:22.000 And the doctor's like, you have a hard time losing weight?

01:36:25.000 I'm like, no.

01:36:26.000 And he was like, you have hypothyroidism.

01:36:29.000 It's, what's it called?

01:36:31.000 Hashimoto's disease.

01:36:32.000 Wow.

01:36:32.000 Yeah.

01:36:33.000 And so they prescribed thyroid medication, but it just stuck.

01:36:36.000 Because at nighttime, I would get these vicious headaches.

01:36:39.000 And I would go to sleep like I got shot with a tranquilizer dart.

01:36:42.000 I was so tired.

01:36:43.000 But my willpower and my discipline is what kept me working out.

01:36:48.000 I don't know if I was 8% body fat.

01:36:49.000 I might have been 10. But I had a six pack.

01:36:51.000 I was ripped.

01:36:52.000 And so they're like, this is unusual.

01:36:54.000 Usually people who have hypothyroidism, they gain weight.

01:36:58.000 But I just worked out all the time.

01:37:00.000 I just made sure I worked out, period.

01:37:02.000 I didn't use it as an excuse.

01:37:04.000 People that use that as an excuse, I'm tired all the time when I exercise. 0.98

01:37:09.000 I still fucking do it. 0.81

01:37:11.000 I just make myself do it. 0.98

01:37:13.000 That's a possibility.

01:37:15.000 That's a choice.

01:37:15.000 But do you enjoy it?

01:37:16.000 Because I enjoy exercising.

01:37:18.000 Yes.

01:37:18.000 It's not a chore for me to do it.

01:37:21.000 Well, clearly when you get healthier, you're enjoying it even more because you're seeing the fruits of your labor.

01:37:24.000 But also, once you get going, once your body starts sweating, effort feels good.

01:37:30.000 Especially when you do it and then you have those breaks in between sets where you get to take some deep breaths.

01:37:36.000 And you realize, all right, I did these things that I thought were really difficult to do.

01:37:40.000 Like if I said, I'm going to do 50 burpees, and I do 50 burpees.

01:37:42.000 Like, you did it!

01:37:44.000 And that little reward for hard work and for effort, that's very important for people. 0.97

01:37:49.000 And especially in this world that we live in, where we have these bodies that were designed to run away from predators and fend off invaders, and they don't get any fucking use at all. 0.94

01:37:58.000 You just sit down at a chair.

01:38:00.000 And when you do that, you get depressed and you feel that anxiety, like, gee, I wonder why.

01:38:05.000 When people tell me they're anxious, oh, I have anxiety, I have anxiety, okay, do you also have exercise?

01:38:11.000 You don't have exercise.

01:38:12.000 Well, what a coincidence.

01:38:13.000 You don't have exercise.

01:38:15.000 And then the thing that you get when you don't exercise is prevalent, which is anxiety.

01:38:21.000 Exercise.

01:38:22.000 Rigorous, hardcore exercise is clinically proven to be better than SSRIs for dealing with depression.

01:38:29.000 They've shown better results for anxiety for people who exercise vigorously than almost anything. 0.98

01:38:36.000 Other than like just fucking hardcore benzodiazepines, which are very difficult to kick.

01:38:41.000 I'm going to share this probably for the first time ever publicly, and I'm doing it on the biggest forum in the world. 0.94

01:38:47.000 Last year in July, I was driving to go get the roti 3 Peruvian chicken with my wife and kids.

01:38:56.000 I had absolutely no sense of doom or anxiety or stress, and I got out of the blue what turned out to be a panic attack.

01:39:06.000 I'd never, ever had this.

01:39:08.000 I've never...

01:39:09.000 You know, I'm an intense person, but I'm very mellow.

01:39:11.000 First time in your life.

01:39:12.000 First time.

01:39:13.000 So I had had a few times where I felt kind of an anxiety rush.

01:39:18.000 I think it started when I was getting, in 2017, a lot of death threats that required for me to have security and so on.

01:39:26.000 So that's the first time that I felt kind of this whoosh.

01:39:29.000 But it was totally manageable.

01:39:30.000 I've never experienced anything.

01:39:32.000 And so we were driving and I told my wife, I feel like I have to stop.

01:39:37.000 My heart is really beating fast.

01:39:39.000 I started getting tingles in my fingers.

01:39:42.000 I said, am I getting a stroke?

01:39:44.000 Am I getting a heart attack?

01:39:46.000 And so we went to the hospital and very quickly they said, you know, it's a panic attack, which I haven't, I've never had a recurrence of it.

01:39:56.000 I can't explain why I had it that time and I haven't had it other times.

01:39:59.000 It turns out, by the way, that the attending physician, when we were...

01:40:02.000 I said, you know...

01:40:04.000 Because I'm always worried.

01:40:05.000 I mean, you would feel it more than I do.

01:40:07.000 You're a public figure.

01:40:11.000 I'm known.

01:40:11.000 And he goes, I know who you are when I saw the name that I was...

01:40:14.000 Right?

01:40:14.000 And then he kind of told me, you know, maybe you need to mellow out and not be so...

01:40:18.000 You know, he gave me the usual stuff.

01:40:19.000 But I'm saying all this because...

01:40:23.000 As I felt other times this kind of rush coming that might lead to that, what would help me is to right away start exercising.

01:40:31.000 Yes.

01:40:32.000 And when I would exercise, it's as if like a gag reflex.

01:40:36.000 You know when if sometimes you're nauseous, you're nervous, if you gag, it releases it.

01:40:40.000 So exerting the physical pressure that's pent up in you, then my wife would say, how do you feel?

01:40:46.000 I say, oh, I feel great.

01:40:47.000 I'm fine.

01:40:48.000 So I think I have anecdotal evidence to support what you're saying.

01:40:51.000 Yeah, I think most people do that have experienced that, that have had these bad feelings, then exercise and felt good afterwards.

01:40:58.000 It's the release of endorphins.

01:40:59.000 I mean, it's all science.

01:41:00.000 They know what happens to the body when you exercise.

01:41:04.000 Exertion feels good.

01:41:05.000 There's something very valuable.

01:41:06.000 And if someone's overweight and you're saying, well, I can't run, I can't exercise vigorously, you don't have to.

01:41:11.000 You can just walk.

01:41:12.000 Just go walk.

01:41:13.000 Especially if you're overweight, I would encourage you to just walk.

01:41:15.000 You don't have to do something that hard.

01:41:18.000 Now, what I'm about to say next is completely speculative because I've often tried to introspect as to, you know, what caused that particular episode.

01:41:27.000 And it kind of relates back to our earlier comment about, you know, how I lost weight.

01:41:31.000 So something that I suffered from, not in a clinical sense, but I'm very health anxious in that, you know, because I'm punctilious, because I'm perfectionist, I always worried is something looming in the background.

01:41:44.000 And of course, once I'm overweight...

01:41:47.000 It's a lot more looming in the back, and it could be around the corner, right?

01:41:51.000 And so, as I was losing weight, but I had never gone to see a physician for several years, I was always ruminating about the possibility that once I see my physician for the first time in three years since I last got my checkup,

01:42:06.000 could there be something that ends the party that I'm on?

01:42:10.000 Could there be a result, right?

01:42:12.000 And as we were driving to go to get the chicken, And again, I'm speculating, but it makes sense.

01:42:19.000 I saw a bus sign ad in the back of the bus, like city bus, that said, you know, could you recognize the signs of a stroke if it's happening?

01:42:31.000 And so I think I literally internalized it, got the panic attack.

01:42:40.000 By putting it to myself, developed the symptoms of a panic attack that mimic these kinds of things.

01:42:48.000 And I said, that's it.

01:42:49.000 I'm about to die in front of my chill.

01:42:51.000 And it just gets worse and worse and worse, right?

01:42:54.000 So for anybody who's listening out there, there is hope that you could never have it again.

01:42:59.000 But when you do have it, it is a surreal feeling.

01:43:02.000 Well, I will speculate as well, and I think that completely makes sense, and also I think it makes sense that you finally doing something about your health and losing weight makes you also anxious about the fact that it took you so long to do it, and what kind of damage have you done in the process?

01:43:17.000 Because when you were 86 pounds heavier, which is so crazy for me to say, I can't believe you were actually 86 pounds heavier, but that's how you were when I met you.

01:43:26.000 That is It's terrible for your body.

01:43:29.000 It is.

01:43:29.000 Your body carrying around all that extra tissue, it's the worst.

01:43:35.000 It's not my disdain for people that are overweight.

01:43:38.000 I have love for everybody, and I certainly have love for people that are overweight.

01:43:42.000 I have a lot of friends that are morbidly obese.

01:43:44.000 I have friends that are comedians.

01:43:46.000 One of your comedians who always appears, I don't know his name.

01:43:48.000 Joey Diaz?

01:43:49.000 Yeah.

01:43:49.000 Yeah, Joey's lost quite a bit of weight.

01:43:51.000 Oh, good.

01:43:51.000 Yeah, he lost quite a bit of weight during the pandemic.

01:43:53.000 He was really worried about it.

01:43:55.000 You're setting us straight one guest at a time.

01:43:58.000 I try, man.

01:43:59.000 I come off mean sometimes, because I'm mean to me.

01:44:05.000 If I'm mean to me about stuff like that, I'm mean to my friends.

01:44:12.000 And sometimes they don't want to hear it, and I'm like, okay.

01:44:15.000 Okay, but I'm just telling you.

01:44:16.000 You know, it's so funny you said this because I didn't, not to be charitable, but a lot of people got upset when you had fat shamed me.

01:44:22.000 And I think my wife and I were talking and I said, you know what?

01:44:25.000 How about I look at it this way?

01:44:26.000 If he didn't care, he wouldn't have said that stuff. 0.99

01:44:29.000 No, I've had a lot of fat people and never said a fucking word to them. 0.99

01:44:31.000 I love you. 0.99

01:44:33.000 I want you to be healthy and wealthy.

01:44:35.000 And I'm happy that you are now.

01:44:36.000 I'm really happy.

01:44:37.000 It's beautiful.

01:44:38.000 And I've been following it very closely.

01:44:40.000 I follow you on social media.

01:44:41.000 You sent me one such a Nice message.

01:44:43.000 I'm seeing you on those.

01:44:45.000 That really made my day.

01:44:46.000 That was so beautiful.

01:44:47.000 Thank you.

01:44:47.000 Well, it made my day to see you thrive.

01:44:49.000 It really makes me happy.

01:44:51.000 Thank you.

01:44:51.000 It makes me happy because I know how hard it is.

01:44:53.000 It's very hard to change your lifestyle.

01:44:55.000 It's very hard to change habits because we get ingrained in these patterns in our head, whether they're good or bad.

01:44:59.000 And one of the things that I could say, like people say, oh, it must be hard for you to exercise every day.

01:45:04.000 I'd be like, I don't think it's not.

01:45:07.000 Nah, it's not really.

01:45:08.000 No, it's hard when you haven't been exercising to start.

01:45:11.000 Once you have momentum, it's not that hard.

01:45:14.000 It's like when people say, Joey Diaz said this, Joey's a very wise man, and one of the things he said about stand-up comedy, he said, it's the hardest, easiest thing you'll ever do.

01:45:23.000 Because when he's on, when that guy's on, he, in my opinion, is the funniest guy that's ever lived.

01:45:28.000 And when he's on, I've seen a lot of great comedians, and like, you know, there's great, great comedians that are live today, but no one makes me laugh like that guy.

01:45:36.000 And when he's on, it's effortless.

01:45:39.000 It's effortless.

01:45:40.000 He's just in the groove.

01:45:41.000 But getting there required decades and hard work and writing and performing and constantly experimenting with how to deliver material and how to do it correctly.

01:45:54.000 Once you've got it though, then it's just about maintaining it.

01:45:57.000 That's why you see the great ones like Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle.

01:46:01.000 They're constantly working.

01:46:02.000 They're constantly going at it.

01:46:04.000 If they had to start over from scratch as a beginner, as an open-miker, that's hard.

01:46:09.000 That's why I'm very encouraging of young, up-and-coming comedians, or even old. 0.98

01:46:13.000 I don't give a fuck what age you start. 0.90

01:46:15.000 People who are just starting out in comedy. 0.99

01:46:17.000 I'm very encouraging of them because I want them to know, like, hey, man, we all suck in the beginning.

01:46:22.000 It is a hard grind, but it is a beautiful fraternity of people.

01:46:26.000 And if you can make it in this community, if you can get to a point where you're funny, you will have a really enjoyable life.

01:46:32.000 It's a great way to make a living.

01:46:34.000 I saw you on a documentary where I think you were, it was a documentary about stand-up.

01:46:39.000 Do you know which one recently?

01:46:41.000 I've done a couple of those.

01:46:41.000 Okay, I don't know which one.

01:46:43.000 I was fascinated by it because I think what was being discussed is the creative process in generating material.

01:46:50.000 And I'm fascinated by that because I can explain my creative process of how I write a book, but I've never attempted to write a set of jokes.

01:47:00.000 I could be naturally funny, but I don't know the mechanism.

01:47:02.000 I don't know how a chef is creative.

01:47:04.000 I don't know how a painter.

01:47:05.000 But the act of creation excites me.

01:47:08.000 And so I remember I had watched that particular documentary, and I thought it was so cool to see all these comedians.

01:47:15.000 I'm trying to think which one it was.

01:47:16.000 It was maybe a two-part series.

01:47:18.000 Is it ringing a bell?

01:47:19.000 Do you know which one?

01:47:20.000 I've done a few of them, and I haven't done one in a while, but everyone does it differently.

01:47:25.000 Some people write everything in joke form, and they think in joke form.

01:47:28.000 Tony Hinchcliffe is one of my favorite comedians, a good friend of mine.

01:47:31.000 He writes in joke form, and he thinks in joke form.

01:47:35.000 He's the guy, if something happens, if Jamie says something, and Tony has this sly look on his face, I always look at him, and he'll have the perfect line.

01:47:43.000 He's like the best off-the-cuff guy I've ever met.

01:47:47.000 And he hosts this show called Kill Tony that's on Monday nights on YouTube.

01:47:52.000 And the beautiful thing about that show is complete amateurs and professionals and, you know, they all throw their name into a hat.

01:48:09.000 Wow.

01:48:21.000 That takes courage.

01:48:22.000 Yeah, it does take courage.

01:48:23.000 But my point was that his specific style of writing is very different than mine, which is I either get an idea and I write it down or put it in my phone or I write in essays.

01:48:34.000 So I write essays where I just like a subject, like...

01:48:38.000 Sex differences.

01:48:39.000 Yeah, sex differences.

01:48:40.000 And then just start...

01:48:41.000 And then I just like...

01:48:42.000 I might type out a thousand words of nonsense for one sentence.

01:48:47.000 And that one sentence of like, ah, there's something there.

01:48:50.000 And I'll pull that out and I'll put it aside.

01:48:53.000 I'll copy and paste that somewhere else.

01:48:54.000 And then I'll start over again with that one sentence that I know that's good.

01:48:57.000 I'll keep that above and then right below it, I'll give it a couple of spaces.

01:49:00.000 And right below it, I'll readdress the subject.

01:49:02.000 Try to do it from new eyes.

01:49:04.000 So if you have to come up with new material for a one-hour special, how many pages of content is going to correspond to the one hour? 0.95

01:49:15.000 Nine out of ten pages suck.

01:49:17.000 Really? 1.00

01:49:17.000 Yeah, if you looked at my notes, you'd be like, this guy's fucking terrible. 1.00

01:49:20.000 But the thing is, I'm not writing down the things that I think are good. 0.98

01:49:25.000 I'm just writing.

01:49:27.000 So I'm trying to let my mind find the things that are good.

01:49:32.000 So as I'm talking about a subject, I'm just...

01:49:38.000 So, if that's true, then why is this?

01:49:41.000 And then like, aha, I got something.

01:49:43.000 And then I'll pull that aside, and then I'll try to figure out a clever intro to that, and then maybe I'll try it the other way, and maybe I'll start with the premise first, or maybe I'll start with the pun.

01:49:53.000 I mix it up.

01:49:54.000 But I find that my best writing is when I write in just an essay form, and then extract And are you trying to write every day?

01:50:02.000 Yeah, I write basically every day.

01:50:04.000 I do something every day.

01:50:05.000 Every day.

01:50:06.000 I mean, I'll take a day off, but I feel like if I don't sit down every day and review my notes and go over my material, I feel like I'm doing it myself a disservice because there's so many bits that I have that are in my act that have been on comedy specials that I've done that just came from sitting down and writing.

01:50:23.000 Some of them came from nowhere.

01:50:25.000 Like, some of them came from nowhere.

01:50:27.000 You know, like I was with a friend of mine once.

01:50:29.000 And we were talking, and she was laughing about this overweight woman who had all this makeup on and this short dress, and she was looking at this crazy image of this woman, and she goes, what is she thinking?

01:50:45.000 I go, I'll tell you exactly what she's thinking.

01:50:47.000 She's just letting everybody know, it's not the best ride.

01:50:51.000 But there's no line.

01:50:53.000 And her and I were howling.

01:50:55.000 We were laughing so hard.

01:50:57.000 That came out of the ether, right?

01:50:58.000 And that made it onto a comedy special.

01:51:00.000 But that came out of nowhere.

01:51:01.000 So sometimes it's like that.

01:51:03.000 Sometimes they just come.

01:51:04.000 Do you test the stuff on trusted audience of your friends before you do it the first time professionally?

01:51:13.000 Sometimes I'll run it by a professional.

01:51:16.000 Sometimes I'll run it by Tony or one of my friends and I'll have an idea.

01:51:20.000 But most of the time I run it on the stage.

01:51:23.000 So most of the time, like I've been doing this Johnny Depp Amber Heard chunk.

01:51:29.000 And I've got two different versions.

01:51:32.000 So Friday night I did two sets in Phoenix.

01:51:35.000 I did one version of it the first set and a different version of it the second set.

01:51:39.000 Just trying to figure out.

01:51:40.000 And so it's baby legs, obviously, because the trial just started.

01:51:43.000 I need to figure out if it's even going to work.

01:51:45.000 It gets laughs, but I'm like, you always have to realize that if something gets laughs and it's in the news right now, it doesn't mean it's really good. 0.98

01:51:53.000 It could be that they're just reacting to it because they want to laugh at this crazy fucking trial. 0.61

01:51:58.000 It doesn't necessarily mean the material's good. 0.96

01:52:01.000 So you can't rely on the moment being novel, right?

01:52:06.000 Like there's this moment and everybody's excited about this moment and they're all aware of it so they're tuned into it.

01:52:12.000 It's got to be good a year from now, right?

01:52:15.000 Where it's like, if you had to do a joke tomorrow about someone like Brett Kavanaugh being inducted into the Supreme Court, it's got to be good a year from now.

01:52:28.000 It's got to be a good chunk.

01:52:29.000 It's got to have good material.

01:52:30.000 It can't just be familiar.

01:52:32.000 So I want to tie what you just said to some scientific principles.

01:52:37.000 So there's something called two-factor theory in psychology of persuasion.

01:52:41.000 The idea being that every time you are exposed to a stimulus, there is incremental learning.

01:52:47.000 The first time that I hear a lecture, I pick up a lot of stuff, but the second time I pick up more, but it reaches this asymptote.

01:52:54.000 After I've watched the same lecture 18 times, I can't extract anything from it.

01:52:58.000 Right.

01:52:58.000 An opposing factor is what's called negative tedium, boredom.

01:53:02.000 The first time I hear a funny ad that's surprising, it makes me crack up, but by the second time, it decays very quickly.

01:53:09.000 Yes.

01:53:09.000 The combination of these two results in what's called an inverted U-shape, okay?

01:53:13.000 So I'm wondering how we would apply that principle, let's say, to the feeling of novelty that you as the comedian experience when you deliver that joke, right?

01:53:24.000 The first time you say it, it's exciting.

01:53:27.000 The 73rd time that you say it during your tour...

01:53:31.000 Are you able to deliver it with as much spice and spunk, or are you entering as the deliverer of the message the negative tedium of the curve?

01:53:40.000 That's part of the art.

01:53:41.000 The art is you have to be in the moment when you're discussing a subject, so you have to care.

01:53:46.000 If you don't care, the audience knows.

01:53:48.000 If you're phoning it in, they know.

01:53:49.000 You can say the right words with the right amount of pause, with the right timing, and it doesn't matter. 0.98

01:53:54.000 They have to fucking know that you're tuned into it. 0.98

01:53:57.000 If you're not tuned, they smell it. 0.99

01:53:59.000 They feel it.

01:54:02.000 What's going on when you're doing stand-up is some kind of weird sort of mass hypnosis.

01:54:07.000 That's what's going on.

01:54:09.000 And to think that it's just jokes is not totally understanding the art form completely.

01:54:17.000 Because everyone knows, everyone that's done stand-up that's had a killer set, when you're killing, you have this feeling where you're just...

01:54:26.000 Everyone's like synced.

01:54:30.000 It's like there's energy in the room.

01:54:32.000 Like you feel a wave that you're all riding.

01:54:35.000 And you're as much of a passenger as you are the driver.

01:54:39.000 And you're all riding it together.

01:54:40.000 That's the best time.

01:54:42.000 That's the best time for the audience.

01:54:43.000 It's the best time for the community.

01:54:44.000 So of all the, I don't think I've ever asked you this, so you've got many hats, you've got this show, you've got the MMA, you do other things, you do stand-up.

01:54:53.000 If there is one that I told you you must choose as the one, is it a fair question to ask you that?

01:55:01.000 What would it be?

01:55:02.000 I definitely wouldn't want to choose because I think one of the things that I really like is that they all complement each other.

01:55:07.000 They complement each other as well.

01:55:09.000 Like doing MMA for instance.

01:55:12.000 One of the things about it, first of all, I love the sport and it's a great honor for me to be able to do commentary for the UFC and it means a lot to me and it always means a lot to me.

01:55:21.000 I never take it casually.

01:55:22.000 I always take it very seriously.

01:55:24.000 I'm never funny.

01:55:26.000 Like I'm not cracking jokes.

01:55:27.000 I'm not trying to be funny.

01:55:29.000 I mean, if something funny comes up, that's fine, but my job is to explain what's happening and to put color to...

01:55:37.000 I'm literally a color commentary guy.

01:55:41.000 That's helped by comedy, because I talk live all the time.

01:55:46.000 So when I'm at the UFC, and millions of people are watching, and the light goes on, and the camera's pointed at me, and I have to explain what's going on, I have zero feeling of, oh my god, oh, these people are watching, because people are always watching me.

01:55:58.000 They're watching me when I do this, they're watching me when I do stand-up, and I'm well aware when I stumble my words, I'm well aware when things don't come out the way I wanted it to, where I'm searching for the correct sentence and it doesn't really fit right, whether I'm not warmed up enough.

01:56:13.000 Because there is an intellectual warm-up process, and I'm sure you're aware of that too, that feeling.

01:56:18.000 So they complement each other.

01:56:20.000 All three things complement each other.

01:56:22.000 Podcasting is complemented by stand-up, because stand-up is the most difficult of the three.

01:56:26.000 Stand-up is you don't get a chance to redo it.

01:56:28.000 You can't say, actually what I meant to say is this.

01:56:31.000 There's so much wiggle room in podcasting, which is probably the easiest.

01:56:35.000 Podcast is probably the easiest.

01:56:36.000 And then stand-up is the hardest.

01:56:39.000 And MMA, it's easy with a caveat.

01:56:43.000 It's easy for me because I'm a massive fan and I watch fights constantly.

01:56:48.000 I'm always watching them on YouTube.

01:56:50.000 And this is something that's been a passion of mine my entire life.

01:56:54.000 So from the time I was a boy up until now, I've never not followed combat sports.

01:56:59.000 I've never not watched all the big fights.

01:57:01.000 I've never not paid attention.

01:57:03.000 I've never not trained.

01:57:04.000 I've never not...

01:57:04.000 So it's easy for me to plug into it because it means a lot to me.

01:57:09.000 But if someone was just applying it as a job, Say if you didn't give a shit about MMA, but you're like, you know what would be good? 0.90

01:57:16.000 If I was an MMA commentator. 0.92

01:57:17.000 MMA's really popular.

01:57:19.000 Maybe I should become one of those.

01:57:21.000 I'm not into training.

01:57:23.000 It's not a part of my life, but I'm just going to learn a lot about it.

01:57:27.000 Good luck.

01:57:28.000 Good luck.

01:57:29.000 Good luck. 1.00

01:57:30.000 That shit would take decades. 0.99

01:57:31.000 And you're gonna get things wrong. 1.00

01:57:32.000 People are gonna get so mad at you.

01:57:34.000 You're gonna say the wrong name for a kick.

01:57:35.000 Or you're gonna give the wrong advice about the way they need to position their feet or the way they need to move. 0.99

01:57:41.000 You're gonna fuck it up. 0.95

01:57:42.000 And then the people that know are gonna be so mad. 0.99

01:57:45.000 One of the things that I'm very fortunate that I have that job.

01:57:50.000 Very, very fortunate.

01:57:51.000 But I say I'm very fortunate.

01:57:52.000 Everyone knows I'm very fortunate.

01:57:53.000 I know that they know.

01:57:55.000 They know that I know, right?

01:57:56.000 And they also know that I'm legit.

01:57:58.000 Like, I really care.

01:58:00.000 Authenticity.

01:58:00.000 You talked about it earlier.

01:58:01.000 There's not a moment when I'm watching a great fight where I'm pretending. 0.97

01:58:05.000 I am fucking 100% tuned into that. 0.95

01:58:07.000 They know I'm one of them. 0.95

01:58:09.000 So when I'm talking about technique or I'm talking about style matchups and what's fascinating about it, they know I'm 100% genuine.

01:58:17.000 If you're just a sports guy and you're bullshitting, we've had a few of those, sports guys who come in and try to add sports guy terminology that they might use for baseball or for football or what have you, and they try to apply that to MMA, MMA people get mad.

01:58:32.000 They get mad.

01:58:33.000 Because it's a more personal form of competition.

01:58:39.000 It's more personal, more intense.

01:58:42.000 It's like you're literally putting your health on the line.

01:58:47.000 Well, I remember maybe the first time that I came on your show, you said something that always stuck with me.

01:58:52.000 You were drawing an analogy between the honesty that is required when you are a stand-up comic and when you're a fighter and you go into the ring.

01:59:04.000 You can't hide anywhere.

01:59:05.000 And then you analogized it to when I have to speak in front of an audience about academic stuff. 0.97

01:59:12.000 And you said that all of these three pursuits, you can't bullshit because they're going to know.

01:59:18.000 And I love that because I am someone who is authentic to a fault.

01:59:22.000 And so I love the idea that if you walk into the ring, you can't fake it.

01:59:27.000 If you're not prepared, you're going to get pummeled.

01:59:29.000 If you go up in front of an audience, you're not funny.

01:59:33.000 Regrettably, people are going to respond accordingly. 0.99

01:59:35.000 If I get up in front of an audience and I start espousing bullshit, people are going to... 0.98

01:59:40.000 I mean, I'm on this show. 0.99

01:59:41.000 People are going to listen to every syllable that I utter.

01:59:45.000 And so I think for me what protects me is that I'm very epistemically humble.

01:59:50.000 In other words, when I know something, I walk with the swagger of someone who knows what he's talking about.

01:59:57.000 But then if you ask me about...

02:00:00.000 So what are the consequences of the legalization of marijuana in Canada?

02:00:03.000 I'm going to say, you know what?

02:00:05.000 I don't know enough about this topic.

02:00:06.000 And so having that epistemic humility protects me against the prying eyes because I am very modulated as to what I know and what I don't know.

02:00:15.000 And of course, Confucius talked about this many thousands of years ago.

02:00:19.000 And so I think that honesty element is so beautiful.

02:00:23.000 And so people ask me, do you get nervous before you get on Joe Rogan?

02:00:27.000 And I say, no, he's a friend.

02:00:29.000 I know I'm going to have a good time.

02:00:31.000 I don't think just like you that there's anybody watching me.

02:00:34.000 The number one thing that makes me stressed about coming on the show is, am I going to have to go to the bathroom during the three hours?

02:00:41.000 But you have to go.

02:00:42.000 You let me know.

02:00:42.000 I know.

02:00:43.000 You always say that.

02:00:43.000 Just let me know.

02:00:44.000 We'll pause it.

02:00:44.000 That's literally the only thing that worries me.

02:00:47.000 But your honesty is very important.

02:00:48.000 I mean, and you are obviously honest to a fault.

02:00:51.000 There's no fault to being honest.

02:00:52.000 So it's not...

02:00:53.000 That's a weird statement.

02:00:54.000 But it's your...

02:00:56.000 It's...

02:00:58.000 So that people know they can trust you.

02:01:00.000 If you're like you are, where you know so much about psychology, you know so much about the mind, you know so much about the way people think and why they think and what the evolutionary basis for those things are, you can enlighten people in a way that they can just accept your knowledge because they know that you're being honest.

02:01:18.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:01:19.000 And that's so valuable.

02:01:21.000 That's so valuable.

02:01:22.000 One of the biggest thrills I get is, as you might imagine, given your platform, I receive innumerable emails from people.

02:01:29.000 Someone will say, I got into evolutionary psychology because I followed the stuff that you were talking about with Joe Rogan. 0.94

02:01:38.000 Which leads me to another point, which, again, not to blow complimentary smoke up your beautiful behind. 1.00

02:01:45.000 But in the parasitic mind, I tell the story in chapter one of the haughtiness of academia. 0.97

02:01:51.000 And the story that I tell is I was at Stanford speaking at the business school, about as big of an academic mecca as you can get.

02:01:59.000 And the gentleman who had hosted me...

02:02:03.000 The night before for dinner said, oh, you know Joe Rogan, you go on a show.

02:02:08.000 I said, yeah.

02:02:09.000 He said, yeah, well, we don't condone that at Stanford.

02:02:12.000 I said, well, what do you mean?

02:02:14.000 What is it that you don't condone?

02:02:15.000 He said, well, we don't do sexy research so we can get on Joe Rogan.

02:02:19.000 I said, well, I don't do research so I can get on Joe Rogan, but I can do research and get on Joe Rogan.

02:02:24.000 Surely you would think that popularizing your ideas to millions of people Might be worthwhile in addition to publishing in peer-reviewed journal.

02:02:32.000 And his answer was, yeah, well, we don't do it.

02:02:34.000 He's just saying that because he hasn't been on.

02:02:36.000 Exactly.

02:02:37.000 It's an ego.

02:02:38.000 I've had a lot of people from Stanford on.

02:02:40.000 Well, but not this guy.

02:02:41.000 But by the way, when I started coming on the show, I don't think you had yet many professors who had come on.

02:02:46.000 I think now everybody wants to come on Joe Rogan because...

02:02:48.000 Yeah, you were one of their...

02:02:49.000 What year did you first come on?

02:02:50.000 I might have been the first...

02:02:51.000 What year was it?

02:02:52.000 The first time, 2014. Yeah.

02:02:55.000 I don't know if you were the first professor, but you were certainly one of them.

02:02:59.000 I mean, that was eight years ago.

02:03:00.000 Isn't that crazy?

02:03:00.000 That's eight years ago.

02:03:01.000 Time flies.

02:03:01.000 That's unbelievable.

02:03:02.000 Do you foresee doing this forever, or do you ever see it?

02:03:06.000 I enjoy it.

02:03:07.000 I don't think about it.

02:03:08.000 I don't think about whether or not I'll keep doing it.

02:03:11.000 I thought about it when I was going to build a giant building.

02:03:14.000 When I came out here, I was going to buy a piece of land and build it.

02:03:16.000 And I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

02:03:19.000 For what purpose? 1.00

02:03:20.000 To build a fucking crazy podcast empire. 1.00

02:03:22.000 Is that right? 1.00

02:03:23.000 Just to build a giant studio.

02:03:24.000 I'll show you what we're doing here afterwards.

02:03:26.000 Yeah.

02:03:26.000 But I thought about it for a moment.

02:03:28.000 Then I'm like, what are you thinking?

02:03:30.000 Why are you thinking about that?

02:03:31.000 I just do what I like to do.

02:03:33.000 And as long as I can do what I like to do, I just do what I like to do.

02:03:37.000 It becomes like...

02:03:39.000 Pragmatic if I have to sit down and go, well, this is not tenable anymore.

02:03:42.000 This is not manageable.

02:03:44.000 This is too much of this and that.

02:03:45.000 But it's not.

02:03:47.000 So I don't have to think about it like that.

02:03:48.000 So if you don't mind me asking, you've had recent stuff with Spotify and this thing being taken off and that.

02:03:56.000 Would that be construed as something that affects your enjoyment of doing a podcast?

02:04:01.000 What affects my enjoyment is whether I enjoy it while I'm doing it.

02:04:06.000 And I always enjoy it while I'm doing it.

02:04:08.000 Because I always pick who's on.

02:04:10.000 So I don't have...

02:04:11.000 There's not a managerial department.

02:04:16.000 There's no executives.

02:04:17.000 There's no one.

02:04:19.000 So if you see...

02:04:20.000 Like yesterday I had the Black Keys on.

02:04:23.000 I love that band. 0.98

02:04:24.000 They're fucking awesome. 0.86

02:04:25.000 They were great. 0.98

02:04:26.000 And I'm friends with them, and they contacted me, and they said, hey, we got an album coming out. 0.97

02:04:31.000 I'm like, fuck yeah, come on. 0.97

02:04:32.000 That's the process. 0.99

02:04:34.000 So there's no filter.

02:04:35.000 So the audience knows there's no filter.

02:04:38.000 They're aware of this.

02:04:39.000 So they know that if I'm talking to you, it's because I enjoy our conversations.

02:04:43.000 So that's always going to be good.

02:04:46.000 And when it's not, I'll just quit.

02:04:48.000 But I was just like, I don't want to do that anymore.

02:04:50.000 I'll just quit.

02:04:51.000 So I recently saw you on Instagram posting about Marcus Aurelius.

02:04:57.000 Yes.

02:04:58.000 And so I want to, can we veer to that for a second?

02:05:00.000 Sure, please.

02:05:00.000 So in the next book that I'm doing, The Recipe for a Good Life, of course I get into the history of all sorts of cultures that have explored the good life.

02:05:11.000 It's not as though I'm the first guy to write about this.

02:05:13.000 Probably one of the topics that's been most written about.

02:05:16.000 None have been as prolific as the ancient Greeks.

02:05:20.000 And so when I saw your thing about Marcus Aurelius, I was about to write you to say, well, I've come to that same realization.

02:05:28.000 So as I was doing my research for the book... 0.93

02:05:33.000 Every time I would get an insight that I thought was original to me, I'd say, that fucker Epictetus has already said it 2,000 years ago. 0.97

02:05:42.000 Isn't that wild? 0.98

02:05:43.000 Yeah, it's unbelievable.

02:05:44.000 And so it reminds me, and I want to give him kudos on the show.

02:05:47.000 So do you know who Nassim Talib is?

02:05:49.000 Sure.

02:05:49.000 Yeah, so Nassim is a good friend of mine.

02:05:51.000 He's a fellow Lebanese.

02:05:52.000 And so many years ago, he was kind of egging me, teasing me, saying, I don't really understand what you study in psychology, Gad.

02:05:58.000 Everything that there is to know about psychology and human nature, the ancient Greeks have already covered it.

02:06:03.000 And so I mean, he was just egging me on.

02:06:06.000 But then many years later, as I'm preparing for this book, I'm like, I think he might be right.

02:06:13.000 We might be empirically validating what they've already philosophized.

02:06:18.000 So your post about Marcus Aurelius really resonated with me at exactly that same moment.

02:06:25.000 It's quite fascinating when you read his writing.

02:06:28.000 It's unbelievable.

02:06:29.000 Because he was so wise and his decisions for what he would concentrate on and not concentrate on and how he would accept people's flaws and mistakes that they'd made as if they had never made them and this just approach to stoicism and his philosophy on life.

02:06:48.000 The Greeks and the Romans, and if you look at the history of these ancient civilizations that dominated the world at that period of time, we can get a kind of an understanding of how they thought about things.

02:07:03.000 It's, to me, one of the more amazing things about history is to peer It's almost like we have a little bit of a time machine to peer into the mindset of these people that were so wise thousands and thousands of years ago and that their words are applicable today.

02:07:20.000 Yeah.

02:07:20.000 Well, I mean, that speaks to the universality of the human condition, right?

02:07:25.000 So I always tell my students when I'm teaching about evolutionary theory, I say, look, you can use cultural products as fossils of the human mind, right?

02:07:32.000 The human mind doesn't fossilize.

02:07:34.000 But the products that is left from human minds, we can study its contents in the same way that paleontologists study fossil remains.

02:07:42.000 So I can connect to the mind of an ancient Greek poet and understand what he's talking about as though he's speaking today.

02:07:52.000 Because the software that's running his mind and mine is identical.

02:07:57.000 He doesn't know what an iPhone is.

02:07:58.000 He doesn't know what a podcast is. 0.51

02:08:00.000 But he knows about sexual longing.

02:08:02.000 He knows about paternity uncertainty.

02:08:04.000 He knows about sibling rivalry.

02:08:06.000 Those are the universal themes that are invariant across time and place.

02:08:10.000 And so one of the things that I love about being an author is that I get to be connected through ideas with all of these immortal souls, you know?

02:08:19.000 And so it's really a beautiful thing to write and to create and that...

02:08:25.000 The fact that I independently thought of something that Epictetus thought 2,000 years ago connects me with him.

02:08:32.000 Yes, truth.

02:08:34.000 It's just you developed an understanding of human beings and of human nature and you have deciphered from this and extracted some truth and it turns out other people have done the same thing.

02:08:45.000 It's fantastic.

02:08:45.000 It is fantastic.

02:08:47.000 You know, there's a great book called The Immortality Code.

02:08:53.000 And it's Brian Mororescu who has gone through ancient Greek culture and all of the Ulyssidian mysteries and looked into all of their rituals and tried to figure out what was going on.

02:09:12.000 And one of the things that they've done is going over pottery.

02:09:18.000 And finding that there's remnants of psychedelic substances in these pottery jars.

02:09:25.000 And so these wine jars, these jugs as pottery, they found that they were imbibing in wine that was dosed with lysergic acid.

02:09:37.000 So they had different kinds of ergot and different kinds of things that would produce psychedelic states.

02:09:43.000 So all of these, you know, when people would go there to learn and when people would go to have these ritualistic experiences, they were tripping.

02:09:53.000 And this is the birthplace of democracy.

02:09:55.000 This is the birthplace of a lot of these thinkers, these great thinkers of, you know, that age.

02:10:03.000 And of course, Roman emperors forbade it, and they outlawed it, and in the book they sort of detail how it migrated to other countries, and you can find the same remnants in the pottery in these other countries,

02:10:19.000 and you can literally track the path of their escape from these areas where they were more restrictive and trying these ritualistic experiences in other places.

02:10:30.000 Yeah.

02:10:30.000 It's The Immortality Key or Code?

02:10:33.000 Key.

02:10:34.000 Key.

02:10:34.000 The Immortality Key.

02:10:35.000 It's an amazing book.

02:10:36.000 Really, really interesting.

02:10:37.000 And Brian was on the podcast and because of him being on the podcast, Harvard has opened up a field of study.

02:10:44.000 Wow.

02:10:44.000 And in that particular area where they're looking at psychedelic substance use in ancient Greece.

02:10:51.000 Because it's irrefutable now.

02:10:53.000 Because of the residue, now they now have scientific evidence.

02:10:56.000 They have residue that shows that They were most certainly flavoring their wine with this stuff.

02:11:02.000 That's another thing that I didn't know.

02:11:04.000 I always thought wine was wine.

02:11:06.000 It was fermented fruit.

02:11:07.000 It's not.

02:11:08.000 Their wine, they would always add things to.

02:11:10.000 They constantly added stuff to their wine.

02:11:12.000 Their wine was never just wine.

02:11:14.000 Their wine was most of the time wine with other things and oftentimes psychedelic substances like ergot mixed in with the wine.

02:11:22.000 Fantastic.

02:11:24.000 So earlier you said that everything that I do, I do it out of love.

02:11:29.000 If I stop enjoying it, I won't do it.

02:11:32.000 So in The Recipe for the Good Life, I talk about the two decisions that you'll make in your life that are most likely to either impart great happiness or great misery on you.

02:11:43.000 Number one, choosing the right spouse.

02:11:46.000 Number two, choosing the right job or profession.

02:11:48.000 Because most of your waking time is going to be spent either with your family or at your job.

02:11:53.000 And if either or both of those impart you great happiness, you're well on your way to living a happy life.

02:12:00.000 And so in your case, you've ticked off the...

02:12:03.000 I mean, you probably live the most desired life in terms of a pursuit that most people desire to be in your, right?

02:12:12.000 Because you're completely free.

02:12:14.000 You're not bound to anyone.

02:12:16.000 You do exactly what you want, when you want, right?

02:12:20.000 So what would be, if it came to choosing the right spouse, you've been married for a long time so that Have you met my wife before?

02:12:29.000 I've never met her.

02:12:30.000 Oh, she's here.

02:12:31.000 She'll be here in a little bit.

02:12:32.000 Oh, that'd be great.

02:12:33.000 She'll be here.

02:12:34.000 We have a gym next door.

02:12:35.000 So what would be the things that you would advise people?

02:12:39.000 I want to see if it jives with some of the things that I say in the book, the things that you should look for for the optimal mate.

02:12:45.000 Of course, there is no guaranteed recipe, but do you have some life lessons as to how someone should choose their optimal wife or husband?

02:12:53.000 You have to be someone who a good person would want to be with.

02:12:59.000 That's a big one.

02:13:00.000 There's a lot of people that want this amazing spouse, they want an amazing husband, they want an amazing wife, but they're not amazing. 0.99

02:13:08.000 Who the fuck are you to get that person? 0.99

02:13:11.000 I don't mean worthy as in a human being. 0.99

02:13:15.000 I mean worthy in your behavior, your tenacity, your discipline, your passion.

02:13:25.000 You have to be fun to be around.

02:13:28.000 You have to be a giver.

02:13:30.000 You have to be someone who enjoys being around you.

02:13:33.000 So when you're on a date with that person, when you first meet them, they like you.

02:13:37.000 They have fun.

02:13:38.000 You like them.

02:13:39.000 It's mutually beneficial.

02:13:41.000 Everybody wants to be desired, but nobody wants to be compatible.

02:13:46.000 Nobody wants to be generous.

02:13:49.000 Those are not things that people aspire to.

02:13:51.000 People don't aspire to being cordial.

02:13:54.000 They don't aspire to being warm and friendly and loving and humorous.

02:13:59.000 But that's what people like.

02:14:01.000 Everybody wants to be the baller at the club with the champagne, the big gold chains. 1.00

02:14:05.000 But that's just fucking bullshit. 1.00

02:14:07.000 That's what you see from the outside. 1.00

02:14:09.000 You want to be the person who's on stage where everybody cheers and they see your face.

02:14:13.000 That's on the outside.

02:14:14.000 What you want to be is someone who people like genuinely.

02:14:19.000 Like as a person. 0.99

02:14:21.000 Not the image of you, but who you fucking really are. 0.99

02:14:24.000 They have to know you. 0.98

02:14:25.000 So if you don't know yourself, and if you're not honest with yourself in terms of your discipline, your work ethic, the way you treat your friends, the way you treat strangers, the way you are,

02:14:41.000 your personality.

02:14:41.000 If you're not working on that, you're never going to attract a valuable mate.

02:14:46.000 You're never going to attract someone who is... 1.00

02:14:49.000 Someone who's desirable, someone who you want to be around.

02:14:52.000 Why would they want to be around with you?

02:14:53.000 There's people out there that are working harder than you.

02:14:55.000 There's people out there that are nicer than you.

02:14:57.000 There's people that are there that are more friendly than you.

02:14:59.000 That's attractive.

02:15:00.000 If a woman's on a date with a man and the man's rude to the waitress...

02:15:03.000 I was gonna say exactly that as a test.

02:15:06.000 Oh my god.

02:15:06.000 Or the man talks badly about his ex-girlfriend or his ex-wife.

02:15:10.000 She's gonna go, what are you gonna say about me?

02:15:11.000 Yeah.

02:15:12.000 You know, you're not even treating me nice.

02:15:15.000 So I agree with everything that you've said.

02:15:18.000 So I told you I always go for long walks with my wife to get to the cafe in the morning.

02:15:24.000 And so one day we were stopped by one of my daughter's friend's father who came up to us.

02:15:30.000 He's a photographer.

02:15:31.000 And we stopped by to say hello.

02:15:33.000 And he said, do you mind if I ask you a question, Gad?

02:15:35.000 I said, sure.

02:15:36.000 He goes, how do you do it?

02:15:38.000 I said, do what?

02:15:39.000 What are you asking?

02:15:40.000 He goes...

02:15:41.000 Every single day I see you walking on this thing, you're arm in arm with your wife, and you're kind of lost in conversation.

02:15:49.000 You're both very serene and happy.

02:15:51.000 I said, well, I don't have a recipe.

02:15:53.000 I really just enjoy her company.

02:15:55.000 She's my best friend.

02:15:56.000 It sounds cliche-ish, but that's really what it is.

02:15:58.000 I'd rather be with my wife more than anyone else on most days that I exist than Now, I don't know if there is a recipe to find that person, but if you do find that person, hang on tight.

02:16:09.000 So that's one.

02:16:10.000 Well, you have to know who you are.

02:16:11.000 Very true.

02:16:12.000 If you don't know who you are, you won't know who they are. 1.00

02:16:15.000 And if you're full of shit... 1.00

02:16:16.000 And by the way, the ancient Greeks already beat you to that. 1.00

02:16:19.000 Know thyself, right?

02:16:20.000 Yes, yes.

02:16:21.000 So the stuff you're saying, they already said it.

02:16:24.000 Yeah, they knew it.

02:16:24.000 To our point.

02:16:25.000 Yeah.

02:16:25.000 The second thing, if I'm going to get more scientific...

02:16:29.000 I think?

02:16:52.000 But on the other hand, for long-term marital success, you want assortative mating, birds of a feather flock together, on which traits, on shared values.

02:17:04.000 Right, right.

02:17:05.000 So if you don't have that in common, the stats of you likely divorcing shoots through the roof.

02:17:12.000 Like Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.

02:17:13.000 Bingo.

02:17:14.000 Johnny's a sweetheart of a guy, generous to a fall.

02:17:16.000 But is that true?

02:17:17.000 Is he really?

02:17:17.000 Oh, yeah, he is.

02:17:18.000 Yeah, he's a sweetheart of a guy.

02:17:19.000 Okay.

02:17:20.000 Yeah, I've talked to him, and he's very good friends with one of my very good friends, my friend Doug Stanhope.

02:17:25.000 He's a sweetheart of a guy, and that's part of the problem.

02:17:27.000 And he was in a loving relationship before her and had a child and the whole deal.

02:17:32.000 But it's also, it's the partying, you know, that's probably what they shared in common.

02:17:36.000 But what they didn't share in common was truth and honesty, and Johnny's pretty honest.

02:17:40.000 I didn't know that he was so poetic and all that.

02:17:43.000 See, people are going to get the chance to see him.

02:17:45.000 He's an interesting guy, and she's not.

02:17:48.000 Well, she's interesting, like, if I was a psychologist, and I was studying her.

02:17:52.000 Like, for you, it must be interesting.

02:17:54.000 Right, right, right, exactly. 0.99

02:17:54.000 Because, I mean, she's so full of shit that she says things on the stand that are directly refuted by previous things that she said. 0.99

02:18:01.000 Right. 1.00

02:18:02.000 Including that she never hit him. 1.00

02:18:03.000 Like, she's fucking... 1.00

02:18:04.000 Not only that, the two of them are recording each other. 1.00

02:18:07.000 Like, how crazy the both of them.

02:18:08.000 They're both... 0.90

02:18:09.000 That's when they have in common. 1.00

02:18:10.000 Neither one of them trusted each other, so they were fucking recording their conversations like insane people. 1.00

02:18:14.000 Yeah. 0.97

02:18:15.000 You were mentioning earlier about the test if someone treats the waiter or waitress badly.

02:18:22.000 Do you remember in Bronx Tale the door test?

02:18:25.000 Yes, yes, yes.

02:18:27.000 Isn't that unbelievably wise?

02:18:28.000 Yeah, it is wise.

02:18:29.000 How crazy is it back then?

02:18:31.000 Like, there's no automatic doors.

02:18:33.000 Exactly.

02:18:34.000 By the way, one of my favorite movies of all time.

02:18:37.000 It's a great movie.

02:18:38.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:18:39.000 But that is a test.

02:18:41.000 You want people that care.

02:18:43.000 People that don't care about other people.

02:18:45.000 That's only a virtue if no one cares about anyone and you're protecting yourself from pain.

02:18:52.000 Right.

02:18:53.000 And so there are a lot of people out there that say that. 0.99

02:18:55.000 I don't give a fuck about anybody else. 0.98

02:18:56.000 I'm going to get my thing. 0.99

02:18:58.000 That's silly. 0.91

02:18:59.000 You're missing the objective point. 0.93

02:19:02.000 The objective point is community.

02:19:04.000 The objective point is camaraderie, love, friendship, relationships, whatever.

02:19:10.000 It's a mutually beneficial thing to be caring and to be kind.

02:19:14.000 It feels good to be nice to people.

02:19:16.000 It really genuinely does.

02:19:18.000 It's actually selfish to be generous and kind and nice.

02:19:21.000 It really is.

02:19:22.000 Because you benefit.

02:19:23.000 Yeah, you benefit.

02:19:24.000 And people don't think about it that way.

02:19:25.000 And it's not why you should do it.

02:19:28.000 You should do it because it makes other people feel good, but that does make you feel good.

02:19:31.000 It really does.

02:19:33.000 That's one of the secrets to my happiness.

02:19:35.000 I have a lot of really good friends.

02:19:37.000 And I'm really close to them.

02:19:38.000 And I love them.

02:19:40.000 And I tell them I love them.

02:19:41.000 I tell my guy friends I love them all the time.

02:19:44.000 And I have a lot of friends.

02:19:46.000 And these friends that I have, a lot of them I've known for decades.

02:19:51.000 And we've had a lot of fun together.

02:19:53.000 And we have kindness and generosity, but also we hold each other accountable, and we're also very honest. 0.99

02:20:01.000 And when they're not honest, I'm like, come on, fuckface. 1.00

02:20:04.000 I know you're full shit. 1.00

02:20:05.000 Do you, because of your fame and so on, are you... 1.00

02:20:10.000 Not defensive, but are you guarded in bringing new people into your inner circle, always wondering if there is an ulterior motive to why this person...

02:20:21.000 Do you have the mechanism to be able to adjudicate that?

02:20:24.000 Because a lot of people are trying to be friends with Joe Rogan, and I need to make sure that you're not a pretender, a user, and someone who's being instrumental in your...

02:20:34.000 You can find out pretty easy.

02:20:35.000 Okay.

02:20:36.000 Bullshitters are not good at it.

02:20:38.000 No one's good. 0.99

02:20:38.000 I mean, there's some genuine sociopaths that wind up being cult leaders and shit like that, but eventually you see it. 0.99

02:20:46.000 Eventually you see it. 0.65

02:20:47.000 Just don't let them all the way in.

02:20:48.000 But you get it by just the way they talk. 1.00

02:20:52.000 When you're full of shit, one of the things about being a liar or being someone who is dishonest or is acting, you're acting like you're someone who you're not, is you're not good at recognizing that in other people. 1.00

02:21:07.000 Right. 1.00

02:21:07.000 And you're not reading how the other people are seeing you, so you think you're conning people when you're not. 1.00

02:21:13.000 This is the Amber Heard thing.

02:21:15.000 If she was an honest person, just the way she's talking and acting, the fake crying, it would be so brutal.

02:21:25.000 But it's so funny because I listened to, I think it was maybe Megyn Kelly's podcast, where it seemed as though everybody had bought into her act.

02:21:37.000 No way, even though she's an actress, could she ever fake those emotions? 0.97

02:21:41.000 Whereas I watched that little snippet and it struck me as inauthentic.

02:21:45.000 Who thought it was authentic?

02:21:47.000 Well, I can't remember who her guest was.

02:21:49.000 No, no, no.

02:21:50.000 I think there was a guest on her show.

02:21:52.000 Oh, the guest must have been a hardcore woman feminist that doesn't believe ever that the man is the victim. 1.00

02:21:58.000 Do you think that that's the only thing that can assort people into seeing the inauthenticity versus not seeing it?

02:22:03.000 Yeah, I think she has...

02:22:05.000 If someone doesn't recognize the inauthenticity of that woman on trial, it's because they don't want to.

02:22:12.000 They can't read people, yeah.

02:22:13.000 Well, they either can't read people or they are so biased that they're looking for, like when people were talking about Joe Biden, like Joe Biden's State of the Union.

02:22:24.000 It was Mark Garagos.

02:22:26.000 What about Mark Garagos?

02:22:27.000 He was a friend.

02:22:27.000 I think that was the guest on Megyn Kelly where he was saying, you can't fake those kinds of raw emotions.

02:22:33.000 That's hilarious.

02:22:34.000 Isn't he a lawyer, though?

02:22:35.000 He is.

02:22:36.000 Yeah.

02:22:37.000 I don't know about that.

02:22:39.000 Yeah.

02:22:40.000 Sorry, Mark.

02:22:40.000 I didn't mean to call you out.

02:22:41.000 Of course you can fake that.

02:22:43.000 She's not even faking it well.

02:22:45.000 Right. 1.00

02:22:45.000 What a sucker he is. 1.00

02:22:46.000 I'd like to find out how many times that guy's been divorced. 1.00

02:22:48.000 Okay.

02:22:49.000 Mark, I'm really sorry.

02:22:51.000 I got to tell you.

02:22:52.000 Maybe he's just saying that to be a contrarian.

02:22:56.000 So I know Mark well.

02:22:59.000 He lives in Southern California.

02:23:01.000 He's done a lot of high-profile cases.

02:23:03.000 A couple of summers ago, I was in Southern California with my family.

02:23:06.000 We were very keen to go to an LAFC game, Los Angeles Football Club.

02:23:11.000 I reached out to Mark.

02:23:12.000 I say, Mark, you got to hook me up with tickets.

02:23:15.000 Within two hours, he's wired me tickets to go.

02:23:18.000 So he's a good guy.

02:23:20.000 He is a very, very good guy. 0.99

02:23:21.000 Sometimes good guys are suckers. 0.91

02:23:24.000 Now, I might agree with you on one point. 0.87

02:23:27.000 Doug Peterson, is that his name?

02:23:29.000 The guy who killed his wife?

02:23:31.000 Or Dennis Peterson?

02:23:32.000 The guy who killed his pregnant wife who was on death row in California.

02:23:37.000 He represented him.

02:23:39.000 Which one?

02:23:40.000 I don't remember what that guy was.

02:23:42.000 What were the circumstances of him killing?

02:23:45.000 There was a guy who was dating, having an extramarital affair.

02:23:50.000 Was that in Colorado?

02:23:52.000 No, it was in Modesto, California.

02:23:55.000 There's a few of those cases, aren't there?

02:23:57.000 Can we get Jamie to pick Scott Peterson?

02:24:00.000 Scott Peterson.

02:24:01.000 Okay, I remember that one, yeah.

02:24:02.000 Well, I think Garagos represented him, or maybe during the appeal process.

02:24:07.000 And I've always wondered whether when lawyers do that, they have to know the truth.

02:24:13.000 Yeah, you have to know, but it's your job to defend the guy.

02:24:15.000 That's what's the darkest thing about that job.

02:24:17.000 Yeah.

02:24:18.000 When you're a defense attorney in particular, where you have to defend someone who very well might have killed their pregnant wife.

02:24:25.000 But technically speaking, if that client were to say to you, I admit to you in private that I've done it, or do you have to go under the...

02:24:36.000 I don't know.

02:24:36.000 I'm not a lawyer.

02:24:37.000 I don't know.

02:24:38.000 I don't know how that works.

02:24:40.000 I mean, I think you could probably recluse...

02:24:43.000 Could you recuse yourself?

02:24:45.000 What happens when someone knows that their client is guilty?

02:24:50.000 That's a very good question.

02:24:52.000 Yeah.

02:24:52.000 I mean, so my feeling is as long – and I don't know.

02:24:56.000 I'm not a lawyer either.

02:24:57.000 But I don't think they can simply say, I did it and you're defending me.

02:25:01.000 So I just kind of put my hand and I go, la, la, la.

02:25:04.000 Don't ever say it.

02:25:05.000 And I'm presuming that we're going – everything you're telling me is truthful.

02:25:09.000 Yeah.

02:25:10.000 You know what's scary is the opposite of that?

02:25:12.000 When prosecutors know that you're innocent and they're still trying to get you.

02:25:16.000 That's real.

02:25:16.000 I mean, that's Kamala Harris, by the way.

02:25:19.000 I despise that woman and I'm Canadian. 0.69

02:25:22.000 I have no... 0.97

02:25:23.000 By the way, her high school... 0.97

02:25:25.000 I played soccer for my high school against her high school when she was at that school in Montreal.

02:25:32.000 Because I don't know if you know, she was from Montreal.

02:25:34.000 Oh, wow.

02:25:34.000 I didn't know that.

02:25:35.000 She grew up in Montreal.

02:25:36.000 Wow.

02:25:36.000 So we lived very close to one another.

02:25:39.000 Did she cheat at soccer, too? 1.00

02:25:40.000 She probably cheated. 1.00

02:25:41.000 I didn't play against her.

02:25:43.000 I didn't play.

02:25:44.000 I played on...

02:25:45.000 Back then, we used to have boys teams that were made up of biological boys.

02:25:48.000 Lawyers are supposed to...

02:25:50.000 Represent someone even if they think they're guilty.

02:25:52.000 Okay.

02:25:53.000 Zealously.

02:25:54.000 But if they think they're guilty or if they know?

02:25:56.000 I believe it's the same thing.

02:25:58.000 Oh, it's the same thing.

02:25:58.000 Okay.

02:26:00.000 Defense lawyers are ethically bound to zealously represent all clients, including those they believe will justly be found guilty.

02:26:17.000 So the problem with that is then it becomes like an intellectual exercise for the person who's the lawyer to defend someone who they know is guilty against an inferior...

02:26:28.000 Right.

02:26:29.000 Prosecuting attorney that they know is kind of a schlub and that they can sneak by and they've done that in the past with expensive suits and big words and convincing arguments.

02:26:40.000 The mafia lawyers surely don't think that those guys are in construction really. 0.95

02:26:44.000 Not only do they not think it, do you remember when John Gotti was on trial and he had that mob attorney who was fucking excellent, who was built like a brick shithouse? 0.95

02:26:53.000 Bruce something. 0.94

02:26:54.000 What was his name?

02:26:54.000 Cutler?

02:26:55.000 Bruce Cutler?

02:26:56.000 Was that his name?

02:26:56.000 That sounds right.

02:26:57.000 Cutler?

02:26:58.000 Boy, we're going to Jamie today a lot.

02:27:00.000 What was his name? 1.00

02:27:01.000 But he was built like a fucking linebacker. 1.00

02:27:03.000 He was a scary guy. 1.00

02:27:06.000 He was a mob lawyer. 0.88

02:27:08.000 He looked like a mob.

02:27:09.000 Yeah, look at him.

02:27:10.000 What's his name?

02:27:10.000 There you go.

02:27:11.000 Bruce Cutler?

02:27:12.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:27:12.000 Look at the fucking, look at the size of that guy. 1.00

02:27:15.000 I mean, he looks like the guy would break your fucking head with a bat. 1.00

02:27:18.000 Look at him. 1.00

02:27:20.000 Big, bald, gorilla-looking dude. 1.00

02:27:22.000 Like, he'd smash your fucking face in. 1.00

02:27:24.000 That looks like a mob attorney. 1.00

02:27:26.000 Like, that's a guy that was under no illusion that John Gotti was innocent.

02:27:33.000 And he was really good at getting him out.

02:27:35.000 That's why they called him the Teflon Don.

02:27:37.000 They kept getting him out.

02:27:38.000 By the way, you mentioned earlier how horrific it is when you prosecute someone that you know is innocent.

02:27:44.000 Of all the guests I've had on my show, probably the one that on a personal level affected me the most is I had a guy who spent 29 years in prison for a murder which he was eventually exonerated of.

02:27:59.000 And I've included him in my latest book because I'm talking again about the recipe for the good life.

02:28:05.000 And what amazed me about this guy is how non-filled with anger and hatred and a sense of retribution he had.

02:28:14.000 And so I basically coined him, you know, the new Buddha because I was trying to put myself in his position.

02:28:20.000 If you stole from me 29 years of my existence, he was so poised and so truly like as if he's a saint.

02:28:28.000 And I thought, you're a much better man than I am because if I got out after you've stolen 29 years from me, I think I would want to burn the world down because I would be so...

02:28:38.000 It's a third of your life.

02:28:40.000 Right.

02:28:40.000 If you're lucky.

02:28:41.000 Yeah, so you might...

02:28:42.000 I'll send you the link if you ever have time.

02:28:44.000 You should watch it because this guy is the model by how we should live life without having rancor in our heart.

02:28:52.000 I mean, how forgiving he was is really incredible.

02:28:56.000 That's amazing.

02:28:57.000 Yeah, it's a sneaky system.

02:29:00.000 I've had Josh Dubin on.

02:29:02.000 He's an ambassador for the Innocence Project and he's a good friend of mine.

02:29:05.000 I've had him on multiple times and through this podcast several people have actually been let out of jail because of the arguments that he made in this podcast and cases reopened and people examining things.

02:29:16.000 Is there no end to your influence?

02:29:19.000 It's his influence.

02:29:20.000 I mean, I'm giving him the portal, but he's so selfless in his work and what he does to try to exonerate innocent people. 0.99

02:29:29.000 And, you know, we've had fucking tear-filled conversations about this because he's gotten people out that, you know, were immigrants, couldn't speak English well, were unfairly accused, and the prosecutors knew that this person was innocent, and they don't give a fuck. 0.98

02:29:45.000 Once they have someone in the game, they're trying to win. 0.98

02:29:49.000 Once the game is going on, they don't say, hey, Your Honor, I think we're wrong.

02:29:53.000 I think this guy's innocent, and I'm going to not try to prosecute him.

02:29:59.000 Even though we're in court right now, I want to say that I'm on his side.

02:30:03.000 No one does that.

02:30:04.000 Ego and careerism over truth.

02:30:07.000 So on the judicial point, are you for or against the death penalty?

02:30:13.000 If people were honest, 100% of the time, I would be for the death penalty.

02:30:19.000 People are not honest.

02:30:20.000 And if you know what I know about the whole process of trying someone and convicting someone unfairly about the way they withhold evidence, like we were talking about with Kamala Harris, including genetic evidence, they try to withhold evidence that would exonerate innocent people.

02:30:38.000 If I didn't know that, I'd be for the death penalty.

02:30:41.000 So philosophically, you're not against it. 1.00

02:30:43.000 I am for killing people who rape children. 1.00

02:30:46.000 I'm for killing people who murder your family, killing people who do horrible things. 1.00

02:30:53.000 I'm all for removing dangerous people that are detrimental to society. 0.99

02:30:57.000 The problem is you don't know.

02:31:01.000 You don't know because we have a corrupt system. 0.99

02:31:03.000 And not only do we have a corrupt system, but we have people that have existed inside this corrupt system for decades, and they're really fucking good at it. 0.98

02:31:10.000 So how about we do it very simply? 0.97

02:31:13.000 I'm going to set a criterion.

02:31:14.000 If I find your DNA in or on the bodies...

02:31:19.000 But you can't, no, because someone could plant that.

02:31:21.000 Even then it becomes sketchy.

02:31:24.000 Because people have planted DNA evidence on innocent people.

02:31:29.000 They've taken someone's innocent DNA, an innocent person's DNA, and planted it on a body in order to make it look like they committed a crime.

02:31:38.000 That's impossible.

02:31:39.000 So then practically speaking, since there is no way to render that probability of malfeasance to zero, then practically you would never be for the death penalty.

02:31:50.000 I think it's so hard to know whether or not someone who is saying they're innocent, unless there's overwhelming evidence, unless you have their family members and all these people saying, like Jeffrey Dahmer is a good example. 0.99

02:32:06.000 Fucking monster. 0.99

02:32:08.000 The guy was a monster, clearly. 1.00

02:32:10.000 There's a lot of cases of those. 0.98

02:32:12.000 Ted Bundy. 1.00

02:32:12.000 There's a lot of cases of those where people were fucking monsters. 1.00

02:32:15.000 That makes sense. 1.00

02:32:17.000 Like, remove them from society.

02:32:19.000 But what about people that are unfairly executed?

02:32:22.000 Unfairly convicted and then executed for crimes they didn't commit?

02:32:25.000 That happens all the time.

02:32:26.000 So I think we can set the set of criteria that you must reach so that you would feel sufficiently convinced that it has assuaged the possibility that someone is planting.

02:32:40.000 It has to be a Richard Ramirez type situation.

02:32:42.000 It has to be someone...

02:32:43.000 The Night Stalker.

02:32:44.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:32:44.000 There's so many people that are good people that get fucking railroaded and they wind up in jail and they have poor representation and maybe they can't read and maybe they're just... 0.98

02:32:55.000 They get fucked and then they wind up getting executed and the killer is loose and free. 0.99

02:32:59.000 And that happens. 1.00

02:33:00.000 That happens all the time.

02:33:01.000 I don't know what percentage.

02:33:03.000 Let's ask this.

02:33:04.000 What do you think, I don't even know the statistics, what percentage of people who are executed turn up to actually be innocent?

02:33:14.000 I'm going to say no more than 5%, which is a pretty high number.

02:33:17.000 It's a pretty high number.

02:33:18.000 I would say you're probably right.

02:33:20.000 It's probably less than that.

02:33:21.000 I would say it's probably less than 5%, but that's enough, man.

02:33:24.000 That's enough, yeah.

02:33:25.000 That's a lot. 0.84

02:33:26.000 You get 100 people, five of them, you're going to murder.

02:33:29.000 But that's because the criteria...

02:33:32.000 4%.

02:33:33.000 See, we're close. 0.99

02:33:34.000 Goddamn! 0.99

02:33:34.000 Give me some knuckles, brother. 0.99

02:33:36.000 Goddamn! 0.99

02:33:37.000 Nailed it. 0.99

02:33:37.000 Can I see that statistic, the way they say it? 0.99

02:33:39.000 It says the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science determined that at least 4% of people on the death penalty, death row, were and are likely innocent.

02:33:51.000 Have been executed.

02:33:52.000 Oh, people have no doubt that some innocent people have been executed.

02:33:56.000 That's a different sentence.

02:33:56.000 Yeah, but it's okay.

02:33:57.000 It's the same thing.

02:33:58.000 It says people on death row that have been convicted to the death penalty.

02:34:04.000 Yeah, but look, there have been cases of death penalty where it's based on eyewitness testimony.

02:34:11.000 We know how unreliable that is.

02:34:12.000 Terrible, yeah.

02:34:12.000 So you and I can set up the framework so that our exacting standards, so that nobody falls under 4%, could be met.

02:34:21.000 What I don't like is when you have people who say, under no conditions and no possible states of the world is it ever appropriate nor moral to kill someone.

02:34:33.000 And I simply don't agree that that's part of our...

02:34:35.000 Like Hitler? 0.82

02:34:36.000 You're telling me you wouldn't want to execute Hitler? 0.99

02:34:38.000 Exactly.

02:34:39.000 It's crazy.

02:34:39.000 There's people that are egregious, right?

02:34:41.000 There's people that their cases are so horrific that there is a moral imperative to remove them from the population.

02:34:50.000 Exactly right.

02:34:51.000 And I think the example that you gave with the children is that's where I would be.

02:34:55.000 You know, there's a story.

02:34:57.000 There's a UFC fighter who's one of the all-time greats, Cain Velasquez, and he's in jail now because there was a man who was working at the preschool who molested his four-year-old A hundred times or more.

02:35:12.000 Like, they don't know how many times this person did this.

02:35:15.000 By the way, that number, before you go on, that number is an actual stat, which I may have mentioned on the show before, that the average pedophile, when they're caught, has up to 100 prior molestation encounters.

02:35:28.000 Well, this guy got out on bail and was under house arrest and Cain Velasquez found out and chased him down in his car, shot at him in the car, wound up shooting his father who was driving the car.

02:35:42.000 His father, who by the way, was running the nursing home. 0.96

02:35:44.000 So his father likely knew that his son was a monster. 0.99

02:35:48.000 Shot him in the abdomen and in the arm. 0.99

02:35:52.000 I think he shot him through the door.

02:35:54.000 The car was shooting out the door of the car.

02:35:56.000 Kane's in jail with no bail, no possibility of bail, and he's being tried for murder, or tried for attempted murder, excuse me.

02:36:05.000 And, you know, that's a situation where that guy seems to be guilty.

02:36:13.000 I would have no problem with that guy getting the death penalty.

02:36:16.000 Wow. 0.99

02:36:16.000 That guy's ruining people's lives. 0.99

02:36:18.000 Unbelievable.

02:36:19.000 Ruining a small child. 0.99

02:36:21.000 If you found out your boy had been sexually molested... 1.00

02:36:25.000 Fucking a hundred times by some monster. 1.00

02:36:27.000 It's the biggest nightmare in the world. 1.00

02:36:28.000 It's the scariest thing ever and what Cain Velasquez did is what every person says they would do if someone came after their child.

02:36:35.000 He actually went out and did it.

02:36:37.000 So I've had not heated exchanges with my wife, but I always come with the following approach in parenting.

02:36:46.000 I don't put my children, who are now a bit older, they're 13 and 10, but growing up, I never put my children in any situation where they could ever be molested.

02:36:57.000 Meaning, if there is a man in any situation, my children are never going to be alone with them.

02:37:04.000 Now, my wife would argue, aren't you being a bit too punitive in presuming that there's a pedophile hanging around every corner?

02:37:11.000 I say, well, I'm not willing to take...

02:37:13.000 So the precautionary principle, I'm not willing to take the chance that that person who really seems nice, that neighbor, or the teenage son of their friend...

02:37:26.000 Anybody could be that guy.

02:37:27.000 He doesn't have horns.

02:37:29.000 I can't tell what he looks like.

02:37:31.000 Therefore, there was never any sleepovers.

02:37:33.000 There was never sleepaway camp.

02:37:36.000 So I can't understand.

02:37:37.000 Not that I'm blaming this gentleman who sought revenge.

02:37:40.000 But why is it that he was in a nursery that was run by a father and there was a male present?

02:37:47.000 That makes no sense to me.

02:37:49.000 I don't know.

02:37:49.000 I don't know how it worked.

02:37:51.000 I don't know the story.

02:37:52.000 I see your perspective, but, you know, there's a lot of people that have run nursing homes that are adult males that are great people.

02:38:00.000 It's not.

02:38:02.000 I mean, it's a horrible, horrible situation.

02:38:04.000 But I just think the problem is we can't read minds.

02:38:07.000 Yeah.

02:38:08.000 Until we can determine ultimate truth, like pure, undeniable truth from a person.

02:38:15.000 Like I sit you down and say, Mr. Saad, will you please put your hands on this thing and tell us what you did and what you didn't do.

02:38:24.000 And then until we can do that...

02:38:26.000 And by the way, people...

02:38:27.000 Here's the thing.

02:38:30.000 People say, like, oh, just give them a polygraph test.

02:38:33.000 Let me tell you something. 1.00

02:38:35.000 Sociopaths pass polygraph tests all the fucking time. 1.00

02:38:39.000 Real sociopaths can sit there and lie to your fucking face and it doesn't change their heart rate at all. 1.00

02:38:46.000 Liars. 1.00

02:38:47.000 Like real good liars. 1.00

02:38:49.000 People have gotten real fucking good at lying. 1.00

02:38:52.000 They've been lying their whole life. 1.00

02:38:53.000 They've just been making up shit and lying about this and lying about that and covering their tracks. 1.00

02:38:58.000 They don't even think they're lying. 1.00

02:38:59.000 They're fucking crazy. 1.00

02:39:01.000 I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the show. 1.00

02:39:03.000 There's an evolutionary biologist by the name of Robert Trivers who's still alive.

02:39:08.000 Some have said he's arguably the biggest evolutionary biologist since Darwin.

02:39:12.000 He's now in his late 70s.

02:39:14.000 So he developed the theory of the evolution of self-deception.

02:39:17.000 Why is it that we are so good at self-deceiving?

02:39:19.000 And the argument is that if I'm trying to manipulate you, Joe, when I lie to you in a manipulative intent, I have micro cues that...

02:39:33.000 Yes.

02:40:00.000 Yeah, it's not effective.

02:40:02.000 That's why it's not applicable in court.

02:40:03.000 And they need to come up with one.

02:40:05.000 I mean, that's the only way we're ever going to really know.

02:40:07.000 And until then, there's unfortunately a lot of people that are in bad circumstances, they have poor representation, they get framed, something happens, and then they wind up on death row.

02:40:18.000 So until then, it's very hard to support the death sentence.

02:40:23.000 I mean, I don't not support it in cases of pure guilt, like we know.

02:40:30.000 It's undeniable.

02:40:31.000 But there's a lot of places where people thought someone was absolutely guilty and it turned out not to be the case.

02:40:37.000 And then, you know, imagine living with that.

02:40:39.000 Imagine being a prosecuting attorney and you railroaded someone and sent them down the river, put them on death row, and then had them killed, and then it turns out they were innocent. 0.73

02:40:48.000 Like, man, good luck in hell. 0.97

02:40:50.000 Good luck in hell. 1.00

02:40:51.000 There's a special place in hell for people like that. 1.00

02:40:54.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:40:54.000 Imagine? 0.99

02:40:55.000 Prior to eventually settling on consumer psychology and evolutionary psychology, I had toyed with the idea of going into criminal psychology.

02:41:03.000 I had always been fascinated with the serial killers and so on.

02:41:06.000 And I decided, I think, rightly against it because I thought that I might have had the intellectual interest, but my personality would have been severely damaged by being exposed to darkness and evil.

02:41:20.000 That's actually one of the reasons why I didn't go into clinical psychology, unlike, say, Jordan Peterson, a friend of both of us.

02:41:31.000 I'm empathetic that I think I could have been an effective therapist, but I think it would have been very detrimental to my personhood because I wouldn't have been able to create the demarcation between listening to what was done to you when you were a child And then, oh,

02:41:46.000 now it's five o'clock.

02:41:47.000 Let me go and party with my family because all is good.

02:41:50.000 And so I think I would have probably blown my brains.

02:41:52.000 And so I think in retrospect, even though I've always been interested in forensic psychiatry and clinical psychology and criminal, I picked more uplifting fields of human behavior to study.

02:42:02.000 I think you picked wisely and I think you're absolutely accurate.

02:42:05.000 I think that same problem applies to police officers.

02:42:08.000 Exactly. 0.99

02:42:08.000 I mean, I have many friends that are either former or current police officers, and they tell me the horrific things that they've seen, you know, where they've had to go to a home where a father just murdered the wife in front of the children and that kind of shit, 0.99

02:42:24.000 or murdered a child. 0.81

02:42:26.000 They've seen so many horrific, horrific things, and then they come home to their own children, and there's a high rate of suicide among police officers, and I think they're correlated.

02:42:35.000 And imagine that we now You know, make them turn out to be, you know, diabolical via the hashtag defund the police.

02:42:43.000 So, of course, they are bad cops.

02:42:45.000 But the reality is we should be treating them with the respect they're deserving of because most of us would not be lining up to do their job.

02:42:52.000 They don't get paid enough for it.

02:42:54.000 And yet we do hashtag defund the police.

02:42:56.000 It's grotesque.

02:42:57.000 Well, it falls in line with these people that live in this delusional world where you don't need law enforcement, you don't need laws, and they're just going to be good people.

02:43:05.000 And then you get LA, where you get rampant, out-of-control crime, and people just get released on bail for murder.

02:43:11.000 They're just out roaming around the streets.

02:43:13.000 And if you steal less than 950, it's not a felony. 0.97

02:43:17.000 I mean, how many fucking Walmarts have to close down and Walgreens have to close down in San Francisco? 0.83

02:43:23.000 Those drug stores where they just walk in and just start shoveling things into a bag and walk out and no one does anything about it. 0.97

02:43:29.000 But again, that shows you that having a poor understanding of human nature has downstream bad effects, right?

02:43:35.000 So if you think that by definition if you're a criminal, It is never due to your own personal agency, but the culprit is really the society that caused you to become a victim.

02:43:47.000 Then why should I be punitive, right?

02:43:50.000 And therefore I shouldn't incarcerate you.

02:43:53.000 It's wrong.

02:43:53.000 I am double penalizing you.

02:43:55.000 First, the world made you into the rapist. 0.90

02:43:58.000 Otherwise you're a beautiful, lovely human being. 0.99

02:44:00.000 And now I'm going to put you in prison.

02:44:02.000 Why don't I instead find a way to help you out of this thing?

02:44:07.000 So it's a wrong understanding of human nature that causes all of these insane woke policies.

02:44:12.000 It is a wrong understanding of human nature, but there is a reality to people that are fucked by the world. 0.55

02:44:17.000 There are certain people that through no fault of their own, they were born into a horrible circumstance. 0.99

02:44:25.000 They have terrible parents.

02:44:26.000 They live in a terrible neighborhood. 0.89

02:44:27.000 There's crime and drugs.

02:44:29.000 And that's all they know.

02:44:30.000 And that's all they've ever known.

02:44:32.000 And they grew up that way.

02:44:33.000 And they're probably the victim of abuse, whether it's physical abuse or sexual abuse and violence.

02:44:37.000 They've had this their whole life.

02:44:39.000 They've been in and out of penal institutions. 1.00

02:44:41.000 These people are fucked. 1.00

02:44:42.000 And the problem is there's no rehabilitation mechanism that's involved. 1.00

02:44:48.000 The friends that I've had that have gone to jail and come out of jail, they're like, you're not getting rehabilitated in there.

02:44:54.000 If anything, you get turned into a harder criminal.

02:44:57.000 You get taught how to do crimes better and you get to talk to people about how they get caught and how they're going to not get caught the second time when they get out.

02:45:04.000 I don't know what the solution is.

02:45:07.000 I would imagine that we're going to have to have a much more comprehensive understanding of what it takes to program a mind and what it takes to deprogram a mind and what techniques, what substances are involved in that that can be Effectively given to people?

02:45:24.000 Because we know that there's some substances that aid tremendously in alleviating people from whether it's alcoholism or any kind of addiction issues like this Ibogaine.

02:45:35.000 There's a bunch of different things that people can do.

02:45:37.000 A lot of people that have done psilocybin, John Hopkins studies have shown tremendous benefits in quitting detrimental behavior, whether it's cigarettes or things like that, gambling, drug addiction.

02:45:53.000 I think there's Just aging reduces your criminality.

02:45:57.000 Nothing else, right?

02:45:58.000 Just your drop in testosterone is a huge predictor.

02:46:02.000 Especially violence, yeah.

02:46:03.000 So just, you know, wait out the curve and you'll become less violent.

02:46:08.000 Yeah, but I mean, it's like, how do we let someone become more wise while still protecting everyone else from that person's impulses and urges? 0.69

02:46:17.000 Especially if that person did grow up in a violent household where they were beaten and everyone in their neighborhood sucks and just...

02:46:24.000 There's a lot of people like that. 0.95

02:46:27.000 That's the real inequality.

02:46:28.000 The real inequality is the way children are raised.

02:46:32.000 The real inequality is what are you exposed to?

02:46:35.000 Even in the womb, they've done studies that show that women that are pregnant, and notice I said women that are pregnant, because guess what? 0.92

02:46:44.000 Men can't get pregnant. 1.00

02:46:46.000 Wow.

02:46:46.000 That was a bold statement on your part.

02:46:48.000 I'm saying it.

02:46:49.000 While women are pregnant, that if that woman is exposed to violence, that her higher cortisol rates in her body and the stress in her body, the adrenaline, all these effects will actually make the child more inclined towards violent activity. 0.55

02:47:04.000 Because the kid is thinking he's going to be born into a world that's crazy and he's got to protect himself.

02:47:10.000 He's got a shorter tension.

02:47:11.000 But then this kind of causal argument could be applied ad infinitum, right?

02:47:16.000 Yes.

02:47:16.000 At some point, you have to stand up and say, I have personal agency.

02:47:20.000 Look, I grew up in the most violent environment possible.

02:47:24.000 It's called the Lebanese Civil War.

02:47:27.000 I did not rob anybody.

02:47:28.000 I did not attack anybody.

02:47:30.000 I did not rape anybody.

02:47:31.000 But you also grew up with good parents.

02:47:33.000 Fair enough.

02:47:34.000 I get it.

02:47:35.000 But there are many, many people who've grown up with very, very bad parents, and they didn't end up killing anybody.

02:47:41.000 That's true.

02:47:41.000 So I get the argument of the mitigating factors, and I'm empathetic enough to understand it, but it never justifies.

02:47:49.000 At any moment in life, you have a bifurcation in the road, and you can go right or you can go left.

02:47:55.000 If you make the wrong choice, you pay the price.

02:47:58.000 I think that's true.

02:47:58.000 I think you're right.

02:48:00.000 But I think we need to find some way to reach people and let them know this in a way that there's a lot of people that don't have any role models of people that are striving through all this chaos and doing the right thing.

02:48:16.000 All the people that they're around, you know, people imitate their atmosphere.

02:48:20.000 If everyone in your atmosphere is committing crimes, and there are places in this country and certainly places in the world where that's the case, where you just live in a horrific environment and everyone around you is involved in terrible activities.

02:48:33.000 Have you seen this study?

02:48:34.000 I can't cite it off the top of my head, but that the number one predictors in a home that can serve as a predictor of how well your children will do is how many books are in the home.

02:48:45.000 Really?

02:48:46.000 So imagine if...

02:48:47.000 It'd be great if...

02:48:48.000 Well, my kids are going to kill it because I got a lot of books.

02:48:50.000 They got a lot of books from guests that come on your show and then books you throw.

02:48:54.000 Exactly.

02:48:55.000 I'm going to test you on this book next time.

02:48:57.000 What did I say in Chapter 7?

02:48:59.000 No, but seriously, so you're exactly right.

02:49:02.000 Having loving parents.

02:49:04.000 Larry Elder, whom I think you know, often talks about that the number one predictor... 0.97

02:49:08.000 He's the blackface for white supremacy. 0.99

02:49:10.000 I saw that in LA Times. 0.98

02:49:12.000 They wouldn't lie.

02:49:12.000 Exactly.

02:49:13.000 What does it say?

02:49:14.000 A child growing up in a home with at least 80 books will have a greater literacy and numeracy in adulthood.

02:49:20.000 A home library can promote reading.

02:49:22.000 There you go.

02:49:24.000 The other thing that I think in terms of parenting that is fantastic is if you treat your children with the dignity that they are deserving of.

02:49:31.000 Now, what do I mean by that?

02:49:32.000 I don't baby my children.

02:49:34.000 Even when they were five or six or seven, I speak to them as though they have a personhood.

02:49:40.000 I listen to them.

02:49:41.000 I explain the concept of libertarianism to my son who was nine last year.

02:49:46.000 We were walking and I was explaining.

02:49:48.000 You know why?

02:49:48.000 Because I was pissed off that a cop was standing giving out jaywalking tickets to people who were crossing the street when I'm perfectly capable as a 57-year-old man to know if there's an incoming car for me to make...

02:50:02.000 But apparently, no, the nanny state has to say when I should cross.

02:50:05.000 And so that led to a discussion of libertarianism.

02:50:08.000 Well, my giving him the dignity of me speaking to him in a way that I explained this to him, that's what good parenting is, right?

02:50:15.000 I don't mean to be tooting my own horn, but it's that you treat your children with the respect that they have a functioning brain.

02:50:24.000 Treat them with dignity.

02:50:26.000 And I think that could hopefully go a long way towards solving some of this criminality, maybe.

02:50:31.000 Well, your children are very lucky that they have you as a dad. 0.99

02:50:34.000 Unfortunately, there's a lot of people that have shithead dads. 0.90

02:50:38.000 The other thing is exposure to drug addiction and then losing that sort of the fear of that at a very early age. 0.98

02:50:49.000 Everyone's doing drugs around you and it's a common thing.

02:50:53.000 It's like You didn't have a dad growing up, right?

02:50:55.000 No.

02:50:56.000 I have a stepdad, but my parents divorced when I was five years old.

02:51:02.000 Did you stay in touch later with your biological dad?

02:51:05.000 No, I haven't talked to him since I was seven.

02:51:07.000 Wow.

02:51:08.000 Do you even know if he's alive?

02:51:09.000 Yeah, he's alive.

02:51:11.000 Wow, that's rough.

02:51:12.000 Rough on him.

02:51:14.000 Has he ever tried to reach you?

02:51:16.000 No.

02:51:17.000 No, that's what's even more crazy.

02:51:19.000 His kids have.

02:51:21.000 He has other kids.

02:51:22.000 They tried years ago.

02:51:23.000 Do you think they reached out, forgive me for asking, because you're the Joe Rogan guy?

02:51:28.000 That's how they knew.

02:51:30.000 We have the same name, he and my dad and I. His name is Joe Rogan too.

02:51:34.000 Oh, is that right?

02:51:35.000 Yeah.

02:51:36.000 Wow.

02:51:37.000 Yeah, that's his punishment.

02:51:39.000 That's his punishment.

02:51:40.000 He could have been with the son Joe Rogan and Probably not though.

02:51:44.000 Probably wouldn't have been me. 0.99

02:51:45.000 I probably would have been a shithead if I kept him as a dad. 0.99

02:51:51.000 It's one of those things where you always wonder. 0.98

02:51:57.000 The curse of having that happen to me at an early age, it gave me an independence and a determination.

02:52:05.000 I had determination that other kids didn't have.

02:52:10.000 I'm going to show the world.

02:52:12.000 I had that, but I also had no one's coming to help me.

02:52:15.000 There's no dad that's going to clean up my mess.

02:52:17.000 There's no dad that's going to be there to hold my hand and comfort me.

02:52:22.000 I had to do it all myself in a lot of ways.

02:52:26.000 My stepdad's a very good guy and my mom's a wonderful lady.

02:52:30.000 They didn't do bad, but there's something about not having your biological father in your life and knowing that he's out there and that he's not even reaching out to you.

02:52:37.000 I can't imagine that.

02:52:39.000 I mean, I love my children so much.

02:52:41.000 I won't say much, but believe me, I share a similar reality.

02:52:45.000 Yeah, I'm sure.

02:52:47.000 And yesterday I was asked, I was speaking at UT Austin, I was asked by a young man, how do you deal with adversity? 0.99

02:52:54.000 I said, well, for better or worse, I have the temperament that if you try to hurt me or if I face stressors in life, I want to then shove it up your ass and succeed even more. 0.90

02:53:05.000 So the more you throw at me, not unlike what happened with you, The more I'm irreverent to that stressor and I want to defeat it. 0.97

02:53:12.000 So I hear you, brother.

02:53:14.000 It's taken me a while to calm myself, though, because of it.

02:53:18.000 It took into my, you know, probably into my late 20s to really calm myself.

02:53:26.000 Because there was part of me that also felt angry that he wasn't around and also part of me that didn't feel in any way like I was safe.

02:53:40.000 When you're a child, you don't feel like anybody's looking out for you.

02:53:45.000 It's like a weird way to grow up.

02:53:47.000 You grow up in this way where you feel like...

02:53:51.000 Plus, I was a latchkey kid.

02:53:52.000 They just let me out of the house when I was little.

02:53:55.000 And you grow up that way, you recognize a lot more danger than other people do, which is also why I moved here so quickly.

02:54:04.000 Like, I moved to Texas in May of 2020, I started looking for houses. 1.00

02:54:09.000 I was like, fuck you. 0.99

02:54:10.000 When they said two weeks to flatten the curve, I go, okay, flattening the curve. 1.00

02:54:13.000 And then I started looking at statistics, then a few of mine got COVID and got over it really easily, and I'm like, what is going on?

02:54:19.000 And then it was months later.

02:54:20.000 I was like, what happened in a few weeks?

02:54:21.000 And then it was like more restrictions.

02:54:23.000 And I was like, what's going on?

02:54:26.000 And then I came out here to Texas and everybody's no masks and just hanging out. 0.99

02:54:31.000 I was like, what the fuck is going on? 0.99

02:54:34.000 Yeah, you should take care of yourself. 0.99

02:54:36.000 Yeah, you should be healthy.

02:54:37.000 Yeah, you shouldn't do anything unwise.

02:54:39.000 Yeah, it's not good to get COVID, but it seems like it's a respiratory disease and we've never been able to stop a respiratory disease from spreading ever in human history, ever.

02:54:50.000 And I know that. 0.98

02:54:51.000 And I'm not a fucking epidemiologist. 0.99

02:54:53.000 How do you not know that? 1.00

02:54:53.000 How do they not know that? 1.00

02:54:54.000 They do know that.

02:54:55.000 And masks don't work. 0.99

02:54:57.000 Fucking Fauci said masks don't work. 0.99

02:54:58.000 Unless you have a fitted N95 or KN95 mask. 0.99

02:55:03.000 Like, they're not working. 1.00

02:55:04.000 These fucking bandanas that people are wearing, this is nonsense. 1.00

02:55:08.000 Like, what are we playing games? 1.00

02:55:09.000 And the thing about Texas is like, you know, I met with the governor when I first came out here.

02:55:14.000 And one of the things that he said, he said, we want to make sure that we preserve people's freedoms.

02:55:19.000 That's the same thing Ron DeSantis said.

02:55:21.000 I met him recently, too.

02:55:22.000 He said, we preserve people's freedoms here.

02:55:24.000 I spoke at an event by Hillsdale College.

02:55:27.000 I don't know if you know the school.

02:55:28.000 They're kind of a college that positions itself as kind of the premier anti-woke college.

02:55:33.000 And they had invited me to speak in Florida at an event in Naples.

02:55:37.000 And so I was the plenary speaker on whatever it was on Thursday.

02:55:41.000 The Wednesday event, it was DeSantis.

02:55:44.000 And so I didn't get to meet him personally, but I was at his thing.

02:55:47.000 And he seems like pretty legit.

02:55:49.000 What do you think?

02:55:50.000 I think he's legit.

02:55:51.000 There's people that don't agree with some of the things that he says because they're ideologically opposed to him because they're on the left.

02:55:57.000 But if you don't have a left or a right, which would be way better for all people to just engage with individual ideas individually.

02:56:07.000 Engage them independently.

02:56:09.000 How do you feel about education?

02:56:10.000 I think it's critical.

02:56:11.000 It's very important.

02:56:13.000 How do you feel about indoctrination by people that are educators?

02:56:16.000 I don't like that at all.

02:56:17.000 They're just two very different things. 1.00

02:56:19.000 And if you want to tell me that they're the same thing, I say, fuck you. 1.00

02:56:22.000 Because they're not. 1.00

02:56:23.000 Because there's a lot of fucking crazy people that wound up being teachers. 0.99

02:56:27.000 Someone said to me that, or read this, that term groomer, a lot of people don't like that term online. 0.99

02:56:35.000 They're very upset.

02:56:36.000 But they're real.

02:56:36.000 There are groomers.

02:56:38.000 You don't like it?

02:56:39.000 Do you not like it because you don't want children to be groomed?

02:56:42.000 Or do you not like it because it's a pejorative that's used against the left?

02:56:46.000 Which is, I think, more likely.

02:56:48.000 But here's what's more important. 1.00

02:56:50.000 Not have people groom your fucking kids. 0.99

02:56:52.000 That's what's more important than you getting uncomfortable with this word because it's used by people on the right. 1.00

02:56:56.000 Like, I saw someone as an argument, someone who I think is an intelligent person, say that there should be a block against using the word groomer.

02:57:06.000 No!

02:57:06.000 No, there should be no groomers!

02:57:08.000 How about that?

02:57:09.000 And this is what they wrote.

02:57:10.000 They said, not all teachers are groomers, but a lot of groomers are teachers.

02:57:14.000 There you go.

02:57:15.000 And that's real. 1.00

02:57:16.000 That's a real fucking problem. 1.00

02:57:17.000 I mean, constantly, teachers are getting arrested for exposing themselves to children, For masturbating in front of children, for sending nude pictures in front of children. 1.00

02:57:28.000 Every couple days there's a new one that pops up in the news.

02:57:30.000 And how many of those people haven't been caught yet?

02:57:32.000 And how many of those people are out there?

02:57:34.000 And how many of those people are doing it under the guise of I'm an LBGTQ educator?

02:57:41.000 I'm keeping a tally of the amount of hate mail that you're going to be getting.

02:57:45.000 Well, good luck.

02:57:45.000 I don't read it.

02:57:48.000 There's people that are good people in all walks of life. 1.00

02:57:51.000 Trans people, gay people, straight people, bisexual, whatever the fuck you are. 0.98

02:57:55.000 There's good people in all walks of life. 1.00

02:57:57.000 There's also pieces of shit that will use those labels in order to get closer to groups of people and indoctrinate them. 0.99

02:58:06.000 And indoctrinate them for their own sexual pleasure. 1.00

02:58:08.000 And that's real.

02:58:09.000 So you don't like kindergarten teachers talking about gender identity? 0.59

02:58:14.000 Well, I think it's important, and I think everyone should know it.

02:58:16.000 I think that's why that whole, what they were calling the don't say gay bill in Florida was so infuriating.

02:58:23.000 Like, when you're saying that you oppose any sort of legislation that prevents people from talking about Sex and gender identity and sexual orientation with people that are first grade through third grade.

02:58:42.000 You oppose anything that restricts that.

02:58:45.000 I go, okay.

02:58:47.000 Who are you talking about? 1.00

02:58:49.000 Because if this is open-ended, I've had some fucking idiots for teachers when I grew up. 1.00

02:58:54.000 Can you imagine if those fucking idiots were trying to convince your child that they should be homosexual or that they should even be straight? 1.00

02:59:03.000 Imagine if you have a kid that's gay. 1.00

02:59:05.000 Never mind convincing. 0.94

02:59:06.000 How about just don't address, don't talk about this issue.

02:59:10.000 That's my point. 1.00

02:59:10.000 My point is, imagine if you have a gay child and you have a fucking teacher that's trying to indoctrinate your child into the world of heterosexuality and convince your child that they're going to burn in hell if that child is gay. 1.00

02:59:25.000 Imagine how furious you would be. 1.00

02:59:27.000 Well, it works the other way too, right?

02:59:29.000 It does.

02:59:30.000 It works the other way. 1.00

02:59:31.000 You should be really good at what you do if you want to talk to a fucking seven-year-old about gender identity and sex. 1.00

02:59:42.000 I've seen some of these people with lip rings and fucking blue hair. 1.00

02:59:46.000 They clearly are ideologically bound. 0.99

02:59:49.000 I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the way they live their life.

02:59:52.000 I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them pursuing whatever sexual identity they have and living their life.

02:59:59.000 But I'm saying you should not be the person that talks to children about this.

03:00:04.000 I think?

03:00:20.000 And the typical answer that we get from academic research is that you should only target children with advertising when they know that the intent of the advertisement is to persuade them of something.

03:00:33.000 Yes.

03:00:33.000 Because once they know that, they can build the cognitive barriers against your persuasive intent.

03:00:40.000 Yes.

03:00:43.000 We tell companies, you can't sell cereals to an 11-year-old child because they're too young to protect themselves against the persuasive intent.

03:00:53.000 But from this side of the mouth, we tell people, teachers, that it is when they're 7 years old or 6 years old that we should tell them about LGBTQ stuff.

03:01:03.000 Those two things are inconsistent.

03:01:05.000 If I can't target your child to sell them chewing gum, then I shouldn't be targeting your child with gender identity stuff.

03:01:12.000 Well, the other thing is children want the praise and acceptance from adults.

03:01:17.000 They do.

03:01:18.000 That's part of being a child, especially adult they admire, like a teacher.

03:01:22.000 Especially adult that has a position of power, a position of influence.

03:01:25.000 They're standing in front of a class, and they're 37 years old, and these kids are 8, and they're telling them about how the world works.

03:01:33.000 And maybe they're doing it in a better, more attentive way than the parents do. 0.97

03:01:36.000 Maybe the parents aren't doing such a good job, because maybe the parents are fucking tired and they work all day. 0.97

03:01:40.000 I don't know. 0.98

03:01:41.000 But what I do know is your cerebral cortex doesn't even fully form until you're 25 years old.

03:01:46.000 Your frontal lobe, your ability to be a fully, like, realistically, you shouldn't be able to make any decisions until you're 25. Like, realistically.

03:01:57.000 Right?

03:01:57.000 But obviously you can't do that.

03:01:59.000 It is.

03:01:59.000 It's a high standard.

03:02:00.000 But there's so much that you can convince a child of.

03:02:05.000 There's so much.

03:02:06.000 You can convince them to join cults. 0.99

03:02:08.000 You can convince them to be a suicide bomber.

03:02:10.000 Why do you think they get children to wear those vests? 1.00

03:02:14.000 Because you can convince a child that you're going to go to heaven and you're going to be with Allah if you put on a suicide bombing vest when you're fucking ten years old. 0.97

03:02:23.000 There's a reason why they do that, and they don't go to 50-year-old guys with PhDs, right? 0.98

03:02:28.000 Because that guy would be like, wait, how many virgins do I get?

03:02:31.000 Why do I even want a virgin? 1.00

03:02:32.000 What the fuck are you saying? 1.00

03:02:33.000 Can you show me this? 1.00

03:02:35.000 How do I know that God said this?

03:02:36.000 I feel as though you're preparing the next bit for your show.

03:02:43.000 No.

03:02:43.000 We're at a very strange place in this country where we're so ideologically bound and we're so connected to our tribe that we ignore all the signs that both sides are doing something wrong.

03:02:56.000 Both sides.

03:02:58.000 You were speaking about Dave Rubin, and there's one thing that I noticed recently that was kind of very disturbing.

03:03:05.000 Dave is now, he's essentially a right-wing guy, right?

03:03:09.000 He used to be a left-wing guy.

03:03:11.000 He used to be with the Young Turks.

03:03:12.000 Now he's a right-wing guy.

03:03:13.000 Dave and his husband adopted children.

03:03:18.000 No, surrogacy.

03:03:19.000 Surrogacy, yeah.

03:03:20.000 Surrogate, okay.

03:03:23.000 So they used their sperm and they created children, right? 1.00

03:03:26.000 And then I was watching all of these fucking vicious... 1.00

03:03:31.000 Right-wing, ideologically captured people who were talking about how horrible they were and about this is rent-a-womb and they were talking about how it's satanic and all this sick shit and just shitting all over him and his husband. 1.00

03:03:51.000 I guess there's two children. 1.00

03:03:53.000 There's two of them, exactly.

03:03:55.000 And I'm watching this.

03:03:56.000 I'm like, man, imagine being that dude.

03:03:58.000 And, you know, you go over to that side and you think, you know, well, the right wing accepts me and he loves me.

03:04:03.000 And it's kind of a cool thing because I'm a gay guy, but I'm also conservative now and I've been red pilled.

03:04:08.000 And then you try to express a little bit about your own personal life. 1.00

03:04:12.000 And these hateful assholes are coming out for you. 1.00

03:04:15.000 And he just wants to be a loving father, just wants to be a loving father with his husband. 0.99

03:04:20.000 And that basically speaks to a point that I make in Chapter 1 of The Peristic Mind where I say, while I will be focusing on idea pathogens of the left, because the ecosystem that I inhabit is academia, so therefore all the bad ideas stem from leftist professors, This doesn't mean that I'm implying that the right cannot be parasitized by bad ideas as well.

03:04:41.000 So the fact that I don't focus on the right doesn't mean that I am implicitly saying I support the right and not the left.

03:04:49.000 Academia is run by leftists, therefore they're the ones who originate and spawn all those bullshit ideas that I discuss in the book. 0.87

03:04:56.000 So you're exactly right. 0.96

03:04:57.000 The political aisle that you lay on It's not going to predict whether you can be parasitized.

03:05:04.000 Yeah, it's not. 0.97

03:05:06.000 There's plenty of really shitty right-wing ideas, too. 0.96

03:05:09.000 Exactly. 0.99

03:05:10.000 And there's plenty of shitty libertarian ideas. 0.98

03:05:12.000 There's shitty ideas in all sorts of ideologies. 0.92

03:05:15.000 And again, I think you should engage with each idea individually.

03:05:19.000 This is, by the way, why people think that I'm being coy when they ask me, so what do you identify in terms of your politics?

03:05:25.000 And I say exactly what you just said.

03:05:28.000 I'm an ideas guy.

03:05:29.000 If you ask me what's your view on immigration or on the death penalty, you'd think I'm an ultra-conservative.

03:05:36.000 If you ask me about gay rights and transgender rights, you'd think that I am a Portland, Oregon inhabitant.

03:05:42.000 So depending on the issue you ask me, I move around to different parts because I'm an ideas guy.

03:05:48.000 I think if more people had that commitment, then we wouldn't be quite as tribalized, if I can put it that I'm with you, and I think that's the only way we get out of this.

03:05:58.000 Look, I lean far more left than I do right because I grew up on welfare.

03:06:03.000 I grew up in poverty.

03:06:06.000 We had food stamps when I was a kid.

03:06:07.000 I remember those times.

03:06:09.000 I remember being poor.

03:06:10.000 And I will never say that I don't believe in social services or a social safety net.

03:06:14.000 I think that's crazy.

03:06:16.000 That saved my family.

03:06:18.000 It saved me.

03:06:18.000 And my parents worked their way out of it.

03:06:20.000 My mom and my stepdad worked their way out of that and eventually got off of it and eventually did well.

03:06:25.000 I saw it happen.

03:06:26.000 So I saw the benefit of hard work, but I also saw the benefit of having a social safety net.

03:06:31.000 So I'm very progressive in that. 0.99

03:06:32.000 But I value hard work and discipline more than fucking anything. 1.00

03:06:36.000 And when someone says, oh, I can't this because I'm triggered by this, shut the fuck up. 0.99

03:06:44.000 I know what that is. 0.99

03:06:46.000 I know weakness.

03:06:47.000 I know nonsense.

03:06:49.000 I know excuses.

03:06:51.000 I know slovenly behavior.

03:06:53.000 And it should never be praised.

03:06:57.000 Ever.

03:06:58.000 Because it's not good for you either.

03:07:00.000 And the feelings that you get when someone leaves and pretends that everything you're doing is fine.

03:07:06.000 You need a mental health day.

03:07:08.000 I get it.

03:07:08.000 You need a mental health day.

03:07:10.000 A friend of mine who's an employer, she employs people, and she was saying that some of her employees are saying, I need a mental health day today.

03:07:17.000 She's like, You're not sick. 1.00

03:07:19.000 Get the fuck to work. 1.00

03:07:21.000 What are you talking about? 1.00

03:07:22.000 You want to get paid for this mental health day? 1.00

03:07:24.000 Show the fuck up. 1.00

03:07:26.000 We're not talking about your parents just died in a car accident. 0.99

03:07:29.000 No, you're just, you have a high level of anxiety today.

03:07:32.000 You know, it's this Roe vs.

03:07:33.000 Wade thing.

03:07:34.000 I saw it in the news and I need a mental health day. 1.00

03:07:36.000 Fuck you. 1.00

03:07:37.000 Show up at work. 1.00

03:07:38.000 Show up at work and work harder. 0.98

03:07:40.000 Get Get the fuck out of here with this. 1.00

03:07:41.000 You need to be a bit more animated, Joe. 0.99

03:07:42.000 I get so crazy about it because I know what it is.

03:07:46.000 By the way, I see it in my own environment with the number of students who now file for special services through the Office of Disability or whatever it's called.

03:07:57.000 So for the first 20 plus years as a professor, I almost had no one.

03:08:02.000 Because when you file with them, for example, you'll get 50% more time on your exam.

03:08:07.000 But you never find out because it's confidential.

03:08:10.000 So I never find out this person suffers from this issue.

03:08:13.000 So all I get is an instruction that person X needs 50% more time on the exam, right? 0.95

03:08:20.000 Well, I used to never have any of these filings.

03:08:23.000 And now, in any given semester, I may have, you know, quite a large percentage.

03:08:28.000 10% of the students are somehow in there.

03:08:31.000 So what happened?

03:08:32.000 There's been a growth in the incidence of, you know, whatever disability you had to follow.

03:08:37.000 But no, it's part of the grievance infrastructure, right?

03:08:40.000 There's been an infestation of indulgence.

03:08:43.000 Exactly.

03:08:43.000 Yeah, and look, you can always find reasons why you can't get out of bed.

03:08:46.000 I could find reasons every day.

03:08:48.000 We could always.

03:08:49.000 And by the way, those things, thinking in negative ways like that, it becomes a pattern.

03:08:56.000 It becomes a part of the way your mind interfaces with the world.

03:09:00.000 And it just creates more and more incentive for you to continue those patterns, and those patterns become comfortable. 0.96

03:09:06.000 Just like becoming a loser, failing, falling apart, not following through with things, fucking up jobs, getting divorced all the time, gambling away all your money, going in, like, all those things are patterns. 0.98

03:09:19.000 I don't have to tell you, you're literally a psychologist. 0.99

03:09:22.000 But all those patterns, they're so easy for people to fall into and you can't accept that.

03:09:27.000 You cannot accept that because there's been plenty of people out there that have had those patterns to turn their life around and that's what I encourage people to do. 0.99

03:09:35.000 I don't say the things that I say because I'm a mean person and I want to shit on people that are weak. 0.94

03:09:40.000 I want people to be strong. 0.97

03:09:42.000 I want people to be strong with themselves and I want people to recognize that there's value in being disciplined.

03:09:49.000 There's value in getting your life together.

03:09:51.000 There's value in truth.

03:09:52.000 There's value in honesty.

03:09:53.000 There's value in hard work.

03:09:54.000 There's value in camaraderie and friendship and love and being a good person.

03:09:59.000 And it's hard to be a good person.

03:10:00.000 And Aristotle has already said all those things that you just said.

03:10:04.000 Yes.

03:10:05.000 But you go on thinking you're the first one who said it.

03:10:07.000 No, I'm not thinking.

03:10:08.000 I definitely am not.

03:10:09.000 I'm teasing you.

03:10:10.000 By the way, we're three hours in.

03:10:11.000 How about that?

03:10:12.000 Crazy.

03:10:12.000 You know, I didn't even know if it was an hour or two or three.

03:10:15.000 Crazy.

03:10:15.000 It flies by.

03:10:16.000 You are amazing.

03:10:17.000 The Parasitic Mind is available now.

03:10:18.000 Did you do the audio book?

03:10:19.000 Please tell me you did.

03:10:20.000 No, it's from the time when you got angry at me, nothing has changed.

03:10:24.000 It's not me. 0.98

03:10:25.000 Goddammit. 0.97

03:10:26.000 I know.

03:10:26.000 Why don't they let you do it?

03:10:27.000 Tell these fucks. 1.00

03:10:28.000 I know. 1.00

03:10:29.000 Your silky smooth voice?

03:10:30.000 I know. 1.00

03:10:31.000 It'd be so much better than some fucking actor reading your bullshit. 1.00

03:10:34.000 With the next book, will you read it? 1.00

03:10:36.000 I am going to do everything in my power to adhere to your edict.

03:10:40.000 Who is the publisher?

03:10:41.000 The publisher of the book is Regnery, the audio book.

03:10:44.000 I can't remember who it is. 0.99

03:10:45.000 Regnery, please get your shit together. 1.00

03:10:47.000 The Godfather should be reading his own book. 1.00

03:10:50.000 I am the Lebanese Barry White.

03:10:52.000 Yes.

03:10:53.000 I mean, the smooth voice.

03:10:54.000 I need it.

03:10:54.000 I need it on the audiobook.

03:10:56.000 If I heard some other guy reading your words, I'd be like, look.

03:10:59.000 Not just my words.

03:11:00.000 In many cases, it's my personal history in Lebanon.

03:11:03.000 Right.

03:11:04.000 Exactly.

03:11:05.000 This is nonsense.

03:11:06.000 I'm with you, brother.

03:11:07.000 Let's go.

03:11:08.000 Come on.

03:11:09.000 Delete that old one.

03:11:11.000 Start fresh with a new one.

03:11:13.000 But either way, the book is fantastic.

03:11:14.000 Just read it.

03:11:14.000 Don't even get the audio.

03:11:16.000 Do whatever you want.

03:11:17.000 But know that this man wrote it.

03:11:19.000 It's available and it's awesome.

03:11:21.000 I appreciate you, brother.

03:11:22.000 Oh, thank you so much.

03:11:23.000 And your podcast is available.

03:11:25.000 The Sad Truth on podcast, Apple, on YouTube.

03:11:28.000 It's everywhere.

03:11:28.000 On everything.

03:11:29.000 Beautiful.

03:11:30.000 Always a pleasure.

03:11:30.000 Always a pleasure, my friend.

03:11:32.000 All right.

03:11:32.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 11, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1816 - Gad Saad

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript