The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2012 - Gad Saad

00:00:08.000 How are you, sir?

00:00:13.000 Oh my god, I'm excited to see you.

00:00:14.000 Good to see you.

00:00:15.000 It's always great to see you.

00:00:16.000 I think this is the ninth time I appear.

00:00:20.000 So am I entering kind of Hall of Fame status?

00:00:22.000 Yeah, there's like after five.

00:00:25.000 Anybody with more than five. 0.63

00:00:26.000 That should be like the top line on my CV. Forget about all the other bullshit. 0.99

00:00:30.000 Nine times on Joe Rogan. 0.99

00:00:32.000 We've had some fun conversations.

00:00:33.000 Yeah, before we start, today, July 25th, is the release of my latest book.

00:00:39.000 Here's a copy for you, sir.

00:00:40.000 Thank you very much.

00:00:42.000 The Sad Truth About Happiness, Eight Secrets for Leading the Good Life.

00:00:46.000 Boom.

00:00:47.000 All right.

00:00:48.000 Please read it.

00:00:49.000 I will.

00:00:49.000 You'll enjoy it.

00:00:50.000 Did you do the audiobook?

00:00:52.000 I swear to God, the number one thing I was worried that you were going to ask me was that.

00:00:57.000 And you lead off with that.

00:00:59.000 So, here's what happened.

00:01:00.000 An actor does it.

00:01:01.000 So, he has a beautiful voice.

00:01:05.000 I insisted.

00:01:06.000 I said, Joe Rogan berated me on his show for maybe 15 minutes.

00:01:12.000 Listen to him.

00:01:13.000 They pitched it to the audio publisher.

00:01:15.000 The audio publisher said, sorry, we do in-house narration.

00:01:19.000 So I think for the next book, I'll put it as part of the contract.

00:01:22.000 Yeah, it has to be. 0.99

00:01:23.000 They're silly. 0.99

00:01:24.000 They're silly, especially when you're a public figure. 0.99

00:01:27.000 Like, there's hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of you talking. 0.97

00:01:32.000 Indeed.

00:01:32.000 Now, when people want to hear your words, they want to hear them through your mouth.

00:01:35.000 And it's personal stories.

00:01:37.000 Yes!

00:01:38.000 It makes no sense.

00:01:40.000 I'm sold.

00:01:40.000 Believe me, I fought the fight.

00:01:42.000 That's so crazy. 0.77

00:01:42.000 But it's such a silly fight to have when someone's a professional public speaker. 0.77

00:01:48.000 Yeah. 0.81

00:01:48.000 Like yourself. 0.81

00:01:49.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:01:51.000 With a very velvety voice.

00:01:53.000 Velvety! 0.53

00:01:54.000 Smooth! 0.85

00:01:55.000 And, you know, who's closer to the subject matter, right?

00:01:59.000 Indeed.

00:01:59.000 Come on.

00:02:00.000 You know the truth behind the words.

00:02:02.000 Like, you're going to say these things, if you're talking about, especially, like, real-life experiences, you're saying them as you.

00:02:08.000 I lead off, by the way, in the first chapter to talk about sort of existential happiness, about how I came very close to being aborted in Lebanon.

00:02:18.000 I don't want somebody else to be telling that story.

00:02:20.000 Right, right, right, right.

00:02:22.000 Of course.

00:02:23.000 Your story is wild.

00:02:25.000 You know, what I find about people like yourself that have been through...

00:02:33.000 Like a really scary thing.

00:02:37.000 Really scary.

00:02:38.000 Like genuinely scary.

00:02:39.000 Like scary threats for your life.

00:02:41.000 War zone stuff. 0.96

00:02:42.000 Folks like yourself have so much less patience for nonsense. 0.95

00:02:46.000 Exactly.

00:02:47.000 And that's why I sometimes can appear irascible when I go after me.

00:02:53.000 Because sometimes people will say, you know, when I meet you, you seem so much nicer and warmer than how you are on social media.

00:02:59.000 But I'm not trying to be mean on social media. 0.99

00:03:01.000 It's that I'm pissed off at the bullshit. 0.98

00:03:03.000 And so it comes across as though, you know, I'm cantankerous and combative, but I'm just really fighting, hopefully, the good fight. 0.99

00:03:10.000 The real problem with social media is the problem with human beings.

00:03:13.000 It's tribal groupthink.

00:03:14.000 Yeah.

00:03:15.000 And it overwhelms these groups of people that you associate with and then narratives get formed and you can't stray outside those narratives.

00:03:24.000 You can't even look at objective reality.

00:03:28.000 You can't look at data.

00:03:29.000 You can't look.

00:03:29.000 It just becomes so crazy that the ideology and the adherence to that ideology trumps everything.

00:03:35.000 It trumps the truth. 1.00

00:03:36.000 It trumps You're willing, as long as the politicians on your side, to ignore craziness, corruption, horrible shit. 1.00

00:03:45.000 You ignore all of it. 0.99

00:03:46.000 Perfect example of that, I hate to say that I've seen his feed, Meathead from All in the Family, Rob Reiner.

00:03:54.000 Have you ever gone to his...

00:03:57.000 I've read a couple of tweets and I'm like, I'm out.

00:03:59.000 I love his work too much.

00:04:01.000 I know.

00:04:02.000 I know.

00:04:02.000 It's hard to then like his work.

00:04:04.000 He is so overwhelmingly obsessed with Trump.

00:04:11.000 Stephen King is another guy who fits that description.

00:04:15.000 Something happens to old liberals with a ton of money.

00:04:21.000 It's like something happens to those old creative types.

00:04:25.000 It just doesn't make sense.

00:04:28.000 It doesn't make sense that you're arguing with people online about it all day long, if you're Rob Reiner or if you're Stephen King, like putting nasty tweets out.

00:04:38.000 It's like, come on.

00:04:38.000 So I actually, I wrote, maybe it was a shameless plug-in of my book, but I responded to Rob Brown and I said, let me send you a copy of my book.

00:04:47.000 Man, there's so much that you have to be happy about.

00:04:51.000 Stop being mired endlessly in vitriol.

00:04:54.000 I mean, that's all he does.

00:04:55.000 I mean, imagine this guy, how many things he's got to be grateful about.

00:04:59.000 He's a creative guy, a talented guy, and he spends all day obsessing on issues that ultimately he's got no control over.

00:05:06.000 Well, people viewed Trump as an existential threat to the very fundamentals of the country.

00:05:15.000 They thought that he was gonna come in and he was gonna represent corruption on a level that we've never seen before.

00:05:22.000 But the problem with doing that and saying that is that it opens the door to examining all the other corruption.

00:05:29.000 Like, how much corruption is there?

00:05:30.000 How much money are you guys making?

00:05:34.000 Where's this money coming from?

00:05:35.000 There's so much corruption that's readily available that once you start opening the door to calling someone a monster, Then everyone gets to look at you and go, hey, but what about you guys?

00:05:45.000 What are you doing?

00:05:46.000 What about drone bombings?

00:05:49.000 Let's talk about some real problems.

00:05:51.000 What about the fentanyl crisis?

00:05:53.000 What about the borders where criminals are coming through?

00:05:58.000 How many are being sent back?

00:06:00.000 What's the numbers?

00:06:01.000 What's the numbers?

00:06:02.000 I mean, a lot of them are good people that just want to find a better way to live, and good for them.

00:06:06.000 And I would do it too. 0.95

00:06:08.000 If I could sneak across into America and be assimilated, I would fucking do it. 0.98

00:06:12.000 Why wouldn't you? 0.98

00:06:13.000 If you got a bad roll of the dice and you're living in somewhere that's less favorable, and you get the opportunity to just, all you have to do is get across the river and they let you in.

00:06:21.000 But how many of those people shouldn't be here?

00:06:24.000 How many of those people are dangerous?

00:06:25.000 How many?

00:06:26.000 What's the number?

00:06:26.000 It's not zero.

00:06:28.000 What's the number?

00:06:28.000 Well, I can tell you that we've talked about this in the past when we talked about people who come from certain cultures where there's rampant anti-Semitism.

00:06:37.000 And so if you let people that are coming from cultures where when they're polled, somewhere between 90 to 99% of them will exhibit rampant Jew hatred.

00:06:48.000 It doesn't take much of a sociologist or a survey analyst to recognize that out of all those people that are coming in, you're going to have an increase of Jew hatred.

00:06:58.000 Yesterday, I was out with some friends here in Austin, and so one of them asked me, have you seen an uptake on Jew hatred?

00:07:06.000 Are you exposed to more?

00:07:07.000 And I say, it's endless.

00:07:09.000 I mean, it's usually on social media.

00:07:10.000 Do you think it's ramped up?

00:07:12.000 Or do you think now that Elon has taken over Twitter and allowed much more free speech...

00:07:18.000 Hard to tell.

00:07:19.000 I really don't know.

00:07:20.000 But there is kind of a normalized...

00:07:22.000 Now, many of them are behind anonymous accounts.

00:07:25.000 Of course.

00:07:26.000 But there is kind of a cavalier normalization of just saying...

00:07:31.000 So, for example, I think someone had retweeted a promotional thing about my book.

00:07:36.000 And someone said, you know, why are you promoting the Jew?

00:07:39.000 You're like, my God, this guy could be your son's teacher.

00:07:43.000 He could be the grocer at the store.

00:07:47.000 You know what I have a real concern with that and I also have a real concern with Vested entities like organizations that would want people to be at each other's throats Stirring up things with fake social media posts because this is a real problem that's happening in the world right now,

00:08:05.000 right, you know someone tweeted a bunch of different examples of where Dozens and dozens of accounts are saying the same inflammatory things with the exact same wordage, exact.

00:08:21.000 And they're all like, you know, they have numbers and letters in their accounts, like just random accounts.

00:08:25.000 And, you know, you go to their page, it looks kind of real.

00:08:28.000 They have a photo.

00:08:29.000 There's like them with a flag.

00:08:31.000 It's like, and you go through it, but you get this sense like, oh, you're a bot.

00:08:36.000 You're not even a real person. 1.00

00:08:37.000 So you're an agent of you're stirring up bullshit. 0.99

00:08:42.000 So there's a certain aspect of our culture. 0.98

00:08:45.000 I don't know what the percentage is, but there's a certain aspect of the conversations online that are being flavored by fake accounts that are designed to get people upset with each other.

00:08:57.000 It's like psychological warfare on a level that no one anticipated and no one's prepared for.

00:09:06.000 Because when you have the two things we already discussed, like this adherence to the ideology no matter what, no matter what, Like, there's no...

00:09:15.000 You can't objectively, logically defend any of the things that are in opposition of it.

00:09:21.000 And then you have this.

00:09:22.000 So are you...

00:09:23.000 I noticed...

00:09:24.000 I mean, obviously, we follow each other on Twitter.

00:09:26.000 You almost never...

00:09:27.000 I mean, short of the recent thing you did with Peter Hotez, you almost never weigh in on anything.

00:09:34.000 Was that sort of a conscious thing for you to step back?

00:09:37.000 Yeah.

00:09:37.000 Well, with that one, it was like, okay, this is crazy.

00:09:40.000 You're saying that...

00:09:43.000 He made some crazy tweet about neo-fascist leanings.

00:09:48.000 Yeah, yeah, I saw that.

00:09:49.000 Like, what are you talking about?

00:09:50.000 Like, with Robert Kennedy Jr., with me, I'm like, this is dangerous.

00:09:53.000 Like, what you're saying is totally untrue.

00:09:56.000 You know it's untrue.

00:09:57.000 And you're willing to just say it because, like, the more you can discredit someone who's in opposition to some of your ideas, the more you can somehow or another in your weird game of checkers you're playing, like, elevate yourself.

00:10:12.000 But you don't think people know what you're doing?

00:10:13.000 Like, that's like the most clear...

00:10:15.000 Neo-fascist? 1.00

00:10:16.000 Like, what the fuck are you saying? 0.99

00:10:17.000 Did you feel more angry at the fact that you had already had a conversation with him and so there was some kind of personal connection between you two? 0.99

00:10:26.000 I mean, I understand he's not your best friend.

00:10:27.000 For sure.

00:10:28.000 I've had him on at least...

00:10:30.000 Was he on twice?

00:10:31.000 Twice.

00:10:32.000 I've had him on twice.

00:10:33.000 I was very nice to him.

00:10:34.000 Even in disagreement with him, like, in issues of health.

00:10:37.000 I was very nice to him.

00:10:40.000 But you can't just say stuff like that.

00:10:42.000 And, you know, it's like, I just wanted to say, like, have a debate with the guy.

00:10:46.000 Yeah.

00:10:46.000 Like, have a debate with the guy.

00:10:47.000 So what ended up happening?

00:10:48.000 I think it got up to, like, two million dollars.

00:10:50.000 He's not going to do it.

00:10:51.000 He won't do it.

00:10:53.000 You know, I don't think he wants to do it.

00:10:55.000 You know, and there's the idea that, like, Robert Kennedy would be too silver-tongued, like, oh, come on, because he's a lawyer, you know, and he's really good at arguing stuff.

00:11:04.000 Like, if you either have facts or you don't have facts, and if you're scared to debate the facts, I have to go, well, what are these facts?

00:11:10.000 Well, what's bothering you?

00:11:12.000 What do you worry that he might bring up?

00:11:14.000 What are we saying?

00:11:15.000 It could be the case.

00:11:16.000 So, for example, I've been often asked, why don't you debate creationists about evolution?

00:11:21.000 And I take the position there of Richard Dawkins, which is it's not that I'm too haughty to debate anyone.

00:11:26.000 It's that there's almost no chance that I could present any evidence that would cause you to alter your position.

00:11:33.000 So it's really a losing proposition.

00:11:35.000 So could it be that Peter Hotez is coming from that perspective?

00:11:39.000 It could, but you know what I would say to that?

00:11:42.000 Even in your case, it is preposterous for someone to not believe that at least there's a process of evolution at this stage.

00:11:52.000 It's kind of crazy, because there's evidence of things that are happening where things are adapting to their environment right now that we've tracked.

00:12:00.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:12:01.000 You know there's a little antelope in the Congo that swims underwater and eats fish?

00:12:05.000 Is that right?

00:12:06.000 Yeah.

00:12:06.000 It's called a diker.

00:12:08.000 I think it's called a diker. 0.98

00:12:09.000 D-I-K-E-R. I think that's how you say it.

00:12:11.000 But this little animal evolved, lived on grasslands, and the grasslands became rainforest.

00:12:18.000 And when the grasslands, these little, like, prairie animals were trapped inside the Congo.

00:12:23.000 There's an amazing BBC documentary about it.

00:12:26.000 But these things are evolving.

00:12:28.000 They're figuring out how to swim.

00:12:30.000 But believe me, having spent 30 years trying to convince some of my academic colleagues about the value of evolution in studying human behavior, they'll go, la la la, I don't want to hear it.

00:12:40.000 Right, with human behavior.

00:12:41.000 And especially with certain narratives.

00:12:46.000 So this one is just swimming in the water. 1.00

00:12:48.000 But these motherfuckers can go underwater. 1.00

00:12:52.000 The dikers that they were talking about in the Congo, they can swim underwater for like 100 yards. 1.00

00:12:56.000 Why do I feel that the crocodile is about to hit it any second now?

00:12:59.000 Because we've seen too many of those videos.

00:13:01.000 That is arguably one of the scariest scenarios.

00:13:06.000 The scariest. 0.99

00:13:07.000 The fucking scariest. 0.99

00:13:08.000 I have to pause. 0.99

00:13:09.000 Something happened with my video feed right now.

00:13:12.000 Oh.

00:13:12.000 It's mixing your two things really strangely.

00:13:16.000 Do we got a reboot?

00:13:17.000 Not a reboot.

00:13:18.000 I just got to figure out what happened.

00:13:19.000 Oh, okay.

00:13:19.000 But we got everything else?

00:13:20.000 No, yeah.

00:13:21.000 It's just, yeah, when I cut to your camera, it's blending them together.

00:13:24.000 So if the people are only listening to audio, this is a special segment of the podcast.

00:13:27.000 It's only just for you.

00:13:29.000 There you go. 1.00

00:13:30.000 Because the video's fucked. 1.00

00:13:32.000 Should we stop talking? 1.00

00:13:33.000 I mean, you can keep talking.

00:13:34.000 It's just that the video looks weird, so I don't want to be a distraction.

00:13:37.000 All right, well, let's fix it.

00:13:38.000 We'll pause.

00:13:39.000 We'll be right back.

00:13:40.000 We're back.

00:13:41.000 All right.

00:13:42.000 A little technical difficulties.

00:13:43.000 I just want to close the parenthesis on something that happened from last show.

00:13:47.000 Oh.

00:13:47.000 Incredible story.

00:13:48.000 You ready?

00:13:49.000 Yeah.

00:13:49.000 That actually speaks about connecting with people.

00:13:52.000 So last show, you had asked me, or not you had asked me, we were talking about who would be some guests that we'd really want to have on our respective shows, and You probably don't remember what my two celebrities were.

00:14:03.000 Do you?

00:14:03.000 I don't remember.

00:14:04.000 Clint Eastwood.

00:14:06.000 And first, I appreciate his politics.

00:14:09.000 I've been watching him since I was a kid in Lebanon.

00:14:12.000 Number two was Burt Bacharach.

00:14:15.000 Do you remember who that is?

00:14:17.000 I remember the name.

00:14:18.000 Burt Bacharach is the music composer who's basically written songs for everybody.

00:14:24.000 He was featured in one of the Austin Powers movie where the guy says, ladies and gentlemen, Burt Bacharach.

00:14:32.000 Anyways.

00:14:34.000 After our chat aired, I go on my Instagram, I have a personal DM, private DM, from what looks like the account of Burt Bacharach, who's arguably the biggest musical composer ever.

00:14:51.000 In the United States.

00:14:53.000 So I'm extremely excited.

00:14:54.000 It turns out it was his son who said, oh, your clip with Joe Rogan was passed on to me.

00:15:03.000 And I think it would be great for, I'd love for my dad to come on your show.

00:15:10.000 Now, cut to the punchline.

00:15:12.000 It never ended up happening.

00:15:13.000 He recently passed away.

00:15:14.000 So perhaps he wasn't, I mean, he was like 94, 95. But just the fact that you and I are having a conversation, someone else picks it up, and then my world can intersect with Burt Bacharach, whom there is no conceivable place where his world and mine would ever connect,

00:15:34.000 that's the beauty of life.

00:15:35.000 Wow, that is the beauty of life.

00:15:37.000 That's awesome.

00:15:38.000 Isn't that amazing?

00:15:39.000 You are a connector, sir.

00:15:40.000 I try to be.

00:15:41.000 Clint Eastwood would be an interesting guy to talk to.

00:15:44.000 The guy still works.

00:15:46.000 He's like 93 years old.

00:15:48.000 He's still out there making movies.

00:15:49.000 He still enjoys it.

00:15:50.000 I remember in Lebanon, I only learned English when I moved to Canada when I was 11. I got all the communication I needed to get.

00:16:01.000 Even though there wasn't much dialogue in his spaghetti westerns, I would look at him and I would say, that's the man.

00:16:08.000 Remember Every Which Way But Loose?

00:16:10.000 Of course.

00:16:11.000 He hung around with an orangutan!

00:16:14.000 So that's a bit later, right? 1.00

00:16:15.000 That's a fucking movie. 0.99

00:16:16.000 That's in the 70s, right? 1.00

00:16:18.000 I believe so.

00:16:19.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:20.000 I believe it was the 70s.

00:16:21.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:21.000 He played a bare knuckle boxer.

00:16:23.000 That's right.

00:16:24.000 Who traveled around with an orangutan.

00:16:27.000 That's right.

00:16:27.000 Yeah, I think that sounds like 77. But I'm talking in the 60s.

00:16:31.000 I'm talking, you know, 65, 67, 68 when I'm, you know, four or five years old and I'm watching this guy in Lebanon.

00:16:39.000 Wow.

00:16:40.000 That's the power of the male archetype.

00:16:43.000 That is still Every Which Way But Loose, right?

00:16:45.000 I'm not conflating two movies, right?

00:16:47.000 That's the movie where he was the bare knuckle boxer, isn't it?

00:16:50.000 I think that sounds right.

00:16:51.000 Yeah.

00:16:52.000 Yeah.

00:16:54.000 And I think at the time, his love interest in that movie...

00:16:58.000 What the hell was that, Jamie?

00:16:59.000 What was that?

00:16:59.000 Jesus, Jamie.

00:17:00.000 You got a wrong tab.

00:17:01.000 Open up, son.

00:17:01.000 How dare you.

00:17:03.000 How about taking in a new movie?

00:17:05.000 Okay.

00:17:06.000 I guess that's what this trailer is, and I don't know why there's nothing on it.

00:17:09.000 Oh, you can't see the video?

00:17:10.000 I don't know yet.

00:17:11.000 Oh, what is happening?

00:17:13.000 Okay.

00:17:15.000 Yeah.

00:17:15.000 But it's weird.

00:17:16.000 Oh, there's a video.

00:17:16.000 That's the one.

00:17:17.000 Well, I guess so.

00:17:19.000 I don't know what that voice is over it.

00:17:21.000 It seems like someone was...

00:17:22.000 Oh, I said 77. It's 78. There you go.

00:17:25.000 Yeah.

00:17:26.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:17:26.000 Is this a dumbass movie? 1.00

00:17:30.000 Those movies are great, though. 1.00

00:17:31.000 I love movies from that era, like ridiculous, like Smokey and the Bandit. 0.56

00:17:37.000 I mean, come on, man. 0.87

00:17:39.000 Jackie Gleason, you got Burt Reynolds, Sally Field.

00:17:43.000 Come on, man.

00:17:44.000 That's a fun movie.

00:17:46.000 Jackie Gleason plays a cop.

00:17:49.000 It's hilarious.

00:17:50.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:17:52.000 What's your favorite movie of all time, if you had to pick one?

00:17:54.000 I really don't think I have one.

00:17:56.000 But you know what I watched recently, I rewatched, is 2001, Space Odyssey.

00:18:01.000 I forgot how good that was.

00:18:03.000 That movie is amazing.

00:18:05.000 It's not just amazing, it's amazing visually.

00:18:08.000 And it's from 1968. Yeah, it's amazing.

00:18:11.000 The special effects are so good, like, all through it. 0.97

00:18:15.000 Like, even the apes in the beginning, you know, the scene where they're evolving, when they encounter the monolith, the fucking special effects on the apes is pretty goddamn good for 1968. My all-time favorite, the original 12 Angry Men. 0.94

00:18:32.000 I first saw, and actually it speaks to what we talked about earlier about how you can get someone to change their mind when they're in a tribal mindset.

00:18:39.000 Because I watched the movie for the first time in a first semester.

00:18:43.000 I was an MBA student and I was taking an organizational behavior class where the professor assigned us that movie to watch it to demonstrate group dynamics.

00:18:54.000 Because for those of you who don't, have you seen it, Joe?

00:18:56.000 I don't think I have.

00:18:58.000 Oh, you need to.

00:18:58.000 Rent it tonight.

00:18:59.000 Who's in it?

00:19:00.000 It's Henry Fonda.

00:19:02.000 That's it.

00:19:03.000 That's the one.

00:19:05.000 Okay, I think I have, but it was a long, long time ago.

00:19:09.000 So let me tell you the premise.

00:19:10.000 Twelve guys get together in a room.

00:19:12.000 They're trying to discuss whether a guy should be found guilty.

00:19:17.000 They take a poll.

00:19:20.000 Eleven say he's absolutely guilty.

00:19:22.000 Let's go home.

00:19:23.000 One guy, Henry Fonda, says, hey, let's sit and talk about it.

00:19:27.000 The rest of the movie is how he gets each of the 11 other guys to flip their positions.

00:19:33.000 And so that's why I had watched it in that MBA course because it demonstrates how, you know, there are techniques you can use to try to persuade people.

00:19:40.000 Of course, today you could almost never do it.

00:19:42.000 I can never convince Rob Reiner of anything.

00:19:44.000 But, you know...

00:19:46.000 I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say that.

00:19:48.000 I think some people are just really deeply cemented in their belief systems.

00:19:53.000 And maybe they can relax.

00:19:56.000 You're a human being.

00:19:58.000 If you're a human being and you're willing to look at objective truth, you can...

00:20:01.000 Realize that there's some other things afoot.

00:20:03.000 There's a tribal aspect to all of our ideological problems that makes objective reasoning a giant problem.

00:20:13.000 It gets in the way of everything.

00:20:16.000 Because people are so tribally committed right now.

00:20:19.000 And that they're tribally committed to this idea that the other side is the end of the world if they take power.

00:20:25.000 And there's all these different things that have bounced back around, these societal issues that keep getting bounced back around.

00:20:34.000 Where you go, like, why aren't these resolved?

00:20:36.000 Like, the Roe v.

00:20:38.000 Wade one, and now they're talking about gay marriage, like, doing the same thing with gay marriage. 0.55

00:20:43.000 Like, why do you want to do this? 1.00

00:20:46.000 Are you doing this because you just want people to squabble about shit? 0.99

00:20:48.000 Because that's what it seems like. 0.99

00:20:50.000 Because that's the only reason why you would have, like, Supreme Court conversations about gay marriage in 2023. Like, why would you? 0.96

00:20:57.000 What the fuck? 1.00

00:20:58.000 Why? 1.00

00:20:59.000 What?

00:21:01.000 We've already had that debate.

00:21:03.000 We're gone!

00:21:04.000 We passed that!

00:21:06.000 So if that's still...

00:21:07.000 If people even want to bring it up for debate, like, is that real?

00:21:10.000 Or is this one of those things that keeps us culturally squabbling?

00:21:14.000 And it keeps people, like, ideologically connected to one group and opposed with all their vitriol, the other group. 0.76

00:21:22.000 The other group, they're monsters. 1.00

00:21:25.000 They're evil. 1.00

00:21:26.000 The ruin of society.

00:21:27.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:21:28.000 And this fucking bipolar aspect to our society, it's fed by social media. 1.00

00:21:36.000 It's fed by these fake accounts. 1.00

00:21:38.000 It's fed by soulless commentators.

00:21:42.000 The saddest part is when that tribalism comes into your own family.

00:21:47.000 So here's an incredible story.

00:21:50.000 I've appeared on Tucker Carlson's old show several times on television, but his long-form podcast that he used to do.

00:21:58.000 He had invited us, meaning my family and I, to Florida to do his show.

00:22:04.000 He was super gracious, super warm with everybody, with my kids and so on.

00:22:09.000 And so I put out a tweet just thanking him for his hospitality.

00:22:12.000 Hey, Tucker, it was so nice to meet you.

00:22:14.000 Thank you for giving me the opportunity to chat, blah, blah, blah.

00:22:17.000 A cousin of mine, Joe, who went through the Lebanese Civil War with me and who was my best friend growing up in Lebanon.

00:22:25.000 So you would think that if there's ever a relationship that's cemented in the trials and tribulations of our childhood, it would be that relationship.

00:22:33.000 Yeah.

00:22:34.000 So he puts out a tweet and he says something.

00:22:36.000 I mean, I don't remember exactly, although I quote it in the book on happiness.

00:22:39.000 Because I'm basically arguing, don't live your life like my cousin.

00:22:44.000 He puts out a tweet saying something like, have you no shame?

00:22:48.000 So he decides to publicly shame me for being associated or agreeing to go on Tucker Carlson's show.

00:22:56.000 That shows you what tribalism can do to the human mind.

00:23:00.000 It takes something as difficult as what we went through through the Lebanese Civil War and it erases it because he can't believe that I could do something as grotesque as to talk to Tucker Carlson.

00:23:11.000 Yeah, and if you asked him for examples, specific examples of why Tucker Carlson is so horrible, that's where it would get interesting.

00:23:19.000 Because some people might be able to say some things they found disagreeable, but most people are just sticking to a narrative.

00:23:25.000 There's just this narrative that he is evil incarnate, he is a transphobe, or whatever it is. 0.93

00:23:33.000 He's a Putin stooge. 0.98

00:23:35.000 Yeah, he's a Putin stooge.

00:23:37.000 There's all these different things.

00:23:39.000 They want to ignore all evidence that he's a lovely guy.

00:23:43.000 And he really is.

00:23:44.000 By all accounts.

00:23:46.000 By all accounts.

00:23:46.000 All the people that I know that have had interactions with him say he's a very lovely guy.

00:23:50.000 Including my friend Steve Rinella.

00:23:52.000 He had him on a podcast.

00:23:54.000 And these people that, you know, they had these ideas of who he was before he came on his podcast.

00:23:58.000 And he's like, they all came away like, I really like him.

00:24:00.000 He's a really nice guy.

00:24:02.000 Even if you don't agree with his politics, he seems like a really nice guy.

00:24:05.000 Gracious, down to earth.

00:24:07.000 What I love, you know how you often say, if you want to know whether the date that you're out with is a good person, see how he or she treats the server at the restaurant?

00:24:17.000 Sure.

00:24:17.000 So the way he interacted with my children, right?

00:24:20.000 He was focused on them.

00:24:22.000 He was, so how are you doing?

00:24:24.000 How are you enjoying?

00:24:25.000 Right?

00:24:25.000 So he's taking his time.

00:24:27.000 He's not acting hottie and I'm this big star.

00:24:29.000 He is focused on my children.

00:24:31.000 I thought that was really lovely.

00:24:32.000 That's what I was trying to convey in that tweet.

00:24:34.000 But to my cousin, that was beyond the pale.

00:24:38.000 Yeah, it's unfortunate.

00:24:40.000 It's unfortunate that someone would turn on you like that.

00:24:44.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:24:45.000 It's just so foolish. 0.99

00:24:46.000 It's so foolish because, first of all, that should be something that you would have a conversation with somebody about. 0.99

00:24:53.000 If I care about someone and they're talking to someone that I find egregious, I think you would have a conversation with them. 0.98

00:25:01.000 You'd call them up and go, hey, man, this is what I think.

00:25:04.000 You tell me what you think.

00:25:05.000 I want to know what you think.

00:25:08.000 There's certain...

00:25:10.000 Like narratives that you can't like anything on Fox News is the Hitler.

00:25:14.000 It's the Hitler. 0.95

00:25:15.000 It's the evil. 0.58

00:25:16.000 Well, I'll be on the Hitler channel tomorrow when I go to Greg Gutfeldt.

00:25:21.000 Yeah, it's like, I mean, I think they're trying to reform that in some sort of a way.

00:25:27.000 Yeah.

00:25:27.000 And I think Fox News is getting a lot of pushback from people on the right that are very concerned with, you know, some of the decisions they're making.

00:25:37.000 They're kind of going down the same path that a lot of these other corporations have gone down.

00:25:42.000 Do you have a sense of what happened?

00:25:44.000 I don't know.

00:25:46.000 So I don't know what happened with Tucker Carlson.

00:25:48.000 I don't know why he got fired.

00:25:50.000 I know as much as the average person who reads Reddit.

00:25:54.000 I know some conspiracies.

00:25:56.000 I know he was kind of a wild fella when you think about what he was doing on a major television show.

00:26:07.000 Implicating the CIA in the assassination assassination of John F. Kennedy.

00:26:12.000 Yeah, he's saying it with like utmost certainty.

00:26:14.000 Yeah, right?

00:26:16.000 So you think that the reason of firing him was that they thought that he didn't adhere to some journalistic ethic or rigor or something like that?

00:26:23.000 I don't know.

00:26:24.000 Yeah, that could be the case.

00:26:26.000 I don't know.

00:26:27.000 I would think that When you have a network that's run by advertising, it's what you do for income.

00:26:35.000 I would imagine there's a lot of pressure by those people, those advertisers, to eliminate threats to their business. 0.86

00:26:46.000 So if you've got some wild dude on Fox News Who's saying a bunch of shit about whatever it is, whether it's why we in Ukraine, whether it's why you mandating vaccines, having that kind of stuff on regular television. 0.65

00:27:05.000 It's a big problem to anybody that's selling advertisement that's in those businesses. 0.98

00:27:10.000 Apparently Budweiser didn't learn that lesson.

00:27:14.000 Well, see, the difference between Budweiser and pharmaceutical drug companies is that Budweiser is not prescribed.

00:27:21.000 Right.

00:27:21.000 It's not recommended by your doctor.

00:27:23.000 Right.

00:27:24.000 You don't go to CVS to pick it up.

00:27:27.000 It's different.

00:27:29.000 And so this is like something that you can't really criticize a brand and like say, yeah, we don't buy Pfizer around these parts anymore.

00:27:41.000 That doesn't work.

00:27:43.000 It's not gonna work.

00:27:44.000 You can do that with Budweiser, though.

00:27:47.000 And you can do that with, like...

00:27:48.000 That's probably gonna happen with some other stuff, too.

00:27:51.000 Like, people are upset at the Country Music Channel.

00:27:54.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:27:55.000 The Jason Aldean song.

00:27:56.000 Try that in a small town.

00:27:57.000 Yeah.

00:27:58.000 The level of outrage...

00:28:01.000 Now, I'm not saying that that's the greatest song the world's ever known, you know?

00:28:05.000 But the level of outrage coming from people that are upset about that song is so strange.

00:28:11.000 When there are...

00:28:15.000 Hundreds of rap songs out there that are infinitely worse and also enjoyable.

00:28:22.000 Misogynistic, prolifying violence, the whole thing.

00:28:25.000 And no complaints at all.

00:28:27.000 And we're not even talking about old stuff.

00:28:29.000 There's new stuff too. 0.99

00:28:31.000 There's hip-hop, there's wild rock songs, there's a lot of wild shit. 0.98

00:28:37.000 And to be focusing on that one And it's the racial aspect of it was crazy because like the real Antifa problems that were happening during the BLM, I think it was a lot of white people doing that, wasn't it? 0.99

00:28:50.000 It was a lot of like lost liberal whites who are very angry, who decided to take up this movement and smash things.

00:28:58.000 So like the racial aspect of it, there's nothing racial about the lyrics.

00:29:03.000 Or how about the Tracy Ullman?

00:29:04.000 Did you see the Tracy Ullman controversy?

00:29:07.000 No, I did not.

00:29:07.000 So she wrote in the, I don't know if you remember, I think it was 1988, she had this iconic song, Fast Car.

00:29:14.000 Yes.

00:29:15.000 Oh, right, right, right.

00:29:16.000 And then this, I guess he's a country music singer.

00:29:19.000 Tracy Chapman.

00:29:20.000 Chapman.

00:29:20.000 That's the Ullman.

00:29:21.000 Oh, she's an She's an actress, right?

00:29:22.000 She's a comedian. 1.00

00:29:23.000 Yes.

00:29:23.000 Tracy Chapman, thank you.

00:29:25.000 And then this singer asked for her permission, I guess, to do a cover and so on.

00:29:33.000 It's amazing.

00:29:33.000 And then people came out that, you know, the white guy is usurping this thing.

00:29:37.000 Yeah, well, but that's always going to happen.

00:29:39.000 You're always going to have a certain amount of people to say that.

00:29:42.000 It doesn't mean it's real.

00:29:45.000 And apparently she's happy that he's doing it.

00:29:47.000 Well, no kidding.

00:29:48.000 Everybody's good.

00:29:49.000 And it's a great song.

00:29:50.000 I mean, it's really good.

00:29:51.000 He didn't even change the gender, like when he sang it. 0.56

00:29:54.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:29:55.000 You know?

00:29:56.000 I can become a checkout girl. 0.62

00:29:57.000 He says checkout girl.

00:29:58.000 Right.

00:29:59.000 Yeah.

00:29:59.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:00.000 So what else is up?

00:30:01.000 I think we were going to talk about what my impression of some of the prices in Austin are.

00:30:08.000 Oh yeah, you were telling me that an espresso was $8.

00:30:11.000 So yeah, so yesterday I went out with, actually I was at the hotel, and two friends came by, one of whom I think has been on your show, Michael Malice.

00:30:22.000 Yeah, I love that dude.

00:30:22.000 Yeah, he's lovely.

00:30:23.000 And the other guy is a professor at UT Austin, Richard Lowry, who's really fighting.

00:30:28.000 He's very much of an academic honey badger, fighting against all the woke stuff.

00:30:32.000 And so we were just hanging out.

00:30:34.000 One of the guys ordered a Diet Coke and two of us ordered two espressos.

00:30:40.000 The bill came.

00:30:42.000 It was, with the tip, $28.

00:30:45.000 And I'm thinking, this is like Oprah money.

00:30:48.000 Who can...

00:30:51.000 You know, afford these prices.

00:30:53.000 You tell me, what's going on in Austin?

00:30:56.000 I have no idea.

00:30:57.000 I didn't go to that place.

00:30:58.000 But I mean, in general, the real estate, everything is completely doubled, tripled.

00:31:03.000 I mean, I understand that it's because it's a hot place.

00:31:05.000 Yeah, but espresso shouldn't be eight bucks, right?

00:31:08.000 What should espresso cost?

00:31:10.000 Well, in Montreal, it'll be...

00:31:12.000 Four or five is normal.

00:31:13.000 Montreal would be maybe for an espresso, so it's a short espresso, single espresso, $3.50.

00:31:19.000 It's hard for people to believe, but when I was growing up, there was no Starbucks.

00:31:24.000 Right.

00:31:24.000 People did not like coffee like they like coffee now.

00:31:30.000 They are the greatest drug dealers the world's ever known.

00:31:33.000 They're slinging that sweet caffeine all over this country, and that's what it is.

00:31:38.000 It's the best drug-dealing operation the world's ever known, because it's a super mild, productive drug that everybody enjoys.

00:31:45.000 It feels like a warm hug, as my friend Tate Fletcher likes to say.

00:31:49.000 I feel the requisite drug conversations coming up.

00:31:52.000 Here we go on a 30-minute conversation of drugs.

00:31:53.000 Yeah, but this is a good drug.

00:31:55.000 Caffeine, whatever bad effects you get from coffee, they're so minimal.

00:32:00.000 There's even links to good health benefits from it.

00:32:03.000 Yeah.

00:32:04.000 I think there's worry.

00:32:05.000 People used to worry about dehydration, but I don't think they worry about that as much anymore when it comes to drinking coffee.

00:32:10.000 They used to think that if you drank a lot of coffee, you would get dehydrated, but there's a certain amount of hydration you're actually getting from drinking coffee, too.

00:32:19.000 So it's kind of complicated, because it is kind of a diuretic, but you're also drinking it.

00:32:24.000 So that perfect segue into one of the chapters of the book, I talk about everything in moderation, which, of course, Aristotle already talked about the golden mean.

00:32:34.000 You know, if a soldier is too cowardly, it's not good.

00:32:37.000 If he's too reckless, he's going to die.

00:32:39.000 And so, like most things, the sweet spot is in the middle.

00:32:42.000 And so in that chapter, I go through a bewildering number of phenomena, all of which...

00:32:48.000 Adhere to that inverted you.

00:32:50.000 Too little, not good.

00:32:51.000 Too much is not good.

00:32:52.000 And the ideal point is in the middle.

00:32:54.000 Exercise intensity, inverted you.

00:32:57.000 Alcohol consumption, inverted you.

00:32:58.000 Coffee consumption, inverted you.

00:33:00.000 And so I thought that was a really...

00:33:04.000 Cool chapter to cover because it's arguably the most universal law that we can find.

00:33:10.000 So many things adhere to that inverted U. And I think we had discussed this last time that I was on the show.

00:33:16.000 The ancient Greeks were already aware of it.

00:33:18.000 I mean, Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics talks exactly—I mean, he doesn't call it the inverted U. He calls it the golden mean.

00:33:27.000 And so to our earlier conversation, the last time I was here in going through the research for this book, the amount of insights I've found from Seneca, Epictetus, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius was just breathtaking.

00:33:41.000 It was unbelievable.

00:33:42.000 Yeah, I just got back from Greece.

00:33:44.000 Was that right?

00:33:45.000 Yeah, I was in Greece for two weeks.

00:33:47.000 And I saw the Parthenon, and we went to Ulysses, went to Dallos, went to a bunch of different islands.

00:33:57.000 It was really interesting, man.

00:33:58.000 We checked out a bunch of ruins, and it's just so...

00:34:04.000 It's so hard to even wrap your head around what was going on there 2,000 plus years ago.

00:34:10.000 Yeah, indeed.

00:34:11.000 I did five islands, so maybe we can compare notes.

00:34:14.000 I did Corfu, Crete, Naxos, Santorini, and the fifth one I'm leaving to the end, I asked the captain...

00:34:24.000 At the time, I was traveling with a buddy of mine after school.

00:34:27.000 This is like 1990. I said, take us to an island that's completely void of tourists.

00:34:32.000 And so he dropped us off on a volcanic island called Foligandros.

00:34:36.000 And we spent, I think, maybe two days there, not a single tourist, just hanging out with the locals.

00:34:41.000 They didn't speak a word of French or English, and it was just magical.

00:34:44.000 Wow.

00:34:45.000 Where did you go?

00:34:45.000 Which islands did you go to?

00:34:47.000 We went to a bunch of them.

00:34:48.000 I can't remember all the names.

00:34:50.000 Mykonos?

00:34:51.000 Oh, right.

00:34:51.000 But that's tons of tourists, right?

00:34:54.000 Yeah, there was a lot of people there.

00:34:55.000 We went to...

00:34:57.000 I'm not going to remember.

00:35:00.000 A bunch of weird ones.

00:35:02.000 But it was really fun.

00:35:04.000 And it was relaxing.

00:35:05.000 But the most mind-blowing thing was seeing the Parthenon and seeing Ulysses and walking around there.

00:35:13.000 Yeah, we just came back from Portugal.

00:35:15.000 We did 16 days in Portugal.

00:35:17.000 First time ever.

00:35:19.000 I think it's Eleusis.

00:35:20.000 I'm saying Eleusis.

00:35:20.000 It's Eleusis.

00:35:21.000 Oh, okay.

00:35:22.000 Yeah.

00:35:22.000 Well, really enjoyed Portugal with the exception, apologies to all of my Portuguese listeners and fans, not a very attractive language.

00:35:32.000 You don't like that language?

00:35:33.000 I don't like that.

00:35:34.000 Did you hear it coming out of Brazil?

00:35:36.000 It sounds amazing.

00:35:37.000 Brazilian Portuguese is nicer than Portuguese Portuguese.

00:35:40.000 Oh, no.

00:35:41.000 I'm stealing here some...

00:35:43.000 I think there was a comedian who said this, but who said something that, like, Portuguese is akin to someone having a perpetual stroke in the way that, you know, fazão, wow, right?

00:35:55.000 There's kind of a twisting of the mouth that appears unnatural.

00:35:59.000 Oh.

00:35:59.000 And I can see that because I found that it wasn't the most pleasant.

00:36:03.000 So now I'm going to get hate mail from Portuguese people. 1.00

00:36:05.000 Yeah, they're going to be very mad at you because Brazilian Portuguese is beautiful.

00:36:08.000 It's got a flow.

00:36:10.000 It's got a flow, yeah.

00:36:12.000 It's almost like they're dancing.

00:36:14.000 Italian, it's a universally loved language.

00:36:17.000 French is spoken in France.

00:36:19.000 Now I'm going to upset the next group of people.

00:36:22.000 Quebec French is an affront to human dignity. 1.00

00:36:26.000 What?

00:36:26.000 Yes, sir.

00:36:27.000 I said it.

00:36:28.000 What?

00:36:28.000 Yes.

00:36:29.000 It's horrifying.

00:36:30.000 I can't believe what you're saying.

00:36:31.000 Now listen to this.

00:36:31.000 My wife is able to switch her French depending on whom she's speaking with.

00:36:38.000 So if she's speaking with someone who speaks international French, she'll speak in a regular manner.

00:36:44.000 Not Parisian French, but like an international French.

00:36:46.000 I speak an international French because we're from Lebanon.

00:36:49.000 When she speaks to a Quebecer, she turns into a complete Quebecer. 0.60

00:36:53.000 And oftentimes I say, how did you just do that?

00:36:55.000 That sounds so inauthentic.

00:36:57.000 She goes, well, no, because if I speak in the regular French, then it'll come across as haughty.

00:37:02.000 But that to me is so strange because that would be like I speak with an Oxford accent with one person.

00:37:08.000 Right.

00:37:08.000 And then I turn into the Southern drawl with the other person, depending on who.

00:37:13.000 That doesn't sound.

00:37:14.000 There's a falsity to that.

00:37:16.000 There's a good argument.

00:37:17.000 There's a good argument that there's a falsity to that.

00:37:20.000 Yeah, but there's also a good argument that like there's like a cultural agreed-upon way of communicating.

00:37:28.000 You know, like if you started talking like therefore thou, like if you started talking like that today, people would go, what are you doing, man?

00:37:35.000 Right.

00:37:35.000 We don't talk like that anymore.

00:37:37.000 Do you think I have an accent in English?

00:37:39.000 You don't have an accent.

00:37:41.000 You have a very distinct way of talking.

00:37:45.000 Okay.

00:37:46.000 So you couldn't say, oh, you're American or Canadian?

00:37:49.000 Well, there's that.

00:37:51.000 Your words are very clear, but there's something going on.

00:37:56.000 Right.

00:37:57.000 It's clear there's something going on there.

00:37:59.000 Right.

00:37:59.000 But that's a fascinating thing about a person that's able to speak multiple languages.

00:38:04.000 It's like you're speaking English, but you're speaking English perfectly with a little bit of a twist to it.

00:38:10.000 Right.

00:38:11.000 Which is, I guess, an accent.

00:38:12.000 So I guess the answer is yes.

00:38:14.000 Arguably my only regret as a parent so far, may it be the only one that I ever experienced, has been that we haven't...

00:38:24.000 We're good to go.

00:38:44.000 We're good to go.

00:39:04.000 At least my son has been saying, you know, Daddy, you should only speak to me in Arabic.

00:39:08.000 But now it feels as if it's a vocabulary lesson, right?

00:39:13.000 So I'm telling him, here is how you say...

00:39:15.000 He goes, no, but just speak to me.

00:39:17.000 Right, right, right.

00:39:18.000 But that's easy to do when you're, you know, one year old.

00:39:21.000 When you're 11, 12, 13, it feels false to start speaking to you in Arabic when you don't speak a word of Arabic, you know?

00:39:28.000 Yeah, but that's a great way for him to learn.

00:39:30.000 Yeah indeed.

00:39:31.000 Wouldn't it be?

00:39:32.000 Yeah, of course.

00:39:32.000 Because he'd have to keep up.

00:39:33.000 He'd have to keep up.

00:39:34.000 Yeah.

00:39:35.000 That's what they say, like, if you really want to learn a language, really want to learn it.

00:39:38.000 Move to a place.

00:39:39.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:39:40.000 I mean, one of the things that I regret the most is that I haven't been able to return ever to Lebanon because if I were to go on a visiting professorship to, say, American University of Beirut for a year, they're going to come back flawless Arabic speakers. 0.98

00:39:53.000 And especially, I mean, now my daughter's 14, he's 11, so they're sort of entering that period where they're pretty much soon not going to be able to ever speak it like a native speaker.

00:40:04.000 There's something magical that happens around puberty, where if you learn a language after that period, you can never speak it without an accent.

00:40:13.000 Really?

00:40:13.000 Yeah.

00:40:14.000 And it really is.

00:40:15.000 And no one exactly knows what causes that mechanism.

00:40:19.000 So, for example, I learned English at 11, and that was the genesis for why I asked you, do I have an accent?

00:40:27.000 Because I would expect that the time at which I learned it, I snuck in just before that period.

00:40:33.000 Had I learned it when I was 13, 14, 15, I could have spoken it perfectly, but you would have detected a much stronger accent.

00:40:41.000 That's interesting.

00:40:43.000 That's a strange thing about human development and just the sounds that we all agree upon that equal the words.

00:40:50.000 Well, there are tons of sounds in Arabic.

00:40:53.000 Let's see if you can do them.

00:40:54.000 You ready?

00:40:54.000 First time ever on the Joe Rogan Experience.

00:40:56.000 Give me a try.

00:40:57.000 Okay, so for example, my last name, everybody, all Americans will say Saad.

00:41:02.000 You just extend the A. But the proper way to say it, it's Gad Saad.

00:41:08.000 Right, it's like Arnold.

00:41:10.000 Like if Arnold was gonna say it.

00:41:11.000 Sort of like, exactly.

00:41:13.000 Or for example, can you say not there's and they're coming from different parts from my throat.

00:41:22.000 What? 1.00

00:41:24.000 So if I say, if I say that the Arabic people are going to laugh at this, that means you're shit. 1.00

00:41:31.000 Okay. 1.00

00:41:32.000 Okay. 1.00

00:41:35.000 That means you're an ass, okay? 1.00

00:41:38.000 You're an idiot. 1.00

00:41:38.000 Say it again? 1.00

00:41:39.000 The second one?

00:41:40.000 Yeah, the second one.

00:41:42.000 But see, you're saying it's.

00:41:50.000 Okay.

00:41:50.000 First time ever?

00:41:51.000 Are we breaking new ground?

00:41:52.000 Oh yeah, for sure.

00:41:53.000 I've never even tried to say these words.

00:41:54.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:55.000 You know, it's Arabic.

00:41:58.000 Earlier I said some derogatory things about Portuguese and about French-Canadian, so let me be fair and say, not Arabic. 0.92

00:42:07.000 Hebrew, which is also from my heritage, is a violently ugly language. 1.00

00:42:14.000 On the other hand, Arabic, as spoken by the Lebanese, and I'm not saying this because I'm Lebanese, because Arabic comes in many different dialects, right?

00:42:22.000 There's Iraqi Arabic, there is North African Arabic, there's Egyptian Arabic.

00:42:27.000 The Lebanese Arabic is really the Italian of Arabic dialects.

00:42:33.000 Get ready for some comments and I'll come in your way.

00:42:36.000 Isn't it weird how when they have horror movies, whenever someone's calling a demon, they always have to do it in an old language?

00:42:43.000 Meaning?

00:42:44.000 It's always in Latin or something.

00:42:46.000 Oh, right.

00:42:47.000 They're always reading from some book they're not supposed to be reading from.

00:42:50.000 What does it say?

00:42:52.000 And then the demons come.

00:42:56.000 You have to say the magic old words that people don't understand.

00:43:00.000 There's probably some weird...

00:43:01.000 You're a psychologist.

00:43:02.000 Yes. 1.00

00:43:03.000 You understand that shit. 1.00

00:43:04.000 That's interesting. 1.00

00:43:04.000 What's going on there? 1.00

00:43:05.000 Yeah, woof, you're putting me on the...

00:43:07.000 Because it's always, right?

00:43:08.000 It's always like a dead language.

00:43:10.000 Well, I think it's because of that.

00:43:12.000 So because it's an extinct language, it's somehow...

00:43:15.000 Calling demons.

00:43:16.000 It's calling demons that exist in another world.

00:43:19.000 I think it's as simple as that. 0.98

00:43:20.000 What a dumb concept that the way to call demons is like by saying a word, like making a noise with your mouth. 0.97

00:43:26.000 It's the perfect frequency. 0.98

00:43:27.000 Or say Candyman in front of the mirror three times.

00:43:32.000 Scariest movie of all time since we were talking earlier about our favorite movie, Halloween, first one, Jamie Lee Curtis.

00:43:39.000 Is it really?

00:43:40.000 Till today, I would probably have a hard...

00:43:42.000 See, what scares me about horror movies is not the supernatural stuff, it's the being startled.

00:43:49.000 You see what I mean?

00:43:51.000 So oftentimes when I'm watching a horror movie, I will block my ears because it's that sudden sound that really scares me.

00:44:00.000 I think if I had to pick an all-time scariest movie, I think I would see the first Alien.

00:44:08.000 Love that movie.

00:44:09.000 The first Alien movie, that is a scary movie.

00:44:13.000 It's very different than all the other Alien movies.

00:44:15.000 Because in all the other Alien movies, the aliens are kind of out in the open and you shoot a bunch of them.

00:44:20.000 They're coming from all over the place.

00:44:21.000 It's way unrealistic, by the way.

00:44:24.000 Wait, we can get into that.

00:44:25.000 Have you seen the documentary of the making of Alien?

00:44:28.000 I have, yeah.

00:44:29.000 Isn't that amazing?

00:44:30.000 It's amazing, yeah.

00:44:32.000 H.R., how do you say his name?

00:44:33.000 Geiger?

00:44:34.000 H.R. Geiger, the artist that designed it?

00:44:37.000 Oh my god.

00:44:38.000 What a unique vision.

00:44:40.000 Unreal.

00:44:40.000 His art was so strange.

00:44:43.000 That creature that he created was fucking amazing. 0.99

00:44:47.000 It was literally like the ultimate terrifying alien predator. 1.00

00:44:52.000 And a feminist empowerment because the alien is a female. 1.00

00:44:57.000 Oh, the big one.

00:44:58.000 The mother.

00:44:58.000 The mother is a girl, yeah.

00:45:00.000 But this movie is so fucking good. 0.99

00:45:02.000 It's so good and it's so scary. 0.99

00:45:04.000 It's a great sci-fi movie, but it's also fucking scary. 0.97

00:45:09.000 Like you're talking about being startled. 0.97

00:45:11.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:45:11.000 And that alien in this movie is elusive and intelligent and traps people.

00:45:19.000 Yeah.

00:45:19.000 And you get to see it in brief glances.

00:45:23.000 And then in the new movies after that, like aliens, it's kind of a different things going on, because you can kill them easy. 0.51

00:45:30.000 You're just blasting a bunch of them, and then the mother's at you, but you got a robot body, so you're all good. 0.96

00:45:35.000 It's just so much ridiculousness that it just hurts my feelings. 0.97

00:45:38.000 Have you ever seen 1980 Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill? 0.98

00:45:44.000 Which is kind of a precursor to all the transgender stuff that we hear today. 1.00

00:45:48.000 Have you seen that movie?

00:45:49.000 No.

00:45:49.000 Oh, it's fantastic.

00:45:51.000 Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson.

00:45:55.000 You're amazing, Jamie.

00:45:57.000 It comes out.

00:45:58.000 You're a wizard.

00:45:59.000 You have to see this movie, Joe.

00:46:01.000 Is she supposedly transgender in this movie?

00:46:03.000 No.

00:46:03.000 So what happens is...

00:46:04.000 Can I give away some stuff?

00:46:06.000 Yeah, it's a spoiler alert.

00:46:07.000 It's a movie from the 20s.

00:46:08.000 42 years old.

00:46:09.000 You got it.

00:46:11.000 Well, but if somebody wants to see it.

00:46:13.000 So she is sexually frustrated with her in her marriage.

00:46:16.000 So she goes to see a psychiatrist, played by Michael Caine, who, as she's telling him her sexual stories, is becoming aroused. 0.95

00:46:26.000 But he turns out to be a guy who wants to become a transsexual. 0.97

00:46:30.000 Him, the psychiatrist.

00:46:31.000 And so he doesn't like the idea of being aroused as a male because it is then attacking his desire to make the transition into being a female.

00:46:40.000 And so Dressed to Kill, the movie, is him dressing up as a there you go.

00:46:45.000 That's Michael Caine.

00:46:47.000 Oh, my God.

00:46:48.000 It's phenomenal.

00:46:49.000 I saw it as a 15-year-old.

00:46:50.000 I think that was my first exposure to transsexual operations and so on.

00:46:55.000 Oh, my God.

00:46:57.000 Yeah.

00:46:58.000 Oh, wow.

00:46:59.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:59.000 This is an amazing movie.

00:47:01.000 I highly, highly recommend it.

00:47:03.000 1980?

00:47:03.000 1980. 15 years old.

00:47:06.000 This was the year, by the way, that year when my, not, this is a weird segue, but when my parents were freed in Lebanon after having been kidnapped by Fatah in 1980. Wow.

00:47:21.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:21.000 So I remember I was 15 years old.

00:47:23.000 Another thing that happened to me when I was 15 years old, I broke my nose in soccer and then had to have it reset by the surgeon.

00:47:31.000 And so for about a week I wore a face cast.

00:47:35.000 Did you get it fixed where you can breathe out of both nostrils?

00:47:38.000 I think I can, yeah.

00:47:39.000 But yeah, it was...

00:47:41.000 That is so important.

00:47:43.000 If anybody out here is listening and you have a deviated septum, get that fixed.

00:47:49.000 If you can.

00:47:50.000 If it's safe to do.

00:47:52.000 The benefits of being able to breathe out of your nose...

00:47:57.000 Speaking of athletics, I remember many years ago I had come on the show where I was singing the glory of, yeah, Lionel Messi.

00:48:05.000 And you were like, who?

00:48:06.000 Who's Lionel Messi?

00:48:07.000 And then you mentioned some MMA fighter that I'd never heard of.

00:48:11.000 And I remember your exact response.

00:48:12.000 You looked at me and said, how dare you, sir?

00:48:16.000 Let me flip it back to you.

00:48:17.000 How dare you?

00:48:18.000 So are you now, you are a Messi fan finally?

00:48:20.000 You've come around to the truth?

00:48:22.000 Well, he's an amazing soccer player.

00:48:25.000 Oh, that goal.

00:48:27.000 There's no denying.

00:48:29.000 Okay, well, let me...

00:48:30.000 Since I'm on the number one show in the world...

00:48:32.000 He's a wizard. 0.95

00:48:33.000 Didn't they offer him, like, some fucking insane amount of money and he just said no? 0.99

00:48:37.000 Saudi Arabia. 0.98

00:48:38.000 How much did they offer him?

00:48:38.000 A different guy just got offered a billion dollars for one year.

00:48:41.000 Yeah, Mbappe.

00:48:41.000 What?

00:48:42.000 Mbappe, Mbappe.

00:48:43.000 What?

00:48:43.000 A billion for a year?

00:48:45.000 Well, $330 of that is so that he can transfer to the team, and then $771 is for his services to play soccer for a year.

00:48:52.000 They're buying everybody, the Saudis. 1.00

00:48:54.000 Jesus! 0.99

00:48:56.000 LeBron said if they offered him, he'd fucking take off. 0.99

00:48:58.000 They have so much money. 0.98

00:48:59.000 But let me tell you something.

00:49:00.000 LeBron will become Saudi Arabian king.

00:49:03.000 He'll be the king of basketball over there.

00:49:06.000 That's right.

00:49:06.000 What?

00:49:07.000 That is so crazy.

00:49:09.000 Yep, yep.

00:49:10.000 December 18, 2022, World Cup Final.

00:49:14.000 You talk about the power, the emotional power of sports, right?

00:49:18.000 My family and I were sitting and watching the World Cup Final.

00:49:22.000 And we had...

00:49:23.000 The extent to which we were emotionally vested in Messi winning the World Cup can only demonstrate the beauty of sports, right?

00:49:32.000 Because here's a guy that...

00:49:34.000 We've never met him.

00:49:36.000 We're not Argentinian, right?

00:49:39.000 He doesn't know that we're alive, and yet it's life and death for us.

00:49:43.000 I mean, it was so harrowing, I don't know if you watched the game, that at one point my son, who's 11 years old, said, I can't watch this anymore, I'm going to have a heart attack.

00:49:53.000 That's the power of sports, that it can pull us in, and it can make us truly tribal.

00:49:58.000 And in my case, before you interject, It was kind of driven, my desire for him to win was driven by really a purity strand.

00:50:08.000 It was that it seemed cosmically unjust for the greatest soccer player of all time to not have won the World Cup.

00:50:15.000 So when he won it, to me it seemed like the world is right.

00:50:18.000 Beauty has won.

00:50:20.000 I get it.

00:50:22.000 That's awesome.

00:50:23.000 And I should add, what a guy, right?

00:50:27.000 Humble, sweet, family man.

00:50:31.000 What's fascinating to me is as happy as they are, the people on the other team that were rooting for the other team, they're devastated right now.

00:50:38.000 That's the weird thing about sports.

00:50:40.000 You can get so attached to what's happening that a loss is like really a loss. 0.99

00:50:46.000 Can't believe we fucking lost to Kansas City! 0.81

00:50:50.000 Well, in my first book ever, 2007, Evolutionary Basic Consumption, I talk about studies, not my studies, I was citing other works, that looked at what happens to the testosterone levels of fans as a function of whether their team wins or loses. 0.97

00:51:06.000 How do you test that?

00:51:07.000 Well, it's been tested.

00:51:09.000 You just take salivary assays of fans as their team is winning or losing.

00:51:14.000 Oh, you can get the testosterone levels from that?

00:51:16.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:51:16.000 That's interesting.

00:51:17.000 Wow.

00:51:18.000 It's not surprising, as you would know as a fighter, that if you and I fight and you defeat me, your testosterone level goes up, my testosterone level goes down.

00:51:28.000 Like a video game.

00:51:29.000 Like a video game.

00:51:30.000 Except what's happening here is that there is a vicarious endocrinological response.

00:51:36.000 The fans are having the same increases in their testosterone levels or decreases as a function of their team winning or not.

00:51:44.000 Oh.

00:51:44.000 That's quite extraordinary.

00:51:45.000 And that shows you why we become so bonded to our favorite players and so on.

00:51:49.000 We are really going through this battle with them.

00:51:52.000 Yeah, it's really the case with fighters.

00:51:55.000 When people have a fighter that they're really a giant fan of and that person gets beaten in a devastating manner, it's heartbreaking.

00:52:04.000 There's even studies, by the way, that have looked at what happens to sexual behavior of fans after their team wins or loses.

00:52:14.000 So if, let's say, if your wife is upset that you haven't been producing in the bedroom, she should pray that the husband's favorite team wins because if he wins, he has an increase.

00:52:28.000 Increase in testosterone level.

00:52:30.000 Increases their libidinal drive.

00:52:32.000 And so, we're animals.

00:52:35.000 It's just attaching so much of your own emotions to something completely out of control and just rooting on it.

00:52:43.000 Exactly.

00:52:44.000 But do you have a fan in any sport where you've ever been that vested in?

00:52:50.000 Well, there was one time I remember when I was a kid.

00:52:54.000 I was a giant fan of Donald Curry.

00:52:56.000 Donald Curry was the welterweight boxing champion at the time.

00:53:00.000 And he had a rivalry with this other guy, Milton McCrory.

00:53:05.000 And Donald Curry knocked him out.

00:53:07.000 He became, like, my favorite boxer.

00:53:08.000 And then Donald Curry, he got beat by this guy Lloyd Hunnigan.

00:53:12.000 It was a devastating loss.

00:53:13.000 Like, people couldn't believe Lloyd Hunnigan beat Donald Curry.

00:53:17.000 And it was like Donald Curry might be on the downslide, but I was still like a giant fan of his.

00:53:21.000 And then Donald Curry fought Mike McCallum.

00:53:24.000 And Mike McCallum hit him with a left hook to the body and a left hook to the chin and put him out.

00:53:30.000 Like out cold and I couldn't believe it.

00:53:33.000 And I ran.

00:53:35.000 Here it is right here.

00:53:36.000 I ran out of the house.

00:53:38.000 Watch this.

00:53:40.000 Boom! 0.99

00:53:42.000 So the one with the black shorts is your guy, right?

00:53:46.000 The guy down is my guy.

00:53:49.000 So I misremembered it.

00:53:53.000 It wasn't a left hook to the body.

00:53:54.000 It was like he goes with a right hand and then a left hook behind it.

00:53:58.000 But he just, he KO'd, KO'd Donald Curry.

00:54:03.000 And I couldn't believe it.

00:54:04.000 And so I put on my running shoes.

00:54:06.000 I couldn't stay home.

00:54:07.000 I just couldn't deal with it.

00:54:08.000 I couldn't deal with it.

00:54:09.000 And I went running in the snow.

00:54:11.000 And I ran.

00:54:13.000 No, I went in the snow.

00:54:15.000 I'm thinking of another story.

00:54:17.000 It was another time when someone lost and I went running in the snow.

00:54:19.000 I don't think it was in the snow.

00:54:19.000 I think it was warm.

00:54:20.000 I don't remember, but I remember I went running.

00:54:22.000 And as I'm running, and I'm running down the road, I'm thinking to myself, I am never going to be this invested in someone else winning or losing ever again.

00:54:31.000 I was so devastated that he lost.

00:54:34.000 What was the bond?

00:54:36.000 His technique.

00:54:37.000 His technique was perfect.

00:54:39.000 He was crisp.

00:54:41.000 Like he was coiled.

00:54:42.000 They called him...

00:54:43.000 What was his nickname?

00:54:45.000 Something Cobra.

00:54:48.000 Here comes Jamie.

00:54:51.000 I forget what his nickname was.

00:54:54.000 But his technique was so crisp.

00:54:57.000 Lone Star Cobra.

00:54:58.000 Lone Star Cobra.

00:54:59.000 There you go.

00:54:59.000 He was out of Fort Worth.

00:55:02.000 And his technique was so sharp.

00:55:04.000 I just really, I always admired guys who were able to find like the shortest path to connecting with a shot.

00:55:12.000 Where it's just like the technique is so dialed in.

00:55:16.000 There's guys that like, Gervonta Davis is like that.

00:55:18.000 Their technique's so dialed in.

00:55:20.000 That when you watch them uncork, it's like, oh my god, the efficiency of it.

00:55:25.000 And so I was just a giant fan of the guy.

00:55:28.000 I just loved, as a person who really enjoyed technique, I like watching someone who's exceptional at it.

00:55:34.000 I recently put, maybe a few months ago, I put out a sort of a hypothetical what-if scenario where I, I think this was on Twitter, where I asked people who follow me, would I be able to step on an NFL field and And under any circumstance,

00:55:53.000 simply get a single yard as a running back.

00:55:58.000 Right?

00:55:58.000 So in other words...

00:55:59.000 Right.

00:56:00.000 Right.

00:56:00.000 So now, for example, if I go into a boxing ring with someone, the only way I'm going to survive is if I keep running around long enough.

00:56:09.000 Because the singular time that they hit me, I'm unlikely to be able to withstand that.

00:56:14.000 Right.

00:56:14.000 So I'm gone, right?

00:56:15.000 Right.

00:56:16.000 If I play basketball, I think I have enough skills that I can receive the ball and pass it off to someone.

00:56:21.000 And so then I started thinking, what about other sports?

00:56:25.000 Could the average person who doesn't play that sport survive long enough to do something?

00:56:30.000 I'm obviously not going to get 100 yards, but a single yard.

00:56:34.000 What are your thoughts?

00:56:35.000 I thought, maybe I was being presumptuous, maybe now I'm an old guy, But I thought that it could be possible for the front line to make enough of a hole for me to run through for one yard.

00:56:45.000 I just need to get a single yard.

00:56:47.000 Yeah, it's possible.

00:56:49.000 But a lot of people thought there's no chance that that would happen because they would catch you in the backfield, they would tackle you, and then you would die.

00:56:56.000 Well, they probably could do that too.

00:56:58.000 That could happen as well.

00:56:59.000 But if the defense is so strong that they can just create a small enough opening for you to go one yard, I think that's reasonable.

00:57:07.000 It would suck for you though, dude.

00:57:09.000 They're going to pile on top of you. 0.79

00:57:11.000 You're never going to be the same again.

00:57:12.000 Especially since I've lost so much weight, at least before I looked like a linebacker.

00:57:15.000 A fat linebacker.

00:57:17.000 Yeah, you don't want that happening to you.

00:57:19.000 What was that?

00:57:20.000 Watch again.

00:57:22.000 Watch this guy.

00:57:22.000 This is the running back trying to get the ball to get one yard.

00:57:25.000 Watch this.

00:57:28.000 Bam! 0.98

00:57:28.000 His helmet's off and he's hurt. 0.98

00:57:30.000 Oh my goodness.

00:57:31.000 Oh my god, he got tack, old.

00:57:32.000 And that's one of five guys that are going to try to stop you from doing it.

00:57:34.000 Tack, old.

00:57:35.000 These guys are so powerful.

00:57:37.000 So Jamie is in the camp of I'm not getting a single yard.

00:57:40.000 There's a lot of other variables, but yeah.

00:57:42.000 It is possible that the defense could have prevented that if the defense is extraordinary and the guys are on point.

00:57:51.000 Games, things happen, right?

00:57:53.000 People are trying to control things and people are charging forward.

00:57:57.000 It's possible that there's an opening just big enough for anyone to get three yards.

00:58:02.000 Right.

00:58:03.000 Or one yard rather, three feet. 1.00

00:58:05.000 Do you think you could step on a soccer field and look anything short of a complete moron? 1.00

00:58:11.000 No. 1.00

00:58:11.000 No, impossible. 1.00

00:58:12.000 I actually saw you recently, and I was really delighted to hear that, where you were singing the praises of how fit soccer players are.

00:58:20.000 Oh my god, we went to see the games here in Austin.

00:58:23.000 And when you watch professionals, first of all, here's one reason why soccer is problematic for television.

00:58:28.000 They don't get breaks.

00:58:30.000 So there's no breaks like, you know, we'll be right back with another word from Nabisco.

00:58:35.000 There's none of that.

00:58:36.000 So if you have commercials, like you have to interrupt the play of the game, and then people have to catch up, and then is it not live now?

00:58:43.000 Or are you going to have half of a commercial and half of the game?

00:58:46.000 Like, what are you going to do?

00:58:47.000 How are you going to do that?

00:58:48.000 Because they don't stop.

00:58:49.000 They just keep going.

00:58:50.000 And you have to be insanely fit.

00:58:52.000 Those guys look like thoroughbreds. 0.99

00:58:55.000 Like their legs were just fucking shredded. 0.98

00:58:58.000 So there was a study a few years ago, I can't cite what it was, that looked at who were the fittest athletes. 0.99

00:59:03.000 Number one was soccer.

00:59:05.000 It has to be.

00:59:05.000 Do you know what number two was?

00:59:07.000 No.

00:59:07.000 Squash players.

00:59:09.000 Why?

00:59:10.000 I'm guessing because there are a lot of those very, very quick accelerations that you have to engage in to be able to get...

00:59:17.000 The ball is very dead, right?

00:59:18.000 And so you really have to have this incredible quickness to be able to...

00:59:24.000 What a weird thing for an elite athlete to choose.

00:59:27.000 Jamie, can we check the rankings?

00:59:30.000 I don't even really think I could describe squash.

00:59:32.000 You know, I tried to play it.

00:59:34.000 I got very claustrophobic.

00:59:35.000 Really?

00:59:35.000 I'll be serious.

00:59:36.000 Let me see what it looks like.

00:59:39.000 Show me a squash game.

00:59:40.000 It's like a racquetball, right?

00:59:43.000 No, but with a ball that's more dead.

00:59:46.000 Racquetball, the ball has a lot more give.

00:59:49.000 It bounces more.

00:59:51.000 I was just trying to look.

00:59:52.000 I found other sports that sound like they would be more, but I didn't find it in a scientific study.

00:59:56.000 My wife has been trying to get me into pickleball. 1.00

00:59:59.000 What are our thoughts about that?

01:00:02.000 I hear people like it.

01:00:04.000 Have I just lost a few testosterone points?

01:00:06.000 No.

01:00:07.000 Come on, man.

01:00:08.000 People like pickleball.

01:00:10.000 Well, apparently there's a whole craze of pickleball now because it's not quite as difficult as tennis.

01:00:15.000 You don't have to cover as much ground.

01:00:17.000 It's still a racket game.

01:00:19.000 It looks like a lot of damage to the knees, son.

01:00:20.000 That's what I'm looking at right there.

01:00:22.000 In terms of squash, we're talking?

01:00:23.000 You're running around.

01:00:24.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.99

01:00:25.000 A lot of fucking explosive movements for old guys like us. 0.98

01:00:28.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.99

01:00:29.000 Best stick to yoga.

01:00:32.000 Pickleball, you can play with a beer in your hand.

01:00:34.000 Yeah, pickleball.

01:00:36.000 Pickleball is the way to go, son.

01:00:37.000 By the way, and I'm not going to call it ping pong, table tennis.

01:00:41.000 Oh, my God.

01:00:42.000 Insane.

01:00:43.000 I watch a lot of it.

01:00:44.000 When I was a graduate student, there was a fellow student who were roughly the same level, so we could have these long rallies.

01:00:52.000 We'd play for two, three hours.

01:00:53.000 We'd be drenched.

01:00:54.000 Oh, it's very, very, very athletic.

01:00:57.000 It's also amazing to watch, like their reads, like knowing where the ball's coming, and to be able to get to the side of the table, and they'll whack it over there, and then it steps sideways, and dudes are hitting them behind their backs.

01:01:07.000 Yeah, it's beautiful.

01:01:08.000 It's wild!

01:01:09.000 It's wild!

01:01:10.000 It's beautiful.

01:01:11.000 Those exchanges are so fast!

01:01:13.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:01:14.000 And you're just, this little ball, just tracking this little ball, whacking it with your thing.

01:01:18.000 Now that you said that you went to the soccer match here, that's because Austin has a team, right?

01:01:24.000 Oh yeah, it's the only real professional team in town.

01:01:27.000 So are you willing on your show to commit to inviting Dr. Gad Saad to a game when Inter Miami comes over?

01:01:34.000 Because Gad should see Lionel Messi in person?

01:01:38.000 I would be happy to do that if I am going to be here while that is happening.

01:01:45.000 So I have a lot of commitments.

01:01:47.000 I don't necessarily know when that is.

01:01:50.000 But would you want to go?

01:01:51.000 Yes.

01:01:52.000 Yes, yes, yes.

01:01:53.000 If I was free, I 100% want to go with you.

01:01:55.000 I really enjoyed it.

01:01:57.000 Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

01:01:58.000 That's amazing.

01:01:59.000 You just made my day.

01:02:00.000 You made me happy.

01:02:01.000 Matthew McConaughey, who's the coolest.

01:02:03.000 Such a good guy.

01:02:04.000 He's one of the owners, too.

01:02:05.000 So he's there.

01:02:06.000 Of Austin.

01:02:07.000 Yeah.

01:02:07.000 Oh, is that right?

01:02:08.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:02:09.000 I'm not missaying that, right?

01:02:11.000 I don't think so.

01:02:12.000 But yeah, they just actually played here right before Messi joined the team.

01:02:15.000 I don't want to misstate his position.

01:02:18.000 I think he's one of the owners.

01:02:19.000 I unfortunately don't pay attention to that, but I do pay attention to him.

01:02:23.000 He's a super cool guy.

01:02:24.000 And he was with us, explaining it to us.

01:02:27.000 He loves it. 0.99

01:02:29.000 He fucking loves it. 0.98

01:02:31.000 You know who else is surprisingly into soccer? 0.99

01:02:33.000 Do you know the Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds? 1.00

01:02:37.000 Oh, no shit. 1.00

01:02:38.000 Have you heard? 1.00

01:02:38.000 He is the part owner of Wrexham. 1.00

01:02:41.000 Yeah, there he is.

01:02:41.000 He's co-owner.

01:02:42.000 Okay.

01:02:43.000 I knew it.

01:02:44.000 I knew he was.

01:02:44.000 I just wanted to be short.

01:02:45.000 Let's do Ryan.

01:02:47.000 Wrexham.

01:02:48.000 W-R-E-X. Yeah, Ryan Reynolds.

01:02:51.000 Yeah, they purchased a team, right?

01:02:54.000 What a wild baller move. 0.91

01:02:56.000 I'm going to purchase a sports team.

01:02:57.000 They got good.

01:03:02.000 Speaking of Blake Lively, I actually have her in the current book that came out today as a manifestation of a truly beautiful woman.

01:03:11.000 Do we agree on that?

01:03:12.000 Oh, she's gorgeous. 0.88

01:03:13.000 She's phenomenal. 1.00

01:03:13.000 Yeah, truly beautiful. 1.00

01:03:15.000 And exudes...

01:03:15.000 That's like a duh.

01:03:18.000 Depends if you like that type.

01:03:20.000 There's like a level of beauty, and then everything else is just different versions of that.

01:03:26.000 Yeah.

01:03:26.000 That's what I think.

01:03:27.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:03:27.000 I think people are too picky, first of all.

01:03:29.000 And I also think it's like a level of beauty that's like, you hit a level of beauty and it's like, everything else is just different.

01:03:37.000 So on a man, who would be a guy that you would think is kind of the epitome of gorgeous?

01:03:43.000 Jason Momoa.

01:03:44.000 Jason Momoa.

01:03:46.000 Is that right?

01:03:46.000 He's perfect.

01:03:47.000 He's beautiful.

01:03:48.000 He's tall.

01:03:49.000 He's from an island.

01:03:50.000 He's got tan skin.

01:03:52.000 He's always smiling.

01:03:53.000 He's like a man's man. 0.97

01:03:54.000 This is not the scientific study, but I was just trying to find where soccer lifts on this rink.

01:03:58.000 This is the most overall fitness rating, but this is based off of physical demands.

01:04:03.000 It has soccer.

01:04:04.000 Number one is water polo.

01:04:06.000 25. 26. Oh.

01:04:08.000 Oh, come on. 0.87

01:04:10.000 You know, you never wrestled, did you?

01:04:12.000 Yeah, the other thing I had had wrestling.

01:04:14.000 Boxing.

01:04:14.000 Okay, first of all, let me hit the brakes.

01:04:18.000 Martial arts being number five and then boxing being number six, that is way too general. 0.95

01:04:25.000 You can't say martial arts because martial arts is jujitsu and it's also like fucking karate at the mall. 0.95

01:04:30.000 And then if you go down, go down. 0.91

01:04:33.000 I can't speak to rugby league, but you know, I talked to guys like Volkanovski who used to play. 1.00

01:04:38.000 It's fucking hardcore shit. 0.99

01:04:40.000 That's all believable. 1.00

01:04:41.000 But why is wrestling keep going down?

01:04:43.000 Keep going down.

01:04:44.000 Why is wrestling way down below basketball?

01:04:47.000 Oh, there's squash. 1.00

01:04:49.000 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

01:04:52.000 This is a bullshit study. 1.00

01:04:53.000 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

01:04:54.000 Let me tell you something. 1.00

01:04:54.000 What's the reference there? 1.00

01:04:55.000 Number one is wrestling.

01:04:56.000 Number one.

01:04:57.000 Is that right?

01:04:58.000 100%.

01:04:58.000 Put it at number one.

01:04:59.000 You mean Greco-Roman wrestling, you mean?

01:05:01.000 Whether it's Greco-Roman or whether it's freestyle or whatever it is, folk style, whatever wrestling, that is the most physically demanding sport, for sure.

01:05:10.000 It's so hard to do.

01:05:13.000 It's so hard.

01:05:14.000 And to be at an elite level, like a Daniel Cormier level, like...

01:05:21.000 I'm going to pretend I know who that is, but go ahead.

01:05:24.000 He's a two-division UFC world champion.

01:05:26.000 Oh, okay.

01:05:27.000 He was also an Olympic wrestler.

01:05:28.000 Nice.

01:05:28.000 There's levels that these guys are at.

01:05:31.000 Their fucking fitness is off the charts. 1.00

01:05:34.000 Their athleticism is off the charts. 1.00

01:05:36.000 Well, you know, I think we probably discussed this before.

01:05:39.000 This is not wrestling, but my brother was an Olympic judoka.

01:05:42.000 Oh, well, that's another one, man.

01:05:44.000 Judo is hardcore.

01:05:46.000 I've trained a bunch with Judo guys.

01:05:48.000 They're ridiculously strong because they're throwing bodies around all the time. 0.99

01:05:53.000 And that throwing bodies around, when they grab ahold of you, it's a totally different feeling.

01:05:58.000 So, I'm sure I've said this story before.

01:06:01.000 What's that?

01:06:02.000 Wrestling number one, boxing two.

01:06:04.000 Yeah, that's how it should be.

01:06:05.000 Soccer.

01:06:06.000 What is this website?

01:06:08.000 This website's a good website.

01:06:09.000 Athletic Bill.

01:06:09.000 Yes, I don't know.

01:06:10.000 If it agrees with my thinking, it's a good website. 0.99

01:06:14.000 If it doesn't, it's a bullshit website. 0.99

01:06:15.000 Okay. 1.00

01:06:16.000 Where's soccer there, Jimmy?

01:06:17.000 This one was number nine on this list.

01:06:19.000 Yeah, wrestling, MMA, that's accurate.

01:06:22.000 That's accurate. 0.97

01:06:22.000 Because if you look at guys like Karelin, Alexander Karelin, who's the scariest fucking wrestler of all time. 0.97

01:06:31.000 Like, if anybody says, like, who's the scariest wrestler of all time? 0.97

01:06:34.000 It's Corellin.

01:06:35.000 They used to call him the experiment.

01:06:37.000 Because his parents were, like, normal size.

01:06:40.000 Like, kind of tiny.

01:06:41.000 Like, 5'7". 1.00

01:06:42.000 And he's a fucking panther. 1.00

01:06:45.000 Like, a human panther. 1.00

01:06:46.000 6'2", 300 pounds, and you know what his move is?

01:06:50.000 Yikes.

01:06:50.000 He throws people around.

01:06:52.000 He picks them up and beats them with the earth.

01:06:55.000 He's the most terrifying wrestler ever, because he would just hoist them up in the air.

01:06:59.000 And look at that picture.

01:07:00.000 See that picture? 1.00

01:07:01.000 I have that picture framed on metal, printed on metal in the gym, just to remind me of what a pussy I am. 1.00

01:07:08.000 You should always know that dudes like that have existed and probably still exist today. 1.00

01:07:13.000 He was fucking terrifying! 0.99

01:07:15.000 Let's play the football game of Can I Get a Yard? 1.00

01:07:18.000 You go in with this guy.

01:07:20.000 Zero chance.

01:07:20.000 No, not winning.

01:07:21.000 How long can you last?

01:07:23.000 I'd have to run away.

01:07:24.000 It would just be until he catches me.

01:07:27.000 Okay.

01:07:27.000 I would have to run away, and I probably wouldn't be able to run away.

01:07:30.000 He's faster than me.

01:07:31.000 He's big and fast.

01:07:32.000 Right.

01:07:32.000 The thing about Corellin was he was 300 pounds, but he moved like a cat.

01:07:37.000 He had crazy flexibility, like ridiculous flexibility and mobility.

01:07:42.000 He did all these mobility drills.

01:07:43.000 If you watch his workouts, They were extraordinary.

01:07:47.000 He's doing a lot of things like shield casts with giant steel plates. 0.99

01:07:52.000 So he's doing a lot of this shit. 0.91

01:07:54.000 So it's like rotational muscles, his ability to manipulate things in awkward positions was off the charts. 0.99

01:08:00.000 It was all like heavy kettlebell work. 0.90

01:08:03.000 That guy was a freak.

01:08:05.000 And his mobility, he would show all these mobility drills and different things.

01:08:08.000 Look at what he's doing.

01:08:09.000 Oh my goodness.

01:08:10.000 Look at this. 1.00

01:08:10.000 I mean, this is a fucking Olympic gold medalist wrestler. 1.00

01:08:15.000 What era is this? 0.99

01:08:16.000 80s?

01:08:17.000 I think his last wrestling matches were around, I want to say before 2000, because he did have offers.

01:08:27.000 He had like one Fugazi MMA fight.

01:08:30.000 It was like a fake MMA fight.

01:08:32.000 Because they did a few of those in Japan.

01:08:34.000 They had a weird sort of symbiosis with pro wrestling and MMA. And so there was MMA fights in Japan that are allegedly fixed.

01:08:43.000 And they look fixed. 0.98

01:08:44.000 You watch me going, get the fuck out of here. 0.99

01:08:47.000 It's like you see a fake tap. 0.99

01:08:50.000 You see someone giving their arm up or something.

01:08:53.000 There was some of that going on.

01:08:54.000 And so it seems like he got involved in one of those.

01:08:57.000 Where they gave him a shit ton of money and they said, come over here.

01:08:59.000 It's kind of pro wrestling, but kind of not.

01:09:01.000 We'll say it's an MMA fight.

01:09:03.000 It's one of those deals. 0.99

01:09:04.000 But if he did fight MMA, everyone would be fucked. 0.99

01:09:08.000 Everyone. 0.99

01:09:09.000 Wow. 1.00

01:09:09.000 Everyone would be fucked. 1.00

01:09:11.000 And if you figured out how to strike, oh my Jesus. 0.98

01:09:14.000 You know, I'm not sure if we've talked about this before, but the precursor of MMA, I had had that conversation with my brother, the judo guy, because we would go out to nightclubs and he's a very, very small guy, probably 5'3",

01:09:30.000 but built like a pit bull.

01:09:32.000 And he'd kind of interact with the world as though he's 6'8", the bouncers and so on.

01:09:37.000 And I once asked him, do you think you can take these guys?

01:09:40.000 And he said, if I can get them, if they knock me out before I get to them, then they knock me out. 0.57

01:09:47.000 But if I get them and I can bring them down, then they're dead.

01:09:51.000 And I think from my very, very limited knowledge of MMA, the guys who usually win are precisely those guys who can do exactly what he said, right?

01:09:59.000 Yeah, sorta, but kind of everybody knows how to defend that now.

01:10:03.000 It's just how well can you defend and how good of a striker is that wrestler?

01:10:09.000 Because there's this gentleman who's coming up on the scene right now, his name's Bo Nickel.

01:10:13.000 And he's an elite, like, blue chip wrestler.

01:10:17.000 Like, elite wrestler.

01:10:18.000 Like, Olympic caliber wrestler.

01:10:20.000 And now he's competing in MMA and his last fight was a first round knockout with his hands.

01:10:26.000 And he showed that he's got sick boxing skills too, which is the most terrifying thing. 0.87

01:10:32.000 When you've got a guy who's above and beyond you in grappling, like once he gets a hold of you, you're fucksville. 0.94

01:10:39.000 There's no way, you have one way ticket to fucksville. 1.00

01:10:42.000 He's gonna slam you to the ground, he's gonna control you, he's gonna beat your ass. 1.00

01:10:45.000 They're just too good at wrestling. 1.00

01:10:46.000 And then also he can fuck you up standing. 0.99

01:10:48.000 That's where it gets really dangerous. 0.99

01:10:50.000 So if a guy like Karelin learned how to stand up, That would have been the end.

01:10:54.000 Because there's certain freaks, athletic freaks, what are you going to do with that?

01:11:01.000 So in the MMA, in the history of the MMA, is there someone that is akin to Messi in terms of a Michael Jordan or a Messi in the MMA? There's a few.

01:11:10.000 There's a few that are in that conversation.

01:11:12.000 I think the number one consensus greatest of all time is Jon Jones.

01:11:15.000 Because Jon Jones just went up and easily won the heavyweight title with the first round submission.

01:11:21.000 Easily.

01:11:21.000 Just took the guy down, strangled him quick.

01:11:23.000 And the way he did it was so extraordinary.

01:11:26.000 His control of distance, his management of the space, the way he set it up.

01:11:31.000 It's really tough to argue that he's not the greatest of all time. 0.99

01:11:34.000 Undefeated as a light heavyweight, had one defeat that was a disqualification that's 100% bullshit. 0.99

01:11:39.000 He was on top of this guy smashing him, beating the fuck out of him. 0.99

01:11:43.000 But they said that he did 12 to 6 elbows, which are the dumbest fucking ever Rule in MMA. Because what if it's 12.05? 0.99

01:11:51.000 What if it's 12.05?

01:11:52.000 Sorry, what does that mean?

01:11:53.000 Oh, I'm sorry.

01:11:54.000 From the position on the clock.

01:11:56.000 An elbow straight down is illegal.

01:11:58.000 Oh, I see.

01:11:58.000 Doesn't make any sense.

01:11:59.000 You have to do it sideways?

01:12:01.000 How do you do it?

01:12:01.000 You do it at an angle.

01:12:02.000 But it's literally because the athletic commissions that were sanctioning MMA initially, they said, you know, we've seen those things on ESPN where people break bricks with their elbows.

01:12:14.000 You can't do that.

01:12:15.000 It's too dangerous.

01:12:16.000 So you can't do that on the ground.

01:12:18.000 You can't even do it standing up, I don't believe.

01:12:19.000 I think if someone comes straight at you and tomahawk elbows you, I believe that's illegal.

01:12:24.000 I'm not sure about that.

01:12:25.000 But on the ground, it's most certainly illegal. 0.99

01:12:27.000 And it's the dumbest rule. 0.97

01:12:28.000 It doesn't make any sense. 0.99

01:12:30.000 A regular elbow is just as hard.

01:12:31.000 An elbow like this is just as hard.

01:12:34.000 It might be more hard because you can kind of get more of your shoulder into it.

01:12:37.000 Or this might be a more awkward move that, I mean, I'm not the best at this, but I would think that this is not as good as This.

01:12:46.000 This seems like I'm getting a lot of weight into that.

01:12:49.000 I'm getting the torque off my hips.

01:12:51.000 This I'm kind of coming up and down.

01:12:53.000 I feel like I have more ability to generate force going sideways, going into it like that.

01:12:59.000 So I don't, I think if you measured it, I bet it would be, I bet this elbow is stronger for like the elite fighters.

01:13:05.000 So it's not a matter of like whether or not it makes sense. 0.97

01:13:08.000 It's a dumb rule. 0.97

01:13:10.000 And that's the only time he ever lost. 0.99

01:13:12.000 He got disqualified.

01:13:12.000 Yeah, he got disqualified.

01:13:13.000 It's the only time he ever lost.

01:13:14.000 Other than that, like, he's, like, at certain point in time in his career, he was, like, playing with his food.

01:13:19.000 Like, he let fights go on too long, where he's, like, almost disinterested.

01:13:23.000 Like, he wanted to try standing up with guys who were supposedly great strikers.

01:13:27.000 Just decided not to try to take people down. 0.99

01:13:30.000 Just tried to do whatever the fuck he wanted to do. 0.98

01:13:31.000 Because he's so much better than everybody. 0.99

01:13:33.000 He was getting bored.

01:13:34.000 And then when he has, like, big challenges, like this second Daniel Cormier fight, he stopped Cormier with a head kick. 0.96

01:13:40.000 He's so fucking good. 0.92

01:13:42.000 I mean, he's beaten so many people and the way he beat them. 0.98

01:13:45.000 He fought Lyoto Machida and it's one of the most cold-blooded finishes in the history of the sport.

01:13:51.000 He has Machida and he grabs him at the cage, presses him against the cage, and gets him in this perfect power guillotine.

01:14:02.000 Puts him to sleep and then drops him and walks away.

01:14:07.000 Watch this.

01:14:08.000 So he grabs ahold of him, they get this exchange, and John catches him in this knee to the body, and then he catches him in this standing crank.

01:14:17.000 So see how he's doing that?

01:14:18.000 He's compressing Machida's head to his chest, completely putting him out, like there's nowhere to go.

01:14:23.000 He's 100% out cold.

01:14:25.000 And so look at that.

01:14:26.000 It just drops him.

01:14:27.000 Oh my goodness.

01:14:28.000 And walks away.

01:14:29.000 Cold-blooded.

01:14:30.000 Cold-blooded.

01:14:32.000 That's the GOAT. That's the greatest of all time.

01:14:35.000 And when he's challenged, that's when, like I said, the second Daniel Cormier fight, there was so much bad blood between them.

01:14:41.000 When he's challenged, really challenged, that's when you see how good he really is. 0.96

01:14:45.000 The problem is he's so much better than almost everybody that ever has done the sport that he, at certain times, just got too distracted, partying a lot, fucking off a lot.

01:14:56.000 Do you think there are any personality traits that predict people who are likely to be interested in MMA fighting versus other sports?

01:15:05.000 There's so many personalities.

01:15:07.000 It's really interesting.

01:15:08.000 The diversity in personalities in MMA is really fascinating to me as a person who's an analyst.

01:15:16.000 That are very calm and disciplined and religious, like people like the greatest, like Khabib Nurmagomedov, who's also in the conversation of who's the greatest of all time.

01:15:25.000 He's also in that conversation.

01:15:30.000 He's in the conversation of the greatest of all time.

01:15:32.000 Because it's not even a matter of whether he lost, because he never lost, who's 29-0.

01:15:37.000 It's a matter of, did he ever lose a round?

01:15:39.000 And he lost maybe one round in the Conor McGregor fight, because in the Conor McGregor fight, he was in one round, it looked like he was kind of taking a round off to really put the heat on him. 0.97

01:15:51.000 He was slowing Conor down, and then he just, he was just taking him down and beating the shit out of him, beating the shit out of him, yelling at him, let's talk now, let's talk, because there was so much trash talk. 0.71

01:16:00.000 It was a very emotionally charged fight. 0.90

01:16:02.000 And I think he might have lost one round in that fight where Conor got the best of him standing. 0.99

01:16:08.000 Connor's still an elite motherfucker. 0.98

01:16:10.000 But other than that, his whole career is just domination. 0.98

01:16:14.000 There's one fight that he had with Gleason Tebow that was a controversial fight.

01:16:17.000 It was a close fight.

01:16:18.000 But that's very early in his career.

01:16:20.000 When you look at him against guys like world-class competition, You know, guys like Edson Barboza, guys like Michael Johnson. 0.97

01:16:27.000 The domination that he showed on these guys was just fucking off the charts. 0.99

01:16:32.000 He would just take them down, mount them, tie their legs up with his legs, and beat the fuck out of them. 0.99

01:16:39.000 And he did it to everybody. 0.99

01:16:40.000 He did it to everybody. 0.97

01:16:41.000 What's your preference in terms of, do you like the showy trash talkers? 0.90

01:16:47.000 I have no preference. 0.61

01:16:48.000 I love them all.

01:16:49.000 I love it all. 0.98

01:16:50.000 I love the guys that talk a lot of shit, and I love the guys that are like Khabib, that are stoic, and just get the job done. 0.98

01:16:55.000 See, because in soccer, of course, you've had this perennial discussion about Messi versus Ronaldo. 0.99

01:17:01.000 I don't really think there is a debate.

01:17:03.000 Messi's much better.

01:17:04.000 But I also admire his humility, right?

01:17:09.000 Because if there ever was someone who should have a chip on his shoulder, it should be Messi.

01:17:13.000 Probably the most famous person in the world who's done it all.

01:17:16.000 And yet he really walks around as though he's nobody.

01:17:19.000 On the other hand, Ronaldo is a big showboat.

01:17:22.000 If you ask Ronaldo who's the greatest player ever, he'll say, it's me.

01:17:25.000 Whereas if you ask Messi, he'll list 10 people and he won't put himself on that list.

01:17:29.000 And so there is a way by which he engages in his personal conduct that I think is really admirable, that he truly is a role model.

01:17:39.000 Right.

01:17:39.000 Yeah, that's beautiful.

01:17:41.000 So I'm wondering, so from the perspective of, because there's a lot of showboating and fighters, right?

01:17:46.000 I'm the greatest ever and I'm going to knock you out.

01:17:49.000 I would have thought that you'd probably be more into the understated guys.

01:17:54.000 No. 1.00

01:17:54.000 No, I'm all into whatever the fuck you're into. 1.00

01:17:57.000 Like, I like that Conor McGregor wears diamond-encrusted watches and drives around a Lamborghini yacht. 0.99

01:18:02.000 I fucking love it. 0.93

01:18:03.000 I know that dude grew up poor. 0.97

01:18:06.000 That dude was struggling early in his MMA career and wasn't even sure if he was going to continue fighting.

01:18:12.000 Right.

01:18:13.000 You know, I became a fan of his watching him fight in the UK. I watched him fight on YouTube, and I reached out to him like, 2013, I sent him a message saying, I hope one day you come over to the UFC. I'd love to see your fights.

01:18:29.000 It might have been earlier than 2013. But I was like, I knew he was legit back then.

01:18:36.000 There was something special.

01:18:37.000 He's been on this show many times?

01:18:38.000 No, he hasn't been on this show ever.

01:18:40.000 No kidding.

01:18:41.000 I definitely have him on, though.

01:18:42.000 I love the guy.

01:18:43.000 I love that he's wild.

01:18:44.000 I love it.

01:18:45.000 I like wild guys.

01:18:46.000 I like Jon Jones and he was wild. 1.00

01:18:48.000 I think he did some questionable shit. 0.99

01:18:49.000 That's no doubt some things that he shouldn't have done. 0.97

01:18:52.000 Are many of your closest friends fighters?

01:18:55.000 I have a lot of friends that are in all walks of life. 0.98

01:18:58.000 But most of my friends, most of my close friends do risky shit. 0.98

01:19:03.000 Either they do martial arts, or they do stand-up comedy, or they do something. 0.97

01:19:08.000 How about intellectual risk-taking?

01:19:09.000 Yeah, well, you do those.

01:19:11.000 You do those things for sure.

01:19:12.000 What year was that?

01:19:13.000 2013. Yeah.

01:19:15.000 So I tweeted to him.

01:19:17.000 He was amazing.

01:19:19.000 But I knew that back then.

01:19:20.000 But I like that he's a wild fella. 1.00

01:19:23.000 I like that he's fucking wearing ridiculous expensive suits and fucking giant watches and crocodile skin shoes. 1.00

01:19:30.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00

01:19:31.000 I like it. 1.00

01:19:32.000 I like when people go hard.

01:19:34.000 That's good.

01:19:35.000 Good.

01:19:35.000 Enjoy it.

01:19:36.000 Enjoy it. 1.00

01:19:37.000 Enjoy the shit out of it. 0.98

01:19:38.000 I like when Floyd Mayweather does it. 0.98

01:19:39.000 Enjoy it.

01:19:40.000 You earned it.

01:19:40.000 You deserve it.

01:19:41.000 Enjoy it.

01:19:42.000 Enjoy it.

01:19:43.000 Did you see there's a...

01:19:44.000 I think it's an HBO documentary coming out of the Mexican boxer.

01:19:49.000 I can't remember his name.

01:19:51.000 Which one?

01:19:52.000 Oscar De La Hoya.

01:19:53.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:19:54.000 Have you heard that there is a...

01:19:56.000 No, I have not heard that.

01:19:57.000 I think it's coming in August.

01:19:58.000 And I seem to be...

01:20:00.000 I mean, from the little trailer that I saw, I think there is quite a bit of personal demons that he's had to face in his life.

01:20:06.000 And so it seems like a gripping story.

01:20:08.000 Apparently he likes to party.

01:20:10.000 Oh, is that right?

01:20:10.000 Yeah.

01:20:11.000 You mean with the ladies or with the...

01:20:13.000 Oh, I was meaning with...

01:20:15.000 I don't know.

01:20:16.000 These are just rumors.

01:20:17.000 You know, some controlled substances.

01:20:19.000 He's had some issues.

01:20:20.000 Yes.

01:20:21.000 Public issues.

01:20:22.000 Oh, there you go.

01:20:23.000 Yeah.

01:20:24.000 Some issues with rehab, drinking, drugs, and women.

01:20:27.000 Holla.

01:20:28.000 This might be the most interventions by Jamie on any show that I've been on.

01:20:32.000 Nah, he always does it. 0.98

01:20:34.000 Jamie knows how to fucking load him up. 0.98

01:20:36.000 He's the all-time greatest truth checker. 0.99

01:20:38.000 Well, he's the goat of podcast producers, for sure. 0.78

01:20:41.000 He's the goat of podcast producers. 0.86

01:20:42.000 He's the messy of podcast producers.

01:20:43.000 100%.

01:20:44.000 But there's no Rinaldo out there.

01:20:46.000 What am I the messy of?

01:20:48.000 Or what is messy that got over?

01:20:50.000 Why does it have to always be about you?

01:20:51.000 Why do we keep turning around to you?

01:20:52.000 Come on, man.

01:20:53.000 You know I love you.

01:20:53.000 I've said two words in this podcast.

01:20:55.000 That's not true at all.

01:20:56.000 Literally, if someone does a content analysis of our conversation so far, they wouldn't know that I'm here.

01:21:02.000 I've just sat and smiled at your beautiful face.

01:21:06.000 Aw, sweetie. 0.97

01:21:09.000 That can't be true.

01:21:10.000 I can just look at the words I'm seeing on my recording.

01:21:13.000 It's like 50-50 in the last few minutes.

01:21:15.000 No, it is not 50-50.

01:21:16.000 How dare you?

01:21:17.000 How dare you, sir?

01:21:18.000 You got a little testy there.

01:21:19.000 I gotcha.

01:21:20.000 No, not at all.

01:21:21.000 I'm just having fun.

01:21:23.000 So what else is up?

01:21:24.000 What's going on?

01:21:26.000 I don't know, man.

01:21:27.000 I'm more worried.

01:21:28.000 What's upsetting you?

01:21:29.000 What's making you happy?

01:21:31.000 What's...

01:21:31.000 I'm more worried than ever about the cultural narratives.

01:21:35.000 I'm more worried than ever about the fucking divide in this country. 0.99

01:21:41.000 It seems so accelerated. 0.99

01:21:45.000 Whether it's climate change or Ukraine or whatever the subject du jour is.

01:21:53.000 Everyone's so stereotypically on one side or the other.

01:21:58.000 Have you lost any personal friendships because of ideological issues?

01:22:04.000 No, not real friendships.

01:22:05.000 Okay, good.

01:22:06.000 Maybe acquaintances.

01:22:07.000 Okay.

01:22:08.000 But that was okay.

01:22:08.000 Those are good.

01:22:09.000 If you can clean those up.

01:22:11.000 Exactly.

01:22:12.000 Yeah, you find out who's really your friend.

01:22:15.000 Even people that I vehemently disagreed with about certain policies that were in place during the pandemic.

01:22:22.000 Yeah.

01:22:23.000 They're still my friends.

01:22:25.000 We can have disagreements.

01:22:26.000 I know who the core of you is.

01:22:28.000 And people think about things differently.

01:22:30.000 We're free to think about things differently.

01:22:32.000 Some people are free to have a perspective that I don't agree with.

01:22:37.000 And you might be able to back it up with some facts.

01:22:41.000 You might be able to. 1.00

01:22:43.000 Or you might be intolerant to the other opposition views because some of them are full of shit. 1.00

01:22:50.000 Maybe that's true too. 0.99

01:22:51.000 There's a lot going on, but it's very hard for people, especially in times of crisis.

01:22:56.000 During the pandemic, you kind of found out how human beings are very malleable and very quick to pick a narrative that they support, and especially if that narrative offers a promise of going back to normal.

01:23:12.000 And that was what was weird about that.

01:23:14.000 It was like, this is a psychological, like, test study.

01:23:18.000 If you wanted to do a test study of how a population, even a free, supposedly free population, free thinking, freedom of expression, freedom of speech is literally in the doctrine that we run the law by.

01:23:33.000 And to have people willing to throw that away quickly under something that wasn't even...

01:23:40.000 We're not talking about a nuclear war.

01:23:42.000 We're talking about something that's relatively...

01:23:44.000 In terms of the amount of people that die every year, it's not good.

01:23:48.000 It certainly wasn't a good thing to have at anybody.

01:23:51.000 99.7% survival...

01:23:53.000 Yeah.

01:23:55.000 I mean, again, it's not a good thing, right?

01:23:59.000 It's not good to get any kind of cold, any kind of disease, any kind of, like, illness.

01:24:03.000 It's not good. 0.98

01:24:04.000 But there's a lot of shit that's killing people also, and there's almost no effort to stop that. 0.98

01:24:12.000 There's no effort to stop the comorbidities that caused a lot of the problems that a lot of those people that didn't survive had. 0.99

01:24:18.000 There's no effort to stop that in terms of what we understand about health and wellness and promoting that.

01:24:24.000 You're referring to obesity, largely.

01:24:26.000 Not just obesity, but malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies.

01:24:31.000 So many people are eating, but they're malnourished.

01:24:34.000 It's a giant portion of our population that is not getting the proper nutrients every day.

01:24:39.000 And there's a host of diseases that come along with that.

01:24:41.000 And it's just not being discussed.

01:24:44.000 I mean, it's not like the epidemic that it really is.

01:24:47.000 It's not being discussed like the epidemic that it really is.

01:24:49.000 Do you think that a lot of the governmental policies that were instituted stem from the fog of war during the pandemic, and so it was driven by ignorance?

01:24:58.000 Or are you of the view that There is kind of a Dr. Evil, nefarious thing behind this whole thing.

01:25:07.000 I am very reluctant to go with the Dr. Evil narrative.

01:25:10.000 I think there's certainly people that you would consider evil that will take advantage when things happen.

01:25:18.000 But do I think that they released the pandemic on purpose?

01:25:21.000 No.

01:25:22.000 No, there's pretty clear evidence that people working in the lab got sick and that those people spread it.

01:25:27.000 No, but let's say the ad hoc policies that they would come up with, you could only be four people on a boat, you can do this, you can't do that.

01:25:34.000 My feeling is, I don't have any proof of it, it's just I'm speculating, is that a lot of it really came from the fog of war.

01:25:41.000 People were, and I'm not trying to be charitable, but I think that most people were well-meaning.

01:25:46.000 They didn't know what the hell they're talking about.

01:25:48.000 They didn't exhibit any epistemic humility, right?

01:25:51.000 They made it seem as though they knew what they're talking about.

01:25:54.000 But they were trying their best.

01:25:55.000 I don't think there was kind of this grand conspiracy where this is our chance to take over the freedoms that people still adhere to.

01:26:04.000 I would be more inclined to believe what you're saying.

01:26:06.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:26:07.000 I think it's many factors.

01:26:10.000 And I think when we want to look at why people did what they did, we try to look at it one way or another.

01:26:16.000 I think there's many, many things going on.

01:26:19.000 And also, for sure, Governments that are really good at crafting laws that allow them to gain power, and they've done that with all the bills that they passed after 9-11, 0.97

01:26:35.000 you know, the Patriot Act, the Patriot Act II, the NDAA, all that crazy shit.

01:26:40.000 Whenever something happens, they find new ways to control They do it because it's an opportunity. 0.88

01:26:48.000 It's an opportunity to pass laws that people are reluctant to pass before.

01:26:51.000 It happens.

01:26:52.000 It happens all the time.

01:26:53.000 It's normal.

01:26:54.000 That's their job.

01:26:56.000 That's what they do.

01:26:57.000 What they do is they're in control, they're in power.

01:26:59.000 That's the game that they're playing.

01:27:00.000 The game that you're playing is, I want to keep my freedom.

01:27:04.000 We have to figure out a way to establish real clear rules to how this game works.

01:27:09.000 Because if you could just cheat and lie and then delete things off social media. 0.96

01:27:14.000 Have a bunch of bots saying a bunch of shit to stir people up and you're literally funding this? 0.99

01:27:19.000 Like, who's doing that? 0.99

01:27:21.000 How many of them are coming from America itself?

01:27:24.000 And how many of them are coming from foreign agents who are trying to disrupt American politics and trying to disrupt American narratives?

01:27:32.000 I wonder.

01:27:33.000 I wonder, like, what is the ratio of shitposting?

01:27:37.000 Like, what would you call it? 0.88

01:27:40.000 Botposting.

01:27:41.000 What's the level of disingenuous, non-human, non-real-person posting?

01:27:47.000 As relating to COVID or anything?

01:27:50.000 Anything.

01:27:50.000 I think it's all the social things that are coming up right now.

01:27:54.000 Anything.

01:27:55.000 You see a lot of these wacky fake accounts.

01:27:58.000 I wonder how many of them are.

01:28:00.000 There was an FBI analyst that said that he believed there's somewhere around 80% of Twitter's users or bots.

01:28:10.000 It could be as high as 80%.

01:28:11.000 Wow.

01:28:13.000 That's crazy.

01:28:14.000 What?

01:28:15.000 Do you imagine Twitter just becomes bots arguing with bots and they finally realize like no one's on it?

01:28:23.000 Have you felt that your experience with Twitter has radically changed as a function of the pre and post Elon Musk coming in or hasn't changed much?

01:28:34.000 You feel more free.

01:28:35.000 You can post things that are controversial and not worry about having your account limited.

01:28:42.000 Because if you were posting things about, like, first of all, there's things you couldn't post.

01:28:47.000 Like, you could not post a story about the Hunter Biden laptop.

01:28:49.000 You couldn't even send it to me in a DM. There were certain things I tried to send people in DMs, and they wouldn't allow me to send them.

01:28:56.000 That's amazing.

01:28:56.000 I'm like, this is wild.

01:28:58.000 This is weird.

01:28:59.000 It's just confusing.

01:29:01.000 It's like, why would you think this is a good idea?

01:29:03.000 Well, I remember I had been contacted by...

01:29:06.000 I don't know if you've had him on the show.

01:29:08.000 Do you know who Matt Ridley is?

01:29:09.000 Matt Ridley.

01:29:10.000 Why do I know that?

01:29:11.000 He's an evolutionary biologist.

01:29:12.000 He was in the House of Lords in Britain.

01:29:14.000 He's been on my show a few times.

01:29:15.000 He wrote a book a few years ago with a co-author.

01:29:18.000 I can't remember her name.

01:29:19.000 Mm-hmm.

01:29:41.000 And I've always kind of struggled with that decision because I was being pragmatic and saying, look, we're just going to waste our time.

01:29:48.000 First of all, it's not going to appear.

01:29:50.000 They're going to take it down.

01:29:52.000 They're probably going to put a strike on my channel, if not remove my channel.

01:29:56.000 And there is a real problem with that.

01:29:58.000 And so we ended up never doing the show.

01:30:00.000 But just the fact that they can get to me, someone who really defines his identity as being irreverent and I just do whatever I want...

01:30:07.000 Yet they still found a way to get me to modulate my behavior, to think about it.

01:30:12.000 Therefore, they won against me.

01:30:13.000 Yeah, it's self-censorship that people do out of survival.

01:30:17.000 Yeah.

01:30:17.000 And it always sat badly with me because, you know, I always thought, no matter what, I'm always going to speak my mind.

01:30:25.000 But here was a case where I actually fell prey to that...

01:30:29.000 What's crazy is also the goals shift, the goalposts shift.

01:30:32.000 So I think you could talk about a lab leak theory now.

01:30:35.000 Yeah.

01:30:35.000 Because it's kind of established science.

01:30:37.000 And there's more evidence that points to the fact that it leaked from a lab than there's almost no evidence of natural spillover.

01:30:44.000 There's also evidence of manipulation of the virus itself to make it more contagious to human beings.

01:30:51.000 It's some real wackiness, man.

01:30:53.000 It's crazy how it took so long for people to think that that could even be a possibility.

01:31:00.000 Remember when Jon Stewart was on the Colbert show and Colbert kept trying to block him from joking around about it?

01:31:06.000 No, I don't.

01:31:07.000 You never saw that?

01:31:07.000 No, I didn't see that.

01:31:08.000 Oh, my God.

01:31:09.000 You have to see this.

01:31:10.000 It's kind of amazing.

01:31:11.000 Because Jon Stewart, bless his heart, he sticks to the bit.

01:31:14.000 Yeah.

01:31:15.000 And Colbert is trying to cockblock the joke.

01:31:18.000 He's trying to stop him from ranting.

01:31:20.000 So you can clearly see Jon Stewart is in the middle of a bit.

01:31:23.000 He's literally doing it to the audience.

01:31:26.000 He's doing a bit.

01:31:27.000 Watch this.

01:31:28.000 It's pretty fun.

01:31:36.000 I guess this is it.

01:31:37.000 This is a delight to have you here, my friend.

01:31:40.000 Oh, my God.

01:31:41.000 There's nothing I wanted to do more than breathe everyone's air.

01:31:47.000 Well, here's the thing.

01:31:49.000 Here's the thing.

01:31:50.000 This is what I know about you.

01:31:51.000 This is what I know about you.

01:31:52.000 We are truly dear friends, and yet this is the first time I've seen you in the flesh in 15 months.

01:31:56.000 That is correct.

01:31:58.000 Right.

01:31:59.000 And I am so really happy.

01:32:04.000 And I know we're all vaccinated, and I'm not gonna get COVID, but I'm gonna get something.

01:32:11.000 Honestly, these people did not take good care of themselves during the pandemic.

01:32:15.000 Last time...

01:32:16.000 Well, actually, the first time we talked during COVID, I was still in South Carolina.

01:32:22.000 That's right.

01:32:22.000 You were locked down.

01:32:24.000 I was locked down there, and the family, Evie and the kids, were the actual crew.

01:32:28.000 That's right.

01:32:29.000 That's how we were doing it.

01:32:30.000 We were doing it in a little, unused little bedroom with cables through the window and a satellite truck on our lawn.

01:32:36.000 That's right.

01:32:38.000 Fantastic.

01:32:38.000 The room was twice the size of this desk, I think.

01:32:40.000 I'm not joking.

01:32:41.000 Chris could tell you.

01:32:42.000 It's really, really tiny.

01:32:43.000 But the whole point was just to get it done, to get something out there.

01:32:46.000 We really wanted to do the show.

01:32:47.000 And when I interviewed you for it, you were talking about how little progress we've made in science in combating pandemics.

01:32:56.000 Because in 1918, the advice was, wear a mask, wash your hands.

01:33:00.000 That's right.

01:33:01.000 And 100 years later, 103 years later...

01:33:03.000 Wear a mask, wash your hands.

01:33:04.000 It was soul-crushing to find that.

01:33:06.000 I was really hoping that, like, in 1918, they'd be like, drink a tincture of mercury and butterfly juice.

01:33:12.000 Like, I was hoping it'd be, like, some bizarre thing, and I'm like, we've come a long way, baby.

01:33:16.000 It's the exact same...

01:33:17.000 How do you feel about the science now, though?

01:33:18.000 So, I will say this.

01:33:22.000 I... And I honestly mean this.

01:33:24.000 I think we owe a great debt of gratitude.

01:33:29.000 To science.

01:33:30.000 Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science.

01:33:45.000 Uh-oh.

01:33:49.000 And that's kind of...

01:33:51.000 Hold on a second.

01:33:52.000 No, no, no, no, no, no.

01:33:55.000 Spit take. 0.92

01:33:56.000 Listen.

01:33:57.000 It's coffee.

01:33:58.000 I wouldn't do that to you.

01:33:59.000 I wouldn't do that to you.

01:34:00.000 I'm all for spit takes.

01:34:01.000 What do you mean by that?

01:34:02.000 Do you mean like, there's a chance that this was created in a lab?

01:34:05.000 There's an investigation.

01:34:06.000 A chance?

01:34:08.000 If there's evidence, I'd love to hear it.

01:34:10.000 There's a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China.

01:34:16.000 What do we do?

01:34:17.000 Oh, you know who we could ask?

01:34:19.000 The...

01:34:20.000 Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab. 0.55

01:34:23.000 The disease is the same name as the lab.

01:34:28.000 That's just a little too weird, don't you think?

01:34:31.000 And then they ask those scientists, they're like, how did this...

01:34:33.000 So wait a minute.

01:34:34.000 You work at the Wuhan Respiratory Coronavirus Lab.

01:34:38.000 How did this happen?

01:34:39.000 And they're like, a pangolin kissed a turtle.

01:34:43.000 And you're like, no.

01:34:46.000 The name of your lab, if you look at the name, look at the name.

01:34:50.000 Can I... Let me see your business card.

01:34:54.000 So when is this?

01:34:55.000 See, look at Colbert though.

01:34:56.000 Colbert keeps opening his mouth.

01:35:24.000 He has to stand up.

01:35:25.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:35:26.000 There's been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania.

01:35:31.000 What do you think happened?

01:35:32.000 Like, oh, I don't know.

01:35:34.000 Maybe a steam shovel made it with a cocoa bean. 0.99

01:35:38.000 Or it's the chocolate factory.

01:35:42.000 Maybe that's it.

01:35:43.000 That could be.

01:35:44.000 Look at Jon Stewart.

01:35:46.000 But you see how many times Colbert tried to con block his bit?

01:35:50.000 But so this happened when?

01:35:51.000 This was...

01:35:53.000 Look, they have the COVID-19 vaccine link there.

01:35:57.000 Two years ago.

01:35:58.000 So this is in the heart of everything.

01:36:00.000 The chaos of it all.

01:36:02.000 Yeah.

01:36:03.000 Well, you know, in Montreal, you probably know that we had some of the most authoritarian stuff on COVID. Late into the pandemic, there was a curfew that you weren't allowed to walk your dog in your neighborhood after,

01:36:18.000 you know, 8 p.m.

01:36:20.000 or 10 p.m.

01:36:20.000 or whatever it was.

01:36:21.000 Now, people really, there was an outcry, so they rescinded it.

01:36:25.000 But just the fact that they did that, I mean, what would be the scientific evidence that suggests that walking your dog outside in the middle of the night?

01:36:32.000 Super spreader event.

01:36:33.000 Right.

01:36:34.000 No, but I genuinely think, though, and I'm not someone who just gives people a pass to be charitable.

01:36:41.000 I genuinely don't think it was something nefarious.

01:36:44.000 I think that it was just a fog of war. 1.00

01:36:46.000 People are acting like idiots, thinking they know what they're doing. 1.00

01:36:50.000 I'm sure there's going to be a thousand doctoral dissertations written about the failure of public policy. 1.00

01:36:56.000 Without it necessarily being a whole evil orchestrated thing.

01:37:00.000 That's my sense.

01:37:01.000 I think there's certainly a lot of that.

01:37:03.000 And then there's certainly a lot of people that never really had the power to dictate what people can and can't do before.

01:37:09.000 Like mayors and governors.

01:37:11.000 They really didn't have the ability to shut down businesses before.

01:37:14.000 Yeah.

01:37:14.000 And I think there's something creepy and weird about having that ability.

01:37:19.000 And that people, especially if their income doesn't change at all.

01:37:23.000 They did not seem to have a problem doing unscientific things that stop people from making money.

01:37:29.000 Like shutting down outdoor dining.

01:37:31.000 That didn't make any sense.

01:37:32.000 And they did it for optics.

01:37:35.000 And the fact that that kind of stuff can happen.

01:37:39.000 When you get...

01:37:42.000 It gets real strange when people have power to do things, because some people are just going to start doing those things.

01:37:49.000 You know, there's an interesting conversation to be had about what's going on in Canada right now with assisted suicide.

01:37:56.000 Yeah.

01:37:57.000 Because all you have to do is go to a doctor, I believe.

01:38:01.000 The doctor recommends it, and then one other doctor has to recommend it.

01:38:04.000 So I don't know the specific mechanism.

01:38:07.000 Let's find out what the specific mechanisms are.

01:38:11.000 You know, people that are depressed are getting this as an option.

01:38:16.000 In 2021, the law was changed to include that those with serious and chronic physical conditions, even if that condition was non-life-threatening.

01:38:23.000 It's been available for adults since 2016. Okay, so, since 2016, Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying program, known by the acronym MAID, has been available for adults with terminal illness.

01:38:37.000 Okay.

01:38:42.000 Yeah.

01:38:43.000 Yeah.

01:38:49.000 Yeah.

01:38:51.000 Yeah.

01:38:54.000 Yeah.

01:38:57.000 So, if someone could, like, instead of discouraging people, instead of saying, you know, having a suicide hotline, instead of, like, having people that have nowhere to go, somewhere they can reach out and find help, instead of that, you're saying, okay, we'll help you kill yourself.

01:39:11.000 Like, that is, that's a weird one, man.

01:39:14.000 That's a weird one to get behind because I'm all for people that have terminal illnesses and don't want to...

01:39:19.000 I mean, we do it to our dogs, right?

01:39:21.000 If our dog is dying, we have the dog put down.

01:39:25.000 It's a humane way to take care of something that you love and care for.

01:39:29.000 You don't want them to...

01:39:30.000 I went through that five years ago.

01:39:31.000 It was like the worst thing that I've ever gone through.

01:39:33.000 It's horrible.

01:39:34.000 It's devastating.

01:39:35.000 How's your...

01:39:36.000 I see sometimes photos.

01:39:37.000 He's doing well?

01:39:38.000 He's the sweetest.

01:39:39.000 He's the best.

01:39:40.000 Well, you know, in Canada, there are all sorts of problems we're facing.

01:39:44.000 I don't know if you heard about the story of the guy who just committed suicide because he was being bullied by the diversity, inclusion, and equity.

01:39:51.000 Have you heard about the story?

01:39:52.000 No, I didn't hear about this one.

01:39:53.000 A 60-year-old man who, from everything that I've heard, was an exemplary principal He had been told that he has to take some diversity, inclusion, equity stuff.

01:40:05.000 And in one of those meetings, I don't know the exact details, but he had sort of raised some concerns.

01:40:10.000 Shouldn't we be judging people based on a meritocratic ethos and so on?

01:40:15.000 Because he said that, he's actually quite a liberal person from what I have heard.

01:40:20.000 But just the fact that he questioned the DI cult, the diversity, inclusion, equity, they started hounding him, harassing him. 0.96

01:40:28.000 He's a racist.

01:40:28.000 He's got to take remedial courses, sensitivity.

01:40:32.000 He ended up committing suicide.

01:40:34.000 I'm sure, Jamie, you can pull it up.

01:40:37.000 Just recently, in the last week or two.

01:40:39.000 Jordan Peterson wrote something about cancellation.

01:40:44.000 It's akin to being diagnosed with like a terminal illness.

01:40:49.000 Or a horrible illness.

01:40:53.000 I forget what he said.

01:40:54.000 But you know what?

01:40:56.000 A lot of people have tried to cancel me now.

01:40:58.000 Sometimes people say, oh, it's because you're tenured that you can be courageous because otherwise you wouldn't be courageous.

01:41:04.000 The reality is I get tons of death threats.

01:41:06.000 I mean, last year I received for the first time ever an in-person death threat while walking with my son, necessitating that the Montreal police get involved.

01:41:15.000 So there are many ways by which people can try to get you to modulate what you say and so on.

01:41:20.000 It's a real problem.

01:41:22.000 What is the number one thing that people are upset at you about?

01:41:26.000 Probably, and I haven't done it in a while just because I kind of lost interest, the most violent would be any criticism of Islam. 0.68

01:41:35.000 And in this case, it was, I think, someone who was of that faith because he looked like he came from that background.

01:41:42.000 And so people will get upset at me for all sorts of things.

01:41:46.000 Valerie Bertinelli got upset at me once because I tweeted something about my wife having an uncomfortable interaction with someone, a barista, who was transgender. 0.99

01:41:55.000 And she got super upset.

01:41:56.000 And two days later, 26 million tweets later, all the, as Dave Chappelle calls them, the alphabet, people were really coming after me. 0.65

01:42:03.000 But that doesn't have the timber of we want to kill you.

01:42:07.000 When you start criticizing some Islamic stuff, then it can get pretty hairy.

01:42:14.000 And I think that's one of the things that's maybe different about, say, Jordan and me.

01:42:19.000 I think he receives a lot more hate than I do.

01:42:23.000 But some of the hate that I receive is really unique in that it's both Jew-related.

01:42:29.000 And he actually mentioned this recently, that I'm in a unique position in that I receive a lot of hate that's related to my being Jewish.

01:42:38.000 So cover being Jewish and then criticizing some Islamic tenets. 0.91

01:42:42.000 So for example, I've seen at times when I've come on the show, and I remember one time I talked to you about the hatred of black dogs as sanctioned by Muhammad himself. 0.57

01:42:52.000 And then all sorts of people started saying, he's making this stuff up. 1.00

01:42:56.000 It's bullshit. 0.99

01:42:56.000 Why don't you bring a real Islamic person on the show? 0.99

01:42:59.000 You can just look it up. 0.99

01:43:01.000 I mean, Jamie can now check it that there is within Islam a hatred for a black dog. 0.98

01:43:07.000 So even the most, you know... 0.93

01:43:09.000 Is that a translation issue?

01:43:11.000 Does that mean the color black for sure? 0.99

01:43:15.000 It's black dogs, yes, specifically. 1.00

01:43:17.000 Black dogs. 0.95

01:43:18.000 Now, I think it comes from the fact, I don't know the exact theological reason, but I think that Muhammad himself had had a fear of black dogs, and so he sanctioned it as a kind of divine prescription. 0.91

01:43:30.000 It couldn't possibly mean something else?

01:43:34.000 Meaning what?

01:43:35.000 You mean the color black meaning something else?

01:43:38.000 The alleged hadith which regards black dogs as evil has been rejected by the majority of Islamic scholars as fabricated.

01:43:44.000 Nevertheless, Islamic scholars have tended to regard dog's saliva as impure.

01:43:50.000 Yeah, so that comes, by the way.

01:43:53.000 So they're saying it's fabricated?

01:43:54.000 Well, but...

01:43:56.000 Pretty much anything that you say, someone will say, oh, it's fabricated.

01:44:00.000 So in Islam, there's a thing called nejis, which is like impure things, right? 1.00

01:44:05.000 So for example, the kuffar, the non-Muslim, is himself impure. 1.00

01:44:09.000 Well, urine is impure. 1.00

01:44:11.000 The dog's saliva is impure.

01:44:12.000 So if you were to be licked by a dog or something, then you'd have to redo your purity ritual before you pray because you've been touched by nejis, by something that is impure. 1.00

01:44:23.000 So there are many debates depending on the hadith as to whether something is authentic or not. 0.95

01:44:28.000 But there is certainly, as Jamie just pulled out, the fact that there is within certain Islamic thought that black dogs are uniquely bad. 0.79

01:44:38.000 And so just if I say that on your show, there'll be some Islamic guy who says, you know, the Jew is making this stuff up and so on. 0.95

01:44:46.000 And so...

01:44:48.000 Now, I've stayed away from it recently, not because I'm trying to shy away from it, just because I've said all that I have to say about the matter, and I've moved on.

01:44:57.000 But the hatred comes from all forms.

01:44:59.000 I can criticize feminism.

01:45:00.000 I'll get women's group attacking me. 1.00

01:45:02.000 If I attack something about transgender issues, I'll get criticized.

01:45:07.000 And so the hate is endless.

01:45:12.000 That's a horrible thing to experience.

01:45:17.000 It's a horrible thing to experience, especially from a guy like you, that literally fled it.

01:45:22.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:45:23.000 I think in our earlier chats many years ago, we've talked about Islamic immigration and so on.

01:45:31.000 And I hold zero hatred.

01:45:34.000 I think you know me enough to know that I have tons of Muslim friends.

01:45:39.000 I probably know more Muslim guys than most people will ever meet.

01:45:42.000 I never criticize individuals.

01:45:43.000 I criticize ideologies, right?

01:45:46.000 So, you know, does Islam codify the right of people to criticize Islam or not, if you're in an Islamic country?

01:45:53.000 Well, the answer to that is very clear, and the answer is not one that promotes freedom of speech.

01:45:58.000 Me saying that doesn't imply that I'm being hateful towards Muslims.

01:46:02.000 I'm just literally talking about the Islamic doctrines, just like there are doctrines in Deuteronomy that you and I can decide to criticize, right?

01:46:11.000 And I think most Muslims, even some of whom are students in my class who've heard me talk about these things, not in a classroom setting, but in public, are very fair.

01:46:21.000 And they'll say, you know, you're a very fair guy.

01:46:24.000 But other ones will send me emails and stuff that are just brutal, that are really...

01:46:30.000 And I have to say, I'm someone who's, if I can speak of myself, quite courageous, but that in-person threat that I received when I was walking with my son was really, truly harrowing because I could never rise to that threat, right?

01:46:45.000 Because the way that guy was speaking to me, he always had more, you know, I had more to lose than him.

01:46:50.000 And so there was never going to be a situation where if he decided to act on his hatred, I could have ever lived up to that challenge.

01:46:57.000 And so for several weeks, I was really being careful, trying to avoid that street. 0.98

01:47:03.000 And it doesn't make sense that in the 21st century, a professor in Canada should have to worry about which street he walks on because some idiot is threatening him in front of his 10-year-old son. 0.99

01:47:13.000 It's incredible. 1.00

01:47:14.000 Yeah.

01:47:15.000 It's very terrifying.

01:47:17.000 When you think about rigid things that are in certain religious doctrines, what do you think the roots of some, like the forbidden foods, do you think the roots were initially that those foods got people sick?

01:47:32.000 Oh, yes.

01:47:32.000 That there was pandemics attached to them?

01:47:33.000 Oh, what a great question.

01:47:35.000 Thank you.

01:47:35.000 In The Consuming Instinct, one of my earlier books, 2011, I have a whole analysis of Of certain kosher laws from an evolutionary biological perspective.

01:47:46.000 And it's exactly what you just intimated.

01:47:48.000 So pork.

01:47:49.000 So pork, right?

01:47:51.000 So imagine ancient Jews walking around in an environment where there's no refrigeration, where the shellfish that might be tainted with a particular pathogen or not, you can't smell it. 0.54

01:48:08.000 Yeah.

01:48:29.000 Theological prescription, I can analyze it from an evolutionary perspective.

01:48:33.000 Now, when I did that, let's say for kosher laws, I didn't get rabbis writing to me saying, how dare you?

01:48:40.000 We're going to kill you for arguing that it's not divine.

01:48:43.000 If I do the exact same thing with some Islamic doctrine, you know, very respectfully, very properly, most Muslims will hear it and say, yeah, fair enough, Professor Saad. 0.69

01:48:52.000 But a few will say, how dare you? 0.99

01:48:55.000 You should be killed. 1.00

01:48:56.000 And that makes no sense in a free society. 1.00

01:48:59.000 No, it doesn't.

01:49:00.000 And it doesn't mean that the root of any of these religious doctrines weren't from God himself.

01:49:07.000 Like, who knows?

01:49:11.000 Who knows what the root of this stuff is?

01:49:13.000 But the root of most of them...

01:49:17.000 For sure has gone through people.

01:49:20.000 And the conversations have gone through people.

01:49:22.000 It's like real clear in the Bible, especially in the New Testament.

01:49:25.000 We know the people that...

01:49:26.000 But the origins of it is what's the most fascinating to me.

01:49:32.000 It's like, where did it start from?

01:49:34.000 When the first guy wrote it down, especially when you're talking about ancient Christianity or whatever it was before it was even called Christianity.

01:49:45.000 When I was in Greece, I was with Brian Mororescu.

01:49:50.000 And he wrote this book about the Eleusinian Mysteries called The Immortality Key.

01:49:55.000 It's an amazing book.

01:49:56.000 And in this book, it all details these rituals that they used to do.

01:50:02.000 And thousands of years ago, where they were drinking wine that were laced with psychedelics and coming up with democracy.

01:50:12.000 When you're in those kind of environments, when you're in a place that used to be this amazing utopian society, or at least transformative society that never existed before, and then you're walking around the ruins like, I wonder if they saw it coming.

01:50:28.000 I wonder if they saw the end coming.

01:50:30.000 Yeah.

01:50:30.000 Are we seeing the end, Colin?

01:50:32.000 I hope not.

01:50:33.000 I hope not.

01:50:35.000 Do you know?

01:50:36.000 I mean, when you see, like, and you realize they built the Parthenon.

01:50:40.000 When you're there looking at that thing, you're like, what did you do?

01:50:44.000 How did you do this?

01:50:45.000 How did you do this 2,000 plus years ago?

01:50:48.000 And it's all designed with the golden ratio in mind.

01:50:51.000 It's wild craftsmanship.

01:50:54.000 I actually talk about, in my current happiness book, I talk about different correlates with happiness.

01:51:00.000 How does personality correlate with happiness?

01:51:03.000 How does culture correlate with happiness?

01:51:05.000 Marriage and so on.

01:51:07.000 One of the sections I talk about religiosity and happiness.

01:51:11.000 Are religious people on average happier?

01:51:13.000 And the answer turns out that there is a moderate positive correlation between religiosity and happiness.

01:51:21.000 Now that makes perfect sense in that religion provides me with structure, it provides me with greater commonality, it creates a nice demarcation between in-group and out-group, therefore people in my in-group I can cooperate with, I have greater cohesion.

01:51:36.000 So there are very functional earthly reasons for why If I am religious, it's going to lead to greater happiness.

01:51:43.000 But what I try to also argue in the book is that that shouldn't cause people who are not religious to despair, that they're not going to be as happy.

01:51:52.000 I'm not sure what your religious views are, but I'm very much rooted in my Jewish identity.

01:51:58.000 But in a cultural sense, I'm not very much of a believer, but I am very much someone who sees the divine in things, right?

01:52:07.000 My having a friendship with you, being able to text you for me to come on this show is a divine thing.

01:52:13.000 My being able to bond with my Belgian shepherds in the way in this pure love is a divine thing.

01:52:19.000 Meeting a random stranger with whom I have this fantastic conversation for 30 minutes is Is a manifestation of the divine.

01:52:25.000 So I think we can be quite spiritual in our day-to-day without necessarily couching it in some supernatural, you know, religious narrative.

01:52:34.000 What are your thoughts?

01:52:35.000 I would agree with that, but I would also say that for a lot of people, those religious narratives are like a scaffolding for which they can establish a better life.

01:52:47.000 And I meet a lot of people that are devoutly religious, particularly devoutly Christian or devoutly Muslim, that are very disciplined and live their life because of this extreme belief, live their life in an often very successful way.

01:53:01.000 And I think there's a peace that they have in a true belief.

01:53:06.000 There's a peace that you have that there's a God that's got a plan for this whole thing.

01:53:11.000 And just worship that God and do the right thing and you're gonna be okay.

01:53:17.000 But do you, I mean, so for, again, from a purist perspective, I think it's less impressive for me to do the right thing because otherwise there is a big guy who is judging me than to do the right thing for no other reason than it being the right thing to do.

01:53:35.000 I think the latter is a lot more impressive, right?

01:53:38.000 Do you agree?

01:53:38.000 Sure, but the big guy is a part of you, and you're judging you.

01:53:42.000 So you're not just doing something so that he doesn't judge you.

01:53:45.000 You're doing something so that you don't judge you.

01:53:47.000 Fair enough.

01:53:48.000 So you are also God, because you are also watching you do this thing.

01:53:53.000 Well, I've evolved a moral compass, to use an evolutionary thing.

01:53:57.000 For social species, it makes perfect sense for us to have evolved a distinction between right and wrong.

01:54:04.000 If you wrong me, there's going to be retribution.

01:54:06.000 So we evolved that emotion.

01:54:07.000 So I often get frustrated when religious people say, sure, evolution explains a lot of things, but it can't explain morality.

01:54:15.000 That's simply not true.

01:54:16.000 There's a lot of very clear evolutionary reasons for why a social species would have evolved a moral compass.

01:54:24.000 That makes sense.

01:54:25.000 Yeah, it's not something that exists outside of the purview of science.

01:54:29.000 And I think, I mean, there are several people, I think, that have been on this show that have, you know, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, that have written about the fact that, you know, the moral compass is totally within the purview of science.

01:54:43.000 It completely makes sense that there's a moral compass.

01:54:46.000 And it also makes sense that you're talking about these divine moments.

01:54:48.000 I think it's all these things and then some.

01:54:53.000 I think it's all these things and then some.

01:54:56.000 I think to just sort of… Rationalize it down to survival instincts and, you know, sort of have that dismissive reductionist view of what it means to be a person and have these experiences in life and what life is.

01:55:14.000 I think we're trying to label something that is almost impossible to believe is true.

01:55:20.000 That I'm saying sounds with my mouth and you know what I'm thinking.

01:55:24.000 We're like sharing a context and language and we have all these words that are connected to very specific things that we're very aware of.

01:55:32.000 Meanwhile, we're hurling through infinity on an organic spaceship that's spinning a thousand miles an hour in a shooting gallery of asteroids and comets.

01:55:43.000 All these things are true.

01:55:45.000 And we're finite life forms that are constantly innovating and trying to escape the boundaries of our eventual demise physically, psychologically.

01:55:53.000 We're trying to connect each other on the internet and put chips in our brains.

01:55:58.000 It's wild what's happening and in the middle of all this there's a battle a true battle in 2023 over censorship a real battle like the likes of which I've never seen because as a kid growing up there was no arguments against freedom of speech in America right I do not remember ever seeing someone argue against freedom of speech it certainly wouldn't have been someone on the Left Yeah.

01:56:26.000 Sorry.

01:56:27.000 No, I'm saying just that that alone is a terrifying thing.

01:56:31.000 It's like people are literally crafting the shackles that are going to eventually contain them.

01:56:37.000 And they're doing so greedily and enthusiastically.

01:56:43.000 So can I offer a philosophical explanation of why I think this is happening?

01:56:47.000 Sure.

01:56:49.000 Some of your viewers may have heard me mention this elsewhere, but it's worth repeating.

01:56:52.000 So in my last book, In the Parasitic Mind, I talk about two ethical systems, deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics.

01:57:00.000 Deontological ethics is an absolute statement.

01:57:02.000 For example, if I say it is never okay to lie, that is a deontological statement.

01:57:07.000 If I say it is okay to lie to spare someone's feelings, so the example that I often give is if your spouse asks you, do I look fat in those jeans, then put on your consequentialist hat really quickly, and then lie, right?

01:57:21.000 Most of us are going to be consequentialists.

01:57:23.000 But when it comes to certain fundamental principles that define, say, Western values, those have to be deontological, right?

01:57:32.000 And so, as to your point, until very recently, we all agreed that presumption of innocence was a deontological statement that can't have a but associated to it.

01:57:45.000 You can't say, I believe in presumption of innocence, but not for Brett Kavanaugh.

01:57:50.000 I believe in freedom of speech, but not for Donald Trump.

01:57:54.000 And so one of the reasons why I've gotten into a beef with someone that we both know well is because that person has repeatedly violated what he should know better, which is that deontological principles, by definition, should never have the butt qualifier.

01:58:10.000 But now it has become perfectly okay when talking about freedom of speech to tackle it from a consequentialist perspective.

01:58:18.000 Don't criticize Islam because that means you're hurting people's feelings. 0.99

01:58:22.000 Therefore, shut your mouth. 0.99

01:58:24.000 No. 0.99

01:58:25.000 You can criticize Islam. 0.60

01:58:26.000 You can criticize Judaism.

01:58:28.000 You can criticize evolution.

01:58:29.000 You could do whatever.

01:58:30.000 There is no but.

01:58:32.000 And I think if we can ever return to understanding the distinction between deontological and consequentialist, I think we'll be back on the right track.

01:58:41.000 What do you think got us on the wrong track in the first place?

01:58:44.000 So I think it's the distinction between reason and feelings.

01:58:48.000 We're both a reasoning animal and a thinking animal, but there's been now too much emphasis placed on...

01:58:55.000 Feelings.

01:58:56.000 Feelings, right?

01:58:56.000 So if I tell a truth that is hurtful to someone, then I should not tell the truth.

01:59:03.000 So I've often...

01:59:04.000 When I went in front of the Canadian Senate as did Jordan... 1.00

01:59:07.000 For Bill C-16, the transgender bill, neither of us was arguing that transgender people shouldn't live with full dignity and so on.

01:59:15.000 But what we were arguing is that in the pursuit of that noble goal, you don't murder truth, right?

01:59:22.000 So if I were to say it's insane for six foot four biological males to walk into female spaces, that makes no sense. 0.81

01:59:32.000 I'm not erasing transgender people, right?

01:59:35.000 But if the optimization metric is make sure to not hurt people's feelings, you start conflating these things.

01:59:43.000 Yeah.

01:59:44.000 Does that make sense?

01:59:45.000 Yeah.

01:59:45.000 But it's also...

01:59:48.000 There's no way to stop someone from...

01:59:53.000 Like, if someone is a legitimate pervert, and all they have to do is say they're a woman, and now they can go to the woman's bathroom, there's no way to stop that.

02:00:01.000 I'm not saying that that's the majority of people.

02:00:03.000 I'm saying...

02:00:05.000 There are human beings that are like that, and this does not in any way discount trans people.

02:00:12.000 This just says there's people that will game the system, and there's no safeguards in place.

02:00:18.000 So if you want to protect people from that, I don't know how you would do it other than having some sort of security in each women's bathroom to make sure that no one's creeping on people, which is outside impossible.

02:00:32.000 You cannot have that.

02:00:34.000 Think about, again, deontological principles.

02:00:36.000 Until three minutes ago, 117 billion people had existed.

02:00:41.000 That's roughly the estimate of how many people have ever existed, who fully understood that there were two phenotypes in the human species called male and female.

02:00:51.000 And nobody disagreed as to what that was.

02:00:53.000 But suddenly now, it is really controversial to argue that, and that's why I do some of the satire and sarcasm on social media.

02:01:01.000 It's not to be mean or flippant.

02:01:03.000 It's because the only way you can handle some of the lunacy we're saying is through derision, through mockery, because it's insane.

02:01:09.000 I mean, we are the product of 117 billion people who exactly knew How coupling works.

02:01:16.000 But now we can no longer say it.

02:01:18.000 When we refer to Leah Thomas, the 6'4 swimmer, we can't say that that's a male because that's a female because she said so.

02:01:27.000 It's insane.

02:01:29.000 It is insane.

02:01:30.000 And it's wild to watch.

02:01:32.000 It's wild to watch young people just adopt it wholesale.

02:01:37.000 Because if you're a female athlete, it's not good. 1.00

02:01:41.000 It's not good.

02:01:42.000 It's unfair.

02:01:43.000 And I mean, that's the exact idea, right?

02:01:44.000 Because people talk about it's unfair to the transgender athlete. 0.96

02:01:48.000 What about the unfairness to all of the biological females who are being screwed by this, right? 1.00

02:01:54.000 Yeah, there was a woman who came on trigonometry recently, and she had a very detailed depiction of all the different advantages that, even with a reduction of testosterone, that the male frame has.

02:02:07.000 Particularly in developing power, power-related things, the shape of the hips, the angle from the hips down to the knees.

02:02:14.000 Joe, I've had conversations with physicians, not that you need a physician to confirm that there is male or female, but how could you be a medical doctor and actually espouse some of the nonsense such as there are no sex differences between men and women?

02:02:31.000 I've had anesthesiologists.

02:02:33.000 I've had gynecologists who argued that transgender medicine recognizes that the antiquated binary is no longer valid.

02:02:41.000 That's insane.

02:02:42.000 How could you be a gynecologist and practice gynecology not knowing that?

02:02:47.000 Maybe you're on ketamine.

02:02:50.000 I don't know.

02:02:52.000 I don't know how things got this bonkers.

02:02:54.000 But I think that if you have a group where you can't question anything about it, you're gonna have problems.

02:03:01.000 Because then you have a protected group and crazy people can join that group.

02:03:06.000 And that is a real factor.

02:03:08.000 We've seen it.

02:03:09.000 It's a thing. 0.98

02:03:10.000 You see it with these cases where these males with fully intact penises are wandering around women's locker rooms and women are freaking out and they're like, no, I'm a woman. 0.79

02:03:20.000 Like what can you say if you see there's this thing that Matt Walsh did an interview with this guy. 0.95

02:03:25.000 He's a politician Let me find this because it's so crazy.

02:03:28.000 So this guy who is a Biological male here.

02:03:33.000 I'll send you this Jimmy.

02:03:34.000 I'll send you this this story behind it, but there's a video of him talking to Matt Walsh and On the documentary.

02:03:42.000 No, it's not a documentary here So this guy...

02:03:46.000 We'll pull up the story.

02:03:48.000 So he is a biological male who has come out as a woman of color who's a lesbian.

02:03:57.000 And he does it with a fully...

02:03:58.000 Oh, he's doing it facetiously.

02:04:00.000 I've seen that guy.

02:04:01.000 He's doing it with a full straight face.

02:04:03.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:04:03.000 Beautiful.

02:04:03.000 And the way when you hear them talk, it's amazing.

02:04:08.000 Yes, I've seen this guy.

02:04:09.000 Because it's checkmate.

02:04:11.000 And they're saying, if this was true, we would be clapping and applauding him.

02:04:16.000 But we don't think it's true.

02:04:17.000 Yeah.

02:04:18.000 But this, like, throws the whole thing.

02:04:21.000 Find the actual interview, if you could, online.

02:04:26.000 Because it's amazing.

02:04:27.000 The way this guy does, this guy deserves, he should be in the next Tarantino movie.

02:04:33.000 He's an amazing actor.

02:04:35.000 Yeah.

02:04:36.000 But the way he lays it down is so perfect.

02:04:39.000 And he does it fully straight-faced.

02:04:41.000 And now they're saying, if this was true, we would be applauding him.

02:04:45.000 But it's not true.

02:04:47.000 But that's the problem with the whole thing. 0.99

02:04:50.000 So you think in the deep recesses of all those folks' minds who come out in support of men who have penises or women, do you think they know that it's bullshit? 0.99

02:05:00.000 Or have they been so parasitized that they actually believe their nonsense? 0.99

02:05:05.000 I think a lot of them believe it and I think a lot of them that belief is confirmed by their social groups or who also not just believe it but enforce belief in it.

02:05:15.000 There's a social pressure to enforce belief in it and I've seen it.

02:05:19.000 I've seen it in action.

02:05:20.000 I've seen women have arguments with people that are You know, pro-trans rights and, you know, and these women are arguing that there's pro-trans rights and then there's erasing women's rights, including, like, the athletic argument, including the female spaces,

02:05:37.000 like intimate spaces, locker rooms, bathrooms.

02:05:41.000 It's a very controversial subject in this strange culture we live in, and it's one thing that people can subscribe to one side or the other and find a group willingly, vehemently opposed to their position.

02:05:53.000 So they engage in instantaneous conflict.

02:05:55.000 So they're involved in this psychic war.

02:05:58.000 With competing ideologies, and it gives them meaning.

02:06:01.000 That's a real problem with human beings, that we do attach ourselves to things.

02:06:05.000 Even if those things don't involve you or your life, you decide, like, this is the movement that I'm going to get behind, stand behind, and I'm going to tell people.

02:06:12.000 And it gives you meaning.

02:06:13.000 Like, you're a social justice warrior for the rights of the disenfranchised.

02:06:17.000 Sure.

02:06:18.000 You know, and there's something to be said for actually doing that, of course.

02:06:21.000 There's something to be said for actually standing up for people who don't have a voice and doing the right thing.

02:06:25.000 There is something to be said for that.

02:06:26.000 But there's also something to be said for to be able to look at this from both sides. 0.99

02:06:31.000 And if you're an 11-year-old girl and there's some guy's dick in your face in the girl's bathroom, like, what? 0.99

02:06:38.000 This guy's just walking around naked in the locker room and you're a kid? 1.00

02:06:41.000 Like, is that okay?

02:06:42.000 Yeah.

02:06:43.000 I mean...

02:06:44.000 How do you know what's happening here?

02:06:46.000 Are you sure?

02:06:49.000 Yeah.

02:06:50.000 And in some cases, when someone's like so feminine and seems like a woman, you wouldn't have any problem with it, right?

02:07:01.000 Well, I mean, there is a normal distribution, for example, when it comes to women who are very masculine, men who are very feminine.

02:07:10.000 We've always recognized that. 0.99

02:07:12.000 But we've never taken the step into the abyss of infinite lunacy where we say sometimes women can have penises. 0.99

02:07:20.000 I mean, that's why I wrote The Parasitic Mind, the last book, right? 0.99

02:07:24.000 Because I was literally arguing that human minds can be parasitized by By ideological worms in the way that you can be parasitized by actual brain worms, right?

02:07:35.000 Because there is no rational mechanism by which you can take a sexually reproducing species involving two phenotypes.

02:07:43.000 There aren't any more than two.

02:07:44.000 There's male and there's female.

02:07:45.000 Nothing else.

02:07:53.000 I actually satirically put out a tweet where I argued for finger fluidity and finger diversity.

02:08:06.000 Then we should no longer be teaching in biology class that boys and girls are born with 10 fingers.

02:08:11.000 I was being facetious, but that's exactly the logic that they're using, right?

02:08:15.000 Of course, there are some people who are born intersex, and of course, they have the right to live a dignified life free of bigotry.

02:08:24.000 That doesn't mean, though, that we have to go back and rewrite the anatomy and biology books. 0.99

02:08:31.000 And that's why I fight all these battles online and so on, because I truly am allergic to bullshit. 0.96

02:08:38.000 I am very deontological when it comes to truth. 0.98

02:08:41.000 And I get personally offended when I see people espousing all that nonsense.

02:08:46.000 What is it that Dennis Prager was just talking about?

02:08:48.000 There was some video that came across my Instagram feed that was him saying that whatever medical organization is recommending that children not be labeled male or female because they don't have the ability to choose.

02:09:08.000 They can't tell you how they identify.

02:09:13.000 Let's find out, because it's something crazy.

02:09:16.000 I remember reading it going, I'm not ready for this. 0.99

02:09:18.000 I have shit to do. 0.99

02:09:21.000 Now children are being taught that medical professionals, to the best of their ability, take an educated guess as to the sex of a child. 1.00

02:09:32.000 Really?

02:09:33.000 So until three minutes ago, 117 billion people knew exactly how to sort into male and female, but now we no longer abide by those antiquated binaries?

02:09:43.000 I mean, it's insane.

02:09:45.000 It's terrifying.

02:09:46.000 Why can't we chew gum and walk at the same time?

02:09:49.000 I think both you and I are very socially liberal.

02:09:52.000 I don't care one way or the other about what transgender people do. 1.00

02:09:57.000 That doesn't mean that I have to accept the fact that a guy with a penis can call themselves a girl and I have to just say amen. 0.97

02:10:03.000 Yeah, it seems crazy to have to agree to that. 0.98

02:10:09.000 And that's not discounting the idea of trans people. 0.65

02:10:12.000 It's real.

02:10:13.000 But it seems crazy to force everyone to go along with what was called gender dysphoria up until very recently.

02:10:23.000 Exactly.

02:10:24.000 And there was a psychological condition that they would talk about, an issue that people had.

02:10:30.000 Well, and to the point, remember earlier I put up the dress, or Jamie put up the dress to gail movie?

02:10:35.000 In the past, when you wanted to have a sex change operation, the number of steps that you had to go through before you were accepted for sex change reassignment...

02:10:46.000 It was quite assiduous, and it made perfect sense because it's something that you can't undo, and so it made perfect sense that you'd have to go through.

02:10:56.000 And now, a five-year-old can say that they are, and you're not allowed to question it.

02:11:02.000 It's really, it's just insane.

02:11:03.000 And you can put them on a hormone block.

02:11:04.000 And you can put them on hormones, exactly.

02:11:06.000 And there's so many problems that they're finding now, the people that have hormone blockers.

02:11:10.000 Charles Rees Theron adopts two kids from Africa, two boys, and it turns out statistically that it's perfectly reasonable that both of them are now girls.

02:11:24.000 Have you seen that?

02:11:26.000 I saw some meme.

02:11:27.000 I wasn't sure that it was true.

02:11:30.000 If that is true, that seems very unlikely statistically, doesn't it?

02:11:36.000 No, of course.

02:11:37.000 I mean, already...

02:11:38.000 What are the odds?

02:11:39.000 So I think it's one in something like 10,000 that you have full-blown gender dysphoria in the order of that magnitude.

02:11:47.000 So if you have two, so it's two independent events, so it's one out of 10,000 times one out of 10,000.

02:11:53.000 That's a very small number.

02:11:55.000 Let's steel man this.

02:11:56.000 What's the most charitable explanation for this?

02:12:03.000 Why she's doing this? 1.00

02:12:04.000 Why this is the case?

02:12:06.000 Why this is the case that she adopts two kids and that they turn out to be girls? 0.98

02:12:09.000 So I don't think it's a charitable explanation, but I think it's the correct one.

02:12:13.000 And I talk about it in the last book.

02:12:14.000 So I talk about Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

02:12:17.000 So Munchausen syndrome is when I fake an illness myself to garner sympathy and empathy.

02:12:22.000 Munchausen syndrome by proxy is when I harm someone under my care to garner the empathy by proxy.

02:12:30.000 So it could be my child.

02:12:31.000 It could be my dog.

02:12:33.000 It could be my elderly parent.

02:12:35.000 And so I've argued that transgenderism, as exhibited by many of these progressive, is a form of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. 0.83

02:12:44.000 Look at me, the super progressive woman who's got two transgender kids. 0.99

02:12:49.000 So it's a very, very diabolically narcissistic... 0.93

02:12:52.000 I don't pretend to be psychoanalyzing her, but you asked me for my prediction or opinion, I think that's what it is.

02:12:59.000 Yeah, I was trying to find, is there an explanation that would make...

02:13:02.000 I would like to know, what is someone who truly believes that that's normal?

02:13:09.000 What do they think?

02:13:11.000 Who believes that what is normal?

02:13:13.000 That it's just normal that those two boys turned out to be girls.

02:13:17.000 It's people who live in La La Land because we know that statistically it's just impossible.

02:13:22.000 It's like winning the lottery.

02:13:23.000 Right, but people do win the lottery, right?

02:13:25.000 Yeah.

02:13:26.000 So what would be your most charitable explanation?

02:13:29.000 That would be the most charitable.

02:13:30.000 It just turned out that these two boys...

02:13:34.000 But there's still a lot of evidence that if you, like, especially with boys that exhibit that, they turn out to be gay.

02:13:40.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:13:41.000 Feminine gay men. 0.95

02:13:42.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:13:43.000 Which used to be fine.

02:13:45.000 Yeah.

02:13:46.000 And now it's like, you know, like Tim Dillon has an argument about it, that a lot of this is really homophobic.

02:13:52.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:13:53.000 Yeah, I got that argument.

02:13:55.000 Yeah, it's an interesting argument.

02:13:56.000 The guy, the progenitor of this kind of stuff is, I don't know if you know him, John Money.

02:14:01.000 Do you know who that is?

02:14:02.000 No.

02:14:03.000 John Money was a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University who's really the father of social constructivism who argued basically...

02:14:13.000 That, you know, you could take any boy and any girl, raise them in the opposite, you know, gender role, and then they would be that. 0.92

02:14:21.000 And the classic example, which you may have heard of, was David Reimer, whose penis was botched during a circumcision. 0.97

02:14:29.000 They put a dress on him, said, call him whatever, Linda, and then he ended up committing suicide. 0.96

02:14:33.000 Well, the guy who started all that was John Money at Johns Hopkins.

02:14:38.000 And so we can really lay the...

02:14:40.000 Him as the original culprit because a lot of surgeons will go to John Money for his expert advice.

02:14:47.000 Question about this story.

02:14:49.000 Sorry?

02:14:50.000 I saw this meme go around too.

02:14:51.000 This is where it came from, right?

02:14:52.000 This picture?

02:14:53.000 Yeah.

02:14:54.000 When I'm looking up the story about her adopting kids, all I'm seeing is that she had adopted one daughter and that in 2019, the other one said that she was not a boy and that she is a daughter also and so that they're both daughters.

02:15:09.000 Oh, so one of them is a biological girl.

02:15:10.000 One is a real daughter.

02:15:12.000 And that's why I was trying to find out the actual...

02:15:13.000 I'm digging through the stories.

02:15:15.000 Nothing actually says biological anything.

02:15:19.000 Well, then I really appreciate, Jules, your careful...

02:15:24.000 At the start, you said, I don't know if that's true or not.

02:15:26.000 Yeah.

02:15:27.000 So it turned out it's not true.

02:15:29.000 That's one of the reasons why I think a lot of people listen to you, because exactly of that careful thing...

02:15:35.000 I mean, you can get upset at it, and you could also...

02:15:37.000 There's a lot of people that I know that will say their child is LBGTQ because their child is...

02:15:44.000 They call themselves non-binary.

02:15:46.000 I've seen this happen before.

02:15:47.000 People, they wave it like a flag, that it's like this amazing thing that they have a queer child.

02:15:53.000 And the kid is just like, no, I'm just non-binary. 0.99

02:15:55.000 I don't fucking nothing. 0.98

02:15:56.000 I don't want to be this. 0.97

02:15:58.000 You know what I mean?

02:15:58.000 Whatever.

02:15:59.000 Or they're just identifying as it.

02:16:01.000 Because the identity thing is very new.

02:16:04.000 And when you give kids an opportunity to distinguish themselves from other people, whether it's...

02:16:09.000 There's a lot of things that people do that with.

02:16:11.000 They get into certain things.

02:16:13.000 They get into certain social groups.

02:16:14.000 They get into certain hobbies and sports together.

02:16:17.000 But there was a thing that happened recently where they did a study in New Jersey.

02:16:21.000 They found out that there's a 4,000% increase in kids calling themselves non-binary.

02:16:26.000 It's just like...

02:16:28.000 I mean, at what point in time do we examine whether or not social pressures are playing a part of this?

02:16:34.000 Is it Lisa Littman or Lisa Littman?

02:16:36.000 She was a researcher at Brown University who argued for the rapid onset of transgender thing as a social contagion.

02:16:47.000 Yeah.

02:16:52.000 Yeah.

02:17:12.000 She really...

02:17:13.000 I'd even invited her on my show to offer her a platform to support her.

02:17:18.000 And she had laid low because of the blowback she was getting.

02:17:21.000 Well, Abigail Schreier has experienced a tremendous amount of that.

02:17:25.000 And she was one of the first people to talk about it.

02:17:26.000 And when she talked about it on the podcast, I was...

02:17:31.000 I wasn't aware that it was that big of an issue.

02:17:34.000 And that there's so many particularly young autistic girls that dive into this.

02:17:41.000 And that also there's a certain thing that happens when they start injecting testosterone that it gives them this feeling of euphoria.

02:17:49.000 And that it does alleviate some anxiety.

02:17:51.000 It has an effect.

02:17:52.000 It has a physiological effect.

02:17:54.000 And so they think, this is what I've been missing my whole life.

02:17:57.000 Which is really kind of crazy to think that...

02:18:00.000 I mean, it's a weird thing.

02:18:05.000 Especially when it comes to encouraging surgery and encouraging it for really young people.

02:18:12.000 When did we stop believing that young people are impressionable?

02:18:17.000 Right.

02:18:17.000 When do we stop believing that young people should not make life-changing choices when they're really young?

02:18:23.000 Because they don't know what the fuck is going on. 0.99

02:18:26.000 We've always said that with tattoos. 0.99

02:18:28.000 We've always said that with body modifications.

02:18:31.000 And look at the cognitive inconsistency when it comes to age.

02:18:35.000 Because if a progressive will say that a 17-year-old who's 17 years old, 364 days, so in one day he's going to be 18, Who lies in wait, kills his parents to pick up the insurance, the progressive will argue,

02:18:52.000 well, you can't put him in prison for life.

02:18:54.000 He's just a child.

02:18:55.000 His brain is still going to develop until he's 25. So for that issue, from this side of my mouth, I say that he's too young.

02:19:03.000 But from this side of my mouth, I'll say that a four-year-old is perfectly capable of saying, I am in the opposite body and shut up, don't question it.

02:19:12.000 Those two things can't coexist.

02:19:13.000 Yeah, someone has to be a horrible monster for people to agree that this person needs to be tried as an adult.

02:19:19.000 Right. 1.00

02:19:19.000 You know, like some boy who stabs his whole family to death, like crazy shit like that. 1.00

02:19:23.000 Right. 1.00

02:19:24.000 And which does happen.

02:19:25.000 I think there was a case of something like that recently where a kid stabbed his mother to death and they tried him as an adult.

02:19:31.000 I think he stabbed a girl to death.

02:19:33.000 No, I'm screwing it up.

02:19:35.000 I think he stabbed a girl that he went to high school with to death and left her in the woods.

02:19:39.000 That's what it is, I think.

02:19:40.000 There's been a bunch of those.

02:19:42.000 Guys stabbed their parents.

02:19:42.000 I just watched a documentary on the dating show Serial Killer.

02:19:48.000 Have you seen this guy?

02:19:49.000 Do you know this story?

02:19:50.000 No.

02:19:51.000 The dating show...

02:19:52.000 Jamie, I'm sure, is going to pull it out.

02:19:54.000 It's a guy who was really diabolical.

02:19:56.000 I mean, he was attacking 8-year-old girls. 0.78

02:19:59.000 He was attacking 25-year-olds.

02:20:01.000 What year was this?

02:20:02.000 This would be...

02:20:03.000 70s.

02:20:04.000 Oh, yeah.

02:20:05.000 We did talk about this once.

02:20:06.000 Yes.

02:20:06.000 Then he appeared on the famous dating show where, you know, a woman is interviewing three guys.

02:20:12.000 That's the guy.

02:20:13.000 Yes, I remember that.

02:20:15.000 I do remember that.

02:20:17.000 Yeah.

02:20:17.000 And it's funny because he won that show, and then the woman decided not to go out with him because she found him creepy.

02:20:28.000 So she had the right antenna to pick up his creepiness, whereas other people didn't.

02:20:33.000 So he was a serial killer.

02:20:35.000 But not just a serial killer, Joe, because he did not have a unique demographic group.

02:20:41.000 Typically, serial killers will focus.

02:20:43.000 I only go after boys.

02:20:45.000 I only go after...

02:20:45.000 This guy was caught in the act of suffocating an 8-year-old girl.

02:20:52.000 And she didn't pass away.

02:20:54.000 And he was, I think, sexually assaulting her.

02:20:56.000 But he's also done it to 25-year-olds.

02:20:58.000 So this guy was...

02:20:59.000 Now, a progressive will tell you That this guy is like that because something happened in his background that made him that way.

02:21:07.000 He couldn't have been born damaged, right?

02:21:10.000 It's the social constructivist argument.

02:21:12.000 We're all born empty slate, and it's only society that either makes us good or bad.

02:21:17.000 And therefore, they would want to rehabilitate.

02:21:19.000 And by the way, the justice system released him several times when in a real deontological world, that guy would have been executed.

02:21:28.000 By the way, I support the death penalty for guys like that.

02:21:30.000 I support it if the legal system was clear.

02:21:33.000 There's just too many people that get accused, and we've had a bunch of them on, that get accused of crimes that they didn't commit and spend decades in prison for murders they didn't commit.

02:21:43.000 I've actually had a guy on my show, arguably the most remarkable story I've ever heard on my show, and I discuss it actually in my current book, Unhappiness, talking about gratitude.

02:21:54.000 He spent 29 years in prison for a murder that he was eventually exonerated of.

02:22:01.000 On the show, I asked him, how is it that you go about your life?

02:22:05.000 You're so put together.

02:22:06.000 You're not full of vengefulness.

02:22:08.000 You don't want to destroy the world.

02:22:09.000 You must be Buddha.

02:22:10.000 You're a much better man than I am.

02:22:12.000 And his answer really speaks to the mindset of being a happy person and having gratitude.

02:22:17.000 He said, well, I have a sister who's been bedridden with cerebral palsy for much of her life, and yet she manages to smile and be happy, so I don't really have much to complain about.

02:22:29.000 So here's a guy who has had three decades stolen from him, and yet he still had the grace and dignity.

02:22:35.000 I think we can all learn a lot from that lesson.

02:22:40.000 Yeah, so that's why I have a hard time supporting the death penalty.

02:22:44.000 Yeah.

02:22:44.000 Because I think there's a lot of, like, very corrupt prosecutors and a lot of very corrupt lawyers, and the whole thing is, it's human.

02:22:55.000 But couldn't we just restrict it to the most...

02:22:58.000 So, if I find your DNA in the body of five dead children...

02:23:04.000 That's the only time I will use the death penalty.

02:23:08.000 Why not make it so extreme that your concern doesn't apply?

02:23:13.000 I could agree with that.

02:23:15.000 I see it at least on paper that I could agree with that.

02:23:18.000 But the problem is people plant evidence and, you know, it's you could see like if there's a video of someone in the act of doing something, especially now with deepfakes, that's a problem again, right?

02:23:30.000 But yeah, if someone was especially if they're saying they're guilty, they show no remorse.

02:23:36.000 Yeah, like why should they be alive?

02:23:38.000 But I just wish that we knew for sure That everybody who's locked up in jail for a crime was actually guilty of that crime.

02:23:46.000 And that's not the case.

02:23:48.000 So that's not the case.

02:23:50.000 So there would be no context where you would ever sign up for the death penalty, as it stands.

02:23:53.000 I just think you're giving people the kind of power.

02:23:57.000 For sure, if someone does something, we know they did it.

02:23:59.000 You want that.

02:24:00.000 Yeah.

02:24:01.000 But it's sort of akin to maybe the principles of free speech.

02:24:06.000 Free speech applies even to people that you disagree with.

02:24:11.000 The Holocaust deniers.

02:24:12.000 Right. 0.98

02:24:12.000 The insane people. 0.98

02:24:14.000 Nazis. 0.71

02:24:15.000 That was what the ADL used to support, right?

02:24:21.000 I think that if we were living in a world where there was no lies and all the prosecutors and all the judges were all above board and just impeccable sense of ethics and morals and you could trust them to know the truth,

02:24:38.000 then yeah.

02:24:39.000 But that's not the case.

02:24:40.000 Yeah.

02:24:41.000 So, in a flawed society like the one that we live in, I can't support something that's killing innocent people.

02:24:47.000 Even if it's killing guilty people too. 0.99

02:24:50.000 It's like, if it kills ten guilty guys and one innocent guy, we fucked up. 0.96

02:24:55.000 And I think that, I don't know what the number is of people that are unjustly accused, but it's gotta be high. 0.97

02:25:02.000 And then there's people that are in jail for things that are very minor, and then while in jail, wind up killing somebody.

02:25:09.000 Well, I mean, to your point, I think the Innocence Project has demonstrated that there have been men who were on death row who were exonerated.

02:25:17.000 Yes, many cases.

02:25:18.000 So that speaks to your point.

02:25:19.000 Many cases.

02:25:20.000 And my good friend Josh Dubin has worked with a lot of these different people.

02:25:25.000 And through the show, a few of them have actually wind up being exonerated.

02:25:29.000 Wow.

02:25:29.000 Yeah.

02:25:30.000 He's a fascinating guy, and he's dedicated himself to finding these cases and helping these people, and he's gotten a bunch of them out, and their stories are insane.

02:25:40.000 And because of that, because knowing that those exist, I can't support something that's going to possibly kill those people.

02:25:48.000 It just doesn't...

02:25:50.000 There's just too much corruption.

02:25:51.000 There's too much.

02:25:52.000 You can demonstrate.

02:25:54.000 You can see it.

02:25:55.000 There's cases after case after case of prosecutors getting arrested, DA's getting arrested, lawyers. 0.99

02:26:02.000 There's too much fuckery. 0.99

02:26:04.000 Yeah. 0.91

02:26:05.000 It's a human issue, you know, and unless we knew that humans were telling the truth, you know, you can't, it's just too, it's too much of a, and to do it, imagine if you're the person who executes this person, then you find out that person was innocent.

02:26:19.000 Like, oh my God, you got to live with that?

02:26:22.000 That person, not only did you steal three decades of your life, but then you took their life for something they didn't even do?

02:26:27.000 That's the reason why, and isn't it in firing squads when you have a whole bunch of people and they're all, exactly.

02:26:33.000 Yeah, but what about lethal injection?

02:26:36.000 Yeah, there is someone who's literally doing it.

02:26:38.000 Who knows what's going on there.

02:26:39.000 Oh, do it with a computer.

02:26:40.000 Okay, whatever.

02:26:42.000 You know what you're doing.

02:26:44.000 You know what you're doing.

02:26:45.000 I mean, you can find all sorts of ways to rationalize it.

02:26:48.000 Yeah.

02:26:49.000 But morally, of course, you'd want that person removed from society. 0.99

02:26:52.000 If you found out that someone in your community back in the day, in the tribal days, was raping children, you'd want to kill them. 0.99

02:27:00.000 Exactly. 1.00

02:27:00.000 And justly so. 1.00

02:27:04.000 Actually, yesterday, the guys that came over at the hotel, we were talking about parenting with the threat of protecting your children from a pedophile.

02:27:18.000 And I've argued that my approach to parenting has been, I don't trust anyone with my children.

02:27:24.000 Precisely because the one who is going to commit those infractions is not someone that has hidden horns that you can see.

02:27:32.000 It is your uncle.

02:27:34.000 It is grandpa.

02:27:35.000 It is the really sweet neighbor.

02:27:37.000 It is the person.

02:27:39.000 And I've actually had, not heated, but disagreements with my wife where she thought I was being too paranoid about this.

02:27:47.000 And my answer is, my job is to always err on the side of safety. 0.95

02:27:53.000 So there's no sleepovers, there's no sleepaway camp, because there is going to be this counselor there who is a pig, and then I would have miserably failed in my job.

02:28:04.000 And so my job, while you are under my protection, is to make sure that I never put you in a position where this could happen.

02:28:11.000 What happens after when you're an adult, that's your business.

02:28:14.000 What are your thoughts?

02:28:14.000 Am I being...

02:28:15.000 No, I feel what you're saying.

02:28:17.000 I think you also have to let your children expose.

02:28:22.000 They have to be in the real world.

02:28:25.000 They have to experience different kinds of people.

02:28:27.000 And to protect them too much is actually damaging to their development.

02:28:30.000 So there's a fine dance that you do.

02:28:32.000 So that's the anti-fragility stuff.

02:28:34.000 Yeah, there's a fine dance. 0.80

02:28:37.000 And, you know, you think about just your experience.

02:28:40.000 I mean, it's horrible to say that any bad experiences were good for you, but oftentimes you develop character through a lot of adversity in your life.

02:28:50.000 Oh, I completely agree with that.

02:28:51.000 It's like, how much adversity do you want to expose your children to?

02:28:53.000 And then there's the question of things like predators.

02:28:56.000 I've actually argued, in the happiness book, I argued that what I went through in the Lebanese Civil War, paradoxically, makes me a happier person.

02:29:07.000 Because any time that I start whining about something that's pissing me off, I can always pull back from my memory, I had the miracle of escaping the Middle East intact. 0.96

02:29:18.000 So what am I whining about?

02:29:20.000 So you're exactly on point, that the fact that I've gone through those horrors makes me the happier person I am today.

02:29:26.000 Yeah, I think perspective.

02:29:29.000 You know, that's the thing about anyone that I've met that's come from some war-torn part of the world.

02:29:35.000 When they make it to America, especially if they're in a place that's safe and nice, they just have an immense appreciation and their perspective is very different. 0.97

02:29:45.000 They're also, like, people that come from communist countries in particular, they are just so allergic to that horseshit. 0.97

02:29:51.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:29:52.000 When they see it coming, any Marxist ideology, they see it coming, they're like, fuck you. 1.00

02:29:57.000 Fuck you. 1.00

02:29:57.000 We know where this goes. 1.00

02:29:58.000 This goes to, you have to give up all your possessions and everything goes to the state and everything gets distributed evenly.

02:30:05.000 How do you enforce that?

02:30:06.000 Who gets to choose? 0.99

02:30:08.000 What the fuck are you signing up for? 0.99

02:30:10.000 But these idealistic kids that think that the world could be a better place with socialism if that we all just like no one should I saw this thing argued this guy argued online no one should ever be able to make a million dollars and That you should be restricted to a certain amount of income that allows you to have a certain like a Spit specified the certain size apartment that you should be allowed and anything else is in excess and Amazing. 0.99

02:30:38.000 That it's, you know, an attack on the freedoms of others.

02:30:43.000 It's like there's this fascinating takedown by this, like, you know, super progressive, probably college kid who had these ideas.

02:30:51.000 I've seen it.

02:30:52.000 So I think last year when I came on the show, I might have been right in the throes of...

02:30:58.000 I'm having all my book royalties stolen from my last book from the tax authorities, right?

02:31:03.000 And so I was really pissed about it. 0.92

02:31:05.000 And whenever I would post a tweet sort of condemning the parasitic taxation system, there would be people who would write to me with complete entitlement, Canadians, and saying, well, why should you get to keep the money instead of you not being a selfish pig and sharing it with others?

02:31:23.000 So my book royalties, my thoughts, my ideas, my humor is not mine.

02:31:28.000 As a matter of fact, according to the Canadian government, about 58% is owned by them.

02:31:32.000 But it really comes from having this idea inculcated in you, which is that we should all have equality of outcomes.

02:31:39.000 It is a cancer and it is an affront to human meritocracy.

02:31:44.000 It's unbelievable.

02:31:46.000 The argument against that would be that there's a certain reality to the way you're living in this life and that you have resources available and you have things available that other people don't have and it would be better if you had less and then it bounced out.

02:32:09.000 So if you give a little bit more and then eventually bounce out.

02:32:12.000 The problem is it's not bouncing out.

02:32:15.000 The problem is, like, where's the money going?

02:32:18.000 Well, the money is going to the government, and they get to decide how it's spent.

02:32:22.000 And they get to pass laws and dictate and send a little here.

02:32:26.000 Well, there's a war, so we're going to need more.

02:32:28.000 And then there's inflation.

02:32:29.000 This comes with the war. 0.98

02:32:30.000 The price of gas and food and everything goes up and all this is happening and you can't say shit about it. 0.96

02:32:37.000 And you're in this position where you're like, well, if you complain, well, you're a man of privilege. 0.96

02:32:43.000 You're privileged and you should be giving that up.

02:32:46.000 And if you gave it up, the world would be a better place.

02:32:59.000 We're good to go.

02:33:14.000 Some of it's got to be going to people that care and are really trying to make the world a better place.

02:33:18.000 Some of it has got to be going to whatever organizations that are doing a good job.

02:33:27.000 The idea that if you just keep...

02:33:29.000 Some people think they should have a 90% tax bracket.

02:33:32.000 It's like if you're a billionaire, you don't deserve to have a billion.

02:33:34.000 You should just give up...

02:33:35.000 Well, guess what?

02:33:36.000 They're not going to work.

02:33:36.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:33:37.000 People are going to get upset.

02:33:39.000 They're not going to innovate.

02:33:40.000 You don't have a quality of effort.

02:33:42.000 There's a lot of equality.

02:33:44.000 People talk about equality.

02:33:45.000 There's not an equality of effort.

02:33:47.000 There's not a quality of intelligence.

02:33:48.000 There's not a quality of skill, of talent.

02:33:51.000 And it's genuinely anti-human nature.

02:33:53.000 And I'm not sure if I've said this before on this show, but E.O. Wilson, the famous Harvard biologist, who passed away now last year, I think, he studied social ants.

02:34:05.000 And in social ants, everybody is equal other than the reproductive queen.

02:34:09.000 So when he was asked about socialism slash communism, his answer, which I love to always quote, was, great idea, wrong species.

02:34:16.000 Yeah.

02:34:16.000 Right?

02:34:17.000 Which perfectly captures, right?

02:34:19.000 We're not all equal.

02:34:20.000 Some of us are taller, shorter, harder working, less harder working.

02:34:23.000 So there's no reason why we should all have equality of outcomes.

02:34:26.000 It is anti-human nature.

02:34:28.000 It's not realistic.

02:34:31.000 It's not realistic to expect people to work as hard as some people.

02:34:34.000 They don't have to.

02:34:36.000 You don't want to be Michael Jordan. 0.99

02:34:37.000 Well, don't fucking practice 12 hours a day. 0.99

02:34:40.000 You don't have to be Michael Jordan. 0.99

02:34:41.000 Like, if you're happy as being a guy who works a job and likes to go hiking and likes to go fishing or something, that's great.

02:34:47.000 There's nothing wrong with that.

02:34:48.000 But there's all kinds of people.

02:34:50.000 And some people are going to be that guy.

02:34:54.000 And when they are that guy, you can't say you have to give up all your money.

02:34:58.000 It's hard to be that.

02:34:58.000 It's hard to be Michael Jordan.

02:35:00.000 He deserves all that money. 0.98

02:35:01.000 It's fucking impossible to be. 0.98

02:35:02.000 Only one guy pulled it off. 0.97

02:35:04.000 And you deserve all the money you make, my friend.

02:35:07.000 Let's leave me out of this.

02:35:08.000 Try to skirt around that.

02:35:12.000 But if you want it to be fair and send some to the Gatsad Trust Fund.

02:35:17.000 What do you use your trust fund money for?

02:35:19.000 I would use it to be able to use as escape velocity so that I don't have to answer to anybody.

02:35:27.000 Have you, because of the oppressive nature of the Canadian government, have you ever thought about jumping ship?

02:35:32.000 Oh my God, I think we've discussed it in the past.

02:35:34.000 I think about it probably 30 times a day.

02:35:36.000 Wow.

02:35:37.000 I haven't been able to for two main reasons, Joe.

02:35:40.000 Number one, both my family and my wife's family are in Montreal.

02:35:43.000 So that's number one that keeps us there.

02:35:46.000 Number two, it's very, very hard to walk away from a tenured professorship.

02:35:50.000 I mean, that's the truth.

02:35:51.000 Montreal's a great city too.

02:35:53.000 It's a beautiful place to live.

02:35:55.000 It is.

02:35:55.000 It's a perfect amount of cold weather that develops adversity and character.

02:35:59.000 I've heard you say that before, but that's spoken from a guy who's lived in Southern California and then Austin for too many years.

02:36:06.000 I think you forgot how bad the winter's going to be.

02:36:08.000 Oh, I remember.

02:36:08.000 I lived in Boston.

02:36:10.000 I remember. 0.98

02:36:10.000 It sucks. 0.98

02:36:11.000 It sucks hard. 1.00

02:36:12.000 It sucks. 0.99

02:36:12.000 But I'm not saying that it's good. 0.99

02:36:14.000 I think it's good for you.

02:36:15.000 Yeah.

02:36:16.000 Like cold plunges are good for you.

02:36:17.000 Right.

02:36:18.000 It's not good while you're doing it. 0.99

02:36:19.000 It sucks. 0.99

02:36:20.000 Right. 0.99

02:36:20.000 But I think it's good for you. 0.99

02:36:21.000 Yeah.

02:36:21.000 And I think there's something about being at the...

02:36:24.000 You're at the mercy of nature for many months at a time.

02:36:29.000 Yeah.

02:36:29.000 There's many months from November until Wednesday start warming up, around April?

02:36:33.000 Yeah, mid to April.

02:36:34.000 Yeah. 0.97

02:36:34.000 It can get cold as fuck in March. 0.97

02:36:36.000 Cold as fucking March. 1.00

02:36:38.000 You got a full snowstorm. 0.99

02:36:39.000 Yeah, so there's so many months where it's so goddamn cold that I think there's a certain humility that comes with that. 0.57

02:36:47.000 There's a certain appreciations of the summer days because the summer days are enormously novel. 0.62

02:36:54.000 It's like, what a beautiful thing.

02:36:56.000 Six months ago, we were just digging ourselves out to try to drive to the grocery store. 0.99

02:37:01.000 You gotta dig yourself out of three feet of fucking snow. 0.99

02:37:03.000 That's true. 0.99

02:37:04.000 Everybody remembers that.

02:37:04.000 Well, and that's why in Montreal, there's kind of an orgiastic party feel during the summer months, because we're making up for cocooning.

02:37:12.000 Yes.

02:37:13.000 I used to love doing comedy up there.

02:37:15.000 We used to do the Montreal Comedy Festival, and it was in the summer, and everybody was so happy.

02:37:19.000 That's right.

02:37:19.000 And I really clearly remember thinking that, that there's something to the kind of character that comes out of people that live in that place.

02:37:27.000 It's not all of them, of course. 0.98

02:37:29.000 There's fuckheads at every corner of the world. 0.98

02:37:31.000 But I just think there's something cool about that city. 0.99

02:37:34.000 And it's also very European, even though it's Canadian.

02:37:37.000 There's a lot.

02:37:39.000 Well, thank you.

02:37:39.000 You're making me feel good that I'm still there.

02:37:41.000 I love it up there.

02:37:42.000 It's a great place.

02:37:43.000 It's great.

02:37:44.000 I just don't love the kind of direction that the government is trying to take control of the country.

02:37:51.000 That's what freaks me out.

02:37:52.000 Taking control of narratives and taking control of...

02:37:56.000 What people say on social media and stopping protests and what they did with the Canadian truckers.

02:38:02.000 Well, I think, and again, not to blow smoke up your behind, but one of the things that I think people appreciate about you is that you do change your opinion in light of new evidence.

02:38:11.000 And I remember very vividly the first time that you and I spoke about Justin Trudeau, you were quite a fan, and then you revised your opinion.

02:38:19.000 Well, I felt he's a very handsome man, very good speaker, but he's not really a good speaker.

02:38:25.000 On the cuff, off the cuff.

02:38:27.000 It's really like when he has a speech.

02:38:29.000 There's a template.

02:38:30.000 Yeah.

02:38:31.000 And he's a good-looking guy.

02:38:33.000 It's like when you see a handsome fellow with nice hair, it's like, oh, I want him to be good.

02:38:37.000 But you know, it's funny that you say he's good-looking because Megyn Kelly came on my show and her view, and we would think that she would know how to judge the masculinity of someone, she said, I would never want that guy on top of me.

02:38:50.000 He doesn't exude any masculinity.

02:38:51.000 Whoa, Jesus.

02:38:52.000 I mean, literally almost exactly that to the word.

02:38:54.000 I'm sure that Jamie's going to pull it up any second now.

02:38:56.000 But that's also him now, right?

02:38:59.000 Where you know who he really is.

02:39:00.000 I think...

02:39:01.000 He's a girly girl. 0.98

02:39:03.000 You think so?

02:39:03.000 We had a boxing match.

02:39:04.000 We had a boxing match with some other politician.

02:39:06.000 Did you ever see it?

02:39:07.000 I did.

02:39:08.000 Not terrible.

02:39:09.000 Yeah.

02:39:09.000 Not terrible.

02:39:10.000 I mean, I'll defer to your boxing expertise.

02:39:12.000 Yeah, not terrible.

02:39:12.000 Like, threw some pants, you know.

02:39:14.000 Is that right? 0.99

02:39:15.000 Fuckin's going after it. 0.99

02:39:16.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:39:17.000 But...

02:39:18.000 What disturbs me is the way he's willing to discredit people that disagree with him, like the Canadian truckers.

02:39:26.000 He's saying that they're often misogynistic and racist.

02:39:29.000 Like, what are you talking about, man?

02:39:31.000 The fact that they froze the bank accounts of people who donated money?

02:39:34.000 That's insane.

02:39:35.000 Insane. 1.00

02:39:36.000 That's like Banana Republic shit. 1.00

02:39:38.000 That's scary. 1.00

02:39:40.000 That's scary totalitarian shit. 1.00

02:39:42.000 I had the spokesperson of the trucker convoy on my show. 1.00

02:39:47.000 Yeah, it's unbelievable.

02:39:48.000 It's a test case.

02:39:50.000 It really is.

02:39:50.000 Yeah, for totalitarian government tactics.

02:39:53.000 And they did not fail.

02:39:54.000 They did not pass that test.

02:39:56.000 They failed that test.

02:39:57.000 And to the great discredit of my fellow Canadians, we've now three times.

02:40:02.000 I mean, you don't vote for him.

02:40:04.000 You vote for the party in a parliamentary system.

02:40:06.000 But it's three times now that he's...

02:40:09.000 And each time, he's gotten, I think, no more than about 30-something percent of the vote.

02:40:13.000 So that's one of the dangers of a parliamentary system.

02:40:16.000 Even though two-thirds of the people don't want you there, he's now been prime minister since 2015. How does that work?

02:40:23.000 Well, you're basically voting for the party, and then depending on how many seats are taken in the parliament, that's who becomes the majority.

02:40:32.000 So it's not like the American system where I am voting for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

02:40:38.000 You're voting for a platform in your riding.

02:40:41.000 So if I'm voting for the Liberal Party, I'm voting for the Liberal candidate in my riding.

02:40:47.000 And now that is tallied up.

02:40:50.000 And since he's the prime minister, the leader of that party, he then becomes the prime minister.

02:40:54.000 And does anyone primary him?

02:40:56.000 Do they have that sort of a situation where someone tries to challenge him from the same party?

02:41:05.000 So once someone's a leader of the party, they no longer challenge that person.

02:41:08.000 That's right.

02:41:10.000 So I don't know the exact details.

02:41:11.000 So as long as that party is in power, he's in power.

02:41:13.000 He's in power.

02:41:14.000 For how long?

02:41:15.000 There is no...

02:41:15.000 I don't think there's a statute...

02:41:17.000 Not statute.

02:41:18.000 What is it called?

02:41:19.000 Term limitations.

02:41:20.000 Thank you.

02:41:21.000 I don't think there is...

02:41:22.000 So he could be dictator forever.

02:41:23.000 For like the next 4,000 years.

02:41:24.000 It's unbelievable.

02:41:25.000 Jesus.

02:41:25.000 Yeah.

02:41:26.000 Great.

02:41:26.000 One of the other reasons why I'd like to leave Canada and move to greener pastures Yeah, it's just not good for people to have that kind of power.

02:41:35.000 It's almost never good.

02:41:37.000 And especially when they start using it in that way.

02:41:39.000 They start using it the way they're using it up there.

02:41:43.000 It's like the clamping down of free speech is never done by the good guys.

02:41:48.000 It's not.

02:41:49.000 It's not what it is.

02:41:50.000 And when you're being fed propaganda, and you know you're being fed propaganda, and now you're expected to...

02:41:57.000 Not say it, not talk about it, and just accept it.

02:42:00.000 That's not good for anybody.

02:42:02.000 And it's only good for the people that are in power, and it's only good for as long as they're alive.

02:42:06.000 Because what they're going to leave behind is going to be a disaster.

02:42:09.000 And if new people that are from the opposing party get into control, they're going to expand their control even further.

02:42:14.000 And this is a terrible cycle that if you don't have very rigid rules on what can and can't be done, You open the door for tyranny, and that's what they're doing.

02:42:24.000 And the worst part is that it's cloaked under the robe of progressivism, right?

02:42:28.000 It says he'll be Prime Minister until 2025. They brokered a deal, what does it say at the top?

02:42:34.000 It says they brokered a deal that will keep minority government in power until the next election.

02:42:39.000 Yeah.

02:42:40.000 Why'd they say minority government?

02:42:42.000 What does that mean?

02:42:44.000 So that means...

02:42:45.000 Minority liberal government, that's the minority of the people in the country?

02:42:49.000 No, it's in terms of the number of seats in the parliament.

02:42:53.000 I don't know the exact number, but you could either be a majority government or a minority government.

02:42:57.000 Usually when you're a minority government, it's because you've set up an agreement with another party allowing you to, right?

02:43:04.000 So in this case, it's the NDP. So the whole party's behind him, which is a problem.

02:43:08.000 And that's, what would it take for someone from another party to win? 1.00

02:43:16.000 Get enough seats in the ridings to overturn this asshole. 0.99

02:43:21.000 Right now, the top guy in the Conservative Party is Pierre Polievre. 0.99

02:43:26.000 I don't know if you've heard of him.

02:43:27.000 I have.

02:43:28.000 I think Jordan Peterson had him on his show.

02:43:32.000 I'm not a huge fan.

02:43:33.000 I don't know enough about his policy, so I don't want to misspeak.

02:43:35.000 But traditionally, I don't like someone who spent their entire career in politics and nothing else.

02:43:41.000 I like the guys who...

02:43:43.000 You know, they were surgeons or they were lawyers or they were businessmen and then they come into politics as a second act to their lives.

02:43:50.000 Whereas this guy, meaning the Pierre guy, has always been in politics.

02:43:55.000 And so for that reason alone, I would prefer someone to be coming in from the outside.

02:44:00.000 But short of that, I don't know anything about him.

02:44:05.000 It just doesn't seem like it's moving in a good direction in terms of people's ability to express themselves.

02:44:10.000 Indeed.

02:44:11.000 Yeah, it seems very much a thing that's in danger up there.

02:44:16.000 Yeah.

02:44:17.000 It's weird.

02:44:18.000 Yeah.

02:44:19.000 Well, has Jordan been a supporter?

02:44:22.000 I think he's a supporter of his, right?

02:44:24.000 Yeah, Jordan is a supporter of his.

02:44:26.000 I've watched some interviews with him.

02:44:27.000 Well, there is another guy who broke from the Conservative Party named Maxime Bernier who started a new party called the PPC or something.

02:44:41.000 I can't remember what it is.

02:44:42.000 But it's very, very hard to get it off the ground.

02:44:45.000 So I don't even think they got one person to sit in the parliament.

02:44:49.000 Despite the fact that many of his positions, we both probably you and I would agree with, but it's just very hard to introduce a new party.

02:44:57.000 Yeah, so it's kind of how it is in America as well, right?

02:45:01.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:45:02.000 Like Cornel West just branched off and he's in another party right now, right?

02:45:05.000 Oh, is that right?

02:45:06.000 What party is he in?

02:45:08.000 Cornel West left the Democrats to run for president under another party.

02:45:13.000 As an independent?

02:45:17.000 What is the Green Party?

02:45:18.000 The Green Party.

02:45:18.000 The Green Party, okay.

02:45:19.000 Yeah, so that's interesting because there's a lot of people that are Cornel West supporters that they're thinking would ordinarily vote for the Democrat, whoever the Democrat is.

02:45:27.000 Like there's blue no matter who people.

02:45:29.000 Of course.

02:45:29.000 There's a certain percentage in this country.

02:45:30.000 And there's many of those who might look at Cornel West and go, you know what, I'm more aligned with what he's saying.

02:45:36.000 Right.

02:45:36.000 And they might vote for him and it might, you know, sway votes in one way or another.

02:45:40.000 We're very worried about that.

02:45:42.000 Sort of like what Ross Perot did.

02:45:43.000 I was just gonna say exactly that.

02:45:45.000 Yeah, Ross Perot was like conservative.

02:45:48.000 Yeah.

02:45:49.000 But also...

02:45:50.000 This was in 92?

02:45:51.000 Does that sound right?

02:45:52.000 Yeah, it was when Clinton got in office.

02:45:55.000 Because they thought, you know, Ross Perot was like...

02:46:00.000 He was saying...

02:46:01.000 He took out ads.

02:46:03.000 So this is what people don't understand.

02:46:06.000 There was no way to get your word out back then.

02:46:09.000 It's hard to imagine in this day of YouTube and the web.

02:46:13.000 If you grew up with it, this is gonna sound so alien to you.

02:46:16.000 But no one really understood how the IRS system worked or the Federal Reserve worked or any of these things work.

02:46:23.000 And Ross Perot was so wealthy that he bought an hour of TV time.

02:46:29.000 Yeah.

02:46:29.000 So instead of like whatever would normally be on, whatever channel he did it, he literally bought, he goes, how much does it cost?

02:46:36.000 How about a whole fucking thing? 0.99

02:46:38.000 He was a Texas crazy billionaire dude. 1.00

02:46:41.000 Little dude, right? 0.98

02:46:42.000 Little dude.

02:46:43.000 I got a big heart and I'll fuck you up. 1.00

02:46:44.000 And he just didn't tolerate anybody's bullshit. 1.00

02:46:47.000 And this guy... 0.99

02:46:49.000 Laid out, I forget what exactly he talked about, but he laid it out of the way with charts and explaining to people, like, how are you getting fucked? 1.00

02:46:57.000 And I remember the conversations that I would have, the people I was working with back then, we would all sit around and go, did you fucking watch that shit? 0.99

02:47:03.000 Like, what is this? 1.00

02:47:05.000 Like, is that all true?

02:47:06.000 And people start researching it and buying books, and you gotta read this book, and like, what is this?

02:47:13.000 And a lot of people wanted him to win.

02:47:15.000 And they thought, like, yeah, let's have something different. 0.99

02:47:18.000 Like, someone who understands how to run a fucking business. 1.00

02:47:20.000 Someone who understands all the waste and corruption and all the evil bullshit that's going on behind the scenes. 1.00

02:47:25.000 Come on, get in there, Ross. 0.99

02:47:27.000 And that's probably how Bill Clinton got elected.

02:47:29.000 That's right.

02:47:30.000 Because he split the Republicans.

02:47:31.000 Yeah, they split the Republicans.

02:47:32.000 Because most of the people that were for Ross Perot were like, you know, fairly conservative-minded people who wanted no-nonsense.

02:47:40.000 No-nonsense Texas billionaire comes along, explains everything.

02:47:43.000 He's been very financially, you know, successful.

02:47:46.000 Are you ready to make a prediction for the 2024 election?

02:47:50.000 Here's my prediction.

02:47:51.000 I don't think Biden runs.

02:47:53.000 I don't know what's going on with all this stuff with his son and with the evidence of corruption, how valid it is.

02:48:04.000 I see all these articles about all these conversations that they had and the money that was being transferred back and forth.

02:48:10.000 I'm thinking it's pretty valid.

02:48:11.000 It seems real valid, but it also seems like if this is all coming out, what a good way to remove a president that seems mentally compromised.

02:48:23.000 Because it seems like if you were in the Democratic Party and you thought, like, listen, there's a certain amount of people that are going to vote blue no matter who, right?

02:48:32.000 We just need a better representation.

02:48:35.000 Because you could not have Kamala Harris.

02:48:37.000 She would not win.

02:48:38.000 People would be very, very reluctant to vote for her for president, I think, after just listening to her talk for the last three years.

02:48:44.000 Like, what?

02:48:46.000 And so, who else?

02:48:48.000 And there would have to be a reason for that who else.

02:48:50.000 So she would have to step down.

02:48:51.000 It's Californian Justin Trudeau.

02:48:53.000 It's Gavin Newsom.

02:48:54.000 The problem is he did such a bad job with California.

02:49:00.000 They're so vulnerable.

02:49:01.000 He does spit out some good propaganda. 0.97

02:49:04.000 He just starts talking about them very high on California and all the fucking companies that have come from this and all the money is generated and all the intellectuals and all that. 0.92

02:49:12.000 Yeah, but you got to know the real stats of like how many of them feel stuck. 0.82

02:49:16.000 Because if you ask people on the street in California, I think the number was four out of ten people they surveyed are thinking about moving.

02:49:24.000 Yeah.

02:49:24.000 Out of California.

02:49:25.000 Which is most people don't have the ability to up and move.

02:49:28.000 Yeah. 0.76

02:49:28.000 I was very fortunate when all the shit was going down in California in whatever it was, May of 2020, when I first started thinking about moving. 0.76

02:49:36.000 Yeah. 0.95

02:49:36.000 I was like, this ain't going in a good direction. 0.95

02:49:40.000 And I fucking smell chaos. 0.97

02:49:42.000 And I got out early. 1.00

02:49:45.000 But if you don't get out early and you don't have the ability to get out early, you don't have the financial ability, maybe your parents live there, maybe you're taking care of someone, maybe your job depends on you staying there and it's a good job, you're fucked! 0.99

02:49:57.000 And that's a lot of people. 0.99

02:49:59.000 I wasn't fucked, so I got out.

02:50:02.000 And I don't like where it's going, because I don't, with letting people out of jail and all this craziness about no bail, like letting people, they arrest them when they commit a crime and put them right back on the street. 0.64

02:50:14.000 No bail.

02:50:14.000 No cash bail.

02:50:16.000 It's not a felony if it's under $950.

02:50:18.000 All that stuff is crazy.

02:50:20.000 When you go to CVS, you see what it looks like in these stores in San Francisco.

02:50:24.000 It's Mad Max. 1.00

02:50:24.000 It's fucking madness. 1.00

02:50:27.000 There's so many businesses that are closing down. 0.99

02:50:29.000 They don't want to be a part of it anymore.

02:50:30.000 They're getting out of these states.

02:50:31.000 They're getting out of Portland.

02:50:32.000 They're getting out of Seattle. 1.00

02:50:33.000 They're getting out of these places because they're like, this is fucked. 1.00

02:50:36.000 And it ain't getting better. 0.99

02:50:38.000 And that's what I don't like.

02:50:39.000 I don't like when I don't see any course correction.

02:50:42.000 I don't see any readjustment.

02:50:44.000 I don't see anything like, hey, we need to take care of disenfranchised people, but we also need to make our streets safe and we have to stop crime.

02:50:51.000 Okay, so we need to figure out a way to, you know, have these things...

02:50:55.000 You know mutually beneficial to everybody sure and there's no none of that there's like more ridiculous laws More lacks on crime more money for the homeless people give them free drug give needles they need clean needles like what?

02:51:09.000 Let them camp out anywhere.

02:51:10.000 I was asking you offline when we weren't on the show if you regret moving here and what you said was you even love it more here than you did last year when we sold.

02:51:20.000 I love it.

02:51:21.000 Texas is great and Austin is particularly great because it's a progressive minded city that's surrounded by red states.

02:51:28.000 There's a t-shirt that says keep Austin weird and surrounded. 0.97

02:51:33.000 There's something about being surrounded by the rest of the real fucking Texas, Texas people. 0.98

02:51:39.000 Even the progressives here are more reasonable. 0.94

02:51:43.000 Whatever the chart is, where the middle is, there's so many people that you would even think of as conservative or you'd think of as progressive because they're socially progressive or conservative, but they're kind of more in the middle in terms of the way California was.

02:51:58.000 California was like radical leftism and then If you were a conservative, you had to hide it.

02:52:04.000 Or you're a Nazi, or you live in Orange County.

02:52:07.000 There's like certain places where the conservatives thrived.

02:52:10.000 And that was fine. 0.99

02:52:12.000 But the overwhelming amount of people who are in the big urban areas, like specifically San Francisco and Los Angeles, they're in the fucking fog of it. 0.99

02:52:24.000 They're in the fog of it. 1.00

02:52:25.000 They believe all sorts of wacky shit. 0.99

02:52:29.000 And they were the first persons that were, like, happy that we were locking down. 0.99

02:52:34.000 The first persons happy there was a mask mandate and a vaccine mandate. 0.84

02:52:37.000 They were happy to go along with it all.

02:52:40.000 I'm going to, I don't know if you've heard of the Commonwealth Club, which is this big she-she event, to talk about this book. 1.00

02:52:46.000 It's in San Francisco.

02:52:47.000 Oh, boy.

02:52:48.000 So maybe I need to be wearing a hazmat suit or something.

02:52:51.000 Yeah, you need to wear something, like N95-type deal.

02:52:54.000 That's right.

02:52:55.000 Just the poop smell in the air.

02:52:56.000 Exactly, yeah.

02:52:59.000 I don't know how you fix that.

02:53:00.000 That's the thing.

02:53:01.000 I don't think we've ever seen a city fall apart like we've seen Los Angeles and San Francisco fall apart and then have it be brought back.

02:53:08.000 I mean, it can be done, clearly.

02:53:10.000 But how and how much time?

02:53:12.000 So you think it's a death spiral?

02:53:15.000 I'm worried that it's a death spiral.

02:53:17.000 I'm worried that it's going to turn worse.

02:53:18.000 You could have never imagined.

02:53:20.000 When I used to go to San Francisco in the 90s to do stand-up all the time, I would at the original Cap City, which is this cool little club that seated like 150 people.

02:53:30.000 It was great.

02:53:32.000 You could walk around the city and cool places to eat and cool bars to go to.

02:53:36.000 It was a fucking lovely city filled with culture and artists and interesting people and smart people. 0.69

02:53:42.000 It's like where the smart people were. 0.99

02:53:44.000 Not the people that were interested in show business and the vapid pursuit of stardom.

02:53:48.000 Those are the people up there. 0.98

02:53:49.000 There were the tech people and the artists and the musicians and so much cool shit came from San Francisco.

02:53:56.000 Amazing food, the restaurants, just walking around the streets. 0.78

02:54:00.000 People were cool.

02:54:02.000 And now it's a hellhole.

02:54:04.000 It's the same place just 30 years later. 1.00

02:54:06.000 It's a fucking hellhole. 1.00

02:54:08.000 How? 1.00

02:54:09.000 Ideologies have consequences.

02:54:11.000 Well, San Francisco is a really good documenting of that.

02:54:16.000 Michael Schellenberger's book.

02:54:17.000 Oh, I've had him on the show.

02:54:18.000 He's amazing.

02:54:19.000 He's amazing.

02:54:19.000 And Michael Schellenberger, who used to be like a hardcore progressive.

02:54:24.000 So he understands the mentality behind it and the sentiment behind it.

02:54:28.000 He's like a super sweet, kind guy.

02:54:30.000 He's a lovely guy.

02:54:31.000 And his book is amazing because it really documents and it's about how progressives ruin cities.

02:54:36.000 And it uses San Francisco as an amazing example of it.

02:54:41.000 And it's unfortunate because I think these people all have the right intentions.

02:54:44.000 A lot of them at least do.

02:54:46.000 They have good intentions.

02:54:48.000 They think this ideology is a kinder, more inclusive, more gentle.

02:54:52.000 But the consequences of the way they're enacting laws and allowing people to ruin everything around them, that is real financial consequences.

02:55:02.000 Yeah, in the parasitic mind, I actually talk about the fact that all of those parasitic ideas start with a noble goal.

02:55:10.000 And then in the pursuit of that noble goal, things go awry.

02:55:13.000 Ugh, so awry.

02:55:16.000 I mean, how do you turn that around?

02:55:18.000 Like, who could be elected to mayor of San Francisco that could turn that around?

02:55:22.000 And how would it even be tolerated?

02:55:24.000 And do you even have the resources?

02:55:26.000 Well, it's hard when you have a supermajority like you do in California, right?

02:55:29.000 It's also hard when you have, like, it's very, like, it takes a long time to build a building.

02:55:36.000 Yeah.

02:55:36.000 It's really easy to light it on fire.

02:55:38.000 Yeah.

02:55:39.000 It takes just a few minutes.

02:55:40.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:55:40.000 Just throw gasoline on, throw a step away, that fucking building's gone. 1.00

02:55:44.000 And to rebuild is quite difficult. 1.00

02:55:47.000 Yeah.

02:55:48.000 And when you have a city that's just overwhelmed with Homelessness and crime and chaos.

02:55:53.000 Did you see that video of these kids that stole a car and drove it off a cliff?

02:55:57.000 No.

02:55:57.000 In San Francisco?

02:55:58.000 No.

02:55:59.000 You didn't see it?

02:55:59.000 No.

02:56:00.000 Yeah.

02:56:01.000 I don't know the story behind this other than the fact that it was a stolen car.

02:56:07.000 But it is wild footage of this car going off the side of like a very steep hill in San Francisco.

02:56:16.000 Watch this.

02:56:17.000 So here comes the car.

02:56:20.000 Stolen car.

02:56:25.000 Watch this.

02:56:25.000 This is wild.

02:56:27.000 So look to the upper left-hand side.

02:56:30.000 That's where it's gonna come from.

02:56:32.000 Yeah.

02:56:36.000 Oh, this is in the video.

02:56:38.000 This is a long-ass video.

02:56:39.000 Yeah, this is like an unedited.

02:56:41.000 Okay.

02:56:42.000 They're joyriding?

02:56:43.000 What are they doing?

02:56:44.000 Seems like it.

02:56:45.000 Here it is.

02:56:45.000 Oh!

02:56:51.000 Bro.

02:56:53.000 Sorry, they jumped out of the car before this happened, or they're in the car?

02:56:56.000 As the video continues, people try to help them get out of the car, and they sort of all get out of the car, and then at least two of them run away.

02:57:02.000 Oh my god.

02:57:05.000 Let's sort of skip ahead.

02:57:08.000 So a few people are now out of the car.

02:57:10.000 They're climbing out here.

02:57:12.000 Oh my goodness.

02:57:18.000 And then you can see him climbing the stairs.

02:57:19.000 Does that lady say, I love you?

02:57:21.000 Well, yeah, there's something going on.

02:57:22.000 It's very confusing.

02:57:26.000 I saw it on Twitter last night.

02:57:27.000 Wow.

02:57:29.000 Wow.

02:57:29.000 Is that a person that was in the car?

02:57:31.000 I believe so.

02:57:32.000 So she's saying, I love you?

02:57:34.000 I don't know who's talking. 0.98

02:57:35.000 I love you, but I'm getting the fuck out of Dodge. 0.99

02:57:38.000 Is that what she's saying? 0.99

02:57:38.000 Could be. 0.99

02:57:39.000 Is she one of the people that opened the door?

02:57:42.000 Again, it's hard to say who's...

02:57:43.000 Here, back it up a little so we can see.

02:57:44.000 What are we, investigative journalists?

02:57:46.000 I don't know who's talking.

02:57:51.000 I'm sorry.

02:57:52.000 I love you.

02:57:53.000 So someone's hurt bad.

02:57:54.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:57:57.000 Yikes.

02:57:57.000 Oh, so that's the person driving the car.

02:58:00.000 You see the position that she's in?

02:58:01.000 That's the front of the car.

02:58:02.000 Yeah.

02:58:02.000 So that's the driver.

02:58:03.000 No, that's not the case, because then the...

02:58:05.000 Oh, yeah.

02:58:06.000 No, that's the back seat.

02:58:09.000 Right?

02:58:10.000 Wow.

02:58:10.000 I don't know.

02:58:11.000 Is that the front seat?

02:58:17.000 Which one?

02:58:20.000 That's the front?

02:58:21.000 No.

02:58:23.000 So that's the back?

02:58:23.000 The front's in the...

02:58:24.000 The front is like...

02:58:27.000 Oh my god, this is so crazy.

02:58:30.000 Look at how it goes down.

02:58:31.000 Boom! 0.99

02:58:33.000 I'm looking forward to my visit to San Francisco.

02:58:37.000 That was in the back passenger seat.

02:58:39.000 Of course, look how the doors open.

02:58:41.000 Duh.

02:58:42.000 But... 1.00

02:58:42.000 Whatever the fuck happened, that lady's like, I'm out, bitch. 1.00

02:58:47.000 Love you, man. 1.00

02:58:48.000 I gotta go. 1.00

02:58:48.000 You got fucked up. 1.00

02:58:50.000 Yikes. 1.00

02:58:52.000 We've covered a lot of ground.

02:58:53.000 San Francisco.

02:58:55.000 Carjacking.

02:58:55.000 Wish me luck.

02:58:56.000 They carjacked that car and drove it over the cliff.

02:58:59.000 There's a video of it going over the cliff, too.

02:59:02.000 There's a video of it going straight down the street and going through a fence.

02:59:05.000 I'm just launching.

02:59:06.000 It's happening to somebody I know.

02:59:07.000 Really?

02:59:08.000 Yeah, he stopped them from actually stealing it, and the car flipped over.

02:59:12.000 They got out and shot at him.

02:59:13.000 Oh, my God.

02:59:15.000 It's not in San Francisco, though.

02:59:16.000 Where was that?

02:59:17.000 Columbus?

02:59:18.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:59:18.000 Goddamn Columbus. 1.00

02:59:19.000 It's a wild there, too. 1.00

02:59:20.000 That's a gritty town, right?

02:59:22.000 I love Columbus.

02:59:23.000 Is that right?

02:59:23.000 Yeah, it's fun.

02:59:24.000 Fun place to do stand-up.

02:59:25.000 Fun people.

02:59:27.000 Blue Collar.

02:59:27.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, fun, fun people.

02:59:30.000 But, you know, like, all places took a hit during the pandemic.

02:59:34.000 All places took a hit economically.

02:59:36.000 They took a hit with violence and crime and, you know, and the mostly peaceful protests.

02:59:43.000 That's right.

02:59:45.000 That's right.

02:59:46.000 Mostly peaceful protest is a great meme.

02:59:48.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:59:49.000 That was on CNN, right?

02:59:51.000 I think it was on a lot of places.

02:59:53.000 I think a lot of places use that narrative.

02:59:54.000 No, but the original one was, he's saying that and stuff finds out.

02:59:58.000 Mostly peaceful protest.

03:00:00.000 Yeah.

03:00:01.000 That's the thing.

03:00:01.000 That is the truth, though.

03:00:03.000 But if you do light some buildings on fire, and most of the people are not lighting buildings on fire, it's mostly peaceful.

03:00:09.000 Yeah.

03:00:09.000 Well, that's one of the things, by the way, that I think Canada, we have better than you guys in that we are less violent.

03:00:17.000 Right.

03:00:18.000 Except with hockey. 1.00

03:00:20.000 You guys fuck people up in hockey. 0.99

03:00:21.000 There is no place in Montreal that you truly would be afraid to take a wrong turn. 1.00

03:00:27.000 Oh, well, that's nice.

03:00:28.000 That's because the cold weeds out the weak.

03:00:34.000 They're cold weeds out the week up there. 0.96

03:00:36.000 I remember coming from Boston thinking how fucking cold it is up there. 0.98

03:00:39.000 Like, whoa! 0.98

03:00:40.000 This is another level.

03:00:42.000 Another level.

03:00:43.000 Like, walking from my hotel to get something to eat.

03:00:46.000 I remember we walked a couple blocks and we're like, this is an adventure.

03:00:49.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:00:50.000 An adventure in not dying when you're walking to a restaurant. 1.00

03:00:53.000 Like, holy shit. 0.99

03:00:54.000 Minus 40. Yeah, and then when you get inside, everyone's like, holy shit! 1.00

03:00:57.000 Holy shit! 0.99

03:00:58.000 But there's a warmth and hospitality to going to a place when it's warm inside and it's cold outside and everyone's very appreciative of the warmth. 0.99

03:01:10.000 It's very different than going into a cool place when it's hot out.

03:01:13.000 Right.

03:01:14.000 Going to a cool place when it's hot out, it's nice. 0.98

03:01:16.000 It's nice, but it doesn't feel the same nice as like you could fucking die out there. 0.98

03:01:21.000 That's right. 0.98

03:01:22.000 I've, by the way, when I was 13, they had stopped school.

03:01:25.000 I think the only time ever because it was too cold.

03:01:28.000 Usually it's because it's too snowy.

03:01:29.000 And it was, I think, minus 70 with wind chill.

03:01:33.000 And I decided to walk out just to say, as I am now, that I did it.

03:01:39.000 And I lasted maybe 10 meters.

03:01:41.000 My face was burning.

03:01:44.000 So basically, it was like playing football in the NFL. You lasted about...

03:01:48.000 What a nice way to bring it back.

03:01:51.000 The same way you would walk out with a football.

03:01:54.000 God, it gets so cold.

03:01:55.000 But I mean, I don't think it's necessary to develop character, but I certainly think it helps.

03:01:59.000 Yeah.

03:02:00.000 I felt that about Boston.

03:02:01.000 Like, I love the people that live there. 0.99

03:02:03.000 Because there's a certain, like, fucking roughness to those people. 1.00

03:02:07.000 They've dealt with some shit. 1.00

03:02:09.000 You know, they know how to deal with some shit. 1.00

03:02:11.000 When is your next visit to Montreal? 0.99

03:02:13.000 I don't know. 0.96

03:02:14.000 I've been to Canada since all this shit went down until I couldn't cross the border if I was unvaccinated. 0.98

03:02:18.000 Oh, right. 0.99

03:02:19.000 That's true. 1.00

03:02:19.000 And I'm like, you guys are out of your fucking mind. 1.00

03:02:23.000 Yeah. 1.00

03:02:24.000 I mean, it still wasn't America until May.

03:02:26.000 You couldn't come here.

03:02:27.000 That's true.

03:02:28.000 If you were unvaccinated.

03:02:29.000 We were like the last country to hang in there with that.

03:02:33.000 Yeah.

03:02:33.000 Ugh.

03:02:35.000 Weird.

03:02:36.000 Just weird to be going through this.

03:02:38.000 Yeah.

03:02:38.000 Well, I remember the last time, at least that I knew that you came, you kindly invited me to one of your stand-up at the Corona Theater across from Joe Beef.

03:02:48.000 We're giving a lot of plugs.

03:02:50.000 Oh, Joe Beef's amazing.

03:02:51.000 I think he's your friend, yeah.

03:02:52.000 Yeah, both of those guys.

03:02:54.000 That's an incredible restaurant.

03:02:56.000 It is.

03:02:57.000 I think it was voted in the top restaurants in Canada.

03:03:01.000 Yeah, should be.

03:03:03.000 Montreal's just an amazing place for culture in general.

03:03:05.000 It's just a beautiful city.

03:03:07.000 It's got great old architecture.

03:03:09.000 It's a lovely city.

03:03:11.000 I'm feeling better by the second about being there.

03:03:12.000 If you're going to live in Canada, it's a great spot.

03:03:14.000 It is.

03:03:15.000 It's a great spot.

03:03:15.000 Much less antiseptic than Toronto, that's for sure.

03:03:20.000 Yeah, it's just, you know...

03:03:23.000 Those kind of policies that are in place that stop the freedom of expression, they're troubling.

03:03:31.000 Because I always thought of Canada as being like this really open-minded, liberal place.

03:03:34.000 And incidentally, there's a unique dynamic in Quebec that's different from Canada, which is the protection of the French language.

03:03:41.000 And in doing that, you do end up also infringing on people's intrinsic rights, right?

03:03:46.000 So I'm fully Francophone, so it's not as though I'm perfectly happy to speak French.

03:03:51.000 I think?

03:04:07.000 Good question.

03:04:09.000 According to the Quebec government, it is, because Quebec is a distinct society that's surrounded by evil English language, and we need to do whatever we can to protect it. 0.98

03:04:19.000 In my view, you shouldn't.

03:04:22.000 It is fascinating that there's a segment of your country that speaks primarily French.

03:04:27.000 Amazing, isn't it?

03:04:28.000 It is.

03:04:28.000 By the way, as you leave Montreal, it becomes almost exclusively French.

03:04:32.000 Really?

03:04:33.000 In Montreal, historically, the more you went west, it was more English.

03:04:38.000 The more you went east, the more French it was.

03:04:41.000 But outside of Montreal, 20, 25, 30, 40 minutes, you could pretty much only speak French.

03:04:49.000 Wow.

03:04:50.000 Yeah.

03:04:51.000 So...

03:04:52.000 Kind of cool.

03:04:53.000 Cool to visit.

03:04:54.000 Kind of cool.

03:04:54.000 Come and see us.

03:04:55.000 We miss you up there.

03:04:58.000 Well, you know, you got to stay there and keep it down.

03:05:01.000 Hold it down.

03:05:01.000 You're one of the few reasonable voices from up there.

03:05:05.000 It's like yelling from the rooftops.

03:05:07.000 Oh, thank you.

03:05:08.000 And you've been at the front lines for a long time, my friend.

03:05:11.000 You were sounding out about the dangers of all this stuff before anybody really recognized where it could go.

03:05:16.000 Oh, thank you for saying that.

03:05:17.000 You and Jordan.

03:05:18.000 Yeah.

03:05:18.000 You know, I mean, you were even before him.

03:05:21.000 Some of the criticisms that you experienced back then, I thought, like, wow, this is...

03:05:26.000 Weird that people have this perspective.

03:05:27.000 Like, don't they see that he's making so much sense?

03:05:29.000 Yeah.

03:05:30.000 I mean, everything you're saying is so rational and reasonable and well thought out.

03:05:34.000 Like, oh, he's a Nazi. 0.75

03:05:35.000 Wait a minute, he's a Jewish Nazi who escaped Lebanon? 0.98

03:05:38.000 What are you talking about? 0.90

03:05:41.000 Right, right.

03:05:42.000 It's weird where people try to categorize people.

03:05:46.000 And you, in a lot of the ways, because of who you are and because of your academic background, because you're so articulate and the books you've written, you've managed to, like, avoid a lot of the pitfalls that some other people have fallen into because you're so undeniably respected as an intellectual.

03:06:03.000 And when you're talking about these things, you're talking about it from a place of, like, you have a deep understanding of the literature, you have deep understanding of, like, Where these problems come from?

03:06:11.000 What's the source of them?

03:06:13.000 How do they arise?

03:06:14.000 And how do they permeate through society in this sort of, as you say, parasitic way?

03:06:19.000 Thank you.

03:06:20.000 Those are very sweet words.

03:06:21.000 I really appreciate them.

03:06:22.000 Yeah, well, you're a very important voice, my friend.

03:06:24.000 You really are.

03:06:24.000 And I think that your work has been instrumental for helping other people form arguments against some of this nonsense, too, because you sort of laid it out where it could just repeat what you've said.

03:06:36.000 Like, you know, wait a minute, you know, the Godfather's got some points here.

03:06:41.000 Thank you, Joe.

03:06:42.000 I really appreciate it.

03:06:42.000 My pleasure, brother.

03:06:43.000 And your new book is available right now, as of today. 0.98

03:06:46.000 Unfortunately, these fucking knuckleheads didn't allow you to do the audio, but you can read the book and hear it in your sweet and sultry voice. 0.97

03:06:54.000 The Sad Truth About Happiness, Eight Secrets to Leading the Good Life. 0.99

03:06:58.000 Available now.

03:06:59.000 Thank you so much, Joe.

03:07:00.000 Thank you.

03:07:00.000 Let's do it again.

03:07:01.000 Anytime.

03:07:02.000 Anytime.

03:07:02.000 We'll do it again.

03:07:03.000 All right.

03:07:03.000 Love you.

03:07:04.000 Thank you.

03:07:04.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - July 26, 2023

Joe Rogan Experience #2012 - Gad Saad

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