Actor and comedian Rob Reiner joins Jemele to discuss his new book, 8 Secrets for Leading a Good Life, and why he doesn t care what people think of him. Plus, he talks about how he came very close to being aborted in Lebanon and how he got his big break as a stand-up comic. And he explains why he thinks Stephen King should be a better president than Donald Trump. It's a good one, and it's a very funny one, so don't miss it. Guests: Joe Rogan, writer, comedian, podcaster, actor, and podcaster. Special thanks and shout out to my good friend, comedian and friend Rachel Goodman, who was kind enough to sit down with me to talk about the podcast and give us a sneak peek of what's to come in the next few episodes. Thanks, Rachel! Thank you so much for coming on the pod, and thank you for being a friend of the pod. I really appreciate it, and I can't wait to do it again next week. Tweet me and let me know what you thought of this episode and what you think of it! Timestamps: 0:00 - What's your favorite part of the podcast? 6:30 - Who do you think is the worst thing you've ever heard of a comedian? 7:15 - Why I don't care what other people think about me? 8:20 - Who's better than you? 9:10 - How do you like him? 11:40 - What do you don t care? 13:00- What kind of person? 15:00 16:15- What's the best thing you're the most important thing you like? 17:10- What are you looking for? 18:10 19:15 21:40 22:30 23:00 What s your biggest takeaway from this episode? 26:00 Is he a good guy? 27:00 Do you like the good life? 25:00 Can you have a problem? 28:30 What s a good day? 29:00 Does he like it? 30: What s his favorite thing? 35:30 Is he like a good story? 32:00 Are you working for me? 35:00 How much money? 36:30 Does he have a good job? 33:00 Would you like to work for me again?
00:02:02.000Like, you're going to say these things, if you're talking about, especially, like, real-life experiences, you're saying them as you.
00:02:08.000I 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.
00:02:18.000I don't want somebody else to be telling that story.
00:03:15.000And it overwhelms these groups of people that you associate with and then narratives get formed and you can't stray outside those narratives.
00:03:24.000You can't even look at objective reality.
00:04:28.000It 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.
00:04:38.000So 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.
00:04:47.000Man, there's so much that you have to be happy about.
00:04:51.000Stop being mired endlessly in vitriol.
00:05:35.000There'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?
00:06:13.000If 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.
00:06:21.000But how many of those people shouldn't be here?
00:06:24.000How many of those people are dangerous?
00:06:28.000Well, 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.
00:06:37.000And 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.
00:06:48.000It 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.
00:06:58.000Yesterday, I was out with some friends here in Austin, and so one of them asked me, have you seen an uptake on Jew hatred?
00:07:47.000You 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,
00:08:05.000right, 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.
00:08:21.000And they're all like, you know, they have numbers and letters in their accounts, like just random accounts.
00:08:25.000And, you know, you go to their page, it looks kind of real.
00:08:37.000So you're an agent of you're stirring up bullshit.
00:08:42.000So there's a certain aspect of our culture.
00:08:45.000I 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.
00:08:57.000It's like psychological warfare on a level that no one anticipated and no one's prepared for.
00:09:06.000Because 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...
00:09:15.000You can't objectively, logically defend any of the things that are in opposition of it.
00:09:57.000And 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.
00:10:12.000But you don't think people know what you're doing?
00:10:17.000Did 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?
00:10:26.000I mean, I understand he's not your best friend.
00:10:53.000You know, I don't think he wants to do it.
00:10:55.000You 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.
00:11:04.000Like, 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?
00:11:35.000So could it be that Peter Hotez is coming from that perspective?
00:11:39.000It could, but you know what I would say to that?
00:11:42.000Even in your case, it is preposterous for someone to not believe that at least there's a process of evolution at this stage.
00:11:52.000It'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.
00:12:30.000But 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.
00:13:49.000That actually speaks about connecting with people.
00:13:52.000So 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.
00:14:34.000After 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.
00:15:14.000So 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,
00:18:05.000It's not just amazing, it's amazing visually.
00:18:08.000And it's from 1968. Yeah, it's amazing.
00:18:11.000The special effects are so good, like, all through it.
00:18:15.000Like, 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.
00:18:32.000I 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.
00:18:39.000Because I watched the movie for the first time in a first semester.
00:18:43.000I 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.
00:18:54.000Because for those of you who don't, have you seen it, Joe?
00:19:23.000One guy, Henry Fonda, says, hey, let's sit and talk about it.
00:19:27.000The rest of the movie is how he gets each of the 11 other guys to flip their positions.
00:19:33.000And 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.
00:19:40.000Of course, today you could almost never do it.
00:19:42.000I can never convince Rob Reiner of anything.
00:21:50.000I've appeared on Tucker Carlson's old show several times on television, but his long-form podcast that he used to do.
00:21:58.000He had invited us, meaning my family and I, to Florida to do his show.
00:22:04.000He was super gracious, super warm with everybody, with my kids and so on.
00:22:09.000And so I put out a tweet just thanking him for his hospitality.
00:22:12.000Hey, Tucker, it was so nice to meet you.
00:22:14.000Thank you for giving me the opportunity to chat, blah, blah, blah.
00:22:17.000A cousin of mine, Joe, who went through the Lebanese Civil War with me and who was my best friend growing up in Lebanon.
00:22:25.000So 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.
00:22:34.000So he puts out a tweet and he says something.
00:22:36.000I mean, I don't remember exactly, although I quote it in the book on happiness.
00:22:39.000Because I'm basically arguing, don't live your life like my cousin.
00:22:44.000He puts out a tweet saying something like, have you no shame?
00:22:48.000So he decides to publicly shame me for being associated or agreeing to go on Tucker Carlson's show.
00:22:56.000That shows you what tribalism can do to the human mind.
00:23:00.000It 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.
00:23:11.000Yeah, and if you asked him for examples, specific examples of why Tucker Carlson is so horrible, that's where it would get interesting.
00:23:19.000Because some people might be able to say some things they found disagreeable, but most people are just sticking to a narrative.
00:23:25.000There's just this narrative that he is evil incarnate, he is a transphobe, or whatever it is.
00:24:07.000What 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?
00:25:27.000And 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.
00:25:37.000They're kind of going down the same path that a lot of these other corporations have gone down.
00:26:16.000So 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?
00:26:27.000I would think that When you have a network that's run by advertising, it's what you do for income.
00:26:35.000I would imagine there's a lot of pressure by those people, those advertisers, to eliminate threats to their business.
00:26:46.000So 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.
00:27:05.000It's a big problem to anybody that's selling advertisement that's in those businesses.
00:27:10.000Apparently Budweiser didn't learn that lesson.
00:27:14.000Well, see, the difference between Budweiser and pharmaceutical drug companies is that Budweiser is not prescribed.
00:28:31.000There's hip-hop, there's wild rock songs, there's a lot of wild shit.
00:28:37.000And 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?
00:28:50.000It was a lot of like lost liberal whites who are very angry, who decided to take up this movement and smash things.
00:28:58.000So like the racial aspect of it, there's nothing racial about the lyrics.
00:30:01.000I think we were going to talk about what my impression of some of the prices in Austin are.
00:30:08.000Oh yeah, you were telling me that an espresso was $8.
00:30:11.000So 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.
00:32:05.000People used to worry about dehydration, but I don't think they worry about that as much anymore when it comes to drinking coffee.
00:32:10.000They 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.
00:32:19.000So it's kind of complicated, because it is kind of a diuretic, but you're also drinking it.
00:32:24.000So 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.
00:32:34.000You know, if a soldier is too cowardly, it's not good.
00:32:37.000If he's too reckless, he's going to die.
00:32:39.000And so, like most things, the sweet spot is in the middle.
00:32:42.000And so in that chapter, I go through a bewildering number of phenomena, all of which...
00:33:04.000Cool chapter to cover because it's arguably the most universal law that we can find.
00:33:10.000So many things adhere to that inverted U. And I think we had discussed this last time that I was on the show.
00:33:16.000The ancient Greeks were already aware of it.
00:33:18.000I mean, Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics talks exactly—I mean, he doesn't call it the inverted U. He calls it the golden mean.
00:33:27.000And 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.
00:35:43.000I 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?
00:35:55.000There's kind of a twisting of the mouth that appears unnatural.
00:37:17.000There's a good argument that there's a falsity to that.
00:37:20.000Yeah, but there's also a good argument that like there's like a cultural agreed-upon way of communicating.
00:37:28.000You 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?
00:39:40.000I 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.
00:39:53.000And 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.
00:40:04.000There's something magical that happens around puberty, where if you learn a language after that period, you can never speak it without an accent.
00:41:58.000Earlier I said some derogatory things about Portuguese and about French-Canadian, so let me be fair and say, not Arabic.
00:42:07.000Hebrew, which is also from my heritage, is a violently ugly language.
00:42:14.000On 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?
00:42:22.000There's Iraqi Arabic, there is North African Arabic, there's Egyptian Arabic.
00:42:27.000The Lebanese Arabic is really the Italian of Arabic dialects.
00:42:33.000Get ready for some comments and I'll come in your way.
00:42:36.000Isn'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?
00:46:31.000And 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.
00:46:40.000And so Dressed to Kill, the movie, is him dressing up as a there you go.
00:47:06.000This 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.
00:49:39.000He doesn't know that we're alive, and yet it's life and death for us.
00:49:43.000I 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.
00:49:53.000That's the power of sports, that it can pull us in, and it can make us truly tribal.
00:49:58.000And in my case, before you interject, It was kind of driven, my desire for him to win was driven by really a purity strand.
00:50:08.000It was that it seemed cosmically unjust for the greatest soccer player of all time to not have won the World Cup.
00:50:15.000So when he won it, to me it seemed like the world is right.
00:50:31.000What'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.
00:50:40.000You can get so attached to what's happening that a loss is like really a loss.
00:50:46.000Can't believe we fucking lost to Kansas City!
00:50:50.000Well, 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.
00:51:18.000It'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.
00:51:45.000And that shows you why we become so bonded to our favorite players and so on.
00:51:49.000We are really going through this battle with them.
00:51:52.000Yeah, it's really the case with fighters.
00:51:55.000When people have a fighter that they're really a giant fan of and that person gets beaten in a devastating manner, it's heartbreaking.
00:52:04.000There's even studies, by the way, that have looked at what happens to sexual behavior of fans after their team wins or loses.
00:52:14.000So 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.
00:54:20.000I don't remember, but I remember I went running.
00:54:22.000And 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.
00:55:20.000That when you watch them uncork, it's like, oh my god, the efficiency of it.
00:55:25.000And so I was just a giant fan of the guy.
00:55:28.000I just loved, as a person who really enjoyed technique, I like watching someone who's exceptional at it.
00:55:34.000I 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,
00:55:53.000simply get a single yard as a running back.
00:56:35.000I 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.
00:56:49.000But 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.
00:56:56.000Well, they probably could do that too.
00:58:36.000So 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?
00:58:43.000Or are you going to have half of a commercial and half of the game?
01:00:57.000It'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.
01:04:59.000You mean Greco-Roman wrestling, you mean?
01:05:01.000Whether 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.
01:09:11.000And if you figured out how to strike, oh my Jesus.
01:09:14.000You 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",
01:09:32.000And he'd kind of interact with the world as though he's 6'8", the bouncers and so on.
01:09:37.000And I once asked him, do you think you can take these guys?
01:09:40.000And he said, if I can get them, if they knock me out before I get to them, then they knock me out.
01:09:47.000But if I get them and I can bring them down, then they're dead.
01:09:51.000And 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?
01:09:59.000Yeah, sorta, but kind of everybody knows how to defend that now.
01:10:03.000It's just how well can you defend and how good of a striker is that wrestler?
01:10:09.000Because there's this gentleman who's coming up on the scene right now, his name's Bo Nickel.
01:10:13.000And he's an elite, like, blue chip wrestler.
01:10:46.000And then also he can fuck you up standing.
01:10:48.000That's where it gets really dangerous.
01:10:50.000So if a guy like Karelin learned how to stand up, That would have been the end.
01:10:54.000Because there's certain freaks, athletic freaks, what are you going to do with that?
01:11:01.000So 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.
01:11:10.000There's a few that are in that conversation.
01:11:12.000I think the number one consensus greatest of all time is Jon Jones.
01:11:15.000Because Jon Jones just went up and easily won the heavyweight title with the first round submission.
01:12:02.000But 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.
01:14:08.000So 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.
01:14:32.000That's the GOAT. That's the greatest of all time.
01:14:35.000And when he's challenged, that's when, like I said, the second Daniel Cormier fight, there was so much bad blood between them.
01:14:41.000When he's challenged, really challenged, that's when you see how good he really is.
01:14:45.000The 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.
01:14:56.000Do you think there are any personality traits that predict people who are likely to be interested in MMA fighting versus other sports?
01:15:08.000The diversity in personalities in MMA is really fascinating to me as a person who's an analyst.
01:15:16.000That 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.
01:15:30.000He's in the conversation of the greatest of all time.
01:15:32.000Because it's not even a matter of whether he lost, because he never lost, who's 29-0.
01:15:37.000It's a matter of, did he ever lose a round?
01:15:39.000And 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.
01:15:51.000He 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.
01:16:00.000It was a very emotionally charged fight.
01:16:02.000And I think he might have lost one round in that fight where Conor got the best of him standing.
01:18:13.000You 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.
01:18:29.000It might have been earlier than 2013. But I was like, I knew he was legit back then.
01:22:51.000There's a lot going on, but it's very hard for people, especially in times of crisis.
01:22:56.000During 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.
01:23:12.000And that was what was weird about that.
01:23:14.000It was like, this is a psychological, like, test study.
01:23:18.000If 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.
01:23:33.000And to have people willing to throw that away quickly under something that wasn't even...
01:23:40.000We're not talking about a nuclear war.
01:23:42.000We're talking about something that's relatively...
01:23:44.000In terms of the amount of people that die every year, it's not good.
01:23:48.000It certainly wasn't a good thing to have at anybody.
01:24:44.000I mean, it's not like the epidemic that it really is.
01:24:47.000It's not being discussed like the epidemic that it really is.
01:24:49.000Do 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?
01:24:58.000Or are you of the view that There is kind of a Dr. Evil, nefarious thing behind this whole thing.
01:25:07.000I am very reluctant to go with the Dr. Evil narrative.
01:25:10.000I think there's certainly people that you would consider evil that will take advantage when things happen.
01:25:18.000But do I think that they released the pandemic on purpose?
01:25:22.000No, there's pretty clear evidence that people working in the lab got sick and that those people spread it.
01:25:27.000No, 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.
01:25:34.000My 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.
01:25:41.000People were, and I'm not trying to be charitable, but I think that most people were well-meaning.
01:25:46.000They didn't know what the hell they're talking about.
01:25:48.000They didn't exhibit any epistemic humility, right?
01:25:51.000They made it seem as though they knew what they're talking about.
01:26:10.000And I think when we want to look at why people did what they did, we try to look at it one way or another.
01:26:16.000I think there's many, many things going on.
01:26:19.000And 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,
01:26:35.000you know, the Patriot Act, the Patriot Act II, the NDAA, all that crazy shit.
01:26:40.000Whenever something happens, they find new ways to control They do it because it's an opportunity.
01:26:48.000It's an opportunity to pass laws that people are reluctant to pass before.
01:28:15.000Do you imagine Twitter just becomes bots arguing with bots and they finally realize like no one's on it?
01:28:23.000Have 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?
01:36:03.000Well, 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,
01:36:21.000Now, people really, there was an outcry, so they rescinded it.
01:36:25.000But 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?
01:37:57.000Because all you have to do is go to a doctor, I believe.
01:38:01.000The doctor recommends it, and then one other doctor has to recommend it.
01:38:04.000So I don't know the specific mechanism.
01:38:07.000Let's find out what the specific mechanisms are.
01:38:11.000You know, people that are depressed are getting this as an option.
01:38:16.000In 2021, the law was changed to include that those with serious and chronic physical conditions, even if that condition was non-life-threatening.
01:38:23.000It'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.
01:38:57.000So, 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.
01:39:11.000Like, that is, that's a weird one, man.
01:39:14.000That's a weird one to get behind because I'm all for people that have terminal illnesses and don't want to...
01:39:40.000Well, you know, in Canada, there are all sorts of problems we're facing.
01:39:44.000I 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.
01:39:53.000A 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.
01:40:05.000And in one of those meetings, I don't know the exact details, but he had sort of raised some concerns.
01:40:10.000Shouldn't we be judging people based on a meritocratic ethos and so on?
01:40:15.000Because he said that, he's actually quite a liberal person from what I have heard.
01:40:20.000But just the fact that he questioned the DI cult, the diversity, inclusion, equity, they started hounding him, harassing him.
01:40:56.000A lot of people have tried to cancel me now.
01:40:58.000Sometimes people say, oh, it's because you're tenured that you can be courageous because otherwise you wouldn't be courageous.
01:41:04.000The reality is I get tons of death threats.
01:41:06.000I 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.
01:41:15.000So there are many ways by which people can try to get you to modulate what you say and so on.
01:41:22.000What is the number one thing that people are upset at you about?
01:41:26.000Probably, 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.
01:41:35.000And in this case, it was, I think, someone who was of that faith because he looked like he came from that background.
01:41:42.000And so people will get upset at me for all sorts of things.
01:41:46.000Valerie Bertinelli got upset at me once because I tweeted something about my wife having an uncomfortable interaction with someone, a barista, who was transgender.
01:41:56.000And two days later, 26 million tweets later, all the, as Dave Chappelle calls them, the alphabet, people were really coming after me.
01:42:03.000But that doesn't have the timber of we want to kill you.
01:42:07.000When you start criticizing some Islamic stuff, then it can get pretty hairy.
01:42:14.000And I think that's one of the things that's maybe different about, say, Jordan and me.
01:42:19.000I think he receives a lot more hate than I do.
01:42:23.000But some of the hate that I receive is really unique in that it's both Jew-related.
01:42:29.000And 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.
01:42:38.000So cover being Jewish and then criticizing some Islamic tenets.
01:42:42.000So 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.
01:42:52.000And then all sorts of people started saying, he's making this stuff up.
01:43:18.000Now, 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.
01:43:30.000It couldn't possibly mean something else?
01:44:12.000So 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.
01:44:23.000So there are many debates depending on the hadith as to whether something is authentic or not.
01:44:28.000But there is certainly, as Jamie just pulled out, the fact that there is within certain Islamic thought that black dogs are uniquely bad.
01:44:38.000And 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.
01:44:48.000Now, 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.
01:45:46.000So, you know, does Islam codify the right of people to criticize Islam or not, if you're in an Islamic country?
01:45:53.000Well, the answer to that is very clear, and the answer is not one that promotes freedom of speech.
01:45:58.000Me saying that doesn't imply that I'm being hateful towards Muslims.
01:46:02.000I'm just literally talking about the Islamic doctrines, just like there are doctrines in Deuteronomy that you and I can decide to criticize, right?
01:46:11.000And 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.
01:46:21.000And they'll say, you know, you're a very fair guy.
01:46:24.000But other ones will send me emails and stuff that are just brutal, that are really...
01:46:30.000And 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?
01:46:45.000Because the way that guy was speaking to me, he always had more, you know, I had more to lose than him.
01:46:50.000And 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.
01:46:57.000And so for several weeks, I was really being careful, trying to avoid that street.
01:47:03.000And 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.
01:47:17.000When 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?
01:47:35.000In The Consuming Instinct, one of my earlier books, 2011, I have a whole analysis of Of certain kosher laws from an evolutionary biological perspective.
01:47:46.000And it's exactly what you just intimated.
01:47:51.000So 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.
01:48:29.000Theological prescription, I can analyze it from an evolutionary perspective.
01:48:33.000Now, when I did that, let's say for kosher laws, I didn't get rabbis writing to me saying, how dare you?
01:48:40.000We're going to kill you for arguing that it's not divine.
01:48:43.000If 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.
01:49:34.000When the first guy wrote it down, especially when you're talking about ancient Christianity or whatever it was before it was even called Christianity.
01:49:45.000When I was in Greece, I was with Brian Mororescu.
01:49:50.000And he wrote this book about the Eleusinian Mysteries called The Immortality Key.
01:49:56.000And in this book, it all details these rituals that they used to do.
01:50:02.000And thousands of years ago, where they were drinking wine that were laced with psychedelics and coming up with democracy.
01:50:12.000When 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.
01:51:07.000One of the sections I talk about religiosity and happiness.
01:51:11.000Are religious people on average happier?
01:51:13.000And the answer turns out that there is a moderate positive correlation between religiosity and happiness.
01:51:21.000Now 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.
01:51:36.000So there are very functional earthly reasons for why If I am religious, it's going to lead to greater happiness.
01:51:43.000But 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.
01:51:52.000I'm not sure what your religious views are, but I'm very much rooted in my Jewish identity.
01:51:58.000But 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?
01:52:07.000My having a friendship with you, being able to text you for me to come on this show is a divine thing.
01:52:13.000My being able to bond with my Belgian shepherds in the way in this pure love is a divine thing.
01:52:19.000Meeting a random stranger with whom I have this fantastic conversation for 30 minutes is Is a manifestation of the divine.
01:52:25.000So I think we can be quite spiritual in our day-to-day without necessarily couching it in some supernatural, you know, religious narrative.
01:52:35.000I 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.
01:52:47.000And 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.
01:53:01.000And I think there's a peace that they have in a true belief.
01:53:06.000There's a peace that you have that there's a God that's got a plan for this whole thing.
01:53:11.000And just worship that God and do the right thing and you're gonna be okay.
01:53:17.000But 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.
01:53:35.000I think the latter is a lot more impressive, right?
01:54:25.000Yeah, it's not something that exists outside of the purview of science.
01:54:29.000And 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.
01:54:43.000It completely makes sense that there's a moral compass.
01:54:46.000And it also makes sense that you're talking about these divine moments.
01:54:48.000I think it's all these things and then some.
01:54:53.000I think it's all these things and then some.
01:54:56.000I 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.
01:55:14.000I think we're trying to label something that is almost impossible to believe is true.
01:55:20.000That I'm saying sounds with my mouth and you know what I'm thinking.
01:55:24.000We'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.
01:55:32.000Meanwhile, 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.
01:55:45.000And we're finite life forms that are constantly innovating and trying to escape the boundaries of our eventual demise physically, psychologically.
01:55:53.000We're trying to connect each other on the internet and put chips in our brains.
01:55:58.000It'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.
01:56:49.000Some of your viewers may have heard me mention this elsewhere, but it's worth repeating.
01:56:52.000So in my last book, In the Parasitic Mind, I talk about two ethical systems, deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics.
01:57:00.000Deontological ethics is an absolute statement.
01:57:02.000For example, if I say it is never okay to lie, that is a deontological statement.
01:57:07.000If 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?
01:57:21.000Most of us are going to be consequentialists.
01:57:23.000But when it comes to certain fundamental principles that define, say, Western values, those have to be deontological, right?
01:57:32.000And 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.
01:57:45.000You can't say, I believe in presumption of innocence, but not for Brett Kavanaugh.
01:57:50.000I believe in freedom of speech, but not for Donald Trump.
01:57:54.000And 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.
01:58:10.000But now it has become perfectly okay when talking about freedom of speech to tackle it from a consequentialist perspective.
01:58:18.000Don't criticize Islam because that means you're hurting people's feelings.
01:58:32.000And 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.
01:58:41.000What do you think got us on the wrong track in the first place?
01:58:44.000So I think it's the distinction between reason and feelings.
01:58:48.000We're both a reasoning animal and a thinking animal, but there's been now too much emphasis placed on...
01:59:48.000There's no way to stop someone from...
01:59:53.000Like, 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.
02:00:01.000I'm not saying that that's the majority of people.
02:00:05.000There are human beings that are like that, and this does not in any way discount trans people.
02:00:12.000This just says there's people that will game the system, and there's no safeguards in place.
02:00:18.000So 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.
02:00:36.000Until three minutes ago, 117 billion people had existed.
02:00:41.000That'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.
02:00:51.000And nobody disagreed as to what that was.
02:00:53.000But suddenly now, it is really controversial to argue that, and that's why I do some of the satire and sarcasm on social media.
02:01:43.000And I mean, that's the exact idea, right?
02:01:44.000Because people talk about it's unfair to the transgender athlete.
02:01:48.000What about the unfairness to all of the biological females who are being screwed by this, right?
02:01:54.000Yeah, 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.
02:02:07.000Particularly in developing power, power-related things, the shape of the hips, the angle from the hips down to the knees.
02:02:14.000Joe, 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?
02:03:10.000You 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.
02:03:20.000Like what can you say if you see there's this thing that Matt Walsh did an interview with this guy.
02:03:25.000He's a politician Let me find this because it's so crazy.
02:03:28.000So this guy who is a Biological male here.
02:04:47.000But that's the problem with the whole thing.
02:04:50.000So 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?
02:05:00.000Or have they been so parasitized that they actually believe their nonsense?
02:05:05.000I 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.
02:05:15.000There's a social pressure to enforce belief in it and I've seen it.
02:05:20.000I'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,
02:05:41.000It'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.
02:05:53.000So they engage in instantaneous conflict.
02:05:55.000So they're involved in this psychic war.
02:05:58.000With competing ideologies, and it gives them meaning.
02:06:01.000That's a real problem with human beings, that we do attach ourselves to things.
02:06:05.000Even 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.
02:07:12.000But we've never taken the step into the abyss of infinite lunacy where we say sometimes women can have penises.
02:07:20.000I mean, that's why I wrote The Parasitic Mind, the last book, right?
02:07:24.000Because 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?
02:07:35.000Because there is no rational mechanism by which you can take a sexually reproducing species involving two phenotypes.
02:07:53.000I actually satirically put out a tweet where I argued for finger fluidity and finger diversity.
02:08:06.000Then we should no longer be teaching in biology class that boys and girls are born with 10 fingers.
02:08:11.000I was being facetious, but that's exactly the logic that they're using, right?
02:08:15.000Of course, there are some people who are born intersex, and of course, they have the right to live a dignified life free of bigotry.
02:08:24.000That doesn't mean, though, that we have to go back and rewrite the anatomy and biology books.
02:08:31.000And that's why I fight all these battles online and so on, because I truly am allergic to bullshit.
02:08:38.000I am very deontological when it comes to truth.
02:08:41.000And I get personally offended when I see people espousing all that nonsense.
02:08:46.000What is it that Dennis Prager was just talking about?
02:08:48.000There 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.
02:09:08.000They can't tell you how they identify.
02:09:13.000Let's find out, because it's something crazy.
02:09:16.000I remember reading it going, I'm not ready for this.
02:09:33.000So 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?
02:10:24.000And there was a psychological condition that they would talk about, an issue that people had.
02:10:30.000Well, and to the point, remember earlier I put up the dress, or Jamie put up the dress to gail movie?
02:10:35.000In 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...
02:10:46.000It 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.
02:10:56.000And now, a five-year-old can say that they are, and you're not allowed to question it.
02:11:03.000And you can put them on a hormone block.
02:11:04.000And you can put them on hormones, exactly.
02:11:06.000And there's so many problems that they're finding now, the people that have hormone blockers.
02:11:10.000Charles 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.
02:14:54.000When 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.
02:15:09.000Oh, so one of them is a biological girl.
02:18:28.000We've always said that with body modifications.
02:18:31.000And look at the cognitive inconsistency when it comes to age.
02:18:35.000Because 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,
02:18:52.000well, you can't put him in prison for life.
02:18:55.000His 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.
02:19:03.000But 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.
02:20:59.000Now, a progressive will tell you That this guy is like that because something happened in his background that made him that way.
02:21:07.000He couldn't have been born damaged, right?
02:21:10.000It's the social constructivist argument.
02:21:12.000We're all born empty slate, and it's only society that either makes us good or bad.
02:21:17.000And therefore, they would want to rehabilitate.
02:21:19.000And by the way, the justice system released him several times when in a real deontological world, that guy would have been executed.
02:21:28.000By the way, I support the death penalty for guys like that.
02:21:30.000I support it if the legal system was clear.
02:21:33.000There'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.
02:21:43.000I'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.
02:21:54.000He spent 29 years in prison for a murder that he was eventually exonerated of.
02:22:01.000On the show, I asked him, how is it that you go about your life?
02:22:12.000And his answer really speaks to the mindset of being a happy person and having gratitude.
02:22:17.000He 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.
02:22:29.000So here's a guy who has had three decades stolen from him, and yet he still had the grace and dignity.
02:22:35.000I think we can all learn a lot from that lesson.
02:22:40.000Yeah, so that's why I have a hard time supporting the death penalty.
02:23:15.000I see it at least on paper that I could agree with that.
02:23:18.000But 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?
02:23:30.000But yeah, if someone was especially if they're saying they're guilty, they show no remorse.
02:24:15.000That was what the ADL used to support, right?
02:24:21.000I 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,
02:24:41.000So, in a flawed society like the one that we live in, I can't support something that's killing innocent people.
02:24:47.000Even if it's killing guilty people too.
02:24:50.000It's like, if it kills ten guilty guys and one innocent guy, we fucked up.
02:24:55.000And I think that, I don't know what the number is of people that are unjustly accused, but it's gotta be high.
02:25:02.000And then there's people that are in jail for things that are very minor, and then while in jail, wind up killing somebody.
02:25:09.000Well, 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.
02:25:30.000He'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.
02:25:40.000And because of that, because knowing that those exist, I can't support something that's going to possibly kill those people.
02:26:05.000It'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.
02:26:19.000Like, oh my God, you got to live with that?
02:26:22.000That person, not only did you steal three decades of your life, but then you took their life for something they didn't even do?
02:26:27.000That's the reason why, and isn't it in firing squads when you have a whole bunch of people and they're all, exactly.
02:26:33.000Yeah, but what about lethal injection?
02:26:36.000Yeah, there is someone who's literally doing it.
02:27:04.000Actually, yesterday, the guys that came over at the hotel, we were talking about parenting with the threat of protecting your children from a pedophile.
02:27:18.000And I've argued that my approach to parenting has been, I don't trust anyone with my children.
02:27:24.000Precisely because the one who is going to commit those infractions is not someone that has hidden horns that you can see.
02:27:39.000And I've actually had, not heated, but disagreements with my wife where she thought I was being too paranoid about this.
02:27:47.000And my answer is, my job is to always err on the side of safety.
02:27:53.000So 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.
02:28:04.000And 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.
02:28:11.000What happens after when you're an adult, that's your business.
02:28:37.000And, you know, you think about just your experience.
02:28:40.000I 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.
02:28:51.000It's like, how much adversity do you want to expose your children to?
02:28:53.000And then there's the question of things like predators.
02:28:56.000I'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.
02:29:07.000Because 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.
02:29:29.000You know, that's the thing about anyone that I've met that's come from some war-torn part of the world.
02:29:35.000When 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.
02:29:45.000They're also, like, people that come from communist countries in particular, they are just so allergic to that horseshit.
02:30:10.000But 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.
02:30:38.000That it's, you know, an attack on the freedoms of others.
02:30:43.000It's like there's this fascinating takedown by this, like, you know, super progressive, probably college kid who had these ideas.
02:31:05.000And 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?
02:31:23.000So my book royalties, my thoughts, my ideas, my humor is not mine.
02:31:28.000As a matter of fact, according to the Canadian government, about 58% is owned by them.
02:31:32.000But it really comes from having this idea inculcated in you, which is that we should all have equality of outcomes.
02:31:39.000It is a cancer and it is an affront to human meritocracy.
02:31:46.000The 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.
02:32:09.000So if you give a little bit more and then eventually bounce out.
02:33:53.000And 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.
02:34:05.000And in social ants, everybody is equal other than the reproductive queen.
02:34:09.000So when he was asked about socialism slash communism, his answer, which I love to always quote, was, great idea, wrong species.
02:37:19.000And 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.
02:37:52.000Taking control of narratives and taking control of...
02:37:56.000What people say on social media and stopping protests and what they did with the Canadian truckers.
02:38:02.000Well, 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.
02:38:11.000And 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.
02:38:19.000Well, I felt he's a very handsome man, very good speaker, but he's not really a good speaker.
02:38:33.000It's like when you see a handsome fellow with nice hair, it's like, oh, I want him to be good.
02:38:37.000But 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.
02:40:09.000And each time, he's gotten, I think, no more than about 30-something percent of the vote.
02:40:13.000So that's one of the dangers of a parliamentary system.
02:40:16.000Even though two-thirds of the people don't want you there, he's now been prime minister since 2015. How does that work?
02:40:23.000Well, 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.
02:40:32.000So it's not like the American system where I am voting for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
02:40:38.000You're voting for a platform in your riding.
02:40:41.000So if I'm voting for the Liberal Party, I'm voting for the Liberal candidate in my riding.
02:41:26.000One 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.
02:42:02.000And it's only good for the people that are in power, and it's only good for as long as they're alive.
02:42:06.000Because what they're going to leave behind is going to be a disaster.
02:42:09.000And if new people that are from the opposing party get into control, they're going to expand their control even further.
02:42:14.000And 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.
02:42:24.000And the worst part is that it's cloaked under the robe of progressivism, right?
02:42:28.000It says he'll be Prime Minister until 2025. They brokered a deal, what does it say at the top?
02:42:34.000It says they brokered a deal that will keep minority government in power until the next election.
02:43:43.000You 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.
02:43:50.000Whereas this guy, meaning the Pierre guy, has always been in politics.
02:43:55.000And so for that reason alone, I would prefer someone to be coming in from the outside.
02:44:00.000But short of that, I don't know anything about him.
02:44:05.000It just doesn't seem like it's moving in a good direction in terms of people's ability to express themselves.
02:44:42.000But it's very, very hard to get it off the ground.
02:44:45.000So I don't even think they got one person to sit in the parliament.
02:44:49.000Despite 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.
02:44:57.000Yeah, so it's kind of how it is in America as well, right?
02:45:19.000Yeah, 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.
02:45:27.000Like there's blue no matter who people.
02:46:49.000Laid 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?
02:46:57.000And 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?
02:48:11.000It 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.
02:48:23.000Because 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?
02:49:01.000He does spit out some good propaganda.
02:49:04.000He 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.
02:49:12.000Yeah, but you got to know the real stats of like how many of them feel stuck.
02:49:16.000Because 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.
02:49:28.000I 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.
02:49:45.000But 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!
02:50:02.000And 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.
02:50:44.000I 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.
02:50:51.000Okay, so we need to figure out a way to, you know, have these things...
02:50:55.000You 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?
02:51:10.000I 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.
02:51:21.000Texas is great and Austin is particularly great because it's a progressive minded city that's surrounded by red states.
02:51:28.000There's a t-shirt that says keep Austin weird and surrounded.
02:51:33.000There's something about being surrounded by the rest of the real fucking Texas, Texas people.
02:51:39.000Even the progressives here are more reasonable.
02:51:43.000Whatever 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.
02:51:58.000California was like radical leftism and then If you were a conservative, you had to hide it.
02:52:04.000Or you're a Nazi, or you live in Orange County.
02:52:07.000There's like certain places where the conservatives thrived.
02:52:12.000But 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.
02:53:20.000When 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.
02:54:48.000They think this ideology is a kinder, more inclusive, more gentle.
02:54:52.000But the consequences of the way they're enacting laws and allowing people to ruin everything around them, that is real financial consequences.
02:55:02.000Yeah, in the parasitic mind, I actually talk about the fact that all of those parasitic ideas start with a noble goal.
02:55:10.000And then in the pursuit of that noble goal, things go awry.
02:56:53.000Sorry, they jumped out of the car before this happened, or they're in the car?
02:56:56.000As 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.
03:00:58.000But 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.
03:01:10.000It's very different than going into a cool place when it's hot out.
03:02:38.000Well, 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.
03:04:09.000According 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.
03:05:42.000It's weird where people try to categorize people.
03:05:46.000And 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.
03:06:03.000And 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?
03:06:24.000And 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.
03:06:36.000Like, you know, wait a minute, you know, the Godfather's got some points here.
03:06:43.000And your new book is available right now, as of today.
03:06:46.000Unfortunately, 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.
03:06:54.000The Sad Truth About Happiness, Eight Secrets to Leading the Good Life.