The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 380. A Resurgence of Vision ｜ Vivek Ramaswamy

00:00:00.960 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone watching and listening.

00:01:11.540 Today I'm speaking to author, entrepreneur, and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:01:17.980 We discuss his ongoing campaign, the long-growing hunger in the general population for depth in political discussion,

00:01:27.520 the dire need, the necessity for a renewed American vision,

00:01:31.340 and how Vivek plans to strip the Washington administrative agencies of their unconstitutional powers.

00:01:38.380 All right, Mr. Ramaswamy, we said about four months ago, which was the last time we talked,

00:01:44.500 that we would talk in about four months, and here it is.

00:01:48.460 I was very interested, after contemplating our last conversation, in staying in touch with you,

00:01:55.800 at least in part, to get more insight into what it's actually like to be on the campaign trail.

00:02:01.420 And so, now you've been hard at it. How long it's got to be?

00:02:04.620 How long have you actually been campaigning now?

00:02:07.600 Well, it was the last week of February that we began.

00:02:10.460 So, it's been just a little bit over four months, about close to five months.

00:02:14.480 Right, right. So, what have you learned?

00:02:18.620 Well, one of the things I've learned is actually one of the more surprising expectations

00:02:23.840 is that the political consultant class at the start of this campaign

00:02:27.560 had a concern about my style that I think they still continue to have today,

00:02:34.740 which is the advice they give me is to dumb it down,

00:02:38.480 that this is no longer the era of writing books.

00:02:42.860 As you know, I mean, you've written more prolifically than I have,

00:02:46.620 but the last few years I've been in a stage of life where I've been writing books,

00:02:50.540 examining issues with depth.

00:02:52.140 I think the threats to liberty are complex, and I've been explaining them.

00:02:55.500 And so, what they said is, when you need to get used to the political mindset,

00:02:59.780 people don't have that kind of attention span.

00:03:01.780 They need to be distilled into bullet points,

00:03:05.220 dumb it down when you need to, or nobody's going to listen to you.

00:03:09.560 What I have found is that I have been at my worst when I'm doing that,

00:03:13.860 and I've been at my best when I'm more or less ignoring that advice.

00:03:19.220 And that's less about me, Dr. Peterson.

00:03:22.880 That's actually deeply encouraging about the voter base in this country.

00:03:28.900 I'm talking to voters that go beyond the traditional Republican primary base,

00:03:32.920 but everything that I'm saying here applies to the traditional Republican primary base as well.

00:03:38.600 I think that our voters today are hungry for depth, actually,

00:03:46.240 in a way that they may have never been.

00:03:49.100 And why do I say they may have never been?

00:03:51.820 Well, I mean, these political consultants are getting their conventional wisdom from somewhere. 1.00

00:03:55.520 I assume it's from past experience and not just raw stupidity. 0.99

00:03:59.740 I think that they must be judging from prior eras. 0.99

00:04:02.540 And at least today, I will give you my sense.

00:04:04.820 You put your finger on two things that I think are of crucial importance.

00:04:09.640 You know, one of the things we talked about the last time,

00:04:12.160 you said that you weren't going to have someone else write your speeches.

00:04:16.220 You said you weren't going to use a teleprompter.

00:04:18.260 You were going to say what you thought.

00:04:19.960 Now, this is what I've watched happen to a number of people that I know quite well.

00:04:24.580 They get, they lack confidence in their own ability,

00:04:28.500 in their own capacity to judge the political context.

00:04:32.980 And they hire political consultants.

00:04:35.960 And the political consultants claim to be political consultants.

00:04:39.980 But my sense with political consultants is that they're like money managers.

00:04:44.720 If they could manage money, they'd be rich.

00:04:47.160 And if political consultants knew anything about politics, they'd be running themselves.

00:04:51.100 And they always do the say the same thing.

00:04:53.560 They say just what you said, which is, well, people aren't very bright.

00:04:57.300 They don't have a very long attention span.

00:04:59.320 You have to dumb it down, which shows you exactly what they think of people.

00:05:03.760 And it makes you wonder too, just exactly who they want to dumb down for.

00:05:07.900 Like it might be for the people, but it might be for them. 0.94

00:05:10.600 And it's canned advice.

00:05:12.280 And then you said, you know, that you found when you did that,

00:05:15.660 that that's when you went astray and you fell off course.

00:05:18.920 And that's what I've seen happen to the other people I've watched do this.

00:05:22.140 And, you know, I don't dumb what I say down ever.

00:05:27.420 And people watch it online and lots of people say, well, you know,

00:05:31.140 I had to listen to this two or three times and I had to look up some of the words.

00:05:34.900 But I'm pretty thrilled that I'm not being talked down to.

00:05:38.340 And I learned something.

00:05:40.120 And so I think all of that's a lie.

00:05:43.040 I think it's mendacious.

00:05:44.160 And I also think this is more situational that it's a hangover from the television era because

00:05:50.760 television, yeah, right, right.

00:05:52.780 Because you had television produced fragmented attention because you could only,

00:05:57.580 you could only get a 30 second soundbite and you couldn't assume that your audience was following you.

00:06:03.220 But that's not true online and not true in the podcasts.

00:06:07.780 So that's very interesting.

00:06:09.860 That's actually a great point is that in a certain sense, it's easy to just blame the

00:06:14.420 political consultants, but they may be playing to the medium of communication.

00:06:18.480 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:06:20.260 So they produce 30 second TV ads.

00:06:22.900 That is what they do.

00:06:24.160 Literally, you have to say it in 30 seconds.

00:06:25.960 And the final one of those 30 seconds has to be paid for by, you know, X, Y, Z.

00:06:30.720 So that is already where they begin.

00:06:33.140 And even TV hits that are unpaid ads, and we haven't been doing very much TV paid ads at all.

00:06:38.280 One of the things I'm learning is that actually is probably, certainly at this stage of the

00:06:42.320 campaign, a horrendous waste of money.

00:06:44.880 Absolutely, absolutely.

00:06:46.260 I mean, it doesn't make any sense.

00:06:47.300 But even the three, four minute TV hits, it's a bastardized form of the truth.

00:06:54.520 And, you know, I do think, especially in this moment we live in, the threats to liberty are

00:07:01.100 complex.

00:07:02.200 They do not present themselves in one bad guy and one good guy.

00:07:05.940 In fact, I think one of the mistakes that the Republican Party makes, and I see this

00:07:10.360 when I go to party events in particular, you know, there will be a lot of signs that will

00:07:14.320 say, fire Biden, you know, and then the pledge that the Republican Party has asked people

00:07:20.580 to sign is called the beat, to make it out of the debate stage, which I will sign as a

00:07:25.140 condition for going on the debate stage.

00:07:26.780 But it's called the Beat Biden Pledge.

00:07:29.180 And it's so reductionist, right?

00:07:32.780 Like, you know, the entire party apparatus is focused on one man, not because I have any

00:07:38.540 great feelings about this man.

00:07:39.540 I don't. 0.83

00:07:39.820 I think he's an awful president.

00:07:41.020 But the deeper point is he's barely the president.

00:07:43.680 It's a managerial class that's actually pulling the strings.

00:07:47.440 And we can get into the substance of that.

00:07:49.520 But that gets back to the reductionist form on TV or if the political consultants are giving

00:07:54.740 you the advice and you see this, just listen to the other candidates in this race.

00:07:58.220 It's almost as though they're there, as they tell them to do, stay on message.

00:08:02.440 And that message is how we defeat Joe Biden and the radical Biden agenda, as though these

00:08:07.920 were words uttered by the same carbon copy printer that was served up to all of the candidates.

00:08:13.780 I think it in some literal sense was the same carbon copy that was served up to all the

00:08:17.720 candidates.

00:08:18.020 But then, you know, the people, but the good news is you might think, you know, in a less

00:08:24.180 optimistic version of the world that the politicians speaking like this has a dumbing down effect

00:08:31.220 on the people.

00:08:33.700 And what I see, and I think this is encouraging, certainly in the on the ground events that

00:08:39.120 we're doing now, are these millions of people?

00:08:41.840 No, but these are maybe a few hundred or at a big event, a few thousand people at a time

00:08:46.600 and at a small event, maybe 50 in roomfuls of that size.

00:08:52.120 People aren't falling for it, right?

00:08:54.460 Their eyes will glaze over.

00:08:56.100 And then the questions I get from the grassroots audience base, I mean, they're like the questions

00:09:02.040 I get from you, very different from what I would get on cable television on a given night

00:09:08.020 of the week.

00:09:08.580 And so this is deeply encouraging that I think years, I think the last decade of the public

00:09:15.060 knowing that they have been lied to, systematically lied to by the legacy media, I think has

00:09:22.020 inculcated a deep sense of curiosity, intellectual curiosity, skepticism.

00:09:29.320 You know, I think the mainstream media will now complain that that creates conspiracy theories.

00:09:33.780 Many of these conspiracy theories end up being correct.

00:09:36.380 Some of them may not be correct, but there's still the right spirit of being skeptical of what

00:09:41.540 you're fed such that individual people across this country, college degree or not, are asking

00:09:47.920 some of the most intelligent questions I've heard, more intelligent questions about central

00:09:52.820 bank digital currencies than I will get from my former colleagues on Wall Street, more detailed

00:09:58.360 questions about the relationship between the US and the UN than I might get in a standard

00:10:03.860 foreign policy briefing from somebody who's been giving those briefings for 30 years.

00:10:08.240 And so I think this is actually deeply encouraging, actually, to say that, you know, part of the

00:10:15.440 reason, as I often say, right, if you have a people who are sheep, a government behaves 1.00

00:10:22.100 like wolves.

00:10:22.980 Well, when those people are not behaving like sheep anymore, when they're questioning what

00:10:27.960 not only their government, but their media and their political class are feeding them, this

00:10:33.400 is a unique moment.

00:10:34.320 And this is where I've maybe, I wouldn't say shifted the messaging, I've discovered the

00:10:39.540 core messaging of this campaign in the last three to four months.

00:10:43.380 Kind of what was in my heart at the start, I'm now able to articulate.

00:10:47.440 We live in a 1776 moment, that's what I think.

00:10:50.360 It's like a moment of the American Revolution, that's what I feel in the air.

00:10:53.620 Well, the other thing that's worth thinking about on the television front is that you don't

00:10:58.420 want to underestimate the degree to which network TV and legacy media as such is really entertainment.

00:11:05.740 And so part of the, well, that's exactly it.

00:11:08.980 So, you know, so that it's politics as spectacle and part of what you're being called upon to

00:11:14.640 act out as a legacy media politician is the, is politician as actor, right?

00:11:21.120 You should be playing the part of the politician.

00:11:22.940 And, and television, because it's primarily an entertainment medium, demands that.

00:11:28.580 But that doesn't mean that that's what the public wants on the political front.

00:11:32.480 And I think, you know, you talked about this being a 1776 moment.

00:11:36.520 And I know Lincoln wasn't around in 1776.

00:11:39.280 But, you know, people used to listen to Abraham Lincoln deliver two-hour speeches, right?

00:11:44.560 And they'd be standing there in the hot sun while he was orating.

00:11:47.600 And one of the things I've also really noticed, Vivek, and this is interesting, you know, very

00:11:52.560 few people buy books.

00:11:55.180 It's a, it's a luxury market or it's an elite market.

00:11:58.480 But the audio book industry has exploded and lots and lots of people listen to long form

00:12:05.580 podcasts.

00:12:06.720 And I, they're not necessarily people who read, but it also looks to me, and this could easily

00:12:11.580 be the case that maybe 10 or 20 times as many people can listen to complex ideas as can read

00:12:18.360 them.

00:12:19.920 And so-

00:12:20.380 I think so.

00:12:21.620 Well, it might be the case.

00:12:22.880 We don't know, right?

00:12:23.640 Because it's a technological revolution, these long form podcasts.

00:12:26.420 And we don't really know what the significance of it is.

00:12:28.920 Although we do know that the most popular journalist in the world, and that's definitely Joe Rogan,

00:12:34.820 is a long form podcaster.

00:12:36.540 And his podcasts regularly run three hours.

00:12:39.160 So obviously people don't have a short attention span.

00:12:42.660 You know, I think that there's a couple interesting hypotheses of what's going on here.

00:12:48.260 One is there might just be a real scientific understanding that this has revealed, which

00:12:53.280 is everyone might have, I think I have, you know, if this is true for everyone, it's definitely

00:12:58.340 going to be true of me, maybe a low level dyslexia, right?

00:13:02.480 Dyslexia might not be a, just like a condition for just a scarce few people, that there's something

00:13:08.380 about the way that our eyes process information that's just a little bit behind where most

00:13:12.760 people are on where their ears process information.

00:13:16.340 But I think that there's something deeper going on in our moment.

00:13:19.760 And I think it's not a coincidence that we see the rise of this podcasting form at a moment

00:13:26.060 in our history when there's a demand for it.

00:13:29.020 And why is there a demand for it?

00:13:30.380 And I think there is a deep hunger for human connectivity, direct disintermediated human

00:13:38.980 to human connectivity.

00:13:40.580 And the reason I say, I think that's closer to the flame is that I see an excitement, Dr.

00:13:46.640 Peterson, when I'm going to these events.

00:13:48.360 I mean, I was in whatever, a few days ago in Iowa, in a barn, in a small town of just a

00:13:53.260 couple hundred people.

00:13:54.920 There were a couple hundred people in the barn.

00:13:57.380 Literally, it was as though everybody in the town came to the meeting that we were having

00:14:01.700 in that barn.

00:14:03.200 And I think it's because we live in a moment where people are starved.

00:14:08.880 We talked about this last time for purpose and meaning and identity, but people are also

00:14:12.820 starved for a disintermediated relationship with their fellow citizens and human beings.

00:14:20.320 And so there's something about hearing the voice, especially if it's the voice of the

00:14:25.340 person who actually wrote it, right?

00:14:27.100 So I think that's why the audiobooks are more successful when the actual author reads it.

00:14:31.300 It's also the case with the podcasts that they're unscripted, eh?

00:14:35.220 And so I think there's a great difference in listening, even, and this might be one of

00:14:41.440 the ways that a long-form podcast actually has an advantage over a book.

00:14:45.560 You know, I think it's easier, I think you can think more deeply in a book, but I also

00:14:51.380 think it's easier to deceive people because you can craft your lies in a book, but it's

00:14:56.960 very difficult to craft your lies in a spontaneous conversation, right?

00:15:01.140 You get falseness of tone, you get awkwardness of body posture, you can tell when people are

00:15:06.800 delivering a soundbite.

00:15:08.460 You know, and I think part of the reason that people like Rogan, and Lex Friedman's a good

00:15:12.060 example too, Friedman, is that the reason that they're so popular is because they are

00:15:17.160 genuine.

00:15:18.160 The same thing is true with Russell Brand.

00:15:20.340 You know, I mean, he's got more of a trickster shtick and he's a comedian, but of course,

00:15:23.820 Rogan was a comedian too.

00:15:25.460 But it's, and that is a form of disintermediated interaction.

00:15:30.100 And I do think that it's the antithesis of the crafted Hillary Clinton political class 1.00

00:15:36.280 message.

00:15:36.780 It's part of the reason that Donald Trump was also successful and it is something that

00:15:41.320 makes itself available to people like you.

00:15:44.800 And Kennedy has been doing this very effectively too, who are using the new media.

00:15:49.080 Pierre Polyev, the conservative leader in Canada, has also done a very good job of that.

00:15:52.920 It's direct to voter communication.

00:15:55.340 And I think your comments that the time is calling for that because people are tired of

00:16:00.340 being manipulated by large, what gigantic enterprises, corporate or government alike.

00:16:05.820 They want to see the real thing and they want to hear it because they can tell if it's

00:16:09.900 real then, you know, and, and Trump definitely capitalized on that.

00:16:14.100 You know, he, he, he, he didn't use the podcast format, although he used Twitter quite effectively,

00:16:18.980 but he capitalized on that.

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00:17:59.380 Certainly in 2016, he did.

00:18:02.700 Yes.

00:18:03.060 And, you know, I mean, I think even large-scale rallies of being there in person, there's,

00:18:07.520 you know, in some ways, I would say that if I go to go up the chain, I would say there's

00:18:12.680 no substitute for being in person, live in a room with even no screens or algorithms

00:18:19.620 in the air between us with a large group of people who are your direct consumers of your

00:18:24.560 message.

00:18:24.960 And that's what the part of this campaign I'm enjoying the most.

00:18:28.240 Next best to that are actual unscripted long-form conversations where you're not reading speeches

00:18:35.040 into a teleprompter.

00:18:35.980 It's not a three-minute hit.

00:18:37.240 You know, context like the conversation we're having now, and I've invested more time in

00:18:41.680 that just because I hope it's certainly effective as a campaign.

00:18:45.500 We'll find out that part later.

00:18:47.340 But I am rejuvenated as the best version of myself when I'm actually able to speak truth

00:18:53.380 without doing it in some sort of artificially constrained format.

00:18:57.480 Then you go to actually TV hits, which are a true bastardization of reality, and then you

00:19:03.220 get to the ultimate bastardization, which is a 30-second straight-to-camera TV ad, which

00:19:07.580 is where the most money will actually get spent on this campaign.

00:19:11.400 So one of the things I've learned is I don't yet have a strong view on what the political

00:19:19.280 snakes and ladders will be on mapping a path to victory, but actually that might just be

00:19:25.200 the path to victory, and I'm going to stick to that, and that's one of the things I've

00:19:29.240 learned in this campaign.

00:19:30.840 I've reviewed the empirical literature looking at campaign spending and its relationship

00:19:36.320 to campaign success, and as far as I can tell, there's no relationship at all.

00:19:41.440 I think part of what also happens-

00:19:42.300 That's encouraging.

00:19:43.660 Well, I also think what happens is, that's especially true for incumbents, by the way.

00:19:47.920 There's a small effect of advertising spending for challengers, but it's not very big, and

00:19:52.540 it certainly doesn't justify the magnitude of spending.

00:19:55.500 And I think part of what's also happened to the political consultant class is that Democrat

00:20:00.080 and Republican alike, they've been in bed with the political advertisers and the big

00:20:04.680 media corporations for like six decades.

00:20:07.340 And so the political consultants tell you to craft your campaign in a manner that will

00:20:11.520 maximize your spending in the legacy media format.

00:20:15.000 But there's no evidence that that works, by the way.

00:20:18.340 So, but that's the pipeline.

00:20:20.680 It's actually fascinating you say that, because maybe you've studied that empirical literature

00:20:24.380 more than I have.

00:20:25.880 Here's what I will tell you in the last election cycle of a Republican primary, and then this

00:20:30.340 one as well.

00:20:30.980 So, in 2015, around this time, you could look back at the data in the second half of 2015.

00:20:38.400 How much was each candidate spending per percentage point they had in the polls?

00:20:44.480 So, for Jeb Bush and Scott Walker and a bunch of these other guys last time around, it was

00:20:49.820 millions of dollars per percentage point in the polls.

00:20:54.380 For Donald Trump, it was in the tens of thousands, the thousands of dollars is what we're talking

00:20:59.320 about in terms of paid advertising per percentage point.

00:21:02.140 Now, we look at it this time around, and I find this encouraging, suggests to me we're

00:21:07.160 on the right track, where, again, you look at the candidates in this race, if you count

00:21:11.260 their super PAC dollars that are spending money on ads, millions of dollars per percentage

00:21:16.320 point in the polls.

00:21:17.900 For me, it's, again, in the tens of thousands.

00:21:20.580 We're not spending boatloads of money, barely any money, on paid ads on TV or otherwise.

00:21:25.960 And I think at this stage of a race, it does say something about, you know, you're on the

00:21:32.860 product market fit, regardless of whether or not you're using the money to prop it up.

00:21:37.340 I do think there will come a point as a realistic matter at some point in this race, and it did

00:21:42.940 for Trump last time around as well.

00:21:44.660 It's just, you know, part of the pill you have to swallow is just the sheer scale of reaching

00:21:51.640 still the many people in this country who don't access YouTube or long-form podcasts

00:21:56.660 that still are viewing the linear medium of television, and it does skew to be an older

00:22:01.880 voter base, that, yes, that is going to be, there's going to be a time and place for that

00:22:04.960 in this campaign.

00:22:06.220 But that's almost by the time you get there, you've already won if you're going in the

00:22:11.060 right order.

00:22:11.820 And so that's the way I'm viewing this, too, is at some point we're going to need the

00:22:15.100 mega money to probably pipe this all the way through.

00:22:17.700 But I'm pushing that as far out down the line as we can, and I am more confident than ever

00:22:24.420 that actually an outsider like me, me in particular, in this race, can absolutely defeat the odds

00:22:32.320 and win an election just as Donald Trump did last time around.

00:22:35.820 And it says as much about the improved pipes that we have, thanks to new media that disintermediates

00:22:42.140 television, but it says something even deeper, Dr. Peterson, about the people.

00:22:45.780 The people can tell when they're being lied to.

00:22:49.320 And I think that we live in this moment where the government, where the media, where the

00:22:52.960 establishment believes that the people can't handle the truth.

00:22:57.800 It's like Jack Nicholson at the end of A Few Good Men, right?

00:23:00.840 You can't handle the truth.

00:23:02.500 I think the people live in a moment today, and it's the voice that I'm representing on their

00:23:08.440 behalf, on our behalf, to say that, you know what, we the people can handle the truth about

00:23:15.660 COVID, about the Nashville Shooter Manifesto, about the Hunter Biden laptop story, about what

00:23:21.240 really happened on January 6th, about what really happened over the course of the last

00:23:25.900 year of vaccine mandate policies.

00:23:27.960 We can handle the truth.

00:23:29.360 Sometimes it's ugly, but just give us the truth.

00:23:32.060 And I think that that's something that if a good thing has happened over the last 10 years

00:23:37.680 through the Trump administration and otherwise, I think we have a populace, a population that

00:23:42.100 was trained on knowing that they have been lied to, which means that they are badly starved,

00:23:50.000 hungry for somebody, human being, a medium, et cetera, where they know they're at least able

00:23:56.300 to get the truth or be able to tell the difference if they're being lied to or not.

00:24:00.280 And I think that is a powerful moment that we live in.

00:24:05.080 I mean, how special it is to be alive in a moment like this.

00:24:07.720 It's like if you were alive in 1775 or the spring of 1776, you'd have a lot of reasons

00:24:13.000 to be upset about a tyrannical government.

00:24:15.600 But what did they do back then?

00:24:17.500 It was a special time, a unique time to be alive.

00:24:21.320 I think we're in one of those moments where it is actually a pretty unique time to be alive

00:24:26.960 if we're willing to open our eyes and see it that way.

00:24:30.820 And then when you have a bunch of other politicians who preach about the virtues of incremental

00:24:34.540 reform or I'm going to reform X, Y, or Z, I almost don't use the word reform anymore.

00:24:41.240 I think the real choice in this election, in this moment, is do you want reform or do you want

00:24:52.880 revolution?

00:24:55.140 And I stand on the side of revolution, actually.

00:24:58.900 I stand on the side of the American revolution.

00:25:00.400 I'm not talking about violence or anything like this, but I'm talking about a revolution

00:25:03.920 of those 1776 ideals, a revival of the American revolution itself.

00:25:09.520 And in some ways, I'm far more optimistic today.

00:25:14.100 Ironically, you would have thought it might have gone the other direction.

00:25:15.800 I would have thought it would have gone the other direction.

00:25:17.340 I'm actually more optimistic today than when I began in late February, than when you and

00:25:23.020 I spoke this March.

00:25:26.020 Because I believe that actually we absolutely are in a revolutionary moment.

00:25:31.560 There's electricity in the air.

00:25:33.160 It is a special time to be alive.

00:25:35.160 And if we're able to awaken the positive instincts that come out of that, boy, do I think good

00:25:40.700 things are going to happen in the next 18 months.

00:25:42.780 And this election is just going to be one of them.

00:25:46.440 Well, obviously, the fact that Kennedy's candidacy is quite popular, as well as Trump's,

00:25:52.720 is an indication that that revolutionary fervor is active.

00:25:56.500 Because Kennedy strikes me as as much of a bull in the China shop on the Democrat front as

00:26:02.680 Trump was on the Republican front.

00:26:05.000 And you, I've been following you regularly on Twitter and watching how you've been being

00:26:09.940 treated in the press.

00:26:10.820 And I want to get back to that at some point.

00:26:12.980 But also, and it's made me curious too, you've talked a fair bit about your skepticism about,

00:26:19.900 let's say, the deep state, you know, about the FBI in particular.

00:26:23.660 And you've put forward some relatively radical propositions.

00:26:27.240 And you just said that you feel that there's a kind of revolutionary fervor in the air,

00:26:31.700 which in some ways is a strange thing for a conservative to say, for a Republican to

00:26:36.160 say.

00:26:36.360 And I know you're more on the libertarian end, if I'm hopefully not putting words in your

00:26:39.980 mouth.

00:26:40.460 But what do you think it is that you're bringing to the table that's in that revolutionary spirit?

00:26:45.660 And how do you defend yourself, do you think, against the danger that, you know, radical

00:26:50.960 change in and of itself, even if it's hypothetically in the proper direction, can, you know, can cause

00:26:56.920 its own brand of trouble, you know, doubt about fundamental institutions and that sort

00:27:01.140 of thing.

00:27:01.400 So what do you think is revolutionary about your approach?

00:27:04.580 And how do you think you can protect yourself against the potential excesses of the necessity

00:27:09.380 for relatively radical change?

00:27:11.660 I think that there are a couple of unique attributes here for me.

00:27:16.980 One is it just does take somebody who comes in as an outsider.

00:27:22.380 You cannot be beholden to the existing system.

00:27:25.500 One of the things that actually constrains the revolutionary impulse, and you could argue

00:27:29.580 whether this is good or bad or neutral, but it's just a fact, is the influence of large

00:27:34.800 donors in the Republican Party.

00:27:37.020 There is a version of the world in which they, I mean, there's an institutionalized function

00:27:42.400 that large donors play, and it's to sort of tame candidates, to get them back on a few

00:27:49.780 set of accepted messages that then become eventually the agenda they use to govern.

00:27:56.960 You could argue that there is a conservative function.

00:28:00.960 They're conserving the status quo in a way that some people may argue is good.

00:28:05.740 I think that there are positives and negatives, but I think the negatives outweigh the positives

00:28:11.560 greatly in the current moment.

00:28:13.560 For whatever it's good, you could debate whether this is good or bad.

00:28:16.200 I am not constrained by that.

00:28:17.760 I'm totally unconstrained by that because I'm not playing the mega super PAC puppet game.

00:28:22.180 I am independent.

00:28:23.260 I have put, now more than the last time that we spoke, I've put over $15 million of my own

00:28:28.700 hard-earned money into this campaign.

00:28:30.720 And we have 70,000-plus small-dollar donors.

00:28:34.800 The online fundraising is now, you know, just digital small-dollar fundraising is now hit

00:28:40.460 a snowball effect where it's just continuing to accelerate day by day.

00:28:43.760 That's what's lifting this campaign up.

00:28:46.260 And so that's one of the constraints that doesn't apply to me.

00:28:49.300 That much, I think, was also true largely of Trump.

00:28:52.380 I think it takes a unique combination, though, because where Trump got tripped up with draining

00:29:00.140 the swamp, gutting the deep state, is what the same members of that managerial class told

00:29:06.120 him when he got into office.

00:29:07.880 They told him lies, but lies that he was forced to believe because he didn't have independent

00:29:12.100 knowledge to know any better, which is that you can't fire civil servants without running

00:29:19.700 afoul of the civil service protections, which are these extensive laws designed to protect

00:29:24.560 individual bureaucrats from firing by the U.S. president.

00:29:28.100 Trump's instincts were in the right place.

00:29:29.660 I actually think he was an excellent president in this regard, but he was not able to implement

00:29:33.720 his own agenda.

00:29:34.620 He was able to expose the problem because the people around him told him a bunch of lies.

00:29:38.920 Why are they lies?

00:29:40.340 Well, my suggestion is read the law.

00:29:42.360 Just those civil service protections, to use one example among hundreds, those civil service

00:29:48.500 protections protect against individual employee firings.

00:29:54.140 They do not apply to mass layoffs on their own terms.

00:29:59.980 The law just doesn't apply to mass layoffs.

00:30:02.120 Mass layoffs are absolutely what I am bringing to the D.C. bureaucracy.

00:30:06.280 I have said that I will lay off over 75% of the federal employee bureaucrat headcount by

00:30:11.960 the end of the first term, 50% by the end of the first year, and we've already offered

00:30:16.840 unprecedented detail on exactly how we will do it, on which of the remaining minority employees

00:30:22.960 in the FBI, minority number of employees, will move to the U.S. Marshals or to the Drug

00:30:28.500 Enforcement Agency or to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which small sliver of the U.S.

00:30:33.400 Department of Education will move to the U.S. Department of Labor so that we neither need

00:30:37.000 an FBI nor a Department of Education, and we can get into those details, but you're asking

00:30:41.480 about a question of personal attribute, and I think that the personal attribute that really

00:30:45.960 matters here is that we need a U.S. president that is at once an outsider to that system,

00:30:53.880 uncaptured, unbeholden by the donor class and the managerial class, but at the same time

00:31:00.400 who has a deep, first personal, bone-deep understanding of how to actually get that job

00:31:09.200 done and a deep understanding of the laws and the constitution of this country.

00:31:15.480 That is what I think is actually a rare combination that I'm bringing to the table.

00:31:19.040 Okay, let me ask you about that because that's very, very complicated. So, you know, first of

00:31:24.400 all, it is the case that in most large-scale institutions, a small number of people do

00:31:30.320 almost all the productive work, right? That's the square root law. Okay, so if you have 10,000

00:31:35.740 employees, 100 of them are doing half the work. Now, we saw a stellar example of that in Musk's

00:31:42.700 takeover of Twitter because he dispensed with about 80% of the employees, and all he did was improve the

00:31:49.540 company. Now, Musk has had extensive experience doing that sort of thing with other companies,

00:31:54.580 and he's obviously able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now, you just made the case that

00:32:00.040 you would like to do the same thing, and you also said that you had a detailed plan to do so,

00:32:04.880 and so what I'm very curious about is how is it that you are, how is it that you believe you will

00:32:11.660 be able to decide who should stay and who should go, and how is it that you've developed this detailed

00:32:18.200 plan? Like, what sort of analysis have you conducted that enables you to determine what

00:32:23.760 should be shrunk and how, and to know that that's going to cause beneficial rather than damaging

00:32:29.060 consequences? So there's something we have going for us here, is that I don't have to start in a

00:32:35.120 vacuum. There is this thing we call the U.S. Constitution, already proven, time-tested, to be the

00:32:41.900 best operating manual for a nation in preserving liberty and human history. That's certainly my view.

00:32:47.320 Well, it turns out that much of the excess we have seen came from running afoul of that operating

00:32:56.000 document. So many of the administrative agencies that were created were created in a manner that

00:33:02.380 Congress actually never gave those agencies the power to wield the power that they do. The Supreme

00:33:08.440 Court has, in the last two years, already begun to recognize that. West Virginia versus EPA,

00:33:13.820 a case where the Supreme Court held that the EPA's regulation, climate-focused regulations on the

00:33:19.540 coal industry, were unconstitutional because we, the people, never gave the government that authority,

00:33:26.940 and Congress, in turn, never gave that authority to this three-letter agency, which nonetheless ran afoul.

00:33:33.880 Well, if those EPA regulations are unconstitutional, then it turns out most of the federal regulations

00:33:41.320 today are also unconstitutional. Turns out most of the employees implementing those regulations are

00:33:47.360 actually unnecessary. So in many ways, I don't think we have to start in some first principles

00:33:54.880 whiteboard of a vacuum and say, how are we going to design and draw this up? That would be a fatal

00:34:01.440 conceit, I think. That would be hubris, I think, designed for failure to think that one man,

00:34:06.060 Elon Musk or myself or anybody else, it's just not going to happen. It's destined for failure.

00:34:12.720 But if you're following a time-tested framework for the operating manual for this nation built,

00:34:18.720 an operating manual built in the shadow of the Declaration of Independence, the greatest mission

00:34:21.940 statement for a free society in human history, well, then I think we actually are doing nothing

00:34:28.080 more than implementing that which is already time-tested and true. And so, you know, I don't want to,

00:34:33.400 you know, short sell myself here on, I mean, I have, I'm 37 years old. I've built multiple,

00:34:39.260 multi-billion dollar companies. I do understand that if somebody works for you and you can't fire

00:34:44.920 them, that means they don't work for you. I understand what meritocratic hiring looks like.

00:34:49.240 You work for them. You're, in some ways, their slave because you're responsible for what they do

00:34:53.400 without any authority to change it. So I understand these principles, but it's not that experience-based,

00:34:59.600 not Donald Trump's, not Musk's, not mine, that could be sufficient to get this right at the level

00:35:06.060 of the nation. It is actually a firm understanding and commitment to the Constitution itself. And that

00:35:14.380 brings me back to that rare combination. You can't rely on your advisors for that. That is not a

00:35:20.160 substitute for saying, okay, I'm bringing executive experience and then I'm going to ask my advisors

00:35:24.480 how it's done within this legal framework and ask the lawyers. And I think that's the difference

00:35:29.540 between me and Trump. And I think that'd be the difference between me or someone like an Elon Musk

00:35:32.880 or anybody else who would be great as a, who is great as a business builder and is a good alternative

00:35:38.560 to the professional political class doing this in Washington, DC. But I think it requires a deep

00:35:45.520 intellectual, historical, principled, understanding, passion for, and commitment

00:35:50.820 to that Constitution to see that through, but not doing it as somebody who's coming in as just a law

00:35:55.900 professor or a lawyer. They're not going to have the skillset to actually, the fortitude to cut and

00:36:02.540 see that through. And that explains why we haven't had leaders to that effect yet, because that is a

00:36:07.060 rare combination. Those skillsets aren't supposed to go together, right? These are different skillsets

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00:37:20.260 Why do they go together in your case? I hope they do. Why do you think they do? What is it about

00:37:31.160 your background and your interests that make it reasonable for you to make the claim that you

00:37:36.240 exist at that intersection between like legal prowess, let's say, and wisdom in relationship

00:37:42.900 to the Constitution and that entrepreneurial bent? What do you have on that front that say

00:37:47.900 Trump doesn't have? Yeah. So the first thing I'll say is I'm not going to claim to be some

00:37:53.680 messiah coming from on high with exactly the prescription. But what called me into this race,

00:37:58.900 I mean, when you and I first started getting to know each other, I would have said we were both

00:38:02.760 nuts if we were thinking about me running for US president. I was driving change in the private

00:38:07.880 sector. I started Strive. I was writing books. That was my calling. So the thing that pulled me in,

00:38:14.040 Dr. Peterson, is that I think I am the best among the lot we have now to actually bring that

00:38:21.620 combination to the White House at a moment where we require it to actually reform that administrative

00:38:27.560 state to gut and bring a revolution to that administrative state that we need a unique

00:38:33.720 combination to actually achieve. Because I watched where Trump fell short. I watched where Trump excelled

00:38:39.040 above his lot. And so that pulled me in. So I will preface everything I'm saying by saying that

00:38:43.740 I'm not going to tell you that I am some messiah and here I have arrived, okay? Far from it.

00:38:49.840 But I do think I'm a product of my experiences. So first of all, I had the privilege of not growing

00:38:57.540 up in money. I had the privilege of actually having to work for what I've achieved. I'm grateful for that.

00:39:04.000 I did not want to be burdened as many of my peers at places like Harvard and Yale were burdened.

00:39:08.520 And I do think it's a burden by the burden of inheritance or by the burden of not having the

00:39:13.240 space to actually achieve and ordain for myself what I would in my career. So I started as a

00:39:19.100 scientist. I was a molecular biologist in the lab in my senior thesis all the way through college.

00:39:25.680 I ended up getting into the world of biotech investing, the commercial side of my brain,

00:39:30.240 right? Finding opportunity where others would not. That led me to really enjoy,

00:39:36.700 I am grateful for this more than boastful of it, just strictly grateful that I was able to find

00:39:41.640 this opportunity to earn extraordinary success for myself by my mid to late 20s. I was in law

00:39:47.840 school simultaneously as I was making tens of millions of dollars as a hedge fund investor

00:39:51.480 by spotting opportunity. And I said, I'm going to take this to the next level.

00:39:55.380 I'm going to start an entire business on finding opportunities to develop medicines that others

00:39:59.160 didn't and built a multi-billion dollar company from scratch.

00:40:02.780 And I think that's different than coming in and just managing and being appointed,

00:40:06.820 rising the managerial ranks of a big corporation, sitting on a bunch of boards, and then plopping

00:40:11.820 yourself into CEO when some guy retires at the age of 70. I built that company from scratch.

00:40:17.500 And so that's one skill set. But actually, it was midway through my career at the hedge fund where I

00:40:23.400 first started that I also have this weird native itch to study law and political philosophy.

00:40:29.960 I'd been so science-centric that I actually told my bosses at the hedge fund, I said,

00:40:33.860 listen, I'm going to take three years off. I'm going to go to law school. I'm actually going to,

00:40:37.580 I'm finding, reading things in my spare time that I would rather do in a more structured setting.

00:40:43.180 Now, I discovered something important there, which is if you're following your passion,

00:40:47.540 good things tend to happen. They said, just keep your job. They gave me far more autonomy on the job.

00:40:53.160 They said, go manage this portfolio yourself and do it from New Haven if you want to.

00:40:56.960 I said, great, we have a deal. And that's what I did. But I, for me, it's less that I have a skill

00:41:04.220 set more than I have had for the last 15 years, a dual passion that has given me experiences both

00:41:09.920 akin to that of many legal academics, which shows up in several of my books, which have been quoted

00:41:15.180 in appellate court opinions in the last three years. But my principal day job has still been as

00:41:20.280 an entrepreneur building enterprises, hiring and firing people accordingly.

00:41:24.580 Right, right. So you're at the intersection of, you're at the intersection of three relatively

00:41:30.440 unique domains of achievement. So you, one on the entrepreneurial front, one on the scientific

00:41:36.780 front and one on the legal front. And so that is, you know, each of those levels of accomplishment

00:41:42.280 are relatively rare and the intersection is relatively staggeringly rare, let's say. How was it,

00:41:48.420 do you think, and why did your interest turn from the scientific to the legal? And what aspects of

00:41:55.680 the legal in particular compelled you? And then how did that transmute into a political interest?

00:42:02.560 Well, I mean, the political interest really is barely an interest at all. I feel like this is a

00:42:07.240 sense of duty that pulled me into this political journey. But all the way through the legal doorstep of

00:42:12.780 it, I guess I'm a person that reasons through principles. Okay. I think that science is actually

00:42:19.400 founded on principles that are iteratively, we hone and we have an approximation of the actual truth

00:42:27.000 of the world. But the scientific method driven by hypothesis driven testing, as opposed to just

00:42:34.500 purely deductive, oh, I observe something and then I decide that that's the state of the world. That's not

00:42:39.280 the way the scientific method works. It's a deeply principled understanding and approximation of the

00:42:45.000 world, right? You form a hypothesis and then you test that hypothesis. You don't just sit and

00:42:49.840 deductively observe the whole time. That's actually not, that's just pure empiricism. That's not the

00:42:53.620 scientific method. And so there's something about that that spoke to me. And I think that was probably

00:42:59.360 why when I started my first major business, Roivant, which was a scientifically founded company, I mean,

00:43:04.640 I personally oversaw the development of five medicines, which are FDA approved today. But

00:43:10.700 the business building piece of it was the first thing I did was with the day one employees, we sat

00:43:16.640 in a room for about six hours and came up with our first draft of what ended up being 20 business

00:43:22.920 principles, right? Here are the principles on which the company would run, right? Value creation in the

00:43:29.660 external world is a sole goal. Everything that happens in these four walls is a means to the end

00:43:33.700 of what happens in the external world. You know, whatever's necessary is always possible. I mean,

00:43:38.900 we went through several iterations of that. And so for me, I think it's just the way that I think and

00:43:44.860 process information. And then that is, I think, part of what drew me in my interest in the law and in the

00:43:52.440 ordering. I think we're a nation deeply built foundationally on the rule of law, not the whims

00:43:59.360 of man. And that's what speaks to me about much of the U.S. Constitution, about the United States

00:44:05.420 of America. And so delving deep into what those principles were became just a passion of mine.

00:44:11.720 It was a side hobby. I mean, the things I was reading in my spare time in my mid-20s, well,

00:44:16.940 you know, I'm a hedge fund, you know, investor. And then, you know, before my career as an entrepreneur,

00:44:22.080 I mean, it's kind of a weird thing for a guy to do in his mid-20s and spend my weekends that way.

00:44:27.180 But that's what helped me discover that I have this separate passion that drew me then to go to

00:44:32.880 Yale for a few years. But it's part of what pulled me back even out of my business career.

00:44:37.960 I ran my business in a way that was tethered to those business principles. I think it's part of

00:44:42.480 what allowed me to have success as an entrepreneur. But even when I felt like, okay, I've developed a

00:44:49.640 drug among other things for prostate cancer. Now there's this cultural cancer that nobody else is 0.95

00:44:55.440 working on. There are other people working on biological cancer. Nobody was working back in

00:44:59.400 2020 on the cultural cancer that I believed I had identified, which was the mixture of this wokeism 0.68

00:45:04.220 with the forces of capitalism back in 2020, when I think this was really still not as well understood

00:45:09.860 as it is today, to say that I'm going to step aside from my job as a biotech CEO to focus on this

00:45:15.040 cultural cancer, but against the backdrop of a legal framework where it feels intuitively like

00:45:19.900 something's gone wrong. It's not obvious that somebody's prosecuting this as a legal violation,

00:45:25.640 but what are the principles enshrined in that law that are violated by what we're actually seeing?

00:45:31.300 So that's what drew me in. And then one thing, you know, that led me to the doorstep of this.

00:45:36.420 You were interested in science as an investigative process. And then when you set up a business,

00:45:43.680 you started to understand that you needed to develop a set of guidelines that were essentially

00:45:49.220 enabling principles, because that's a good way of thinking about principles or rules, rather than

00:45:53.500 as restrictions, as enabling principles. And that attracted your attention to the idea of enabling

00:45:59.740 principles as such. You got deeper into that, particularly on the constitutional front, and that

00:46:05.080 pulled you into the legal domain. And now your claim is that you think that you can, you and your team

00:46:10.820 think that you can use your knowledge of those enabling principles, especially buttressed by your

00:46:15.900 corporate and entrepreneurial experience as a scalpel and a tool of discriminating judgment to,

00:46:24.120 what would you say, recreate, shrink back, and reestablish the managerial state as something

00:46:32.180 more akin to what was envisioned in the Constitution. That's the gist of the argument.

00:46:38.180 That's exactly right. And I think that puts me together in a position to say,

00:46:43.160 okay, now let's just intuitively, there's a lot there, right? So let's just sort of make this

00:46:47.220 intuitive. What would George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and John Jay and Alexander Hamilton

00:46:54.380 and James Madison say, if they were walking the modern American terrain, if they were walking around

00:47:00.600 in Washington DC on a given day, what would they say? Would they be pleased? Would they be proud?

00:47:07.780 Would they be appalled? I think today in many respects, they would be appalled by what they see.

00:47:13.160 And I think their intuitive understanding, that intuition is also part of what I'm reviving here

00:47:19.500 because they're the guys who enshrined that intuition in the form of principles that are

00:47:24.700 in a document known as our US Constitution today. And so for me, I think I share those intuitions.

00:47:30.660 There's the intuitive side of me too, but my skillset is both as an entrepreneur and as somebody who

00:47:36.620 understands principles, including legal principles. And those things don't usually go together.

00:47:42.960 Now, we haven't talked about all the things that I'm awful at, okay? My artistic talents are sparse.

00:47:49.060 I think that everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. But I do think that the unique

00:47:54.960 coincidence of those talents is something that it so happens this moment calls for when we think about

00:48:04.220 who we actually need in the White House to take us to the next level. And I think there's something

00:48:08.580 encouraging about the moment we live in and the challenges we face. It's not Congress. It's driving

00:48:13.160 the administrative state. And that's where my focus is as well, because I think that's where the skill

00:48:17.060 set will be most useful. Well, you could see that Trump was attractive to people because of his

00:48:22.700 entrepreneurial background and the fact that he was an outsider and his appeal to people's sense that

00:48:29.120 things had developed at the managerial state level far too far and that that needed to be disrupted.

00:48:36.000 But Trump was lacking, arguably, in political experience and potentially an administrative skill,

00:48:44.060 although he had been at the head of multiple successful enterprises and so obviously had some

00:48:50.300 administrative skill. I think people are attracted to DeSantis in part because he has that toughness of

00:48:56.560 temperament that's characteristic of Trump, but has a better track record in terms of administrative

00:49:03.160 ability. And your claim is that you have an interesting intersection of all those abilities,

00:49:10.080 right? There's an entrepreneurial ability. There's an administrative ability, but then there's also that

00:49:16.080 legal depth in relationship to your understanding of constitutional principles that gives you an additional

00:49:22.540 edge. So let me, okay. So let me ask you something about temptation because, you know, I've watched

00:49:28.620 lots of people. I think there's one more dimension to this. There's just one more dimension to this that

00:49:32.460 I think is important as I was hearing you summarize this. And I just wanted to pause because I think it

00:49:37.320 might actually be the most important of all is I do think there is a fundamental difference between

00:49:44.440 either running an enterprise or even running a state as a governor. That is a requirement of

00:49:51.440 certainly the U.S. president in the moment we live in today is I think an ability to articulate

00:49:58.660 and deeply believe in a vision of what it means to be a citizen of this nation. So take everything you

00:50:08.580 laid out. Yes. I think you summarized it beautifully, but I think that that is in some ways insufficient.

00:50:16.240 It's a little bit still too small because I think that's still like a resume test. And we all are

00:50:22.320 Trump, DeSantis, myself, and, you know, we're in the top three now in the Republican national

00:50:26.640 polling, but the others too, I would put in the same category interviewing for a job with the American

00:50:31.360 public. So, you know, I feel like I'm in a job interview with the American public. So are the others.

00:50:35.600 We should treat it that way and not take the public for granted. So that's why I'm

00:50:39.000 treating this like an interview. But I think there's a third element that goes beyond just that

00:50:43.740 descriptive and interestingly detailed account that you and I just went through

00:50:49.580 is this more foundational ability to articulate and believe in a vision of where we are going.

00:50:57.220 And I think this is a big difference for me, and this is a generational difference. I think,

00:51:01.320 Dr. Peterson, I think this is what is allowing us to reach young people in this campaign in an

00:51:07.740 unprecedented way for the Republican Party. Part of that's we're using podcasts, but part of that is

00:51:12.040 just the message, is that young people are, as you and I have talked about last time, hungry for a

00:51:18.740 cause, hungry for direction and purpose. And what I see in the rest of the Republican Party, I'm not

00:51:24.180 going to speak about any other field here, but the Republican field, what I see is a group of people

00:51:30.080 who are habitually running from something. I am in this race to start leading us to something,

00:51:40.120 offering an actual affirmative vision of our own. And I think we badly require that in this moment in

00:51:49.060 our national history. So to take everything we talked about, the competence, the diverse skill set

00:51:54.300 from being enterprising to having deep knowledge of the law on actually the unprecedented detail we've laid

00:52:00.020 out on how to reorganize and gut the administrative state, all of that. But I think the missing fuel that

00:52:08.500 will allow me to see that through, but also revive a missing national identity is having a clear answer to

00:52:14.060 the question of what it means to be an American. We talk about the American Revolution. What were those

00:52:18.680 ideals of the American Revolution? How do we revive them in the present? And I think we're seeing that

00:52:24.660 in some ways where, look, again, in the Republican debate stage, one of the requirements was 40,000

00:52:30.000 unique donors, right? The former vice president of the U.S. just met that requirement, I'm told, in the

00:52:35.320 last 24 hours. We're at over 70,000 unique donors. I've never had a political donor in my life.

00:52:43.900 We didn't begin this campaign with any donor lists. But the beauty of this is 40% of those donors

00:52:51.180 are first-time ever donors to the GOP in any form, and most of them are relatively young, actually.

00:53:02.140 So that says something about one of the missing gaps. When I think the most important thing that I want

00:53:08.100 to be saying that I did for this country when I leave office in January of 2033, that's eight years

00:53:15.700 from now. My older son won't even be in high school yet. Probably the most important thing I want to say

00:53:20.380 is that we revived national pride in my two sons and their generation. And I think it does take someone

00:53:29.760 probably of a different generation. I'm the youngest person ever to run for president in a major political

00:53:35.360 party, but not just of a different generation, but of a different generational view that we're

00:53:43.520 actually standing for an affirmative vision of our own rather than just tearing down the vision of the

00:53:50.080 other side. And so I just wanted to pause to say that because I think of all the things we talked

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00:55:16.620 Okay, well, I think that's a good addition, and I'll return to the issue of temptation via the root of

00:55:22.880 youth, I think. So let's talk about that vision of the future. So this is going to be a bit of a convoluted

00:55:27.660 question, because I have to wander around a bit to answer it. So I've been involved in this enterprise

00:55:32.320 that's established in the UK, but has roots in Australia and Europe and the US and Canada. We're trying to

00:55:41.340 formulate a positive vision of the future, and one of our principles, let's say, our suppositions, is that if

00:55:48.780 your vision of the future is predicated on fear, so it's an apocalyptic vision, let's say, and you're using

00:55:55.160 that fear as a means to garner power to yourself, you're not to be trusted. And this is happening

00:56:02.220 most particularly, I would say, on the climate apocalypse front. And I suspect that there are any

00:56:08.420 number of existential crises awaiting us in the future, as there always are. But my sense is that

00:56:14.900 if you use any given crisis as the means of instilling a demoralizing fear, and the consequence

00:56:23.740 of that is that you're gathering power to yourself, you're not to be trusted as an advocate of the

00:56:28.740 people, and that you should be putting forward a positive vision. And we're trying to differentiate

00:56:33.440 that and delineate it. And we would like to see cheap energy. We would like to see a multidimensional

00:56:39.180 approach to environmental maintenance. We would like to see, what would you say, a re-established

00:56:44.900 commitment to the fundaments of the minimal necessary family. We're not very fond of corporate

00:56:50.380 gigantism. But most importantly, I would say, of all those things, is that we believe that we can, that

00:56:58.620 people, that we can all be offered a positive vision of the future so that we have something to

00:57:04.440 strive for, that's motivating and hopeful, instead of being enjoined to cower and destroy our own

00:57:13.460 ambitions because we're something approximating a planet-destroying force. Now, I know that the

00:57:19.500 typical young man in grade 12 now is more likely to be conservative than liberal. It's not true of

00:57:26.220 young women. The tide is turning on the generational front. And I think it is because young people have

00:57:32.720 been force-fed so much apocalyptic doom that they've really had enough of it. And I see this in

00:57:40.240 your tweets and your communications, too, that you're trying to outline a positive vision. And you've

00:57:46.020 laid out some of the principles. And you talk a little bit about the return to constitutional

00:57:51.480 principles. But if you saw a renewed America and, by implication, a renewed West, what would that

00:57:58.440 renewal look like? Like, where would we be in five years or 10 years that's different from now? And

00:58:03.520 how might you move us towards that? I think it is an ordering of our society on things that have

00:58:11.560 always grounded successful, flourishing societies throughout our human history. So the left preys on

00:58:19.260 this vacuum of identity with race, gender, sexuality, and then now what you just mentioned, climate.

00:58:26.080 It's serial. Once the climate farce is, and I do think that much of the agenda around it is a farce,

00:58:34.040 once that's revealed and untenable, just as when the COVID-19 pandemic passed, the residual climatism

00:58:41.840 filled the void, once this farce passes and people like yourself, myself, Alex Epstein, and

00:58:47.040 Bjorn Lomborg and others are playing roles in exposing this, it'll be something else that fills the void.

00:58:52.620 I don't know what it is, but it'll be something. Now, I think that what I see right now is a lacking

00:58:59.500 in a conservative movement that becomes too, what should I say, lazy, too satisfied,

00:59:11.900 complacent, probably complacent is the right word, with just criticizing that vision and the endless

00:59:18.960 hypocrisies in the nature of how uninspiring it is, and it is uninspiring, but just criticizing it is

00:59:24.400 also uninspiring. And so I want us talking more and acting more on ordering a country, a nation, a society

00:59:33.360 grounded in the value of each individual, a member who is a member of a family,

00:59:40.940 who is a family that is embedded in a nation with commitments to that nation.

00:59:46.700 And yes, I think a revival of a belief that we are one nation under God. That doesn't mean a single

00:59:52.820 religion or a single, you know, religious orthodoxy pushed from on high. In fact, I think

00:59:58.460 it shouldn't be so. But broadly, individual, family, nation, God, as an affirmative alternative to

01:00:07.040 race, gender, sexuality, and climate. And I think that that vision is not only more innately inspiring

01:00:14.620 to young people, to all people, it is grounded in truth, right? We have distinct sources of our

01:00:22.640 identity that we as lost human beings, we as lost human beings who wander in that wilderness,

01:00:28.920 biblically wander in that desert. We need something to ground us. And I think that reviving the value of

01:00:36.360 the individual through hard work, and the creation of what you create through hard work,

01:00:42.480 and the ability to be proud of that. Now, I was talking yesterday to two entrepreneurs who are

01:00:47.240 themselves already young, actually, not much older than me, multi-billionaires who have, are now on

01:00:53.700 their next creation. I asked him, what motivates you? I think he didn't have an answer other than to

01:00:58.220 say hard work, actually. I believe in hard work as an ethic, and I believe in creation. That's great.

01:01:03.000 I said, I need your help in bottling that up, and I need to put that in the water across this country.

01:01:09.120 But the value of hard work, the value of the family, that there is truth to having a commitment

01:01:16.820 to the unit of two parents in the house with a commitment to their children first. The idea

01:01:23.340 that, you know what, I will take care of my family first before I worry about the starving child in the

01:01:31.000 middle of the Congo. Not to say that there's something wrong with going and helping the

01:01:33.760 starving child in the middle of the Congo, but to say that there's an ordering. I am a self.

01:01:37.900 That that means something. I work hard and create something in the world, and I am proud of that,

01:01:42.500 and I am an individual agent. Not riding some tectonic plate of group identity, but there's only

01:01:47.840 ever one you, Dr. Peterson. There's only ever one me. There's only ever one anyone. And that there's

01:01:53.620 inherent value as the individual. The same thing I'll say is that my first commitments are to my

01:01:57.960 family, the children who I brought into this world, the wife with whom I am raising those children,

01:02:03.620 the parents who brought me into this world. Those are my commitments. And then around that,

01:02:08.160 I have commitments as a citizen to this nation that I will go and visit the south side of Chicago

01:02:15.060 or Kensington in the middle of Philadelphia before I go take pictures with some child in Myanmar so I 0.99

01:02:23.000 can post it on my social media account and feel better about myself. I'll get to Myanmar later.

01:02:27.240 I'll get to the Congo later, but I'm a citizen of this nation, and that that means something to me

01:02:33.540 too. So I take care of myself through my own hard work and dedication. I take care of my family.

01:02:39.080 I take care of my nation, that I'm proud of these things, that I believe that we're a nation

01:02:44.400 under God. And then, yes, as human beings, we are all equal in the eyes of each other because

01:02:51.440 in the Christian tradition or Judeo-Christian tradition, you'll say we're made in the image of God.

01:02:55.700 God, I'm raised in a Hindu household. We say it's that God resides in each of us,

01:03:00.540 but whatever formulation it is, that there is a higher power. And then once we've taken care of

01:03:05.620 all of that, then we can get to Ethiopia or South Africa or Myanmar or wherever else one might go.

01:03:13.480 But I think what we see right now is a substitution of that effect, right? Intensely worried about the

01:03:18.820 climate apocalypse or intensely worried about some fringe problem that doesn't affect your own community

01:03:25.060 or your family or your nation at home as a substitute for the actual things that, in a time-tested way,

01:03:32.600 ground us as human beings. And so I'm still just scratching the surface, but at least gives you a

01:03:36.660 taste of how I view that future. No, no, no. Well, you know, I've been spending a lot of time

01:03:41.720 assessing the book of Exodus, right? And part of what the book of Exodus does is lay out a psychological

01:03:49.280 and social alternative to tyranny and chaos. And chaos is the desert in the Israelite sojourn. And so

01:03:56.700 you can imagine two extremes of misgovernment. One would be tyrannical order and the other would be

01:04:02.160 desert chaos. And the alternative that's put forward in that book is an alternative that the Catholics in 0.95

01:04:08.940 particular have referred to as subsidiarity. And it's the notion of a hierarchical identity that's both

01:04:15.200 individual and social. And it very much parallels what you're describing as the essence of identity itself.

01:04:22.980 Now, you see a craving for this on the left, because the leftists tend to prioritize hedonic impulse, right,

01:04:33.700 as sort of the grounds of individual subjectivity. And then in response to the lack that produces, they leap to

01:04:41.380 global identity solutions. And that would be ethnicity, race, or maybe, okay, but what the appropriate,

01:04:49.360 exactly, the appropriate alternative to that is, I think, historically speaking, the subsidiary

01:04:56.480 structure that you're laying out. So you could say, well, first and foremost, you're responsible for

01:05:02.020 yourself. You have to take care of yourself. And that's a duty and an obligation, but also a source

01:05:07.660 of meaning, right, of meaningful strides. And if you can manage that, well, then you can embed yourself

01:05:12.620 within a couple. And that's another place you can derive meaning and identity. And if the two of you can

01:05:17.860 organize yourselves halfway intelligently as a mutually sacrificial couple, because you're

01:05:24.140 sacrificing your short-term impulses to her well-being and vice versa, and counseling each other

01:05:30.300 to do the same for yourselves, well, then maybe you can establish a family. And that's your next level

01:05:35.140 of responsibility. And then maybe a community or a business enterprise, and then maybe a town,

01:05:40.420 and then maybe a city or a state, and then maybe a nation. And then you said, you know,

01:05:45.160 well, that has to be nested under God. And that is, like, that's one of the pillars of Catholic

01:05:50.360 social doctrine, one of the three pillars, that notion of subsidiarity. And I think it is the

01:05:55.100 time-tested alternative to, you know, top-down, Tower of Babel, statist centralism, and the absolute

01:06:02.580 inchoate chaos of the fragmented identity that we see unfolding in the world now. And I think that's why

01:06:09.500 this message of responsibility, by the way, is echoing so deeply with young people, particularly

01:06:14.740 with young men, because meaning is to be found in that subsidiary hierarchy of responsibility,

01:06:20.600 right? And it's also ethical, and you implied this, it's also ethical, oddly enough, to focus

01:06:29.440 your attention first on what's local to you, right? Take care of yourself first, then take care of your

01:06:35.300 wife. It doesn't mean other people aren't important, but it means that you have a hierarchy of

01:06:40.280 responsibility, and that you should take care of what's local and immediate before you dare ordain

01:06:47.020 to presume that you're capable of doing something that's more abstract. And I know people understand

01:06:53.360 this. That's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. It's intuitive. It's woven into our nature as

01:06:59.220 man. And I think that we are in some ways running contrary to our nature as man, which leaves a

01:07:04.920 vacuum in its wake that leaves us lost like the Israelites were in the book of Exodus. And I think

01:07:10.800 that that's where we are in our modern American landscape. And so I think that there's a now very

01:07:17.520 practical component of how we revive that worldview. I think there's an attitude where the things that

01:07:21.900 I'm talking about, individual, family, nation, God, these are, needless to say, not novel concepts.

01:07:27.940 They sound novel to some when I say them now, to many, to most. And that shows you how dislocated

01:07:34.840 we are right now from even the proper ordering of a society. You don't have to take a Judeo-Christian 1.00

01:07:40.460 worldview. Take Aristotle. He said the same thing, basically. You go to the Hindu scriptures in ancient

01:07:46.640 India, they say the same thing, right? So this is time-tested, transnational, transhistorical stuff,

01:07:53.060 okay, truths. Now, the reality is I think that there's a sort of squeamishness, prudishness

01:08:02.100 that make us feel in the modern American moment like we're hearkening back to something. Those are

01:08:08.620 antiquated values. They're not cool. They're not the stuff of progress. I think that's a uniquely

01:08:13.660 postmodern attitude. And I think one that many, especially millennials, Gen Z actually might

01:08:19.320 actually come back to it because they're so starved. But millennials, my generation, feel

01:08:23.760 like that was not cool. And certainly if there's a boomer preaching to us as such, or a Gen Xer

01:08:30.180 preaching to us as such, I think that there's a reluctance, almost a contrarian impulse, equal

01:08:37.940 and opposite reaction in the other direction, a sort of natural rebellion to it. This goes back

01:08:44.800 to also the special set of attributes that I think it takes in this unique moment to get this done.

01:08:51.600 This is my responsibility to make faith, family, patriotism, hard work, to make these values cool,

01:09:01.240 actually, for the next generation, to the way we live by those values. The example that I want to set

01:09:08.080 living in the White House. I'm not some old fogey from a giant, from a past generation preaching how

01:09:14.320 it used to be. I'm talking about this on the campaign trail, certainly, in the way that it can

01:09:19.720 be. This is a progressive vision, as I cast it, because of how far we've come. This now becomes

01:09:27.800 the stuff of progress, not regress. And I think that, I know that's framing, and you could just say

01:09:32.640 that's just marketing, but there's some element of marketing to the job, you know, to get this

01:09:37.520 done. Human beings have to come along. There's some element of marketing to every job. 0.96

01:09:41.960 Yeah, and I think that's okay. I don't chafe at that. I accept it. I embrace it. Let's accept that.

01:09:47.900 Part of the job of the next U.S. president is to be a successful marketer for the values, as long as

01:09:53.880 you're marketing something that's good for you, that's grounded in truth, that's good for the nation.

01:09:58.360 And there's no shame in that. But I think that as a young person, as a guy who's still,

01:10:02.800 actually, you know, this month I'm turning 38, but as a guy who's still 37, you know, I think that

01:10:10.000 there's no shame in that. I am openly saying, and many young people will hear me say this,

01:10:14.800 and that's okay. They can be in on the marketing campaign to say that, yes, I'm marketing to you

01:10:20.280 guys, but I'm marketing something that's true. These values are cool. They are meaningful.

01:10:25.600 They are different. They are today heterodox. You want to stick it to the man? You want to be a

01:10:31.720 hippie? You want to be heterodox? You want to be countercultural? Say you want to get married

01:10:36.280 in a heterosexual relationship and bring kids into this world and teach them to believe in God 0.56

01:10:41.680 and be patriotic and pledge allegiance to the flag. That's pretty heterodox today. Put up the U.S.

01:10:47.300 flag instead of the trans flag in the month of June in front of your house. Yeah, that actually

01:10:52.760 is pretty heterodox today. And so it's my job to reawaken that spirit. And again, you know, you can

01:10:58.480 talk about Trump or Biden or whoever. I think there are intangibles. Yes, we can talk about the

01:11:04.620 differences in having, well, who has the business skillset? Well, who has the legal skillset? And

01:11:09.260 these are important discussions. But I think far more important is who is going to be able to bring

01:11:16.200 along a generation that is starved for purpose and meaning but running and latching on to the

01:11:23.640 superficial fast food that the other side is serving up as opposed to serving up the more

01:11:27.980 substantial fare in an appetizing format that they actually want to consume it. And I think that's

01:11:34.460 something that I feel like I'm not going to frame this in a sense that I have the unique ability to do

01:11:39.280 because then there's just more boasting. And I feel like I've been already boasting too much in this

01:11:42.720 conversation. That's not the point. It is something that I have a responsibility to do. I have a duty

01:11:48.140 to do as a member of my generation and somebody who can do this. With that comes a duty to do it

01:11:55.120 right now. And that's the sense of duty that I feel right now. So let me ask you the other question

01:12:01.300 that has emerged in my mind as we've been talking. So, you know, for most of my career,

01:12:08.880 I was a popular professor and I had a little bit of exposure on the broader public front. I worked

01:12:16.100 with a small television station in Ontario. And so I had a taste of public recognition, let's say.

01:12:23.260 But I didn't become well known until I was in my mid-50s, you know. And that's protected me,

01:12:29.620 I would say, to some degree, against some of the excesses that might otherwise be associated with

01:12:34.780 that. You know, I had a very established family and long-term friends who were accomplished in

01:12:39.640 their own right. And like a phalanx of people around me who could counsel me carefully as my star

01:12:48.200 rose, so to speak. Now, you're a young man and you've been very successful on multiple fronts and

01:12:54.540 for a very long time. And you've garnered great wealth. You've had a lot of entrepreneurial

01:13:02.460 adventures. Now you're running a very public candidacy for presidency. But you're 37. And so

01:13:09.440 one of the things, we talked already about the temptations that you faced on the campaign front

01:13:14.540 with regard to the advice that you were receiving from the political class and how you withstood that.

01:13:20.720 And I guess I'm curious, and I think this is probably the therapist in me, thinking about

01:13:25.260 someone who's in your situation. And you've provided a partial answer in your understanding

01:13:32.960 that you have a responsibility at all these levels of social embeddedness. But how do you keep your

01:13:40.080 ego from running away from you, given the particulars of your situation in combination with your youth?

01:13:48.000 Like, what do you have around you that keeps your feet on the ground, do you think? Or

01:13:51.380 around you or within you? Honestly, it's very practical and simple. The first thing is my family.

01:13:59.420 I actually am pretty grateful to, I don't know that I hope you don't mind me mentioning this, but

01:14:05.820 the best piece of advice I got at the start of this campaign was just like very practical advice from

01:14:11.300 Tucker Carlson. Okay. Tucker told me, it's just like very practical stuff. He said, travel with your

01:14:17.520 family. Take your bubble that you live in with you, right? Because, you know, at some point you're

01:14:23.460 going to show up on the road and you're just going to be floating in the ether and waking up in some

01:14:29.040 hotel asking, okay, where am I? And I'm just floating and going through the motions. You're going to feel

01:14:33.840 like that at some point in this campaign. And here's how you protect yourself against that.

01:14:37.760 Whatever you have at home, just take it with you. Or when you don't take it with you, just make it a

01:14:43.540 rule that you want to come back and spend as many nights at home, sleeping in your own bed as

01:14:48.120 possible. I came home at 1130 last night. A few nights ago, it was 2 a.m. when I got back from

01:14:54.080 Iowa. Oh, actually, where was it coming from? That was New Hampshire. Excuse me. Loose trek where I'm

01:14:58.780 coming from. But it's 2 a.m. But I still made a point to come back rather than to sleep the night

01:15:03.620 over there because just as a very practical point, there's nothing philosophical about this. It grounds me.

01:15:09.240 I wake up that next morning to the sound of my young son crying, and it annoys you for the first

01:15:16.740 split second, and then it's just joy after that, which is like, that's what you wake up to in the

01:15:21.500 morning. And I think that we're traveling as much as we can as a family. Now, my wife has her own

01:15:27.540 version of this, which I wouldn't say is in conflict, but has some logistical attributes that

01:15:32.860 we have to balance, which is her version of also part of staying grounded in a journey that she did not

01:15:38.280 sign up for. She does not covet attention. She doesn't hide from—I don't know if you've ever

01:15:43.320 seen her. She's very earnest and connects with people at a level sometimes that's even deeper

01:15:49.140 than I do with many audiences. And she's not shy about it, but she doesn't covet it in any sense,

01:15:54.620 certainly doesn't seek it. The thing that keeps her grounded is, in addition to our family unit,

01:16:00.720 which is important to her, is she made a decision that I admire her for keeping is she's kept her

01:16:05.420 full-time job through this. And it is not a lightweight full-time job. She is a throat surgeon. 0.87

01:16:10.600 She literally saves lives of people who have gone through cancer at the Ohio Cancer Center,

01:16:16.980 at the James Hospital, at the Ohio State University. People have been through head and neck cancer,

01:16:21.460 the consequences of that. She's a throat surgeon, the best, one of the best in the world,

01:16:25.320 certainly at the narrow domain she's in. She has people who fly here to see her. She keeps her

01:16:30.420 operating room schedule. And so let's say I'm in Iowa on a Friday night. There have been cases where

01:16:35.820 she would—days where she will do 12 cases in the day and still be at a dinner event where we're both 0.83

01:16:41.660 speaking in Iowa that night. And so for each of us, it's—I think the practical steps, actually. I think

01:16:48.860 we're—and this is where I'm so grateful to Tucker, actually. I launched the campaign, actually,

01:16:56.420 on his show. And it was just in the chit-chat that we had after that that I got, like, probably the

01:17:01.080 best practical tip that I have since used throughout this campaign, which is as simple as this. Whenever

01:17:07.560 you can, just make it a rule. We will travel with our family as a family unit. Whenever that is

01:17:12.340 possible, that is just what we will do. When that is not possible because Apoorva has to stay in

01:17:16.760 Columbus, Ohio, maybe I'll get one-on-one time with Karthik. She'll stay with Arjun. And when it's not

01:17:21.540 possible for the kids to come, which would be too taxing for them, or they have their activities,

01:17:25.640 I will make an effort. And even if it's 2 a.m., I will be back home in this house where I'm talking

01:17:30.300 to you from. And maybe I'll get an hour less sleep, but I'll be more grateful for it in the

01:17:35.180 morning when I wake up the next day. Well, you know, that harkens back to this issue and idea of

01:17:44.240 embedded responsibility that we already discussed. So one of the, what would you call it,

01:17:51.920 errors that the psychotherapeutic community has foisted on the general public, and I think this

01:17:57.780 is true even of the greatest therapists, is the idea that your sanity is something that's somehow

01:18:04.440 located in you. And I don't think that's true. Like, I think your sanity is the harmony that's

01:18:12.080 established between your multiple levels of social embeddedness. And so when you abide by

01:18:18.620 Carlson's advice to take your wife and your children along with you, you're actually taking

01:18:24.220 the structure of responsibility that reminds you to be sane along with you, right? And because we all

01:18:30.980 need to be tapped into harmony and unity. And you do that, not so much, some of it's abiding by your

01:18:38.580 own principles. It's internal, it's pure force of will. But as Carlson pointed out, you know, you can

01:18:43.940 wake up after a month on the road, you're kind of lost and suspended in space. And that's also the

01:18:50.380 sort of time where a moral error of one form or another is much more likely to occur. But if you're

01:18:55.660 in constant communication with those embedded levels of responsibility, that also keeps you on

01:19:01.480 track, right? In that conservative manner that is part and parcel of secure sanity. And that's another

01:19:08.700 advantage to adopting social responsibility, right? As you surround yourself with people

01:19:13.120 who remind you to be sane. Yeah, because I don't know about other people, but I'm not a perfect person

01:19:18.820 or endowed with some sort of divine, you know, infallibility in the decisions that we make.

01:19:26.460 And so we just put ourselves in a position to make the moral decision at every step through

01:19:33.520 the structures that have, it's not, I didn't invent this. My parents demonstrated it by example

01:19:39.580 to me, and I suppose they didn't invent it. It's societies throughout human history in our faith-based

01:19:45.560 tradition. I mean, the Hindu way of life, just as the Judeo-Christian way of life, puts a great premium

01:19:51.400 on this institution of the family. And so I think it's actually comes down to just being that

01:19:57.160 practical about it rather than to be overly abstract. It's like, you know, you and I talked

01:20:03.720 about the bats in the cave, I think, you know, I certainly see us, see myself, all of us, I think

01:20:10.180 my generation, maybe all of us as Americans, as human beings today, like blind bats lost in a cave,

01:20:17.100 right? And the bat, how does it figure out where it is in that cave? It sends out an echolocation 0.77

01:20:24.780 signal that bounces back off the wall, and then it comes back and it says, this is where I am.

01:20:31.000 So if we human beings are doing the same thing, this is my family, that's true, that bounces back,

01:20:35.380 it says, this is where I am. I believe in God, I'm a citizen of this nation. Those things come back

01:20:39.760 and say, this is where I am. When those things disappear or they're distant, what happens? We

01:20:46.540 send out these signals and then nothing comes back. And we're back in the desert. We're back to

01:20:54.320 being the Israelites in the book of Exodus. We're back to being Americans in 2023. And so-

01:20:59.300 Yeah, well, that's part of that problem of overemphasis on subjective self-identity.

01:21:03.820 You know, this is a big, this is a terrible thing that the radicals on the left have done to people

01:21:09.080 psychologically is to tell them, you are only what you claim to be. It's like, well, no, that's not

01:21:15.520 true. You're what you've been able to negotiate with other people. And that's a damn good thing

01:21:20.840 for you too, because as you pointed out about yourself, like isolated and alone, there's no 0.61

01:21:26.520 indication at all that we'd be other than, you know, maximally sinful in the direction of our greatest

01:21:31.680 weakness. We need other people. And part of our identity is the ability to integrate ourselves

01:21:37.080 with other people and to use them as signaling devices for our own orientation. As you pointed

01:21:41.940 out, that's a deep psychological truth. And it is practical in the way that you described too,

01:21:47.080 right? It's, you distribute the responsibility for your sanity to the community that you take

01:21:52.900 responsibility for. And that works. And that's not an internal or psychological phenomenon.

01:21:58.360 That's a phenomenon. That's a social phenomenon. And that's one thing the conservatives knew,

01:22:03.680 I would say, in their conservative philosophy, that the liberals who are hyper-individualistic

01:22:09.200 miss completely. And you know what? Maybe those who are saints or the rare saintly individuals who are

01:22:16.660 rare in human history that walk this earth, maybe they don't need that. They're on a higher plane than

01:22:21.780 people like me. I think that ordinary people, people like me, need that grounding in order to

01:22:29.100 have my grounding in who I am avoid moral error, as you put it. I think that's an important insight

01:22:35.000 in all of this as well. It might be why you see instances of moral error more often from people

01:22:41.340 who do put themselves in the position to wake up on a given day and not know where I am or feel lost

01:22:47.000 in this aimless passage of time. And so, you know, I guess I don't want to discount the possibility

01:22:52.240 that there are a rare few people out there who independently could find that for themselves

01:22:57.860 without creating the structures around them from family to nation to God and belief in God to ground

01:23:05.100 themselves in these things. But I certainly think that I am like most people in that, yes, I do need it.

01:23:11.300 We do need it. And part of what we do is, you know, there's this old expression where you practice

01:23:17.320 what you preach. I actually feel that what I'm doing much of in this campaign is it's not that

01:23:23.840 I'm doing that because I'm practicing what I'm preaching. It's the reverse. I'm just actually on

01:23:29.320 this campaign preaching what I practice. And I would like to actually share that privilege. I'll use the

01:23:38.200 the P word. I would like to share that privilege with everyone in this nation, with certainly every

01:23:44.420 kid in this nation to enjoy the ultimate privilege that I had as a kid, which is not that I grew up

01:23:51.560 in wealth. I did not actually, but I grew up with two parents in the house with a focus on education,

01:23:57.980 a focus on the family unit, a focus on God. Now my kids, they are growing up in much greater wealth

01:24:03.800 than I did, but that's not the attribute that makes the difference. We're doing our best to

01:24:08.220 give them that same privilege. Two parents in the house, 2 a.m. or not, two parents in the house with

01:24:14.940 a focus on education, on a focus on the family unit, with a focus and a belief in God. And why,

01:24:23.440 if I'm aiming to lead this country, why would I want anything other than to share that same privilege

01:24:28.300 with every other kid who's growing up in this country as well? Does that mean that one of the

01:24:33.980 25% of kids, and it is that high, who are born into fatherless homes or raised in fatherless homes

01:24:40.120 today don't have a shot at achieving everything that I have or people like me have in my life? No.

01:24:49.080 No. In fact, if I'm speaking to one of those kids, I will say that in your unique experience,

01:24:54.720 there is still sources of strength that you will be able to find. It doesn't have to be

01:24:58.680 exactly what mine was. Would we have gotten out of world, would we have won World War II if FDR

01:25:04.540 didn't have polio? I don't know, actually. I just, it's a weird question to ask, but I don't know. I

01:25:11.580 mean, but does that mean we wish polio upon every U.S. president or every citizen because that's how we

01:25:17.220 protect ourselves? No. And so both of these things can be true at once, that when you encounter

01:25:21.900 hardship, you don't have to be victimized by it. You still can derive at an individual level

01:25:27.240 fortitude from it, because if it isn't the two-parent household, then it can be something

01:25:30.860 else that grounds you. But that also should stop us short of saying, oh, well, because somebody else

01:25:35.840 can do it or did do it, that we should wish polio in the FDR analogy case or a single-parent

01:25:41.180 household in the case of a quarter of people in this country's case upon everybody else. No.

01:25:45.920 And I think that both of those things can be true at once. And so what I'm saying here,

01:25:48.720 I want to be very careful that that doesn't negate hope or possibility for those quarter

01:25:53.720 of kids. No, I think you made that very clear. What do you think you've done or your wife has

01:26:00.480 done or both of you have done that makes your marriage work? Like, how long have you been

01:26:04.980 married first? Why do you think your marriage could sustain the pressures of an extended campaign

01:26:11.320 and then a potential presidency? Because that's a hell of a lot to ask for any bond to maintain

01:26:16.940 that many transformations. What have you guys done that should, let's say, speak to a certain

01:26:23.640 degree of confidence among the listeners in the integrity of the commitments that you've

01:26:28.340 made on the family front?

01:26:30.160 Well, I would say that the superficial answer is we just got very lucky. The deeper answer is I think

01:26:38.140 we chose well, the true answer is I think that we were actually, we were set up by fate, I think by

01:26:45.380 God to be in this marriage with one another. I mean, there are, I've never met and will never meet

01:26:52.180 somebody in my life who pushes me. And I think that that's, it's the push actually between us,

01:26:57.660 right? It was, you know, I think that Apoorva, she pushes me to be the best version of myself.

01:27:05.060 The only person more unforgiving of my failure to be the best version of myself than me,

01:27:13.200 I'm very unforgiving of myself, but there's one person even more unforgiving and unsparing,

01:27:17.540 and that's Apoorva. And I returned the favor to her. And I think that that is, that push.

01:27:25.400 How do you do that without alienating each other? How do you do that without alienating each other?

01:27:30.720 I think it is, well, you know, occasionally there'll be spikes of it in moments of insecurity.

01:27:37.100 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:27:38.140 But the lack of alienation doesn't actually come from the without, that comes from within,

01:27:43.380 right? So when you have somebody who loves you and is pushing you to be the best version of

01:27:49.420 yourself because they know that they can expect more of you, and then you lash out at them as I,

01:27:54.840 on occasion, may in my weaker moments do, that is actually-

01:28:00.720 An insecurity in me. And I think that my ability to at least see that is part of what,

01:28:08.840 and she helps me see it, right? Understands enough of me to understand what those moments

01:28:12.380 of insecurity are to just say, okay, he didn't mean what he just said, but we're going to actually

01:28:17.200 get to the bottom of this. That's actually been, for us, a very different way that might not be

01:28:24.660 working for everybody else. It's not just like two magnets that are automatically stuck. That's

01:28:30.780 been the result of it. It's actually two people who are in a constant

01:28:35.600 cooperative struggle in pushing one another to be the best version of ourselves.

01:28:47.420 And I think that's the way I would describe it, is I think actually that cooperative tension

01:28:51.740 is part of what actually keeps our marriage and our family unit so deeply,

01:28:59.960 steel level strong. And I think that that is-

01:29:04.620 I think Ben Shapiro-

01:29:05.620 Arranged by fate.

01:29:06.500 Ben Shapiro-

01:29:07.000 I don't think we would have found it.

01:29:07.800 Shapiro told me that the Hebrew word for Eve means beneficial adversary, and it means optimized

01:29:16.480 player. It means something like optimized player in a challenging game, right? So there is that.

01:29:22.180 That's the best description of it. That's exactly how it feels. You caught me in trying to describe

01:29:27.820 it. I have a feeling it's hard to capture in words.

01:29:30.080 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:29:30.900 You just captured it in words. That is it. And it just actually raises another one of these

01:29:36.180 kind of conservative values that's a little bit uncouth maybe to talk about, or you're not

01:29:44.400 supposed to talk. It's beyond the pale to talk about right now, but it's just the importance of

01:29:48.220 choosing who you marry and choosing very well. And almost the responsibility that I'm grateful

01:29:56.600 that my parents, Apoorva's parents, both exercised in making sure that they were, you know,

01:30:06.180 filtering for making sure, understanding their kid probably better than anybody else. That's

01:30:11.140 something that I think many parents abdicate today is to say that, oh, he's, well, I think

01:30:15.780 he would find somebody more matched for him, but at least he's happy, or at least she's happy.

01:30:22.440 And you're studying Exodus, but this might be more of a Genesis example. I think it's probably late

01:30:28.440 in the book of Genesis when Abraham sends his servant after he has him put his hand under his

01:30:38.280 thigh for the moment of commitment. That was just how they made commitments back then. We don't put

01:30:43.380 people's hands under their thighs now, but that was, I think, the biblical version of a solid commitment

01:30:48.040 to say, go back all the way over there to our homeland to find the proper spouse for my son,

01:31:00.720 Isaac, who was, he was the son that he was, God asked him to sacrifice. He didn't have to sacrifice.

01:31:05.460 It was important to him to know that he went all the way there. And what if I come back empty-handed?

01:31:11.120 He said, I will not come, you will not come back empty-handed. If you do, I will relieve you of your

01:31:14.860 promise, but do not come back empty-handed. And I do not want her, I don't want her marrying someone, 0.97

01:31:21.920 you know, a Canaanite or something like this. So he brings back Rebecca. And I think it's just a 0.76

01:31:26.940 beautiful story of the importance of parental, some, it doesn't always have to be this way,

01:31:35.100 but the spirit of it at least is, if it's not a parent, it's someone close to you. Maybe it's a

01:31:38.620 best friend, but who really cares enough about you to say that maybe that's not the right person.

01:31:42.860 And what I will tell you is in the period that Apoorva and I were dating, pragmatically,

01:31:48.920 we knew we were going to get married, but we were waiting for her to finish medical school. And by 0.99

01:31:52.160 the pragmatism of, you know, all of that, if I was to do it again, we would have just gotten married

01:31:56.420 sooner and just be done with it. We don't have to have a big ceremony about it. But we started in

01:32:00.640 2011. We got married in 2015. There wasn't one person who cared about either of us who would have

01:32:07.000 looked and said, you know, maybe you want to take a step back and take it a little bit slower.

01:32:12.860 But if the people around me who know me best, they would have stepped up and up to it, including

01:32:21.220 my parents and family members and my brother and, you know, my best friends, they would have stepped

01:32:27.120 up and said, hey, this isn't right. Why don't you, you know, are you sure you want to go this fast?

01:32:33.320 Take it slow. Not a single person around me said it because they knew it was right.

01:32:38.140 But I think it also just highlights the importance of, we could say we got lucky, but I think that

01:32:45.420 actually it was the fabric around us, each of us that helped us get it right too. And so I think

01:32:52.580 even the importance of who you choose in your marriage, I mean, the Bible has a lot to say

01:32:58.400 about this. Hindu tradition has a lot to say about this. My parents have a lot to say about this. And

01:33:02.200 if you asked me 20 years ago, I would never be saying this right now, but I think that actually

01:33:06.340 there is a role for family members to play. That's wise role for wise counsel. It is. Yeah. And I

01:33:14.380 enjoyed that. And I, and I thankfully am eternally grateful that I was blessed with the wife that I

01:33:21.180 have now. That was not a product of accident. It was actually a product. Why do you think,

01:33:26.040 why do you think she supports your, you know, it's, I've seen many couples compete with each other 0.98

01:33:33.320 and, and interfere with each other's progress forward, sometimes out of spite and jealousy and,

01:33:40.300 you know, hidden resentment and bitterness. And your wife appears to be on board with your

01:33:46.760 ambitions or with your joint ambitions. Like what, and you said, you know, that she, you,

01:33:52.320 you have a child, she has maternal responsibilities, but she's maintained this 0.78

01:33:56.720 difficult career. She's obviously balancing that with the support she's providing you for your 0.99

01:34:02.720 complex endeavor. Why does she support what you're doing? I think that it's, I think that she and I

01:34:10.420 both share this in common is that we don't view this as balance in a certain sense. If we were going

01:34:16.280 to view this as a game of balancing competing responsibilities, no chance. Cause I mean,

01:34:22.520 just think about the endeavor I'm on with two young kids at home, you know, I've built businesses

01:34:27.960 and everything else, but this is another scale altogether at the age of 37 with a wife who's a

01:34:31.840 full-time surgeon. If we're playing in the game of balancing, there's no balance in this,

01:34:36.500 that ball games out. I think it is because it is part of a shared project of asking ourselves,

01:34:43.640 how do we make the most of the short time we're given on this earth? Right? There's more to our

01:34:49.480 life. We, we agree on this. There's more to life than the aimless passage of time. We were put here

01:34:55.340 for a purpose. I think that my wife, Apoorva, she shares a conviction that I was put here to pursue

01:35:03.900 the purpose that I'm pursuing now. Does that end in the white house? I mean, we, we certainly hope so 0.92

01:35:08.060 not for ourselves, but for our sense of purpose, but that's God's plan, not ours.

01:35:12.680 But she believes that I am following my purpose, just as I believe she is following her purpose in

01:35:20.360 doing what she does today. And there have been times in our life where, you know, we, we talked

01:35:24.680 about that cooperative tension. Well, that's a team sport, actually. It's like when, you know,

01:35:30.500 it's like almost an analogy of, you know, Kobe Bryant, right? The way he would push his fellow Los

01:35:34.060 Angeles Lakers, they're still part of the same unit. And so, you know, I'll give you an example.

01:35:38.420 When, when our first son, Karthik, was born, he was born in February of 2020. We had moved to Ohio

01:35:46.080 not long before that, but Apoorva was finishing up her final months of training in Columbia and

01:35:52.780 Cornell Hospital, New York Presbyterian's hospital system to be an ENT. She's the throat surgeon she is 1.00

01:35:57.920 today. And you will remember February, 2020 was right. He was born on February 23rd of 2020.

01:36:04.620 That's right on the cusp of that first wave of the pandemic in New York City, where unlike the later

01:36:12.260 waves that were catastrophized, you know, that was a real wave of, in New York City, condensed

01:36:16.940 Manhattan's hospitals were, for a matter of months, overrun in the ICUs included. And she has this

01:36:25.040 special skill set as a throat surgeon, but she is three weeks into giving birth. You know, she could 1.00

01:36:32.540 take as long of a maternity leave as she wanted. She felt that this was her duty. Her colleagues were

01:36:37.280 short-staffed. I think one of them is maybe was without violating any norms or anything, gently

01:36:43.660 suggesting what kind of trouble they're going through and facing. And she just said, okay, it's my

01:36:47.720 obligation to go back. I'm a biotech CEO. I'm running a successful enterprise, multi-billion dollar

01:36:54.140 company. But it's 2020. Circumstances have changed. We brought our first son into this world. It was the

01:37:00.620 early stage where nobody knows the first thing about this virus. And so, literally in March of that year,

01:37:06.320 she made the decision. She gave birth on February 23rd. By mid-March, she's already made the decision

01:37:10.820 going back in mid-March to treat patients on the front line, do open-air surgery of people who

01:37:17.240 are COVID positive at that time. At the time, people didn't know whether that was a significant

01:37:21.600 thing or not to be concerned about if you have an infant. And so, what did I do? I was in Ohio for

01:37:27.440 a month and a half with our newborn infant. You know, the one thing they said is it probably doesn't

01:37:33.220 affect young people badly, but you don't want an infant. You don't know yet. And so, you know, 0.77

01:37:37.300 back in March and April of 2020, I took a step back from my day-to-day grind as a biotech CEO to

01:37:45.040 say that, you know, we've got other people in charge. I'm taking a little bit of time to

01:37:48.300 play my dad, my role as a dad, as a father. And I was the one, you know, mixing up our, you know,

01:37:54.420 mixing up formula or taking the breast milk she FedExed to us and feeding the little man. That

01:37:59.580 actually gave us a unique bonding that I don't think we otherwise would have had if I was still

01:38:04.960 in the hustle and bustle of traveling internationally and doing deals and developing

01:38:09.160 drugs that I'd been doing in the two years before. But that was that moment. I think that

01:38:14.400 Apoorva and I sat down in December and I couldn't have predicted to you that I would feel this way,

01:38:20.360 but I felt compelled. I felt and I continued to feel that same sense of duty for all the reasons

01:38:26.320 we talked about earlier that I have to do this. This is what's right. I think that this is quite

01:38:32.960 possibly the purpose for which I was put here. And I cannot let this moment pass, even though

01:38:38.200 we have all the reasons in the world of the inconveniences of this journey of running for

01:38:42.980 president being the wrong thing to do right now. This is what this is what I feel compelled to do.

01:38:48.120 And in an instant, I mean, she she had for us as a unit to make sure this is the right question for

01:38:53.920 us, pushed me as she does. Are you sure that we shouldn't be doing this even 20 years from now?

01:38:58.480 Suppose even it is your destiny and your role to be the U.S. president. Shouldn't we do it when

01:39:02.860 these kids are out of the house, when we have more experience? And we she pushed me and we pushed each 0.71

01:39:07.980 other to make sure that we had conviction that there's the right answer. But once we have that

01:39:12.420 conviction, she's all in in the same way, because this isn't my project versus hers. This is asking

01:39:18.620 the question of why we as a unit were brought together, why God each put each of us here, put us

01:39:23.800 here together to realize our purpose in the world. And does that mean that I'm then attached to and

01:39:31.620 fetishizing the result of being the White House? No, I think that would actually be the wrong way to

01:39:34.740 look at this. But if I am called to do what I am now, we will be open and open minded and open

01:39:42.520 hearted to whether God's plan has me in the White House next November or next January of 2025 or not.

01:39:48.680 We're not attached to that result, but I am attached to following out what I believe is my

01:39:54.760 conviction and duty. But I couldn't do it without the foundation of a family, starting with a spouse,

01:40:00.900 a wife who pushes me to actually do not more of not not less of that and view it as some balancing

01:40:07.660 act or trade off, but actually further in the direction that I already feel called to go. And there's

01:40:13.540 no way I would have achieved the success I have in my life. There's no way I would have the capacity

01:40:18.360 to do what I'm doing now, were it not for that. And I would I would like to think if Apoorva were

01:40:24.880 here, she would in her own version of success that she's had in her life, the impact she's having

01:40:29.340 on the patients she sees every day, that I've played a role in pushing her to do the same.

01:40:35.140 Right, right. All right. Well, that's a very thorough answer to that question. And and I guess

01:40:40.760 probably the answer that, you know, people would hope to hear. So so look, so look, we'll talk again

01:40:46.520 and maybe something approximating three to four months. We thought the last time we talked that

01:40:51.040 it might be good to do this to check in ever so often.

01:40:53.520 Are we on a time? I thought we were just getting warmed up.

01:40:56.380 I was just kidding.

01:40:57.200 Yeah, well, we've got another we've got another half an hour to do behind the Daily Wire plus

01:41:03.740 platform. So we will we will turn to that. But we have run 96 minutes. And amazing. I couldn't

01:41:10.640 guess that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's that's that's how it's supposed to happen if the conversation goes

01:41:16.120 well. And so it's very interesting to watch your progress through this. What promises to be the

01:41:22.960 strangest and most surreal presidential election, I would say, in living memory, it must really be

01:41:28.940 something to be on the front lines, you know, plowing your way through this. And it'll be very

01:41:34.720 interesting to see. It's been interesting to watch your success so far, which a success that seems to

01:41:40.200 be expanding quite remarkably and perhaps somewhat unexpectedly. And so it'll be amazing. It'll be

01:41:47.140 remarkable to watch that unfold. Some that's some major drama. You know, I think that's relevant

01:41:52.260 to your notion that you shouldn't hold on too tightly to the outcome because you actually don't

01:41:57.440 know what the right outcome should be. You know, maybe this is your time for that ultimate goal,

01:42:03.040 the presidency. But God only knows what you could learn along the way if you stick to your principles

01:42:09.100 and exactly what you're only 37. There's absolutely no doubt that whatever you learn along

01:42:15.620 the way, if you stick to your principles, is going to serve you well in whatever might come

01:42:20.080 your way in the, you know, additional 60 years you have to unfold your life. So I really do hope

01:42:27.260 and wish that and pray, I suppose, that you're able to stick to your principles and abide by the truth

01:42:32.060 that you swore to allow to guide you and to stay out of the hands of the bloody political consultants

01:42:38.360 and to continue talking directly to people. And that is what's called for now. It is what people

01:42:43.360 are crying out for now. And it'd be lovely to see someone actually do that. And it looks to me like so

01:42:48.200 far you've managed that for what it's worth for my opinion. And, you know, it's a hell of a thing to be

01:42:54.340 able to continue doing that in the face of all the pressure that's going to come your way, especially

01:42:59.160 as you become more successful and more sycophants and temptations as well as opportunities come your

01:43:06.580 way. So I hope you can keep your feet on the ground and your head in the sky properly. And it sounds

01:43:12.200 like you have the wife that can help you do that and the family and friends as well. So hooray for that.

01:43:17.860 So for everyone watching and listening, I'm going to talk to Vivek another half an hour on the

01:43:21.940 Daily Wire Plus platform. I often do something autobiographical on that front. But I think

01:43:26.940 today I'm going to hassle them instead because I read a New York Times article recently, which was

01:43:31.320 a bit of a hit piece. And I thought it might be entertaining and interesting to walk through that

01:43:35.700 and dissect it. It's not like I'm a big fan of the New York Times, as I suppose most people watching

01:43:42.040 and listening know. But, you know, it's interesting to take apart what it is they're attempting to do.

01:43:46.960 And I'd like to see how Vivek responds to that. So that's the plan for the Daily Wire Plus.

01:43:51.940 In the meantime, thank you all for watching and listening. And thank you very much for agreeing

01:43:57.760 to talk to me again. It's quite a privilege to be involved even in a peripheral way in this campaign.

01:44:02.900 Hopefully YouTube won't censor this podcast as they did with my discussion with Robert Kennedy,

01:44:09.900 which is 100% unforgivable, but seems unlikely.

01:44:15.220 Yeah. Well, you know what? If they do, we'll find other ways of reaching the people with the truth.

01:44:19.700 And that's what I admire about what you do. You and I both, I think, speak the truth without

01:44:26.300 attachment to the result. And I think that that's actually what keeps us tethered. So thank you,

01:44:31.240 my man.

01:44:31.520 Yeah. Well, you know that I think one element of faith in the truth is the decision. And I think

01:44:37.520 it's a decision. I think it's a decision of faith that whatever happens if you speak the truth

01:44:44.580 is by definition, the best thing that could have happened. Now that might not be what you planned,

01:44:50.080 but what the hell do you know? You know, you're bounded in your vision.

01:44:54.320 Yeah. Well, they're certainly not infallible. They're certainly not infallible.

01:44:58.040 Yes. Yes. Yes. Our plans are silly compared to the truth. So I like that.

01:45:03.840 Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a nice, it's a way of finding a really firm foundation, you know,

01:45:08.120 because, and a way also of contending with your own ignorance, you know, you think, well,

01:45:12.480 I said what I had to say and it didn't turn out how I expected. Well, that doesn't mean that the

01:45:18.140 consequence was erroneous. It wasn't what you expected, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.

01:45:23.600 That's a hard thing to understand, especially when the consequences appear somewhat dreadful,

01:45:29.380 you know, because they can be, but of course the consequences of speaking falsehood can be

01:45:33.540 dreadful and generally are much more dreadful, right? Lies lead to hell. That's for sure.

01:45:38.940 All right, sir. Well, thank you to everyone watching and listening, to the Daily Wire Plus

01:45:43.880 folks for making this possible, to the film crew here in Toronto and in Vivek's location for

01:45:50.000 facilitating this flawlessly and for everyone watching and listening, your time and attention

01:45:54.520 is much appreciated. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 17, 2023

380. A Resurgence of Vision ｜ Vivek Ramaswamy

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