The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 389. Snow White, Building an Empire, & Making Movies ｜ Jeremy Boreing

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone watching and listening. Today I'm speaking with screenwriter, director, and co-founder of The Daily Wire, Jeremy Boring.

00:01:15.980 We discuss yesterday's landmark launch of the Bent Key Kids platform, what children's entertainment, really cultural drama, should be trying to keep politics out of it.

00:01:29.180 The strange inversion of Hollywood from the transcendental and literary to the political, and the folly of propagandistic populism put forward at the expense of traditional values, culture, enjoyment, and your children.

00:01:47.620 Well, hello, Jeremy. It's good to see you.

00:01:49.860 Nice to see you.

00:01:51.880 Where are you?

00:01:52.860 For a while, you've been, I'm in Lisbon at the moment. I arrived literally like an hour and a half ago, if that, and so, yeah, I've zipped over here to the studio so that we could talk.

00:02:02.780 You had a big announcement yesterday, so let's start off our conversation.

00:02:08.120 Well, first of all, why don't you tell everybody who's watching and listening what our relationship is and exactly who you are in relationship to me and so forth, and then we'll talk about last night's announcement.

00:02:18.280 So I'm the co-founder and, on a good day, co-CEO of The Daily Wire. I'm actually on a leave of absence from that co-CEO role. At the moment, I'm in Eastern Europe and Croatia today, producing our first major scripted series for Daily Wire Plus called The Pendragon Cycle.

00:02:36.400 But our relationship is because of my involvement with Daily Wire, where your podcast is hosted and we make a lot of projects together, which has been a real treat for me.

00:02:46.320 One of the things that Ben and I, Shapiro, when we first started working together in advance of founding The Daily Wire, we really wanted to be involved in things that we thought had weight beyond just the politics of the moment.

00:02:58.860 And that may sound obvious, but we're both in a very political sphere. And so it wasn't readily apparent how to get from point A to point B, how to go from talking about politics every day to talking about deeper issues and ultimately to not only criticizing culture, but to making culture, to doing something proactive in the culture.

00:03:17.900 But that's what our journey has been. And in some ways, our announcement yesterday is another major step.

00:03:24.700 But truly, beginning to work with you a little over a year ago was a major step in that regard as well, just to move us out of only being able to talk about today and to talk about the things that undergird today, the things that undergird the news.

00:03:38.800 So that's our relationship. And I think tees up well the announcement from yesterday as well, which is that we launched our new company called Bent Key, which is our children's entertainment entity.

00:03:50.000 We announced a little over a year ago that we were going to do so in the wake of those tapes that Chris Ruffo leaked from Disney, where executives were talking about their not-so-secret gay agenda and inserting queerness into their content.

00:04:03.360 They were talking about the Reimagine Disney campaign, where they were going to have more than 50% of all of the talent of all of the on-screen characters in Disney content be from so-called underrepresented groups.

00:04:16.200 It was just this, you know, they said the quiet part out loud, which is essentially that they were going to use this brand that has for 100 years built goodwill and trust with parents to inculcate in children the sort of woke politics of the now.

00:04:31.600 We felt a real need to challenge that. We committed to spend $100 million over three years pursuing a challenge to it.

00:04:37.640 And yesterday we took the first step, which is launching this new app, this new company, Bent Key, with four original shows, with over 18 licensed shows from around the world that have all been carefully vetted, to first be highly entertaining for kids, and second, not to betray the values of the kinds of people who find value in your work or in Daily Wire's work or Ben Shapiro's work,

00:04:59.640 that they could trust, that they could put their kids in front of this content and not receive sort of a woke sucker punch for their trouble.

00:05:08.640 Okay, so let's delve into that a little bit.

00:05:11.060 So I was thinking the rejoinder to the implicit suppositions that you're bringing to bear on this conversation is something like the left's insistence that everything is political.

00:05:24.380 You know, and when I, I taught this course at Harvard and then at the University of Toronto, and it's online, called Maps of Meaning, and it was about, I think what it's about is the inevitable religious substrate of culture itself.

00:05:37.720 And I have a reason for saying inevitably religious. 0.89

00:05:40.280 And, you know, the students used to ask me, you know, why was I convinced that what I was discussing wasn't just another ideology among ideologies, which is a variant of the claim that everything is political.

00:05:54.920 Now, you know, one of the things you and I have discussed, and Shapiro as well, at the Daily Wire, is our belief that everything isn't political and that there's a strata of culture that is associated with deeper narrative, let's say.

00:06:08.640 Again, fairy tales would certainly fit into that category, that has to maintain its separateness from what's political, and it can.

00:06:17.280 Now, you mentioned, you know, with the Daily Wire that part of the limitations of its original conceptualization was that it was of the moment.

00:06:28.980 And, you know, I've seen that's a box in some ways that Shapiro has been in.

00:06:33.620 And he was participating with the Exodus seminar, and I could tell that was a real pleasure for him because he got to stretch his significant intellectual abilities beyond the merely political.

00:06:46.500 So what do you think you have to offer at Bent Key that isn't political?

00:06:51.260 And is there a way that you can defend the claim that it's actually not political?

00:06:55.520 And if it's not political, then how do you know it isn't?

00:06:58.920 How do you stop it from being political?

00:07:01.240 And why should people find that credible, given the political orientation of the Daily Wire?

00:07:08.440 Sure.

00:07:09.320 Well, first of all, I don't mean in any way to say that Daily Wire isn't political or that I'm not a political operator.

00:07:14.700 Obviously, in many ways, I am.

00:07:16.200 Shapiro in many ways is.

00:07:17.920 And it's perhaps a political act to launch Bent Key at all.

00:07:23.080 I mean, certainly it's a reaction to what we see as the excesses of the left manifesting themselves in particularly children's entertainment.

00:07:30.720 But, you know, if you look at the broader work that we've been doing over the last several years, entertainment more generally, I've learned not to refer to it as adult entertainment, although we would get more clicks probably if I did.

00:07:40.640 So, it is a political action that we're taking, but that is distinct from saying, in particular with the kids' content, that the content itself will be intended to communicate politics.

00:07:53.880 And I think that that's perhaps a subtle but very important distinction.

00:07:58.320 Kids deserve a childhood.

00:08:00.620 I think that you can make a good argument that one of the problems in our culture is that we infantilize adults.

00:08:06.180 That through the university system, for example, we now refer to 23-year-olds as college kids and expect that they would not be held accountable for anything that they do as though they're still juvenile legal standards for 23-year-olds who at any other point in human history would have been, you know, married, parents, productive in their societies, perhaps have fought in wars, perhaps be members of the clubs and institutions that used to be a major part of what held up.

00:08:35.600 Sort of the culture itself, you know, church communities and other kinds of civic organizations.

00:08:43.740 Now we call them kids.

00:08:44.880 But then on the other hand, we take actual kids and in many ways deny them their childhoods because we instead are using them as sort of social experiments to see if it's possible to inculcate into them a set of almost anti-value values.

00:09:00.300 I say anti-value because they're not anything that would have historically been considered values and they in many ways oppose the values on which civilization thus far has been built.

00:09:09.580 And we want to just see what happens.

00:09:11.040 You know, what happens if we tell little boys that they're little girls?

00:09:13.680 What happens if we drug an entire generation of boys out of all of the sort of biological impulses that boys have?

00:09:21.280 What happens if we have children marching in political rallies and use them as political instruments?

00:09:28.320 That's what I don't want Bent Key to be.

00:09:30.560 So while I'm doing something political in the launch of Bent Key, what Bent Key itself from a content point of view is endeavoring to do is say,

00:09:38.220 no, you know, I don't think that adults are kids, but I think that kids by God should be, and we should provide them with the kind of content that almost all of us up until this particular moment got to have in our youth,

00:09:49.860 which was content that took the values on which our civilization was built, wrapped them in a sense of imagination, wrapped them in a sense of wonder, wrapped them in a sense of joy,

00:09:59.020 and gave children the opportunity to engage with them, not as lessons, but as entire worlds in which they might see themselves and project themselves into.

00:10:11.180 That's what Bent Key was to be.

00:10:13.240 There's a bunch of thoughts going on in my mind about how to distinguish the political from the, I think, from the eternal.

00:10:20.620 And so we could say the deeper a story is, the less it's reflective of the immediate moment and the more it's reflective of the eternal.

00:10:30.500 Now, the problem with that is that it gets, if it gets too reflective of the eternal, it tends to float away.

00:10:36.300 Mircea Eliade, historian of religions, he called that the deus abscondus, the God who floats away, essentially.

00:10:45.320 And one of the things that Eliade did that was very interesting was note that the Nietzschean death of God was actually a recurring motif in culture,

00:10:56.140 that a society would be founded on a religious revelation, which was its core narrative,

00:11:00.980 and that it would run in some ways till it exhausted that narrative or ran into a counter-proposition that took it out or it degenerated,

00:11:09.580 you know, it degenerated into sort of a multi-headed paganism, something like that.

00:11:13.280 But that it wasn't uncommon for God to disappear, and God would disappear, so to speak,

00:11:19.240 when his conceptualization became so far removed from the concrete that it was as if he was,

00:11:25.960 he's like the God of Einstein, just sort of an abstract cosmic force, right?

00:11:30.420 Now, you want to find a great narrative.

00:11:33.640 You announced the first live-action movie that you're going to produce, Snow White,

00:11:38.620 which is a very interesting choice because it was the movie, of course, that Disney based his empire on,

00:11:43.840 but also it's a timeless fairy tale.

00:11:47.160 Now, a timeless fairy tale is, it's sort of halfway between the ultimately religious and the proximal and temporally bound.

00:11:58.720 And we have evidence, there is evidence from historical research that some of the fairy tales that are commonly known are up to 15,000 years old.

00:12:11.560 So, and the reason that's relevant is because they've demonstrated their eternal relevance merely as a consequence of being remembered that long.

00:12:20.220 And so, one of the ways that, the reason I'm saying this is because what, there's a technical way to some degree that you can distinguish what's merely political from what's timeless and eternal,

00:12:31.560 because what has the latter properties is so ancient and unchanging.

00:12:37.440 And one of the things I learned in this Exodus seminar, and this was mostly from Jonathan Pajot,

00:12:43.660 because he developed this idea most specifically and accurately,

00:12:48.560 was that for a society to order itself properly, it has to order itself under a pyramidal structure.

00:12:55.960 And one element of that pyramidal structure is horizontal, and that would be the Jacob's ladder leading up to heaven.

00:13:02.320 And the other axis is communitarian.

00:13:05.300 And so, that's reflected in a popular culture.

00:13:08.580 You might say, well, if enough people believe it, it's true.

00:13:11.720 And you could also say that you should go along with the crowd unless you have reason not to.

00:13:16.500 And you should say that you should be socialized into your cultural mores.

00:13:20.380 And the objection to that is, well, what do you do then when the society goes off the rails?

00:13:26.020 And how can a society go off the rails if it's only consensus?

00:13:31.740 It goes off the rails like Nazi Germany or after the French Revolution or with the Soviets. 0.63

00:13:36.740 And the answer to that is, well, you need that horizontal axis that orients you towards what's timeless.

00:13:42.720 And the landing point here is, well, that's one of the things that great stories do, right?

00:13:49.080 They bring God down to earth a little bit so that he's more human and more accessible.

00:13:54.140 That's a way of thinking about it.

00:13:55.820 But they also escape the constraints of what's immediate.

00:13:59.460 And they're not political.

00:14:01.460 And so, let's take this Snow White story, for example.

00:14:05.200 I mean, you place Brett Cooper as the star.

00:14:09.180 That's a very interesting choice.

00:14:10.540 She's not your classic Snow White.

00:14:12.600 She's quite an athletic and, like, robust-looking person, right?

00:14:17.500 She's a tough cookie, Brett.

00:14:19.260 And how do you know and why are you convinced that your political affiliations, beliefs,

00:14:26.780 haven't skewed your narrative comprehension?

00:14:30.840 Why do you think you're a reasonable judge of that?

00:14:33.020 And did you even have anything to do with the way that Snow White itself, the new movie, was constructed?

00:14:37.920 Yeah, absolutely.

00:14:38.860 So, I don't think that it's possible to say that you can completely separate my politics out.

00:14:45.060 Obviously, the choices that I make are informed by who I am.

00:14:48.200 What I would say is that I would offer two points of view here.

00:14:52.460 One is about The Daily Wire, and one is about me.

00:14:56.220 Let's start with The Daily Wire.

00:14:57.540 The Daily Wire was essentially founded by three men, myself, Ben Shapiro, and Caleb Robinson.

00:15:02.720 The three of us have incredibly diverse religious backgrounds.

00:15:06.240 Caleb grew up and was very committed in a religious circle that is Christian but keeps Jewish law.

00:15:17.120 And so, it's a very small flock kind of mentality.

00:15:19.880 There's not a lot of people who see the world the way that they see it.

00:15:23.180 It's a very small community, but a very devoted community, as one must be, to keep all of the religious holidays,

00:15:29.680 to keep Sabbaths, to keep biblical kosher, you know, it was a very, it was a religious point of view that took work.

00:15:37.140 Ben, of course, is an Orthodox Jew, and everything that accompanies that, you know, he, you know, Ben,

00:15:43.280 the Jews suffer the worst terror attack in living memory of any of, you know, any except the very oldest Holocaust survivors who live now,

00:15:51.580 have never seen anything as bad as what happened 10 days ago.

00:15:54.020 And yet, Ben didn't even know about it.

00:15:57.560 Why?

00:15:58.320 Because it was the Sabbath.

00:15:59.860 And in Ben's community, they're so devoted to their religious beliefs that even in a moment like that,

00:16:05.400 I could not reach Ben with any electronic device to communicate this information to him.

00:16:09.720 I had to communicate something to him because I put extra security on his family and on his home,

00:16:14.260 and so I had the security guard walk up and tell him some small version of what had happened.

00:16:17.820 But I use it to point out that Ben is incredibly dedicated to his beliefs,

00:16:22.800 but his beliefs are incredibly distinct from Caleb's.

00:16:25.200 They share all these religious holidays.

00:16:27.040 They share many aspects of Old Testament law, but they depart wildly when the New Testament comes into play.

00:16:33.160 And then you have me, who for 15 years taught a home church in Southern California,

00:16:38.040 and who is, you know, a Paulian, you know, sort of New Covenant radical,

00:16:45.080 the furthest from Ben and the furthest from Caleb,

00:16:47.660 and what I think about, you know, what the Gentile is to make of the law and other things. 0.94

00:16:51.800 I don't mean to get too far off into that,

00:16:53.440 except to say that baked into the very heart of the Daily Wire

00:16:56.960 is fundamental disagreement between the three founders

00:17:02.680 on some of the most important questions while still seeing in one another kinship

00:17:08.760 and what we see as the fight of our lifetime in our culture.

00:17:12.100 And so for that reason, you know, we rarely get sucked into sort of purity politics at the Daily Wire.

00:17:20.280 I think it's allowed us to weather a lot of sort of, you know,

00:17:23.440 what I call purity death spirals that come along in politics from time to time.

00:17:28.480 And it makes us each question not only our own beliefs all the time,

00:17:31.680 because we have to find a way to work together and build this company around worldview

00:17:35.700 while not sharing every aspect of our worldview.

00:17:38.260 But it also makes us question the kind of content that we make.

00:17:41.120 If there's a piece of content that both Ben and Caleb and I find resonates,

00:17:45.760 well, that must mean that it necessarily transcends some of our disagreements.

00:17:50.920 And I think that that's a fairly good way of saying that no one of our individual politics

00:17:55.100 necessarily override in the content that we make.

00:17:58.480 And the other thing I would say is just about me personally, which is,

00:18:01.820 you know, I'm a conservative in the American sense,

00:18:05.320 but I'm not a conservative in the classic European sense

00:18:08.000 that is somewhat ascendant even in America today.

00:18:11.160 You know, I'm very much of the Reagan moment in America,

00:18:14.360 where part of what American conservatism seeks to conserve

00:18:17.940 is the unique brand of American liberalism

00:18:20.820 that came to the fore in our founding era.

00:18:23.880 You know, I think that lowercase liberalism is the immune system within a traditional society.

00:18:30.780 It looks out for those who are hard done by,

00:18:33.920 by the structures that are overwhelmingly good,

00:18:36.460 that were generated from ancient wisdom,

00:18:38.580 but that nevertheless are imperfect in an imperfect world,

00:18:41.680 and that liberalism does a good job of saying,

00:18:44.260 well, some people are dispossessed in these systems.

00:18:46.480 Some people, you know, we need to question those systems.

00:18:48.400 We don't need to burn them down.

00:18:49.520 We don't need to throw them out,

00:18:50.940 but we need to always be working to better them,

00:18:53.060 and we need to be looking after the people who are left out in those systems.

00:18:56.880 You know, this is the sort of all men are created equal,

00:18:58.940 endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,

00:19:01.740 brand of American liberalism,

00:19:03.540 very distinct from French liberalism or European liberalism,

00:19:06.960 and I think an important part of the American tradition.

00:19:09.740 So to the extent that I'm a conservative,

00:19:11.100 I want to maintain the institutions that I know are imperfect,

00:19:14.940 but I also know undergird our society.

00:19:16.820 But one of those institutions, at least for Americans,

00:19:19.920 is this unique brand of liberalism,

00:19:21.580 which has always been incredibly helpful in helping our system be,

00:19:26.000 again, imperfect, but perhaps healthier than other systems in moments,

00:19:29.920 for example, in the 20th century.

00:19:32.180 And so what comes with my particular brand of, you know,

00:19:37.300 American conservatism is always self-doubt,

00:19:40.880 because the American liberalism in me knows

00:19:43.760 that my imperfections are also manifest in the things that I do

00:19:48.000 and that my American liberalism says

00:19:50.820 that I also need to be protecting people from my worst excesses,

00:19:53.700 from my worst impulses,

00:19:55.260 that not all of my decisions are correct,

00:19:57.200 that not everything that I set my hand to is right.

00:19:59.980 And I think that that brings along,

00:20:02.360 I'm certainly in no way claiming not to fail at this quite often,

00:20:07.140 but I am conscious of the mistakes that I make as much as I can be.

00:20:13.540 You know, we were discussing even before the show,

00:20:16.540 and I won't go into specifics,

00:20:17.540 but I inadvertently harmed someone

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00:22:05.000 I'm not unaware that I did it,

00:22:06.680 and I'm not unaware that I have some culpability,

00:22:08.880 even though I didn't set about to do it.

00:22:10.380 I didn't do it deliberately.

00:22:12.320 I think that that particular view, though,

00:22:14.540 also helps with this content question

00:22:16.260 that you're asking.

00:22:17.100 I would certainly never suggest

00:22:18.620 that our content does not in some ways

00:22:20.160 reflect my political opinions

00:22:21.540 because I'm imperfect.

00:22:23.540 But I think that the unique mixture

00:22:25.800 that is The Daily Wire

00:22:26.840 and the unique mixture that is my own politics

00:22:29.040 perhaps uniquely prepares us and me

00:22:31.680 for this moment

00:22:32.680 of trying to be critical of my own impulses,

00:22:36.020 trying to be critical of my own beliefs,

00:22:37.620 and trying to find something that transcends them

00:22:39.600 and that speaks to those institutions

00:22:41.360 on which our society's been built.

00:22:44.720 Absolutely, our content will fail at that,

00:22:46.580 but that's what our content's going to endeavor to do.

00:22:49.680 Right.

00:22:50.220 Well, it's a tricky business, eh?

00:22:51.660 I was reflecting.

00:22:52.680 I saw the Snow White trailer last night, eh?

00:22:55.080 And I would say, as a neutral observer,

00:22:59.540 it's pretty easy for me to determine

00:23:02.200 whether something I watch or listen to

00:23:04.420 is of a certain quality.

00:23:07.740 Now, I wouldn't say my judgment in that regard

00:23:10.120 is unerring, but it's not too bad,

00:23:12.600 and I'm reasonably informed on that front.

00:23:14.560 But I did find right away,

00:23:16.920 much to my chagrin,

00:23:18.200 and I've experienced this before,

00:23:19.620 that it was difficult for me

00:23:20.960 to evaluate the Snow White trailer

00:23:22.960 because I know,

00:23:25.080 well, I work with you guys,

00:23:26.180 and I genuinely wanted to succeed,

00:23:28.460 and I believe that your heart

00:23:29.920 and your pocketbook

00:23:31.620 is in the right place

00:23:32.880 in relationship to this.

00:23:34.100 It made it very hard for me to decide

00:23:36.740 how I felt about the trailer.

00:23:39.860 And so this is part of the reason

00:23:41.880 I asked the content question.

00:23:43.440 And so your claim is that

00:23:45.440 there's a truly diverse range of opinion

00:23:49.660 at The Daily Wire.

00:23:50.980 Now, my experience,

00:23:52.160 just so everybody watching and listening knows,

00:23:54.760 you know, I was very concerned about

00:23:56.400 forming a partnership with you guys,

00:23:59.480 and my negotiating team,

00:24:02.680 I was quite ill when this was happening,

00:24:04.120 but my negotiating team and your side

00:24:05.720 went back and forth for a long time,

00:24:08.060 like six months,

00:24:09.540 hammering this deal out,

00:24:11.140 and it was a full-blown boxing match

00:24:15.060 doing it,

00:24:15.620 although always cordial on both sides.

00:24:17.960 And that's how it should be

00:24:18.860 because you want to hammer out a detail

00:24:20.680 where all the,

00:24:21.720 or a deal where all the details

00:24:23.140 are hammered out

00:24:24.000 and everyone is thrilled to be on board.

00:24:26.740 And when we finally managed that,

00:24:29.060 I was thrilled to be on board.

00:24:30.300 And then we got a lot of backlash from people,

00:24:32.360 you know,

00:24:32.580 and they were afraid that

00:24:33.760 you guys would interfere with

00:24:36.200 the free content that I was generating

00:24:38.420 and that my approach to

00:24:42.820 public communication would be somehow

00:24:46.380 twisted and bent into

00:24:50.060 the more political Daily Wire mode.

00:24:52.760 And most of that criticism has disappeared.

00:24:55.320 Now, if I do something political,

00:24:57.020 some of it pops back up,

00:24:58.120 but most of it has disappeared.

00:24:59.540 And also any remaining concerns I had

00:25:01.900 have disappeared

00:25:02.600 because all I've experienced

00:25:04.600 while working with the Daily Wire

00:25:06.300 has been a very high level

00:25:08.380 of professional excellence

00:25:09.660 in everything that's been done,

00:25:12.940 including all the editing

00:25:14.040 of the various documentaries

00:25:15.360 that I've done with you guys,

00:25:16.700 a real openness to creative exploration.

00:25:19.480 I mean, we did,

00:25:20.840 I don't know,

00:25:21.180 we've done five documentaries,

00:25:22.860 I think in a way on a wing and a promise.

00:25:25.060 I said I was going to a certain place.

00:25:27.080 We did this with the biblical museum documentary.

00:25:29.860 That's one that's been released.

00:25:31.480 I went there and I talked to people.

00:25:33.280 We had a film crew.

00:25:34.340 We filmed hours and hours of content

00:25:36.000 and you had a great editorial staff

00:25:38.040 make that into a compelling documentary.

00:25:40.580 But we didn't have a detailed business plan

00:25:43.820 for it worked out.

00:25:44.980 And it was spontaneous and playful

00:25:48.840 and investigative and creative

00:25:51.460 in the best sense.

00:25:52.240 So all I've found working with you so far

00:25:54.420 and this has been quite a surprise really

00:25:56.400 is apart from the high level of professionalism,

00:25:59.360 which makes everything

00:26:00.200 that I've been able to do done better,

00:26:02.980 I've also found that it's done nothing

00:26:04.800 but facilitate anything I wanted to do

00:26:07.260 that was creative.

00:26:08.240 And that included the Exodus seminar

00:26:09.880 because you guys also took a big risk on that.

00:26:12.580 I mean, first of all,

00:26:14.040 organizing the first part of it,

00:26:16.140 which was all there was supposed to be,

00:26:17.500 which was about eight episodes,

00:26:18.520 and then doubling the length.

00:26:20.640 And you were very generous about that.

00:26:22.460 And everyone who came down to participate

00:26:24.900 had a remarkably good time,

00:26:28.560 would be happy to do it again.

00:26:30.080 And it was very productive.

00:26:31.460 And so the reason I'm telling that whole story

00:26:33.500 is because I think I have some reason

00:26:36.000 to assume that your claim

00:26:39.140 to be able to engage in a creative endeavor

00:26:42.220 rather than a political endeavor

00:26:43.680 has some gravitas, right?

00:26:46.960 It's reliable.

00:26:48.160 I really saw that with the documentaries.

00:26:50.340 Now, I contrast that in my own mind

00:26:52.480 with the other problem,

00:26:53.360 which I mentioned,

00:26:54.060 which is, yeah,

00:26:55.140 but if you're hoping that someone will succeed

00:26:58.120 and you are aligned with them in sentiment,

00:27:01.300 let's say,

00:27:01.900 it gets hard to actually evaluate

00:27:03.660 the creative content

00:27:04.700 because your biases emerge.

00:27:07.120 And so what sort of response

00:27:10.120 have you got to the bent key programming

00:27:11.900 for kids that's already been viewed

00:27:13.800 by children and parents,

00:27:15.480 by your target market?

00:27:16.580 And how has that made you feel

00:27:18.400 about the possibility,

00:27:19.780 like the actuality of quality

00:27:21.280 and the possibility of success in that regard?

00:27:24.120 Well, as we sit here,

00:27:25.180 the app has been live for just over 24 hours.

00:27:28.660 And so we're only just now getting real feedback.

00:27:32.600 I mean, up until now,

00:27:33.440 everyone who's viewed any of the content

00:27:34.960 in some way is going to be predisposed

00:27:36.960 to like it in the ways that you're saying.

00:27:40.560 So it's early.

00:27:41.240 People are just now engaging with the content,

00:27:42.760 but the feedback has been very good,

00:27:45.160 except in one place.

00:27:46.880 You know, Deadline Hollywood ran a story about Snow White

00:27:49.820 and many of the comments are very negative,

00:27:51.580 but of course that's because most of the people

00:27:53.600 who read Deadline Hollywood

00:27:54.640 are people who have another set of biases,

00:27:57.300 theirs being against.

00:27:58.760 And so I probably put them in the same category

00:28:01.640 that I put you.

00:28:02.840 You're a friend,

00:28:03.840 you're a collaborator,

00:28:05.800 you're a partner in many of our endeavors.

00:28:09.380 And so, of course,

00:28:10.360 your biases come to bear,

00:28:11.380 their biases are going to come to bear.

00:28:12.760 But so far,

00:28:13.440 the audience has really responded to the content.

00:28:15.920 And we worked incredibly hard

00:28:17.920 on these original shows.

00:28:19.940 A Wonderful Day with Mabel McClay,

00:28:22.120 I truly believe,

00:28:24.780 is a show that kids 20 years from now

00:28:27.940 will talk about the way that I talk about Mr. Rogers,

00:28:31.120 something that is so dear to me from my own childhood.

00:28:34.260 I think that the creators of that show,

00:28:36.760 Ryan and Katie Chase,

00:28:37.660 whom I've known for many, many years,

00:28:39.940 were almost put on earth to make this content.

00:28:43.000 It's beautiful.

00:28:44.640 It's filled with wonder.

00:28:46.860 It's filled with joy.

00:28:48.780 It's filled with imagination.

00:28:50.320 It isn't,

00:28:51.600 they are not political operators at all.

00:28:55.080 They're people who ran an improv comedy school

00:28:58.000 for kids in LA for a decade.

00:29:00.280 They love kids.

00:29:01.980 They're delighted by children.

00:29:03.300 They understand children.

00:29:04.800 And they've made a show

00:29:05.940 that I put in a category

00:29:08.880 of about five pieces of content.

00:29:11.300 The Exodus Seminar being one of them.

00:29:14.180 Matt Walsh's documentary,

00:29:15.340 What is a Woman? 1.00

00:29:15.920 being another.

00:29:16.700 This very small group of content

00:29:19.260 that I believe is

00:29:20.800 the things that I'm the most proud of

00:29:24.200 having published in my career.

00:29:27.040 Then we have Chip Chilla.

00:29:28.700 The writers who came over to do Chip Chilla

00:29:30.700 are guys who've been working.

00:29:32.200 They worked on Veggie Tales

00:29:33.360 and other animated shows in the past.

00:29:35.460 Highly creative.

00:29:36.520 We worked very hard

00:29:37.780 to get them on board on the team,

00:29:38.880 much like we worked to get you on the team.

00:29:41.080 The producers,

00:29:41.880 a guy who came over from Disney,

00:29:43.120 was the creator

00:29:44.220 of the Tangled animated series,

00:29:46.700 which is a true piece of art.

00:29:48.600 You know,

00:29:49.560 there are no schlubs over at Disney 1.00

00:29:50.720 when it comes to making great content.

00:29:52.840 And I'm very proud of Chip Chilla.

00:29:54.200 I think kids love it.

00:29:55.300 As I sat down,

00:29:56.440 my own daughter

00:29:57.000 had not gotten to see it yet.

00:29:58.820 She saw her first episode

00:30:00.000 before I left the house.

00:30:00.980 She's three years old.

00:30:02.260 And my wife texted me

00:30:03.680 and said that she just came

00:30:05.020 into her room and said, 0.93

00:30:07.060 Mommy, I want to sit on the potty

00:30:08.340 and watch Chip Chilla.

00:30:09.560 So that's one vote of confidence.

00:30:12.440 I think people are really going to respond

00:30:13.940 to that content.

00:30:15.000 But it is a journey.

00:30:16.600 Most of the people

00:30:17.240 who are excellent

00:30:18.380 at making this kind of content

00:30:19.640 are making it—

00:30:21.140 you don't become excellent

00:30:22.280 without experience.

00:30:23.580 And if you have experience,

00:30:24.760 it's because you've been working

00:30:25.780 within the very system

00:30:26.660 that we're challenging.

00:30:28.060 And so, of course,

00:30:28.800 the undertaking is enormous.

00:30:32.580 Building up to the kind of quality

00:30:34.040 that you see at Disney,

00:30:35.620 we're going to miss.

00:30:36.340 We're going to strive.

00:30:38.160 There are going to be times

00:30:38.740 where we hit it.

00:30:39.260 There's going to be times

00:30:39.780 where we miss.

00:30:40.260 We're going to learn

00:30:40.680 from our mistakes.

00:30:41.420 We're going to get better

00:30:42.060 as we go.

00:30:43.640 You know,

00:30:43.900 I always laugh at people

00:30:44.860 who walk out of the hospital

00:30:47.260 with their first kid

00:30:48.140 and they have a world's greatest dad

00:30:50.040 ball cap.

00:30:51.040 And I always think,

00:30:52.060 buddy,

00:30:52.260 you're not even a mediocre dad.

00:30:54.180 You've been a dad for 17 hours,

00:30:57.340 you know?

00:30:58.380 It's an aspirational statement,

00:30:59.920 though, the hat, right?

00:31:00.800 And so I would right now

00:31:02.140 wear a world's greatest

00:31:03.240 kids' content producer hat,

00:31:05.740 not because it's what I am,

00:31:07.020 but it's because

00:31:07.420 what I aspire to be.

00:31:09.220 We believe that this

00:31:11.060 is an important charge.

00:31:12.420 We believe that it is

00:31:13.280 the mission of a lifetime

00:31:14.220 to help reclaim our culture

00:31:16.040 in all the ways

00:31:16.720 that matter most.

00:31:17.940 We're going to pour ourselves

00:31:19.100 into it

00:31:19.760 to the point of,

00:31:22.460 well,

00:31:22.680 as we've poured ourselves

00:31:23.400 into everything else

00:31:24.460 to the point of breaking

00:31:25.380 and finding joy

00:31:26.340 in the sheer difficulty of it

00:31:29.080 because we believe

00:31:29.920 in the thing that we're doing.

00:31:32.740 Yeah, well,

00:31:33.260 you guys are a strange bunch

00:31:35.000 of conservatives,

00:31:36.160 you know,

00:31:36.420 and maybe that's a consequence

00:31:37.800 of the strange fracturing

00:31:39.200 of the political landscape

00:31:40.240 because,

00:31:41.120 well,

00:31:41.260 first of all,

00:31:41.780 a libertarian conservative

00:31:43.140 is not that easy

00:31:45.160 to distinguish

00:31:45.820 from a classic liberal

00:31:47.040 in many ways.

00:31:48.060 And so,

00:31:48.620 but then,

00:31:49.240 you know,

00:31:49.520 the research I did

00:31:50.660 and that was done

00:31:51.460 by a number of psychologists

00:31:52.580 at the same time

00:31:53.580 showed quite clearly

00:31:55.060 that,

00:31:55.640 say,

00:31:55.880 10 years ago,

00:31:57.200 the best predictors

00:31:58.520 of conservative belief

00:31:59.920 on the temperament side

00:32:01.240 were low openness,

00:32:03.780 which is interest in ideas

00:32:05.760 and interest in aesthetics.

00:32:06.880 And certainly,

00:32:08.480 it's low interest

00:32:09.540 in aesthetics,

00:32:10.220 in particular,

00:32:11.120 that was one of the big predictors

00:32:12.440 of classic conservatism

00:32:13.820 in our studies

00:32:14.760 and that would

00:32:15.900 argue very strongly

00:32:18.200 against being interested

00:32:19.600 in something particularly

00:32:20.860 like child's literary

00:32:22.180 entertainment,

00:32:23.000 right?

00:32:23.360 So,

00:32:23.940 and then,

00:32:24.980 and so,

00:32:25.740 now,

00:32:26.400 but it is the case

00:32:27.320 that all of the people

00:32:28.640 that I've worked with

00:32:29.360 at The Daily Wire

00:32:30.100 have this very,

00:32:31.500 very high level

00:32:32.180 of interest

00:32:32.640 in creative production

00:32:33.640 and so that does say

00:32:34.680 something strange

00:32:35.360 about the fractionating

00:32:36.280 of culture,

00:32:36.880 but it's also something

00:32:38.060 I find

00:32:38.640 that I find

00:32:40.540 difficult to,

00:32:42.020 you're a complex

00:32:43.760 sort of person

00:32:44.620 to understand

00:32:45.180 and so I wanted

00:32:45.780 to delve into that

00:32:46.560 a little bit

00:32:47.000 and so you have

00:32:48.500 this background

00:32:49.140 in Christian teaching

00:32:52.060 and now you've started

00:32:53.520 this crazy company

00:32:54.480 which seems to be

00:32:55.200 working extremely well

00:32:56.320 and now you're branching

00:32:57.520 out into

00:32:57.920 the entertainment world.

00:32:59.380 Now,

00:32:59.840 The Daily Wire

00:33:00.300 has produced a number

00:33:01.180 of movies,

00:33:01.660 we could talk about

00:33:02.360 those momentarily

00:33:03.280 with some degree

00:33:04.380 of success.

00:33:05.360 It's like,

00:33:06.100 I don't understand

00:33:07.860 how it is

00:33:08.580 that you're that guy.

00:33:09.940 Like,

00:33:10.400 where did you develop

00:33:11.360 you're interested

00:33:11.980 in entertainment?

00:33:13.660 Why do you think

00:33:14.780 you have the

00:33:15.760 aesthetic capacity

00:33:17.160 to make the kind

00:33:18.740 of judgments

00:33:19.220 necessary to run

00:33:20.600 a,

00:33:21.280 well,

00:33:21.480 what's attempting

00:33:22.540 to be a full-fledged

00:33:23.760 entertainment network?

00:33:25.820 Why do you think

00:33:26.640 that's you

00:33:27.260 and if it is you,

00:33:28.680 how did you come

00:33:29.660 to have those abilities?

00:33:31.320 Now,

00:33:31.560 you're in Europe,

00:33:32.180 we could talk about this,

00:33:33.100 too,

00:33:33.980 very deeply involved

00:33:35.300 in this Pendragon cycle.

00:33:36.940 I'd like to hear

00:33:37.720 more about that,

00:33:38.400 but like,

00:33:39.080 where did these interests

00:33:40.140 come from in you

00:33:41.160 and why do you think

00:33:42.440 you have the ability

00:33:43.400 to manage this?

00:33:45.400 Well,

00:33:45.840 the first question first,

00:33:46.760 where does it come from?

00:33:47.720 You know,

00:33:47.920 I grew up in a very rural town

00:33:50.040 in West Texas

00:33:50.820 called Slayton,

00:33:52.620 and it's on the flattest

00:33:54.140 landmass on Earth

00:33:55.000 called the Llano Estacado.

00:33:56.540 We have towns

00:33:57.440 with names like

00:33:58.140 Level Land

00:33:59.120 and Plain View,

00:34:00.600 a town called

00:34:01.500 No Trees.

00:34:02.460 It is truly flat

00:34:04.260 and desolate.

00:34:04.940 What we have

00:34:05.500 in abundance

00:34:06.400 is sky

00:34:07.040 because there's nothing

00:34:07.640 to obscure your view

00:34:08.580 of it.

00:34:09.340 And this particular region

00:34:10.460 has produced

00:34:10.920 an enormous,

00:34:11.840 disproportionate number

00:34:13.040 of successful

00:34:13.700 musical stars

00:34:15.160 from Buddy Holly,

00:34:16.740 who was very famously

00:34:19.180 from Lubbock, Texas,

00:34:20.680 Natalie Maines

00:34:21.500 of the Dixie Chicks,

00:34:22.560 Joe Ely,

00:34:24.160 Leanne Womack,

00:34:25.200 you know,

00:34:25.380 went to school out there,

00:34:26.200 a lot of country stars

00:34:26.980 in particular.

00:34:28.300 And so,

00:34:29.140 a lot of people wonder

00:34:30.520 why this area

00:34:31.640 has produced

00:34:32.080 a disproportionate number

00:34:33.220 of artists in music.

00:34:34.700 But those of us

00:34:35.240 who grew up in it,

00:34:35.920 and my best friend,

00:34:36.680 my childhood best friend's

00:34:37.620 father sort of ran

00:34:38.900 the local entertainment

00:34:39.960 industry.

00:34:40.480 He ran the local

00:34:41.120 music industry

00:34:42.260 in that part of the world.

00:34:43.140 So I had access

00:34:44.200 to all of that

00:34:45.060 growing up,

00:34:46.300 you know.

00:34:46.620 I wasn't very good

00:34:48.240 at sports,

00:34:49.000 but I,

00:34:49.600 you know,

00:34:50.200 was working backstage

00:34:51.040 at theatrical

00:34:51.940 and musical productions

00:34:52.800 at the theater

00:34:53.320 that he owned

00:34:53.840 or at bars

00:34:54.380 or other things

00:34:55.060 from a very young age.

00:34:56.480 In fact,

00:34:56.720 the key that I wear

00:34:57.420 around my neck

00:34:58.100 for which our company

00:34:58.900 is named,

00:34:59.500 The Bent Key,

00:35:00.720 was the key

00:35:01.340 to a regional theater

00:35:02.380 in post-Texas

00:35:03.340 called the Garza Theater

00:35:04.360 where I grew up

00:35:05.420 doing plays.

00:35:07.340 I had access

00:35:08.140 to this wonderful

00:35:08.660 world of entertainment

00:35:09.320 and what I understood

00:35:10.080 from the people

00:35:11.440 I was getting to work with,

00:35:12.260 the adults I was getting

00:35:12.920 to work with,

00:35:13.700 is that it was

00:35:15.220 the desolation

00:35:16.540 of that area.

00:35:17.740 It was the fact

00:35:18.400 that we had no trees

00:35:19.260 to look at

00:35:19.800 and nothing but sky.

00:35:21.060 Joe Ely says

00:35:21.800 we had nothing

00:35:22.580 but a desolate void

00:35:23.900 to fill.

00:35:25.080 And I think that's true.

00:35:26.880 And so,

00:35:27.380 for any of us

00:35:28.100 who had any

00:35:28.780 bent in that direction,

00:35:30.980 you couldn't produce

00:35:33.060 enough to ever

00:35:33.660 fill that void.

00:35:34.900 You'd look up

00:35:35.460 at the sky

00:35:36.060 for your inspiration

00:35:37.500 instead of being

00:35:38.020 able to look around you.

00:35:39.300 And that's what took me

00:35:40.320 ultimately to California.

00:35:42.560 Sure,

00:35:42.940 a little bit of

00:35:43.360 manifest destiny,

00:35:44.260 but an awful lot

00:35:44.880 of stars in my eyes.

00:35:46.520 I moved out there

00:35:47.400 because I wanted

00:35:47.860 to be an actor.

00:35:48.540 I wanted to be

00:35:49.220 a producer.

00:35:50.380 I got out there

00:35:51.040 and realized very quickly

00:35:52.180 that I didn't have

00:35:53.040 what it took

00:35:53.880 to be a successful actor.

00:35:55.420 That was a very hard

00:35:56.160 moment in my life.

00:35:57.900 And I really poured

00:35:58.460 myself in.

00:35:58.960 What were you lacking?

00:36:01.820 I,

00:36:02.440 I,

00:36:03.240 what I came to realize

00:36:04.640 is that

00:36:05.300 the environment

00:36:06.540 that I grew up in

00:36:07.300 I thought was teaching

00:36:08.380 me to be an actor,

00:36:09.380 but it wasn't.

00:36:10.780 What it was teaching

00:36:11.420 me to be

00:36:11.940 was a producer.

00:36:13.260 And by producer,

00:36:14.140 what I mean is

00:36:14.880 someone who creates

00:36:16.180 something out of nothing.

00:36:17.820 That in a way,

00:36:18.840 the acting

00:36:19.320 that I had done

00:36:20.000 in my youth

00:36:20.660 hadn't been

00:36:21.760 the kind of acting

00:36:22.820 that true actors do.

00:36:24.680 It had been

00:36:25.080 the kind of acting

00:36:26.000 that a producer does,

00:36:27.440 the acting

00:36:27.920 that is necessary

00:36:29.000 to create

00:36:30.260 the something

00:36:30.720 out of nothing.

00:36:31.360 You know,

00:36:32.320 I would walk around

00:36:33.280 at 16,

00:36:34.340 15,

00:36:34.860 14 years old.

00:36:36.600 I would walk around

00:36:37.720 with a can

00:36:39.280 of black spray paint

00:36:40.280 in one hand

00:36:40.980 and a script

00:36:41.720 in the other

00:36:42.200 because I both had

00:36:43.140 lines to act

00:36:44.380 in the show

00:36:45.060 and I was

00:36:46.000 concerned with

00:36:47.520 touching up the paint

00:36:48.420 on the proscenium

00:36:49.160 at the front of

00:36:49.780 the stage

00:36:50.840 because I hated

00:36:52.060 that people would

00:36:52.620 come in and see

00:36:53.200 the dings

00:36:54.120 and the nicks

00:36:54.680 from where the set

00:36:55.340 had been built.

00:36:56.500 In other words,

00:36:57.320 everything that I was doing

00:36:58.260 was to try to

00:36:59.120 ultimately create

00:36:59.780 this aesthetic experience

00:37:00.920 and acting

00:37:01.880 was just in service

00:37:02.660 of that.

00:37:03.140 But I didn't know,

00:37:03.780 I like the maturity

00:37:04.620 to know that.

00:37:06.140 One of the things

00:37:06.680 I talk about

00:37:07.220 very often

00:37:07.700 is how I've gotten

00:37:08.960 to live a dream life,

00:37:10.200 truly, Dr. Peterson.

00:37:11.180 I'm in Croatia.

00:37:12.820 Three days ago,

00:37:13.640 I was in Italy.

00:37:14.260 Three days before that,

00:37:15.060 I was in Slovenia.

00:37:15.880 I was in Hungary.

00:37:17.720 You know,

00:37:18.780 but I live a dream life

00:37:19.880 in many ways

00:37:20.480 because I let my dreams die.

00:37:23.200 I had these dreams

00:37:24.340 as a young man

00:37:25.140 and they were very useful

00:37:26.440 for getting me

00:37:27.040 out the front door.

00:37:28.180 They were very useful

00:37:28.920 for putting me

00:37:29.540 on the path.

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00:38:37.580 But if I had held

00:38:42.560 to them too tightly,

00:38:44.840 the path would have

00:38:45.720 led to nowhere.

00:38:47.360 And because by God's grace,

00:38:48.540 I had to...

00:38:48.880 That's a great observation,

00:38:51.460 you know,

00:38:51.740 because I counsel people

00:38:54.160 to develop a vision

00:38:55.260 for their life

00:38:56.060 because if you don't have

00:38:57.680 a vision for your life,

00:38:58.680 you're going to be

00:38:59.380 playing a role

00:39:00.280 in someone else's vision

00:39:01.520 and it might not be

00:39:02.400 one you would award

00:39:03.280 to yourself.

00:39:04.320 But I also say,

00:39:05.440 don't assume

00:39:07.020 that it's the precise...

00:39:08.500 That the precise details

00:39:10.220 of this vision

00:39:10.920 are what going to unfold.

00:39:12.380 But actually,

00:39:13.540 what it is,

00:39:14.220 it's a self-correcting system.

00:39:16.400 As you aim up,

00:39:17.840 but you don't really know

00:39:18.680 what you're doing

00:39:19.280 and then you wander

00:39:20.080 towards that up

00:39:21.180 and as you go,

00:39:22.180 you collect more information

00:39:23.480 and that enables you

00:39:24.580 to modify the vision.

00:39:25.680 So I would say,

00:39:26.820 maybe tell me

00:39:27.460 what you think about this,

00:39:28.380 that it wasn't so much

00:39:29.220 that your dreams died,

00:39:30.540 is that as you pursued them,

00:39:32.240 they got sharper

00:39:33.060 and clearer.

00:39:33.800 And that meant

00:39:34.780 you had to leave

00:39:35.720 some of the excess detail behind.

00:39:39.400 But you do.

00:39:40.220 When you translate

00:39:41.560 a vague notion

00:39:43.520 like I'd like to go

00:39:44.460 to Hollywood

00:39:44.920 and be successful,

00:39:46.380 that's a pretty vague plan.

00:39:48.160 When you transfer that

00:39:49.240 into the real world,

00:39:50.200 that should sharpen, right?

00:39:51.600 You should find

00:39:52.260 your specific destiny.

00:39:54.420 And that's also,

00:39:55.140 by the way,

00:39:55.560 that's the bringing down

00:39:56.680 to earth

00:39:57.180 of the metanarrative, right?

00:39:58.980 I mean,

00:39:59.240 the metanarrative is

00:40:00.180 young man

00:40:01.540 from small town

00:40:02.760 goes to Hollywood

00:40:03.560 and makes good.

00:40:04.640 But there's not

00:40:05.340 a lot of detail in that.

00:40:07.120 And you flesh that out

00:40:09.200 as you move forward

00:40:10.120 and sharpen your vision.

00:40:11.540 And so you found

00:40:12.300 that you had specific talent

00:40:13.720 more on the production end.

00:40:15.240 So what did you discover

00:40:16.060 about yourself

00:40:16.660 that was relevant

00:40:17.440 to the production side

00:40:19.560 of things?

00:40:19.900 And how did that

00:40:20.480 tangle up

00:40:21.060 with the instantiation

00:40:24.380 of the Daily Wire

00:40:25.160 and then its expansion

00:40:26.260 into entertainment?

00:40:27.700 Well, I would say

00:40:28.140 when I was a child,

00:40:28.860 I thought as a child,

00:40:29.760 right?

00:40:29.940 I had this dream.

00:40:30.880 As you say,

00:40:31.360 it was nothing

00:40:33.000 if not ambiguous.

00:40:35.340 It seemed clear to me

00:40:36.900 because my exposure

00:40:37.660 to the world

00:40:38.160 had been so small.

00:40:39.560 You know,

00:40:39.780 go west,

00:40:40.780 make good,

00:40:41.400 as you say.

00:40:42.100 That seems substantial.

00:40:44.060 But of course,

00:40:44.760 anyone who's lived

00:40:45.580 any life as an adult

00:40:46.940 at all knows

00:40:47.500 that that's not substantial

00:40:48.500 in any way.

00:40:49.780 There's nothing there

00:40:50.620 you can hang your life on.

00:40:52.220 So I came to Hollywood

00:40:53.260 and I immediately

00:40:53.860 began failing.

00:40:54.720 In fact,

00:40:54.960 one of the great criticisms

00:40:55.860 that people make,

00:40:56.600 if you even read comments

00:40:58.120 about the kids' announcement

00:41:00.640 or the Snow White

00:41:01.200 announcement this week,

00:41:01.940 you'll read many people

00:41:02.660 saying,

00:41:03.400 Jeremy Boring

00:41:04.120 is a failed film producer.

00:41:05.520 He's at it again.

00:41:07.020 Failed screenwriter

00:41:07.920 Ben Shapiro.

00:41:09.080 And I always think

00:41:09.700 that's a very funny criticism.

00:41:11.200 I mean,

00:41:11.380 after all,

00:41:12.620 I don't say this

00:41:14.500 with any sense of arrogance.

00:41:15.400 I say it simply

00:41:16.080 as a matter of fact.

00:41:16.960 I'm quite successful.

00:41:19.240 In any material sense,

00:41:20.720 I am a quite successful person.

00:41:22.480 And that success

00:41:24.620 is built atop

00:41:26.140 all of the failures

00:41:27.120 that my detractors online

00:41:28.740 are trying to mock me for.

00:41:30.440 What they don't understand

00:41:32.060 is how proud I am

00:41:33.040 of those failures,

00:41:34.040 how instrumental

00:41:34.780 those failures were

00:41:35.760 in helping me

00:41:36.500 to come however far I've come.

00:41:39.480 And it'll be future failures

00:41:40.620 that take me wherever it is

00:41:41.840 that I ultimately go.

00:41:45.260 Well, you know,

00:41:46.420 a failure,

00:41:47.880 failure is a very interesting way

00:41:49.420 of thinking about something. 0.98

00:41:50.640 It's a foolish way 0.96

00:41:51.640 of thinking about something 0.97

00:41:52.660 if you're committed

00:41:53.680 to the end goal.

00:41:54.900 I mean,

00:41:55.120 what I've learned in my life

00:41:56.200 is that I've never done anything

00:41:58.740 that I actually did

00:42:01.280 that wasn't a success.

00:42:03.360 Now,

00:42:03.800 I'd add a coda to that,

00:42:05.180 which is

00:42:05.560 that doesn't mean

00:42:06.800 it succeeded

00:42:07.800 the way I thought it would.

00:42:09.980 Right?

00:42:10.280 Right.

00:42:10.460 So,

00:42:11.160 but if you put your heart

00:42:13.120 into something

00:42:13.860 and the original end

00:42:17.520 that you had conceived of

00:42:19.380 doesn't make itself manifest,

00:42:20.660 that doesn't mean

00:42:21.720 that you didn't learn

00:42:23.000 10,000 useful things

00:42:25.600 that you're going to be able

00:42:26.920 to apply

00:42:27.540 to the next project.

00:42:28.880 It also doesn't mean

00:42:29.720 that I've often salvaged projects

00:42:32.640 from years later

00:42:33.940 when I think,

00:42:34.880 oh, okay,

00:42:35.320 well, that didn't work out there,

00:42:36.500 but I've got all that sitting there

00:42:37.960 that I've mastered.

00:42:38.840 I can now apply it to this.

00:42:40.260 And I truly don't believe

00:42:41.860 that I've ever put my heart

00:42:43.140 into anything

00:42:43.900 in a committed way

00:42:45.080 that hasn't

00:42:46.080 really radically paid off

00:42:48.400 even though

00:42:48.900 the time frame

00:42:50.160 of that payoff

00:42:50.840 was indeterminate

00:42:51.700 and the potential initial goal

00:42:54.980 might not have been realized.

00:42:57.220 And the other thing

00:42:58.120 I would say

00:42:58.480 about the critics

00:42:59.220 who are criticizing

00:43:00.100 your repeated failures

00:43:01.740 is that they don't know anything

00:43:02.960 about entrepreneurial activity.

00:43:04.640 And I studied

00:43:05.500 entrepreneurial activity

00:43:06.580 technically

00:43:07.340 for a very long time.

00:43:09.180 And one of the things

00:43:09.960 that you see

00:43:10.520 with entrepreneurs

00:43:11.200 is that,

00:43:12.080 and you see this

00:43:12.680 with venture capital investors

00:43:14.860 is that

00:43:15.460 the ratio of failure

00:43:17.040 to success

00:43:17.620 is very high.

00:43:19.080 And you have to do

00:43:19.960 a lot of things

00:43:20.960 before something goes viral

00:43:22.660 and bears fruit.

00:43:23.700 But that doesn't mean

00:43:24.840 that all those other attempts

00:43:26.880 that didn't magically catch fire

00:43:29.200 were failures.

00:43:30.240 It just means

00:43:30.960 that you have to,

00:43:31.920 you have to do

00:43:33.060 a lot of things

00:43:33.660 before any one thing

00:43:35.000 really catches on.

00:43:36.460 And so if you think

00:43:37.360 that you can be successful

00:43:38.960 without failure,

00:43:41.260 you don't know anything

00:43:42.000 about how to be successful.

00:43:43.400 So that's just 0.98

00:43:43.920 a foolish criticism. 0.95

00:43:45.340 Now, 0.99

00:43:45.600 it does sound to me too

00:43:46.840 oddly though,

00:43:47.640 you know,

00:43:47.900 because people watching

00:43:49.080 and listening

00:43:49.580 and watching the Daily Wire,

00:43:51.500 their presumption

00:43:52.380 is going to be

00:43:53.260 something like,

00:43:54.060 and this would have been mine,

00:43:54.940 is that

00:43:55.240 all of the

00:43:56.740 major players

00:43:57.960 in the Daily Wire world

00:43:59.060 were basically

00:44:00.140 politically oriented people

00:44:01.460 who decided

00:44:02.240 to make a foray

00:44:03.260 into the entertainment world.

00:44:04.660 But what you're telling me

00:44:05.860 was that in your case,

00:44:07.180 and this might be true

00:44:07.940 with Shapiro too,

00:44:08.740 because I know

00:44:09.140 he was extremely

00:44:09.920 interested in music,

00:44:11.520 is that

00:44:11.900 you were actually

00:44:12.800 primarily interested

00:44:14.060 in entertainment,

00:44:16.240 so to speak. 0.99

00:44:17.000 It's not such a stupid word, 0.99

00:44:18.760 entertainment, 0.99

00:44:19.340 because that's not

00:44:19.980 what it is.

00:44:20.440 Let's call it culture.

00:44:21.640 You were primarily

00:44:22.440 interested in dramatic culture

00:44:24.240 rather than politics.

00:44:25.820 And so this is actually

00:44:26.620 for you,

00:44:27.140 this is actually

00:44:27.740 a return to what

00:44:29.340 you had originally

00:44:31.240 dreamed of

00:44:31.920 and envisioned.

00:44:33.200 Both in the general

00:44:34.660 and in the particular,

00:44:35.980 as you say,

00:44:36.860 I'm in Europe

00:44:37.240 producing this

00:44:38.240 Pendragon cycle.

00:44:39.120 When I was 20 years old,

00:44:41.540 21 years old,

00:44:42.660 sitting in an apartment

00:44:44.220 I couldn't afford

00:44:44.980 in the worst part

00:44:45.780 of the San Fernando Valley,

00:44:48.040 truly looking for quarters

00:44:49.860 under the couch

00:44:50.500 to see if I could afford

00:44:51.340 dollar menu jack-in-the-box,

00:44:53.220 I, as a teenager,

00:44:54.560 had been in love

00:44:55.240 with Stephen Lawhead's novels,

00:44:56.500 The Pendragon Cycle.

00:44:57.460 It's a young adult series

00:44:59.940 about Arthurian myth

00:45:01.240 and about the fall

00:45:02.100 of Roman Britain 0.53

00:45:03.340 and the sort of rise

00:45:04.200 of sub-Roman Britain 0.74

00:45:05.040 and the preservation

00:45:05.920 of Christianity

00:45:06.820 in this very small

00:45:08.600 Celtic area in Wales.

00:45:11.000 And it deeply shaped

00:45:12.320 my worldview.

00:45:13.060 I mean, these books

00:45:13.560 were incredibly formative

00:45:14.740 for me.

00:45:15.340 And at 21,

00:45:16.140 I've realized that

00:45:17.640 I can't make it

00:45:18.220 as an actor.

00:45:19.140 I don't really know

00:45:20.060 what my life is supposed to be.

00:45:21.500 I'm desperately poor.

00:45:23.940 And I started writing

00:45:25.780 adaptations of these novels.

00:45:27.520 I didn't own the right.

00:45:29.740 I had not optioned

00:45:31.260 the rights from the author

00:45:32.060 to write these adaptations.

00:45:33.400 I didn't even know

00:45:33.960 there was such a thing

00:45:34.720 as optioning the rights.

00:45:36.220 I was that young

00:45:37.600 and that naive.

00:45:38.460 And I labored for two years

00:45:40.320 trying to work on this.

00:45:41.880 And here I am

00:45:42.560 at the fulfillment

00:45:43.100 of this moment

00:45:43.640 where I'm actually producing

00:45:44.600 not only have I returned

00:45:46.320 to sort of my original dream

00:45:48.360 of making this cultural content

00:45:50.020 in the general,

00:45:50.900 but in the very particular.

00:45:52.280 But even that

00:45:53.020 wasn't by design.

00:45:54.740 It was by taking the steps

00:45:56.940 that were in front of me

00:45:57.900 by accepting the outcomes

00:46:00.340 that weren't the outcomes.

00:46:01.520 I didn't always accept

00:46:02.280 them gracefully,

00:46:03.660 but I ultimately,

00:46:05.380 because of grace,

00:46:06.180 was able to accept them

00:46:07.260 and therefore was able

00:46:08.840 to keep growing in life.

00:46:10.040 And the circle brought me

00:46:11.440 back around to this moment.

00:46:13.240 Yes, Ben Shapiro

00:46:14.000 was a virtuosic violinist

00:46:15.540 as a young man.

00:46:16.120 There's a beautiful video

00:46:16.900 of him playing the theme

00:46:18.120 from Schindler's List

00:46:19.080 for Larry King

00:46:20.220 when he's nine years old

00:46:21.800 or something.

00:46:22.720 Andrew Klavan,

00:46:23.440 who was there

00:46:23.860 from the very founding

00:46:24.580 of the Daily Wire,

00:46:26.140 obviously was a,

00:46:27.120 he had an entire life

00:46:28.360 as a fiction,

00:46:29.420 as a novelist

00:46:30.540 before he ever engaged

00:46:32.400 with politics at all.

00:46:33.620 He had written screenplays

00:46:34.740 for big Hollywood films

00:46:35.820 with Michael Douglas,

00:46:37.220 Clint Eastwood,

00:46:37.940 and others.

00:46:39.460 We were part of this

00:46:41.460 West Coast,

00:46:43.060 Breitbartian,

00:46:44.480 by which I mean

00:46:45.080 Andrew Breitbartian,

00:46:46.560 conservative moment

00:46:47.680 that happened

00:46:48.340 where all these

00:46:49.200 entertainment industry people

00:46:51.580 began to realize

00:46:52.880 that the culture

00:46:53.440 had slipped out

00:46:54.040 from under them

00:46:54.700 and through people

00:46:55.820 like Andrew Breitbart,

00:46:56.820 through organizations

00:46:57.440 like Friends of Abe,

00:46:58.360 which I ended up

00:46:59.080 being the executive director

00:47:00.320 of for five years in L.A.,

00:47:01.660 which was this underground group

00:47:03.680 of 2,500

00:47:04.400 entertainment industry professionals

00:47:06.860 who would meet in secret

00:47:08.580 for fear of being discovered

00:47:09.900 as conservatives,

00:47:11.660 would come together.

00:47:13.100 And that moment

00:47:14.720 was so unique

00:47:15.720 and it bore so much fruit.

00:47:17.800 And I think it's part of my Daily Wire

00:47:19.300 is unique.

00:47:20.260 We're unique, A,

00:47:20.960 because of the sort of

00:47:22.440 built-in worldview differences

00:47:25.180 between Shapiro, Boring,

00:47:26.280 and Robinson.

00:47:27.180 We're unique because

00:47:28.320 we came out of this milieu

00:47:29.780 of cultural entertainment,

00:47:32.280 West Coast conservatism

00:47:33.540 that happened in L.A. 0.69

00:47:35.040 in the mid-2000s,

00:47:37.100 this very unique moment in time.

00:47:39.220 And we're unique

00:47:40.140 because we don't pander

00:47:40.920 to our audience.

00:47:42.020 We're unique because

00:47:42.780 we're lowercase r Republicans,

00:47:44.680 because we believe

00:47:45.420 that our job is,

00:47:46.400 yes, never to betray

00:47:48.280 our audience,

00:47:49.340 yes, to represent

00:47:50.560 our audience,

00:47:51.360 but also to lead

00:47:52.580 our audiences.

00:47:53.880 You know, we don't

00:47:55.320 give our audience

00:47:56.060 exactly what they think

00:47:57.140 that they want

00:47:57.720 because our belief is

00:47:58.840 that they don't actually

00:47:59.840 want what they may think

00:48:01.340 superficially that they want.

00:48:02.980 Right?

00:48:03.480 Now, that doesn't mean

00:48:04.160 I have the right

00:48:04.620 to betray my audience,

00:48:05.600 to give them what they

00:48:06.220 decidedly do not want.

00:48:07.780 But people will write in

00:48:08.780 all the time and say,

00:48:09.560 when are you going to

00:48:10.160 make a Christian movie? 0.83

00:48:11.960 Well, I know they don't

00:48:12.880 actually want a Christian movie.

00:48:14.100 I know that because I see

00:48:15.260 the box office numbers

00:48:16.240 for those types of movies,

00:48:19.740 right?

00:48:19.940 I know that what they're

00:48:22.840 crying out for

00:48:23.900 is for Christians,

00:48:25.480 for example,

00:48:26.140 to make truly entertaining

00:48:28.060 and meaningful content

00:48:29.600 for them.

00:48:30.620 The way that they express that.

00:48:32.360 Right, right, right.

00:48:32.480 If you're a populist,

00:48:34.160 you would just give them

00:48:34.760 exactly what they're expressing.

00:48:36.940 But giving them

00:48:37.740 exactly what they're—

00:48:38.320 Well, that misses

00:48:38.420 that transcendental axis.

00:48:40.500 It misses the vertical.

00:48:41.360 This is the problem

00:48:42.560 with leading by poll.

00:48:44.660 That's right.

00:48:45.080 One of the things

00:48:45.580 you learn as a research

00:48:46.620 psychologist is that

00:48:47.740 it's not that easy

00:48:48.500 to figure out

00:48:49.060 what people think.

00:48:50.280 And you can't find out

00:48:51.440 just by asking them

00:48:52.700 one question.

00:48:54.160 First of all,

00:48:54.740 the question sets up

00:48:55.980 the answer.

00:48:56.640 So you have to ask them

00:48:57.880 a whole panoply of questions

00:48:59.420 to get anything near anything

00:49:01.620 like their actual opinions.

00:49:03.920 And then it is also

00:49:05.300 the case that,

00:49:06.920 so what does it mean

00:49:08.080 to lead under

00:49:08.820 those circumstances?

00:49:10.000 Well, this is where

00:49:10.280 the for-profit mechanism

00:49:13.200 is so powerful

00:49:14.140 because I have

00:49:15.680 two conversations

00:49:16.540 with my audience.

00:49:17.720 I have the polling conversation,

00:49:19.880 what do you want?

00:49:21.260 And they tell me

00:49:22.020 what they want to want.

00:49:24.520 But then I have

00:49:25.140 my for-profit conversation,

00:49:26.800 which is where

00:49:27.240 I give them options,

00:49:28.520 and they tell me

00:49:29.260 with their actions

00:49:30.060 what they actually want.

00:49:31.680 Right, exactly, right.

00:49:33.020 Huge difference there.

00:49:34.700 There's a kind of content

00:49:35.740 that we all want to want.

00:49:37.940 And then there's

00:49:38.520 the kind of content

00:49:39.180 that we actually want,

00:49:40.620 that we actually engage with.

00:49:42.540 And that's what we're trying

00:49:44.260 to do at The Daily Wire.

00:49:45.240 We are trying to give

00:49:46.200 our audience what they want,

00:49:47.800 just not necessarily

00:49:48.680 what they want to want.

00:49:50.760 That's the tension

00:49:52.620 that we're living in.

00:49:53.300 Well, that's what

00:49:54.560 a real political leader

00:49:56.180 should do, too,

00:49:57.380 is rather than...

00:49:58.680 And I've seen some...

00:49:59.460 I've actually seen

00:50:00.280 many, many political leaders

00:50:01.600 founder on exactly

00:50:02.720 this problem

00:50:03.540 because they start out

00:50:05.200 motivated by commitment

00:50:07.020 to a set of principles,

00:50:08.220 assuming they're not just,

00:50:09.560 you know, 0.52

00:50:09.840 the psychopathic types 0.65

00:50:10.920 are out for themselves,

00:50:11.800 but they start by being

00:50:12.900 motivated by a set of principles.

00:50:14.460 And then they ally themselves

00:50:16.060 with political consultants

00:50:17.420 because they're afraid

00:50:18.480 of their own inexperience.

00:50:20.140 they hire people

00:50:21.560 to run their campaign,

00:50:23.400 which you can't do

00:50:24.740 because it's your campaign.

00:50:26.360 They hire people 0.99

00:50:27.080 to write their speeches,

00:50:28.360 and then they just get transformed

00:50:29.960 into another

00:50:30.760 stamped political product,

00:50:32.560 and they almost always fail.

00:50:35.020 Right?

00:50:35.300 And so you need that.

00:50:37.560 You can't rely on 0.99

00:50:40.720 foolish sampling 0.97

00:50:42.320 of public opinion 1.00

00:50:43.320 to govern

00:50:43.840 what you're going to offer

00:50:44.860 because the public

00:50:45.840 is striving towards something,

00:50:48.140 but if they had it,

00:50:51.880 they could describe it.

00:50:53.080 But if they're aspiring towards it,

00:50:55.000 they're still stumbling

00:50:55.880 towards its description,

00:50:57.000 and then it's incumbent

00:50:57.980 on the leaders

00:50:58.700 to listen

00:50:59.480 and to take them

00:51:01.620 to the next step,

00:51:02.380 and that is what

00:51:02.960 a great storyteller should do,

00:51:04.620 and the failure to do that

00:51:06.340 will be punished

00:51:06.940 by the market

00:51:07.580 because a Christian movie

00:51:10.400 could be just as 0.91

00:51:11.760 propagandistic and dull

00:51:13.140 and is very much likely to be.

00:51:14.680 Like, if it's explicitly Christian, 0.98

00:51:16.420 it's because it's not a movie.

00:51:18.140 It's a piece of propaganda

00:51:19.860 designed to push

00:51:20.920 really what's a political agenda,

00:51:22.800 not even a religious agenda.

00:51:24.160 It's a political agenda

00:51:25.060 disguised as a religious agenda,

00:51:26.760 and certainly,

00:51:28.000 people who proclaim

00:51:29.080 their Christianity

00:51:29.980 all too loudly

00:51:31.100 are just as likely

00:51:32.540 to fall prey

00:51:33.260 to that temptation

00:51:34.060 as anyone else.

00:51:35.080 What people want

00:51:36.060 is a story

00:51:36.720 that captures

00:51:37.300 their imagination,

00:51:38.700 right?

00:51:38.900 And the imagination, too,

00:51:40.840 it's different than...

00:51:42.120 So the neural system

00:51:44.420 that governs the imagination

00:51:45.800 is a different system

00:51:47.360 than the system

00:51:48.080 that governs

00:51:48.840 linguistic content.

00:51:51.040 It's more archaic.

00:51:52.780 It's more emotional.

00:51:54.040 It's more instinctual.

00:51:55.400 It's less attuned

00:51:56.500 to the moment.

00:51:57.520 It's less specific

00:51:58.940 and adapted to immediacy.

00:52:01.400 So it's got a local impracticality,

00:52:04.640 but it's got a medium

00:52:06.260 to long-term vision,

00:52:08.660 a much broader vision.

00:52:09.940 And great cultural drama

00:52:14.460 appeals to the imagination,

00:52:16.520 and it has to be

00:52:17.600 of the pattern

00:52:18.640 of the imagination.

00:52:20.160 And that may be

00:52:21.040 quite distinct.

00:52:21.820 Like, one of the things

00:52:22.420 I've really been struck with,

00:52:23.480 for example,

00:52:24.840 is just as political correctness

00:52:28.240 hit its height,

00:52:29.820 the Marvel universe

00:52:31.260 became most popular.

00:52:33.300 And it was fascinating

00:52:34.740 for me to watch

00:52:35.560 because Tony Stark 0.88

00:52:36.880 is as close to a fascist 0.94

00:52:38.600 as any Hollywood hero 0.81

00:52:40.920 has ever been, right?

00:52:42.320 I mean, he's a military-industrial,

00:52:45.140 self-absorbed,

00:52:46.720 hyper-Ayn Rand capitalist, right?

00:52:49.480 So he's as far away

00:52:50.820 from woke as you could be.

00:52:53.240 And then,

00:52:53.920 and so that was

00:52:54.640 extremely interesting to see.

00:52:56.160 Although the Marvel people,

00:52:58.440 until recently,

00:52:59.300 never took the bait.

00:53:00.180 They never got political.

00:53:01.640 And so they kept the politics

00:53:03.980 implicit in the story.

00:53:06.460 And then I watched

00:53:07.520 The Black Widow

00:53:08.400 with Scarlett Johansson.

00:53:09.760 And you couldn't have come up

00:53:11.120 with a more anti-woke movie

00:53:12.700 if you would have scripted it

00:53:14.220 for that purpose.

00:53:15.280 And, but because that wasn't

00:53:16.780 why it was scripted,

00:53:17.720 it was successful.

00:53:18.480 I mean, The Black Widow

00:53:19.860 was literally about

00:53:21.160 a communist demagogue,

00:53:24.780 quasi-god,

00:53:25.860 who lived in the sky,

00:53:27.000 who was a remnant

00:53:28.040 of the communist empire,

00:53:29.500 taking over the minds

00:53:31.400 of young women

00:53:32.460 and destabilizing

00:53:34.580 the whole world.

00:53:35.280 It's like, well, yeah,

00:53:36.660 it looks like that's happening.

00:53:37.940 And then what was so strange,

00:53:39.300 too, is that Johansson,

00:53:41.320 who was the savior

00:53:42.340 in the narrative,

00:53:44.540 the only reason that she

00:53:46.060 was able to break the hold

00:53:48.660 of this propaganda

00:53:49.700 on the minds

00:53:50.700 of her female compatriots 0.64

00:53:52.080 was because she had been

00:53:53.160 raised in something

00:53:54.760 approximating a loving

00:53:56.400 nuclear family,

00:53:57.440 even though it was,

00:53:58.460 it was deeply flawed

00:54:00.240 and partly false.

00:54:01.660 And so,

00:54:02.080 so why am I saying all that?

00:54:04.140 Well, it's because

00:54:04.860 you will get punished

00:54:06.820 by the market

00:54:07.460 if you do turn

00:54:09.000 your cultural dramas

00:54:12.060 into political propaganda.

00:54:14.220 And it's also very comical

00:54:15.840 to see the weird reversal

00:54:17.240 here, too,

00:54:17.780 because what you see

00:54:18.800 happening in Hollywood

00:54:19.760 is that the actors

00:54:22.500 dream of being

00:54:23.660 political activists.

00:54:25.540 And they seem,

00:54:26.540 I've had conversations

00:54:27.520 with Hollywood actors

00:54:28.500 about this.

00:54:29.020 I said,

00:54:29.360 look,

00:54:29.580 you guys are already,

00:54:31.180 you already occupy

00:54:32.100 a kind of pinnacle.

00:54:33.780 Why would you subordinate

00:54:35.380 that pinnacle

00:54:36.280 to the political?

00:54:37.520 You're subordinating

00:54:38.500 the greater,

00:54:39.720 the dramatic culture

00:54:40.880 to the lesser.

00:54:41.580 Now,

00:54:41.780 you guys are taking

00:54:42.580 the reverse tack,

00:54:43.700 eh?

00:54:43.860 Because you made

00:54:45.060 your largest scale success

00:54:47.560 in an essentially

00:54:48.580 political realm,

00:54:49.520 and now you want to

00:54:50.220 transcend that

00:54:50.920 and move into the cultural.

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00:56:09.340 So, it's very fascinating

00:56:14.040 to watch this.

00:56:15.440 Well, I've,

00:56:16.300 I watched,

00:56:18.520 I have lived through,

00:56:19.680 I think,

00:56:20.320 the most rapid

00:56:21.100 political transformation

00:56:23.380 on,

00:56:24.620 probably,

00:56:26.300 in human history.

00:56:27.640 I mean, in 2008,

00:56:29.160 Barack Obama

00:56:29.740 could not be elected

00:56:30.620 president as a Democrat

00:56:31.920 if he opposed gay marriage.

00:56:34.420 And in 2012,

00:56:35.980 Barack Obama

00:56:36.480 could not be elected

00:56:37.240 as a Democrat

00:56:38.180 if he,

00:56:38.840 I'm sorry,

00:56:39.940 yeah,

00:56:40.600 he could not be elected

00:56:41.960 in 2008

00:56:42.780 if he supported gay marriage,

00:56:44.120 I'm sorry,

00:56:44.640 and he could not be elected

00:56:45.760 in 2012

00:56:46.300 if he opposed gay marriage.

00:56:48.980 In four years,

00:56:52.480 there was that rapid

00:56:53.660 a change on an issue

00:56:54.760 so deeply fundamental

00:56:56.880 about which there were

00:56:57.600 such deeply held beliefs,

00:56:59.080 such deeply held passions.

00:57:00.640 How could that change

00:57:01.660 so quickly

00:57:02.120 and what changed

00:57:02.700 obviously is culture?

00:57:04.640 And we could,

00:57:06.000 you know,

00:57:06.320 we can debate

00:57:06.940 whether that was good

00:57:07.960 or bad

00:57:08.420 or was it some good

00:57:09.260 and some bad,

00:57:09.840 that's not even

00:57:10.460 the conversation

00:57:10.920 I'm trying to engage in.

00:57:11.980 I'm only interested

00:57:12.720 in the fact of it

00:57:13.700 and the fact

00:57:15.220 that the Overton window

00:57:16.780 had shifted so far

00:57:17.920 and what shifted it,

00:57:19.760 you know,

00:57:20.460 80% of what shifted it

00:57:21.840 was a single

00:57:22.720 network television show

00:57:24.480 called Will and Grace

00:57:25.360 that for the first time

00:57:27.520 on NBC,

00:57:28.300 on the biggest network

00:57:29.040 for comedy,

00:57:30.100 every single day,

00:57:31.700 you know,

00:57:32.040 15 million people

00:57:33.260 brought into their homes 0.51

00:57:34.360 these vibrant,

00:57:36.640 wonderful characters

00:57:37.400 who were gay

00:57:38.000 and it fundamentally

00:57:39.380 transformed how

00:57:40.580 they saw that issue.

00:57:42.780 That is,

00:57:43.640 that is a power

00:57:45.000 that politicians

00:57:45.640 obviously don't have.

00:57:47.520 If they did,

00:57:48.320 Barack Obama

00:57:48.800 wouldn't have had

00:57:49.260 to have changed.

00:57:49.720 He always supported

00:57:50.520 gay marriage.

00:57:51.360 So you would have

00:57:51.940 never heard him

00:57:52.500 oppose gay marriage 0.97

00:57:53.440 in the first place

00:57:54.420 if politics is where

00:57:55.400 the real power lives.

00:57:57.820 Politics is incredibly

00:57:58.960 powerful,

00:57:59.620 of course,

00:58:00.240 but it has to operate

00:58:01.800 within a cultural window

00:58:02.820 and the real failure

00:58:04.520 of the right in America

00:58:05.560 in my lifetime

00:58:06.240 is that they ceded

00:58:07.200 all of that ground

00:58:08.120 almost completely

00:58:09.180 to the left.

00:58:11.960 Right, right.

00:58:12.960 Okay, so let's,

00:58:14.360 I've got two threads

00:58:15.540 to walk off on

00:58:17.080 from that point.

00:58:18.120 The first is,

00:58:19.380 this has been

00:58:20.960 a weird reversal too.

00:58:22.040 I mean,

00:58:22.160 one of the strangest things

00:58:23.220 I've seen in the last decade

00:58:24.700 and I've seen a lot

00:58:25.720 of strange things

00:58:26.540 in the last decade,

00:58:27.520 by the way,

00:58:28.020 was the Babylon Bee

00:58:29.660 comedians

00:58:32.400 interview Jonathan Pajot.

00:58:34.900 It was a preposterous

00:58:36.480 interview

00:58:36.860 because Pajot

00:58:37.720 was speaking

00:58:38.240 very seriously

00:58:39.200 about the architectural

00:58:40.840 and mythological

00:58:41.720 significance

00:58:42.680 of the monsters

00:58:44.300 on the outside

00:58:45.360 of medieval cathedrals

00:58:47.160 and relating that

00:58:48.500 to the fuzzy edges

00:58:50.580 of cognitive

00:58:51.340 and perceptual categories,

00:58:52.800 which is a very

00:58:53.620 sophisticated

00:58:54.240 intellectual discussion 1.00

00:58:55.960 and these idiot 1.00

00:58:57.060 commentators 1.00

00:58:57.960 from the Babylon Bee, 1.00

00:58:58.980 and I mean idiot 0.99

00:58:59.700 in the best possible way, 1.00

00:59:01.020 were cracking

00:59:01.620 absurd jokes

00:59:02.460 in the background

00:59:03.140 and acting like frat boys

00:59:04.460 and being very comical

00:59:06.520 but keeping up

00:59:07.640 with the conversation

00:59:08.620 and Pajot was cracking

00:59:10.080 jokes along with them

00:59:11.060 and keeping up

00:59:11.640 quite nicely

00:59:12.300 and that was all done

00:59:14.280 in the name

00:59:14.720 of Christian satire,

00:59:16.520 which is like,

00:59:17.320 what do you mean

00:59:17.760 Christian satire?

00:59:19.300 Christian satire?

00:59:20.360 I mean,

00:59:20.600 I think the Babylon Bee

00:59:21.880 has taken out the onion.

00:59:23.540 That's what it looks like

00:59:24.360 to me.

00:59:25.140 And it's like, 0.92

00:59:26.180 what the hell? 0.96

00:59:27.740 Where did Christian satirists 1.00

00:59:29.260 come from?

00:59:29.860 And so,

00:59:30.580 I'm curious here,

00:59:31.460 what do you think's going on?

00:59:32.480 The first is,

00:59:33.300 how did you reconcile

00:59:34.460 the conflict

00:59:35.920 between a kind of

00:59:37.160 traditional Christian,

00:59:38.960 Protestant,

00:59:39.700 American evangelism

00:59:41.040 and the entertainment industry?

00:59:42.560 Because that's quite 0.98

00:59:43.880 the damn gulf 0.98

00:59:44.720 and why do you think 0.99

00:59:48.080 that can be successfully

00:59:49.260 broached,

00:59:49.940 that gulf?

00:59:50.540 Why do you think

00:59:51.080 it should be?

00:59:51.800 I mean,

00:59:52.040 you talked about

00:59:53.040 the importance of culture

00:59:54.080 but that doesn't mean

00:59:54.840 that you should dance

00:59:55.700 with the devil,

00:59:56.760 you know,

00:59:57.000 to lead people

00:59:57.820 down the appropriate road

00:59:59.120 and that must have,

01:00:01.580 the Hollywood culture,

01:00:02.660 even though you wanted

01:00:03.160 to be part of it,

01:00:03.900 there must have,

01:00:04.660 there must have been

01:00:05.160 a moral quandary there.

01:00:06.940 Oh yeah,

01:00:07.220 people would always say

01:00:08.140 in Hollywood,

01:00:08.840 in Christian Hollywood

01:00:09.960 when I was in my 20s,

01:00:10.920 they would say,

01:00:11.240 we have to reclaim

01:00:11.860 Hollywood for Christ

01:00:12.820 and I would be like,

01:00:13.800 guys,

01:00:14.720 he was never here.

01:00:17.780 Right, right, right.

01:00:19.160 All the best bands

01:00:20.080 are with Satan

01:00:20.820 as Bart Simpson said.

01:00:23.040 Yeah, right.

01:00:23.700 That's right.

01:00:24.500 I think that it is

01:00:25.340 American Protestantism

01:00:26.520 that's part of it

01:00:27.300 for me though.

01:00:28.280 You know,

01:00:28.820 I'm decidedly not

01:00:30.440 Catholic

01:00:31.280 or mainline Protestant.

01:00:33.340 I didn't grow up

01:00:34.200 in a church

01:00:34.860 that has

01:00:35.780 deep historic roots

01:00:38.920 and so I think

01:00:40.820 probably,

01:00:41.520 if I'm being honest

01:00:42.360 with myself.

01:00:43.240 You know,

01:00:43.500 I know a lot of people

01:00:44.440 who grow up in,

01:00:46.600 who are very devoted

01:00:47.600 Catholics

01:00:48.060 or very devoted

01:00:49.020 Episcopalians,

01:00:50.120 very devoted

01:00:50.660 Presbyterians.

01:00:51.920 I don't even know

01:00:52.800 if they believe

01:00:53.600 in Christ.

01:00:54.620 I don't know

01:00:54.800 if they even believe

01:00:55.500 in the Bible

01:00:56.020 but they certainly

01:00:57.860 have had

01:00:58.560 enormous benefit

01:00:59.760 and enormous structure

01:01:00.540 put in their life

01:01:01.220 by these traditions.

01:01:02.740 Probably even more precisely,

01:01:04.080 I know many Anglicans

01:01:04.980 who fit that description.

01:01:06.740 You know,

01:01:06.760 they're incredibly intelligent

01:01:08.480 and they understand

01:01:09.420 the value

01:01:10.100 of their church

01:01:10.820 but they don't

01:01:11.220 necessarily believe

01:01:12.400 that it's true

01:01:13.380 and I understand that.

01:01:14.540 I think that that's

01:01:15.100 a somewhat tragic view

01:01:17.560 but I think that it's

01:01:18.280 a perfectly relatable view

01:01:20.200 especially if you're

01:01:21.440 in one of those institutions

01:01:22.340 that has such history.

01:01:24.280 But I didn't grow up

01:01:25.180 in that kind

01:01:25.640 of an institution.

01:01:26.700 I grew up in

01:01:27.480 a kind of American

01:01:29.100 evangelicalism

01:01:29.980 that I think

01:01:30.400 is somewhat ungrounded

01:01:32.360 in many ways

01:01:33.960 that I think are actually,

01:01:34.860 you know,

01:01:35.000 as an adult

01:01:35.420 I can say in many ways

01:01:36.260 that I think are bad

01:01:37.100 but one of the benefits

01:01:38.800 that it has

01:01:39.720 and one of the benefits

01:01:40.380 that it gave to me

01:01:41.160 is probably

01:01:42.240 my belief in God

01:01:45.160 is because of narrative.

01:01:47.040 It's not because

01:01:47.980 of institution.

01:01:49.200 In other words,

01:01:50.020 I came to believe in God

01:01:51.180 because of the story of God

01:01:52.720 because of the redemptive

01:01:53.760 story of Christ

01:01:54.700 and so in that sense

01:01:56.760 I understand

01:01:57.280 the power of story.

01:01:58.820 You know,

01:01:58.960 we are interesting creatures

01:02:00.920 aren't we

01:02:01.300 because we're both

01:02:02.740 material and immaterial,

01:02:04.220 right?

01:02:04.600 We're meat

01:02:05.300 and we are the thing

01:02:06.060 that transcends meat

01:02:07.120 and it's very hard

01:02:08.100 to know where the line

01:02:09.240 between those two things

01:02:10.380 is probably because

01:02:11.960 in a sort of ultimate sense

01:02:13.160 there isn't one.

01:02:14.600 It's very hard to understand

01:02:15.540 where illnesses begin.

01:02:17.440 You and I,

01:02:17.800 I mean,

01:02:18.000 you far more than me

01:02:18.800 but certainly both of us

01:02:19.760 in our life

01:02:20.280 have seen

01:02:21.300 bad thoughts

01:02:23.340 actually lead

01:02:25.640 to physical destruction

01:02:26.740 and so,

01:02:28.260 you know,

01:02:28.420 did the thing

01:02:29.620 that began

01:02:30.440 in the physical world

01:02:32.180 transcend it

01:02:33.020 into the spiritual world

01:02:34.060 for a person

01:02:34.660 and certainly

01:02:35.580 if you believe

01:02:36.440 any of the stories

01:02:37.360 of the Bible,

01:02:38.680 the New Testament

01:02:39.140 or the Old,

01:02:39.800 you must believe

01:02:40.620 that there are things

01:02:41.200 that start in the spiritual

01:02:42.140 that then manifest themselves

01:02:43.500 in the physical.

01:02:44.580 Somehow that door swings

01:02:46.280 both ways.

01:02:47.760 We don't fully understand that.

01:02:49.240 The problem though

01:02:50.020 with the sort of conservatism

01:02:51.380 you described earlier,

01:02:52.580 the conservatism

01:02:53.440 that doesn't care 0.59

01:02:54.480 about narrative,

01:02:55.300 that doesn't care 0.59

01:02:55.960 about aesthetic,

01:02:57.420 my argument would be,

01:02:58.240 yes,

01:02:58.480 but narrative and aesthetic

01:02:59.720 care about you.

01:03:01.460 Right,

01:03:01.900 right,

01:03:02.240 that's for sure.

01:03:03.780 Narrative is real.

01:03:05.040 Narrative is an active force

01:03:06.840 in the world

01:03:07.420 and so,

01:03:08.160 the narrative impacted me

01:03:10.380 and changed my life

01:03:11.580 and so,

01:03:12.620 it's that understanding

01:03:13.480 of the power of narrative

01:03:14.640 that caused me

01:03:15.240 to be drawn

01:03:15.760 in that direction.

01:03:17.800 Okay,

01:03:18.200 okay,

01:03:18.540 well,

01:03:18.920 you know,

01:03:19.320 I'm writing this new book

01:03:20.560 called We Who Wrestle

01:03:21.520 with God

01:03:22.040 and it's going quite nicely

01:03:24.340 and one of the arguments

01:03:26.100 that I lay out in there

01:03:27.200 and I believe this

01:03:28.120 to be true

01:03:30.180 at multiple levels

01:03:31.880 simultaneously,

01:03:32.800 it's true scientifically,

01:03:34.200 it's true philosophically,

01:03:36.000 it's true metaphysically,

01:03:37.280 it's true religiously,

01:03:38.200 all of that

01:03:38.720 is that a description

01:03:40.660 of the structure

01:03:42.000 through which we perceive

01:03:43.840 the world

01:03:44.500 is a story.

01:03:46.520 That's what a story is

01:03:47.560 and you cannot perceive

01:03:49.140 the world without a story.

01:03:50.320 This is why the empiricists

01:03:51.620 and the postmodernists

01:03:52.600 got this right,

01:03:53.400 by the way.

01:03:54.000 This is why the empiricists

01:03:55.320 are wrong.

01:03:56.400 There's a trillion facts.

01:03:58.940 You have to rank order them

01:04:00.580 in terms of their value

01:04:01.620 and a description

01:04:02.780 of that rank ordering

01:04:03.880 is a story.

01:04:05.260 So when you watch someone

01:04:06.420 on screen

01:04:07.100 walk through their life,

01:04:09.340 what you're seeing

01:04:10.200 are the choices they make,

01:04:12.600 the value choices they make

01:04:14.000 and the consequences

01:04:14.940 and we're so interested in that

01:04:16.620 because we want to fill in

01:04:17.820 our narrative

01:04:18.320 so that we have

01:04:19.220 a narrative

01:04:19.960 that will allow us

01:04:21.300 to orient ourselves

01:04:22.120 in the world properly

01:04:23.020 and the biblical narrative

01:04:24.580 is the meta-narrative

01:04:26.580 of Western culture

01:04:27.520 and there's no escaping that.

01:04:29.380 Now,

01:04:29.800 what the postmodernists

01:04:31.360 did wrong

01:04:31.960 after realizing

01:04:32.940 that we saw the world

01:04:33.920 through a story

01:04:35.000 was insist that

01:04:36.480 that story was one of power

01:04:38.120 and if you think

01:04:39.720 the ruler of the world

01:04:41.120 is the person

01:04:42.120 who wields the most power,

01:04:44.140 you are literally

01:04:45.620 the farthest thing 1.00

01:04:46.440 from a Christian

01:04:47.000 you could possibly be

01:04:48.160 because the entire

01:04:49.440 Judeo-Christian narrative,

01:04:51.040 Moses,

01:04:51.560 we talked about this

01:04:52.280 in the Exodus seminar,

01:04:53.960 Moses is forbidden

01:04:55.120 from entering

01:04:56.180 the promised land

01:04:57.200 even though

01:04:58.220 he had led

01:04:59.320 the Israelites faithfully

01:05:00.660 for decades

01:05:01.420 under the most

01:05:02.180 appalling conditions

01:05:03.380 merely because

01:05:04.460 he uses force once

01:05:06.480 when God tells him

01:05:07.940 instead to use his words

01:05:09.380 and that's it.

01:05:10.460 It's like the punishment is

01:05:11.560 hey,

01:05:12.040 you're right on the border

01:05:12.740 of the promised land

01:05:13.520 but you used your staff

01:05:15.500 to hit the rocks

01:05:16.380 when you were told to speak

01:05:17.720 and you don't get to proceed

01:05:19.400 and so

01:05:20.140 you made yourself God.

01:05:21.340 It's not just

01:05:22.280 well and you also

01:05:24.280 made the assumption

01:05:25.140 that you

01:05:25.700 that's exactly right

01:05:26.760 you used force

01:05:28.920 you used your ability

01:05:29.980 to compel

01:05:30.820 when you should have

01:05:32.380 used your ability

01:05:33.340 to invite

01:05:34.120 and to entice

01:05:35.260 you didn't tell

01:05:36.200 the right story

01:05:37.020 you used force

01:05:38.040 Thomas Jefferson makes

01:05:38.700 this brilliant

01:05:39.400 Thomas Jefferson

01:05:40.580 makes a brilliant argument

01:05:41.640 in his

01:05:42.200 he wrote the

01:05:44.420 Virginia Charter

01:05:45.440 of Religious Freedom

01:05:46.360 and in the

01:05:47.980 in the preamble

01:05:49.140 to the Virginia Charter

01:05:50.300 of Religious Freedom

01:05:51.100 I won't quote it

01:05:52.380 because I would misquote it

01:05:53.380 but he essentially says

01:05:54.980 since God alone

01:05:57.480 has both the power

01:05:58.720 and the right

01:06:00.160 to compel us

01:06:01.920 to believe

01:06:02.760 and since he chose

01:06:04.760 not to

01:06:05.400 who would we be

01:06:07.260 to do otherwise

01:06:08.060 right

01:06:09.360 great

01:06:09.700 great

01:06:10.240 yeah

01:06:10.540 great

01:06:10.900 absolutely

01:06:11.480 well that

01:06:12.200 yeah

01:06:12.480 yeah

01:06:12.840 precisely

01:06:13.420 and that

01:06:14.140 and the insistence

01:06:15.240 that in the Judeo-Christian

01:06:17.340 tradition

01:06:18.100 that we do have

01:06:19.000 true choice

01:06:19.560 true free choice

01:06:21.040 and that we can use

01:06:22.060 that in the moral domain

01:06:22.940 and that is being

01:06:23.660 reserved to us

01:06:24.700 that is part and parcel

01:06:26.520 of the notion

01:06:27.240 that we have

01:06:27.880 responsibility

01:06:29.140 and the right

01:06:30.160 to our own destiny

01:06:31.160 I mean

01:06:31.780 one of the things

01:06:32.700 you see

01:06:33.100 I've been

01:06:33.480 I've been writing

01:06:34.060 about the prophet

01:06:34.720 Elijah

01:06:35.200 in this new book

01:06:36.600 and Elijah

01:06:37.600 is an interesting figure

01:06:38.580 because he's one

01:06:39.240 of the prophets

01:06:39.800 that shows up

01:06:40.660 on the mount

01:06:41.140 when Christ is

01:06:41.960 transfigured

01:06:42.620 it's Moses and Elijah

01:06:43.820 and it's like

01:06:44.380 you might ask

01:06:44.920 well who's Elijah

01:06:45.780 right

01:06:46.120 you know who Moses is

01:06:47.120 but Elijah

01:06:48.280 is the first person

01:06:50.000 first of all

01:06:50.920 to take a stance

01:06:51.980 against that

01:06:53.460 no he's the most

01:06:54.460 outstanding exemplar

01:06:55.860 of the people

01:06:56.380 who took a stance

01:06:57.240 against deifying nature

01:06:59.080 so he's the enemy

01:07:00.800 of the prophets

01:07:01.460 of Baal 0.76

01:07:02.020 and Baal is a nature god

01:07:03.620 right

01:07:03.900 the god of the earthquake

01:07:04.840 the god of the environmentalists

01:07:06.700 Baal is a variant

01:07:08.280 of Gaia

01:07:08.880 although he's male

01:07:09.760 and so

01:07:10.500 and Elijah realizes

01:07:12.220 that whatever god is

01:07:13.300 is not nature

01:07:14.700 despite nature's

01:07:15.880 awesome capacity

01:07:17.100 and ability

01:07:17.880 to elicit something

01:07:19.500 you know

01:07:20.840 approximating

01:07:21.760 admiration

01:07:22.280 and awe

01:07:23.480 it's not

01:07:24.140 it's not the earthquake

01:07:25.440 and it's not the

01:07:26.360 it's not the hurricane

01:07:27.760 it's not the storm

01:07:28.780 it's instead

01:07:30.080 the still small voice

01:07:31.520 within

01:07:31.880 that's where that line

01:07:32.800 comes from

01:07:33.420 and so

01:07:34.420 and so there's

01:07:35.600 so that

01:07:36.700 that the conscience

01:07:37.940 has to be free

01:07:38.920 in that regard

01:07:39.800 and and that's

01:07:41.960 all right

01:07:42.300 so let me ask you

01:07:43.240 another question here

01:07:44.080 so the other thing

01:07:45.620 that people are going

01:07:46.220 to be skeptical about

01:07:47.200 I'm less skeptical

01:07:48.100 about this now

01:07:49.000 you know

01:07:49.280 because I've

01:07:49.920 worked with some

01:07:50.980 of your very talented

01:07:51.860 people

01:07:52.280 Jonathan Hay

01:07:52.940 and Elliot Feld

01:07:53.640 for example

01:07:54.240 brilliant editors

01:07:55.640 brilliant

01:07:56.240 and being an editor

01:07:57.140 is very hard work

01:07:58.160 and they're very good

01:07:59.200 at it

01:07:59.440 they can get to

01:08:00.020 the core of a story

01:08:00.900 and I've seen them

01:08:01.460 do that multiple times

01:08:02.500 that takes a very

01:08:03.820 special talent

01:08:04.620 and someone who's awake

01:08:05.920 you know

01:08:06.540 that's hard

01:08:07.120 now

01:08:07.720 where are you

01:08:09.360 getting your talent

01:08:10.300 and how do you

01:08:11.900 select them

01:08:12.340 on the creative side

01:08:13.340 you know

01:08:13.900 because you'd think

01:08:14.640 well who's going

01:08:15.540 to go work

01:08:16.040 for daily

01:08:16.520 for the new

01:08:17.200 daily wire enterprise

01:08:18.080 I mean

01:08:18.760 I know there's a lot

01:08:19.780 of disaffected people

01:08:20.960 in the entertainment industry 0.91

01:08:22.080 and they're sick 0.75

01:08:22.720 and tired of being

01:08:23.360 told what to do

01:08:24.140 and having their talents

01:08:25.360 subverted to the woke mob

01:08:26.780 but I'm curious

01:08:28.920 you've collected

01:08:29.640 a lot of creative people

01:08:30.800 around you

01:08:31.340 and how have you done that

01:08:33.480 and how do you assess

01:08:34.320 and evaluate them

01:08:35.260 yeah

01:08:36.140 when a woman experiences

01:08:39.200 an unplanned pregnancy

01:08:40.420 she often feels alone

01:08:41.900 and afraid

01:08:42.480 too often

01:08:43.520 her first response

01:08:44.480 is to seek out

01:08:45.180 an abortion

01:08:45.660 because that's what

01:08:46.940 left-leaning institutions

01:08:48.020 have conditioned her to do

01:08:49.500 but because of the generosity

01:08:51.280 of listeners like you

01:08:52.420 that search may lead her

01:08:53.800 to a pre-born network clinic

01:08:55.260 where by the grace of God

01:08:56.740 she'll choose life

01:08:57.780 not just for her baby

01:08:59.000 but for herself

01:09:00.260 pre-born offers God's love

01:09:02.160 and compassion

01:09:02.760 to hurting women 0.99

01:09:03.520 and provides a free ultrasound

01:09:04.940 to introduce them

01:09:05.880 to the life growing inside them

01:09:07.500 this combination

01:09:08.640 helps women to choose life

01:09:10.220 and it's how pre-born

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01:09:13.740 thanks to the daily wire's

01:09:15.400 partnership with pre-born

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01:09:18.560 choosing life

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01:09:50.380 well one thing

01:09:55.640 that I would say

01:09:56.120 is it's much easier

01:09:57.080 with kids entertainment

01:09:57.980 than it has been

01:09:58.800 with our more general

01:09:59.640 entertainment

01:10:00.440 with general entertainment

01:10:02.800 there are a lot

01:10:04.000 of disaffected people

01:10:04.820 as you say in Hollywood

01:10:05.680 they want to come over

01:10:06.800 and be a part of something

01:10:07.660 that they believe in

01:10:09.040 the challenge is

01:10:10.780 I can't offer them a career

01:10:11.880 I can only offer them a job

01:10:13.180 and if the job

01:10:14.160 that I offer them

01:10:15.000 gets in

01:10:15.620 could actually be

01:10:16.660 detrimental to their career

01:10:18.060 well then that's

01:10:18.900 a pretty bad bargain

01:10:19.760 so one of the things

01:10:21.740 that we're endeavoring

01:10:22.440 to do

01:10:22.800 obviously get talent

01:10:24.260 where we can

01:10:24.940 to grow talent

01:10:26.740 internally

01:10:27.320 to stretch ourselves

01:10:29.040 over time

01:10:30.540 and success

01:10:31.020 to be able to show people

01:10:32.080 look this isn't

01:10:32.760 a flash in the pan

01:10:33.540 there's going to be

01:10:34.060 more and more opportunity

01:10:35.040 over here

01:10:35.580 I think that will draw

01:10:37.180 more and more talent

01:10:38.180 to take that leap

01:10:39.880 and come over

01:10:40.340 and work with us

01:10:41.020 on the kids front

01:10:42.460 it's been much easier

01:10:43.340 the second I announced

01:10:44.480 that we were doing this

01:10:45.240 we had huge writers

01:10:46.920 from DreamWorks

01:10:48.140 and Disney

01:10:48.520 huge producers

01:10:49.160 from DreamWorks

01:10:50.020 and Disney

01:10:50.420 and other animated

01:10:51.640 and kids entertainment

01:10:53.180 companies

01:10:53.680 jump ship

01:10:54.540 and come straight to us

01:10:55.480 and at first

01:10:56.000 I didn't understand why

01:10:57.080 because they're

01:10:57.660 they're taking

01:10:58.600 in some ways

01:10:59.080 an even bigger risk

01:11:00.080 but then I realized

01:11:01.900 oh it makes sense

01:11:03.280 if you had come to me

01:11:04.800 when I was 25

01:11:05.720 let's say

01:11:06.500 and said

01:11:07.680 Jeremy we read this pilot

01:11:08.900 that you wrote

01:11:09.620 it's fantastic

01:11:10.900 we really like it

01:11:11.920 we'd love to make it

01:11:12.940 but you know

01:11:13.760 you're going to have to put

01:11:15.060 an anti-gun agenda

01:11:18.120 in there

01:11:18.540 and the one character

01:11:19.220 is going to have to have

01:11:19.760 an abortion

01:11:20.200 and these two men 0.99

01:11:20.940 are going to kiss

01:11:21.500 in the third act

01:11:22.380 I would have been

01:11:23.760 I may have said no

01:11:26.000 because I'm a bit

01:11:26.540 of a contrarian at heart

01:11:27.620 but I may have said yes

01:11:29.000 you know

01:11:29.500 because I wanted so badly

01:11:30.880 for those dreams

01:11:32.600 to come true

01:11:33.260 but if you tell me

01:11:35.020 to do that for a show

01:11:35.880 that's going to be marketed

01:11:36.760 to seven year olds

01:11:37.820 well now there's really

01:11:39.580 no conflict at all

01:11:40.640 I simply cannot do it

01:11:42.780 I cannot have

01:11:44.000 I'm not going to

01:11:45.720 for any amount of money

01:11:46.860 for any amount

01:11:47.900 of my dreams coming true

01:11:49.200 get comfortable

01:11:50.420 with putting

01:11:50.920 transgendered characters

01:11:52.320 in shows aimed

01:11:53.420 at seven year olds

01:11:54.260 and since that is

01:11:55.360 actually what's happening

01:11:56.920 at these major

01:11:58.580 Hollywood studios

01:11:59.240 right now

01:11:59.700 people who

01:12:00.540 people who were drawn

01:12:01.460 to kids entertainment

01:12:02.360 in particular

01:12:02.940 are people who love kids

01:12:04.580 they love

01:12:05.280 the innocence of children

01:12:06.400 the youth of children

01:12:06.940 they feel a responsibility

01:12:08.020 you know

01:12:08.880 the people who work

01:12:09.500 at Disney

01:12:09.940 are a special breed

01:12:11.200 I've worked with

01:12:12.160 some of them now

01:12:12.700 they're damn near impossible

01:12:13.980 by the way

01:12:14.620 it's terrible to manage them

01:12:16.520 because they're so creative

01:12:18.340 they're so full of love

01:12:19.900 they're so full of life

01:12:21.040 they're so full of vision

01:12:22.080 it makes them

01:12:23.340 challenging to manage

01:12:24.660 they're incredible artists

01:12:26.060 truly in every sense

01:12:27.260 of the word

01:12:27.700 and they feel

01:12:29.040 deeply responsible

01:12:30.760 for the content

01:12:31.360 that they create

01:12:31.960 whereas if you ask me

01:12:33.100 to be a writer

01:12:33.580 on Game of Thrones

01:12:34.380 it may go against

01:12:35.380 some of my values

01:12:36.160 but I'd be stoked

01:12:37.200 to be working

01:12:37.680 on the biggest show

01:12:38.500 I'd be stoked

01:12:39.260 to be working

01:12:39.680 with the best people

01:12:40.440 in the industry

01:12:41.000 and I'd console myself

01:12:42.320 at night

01:12:42.700 with the knowledge

01:12:43.320 that adults

01:12:44.020 can make their own choices

01:12:44.960 adults have the right

01:12:45.780 to engage with content

01:12:46.820 maybe the people

01:12:47.680 who watch it

01:12:48.140 won't even agree with it

01:12:49.020 but they'll enjoy it

01:12:49.760 for other reasons

01:12:50.440 you don't feel that way

01:12:51.660 with little kids

01:12:52.280 so from the second

01:12:53.760 we launched

01:12:54.340 the disaffected

01:12:55.300 in general entertainment

01:12:56.460 put out feelers to us

01:12:58.560 keep us posted

01:12:59.400 they'll come take a meeting

01:13:00.260 and then they'll back off

01:13:01.200 on the kids front

01:13:02.780 it's where do we sign up

01:13:04.440 uh-huh

01:13:05.800 uh-huh

01:13:06.560 what they're being asked

01:13:07.460 to do in their daily lives

01:13:08.480 is evil

01:13:09.200 and they don't want

01:13:10.740 to participate in evil

01:13:11.600 hmm

01:13:12.660 hmm

01:13:13.200 so what sort of applicant pool

01:13:15.040 have you been able

01:13:15.740 to draw from

01:13:16.380 like how many

01:13:17.000 I don't know how many people

01:13:18.260 you've hired

01:13:18.860 in the bent key apparatus

01:13:21.260 who are creative

01:13:22.080 can you give us

01:13:23.060 an approximate number

01:13:24.100 yeah

01:13:25.580 you know

01:13:25.900 because I've been out

01:13:26.700 of the country

01:13:27.140 for the last many months

01:13:28.780 on this leave of absence

01:13:29.700 and I'm

01:13:30.020 I found out yesterday

01:13:31.240 that since I've left

01:13:32.300 we've hired almost 30 people

01:13:34.060 uh

01:13:35.240 which is

01:13:35.880 that's a lot

01:13:36.780 that's a big number

01:13:38.060 of my company now

01:13:38.800 that I've never even met

01:13:39.840 but it's

01:13:41.100 it's necessary

01:13:41.740 for how we're doing things

01:13:42.640 for me to be on this leave

01:13:43.660 but I would say

01:13:44.860 two dozen

01:13:46.440 creatives

01:13:48.220 in the

01:13:48.660 in the

01:13:49.320 kids entertainment

01:13:50.700 is probably

01:13:51.320 an accurate number

01:13:52.420 right

01:13:53.460 so it's still a small number

01:13:54.700 and how many

01:13:55.480 how many

01:13:56.000 how many inquiries

01:13:57.180 have you had

01:13:57.860 about the possibility

01:13:58.920 of such

01:13:59.540 positioning

01:14:00.420 daily

01:14:03.040 okay

01:14:04.800 okay

01:14:05.140 so you have

01:14:05.620 a huge

01:14:05.960 applicant pool

01:14:06.660 to select from

01:14:07.480 and people

01:14:08.920 like I say

01:14:09.480 people who've worked

01:14:10.260 at very high levels

01:14:11.380 at very big studios

01:14:12.600 right

01:14:14.420 so it must be tempting

01:14:15.220 to hire all of them

01:14:16.260 yeah

01:14:17.120 if we had the resources

01:14:18.500 we would have hired

01:14:19.240 probably all of them

01:14:20.220 by now

01:14:20.600 you know

01:14:21.980 it is

01:14:22.540 we grow out of cash flow

01:14:24.080 you'll

01:14:24.420 they'll read all these rumors

01:14:25.560 about how we're funded

01:14:26.300 by billionaires

01:14:27.040 we spend over

01:14:28.140 200 million dollars a year

01:14:29.720 you'd have to be

01:14:30.800 quite a billionaire

01:14:31.480 to fund the daily wire

01:14:32.940 there's not

01:14:33.800 I know

01:14:34.260 it's hard for people

01:14:35.320 to understand

01:14:35.700 how money works

01:14:36.480 but a guy

01:14:37.520 with a billion dollars

01:14:38.420 can't spend

01:14:38.940 200 million dollars a year

01:14:40.920 on

01:14:42.000 propping up

01:14:43.400 the daily wire

01:14:44.820 the daily wire

01:14:45.580 is a for proper business

01:14:46.680 well he also doesn't

01:14:47.240 in most cases

01:14:47.980 he also doesn't

01:14:48.880 have that money

01:14:50.120 it's not like

01:14:51.080 I always think of

01:14:51.940 the Scrooge McDuck image

01:14:53.340 because that's what

01:14:54.080 people think

01:14:54.800 you know

01:14:55.040 that the typical billionaire

01:14:56.080 has a money bin

01:14:57.060 where he goes

01:14:57.780 and swims in pennies

01:14:58.960 and your money

01:14:59.940 is out there

01:15:00.600 if you have more money

01:15:01.520 than you need

01:15:02.240 for your daily necessities

01:15:04.400 your money is invested

01:15:05.720 in all sorts of things

01:15:06.820 it's

01:15:07.120 that's right

01:15:07.640 it's not

01:15:07.940 it's yours to control

01:15:09.720 but

01:15:10.640 it's not

01:15:12.240 it's not yours

01:15:13.300 in the simple sense

01:15:14.280 that you have the money

01:15:15.160 in your wallet

01:15:15.920 or if it is 1.00

01:15:16.960 you're being foolish 1.00

01:15:18.080 with your money 1.00

01:15:18.800 so

01:15:19.460 that's a hard thing

01:15:20.800 for people to understand

01:15:21.660 the number of people

01:15:23.100 on planet earth

01:15:23.740 who could just fund

01:15:24.860 an operation

01:15:26.160 like the daily wire

01:15:27.000 is remarkably small

01:15:28.160 it's not even billionaires

01:15:29.220 it's deca billionaires

01:15:30.340 we

01:15:32.640 the daily wire

01:15:33.500 can go away tomorrow

01:15:34.540 if we fail

01:15:36.080 and that's a very real possibility

01:15:37.840 all of the time

01:15:38.900 there have been

01:15:39.660 numerous moments

01:15:40.620 in the history

01:15:41.060 of the company

01:15:41.560 where we've come

01:15:42.080 right up against it

01:15:42.920 and even that

01:15:44.180 is a huge lesson to me

01:15:45.200 it's not

01:15:45.500 I wouldn't have known that

01:15:46.500 until I took this journey

01:15:47.560 I always thought

01:15:48.740 in the early years

01:15:50.020 I thought well we'll reach a point

01:15:51.140 eventually where there's some stability

01:15:52.480 but we keep expanding

01:15:54.280 we keep growing

01:15:54.860 if you're not growing

01:15:55.460 you're dying

01:15:56.020 you know

01:15:57.060 the first year of the company

01:15:58.720 that might be the only real stability

01:16:00.780 Jeremy

01:16:01.240 you know

01:16:01.780 because

01:16:02.300 a biological organism

01:16:04.240 tends to deteriorate

01:16:05.680 very rapidly

01:16:06.300 if it isn't growing

01:16:07.300 and expanding

01:16:08.000 right

01:16:08.320 there's

01:16:08.620 the real stability

01:16:10.160 might be

01:16:11.080 that creative edge

01:16:12.480 and that's particularly

01:16:13.220 going to be true 0.97

01:16:13.880 if you're in entertainment

01:16:14.720 and what that does mean

01:16:15.860 or in cultural drama

01:16:17.380 let's say

01:16:17.900 what that does mean

01:16:19.320 and this is one of the things

01:16:20.460 I've really found exciting

01:16:21.440 by the way

01:16:21.860 about working with The Daily Wire

01:16:22.980 because I've worked with

01:16:24.040 a lot of different organizations now

01:16:25.720 and some of them

01:16:26.500 were quite great

01:16:27.220 like Harvard was great

01:16:28.300 in the 90s

01:16:28.860 when I was there

01:16:29.500 and I've started

01:16:30.920 a number of companies

01:16:31.800 and they've done quite well

01:16:32.920 and I'm accustomed

01:16:34.060 to having very good

01:16:35.160 graduate students around me

01:16:36.460 and

01:16:36.600 but

01:16:37.240 one of the things

01:16:38.520 I really have enjoyed

01:16:39.440 about The Daily Wire

01:16:40.300 is that

01:16:40.920 everything is done

01:16:42.320 to a high standard of excellence

01:16:43.560 so that's cool to see

01:16:45.080 and that people are taking

01:16:46.860 that responsibility

01:16:47.700 onto themselves

01:16:48.580 which I also really like to see

01:16:50.020 because it means

01:16:50.640 that you've distributed

01:16:51.600 responsibility

01:16:52.440 and creative freedom

01:16:54.660 at the same time

01:16:55.600 quite extensively

01:16:56.600 and that gives your company

01:16:58.160 a real dynamism

01:16:59.140 and I really saw that

01:17:00.060 with the documentaries

01:17:01.320 and so

01:17:02.500 that's

01:17:03.840 but I think

01:17:04.440 that's the only kind

01:17:05.240 of stability

01:17:05.700 you can really hope for

01:17:06.860 doing what you're doing

01:17:08.180 it has to be

01:17:08.860 a living stability

01:17:10.100 and not

01:17:10.680 some false stability

01:17:12.960 that comes from

01:17:14.060 resting on your laurels

01:17:15.760 and assuming

01:17:16.260 what you've already

01:17:17.280 going to

01:17:17.600 that's like

01:17:17.980 burying your talents

01:17:18.860 in the ground

01:17:19.540 I give a speech

01:17:20.580 to all of our new recruits

01:17:21.580 once a month

01:17:22.120 they bring

01:17:22.460 and of course

01:17:22.920 I haven't gotten to do this

01:17:23.680 in the last five months

01:17:24.700 but once a month

01:17:25.940 they bring all the new people

01:17:26.840 into a room

01:17:27.480 and I go and visit with them

01:17:28.520 and I tell them

01:17:30.580 every time

01:17:30.960 the Daily Wire

01:17:31.440 is an incredibly

01:17:32.140 difficult place to work

01:17:33.340 it's an incredibly

01:17:35.220 difficult place to work

01:17:36.320 because

01:17:36.820 we have an actual mission

01:17:39.220 and

01:17:40.060 you know

01:17:41.140 it

01:17:42.100 I liken it

01:17:43.620 into the mission

01:17:44.200 of say

01:17:44.700 a SpaceX

01:17:45.360 even though obviously

01:17:46.160 what we do

01:17:46.500 is very different

01:17:47.220 but we're

01:17:48.380 trying to get to Mars

01:17:49.580 and we're building

01:17:51.220 the rocket as we go

01:17:52.300 and there's

01:17:53.660 every possibility

01:17:54.780 at every

01:17:55.460 new step

01:17:56.380 that we'll crash

01:17:56.960 back to Earth

01:17:57.480 if you don't get

01:17:57.940 breakaway velocity

01:17:58.760 there's only

01:17:59.240 the inevitability

01:18:01.120 crashing becomes

01:18:01.960 an inevitability

01:18:02.680 it's just a matter of time

01:18:03.720 and that may well be

01:18:04.840 our fate

01:18:05.540 we could one day

01:18:06.300 have a billion dollars

01:18:07.180 a year of revenue

01:18:08.220 and then fail

01:18:09.320 and you could say

01:18:10.180 well I don't understand

01:18:10.900 you used to be succeeding

01:18:12.300 with 30 million dollars

01:18:13.400 a year of revenue

01:18:13.900 how could you fail

01:18:14.580 with a billion

01:18:15.100 well it's easier

01:18:16.400 to fail at a billion

01:18:17.240 because the mistakes

01:18:18.260 get much more costly

01:18:19.180 much faster

01:18:19.880 Daily Wire is hard

01:18:21.600 the pressure is intense

01:18:22.600 every startup is hard

01:18:24.180 and our startup

01:18:24.740 has actual enemies

01:18:25.600 we have

01:18:26.040 all the major giants

01:18:27.520 in social media

01:18:28.240 except perhaps Elon

01:18:29.180 actively trying

01:18:30.400 to shut us down

01:18:31.160 trying to demonetize us

01:18:32.540 we have billionaire

01:18:33.340 funded non-profits

01:18:34.380 who exist

01:18:35.260 they pay people

01:18:36.120 six figures a year

01:18:37.360 to listen to our content

01:18:38.740 and then to try

01:18:39.680 to target our advertisers

01:18:40.920 into dropping us

01:18:41.840 on the basis

01:18:42.560 of the things

01:18:43.060 that we say

01:18:43.440 on that content

01:18:44.000 we have a government

01:18:44.920 that's hostile

01:18:45.600 to the things

01:18:47.200 that we do

01:18:47.720 the entire apparatus

01:18:49.500 of our culture

01:18:51.240 is arrayed

01:18:51.900 essentially

01:18:52.340 against our business

01:18:53.260 of course

01:18:54.140 it's an incredibly

01:18:55.040 challenging environment

01:18:55.880 for people to work in

01:18:56.740 I say

01:18:57.520 it is possible

01:18:58.880 it is possible

01:19:00.160 that I will one day

01:19:00.880 fire you

01:19:01.320 because of a mistake

01:19:02.160 of course

01:19:03.560 hypothetically

01:19:04.220 there's a mistake

01:19:04.820 that you could make

01:19:05.420 that's so vast

01:19:06.100 I would have to fire you

01:19:06.980 and that has happened

01:19:08.040 one or two times

01:19:09.460 but in the vast majority

01:19:11.440 of instances

01:19:11.960 that's not why people

01:19:13.060 burn out at the Daily Wire

01:19:14.480 or quit the Daily Wire

01:19:15.320 and get fired

01:19:15.840 far more prevalent

01:19:17.320 is people who

01:19:18.540 try to rest

01:19:19.900 on past successes

01:19:21.100 if you try to rest on

01:19:23.500 I understand that temptation

01:19:24.960 but past successes

01:19:26.900 will not get us to Mars

01:19:28.280 you know

01:19:29.500 we will crash

01:19:30.660 with all of those

01:19:31.580 past successes

01:19:32.280 firmly in our pocket

01:19:33.360 it's the next success

01:19:35.160 that has to happen

01:19:36.060 and the one after that

01:19:37.220 and the one after that

01:19:38.080 and if you're not willing

01:19:38.900 to continue to challenge yourself

01:19:40.280 and continue to grow

01:19:41.440 and take responsibility

01:19:42.680 if I walk in

01:19:44.120 and say you made a mistake

01:19:45.060 I need you to say

01:19:46.460 yes I did

01:19:47.580 and here's what I learned

01:19:48.400 from it

01:19:48.760 I tell people

01:19:49.540 my dream in life

01:19:50.560 is to one day

01:19:51.180 make a one billion dollar mistake

01:19:53.060 you know

01:19:54.420 you talked about enemies

01:19:55.560 and risk

01:19:57.020 and I think

01:19:58.140 part of the reason

01:19:58.920 that it's exciting

01:20:00.580 to be working

01:20:01.740 with the Daily Wire

01:20:02.660 is because

01:20:03.360 the risk

01:20:04.680 is calibrated properly

01:20:06.060 see

01:20:07.240 one of the things

01:20:08.540 you do as a therapist

01:20:09.520 I had a client

01:20:10.540 who was very afraid

01:20:11.500 of death

01:20:12.540 now everyone's

01:20:13.520 afraid of death

01:20:14.220 and logically so

01:20:15.200 but you can be

01:20:15.860 so afraid of death

01:20:16.800 that it completely

01:20:18.040 obliterates your ability

01:20:19.260 to live

01:20:19.740 and she was a vegan

01:20:21.060 and couldn't even walk

01:20:23.320 into a butcher store

01:20:24.300 and it was because

01:20:25.740 the idea of death

01:20:27.020 was just

01:20:27.620 too much for her

01:20:29.020 she tried to stay asleep

01:20:31.200 most of the time

01:20:32.080 she was very suicidal

01:20:33.240 she had

01:20:36.440 she had a panoply 0.84

01:20:37.860 of problems

01:20:38.420 and one of the things

01:20:39.860 we did in treatment

01:20:40.560 I outlined this in my book

01:20:41.940 was

01:20:42.300 go watch an embalming

01:20:43.920 and that was very

01:20:45.780 very dramatic

01:20:46.400 it was dramatic for me too

01:20:47.600 it's not a trivial thing

01:20:48.980 to see

01:20:49.420 that's for sure

01:20:50.280 and part of the reason

01:20:51.780 you do that with people

01:20:52.760 and I did this

01:20:53.620 because she had a dream

01:20:54.540 that indicated

01:20:55.260 some necessity

01:20:56.120 on her part

01:20:56.800 to do something

01:20:57.440 that dramatic

01:20:58.060 in order to lift herself 0.99

01:20:59.300 out of her fear

01:21:00.000 and it really did

01:21:01.000 and part of the reason

01:21:01.980 it lifted herself 0.68

01:21:02.820 out of her fear

01:21:03.660 was because

01:21:04.260 if you have to confront

01:21:07.000 something truly terrible

01:21:08.660 this is what happens

01:21:09.640 when

01:21:10.800 archaic people

01:21:12.580 initiate their teenagers

01:21:13.960 especially the boys

01:21:14.940 they subject them

01:21:16.100 to something truly awful

01:21:17.340 and the reason

01:21:18.800 they do that

01:21:19.400 is because

01:21:19.900 then their nervous system

01:21:21.540 is calibrated properly

01:21:22.700 they know the difference

01:21:24.240 between something

01:21:25.020 truly awful

01:21:26.200 and something

01:21:27.820 that's just

01:21:28.360 you know

01:21:28.680 not that good

01:21:29.780 and if you don't

01:21:30.740 have that calibration

01:21:31.620 then everything

01:21:32.220 that's just not that good

01:21:33.480 becomes truly awful

01:21:34.540 now one of the things

01:21:35.620 that's cool

01:21:36.120 about the daily wire

01:21:36.960 and this may be

01:21:37.720 a consequence

01:21:38.440 of the intense assault

01:21:40.260 on its existence

01:21:41.120 is that

01:21:41.820 because you guys

01:21:43.420 are surrounded by enemies

01:21:44.680 and the probability

01:21:45.440 of failure

01:21:46.160 is spectacular

01:21:47.180 that risk

01:21:48.860 is built in

01:21:49.820 like just accepting

01:21:51.440 that risk

01:21:52.100 is built in

01:21:52.920 to the psyches

01:21:53.640 of the people

01:21:54.200 who work there

01:21:54.880 and so

01:21:55.220 when I say

01:21:56.220 well why don't we

01:21:57.220 go do a documentary

01:21:58.340 in Jerusalem

01:21:59.100 and Athens

01:21:59.680 and Rome

01:22:00.660 and we won't script it

01:22:02.300 and we'll just see

01:22:03.020 what happens

01:22:03.520 when we go there

01:22:04.420 everybody says

01:22:05.360 well that sounds like

01:22:06.240 it would be interesting

01:22:07.120 instead of having

01:22:07.960 a neurotic fit

01:22:08.880 about all the multiple

01:22:10.460 ways that could go wrong

01:22:11.840 which

01:22:12.600 and there are multiple

01:22:13.660 ways it could go wrong

01:22:14.640 and the probability

01:22:15.320 that it would succeed

01:22:16.260 is very low

01:22:17.100 but I know

01:22:18.940 perfectly well

01:22:19.780 when you're trying

01:22:20.400 to engage people

01:22:21.620 unless you put yourself

01:22:23.460 on the ragged edge

01:22:24.400 of disaster

01:22:25.180 you're not interesting

01:22:27.620 and so you know

01:22:28.940 it could easily be

01:22:29.800 that all this

01:22:31.180 adversarial tension

01:22:32.660 that you're experiencing

01:22:34.460 that I'm experiencing

01:22:35.420 as well

01:22:35.980 is actually

01:22:36.920 not only

01:22:38.120 not an

01:22:38.880 antithetical

01:22:40.040 to that success

01:22:41.040 to radical success

01:22:42.100 but actually

01:22:42.660 a precondition

01:22:43.520 for radical success

01:22:44.720 it's certainly

01:22:45.740 you know

01:22:46.180 one of the things

01:22:46.820 my family has learned

01:22:47.960 through bitter

01:22:49.080 experience

01:22:49.760 is that

01:22:50.440 the worst

01:22:52.380 attacks

01:22:53.160 have the most

01:22:55.620 possibility

01:22:56.920 embedded in them

01:22:58.140 if you can

01:22:59.480 stop panicking

01:23:01.040 and pull back

01:23:01.900 and evaluate

01:23:02.460 the situation

01:23:03.320 there's

01:23:04.320 all sorts of

01:23:05.520 opportunity

01:23:06.040 in a bitter attack

01:23:07.840 especially

01:23:08.720 if you don't

01:23:09.300 apologize

01:23:09.760 if you can

01:23:10.380 withstand

01:23:10.720 the attack

01:23:11.440 if you can

01:23:11.980 you can

01:23:12.840 meet it

01:23:13.180 with a sense

01:23:13.980 of humor

01:23:14.460 and playfulness

01:23:15.160 which is a very

01:23:16.000 strange thing

01:23:16.620 to be able to do

01:23:17.860 when it's a true attack

01:23:19.060 but

01:23:19.700 there's certainly

01:23:21.220 the journalists

01:23:21.960 who have treated me

01:23:22.920 most harshly

01:23:24.100 have been the ones

01:23:25.540 who have done me

01:23:26.100 the biggest favors

01:23:26.960 and that's a very

01:23:28.580 strange thing

01:23:29.180 to see and learn

01:23:29.980 you know

01:23:30.340 it's

01:23:30.640 it kind of stands

01:23:32.180 your understanding

01:23:32.940 of the world

01:23:33.580 on its

01:23:34.000 on its head

01:23:34.920 but in a way

01:23:36.860 that's also

01:23:37.340 a great relief

01:23:38.200 it's like

01:23:38.620 don't be so sure

01:23:39.480 that's just

01:23:40.000 a catastrophe

01:23:40.680 you know

01:23:41.560 I mean

01:23:41.840 sometimes

01:23:42.220 that's obviously

01:23:42.920 very hard

01:23:43.440 to rationalize

01:23:44.200 but

01:23:44.440 even in the

01:23:45.340 extreme situations

01:23:46.400 it's not obvious

01:23:48.380 you know

01:23:49.020 no matter how big

01:23:49.860 the dragon

01:23:50.420 there might be

01:23:51.060 a treasure

01:23:51.480 that's associated

01:23:52.420 that's just as big

01:23:53.580 or bigger

01:23:54.160 it might be

01:23:55.420 that that's how

01:23:55.960 the world is structured

01:23:56.820 so let's close

01:23:57.940 this with

01:23:58.420 I wanted to ask you

01:23:59.620 about Pendragon

01:24:00.400 and what you're

01:24:01.380 doing in Europe

01:24:01.960 and you mentioned

01:24:03.240 that that

01:24:03.780 series

01:24:04.780 was very

01:24:05.900 relevant to you

01:24:07.600 in the shaping

01:24:08.120 of your world view

01:24:08.960 so why don't you

01:24:09.820 walk us through

01:24:10.660 that a bit

01:24:11.040 and then tell us

01:24:11.780 exactly what you are

01:24:13.000 doing in Europe

01:24:13.600 and when this is all

01:24:14.520 going to be launched

01:24:15.280 and what you expect

01:24:16.220 of it

01:24:16.580 so Stephen Lawhead

01:24:18.180 is an American author

01:24:20.360 he's expatriated

01:24:21.820 about 30 years ago

01:24:23.040 and has lived in Oxford

01:24:24.480 ever since

01:24:25.120 he was a

01:24:25.720 American sort of

01:24:27.080 evangelical

01:24:27.620 worked in the

01:24:28.220 evangelical music industry

01:24:29.220 actually in Franklin

01:24:29.920 Tennessee

01:24:30.300 right down the road

01:24:31.000 from the Daily Wire

01:24:31.700 offices

01:24:32.740 and he's been

01:24:33.880 Anglicanized 0.58

01:24:34.660 and

01:24:35.260 you know

01:24:36.500 he's obviously

01:24:36.880 a major Anglophile

01:24:37.780 moved to Oxford

01:24:39.000 and really pursued

01:24:40.500 his writing

01:24:42.680 from a

01:24:43.940 historic point of view

01:24:45.080 that's not to say

01:24:45.740 that he writes history

01:24:46.520 he certainly doesn't

01:24:47.340 it's very fiction

01:24:48.020 it's very much fiction

01:24:49.200 but it's

01:24:50.620 it's fiction

01:24:51.220 that's grounded

01:24:51.840 to a large degree

01:24:53.120 that takes place

01:24:53.700 in a time

01:24:54.140 and a place

01:24:54.560 which he understands

01:24:55.460 incredibly well

01:24:56.960 and it's

01:24:58.100 it's masculine 0.96

01:24:59.760 and it's

01:25:01.100 Christian

01:25:03.840 but it's Christian

01:25:05.220 in a way

01:25:05.600 that's very grounded

01:25:06.360 as well

01:25:06.820 I mean it's about

01:25:07.480 you know

01:25:08.660 it's about

01:25:09.100 this very dark period

01:25:10.860 in British history

01:25:11.560 it's about

01:25:12.120 war

01:25:12.940 and it's about

01:25:13.580 death

01:25:13.980 and it's about

01:25:14.620 the human struggle

01:25:16.260 and I would say

01:25:17.380 that I found

01:25:18.260 the Pendragon cycle

01:25:19.160 about the same time

01:25:19.840 that I found

01:25:20.400 Braveheart

01:25:21.040 when Braveheart

01:25:22.140 first came out

01:25:22.680 in theaters

01:25:23.000 and Braveheart's

01:25:23.600 the film that

01:25:24.060 impacted me

01:25:24.760 the most in my life

01:25:26.540 for many of the same reasons

01:25:28.140 it's historical fiction

01:25:29.380 obviously

01:25:29.880 it's not

01:25:30.280 that's not quite the story

01:25:31.300 of William Wallace

01:25:32.280 but it's an important story

01:25:34.760 and an important take

01:25:35.920 on a story

01:25:36.500 that's fundamentally about

01:25:38.280 I think

01:25:38.940 what it means

01:25:39.780 to be a man of purpose

01:25:40.980 and a man of faith

01:25:41.860 in the real world

01:25:43.400 not the sort of

01:25:45.060 maybe Christian

01:25:45.820 you know

01:25:46.420 I grew up in the

01:25:47.120 Jesus is nice 90s

01:25:49.400 when

01:25:50.040 when

01:25:50.700 when Jesus is

01:25:51.620 that's just not true

01:25:52.340 that's just not true

01:25:53.580 I've always said

01:25:54.400 I want to write a book

01:25:55.100 called Jesus the Jerk

01:25:56.260 because

01:25:57.140 you know

01:25:57.600 Jesus was

01:25:59.000 a tough guy to like

01:26:00.560 he showed love

01:26:03.180 in a way

01:26:03.460 that only God

01:26:04.100 can show love

01:26:04.880 which is

01:26:05.680 you know

01:26:06.640 it has an edge

01:26:08.260 it has an edge

01:26:09.380 that's right

01:26:10.220 and I'm not even sure

01:26:11.640 that you could show love

01:26:12.800 in the ways

01:26:13.440 that Jesus sometimes

01:26:14.500 showed love

01:26:15.500 for example

01:26:16.120 if you met a woman

01:26:16.920 at a well

01:26:17.480 and she had one source

01:26:19.060 of absolute shame

01:26:20.140 and you chose

01:26:21.020 to lead with it

01:26:21.840 I'm not sure

01:26:22.680 that you could make

01:26:23.260 the claim

01:26:23.660 that you are acting

01:26:24.320 out of love

01:26:24.920 but Christ

01:26:25.800 could make the claim

01:26:26.820 that he was acting

01:26:27.360 out of love

01:26:27.780 that's a very unique

01:26:28.660 all of that to say

01:26:30.860 the sort of nice

01:26:32.800 hippie Jesus

01:26:33.420 who came to hug it out

01:26:34.540 was very unappealing

01:26:36.480 to me

01:26:36.800 it didn't seem

01:26:37.500 real

01:26:38.040 it didn't seem

01:26:38.780 you know

01:26:39.440 I lived in a small town

01:26:40.440 my friends

01:26:41.360 as is true

01:26:42.640 in many American

01:26:43.280 small towns

01:26:43.900 in that era

01:26:44.640 horrible drug use

01:26:46.520 horrible drug use

01:26:47.200 happening inside my family

01:26:48.360 lots of pain

01:26:49.040 and suffering

01:26:49.460 all around me

01:26:50.180 and I just

01:26:52.200 didn't see

01:26:53.040 how this nice guy

01:26:54.160 Jesus

01:26:54.520 held up

01:26:56.160 and then I

01:26:57.460 encountered

01:26:57.820 these stories

01:26:58.540 law head stories

01:26:59.620 Mel Gibson

01:27:01.160 and Randall Wallace's

01:27:02.640 story of

01:27:03.520 of Braveheart

01:27:04.320 and I saw

01:27:05.440 what it would be

01:27:05.840 to be a man of purpose

01:27:06.840 who actually

01:27:07.580 lived out faith

01:27:08.440 in a

01:27:09.220 in a

01:27:09.880 in a world

01:27:11.480 that wasn't very nice

01:27:12.600 and that really

01:27:14.680 inspired a lot

01:27:15.280 of my thinking

01:27:15.700 a lot of my world view

01:27:16.600 I'm sure that my politics

01:27:19.020 is formed

01:27:20.160 in those moments

01:27:20.860 I'm sure that my faith

01:27:21.700 is forged

01:27:22.260 in many ways

01:27:23.420 in those moments

01:27:23.860 it's interesting

01:27:24.360 that you saw that

01:27:25.540 you know

01:27:25.900 I've been writing

01:27:27.240 about Abraham

01:27:28.020 and the Abrahamic story

01:27:30.520 is extremely interesting

01:27:31.820 which is of course

01:27:33.440 why we still remember it

01:27:35.020 but there's

01:27:35.860 there's a couple of elements

01:27:37.420 that I find

01:27:38.020 particularly germane

01:27:39.140 to our discussion

01:27:40.120 and to the state

01:27:40.880 of the current world

01:27:41.560 so Abraham

01:27:42.760 has the socialist

01:27:43.980 paradise

01:27:44.460 at the beginning

01:27:45.220 of the story

01:27:45.920 essentially

01:27:47.120 like if you imagine

01:27:48.540 that the socialist

01:27:49.280 paradise

01:27:49.700 is a place

01:27:50.460 where all your

01:27:51.340 needs are met

01:27:53.100 Abraham has that

01:27:54.800 right

01:27:55.040 because he's the son

01:27:56.120 of a wealthy man

01:27:57.520 and he has

01:27:59.880 everything he needs

01:28:01.260 at hand

01:28:02.060 and he's actually

01:28:04.120 luxuriated in that

01:28:05.380 for decades

01:28:05.960 because I think

01:28:06.420 he's 75

01:28:07.080 when the story opens

01:28:08.340 and God comes to him

01:28:10.140 and says

01:28:10.580 you're not built

01:28:12.620 for laying around

01:28:13.440 and you know

01:28:14.740 existing on a

01:28:16.560 non-stop diet

01:28:17.360 of topless

01:28:18.200 servant girls 0.99

01:28:19.160 and milk and honey

01:28:20.580 get the hell out there

01:28:22.220 in the world

01:28:22.800 and what

01:28:24.440 and what

01:28:25.100 have your adventure

01:28:26.740 well the thing

01:28:27.820 about an adventure

01:28:28.620 is it's rough

01:28:29.620 it's rough

01:28:30.940 but it's funny

01:28:32.260 because

01:28:32.660 it appears

01:28:34.440 that a rough adventure

01:28:36.120 is better than

01:28:37.080 an endless diet

01:28:38.140 of milk and honey

01:28:38.920 you know

01:28:39.380 even when you think

01:28:40.200 about what we do

01:28:41.260 when we go to movies

01:28:42.140 we don't go

01:28:43.680 and watch people

01:28:44.680 satiate themselves

01:28:46.380 with materialist goods

01:28:47.480 we don't go to movies

01:28:48.380 and watch people shop

01:28:49.660 we don't watch them

01:28:50.800 eat ice cream

01:28:51.780 right

01:28:52.320 we don't

01:28:52.720 we don't see them

01:28:53.560 with the possible

01:28:54.480 exception of sex

01:28:55.540 we don't see them

01:28:56.280 engaging in

01:28:57.100 consumatory activities

01:28:58.860 technically speaking

01:28:59.780 we go watch people

01:29:01.000 like James Bond

01:29:02.040 we go watch

01:29:02.760 people who are having

01:29:03.640 dangerous adventures

01:29:04.880 and that's exactly

01:29:06.020 what God actually

01:29:06.980 puts in front of Abraham

01:29:08.260 and the reason

01:29:09.200 that Abraham

01:29:09.640 can handle

01:29:10.300 these dangerous adventures

01:29:11.380 is because he continually

01:29:12.440 makes the appropriate

01:29:13.360 sacrifices

01:29:14.020 he always keeps his eye

01:29:15.560 on what's highest

01:29:16.420 and that leads him

01:29:17.740 through war

01:29:18.740 and starvation

01:29:19.640 and the possible loss

01:29:21.220 of his wife

01:29:21.740 and the necessity

01:29:22.520 in principle

01:29:23.260 to sacrifice his son

01:29:24.500 and all the calamities

01:29:26.160 of the world

01:29:26.840 are in the Abrahamic story

01:29:28.220 and he prevails

01:29:30.020 against all that

01:29:31.000 and becomes the father

01:29:31.980 of nations

01:29:32.600 in consequence

01:29:33.300 but what's so cool

01:29:34.680 about the story

01:29:35.420 and it goes along

01:29:36.640 with your observation

01:29:37.560 that the Christ

01:29:38.380 is a nice hippie story

01:29:39.620 just doesn't cut it

01:29:40.580 it's like no

01:29:41.500 you're built to be

01:29:42.580 you're built to take on

01:29:45.340 death and hell

01:29:46.160 fundamentally

01:29:47.140 and that's part and parcel

01:29:48.860 of the Christian passion story too

01:29:50.380 because it means

01:29:51.240 that a full encounter

01:29:52.120 with life

01:29:52.680 is an encounter

01:29:53.380 with all of the terrible

01:29:55.020 elements of death

01:29:55.980 something I covered

01:29:57.060 in detail with Pajot

01:29:58.840 when we did the Jerusalem

01:29:59.880 documentary

01:30:00.520 that will be coming out later

01:30:01.680 and that wasn't even enough

01:30:03.300 is that the full

01:30:04.440 Christian passion story

01:30:05.760 is you don't have

01:30:07.080 to just encounter death

01:30:08.420 and the worst sort of death

01:30:10.320 you know

01:30:10.620 at the hands

01:30:11.300 of your own community

01:30:12.360 disgraced

01:30:13.520 despite your innocence

01:30:14.600 you have to

01:30:15.760 encounter the reality

01:30:17.120 of hell itself

01:30:18.060 to have lived

01:30:19.160 a full life

01:30:19.980 and you know

01:30:20.740 that's brutal

01:30:21.560 but it is

01:30:22.460 what it offers

01:30:24.460 and this is something

01:30:25.460 that's really

01:30:26.100 an offering

01:30:26.740 especially to young men

01:30:28.280 is that

01:30:28.740 well it offers you

01:30:30.400 the adventure

01:30:30.960 of your life

01:30:31.720 and maybe if you had that

01:30:33.440 that would be

01:30:35.120 that would be

01:30:36.420 what you actually want

01:30:37.560 instead of what you say

01:30:38.520 you want

01:30:39.020 you know

01:30:39.360 it could be

01:30:40.320 that that's how things work

01:30:41.720 well and it sounds like

01:30:43.180 you know

01:30:43.640 you started this

01:30:44.440 in part by saying

01:30:45.280 you know

01:30:45.500 you are having

01:30:46.140 the adventure

01:30:46.660 of your life

01:30:47.280 you're in Italy

01:30:48.200 you're in Europe

01:30:48.820 you're pursuing this

01:30:50.920 this series

01:30:51.960 that's actually

01:30:52.540 the fulfillment

01:30:53.160 of a dream

01:30:53.760 that you've had

01:30:54.340 since you were

01:30:55.060 a teenager

01:30:56.020 and strangely

01:30:57.200 it's come true 0.99

01:30:58.080 to kill me 0.65

01:30:58.580 right 0.96

01:30:59.940 it's also the hardest

01:31:00.520 it's the hardest thing

01:31:01.400 I've ever done

01:31:02.160 by any measure

01:31:03.200 what's hard about it

01:31:06.520 I think that I'm

01:31:07.600 on the brink

01:31:08.060 I think I'm

01:31:08.500 on the brink

01:31:08.880 of personal collapse

01:31:10.000 it's been

01:31:10.560 so difficult

01:31:11.980 I'm edgy

01:31:13.760 I'm mercurial

01:31:16.880 in ways

01:31:17.240 that I'm not

01:31:17.680 typically mercurial

01:31:18.680 I don't gain weight

01:31:22.580 I don't lose weight

01:31:23.280 it's just been

01:31:24.360 this horrible

01:31:24.800 grind

01:31:25.820 and everyone

01:31:26.680 who sees me

01:31:27.180 or sees photos

01:31:28.260 of me

01:31:28.560 or saw my video

01:31:29.380 a few days ago

01:31:30.280 say

01:31:30.520 I've never seen

01:31:31.460 you look so happy

01:31:32.300 and I think

01:31:33.800 well yeah

01:31:34.020 because both

01:31:34.420 of those things

01:31:34.880 are true

01:31:35.340 right

01:31:36.540 right

01:31:36.940 right

01:31:37.280 right

01:31:37.660 right

01:31:38.180 yeah

01:31:38.660 isn't that

01:31:39.080 a strange thing

01:31:39.920 and so how do you

01:31:40.980 account for the fact

01:31:41.880 that how do you

01:31:42.700 account for the fact

01:31:43.620 that you are doing

01:31:44.960 this perversely

01:31:45.800 impossible thing

01:31:46.760 that is unlikely

01:31:49.100 beyond belief

01:31:50.120 but that's actually

01:31:50.960 happening

01:31:51.400 I mean

01:31:51.700 first of all

01:31:52.360 with the Daily Wire

01:31:53.220 in general

01:31:53.780 second with

01:31:55.080 what is so far

01:31:56.400 a improbably

01:31:58.480 successful foray

01:31:59.800 into the domain

01:32:00.580 of culture

01:32:01.180 and then third

01:32:02.220 and even more

01:32:02.940 specifically

01:32:03.540 that well

01:32:04.580 you're making

01:32:05.120 the series

01:32:06.040 of your dreams

01:32:06.940 essentially

01:32:07.460 like why do you

01:32:08.860 think

01:32:09.180 why do you

01:32:10.960 what do you think

01:32:11.660 you've done

01:32:12.320 apart from

01:32:13.140 being the fortunate

01:32:14.200 recipient of God's

01:32:15.480 grace

01:32:15.760 what do you think

01:32:16.500 you've done

01:32:17.120 or not done

01:32:18.720 to make this

01:32:19.540 a possibility

01:32:21.500 I think that

01:32:23.840 I would say

01:32:24.640 that

01:32:25.080 God recommends

01:32:26.580 God

01:32:27.040 God doesn't

01:32:28.340 recommend us

01:32:29.180 this is one

01:32:30.480 of the lessons

01:32:31.240 that I

01:32:31.660 encounter

01:32:32.300 over and over

01:32:33.020 and over

01:32:33.320 in my life

01:32:33.900 and where I

01:32:34.240 see

01:32:34.540 real pride

01:32:36.800 set in

01:32:37.280 is when we

01:32:37.640 think God

01:32:38.020 is recommending

01:32:38.560 us

01:32:39.000 when quite often

01:32:40.340 he's recommending

01:32:40.940 well perhaps

01:32:42.680 exclusively

01:32:43.220 he's recommending

01:32:43.880 himself

01:32:44.440 you know

01:32:46.120 what have

01:32:47.280 what have I

01:32:48.140 done

01:32:48.520 well I've done

01:32:49.320 a lot of

01:32:49.900 things

01:32:50.260 a lot of

01:32:51.060 them are good

01:32:51.500 and a lot

01:32:51.860 of them are

01:32:52.220 bad

01:32:52.540 I am a lot

01:32:54.340 of things

01:32:54.780 I'm complex

01:32:55.360 like everyone

01:32:55.860 else is complex

01:32:56.780 and in a lot

01:32:58.060 of superficial

01:32:58.620 ways I've made

01:32:59.420 great choices

01:33:00.100 and done great

01:33:00.820 good things

01:33:01.740 and in a lot

01:33:02.780 of more subtle

01:33:03.420 areas of life

01:33:04.740 I've done

01:33:05.960 probably

01:33:06.440 and am

01:33:07.640 probably worse

01:33:08.460 than people

01:33:09.040 who've been

01:33:09.500 made worse

01:33:10.500 superficial choices

01:33:11.540 than I've made

01:33:13.600 you know

01:33:14.240 you talked a little

01:33:15.120 bit ago about

01:33:15.640 free will

01:33:16.100 and how important

01:33:16.680 free will is

01:33:17.340 and of course

01:33:17.720 I agree

01:33:18.240 you can't

01:33:19.560 I don't think

01:33:21.180 one can honestly

01:33:22.340 look at life

01:33:23.000 and deny free will

01:33:23.920 I think that you

01:33:24.460 look at life

01:33:25.040 I think a lot

01:33:25.520 of people

01:33:25.840 can reason

01:33:26.580 their way

01:33:27.000 out of believing

01:33:27.720 in free will

01:33:29.160 but if there

01:33:30.320 is a supercomputer

01:33:31.180 which could

01:33:32.200 somehow

01:33:32.960 measure all

01:33:34.140 of the

01:33:34.640 vibrations

01:33:35.680 from every

01:33:36.940 photon

01:33:37.340 and every

01:33:38.120 electron

01:33:38.540 since the

01:33:39.540 big bang

01:33:40.100 and crunch

01:33:40.920 it all up

01:33:41.420 could it

01:33:41.700 figure out

01:33:42.160 that I'm

01:33:42.440 going to

01:33:42.620 clap my

01:33:43.000 hands right

01:33:43.440 now on

01:33:43.720 this podcast

01:33:44.380 well if there

01:33:44.980 is such a

01:33:45.420 supercomputer

01:33:45.840 that computer

01:33:46.460 is God

01:33:47.040 which speaks

01:33:49.740 to the fact

01:33:51.280 that there

01:33:51.520 is both

01:33:51.840 an experiential

01:33:52.780 free will

01:33:53.380 and there

01:33:54.260 is something

01:33:54.900 beyond free

01:33:55.920 will

01:33:56.220 as well

01:33:57.140 that in

01:33:58.800 some ways

01:33:59.460 I'm responsible

01:34:00.140 for my choices

01:34:00.920 and in some

01:34:01.460 ways I'm not

01:34:02.120 from a governing

01:34:03.300 point of view

01:34:03.920 from a justice

01:34:04.640 point of view

01:34:05.240 we can only

01:34:06.320 organize society

01:34:07.340 around the idea

01:34:08.120 of free will

01:34:08.740 you couldn't

01:34:09.880 organize society

01:34:10.860 around determinism

01:34:11.760 it would be an

01:34:12.380 unjust society

01:34:13.340 if you did

01:34:14.540 but part of

01:34:15.220 humility is to

01:34:16.020 say free will

01:34:16.760 isn't sufficient

01:34:17.520 to completely

01:34:18.260 describe the

01:34:19.560 human experience

01:34:20.360 just as

01:34:21.000 determinism

01:34:21.640 isn't

01:34:23.300 perhaps at

01:34:23.980 all

01:34:24.320 satisfactory

01:34:25.760 to describe

01:34:26.320 the human

01:34:26.660 experience

01:34:26.980 so I

01:34:27.580 take all

01:34:27.940 of that

01:34:28.260 and I

01:34:28.640 mentioned

01:34:30.380 that a lot

01:34:30.980 of drug

01:34:31.400 use happened

01:34:31.900 in my

01:34:32.180 family

01:34:32.580 I have an

01:34:33.720 uncle

01:34:33.960 who's a

01:34:34.260 year younger

01:34:34.640 than me

01:34:34.980 we were

01:34:35.260 basically

01:34:35.620 raised as

01:34:36.200 brothers

01:34:36.540 very small

01:34:37.900 town

01:34:38.240 very close

01:34:39.420 incredibly close

01:34:40.460 to this day

01:34:40.840 with my

01:34:41.100 grandparents

01:34:41.500 and we

01:34:42.920 grew up in

01:34:43.520 the same

01:34:43.780 house at the

01:34:44.200 same time

01:34:44.640 basically

01:34:45.180 that's not

01:34:47.020 literally true

01:34:47.640 but for all

01:34:48.060 intents and

01:34:48.420 purposes

01:34:48.700 it's true

01:34:49.280 and at

01:34:51.160 about the

01:34:51.700 same time

01:34:52.260 in our

01:34:52.580 lives we

01:34:53.060 started walking

01:34:53.640 into rooms

01:34:54.160 where there

01:34:54.440 was alcohol

01:34:54.940 and at

01:34:55.460 about the

01:34:55.840 same time

01:34:56.220 in our

01:34:56.440 lives we

01:34:56.820 started walking

01:34:57.260 into rooms

01:34:57.680 where there

01:34:57.940 were cigarettes

01:34:58.480 and at

01:34:58.760 about the

01:34:59.160 same time

01:34:59.620 we walked

01:35:00.360 into rooms

01:35:00.840 where there

01:35:01.100 were drugs

01:35:01.600 and he

01:35:03.380 became addicted

01:35:04.280 to all of

01:35:04.780 those things

01:35:05.280 and I

01:35:06.700 didn't

01:35:07.640 is that

01:35:08.480 as simple

01:35:08.960 as I made

01:35:09.460 better choices

01:35:10.080 than him

01:35:10.520 well it's

01:35:10.840 certainly not

01:35:11.300 as simple

01:35:12.040 as I made

01:35:12.480 better choices

01:35:13.400 than him

01:35:13.800 if the room

01:35:14.400 had been

01:35:14.640 filled with

01:35:15.060 ranch dressing

01:35:15.660 he would

01:35:15.980 have walked

01:35:16.260 out addicted

01:35:17.060 to ranch

01:35:17.500 dressing

01:35:17.840 there is a

01:35:18.300 switch in his brain that's different than the switch in my brain. And by God's grace, he's

01:35:24.420 been freed from those things. And so that's why I don't feel bad talking about it. It's not as

01:35:29.980 though he's still in the throes of it or has been in a very long time. But I always look at his life

01:35:35.300 and my life and say, you could easily say that I made better choices. And in some ways I did,

01:35:42.060 but even those choices, I don't know that I deserve much credit for. And I also made some

01:35:46.060 really terrible choices and just didn't get stuck with the consequences as he did.

01:35:49.940 At the same time, while he went through this phase of doing superficially incredibly terrible things,

01:35:55.680 I also can't look at his life and conclude that I'm better. I did a lot better in those

01:36:01.320 superficial areas. And I also know the darkness that I'm carrying around in my heart. I know

01:36:05.820 the judgments that I have of other people. I know that the devil on one shoulder and the angel on

01:36:12.140 the other shoulder both speak in my own voice. And so it's very hard to ever trust your own

01:36:17.960 perceptions of your goodness or your badness. I say all of that to say, I can't really describe

01:36:23.780 how I am where I am wholly apart from the grace of God. I don't understand why I've made choices

01:36:30.560 that have led to this. I could point to some of the choices that I think have without fully taking

01:36:35.100 any credit for them. I am, as I said earlier, I'm committed to the institutions that have helped us

01:36:42.380 shape our society. And I'm critical of those institutions. But I don't feel a desire to burn

01:36:47.320 them down. I only feel a desire that I think we should all take up a responsibility in our generation

01:36:51.960 to out with the bad and rebuild the important edifices. I don't know where that comes from except

01:37:00.540 story. I know that in Braveheart, William Wallace doesn't achieve the goal. He's executed. Other

01:37:06.060 people achieve the goal. I know that in the Pendragon cycle, in turn, both Taliesin and Merlin and

01:37:12.660 Arthur fail to achieve the goal. They draw us one step closer to that goal, and they go through

01:37:18.760 huge losses. So perhaps in a narrative sense, I was drawn to these stories about how it's not our job

01:37:25.600 to save the world. It's only our job to do our part. When Andrew Breitbart wrote his book,

01:37:30.840 Righteous Indignation, Excuse Me, While I Save the World, I called him and said, Andrew,

01:37:35.160 you can't call the book that. And he said, well, I am indignant, and it is righteous. I said, well,

01:37:39.200 you can call it. You can use that part, but don't use the subtitle. I said, it's, you're not saving the

01:37:43.800 world, and God is a jealous God. He's not going to share credit for saving the world with you.

01:37:49.040 And I understand that Andrew was on that mission. I supported him. I loved him in that mission.

01:37:53.840 But the mission is to do our part in God's work, not to think that we're God and that the work is

01:37:59.220 ours to do. And I don't mean to be critical of my friend, only of this one bad idea that I think that

01:38:03.900 he, this one bad idea that I think that he had. And so I do think, I do think that's part of the

01:38:09.980 grace that's helped me accomplish the things that I've accomplished. I'm doing what's put in front of

01:38:13.880 me to do. I'm skeptical of my own motivations, enough that I challenge myself and try to do better.

01:38:20.960 And I know it isn't ultimately my fight to win. And somehow in that, I've been able to participate

01:38:25.780 in a grace. And it may all fail, so I don't want to hold myself up as some great example of how you

01:38:30.460 should live your life. I only want to say that I think the only correct posture between us and God

01:38:36.400 is humility. The only correct posture between us and our own lives is a sense of responsibility for

01:38:41.280 our actions on the one hand, and a sense of humility before God and the other. And somewhere in

01:38:46.780 that, I've been able to live a happy life in times of success and in times of failure.

01:38:51.820 And I'm not displeased to currently be in a phase of success. Success can be much harder,

01:39:00.600 by the way, than failure. It comes with its own, as you know, probably much better even than I.

01:39:07.220 Success comes with enormous challenges. But there's a reason we call it success, too. It comes with a lot

01:39:12.160 of amazing benefits. That's a really good place to stop. We're at about the right time. And that's

01:39:17.940 a very good closing. And so I'm very much looking forward to seeing what happens with Bent Key on the

01:39:25.100 Child's Entertainment Front. It's something I'm very interested in. I hope the Pendragon series

01:39:29.880 knocks them dead. I'm really looking forward to the release of our documentaries. It's been 0.92

01:39:34.780 spectacularly good fun and serious as well to be working with The Daily Wire. So I thank you for that.

01:39:40.900 But that's been really nothing but good. And that's quite something. We've been working

01:39:46.380 together for a year and a half now, something like that, eh? And it's been—all of it's been good

01:39:53.080 on my side. And so I'm very pleased about that and would like to say thank you for setting up the

01:39:58.300 organization. Well, as long as you keep never saying anything that I don't agree with.

01:40:00.160 Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you talked about firing me if I make a mistake. I mean,

01:40:04.960 I've known for six years that I'm one wrong statement away from catastrophe. But that is an

01:40:11.800 exciting place to exist. There is that. And it does force you to be awake. And there is something

01:40:16.560 useful about being forced to be awake. And I think Daily Wire is awake in the right way. So

01:40:22.440 good luck with your venture. As you know, anything I can do to help that would be appropriate, I would

01:40:29.500 be more than happy to do. Thank you. And I'm thrilled to see—I'm very interested to see

01:40:34.600 what's going to happen with Snow White because that's so preposterous and ridiculous and comical 0.96

01:40:38.920 and pointed. And a nice move in relationship to Disney's 100th anniversary. You guys have a very

01:40:45.640 good sense of timing. And so that's very funny to watch. And so thank you very much for the

01:40:49.920 conversation. As everyone who's watching and listening knows, I will spend another half an hour with

01:40:55.060 Jeremy on the Daily Wire side of things. And so if you want to head over there, consider a subscription,

01:41:01.220 you'll get access to the Bent Key productions now too, which seems to be an additional benefit,

01:41:06.180 especially if you have kids. So give that some consideration. And thank you to the film crew

01:41:10.560 here in Lisbon and to the Daily Wire for making all of this possible. And Jeremy, it was a pleasure

01:41:14.940 talking to you and getting to know you a little bit better. Thank you so much for having me.

01:41:25.060 Thank you.

01:41:26.060 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 19, 2023

389. Snow White, Building an Empire, & Making Movies ｜ Jeremy Boreing

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