The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 516. Michael Malice： A Clinical Analysis

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. I had the opportunity today to sit down and talk, play really with Michael

00:00:22.900 Mellis. And that's always fun. Michael's a, he's a genuine delight to have a conversation

00:00:29.160 with. You never know what direction it's going to go in. Many directions, all of which have a certain

00:00:33.400 coherence. He's got a great sense of humor and irony and is extremely sharp and unpredictable.

00:00:42.520 So that's ridiculously fun. And he always has something useful to say. So what did we talk

00:00:49.480 about today? Well, we talked about the terrible attractiveness of the kind of virtue signaling

00:00:58.020 that other people make sacrifices for. Motivation for deep evil. Michael has studied totalitarian evil.

00:01:06.420 He was curious about the more mundane forms of pathology, the sorts of things that motivate

00:01:13.940 not only pedophilia, but extreme sadistic pedophilia, let's say. So that always makes for

00:01:20.800 enjoyable conversation. We talked about Michael shifting views with regards to the marginal,

00:01:31.140 let's say, as a creative anarchist by personality and political inclination. Michael is prone to

00:01:40.760 presume that the different against the same or the, what would you say, exceptional against the normal

00:01:49.700 is admirable. But he's also come to recognize that the center can be dissolved in a manner that's

00:01:58.660 cataclysmic and the diverse and the creative can degenerate into the monstrous and dangerous. And so we

00:02:05.780 talked about that technically, psychologically, sociologically. We talked about Camille Paglia,

00:02:13.080 who's a hero of Michael's, the brilliant female literary critic, unpredictable and sparkling,

00:02:22.140 and Michael's request to me that I broker an invitation, which I could do, I suppose, with some

00:02:28.700 degree of success probability. And we surveyed the landscape. Fundamentally, what we did was survey

00:02:38.760 the landscape of counterproductive moralizing and analyzed its effect on psychological and political

00:02:46.380 behavior. And it was great fun. So join us for that.

00:02:51.940 I suppose you think this should be a national holiday.

00:02:55.040 Well, kind of. Don't you? We took down Trudell. That's the spirit of January 6th.

00:03:00.200 Put her there, man.

00:03:01.240 Right?

00:03:01.480 Thank God. You know, I watched his resignation speech today. Apparently, the wind blew it away

00:03:09.880 just a couple of minutes before his actual speech. So he had to wing it. And you can tell. And you know

00:03:15.660 what I really found fascinating about it was, and I think it's perfectly in keeping with his essential

00:03:20.720 narcissism, is the first statements he made were about him. He said something like,

00:03:28.720 well, you all know I'm a leader and that, or I'm a fighter. You all know I'm a fighter and I don't

00:03:36.140 quit. It's like, well, this isn't about you. I can't believe that, I can't envision saying

00:03:43.560 something like that about myself. You know, can you imagine going out in front of a national audience

00:03:48.300 and saying, I'm a fighter?

00:03:50.820 I can't imagine anyone calling you a leader. That's true.

00:03:53.320 Well, yeah. So, anyways.

00:03:55.600 In all seriousness, to your point, I'm sorry to cut you off. You know better than I do from

00:03:59.560 your work at Shrink, narcissists think their narrative is the reality. They literally believe

00:04:04.220 what they say is true. And when you challenge that, they get enraged because it's, in effect,

00:04:09.340 you're lying if you contradict what they say.

00:04:11.360 Yeah, it's self-evident.

00:04:12.380 Well, there's an interesting corollary to that, you know. Statistical analysis of language,

00:04:21.300 kind of using something approximating early large language models was just factor analysis,

00:04:26.620 but it's analogous, showed that there's no difference between being self-conscious and being

00:04:35.120 miserable. They're so tightly associated that you can't distinguish them.

00:04:41.220 So, the default reality is that if you prioritize yourself, the associated emotion is negative.

00:04:52.020 So, narcissists are in a game that just can't possibly be won.

00:04:55.480 Wait, but isn't it more the case that they can't prioritize their self because there is no self?

00:05:00.120 Well, the self is a funny thing, Michael. This is something we might as well talk about this,

00:05:04.680 you know. A human being is something that's organized on many levels, right? So,

00:05:09.520 if you think about it neurobiologically, for example, I'll give you an example.

00:05:14.000 If you take a cat, a female, that works better on female cats, partly because their sexual behavior 0.99

00:05:18.920 is a little less complex to organize. You can take out the whole, almost the whole brain of a female 1.00

00:05:24.300 cat, the whole cortex, and most of the centers of emotion, and leave it only with the hypothalamus,

00:05:30.200 which is just a cap on the top of the spinal cord. And that cat, in a relatively unchanging

00:05:36.580 environment, can function. It can eat, it can mate, it can defend itself, it can drink,

00:05:43.240 it can regulate its temperature. Like, it's functional. And this is the weirdest thing,

00:05:47.920 it's hyper-exploratory. So, think about that. A cat with no brain is hyper-exploratory.

00:05:53.860 Okay. So, the hypothalamus regulates basic motivational states like lust and hunger and

00:06:01.420 thirst and temperature regulation, defensive aggression, right? And so, it's the first place

00:06:10.940 where reflexes transform into something like personalities. But there's a sets of them,

00:06:16.520 right? Like, you know what? A cat that's involved in defensive rage isn't a cat that's in the mood

00:06:21.980 for mating, right? So, it swaps between these fundamental motivational states. Well,

00:06:26.160 each of those motivational states has a self. And Nietzsche pointed this out back in an unrelated

00:06:33.020 investigation, in a sense. But he said, every drive philosophizes in its spirit.

00:06:40.420 So, these underlying motivational states, like, they're not just drives, like reflexes. They come

00:06:45.180 with perceptions, thoughts, attitudes, political opinions, like they come fully fledged. But imagine

00:06:53.280 if you're really immature, badly socialized, they just operate in sequence. That's like a toddler.

00:06:58.840 Well, when people talk about their self, usually they talk about something like possession by one

00:07:05.460 of those lower states. Now, then you could imagine that could be integrated. Right.

00:07:09.100 And that's what happens when you mature. But then that integration and being social are almost

00:07:15.200 exactly the same thing. Like, you know, if I was a solitary animal living in the woods,

00:07:20.200 I could just cycle through my underlying motivational states. There'd be no real reason to regulate or

00:07:25.740 integrate them. But as you mature, you integrate them so that they take the future into account and

00:07:32.060 other people into account. But then, so then the self starts to become, well, reflexes, basic motivational

00:07:38.380 states, integrated personality, but that it's integrated into a relationship and a family and

00:07:43.760 a community and a society. And it isn't obvious at all which of those takes priority. And one of the

00:07:51.260 things I've been thinking about is that our definitions of mental health are, and this is partly

00:07:56.800 psychologists' fault, are really badly flawed because we think of sanity as a characteristic of

00:08:03.060 the self, but it's probably something like harmony between all these, simultaneous harmony between all

00:08:09.600 these levels.

00:08:10.360 I wrote a short list of things I want to talk to you about, and we were already hitting it. And what I

00:08:14.140 want to talk to you about at length, I want to hear your thoughts at length, is that what you just

00:08:18.200 hit on is the idea of self-actualization.

00:08:20.000 Yeah.

00:08:20.580 Because I think that's the kind of thing when you're starting out in any career, it's not possible

00:08:24.660 because you're going to have to subordinate yourself to your boss, your superior is somewhat,

00:08:29.020 and you can't really be yourself all the time.

00:08:30.760 Well, I think you hit the target dead center by bringing up self-actualization. Okay, so this

00:08:38.060 was, this idea emerged in the late 1950s and the 1960s, right? First of all, with the existential

00:08:45.940 psychologists and psychoanalysts, and then with the humanists like Maslow and Rogers. And it was kind

00:08:52.560 of a substitute for religious pursuit. Like it'd be the secular substitute for religious pursuit. There was

00:08:58.600 this idea that there was a self, which is something like the liberal project, I would say the liberal

00:09:04.340 individualistic project, and then that that could be actualized. But, but there's a real problem with

00:09:09.880 that because, look, I had a neighbor say to me once, no mother is any happier than her most unhappy

00:09:18.460 child. Okay.

00:09:19.680 Right. Right. Which, you know, strikes me as highly plausible. So because if you're socialized,

00:09:26.220 you're in a nexus of relationships. Right. And if those relationships aren't harmonious,

00:09:31.380 voluntary, playful, you're miserable. And that means that the self-actualization isn't self. It's more

00:09:40.180 like conducting yourself in a manner that enables harmony to exist, like a musical harmony at all these

00:09:46.540 levels simultaneously. So you have to conduct yourself. If you're going to not be swamped by

00:09:51.620 negative emotion, this goes back to Trudeau. If I only think about my local self now and maximizing

00:09:57.660 that, you might say, well, I get exactly what I want or something in me does. Why wouldn't I be

00:10:02.720 happy? Well, part of the reason is I'm sacrificing the future because I'm being impulsive. And also,

00:10:08.240 if it's all about me, who the hell's going to want to be around me?

00:10:11.800 Well, I had, please, because again, this is your forte, not mine. I had always thought of

00:10:17.040 self-actualization, if I had to define it as, I'm myself 24-7. I'm myself when I'm at home. I'm

00:10:23.440 myself when I'm with my friends. I'm myself in a professional setting where you're always in a

00:10:27.440 position to be yourself. And I think when you have people around you who like you, respect you,

00:10:32.740 admire you, you can have that. And it is very harmonious because you don't have to change

00:10:37.740 who you are or how you talk if you're in the morning, evening, night, or no matter the setting.

00:10:42.820 So, Carl Jung talked about something akin to that. And I think that's partly the source of the ideas.

00:10:49.560 So, he believed that there was a core self. But Jung believed that the core self,

00:10:56.020 this is something we can talk about in great detail, but Jung identified the core self.

00:11:00.740 He thought that Christ was an archetype of the core self. There was a technical reason for that.

00:11:05.620 And then he thought the self was guarded, in a sense, by persona, which is exactly what you're

00:11:11.360 wearing, right? You've got a mask on. And so, the persona would be the tool that you use to,

00:11:17.760 this is one way of thinking about it, the tool that you use to manipulate the social environment

00:11:22.040 so that you don't cause undue stress and so that you get what you want. Now, you, like you,

00:11:29.040 apparently, would presume that if you're well-constituted, there's no real division between

00:11:35.400 the persona and the self. Now, it can be a bit more complicated than that because one of the

00:11:40.880 things Jung pointed out was that there are times when you want a persona. Like, you want to put out

00:11:47.940 a shallow version of yourself in a way. So, imagine, for example, that you go into a bank and you're

00:11:53.200 just going to do a business transaction with the teller. You don't want, whether you want the teller's

00:12:00.340 full self there or not is a matter of dispute. Really, what you want is a pretty generic

00:12:06.720 transaction, right? Right. So, there are times when you need to know when you present a generic

00:12:11.720 version of yourself. But my point is that bank teller isn't really in a position to be self-actualized

00:12:15.760 because they have to subordinate themselves to Chase or whatever the company is.

00:12:20.300 Well, you know, okay, so let's, I've been thinking about an idea akin to that

00:12:25.180 in relationship to the Exodus story. Okay. No, so the Exodus story presents kind of an

00:12:31.440 archetypal landscape of human destiny. And you might say one of the ways of interpreting it is that

00:12:38.400 everybody starts out as a slave. And that would be, I think, akin to your idea that the bank teller,

00:12:45.400 for example, isn't in a position to be self-actualized, right? Because they're so constrained by the

00:12:51.340 demands of the situation that there's no room for, what, individual creativity or full individual

00:12:57.520 expression. I can give you an example that happened to me when I, in 2000, I was working at Goldman

00:13:02.140 Sachs as a help desk, right? So, how it worked is- I can't imagine that. Why? I was better than

00:13:07.300 everyone else on the team combined because I knew how to be helpful. Because I knew, what I understood

00:13:11.480 was when that person is calling you, they don't want an answer, they want reassurance.

00:13:16.780 If you're at the point when you call the help desk, you're freaking out. You just want to know

00:13:21.060 someone will take care of it. I don't care what the answer is. I'm outsourcing my concern. So,

00:13:26.000 I understood the rest of my team didn't because they'd be like, oh, I don't know. I'm like,

00:13:29.860 don't add to their stress. They're stressed enough. You're there to ameliorate their stress.

00:13:33.820 Yeah, well, that's great. I mean, partly what you want-

00:13:35.720 I'm going to be looking for what I said earlier with this bank teller. And a lot of times they

00:13:39.880 would want overtime. And I wouldn't want to do the overtime because I wanted to go home and work

00:13:44.560 on my writing and so on and so forth. And overtime was time and a half. I'd rather have that hour

00:13:49.040 than that time and a half. My co-workers, I'm using this term literally, couldn't understand

00:13:55.600 that. They're like, you're getting paid time and a half and the team needs you. And I'm like,

00:13:59.740 I don't care. I'd rather have my time. And for these types of people, that self,

00:14:06.200 it makes no sense. You're there to help the team. The team needs you. QED.

00:14:10.380 Okay. So let's take apart that idea of your time. Because the way you phrased that, for example,

00:14:18.980 there's an implicit assumption there that's underlying our discussion that there's a

00:14:23.260 distinction between your time and company time. Yes. Okay. So I want to hit that from two

00:14:29.120 perspectives. One would be, well, they're both your time because you decided to go work for the

00:14:33.560 company. Right. But so that's a voluntary choice. Sure.

00:14:37.600 Just like it is to pursue what's your time. So then the question would be, what is it in you

00:14:45.420 that you were serving when it was your time specifically rather than company time? You

00:14:52.060 know what I mean? It's like, how do you, because you did both of them voluntarily.

00:14:55.700 But I didn't do both of them for free. Right. Okay. So one of the distinctions would be

00:15:00.000 the thing that you're doing when you spend your time, the time you characterize as my time.

00:15:08.000 Yeah.

00:15:08.320 That's something you would do for free.

00:15:10.020 Right.

00:15:10.380 Okay. Why? What was it about it that made it valuable in the absence of external reward?

00:15:16.780 Because that was what I wanted to be as a person. And I was working my writing and things like that

00:15:22.400 and trying to make it. Whereas the Goldman Sachs stuff, this is, there was no future in it for

00:15:27.080 me that I was like. Future.

00:15:28.040 Right. Yeah. Okay. So that's an interesting aspect of that. So would we say that?

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00:16:37.680 It was easy for you and maybe it's easy for people in general to assume that what they're

00:16:46.280 doing is having their time if what they're doing with that time is investing in their

00:16:51.480 future. I don't think they were thinking about the future. No, you, when you were doing your

00:16:55.820 writing was the fact that it was motivationally relevant to you directly associated with the

00:17:01.840 fact that it was an investment in the future. Like why was your writing, why did your writing

00:17:06.760 take precedent and why did you identify the time you spent writing as serving you? Like

00:17:12.860 I'm after a definition of you. What do you mean by you?

00:17:15.760 My definition of me as I saw it then, though I was in a position to implement it, is someone

00:17:21.500 who is a writer, someone who is a creative person, someone who's a thinker. There was no

00:17:25.600 part of me that wanted to be that corporate helper.

00:17:29.240 Right. Okay. So then I would say that's akin to the distinction between slave and sojourner,

00:17:36.280 let's say, in the Exodus story.

00:17:38.340 So, you know, there's this, one of the elements that underlies the general critique of capitalism

00:17:44.880 is that people are wage slaves.

00:17:46.820 Right, of course.

00:17:47.440 Right now, you can criticize that in that, well, slaves can't quit. And the critic would

00:17:54.280 say, well, I can quit one job, but if I don't get another one, I'll starve. So like, I'm

00:17:58.780 in a slavery position, so to speak. Now, I think the most effective way of countering

00:18:05.240 that is likely that if you're not charting your own destiny, then you are a slave.

00:18:11.620 But I think there's a big difference, and this is why the Exodus metaphor does not apply

00:18:15.540 here. I think a lot of people want the cage. I think H.L. Mencken is right. The average man,

00:18:21.340 H.L. Mencken, H.L. Mencken said the average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants

00:18:26.260 to be safe. You don't see that in Exodus. The Jews wanted to escape Egypt. There were

00:18:30.240 none of them that stayed behind. They go, oh, you know, I got a pretty good hero under

00:18:32.880 Pharaoh. They all want to be free, and that's not accurate.

00:18:35.140 But they do, like, well, they're lost in the desert, because that's part of what happens

00:18:40.920 on the way to freedom, so to speak. They do get whiny as hell. 0.73

00:18:43.600 Oh, hell yeah.

00:18:44.160 They pine for the days when the tyrant told them what to do. They said, well, at least we have

00:18:51.000 we had like a variety. They're getting manna from heaven, right? They said, well, we don't

00:18:54.540 have onions and garlic anymore, even though they're getting heavenly food. So they do revert

00:18:59.740 to that slave, what would you say, that longing for slavery. And I do agree that that is being

00:19:08.080 part of the reason, this is something that I think is really worth discussing with you,

00:19:12.860 part of the reason that people are wage slaves, let's say, is because they don't want to take

00:19:19.780 on the responsibility of charting their own course. Now, I think people often also don't

00:19:24.400 know how. Like, our school systems, for example, were set up to not teach people to do that.

00:19:30.540 It's the Bismarck model, where they wanted to make everyone homogenized to little soldiers.

00:19:36.520 It's funny how, one of the things I love about social media and kind of new media is that it

00:19:41.280 allows people to question things they never thought to even question for their whole life.

00:19:45.020 I'll give you a parallel example. The great leader, Kim Il-sung, who founded North Korea,

00:19:49.720 he had a big tumor on the back of his neck. It was too close to his spine to operate.

00:19:54.380 That was the alien control.

00:19:56.280 And it kept bigger and bigger throughout his life. And he was always photographed from this angle.

00:20:00.520 And I heard differing accounts about whether North Koreans knew about this.

00:20:04.260 And I met a refugee and I said to her, did you know about this thing? She goes, oh yeah,

00:20:08.820 it was an old war injury. And I said, why would a war injury get bigger throughout his life?

00:20:13.560 And she just stopped. And she's like, holy crap. She never questioned. And she knew in the face, 0.99

00:20:16.980 it was a lie, but she never questioned that it was a lie. Let's look about education.

00:20:21.600 Why are we all going to school at the same time and learning everything at the same pace?

00:20:26.120 It makes no sense. You're probably, me might be better at math. I might be better at,

00:20:29.680 you know, history.

00:20:30.900 Age graded group.

00:20:31.940 Yes. It makes, and when you stop and think, you go, especially with technology nowadays,

00:20:35.480 you can have dynamic testing, you know, okay, once a month you test, you stay here,

00:20:40.000 you get extra help. That's fine. You can read ahead. But somehow we all have to

00:20:45.160 start school at the same time, study everything at the same rate. And people who get are worse than

00:20:51.000 others or some, not do any fault of their own, are punished. It makes no sense, but we never

00:20:55.300 question it. And now thanks to podcasting like this, you'd be like, wait a minute,

00:20:58.900 this is kind of weird, isn't it? Why does everyone have to learn everything at the same rate

00:21:02.260 and at the same time?

00:21:03.640 Well, you know that it was the school systems were established in accordance with the Prussian

00:21:08.980 military model.

00:21:09.800 Yes, yes, of course.

00:21:10.640 And that the goal there was to make obedient soldiers and really, literally to crush out

00:21:15.060 any proclivity towards individual striving.

00:21:19.540 Just one more thing. There's a book called Illiberal Reformers, which talks about this at

00:21:22.960 length. It's amazing the boner Western leftists have for European ideas. Like they went over to

00:21:29.480 Prussia, they saw this. And because it's foreign, it's like, oh my God, this is amazing. This is

00:21:34.080 next gen. Same thing happened a couple of generations later with Lenin and the communists.

00:21:37.940 It's like, okay, it's from overseas. It must be better than our stupid American values is how 1.00

00:21:42.520 they perceived it. And the consequences have been absolutely disastrous. Like we've, 1.00

00:21:47.860 if you ask most conservatives in 2019, could COVID have happened in America, the lockdowns and all

00:21:53.960 the submission, they would have laughed in your face, but they ran the experiment. They have the

00:21:58.020 data. Their theory was wrong. People are docile.

00:22:02.440 I was shocked at the degree of, well, my conclusion observing Toronto during the COVID was that

00:22:09.000 70% of Canadians would have worn a mask for the rest of their life. And I would say

00:22:16.620 30% of them would have worn that mask happily if they could have continued informing on their

00:22:23.980 neighbors. Oh yeah. And the thing that's crazy to that is Canada is not a hospitable country.

00:22:28.960 It's a nation of frontiersmen. And look at Scotland. Like what happened to these peoples?

00:22:33.960 Or Australia. Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. There you go. And now they're, they're castrati.

00:22:39.040 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we did get rid of Trudeau today.

00:22:44.700 Yeah. But I mean, this is kind of, this is ripping. I mean, first of all, I think it's kind

00:22:49.100 of crappy of him to set up his successor and take a major loss like Kim Campbell had to face. It was

00:22:54.260 a 93. So, but I mean, I don't, I'm sure there's room for hope with Pierre, but it's, he's a symptom.

00:23:01.320 He's not the, he's not the cancer. Don't you think?

00:23:03.920 Yes. Yeah. Hey man, Canadians voted for him. And I would say that the default Canadian, 0.67

00:23:12.320 if presented with his policies one by one would still agree with virtually all of them.

00:23:18.700 Yeah. And that's true of the conservatives as well.

00:23:22.420 Yes, of course. Yes.

00:23:23.040 You know, the, the, the malaise is very, very deep. Yeah. Okay. So back to this, I'm, I, I still want

00:23:29.920 to dig in a little further into this, your dream. So we have this program online called

00:23:36.500 Future Authoring that helps people lay out a plan for the future.

00:23:40.080 Oh, what a great title. Okay. I love that.

00:23:41.540 Yeah. Well, it, it, it, it has almost a miraculous effect. It's really quite stunning. And I'm still,

00:23:49.880 I still find this difficult to believe because psychological interventions usually don't work.

00:23:56.340 And they often, if they work, they don't have the results that you intend, which is partly because

00:24:01.700 if something's kind of working well, it's really hard to improve it. It's way easier to buck it up

00:24:06.020 in ways you don't understand. Okay. So the future authoring program asks you to, okay. So you make

00:24:12.880 a contract with yourself like a covenant. So the covenant is something like this. If you could have

00:24:18.740 what you wanted in five years. And so what you wanted would be, you'd be satisfied with that or

00:24:23.440 thrilled with it even, and things would be going well enough for you so that you weren't swamped

00:24:28.960 by misery, which is really what people want, but they want to not be swamped by misery. They don't

00:24:33.360 want to be happy. Okay. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's very important to know that. It's a very

00:24:38.240 distinction. Yes. It's a very good distinction. Yes. So then can you imagine anything that would

00:24:43.560 satisfy you? So this is like a pretend game that a kid would play, you know, like it's fantasy. It's

00:24:48.940 like, okay, you get to have what you want now, but there's a condition here. You actually have to

00:24:52.860 be taking care of yourself like someone you care for. Yeah. Okay. So now you posit yourself

00:24:57.260 as someone you care for. Now you get to have what you want. What would satisfy you? But

00:25:02.660 you have to specify it. Sure. Okay. So then we have people write just for 15 minutes with

00:25:07.320 no real self-criticism. What might that be like? And then we have them criticize it a bit

00:25:14.320 because you have to make it into a strategy and then differentiate. It's like, well, what would

00:25:19.660 you want for a relationship? What would you want with regard to your family, your career,

00:25:24.380 your education, your care of yourself, your service to the community, your mental and physical

00:25:30.260 health? And again, same rules apply. You get to have what you want. Okay. So now we had

00:25:37.880 young people do this when they came to college on their orientation day. 90 minutes. That's all 0.95

00:25:45.500 they wrote. They either wrote for 90 minutes or they wrote about what they did for the last

00:25:49.200 two weeks for 90 minutes. So it was randomized, randomized study. The kids who did the self-authoring

00:25:55.620 program were 50% less likely to drop out the first year. Oh, wow. Yeah. 50%. Yeah. Yeah.

00:26:02.420 And even the college where we did this, it's stunning for a 90 minute intervention. Even the college

00:26:11.220 that we did the intervention in wouldn't implement the program. We got zero takers on the university

00:26:16.180 side, which is, you know, very telling as far as I'm concerned. But the reason I brought it up is

00:26:22.280 because the alternative to being a slave, let's say, which would be the alternative to self-actualization

00:26:29.460 is charting your own course. But then this is the question I have for you. Like you were doing that

00:26:36.900 when you had these dreams of writing, but why did you identify writing with yourself and why were you

00:26:44.220 motivated to pursue it? You know, cause that's work too, like working at Goldman Sachs. So this was my

00:26:49.700 list. I remember the list distinctly and I've checked them all off. Okay. No alarm clock, never have to

00:26:56.380 talk to someone I don't want to, and never have to engage in small talk. That was all I wanted.

00:27:01.820 So I've done standup for a little bit. And that was very frustrating for me because of the lack of

00:27:07.600 causality, meaning a joke that kills one night would bomb the next. And that threw me for a loop

00:27:12.120 writing. I could do it in my underwear, my house, my own time. So that, so to have those things

00:27:18.260 is to me, self-actualization and a huge, huge blessing.

00:27:22.940 Right. So that, that, a blessing. Yes. I don't take it for granted. The president doesn't have that.

00:27:28.780 So, you know, when, when God comes to Abraham, he comes as the voice of adventure. And what he

00:27:36.720 tells Abraham is that if he follows that voice, his life will be a blessing to himself. Right. 0.86

00:27:42.720 There's other aspects of the deal, but that's one of them. His life will be a blessing to him.

00:27:47.160 You set out the preconditions for what your life would be like if it was a blessing.

00:27:50.760 Yes. You said, so you're very high in openness. So you didn't want any small talk. You wanted to

00:27:55.720 get to the heart of the matter. Yes. Yes. Get to the depths right away.

00:27:58.220 Me and Michaela are zero in agreeableness. Yeah.

00:28:00.340 So I never have to talk to someone I don't want to. Yeah.

00:28:02.420 And I like my biorhythm. I go to bed at two, I wake up at 11, Monday to Sunday.

00:28:08.720 Right. Right. So you're, you're an evening person. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's,

00:28:12.480 that's often associated with openness. Is that true?

00:28:15.140 Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's actually the person, there are morning people and evening people

00:28:19.160 and they have different temperaments. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so you wanted to not

00:28:25.940 to have to engage in pointless small talk. Right. Right. You said you want to set your

00:28:30.800 own temporal rhythm. Right. Right. Although is it disciplined or is it erratic or do you

00:28:35.240 just get up at the same time, but later in the day? It's organic. You just get up. Yeah.

00:28:39.320 And that's okay. Yes. The best. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's better for me psychologically

00:28:44.920 if I get up at a regular time. But that is regular time. It's 11. Oh, you, but that's

00:28:49.160 what I asked. You get up at 11. Yes. But that, okay. So it's stable, but it's your choice. Yes.

00:28:53.960 Right. So that means- I don't have a clock. My body just wakes up. Right. So that means

00:28:57.100 it's not, what would you say? It's not, um, undisciplined. Sure. You know what I mean?

00:29:02.100 I'm very disciplined. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you wanted not to have to engage in trivial

00:29:07.640 interactions. Right. You wanted to get up on your rhythm. Right.

00:29:11.360 What else? Never have to talk to someone I don't want to. Right. No small talk. Yeah.

00:29:16.620 Right. So that's part of the small talk thing. Why do you distinguish them then? You wanted

00:29:20.760 to not have small talk and you also wanted not to talk to anybody you didn't want to talk to.

00:29:24.600 Well, not interact. So not just talk. Like if I, like if I don't have to go to some event

00:29:28.660 I don't want to, or be trapped in a conversation. Right. So you really wanted to choose the parameters

00:29:33.240 of your social. That's all you wanted. That's it. Were there other things? That was it.

00:29:36.320 I mean, I said, if that was my list, I've made it like in my head. I like being like now there's

00:29:41.320 other ancillary things. Like don't look at the check at a restaurant. Don't care. If I want to

00:29:45.500 go on a trip once in a while, I can. But I think at a certain point, this is what I want to talk to

00:29:48.980 you about is at a certain point, we and I have discussed this off camera. You stop driving the

00:29:55.160 car and you start surfing. Because I think when you reach a certain level of success, whatever comes

00:29:59.480 next is so often so random and circuitous. Like I've talked about this with Roseanne, you know,

00:30:03.780 one day the president's complaining about a song she sings. This is not the kind of thing you can

00:30:07.280 plan for and expect. Right. So once you reach a certain level of success, things just maintain

00:30:11.140 their momentum. And I talked about this with Rogan also. He's like, yeah, just wake up. You're like,

00:30:15.680 okay, you know, Prince Charles is complaining about me. This is my life. And you have to accept it.

00:30:20.540 You have that too. You want to be Jordan Peterson.

00:30:22.480 Yes, yes. Well, so that's the, there's a specific reason I wanted to bring this up. So

00:30:31.140 when I was writing We Who Wrestle with God, I was looking at character, their characterizations

00:30:36.420 of the divine. That was going to be the subtitle. We used perceptions instead, but

00:30:40.080 it doesn't matter. What, what the stories do, as far as I am concerned, or at least one of their

00:30:48.200 functions is to figure out what principle should be superordinate. Now you did that. You, you had three

00:30:53.920 parameters for your superordinate principle. And you identified that with yourself, right? That,

00:30:58.640 that would satisfy me. So, so the God, the divine in the Abrahamic encounter is the voice of

00:31:06.340 adventure. And so God's covenant, his contract there, because it's put in contractual form.

00:31:12.460 If you follow this voice, then the following things will happen. You'd be a blessing to yourself.

00:31:17.860 Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe

00:31:22.920 on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive

00:31:29.080 fairs. Discover more at viking.com.

00:31:34.000 Your name will become known among other people justly.

00:31:37.700 Yes.

00:31:38.180 Right. So that's a good author. That's a good offer, right? Because people want social standing

00:31:42.940 and that can be gamed and it can be falsified, but it can also be genuine.

00:31:46.600 Yes.

00:31:47.260 Right. Okay. You'll do something of lasting significance. So that's cool. That would be

00:31:53.280 probably for you.

00:31:54.600 Yes.

00:31:54.800 Maybe your work on anti-totalitarianism.

00:31:57.140 Yes.

00:31:57.640 Right. And then you'll do it in a way that will be a blessing to everyone else.

00:32:02.140 Yes.

00:32:02.320 It'll multiply the pie instead of, okay. And then the, okay. Then the association of the promised

00:32:08.820 land with that is that if you follow that call, then the world turns into a field of unpredictable

00:32:17.720 opportunity.

00:32:18.580 Yes.

00:32:18.960 And so that's also an adventure.

00:32:20.560 And it's true. 0.56

00:32:20.700 Because you don't know what's going to happen. I know. It is true. That's the opposite of

00:32:24.200 being a slave.

00:32:24.940 No, but I'm telling to the audience, like when you're young, I'm telling you, like, this

00:32:28.640 is the advice I always give them. I say this all the time. Let's suppose you're a new

00:32:31.480 author, right? It's an easy example. Go into the bookstore, look at those crappy,

00:32:35.300 crappy books on the shelves that you're like, I can't believe this is a book deal. That could 0.92

00:32:37.860 be you. You could be that shitty author. 1.00

00:32:40.100 Right, right. 0.99

00:32:40.700 Their friends are like, how did this guy get a book deal? And when you put it in terms

00:32:44.080 like that, all of a sudden, what would have seemed impossible because of your schooling,

00:32:48.160 like, oh, you're not going to be an author. It's like, oh, wait a minute. I can do this.

00:32:51.700 Or you could be a band that no one's heard of, but you pay the rent and you create your

00:32:55.960 music and you've got a dedicated fan base. That's heaven on earth. You don't have to be

00:33:00.860 the Beatles.

00:33:01.540 Right. Well, you might not even want to be.

00:33:03.460 Exactly. So yeah, look at what happened to John Lennon.

00:33:06.180 Right, right, right.

00:33:06.820 So we have this bizarre Pareto distribution in American aspirations where unless you're

00:33:13.820 at the very, very top, you're kind of a failure. And like, that's ridiculous. You don't have 0.98

00:33:18.140 to be this hugely successful thing to make it.

00:33:20.540 There's also another way of dealing with the Pareto distribution problem, right, which

00:33:25.340 is just so everybody listening is clear, is that the bulk of the rewards go to a small

00:33:30.980 minority of people in any field. Now, a small minority of people in every field do the productive

00:33:36.260 work, too. So let's not forget. But one of the ways that a sophisticated society deals 0.95

00:33:41.440 with that is just by generating an indefinite number of games.

00:33:44.540 Right. Here's a cool thing that I've noticed about people. Imagine that you're kind of out

00:33:50.940 on the Pareto distribution in one dimension. It's like, you know, so you've got specialized

00:33:55.660 knowledge. There's quite a few of you. But if you have specialized knowledge in two areas

00:34:00.920 that are distinct, there's hardly any of you.

00:34:03.500 Right.

00:34:03.600 And if there's three, it's like, you're that person. You're the only person playing

00:34:07.900 that game. So that's a good thing for everybody who's watching and listening to know. It's

00:34:11.340 like, get really good at something. And then that makes you exceptional. And you're going

00:34:15.940 to be somewhat successful just because of that. But then if you add another distant skill

00:34:21.320 to that, and you overlap them, it's like, you're pretty rare. And three, no one's like you.

00:34:26.620 So I had a question I had for you, and then I was going to put you a little bit on the spot

00:34:29.440 in a fun way. Who did you model? You basically became Jordan Peterson, not overnight, but it

00:34:35.360 was pretty quick, right? To go from just a professor to kind of-

00:34:37.980 Yeah, it went like this.

00:34:38.700 Yeah, right. As a totic. Who did you model yourself after? There had to be someone who's 0.97

00:34:44.540 like, all right, I don't know what I'm doing here. Like, who do I want to be like who paved

00:34:48.140 the way for you?

00:34:48.680 Oh, that's easy, really. They were people that I encountered in books.

00:34:54.560 Oh, like who?

00:34:55.480 Definitely. Well, I would say, like I read a lot, and some books had a massive effect

00:35:01.820 on me. Like my pattern for reading was I had a problem I was always trying to solve. I

00:35:06.220 was trying to solve the, I was trying to understand evil. That's been like my motivation since I

00:35:10.920 was like 13. And then now and then I'd run across an author and I'd think, oh, this person

00:35:16.560 knows something I don't, seriously. And then I'd just read everything they read, wrote, and

00:35:21.640 then I'd find out who influenced them and I'd read that. And so, you know, the cardinal

00:35:26.380 people who influenced me were Carl Jung, for sure, Nietzsche.

00:35:31.120 Okay.

00:35:31.680 Carl Rogers was a pretty big influence. There was some biological psychologists, Jeffrey

00:35:36.580 Gray. I learned a lot about the brain from Jeffrey Gray.

00:35:39.160 But none of these people were public intellectuals like you are.

00:35:43.120 No.

00:35:43.380 What I meant is who, is there anyone you model yourself after in that regard?

00:35:46.020 No, I wouldn't say so.

00:35:50.960 That's interesting.

00:35:51.800 Okay.

00:35:52.260 The reason it worked for me, likely, is because I had a unique lecturing style.

00:35:58.960 Yeah, but lots of people have unique lecturing styles.

00:36:00.980 And even if you...

00:36:01.480 Yeah, but they usually use notes.

00:36:03.220 Okay.

00:36:04.120 See, I trained myself pretty much from the beginning of my career to speak without notes.

00:36:09.320 And then when I...

00:36:11.560 So that was...

00:36:12.820 That made my...

00:36:13.420 My classes were very popular.

00:36:15.120 The combination of speaking without notes and then dealing with this, like, major existential

00:36:19.200 issue made my classes very popular.

00:36:21.720 And that happened to translate to YouTube.

00:36:24.040 Okay.

00:36:24.480 And I would say at the time, I experimented with YouTube just as an experiment, basically.

00:36:29.440 Like, I was doing some outreach on media.

00:36:33.020 A producer came to me 20 years ago for a little television station, kind of like an NPR, Canada's

00:36:40.360 equivalent, TV Ontario, and asked to film one of my classes.

00:36:45.660 And so we did a 13-part series.

00:36:47.800 And my classes were very popular.

00:36:49.980 And so I had a taste of popular success as a professor.

00:36:55.100 And then sort of a little bit on that TV.

00:36:57.020 Did you watch those clips to see what you could improve, what you did wrong?

00:36:59.920 No.

00:37:00.220 Interesting.

00:37:00.740 No.

00:37:00.980 No, I can tell what I was...

00:37:03.140 Okay.

00:37:03.580 Well, if you're really speaking to an audience, you know this likely as a stand-up and as

00:37:09.140 a speaker.

00:37:09.800 If you're really speaking to an audience, they tell you.

00:37:12.080 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:37:12.760 That's fair.

00:37:13.340 Because you have a class.

00:37:14.240 You have dynamic instant feedback.

00:37:15.480 That's right.

00:37:15.880 Okay.

00:37:16.160 Oh, yeah.

00:37:16.440 It's not just you in front of a camera.

00:37:17.820 Right.

00:37:18.200 Oh, yeah.

00:37:18.560 That's a big difference.

00:37:19.380 And the most telling part of the feedback is silence.

00:37:22.400 Yeah, right.

00:37:22.820 Right.

00:37:23.120 Because people are riveted.

00:37:24.120 Or looking around at each other.

00:37:25.260 Yeah.

00:37:25.420 Or shifting their seats.

00:37:26.720 Yeah, exactly.

00:37:27.160 They're not moving, which means it's so interesting.

00:37:29.460 Because what that means neurophysiologically is there's all these competing motivations

00:37:33.860 in someone, right?

00:37:34.820 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:35.320 And what happens if you decide to do something, the thing you're doing wins a Darwinian competition

00:37:42.520 over all the other things you could be doing and suppresses them and inhibits them.

00:37:46.440 And the more powerful the central motivational state, the more complete the inhibition.

00:37:52.780 And so what I'm trying to appeal to people in a lecture is, like, the lecture is a journey.

00:37:57.680 It's a quest.

00:37:59.020 I'm answering a question.

00:38:00.360 It's a quest.

00:38:01.400 So I'm taking people on a quest.

00:38:02.900 And if the quest is successful, they're dead silent, right?

00:38:05.840 They're just, they're tangled right into the discussion.

00:38:09.180 And that's, there isn't anything more fun than that.

00:38:11.460 Like, it's ridiculously entertaining to do that.

00:38:13.920 So I'm going to, I'm going to put you a little bit on the spot.

00:38:15.920 And this is also in teaching people at home how to ask someone for a favor, right?

00:38:20.660 So the key, in my opinion, asking for a favor is give that person the space to say no.

00:38:25.800 Don't ever say, hey, can you do this for me?

00:38:27.320 Say, would you be comfortable?

00:38:28.920 Are you okay with this?

00:38:29.940 Something that you're in a position to do.

00:38:31.680 Because I've had people make demands, get me on Rogan.

00:38:33.800 It's like, you're really, it's a big ask, you know, like, like worded a bit away.

00:38:38.960 So when I was growing up, there was someone I was modeling myself after.

00:38:43.540 And you know, that question people ask, if you have dinner with anybody, anybody, there

00:38:47.300 is this person, and this person is a big fan of yours.

00:38:50.920 And I would love it if you feel comfortable telling them, hey, have break bread with Michael

00:38:56.800 Malice, it'll be worth your time. 0.98

00:38:58.580 And that person is Camille Paglia.

00:39:00.960 Oh, she was my role model when I started out trying to do this kind of stuff.

00:39:05.980 Well, I like your conceptualization.

00:39:08.440 It goes along with your stance as an anarchist, right?

00:39:11.260 Well, look, this is one of the principles that we're using to guide the development of

00:39:15.800 this Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

00:39:18.080 Here's the rule.

00:39:19.560 Policies that require fear and force are bad policies.

00:39:22.380 Yes, that's right, yeah.

00:39:22.940 Right.

00:39:23.220 Now, it's tricky when it comes to the regulation of criminal behavior, right?

00:39:28.300 Because the really psychopathic, antisocial people, they don't play a social game.

00:39:32.600 And so asking them-

00:39:34.140 Or people can't think ahead, even those who just can't think past the next moment.

00:39:37.740 Well, they don't, right?

00:39:39.020 I mean, psychopaths are notorious for not learning from experience.

00:39:42.380 But non-psychopaths as well, at a certain intelligence level, they're not thinking in

00:39:45.640 terms of causality.

00:39:47.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:39:48.280 Well, I suspect that you're-

00:39:50.540 See, this is a tough one.

00:39:51.920 I was going to ask you when you were talking about your decision to become a writer.

00:39:55.880 I mean, you're blessed with an extremely high level of verbal intelligence, right?

00:40:00.960 And that's an a priori gift.

00:40:02.820 Yes, that's fair.

00:40:03.640 That's fair, yeah.

00:40:04.460 But then, but there's quite a correlation between intelligence and socioeconomic status.

00:40:11.740 It's pretty high.

00:40:12.320 It's the best predictor, right?

00:40:13.900 And the second best predictor is conscientiousness.

00:40:16.440 Is that right?

00:40:16.800 Yeah.

00:40:17.320 Okay.

00:40:17.620 It's much weaker.

00:40:19.100 It's about one-fifth as powerful.

00:40:20.580 Okay.

00:40:20.820 You know, or on the entrepreneurial space, it's openness, right?

00:40:25.660 But my, but there's no, there doesn't-

00:40:28.500 Really?

00:40:29.000 That's interesting, because so many entrepreneurs I know are so, like, kind of, like, basic in

00:40:32.840 their thinking.

00:40:34.080 Well, the managerial types tend to be intelligent and conscientious.

00:40:38.200 The entrepreneurial types tend to be intelligent and open.

00:40:40.380 Okay, got it.

00:40:40.960 Okay.

00:40:41.100 So, there's a pathway to, like, it's likely that a serial entrepreneur is going to be high

00:40:47.460 in openness.

00:40:48.060 Okay.

00:40:48.380 Yeah, yeah.

00:40:48.700 Okay.

00:40:49.420 Right.

00:40:49.680 Right.

00:40:49.960 Okay.

00:40:50.260 Because they're, yeah, yeah.

00:40:51.320 Yeah, yeah.

00:40:51.660 They're switching games.

00:40:52.600 Like, an open person is switching games all the time.

00:40:54.720 Right.

00:40:55.280 Right.

00:40:55.580 Whereas, like, a more managerial person picks a game.

00:40:58.500 Yeah.

00:40:58.820 And gets really good at it.

00:40:59.960 And that works great if the game is working.

00:41:02.960 Yeah.

00:41:03.080 But it works terribly when the game stops working, right?

00:41:05.620 Which is why you need some entrepreneurs in your organization.

00:41:08.640 So, yeah, so I was wondering about this adventure issue.

00:41:11.740 You know, intelligence predicts success.

00:41:15.140 And so, then you might say, well, what's your probability for success as an adventure if

00:41:22.700 you're not as intelligent?

00:41:23.860 But my suspicions are that strength of character will do the trick.

00:41:27.900 You know, because one of the pathways to success in a functional society is that people can

00:41:35.200 really rely on you.

00:41:36.320 That's so, I'm sorry.

00:41:37.440 This is kind of insane that you, that's insane, but it's fortuitous to say this because I've

00:41:41.260 given talks for young people about, like, what I wish I'd known at their age.

00:41:44.120 And I tell them, don't strive for excellence because you're not gonna be able to do it.

00:41:47.680 Yeah.

00:41:47.940 Strive for competence.

00:41:49.100 Yeah.

00:41:49.320 If I can rely on you as someone who's working for me, and you say, I'll have this paper on

00:41:54.720 Tuesday, and it's ready on Tuesday.

00:41:56.380 Yeah.

00:41:56.680 You're at the 90th percentile.

00:41:58.100 Right away.

00:41:58.360 In fact, I'd rather have you say, I'll have it for you on Wednesday and give it Wednesday

00:42:03.100 than say Monday and give it to me on Tuesday.

00:42:05.420 Because I know I could schedule it around the Wednesday.

00:42:07.720 A hundred percent.

00:42:08.460 Well, the other thing too, see, if you're reliable, this is why honesty is the best policy.

00:42:14.060 If you're reliable, and you already pointed this out, you're low entropy.

00:42:18.260 Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

00:42:19.320 Right, it's like, I can reduce you to one pixel.

00:42:22.900 Well, you will do what you said, box, shelf.

00:42:27.360 I also appreciate the irony of the anarchists advising people to minimize the chaos that

00:42:31.380 they bring, but that's the best approach.

00:42:33.000 Well, but when we talked to you, when we talked about anarchy before, like you stressed the

00:42:37.140 voluntary element of it, right?

00:42:38.620 Right, and that strikes me as, well, that's why we made that a principle for our policy

00:42:44.900 discussion, so to speak, at ARC.

00:42:46.580 It's like, if you can't offer people an invitational vision, so they say, yeah, yeah, I would do

00:42:53.120 that.

00:42:53.380 I would be enthusiastic about doing that.

00:42:55.460 Then there's something wrong with your policy.

00:42:57.080 So I think, like, a cardinal way of identifying tyrants is they use fear and compulsion.

00:43:02.540 Yes.

00:43:02.860 Right.

00:43:03.440 Definitionally.

00:43:04.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:43:05.140 And so this is a good, also, for you people to know who are watching and listening, is if

00:43:10.080 you're listening to a politician, and they're trying to motivate you fundamentally with fear,

00:43:15.900 or they're proposing the use of compulsion, you know, say in the case of an emergency, it's

00:43:23.140 like, yeah, probably you're a tyrant, probably you're a tyrant, even in an emergency, right? 0.65

00:43:29.520 Oh, yeah.

00:43:30.040 No, your duty is to...

00:43:32.120 Or the invocation of emergency.

00:43:33.780 Well, that's exactly the problem, is that, well, the emergency is pretty convenient for

00:43:38.260 you if you happen to be a tyrant, and part of the reason the idea of the apocalypse is

00:43:45.440 archetypal is because there's always an emergency.

00:43:47.860 Of course.

00:43:48.320 Right?

00:43:48.540 It's like, you're going to die.

00:43:50.200 Everything's going to come to an end.

00:43:51.600 And so you can conjure up an emergency at a moment's notice.

00:43:55.900 So I don't know whether I should look at the blue eye or the red eye.

00:44:02.380 So you taught for Peterson Academy.

00:44:04.460 Yes.

00:44:04.820 Wait, wait.

00:44:05.300 So will you message Camille Paglia for me?

00:44:07.400 It's okay if you say no.

00:44:09.920 She's tricky. 0.79

00:44:11.160 I know.

00:44:11.540 You know, I could send her a note and tell her who you are.

00:44:15.740 Well, tell me exactly what you want.

00:44:17.400 I just want to have dinner with her.

00:44:18.980 My treat.

00:44:19.460 I will go to Philly.

00:44:20.340 I will, and I've, I've, I've Klaus, she will know.

00:44:23.760 I'll tell you what this, I have Candy Darling's journal.

00:44:26.340 You won't know what that is.

00:44:27.120 She will.

00:44:27.840 I have Klaus Nomi's tuxedo.

00:44:29.620 You won't know what that is.

00:44:30.380 She will.

00:44:31.160 I know who Klaus Nomi is.

00:44:32.280 I have a tuxedo.

00:44:33.200 You do, do you?

00:44:33.920 Yes.

00:44:34.200 He's a singer.

00:44:35.000 Yes.

00:44:35.420 Yes.

00:44:35.740 And with a soprano voice.

00:44:37.780 Yes.

00:44:38.400 And he's saying, let's see.

00:44:40.520 I can't believe you know Klaus Nomi.

00:44:41.540 He didn't have any hits.

00:44:43.000 Yeah.

00:44:43.320 But yeah, I know who Klaus Nomi is.

00:44:46.180 He's got a stunning and striking voice.

00:44:49.280 Yes.

00:44:49.700 Yeah.

00:44:50.580 So why do you have one of his tuxedos?

00:44:52.220 Well, he had a very, he has one tuxedo that was a stage outfit.

00:44:55.280 Uh-huh.

00:44:55.600 And it's this kind of iconic item.

00:44:58.120 Okay.

00:44:58.360 So what you should do is you should write me a paragraph.

00:45:00.560 Okay.

00:45:00.960 About what you have to offer.

00:45:02.360 Okay.

00:45:02.680 And about what you want.

00:45:03.960 And about, I would also recommend guarantees.

00:45:07.240 Like I went and talked to Paglia and it was, it was hard.

00:45:11.140 Really?

00:45:11.640 Well, she was very apprehensive because she's been abused and used by all sorts of people

00:45:16.500 and journalists.

00:45:17.140 Okay.

00:45:17.400 So she's very skeptical.

00:45:19.440 She was extremely hospitable once we got there, my wife and I, and she knew that we were up

00:45:24.540 to no tricks.

00:45:25.300 Okay.

00:45:25.600 She just flipped and she was extremely inviting, but she's got a wall and it's a protective

00:45:30.340 wall.

00:45:30.660 Okay.

00:45:31.040 So I think one of the things you'd have to do in the paragraph is reassure her.

00:45:36.040 You need invitation plus reassurance.

00:45:38.180 Okay.

00:45:38.460 Done.

00:45:38.860 Okay.

00:45:39.060 Great.

00:45:39.360 And then, yes, I could, I could contact her.

00:45:41.400 It would make my life.

00:45:42.940 My dream for Camille Paglia is to have her talk to Ben Shapiro because they're both machine

00:45:48.380 guns.

00:45:49.200 And so I'd love to see that just as a spectacle.

00:45:51.700 And speed up the tape.

00:45:53.280 Yeah.

00:45:53.860 I'd love to see that.

00:45:56.860 Yeah.

00:45:57.340 I can imagine even better maybe would be Russell Brand, Ben Shapiro, and Paglia.

00:46:02.260 Those are the three most verbally fluent people I've ever seen in my life.

00:46:05.480 Wow.

00:46:05.800 That would be quite a troika. 0.99

00:46:07.240 Yeah, it would be.

00:46:08.040 It'd really be something.

00:46:08.860 Hey, everyone.

00:46:11.600 Real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:46:15.820 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling

00:46:20.240 depression and anxiety.

00:46:21.580 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment

00:46:26.660 to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:46:29.500 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of

00:46:34.460 why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:46:37.280 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely

00:46:42.320 possible to find your way forward.

00:46:44.680 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone.

00:46:47.860 There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:46:50.540 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:46:56.800 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:47:03.000 Why do you have Klaus Nomi's tuxedo?

00:47:06.320 And who is Candy Darley? 0.98

00:47:07.980 And why do you want to talk to Pallia?

00:47:09.940 Because Pallia was my, who I wanted to be when I grew up in many ways.

00:47:15.020 Why?

00:47:15.760 Because what I found fascinating about her is she is the kind of person where

00:47:20.320 even if she's dead wrong, I want to hear her say more.

00:47:24.220 And that is very, very rare.

00:47:26.080 It is very rare when you, like she was, like 10 years ago, she was talking about how great

00:47:30.860 Kamala Harris is.

00:47:31.940 And I'm sitting there, I'm like, Camille, Ms. Paglia, come on, like, are you serious?

00:47:36.080 And it did not diminish my respect for her in the slightest.

00:47:39.160 So when someone has takes, and people say this about me, they're like, I don't agree

00:47:43.240 with half the things you say, but I love how your brain works.

00:47:45.900 That to me is like the epitome of a public intellectual or even if they're dead wrong

00:47:51.200 or like I know enough about a subject where I'm like, this person's way off.

00:47:54.200 I don't care.

00:47:55.020 Keep talking.

00:47:55.500 That's probably part of that quest.

00:47:58.220 You know, so one of the things I've learned to do in lectures is before I go on stage,

00:48:03.420 I have a question.

00:48:04.540 It's like, it's a question that matters to me, which is also something you should do

00:48:08.900 when you write, by the way.

00:48:10.180 It matters to me and I don't know enough about it yet.

00:48:13.540 And I'd like to get farther in my thinking.

00:48:16.440 And so then what I'm trying to do on stage is get farther in my thinking and maybe to come

00:48:20.280 to a conclusion.

00:48:21.160 If I can do that, then that's like the punchline, right?

00:48:23.520 That's very satisfying, but in some ways it doesn't matter because the journey is what

00:48:30.380 matters.

00:48:30.920 And I think what you're pointing out is that there are certain kinds of intellectuals whose

00:48:34.960 thought quality is so rich that the journey is worth the...

00:48:39.300 And so entertaining to listen to.

00:48:40.780 Right.

00:48:40.980 Like the way she talks, I can do it, I'm not gonna...

00:48:43.240 Yeah.

00:48:43.500 It's just so like unique and idiosyncratic.

00:48:46.040 And you watch clips of her from the 90s.

00:48:48.120 She was just, I mean, I was like, okay, this...

00:48:50.760 And what I love about her is she is...

00:48:53.400 You can't put her in a box.

00:48:54.660 Yeah.

00:48:55.180 She's so, I mean, she's so all over the map politically. 1.00

00:48:58.080 In certain...

00:48:58.460 I mean, she's a hardcore atheist, but she goes on and on about the Catholic Church and the

00:49:02.680 beauty it brings and the venerance that people have for it and how valuable it is.

00:49:06.760 And her, you know, she's very big on Warhol, but at the same time her veneration of the

00:49:11.420 classics and her insane contempt for how that's being thrown into the garbage can and we're 0.95

00:49:17.040 losing thousands of years of creative history simply because it's predominantly white men 1.00

00:49:21.080 is to her just complete madness and she's correct. 0.91

00:49:24.780 So there's so much I would love to talk to her about and just pick her brain and just

00:49:28.720 to thank her.

00:49:29.660 Because I think there's certain people when you find them at the right age, you know,

00:49:33.440 like Catcher in the Rise, this, the fountainhead for certain people, it really kind of codifies

00:49:37.840 you later in life.

00:49:39.000 Yeah, yeah, you know, I've been thinking about the function of religious texts in exactly

00:49:44.840 that manner.

00:49:45.740 I think partly, so it looks very much like a description of the structure through which

00:49:52.140 we see the world is a story.

00:49:54.160 Yes, yes, right.

00:49:55.060 So there's an infinite number of facts, but they have to be sequenced and prioritized.

00:49:59.040 And the way someone sequences and prioritizes is their story.

00:50:03.280 Yes.

00:50:03.820 Okay, so...

00:50:05.680 Yeah, people don't want truth, people want narratives.

00:50:07.720 That's because narrative structure our truth.

00:50:10.880 Yeah.

00:50:11.720 So I think that what a core, what core stories do, so this would be, say, the fairy tales

00:50:18.580 would do this, or any stories that are shared broadly across a culture is they actually,

00:50:23.460 you just pointed to this, I think it's true.

00:50:25.500 You know how it is.

00:50:26.240 A book has a different effect on you depending on when you read it.

00:50:32.120 So, and it's definitely the case that books you read, let's say, in your mid-adolescence

00:50:36.760 likely, it's like they set the stage.

00:50:39.340 Yeah, yeah.

00:50:39.840 Right?

00:50:40.060 And I think that's actually true.

00:50:41.460 I think what happens is the story that strikes you provides a framework for memory, and then

00:50:48.160 you slot everything else into that.

00:50:49.800 And so it actually becomes the foundation.

00:50:52.140 And I think that part of the problem with moving away from broad knowledge of the biblical

00:50:57.800 stories is that the foundation of our perceptions is no longer unified.

00:51:03.420 And when that's the case, I mean, some variation is good because you don't want everybody thinking

00:51:08.240 exactly the same thing.

00:51:09.920 But if there's too much variation, you can't even talk to each other.

00:51:12.880 But don't you think it's happening now?

00:51:14.460 I think it's happened.

00:51:16.080 Yeah, I'm surprised.

00:51:17.440 I was someone who's very big, encouraging political division.

00:51:21.400 And, you know, Thomas Sowell says there's no solutions, only trade-offs.

00:51:26.020 Yeah. 0.90

00:51:26.300 I was naive because I didn't realize the trade-off is how dumb political discourse has gotten. 1.00

00:51:31.800 Where people, no one's holding them in check, so people are free to say just completely stupid 1.00

00:51:34.920 things. 1.00

00:51:36.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:51:36.420 And since you're surrounded by this echo chamber, and anyone who says, hey, this is stupid, 0.99

00:51:41.240 now you sound like the out-group, it becomes self-validating, and it's really horrifying. 0.95

00:51:47.060 So we've been, I've been working on trying to conceptualize why that happens, particularly

00:51:52.660 with Jonathan Paggio, we've been drawing, and John Verveke, we've been drawing a bunch

00:51:57.300 of different sources trying to understand the structure of a concept or a perception.

00:52:02.840 Yeah.

00:52:02.980 So I think this is how it works.

00:52:05.280 This is also the same structure as the tabernacle, by the way, in architectural form.

00:52:10.300 So every concept has a center.

00:52:13.240 Okay, that's what Moses' staff establishes.

00:52:17.120 That's what a flag establishes when you move to a new territory.

00:52:20.200 There's a center, okay, and the center is the ideal, that's a good way of thinking about

00:52:24.780 it.

00:52:24.900 Or the center is the place that looks upward, okay?

00:52:27.920 And then around the center, there are margins, and the farther away you get from the center,

00:52:33.980 the less like the center the phenomena is, and they start to multiply.

00:52:38.980 So now, a concept that's only center is too rigid, and a concept that's only margin is

00:52:46.940 too profuse and diffuse.

00:52:49.320 And so what we need is a balance between the center and the margin.

00:52:53.080 Your proclivity would be, I think, because you're open, would be to deprioritize the center

00:52:58.880 to favor the margin.

00:52:59.860 Yeah, that's what open people do.

00:53:01.680 But you just said you realized that if you, the margin's fine.

00:53:06.380 The margin of the margin, it's like, oh, that's less fun.

00:53:10.920 The other point I made in my book, The New Right, is that when you're in the center,

00:53:14.080 insanity and brilliance are equidistant.

00:53:16.520 You have no capacity really for distinguishing between the two of them, because they both

00:53:19.680 sound completely crazy to you, and something you'd never heard before.

00:53:23.000 And I thought, okay, then we got to kind of knock the center out.

00:53:26.040 But then what's happening is you kind of get these new centers, which kind of crystallize.

00:53:30.300 And a lot of them are just like...

00:53:32.300 Insanity.

00:53:33.180 Insanity.

00:53:33.780 And also, as you know from a lot of your work, the more insane, the more sticky it gets.

00:53:39.700 Because people take pride in having insane views, because it's like an agnostic thing.

00:53:43.460 I've been initiated into these mysteries.

00:53:46.440 These people just don't get it.

00:53:47.780 Right.

00:53:48.060 Well, it also mimics creativity, so you can wear that.

00:53:51.180 So, well, here's a mythological take on that.

00:53:53.660 This is very cool.

00:53:54.900 So, the center is a phallus, right?

00:53:57.740 It's unitary and solid.

00:54:00.920 Say that's archetypal masculinity, that ideal center.

00:54:04.500 Okay, when it collapses, a hydra emerges.

00:54:07.780 Right, right.

00:54:08.200 And a hydra has an indefinite number of heads.

00:54:11.060 Right, and the odds that they're all going to be positive is very low.

00:54:14.040 Well, the mere fact that they're multiplicitous is already a problem, because it's an entropy problem.

00:54:18.360 Right.

00:54:18.620 It's like, what am I going to do with all this?

00:54:22.780 Right.

00:54:23.100 You know, you want, you know, if you have a toddler who's, say, three, and he has a closet or she has a closet full of clothes, say, 20, 30 outfits, you open the door and you say, what do you want to wear today?

00:54:35.520 It's like, all you do is make the kid anxious.

00:54:38.020 You take three outfits and lay them on the bed and you say, well, which one do you want?

00:54:42.740 Then they're happy.

00:54:44.020 And it's because, you know, this has actually been figured out technically.

00:54:47.980 It was figured out by, uh-oh, I'm going to forget his name, Friston, Carl Friston.

00:54:53.080 He's a neuroscientist.

00:54:54.540 And he did some work on entropy.

00:54:56.380 And I did some work like this in my lab.

00:54:58.000 We were trying to tie the idea of anxiety to entropy, to make it physical.

00:55:04.080 Anxiety signifies a multiplicity of pathways.

00:55:07.960 Right.

00:55:08.280 And you might say, well, that's diversity.

00:55:10.260 That's creativity.

00:55:11.020 That's what the left thinks.

00:55:12.080 It's like, yeah, but what if it's too much?

00:55:15.320 Well, then it's, that's what the hydro paralyzes you when you look at it.

00:55:18.440 It's too much entropy.

00:55:19.960 You don't want to make a hundred decisions.

00:55:21.860 We know this from the consumer literature.

00:55:23.380 So if you go to a store, imagine there's, try buying a printer.

00:55:27.640 You've run into this right away.

00:55:29.260 I want to buy the best printer.

00:55:30.660 It's like, there's 500 printers.

00:55:32.380 By the time you go through all 500, most of the models have changed, right?

00:55:38.000 You're never going to optimize.

00:55:39.760 And so what that means is if you have 500 printers and you have to choose the best one,

00:55:43.740 you're going to fail.

00:55:45.320 So you actually want to go to a store where there are four printers.

00:55:47.940 Because like one printer, that they're making you buy that printer.

00:55:51.500 Four, so you can see, right?

00:55:53.620 I mean, it makes perfect sense too, right?

00:55:55.420 You don't want totalitarian centrality, but you don't want indefinite amorphousness.

00:56:02.200 This, this would be, I don't know if that's a critique of all out anarchism, is it?

00:56:07.340 No, no, but, but it speaks because all out anarchism would still have leadership.

00:56:12.920 And with that, have you ever seen The Devil Wears Prada?

00:56:17.160 I think so.

00:56:18.280 Yeah.

00:56:18.540 So do you remember the speech that Meryl Streep gives to Anne Hathaway?

00:56:24.440 Elaborate.

00:56:25.140 So Anne Hathaway's, Meryl Streep is Anna Wintour.

00:56:28.220 She's head of Vogue magazines, you know, Romana Clef, Romana Clef, however it's pronounced. 0.98

00:56:33.160 And Anne Hathaway is her assistant.

00:56:35.220 And they're putting together a photo shoot.

00:56:37.500 And they're trying to say which belt would go with this ballerina skirt.

00:56:40.780 And Meryl Streep's like, it's hard to pick.

00:56:42.560 They're, they're, they're too, or there's some of the characters, like they're too similar.

00:56:45.620 And Anne Hathaway laughs.

00:56:47.520 And they look, everyone in the room looks at her as like, something funny?

00:56:50.160 And she goes, I'm sorry, I'm just still, these belts look the same to me.

00:56:53.640 I'm still getting used to this stuff.

00:56:55.220 And the venom from Meryl Streep's character, she's like, this stuff?

00:56:59.540 And she goes, oh, I see what's going on here.

00:57:01.800 Like, you think you chose that lumpy, right?

00:57:04.480 I remember the speech.

00:57:05.620 But what had happened was, five years ago, Yves Saint Laurent had, that sweater isn't blue or turquoise, it's cerulean.

00:57:14.100 Because five years ago, Yves Saint Laurent had cerulean military jackets.

00:57:18.640 And then it was in all, a cerulean spread out to all designers.

00:57:21.460 Then it was in all the runways.

00:57:22.940 Yeah.

00:57:23.220 Then it was in the department stores.

00:57:24.380 Yeah.

00:57:24.720 And then it ended up at some bargain.

00:57:26.880 Target, where you fished it out.

00:57:28.120 You bought it.

00:57:28.940 Right.

00:57:29.300 Yeah.

00:57:29.540 Because you're pretending you don't, what you're trying to say with your outfit is that you don't care about fashion.

00:57:36.460 Yeah.

00:57:36.720 But what you don't know is, that cerulean sweater has been picked for you by the people in this room.

00:57:42.980 Right.

00:57:43.360 From a pile of stuff.

00:57:44.900 Right.

00:57:45.360 So that model.

00:57:46.640 And you've picked it from the bottom of a 10 hierarchy.

00:57:50.220 Right.

00:57:50.740 10 rung social hierarchy that you're at the bottom of, and you don't even know it.

00:57:54.560 And you don't even know it.

00:57:55.840 And you're dismissive of it.

00:57:57.980 Right.

00:57:58.360 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:59.020 So you thought, the choice has been made.

00:58:01.240 And again, that is an anarchist system.

00:58:02.800 There's no government involvement.

00:58:04.060 But point being, you need leaders who are going to be winnowing things down.

00:58:08.200 So that person at the bottom has that limited choice.

00:58:11.280 Because at the end of the day also, you don't need the best printer.

00:58:14.280 I'm sure that's the 10th best printer.

00:58:15.980 What, it's not going to print the letter Q?

00:58:17.580 They're all going to be fine.

00:58:18.820 Like this idea that you need the best is also spurious.

00:58:21.860 Unless you're like.

00:58:22.840 Well, that's the trade-off problem.

00:58:24.260 Yeah.

00:58:24.620 You know, you could spend a year finding the best printer, but then like,

00:58:27.840 you could have spent that year doing a lot of other things.

00:58:30.380 Right.

00:58:30.520 So like what, this printer that's like $50 cheaper is not going to work?

00:58:34.800 What does that make sense?

00:58:35.140 Well, there's an economist, Simon, great economist.

00:58:38.440 He was the guy who had the bet with Paul Ehrlich about whether.

00:58:42.340 Julian Simon.

00:58:42.780 Let me tell you a story about Julian Simon.

00:58:44.440 Okay.

00:58:44.940 Let me just.

00:58:45.840 Please.

00:58:46.380 Okay.

00:58:46.540 Simon came up with a concept called satisficing.

00:58:49.840 Okay.

00:58:50.200 And satisficing is a reflection of exactly what you just described.

00:58:53.660 It's like you don't, with most decisions, you don't go for the best.

00:58:57.780 You have something like a threshold.

00:59:00.080 And once you hit that threshold, you say that that's what people do with their mates. 0.98

00:59:05.100 Oh, well, you know, my friend Ron Messer said, he goes, every woman's crazy. 0.98

00:59:08.680 I'm sorry.

00:59:09.100 I'm sorry to out Ron. 0.97

00:59:10.080 He goes, every woman's crazy. 1.00

00:59:11.760 So you find the woman who's crazy, you can handle. 1.00

00:59:13.760 That's the one you marry. 0.99

00:59:14.580 Right.

00:59:15.340 Right.

00:59:15.520 So you're not going to find that anyone who, this, this very horrible, how women are given

00:59:20.020 this kind of Disney idea that you need Prince Charming.

00:59:22.460 You're not finding him.

00:59:23.280 And why is he going for you?

00:59:24.460 So everyone's going to have a problem.

00:59:26.000 And when you find that problem, you could handle men as well as females.

00:59:28.700 You know, that's the one you sell with.

00:59:29.720 But what we just talked about.

00:59:31.220 One of your problems is to find someone who can stand you.

00:59:34.400 So yeah, that's a big problem.

00:59:36.020 You were talking about Simon.

00:59:37.060 You had a story about him.

00:59:38.000 Oh, so I was an intern at the Cato Institute in 1997.

00:59:41.420 And we had to go out distributing videotapes, whatever.

00:59:43.780 We come back.

00:59:44.500 He's giving a talk in the auditorium downstairs.

00:59:47.120 Doors are closed.

00:59:47.860 But there's a monitor.

00:59:49.500 And I'm looking at the monitor and it looked like he had horns.

00:59:52.260 And I was just like, what?

00:59:53.460 And I'm staring at it.

00:59:54.320 I'm like, is this some kind of glitch?

00:59:56.060 And what had happened was at the beginning of the talk, he said, since the environmentalist

01:00:00.000 think I'm a devil, and he took suction cupped horns and stuck them on his head.

01:00:04.600 And it's on C-SPAN.

01:00:05.480 He gave his talk that way.

01:00:06.860 I got his autograph.

01:00:07.880 He passed away shortly thereafter.

01:00:09.620 But he was a great, great guy.

01:00:11.560 Yes.

01:00:11.820 And what I love about him, and I think it's very important for people in our space, is

01:00:15.860 he had a sense of levity and a sense of positivity.

01:00:19.140 I think a lot of times, and I'm sure you agree, nefarious political movements attract

01:00:24.380 people simply because they present joy.

01:00:27.700 I mean, that is the perfect word for it.

01:00:29.460 And people who are agnostic about politics or aren't informed, which is perfectly fine, 0.87

01:00:33.840 they're like, I want to go where the fun people are.

01:00:35.880 It's just as simple as that.

01:00:37.120 And it's very sinister and very tricky, but very effective.

01:00:40.120 You think that sinister people can use joy?

01:00:43.820 I mean, look at Officer Harris.

01:00:46.760 Did she use it or did she?

01:00:49.000 Fair enough.

01:00:49.800 Fair enough.

01:00:50.300 But I guess my skepticism is that it's...

01:00:52.560 Look at Hollywood.

01:00:53.060 It's just that it's...

01:00:55.000 Okay.

01:00:56.100 To use joy or to manipulate it...

01:00:58.560 Well, I mean, what's the...

01:00:59.580 Well, I think kind of the difference maybe is the voluntary element.

01:01:03.240 Like, look, I figured out...

01:01:05.180 I had this weird kind of obsession when I was teaching in Boston because I was teaching

01:01:10.220 about horrible things, terrible things like the Holocaust and the gulag and like the depths

01:01:16.000 of depravity, right?

01:01:17.200 And I got this voice in my head that kept saying, if you could master this, you'd do that with

01:01:25.160 a light touch.

01:01:26.160 And I thought, really?

01:01:29.780 Like, how the hell am I going to talk about these topics that are...

01:01:34.140 I'll tell you how I did it.

01:01:36.360 Okay.

01:01:36.780 Because my book on North Korea, Dear Reader, it's written from Kim Jong-il's perspective,

01:01:40.560 right?

01:01:41.320 Right.

01:01:41.860 And their propaganda is humorous in the sense of absurd.

01:01:48.020 And I wrote it straight.

01:01:50.040 And I'll give you one example that he is.

01:01:51.860 So they have something there called the Tower of the Juche idea, which is, this is true, 0.98

01:01:55.960 the biggest stone obelisk in the world or concrete obelisk, whatever.

01:01:59.360 And according to their literature, it was Kim Jong-il's idea and no one else had ever thought

01:02:03.740 of such a thing, right?

01:02:05.140 For that to be true, and this is how I lay out the scene, the architects must have sat

01:02:09.980 together and no one even as a brainstorm had this as a suggestion.

01:02:13.340 And I imagine one of the architects being like, you know what?

01:02:15.340 Let's make this the second tallest stone obelisk in the world.

01:02:19.860 And then Kim Jong-il comes in and goes, guys, let's make it the biggest...

01:02:24.900 And they're like, oh my God, no one's ever thought of this.

01:02:27.040 Right, right, right.

01:02:27.680 But that, for their propaganda to be true, that is what would have to be the backstory.

01:02:32.140 Another example that they have is there was an amusement park, Funfair, that they built

01:02:36.620 in North Korea.

01:02:37.940 And Kim Jong-il, the dear leader, wants to make sure, this is like a South Park episode,

01:02:42.020 that it was safe for everyone.

01:02:43.700 So he gets on all the rides and everyone's like, can we ride it with you?

01:02:46.760 No, no, no, no, no.

01:02:47.920 I have to make sure that the elderly and children aren't harmed.

01:02:50.980 And he did all the rides by himself and there was a light drizzle, so you know he's very

01:02:54.880 brave.

01:02:55.480 And everyone stood and clapped.

01:02:56.860 And they present this story with a straight face and you read this and you realize how

01:03:02.140 humorous it is that this is what's positive as truth in this country.

01:03:06.220 Now, my last chapter in the book is where the mask drops and it gets very, very dark very,

01:03:09.800 very quickly.

01:03:10.240 But I think there is-

01:03:12.160 Right, so you used-

01:03:13.720 That's interesting.

01:03:14.960 You know, did you ever- did you watch The Death of Stalin?

01:03:18.020 That's what my- I mean, he also did Veep, which is probably like the best comedy of all

01:03:22.240 time.

01:03:22.720 Oh, I haven't seen Veep.

01:03:23.900 He did Veep.

01:03:24.640 You haven't seen Veep?

01:03:25.460 No, no, no.

01:03:27.380 Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julia Louis-Dreyfus blocked me because she plays Selina Meyer, who's the 0.97

01:03:32.500 titular character.

01:03:35.060 She was going on about Trump or something.

01:03:36.320 I go, you won several Emmys for demonstrating that all politicians are sociopaths blocked.

01:03:41.180 That show is a complete masterpiece because as the seasons go on, the mask drops more and

01:03:49.660 more.

01:03:49.940 And the first season, she's this bumbling vice president. 1.00

01:03:52.420 And every episode, there's a running gag.

01:03:54.020 It's like, did the president call?

01:03:54.840 No, no.

01:03:55.260 Okay.

01:03:55.920 And by the end, it's full-blown brazen sociopathy.

01:04:00.420 And she's such a great comedic actress and so charismatic.

01:04:04.800 Like there's this one scene where her assistant's in the hospital, right?

01:04:09.920 There's just these little touches.

01:04:11.200 And they come and bring him water.

01:04:12.580 She, of course, takes it.

01:04:13.380 She goes, can someone get Gary some water?

01:04:15.140 Like, this must be a hospital.

01:04:16.160 Like it never even ends her head that this water would be for the guy in the bed because

01:04:19.500 she comes first.

01:04:20.600 So there's so many moments like this throughout the show.

01:04:23.180 And the death of Stalin, same thing.

01:04:25.140 There's this one great scene where after Stalin dies, spoiler alert, he dies, death of Stalin,

01:04:29.700 his daughter is talking to Khrushchev.

01:04:32.420 And Khrushchev says to her, I promise nothing bad will happen to you.

01:04:36.760 She's like, why would you say that?

01:04:37.860 He goes, no, no, no, no, no.

01:04:38.980 Calm down.

01:04:39.520 She goes, wait, people plotting to kill me.

01:04:41.180 He goes, no, no, no.

01:04:41.980 I'll protect you.

01:04:42.860 And she's like, protect me from what?

01:04:44.080 But like, this is the reality that these people lived in.

01:04:46.940 Yeah.

01:04:47.560 Yeah.

01:04:47.880 Yeah.

01:04:48.040 Well, I've, I was obsessed with the idea of evil clowns for a while because I started

01:04:52.620 to figure out what it meant.

01:04:54.540 The evil clowns of classic horror trope, right? 0.84

01:04:57.400 It's right.

01:04:57.700 And it's weird. 0.89

01:04:58.400 Like Stephen King wrote this strange book called It about this clown who is an alien.

01:05:03.080 So a sky god that lived in the sewer.

01:05:05.500 So in the underworld. 0.97

01:05:06.720 So it's evil clown in the underworld. 0.98

01:05:08.960 And it's an evil clown of cosmic significance who lives. 0.92

01:05:11.740 And as soon as I figured out the archetype, 0.93

01:05:14.080 understructure, I thought, oh, I get this.

01:05:16.000 But it's partly because like, there's this old idea in, in, in, in traditional Christianity

01:05:22.820 that, that Lucifer, that the devil, that Satan can't produce anything original.

01:05:29.780 Everything's a parody.

01:05:31.100 Right.

01:05:31.240 Everything's a parody.

01:05:32.420 Right. 0.86

01:05:32.840 And there is this evil clown element to totalitarian states. 0.76

01:05:37.060 It was really captured very well in that death of Stalin. 0.85

01:05:40.000 And in North Korea today.

01:05:41.200 Well, well, and in your book.

01:05:42.560 Yeah.

01:05:42.720 Exactly.

01:05:42.920 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:05:44.580 You know, it's funny that you say that because when people ask me about why I write the book,

01:05:47.860 I said this, I'm like, look, I've got a very small microphone.

01:05:50.780 There's only so much I can do about North Korea.

01:05:52.060 What can I do?

01:05:52.860 And I said, what can I, I can do is people will look at that country and they see the

01:05:56.920 joker. 0.99

01:05:57.680 They see this evil clown. 0.96

01:05:58.780 And I go, all I want to do is move the clown a little bit, move the camera a little bit. 0.95

01:06:02.940 And you see behind that clown, there's a lot of dead bodies.

01:06:05.440 Right. 0.73

01:06:05.600 And all of a sudden you're like, this isn't funny at all.

01:06:07.660 This is horrifying.

01:06:08.540 And that was my goal with that book.

01:06:09.880 Right.

01:06:10.540 Yeah.

01:06:10.900 Well, the comical element, I think, comes in the preposterousness of the lies.

01:06:16.820 Right.

01:06:17.160 Because, and this is also partly why the gender thing bothers me so much.

01:06:22.200 I mean, there's many reasons why it bothers me.

01:06:24.340 The brutal surgery being, you know, not least among them.

01:06:27.400 But I believe that there is no more fundamental perceptual axiom than the capacity to distinguish

01:06:34.440 between male and female.

01:06:35.600 I'm thinking about this biologically.

01:06:37.720 Creatures could distinguish between the sexes for hundreds of millions of years before there

01:06:43.640 were nervous systems.

01:06:44.740 Right.

01:06:45.300 Right.

01:06:45.680 So it's like, this is fundamental.

01:06:47.760 And obviously, because if you can't distinguish between male and female at some level, you

01:06:52.180 don't reproduce.

01:06:53.260 Well, except for the cuttlefish.

01:06:54.820 What do they do?

01:06:56.740 Are they hermaphroditic?

01:06:57.760 No, no.

01:06:58.300 There's a, there's a, I think, at least the giant cuttlefish, maybe other species.

01:07:02.460 There's a male that present as female and they wait for the alpha bull males to go away 0.98

01:07:08.160 and then they rape or at least impregnate the females. 0.97

01:07:11.660 Right. 1.00

01:07:12.120 Well, so they still know.

01:07:13.200 They're passing.

01:07:13.320 They just pretend.

01:07:14.240 Yeah.

01:07:14.580 They're passing though.

01:07:15.360 Yeah.

01:07:15.680 Yeah.

01:07:16.000 So, so the problem with that, the gender bending foolishness, and I think it's part of this 1.00

01:07:21.880 like evil clown pathology is that if you, yes, that's for sure. 0.96

01:07:25.700 If you can get people to accept the lie that a man can be a woman, all other lies are trivial 0.87

01:07:31.840 in comparison, right?

01:07:33.000 The lie is then paramount.

01:07:35.580 There's, there's a, there's a weird sub-narrative.

01:07:40.000 Sorry, I'm obsessed with biblical references because I've been immersing myself in it for

01:07:44.260 quite a while.

01:07:44.800 But there's a biblical idea that's a strange one, that when the abomination of desolation

01:07:49.920 is raised to the highest place, put on the altar, it's time to head for the hills.

01:07:54.220 And that's what it is.

01:07:55.460 It's a statement that when the thing that, when the order is perverted 100%, right, when

01:08:02.360 the worst possible thing is elevated to the highest possible position, things have deteriorated

01:08:07.500 to such a point that you better take appropriate steps.

01:08:09.980 But we got a ways to go.

01:08:12.140 Well, hopefully.

01:08:13.200 Yeah.

01:08:13.660 I don't think we're there yet.

01:08:15.240 I think these could, I mean, what about going on with, with Rotterham, those stories?

01:08:18.800 Yeah.

01:08:19.200 You talk about, you know, trying to understand evil.

01:08:22.300 I mean, these things where I don't even get into the details, people could Google it.

01:08:26.400 And it's just like, it makes no sense.

01:08:28.260 You just, I, you try to, whenever I'm going to get a little bit graphic here.

01:08:32.780 Whenever I hear these stories of like some CNN producer getting arrested for having imagery

01:08:37.960 of children, I always hope, I read the article just to get the details.

01:08:42.020 I'm like, I hope it's like they're watching teenage girls and there's some kind of conversation

01:08:46.540 we could have about how high schoolers are overly sexualized. 1.00

01:08:49.540 Then you read it and it's like infants and children being tied to chairs and there's message

01:08:56.900 boards.

01:08:57.880 Yeah.

01:08:58.060 So it's not just one guy, like he's got a community.

01:09:00.600 Yeah.

01:09:00.860 And you see this and you're like, what, you're a shrink, I'm not.

01:09:04.460 What is the utility to you?

01:09:05.900 You know, is it just pure?

01:09:08.280 If you feel really want an answer to that, I do, because you were talking about understanding

01:09:11.800 evil.

01:09:12.240 It's like, I can understand evil in the sense of sadism, but a child is weak.

01:09:16.120 Like, what do you, what do you want here? 0.98

01:09:17.420 It's like beating the crap out of, it's like taking candy from a baby is not an accomplishment. 0.94

01:09:21.340 No, it's, it's, it's, oh boy. 0.71

01:09:25.340 You really want an answer?

01:09:25.940 Yes, I want an answer because I'm not the only one.

01:09:28.740 When I talk about the social media, people are like, I can't wrap my head around it.

01:09:31.780 All right.

01:09:32.200 I can understand assault.

01:09:33.380 I can understand murder.

01:09:34.300 I can stand bank robberies.

01:09:36.020 I can, but you read stories like this.

01:09:37.360 I'm like, this is a, this is an alien thought process.

01:09:40.200 Okay.

01:09:41.760 So in the story of Cain and Abel, I'm bringing it up because.

01:09:44.940 Sure.

01:09:45.840 It's the, it's the first biblical story about real people.

01:09:49.000 Right.

01:09:49.280 Okay.

01:09:49.800 Right.

01:09:50.480 And it's a murder and his target.

01:09:53.340 Yeah.

01:09:53.520 So that's, that's not fun.

01:09:55.440 Right.

01:09:55.660 That's the first thing that happens in the profane world.

01:09:58.680 Right.

01:09:59.080 Okay.

01:09:59.520 Okay.

01:09:59.780 So Cain, he's working away, hypothetically, and he's not getting anywhere.

01:10:05.560 Okay.

01:10:05.880 And there's two reasons for that, possibly.

01:10:07.780 One is that he's doing something wrong.

01:10:09.860 And the other is the cosmos is constituted improperly.

01:10:13.640 Sure.

01:10:14.140 That's, and he decides that the cosmos is constituted improperly.

01:10:18.200 So he's doing what he can and everyone should know it.

01:10:21.480 And he's working himself to death and it ain't working.

01:10:24.600 And so something's broken.

01:10:26.080 Whereas his brother, like the sun shines wherever he goes, everyone loves him.

01:10:32.420 So it's Cain's failing, trying hard, failing, making sacrifices, failing, Abel, no effort

01:10:38.620 at all is just saying through life.

01:10:39.940 That's Cain's position.

01:10:40.980 So Cain decides he's going to go and have it out with God because it's not his fault,

01:10:44.760 obviously.

01:10:45.400 Right.

01:10:45.600 And so he says to God that Abel, everything's going well for him.

01:10:51.380 And here I am suffering away.

01:10:53.160 Nothing's working for me.

01:10:54.360 And I'm bitter and miserable and resentful and no wonder.

01:10:58.840 And God says, well, you got a couple of things wrong with your theory there, buddy.

01:11:02.740 The first theory is that that's wrong is that your failure is not what's making you miserable.

01:11:08.720 And God says, there's an intermediary figure playing a role here that you don't understand. 0.89

01:11:15.220 He says, sin crouches at your door like a sexually aroused predatory animal.

01:11:21.000 And you invited it in to have its way with you.

01:11:24.080 So you engaged in a creative dialogue with the figure of evil because you felt you were

01:11:32.340 justified, because you're resentful, because you're failing.

01:11:34.780 Now, while you were failing, you could have learned, you could have decided it was your

01:11:39.680 problem.

01:11:40.200 But no, it's God's fault.

01:11:42.120 And so God tells Cain, I don't think it's my fault.

01:11:44.320 I think it's your fault.

01:11:45.380 If you did well, you would be accepted.

01:11:47.500 Yeah.

01:11:48.240 All right.

01:11:48.800 So Cain listens, but he doesn't hear.

01:11:50.940 And he goes away.

01:11:51.780 And then he invites his brother to go do something with him, like in good faith. 0.98

01:11:55.240 And then he kills him with the rock.

01:11:56.840 Why? 0.99

01:11:58.080 To get revenge against God.

01:12:00.500 To get, that's the motive.

01:12:02.460 Right.

01:12:02.860 Because Cain is existentially wounded because his sacrifices are being rejected.

01:12:08.120 So he takes God's ideal and he sullies it.

01:12:11.320 Right.

01:12:11.900 That's what they're doing with kids.

01:12:14.480 You take the most innocent possible creature and you do the worst possible thing to them.

01:12:21.540 Yeah, that's what it is.

01:12:22.900 It's, oh God.

01:12:25.080 Oh God is right.

01:12:27.600 You know, I was thinking about in terms of a pornographic aspect, but it's actually literally

01:12:33.040 demonic.

01:12:34.680 It's like core demonic.

01:12:36.480 Yeah.

01:12:36.840 Well, that's why, you know.

01:12:37.740 That's why it's so alien.

01:12:38.860 Christ says in the gospels that, you know, that the people who sullied children, he says

01:12:43.420 something like it would be better for them if they, you know, if a heavy weight was wrapped

01:12:47.460 around their neck and they were thrown into the ocean.

01:12:49.440 It's the worst sin.

01:12:51.100 That's why they're doing it.

01:12:52.040 That's why they're doing it.

01:12:53.880 It's the, it's the, it's the ultimate middle finger to the, to reality and being. 1.00

01:12:59.900 It's like, you f*** with me, I'm going to f*** with you. 0.99

01:13:04.660 Right. 0.99

01:13:05.380 And so, and then there's that perverse delight that's, there's a novelty edge to that too.

01:13:10.000 So you get sexual gratification for a multitude of reasons.

01:13:14.880 One reason is just sort of reflexive, like sexual activity in itself is pleasurable, but

01:13:19.760 you can put a novelty spin on that.

01:13:22.740 And that's partly what motivates diverse creatures to seek out multiple sexual partners. 0.82

01:13:28.940 And you can game that in all sorts of ways.

01:13:30.620 Because when people start watching pornography, they start with the sorts of things that you

01:13:34.420 described, like attractive women of, attractive nude pictures of, you know, of, of lithe women.

01:13:41.720 But then after 10,000 of those, it's like, well, maybe a little variation.

01:13:47.200 And then you can chase, that's that inviting that spirit in.

01:13:50.320 You can chase that edge, right?

01:13:52.400 Serial killers do that. 0.94

01:13:54.100 They chase that edge right to the logical conclusion.

01:13:57.020 The logical conclusion is a long, long, long way down.

01:14:00.600 And people don't want to understand this.

01:14:02.240 It's worse even than this, Michael.

01:14:04.380 It's worse than this.

01:14:05.240 Because, see, one of the things God tells Cain is that he invited this spirit in to have

01:14:10.080 its way with him.

01:14:11.120 It's very specific wording.

01:14:12.760 There's like a myth, there's a whole sequence of mythological stories around it.

01:14:17.420 For someone to do something like shoot up an elementary school, they fantasized about

01:14:22.260 it for like 5,000 hours.

01:14:24.400 Like, there's a devil in them, so to speak.

01:14:26.900 You might as well call it that, because for all intents and purposes, that's what it is.

01:14:31.720 They've invited it in, and it's taken possession of them.

01:14:35.240 And it's fantasizing in that spirit, what's the worst thing I could do?

01:14:40.140 But that's not the worst.

01:14:41.440 That, to me, it's a lot easier to wrap my head around, I hate everyone in this school.

01:14:45.520 I'm going to put them in their place.

01:14:46.720 I'm going to show them what's what. 0.96

01:14:47.480 Yeah, but this is an adult killing children. 0.86

01:14:49.520 I was specifically referring to Sandy Hook in that case.

01:14:52.260 Yeah, yeah.

01:14:53.080 I would say, in terms of level of sin, you know, I'm annoyed at my classmates.

01:14:59.360 Right, right, yeah.

01:14:59.940 That's more comprehensible.

01:15:01.420 Easily, yeah.

01:15:02.200 Yeah, definitely.

01:15:02.860 Although, you know, there's a darkness in that.

01:15:06.000 Well, we don't even have to say that.

01:15:07.440 That's extraordinarily deep.

01:15:09.220 No, no, the desolation of the innocent.

01:15:12.840 That's the thrill in and of itself.

01:15:15.080 Like, it's the, it's the, and there's more to it.

01:15:18.840 It's like, because this is why it's Luciferian.

01:15:21.800 So Lucifer is the usurper, technically speaking, right?

01:15:24.860 So he's often the intellect, by the way, that wants to put itself in the highest place.

01:15:30.300 Well, there's nothing more that makes you the commanding officer of the cosmos than to

01:15:37.240 take the most profound moral rule imaginable and to invert it, right?

01:15:41.660 That's how much you can get away with.

01:15:43.900 And these, like, I know what people like this are like.

01:15:46.780 They also think, I'm so smart, no one will ever catch me.

01:15:50.200 And I can toy with people, too, because I can hint at this. 1.00

01:15:53.940 Because they're so stupid, they won't even notice. 1.00

01:15:56.680 That's often why they get caught. 1.00

01:15:57.880 That's what happens to Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, right? 0.54

01:16:02.140 And the prosecutor does a brilliant job of toying with him.

01:16:05.820 Why, there's something else I've been, I've been wondering about.

01:16:08.000 Why do you think it's so, I'm scared to ask, because you answered that last question in

01:16:12.700 a way that I'm not comfortable with in this.

01:16:14.820 Oh, no, no, no.

01:16:16.060 Why do you, people don't want to know any about, anything about this.

01:16:18.880 Why do you think there is such a movement, in your opinion, God, I'm scared to ask this,

01:16:24.980 to downplay this in the media?

01:16:27.440 I had this tweet, I said, if we cared half as much about childhood assaults as we do

01:16:32.920 about global warming, we, I mean, the media.

01:16:34.820 You mean in the UK?

01:16:35.760 In the media, in the media.

01:16:36.860 Yeah.

01:16:37.140 No, just anywhere, in America.

01:16:38.200 Well, let's take the UK.

01:16:39.160 Let me finish my thought.

01:16:39.980 Just like, if we, if the media cared a tenth as much about childhood assaults and certain

01:16:44.880 kinds of assaults as they do about global warming, things would be a lot better.

01:16:48.000 This is something that you could fix right now.

01:16:49.440 It's not some hypothetical of the environment in a hundred years.

01:16:51.840 Because, and it's, this is crazy, moral panic, mass hysteria.

01:16:57.820 Why is that happening?

01:17:00.300 Well, part of the reason in the UK is that.

01:17:03.600 Well, the UK is a racial thing, partly.

01:17:06.320 Well, it's, yeah, but, but, but they're covering it up.

01:17:09.340 Right.

01:17:09.520 Yeah, but, well, yeah, yeah, there's the racial thing.

01:17:11.880 And there's fear associated with that.

01:17:13.360 And people are afraid that they're going to be targeted by the woke mob.

01:17:15.980 If they stand up, they're going to be called Nazis and neo-Nazis.

01:17:19.300 They are.

01:17:19.660 They're not wrong. 0.51

01:17:20.060 Yes, of course they are.

01:17:20.560 That's all right.

01:17:21.660 That's, that's one element of it.

01:17:23.940 The other element is the elite.

01:17:29.780 Look, you want to elevate your social status.

01:17:33.420 Now, if you're a good person, you do that by being useful.

01:17:36.720 Okay.

01:17:37.080 Okay.

01:17:37.360 But you can game the system. 0.61

01:17:39.740 Narcissists and psychopaths game the reputational system.

01:17:42.480 That's their niche.

01:17:43.300 Sure.

01:17:43.600 And they do that successfully often.

01:17:45.180 Often successfully enough to be attractive, you know, especially if they're men.

01:17:50.480 Because naive young women are attracted to psychopaths because they game the system so effectively. 0.97

01:17:55.580 Okay.

01:17:55.820 But that proclivity to game the reputational system is a very deep temptation.

01:18:03.440 One of the commandments, I think it's the third, but it might be the fourth, is to not use God's name in vain.

01:18:09.520 And people think that means don't swear.

01:18:11.360 I don't know.

01:18:11.700 Maybe.

01:18:11.980 I can never remember the order.

01:18:13.820 It doesn't mean that.

01:18:14.980 It means do not claim divine inspiration for pursuing your own agenda.

01:18:20.040 It's like the worst thing you can do.

01:18:21.620 I'm doing something low and terrible for the best possible reasons.

01:18:25.520 That's the Stalinist situation, right?

01:18:27.820 Right.

01:18:28.000 I'm exercising all my sadistic desires, like baria, and I'm doing this for the benefit of the poor. 0.99

01:18:34.780 Right.

01:18:35.100 Okay.

01:18:35.380 So you don't ever want to underestimate the attractiveness of moral posturing, especially if someone else is paying for it.

01:18:42.820 Sure.

01:18:43.060 So in the UK, it's like, I'm tolerant, I'm cosmopolitan, I'm open to diversity, we can welcome immigrants of all stripes in.

01:18:50.980 And if the cost for me displaying my cosmopolitan sophistication is that 10,000 working class women get raped, girls?

01:19:01.440 Well, no skin off my nose.

01:19:04.280 And so that's the other part of it.

01:19:06.460 I mean, they're afraid.

01:19:07.500 They're afraid of being called Nazis.

01:19:09.020 They are afraid of being prejudiced, you know, because it's easy once there's a pool of bad actors in a given identifiable group to tar the whole group.

01:19:18.960 Right.

01:19:19.180 And when you should do that, when you shouldn't, is not a simple question.

01:19:23.240 There's lots of complex reasons, but one of them is there's no limit to the degree that people will elevate their own moral status falsely, especially if someone else pays the price.

01:19:36.340 I hear you, and that explains the UK, but this is the case in the US as well.

01:19:39.980 Yeah.

01:19:40.300 They pretend this isn't a thing or that it's not a big deal, or it's some kind of right-wing issue.

01:19:44.840 Well, part of it, too, Michael, I think, is just that people don't, like, you didn't like my explanation for the child.

01:19:51.760 No, I did not.

01:19:52.380 Right, right.

01:19:53.360 But you're not a naive person.

01:19:55.200 Right.

01:19:55.700 Okay, so Michael Schellenberger, when he broke the WPATH files, I interviewed him, and I asked him, well, we talked about it, and he said that he first got wind of this butchery because I did an interview with Abigail Schreier.

01:20:11.500 Schreier?

01:20:12.180 Schreier.

01:20:12.860 She's great.

01:20:13.360 She is great and very, very brave, and I did that just as I was recovering, and it just made me so nervous.

01:20:19.700 Like, I was barely functioning, and it was such a terrible interview to do.

01:20:23.060 It was really early in the trans butchery cycle, and I knew we'd get pilloried for it. 1.00

01:20:28.360 I thought it might sink me, and I thought, you know, we're going ahead with this.

01:20:33.020 And she laid out, as you know, the absolute travesty of this entire catastrophe.

01:20:40.080 Now, Schellenberger watched that, and he said he couldn't believe it.

01:20:46.000 He couldn't believe it.

01:20:47.040 It wasn't until two years later that he started, you know, it was in his mind, but I think that's so telling because Schellenberger's not naive now.

01:20:55.080 He tilted towards the left, and so he's going to have the kind of temperament that's inclined to think the best of people.

01:21:01.700 Right.

01:21:02.060 Which is a great inclination, except not when you're dealing with psychopaths.

01:21:07.200 Yeah, right.

01:21:07.880 Right.

01:21:08.280 In which case, it's exactly the wrong attitude.

01:21:10.680 Right.

01:21:11.000 And the problem with the left often is they have no imagination for evil, and some of that's naivety, and some of it's like willful blindness.

01:21:18.040 It's like you don't want to know.

01:21:20.280 You know, you don't want to know.

01:21:21.660 You don't want to know what sort of snakes are in people's minds.

01:21:24.220 Like, I studied sociological evil and psychological evil for 40 years, right, trying to get to the bottom of it.

01:21:31.340 I had some pretty bad actors in my clinical practice and saw some things all the way to the, I wouldn't say all the way to the bottom.

01:21:39.080 Hell's a bottomless pit for a reason.

01:21:41.000 Sure.

01:21:41.520 Right.

01:21:42.120 Lies get so deep that you literally can't get to the bottom of them.

01:21:45.960 You scrape something away and you think, finally, it's like, no, just another layer of lies.

01:21:51.400 Well, you know that from studying totalitarianism.

01:21:54.220 But so part of it is, Michael, it's not only that.

01:21:56.120 It's like you read these stories about, like, someone who's with an underage kid, and you think that's the basement, and then you hear about England, and it's like, oh, this person's a saint.

01:22:05.220 Oh, yeah.

01:22:05.560 Compared to that. 0.65

01:22:06.340 It's just like, holy crap, I thought this was the bottom. 0.57

01:22:09.040 And there's a trap door, and there's another cellar.

01:22:11.460 Well, that's what Dante was trying to show.

01:22:13.080 Yeah, right, yeah, yeah.

01:22:14.080 You know, and one of the things I've learned, too, this is also something that's awful.

01:22:17.240 Well, so imagine that you say you're married, right, and you hit a sequence of conflicts with your wife, and they repeat.

01:22:26.660 Okay, so there's a hole there in your relationship.

01:22:29.420 And so usually people just walk around those, and they try to, like, not delve into it, partly because when you start delving into it, the person's going to accuse you.

01:22:37.920 Sure, sure.

01:22:38.400 And get angry, and then they're going to cry.

01:22:40.380 And that'll stop 90% of people.

01:22:44.020 But if you go past the anger, and you go past the tears, and you delve in, you go down Dante's hell, and at the bottom, you find betrayal.

01:22:51.540 And then there's trauma there, and then the person has to, like, really cry, and really reconfigure, and admit to, God, sometimes it didn't even happen to them.

01:23:01.040 Sometimes they're carrying the burden of something that happened to their mother.

01:23:05.160 Yeah, yeah.

01:23:05.500 You know, and you have to go all the way to the bottom to exercise that.

01:23:10.200 And if you do that, it changes your view of human nature.

01:23:13.300 It's like, like you said, you know, you get these, oh, I don't know, some guy's attracted to 16-year-old girls, you know.

01:23:20.460 And you think, well, low, within the realm of human comprehension, low.

01:23:26.380 Right.

01:23:27.180 And then you think, you're just, like, you're in the first circle there, buddy.

01:23:30.740 You're not even approaching the bottom.

01:23:32.860 It's funny, I'm so well-versed in political evil, that this kind of depravity, because political evil is easy to understand, and that amoral people who seek power at any cost.

01:23:44.460 Yeah, right.

01:23:44.920 Okay.

01:23:45.220 Because they're after power.

01:23:46.400 Yeah, you get it.

01:23:46.900 Oh, yeah.

01:23:47.140 I know they're motivation.

01:23:47.680 It's like a criminal.

01:23:48.660 You want my Lamborghini?

01:23:50.180 I want my Lamborghini.

01:23:51.460 It's just a matter of difference of approach.

01:23:53.060 Right.

01:23:53.340 Okay, I get it.

01:23:53.900 Fine.

01:23:54.380 Understood.

01:23:55.160 Yeah, yeah.

01:23:55.880 So when I hear these stories, I feel completely naive, because until you just said that.

01:24:01.180 You said what iniquity meant the other day.

01:24:03.020 What does that mean?

01:24:04.820 Aiming down.

01:24:06.340 What?

01:24:07.200 So imagine that, you know, you make a moral error.

01:24:10.960 Sure.

01:24:11.380 Like, that would be like stealing a car.

01:24:13.360 Right.

01:24:13.780 Well, you want the car.

01:24:15.640 You want to go places.

01:24:16.680 It's like, fair enough.

01:24:18.340 You made this error of stealing it.

01:24:20.080 It's like, no, you steal the car, and then you burn it.

01:24:24.020 That's the joker in Batman, right?

01:24:25.820 It's like, I didn't want that money.

01:24:27.960 I just wanted to steal it, and now I'm going to burn it.

01:24:30.480 And he's the guy that terrifies all the criminals.

01:24:32.840 It's like, because the criminals, it's not iniquity for the typical criminal.

01:24:38.140 It's just a matter of strategy.

01:24:40.660 Right, yeah, yeah.

01:24:40.940 They buy the whole capitalist thing.

01:24:42.820 They want the house and the yard.

01:24:44.260 Maybe they even want education for their kids. 0.82

01:24:46.420 Right.

01:24:46.660 Right, so 90% of them, they're like you.

01:24:49.260 They're aiming up a crooked way, and I'm not trying to rationalize.

01:24:52.880 It's like, they're not aiming at, well, part of them is,

01:24:56.200 but there are people who are aiming at down.

01:25:00.480 So there's a book, Panzram.

01:25:02.060 You ever read Panzram?

01:25:03.180 No.

01:25:03.500 Oh, my God.

01:25:05.920 So the book starts out, it's this guy who's in prison.

01:25:09.220 It's a novel or a real book?

01:25:10.460 It's an autobiography.

01:25:11.340 Autobiography, okay.

01:25:11.960 And he's sitting in a corner.

01:25:14.260 He's all beat to hell.

01:25:15.120 He's a very tough-looking guy.

01:25:16.840 And a prison psychiatrist goes and gives him a cigarette.

01:25:20.420 And Panzram, the guy who wrote the autobiography, said,

01:25:23.520 that's the only nice thing anybody ever did for him in his whole life.

01:25:26.920 Now, whether or not that's true, that's not the point.

01:25:29.260 But it's close enough to true.

01:25:31.100 And so the psychiatrist starts to interview this Panzram character, 1.00

01:25:34.380 who's like, I think he raped 240 men. 0.89

01:25:37.200 He killed like 50. 0.99

01:25:38.460 His dying words to the hangman were, 1.00

01:25:41.640 hurry up, you hoosier bastard. 1.00

01:25:43.260 I could kill 12 men in the time it's taken you to knot that rope. 1.00

01:25:46.720 Oh, my God. 0.99

01:25:47.440 Right, and he meant it.

01:25:48.440 Okay.

01:25:48.660 And Panzram was brutalized when he was a child,

01:25:51.340 like just beyond belief.

01:25:54.020 And he decided that he was going to aim down for his whole life.

01:25:58.260 And so he almost started a war between Great Britain and the United States.

01:26:01.440 He wanted to burn everything to the ground, everything.

01:26:04.640 And that's his autobiography.

01:26:06.300 He even told us, the psychiatrist asked him to write his autobiography.

01:26:09.860 It's called Panzram, and so that's what he did. 0.90

01:26:12.160 He told the psychiatrist never to turn his back on him.

01:26:16.540 Because he thought, even though he liked the psychiatrist,

01:26:18.920 insofar as Panzram could like anyone, he thought, give me an opportunity, buddy.

01:26:24.700 Yeah, okay.

01:26:26.260 Yeah, yeah.

01:26:26.860 Well, that's like, well, that is different.

01:26:28.600 There's some overlap with political psychopathology,

01:26:31.080 with people like Barry and Stalin as well.

01:26:33.280 You know, God only knows what those people are up to,

01:26:35.540 especially someone like Barry. 0.69

01:26:36.840 I have a death warrant.

01:26:38.840 I think I told you this last time we talked.

01:26:40.280 I have a death warrant signed by him in my kitchen, framed. 1.00

01:26:43.220 And the paper is just real shit. 0.99

01:26:45.840 And it's like, it's not even worth a nice piece of paper. 0.99

01:26:49.120 That's how little someone's life was worth then and there.

01:26:51.600 Yeah, right.

01:26:52.740 Right.

01:26:53.160 Yeah, exactly.

01:26:53.980 Well, it's funny.

01:26:54.600 Those little details matter.

01:26:55.860 They didn't worry about the good printer, Jordan.

01:26:57.400 I read Theodore Dalrymple's account of going to North Korea,

01:27:00.880 which is brilliant.

01:27:01.580 He's such a brilliant essayist.

01:27:03.040 And he went into the big department store there

01:27:05.580 where everyone's an actor and all the artifacts aren't real.

01:27:09.340 And he bought a pen.

01:27:10.580 He was like the only person who actually bought something in the store

01:27:12.920 because no one buys anything.

01:27:14.540 And he detailed out the ways the pen didn't work.

01:27:17.440 Like, you just have no idea how many ways a pen could not work.

01:27:20.780 The little pocket clip can, you know, come off.

01:27:24.820 The ball doesn't work.

01:27:25.820 The ink is watery and runs.

01:27:28.340 Like, for a pen to work, a hundred things have to be not lies.

01:27:32.420 In that kind of totalitarian state, absolutely everything is a lie.

01:27:36.180 But I'm going to correct you a little bit.

01:27:38.280 The pen did work as a status symbol.

01:27:41.240 Yes.

01:27:41.760 Because if you have this nice pen in your pocket, that's what it works.

01:27:44.800 Right, right, right.

01:27:45.920 Sure, sure.

01:27:47.740 Yeah, yeah.

01:27:48.540 So, the bottom of things.

01:27:51.660 Yeah, well, it's a very long way down.

01:27:53.740 And that is part of the problem with the marginal.

01:27:55.600 So, you know, we were talking about the center and the margin.

01:27:58.200 It's like, Jonathan Paggio explained this to me.

01:28:02.520 I didn't know this.

01:28:04.280 So, in sacred architecture, the architecture of cathedrals, there was often monsters on

01:28:09.020 the periphery, right?

01:28:10.820 Like the gargoyles.

01:28:12.120 Sure.

01:28:12.240 And the monsters are because as you move farther and farther away from the center, you get into

01:28:17.280 the world of monstrous forms.

01:28:18.800 Now, by the definition of the center, granted, but this is the case for every conceptual scheme

01:28:25.200 or every perception.

01:28:26.880 Ideal at the center.

01:28:29.440 Like, circles of approximation.

01:28:31.740 Right.

01:28:31.940 Drifting out into the marginal and then the monstrous.

01:28:36.760 And this is the problem with the, part of the problem with the postmodernist ethos.

01:28:40.240 It's like, center the marginal.

01:28:42.200 It's like, oh yeah?

01:28:44.260 How about the monstrous?

01:28:45.580 Well, they're just victims.

01:28:47.060 It's like, wait till there's one under your bed.

01:28:49.080 Right.

01:28:49.680 Right.

01:28:49.920 Right, because they're marginal for a reason.

01:28:52.540 Oh yeah.

01:28:52.820 Hopefully.

01:28:53.260 Hopefully.

01:28:54.260 Hopefully.

01:28:54.780 Yeah.

01:28:55.440 Hopefully.

01:28:56.220 You know, for Foucault, all the people who were in prison were victims.

01:29:01.080 It's like, all of them?

01:29:02.240 Right, right.

01:29:02.880 Really?

01:29:03.540 You saw this in what brought down the Scottish government, the Scottish prime minister?

01:29:08.760 Remember, she put the activists in the women's prison. 0.99

01:29:10.560 Nicola Sturgeon, yeah.

01:29:11.520 Yeah, it's like, oh, they're men.

01:29:13.480 They're women. 1.00

01:29:14.360 No, she didn't know what to say.

01:29:15.360 She was asked and she was stammering.

01:29:16.960 Well, that's right.

01:29:17.840 That's right.

01:29:18.340 But that was bad enough.

01:29:19.660 It's like, oh, I see.

01:29:20.940 So, every man who says so is a woman.

01:29:23.940 Everyone.

01:29:24.680 The thing that I think that you obviously know that I think a lot of people haven't codified

01:29:28.920 is that a big portion of leftist thought is based on the idea that human beings never

01:29:34.940 respond to incentives.

01:29:36.840 And those who do, it's in such small numbers that it doesn't really matter.

01:29:40.140 Yeah.

01:29:40.560 And we can talk about it in sports where like if someone's a wrestler, they have to make

01:29:43.960 weight, right?

01:29:44.720 So, if you kind of lose 15 pounds of fluid and you're 160 on the day of the weigh-in,

01:29:49.580 you can actually be someone who's 180 pounds and you're going to fight someone who's much

01:29:53.420 small than you.

01:29:54.300 And I'm sure, I haven't looked this up, that there was one guy who was like, wait a minute,

01:29:59.040 I can game the system.

01:30:00.200 I'm 180.

01:30:01.140 But if I'm 160 on that day, if I just have diarrhea and just dehydrate myself, I'm going

01:30:05.800 to have a huge advantage.

01:30:06.720 And now everyone has to do it.

01:30:08.080 But that's the same thing.

01:30:08.960 If you have this, you're telling me that one person is going to say, okay, wait, if I just

01:30:12.700 say I'm female, I can just run the table in a given sport. 0.99

01:30:16.560 Right.

01:30:17.120 Even as a joke, why wouldn't that guy do it?

01:30:19.120 Yeah.

01:30:20.040 Yeah.

01:30:20.340 Well, you remember, who was the comedian that was wrestling women, Man on the Moon?

01:30:25.280 Andy Kaufman, my idol.

01:30:26.400 He knew that was coming, eh?

01:30:27.540 He knew that there was part of him, his evil little soul that knew that was coming.

01:30:31.680 Oh, he wasn't evil at all?

01:30:32.780 Well, no, not at all.

01:30:34.180 No, no.

01:30:34.500 He was very intuitive.

01:30:35.440 This is actually, this wants to, this is, I want to segue into what I really want to

01:30:39.980 pick your brain about.

01:30:41.080 Something that I relate to a lot, and you're probably going to go on for five hours, and

01:30:44.580 I'll love every minute.

01:30:45.840 The trickster archetype.

01:30:47.400 What is the, why is the trickster archetype so important?

01:30:50.620 And what are your thoughts about it?

01:30:52.320 Positive, negative?

01:30:53.900 Well, the trickster is both.

01:30:55.320 You're a trickster today.

01:30:56.160 Yes, very much so.

01:30:56.980 Yeah, exactly, exactly.

01:30:58.440 And you have that about you.

01:31:00.460 Yes.

01:31:00.760 Well, Jung said the trickster is the precursor to the savior.

01:31:04.420 Oh, okay.

01:31:05.000 Right, right, right.

01:31:06.460 So that's, well, that's because.

01:31:07.780 He said that really?

01:31:08.560 You bet.

01:31:09.220 Oh. 0.58

01:31:09.360 He's a marginal character, but the trickster is a psychopomp.

01:31:12.320 Okay, so you want to answer this question?

01:31:14.720 Yes, I do.

01:31:15.540 Okay, so we'll go right from first principles.

01:31:18.100 So here's how the world works.

01:31:21.460 You set a name.

01:31:23.020 Okay, that means you elevate something.

01:31:24.720 Yeah.

01:31:25.080 You prioritize it.

01:31:26.480 You celebrate it.

01:31:27.620 You worship it.

01:31:28.420 Those are all the same thing.

01:31:29.500 You set it as a name.

01:31:31.160 Okay, now your perceptual systems are navigation tools.

01:31:34.960 Okay, so you set the aim.

01:31:37.020 You see a pathway.

01:31:37.980 This is actually how the world appears to you.

01:31:41.600 You see pathways, tools, they move you forward.

01:31:45.920 Okay.

01:31:46.080 Obstacles, they get in your way.

01:31:47.640 Yeah, yeah.

01:31:48.460 Friends, they're tools in the social world.

01:31:51.660 Foes, okay, that's the dramatic landscape.

01:31:55.420 One more.

01:31:56.680 Agents of magical transformation, like wizards, what do they do?

01:32:01.240 They reset the aim.

01:32:03.540 A trickster is an agent of magical transformation.

01:32:06.740 Now, is he good or bad?

01:32:09.100 You don't know because a trickster is, so imagine you're playing game A, right?

01:32:14.240 But there's someone who's playing game D and they come to visit.

01:32:19.380 Okay, now they're a trickster because they're not playing by the same rules.

01:32:22.760 They're not in the same world.

01:32:24.520 And when you interact with them, it's magical because they're emblematic of another way of being.

01:32:29.860 Well, that could be a descent into the abyss or it could be an ascent to a higher game.

01:32:34.800 You don't know.

01:32:35.820 And the thing is, is that in all likelihood, you're going to be afraid.

01:32:41.300 So when Gandalf, for example, when Gandalf comes to visit the hobbits, they're kind of in awe of him,

01:32:47.640 but they're also afraid and distrustful.

01:32:50.100 And even Bilbo is the same.

01:32:53.600 Like he knows there's something to this guy, but, and the strider too, Aragorn, kind of plays the same role.

01:32:59.380 He's ambivalent.

01:33:00.300 Well, why?

01:33:00.760 Because he's a game changer.

01:33:02.260 Well, your game could fall apart, in which case the trickster is like, he's opened the portal to hell, but your game could be elevated, in which case he's a harbinger.

01:33:12.060 He's a psychopomp.

01:33:13.040 He's someone who lives on the edge.

01:33:14.200 He's a messenger of the gods.

01:33:15.500 And so tricksters, tricksters introduce the possibility of a new game, you know, and even comedians do that all the time, because what they're doing, a joke is often, here we are in this world.

01:33:28.680 And then, no, it's actually this world, and everybody laughs, you know, and that's the punchline.

01:33:34.140 And so the comedian is a trickster, and he's a world shifter. 0.97

01:33:39.480 And so the tricksters, now, the trickster and the fool are similar archetypal creatures. 1.00

01:33:45.320 And the fool is also the precursor to the savior, because when you play a new game, you're a fool, the beginner, right? 1.00

01:33:52.020 You're a beginner. 1.00

01:33:52.720 Yeah. 1.00

01:33:52.800 So you have to accept the fool. 1.00

01:33:54.740 You have to accept the trickster and the fool to play a new game. 1.00

01:33:58.240 Right, right. 0.98

01:33:59.280 And so certainly comedians play that role all the time.

01:34:02.100 And that's partly, what do they do exactly?

01:34:06.220 They're jokes.

01:34:08.660 Well, a joke is something like an introduction to a new, it's an introduction to a new way of perceiving.

01:34:14.120 So, you know, it's a micro, it's a micro transformation.

01:34:17.640 So, I don't know.

01:34:19.440 I think part of the way that you distinguish the positive tricksters from the negative tricksters is the positive tricksters use play and humor and invitation, right?

01:34:28.420 So it's a game.

01:34:29.500 You want to play a new game.

01:34:30.960 That's the invitation.

01:34:32.240 That's the right, but that's definitely the right basis for policy.

01:34:35.540 What about the bad kind of trickster?

01:34:38.920 Make your question more specific.

01:34:40.760 Well, you just said the good kind of trickster uses games, you know.

01:34:44.040 Do you want to play a game?

01:34:45.000 What would be the inverse of that?

01:34:46.080 Well, as you said, that could be manipulated.

01:34:47.780 Sure, sure.

01:34:48.360 So you can get campaigns of false joy.

01:34:51.000 Well, the Soviets did that all the time. 0.98

01:34:52.900 We're so enthusiastic for Stalin, right? 0.97

01:34:55.180 You wouldn't call them tricksters, though.

01:34:57.060 There's none of that there, I would argue.

01:35:00.020 Well, there's the trickster component that we talked about with regards to the black comedy. 0.82

01:35:04.960 Yeah, that's right.

01:35:05.880 That was the only safety valve that they had, this dark humor.

01:35:08.840 Yeah.

01:35:09.700 Well, and the...

01:35:12.140 And Stalin would engage in it as well. 0.72

01:35:14.240 Yeah.

01:35:14.560 Like, he used dark humor.

01:35:17.800 Well, Stalin...

01:35:19.040 Solzhenitsyn did a pretty good job of detailing out Stalin's attitude towards everyone around him.

01:35:25.080 He thought everyone around him was contemptible and lied all the time and couldn't be trusted.

01:35:29.740 Right, yeah.

01:35:30.400 Talking about projection.

01:35:30.880 It was 100% right.

01:35:32.020 Yeah, yeah.

01:35:32.560 Right, and so you can see the spiral he was in.

01:35:35.460 It's like, right, you start to betray.

01:35:38.340 People get afraid.

01:35:39.700 They become contemptible.

01:35:41.420 You're more likely to betray them.

01:35:43.020 Yeah.

01:35:43.120 And they lie, and it just goes, you know, it just spirals completely out of control.

01:35:48.740 I mean, you can think of Stalin as a rational actor in some ways.

01:35:51.900 It's like, what would you be like if every single person around you did nothing but suck up and lie to you 100% of the time?

01:35:59.820 What's interesting about this, this is a very divergent example of this.

01:36:05.440 Roseanne had to do something like this. 0.81

01:36:07.500 When Roseanne had her... 0.83

01:36:08.480 I talked to her about this.

01:36:09.300 Yeah.

01:36:09.640 When Roseanne Barr, when she had her show, she had a whole crew of writers. 1.00

01:36:14.600 Yeah.

01:36:14.820 And she had them by number, and she saw that the people would laugh at their own jokes because they were trying to sell them.

01:36:21.520 Yeah.

01:36:21.700 So this was kind of...

01:36:22.560 It was hard for her to figure out, okay, is what...

01:36:25.080 Or she would intentionally say things that aren't that funny to see if people are like, ah, ha, ha, ha.

01:36:29.740 Right.

01:36:29.880 She'd be like, okay, you're not laughing because what I'm saying is that funny.

01:36:32.760 You're laughing because you want to appease me.

01:36:34.280 Yeah.

01:36:34.480 And when you get at that level, it's almost inevitable that...

01:36:37.700 And some people are really good at it because they have a proximity to power they're going to want to pass.

01:36:42.480 Yes.

01:36:42.740 So it gets harder and harder.

01:36:45.120 Absolutely.

01:36:45.920 Absolutely.

01:36:46.520 That's definitely the danger of...

01:36:48.200 I mean, danger of celebrity.

01:36:50.280 I mean, my impulse throughout my life was to, especially in professional settings, like at the university, to take people at their face value.

01:37:02.080 And that worked quite well.

01:37:03.860 But partly the reason it worked is because I was in very rarefied environments.

01:37:07.360 Oh, yeah, right.

01:37:07.860 Sure.

01:37:07.960 I was at McGill when McGill was functional, and then I was at Harvard when Harvard was functional and the University of Toronto.

01:37:13.720 And so the typical person who came my way was playing mostly a straight game.

01:37:19.140 Well, as I became more known, let's say, the percentage of bad actors who present themselves increases.

01:37:28.660 Oh, yeah.

01:37:28.980 And so you become more skeptical that way, too.

01:37:32.320 And so there's more.

01:37:33.020 So, and you can imagine, well, that's one of, obviously, the dangers of power.

01:37:37.900 Why is power dangerous?

01:37:40.040 No one gives you any feedback.

01:37:41.220 You know, that's funny.

01:37:42.720 Whenever I meet, and I'm obviously not your level, but whenever I meet someone at an event, I always throw out a marginally inappropriate comment is the first thing.

01:37:51.420 Because they're not going to have the skill set to mask their reaction.

01:37:56.000 So if they laugh or they find it funny, that's good.

01:37:59.480 If they roll their eyes, that's sincere.

01:38:01.580 But if they kind of give me attitude, I'm like, okay, this is going to be someone I'm going to have difficulty engaging with.

01:38:07.780 Because if they can't handle me at a one, they're not going to be able to handle me at a ten.

01:38:11.540 Yeah, yeah.

01:38:12.320 Well, people, I think that's not an atypical game for people who are sort of comedically oriented and playful.

01:38:21.180 It's like when little kids come to a playground, they start interacting with each other in an immature way.

01:38:29.000 Like if they're four, they'll sort of start off at two-year-old level.

01:38:32.060 And then they ratchet up and see if the other child can play the same game.

01:38:39.160 Now, you know, four-year-olds can play with two-year-olds.

01:38:41.620 But for a play partner, they want someone who's going to push them.

01:38:45.380 Sure, sure.

01:38:45.660 And so they do this.

01:38:46.320 They ratchet up to see if they're at the same level with regards to the game.

01:38:50.440 Yeah.

01:38:50.820 This is, you know, one of the things that you might think about with regards to small talk.

01:38:55.840 That's partly what people are doing.

01:38:59.240 Right?

01:38:59.780 So when they meet socially to begin with.

01:39:01.740 Oh, to suss each other out. 1.00

01:39:03.240 Yeah, yeah.

01:39:03.560 They want to offer their little offerings to get the exchange going.

01:39:06.620 Now, part of what you're likely objecting to is that people who aren't high in openness won't take the conversation down, right?

01:39:15.380 Or they won't make it deep.

01:39:16.680 They just won't go there.

01:39:18.620 Or they can't.

01:39:19.280 Or they can't.

01:39:20.120 Yeah.

01:39:20.360 Right, right, right.

01:39:21.700 They're not interested or they can't.

01:39:24.020 Right.

01:39:24.240 And that's very frustrating if you're an open person.

01:39:27.040 Yes.

01:39:27.420 Because that's all you want to do.

01:39:28.880 Yeah, I always say there's, I use this example all the time.

01:39:31.600 There's two kinds of people.

01:39:32.820 Maybe it's more than two, but whatever.

01:39:34.440 If you're at a party and you meet someone who's like a guinea pig breeder, there's either, well, that's weird. 0.94

01:39:39.400 Okay, psycho. 0.89

01:39:40.140 Or sit down and tell me everything. 0.99

01:39:41.780 Right.

01:39:42.160 And my people, people I like, and me, I'm definitely number two.

01:39:45.700 Whatever it is, if you have a passion or some technical knowledge and this means a lot to you, tell me.

01:39:50.020 That's why I love being a clinical psychologist.

01:39:52.020 Oh, yeah.

01:39:52.380 People, if you get people actually telling you what they're like, they're unbearably interesting.

01:39:57.620 Yeah.

01:39:58.000 Yeah, this is true even for simple people because there are no simple people.

01:40:02.120 The ones who are less intellectual are less articulate and it's harder to get their stories out of them.

01:40:06.980 Well, it's the 115s who are the problem, aren't they? 1.00

01:40:10.180 Meaning?

01:40:10.760 The marginally intelligent who think that they're brilliant and fascinating.

01:40:14.120 Well, then their ideas tend to be dull, but that doesn't mean they are.

01:40:17.540 Okay.

01:40:18.160 Right?

01:40:18.520 You got to get them off their ideas.

01:40:20.080 Like, yeah, there's nothing worse than a dull ideologue.

01:40:23.480 Right.

01:40:23.760 It's like, I've heard it all before.

01:40:25.060 But if you get people talking about what they know, and they're often very hesitant to do that because they don't want to, no one's ever listened to them.

01:40:34.300 Sure.

01:40:35.000 And they're afraid, like the guinea pig breeder, that they'll just be laughed at if they let people know what they're really like.

01:40:40.000 But people are unbelievably interesting if you can get them talking.

01:40:43.120 All right.

01:40:43.460 We should stop.

01:40:44.380 We should go to the Daily Wire side.

01:40:45.800 We should talk about the current political situation.

01:40:47.840 Let's do it.

01:40:48.300 Let's do that on the Daily Wire side.

01:40:49.960 Yeah.

01:40:50.200 Okay.

01:40:50.540 Good.

01:40:51.120 Good.

01:40:51.440 So, always a pleasure talking to you and seeing you.

01:40:55.040 And I had no idea what we were going to talk about.

01:40:58.180 And we didn't talk about any of the things, really, that I thought we might talk about.

01:41:01.160 Yeah.

01:41:01.260 But that's entertaining.

01:41:03.300 Very entertaining.

01:41:04.700 So, and hopefully everybody else found that it was so, too.

01:41:07.840 And write me that paragraph.

01:41:09.540 I promise.

01:41:10.320 Oh, I will.

01:41:10.720 And I will send an introduction and we'll see.

01:41:13.600 I'd like to go talk to her again, too.

01:41:15.340 Oh, God.

01:41:15.760 She's the best.

01:41:16.580 Yeah.

01:41:16.920 Oh, yeah.

01:41:17.260 It was fun to talk.

01:41:18.000 She's a blast. 0.97

01:41:19.140 She's a blast. 0.97

01:41:19.900 And she's so smart.

01:41:21.200 I know, Jordan.

01:41:22.320 I know.

01:41:22.760 Sparks everywhere.

01:41:23.460 I know.

01:41:23.820 I can't wait.

01:41:24.680 Have you talked to Russell Brand?

01:41:26.400 I have not.

01:41:27.460 Russell Brand is fun.

01:41:28.720 Okay.

01:41:28.960 He's fun in that way.

01:41:30.620 He's got that.

01:41:34.180 He's always leaping from place to place.

01:41:36.240 Russell wasn't the guy for me when I was 16.

01:41:38.580 Yeah.

01:41:38.600 No, no.

01:41:38.880 I get it.

01:41:39.280 I get it.

01:41:39.820 It's like that first band you fall in love with.

01:41:41.800 Maybe 20 years later, you listen to them, you're like, they're not that good.

01:41:44.040 But man, when you were 16, no one's going to tell you any different.

01:41:46.840 Yeah.

01:41:47.020 Well, the thing about Pelley is she is that good.

01:41:49.060 Right.

01:41:49.440 I know.

01:41:50.080 I know.

01:41:50.620 I know.

01:41:50.940 So that's good.

01:41:51.840 That's good.

01:41:52.320 All right, sir.

01:41:52.940 Great pleasure.

01:41:53.580 Good to see you, man.

01:41:54.180 Yeah.

01:41:54.420 Yeah.

01:41:54.640 And thank you, everybody, for watching and listening.

01:41:56.640 And to the film crew here today in Scottsdale for setting up this crazy site.

01:42:03.300 And join us on the Daily Wire side because I didn't talk to Michael at all about the strange

01:42:08.400 political situation that we happen to be in now.

01:42:10.720 And I want to get his feelings about, well, about Musk and about the strange group of people

01:42:16.820 who've aggregated themselves around Trump and about what he thinks is going to happen

01:42:21.140 in the next year and what he hopes is going to happen.

01:42:23.180 And so join us on the Daily Wire side for that.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 20, 2025

516. Michael Malice： A Clinical Analysis

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