The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Femsplainers with Christina Hoff Sommers and Danielle Crittenden

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

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:20.100 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:27.420 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:35.360 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:41.800 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:00:47.460 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:00:51.040 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:00:59.360 To support this podcast, you can make a donation at jordanbpeterson.com slash donate, or by following the link in the description.

00:01:08.560 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, Self-Authoring and Understand Myself, can be found at self-authoring.com and understandmyself.com.

00:01:21.040 Welcome to the FemSplainers. I'm Danielle Crittenden. 1.00

00:01:38.560 And I'm Christina Hoffs-Sommers.

00:01:40.040 And we are thrilled to have the father of all mansplainers in our studio today.

00:01:47.200 Because, you know, I think he's actually more of a man whisperer.

00:01:51.420 Yes, a man whisperer, and the mad genius behind the intellectual dark web, whatever.

00:01:57.960 Welcome to the FemSplainers, Jordan Peterson. 1.00

00:02:00.480 Thank you very much.

00:02:01.800 So delighted to have you.

00:02:03.960 It's an honor to have you.

00:02:05.560 It's an honor. It's amazing.

00:02:06.800 And a note to our listeners, we're recording this in front of a live audience at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.,

00:02:14.200 where Christina is a resident scholar.

00:02:16.660 And there'll be video of the podcast as well.

00:02:19.340 And we will let you know where to find that when it's ready.

00:02:22.460 And we're also grateful to AEI every week for the use of its recording studio for the podcast.

00:02:28.280 And now for an introduction, though he needs no introduction to the people here.

00:02:32.800 But Jordan Peterson is a professor at the University of Toronto and author of many books and poster of many fantastic lecturers.

00:02:42.680 His most recent book has – I can't keep track of how many languages it's been translated into.

00:02:48.680 And the sales, just a phenomenally successful book tour.

00:02:53.200 In fact, my first question is really about your tour.

00:02:55.860 You look pretty good for somebody who's visited, what, 100 cities in the past year?

00:03:02.340 Since January 23rd.

00:03:03.960 I don't know how you do it.

00:03:05.700 Mostly flying.

00:03:08.420 Well, what do you do for fun?

00:03:10.180 Do you ever get to relax?

00:03:12.180 In brief moments.

00:03:13.680 And what do you do?

00:03:16.160 Go on Twitter and get –

00:03:17.780 Oh, God, yes.

00:03:18.760 Although I wouldn't qualify that as relaxing.

00:03:21.200 And I try to, you know, forestall that temptation as much as possible.

00:03:24.560 Well, I have the odd amount, bit of time that I can spend with my wife.

00:03:28.040 She does travel with me.

00:03:29.380 And so, you know, we've had – we try to take some time to walk around the cities that we're in and see what we can.

00:03:36.460 We're usually not at any given place for more than a day or two.

00:03:40.100 And they're usually pretty packed up with, well, whatever is associated with the lecture.

00:03:44.960 And then with press that the publishers usually arrange.

00:03:48.720 Well, I heard you interviewed in Sweden.

00:03:51.280 You were in Stockholm.

00:03:51.940 And you were – had a half an hour to visit the city with your wife.

00:03:57.320 And you loved it.

00:03:58.460 But that, you know, it's very tiring.

00:04:00.420 Yeah, well, you take your breaks where you get them.

00:04:02.880 Well, the thing is, is that the lecture tour is unbelievably positive.

00:04:07.440 Yes.

00:04:07.680 And a lot of this is ridiculously positive, you know, like so if I'm going out on the streets now or in cafes or, you know, airports, I meet people all the time.

00:04:18.200 And they're always polite and they're always happy to see me and they always have some very touching story to relate.

00:04:26.360 And then the audiences themselves are very positively predisposed to whatever it is that we're doing together.

00:04:34.940 And so that makes it a lot easier to stay motivated and to continue.

00:04:41.560 Right.

00:04:41.740 You know, I mean, it's demanding because everything's scheduled so tightly.

00:04:45.440 And I do a different lecture every night.

00:04:51.100 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:04:54.980 To support this podcast, you can make a donation at jordanbpeterson.com slash donate or by following the link in the description.

00:05:03.520 Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, and understand myself can be found at self-authoring.com and understand myself.com.

00:05:31.460 Welcome to the FemSplainers. 1.00

00:05:33.260 I'm Danielle Crittenden.

00:05:34.640 And I'm Christina Hoff Summers.

00:05:36.120 And we are thrilled to have the father of all mansplainers in our studio today.

00:05:44.200 Because, you know, I think he's actually more of a man whisperer.

00:05:47.480 Yes, a man whisperer and the mad genius behind the intellectual dark web, whatever.

00:05:54.020 Welcome to the FemSplainers, Jordan Peterson. 1.00

00:05:56.520 Thank you very much.

00:05:57.860 So delighted to have you.

00:05:59.640 And it's an honor to have you.

00:06:01.640 It's an honor.

00:06:01.840 And a note to our listeners, we're recording this in front of a live audience at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., where Christina is a resident scholar.

00:06:12.720 And there'll be video of the podcast as well.

00:06:15.400 And we will let you know where to find that when it's ready.

00:06:18.520 And we're also grateful to AEI every week for the use of its recording studio for the podcast.

00:06:23.740 And now for an introduction, though he needs no introduction to the people here.

00:06:28.980 But Jordan Peterson is a professor at the University of Toronto and author of many books and poster of many fantastic lecturers.

00:06:38.100 And his most recent book has I can't keep track of how many languages it's been translated into.

00:06:44.380 And the sales, just a phenomenally successful book tour.

00:06:48.760 In fact, my first question is really about your tour.

00:06:52.400 You look pretty good for somebody who's visited, what, 100 cities in the past year?

00:06:58.400 Since January 23rd.

00:07:00.020 I don't know how you do it.

00:07:01.780 Mostly flying.

00:07:04.440 Well, what do you do for fun?

00:07:06.240 Do you ever get to relax?

00:07:08.240 In brief moments.

00:07:09.740 And what do you do?

00:07:10.540 Go on Twitter and get...

00:07:13.840 Oh, God, yes.

00:07:14.800 Although I wouldn't qualify that as relaxing.

00:07:17.300 And I try to, you know, forestall that temptation as much as possible.

00:07:21.100 Well, I have the odd amount, bit of time that I can spend with my wife.

00:07:24.100 She does travel with me.

00:07:25.380 And so, you know, we've had...

00:07:27.200 We try to take some time to walk around the cities that we're in and see what we can.

00:07:32.540 We're usually not at any given place for more than a day or two.

00:07:36.060 And they're usually pretty packed up with, well, whatever is associated with the lecture.

00:07:41.040 And then with press that the publishers usually arrange.

00:07:44.800 Well, I heard you interviewed in Sweden.

00:07:47.360 You were in Stockholm.

00:07:48.720 And you were...

00:07:50.360 Had a half an hour to visit the city with your wife.

00:07:53.360 And you loved it.

00:07:54.540 But that, you know, it's very tiring.

00:07:56.540 Yeah, well, you take your breaks where you get them.

00:07:58.960 Well, the thing is, is that the lecture tour is unbelievably positive.

00:08:03.540 Yes.

00:08:03.760 And a lot of this is ridiculously positive, you know.

00:08:07.400 Like, so if I'm going out on the streets now or in cafes or, you know, airports, I meet people all the time.

00:08:14.380 And they're always polite.

00:08:16.320 And they're always happy to see me.

00:08:18.220 And they always have some very touching story to relate.

00:08:23.060 And then the audiences themselves are very positively predisposed to whatever it is that we're doing together.

00:08:30.820 And so that makes it a lot easier to stay motivated and to continue.

00:08:37.480 Right.

00:08:37.800 You know, I mean, it's demanding because everything's scheduled so tightly.

00:08:41.520 And I do a different lecture every night, every time I go.

00:08:47.180 I know.

00:08:47.620 I find that amazing because I give a lot of lectures and I anguish over every word.

00:08:53.020 And then I have another one and you go up without notes.

00:08:57.700 Yeah.

00:08:57.920 Well, I have a large collection of, you know, things that I know what, how to talk about.

00:09:02.420 And usually what I try to do is to formulate a problem before the lecture.

00:09:07.120 And so I'm addressing a specific problem.

00:09:09.480 Right.

00:09:09.800 And then I can track how I would set up the argument.

00:09:13.020 And then I walk through it.

00:09:14.320 But part of it's also an attempt to formulate the argument on the fly, you know, to make the question, what would you say?

00:09:20.800 To formulate it more precisely and to make a more precise and engaging answer.

00:09:24.460 And then I can use the audience to judge whether or not that's happening.

00:09:28.740 And so it's also a real challenge to do that.

00:09:31.980 So I enjoy that.

00:09:33.780 And it's an excellent intellectual workout.

00:09:37.600 And I've been recording the lectures and I've been using some of them to write the first draft of the chapters for my next book and for books after that.

00:09:48.040 And so, you know, I'm able to maximize the, what would you say, the utility of doing this at each event.

00:09:54.560 And my wife seems to be particularly well suited to traveling like that. 0.56

00:09:59.100 But she actually enjoys it quite a bit and is a very stable person.

00:10:05.320 And so that's also helpful.

00:10:07.740 And, you know, it's nice to have an extra brain along because things are scheduled so tightly that we don't ever have any room for error.

00:10:15.360 Yes.

00:10:16.300 I don't know how intellectually rigorous we plan to be with you today because we know that whenever you're on one of these platforms, you're talking about your ideas.

00:10:24.480 But on the FemSplainers, we want to hear a little bit more about Jordan Peterson, the man.

00:10:30.060 Desperately and definitely want to hear about your wife, Tammy.

00:10:32.540 Yeah.

00:10:33.040 And also, you're so well known for your views on men or how your ideas have been taken up so enthusiastically by young men.

00:10:42.460 But we want to talk to you about women. 0.95

00:10:44.840 Yep.

00:10:45.140 That's good.

00:10:45.800 So, but one of the things you and I share is that we both grew up in Canada.

00:10:51.300 I promised, Christine, I would not do my Canadian accent while you were here.

00:10:56.020 But you grew up in rural Alberta.

00:10:58.520 I grew up in Toronto.

00:10:59.900 And you are, what, the country's most famous guru now since Marshall McLuhan.

00:11:05.920 But is the fact that you came from Canada have any effect on your views, do you think?

00:11:11.040 Has it formed you in any way?

00:11:13.080 She's always looking to promote Canada. 0.98

00:11:14.480 For the Canadian angle.

00:11:16.540 So, go for it.

00:11:17.600 Hey, we have listeners in Canada.

00:11:18.180 Well, I think the particular part of Canada I grew up in probably was formative to some degree.

00:11:25.100 I mean, the town I grew up in was only 50 years old, you know.

00:11:29.000 And the particular part of the world that I grew up in was really the last settled part of the North American prairie.

00:11:36.260 This was outside of Edmonton, correct?

00:11:37.720 Yeah, about 400 miles north of Edmonton.

00:11:40.080 Oh, 400 miles.

00:11:41.180 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:41.660 Yeah, it's right at the tip of the...

00:11:42.340 That's a short distance, short distance.

00:11:43.960 Yeah, so the prairie stretches up that far north.

00:11:48.080 It stretches up farther north in Alberta than it does anywhere else in the North American continent.

00:11:52.280 And so we were at the tip of viable farming, essentially.

00:11:56.460 And so it was a new place, and it was a rather raw place.

00:12:00.700 And it was a rather harsh place in many ways, especially because of the winter.

00:12:06.140 And it was fundamentally a working-class place, although a prosperous working-class place, right, 0.59

00:12:10.860 because most of the industry there was related to the oil and gas industry.

00:12:14.980 And although it was cyclical, when things were good, working-class people could make a very good living.

00:12:21.720 This was during the 70s, so through the whole...

00:12:23.940 Was it fun to be a kid in 400 miles outside a small town?

00:12:29.960 Yeah, I liked it when I was a kid.

00:12:32.320 I wouldn't say it was as fun when I was a teenager.

00:12:36.420 But I'm not convinced that, you know, the majority of people who are teenagers necessarily have the most wonderful time of it.

00:12:45.100 I think adults often look backwards at the past through rose-colored glasses.

00:12:50.060 I think that's what the cartoonist Trudeau accused Reagan of doing continually.

00:12:56.480 Gary Trudeau.

00:12:57.120 You're at the American Enterprise Institute.

00:12:59.180 Don't insult Mr. Reagan.

00:13:00.980 No, no.

00:13:01.600 I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

00:13:02.480 I think the words you used for it in your book was teenage wasteland, I think, is what you called it.

00:13:08.340 But it's Canadian-ness.

00:13:10.160 How does that have formed you or affected you, if at all?

00:13:12.820 Maybe it didn't.

00:13:14.500 It's hard to say.

00:13:15.600 I mean, I've lived in lots of different parts of Canada now, and Canada's quite different.

00:13:21.180 I lived in, well, Alberta for a while, and it had this particular flavor of existence.

00:13:26.080 I mean, mostly in Fairview, I was striving to leave and to move ahead, let's say, or to move, I hesitate to say, up, but somewhere different, somewhere more urban.

00:13:38.000 But that's the case with many people.

00:13:39.460 I mean, the small towns all across the West in the U.S. and in Canada are dying.

00:13:44.580 They're down to nothing because everyone's moved to the cities.

00:13:47.300 I lived in Montreal for a good while, and that was interesting because it was a very, very different culture.

00:13:52.660 It was a culture that was, to some degree, stratified by language and by class.

00:13:57.260 None of that was true in Alberta because it was so new that there's no class structure.

00:14:00.820 So that was quite interesting.

00:14:02.300 Right.

00:14:02.420 You worked, what I loved, I pulled a passage because I think, as you say, people are born in small places everywhere, and some want to leave and some don't.

00:14:10.920 You said, I wanted to be elsewhere.

00:14:13.540 I wasn't the only one.

00:14:15.220 Everyone who eventually left the Fairview I grew up knew they were leaving by the age of 12.

00:14:19.740 I knew, and my wife, who grew up with me on the same street, knew.

00:14:24.600 What was that thing?

00:14:25.760 What would you call that?

00:14:26.560 What's the thing that makes you want to leave and sets you off?

00:14:29.540 Because, as you point out, there was no class system.

00:14:32.440 Education was cheap in Canada compared to the United States.

00:14:35.460 Oh, yeah.

00:14:35.760 It wasn't cost that was stopping people.

00:14:37.980 You were from a, what, middle class?

00:14:39.880 Yeah.

00:14:40.160 You worked in a paper?

00:14:40.400 My father was a teacher, and my mother was a librarian, though she had trained as a nurse.

00:14:44.760 So, you know, we had a comfortable, I would say, suburban lifestyle, essentially.

00:14:50.660 You know, a moderate, middle class, suburban lifestyle.

00:14:53.340 That's what Fairview looked like.

00:14:54.400 It looked like a suburb that was built mostly, say, between the 1950s and the 1970s.

00:15:00.300 The young Jordan and the then young Tammy, and you have to tell us that story, how you met, but wanted more.

00:15:07.720 Well, you know, I think that's one thing that is different to some degree about class.

00:15:13.080 My father and my mother had both left the towns they were from, and they were forward, future-looking people.

00:15:19.860 And, you know, most of my friends who quit school and who didn't attend university, they didn't have that sense, I would say, that more developed sense of a world outside of what they knew.

00:15:33.480 And the other thing is that my father took us on long trips when I was a kid.

00:15:38.060 He was a teacher, and so he had summer holidays.

00:15:40.240 And we drove all over western Canada and down into the U.S., long driving trips, thousands of miles.

00:15:46.460 And, you know, that also gave us the sense that the world was a bigger place.

00:15:50.380 But I knew way before I was 12, I believe, that I was off at least to university.

00:15:55.120 And I think generally in your family, if you're liable to go to university, people don't even really talk about it.

00:16:01.840 It's just a given that that's what's going to happen.

00:16:04.340 It's something that you take in with every breath almost.

00:16:09.940 It's often an unspoken expectation.

00:16:14.520 And maybe people make casual reference like, well, when you go to college, but it's not like there's a question about it.

00:16:20.920 Whereas if you're from a working class background, especially if your family hasn't pursued post-secondary education, that isn't in the realm of unspoken or spoken expectation.

00:16:32.300 And it wasn't like lots of my friends, including many of them who dropped out before they hit high school.

00:16:37.320 They weren't, they were by no means the dimmest people in the class.

00:16:41.540 Like they were plenty smart, but they weren't oriented towards the idea of, of pursuing a career that, that involved intellectual, what intellectual engagement wasn't in their worldview.

00:16:56.700 And, you know, when you hear people on the, let's say, more socialist end of the distribution talk about barriers to education, they often talk about cost.

00:17:05.460 And sometimes cost is a barrier and it's more of a barrier, although there's still plenty of community colleges and state colleges where you can get educated for a perfectly reasonable amount of money.

00:17:17.500 But for my friends, it was never a reason that money was never a reason they didn't pursue post-secondary education.

00:17:24.980 It was more like a truncated view of time, I would say.

00:17:30.260 You know, there was more of an emphasis on the here and now.

00:17:33.140 And there were jobs aplenty, I guess.

00:17:34.800 Well, there was also that, yeah.

00:17:36.140 And, and well-paying jobs.

00:17:37.820 Like, it wasn't obvious that you were in better shape economically to go to university than you were to, oh yeah, well, especially if you were doing something like working on the oil rigs.

00:17:45.360 Right, right.

00:17:46.080 But, you know, that was rough, cold, harsh work.

00:17:49.340 And it wasn't, it wasn't, once you had an inn, you could stay employed, but it wasn't that easy to land an entry-level job either.

00:17:57.160 And so, yeah, well, it was wise for lots of working class people to, to work in those jobs because they were unbelievably lucrative.

00:18:05.560 So, and they should have been because they were very difficult and dangerous and frigid, cold and, and, and rough.

00:18:11.300 So, you know, it's not like the people didn't earn their money.

00:18:14.120 Well, just tell us quickly, like how you met your wife.

00:18:17.340 You were, you met her when you were seven or eight or, you know, little.

00:18:21.000 Yeah, in grade three.

00:18:21.840 In grade three?

00:18:23.180 Yeah.

00:18:23.640 And you, did you fall in love with her?

00:18:25.820 In grade three.

00:18:26.760 In grade three?

00:18:27.360 Yeah.

00:18:29.080 And was it mutual?

00:18:31.960 And not in the beginning.

00:18:33.020 She wouldn't, she wouldn't admit it if it was.

00:18:36.020 There were lots of the boys in grade three were in love with her.

00:18:39.080 She had a whole little crew of guys that were perfectly willing to follow her around and she was perfectly willing to exploit that.

00:18:47.180 She was very good at it.

00:18:48.560 Yeah, she was very popular.

00:18:49.580 It's just so wonderful that you met as children.

00:18:53.960 We were friends for a long time.

00:18:55.280 You know, we used to play chess together and croquet and she was a vicious croquet player. 1.00

00:18:59.720 She would, I don't know if you've ever played croquet, but if the, if your balls touch, then you can stand on yours and whack it. 0.95

00:19:07.400 And then the other person's ball will vanish off into the stratosphere and she liked to knock it all the way down the street. 1.00

00:19:13.620 Oh, that's mean.

00:19:13.760 Yeah, and then she'd laugh and, you know, so she, she always had a good sense of, a good vicious sense of humor. 0.99

00:19:20.880 It's one of the things I actually admire about my wife when, when, when we've had our verbal disputes, which, you know, have certainly happened. 0.99

00:19:27.400 And she can string together a sequence of insults that's so hair racing that you, you have to laugh. 1.00

00:19:34.520 It's like.

00:19:35.380 Did she have brothers?

00:19:36.880 Um, she did.

00:19:38.020 She has a brother, much older, eight, eight years older, but he's quite a peaceful person.

00:19:42.460 And she had two sisters.

00:19:43.360 Girls with brothers can seem to, can get along with guys because guys, they, they, they, they show love and affection by insults and jabs and jeers.

00:19:52.840 And, and if you, and I had a brother and I sort of learned, okay, I can, but if you don't have brothers, girls are like, oh, that's so rude. 1.00

00:19:58.900 That's so.

00:19:59.380 Yeah.

00:19:59.800 So she was.

00:20:01.000 Yeah.

00:20:01.180 Well, she, she, she has a naturally. 0.78

00:20:03.660 Or maybe she came by it naturally.

00:20:05.760 Acerbic twist.

00:20:06.340 She, she did.

00:20:07.180 Well, and her father is quite sharp witted and, and well, he was a real town character.

00:20:12.700 He's still alive.

00:20:13.640 And he was a real character in the town, a real hyper extrovert.

00:20:16.880 Everybody knew him.

00:20:18.120 And, uh, he had a pretty good wit on him.

00:20:20.720 And she had some of that.

00:20:22.080 Well, it still does have some of that.

00:20:23.980 So she was a, you know. 0.91

00:20:25.920 Well, aside from her acerbic humor and her ability to whack balls. 1.00

00:20:31.040 And I just don't want to go further on that description. 0.66

00:20:33.360 That could have many, many things that tells us about you.

00:20:37.100 But what else, what else brought, what else attracted her?

00:20:40.340 I mean, you've known her pretty much your whole life.

00:20:43.180 So some of the other qualities that not just attracted you, but enable you to sustain.

00:20:48.480 I mean, I think every young person in this room will want to know, and maybe there isn't one, but what's the secret?

00:20:54.060 What's it like to be with someone that long?

00:20:55.600 How do you sustain that?

00:20:57.320 Well, I think if you're fortunate, some of it's, some of it's good fortune.

00:21:01.700 Um, you know, and I would say this is true.

00:21:03.540 I've watched people in their relationships, you know, personally for a long time, but also as a professional, because I've done a lot of clinical counseling.

00:21:10.660 And I mean, there's some things that need to be a given about the relationship, I would say.

00:21:15.800 It doesn't hurt to find the other person very attractive, you know, and that's a mysterious thing.

00:21:21.840 We're not exactly sure what it is that produces, let's say, chemistry between people, although chemistry is definitely part of what produces it.

00:21:29.460 There's subtle things that attract people to one another that are way below the level of consciousness.

00:21:33.500 So, for example, women don't like the odor of men who have RH blood factors, who, if they had children with, would be likely to produce a stillborn infant.

00:21:46.460 Well, that's definitely a category on match.com.

00:21:49.040 Yeah, right, right, right.

00:21:51.260 Well, it's so strange, though, because you, you know, you.

00:21:53.480 How does that, how do you even know?

00:21:54.880 Well, that's a good question.

00:21:56.460 And you know, you know by odor, apparently.

00:21:58.760 And so, um, there's also.

00:22:00.560 What if you're wearing cologne?

00:22:01.560 Well, that, then it would depend on what type of cologne it is.

00:22:06.100 RH, what was it?

00:22:07.300 Right.

00:22:07.700 Smell is a very strange sense, and it's very deeply tied to very profound emotions, including memory.

00:22:14.860 And so, you find people attractive for reasons that you can't always determine.

00:22:22.300 And so, so that, that was part of it.

00:22:24.620 I mean, I've always found her very attractive, and that continues.

00:22:27.440 And I, I liked her combattiveness, you know.

00:22:31.240 Like, I think that there's, you want someone, I think, in a relationship that you can spar with.

00:22:38.860 And it's partly because you have hard problems to solve.

00:22:43.600 And if the person that you're with isn't willing to put forward their opinion, then you only have half the cognitive power that you would otherwise have.

00:22:54.600 You know, and hopefully you find someone who's interestingly different from you.

00:22:59.140 Like, not so different that you can't communicate, and you have to be careful of that.

00:23:02.900 But interestingly different, and then hopefully they have the ability and the will to express their opinion.

00:23:09.220 And, and then, well, then it's, you know, then, then your interest stays heightened.

00:23:14.340 And there has to be that tension in a relationship.

00:23:16.980 You know, people think, well, I, I want to get along perfectly with my partner.

00:23:21.640 It's like, no, you, you probably don't.

00:23:24.780 You just get bored, and then you go looking for trouble.

00:23:27.600 And so you want a little bit of trouble in the relationship, and a little bit of mystery, and a little bit of combativeness, and, and the ability to exchange opinions forthrightly.

00:23:38.360 And, and I trust her, which is a huge element.

00:23:42.580 I mean, when, when we finally did decide to get together permanently, we were both in our later 20s.

00:23:48.820 And, you know, one of the things that I had learned by that point, and insisted to her about, was that we had to tell each other the truth.

00:23:58.220 And she took to that wholeheartedly, you know, and for better and for worse, because truths can be harsh.

00:24:07.620 Does that include, like, does this outfit make me feel like that?

00:24:12.280 Yeah, well, the truthful answer to that is I don't answer questions that are likely to get me in trouble.

00:24:18.440 Yeah, so.

00:24:20.400 I have a son who will answer honestly, and it's infuriating.

00:24:23.700 But then I realized, if you want the truth, talk to Tam.

00:24:26.860 Well, well, that's the thing, you know, it's, it's useful to know.

00:24:30.840 The truth is empowering.

00:24:31.880 Truth tellers are charismatic.

00:24:34.540 And, you know, actually, both my sons are, like, brutally honest, which is disconcerting.

00:24:38.360 But it's, I can see that it's made them very formidable.

00:24:45.860 And because of the people trust them, and the friendships, and just, it gives them a, and you've written a lot about this.

00:24:53.460 Well, you know, if, if I tell my wife that she looks good in an outfit, she knows that I mean it.

00:24:57.920 Yeah.

00:24:58.640 And so there's some utility in that.

00:25:00.180 And then if you're silent and say, I don't answer questions, that she, she goes and she knows it.

00:25:03.600 Well, sometimes, sometimes, you know, she'll say, you know, do you like this?

00:25:07.440 And I'll tell her that I don't.

00:25:09.160 And, and, you know, and that doesn't necessarily make her happy in the moment.

00:25:13.280 Right.

00:25:13.400 But, but if I do say I like it, she knows that I mean it.

00:25:17.500 And, you know, I actually like her sense of style a lot.

00:25:19.900 So it turns out that 90% of the time, it's pretty easy for me to say, look, I think you look great, and mean it.

00:25:26.140 And, you know, she's a fairly harsh standard bearer, too. 0.99

00:25:29.400 Like, she's, she's insisted that I stay in whatever reasonable physical shape I happen to be in.

00:25:35.760 You know, that was, that was something that she's very demanding of.

00:25:39.200 And I would say that it's the same from my side.

00:25:41.620 And, and we've been good at negotiating, which is, you know, what do you want from a partner fundamentally?

00:25:49.880 What, what do you want and need?

00:25:51.200 I mean, the first thing is, is that, well, hopefully you, like I said, you're blessed with the fact that you find each other attractive.

00:25:57.420 And I think it's very difficult for the relationship to begin or proceed or sustain itself without that.

00:26:05.920 But having that, then what do you want?

00:26:08.560 Well, you want someone that you can trust.

00:26:10.180 You want someone that you can build a view of the future with, and you want someone that you can negotiate with.

00:26:15.600 And that's very hard to negotiate with people because they have to tell you what they think.

00:26:20.600 They have to know what they want or figure it out.

00:26:23.420 They have to tell you what they want.

00:26:25.120 They have to be satisfied when they get what they want, which is also a very difficult thing to manage.

00:26:29.760 And you have to continually update that because your life goes through different stages.

00:26:34.560 Well, and your attraction wanes, as we all know, at our stage of life, not fatally necessarily.

00:26:41.480 For yourself.

00:26:43.220 But, but no, but you will go.

00:26:45.240 I mean, you will not be 25 forever.

00:26:47.360 So, so that, that has to be renegotiated.

00:26:50.340 Yeah.

00:26:50.580 Well, and you have to work at that too, you know, and, and that's something that people also don't understand because they tend to think that, well, that, that all romantic interaction should be spontaneous.

00:27:02.000 It's like, well, if that's your theory, then you might as well just give up right now if you're going to get married because that, like, the only reason you can think that is because you don't have enough responsibility to make romantic entanglement virtually impossible.

00:27:15.940 And what happens when you're married, especially when you have little kids is that, and, and you both have a job, let's say, is you're so busy that the probability that you're going to find time for spontaneous mutual interaction is decreases to zero.

00:27:29.440 And so if that's what you're hoping for, then you're never going to have it.

00:27:33.020 And so what you have to do is you have to make time for each other.

00:27:35.840 And, you know, if you're dating when you're establishing a relationship, well, you put some effort into it.

00:27:41.820 You know, you, you decide that you're going to go out for dinner and you dress up to some degree and, you know, you try to present yourself to each other in some half ways, mutually acceptable manner.

00:27:50.940 And you hope that there's going to be a positive consequence of that, that you're going to find each other attractive.

00:27:56.180 But then people somehow think that once they're married, that the same amount of effort isn't necessary.

00:28:01.860 And that's wrong.

00:28:03.680 I would say more effort is necessary on the same front.

00:28:07.620 And you have to think it through.

00:28:09.260 It's like, you know, if you don't want to be bitter about the intimate element of your relationship, how much time do you have to spend together each week?

00:28:18.820 And my, my rule of thumb sort of derived from clinical observations is that you need to spend 90 minutes a week with your partner talking.

00:28:27.820 And that means you're telling each other about your life and staying in touch, you know, so that you each know what the other is up to.

00:28:35.620 And you're discussing what needs to be done to keep the household running smoothly.

00:28:39.340 And you're laying out some mutually acceptable vision of how the next week or the next months are going to go together.

00:28:45.520 Right. So that that keeps your narratives locked together like a like the strands in a rope.

00:28:50.300 You need that for 90 minutes or you drift apart and you need to spend intimate time together at least once a week and probably more like twice.

00:28:59.220 And that has to be negotiated.

00:29:00.700 And if you don't negotiate it and if you don't make it a priority, then it won't happen in all likelihood.

00:29:05.700 And then, well, well, then you don't have it.

00:29:09.160 And that's a catastrophe because there's not that many things in life that are, you know, intrinsically, what would you say, engaging and meaningful and pleasurable and also bonding, all of that.

00:29:20.480 And if you let that go, then, well, part of you dies and part of the relationship dies.

00:29:25.920 And, well, then there's always the possibility of becoming attracted by alternative entanglements, which which you would do if you had any spirit left.

00:29:34.600 Right. I mean, that's the thing is if well, if you're not if you're if your relationship at home is entirely unsatisfying sexually, what are you supposed to do with that?

00:29:44.200 Nothing. You're supposed to just bear it.

00:29:46.620 I mean, in one way, the answer is yes, because it's your marriage.

00:29:49.600 But another way is, well, what, that's all the fight you've got in you, you're going to just let the erotic element of your life die and accept everything that goes along with that, because you're not willing to cause a bit of trouble to ensure that it's maintained.

00:30:06.500 And, you know, and we're not very good at thinking these things through consciously.

00:30:10.020 And I mean, people are bad at negotiating, period, as far as I can tell.

00:30:14.080 But they're particularly bad at negotiating things that are deeply private.

00:30:17.260 But how much do you want your partner to know about you anyways?

00:30:21.180 It takes a lot of trust to have a real conversation about what you need and want.

00:30:28.120 Now, you have in the press, people read that you are you have a following of young men.

00:30:37.880 And I went to hear your lecture in Washington, D.C., and there were a lot of women there. 0.96

00:30:42.260 And your book, first of all, men don't buy books that often compared to women.

00:30:48.880 So I'm presuming you have a lot of female readers. 1.00

00:30:51.220 And I found it, Danielle and I found it completely readable.

00:30:55.940 Well, it wasn't written for men.

00:30:57.680 No.

00:30:59.060 It's more like a delusional desire on the part of the radical leftists that the only people that could possibly be attracted to me are angry men.

00:31:06.900 Exactly.

00:31:07.140 It'd be better if they were angry, young, white men, you know, because then that fits the narrative completely. 0.73

00:31:11.700 But you have a diverse audience, a diverse following, including many women.

00:31:16.340 They're also not particularly angry.

00:31:18.420 I mean, I've been, I've talked to 200.

00:31:20.700 You're diffusing the anger.

00:31:21.920 That's the point of your book is stop being angry.

00:31:23.920 Stop being resentful, right?

00:31:25.420 Well, resentment is that that's absolutely crippling.

00:31:28.240 Right.

00:31:28.680 Resentment, just resentment, deceit, arrogance.

00:31:31.840 That's part of, I'm writing another book, and one of the rules is don't allow yourself to become resentful.

00:31:37.360 What is it again?

00:31:38.160 Resentful.

00:31:38.800 Resentful.

00:31:39.400 Deceitful. 1.00

00:31:39.860 Deceitful and arrogant. 0.95

00:31:41.280 Yeah, those three things together. 0.95

00:31:42.580 Yeah, but it could be rad if you just.

00:31:44.800 Right.

00:31:45.960 Well, that's supposed to be a good thing.

00:31:48.200 So, yeah, and I mean, there's been 250,000 people, as I said, come to the lectures, and there hasn't been a single negative incident, not one.

00:31:55.400 This is what I find fascinating, is that I found you early on.

00:32:02.000 I had no idea you.

00:32:03.360 I just thought, it was like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, like, who is that guy?

00:32:08.220 Who is that guy?

00:32:09.000 I'm like, you were pretty good.

00:32:10.120 And we were covering a lot of the same topics later on, and wow, and then, you know, I found out who you were.

00:32:17.760 What is astonishing to me is that there's this amazing, just split between the positivity of your audience, the diversity of your audience, the intellectual content of your message, and then you get with a snarky journalist with an agenda.

00:32:36.560 And I'm not mentioning names, but this.

00:32:38.860 BBC.

00:32:39.060 No, this young woman from GQ.

00:32:46.040 Oh, yeah.

00:32:46.800 She hated me on site.

00:32:48.220 And on site.

00:32:48.860 And it was just like, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

00:32:51.020 That was Channel 4.

00:32:51.860 We don't want to blame the BBC.

00:32:53.320 It was Channel 4.

00:32:54.440 You were a saint.

00:32:54.840 And then I, and she seemed, you know, like as often, she seemed intelligent and capable of insight up to a point.

00:33:03.440 But it's almost as if something had seized her mind and she.

00:33:07.120 Oh, yeah, something had.

00:33:08.500 Something had.

00:33:09.180 That's for sure.

00:33:09.600 You bet.

00:33:09.880 I think people.

00:33:11.620 Possessed by ideology.

00:33:13.320 Camille Paglia says that a whole generation of some of our most talented young women are incapable of thought because of this ideology.

00:33:20.680 Or a different thought, maybe you mean.

00:33:22.380 Or just, just an openness to, she couldn't, and you were saying completely, like interesting, fascinating, original things, even to me who've studied these topics.

00:33:32.800 And I thought, wow.

00:33:34.320 And.

00:33:34.600 No, it was quite the day.

00:33:35.760 So I went to Baltimore.

00:33:37.080 You survived it.

00:33:38.160 Yeah.

00:33:38.440 Very well.

00:33:39.020 And acquitted yourself.

00:33:39.620 Made me think a lot that day because I went there and I had to go out of my way to do it.

00:33:44.840 Not that I'm complaining, but there's a reason for saying that.

00:33:47.920 You know, so I got there.

00:33:49.400 You had to go to Baltimore?

00:33:50.200 Yeah.

00:33:50.460 Well, I was talking in Baltimore.

00:33:52.100 Oh, okay.

00:33:52.240 So, so.

00:33:53.500 There's the aquarium.

00:33:54.220 And I showed up to the, to the hotel room where this was all occurring.

00:33:58.080 And, you know, what you expect, generally speaking, even from journalists who aren't, you know, who are more of the attack dog variety or who maybe aren't positively predisposed to you ideologically or personally.

00:34:11.300 You expect a certain modicum of professional politeness.

00:34:15.720 Right.

00:34:15.820 You know, because while you don't have to be there and you came and you, you accepted an invitation and all of that.

00:34:22.620 And so, and so even with the Channel 4 journalist, Kathy Newman, she was quite polite and forthcoming in the, in the green room before the interview, you know.

00:34:33.560 So, so she would have had at least that professional persona, which is, it's not nothing, right.

00:34:38.340 There's something to be said for, for going through the motions professionally in an appropriate manner.

00:34:44.600 But when I walked into the hotel room in Baltimore, it was obvious that this interviewer had already made up her mind about me 100% and that she was absolutely, you know, negatively predisposed to me with a personal animus.

00:35:00.300 And animus, and animus is exactly the right word.

00:35:02.320 And there was about a half an hour photography session because it was GQ.

00:35:07.160 And so I was in that atmosphere.

00:35:09.420 The photographers were fine.

00:35:10.540 I was in that atmosphere for about 45 minutes before we started to talk.

00:35:14.440 And part of the reason that I'm so, I'm not as calm during that interview as I usually am.

00:35:22.400 I'm a little bit harsher.

00:35:23.480 And the reason for that is that, you know, it just started off instantly combative.

00:35:28.280 And, and what I, what I should have done, you see, it's very, very difficult to be awake enough to do these things properly.

00:35:38.380 And, and the interview progressed fine.

00:35:40.560 Although by the end of it, I thought that I had maybe done enough interviews for a while because I didn't think I had regulated my temper as well during that interview as I might have.

00:35:49.640 I was harsher.

00:35:50.480 You actually did.

00:35:50.780 Well, it's not so bad.

00:35:51.200 For the first few minutes you were getting angry.

00:35:53.140 And then she brought up a question about anger and I just saw you kind of adjust.

00:35:58.440 And then after that, it was smooth sailing.

00:36:00.580 Well, that's good because it was touch and go, you know, and I thought, boy, you know, maybe you're running out of patience.

00:36:05.480 Maybe you, you know, maybe it's time to dial back on the interviews because, you know, I've had many interviews like that.

00:36:11.300 And they're very, I find them like, and it takes me like three days to recover from an interview.

00:36:16.420 And then you start thinking to yourself like, what I should have said, I should have said that, and I drive myself mad.

00:36:21.040 No, but you did very well.

00:36:22.120 But it's so interesting that what it told me was how parochial she was, and she lives in her own little world.

00:36:30.440 But, Christina, isn't it more a little bit about the ideology of our time?

00:36:33.660 And, gosh, you encounter this everywhere, and I used to write about this wisely.

00:36:38.200 I would encounter it.

00:36:39.840 I mean, I think part of the issue is that you will acknowledge that there are differences between the sexes.

00:36:48.400 That seems to be the heresy.

00:36:49.760 I know, that's a hell of a sexist thing to do. 0.91

00:36:51.440 No, that's a heresy.

00:36:52.740 Because when I was reading your book, there is nothing about it that is anti-female.

00:37:01.360 In fact, you do a lot of examination of the Adam and Eve story, and you have this wonderful passage about, like, Adam being the originally aggrieved man who throws the woman under the bus.

00:37:11.760 Yeah, I know.

00:37:13.120 It's her fault.

00:37:14.740 It's her fault.

00:37:15.580 And, God, you too.

00:37:16.580 You made her.

00:37:17.080 It's her fault, too, that I'm hiding.

00:37:18.860 Yeah, it's really funny.

00:37:20.020 So there's nothing in this.

00:37:22.700 And the rules, such as they are, you know, they seem very commonsensical.

00:37:26.960 They could apply to anyone.

00:37:28.680 So is that a fair surmise of why you get so attacked, that just the very fact that you're willing to speak about the sexes as being not unequal, but different?

00:37:41.840 Different, but equal.

00:37:42.920 Yeah.

00:37:43.900 Well, you know, I would say that that's part of it, because there's a threat there.

00:37:48.800 So one of the things that happened when I was in Scandinavia, I just wrote a column about this, actually.

00:37:53.860 It was interesting being in Scandinavia, especially in Sweden, because they've pushed the equality of opportunity doctrine farther than any other country in the world.

00:38:02.980 They invented it.

00:38:03.560 It all started there, like in the UN, in the original, you know, the charter.

00:38:09.000 The Swedes were there.

00:38:10.020 They've never given up.

00:38:11.200 No, no, and so, and the week that I was there was the same week that two articles were published on gender differences in temperament and in interest.

00:38:24.260 And the biggest sex differences that we know of that aren't morphological are in interest.

00:38:31.720 So women are more interested in people, by and large, and men are more interested in things, by and large.

00:38:37.620 And the difference is actually large.

00:38:39.420 It's one standard deviation.

00:38:41.040 And so that means if you're a man, you would have to be more interested in people than 85% of men to be as interested as 50% of women.

00:38:51.200 And if you're a woman, you'd have to be more interested in things than 85% of women to be as interested as the 50th percentile male.

00:38:59.880 So the difference is actually quite substantial.

00:39:02.400 And it's certainly large enough to drive occupational choice differences, which it does.

00:39:08.260 And it explains a lot about the configuration of people in the workplace.

00:39:11.820 Oh, absolutely.

00:39:12.680 Well, and, you know, we're approaching parity in terms of workplace, overall workplace distribution of men and women.

00:39:19.100 But there's massive differences in occupational choice.

00:39:22.100 Like, it's very interesting, for example, to go to the website of the U.S. Labor Department and look at male and female-dominated industries.

00:39:31.380 And, you know, there's the top 10 male-dominated industries have basically zero women in them. 0.98

00:39:38.220 So bricklayers being one of them.

00:39:39.840 Like people.

00:39:40.660 There are people-free zones, according to Camille Paglia, that you find just a lot of men in the people-free zones.

00:39:45.900 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:39:47.260 And the women are, you know, you ask a group of women and men, would you rather spend the next three weeks taking apart a machine and putting it together or helping a group of people work out their problems? 0.99

00:39:57.340 And the pool of people who want to do the machine, it's just far more men than women.

00:40:02.500 Well, and there's more men in women-dominated industries than there are women in men-dominated industries at the extreme. 0.99

00:40:08.360 So that's kind of interesting.

00:40:09.300 Would that be like nursing?

00:40:10.260 Nursing, yeah.

00:40:10.920 Yes, there's way more male nurses than there are female bricklayers. 1.00

00:40:14.280 I've studied these male nurses, and already, you know, gender activists are upset because they earn more than women.

00:40:23.660 And a professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania tried to find out why.

00:40:28.680 And she found out they immediately find out what's the best-paying field, subfield.

00:40:33.660 So they go into, like, nurse anesthesiology.

00:40:36.080 It pays a lot more.

00:40:36.780 The men are there in disproportionate number, and they're willing to work, you know, insane hours.

00:40:42.040 They're far more willing to move to a higher-paying field.

00:40:44.240 Same thing Farrell found with gender differences is that men are more willing to move.

00:40:48.480 They're more willing to work longer hours.

00:40:50.880 Yep.

00:40:51.140 They're more willing to work outside.

00:40:54.100 They're more willing to take on dangerous tasks.

00:40:56.420 They're more likely to work in scalable industries.

00:40:59.120 So, like, you can't scale personal care.

00:41:01.180 It's really very, very difficult.

00:41:02.760 They're much less likely to work part-time.

00:41:05.060 If they have small businesses, they're much more likely to work full-time in the small business rather than part-time.

00:41:11.480 Yeah.

00:41:11.620 And, I mean, women have their reasons to want to work part-time. 1.00

00:41:14.360 And Farrell also pointed out that if you work 10% longer hours, you make 40% more money.

00:41:20.260 Yeah.

00:41:20.420 A non-linear return on overtime.

00:41:22.620 That's something that's really useful to know, you know, in terms of your career planning.

00:41:25.900 It's really beneficial to an employer that has some...

00:41:28.420 Well, it also marks you out, you know.

00:41:29.940 Like, if you have 10 employees and they're all doing a reasonable job, let's say, but one of them is working an extra half an hour a day or 45 minutes a day, and you can observe that every day, then that gives them an edge with regards to potential promotion.

00:41:41.420 And so, and the return on those edges is non-linear.

00:41:45.700 And so, anyway, so I went to Scandinavia, and it was the same week that two studies were released showing what had already been established beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the personality differences between men and women and the differences in interest as well actually get bigger as your society gets richer and as it gets more egalitarian.

00:42:06.540 And not just a little bit, either.

00:42:09.400 That's the other thing that's so interesting, is you might think, well, the effect is...

00:42:13.020 It's the opposite of what the social constructionists would predict, first of all.

00:42:17.020 So that's the first thing to point out, is it's not only that their hypothesis wasn't supported, it was decidedly refuted.

00:42:24.920 And none of them have come to terms with that.

00:42:27.040 And it's not a small effect.

00:42:28.880 But the difference between personality, between men and women in Scandinavia, is a lot larger than it is in non-egalitarian countries.

00:42:36.680 Like in rural Botswana.

00:42:38.080 But that's also true in the United States.

00:42:40.760 The richer the demographic your household, the more likely the woman is to take time out and be at home with the kids. 1.00

00:42:48.820 Right.

00:42:49.200 Because she can afford to do it.

00:42:50.360 She can afford to do it.

00:42:51.160 And she can afford to major in odd, low-paying fields, like, I don't know, feminist dance therapy or something. 1.00

00:42:58.380 Well, the other thing you see, too, is that one of the things that's also interesting, I think, is that there's this idea that marriage is a patriarchal institution that's primarily put there for the utility of the male. 0.71

00:43:11.960 And you think, well, like, I think that's complete bloody rubbish, and I don't think there's any evidence to support it at all.

00:43:17.920 But I think the best counter-evidence is that, well, if that's the case, then rich people shouldn't be getting married, because they don't have to oppress themselves. 0.93

00:43:27.160 But the truth of the matter is, is that the higher your demographic position, the more likely you are to be married.

00:43:33.020 So marriage has fallen apart among, you know.

00:43:35.280 And the more likely the wife is staying home and not, I mean, she has all sorts of pursuits, but she's not. 0.85

00:43:41.600 Well, there's an old saying, anyone, any woman who marries for money earns it. 1.00

00:43:47.520 Let's pause there for a quick break.

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00:46:36.120 Hey Christina, how's your holiday shopping going?

00:46:44.880 Oh, I'm at that stage where I'm trying to figure out gifts for a lot of people whose tastes I don't know and don't understand.

00:46:51.640 Including my two grown-up sons.

00:46:54.000 Same.

00:46:54.800 But I can give you a secret Santa tip.

00:46:57.800 It's called Scentbird.

00:46:59.580 Of course, Scentbird.

00:47:01.100 Yes, Scentbird is our luxury fragrance subscription service, which allows recipients to choose a new cologne or perfume every month from over 450 designer brands.

00:47:12.380 You get generous-sized samples and sleek, reusable travel sprays.

00:47:16.300 And I've been loving experimenting with so many lovely fragrances.

00:47:20.040 I wouldn't have tried them if I had to commit to a whole bottle.

00:47:23.380 I know, and my two daughters have been so jealous of my subscription, so this holiday I'm getting them each one of their own.

00:47:29.860 Yeah, but I don't see how that's going to help me with my sons.

00:47:33.600 You forget, Scentbird is for men too.

00:47:36.140 There's a full selection of designer colognes for our guys, including such high-end brands as Xenia and Hugo Boss.

00:47:43.520 That's a great idea.

00:47:44.960 And since they're always complaining they don't know what to get the women in their life, Scentbird will solve that problem. 0.83

00:47:50.740 Yeah, especially as it means they won't even have to go into a store.

00:47:54.440 We know how much men love holiday shopping.

00:47:57.460 Done.

00:47:57.920 Just remind me how I do it.

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00:48:19.440 I might get one for my little dog Izzy too.

00:48:21.780 She could use a nice scent.

00:48:23.580 We're talking to Jordan Peterson, the author of Twelve Rules for Life, An Antidote for Chaos, and who the New York Times has called the most influential public intellectual in the world right now.

00:48:41.680 But now let me just, okay, this is where you might get in a little trouble.

00:48:46.220 Because in your book you call men order and women chaos.

00:48:50.580 And you say order, the known, appears symbolically associated with masculinity and chaos, the eternal feminine, is also the crushing force of sexual selection.

00:49:00.000 Yeah, what's up with that?

00:49:00.960 Yeah.

00:49:01.540 We chaotic.

00:49:02.220 You find us chaotic.

00:49:03.520 Well, it isn't men and women that are order and chaos.

00:49:07.060 It's masculinity and femininity symbolically. 0.81

00:49:09.660 And so what's happened fundamentally is that our brains are wired for social cognition.

00:49:18.540 So we're not natural scientists.

00:49:20.800 We're natural sociologists.

00:49:22.360 That might be a better, even though I shudder to think that that might be true.

00:49:26.240 Especially given the state of sociology.

00:49:27.820 Yes, well, that's it.

00:49:28.720 Okay, triggering.

00:49:29.540 Or maybe we're more naturally people who observe through the lens of fiction.

00:49:38.520 And that what we see is the world as characterized.

00:49:41.660 And the world, obviously, is made out of men and women and children. 0.99

00:49:46.160 And those seem to be our fundamental cognitive categories, masculinity, femininity, and then the category of children.

00:49:55.140 And those categories have expanded to take on connotations outside of pure person perception.

00:50:05.080 And so, you know, it's for this reason that if you go to a movie, and maybe it's a Disney animated movie,

00:50:10.660 and I like to talk about those because they draw on a very deep symbolic well.

00:50:14.920 Well, it's perfectly reasonable to see a witch that lives in a swamp.

00:50:19.340 Because those go together.

00:50:21.060 Like, it makes sense.

00:50:22.360 You know, the witch doesn't live in a gleaming chrome high-rise. 1.00

00:50:25.680 You know, she lives in a swamp. 0.98

00:50:27.220 Because that's maybe in a shack.

00:50:28.220 It would be handy for her broom, I think.

00:50:29.440 She could just fly out the door.

00:50:30.240 Well, that's it.

00:50:31.240 Well, the high-rise would be better for the broom. 0.64

00:50:33.180 Right, right.

00:50:33.500 Because you could take off better.

00:50:36.120 But there are categories of symbolic association that are natural to the way we think.

00:50:41.980 And the fundamental elements of those categories seem to be gendered.

00:50:46.320 And so, this is partly why I make reference to Taoism, for example.

00:50:50.060 So, for the Taoists, the world is made out of chaos and order. 0.94

00:50:53.480 And chaos is the domain that you don't understand and that emerges unpredictably.

00:50:58.080 But also the domain from which new forms emerge.

00:51:02.080 Right?

00:51:02.340 Because it's from novelty that the new emerges.

00:51:04.900 And I think the fundamental association between femininity and chaos is the association between what's unexpected and novel and what's new.

00:51:13.800 Because new forms emerge from chaos.

00:51:16.900 And it's not that chaos is bad and order is good.

00:51:21.460 No, both have their pathologies.

00:51:24.260 Both have their pathologies.

00:51:25.080 And their virtues, yeah.

00:51:25.940 Yes, and what you're looking for, and this is what the book concentrates on above all,

00:51:31.440 is that you're looking constantly to find the balance between those two.

00:51:34.640 So, for example, formally speaking, the domain of order is that place that you are when what you're doing is producing the results that you want to have produced.

00:51:45.660 So, imagine, think about the preconditions for not being anxious.

00:51:50.920 Okay, so the preconditions are that you're constantly making predictions about what's going to happen next.

00:51:55.760 And those predictions are tied tightly to your behavioral output.

00:52:00.020 So, you act in a certain way, and you presume that a certain thing is going to happen.

00:52:04.380 And if your actions produce the results that you desire, then you assume that you know where you are and you know what you're doing,

00:52:11.440 and that your plan is intact, and that the environment is secure, and that keeps your anxiety under control.

00:52:16.740 That's order.

00:52:17.500 And then, you know, maybe you're at a party and you don't know anybody, and you tell a joke, and everybody looks at you like what you said was not only not funny, but also downright offensive.

00:52:28.880 And then, all of a sudden, you've moved from the domain of order into the domain of chaos, because you thought you were somewhere, and you thought you were someone,

00:52:36.560 and you thought you were with people that were of a certain type, and you got all that wrong.

00:52:42.820 And so, it calls...

00:52:43.480 We're also suggesting it is going to be the woman who says, I find that really offensive.

00:52:47.660 Well, I'm not suggesting that.

00:52:50.460 But, you know, it probably is.

00:52:52.860 Never mind.

00:52:53.360 But women are also more sensitive to negative emotion. 0.99

00:52:56.080 Right.

00:52:56.500 So, there is some slightly higher probability that that might be the case.

00:53:00.120 But then, I think women are also associated, at least in men's imaginations, with nature, which is part of the chaotic domain, say, as opposed to culture, because they're sexually selective. 0.88

00:53:11.440 So, you've got to think, what is nature?

00:53:15.520 I mean, we have that as a cognitive category, right?

00:53:17.640 We think of the natural world.

00:53:18.880 We think of nature versus culture.

00:53:20.340 It's a fundamental opposition.

00:53:22.120 What is nature?

00:53:23.400 Well, nature is trees and landscapes and animals and all of that.

00:53:27.020 But that isn't what nature fundamentally is.

00:53:30.120 Nature fundamentally is that which selects from a genetic perspective.

00:53:35.800 That's nature.

00:53:36.760 That's the fundamental definition of nature.

00:53:38.920 And it is the case that human females are sexually selective. 1.00

00:53:43.500 And it's a major component of human behavior.

00:53:46.200 So, the evolutionary theory, roughly speaking, is that the reason we diverged from chimpanzees 8 million years ago, 7 million years ago, is at least in part because of the differences between sexual selectivity between female humans and female chimpanzees.

00:54:07.440 Female chimpanzees are more likely to have offspring from dominant males.

00:54:12.680 But it's not because of their sexual selectivity.

00:54:15.160 So, a female chimpanzee has periods of fertility that are marked by observable physiological changes.

00:54:23.260 Not the case with human females. 1.00

00:54:25.200 Human female ovulation is concealed.

00:54:28.280 So, that's a very profound biological difference between human females and chimpanzees. 1.00

00:54:33.680 And the chimpanzee females will mate with any male.

00:54:36.340 But the dominant males chase the subordinate males away.

00:54:39.720 But human females are sexually selective. 1.00

00:54:42.380 And it's not a trivial fact.

00:54:44.400 So, you have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors.

00:54:48.900 You think, well, how can that be?

00:54:51.780 Well, imagine that on average, every single human female has had one child throughout the entire course of history.

00:54:58.180 Which is approximately correct, by the way.

00:55:00.580 Then imagine that half of the men had zero and the other half had two.

00:55:06.020 Okay.

00:55:06.680 And that's roughly the case.

00:55:08.980 So, half of males, historically speaking, have been reproductive disasters.

00:55:13.100 And the reason for that is because of female sexual selectivity. 1.00

00:55:16.100 So, it is actually the case that female humans are nature. 1.00

00:55:20.240 It's not only that they're associated with nature symbolically.

00:55:24.340 As far as reproduction is concerned, they are the force of nature that does the selection.

00:55:30.180 And so, they're nature in the most fundamental way.

00:55:32.760 And there is a chaotic element of that, at least in relationship to men.

00:55:35.960 And also in relationship to women.

00:55:37.840 Because a lot of the female on female competition is competition that's chaotic. 0.69

00:55:43.820 For the right to be sexually selective.

00:55:46.900 Right?

00:55:47.060 Not only with regards to men, which drives a lot of politicking.

00:55:50.640 But also in relationship to each other.

00:55:52.700 Because part of what human females do is jockey for position in the female dominance hierarchy. 1.00

00:55:57.980 For the top position, which is the woman who gets to be most sexually selective. 1.00

00:56:03.800 And so, that drives female-female competition. 1.00

00:56:05.980 And it's a different dynamic.

00:56:07.300 Like, there's similarities between female-female competition and male-male competition.

00:56:12.080 But there are also differences.

00:56:13.500 And they're pronounced.

00:56:14.740 So, men, for example, well, men are more likely to compete for socioeconomic status.

00:56:20.280 And that's partly because that drives female mate choice. 1.00

00:56:23.040 So, the correlation for men between socioeconomic status and sexual success is about 0.6.

00:56:28.740 And for women, it's zero. 0.99

00:56:31.120 Zero.

00:56:31.680 In fact, it's actually slightly negative.

00:56:33.180 So, and that's a huge difference between men and women. 0.99

00:56:36.600 Do you know the anthropologist Sarah Herdy?

00:56:39.460 H-R-D-Y. 1.00

00:56:40.820 And she's like my favorite feminist theorist. 0.78

00:56:43.440 Although, as she would say, I'm a theorist who happens to be a feminist.

00:56:46.860 But she studied primate behavior.

00:56:49.520 And she watched, she looked at the women very carefully, the females, very carefully, and looked at chimpanzees and gazelles and found that the female, initially, like, male primatologists would look and say, oh, the females, the males are dominant and the females are so cooperative.

00:57:12.440 She looked more carefully and saw the females weren't exactly cooperative. 1.00

00:57:16.720 Like, they would pass around their infant, their baby, you know, whatever they were, and would find, and so the male primatologist would say, oh, they're so kind and caring.

00:57:29.520 She found out that when it was not your, it was not hers, they would take, like, little tufts of hair, you know, would come out.

00:57:36.040 Or they'd do something to the eyes, and the baby would, like, be injured.

00:57:39.920 And she saw all this violence.

00:57:41.880 Especially true when there's status differentiation.

00:57:44.500 Yes.

00:57:44.720 So it's much more likely that'll happen when a higher status female is taking care of a lower status infant. 1.00

00:57:49.300 Exactly.

00:57:49.820 And she said the great tragedy, well, not tragedy, she said the reality of our species.

00:57:55.420 And, in fact, the subtitle for her book is The Woman Who Never Evolved.

00:57:59.680 We didn't evolve for niceness and cooperative.

00:58:03.060 There's immense competition, and we can, according to her, we are, it's indelibly, you know, marked in our nature to compete for the dominant males.

00:58:16.780 Yes, no doubt about that.

00:58:18.140 And that seems true cross-culturally as well.

00:58:21.400 That does flatten out a little bit in the more egalitarian societies.

00:58:24.660 So instead of being exaggerated, it does flatten to some degree.

00:58:27.520 So you could imagine that there's a biological component and a cultural component.

00:58:31.600 Of course, both.

00:58:33.060 And in that case, if you modify the cultural component, then that seems to decrease the overall.

00:58:39.860 So, like, let me be more clear about this.

00:58:43.500 Women are less prone to mate up, across and up, status hierarchies in Scandinavia than they are in less egalitarian countries. 0.76

00:58:51.560 But they're still prone to do it.

00:58:53.160 So worldwide, for example, women, young women, find men who are about four years older than them maximally attractive.

00:59:00.320 And they tend to mate across and up status hierarchies. 0.92

00:59:03.420 And so one of the consequences of that, for example, is that as women have entered the workforce, they've actually driven inequality. 0.93

00:59:11.760 Because rich women will only marry rich men, men as rich as them or richer, whereas rich men will marry women who are poorer than them. 0.62

00:59:20.920 But women won't. 1.00

00:59:22.100 And so what that means is it's another factor that's pooling wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

00:59:27.220 It's assortative mating now.

00:59:29.480 And you just find someone with your background.

00:59:31.460 Whereas a doctor might have once married a secretary, he now marries another doctor.

00:59:36.520 Can I ask then, stepping a little bit back from primates as well, how does this selection work in the era of swiping right and left?

00:59:45.940 What is your reaction to the way young people date today?

00:59:50.760 Oh, that's a good...

00:59:51.480 I was really hoping we'd get into that.

00:59:53.380 I was really...

00:59:53.960 Well, you were very into the monkeys, so I didn't want to interrupt you.

00:59:56.640 No, no.

00:59:57.660 Well, I should close off the Scandinavian discussion just by pointing out, and this is something that the Scandinavians are really going to have to wrestle with,

01:00:04.660 is that if you institute effective policies to promote equality of opportunity, which the Scandinavians have done,

01:00:13.720 you're going to produce some equality.

01:00:15.420 So like a 50-50 distribution of men and women in the workplace.

01:00:18.560 But you're also going to exacerbate certain kinds of inequality.

01:00:22.820 And you can't get out of that.

01:00:24.340 So you cannot have equality of opportunity and equality of outcome together.

01:00:29.080 They don't work together.

01:00:30.120 And equality of outcome, the essential equality of outcome doctrine, which is often described with the code word equity,

01:00:36.200 is that at every level of every occupation, the people have to be represented by the same number that they're represented in at the population.

01:00:45.060 So if it's not 50-50 men and women in each occupation and in each strata at each occupation,

01:00:52.060 then that's sort of prima facie evidence for discrimination and for systemic discrimination.

01:00:57.860 It's like, nope, sorry, you have to factor in choice.

01:01:01.060 And choice actually turns out to be a very important determinant.

01:01:03.720 And as the society gets flatter and flatter, choice becomes a more important, a more and more important determinant.

01:01:10.220 And so what that essentially means is that the most radical end of the left-wing political agenda is logically impossible,

01:01:20.460 apart from the fact that it's impossible for a variety of other reasons.

01:01:23.040 And they should look at the data.

01:01:24.740 I mean, it's just a cliche now of in any group of activists, and they'll say, oh, well, we need, in order for women to achieve equality,

01:01:35.880 we need government-funded daycare, and we need online.

01:01:39.760 They have it in Sweden.

01:01:41.060 Yeah.

01:01:41.640 Sweden has fewer women in managerial levels. 0.99

01:01:45.580 American women are ahead.

01:01:47.220 In fact, now they have quotas over there, so they need female CEOs and females on board. 1.00

01:01:53.200 It hasn't made any difference to them.

01:01:54.480 They're bringing in American women because we're so much further ahead. 1.00

01:01:58.480 And it's made no difference in the distribution of men and women lower in the hierarchy.

01:02:01.900 No, it's called the Nordic paradox. 0.91

01:02:04.720 Okay, you guys are so wonky.

01:02:06.140 I want to get back to that.

01:02:06.700 Okay, so yes, that's good, good.

01:02:08.280 I think we all want to get back to data.

01:02:09.840 I want to get back to these monkeys.

01:02:11.440 Well, I was thinking this morning about, I was talking to a variety of political types, and we were talking about...

01:02:19.200 This morning?

01:02:19.760 Yeah.

01:02:20.240 In D.C.?

01:02:20.880 Hard to believe.

01:02:21.840 Who?

01:02:22.080 Hard to believe.

01:02:22.520 No, I'm not telling you.

01:02:23.780 Okay.

01:02:23.940 A bunch of Republicans here, and I've been talking to Democrats as well, but it was mostly Republicans here.

01:02:28.760 And we were talking about abortion, and I made a case that that's really not a very productive discussion because you're talking about a problem way too late in the sequence of problems.

01:02:45.280 So by the time the discussion starts to be about abortion, there's 50 problems that have already emerged that no one has addressed.

01:02:52.580 And some of those problems are, the fundamental problem is how human beings should regulate their sexual behavior.

01:02:58.960 And that's a big problem.

01:03:00.040 And you think, well...

01:03:01.480 And there's an interesting thing that's happening because, you know, the people on the right would say, well, that's easy. 0.94

01:03:07.080 It's like, don't sleep around and get married and have sex with your marital partner, and that'll solve the problem. 1.00

01:03:13.040 So there's strictures on sexual behavior, and those would be the traditional ones.

01:03:16.620 And what you see on the left is that there's this weird paradoxical demand, let's say, that people should be allowed to express their sexuality in any manner that they choose whenever they want.

01:03:33.300 But that sex is so dangerous that it has to be carefully regulated at every single stage of the interaction. 0.95

01:03:40.620 And so you know that many state legislatures have now followed the example of university campuses and put it in affirmative consent legislation so that every move you make towards physical intimacy has to be preceded by the instantiation of a verbal contract, essentially.

01:03:59.380 It's like, well, can I take your hand?

01:04:02.260 Yes.

01:04:03.020 You actually, from what I understand, you actually have to say yes.

01:04:06.360 Like, nodding is not sufficient.

01:04:08.320 And so each stage has to be preceded by affirmative consent.

01:04:14.980 And, you know, which, well, I won't say anything about, yeah, I will.

01:04:21.280 It's absurd.

01:04:22.120 It's absurd to assume that that's how human intimate relationships are supposed to proceed.

01:04:29.080 And then you have complicated laws emerging that are part of that, that, for example, this is the case in California, as I understand it,

01:04:37.360 is that you cannot give affirmative consent if you're intoxicated.

01:04:41.640 Okay, so you think about that.

01:04:42.880 It's like, well, what does that mean?

01:04:44.000 It means that, like, a lot of sex has been illegal for a long time, including marital.

01:04:52.780 Yes, that's what it seems to mean.

01:04:54.680 Including, like, on my honeymoon, okay?

01:04:56.800 I'm rethinking it.

01:04:58.060 It seems to me to mean, the California legislation, that if you have sex with your wife or husband, and either of you is intoxicated, then you're either one of you or both is guilty of rape.

01:05:17.600 That's what it looks like to me. 0.90

01:05:18.920 Actually, I was in a debate a few years ago at the University of Virginia Law School, and I turned to my debate partner and said, so, if what you're saying is right, two people can rape one another. 0.95

01:05:33.440 Right. 0.92

01:05:33.860 And she said, yes. 1.00

01:05:35.520 And I thought, oh, shit. 1.00

01:05:38.160 I mean, how can that be? 1.00

01:05:41.440 Well, that's the question.

01:05:42.700 Well, okay, so then I would say, well, it's interesting, because I think that a lot of this confusion has emerged fundamentally as a consequence of the birth control pill.

01:05:52.320 So, you know, because you've got to think situationally before you think ideologically or psychologically.

01:05:56.860 It's like, it seems to me that the 20th century will be remembered for the hydrogen bomb, the transistor, and the birth control pill.

01:06:06.040 And those are unbelievably radical technological innovations.

01:06:10.040 And maybe the most...

01:06:11.100 Internet came in.

01:06:11.620 Yeah, but...

01:06:12.840 My fair lady.

01:06:13.380 My fair lady.

01:06:15.040 Just saying.

01:06:15.680 It's dependent on the transistor, you know, because it spawned all of that.

01:06:19.260 So that's the big technological innovation that spawned all that.

01:06:22.400 And of the three, I would say the birth control pill is probably the bigger hydrogen bomb.

01:06:28.300 So, and because it changed the fundamental biological nature of women and men. 1.00

01:06:34.480 And because it gave women, for the first time in biological history, the option of choosing their reproductive status.

01:06:45.540 Yeah.

01:06:46.100 And that's...

01:06:46.960 We like that.

01:06:47.540 That's absolutely...

01:06:48.240 Well, yes and no.

01:06:49.540 Like, yes, we like it.

01:06:51.100 But it's not something that's come without a tremendous...

01:06:54.160 Have you been reading Lionel Tiger, a fellow Canadian...

01:06:59.640 Have you been reading Lionel Tiger?

01:07:00.440 No, no, I haven't.

01:07:01.620 I think you'll find him interesting because he writes about that.

01:07:04.220 Well, and I'm not making a case for the abolition of the birth control pill by any stretch of the imagination.

01:07:09.240 But I'm pointing at its complexity.

01:07:11.140 And so, because one of the questions is, well, once you can regulate your reproductive function, what attitude should you have towards sex?

01:07:20.600 And one answer might be, the more of it under the more varied circumstances, the better, because why not?

01:07:27.400 And I would say that was actually part of the attitude that emerged in the aftermath of the birth control pill in the 1960s, right?

01:07:35.100 And it was a reasonable response in some sense because it's such a cataclysmic change that you don't know what it implies.

01:07:42.720 Well, what's the consequence of that?

01:07:45.500 Well, first of all, people aren't reliable enough to use birth control in an entirely reliable manner.

01:07:51.720 So, even though it can work at near 100% efficiency, you have to take it extraordinarily regularly and in a disciplined manner for that to work.

01:08:00.060 And so, there was still the problem of unwanted pregnancy, let's say.

01:08:04.680 And then there was the problem of the proliferation of sexual epidemics.

01:08:09.380 And that culminated in AIDS, which, you know, could have easily wiped all of us out, but didn't. 0.55

01:08:14.340 But there's other sexual epidemics that could have had the same effect, but we've been fortunate enough to escape them.

01:08:19.700 And then more recently, there's been this weird inversion, especially on the radical left, that points to the reemergence of something like a set of sexual taboos.

01:08:35.420 You know, like I think the idea that sex is casual and that it's a form of entertainment is, I think it's an absolutely preposterous idea.

01:08:44.780 I think that it's psychologically shallow beyond belief to hold that as a core proposition.

01:08:54.780 Because it forces you to, first of all, if it's repetitive sex with multiple partners, it forces you to treat people as if they're interchangeable.

01:09:04.800 And I don't see how that's good for you psychologically or for the people that you're using interchangeably.

01:09:11.780 It implies that you can divorce sexuality from play, from the desire for a relationship, from emotional fragility, from love, from family, from responsibility.

01:09:25.980 All of those things that are part and parcel of everyone.

01:09:28.300 And I don't think you can, and I don't think people's experience indicates that you can, and especially on the emotional front.

01:09:36.100 And I think that's partly what's driving.

01:09:39.160 And there's also a residual sense that there's something about sex that's fundamentally dangerous.

01:09:44.000 And maybe it's dangerous emotionally and personally, and maybe it's dangerous socially and psychologically, which it most certainly is, because it's a powerful force.

01:09:51.980 And the way the left is reacting to that is by insisting that all forms of sexual behavior are valid and that it's reasonable to manifest all of them, but that it's simultaneously so dangerous that absolutely every aspect of it has to be state-regulated and in an increasingly draconian form.

01:10:10.540 And so I think what needs to happen is that the left and the right have to get together and have a real discussion about what constitutes valid sexual morality.

01:10:20.700 And that's the conversation you have to have way before you worry about solving the abortion debate, which is very divisive and very intractable.

01:10:28.920 Well, one of the things we talked about actually just last week on the podcast is this cover story in The Atlantic about the sexual recession amongst young people, that despite the advent of the birth control pill, abortion is going down.

01:10:42.640 That there's less hookup, fewer hookups.

01:10:48.420 Have you looked into that?

01:10:50.080 Do you have an opinion on that?

01:10:51.920 Well, if you raise the cost of something, you decrease its prevalence.

01:10:54.720 It's, you know, and I think that it's, it seems to be, you know, dangerous now to hook up.

01:11:00.720 Well, you know, I kind of think that it's also a reflection of the same thing that Bloomberg reported on just a few days ago.

01:11:07.800 They said that across businesses, men are thinking, I'm not spending any time with a single woman that isn't, you know, associated with me in some formal manner, like my wife.

01:11:17.600 I'm not going to do it.

01:11:18.400 I'm not going to mentor young women. 1.00

01:11:19.680 I'm not going to be in a room alone with them.

01:11:21.040 Because I could face career annihilation.

01:11:23.000 Absolutely.

01:11:23.500 And instantly.

01:11:24.140 They're frightened of young women now.

01:11:26.060 But as Kate Julian said, that's part of it.

01:11:27.960 But we can over-exaggerate the part.

01:11:29.720 I mean, anxiety and depression is going up amongst both young men and young women.

01:11:35.340 Suicide is going up.

01:11:37.120 That there's, it's not just a, you know, most people, I think, are not, we're talking about an elite demographic who is into the consent and political correctness and workplace.

01:11:49.040 This is across the board.

01:11:51.000 And it's global.

01:11:51.820 It's happening even in Sweden.

01:11:55.140 It's really happening in Japan.

01:11:56.720 Yeah.

01:11:57.000 And Japan.

01:11:57.680 Exactly.

01:11:58.780 Weird things are happening in Japan.

01:11:59.740 And that speaks to, and especially in Japan, they have people, especially young men, have given up on intimacy.

01:12:07.360 And that having sex is actually, I mean, too much trouble. 0.92

01:12:11.140 Like one of the sex robots. 0.99

01:12:12.320 Right.

01:12:12.860 Well, right, right, right.

01:12:14.040 Well, that's the question.

01:12:14.860 Well, and there's pornography.

01:12:16.480 Yeah.

01:12:16.780 And there's pornography.

01:12:17.640 Like basically zero risk sexual behavior.

01:12:19.320 It's when you allow for pornography that men and women will sort of separate that from their actual sex.

01:12:25.480 But anyway, we're seeing a whole, I guess, collapse of intimacy, let alone sex.

01:12:32.180 And I don't think that's just explained by the political nature.

01:12:36.460 So I'd be interested in your thoughts.

01:12:40.380 Yeah.

01:12:40.600 Well, I don't know the literature on the decline in sexual activity well enough to know if it's valid or reliable.

01:12:46.940 But, I mean, I think that, you know, in a stable society, you take lots of things for granted.

01:12:53.640 You take the fact that men and women are going to be sexually attracted to one another for granted.

01:12:59.240 And even though it's more fragile than it appears, you know, and it's suppressed more easily than you might think.

01:13:06.340 And you take the idea that men and women are going to move together towards the establishment of long-term intimate relationships for granted.

01:13:13.760 But that's partly because you don't understand what invisible preconditions exist to make that self-evident.

01:13:22.360 You know, and when those invisible preconditions are disrupted by rapid technological or sociological change, then things shift underneath you and you don't know why.

01:13:32.200 A lot of it is traced to the advent of the smartphone, especially in the Generation Z, that Kate was explaining this to us,

01:13:39.620 that you could see it was broadband internet and the smartphone that led to this, you know, increasing fall-off of relationships.

01:13:49.340 Yeah, well, maybe the abstract is more interesting than the proximal.

01:13:52.580 You see that when you're having dinner with people.

01:13:53.940 I just want to know the truth.

01:13:55.660 Have you ever been with somebody you loved and found fascinating and all that, but you really wanted to get back to your smartphone?

01:14:01.120 Has that ever happened?

01:14:02.460 Yeah, well, it happens all the time.

01:14:03.960 It happens to me.

01:14:05.000 She'll never admit it.

01:14:05.980 No, it happens during our podcast.

01:14:10.060 They tell you to put your bones out there.

01:14:12.060 No, I'm researching things for the purpose of the podcast.

01:14:15.060 They're very addictive.

01:14:16.040 Yeah, they're very addictive.

01:14:17.020 And, you know, I read the other day that the preferred...

01:14:19.980 They're very alluring.

01:14:21.080 They are.

01:14:21.680 We're kind of going together.

01:14:23.480 The preferred method of interpersonal communication between young people now is texting rather than face-to-face communication.

01:14:30.040 Right, and the swiping, that apes don't swipe. 1.00

01:14:32.120 Well, that's a very interesting topic, too, like the Tinder phenomenon.

01:14:37.680 Right.

01:14:38.080 Because that's also a major technological revolution.

01:14:41.100 Because what it's done, I would say, for the first time, is reduce the cost of rejection to males to zero.

01:14:52.620 Because it hides it.

01:14:54.280 The only people you ever hear from are people who haven't rejected you.

01:14:56.900 Although they...

01:14:58.100 True, but there was one man who had to make 300...

01:15:02.240 He actually tallied it.

01:15:03.540 Yeah.

01:15:03.800 He had to make 300 requests of swiping right or whatever.

01:15:07.560 To yield one.

01:15:08.380 So I think he had the sense of rejection.

01:15:10.180 Sure, sure, sure.

01:15:11.120 But it's massively attenuated.

01:15:12.840 Yeah.

01:15:13.000 And it's not observed.

01:15:14.120 Yeah, you're not being humiliated.

01:15:15.600 Not at all.

01:15:16.140 Not at all.

01:15:16.840 It's really at arm's length.

01:15:18.940 And, you know, you can swipe very, very rapidly.

01:15:20.900 And so you can get all that rejection over within a very short period of time.

01:15:23.860 Right.

01:15:24.100 It's like losing a video game or something.

01:15:25.780 Or, well, less.

01:15:27.180 Worse.

01:15:28.020 I mean, not nearly as bad.

01:15:29.620 Yeah.

01:15:29.760 So, and, you know, I don't know what...

01:15:33.260 And, I mean, Tinder also reduces the...

01:15:36.100 One of the other things that you want to think about with regards to sex, and I think this is probably particularly true for women, 0.71

01:15:41.820 is that to what degree is it in women's interests to allow the cost of sex to fall to zero? 1.00

01:15:48.440 Because pornography certainly does that. 0.99

01:15:50.860 And it just seems to me that that's not a very good long-term strategy for relationships between men and women.

01:15:56.560 Because whatever sex is worth, the cost of zero is the wrong price. 0.95

01:16:01.380 And so that's, you know, I've heard from...

01:16:03.360 Well, you can go to the bunny ranch and pay quite a bit for it.

01:16:05.420 Well, true.

01:16:06.160 True.

01:16:06.600 But that's true.

01:16:07.760 But, you know, you don't have to.

01:16:09.420 No.

01:16:09.880 And, you know, I've heard from a number of women, what written, read blog reports on their frustration with their attempts to be relatively sexually selective. 0.97

01:16:20.360 Like, let's say they decide that they're not going to sleep with their new partner on the first date.

01:16:27.280 You know, they're frustrated by the fact that to the degree that they're being cautious in their sexual behavior,

01:16:34.340 which I think is actually an admirable idea, that they're instantly out-competed,

01:16:40.120 especially if their partners are somewhat impulsive, by women who will say yes at the drop of a hat.

01:16:45.000 And so, well, again, I don't think...

01:16:49.180 You know, it depends on what the goal is.

01:16:51.040 That's the thing, is that there's the short-term sexual gratification,

01:16:56.080 but the literature indicates that married couples, for example,

01:16:59.120 or couples in a permanent, long-term, monogamous relationship are more sexually satisfied than single people.

01:17:04.400 And maybe the single people have to be parsed out into those who are sexually successful and those who aren't.

01:17:10.560 But I suspect that wouldn't make that much difference.

01:17:13.940 But whatever.

01:17:15.560 There's the utility of relatively immediate sexual gratification, for whatever that's worth,

01:17:20.620 and the adventurousness that goes along with that, let's say.

01:17:23.580 The hunt and the excitement of having a new partner and all of that.

01:17:27.160 And maybe even the danger that's associated with that,

01:17:29.400 because people like to have a little bit of danger in their life.

01:17:32.000 But what's the goal?

01:17:34.240 It's like, what do people want?

01:17:35.700 And I mean, there's a great book called A Billion Wicked Thoughts that was written by Google engineers.

01:17:41.120 And so it contains great psychology, because Google engineers don't care about political correctness,

01:17:45.660 and they just write down what they find.

01:17:47.200 And they don't even notice that it's politically incorrect.

01:17:49.920 Hence, James Damore, for example.

01:17:52.140 And what they found was that women use pornography just as much as men.

01:17:56.940 But the pornography that women use is verbal. 1.00

01:18:00.020 It's not imagistic.

01:18:01.360 And the pornographic novels, essentially, follow the same extraordinarily standard plot line,

01:18:08.380 to the degree that publishing houses like Harlequin, which is-

01:18:11.820 I was going to say, it's the Bodice Rippers, the romance novels.

01:18:14.560 Yeah, right.

01:18:15.120 So in the Harlequin series, you have the ones that were published, like in the 1970s, that are pretty tame.

01:18:21.820 They're pretty hot, actually.

01:18:23.080 Well, there's a variety.

01:18:25.140 They range from completely tame to, essentially, to hardcore pornography.

01:18:30.160 But the plots are quite similar.

01:18:32.780 And the plot is, you know, young, relatively innocent woman finds powerful, interesting, dangerous male,

01:18:40.460 tames him, and then they live happily ever after.

01:18:43.060 Ever last and loved.

01:18:43.540 Yeah.

01:18:43.840 Yeah.

01:18:44.080 And it's the Beauty and the Beast plot, which is a fundamental-

01:18:46.240 Isn't the biggest search for women on Pornhub we discovered, we did an episode on porn, was, for women, it was rape?

01:18:53.360 Wasn't that like the- 0.96

01:18:54.160 No, lesbianism. 1.00

01:18:56.120 Or at least that was your porn. 1.00

01:18:57.280 That was your search. 0.96

01:18:58.080 That's not me.

01:18:58.700 Oh, okay.

01:18:59.320 I don't know. 0.92

01:19:00.020 You know what my porn is? 0.95

01:19:01.300 Going to the Williams-Sonoma store. 0.97

01:19:02.860 I know.

01:19:04.120 It is. 0.99

01:19:05.040 It is female porn. 1.00

01:19:06.080 All those pots. 1.00

01:19:07.180 Oh, the pots and pans.

01:19:08.520 No, but seriously, no.

01:19:09.740 The philosopher Bill Maher once said that men and women should never tell one another their fantasies

01:19:14.720 because women are outraged by what we say, and we're totally bored by what they say. 1.00

01:19:21.620 And I thought, like, women have kind of these scenarios and, you know, I don't know, unicorns. 1.00

01:19:26.340 I don't know what they're doing.

01:19:27.260 Storylines.

01:19:28.100 Storylines.

01:19:28.640 And men are just like, I don't want to say this to you,

01:19:32.220 but there's a lot of just close-ups of female body parts. 1.00

01:19:36.380 Yeah, well, men are much more visually oriented and sexually.

01:19:39.180 But now they're being shamed.

01:19:40.360 I mean, now it's called the male gaze.

01:19:42.760 And so there's all of this, like, oh, my God, the Sports Illustrated is exploiting the female figure.

01:19:48.660 I say, yeah, I mean, men like it.

01:19:51.780 And I'm worried that now sort of the way in the past sexual sub, you know, gays were shamed,

01:19:58.820 and we're now reversing it and shaming, like, heterosexual attraction.

01:20:02.580 Yes, that's definitely happening.

01:20:04.180 Well, remember we had the young woman who complained about being whistled at, and I said, don't worry, it stops.

01:20:08.280 With sexual behavior, the question is, what's the end game?

01:20:11.120 And this is what people have to ask themselves, is, like, one of the corollaries to the female pornographic romance

01:20:18.520 is actually the establishment of a long-term relationship.

01:20:22.220 And the question is, you know, it's so funny, because I got pilloried in the New York Times for talking about enforced monogamy.

01:20:30.320 It's quite interesting, eh?

01:20:31.560 Because I talked to them.

01:20:32.860 That gets brought up, like, in every Starkey interview. 0.98

01:20:35.200 Oh, it's so ridiculous. 0.98

01:20:35.900 I talked to that woman for two days. 0.97

01:20:38.520 I know, and it's just like a little side comment, and then that became, like, the center, the showcase.

01:20:41.820 Can you just explain, like, enforced monogamy?

01:20:44.740 You mean forced marriage, or...?

01:20:46.080 No, I mean that it was an anthropological term, which she knew perfectly well, because she's a very smart person.

01:20:52.220 And all it means is that there's a pronounced proclivity in human societies around the world

01:20:57.180 to enforce monogamous relationships at multiple levels of the sociological hierarchy.

01:21:02.800 You do it culturally, you do it in expectation, you do it legally, you know, and enforced monogamy.

01:21:08.920 So my son was just married, and if he came to me next year and he said, you know,

01:21:12.880 OK, Dad, guess what?

01:21:13.800 I've managed to have four affairs in the last year with hot women, and my wife hasn't found out about any of them. 1.00

01:21:19.280 I'm not going to pat him on the back and say, good job, kid. 0.92

01:21:22.940 You know, I'm going to say, what the hell's up with you?

01:21:25.040 You know, you violated the vow that you took.

01:21:27.160 You're putting your whole future at risk.

01:21:28.640 You're betraying yourself and your wife.

01:21:30.180 Well, that's enforced monogamy. 1.00

01:21:32.420 You know, the idea is that the social norm is the establishment of a long-term monogamous relationship

01:21:37.860 and that there are strictures put in place to support that but also to punish deviation from it.

01:21:44.660 And you say, well, you know, maybe not so much on the punishment end, but it depends.

01:21:49.780 It's like, what do you want?

01:21:50.920 What is it that you want?

01:21:52.300 You want a long-term stable relationship or not?

01:21:55.040 And if that's the goal, then your behavior should be devoted to whatever it is that facilitates that goal.

01:22:00.880 And I don't see that.

01:22:02.280 I certainly don't see that casual and impulsive sex fits that bill, not in the least.

01:22:07.740 And all of the evidence with regards to living together shows that that's actually detrimental to the establishment of a long-term relationship.

01:22:15.780 So, first of all, common-law marriage, people who are in common-law marriage are much more likely to be divorced.

01:22:22.080 So that's the first thing.

01:22:22.960 The second thing is people who live together before they get married are much more likely to be divorced after they get married.

01:22:29.520 So the idea that, well, you can try someone on for size and see how it works, and then you're going to see if you're compatible, it's like that's one story.

01:22:36.760 Another story is, well, how about you and I live together for a little while?

01:22:40.340 And, you know, you're not so bad, but maybe I can find someone better.

01:22:44.940 And if I do, you know, in the next year and a half or so, because we're not hooked together in any formal way, I can just trade you in.

01:22:50.500 It's okay, you can do the same to me.

01:22:53.080 But I don't really see that as the sort of complementary mutual interaction that leads to the formulation of long-term trust.

01:23:01.280 And I think it's a better story for interpreting what constitutes living together than, well, you know, we're going to try each other out because that's what mature people would do.

01:23:09.040 It's a lease or a rental.

01:23:10.660 Yeah, well, that's right.

01:23:11.660 You never wash the rental cars or you get used to it.

01:23:13.180 Yeah, yeah, well, that's it.

01:23:14.860 And most importantly, the data indicate that it doesn't work, is that you're more likely to get divorced, not less likely.

01:23:22.240 Because maybe the right attitude is, well, you're probably about as flawed as me, and, you know, we're lucky that we found each other.

01:23:28.540 And so let's see if we can make a commitment, because we're engaging in something that's very risky, you know, an intimate relationship.

01:23:35.160 And we're going to commit to each other and see if we can build something of value across time.

01:23:39.960 And there's a definite risk in that, but there's a compliment to your partner.

01:23:43.420 It's like, well, I think you're worth making a sacrifice for.

01:23:47.420 And what's the sacrifice?

01:23:48.720 Well, it's everyone else.

01:23:50.140 It's a big sacrifice.

01:23:52.000 And if you don't see that as a compliment, then I don't think you're thinking, because not only is it a compliment, it's sort of like the ultimate compliment.

01:24:00.100 And maybe you don't get to have a marriage that works without that compliment.

01:24:04.160 Maybe it's so difficult to establish a long-term relationship that's functional that you have to make a walloping sacrifice very early on in the relationship in order for that to even be a possibility.

01:24:15.660 And, you know, maybe not, because what the hell do we know about what binds people together?

01:24:19.220 But it's not that easy to stay with someone for a long period of time.

01:24:23.720 You know, it's a real commitment.

01:24:26.640 It takes a tremendous amount of effort.

01:24:28.800 So anyways.

01:24:29.180 Yeah, but actually, you're bringing us back to the beginning and your time with Tammy.

01:24:33.500 And one of the things about, I think, I'm going to guess this is a bit of an overlooked part in your chapter in your book, but I just, it was like one of my favorites.

01:24:43.100 It was your book on modern parenting.

01:24:45.140 Oh, yes.

01:24:45.700 And that was the rule.

01:24:46.420 That's the one I thought I would get in most trouble for.

01:24:48.300 I know, but it reminds me.

01:24:50.120 My critics don't read that far into the book, though.

01:24:51.700 Well, my mother, when I had my first child, gave me a 1950s copy of Dr. Spock, and he was considered so controversial.

01:24:59.520 And yet he was just like the most sensible person, knew children very, very well, was a pediatrician.

01:25:04.200 And your rule for parenting is do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.

01:25:11.740 And you kind of, in that one chapter, and it's not even one of your longest chapters, just did this wonderful sweeping overview of modern parenting and the problems.

01:25:22.680 And in some ways that we're producing maybe some of these kids who are prolonging the markers of adulthood, that you feel that parents, you said, you see today's parents as terrified by their children, not least because they've denied credit for their role as benevolent and necessary agents of discipline, order, and conventionality.

01:25:43.060 And then you told some hilarious stories about when your wife ran a daycare center out of your house, and you would get into tests of wills with some of the two-year-olds.

01:25:52.340 Yeah, they're tough, man.

01:25:53.620 Two-year-olds can be really tough.

01:25:53.940 Your sister and son is ornery.

01:25:55.540 I'm glad to hear he got married.

01:25:57.180 Congratulations.

01:25:57.640 Tough kid.

01:25:58.740 Yeah, he still doesn't want to do anything he doesn't want to do.

01:26:01.520 He's very charming and very emotionally stable.

01:26:04.060 So it's like he's easy to get along with, but trying to get him to do something he doesn't want to do, it's like he had my wife defeated when he was nine months old.

01:26:11.840 And she's tough, like seriously.

01:26:14.000 She's no pushover. 0.99

01:26:15.220 But he would just sit there with his mouth closed and glare at her.

01:26:18.060 It's like, I'm not eating that, and I can take more than you can dish out.

01:26:22.560 It was really something to see, you know, to see that kind of force of will in someone that small.

01:26:26.760 Well, talk a little bit about that and just the modern roles between men and women.

01:26:33.020 I mean, we're less, you know, you don't really, you're not really supposed to distinguish between fathers and mothers, even though that seems to inevitably happen in most.

01:26:41.820 Well, it happens in large part because the children differentiate between them.

01:26:45.300 Like parents are under the delusion that most of what you do with your children is driven by what you want to do with your children,

01:26:50.880 when in fact it's driven to a massive degree by what your children want you to do with them.

01:26:56.760 And so there were studies done 30 years ago on feminist parents who decided that they were going to raise their children in non-gender differentiated manners. 0.59

01:27:06.440 And when they were studied, they found that the parents who had that explicit philosophy were just as gender differentiated with their children as the parents who didn't have the philosophy.

01:27:15.400 And the reason for that is that if you're a parent that has any sense at all, you don't respond to your children as a rigid ideologue.

01:27:23.740 You respond to them as whatever it is the child manifests him or herself as.

01:27:29.940 Like, you know, with any individualized relationship, you take your cue from the person.

01:27:35.020 And you might think, well, a child has no intrinsic nature.

01:27:37.980 But, you know, if you think that, you either don't have children or you've never seen a child or you're so blinded by your ideology that you don't have a child.

01:27:46.960 You just have a blank projection screen onto which you project your presuppositions and then heaven help your child.

01:27:54.020 You know, so so a lot of the gender differentiation is actually driven by the children's demands.

01:27:59.300 And and that's all for the good that chapter.

01:28:02.480 I thought I would get into tremendous trouble for writing that chapter because it's contentious right on the surface.

01:28:07.880 It's just the rule, because the rule first implies that children can be dislikable.

01:28:12.600 And then I would say again, you know, it's like, have you met children?

01:28:15.860 Were you ever a child?

01:28:17.300 Were there children you didn't like?

01:28:19.060 Well, obviously.

01:28:20.060 And so lots of children are dislikable.

01:28:21.880 But it's taboo to admit that because they're all sweetness and light and innocence ever since Rousseau.

01:28:26.560 But, you know, Rousseau put all five of his children in an orphanage where they all died.

01:28:31.880 So maybe we won't.

01:28:32.980 So we won't talk too much about Rousseau.

01:28:36.180 And and then the next taboo is, well, that parents can dislike their children.

01:28:41.780 But if you're a clinician and you don't think that parents can dislike their children, then well, then well, then you're not a clinician.

01:28:49.060 Because one of the things you constantly see is that pathology within families is an incredibly common source of psychological destabilization.

01:29:00.180 Right.

01:29:00.360 And it's terrible tension between parents and their children and between siblings.

01:29:04.000 What I suggest in the in the book, which I think is radical by today's standards, is that your fundamental job as a parent is to ensure that by the time your child is four years old, that they are maximally desirable to other children and to adults.

01:29:23.380 Because what happens is that after the age of four, you aren't the primary agent of socialization.

01:29:30.220 The social world becomes the primary agent of socialization.

01:29:34.200 And if your child is the sort of child that's invited to play by other children because your child is capable of forestalling gratification and taking turns and playing someone else's game when when it's necessary and abiding by the rules and not having a temper tantrum when they lose and not getting too, you know, high on their horse when they win, then many children will invite them.

01:29:57.880 You get married when you get married when you have your children and you're flawed and your partner's flawed and hopefully you're flawed in different ways.

01:30:05.000 And so you put the two of you together and you make one approximately normal person and then hopefully and then your child has to interact with that dyad that is a reasonable representative of social norms. 1.00

01:30:18.100 And if you have an ethical obligation to ensure that your child is behaving in a manner that makes them optimally desirable to their playmates and also to other adults because then the kids invite them to play and they get to be socialized, right?

01:30:43.980 They have friends, for God's sake.

01:30:46.100 It's like, what do you want for your kids?

01:30:47.360 How about some friends?

01:30:48.600 Wouldn't that be nice?

01:30:49.840 And maybe what you'd like is that they regulate their behavior well enough so that when you take them places, restaurants, to see your friends, to see your relatives, they behave in a manner that's sufficiently civilized. 0.96

01:31:00.920 So their intrinsic charm wins over the adults and everywhere they go, people are smiling and welcoming instead of wishing with fake smiles that the damn brat would leave along with their foolish parents, which is not a good, that's not a good environment to have your child constantly exposed to. 0.98

01:31:20.400 No friends because they're too selfish and immature and irritating to adults so that they're barely tolerated under the mask of false smiles. 0.98

01:31:30.920 It's like you have an ethical obligation to regulate your child's behavior so that they're optimally acceptable socially.

01:31:36.900 And that is not how people look at children in the modern world.

01:31:40.060 They think, well, you're raising their self-esteem or you're enhancing their creativity or you don't want to put constraints on their behavior because you're going to interfere with the flowering of their intrinsic self.

01:31:49.900 And, you know, it's all Rousseauian nonsense and there's no evidence to support it.

01:31:56.340 And he's no expert. 0.96

01:31:56.960 Oh my God, he was the worst father in history. 0.99

01:32:01.420 Such a corrupt, and he had these babies with this poor scullery mate and left them all in a, actually a place where they would just languish and die. 0.99

01:32:11.780 Yeah, right, five of them. 0.98

01:32:13.140 Rousseau.

01:32:13.660 Yeah, I know, I know.

01:32:15.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:32:16.200 Man is intrinsically good.

01:32:18.140 Yeah, well, except for Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

01:32:20.020 But I just remember a few weeks ago I was reading about you and somehow I got onto somebody's Twitter feed whom I will not mention because, oh my God, but anyway, a difficult person.

01:32:31.500 And she was attacking you and had a selection from your book where you had called two-year-olds little monsters.

01:32:41.700 And so suddenly all of these distraught Twitter followers of this feminist were saying, oh, he called them monsters.

01:32:51.560 Little monsters.

01:32:51.860 Yeah, little monsters.

01:32:53.440 And then occasionally there'd be a parent who would say, two-year-olds kind of are monsters, you know, and then there'd be, ah, and they kind of are.

01:33:03.400 And they had taken this out of context and shown it like something to deplore.

01:33:08.540 And it was so amusing to me, this little game.

01:33:11.460 Hopefully they'll soon be cursed with some two-year-olds. 0.55

01:33:13.380 Well, they're going to get their own little monsters. 0.98

01:33:15.100 My son was, I won't say which one, was two years old and had, he was a good boy, but he had an insane meltdown in a supermarket.

01:33:24.540 I was with my mother.

01:33:25.640 We both pretended we didn't know him.

01:33:28.420 We didn't want to be the parent.

01:33:30.100 Oh, yeah.

01:33:31.040 Oh, yeah.

01:33:31.560 And we heard people say, oh, my God, look at that child.

01:33:34.060 Oh, watching a two-year-old have a tantrum is, it's a real little miracle.

01:33:37.700 It was terrifying.

01:33:37.940 I didn't want to be associated with it.

01:33:39.340 We had a boy who used to be, like when my wife was taking care of more kids than ours, there was a little boy.

01:33:44.760 Who had learned to throw a pretty decent tantrum.

01:33:48.220 And he would do that.

01:33:50.200 And it didn't work in our house because we'd just leave him, have his tantrum, and go into a different room.

01:33:54.600 And then he'd kind of wake up out of it, and there wouldn't be anybody around.

01:33:57.520 And so that, like if you put all that work into a dramatic display and you have zero audience, you're not going to sustain it.

01:34:04.220 Anyways, he could actually hold his breath until he turned blue.

01:34:08.840 So you should try that.

01:34:09.960 Go home and see if you can do that in front of the mirror, man.

01:34:12.500 Like it's hard.

01:34:13.480 It's very, very.

01:34:14.480 You've got to admire it.

01:34:15.480 You have to be will.

01:34:15.780 You do.

01:34:16.300 It was impressive.

01:34:17.280 It was, and, you know, two-year-olds are very impressive.

01:34:20.180 They have unbelievable outbursts of rage and disinhibited emotion.

01:34:24.780 And your job is, you know, they're driven by these underlying motivational systems that are unbelievably powerful.

01:34:31.700 And it's part of what makes them delightful because when they're happy, they're insanely happy.

01:34:36.180 And when they're playful, they're incredibly playful.

01:34:38.540 And so the positive end of them is way exaggerated compared to, you know, a rather drab adult.

01:34:44.200 And so it makes two-year-olds extraordinarily interesting.

01:34:47.380 But the same is true on the negative emotion side.

01:34:50.100 They're completely dysregulated.

01:34:51.420 And it's really hard on them.

01:34:52.600 Like to have a two-year-old who isn't in control of their emotions means that you have a child who's developing central personality.

01:35:00.720 You know, their ego, for lack of a better word, is constantly being swamped by these powerful underlying emotional systems.

01:35:07.240 You know what it's like if you are enraged for any period of time or if you're engulfed by grief.

01:35:12.640 Like it's exhausting.

01:35:14.260 It's demeaning and it's exhausting.

01:35:16.820 And it's the same with a little kid.

01:35:18.300 It's like it's a real defeat for the developing integrated individual to be subjugated by those catastrophically powerful emergent emotions. 0.97

01:35:28.760 And part of your job as a parent is to scaffold the part of the child that can regulate and inhibit those powerful underlying systems.

01:35:37.020 So with my son, for example, when he used to misbehave, I would count and say, you're going to go sit on the steps.

01:35:43.360 He'd say, oh, no, I'm not.

01:35:44.920 I would say, oh, yes, you are.

01:35:47.280 And then usually I'd have to chase him around because he wouldn't go sit on the steps.

01:35:50.740 And so I'd put him on the steps and say, you're going to sit there until you've got yourself under control.

01:35:55.780 And so he'd say, no, I'm not.

01:35:57.300 And I'd say, yes, you are.

01:35:58.600 And then he'd try to get up and I'd just hold him.

01:36:00.540 I'd say, you're going to sit there.

01:36:01.820 I'm going to hold you until you sit there.

01:36:03.980 No, I'm not.

01:36:04.840 It's like I could outweigh a two-year-old.

01:36:08.120 So I usually won those battles.

01:36:10.120 And then he'd sit there.

01:36:10.820 I'd say, look, kid, this is the deal.

01:36:12.280 I'd say two things.

01:36:13.180 It's like you want to have a bad day or you want to have a good day.

01:36:15.320 You think about that.

01:36:16.180 Because if you want to have a good day, we can just have a bad day.

01:36:19.580 But if you want to have a bad day, we can have a bad day.

01:36:21.720 So you sit here.

01:36:22.520 And as soon as you get control of yourself and you're ready to be civilized, then you can come back and we can have a good day.

01:36:27.980 So we'd sit there.

01:36:31.140 I was unbelievable to watch.

01:36:33.500 Just enveloped with rage.

01:36:35.780 Just trying to get himself under control.

01:36:38.980 And so I'd come back 30 seconds later and I'd say, you know, what?

01:36:43.720 Got yourself?

01:36:44.580 Got your act together yet?

01:36:46.280 No!

01:36:47.200 Not yet!

01:36:48.880 And so I'd wait.

01:36:50.080 And usually it took him two or three minutes and he'd calm down and then he'd come back out and he'd say, I'm ready to have a good day.

01:36:55.920 And he meant it, you know, and I could tell he meant it, too, because whatever resentment I was harboring towards him for his misbehavior, and you have to watch that when you're an adult, would vanish because he'd come and he was done.

01:37:09.420 He was ready just, you know, to proceed on a civilized basis.

01:37:13.340 And it was really interesting to watch that because it took him, every time he sat on the steps, it took him a shorter and shorter period of time to attain mastery, right?

01:37:21.920 Until, you know, it got to the point where he could only have to sit for 15 seconds or so and he would bring himself under control.

01:37:29.560 And that was a victory.

01:37:30.780 Like, if you imagine the neurological systems developed that are responsible for personality integration, it was a victory for those systems because they were attaining the ability to regulate the lower order spontaneous emotions.

01:37:43.080 And, you know, and he turned into an individual who's capable of a tremendous level of self-control.

01:37:50.500 And, you know, and he had large demons to fight with.

01:37:53.140 Good for his wife. 0.92

01:37:53.260 Yes, absolutely.

01:37:55.160 And, well, it turned out well for my daughter, too, because she ended up being very ill and he ended up being extraordinarily level-headed and reliable.

01:38:03.020 And thank God for that.

01:38:04.160 Could you come to my house and do that for my little Maltipoo Izzy?

01:38:09.000 Because I can't, I can't, she, I can't, I can't train her.

01:38:13.340 She's like a one.

01:38:13.720 Well, maybe that's the next book, the dog.

01:38:16.340 I would love it.

01:38:16.880 Twelve rules on how to train your dog?

01:38:18.940 Yeah, I said, you like cats.

01:38:20.320 You like cats.

01:38:21.040 What's with that?

01:38:21.160 Yeah, that's the one rule I objected to.

01:38:23.720 Like, what's with petting the cat?

01:38:25.040 I wrote about dogs for two pages to begin with just to satisfy the dog people.

01:38:28.900 It didn't satisfy us.

01:38:29.940 Well, they're not satisfiable.

01:38:31.500 You can't satisfy them.

01:38:33.220 All right, well, we can't thank you enough for coming here.

01:38:36.560 I know the AEI audience is just so delighted to have had the chance to hear you in person.

01:38:42.200 Well, I'm really happy that we got the chance to talk finally for some length of time.

01:38:45.900 I've only met you, like, well, once we met in D.C., but I've just seen you on the Internet.

01:38:50.000 I know, we've passed electronically, right?

01:38:51.580 Yes, yes, yes.

01:38:52.300 Oh, you've swiped past.

01:38:54.280 Oh, yeah, well, there was that.

01:38:55.500 We're not going into that.

01:38:56.520 Okay, thank you, everyone.

01:38:57.800 Thank you.

01:38:58.300 Thank you, Jordan Peterson.

01:39:00.920 Dr. Peterson.

01:39:03.220 Thank you.

01:39:27.100 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 02, 2019

Femsplainers with Christina Hoff Sommers and Danielle Crittenden

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