The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Rex Murphy's Interview with Jordan B. Peterson

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00:02:11.860 Hi, I'm Michaela Peterson, Dad's daughter and collaborator. This is an interview podcast.

00:02:23.900 It was organized by Rex Murphy, who is a straightforward Canadian commentator and author,

00:02:29.140 primarily focused on Canadian political and social matters. He was the regular host of CBC Radio 1's

00:02:35.160 Cross Country Checkup, a nationwide call-in show for 21 years before stepping down in September 2015.

00:02:41.860 He currently works for the National Post and has his own social media platform. He's been

00:02:46.760 supporting Dad since Dad's controversial rise to fame in 2016, even though he got little support

00:02:52.600 elsewhere. I'm a huge fan of his. You can check out his new YouTube channel, Rex TV. It was just

00:02:58.220 recently launched. Peterson updates? Not yet, unfortunately. We're hanging in there, slowly

00:03:03.380 improving though. ThinkSpot is launching soon. You can sign up using the code LIONDIET

00:03:08.280 at thinkspot.com to get invited in. I think the first set of invites are coming out right

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00:03:27.120 podcasts and basically form book reading groups. It's a learning platform more than a scrolling

00:03:33.660 down trolls platform. Give it a shot if you're interested using the code LIONDIET

00:03:38.320 at thinkspot.com. Enjoy the podcast. I've named it simply Rex Murphy's interview with Jordan B.

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00:06:32.320 about to join me now is probably the world's most famous intellectual, certainly the most famous

00:06:47.320 intellectual to come out of Canada in the last 20 years. And he will be speaking with me about the

00:06:53.360 role of the university and about his meteoric rise to intellectual and media influence, Dr. Jordan

00:07:02.280 Peterson. Dr. Peterson, I'm going to start on an incidental thing. At least it's incidental to me

00:07:07.840 and has bothered me since you became known as it is now to all the world. And that was in the very

00:07:13.860 early days of the controversy that came to you when the University of Toronto sent you some military

00:07:21.760 letters that I thought, I've used this word before, insolent, that I thought were against the spirit of a

00:07:28.740 university, that they weren't supporting you, they were actually threatening you. And that said to me that

00:07:34.640 something is beyond a particular controversy. Something deeper is wrong here, that universities, or this university

00:07:42.820 is upside down. How did you reason that? How did they get there that they could be so completely

00:07:50.120 unaware of their own position? Well, I think a lot of it was confusion and a lack of experience with

00:08:01.860 this sort of thing. I mean, the University of Toronto is a peaceful place and a rather conservative

00:08:08.100 university, all things considered, the administration wasn't prepared to handle a controversy of the

00:08:17.300 nature that swirled around me. They were used to making minor administrative decisions. And when they

00:08:24.660 were put on the spot and forced to defend their fundamental presumptions, let's say, it isn't clear

00:08:31.380 that they were ready and prepared to do so. Partly because of lack of practice. It isn't necessarily the

00:08:40.580 case that you climb the administrative chain in a university by engaging in continual philosophical

00:08:47.540 reappraisal of the fundamental presuppositions of university as an institution. You know, it's a much more

00:08:55.140 administrative job. And so I'm going to say everything I can in favor of the University of Toronto before I

00:09:02.020 say anything contrary. You know, I found too that when I've been put on the spot by journalists and asked to

00:09:10.980 defend, let's say, customs that everyone has always accepted, like marriage, it's very difficult to generate

00:09:20.740 a defense for such an institution off the top of your head, let's say, because part of the whole

00:09:29.540 purpose of customs is that everyone accepts them. You don't think, they're a reflex. Well, they are,

00:09:34.900 they're unstated presuppositions. And so when you're put on the spot, you don't know what to do.

00:09:40.980 When I first got the letter, the first letter, and I know how HR departments work, they send you one

00:09:47.700 letter of warning, so that it's documented, and then they send you another so that it's documented, and then they

00:09:52.580 send you a third. And if you haven't ceased by then, well, then they go to the next step, which would be

00:09:57.620 something to do with whatever approximation, determination, they might be able to manage.

00:10:02.260 They document you.

00:10:03.220 Yes, yes. And they're documenting all their steps. And I told the person who delivered the letter to me,

00:10:08.820 who's a person I actually got along with quite well, that it was full of errors, and it was poorly written,

00:10:15.060 and that they should take it back and write it properly. Because I did. I know. I followed it.

00:10:20.020 I know. And because if they were going to do this, they better do it right, or there was going to be

00:10:25.780 trouble. And I didn't mean that I was going to cause trouble necessarily, but that there was going

00:10:30.500 to be trouble. But they didn't take it back. So I read it on YouTube. So, and then I did the same

00:10:37.220 thing with the second letter. And then I met the dean, and after that, and, you know, we agreed, we had quite

00:10:44.420 a congenial discussion, I would say. And we agreed to have a discussion, at least a debate. It never

00:10:50.020 was a debate. It was, I don't know what they call those now. They can't be debates. They were forums,

00:10:55.140 or something like that. Something like that, yeah. Not a debate about free speech on campus.

00:11:00.420 That was the three, yeah, I saw that. It was awful. Yeah, it was quite the, it was, but they did do it,

00:11:07.060 which was something, you know. And I've also heard that behind the scenes, because I have some friends who,

00:11:14.420 some access to administrative decisions, and they believe that the University of Toronto,

00:11:19.220 in the aftermath of all this, has actually reconfirmed its internal commitment to free speech.

00:11:26.500 So, and, you know, I don't know how much of that is true, but I'm willing to give them a certain

00:11:31.620 amount of benefit of the doubt. But it's important to understand that people can be caught unaware. And

00:11:37.860 the other thing too is that they actually did me a bit of a favor, because one of the things I claimed

00:11:43.140 in the YouTube video that I made was that what I was doing by making the video was probably illegal.

00:11:48.740 Yes, I remember. And their lawyers basically said that it was probably illegal. And so,

00:11:54.820 that also helped establish my bona fides, let's say, as a reasonable interpreter of the law. And so,

00:12:02.900 it wasn't all bad, although it was extraordinarily stressful, that and the demonstrations that followed.

00:12:08.420 How is it that in a university, which of all things, obviously, it's the exercise of thought,

00:12:15.460 the training in mind, and therefore, the power of expression that comes as a result of those two

00:12:20.580 things, that to say things under the banner of reason and an exercised mind, that's what it is.

00:12:28.020 So, how comes it that on certain issues, the transgender one as well, there's a whole list of them,

00:12:34.100 the politically correct ones, that suddenly, not only is language being bent, it's being turned

00:12:39.620 upside down in some cases. Also, neologisms are floating out there every six seconds with new

00:12:45.620 rules on them. A word you never heard yesterday is somehow rather prejudiced if you say it today.

00:12:51.620 Yes, or even illegal to use.

00:12:53.460 Very much.

00:12:54.100 Yeah, like the idea of deadnaming.

00:12:55.860 Well, the very one I was thinking, that the word didn't exist two days ago.

00:13:00.420 Yeah.

00:13:00.980 And now, if you deadname someone, which is a word that doesn't exist,

00:13:05.220 you're in violation of something or a horrible bigot. When have we let go of the scraps that kept us

00:13:10.820 either to something like reason, or when have we lost our nerve that when people come to you and

00:13:15.860 they say to you things that you know, not from bias, are nonsense, that they can't simply be

00:13:22.820 dismissed as nonsense with no peril whatsoever.

00:13:25.780 Well, you're assuming that we had nerve.

00:13:28.500 Yeah.

00:13:29.460 I mean, well...

00:13:30.260 Sorry.

00:13:30.820 Well, I mean, you know, some people have nerve. But one of the things I've learned over the last

00:13:36.660 three years, because really, this all started in October of 2016, was that the percentage of

00:13:44.340 people who have nerve is very small and vanishingly small. You know, I've met people. Douglas Murray has

00:13:51.060 nerve.

00:13:51.460 Yeah.

00:13:51.860 That's for sure. Roger Scruton has nerve.

00:13:54.500 Yes, he has.

00:13:55.140 Lindsay Shepard has nerve.

00:13:56.500 Yes, she has.

00:13:58.340 There's a handful of people that I've met who you can't move. You know, you're one of them,

00:14:02.900 I would say.

00:14:04.500 Try.

00:14:04.900 Well, succeed, I would say. And I've met a number of journalists who've, you know,

00:14:11.940 I've had my fair share of conflict with journalists, that's for sure, I would say. Talking to journalists

00:14:18.180 is the most stressful thing I've done, apart from talks at university campuses.

00:14:24.340 Journalism, just to sidetrack that, because it's a very good issue. Journalism, I've been playing at

00:14:30.660 it from the margins for a long while. Journalism is very much corrupted. It is not the media in the

00:14:37.460 middle. It is, in many cases, wittingly or unwittingly partisan. It is part of the game that it says it's

00:14:44.420 covering. Journalism is one of the failing institutions in this society, much as universities.

00:14:49.300 Yeah, well, you know, there's technological reasons for that. You know, the journalists,

00:14:54.660 journalism as such, is under unbelievable pressure from the new technologies, YouTube podcasts in

00:15:00.740 particular, which of course have also vastly expanded what constitutes journalism. And so

00:15:06.020 journalists are running scared. It's very difficult for them to find paying jobs. Their staffs are

00:15:12.500 shrinking, the newspapers are in trouble, television stations are vanishing. And so there's increasing

00:15:20.260 desperation, I would say, as well as decreasing professionalism among those who still practice.

00:15:25.620 And so some of it's the personal failings of the ideologues who happen to be occupying the positions

00:15:32.260 that ideologues occupy. But some of it's a consequence of these transformations in

00:15:38.180 in communication technology that are so vast that they're actually inconceivable. And I think YouTube,

00:15:44.500 both YouTube and podcasts are great examples of that. Podcasts even more than YouTube, because

00:15:50.740 YouTube serves billions of people, which is one walloping network. But podcasts are maybe 10 times

00:15:58.820 as popular. And that's all underground. It's interesting because they don't attract as much attention,

00:16:04.340 you know, or as much as much controversy. Maybe because they're more siloed in some sense.

00:16:10.900 But the journalists are fighting a losing game. And I think as you fight a losing game,

00:16:16.580 I've seen this happen with corporations, you lose your best people first, and then the death spiral

00:16:23.460 begins. And I think we're seeing exactly that. And then that's exaggerated by this proclivity to

00:16:30.900 polarization that also might be part and parcel of the technological changes, you know.

00:16:35.220 Okay. Let me sweep back to that other word, nerve. I know, because I follow you,

00:16:41.140 how deep your respect and attention to Alexander Solzhenitsyn is. If you have a hero, obviously he is it.

00:16:51.300 Now, in the Soviet Union, if Solzhenitsyn writes a small note or something, he gets tossed off into a

00:16:56.020 gulag for nine years or more. If a man looks the wrong way in China, he can pivot some damn camp.

00:17:02.900 And in Korea, we won't even go into it. In those countries, if you want to say something,

00:17:08.180 even if it's not merely innocuous, you really have to have courage. Solzhenitsyn should be called

00:17:14.100 Stalin. He had to steal. Over here, when, okay, we have a trans activist group, let's say,

00:17:21.220 the one that's in the thing. And you almost innately know that this is absurd. And you say,

00:17:27.940 well, I don't think I'm going to say that's absurd. What are we afraid of? We fight wars and say we gave

00:17:33.460 all our soldiers this, that we would preserve democracy and freedom of speech. There is no loss

00:17:40.340 if you decide to challenge in terms of any contrast with the totalitarian systems, where if you said

00:17:45.940 something, you really did pay a price. Worst thing you can do over here is lose a job.

00:17:50.500 Well, you can be hauled in front of quasi-judicial tribunes as well. And I mean,

00:17:55.700 they're certainly willing to do that. I think the human rights tribunals should, in my opinion,

00:18:00.820 they should be obliterated. They're a travesty. Yes, we're setting up these quasi-judicial

00:18:06.740 inquisitions in all sorts of institutions. And ideologically constituted, because I read

00:18:10.580 the biographies of some of the people who were appointed to them. And no one can be a judge in their own

00:18:15.380 cause. And in this context, it's the cause people judging the causes. Yeah, precisely.

00:18:20.980 But what's happening in British Columbia with this case, what's the person's name?

00:18:26.340 Jessica or Jonathan? I prefer Jonathan. I think we'll go with Jonathan.

00:18:29.940 I think we will. And we'll see if they'll haul us in front

00:18:31.460 of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. We will go together.

00:18:33.860 Good. That would be too much to bear, undoubtedly, but it would be interesting.

00:18:39.140 But no, he's got 16 people. A good portion of them are immigrant women.

00:18:43.140 Yeah. He is insisting that they wax his penis and testicles. If he's got here on the first,

00:18:48.740 it's a bit of a worry. And he's got 16 of them under charge. And I asked the question,

00:18:55.540 if 16 people are of this mind and one person is of this, which is the more likely to be off?

00:19:02.820 Yeah, well, it seems irrelevant. And I mean, it's a consequence. You know,

00:19:08.020 one of the things I pointed out with Bill C-16 was that it contained multiple internal

00:19:12.420 contradictions, especially in the background policies, which I had read in quite a bit of

00:19:16.500 detail. They were formulated in Ontario, although the federal government removed the link on their

00:19:23.700 website to those policies after I pointed out the fact that that link existed, which I thought

00:19:28.740 was unbelievably underhanded and still believe so. But Carl Jung once said that internal contradictions

00:19:36.020 are played out in the world as fate, you know, is that the thing about propositions,

00:19:40.740 if they're accurate, is that they represent real states of being in the world. And if you entertain

00:19:46.020 a set of propositions that are internally contradictory, then you're going to run yourself into all sorts of

00:19:51.540 sharp objects and dead ends. And that's exactly what's happening. And every time, and I've thought

00:20:00.420 this really for three years, every time you think that there's no possible way that this can get more

00:20:04.980 absurd, then one more example comes up where it's more absurd. And I would say the situation in BC is

00:20:10.980 precisely that. I mean, one of the women that he's persecuting, because I think he and this terrible

00:20:17.620 bureaucracy is persecuting, was an immigrant woman, I believe she was Muslim, who had an aesthetics

00:20:26.100 business in her own home. And as a consequence of the negative publicity, or the publicity and the

00:20:33.220 pressure, she shut down her business. And God only knows what that means for her family. Well, and for

00:20:38.500 her, and you were asking about courage earlier, you know, one of the things that I have watched quite

00:20:48.740 frequently, is the way that people respond to being mobbed on Twitter. You know, now I've almost

00:20:54.500 stopped looking at Twitter, it's been about three months that I've taken a Twitter hiatus, let's say,

00:20:59.700 I still post, I don't even have my password anymore, I send what I want to post to a third party and they

00:21:05.700 post it, because it keeps me out of the... An antiseptic distance. That's right, exactly. And that's

00:21:11.140 exactly the right way of thinking about it. You know, people, civilized people, and I mean that in

00:21:20.020 civilized, socialized people, cannot tolerate being mobbed. Because, and there's a reason for that.

00:21:27.300 You see, you said, with regards to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, you know, if there's

00:21:33.700 16 people on one side and one on the other, you might be thinking that the 16 people are right.

00:21:38.420 More or less.

00:21:38.980 Right, right. But then you think of the situation where you've said something on Twitter and,

00:21:44.020 you know, a thousand people mob you publicly. I mean, your first response, if you're,

00:21:51.380 your first response is going to be to examine your own conscience and see how you transgressed.

00:21:56.580 It's not really much different psychologically. I mean, it's lesser, I suppose, but it's not that much

00:22:02.020 different than waking up one morning and coming to your door and finding a mob of your neighbors

00:22:07.700 angrily aggregated on your lawn. You know, it's a terrible shock for people, and it really hurts

00:22:13.540 them. You know, they're often, they're often, by all accounts, you know, damaged for lengthy periods

00:22:20.260 of time by this. And their first impulse is to apologize, which is truly the wrong thing.

00:22:28.340 Like, the right thing to do is to understand that if you haven't done anything wrong, you don't

00:22:38.020 apologize. Now, that's very difficult. It's very difficult. And then to wait, because if you wait

00:22:44.580 two weeks, people will come to your defense. But it takes the people who will come to your defense

00:22:50.340 two weeks to get their act together, where it takes the activists who are unbelievably organized

00:22:54.660 15 seconds to mob you. Well, there's two points to draw out of there. First of all, because you have

00:23:00.020 now been almost fire hosed into the world of celebrity, multimedia, and vast attention.

00:23:08.500 I've dabbled in a lesser zone for a long while, so you adjust to the kind of swirl, okay? But what I've

00:23:15.300 never forgotten, and I'm serious, is that people who are not in it at all, my father or a mechanic down

00:23:22.900 the road, or the doctor over here, doesn't have to be class. If you haven't had media,

00:23:28.900 and if you haven't adjusted to it, and suddenly your name, and I'm just backing up your point,

00:23:34.500 your name suddenly becomes the center of some great Twitter snowstorm in pejorative terms,

00:23:41.220 and people are speaking of you with the most vulgar responses. It is a terror. It isn't to me,

00:23:48.340 because I dismiss it, but people who have not experienced it, it is really, really,

00:23:53.380 really something that it's an unbearable pain. Yes. And they bring it down with club force,

00:23:58.740 and the great megaphones of the national networks in the States, etc. You can expunge a person's

00:24:05.380 personality with this kind of brutality. Yes, well, and it's permanent, right? Because

00:24:09.620 the record never disappears. And I want to put a personal question to you now. When you,

00:24:14.020 because I know you had been on YouTube, you knew the media in that sense, but you weren't a media

00:24:19.780 person. In your baptism, harsh as it was, how hard was it in the first couple of weeks for you

00:24:26.260 to find balance and scale? You may be a clinical psychologist, and you are obviously mature.

00:24:30.980 Oh, I don't think I've ever found balance and scale.

00:24:33.540 Well, join my club.

00:24:35.060 I don't believe it. I mean, I'm here still. I mean, in that great throbbing moment when all

00:24:42.020 this stuff came in, and he hates this one, and your name is flashed all over the world. That was

00:24:47.060 the first real magnitude of media attack on you. Yeah.

00:24:51.140 So even for you, how was that period? Well, it was dreadful. I mean,

00:24:55.780 especially the first couple of months, because, well, because the attention was,

00:25:00.980 well, it has been since then, but the attention was unbelievably intense. I mean,

00:25:05.460 I had, there were days upon days where there were reporters lined up coming into the house,

00:25:12.980 one after the other. And that's, that really hasn't stopped. I mean, it stopped, let's say,

00:25:18.260 in the last two months since, since the end of March, however long ago that is, because I've

00:25:26.820 shut myself off because of my, I have some family health trouble that's very serious. But

00:25:36.580 I don't think I've ever adjusted to it. What's made it bearable, I would say, and some of it's

00:25:46.020 been very good. I mean, it's taken my life, which was fairly broad. I had a fairly broad range of

00:25:52.020 experiences, partly because I'm a clinical psychologist. And, you know, it's taken it from

00:25:57.140 good and bad to great and unbearable. And I, yo-yo between those states.

00:26:07.380 What's helped is, well, the first thing is, is that, you know, I determined right from the beginning

00:26:18.020 that I was going to say carefully what I believe to be true, because there wasn't a safer route than

00:26:28.980 that. It's interesting. You know, that, that in the final analysis,

00:26:33.060 it wasn't certain that anything would protect me. Better than doing the right thing. Well,

00:26:40.340 whether that would work or not was debatable, but there wasn't a better option.

00:26:43.780 Yeah, I can understand that. And I believe that, you know, I still believe that.

00:26:48.820 And I think the success of what I've done is an indication of that. The success of my book,

00:26:54.660 say, which is also absolutely overwhelming. I mean, it's, it's impossible to, you know,

00:27:01.220 especially I'm kind of old, you know, I'm just about 60. And you're white and you're male.

00:27:07.060 There's all of those things. You are a bad man. Yeah. Well, the, the old part,

00:27:10.740 I think it has to do with, with the ability to adapt. I'm even older and whiter than me.

00:27:14.500 Yeah. Well, but you know, it's, it's fulfilled and the lectures and the podcasts as well.

00:27:23.060 And the YouTube videos, they've fulfilled a need, which also is something that's very

00:27:27.780 difficult for me to, to reconcile myself to, you know, I mean, on every time I walk down the street,

00:27:33.860 someone stops me, someone stopped me on the way here, you know, and as opposed to my treatment at

00:27:39.940 the hand of a minority of journalists, which has been atrocious upon occasion and, and academics as

00:27:46.340 well. The treatment I received from people in public is so positive that it's almost unbearable.

00:27:52.740 Let me tell you a personal anecdote that relates to you. I don't mix my old stuff with family members,

00:27:59.220 but my sister is a non-political kind of person. And as I say, I don't mix those things. She called

00:28:05.140 me and she's out of this world altogether. She called me about, I don't know, a year ago. Have you

00:28:11.540 seen Dr. Jordan? You know, lovely stuff. And she was following the videos, the biblical lectures.

00:28:18.980 Yeah. She's a smart, nice woman. And then that was one thing that I was unsolicited. She's not

00:28:25.460 in the world of publicity. She doesn't follow fads, but somehow your name got in there and she's watching

00:28:29.860 these with great attention, great enjoyment actually. But the better one, won't be particular.

00:28:36.500 A friend of mine from home, never finished school. He's about 55, 56. So we're not into the team

00:28:44.420 cohorts. Yeah. And he calls me up. I don't think he's read a book in six years. And he says, I've been

00:28:51.620 watching this Peterson fellow. And you know, I can't reproduce what he was saying. It was just that he found

00:28:58.420 such comfort and he found such support. And my thought when I was hearing this, it was some way

00:29:04.900 to relay it to you in all the ping pong back and forth that you're going to do. These voices are

00:29:11.380 saying something. You're doing something really fine for people that I could never project would

00:29:16.580 be receiving the message. And it's very, this is also something that's been very difficult to

00:29:22.100 to both understand and I would say in a strange way to tolerate because I've become opened up to

00:29:32.180 the trouble that people have in a way that far exceeds even what I experienced as a clinical psychologist.

00:29:39.620 Yeah. You know, last year, my wife and I went to 160 cities.

00:29:46.500 Yeah, it was, well, we figured we better make, hey, well, the sun shines.

00:29:51.620 So, um, you're a stronger man than I, you know, the, well, you get caught up and you get caught up in,

00:29:57.060 in, in, in the wave of events, you know, and, and the adrenaline self supplies.

00:30:01.620 Yeah. Well, and it was, it was, it was exciting and worthwhile and the demand was there, you know,

00:30:06.820 and, and, um, I enjoy lecturing and I used the opportunity, I delivered a different lecture

00:30:12.020 every night and I used the opportunity to think, you know, and, and to communicate, which of course is

00:30:18.100 what you're, and in a, in a psychologically, in a manner that I believed would be

00:30:23.540 psychologically helpful. But it was also, I think, and I don't

00:30:30.580 know exactly what the cumulative effect has been on me. But I had no idea the degree to which

00:30:43.700 people were dying for a word of encouragement. So many people want, that's what my friend was

00:30:48.020 about. I'm speaking back to you now on the same thing. I know what he was saying.

00:30:52.180 He had felt no soft brain for a long, long time. Yeah. And he was in this camp of the truly neglected.

00:30:58.260 Yeah. You're uneducated. You're not particularly sophisticated. You got a low paying job. Who

00:31:04.420 gives a fuck about you? Yeah. And then someone is out there of stature and credibility. And this

00:31:11.140 guy who would never be in your circle. Never. Yeah. You send an echo ping to him and he was calling

00:31:17.620 me to say, my God, this is so good. So allow yourself to feel good. Yeah. Well, the thing is,

00:31:22.740 the funny thing is, is that it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel good. You know, and that might be

00:31:29.540 a reflection of my general state of mind, which is very unsettled at the moment for the reasons that

00:31:35.780 I told you that I told you. And well, because of all of everything that's happened over the last

00:31:41.940 few years, but to get a taste of the depth of despair that can be ameliorated with not much more than,

00:31:54.100 you know, some words of encouragement, some statement that, you know, you as a human being

00:32:01.140 aren't intrinsically worthless, worthless, worthless, and that you have a spirit worth

00:32:06.100 preserving. And that the things that you do in your life that you do correctly are important.

00:32:11.140 It's like, people are literally dying for lack of that. And I mean that, I mean that,

00:32:18.260 honestly, I don't know how many people have told me, and these are very hard things to hear.

00:32:23.540 It's been hundreds of people, because I meet people after each of my lectures, you know,

00:32:33.780 who've told me that they are still alive because they watched my lectures, or because they read my

00:32:39.780 book. And then they usually have a good story to tell, you know, about what sort of hell they happened

00:32:45.140 to be in six months earlier, and what they did to pull themselves out, and how that's brought their

00:32:51.540 family back together, or helped them advance in their career, or got them out of bed, or stopped

00:32:56.740 them from using heroin, or being alcoholic. Or jumping off a... Yeah, well, and you know, all of that is, I'm...

00:33:08.340 Is it something that you, at some point, have at least to shield against? No. No? No. No.

00:33:15.780 Well, maybe I can put it in another way. I meant to ask this a little earlier, but you're already

00:33:22.740 telling me. When this began, I want to say when you began this, when this began, this is an experience,

00:33:30.820 and you set out to the world. You started, you had maps of meaning. I also know, without knowing you,

00:33:37.380 that you had spent some considerable time doing actual thinking, which is something people don't do

00:33:42.580 very much. Asked the question. Yes, obsessively. You thought, and you thought things through in a

00:33:47.540 way that these generations have almost abandoned. So you were prepared in that sense. And you went

00:33:54.100 out, and there were certain things you saw wrong, or discordant, either in the universities or in the

00:33:59.460 general system. And you said, I'd like to spread some reason here. I'd like to talk also about reality

00:34:05.060 and life. Now, when that began, I would think everything was fairly sufficient. What did you

00:34:13.220 learn? And how did, I'll call it a mission, if I may. How did the mission change over time,

00:34:20.900 when you came in contact with the audience that you're now describing? And what is it that you have

00:34:26.180 learned? You have done a lot of thought beforehand. You knew where you were at. But when you go out and

00:34:30.980 encounter all of these, and all of these individuals, what new came to you? Well, I would say,

00:34:37.780 it isn't obvious to me that the mission itself changed. I think it's an extension of what I've

00:34:43.940 been doing since 1985, and maybe even before that. It's just that the scale continued to grow. I mean,

00:34:50.900 even with my YouTube channel, where I put my lectures in rather primitive technological form,

00:34:58.580 because I was just using an iPad and, you know, a lapel mic. I had a million views by April 2016. And,

00:35:08.580 you know, that really made me think, because I worked with TVO, of course, and my lectures were

00:35:14.020 popular with big ideas, which showcased a number of public intellectuals. I think I had five lectures

00:35:20.100 in the top 20 or something like that. So I knew that there was, and I was getting a certain amount

00:35:24.980 of recognition in public for that. Not a lot, but, you know, enough. And then from a very wide variety

00:35:30.260 of people, you know, which was quite interesting. When I hit the million mark on YouTube, I really

00:35:37.780 thought about that, because I thought, well, I don't know what to do with that figure. I don't know how

00:35:43.700 to conceptualize it in context, because a million is a lot of people. It's, you know, it's 20 football

00:35:50.100 stadiums full of people. It's an overwhelmingly bestselling book. It's far more people than you'd

00:35:58.100 teach in your life. And I thought, well, what? And then it wasn't cute cat videos, you know,

00:36:03.220 and this was back when YouTube was still a developing force, let's say. And something to be sort of

00:36:10.020 ignored in some sense, because of its humble beginnings. And it was a very secondary place.

00:36:14.740 Yes, it was a very secondary place. Although that was starting to change. I thought, what the hell

00:36:20.740 is this YouTube? What are we doing here? And then it struck me that, well, this was a Gutenberg

00:36:25.380 revolution that we were experiencing, that the spoken word was now as permanent and as immediate,

00:36:32.100 more immediate than the printed word, and just as permanent. And with a much larger audience, because

00:36:37.220 more people, as far as I can tell, can listen than can read. And even with my book, a tremendous

00:36:43.940 percentage of my books have been sold in audio form. So I really started to think about YouTube

00:36:51.060 at that point. And I suppose that was one of the things that drove me in my foolish curiosity to make

00:36:57.060 those political videos that I made in October, which was the first time I'd ever tried something

00:37:02.900 like that. And that was in some sense, I wouldn't call it a whim. But you know, I woke up at three in

00:37:08.820 the morning, because I was so irritated about this bill, and its attempt to force a certain type of

00:37:16.100 language usage. And I could see what was behind that quite clearly. I thought, well, you know,

00:37:21.540 this really is annoying me to death. And often what I would do when something was annoying me to death

00:37:26.740 was get up and write. But I thought, well, I'll make a YouTube video and see what happens. It's like,

00:37:34.260 well, I certainly saw what happens. Yeah, you did. Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Well, the thing is,

00:37:42.660 you know, you've got a hold of something, let's say it's YouTube, and you think you know what it is.

00:37:49.540 And, you know, you don't. You don't have any idea what it is. And neither does anyone else. And that's

00:37:56.180 certainly still the case. We have no idea what these multiple technologies are doing to us. But I can tell

00:38:01.380 you that YouTube is an overwhelming force, and it's becoming more and more powerful day by day.

00:38:07.860 I've especially seen that in countries, Slovenia was a good example, where no one really trusts the

00:38:13.780 mainstream press. All the young people do, and not so young either. Pretty much everybody under 35,

00:38:21.540 I would say, all they watch is YouTube. And that's the case all over the world. And so it's,

00:38:27.540 I think on my YouTube channel, my videos have been watched 110 million times. And the total viewership

00:38:35.460 is probably, like, because people keep cutting them up and distributing them, which is something

00:38:40.500 else that can be done on YouTube, right? You can have a dialogue, right, where people edit and make

00:38:45.620 their own commentaries. And the total for that would be at least 500 million.

00:38:49.540 Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, it's a new, well, it's not a new conversation. It's a new idea of

00:38:59.620 conversation. I don't even know that it's the word for it.

00:39:02.260 Yeah. Well, it is certainly, it certainly has that conversational aspect that television lacks.

00:39:08.020 It's very comical to watch an organization like CBC try to adapt itself to YouTube,

00:39:12.660 baby, because they'll put on a 10 minute clip, and they break all the rules. They put two 30

00:39:17.300 second commercials in front of you, which you can't skip. So no one will watch it. No one will

00:39:23.380 watch it. No one you do with YouTube is you put on a 10 second commercial and you let people skip it

00:39:28.660 after five seconds. That's the rule. They break that rule. Then they don't allow comments. And so

00:39:33.780 they'll put up something you might want to watch, you know, for 10 minutes, and they'll get like,

00:39:38.100 you know, 20,000, 30,000 views, because they don't take the conventions of the,

00:39:44.180 they don't take it seriously. And it's like, you should take YouTube seriously.

00:39:47.380 Well, they also have no intuition for these particular forms. And they're also,

00:39:51.700 this will circle back to even to the beginning, they're wrapped up in certain ideas about things.

00:39:56.740 And they're wrapped up in a certain orientation towards change and politics,

00:40:00.900 that there's only a certain corridors that they will walk down. And there are other corridors

00:40:06.420 which you are forbidden to, or it is heresy to even admit that they exist.

00:40:10.740 Yes, and populations you won't deign to address. See, one of the things that's interesting about

00:40:15.540 the YouTube stars, you know, like Rogan and, and say, Dave Rubin, is that they don't think

00:40:21.380 their audience is stupid. That's a good beginning. And it is, it is a really good beginning.

00:40:25.700 It is a very good beginning. And you know, one of the things I've noticed that at my lectures is,

00:40:28.500 well, you talked about the gentleman who sent you the email, you know, he's 55, he wasn't well educated.

00:40:33.700 A tremendous number of the people who are coming to my lectures are people in that camp. They're

00:40:39.220 working class, often men, but not always. So women as well, but more men. And they're long haul

00:40:46.820 truckers or construction workers. And they're listening to three hour lectures and complex

00:40:51.380 lectures too, you know, and it's because they're not stupid. They're interested in the world.

00:40:56.180 It also defies a great axiom. If you were in the television world, private or public for 30 years,

00:41:01.220 the idea. If you had an interview, I did a provincial show for years and years. If you had

00:41:07.700 an interview, you may make it four minutes. They're going to watch you for five minutes.

00:41:13.060 Right. If you had a commentary, can you make it 60 seconds? The idea that people had an attention

00:41:19.300 span that went beyond four minutes, never entered into the world of people in the studio. And you,

00:41:25.060 and you put stuff on that has no glitz. It is profound. It can be complex. And it goes on for

00:41:31.620 60, 70, 80 minutes. And everyone is happy. Yeah. I mean, it's all upside down. They've been operating

00:41:36.820 under wrong assumptions for three decades. Yeah. Well, and Rogan's, Rogan's interviews are

00:41:40.740 three hours long. Yeah. You know, and people watch the whole thing or listen to the whole thing.

00:41:45.540 Let's go back to another area where you really have been on the mark. I'm saying that personally,

00:41:51.300 and I think you're absolutely correct. And this is not sycophancy. There's some of the stuff that

00:41:57.540 goes on in the university. Some of the, if I read the course syllabus, if I read some of these legal

00:42:03.220 peer reviews, some of the subjects in there are beneath tripe. Well, that's why they've flourished.

00:42:11.220 I'm serious. I'm serious. I thought about this a lot. It's like, what the hell happened?

00:42:18.660 And here's what happened is that, you know, the scientific types and the serious scholars,

00:42:24.820 they're, they're a specific sort of person. They're, they're rather obsessed, the good ones. Yeah.

00:42:30.580 Um, the good, the great ones are completely obsessed. Yeah. And partly mad. Yeah. Well,

00:42:35.140 and then, well, maybe you need a bit of that to be completely obsessed. I think you are. And,

00:42:39.140 you know, a minority of scientists produce the majority of the literature. Yeah. And it's the

00:42:44.260 same in the humanities and in the social sciences. And so those are people who are working 70 or 80

00:42:49.300 hours a week. All they do is work. And what they work on is their thing. Yep. And they need to do

00:42:55.060 that because, well, they're on the cutting edge and they want to stay there. And they have their

00:42:58.820 ambitions for some of, some of, sometimes it's political ambitions, but their stuff never lasts. But the

00:43:04.820 good scholars are, some of them are great. They discover amazing things. I mean, I, I've encountered

00:43:10.900 amazing psychological research, you know, that's just, especially in the physiological,

00:43:16.180 on the physiological end of things in, in the general literature, that's just absolutely brilliant

00:43:21.860 beyond belief. And even the divulge of discovery is a tremendous ecstasy in itself. Yes. Right. Well,

00:43:27.380 and, and, and, and, and it's a minority taste in some sense, you know, and then there's these

00:43:31.700 pseudo disciplines, which have multiplied since the 1960s. And no one who was serious paid any

00:43:39.140 attention to them. See, that's what happened is that the serious people were busy doing their

00:43:44.900 serious things. And there was all this stuff. Yeah. Political activism, identity politics,

00:43:50.900 gender stuff. That's right. That's right. In the, in the, what do they call them? Grievance studies

00:43:55.700 departments, you know, and, and everybody just sort of assumed that they were noisy, but harmless.

00:44:03.780 But they were not harmless because they're extraordinarily well organized. And the, the balance

00:44:10.020 tipped, you know, it almost tipped in the nineties because there was a big, a big rising of political

00:44:15.780 correctness around 1993, but then the American economy boomed like mad. And that kind of, I think

00:44:21.700 that just kind of took the steam out of the, out of the, what would you call it? Out of the objections.

00:44:26.740 Yeah. But something happened four years ago, something like that,

00:44:33.380 five years ago where the scales tipped. And I think it was the fair part of this. I'd like,

00:44:39.700 I really like your opinion is the growth of this. It's, it's an awful philosophy.

00:44:46.340 The idea of identity politics, which carries two great axioms that I can only communicate with you

00:44:51.460 if you're off the same tribe as I am. And if you're teaching me in particular, I can't be taught by

00:44:56.580 you if you're not on my tribe. But education is actually to receive it from everybody else and take

00:45:01.940 you out of yourself. And the second thing is the subdivisions of identity politics, that ridiculous

00:45:07.620 story out in BC is on that identity politics, gender politics, that's roared out into society.

00:45:14.260 Half the people and half the dinner tables of North America are afraid to bring these subjects up.

00:45:18.420 Yeah, it's probably more than half. And we're being ruled by them.

00:45:21.780 Yeah. Well, it doesn't take much, it doesn't take a very large determined minority to shut down a

00:45:28.020 large and silent majority. That's unfortunately the rule. And the identity politics issue,

00:45:34.020 it's a reversion to tribalism. And, you know, and so it's the miracle actually, the surprise isn't

00:45:39.940 actually that it's back. The surprise is that it ever went away. And we took the fact that it went

00:45:45.940 away for granted. And we forgot the reasons that it went away. We forgot the axioms, right? We started

00:45:55.380 to lose faith in them, let's say. And, well, that's partly what I've been trying to fight against

00:46:00.900 and to write about why those rules were, why those rules were necessary and what they meant.

00:46:08.420 Is it, is part of your project, you know, the various words I'm using here, is part of your

00:46:14.740 project a kind of restoration or a reminder that certain markers are fundamental and cannot be moved?

00:46:22.340 Well, that is, that is the project. I mean, when I wrote my first book, which took me about 15 years

00:46:28.180 to write, and I spent, really, I spent all my time except when I was writing scientific papers

00:46:34.580 and when I was socializing, which I did a fair bit of thinking about that book. I mean, it was

00:46:40.260 really obsessive thinking, chronic, from the time I woke up till the time I went to bed,

00:46:46.100 unless I was engaged in some other activity that would shut down my mind. I was trying to understand

00:46:51.220 whether there were, was, what, a foundation of stone underneath the presumptions of Western

00:46:59.220 civilization or, and it was really a postmodern book, Maps of Meaning, which I didn't understand,

00:47:04.500 because at the time, being unfamiliar with that lexicon, let's say, there was the terrible Cold War

00:47:12.980 raging and, you know, it wasn't obvious that it wasn't merely a matter of opinion. You know,

00:47:18.260 you could make that case is that, well, here's your set of Marxist presuppositions, many of which

00:47:22.500 sounded incredibly attractive, and which still do, you know, from each according to his ability,

00:47:27.620 to each according to his need. I mean, no one likes to see people with needs unfulfilled.

00:47:32.500 The problem is that needs multiply without end, and ability is limited. But, you know, you have to

00:47:37.940 start thinking about the world in a harsh and sophisticated way to notice that flaw.

00:47:43.700 I wanted to analyze that system, and the Nazi system to a lesser degree, but also that, and

00:47:51.140 the Western system to see if there was something at the bottom that was rock-like, that wasn't merely

00:47:57.540 arbitrary. And I believe that what I discovered, let's say, or thought through was that we got some

00:48:05.220 things in the West fundamentally correct. And they're correct for biological reasons,

00:48:12.580 which is very important because we've been around a very long time, and biological reasons are very

00:48:18.100 fundamental. But also that that biology reflects some underlying metaphysics as well that we don't

00:48:23.220 understand, because we don't understand anything about the fundamental nature of the world is beyond us.

00:48:28.660 The why? Yes, the whys and the wherefores for that matter, the purpose, all of that.

00:48:34.180 The fact that people have religious experiences, and that they're easily duplicable, and that they

00:48:40.420 seem to be consistent across societies, at least to some degree. And what I decided then, because

00:48:47.700 I was trying to understand why the world had divided itself up into armed camps that were

00:48:52.100 hell-bent on mutual destruction, right? Mutual assured destruction, right? The terrible acronym MAD,

00:48:59.220 which was an insane satanic joke. And why it was so important for us to defend our tribal positions

00:49:07.860 in that manner? And what, if anything, could be done about it? Like, here's the solution. We have this

00:49:14.340 terrible tribal warfare that's characteristic of our species, and it's accelerated to a degree that's not

00:49:21.460 sustainable. What do we do about it? And the answer that came to me as a consequence of what I studied

00:49:28.500 was that we try to make ourselves better people. The solution to tribalism is the elevation of the

00:49:35.140 individual, and the West got that right. The individual is the atom that begins the entire reaction.

00:49:41.460 Yes, yes. And that's why the identity politics makes the individual a simple avatar of the collective.

00:49:47.460 Right. And everything that attaches to him is always extrinsic and not essential. Yes, exactly.

00:49:53.300 And you strip personality, and we're adding up groups and trying to administer justice via a collective.

00:50:00.500 Yeah. It's insane. Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's so dangerous. And I heard you on this.

00:50:07.460 Why do we seek to perpetrate some sort of justice over the generations? It was one of the worst things

00:50:12.900 in all of history that you would make the son or the daughter carry the sin of their parents.

00:50:18.980 Yeah. And now it's, you're seeing it in reparations again. Yeah.

00:50:23.620 All the ideas that we thought had been completely wiped out, either enlightenment or just symbol logic

00:50:29.620 itself. They're back. Yeah. Why are we so easily yielding to this? I mean, the patterns of correctness

00:50:37.700 and language and people kind and things of that order. It's an absurdity.

00:50:42.500 Well, I think some of it is the desire to escape from individual responsibility.

00:50:47.220 No, if you can dissolve yourself in the collective and then the impetus isn't on you to act as forthrightly

00:50:56.900 as would otherwise be necessarily the case. So there's that. And then there's the undeniable

00:51:05.220 attraction of having someone to blame for the miseries of your existence, which are likely manifold.

00:51:11.380 It's also the comfort of saying, I can start a small war with one tribe and another, and we can play games with each of these blocks.

00:51:18.980 It won't be a society. It won't be a country. But if you dissolve the collective politics, I mean, the real politics,

00:51:25.380 into subcategories of gender, sex, ethnic, religion, and each of these is now claiming a right only as a collective,

00:51:33.460 everything else falls apart. You know your yeats. Yeah. And there's no need to quote it. Yeah.

00:51:38.100 But again, back to the universities. If there's one place that can reset balances, it starts with mind.

00:51:45.700 It starts with the younger mind that will be met with a more mature mind and taught the ways of the mind,

00:51:51.460 how the mind works, what you should read, how you form judgments, how you put contrast over great lengths

00:51:57.380 of time, not today and tomorrow, but 500 years ago. If you train the minds, then there is a balance

00:52:03.620 and there's an opportunity to see the world as it really is.

00:52:06.260 You have to believe in the mind in order to do that. Well, you know, it goes back to exactly what

00:52:12.020 we were discussing is that, you know, one of the things I've pointed out to my audiences is that

00:52:17.540 there isn't a debate about who should speak on campuses. There's a debate about whether free speech

00:52:25.140 exists. That's a whole different debate. I know this. People don't understand the difference in the

00:52:30.340 severity of those two debates. Like, if I don't want you to talk, I still might believe that people

00:52:36.180 can talk and they can exchange opinions and they can change each other's minds. And even if they're

00:52:41.540 different, the argument that's being put forward on the campuses to stop people from speaking is that

00:52:47.060 there is no such thing as free speech. All there is is the exchange of the ideas of avatars who are

00:52:54.100 possessed by their group ideology. And then the logical consequence of that is to refuse to let

00:52:59.380 them to speak because why should you allow the group that you're in direct competition to have

00:53:05.940 its voice? And so it's the collectivists, the identity politics types, it's the very idea of

00:53:14.180 individuality that they're opposed to, that they've dispensed with. And that goes back to their, you know,

00:53:20.420 to the French, the terrible, the terrible, the despicable French intellectuals who,

00:53:25.620 in my opinion, were responsible for leading this revolution.

00:53:30.580 And it got picked up, as always, the most obnoxious and useless ideas, useless in the sense of their

00:53:38.340 intrinsic logic, find the easiest welcome on the campus. This is the most trendy institution in the

00:53:43.780 world. Yeah, well, and it came through the, it came through, well, it came through the Yale English

00:53:48.500 department. Yes, of all of them, yeah. Yeah, that's where, that's where the, the, the French

00:53:53.380 continental ideas made their entrance into North America. You know, in all your travels and speeches,

00:53:58.740 I know much of it gets small p into the politics, because that's the world we're in. Do you get much

00:54:04.340 chance, because obviously no one could follow you around, it wouldn't last. Do you get much chance to

00:54:09.140 expand on the beauties of the culture? I'm thinking of poetry and music and things of this nature,

00:54:14.660 the other side of the academic, the things that sometimes, you know, they sing to the humans.

00:54:20.900 I do, I do. I mean, that's one of the reasons that, that I was so motivated to

00:54:26.820 continue the lectures, you know, because we actually put together a sequence of tours.

00:54:31.540 What, we didn't plan 160 cities in one go. I mean, it sort of unfolded.

00:54:35.540 It's only you and Bono left. Yeah, yeah. Well, it, it, it unfolded across time, you know,

00:54:43.940 because they were so popular and the popularity didn't seem to be waning. And, but it was an

00:54:49.540 opportunity to put forward the case for all the wonderful things that we've done. I mean, and to

00:54:54.500 express gratitude and amazement at the fact that, you know, our, the fact that our city, this city,

00:55:01.620 Toronto, the city works is for me, it's an, and I think this is partly because I've been sensitized

00:55:07.300 so much to, to the catastrophes of existence in, in, in sort of the collective and the personal

00:55:13.620 senses that when I go outside and everything works and there's all these people of different colors

00:55:18.900 and creeds and religions walking down the street and it's all peaceful and the lights go on regularly

00:55:24.820 and the power is always working and everything technological is a hundred percent reliable and

00:55:29.380 there's no riots in the street and the probability that you're going to meet with an untimely and

00:55:35.780 painful death at the hands of someone else is almost nil and that we live for such a long time.

00:55:41.700 All of this to me is a complete, it's a complete miracle. It truly is. And I remind people of the

00:55:48.260 unlikelihood of that constantly in the lectures and ask them to be grateful for the fact that,

00:55:53.540 I mean, you think, you look a hundred years ago in 1919, you just think of what you would have been

00:56:00.820 through in the last six years, right? The Russian Revolution, the First World War, the Spanish

00:56:07.060 influenza, just absolute bloody hellish catastrophe, one after the other. The conception of Nazism was

00:56:14.340 brewing then too. Right, right, right, right, right. The seeds of the next catastrophe were already at work.

00:56:19.940 They were. And also, of course, the same thing with the Russian Revolution, which was bloody enough

00:56:24.340 to begin with, but which certainly accelerated in its brutality as it expanded. And, you know,

00:56:29.780 we don't have any of that at the moment. It's actually the world is more peaceful than it's ever

00:56:33.780 been. There's no wars in the Western Hemisphere. That's the first time since the coming of Columbus

00:56:40.020 that the entire Western Hemisphere is free of conflict. I see frequently on your various sites that

00:56:46.420 you do list up. And that's another great counter. The environmental crowd, and I don't take them

00:56:52.740 as being pure either. Some of them are, obviously. Most of them are not. They're always having a

00:56:58.820 spectacular, at the high table, the catastrophe. The world is ending the more. This is the worst

00:57:03.620 we'll ever be. We're destroying the planet. You point out very frequently that certain of the

00:57:08.420 technologies, certain of the advances of the civilization have lifted people out of poverty. They put them into

00:57:13.780 new situations. We have relieved more suffering in some cases, maybe not more than we have caused,

00:57:20.900 but it's a different century. We should be grateful for things. Gratitude is in short supply.

00:57:26.180 Yes. Yes. And it's completely absent among the collectivists and the people who play identity

00:57:33.380 politics. There's no gratitude at all. And it's so interesting. It's so interesting to me to see that

00:57:39.140 because, let's say, the professors who lead those movements, they are the most protected people

00:57:46.260 who've ever lived, right? It's like they're standing on a hill and around them is a wall,

00:57:51.700 and it's four feet away. And around them, that wall is another wall that's four feet away,

00:57:55.700 and another wall, and another wall. And there's just sequential walls, and at this edge of the

00:58:00.340 sequential walls is a huge army, and it's powerful. And all of that protects them, absolutely.

00:58:07.540 Absolutely. And they say, everything is corrupt and going to hell. And there's just no sense of

00:58:14.500 gratitude whatsoever. And that's appalling to me because it's so unlikely to occupy a position like

00:58:22.180 that. And the proper response, although criticism is necessary, obviously. Criticism means, well,

00:58:29.540 this is wrong, and this is how we could fix it. It doesn't mean tear everything down and leave people

00:58:34.260 with nothing. And that certainly happens to people in universities now. They come in barely formed,

00:58:42.100 and they leave... Ill-formed.

00:58:44.340 Yeah, they leave in tatters, you know, and that's... And it's also true, to go back to where you've

00:58:52.100 referred to it, I've referred to it. There are so many people outside of the higher structures of

00:58:58.820 society that no one is talking to. That's where Mr. Trump comes in, and more power to him for that

00:59:05.380 matter. He is talking and listening. I know that's another absolute heresy. He's not the cause of these

00:59:12.580 things. He's the result of failures of other and more sophisticated people.

00:59:17.780 Well, and I think I have a friend who's working very closely with the Democratic Party in the United

00:59:22.580 States and has been quite effective at doing so and trying to move the party closer to the middle and

00:59:28.020 away from the radicals. And we discussed this a lot because, you know, I think one of the reasons that

00:59:33.540 the people who hate the Democrats in the United States truly hate them, right, that there's just

00:59:38.500 vitriol there is because they've proved themselves incapable of generating a candidate who can

00:59:44.740 actually take on Trump. And I think there's a disappointment even among the enemies of the

00:59:50.340 Democrats that's so profound there that it generates precisely this vitriol. It's like

00:59:55.780 the man is characterized by manifold flaws. And I'm not saying this in a partisan way.

01:00:02.980 No, I accept. And the fact that the system works so poorly that a credible centrist candidate can't

01:00:09.380 be found to offer himself at least as a viable alternative. I mean, my poor friend, who I said

01:00:17.060 has been following this and has been deeply involved in the debates, he's just tearing out his hair

01:00:22.820 watching the Democrat debates and watching it degenerate. Well, he should.

01:00:26.660 He should. Well, exactly, but it's so sad to see that. You have a New Age spiritualist who's

01:00:33.300 going to be president of the United States, and you have them dissolving the idea of nationhood,

01:00:38.020 we will abandon the border. I mean, anyway, it is such a weak thing, but the people in the street,

01:00:43.380 the guy who called me about you, that's a class, and it's a vast class. Yes. And it is,

01:00:49.860 that's the great 50 percent that has been walked over and is turmoil, and all of the identity

01:00:55.780 politics and all of those things that get traffic and commerce in conversation in the media,

01:01:00.660 these are irrelevant to them. Yeah. Apart from being insulting. Yes. And after a while,

01:01:05.060 the social pressure builds it. And this game that's going on over here will have to close

01:01:10.020 or something breaks. Yes. Yes. Well, I guess Trump was an attempt to break it.

01:01:15.060 Brexit was another attempt. Yeah, that's right. Brexit was another attempt. And Australia could

01:01:18.900 illustrate. I'll let you go with one more question only. After all that you have done,

01:01:24.100 and all the energy, obviously, that it required to do it. Have you come at this point to something

01:01:32.500 fresh in your understanding about what counts and what does not count, and how one conducts

01:01:38.260 oneself about the universe? Has something new occurred to you, or is it a refinement of what you went in with?

01:01:44.980 I think the fundamental thing that I've learned is that you can speak

01:01:48.260 speak in the deepest terms imaginable, if you're careful, to an extraordinarily wide range of people,

01:01:57.060 and that that's desperately needed, and that hopefully it's salutary. It looks like it's salutary.

01:02:03.940 And so that's hopeful. You know, the counterpoint to the stress of the last three years has been the

01:02:13.700 my observation of the positive consequences of having these sorts of deep, as deep as I can make them anyways,

01:02:21.220 philosophical discussions, and to watch thousands of people participate as if it's important.

01:02:26.820 You know, when I talked to Sam Harris in Dublin about the relationship between facts and values and

01:02:32.740 religion and science, which is about as academic a topic as you could hope for, we had 10,000 people

01:02:38.420 come to the... So that's... The university may not be functioning where it's supposed to be functioning,

01:02:49.540 but that doesn't mean that it's not functioning. It's out there. Thought will find its place.

01:02:54.580 Well, that's what it looks like to me. And so that's been unbelievably positive, although very

01:03:03.140 demanding. Yeah, very. It's... Well, and I'm in...

01:03:11.860 In these interviews, and more frequently, I've tended to get emotional. And the reason for that is the

01:03:18.100 health problems that are plaguing my family, at least in part. Yes, I understand.

01:03:21.780 Um, so that makes me more, much more... Susceptible.

01:03:25.220 ...fragile than I should otherwise be, despite my exhortations to people to, you know, bear their

01:03:33.060 cross. My friend, I'm a cross for you to bear. Listen, I thank you greatly for your courtesy,

01:03:40.180 because you obviously didn't have to do this. And I really do admire what you're doing. And I will say,

01:03:45.380 on behalf of the people who will never meet you, that you are a very fine person.

01:03:48.820 Thank you. And thank you very much for the support that you've shown me over the last

01:03:52.260 few years. It was much appreciated. I would do it 20 times.

01:03:54.740 Well, I appreciate that very much. It was a pleasure to meet you and to speak to you.

01:03:57.700 Pleasure to meet you, sir. I'll tell you that.

01:03:59.300 If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up Dad's books,

01:04:03.780 Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief, or his newer bestseller, 12 Rules for Life,

01:04:08.340 An Antidote to Chaos. Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan

01:04:13.300 B. Peterson podcast. See jordanbpeterson.com for audio, ebook, and text links, or pick up the books

01:04:19.300 at your favorite bookseller. I really hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please leave a

01:04:23.860 rating at Apple Podcasts, a comment, a review, or share this episode with a friend. Thanks for tuning in,

01:04:29.700 talk to you next week. Follow me on my YouTube channel, jordanbpeterson, on Twitter,

01:04:35.540 at jordanbpeterson, on Facebook, at drjordanbpeterson, and at Instagram, at jordan.b.peterson. Details on this

01:04:45.300 show, access to my blog, information about my tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended

01:04:51.780 books can be found on my website, jordanbpeterson.com. My online writing programs, designed to help

01:04:59.200 people straighten out their pasts, understand themselves in the present, and develop a

01:05:03.920 sophisticated vision and strategy for the future, can be found at selfauthoring.com. That's

01:05:09.820 selfauthoring.com. From the Westwood One Podcast Network.

01:05:15.280 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

01:05:24.460 important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those

01:05:29.460 battling depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can

01:05:34.580 be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

01:05:38.980 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you

01:05:44.400 might be feeling this way in his new series. He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that

01:05:49.300 while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you're

01:05:54.600 suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

01:06:00.680 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

01:06:06.360 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - October 20, 2019

Rex Murphy's Interview with Jordan B. Peterson

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