The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Who is Joe Rogan？ Part One

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.

00:00:41.780 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.

00:00:57.420 Welcome back to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast, or if you're new here, welcome to season 2, episode 11.

00:01:05.580 I'm Michaela Peterson, dad's daughter, favorite child, and collaborator. Just kidding.

00:01:10.700 Today we're presenting a very entertaining podcast, Dad's Conversation with Joe Rogan, part 1.

00:01:16.440 Dad and Joe discuss topics like parenting and divorce, raising kids and teenagers, experimenting with drugs, pot, conversion therapy, transgender children, which is a touchy subject, Joe's early years and where he grew up, and much more.

00:01:32.780 I think people will really like this episode. I'm excited about it anyway, although I just went to the gym and I am pumped.

00:01:38.740 Update on personal stuff, mom is still recovering from her surgery, but it's slow.

00:01:44.180 Every day is a bit better, and we'll be updating people on what's going on over my YouTube channel, at Michaela Peterson, when she feels well enough to explain, to avoid all those rumors going around apparently.

00:01:54.920 Thanks for all the kind messages, mom's really enjoyed reading them.

00:01:58.160 So hopefully you enjoy this episode, I did.

00:02:01.200 When we return, dad's conversation with Joe Rogan.

00:02:03.940 Please welcome my father, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, with his guest, Joe Rogan.

00:02:11.680 I guess the first thing I'd like to just ask you is, how are you doing?

00:02:15.880 I'm doing great. How are you?

00:02:18.260 What's great about what you're doing? What's so good about your life?

00:02:22.780 Well, right now I'm in the process of putting together my next stand-up comedy special.

00:02:28.980 So I'm at the process now where I've actually put together a full new hour of material since my Netflix special, which came out in October.

00:02:38.000 So that's great for me. That's always a relaxing moment because it's very difficult to put that hour together.

00:02:46.300 And so how do you go about doing that?

00:02:49.360 A lot of writing, a lot of performing, a lot of reading, a lot of going over notes, a lot of examining material, a lot of reviewing sets and trying to find out what I like and what I don't like.

00:03:03.600 It's a long and brutal process. It's the most fun, but also the most difficult part of stand-up is the creation of new material.

00:03:12.020 So how many hours do you think you put in of work to do an hour's worth of stand-up? Any idea?

00:03:18.020 That's a really good question. It's usually about, I can create a solid 10 minutes a month. That's usually what it is.

00:03:26.640 So it takes me six months to do an hour. And in that six months, on an average week, I'll do eight or nine sets.

00:03:35.680 So that's eight or nine, either half hour or hours of material, sometimes 15 minutes, usually an hour, depending upon where I'm working and how many other people are on the show.

00:03:48.740 And then a lot of time writing.

00:03:51.360 So you're doing those sets in front of live audiences all the time?

00:03:54.800 Yes. Yeah, you have to. That's the weird thing about stand-up comedy. It seems to be that it's not something that you can do in a vacuum.

00:04:05.000 It has to actually be done. It has to come alive in front of the audience.

00:04:09.020 Like, I can write in a vacuum. I can write alone. I can contemplate, go over my material, review, edit.

00:04:18.820 I can do all sorts of things by myself, but it really doesn't come alive until it's in front of an audience.

00:04:24.620 Yeah, well, I guess it's not so easy to figure out what's funny.

00:04:27.280 Yeah.

00:04:27.600 You kind of hope that people will laugh.

00:04:30.220 Yeah, it's that, but it's also there's a state of mind that you only really achieve when you're performing in front of an audience.

00:04:37.260 And you can try to recreate it, but it'll be fake.

00:04:40.460 If you try to do it on your own, like, I don't write, I don't write in joke form.

00:04:45.340 Like, I don't write the way I say it on stage.

00:04:48.120 I write in sort of a conceptual form.

00:04:51.660 I write in an essay form.

00:04:53.980 And then I sort of extract things that I think are funny out of that.

00:04:57.840 But they really only find their true, the true way I'm going to do them.

00:05:04.040 I only find that in front of an audience because it's like when I'm in front of an audience, then it becomes clear to me how I should and shouldn't say things based in part on how they're reacting and based in part on how I feel when I'm performing the idea.

00:05:20.500 Like, I find where the fat of the bit is.

00:05:24.180 And that's where you kind of appreciate economy of words and you know what to edit out and what to elaborate on, what people aren't totally understanding and what maybe is over explained.

00:05:37.120 And all that stuff kind of comes together in front of an audience.

00:05:39.580 So the essays that you're writing or the writing that you're doing, like, are they on serious topics?

00:05:45.560 Are they on things you're thinking about philosophically or are you trying specifically to be funny or are you just trying to get some thoughts down, you know, about the way you're thinking about the world?

00:05:55.220 Both.

00:05:56.240 You know, it's like the ideas, it's, I always say the stand-up comedy, at least the way I do it, it comes in three forms.

00:06:05.600 Like, there's three steps.

00:06:06.840 In the beginning, you're really just trying to get laughs.

00:06:09.040 You're fighting for survival out there.

00:06:10.680 You're scared.

00:06:11.560 That's in the early days of your career.

00:06:13.540 Then you start doing what you think is funny, like things that would make you laugh.

00:06:18.980 But then in stage three, you start trying to make ideas funny and you try to cleverly introduce ideas into people's heads that maybe they wouldn't entertain without the humor aspect of it.

00:06:34.080 And so when I write, if I write on a subject, whatever the subject might be, I write without thinking, oh, I have to make each word funny or I have to make each sentence funny.

00:06:45.720 I write just what are my thoughts on this subject.

00:06:48.740 And then along the way, I find irony and I find ridiculous perceptions and all the things that lead to stand-up comedy material.

00:07:01.640 And then I extract those.

00:07:03.240 Right.

00:07:03.660 And how much of that, like humor and the whip just occurs to you spontaneously on the stage?

00:07:09.180 Sometimes a lot.

00:07:10.340 It depends on the subject, but it's always a possibility.

00:07:14.080 Some of the best lines that I've ever come up with in my act come up with on the spot while I'm just talking about things.

00:07:22.920 Right.

00:07:23.220 Well, that should be when you're like into the subject and things are going well with the audience.

00:07:27.840 Yeah.

00:07:28.540 Yeah.

00:07:29.220 That's basically how it goes.

00:07:30.560 It's a tricky business.

00:07:31.660 Yeah.

00:07:32.180 It sounds like an extremely tricky business and one where the cost of failure is humiliation and emotional pain.

00:07:41.320 Yeah.

00:07:41.540 It's the worst.

00:07:42.620 Yeah.

00:07:42.960 Yeah.

00:07:43.140 There's not that many things that are more embarrassing than like trying to be funny, especially if you've put, say, 100 hours into one hour of preparation, which is less than you're doing.

00:07:52.840 And then finding out that you're just not that amusing.

00:07:57.440 That doesn't sound good.

00:07:58.660 More common than not.

00:07:59.600 Yeah.

00:07:59.960 Yeah.

00:08:00.480 Yeah.

00:08:00.680 It's not good.

00:08:01.380 So how many Netflix specials have you done now?

00:08:03.520 Uh, I've done three and, uh, I'm working on my fourth one right now, but overall I've done nine different hours of comedy, either a comedy album or a video special.

00:08:17.980 So, yeah.

00:08:19.520 Uh, what, and you, what's it been like working for Netflix?

00:08:22.940 It's great.

00:08:23.720 They're very easy.

00:08:25.060 Oh, that's good.

00:08:25.680 Yeah.

00:08:25.700 They, they don't, they really don't have any notes.

00:08:29.100 They just let me, you know, fortunately I got to them at a stage in my career where I was already advanced and I was already a headliner and I'd already been doing standup comedy for decades.

00:08:40.080 So it was, it was good in that sense that I was well prepared, but they, you know, they, when we first signed this initial deal, they were, they were really just wanting me to do what I do best.

00:08:53.620 Right.

00:08:53.780 So they liked it and it's easy.

00:08:55.720 There's no, there's really relatively little input, almost none.

00:09:00.540 Right.

00:09:00.760 So they're, they're, they're not willing to mess with success fundamentally.

00:09:04.640 Yeah.

00:09:04.860 They like what I do.

00:09:05.680 So they're just like, go ahead.

00:09:06.960 Just, and they know that my goal is to do my best.

00:09:09.740 I'm not trying to, I mean, there are comedians that will release material just for the money.

00:09:15.420 They'll try to capitalize on their fame and put something out that's sloppy.

00:09:20.380 And I feel like for me, at least that's, that's not an option.

00:09:24.260 And that would taint my legacy and taint my, my body of work.

00:09:28.340 I'm not interested in doing that.

00:09:30.480 Right.

00:09:30.860 Right.

00:09:31.300 Yeah.

00:09:31.480 Well, I've seen your Netflix specials and they're pretty damn funny.

00:09:34.860 Thank you.

00:09:35.280 That little skit you did on the Kardashians.

00:09:38.340 That was a killer, man.

00:09:40.780 Thank you.

00:09:41.280 That took forever to work out.

00:09:43.060 I had to figure out a way to make fun of that guy.

00:09:45.600 God, God, it was, it was, it was ridiculous.

00:09:49.000 You make an extremely intense, demonic gargoyle, a very good sense of humor.

00:09:56.000 Yeah.

00:09:56.120 So that was killing me.

00:09:57.120 I thought, Jesus, he's not going to go there.

00:09:58.920 Is he?

00:09:59.360 Oh yeah.

00:09:59.780 Yeah.

00:09:59.920 Yeah.

00:10:00.020 Oh, he's going to go farther.

00:10:02.700 Yeah.

00:10:03.340 It was good.

00:10:03.940 It was good to see that kind of like horrific courage manifest itself on stage.

00:10:08.720 You really liked that in a comedian, you know, when you see them get going.

00:10:11.620 And I used to see this with Sarah Silverman.

00:10:13.940 You could see her eyes sort of flash and she'd think, I shouldn't say that.

00:10:18.280 There's no way.

00:10:19.460 Then she'd say it.

00:10:21.320 You'd think, Oh, no one should have said that.

00:10:23.500 But man, it was deadly.

00:10:25.720 Yeah.

00:10:26.000 I think out of all the women doing comedy right now, she's probably the best at that.

00:10:30.300 You know, she can come up with pushing that envelope.

00:10:32.540 Yeah.

00:10:32.720 That's for sure.

00:10:33.120 That's for sure.

00:10:33.800 She's got, there's some very dark recesses in that woman's mind.

00:10:38.660 Yeah.

00:10:39.280 Yeah.

00:10:39.580 Yeah.

00:10:40.140 Okay.

00:10:40.400 So the Netflix thing is going well.

00:10:42.280 Do you, do you enjoy, do you enjoy doing that?

00:10:45.220 Yes.

00:10:46.480 Yeah.

00:10:46.740 I enjoy it.

00:10:47.360 What do you, what do you like about it?

00:10:48.960 The danger of it, the, the difficulty, the challenge that one, it's done and people enjoy

00:10:56.800 it, that I'm legitimately affecting people.

00:10:59.180 I love, I love that.

00:11:00.540 Well, people, they'll get a chance to sit down and watch it for an hour and it'll make them

00:11:05.660 feel better.

00:11:06.340 They'll laugh.

00:11:07.240 They, they, they, it takes them out of the dreary dullness of their day or the agony of

00:11:13.580 whatever they're going through in their life.

00:11:14.880 And they can escape that for an hour.

00:11:16.680 Yeah.

00:11:17.180 Thank God for comedy, man.

00:11:18.600 And it's just about, it's just in the same domain as music for necessity.

00:11:23.620 Yeah, I agree.

00:11:25.060 You know, there are campuses now where there's like no sarcasm rules, say.

00:11:30.900 Oh, that's hilarious.

00:11:32.420 God, can you imagine?

00:11:33.740 I'd, I'd last about 15 seconds.

00:11:36.700 Yeah.

00:11:37.380 It's sarcasm considered a microaggression.

00:11:39.860 Is that what it is?

00:11:40.200 It is definitely.

00:11:41.280 Yeah.

00:11:42.420 Unless it's real sarcasm, in which case it's a macroaggression.

00:11:45.560 I just keep thinking that in time, this is going to be one of the most hysterical periods

00:11:53.440 of time that people look back on, periods of history.

00:11:56.480 Like, you know, when we look at guys with powdered wigs and, you know, preposterous behavior from

00:12:01.360 the past and we go, God, what were they thinking?

00:12:03.580 I really think we're going to do the same thing about today.

00:12:06.700 I think.

00:12:07.120 Well, I hope so.

00:12:08.120 One of the most, I think for sure.

00:12:10.460 I hope so.

00:12:11.000 That means that we'll be more sane when we're looking back, or at least we'll be sane in

00:12:15.060 a different way.

00:12:15.840 And I'm pretty much ready for a different form of insane personally.

00:12:19.180 Well, I think the insane that you're getting is so, it's so pronounced and it's so much

00:12:27.380 more intense that it's less effective.

00:12:31.680 And then the reaction to it is more popular.

00:12:36.220 The negative reaction to a lot of this insane rhetoric and this insane behavior, it's more

00:12:41.340 popular now to understand how ridiculous some of these people are.

00:12:45.860 You know, when you see like what Antifa is doing in Portland, blocking traffic and, you

00:12:51.700 know, telling people where to go and what to do and then beating people up that don't

00:12:56.260 comply and saying that you're a white supremacist if you don't listen to them.

00:13:00.720 And like this, this, all this stuff is so ridiculous.

00:13:04.300 It's so over the top and they keep feeding on themselves.

00:13:08.500 They keep attacking people that are not progressive enough.

00:13:11.980 They keep literally eating their own and it, it, for the, from the outside, from the perspective

00:13:19.080 of people that don't share their ideology, it looks more and more ridiculous.

00:13:23.620 And that makes them more and more frenzied and it ramps it all up.

00:13:28.440 And I think it's ultimately going to crash.

00:13:31.180 It's just like, what kind of damage is it going to do to the landscape as it's crashing?

00:13:36.660 Right, right.

00:13:37.080 Well, that's, that's the thing that, you know, hopefully can be mitigated so that the landing

00:13:41.060 isn't too hard.

00:13:42.240 Yeah.

00:13:42.520 So I thought, look, every time we've talked, we've talked a lot about me and like, I'm

00:13:47.940 quite sick of talking about me actually, and probably have been for like a year or maybe

00:13:52.980 even longer.

00:13:53.940 So I thought that it would be really good to talk about you.

00:13:57.440 And I'm curious about you because you're such a strange character.

00:14:00.240 And so, um, you know, in the, in the most interesting of ways.

00:14:04.540 And so I thought I'd like start at the beginning.

00:14:07.060 So I don't know that much about you.

00:14:09.180 So, um, where'd you grow up?

00:14:13.260 Well, I grew up in a lot of places.

00:14:15.180 I was born in New Jersey.

00:14:17.160 Um, I lived there until I was seven.

00:14:19.540 My mother, uh, split up from my dad and married my stepdad.

00:14:24.720 We moved to California.

00:14:26.660 We lived in San Francisco from age seven to 11.

00:14:30.680 Then I lived in Florida.

00:14:32.420 He was going to the university of Florida at Gainesville, live there from age 11 to right

00:14:38.480 around 13.

00:14:39.940 Then we moved to Boston and I lived in Boston for the next, I guess the next 10 years.

00:14:48.780 And that's really where I grew up.

00:14:50.700 I grew up basically when I, when I think of where I come from, I think of Boston, it's

00:14:54.700 also the place where I started doing standup comedy, which means a lot to me.

00:14:58.500 And it's also where I started fighting.

00:14:59.840 So I started doing martial arts, but all the significant things that happened in my life

00:15:04.200 happened in Boston.

00:15:05.260 I see.

00:15:05.720 In my developmental period.

00:15:07.040 And so you moved to Boston when you were how old?

00:15:10.200 13.

00:15:11.220 13.

00:15:11.740 I see.

00:15:12.260 Yeah.

00:15:12.480 Right.

00:15:12.700 Right.

00:15:12.980 And then you were there for how many years?

00:15:15.420 11, 11 years.

00:15:16.920 Oh yeah.

00:15:17.180 So that's a long time.

00:15:18.440 Yeah.

00:15:18.740 Where'd you live in Boston?

00:15:20.600 Newton, Newton, Upper Falls.

00:15:22.860 It's a suburb of Boston.

00:15:24.200 Yeah.

00:15:24.700 Yeah.

00:15:25.480 Nice and new England, eh?

00:15:27.400 Yeah.

00:15:28.060 I love it out there.

00:15:29.360 Yeah, me too.

00:15:30.220 The people have a great sense of humor.

00:15:32.280 It's like Toronto in a way that you have to deal with that wicked winter.

00:15:36.540 And I think that develops character in people.

00:15:39.580 Well, it's funny.

00:15:40.600 You know, when I moved to Boston, because I, well, I'd lived in Alberta and then Montreal.

00:15:45.480 And Montreal is bloody horrible in the winter.

00:15:48.620 And Alberta is even worse.

00:15:49.880 And so I was, I'd go down to Boston and I went down there to interview first.

00:15:54.960 And it was February and like, it was spring as far as I was concerned.

00:15:58.320 I didn't even have a coat on.

00:15:59.540 And then when we lived there for years, you know, it was so funny.

00:16:02.060 We lived in this old house by a park and we'd get those nor'easters blew in, you know, with

00:16:06.580 the hurricane level winds and it bloody well snowed three and a half feet.

00:16:10.280 And I'd be thinking in my Canadian way that, Jesus, I better not go outside because I'll

00:16:14.480 just freeze to death the second I step outside.

00:16:16.900 But I'd go outside and it was like, well, it was 34 degrees or some damn thing.

00:16:23.400 It's like, I was expecting minus 40, you know, just horrible.

00:16:27.160 So my Boston winter is never, I mean, apart from the snow, which was, you know, deadly

00:16:32.020 significant, they never really struck me as winter.

00:16:34.400 They sort of struck me as, well, this is the sort of winter that you'd like to have if

00:16:38.180 you wanted to, like a showy winter that people could be pleased with rather than one

00:16:42.720 that just sort of killed you.

00:16:44.600 Yeah.

00:16:44.680 Yeah, Canadians are on another level when it comes to winter.

00:16:47.940 I have some pretty good friends that live in Alberta.

00:16:50.460 And whenever I go up there, it's like, whoa.

00:16:53.700 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:54.260 Where do you go?

00:16:55.760 Where do you go?

00:16:56.920 They're outside of Edmonton.

00:16:58.660 They're about two and a half hours north of Edmonton.

00:17:02.420 Where?

00:17:04.060 I don't know the name of their town.

00:17:06.480 It's where I go bear hunting.

00:17:09.740 That's...

00:17:10.420 Yeah, because bear, you know, you might, one thing you notice about bear is they have

00:17:14.240 fur.

00:17:15.540 See, that's why they can live there.

00:17:16.820 Human bear, they don't have fur.

00:17:19.020 They actually can't live there.

00:17:20.400 Yeah.

00:17:20.540 Yeah.

00:17:20.600 Two and a half hours north of Edmonton in the winter.

00:17:23.140 Yeah, yeah.

00:17:24.240 It's rugged.

00:17:25.240 Yeah.

00:17:25.420 You go outside on the wrong day and you're out there too long, then you die.

00:17:29.020 So...

00:17:29.300 Yeah.

00:17:29.540 Or you run into a grizzly, which is also...

00:17:33.020 Well, that, yes.

00:17:34.020 There's also that.

00:17:35.020 Those are nothing to contend.

00:17:37.400 Those are nothing to take lightly, man.

00:17:39.020 When we used to go camping, especially in British Columbia, grizzly bears were always a concern

00:17:43.880 because like a black bear, if it chases you, and first of all, it's only about a third

00:17:48.500 the size of a grizzly bear, and it's still pretty big.

00:17:50.740 Like, it's a black bear.

00:17:51.640 You know, it's not like a house cat.

00:17:53.280 And if those things chase you and you play dead, they'll usually leave you alone.

00:17:58.360 But if a grizzly chases you and you play dead, then it eats you.

00:18:02.960 And so...

00:18:03.520 And then, of course, if you fight back, well, it also eats you.

00:18:06.320 It just...

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00:20:55.980 Well, believe it or not, more people are preyed upon by black bears.

00:21:05.560 When a black bear attacks you, it's usually because it's trying to eat you.

00:21:10.280 When a grizzly bear attacks people, it's usually either a mistake or it was scared, or it's

00:21:15.960 really hungry.

00:21:17.780 Yeah, the black bears tend to be like that too.

00:21:19.860 A lot of them are old if they attack you, you know, they're getting, they're getting,

00:21:23.640 so they can't catch a real animal.

00:21:25.240 So they're, they'll settle for like a, you know, an Arctic monkey with no fat.

00:21:30.980 So yeah, they get desperate.

00:21:33.880 Yeah.

00:21:34.120 So, okay.

00:21:34.520 So New Jersey, what do you remember about New Jersey?

00:21:38.360 Ah, boy, that's where I went to Catholic school, which was a horror in and of itself.

00:21:43.460 And, uh, it's, you know, where my relatives lived.

00:21:46.480 And I just remember the, the ethnic, ethnic Italian environment and what that was like,

00:21:51.960 you know, what, what it was like being around my relatives are out there.

00:21:55.760 Very Sopranos like, if you ever watch the TV show, that's, that's really representative

00:22:00.820 of a lot of New Jersey.

00:22:02.880 You know, I don't remember too much other than that though.

00:22:05.380 You know, I was pretty little when they left.

00:22:06.540 Do you still have relatives out there?

00:22:07.900 Um, I have one uncle, well, two uncles that still live there.

00:22:13.360 You ever see them?

00:22:15.000 I haven't seen them in years.

00:22:17.480 Okay.

00:22:17.940 So New Jersey, mostly positive memories, do you think?

00:22:20.960 Or it's just, it's just, I mean, seven and below, that's pretty young.

00:22:24.720 So.

00:22:25.500 Well, it was a tumultuous time period for me.

00:22:28.280 My parents were, uh, always fighting and it just, it wasn't a good time.

00:22:33.640 So when we escaped New Jersey, it was a relief.

00:22:36.300 And that was also when your mom split up from your dad?

00:22:39.740 Yeah.

00:22:40.240 And do you, do you, do you, do you, are you in contact with your dad?

00:22:45.080 No, I haven't spoken to him since I was seven years old.

00:22:48.840 Is he still alive?

00:22:50.780 He's still alive.

00:22:52.120 And his name's Joe Rogan, which is even crazier.

00:22:55.800 Huh.

00:22:57.020 So you ever think about him?

00:22:59.460 No, no, not really.

00:23:01.660 No, no.

00:23:02.020 It's a long time ago.

00:23:02.900 Well, that's, huh.

00:23:04.120 Well, and do you remember what he was like to you?

00:23:07.720 He was nice to me.

00:23:09.440 He just wasn't very nice to my mother.

00:23:11.720 They had a very bad relationship.

00:23:14.400 Right.

00:23:15.280 Right.

00:23:16.280 Okay.

00:23:16.720 So you leave New Jersey and you go to California.

00:23:19.840 Yeah.

00:23:20.320 Where'd you live there?

00:23:21.220 We lived in San Francisco and that was an interesting time for me because it was during the Vietnam

00:23:28.040 War and it was sort of the height of the hippie movement.

00:23:32.500 Right.

00:23:32.860 And my stepdad was a hippie.

00:23:34.960 My father was a police officer in New Jersey.

00:23:38.000 Oh yeah.

00:23:38.420 So I went from being around a cop who was a pretty brutal guy to being around a long-haired hippie

00:23:46.020 who was all about peace and love and was an architecture student.

00:23:50.340 You know, it was a completely different sort of vibe.

00:23:53.380 Yeah.

00:23:53.760 Sounds like a completely different sort of vibe.

00:23:56.420 Yeah.

00:23:57.160 I was around a lot of gay folks.

00:23:59.160 Yeah.

00:23:59.360 I was around a lot of hippies, a lot of pot smokers, a lot of real open-minded thinkers and weirdos around

00:24:06.140 Haight-Ashbury and that sort of area.

00:24:08.740 We lived near Lombard Street.

00:24:10.960 It was real classic San Francisco in the 70s.

00:24:13.720 70s.

00:24:14.220 So yeah.

00:24:14.860 So let's see.

00:24:16.280 So you would have been, you said seven.

00:24:19.640 How?

00:24:20.480 I guess it was like 74.

00:24:21.900 74.

00:24:22.260 It was probably 74 because I was seven years old.

00:24:25.520 Right.

00:24:26.120 I was born in 67.

00:24:28.140 Yeah.

00:24:28.580 So you're five years.

00:24:29.520 I see.

00:24:29.880 You're five years younger than me.

00:24:31.120 So that places you there.

00:24:33.320 So yeah, it was still pretty hippie central.

00:24:36.140 Yeah.

00:24:36.600 It was pretty, it was pretty interesting.

00:24:38.900 And then I went from there to Florida, which was like a total polar opposite.

00:24:43.660 You know, that was the first time I'd ever heard anybody say the N word was in Florida

00:24:48.200 and I didn't know what it meant.

00:24:49.720 I had to ask my mother.

00:24:51.120 My mother got upset at me.

00:24:52.200 She thought I knew what it meant.

00:24:53.520 I was just playing games.

00:24:54.760 I was like, I don't know what it means.

00:24:56.260 I'm like, tell me what it means.

00:24:57.520 She said, it's a bad word for black people.

00:24:59.360 And I was like, wow, really?

00:25:02.180 I go, okay.

00:25:02.880 Florida because I was hearing it all the time.

00:25:05.640 I never heard it in San Francisco.

00:25:07.740 I literally didn't hear it until I was 13 years old or, excuse me, 11 years old.

00:25:12.920 And so, yeah.

00:25:13.580 So where did you move to Florida?

00:25:15.800 We moved to Gainesville, which is where the University of Florida was, where my stepdad was

00:25:21.600 going to get a, he was, he's studying architecture.

00:25:25.900 And then we eventually moved to Boston so he could go to the Boston Architectural Center.

00:25:30.020 That's why we wound up moving there.

00:25:32.320 And is your mom and your stepdad still together?

00:25:36.180 Yep.

00:25:36.520 Still together.

00:25:37.400 And do you see them?

00:25:38.800 All the time.

00:25:39.700 Yeah.

00:25:39.840 They have a great relationship.

00:25:41.120 It's really completely different.

00:25:43.180 They've been together forever.

00:25:44.780 They, they just, they get along fantastic.

00:25:46.840 And in many ways that sort of modeled my expectations for a real relationship.

00:25:53.000 You know, like I saw the worst and then I saw a really great one and I'm like, okay,

00:25:58.520 I want that, you know?

00:26:00.680 Yeah.

00:26:01.080 That's a good choice.

00:26:01.980 That's, that's, that shows some wisdom on your part.

00:26:04.040 Picking the second one rather than the first one, let's say.

00:26:07.160 Yeah.

00:26:08.100 Yeah.

00:26:08.480 Yeah.

00:26:08.720 And has that worked out?

00:26:09.720 Have you had good relationships?

00:26:11.700 Oh yeah.

00:26:12.160 Yeah.

00:26:12.480 I mean, my wife's awesome.

00:26:13.980 I get along with her.

00:26:14.900 Fantastic.

00:26:15.540 Yeah.

00:26:15.720 You've been married for how long?

00:26:17.300 Almost 10 years.

00:26:18.140 10 years.

00:26:18.600 And you have two girls or three?

00:26:20.440 I have three girls.

00:26:21.740 Three girls.

00:26:22.440 Right.

00:26:22.780 Yeah.

00:26:23.220 Two young ones and one adult one.

00:26:24.940 Right.

00:26:25.640 I remember on the special that I was referring to that you were bemoaning the fact that you

00:26:30.140 were absolutely saturated in a feminine environment.

00:26:33.640 Yeah.

00:26:34.300 Yeah.

00:26:34.640 It's interesting, man.

00:26:36.000 It's interesting, but I think it balances me out.

00:26:38.000 I think ultimately it's probably good for me.

00:26:39.940 Yeah.

00:26:40.160 You think it's interesting.

00:26:41.340 Now you wait till they hit teenagehood.

00:26:43.800 Yeah.

00:26:44.520 Then it'll be interesting.

00:26:45.680 All right.

00:26:46.720 Yeah, for sure.

00:26:48.500 Yeah.

00:26:48.760 I actually enjoyed having teenagers, you know, weirdly enough.

00:26:51.700 I mean, we had a good rule in our house with our kids brought their friends over to our

00:26:55.900 house a lot.

00:26:57.900 And it was funny because when they first came over, when my teenager's friends came over,

00:27:02.940 they were always afraid of me.

00:27:04.520 But after about a month of being there, you know, like getting to know the place a bit,

00:27:08.940 not staying there all the time, obviously, but getting a bit familiar with it, they ended

00:27:12.740 up being a lot more afraid of my wife.

00:27:14.860 So that was quite funny.

00:27:16.640 You know, she doesn't look like she doesn't look that dangerous on first impressions.

00:27:21.740 And she's kind of soft-spoken, but she's very unforgiving.

00:27:27.160 That might be one way of putting it.

00:27:29.340 And then we had a pretty good rule in our house with the teenage kids, which is, was,

00:27:34.180 it's a good one to know, which was, look, we're really happy you're here, you know.

00:27:38.100 But if you do something really stupid and we never, ever have to see you again, that

00:27:41.840 would actually be okay with us.

00:27:46.360 That's a good rule.

00:27:47.600 That's a very good rule.

00:27:48.340 It's a good rule.

00:27:49.260 Yeah.

00:27:49.360 Well, they also knew we meant it.

00:27:51.420 And so the kids could have their friends over, you know, and they could have a reasonable,

00:27:54.820 they could have a reasonable amount of fun or maybe even a slightly unreasonable amount

00:27:58.640 of fun, but they couldn't have an overwhelmingly unreasonable amount of fun.

00:28:03.760 That's a great way to put it.

00:28:06.280 Overwhelmingly unreasonable amount of fun is a great way to put it.

00:28:09.300 Yeah, that was too much, too much.

00:28:10.720 We had a good drug policy too, I think.

00:28:12.880 How'd that go?

00:28:13.900 I think it went well.

00:28:15.000 The rule was, look, I know perfectly well you're going to experiment.

00:28:20.260 They were going to an art school, you know, it's like...

00:28:22.740 Oh, for sure.

00:28:24.280 I think one of the majors was pot smoking and experimentation.

00:28:29.120 Like, there was just no way they weren't going to experiment.

00:28:32.200 And my rule was, I better not be able to tell because you're being too much of a fool.

00:28:38.660 So if you're going to experiment, you better handle it because otherwise you're pathetic.

00:28:43.040 And that seemed to be pretty good.

00:28:46.580 Well, that's, you know, because I thought, I already thought it through, you know,

00:28:49.780 because there's a literature on experimentation among adolescents,

00:28:55.960 both criminal experimentation, you know, delinquency, minor delinquency and that sort of thing,

00:29:00.820 and drug use.

00:29:01.480 And you get pathology at both ends.

00:29:04.260 The ones who are, you know, smoking pot every day and taking drugs on a regular basis,

00:29:09.220 their outcome's not so good.

00:29:10.540 But the ones who abstain completely and never experiment,

00:29:14.940 their outcome is also not so good.

00:29:16.620 They tend to be on the dependent, anxious end of the distribution.

00:29:20.500 And so, you know, you want your kids to, well, play with the rules a little bit.

00:29:27.360 But then I thought, well, what...

00:29:28.640 So, okay, you've got to play with the rules a little bit.

00:29:31.160 What are the rules about playing with the rules?

00:29:33.460 And one should be, try not to be a bigger fool than necessary.

00:29:37.320 That's a good one.

00:29:38.260 So, you're not compromising yourself in the present.

00:29:41.220 But the biggest issue, I think, really, and I think this is the fundamental rule for experimentation with adolescents,

00:29:48.220 is you don't get to screw up your future.

00:29:51.500 Yeah.

00:29:52.120 Right?

00:29:52.500 Because that's the killer.

00:29:54.940 Well, what I worry about more than anything is opioids.

00:29:58.000 I worry about those because people are dying from them.

00:30:03.760 Yeah.

00:30:03.900 You know, no one's dying from pot.

00:30:05.720 It's very rare that anybody is doing something so stupid that they put their life in danger from pot or mushrooms.

00:30:12.220 I'm worried about the ones that kill you.

00:30:15.300 You know, I mean, I worry about pills more than anything that my children might possibly face,

00:30:21.780 especially when I consider the fact that these opiate manufacturers, these opioid manufacturers,

00:30:28.240 they keep making these damn things stronger.

00:30:30.860 And I don't understand.

00:30:32.400 I mean, it's not like Oxycontin wasn't strong enough as it is, but now they have fentanyl.

00:30:36.760 And now they're coming up with things that are stronger than fentanyl.

00:30:39.260 It's disgusting.

00:30:40.380 Yeah.

00:30:40.600 Well, it's a weird arms race, eh?

00:30:42.260 Because, I mean, this is something that's really an unexpected consequence of the illegalization of drugs,

00:30:48.640 is that now we've generated all these chemists who are really good at making tiny variations on every psychoactive substance known.

00:30:56.360 And now instead of like 10 addictive substances you can get yourself into serious trouble with, there's 300.

00:31:04.780 Yeah.

00:31:05.220 That doesn't seem to be a big plus.

00:31:08.180 No, it doesn't.

00:31:09.940 It's disturbing and it's disgusting.

00:31:12.040 And, you know, they're finally starting to bring some of these guys to justice and they're arresting some of these people

00:31:17.140 and bringing them to court, some of these manufacturers.

00:31:21.180 They've been pushing this stuff down people's throats for years and incentivizing doctors to subscribe them.

00:31:27.960 Yeah, well, it's a tough one, man.

00:31:29.500 And like when my daughter was sick, when she was a kid, she was in extreme.

00:31:37.420 It's got to be agony is the right word, you know, for like two years about that because she was walking around on two broken legs.

00:31:44.200 You know her story a little bit.

00:31:46.200 And the physician at Sick Kids, which was the person who was dealing with her arthritis, would only prescribe her basically, you know, Anacin, you know, minor league over-the-counter painkillers,

00:31:59.920 which was like trying to kill a grizzly bear with a fly swatter.

00:32:04.080 It really wasn't the right tool for the job.

00:32:07.200 And we found a family doctor who had enough courage to prescribe her OxyContin.

00:32:13.180 That was no joke, you know, because the first couple of weeks she was on OxyContin.

00:32:18.560 It was really odd and rough because it was like she was drunk.

00:32:22.780 And so that was, well, that was weird socially, to say the least, and also rather frightening, but it did control her pain.

00:32:31.620 And we actually had them mix OxyContin with Ritalin, which is a strange combination, but a good one to know about because OxyContin sedates and Ritalin stimulates,

00:32:42.120 but the combination of the two are synergistic, so they can really control pain.

00:32:45.740 And so her pain was controlled enough so that it didn't drive her insane over about a two-year period.

00:32:52.640 And then once she got her operations and had her legs fixed, she went off the opiates and she went through the whole withdrawal shtick.

00:33:02.380 You know, she had like night sweats and she had ants crawling under her skin and like it was pretty brutal,

00:33:08.580 although she stopped cold turkey and never tried them again.

00:33:11.900 She hated them.

00:33:13.240 She said they just made her feel dead.

00:33:15.000 And it's funny, a lot of people, you know, a lot, you hear their horror stories that, you know,

00:33:19.480 if you try opiates once, you're pretty much screwed because they're so wonderful, but lots of people don't like them.

00:33:24.520 But there is a sizable minority of people, you know, who really liked them.

00:33:29.860 And then there is the danger that you described of overdose.

00:33:32.660 And that's, you know, that's a frightening thing.

00:33:35.640 Hopefully your kids aren't enough to stay mostly away from pills.

00:33:39.440 Yeah, hopefully.

00:33:40.120 You know, you got to worry about the influence of their friends and peer pressure.

00:33:44.140 Yeah, yeah, definitely.

00:33:46.400 Well, the terrible thing about teenagers, you know, is that everybody always says, well, why do you succumb to peer pressure when you're a teenager?

00:33:52.960 And the answer is, well, that's why you're a teenager.

00:33:56.500 You know, you're getting away from your family.

00:33:58.480 And you're even getting away from your, like, elementary school best friend.

00:34:02.740 And you're starting to join the broader social group.

00:34:05.600 And your job is to fit in.

00:34:07.680 Like, not to fit in so much that there's nothing left of you, you know, but your job is to fit in to the tribe, to the group, and to learn how to do that.

00:34:15.960 And, of course, the downside is, well, you're susceptible to peer pressure.

00:34:19.820 But it's hard to distinguish that from actually being properly socialized, you know.

00:34:25.140 The two things are very tightly aligned.

00:34:28.300 All right.

00:34:29.000 So you were in Florida.

00:34:30.540 And you learned some words that you didn't know.

00:34:34.560 And what was Florida like for you?

00:34:36.680 You were there only for a couple of years.

00:34:38.060 Yeah, Florida is a strange place.

00:34:40.120 I mean, I still have a love-hate relationship with Florida.

00:34:43.680 It's the land of the lost.

00:34:45.360 It's where people go to escape wherever they're from.

00:34:48.400 Billy Corbin, who's a documentary director, he directed Cocaine Cowboys and a bunch of other great documentaries.

00:34:57.580 He lives down in Florida.

00:34:59.720 And every time he and I talk, we just talk about how ridiculous Florida is.

00:35:05.200 And it's this place where people go to escape.

00:35:10.180 They go to escape from the brutal cold of the Northeast winter.

00:35:14.180 Or they go, oh, Jesus.

00:35:16.460 My phone is telling me that I'm running out of batteries.

00:35:19.220 I'm going to have to switch headsets and plug this in.

00:35:21.620 But it only took a second.

00:35:23.040 That should be fine.

00:35:24.340 But I just think that Florida is just like a uniquely stupid place.

00:35:29.840 It's a weird place.

00:35:31.040 You know, it's one of the things that's really struck me about the United States.

00:35:35.200 It's really different than Canada, for what that's worth.

00:35:38.460 It's not like Americans really care why the United States is different than Canada,

00:35:41.980 apart from the fact that it isn't like freezing cold six months of the year.

00:35:46.000 There's a lot of...

00:35:47.620 The U.S., it's like a movie set.

00:35:50.380 You know, so much of it is like it's manufactured to look like something else.

00:35:55.520 And Florida is really like that.

00:35:57.660 Yeah.

00:35:57.940 It's a very strange place to visit.

00:36:01.200 Because everything is...

00:36:02.640 Not in the old towns, but the beach towns are like that a lot.

00:36:06.420 There's some genuine old Florida, but most of it is...

00:36:09.680 It's manufactured fake utopia for exactly the sort of people that you're describing.

00:36:14.980 Yeah.

00:36:15.660 You know, that doesn't make it unbearable or anything.

00:36:18.000 I mean, the weather's nice and the beach is nice.

00:36:20.100 And, you know, there's worse places to live.

00:36:22.760 But there's something about it that's like a...

00:36:27.000 I don't know.

00:36:27.460 It's like a...

00:36:29.560 It's got this...

00:36:31.760 Well, obviously, it's like a resort.

00:36:33.580 But resorts have that sort of fake utopian element to them that is...

00:36:39.760 I don't know what it's like exactly.

00:36:41.860 It's kind of like a child fantasy or an adolescent fantasy.

00:36:44.920 Something like that.

00:36:46.240 You know?

00:36:46.720 It's what you think you want.

00:36:48.620 Yeah.

00:36:49.260 If you don't think about it very hard.

00:36:51.020 I always say that if you want to starve to death, open up a bookstore in Miami.

00:36:55.780 Right.

00:36:57.640 Right.

00:36:58.120 Like legitimately.

00:36:59.480 There's no reading going on down there.

00:37:02.200 It's just a strange place where people go to party and it's weird.

00:37:08.280 Right.

00:37:08.560 Now, I have to warn you that there is a beam of light shooting directly out of your head.

00:37:13.160 Oh, right here?

00:37:13.940 Yeah.

00:37:14.220 It's very impressive.

00:37:16.100 I'll move this around.

00:37:17.380 There we go.

00:37:18.580 Yeah, that's probably better because, you know...

00:37:20.340 I had to plug in because the power was dying on my phone.

00:37:25.220 I guess this video stuff sucks a lot of power out of your phone.

00:37:28.820 I guess so.

00:37:29.520 I guess so.

00:37:30.320 I mean, I didn't like the whole...

00:37:31.400 I didn't like the whole light thing shooting out of your head, but you never know.

00:37:35.300 You don't want to get any rumors started on the internet.

00:37:38.100 You know how easy that is.

00:37:39.500 Well, yeah.

00:37:40.560 You, amongst all people, know how easy that is.

00:37:44.240 Hey, I haven't been in this scandal for a whole week.

00:37:48.080 Well, this podcast is still young.

00:37:50.600 Yeah, fair enough.

00:37:51.620 Fair enough.

00:37:52.140 We might be able to cover something that'll cause trouble with any luck.

00:37:55.480 Yeah, you are, out of all the people that I'm friends with, you are probably the most misrepresented

00:38:00.760 friend that I have.

00:38:02.480 And I defend you quite often, and I don't get where people are coming from with you.

00:38:09.080 I don't understand their inability to listen to your words.

00:38:12.440 And instead, they try to generalize and formulate these distorted descriptions of who you are and

00:38:20.500 what you stand for.

00:38:21.420 And it's very strange to me.

00:38:23.060 And I don't know...

00:38:24.340 I mean, I kind of do know that you're challenging a lot of people's beliefs and the way they,

00:38:29.460 you know, they've structured these beliefs.

00:38:32.480 But it's very frustrating to me.

00:38:34.520 And I'm sure it must be way more frustrating for you.

00:38:36.860 Well, it's kind of...

00:38:38.000 It's kind of...

00:38:38.800 It's surreal to me because I was talking with my kids about this the other day.

00:38:44.920 You know, the way people think I am, especially if they read, you know,

00:38:50.140 the hit pieces that the journalists have written, and maybe even watch me in those interactions,

00:38:55.140 you know, they think I'm provocative, and they think I like combat and conflict.

00:38:59.200 And, you know, and I don't.

00:39:02.560 I'm not combat, actually.

00:39:04.120 And I really don't like conflict that much.

00:39:06.800 I go out of my way quite a bit to avoid it.

00:39:09.880 And, you know, I'm misogynist, except that almost all the people I've ever worked with in

00:39:15.160 my whole life have been women, and I've been in a women-dominated field.

00:39:18.200 And I never thought of myself as right-wing, that's for sure.

00:39:23.200 I mean, maybe now that the far left has gone completely off the deep end, it's like,

00:39:28.660 well, maybe I'd be classified as a conservative.

00:39:31.920 But that's mostly because, as a social scientist, I learned that you shouldn't conduct large-scale

00:39:37.600 experiments on huge swaths of the population and assume that your stupid idea is going to

00:39:42.140 work out correctly, because it won't.

00:39:44.160 You can't even get people to behave properly in a lab for, like, half an hour.

00:39:49.260 So how you think you're going to get a whole society to do what you want, you know, as a

00:39:53.920 consequence of passing a piece of legislation is beyond me.

00:39:57.240 But yeah, it's...

00:39:58.300 And here's something else that's weird.

00:39:59.900 You know, like, if you read the newspapers on this new...

00:40:04.300 You knew I got disinvited from Cambridge, Cambridge Divinity School.

00:40:08.440 I mean, what a thing to be disinvited from, a divinity school.

00:40:12.460 Christ, you have to be Satan himself to get disinvited from a divinity school.

00:40:16.860 And, well, it's so crazy.

00:40:19.980 You know, and I just wanted to go down there and learn some more about the biblical stories,

00:40:24.200 the Exodus stories.

00:40:25.080 That was the idea.

00:40:27.020 And then to get disinvited to have that would be a whole big scandal.

00:40:31.540 It was just like, what the hell, man?

00:40:34.700 It's quite the crazy situation.

00:40:38.680 And then, so you read about all this and you see this online and you'd think, God, his life

00:40:44.100 must just be hell because of all the controversy.

00:40:47.260 But then, when I go out in the streets or to my lectures or anywhere, it's completely different.

00:40:54.420 It's unbelievably different.

00:40:56.160 Like, so now if I walk down the street...

00:40:58.580 I mean, when you walk down the street, you must just get...

00:41:00.620 You just must get identified all the time, eh?

00:41:04.880 Yeah.

00:41:05.700 Like, if you go out in an hour, how many people will come up to you?

00:41:10.540 Depends where I go.

00:41:12.500 But if I'm in Hollywood, it's pretty crazy.

00:41:15.320 If I go around young people, if you see men and they have shaved heads and tattoos, it

00:41:21.660 gets nuts.

00:41:23.200 Those are my people.

00:41:24.800 Muscular men.

00:41:29.020 So if I go out, you know, and I'm walking down the street and it doesn't really matter

00:41:33.540 where, usually I get approached five or six times in an hour by people.

00:41:37.340 And, you know, they're always very polite and they're very apologetic and they are happy

00:41:44.180 about something they've read or listened to or whatever.

00:41:47.020 Or often they talk about our podcast.

00:41:49.140 That's pretty damn common.

00:41:50.480 That was common throughout Europe as well.

00:41:53.580 And, you know, they tell me about some dark part of their life and how they're doing much

00:41:57.360 better.

00:41:57.800 And, you know, how their friends have been watching my videos and are feeling better about

00:42:01.140 it.

00:42:01.320 And so it's just ridiculously positive.

00:42:03.960 Just all the time.

00:42:05.560 And then when I go to my lectures, it's the same thing.

00:42:09.920 Yeah.

00:42:10.420 It's like crazily positive.

00:42:12.440 So, you know, we've had 350,000 people at the lectures so far and there hasn't been one

00:42:19.720 negative occurrence.

00:42:22.000 We had one heckler once who was rapidly escorted from the building and he knew he was going to

00:42:26.840 get escorted.

00:42:27.440 So he was kind of a cooperative heckler, but like no one's coming there with anything negative

00:42:34.020 on their mind.

00:42:35.120 They're there to listen to a psychological lecture and to have a deep discussion and to

00:42:39.220 try to get their act together.

00:42:40.580 And the goddamn journalists, they just don't seem to be able to fathom that.

00:42:44.420 Like they've got this false cynicism or maybe real cynicism that makes it absolutely impossible

00:42:49.580 for them to believe that, you know, tens of thousands of people could actually be serious

00:42:55.720 about improving their life and that I could be having events that were basically 100%

00:43:02.360 positive.

00:43:03.540 And so online, I'm a bloody monster.

00:43:06.100 You know, I'm a misogynist and a racist and a transphobe and what else am I?

00:43:10.940 I'm a homophobe and a Nazi lots of times and sometimes a Jewish shill and well, there's

00:43:19.520 a bunch of other things too.

00:43:21.280 What disturbed me about you is when they pulled your books out of New Zealand.

00:43:24.040 When a New Zealand bookstore decided to pull your books because of the Christchurch massacre,

00:43:29.680 like what does a book on self-improvement and taking responsibility, what does that have

00:43:36.000 to do with a horrific mass murder?

00:43:38.760 I mean, the idea that they connected those two together and that they decided that in

00:43:43.860 some way or shape your words of encouragement and recognizing the importance of discipline

00:43:51.400 and of taking responsibility and self-reliance, that those things, your book somehow or another

00:43:57.980 had something to do with someone doing something as awful as what happened at Christchurch.

00:44:02.620 It's so distorted.

00:44:04.120 And that's like the perfect example that I cite when I say, like, think about the fact

00:44:09.400 that this guy's book was removed right after something had taken place that had literally

00:44:16.040 nothing to do with anything you've ever said ever.

00:44:19.420 Yeah, well, they kind of got their comeuppance in some ways because people started to point

00:44:26.260 out that they were still carrying Mein Kampf.

00:44:28.500 Oh, God.

00:44:29.080 So that turned out to be a problem.

00:44:30.760 And then they were also carrying a book that showed you how to turn a semi-automatic into

00:44:35.940 a fully automatic.

00:44:37.000 And so, you know, you've got to be careful when you go after someone for their sins that

00:44:42.520 you don't have a few sins of your own, like, lying around where people can, you know, sort

00:44:46.560 of observe them.

00:44:47.740 Anyways, they did reverse that decision, but...

00:44:50.780 That's good.

00:44:51.740 Yeah, yeah, that was good.

00:44:53.160 But it is, it's very weird.

00:44:55.260 It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a...

00:44:57.160 And I'm going to the UK here right away.

00:44:59.220 Now we're talking about me and we weren't supposed to be, but I'm going to the UK right

00:45:02.880 away because the paperback is launching there.

00:45:04.700 And so I'm going to be talking to journalists and talking to UK journalists, man, that's

00:45:09.540 like jumping into a tub of, well, not full grown crocodiles, but, you know, like five

00:45:15.440 footers anyways.

00:45:17.760 So what you're trying to say is...

00:45:20.700 Yeah, they're pretty snappy.

00:45:22.620 So I've got some trepidation about that.

00:45:26.520 But so it's a funny, it's a funny life to, it's a very peculiar life to be involved in.

00:45:30.920 And I'm not exactly ever sure what to make of it on a day to day basis.

00:45:34.700 But it does give me a chance to talk to you.

00:45:37.240 So that's...

00:45:37.700 What's most peculiar for you is that you were not famous for most of your adult life.

00:45:43.700 And then over the last four years, you've been catapulted and become one of the most

00:45:49.380 famous, if not the most famous, psychologists on the planet Earth.

00:45:53.140 Yes, it's very disconcerting.

00:45:55.320 It's hard to get it.

00:45:56.160 It's actually rather hard to adjust to that.

00:45:58.600 I mean, maybe it's a function of age.

00:46:00.560 I found, you know, when I was younger, and I used to move from place to place, take

00:46:05.540 me about a year to adapt.

00:46:07.180 But I also noticed that as I got older, every time I moved, it took me longer to adapt.

00:46:12.860 By the time you're 56, you know, if you know someone for 10 years, it's like you feel like

00:46:17.480 you're just starting to get to know them a bit.

00:46:19.880 You know, when you're 17, you have a roommate for six months, and it's like your best friends

00:46:23.600 for the rest of your life.

00:46:25.380 So it is a very difficult thing to adapt to.

00:46:28.100 I can't, I can't, I can't really wrap my mind around it.

00:46:32.600 And I guess it's also partly because it's true no matter where I go.

00:46:36.880 Like, I went to Slovenia, you know, and it's, everybody speaks English in Slovenia, by the

00:46:42.600 way.

00:46:43.000 And you are a big hit in Slovenia.

00:46:44.920 I don't know if you know this, but I, I, it looks to me like the podcast YouTube world

00:46:50.620 has even more impact in places where the press is not very reliable.

00:46:56.800 And so, like everybody knew about our, everybody knew about our interviews and our podcasts.

00:47:02.360 And so I was stopped in Slovenia constantly, which is, that was a real shock too.

00:47:08.260 So, but again, so the shock is, and this is the weird thing about YouTube and about podcasts

00:47:12.660 is that it's not, it's just not one country or two countries.

00:47:16.780 It's like every damn country.

00:47:18.940 And so it's, but I'm, I'm really fortunate, really fortunate because like I said, all the

00:47:25.640 public encounters I have are, are extremely positive.

00:47:29.740 They're hard to cope with though, you know, in some sense, because people are always, they

00:47:33.680 always tell me a serious story.

00:47:36.000 You know, they say I was in some sort of hell of some sort six months ago, too much drugs or

00:47:42.040 alcohol or bad relationship or not getting along with my family or underemployed or nihilistic

00:47:47.320 or depressed, whatever, you know, like whatever little corner of hell they have to occupy.

00:47:52.260 And they've been practicing something like maybe developing a vision for their life or

00:47:57.920 trying to live a more meaningful life or taking more responsibility or, or like really making

00:48:02.660 an effort to pull their families together.

00:48:04.340 And to, and to, to advance at work regardless of what their job is and, and it's working.

00:48:10.780 And so they're always like shell shocked that it's working and thrilled to death, but it's

00:48:14.840 so strange to have these intense 20 second, 30 second conversations with people about really

00:48:22.620 deep elements of their life.

00:48:24.440 And then, you know, it's, it's a shock.

00:48:27.100 And then you walked along the street and it's a normal day.

00:48:30.140 And then someone else comes up and does the same thing.

00:48:32.340 It's like, I don't know what to do with it emotionally.

00:48:35.300 It's, it's because maybe, you know, someone might tell you that, I don't know, maybe they

00:48:40.780 tell you that something, if you're, if you've been helping them, maybe they tell you that

00:48:44.180 once a year, once every five years or something, but to have it happen all the time is,

00:48:49.900 it's, I don't know, it, I think it fills me with a kind of sorrow.

00:48:53.980 Like I'm really happy that it's happening and everything, but there's still something

00:48:58.120 about it that's deeply and, and, and deeply moving and difficult to adjust to.

00:49:06.460 The sorrow because so many people are struggling out there and that you're encountering all

00:49:11.980 these folks?

00:49:12.420 Well, the sorrow is that there's so many people struggling out there and they don't have this

00:49:18.720 sort of, they, they have so little support that my lectures and podcasts in the book

00:49:24.380 were what was necessary to help them straighten themselves out.

00:49:28.780 It's like, you know, you just can't imagine how many people out there haven't heard an encouraging

00:49:33.600 word.

00:49:34.480 Yeah.

00:49:34.980 You know, it's like they're home on the, what's the old song and home on the range.

00:49:38.820 Yeah.

00:49:39.440 Except that's where you don't hear a discouraging word.

00:49:41.760 Well, these people have never heard an encouraging word.

00:49:43.860 And that's, it's sad to see how common that is and how little it takes to turn that around.

00:49:51.920 And it's so fun out in the lectures because, you know, a lot of the people in my lectures

00:49:56.240 are, Greg, they're the same people you were talking about that stopped you in Hollywood.

00:50:00.400 You know, they're kind of rough working class guys.

00:50:03.060 That'd be about 30% of my audience, I would think, you know, and they're not the sort of

00:50:07.040 people that you would stereotypically presume would come to an hour and a half lecture on,

00:50:11.900 you know, philosophy and psychology.

00:50:14.200 But man, they're listening.

00:50:15.640 They're listening like mad.

00:50:17.460 And it's so fun and interesting to watch them think it through and to, and to take this

00:50:23.820 seriously.

00:50:24.240 And, you know, and they come up afterwards and they say, you know, I've been watching your

00:50:27.640 lectures and I'm a much better husband or I'm a much better father.

00:50:30.540 And sometimes they have their girlfriend or wife with them and she says the same thing.

00:50:34.260 And, you know, it's really nice, man.

00:50:38.140 Yeah.

00:50:38.720 It's really something.

00:50:39.400 Well, you really are making a giant impact.

00:50:42.780 And it's only understandable that it would be difficult for you to wrap your head around

00:50:45.980 what this is.

00:50:47.900 And it's not something that very few human beings ever get to experience.

00:50:52.760 A very, very, very tiny percentage of our population worldwide is ever put in a position

00:50:59.820 like you're put into.

00:51:01.400 So let's look at your position.

00:51:04.040 I mean, I asked you this at one time.

00:51:05.840 So last time we talked, I think you were getting some hundred million downloads a month on your

00:51:11.200 podcast.

00:51:12.200 Yeah.

00:51:12.440 What are your figures?

00:51:13.320 If you don't mind, what are your figures?

00:51:15.540 It's probably double that.

00:51:16.520 Double that.

00:51:17.240 Jesus Christ.

00:51:18.300 That's just unbelievable.

00:51:19.480 Yeah.

00:51:19.680 It's crazy.

00:51:20.800 Especially with YouTube, with YouTube and all the YouTube clips.

00:51:24.340 And it's, it's, it's, it's actually probably more than that.

00:51:27.540 It's nuts.

00:51:28.320 I, it's gotten to the point where I try to pay as little attention to the numbers as possible

00:51:34.940 and just concentrate on doing the show.

00:51:37.180 Because I think if I pay attention to it too much, excuse me, I think if I pay attention

00:51:41.820 to it too much, I might lose my mind.

00:51:43.700 I mean, it's just, it's, it's untenable.

00:51:46.340 That's just the sheer volume of human beings.

00:51:49.360 When you, if you, if you were ever on a stage and you were looking out at 300 million people,

00:51:55.740 what would that look like?

00:51:57.440 I mean, it's not 300 million people because it's 300 million downloads in a month, but the

00:52:02.440 real number of human beings you're interacting with.

00:52:05.980 I mean, I don't know what that is, but it's 50 million people.

00:52:09.120 I don't know how many actual million people are listening to the show or watching the show

00:52:13.680 on a regular basis, but it's an unmanageable number in terms of like reading comments or

00:52:19.640 trying to pay attention to what they want or what they don't want.

00:52:23.680 It's a, it's very strange.

00:52:26.220 Yes.

00:52:26.620 It's a very weird, it's very weird position to be in.

00:52:29.180 There's no doubt.

00:52:29.820 And the strange thing is too, is that, well, we've talked about this before too.

00:52:34.420 Like this is early days, right?

00:52:35.980 I mean, this has only been happening for about, how long have you been doing your YouTube

00:52:41.140 videos?

00:52:42.660 The YouTube videos are only a few years.

00:52:44.940 So I think it's only three or four years.

00:52:47.120 The podcast will be 10 years in December.

00:52:51.180 Right.

00:52:51.660 Okay.

00:52:51.900 So 10 years, that's starting to become a decent chunk of life, but three or four years,

00:52:55.700 that's still new.

00:52:56.920 Yeah.

00:52:57.260 And I mean, the podcast market and the YouTube market are still, they're brand new technologies

00:53:02.340 fundamentally.

00:53:04.040 Yeah.

00:53:04.580 Fundamentally.

00:53:05.140 And now you're seeing corporations trying to capitalize on it.

00:53:08.140 And, you know, I've started to get these very bizarre offers to make my podcast exclusive

00:53:12.900 on this platform or that platform.

00:53:14.980 And, you know, these, these companies are, they're throwing crazy amounts of money around

00:53:20.080 that podcast, like networks, hundreds of millions of dollars to buy podcast networks.

00:53:26.720 So it's, it's, it's becoming very, very strange because what was a joke five or six years ago,

00:53:33.260 literally like, why are you wasting your time doing a podcast?

00:53:35.960 I used to hear that all the time.

00:53:37.880 Now it's, how did you do this?

00:53:39.780 How did you make this podcast so popular?

00:53:41.920 I get a totally different question very quickly.

00:53:44.500 Yeah.

00:53:44.700 Well, it's so, well, it's so strange because so many people have, nobody realized that there

00:53:50.920 was a, an audience for on-demand audio and you see the same thing.

00:53:55.540 Not only that, but not just on-demand audio, but long form conversation.

00:54:00.780 Yeah.

00:54:01.100 One of the, I mean, even my friend Ari, who's one of my best friends would always tell me,

00:54:05.400 you got to edit your shows.

00:54:06.660 Nobody wants to listen to anything that's three hours long.

00:54:09.300 So I'd say, well, then they don't have to listen.

00:54:11.800 And he's like, ah, you like, you're, you're doing yourself a disservice.

00:54:14.840 And I'm like, I don't think I am.

00:54:16.860 Like, why not?

00:54:17.880 If someone only has an hour, then listen to it for an hour.

00:54:21.160 Like, you're not going to, I mean, you might miss out some information, but it's not going

00:54:24.480 to change your life.

00:54:25.200 Like do whatever you want to do.

00:54:26.720 But I like talking to people for long periods of time because I think you really only get cooking

00:54:32.380 after like the first half hour, 40 minutes.

00:54:35.400 That's when you get comfortable.

00:54:37.080 You sort of get into a groove of communication, you know, figuring out this person's rhythm

00:54:43.460 and thought processes.

00:54:44.920 And it, you, and then as you expand on these ideas and you share information back and forth

00:54:51.440 with each other after an hour, an hour and a half, two hours, that's when things really

00:54:55.260 start getting deep.

00:54:56.180 And oftentimes the last hour of a three hour podcast is the best hour.

00:55:00.740 Yeah.

00:55:00.940 Well, that intuition was certainly right.

00:55:03.020 And revolutionary.

00:55:04.860 You never know when you come up with a revolutionary idea.

00:55:08.200 Yeah.

00:55:08.580 I mean, part of my revolutionary idea is just me being stubborn.

00:55:11.960 Just like I didn't care.

00:55:13.300 I wasn't doing it for money.

00:55:14.900 So the only reason why I was doing it was because I enjoyed talking to people like you

00:55:18.560 or many of my other guests.

00:55:20.320 I want to talk to, it's a very rare opportunity where I would get a chance to sit down with

00:55:25.920 someone like you with no distractions, no other people in the room, no cell phones, and

00:55:30.480 just talk for three hours.

00:55:32.660 That's so unusual in our world and our constantly distracted world.

00:55:36.900 And I think I've gotten a fantastic education because of that.

00:55:41.100 I mean, it's really enlightened me on so many different subjects and expanded my understanding

00:55:46.280 of people in general.

00:55:48.600 And conspiracy theories.

00:55:50.040 I mean, man, you're up on those.

00:55:53.380 I've got some of those too.

00:55:54.980 Yeah.

00:55:55.200 So that's important to be up on the conspiracy theories just to keep track of the damn things.

00:56:00.260 Well, you got to know what people think of you.

00:56:02.460 You know, I've been lately, I'm a Zionist shill.

00:56:05.280 This is the most recent one.

00:56:07.740 I didn't know it was a Zionist shill.

00:56:09.340 Oh, yeah, you're a Zionist shill.

00:56:11.680 Yeah.

00:56:12.100 I'm a white supremacist too, depending on who you ask.

00:56:15.060 Yeah.

00:56:15.460 Yeah.

00:56:15.680 Well, I've got those two things as well.

00:56:18.020 So it's like, it's real interesting to be able to juggle both of those identities.

00:56:22.960 It's like, yeah, good luck with that.

00:56:24.460 Zionist shill one day, white supremacist the next.

00:56:27.660 It's sort of like being gender fluid, except on the political spectrum.

00:56:31.640 Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.

00:56:33.560 Yeah.

00:56:34.120 Why do you have to be conservative or Democrat?

00:56:36.560 You know, sometimes you're one and sometimes you're the other.

00:56:39.340 It depends on the day.

00:56:40.280 And there's no reason to extend that like all the way out to the edges, you know.

00:56:45.400 Yeah, gender fluid is my favorite.

00:56:47.120 That's my favorite thing that's going on right now, where someone could be like a woman for

00:56:51.000 a few hours and then be a man for the next six.

00:56:53.760 You know, I read.

00:56:54.800 Back and forth.

00:56:55.400 I read, although I don't know if this is true, but I read it several places and I actually

00:57:01.540 looked.

00:57:02.380 I read that the Olympic Committee is going to let trans people compete in the Olympics

00:57:09.860 in the next competition.

00:57:11.520 I'm not surprised because the Olympic, the IOC, the Olympic Committee is incredibly corrupt.

00:57:19.560 And I think what they do, first of all, is disgraceful.

00:57:23.660 They make billions of dollars.

00:57:25.460 The athletes make zero.

00:57:27.020 I think it's disgusting.

00:57:28.420 I think everything about what they do is corrupt.

00:57:31.120 And the idea that they're there for fair and pure competition is nonsense.

00:57:38.000 They're there to make shitloads of money.

00:57:40.220 And that's what they're good at.

00:57:41.480 And what they're good at doing is putting on these gigantic events where they profit in

00:57:46.420 spectacular and staggering ways.

00:57:49.400 And the athletes dedicate their entire life to these moments.

00:57:53.540 And they literally make nothing.

00:57:54.980 And then after that, if they're lucky, if they're very famous and popular, they can eke out a

00:58:01.160 living with endorsements.

00:58:03.500 Right.

00:58:03.680 Or, you know, for the rare person like Michael Phelps or someone like that, who's just a

00:58:07.600 true outlier, they can actually get wealthy from it.

00:58:10.300 But it's very, very rare.

00:58:12.120 Most of those athletes will be in severe debt.

00:58:15.380 Most of those athletes either have to get sponsored or they have to find someone who is

00:58:21.420 willing to share the burden and help them achieve their goals.

00:58:26.940 But without some sort of altruistic benefactor who's got millions of dollars to pour into

00:58:33.880 their camp.

00:58:34.880 I mean, it's just, it's disgusting.

00:58:37.720 They're professional athletes.

00:58:39.440 I mean, that's what they do with their entire life.

00:58:41.220 If you want to win a gold medal in the Olympics in gymnastics, you can't have a side job.

00:58:45.840 You can't be working eight hours a day.

00:58:47.900 No, you have to be a professional athlete.

00:58:50.540 And the Olympic Committee knows this.

00:58:53.600 And if you've ever paid attention to how they've let people get away with cheating.

00:59:00.820 I mean, there's a fantastic documentary out right now by Brian Fogle called Icarus.

00:59:06.780 And it's all about the Sochi Olympics and how Russia cheated in the Sochi Olympics.

00:59:12.460 And the IOC barely punished them.

00:59:15.780 They punished a few people and how the IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency all, they have

00:59:22.300 people from each, they have, from each organization, they share, like they go back and forth.

00:59:28.260 They work for one and they work for the other.

00:59:30.420 And they're totally in conflict.

00:59:32.500 It's a total conflict of interest.

00:59:34.600 And it's a dirty business.

00:59:36.920 So if the tide of political perception is that it's a good progressive thing to have trans women competing in the UFC, or not in the UFC, I shouldn't say the UFC, because that'll never happen.

00:59:49.500 But trans women competing in the Olympics, and that this was what everybody wanted, they would

00:59:55.700 just do it.

00:59:56.380 They would do it regardless of whether or not it's fair, regardless of whether or not it made

01:00:00.020 sense.

01:00:00.440 And they would do it just to get more eyes on the show, just to get more money.

01:00:04.680 And that's what they're there for.

01:00:06.020 That's what they're good at.

01:00:06.900 It's going to be fascinating to see how all that plays out, because it's so absurd.

01:00:09.940 I was looking, I looked up some stats the other day, because I was curious, you know, it's

01:00:13.860 like, okay, I know that all the differences between men and women are socially constructed.

01:00:18.900 But nonetheless, I went and looked up the biological comparison of strength, you know, and the

01:00:24.320 typical woman has 30% of the upper body strength of the typical man, and about 55% of the lower

01:00:31.320 body strength.

01:00:32.680 Now that's like, that's a big difference, man.

01:00:34.780 That makes the average man three times as strong in the upper body.

01:00:38.640 Jesus, that gives you an advantage that's just, well, it's criminal.

01:00:43.440 Well, it is.

01:00:44.320 But the question is, how much do you lose from the conversion?

01:00:48.380 How much do you lose from estrogen?

01:00:50.220 You lose some.

01:00:51.120 But if a woman say, look, if you have an athlete who's a woman who's 32 years old, and it turns

01:00:56.660 out that she's been taking steroids her entire adult life.

01:01:01.000 So she's been taking steroids for 12 years every day, and then decides to stop taking them

01:01:06.500 right before the Olympics.

01:01:07.680 Wouldn't everybody agree that she has a massive advantage?

01:01:12.040 Wouldn't everybody agree that most likely her tendon strength, her muscle strength, her

01:01:16.840 bone structure, all of that has been completely altered by taking performance-enhancing drugs?

01:01:24.520 We would all agree to that.

01:01:25.900 Well, guess what?

01:01:27.000 That's what you're doing if you're a man for 30 years, and then you decide to transition

01:01:31.820 and become a woman for two, even if you're taking estrogen, even if you go through this.

01:01:36.960 One thing I don't understand is, apart from the obvious unfairness of that, what I struggle

01:01:45.380 with understanding is the triumphalism of the victors.

01:01:50.440 It's like they enter these contests, and then they win, and then they celebrate their victory

01:01:57.240 as if it's a genuine victory, despite the fact that they've wiped out these women who've

01:02:02.060 been working mostly within the rules for maybe not decades, but certainly many, many years

01:02:10.380 in succession.

01:02:11.040 And they just blow them away, especially in, like, strength contests.

01:02:15.480 And then they actually treat that like they won, and then they also claim it as a moral

01:02:21.220 victory.

01:02:22.440 You know, and for me, that's just, the only thing I see in that is a narcissism that's

01:02:28.740 so deep that it's almost unfathomable.

01:02:31.040 It's like, how can you take pride in that sort of victory unless you don't see who it is

01:02:38.260 that you're defeating?

01:02:39.180 I don't get it.

01:02:42.020 Well, it shows how pathological this whole thing really is when you're dealing with the

01:02:50.840 idea that you can turn a person into someone of the opposite gender, not just recognize

01:02:58.040 them as being a woman and treat them as a woman and allow them to use whatever name they

01:03:04.000 would like.

01:03:04.520 I'm all for that.

01:03:05.520 But it's that you are going to say, no, this is a woman, and she should be able to compete

01:03:11.160 with women, including in combat sports, rugby.

01:03:14.760 There's a male to female trans athlete that plays rugby in Australia that's 240 pounds and

01:03:23.360 just smashing women.

01:03:24.980 And I don't think there's any real standards that are universal in terms of, like, what do

01:03:29.300 you have to go through in terms of your conversion therapy?

01:03:32.220 And what about size differences when you're dealing with high-impact sports?

01:03:38.220 No, because that's a political minefield.

01:03:40.540 Like, the radical end of it is, well, you're the gender that you say you are, and the medical

01:03:46.740 conversion is irrelevant.

01:03:47.880 And I don't know how that translates into the sports world, but my sense is that if the

01:03:52.620 same thing happens in the sports world that's happened in the political world, that it will

01:03:57.360 be basically indistinguishable from whim.

01:04:01.720 It's like, well, now I'm a woman.

01:04:04.540 Yeah, I had a guy on my podcast recently, and this came up, and it was a big argument.

01:04:09.280 And essentially, his stance was, he is all for inclusiveness, and he wants, he would like

01:04:18.200 to move towards a world where trans athletes can compete, and they're included, and they

01:04:24.040 can compete as women.

01:04:25.380 And I was trying to explain the benefits of being a male, the physical benefits of being

01:04:32.140 a male and competing against women.

01:04:33.920 And, you know, he just didn't want to hear it.

01:04:36.600 It was just in denial of it.

01:04:38.240 It was going against these preconceived notions that he had, and that this, and the ideology.

01:04:46.020 There's a part of progressive ideology that is, you're supposed to look at a trans woman

01:04:51.160 as every bit a woman.

01:04:53.380 Yeah, well, that's because you're supposed to accept the doctrine that all differences

01:04:58.460 between men and women are socially constructed, which is, of course, a doctrine that's

01:05:03.900 I think, it's delusional.

01:05:07.020 Yeah, it's nonsense.

01:05:07.460 And it's delusional for some even deeper reason that's even harder to fathom.

01:05:12.920 I don't know what it is.

01:05:14.240 Yeah, it is hard to fathom.

01:05:15.640 I don't understand the root of it.

01:05:18.140 I really don't.

01:05:19.300 Even when I talk to people who subscribe to these notions, I don't understand the logic.

01:05:26.180 I don't understand where's the breakdown in their perception of the world where they

01:05:30.900 don't see.

01:05:32.120 And another thing that we got into.

01:05:33.240 Some of it.

01:05:34.060 Go ahead, please.

01:05:34.860 Oh, go ahead.

01:05:35.740 No, I was saying another thing that we got into was children transitioning.

01:05:40.320 Oh, yeah.

01:05:40.720 And then he was in the form.

01:05:42.140 I keep hearing this.

01:05:43.680 This is something that I keep hearing that's driving me mad.

01:05:46.440 That hormone blockers, that these puberty blockers are reversible.

01:05:51.680 They keep saying that they're harmless.

01:05:53.820 They're reversible.

01:05:54.600 If the child changes their mind, they could always just get off the bar and the results

01:05:59.300 are reversible.

01:06:00.280 That's not true.

01:06:01.860 You're affecting the development of a child.

01:06:04.900 If you're using these hormone blockers, you are changing the way the child is going to

01:06:09.680 develop because they're not going to have testosterone the way a normal boy would if they're transitioning

01:06:13.980 from male to female.

01:06:15.580 If you're doing this to a six-year-old kid, the notion that this is completely reversible

01:06:20.940 is completely disingenuous because that child is not going to go through the same developmental

01:06:25.720 period physically as they would if they had access to testosterone.

01:06:30.000 They're just not.

01:06:31.440 It's just not true.

01:06:32.560 It's not true if you talk to medical doctors.

01:06:34.940 It's not true if you talk to a biologist.

01:06:37.980 It's just not true.

01:06:39.620 And it's something that they use to try to justify the, in air quotes, harmlessness of

01:06:45.660 this particular type of therapy that they're encouraging.

01:06:47.860 And it's just to say that there's nothing wrong with being trans.

01:06:53.240 And I don't think there is anything wrong with being trans.

01:06:55.260 But I think there is something wrong with making decisions for a child or allowing a child to

01:07:00.100 make decisions that will massively impact them for the rest of their life and to make

01:07:05.900 that decision when you're six.

01:07:07.580 Like I could only imagine if I was a person who had gone through that and then having this

01:07:12.020 conversation with my parents going, why the fuck did you let me make that decision at

01:07:16.540 six years old?

01:07:17.400 Well, it's going to be really interesting to see that play itself out in the courts in

01:07:21.360 about 12 years.

01:07:22.460 Oh, it's going to be ugly.

01:07:23.660 It's going to be ugly.

01:07:24.520 It's going to be ugly, man.

01:07:26.020 Because, yeah, you don't let your damn six-year-old get a tattoo.

01:07:31.980 Right.

01:07:32.480 Exactly.

01:07:33.280 I mean, a tattoo is fairly reversible.

01:07:36.060 The whole thing about it is nonsense.

01:07:38.580 And it's this whole progressive ideology that they're subscribing to.

01:07:44.500 And there's a doctrine, like you have to, there's all these different things that you

01:07:48.860 have to subscribe to if you want to accept that ideology.

01:07:52.460 And this is one of them.

01:07:53.320 Yeah.

01:07:53.800 Little gods that you have to worship.

01:07:55.720 Yeah, yeah.

01:07:56.440 Yes.

01:07:57.080 Trans children.

01:07:57.760 You can't say, yeah, that is problematic.

01:08:00.900 You're not allowed to say that.

01:08:02.600 You can't even entertain the notion that this could be a particularly egregious offense on

01:08:09.000 a child if they decided that was a bad idea when they become 18 or 19.

01:08:13.560 If the primary idea is that our society is an oppressive patriarchy, and I think that's

01:08:19.360 like number one idea, then anything that touches on that in any way immediately becomes untouchable.

01:08:25.580 And so in order for the adults to make the decision, then you have to believe in authority

01:08:31.660 because the adults have the authority.

01:08:33.640 And if you're going to believe that the adults have the authority, then you have to believe

01:08:36.880 that hierarchy has some value.

01:08:38.600 And then that tangles you up with your insistence that hierarchy is definitely oppressive, and

01:08:45.580 especially the Western form of hierarchy.

01:08:47.920 And so I think that central axiom is so vital that anything that gets near it gets twisted

01:08:55.180 and bent like it's too close to a gravitational field, and the logic is irrelevant because

01:09:00.100 that fundamental central issue has to be supported at all costs.

01:09:06.040 Well, this is one of the conundrums of our conversation.

01:09:08.640 We came to this one point where I said, now, if a child identifies as a girl, I said, why not

01:09:16.880 just let them be a girl?

01:09:18.600 Why do you have to fuck with their hormones?

01:09:21.300 Why do you have to chemically engage with their body?

01:09:24.780 Yeah, if it's all nonsense.

01:09:26.540 I mean, this is my take on all of this.

01:09:28.900 Like, just be a girl.

01:09:30.800 Anything where you need medical science to consistently, yeah, right?

01:09:35.680 Anything where you need medical science to consistently inject chemicals into your body

01:09:40.620 that are going to alter your hormones irreversibly at a very young age.

01:09:44.520 Like, why is that natural?

01:09:47.900 Why are you saying this is what this person biologically or psychologically needs?

01:09:54.940 Are you sure?

01:09:56.120 This seems like something that human beings have constructed.

01:09:58.300 Well, it's particularly damn weird if you insist that gender is a social construct.

01:10:02.920 Yes.

01:10:03.300 Like, if it's a social construct, then what the hell are the hormones for?

01:10:07.320 Exactly.

01:10:08.000 That was my point.

01:10:09.060 Yeah.

01:10:09.260 And he didn't have an answer to that.

01:10:10.340 No, no, that's a rough one, man.

01:10:13.000 That's...

01:10:13.240 Yeah.

01:10:13.600 Okay, so we're going to go back to Boston.

01:10:16.300 Okay.

01:10:17.420 Okay.

01:10:18.160 If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up Dad's books,

01:10:21.920 Maps of Meaning, The Architecture of Belief, or his newer bestseller,

01:10:25.220 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos.

01:10:27.840 Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

01:10:32.860 See jordanbpeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links,

01:10:36.880 or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller.

01:10:39.160 We'll get to Joe's time in Boston next week, along with how he got into martial arts,

01:10:43.800 insecurities as a young teen, his odd jobs, kind of a more personal look at Joe's life.

01:10:49.060 He delves into his experiences teaching martial arts, how he got into stand-up comedy,

01:10:53.640 his many surgical procedures, something I can relate to.

01:10:57.040 Next week's episode will be a great finish to their conversation.

01:11:00.280 Talk to you guys then.

01:11:01.320 Hope you enjoyed.

01:11:02.480 Follow me on my YouTube channel, Jordan B. Peterson,

01:11:05.660 on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson,

01:11:08.620 on Facebook, at Dr. Jordan B. Peterson,

01:11:11.860 and at Instagram, at jordan.b.peterson.

01:11:15.340 Details on this show, access to my blog,

01:11:18.900 information about my tour dates and other events,

01:11:21.620 and my list of recommended books,

01:11:23.800 can be found on my website, jordanbpeterson.com.

01:11:27.500 My online writing programs,

01:11:29.540 designed to help people straighten out their pasts,

01:11:32.100 understand themselves in the present,

01:11:34.360 and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future,

01:11:37.680 can be found at selfauthoring.com.

01:11:40.440 That's selfauthoring.com.

01:11:43.660 From the Westwood One Podcast Network.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 02, 2019

Who is Joe Rogan？ Part One

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