Ep. 413 - The Significance Of Celebrity Deaths
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Summary
Kobe Bryant and his daughter were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday. Why do we care so much about celebrity deaths? And why do we react so badly to the news of them? Plus, why did the media cover it so badly?
Transcript
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Well, thank you for being here, everybody. Welcome to the show. I hope your weekend was well spent.
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We start today with the big news of the weekend, the terribly sad news, of course, of NBA legend
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Kobe Bryant dying at the age of 41 alongside eight other people, which we shouldn't forget
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to include, including his teenage daughter, Gianna, in a helicopter crash on Sunday. They were,
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as I understand it, on their way to a travel basketball game. He was bringing his daughter
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to her game, and the helicopter crashed. According to investigators today, the latest is that
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they're saying it was probably weather-related. There was dense fog in the area at the time of the
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crash. So I want to discuss a few things related to this story, and the first thing I want to talk
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about is why a death like this, a celebrity death, affects people the way that it does. Why does it
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get under our skin the way it does? Why are we so shocked by it? And my point is not to criticize
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or complain about our tendency to care so much about celebrity deaths. I've seen some of that
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online, and any time a famous person dies unexpectedly, there are always people saying,
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oh, he was just a person like us, and why cry about this if you're not crying about the thousands
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of other people who died across the world, you know, on any given day. I think those sorts of
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comments deny something fundamental about human nature. It's normal that we care about it, and at
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one level, it doesn't require explanation or justification. These are people who, if they're
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famous people, whether they're, you know, famous actors or athletes or what have you, they are people
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who, even if we didn't know them personally, they were still a part of our lives in some sense. Not
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a central part, of course, but they were a part. And when they die, we do feel like we've lost
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something, and we have. So I'm not looking to justify or explain, but I do think it's good to
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understand. I want to try to understand why the death of somebody like Kobe Bryant tends to hit people
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hard, aside from the obvious, which is the obvious things like he was a young man, he had a family,
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his daughter was killed too. Those things are obviously make it all the more tragic, but I want
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to go deeper than that. I think there's a deeper level of why we react the way we do to these sorts
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of things, and I want to talk about that. And then also related to this story, unfortunately, we have to
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discuss the media's embarrassing performance in reporting it. But as we discuss that, I am going to do
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something I've probably never done before and may never do again, and that is defend an MSNBC anchor,
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who's come under fire for something that happened while she was reporting about Kobe Bryant. But I'm
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going to defend her, and there are others who I'm not going to defend because they're indefensible.
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So we're going to get to all of that. But first, before we do, a word from ExpressVPN. Listen,
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more. Okay, so here's my thought as we get back to Kobe Bryant. Because I've been thinking about this,
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why do we tend to react so strongly to celebrity deaths, especially when the celebrity in question
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is young and healthy and, you know, not known for reckless behavior? Not a celebrity who, in the back
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of your mind, you're kind of expecting might die of an overdose or something like that. And not a
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celebrity who's been around for 60 years and is getting older. And, you know, the ones in those
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categories where you're sort of expecting this news about them. So when you go online and you
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see their name trending, you immediately think, oh, well, yeah, I guess it, I guess it finally
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happened. With, I think, Kobe Bryant, a lot of people had the same experience I did. I learned
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about it on social media. I saw his name trending on Twitter and I thought, oh, I don't know, did he
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say something controversial or whatever? Then you click on it and it's the last thing you expect to
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see is that he's dead. And that's what makes the reaction all the stronger. And a big part of the
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sadness is simply, as I said, that he was a young man, a father, his child died with him, which makes
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it just ghastly or even ghastlier than it already would have been anyway. So that's part of it. But
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I think there's something deeper, which is this. We spend so much of our lives, you know, hiding from
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the fact that we are mortal beings. And then something like this happens unexpectedly and
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forces us to acknowledge this reality, a reality, a terrible reality, that death is always with us,
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always walking alongside us. And at any moment, it can point its finger at you and say, now's your
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time. And it will happen. It absolutely will happen to you, to me, to all of us, no matter
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what. It's as simple as that. Now, we know this, of course. You know, we all know it. Nobody is
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surprised to learn that human beings are mortal. I'm not saying that we're surprised in that sense.
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But in a way, we are surprised to learn it, I guess, because we spend so much time repressing
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that knowledge and keeping those thoughts at bay. And then when the reality of death hits us in the
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face from an unexpected direction, it's almost as if we have to relearn the fact that human beings are
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mortal. I remember talking to my wife about this yesterday when I got home. And she said, oh, did you
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hear about Kobe Bryant? And I said, yeah. And then I said, oh, it's crazy. Crazy. That was the first
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first word I said. But really, it's not crazy at all, is it? Someone dying? Well, that's about the
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least crazy thing they can do. It's the most normal thing in the world, actually. It's the one thing that
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everybody does. And all of us will do. So what's crazy about it? Sad? Sure. Unwelcome? Yeah. Crazy? No.
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It only seems crazy because, again, we keep death thoughts at bay by lying to ourselves and telling
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ourselves that death is something that can be controlled, if not avoided altogether. We can
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at least control it. We can hold it off at a distance because it's not our time, whatever that
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means. If we're young and we have plans and we have stuff to do, we think, no, I can't die now. I've got
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all these plans. I've got stuff on the calendar, see? But death doesn't care about that, doesn't
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care about our plans or our age or anything, really. Again, none of this is a revelation.
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None of this is news to anyone, but it is a stark reality that we don't dwell on, most of us. We try
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not to think about it. And then somebody dies, somebody who, in our minds, very much belong in
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the category of living, someone like a still young sports legend. They die and we're forced to peer
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over at the reaper in the room, the dude with the cloak and the scythe, and go, oh yeah. Oh yeah.
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And it can also be disturbing, I think, to watch somebody kind of go from present to past,
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to watch someone who is turn abruptly into was. Especially, again, when in our minds,
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it's too early for that, whatever that means. Especially when there's no gradual transition
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from is to was. Somebody dies from a disease over time and there's sort of this transition
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where you're getting ready for it. But in a case like this, it's just the person is,
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and then they become a was, 10 seconds later, out of nowhere. And it's disturbing because we know
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that the same thing will happen to us. One day we will be a past event, you know, a memory,
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and then not even that. There was a book written decades ago by a guy named Ernest Becker,
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which I just read recently, as a matter of fact. Somebody recommended it to me.
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And the book is called Denial of Death. He was a psychoanalyst. And there's a lot in his theory
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that I don't agree with. And there's a lot in psychoanalysis that I find to be pseudoscientific,
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you know, silliness, really. But the central thesis of his book, in my opinion, is compelling
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and persuasive. And it relates to what I'm saying now. He argued that our repressed anxiety about death
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is a driving factor in our lives and in a culture. And so much of human culture, in fact,
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according to him, is set up specifically to distract us from and to evade thoughts of death.
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So much of human culture, really, at the end of the day, is about managing terror. It's about
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managing our terror of death, even if it is a repressed or suppressed terror. I think there's a lot
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of truth to that. And by the way, interesting fact about Ernest Becker, he won the Pulitzer Prize for
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that book a few months after it was released. But he wasn't around to receive the award because he
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died shortly after finishing the book. So a morbid illustration of his point, I suppose.
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Okay, well, all of that is thoroughly depressing. But I was thinking about it and
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I wanted to share it. So there's that. More discuss on this in just a moment. But first,
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slash Walsh. Okay, well, the other inevitable thing about celebrity deaths is that people, especially
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people in the media, will try to capitalize on the tragedy by posting hot takes as soon as the death
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occurs, because they're trying to get attention. And there was a lot of that happening yesterday. And I don't
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want to highlight most of it, because they're doing it for attention. And if I give them attention, I'm doing
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exactly what they want. So I don't want to do that. But there is one especially notable example, I think, a
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Washington Post reporter, Felicia Sonmez, posted an article about Kobe Bryant's rape case. She posted this
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article. Now, it's not an article she wrote. It was the Daily Beast wrote it years ago. But what made
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this so callous and, you know, calling it tacky would be way underselling it. She posted this article
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literally hours after he had died in a fiery wreck alongside his teenage daughter. I mean, just really
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didn't wait very long at all. Didn't even wait for the bodies to be pulled from the wreckage.
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And she's posting this article. And there was no tweet before this one expressing condolences or even
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reporting on the story. Instead, the very first thing she says about it, the very first reaction that
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she offers, is calling attention to his rape case 15 years ago. And there was a lot of that, actually.
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And like I said, I'm not going to specifically call attention to most of it. But a lot of prominent
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prominent people, especially prominent women on Twitter, immediately tweeting about Kobe's rape case.
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Some actually calling him a rapist, despite the fact that he was never convicted of anything, by the way.
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Now, Felicia has been suspended by the Washington Post, not for the rape tweet, but for follow-up tweets
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where she posted screenshots of angry emails she had gotten with the full names of the people.
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And so that was a violation of company policy. And she was suspended for that. But she offered
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no apology in her follow-up tweets. And she made herself the victim. She said, oh, geez, look at all
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these mean things people are saying about me. As if she wasn't expecting that, right? As if that wasn't
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the entire point, was to garner this negative attention for herself, using the death of a person,
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of nine people as a way to do it. So that's all, you know, I don't even want to get into it because
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this is the point. It's like not what we should be talking about right now. But all these people
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posting about Kobe Bryant's rape case, I do think it's relevant to note, as I said, that not only is
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just not the time, but by the way, he was never convicted of anything. So you're putting this out
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there right after he dies. He's not around to defend himself. But, you know, who cares? We're
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going to, it's, there's no, you know, slander a dead man. This is just what we do now. But as I said,
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I do want to also defend at least one person in the media. Lots of people on social media have been
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whipping up outrage against an MSNBC anchor who, according to them, said the N word on air while
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discussing Kobe Bryant. Maybe you've heard this, but here's that moment where she supposedly used
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the N word on MSNBC. Listen to this. Yeah, it seems like he was just the kind of athlete,
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the kind of star that was perfectly cast on the Los Angeles Nakers, Los Angeles Lakers. Kavita,
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if I could ask you to stay with us. So a lot of people shared that saying, oh my gosh,
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she said the N word, she's racist, so on and so forth. The anchor though came out and clarified
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that she didn't say the N word. She was actually about to say Nicks, but then stumbles and changes
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it to Lakers midstream. So she almost said Los Angeles Nicks and changed it. And then it came
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out as Nickers. So you can hear the K sound, the Nick. You can hear that K sound in the clip.
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There was no G sound. And that explanation makes sense. Okay. It's a stumble. Sometimes people
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mess up sports teams and names and things. And so it's a verbal stumble. It happens. It happens to
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all of us. We all do it. And if you spend a lot of time on TV, you're going to do it on TV sometimes.
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Now to say Los Angeles, Los Angeles N words wouldn't even make sense. I mean, even if she's a secret
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racist and she says the N word all the time in her private life, which I doubt is the case, but
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my point is, even if it were, it wouldn't make any sense for her to say Los Angeles N words.
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Certainly to do it on purpose. I mean, is that the theory here that she's some kind of racist and
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she thought that now would be a time to throw the N word out there and ruin her career, her life in
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the process? Really? Or maybe, maybe she, she, it was a slip of the tongue, like a Freudian slip
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revealing her racism. Well, but again, even as a slip of the tongue, it doesn't, it makes sense as
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a stumble, a stutter. It's just, you're jumbling up words, but as a slip of the tongue where she
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accidentally said a racial slur that she had in her head, but didn't want to say out loud,
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it doesn't even make any sense that that theory makes no sense. That's not how the mind works.
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Um, yet this is what people do. It doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense.
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What we do now is we look for the most negative possible interpretation of everything. We are
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constantly searching for reasons to destroy anyone and everyone for anything. And so we extend no grace,
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no understanding at all, none. Okay. We, we dig for the absolute worst possible interpretation.
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Doesn't matter if it's plausible. Doesn't matter if it's likely, but if it's a possible interpretation,
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because yeah, it is, it is, it's possible that she really said the N word because she's a racist and
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it just slipped out. Um, it's not plausible. That it's not very plausible. It's not likely.
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It doesn't make a lot of sense, but yeah, it's possible. So what people do is they say, well,
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it's possible. So let's just go with that. It's possible and it's negative and it would destroy
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her. I don't know her. I've got nothing against her personally, but let's just go with it because,
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hey, um, just going for the worst interpreter, the worst spin, trying to paint people in the worst
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light all the time. And it's, it's, I mean, it's evil, honestly, it's an evil thing. We act like evil
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people when we do that. Now, maybe you could say what I'm saying here is a little bit self-serving
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because people do this kind of thing to me and I get frustrated. And maybe there is an element of
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that. I admit, um, this is something people do to me where I'll say something and, you know, maybe I
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was, I didn't word it exactly right. And it was a little bit clumsy. And maybe if you take this part
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out of context, you can kind of make it seem like something else. And people do that to me. And yeah,
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it's frustrating because, you know, my point is always, do you, do you really think that's what I
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meant to say? Is it, do you really think that I meant to say that? No, you don't. It's just,
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you can make it seem like I maybe meant to say that. And so even if you don't believe it, you're
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going with it. Um, but anybody who speaks in public to any kind of audience in any forum will have to
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deal with this now where people are casually sort of ripped to shreds, casually smeared and slandered
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on the flimsiest pretense. And why? For fun, I guess, mostly. Now I've heard some conservatives
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who've said, well, she works for MSNBC and they do this kind of thing to people all the time. So,
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so she deserves it. Really? She deserves to be dishonestly smeared and potentially have her career
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ruined because you don't like the media company she works for? I mean, how would you react to that
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if somebody used the same logic with Fox News? What if somebody who hates Fox News smeared somebody on
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Fox News dishonestly and said, well, it doesn't matter if it's true or not. They work for Fox. They
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deserve it. I mean, do you hear yourself? And don't you hate MSNBC precisely because of their propensity
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to be dishonest? Yet now you're advocating for dishonesty yourself. So you apparently have no
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problem with dishonesty. So why? So then what's your problem with MSNBC? Is this really a, well,
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they started it. They started it. Yeah. I mean, I don't like being dishonest and smearing people,
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but they did it first. So what am I going to do? Have principles? What am I going to do? Have
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integrity? What am I going to be a good person? Well, no, I can't be that. No, I'm a piece of
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garbage just like them, but, uh, I'm a different kind of piece of garbage. So, you know,
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I, I, I hate this so much. And especially when people try to justify it on ideological
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grounds or they try to justify it as I'm a, I'm just fighting. You don't, you don't,
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you don't have the guts. You don't have the, uh, stomach to fight. Like I'm fighting. We
00:22:02.160
got to fight them. You're not fighting. This is not for you. Retweet, you, you know, you
00:22:07.100
accusing someone of something that you know, isn't true online. That's not you fight. What
00:22:10.820
are you? You're a warrior now. No, you're just a small, pathetic little liar. And I don't
00:22:21.620
know. You, you, you think you, um, achieve some kind of victory by becoming that? I don't
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think so. It's, it's just, it's all a bunch of nihilistic Machiavellian ends justify the
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means nonsense. And I wish we would, we would stop, especially when, look, if you're looking
00:22:43.040
to, uh, criticize MSNBC, there are so many valid avenues of criticism that you could turn
00:22:53.220
on MSNBC anytime and find completely legitimate, honest, uh, righteous reasons to criticize.
00:23:03.520
You don't need to latch onto something like this. All right, let's move on and over, unfortunately,
00:23:10.500
to politics backing up. Um, well, let's, let's back up a moment. There's been a controversy,
00:23:16.280
more controversy, uh, this time because Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders and didn't really
00:23:23.280
endorse, I mean, it wasn't like an official endorsement. He said, Rogan said on his podcast
00:23:27.420
a few days ago that he's probably going to vote for Bernie Sanders. And I, I, I think he
00:23:33.080
was talking about in the primary, first of all. Um, but you want to call that an endorsement
00:23:38.920
and, and then Sanders campaign ran with it and, and acted like it was a full throated
00:23:42.800
endorsement. Why is this controversial? Well, um, and is it that Rogan's conservative listeners
00:23:49.700
are up in arms? Uh, are, are they upset about it? No, not from what I've seen. I'm a conservative
00:23:55.980
and I'm a Rogan fan and I don't care that he's going to vote for Bernie Sanders. It makes
00:23:59.800
no difference to me. He's got his own opinion. We don't line up exactly politically. I already
00:24:04.300
knew that. I don't care. It makes no difference. Um, the controversy is from the left, from
00:24:09.720
progressives who say that Rogan, excuse me, is a bigot and a bad guy. And thus now Bernie
00:24:16.500
is tainted by the bigotry. Bernie is now a bigot due to his proximity to this other alleged
00:24:22.020
bigot. Now, why is Rogan a bigot? Well, apparently he's told a bunch of mean jokes. He is a comedian.
00:24:27.760
And, uh, if you go through his whole catalog of jokes, look, speaking of, of taking things
00:24:33.540
out of context and being dishonest and trying to smear people, well, now we're doing it with
00:24:37.260
Joe Rogan. He's a comedian. He's got hours and hundreds of hours of material out there
00:24:41.880
through his podcast and his standup career. And so now they're digging through all of that,
00:24:46.960
trying to find isolated incidents out of context, him saying a bad word or saying a bad thing.
00:24:52.240
Um, that's part of it. And then, but I think the, the bigger part and the reason why they're doing
00:24:59.120
this in the first place where they're digging through and looking for out of context bits to
00:25:03.220
use against him. The reason they're doing that is because he raised their ire a few years ago,
00:25:08.420
Rogan did when he came out against men, men competing in women's sports. So Rogan, especially in the MMA.
00:25:16.880
Um, so Rogan took the radical position that men are men and thus should compete against other men
00:25:28.140
and not against women. And this is inexcusable, uh, according to the left. It's, um, this is
00:25:37.300
transphobia. It's bigotry. It's wicked. It's evil. So on and so forth. Well, other candidates are
00:25:44.480
looking to capitalize. And that's why Biden came out over the weekend with a brief statement
00:25:48.540
and he said, quote, transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time.
00:25:56.060
There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.
00:26:06.360
Now, first of all, obviously from my perspective, and if you're not a radical left winger,
00:26:13.300
from your perspective, this is already crazy. The idea that trans equality is a civil rights
00:26:19.740
issue of our time. I would say the civil rights issue of our time is abortion. But even from a
00:26:25.700
leftist perspective, if you didn't know any better, wouldn't you expect them to say that,
00:26:31.580
you know, I don't know, something like police brutality or, you know, mass incarceration or
00:26:37.540
something like that is the civil rights issue of our time. You'd expect, if you didn't know any
00:26:40.920
better, you would expect them to go with something racial as being the civil rights issue of our
00:26:46.200
time. And at least in that case, now, I don't think that police brutality is the civil rights
00:26:52.300
issue of our time, but at least in that case, there's some meat on the bones there. And you
00:26:55.540
can, there's something really, there's some kind of argument you could make reasonably that it's at
00:27:02.200
least an issue. But no, they go with trans equality. They say that allowing men to change
00:27:12.380
in the women's locker room, that is the civil rights issue of our time, the number one most
00:27:16.940
important thing. Now, this only surprises you if you don't understand how leftism actually works and
00:27:25.160
the victim pyramid, as I've explained many times. Trans people are the uber victims, the ultimate
00:27:32.380
victims, and their victimhood claims trounce all other claims. Doesn't matter that most of their
00:27:38.960
victimhood claims are utterly superfluous and ridiculous. And in fact, what they are asking is
00:27:46.120
that they should be allowed to victimize other people by, for example, cheating women out of gold
00:27:52.880
medals in their sports and championships and by taking away their privacy in the locker room. Like
00:27:58.060
what they really want is to, is to be the victimizers of women when they advocate for those sorts of
00:28:05.200
things. Um, but that doesn't matter because they, this is how it works. They, they are at the very top.
00:28:11.540
And so all of their victimhood claims are not only correct and right and unquestionable, but also are,
00:28:19.040
are the most important victimhood claims that anybody makes.
00:28:23.880
So Biden understands all this and he is dutifully playing along with it. Um, but I would like to ask
00:28:31.340
Biden a question if I had a chance or, or really if we had a real news media, this is a question they
00:28:36.000
would ask, especially at a debate. And it's a very relevant, pertinent question. And, and that is simply
00:28:40.700
this, um, Joe Biden, when did you decide all of this? So you've decided that trans, trans equality is a
00:28:51.760
civil rights issue of our time. You've decided you, and so, and so thus you must have also decided
00:28:57.080
that men can be women. If you haven't decided that, then it doesn't make any sense at all to say that
00:29:03.560
this is a civil rights issue of our time. So you've decided that a dude with a penis and XY chromosomes
00:29:11.060
can be a woman and that he has a God given right to go into women's locker room. And if you don't allow
00:29:18.080
him to, it becomes a civil rights issue of our time. When, when did you decide that? Because you're
00:29:25.060
what, almost 80 years old. So nearly 80 years on this earth. And you never mentioned this before.
00:29:32.360
Before, like, just five seconds ago. You spent well over the first 70 years of your life never
00:29:39.700
mentioning any of this. Not once. I mean, go back to any other time. Go back to the early 2000s.
00:29:47.180
Or even the mid-2010s. Certainly go back to the 90s, the 80s, the 70s. This guy's been in public
00:29:52.720
life this whole time. You think you're going to find him saying anything about transgender equality?
00:29:59.660
What if you asked him back in the early 2000s when he was at the very young age of, you know,
00:30:06.340
50 or something or 60. If you'd asked him, a person with a penis, can that be a woman?
00:30:16.540
Or if you'd asked him, can men get pregnant? What do you think you would have said?
00:30:20.040
Did he believe this whole time that actually men can get pregnant? And never said anything? Or
00:30:27.620
probably not. So he had some sort of, not just him, but Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, all these
00:30:33.880
people. At some point, very late in life, he had this transformation, this conversion experience,
00:30:40.160
where he realized somehow that, oh, you know what, actually. So what, can you explain it? I think
00:30:46.080
it's a very valid question, isn't it? I just want to know what happened. Was there some sort of
00:30:50.260
scientific breakthrough that I'd never heard about? Did you have a vision? Did you have a dream?
00:30:56.360
Was this a road to Damascus type of moment? What was it? Now, of course, I know the answer to that
00:31:04.740
question. What was it is, what it was, is just the political winds shifting and his base and the
00:31:10.200
Democrat Party going so far left, especially in recent years. That's what happened, but he's not
00:31:15.140
going to say that. So what would he say? It was somewhat easy for guys like Obama. Obama, who we
00:31:25.540
forget, we often forget, was elected in 2008 as an opponent of same-sex marriage. And then in 2012,
00:31:34.320
for the re-election, magically, he was a proponent of it. And he was asked to explain that. And it was
00:31:40.820
pretty easy for him to say, oh, I've evolved on the issue and I've realized the blah, blah, blah.
00:31:47.060
It would be a little bit more difficult and awkward to say that you evolved on the issue of
00:31:54.260
whether or not women can have penises. But because what could possibly justify that evolution?
00:31:59.980
And the thing is, the media knows that it would be very embarrassing for Democrats to have to try to
00:32:06.780
justify and explain this nonsense. And so they're never asked to. And as I often say, this goes to
00:32:16.840
show that media bias and fake news and all that, it's usually about what isn't said. The questions that
00:32:24.900
aren't asked. The stories that aren't covered. The angles that are not exploited. It's usually not
00:32:31.440
about what is being covered and what is being said. Sometimes it's that. And it's not usually that
00:32:37.880
they're making up stories that didn't happen, although sometimes they do that too.
00:32:42.600
But mostly, it's just about what they ignore. And this is a great example of that.
00:32:47.140
Where they have, I think, silently conspired. It's a sort of silent understanding they all have in
00:32:52.960
left-wing media. We are not going to ask these people this question. Yeah, we'll ask them very,
00:32:58.860
very broad, give them an opportunity for platitudes where we just say, oh, how do you feel about this?
00:33:05.340
We give them a chance to talk about the need to be accepting of transgender people. But we're not
00:33:11.560
going to dig down into that even one inch deeper and ask them something like, when and why did you decide?
00:33:19.680
When and how did you change your mind? Yeah, we asked them that about same-sex marriage.
00:33:28.640
And we would still ask them that now because we know that they have a relatively non-embarrassing
00:33:34.140
answer ready for it. But they couldn't possibly have a non-embarrassing answer for this because
00:33:39.440
it's crazy. And so we're just not going to ask. All right, let's see. Before we get to emails,
00:33:46.620
I did want to mention the Grammys last night. I don't know who was nominated. I don't know who
00:33:53.460
won most of the awards. Doesn't matter. But there was one little thing that I want to highlight just
00:33:57.280
because it shows you the state of the music industry. The great John Prine won a Lifetime
00:34:02.580
Achievement Award. If you don't know who John Prine is, what are you doing with your life? But do yourself
00:34:08.960
a favor and look him up on iTunes. And I only say, I meet people. When I get to talk about music with
00:34:14.860
people, I often meet people who have never heard of this guy somehow. He's a musical legend. Okay.
00:34:19.860
So look him up on YouTube or something and do yourself a favor. Anyway, he won Lifetime Achievement
00:34:24.160
Award. Well-deserved. And he is one of our great living artists. And then Bonnie Raitt, speaking of
00:34:31.940
great living artists, got up to perform a rendition of one of Prime's songs, one of his best songs,
00:34:38.500
Angel from Montgomery. Angel from Montgomery, by the way, is one of the best American songs of the last
00:34:44.520
100 years. It's a beautiful, sad, simple, yet poetic song. And here's Raitt singing that song at the
00:34:57.020
I am an old woman named after my mother. My old man is another child.
00:35:10.120
This old man is grown old. Dreams were lightning. Thunder was desire. This old house would have
00:35:28.860
Okay. Gorgeous rendition, which is what you would expect from Bonnie Raitt, who's a brilliant
00:35:34.120
singer and has been for a long time. I think she's, I looked it up. She's like in her 70s now,
00:35:39.260
believe it or not. But here's the problem. They gave her 75 seconds, less. They gave her less than
00:35:48.960
75 seconds to sing that song. It's like a four minute song. Everybody would benefit from hearing
00:35:55.160
the whole song. Beautiful song. They give her 75 seconds and then they usher her off the stage.
00:36:00.960
And probably, partly because they had to free up six minutes for Ariana Grande, she of donut-licking
00:36:10.660
fame, to perform in her underwear. And here's what that looked like.
00:36:13.820
I think we'd tell therapy, my new addiction. Whoever said money can't solve your problems.
00:36:21.520
Must not have had enough money to solve. Let's say which one I said.
00:36:27.520
Happiness is the same. Races, rib bottoms, yeah.
00:36:31.640
My smile is gleaming. My skin is gleaming. The way you shine, I know you've seen it.
00:36:38.260
I bought a crib just for the closet. Both his and hers. I want it. I love it.
00:36:45.920
So there you go. I just want to highlight that because what a startling contrast you see.
00:36:51.380
On one hand, you have soulful, meaningful, real, authentic music.
00:36:59.760
And then on the other hand, you have an idiot rolling around in her underwear.
00:37:02.660
But, you know, of course, the idiot gets all the time. She gets six whole minutes to go on
00:37:09.860
with her pretty average, I'm not going to claim that she's a bad singer, okay?
00:37:16.340
She's obviously, she's better than me, Ariana Grande, but she's not great.
00:37:24.900
Her music, the lyrics that she's singing, of course, are lyrics that anyone with a sub-75 IQ
00:37:33.080
could come up with, even though, you know, she didn't even write her own songs.
00:37:40.240
You know, not great. The arrangements are just typical cookie-cutter pop arrangements.
00:37:45.640
So rather bland singing, terrible lyrics, standard cookie-cutter melody and arrangement.
00:37:52.500
The dancing, even the dancing, not even that impressive of dancing.
00:37:57.000
At least with Beyonce. I mean, Beyonce, not that great of a singer.
00:38:00.580
Her songs are pretty stupid. She is a really good dancer, at least.
00:38:06.780
Then you've got someone like Ariana Grande, so many of these pop stars.
00:38:12.980
Yet, of course, we give her all the attention. I get it.
00:38:15.140
I mean, she's the big-name star, and people these days,
00:38:19.100
a lot of them have never even heard of John Prine or Bonnie Rae.
00:38:28.500
But first, if you're a regular listener of this show,
00:38:31.280
you've heard me talk many times about the pro-life issue.
00:38:34.620
I was just saying it's a civil rights issue of our time,
00:38:37.400
and I do believe that, and it's very easy to come to that conclusion
00:38:41.520
when you consider the 60 million human beings that have died from abortion.
00:38:45.160
But we know that as, you know, we do everything we can in the pro-life movement
00:38:51.520
to call attention to this issue and to fight back,
00:38:53.860
the left is going further and further off the cliff.
00:38:56.580
There was the New York state law allowing abortion up to birth,
00:38:59.720
the Illinois state law allowing partial birth abortions.
00:39:02.540
So they are going further and further, deeper and deeper,
00:39:06.020
into just this extreme advocacy for not only abortion but infanticide.
00:39:12.580
Think about what Ralph Northam said about delivering the children
00:39:15.340
and then making a decision about what to do with them, i.e., maybe we kill them.
00:39:19.140
So as that's happening, of course, the left is also viciously attacking anyone
00:39:25.240
who stands for the pro-life cause, and we've experienced that here at The Daily Wire
00:39:29.280
with them coming after our advertisers and our sponsors,
00:39:32.740
especially after Ben Shapiro spoke at the March for Life last year.
00:39:38.340
Live Action is one of the best pro-life groups out there.
00:39:42.960
They're one of the leaders of the pro-life movement,
00:39:44.460
and they're being targeted for censorship in many different platforms.
00:39:49.140
There are platforms on social media where they're not allowed to advertise anymore.
00:39:52.320
They were kicked off Pinterest entirely simply for speaking the truth about abortion.
00:39:57.780
And this is why, you know, our DailyWire.com members are so important.
00:40:02.040
Your membership helps keeps our cameras on and our microphones turned up,
00:40:09.600
But you can also be a big help, not just to us, but to Live Action as well.
00:40:15.740
a portion of any DailyWire.com membership will be donated.
00:40:19.140
And to Live Action with the promo code LIVEACTION to support awareness and education
00:40:25.040
So join DailyWire.com and make your pro-life voice heard.
00:40:40.160
I'm an admirer of personality assessments as a tool to better know oneself,
00:40:46.160
and for interpreting the actions of other people significant to you.
00:40:49.220
I'm a proponent of the Enogram personality test over Myers-Briggs,
00:41:11.580
I talked briefly about personality tests last week on the show,
00:41:38.900
and he gave me a link which describes my personality.
00:42:20.700
but can slip into being critical and perfectionist.
00:42:22.700
They typically have problems with resentment and impatience.
00:42:57.280
Does that look like the bookshelf of an organized person?
00:43:07.740
but a glowingly positive review of my personality.
00:43:12.160
And then the only negatives it throws in there are the kinds of negatives you would say in a job interview if you're asked,
00:43:20.800
the negative is I'm a little too critical and perfectionist.
00:43:42.580
Almost everybody is a perfectionist in some areas of life.
00:43:45.720
And then the rest of it is just a bunch of compliments that,
00:44:19.700
with like a few token negatives thrown in there.
00:44:22.640
But that's why people believe in personality tests,
00:44:29.980
because it's exactly what they want to believe about themselves.
00:44:38.460
there would have to be personality types that are pretty much a hundred percent
00:44:43.520
Like there would have to be some personality tests that are the reverse of this,
00:44:53.300
There would have to be personality tests where the result comes back and says,
00:45:09.220
because there are people like that in the world.
00:45:17.360
I couldn't possibly think that you could never see yourself that way.
00:45:20.920
But we've all met people who seem to have almost no redeeming personality traits at all.
00:45:43.400
If a miserable a-hole took a personality test and it came back and came back as a miserable a-hole,
00:46:04.280
where it could come back with a bunch of positive glowing things like this,
00:46:10.580
but it's also possible that there are personality types that you could be diagnosed with that are really negative.
00:46:35.260
It's just not true that everybody has a basically positive personality.
00:46:55.460
You've been a 22-year-old Christian all your life, huh?
00:47:14.200
Hopefully you can give some insight into this question,
00:47:23.640
all my history classes seem to teach that Hinduism is the oldest religion.
00:47:30.020
The age of the religion is typically based on the earliest known evidence of its existence.
00:47:39.120
but I was wondering how you would answer this question,
00:47:41.400
and what evidence you would point to for your answer.
00:47:45.760
Christianity is definitely not even in the running for the oldest religion in the world.
00:47:54.620
and you're saying that's what makes Christianity the oldest,
00:48:00.900
there's no question the religion of Christianity began,
00:48:03.680
with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus in the age 33,
00:48:19.660
in that it has an almost precise beginning date.
00:48:27.860
Which is what makes it hard to say exactly how old Judaism is,
00:48:32.480
but if you go with archaeological and textual evidence,
00:48:37.080
the most generous estimate you could probably come up with for Judaism,
00:49:08.120
Most sort of secular scholars will say it was more like maybe 600 BC that was written.
00:49:19.460
The problem is that Hinduism does have evidence of its existence,
00:49:29.980
there is evidence of its existence going back a thousand years before that.
00:49:37.000
But if your history textbooks are saying that Hinduism is the oldest religion, period,
00:49:46.440
So your suspicions that there might be some incorrect information here, I think,
00:49:55.900
Hinduism is definitely not the oldest religion.
00:49:57.980
Now, if the question is oldest currently still practiced religion,
00:50:16.480
then you got to go back to like the fertility cults before the Neolithic era,
00:50:32.320
So those would probably be the oldest religions,
00:50:37.980
maybe make an argument for Hinduism or Astrinism,
00:50:46.680
Which, you know, I don't see that as a problem.
00:50:53.340
then we should all be fertility cultists, right?
00:50:56.260
We should all still be practicing the primitive religions that they practiced
00:51:14.440
I don't think oldest translates to most credible or closest to the truth or whatever.
00:51:25.720
And yeah, I don't think the evidence points to Judaism being the oldest religion.
00:51:36.660
And I wrap that up with, of course, the disclaimer that I'm not a historian or an archaeologist myself.
00:52:33.340
It's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:52:35.820
We're going to be talking about matters of life and death today.
00:52:44.160
We'll talk about it all on The Andrew Klavan Show.