00:00:53.640Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:01:05.880Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's double feature
00:01:10.100episode. Today, it's a double feature of duos. First, our interview with Dakota Meyer and Rob
00:01:16.760O'Neill, two badass military veterans with lifetimes of experience and incredible advice.
00:01:24.360Then we'll have our sit down with Brett Weinstein and Heather Hayegg way back in 2021. One of our
00:01:30.700first interviews on Sirius XM with practical solutions for a world in disarray. I really
00:01:36.740love these two. I've thought about them so many times. I love Brett. I know him better than Heather,
00:01:41.560but she was so charming too. And they've been through a lot. Um, they've got a great podcast
00:01:46.440of their own and they're always worth spending time with. Very provocative thinkers, very
00:01:51.080insightful and rather fearless. Enjoy and see you Monday. I've got with me today two guys you
00:01:59.560already love and two guys who have sacrificed so much for our country. They know firsthand about
00:02:05.500the sacrifice of war. They know about what it's like to put country above self when freedom and
00:02:11.340democracy are on the line. Rob O'Neill is a U.S. Navy SEAL combat veteran. He has been a part of
00:02:18.060some of the biggest SEAL missions ever conducted. He is best known, of course, for being the SEAL
00:02:24.260Team 6 member who shot and killed Osama bin Laden. But he also helped rescue fellow SEAL
00:02:30.580Marcus Luttrell in Afghanistan. And he was the lead paratrooper in the rescue of Captain Richard
00:02:36.620Phillips from the Marist, Alabama. The hijacking became the basis for the movie Captain Phillips
00:02:41.980featuring Tom Hanks. I mean, I joked with him last time he was on or the first time.
00:02:46.720He's like the Waldo of military. He's been on everything and everything he touches turns into
00:02:53.940a Hollywood movie. You've got Captain Phillips, you've got Lone Survivor, and then, of course,
00:03:01.280Zero Dark Thirty, all of which feature some of his heroism. And speaking of heroes, Dakota Meyer
00:03:08.020is also with us today. He is our country's second youngest living Medal of Honor recipient,
00:03:14.340our nation's highest military decoration. In 2009, under heavy enemy fire from the Taliban,
00:03:20.640Dakota disobeyed direct orders and repeatedly went back into the fight, into the ambush area,
00:03:26.920to find his fallen brothers and to retrieve the bodies of those who had died as well as rescue
00:03:32.960those who were still fighting and needed his help. He received his Medal of Honor from President
00:03:38.380Obama at the White House in 2011. And when they finally got to those trapped Americans,
00:03:45.060Dakota jumped out and he ran toward them, drawing all those enemy guns on himself,
00:03:50.600bullets kicking up the dirt all around him. He kept going until he came upon those four Americans
00:03:56.320laying where they fell, together as one team.
00:04:00.420Dakota and the others who had joined him knelt down, picked up their comrades,
00:04:04.400and through all those bullets, all the smoke, all the chaos, carried them out one by one.
00:04:10.860Because, as Dakota says, that's what you do for a brother.
00:04:13.900A former Marine who read about your story said that you showed how, in the most desperate final hours,
00:04:20.140our brothers and God will not forsake us.
00:04:22.420And because of your humble example, our kids, especially back in Columbia, Kentucky and in small towns all across America, they'll know that no matter who you are or where you come from, you can do great things as a citizen and as a member of the American family.
00:04:41.360In the end, Dakota is credited with saving the lives of at least 36 U.S. and Afghan troops that day.
00:04:48.560These two men have gone to hell and back for our country.
00:04:51.180And when they returned home, civilian life led to a new host of challenges, which we
00:04:56.360will also discuss over the next two hours.
00:04:58.860It's my honor to have them here today.
00:05:00.420They've written a new book titled The Way Forward, Master Life's Toughest Battles and
00:10:47.100Now, that's that's a great wind up. I appreciate that. It is. I mean, even a week ago, I was personally talking about Germany as far as NATO.
00:10:56.180They've never paid their two percent GDP, which they were. I mean, if you think they weren't they said they weren't going to be ready to pay that until 2031.
00:11:03.720And I thought that was kind of rude of Germany, because if you think about it, there's kind of the reason we needed NATO 100 years ago.
00:11:08.740Yeah. But now with this turnaround and it comes back to President Zelensky and again on social media, you're going to get people here and there and it's propaganda, this propaganda, whatever.
00:11:19.140He's the face of it. And he's part of the reason a lot of people are coming together, because whether or not he is exactly where he says he is fighting, he is there, along with the mayor of Kiev and all the men and women, the shop owners that are making Molotov cocktails.
00:11:36.160I mean, I wouldn't personally want to be throwing burning booze at a tank, but if you have that in you to defend your country.
00:11:43.080And I love the way they're saying we're doing this because we don't want to go anywhere else.
00:11:46.420This is our home. And I mean, Putin's lost his marbles.
00:11:50.300And he did say once he got the stiff resistance from Ukraine, well, hey, Finland and Sweden, you better not do this.
00:11:56.460And and those two, they're not in NATO, but they've really not done much.
00:12:00.040They're they're getting involved. And I love that. Obviously, the the Baltic states, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania,
00:12:05.020they're involved hungry poland but it's almost it's this is europe uniting and i was saying at
00:12:11.180first i don't want american troops on the ground but i was even saying you know this is a european
00:12:16.220problem europe's stepping up and they're talking about paying more than they need for nato even
00:12:20.500though uh ukraine's not a nato country they're defending innocent people because a lot i mean
00:12:25.440this is something that should almost unite everybody nobody really wants this war except
00:12:28.720that crazy person in Moscow. Yeah. I mean, Dakota, it's like the they're making military
00:12:34.840munitions there with these Molotov cocktails. You're seeing grandmas in the street go up to
00:12:38.680Russian soldiers and yell at them. I mean, like the Ukrainian people feel what we're all seeing,
00:12:43.760which is this is a sovereign nation under attack for no reason. Right. Putin's propaganda war
00:12:49.720isn't winning. He's, you know, bellying on about how there are neo-Nazis in there and how they're
00:12:55.800torturing Russian-speaking Ukrainians in these sort of more separatist regions. No one's believing
00:13:01.340it. Even the Russians aren't believing it. The Ukrainian resolve to fight this and get them out
00:13:06.440of Ukraine and to live a peaceful life has been extraordinary. Usually we see these countries
00:13:11.420just collapse when you see a stronger country, like a big bully like Russia go in. They just
00:13:16.440collapse. Not so. Yeah, I mean, look, I think you would have seen this collapse had the president
00:13:23.900left. I think that, you know, he's obviously not doing all, you know, everything, but I do think
00:13:29.600he is the keystone of this arch that's keeping that entire country fighting. And I think that,
00:13:35.680you know, that's what's going to be held on. You know, you see the media who's putting all this
00:13:39.400attention. Everybody wants these, like the winds or like, how far is it going to go? Or, you know,
00:13:44.360everybody's trying to get, get their tagline in there. And they keep talking about, well, you
00:13:48.160know, Putin taking Kiev. Right. And even if he takes it, even if he runs his troops through it
00:13:54.360and he puts people inside of the city buildings, he's still going to have 20 years of insurgency
00:14:01.560across it. It doesn't mean anything. I mean, Putin better be ready for a long, long war.
00:14:09.600Because if not, I mean, look, we know what it's like to walk in somewhere with air superiority
00:14:14.340And we know what it's like to walk in with the money and the troops and the training and and then have to fight for 20 years.
00:14:21.560You know what I mean? And I don't think that we can over underestimate the over complexity of street fighting.
00:14:28.800Right. I mean, it is a complex deal. We it took the United States, which is by far the best fighters on the face of the planet that ever existed.
00:14:37.180And it took us over three weeks to take over Fallujah that had what, 300000 people in it.
00:14:43.580You're talking about a city that has is the size of Chicago.
00:14:47.620I mean, you know, this is going to be no small undertaking.
00:14:50.260And then what does he do after he gets it? Right.
00:14:53.300It's just incredible to see these people, their willingness to rise up and fight for their own country, to fight for what they believe in.
00:15:02.140You know, there's all this stuff coming out now about, you know, who's supporting who and all this, you know, trying to look at, you know, well, what can we believe and what what can we not?
00:15:11.140At the end of the day, you know, you have to humanize this aspect of it.
00:15:17.500And that's what we did in the way forward, right, is obviously our first books came out.
00:15:20.620We were talking more about, you know, about the the war and the black and white side of it of, you know, who's wrong and right.
00:15:27.180But there's just a humanization factor to this that we cannot miss.
00:15:31.140And you're seeing this across the globe right now of what hope can do.
00:15:34.920And these people hope and they believe so much that they can win and in their country that they're willing to take Molotov cocktails and throw them at tanks.
00:15:43.800Yeah. I mean, they're at the point now where reportedly Putin's people are going to meet with senior Ukrainian diplomats.
00:15:51.920I guess they had to agree to go meet in Belarus, which is Putin's puppet.
00:15:55.440And they've been doing whatever Putin wants this country sort of in between the two.
00:15:59.960And but the Ukrainian officials agreed to do it.
00:16:03.600it's not going to be Putin and it's not going to be Zelensky, but it's going to be, you know,
00:16:07.100underlings that are going to go meet. And no, there are no preconditions. And Putin last week
00:16:11.840had been saying, you will agree, you will agree to neutrality and you will agree not to join NATO.
00:16:16.740And then we will meet. And now here they are, no preconditions meeting. I mean, who knows,
00:16:20.540you know, Zelensky saying, I don't think it's going to amount to much and they haven't stopped
00:16:23.420the fighting in the meantime, but it's something. Meanwhile, can I ask you guys about this? Because
00:16:28.240the most concerning headline has been about Putin saber rattling with his nukes. He's like,
00:16:35.620that's not really what you want to hear. But and, you know, who knows whether it's true,
00:16:39.640but there are reports that he he seems unstable to those who are around him. People have been
00:16:43.640watching him for a long time, think he's Putin might be losing it, you know, that he he changed
00:16:48.460during the pandemic was the reporting. And now he's putting their nuclear arsenal and those who
00:16:53.860oversee it on alert. That's concerning. And it's especially concerning because of all the things I
00:17:01.820listed at the top. He's got to be feeling concerned about Europe uniting against him. This is his
00:17:08.760worst nightmare. I mean, you got like Kosovo applying now openly for NATO membership. You got
00:17:15.120these other countries, you know, who had been like considering it. I'm trying to see who it was. It
00:17:20.500Finland and Sweden at least making noises about it. And this is the last thing he wanted, right?
00:17:26.220He hates a united Europe. He does not like to be seen as the universal bad guy.
00:17:30.620So that combined with the threat of nukes makes you wonder what his next move is.
00:17:35.940Well, his issue was he was saying that NATO's against him. NATO wasn't against him and Ukraine
00:17:40.420was not a threat. And he's gotten exactly the opposite of what he wanted. Now, like you said,
00:17:44.760with Kosovo, they want in. And you mentioned Belarus. Putin thought Ukraine was going to be
00:17:49.640like Belarus, but it's kind of rolling. No one fights. And all of a sudden, bam, you're part of
00:17:52.860Russia, Ukraine. You know, you mentioned Fallujah. We were fighting about 300,000, a city of 300,000,
00:17:58.780but not everyone was fighting. There's several million in Kiev and they all want to fight.
00:18:03.140And then, of course, Putin's going to, you know, I think he went crazy during the pandemic. There
00:18:07.100were reports that his family had COVID. He never wanted to admit it. But even Condoleezza Rice was
00:18:11.320saying he looks like he's a little crazy, like his face is chubbier and he's not quite making
00:18:14.780sense. So he's saber rattling. The nuclear threats there, that's scary. I mean, that's something
00:18:19.480we can't even imagine uh but well i think the the first option is a little bit worse we there's a
00:18:24.680bomb that he has about 22 000 pounds it's a thermal barrack charge we have one that we dropped actually
00:18:29.000on the um the taliban it's called a massive ordinance air burst we call it the mother of
00:18:33.400all bombs the moab but he's got one that it's it's um it's a thermal barrack charge that detonates
00:18:37.480about six feet off the ground and it'll make a crater three football fields and it'll liquefy
00:18:42.440anyone inside and if he dropped that on a populace um it's devastating but he can say he didn't go
00:18:49.320nuclear that's as close you can get and everyone knows that we've done it uh russia made one i'm
00:18:53.780assuming because china steals everything from us they have one too but that's like the next step
00:18:58.300in how serious are we and it's scary when you get someone that maniacal a little bit senile but his
00:19:04.460back's against the wall finger on the trigger i don't care how many times they're in treaties
00:19:08.660they say well we have them but they're not aimed at anyone that's a that's a bunch of bull they're
00:19:12.580aimed at something and he's got access to stuff and i'm not sure going into belarus is going to
00:19:17.620do anything. And Putin wants to save face. But, you know, it's going to come down to something
00:19:21.620really, really graphic or it's going to turn into like a Julius Caesar thing to step back in a coup.
00:19:26.300You know, before I went over there to interview him, one of the I had briefings with former FBI,
00:19:31.320former CIA folks, you know, who've spent their lives studying Russia and Putin. And one of the
00:19:35.840things that I learned was that, you know, Russia is basically a kleptocracy and whoever's in charge
00:19:41.600is totally corrupt and has tons of money and houses and assets stationed all over Russia.
00:19:46.500And the sort of way it works is you just have to stay in power.
00:19:51.360Like the way of preventing oneself from winding up dead or in jail is you have to stay in
00:19:57.720And that's what he's been doing, right?
00:19:59.920I mean, he's effectively just an authoritarian leader there now.
00:20:03.100He went through the sort of the motions of pretending that Medvedev was president for
00:20:08.360a while, but he took back over and hasn't given it up since.
00:20:11.640And there's a real worry if he feels trapped, if he feels in a corner where he feels like, okay, not only is Russia losing face and compromising positions that they've worked 75 years to not compromise, what if he's, what if the Russian people and even, you know, his underlings start turning on him?
00:20:29.460And the solution within Russia is Putin needs to go. Right. I mean, I know, Dakota, you write in the book a lot about like, and of course, this is this led to your Medal of Honor. There's there are times in which soldiers need to disobey orders and understand what's what's right might not line up with what's what you've been told to do.
00:20:48.800yeah i mean look and i totally agree with that i i truly think that the you know the results of
00:20:55.580of ukraine is going to come down to how far um putin will take this right i mean how far is he
00:21:01.700willing to go is he willing to go nuclear right but i think on the backside of that is there's
00:21:07.100going to have to be someone under him push the button to go nuclear and you can't ever pull out
00:21:12.940that that i call it the humanization factor right like the the factor that i have to push this and
00:21:19.000i have to know that my family's going to pay for this because they know that as soon as the nuke
00:21:22.840comes out they know that the wrath of the world is going to be unleashed on on russia they know
00:21:29.180that the wrath of the world is just going to come out and there are going to be nukes dropped and
00:21:32.960whatever he does in ukraine will be a hundred times worse on him so putin's kind of in this
00:21:38.600position though it's a it sucks for Putin uh maybe we should send him a book um because he's
00:21:44.740gonna he's gonna he's gonna need a way forward right after this but I think he thought that he
00:21:50.640was gonna run through this like like Rob said be over in a couple days nobody was gonna fight
00:21:55.040he was gonna have it he's gonna go back but you know for our generation um you know Putin's kind
00:22:01.120of been like this guy that we've all been warned about right he's kind of like the guy in the bar
00:22:05.240of of hey you know that that guy can fight you know don't mess with him you know don't don't
00:22:10.100ever get you know don't ever mess with him so now he comes out and we're watching him fight
00:22:14.560uh for the first time that i can remember in my life and he's and he's he's losing he's not good
00:22:19.220he's losing he's not good at it right so if putin goes back and he's going to be the leader of
00:22:23.580russia and they want to be powerful i mean he's really putin's the laughing stock of of the world
00:22:28.080right now well he's put himself in a bad spot too because um he's been quoting uh vladimir lenin
00:22:33.780and joseph stalin nikita khrushchev uh and you know he's he's that he's talking legacy talk now
00:22:39.180and he's pushing 70 another scary part is he realizing that he's not tough what if he needs
00:22:45.060to go out with the bank and there's there's all this the like we said the human element parts of
00:22:49.000the legacy elements how does he because he wants his own legacy but he also wants mother russia
00:22:53.480and if he makes it look weak who knows what he'll do so you know there's not you know he yeah i mean
00:22:58.460it's scary there's a lot of a lot of ins and outs and uh you know it's one of those things where you
00:23:03.100you don't want to believe something bad will happen because it never has. Here's a guy that
00:23:07.300said, if you interfere, you'll see a response you've never seen in the history of your nation.
00:23:12.300He's talking to us. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But I just think that, look, no matter how this goes,
00:23:20.260whether he takes Ukraine or whether he backs out, like I, I, my prediction is this is the end of
00:23:26.820Putin. It very well could be. I mean, all the things that we were saying that they should do,
00:23:31.960they're now doing, except for cutting off the oil and gas access to, you know, to Russia that
00:23:37.080that no one's giving up yet. Although Germany has now made the Nord Stream 2 disconnection and
00:23:43.080sort of they've said we're done and we're permanently done. It's crazy what happened
00:23:46.920in Germany. They totally underestimated the new chancellor of Germany. They thought they had
00:23:50.480another Angela Merkel on their hands who wanted to appease Russia and be more dovish and not build
00:23:55.980up the military and not be confrontational. And this new guy is like, how you like me now?
00:24:00.160It is crazy. I mean, it's really worth reading what happened in Germany over the over the weekend. So we'll see that the actual line was that Putin has his nuclear deterrent forces on high alert amid the spiraling tensions that the defense minister and the chief of the military's general staff have been ordered to put the nuclear deterrent forces in a special regime of combat duty.
00:24:28.540could absolutely just be saber rattling. But then that's what people said about the 200,000 troops
00:24:34.560around Ukraine. There's so much more to go over with the two greatest guys. We're so lucky that
00:24:39.820they're Americans, that they decided to risk their own lives and fight for us and now are
00:24:44.180continuing to share their wisdom with us. Rob O'Neill, Dakota Meyer coming right back on their
00:24:49.440book. Their lives have been fascinating and they're going to share some of the lessons
00:24:52.920of heroism and strength and resilience right after this. Don't go away.
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00:25:05.700the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination-focused dining
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00:25:20.520no children and no casinos. Discover more at viking.com. Not every game's an all-timer.
00:25:52.740all right so let's let's go back to some of the lessons of childhood um because i i love the
00:26:02.580stories and sort of how you got there rob i mentioned you not so great necessarily on the
00:26:06.840football field not kicking people's ass more likely to be getting the ass kicked which seems
00:26:11.380hard to believe but okay um and you write in the book about one of the important lessons you took
00:26:16.540away from your time with your dad on the basketball court. And I have a little aspiring basketball
00:26:24.420player. He's 12. And so I appreciate what you write in the book about this competition you had
00:26:29.120where you couldn't go inside at night unless one of you hit 20 free throws in a row, which,
00:26:34.300and you write in the book, that's effing hard. And that is hard. That is hard. I can see it just
00:26:39.300with my own son, but tell us about where that went and what you learned from the experience.
00:26:46.540Well, that's that is hard. But when I was I was actually learning stuff that would help me in life is do everything like you do anything.
00:26:54.100And if you want to be good at something, do it a thousand times. You want to be really good, do it ten thousand.
00:26:57.960If you want to be great, do it a hundred thousand times. And a free throw to me, that's just a great analogy for life.
00:27:04.340A free throw, it's, you know, bounce the ball three times, backspin, bend the knees, release.
00:27:09.540and like the only argument my father tom and i well dad and i had was uh do you look at the ball
00:27:15.100as you release or do you keep your eyes on the rim i was a big believer you keep your eyes on the rim
00:27:18.440he would keep his eyes on the ball but yeah it was it was one of our things where um you start
00:27:23.020with a make always start with a make because you you know you're aligned your your uh your feet
00:27:27.900are on the free throw line start with the make and then keep going from there like i was well
00:27:31.260even when i watched college and pro basketball they make their free throw and they go shake
00:27:33.960everyone's hands knock it off keep your feet on the line make the second one then we can all talk
00:27:37.580about how cool you are but we got to a point where it was uh 20 in a row no matter what to
00:27:42.640leave the gym um and it didn't matter if it took us the first try or five hours but the cool thing
00:27:48.000was we also had at the beginning of our season which ended after my season it was 20 to leave
00:27:53.960the gym but then 20 to go get a steak at the derby uh so it stayed 20 to leave but once we
00:27:59.440hit the steak then it goes up by five so it's now it's 20 and 25 to get a steak then 30 to get a
00:28:03.260stake and then 40 45 and we got to a point my senior year where my father made 91 free throws
00:28:09.080in a row and it was awesome and that was a family record that lasted for less than a week because
00:28:13.720the next week i made 105 in a row but what we were learning is that's the same thing with shooting
00:28:19.820it's the same thing with your follow-through do the same thing front sight focus how are your
00:28:23.640knees what's your position and just shooting free throws like that is like uh it's as simple as um
00:28:28.480people like aspiring navy seals are like uh i'm not good at pull-ups how do i get better at pull-ups
00:28:33.700it's like oh that's simple you do pull-ups simple yeah right do more pull-ups i got i want to go to
00:28:38.580this the derby does it still exist is it still in i know you've been to butte and the derby and
00:28:44.280my buddy owns it he's actually the principal at a school in chicago and i've dropped the derby
00:28:49.420that's three times i better get something out of this all right i'm going to go there they don't
00:28:54.540even know how good they they don't even know they're that good because it's you know it's
00:28:57.020beat montana they don't they just expect everything to be delicious derby is i'm not going to put
00:29:01.820anything like that sort of challenge in front of myself to get there i'm just going to go and eat
00:29:05.280i'm not going to go get 106 three three throws and beat the rob o'neill record that's what's
00:29:09.880funny about that story too is uh is uh i was i was okay with 105 in a row but i was so angry at
00:29:16.180106 it's crazy talk you realize that right okay that's how that's how you become rob o'neill i
00:29:22.540get it um but you know dakota it reminded me uh you wrote something in the book forgive me i don't
00:29:27.240have his name right in front of me but it was about um one of your commanding officers who
00:29:31.520he kept saying what was it um hold the line or nine nine what was what was the he kept it was
00:29:37.060like the lesson that he kept drilling into you and you hated it at the time couldn't understand
00:29:40.600why you had to keep doing it well you know so like when i when i got to the fleet um i came to
00:29:46.880a group of marines that had just came back from haditha the triad and um one of my seniors he'd
00:29:53.880lost they'd lost quite a few of our unit and um yeah his name was dan daniel kreitzer uh i'll
00:30:00.300never forget him just an incredible guy he always he always just like ran into us nine lines like
00:30:05.880nine line medevac it's a it's a um it's a format that we use to medevac out wounded wounded marines
00:30:13.540or you know wounded service members on the battlefield and it's so critical right I mean
00:30:18.160he just drilled it into us while a lot of other marines their team leaders were messing with them
00:30:22.800and were you know playing games and and doing all these other things uh you know ours was always
00:30:28.640just making sure that that was something that we could do with their eyes closed at any point in
00:30:32.920time under any piece of stress because at the end of the day that was ultimately what was going to
00:30:37.260take care of um you know to get our whoever one of our our brothers or or us or whatever uh to
00:30:45.000to safety to where they can get help and that was why you know that was the core to everything that
00:30:49.920we did whether we were out training uh for ieds or whether we were out you know shooting uh you
00:30:55.480know our nine line was the very basic the minimum that we had to be proficient at in order to to go
00:31:02.640out and everything's habitual right like everything in life is is is habitual you can't don't ever
00:31:08.780think that you can do the uh you know do it when it matters if you can't do it when it doesn't
00:31:13.940matter exactly and that's kind of what rob was saying about the basketball in the book is saying
00:31:18.760it's not about becoming a great basketball player it's about like getting muscle memory and getting
00:31:23.560to the point where you're you don't even have to think about it you just keep doing it over and
00:31:26.940over and over it becomes second nature whether it's basketball or it's shooting or it's the
00:31:31.940nine lines, you know, and in the military, they get that. And, but it applies as you point out
00:31:36.820the book to regular life. I mean, a lot of people have goals that they want to achieve. And it's
00:31:41.760like, if you've got to think about it in the moment when the stress is on, you're already in
00:31:46.220trouble. Yeah. I truly believe that, you know, I truly believe, and I speak on this a lot is that,
00:31:52.280you know, the, the, the results of, of the time, like, look, all of us are going to be tested.
00:31:57.540We're all tested at some point. And the results of that test, when it comes up, are already decided.
00:32:06.040They're already decided by the micro decisions that you made all the way up to that point. Right.
00:32:10.640The results, whether you're going to succeed or fail, are already decided at that moment.
00:32:15.960And so it matters. It matters what you put in your body. It matters every little aspect of it.
00:32:20.720You can't expect to be a good person, but only be a good person in parts of your life.
00:32:26.960you can't expect to, you know, like it's just, it's either one way or the other. You can't be
00:32:31.760both. And I, and I truly believe that. Now, Dakota, you, you write in the book about your
00:32:36.340own personal background, uh, born and raised in Kentucky. Yeah. Okay. And, um, you tell us a
00:32:44.000little bit about big Mike and the role that he played in, I don't want to be too dramatic and
00:32:49.440say saving you, but kind of in a little, in a way saving you. Yeah. I mean, you know, my, my dad is,
00:32:57.560uh, my dad's probably the greatest man that's that, uh, you know, I've ever met that walks
00:33:04.280the face of planet. Um, my dad's very simple man. Uh, my dad is principally based, you know,
00:33:10.700my dad didn't, he never, you know, he was all about, you know, he never cares what anybody
00:33:15.600else thinks. Right. Um, but with that, you know, my dad's very direct. My dad is very straightforward,
00:33:20.860but, um, my dad does that not because he's trying to be controlling or not because he's trying to
00:33:27.100do it out of convenience for, for himself or to make things easier. Um, my dad was that way
00:33:32.540because he cared about you. Right. My dad was that way because he, he, um, he wanted you to
00:33:37.760be better and he was going to hold you to a standard that, that, that would accept nothing
00:33:41.820less than you being the best that you can be. And, you know, my dad was all about people, right?
00:33:46.240About taking care of yourself, taking care of the things around you and, you know, taking care of
00:33:50.960the people around you, not, you know, dishonoring your name, right? There's a lot of people that
00:33:55.300have the same last name. And when you disrespect that or you make that look bad, that's a spill
00:34:01.160factor for everybody. Yeah, you know, and what's incredible was, is I didn't know it until I was
00:34:06.70013. Um, you know, but, but, but my dad, uh, big Mike, um, he adopted me. And so, you know,
00:34:14.520you didn't know that until you were 13. Yeah. Yeah. Um, my, my, my mother gave me up when I
00:34:21.640was like nine or 10. Um, and I honestly, I don't even know the whole story about how they got
00:34:27.620together. I've asked, I mean, like, if you want to talk about, um, you want to put an investigator
00:34:32.700in, you should go try to figure out where I was born. Because if I asked my mom where I was born,
00:34:37.300she tells me one place, my dad tells me another place, and my birth certificate says an entirely
00:34:42.040different place. Oh, boy. So, you know, yeah. So just to go ahead and give you a little bit
00:34:46.440of coordination on that. So, you know, I found out I was adopted when I was 13. My mom kind of
00:34:53.640gave me up when I was nine or 10, let me go live with my dad, whatever she's got to say to justify
00:34:58.060it. Um, but you know, I, um, I went to live with my dad, my dad took me in and just, you know,
00:35:05.040full-time dad, you know, working 40 to 60 hours a week on his job and then living on the farm and
00:35:10.620working. And he's just, you know, he was an example. And, you know, I found out when I was
00:35:14.52013 and this is, this will give you a true perspective of just how my dad is. Um, you know,
00:35:20.600my mom brought me in on my 13th birthday and laid these papers down in front of me because she
00:35:24.460wanted me to move back in with her and she said um uh hey you know this is uh you're you know you're
00:35:30.600you're adopted and I was like what like yeah she's like you're you're adopted your dad adopted
00:35:36.560he's not your real dad and um I just I'll never forget just being like so lost is like what do
00:35:44.880you what do you mean like like this this is like what do you mean and um so I went back got dropped
00:35:51.040off at my dad's house. My dad had no clue she did this. And I was so mad. And I'll never forget,
00:35:56.240my dad could tell I was upset, obviously. And my dad came in and he looked at me, he heard me out.
00:36:01.620And I was like, I was really mad at him. Like, why didn't you tell me you've been lying to me?
00:36:05.580And he looked at me and he goes, Dakota, what does it change? What does it change? What does
00:36:13.100it change between us? He goes, I'm still your dad. You know, we don't have the same blood running
00:36:18.500through us, you know, I'm still your dad. And it doesn't change how much I love you. It doesn't
00:36:22.460change, you know, anything about our relationship, does it? And so at a young age, my dad taught me
00:36:27.360that, you know, blood, just because your blood doesn't mean your family. And just because you're
00:36:31.160not blood doesn't mean your family. And, you know, that's just the type of man that he is. I mean,
00:36:34.960he is the, I mean, he's just an incredible human being. That's an amazing story. And he comes as
00:36:43.320one of the heroes of the book, for sure. I mean, the way, and he got you when you came home. And
00:36:47.660i want to know big mike big mike sounds like an extraordinary person and you know it's good
00:36:53.160because to me it's like a it's just a reminder of the importance of a strong in particular male
00:36:58.220role model for little boys you know and the importance of a dad in one's life a strong
00:37:02.800father figure or father um can teach you all sorts of lessons that you know you you may not
00:37:08.440see common and over on the front in uh in butte montana rob you had great parents but you write
00:37:15.660about a story i hadn't yet heard about you about there there was a guy in town named ben who turned
00:37:23.040out to be pretty much a badass and little rob o'neill wanted to be just like him now he wasn't
00:37:28.200a seal but tell us about ben and the lesson you learned in particular when he walked into i think
00:37:32.600it was a bar or something you were like okay i see a difference here yeah so i grew up with ben
00:37:38.000um we went to the same school and he was always you know he was a always lifting weights always
00:37:42.980working out huge guy on the uh the football team and ever since i knew him he wanted to be a marine
00:37:48.040and that was his thing like he was going to be a marine always had a great haircut as soon as he
00:37:52.480got a truck like 15 years old he had the marine corps sticker on there and as soon as he um as
00:37:57.540soon as he graduated the next day like he was going it's not like he was from a military family
00:38:01.380ben was just going to do that he was a monster when he left and when he came back now we were
00:38:05.720talking about there's tough guys in butte and then there was me i was working i was delivering pizza
00:38:11.060and it was a pizza joint and a bar uh at night um and it was called the vu villa and i was in
00:38:18.060the vu one night and ben ben ben came in and he just looked like a marine now that's him he kind
00:38:23.700of he walked in and uh he almost he was so cool he almost looked like he didn't recognize anybody
00:38:31.480because he knew everyone was staring at him and it's like the whole uh you know yes i will go
00:38:35.980home with that girl but i'm gonna beat up her boyfriend first type guy um but i mean he obviously
00:38:39.760He didn't do that. Just a great guy. But he looked like that. And it was impressive that that got my interest in the Marine Corps.
00:38:44.360I still wasn't quite going to go yet. But it was like, if I ever decide to, that's what I that's what I want to aspire to be.
00:38:49.200I want to look like and like you'd be it's not a big place.
00:38:51.940You'd be driving around town and he's out there getting his PT on, you know, his physical training, running down Blacktail Lane with no, you know, Marine Corps shorts and no shirt on.
00:38:59.620Just like that's a Marine. That's what Marines look like. God help the enemy.
00:39:03.660Yeah, right. And you're like, I'll do it. I'll do it.
00:39:05.460And then you told us in our last interview about you got a little sidetracked by the Navy recruiter.
00:39:09.760It was like, well, yeah, when I when I decided to join, I went into it because it was a time to get out of town.
00:39:14.740And the quickest way out of Montana is to join the military.
00:39:17.880And because of hunting, you know, my dad and I thought we were the best shots in the world.
00:39:21.880I'll go be a Marine sniper because after, you know, I saw Ben and then I watched Full Metal Jacket.
00:39:26.880And I read Carlos Hathcock's book, who was the greatest Marine Corps sniper.
00:39:30.900And I went to join the Marine Corps. And I walked down there right in the office.
00:39:35.240And the Marine recruiter was not in the office. But the Navy guy's office right next door.
00:39:39.020and ben had actually been the guy that told me like he was he was a guy that would mess with you
00:39:43.940but he's messing with you and he's joking but he looks like he could just squash you he said the
00:39:48.840marine corps is actually part of the department of the navy it's just the men's department
00:39:52.260and that's why i went into the navy guys off dakota's shaking his head yes for our listening
00:39:56.720audience dakota the marine likes this story yeah i'm trying not to brag too much about the marine
00:40:01.140course because the war heroes sitting next to me and uh so i went in there and um the navy now
00:40:07.280Now, what I didn't know about the Navy is if you wear khakis and have anchors, you're a chief.
00:55:22.940hopefully you shot the free throws like you should have hopefully you did everything every
00:55:26.200single time and you're good at it or you're great at it and uh i mean it's january in the hudson i'm
00:55:30.560not jumping in there in my box you know i'm i have a mild fear i mean rob rob's been kicked off
00:55:38.300oh i want to i want to know more did that make news should i know about this okay but you're in
00:55:45.200no position you are in no no position to cast stones to call you little medal of honor winner
00:55:50.040No, you have not. Because I teased earlier that one thing that happened at your Medal of Honor ceremony that we did not know, and I played that moment over and over again.
00:56:00.060I mean, I interviewed you on The Cali File, and when it happened, we watched it, President Obama, the whole bit, very moving.
00:56:06.540And at Fox News, we take the whole ceremony and put it on. Wonderful stuff.
00:56:10.400Dakota wasn't necessarily all there at that appearance.
00:56:15.040Apparently, speaking of drinking booze in the airport, it can happen before a Medal of Honor ceremony, too.
00:56:20.040yeah you know we i mean what do you expect when you invite 200 and some marines to to the white
00:56:27.240house right um you know we uh when we were founded in a bar just so you know so we uh we got there
00:56:35.500and they uh they were serving drinks and before and i just mean you know everybody wants to have
00:56:40.040a drink with you right oh you gotta have a drink with me and we were drinking and drinking i'll
00:56:44.100never forget, like they put, you know, everybody went in to sit down. They actually ran, the White
00:56:50.000House ran out of beer. They ran out of beer at the ceremony and they had to find a way to get
00:56:54.900more in, which it's not just going down to the 7-Eleven on the corner. That was very risky by
00:57:00.520you. Speaking of your big risks, I mean, can you imagine if you would like thrown up in the middle
00:57:04.460of the Medal of Honor ceremony? It would have been awful. You know, sometimes I don't really
00:57:10.020think about those things uh you know i uh but i'll never forget i didn't realize how so everybody
00:57:16.420went in to sit down i didn't realize how drunk i was until you know me the president and uh you
00:57:24.580know michelle we walked in after everybody was in there together and i'll remember walking in i'm
00:57:30.540like i am wasted and so i'm standing up on stage and there's this moment you know because like the
00:57:37.120whole back of the room is lined with cameras. And I promise there was nobody who didn't want to be
00:57:42.880there more than, more than me. And so I'm standing up there, you know, my family, they're all fighting
00:57:47.700already. Well, some of them. And so I'm standing up there on stage and, you know, I'm at, I'm at
00:57:53.500position of attention. I hadn't been in a uniform in two years, you know, and I'm up there and I'm
00:57:59.060standing position of attention. I know how Marines are like, if you do one thing wrong, you know,
00:58:03.760they're, they're going to crucify you and you've just, you know, ruined the legacy of the United
00:58:07.460States Marine Corps. Right. And so I'm standing up there and I'm sweating so bad because these
00:58:13.120lights from the cameras and I go, and I'm so drunk that I have to go up and I'm just, I'm like,
00:58:18.120and it's, you don't ever touch your face and I can't do it. So I've got to wipe the sweat off.
00:58:23.560And I think he thought that I was crying and all these cameras just start going off like
00:58:28.540everywhere. And I'm like, yeah, I was just wiping my head off guys. It's all good.
00:58:32.200yeah not it not it i'm just drunk i'm just drunk well the other thing is i'm with you know respect
00:58:39.020you're a little heavier in that particular shot in that video than you are now and certainly then
00:58:44.980when you were fighting and you write about that too in the book and about your friend
00:58:47.680who gave it to you straight like everyone needs this friend i usually think it was just a woman
00:58:52.720thing you know because we need the friend who'll be like your ass does look fat in those jeans you
00:58:57.320should not be wearing those and you have yet your ass looks fat in those jeans friend i i did his
00:59:03.820name is uh his name's tim kennedy i don't know if you ever heard of yes yes of course yeah we had
00:59:08.580him on yeah just just an incredible guy he's no he's a no bullshit kind of guy um and you know i
00:59:15.280moved to austin i was going through i was going through my divorce which was just you know by far
00:59:20.120i would rather go through you know five afghanistan's than a divorce and um and and you
00:59:28.460know i i remember coming into the gym we were working out on it myself him and another guy
00:59:33.560we're working out just on it and it's kind of on it was kind of like my the gym was my
00:59:37.540kind of my like my my grounding piece to get me through this right working out and working with
00:59:43.460tim and shane uh and and one and they they it was my getting me through this right like they were
00:59:48.400literally, um, the people, you know, when you talk about contagious, right? Like they were the people
00:59:53.620around me that were, were holding the line. And I'll never forget. I came in one day and I was
00:59:57.180just, you know, probably looking for some, maybe a little empathy. Uh, and I came in and I was like,
01:00:01.900man, um, I said something about like, I'm fat. Yeah. I said, I think I'm fat. And, uh, and Tim
01:00:09.180kind of like, or I'm weak or something. I can't remember what the exact line was, but Tim looked
01:00:12.700at me and he goes hey hey check it out um people look up to you as as a warrior and uh you need to
01:00:20.460look like one you understand and i'll never forget i'm already down because my whole life is
01:00:27.820shattering around me and that was tim's way of empathy but you know you have to surround yourself
01:00:34.360with people who tell you what you need to hear not what you want to hear that's richard um you
01:00:38.640You know, it's such a so many times we surround ourselves in and I see this a lot.
01:00:44.300We surround ourselves with people who make us feel good, you know, and that's the same thing that I was doing when I got out of the Marine Corps was I was I was surrounding myself with people that made me feel good.
01:00:53.000And I was eating things that made me feel good. And that's why I looked like this fat piece of trash that I did.
01:01:01.980I think I think Dakota learned a lesson I learned from my grandma.
01:01:05.480She said there's a big difference between a surprise party and an intervention.
01:01:08.640i needed an intervention you know and and my life didn't really get back on track you know
01:01:15.420it didn't really start going forward um until i started surrounding myself with people who would
01:01:21.860hold me accountable who would you know you know we we have this false sense of brotherhood across
01:01:27.440the globe now and i see it in a lot of service i see this in the fire in being a firefighter i see
01:01:32.180this in a lot of things and it's it's we want people to like us and i see this with people
01:01:37.540parent. And it's not about people liking you. It's not about, you know, not hurting someone's
01:01:42.520feelings. It's about telling them what they need to hear so that they can go ahead and fix it.
01:01:46.420Right. Could you imagine if you walked in a doctor just told you, you know, what was going
01:01:51.060to make you feel good? Oh, oh, yeah. You have you have diabetes from eating too much sugar
01:01:56.000and you're you know, you're morbidly obese. But hey, hey, it's OK. There's just more of you to
01:02:01.120love. Yeah. No, you need somebody who'll give it to you straight. I always talk about my primary
01:02:06.600care physician on the show because i love him and he really he's he's one of those people for me he's
01:02:10.760on the radical honesty program but he definitely does not like it when his patients get too heavy
01:02:16.420because it's it's not healthy it's just not and apparently there was a guy who went to see him
01:02:21.920you have to pay cash and then you seek reimbursement later more and more doctors doing it
01:02:25.420anyway there's a parent there was a patient who went in with his wife and they each got a physical
01:02:28.960and they just moved to the to the area so he was paying the the bill at checkout and his physical
01:02:36.060costs a thousand dollars more than his wife's physical. And he said to the receptionist,
01:02:41.040why is my physical a thousand dollars more than my wife's physical? And the doctor heard it and
01:02:45.160he came out and he goes, because you're fat. I was like, what? But he's like, listen, these are
01:02:53.660the number of things that are going to go wrong with you that I'm going to have to take care of
01:02:56.180or the long, long list, way longer than your wife's. And so, yeah, you're going to have to
01:02:59.680pay more. But like, as it may sound mean, it's also good to hear because it can be the wake-up
01:03:04.680call that people need, you know, to sort of start changing their lives. And you did. I mean,
01:03:09.440you look great and you got the drinking under control and, you know, all the things. So
01:03:13.680hats off to you. All right. Now I want to talk about sort of the rule breaking parts of your
01:03:19.240lives. And it's interesting because you're, you know, you're these decorated military heroes,
01:03:23.600but you're also kind of rule breakers. By the way, Rob, my team graciously reminded me that
01:03:27.700you were banned by Delta for an anti-mask tweet. I wasn't going to bring it up. I was going to say
01:03:32.100something that rhymes with delta what'd you do it is just for a tweet you got banned well i you
01:03:37.680know i i took a photo a selfie that because they look i had a mask on and they were serving us
01:03:44.560like stuff and i said i could take my mask off to to eat this they said yeah so i i took a picture
01:03:50.760and posted it that was a bad idea don't tweet that but then what's what's crazy is as i took
01:03:55.440off like a two-hour flight i didn't know it went viral and i landed no one had said a word i was
01:04:00.280wearing a mask the whole time when i get off uh turn my phone on getting blasted and my wife
01:04:04.760called said what did you just do i'm like i don't know yeah that horrible selfies in the new york
01:04:09.100times you idiot didn't you say like did you consider saying do you know why like have you
01:04:13.520heard of isama bin laden like did you try to play that card at all no no i didn't all i said was it
01:04:18.560was amazing on the 20 year anniversary at 9 11 i'm the one on a no-fly list it's nothing you and
01:04:24.660him had in common oh geez it's crazy they put khalid shake muhammad on a plane before they put
01:04:28.780me on i don't get it oh my god please tell me they reversed themselves did they reverse themselves
01:04:32.660not yet they're too woke oh delta you're gonna get a lot of people banning you you're we're gonna
01:04:39.080choose all right american airlines i prefer american delta anyway i gotta say so um okay
01:04:46.480so that that wasn't exactly the thing i was talking about but let's talk about because we
01:04:49.520didn't actually get to this last time either um you killed bin laden you were the man who actually
01:04:56.100shot bin laden and then there's a reason we know that because um you you had an interview with was
01:05:02.540it esquire who did you give the anonymous interview to anonymous was with esquire and that was just
01:05:07.420more of a proof that uh a lot of veterans don't know what to do when they get out of the military
01:05:11.700that's what that was that was that was and then i remember being at fox news when you gave the big
01:05:16.400interview to peter docey who back then was just known more as like steve docey's son um now
01:05:21.500everybody knows him as as biden's chief antagonist in the white house press corps but um and i know
01:05:25.840you knew Brian Kilmeade and all that stuff. So you came out with it and you'd been out,
01:05:29.580you were outed against your will prior to the revelation on Fox because some magazine got a
01:05:34.660hold of the fact that it was you and they tried to get ahead of it, which wasn't good because you
01:05:37.960needed to secure the safety of your family. And you have to take arrangements before you come out
01:05:41.980with something. So, but there was definitely blowback. And you write in this book about how
01:05:46.100even before that moment, there was jealousy. And I do want to talk about it because I think we
01:05:51.400revere our military so much we try to skirt past anything that doesn't reflect so well on them but
01:05:58.160can you just talk about that because it was a little bit of a breaking rules to to come out
01:06:03.500and you know you you i think you say in the book don't don't sit in the front row that was sort of
01:06:07.600the lesson um and there were people who had negative feelings about you even prior to you
01:06:13.060outing yourself yeah and um i can't blame them i i've seen missions done before where i wasn't
01:06:18.740part of it and i was actually why didn't i get to do that type thing and you have guys so close
01:06:22.260to doing something and they didn't do it and at first it's i mean everyone knew what happened
01:06:26.140um and the first thing that as soon as anyone found out bin laden was dead especially the
01:06:31.700seals the first question they would ask was who got him and uh it was actually kind of funny at
01:06:36.140first because i was known for like i like morale i like to tell stories and jokes i guess uh
01:06:40.260the common answer was yeah o'neill got him they would say oh we are never going to hear the end
01:06:44.840of this and it was kind of funny about that but then you know the further we get out it would be
01:06:49.780a navy seal out in town and they would say who got them like the bartender don't tell anybody but
01:06:54.080and so the word got out my name got out um around virginia beach dc new york and then other navy
01:06:59.440seals in in california and so that right there was it was more of uh yeah he's out there telling
01:07:04.020everyone just trying to get you know we'd be at lunch somewhere and a shot of tequila would show
01:07:08.420up and the bartender would say they don't want to know but someone sent this to you you know it's
01:07:12.260for and just weird stuff like that. I didn't want the attention. My plan was to be in the Navy for
01:07:16.40030 years. I was going to be a buds and a seal instructor out in Coronado with a mustache and
01:07:20.740a cigar. Like I had my line ready and everything. All right, gents today, we are going to run 10
01:07:24.720miles. And of course, by we, I mean, you stuff like that. But this, this happened and it was
01:07:29.700just sort of, um, it got uncomfortable in the Navy. And, and then obviously, you know, it was
01:07:35.220in May of 2011, the greatest time of our lives. And then in August, the worst time of our lives,
01:07:40.240We lost extortion, went seven, 31 Americans to include the dog bark died.
01:07:44.300And we went from planning missions to planning funerals.
01:08:05.520And then I went to work in Washington.
01:08:09.280and a congresswoman congressman carol carol maloney from new york said you should probably
01:08:14.220donate something to the memorial museum i did donate a shirt anonymously and um with a flag
01:08:19.700on it and it was just you know just to have there and uh once i gave the shirt there was 30 people
01:08:25.140and they wanted to hear the story i told the story i did actually peter doocy was there with
01:08:28.500the camera crew we were filming it for historic uh sake and i told the story and watching their
01:08:34.540responses they'd all lost someone in 9-11 and just the way they came up to me and said putting
01:08:39.200a face and a name with this. There will never be closure, but this is healing. And a lot of
01:08:44.800sitting around with it, I was like, you know what, if I can help them, I've assumed risk before I can
01:08:48.440do it. And then I came up with a manuscript and I submitted it to the Pentagon. So my book is the
01:08:53.840only one that was approved by all the agencies and the Department of Defense. And I believe if you
01:08:58.140have something historical, you know, an American, the world should know. I'm really happy George
01:09:01.840Washington had a biographer with him. I did it the right way. And then, well, you know, that was
01:09:06.980after the um the fox news came out you were actually i was watching your show that was the
01:09:11.020first time i saw my face on television when because you had it because there was so much bad press
01:09:14.900and we kind of had to get ahead of it but i couldn't get on because the special was not for
01:09:17.860a few days but i mean that was a that was a weird awakening to kind of like the way forward you're
01:09:22.180here you are launching the limelight now what do you do right right and you dealt with it and i
01:09:27.300know a lot of a lot of the opinion on you speaking out uh softened once they saw the piece on fox
01:09:33.140and saw how humble you were you were giving the credit away you that's what you always do yeah
01:09:38.900that that week of sitting alone in a hotel room watching all the horrible stuff i couldn't even
01:09:43.680watch the news just a horrible anyone that ever saw anything was trying to get the exclusive and
01:09:48.400it was all over the news saying stuff like i didn't say that why would you say that and then
01:09:51.980but then the the fox news special came out it was really good peter did a great job he's still doing
01:09:55.660a great job yeah he is well you know what's so crazy about that and then and then people were
01:09:59.580like, oh, it wasn't really Rob O'Neill who shot in Laden. And of course, you've already been
01:10:03.560backed up. It was you. And then I know with you, Dakota, Medal of Honor winner. The vipers came
01:10:11.440out like, no, he overstated what he did. Not true. And it happened to Marcus, too. Marcus Luttrell
01:10:16.740and his story, Lone Survivor. No, he over like what? Who are these disgusting press people who
01:10:21.680decide it's time to eat our military heroes to tear down these stories of heroism? I mean,
01:10:26.440And my own personal belief, being a member of the media, is there are people who hate America and they don't like any story that reflects well on Americans or the American military or this country.
01:10:35.080They much rather tell a story of like abuse at Abu Ghraib.
01:10:38.240All right. Hold on. I'm going to get your reaction to that.
01:10:40.340And I'm going to get more on Dakota's extraordinary story and his rule breaking right after this quick break.
01:10:46.860Don't go away. Looking forward to more of our conversation with Dakota and Rob in two seconds.
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01:11:52.820And Dakota, you write about how when you went for that Medal of Honor ceremony, that President Obama told you that your life was never going to be the same, that it was going to change forever in the wake of that medal.
01:12:05.560And you write in the book, Obama was right. Nothing was the same again afterward, not by a long shot and not in the way that the president and other people praising me intended.
01:12:14.160After the ceremony, reporters began questioning the whole story of what happened, claiming that parts were embellished or made up, that I had never killed the guy with the rock, reference to your story, and maybe hadn't killed any Taliban at all, that I couldn't have saved as many people as I claimed and so on and so forth.
01:12:28.560and you say even before i received the award i knew i didn't want it receiving it made that
01:12:35.560notion feel even more true so why why is that why do you think the press because i just pointed out
01:12:43.260before the break has a pattern of doing this to our military heroes well so in my instance um
01:12:50.120you know so we started we started embedding the press i mean obviously it's been for a long time
01:12:55.160But like, so the one who came out and started talking, started writing this, these narratives, he was actually embedded with us that day.
01:13:03.860He was on the mission. We were never in the valley at the same time on my way in.
01:13:08.800He was on his way out. There was a point at where he wanted to go in with me.
01:13:15.780And I looked at him and just said no. And he left.
01:13:19.480um he left out went back to the base uh where it was safe uh while i continued to make four more
01:13:27.200trips in um and so this was kind of his moment to i don't know and you know he talked to a lot
01:13:33.380of the guys there's a lot of guys on the mission that day um that that that have their own opinions
01:13:38.900but all i'll say is is um um you know i i don't i've never claimed to i've never claimed that i
01:13:46.760killed anybody that day other than the guy with the rock. Um, I don't know how many people I
01:13:51.400killed. I don't know how many people I saved just in my mind. I didn't kill enough cause the war
01:13:54.880would be over. And I didn't, um, I didn't save enough because I lost a lot of, a lot of friends
01:13:59.640that day. And, but when they come back and they start writing these articles and they start
01:14:04.160saying these things, you know, it used to bother me. I mean, it used to smash me. I'll never forget
01:14:09.180coming home. I flew in from a speech one day and I drove home and, uh, on the front page of the,
01:14:15.540the biggest newspaper in the state was my me on the front of it.
01:14:20.580And it said medal of dishonor. And I didn't ask for this medal.
01:14:24.060I didn't ask for the medal. You know, in the whole process of the medal,
01:14:28.000there's only one statement that's not included and it's mine. So, you know,
01:14:32.880by, by writing that he's calling all of his friends, a bunch of liars.
01:14:37.900So, you know, it's just, it was just an incredible,
01:14:43.040But really, it just said more about him than me. Right. He could have grabbed a weapon and got busy, too.
01:14:49.760You know, and everybody's like, oh, they wouldn't let me or they well, they told me no, too. Right.
01:14:54.520So we a lot of people were a lot closer to my teammates and the guys in there getting getting, you know, getting killed than I was.
01:15:02.220But again, it's back to the individual choice. It goes back to the preparation.
01:15:07.220And, you know, Rob talked about a little bit earlier about, you know, why do, you know, why do some people act on chaos and why do some people not?
01:15:14.760And I just think it's I don't think it's a nature thing.
01:15:18.400I think it's it's a it's a preparation thing. Right.
01:15:21.520People who aren't prepared don't don't act.
01:15:24.620And and I think that that was the case of that day is is most of them should have had no business being in that in that situation.
01:15:32.740And it showed whenever whenever they were tested.
01:15:36.080And, yeah, I mean, that's another piece of your story is that you you had the smarts to disobey the authorities when you could see the authorities were wrong and that they trust in them was not warranted.
01:15:49.700As we've seen now, thanks to the investigations into your military commanders who are calling shots that day, have played out that you were right, that they were giving you bad orders, that they were not on the right path.
01:16:02.380But it takes an extraordinary human being, especially as a soldier, to understand a Marine, to understand the difference because you're trained the entire time in the military to obey orders.
01:16:13.160And, you know, it's like it's like from a few good men.
01:16:15.580Oh, you only get to obey the orders you believe in or, you know, it's up to you.
01:16:19.380And he's like, no, I have to obey all the orders.
01:16:22.360You found a way to disregard what you were being told.
01:16:25.020And you did save three dozen lives at least and took a lot of lives that needed taking that day.
01:16:31.180And I don't want to skip over, retrieve the bodies of four of your fallen comrades, including First Lieutenant Michael Johnson, Staff Sergeant Aaron Kennefic, Gunnery Sergeant Edward Johnson Jr., and Hospital Corpsman Third Class James R. Layton, including taking the things off of their bodies that you knew that the families would want to make sure that those got back to the people who loved those guys.
01:16:57.660I mean, these are extraordinary acts of honor. So I don't know. I mean, when you, how do you
01:17:04.080describe what, what, what made you see, separate the wheat from the chaff that day and know what
01:17:08.760to do? Well, you know, so before we move on from, you know, the, the people who criticize or come
01:17:14.520out, you know, with, with, with what I did that day, you know, I was, I was 21 years old. I left
01:17:21.400a room that was about the size of the conference room that we live in right now. And I had, you
01:17:26.000know, three teammates that, that were as close to me as it got right. We stood up, we, we woke up
01:17:31.800every day next to each other. We ate next to each other. We fought next to each other. And, um, I
01:17:36.600left, I left there on a Monday and I returned on a Wednesday and I was the only one that came back
01:17:43.380there. I came back and I had to literally every bed that was in that, where I lived in my home at
01:17:50.300that moment. Um, every guy that I relied on, every guy that I loved, um, I was literally putting their
01:17:56.800stuff in a bag to send home to their, to their family. Um, and, and so, you know, anybody who
01:18:02.560criticizes that or what I did and they want to dispute seven versus nine or six or whatever it
01:18:07.900is numbers. I mean, they're, they're, they're cowards themselves. Um, as far as like why I did
01:18:12.900what I did. Um, you know, I, I just, it was a simple, you know, I always talk about what's
01:18:21.880why I don't understand how I got a medal or I got awarded anything because what I did was easy.
01:18:29.700Um, it was what needed to be done. It was clear. There were, there were human beings who were
01:18:33.840suffering. Um, they were my brothers. They were my family. Um, it was, it was very clear,
01:18:39.960very obvious that they were trapped, that they were hurt, that they were scared, that they needed
01:18:46.200help. And that was that was clear across the board. Can you just describe I mean, I described
01:18:52.220it at the top of the show as an ambush in which folks were caught. And you kept going back in
01:18:56.720trying to save people trying to remove the bodies of the fallen, trying to save US troops, Afghan
01:19:02.700troops, fight the enemy. But like, how do you describe it in a few lines? Like what what happened
01:19:07.160that day on september 8th 2009 yeah i'll never forget like i turned like we've got the truck
01:19:13.820close to rodriguez chavez was driving and uh we turned and it was like a riverbed uh going up
01:19:19.600into this valley and and um i'll never forget going in there and there were bodies everywhere
01:19:24.080i mean there were bodies everywhere i mean you had the taliban i mean like my driver in the truck
01:19:28.740was literally like he ran like i'll never forget he was running over the enemy because they were
01:19:32.660that close to the truck. You know, it was just, I was always a worst case scenario guy. And this
01:19:39.300was worse than my worst case scenario. And I didn't think I was going to die. There was a
01:19:44.700point that I remember that I didn't think I was going to die. I just, I just accepted and knew I
01:19:49.160was. And all I could think about as each one of these guys were shooting at me was, I know I'm
01:19:56.460going to die and you're going to get me, but you're going to have to earn it. And, you know, we came
01:20:02.160in and like on each trip we came in um we would bring in these trucks behind us these little
01:20:06.660these little afghan uh toyotas and we would i would or ford rangers yeah and i don't remember
01:20:12.580which one it was but anyways it was all these trucks and we would throw uh i would throw the
01:20:17.280bodies in the back of the truck i'd try to put the dead ones on the bottom and then i would the
01:20:21.300ones that had a chance to live on top of that and and and just send them out just truckload after
01:20:26.280truckload. And, you know, all I could think about that day was it wasn't about Afghans. It wasn't
01:20:32.280about, you know, the Afghan soldiers versus U.S. soldiers or Marines. It wasn't anything about that.
01:20:37.740It was about good versus evil. And it was literally that simple. It was good versus evil.
01:20:43.540And that's not very hard to distinct between in these types of situations.
01:20:49.540Mm hmm. Wow. You know, I've talked to Rob O'Neill after the Afghanistan withdrawal. I haven't talked to you. This is our first time since that happened. How do you make sense of it? Right. It's been on a lot of minds lately, given what we've seen with Putin.
01:21:04.380yeah i mean look this is something we all knew uh there i mean anybody who went over there and
01:21:12.540thought that we were ever going to put you know some type of democracy or we were ever going to
01:21:16.320have a you know build a military up in in afghanistan that was going to be able to sustain
01:21:20.660itself as soon as we leave uh they were just they were just kidding themselves right but
01:21:25.020but with that being said you know how do i justify it and and and i justify it this right
01:21:31.060You can if you want to get in the rabbit hole, you know, of why we were there and how we got there.
01:21:37.560I mean, that's a whole other ballgame. But but for me, I leave it at this is I didn't make the decision to go in.
01:21:44.040And none of us who were in that uniform did who wore the nation's cloth.
01:21:47.540And what I'll tell you is, is for 20 years, Afghanistan and Iraq were safer than they'd ever been in Afghanistan.
01:21:56.440when there was a U.S. flag, when someone was wearing a United States flag over there and
01:22:02.820they were going through these places, women were allowed to go to school. It was as safe as it had
01:22:08.620ever been that they'd ever seen. When America is somewhere, the place is better. Wherever we're at,
01:22:17.780it's better. And I'll say that while we were in Afghanistan, while our soldiers and Marines and
01:22:22.620airmen and and everyone who served wherever they were in these countries, the place was a better
01:22:29.080place. And we were over there just trying to leave it better than we found it. Right. It's not our
01:22:33.180fault that the people above us couldn't make the right decisions. What do you make of the the
01:22:38.460president, Biden? And, you know, we're going to hear from him in the State of the Union finally
01:22:41.960this week, calling it an extraordinary success, not the war, but his his command of the withdrawal.
01:22:47.680oh i mean look i i think that i mean this is this is his way right i mean you know it's it's um he
01:22:55.880sinks the boat and then he rescues three people off of it as you know 10 others drowned and uh
01:23:01.680you know it's a success that he saved those three people don't mind the fact that he sank the boat
01:23:06.160right um i mean this is you know the biden biden his administration are so incompetent um that the
01:23:14.520incompetency has led to Russia doing this. I mean, I can tell you right now that that is what America
01:23:20.040is on America's shoulders because of we picked a weak leader. And the fact is, is people don't want
01:23:25.180to don't want to hear this. But the fact of the matter is, and you're seeing this firsthand right
01:23:29.400now, is that when America is strong, the world hates us. But when America is weak, the world
01:23:36.460suffers. And you're seeing that across the globe right now. Do you agree with that, Rob? Do you
01:23:41.900think that's fair to biden well i mean it's it's scary because like dakota was saying they can they
01:23:47.380can do anything and say anything because most of the media is going to go with it you even had
01:23:51.780jen saki the other day saying that we need to stop relying on we need to become energy independent
01:23:56.880without creating more gas like it's like you know and i tweeted the windmills going we can uh we can
01:24:03.660all ride unicorns that would work wouldn't it it's it's just the the issue is uh uh it's a political
01:24:08.900reason to pull out of Afghanistan because they wanted the 20 year anniversary of look at us,
01:24:13.140look at us. And they're going to still say it was a success, even though if we, you know,
01:24:16.760I can always resort back to the planning for the Bin Laden raid. We had some of the best tactical
01:24:20.280minds in the world come up with the perfect plan. If we took those same 23 guys a year ago and said,
01:24:26.060come up with the worst way to get out of Afghanistan, we would have come up with exactly
01:24:29.620what they did the worst way possible. I mean, let's be honest, everything they've touched
01:24:34.920being the administration has turned to shit. And I should point out to the audience that you
01:24:40.440you're not like blindly anti Joe Biden. You write nice things about him, Rob, and say, you know,
01:24:46.020he was, of course, Obama's vice president at the time of the bin Laden raid. And so it's not like
01:24:51.280you came in saying he sucks. He's a Democrat. And I know you've said before, and you've said in this
01:24:55.100book, when people ask me if I'm a Democrat or Republican, you would tell them what you say.
01:24:59.580No, I'm an American and I'm a big believer.
01:25:02.320I don't need to blindly follow what one party says.
01:25:04.960I think party politics, I think John Adams thought that it was the worst thing.
01:25:07.680Two parties are going to destroy the country.
01:25:09.160You have people up there on Capitol Hill right now.
01:25:10.860I love the ones both sides of the aisle that call themselves war hawks, even though they've never been to war.
01:25:15.040No one in their family has been to war, but they sure are good at sending us because a lot of these big time contractors that are huge funders, their reelection campaign, everyone on Capitol Hill.
01:25:23.060I mean, if you're like Nancy Pelosi, 19th term, because we just need some change.
01:27:20.080And you write that it may actually be the downfall of the United States one day, just
01:27:24.200this this sort of blind knee-jerk deference to authority that we've had for far too often i mean
01:27:31.780i think if there's one good thing about covid and the restrictions and all that maybe it's stopping
01:27:36.540that maybe it was the beginning of the end of the american people's knee-jerk deference to authority
01:27:41.760yeah i mean well i don't know i mean i think if something else i mean look how long it took
01:27:48.000everyone to to stand up to that right um i don't know i think there's just too much trust put into
01:27:53.960people who are in roles right uh and and the issue is is that because like i i spoke on earlier
01:27:59.700people don't want to tell people what what they need to hear they just want to make people feel
01:28:03.920good right um you know all of our generals are all like they have to like they're they're selected
01:28:09.500like they're they're in politically to be able to get those stars right that's one of the problems
01:28:14.220but yeah i i seen it i seen it firsthand i seen it firsthand that you know there was two
01:28:19.720investigations that were done on our battle uh that and that came back and said and i'll quote
01:28:25.140a direct loss of life due to leadership no one was held accountable no one was held accountable
01:28:31.320you know and that's the issue is the lack of accountability inside of our military
01:28:35.860the lack of accountability across the globe like we don't we don't have a we don't have a military
01:28:40.840i can tell you right now the guys on the ground the guys who are the the lower enlisted there's
01:28:46.880no there's no problem there like there's no issue of of what they believe in when you start seeing
01:28:53.100them become you know I hear so often well you know our military's becoming weak or you know
01:28:58.740this new generation's weak well let me tell you uh if they're becoming weak it's because of their
01:29:04.500direct reflection of leadership because the leadership's weak you want to talk about leadership
01:29:08.840you know we just we mentioned Jocko you know I think we mentioned Jocko earlier but you know
01:29:12.740Jaco talks about how there are no there are no bad teams. There's only bad leaders. And let me tell you something. We've had quite a few bad leaders here in the past. Well, since I've been alive. And, you know, but you're also seeing the power of what a good leader can do over in Ukraine right now in this, you know, this 21st century David versus Goliath situation.
01:29:34.100Well, and Jocko, Jocko Willink, he's been on the program. He talks about extreme accountability, right? He's the first one to say it was my fault. Here's what I did. Here's what I could do differently. That's the mindset you guys have, too. And that's exactly the opposite of what we've seen, you know, in the wake of so many of these conflicts.
01:29:49.340You tell me, Rob, because I think I'm thinking about this, about your point you made the last time, because you made this even before you wrote the book about, you know, the generals and so on.
01:29:57.680Part of this is why people are reluctant to do too much in Ukraine.
01:30:02.040If we hadn't done Iraq, if we hadn't done Afghanistan for 20 years, never mind the initial response, but that I think everyone would agree that was justified, except for the truly far left loons.
01:30:13.540But if we hadn't done those things, I think we know we would have come to Ukraine saying, oh, yeah, we need to go do something.
01:30:18.240This is a sovereign nation. It's a democracy. It's not perfect. It's not exactly a democracy
01:30:23.140like ours, but you can't invade a sovereign nation like Putin's doing. And, you know,
01:30:28.020the United States is, you know, we're the beacon of freedom in the world and we're the strongest
01:30:31.560military and the strongest country. And then when so on, we got to go in there, no fly zone or
01:30:35.360something. The reason we don't want to do it, not only are we war weary, but we don't believe
01:30:40.280in the people calling the shots anymore. Forget Biden. We don't have the same faith in the generals
01:46:14.800A hundred percent. Yeah, it's illiberalism. All right, so your book is not about wokeism. It's
01:46:20.540really about life and how we deal with the incredibly fast rate of change that we happen
01:46:28.200to be seeing, you know, for whatever reason, I was born in 1970, you guys were born somewhere
01:46:32.980around there. And for whatever reason, we're all on this earth at this particular time together,
01:46:37.280we don't know why the cosmos dictated it or somebody else or nobody. But here we are. And
01:46:43.260you're you seem to be positing that the rate of societal change right now is is dizzying. And that
01:46:49.380are I was quoting now our brains, bodies and social systems are perpetually out of sync.
01:46:55.080We are generating new problems at a new and accelerating rate, and it is making us sick.
01:47:01.320So what was the point of writing A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century,
01:47:07.280Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life?
01:47:11.040Well, we found over 15 years of teaching that the model that we used ourselves and we
01:47:19.340talked to our students was actually very liberating.
01:47:23.060It didn't solve every problem that we faced, but it simplified what it was to live because you simply understood what you were built for and why that was at odds with the world that you found yourself in.
01:47:34.600And so the recognition that the problem is not chaos, that it's actually definable, and that the various maladies we have are addressable by thinking your way through them is powerful.
01:47:48.540And our students, frankly, frequently ask us to provide a book like this so that they could share what they were learning with people who weren't in the class because they felt it changed their lives, but it was hard to convey.
02:05:02.820It's just being thrown data that confuses it.
02:05:06.020And creating these kinds of regular patterns in your life makes sense to the extent that
02:05:11.620you can avoid chemicals that disrupt your body's capacity to figure out what time of
02:05:17.900day it is or what mode it should be in.
02:05:20.820That's a good idea to the extent that you have to use something to get to sleep using
02:05:24.820something that is as minimally disruptive as possible, like melatonin is likely to be much
02:05:31.300better because it's a natural trigger of neurological systems than something synthesized
02:05:38.220in the lab novelly. And interestingly, we talk in the book about the patterns that children pick up
02:05:46.620when they are learning what it's like to be a human and when to go to sleep. And we talk about
02:05:52.720the question of whether or not there are signals in breast milk that may allow a mother, you know,
02:05:59.840we tend to think of breast milk as food, but it's food plus a lot of information. And the mother may
02:06:05.660be sending information to the baby about what time it is. It's time to start ratcheting down and
02:06:09.680heading towards sleep. And if you've used a breast pump and not recorded the time of day that you
02:06:14.700pumped the breast milk and you feed the child that milk at an arbitrary time, you may be sending
02:06:20.100chaotic messages. That's actually a hypothesis that one of our students, Josie Jarvis,
02:06:27.720proposed and did some research on, which we cite her in the book. And it's remarkable. So
02:06:34.040is the ability to pump breast milk a modern convenience that is super valuable to many
02:06:39.740mothers? Absolutely. It was for me. And I know it is for many, many people. So we're not taking
02:06:47.420a regressive traditionalist approach and saying, you know, the only way to do things is what was
02:06:52.200done in the past. But as we introduce modern amenities to our lives, let us think about what
02:06:59.080systems we might be disrupting and how to disrupt them as little as possible. So in this one, you
02:07:05.560know, it just, it actually wouldn't take much more to, if, you know, if you're in this position of
02:07:10.200being a mother to an infant and you're expressing breast milk, don't just date stamp it, which we
02:07:16.500all do so that it doesn't spend too much time in the freezer. But timestamp it too. And give your
02:07:22.520baby milk expressed at the same time of day as when you're feeding. Yeah, I like that. I mean,
02:07:27.600what could it hurt? A lot of this stuff is like, what could it hurt? It's one step closer to how
02:07:31.660we used to live. And there's no downside if you've got it in the freezer. Janice Dean,
02:07:35.860my good friend from Fox, she was on the show yesterday. And she and I had our second babies
02:07:41.200within six weeks of one another and we had all this breast milk mine and hers stored in our
02:07:46.680respective freezers when super storm sandy hit and both of our houses lost power and it was
02:07:54.300freezing not you could it was like i don't care i'll put my kids in 45 sweaters save the breast
02:08:00.360milk it was like whatever has to be done it's liquid gold all right um next up we're going to
02:08:07.060get into some highly controversial topics, like the difference between men and women. Newsflash,
02:08:12.280there are some. Yeah, there are some. We're not the same. And we're going to dive into this crazy
02:08:16.760MMA fight from last Friday, where a trans woman absolutely obliterated her female opponent. It's
02:08:23.480raising a lot of eyebrows. You'll see why. We'll be right back. Viking, committed to exploring the
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02:09:13.720Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, everyone. We are joined today by co-hosts of the very
02:09:18.020popular Dark Horse podcast, Brett Weinstein and Heather Hying. Okay, so back to the confused
02:09:25.200students. Why? Why? Why is there an incongruity between how I feel and how everybody tells me I
02:09:30.420need to behave to feel well because I'm doing it all and it's not happening. And one of the things
02:09:35.260you guys dive into is gender. You believe this is very controversial. There really are differences
02:09:41.680between men and women. You stand by that. So we are quite radical. Yes, that's right. Let's start
02:09:50.440at the 30,000 foot level. And you walk us through some of those differences based on evolutionary
02:09:56.560biology? Yeah. Well, a conservative view is that in our lineage, we have been sexually reproducing
02:10:04.380with two and only two sexes for 500 million years. It's possible that that lineage of sexual
02:10:10.620reproduction goes back one to two billion years. But at the very least, at a minimum, it's 500
02:10:17.060million years in our lineage alone. So what does that mean? There are two sexes. Sexual
02:10:23.560reproduction has value. We won't go into what the value is here, but it hasn't reversed in our
02:10:28.920lineage. And it involves two gametes coming together to make a new being. And those two
02:10:38.160gametes have to do two things. They have to bring together not just the DNA from two different
02:10:43.860beings, half from mom, half from dad, but they also have to bring the cytoplasm, the machinery
02:10:49.960of the cell and they also have to find one another and so basically they divide the labor so one of
02:10:55.460the gametes we call it the egg and we call the things that have eggs females brings the cytoplasm
02:11:01.040has this big bulky gamete that has all of the machinery of the cell and then that leaves the
02:11:06.000other job uh the finding generally to the other gamete which in animals is uh is sperm and in
02:11:13.400plants is pollen and we call those things that have those gametes males so that's ancient history
02:11:19.320quite literally. And what that sets in motion is a tendency because the egg has so much more stuff
02:11:26.780in it than the sperm does to, to have an asymmetry in the investment of, of the partners of, of the
02:11:34.640parents. And so if only one parent is going to invest further in offspring, it will tend to be
02:11:40.440females. This then gets into, you know, and, and, and none of this is new. None of what I've just
02:11:46.200said is new or frankly controversial in evolutionary biology. Where it gets more interesting is if
02:11:53.280gender is the behavioral manifestation of sex, and sex is binary, there are males and there are
02:12:00.580females, well, behavioral manifestation of sex or the software of sex is going to be, you know,
02:12:07.360it's going to map onto sex pretty well, but it's going to be much more highly variable.
02:12:11.460And then especially in us, for humans who are more software than any other organisms on the planet, the fact that we have a history of being mammals, where we have obligate maternal care in the form of pregnancy and lactation and breastfeeding, that is true.
02:12:41.460And those things are changing, and there's nothing wrong with them changing, as long
02:12:45.080as you don't deny the underlying reality of the differences between the sexes.
02:12:49.800Well, we definitely are doing that, Brett.
02:12:51.500I mean, in today's day and age, we're being told that gender is 100% a social construct
02:12:56.100and that there was just some article, it was, I think, a parenting article in Slate.
02:13:00.640A woman wrote in and said, really struggling with trying not to raise boys or girls, but
02:13:07.520trying to raise completely gender neutral beings who then will just figure out for themselves
02:13:12.040whether they're boys or girls, you know, like, help me, and was, you know, shamed appropriately
02:13:16.880for, you know, what are you saying? Like, it shouldn't be hard, grow up, evolve, right?
02:13:21.500But that's the current fancy is that it's gender is 100% a social construct.
02:13:27.640Yeah, it's nonsense. And it's nonsense in several different ways. One thing that has to be said
02:13:33.300is that we make the point very strongly in the book that just because something is cultural
02:13:38.300does not take it out of the realm of evolutionary and adaptive. Culture is just as adaptive as
02:13:44.740genes. It is just as biological. And so even noticing that certain things are transmitted
02:13:50.300culturally does not free you from obligation to the evolutionary logic. But the more subtle point,
02:13:58.120I think, is that the logic of male and female, as Heather points out, are incredibly ancient
02:14:05.720and they are also incredibly consistent. So if one looks at a plant, a flower that has both male
02:14:13.740and female parts, you can notice that the female parts are much more reluctant about having sex
02:14:21.000with strangers than the male parts. That has nothing to do with, absolutely. So the female
02:14:27.200parts will have a long extension that forces the pollen grains to grow down towards the ovules.
02:14:35.520It's effectively a test. It's like a long courtship. How badly do you want it?
02:14:40.220Right. Exactly. The pollen doesn't care. The pollen will meet with anyone. The pollen's all
02:14:44.360over your car and your house and your life because the males are effectively, they don't
02:14:49.600have any reason not to mate with any tree that will have them. So that asymmetry is not about
02:14:58.700animals at all. It's certainly not about humans. It's about a strategic fact that arises every
02:15:07.340time you have these two different size gametes, as Heather points out. And so that doesn't mean
02:15:11.960that we can't change the dynamics in humans. And in fact, we are changing the dynamics in humans.
02:15:16.620And in many ways, it's very positive. I mean, the breast milk example is a great one. Pumping breast milk means men can now we can democratize the work of feeding babies. That's a good thing. Doesn't mean you have to do it, but having the option is a good thing.
02:15:32.440So it's not that we can't change these things, but we are, it's not those who think that this
02:15:36.880has something to do with recent human history and one group imposing its power on other groups and
02:15:43.940subjugating them and that that's where gender came from. That's nonsense. It's way too ancient
02:15:48.280and consistent for that. You know, it's annoying. We did a story on Courtney Cox doing some story
02:15:53.600about two people who were together and they had a baby and it was a trans man and a trans woman
02:15:58.900who wound up together. So, you know, the one who was biologically male was presenting as female.
02:16:03.320The one who was biologically female was presenting as male. And the one who was biologically male
02:16:07.780is sitting there trying to breastfeed this baby that they just had, that the one who is
02:16:12.360biologically female, but presenting as male actually gave birth to. So it's a biological
02:16:17.520male sitting there going, I don't understand no milk has come out of my breast yet. It's like,
02:16:21.300I got news for you, buddy. I need to break it to you. But some things are not going to change
02:16:27.100depending on your identity. But you guys recognize, I think accurately, right? That
02:16:32.760it goes beyond that. It goes beyond the flower and the pollinating everywhere. And say in the
02:16:37.760book that women tend to be more altruistic, trusting and compliant, also more prone to
02:16:42.080depression and anxiety disorders. Men are more prone to being diagnosed with ADHD, that men
02:16:47.320prefer working with things. Women prefer working with people. In some circles, you're not allowed
02:16:53.280to say things like that. That's one step away from what James Damore of Google said that got
02:16:59.400him fired, right? These characteristics. I happen to agree you're 100% right, but
02:17:04.040we're no longer allowed to talk like that. Yeah. And I mean, this sort of circles back to
02:17:10.580where you started talking about Peter Boghossian and what he was facing at Portland State and what
02:17:16.580all faculty really are facing who have a fundamental belief in underlying reality of
02:17:21.920the universe. You know, we, we should all be able to talk to all range of people across all
02:17:26.840demographics. And the one kind of people who I find it very difficult to, to have a conversation
02:17:34.000with is those who actually don't believe that there is an underlying reality. And that's quite a,
02:17:39.740that's quite far from, from saying, you know, how close are we to getting there? What are the best
02:17:43.880ways to get there? But is there an underlying reality? Yes. Yes. In fact, there is. So in the
02:17:49.440end, this is the mistake of the extrapolated postmodernism we're dealing with.
02:17:54.120I was just going to say that. So I didn't understand postmodernism until recently. But
02:17:57.520if you're a postmodernist, you're one of those people. You don't believe that there's a truth,
02:18:02.520a reality. Everything's massageable and arguable.
02:18:06.280Yeah. And I think there is a base value in some elements of postmodernism, but the way that is
02:18:15.460instantiated on the, in the modern academy and modern campuses, and then, you know, crawling
02:18:20.800off campuses, speeding off campuses into the media, for instance, in Hollywood, uh, is it's
02:18:26.600batshit. You know, it does, it doesn't make any sense. And so, you know, you can be, for instance,
02:18:31.600you can be gender non-conforming as I was and still have no confusion at all about whether
02:18:37.260or not you're a girl or a boy or a man. Same, same Heather. I'm the same as you. When I was a
02:18:41.940kid. I look like a boy. I acted like a boy. In today's day and age, they try to make me a boy,
02:18:47.060not my parents, but society. And I'm all woman. Right. Exactly. I think, you know, I'm, I'm,
02:18:53.100I'm grateful. It sounds like you're grateful for the parents you had. I'm grateful for the parents
02:18:57.500I had. And especially had we been born 40 years later, my God, you know, that would have been a
02:19:03.720very dangerous moment. And it's, it is only those parents who see reality, who are able to protect
02:19:10.020their children, but even that is becoming harder and harder. Yeah. Because we are so insistent that
02:19:15.400there's no difference to the point where we have, I mentioned this in the tease, situations like
02:19:19.680this MMA fighter. It made a lot of news yesterday. Her name is Alana McLaughlin. It's a biological
02:19:25.840man who transitioned to being a woman in 2010 at age 38. So we are well past puberty and all the
02:19:33.020changes that come to the male body, thanks to testosterone and so on. Alana served as a man
02:19:39.400in the U.S. Army Special Forces, and now is an MMA fighter in the Women's League, fought somebody
02:19:46.060named Celine Provost. It took Alana three minutes and 32 seconds into the second round to beat
02:19:52.820Celine in a video that is disturbing to watch. But we're told, fear not, because Alana McLaughlin
02:19:59.840passed all the medicals, including a hormone panel issued by the Florida State Boxing Commission,
02:20:03.920and therefore we're not supposed to be upset when we see what is clearly somebody who was born
02:20:08.420a boy who lived 38 years as a man absolutely eviscerate a biological female i think we have
02:20:15.460the tape if uh yeah we'll take a look at it find out as provost comes out swinging as we expected
02:20:22.020has one mma fight inside for the pocket or go for the legs not looking like the stronger fighter
02:20:27.860and taking a ton of punishment coming in getting picked away there as they get in the clinch and
02:20:32.960this is where mclaughlin could have an advantage get this punishment but big right from mclaughlin
02:20:37.680second overhand did not find it protection there from provost and the tap alana mclaughlin victorious
02:20:46.480in her mma debut i i don't know i i feel uncomfortable i want to be supportive of
02:20:56.660alana but i also feel really uncomfortable seeing that there's so much to say here uh you know trans
02:21:02.600Trans is real. And there is a lot in the discussion around trans people and trans rights that is actually complex and not totally clear, no matter how much truck you hold with reality.
02:21:15.440But trans women in women's sports is the shallow end of the pool. This is really easy.
02:21:22.360This is really easy. And part of the reason it's easy to say, actually, that's not okay. That's not fair. That marks the end of women's sports is because the idea that she passed hormone panels at whatever age she is now, 48, I guess, is absurd.
02:21:42.500is again, taking a measure that we have current levels of testosterone to current levels of
02:21:47.540testosterone suggest things about current levels of strength. Sure. But are they only be the only
02:21:53.260things that indicate whether you have benefited from being male? No, they're not just to pick
02:21:58.220two other things. Uh, there are different kinds of effects of hormones and in endocrinologists
02:22:04.400refer to activational versus organizational effects, but basically on or off, are you
02:22:09.320currently benefiting from testosterone that's just the activational effects it doesn't it doesn't
02:22:14.420reflect all of the so-called organizational effects yeah like bone length and strength
02:22:20.240all right i'm going to just stand you by quickly heather because we're going to squeeze in a quick
02:22:23.080break before the top of the hour but we're coming back with heather and brett we'll pick it up right
02:22:26.820here uh in just a few don't go away welcome back everyone to the megan kelly show we are joined
02:22:37.340today by brett weinstein and heather highing uh and we are discussing their new book a hunter
02:22:41.920gatherer's guide to the 21st century all right let's pick it up where we left it off uh heather
02:22:46.700on the fact that your testosterone levels may be the same as your opponent does not mean you don't
02:22:52.020have a physical advantage if you've lived three decades as a man that's right because of uh among
02:22:58.420many other reasons because of organizational effects of the testosterone that were present
02:23:03.680during your time in utero and early development and puberty, which will have shaped things like
02:23:09.460bone length, bone density, bone shape. Female and male skeletons are different. Women are
02:23:16.180adapted to have wide hips for childbearing. And yes, that may sound conservative and all,
02:23:22.360but it is true. And that means that we are less stable, for instance, just that one simple
02:23:27.220parameter. It is also true, for instance, that the Y chromosome itself has masculinizing,
02:23:33.680effects. And that is not widely known, but the idea that we have the one thing, again, the one
02:23:38.980thing, testosterone, as measurable right now, this is a failure of science. And it's more like
02:23:44.940scientism that says, ah, we can measure the thing, therefore that's all that matters. And it just
02:23:51.920doesn't. So I would say the number of mediocre male athletes who transition and become elite
02:24:00.280female athletes tells us all we need to know. It's so true. It's so true. Of course, in Connecticut,
02:24:07.500we had on a couple of the girls who got burned by this, who were runners at the high school level,
02:24:12.340who were kicking butt, and then competitors who were biologically male, who ran as males
02:24:18.820the previous spring and couldn't win anything, crossed over without taking any hormones,
02:24:24.200without doing anything different, and in the fall started crushing the biological girls.
02:24:28.380And the biological girls raised their hands and said, well, this doesn't feel fair.
02:24:32.580And then it was, you're bigots, you're bigots.
02:24:34.460And the poor girls are like, wait, am I?
02:26:11.120A basic difference between males and females in what they're interested in is not an indication
02:26:15.780that anybody has been excluded from anything.
02:26:18.920So there's a question about what all of this activism is.
02:26:23.240Is it really targeted at problems that need solving?
02:26:26.360undoubtedly some of it is but a large amount of it appears to be activism for its own sake
02:26:31.860and i would point out you said you were born in 1970 that happens to be the year that the song
02:26:39.760lola by the kinks rose to the top 10 in both the uk and the u.s on behalf of my serious xm colleagues
02:26:48.640i thank you for that bit of music history keep going well i mean it's important because if you've
02:26:53.460I mean, we, you know, probably the three of us all know the lyrics to that song. He uses her
02:27:01.280pronouns. He recognizes that she is, in fact, a man, but he is compassionate towards her. In fact,
02:27:08.540he, you know, that's the way I want it to stay for my Lola. And the point is, he is actually
02:27:15.740sympathetic to her cause. I never realized it was telling a story like, all I know is Lola,
02:27:21.300la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. It's not like a la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
02:27:26.440Well, there is a story there. The story is that this beautiful woman comes up to him in some kind
02:27:32.180of a bar situation and asks him to dance. And she speaks like a man. And in any case,
02:27:39.440the point is everybody got this. This is a boomer phenomenon, right? The boomers understood this.
02:27:45.320And is it tough to be trans? Undoubtedly. But the point is, not only is the recognition that there was a problem to be solved at least 50 years old, but we've made progress since then.
02:27:58.600The fact is almost everybody is on board with the idea that you should effectively be able to present as you wish within reason, but there are places where that has to stop. It does not allow a man to declare himself female and use that loophole to compete fairly in women's sports. It obviously can't be. And there's an even worse case, which is the separate prison system for men and women.
02:28:22.020Can you just simply, can a sexual predator declare themselves female and go to a women's
02:29:26.240And I've said this before, but every time, at every turn, the women lose this debate
02:29:29.640at every time, you know, whether it's running in a race at an MMA fight while sitting in
02:29:34.540a prison, women who are there with their daughters in a locker room who say she's a
02:29:39.060little young to see a penis come out of nowhere, you know, while we're in the women's
02:29:42.380locker room, they're not trying to be insensitive. They're trying to ask for some sensitivity
02:29:46.060to biology. And as you point out, millions of years of human history.
02:29:51.420Yeah. It's societally sanctioned misogyny. And so we're a year older than you, but we're all
02:29:58.620Gen Xers here. And I don't know about you, but I'm going to guess, Megan, that you and I had
02:30:05.000similar experiences growing up on opposite coasts of being girls who felt like the world was our
02:30:10.340oyster. We could do anything. We were now allowed to consider doing anything that once had been the
02:30:15.900domain of men. And that is not the same as imagining that we were men, or we were going
02:30:21.940to become men, or that we're going to displace men, but just that the opportunities were now
02:30:25.760open. And boy, are we going backwards. Yeah. Oh, 100%. I mean, it's crazy to me,
02:30:31.100because at no point did I have any gender confusion whatsoever. I enjoyed looking like
02:30:35.680a boy. I enjoyed having boy hair and what really looked like a boy face and certainly boy fashion
02:30:41.500and all my toys were Incredible Hulk and superheroes. My mom begged me to get a dress
02:30:47.920and a doll. I was like, hell no. Well, look at me now. In today's day and age, they'd be sending me
02:30:53.160in to go have a double mastectomy. It's like we've lost our ever-loving minds and the girls
02:30:58.180always suffer. All right, let's talk about childhood because this is something I really
02:31:02.080wanted to get into. I love what you write in the book about childhood. Listen to this. Here's a
02:31:07.120quote from the book. We're stealing childhood from the young. You say, stealing childhood from the
02:31:12.460young by organizing and scheduling their play for them, by keeping them from risk and exploration,
02:31:18.880by controlling and sedating them with screens and algorithms and legal drugs, practically guarantees
02:31:25.060that they will arrive at the age of adulthood without being capable of being adults. That
02:31:31.780explains so much about what we're discussing and what we're seeing on college campuses and
02:31:37.020with individuals now who just, they're not very good at adulting. They do seem really quick to
02:31:42.500go to the drugs, go to the screens, and don't seem to be able to handle conflict or adversity
02:31:49.560at all. That's right. And it misunderstands what childhood is. We have the longest childhoods
02:31:57.940of any organism on the planet but other organisms have childhoods too and the other organisms that
02:32:02.980have childhoods other apes elephants dolphins wolves what they're doing during that childhood
02:32:10.260is learning how to be their future selves learning how to be you know apes dolphins elephants wolves
02:32:15.780whatever it is and they do that through play they do that through exploration they don't do that
02:32:21.780by being protected from all risks. So what do you get? What do you maximize if you do the things
02:32:29.080that we lay out in what you just read? Well, you get as close to a guarantee as you can possibly
02:32:34.440imagine that your child will survive to the age of 18. What you do not get is an 18-year-old who
02:32:41.360has any functionality in the world. So you have to expose your child to risk. You have to, with
02:32:46.900every passing, you know, day, week, month, year, let them do more and more, let them take more and
02:32:52.060more risk. And tragedy may happen. And, you know, every time I say that, I literally get visceral
02:32:57.160chills. You know, we have been lucky. I do not know how you go on if you do lose a child. But
02:33:05.400it's a much greater societal level tragedy, and frankly, an individual level tragedy as well,
02:33:10.880to simply survive but be incapable of actually being a human being the the um extreme example
02:33:18.800of this brett is rose kennedy and the kennedy family and she she said something i think about
02:33:23.920all the time uh which is better broken arm than a broken spirit so um we actually have rules
02:33:32.680in our household which our children would have no trouble uh recounting which are you're allowed
02:33:38.800to break your arm or your leg you're not allowed to damage your eyes your skull your neck or your
02:33:45.040back and these aren't perfect rules but the basic point is we expect you to live in such a way that
02:33:50.960things are going to happen and you know when they do our question is is effectively what did you
02:33:57.580learn and the point is our kids are going to be excellent at managing risk as adults because they
02:34:04.600will have seen a lot they will have made their errors when those errors were relatively easy
02:34:08.520to recover from. And that's what we should be doing for everybody. And it is the exact opposite
02:34:13.820of what we are doing. The conventional wisdom now is creating incredibly fragile adults,
02:34:19.620which as you say, is what's happening in college campuses. It's why we're seeing
02:34:23.400that rebellion. It's effectively a tantrum, a demand for others to solve the discomfort of
02:34:30.080life, which is a very dangerous trend. So I do a little speech on Stanford, Stanford campus,
02:34:38.520once a year, usually. And I actually said this past year, something not controversial, which is
02:34:44.160words are not violence. They're not. And, you know, talked a lot about some of the words I've
02:34:49.360received and I'm fine. I'm just fine. I actually perfectly sound healthy, probably stronger for
02:34:55.100having gone through it. But you should have seen the reaction, you guys. I mean, they were like,
02:34:58.440ah, what? You're pro-bullying? No, but I mean, I might be pro-bullying a little bit. Like,
02:35:04.440you know what i mean just like a little bullying you know what i'm saying yeah and you know like
02:35:09.180we don't we don't have to use that word i get why you would and you'll make maybe i agree exactly
02:35:13.860with you but um pro letting kids figure it out for themselves which sometimes is going to look
02:35:19.760like adults don't think it should and sometimes may even involve some physical stuff yeah yeah
02:35:26.140because if you prevent children from doing any of that on their own where exactly do you think
02:35:31.440they're going to learn it. Do you think they wake up at their 18th birthday having been magically
02:35:35.620anointed by some, by what, some fairy with all of the knowledge they're going to need? You do this
02:35:41.700by experience. This is not hardwired. We're not moths. We have to learn how to be us. And the ways
02:35:49.620that people are parenting now and that schools are educating are preventing humans from becoming
02:35:55.280humans. I want to defend your pro-bullying point because it's easy to misunderstand it.
02:36:03.920Bullying is not a good thing. Skinning your knee is also not a good thing, but being in favor of
02:36:09.980a world in which kids skin their knees is not the same thing as being in favor of abrasion.
02:36:14.920The point is it's about the things that guarantee abrasions will happen. And what you don't want
02:36:21.780is adults who don't know how to deal with a bully, who cave in the face of a bully.
02:36:26.460And we're seeing an epidemic of this kind of cowardice now, precisely because we have
02:36:30.540over-insulated children from the bullies that would teach them how to stand up.
02:36:35.940Yeah. It's like, I used to be obsessed with Oprah, less so these days, but I used to be
02:36:41.720obsessed with her. And she used to say, and now I say to myself, whenever life throws some massive
02:36:46.540challenge at me, the first reaction is, thank you, because it's an opportunity to grow, to build your
02:36:52.320superhero muscles. There's only one way to get there, and it is to go over those huge mountains,
02:36:58.020right? Take them on one at a time. And I do feel to some extent this way about my children. When
02:37:02.520something negative happens in their life socially, it's a great opportunity to learn. And I'd much
02:37:08.980rather your point, Heather, to have it while they're in my home. My husband and I can speak
02:37:14.680to them about it and help them navigate it, then just protect them from it and leave this
02:37:20.840nubile 18-year-old out there at college to try to figure it out on his or her own.
02:37:26.440Absolutely. And so Brett mentioned that we tend to ask our children after something has gone wrong,
02:37:31.500what did you learn? But we also ask them that when something almost goes wrong,
02:37:36.580right? And we talk in the book about the value of close calls, which is exactly the content of
02:37:40.880what we're discussing now, but, you know, usually if someone has narrowly escaped an injury or a
02:37:47.520social faux pas, they want to move on and pulling them back to it and saying, Hey, what did you
02:37:52.200learn? Uh, we'll be met with disbelief, uh, at best, uh, but spending just a little time to
02:37:58.840figure out, okay, how could I, you know, how could I have done even better with that close call
02:38:03.220will help you move into the future with greater grace and skill. And then, you know, the fewer
02:38:08.660of those conversations you have to have in the future. Well, but one of the things that's annoying
02:38:12.680on a bigger level is how much abuse we're heaping onto our children and how we've settled on living
02:38:17.300in this constantly abusive way. I mean, it's, I went to this parenting seminar in New York City
02:38:23.360last year or the year before, I don't know, within the past 18 months. And all these kids are sitting
02:38:27.860up there from all these New York City private schools, very privileged schools. And the kids,
02:38:32.280the one kid said, do you want to know why your kids are so fucked up? I'll tell you why. It's
02:38:36.200Because you all think that they need to get perfect days so they can go to the perfect Ivy League college and they have to be in 10 different clubs and they have to play at least three sports.
02:38:43.720And they're they're doing drugs on the weekend as an escape just to get their minds off of this hideous lifestyle.
02:38:50.920Forget sleep. Right. Forget any deposits into wellness, going to sleep with the sun down and waking up with it.
02:38:56.480No, no. Right. So it's like I was noticing there was an article just out yesterday in The New York Times talking about should students be allowed to miss school for mental health reasons?
02:39:05.240and now more and more states are passing laws that will allow students to miss school to take
02:39:11.040care of their mental health you don't need a law for that we've been doing that since the 70s at
02:39:14.100least when my mom used to call up and say she doesn't feel well today she's not going in if
02:39:17.580you need a day you take a day why do we need laws for it but anyway yeah if you need a day you take
02:39:22.180a day but also the school should be set up so that the students don't need as many mental health days
02:39:27.000that's it school should be better for the students in the first place that's it so what so what do
02:39:31.760we do about that, the way we've agreed to live? Well, again, back to the question of how one
02:39:40.200raises children. We can speak best to the way we've raised our children, and we can say,
02:39:46.760in some sense, what its consequence has been. We have been incredibly open with them about
02:39:53.300virtually every topic. And in fact, we've been open with them about everything. There were a
02:39:58.440couple topics we delayed slightly because we thought it would be confusing too early, but
02:40:03.160sex, drugs, rock and roll, the whole shoot and match. We have talked to them about the reality
02:40:09.080of the world they are going into. We've talked to them about the fact that they have not been
02:40:13.360provided the tools to navigate it and they will have to bootstrap those tools and that we are
02:40:18.700here to help them figure out how to do it. But in fact, being told how to do it won't work.
02:40:23.460One has to actually learn that process. You can know how somebody climbs El Capitan without being able to climb a damn thing. You have to go climb yourself to learn how it's done. And it has worked very well. Our kids have their eyes wide open. They do not have anxiety, even though, frankly, looking at the world they're entering, one could easily forgive them for being terrified.
02:40:50.520That's not their experience because they've grown up looking at it and it's not going
02:40:54.640to come as a shock to them when they emerge into that world.
02:40:58.160And, you know, maybe what we've done is a prototype, but I would recommend that people
02:41:01.880take something like this approach because you're not doing your kids any favors by insulating
02:41:06.800them from a world that will be as bad or worse when they get to it.
02:41:10.920The big reveal at the end where they say, oh, my gosh, what what have you been hiding
02:42:06.840If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you,
02:42:09.440please go to connexontario.ca and see supply.
02:42:16.460Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show. Joining me today, Brett Weinstein and Heather
02:42:21.000Haying. They have a new book out today, Haying. I keep messing it up, Heather. It's called A
02:42:26.800Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, and we're diving into their possible solutions
02:42:31.080to a world in disarray. Okay, so I just want to pick it up back where we left off before we move
02:42:36.560on to relationships on child rearing and read the following from your book. If your child has
02:42:43.020been made totally safe, living a life with no risk, then you have done a terrible job of parenting.
02:42:48.780Yes. Love that. Agreed. Then you go on to say, we should create new opportunities for engagement,
02:42:54.100for creation, for discovery, for activity that provides an alternative. And this is where it
02:43:00.260took an unexpected turn for me, that provides an alternative to the boredom that leads to
02:43:06.380addiction, did not see that coming. I always thought addiction was the product of family
02:43:13.540history, trauma, bullying, excessive bullying, something like that. I never tied it in my mind
02:43:22.540to boredom. Love to have you expand on that. Well, there are of course many factors which
02:43:30.240go into addiction and it's multifactorial, but one of them does appear to be boredom.
02:43:36.380So there are, and we cite this study in the book, or one of them, there are some studies
02:43:41.580with rats, which basically demonstrate that, sure, if you give rats, I think the study I'm
02:43:48.780thinking of is with methamphetamine. If you give them methamphetamine and you give them nothing
02:43:52.620else to do, they use the methamphetamine and they become addicts. Whereas if you give the same rats
02:43:58.940methamphetamine and you enrich their environment, you give them other things to do that rats like
02:44:04.300to do, they are more likely to do the other things. So the simple model, yeah, the simple
02:44:13.220model of we are simply physiologically liable to become addicted if you expose us to certain drugs
02:44:19.340is again, this reductionist oversimplified view of, of what we are. And it extends not just to
02:44:25.460humans, but to rats. So a life that is enriched because we have found meaning because we know
02:44:32.080what it is that we're interested in doing in the world, be it, you know, creating art or speaking
02:44:36.700truth or climbing mountains, you know, whatever it is, if you have something that you know you're
02:44:42.020seeking, you are less likely to become addicted, even if exposed to the very same exogenous
02:44:46.600substances. So you're doing your kid a favor in so many ways by helping them fill their life up
02:44:53.260and letting them find ways of filling up their life. But I noticed it even, you know, sometimes
02:44:58.760with adults, Brett, where the people who seem the smallest to me in terms of their emotional
02:45:04.860wellness are people who are not busy enough. You know, if I had a nickel for every time, I'm like,
02:45:09.960she needs to get busier. Or even frankly, a lot of these wokesters, I just, I always feel like
02:45:14.700they need more in their lives to worry about because most people are out there doing real
02:45:19.800things, taking care of their families, working for a living, blah, blah, blah. And they don't
02:45:23.260have time to worry about pronouns and a bunch of other nonsense and getting offended.
02:45:26.940Yeah, not only do they need more in their lives, but they need experience that would tell them what it is like to actually build something.
02:45:37.300Because building something, if it's at all complex, will force you to balance competing concerns, for example.
02:45:44.660It makes it very hard to be a utopian if you've actually had to make something work.
02:45:50.060And so, in some sense, the place that I actually do feel sympathetic for this movement is that I do think they have been betrayed.
02:46:02.140They have not been provided a world that educates them properly, that exposes them to things that would make them highly capable.
02:46:08.280And so in some sense, their anger is understandable, but their anger is so deeply misinformed about what a solution looks like that we have an obligation not to listen.
02:46:20.700We actually have to address this in a way that might work rather than give in to demands that will cause disaster.
02:46:50.460And you should read her book to find out what she says to do, because it's very helpful.
02:46:53.600It's just like, basically go for it, go on, go on a six month to year long trip to Europe,
02:46:57.560log off of all devices for the love of god get her or him off of youtube anyway i'm not doing
02:47:03.220her justice but that's that's just my thumbnail but you guys should write the summary of what to
02:47:08.900do if you see wokeism in your child right like this that's what you're talking about like get
02:47:13.860them busy give them challenges have them weigh competing factors to try to make real life
02:47:19.060decisions on complex matters i i'm hearing it right now it's like well maybe you did just write
02:47:25.060the book, but you didn't title it the right, the right way. Yeah. I mean, doing, you know,
02:47:29.740having your children, and this holds for adults too, engaging the physical world, as Brett just
02:47:34.280said, you're learning how to build or make or do something in the physical world where the results
02:47:39.480aren't negotiable. You can't, you can't claim that you did it. If you didn't, you can't claim
02:47:44.000that you won. If you didn't, you either summited or the cake, the cake is edible or the eggplant
02:47:50.120grew or the table is made, whatever it is, doing something that has a physical manifestation in the
02:47:56.700world will create strength and ability. And then also travel, just as you just said. And this has
02:48:03.460been a drumbeat of ours forever. And it's what we used to do with our undergraduate students
02:48:07.700and also with our own children is exposing people to ways of being, to places in the world that
02:48:15.180they have not heretofore imagined. And they, especially if they had ideas about what it
02:48:21.040looked like, because, you know, because they watched a lot of Disney or because they watched
02:48:25.320a lot of documentaries, you know, no matter how good the information was that they thought they
02:48:29.340had about what being in Quito or Panama City or the Amazon rainforest or Galapagos was going to be,
02:48:36.340there's no, there's no replacement for being there. So experience reveals your biases and
02:48:42.300it reveals the holes in your thinking. And it informs you and enables you to become a much more
02:48:48.120complete and frankly, compassionate human being. And you grow in the process. It's like it nails
02:48:53.020so many different things. It's like you as the grown up grow, you have bonding time with your
02:48:57.440children. There's nothing that promotes bonding, like traveling together and navigating new
02:49:01.200circumstances. But you gave me a little chill there with like the new people and finding out
02:49:05.640who you are. Okay, let's talk about relationships, because that's the foundation of children. I think
02:49:11.400it's the foundation of happiness. I think it's the reason we're here, right? There are relationships
02:49:15.760and in particular, our love relationships and our romantic relationships. You know, before there
02:49:20.760were the little Brett and Heathers, there was the original Brett and Heather who found one another,
02:49:25.440managed to fall in love and navigate a successful relationship through this crazy, crazy world.
02:49:30.280And one of the ways you posit one can do that and really should do that is via a monogamous
02:49:36.740relationship. Oh, you said it. Okay. When I was on NBC, we did a segment on throuples. Okay. And
02:49:44.260then quads, people who are living in a relationship with three people or four people. And it was
02:49:49.740fascinating. It wasn't something I would endorse, but it was fascinating. But you say that's,
02:49:53.560that's probably not the route to happiness via, if you look at evolutionary history.
02:49:58.920yeah the puzzle is a complex one because we can tell the fact that males and females in our
02:50:08.640species are different sizes tells us that there's a long history of at least mild polygyny in our
02:50:13.860species but it is also true mild what polygyny uh well what your listeners are more likely to
02:50:21.240understand as polygamy. Okay, got it. An individual male having multiple wives. But it is also true
02:50:29.400that the later we go in human history, the more change has come to that system. And effectively,
02:50:35.320our cultural software layer has overwritten what is in the ancestral genetic layer. So most people
02:50:45.180alive today come from populations that are monogamous, and there's a reason for that,
02:50:51.980which is that monogamous cultures have certain advantages in an era of growth and expansion.
02:50:57.480They bring all adults who are capable of contributing to child rearing into that process,
02:51:03.240and that increases the rate at which a population can capture a landmass or a resource, and it also
02:51:11.600makes for a fairer, safer, more productive society. It distributes opportunity more evenly.
02:51:18.660It makes people less warlike. It makes people more prone to cooperation. And these are all
02:51:23.860major advantages. And that's before you ever get to the question of personal satisfaction.
02:51:30.300And I think something you alluded to in your initial comment is that there is something
02:51:36.040indescribably important about having that one person in your life who you absolutely bond with
02:51:44.580you have an understanding of who they are and they have an understanding of who you are in a way
02:51:49.360that no one can match and they're capable of providing a reality check and just simply being
02:51:55.400non-negotiably there that it's hard to describe this to people who haven't yet experienced it
02:52:03.220It's hard to give them a sense for why it is so different from having maybe casual relationships with more people or bonds with more people involved.
02:52:15.580And if there's one thing I would wish for younger people that would upgrade the quality of their lives and make them more secure and more capable,
02:52:25.180it would be that they find a person with whom they can build such a relationship and build it.
02:59:09.060And then like everything, we totally overcorrected to where now somehow you're fierce, again,
02:59:14.300to use that word, if you've lost count of your partners and you're living in a throuple and
02:59:19.360monogamy is a joke to you. And by the way, so is gender. And I was like, I would, I feel for these
02:59:25.62020 year olds. Breton is the mother of three young kids. I feel for them too. I'm really hoping and
02:59:29.720praying that by the time they get to college and, you know, six to eight years, it's all going to be
02:59:34.380solved. Now they have a serious problem that I think many of them are just not aware of, right?
02:59:41.820because they don't understand that there is some sort of alternative to the world they've been
02:59:46.640handed, but they need to discover it and figure out how to make it work. And this is not simple
02:59:53.040because let's say, for example, that you correctly understand that there's something wrong with these
03:00:00.060new sophistications and that it doesn't result in sexual satisfaction for anyone, as far as I can
03:00:05.900tell. So you decide you're going to not do that. Well, suddenly you're in competition for attention
03:00:13.100with all sorts of people who haven't decided that. And I don't know that phones ring anymore
03:00:18.480so much, but your phone's not going to ring if that's what they do. And so it's going to seem
03:00:25.000like you've made an error when in fact, one needs to recognize, if we go back to the idea that men
03:00:31.840have two different ways of reproducing and one involves no commitment if you are trying to
03:00:36.920compete for attention and you get attention of men by behaving in this incredibly provocative way
03:00:42.960it works but it's not the right kind of attention because men are wired to view women who behave
03:00:49.360that way differently than they view women who behave in a choosy way and so the way to do this
03:00:57.960If you are a young person and you're trying to figure out how to navigate this part of your life, I think the thing to shoot for is a culture in which people who get it opt out of these false sophistications and begin to generate some new set of rules about how they will behave towards each other.
03:01:15.620And you know what? It's not going to be as exciting on a nightly basis, but will it result in you being satisfied years down the road?
03:01:24.960Okay. But I'll challenge you on that. I actually think it is more satisfying on a nightly basis
03:01:29.280because the chase is fun and extending the chase. Doug is still chasing me. We've been married for
03:01:36.18015 years. He's still on steady ground. I agree. I said it wouldn't be as exciting,
03:01:42.740but I didn't say it wouldn't be as satisfying. I agree with you that all wisdom is very closely
03:01:48.180related to delayed gratification. And so the point is the sex you ultimately have at the end of that
03:01:53.760chase is a whole different sport. Yes. And you also point out in the book,
03:01:58.100the difference between hotness and beauty. And I thought that was a great point too.
03:02:04.560It's hard to spot and it's especially hard to spot because some women have both, which is
03:02:09.980confusing. But I think the thing that reveals this is that it is possible to be hot and not at all
03:02:17.700beautiful. It's possible even to be hot and be ugly. This is something we see fairly regularly
03:02:22.860And we don't realize it because we assume they are closely related, but in fact, they're completely separable.
03:02:30.300And what we argue in the book is that hotness tends to be associated with appealing to that less interesting short-term male strategy.
03:02:39.380And beauty, which fades much more slowly, tends to be about appealing to that longer-term male strategy that is a mirror for the longer-term female strategy.
03:02:48.720So, you know, of course, Doug should still be chasing you. And, you know, you should also still be chasing him. You know, one of the things about monogamy is that we are, you know, it's not just male-male competition and female choice. It's also female-female competition, and let's be good about it, and male choice.
03:03:05.660And so we've got choice by both partners and, and, you know, not ever sinking into the sense of, well, this is what I've got and I'll have it forever. And I guess I don't have to work at it anymore. We should, we should always be working at it and always excited by it as well.
03:03:23.680I said to my one friend, she was annoyed with her husband. They hadn't been connecting in a while. And she was talking about how he was putting up these shelves and he wasn't doing it the way she liked it. And I said, and this is a very good looking guy. And I said, why don't you just ask him if he can do it with his shirt off? Just watch him. Just watch him. He's so good looking. It's going to light a fire. You're not going to give a damn that he chose silver instead of white or whatever it was. There's some evolution in that too.