Heather Hayig and Brett Weinstein join host Meghan kelly to discuss their experience being forced out of Evergreen State University for being "woke enough." They also discuss the recent recall of Peter Boghossian, who resigned from the same university where they were forced out.
01:01:01.800The point is, it's about the things that guarantee abrasions will happen.
01:01:06.580And what you don't want is adults who don't know how to deal with a bully, who cave in the face of a bully.
01:01:13.240And we're seeing an epidemic of this kind of cowardice now precisely because we have over insulated children from the bullies that would teach them how to stand up.
01:01:23.160It's it's like I used to be obsessed with Oprah, less so these days, but I used to be obsessed with her.
01:01:29.280And she used to say and now I say to myself, whenever life throws some massive challenge at me, the first reaction is thank you, because it's an opportunity to grow, to build your superhero muscles.
01:01:40.340There's there's only one way to get there.
01:01:42.200And it is to go over those huge mountains, right?
01:01:46.260And I do feel to some extent this way about my children.
01:01:49.040When something negative happens in their life socially, it's a great opportunity to learn.
01:01:54.700And I'd much rather your point, Heather, to have it while they're in my home.
01:01:59.980My husband and I can speak to them about it and help them navigate it than just protect them from it and leave this nubile 18 year old out there at college to try to figure it out on his or her own.
01:02:12.220Absolutely. And, you know, so Brett mentioned that we tend to ask our children after something has gone wrong.
01:02:19.700But we also ask them that when something almost goes wrong.
01:02:23.220Right. And we talk in the book about the value of close calls, which is exactly the content of what we're discussing now.
01:02:28.700But, you know, usually if someone has narrowly escaped an injury or a social faux pas, they want to move on and pulling them back to it and saying, hey, what did you learn?
01:02:42.760But spending just a little time to figure out, OK, how could I how could I have done even better with that close call will help you move into the future with greater grace and skill.
01:02:53.780And then, you know, the fewer of those conversations you have to have in the future.
01:02:57.520Well, but one of the things that's annoying on a bigger level is how much abuse we're heaping on to our children and how we've settled on living in this constantly abusive way.
01:03:06.800I mean, it's I went to this parenting seminar in New York City last year or the year before.
01:03:11.620I don't know, within the past 18 months.
01:03:13.160And all these kids are sitting up there from all these New York City private schools, very privileged schools.
01:03:18.080And the kids, the one kid said, do you want to know why your kids are so fucked up?
01:03:22.700It's because 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.
01:03:30.540And they're they're doing drugs on the weekend as an escape just to get their minds off of this hideous lifestyle.
01:03:44.740So 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?
01:03:52.460And now more and more states are passing laws that will allow students to miss school to take care of their mental health.
01:05:27.360They do not have anxiety, even though, frankly, looking at the world they're entering, one could easily forgive them for for being terrified.
01:05:37.520That's not their experience because they've grown up looking at it and it's not going to come as a shock to them when they emerge into that world.
01:05:44.920And, you know, maybe what we've done is a prototype.
01:05:47.320But I would recommend that people take something like this approach because you're not doing your kids any favors by insulating them from a world that will be as bad or worse when they get to it.
01:05:57.680The big reveal at the end where they say, oh, my gosh, what what have you been hiding from me?
01:06:03.300All right. Up next, we're going to talk about marriage and how society is changing as a result of declining marriage rates in our country.
01:06:10.740Brett and Heather have some ideas on that.
01:06:13.560Plus, do you want to sound off about AOC, Bill de Blasio and all the Hollywood celebrities going unmasked at the Met while your kid has to sit there eight, nine hours a day with a mask on, even if he or she has been vaccinated?
01:06:28.060I am so irritated about this in about 20 minutes.
01:06:31.380I'm going to give you my take and I would love to hear from you.
01:06:57.040It's called A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, and we're diving into their possible solutions to a world in disarray.
01:07:04.780Okay, so I just want to pick it up back where we left off before we move on to relationships on child rearing and read the following from your book.
01:07:13.160If your child has been made totally safe, living a life with no risk, then you have done a terrible job of parenting.
01:07:21.200Then you go on to say we should create new opportunities for engagement, for creation, for discovery, for activity that provides an alternative.
01:07:30.700And this is where it took an unexpected turn for me that provides an alternative to the boredom that leads to addiction.
01:07:56.800Well, there are, of course, many factors which go into addiction, and it's multifactorial.
01:08:03.600But one of them does appear to be boredom.
01:08:06.120So there are, and we cite this study in the book, or one of them, there are some studies with rats,
01:08:12.800which basically demonstrate that, sure, if you give rats, I think the study I'm thinking of is with methamphetamine.
01:08:20.020If you give them methamphetamine and you give them nothing else to do, they use the methamphetamine and they become addicts.
01:08:25.980Whereas if you give the same rats methamphetamine and you enrich their environment, you give them other things to do that rats like to do,
01:08:35.040they are more likely to do the other things.
01:08:39.640So the simple model of we are simply physiologically liable to become addicted if you expose us to certain drugs is, again, this reductionist, oversimplified view of what we are.
01:08:54.260And it extends not just to humans but to rats.
01:08:56.160So a life that is enriched because we have found meaning, because we know what it is that we're interested in doing in the world,
01:09:03.920be it creating art or speaking truth or climbing mountains, whatever it is,
01:09:10.020if you have something that you know you're seeking, you are less likely to become addicted,
01:09:14.200even if exposed to the very same exogenous substances.
01:09:17.220So you're doing your kid a favor in so many ways by helping them fill their life up
01:09:23.000and letting them find ways of filling up their life.
01:09:26.160But I noticed it even, you know, sometimes with adults, Brett, where the people who seem the smallest to me
01:09:32.960in terms of their emotional wellness are people who are not busy enough.
01:09:37.240You know, if I had a nickel for every time, I'm like, she needs to get busier.
01:09:41.200Or even, frankly, a lot of these wokesters, I just, I always feel like they need more in their lives to worry about
01:09:46.840because most people are out there doing real things, taking care of their families, working for a living, blah, blah, blah.
01:09:52.440And they don't have time to worry about pronouns and a bunch of other nonsense and getting offended.
01:09:57.740Yeah, not only do they need more in their lives, but they need experience that would tell them
01:10:03.900what it is like to actually build something.
01:10:06.920Because building something, if it's at all complex, will force you to balance competing concerns, for example.
01:10:14.420It makes it very hard to be a utopian if you've actually had to make something work.
01:10:19.800And so, in some sense, the place that I actually do feel sympathetic for this movement is that I do think they have been betrayed.
01:10:31.880They have not been provided a world that educates them properly, that exposes them to things that would make them highly capable.
01:10:38.020And 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.
01:10:50.400We actually have to address this in a way that might work rather than give in to demands that will cause disaster.
01:10:56.260You know what I'm thinking of? I mentioned Abigail Schreier a minute ago.
01:11:00.560In her book, she has a—it's a very useful prescription in case you see the sudden onset of gender dysphoria in your teenage child.
01:11:10.760You know, it wasn't there before, and one day she comes home and says,
01:11:13.780Oh, you know, I think I might be a boy.
01:11:15.040And, you know, you have very good reason to suspect this is a social contagion and not actual gender dysphoria.
01:11:19.940And you should read her book to find out what she says to do, because it's very helpful.
01:11:23.360It's just, like, basically go for a—go on a six-month-to-year-long trip to Europe.
01:11:27.740Log off of all devices. For the love of God, get her or him off of YouTube.
01:11:31.780Anyway, I'm not doing her justice, but that's just my thumbnail.
01:11:35.620But you guys should write the summary of what to do if you see wokeism in your child.
01:11:41.260Right? Like, that's what you're talking about.
01:11:43.280Like, get them busy. Give them challenges.
01:11:45.340Have them weigh competing factors to try to make real-life decisions on complex matters.
01:11:52.060I'm hearing it right now. It's like, well, maybe you did just write the book, but you didn't title it the right way.
01:11:58.240Yeah. I mean, doing—you know, having your children—this holds for adults, too.
01:12:02.160Engaging the physical world, as Brett just said.
01:12:04.420You know, learning how to build or make or do something in the physical world where the results aren't negotiable.
01:12:10.300You can't claim that you did it if you didn't.
01:12:13.100You can't claim that you won if you didn't.
01:12:14.920You either summited, or the cake is edible, or the eggplant grew, or the table is made.
01:12:22.200You know, whatever it is, doing something that has a physical manifestation in the world will create strength and ability.
01:12:29.400And then also, you know, travel, just as you just said.
01:12:32.440And this has been a drumbeat of ours forever, and it's what we used to do with our undergraduate students and also with our own children,
01:12:39.540is exposing people to ways of being, to places in the world that they have not heretofore imagined.
01:12:46.720And they—especially if they had ideas about what it looked like because, you know, because they watched a lot of Disney or because they watched a lot of documentaries.
01:12:56.320You know, no matter how good the information was that they thought they had about what being in Quito or Panama City or the Amazon Rainforest or Galapagos was going to be,
01:13:06.100there's no—there's no replacement for being there.
01:13:09.040So experience reveals your biases, and it reveals the holes in your thinking, and it informs you and enables you to become a much more complete and, frankly, compassionate human being.
01:13:25.860You have bonding time with your children.
01:13:27.720There's nothing that promotes bonding, like traveling together and navigating new circumstances.
01:13:31.940But you gave me a little chill there with, like, the new people and finding out who you are.
01:13:35.800Okay, let's talk about relationships because that's the foundation of children.
01:13:40.900I think it's the foundation of happiness.
01:13:42.560I think it's the reason we're here, right?
01:13:44.680There are relationships, and in particular, our love relationships and our romantic relationships.
01:13:49.620You know, before there were the little Brett and Heathers, there was the original Brett and Heather who found one another, managed to fall in love,
01:13:56.000and navigate a successful relationship through this crazy, crazy world.
01:13:59.620And one of the ways you posit one can do that and really should do that is via a monogamous relationship.
01:14:09.660Okay, when I was on NBC, we did a segment on throuples, okay, and then quads, people who are living in a relationship with three people or four people.
01:14:20.220It wasn't something I would endorse, but it was fascinating.
01:14:22.480But you say that's probably not the route to happiness via—if you look at evolutionary history.
01:14:28.620Yeah, the puzzle is a complex one because we can tell the fact that males and females in our species are different sizes tells us that there's a long history of at least mild polygyny in our species.
01:14:52.240An individual male having multiple wives.
01:14:54.680But it is also true that the later we go in human history, the more change has come to that system.
01:15:03.280And effectively, our cultural software layer has overwritten what is in the ancestral genetic layer.
01:15:11.720So most people alive today come from populations that are monogamous, and there's a reason for that, which is that monogamous cultures have certain advantages in an era of growth and expansion.
01:15:25.900They bring all adults who are capable of contributing to child rearing into that process, and that makes for—it increases the rate at which a population can capture a landmass or a resource, and it also makes for a fairer, safer, more productive society.
01:15:44.420It distributes opportunity more evenly, it makes people less warlike, it makes people more prone to cooperation, and these are all major advantages.
01:15:53.760And that's before you ever get to the question of personal satisfaction.
01:15:58.740And I think something you alluded to in your initial comment is that there is something indescribably important about having that one person in your life who you absolutely bond with.
01:16:13.100You have an understanding of who they are, and they have an understanding of who you are in a way that no one can match.
01:16:19.740And they're capable of providing a reality check and just simply being non-negotiably there.
01:16:28.280It's hard to describe this to people who haven't yet experienced it.
01:16:31.780It'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.
01:16:41.420But there really is no substitute, and 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,
01:16:53.460it would be that they find a person with whom they can build such a relationship and build it.
01:17:40.860So it's a yin-yang relationship, not a simple symmetrical or identity relationship.
01:17:47.560And the fact is, this goes back to the issue we were discussing earlier with the flower parts showing the same kind of difference in perspective as humans or any other animal will.
01:17:59.300There is a lot to be lost to women if they reproduce without first establishing the willingness of a partner to invest in participating and raising that child.
01:18:12.300Children and human children are extremely expensive to raise, and they are much better raised by a team.
01:18:17.400So that is the reason that women are wired to be very reluctant about behavior that could saddle them with a child and no help in raising it.
01:18:28.180And that creates the dynamics that we all know exist.
01:18:33.500Wishing them away does not cause them to go away.
01:18:35.700But I guess the last thing I would say is what people don't realize is that, yes, men do men are wired to be ever aware of the possibility of sex without commitment.
01:18:48.920That is an ancient pattern, but it is not the only thing that men are wired for.
01:18:54.880Men, because the way most men have reproduced in history is through investing in a particular woman and her offspring, that that pattern causes them to be choosy and careful in a very symmetrical way to the way women behave generally.
01:20:24.520It was like I was in love with him from that minute forward because he was expressing exactly what you're saying, Brett.
01:20:32.580He was this evolved, incredibly great guy who was putting it on the table saying, yeah, I'm I want you and I want to build a family with you.
01:20:41.720And if that's not your goal, if you're somebody who just wants to be the career woman, I say on Fox News, that's actually not for me.
01:20:58.260But Bob Trivers, who is an extraordinary evolutionary biologist and was our undergraduate advisor.
01:21:05.580And excuse me, we asked him if he would be the gosh, what's the word for the officiant at our wedding.
01:21:13.860And so he came up into the Sierra Nevada and officiated at our wedding.
01:21:17.480We've been together for many years and Bob knew us.
01:21:20.460Dr. Trivers knew us as undergrads and as burgeoning evolutionary biologists.
01:21:24.780And so he agreed to do this wedding ceremony for us in the in the mountains.
01:21:29.520But he insisted the day before on basically interviewing us as clergy might have.
01:21:33.880And one of the only question I remember that he asked us was, do you intend to have children?
01:21:40.820And it became very clear that if we had said no, he was going to have a harder time knowing what to say about us, even though he respected our brains greatly and us as friends.
01:21:53.100But but for him, that was a key part of what the marriage ceremony was about.
01:23:57.120I'm really hoping and praying that by the time they get to college and, you know, six to eight years, it's all going to be solved.
01:24:04.500Now, they have a serious problem that I think many of them are just not aware of.
01:24:09.700Right. Because they don't understand that there is some sort of alternative to the world they've been handed, but they need to discover it and figure out how how to make it work.
01:24:21.920Let's say, for example, that you correctly understand that there's something wrong with these new sophistications and that it doesn't result in sexual satisfaction for anyone, as far as I can tell.
01:24:34.640Well, so you decide you're going to not do that.
01:24:38.700Well, suddenly you're in competition for attention with all sorts of people who haven't decided that and you're I don't know that phones ring anymore so much, but your phone's not going to ring if that's what they do.
01:24:50.040And so it's going to seem like you've made an error when, in fact, one needs to recognize, you know, if we go back to the idea that men have two different ways of reproducing and one involves no commitment.
01:25:03.360If you are trying to compete for attention and you get attention of men by behaving in this incredibly provocative way, it works, but it's not the right kind of attention because men are wired to view women who behave that way differently than they view women who behave in a choosy way.
01:25:23.480And so the way to do this, if 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.
01:25:43.580And 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? The chances are much, much greater.
01:25:53.480Okay. But I'll challenge you on that. I actually think it is more satisfying on a nightly basis because the chase is fun and, you know, extending the chase. Doug is still chasing me. We've been married for 15 years. You know, he's still on steady, on steady ground.
01:26:07.760I agree. I said it wouldn't be as exciting, but I didn't say it wouldn't be as satisfying. I agree with you that all wisdom is very closely related to delayed gratification. And so the point is the sex you ultimately have at the end of that chase is a whole different sport.
01:26:24.040Yes. And you also point out in the book, the difference between hotness and beauty. And I thought that was a great point too.
01:26:31.640It's hard to spot. And it's especially hard to spot because some women have both, which is confusing. But I think the thing that reveals this is that it is possible to be hot and not at all beautiful. It's possible even to be hot and be ugly. This is something we see fairly regularly and we don't realize it because we assume they are closely related. But in fact, they're completely separable.
01:26:57.260And what we argue in the book is that hotness tends to be associated with appealing to that less interesting short-term male strategy. And 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.
01:27:17.140So of course, Doug should still be chasing you. And you should also still be chasing him. One of the things about monogamy is that 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.
01:27:34.080And so we've got choice by both partners and 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 always be working at it and always excited by it as well.
01:27:52.100I 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.
01:28:16.480You two are amazing. Well, this was so fun. I love the book. I love everything you stand for, and I hope you'll come back. Good luck with all of it.
01:28:28.540Thank you so much, Megan. It's been a pleasure.
01:28:29.660All the best. Okay, so up next, we're going to share my thoughts on all the Hollywood and political elites hanging out last night unmasked. You saw AOC? Unmasked in her tax-the-rich dress, not socially distanced,
01:28:44.700while my kids and yours are sitting in school and can't even speak at lunch. Okay? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that,
01:28:52.840on some of that discussion we had about everything hanging out, the Kardashians and so on. It's a lot.
01:28:59.720What do you think? Force for good? Phone lines are open. Call me at 833-44-MEGAN.
01:29:04.9604-4, like the Syracuse 44. It was a shout-out to my alma mater.