The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - Peterson Academy, Andrew Tate, New Book, Childhood Stories, Life ｜ Jordan Peterson

00:00:00.040 Andrew Tate bought me tickets to fly to Romania. There's a rumor online that we

00:00:04.800 hooked up. That didn't happen. Do you think you made any mistakes in that

00:00:08.220 venture? Here, here's conception one. I am what I believe, but as soon as your

00:00:15.480 belief collapses, well then who are you? At least think it through. The belief in

00:00:19.800 God is not adherence to a set of semantic propositions. What do people do if

00:00:24.600 something they fundamentally believe changes? I don't know who the hell you

00:00:28.440 are and neither do you when people say they want to be happy they actually don't know what they

00:00:34.040 mean that's why you think you think so that your stupid thoughts can die instead of you okay let's

00:00:40.680 switch directions i'm not very fond of the whole online porn thing in any way i've got all these

00:00:47.560 hoes and look at me you said tate's intelligent and what that means as well is that some of the

00:00:51.960 things he says are going to be of value now why he says those that's a whole different issue

00:00:57.000 He's genuinely tough.

00:00:58.820 It's better to be a monster than a rabbit, in some ways.

00:01:01.940 The more you could embrace the worst enemy,

00:01:04.460 the more radically you could transform for the better.

00:01:07.440 Would you talk to him?

00:01:09.460 Well.

00:01:11.460 Dad, welcome to my podcast.

00:01:13.660 Yeah, well, I'm glad to be here.

00:01:14.840 It's good to see you're getting it going again.

00:01:16.620 Yeah, finally.

00:01:17.880 Mm-hmm.

00:01:18.460 But thank you for being the intro back into the online world.

00:01:22.940 I'm looking forward to it, kiddo.

00:01:25.000 So I think it was last week I saw a video going around of you describing the worst breakfast you've ever had.

00:01:32.240 Oh yeah, that's a funny one.

00:01:33.680 Yeah, and that has millions of views.

00:01:35.940 And it reminded me of going to the restaurant near our house when we were kids.

00:01:40.660 And I remember one time you didn't like your breakfast and you got up and taught the cook how to cook.

00:01:48.320 So I thought we could open with, why on earth you did that?

00:01:52.560 Why did that amuse you?

00:01:54.240 because a normal person would quietly complain about their breakfast with other people at the

00:01:59.760 table and then eat most of it out of guilt and then not come back and you did not do that

00:02:05.300 okay so yeah so this is a little restaurant little diner by our house yeah cost and i knew the owner

00:02:11.280 and i liked her and i liked going there for breakfast i used to bring my graduate students

00:02:16.340 there and we'd have breakfast there yeah and we had meetings that were very productive

00:02:20.420 and that breakfast was excellent.

00:02:23.100 And so what does that mean?

00:02:24.280 It means that the potatoes were fresh

00:02:26.280 and that they were cooked crispy and golden

00:02:29.200 and not brown and soggy and horrible and old

00:02:32.460 and sometimes rotten because you can do all those

00:02:34.860 if you really want to.

00:02:36.280 And the orange juice was like made out of oranges

00:02:38.480 instead of whatever the hell they fed astronauts in 1957.

00:02:42.420 And the coffee was fresh

00:02:44.380 and the bacon was actually made out of pork

00:02:46.860 instead of whatever the hell you make bacon out of

00:02:49.660 you don't have a pig and it was good and so i liked coming there and i liked the woman she's

00:02:55.420 hard-working immigrant woman and she ran a good restaurant it was very uh welcoming and they had

00:03:01.580 a great cook and then they brought in this new guy and it was like second rate and i thought

00:03:06.860 it doesn't have to be second rate he maybe he's lazy in which case he should go or maybe he just

00:03:11.420 doesn't know what the hell he's doing and i thought well i don't want to be pissed off about this and

00:03:15.820 and never come back and grumble about it, I'd rather come here and have a good breakfast.

00:03:20.060 So I thought, well, and I worked as a short order cook for years and knew the difference

00:03:24.760 between how to cook, you know, hash browns properly and improperly, and I went in and

00:03:31.520 told him, like, what was wrong in detail, why this didn't work, and what he could do

00:03:36.400 instead, and, you know, he responded positively, because I wasn't going in there giving him

00:03:40.600 hell, I was doing exactly what I just told you.

00:03:42.940 It's like, I wanted to go to this restaurant.

00:03:44.680 It was all set up. 0.91

00:03:45.440 I liked the woman.

00:03:46.560 And he might as well do it right.

00:03:49.000 And so that's what I did.

00:03:50.920 I thought that was amusing.

00:03:52.200 I thought it was really funny.

00:03:53.000 Did breakfast and anxiety provoking.

00:03:54.720 Breakfast improved very dramatically.

00:03:57.280 Yeah.

00:03:57.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:03:59.320 Mm-hmm.

00:04:00.220 It's funny.

00:04:00.800 Yeah.

00:04:01.020 So there was no downside to that, too.

00:04:03.200 You know, because you go out to a place and you don't get treated well.

00:04:06.380 It just pisses you off.

00:04:07.640 And then you don't say anything because you're so polite.

00:04:09.780 And, you know, it's understandable to some degree.

00:04:11.920 but it's not helpful because then you go away and you're irritated because you didn't get what you bargained for

00:04:17.640 and then you don't go back and if that happens to a small business, it doesn't have to happen that often

00:04:22.720 and people just don't go and then if the, you know, maybe the owner doesn't even know

00:04:27.320 and so then their business vanishes out from underneath them and that's not helpful.

00:04:32.320 You know, if he would have got all uppity and squawky about it, that wouldn't have gone well

00:04:36.320 but I wasn't being mean and you know and I wasn't trying to like parade my knowledge of hash browns

00:04:42.640 around I just wanted to keep going to that diner so yeah all right it's it's a little bit funny

00:04:49.420 yeah I guess it's a little bit funny I suppose yeah yeah uh so I thought we should no the other

00:04:55.680 thing about that too is like if you're at a restaurant and you have good service it's really

00:05:01.100 helpful to tell the people what they did right in detail and this is a good thing to know in your

00:05:05.420 life in general like if you go somewhere and people go a bit out of their way to make it go

00:05:09.880 well for you and you tell them what they did in detail and you thank them for it they're so happy

00:05:15.760 you can't believe it and then they're way more likely to do that again in the future because

00:05:19.280 there isn't anything bf skinner figured this out a skinner taught skinner could teach an animal to

00:05:25.220 do anything skinner taught rats to dance and to climb ladders and to peck on photographs to guide

00:05:30.540 missiles and that was pigeons and oh wow yeah yeah skinner could teach animals to do anything

00:05:35.480 and he said you can teach an animal using threat so that produces anxiety you can use punishment

00:05:41.680 like electric shock minor electric shock the behaviors would do that which isn't as harsh as

00:05:47.200 it sounds because it's you know minor irritant essentially or you can use reward now reward is

00:05:53.080 hard to use because if you're going to teach an animal by using reward you have to watch them

00:05:58.220 And then you have to wait till you see them do something that you want them to repeat,

00:06:02.280 and then you have to reward them right there and there.

00:06:04.760 So you have to be very, very attentive to use reward.

00:06:08.340 And so often people don't use reward in their lives,

00:06:10.780 because they don't pay enough attention,

00:06:12.320 or maybe they're afraid to actually communicate what they want.

00:06:15.120 But it's unbelievably powerful.

00:06:17.580 And so if you watch your kids, or your wife, your friends,

00:06:21.780 and I don't mean to do this manipulatively because that's stupid,

00:06:24.940 But if they do something that you would like to see repeated, and you notice it, you think,

00:06:31.440 oh, that went real well.

00:06:33.140 You went out of your way, you stepped up, you improved your performance.

00:06:36.640 Even if it's just a minor improvement sort of on the edge, if you identify that, describe

00:06:42.180 it in detail, and call it out, it's so motivating for people, you just can't believe it.

00:06:48.940 You can just call out the best in people constantly by doing that.

00:06:52.320 You can do it to yourself, too, you know?

00:06:53.860 If you notice that you've made a little progress forward, instead of bitching at yourself about

00:06:58.660 how you're slightly less useless than you once were, you know, and sort of damned with

00:07:03.140 faint praise, you can notice that you took a step, however small, in the right direction

00:07:08.460 and, you know, treat yourself with a bit of appreciation.

00:07:11.560 In consequence, it's one of the things you teach people if you're a behavioral psychologist

00:07:15.200 is to teach them how to reward themselves for taking incremental steps towards their

00:07:20.880 desired goal.

00:07:21.880 Yeah.

00:07:22.880 Do you think that works for people across the board, or do you think some people react

00:07:27.300 more to punishment?

00:07:28.560 No, it's... some people don't react at all to punishment.

00:07:34.380 Like Julian, your brother, was a good example of that.

00:07:37.020 He was just too ornery and tough to react, really.

00:07:40.920 He didn't react well to punishment.

00:07:42.640 We used to use time out on him, because you can use time out on kids.

00:07:46.260 He was way more responsive to reward.

00:07:49.960 You were more sensitive to punishment in that, with you, when you were a little kid, really

00:07:55.560 all I had to do was, you know, point my finger at you and look, and you'd stop, Julian.

00:08:00.340 That was like, that was just an invitation to tango for him.

00:08:04.320 But reward, fundamentally, reward.

00:08:07.480 You want to use threat and punishment sparingly, very, very sparingly.

00:08:13.340 You know, you bring up the big guns only when necessary, but reward is, it's so useful.

00:08:19.360 but it requires careful focal attention you know and i think scarlet's like that she hardly needs

00:08:26.880 it like if you just look at her sideways when she's done something wrong she cries

00:08:30.560 right yeah right but not in like a depressed way you know what did i do wrong oh my gosh

00:08:35.900 yeah well that cry so the way your nervous system works basically this is one of the ways you learn

00:08:42.960 is that imagine that there's a sequence of activation of neurons in a pattern like like

00:08:48.840 musical pattern, right? And so whenever you're manifesting a given behavior, there's a symphony

00:08:54.760 of neurons that are firing that accompany that or that precede it. Now, if the symphony of neural

00:09:04.760 pattern produces a desired outcome, then that produces a release of dopamine. And the dopamine

00:09:11.760 does two things. One, it makes you feel good. And the second is that it makes the neurons that were

00:09:17.860 most recently active grow the connections between them and strengthen sort of in proportion to how

00:09:24.740 like the the farther back in time they were activated the less dopamine they're flooded by

00:09:30.900 so any behavioral pattern neural pattern that's resulted in a positive consequence

00:09:36.500 gets bathed in dopamine and then strengthens it's like the weight strengthening in a large

00:09:40.820 language model, it's the same thing.

00:09:43.080 And so, if you reward people for performing properly, then what they did is reinforced

00:09:53.280 by the dopamine as well as rewarded.

00:09:55.840 So the reinforcement is the growth and the reward is the subjective feeling.

00:10:00.820 And if you punish them for it, we don't exactly know how punishment works neurologically,

00:10:05.500 or at least I don't know, but it weakens the connections and kills the patterns, and

00:10:11.440 I think that the feeling of negative emotion that is associated with failure, let's say,

00:10:17.660 is actually a signal of the death of part of you, right?

00:10:21.860 The impending death or the weakening of something.

00:10:23.940 Yeah.

00:10:24.940 Kind of feels like that if you're doing something.

00:10:25.940 Well, it's part of you that's dying or weakening, right?

00:10:28.740 So it has to give up, and it's painful, right?

00:10:30.940 Yeah.

00:10:31.940 a radical personality transformation, you know, if you fail dreadfully, so imagine you fail

00:10:37.980 in a marriage, let's say, because it's betrayed.

00:10:43.800 What you failed at is a pattern that's co-activated with almost everything you do, right?

00:10:49.880 Because if you're married to someone, the fact that you're married is a predicate

00:10:55.100 of everything that you're involved in, the way you look at the world, the way you think

00:10:58.760 about yourself, the way you conduct yourself.

00:11:00.920 And then when that collapses, all of that is punished.

00:11:05.520 All of it.

00:11:06.520 And so, well, that's enough of a death.

00:11:07.960 You know, if you're like 75 years old and your wife dies, there's a real high probability

00:11:11.940 you'll die in the next year.

00:11:13.500 It just takes you out.

00:11:15.140 You know, and even if it doesn't, if you're younger, a big party is gonna die.

00:11:19.560 And that's very, very painful.

00:11:20.960 That grief and that reconstitution, that's all a partial death.

00:11:25.380 And it can kill you, right?

00:11:26.380 It can be so stressful that you just die.

00:11:27.920 but if you don't a lot of you has to die and then hypothetically you know re-emerge it takes a long

00:11:34.200 time for the death like a year and a long time for the re-emergence sometimes you don't re-emerge

00:11:40.040 either you just end up you know three quarters dead and that's what happens with ideological

00:11:46.180 beliefs too right why people get stuck in it because in order to change your frame of thought

00:11:51.060 a piece of you has to die yeah well not it's worse than that a piece of you has to die and it might

00:11:55.880 be a lot of you, but also, when that peace dies, it's not like it's replaced immediately

00:12:02.220 by a new functional peace.

00:12:04.540 You lose the…

00:12:05.540 Just chaos.

00:12:06.540 That's right.

00:12:07.540 That's the desert.

00:12:08.540 We just released this Exodus seminar, right, and one of the things that happens to the

00:12:12.560 Israelites, once they leave the tyranny of Egypt, they end up lost in the desert.

00:12:17.500 Of course, that's part of the mystery of the story.

00:12:19.500 It's like, it's not a very big desert where they're lost.

00:12:22.580 wouldn't take 40 years to walk across it. It's three generations. But what happens is that in

00:12:28.460 the aftermath of the collapse of a tyrannical belief system, well, the tyranny disappears,

00:12:34.600 but then you're lost. And it's not obvious at all that being lost is preferable to being in the

00:12:40.300 tyranny. And that's why people will develop nostalgia for the tyranny. It's also why people

00:12:44.720 won't let go of their beliefs. It's like, imagine you stubbornly stick to a counterproductive

00:12:49.560 pattern of behavior, and you even know it's counterproductive, but you won't let it go.

00:12:52.940 You think, well, why would you be so damn daft not to let go of something that you know

00:12:58.520 is hurting you? And the answer is, well, better the devil you know than the desert you don't.

00:13:03.920 Right? It's a really big problem. And in the Exodus story, there's an emphasis. It's

00:13:08.680 like, it might, the desert period, it might extend past your lifetime.

00:13:15.240 Right, right? Well, you know, if a whole tyrannical society collapses,

00:13:19.160 yeah there's no reason to assume that the society is going to regenerate within the span of your

00:13:23.700 life you know you might just be the cohort that's cast into the desert that happened in russia

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00:13:37.040 you're just screwed right because everything that you knew collapsed and you're 50 you know you're

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00:15:47.100 this episode okay so from my experience of like belief systems falling and i think my

00:15:52.000 first belief system that fell was like full-blown trust in the medical system because of what

00:15:57.680 happened to me and when that fell i've talked about this a bit it impacted almost every part

00:16:03.180 of my life where i was like i believed that you know i believe that that was how i was going to

00:16:08.140 get better it didn't make me better something else outside of that got me better which is the diet

00:16:13.240 that we're on which was ridiculous exploratory capacity yes for sure um but i think that was

00:16:20.340 the first belief system that fell and then i lost trust in everything like if that was wrong

00:16:25.060 is the government wrong what else is wrong this is something that nietzsche pointed out with regards

00:16:29.900 to the psychological consequences of European colonialism on Europe.

00:16:36.720 So he said, okay, imagine Europe is Christendom, all things considered, when the European expansion

00:16:43.020 started.

00:16:44.020 Okay, now the Europeans go out into the world, and there's some arguments within Christendom

00:16:49.440 about which branch of Christianity should rule, you know, and there's doubters, but

00:16:53.700 basically as far as the Europeans were concerned, the cosmos was structured according to Judeo-Christian

00:16:59.860 precepts. It was just an assumption network. Okay, so now the Europeans go out in the world,

00:17:05.000 and they find out that there's a lot of different belief systems, equally well-developed, or arguably

00:17:11.320 equally well-developed, apparently predicated on different axiomatic systems. Okay, so now that

00:17:16.980 brings up doubt. So the doubt is, well, you know, the Japanese, Chinese, they seem to be doing

00:17:24.240 pretty well, and they're not, or better even, in some regards. I think you could argue that when

00:17:29.180 Europeans hit Japan that the Japanese had attained a higher level of

00:17:35.360 Sophisticated civilization in many ways. They're certainly well advanced in the hygienic front for example. Yeah, and so

00:17:41.340 That's the first doubt. The first doubt is oh

00:17:44.460 There's a bunch of belief systems

00:17:47.200 But then Nietzsche pointed out but then there's a secondary doubt which is once you realize that any

00:17:53.400 That a belief system per se especially a relatively core one can collapse

00:17:58.640 That raises not only the specter of which belief system is correct

00:18:04.320 But another specter which is well, what makes you think any belief system is justifiable? Yeah, right?

00:18:09.520 And that's the nihilist trap. It's like well everything is meaningless, right?

00:18:13.580 And you know and that's a hard trap to get out of and we're certainly still Nietzsche knew that after the death of God

00:18:20.480 which was something he regarded as really the ultimate catastrophe the ultimate murder that

00:18:26.860 two things were most likely to happen. One would be a descent into a kind of counterproductive nihilism,

00:18:33.040 the loss of all values, that's how he construed it, and all the psychological disorientation that goes along with that, and the other would be a radical turn towards a

00:18:41.860 replacement totalitarian certainty,

00:18:44.580 which he believed and said would likely come from the radical left in the form of something approximating communism. He nailed that like 1850.

00:18:52.480 stunning and Dostoevsky knew exactly the same thing they both got it exactly right and so and

00:18:58.440 that is exactly what happened so yeah so and then there's another way of thinking about it too is

00:19:04.960 that you look at the world through a hierarchy of presuppositions of axioms yeah so like if you're

00:19:14.020 married one of the axioms is and this would be the definition of marriage one of the axioms of

00:19:20.360 marriage is likely trust on the interpersonal communication front, like you have to assume

00:19:27.200 that your partner is revealing to you what they are.

00:19:31.160 And then sexual fidelity would be the other, and those are obviously integrally associated,

00:19:35.440 but those are the two, you could argue, those are the two fundamental pillars, okay?

00:19:40.160 So everything else in the marriage, and that would be your self-conception, your conception

00:19:45.260 of your future, the past, your partner, other people, all of them depend on the integrity

00:19:50.920 of those axioms.

00:19:52.740 And so if any, either of those axioms are challenged, so your partner lies to you in

00:19:59.320 some fundamental way or betrays you on the sexual front, the whole edifice tumbles down.

00:20:04.860 Yeah.

00:20:05.860 Right?

00:20:06.860 And that, okay, and so what happens technically there is that edifice gives you security because

00:20:12.200 things are defined, and so they're not all the...

00:20:14.680 Look, if you can't trust someone,

00:20:16.620 you don't know who the hell they are, right?

00:20:18.780 And when you're facing someone

00:20:20.460 and you don't know who they are, they could be anyone.

00:20:23.200 They could be Mother Teresa or Ted Bundy.

00:20:25.720 Right, that's a big range, okay?

00:20:27.660 So someone you can't trust is a nightmare of entropy.

00:20:32.660 And the reason they're a nightmare of entropy

00:20:34.460 is because you don't know which direction to take.

00:20:37.920 Like, they're an infinite multitude

00:20:40.640 potential directions okay you the systems within you that signal anxiety signal the emergence of

00:20:47.600 that multitude of pathways it's like you know you you i've seen this in interviews i've had it's

00:20:52.880 like you know i thought they were good faith interviews and then i discovered that i was

00:20:56.080 talking to a snake yeah no kidding it's like oh i see you're not who you claim to be and whatever's

00:21:02.400 happening here isn't what i thought yeah what's going on and the answer is god only knows right

00:21:09.280 So anxiety signals that. Anxiety comes up and says,

00:21:12.720 you thought you were here, in the walled garden,

00:21:16.640 but it turns out that you're in chaos. And then,

00:21:20.160 because you don't know how difficult it will be to get out of the chaos and re-establish order,

00:21:25.760 your brain says, warning, warning, multiple pathways ahead, multiple indeterminate pathways ahead.

00:21:32.880 that equates to incalculable expense of energy and time probable, right? And so you get anxious,

00:21:41.280 and that's what freezes you. You don't know which direction to go, you turn to stone. So when

00:21:48.000 the mythological hero faces the terrible chaotic feminine, let's say, with the head of snakes,

00:21:55.280 it's a predator, he freezes. And the reason for that is, well, if you don't know what direction

00:22:00.880 to go how about you don't move right that's anxiety it's a signal of emergent entropy

00:22:07.200 and entropy can tear you apart right it's complete disorder so okay so i have like four or five

00:22:13.360 questions from that whole thing that just happened but i think i think the first one what do people

00:22:19.840 do if something they fundamentally believe changes and they're left in this state of

00:22:25.280 what's even stable in my life like where do you start when you're frozen okay so back to the book

00:22:30.480 of Exodus, this is so cool, Jonathan Pazio explained this to all of us, and like, I don't

00:22:35.680 think any of us ever recovered after he explained it, because it's so bloody brilliant.

00:22:39.320 So the Israelites are out in the desert, right?

00:22:41.520 They're lost, and they have the habits of slaves, so they don't know what they're

00:22:44.840 doing, and they're all bitchy, and they're whining about having the tyranny back, and

00:22:48.260 they're bitching about Moses, and they're worshipping like golden calves, and they're

00:22:52.180 fighting with each other.

00:22:53.180 It's just like chaos.

00:22:54.180 They don't know where to go.

00:22:56.280 And so God appears to them, and God appears as a pillar of light at night, so it's a fire,

00:23:03.340 and a pillar of darkness during the day.

00:23:07.020 And so Pajot said, that's the same thing as the Daoist yin and yang, it's the same

00:23:11.500 idea.

00:23:12.500 So, what does it mean?

00:23:13.500 Well, in the Daoist worldview, reality itself, so that's experiential reality, is made out

00:23:18.760 of the balance between chaos and order, okay?

00:23:21.740 Now order is where you are when things are going the way you want them to go.

00:23:25.940 order and chaos is where you don't know what the hell's going on so chaos is also possibility right

00:23:31.060 the future is chaos and novelty is chaos now in the taoist worldview the little serpent because

00:23:37.900 it's a serpent that that's the white serpent their head to head has a black dot in it it's because

00:23:43.920 order can turn into chaos at the drop of a hat yeah and the black serpent has a white dot in it

00:23:49.940 because chaos can reveal a new order and that's the interplay of reality the interplay between

00:23:55.720 the unknown and the known. Now, when you're guided by that which grips your interest optimally,

00:24:03.720 right, so you're attentive because you're interested in something, you're focused on

00:24:07.120 it, what it means is that chaos and order are balanced for you in a way that doesn't

00:24:12.880 flood you too much, so you're not too terrified, but that isn't so predictable that no transformation

00:24:18.840 is taking place in front of you. Now, you might think, well, what I want to be is stable.

00:24:23.820 And that's wrong.

00:24:25.320 You don't want to be stable.

00:24:26.420 You want to be stable and improving, right?

00:24:30.500 Okay, so something will beckon to you as compelling and interesting if it's exactly on the frontier

00:24:39.940 between chaos and order that will move your development forward, right?

00:24:43.880 And when that happens, you're engaged.

00:24:45.740 That's the instinctive meaning.

00:24:47.600 That's how God manifests himself to the Israelites in the desert.

00:24:51.040 that the thing that grips your attention, it's like the snitch that Harry Potter chases and wins

00:24:58.060 the game. You know, that's the thing that dances and grabs your attention. And so you could think

00:25:02.680 of God in the story of Exodus as that which calls to you. And you see a precursor of that in Exodus

00:25:08.880 because Moses leaves Egypt at one point. He kills an Egyptian who has beaten up an Israelite and he

00:25:17.220 kills him. And then the word gets around and he's afraid the Pharaoh's going to kill him. So he

00:25:20.780 And he goes to this land, Midia. I think it's Midia. His father-in-law is a Midianite priest.

00:25:26.780 So I think it's Midia, but the people who live there are Midianites anyways.

00:25:32.780 He marries one of the priest's daughters, and he settles into their household.

00:25:36.780 And, like, he's very valued there because he rescued the girls, including the one he married, from these, like, thugs at a well.

00:25:42.780 And they're pretty happy with Moses. And now he's a shepherd, and a shepherd is a guide and a leader, right?

00:25:48.780 leader, right? That's what a shepherd does. And a shepherd protects the weak because that's also

00:25:52.760 what a shepherd does. And remember in the Middle East at this time, there's lions and wolves. And

00:25:57.200 like you're not some trivial dude if you're a shepherd because you're out there alone and

00:26:01.640 where there's predators and you're, you know, taking care of the vulnerable. So that's the

00:26:07.040 leader. Yeah. Yeah. That's the leader, right? That's why the shepherd is a leader figure in

00:26:12.820 the Old Testament. You have a rod that you move the sheep with and fight off the predators. And

00:26:17.260 That's Moses and he's having a perfectly fine time. He doesn't want to go back to Egypt and he goes

00:26:21.820 It's actually happens near Mount Sinai

00:26:23.740 He encounters a burning bush and so Moses is going about his business and all of a sudden something attracts his attention and

00:26:31.180 He and he decides to go off his path

00:26:34.780 Right so the path of normality to attend to this thing that captures his interest and it's not like a burning forest

00:26:42.640 It's just something that glitters, right?

00:26:44.640 It's a call and so Moses goes to investigate and as he approaches it he realizes that it's a burning bush

00:26:52.220 And so what is that? Well a tree is a symbol of life like the tree of life, right?

00:26:56.660 The tree is a symbol of life because well trees are alive obviously, but that branching complexity is sort of

00:27:03.120 Emblematic of life and a burning

00:27:05.880 Tree is being and becoming at the same time because fire is transformation

00:27:10.300 And so the burning bush is a symbol of being and becoming simultaneously, right?

00:27:16.340 And so Moses investigates this.

00:27:18.540 And as he investigates it more deeply, here's a voice.

00:27:21.220 And the voice says, you're starting to tread on sacred ground.

00:27:25.460 And so he takes off his shoes and continues to investigate.

00:27:28.600 And that's when God himself reveals himself to Moses and then really transforms him into a revelatory leader.

00:27:35.800 And the idea there is, it's such an amazing idea.

00:27:38.620 and I think it's absolutely right, is that, you know, you're going to be walking down your pathway

00:27:42.780 in life, and maybe you're perfectly content, and something is going to glitter and gleam in the

00:27:47.440 periphery, capture your interest, right? And it's partly you, because it's you that's

00:27:52.300 interested, but it's partly the world calling to you, because you don't get to say what makes

00:27:58.140 you interested, right? It sort of happens to you. It's a synchronicity, like it's a place where the

00:28:02.900 narrative and the objective touch, and so if you decide to go off your pathway and investigate,

00:28:08.620 what interests you. And you investigated enough, you go deeper and deeper and deeper. And if you

00:28:14.540 go deep enough, you get on sacred ground. And that's where you're getting so deep that you're

00:28:19.680 starting to study that which everything depends on. And then if you continue to study, you'll get

00:28:25.460 right to the bottom of things itself. That's Moses' encounter with the divine. And if you do that,

00:28:29.960 you will be a leader, right? And so that's, and so you say, well, what guides you when you're lost?

00:28:35.780 Well, the manifestation of intrinsic meaning guides you when you're lost.

00:28:40.720 You can hear that in music, like music plays out the balance between chaos and order properly,

00:28:45.460 and it sort of tells you what is intrinsically meaningful and necessary and beautiful and

00:28:52.740 true, all of that.

00:28:53.820 And so, and it's so cool because it works out neurologically, really.

00:28:57.540 Like, it is the case that you advance developmentally on the edge of chaos, right?

00:29:04.620 you have to push yourself to advance yeah that's what you do when you play like if you're playing

00:29:08.800 one-on-one basketball with someone you don't want to be six foot four and play with your like four

00:29:13.180 foot two nephew and just stomp them to death and you think well why not because you could beat the

00:29:18.180 little bastard non-stop it's like i'm the victor you don't want that right you want to find someone

00:29:23.040 who can push you maybe you want to play with someone who's slightly better than you now why

00:29:29.140 Why?

00:29:30.140 Because it's harder to win.

00:29:31.540 And the answer is, well, the win means that you're developing.

00:29:35.920 That's the meta-win.

00:29:37.600 And you obtain the meta-win on the border of chaos, and that's all the place where the

00:29:41.940 hero operates, and that's where you find the dragon, and all of that.

00:29:44.820 It's exactly the same thing.

00:29:46.600 And meaning, the instinct of meaning signifies that developmental edge, and the constant

00:29:53.120 mythological insistence is that God is to be found at the core of what makes itself

00:29:58.740 manifest as meaning and that's a definition you know and say well people think well you know i

00:30:03.540 don't believe in god it's like god it the belief in god is not adherence to a set of semantic

00:30:10.460 propositions that's just not how it works it's not like it's not like reading a set of descriptors

00:30:17.540 and saying i you know i i concur it's not that at all it's being guided by well it's being guided

00:30:24.260 by the spirit of truth that's one way of thinking about it guided by the spirit of adventure

00:30:28.740 that's another way of thinking about it and it's faith in meaning it's faith in truth

00:30:33.960 those aren't propositional ideas and they're they they fit the neurology perfectly because

00:30:39.740 the instinct of meaning manifests itself on the edge of development that's how your brain's set

00:30:46.340 up so if you're floating around in chaos because one of your belief systems failed whether that's

00:30:51.560 your job or your belief in the medical system or your relationship or something like that

00:30:55.800 your suggestion is wait for something meaningful to appear because it'll appear and then pursue it.

00:31:03.220 Or watch.

00:31:04.100 Like one of the things you do with people who are depressed if you're a behavioral therapist is you say,

00:31:08.460 okay, let's have you track your mood for the next two weeks.

00:31:12.600 Like you're going to think because you're depressed.

00:31:14.200 It's like, how do you feel?

00:31:15.280 Two out of ten.

00:31:16.440 When?

00:31:17.060 Always.

00:31:17.740 It's like, no, not always.

00:31:19.780 If you track your mood, you'll find that even if you're severely depressed,

00:31:23.160 You'll vary say between zero and four out of ten

00:31:26.700 Okay, so now it might be that you find this is very common you find that even though you don't want to see your friends

00:31:32.640 If you're with them you're at four

00:31:35.840 Okay, and and then maybe there'll be some other things if I listen to music if I'm painting if I'm working out if I'm building

00:31:42.380 You know a shelf or whatever there'll be different things that people find compelling

00:31:48.660 My mood lifts and here's some other things I'm doing where I'm at zero

00:31:52.460 yeah okay let's start doing fewer of the zero things and more of the four things and see how

00:31:58.660 far we can go and then maybe you practice that for a month and now you're doing some six out of

00:32:03.380 ten things like there'll be there'll be domains of your life that make themselves manifest as more

00:32:11.120 able to chase away the darkness and you need to discover what those are and you have to be humble

00:32:16.900 which is you don't know because what do you know about yourself the things that you find meaningful

00:32:21.700 that make themselves manifest as meaningful, you might not want to even admit.

00:32:26.040 Like, maybe you have a woman who's hell-bent on her career for ideological reasons, but

00:32:30.840 if you get her to track her mood, she's far happier when she's with her kids. 0.92

00:32:36.780 Or the reverse, right?

00:32:37.980 You might have a woman who would like to believe that having her children is enough, but if

00:32:44.660 you track her mood, you find that if she isn't out pursuing her career 30% of the time, she

00:32:51.700 She's devastated.

00:32:53.280 And it's an empirical, you call this in behavioral therapy, you call this collaborative empiricism.

00:32:57.460 And so the idea is, well, I don't know who the hell you are, and neither do you.

00:33:02.720 So how about we watch?

00:33:04.320 We watch.

00:33:05.320 And that's humility.

00:33:06.320 It's like, I don't know.

00:33:07.320 I don't know.

00:33:08.320 And you have to be brought to your knees to watch that seriously.

00:33:13.400 So then you can find...

00:33:14.400 And then, you know, there's a reliable pattern to the things that make your life meaningful.

00:33:19.140 So, and this is one of the things I've talked to my audiences a lot about, is that they're

00:33:23.340 all...

00:33:24.340 So, you might say, well, I want to be happy.

00:33:27.900 And people say that all the time.

00:33:28.900 And they don't even know what the hell they mean when they say that.

00:33:31.520 What they actually mean is that they don't want to suffer too much.

00:33:34.680 But they don't say, I don't want to be unhappy.

00:33:39.800 They say, I want to be happy.

00:33:41.160 But happiness is incentive reward, and it only occurs sporadically when you're pursuing

00:33:46.180 a goal.

00:33:47.180 Happiness has its dangers too because it makes you impulsive and when people say they want to be happy

00:33:52.140 They actually don't know what they mean and what they really mean what they really mean is something like I

00:33:58.000 Want to have a meaning that will sustain me even through catastrophe and that's not happiness because when you're in a catastrophe

00:34:05.120 Which you will be or maybe always are you're not going to be happy

00:34:09.840 Okay, so what if people where do people find meaning and my?

00:34:14.340 My conclusion, fundamentally, it's not mine, this is the fundamental axiom of Western

00:34:21.840 civilization, is you find true meaning in voluntary self-sacrifice, right?

00:34:27.420 So it's like, you know, you have a great relationship with your kids, you're a mother.

00:34:32.020 Well it means you've given up yourself to a large degree to foster that relationship.

00:34:37.360 Same with your relationship with your partner.

00:34:39.400 Like it's not self-martyrdom, but it's in that responsible shouldering of the virtues

00:34:46.400 of the relationship that the meaning arises, and the most reliable source of meaning is

00:34:51.460 responsible self-sacrificial conduct, and so here's something very cool.

00:34:56.580 I went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher with Jonathan Paggio.

00:35:00.380 It's in Jerusalem, and it was the first church.

00:35:02.280 Now it's hypothetically situated on the place where Christ hung himself on the cross.

00:35:06.560 It was hung on the cross.

00:35:08.240 And so what does that mean?

00:35:09.240 Well, at minimum, psychologically, it means that the community is founded on the principle of voluntary self-sacrifice.

00:35:17.180 That's what it means.

00:35:18.020 And so you have the cross at the center of the church, and that's the place of the altar.

00:35:23.400 That's the place of sacrificial offering.

00:35:25.540 Then you have the church surrounding that.

00:35:27.600 Then you have the town surrounding that.

00:35:30.200 And then the community itself, and this was the pattern for European towns for centuries, the state surrounding that.

00:35:35.760 But the thing at the middle was responsible, voluntary self-sacrifice towards a higher good, right?

00:35:41.600 And it took people thousands of years to delineate out that vision.

00:35:45.640 You know, you see it developing through the Old Testament,

00:35:47.740 but it's fully realized in many ways in the New Testament

00:35:50.300 with the idea that you have to bear the weight of death voluntarily

00:35:55.340 and also the weight of hell, of malevolence.

00:35:58.820 You have to take that onto yourself.

00:36:02.280 And in doing so, you transcend it.

00:36:04.140 And in doing so, you also act out the foundation of community itself.

00:36:09.420 And of course that's true, because if I'm going to be in a community, I have to give

00:36:15.960 up myself, like my short-term, merely me-focused self.

00:36:22.060 Obviously, that's the definition of community.

00:36:25.440 You know, if it's me first, always, there's no community.

00:36:30.780 So to me, these things, they've started to become almost truisms.

00:36:33.900 It's like, well, obviously, community, the stable, healthy community is predicated on

00:36:39.860 voluntary self-sacrifice.

00:36:40.860 It's like, well, what, how else could it be?

00:36:43.400 No sacrifice?

00:36:44.400 No.

00:36:45.400 That's not going to get you anywhere.

00:36:47.420 The sacrifice of other people?

00:36:49.580 Well that's a little convenient for you, plus the other people don't exactly appreciate

00:36:54.360 it.

00:36:55.360 And so, you know, if you're a good mother, there's-

00:36:56.860 So much easier that way.

00:36:57.860 Well, right.

00:36:58.860 It is in the short term.

00:36:59.860 But that's the other thing. It's actually not easier. So psychopaths do that all the time.

00:37:04.280 They sacrifice other people to their own whims at the drop of a hat. So what happens to psychopaths?

00:37:09.960 Well, they end up in prison. They fail to learn from experience. They have to wander from town

00:37:15.060 to town. Like, they end up in hell. It doesn't work because people catch on, you know, usually.

00:37:21.340 And then there's hell to pay. Like, literally. Literally. So there isn't an alternative. And,

00:37:28.860 you know you might think well who the hell wants the path of voluntary self-sacrifice like fair

00:37:33.160 enough you know with the cross and hell it's doesn't exactly sound like a picnic but if you

00:37:38.740 know that the alternative is hell then you think well you know yeah it also at least from what i've

00:37:47.180 gone through it seems to get easier like the first time it happens to you or a belief system falls

00:37:52.940 and you're in chaos it's pretty horrible for quite a while but then you kind of get used to it

00:38:00.060 that's what I found anyway so then the next thing that happens well maybe it's worse than the first

00:38:04.960 thing that happens but then each dramatic thing that happens after that it's like oh you know

00:38:09.940 what I already did this one and I survived and then I think you can take on more risk well then

00:38:15.280 you also have a different conception of what you are because yeah here here's conception one I am

00:38:20.380 what I believe. Okay, that's great, as long as it's working, but as soon as your belief

00:38:24.860 collapses, well then, who are you? And then the next conclusion is, I'm whatever is left

00:38:30.560 over when my belief system collapses. And that's the depressive, nihilistic state.

00:38:35.260 It's like, well, you know, everything's up in the air, and life is fundamentally misery,

00:38:40.600 and I'm this disoriented thing, and that's the essential nature of being. You know, stable

00:38:45.680 state collapse into chaos. I'm the stable state. Nope. I'm chaos. Nope. Well, then order

00:38:53.160 re-emerges from chaos. And now you think, well, I'm the new order. And that's the

00:38:59.240 fervor of a convert. But then it collapses. And then you do that five times and you think,

00:39:04.400 oh, I see. I'm the thing that does this. Right. That's right. That's right. That's

00:39:08.640 Sisyphus. It's the voluntary acceptance of the fate of Sisyphus. You're the thing

00:39:13.920 that's rolling the stone up the mountain, and then it rolls back down.

00:39:17.600 But it's a different mountain each time, and maybe each peak is higher, right?

00:39:21.160 And so then you're the thing that transforms.

00:39:23.760 That's why in the Judeo-Christian ethos, in the Judeo-Christian narrative world, your

00:39:31.700 soul is identified with the dying and resurrecting savior, because you're the thing that goes

00:39:36.660 through this process of purification by repeated deaths and rebirths, right?

00:39:41.520 And so then you're the thing that withstands the repeated deaths and rebirths in the favor

00:39:47.200 of the emergence of a higher order, you know?

00:39:51.120 And the pathway of that, that's Jacob's Ladder.

00:39:53.220 That's the pathway to paradox.

00:39:54.880 That's the hero's path.

00:39:56.440 That's why Jung said that Christ was a symbol of the self, because that core self isn't

00:40:01.240 what you believe, and it's not the catastrophe that ensues when belief disintegrates.

00:40:07.500 It's the process by which you're honed in fire by repeatedly encountering, you know,

00:40:14.240 what's salutary and transforming.

00:40:16.740 And then if you identify with that, the more you identify with that, the more you can say,

00:40:22.360 bring it on.

00:40:23.360 Right?

00:40:24.360 And the ultimate extent of that is probably something like embracing your enemy.

00:40:29.200 And you think, well, how the hell can I do that?

00:40:32.880 It's like, here's a hypothesis.

00:40:36.700 The more you could embrace the worst enemy, the more radically you could transform for

00:40:41.420 the better.

00:40:42.420 Right?

00:40:43.420 Because the worst enemy is going to bring everything that could possibly take you out

00:40:47.980 against you.

00:40:48.980 Worst enemy in an idea way or as a person?

00:40:51.840 Either way.

00:40:52.840 Either way.

00:40:53.840 Whatever knocks you off your feet.

00:40:54.840 Yeah, okay.

00:40:55.840 Now you think, well, something's coming to knock me off my feet.

00:40:58.140 You might think, well, maybe I could use what knocks me off my feet to shed what's most

00:41:05.520 useless about me and you know and we've seen this we've seen this in our family you know

00:41:10.560 practically speaking because one of the things we did learn was that just because the attack

00:41:15.600 looked like a catastrophe doesn't mean that it isn't the best thing that could have possibly

00:41:20.880 happened even though you might not see that for like two years right two years yeah right right

00:41:26.340 and then of course it depends on how you dance with it too you know i mean when we when i was

00:41:30.460 one of the most shocking things that happened to me when i was still ill was to be portrayed in

00:41:35.320 Marvel series as Red Skull right I mean it just knocked me off my feet I couldn't believe it it

00:41:40.360 was so insanely surreal and over the top and we didn't know what the hell to do about that hilarious

00:41:46.920 also hilarious well I thought you might have taken a little bit of time to get there

00:41:52.300 well by that time yeah and I was sick too by that time it had happened enough so that it wasn't

00:41:58.700 yeah but it did it really literally when it when I first saw it it I literally I almost fell over

00:42:04.800 It shook me, like it shook me so badly because I just couldn't believe it was happening.

00:42:09.000 But then we turned it into a joke, really, and put a, you know, we made that lobster symbol.

00:42:15.640 Some Czech kid was a Czech kid, right?

00:42:17.600 Made that lobster out of the Hydra image.

00:42:19.600 We made that tell the truth and make your bed evil logo and then ran a charity venture for, well, for about a year, I think.

00:42:28.340 Yeah.

00:42:28.720 Yeah, and so that worked, you know, and that's a weird thing because that worked out real well.

00:42:33.020 And that was an interest really interesting example because it was it was as

00:42:38.520 profound

00:42:40.160 Reputational blow in some ways as could be mustard, right?

00:42:43.480 It's like to be pilloried as a Nazi is one thing

00:42:46.360 But like to be pilloried as the source of all the magical source of all Nazis

00:42:51.140 That's a whole different level of conceptualization

00:42:54.440 And you think well, you know, how could that be turned to something good?

00:42:58.340 And that's a complicated question, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be

00:43:03.020 Did you know Elvis's manager had all the I hate Elvis merch?

00:43:09.580 That's what you do.

00:43:10.580 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:11.580 Well, that was something I joked about early.

00:43:13.780 You know, the first time I went on Joe Rogan, I made this, you know, horrible joke that

00:43:17.880 I'd figured out how to monetize social justice warriors and, you know, all the people who

00:43:21.740 think that I'm an evil capitalist thought, which I am, thought, well, there's just evidence

00:43:26.760 that he's an evil capitalist, but it was also a joke, but it was also true.

00:43:31.340 It's like, okay, like you guys, you hate capitalism.

00:43:34.880 And so you're going to use your woke nonsense to go after people's reputation.

00:43:39.320 It's like, what's the funniest thing that can be done with that?

00:43:42.820 And clearly the funniest thing to do with that is to monetize it.

00:43:46.360 And so we've done that a lot.

00:43:47.520 So the last time I was in Berlin, we accidentally rented a theater that was right in the middle of the communist district.

00:43:54.360 And all the communists thought that was just a provocation.

00:43:57.180 But it wasn't.

00:43:57.980 It was just ignorance.

00:43:58.780 And we didn't know that that was like communist central in Berlin.

00:44:02.900 I didn't even know they had that area in Berlin.

00:44:04.560 Right, right, right.

00:44:05.440 You know, so silly us, but they did.

00:44:07.600 And so we got a couple hundred protesters, which was the best the protesters had mustered on our last tour.

00:44:12.680 Because usually it was like six bedraggled individuals, you know, with their signs protesting something they didn't even purport to understand.

00:44:20.660 You know, after a big show in the press about how there would be thousands of them.

00:44:24.720 and so but Berlin they managed a pretty decent contingent but the police they're pretty used

00:44:30.000 to handling them and it's like a little dance they all know how to do it so we went out and

00:44:34.080 filmed them and then used that as a promo for the rest of the tour because it's like what else are

00:44:39.740 you going to do about it you know it's you might as well do something comical and and hypothetically

00:44:45.560 productive and satirical at the same time and so I want credit for that yeah that was I think that

00:44:50.540 was your I think the I don't remember how much of the Red Skull charity venture was also that

00:44:57.660 was a collaborative venture between the two of us did you find the Czech kid yeah on Twitter

00:45:03.560 yeah right yeah yeah so he was he was great yeah yeah well you know we always had a relationship

00:45:10.920 well and this was true in our household in general like there was always like satire and play

00:45:18.080 we had to yeah well yeah there's that too but but it wasn't just you know the friends that i had

00:45:23.820 and you know this the friends that i had when i was a kid you've met a lot of them all we ever did

00:45:28.320 was joke it was just continual joking the friendships i had for almost all my life where

00:45:33.880 it's all competitive humor and so we did the same thing in our household your mom figured you out

00:45:38.700 about six years ago took her a long time she said i don't know what to make michaela said everything

00:45:44.000 Mikayla says is a joke it's like really it's like yes yes just listen and then your mom figured that

00:45:50.500 out she thought oh well you know she kind of knew it wasn't like she was completely out of the loop

00:45:54.580 on that front I think I was like 17 it was even worse for your mom because she realized that you 0.91

00:45:59.440 know she had no idea how much like you she is she thinks Mikayla you know she's kind of rough

00:46:06.860 it's like Tammy you know she's exactly like you she's no I'm not really like that's like

00:46:12.120 yeah you're exactly like that you're exactly like that actually I think once she finally

00:46:19.060 really swallowed that she thought that was pretty good compliment all things considered

00:46:22.420 oh that's nice yeah yeah yeah okay let's switch directions hey everyone as you may know recently

00:46:28.580 I got quite ill from living in a house with mold behind the drywall and in the hvacs which is why

00:46:33.140 I had to pause the podcast for like six months and recover my brain but saunaing has been something

00:46:37.700 that's been hugely beneficial for recovering from that.

00:46:40.280 I've been sauna-ing for years to reduce symptoms of autoimmunity

00:46:43.220 and anxiety, depression, etc.

00:46:46.080 And if I eat something wrong that gives me an autoimmune flare-up, I sauna.

00:46:49.620 There's so much evidence that is good for health and longevity

00:46:52.120 by helping your body detox faster amongst other benefits.

00:46:56.180 Bond Charge is a holistic wellness brand

00:46:58.480 that has products ranging from blue light glasses to red light therapy.

00:47:02.740 All their stuff is good, but their sauna blanket is my favorite.

00:47:05.460 it works by helping you detox and sweat it raises your heart rate like exercise so it burns calories

00:47:11.000 it's super easy to set up and clean and you can travel with it which is huge for me seems to

00:47:16.580 improve my mood by about 30 after use which is significant pre-shipping easy returns and

00:47:22.080 exchanges 30-day trial 12 months warranty all that good stuff you can go to bondcharge.com

00:47:28.200 slash mp and use coupon code mp to save 15 that's b-o-n-c-h-a-r-g-e.com slash mp and use code mp to

00:47:38.700 save 15 but that was fascinating i actually kept up with that whole thing which is which is great

00:47:44.320 but i think that's also from years of experience of trauma and then getting through it and then

00:47:51.260 and now i've realized when bad things happen and i have this belief that's like firmly ingrained in

00:47:56.860 me that when my life is going really well and then suddenly oh everything's upside down again

00:48:01.820 it's a period of time and I'm going to end up in a better place on the other side and it is going to

00:48:07.460 end and I believe that so when bad things happen now I go oh well I hope this isn't a year and a

00:48:12.180 half of bad things but I'm sure there's something here that I need to learn unfortunately which is

00:48:17.320 a better state of being then I'm in the middle of a catastrophe and it's never going to go away

00:48:21.180 and this is my life forever yeah which I don't believe anymore yes the book of Job outlines that

00:48:26.240 right because it's a terrible book oh yeah because god makes a bet with satan actually the reverse

00:48:31.260 yeah and satan you know job's a good guy yeah satan says yeah yeah i bet i can take him out

00:48:37.220 and god says no i don't think you can he's a good guy i don't think do your worst yeah you know do

00:48:42.660 your worst have at him man and you know people read that the like the kind of shallow atheist

00:48:48.180 materialist types read that they think god's so reprehensible it's like have you lived

00:48:53.320 You know, you don't think there's anything reprehensible about life?

00:48:58.080 You don't think, like, horrible, unfair things are going to be hurled your way?

00:49:02.120 And that that has to be incorporated into your idea of the absolute?

00:49:05.200 It's like, definitely that's coming, so how about you don't be so naive?

00:49:10.120 You know, on the one hand, the critics of those stories say, well, you know, religion

00:49:13.640 is a defense against death anxiety, and you think, okay, yeah, what about the story of

00:49:17.520 Job?

00:49:18.520 Like, the God in there isn't promising his believers everlasting bliss.

00:49:23.600 It's like, I'll take you out.

00:49:25.260 Earthquakes, storms, and Satan himself.

00:49:27.580 I'm coming at you.

00:49:28.860 You better get ready.

00:49:30.380 There's no whitewashing that.

00:49:32.040 And Job's response is, no matter what is thrown at, no matter what it is, he maintains faith.

00:49:39.820 Right?

00:49:40.120 And that's not blind stupidity.

00:49:42.540 That's not superstitious, childlike faith.

00:49:46.780 That's toughness.

00:49:48.520 It's like, no, I can handle this.

00:49:50.040 I don't care what it is.

00:49:51.460 There's something that I can ally myself with,

00:49:55.880 like a principle, the principle of truth, maybe.

00:49:58.700 There's something I can ally myself with

00:50:00.760 that will carry me through this, right?

00:50:03.320 And if you don't have that, then it just takes you out.

00:50:06.440 So you need to have that.

00:50:08.000 Well, otherwise you can just be miserable

00:50:10.280 and then also be in hell, right?

00:50:12.800 And then that can last for your whole life

00:50:15.140 and maybe your children's life.

00:50:16.900 And yeah, those are the alternatives.

00:50:19.340 Yeah.

00:50:20.100 Okay.

00:50:20.740 Let's discuss what we're doing with Peterson Academy.

00:50:24.580 Hey, why don't you introduce it?

00:50:26.560 Okay, I will.

00:50:27.980 So I think most people know that you did a personality course a number of years ago,

00:50:33.660 which was wildly successful.

00:50:36.160 I thought it was great.

00:50:38.160 And I thought, first of all, we should make more of those.

00:50:42.420 Made a bunch of money.

00:50:43.580 And I'm, you know, motivated by that.

00:50:46.140 made a bunch of money it also taught people it was a cool way of learning uh so i thought well

00:50:51.000 we should do that and then i thought we could do that for other people and so that's kind of how

00:50:55.940 the idea came up and then you have been talking about some sort of online university for years

00:51:01.240 and years and so that kind of i think amalgamated into well i knew i started learning you know when

00:51:07.700 i started putting my lectures out on youtube i thought well obviously you know what and i also

00:51:14.500 thought, why wouldn't it be good to provide everybody, at least in principle, with access

00:51:22.720 to the best lectures?

00:51:23.720 Yeah.

00:51:24.720 You know, like, because now we can, and the technological barrier to that has been blown

00:51:28.420 apart.

00:51:29.420 And, you know, before you needed 500 lectures on personality, let's say, distributed across

00:51:34.600 the world, and most of them, you know, 95% of them weren't particularly good.

00:51:39.880 But now, in principle, you could gather the best lectures from all over the world, and

00:51:44.320 And then also give them free reign to say what they want, take it out of the idiot bureaucratic

00:51:51.440 restrictions that the universities apply, and bring it to everyone.

00:51:55.220 And so I started experimenting with that on YouTube, and that became wildly popular with

00:51:59.760 people.

00:52:00.760 And yeah, and so then we started doing that with all sorts of other lectures.

00:52:04.200 Whenever I interviewed someone or gathered someone up, I thought really knew what they

00:52:07.700 were talking about.

00:52:09.060 We've been recording them.

00:52:10.060 How many courses have we recorded now?

00:52:11.760 We have almost 20.

00:52:12.760 Mm-hmm.

00:52:13.760 more on launch. Our plan is to launch in November. I think we'll probably do a soft launch so there's

00:52:21.620 going to be a certain number of available, you know, memberships that will sell. We're aiming

00:52:29.060 for about $40 a month so that it's accessible to everybody and it'll give people access to the

00:52:35.160 entire platform so they won't have to pay per course. There's a social media element built in

00:52:39.960 so people will have profiles, they'll be able to DM each other, they'll be able to post, they'll be

00:52:43.740 able to form study groups uh we're hoping to include location if you want to turn location on

00:52:49.480 so people can actually meet up in person if they want to study together and the courses look so

00:52:55.640 good and the nice thing about filming courses is that they can be continually updated so we have

00:53:01.460 the best cameras we could get so like netflix quality cameras and we can just continually

00:53:06.800 update the courses and so far we haven't shot a course that i was like yeah maybe we put this in

00:53:12.920 the in the back and don't show it to very many people so far everything's been really good oh

00:53:17.440 and then um our plan so we were trying to figure out this whole accreditation process which is a

00:53:23.560 complete nightmare because all the accreditation um what are the processes processes and the

00:53:29.880 accreditors are are woke like completely woke and the entire university system is kind of

00:53:36.180 structured strangely and they force you to take courses that aren't really applicable to your

00:53:39.800 degree it takes a certain number of time it takes a certain number of years so you can't really

00:53:44.780 combine all your studying in quickly the entire thing just bothered me when i went to university

00:53:49.760 i didn't think it was i didn't want to take certain courses that i was forced to take for

00:53:53.160 a degree that had nothing to do with it made no sense um so we're starting with a general

00:53:57.840 education degree which i think could be applicable to anybody yeah so let me expand on that yeah so

00:54:04.680 for people who are watching and listening you know you might think well why should you have a

00:54:09.140 why should you be generally educated? So that would be something like, why would you take a

00:54:13.540 Bachelor of Arts? And there's two answers to that. One is, well, do you want to learn to

00:54:17.980 communicate and think or not? So let's walk through that. Why do you think? So you can think

00:54:23.740 things through before you act them out so you don't end up in hell. That's why. So that's why

00:54:28.200 you think. You think so that your stupid thoughts can die instead of you. That's why you think. And

00:54:35.200 And that's technically and biologically why you think.

00:54:38.360 So like, learn to think, and you're probably mostly going to think in words at the more

00:54:42.440 sophisticated level, although you could also think in images.

00:54:46.600 So you should be exposed to the greatest images and the greatest words so that you can craft

00:54:51.980 your tools and prepare.

00:54:54.060 And then, well, why should you communicate?

00:54:56.140 And the answer is, well, like, do you want to have some customers, because you're going

00:55:00.660 to have to talk to them.

00:55:01.660 Are you going to formulate some contracts, or are you going to convince people to come

00:55:04.260 along with you or invite them?

00:55:05.880 It's like, so you better be able to communicate.

00:55:08.300 And so that's on the process front.

00:55:10.600 You should know how to think, and you should know how to communicate, because otherwise

00:55:14.220 you're going to be a useless, resentful, bitter, pointless, counterproductive lump.

00:55:19.760 And that's not a good strategy.

00:55:22.560 But then there's a second element to it, which is that as you move yourself up the

00:55:27.620 ladder of accomplishment, let's say, you'll increasingly encounter people who know things.

00:55:33.620 And you know, if you get to the upper echelons of any hierarchy, you'll start encountering

00:55:42.360 people who know a lot about almost everything.

00:55:45.620 And so if you're stupid and you don't know anything about anything, then like, they're

00:55:50.000 just going to look at you and listen to you for like two seconds and think, well, I don't

00:55:53.960 know where this clunk came from, but you know, he's not come along for the ride.

00:55:57.780 And so you should know something about music and art and literature and history and science

00:56:04.640 and of all the different sciences.

00:56:06.780 You need to be enculturated because, well, so that you can play with sophisticated people

00:56:13.300 and you can play a sophisticated and productive game.

00:56:16.500 But also so that you've informed yourself with the greatest ideas of history so that

00:56:21.220 whatever problem you're tackling, you're going to have tools to tackle it with.

00:56:25.920 And so, that's why you need to be generally educated, and that's why we're putting together this corpus of lectures.

00:56:33.000 We're hoping that once we get it well-developed, you'll be able to take all these courses, and then, you know,

00:56:37.860 you won't be a complete embarrassment to yourself. And that, you know, hypothetically, that'll be useful.

00:56:43.380 And so on the social front, so one of the things that we've come to realize as we've been thinking through the university issue is that,

00:56:49.980 you know, because you might say, well, why will people pay $75,000 a year for a degree?

00:56:55.160 And part of the answer to that is, well, they leave their coterie of high school friends,

00:57:00.920 you know, which is kind of random, and they get to do a personality transformation

00:57:05.080 to grow up and to find a new group of peers,

00:57:07.800 but, and that's very important to find a new group of peers, man, that's worth something.

00:57:11.920 And some of those peers might be the great figures of history,

00:57:14.680 but they also might get a chance to find their mate, you know, and so at a selective university,

00:57:20.440 you bring people together who are young people who are relatively accomplished,

00:57:23.640 And so the pool from which you have to choose your mate is all of a sudden increased in quality dramatically.

00:57:30.460 And so who knows what that's worth? It's worth a lot. And so we realized as we've been building this that

00:57:38.040 universities are, whatever they are, they're much more than merely lectures and

00:57:43.600 accreditation. That's probably

00:57:45.600 25% of what a university offers. A huge part of the rest of it is

00:57:49.860 is social milieu and socialization.

00:57:52.960 And so that's why we've been building out

00:57:54.400 the social communication part of it.

00:57:56.960 And so you're very excited about that part in particular.

00:57:59.220 You've got more excited as we've gone along.

00:58:01.000 And so what do you think's good

00:58:02.300 about the social media side of the platform?

00:58:07.460 Well, we took aspects from social media platforms

00:58:10.320 that already exist and thought,

00:58:11.800 you know, this kind of works.

00:58:13.300 You can stick something like that on here.

00:58:15.120 And I know that, well, Instagram's

00:58:17.600 commonly used for dating now.

00:58:19.860 So DMing people, seeing what they look like, and being able to have a conversation is really important.

00:58:24.740 And I think if you bring a bunch of people onto a platform where you're all trying to learn and improve yourselves,

00:58:29.240 then the quality of people you're going to meet there, at least they're interested in ideas.

00:58:33.560 Well, they're also on the same developmental course as you.

00:58:36.320 Yeah.

00:58:36.880 So I just wanted to make sure, like when we first started it, we had more of a text-based communication.

00:58:44.220 And I wanted to make sure we had an element of being able to see what people looked like.

00:58:47.600 Because if you meet someone, you want to see what they look like.

00:58:50.020 And I think that's more relevant.

00:58:52.480 I actually think that's more relevant for women. 0.99

00:58:54.740 I'm not sure if that's backed up, but I know most Instagram users are female.

00:58:58.760 So I think women are more attracted to like, what do I look like? 0.74

00:59:01.720 What do other people look like?

00:59:03.120 So I wanted to put that on the app.

00:59:04.780 Whereas something like Reddit, which is mostly text-based and it's mostly male,

00:59:08.620 I didn't want to just stick to that.

00:59:10.100 So we've combined that, which I think will also keep people on the platform,

00:59:15.280 which is also one of the goals.

00:59:17.200 Yeah, well, and we're also trying to figure out how to bring people together, like physically,

00:59:22.700 because, you know, it's very useful.

00:59:26.200 What do you do at university?

00:59:27.540 Well, you eat with people, you know, you share hospitality, you party with people.

00:59:31.640 And, you know, you can think about that as extraneous entertainment, but it's not.

00:59:36.280 It might be the most important thing you do, actually.

00:59:38.720 And that's also true as you conduct yourself in the professional world, you know.

00:59:42.800 I mean, you make your professional customers and your peers by working together, but the

00:59:48.440 hospitality element of it is incredibly important, because that's how you get to know people

00:59:52.740 outside of the narrow sphere of your self-shared, your shared interest.

00:59:58.420 That's how you sort of decide whether or not you're, well, that you can trust each

01:00:03.400 other and whether you can play well together, you know?

01:00:05.800 And that's very important if you want a long-term relationship, professionally or socially.

01:00:11.380 And so we need to be able to duplicate that.

01:00:13.280 And that's going to take some work now.

01:00:15.020 That'll take time just because we'll need enough people on the platform

01:00:17.860 so that there will be people on the platform in certain people's areas.

01:00:21.580 So that, I mean, depends how many people sign up or how fast that'll happen.

01:00:25.980 But I think initially we're going to start with a smaller number of people,

01:00:29.080 launch in November, and then do a bigger launch in January.

01:00:32.720 And I think people are going to love it.

01:00:35.900 Yeah, well, there's a comical element of this too,

01:00:38.120 because one of the things I used to do

01:00:40.220 with my graduate students

01:00:41.300 when they were doing a research project

01:00:42.800 is they'd come to me with the project

01:00:44.680 and I'd send them home for a weekend

01:00:46.140 and say, look, why don't you come back on Monday

01:00:48.260 and tell me how you would do this

01:00:50.340 if you could do it 10 times faster.

01:00:52.480 Now, you might have to cut some corners, right?

01:00:54.400 You might not be able to approach it

01:00:56.060 exactly the same way that you've decided to,

01:00:58.660 but if you could make it 90% more efficient,

01:01:01.700 it's gonna be worth a certain degree of sacrifice,

01:01:04.660 especially if you can do that

01:01:05.680 with no decrement in quality.

01:01:06.880 at least think it through you know i had one student um she was bloody brilliant she got like 1.00

01:01:12.700 99th percentile on the verbal gre after learning english four years before that's right like that's 0.91

01:01:18.420 impossible and she did it she was a real genius and she finished her first draft of her master's

01:01:23.840 degree in one weekend yeah you know i told my students like write a really bad first draft

01:01:28.520 because you can do that anyways you know how can you do this 10 times faster and one of the things

01:01:34.380 we thought that would be very funny especially because I'm somewhat irritated at universities

01:01:38.340 for a variety of reasons was we tried we thought what if we could make getting a degree 95% less

01:01:44.040 expensive because that's a pretty funny target it's like we're going to undercut you by 95%

01:01:49.720 and and offer a better quality experience along the way at least in terms of explicit learning

01:01:56.280 and and you know I think that we have a crack at that and on the accreditation front so we've been

01:02:02.260 In banding this out a lot, you know, I went and talked to some people, there are people

01:02:05.820 that wanted to partner with us, you know, mortar and brick universities, that in principle

01:02:10.820 could have helped us with the accreditation process, and we've been talking to people

01:02:15.760 in different political jurisdictions who are interested in partnering with us, some in

01:02:19.840 Canada and some in the US, some in Europe.

01:02:22.660 But our conclusion has been, especially after having good faith discussions with them, is

01:02:27.380 is that the detrimental consequence

01:02:31.140 in terms of time and effort,

01:02:33.520 and perversion of the ultimate goal

01:02:36.440 in terms of pursuing accreditation

01:02:39.040 might make it not worthwhile.

01:02:41.460 And so what we thought instead,

01:02:43.420 I think this is a better solution,

01:02:44.940 is that we're gonna go directly to businesses.

01:02:47.500 Like, you'll be able to take courses on our site,

01:02:50.080 but it's not gonna be that easy to get the degree, right?

01:02:53.320 It's gonna be rigorous.

01:02:54.400 And if you get a degree from our institution, you'll be tiered, so people will know how

01:03:00.800 well you perform, but the performance criteria will be, like, intense and reliable.

01:03:07.180 Now, the disadvantage to that is it's going to be harder to get the degree.

01:03:11.560 The advantage is that if you do get it, you're going to be far more marketable once people

01:03:17.120 know that the degree is a valid signifier, and so we're going to talk to businesses,

01:03:21.000 which we can definitely do, and say, look, you know, here's what our graduates will

01:03:26.240 know.

01:03:27.240 Here's how we tested them.

01:03:28.240 They'll be able to communicate.

01:03:29.240 This is the rigorous process they went through.

01:03:31.540 You'll be damn fortunate if we can provide you with a list of people who've graduated.

01:03:36.220 And if you had any sense, you'll, you know, you'll employ them preferentially because

01:03:42.340 we did the rigorous screening work.

01:03:44.340 I know how to do the rigorous screening work because I studied that for like 25 years.

01:03:48.660 And I worked with a company in California that started, like, 5,000 small businesses

01:03:54.700 around the world.

01:03:55.700 We screen tens of thousands of people.

01:03:57.060 We know how to predict for managerial competence, administrative competence, creative competence,

01:04:02.500 and we really know how to do that.

01:04:05.220 And so, a degree from our university will signify high-level conscientiousness and general

01:04:13.140 cognitive ability, and those are very valuable for any employer with a clue.

01:04:17.740 So I think we can just skip the computation process and go right to the employers.

01:04:21.780 And then we've also been thinking about, you know, allying our general education approach

01:04:29.120 with something like a requirement for something maybe approximating a technical training boot

01:04:34.380 camp so that people who come out, you know, will also have one other layer of marketable

01:04:38.540 skill and teaching people how to program, you know, you need to be able to spin a laptop

01:04:44.240 around on your finger like harlem globetrotter does with a basketball because then you're you

01:04:48.800 know 15 times as deadly and so we haven't quite worked out exactly how we're going to do that but

01:04:53.840 it's all you know these boot camps last what 10 weeks yeah and if people could get a general

01:04:59.120 education degree so that they could have a conversation with competent people and not

01:05:02.640 sound like a moron and then they did some sort of boot camp to hone exactly what the skills they

01:05:07.680 wanted in order to get a job they'd be more educated than most people who go to university

01:05:12.320 Oh, yeah, definitely.

01:05:13.320 For sure.

01:05:14.320 Definitely.

01:05:15.320 So that's the goal.

01:05:16.320 And so our criteria for selecting professors is, well, do you know what you're talking

01:05:20.820 about?

01:05:21.820 And are you extremely interesting?

01:05:22.820 And that's good criteria.

01:05:24.940 And then we tell the people who come, it's like, come offer the course that you could

01:05:30.380 offer if you offered the course that would be exactly the course you would want to offer,

01:05:35.920 and assume that you'll have an audience of people who really want that, because everybody

01:05:39.980 records in front of a live audience and we select the audience very carefully.

01:05:43.380 It's people who want to be in the audience to listen to that topic.

01:05:48.020 And so we have extremely enthusiastic professors and extremely enthusiastic audiences and the

01:05:57.140 filming is very high quality and the editing is high quality and we've added all sorts

01:06:00.780 of graphics and...

01:06:01.780 Ooh, ooh, there's more too.

01:06:04.020 So when you're watching the video, these are some features, I want to give them all

01:06:07.860 But when you're watching the video you'll be able to comment on the video while you're

01:06:11.420 watching it and it'll be time stamped so if you go to the middle of the video you can

01:06:14.520 see what people are talking about there.

01:06:16.180 You can also see the entire transcript which is so helpful because I actually have an easier

01:06:22.360 time just reading a transcript than I do watching a video for whatever reason or listening

01:06:26.240 to a podcast.

01:06:27.240 So you get the entire transcript which has been edited.

01:06:29.980 You'll be able to highlight and annotate the transcript so you can take notes and then

01:06:34.880 there's a section of the app for that.

01:06:37.740 It's what I would have wanted if I had taken online courses, which I did, and they were

01:06:42.340 terrible.

01:06:43.340 It's what I would have wanted, watching courses and taking notes.

01:06:46.740 So I think we implemented it.

01:06:47.740 Well, so most universities, and this is why they've failed with these massive online courses,

01:06:51.500 mostly, is they take a bad lecture and then film it badly.

01:06:54.500 Yeah.

01:06:55.500 Right.

01:06:56.500 And it's like the lecture itself isn't very exciting, and then you add really low production

01:07:00.140 quality and bad audio.

01:07:02.100 It's like none of that's helpful, and none of that's adapted to the realities of the

01:07:07.100 digital communication age. There's just no reason to be stuck in that model. And so we'll see. It's

01:07:13.120 an exciting venture. And we also, you know, one of the things we've done too, this has been really

01:07:18.240 fun. So when we did the Exodus seminar, some of the people who came for the Exodus seminar,

01:07:25.500 they were professors from Cambridge, mostly on the professorial side. They also recorded lectures

01:07:31.500 for the Peterson Academy, and you know, we treated them really well, and you'd think

01:07:36.840 that professors from Cambridge would be treated with respect and paid reasonably well, and

01:07:42.260 they're not treated with respect by their institution, and often not by their students,

01:07:46.140 and they're not paid well at all by any reasonable standard.

01:07:50.040 And so when we brought them to Miami, we just treated them really well.

01:07:54.060 And this is something to really know if you're starting a business enterprise with people

01:07:57.560 is that the hospitality that you show people pays off dramatically.

01:08:04.040 Now, you shouldn't do that just for instrumental reasons.

01:08:06.360 That's not the point I'm making.

01:08:07.640 The point I'm making is that, you know, if you treat the people that you work with

01:08:13.000 like you're happy that they're there, and maybe like you're really happy that they're there,

01:08:17.880 and thank you very much for coming, and is there anything we can do to make this easier for you

01:08:22.440 and more fun, and, you know, we'll never let you forget for a moment how thrilled we

01:08:27.240 are that you're participating.

01:08:29.200 Believe me, that's a very rare attitude shown towards professors, even if they're

01:08:33.940 high-end professors at great institutions.

01:08:36.100 It was sort of like that when I was at Harvard for a while.

01:08:39.220 Harvard was damn good at treating its senior professors in particular well, but man, that

01:08:43.600 vanished across time.

01:08:45.320 You just ended up, even if you were a great professor, and sometimes because you were

01:08:49.280 a great professor, and there was jealousy, you just got treated like, you know, just

01:08:54.380 another employee, and that isn't really what I mean.

01:09:00.800 Just another expendable cog, and that's also how students ended up being treated, too.

01:09:06.860 Just another number, you know, and that's just not helpful.

01:09:09.760 So we've been very hospitable to the professors that have come on board, and, you know, partly

01:09:14.820 that's because we would like them to come back, but it isn't instrumental in that sense.

01:09:19.760 We didn't get together and say, well, we better treat these people right so that they

01:09:22.860 keep producing content for us.

01:09:24.460 It was like, no, we're really happy that we could invite high-quality people, and we're

01:09:31.180 going to bloody well be sensible enough to be appreciative of the fact that they are

01:09:34.940 high-quality people and that that's rare, and we're going to build that into everything

01:09:38.880 we do.

01:09:39.520 And lots of the people, Greg, for example, really commented, you know, and a lot of the

01:09:44.020 people I've talked to recently, they've been very happy with how they've been handled, so to speak,

01:09:48.660 when they've come down to Miami. Hopefully, if we have any sense, we won't let that disappear.

01:09:54.240 It's one of the things I've really liked about working with the Daily Wire Plus crew, too,

01:09:57.420 you know, is that we're in this expansion phase of that enterprise, and everybody's enthusiastic

01:10:02.900 about new ideas. And when you have a new idea and you perform, there isn't a lot of backbiting

01:10:08.740 jealousy going on behind the scenes everybody's happy to be on board and you know and and positive

01:10:14.340 about the expansive ideas that's rare if you're in an if you're in an environment like that man

01:10:20.060 that's rare and well so far that's what's been happening with peterson academy yeah i've done

01:10:25.040 what i did a course on nietzsche half of beyond good and evil yep i did a course on the sermon

01:10:31.020 on the mount yeah i really like that one yeah i did one on maps of meaning one on maps of meaning

01:10:37.740 an update of maps of meaning and shorter than the ones that i've done online so these are all eight

01:10:42.880 hour courses because we figured that was about the right length and uh one on piaget yeah yeah

01:10:50.280 we've got a bunch upcoming yeah yeah so i think that was all of the may yeah well thank you for

01:10:55.480 the opportunity to run with peterson academy you having a good time yeah why well so most of my

01:11:04.520 life especially since i was about 23 because before that was just a blur of horror after that

01:11:12.080 was kind of a blur of horror too but um but most of my life i probably spent trying to fix problems

01:11:19.800 and they were problems that it wasn't like something that kind of bothered me it was like

01:11:23.300 this is going to kill you right like autoimmune disorder or something which i think normally

01:11:27.980 people would be like well it's something i have and i just have to live with and then i'm going

01:11:30.560 to die but at some point for some reason I was like no I'm going to fix it I don't know why

01:11:37.640 I think it's because I was worried I was going to die I was like well I better start doing other

01:11:41.940 things and so most of my life I've spent working on problems that were generally related to health

01:11:48.160 that I needed to go away in order to do things I actually wanted this is probably the first time

01:11:52.520 other than the podcast I really like podcasting and so that's been kind of my separation from all

01:11:57.340 problems i'm working on but this is the first time i'm working on something bigger that is something

01:12:02.460 that i want to do and i know this is more like an opportunity than a problem yeah which is really

01:12:08.540 exciting so that's it's it's fun in a much less stressful way because it's just oh look at all

01:12:15.580 the opportunity oh we could add this what have you liked most about it like you've interacted

01:12:20.380 with these professors you set up a film crew you've set up a studio like and and you set up the

01:12:25.820 business around that too and learned a lot about business in the last five years oh yeah i know way

01:12:30.700 more about international taxes than i want to ever wanted to uh i think the most fun part of peterson

01:12:36.700 academy was figuring out what should be on the actual platform i mean it's exciting talking to

01:12:44.220 professors and helping them come up with courses that would be interesting but i really like the

01:12:50.220 idea of building a platform that has a really easy way for people to communicate and learn

01:12:54.620 and it's all there and every time i'm going on a social media platform or if i'm on some

01:12:59.320 video app or netflix is pretty good but like just apps i'm like why is this loading slowly

01:13:06.040 why are there pop-ups here why do i have to press three times to get where i want there's just i

01:13:11.680 guess ui things that really irk me and so it's nice being able to design something that's going

01:13:17.020 oh no that's annoying we're not going to have that that's well you're not going to have a good

01:13:20.880 position to do this, Michaela got involved in my businesses. 0.56

01:13:26.160 You tell me if I've got this story right, because I was sick for a fair bit of this,

01:13:30.200 but when things blew up for our family, and that was in 2016, 2017, I started to tour.

01:13:39.820 Things started to be occurring on a much broader scale, financially and practically, and Tammy

01:13:46.800 stepped in to help on the logistical front and then you stepped in to help well on the business

01:13:52.120 front right you didn't know much about business at that point kind of kind of so yes in um there

01:13:59.020 were some people you were working with and i did some research on like rates you should be paid

01:14:03.480 and thought you were being underpaid so i said we should fire these people so i fired a number of

01:14:07.140 people and hired other people you know to help you um so on that side i was involved in the

01:14:14.620 business mostly what I focused on until really a two years ago a year and a half ago was social

01:14:20.800 media yeah it was like put them on Instagram you know make sure videos are done properly post every

01:14:25.440 day like spread it around online so that was my main focus for a number of years as opposed to

01:14:30.920 the business end that was more a couple of years ago when our business end fell apart and it really

01:14:37.580 fell apart and I was like okay I don't trust anybody who said that they knew what to do on

01:14:42.400 on the business front,

01:14:43.240 they're really good at saying what to do

01:14:45.040 on the business front.

01:14:45.880 And being expensive.

01:14:46.720 So you're like, they're expensive

01:14:47.780 and they say they know what they're doing.

01:14:49.600 No, if you can't understand somebody you're working with,

01:14:52.660 you shouldn't work with them.

01:14:54.000 It's not that they know so much more than you

01:14:56.680 that you don't understand, which is a mistake.

01:14:58.840 I think that took me like two years to figure out

01:15:01.760 working with some people when I was like,

01:15:03.520 I don't really get it, but I'm not a business person.

01:15:06.620 Maybe I just don't get it or a lawyer.

01:15:08.560 Yeah, or a tax lawyer.

01:15:10.440 maybe I just don't understand.

01:15:12.620 And then eventually I was like, no,

01:15:14.600 I think it's this person.

01:15:15.640 And then it was that person.

01:15:16.920 So don't make that mistake.

01:15:18.980 And on the Peterson Academy front,

01:15:20.620 I mean, because you learn the,

01:15:24.260 so if you're working in different social media platforms,

01:15:27.300 every social media platform is its own cultural ecosystem,

01:15:31.240 right?

01:15:32.080 And then to function effectively in that cultural ecosystem,

01:15:34.880 you have to understand the customs of the natives, right?

01:15:38.260 So when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for example, started putting their stuff on

01:15:42.240 YouTube, for which they had nothing but contempt, they'd put on, like, three-minute clips with

01:15:47.500 a three-minute ad at the beginning that you couldn't skip, and then they'd, like, disallow

01:15:51.100 comments.

01:15:52.100 So they'd get, like, you know, a hundred and—they'd get 10,000 views.

01:15:58.200 And then that just made them more contemptuous, but they didn't know that, well, nobody wants

01:16:03.000 to watch a three-minute ad to watch your three-minute idiot video, and they certainly want to be

01:16:07.200 able to skip the ad, and you don't get to disallow comments because that's not how YouTube works.

01:16:13.100 And so you have to know the culture. And then not only do you have to know the culture and not be

01:16:17.700 contentious of it, it's like just all those TikTok users, you know, you have to have some respect for

01:16:22.620 them. And then you have to stay on the cutting edge because it's very competitive. And if you're

01:16:27.880 not on the cutting edge, which moves all the time, then, well, people get bored of what you're doing

01:16:34.000 and you sink to the bottom.

01:16:35.220 And so, Michaela, you've been operating

01:16:36.940 in how many different social media platforms

01:16:39.100 are we effectively operating on?

01:16:41.800 Well, we're on the main ones.

01:16:43.520 I mean, you started YouTube at the beginning of YouTube.

01:16:48.020 So, like, that was you.

01:16:50.080 Twitter was probably you, too.

01:16:52.300 But Instagram and Facebook, those are...

01:16:54.340 Twitter's still me.

01:16:54.960 Twitter's definitely still you.

01:16:59.020 Instagram and Facebook,

01:17:00.820 I think I made your Facebook in, like, 2013

01:17:03.260 before any of this started and then Instagram was more like 2017 or something and then TikTok as

01:17:08.680 well. TikTok we've hired people to make TikTok content. It works better if you're actually on

01:17:14.620 there filming yourself talking to your audience and we're using clips so it'd be more effective

01:17:20.860 if we actually spent more time talking to the audience on TikTok but we also have like 10,000

01:17:25.200 things going on so it's not a primary concern but all the major ones. Right well and the advantage

01:17:30.400 for Peterson Academy is that you know the social media platforms well enough, in principle,

01:17:36.780 by using them constantly to know what features a good social media platform is going to have

01:17:41.820 to have.

01:17:42.820 Right?

01:17:43.820 And so, that's the thing, too.

01:17:44.820 You know, if you're...

01:17:45.820 I've started a lot of businesses and worked with a lot of people now, and one of the things

01:17:49.580 you need to know if you're...

01:17:51.100 There's this idea that the Harvard Business School came out with a long time ago that,

01:17:54.640 you know, if you're a good manager, whatever the hell that is, you can manage anything.

01:17:59.360 And I think that's complete bloody nonsense, because my experience has been, I think people

01:18:04.760 who manage and know nothing, and think that managing is a thing, think that.

01:18:09.040 But it's not true.

01:18:10.540 The people I've watched who run their businesses properly, and I would say my partner Daniel

01:18:16.180 Higgins is a good example of this, is, like, he knows absolutely everything, about 100%

01:18:21.240 of the entire business, from the, like, ones and zeros in the code, all the way up to the

01:18:25.540 customer base.

01:18:26.540 Like, he knows it.

01:18:27.800 someone has to know it and like you have to get in there and grapple with the details in order to run

01:18:32.600 something properly if you start parsing that off if there's no one who knows that the whole thing

01:18:37.320 is going to go sideways and so you've been actually in the trenches with the social media systems for

01:18:45.080 six years right as they've risen up and so you actually know them so you know and that's been

01:18:51.320 very useful and we never were contemptuous of all these different social media platforms you know

01:18:56.600 because I saw this with my professorial colleagues, especially with regards to journalists, and,

01:19:01.640 you know, there's reasons to be contemptuous, at least of certain journalists, because

01:19:05.560 journalism attracts more than its fair share of narcissists. But my colleagues, when journalists

01:19:10.520 would phone me, I'd always talk to them. And my colleagues would talk to me about that,

01:19:14.920 and their usual response was, well, I don't really talk to journalists. And I'd say, well, why not?

01:19:19.160 So, well, they always get things wrong. And I think, I see. So all of the journalists

01:19:25.240 get things you say wrong and so they're all wrong i thought well maybe you're just not very good at

01:19:31.000 explaining yourself and you're not that interesting it's like you know heaven forbid that thought and

01:19:36.040 so and i also didn't ever treat journalists unless they deserved it you know like they

01:19:41.080 were snakes um although even sometimes though they are um most of the time no in mainstream

01:19:47.160 media most of the time yeah it's all especially if they're british and female and so yeah yeah

01:19:54.840 I don't know why those all go together, because the British journalists, they're quite the pack of hounds, and then there's some real specialists on that front, and their whole career is, how can I trap you into saying something utterly stupid once, so I get to pat myself on the back and aggrandize myself.

01:20:10.840 Yeah, what a job.

01:20:11.420 Oh, yeah. Vicious, man. Vicious. Anyways, we learned that, and I always thought, and this is

01:20:19.580 partly from being a psychologist, you know, the same thing on the self-help front. If you're a

01:20:24.080 behavioral psychologist, all the ones I knew, they give their clients self-help books all the time.

01:20:28.620 Because, you know, if you have a client who's got problems with anger, there's some good self-help

01:20:34.340 books written on anger managements. Like, why not give them a book? You know, and you can be

01:20:39.120 contemptuous of that. It's just a self-help book. It's like, well, what the hell is the problem

01:20:42.940 here? It's intro-level philosophy, and someone's taken time and effort to read. That seems like

01:20:51.380 a good thing. And then also to try to make themselves better. You're going to be contemptuous

01:20:55.800 of that. You know, and one particularly smart, derisive, horrible, snake-like journalist said

01:21:01.940 that I was the stupid person, smart person. That took me back for a while, you know, and then I

01:21:06.400 thought ah you think that's an insult yeah that's the sort of person you are it's like oh no i'm

01:21:14.520 making complex things accessible to people who aren't particularly educated that's called an

01:21:19.320 educator so and i always felt on the journalist front i always felt the same way it's like well

01:21:25.300 why the hell wouldn't you communicate with as broad an audience as possible and we brought that

01:21:29.280 same attitude to all these social media platforms like you know you can make fun of tiktok and maybe

01:21:35.400 you should, but, at least to some degree, but you could always figure out how it works

01:21:40.680 and then use it as a communication tool, and we have all these little tiny shorts of all

01:21:45.520 sorts of different lengths, and, you know, if you can say something in a few sentences

01:21:51.080 for 15 seconds that, you know, 10,000 people are going to learn something from, what in

01:21:58.540 the world is wrong with that?

01:21:59.860 and so well that's one of the advantages to not having a derisive attitude towards things

01:22:06.460 yeah if you have a derisive attitude towards things too you're just going to make less money

01:22:11.040 oh this is just like bluntly oh i can't do that that's below me yeah okay yeah i'm not going to

01:22:17.920 sell out this is funny too you know there's some of you out there thinking i wouldn't sell out it's

01:22:22.000 like yeah don't be thinking you're going to get the opportunity to you know it's like i there's

01:22:27.700 There's no shortage of failed artists who blame that on failure to sell out.

01:22:31.020 It's like, it's not that easy to sell out, and it also presumes that there are people

01:22:34.900 who want what you're offering, and that's pretty goddamn unlikely.

01:22:39.980 And you know, there are cheap sellouts, and there are expert sellouts, and if you're

01:22:44.640 an expert sellout, what has happened is that you've brought your ability to sell and

01:22:49.300 market and communicate to the same level as your ability to create and produce.

01:22:54.480 And that's all a plus, not a minus.

01:22:56.860 And so if you think there's an integral competition between being creative and being

01:23:01.260 commercially successful, all that means is that you haven't harnessed your creativity

01:23:06.000 to solving the problem of productive communication.

01:23:08.980 There's nothing about it that's moral.

01:23:11.780 You can pat yourself on the back all you want for not being an evil capitalist, but

01:23:16.240 most of the time it just means you don't know what the hell you're doing.

01:23:19.280 And you want to make that moral instead of facing the consequences of your own ignorance.

01:23:24.080 So pat, pat, I'm not an evil capitalist.

01:23:26.180 list. It's like, no, you're poor

01:23:28.160 and resentful. Congratulations.

01:23:30.740 Yeah. I'm hoping

01:23:32.260 my goal with this opportunity with

01:23:34.040 Peterson Academy, other than to

01:23:35.980 educate people and to produce great

01:23:38.040 content and to build something that's fun to use

01:23:40.280 and all that, is to make

01:23:42.200 you more money than you've made

01:23:44.120 with this project. Why do you find that

01:23:46.160 interesting? Now, look, you've always

01:23:48.100 been... I think I find it funny.

01:23:50.300 So why do I find it funny?

01:23:51.960 That idea or that goal?

01:23:54.480 Well, but there's two things.

01:23:55.920 okay you find it funny but like one at one time i remember when michaela was i don't know how old

01:24:01.020 she was about seven i think something like that i think it was just before you were diagnosed with

01:24:06.460 with uh with arthritis six six six you we were living in in this little ratty apartment on the

01:24:14.260 university of toronto campus and we we saw people coming and going in front of the house and we went

01:24:19.040 downstairs and michaela had taken all of the books all of her kids books out in the front yard and

01:24:23.480 was selling them and she didn't ask she just went there and sold all these books

01:24:28.720 and you know some schoolteacher had come by bought like 30 of them because it was

01:24:32.540 like all the dr. Seuss books and everything there were tons of money now

01:24:36.500 yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but it was again was it was fun to watch and like

01:24:42.920 we didn't say anything at all that I've read them already yeah I know it was

01:24:46.400 time well I thought it was right it's like you were done with those books and

01:24:49.720 you were trying to figure out what to do with them and you had taken it on to

01:24:52.160 yourself to, you know, undertake this entrepreneurial venture, and I thought that was really...

01:24:57.520 See, this is another example of not...

01:25:00.560 If someone does something new that's exploratory and good, it's really easy to punish it out

01:25:05.760 of existence.

01:25:07.380 Like if your wife, for example, maybe your wife makes a little detour in her style choices,

01:25:11.920 right?

01:25:12.920 And she buys something new that's a little different, and you're thinking, well, what

01:25:16.100 would you might be thinking?

01:25:18.540 You might be thinking, well, what are people gonna think of me if my wife goes out dressed

01:25:22.420 like that?

01:25:23.420 It's like, that's a pretty dismal thought there, buddy.

01:25:26.000 Or maybe you're afraid of her new fashion choice, or you don't want her to become

01:25:29.100 a new person because maybe she'd wise up and get rid of you, or you're jealous

01:25:32.480 because she's trying something new and you're stuck in your idiot rut, or God only knows

01:25:37.400 what stupid, jealous thoughts are going through your mind, and so...

01:25:40.880 Or maybe you actually don't like the new thing that she's bought, and maybe it's

01:25:45.040 not even that good.

01:25:46.160 And so, you know, that's probably unlikely, because what makes you a fashion maven compared

01:25:50.080 to your wife, for example.

01:25:51.480 But, you know, so she tries something new, which is her attempt to be a little more interesting

01:25:56.680 than she already is, and maybe that's a good thing, because then you don't get bored

01:26:00.400 with your wife. 0.94

01:26:01.580 And she tries this, and she's not perfect at it, so you kind of insult her either by

01:26:06.040 not paying attention to it or by saying something rude, and then that's it.

01:26:09.560 Like, for the rest of her life, she wears the clothes she bought in, like, 1975.

01:26:13.660 And then you think, oh, my wife, she's really let herself go.

01:26:17.340 And the answer is, no, she just turned into what you let her become.

01:26:21.060 And so you see someone, that's right, man, it's brutal.

01:26:24.880 It's brutal to watch people do that to each other.

01:26:27.720 It's horrible, and it really costs them.

01:26:30.480 I'm bored with my partner.

01:26:31.980 It's like, yeah, well, you probably put them in a box, Peter, Peter, and the pumpkin shell,

01:26:36.040 right where you kept her very well.

01:26:38.040 No, no kidding, sad.

01:26:40.560 So someone will try something new and kind of scares you, and so you'll, you know, either

01:26:45.940 not reward them or interfere.

01:26:48.060 And if it's a new thing for the person, it's really fragile.

01:26:51.620 And if you punish them, you can just obliterate.

01:26:54.060 You can train a dog to starve itself to death by hitting itself on the nose, hitting it

01:26:59.500 on the nose with the newspaper when it approaches its food dish, right?

01:27:04.000 So now I don't know who discovered that, by the way.

01:27:05.800 That's horrible.

01:27:06.800 Well, it was part of the behavioral experiments on behavioral modification, you know.

01:27:09.840 But the point was is that if it's reward-seeking behavior, incentive-reward-seeking behavior,

01:27:16.240 it's really easy to obliterate it with punishment, even if it's a fundamental motivational goal.

01:27:20.900 So this situation with you, when you were selling these books, like, one tack would have been,

01:27:25.400 did you ask? And the lesson there is, well, if you're ever going to do something new,

01:27:29.860 you have to ask, you have to get permission. That's a stupid lesson to teach someone.

01:27:33.540 It's like, well, are you getting a good price for your books? It's like, she's six.

01:27:38.320 You want her to be not only a capitalist, but to get it right the first time.

01:27:42.220 That's your stupid theory, right?

01:27:43.920 So the right response there is, you know, like, why'd you do this?

01:27:47.080 And, you know, good for you for taking a risk.

01:27:49.260 And so, but my point was, is that you had an interest in money.

01:27:54.100 We could always bribe you when you were a little kid.

01:27:56.140 Like, I think-

01:27:57.140 I remember collecting special coins too.

01:27:58.840 I remember I gave you guys my money when we moved from Boston to Toronto.

01:28:02.640 Do you remember that?

01:28:03.640 No.

01:28:04.640 I remember that.

01:28:05.640 I was five.

01:28:06.640 like money like we we didn't have that we didn't have a lot of money no no so recently yeah yeah

01:28:12.560 because we didn't even afford magazines yeah mom wasn't able to work yeah so and she was a stay-at-home

01:28:18.200 mom yeah yeah um but i remember there i remember hearing you guys discuss moving stressfully

01:28:24.880 i remember giving you my piggy bank oh right yes that's right that's right yeah yeah yeah well you

01:28:31.480 a generous kid for someone who grew up to be an evil capitalist yeah but you always had that

01:28:37.520 capitalist aspect and you were always motivated by money you know and you were always pissed off

01:28:42.220 if you bought something that didn't work too that was funny to watch you do man there was nothing

01:28:46.800 more irritated than Michaela when she was sick she'd go spend some money in like a department 1.00

01:28:50.800 store and buy a piece of junk it's like took her like two years to recover if that happened 0.99

01:28:54.880 but we could all earn money when I when you first started to use injections with your 0.85

01:29:00.920 autoimmune medication, we wanted to transfer you the responsibility of doing the needles

01:29:06.740 because you obviously didn't like having needles, and we thought if you could learn to do it,

01:29:12.040 then it would be under your control. It would be a mastery, and it would be less stressful for you,

01:29:17.580 and so the first time that we did that, I offered you, and you were young, I offered you, I think,

01:29:24.960 50 bucks if you could do it within 40 minutes, right? I said, I'll give you 50 bucks, kid.

01:29:29.860 long time oh yeah you sit on those stairs you see if you can do this yourself i'll give you 50 bucks

01:29:34.980 i missed an entire episode of the simpsons could hear you guys watching it downstairs yeah that's

01:29:39.260 traumatic so no you're sitting there with a needle you didn't get to watch the simpsons

01:29:43.900 that was the only tv show i let the kids watch by the way which i also thought was extremely

01:29:47.660 hilarious but not itchy and scratchy yeah you had to cover your eyes itchy and scratch cover your

01:29:51.740 eyes anyways you know you it took you about 35 minutes before you did it yeah and then the next

01:29:57.740 time I said I think I because I didn't want to give her 50 bucks like three times a day

01:30:01.760 so although I really wouldn't have cared I think the next time it's like 30 bucks in 20 minutes

01:30:06.400 and we got you down so five dollars it was five dollars a needle is pretty cheap you know you

01:30:11.880 mean that was that at the end of it that was at the end of it yeah right right but we also whittled

01:30:15.660 down the amount of time right so that you had to do it in narrower amounts of time but the point

01:30:21.380 of that was that we could always use money as a motivator for you and I don't know why that was

01:30:26.380 i mean some people are more entrepreneurially motivated by temperament it must be yeah you

01:30:31.160 can't pay something i've noticed this hiring people like sometimes you hire somebody and

01:30:36.620 this is rare but you you bring them in and they go i finished everything you asked me to do can

01:30:41.440 i do more yeah those are rare people and those are very useful people and if you want to earn

01:30:47.520 money that's the person you have to be is i've done everything you asked me to do i did it really

01:30:51.440 quickly it's all done can i do anything else i want to do more yeah and then you make more money

01:30:56.020 it's like it's rare that that isn't rewarded right like the average person you

01:31:02.860 hire then they have a set outline of responsibilities and if you ask them to

01:31:08.200 do anything over that is oh that's not part of my job yeah I don't want to work

01:31:11.200 any extra we need to emphasize that for everybody who's listening you got to

01:31:14.900 understand this that's your job isn't the minimal set of responsibilities that

01:31:21.400 you have that someone else delivers to you if that's how you construe your job

01:31:24.820 And then you think, well, I've done my job, I've done enough.

01:31:27.620 It's like, I don't care how much you've done, it's not enough.

01:31:30.540 You're never going to make more.

01:31:31.900 Well, the answer is, you want to be the person that the person who has the opportunities

01:31:37.500 turns to and gives you more opportunities.

01:31:39.660 That's who you want to be.

01:31:41.000 And the way you do that is by doing what Michaela just said.

01:31:43.560 It's like, you do everything you're supposed to do as fast as you can and properly.

01:31:49.760 And then you might ask for what else you could do.

01:31:52.240 But if you're even smarter, you look around and you think, what around here hasn't been done that I could do?

01:31:59.180 And then if you're even smarter than that, you don't do that invisibly, right?

01:32:04.720 Because then you end up a martyr.

01:32:06.500 You know, you're mopping up things that maybe other people should have done, but no one notices.

01:32:10.380 You want to go to your employer and you say, look, here's what you asked me to do.

01:32:14.300 Here's how I did it, like ahead of schedule and under budget.

01:32:17.420 Then here's a bunch of other things I found to do, and I did them.

01:32:20.760 And then, you know, you tell your, and that's partly how you, you don't blow your own horn,

01:32:26.580 right?

01:32:26.800 But you're acting as your own advocate.

01:32:28.900 You bring it to the person's attention.

01:32:30.380 You say, look, you know, I did the things you want and a bunch of other things.

01:32:34.500 And then if the person's busy and has opportunities in any sense, they think the next time a problem

01:32:39.480 comes up, they think, hmm, now I've got a problem, a new opportunity.

01:32:43.520 Who should I?

01:32:44.680 Oh, yeah.

01:32:45.680 Yeah, that kid.

01:32:47.620 Yeah, I'll give that opportunity to him.

01:32:50.120 You know, you'll see people in your life, you think, those people are lucky.

01:32:53.060 It's like, sometimes they are, and you can get unlucky, and that's for sure.

01:32:56.300 But they're often not exactly lucky.

01:32:58.700 It's their, if an opportunity comes their way, they don't think they're better than

01:33:04.820 the goddamn opportunity.

01:33:06.820 And so, and you think, well, that's not how the world really works.

01:33:09.800 It's all about power and exploitation.

01:33:12.080 It's like, have it your way, man.

01:33:13.760 Live that way.

01:33:15.020 And then it'll be true.

01:33:16.260 and you'll be in you'll be in like progressive hell and so i wouldn't recommend that it's much

01:33:23.160 better to do this yeah what what's the next thing i can do okay so you liked you like the fact with

01:33:30.100 peterson academy that it's an opportunity rather than something that's really being thrust on you

01:33:34.960 as a like life or death problem yeah yeah yeah well that's fun that's fun and you've liked

01:33:40.660 solving the social media puzzle part what else do you like about it and offering this opportunity

01:33:47.660 to people because that's a fun thing to be to be participating in and you know the open-ended

01:33:52.280 aspect of that's cool too because we have no idea where this might go you know like in principle

01:33:57.760 we could offer you know hundreds of thousands of people a high quality university degree for

01:34:03.860 $5,000. Right, so that's a ridiculously interesting, what would you say, world to step into if that's

01:34:12.580 possible. I also do like the aspect like I didn't enjoy my university experience and it was before

01:34:18.600 universities were as woke as they were, but I was at an art school in Montreal called Concordia

01:34:23.600 and it was already woke. And it was really frustrating to, because I had like loans and

01:34:29.840 things and it was frustrating to pay for courses and they were terrible the professor wasn't

01:34:36.800 interesting i was like i'm pretty sure what they just said wasn't true right i got a psychology

01:34:41.820 professor tell me rats weren't social creatures because they lived in cages literally that

01:34:45.740 happened and i was like did you hear what he said he said she was like yeah just like you know

01:34:49.500 listen to to him like what i'm not traveling 40 minutes to go to this class and so that that was

01:34:54.980 frustrating and then i was taking courses they used to aggregate out in the wild and build

01:34:58.500 little wire cages and then yeah yeah so yeah so they could be isolated and some rats yeah um and

01:35:04.440 so i think it's funny too and i think it's cruel that people are told they have to go to university

01:35:10.140 they have to spend a hundred two hundred thousand dollars to get a degree so they can get a job

01:35:13.880 otherwise they're screwed that's such a lie it's just a scam i think the entire thing is a scam

01:35:20.520 right now you can learn whatever you want online i think we have the upper hand from just random

01:35:26.120 youtube because it's going to be edited and we have access to these professors and we can give

01:35:31.720 everybody access to these like world-class professors but um it bothers me it doesn't

01:35:36.680 bother me like a health issue but it bothers me that people are being scammed to learn

01:35:40.260 to you know not believe in themselves assume that they can't fix their problems and then hate their

01:35:46.880 country basically but and it'll cost you two hundred thousand dollars so if you weren't

01:35:50.620 resentful before you definitely will be now but it's not our fault yeah and then that'll just

01:35:54.680 be evidence that the system is screwed and oppressive.

01:35:57.360 Yeah.

01:35:58.520 Everything's oppressive.

01:36:00.160 Well, what's the proof of that?

01:36:01.220 Well, just wait till you feel, wait till you see how you feel about the university that

01:36:05.640 taught you that everything was oppressive.

01:36:07.400 Yeah.

01:36:07.620 And then you'll see that everything is oppressive, including the university.

01:36:10.840 Yeah.

01:36:11.140 Yeah.

01:36:11.320 So now, but you also said that you think it's funny on the financial side.

01:36:16.960 So what's the, what's the joke?

01:36:19.800 What's the joke?

01:36:24.680 I think it's funny that we have the opportunity, and I don't know how big it's going to get,

01:36:29.080 but I think it would be funny if we could blow apart the university system a little bit,

01:36:33.820 because it's broken, because of what it did to you.

01:36:36.580 Like, you were alienated out of your job, basically.

01:36:40.620 So, I mean, that's part of the joke. I think that's funny.

01:36:42.800 I think it's funny that I went to university.

01:36:45.360 Up yours, woke moralists. We'll see who cancels who.

01:36:48.240 Exactly.

01:36:48.520 That's sort of funny?

01:36:49.320 That kind of funny.

01:36:50.000 Oh, yeah, that kind of funny.

01:36:51.000 I think it's funny that, like, I went to two different universities.

01:36:53.940 I did like half a degree in classics

01:36:56.260 and then half a degree in biomedical science

01:36:58.420 and then I ended up quitting and working for you.

01:37:01.100 So I don't have a degree.

01:37:02.540 I think it'd be funny to get a degree

01:37:03.640 from the university that we're building.

01:37:05.260 I think that's funny too.

01:37:07.460 And I think it's weird and funny

01:37:09.640 that we're in a situation

01:37:10.580 that we might be able to make this work

01:37:12.560 and we might be able to change the education system.

01:37:16.120 That's funny.

01:37:17.580 It's weird.

01:37:18.920 It's a weird more than funny, but...

01:37:20.940 Yeah, well, that's part of the weirdness

01:37:23.600 of adventure so i've been writing this new book um called we who wrestle with god it's coming out

01:37:28.500 in february and it's how's that going it's going great i'm i'm having quite the blast writing it

01:37:33.100 although it's hard on me because it's a it's a foundational book yeah so it's it's it's hard to

01:37:38.180 do and it's it's kind of like it kind of rattles me up um i spent like three weeks in a monastery

01:37:44.760 just outside of vienna writing a big chunk of it and that was a really good place to be it was very

01:37:48.760 calm and peaceful and beautiful and you know like i was dealing with foundational stories and they

01:37:53.500 rattle you up, you know, because you'll read one, especially if you get an insight into it,

01:37:57.800 it just kind of takes you out. And so there's some real psychological challenge in that. It's

01:38:02.200 frightening, you know, when some of these stories open up and you realize what they're pointing to.

01:38:06.380 It kind of scares you to your core. And that's unsettling, even though it might be necessary.

01:38:12.660 And I was writing about Abraham, and there's a characterization of divinity in Abraham,

01:38:19.860 And the characterization of divinity is adventure.

01:38:24.080 So God in the story of Abraham is the instinct that calls you to adventure.

01:38:30.940 And so Abraham is enticed out of his security because he comes from rich parents.

01:38:35.680 He's privileged, you know, and he could just lay around in his tent and eat peeled grapes

01:38:39.860 from like servant girls for his whole life.

01:38:42.060 But this voice comes to him and says, he's like 70 when this happens.

01:38:46.060 get the hell out of your comfort zone and out into the world, and Abraham decides to listen.

01:38:53.160 And then, you know, all hell breaks loose because he has a rough time of it, like famine and war

01:38:58.880 and betrayal and, like, he has the whole adventure of life, right? But the thing that's very

01:39:06.340 interesting about that is that even though it's much less comfortable than just the infantile

01:39:13.160 bliss that his life starts out with, it's got this glorious aspect to it, right?

01:39:18.420 It's this triumphant Vikings on the high sea, get the hell out and have an adventure

01:39:24.200 through the jungle element to it.

01:39:26.220 It's a romantic adventure, fundamentally.

01:39:28.240 And one of the things I've realized as a consequence of walking through that book is

01:39:32.760 that what people want in life isn't security, and it isn't happiness.

01:39:41.180 They want what they will pay for when they go see a movie.

01:39:45.000 They want a romantic adventure, you know?

01:39:47.360 And if you have a problem that's in front of you, like the collapse of the education

01:39:52.340 system, the adventure is, well, you know, can we confront that problem head on and enter

01:39:57.360 into a world where our adventure is doing whatever's necessary to solve that problem.

01:40:04.380 And that has got that joke-like aspect to it in the most positive sense, but it's

01:40:10.700 the adventure of calling and meaning and you know, and it is I know too, you know

01:40:16.280 When I was really sick when I wrote my last book because I was really sick when I wrote my last book

01:40:20.420 I could barely sit and I spent a number of hours most days writing and

01:40:28.800 You know I was still really sick even though I was writing but

01:40:33.820 at least I

01:40:35.820 I had a terrible problem to solve and thank God for that, right? Because

01:40:41.340 that's what you want. This is something people don't understand is, you know, you think,

01:40:45.580 I have a problem. I don't want to have a problem. It's like, yeah, actually, you probably should

01:40:51.500 thank God that you have a problem that grips you, you know? Now, it's going to depend on your

01:40:57.100 attitude towards the problem, but there's no difference between a problem and a glorious

01:41:02.220 adventure if you if you organize yourself properly in terms of conceptualizing the problem maybe like

01:41:10.140 one's a little bit more painful well you know if you had your druthers you'd probably want

01:41:17.020 the opportunity rather than the problem but but there's opportunity and problems well but and also

01:41:22.140 you're going to have problems so so even if you'd rather have the opportunity which you should

01:41:27.500 rather have if you're sane you still need an attitude to help you with the fact that you're

01:41:32.780 going to have a problem you know and one of the right attitudes is well you know the bigger the

01:41:37.500 dragon the larger the treasure and that's actually yeah that's actually true it's the deepest it

01:41:44.460 might be the deepest human truth that's why it's the core of the hero myth you know and and it's

01:41:50.140 it's a weird it's weird that the world might be constituted in that way but

01:41:55.740 But, well, why wouldn't the greatest reward come to the person who solves the most intractable problem?

01:42:02.100 Like, you know, it's kind of obvious when you think about it that way.

01:42:05.780 So.

01:42:06.440 Yeah.

01:42:06.920 Yeah.

01:42:07.420 Yeah.

01:42:07.660 So it's nice to have a hard problem.

01:42:11.280 And then you have something to sink your teeth into.

01:42:15.180 Yeah.

01:42:15.460 And if you have no idea what you want to do with your life, that's where you should start.

01:42:19.960 Like, what's wrong with it?

01:42:21.560 Okay, fix that.

01:42:22.480 Right.

01:42:22.760 Then at least it won't be as bad.

01:42:24.240 Right.

01:42:24.580 Yeah, absolutely.

01:42:25.240 well, that's another thing you learn as a behavioral psychologist. Like, people will come and say,

01:42:28.820 well, I'm miserable. It's like, well, let's get specific. What sucks about your life? Like,

01:42:34.660 specifically. And so then the person, they might have to talk to you for a hundred hours to detail

01:42:39.720 out that. And then the next part is, okay, what sucks about your life that you would like to

01:42:45.760 change and you could see differently, right? Because sometimes a person will have a problem.

01:42:51.020 You can say, well, what do you want to do about that? And they go, well, I don't know.

01:42:53.840 or i can't do anything or i can't but then but there's a subset of problems where you say well

01:42:58.960 how could you change this so it was better and they have an idea and then there's a smaller

01:43:03.920 subset where you can say well is there some problems that you see a solution to that you

01:43:09.120 see a pathway towards solving and they'll say well i could do this hey do that do that and that's a

01:43:17.600 humility that's humility right because you have to first of all you have to admit you don't know

01:43:21.920 everything. I have problems. Then you have to admit that some of them are beyond you.

01:43:27.040 Then you have to admit that there's some that you could address that you haven't because you're

01:43:33.200 useless. And then you have to admit that this is the step that you could take, no matter how small

01:43:41.120 it is. So you get there on your knees. You get there through humility. It's like, but then if

01:43:46.000 If you start, this is what's cool about it.

01:43:48.260 If you start local and low,

01:43:51.300 then, and you do it religiously,

01:43:55.280 you'll get better at solving problems very rapidly.

01:43:57.820 So it doesn't really matter where you start.

01:43:59.500 I'm less scared of doing it.

01:44:00.280 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:44:01.000 And that starts to scale really quickly.

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01:45:01.820 out of time can we talk about two things sure okay one um i've been getting fairly tortured

01:45:10.320 on twitter about this andrew tate thing hmm are you okay with addressing that sure okay so i think

01:45:19.100 first before we get started and i only want to talk about this once because i'm very bored of

01:45:22.620 this um delve into this too much but i think a bit of clarification on my end in 2019 i was in

01:45:32.340 Germany and Andrew Tate bought me tickets to fly to Romania to go discuss business and then to fly

01:45:41.460 back to Canada and the reason I went was because in 2019 when you googled Andrew Tate he came up

01:45:49.020 as a millionaire kickboxer he had ideas about a subscription platform for me and for you

01:45:54.580 and I think part of the way because of how I grew up I basically said yes to opportunities

01:46:02.040 and I didn't see a reason to not go talk to a millionaire

01:46:05.560 about how he made money.

01:46:07.700 And I also got the benefit of a ticket home.

01:46:09.980 And I was also already in Germany.

01:46:12.140 So I didn't see a reason not to go.

01:46:14.560 That's also probably partly because I used to say yes

01:46:19.160 to any opportunity, which I also think is part of the reason

01:46:22.400 why I'm successful now.

01:46:24.300 So anyway, I went there.

01:46:26.700 from my experience i met andrew and i met his brother tristan they were very nice to me like

01:46:36.180 they were nice to me we had a fun time there the reason that there's a rumor there's a rumor online

01:46:40.800 that we hooked up or we slept together or something that didn't happen i've told people

01:46:45.380 that numerous times it's not like i was a 20 year old girl like enamored versions online too it's

01:46:51.700 one of the things i've really seen that that troll demons like to go after women on that front right

01:46:56.500 and so yeah yeah yeah it's really so it's like backbiting behavior and it doesn't matter what

01:47:01.420 i say he's dispelled it doesn't matter um anyway i haven't really commented on the situation because

01:47:08.880 when i went they were nice to me like i actually had a pretty good time he drove me around in his

01:47:14.660 bugatti and we saw castles which was a weird experience i remember telling him he was a very

01:47:21.480 very very smart person um and i remember telling him you kind of remind me of a human shark i don't

01:47:27.640 know like what it was but it was like you're interesting i don't know if it's your eyes or

01:47:31.440 something but you kind of remind me of a human shark that was it and then i flew home so that

01:47:38.540 that's the story on my end now i wanted to address that because people have been bothering me on

01:47:43.720 twitter for like two years or three years because of pictures of us uh smoking cigars or having a

01:47:49.000 vodka or something because I did um and it was fun but that's it that's the story on my end

01:47:58.020 do you think you made any mistakes in that venture well I had no idea he was going to become like the

01:48:04.700 most famous person in the entire world um would that have changed it I don't think so like from

01:48:11.460 knowing what i knew at the time i would have still gone um from knowing more about the webcam stuff

01:48:19.180 and he told me about so once i was there he told me about the webcam stuff what did he tell you

01:48:23.100 not in detail okay i can't remember like that well but it was something like women who want to do

01:48:30.260 webcam stuff like they already want to do it i help them make way more money and i take a

01:48:37.940 percentage and so I was like okay I didn't I don't think you know I wasn't like that seems like a

01:48:44.980 wonderful business model but I was like if there are women who are already doing it and now they're

01:48:49.580 making more money I guess it doesn't seem you know it is what it is kind of but I didn't know

01:48:55.540 that until I got there and then he he wanted to set up subscription platforms um and said

01:49:03.380 they could be very valuable and and we'd already been kind of looking into that because you'd had

01:49:08.920 some issues with social media i was worried you're going to get banned on sites and so i was already

01:49:14.140 thinking it would be good to set that up with a subscription well gmail canceled me at one point

01:49:18.920 yeah i know that about that yeah it was ridiculous so it was like it would be good to learn how to do

01:49:22.800 the subscription platform um anyway that so i kind of went there to like scope things out

01:49:29.340 and it was a very interesting experience

01:49:31.200 and they were nice to me

01:49:32.180 that's like the story

01:49:33.500 yeah well the

01:49:34.580 I hesitate to talk about Andrew Tate

01:49:37.340 because I don't know that much about him

01:49:39.160 you know

01:49:39.580 but I'll tell you what I know

01:49:42.180 and what I think

01:49:43.000 and people can take it

01:49:44.040 for what it's worth

01:49:45.080 I mean

01:49:45.420 the first question is

01:49:47.200 why is he so popular

01:49:48.400 and the answer is

01:49:49.400 well if you have to choose

01:49:51.120 between being depressed

01:49:52.220 and anxious

01:49:52.880 and laying downstairs

01:49:54.040 and covering yourself with Cheeto dust

01:49:55.880 and looking at pornography

01:49:56.840 and being timid

01:49:57.740 and never going out

01:49:58.680 or you know listening to someone like Andrew Tate who says like get the hell out there and take the

01:50:04.460 world like that's better that's the shadow right speaking in some ways right like if you're naive

01:50:10.460 and timid and anxious and intimidated and useless and resentful there's going to be a bit of a

01:50:15.940 monster that needs to call to you to say you know gird up your loins and get the hell out there in

01:50:22.460 the world and so it's better to be it's better to be a monster than a rabbit in some ways right

01:50:28.620 Or at least there's some utility in the more monstrous predatory path that isn't there in the pathetic rabbit path.

01:50:35.360 And that's partly because if you are a pathetic rabbit, you're going to become a predator anyways.

01:50:39.860 You're just going to become a dark backdoor, backbiting, gossip-mongering, resentful monster.

01:50:45.060 Society is also pushing that on men in particular.

01:50:47.580 Yes, constantly.

01:50:48.360 Well, and I knew, look, I knew, I knew, and I warned people repeatedly that if the culture kept emasculating men,

01:50:57.220 that men who said, to hell with that, I'd rather be a monster, would become extremely popular.

01:51:05.080 Now, Andrew Tate is emblematic of that in many ways,

01:51:08.760 because the first thing you've got to say about him is that he's genuinely tough, right?

01:51:14.520 So that's not a front. That's not a front. He's a fighter.

01:51:17.900 And you can't take the courageous element of being a fighter away from someone who will actually step in the ring, right?

01:51:26.620 And so now, and then you said Tate's intelligent, and what that means as well is that some of

01:51:32.880 the things he says are going to be of value.

01:51:35.080 Now, why he says those, that's a whole different issue.

01:51:38.080 The thing that disturbs me is that, like, I'm not very fond of the whole online porn

01:51:45.080 thing in any way, and I don't think that it's okay for young women to monetize their

01:51:50.960 sexual attractiveness online. 0.94

01:51:52.480 I think that leads to a very dark place for them, even if they're successful.

01:51:59.140 Because becoming successful by...

01:52:00.880 It hurts your soul.

01:52:01.400 Yeah, but you don't become successful by exploiting yourself.

01:52:07.600 And you might think, well, I can exploit myself.

01:52:09.560 It's like you can't treat yourself like a psychopath would treat you and get away with it,

01:52:14.120 even if the psychopath that's doing that is yourself.

01:52:17.000 That doesn't work.

01:52:18.040 That's why psychopaths aren't very successful, because they exploit themselves just like other people.

01:52:22.620 And so I don't like the whole online porn thing, and then I don't, now, my understanding,

01:52:28.540 and I've watched him, apparently, agree to this characterization online, you know, it's hard to get a...

01:52:35.540 I'm not trying to be the jury here, because I haven't heard the whole damn story, but from what I've watched,

01:52:40.540 he would enter into relationships with women, and tilt them in the direction of generating

01:52:50.780 like an OnlyFans following, and monetize that, and then take a percentage.

01:52:55.300 And there isn't anything about that that I think is acceptable. 0.99

01:52:58.960 You know, and you could say, well, you know, women are the captains of their own soul,

01:53:02.340 and if they want to monetize their own attractiveness, then what the hell, why not do it? 1.00

01:53:06.720 And if they're gonna do it anyways, you know, I can help them, and if I help them, why not

01:53:10.260 take a piece of the action? And the answer is, to me, the answer to that is, well, how about

01:53:15.300 because it's ignoble and wrong? Now, you could counter, and you could say, well, you're just

01:53:21.540 too useless and timid to dare to do that, right? And I'd say, you know, point taken. You know,

01:53:30.100 Nietzsche had pointed this out back in the 1850s. He said, most morality is cowardice in the guise

01:53:35.700 of morality. It's not like I'm good. It's just that I'm afraid to do that. And Tate would say,

01:53:42.180 well, if you're just not doing something because you're a coward, that doesn't mean you're good.

01:53:46.120 And whereas I'm forthright and tough, and look at me, I climb into the ring, and, you know,

01:53:50.160 I can entice women into, you know, sex work online and take a cut, and why the hell shouldn't I? And

01:53:55.940 I think that if you're a timid and reprehensible, resentful, bottom-dwelling male, that that's

01:54:01.300 going to look like an attractive alternative, but it's not the highest form of human behavior,

01:54:07.300 right?

01:54:07.540 It's not acceptable.

01:54:09.220 Like, I think pimps of any sort are, I truly believe, they're amongst the most contemptible

01:54:14.760 of people.

01:54:15.960 I think there's nothing in, you know, the pimp is, I've got all these hoes, and look

01:54:19.780 at me, like, you know, king of these women, and it's like, no, you are the ultimate in

01:54:24.240 pathetic, parasitic predators.

01:54:26.180 There's nothing about that that's heroic.

01:54:28.220 It's just pathetic.

01:54:29.420 Now, you might say, if you're that type, well, at least I'm not as contemptible as the cowards who hide behind me.

01:54:36.160 It's like, fair enough, you know. There's ranks of order, even in hell, and there's lower and higher demons, you know.

01:54:43.460 And the person who would like to do something terrible but is too cowardly to do it, that's a pretty damn low form of demon.

01:54:50.140 But that doesn't mean that the person who would like to do something and is courageous enough to do it, even though it's bad, isn't also a demon.

01:54:57.180 And so, you know, I think fundamentally that Tate serves his immediate self in this, like, impulsive, gratifying manner.

01:55:07.260 And I think that goes along with his, you know, look at me, I'm in a Bugatti.

01:55:10.720 It's like, you know, fair enough, man, in some way.

01:55:14.640 Do you think what he's been telling men more on the, you know, take responsibility for your life and do things?

01:55:23.680 If that, I mean, it's hard to, I suppose, separate it from other people.

01:55:26.740 In actual life, people are complex.

01:55:30.520 No villain is simple.

01:55:32.800 No villain is simple, you know.

01:55:34.520 And in great literature, the great villain is a sympathetic figure.

01:55:39.800 You're kind of on board for 75% of it.

01:55:42.400 And not only that, you might also say, well, if I was in that position, I might do the same thing.

01:55:47.420 Like, it's only a cartoon villain who's 100% evil, right?

01:55:51.060 And so even when you meet someone who's dark and psychopathic to the core, you'll find,

01:55:56.620 and I've had clients who were like, I had one client who had like five restraining orders

01:56:01.160 out against him.

01:56:01.960 He was actually quite comical.

01:56:03.120 He's quite a young guy, small guy, kind of slight, extremely intense.

01:56:08.080 You know, he had that kind of human shark thing going.

01:56:10.780 And he was actually, he was quite the horrible riotous blast to work with because he was,

01:56:15.560 he was a very interesting monster.

01:56:17.360 And he would, five restraining orders is a lot.

01:56:20.100 Yep.

01:56:20.420 And restraining orders don't work on the sort of people who need restraining orders.

01:56:24.600 So don't be ever thinking a restraining order is going to help you.

01:56:27.020 Not if a real monster's got you in his sights.

01:56:29.060 And he had a paranoid end to him.

01:56:32.200 And what that meant was if he was ever insulted by you, he would blow the insult up.

01:56:39.780 And it would put enmity between the two of you.

01:56:42.480 So, like, talking to him was quite the nightmare because you didn't get to make a mistake.

01:56:46.420 And he was hypervigilant because he was paranoid.

01:56:48.240 He's just watching you like a bloody hawk for every deviation from honesty.

01:56:53.280 And like, I never lied to him.

01:56:55.160 And if I thought he was doing something stupid and terrible, I just told him that I,

01:56:58.480 looks to me like that's pretty stupid and terrible.

01:57:00.820 Like there was no, I wasn't playing with him and I wasn't trying to impress him.

01:57:04.360 And I talked to him for a long time.

01:57:06.220 But he would, he would, I remember he told me one time about going into a bank.

01:57:14.300 You know, and he met one of those tellers that, you know, you go into an institution.

01:57:18.100 sometime you meet somebody with bureaucratic personality disorder and they decide that the

01:57:22.040 good thing to do that day is to just screw up your life for some idiot complication just because they

01:57:27.460 can it's my job right right yeah well you know i have to do this and they're they're playing their

01:57:31.820 little power game because they're like dosti fc's underground man and they're resentful to the core

01:57:35.940 and so they're going to just screw around with you well now and then someone would do that with him

01:57:40.120 and he'd say i'm going to be your worst nightmare and then what he meant was i'm now going to commit

01:57:48.020 a sizable proportion of my life and all my intellectual prowess to making you as miserable

01:57:55.660 as I can possibly imagine. And then he would go do that. You know, and there was actually,

01:58:01.160 this isn't, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Maybe it shouldn't be a bureaucratic nightmare. Well,

01:58:06.260 right, right. Well, and then see that, well, and that was the weirdly admirable part, right? It's

01:58:10.480 like, you know, because typically what would happen in a situation like that is you'd go into

01:58:14.580 the bank and you just swallow it yeah go out and you know go home and kick your dog and bitch at

01:58:19.280 your wife because you didn't tell the bureaucrat to you know watch the hell out or something

01:58:25.020 terrible is going to happen well he was way on the other end of the distribution it's like don't

01:58:29.460 muck with me and he meant he was an honor code guy it's like don't muck with me and what he meant

01:58:36.160 was don't muck with me now and he meant it and there was something admirable about that you know

01:58:43.520 even though he was a very dangerous person, and he had taken it way too far, but this is what I mean by complexity of the villain.

01:58:49.540 It's like, well, he had the courage of his convictions, let's put it that way, you know?

01:58:57.040 And so when you see someone like Andrew Tate, well, first of all, if you have any sense, you think,

01:59:02.060 this is a guy that's actually crawled in the ring, and the second thing you think is, well,

01:59:06.380 just because his moral compass is warped, and warped in a serious way on the, like, electronic pimp front,

01:59:12.100 And like, I think in a fabled way, personally, that's the highest likelihood, because I

01:59:16.720 don't think you can do that without it permeating everything.

01:59:19.960 That doesn't mean that, you know, he's a two-dimensional villain, you know?

01:59:24.460 Or that there aren't things about him that are complex and interesting and potentially

01:59:28.840 even admirable, you know?

01:59:31.140 People are complicated, and even the villainous types are complicated, and it isn't surprising

01:59:35.720 to me at all that he's an attractive figure, given the current, you know, war against masculinity.

01:59:41.780 He's exactly the same.

01:59:43.220 He's 100% predictable.

01:59:45.800 He's exactly what you'd expect.

01:59:48.440 Would you talk to him?

01:59:50.620 You know, I pretty much talk to anybody.

01:59:53.660 I've thought about, you know, whether or not that would be a good idea.

01:59:56.580 For me, you know, generally, one of my primary driving forces is just curiosity.

02:00:01.200 Yeah, yeah.

02:00:01.580 And I am a clinician, you know.

02:00:03.120 I like talking to...

02:00:04.420 I've talked to lots of, I've talked to lots of very strange people, you know, lots of them.

02:00:13.600 And it's very interesting to do that because you're really wandering into no man's land.

02:00:20.020 And that's perilous and ridiculously, crazily interesting.

02:00:25.020 That's what I loved about, part of what I loved about being a clinician.

02:00:27.720 Like, almost everybody is interesting enough to be a Dostoevsky character if you start listening to them.

02:00:32.700 And so just ordinary people, if you listen to them, they're ridiculously weird and interesting.

02:00:39.520 And then you find someone truly weird and interesting and listening to them, listen to them, it's like you can hardly stand it.

02:00:45.020 Carl Rogers talked about this, you know, he said people won't listen because they're too terrified of changing.

02:00:50.980 Because, you know, if you listen to someone, they tell you how weird they are.

02:00:55.060 You share in that self-revelation.

02:00:58.160 It's too interesting.

02:00:59.700 so and i'm sure talking to andrew tate would be too interesting so okay we should wrap up because

02:01:07.140 you've got to run but just really quick um you you set up a donation site for your friend charles

02:01:13.400 and i know people have been asking like what happened with that how's he doing is everything

02:01:17.540 okay so just like two minutes on that and we'll call it quits yeah yeah well charles charles is

02:01:24.640 this native canadian carver and uh i've had a relationship with him for about 15 years and we

02:01:31.240 got inducted into his family six years ago something like that was cool was very cool

02:01:35.620 and he helped me design the third floor of my house and it's full of all his carvings which

02:01:39.980 it's a magical place it's really a magical place and uh you know i've developed a relationship with

02:01:46.720 him and charles has had a real rough life because he he was ground through the like sadistic

02:01:51.720 residential school nightmare in Canada.

02:01:53.780 Not all the residential schools were run by

02:01:55.720 pedophilic sadists,

02:01:57.580 but his was.

02:01:59.220 And with the effect

02:02:01.860 on him that you might imagine if you had a very

02:02:03.880 dark imagination indeed.

02:02:06.380 And

02:02:06.540 well, anyways,

02:02:09.200 I bought art from him and

02:02:11.360 helped him with his artistic career

02:02:14.020 and

02:02:14.760 that's been of great utility to me

02:02:17.860 as well. But

02:02:19.480 But last year, six months ago, seven months ago, his wife died, and he has little kids,

02:02:26.100 and then his house and his shop burned down like the same month, right?

02:02:29.000 It was so awful.

02:02:30.000 Oh, it was awful.

02:02:31.000 It was awful.

02:02:32.000 And so, you know, he was left bereft in two different dimensions, and so I put together

02:02:36.140 this fundraiser, and we raised a fair bit of money.

02:02:39.080 I think about $190,000.

02:02:41.760 Is that about right?

02:02:42.760 I think about $100,000.

02:02:44.360 I could be wrong.

02:02:45.360 I think it was less.

02:02:46.360 Okay, okay, okay.

02:02:47.360 Something like that.

02:02:48.360 Well, you know, we were looking for investment places generally anyways, and so what we ended

02:02:52.400 up doing was buying a house, a property for him on Vancouver Island, back in a neighborhood

02:02:59.120 that he was familiar with, and it's a beautiful place.

02:03:02.100 It's like this, you know, acreage.

02:03:03.660 It's a beautiful old wood house, and it's got a shop outside where he can carve, and

02:03:07.180 his kids are there now with him, and I'm going to see him tomorrow, probably, or sometime

02:03:13.340 this week, because I'm going to Vancouver Island, and he sent me some pictures recently.

02:03:17.560 he started to carve again and you know he's recovering from the loss of his wife and his

02:03:21.200 kids seem really happy there and it's a beautiful unbelievably beautiful property sort of nestled

02:03:26.520 in the mountains and can people buy his masks online charlesjoseph.ca okay cool i'll link that

02:03:32.640 yeah they're very good yeah he's a great artist a real visionary a very strange person because he

02:03:37.720 was trained in this ancient west coast native tradition they had an unbroken cultural lineage

02:03:43.860 of at least, it's more than 15,000 years.

02:03:46.300 That's about when they probably got down to the West Coast.

02:03:48.500 But it was an unbroken tradition

02:03:50.120 stretching from way before that.

02:03:52.120 And so I've also learned a fair bit

02:03:53.640 on the anthropological front

02:03:55.060 about the mythology of his people

02:03:58.180 and their artistic tradition

02:03:59.480 and how that makes itself manifest in him.

02:04:01.560 Like, he dreams his carving characters.

02:04:04.540 He dreams in the genre that he carves.

02:04:07.880 And he can talk to his great-grandparents

02:04:09.720 in his dreams about the carving problems that he has.

02:04:11.960 He doesn't talk about this generally, you know, because he says, I talk about this and everybody thinks he's crazy.

02:04:17.960 Charles is not crazy.

02:04:19.400 Charles is one deep character, man.

02:04:21.600 You've watched him dance.

02:04:23.320 Oh, my gosh.

02:04:24.920 Yeah.

02:04:25.460 Yeah.

02:04:25.900 Yeah.

02:04:26.420 When we had that event where we got inducted, I don't want to say it wrong.

02:04:31.560 Yeah.

02:04:32.980 There was this event.

02:04:35.000 It was wild.

02:04:36.520 It was like you could feel things in there.

02:04:38.480 Oh, yeah.

02:04:39.040 Yeah, yeah.

02:04:39.440 He really turns into whatever he dances.

02:04:41.080 like it's fully grips them fully you know and and he's gripped fully when he's carving too and

02:04:46.440 it's really been great to have these like i've always loved the west coast canadian

02:04:50.420 native art ever since i was a little kid and so he's he bought a 38 foot cedar pole that he's

02:04:58.580 going to make for us hey for our house up our cottage that's cool yeah yeah and so it's going

02:05:03.300 to have uh two serpents at the base and then two women negative and positive and then two men and

02:05:09.220 and then a hero figure at the top.

02:05:10.480 Yeah, so a real shamanic totem pole.

02:05:12.980 Yeah, we've been working on the design for that.

02:05:14.800 So anyways, he said he's thrilled to be there.

02:05:17.540 He seems, he got away, the reserve he was on was full of trouble.

02:05:22.320 There were people there that were bothering him to death,

02:05:24.120 including like, you know, demented social workers,

02:05:26.320 and he's just pulled himself away from that.

02:05:28.300 And so I'm hoping he'll be set now

02:05:30.300 so that he can just devote himself to carving.

02:05:32.400 And, you know, it's a complicated relationship

02:05:34.380 because he has a complicated life.

02:05:35.840 you know, I mean

02:05:38.200 his community in general

02:05:40.560 like most of the native communities in North America

02:05:42.720 is pretty damn devastated and there's people

02:05:44.740 around him dying all the time of one problem

02:05:46.940 or another, like his life is

02:05:48.620 in some ways a never ending

02:05:50.220 sequence of tragic catastrophes

02:05:53.020 and complexities and you know

02:05:54.680 it's complex being

02:05:56.560 involved in that but

02:05:58.080 I really like Charles, he's a great

02:06:00.980 guy and I don't mean in the

02:06:02.780 isn't he nice, he makes a good friend

02:06:04.700 I mean, Charles is a great person.

02:06:06.720 He's really deep and uncanny in many ways.

02:06:10.800 And so, because you don't go through what he went through and recover without having

02:06:18.440 things moved around profoundly in the depths.

02:06:20.880 And he's really a good artist.

02:06:22.420 He's a real visionary.

02:06:23.420 And so, he's quite the strange person to be around.

02:06:26.360 And so, you know, it's an adventure being in association with him.

02:06:30.720 But it has been a real interesting adventure.

02:06:32.940 going to that potlatch was you know like how likely is that zero right it's zero likely

02:06:39.500 so you know we went to this when i when we got inducted into his family we went to this ceremony

02:06:44.700 that lasted what 12 hours in this indian big house it was a number of days yeah well yeah

02:06:50.780 went over that's right it went over a couple of days that's right right continual dancing and

02:06:54.940 masks and he made like 50 or 60 masks for that festival i bought all those masks so i have a

02:07:00.620 complete potlatch collection which is also very cool and you know it was a real trip it was

02:07:05.340 something i never thought would happen it was a trip yeah yeah okay on that note all right thank

02:07:11.820 you very much for coming on thanks for the opportunity with peterson academy hey well

02:07:15.980 thanks for running with the football there kiddo and it'll be fun to see how it all turns out it's

02:07:20.540 so far you know everybody who's been involved has said very positive things and i've seen you know

02:07:26.700 a fair bit of the edited footage which is great yeah everybody who's working so far is great

02:07:32.380 yeah yeah yeah well that's a good thing to know too you know if you're going to set up a business

02:07:36.460 if you're watching and listening you want to set up a business you find people who are great who

02:07:40.380 are great that's what you're looking for you want you don't want well their competence like no

02:07:45.820 no if you want to stay involved in what you're doing and you want to push it all the way you're

02:07:51.500 You're looking for 100% all-in, on-board, great.

02:07:56.140 And you're looking for people, if a problem emerges, hopefully the problems don't emerge

02:08:01.660 because they solved them before they emerged, but if they do emerge, they deal with them,

02:08:05.280 they put it right, and then they don't have the same problem again.

02:08:09.000 And you have to be pretty damn separate the wheat from the chaff rough if you're going

02:08:15.340 to run an enterprise and make it work.

02:08:17.040 And you've got very good at that, you know, in making sure that the people who are on board are 100% on board and firing on all cylinders.

02:08:28.460 And then it's a blast to do something.

02:08:31.180 And then you can also give people the space for their own adventure, because if you hire really competent people and they share the vision, you can give them a piece and say, you know, have at her, man.

02:08:43.500 This is your territory.

02:08:44.920 And that's also extremely fun.

02:08:46.620 and enables you to do all sorts of other things this is why you shouldn't micromanage it's like

02:08:50.820 you want to spend your life micromanaging or you want to distribute responsibility

02:08:54.960 so that people can have their own adventure well then you'd be jealous of that if you're an idiot

02:09:00.340 but if you're not if they have their responsibility and their piece of the pie well then you can go do

02:09:06.620 something else yeah right and that's a big deal you know when i made the business arrangements

02:09:11.860 with you and Julian, you know, my tack was, I want to make you a deal that you're so thrilled with

02:09:18.520 that I never have to worry about whether our interests are aligned, because it's just obvious,

02:09:22.820 you know, because you got what you needed, not what you wanted or to get the upper hand, but,

02:09:27.920 you know, the negotiation was honest. What do you need so you're thrilled to be doing this?

02:09:33.660 You want to make this arrangement you bloody well want to make in your marriage, too. It's like,

02:09:37.180 What do I have to do to set up this marriage

02:09:39.520 so that you're thrilled to be in it?

02:09:42.260 Yeah, I think it's also fun

02:09:43.500 because I get to work with Jordan on everything.

02:09:45.960 Yeah, and why is that fun?

02:09:46.940 He's been key, he's very smart.

02:09:48.860 Yeah?

02:09:49.700 He's good at firing people.

02:09:50.540 He's good at identifying problems and fixing them.

02:09:53.840 He's very competent.

02:09:56.280 So he can just take on,

02:09:57.140 like he knows the business from the ground up too.

02:09:59.680 He's the one who helped find people to film

02:10:01.660 and like structured that entire thing.

02:10:03.760 He's more familiar with tech on that side than I am.

02:10:07.180 And he has a OCD eye for detail as well.

02:10:10.660 As if we needed more, as if we needed more.

02:10:13.460 How do you balance your personal relationship

02:10:16.460 with your business relationship?

02:10:18.620 Well, we're pretty good at communicating

02:10:22.240 and I'm pretty, we're both extremely disagreeable.

02:10:25.920 He's extremely disagreeable.

02:10:27.360 I'm, at least I've got some compassion on my end.

02:10:30.860 But I think I'm also old enough that I don't,

02:10:34.580 I'm not gonna not say things that bother me.

02:10:36.740 So there's nothing hidden.

02:10:38.980 And then how do we manage it?

02:10:41.120 Our goals are aligned, I think, is how we manage it.

02:10:43.140 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:10:44.300 So we've got, like, sometimes we bicker a little bit

02:10:47.060 about certain decisions, but not very often

02:10:51.320 because our goals are aligned.

02:10:52.740 Sometimes I'm wrong.

02:10:53.860 Well, there isn't that much difference often

02:10:55.780 if the bickering is in good faith,

02:10:57.200 there isn't much difference between bickering and thinking.

02:11:00.140 It's like, if you're thinking,

02:11:01.800 you're bickering with yourself, right?

02:11:04.420 It's like, well, it could be this or it could be that.

02:11:06.100 like well you don't know which is why you do the thinking and you know that the stress that occurs

02:11:10.620 between couples often at least if it's good faith a fair bit of that is well it's a complicated

02:11:15.620 problem and there's going to be a couple of different viewpoints so of course you have to

02:11:19.120 have it out yeah and that's unpleasant in the moment but this is something i think we did fairly

02:11:24.320 effectively in our family it's like we didn't let problems hide under the carpet it was like

02:11:30.520 Bring that sucker out and we'll have a scrap about it right now.

02:11:34.960 And that's, you know, that's stressful because you have the damn fights,

02:11:38.320 but then, at least in principle, they're over.

02:11:42.820 Yeah.

02:11:43.780 We do that, but it's probably less dramatic than it was in our family.

02:11:48.900 We're a bit of a dramatic family.

02:11:51.120 Okay.

02:11:51.860 Okay.

02:11:52.340 We have to end this.

02:11:53.160 Thank you very much for coming on.

02:11:54.380 All right.

02:11:54.760 Well, good luck with the revitalization of your podcast.

02:11:57.280 Thank you.

02:11:57.620 On to the second million subscribers.

02:11:59.600 Thank you.

02:12:00.120 If you guys would like to be notified of the launch of Peterson Academy, you can go

02:12:05.380 to PetersonAcademy.com and sign up there and I'll be putting a link to everything we talked

02:12:10.200 about including PetersonAcademy.com in the description.

02:12:13.060 Thanks for watching.

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - September 29, 2023

Peterson Academy, Andrew Tate, New Book, Childhood Stories, Life ｜ Jordan Peterson

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