The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 hey guys uh another fantastic guest today one of the co-founders of the daily wire jeremy boring

00:00:08.160 how are you doing sir oh doing so well thanks for having me on the show oh i'm so excited to

00:00:13.040 have you the first time that i uh knew of you and i think i might have even retweeted your your uh

00:00:19.420 your ad it was the the razors one where you were going against the the gillette guys i am a bit

00:00:24.740 myth that you didn't use an image of the epitome of toxic masculinity this gorgeous guy right here

00:00:31.360 but i'll forgive i'll also forgive the fact that i wasn't included in lady ballers which we'll talk

00:00:38.700 about shortly explain yourself sir yeah well i i certainly owe you an apology and really the world

00:00:45.360 an apology for not involving you in those two projects you know we we do like to involve our

00:00:50.660 friends and things it's a i think one of the things that makes the daily wire somewhat unique in the

00:00:54.300 media space that we occupy is that we take a pretty expansionist view of the whole thing you

00:00:58.820 know in lady ballers we have a lot of our pals from other organizations in it and even more we're

00:01:02.640 invited to participate in it but couldn't for one reason or another but the beauty of the internet is

00:01:07.220 there is real competition of course but competition on the internet isn't zero sum and so i i really do

00:01:13.260 take a let a thousand flowers bloom kind of approach to the whole thing right do something with you

00:01:17.580 well i was uh delighted that uh one of your uh folks one of your colleagues had kindly invited me

00:01:27.160 to the premiere uh of i think it was lady ballers in nashville by the way i've never been to nashville

00:01:32.180 very excited to eventually go there uh the problem in my case uh and not being able to accept these

00:01:37.740 wonderful invitations and so apologies for not having come is that my teaching schedule doesn't allow

00:01:43.880 me i mean if if i were to accept each of those invitations and then i would quickly be out of a

00:01:49.580 job even though i'm a tenured professor so my apologies how did that go it already happened

00:01:53.780 correct yes we did a premiere in a theater here in nashville on wednesday night that was mostly for

00:02:00.240 cast and crew and family in anticipation of the public premiere this evening it was great you know

00:02:06.020 i've been living with the movie for these last five months editing and color correcting and sound

00:02:10.540 mixing etc but to get to share it with the people who were in it and the people who whose work made

00:02:16.200 it possible to create it was a real treat on wednesday night it was a fun night you know all

00:02:21.120 the sort of daily wire hosts and stars of the movie were there and it was very well received lots of

00:02:25.620 laughs and you are one of the leading protagonists in that movie correct i am although protagonist is

00:02:32.800 tricky in this movie because the good guys are doing the wrong thing but yeah we when we first made

00:02:38.300 the film we went out to a lot of actors who've asked to work with us in the past you know some

00:02:41.740 of them are actors who've already been canceled and have said you know we'll do anything to work

00:02:45.580 with the daily wire but when we put this movie in front of them even they were too afraid even the

00:02:50.080 already canceled actors were too afraid to get involved which is understandable this issue is sort

00:02:55.140 of a religious issue for the left right now but the the upside to those actors turning us down is

00:03:00.800 that it really became a true daily wire production i mean by the end of the by the end of it

00:03:05.100 every daily wire host was involved in the movie in some way so it was it was a real treat to get to

00:03:10.880 work with everyone in a completely different capacity i think when people watch the film they'll say

00:03:14.780 it looks like you just got together with your friends and had a good laugh and that's basically

00:03:18.240 what happened so what give us the i mean i think many people might already be familiar with the

00:03:23.200 main premise of the movie but give it to us for the for those of the first those folks who don't

00:03:27.360 know what it's about well a down and out former high school state champion basketball coach

00:03:33.040 realizes that there's a path back to glory if it gets the old crew back together and convinces them

00:03:37.540 to compete as women in women's sports it's uh i wish that i could say it's an outrageous premise but

00:03:43.500 it's actually just real life we're just the only ones who are willing to point out how absurd it is

00:03:47.580 at this moment it's amazing you know you may i don't know how familiar you are with my work but

00:03:52.880 of course i've been criticizing a lot of this lunacy for you know decades now and certainly within the

00:03:59.400 cesspool of academia where all of these parasitic ideas come from in 2017 uh no lesser than uh jordan

00:04:07.660 peterson and yours truly had to appear in front of the canadian senate to actually confirm that there

00:04:12.100 are two phenotypes of for sexually reproducing species male and female at least that was my part

00:04:17.700 of the testimony how did how did we go so wrong jeremy that these are the things that we are now

00:04:23.440 discussing so that these actors that otherwise would love to work with you are saying absolutely not

00:04:28.980 touching the transgender issue how did what happened yeah well i think you probably know far

00:04:34.600 better than i the power of an idea i mean i i look around the world and i see most of the people

00:04:39.840 i i've been a lay minister for a lot of my life and in that capacity i've counseled a lot of people

00:04:45.020 into marriages and i've counseled a lot of people in their marriages and i've counseled a handful of

00:04:49.240 people who are on the way out of their marriages and it's amazing how almost every single problem

00:04:54.460 that becomes crippling to a person not in the world but certainly in the west and certainly in

00:04:59.420 america is a thought problem yeah you know we have we have very few actual material concerns in the west

00:05:07.520 today we essentially after the second world war all but defeated war poverty disease and death you 0.95

00:05:13.080 know we we live a kind of life that no humans have ever existed before i have a for example a very

00:05:19.600 close friend who i went i came from a very small town so when i say i went to school with them i mean

00:05:23.520 every grade the entire process with the same small handful of people you know his father died when

00:05:29.660 we were young and that was so anomalous then you think for any other group of people who've ever lived

00:05:37.000 in history that was the norm it would be the norm that you everyone would have lost a brother and

00:05:40.660 everyone would have lost a sister so we live in this time of relative prosperity of relative comfort

00:05:46.700 relative peace and in ways that no one's ever really had to adapt to before it turns out humans

00:05:52.800 don't do particularly well without material uh without material uh adversity i i don't know what the

00:05:59.860 solution to that is long term obviously i don't think that the best solution is to go back to a time

00:06:03.760 when infant mortality rates were high and people lived in constant threat of having their homes pillaged

00:06:08.800 but i do think that anytime there's a sort of hardware technological advance the software

00:06:13.580 has to change and we've gone through this amazing period of technological advancement the hardware

00:06:20.640 has changed the software is not yet caught up we've not developed systems for how to be people in this

00:06:26.460 modern age yeah but beautiful answer and i guess you know the the main mission of the daily wire and

00:06:33.980 you'll correct me if i'm getting it wrong is not just to be a you know a podcasting hosting platform

00:06:40.780 which maybe at the start it was it's really to enter in a meaningful and creative uh way into

00:06:48.060 the space of culture war so that you can kind of redress some of the places where you know folks like

00:06:53.980 disney who had been producing great content for many many decades are now you know going astray

00:06:59.320 is that now the official mission of daily wire we want to create creative meaningful products that

00:07:06.600 contribute to the redressing of the cultural issues yes and i would say it in some ways has been from

00:07:13.280 the beginning you know the the earliest days of the daily wire it was andrew clavin ben shapiro and

00:07:19.260 myself our business partner caleb robinson you know most of us lived in la the company was started in la

00:07:25.040 all of us had dabbled in the business the entertainment industry to varying degrees of success

00:07:29.940 and we all sort of came of age politically at least um under the tutelage of andrew breitbart who

00:07:37.800 really was a cultural figure and who you know very famously uh expressed that politics is downstream of

00:07:43.620 culture so we we all came to our political ideas sort of in that milieu of west coast conservatism

00:07:51.120 i think we sort of uniquely understand the power of culture to shape what is politically acceptable

00:07:57.320 i often say that probably the greatest example of this may be in history but certainly of our time

00:08:01.880 is that it would have been impossible for barack obama to have been elected as a democrat to the

00:08:07.000 presidency in uh in 2008 had he been for gay marriage publicly and it would have been impossible

00:08:13.080 for him to be elected to a second term as a democrat had he opposed gay marriage in that small

00:08:18.640 four-year window one of the greatest shifts in you know cultural morality maybe ever recorded took place

00:08:26.380 and what drove that well it wasn't policy that drove it the policy was a reaction to things that

00:08:31.640 were happening in the culture to things that were happening with will and grace being beamed into

00:08:34.980 every uh home on nbc uh night after night after night it was it was what was happening in music it

00:08:41.260 was you know it was the culmination of of decades of cultural work that really came to fruition in

00:08:46.620 that moment if we you know conservatism tends to be somewhat reactionary obviously and

00:08:52.540 we tend to therefore react to the immediate urgent problem but sometimes when you're only reacting to

00:08:58.980 the urgent problem you're forsaking the important problem and culture is really the most important 0.92

00:09:03.380 place where conservatives need to start paying attention and should have started paying attention

00:09:07.840 all along yeah indeed do you feel that it will take as long for things to be redressed in in the

00:09:16.080 appropriate manner as it took to to fall into the abyss of infinite lucy so for example in the parasitic mind

00:09:21.800 when i'm talking about all these idea pathogens depending on which parasitic idea you're talking

00:09:26.700 about you can time stamp it you know 30 40 years ago but some of them can go up to 80 90 years ago

00:09:33.860 cultural relativism was a movement that started with franz boas a cultural anthropologist you know many

00:09:39.640 many years ago so do we need to wait 80 years for disney to no longer be woke or is there a mechanism

00:09:46.880 by which we can accelerate the antidote to these cultural issues well i think that we have things

00:09:52.760 going for us that they did not have going for them one of them is that reality is on our side and so

00:09:58.820 and the other is that most people don't believe actually in their heart of hearts all the things

00:10:05.360 that they purport to believe because the left has achieved a kind of cultural hegemony and political

00:10:10.180 hegemony all across the west to where they can actually enforce conformity to their views so many

00:10:16.520 many people for example will tow the party line on transgenderism very very few people even very very

00:10:23.700 few democrats really want to see their daughter compete against a man in women's sports so i think

00:10:30.660 if we have the boldness to speak out and to speak those truths in the places where those truths need to

00:10:36.380 be spoken which isn't just railing on twitter right it's getting out and using our hands and

00:10:41.180 creating art creating entertainment creating policy being more energetic in our policy approach than

00:10:46.700 conservatives have been for most of my lifetime uh still still having to weigh that of course against

00:10:52.780 the constitution and and the unique american system but i think that if we become energetic and

00:10:58.220 somewhat entrepreneurial in our approach the the good news is that we're we're pushing in the direction

00:11:03.740 of gravity and they were always pushing against gravity so maybe that's just a different way of

00:11:08.300 saying uh if god is on our side maybe it's not too late you know earlier you mentioned about uh

00:11:15.020 hardware versus software excuse me i'm suffering from a really bad cold so apologies for any cost

00:11:21.980 uh so in in in several of my earlier books my evolution psychology books i talk about

00:11:27.820 cultural products as fossils of the human mind and so let me explain what i mean by that and then

00:11:32.940 you can see how i think it might resonate with some of the stuff that you guys are doing and and

00:11:37.100 about the software issue so the the brain is organic and therefore the mind it doesn't fossilize right

00:11:47.180 so if i'm a paleontologist and i want to study the evolutionary history of a species well i can look

00:11:51.340 at fossil remains i could look at skeletal remains that allow me to say things that are very specific about

00:11:57.260 about a species that has now no longer existed 65 plus million years ago what i argue is that while

00:12:04.940 human minds don't fossilize the cultural products that they leave behind do fossilize meaning i can

00:12:12.140 study an ancient greek poem that was written 2500 years ago where you know it was they didn't know

00:12:19.820 what ipads were and didn't know what internet was and didn't know what phones you know what planes

00:12:25.260 were they may not have known what the color blue was exactly fair enough and and and yet the software

00:12:31.580 that's operating their brain that's that's the point i was trying to make is exactly the same software

00:12:36.860 as ours meaning that there is an invariance across time and place about human nature such that the

00:12:43.580 movies that we watch the tv shows that we consume the song lyrics that titillate us the art the the

00:12:50.380 religious narratives are all fossils of the human mind because they speak to an invariant human nature

00:12:56.060 and yet wokism and hence why i use the parasitic framework is able to completely turn that upside down

00:13:03.900 because the narratives that they propose are by definition a negation of reality and yet those ideas go

00:13:10.780 viral yeah well i also think those ideas can only really

00:13:15.020 uh take root when things are otherwise fairly good right i think that you know i this is not my

00:13:23.420 preferred solution to our current problems but should we find ourselves pulled into an actual world war

00:13:28.540 for the first time in 70 some years i suspect that you know whether or not we should have one bathroom

00:13:34.380 or two will quickly resolve itself those aren't the kind of problems that can stand up to actual material

00:13:39.580 uh adversity i i like what you're saying though about being able to see sort of cultural fossils that

00:13:46.940 that reveal something about the human mind in various moments and it it speaks to something that's always

00:13:52.620 sort of informed my world view in politics and that's that i'm not a conservative in the uh purely

00:13:59.740 reactionary european right way right wing sort of tradition you know i'm a conservative in the uniquely

00:14:06.540 american liberal tradition which is which is unique and is distinct and i i think that because it's

00:14:11.900 somewhat nuanced and we live in a very polarized moment it's hard to ever discuss things that

00:14:17.420 require nuance you know part of what makes america unique though is that america as a revolutionary

00:14:22.780 country and therefore a decidedly sort of liberal you know that is a liberal action to try to build

00:14:28.860 something new to try to create something that hasn't existed before to throw off the past and build

00:14:33.420 something new but unique unique to the founders of this country was the idea that the entire past was

00:14:41.500 not bad per se they didn't want a revolution like the french revolution where we're going to remake man

00:14:48.060 right they wanted a revolution that acknowledged all those all of those fossils that tell us something

00:14:52.940 about humanity and that informs my politics to this day i don't i don't want to throw out all of the

00:14:57.740 institutions i i don't want to throw out the past i want to the conservative part of me wants to look

00:15:02.940 backward for the things that work and are true and time tested the wisdom of the wisdom that's been

00:15:07.980 passed down to us across the history of our species i also the the american liberal in me wants to identify

00:15:15.420 the places where those structures fail the places where those structures are inadequate the places where

00:15:20.540 those structures sometimes don't take into account the suffering of you know of minority groups or of

00:15:27.660 the individual and build on the firm foundation of the wisdom of the past but build something new

00:15:32.940 and and for that reason i've always sort of had a equally negative reaction to uh to radical revolutionaries

00:15:41.500 and to you know uh uh maybe you just call them um narrow-minded bible thumping type you know institutional

00:15:53.180 uh people uh people so i'm i'm like neither uh i'm neither comfortable in the protestant uh would

00:16:01.100 neither have been comfortable in luther's church nor would i have been comfortable in in the pope's

00:16:05.100 church so i've always kind of had to walk this middle this middle ground but i think that middle

00:16:09.260 ground is a uniquely american ground right uh to your point about you know not wanting to erase everything

00:16:16.060 that came beforehand and and forgive again another self plug here but it's relevant to the story in my

00:16:22.140 latest book on happiness at one point i talk about the correlation between political orientation and

00:16:29.660 happiness and i cite the quite an extensive research that seems to be rather unequivocal in in

00:16:37.980 demonstrating that on average conservatives score happier than you know liberals slash progressives

00:16:45.900 and i offer i mean a speculative i haven't tested this it's a speculative explanation for it but i i

00:16:51.500 think it's a good one and i'd love to take uh you know to hear your opinion on it so i think that

00:16:56.780 the reason why conservatives are happier is that it's precisely because when they wake up in the morning

00:17:02.700 there is a sense of existential you know comfort in the fact that there are things worthy of conserving

00:17:10.860 right of course no society is perfect but i can wake up and say hey i live in a place where there's

00:17:15.500 freedom of speech and in the case of the united states there's this great idea called the first

00:17:19.660 amendment and there's so yes we can tweak this and that and sure we didn't have a perfect past but

00:17:24.380 overall i think uh this is existentially this is a good place the progressive on the other hand wakes up

00:17:29.900 with complete existential angst from time t0 which is everything sucks currently and just around the

00:17:37.980 corner lies unicornia and if only we can now erase everything we can live a better world what do you

00:17:45.260 think of this explanation yeah it i share that exact sentiment i i express it somewhat differently which is

00:17:52.620 what i would say is that in the judeo-christian tradition we acknowledge this kind of concept of

00:17:58.620 original sin and i know that the jewish position on the idea of original sin is distinct from the

00:18:04.140 christian view of original sin but nevertheless our books start with the same chapters and in those

00:18:09.340 chapters senators the world and it enters the world by way of uh the temptation to make ourselves like

00:18:17.180 god you know the nakash says to man in the garden sure god said if you eat from the fruit you'll die

00:18:23.740 but i say if you eat from the fruit you'll be like god and that that leads us to have this sort of

00:18:29.900 fundamental understanding of the world uh that says the root problem of the world is a problem that is

00:18:36.460 in us it's a desire that is in us we can never escape it you can't you can't defeat sin you can mitigate

00:18:46.300 against perhaps expression of sin you can sacrifice some you know to to make amends with god for sin or

00:18:53.500 in the in the christian view you can uh accept the sacrifice of christ as a as a way of having

00:19:00.380 reconciliation with god on behalf of sin but the left in all of its sundry isms are all united in the

00:19:07.500 in the belief that original sin is a thing that happened to man not a thing that happened within man right

00:19:13.420 so if you're marxist then it's class or if you're uh even sort of radical libertarian uh then maybe

00:19:21.020 it's coercion or whatever it is it's an outside force that acted against man and if you believe

00:19:25.900 that then ultimately you you wake up every day believing that you're a victim believing that the

00:19:30.300 thing that is between you and unicorn unicornia you know unicornia between you and utopia between you

00:19:38.860 and happiness are these external forces that you just need to rail against and defeat and if you're

00:19:44.460 conservative and you and you've held on to the underlying religious traditions on which the west

00:19:50.060 has been built you ultimately have a kind of um i suppose acceptance of the fact that things will

00:19:57.420 always be imperfect that they'll never be for you because the problem is in you and the problem is in

00:20:01.660 your neighbor everyone's dealing with these the same thing inside which is sin and imperfection and the

00:20:07.820 fact that we're not god and and for that reason a strange side effect of it is that you know that

00:20:14.220 that happiness if it exists at all has to happen right here in the imperfect world it isn't waiting

00:20:19.100 for us around the corner in the in the world that we know full well can never be because if there was

00:20:23.980 such a perfect world we couldn't be in it right now beautiful beautifully said so another thing that

00:20:29.100 i talk about in in the happiness book is what are how should i go about choosing the profession that you

00:20:36.540 know is you know optimizes my ability to flourish and so i argue that there are when it comes to

00:20:43.900 you choosing the right profession there are two things that you should try to achieve and you're

00:20:49.820 going to see how they relate to certainly much of the endeavors that you partake in i argue that

00:20:55.180 number one all other things equal anything that allows me to instantiate my creative impulse is going

00:21:01.020 to lead to a more direct line towards purpose and meaning just because the the act of creation of

00:21:06.380 creativity just offers me purpose and meaning and so now i can define the creative pursuits in radically

00:21:13.500 different domains right i could be a chef i could be an architect i could be a podcaster i could be a

00:21:18.140 stand-up comic i could be a author and professor these are very very different pursuits but what they share in

00:21:23.100 common is that something didn't exist until i came along and with with my unique take i created

00:21:29.980 something the dish the the bridge the stand-up comedy routine the the book and so it seems to me that

00:21:36.140 whenever whatever i know of the daily wire i mean you're by definition you're immersed in the act of

00:21:43.260 creation i'm creating new content i'm creating new documentaries i know i'd love to hear about your hungarian project

00:21:49.100 right now which i first heard of when i was with uh one of you like his name escapes me tall gentleman

00:21:55.980 uh is that that's not ringing a bell so far he uh i went i'm decidedly not very tall so they're all

00:22:02.300 tall to me me too i i suffer from the same uh affliction uh but i was with the jordan peterson and

00:22:09.180 your gentleman a couple of other guys over dinner there you go thank you uh and so i'd love to hear

00:22:15.180 about that in a second but is that what gets you up in the morning and kind of rubs your hands is

00:22:21.500 what am i creating today what am i participating in to to to to put a little imprimatur of my

00:22:27.580 creative process would that be right in saying absolutely you know when i first started succeeding

00:22:33.020 in business after after years and years of not really succeeding in the arts a lot of my artistic

00:22:39.180 friends said you know it's got to be hard right do you you're always a really creative guy and

00:22:44.380 now you're in business and and i would correct them and say you know i had that same bias that

00:22:49.180 you that you're displaying until i got into business and realized that it is a creative act

00:22:54.220 i mean hundreds of jobs now exist that only exist because we created them uh all of this content that

00:23:02.060 we're putting out in the world isn't you know yes now i'm being creative and directing a movie but

00:23:06.700 my ability to to be creative in that sense and direct that movie exists within a framework of being paid

00:23:12.700 for and distributed by this other thing that i created that really comes from the same side of

00:23:17.740 the brain and satisfies the same impulse and i i would only add one thing and i i haven't read your

00:23:23.500 book so it may very well be that it's there but a major part of what brings a person happiness and

00:23:30.620 fulfillment i do think is creative expression but i i also think that it's struggled right it is

00:23:37.900 really subscribe to the view that that happiness is pouring out your best effort in pursuit of the

00:23:42.460 thing that you believe we we we struggle here the daily wire is hard our future is not guaranteed

00:23:50.380 you know we're always on the razor's edge where we take enormous risks as soon as we get ahead just

00:23:56.460 a little bit we go to the biggest thing we've ever tried to do and some people think we're being

00:24:00.300 reckless and that could i guess bear out but i actually just think that if you're not growing you're

00:24:05.100 dying and and i don't think that i would be you know i see like these books on bookstore shelves you

00:24:09.980 know the four-hour work week or retire at 40 or and i think nothing sounds more depressing to me yeah

00:24:16.540 than thinking that my effort should be over at 40 or thinking that my effort should be constrained to four

00:24:21.340 days a week i don't have any hobbies my hobby is the thing that brings me joy is pouring myself out

00:24:27.660 pouring out my best effort for the things that are the hardest you know beautifully said so i i do

00:24:32.860 discuss this in the book in the context in a later chapter i talk about uh you know the anti-fragility

00:24:38.780 of failure and the importance of persistence and stick-to-it-ness and of course you you may know

00:24:44.860 him nasim talib who's a fellow lebanese author you know coined the term anti-fragility right so that

00:24:51.260 you know you can't have systems of optimal flourishing if they are so brittle that as soon as

00:24:58.380 you touch them they they fall apart and so and i give examples in the book of you know the the

00:25:03.180 greatest people in their respective of all time and they respected michael jordan was cut in his

00:25:08.380 sophomore high school team leonel messi uh was told that he's too frail to be a professional soccer

00:25:15.020 player zinadine zidane who until leonel messi came along was arguably the the best player of his

00:25:20.460 generation uh that you know won the world cup uh was refused selection by the algerian coast he could have

00:25:27.020 played for either algeria or france and the algerian coast looked at him and said he's he's too slow

00:25:33.260 he'll he we're not interested in him steven spielberg as you probably know was rejected not

00:25:39.660 once not twice but three times from the usc uh film school and on and on jk rowling and so on and so

00:25:45.980 anti-fragility is is actually needed not only for humans seneca talks about and i don't have the exact

00:25:53.820 quote but he basically seneca this is 2000 years ago the stoic philosopher says that the strongest

00:26:00.620 trees that have the deepest roots are those that have been exposed to a lot of wind stressors

00:26:07.260 precisely because that's what allows them to then be strong so i couldn't agree with your general point

00:26:12.860 about you know feeling those stressors uh as a way of then achieving great things i've said this a few

00:26:18.780 times of late but it couldn't be more important when i you know am criticized online as we all are

00:26:24.780 who engage in any of these sorts of conversations that we all engage in one of the number one attacks

00:26:31.580 that people bring up over and over and over again is you know you're nothing but a failed screenwriter

00:26:36.540 and they'll bring it up about ben as well ben's nothing but a wannabe failed screenwriter

00:26:41.660 and i think only someone who not only hasn't had success in their life but who cannot have success

00:26:48.620 in their life believes that i am ashamed of my failures or that you can humiliate me by bringing

00:26:54.140 up my failures i my failures have made me who i am to whatever extent we have success now and in the

00:27:00.700 case of ben shapiro to to say ben is nothing but a failed screenwriter is to miss the fact that uh ben

00:27:08.380 has the nicest watches of anybody uh that i've ever met he's done incredibly well for himself but he's

00:27:13.740 done incredibly well for himself because of the things that he learned in failure and i think that

00:27:19.020 maybe to bring it all the way back to the earliest part of our conversation

00:27:23.580 one of the reasons that conservatives are happy is because our ideas have been stress tested and one

00:27:31.260 of the reasons that the left is totalitarian is because they're terrified that their that their

00:27:36.700 ideas are fragile the only way that they can continue to believe what they believe is if they never

00:27:41.580 have to encounter you opposing their ideas and because of left-wing hegemony in the culture

00:27:49.180 every show i've ever watched was written by a left-wing writer every song i've ever loved and

00:27:53.500 listened to is written by a left-wing writer every you know half of i lived in california for 20 years

00:27:59.100 there weren't even republicans on the ballot it would be one democrat running against another democrat

00:28:02.860 because of the unique way that they handle politics in their ballot politics in their state

00:28:07.340 so of course i i understand the left's arguments i've been completely immersed in the

00:28:12.460 arguments of the left my entire life and so i'm very com i'm very comfortable with my ideas

00:28:18.940 are you were you ever so and in the way famously dave rubin said why i left the left

00:28:25.580 yeah given that you grew up or or flourished in that ecosystem originally were you a lefty person who

00:28:33.020 then saw the light or do or you didn't have that transformation i didn't have that transformation i

00:28:38.460 i i would say that probably in my teenage years i would have more identified as being on the left

00:28:46.860 only attitudinally you know at that point in my life i was in a very small town in west texas

00:28:52.140 the flattest place on earth it's called the llano estacado the the cities have names like plain view

00:28:57.900 and level land i mean it's it is flat and it's the classic kind of buddy holly story for me where

00:29:05.580 you know the small town couldn't contain me and i felt hard done by by the constraints of that

00:29:11.020 environment i i've come to realize that a lot of that was hubris and delusion and i i see so much

00:29:15.660 beauty now in the life that i got to grow up in the world i grew up in but i i didn't see that as

00:29:20.140 a teenager i wanted to rebel against it but very quickly in my early 20s 9 11 happened i moved

00:29:27.340 to la when i got to la and i saw that the people who had you know who had the same sort of

00:29:33.260 criticisms of the status quo that i had and i thought therefore i would be able to relate to them

00:29:38.300 they all wanted to essentially flush the baby out with the bath water and i and i could just never

00:29:43.420 embrace that idea and so i i think that when my politics really started forming and i voted in

00:29:50.860 my first presidential election but by that time i already identified myself as being part of the

00:29:57.020 that unique american conservative tradition and you were i i only found this out yesterday while

00:30:02.940 listening to your excellent chat with the megan kelly um i think it was maybe yesterday that you

00:30:08.940 held it correct uh i can't remember name is it friends of abe am i getting this right is that friends

00:30:14.700 of abe can you tell us about that because i i only found out about this in yesterday's show and i was

00:30:19.740 amazed that i'd never heard of it so please tell us about it well the real trick of friends of abe is that

00:30:23.660 it is truly a secret organization and so it's hard to ever find anything out about it right but we

00:30:27.900 existed for you know the better part of a decade in southern california and it really was just a

00:30:33.740 support group for conservatives working in the industry the thing that we the thing that we guarded

00:30:38.620 the most was people's privacy because in that environment so many people were concerned that if

00:30:43.420 their politics were discovered they would never work again i mean grown men would routinely weep at

00:30:48.540 their first meeting to realize that they were in a room full of other people who saw the world the way

00:30:52.540 they did people had a guy meet his agent they both showed up at the same meeting and they saw each

00:30:58.700 other and were afraid they were both going to lose their job and then realized oh no by virtue of the

00:31:02.140 fact that we're both here is probably okay had a grown man break down weeping saying that if his wife

00:31:06.940 found out his politics he would no longer be married so that town is so political and so um intolerant

00:31:16.380 of any sort of deviation and thought that people truly just live out lies and that was an incredibly

00:31:23.340 formative experience for me to get to be a part of the organization and later to run it for five years

00:31:27.740 just to see

00:31:30.940 to see what that kind of tyrannical thought policing not only does to people's careers many of these

00:31:36.780 people had figured out how to navigate it with their careers but what it did to their soul what it did

00:31:40.700 did to them as people you know for a grown man to weep because he realizes he's not the only person

00:31:45.260 in a city who thinks the way that he's that he thinks something really sinister has gone on there

00:31:51.500 but you know it and i don't mean to to come down hard on the on those folks i understand the the

00:31:56.780 pragmatic reality of i need to put food on the table and therefore maybe i need to hide my political

00:32:01.660 positions but i'm going to speak just as an individual who lives life in a very different way so for me

00:32:07.100 one of the things that i talk about that is most fundamental to my personhood is to a fault as a

00:32:13.500 an adherence to authenticity right and so i'm often when when i'm asked by people you know why do you

00:32:20.380 do it you already lead a very stressful life as a you know a professor you have got all these and yet

00:32:25.500 you you do all these other things say well you know because when i put my head on the pillow at the

00:32:30.060 end of the night the only way that i can you know avoid insomnia is if i feel as though i was

00:32:35.820 perfectly fully authentic in every micro second of my day if i ever modulated what i think what i do

00:32:43.580 what i say i would feel as though i'm a charlatan i'm a fraud and i couldn't live with myself i'm i'm

00:32:49.500 my biggest critic and so let me give a concrete example of how i lived by by that creed so as you

00:32:56.860 probably know jeremy we now have these diversity inclusion equity statements for for everything well

00:33:01.740 in academia you now have to fill out a diversity inclusion equity statement when you apply for

00:33:07.580 research grants when you apply for some fancy professorship and i decided that i would rather

00:33:15.180 not have any research grants which of course affects my career and that i can't then do certain

00:33:20.140 you know studies that i wish to do which are important for the advancement of my research

00:33:24.460 because then i would feel inauthentic from this side of my mouth to write the parasitic mind

00:33:30.300 and rail against diversity inclusion equity but from this side of my mouth while nobody's looking

00:33:35.180 to participate in the charade so again i'm not trying to be unfair to those folks i understand

00:33:40.220 that different people have different ways by which they modulate risk rewards how can they live with

00:33:45.980 themselves saying i'm going to play along and be a charade and only friends of abe is going to be my

00:33:52.380 i would feel fraudulent if i did that yeah well one thing that i think happened with friends of abe is that

00:33:57.100 a lot of people did become much more bold in their in their willingness to step out once they realized

00:34:03.340 they weren't alone that's a big part of how authoritarian regimes which is essentially what

00:34:11.020 hollywood is a big way that they maintain control is to isolate you and make you feel like you're the

00:34:17.180 only person who sees the world and of course if you're absolutely the only person like you it'd be

00:34:21.340 much harder to have any boldness at all you know some of us are somewhat contrarian by nature

00:34:26.860 i've never hidden who i am to my i'm sure to my detriment in many in many situations economic and

00:34:35.420 relational but i wouldn't even say that it's some great act of valor on my part that i wouldn't i'm

00:34:40.940 just i am just not wired to be able to to be other than i am and and i know that other people are wired

00:34:49.260 somewhat differently you know i i i buck and i've always bucked but do you think there's a way

00:34:57.100 forgive me for a trumpet is there a way to teach them so if because ultimately what you want to do

00:35:03.100 is be an agent of change right so i don't need to convince jeremy that he needs to lead an authentic

00:35:08.700 life but there are all sorts of other otherwise moral decent people who don't have your personality

00:35:15.180 trait is there a way for me to instill that courage in them through whichever persuasion technique is

00:35:21.260 reasonable well for sure i think one of the great ways that you can do it is is by living boldly and

00:35:27.900 showing people that that is a viable path you know people sometimes get on to us at the daily wire for

00:35:34.060 preaching to the choir and i think that in some ways they're missing the point that the choir is exactly

00:35:39.100 who you want to preach to to to reach to reach um a person whom i will never meet let's call them a

00:35:47.820 member of the audience right let's say that there's a member of the audience who is diametrically opposed

00:35:52.700 to me in the way that they view the world it's not impossible that they will listen to me talk

00:35:58.300 into a microphone or watch some movie that i made or overhear some pot it's not impossible that they'll

00:36:03.420 engage with that content and that content will change their mind certainly that happens if you have a

00:36:08.220 show as big as ben's i'm sure you can count many people can count themselves in that category but

00:36:12.940 as a percentage it's an incredibly small number and some people are better at that than others i know

00:36:18.460 many many people who were led back to the church by either ben or dennis prager the way they talk

00:36:26.540 about certain issues causes both jews to to reconnect with their judaism but also connect causes

00:36:33.740 christians to reconnect with their christianity amazingly listening to a devout religious jewish

00:36:39.020 person can cause a christian to engage with their christianity of course it can but again those are

00:36:46.140 somewhat unique figures and it's still a somewhat small percentage of their audience what i think

00:36:49.980 happens far far far more often is that people's ideas change through relationship people's ideas change

00:36:58.540 not by listening to ben but by talking to their friend who listens to ben and had his ideas sharpened

00:37:05.580 by ben and had his arguments sharpened by ben and then in his own day-to-day personal life he has

00:37:12.300 actual personal influence over people so i i think that yes we preach to the choir we boldly preach to

00:37:17.580 the choir my hope is that we empower the choir and the choir goes out and lives those authentic lives the

00:37:23.180 people who we already have some alignment can live more authentically can can live more boldly can

00:37:28.780 argue more articulately and they'll reach people where people are actually available to be reached

00:37:35.260 which isn't in esoteric and abstract political argument it's in human engagement and the the dirty

00:37:43.260 process of building and maintaining friendships and marriages and relationships and i think that's

00:37:48.460 where i think almost all the good that we do in other words is is a secondary function of our day

00:37:55.340 to day work yeah that that makes a lot of sense tell us about the since we mentioned it very briefly

00:38:00.620 earlier we mentioned hungary by the way before i i ask you to tell us about that that project i've not

00:38:06.140 been to hungary twice the first time was in 2022 uh when i was invited to i don't know if you know mcc

00:38:13.020 it's one of their think tank i can't remember the name of the uh you know the what the acronym stands

00:38:18.460 for uh so i i gave some talks there they had just uh released a translated version of the parasitic

00:38:26.060 mind into hungarian the second time i went was at the budapest demography uh summit where all kinds

00:38:33.820 of folks were invited to talk about the importance what you would think you don't have to talk about

00:38:38.140 which is we're sexually reproducing species we're built to create children but apparently we need a 0.86

00:38:43.420 summit with world leaders and professors to tell us that yeah yeah have sex it's good to have children

00:38:50.140 leads to happiness but anyways i fell in love with uh with hungary and uh so what what's your link to

00:38:56.540 hungary and then tell us about that that's that uh series absolutely well i'd never been to hungary until

00:39:03.420 this year and we were scouting most of well not most of we were scouting many countries in europe to be

00:39:10.780 a potential home for our first scripted fictional series the pin dragon cycle which is an adaptation

00:39:16.540 of the novels by stephen lawhead which had a real impact on me as a young man and you know the novels

00:39:23.820 predominantly take place in wales and i wanted to shoot in wales geography is really important to art

00:39:30.060 i think and the author stephen lawhead had had become an expatriated expatriated to the united

00:39:35.980 kingdom in part during the writing of these and has remained there and i wanted that connection to

00:39:41.660 the actual place but there are budgetary and logistical realities in in making this kind of

00:39:46.700 content it quickly became evident that wales wasn't going to be the right home for this project at the

00:39:51.660 in the way that we have to go about making it so i went on a trip that took me to

00:39:55.660 places where a lot of film happens romania bulgaria serbia hungary italy and a handful of others and

00:40:07.100 even then as i came to realize that hungary was going to be the best place for this show

00:40:11.820 for a variety of reasons landscapes being one uh the film infrastructure there being another the

00:40:18.540 backlots that they've built for other shows sort of later than ours medieval but nevertheless

00:40:23.980 the our shows pre-medieval but a lot of those backlot locations would really be helpful to us

00:40:28.940 even then i was not looking forward to spending half of my year in hungary and then when we moved

00:40:36.460 there on july 10th or 11th of this year i say move when we when we set up shop there we didn't relocate

00:40:42.860 permanently or anything when we arrived there to make the show i was just immediately struck by how

00:40:48.460 beautiful the city is immediately struck by how livable the city is immediately struck by the fact

00:40:54.220 that here in this small eastern european country there there is a connect a a deep connection to

00:41:04.300 the people in the history that have existed in that spot for yes centuries and you forget how much you

00:41:12.540 miss a sense of national identity and i think that in some ways hungary is a little bit late to the national

00:41:17.100 national identity game but they're but they're far ahead of where we in in western europe or america

00:41:23.660 are right now and it's it's been incredibly refreshing to experience it i think i have concerns about

00:41:29.580 the system by which they've gone about reconnecting to some of their past i think that

00:41:35.180 there are certainly imperfections in the way that they're going about it but there are obviously

00:41:40.860 major imperfections in the way that the path that we've taken to and to the extent that theirs has

00:41:46.140 allowed them to have this resurgence of national pride and identity i can only hope that we find

00:41:50.620 our way down a similar amen at least to a similar end if not down a similar path yeah i'll just add a

00:41:56.780 few few points uh regarding uh well certainly budapest but hungary more generally because on my last trip we

00:42:03.740 we ended up going to apparently the largest lake in europe is located in hungary and we ended i ended up

00:42:10.540 swimming there it was really beautiful this this was this past september what i love about hungary is that

00:42:15.180 it seems as though their sense of aesthetics is found everywhere right the doorknobs look beautiful

00:42:23.020 that the the manholes on the street have more workmanship on them than a piece of art in the

00:42:30.060 you know new york museum of fine arts you know whatever and so there's a sense of aesthetic reverence

00:42:35.580 for aesthetics which perhaps is not surprising why uh roger scruton who is a famous you know uh

00:42:43.180 uh uh uh uh conservative philosopher who's not passed away uh regrettably is very much connected

00:42:49.980 to hungary so that love of history that sense of pride that love of aesthetics that reverence for

00:42:57.260 intellectualism so the the the everywhere you turned the monuments were not of celine dion and

00:43:05.660 taylor swift it was of this nobel laureate this philosopher this artist and the way they reacted

00:43:14.060 to me right uh you know i was treated as though i were a rock star i'm i'm just a professor and but yet

00:43:21.260 that's who their rock stars are and so imagine if we can return to that in the west where you know you

00:43:27.340 revere thought and art and philosophy boy would be in a better place you know they're they're literally

00:43:34.220 putting new facades on brutalist architecture built by the soviets they're they're going out of the 0.88

00:43:39.420 way to take their already beautiful city and make it more beautiful yeah there's a lot to be there's

00:43:44.540 a lot to be learned so a few personal questions i i'm very mindful of the time i know you have a hard

00:43:51.820 stop at two o'clock so one of the things i talk about towards the end of the happiness book is regret

00:43:58.060 and so let me set it up for you uh this is actually one of my former professors when i was a doctoral

00:44:04.780 student his name is thomas gilovich he pioneered the psychology of regret by distinguishing between

00:44:10.460 two forms of regret that we might feel in life regret due to action versus regret due to inaction

00:44:16.220 regret due to action you know i cheated on my wife and i regret that i was such an 0.88

00:44:20.220 asshole and you know that led to the solution of my marriage regret due to inaction you know i always 0.86

00:44:26.220 wanted to be a screenwriter but i became a pediatrician because my dad is a pediatrician 0.93

00:44:30.460 and his dad is a pediatrician and it would have been disastrous if i didn't follow in their medical

00:44:35.500 footsteps but now i'm 60 years old and i realized i hate you know being a pediatrician and i didn't

00:44:41.420 live an authentic life so if i now ask you you're still a relatively young man so you're not at the

00:44:47.340 proverbial porch when you're 85 but if i were to ask you today looking back at your life do you have

00:44:54.220 any looming regrets and do you care to share any with us you know i don't live a life of regret and

00:45:05.900 i can say that i think one interesting thing about and again this probably is

00:45:10.620 what they might call a first world problem but i have more regrets for things that i didn't do and

00:45:15.820 they're all they're all good decisions that i made and i regret the good decisions and what i mean by

00:45:21.900 that is it's just a unique thing that you look back at the girl you didn't have sex with and think

00:45:26.460 oh man i should have had sex with that girl you actually made a good decision but because of the 1.00

00:45:32.060 way that the human mind and the human heart work you're able to look back at the good decision the 0.89

00:45:36.540 place where god basically carried you through and say that you wish that you had made the bad decision

00:45:42.220 but what i know intellectually i don't always know it you know when i'm entertaining some similar moment

00:45:48.220 what i know intellectually is that had you made that decision your life would not have

00:45:53.580 led you to the place that you are today right the the reason that we're able to entertain regret of

00:45:59.180 the things that we didn't do is by and large because we can do it from a sort of fanciful place where you

00:46:04.860 still arrived at the outcome that you that you currently have i love my life i love my business i love

00:46:10.940 my wife i love my daughter i love my family i have those things because of the decisions that i've made

00:46:16.700 along the way for good and for ill and uh and only in a sort of you know only the same part of me that

00:46:23.820 wishes that i could fly like superman wishes that any part of my life had gone any differently because

00:46:28.620 the truth is that i i live a life that i'm very grateful for well you'll never need the help of

00:46:36.140 jordan peterson apparently you don't need to see a therapist because you you know one of the things

00:46:40.220 that's very difficult for most people is is is that haunting looming regret of by the way you're

00:46:46.860 when you said i regret more inactions that's exactly what the research finds which is when you ask

00:46:52.460 people what's their most haunting looming regrets they're almost always over the long term those of

00:46:58.940 inaction rather than of action so you're exactly within what we would expect from the academic literature

00:47:04.060 i think that you and i share in common though this i don't often use the word authenticity just

00:47:11.260 to describe my approach to life in in some ways i view all of my strengths and weaknesses as always

00:47:18.300 being the same things yes you know i think that that's the nature of being a person but i i for for

00:47:24.860 better and for worse i'm a contrarian and for better and for worse will not do the things that i think

00:47:31.100 i'm supposed to do even if i think that they would be better received and for that reason i don't have

00:47:35.420 a lot of the kinds of regrets that you're describing because i have just done the things that i wanted

00:47:40.060 to do in life by and large for the most part or at least the things that i thought were right to do

00:47:45.020 i don't say that as some great moral statement i have all i have all the same failings of everyone

00:47:48.780 else uh of course and you know no one's righteous least of all least of all me but i i have tried

00:47:55.660 to live a life in which i don't allow my decisions to be made for me by circumstance and and i

00:48:01.020 will say that one of the things that i think has made the daily wire very unique

00:48:05.580 is that there is deep disagreement on the most important issues between the three founders ben

00:48:10.540 caleb and myself you know ben is as as uh observant uh in his judaism as one can be uh caleb has this

00:48:20.620 very unique christian background uh that that i won't speak for him here about but is that is not

00:48:26.940 something that one adheres too lightly and i have a very pronounced protestantism and and have been a

00:48:33.500 lay minister and bible teacher during my life and so right at the heart of our of our friendships and

00:48:40.220 partnerships are differences that are somewhat irreconcilable and we've made room for one another

00:48:46.380 in that we support one another in that we love we love one another in a very masculine way uh through

00:48:52.140 those through those distinctions we've created a platform that sort of acknowledges uh differences of

00:48:58.220 of opinion and approach and i think that that's that's important to what we are but the one other

00:49:04.700 thing that's very important to what we are is that we don't pander to our audience right in this

00:49:09.420 incredibly populist moment where you're only supposed to say to people exactly what they want to hear

00:49:16.940 we often challenge our audience that is distinct from betraying our audience it's so important to

00:49:22.220 us not to betray our audience part of our job is to represent them truthfully but part of our job also

00:49:27.980 is to challenge them in the places where perhaps their uh their instinct may be wrong and that happens

00:49:34.060 a lot in politics you know we we get angry we get passionate and sometimes we're tempted to move

00:49:38.620 toward things that aren't true and i think somewhat uniquely the daily wire will say to our audience no

00:49:42.380 no we don't i always think it's funny when people call us grifters they never call us a grifters

00:49:46.620 they never call us grifters when we agree with them they only call us grifters when we don't

00:49:50.380 agree but of course if we were grifters there would never be a time that we didn't agree with them

00:49:55.100 right but we've we've always taken you all the way back to 2016 the the earliest days of our company

00:49:59.660 when ben and i came out saying that we wouldn't support trump's uh first first election to the

00:50:05.340 presidency we thought it was the end of our company and yet we were able to prosper and grow through

00:50:08.940 there even with people who deeply disagreed with us because of to use your word a kind of authenticity

00:50:13.900 i think people believed that they could trust what we said because we weren't willing to just say what

00:50:18.540 they wanted to hear but a major part of that uh it ended up being a good economic decision we didn't

00:50:24.220 know that at the time we thought it was certainly a bad economic decision but neither one of us was

00:50:29.980 willing to live lives if we couldn't live them on our terms neither one of us was willing ben or i to say

00:50:36.780 things that we didn't believe and you know that means that i make a lot of mistakes that i have to

00:50:41.820 own but at least i feel that i can own my mistakes i can own my successes and i can own my mistakes

00:50:47.660 because i made them all on my own terms and that leads to maybe no better life than anyone else but i

00:50:54.700 do suspect a life of fewer regrets than other people might that's beautiful when you were mentioning uh

00:51:00.380 uh you know the intersection between ben yourself and is it caleb caleb yes sir yeah uh it reminded me

00:51:07.980 of a story that happened to me this uh summer i had i was in uh southern california you know promoting

00:51:14.380 my latest book and uh the babylon bee had invited me to their offices in ontario and i i didn't know

00:51:21.740 until i visited that they're actually quite you know christian and they're uh you know in their

00:51:26.860 their outlook and the gentleman who's absolutely lovely who picked me up in in newport beach so

00:51:34.220 it's about an hour and a half drive and then drove me back say again that's quite a haul yeah exactly

00:51:40.780 and as we got back to where my family and i were staying in newport beach he looked to me and looked

00:51:48.220 at me and said do you mind if i just do a prayer for you which kind of took me a bit of back and i said

00:51:54.220 sure so he kind of closes his eyes he puts his hand on my uh my lap and does this beautiful prayer you

00:52:03.020 know all you know god give god sadwa and even though you know i didn't necessarily you know i

00:52:11.260 wouldn't be someone who who would do that i was very very touched by the gesture and so to your point

00:52:17.500 even though you might think that there's no place where we might intersect i thought that that was a

00:52:22.220 truly beautiful spiritual moment that i felt very enriched by so i i hear your point

00:52:29.180 yeah that's what a great story thank you okay last question uh are there any projects even though

00:52:35.420 today we want to promote the project that's about to be released today lady ballers are there any things

00:52:43.020 cooking in the pipeline that you might want to use this opportunity we only have a couple of minutes

00:52:47.020 uh please take it away well of course lady ballers tonight uh this is friday december 1st and we're

00:52:53.660 dropping our first feature comedy this this hilarious look at at men participating in women's sports

00:53:00.140 and we're thrilled about it it's truly a uniquely daily wire project it stars all of the daily wire's

00:53:05.580 hosts it was written by employees of the daily wire you know it's it's it's our most daily wire thing

00:53:10.540 we've ever done it's basically just a 90 minute jeremy's razors commercial but we are also premiering

00:53:15.980 tonight the first teaser trailer the first sneak peek at our first animated series called bertram with

00:53:23.100 adam carolla and that'll be coming in q1 of next year i think people are really going to appreciate it

00:53:28.940 it's it's adam's unique comedic sensibility and his again you just talk about somebody who isn't

00:53:33.980 willing to say things that he doesn't think are true i have a lot of disagreements with adam but i

00:53:37.820 have such respect for the fact that he he owns his positions he's bold about them and he's hilarious

00:53:43.900 you know we're still in hungary i leave in two hours i get on a plane to head back to hungary for

00:53:49.180 the remainder of the year to finish our pin dragon cycle series that's the biggest thing we've ever

00:53:53.420 taken on it's a been an unbelievable undertaking and and certainly the hardest thing that i've ever

00:53:59.340 endeavored to do and looking to the new year you know we we like not to talk about things until we

00:54:05.660 talk about them over here at the daily wire but what i can say is there there are several things

00:54:10.300 coming in 2024 that we're really excited about and and uh you can rest assured that all of them have

00:54:16.860 that sort of unique admixture of of respect for our audience and orneriness that i think sort of defines

00:54:24.380 our company i can't wait to to see that stuff stay on the line so we could say goodbye offline thank you so

00:54:30.380 much you're even more delightful than i thought you would be so thank you for exceeding my my

00:54:35.180 expectations cheers thank you so much jeremy thank you

My Chat with Jeremy Boreing, Co-Founder of The Daily Wire (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_625)

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