Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Ben Shapiro, he's a political commentator, co-founder of the daily wire. An author and a podcaster election years are always chaotic but this one feels particularly spicy. Why is the world at fever pitch and how much is actually going to stop after November expect to learn, if the 2024 election is going to be a typical one. Why Ben hasn't had Donald Trump on his show Ben's experience with childhood.
Bullying. And how it changed him? What been wished more men realized about masculinity. His thoughts on Elon Musk, how to deal with public criticism and much more doesn't matter whether you believe or agree with Ben's politics or not. He is a very non fungible. Human, there are not many people out there like him, and I find him very interesting. I find his background, his personal drive, his work rate, absolutely absurd.
And I think there's an awful lot to take away from today.
But now, ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Ben Shapiro.
Busy time for you. The moment is this more intense than typical election years. How normal is this?
This one is pretty intense, and I'm personally invested in this election Lee. I want Trump to win. Obviously, I've been there very clear. I'm personally campaigning with six, different Senate candidates, like going out and trying to raise money for them and get them publicity. It's a really, really important election. And so I've
I've been taking that pretty seriously plus this is a wild ride. I mean nobody's ever seen an election in which one of the nominees completely drops because he dies on stage and is replaced within 24 hours by a completely different human being, and everybody acts, like that's normal. And then within the space of eight weeks, you have one of the candidates, the subject of two separate assassination attempt. I will say it is kind of weird that Donald Trump has been subjected to more assassination attempts in the past. Eight weeks. Then, Kamala Harris has to one-on-one interviews. I didn't see that one coming, but, you know, it's a wild election season.
Sure, what do you think's driving that? Why is it so wild?
I mean, I think that part of it is, is just the unique circumstances of the candidates and the Democrats, in a normal election cycle, probably wouldn't have nominated you abide in 2020, which meant that they wouldn't have had to deal with a person who is 8,000 years old in 2024 and also Donald Trump is a wild character. I mean, the fact is that he's the first person who has run four non-consecutive terms since Grover Cleveland and he's widely perceived as sort of incumbent figure despite the fact that he
I was out of power for four years and he's on Trump, which means that he's eccentric and he says wild things and you get a lot of internet memes and, and all that's very entertaining. One of the things that's kind of frustrating for those of us who watch politics professionally or who are very in public policy is that there's kind of the bread and circuses aspect of all these elections, then they're the very real policy consequences of who gets elected. And that's a completely different thing that seems to get ignored and all the hubbub, about who performed better in a debate or who is jabbering about eating cats and dogs or any of that sort of
thing. What?
The Arc that you went through from being knocking on Trump 2016, kind of Keenan Trump 2022 now fundraising for me. Yeah yeah I so explain that
to mature. So 2016, I looked at both candidates and I said, both of these people are not fit to be president of the United States. I'm not going to vote for Hillary Clinton. Obviously, I think she's wrong on everything politically. I think that she's corrupt. I'm not voting for her and Donald Trump. Yeah. I had no idea what his policies were going to be. He seemed to take every single side of every single issue. In 2016 was hiepro free Trader.
Anti-free trade. Was he more hawkish on foreign policy or isolationist on foreign policy? Where was he on? Social policy was used or socially liberal, or was he pro-life with? Where was he on anything and nobody kind of new and so, and you combine that with his various sort of eccentricities, and some of the things that he said, which I really radically disapproved of, and I was just like, I'm sitting this election out. I don't like either of these people. Now, I also have the luxury of living in California, where my vote literally counts for nothing. If I've been living in Ohio or swing state, I assumed I would have voted for Trump 2020. I got to see
When I was right about with regard to Trump him, what I was wrong about with regard to Trump, I'd assumed that he was going to govern a lot more liberal than he did. He governed in ways that I thought were we're much better
for my point of view than I thought
they were going to be. Obviously, he appointed, Supreme Court Justices that I liked, I thought that his his middle eastern. Policy was excellent. I thought that his peace through strength. General policy was really good. I liked his tax cuts are a lot of things he did that, I like there were some things I didn't like spending policies, for example, but by 2020. I hadn't changed my mind about Donald Trump in terms of his character. But in
Is of his policy. I changed my mind because, you know, I saw that he had done a lot of things that there's no guarantee he would. Now I'd seen his record and so vote from in 2020 and 2024, I didn't support Trump in the primaries. If I had been voting in the primaries, it didn't actually reach Florida because Trump cleaned up, but I would say that I've been much more likely to vote for Ron DeSantis and in the primaries than Donald Trump became very quickly apparent that Trump was going to be the nominee. And then it was a question of Trump versus Joe Biden. And I think Joe Biden has been a horrific lie, bad.
And so it became clear to me that it wasn't just enough for me to actually vote for Trump or support Trump verbally. That I actually wanted to get involved in the campaign because I think that the consequences of trump losing to either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, now would have been quite disastrous. So what I would say is that my feelings about Trump on sort of a personal level, haven't changed radically on him as a character. They've changed somewhat on him. In terms of the policies that he implemented my opinions about sort of the sanity of the left have changed fairly radically since since 20.
Sixteen. I think that the left has that sort of meme that Elon likes to tweet out where it shows, how he was sort of in the center and then the entire sensor just moved to the left. And so he ended up on the right. I think that that's, that's fairly that's fairly realistic about how far the left is moved.
Why haven't you heard Trump on your show? He's talking to Aiden, Ross. He's talking to Theo Von. If you're one of the poster boys for the ride and you're also doing the campaigning thing. How can that conversation has?
And I'd be happy to have him on? I mean, honestly, I think that it would be a bit of a bias conversation considering that
Supporting him and contributing to his campaign. And one of my job's is a, commentator is also to ask tough questions of particular candidate. Am I the best candidate to do that? I don't
know if I'm the best candidate to do that. What's the tough questions that you would ask him if he could? Um,
you know, I would ask him probably about why he chooses to use the social media influence the way that he does. Why isn't more, why isn't he more dedicated to a solidly focused campaign? Steakley not even stately, but just focused. I mean it just unfocused, it feels
Like he's running after every squirrel in a 300-mile radius during this campaign and and that's a problem for me. If somebody wants to see him win, I'd be asking about that. I'd probably drill down on his Ukraine policy, he and I are better at odds. Over his Ukraine policy at least stated Ukraine pot, it sort of unclear where he is on Ukraine. I'm very much of the opinion that sort of Henry Kissinger, August 2022 opinion that the United States should be supporting Ukraine sufficient to prevent further Russian incursions and sufficient to get Russia to the table and then the United States, should essentially be brokering.
Some sort of deal in the back room directly with Russia and then probably having a crime that down on Ukraine specifically because Vladimir's olenski's interests are not aligned with the interests of the United States in terms of what he's seeking and you got that. I mean as long as he doesn't want to give up the donbas, just want to give up Crimea. You got that and domestically he'd have a hard time doing that given that hundreds of thousands of his own citizens have been killed at the same time. Is that a war that can last interminably without some sort of stasis, in terms of the battle lines? Probably not. And so, but I'm not sure what from things.
About any of those sorts of things, I'd probably be asking about some of the Staffing. I think some of the people that he surrounds himself with, don't do him credit and those sorts of things are things that presumably out asking about. And one of the risks of interviewing President Trump always is that it's how he is going to perceive you as an interviewer and some Megyn Kelly has talked about that. If you are harsh on him as an interviewer, he seems to perceive that adversarially. And if you are not harsh then, and if you're not harsh enough to ask tough questions, then you're really not kind of doing your job.
And so that that's always been sort of a concern. What, and what sort of answers would he be willing to give? Would there be any new information that's added to the debate, other than, you know, a sort of weird feel
in the room without you pushing so hard that you do. Create that weird fell. I mean, we saw this with the most recent debate, right? That if you do throw a few squirrels around that, he's probably quite likely to chase them, one thing that's kind of interesting and I think it tracks with your Arc nicely is, whether or not, we're in a new era of politics where people are more voting against the
Isn't that they hate rather than for the person that they love it seems like so many people are just essentially doing a protest vote. Now,
I mean, I think that's been true for quite a while actually. I think that one of my general theories of politics that people tend to vote against they, very rarely tend to vote for their in a few candidates in my lifetime that people have voted for it said, Barack Obama 2008 was a candidate that you voted for
2012. I think was when it
crossed, I think that's right. So my general Grand unifying theory of American politics, the 2012 broke the country. I think the only important election of our lifetime, perhaps
2012 the one that everybody ignores, because that's when Barack Obama, who had campaigned as great unifier and his own person, he was going to end racial conflict in the United States in 2008. No, red States and blue States, just the United States. No black, no white wall just American. And then by 2012, he had pursued a very left-wing agenda and he decided that he was going to campaign by essentially breaking down Americans into what would now be white dudes for Kamala be black, white, dudes, for Obama, black dudes, for Obama and and a bunch of different kind of constituency groups is gonna pass out goodies to eat,
One of those drive up the turnout in the minority community and among white college-educated women. And then who's going to win? Based on that, it was a different theory of politics. It was the first kind of Base election where nobody tried to reach for the independence. In fact, Romney won with the independence and lost the election and and they were going to portray Mitt Romney legitimately most boring milquetoast candidate in history of American politics. As a person who murders people by way of cancer and straps dogs to the top of his car and forcibly cuts the hair of gay kids in 1952 or something and and Beak and then Obama won.
And I think Obama winning drove everyone insane because the model that Obama applied which was we are going to drive out the base. And that base is so big that we're not going to have to appeal to Independence. We don't have to appeal to rust belt voters, with white non-college educated males are complete afterthought. We're not even going to try to reach out to them or determine what makes them tick or anything like that. And he won on that basis. And Democrats fell into the Trap of thinking that this was replicable with, literally, any candidate and Republicans fell into the Trap of thinking that it was also inevitable. So this led to, to
As in 2016, Hillary Clinton runs on the same Coalition as Obama but she's not Obama so she loses and Trump wins unexpectedly and the conclusion, the Democrats draw from that is that's not possible for her to have lost legitimately because we have an unbreakable unshakeable Coalition like 2012. How could we possibly lose it must have been the Russians or Facebook or something corrupt happened and on the right. It led to the conclusion that Donald Trump is a wizard and that Donald Trump has, has the ability to overcome all of the systemic obstacles that are inherent in American politics. Not.
Normal
candidate, he's out of the box. He's totally different. You can't charge him and that also leads to 2020, right? Were Biden successfully, cobbles together again, the Obama Coalition not because he's any great shakes, but because all the rules change and get this massive uptick in the number of Voters in a normal election cycle. Yeah, maybe four million voters per election cycle in 2020. As opposed to 2016, you had about 22 million new voters. To the election rules, huge expansion of the voting base because while the early voting and kazakova and all that sort of stuff. And so the conclusion that
Straw is, once again, the 2012 Barack Obama Coalition Rides Again and the conclusion Republicans draw is well, Donald Trump is a wizard. So, if he's a wizard Wizards, don't lose, which means that if he says he didn't lose, then he's probably right. You probably didn't lose. He was cheated.
This mythical thinking on both sides is reflected,
exactly. And the actual reality, is that the American Body politic is split pretty much 50/50 that there is no guarantee that you're going to be able to drive out your base in the way you think you are that somebody ought to reach out to the people who are in the middle that 10% of people who are sort of in the middle.
And that really what the American public want more than anything else, is some level of sanity and they keep reaching for it and being denied it by the political class. I think the promise of Joe Biden in 2020, I didn't vote from obviously, I didn't support him. I think he's a schmuck but I think that in 2020, the promise that Joe Biden was inherently, making was I'm dead and I am not going to radically shake things up. It's basically going to be stasis. Things will go back to normal return to normalcy and then it turns out that he was dead, but also he was going to return us to normal, it was just going to be crazy and
And he pursued a bunch of very left-wing policies. Spending policies, terrible foreign policy strange, social policy. And so it was chaos. He was he was dead and there was chaos and that's why I started to lose. And then suddenly Donald Trump starts to look like the candidate of semi stability, right. Donald Trump is because he's been disappeared from Twitter and relegated to the outskirts of social media on Truth social soon. See him, right? He basically is in the Joe Biden 2020, basement strategy and the less you see of Donald Trump the more you're like I don't see him and I like his policies and so I would like his policies back and maybe we won't even get like
Like the super crazy and he was able to basically do that. That was the debate with Biden. Right there made with Biden was Donald Trump stood there. It wasn't like President Trump actually did like an amazing job in the debate with Joe Biden. He was just not crazy, he was just like a normal person in a debate with a senile person. And so that's why you saw Biden's numbers start to tank and then cam will joins the race and Trump really has not yet been able to I think adjust to the change in the opposing candidate and regain that sort of momentum and that sort of focus and that's why again I think that
People's opinions of trump are pretty much baked in, but if what you're saying is Right, which is the people vote against things, then his performance in the debate. Obviously is not good for him because he appeared again, less stable, he appeared less normal and what the American public is craving is just will you like leave us alone. Like, I don't want to think about this 24 hours a day.
What do you think happens? If Trump loses to the Republican candidate for
2028? If he runs again, which presumably he will because he's
you think that he would go?
How old would you be done
once he 78 now. So he be coming up on 82. I have a hard time believing that that Trump will go into the the darkness quietly. So I think that if he if he loses in this election then he will probably Proclaim that he did not lose when she's done before. And yeah I think it's unlikely that the Republican voters that conservative voters are going to turn to him a fourth time. I think that the three times is enough and you know, again, I hope he wins, I want him to win, if he loses.
I think that Republicans are going to say who is best poised to beat a Democrat this. By the way, was the mistake in the DeSantis campaign. I think that this answers was always going to lose in the primaries because Trump is magnetic figure because he's kind of a generational figure. But if two Santa's had a hope of winning it, had to lie in very early on like right after November 20, 22 saying Donald Trump cannot win. I can win, he lost in 2020, he lost a seats in 2022. If you nominate me, I'll win. And the one thing he didn't want to do, I think was tick off a lot of the
in base, which believe that Trump in one in
2020. You've got tribalism within the
tribe. Yeah, it was kind of a catch-22 for two Santa's. If you had said Trump lost in 2020, half the base, which believes that Trump won in 2020 is angry at him. And if he doesn't say the Trump lost and what's the rationale for being
on the stage? Yeah, one of my friends tweeted today, on the back of that voting against the thing you hate leftism, begins his compassion for the poor, but ends his contempt for the prosperous writers and begins his respect for the past but ends, as revulsion, for the present, each side grows to load the others values more than it prize has its own politics.
Was love and defecates hate. It is funny that it seems to be such a warping Force politics that people want things to go badly for everyone when their opponents are in power to this sort of weird, sort of Zero Sum type scenario. That is self-defeating in a lot of ways.
But I think that's only true because the social fabric of the United States has failed. Meaning you don't feel that way about your own local community, you don't feel that way about your family and your own family. Even if you're having fights with somebody disagrees somebody in your family, you don't wish the worst for them. You don't wish the people in your family will suffer so that they learn the lesson like you want things.
Has to be good. Generally speaking for the family or for your local community, it's when you don't have social solidarity with somebody that you're like, these people need to fail so I can succeed. And, and I think that it speaks to a much greater crisis in the American Body, politic, which is to say, much greater crisis in the American Heart. Which is what do we even share anymore, right? There's been a lot of talk about this. What do people from California and Florida, share or New York and Texas? And I think the answer is that at a very high level, they used to share a lot of things. And I think they still do share a lot of things, but politics has become. So,
And I think social media is a part of this, and the federal government has gained so much power that, you know, it's easy to see that
polarized. Voting rights during is now built into the
system. Yeah. And the more, you elevate power to the top level, it has to be built into the system. Because if you didn't feel like the federal government was, all that powerful. Rick Perry, who obviously not a very unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2012. Rick Perry had what I thought was the best line about government in presidential race. He said, I want to make Washington, d.c. insignificant your life. We wouldn't that be delightful? It would be super nice.
I said this to people who are my kind of left wing friends like you know, wouldn't it be nice if you know Donald Trump's president you don't have to wake up every day. Caring what Donald Trump thinks about things because the federal government just doesn't have that much control over your life and you want to live in San Francisco and you want to be governed like you live in San Francisco, you know? Have at it, that's your problem. And if I don't want to live there just to live there, but I think because the federal government has sucked so much control up to the top. Level government is essentially a meat hammer, and it just hammers, everything to the same level. And so you can do that and more successfully
It's a very small community with a lot of social Fabric and a lot of homogeneity in terms of viewpoint, right. Again my local community. I live in Orthodox, Jewish Community. I'd say the people in my community tend to agree 85% of the time. You know, take my community and you contrast that with like an upper-class liberal Enclave in in San Jose or something. And the disagreement is going to look more like, you know, we agree 25% of time thirty percent of the time. How
much do you think that the Country Wide agreement? That was maybe part of the
American Dream throughout the 1900s, how much of that was actual Baseline and how much of that was a perversion from what it truly is, which is now what we're seeing again, something that was broken off in two parts. Then came together briefly, we have this sense of unity which is, which is real, and which is
Fabrics. I think the system has changed. So I think that the social fabric of people, you know, from New York versus people from Alabama, obviously was incredibly broken. I mean, I like the idea that people in New York and Alabama, agreed about things in 1950s, obviously untrue.
Obviously, on issues of race, right? Because people in New York were correct and the people in Alabama were wrong. I mean, so that, so that obviously happens to be, I mean, we fought a Civil War in this country. However, one of the things that used to be sort of an insurance and a bulwark against that was the subsidiarity model that I'm talking about. You can see why the subsidiary model broke down because people in New York, said you're not allowed to treat black people like that in Alabama, we need a big Federal power to come in and stop that and that's a good moral argument. The problem is that it's an argument that can prove too much if applied to everything.
It applies to raise for sure, right. Black citizens of Alabama should not be treated horribly and putting Jim Crow conditions, but it doesn't apply to say social values. Like, how I want to live with my religious community. What the tax policy should be a? Why do I do it? If I don't have to agree on that, why do we have to agree on what social services look like in my local community versus yours? And I think the sort of broad National model being applied to very local circumstances exacerbates division in a really divisive way. Again the the solution to the social fabric problem between people
In different parts of the country and have different values is not to get everybody in a room and pretend that they all agree. The answer is actually probably to leave people alone, so they don't have to deal with each other as much. Yeah, that's funny.
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That's function, health.com / modern wisdom. Eric Weinstein said he doesn't know if the rules-based international order will allow Trump to become president. What do you think of that? I mean, I'm
always sort of skeptical of you know, what couldn't let, what that means, what that order means, I like more specificity in those sorts of allegations. Like who are these people? So we can fight them.
Em. I don't like sort of vague shadowy forces that are systemic racism, right? They like what were you doing? What do you mean, the, the rules-based international order who specifically are we talking about? That is going to inhale and what's in a mountain is about
control. I really appreciate the fact that you seem to very rarely lean into conspiracies. Mm, it seems that a lot of the explanations that you give for why things are happening are out there in front in some form or another, that sort of tangible. I can touch them. It's not this sort of up there in The Ether and yet
That has become very much a signature of some areas of the right as well, for sure, for sure.
And it's something again, I think that that leads to a breakdown in politics, because if you believe that there are these, they conspiratorial forces that are at the center of all things, and then you lose well, then you can't really accept the loss. And if you win, you have to use your power in order to crush those vacant Spirit or evil forces that you can't actually describe her name. And so politics becomes a little bit of blood sport at that point again. I'm not saying there aren't conspiracies, but I'd like to see some evidence of them so that we
can all identify them together and then fight them. So, for example, I think that it's not a conspiracy so much as it is, a large-scale agreement among Legacy members of the media on politics. That happens to be a truth. They the, the Legacy Media agree in very wide scale on politics to, they get together in about Rebecca. Romijn deciding are of know that you start mirroring each other like you would in a social club because that's actually how it works. Is that something that needs to be fought in terms of the informational? Dissemination sure. Is it a conspiracy when the algorithms are set at Facebook or YouTube or old acts before?
On. Is that a conspiracy? When they set these things? Certain ways it's not a conspiracy. It's someone who actually, it's like Jack Dorsey who's actually pulling a lever in saying you shouldn't do this. And I can fight that because I know that Jack Dorsey is pulling the lever. What I don't like is stuff like the rules-based international order is going to stop Donald Trump from being present because I don't know what I'm supposed to fight at that point. How do I stop that from happening and isn't that in an unverifiable hypothesis that you would
now be the purposeful byproduct of such an order like that? The
That it's very difficult to Define and we're going to stay in the shadows, it's sort of endemic to they're very mode of
operation. Sure. I mean that that that's that's the counter-argument. But again my problem is it's unfalsifiable so once you put positive a hypothesis that's unfalsifiable. It makes it very, very difficult for me to either fight it or to or to disagree with you because you can always move into it's a mountain Bailey. Are you just move right back into the next level of the conspiracy? So instead of me saying so for example, 2020 election I've said I think that there were people who
Informally rigged the election in the sense that the media totally agreed. The Donald Trump should not be president. They decided to promote certain narratives to deny certain other narratives to, for example, push with members of the government to hide the hunter, by the laptop story. Like, they're obviously factors change, the voting rules and those are all very specific things. I'm naming right now. Right, that the media social media downplayed a story, can we know what that is and we can have Congressional hearings about it that there that there were changes to the rules in places like Pennsylvania. We know exactly what that is and we can try to win back the legislature.
To actually change the voting rules in Pennsylvania to, to prevent that sort of stuff. These are specific things. What I don't like is when people will say the election was rigged and what they mean is that there was massive voter fraud.
I'll say, okay, we
coordination right? Exactly like the people couldn't bring in boxes and then you'll say, okay, well I need the evidence that people are bringing boxes, say what? But that's the whole point, the evidence doesn't exist. Okay. Well, now we're arguing with shadows. Maybe you're right, I mean, you could be right, I have no evidence that you're right. But I also have no evidence that that you're wrong. So I mean, how am I supposed to even adjudicate
what to do?
Max. So do you sort of purposefully avoid the Deep State coordination conspiracy thing? And just, that's an area that I'm not going to bother debating. That's maybe some other people can try and work. That's
not usually. What I do is, I wait for the evidence to emerge. So sometimes it feels like I'm late on the ball because of that, right, that we live in an in such a fast-paced media environment, that there's a weird math that applies in political media. And the math is that if I jump first 100 times and I'm wrong 98 of those times, but two of those times, I'm right. I'm now credible Source if I'm the second person on the ball.
Because I'm waiting to see the evidence emerged for this thing and I'm right like 98 times but I'm wrong to X then I'm no longer trustworthy better to be first and wrong 98% of the time but write those two because now your profit. Yeah. Right now, you know, now you got tonight. Exactly. Now you got to say that Alex Jones, The Prophet because of all the weird and crazy things that he says like two times, he was like right on it. Like wow, that's amazing. Okay. Well, that that also used to just be called the scam, okay? Like when does that seduction come from.
The necessity for immediate answers, social media has made it so that you want like answers, right? And people, always wanted answers but now you feel like you have the mechanism of getting an answer right away and you get frustrated, if people don't give you an answer right away,
something that for an immediate wrong answer than Adelaide correct
one, especially if it back your priors write it, if the immediate answer that comes back at you, is what you wanted to hear which is that your candidate of choice, whether right or left is a football plays on both sides, that your candidate of choice, definitely didn't lose. They actually want, and they were job doubt of it.
And your outrage, you didn't want your candles, you're really pissed that your candidate lost and then, you know, you have a choice between somebody who says, absolutely, he was jobs out of it. There are people who are coming in the middle of the night and they were bringing boxes of ballots, they were shoving them through the machines, and he actually won and it's all being rigged and the red and the Red Wave was real, but then it was jobs out like, that's a much more interesting and seductive answer than me saying, you know what? I'm perfectly willing to hear the case. I need to see the actual evidence flowing and then as it comes in, and if you can prove that to me and I'm perfectly willing to have you make that argument
Meant but I don't have the evidence to this point. Actually to actually say that I want is it was a sexy or answer and even if it turns out being wrong there's no punishment for it. Hmm. Because either you don't acknowledge that you were wrong, you just keep playing the game. Remember for years later and depending on the and it's a wide variety of conspiracy theories. I feel the same way about Cove it. Okay, I tried to wait for data to emerge, that meant that I got some things wrong. Then there were people who jumped one way or another. Okay. There are some people jump to, we need to lock down permanently, and then we'll just do that for three years. And there were some people who jump to vaccines will immediately be bad. They will
Terrible and we don't need to do anything about color which is basically
just let it free free free
flow through the population. Well, turns out, the second was probably closer to the truth in many circumstances but I didn't have the evidence of any of that sort of stuff. So I had to wait for those things. And what that means that sometimes I will have to apologize on the air for having gotten it wrong because I waited for the data and I made a judgment in the absence of data that I then have to walk back because the data have arrived, right? Most famously has happened with me with regard to the vaccine. So in late, 2025 tsar, and the federal government,
Donald Trump announced that the vaccines were 99% effective in preventing transmission, not that transmission, right? And the case that I made at that point was listen, I'm healthy. I'm young, I don't really need it, but I have parents, my parents, when their 60s and they were basically bubbled with us. We were in a bubble did that time. But, you know, we're out and about and if I can prevent my parents, we gotta get by getting the vaccine final get the vaccine. And so I said that, right? I said, like a lot of the talk about how the vaccines are ineffective. I don't know what data you're basing that on, and then it turns out that Pfizer was basically lying that they had that they had no actual data on transmission and there were
Claims in the absence of the data. Well, when that happens, then I have to come out and have to say, I was too credulous, but the counter to that, you know, the other sort of possibility is people who are so skeptical of everything or selectively skeptical that you know, it's unclear when they're right and when they're wrong and what I would hope is to live in a media environment where when I'm wrong I admit that I got it wrong. And when other people are wrong, they admit that they got it wrong. But that's not the environment we
live in. Yeah, it's one of my least favorite dynamics that somebody publicly changing their mind is seen as a mark of
Fickleness, not a market intelligence that like, I don't know. It seems to me that stupid person's idea of being smart is being unwavering, but that in my experience doesn't seem to be together. It's
one thing to be unwavering on your principles is another thing to be unwavering on the data, right? Sometimes the data just change, right? Like there's new data or it turns out the old data whenever based on anything. And at that point if the data changed then my opinion on the policy changes. If it turns out that the policy that I've been promoting for something a giant failure, I mean by the no good business, would operate on this.
Right, it's my business. We're pouring money down a rat hole and just kept pouring money down a rat hole no matter what because, you know, got to make sure they're consistent on this. Then we'd lose and doesn't that's not in no other area of your life. Do you act like this? When it comes to politics, then you're supposed to be unwaveringly in favor of the original position that you took, regardless of the data that emerges about that position, you enjoy family window with friends. You wouldn't do it with your business.
It's like a show of fealty, or whatever, sort of loyalty to your own side and you're seen as an unreliable Ally. If you're somebody that does change their mind in retrospect, which I really don't like, but
Talking about the seduction of coordination as an explanation for Stuff, two attempts on Trump's life within the space of eight weeks. Some people are laid that at the feet of the deep State doesn't want him to become president because they can't allow because he's gonna drain the swamp and blah blah. Blah. There are a myriad of others. How should we even come to sort of think about this election? And Trump's place in it, like, what does it mean that the media has forgotten the first assassination? So much that we needed a second one to remind them. Right? I think that a few
things are very clear. One is your
About sort of the contents of the assassination. And what is the media response to the assassination? From comes to the media response, the perfectly consistent, they tried to memory hole, the first assassination as fast as they possibly could. And they will try to memory this whole this assassination, as fast as they possibly can, because to acknowledge the reality, which is that the radical increase in political temperature is not a one-sided thing. On the part of Donald Trump, that the left has radically increased the temperature in terms of political rhetoric and that when you keep turning up the heat on a pot of water, at boils over sometimes and that
Maybe you want to turn that down a little bit, that would be to acknowledge that, there are two sides to the political debate. And that's the thing that they can't really acknowledge, I think. And so, the media have immediately reverted to. Well, you know, Trump is saying that it's about violent rhetoric, but look at the violent rhetoric. He uses? Okay, well, that, that is like true, what about is? Mmm, fine. Let's assume that you, that I don't like some of the rhetoric that Trump uses about about politics. Fine. But let's be real, the rhetoric that you guys are using in, which he is orange Hitler without the mustache. And which he is a deep and abiding, Frets the soul of the country that the people who are voting
For him are a threat to the very Fabric and soul of the country. Like, is it, if you believe that he is a singular, hilarion figure. And you haven't have a screw loose, I mean, what might there not be some people in a country of 320 million people who'd want to take a shot at the president of the United States from president of the United States? It seems like the answer is yes. As far as you know, who's responsible for the assassinations again. This is one where it's like. I'm going to wait to see, I think that in almost all human areas. So it's kind of funny that there's a lot of conservatives
Who seem to operate for or Republicans who operate from premises that I think are not particularly conservative when it comes to human nature. So a couple of things about human nature that are typically associated with conservatism concerned, human beings are inherently flawed. They have the capacity for good. They also have the capacity for bad and people kind of dumb are like, these are like kind of Baseline biblical Notions of what human beings are, right. Go back to Adam, not super bright, makes mistakes, hasn't bad inclinations follows up on the bad inclinations. Also can do some good things, right? Like that and this is carried through.
The
founders. If you read Federalist 51, James Madison is talking about if the Angels were, if human beings were Angels. No government would be necessary if human beings were devils and no government would be capable. Yeah. Like that kind of shaded view of humanity, leads to my politics and a lot of these situations. And so what that means is I look at the Secret Service and I'm like, is it a conspiracy or are they? Like, which assumes by the way deep competence or are people just really really incompetent? And they said place a bunch of really bad rules that lead to the elevation of incompetence.
Which seems to be the truth about like a huge wide variety of institutions in American life and in Western life generally well and then you have the opposite view which is in the back room, there are bunch of people who are overconfident and they are scheming to try an assassination attempt where they somehow rope a, not particularly good shot, 20 year old, who can't hit a target from a very close distance. I mean, that the original assassination attempt the fact that he missed Trump is, is a miracle of God. Truly like God's hand came down, like, redirected that bullet because there is no way you must that job. That is
And he had a scope on a rifle. Like, there's no way you missed that shot, he is
extremely close with it with the long gun
and so but the I guess sort of conspiratorial viewpoint would be that the Secret Service coordinated with the local police in order to allow a twenty-year-old incompetent to get up on a roof and then take a shot at the president of the United States, but he was such a bad shot in such a nut that he missed with multiple shots.
Or everyone stupid. I mean it like Occam's razor suggest that everyone is bad at their job and stupid and the same thing holds true with the second assassination attempt, right? When it comes to the second assassination attempt. What we know is that this guy was a nut job, he happened to be a left wing nut job, but he's a nut job. And then who's hiding out in a tree outside of Trumps property for something like 12 hours. And the Secret Service didn't have the proper Staffing to walk around the exterior of the of the golf club. And they saw
Um, they took a shot at him, he ran away. So is that a, is that a conspiracy to kill Trump? First of all, you have to assume Uber competence in planning, the conspiracy and Uber incompetence in carrying it out, right, in order for this to be a deep state conspiracy. Now, if you want to make the case that there are people inside the Deep State, who would prefer that Trump not have the proper levels of protection. I think that's a much easier case to make because people have said that sort of stuff pretty publicly. I mean, you had a full here and like, Democrats tried to bring up a bill to strip down and Trump of the Secret Service protection and Benny represent. Ben Johnson, I think what
Name of the guy who actually tried to do that. So that's that that wouldn't be like super shocking to me. But again those are cases that are easier to support then the broad claims and you know I'm trained to drill down on Broad claims. When people say a sentence like the Deep State wants Trump dead, okay? There's so many there's so many elements of that that I need broken down definitionally, what is the Deep State who in the Deep State? What which agencies, what's the mechanism? How did they make the selection for this particular plan? And again, I'm not asking for each.
One of those things to be checked in order for me to grow increasingly suspicious about the thing but the plausibility of the claim is directly related to the plausibility of each individual elements in the claim. Right? Like for example, people on the left were considering a conspiracy theory that the Wuhan virus was developed by the in the womb and Institute of Neurology, right? And that was like, that's not a conspiracy theory. Every single element of that is incredibly plausible. You have as John Stewart suggested you have an Institute that does virology, the only one in all of this area and literally,
Viruses and then mutates them so that they are applicable to humans and then magically that's exactly where the virus starts like, okay, that's pretty plausible, as a pretty specific Claim about a very specific thing happening at a specific time and place but any time people kind of lay out these broad charges. I just want to know what they mean. So I can either say whether I think it's true or whether it's not and I try to be super consistent out, the application of the principle, it's all said the same thing that I'm saying right now about the conspiracy theories with regard to Trump's the assassination attempts on Trump that I'll say about systemic racism. People will say, systemic racism is
To blame for the, for the disparities between various groups in the United States, as I need you to find systemic racism, What specifically are you talking about that led to? And which disparities are we talking about right now are those best explain? What percentage is explained by a history of discrimination in the United States? Well, let's get specific because it turns out that again, when it comes to your own personal life, no one handles politics. Like they handle the personal life, and it would be much better off if they did. If your wife came to you and she said,
We have a problem. The first thing you would say is what's the problem? And then if she said now, the problem is really big. It's really, really big and its really systemic, but okay, can we like delve into what? No, no. Because that would be to Grant credibility to the people who are forming the public. I need to know what the problem is. I can solve it if you're in the business of politics solving problems, I think maybe this is the key. If you're in the business of politics being about solving problems, you want details, and you want to be able to address those details in a way that lends itself to solving the problem if
Is just about beating up the other guy. Yes. Then it's then you really don't want to solve the problem.
Yeah, 11 is providing Solutions and the other is identifying problems. There is a problem over here
100%. And so this is what will happen with, you know, other people in sort of the conservative side of the aisle. I'll say at said this about even Alex, Jones, or Tucker Carlson like they're a bunch of people who I think identify problems. Sometimes pretty well and then the solutions that they provide are completely wrong in my view because I don't think there are any solutions that are provided. I think that the the generalized solution is because the
our guy is me and wants the worst for you. That's not a solution that's an epithet. And it does that get you to where you're trying to go? I've said the same thing about and rotate, right? And rotate will make a bunch of claims about how men are victimized by the society. And and how feminism has been terrible for men and I'll look at the critique and I'll say like I think maybe 70% of that critique is pretty good. And then I'll look at his solution will be these aren't Solutions. These are mainly just complaints and every time somebody mentions the solution, he's very dismissive of the solutions and so maybe you're not in the business.
Solving the problem in which case you're misleading people because I thought that the goal of this entire Enterprise was to make life better for
people. I wonder whether that plays back into the desire to vote against the organization, or the other side that you dislike as opposed to love for your own side. Because as long as you can continue to identify problems as opposed to posit Solutions, what you get to do is while I mean, we don't really know how we should move forward, but at least one of those guys, yes, like that's the real, those are the real issue. I
mean, I think that's true and
It wasn't, I think a lot of politics is about, you're saying no to the person saying, the wrong thing, right? I mean, like there's William F Buckley, famous line. That conservatism is about standing up for Thrills of History, shouting stop. I think about more than that but his basic premise is that if Kamala Harris wants to stack the Supreme Court and your opposing stacking, the Supreme Court, you don't have to have like an active agenda against that. You do have to stop her from getting elected in order to, in order to do that and opposition ality is I think in some sense, good for civilizations. I think that the United States was more ideologically, solid when posited against this
The union than it has been in the post-soviet era, because it had a contrast to show itself, right? It could people in New York and people in Alabama. We don't disagree. We don't agree about a lot of things. One thing we disagree on. One thing. We totally ran those fucking commies man. We are not going to be like that. Like I think that I think that that is not terrible for society. The problem is when you start applying it to people inside your own country predominantly or inside your own civilization, then you got a problem. And again, I'll I've been criticizing someone the right here, but that I'll lay predominantly at the feet of the left, because I do think that the left in the United
States, particularly has undermined a lot of values that were pretty widely shared and has attempted to portray the right as the enemy of this. A lot of the rhetoric about Trump that he's the enemy of the soul of America. That he's destroying America from within. It seems to me that if I were to put together a list of the top, ten threats to the United States, you know, I think that the, the the idea that Kamala Harris, like, the top threat to the United States, like in the top 10, I think her policies are bad for the United States. That's not quite the same thing as an existential threat.
To the United States in the near term. I think her ideology of Applied over the long term would be horrible for the United States, truly horrible, for the United States. But if I'm thinking of like, do I have more in common with say, Kamala Harris or Isis, right? We're even Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. Like I don't share a lot with Kamala Harris, but I feel like I have more in common with with, with my Democrat, Democrats on their side of the aisle than I do with some
of those folks. Yeah, this is why I think people lay at the feet of foreign actors. The
Stern, anti-western ISM that well, if you wanted to really get a cone a country, or an entire hemisphere of the planet to fracture itself, you would hide away what you're doing as a foreign State actor and you would infiltrate with in there. But again, to your sort of a rubrics of being able to be accurate, that's quite unfalsifiable, that's very woolly. That's very difficult to
work. And again I think there are there are actual symptoms of that, right? I mean Tick Tock is a Chinese algorithm and so I think elevation of particular messages on tick tock
It's pretty traceable to particular moves that Chinese government is making in elevating particular messages. For example, right? Again, specific problem with a specific solution that was actually attempted by the republicans in Congress recently which was to dissociate Tick-Tock from its Chinese ownership. For the said CCP didn't have a window into it or control over the algorithm. You can see that with regard to allegations that the Iranians have been paying members of protest communities in and universities rather than actual problem with an actual solution. But yes, I mean, I think that again,
then the social institutions that used to hold us together have broken down and in the absence of both, the social institutions that held us together and an opposition that holds you together from the outside. I think of think of it as sort of what Global opposition does it hold you as a civilization together. It does. I mean, it's just what it does. And to take an example of Israel, Israel is like fighting each other until the judicial reform, and then they get attacked by Hamas and also super high levels of social solidarity, because like activate, right? Or we all live in the same country without 911.
All right, after 9/11 for like half a second, the United States. Like okay guys, we can see there's an external threat. It's very real mobilize. And then when the threat seems to go away, then people tend to turn on each other. If they don't have their own kind of spaces in which to operate
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Can we talk about your time in school? You sure. Yeah. I am pretty fascinated by this. What do you think? Looking back, skipping grades started Social Challenges. How do you reflect on that time? What are the main lessons that you took away from your period,
in school? I said there are a few different versions. So when I was so my family became Orthodox, when I was 11, which means that I wasn't really part of any Clique in school. I was kind of in and out.
Out of different schools. Went public school then was private school and was public school. Again, then I went private school and so I didn't really have kind of a social sphere that was very stable. In terms of friend groups. I was also two years younger by the time I finished high school. Then everybody else which is not conducive to either situations with girls or to, or to close friendships with other dudes, in your class when you're two years younger, a lot shorter, a lot for a. And, and, you know, smarter than some of the other kids in the class. That's not like, recipe for social select ability. Yeah, yeah, exactly. A stuffed in a Few Lockers is a thing that happens.
And so there are a few, they're kind of two key lessons that I learned sort of, from my schooling. Experience, one was pretty early. I was going in to see what have been seventh grade at a magnet schools, local, public, magnet school, and they had to give you some sort of, as, basically, a rudimentary IQ test to get in. And so people who, you know, scored above a certain threshold, which is very high threshold, would get in. I made it in. I didn't make him by like 20 points. Their kids in my class who did there was their kids in my class with IQs 180, 190.
And, and I remember sitting in class and saying my dad, like some of these kids are really, really smart. I mean, there's a girl in our class, its seventh grade. She was doing, like, senior-level calculus, and from college. And my dad said, well, success is a combination of inherent ability and effort and so you're going to have to outwork them, right? He said you're, you're probably rarely going to be the single smartest person in the room. A lot of rooms and smart people. And for sure on any given topic, there's going to be somebody who knows more than you do in a room of 100 people. And so the best thing that you can do
Is work really, really hard and assume you're not the smartest person in the room. And that was really good advice. And I've taken that very seriously. It's why I take, you know, it's why I take other people's opinion seriously. If they have knowledge on a topic, I think there's a sort of now earned hatred of the experts because the experts have failed on so many occasions. But I don't think that the answer to that is to, I think the answer that is better experts. I don't think the answer to that is
just knowing nothing and then just like, okay, well
now I'm an expert like Twitter expertise, right? I became an expert on the situation in Singapore today because
I read like three sentences on Wiki. So that was one. The other one was that, you know, when you take a lot of crap, you either tend to basically learn to tell people to fuck off or you end up tending to Cave underneath it. And so I have a very weird perspective on bullying, as somebody who's
viciously bullied when I was in school, like really badly
bullied which is I'm not sure that. It's like the worst thing for all kids and not that, I'm pro bowling, no kid deserves to be bullied. It was a terrible experience. I hated it. Did it damage me? I think, in some ways it made me,
A lot tougher because like okay well that's what life is going to be. The life is going to be a lot of people who very often don't like you and they're going to do mean things to you. And you can either just kind of deal with it and try to find a solve for it and whether it or you can cave underneath that and success is the best form of Revenge. Basically. And and so that was something that I sort of cultivated in my in my high school years when you
talk about experiences with bullying being pretty rough. What do you mean? What do you
wrong? I mean so there was a overnight with with other members of the class where
I was hit with belts. There is a, there is a, you know, a lot of situations where I was physically hit like that, that kind of stuff wasn't super rare and and I'm not talking about like a big public school. This is actually like a Jewish Day School, but again, no matter what you kids are kids. And honestly, like, I know a lot of people who did this now, and they're adults, and I've never mentioned a name, is publicly known what? I, because it turns out that 16 17 year-olds are real dumb and they do dumb stuff. And and so, you know, I give them credit
For becoming better human beings now. And, you know, that's that that is what it that is. What it's kids are going to be kids no matter where you go and particularly young males are going to do aggressive and bad
things to each other. That's one of the oddest whole shoes that I've come back around to. So I was quite badly bullied at school as well. And to realize that Not only was this thing that at the time you really didn't enjoy. And then for a period used kind of at the mercy of and you've compensated in many ways and it's changed the person that you are but then
Then you end up on the other side of it, being somebody that you're very proud of and then you start to think we'll hang on a second maybe without those things. I wouldn't have become this thing but then you also should does that
mean I should be thankful for it. Well maybe not
thankful but grateful but then does that disempowered, the work that I did to alkalize the thing. Something
bad happened to me and I made it into
something good. So I should be thankful. You know, maybe I should be proud and it's a very messy each or lineage. Have you have you managed to undo this gordian
knot? I mean, I think that
All I can control the things I can control, what I would if I could wreak on it and go back in time, would I have preferred to have not been bullied? Sure. Because, and what I have kids who are now, you know, ten eight, foreign ones. I want them bullied in school. Of course, I don't want them bullied in school. However, do I want them to experience enough adversity that it toughens them. Yes. And whether that comes from other human beings or where that comes from, just life itself. I mean, there's a lot of adversity in life. If you're not prepped for that, you are going to collapse under the weight of it. And so if you don't have adversity your life, thank God. You should find adversity and
By that, I don't mean. You know, people are going to treat you
horribly. Start a fight in the street. Yeah, exactly. I but I, but I do
mean like if you're 15 years old, 16 years old, and you have like a really great life. Go work for a living like a go-go for summer and get a job at McDonald's and get bossed around like do things that you don't like to do and and find the qualities. In yourself that you feel like need to be cultivating, put yourself in a situation where you're forced to cultivate those values. I mean, whenever I talk to, you know, people who have done much more and I have served in the military, for example, this it, they say the same thing they said they'll go in and very many of them are confused about what they're doing with their life and they come out and they just
feel more empowered like they're ready to take on life and attack life because they've actually been faced with forced adversity things that they didn't actually want to do and hated in the moment. And I feel like that's true of so many things, I mean, it's true in relationships and his for an exercise. I think it's true in everything. Like if you're not, if you're not pushing yourself and working to better yourself again like you wish that you could draw without the pain. But I don't necessarily think that that's the case. I think that you require that in order to grow as a human
being
Do you or did
you have a chip on your shoulder about those experiences? Yeah,
absolutely. Yeah. 100% and how long
did it take for that? There's a part of me that thinks about the Alchemy of, taking something bad, which happened to you and turning into something, which you then benefit from solely as beautiful. But then there's also a bit word. I don't want to be driven by that. Toxic fuel for the rest of my life. It is nothing kind of sadder than the person who's
55 years old, who still hasn't been able to let go of what those bullies did to them in school. So, can you talk about that? Sort of
sure. I mean, process of honestly, I think this is where the Natural Life transition from being a single man. Being a married, man, actually makes a huge difference so it carry a chip on your shoulder because you're just a dude in a rough world. And then you get married and you start a family. And so you need to be more than just a dude. In a rough world, you're not protector your provider people rely on you and your loved, right? You have a you have a structure around you that provides you
some of for when you are the thing that you never had in school which was somebody else?
I was standing up for you that was supporting you through thick and thin, no matter. What is now, what your nuclear family is? Exactly. And I
think that, you know, listen, I'm lucky. I have a great at my parents are awesome and they're always incredibly supportive and we live a mile from them. And, you know, we've always lived in Mal from them, you know, our entire marriage, and that's great. And my wife's parents live mile away like what we're surrounded by family, and that's something that we built up and have deliberately done. And that, that's, that's wonderful. But I do think that it's one of the reasons why sort of prolonged singlehood for both men and women is a problem because you get stuck in
Like stage, you don't have to but a lot of people do where you're a single man, you didn't have a great high school or college experience and now you have a chip on your shoulder and that ship just gets bigger and and it doesn't really change it because the mission is about you right at that point. Your mission is you right? You're looking at you and you're saying, okay, I was bullied. What can I do to avoid being bullied again? What can I do to become the dominant person in the room and some of that's good but that's designed. So then you can be dominant on behalf of something else and that's when the mission changes because when you're trying to dominate on behalf of yourself, then,
There's no end to that, there's always another Hill to climb, but when it's, I need to dominate on behalf of my family. Make sure my family is safe every day. You do that, you're a success. There's no there's no point you reach in sort of single life where it's like now I am the dominant one because you're not there's always another person who's been more dominant than you. But your own hierarchy is the hierarchy of you. Your wife, your kids. When you're at the top of the hierarchy, right? No place to go from there. Right? We are not picking up a second wife or a second family. I hope so. You know that that's kind of you've. Now reached the Apex of your
Dominance hierarchy to use kind of Jordan Pederson language. Yeah,
even if you have integrated or transcended and included in will bury and language, what happened sort of in school? Are there any ways that you see, why you compensate or present now with your kind of the progeny of those experiences? I see a in some ways, a sort of a sternness and a sharp Outer Edge. It's very difficult
and for that has something to do that for sure. I mean, like, with my kids, I'm not like this at. All right. With my wife and I like this, like the thing that people are generally surprised by
Personal interactions that I'm a nice person because the thing that you cultivate is the very like you know don't fuck with me and and so I'm sure that some of that comes from bad High School experiences or bad College experiences or whatever. Does I think the other thing that that you cultivate is a very self-effacing sense of humor because one things you learn when you're bullied, is to make jokes about Kyle take yourself too seriously. Exactly. So what you end up doing is like I'll make, I many people know those into the show. I make jokes about my physique all the time, right? Like I'll be reading them on an ad for
For vitamins, or for protein drinks on my toes. Exactly. And I'll be like, you know what, this chiseled physique, you know, like, there's like a like a, like a Greek. God beneath this shirt lies in a 12-pack and all that that kind of stuff and everything, you know, it's all facing in the truth is, I'm in pretty good shape, right? Me. Like, I've been working out the personal trainer, since 2013, you know, I'm I / my athletic performance is pretty good, not you. I was gonna wear a T-shirt and like have a competition, hear anything? Because no, man, that was something we. Can we turn
the heating up a little? Please will make then take off that jacket that
Good. Yeah, what one can do that? But, you know, like that those kind of self-effacing jokes about that or about my height, or about that sort of stuff that you cultivate as a protective mechanism. When you're in high school for sure. I'll make the joke before somebody else. Makes it ends up, being it ends up being
sort of a degree of humbleness. But again, if it comes from a place of desperation, especially as you get a little bit older, it actually ends up being insincere in another way, right? You know,
I think it did change. I think the when I was like 22, when I was making, those kind of jokes, is probably coming from insecurity. Yep. Not very secure. So now I just find it funny.
What's your advice for people who don't feel like they fit in as a person who perennially maybe didn't for a
while? I think it's very often good. Not to fit in again. I think that it cultivates your sense of individuality and your sense that you got to push through. I mean, and this is true in weirdly, like, nearly every aspect of my life. So when I am a sports fan, I'm particularly big baseball fan, I grew up in Chicago, White Sox, and in Los Angeles because my dad was from Chicago. So, I picked up all his allegiances, and so I never went to a baseball game.
Pretty much my entire childhood. Maybe a couple licks of exceptions where I was rooting for the home team. I was always visiting for the rooting. For the visiting team, I'm an orthodox Jew in a society that is largely not Jewish. If you're always the visiting team, then it does force you to sort of Define yourself. And I think that that's, that's not a bad thing. I think that's that's sort of a good thing, I think when you feel part of it's good to feel part of a thing, but it's also good to sometimes, stand, aside from the thing and, and, you know,
see the
Aaron contrast. Did you ever struggle? I'll have you ever struggled to feel like you're a part of a thing, you know, you have this organization below, you know, with some ungodly number of staff that work for you. You have peers and colleagues that are sort of at your level as well. But at least in my experience, there is a in my last gracious moments. There is a tendency to always see myself on the outside. Observing things happen over there, that social stuff is this thing and I'm aware that family life may be a little bit different, but when it comes to the sort of
More of the social World side. Does that ever do have a sort of see that creep up inside of you a little watching?
Yes. I think particularly in the business fear, I think that when it comes to my socials for the truth is so I've had this long time categorization, which is that I think people tend to be their friends people, our family people. The that most of the people, I know, you know, whenever there's a hard division, where you say it's like these people and it's never true for 100% of people. But there are people who like they love their friends, they want to hang out their friends, they're very social, they like being out. This is this is their thing and then people are like, I want
If I were on a desert island with my family, I'd be totally fine. I don't need to see lots of other people that's fine with me. I'm definitely a family person. So I spent my entire life not really having tons of close friends. Now I have some close friends but they're kind of very small in number. Obviously Best Friends. Jeremy boring is the co-ceo of Daley of Daley wire and my co-founder over there and I have a couple of other friends, one, Israel 11, who lives over a couple who live over here in Florida. But, you know, it's a very, it's a very small circle and even my best friends are not even remotely on the same level as my family.
Like it like it. There's some people who treat friends like family and for me, it's like there's my family and then there's kind of everybody else. That's an interesting
solution for people who maybe didn't fit in as kids to find a different Pathway, to take the sense of social belonging from, which is to basically not accept defeat but go. Okay, like, you know, that's a thing and maybe there's going to be some challenges in this one Arena. But this second arena is something that's completely separate and maybe that was, or wasn't the way when I was growing up. So for me, I'm an only child.
Old, which means that family life is pretty low down on the totem pole of priorities. But when I'd start a family I'm and I'm going to be fascinated to see what happened. How much that's going to change you know? It's going to be something presumably very very important plan is to have more than one child. So that means that's a good plan. I kids need siblings. It's well, I'm very present example shown.
But yet to just think to
watch the Dynamics of siblings in front of you to see
Family life be the single most important thing that's in your entire life. I think it's going to be. It's a different perspective that I hadn't thought of
it's also the hardest thing and it's the and it's the most important thing is by far. The hardest thing I do my business is nothing compared to, you know, dealing with four kids. I'm going with my kids fight each other all the time and they're wonderful and they're lovely. And also there are kids, anybody tells you the kids are inherently, good is never met. A child kids are inherently innocent, they're not inherently good and so you know, they'll treat each other badly and you have to figure out exactly how to navigate that but then they'll treat each other well and it's the best thing that's happening in your life.
Life in the way that I've described it to people is that when you're single, you're sort of variance between happiness and unhappiness on a scale of zero to ten. Like when you're very unhappy, it's like you're kind of depressing. It's kind of its kind of bad and when you're very happy it's like, okay. This is really good. Everything's really nice and you then you get married and with you and your spouse. It's like it goes all the way now to probably negative 20 and positive 20, because when you're happy together, it's better than it was when the, when you were happy when you were single. But also, when things are really bad, it's like way worse than it was when you were single, you're at odds with your spouse over something, it significant or if something God forbid terrible,
With your spouse way, way worse than anything. You were experiencing as a single person and then you have kids and all limits are removed like the happiest things by far in your life are the things that happen with your kids. It's not close. It's like it's it's magic. It's stuff that just shapes every aspect of your being. And then when bad stuff is happening with her kids, it Rex, you, I mean absolutely Rex you
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How do you, how do you learn to cope with that emotionally in the pivoting from? Maybe having a harder exterior to not, not investing to choosing to who you have to spend your time with. And then you have this scenario, There's No Escape. There's no, I'm not going to be friends with you anymore, for a daughter. Having open heart
surgery. Right? Exactly. And so, I think that the, I'm able to bifurcate pretty easily kind of parts in my life. It's just something that I'm good. I do with my time, I can do with humans and
I can do it sort of my business life and my, and my family life and anything that was bleeding over, I tried to get rid of. So for example, I don't have Twitter on
my phone and I was bleeding over to my family life because I'd be checking my Twitter
and if I'm trending, which happens, you know, once every couple of weeks, then it would ruin my day and my wife a few years ago, she said like it's ruining our day we're out. We're having a nice Sunday with the kids and you're miserable and you're upset and is ruining your day. So why don't you just take it off your phone. And if something urgent happens, a lot of people who work for you, they'll let you know and you have to deal with it. You have to deal with it and that's fine. And I did I don't have to turn on my phone.
And I use it as sort of a marketing mechanism. I'll put out a few tweets a day but it's made my life radically better. And so the number one rule is like, put down the phone put out the outside world. The outside world does not exist while you're with your family, cuz your kids don't care, your kids. Don't give a shit. Like, if
I'm happy. We just bonded with here with us.
Yeah, exactly. And and, and, you know, they are first priority and they know their first priority. But if you're browsing your phone, while you're doing with your kids, they don't feel like a first priority like the the iPhone is ruined, a lot of I submit things. Well, it's
interesting that you and Sam Harris. I mean,
You went to the just off the phone, some went for completely off platform. I think Jordan has a perennial battle between him and and Twitter I think it's in a warping a whopping Dynamic for him, many a time. But yeah, it's interesting. That the thing that a lot of people do for fun when you get to whatever close to the most followed, What on within that platform, people are desperately trying to rip this sort of ejector seat button to get it away
from the. Well, the the worst thing on Twitter is by far the replies. But right, I mean it, because if you want to talk about an ego,
Shane Twitter's an eagle machine, right?
That's it, like talking about me. Are ya interests of all the
time? Like, look at that. It's a new second and there are 10 more people who have mentioned, My Name In Lights, like that, that feeds like the worst part of you as a human being. And so just taking yourself out of that and touching grass touch grass. A big thing for me. Yeah, the Brett Cooper approached. The
what about from a mindfulness standpoint? Do you have? I'm sure that you'll have prior and stuff like that. Have you got anything else? That helps you to dissolve that ego and keep it in? Check my wife I mean it's just it's just having kids, it's a kind of a
natural part of life. When you find yourself cleaning,
Vomit at 3 a.m. like well, I do have nine million. Okay. Haha. Here I am. It's 3 a.m. and cleaning up vomit. Well, you know, that's a lie. It's like my wife and I joke about all the time, it's like, okay, you know, like there's the social world, the social media world, the the I'm famous, and we want to take pictures with me world, and then, and people hate my guts world, and then there's the alike. Okay, somebody's got to take out the garbage right now. And, you know, the more you fill up your life with the you've got to take out the also, I happen to be very fortunate. My wife does not give a shit about any of this. Like, my wife is a wonderful person. We met well before I was very
I was 23 shoes 20. So we've been married now 16 years and she and we have four kids and she doesn't care about any of this like show. I'll have a week where there's one week earlier this year, where I went to Auschwitz with the Elan and the same week, we launched a rap song with Tom McDonald, the hit number one on the rap, Treasures, like in one week and I got home. It was a Friday night and I was just telling me about the kids and and then I was like, yeah, it was kind of a busy week, should I go? Yeah, tell me about it. I like, well, like everyone else.
I went to Auschwitz.
Woody Lon. All right, I'm currently the number-one rap artist in America and she's like that's really cool and nice. The washing the dishes do need doing. If you could hurry up
and nothing is gonna nothing is going to make a real more than that, right? Like that's how much do you think a lot of the
compensator e mechanisms the searching for meaning and stuff that a lot of people have at the moment mindful nurse. How am I going to fulfill my Logos and carry might you know, personal actualization. Forward is just surrogate, family life that hasn't yet happened. I
think
I think, I mean not all of it, but I think a lot of it because it turns out a lot of it is also like you have a lot of time on your hands to be thinking about those sorts of things requires time. But also, the amount of time that you have on. Your hands means you're sitting there and thinking about these things may not when I was in law school. I thought about a lot of these things because Battle of time by myself in Cambridge Massachusetts and it was Winter outside. You can do anything until you're sitting there for hours, reading law books and then reading other books and philosophy and that's what, then you have kids and it's like, I'm not time for this. Are you kidding? Like, you know what, you know, my purpose is in life, my purpose right now is changing my son's diaper, that's my purpose.
In life right now. And it turns out that's actually not a bad purpose. In
life. It's the human equivalent of chop wood carry water. Yeah.
Exactly. Change diapers. So this is the thing that I think having in our, in our sort of rationalistic society, the the thing that we since the enlightenment we thought about is we have to think through everything. We do everything, we do has to be thought through there, has to be a reason for it. What's the reason for it? And I think the thing that traditional religion has always said and frankly, that doesn't require religion, Aristotle said it too, is like go do the thing and you will become the thing, right? You on TV.
Kou Zhu, virtuous things you know and you know you don't you don't come virtuous by contemplating virtue of the way that you become virtuous is by going and doing things that are virtuous things I go and help other people go. Take care of your kids, go do something for your community. Go out and earn go out and build a business. Where the these are, these are virtuous things and they make you feel good, right? The the first prescription for somebody who is suffering from some sort of depression should be like get off your ass and go do something. Yeah, you're a Jew. Trying
to think your way out of overthinking is like trying to sniff your way out of a cocaine addiction. It's just
That's a, that's a really interesting point to consider. If you think about egotism as somebody who doesn't do a thing believing that they're worthy of it, but the opposite problem that I think a lot of people that listen to podcasts, like, this may have, which is someone, who is an insecure overachiever outwardly. They're doing the things they're working hard out working, many of the people and yet still do not feel worthy of perhaps the praise or the accolades or the self-esteem that they should based on what they're doing. What would you say to people for whom the
Actions and self-assessment is detached in the wrong direction.
I mean, if you are achieving and if you are doing the things you're supposed to be doing, then go easy on yourself is what I would say. I think that the general societal problem obviously tends to be the other way which is people who have unearned self-esteem based on not doing the thing. If you're doing the thing and you don't have the self-esteem, then that's when I think that you can say kind of screw the people around me who are not providing me. What's like this is you know how I felt in high school and college probably is like I'm doing all these cool things I'm doing all this.
These things, I'm not getting the notoriety and the way that you can, the way that you can react to that is with bitterness or you can basically just say, listen, I know I'm good enough and I know what I'm doing is good. Now. That's, that's not, that's easier. Said than done easy for me to say. Now, I have very happy family life, it's a lot harder when you're in high school and as a virtuoso violinist, when I was in high school as a really, really good violinist and setting up one of the top 10 teachers in the world. And, you know, every talent show was the same, there'd be a talent show at the high school and I get up there and I play something. Virtuosic, I'd be playing, you know, Prelude, mentally grow by it by Fritz.
Or something that worked really hard on, and then some Shmo could get up there and play, three chords on a guitar and sing badly. And all the girls, like, oh my God, I love
Wonderwall and I feel shows chose the wrong instrument and that was 100% acara by
my parents. Yeah, exactly. When you're five yoga to choose? Yeah, I'm not making that mistake with my son. He's learning to play guitar. That's why I learned my
lesson. Very good. Yeah, that's so funny. I think you touched on something. I've been pretty fascinated by recently, which is
The direction of sympathy that always goes toward type B. People who have a type, a problem not type, A people who have a tape be problem. Hey you need to chill out more, you're overworking, you're going to be burned out, you don't give yourself the credit that you need because everybody knows that the worldly outcomes that that person is going to get, are always going to be better the insecure overachiever despite the fact that they may be totally miserable and never able to give themselves. Credit is at least from a structural real-world standpoint.
Going to be in a better position. So, type B person who's never able to get off the couch and
super true. And I think that that's another thing too, that we can say here, is that, for me, for example, I had to learn to that. That's a learned skill, like being easy on yourself is a learned skill and that take, for example, vacationing. I used to suck a big hastening, like be truly awful at it. We go on a vacation with the family, three hours. And I was like, I need to be doing work. I have just an inner, I'm one of these people as they can inner compulsion, or if I have two hours free and I haven't actually accomplish anything in those two hours. I get angry at myself. I'm like, what are you doing? Why aren't
Like writing a book, aren't you doing anything? And people will be like why are you so efficient sick? Because I have a drive to, I'll write books. Like, right now I haven't had a book that I've published in 2021. I have like four in the can just for fun. I'll send already booked. Like those are, those are things that I'll do and it's in. So, I had to learn and my wife help me with this. Like, when it's on vacation, you have a duty to yourself to actually, like, let yourself just breathe that. That's called recharging the batteries. You need to actually take the time. And so it used to take me like full-on two to three days in a vacation to actually get into the
Vacation mode and get out of work mode and now it's fairly instantaneous. Now, it's like a turn off the phone. I turn off the computer and now I'm fairly ready to
go. Yeah, I think about most people need to be told to develop a good work ethic and no sympathy is given to the people who need to develop a good rest ethic. And I just love that. I love that frame and it's something I'm really going to work on both of myself. Now, as yet on family to become way to do it, with all of the trappings of the stuff that, you know, kind of on this trajectory Journey type thing. And it's very easy to become
Increasingly obsessed with an increasingly seductive amount of work and said, resources that you can leverage that with
for sure. I mean I think there is a lot of diminishing returns in terms of the kind of, you know, stuff that you put in, right. You did a certain level and the each additional unit at the very beginning, each additional unit of work, you put in, is going to have tremendous results, going to look like an arithmetic increase and then it turns out that each individual unit of work that you put in is starting to have sort of like mildly diminishing results. And then you get to the point where it's - its - where you actually are
working so hard, they're actually undermining that you're unhappy about the thing that you're doing. And if you aren't happy about the thing that you're
doing and
you're frustrated with the thing, you're doing it, you do need a break. And I mean, in my industry, that's particularly true. I mean, it's very easy to fall into despair following politics daily. It's not a healthy profession, just mentally. And so there are times where it's like, I just, I need to zone out now. I will say that. I'm lucky. That's what God tells me. I have to that once a week. So your bond is it Shabazz
indispensable? You've got that program. Just how will you on Shabbat
If you was chime child. I mean, like, if he was struggling to let go of the work thing and you've got, I don't know, Shabbat inside out. Yes, but I was listening to you talk about the fact that you couldn't use a highlighter, but you can use, Post-It note. Yes. You're not allowed to write, but you're allowed to like,
put removable, sticky notes, kind
of, right? Okay. I mean, that sounds like quite a Jewish solution to a very Jewish problems like this. Exactly. Did your way that
we were like workarounds that accomplish kind of the same thing without violating the rules? Yes. Yeah. And and I think the non-jewish answered as like, what the like what are you doing? All that and the answer
Sir that I usually give to that question is because when you obliterate the rule, you end up actively undermining, the something bigger than the rule, right? That that I think one of the things that modern society has said, is, why do we have these sort of formalistic workarounds to take a more broad example? Well, to take old age as he have somebody who's older and they're suffering from some sort of debilitating disease and they're dying. And so what we'll say to them, we'll put them in hospice. And then we'll say, okay, well we will alleviate your pain and by alleviate your pain.
Very often that means we're gonna give you enough morphine, you're gonna die, right? So why not just allow euthanasia. And the answer is because there are actual consequences to allowing as a society euthanasia in, which you now get into a different moral Matrix, right? Where the different moral Matrix is all about like, well, who deserves to live, who deserves to die? Who's Will, why should suicide be wrong if you think Asia is, okay, right? You get into a whole different world Matrix. Whereas if you say well it's the doctrine of double effect. A Catholic idea that your it's you're attempting to alleviate pain but what you're achieving is the death of the person, then the town's formalistic
So there's a lot of that in Judaism, it's like, okay. Well why not just obliterate their own. Let you write on Sabbath because like, well, okay, well if I can write on Sabbath well then that now allows me to materially change the world in particular ways, and that principle is now broader and allows other things. That's the brief explanation of rules
based how he's litigated your way around, being able to use a highlighter?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's always an abstruse explanation. But yeah, Friday night. Everything goes off,
going back to the wife discussion. You got engaged, your wife after knowing her full three Marine. One remark. Yeah. What have you come to believe? About how to pick
The right partner and make that work long-term.
So I think that
The picking the right partner is is actually it's funny that it's not all that difficult. The reason I say that is because everyone is looking in the wrong place. The the there are two things that obviously need to be physically attracted your partner. We as a society have said that that's like the number one by far. But it's, I'm not going to send us an important. Of course, it's important. I think my wife is beautiful. Yeah, I think she's a hot number. I always thought she was hot number the but when it comes to the thing that made me marry her as opposed to just being interested in dating her something the
That thing was the values on our very first date. We got into discussion of how many kids you would want to have, what do you want your family life to look like, what level of Jewish observance? Are you interested in? We have like an hour discussion on Free Will versus determinism this like on our first date at a coffee bean in Santa Monica it's like a three and a half our first date and then I said jobs like an inquisition. Yeah yeah I mean she may have felt that way but before we got out of that before she got out of the car I said to her like I don't hold by this you know stupid rule where I'm not going to call you for three days and really Intense or Hooks and I'll be on tenterhooks. Oh, how about this? If you're interested, let's just when you want to
Next. And so we made a date in the car and then we saw each other, you know, virtually every day after that. And after three and a half to two and a half months, I said, I love you. And she said, thank you. And that was, and I was very insulted at the time because for about a month, every conversation ended with, I love you and thanks, catch you later. And then, but it was smart, because when she finally did say, I love you, the next words out of my mouth were. So let's get married. Like, we're done mission accomplished. We're finished here and she was 20. She just turned 20 in August in. This is like
October November is November and and she and she's like, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know, maybe we should take our time. I'm maybe just enjoy this time is like, let me explain. I'm not enjoying this time at all. I think this time is terrible. So part of that is of course we're both religious, right? So one of the things that's Fallen by the wayside in modern society. Is if you're religious, you don't sleep with each other before you married. So as like, none of this is enjoyable, and I'm not enjoying the possibility. We're going to break up, I'm not enjoying the, there's nothing happening physically like none of this is happening. So, you know, how about this? How about we get married and then we'll both be happy and
That'll be great and she thought about that for about a week and push me off for about a week and then she's like the most romantic thing she ever said to me. We were talking about this. And she realized that the reason she wasn't saying yes, is because she was afraid of what people would think getting engaged that quickly. And so she turned to me and she goes, people are full of shit and we're engaged and so that was. So we got married in July of that of the next year. And in terms of staying married, I mean, if you find out things about your spouse that you never knew like depth, that you never knew. If it's values-based, you don't have to worry about.
About that being a fundamental break in the relationship. Like every surprise is a surprise on the, on, on, you know, a wide variety of different levels. Most of the surprises are great. Some of them are not, you know, that's what are
the best questions that you think for Bob someone who's non-jewish to work out those values? What are the really important values?
So, you know, I think that I'm a big proponent of Jewish or not Jewish, who should marry somebody, who is like minded values. Wise, I do not think diversity of values. In marriage, is a good idea, a great. So it's so
If you are Christian, I think you probably marry somebody Christian. If you're Muslim, I think you should marry somebody Muslim II. Again, I think that that makes the biggest value is. Do you agree on how you want to raise your children? That's what marriage was built for. Marriage is built for raising kids. That's what it's for. I don't, I frankly don't care how people structure their personal lives in terms of their personal relations. I don't, I mean, I can think things are sinful or not. It makes no difference to me on a practical social political level, the thing that actually matters to me in terms of building a society is, what does the family structure look like? That is geared.
Road toward the proper creation and raising of
children. When you say the way you want to raise your kids, what do you mean
specifically? So what religious precepts you want to teach them? What what values you think are most important? Some people think tolerance is the most important value. Some people think that rules-based living is the most important value. Some people believe that it should sort of be free range parenting and some people are like, no, this is the way that it's going to go in. These are the values I want to instill in my kids so a lot of that boils down to kind of specific circumstances. So for me and my wife, it was like, do you want to send your kids to Jewish school versus join us?
In public school? Do you want our how religious we want to be? Do you want to keep like you know, fairly religious version of Sabbath or not? It gets abstruse and Judaism to the point where it's like okay do in religious circles women tend to wear skirts instead of hands, for example, because they because the Bible says that women should not wear men's clothing. I should I wear women's clothing so the more religious you get the more that's interpreted as women should wear traditionally female clothing and men should wear pants, right? And so you know, when we when we have kids and our daughter is 16, what do what kind of school do you want to?
We going to and what we wanted to be wearing. You can you can get down to it
to even that level nitty-gritty. Yeah, just on the saying I love you thing study that came out that I learned in the New York Post a couple of years ago in heterosexual relationships, who usually says, I love you first research finds that men are more likely than women to say it first, on average. Men say it's 69 days into the relationships. I think you were pretty much best Lay Dying in the middle of the normal distribution
and then, and that's right, and that's right. And the difference is that now they used to be that people would do that.
Then there's heard, we were the normal trajectory the normal trajectory was like three months in. You figured out whether this thing or not and then you're you know, have engagement and then you're married within a year and now the normal thing is you might say that to each other and then you might date for six years and then maybe you fall out of love by which we mean you fall into companionate love as opposed to passionate love.
Correct. Yeah and then you mistake the
thing and then you're like oh my god. Look that hot chick over there. We can have passionate love again. Correct. It's like the trying to, you know, working to maintain passionate love in a companionate love situation is is is
without kids.
It's the bond it together. Yeah, I've talked about this so much and especially when you fold hormonal birth control into this, as well. It becomes really, really messy. But that does seem to be this sort of trajectory that straight up non Child Nuclear family. So basically just Partners, maybe you're married, maybe you're not. But after about between four and seven years, sometimes people just don't know. Don't seem to like the partners so much in the not really too sure what's going on. And there's an argument from Evil history, psychology perspective. That if two people are in a relationship,
Together and no kids have come about something is wrong, maybe it's wrong with you, maybe it's wrong with them, but if you guys break up, maybe the fertility because there was no time in our evolutionary past, when two people would have been together. There was no reliable birth control. So what was going to happen through some incompatibility. So it's good for you guys to break up and I got shredded on the internet for this by most of the people that saw the real. Meanwhile, I'm like
the evidence is just there that, I mean also, what is the? So the question that I've always asked about marriage, I get in trouble, every time I ask this, but it is the only
Russian that matters. What is the social utility of a relationship? The social utility of relationship? Not utility to you, not your personal utility, not your personal enjoyment. What is the social utility of relationship? The social utility of relationship is man woman children. That is the social utility of the relationship otherwise
just to interject a there is maybe an argument that it domesticates men, that it reduces risk taking behavior from young guys. I
mean, I think that that is true to an extent and I think it really only kicks in when you have kids. So is
testosterone drops when you get married test
Drops again when you have kids. Exactly. And so, what when is it happening? I would assume is over time the testosterone if you don't have kids, probably tends to start in uh, trending up again, goodbye. So that is so that is so that's why whenever we have discussions, a marriage and people like, what about gay marriage? Or listen, structure life, however you want, you know, I don't want the government, criminalizing, whatever social Arrangement you've made. What I do want is an acknowledgement that if Society has an interest in a particular relationship that there is a difference in kind between a relationship that is built on man. Woman,
And children than on any other type of relationship. Any other type of relationship is a different thing and so you can make the case. I think it's not a very good case that the government has nothing to do with any of this sort of stuff. That that's fine. I get it. But all of society does actually depend on man woman children, I mean like the pre generation of society just clinically speaking, depends on that thing and the stability of that social unit. And that's why I traditionally we call that thing marriage and your commitment was not just to your spouse. Your commitment was to the marriage, rather your commitment was to the higher Institute. Because what else? Could you commit to
When you say that I'm committing to my wife, right? Your, you first get married. I'm committing to my wife, you don't know your wife, you know, your wife's gonna be like, in 10 years, you know, you're going to be, like, in 10 years, right? Lots of lots of shits gonna happen, things are going to change. You're gonna go through crisis, you're going through, successes and failures, and sufferings, and all that sort of stuff. The thing you can commit to right now is the thing that won't change, which is the nature of the institution in the same way that like when you sign up for a job you're signing up for. Are you signing up for a clinical relationship with your boss? You signing up for like the job your boss might change. Yeah. Right like that's it. That's a different
thing. What about navigating?
NG relationships long-term and keeping that
effective. So I think that the key there is. So I've said a few of these things before, but one of them is try to have more expectations of yourself, then you have of your spouse. So the very easiest thing to do is something doesn't get done. You're like, oh my God, I can't believe my spouse didn't do that. You might be right? Maybe it may. It's annoying me or supposed to do that, but, you know, pick up after the thing anyway, right? It's not about having equal roles in the relationship or or everything is equal. It's about like, are you both doing that? Are
You both efforting it. Are you both doing the best that you can? If there's a sock on the floor and she walks right by it and you pick it up. Yeah it's annoying. That you walk right by it but hopefully next time she's gonna be one and picks it up. And you're in, you know, when you miss it, that's that's the number one. I mean, the number two is that you actually do have to take some time for yourself. So I mean, my wife and I try to actually this is the hardest thing because again we have four children is to actually like take time and be like okay we're gonna go out to dinner is actually important gonna try and spend time looking each other not at screens. You actually have to take time to focus on one another.
Again, highly recommend Sabbath. Excellent time like Friday nights, are kids go to bed and then we have like three hours just talk and hang out. And it's in, that's great. And when you're not watching, whatever's on Apple TV and I listen, I got it, we watch a lot of TV. I mean, like your Zonk after a day where, you know, my typical day is I wake up at like 6:00 a.m. with a kid 615 with the kids, I'm with them until they go to school at 8 a.m. I work. I come and come and do the show. I wore a kid, you meetings and writing. I picked them up from school at like 3:30 or somebody else does their home by 3:30 for I do homework with them. I hang out with them until they go to bed. They go.
Too bad, I work for another hour and a half and then I and then we like hang out and so it's either like by that time we might both be brain-dead, you know, it's 9 p.m. we both been working all day, but but you do have to take time out with your spouse and you also have to, you know, and this is one that Clarity with your spouse, a big one, I Communications very hard one because I'm I tend to be the kind of person who suck it up. I'll just suck it up. And so my wife will say, like, okay, you're sucking it up, and you're sucking it up and you sucking it up for like, six months and you'll have to cut blowout. But oh my God, I can't deal with this. I'm so mad you'd like and she said it would be better if you
Like didn't just suck it up, just like, tell me what's wrong? To go Leon? Yeah, exactly. That's been a problem for me, on a personal level. Because again, I'm the kind of person whether work or anything else, I'll just work my way through it, man. I will just grip my way through this thing. He can't really do that with with a relationship. You do have to be fully honest about, has a lot of blow up risk. When you do
the, this idea called the region be to Paradox were things. Aren't that bad? But they're not that good. And people get stuck in this period of being Comfortably Numb, but I realized that a lot of people who are type A have a reverse region be
Te Paradox, which is that anyone weaker, or with less resilience would have been kicked out the bottom of this workload but not you. You're the David Goggins of doing work, you'd like, who's gonna carry the workload? I'll just keep doing it until the rest of time, right? And yet in some ways that's very virtuous and we should uphold it, but does it have you're patting yourself on
the back for it? And then it's unsustainable.
Like Avenger times you to pathology,
I guess
talking about men. A lot of people associate the right with being pro men and masculinity. Now what do you wish more?
Men realized
what masculinity is. I think that more there has been a concerted movement on the right to treat masculinity as lifting weights and having sex and driving, awesome cars. And you can do all of those things. And I'm not saying any of those things are bad, I think in the proper context, all those things are quite good but it's but that is not the core of what masculinity is you do all those things in service of another thing. Those are what we would call. Instrumental Goods. They're not inherent goods. Are there things.
Is that are designed for another thing. You lift weights in order so that you can be strong and that in them. So you can pick up your kids, you can pick up the groceries, you can stay healthy for your family so you can be attractive to your spouse. Are these are all, it's an instrumental but it's not inherent but you're not inherently more, virtuous because you picked up weights, it it's a useful thing in the same way that earnings, right? Your income is an instrumental good. You're not inherently a better person because you have a higher income. I've had much lower income that I have much lower income that I've had right now and I mean right now I have a really, really healthy income. That's it. Made me a better person. What makes me a better person is how I use that income.
My earning the income, it's an instrumental good. The same thing is true with regard to sex sex within the context of a committed marriage which is designed to Foster love between you and your spouse. And to end. Yes. To make babies on multiple occasions. That that isn't that, isn't it instrumental? Good. It is a very, very it is inherently enjoyable and pleasurable and all that stuff in that. That's why God made it that way. It's also an instrumental good that is designed toward a higher good which is the maintenance of marriage. It's why extramarital sex? For example is bad, right? So this is so I think that the way that we treat masculinity now and I think
It's the more I just live in the political sphere and the philosophical sphere, which I've been doing. Now, this for a while, I'm 40, but I've been doing this since I was seven things, I miss about 23 years. The more you follow this sort of stuff, the more you realize that everything is reactionary, everything is reactionary. And so I think that the modern conception of what masculinity is, is a direct response to what feminism said, masculinity cannot be. So, feminism said, masculinity is not about you taking care of your kids because men are unnecessary to the raising of children. It's not about being a husband because with
Need a man like a fish needs a bicycle, it's not about providing because a woman can be in the workplace and she can earn on her own and so many were like, OK what are the things that are left? What are the things that are left? The things that are left are what if that I can do? I'm, I can weight lift, I can I can earn, I can have lots of sex with random ladies Without Really Trying to cope in any of them for marriage and I can do all those things on my own because feminists don't want me to do any of these things. And instead of sort of muscling, their way back into what traditional roles are, which would require a difference in the way from it.
Isn't produced female roles. It's all complementary. In other words, you can't have a traditional masculinity with also without a traditional femininity and Patricia femininity is good and fresh feminine. He does not require that a woman. Not be in the workplace, my wife's a doctor, it doesn't require that a woman. Be quote unquote, totally submissive or anything like that, it requires that she'd be a partner to you. Just as you are a partner to her, that's what masculinity constitutes and. So again, I think that that's been now seen as sort of a washed-out compromising version of masculinity which annoys the hell out of
Remember
I had this interchange with and rotate on X at one point where he was cameras, ripping on me and saying something about masculinity and I was like, well I have four kids and I know all of them like I have four kids. I know all of them, I raised all of them. I provide for all of them, I defend my house. You have like a complex in Romania with some fancy cars and some Camp girls, like, I don't know, like, maybe that's your definition of masculinity. If it is that he dying version of masculinity, it is not maintainable and it doesn't build money thing. Masculinity is about taking the very male Drive males have a drive.
It's an aggressive drive that's going to be using one or two ways. Either going to beat up, knocks it down or build shit up. Those are the only two things that men are capable of doing. We either knock things down, I see in my son's, right? My eight-year-old, my one-year-old, the only things I want my my girls are nurturers, right? They want they want to play with the dolls. They want to, they want to play house. My boys are like, I'm either going to build a structure. I'm going to knock down the structure. These are like the only two choices the to build a thing or knock it down and that that doesn't change. Men are always like that. So you're going to be a person who builds a thing or I can be a person who knocks down a thing and
Time for knocking down things, right? When they're bad things out there, they're bad guys out there, you gotta knock him down, but if your version of masculinity does not include a thing that you wish to build, then you are destructive force in the universe,
what have you learned since becoming closer to Jordan
Pederson? So, I love Jordan joins. Great Jordans constant willingness to delve is is fast and what we got along. The first time, I mean he when I met him, he was way less famous when we met, I don't know. It's like 2015.
2016, maybe is right when Bill c16 was happening. We were both speaking at some event in Canada, and the first thing that we did is we started exchanging book list and so yeah, they're a bunch of Concepts. I've learned from Jordan. I mean, I think that that his read on the original structure of meaning in the world, in maps, meaning is fantastic. I've used it in sort of biblical analysis of my own again. Jordan is somebody who really, really likes to search. He, that's the thing, and it's always,
An inspiration to watch him kind of go search for those answers even if I don't always agree with his answers, I think the really interesting.
Hmm. What about the pivot that he's made? Obviously since coming to DW, it seems like he's been talking more about politics and also more about religion at the same time. There's a bit of me and I think a lot of my audience John's be no show three times. Now that really misses the spit and sawdust sort of down to earth, less symbolic stuff. I wonder, I would love to see him Arc back
around either.
By that. I mean, I think that's where Jordans it is. And I think he's the best in the world at that. I think is literally the best
in the world me, too. I think that a lot of the sort of recent vacuum that has sucked in other voices for whether it be masculinity, men's movement, personal development has been laid at the feet of Jordans, moving on, abandonment of that for other stuff, whether it be politics, whether it, be religion,
I think there's some truth that I think also, because Jordan has been. So I mean, it's been a wild forage, a cure for Jordan, I think, because of that, as you
Experience more kind of power in the universe. As you have a bigger and bigger following, I think Jordan feels a responsibility to delve into these areas and but I agree. I think that a lot of his best stuff is the kind of 12 rules for life. Here's the thing that you can do this morning, that's going to make your life a lot better. And I think the Jordan is is going to swing back around to that. I think he's taking a lot of big ideas and I think you're going to see him Infuse that back into kind of the smaller.
I'd love that. I'm not think hard. Yeah, I think that would be very much like a no return to.
I would love that I still
That's as I agree with you and I think that he has a new book coming out that sort of about analysis of the Bible and it's great and it's a bunch of stuff in there. That's fantastic. And him being able to sort of reduce that back down to. Like if you see a cat pet it, you know, like that kind of stuff that that that's, that's the best stuff of Jordan. And if you watch Jordan Speak, that's what's great about Jordan watching. Jordan Speak is almost like watching a really great magician to a track hoe hoe, kind of do a bunch of stuff out here. And like, I'm see how all these puzzle pieces fit together and then he'll go and that's bloody well, God isn't it, you know the oh wow, that was cool as a really
cool trick.
He brings it back in to land. Have you changed much since being friends with them? Is the been anything that you've adjusted in
yourself? Um, I think that the Temptation toward, you know, advice-giving has definitely increased because he wouldn't talk to Jordan. He's constantly talking about, like, how do you affect people on a personal level? I think there's been a weird sort of shift, in the sense that I used to do, kind of pure politics and know, I've advised, and now I do a little bit more life advice and maybe slightly less politics and he does more politics him.
Well, if advice. So maybe we're having a nefarious influence on one another, but it's but, you know, I think that again, I don't think it's a better voice on planet Earth for kind of the values that young men should hold in. Jordan,
I agree about the, I always want to ask people about the personal philosophies about how they approach life. I understand that after a, while you kind of need to transcend yourself and stop being so solipsistic or narcissistic or whatever and you need to actually go out there and affect things and also
generate very intellectually curious. And I think that anybody has a
Kuhn is intellectually. Curious is very easy to sort of get bored in this fear that you're in and be like I don't want to explore like a new field. Now, fully on the Jordan is constantly doing that sort of stuff, but I do think he's gonna, you know, and I think increasingly you're saying he's gonna he's gonna bring it back into to a lot of these messages that are easier to digest. Yeah, let's put it that way.
There was a Kurt Vonnegut quote that I came across recently that I want to talk to you about. We are what we pretend to be. So we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Do you ever worry about becoming a caricature of yourself that there are there incentives that aligned
In order for you to play into a niche that you've already carved out basically, how do you allow yourself to change privately when the world has expectations of you publicly and is the room attention or a friction between
those two mean the truth is that I think that I'm pretty well on are who I'm off. Are I think that the perception of me for a wide variety of reasons? Ranging from the titling of YouTube videos to sort of how I'm perceived on Twitter, is a bit different. Listen Twitter, as a medium tends to suck out your vitriol and your acid and you're not going to have a lot of know, you do best.
Well yeah, I mean in the end my best to human sure. I mean, II struggle to think of anybody who's at their best as a human on Twitter because either your, it's very one-dimensional Twitter, you're either. The person who's like, the self-help Guru on Twitter or like Adam Grant or something from, you know, Adams, great or your or your, you know, kind of in the combat mode and Twitter and you know it's a mechanism of distribution. And and you see that in terms of my show, I think people actually have a pretty good read on me if they watch the show because I do talk about
Out from time to time family stuff or I will talk about, you know, deeper values again, even the show tends to be more political because the daily political show. If you watch if you watch, it's easy to say this. But if you watch the vast compendium of the things that I do and I do like a bunch of different shows, then that's me. Like, you put all those different but every show has to focus on sort of a different thing. So if you watch me in discussion with Ana kasparian or something, you'll see a different side of me than you would. If I was like hard pressing on Kamala Harris on today's show. So those are all different facets of me.
And if you put them all together, then that's very close to what I am in private life. When I, when I talk on a show like this, I'm not sure that there's something radically different. I think that the questions that are being elicited are radically different into that, that changes. It's really funny. I've mentioned this in the context of different political debates, so, I will say a thing. If I said it on my show, my audience, you mad at me. If I say it to Bill Maher, my audience is super happy with me, right? So if I what's an example of, okay? So if I say I think that Donald Trump has a lot of personal foibles. I think this is a lot of dumb stuff on
True social and I think it doesn't help him in his race. Then my audience might get mad at me for saying that on my show. I'll say like, wasn't I wanted to win? I think I will Harris is terrible and it should be an awful president. If Trump wants to win, he needs to stop doing dumb crap, I'm through with social. My audience, might be a little mad at me if I go on Bill Maher and I say, listen, I think Donald Trump is a lot of stupid crap on true. Social, he really needs to win. Come on, there's gonna be terrible president, then my entire audience, like he's telling Bill Maher. Right side.
Say right, I understand that the medium is the message in many
ways. Exactly. So I think that that's something to keep in mind it, I've liked him.
They optical illusion where you have two different where you have a color, and it's a color red and it's the same exact color red, but if you put it next to, you know, one color, it looks purple. And if you put it next to another color that looks more red. Yeah. So I think
over time as well, the thing that I'm particularly interested in is their Expectations by your audience that if you continue to nudge those over time. Well, this isn't the been that we had previously even within this context of the show. And, yeah, I just, I wonder about what happens as you grow up as your
Philosophical the importantly, a
struggle. I mean, not even terms of philosophical viewpoint, but in terms of where you put your focus, one of the things that, you know, as a business, one of the things that you have to consider is what does my audience want of me? Not even terms of viewpoint, but in terms of content, for example. So just to give an example, I love talking about the Bible. I know the Bible super wall, right? I mean, I in the original Hebrew, we read it every single week. I've done it for 30 years. I know, I know, you know, the venture to say that I know, you know, the five books of Moses at least as well as anybody who's not a rabbi and so, but,
Audience want to hear my deep read on Genesis, right? So like I'll talk with Jordan about Genesis and Jordans wonderful and Jordan has a wide variety of interest that he and bring to bear and all these different things where he's talking about religion, but isn't Hebrew right man. I like I read Hebrew. I know all that stuff. I can translate it. I know all the commentaries on it for a thousand years. Like, does my audience really want me to analyze Genesis? Yeah, probably not. I mean, like, we tried this. We had a book club and the book club was, you know, we'd read like, great works of literature, so we won't
be the one way. Yeah, you were on a deck of the ship.
Ship. Right,
exactly. So we didn't want to Moby Dick. And it's like I love that stuff, right? I love literature literary analysis. I read tons. Does my audience desperately want my analysis web decoteau, not. So it's like, okay, well that's something that they don't
want. Do you ever wish that you didn't do a Daily Show? You're kind of at the mercy of whatever bullshit happens in the press, the P. Did he gets arrested today? Guess what we're doing? Five minutes on P Diddy cause it's important for us to. I don't know whether you come again. I think that
in the slightest, the I'm so on interesting that I couldn't possibly care and there's a certain level of stuff where I'm sure the audience cares and I can't bring myself to
So I just won't cover it. Like I'm almost in a funny way, but I guess a dumb video about the VMAs or something as someone
who thinks about ideas across a long period of time, who likes to read Classics, who's reading stuff in Hebrew, there must be a desire in you to make a Lindy body of work. Yes, that's it. And yet, I don't know, I listen to a lot of your show during 2020 because that was the only way I could get daily updates on. What the hell was happening with a global pandemic, right? I don't know how many people are going back and listening to their not my me 20.
Auntie been episode. So is there a part of you that Guff like and I've got the blocks and I've got the other bits and pieces, is that, of course,
pull becoming more and it's a deep struggle. It's like the thing that I want to do is that the thing, my audience wants to do is that something I can justify spending, you know, money to actually produce. And I've done a pilot episode of what a Biblical commentary would look. Like, is that something in my audience wants for me? I I've I've done, you know, and one of the things that I'd love to do is then the side. Do you think our audience would love is is something called the, the
Friends, which is I want to sit with a group of historians on particular topics and basically do a round table where we talked about like the history of World War Two, I think, the audience would dig that, and I think that'd be very cool and get Neil Ferguson and get John Keegan. Get, you know, they could Davis Hanson in a room and let you sit around a table and do like, let's start in 1933 and do history of World War Two, like, people would, well, I think would dig that. But, yeah, I
have those big Ideas all the time. If you found out holds all of your
personal. Oh my God, I mean, the, the stuff that I'm really interested in, and if you look at my nightstand, there's nothing
On Daily News. I don't put daily news on my nightstand. I mean, the stuff that's on. My nightstand is typically like a deep read on Military conflict over Taiwan Straits, right? Say it like, it is my audience deeply investment. Now, that may come in useful, like if China attacks Taiwan, I'm going to know a lot more than sort of the normal commentator would on. Well, I know as much as someone who studies it for a living. No, but well I know 70% of that tour and that's good enough, you know, to, for to work. But in terms of like, establishing a long-term body, listen, the thing that I'm proudest of in terms of like, one product that I've created is
Had a history which is basically a review of Western philosophy over the course of about 250 Pages. It was the hardest thing I've had right. I think it was a really interesting and coaching book and I think it has shelf life and going to last the test of time. That's part of the problem. With doing The Daily Show, you're exactly right. And the, I wonder how much video is going to be permanent anyway, I mean, that meaning that what's the last kind of political or philosophical video that you've watched, that wasn't made in the last year or two. I think that the nature
Nature of video is kind of transitory unless you're talking about like a movie from 25 years ago that self encapsulated but a piece of nonfiction content that like everybody knows who's you know, politically aware that Milton Friedman's an entire series called free to choose. Has anybody ever watched for teachers? Probably not. So, in the nonfiction space, very difficult to create kind of conical
permanent content. I'll call evil as Eric calls it.
Yeah, exactly. So that's where books come in and that's why I'm still interested in writing books and, you know, will probably come out with a couple in the next few years. But it's but it's definitely
Well, I like talking Big Ideas. It's the thing that I'm most interested in, and sometimes the politics of the day, does not lend itself to that, and when the news cycle is boring, and when there's nothing to talk about sometimes, that's actually, when I get to do the thing, I want to do, right? So someone might, some of my best shows. I think are the ones that have the lowest listenership and there was one that I did. I remember this one? I thought was kind of cool. I did like a year and a half ago and is real slow and I was talking about relative as talk about the connection between economics and military power. And so I there's a really cool
Cool. YouTube video which is essentially a moving chart that just shows the nature of military spending over the last like four centuries of. This is the versus GDP in various countries and was pointing out how uniquely powerful the United States is and has been and what that means for a western capitalist, you know, Western capitalist military buildup and how you actually compete with China. On my China actually is on a pretty bad path here because their economy will collapse, and then they won't have the ability. And so I like sat there and I did like a full history of Western spending on Military.
Like I think that's fascinating. I'm sure my son. My listeners were probably dying. Yeah, and so every so often, I'll get it. It's like 100 for you and one for me. Yeah, there'll be some of that
talk to me about how you deal with public criticism and scrutiny, especially given the
Background upbringing that you had there is a tendency to be hypersensitive to that so how do you deal with public criticism?
You know it sort of depends on from home. So I've created what I think is pretty healthy feedback loop. I think that everybody needs a feedback loop people who are going to tell you the truth when you're really effing it up. That usually is a couple of people in my business. Jeremy, particularly is very good at this. Jeremy and I have a very good relationship, where if I've screwed something up, he's not shy about telling me that he thinks that I've screwed something up or that I need to correct.
T', something and we'll talk it out. I have a couple other friends who are very good about that some family members on personal level. Obviously, I have family members but I think that everybody needs that because unfortunately, the online discourse is not comprised of people who want the best for you. They generally want the worst for you and so they are looking for an opportunity to jump on your neck with both feet and it is disappointing for sure, when people who you think of his allies kind of Run for the woods, if there's, if there's something controversial that comes up and this happens to I think all of us from from,
Time. I try not to be that person where, if one of my allies is getting hit, I try to actually like defend and I take that pretty seriously. I know Jeremy to do we do this as a company for a bit but it's it's never easy. I mean, I'm not gonna pretend that it's wonderful. It's again, one of the reasons I got off Twitter is because of the trending
element of it so simply reducing your exposure to it is one strategy
but you're right. Yes, for sure. But you need a permeable permeable bubble where
if something really is a is placed around the state
exactly like it, you need,
Somebody who you trust who's going to speak truth to you is true in any Walk of Life who says, like you're doing this wrong.
How do you avoid that? There's a great idea, you'll be familiar with audience capture. Of course, there is an article. I'll send you once we're finished called criticism capture by Ethan Strauss. He basically says that the most warping Dynamic is not the compliments that you receive, but the criticisms, which you get. And a lot of the time. For instance, set, gold and stopped putting comments on his blog 15 years ago. People said you can't do that. It's a Blog, a Blog has comments,
It. He said, well if I leave comments up there, I'll know that each article. I write will be longer and they'll be more caveat and I'll be writing to defend the criticisms of the position as opposed to just explain the position that Dynamic has really smart. That's
really smart. I mean, either I agree with that. I totally heard that again, the nature of human beings, not just politics reactionary. If you get attacked a thousand times on a thing, you tend to believe that once he thinks happens, your the cave and you think are wrong or you think this is the truest thing you've ever.
I said because you're not taking flak unless you're over the target, either way, it's warping right? And and that that latter one. By the way, it has become like, holy writ on parts of the right where it's like, if you say something truly awful and people are ripping into you, it's because what you said is truly necessary, I think there's one of the big mistakes of the right. I think that again, prompted by the left, shrinking of the Overton window tuner invisibility and everybody finding themselves out in the cornfield, I think that the right kind of cultivated the counter, the counter argument which is the more criticism. I take the more right I must be
As well sometimes. Yes, and sometimes really, really know there's a difference between saying something that is true and saying something that just makes you an asshole.
Yeah, and they're not the same body type for no reason. I've heard you say, I don't doubt my ability to say what I want to say, I doubt my ability to handle the emotional blowback that comes with saying it. So how do you deal with the emotional blow
back again? I think I've gotten better at this, over the years. As you get older, you tend to grow a thicker skin. Every, every year, I feel like I need to grow a slightly thicker skin and, you know, itself
Tintin at this point, but I think that it'll, it'll continue to increase. It comes from directions that you don't necessarily game out. What you find is that you build a suit of armor for yourself. And then somebody always finds whatever the tank is in the armor and a six, a knife right in there. Like, okay, well, I better, you know, get some iron and patch that
up. What does that look like from a real perspective?
So to give an example, the amount of anti-Semitism that I'd experienced up until 2015 2016, in the United States was no like zero, like non-existent, this is the best country in the history of the world for Jews.
Leave oblique kind of Jews 2015 2016 because of all of the sort of alt-right associations. And the fact I wasn't voting for either party. I got an enormous amount of blowback, in 2015, 2016 4, taking the positions that I was, taking that sort of receded. Again, post 2015, 2016 and broke out again, very much into the open post, October, 7th and was getting collaterally. Attacked by people who I wouldn't have expected on the basis. That if I care what happened, October 7th too much, then, I must be a bad American or I must not care about what's going on.
Anyplace else on Earth, which I think is totally disingenuous. And, and I rarely say this, but be truly badly motivated, I try not to say that people are badly motivator, but I think that's a pretty obvious bad. A move that can only be motivated by animus. And so I had to sort of build new systems for that just realize that people who I thought were going to speak up. We're not going to that that I think has been a new a new I mentioned before. I think that's you find new ways to get hurt in life and in one of the new ways is that
Reliance on on.
Reliant on other people outside of your closed. Circle can be, can be very difficult. It's people, you expect to speak up in a particular moment, very often will sit down. I
wonder how much of that as well as may be reassuring the prior that some teenage version of been would have been quite worried about as well. This sort of, I'm on the outside looking in people. Truly don't have my back over all this sort of confirms, the fear that I had of the world all along. I
mean that,
There may be some of that, although, I think I've gotten over, see, 90% of that. You never got over 100 percent of, I probably, I think that more it has to do with for me. The reason I got into this business in the first place is because obviously I'm very, I'm very political, I believe the politics matters, I think policy matters and I always thought of myself and still do as far as her a broader ideological movement. And when you think of yourself as sort of a broader ideological movement, which you see as sort of a community then when you kind of get
Separated off from the community and people let that happen. It can be painful and it can be difficult and when you realize that it maybe it wasn't quite as much of a nice. Happy communities, you thought it was. And you know, that that kind of
stuff is in the Bayesian thing and move forward. A Scientific American article said, vote for Kamala Harris to support science health and the environment. Kamala Harris has plans to improve health, boost the economy and mitigate climate change. Donald Trump has threats a dangerous record. What do you think about the editors of Scientific American and
Endorsing a candidate for the second time. Own only 179
years? I mean I would say that they are not actually adding to their own credibility. I mean the data that I've seen suggests that, not a lot of Voters are going to shift their Viewpoint based on the grand input of Scientific American. But a lot of people are going to shift what they think of Scientific American because of that input and signs overall. Yes, the politicization of science has been one of the worst developments of my adult lifetime. They attempt to turn science into a tool on behalf of certain. Political interests has been truly bad. Here's what I'll give a couple examples Rags. I don't wanna just throw a big allegation after the
Attempt to say trans medicine is medicine. That, that, that the, that there are vast studies, suggesting that transgender surgery is going to alleviate mental health conditions, among a wide spectrum of the population of proposition supported by virtually, no data. And that it should be applied to minors. Like that is a political move, the attempt to suggest during coal bed, that black lives matter. What if you went out and ride it for black lives matter that you could be out there like there were there were full on public health statements that you being in a giant crowd, in the middle of the street for for George Floyd apparently was woke
Virus didn't affect you, but if you went to the grocery store, obviously, you had to gear up like you were walking into, you know, post-nuclear Fukushima that, that's sort of said that the politicization of Science in those sorts of directions has been horrifying. And what it's done, is its undermined everything scientific. So, the again, everything being reactionary the reaction isn't. Wow, that's crazy. That they would say that but you know what what they're saying about, you know what they say about, you know, this particular food and its effect on how that might still be true. It was like, well, fuck those guys. Like then if they said that this is wrong, then
Thing they say is wrong blanket coverage. Exactly. And you see that again in a wide variety of sort of arena in public life, that institutions, it's very hard to earn credibility for an institution and it's incredibly easy to blow it up. It really is like all it takes a couple of a couple of giant cracks in your in the in the dam, that holds back the public skepticism and Bam, it's
gone. The study that you were referring to in 2020 nature indoors, Joe Biden, in the u.s. presidential election. Survey found that viewing the
Emmett did not change people's views of the candidates but caused some to lose confidence in nature and in u.s. scientist generally and that was published in nature,
right? Right. And then they did it again and then and Scientific American. Did it again? It's like what are you doing? What are you doing? And it's in that, that Temptation the word for it? That I like to use, it's not my word. It's a great word that I wish would drop into common. Usage is ultra rapid arianism, which is speaking. Well, outside your purview of expertise, right. So I'm not a nuclear physicist and so everything
About nuclear physics, would take with a giant Iceberg, chunk of salt. And whenever the editors of Scientific American decide to speak about about politics, that is like case in point of ultra rapid arianism them speaking. Well outside their, their view, their purview.
Well, you've got on one end, Taylor Swift and on the other end, Scientific American. Is this the period now of the election where all of the armaments are going to be sort of rallied in an attempt to try and push for whichever?
Candidate the side once it is
going to be insane. The night, the next the next fifty days are going to be totally out out there. I mean I can't even like 70 days ago. We had a different nominee. I well, what the hell, man? I mean like this thing is Shifting so fast that if you think that we've seen the last event in this election cycle, what I've said, is that God's writing this here is just awful. I mean, it's like, it's like season 8 of Game of Thrones like it, like it was they spent all this time building up and like, developing characters, and it takes you like a year to get from King's Landing to the wall.
And then season 8, they're like, you know what? Fuck it, the timelines. Ah, laughter. Yeah, exactly. You get on that. Dragon, you're up there in five minutes, you just zooming back and forth and none of the plotting make sense. And it's like, if if it's on the board, then I mean, God's going back to his old story lines now. I mean, look, we've had two assassination attempts in the last eight weeks, like we're not getting like repeats in the storyline. Yep. So I don't know if he's the wrong, people are in charge of the writers room. This is a badly written season of Trump trump. Season 8 is not good.
What would you say to people who want to?
And survive with the sanity intact, the next month and a half.
Don't take every bump in the road is though. It's the grade of the the grade of the road, a bump is not a great, you know? Like it's just like whether or not climate a bump, is not a great. If there is something happens, the tendency is going to be for things to settle back into status quo, ante, almost a major amount. So don't follow every single thing that happens though. This is going to make or break point of the election. This is the turning point. This is where everything falls apart. So there's a tendency to do that after the debate. We're from really
Warm while and camos abled spring to string sentences together in some a coherent fashion and the Endeavor was, oh my God, the elections over. Oh, it's over. And it's like, well, no, it'll settle back into what it was, which is pretty much a dead heat. Yeah, so take a breath. And, and then also, yeah, spend some time not watching politics and I say, this is somebody who benefits from you watching politics, like watch half of my show or the whole show and then and then go outside and do something else. Don't get drawn into the idea that that. Yeah.
If you miss a day, then it's the end of the world. And and also I've said this to both sides, believe it or not. This is not the allow the last election, please stop other shit. It's not true. And anybody who says that she was long cataclysmic language it's just not true and it's worse. It makes the country a worse place. It makes the country a very very bad place. When you keep saying over and over and over that, if your political opponent is elected the world will end then. First of all, you're ramping up the rhetoric such that assassination attempts to do become more common, but more importantly, you're basically saying that half the country is so evil that they want the
To end and there will be no more election. So if you don't actually do something in this election, then you may as well give up. Hope you may as well Despair and it's not true. The political class who are telling you, this are lying to you. They are lying and their people in my industry who do this routinely and it's gross. This is not the last election, 2020 was not the last election, 2016 was not the last election, there will be another election in 2028. It may not go the way we want in 2024. I really, really hope that it does and then you know what, you're gonna get back on the horse and you're going to go try because if you don't, then you will lose like it's just it's so obnoxious. And it's, and it's this sort of kind of charged.
Judge this sort of charged language which is done for cheap political
game. Yeah. It's very it's very, it's sort of pandering in a strange way in. Its it reminds me of the rhetoric that climate activists the most extreme sort of totally annoying climate activists use where they say, we have this tiny amount of time or else the world's going to end and everything and you go well, I know that that's not the case. And I know that the reason that you're using this inflammatory language is because you think it's so important.
And it and people are listening so little that if you overcompensate by driving the car unbelievably quickly, people go and maybe need to listen to this. And it's kind of the same. If we over egg, what's actually happening, it will motivate people in order to go out and vote against or for whoever it is that were talking about, but it's just patronising it comes across as being very
patronising the two worst elements of our politics right now. Are they at the idea that like, oh my God. It's the last election. If we don't vote right now, it's by the way, they're all lying. There all
Online, right and left, when they say this, they're lying. Hey, Joe Biden. The other day, he goes to an event in Pennsylvania and at this event, he puts on a maggot hat, right? It's kind of a joke, right? There's like a bunch of firefighters there there, big Trump fans, and he has kind of a Charming child puts on the mega had. And I thought that's Charming was nice and then I thought, you know, it's kind of crazy about that. Is that like he's going to go on TV tomorrow, and he's going to say that Donald Trump is a deep and abiding threat to the soul of the country. He obviously doesn't believe that because if he actually believed that he wouldn't put on that hat anymore. Anybody else wants to go hat. Yeah, exactly. So he doesn't believe that he's totally full of shit and the same thing is true when people are like
Oh my God, it's the in the last election. So that's one tendency that I hate. Is that the last election crisis point. The other thing that I hate is again emotivism, which is a term that's used by alasdair MacIntyre not coined by him but used by him, which is basically the attribution of motive to people in lieu of attempting to explain their logic. So what you will do is you will say the real reason that they're doing X. The real reason they say this is because they hate you and they want you to die, right? The real reason they're doing this is because they despise you, they despise you and
despite and so I have a right to despise them because they despise you, it's not just the legit disagreement about foreign policy or about tax policy. It's they hate you and they want you to die. And then, everything about you is is terrible to them and so you should hate them right? But like, that is not good. It's not good for the country now, are there cases where that's for sure, their cases, where that's true. Sure, there are cases where that's true, but do I think that that's like the underlying motive of the vast majority of the American population voting, the way that's different than you know, I actually don't think that. That's that. I don't think people put that much thought into how they vote is the truth.
Amy getting the ballad. They get into the voting booth and I like, okay, I got this schmuck, and I got this person. I got this other schmuck and like, okay, fine. So I'll put over on these rocks, like, okay, I
have to Twitter is not the real world with regards to the speaking of which, what do you make of Elon, and his recent injection into public life. So,
I think that Elon taking over X has been excellent. I think that him opening up the gates has been really good. I think that, obviously their safety mechanisms, that need to be put in place. I think that one of the things he did is he sort of nuked, the entire staff when he came in, which was necessary and good.
That also allowed obviously a lot of stuff that I don't think anyone would want on there on the platform or elevated on the platform including probably some foreign interference from the Russians for exam. You see some accounts that obviously have have risen to prominence because of being jogged by outside forces, pretty clearly. And obviously and I think you on wants to not have that happen, I think he wants to crack down on that again. I think that Elon he's somebody who always shoots from the hip. He's very honest about what he thinks, which means that he will actually take things down, right? He'll put
A up he'll realize he doesn't like what he put up and then he'll take it down. He's done this many many times which I actually find kind of charming. One of the things that I like about what he is doing is also, he's very transparent about what he's doing like Ultra transparent. So if you get a video Shadow band on YouTube, you have no idea why or Shadow ban, it takes them three months to get back to you. You got a yellow flag. For some unspecified reason is low-level staffer in San Jose, who decided that you ought to be, that you ought to be downgraded and suddenly your traffic, it's nailed for a month.
You on if you get banned, you'll when your friends like tweak to Ilan directly and you'll all be like, yeah, I don't see why they did that. And then just on ban you like that. There's something Charming about that. Like you would hope that there are systems that are put in place, but what he's trying to do, I think is good. So I think that every position that Elon is articulating as well thought out. No, I don't think that you want is giving it that much thought. Sometimes, I think that he is he has a generalized worldview. That does not line up with the kind of woke redistributionist left that he thinks Kamala Harris represent. Does that mean that every tweet is being you know, run.
Through a rigorous fact-check machine or, is he just memeing? He's just beaming. I mean that, you know, the truth is Elon is using Twitter, the way we all used to use Twitter in like 2010. Okay. I remember when Twitter was fun before I became a shit show. And is there a risk of doing that at the scale that he's up? I
think obligation that comes with platform sighs. I
mean, I do think that that, you know, listen. Do I wish that he would not to eat some of the things he tweets? Sure. Does. He also had get community noted on his own side. He does and he removes stuff. So yeah, people come as a package, I think.
Woman late Elon is good. And if I have a choice between that and sort of the prior regime which was Jack Dorsey in the back room, with a bunch of levers telling people they couldn't say he or she then I would much prefer you
on system. It seems like Jack Dorsey increasingly is coming out as sort of a pro Free Speech position whether that's retconning or whatever, I'm not too sure. Mark Zuckerberg has gone from sort of like nerd to Chad this Arc of him also. What is this some underlying
Sometimes this just
throwing up, what's going on and I think a lot of the tech Pros feel correctly that they were targeted by the government, the aftermath of 2016, so after Trump won't, but remember before 2016? Social media is going to save all of us before 2016 Twitter, was it? Good. Facebook was a good. All these places were great and then Hillary lost and the last because that mythical, you know, story that we told earlier they could not believe that Hillary law. So there had to be another reason that you lost, it couldn't be that she was a terrible candidate who ran a shit campaign. It had to be that she was job by the Russians and Facebook and so all the pressure was brought to bear.
On social media Dianne Feinstein, calling Zuckerberg in front of Congress and saying, if you don't regulate yourself, we're going to regulate you. And I think that Zuckerberg and a lot of these other social media heads after expressing support for free speech, mean Zach did a speech in 2019 that was really good about at Georgetown about free speech, like really good. I remember playing parts of it on my show and then by 2020 because of all of the government pressure around BLM and kovin all that. He basically shut off news on Facebook almost entirely and I think that's not been salutary for the American public discourse. I think that I think
Actually the loss of Facebook. In terms of new distribution has been really bad for forget about for businesses like mine. Which, you know, obviously, this is self-serving, I would love to be able to distribute more news on Facebook, but I think that it's been bad for the national discourse because Facebook was kind of Normie Central, right? Facebook is like, your grandma was on Facebook and everybody on Facebook has a name and has a picture and their actual humans. And so you had an also had a broader panoply of humanity and when you shut it down on Facebook, those the people who are politically active, don't go away. They just got
to rent it or 4chan interestingly with Facebook.
The only social media that still exists where you are only connected to people who you actually know, right? You know on Instagram you follow people that you like their music or you like their dog or whatever on Twitter, you follow people that you don't know that maybe just think of interesting text or take that you hate. But on Facebook apart from the fan pages side, most of the other people that you're connected with the people who actually know from your own life and then still yet to be a replacement for that social. Now I totally
agree and I think that, you know, because of that there's a natural.
Cyril, kind of social fabric there exist more Facebook than some of these other social media sites.
I also think that, you know, wasn't again, self-serving I have a lot of followers on Facebook and it's not a good thing. That all the people who follow me have just seen my content disappear over the course of the last four years. Like, if you click follow on a thing, you should be able to see the updates when they, when they do
reach has declined 90%. Well, 90% since what you are, you aware if that's the same on all sides of the political aisle. So I think it is. I mean I as far as I'm aware not getting targeting that I'm
not aware that its Target may be targeted. Us me. We've had some intimations that perhaps but again I don't want to, you know, get into conspiracy. Like
originally that was a big part.
Of the growth Loop of DW,
right? Hundred percent. Yep. Yep. Facebook was a huge part of that and we've had to come up with creative work arounds and sort of the nature of business and
29 games. What is the thrust of platform now YouTube?
Well, I mean, actually word more and more directing people to our home platform, right? We have more people who are watching on app we have a lot of people are subscribers. Generally tend to watch, we have a million paid subscribers. So we tend to have, you know, a lot of those people watching on app and those numbers don't even get attributed to. Our advertisers have hundreds of thousands of people who watch
my show on a nap.
And the actually that's without mid-roll ads
though. Meaning that the embedded ads. Yeah, right. Yeah. There's right. They're not, they're not, they're not like YouTube ads or anything but like the the they're embedded
in that's going on, still in on the
ACT. Actually, I don't believe so. I think but for our subscribers watching out for you, they watch out very interesting. So, so at some point, you know, we could see, you know, maybe there'll be a lower tip like Netflix. I'll be like a lower tier and you
don't want it if he is to
exactly, you get exposed to view ads from your child.
You think that we've passed Peak
woke? Yes, I do think that we pass people elk. I think that corporations have decided that it's not profitable. I think that booming economies that are inflated have a lot of money to expend and you can experiment on a bunch of stupid bullshit. And so, I think that a lot of people were like, we can do, okay? We can do DIY, we can do all of it and look, our bottom line keeps growing, and that's probably because of the EI. And then it turns out that, you know, when you got to tighten the belt a little bit, the first person to go is your diversity and equity and inclusion officer. And so, I think that there's some of that
In corporate world, the right obviously has gotten much more mobilized, people like Chris Ruffo and Robbie Starbuck. I'm doing good jobs for mobilizing people against this sort of stuff at their corporations. And, and from, you know, various businesses, I'll that, I think is good. And frankly, I think the 2020 was so exhausting for everybody. Like, so exhausting, I think people don't even recognize that we're still exhausted from 2020 and 2024 and we're all like, we've all blocked out of our memories. How bad 2020 was 2020 was horrible. I mean, between between BLM and and
David. It was a terrible year for a huge number of
people. Real one-two.
Punch. Oh my God. It was, it was, it was, I mean, it drove us from California. And so, like the, I think, for a lot of people were still living in the aftermath of that and were like, we don't want remember anything that has to do with it. So if you're gonna tell me about like how America's racist and horrible, like, I just want to hear it. And by the way, you're seeing Commonwealth smartly avoid this, right? Like this is the one smart part of her campaign is it you'll get asked about race and she'll try and brush it away. In a way that Obama certainly would not happen in 2012.
I mentioned the even for people who were and still are in support of everything that happened during
When T20 does still this lingering fatigue of that.
It again, I think that the American people Wang for stability and normalcy, and that's why I think you see a lot of people like my family that moved from a blue state that did not feel like stable or normal to Florida, where it does feel. Pretty stable and pretty normal.
Are you worried you know, DW and your platform have been built on lots of things, but one of them has been in response to crazy stories from the left. If we've passed Peak woke, that creates both a vacuum of stuff to react to and
Also less of a revolutionary guard, feel if more people agree, that it is crazy. What you're doing, is that something that people are that everyone's cognizant of that? Matt, Walsh can't just do a like his another Tick Tock reacts right, Arch, if there's less of that to react to. So, I
think it'll be a different thing that were reacting to, and I think it'll be a more serious thing that we reacting to. I think we're past Peak woke, but I don't think that we're past, you know, Peak, I'm searching for a term for it. I'd say Peak feminism and they like, I think.
The France. Fine. And is the author of wretched of the earth is kind of post-colonial this idea that there were the colonial e oppressed and then they are the oppressors, the oppressed repressed. Make sure that that's not going away. I think the oppressor oppressed Matrix is, is here to stay. I think that it was, it was being sort of forced through the prism of race and sex. I think that that prism is starting to collapse a little bit because I think that it's so tiring and turns out that men and women. Actually, I think don't generally want to be at war with one another and eventually it turns out that they kind of like one another and it turns out that you know, as
Racially divisive is the past period has been. I think most Americans kind of wanted to be left alone and treat each other decently. But I do think that there are class divides. There are divides in terms of what Cara Cara called result in resent him, all the kind of jealousy and resentment that are going to come to the fore again you're seeing in terms of foreign policy it's leading to I think the Great Divide that's to come is between groups that I've called the Lions and groups have called the city, the the Scavengers and that's true economically. It's true societally.
Are people who want to produce, who want to defend, who want to be part of a cohesive Society while having individual freedom to pursue success and their people just want to tear those people down and they've been living off kind of The Spoils of the innovators and the people who are entrepreneurial and the people who want to build and then there are people who just are happy to just tear away at that. And I don't think that that necessarily lines up completely right to left. I think there are some people on the right who are sort of in jealousy and resentment Moto do some of that and I think that, you know, the it's largely relegated that there. It's a very big movement on the left. It's always been sort of class movement on the left.
Which always fits weirdly awkwardly in the United States which is not a class based society. It's always whenever people say I'm fighting for the middle class in America, I always think like Who. And the reason I say that is because virtually a huge percentage of the American population will spend some time in the middle class and everybody who's rich was ones middle class in the United States and a huge number of people who are ones poor. Now, in the middle class, it's not like Britain in 1890, where like where you were born is kind of where you stay and if you're very lucky you enter the merchant class and you become Nouveau riche or something. It's not like that in the United States he was always
The magic of the u.s. so that you can start off. Dirt porn, you can finish off super rich and you know that. So I think that it Maps awkwardly but the innate kind of jealousy of, man, the oldest story that the two oldest stories are Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and Cain and Abel is the story of humanity, always, it is God saying to the person whose sacrifice was rejected. You can learn from the person whose sacrifice was accepted. You can do better. You don't have to do this and the person whose sacrifice was rejecting like, or I could kill that guy. And I think that that's, that's what you're saying.
In terms of foreign policy, I think that you're seeing a coalition of the supposed oppressed who have decided that if you're a productive Society, you need to be torn to the ground because my failure is your fault. And I think you're seeing that economically. I think that you're seeing that, in terms of in social policy, I think you're seeing in terms of some of the attacks on the family because the families safe and secure place. And you're seeing people who feel alienated from family attacking that and in a fit of pique that I think is the end. I don't think those conflicts are going away anytime soon. So, for example, you're not going to see, I think that
We may have hit Peak woke on like men or women. I think that that may be past its sell-by date. But how we had people walk on, I'm protesting America on a college campus Because I think America is a systemically brutal. Exploiter of the rural people's. I don't think remotely hit the end of that. I think that's probably likely to grow
Ben Shapiro. Ladies and gentlemen, been I really appreciate you. It's been a long time coming. Thank you so much it. Thank you. I appreciate it.
