« The Joe Rogan Experience

#1241 - Sam Harris

2019-02-07 | 🔗
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. His podcast called “Making Sense” is available on iTunes & Stitcher.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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the Joe Rogan experience my day, Joe Rogan, happy here to your podcast with, just get right into the jump in the jack stuff that was in your podcast with Jack, and I found something very when I did my podcast with Jack. First vault was not anticipating the blowback that I received. It was stunning ah, but um What I thought was, I was going to have a conversation with this guy, be fun, see what it's like to run this gigantic network that helps people communicate, ok, Jim helps people communicate and distribute information. World! Why what is it like to start something like that up and have it become what it is like how you managed to try to keep up with it and what the headaches been, and apparently people online particular people that want to comment about this? All they
I to know about with censorship, and that was an issue with me. There was a question with me, but it became a far was a far bigger question for people online. They felt like that. I tossed him softball questions um and that I didn't press him yeah and then I listened to your podcast and one thing about Jack is very smart guy, very nice guy, but he talks in a very slow and methodical way and when you ask him a question, he takes these routes and, if you you, want to jump in and press him like you're in this weird situation. Where he's not totally answering your question, but he's talking about the same subject: you're talking like for, for instance, you brought up Louis Farrakhan right like House Louis Farrakhan, in good standing on the platform, and someone like you know, fill in the blank Milo Yiannopoulos or Laura Loomer or whoever it was they get kicked off.
He never got to that. He went around and around and around with you and um. He recognized this after the podcast uh. I received a lot of blowback. He received a lot of blow back, so I contacted him and he said he would be more than happy to come back on again and address all these things, and I said okay, what I'd like to do is address specific instances of people being censored, and he said okay, what I'll do is I'll bring in someone from the company that's in charge of that stuff, so I'm just trying to put together a picture of what it's like to be a ceo of something as big and it's all. So ceo of Square he's runs the cat shop. There's a lot of stuff going on there right, so he's obviously busy how much day to day involve What does he actually have and who gets censored and why they get censored, and how much is he willing to share about that? So we're going to find out in the next follow up podcast, but I got accused of everything from being a show
bill to being a cuck being uh and there's also an issue that you've managed to avoid wisely so of advertising the cash apps, an advertiser on my podcast, so because the cat shops and advertise on my podcast man had you by the throat exactly. I think that I ask all those great questions that were cued up the really, but he is those are the questions I would have asked now. That's hard to say because no one's going to believe it. But those are the questions I would asked and I tried not to be too confrontational with the gas but in hindsight I probably depressed more particularly on people like Kathy Griffin calling for Doc sing for the the the the kid with the mag had on with the native American there's there's quite a few. But I noticed that well what Is your experience like with yes, so it's interesting because you and I have we had different interviews because they were time differently and he this
so initially topic is. This opens the door to all the ways in which our podcasts are different and they may you stream live. I sit on my podcast for at least a week in Jack's case was like two weeks before I released it. So I did. My interview with him before this for three of interviews with him came out in this rolling stone interview. There was uh, I think, only I think, maybe a Huffington Post interview come out, but basically it was nothing out there. So I had no real examples of how he dealt with these questions or how we talked yeah yeah. Well, I mean slow talking is not a problem for me because I'm one of the great slow so we're groove there, but he I I didn't know what his boiler plate was and and how he would he would answer any of these questions and your podcast came up before minded but mine. What mine was before the Cummington High School Catholic, no way out circus happened right.
So the real missed opportunity for me was just a sheer matter of timing like you know, because the coming ten thing puts such a fine point on everything, that's wrong with Twitter in the way journalism interacts with it right now. Is it just? You know, I think it was a far and mind you rode up at an op ed, the New York Times saying Twitter is destroyed, journalism and and- and it was not a crazy out that, in fact after the Covington thing and the whole Jenson and Kathy Griffin would have been a perfect example to talk about, but, like you know why she's still on, if she's calling for the docks in right yeah. But you know- I think I had a substantially similar interview with him that you did because he's. There's two things. One is he's great at sort of pure wedding around the sharp pointed question of you know what policy and why? Why are you applying it in this seemingly disparate way? And it seems to skew politically in one direction, all the time right
but you know I think you also you know I did. I thought I think you did. Naturally we cut him some slack, back in that ceo of these two corporations he can't be expected to actually know what happened in every one of these micro cases. Like I think I brought up the case of I think her name is Megan Murphy. I hadn't I I hadn't even heard of her a lesbian woman that she's like a feminist who say, it's for the wrong thing: a in the transgender space. She said something like men are not women right, right right and she got band and a life or no. I I think it was ten. But you know I raised it and he obviously can't know exactly what happened in that case, or at least it would be surprising to me if he knew so. The fact that he doesn't his finger on each one of these cases and what the what the rationale was, and he has this sort of generic answer- that what you we're seeing you know in public is
not necessarily what we're seeing in fact, in virtually every action case, is not what we're seeing in private with respect to how these people are open, multiple accounts and doing same the various stuff behind the scenes. Now, whether that is true, I don't know but I mean I can just say that Jack seemed he seemed unusually open to talking about anything. I wanted to talk about it, so I saw one allegation they got. Ahold of you was that you must have constrained by you know with the topics you couldn't touch in advance. You must of had a some agreement with him in advance. You know the can happen with me right now. I should address that. There was no no discussion whatsoever about what was off limits yeah. I know nothing and he asked her notes. So in my case I tell all my guests and this the difference between you streaming live and may not I tell all my guess: listen if at any point this interview, you put your foot in your mouth or I put my foot in there. We can edit it.
Like. We. I want you. I want you to be totally happy with what you say over the next two or three hours. So if you have to take something again, take it again and you know we'll just hide the seems as we go now that virtually never happens right and in Jack's case there wasn't even a wrinkle like that. So, but you know I just you know. I recognize it's a high wire act for a lot of these people, especially for some was running to publicly traded companies right and you know I was the invited him on. I said I said jacket way. We're we were in on Twitter. I said, listen I promise I'm not gonna make you smoke a blunt on video that got him. So I don't know have got him, but I didn't try to get him to Slocumb. I I didn't even think about it. Yeah we weren't drinking we were just talking maybe had would be better if we were drinking because it did seem very stiff. I listen to it after the fact, and I mean I get
from their anticipation why it would be disappointing. I just thought it was kind of boring. I thought my podcast with them. Just wasn't very, I sometimes do too many podcasts and when I sometimes do too many podcasts think I run low on juice, I'm not. Is I don't know I'm not as in gay. Aged or I'm not as fired up about it and Maybe I just should have definitely should have prepared more for him, but I really thought it was just going to be a conversation about what it but I thought that would be really easy to do, because it's such a unique position to be running something like Twitter, but he You know, I don't know if he was evasive because he didn't know the things or be you didn't want to talk about the things, but there was things like he didn't know. Exactly why Alex Jones was ultimately band. He didn't he couldn't call or didn't know. No is that because he couldn't recall was because he didn't want to talk about it or is it because he didn't remember,
for it I mean I don't I don't know I mean you have to have to be inside his head to get that answer yeah and clearly got a a very practice line that he uses. To answer questions and I make about you know. I know what it's like to have boiler plate. I you know: I've been a book on a book tour and you're, just basically getting as the same questions again again and here he getting asked fairly pointed questions about you know where Twitter's is going and he's got. You know. I don't think this is dishonest. I just think, but it has this amazing ability to close the door to further inquiry because he gives you the full mea culpa right up front. You asked like: what's what's this asian with the seemingly asymmetrical banning of people and say yeah. We really, I mean we got to get much better at communicating our process, we're not nearly transparent enough. This whole thing, disarray, and my job is to fix it right. So it's like a global. You know we're fucked up and we're going to get better. I promise you
right, yeah, and that is there's do any good for the people that already banned right, but actually but there's not a lot to get it right on that right. You know interview yeah, so it it's a work, whether you, I don't think it's nefarious. I think it could well be totally honest, but it does have this. This effect of you just keep REACH you know, sort of kind of brick wall. But you know we're going to be there yeah. That's I've felt that too, and I didn't didn't, really navigate that very well, and that was a big part of the blowback. But then the blowback was accentuated when they found out that he sponsors me raise the cap. Chap is one of his businesses and its sponsors, the podcast here yeah. Well, I I had a very similar result and I don't have that that problem. So it's you know that. I don't think that diagnosis, your situation at all, but I it's it's very interesting that the difference between these business, the business models that under which we run our podcasts and
just the difference. I mean just every choice you make and how to produce a podcast. I essentially have made the opposite one. Another like streaming live like this, miss the fact that you're. So this is just all very interesting to make so I'm kind of a reluctant student of digital media now, because I've just stumbled into this wild west that you know you in large part have invented right. I mean this podcast in space was not Then, and now is that Spotify in a bind up the this is like a land grab for audio yeah that we were talking about that before the podcast he just purchased some company was, it Kim was a call to get a camera yeah for some on. Godly amount of money yeah like two hundred million dollars and they're going to spend five hundred this year or something, and so it's this. Making this up and you know I'm making, and you know I just Lisa Meditation APP, which is a different business it'll still, and so now I have these kind of two parallel digital business is happening in my life and it's very
interesting. The decisions you make are forced to make and the consequences of it, and so like the fact that we're having this conversation live, you don't even have to think about whether you're gonna, this right because right streaming live and you know what we're gonna and when we're done. We're gonna turn off the mikes and walk out here, and your job is done with my podcast. That's not the work flow at all and I I totally envy this. This approach that you have but forever the reasons I feel like I can't take it in in my life, and so it's it's it, but it is very different into it dictates many choices. You know down the line which I'm I mean: there's, there's a positive and negative, but it's you know the the positive is. What you hear is what we got and we're done after we turn these mikes off and that's and that's not you know, that's not how I ipod there's also the visual element of it and the visual element of it initially was almost like a side effect. I mean we we first started it out visually, but then, when it started going uh
Itunes. The Itunes aspect of it became the focus, the audio version of it rather became the focus but then we decided to stream on Youtube and put it up on Youtube, but it was totally not profitable. It was just for for a goof like oh we'll, have the video up. Why not some people like video? It was one of those things, but then you realize ultimately that Youtube becomes a viable source of revenue and then it's also the a lot of people like to watch it. You know, and they also like to watch because they can comment under it. That was the other thing that came out of the Jack podcast. We got into a controversy about comments, and about how comments are deleted or how they're they're shown in hidden and what happens because people are accusing Jamie of deleting all the derogatory comments that we don't touch any we don't we don't, delete any of them. We don't do anything to them. We just leave him up there and it's a mostly a cesspool.
I mean, even even on a good podcast, there's a lot of crazy shit that happens on these things, but from what we think and Jamie correct me. If I'm wrong, you think what's going on is that people are marking other people post a spam. There's that and and Brandon also has a theory that a lot of all right people are targeted by the algorithm that you tube uses like in in. In one case, there was a guy with a peppy, the frog avatar, and he said, like his his comment immediately went to spam and that the other thing is that the comments are curated depending upon who is watching it and what account it'll be they'll, be different sort of yeah the bill propagate different comments at the top. It's not a this is you can actually change it? If you, if you prefer to see the most new comment, I from your own personal you right to when you're watching use you as a viewer. Yes, our user of you have to make that actual yeah, so that exact this can,
crazy theory just heightened the whole thing right. Ok, now they're deleting negative comments like I don't like doing bad podcast, but I will be the first one to tell you when I think a podcast sucked that podcast was definitely disappointing. It wasn't good mine. Wasn't it was I'd. Like I said I want to listen to. His account is kind of boring yeah. I just wasn't wasn't juicy was up he we he we didn't get all solo, it wasn't like he and I were just shoot the having a good time. What's it take that one decision, so you have decided to make video a main component. This podcast, still probably a small percentage of your actual listens Ronnie more when I was around not anymore, it's it's gotten to the book. It's almost fifty fifty awesome great lows in in on that used to be like ninety ten right now, yeah, okay, so you so I have it. I don't have a video component, and so I just put audio on Youtube, but I put absolutely no energy into Youtube. I mean that may when they change, but because I don't, I don't care, what's happening on Youtube. I never see the comments and whenever I look it is,
as you say, a cesspool is insane. I mean Youtube is just skews massively right excuse it. Just cancel email and probably skews very young too, so you have it just just like millennial, alt right, crazy, traffic light, as I say these sentences you're you two pages is blowing up with hate. For me, you had a bunch of you know: millennials yeah sums up their just when Jim or right yeah. This is an older people too. Well yeah, but I mean it's: it's gotta be younger than most of wearable most so threads not could possibly find anything. I put out there now I got I don't even look at my add, mentions for the most price, but maybe five minutes a day. Looking at that's healthy get back to me and you were actually helpful and in re in my brain on that on that topic, but so because I don't see any of that stuff- I mean, maybe I'm getting a lot of pain for my Dorsey interview, but I don't even know about it right and so I'm not having, I don't feel like, I have to course correct.
Wants to anything now and in large measure. It is a consequence of just this decision that you know I inadvertently made and I'm just- and I don't have a video component to my podcast at the moment, so I'm not I'm not spectating on that. You know that the feedback on you too well the feedback things in testing, because we were just talking about this before the show that with feedback and comments on Youtube Ascent anyone can comment and if you don't go banning people from the channel which we don't do it we wouldn't do. Some was totally a piece of shit, but we don't so you essentially have this open forum. So it's like almost like a message board where people you just sort of comment and it's unlike twitter in that regard, because Twitter, just You get abusive and shitting on Twitter. They just get rid of you if you get abusive in shitty instagram or on Facebook. Facebook they'll just get rid of you, but if you're on Youtube
and you're in those comments you could kind of get away with more. So I would imagine that people that don't appreciate censorship and want to just just fucking spew out whatever is on their mind. That would be the place they would go, especially if it's the same product. Essentially the only thing different- and this is the thing where it got confusing, with the Youtube people versus the audio people with the audio people. It's very obvious that the cash app is a sponsor because it's we say it this CASS brought to you by the cash out where, as in you to be like how they're hiding the fact that the cache up to sponsor road, we talked about it during the podcast itself, but we don't put the ads on you too. We there's ads that you to put gone, but we put the ads on it like after the show, is over I'll, read the ads and we'll insert those into the audio and that will go up to Itunes and RSS feeds and all that stuff. So the if it's on Youtube, it's a brief great in the sense that especially the live. One doesn't have anything so like this has zero ads and then the ones that will be
posted on Youtube later, it'll have you tube ads? So that's is there's a couple of conspiracy theories in that regard. There's all so apparently emerging conspiracy, theory about that Jack was trying to pump up bit coin because they have some sort of a bit coin deal. Have you heard this one? I read that but like it's it from what I saw it's not higher than it was at any point. It's still right around thirty five hundred dollars. So if there was a pump and dump scheme some sort them like it. It should be should like probable on a box, and I guess I don't know yeah. I don't understand that, but it is or any other component to it. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know where that's coming from the city. I don't even know what it is yet to Bali said was that well, the cash app sells bitcoins. We talked about Bitcoin, I think you can buy and sell Bitcoin through the cash up. I should say I think he said something about blockchain technology rendering everything permanent online, and that was that was something but that I think that's in regard to com
pants into anything blog posts. Blockchain is essentially to have everything. That's online forever but there's so many fucking conspiracy theories about all this stuff. It's it's fascinating and You know we were talking about earlier with your the way you do yours, you used to use patriarch, and now use your own website after the Sargon of a cod. Incident which you nobly stepped back away from patrion now or not so no paladin, whatever on what you think of Sargon of a card yeah yeah. Well, it's not even that it's yeah yeah well, there's so many misconceptions about what happened there and you know I tried to clear them up on my podcast but
there's an interesting implication to not taking ads, and I I I I think what's happening and- and this is much bigger than even podcasts- and I think have been should know what you feel about this to be a you. Have you are the the the quintessence of the successful ad model in in podcasting rise like this? Is here is working fantastically well for you and for people like TIM Ferriss and probably mark Maron. I mean this there's some kind of like a winner. Take all thing happening in the space where ads are working great and I am a really be also a a a highly successful example of the the support models like the p b s model in the M p r model, and what's weird, is that I can't like that. We you know you, when our ball, surrounded by people who have podcast want to have podcasts, are asking us for advice:
it's about how to succeed and how to monetize and like I'm, not even in a place where I can recommend my model to anyone else right because it Zaveri, you know it's very hit or miss. I mean I had just happened to have developed an audience that will support my work and you had developed that audience previously. Ironically enough on Youtube too there's a lot of Youtube. Yeah. Just debate the random at the put in people putting MIKE and on their Youtube channels, not mostly debates right, yeah and as a you know, as an author, but it was made, it was just up. The podcast grew, and I had this sort of for forced choice. Where am I gonna go the the ad route or or not- and I found that I may have two things to
to say you know fairly strongly against ads, but we're really only one of them applies to me and I don't think it applies to you or TIM or anyone else. I'm I just felt personally, I couldn't use ads because of just what my platform is and and the kinds of topics I'm engaged and it just didn't work. I mean there was nothing highbrow enough where I fell. Like my credit, so- he wasn't getting subtly undermined by shilling. For it I mean it would be something that I just legit love. They could have been the Oxford English dictionary. You know, like you know, you guys is the best dictionary world. You guys should use it. I still couldn't do it and I'm I tried it with the only thing I took on as a sponsor was audible, and I did that for some weeks and then it just you know I love on, but but it just felt wrong, and so I decided to just experiment with a different business model and it's working for me, but it's I don't think it can work for most people
and I thought I view that as a problem and and and the thing that I I think is is interesting, is that there's the this is much bigger than podcast, and so you have like. You have Facebook on the one hand, which is just a a two totally free platform where the users don't even realize that they're, not the customers there, the actual product right, the user, the users are having their attention sold to advertisers and it's this enormous biz, and on the other end of the digital spectrum, you have Netflix, which is just a stark, paywall right and there's no way in but to pay the subscription, and you know that's and a Netflix could run ads and get more money if they wanted to, but they're you know, they're not doing that, and presumably won't do that. I'm I'm hoping just generally speaking, the the digital future looks much more like Netflix and much less like Facebook, and I I see what ads as
one is they have anchored everyone to the illusion of free? Everyone expects their digital content for free, except in places like Netflix right so like it. When you release a comedy special, when you really release your next hour and you sell it Netflix, I would imagine there are very few people in your fan base who thinking, Joe Rogan. Why didn't he just put that out on you too right? Why is this on Netflix? They? They sort of understand that this piece of content is, it belongs on that shelf and that if they want it, they have to subscribe to Netflix. Where is if you did something so lightly different, but we are functionally the same if you put it on Vimeo and charge people five dollars or whatever you know him, the on demand, yeah. I think you get a lot more pain, right, yeah, I would say well fuck you you created bastard like if you're already doing great. Just release your stuff right, yeah and. I view that as a problem, it's like it's like a psychological problem. People have been anchored to the add subs,
guys model more less everywhere and they expect everything for free and in my world I'm trying to just to continually brook that expectation and push people into a different sense of you, get what you pay for and and that the so that the hybrid model I've created for myself is I'm putting more stuff behind a paywall right, and it said that this is it's not just your sponsorship of of otherwise free content, but I'm I'm very personally, I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that, if someone actually can't afford it, they can't get access to my content. So I I just tell people if you really can't or the stuff behind my pay. Well, you really can't afford my meditation app. Just send us an email and we'll give it to you for free right. So yeah heard that I was like yeah, this guy's crazy. I mean it's. Actually it is actually in the pricing in the apps store for my meditation apps, like it there's the pricing and then below that there's. If you can't afford this, you know here's the here's the email address, I think that's found.
Stick and so that gives free I'm splitting it that way, but I'm raising prices is so it's like it's like a certain, because I I think everything is too cheap in the in the digital space. I think well, I think we're anchored to I mean there are people who will spend five dollars a day, a cup of coffee every day for the rest of their lives, and yet, if you told them this podcast or this app- that they that they say is incredibly valuable to them is going to cost them five dollars a month. They they feel raped right. You know, so it's and I completely understand it because I know what it's like they had a paywall and think I I can't get my credit card out again, I'm not going to pay for this. I'm gonna find this information somewhere else, so we've all been anchored to this thing and You know something is going to win in the end I mean I think at some point you know it's going to look much more like Netflix or much more like Facebook, and I'm
throwing my lot in with the former. But you know it really is the wild west? Well, the Netflix things different, because Netflix has programs that cost a lot of money to create this podcast is very easy. Your friends call you up, hey, you want to do a podcast you coming over. Here I mean. Obviously we had a if all this equipment, but other than that, it's just the and Bam Weston Rant and all that stuff other than that just goes up right where, as you do a comedy special because hundreds of thousands of dollars, you have to secure a venue, you have to hire staff, I mean it's a big deal. Yes, it's that's and that's an easy thing in terms of like bang, for their buck, what what Netflix will get out of it? If you do a television show, I mean my god, you you and you need to hire hundreds of people,
there's wardrobe and make up and set in there's writers and producers and executives. Everybody has to go over the script. A fine tooth comb, it's incredibly incredibly. Strenuous is a lot going on when you create a television like stranger things or something like that, and we have so much special effects, and so to ask for that for free seems. Beat this to me seems ridiculous. Well it yeah, but but except the I mean so I'm kind of split again I'm running on two tracks here and app is much more like a L, a vision show surprisingly that, then it is like a podcast yes, but even if it is just a podcast, if you want to build something, if you want to build a media company like either like, like, let's say you were: let's say you were asking for support for this. Otherwise free pot, podcast people, don't know what your aspiration
as our me. Maybe you want to start a podcast network right. Maybe you have you're trying to build a a business, that is that the maybe have massive payroll expenses that you know, so the expectation that the product should always be free closes the door to any of those aspirations. If, in fact, you have them- and you know it's like I mean it is- it is very interesting psychologically because so I is, I have I've created this network of support for my podcast, but I see people do calculations that they would never do in a more transactional space that they were just let's say, buying my next book right so like for me offering a free, podcast and then saying. If you find this valuable, you can support it right that you know from the side of being a creator of that content. It feels like leaf the most transparent interaction PA
well, because a person can listen for free for as long as they want to just discover how valuable this and then they can support it to the degree that they find it valuable. Whereas if I'm selling you a book, you can't even read the book before you before you buy it or you have to make the decision to buy it and I'm trying to convince you to buy it, because it took me all this time to write it and and uh. You know you're. You know it Sze Transactional um, with what with Podcast people make calculations that they would never make when they're just figuring out whether they want to buy something fight like out, really along lines. What you just described, people say: well, how much does a podcast cost to produce right like like. If I knew what you were spending the money on and what it costs you to to do this podcast. Well, then I would support you right, but they're never saying how much does it cost to write a book and if I knew what you were going to spend the money on once you once you were once it once. I bought this book
then I would know whether or not I wanted to buy. You don't want the book or you don't right. So the problem with this report model and the problem with patriot and everything else is that getting engages this sort of the philanthropy, charity side of the brain right. People are worried about what you're going do and how much it all cause like? How much does is my cost right like that? That's that's a question that someone is asking when they're donating you donating and the prom when there is there not understanding. You know just the opportunity like I have to decide how to spend my time am. I gonna spend ninety percent of my time on a podcast, a that if so, that closes the door to to virtually everything else. I can do right. So it's you know it has to become a viable business, and so I mean I've recognized now that I am you know to some degree. Against the grain of human psychology in asking for support, and now now. I feel, like I'm gonna, ask much less I'm going to
people with the business model is and- and you know and still and remind them of it, but I'm personally. I'm gonna go more and more the in the direction of putting stuff behind a paywall, and if people want it, then they can support and as such, and what is it is. It is kind of a sister and Netflix. The alternate version of it would be if it were Netflix. That would also let you get it for free. If you really can afford it that I mean that that would you that's the guilt for a business model that I'm converging on now I like it, I like how you're thinking and I like the ethics involved in it, and I think it's a great thing and when you set it on your podcast, I was shocked, but it makes sense coming from you um. My thought is: I'm in negotiation- are in discussions right now, and I talk to you about this too, about building an app and what I want do with the app is have a set amount of money that you pay per month. If you want to sign up for the app and you get the podcast with no ads ads, so you can either get it
from Itunes or or whatever Google play or Google podcast or you can get it from the app and if you get it from the app you pay x amount per month and you get the podcast with zero ads and it'll stream live, I'm going to figure out a way to do both those things my thought going into advertising when I, when I first did the podcast I've been doing the podcast now for nine years. When I first started doing it, there was no ads for the longest time. It just cost money. It costs money Thio for ban with that cost money put it, but I was doing it for fun and I didn't care- and I my revenue was coming from other sources a few years ago I decided what I was gonna do was because I was getting ad. The first ad request was a face, was the flashlight rather, and you were the first person to request, I kill that did not have the flash light on your pocket yeah. The first podcast that we did. Okay prima well made I they were disgusting ads too, I mean we would get ridiculous
and be really silly and those at it was just the juxtaposition I just just knowing that the MIKE would go hot and then fifteen seconds before it would still be ringing in their ears. If you want to jack off with this fantastic device in here, SAM Harris, neuroscientists, but moral philosopher, the flesh, flight experience. Some pretty significant positive impact from that mean their business went through the roof, because so the podcast I mean they're really sold a load of flashlights where they told me like some oddly number, like fifty percent of the flashlights they're selling, was cold word. Rogan have no doubt. As of that, are you I don't picture too much of the armies of people using the product. You know so when word got around and then as the podcast space started expanding then advertisers tentatively were dipping their toe in my full Lhasa fee and it's still hold it was where that's like two thousand and six or seven or you know Jamie two thousand and twelve well Evan yeah. I was
the first time I was on here was two thousand eleven. Well did it, maybe in a two thousand nine okay, seven ten with all right, you're, probably on before yeah you're, probably around two thousand ten or eleven there's no other ads other than the flashlight. Okay with you now and then the flashlight dropped off when we start asking for more money they like, and I think we hit the point of no return, but my philosophy getting in to advertise. It was I'm going to do whatever the fuck. I want to do one hundred percent and have no impact whatsoever on the content of my pop Comcast cast, like whatever advertisers that I choose whatever advertise is. Is that I make deals with. They have to understand that there's no way, I'm changing the content of the podcast, and if I use them, I lose them. I don't care, and that was the thought process going in. So I never hit up a snag like this cash app Jack Dorsey,
before where people think that the reason why I was easy with him was because of the fact that he sponsors the podcast, it's a very obvious conflict of interest, but but people have to realize that if they churn out off your podcast you've got just an endless number of advertisers way too many lines yeah. So I'm not a very logical opponent is like is. It is one way of looking at it that they they buy a lot of ads. They do buy a lot of ads. We do have a good relationship with them, but I don't need them if they went away. I have too many ads. That sounds gross to say, but it is a fact. I have many more ads than I have spots for ads so if they went away, would not hurt me at all financially, because I put a limit on how many ads I do duper podcast. I also don't ever interrupt a podcast with an ad. I don't do that because I don't do that. That cost me money, but I just feel like the experience of listening to a podcast
just unbroken, is so much better. Feels gross, but in the beginning I'm like looked you know where it is. You can fast forward, but maybe you to this stuff. Maybe you need stamps dot com, maybe whatever the fuck you need. Those are the ads. They pay a lot of money. I'm going to take that money and I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want these guys decide. Oh you smoke pot or you're too controversial, or you talk about this or talk about that. We're gonna drop you, okay, that's my philosophy and I've lost ads of law sponsors. Okay, I don't care, but if I lost the cash out because I was too high out on Jack Dorsey or if Jack Dorsey comes back and I'm too hard on him in grilling him about these people that have been censored. I hope he doesn't, but I like him. I want to know what the fuck's going on there. In fact, I'm having TIM pool come on tomorrow. Tim pulls in
skip journals, independent journalist, who was used to be with vice, and he knows a lot about the censorship issue with you to more with with twitter rather- and he knows my you tube as well. But with who is censored and why, who is removed, who's been de platform. Why the been the platform and where the inconsistencies- and you know where? Why why Is it skewing so heavily right where the people in the right of the ones we're getting banned? The people on the left are getting away with a lot of crazy shit, so we're gonna we're gonna, get into the weeds with that, and if the cash app hears that and they decide to drop me as a sponsor, I don't care. I really don't care What is a major source of income for me, but it's only one source is one of things being stand up. Comedian work, for the UFC and having a podcast and podcast with ads on Youtube and and having ads that are on the regular podcast itself, I'm free in a sense I have
plenty of money, it's not whether or not I'm starving or worry about paying my bills. I'm free do whatever I want to do well. Also, I should be clear, like I don't think this. Sound, totally sanctimonious and is not intended that way. I don't my scruples around at reading it, as on my podcast, apply to you. Or TIM Ferriss or many other people I mean like TIM is the ultimate example. Tim is somebody who's brand on some level is, What I'm going to do is I'm going to go out there and find the best shit in the world. You know the best shirts, the best workout equipment, but I'm going to tell you about it so I want to know what TIM is found right him is reading an ad for something? You know that is totally brand convergent for him and I think you're very much in a similar situation if you're talking about on it or whatever it is a mystery. Is your own, your own part of on it right, and so it's like I cells, be clear that I say no to a lot of ads that I don't want like there was one there was a uber for babysitting sitting. We get those
fuck outta. Here what you crazy said that got recommended to Maine by somebody but sounds sounds like sounds like Craigslist for baby sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. There's been a few that I've said no to quite a few, some of them that are just boring. I'm like I'm, not reading that we're not selling that that's stupid, but also you're, a comic who can send up ads, and it's like I think Bill Burr. Does this work and kind of trash is the ad as he's reading and or something because that he lost nature box because he told people to go, eat apples it really his legal. You know apple, so I mean that's totally and that's something that's a tool you have in your wheelhouse that has effects down the list is one: reason why you stream live without really worried about it, and I I feel I can't like so is like me yet at the end of the day like if, if things go completely hay wire in your podcast you
and say: listen, I'm a fucking comic. What do I know right like you, can just just pull the ripcord and you're fine right, and do that right. So I got you can't say I'm a moral yeah, so I can't say that I got an idea, so I mean I I can and and there's certain circumstances where I should, but it's like I said I should avoid those rhyme sense yeah right. Yes, so you know I have to prepare for more for podcasts and I feel like I personally I be it. Is it as much as but out of, learn from I guess as well. I just you know this is a high wire act, but I want to net normally so that people feel free to be totally on guard it, because I know that if we have a Spaz attack, we can you know we can you know even spas attack will screws some people's careers. We actually had a conversation about a podcast that I talk to you about one of your podcast. We said that you actually started it over. You start
let's try this again, let's just start from scratch: yeah yeah I mean I I maybe I I think it would. I don't think it would be sporting to say with pockets. That was but yes, I had a podcast that went completely into the ditch for the first half hour I mean just brutal and that and I see said. Listen, there's a really there's a good conversation for us to have here and now in how badly this can go so like now, I know just where the track is. I have to struggle to keep the train on and so a reboot, we're gonna start again and we'll see what happens, and you know the podcast was was not perfect and I got some criticism for it, but Well, didn't understand that we were like we had. You know we had seen pit of alligators and didn't fall in right
made more sense, though, when you told me that, because I'm like okay, it was heated before you even got to go right because you'd already gone through one slash two an hour of back and forth yeah um. I think people need to understand what it's like to do. One of these things too, because you know you do it so often to become is pretty and you're so good at talking you're such a good orator and you're, so articulate that it comes off smooth and easy just having a conversation with someone but you're always considering the fact that people are listening to this you're, always saying how do I? How do I get more out of him or her? How do I take this, and how do I get this person to expand upon this? How do I you know? How do I make this something make something out of this? This is one of things that I felt with Jack because he was dogging in this way and we're really working hard on fixing all these issues. Like
oh geez, I gotta change my gears here on try to figure out cause like it's almost like. We have to re start again, every time, a question to be answered. He would stop talk, and I go okay next so long you forgot what you asked it's almost like. I have to restart the momentum of it, but well again, I'm totally I'm that kind of speaker, so it you know that wasn't compliment, but I didn't know what he talked like I'd, never heard him talk ever so hearing him talk there in talking to him live. You know, I mean some people are fucking effortless. Some people like took awhile like we to start drinking now. That was brutal. But it's a lie, but I mean you know how much I try to micromanage that behind the scenes yeah right, like I was later than your girls are trying to figure that out, and you know you that you guys base we broke all the rules. I I thought I laid down
you wanted, because you even tweeted Albion, Joe's podcast Thursday night at nine o'clock, yeah and so okay. This is so, but you know I mean I I didn't want you guys to go live right. I wanted. I wanted you to both have a chance to say: wait, a minute is smoking a blunt really the thing we want to go. So you know you didn't take my yes and it was what it was when we were drunk by the time the weed came out. That was what's what's interesting to me. As we were drinking from the beginning of the podcast, we start drinking whiskey. We both had three two or three glasses of whiskey right before the week came out. Nobody cared the fact that the CEO of Tesla was trunk road. No one cared about that, I mean wasn't drunk, but it should. Although I try- and I don't- I don't know if that was obvious- I I don't know if they saw that you were drinking, It was obvious in the beginning, pouring the whiskey meals on the table. We had ice clinking glasses salute. Very obvious yeah. I mean the problem for me there with that. Podcast frankly, was that I feel like you both got unlucky,
she with the, which is where he was in his life at that moment, because they see it because of what what that podcast showcased, at least for the first I don't know. Ninety minutes was how many user interface problems you could have with you on like heating. Is he just showed up as kind of fairly weird right he's? Not he's not was like that by any stretch, and he can give a very loose interview, but you working on a? U S is absolutely her role at work, trying to keep that conversation happening. You know in the beginning, but once we got loose yeah, that was good, but it still it's like he was just in a space that he was so massively stressed and so overworked, and he had you know, fires everywhere that had to be put out, and I just thought you know as as a friend I just felt like. Okay, this is sort of the wrong time to be doing this, and this is in us and- and so I just felt like you know it just felt unlucky to me so because he's
again. I I you know, I see him in many other moments and he can be that was out those actually circumstance where I was looking at the comments right. You know and- and I was saying ok this- these are people who are basically reading him, as somebody who is is much stranger than in fact he he ever is, and I could see why they were doing that because he, the guy he just seemed in a very stressed space in his life. What was interesting, he was very different when he first got here versus when the MIKE came on right. When he first got here, he pulls out the blow torch and starts shooting this flame thrower in the middle of the hallway and we're laughing, and I'm like he's going to be easy. This is great, and then we sat down and then stiff after that and I'm I'm just trying to massage it and get him get him get him going. Although I honestly, I think that is another consequence of live.
I'm not arguing that shouldn't shouldn't be alive because it it has a massive advantage for you as well, but it is this, is I'm feeling yeah like you know. If, if I knew that this was being taped and I could rethink the thing were about to say about Liam Neeson or whatever it is yeah, you know it's it's different yeah and so but will that Liam Neeson story is a perfect. Let's go there. Let's go there. A perfect example of a story where you know if you are Liam's friend, you would go tone. Tell that one. Don't tell that one he's like, but I want to be honest, don't don't you
be honest with me? I'm not going to judge you if you tell me that someone got raped and you went out with a baseball bat for a week looking for a black man to beat up to kill to kill it would be like oh Jesus Christ, man like what the fuck was going through your head at that point in time, like that's terribly like yeah like I feel awful about it. I can't believe that was me, but but it didn't happen, nothing happened and now people are calling him a racist and they don't want him in movies and This is fascinating me because it again, this is a much larger problem with with massive implications. We need to think through the whole process of redemption for yeah in our society. Right like like we, we have to understand what are the, what are the criteria for successful apologies and for forgiveness like what
Michael does what it, because a special I mean, what we're in we're in a world where people are are having their their reputations destroyed in their careers threatened for tweets. They sent as teenagers yeah right and- and you know more that this this, the Dorsey's point. Things are not disappearing online anymore. In a certain point, everyone this is going to be a three hundred and sixty panoptikon view of everyone's life people who have grown up on social media and everything is out there and I mean. The irony here for me is that you have a in progressives and people on the far left who receive a disclosure like you know, Liam Neeson Stossel's take his and they just want. You know they just wanna see him burned alive right little us, let's just do the wicker man on this guy, because this is you know this
so awful, and yet, alongside that, these same people on the left are people who have is a as a genuine ethical norm. The rehabilitation of murderers right, like you could be somebody who spent twenty years in prison for a crime. You admit you commit it and there's this norm around redemption and so there's there's no way to square those two things: well, there com simply holding these two contradictions right here. Other one, women's rights and support of the job. I mean yeah. What yeah this is what's going on there? How do you do that? You know don't be Islamophobic but also support women's rights and gay rights. Think, Eric Weinstein, our mutual friend calls the is the the Hilbert problems for social Justice Warriors and the David helper was a very famous mathematician who it at at the turn of the the nineteen cents.
Re a set of problems in mathematics that you know we're just the other day on his list of the most desirable questions they the hardest questions in the most consequential questions to answer, and so you know Erica being a mathematician's flip that around ironically said these are. These are the questions that Social justice warriors have to answer, and there are these impossible oppositions of this sort decent thing and know. Forgive me if I for some detail what has come out that I'm not aware of, but my standing of it is he he had a friend who was raped and then he reported this state of mind. This murderous state of mind he was in where he was walking, are and with the ill. What he calls an occassion at us. A british word for, like a it's like a a small metal club right like a black jack that likely that another term, for I think and looking for a black
guy to kill you like, doesn't hoping someone's going to come out of the woodwork and threaten him so that he could kill this guy in this act of in tre mental violins, because his friend had been raped by a black guy right. Just like any black, I will do now. That's that's sort of like the extra horrific wrinkle to the story right now, and he's confessing this as a kind of a symptom of transient mental illness, at least as as far as I know, it's like a. He is horrified by the fact that he was in the state of mind right. Can you imagine, like I Liam Neeson actor everything to lose and all that remember what what point his life he said this happened. Can you imagine that I was in the state of mind right, and this is, as you say it an all too honest disclosure, but it is damn interesting right and it is the kind of thing that we should be '
all to talk about right and it's not, and the fact that this is becoming synonymous with racism seems just wrong given given how he's to he described her at least how I've heard this big, 'cause. He saying listen if this had been an army and guy or warning italian or a japanese guy. I'd be looking for one of them right. I mean what what what this was at least on his ten, is that the virus of instrumental violence with of the vote, the virus of like this is how every blood feud yeah ever yeah in human history gets is like you, like someone from your tribe, killed my brother and now what I want to do is kill anyone, Your tribe right doesn't matter who that and that's you know clearly as toxic as it gets. You know, ethically, but that's not racism right, that's just that is that we have a word for it. It's it's instrumental violence
but you know yeah, obviously he's getting totally pilloried over this, but we need. We just need to figure out how to talk about how people can redeem themselves once something unsavory is is revealed about their past. They reveal it or whether it's just you know found out about them. Yeah I mean it is racism, though right, because he specifically looking for a black guy, I mean I know, but it's a part of the other tribe no, but it doesn't suggest- that he has a that he disposed and he feels one way or another about black people like. If you told me um, uh yeah, he could, he could have said again. It could have been ah an irish guy right or it could have been made. Well, I guess he's irish, scottish or Irish. It could have been an english guy right. It could have been like any type right. It's like the sea
only of the tribe is what he was reacting to yeah, at least in his description. I don't know why you wouldn't take him at his word, given that he didn't have to say any of this in the first place, right like this is like an amazingly honest and unnecessary disclosure, but it some and I don't think people would think of it as racism. If he, if the story simply was you know she got raped by a cop, and I was just hoping to go- kill a cop right right. You know it the same story right and so yeah may, but we're so trigger happy in our outrage. With respect to anything like what do you think Dennis what what what is going on, because outrage seems to be more in season than it's ever been in my lifetime? I don't I don't. Remember outrage being so. Just such a it's, it's it's record!
Yeah! There's! There's! Let me it's back to Jack. I mean a lot that has a lot to do with social media and twitter in particular. Yeah I mean you have like certain services. I missed the whole Covington High School catholic fiasco. Right now, on to basically was ignoring twitter eyes. My size saw it at the corner of my eye like that man. This is interesting. This is this is blowing up, but I I was so off twitter that I had. There was no temptation for a hot take from me right, and I saw all these people just torching their reputations by taking these like a like Kathy Griffin, right, basic calling for the doc scene of these kids. You know, given all that she has suffered enough of from from mob behavior online and she's. You know whipping up on mob. It was just nuts, but it's not normal. The normal people do it's, but the platform is calling out of people, but it's also when people have been shamed and they've done something awful. Then they reinforce their base like that now she's, like so heavily hard left
because the right wing ran after her like anyone on the right that does anything she's calling for her side to go after this person like reinforcing the ci is a part of that tribe that she's a part of that left wing tribe, yeah, yeah. Well, it's so. Obviously that everyone has a lot to lose doing this, especially in a case where all the facts aren't in and if you just waited, be even the New York Times got this wrong. The New York Times writes an article about the kids in the Manga half that they have to rescind and the so then, as the dust is settling, and I see these people, some people are doubling down some people issuing public apologies. I see somebody who's actually kind of in a brand
herself as well. You know one of my enemies for a reason I can't fathom, but this journalist Cara, Swisher uh, who you know she. She works for, ah, ah recode and and box now, but he's got a big podcast and she's. A big distraction writes for the New York Times and I just got an opinion piece. You know a regular column for the New York Times. Tech journalist- and I you know happen to know she doesn't like me because she's tweeted against and she said some disparaging things about me on Twitter and we had a you know an offline conversation about it. I saw her. She said one of the most vituperative and you know fairly crazy things in response to the kids initially and then- once more information came out, she walked it back and she basically apologized. You know good for twitter, and so so I said good for you, and I I just wanted to support this norm of acknowledging that you something wrong and I wanted to do it even I wanted to actually do it
for someone who I know really doesn't like me. Like I mean that was an added bonus for me, because that that's and that's another norm that I that I think we should support psych like we should. We should play fair even with our enemies and I mean honestly, I I you know. I try to play fair, even with people who never play fair with me. Even someone, like you know, going green Walter Raison A of people who have just about me endlessly. If I get something wrong about them, I publicly apologize for it. So I did this, and this was at the Absolute 11th hour with respect to this this, a scandal online. When I saw the kind of pain- I was getting just for supporting Cara in her walk back of this thing at a moment when it was obvious she should have walked this back. I got people saying you unsubscribing from your. Podcast. You are, you know now. I know you're a fucking racist. You know it was just just pure pain
and I just thought, wow man, that's you know it's like you just touch this thing at its very end and you're you're you're. Now it's the slime. It gets on you so yeah. It is it's the meat You know it is. We had no opportunity to do this before it is. Medium, and it's also people that don't feel like their opinions are being heard. They want their opinion to be heard. They wanted to be heard right now and it might not be a very well thought out opinion, but I know that they have the ability to Blair it out, so they yeah I just send it out and that that the ability to do that. That is just intoxicating for folks and I you teach about this with Jack. There is a there. What what makes twitter especially good for this is that everything has the same staff.
Yeah, your tweets, no bigger than the other tweet that just called you an asshole yeah. That's my Kurt Metzger take on it because Kurt Massacre was a hilarious, stand up comedian, he ah hill right Facebook block on Lee. He only writes on Facebook was like I like how it's set up he's like it's a big difference, gates between me and these fucking idiots who are commenting under there, although, ironically I hate Facebook, I can't even I mean is just the graphic design on Facebook. I find so I can't look at Facebook, so I use it as a publishing channel, but I you know I keep through name in my own mind to just delete the account 'cause. I just don't only read the comments three times, maybe ever and every time I read him, it's like chooses crisis, like you too, but alive. I know it's like you too, but with people with their real names. It's you know. This is a new world that we're living in man and everybody is trying to navigate this thing and figure it out as it goes along and not everybody is doing it well, and I think this world
going to get more and more intrusive. I think this is just the beginning. I think we didn't see twitter comma, and whatever comes after twitter- and this is one of things that I before the podcast. I wanted to really talk to Jack about to get his take on what he thinks is next down the line, because there's going to be something that's more invasive, there's going to be something that is more whether it's I think probably something in the line of augmented reality. There were probably a decade away from something that makes this look like books. Look like you know, fucking cork board at a bookstore yeah, although strain Lee where I live. We're live into the golden age of audio. Here, like I only went to full in the video and were poised to go like you know three d, and I and you know v r and then all of a sudden audio is king. Well, how about phone calls and text I called you at the blue once and it was like fuck. Do you think you're going walking through a supermarket somebody? head on twitter once it was hilarious that face.
Timing face. Timing me out of nowhere is just like knocking on my door without calling me showing straight up. She was angry that somebody face time there It always feels like an old school moved to a site like my book agent calls me in and out of the blue and it's just as it seems so old yeah. It is just like a knock on the door my friend, Joey Diaz only calls only for years. He would scream at you if you text and then recently within the last two or three years you started texting, occasionally already only calls yeah, so I got to tell you is a having released. This meditation app has given me a kind of a sanity check on everything else, I'm doing, which is it's very interesting because, as of it in releasing the at
you know it's like it. It's fire walled from all the other controversial stuff. I'm doing now like I'm, not you know in the app I'm not winge about Trump or you know talking about any of the stuff. I talk about on on a podcast is just me trying to teach meditation as a largely as an antidote to all of the stuff we're talking about, like everywhere with this mistrust Tristan Harris says we got the slot machine in our pocket. That is continually gaming. Our attention all day long- and you know in my view a meditation app is like the one thing you can have on your smartphone, that completely subverts the technology, and you can get you to act. We live a more examined life using the technology, but what's been amazing for me personally- is that I put it out and it is the only The thing that I have put out, maybe ever right, where it is
it's been received exactly as I've intended right. There's. No controversy is just like, like the people who are finding it useful, I love it and they say. Thank you and it's like they're. Getting exactly what I thought I was putting into it, and it's like it made me think what The hell am I doing over here with all of this toxic stuff. That is being any endlessly maliciously spawn against me and misunderstood, and you know it's just I have to. I have to do both because there's a lot of import, things to talk about that are gonna, be be Spahn and maliciously malicious, misunderstood, but it is, it's been so ash and have one thing in the May. I you must get this with with you know, you do understand a percent or maybe it's because I don't have a thing I get for everything. Okay.
Well, maybe maybe UFC commenter no come after gonna. Have it for everything. Well, it is just it is better. It's psychologically, it's been a revelation. Have one thing that I can put out: that is just it's just received appreciated and they got what I intended. And it's just you know, thank you. It's just like. Oh fuck, that's possible. I have no idea. I had if I ever knew, I had forgotten that that that was possible meditation app. It kind of makes sense, because the people are gonna flock to that are looking to meditate they're, looking to hear their mind, they're, not looking a spew hatred on Facebook, no yeah yeah. I thought that after the podcast with Jack, I was like Jesus Christ. Stick just stick: comics podcaster comics with comics. Even if you put your foot in your mouth, everybody knows you're just trying to be funny. You know if you do it
podcast and and the thing about the podcast with Jack. It's not even like. I said anything, bad, it's what I didn't say: yeah that was upsetting to so many people, but that's such a loaded thing and because of that podcast, no there's there's negative to it. That blow back. There's a lot of toxic anger and all that. But the positive is what I like the positive that came out of it is me forced to re, examine how I do podcasts re examine the significance of each individual gassed and specially someone that comes with as much baggage. You know with that, without will lack of a better term as Jack that you're. You know, you gotta, think that there's people listening and there's some questions that you really have to work at yeah, after you have to push through, and even if he's he's dancing in Pierre wedding, I should have went back to okay, wise Kathy Griffin on your platform. Yeah give Doc sings bad. You want. You know what doc you know.
Threats of violence. When someone says I want names, okay, what you gonna do with these fucking names, what do you do with them do with a sixteen year old kid in his name's and then, when you see the actual, the actual video of what actually happened and there's so many people that are still not walking it back still? No, no pulling down a lot of people double down, fuck him and here's another little piece of insight. My friend Matt. Lived in DC and those hats, those Maga hats, they're fucking Everywhere- is little where these kids were. That area. There's these carts that sell these hats, so these kids bought those hats that day it's not like. There are these mag of kids. They probably just be an ass holes right there unsupervised teenage boys, their frontal lobe is not fully formed and there all together, feeding off each like a pack of gremlins. I was a teenage bore. You were a teenage boy. You know how fucking stupid used to be. I mean I was probably way more stupid than you, but I was,
Yes, I I had my moments yeah. No, I just get a hundred teenage boy this together in a crowd. You know on a school trip and you get you get some native elder drum and one other one in some guy's face yeah. You know was amazing. What didn't happen right there exactly so violence and the way he handled it. All smile, like I mean, listen, I'm buying Does anyone against a catholic school kid wearing a mock hat? but you know like a given, given my back stories like yeah, I'm totally poised. I think this guys an asshole and is likely always to be an but people read into an uncomfortable smile right, I mean just like that: the shots of his face with the tweets that said you know this, what white privilege looks like yeah. This is the you know. This is this, is the everything is wrong in our society is just we we have to slow.
Now how to raise a wrote? If you ever seen a more on partial phaser come on man, you want to punch him yeah because he smiling with his Can we start on razor calls for violence from the left or so fucking disturbing to me, because my parents were hippies when I grew up I always thought of the left and we always have you know. I've been called right wing. I've never voted anything but democratic in my life, except for Gary Johnson, Gary Johnson is the one time I voted, independent or whatever the fuck he was libertarian, but I was just. Get. My podcast offer tulsi Gabbert 'cause, because she did my podcast here, but the the The left was always very Consider it well read there were there were the p people that were more open minded. There were supporting of gay people and minorities. That was the left and they were nonviolent. They were the people that are protesting. Vietnam, when I was a kid also just supportive of the virtue of speed
and a freezer and self criticism? Yes, right, like I mean that the the the disadvantage of the left against the right has always been there is this cell? scrutiny and willingness to wonder whether or not well I'm wrong that isn't mirrored. If you go far enough right and it has a there has been so there's been kind of an asymmetric war between left and right. You know politically from for much of our lifetime, but you go far enough left now and you're you're meeting a kind of totalitarian rule distance to speech, and it's yeah. It's very I mean I'm just it'll, be how the the twenty twenty campaign lays out. I'm certainly worried that we could totally blow it with some leftist social w yeah uprising well yeah. That would be unfortunate because I think just double down the other side. We would better off with some sort of a reasonable centrist right, someone who has made sense- and you know
the things that I liked about. Tulsi is that she's, a veteran- and you know I mean like she's. She seems very reasonable to me, but except I I haven't- followed her career close, but it just seems like she's, not making the right noises on things like Syria and Saddam yeah. I don't know enough about that comment yeah. I don't know nothing about a side in the controversy within aghast as well that that that that is. I think, I'm going to as I have in terms of what she yeah. I mean that that is on controversial, what which, in terms of what She is saying about it about him that she's capable of putting both feet in her mouth. On that I thought she's she's, saying he's not an enemy of America. Yeah I mean it again, I'm not close enough to it and it, but I would you know, be very circumspect about it indoors in her going forward into it do a little homework because I've, I think her candidacy is not gonna it. Well, that's a that's a monthly like.
My sense to you, Elizabeth Warren's. Now yours is the most recent one yeah, which is now the most recent one for she filled out applications from native American on a yeah. We did just having done the dna testing eyes. Is that playing that game with Trump? Yes, it was that was such a miscalculation. Well, the fact that she released the data and the data is so clear. Well, it's almost like she had to. Because otherwise he would call her Pocahontas to the end of time, but but then to then have to apologize to native Americans for having done that. It's just because the amount of native Eric in the solar I've been joking around about it than I am like a hundred times more african right. She is native America, I'm one point: six percent african and she's less than like way less than one percent native american right, but this is this is it this is the sort of masochistic death spiral that people on the left can get into it's like you're, like the left. I've always said that the left eats its own in a way that the right
never does it it's just it's some. We have to find someone who can stand outside that the circular firing squad right. And it would be someone who's. You know it would be. In my view, would be somebody like a Younger Bloomberg, I don't think it's finally as Bloomberg, but like somebody like a legit business man who could call bullshit on all of Trump's, fake business, Ackerman and who's, not ethically compromised right, but who can who can get stuff done into it right and it's and it's definitely not someone who feels the need to pander to the far left on these identity politics issues. I think identity politics is really going to be bad for us against Trump, because so much of the country with the crucial sliver of the country. We just have to ask yourself who was it who voted for Obama and then to twice
and then voted for Trump right. Those people aren't racist right. Those people are sick of being called racist, right and and the so what's happening on the left around identity, politics, and all of these means not that racism isn't. A problem is not that transgender issues don't have to be worked out. All of like all those really legit concerns, but the fact that that's the center of Mass Politic, on the left in in a in a net nationwide election again, someone like Trump. I just think that's a absolute recipe for disaster yeah, because the people to subscribe to that ideology don't realize how many people think it's silly yeah? You know when you're in the oppression Olympics in you're, trying to win the gold and for and for how many people it's actually misapplied right? It's like
there. There are many more explanations for voting for Trump in addition to racism. Well, yes, I thought yeah like yes, every racist voted for Trump. You know virtually! So that's fine! Every white supremacists voted for Trump, but that's not the the story about. Why treat you Trump got elected as a long story? It is all visitors, just much more, I mean. Is it they're people who just have have not what do you know this or not thriving in the current economy? You know as as I we got automation and displacing manufacturing drums. You got the consequences of trade and immigration, and you have legitimate concerns about You have there legitimate concerns about immigration that have nothing to do with racism, and so, if you're going to score any hesitation over like open borders as a sign of your xenophobia and racism. You're gonna lose virtually everyone who has
a same concern about how to how you keep people in it, how you, how you admit the right people into a country right, I mean their economic concerns and their social concerns and yeah I mean, and you don't have to be Ben shapiro- to share some of those concerns right and must invent appears racist, obvious. I'm saying he's a conservative and you know, takes a more conservative line on many of these questions. Then I d'oh, but you know it's like you either you either think just take. Immigration is the narrow case. You either think you should be able to know who's coming into the country or you don't right now. If you, I think you should just have open borders, they're two problems with that one. Is there many good arguments against that and two? I don't know what the percentages, but it's got to be thing like ninety five percent of Americans would be terrified at that prospect right. So if, if any of your platform is essentially saying
a concern about immigration is synonymous with racism. You know you have a platform that this can alienate most people and that's the Democrats are totally capable of seeming like that. Whether, in fact, that's that's true for for most Democrats, what do you think is: what's the primary factor like what what caused identity politics, to reach this boiling point that it's at right now, Well, it is, I think, There is a there's, a silo, in effect, there's the effect that group become more radicalized as groups, because the most extreme voices tend to pipe. More and then and everyone everyone, who's who's, silent, this kind of a
in a responsibility around around countering these extreme voices. I get you know every you you can. It only takes a small percentage of extreme voices to how the. Estaba group and and make the group seem like the extreme voices are ex are speaking for the group right. You know, and- and I so I think what we have on in both the left and the right. We have a small percentage of million of those with the last poll I saw that trying to get this question was something like you know: six or eight percent on the tails that are making it seem like these are, and I think it's I think, it's more of a of a problem on the left and on the right, because in the extreme right stu is french and looks french rally, the guy with the guys and Charlotte's bills with Charles, but with a tiki torches. They don't look like they represent to the Republican Party or the For the the right, the conservatives in any general sense, their symptoms,
some problem, but it's a smaller problem. It's a minority problem where is on the left. The extreme voices our have mad serve sway in in a major companies in tech companies in journalism and academia like like the the silence in effect and the reputational cost is being paid by even very powerful people in all these mainstream forums on the left is, is just it the I that's not mirrored on the right, you know and it's a mess. I I I don't know if I told this trillions and on a on a previous podcast with you, but so that was a dinner with a bunch of Silicon Valley, People- and we were talking about- I I I I was it- was it at the moment when that that Netflix story happened, where the what Jonathan Freedland got fired over using the n word in a closed door meeting, and it was. It was a
using the n word in response to my friend Tom C, who you earlier yeah right, exactly special yeah. He said you can't say retarded anymore yeah and then explained like that. You know: there's word, you can't use anymore, Eric didn't even wasn't using it in a joke like calling someone retarded or saying something retarded, but the they were so in. He was saying that that's like he's in the end light around but yeah, but he used the n word in this meeting right and it says like using the n word uh and just the your intonation of the syllables. Yes, it was so shocking right that he wound up getting fired right and and again he was he was using it in the context of expressing just how careful Netflix has to be about speech. I mean he was going. Social justice warrior on himself among social Justice warriors, and he said this is how
worried we have to be and they gave the magic the incantation you could still say retarded, which is amazing, because isn't it step right? I mean in his defense you kind of have to say both words if you're, not the r word right like using the r word is like using the n word around black people more getting to some weird weird place with us actually know, and now I'm realize why I'm confused about why. I think I've talked about this, because I did a podcast with Chelsea Handler, which hasn't aired and they did a month though she was doing a documentary on white privilege. I think I I think I'm actually cast as the with white privilege, and this boy, that's gonna be fun. You have white privilege so, but I recorded a podcast with her so anyway. So we hit this this point because this had just come out then- and I think her documentaries, probably for Netflix. So what was her take on it? Well, she was, she was basically I mean she was playing the other side of the net. For for this you know, and you know
not mail, it will have to say I mean I think I he at least in my own mind. I certainly made sense there and- and she me shouldn't- have a lot of response to it to what I was saying, but I I haven't heard the audio or seen the video but the so anyway. I was at a dinner with a bunch of tech ceos talking about this problem and one guy who who I won't name, who runs a big company that which I won't name set. Listen. You have no idea how deep this goes like. I, I have an hr complaint where there there's a guy who I
in a vise as a furry, I think he's a cat and because we don't provide a litter boxes in the bathroom right, he's real he's, luncheon hr, complaint right. This is real. This is Rick. This was to told as a real story in in in it as a counterpoint or in in the application of the story. We're talking about a Netflix right so It's like this is, and yet this is happening like this. Is people having to navigate ceos of multi dollar companies have having an navigate around this stuff in house right, and I mean the Google thing over James or right I mean that was that wasn't Norma's problem yeah go right like that was the wheels were coming off. As far as I can tell you know, from what I've heard, what and how? So just that, like there was a there. Gonna, be a Google mutiny over James to more? If he what way he had to be fired, yeah yeah this was this- was a big deal at Google,
that's so, and what he and what he wrote, it was essentially like a in on a b plus term paper in human biology or- and it was like in May, you can you can, with what happens is we can push? back on some of the science say or but like this was not a malicious distortion of the state of the science right and- and this was not calling for discrimination against women. This was just saying: listen, men and women are different and they've got different interests right, and this could account for why there's an unequal representation at the left level of software software development And so what like? We're on the left were finding it very difficult to even talk about differences between men and women right there there's- you know, start with start with the uterus and then account from there right. That is all already a taboo conversation to have and, as you know, as we said at the beginning, in talking about that Twitter, that one writer can, I think I name- is Megan Murphy
She got booted for saying men are not women. Yeah, like I mean that's a so so get this politically. I'm I'm very worried that unless we resolve that or just cut through it, we don't send chance against Trump and in twenty twenty. I was reading a story about a woman who was on some sort of an l b g t panel and she's a part of some group, and she was kicked out. Out of it by a man who identifies as a lesbian and has right right, yeah yeah there we go yeah exactly but ironically, so this is a point that think he has a penis. I want to be sure, definitely identifies as a lesbian, I might have read a twitter comment about how preposterous that was said. The penis part there's something Andrew Sullivan.
In a recent article on this is that the transgender thing is at odds with gay rights. In a fundamental sense, I mean you can't balance these equations because it's like it to gay identity, if absolutely focuses on the legitimate differences between men and women. Like I'm a man I like men, I thank my women. That's my situation, but once you once you change the the it your your notion of what you know well how gender relates to sex. It- begins to begins this. This claim on the legitimacy of of of gay identity. Thing is that they're all marginalized, so they stick together. That's the idea, I guess behind
This is sort of a there's. I mean I can only imagine what you know. Andrew Sullivan's, Twitter feed looks like now because he he writes these articles, I'm sure he's just gets eviscerated by the left. You know and he's just you know straight up talking about you know hit. This is what gay rights looks like, and this is this is how you can't be a a man with a whose identify, as a lesbian, right yeah. But you can't say that, and you also can't say that a man with a penis is not a woman. Because if a man like a I could say it because I I can't be fired, but if you do say it you will get a certain amount of hate. I mean there's people that are saying that men who will not date, Trans women who still have penises their transferred transferred- and this is I mean have you ever met Jamie Kilstein so Jamie and I have a checkered history. I don't know if we maybe when I have spoken,
This I never met Jamie but Jamie. When Jamie was Social justice warrior number one, he went hard. He went hard hard, yeah yeah like he. He just. He just was dunking on me and mostly in ways that were totally unfair. I mean he was just you know he was. He was working very hard to become an enemy and um. Then he had his his epiphany. You know that then the social Justice MOB came for him over something over almost nothing right over him Nine to get laid, I mean like they were saying he was a creep or something like that stride does hitting on girls yeah. Well, I miss the details are, but then he came then so then he sense sent me a very. Friendly and apologetic emails about to see know I'm sorry what I did and, and you know he he want- he wants to do a podcast. I haven't taken him up on it, but you know that
Maybe that could be an interesting conversation sincerely apologetic he's a good guy. I mean he. He and I had our own issue at one point in time over a podcast that we did versus. Is there when the Daniel Tosh rape controversy? Like do you remember? I said I I know who Tom not not a joke, which is a rape joke some wall, one man in the crowd he was, he was on stage and he wasn't supposed to be. It was at the laugh factory and DOM Irrera put him on stage and he goes look. I don't have any material. What you guys want to talk about and some guy yells out rape and that's always helpful and. So you know it's like some drunk in a crowd goes Jesus Christ and so Daniel Tosh is taken. Okay. What it's funny about that humiliation. Violence. You know he's like berating this guy in in trying to do stand.
Boys doing this and some woman yells out actually there's nothing funny about rape, and he goes be funny if someone just raped her and everyone starts laughing? I do remember so this woman wrote a giant blog about it and she wanted him to apologize about and Jamie went after Daniel Tosh as a fellow class as Phil like saying that it's you know like, and I was like well she's, a heckler, the woman woman heckled like well he's trying to do stand up and he's like I'm not going to support rape, culture and things like how fuck is that rape, culture, like he's, he's clearly making a joke about something. She said that was very, very patronizing. Obviously he doesn't think there's something funny about rape it is he's just trying to work through this ad Lib set that he's doing with some guy who yelled out something that this whole crowd has to respond to. He can't just ignore the fact that it happened and go. How five
trucks folks. Why do you always read? No, you can't do that. He's got a he's, got to deal with what this guy said, and so that's what he tosses out there and everybody laughed by the way. Girls the property of his person home persona, just ability he takes it to the edge right, yeah yeah, so yeah he's yeah he's Educ medians front end. You know then jamie- and I had this little for tat about it, but he he's very honest about his mistakes like when you talk to him and he's got great insight, because he was that guy? You know he was that guy that was going back and forth of people online all day and checking his mentions, like couldn't walk down the street more than five steps before he pulled out his phone and check his mentions is how people responding to his latest dunking her take down, or you know it's just it's a toxic thing that people are doing it's this this you know looking for people that are that are bad. Looking for things that are wrong. Looking for wrong, speak, it's very toxic, it's toxic for the people that are doing it, it's toxic for the people that are receiving it.
It's not a way that human beings would ever communicate in one on one I mean I tried to communicate with people, the same way online as I would've there right in front of me. I don't succeed, but I try that's my goal. My goal is to try to talk to someone as if they were right in front of me. That's clear not everybody's Hannah Abby. I think road rage is the is the best in the house. It was happening. Yeah yeah, I'm a dot to dot dot, to dot way of looking at two, and what were the only difference is a road rage. Do you know the like us physiological reason for road rage, because you're in a dangerous city Asian you're subliminally taking stock? Going fast here, a metal machine with a bunch of assholes that are probably looking at their phone and everybody's, going fast, and you could die at any moment if someone goes wrong if you're on a highway like the four hundred and five, when you have five lanes going seventy miles an hour, it is a fucking mirror no one dies and every day we do it every day. So let fine
go back to this idea of what the the actual normative response would be when somebody puts their foot in their mouth or something from their past gets disclosed the the the the stupid and indefensible thing they did as a teenager right yeah, you know a you know like this. You know yeah, these guys were now having their careers destroyed for were having dressed up for you know in in the black face her neck and into the hood for Halloween. Whatever was I mean? I you know, I don't. I think I think this that one politician he said he's not even in the in the photo, but the photo. Is on his yearbook, page or like whatever you put on your yearbook, page in high school right um. You find out this thing that you know adult is going to defend right, but what is the path back? What like? What? What is the reboot that, What that should be acceptable because we don't even know it seems,
don't even know what could consume Steve Ble work to rehabilitate somebody's career and yet on this other side, we've got people who again are being let out of prison for murders. They admit they committed right or rapes. They admit admit they committed and they're rehabilitated, and we had- and these are these are stories were supposed to feel good about right, so that we have to figure out how to square this. On the left and- and you know I don't know- I I'd made the way I've been thinking about it is that it has to be intelligible, how you are different from the person who committed that thing right right so like if you, if you did something that was what was a legit racist when you were twenty and like Mark Mark Wahlberg is an example of run. He was running around just beating people, senseless right and for a valid racist motives, I believe when he was
your guy lost his eye right, yeah yeah. So, but I think that was I think I was vietnamese guy, he attacked or but- and he was just doing- really indefensible things now. I don't know what sort of you know pr moment he's had since or how he's apologized for it or but I mean that was a very different time. I think if it was, if all that stuff was being discovered about him now, there may no way back to well make the problem is, with this day and age, it could be reignited, even though he's apologized for it, and even though that it's been addressed, it absolutely reignite image just me talking about it on your podcast- is fucking him over right could yeah, I mean, and also We have to recognize that there's some things, but you can't retroactively instill today. These ideas of what constitutes racism on one thousand nine hundred and eighty five. So if you were in high school in nineteen. Eighty five and you dressed up as Mr T right,
you know, I don't know if that was racist back then I never did it. But I don't know if that's racist, like if you had a bunch of gold chains and you made black and you made you made your face black give yourself a mohawk. He said, I'm Mister T for Halloween and the pictures emerged today what you did when you went door to door when you were fifteen or twelve or whatever you were knocking on peoples, doors and everybody is laughing. Oh you're, Mister T nobody thought it was racist. But let's take that, let's take the hard case. Let's say you were racist, right I mean so like I had. The Skype is Chris, virtually any on my podcast ones, whose appearance, X, NEO just legit racist, raise kept all the tattoos to prove it and now the major problems with Christian patrolling the, as as as I think, you know that I discovered after that podcast. But so this is not an endorsement of him. Sorry Christian, but the the
there's a path back in his like he is celebrated on the left. Yeah he's a former neo and he's you know a I I was. I discovered him on Sarah Silvermans show on wherever that is who I am and you know he's a darling of the left right and darling of MSNBC for this redemption story. So, but what is the take someone like any of these politicians who have something in their back story that is ugly. My feeling is, all there has to be is a transparent and intelligible.
Count of how you are now different of how you can actually honestly look back on this thing and say yeah, I am is embarrassed by that, is you think I should be right. Yeah, it's not like. That is nothing that read. That does not represent how I view the world at all now, but there's just there's just the spirit of the time on social media again, especially on the left into our you know. Total dysfunction politically is to never accept. Any of that I mean is. There is no apology, good enough right and or or there's the of the most cynical possible interpretation of your of your apology, so you're just up trying to your. The only reason we apologize in is because you want to save her job yeah right and that you know we have to figure out how to and we just need some. You know, recovery disc, that we can re boot from here, because it's just not
This is going someplace, terrible and again to look at it The lens narrowly politically of you know over the next two years. It's it's to the massive disadvantage of the left, Lee is, but I don't see any way to fix that, like with the current climate missed current attitude, where people are engaging in this recreational outrage, it fits the climb. I don't mean I don't know what would have to happen for people to come to some sort of realization I mean I would have to happen to them like it did to James. I would have with Jamie Kill, sees it if they turned on him. He's like. Oh, my god. This is awful. Here are some of the what's the stock and then he realized you know I mean I don't No, what other thing could happen. Well, what weird the game we're playing is. I mean you and I are in a position to take risks that you know even the the people at the top of journalism, if you can,
and I like, like Megan Kelly, says one wrong thing and you know it doesn't matter that she's got a twenty million con contract, she's just she's fired, and when you look at the thing that she said, I mean it was just a question. Yeah show me she just didn't seem to understand how charged the phrase black face was right. She just ignorant of that piece of history or something but like in this. So she just she did she put her foot in her mouth. She gave an apology. It was just like you know, full blown hostage, video apology, just like you know just like I am so if I can sorry you don't even know like here, take a sample of my blood and you'll just see my career. Yes, my cortisol and not good enough, not good enough and the letters to say the apology tell yes even more crazy. They let her come back, say the apology and then go good thanks for doing so. But she, no one's job in that space is secure enough where they can take real risks. But you know you and I you know you and I could
to interview interview with Louis CK right like and just process his coming back into stand yeah and do it in a way where people didn't like it? You just say: ok, fuck off right. This is the conversation we had and I think modeling that more and more and I I think, yeah. I think we have to take those risks and people like us have to take those risks and hope to break the spell by having those conversations in public. I would hope that we're having some kind of an impact on it, but I feel like we're. You know we're throwing where of cold water into a volcano. I just I just don't know I don't know if it's enough, I we have pretty big I mean you have an enormous bucket mean you're, reaching more people than the biggest television those are reaching people aren't aware of this, but it's just a fact. So it's it's. Ah, so I think that's part of it and then
changing the norm? Somehow of how we engage on social media, I think is, is is another piece yeah. I agree agree with you the norm on how we engage on social media. I think, is flavored by two things: one, the immediacy of it, the fact that there's no person in front of you don't experience their their anger or there fear or sadness when you say something fucked up, but also also and city, and I think anonymity is good in a lot of ways like for whistleblowers, people that work in certain an environment where they want to be honest, but they would get fired. You know with a very restricted environment, but they have maybe a controversial opinion they want to. They want to be able to express free speech and they can't We can, unless they do something anonymous and even sometimes people when they do things anonymous, they get caught and they get in trouble. Like
there was a guy on four Chan who was you know who would say a bunch of fucked up things like a lot of people, do and people tracked him down and found out who he was and then sent all of these anonymously authored posts to his employer and he got fired, and this guy was a ah father and he had children, and he was you know supporting his fan. Million now is struggling to make a living he's going to try to figure because he wrote some things anonymously online on a message board and he found recreation and saying fucked up things. You know I don't you know, I don't know what the solution is, but I feel like anonymity, it encourages less hospitable. Behavior. Did you hear about the professor at a academic conference getting into an elevator and making a just a dad joke of as he gets it gets into a crowded elevator in an academic conference and see a someone asked what floor and he says women's lingerie, please just like
okay yeah Dean, Martin Joke or whatever right someone in the elevator was so offended by that that they lodge a complaint, and I I cook I've of Lisbon. Now you know at least a month or so, since I the story, I don't know if he was fired, but I like he was fighting for his academic life all over this complaint process. Dean. Martin yeah, I mean just like that event in the fullness of time, time that is going to seem like some sane, which panic right like there's, no such thing as witches, and yet people are getting burned alive because of we have that yeah allegations with witchcraft. What in that kind of situation and we we just have to wake up yeah and and so it Well, you and I don't teach and we're not in a in a university and we're not in that bubble. I think the people that are in that bubble in the escape that bubble then go to whatever tech, company or whatever business. They continue that same bubble
behavior and they want everybody to acquiesce. They want everybody around them to behave. The way that they've been programmed to think that everybody is supposed to behave and you see that now from a lot of young people, you see a lot of young people who are entering into the workforce, think that the standards and the norms that they got in for upon the my at Yale or Columbia, where, wherever they went to school, like that, this is how you're supposed to behave it. Social justice is important and this is real and you have to recognize your privilege. You have to check your privilege and you have to do this, and you have to do that. You have to support trans right call out cold call out. Culture is a big one. That's a big part of it culture. You know, everybody wants everybody their lose their job you mean is the way that things change the way things changes. You have to reinforce the fact that there's these new standards and it has to be severe repercussions for deviating.
So very, very much about control. Me, Jordan goes on about this Jordan Peterson. I took one of his pet subjects. There are no that's that it's launched yeah. This is where this goes. This is all about control and that it's a very slippery slope and when you start telling people what to do and what not to do in that, there's like these, these indefensible under double standards that have to be reinforced, and you can't talk about it like that's what I with Megyn Kelly, she's a well, how come get the fuck out of here, fifty million dollar job again, the crucial moment for me is: why is it that the apology isn't good enough? Then this isn't this, but what is, by all appearances, a sincere apology yes like like where the link there is no link to real racism. Like there's no link, like oh yeah. I want to live in a society where black people have it harder than white people right like okay, if that, if that's who you are, if you're eligi racist will then find we
we can understand why we have we want to boycott your business or we want to you know you. You know you want nothing to do with you right. There should be massive sold social pressure against those kinds of noxious political commitments, but if someone missed speaks or it's an off, color joke and they were is like they weren't trying to offend anyone and they're. Just you know they wish they could take it back and like and and and that links up with I mean. Did you see you must have seen the the norm, Macdonald yeah this I mean that was brutal, yeah right, like it's a and when he was here, he knew he couldn't use the word retard right, because it's like that that's going to get in trouble, and so it's hilarious and exactly what happened? Okay, so he was, he was on Howard, Stern, show with me. I think I think I so it's a he was a. I could have this wrong, but that that that the gist of this is is right, I believe, is on the Howard Stern show, and he
was about to use the word. So so, okay, well walks back now and ask and ask, is coming back to me. He was defend. He was talking about his friend, the the the the ordeal that Louis C K has gone through in this. Just mass of exile. Experience raise that this massive social shown in and he said he was describing it in a way where he then got accused that he would cared more what what Louis CK was going through. Then the women who felt victimized by Louis CK and That was not his intention at all, apparently, and so, when he went to a to clarify this, he was about to say, but you'd have to be retarded. To think that I cared more about Louis CK's ordeal, then the deal of these women who had felt their careers got derailed right. But, as the word
retard was come, a retarded was coming out of his mouth. He tried to course correct and because- know what the fuck he's talking about. He says you'd have to have down syndrome right, which is worse right is more specific and it's what it's like, and then you got all these parents with down syndrome have kids with down syndrome. Who are just? Oh, my God, so now he's just be. He is that he was a. He will show up on the view right with this. This on on this apology, tour- and I mean that's just amazing- video- to see him on the view surrounded by these four women
who knew no he's, not a bad guy right, like they're, try they're trying to that just throwing them lifeline after lifeline and he's so beaten down, right, yeah and he's so walking on egg shells and you got will be Goldberg. You know trying to just just pull him back. You know from the look the lions and it should be so I mean it should be stored, so straightforward like it does it is it part of norms, goal to cause pain for parents who have kids with mental disabilities right? No, I am a like a like a like you, you could you can look in. You can look into this guy's eyes for two for ten seconds and know that this is not the biggest you're worried about right right. For, of course, you know, and I'm and yet people just want him destroyed. Okay, I don't know if they still do but like that the moment with like it was it up. I think it was of a of a real concern that his his showed it can
so me like this was was well. It hasn't been emergency for a second season one of the things that maybe that's part of the problem he was. It is part of the problem he was devastated. I mean I'm very good friends with Adam Eagan he's a guy that runs the comic stories the talent director comedy and he's been on norm show he was on norms. He was like norm sidekick on a show is a very good friend with Nora and Norm really suck heard from this in a way that he never suffered from anything in his career, in terms of like his own personal feeling, like he was devastated by by the blowback in the reaction, and he wanted to come on my podcast and talk about it. But net fixes like it. The way the Netflix said: no press, don't anything, no press, ok! So the fact that you can't talk your way out of S. That's the fucking disease. Well, the problem is not that you can't talk your way out of it. The problems that they wouldn't even let him attempt to talk your way out of it, because they think they realize that norms, a maniac
and norm is a maniac in the best sense of the word is one of my favorite comics and is where is hilarious, but he's also completely crazy in the best way possible Right Norman. I were randomly into in some strange way, randomly were seated next to each other on two separate flights, just randomly it's these are like norm again like this is crazy talking and we had a great time just talking the entire flight. An we were talking about cigarette, yeah yeah yeah I used to smoke, I'm so glad I quit fucking terrible for you. You know I mean it's just, but I that's always wanted a cigarette and going to be gambling. I wanna cigarette, but I quit fuck fuck cigarettes and how long you quit, you have even had a cigarette in years, my God, that's great, we land at lax. He goes right into a store and buy cigarettes. What are you doing goes all that a cigarette case. Want one he was lighting it on the way out the door he couldn't get out the door he lit it before he did. You know that the automatic door he was before it was opening. He was lighting that cigarette. I was like you crazy, but that's
many many comedians are incredibly impulsive, and this is norm. I mean he just he's got he's so off kilter he's got a sort of Garry Shandling crate. Like you don't know, what's going to come out of his mouth and brings laughs, but okay, we we have to be muzzled, flow. Let's put this back into the diversity olympics. We need some respect for or neurodiversity right there are people who are somewhere on the spectrum toward autism right. There are people who are the spectrum we don't know about. We haven't named for sure, and everyone is in some weird spot and people misspeak right you to be a way back to say: that's not what I meant right like like this is a offending people of this type was not my intention
at some level. That has to be good enough. Unless you know we open your closet, we see that you've got swastikas on a you know it when we were you know, and so that I I I think we we have to have to hold the line here in our and very few people are in a position to be able to do it. I mean like Netflix, Netflix doesn't feel they can do it. Netflix is just so terrified of continual blowback and they just start like you. We're going to save this show the way to save it is getting stop talking right, he's just going to take his other foot and take other people's feet and stuff them in his mouth as well. I think one thing that might help to illuminate our understanding of how people behave is what you really enjoy talking about, and you really definitely changed my way of looking at things
they're really, essentially, the concept of free will is a very flawed thing and that you have to really take into consideration who a person is right now and what what has cause them to be this person right now and that a lot of us are operating on this really bizarre momentum of our past and our behave you're in our genetics and life experiences and all these different variables that really need to be taken into account. This idea that you are or autonomous- and you are the director of your own life- is true to a sir extent, but it's also very complicated, much more calm applicated. Then we would like to admit, and when you're talking about something It happened when you were seventeen like Brett Kavanaugh, or something like that. Like Jesus Christ, you know you're going to hold a fifty five man. Fifty five year old man, accountable to something that he did when he was seventeen, it wasn't a crime. Yeah and you're, not exactly sure what happened. This is all very strange. This is very strange stuff, so taking the red pill on
free will makes you much more forgiving out of the stuff, because you see just everyone is an open system. No one offered themselves, one created themselves, no one can directly regulate the effects of every influence that they had or didn't. Have you know, like you are the totality of what brought you here I mean the universe, is sort of just pushed you to this point in time, and the only thing you've got is brain and it states- and that is that is based on your jeans and a tally of environmental influences. You your you, as a system have have had working on you up until this moment, and so the next words that come out of your mouth are part of that process. Now the the some people fought find this to
Yeah. You know frankly, demoralizing picture okay, you're telling telling me I'm just a robot but you're a robot that is open continuously open to influence influence of internally based on its own processes, and it's like there's top down control of unity of the eggs executive function in the brain to your. You know your emotional life say and you're continually open to the influences of culture right. You know the culture is this operating system that you're interacting with in each moment and never is getting in, can change you in radical ways very quickly, there's no telling how much you can change on the basis of one new idea coming your way right now! I would argue that that process of change- and if I say something that changes your view on anything, that's not. 10s of free will. That is evidence of just yet more causality. I mean you, don't don't pick the changes that come your way.
If I get you to see something that you didn't see a moment before, you're not respond Well for the fact that you didn't see it a moment before and you're not responsible for the fact that you now see it is just like the dominoes just kept falling right right um, but it does give you this a far more patient sense of um, one and just it just all the causes and conditions that have created this this behavior you're you're now disposed to react to in the world. Right like you, can. Everything on some level is more of a force of nature. Then it is something that you need to take personally. So if there's a her, came blowing outside. We don't respond to the same way we would respond to you know AL and dropping a bomb on it might might create the same amount of damage, but
In the latter case, where we have an identifiable identifiable agent right so, like ok, now we're in the presence of human evil and we have to go kill these fucker. Right now, we may have to kill them right because that maybe the only way of of of putting out this this you know Sis stopping the damage they're they're committed to causing, but and we would kill hurricanes if we could kill them right and we would you know we, I know if I can, but the feeling we have in both cases is very different. The feeling you have attributing ultimate authorship to a person's behavior is super narrow, prickly an ethically and it's you know the feeling of vengeance. Right like like you, don't you don't? You have This feeling of vengeance is so natural to get triggered in response to a person. It's not
in response to a wild animal. Who may have done something terrible right, I mean like you, would like they've been in examples of this where people have taken vengeance on animals and it just looks like a kind of moral dysfunction. On the part of the people who did it, I mean there's a famous picture of a an elephant got hung from a railroad train. I think back in the twenties right so like this is a circus elephant escaped and ran? You know it or you're, just rampaged through the streets and trampled, let you know a few people and the and the people in the town. I don't know where this was. It was a Baltimore someplace. Were so outraged that they've decided to Lynch the elephant right like and yet That's there's something uncanny about that sort of misappropriation of agency to an elephant. What what is it? What is a mistreated circus elephant gonna do when it gets out and is terrified and is trying to get away from people trample a few people. So we have a very different set of books. We keep ethically for humans and.
But some of it's understandable, some of its inevitable, but a lot of it gives us moral illusions that we don't need to have, and it gives it gives us a kind of just in a bit to take stock of all the variables that are actually guiding human behavior and react to them and mitigate and disincentivize them intelligently, made punishment makes sense, not be people really really deserve at bottom. Whatever their punishments are, it doesn't make, ends in a in a record retributive paradigm. It makes sense if it if it's the the best tool to discourage dangerous behavior and it works right. So it's like you know if, if you're, if you're gonna punish people for things, I can't control well, that's stupid right, because if you eat this much, you punish them that you're not going to
you're not going to moderate the behavior, so you have to punish people for things that are actually under voluntary control and it only it only makes sense if it's the only tool. To do the job, and if the moment you have I mean this is like I may have brought this up last time. We spoke about free will, but this is really the reductio ad absurdum of where most people are on this topic. The moment really understand human evil at the level of the brain. Understand psychopathy say which is, which is: maybe that's not the totality of evil, but that's you know certainly center the eye Once we understand, psychopathy is a neurological condition, that's governed by Jean that environment and we can. We can actually
intrude at the level of the brain to mitigate it. So like psychopathy becomes a disease, but it becomes a and injuries syndrome. Right that we can fix- and let's say let's say it's- a very simple fix. Let's say it's a pill right. Let's say it's just a neurotransmitter in balance, in the presence of that breakthrough, we will feel very differently about. That species of human evil we will not judge it in the same way. Well, because what will happen is you'll give people the pill and they'll say. I can't believe I was that dangerous asshole like like a thank you for, like like I I am is horrified by who I was before you cured me as you were right, and it is total is so so so hot psychopathy in the presence of a cure, for it would look much more like diabetes. Then it looks like you evil. In the present case, and people aren't imagining what it would like, it would be like to be there what it would be like to actually fully understand the
underlying neurophysiology here and actually have something I mean. There's no game, t will be able to deal with it in a simple way, but it's certainly possible, and I mean the classic example- is just like. The Charles Whitman example, where you have a brain tumor, that's causing this aberrant behavior. In that case, everyone everyone sees. Ok, this is not evil. This is a brain. That's the Tower Shooter get back in sixty four. I think And so, but in the same way that a brain, tumor, tumors exculpatory there. I think a full understanding of the the underlined neurology would be exculpatory again. It menu in the meantime before you before we get there. We are. Obviously we have to lock up dangerous. People if there's no way to help them, but
the more we see the causes, the more we view. We view this in terms of just sheer bad luck. Right, like a like there are there people who, when they're adults, are quintessentially evil, who we who and they they put. They provoke the greatest feeling of vengeance from us, but we just walk back their timeline. You recognize it at a certain in they were four years old at one point right: they were the four year old who was destined to become this terrible person right, it's an unlucky four year old right, you know and So at what point? Where is the bright line that says? Okay, here's the point where it's appropriate to just hate this person and feel no compassion, and it on the other side of this line, you should just feel compassion, because this person, unlucky there is no such line and a complete understanding of this lifeline in in scientific terms
would obliterate any line. You think you have right, it would just be this cascade of causation, and you know adding randomness to the picture, doesn't help right. It's just it's. The randomness is just you know. Some these in your brain, rolling dice influencing your behavior that way. Well, that's that doesn't give you the free will people think they have so there's, ironically, there is what seems, on some level deflationary of the the the gravitas of the human spirit for people opens the door, to at least, in my view, a full, more ethical and tolerant and patient and understanding view of of you know, human felons and and human frailty and and just and then, at that point you can just have a conversation about what's pragmatic, what works? What helps people change like in this this person over here is doing terrible things. Is there something
I can do to make him a better person? Well, if there is, let's do that without you know all the judgment. Wouldn't it be amazing if that's how we treated these public shaming events like wouldn't, wouldn't it be amazing if we gave someone an opportunity to say this is this is what I did. This is how awful I feel about this I would never do that again, I'm a different person that was twenty years ago, whatever it was, and and have everybody join in hey anyone could be. You Thank you for being honest about who you are now. Thank you for evolving. Thank you for expressing yourself in a way that maybe other people who have also committed really unsavory or just unfortunate things? the past unfortunate act acts in the past. They can feel relieved by the fact that you've grown and evolved to become a better person and that your you're a different thing now and you are the product of all of your experiences you're, not you're, not this one thing you're not stuck in who
were when you were sixteen years old when, if you were marking marking you hit that guy with a stick, whatever you know whatever he did. You know you're not stuck in that spot for ever these markets on a scarlet letter, it's not a a mark on your for head that you keep for life yeah about the Liam Neeson Incident, which I find so interesting is that there is a case where What he is revealing about himself is, is pretty amazing right, it's like it's like he just decided. Okay, we we need a. Ruth and Reconciliation Commission, for who I used to be right. You know, and ah just volunteered this and for me, like. I, like you, know I don't actually understand that state of mind. I mean many many Aberin states of mind that I can understand. I certainly understand what it's like to want to harm somebody, and you know to feel then ins and all that, but the instant. Channel violence, peace. I don't understand. I've never felt like okay, this type of person,
wrong to me or someone close to me so anytime. Any person of that type will do right like that right, but that is such a problem the world over in human history. Yes, that it is, it is just fascinating ethically for someone what of his. You know stature. To reveal that about himself, and he put it in terms of of of honor, and it was like it wasn't on in this one. This is what what what is so dysfunctional about on our culture right. This is what you this is. What We see more in the south than anywhere else in the country, and this is what you see. Basically, everywhere you go in the Middle EAST is, and this is what Islam inculcates to a degree, that's fairly unmatched in its community. This notion of honor is does link up with this tendency to find
satisfaction in instrumental violence like for, but when you, when you try to run that software on my brain, that just looks like madness right: the idea that any other person will do right of a certain type right. That's just you know. A guy I don't read that Rick resonates not at all right, and so it's just damn interested in the fact that the lesson being taken from this seems to be this is the this should be the end of your career for having talk about this it in the way, and again I've been a. You know: apologies if there's some part of the story that I've gotten wrong or not missing, error or missing, but it seemed to me that he was always counting this in the whole horror animazement appropriate to the disclosure like he can't believe he was inhabiting this state of consciousness and
you know it's just an amazing thing to reveal about yourself so yeah and I'm sure he regrets every second of it yeah and that's that's the wrong fucking punch line. You know, the thing that should happen is someone with a lot to lose should be able to say you know How ugly a human mind can be. This is an experience I had right. There is who I was, and you know, how much I have to live for and how much I have to lose. We have to talk about this kind of mania. They can get humming on a human brain right right. We see this eight every time you open the paper. You see someone in the grip of this kind of thing right. It even happened to me I think it's an amazing conversation to start in the fact that the result is just you know, and an auto da fe is is, is the problem we're trying to fighter way way through this point. Isn't it because there's too many voices I mean
it's just so many people are reacting to it. If he's dealing with he's not dealing with three or four or five voices, you deal with millions of people to get to chime in on this year and get a few thousand of those people that are furious at you. You know you were saying like me in this: I'm in it doesn't doesn't that doesn't work. I was just about to say I was gonna, make a comparison, your podcast, which fact that you're not listening to not reading the comments, but he's he's getting this gigantic signal from a huge number of people. So this is all over my Google NEWS,
feed? I saw it on Yahoo. I saw it and all these different publications were talking about Liam Neeson's case, and so then everybody starts charming in and then the virtue signaling ratio is very high and the anger ratio's very high than the people that think he's secretly still racist and doesn't want to admit it is very high yeah, and it is also the fact that he's a man of wealth and privilege and he's successful and famous and there's I got to be a bunch of jealousy that's attached to that and a bunch of people that want to knock down because he's at a very high hill yeah. There's a lot going on there yeah and I I im- I don't know I feel I I feel for the guy again, I don't know him, but I just I remember again. Forgive me if I get this slightly wrong, but isn't it true that, like his wife, Natasha Richardson, just died in this freak accident. She's skiing accident fell and hit her head, but but honestly she didn't even she wasn't moving when she fell. She was
landing on a ski slope and fell from a standing position and hit her head on the you know the parts now obviously- and I mean it's just it's all- takes yeah I was- was brutal yeah. So on top of that, I believe his cousin or his nephew, nephew or niece died the same way not the same way in terms of fell skiing, but also hit their head and ride. Well, so it's like Jesus Christ to speak this guy and obviously there's many people out there that experience of far greater tragedies- I'm not tryingto, quantify it, but yeah he's. Ah, you know he tried to
talk about a real thing. You know we tried to talk about a real thing and he's he's given some interviews since then, where you know he said I look, I'm not a racist, I'm just telling you. I was in such a fucked up state of mind because of this rape that I was willing to do something irrational and horrible yeah, but he didn't know it, but he did it's interesting, yeah exactly, but and but again take it full circle. People these same people who are calling for his head are prepared to forgive other people. Who did you do that thing, but it's also so dependent like I had MIKE Tyson on the podcast and one of things that I got when I said it was all part of that that was fast. It has so many people like fuck that rapist fucking this guy fuck that all these different things about him. What I wa
how to get into him with him was who he was when he was twelve years old when he was a little boy when he met Custom Otto and was taught out of box and was fucking hypnotized, and this is one of the really important things that came out of that podcast was custom auto. Who is not just this boxing legend who took in this young kid from the ghetto that didn't have a family, but also hypnotized him to hypnotize them to be a destroyer specifically was saying to him: you don't exist. The task exists, you're going to move forward. Bob and weave and rip the body, and he was programming this kid to get incredible amounts of positive response from violent acts, violent acts in a boxing ring and that's where he got his identity, that's where he got all of his love, and so he became this guy and one of the things that I said to him. I said: did anybody ever teach you how to
turn it off he's like no. No, he did like I'm know, I'm no MIKE Tyson, and I was never like that. I was never like that, but I was far more violent when I was fighting far more violent, far more prone to violence. It was my trigger was very short, I was thinking about it all the time and fighting all the time I probably had one hundred fights. I was ready to go like your brain. Has it if you're, if you're getting kicked in the face and punched in the face a lot and you're doing it through a developmental period from the time you're. Fifty for me was fifteen from him was like over thirteen? You have a different way of looking at the world, because this is also in the recipes in the recipes are also you might get knocked. The fuck out you might get head kicked, you might get kicked in the neck with a shin, and you know you wake up and your friends or slapping in the face of putting ice on you. This is all real, and when you have that the that
comes from that, when you were twelve year old boy and your hypnotized by this great man, who's teaching you how to fight in you're getting so much love, you've, never gotten love in your life. You've, never gotten positive feedback and you're getting so much of it from this, and then was teaching you how to turn it off and you're wondering why this guy would grows up to become a fucking. Maniac is punching. People in the street is just crazy and yelling reporters I'll fuck you in the ass white boy, all that crazy shit, that he did. He was a maniac, I mean there's. No, no one taught him how to refer fact there was no SAM Harris APP for meditation for MIKE Tyson, one thousand nine hundred and eighty six, it's a maniac one problem we have here. Is that we don't have a norm around good norm around mental health yeah and- and we do have we've like zero norms around mental training right, so it's a physical training. This is a very, very good analogy between.
Meditation as mental training, which sounds just boxers esoteric and will rise so sounds like new age. You know speeches nonsense to many people, but if you roll back the clock a hundred years, physical training, what made no sense to me no norms around in the only guy lifting a dumbbell was that guy with the handle bar moustache and a leopard you know, beginning or whatever is where I'm at the in the for the freak show right yeah, you know the single it yeah and now, we have a total understand in of the norms around physical training. Yeah like a your, your there's, just you're, actually a freak. If you don't do some kind of exercise where they'll those check, they have even changed in the involved over the last decade or so yeah yeah, it's gotten far more complicated, and you want to continue
a moment, but the the framework that that the paradigm, the fact that there's something to do to get better physically and that those those changes matter they they. You can engage your body intelligently so as to improve it in arc across many different variables, flexibility, strength, that's all totally understood, and now we're just refining the protocol with mental training. Specifically the training of attention and how you respond to the upper noise of. Your own negative emotion right that has been going on for thousands of years in contemplative, mostly eastern contacts met. Some of that. You know. Buddhism really has a lot of. It is specifically it an asymmetric amount of wisdom to to a share on and get some
yeah, I mean I'm very excited to be spending more time on it, because it's the this of so much of the fragmentation are in our lives. Now is the smartphone, so you know what's hot, what's that. What this thing is do owing to us is, can generally amplifying not only are desire for approval, but the the ability to route to react in a it would like. So there's no reason to hesitate to condemn this thing. You're, seeing like this, this upwelling of negative emotion, you see the out the outrage you feel You see something on twitter right is. It's shortening everybody's views right, it's making road rage more of a kind of a general feature of our lives- and this is all trainable like you can. Actually, you can actually learn that when you
only feel anger in response to something that seems to have happened in the world, if you just pay attention to the experience of anger, just feel the end of the mirror, mere physiology of it and get out of your thoughts about it. Like you actually, you notice thought as a process you let that go you continuing to have a conversation with yourself about all the reasons why you should be angry or you should attack this person, and you just become interested in, Anger is a response. The half life of the emotion is like seconds right, it's impossible to stay angry for very long. If you get out of the story, you're telling yourself about why you should be angry now there are certain situations where anger is is appropriate and it's good to have access to that energy. I'm not I'm not advocating, and everyone just get lobotomized and not react anything, but until you
actually be mindful and mindful this is the technical word for what what this isn't until you can actually get out of the that the thoughts and just pay attention to to, in this case the negative emotion? You have zero choice, you're going to stay angry for as long as you stay angry foreign people have this experience of being angry for days about things were being angry hours, there's no way to stay angry for more than moments. If, if, unless you're just lost in the story- and it becomes a kind of super power to do it to be able to say do I need to be angry about this or like how useful is it to stay angry about this and and and you can just get off the ride. Are you can literally, like you know, I see a tweet from somebody who's. Need to destroy my life and I feel the initial you know contraction and I can decide how long I want to feel that way.
For right and that's an amazing thing to be able to do, and it's based on a kind of training that very few people know even and and and so again it's like You're like I'm now the guy in the in the the leopard it right. But but it's You know more and more. We're going to understand that this is just has to be part of everybody's toolkit. It would be amazing. They're taught kids that in school, if you have Learn that when you're learning math history, people are doing that I, my wife, actually does it really in high school, ext year olds, whoa, you continue, you can teach mindfulness to mean in the beginning what they're learning is just basic awareness of their inner lives. Just being able to name the emotion, they're feeling is an amazing capacity in a six year old. Six year olds, just acting out something and you're now teaching them to to know in that moment that what's push
seeing them from behind is sadness or anger or embarrassment or like like just to be able just to have that recursive ability to reflect that's already a major gain in kids that age, but yeah can learn it very early. Actually, this was something I I was talking about with them, Stephen fry on on my bike. As as to Stephen, I was very scared and he he's a he's. Actually he's adorable he's being nice spending abroad. So I really enjoyed that he's just here in the presence of is such a nice guy guys of radiates you no decency by Doug, he was in a fairly skeptical of just like. Why would you ever have to train mindfulness meditation yeah? I mean the analogy that came up came up to me. You can
for me on the fly there was that it is actually a lot like learning to read in the sense that none of us remember having the having gone through the ordeal of learning, to read right now that learning to read was a hassle right like that. Did not come easily to most people and yet now is just now you if you look at a page of text in a language. I understand you can't help, but the code right, it's just an effortless, and so they I mean this. Is these kinds of emotional tools and and and cognitive tools? Just the ability to self regulate emotion in becoming aware of it as a process That is something that I think we could teach kids much earlier, and then we would be in the presence of young adults who would naturally still a facility for it that where they want they wouldn't even remember how hard it was to acquire it yeah what it was
came out earlier with MIKE Tyson- and you know his his coaching and his date mean he essentially got mental coaching on how to accomplish one thing: hi Mental coaching on how to have the perfect mind set for one thing: how to how to how to kick people's yeah. What he didn't have was mental coaching on how to deal with the pressures of life, especially life. I mean, and almost no one really understands what life is like to be a famous twenty year old, heavyweight champ in the world. I mean there's no one had to be sailing in it's gotta be alien, I mean, and to ask kid to manage this state when you know you're talking about someone who, just six years prior, was virtually homeless and had no love in his life at all and was being hypnotized by some madman who's. You know a boxing wizard who lives in the Catskills and did what we were talking about earlier about
who you are now versus who you were two thousand and thirty years ago, when you meet my Tyson now MIKE Tyson is the sweetest. Yes is friendly, as guy he's so soft spoken he's really kind. Hugs people he's a really nice guy. You know, and at one point time he was a scary mother on the play earth yeah. This is actually there's is another sort of uncanny Valley here in martial arts training that I spent a lot of time in when you're training in martial and seeing the world through this lens of via and potential violence, but training. In a way, that's never really putting your skills to the test, so you're you're, basically you're as as a young man you're living with fundamental uncertainty as to whether or not you actually are capable of anything training like fake, martial arts right like or martial arts martial arts, where most of it is where kind of it
Adam I'm of violence and it's not being pressure tested. So it's not like you were you're competing, and you know what it's like to kick someone in the head and it actually works right. It's like this is your spark but it's all you have to keep everything safe right in rottie or even if it's full contact. You have headgear and you've got this like you're, not still basic uncertainty about. What's gonna go down on the street if you know if it's in the presence of real violence and they're you're, especially as a teenager you're in this fairly toxic state of like sort of always. Preparing for violence that it still is in in most people's lives, pretty low order of probability that is going to occur, and yet it's all. It's also backed by this fear of you know you just kind of the ego
fear of maybe you're, just full of right and and and you're just you're gonna get your kicked that this ever happens and with someone like you know, someone who's, a radio. Obviously someone like MIKE Tyson there shouldn't there shouldn't be any uncertainty, about like he's got nothing to prove he in a bar, and somebody says you know what you looking at at minimum. He does I have this fear of like if he walks away from that challenge, He knows he's walking away, not because he was scared, maybe he's going to lose a fist fight with this guy right here is the best boxer on earth. At that moment, it's that he's he's he's got way more to lose than the other guy will have like. Why does he want to be rolling around in the parking? Lot was yeah some stranger, you know. So it's a it's a there's this this is. This is very unhappy place at a lot of martial artists are in, which is, you know, I don't actually know what they're capable of and their living
all the time, with this kind of training software running in their heads and it's it's it's a weird space to be in. Well, it's one of the things that's so great about brazilian jujitsu, exactly We need to do to you, I mean you're, not getting punched and you're not getting kicked, but you are absolutely going full blast and you have one hundred percent confidence when she reached a certain level that you could do that to an untrained purse. Within its frame, you are testing it and you know that it works. Now. You don't, I would argue their people still lose sight of the fact that in reality. People punching and they're not training a lot of punching or defense and then are wet and then there's a guy's friend who can come up as are kicking you in your head, you so you eat less likely like how good an idea was it to pull guard. When you know someone else can walk up, but you know yeah it's within its well. You know within its purview, yeah you're, not you're, you're working out? all of your illusions and that's that's! That's. One reason why so many of us find it addictive
yeah, there's that and there's also there so nice Jujitsu people are so friendly and I think that's one of the reasons why there friendly they're not carrying around all that bullshit that a lot of people carry around, including you know, there's some grown men that have never been in a fight in their life and they get a couple of beers in them. They start crazy my came and you don't even know how to fight. You know what like like someone who wants to jump into a NASCAR racing, never driven a car like stop talking to some guy with cauliflower here yeah. You know what that means right, yeah, it's I mean it to to be a human being, is complicated to be a man and in the face of altercations with other men, is uniquely complicated. You know the the the the kind of altercations that men get to the kind of bravado and chest puffing and shit talking and the consequences of those things like you were talking.
Liam Neeson, his wife falling down and hitting your head, a friend of mine, was working in a bar and in long island and one of the bouncers gotta fight with some guy and punch, the guy knocked him out. The guy fell back hit his head off the curb and died, and that happens all the time and people get knocked out. They hit their head on the ground. They die yeah yeah. I actually did it when I before I had a podcast on, and I was getting my in my mid life crisis- took the form of beginning really back into martial arts again for after a hiatus of maybe twenty five years of I had a a lawyer who focused on Self Defense law. I mean he was only dealing with cases where someone is either either claim in self defense or as a as a legit self defense claim, but they're basically screw it. I mean they punch someone and that person fell down and hit a fire hydrant diet right. So there to beat a murder rap, and so I just had him
opposed. Had him walk me and I had a bunch of I had two people comment. I ask questions. Well, I had Math Thorton the the the the whose John Kavanaugh's judges to coach I'm ask questions. If, in this blog post, I had ah Rory Miller who's, ah a self defense trainer just just to try to flesh out all of the things you should be thinking about when you're the kind of person who it is at all pairing for the possible eventuality of violence, because people who train with guns, are owned, gone guns or carry knives or do martial arts don't actually understand what happens when either like fate? they agreed to fight somebody or they like, like, like like unless you
bless. Your m o is- and this should be, your m o tow- avoid violence at all. Virtually any cost right, like you're, always just trying to leave the premises. If there's some sort of challenge that could become violence, if that's not your your you you're just wandering into potential situations where you can find yourself in court for shoved a guy- and he you Know- fell into the rating got run over right, you like and then now you're the guy who's. Looking at the prospect of going to prison, for you know, for a murder or or or in a second agreement, and so anyway. I had to walk me through all the the the ins and outs of all that was. It was a fascinating conversation because yeah there are people who you know they're extreme cases. There were there, women who have shot there come
totally crazy husband, who's like waving a baseball bat at their heads and they're in prison. For years. For this you know I just real miscarriages of justice were like that. Well, he would think that the that the you know the it would be very easy to prove that she was in fear for her life in this case, and this was it was a legitimate use of lethal force, it's just so hard when no one's there yeah, if no one's. I I mean if you have eye witnesses or you know it's a public thing that happens and there's video of it. But you know no, someone does something to someone and no one's around- you punch someone and they get knocked out and they die, and you say no, this guy was threatening to kill me chasing me. He was threatening to kill me. I was terrified for my life. He lunged towards, I saw the opening I took it and now he's dead. You could go to jail forever. Yeah I mean that's, that's a reality. I mean you should absolutely without a doubt avoid violence at all costs yeah, but you should also know how to fight. I think that's very.
Important, very important, yeah, very few people trained, so it's like in in the curriculum of because of learning how to fight in a training and in whatever martial art for art's, there's in most cases very little time spent training in avoidance. Yes right and that's here that that's that's a real missing piece, because that is the most important thing to train them as well. Yeah, that's like You know, especially if you have real skills right, especially if you're walking around armed right and that the with the one, the one in interesting psychological corrective that concealed carry does for many people is that once you're walking around with a gun, you realize what the problem of what what any altercation can become right like if you're not gonna, get into a shoving match with somebody if you're wearing a gun, all right in your bill, because you like, if it, if that ask
it's your point out your gun and then, as it is a decision whether to kill somebody yeah. So in a and e n you know I I don't have a ton of experience in this area, but you know if, for all of the firearm training I've done with people are. I just get. You know. You know. I know only like former swat operators who are just out there constantly armed and. These are like the last guys who are going to get involved. In anything I mean they used to be cops, but now they don't even feel any burden to police, and it's like it's like they're, just they're, retired, emphatically retired right, because they just recognize how hay wire anything can go for them if, if any any process of conflict in started and again, I think this goes back to understanding how to manage your mind. You know when the shit hits the fan and things go crazy. It's it's very difficult for people to maintain a rational state of mind and things can escalate
so quickly, this can turn to violence so quickly, especially with a rational people or untrained people or people that aren't aware of consequences or maybe can't process it well. But in the crucial piece, which you know many, seasoned fighters and professionals. Don't have very. I would think many don't have. Is this sort of this, this valley, where your ego concern Things are not worked out. It's like when you when you, when you feel the emotional burden of a loss of face. So Jocko willing, because in a bar- and someone says something you know nasty to him or to his wife, Jocko doesn't have anything approve like Jocko knows he's a badass right. So Jocko knows that he just it's time to get out of the bar, because he doesn't want to deal with this psychopath, who doesn't know who he's dealing with
but someone who's not trained like Jocko right, could feel that back. Down, especially backing down in front of your wife. Your girlfriend, that is such an ego blow that you know the temptation to get into this. This monkey dance with the other person is just is um. It's um possible to recover from a very dangerous game and people get into it all the time and I've seen so many people get into it that just don't don't have any cards yet to completely bluffing yeah God, damn it man just stop doing this. You know, outlook, yeah, I've been doing martial arts, my whole whole life and I'm terrified of fights I see fights is like get the fuck outta here before this goes bad. When it goes sideways, men are just we have thousands of years of awful dna. We really do were violence ridge of thousands, millions, yeah violence was imperative. It was imperative for survival.
Had had to be able to react to react and quickly, and yet you had to know what to do. Your genes are never gonna make it to the next stage, which is a minute with the in. This is a controversial thing to say: I've I got in trouble or when my podcast guess Gavin De Becker, the security girl that got in trouble a podcast talking about the primacy of of intuition here likely it will be. Our intuitions are actually really really good for detecting in something that makes us uncomfortable about another person right and this This becomes politically incorrect really fast right because, because is like, you know, if you see a guy on an elevator who makes you uncomfortable, know, Gavin's advice, and I think I think the real saying advice is just don't get on, but there are many people who get on just be they want to prove they're, not racist right. It's like and uh.
I actually know someone who was in a situation like that ah and didn't work out well, and so the intuition is bad for so many things we we have terrible intuitions for statistics and probability theory, and it's like we're real light. We, your whole career, is a Nobel prizes have been won on. You know the people like you know, Danny Kahneman. Have we have shown us? How is not only that our intuitions are bad for for these judgments, but there Miley bad, we can understand, there's this there's a structure to how bad they are, but for judging people who are dangerous, you know give us the guy who makes her, who make the hair stand up on the back of her neck for reasons we can't understand where the eye contact was wrong or the or the or the just the way they were. You know just like a
Jack. You know, like someone comes up to you, engages you and then they will look to see. They just come look to check for witnesses right now. Like people, don't aren't aware that that's even a thing right, when, like that body language is it's very salient to us and and their their hundreds of things like that that that we immediately feel that that that that prompt, you know in in two the response and that these are intuitions, that we know from self defense point of your worth. Listening to it, because I, like the the worst case scenario, is you wind up being a little rude there yeah I'd like sorry MIKE, and I can't talk, but you know people are very dogmatically being kind of trick trained to ignore. Those those kinds of intuitions, and what do you think those intuitions are like? What do you think intuitions are like when you meet someone you go. This person feels dangerous like what is that what's happening,
Well, that is alive. It could, in of the gate, is detection is a big one? I mean we and what people do with their eyes is a is a is a major variable and just how we feel that you know that that the relationship is going, but it says and this is their micro expressions that we notice and in people that we're not aware of noticing. You know like it's just there's this is this is not well understood and we're bad judges of whether someone is telling the truth I mean this is this has been fairly well studied in their people who and even people work for the FBI or not. You know much better than chance and detecting whether somebody's lying, but there's just we get so much information bye, a in a body, language and being in somebody's presence, and we get it so fast that it some again and make it means that there is whether we understand it or not. Their evolutionary reasons why this is so.
If we, if we the vault for anything as social primates, we have evolved to detect stuff that just he is a precursor to violent intent in in others. I think it's just gays or do I think you can sense the energy of someone there's certain mints that people make when they're thinking about hitting him yeah yeah yeah certain like there's like a twitching this to them. I got well pulled back, look almost like a spring or right below the feeling you get around people that are looking to hit people yeah. Well, there's this up, but again all that still vision, but there's you know I mean who knows we're detecting pheromones. We could be be the second of stress I mean just how tuned up they are, but this, let's be honest beyond just physical violence. This is just you know the tech team psychopaths who are happy to be or who are manipulative, I mean just a tad
in their their ways to spot people line. Have him in just a you know: they're they're tells like you know too much information, and I like the people who are giving you superfluous. It is superfluous information. I, as a kind over correction they're, anticipating that you're going to doubt their story and so they're filling in, like thanks that you don't even need filled in right and- and it's and there's patterns to to sort of two to that. But I am again we we, we pick up on a lot of the stuff without consciously being aware of. What's going on, we just know that. That's like not a person I want to spend time time with, but so there may be more of a literature on this. Then I know about. But a lot of this is not well understood, and I mean people like Paul Ekman have done a lot of stuff on on micro expressions. That goes back probably thirty years at this point,
and if there are people who are out liars are a great at detecting micro expressions. Were they really? They were in a really just understand what's going on, but this is not a war in and a I ventrally will. If it is not, there already will be much better than we are doing this. I'm so scared of that Searcy here getting that wrong micro expressions because they remind me of micro aggressions, which is one of the yeah one of the weirder social justice, warrior things like things that used to be just slights, where someone was just like slightly rude, not even select just like, where do you come, right right, I'm not your space become an accent like a level. Where are your parents from? Dare how dare you question my authenticity no don't regression. So it's weird that that's actually accepted. This is something there actually pushing in certain schools that microaggressions are real real,
Christina Hoff, Sommers just wrote something about or she she put something on her twitter today about a Yale article that was written today or that was put out today about documenting politically incorrect behavior, so that someday in the future. When someone is running for Congress or is up for Supreme Court or something that you could go back to the college days and remember when they said something right. I mean one of the examples this woman uses in this post was compared a woman, to a large animal, a woman's body to a large animal in a private text, message that she should have. Oh, I should should have yeah and call this guy in this article white boy, this white boy does this and the white boy the saccharine smile does that which is like certainly racist. I did just that. The expression like right in the way that she's describing it like, is it if this, if this evil can
character slowly makes his way to run the world and he's been engineered since the time he was in college? Well, it's it's gonna happen just by. Just be just based on everyone's use of the tools yeah. I like that, the you know people are not diligently scrubbing their their digital history, and there may in fact be no way to actually do it right and so they're just they're trailing them that that you know they're not even aware of what their trail and in social media. So so I mean, maybe maybe that is that will just be a cure for the problem, because you know at a certain point will be dealing with people who we're basically born. They were born on Facebook right right like that, and they don't even have a moment like they've got their baby picture there and everything that followed right and then ill ill just seem completely untenable. I this just choose people of everything. Yes, everyone's guilty. Everyone has said that dumb thing,
so they can see matter feeling taken the worst possible way and and if we were it, if they're gonna be hung from that than you know, no and no one will survive well. It seems like that's what we're dealing with right now in a lot of cases, you know yeah yeah, the. What I think is really more than what you were saying earlier was that there has to be some sort of path to redeeming themselves that they're there has to be some accepted way that someone can go about redeeming themselves and we can allow them to re enter society. We are constantly bringing it up or judging them by a tour always attributing their past behavior to who they are right now, I mean look at. They should be so simple, but look at my collaboration with magic hours right, Select, Rogers, my on, were on this podcast together, yeah Mon should was scheming to form
global Caliphate in the the the organization he was part of an he wasn't a jihadist. Thankfully me wasn't actually blowing people up, but he was trying to get nuclear weapons in in Pakistan into the hands of the worst possible fear. Crafts right, This was his this much and with all of his charisma and all of his energy and is like it. You know much is fantastic and he used to eight utterly nefarious purpose in my world right. If you know how much that is an issue for me like much it much and modern Iraq or buddies now right. So all I need is a clear path that he took out of the darkness to understand. Why he's a valid collaborator now and yeah? Actually on on that point, I've got people breathing down my neck to tell you that your audience. This is how powerful you are Joe Rogan that the
memories coming out on that our collaboration and it's it's out now, it's it can be found out. There's what's called Islam in the future of tolerance, nice and it's actually it's it's. It's not bad, actually captures the spirit of a collaboration very well up, and if you don't see it, if only does to recognize how awesome monitored is because moderate is just a
stir and the scariest thing about the state of public opinion in the muslim world. From my point of view is just how how hard a job he has to just to have a conversation in that community. Him is just you know, he's so marginalized and his soul reasonable. You know, but we did come back to that original point. Here's someone who was whose own life was purposed toward what what I view as we are one of the most toxic projects, I can think of right, give the nuclear weapons to the people who want to die as martyrs right. That's the project right and margin is just is an absolutely awesome. Collaborator now right, so there's like we have to there has to be a path through some snow saying conversation to
a reboot. The real. The worry, though, for a lot of folks, is that you are not really being honest about who you are currently you just want excuse for furred to be relieved to accept it so clear in some of these cases, like it's clear, we take an enormous Donal case is just utterly clear. Yeah right, I'm and I'm even in May in Megan Kelly's case utterly clear. Like? I don't think unless she's got some white, some white supremacist side gig that I'm not aware of she's. Just like listen I'm clueless. I said you know, I didn't realize what they were looking for, an excuse to get rid of her honestly, but I think that if they weren't. I think that still very likely would have been the end. I mean it's like for Show- had had better ratings. Still that could have been an unrecoverable error. What if she was black
it doesn't work the other direction. Right, reverse leases lag and she said what's so bad about black face. Let me ask you, stand there such an interest in a no, I miss it is sir. I would easier? You know yeah, I mean what if Oprah said, yeah who over saying who cares, you want to pretend to be Diana Ross 'cause. That was the the thing was pretending to be Diana Ross for Halloween. The Diana Ross yeah I mean I got to think they could get away with it. But it's I mean. It was interesting that the thing that happened with Louis CK and Ricky, your and Jerry's, Chris Rock. That was, because I remember when that aired. I think it was two thousand and eleven- and I remember there was nothing around that it was. It was fine yeah right they're using the n word. I mean the problem, the thing that was kind of dishonest about the
the re scandalizing of it- was that in the context of that conversation, it was framed by at the fact that they they really were reference reference in one of the more famous pieces of comedy and in history in the red they were referencing. Chris Rock's act using the n word right up there, they're black people and then their ends yeah and you will we are an end right like like a a you're, the only white guy. I know who and then there so they're talking to in that context, and anyway yeah it was. It was interesting how that almost midnight Blue back against Ricky and and and it's one of those things that were there just looking for more things to be mad at Louis for yeah, but I mean he was also getting, I think it's wrong for a lot of yeah. It took a lot of for that because he didn't. There was no blow back yeah yeah interesting times. Yes, it's pretty good with it and it
We just did three hours yeah and it is. It is interesting times I mean it's probably the most interesting times of our lives in good ways and bad ways, while we're on on the front lines or something Tom you and me, and you you know I I I don't know if you get enough credit for this, but you have like you pushed out into space that no one even knew existed and you're, like I honestly didn't even know what a podcast was way. Can you know, like I learned what a podcast was when I got invited to get interviewed on your podcast the first time you know. So it's like it's awesome what you've created here. So thank you. It's all it's an accident yeah. I just stuck with it. Yeah stumbled upon it and kept going well, I'm good at that. Keep it up. Thank you thank Youtube SAM Harris. Ladies and thank you, gentlemen, for to turn to the show, and thank you to our sponsors. Thank you to express VPN
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Transcript generated on 2019-09-26.