Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Robert and Cody Watch Jordan B. Peterson's New TV Show

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Robert and Cody finish watching and discussing episode one of Jordan B. Peterson's new TV show. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, D. My Cody. It's Behind the Bastards, Cody Johnston edition. Cody, how are you doing? Have you successfully, what's the last dragon that you've confronted to get at its horde of gold? Getting to bed and sleeping soundly and waking up restful was my gold. Wow. My gold is the gold that I stole from the underground lair of the dragon Smaug, who I successfully fought using a variety of ballistic.

I'm sorry, I thought you meant metaphorically. Sean Connery. Yes, famously Sean Connery, the dragon. Yes, because all dragons like all evil uncles are actually the same dragon. You never question when a dragon comes in because Sean Connery playing a dragon in the movie. I know the movie you're talking about, but I've actually forgotten the dragon heart, right? Fucking great movie, incredible film. Take your word for it. I don't know if I've ever seen this.

Cody, I used to love that movie. Honestly, I haven't thought about that movie in 25 fucking years. I think I'm going to have to rewatch Dragonheart and actually see if it holds up because I have no idea if it has. Oh my gosh, I mean, it's been 25 years. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's been a while. I don't know. I feel like a dragon fantasy movie probably doesn't have a lot of the things that make something show up as aged like rampant homophobia or whatever. Yeah, that probably isn't a factor in Dragonheart. You say that, but... Yeah, I'm going to watch it and be like, wow, I forgot that there's a 35-minute Sean Connery rant about immigration in the middle of the movie.

I was going to say Sean Connery doing the voice, so maybe he talks about how it's okay to slap women dragons and stuff, you know? I don't know. I don't know. Okay, but if they're dragons, is it wrong? Well, I'm saying, Cody, the dragon is a powerful archetype because we all have dragons that have to be conquered. And the only way to conquer a dragon is with the Sword of Truth. And if you're using the Sword of Truth, could you not slap a dragon with the Sword of Truth? Perhaps you were unable to penetrate its scales with the sword because you don't have a pin because the pin is mightier. I don't know. Can't say it's wrong, Cody.

I could say it's wrong. I won't because it's not what I could say. Who's to know what wrong and right is? Dr. Jordan Peterson. That's right. We are not yet through the first episode of his incredible TV series, Dragons, Monsters and Men. We sure aren't, Robert. We sure aren't. I like your little almost slip, just calling it a shit.

It is shit. It is complete trick. You know what's fun, Cody? Before this happened, I was out in the woods where a friend and I spent a significant part of a Saturday field dressing a deer with non-ideal equipment in the middle of the deep woods far away from other people. And that whole experience was both powerfully primal. I think it's the kind of thing that Jordan Peterson would say that men are supposed to be doing and that is healthy for them. And it was a task that my friend and I accomplished by being agreeable with each other. And because my friend is more competent at this than me, it's a task that I was able to accomplish by listening to them.

Rather than attempting to direct and manage the process because I didn't know how to do it as well as they did. Did he communicate this respectfully to you? Sure did, Cody. And as a result, it was a wonderful experience all around. And you probably know a little more about how to do it now. I do. I do. But did you cry while thinking about Dumbo during it? I didn't cry while thinking about Dumbo.

I did have the revelation that Antifa hates God because incel? No, it's for the curse of being, right? Yeah, the curse of being. That quote from Tombstone. I thought a lot about the curse of being as I was looking at the Subaru Impressant that got totaled by that deer. Good times. So let's get back to Dr. Jordan. Episode one of...

Honestly, this is just like Peterson's greatest hits to the show. This is him ranting in a way where it's like, you know that thing you talk about all the time? I just like do another version of that. Yeah, go at it, Jordan. Be Peterson. Dragon Tales, Dragon Tales. That's a different show. Although all dragons are the same, just like all uncles are evil. Sadly, this is a different show.

And the Catholic Church is an uncle, which is why you should go to it? I don't know. I don't want to disagree with it because you don't believe anything, but also change it because it molests you. Let's listen to some other wisdom that Dr. Peterson has. So when we left off, he's just announced that writing isn't a tool for finding truth or learning to think. It's a tool of domination because domination is the only task Jordan sees as worth accomplishing. Well, I can scrap the rough.

I don't want, you know, at the end of my life, so that was rough. I want, I floated through life on a cloud of pillows and nothing ever challenged or threatened me. It's like, no one wants that as their memory. What they want is like dragons, victories, dragons, victories, dragons, victories, something like that. Or beasts, you know, tamed, beasts, tamed, something like that. And so, you know, there's a deep... It's like, it's his name talking about stuff. You all understand the value of like the ups and downs of life.

And if everything is perfect and nothing is perfect and you need struggles to have successes and you need bad vibes to have good vibes to compare to, and it's good to like accomplish your goals and get out there and, you know, make some successes and life is a struggle. But he uses this kind of stuff that like everybody like generally agrees about. That like that's just how life is. To say like, you shouldn't like not go into medical debt and like all these like things that like, we can make things like a little easier and you can still have challenges and successes

and victories in life if you can go to the doctor. Yeah. And it's also just like nothing he's saying is an absolute truth. These are all conditional truths. Of course not. Yeah. Challenges and struggles, like meeting and exceeding challenges and struggles can make you a better, stronger person.

Also, surviving difficult things sometimes ruins you as a human being. A lot of people are fundamentally broke. For example, one of my grandpa's brothers fought at best stone and got shot through the head and survived and was never the same. And everyone agrees he was kind of fundamentally broken by the experience. He went and he slayed a dragon and it like ruined the rest of his life, which is the thing that happens to a lot of people who encounter things that are difficult and traumatizing. Because it doesn't always make you better.

Sometimes it makes you less capable of dealing with the world. Well, that's you got to choose the right dragons, right? Yes, the wrong dragon in that case was the Nazis. He should have picked an easier dragon. Easier. Yeah, you got to pick the non-Nazi dragons. Yeah, like sitting at home and advocating for an end to the new deal. Or like, yeah.

Like a video game. Yeah, like a video game. Anyway, whatever. Oh, perfect. It's not right on screen. Which dragons to go after? Which dragons to go after? And let's see how he explains this.

Treasures are worth attaining. That's a good question. You know, because, you know, you could be like Don Quixote and go after windmills. And there's something noble about Quixote because at least he goes after something. What? Wait, can we keep going? Yeah, let's go a little longer. I need a little more.

There are at least dragons in his imagination. You know, it's dangerous to go play in traffic. But, and so you might say, well, I've run out in traffic. I'm dodging cars. I'm playing chicken. Aren't I slaying the dragon? It's like, too hardy exposure to danger. It might be better than no exposure at all.

You know, there is something somewhat admirable about that kind of careless bravado that you sometimes see among... Sophie, pause this. Because I want to emphasize Jordan Peterson has just kind of talked himself into running into traffic. Yeah. Like he kind of convinces himself it's a good idea. Sometimes maybe it is going to run into traffic. Let's let him finish that thought. Hold on, let's give him 10 more seconds.

Okay. All right. Good luck, Jordan. That's sort of the Bart Simpson approach to life, you know, better than the Millhouse approach. Neither are optimal. I feel like one of the points of the Simpsons is that neither Bart nor Millhouse are anything but like object failures as people. Like every time we skip ahead to their future, Bart is like living a marginal existence like an inch away from being out on the street. No, he becomes a fucking Supreme Court justice, right?

Oh, wait. Isn't that... Is that's one of the new... Cody, we don't need to go after season eight. No, that's like back in the day. That's like classic Simpsons. Yeah. I'm talking about the one where Lisa Marys the British man.

Oh, that's just like, well, even in that episode, he's like, there's like a reference. He's like, he's like, looks like shit. He's like, yeah, I'm a fucking piece of shit. He's like, don't worry. I'm getting out all my aggression before I go to law school. And then it becomes a Supreme Court justice. No, that's the one where they see the Itchy and Scratchy movie, right? And his dad.

That's two. So the Itchy and Scratchy one is first. We see him as a Supreme Court justice. And then the flash forward. I guess you're right, Cody. At least he's the president. Jordan Peterson is right. He's like, he's like in construction.

He's like, yeah, I'm going to go to law school eventually. You're right. Jordan Peterson is correct. It's better to be a Bart Simpson than a Millhouse. That's true. None are optimal. Bart's better. Unless there's a moderate amount of flooding.

In which case you probably want to be a Millhouse because he's got those. He's got those those pants that are cuffed up a little bit high. Keep his cuffs bone dry. That's right. Everything's come up anyway. Anyway, anyway, I just find it. So like, all right, there's a real quick. There's a few things here.

It's just like he he's given a few examples and none of them are good yet. Like what dragons do you fight? Well, Don Quixote fought dragons. It didn't exist. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about Don Quixote because he brings up Don Quixote to say that like, well, he's a tilting at windows, windmills. And the windmills, you know, aren't what he thinks they are.

But like, there's something noble in just the act of of the of the fight itself and that that's something beautiful. It's really funny to me because Cervantes. I'm not yet. I'm not an expert on Don Quixote. But if you look up like what the author, why he wrote Don Quixote, it was because he was really pissed at the popular fiction that existed at the day, which was mostly these like really shitty and derivative stories of like medieval knights and, you know, doing

night shit. He specifically framed Don Quixote as an attack on quote, vain and empty books of chivalry. He was trying to destroy a genre of fiction that he found tepid and not engaging and not particularly like intellectually valuable. And it's exactly the kind of fiction that Jordan B. Peterson has based his entire life view on. Right? Oh, yeah.

Like that. Don Quixote is about like, God, all this stuff is lame as hell. It's like boring. It's like, yeah, uh, that's course. Yeah. It's it's very funny. And like, but also like he brings it up and that doesn't really even make a point. It's just like he's trying to he's trying to answer the question.

He's kind of saying tilting at windows is good. Yeah. Because he like the the only examples he's given so far are like, yeah, OK, this this story where it's not really a dragon or running into traffic. Yeah. Those are the two. And he talks again. I have to cannot emphasize enough.

He talks himself into believing that running into traffic might be a good idea. A lot of more noble than not doing it. All right. No, actually, one of like not like completely like ignoring that, like, by the way, when you run into traffic, it's not just like doing a dangerous thing is doing a dangerous thing for potentially hundreds of people who are all who are like on the road in their cars. It's not just like this like weird like frog or video game or like extreme sports, right? It's not you're not jumping out of an airplane like getting the rush of that extreme experience.

You're in traffic. People will die. It's silly, man. Yeah. And anyway, whatever, it's amazing how really consistently in this this episode, Cody, the only parts of Peterson's rants that actually translate into useful information is stuff that like your 11th grade guidance counselor could have told you in between smoking weed out behind the building stuff like job interviews can be scary, but you have to do them sometimes.

Work on them. Like it's not even like you have to do this sometimes like, yeah, get better at public speaking. Yeah. And the challenge that I have in life, I should try to like get better at it. Like, it's yeah, the most basic fact of life. Yeah. Yeah.

You don't need to couch it in this like dragons and monsters and men to be like, oh, you're struggling with that. You should work on it. Yeah. You can you can succeed. I'll help like it's well, and also, I don't know, maybe if you think about it that way. That's less useful because I don't know. I just I lift weights.

I'm not a power lifter or anything like that, but I've made consistent progress. And I just recently hit the point where I was able to do two full sets at a new max. And it was it was something I'd been working towards for about a year. And I didn't think about I want to be able to bench press 220 pounds as if it was a dragon. I thought about it the way that most people think about most actual challenges where this is a series of incremental improvements that I need to make until eventually I can do the thing. But now I've done the thing.

That's nice. And when I what I repeatedly was unable to do it earlier, I didn't think the dragon has bested me. I thought this is part of incremental improvement is failing. And this very simple act to be described. Yeah. If it if this helps people great, but it seems like an unnecessary abstraction to actual progress and success.

But yeah, it's that's exactly what it is. It's not like you can think about challenges this way. You can think about wanting to do, you know, raise your squats or whatever or run a mile faster as a dragon. And maybe that works for you. But it's, I don't know, I think a silly and unnecessary way to think about going after challenges. Well, yeah, because this is like the way and this is the way he talks about a lot of stuff.

But this in particular this show for some reason. Yeah. This is the kind of thing that would be in like a children's book. Yeah. Like Billy and the Dragon, and the Dragon is a metaphor for all the challenges in life. And OK, I that helps children understand what challenges are. But as anyone over the age of like eight or 10 or 12, a child's age understands what challenges are.

I think what Peterson has maybe recognized here that is actually intelligent is that masculinity in our society is so like broken because people think that it does rely like that that being masculine involves fighting things and I was going to say it is this sort of because we've built like a world that's in many ways slightly better than it used to be. There's not a lot of chances for men to go fight things because it's actually not very necessary or healthy if people are fighting all the time. But all of our media is themed towards venerating physical courage as the primary expression

of masculinity. And so Jordan Peterson recognized that you can make a lot of money if you dress up stuff like hey, maybe practice doing job interviews as like and you must slay the dragon and defeat your evil uncle and right. And I guess that's his audience skews like young white male kind of thing. Yeah. Like you like fantasy bullshit in your fucking video games. I'll talk about it like that.

Yeah. And it's like, yeah, doing the dishes is like a dragon's notes. The thing you got to do is like those like dude wipes or like tactical diaper changing bag. Okay. Okay. Now, Cody, I do love I love all of the tactical diaper changing bags because they're they're made to look like or tactical like baby carriers because anything like anything that's like

marketed like it's this every day thing you do. But like, oh, it's war like the armies. So the ones are specifically funny because they're like they're they're made to look like plate carriers, which is like a plate carrier is a thing you wear over your body that carries armor inside of it and ammunition and stuff on the outside of it. And like the baby goes in the place that the body armor that's meant to absorb bullets. It's just really funny. It's also silly and it's like these things that like I know I have to do this in order

to get people to act like this. Yeah. And that's just what he's doing. I think honestly, and I think one of the fundamental things I disagree with Jordan on is he's like, if you think about things in this way, then it will inspire people to achieve more because people are fundamentally motivated by these these grand like sim like archetypes in our heads and symbols from our stories. And I actually think that's pretty unhealthy.

And I think maybe in a lot of cases, the best thing to do is to frame stuff like taking care of your own child and cleaning the dishes as like scrubbing yourself with soap from time to time. We're just like, yeah, it's just a thing you do. It's not a big deal. It's just a thing you do. Yeah. Well, right.

It's the opposite of what he said earlier in this video in the previous episode about like lying and like manipulating language and stuff and saying untruths and like, well, if reality is not is unreality, then how do you fight like, it's like, you don't need to talk like this. You're creating this weird like realm of thought that is unnecessary in order to do the real things in real life. Also this is Dragon's Monsters and Man and he's talking about what it's like to be a man.

I'd be very curious what he would how he would respond to someone saying, if you're a woman, do you also have dragons or like, is it a different metaphor that he occasionally will drop and does he in here? He does a couple of times, although it's very clear who sees Angling Cody. Let's move past that. I want to show you the funniest part of this fucking episode, the treasures that you can get. Well, the first thing dragons guard is virgins.

So there's it's very bizarre story, right? The story of the dragon, because dragons guard golden and virgins, it's like, what interests do dragons have in golden virgins? But, well, the girl wants the guy who could overcome the dragon, so that's that's that's dead simple and and obvious to anyone with even a smidgen of biological knowledge. He's so mad, I can't calm down, man. Any biologist will tell you, Cody, that dragons love virgins. And women want the guy who slayed the dragon, but also like these dragon stories aren't

from the point of view of the woman. No, they're usually like the prize in these stories. Yeah, she's she's not a character and so it's not about like what she wants. It's about what he thinks she wants. So he gets the thing to present as this night to say whenever it's funny because Jordan has recently come out and said that, like, he's emotionally moved by being basically the incel philosopher. Oh, yeah.

And the reason why a lot of men are incels is because they internalize these ideas about what women want that are created by men like men like Walt Disney in the 1950s, who didn't maybe had never talked to a woman in an open and honest conversation, talked at a woman, but even then with Walt Disney, probably not all that often because I don't think women were allowed to speak at the Disney offices. I don't even know if that's a joke. Yeah, I don't I don't think that's a joke, Cody, you know, it is a joke to low prices on gold that our sponsors are selling Cody, are you ever scared of the world?

All the time. Well, I'm going to need you to do something for me, get out, get out, get out a piece of paper and a pen, write your bank account number and your routing number and your Swift code and your pen on it, OK, and then you just send that over to me and at some point I'm going to buy gold. I'm not going to give it to you because you might lose it, Cody. Sometimes you get holes in your pockets and stuff. I'm going to I'm going to put that gold in a very real bank and then when you need it,

you just come and call me. I'll give you my number later and we'll you can get your gold and everyone can do this. Just send me your bank account routing numbers and I will use it to buy gold at a great price. OK, and you'll just like you'll you'll mail me your number or yeah, yeah, you'll get it at some point. Anyway, let's roll these ads for gold. Yay. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the

racial justice demonstrations and you know what, they were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. Because the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns.

He's a shark and on the good and bad ass way and nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space.

And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back, Cody, Robert, Cody. So I think one of the things that's funny about that virgin dragon rant is that you kind of see Jordan start to ask himself why dragons want virgins and then realize there's no reason. Right? Like it's just kind of a weird thing that like. Yeah, it's like a thought he had. He's like, I guess I need to think about that now.

And maybe even like the most famous dragon in all of fiction didn't do that because J.R. Tolkien was just a little bit better of a storyteller than some of the folks at Disney, maybe. Anyway, Jordan is, I don't know, there's so much that's wrong about that. In stories like, you know, the stories that Cervantes hated, dragons are sometimes, yeah, want to, I don't know, have a virgin for some reason so that a knight can rescue her or whatever. But Jordan is, he's not talking about like stories.

Again, he's dropping these things that are like old storytelling shortcuts and not even particularly good ones, right? Like we can debate as to whether or not, you know, the evil uncle or the virgin held by a dragon is like a good thing to have in a story. But there are many stories that include like evil and that include dragons that do not include those tropes. And in fact, most really good stories don't include those tropes because they're not particularly necessary.

Because they're tropes and they're kind of boring. Also, I find it so, that whole brief little clip was so fascinating because also he's because he's bringing up like, oh, also golden virgins, you see, and his explanation for why dragons will capture virgins was that, well, because women, you know, they want the man who defeats the dragon and any biologist and he gets so angry about that, like, oh, we never thought. Well, that doesn't explain the virgin part, Mr. Peterson. You ignored that.

You specifically said virgins and then your explanation is like, well, women want the guy who can get things done. What about the virgin part that you brought up? You brought this up. Yeah. Like his explanation is still removed from the thing he's trying to pretend to know what to talk about. So much of like what he has to say is based on like, he frames it as it's based on these

like immutable evolutionary truths like hierarchy is a thing that we know is important because human like creatures have been doing it before there were human beings, lobsters, you know, are hardwired. You know, yeah, before it's older than trees and anything like that, there's a reason that it has been around for so long. And that's why it's the only way that things can ever be. And it's like, well, actually, if if if just kind of like raw evolutionary benefit was the only thing that mattered, then there's actually not any reason to seek out a virgin.

And in fact, if you're if all that matters is like spreading your DNA, finding people who have proven that like their body type is able to easily and successfully undergo child birth would be better than just randomly picking out virgins because a lot of people who can give birth die doing it because it's it's hard. And maybe if you're if all that organisms do is optimized for survival, that's actually not the best tactic. Yeah. So maybe it's something else.

Yeah. Or maybe like his world doesn't create value systems and they're not always logical. And we can change our value systems because often they're silly and self defeating. Yeah. Maybe everything in the world and how it should be can't be explained by just like how evolution worked out. Yeah. Or by fucking Disney story tales from the 1960s.

Anyway, obviously, the most harmful thing about this whole dragon and virgin shit is that like actual women in real life, a virgin or not are not being guarded by dragons. They're human beings who get to make their own decisions. And the task of like falling in love is not conquering a dragon. It's like meeting somebody and building a relationship, which is very different from fighting an animal. Yeah. And then and like winning the game because he even he hits on this earlier of like, well,

yeah, it's not like you want to work on yourself and demonstrate like why you're a good valuable person and like all these things and like get skills and do that. Be a dragon slayer in his in his language and prove that you can be. But it's not the act of doing it that wins you the the virgin prize. Yeah. Yeah, all of the things that make you good at fighting are not things that make you good in a relationship, you know, like it's it's it's it's everything about this is fundamentally toxic.

I'm sure he would disagree with you. But Dr. Peterson better actually fight because, you know, you have you if you know if you know your dragons and she knows her dragons and your dragons can fight each other. I don't know. I don't know what he would say. I've had to fight a couple of wild animals and the tactic that was successful for me was picking up a big stick and hitting it in the nose. I have not tried that in a romantic relationship, but I don't think it would help me.

Probably not. Sean Connery would say different Sean Connery would say different, you know. Anyway, let's let's let's let yeah, are going to be. What would you say in trance by the man who can keep the predator away from the infants? I mean, clearly, that's a primary significance. So if you can confront the dragon, you get the girl. And that's how God only knows how old that story is like. Millions of years old.

Dr. Peterson, there's no story that's millions of years old. People haven't been telling them for millions of years. This is so silly. He's just he's just trying to say that like the act of like a male organism protecting a female organism from like a predator is like a tale as old as times like OK. I don't know. It's theoretically we don't actually know when people started talking, obviously, like when human beings started using words because we were not writing at that point.

I think like 50,000 years is often bandied, but it's possible that goes back like like two million years. But I will I would be willing to bet that that is not the way stories were necessarily framed for two million years, because I think evidence suggests that things were a little bit like storytelling was much less literal for some of those peoples, because a lot of things about their belief system and the way they dealt with the world would have been not like not been literal in ways that the way we talk is because so much of human thought and speech has been informed by the stuff that happened in the past.

So the first people probably would not have talked about anything the way that is recognizable. I don't know. We have not been telling that story for millions of years. That's where I come to come to ground on. I tend to agree with you that we haven't been telling that story for millions of years. We absolutely have not. Anyway, the episode is sorry when he's talking about this, he's just such a little sneaky little word man, because he's not saying I don't think he's saying like literally we've

been telling the story for millions of years saying that this the existence of this event in like this, the manifestation of this dynamic has existed for millions of years, right? Like he would he would describe like, oh, the tale of the of the little guy making his way up the hierarchy has been a story told for millions of years. And what he means is like, yeah, lobsters do this. And so like the act of it existing in the world is in his mind, the story being told because that's how he views all this stuff. He's just a weird guy.

He is just a he is just a weird guy, Cody. You know, it isn't weird, a third split screen capitalism. Yeah, the third split screen is pretty great. And so is the ads that sponsor this podcast. In a way, they're your dragons, these ads. So I'm going to use your money by throwing some cash on the fucking ground. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations.

And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse.

Standing inside his hearse with like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good and bad ass way, and nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the

youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me, about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the

world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price.

Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts. We're back. So the episode kind of starts to end with more of what I would call meaningless tripe. First he says that like travel is good because it helps you figure out who you want to be, which is fine. But then he says that like doing this is quote unquote activating the ancestral father. And he compares it to epigenetics saying that stressing yourself, stressing yourself, Cody, leads your genes to activate new modules that give you new abilities.

He's talking about leveling up. Kind of, yes. And like getting skill points and like putting, I unlocked brawler. All right. Turn things on inside of you that you don't even know are there. And that's the same as reactivating the ancestral father. It's the same thing because all that biological capacity is in some sense nested inside you. Maybe coded at the genetic level.

We know that if you stress yourself in particular ways, especially voluntarily, new genes turn on and code for new proteins. Like you literally build new modules. They're there in latent form. It's not much different than when you go to the gym and you start lifting weights while your body's going to transform, but it's not going to do that if you just sit around. No, it is did the little arm. Yeah, he's never lifted weights.

Fine. That's fine. He's cheering. He's doing a cheer. He's doing a little cheer. Look, he gets epigenetics completely wrong. It does not work that way. It is not like lifting weights and it is not unlocking modules that provide you with new

powers. Epigenetics is a real phenomenon and it certainly seems accurate to say that there are things that can be passed on in your DNA to your descendants and that are passed on into you from your ancestors in ways that are not super well understood, but certain things can get switched on by environmental factors. It is not like unlocking ancient powers. You are not like becoming your ancestors by unlocking powers that they encoded in your DNA.

In fact, a lot of when this kind of epigenetic phenomenon is observed, it's often stuff that you wouldn't want to have happen. It's bad stuff, right? It's bad stuff. I'm going to quote from a little write-up in Medline Plus on how genes work. That is a pretty basic write-up. I can understand it and I'm stupid. Quote, a common type of epigenetic modification is called DNA methylation.

DNA methylation involves the attachment of a small chemical groups called methyl groups, each consisting of one carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms to DNA building blocks. When methyl groups are present on a gene, that gene is turned off or silenced and no protein is produced from that gene. Another common epigenetic change is histone modification. Histones are structural proteins in the cell nucleus. DNA wraps around histones, giving chromosomes their shape. Histones can be modified by the addition or removal of chemical groups, such as methyl

groups or acetyl groups, each consisting of two carbon, three hydrogen, and one oxygen atoms. The chemical groups influence how tightly the DNA is wrapped around histones, which affects whether a gene can be turned on or not. Errors in the epigenetic process, such as modification of the wrong gene, are failure to add a chemical group to a particular gene or histone, can lead to abnormal gene activity or inactivity. Altered gene activity, including that caused by epigenetic errors, is a common cause of

genetic disorders. Conditions such as cancers, metabolic disorders, and degenerative disorders have been found to be related to epigenetic errors. It's like, again, I don't understand epigenetics. No one really does. There's actually one of the major debates is like, are there ways in which trauma is passed on epigenetically, and it's actually like a lot of people will say, well, yeah, and you can see it, there's studies on Holocaust survivors.

We actually don't really have a great handle on it, and the degree to which that's true, if it is. All of this is, I'm not an expert on epigenetics. Yeah, there's a lot we don't know about this stuff, so it's weird to tie it to the spiritualism. A thing it definitely isn't is you stress yourself and then gain powers from your ancestors. That's not epigenetics. Often epigenetics is like, yeah, a weird environmental factor caused this thing in your DNA to activate, and now you have cancer.

So it's not like I went through like a big ordeal, I fought a dragon, and I unlocked sharpshooter. No, it's more like there's errors made when you're like photocopying stuff, and sometimes those errors can cause serious problems. I mean, that's not the only thing that, again, epigenetics is much more complicated than that little quote that I've read. I would try, I just want to make the point that he is wrong. He is completely wrong about epigenetics.

But he's a biologist. It is not like lifting weights. But he's a biologist, so I feel like maybe he's right about everything you just said. You're right, Cody. And you know, you know what else you're right about? That this fucking episode is almost over. I was right. God bless you for everything, Mr. Cody.

God bless us, everyone. God bless us, everyone. Sophie, can we play the last minute or so before the before the credits run? I just want Cody to see how this all we can just give me a second exit out of it because you didn't mark anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we weren't planning to have a sweet awful font. Maybe the worst font I've actually ever seen like I would prefer papyrus or comic sans. Oh, okay.

You want the last minute? Fuck me. I don't want to see it and we are unfortunately back. We are unfortunately back. It's not much different than, you know, when you go to the gym and you start lifting weights, well, your body's going to transform, but it's not going to do that if you just sit around. You have to, you have to face your being with the necessity of transformation and then all sorts of new things that you had no idea you were capable of will make themselves manifest.

And that's all part of that pattern of voluntary confrontation. That's the core of genuine adventure. Did that make that make any sense to you, Cody? Oh, my God, I need to absorb what's going on in these guys real quick. We've got kind of again, like a Game of Thrones style fuck is going on. Ending scene. This is so totally off. What is this?

Yeah, it's like we just watched Jordan Peterson like fist fight a fucking cave bear. This is so intense. Also, whoever sound designed this, why did you make that credit so much louder than the people are involved in the production of my shall we continue? Like too many people now, Cody, oh my God, it's so embarrassing. You've made a lot of videos in your life. Some of them have been videos of a person sitting and talking to camera. True.

But how big of a crew would you would you say you need? Is it that many fucking people? No. Well, so with our I mean, with our show, I'm the only guy in the room. We do it over zoom. We have really, oh, wow, director and teleprompter virtually and there are people on zoom helping out and like adjusting lights. But it's just me in the room when we had a studio, it was three people, maybe including

me usually. This is a little fancier, you know, it's there are two cameras at least. The cameras in motion. So you need to probably have a boom mic operator following them along, you don't get the mic in the shot and then another one for the second camera and maybe the third camera. So more I think it requires more than we would use for sure, but not as many as I saw on screen. No. But you know, they need to make it look again, it's like anything to make it look more intense

than it is because it's just Peterson rambling about stuff. There I liked how at times there was this text on screen just because you got to have something going on. So just like have the words that he's saying on screen as he says it. His little last speech was was odd because I mean, we already talked about the genetic aspect of it. But like what he's just said, he's trying to say, go out and like challenge yourself and like learn new skills.

And you know, sometimes, you know, bad situations can turn out well. Okay. Oh, so I can't emphasize this enough, this was one. This was the first thing he said decided to be talked about. Can't imagine what he's going to say. Oh, I think epigenetically, you actually do understand because your ancestors had knowledge of this, just like they knew about your evil uncle, who was the Catholic Church and also talking to girls.

If I'm understanding Dr. Peterson, I think I think you are I've gone through the stress of listening to him talk. And now I've unlocked sneak. I have unlocked the skill of my ancestors, which as Italians is cooking spicy meatballs. Probably like chef is the name of the module that you unlocked. Chef or criminal. Those are the two options open to Italians, I guess fascists. So three.

We have three options. The trifecta. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Cody. Yes. How are you feeling?

Yes. How was it? Was episode one of this what you had expected from Dr. Jordan Balthasar Peterson? It is. Dragons, monsters and men. Exactly what I thought it was going to be. I think I saw a trailer at one point was like, oh, so he's just like talking in a chair. Yeah.

He is just in fact talking at a chair. I will say that the credit sequence did kind of surprise me a little bit because it's like, like you expect like a little, some overwrought dorky, like intense kind of dragon-y kind of stuff, but it was more than I expected. It was very loud. Loud. And like unnecessary. Lots of smoke.

And the shift from like, it's all you see, the thing is, it's like so funny and jarring and love it. Yeah. No, I don't. I'm sorry, Cody. It's fine. It's just like, I also, I guess, I'm not surprised, but I think it's amusing that it is like so many of these clips are like, heard him say that before, talks about that a lot.

Well, there's a, there's a soundbite I've heard 90 times on various YouTube videos. Well, you know, maybe they're getting their subscribers up and they're going to get that Gina Carano sci-fi movie penned by the Ben Shapiro out on Daily Wire Plus. Oh, are they making an actual sci-fi movie? I saw Gina Carano in the movie about Joe Biden's son. Oh, yeah. The Hunter Biden. Which includes a lot of editing that I could do and I don't know how to edit because it

looks like they're literally just taking like an MS Paint Style app and like drawing over frames to animate them. It's very funny how, like, poor the trailer looks. It is dog shit. It is, it's actually like, the trailer makes it look like funny bad, but it really is not. It's just a terrible movie. Oh, I bet. I couldn't sit through it.

But it's like, it looks, it looks made up and not in the way that all movies are made up, but like it looks like a fake movie that someone is most 80% of the runtime is Joe Biden either sitting in a car talking to his son or his son sitting in a car talking to a sex worker and like explaining laboriously crimes that often don't sound like crimes because they're just like complicated real estate deals or whatever. I don't know. It's very boring. The only part of it that was funny is that so they, do you know who Victor Yanukovych

was? Is he was the former president of Ukraine who got overthrown in 2014 when he tried to do dictator shit. Anyway, he's like, he looks like a middle manager. He's got like kind of strong Paul Manafort vibes, just kind of not a very interesting looking guy, but like a full head of hair and stuff. The dude they got to cast him was like bald and jacked. They just got like a huge bald man who was fucking shredded to play the former dictator

of Ukraine for no reason. I don't know why you're just like, we got to make sure this guy's played by a hot dude who's fucking shredded. You know the reason. It's nonsense. No, because he's framed as a bad guy because it's talking about like he's clearly a bad guy and he has some shady dealings with Hunter. It's like, because he is a bad, I have no idea why they did it the way they did it.

It's completely incomprehensible. Oh, don't, that was your first mistake. Don't try to comprehend the Hunter Biden movie with Gina Carano. Yeah, I will never do that again. Cody, do you have any pluggables to plug all the same, check out some more news on YouTube and even more news on podcast apps and keep your eye out for an album by a band called The Hot Shapes. That is my band.

I don't know when this episode is coming out, so look it up. Yeah. It'll come out one of these days, perhaps during the holidays. So, you know, hit your evil uncle in the face in order to defeat the dragon of spending Thanksgiving with the people who love you. Yes. If your evil uncle is a woman. If your evil uncle is a woman, then fuck her.

Kill a dragon in front of her. Okay, okay. You can figure it out from here. You're now armed with the knowledge that is mightier than a sword. Anyway, unlocked penmanship. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed

the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.