Lex Fridman Podcast - #128 – Michael Malice: Anarchy, Democracy, Libertarianism, Love, and Trolling

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

Michael Malice is a political thinker, podcaster, and author. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - SEMrush: https://www.semrush.com/partner/lex/ to get a free month of Guru - DoorDash: https://doordash.com/ and use code LEX to get $5 off - MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off annual sub EPISODE LINKS: Michael's Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelmalice Michael's Community: https://malice.locals.com/ Michael's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5tj5QCpJKIl-KIa4Gib5Xw Michael's Website: http://michaelmalice.com/about/ Your Welcome podcast: https://bit.ly/30q8oz1 The New Right (book): https://amzn.to/34gxLo3 Dear Reader (book): https://amzn.to/2HPPlHS PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LexFridmanPage - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. 00:00 - Introduction 04:15 - Sponsors 07:58 - Putin and the Russian soul 15:01 - Love and trolling 25:31 - Problem with government 31:03 - Anarchism 53:07 - Politics 54:59 - Are most people capable of thinking deeply? 1:02:08 - Willy Wonka and Albert Camus view of life 1:08:08 - Trolling 1:12:26 - Conspiracy theories 1:29:43 - Donald Trump and the Election 1:36:58 - Trump Biden presidential debates 1:41:15 - Journalism is broken 1:47:56 - Communism 1:54:02 - Presidential candidates 2:04:34 - Libertarian party 2:14:56 - Objectivism 2:24:17 - Trolling 2:35:21 - The New Right 2:43:29 - Cancel culture 3:13:17 - Book recommendations 3:18:08 - Fear of mortality 3:21:08 - Meaning of life

The following is a conversation with Michael Malis, an anarchist, political thinker, author, and a proud, part-time, Andy Kaufman-like troll, in the best sense of that word. I'm both Twitter and in real life. He's a host of a great podcast called You're Welcome, spelled Y-O-U-R. I think that gives a sense of his sense of humor. He is the author of Dear Reader, the unauthorized autobiography of King John Il, and the new right, a journey to the fringe of American politics. This latter book, when I read it or rather listened to it last

year, helped me start learning about the various disparate movements that I was undereducated about from the internet trolls to Alex Jones, to white nationalists, and to techno anarchists. The book is funny and brilliant and so is Michael. Unfortunately, because of a self-imposed deadline, I actually pulled an all-nighter before this conversation. So I was not exactly all there mentally, even more so than usual, which is tough because Michael is really quick-witted and brilliant. But he was kind, patient, and

understanding in this conversation, and I hope you will be as well. Today I'm trying something a little new, looking to establish a regular structure for these intro's of first, during the guest intro, like I just did. Second, quick one or two settings mention of each sponsor. Third, my side comments related to the episode. And finally, fourth, full ad reads on the audio side of things. And on YouTube, going straight to the conversation. So not doing the full ad reads. And as always, no ads in the middle, because to me, they get in the way of the conversation. So quick mention of the sponsors. First, SCM Rush, the most advanced SCO optimization tool

of EverCom across. I don't like looking at numbers, but someone probably should. It helps you make good decisions. Second sponsor is DoorDash, food delivery service that I've used for many years to fuel long uninterrupted sessions of deep work at Google MIT, and I still use it a lot today.

Third sponsor is Masterclass, online courses from the best people in the world on each of the topics covered from rockets, to game design, to poker, to writing, and to guitar with Carlos Santana. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I hope to have some conversations with political thinkers, including liberals and conservatives, anarchists, libertarians, objectivists, and everything

in between. I'm as allergic to Trump bashing and Trump's worship as you probably are. I have none of that in between. I'm as allergic to Trump bashing and Trump worship as you probably are. I have none of that in me. I really work hard to be open-minded and let my curiosity drive the conversation. I do plead with you to be patient on two counts. First, I have an intense busy life outside of these podcasts.

Like it's 4 a.m. right now as I'm recording this. So sometimes life affects these conversations. Like in this case, I pull an all-nighter beforehand. So please be patient with me if I say something inelegant, confusing, dumb, or just plain wrong. I'll try to correct myself on social media or in future conversations as much as I can. I really am always learning and working hard to improve. Second, if I or the guest says something about, for example, our current president Donald Trump that's over the top negative or over the top positive, please don't let your brain go into

the partisan mode. Try to hear our words in an open mind in nuanced way. And if we say stuff from a place of emotion, please give us a pass. Neuon's conversation can only happen if we're patient with each other. If you enjoyed this thing, subscribe by YouTube, review it with 5 stars and Apple podcasts. Follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now, and no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but I give you time stamps, so if you skip, please still check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. This show is sponsored by SCM Rush, which if you look around, seems

to be one of, if not the most respected digital marketing tool out there. It does a lot of stuff, including SEO optimization of keywords, backlinks, content creation, social media posts, and so on. They have over 45 tools and are trusted by over 6 million marketers worldwide. As you may know, I don't like numbers, but that's because I'm an idiot with that stuff. I speak from the heart and data be damned, but somebody needs to pay attention to numbers because otherwise you can't make optimal decisions. I believe heart comes first, data second, but both are necessary. I started using them just for fun to explore non-numeric things like what kind of titles, awards connect well with people.

As a writer and at times, oftentimes, in eloquent speaker, that information helps me when done in moderation. The amount of data that they put at your fingertips is amazing. So if you want to optimize your online presence, check them out at samrush.com, slash partner, slash Lex, to get a free month of guru level membership. This show is also sponsored by DoorDash, an app that brings you food you're craving right now to your door.

I think what I just said is not grammatically correct but who cares. I use it all the time when the long deep work sessions are going super smoothly and I don't feel like taking a break to cook. I love cooking too, but if the brain is firing, that's even more fun. Also, one of my favorite things on occasion is to sit back with a beer and a friend, a few friends, throw a movie on or some fights

and just order some delicious, healthy stuff through DoorDash. Life is too damn short. So those moments mean a lot. By the way, I'm thinking of integrating occasional conversations into this feed, under the heading of Lexan Friends, with my friends and interesting strangers, aka new friends. I meet once I get on the road for the road trip across the United States. So please download the DoorDash app and enter code Lex to get $5 off and zero delivery fees on your first order of $15 or more.

That's code Lex and the app name is DoorDash. This show sponsored by Masterclass, $180 a year for an all-access pass to watch courses from literally the best people in the world on a bunch of different topics like Chris Hadfield on Space Exploration, Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Scientific Thinking and Communication, Will Wright, creator on SimCity and Sims on Game Design, Carlos Santana, one of my favorite guitarists on guitar, Gary Kasparov on chess, obviously the greatest chess player of all time. I'm Russian, I'm biased, I don't care.

Daniel Nagrano, I'm poker, and many more. Maybe one day I'll do a masterclass on how to drink vodka and ask overly philosophical questions of world-class engineers who are too busy to bother with my nonsense. By the way, you can watch these courses on basically any device, sign up at masterclass.com slash Lex to get 15% off the first year of an annual subscription. That's masterclass.com slash Lex. And now here's my conversation with Michael Malice. There was a Simpsons episode where he starts mixing sleeping pills with pet pills and he's driving his truck, and I'm like, I wanna see what happens he makes red ball and night truck called for.

Oh. Like, there's a lineup of drugs. This is gonna be so fun. This is good. Yeah. Let's start with love. Yes. Yeah, so one thing we'll eventually somehow talk about,

it'll be a theme throughout, is that you're also Russian. Yes Little bit less than me, but how let at my because I'm from Ukraine Oh, you're from Ukraine. We love okay. Well, not because you came here a little bit when you were younger. Yeah I I came here when I was 13 so I saturated a little bit of the Russian soul. I'm marinated in the Russian soul a little deep I haven't told anyone this but I'm glad to tell you, Dividesh. I have been back since I was two. And next summer, it looks like me, my buddy, Chris Williamson, who's also a podcast, or he's British, modern wisdom, he looks like Apollo. We, we, we, we got a videographer, Richard Apollo, Apollo, the God, he looks like the God Apollo. Yeah, he's like a mother. I think he's talking about rocket.

So we're going to go for the first time to see where I came from, which is in Ukraine. We're going to go live off and either St. Petersburg or Moscow, probably St. Petersburg, or both. It's going to be intense. It's going to be a lot of panic attacks, I feel. And your Russian is OK. Yeah, got to do wish.

Harashua, but you might. No, got to do wish. Hmm. But you might. No, you can't talk Russian, you crane or it's like a, they get offended. Yeah. But then you also want to go to Russia. Yeah. I don't know. For me, there's several people in Russia.

I want to interview on a podcast. Okay. So one of them is, uh, Guguro Promen, which is a mathematician and the other person is Putin. You know, my favorite food and story mathematician, and the other person is Putin. You know my favorite food and story is? Do you know this? When he had Merkel with him, do you know this story?

No. Merkel scared a dog's petrified a dog. So he brings in his black lab. It's a labrador. It's like this sweetest animal. And it's all over her and this pictures. And she's sitting like this and she's terrified. And he's like, what's wrong, Angela?

It's just completely trolling her. Yeah. He's aware of the sort of the narrative around him. Yeah. And then he plays with it. Yes. He enjoys it. It's a very Russian thing.

My friend wanted to film about me. He goes, I realize you guys aren't like us at all. You just like look at us. And then I started telling him stories about the upbringing and he's like, oh my god. And as I'm telling them, like, wow, this stuff is really crazy, like how we are wired. Who's the we, your friend is? The Russian, the friends of America,

I'm saying the way Russians are brought up and the way maybe I don't think it was just my family, but you had similar things. Here's an example. I was, I had a buddy staying with me. He had a problem with his roommates, so he crashed in my place fine. I went to the gym and

I come back and He goes oh, there was and my apartment building is for four apartments So it's not like a huge thing. He goes oh, there was someone knocking at your door So you know, I told him a lot and and for me and I wonder if you're the same way if I'm at someone's house That's not my own and someone knocks in the door, I wouldn't even think to answer it. Like, if I had an apple here, maybe I'd eat it, I'd cut it, whatever. I'm not gonna, it just doesn't enter my head to smash into my face.

The thought of answering the door, if it's not my house, it would never enter my head. Would enter your head? No, but why? But he's an American, so someone's at the door, he goes and opens it, even though it's not his house. I would never do that. I would never think to do that. That is so strange. You pick some very obscure thing to delineate Americans.

I don't think that's obscure because I think it speaks to how we perceive strangers with Americans. Everyone's friendly and with us, it's like, no, no, no, like you have that moat. And I think that's a that percolates into many different aspects of how we relate to people and I It's a lot of that. That's true. You're right. There's the relationship I formed there were in Russia or very deep. Yeah close and then there's the stranger's the other that you don't Trust by default it takes a long time to go over the moat of trust for a long time Until recently whenever I said anything to anyone, my brain ran a scan

that said, if this person turns on you, can they use this against you? And I would do everything I said with strangers. And after a while, it's like, you know what, maybe they will, but I'm strong enough to take it, but this is not how Americans think. Or here's another one. Let me ask you this. Sorry, I'm taking over the interview. People ask about advice for work, right? Like I had to, there was this part I went to and basically everyone had their own problems

and everyone else gave their advice, right? And someone's having a problem with the coworker and the advice these deploy middicons gave them is, oh sit down and have a talk with them. And to me, this is like the last case, less resort. Like first you have to see what you can without showing your hand, showing your vulnerability. Only when everything hasn't worked out or you're like, all right, let me sit down with you and try to have it out with you. Probably. But for them, the first thing is like, sit down and be like, oh, you're causing me problems of all blah.

So I perceive that right away is a threat that this person sees an antagonism between us and also as a weakness that I'm getting to them. So my reaction isn't, um, how do I make it better? that this person sees an antagonism between us and also as a weakness that I'm getting to them. So my reaction isn't, how do I make it better? My reaction is to reinforce my position and see what I can to marginalize them, usually. I haven't worked in a corporate setting in a long time, but it's not, I don't approach it the way in American what like I'm glad you came and talked to me.

Now I probably would because it's gonna be a friend. So you're tripp with that to the Russian upbringing as opposed to you have deep psychological issues. I think there's a synonymous done. Wait, am I, would you think differently maybe a few years ago? Hmm, I don't know. I think you lost me at the, because you kind of said that you're kind of applying you have a deep distrust of the world. Like the world is, I think the default setting would be distrust yeah. But I would put it differently is I almost ignore the

rest of the other and even acknowledge it, I just savor. I save my love and trust for the small circle of people. I agree. But when that person is being confrontational or as they perceive it as being open, now there's a situation. How would you handle that? Like a cold wind blows. You just kind of like it yeah, but it's not like, this is not for Tony for us to work out our differences. It's a cold wind. It's not a hug. That's my point. I'm never gonna think it's a hug.

It's cold wind. You're so suspicious. What it really is is a cold wind. I'm so into Maine. It's not, it's not going to be scared of. It's a cold wind. It's not in person. But it's not.

It's great. But it's not a source of like, I's not going to be scared of. It's a cold wind, it's not in person. But it's not, it's great. But it's not a source of, like, I'm not suspicious of, like, I'm not anxious, I would say, or like living in fear of the rest of the world. Oh, I agree, but you're not receptive to that person. Right. That's all I'm saying. And they are.

Got it. So speaking of which, let's talk about love. Yes. Which requires to be receptive of the world. Yes. Of strangers. I agree. How do we put more love out there in the world, especially on the internet? One mechanism I have found to prove increased love and that's a word that has many meanings and is you know used in a very intense sense and it's used in a very loose sense Can you try to define love? Sure love is a strong

Sense of attraction toward a another person Entity or place that causes one to tend to react in a Disproportionally positive manner. That's off the top of my head. This proportionally. Yes. So for example, if you... I'm not proportionally.

Because if someone's about who you love is about to get harmed, you're moving heaven and earth to make sure, or like a book you love. I love this book. You're going through the fire and try to save it. Whereas if it's a book you really like, it's like, I've got another one. It, I don't, you know, and a book's a kind of a loose example, but.

So you're going with the love that's like you're saving for just a few people, almost like romantic love for a close family. But it's also a lot of just love to even the broader, like the kind of love you can put out to people on the internet, which is like just kindness. Sure. I would say in that case, it's important to make them feel seen and validated. And I try to do this when people who I have come to know on the internet, there's a lot. I try to do that as much as possible because I don't think it's valid how on social media, and I do this a lot myself, but not towards

everyone. It's just there to be aggressive and antagonistic. You should be antagonistic towards bad people, and that's fine. But at the same time, there's lots of great people, and especially with my audience, and I would bet disproportionately with yours, there's a lot of people who are because of their psychology and intelligence are going to be more isolated socially than they should. And I've heard from many of them. And if I'm the person who makes them feel, oh, I'm not crazy. It's everyone else around me who is just basic.

The fact that I can be that person, which I didn't have at their age, to me is incredibly reaffirming. You mean the source of love? But I mean love in the sense of like, you know, you care about this person and you want good things for them not in a kind of romantic way. But I mean, you're using a broad sense now. Yeah. But you're also a person who kind of, I mean, attacks this power structures in the world

by mocking them effectively. And love, I would say, requires you to be non-witty and simple and fragile, which I see as like the opposite of what trolls do. Trolls are, if I, if there is someone coming after what I love, there's two mechanisms, right, at least two. I go up and I'm fighting them, and in which case you bring in, if you are getting hurt in a knife fight, even if you win the knife fight, or if you disarm them and you preclude the possibility of a fight and you drive them off or render them powerless, you keep your person intact as yourself,

and you also protect your values. So how do you render them powerless? As you just said, by mocking them, one of the most effective mechanisms for those in power were much closer to Brave New World than 1984. The people who are dominant in power aren't there because of the threat of the Gulag, the gulag or prison. They're there because of social pressures. Look at the masks.

I was on the subway not that long ago in New York City. No one cared who I was until I put out the mask. I was in the subway that long in the U.S. City. I put this on my Instagram, I've told this story before. There was an Asian dude in his early 30s. He was like in Western clothes. It's not like he had a rickshaw or something. An older man in his 50s stood up over him on the subway, screamed at him, said, go back where you came from, you're disgusting, I'm going to get sick. If you think this guy is a

vector of disease, which is your prerogative, why are you coming close to him? Why are you getting in his face? And what? That was the rate of size. So he was because he was Asian. It was both. It was the not having a mask gave him the permission to act like a despicable aggressive person toward him, right? And the point being a lot of these mechanisms for social control are outsourced to low quality people because this is their one chance to assert dominance and status over somebody else. So the best way to defuse that isn't with weaponry or fighting. It's through mockery because

all of a sudden their claims to authority are effectively destroyed. So let me push back on that. What about fighting that with love, with patience and kindness towards them? I don't think kindness is, I think that would be a mismatch and inappropriate. Their Superman is Batman. And Superman's job is to help the good people. Batman's job is to hurt the bad people. And I will always be on a Batman side

than the Superman side. Both work silly tight costumes. One has a point of ears, both are ridiculous. So it's a billionaire who gets you know He's swimming in trim which one is the bill and okay, I'm under educated on Okay, I'm the superhero movies that Paul jazz Okay, but but you're just saying you your predisposition is to be in the Batman side is Do fighting the bad guys.

Yeah, and it's what I'm good at. That's what you're good at. But just to play devil's advocate, or actually, in this case, I am the devil because it's what I usually do. I watch the devil here. You're an angel's advocate. You're an advocate.

I'm to be the angel advocate. Yeah, it's like, I feel like mockery is a path towards escalation of conflict. Yes, in many ways, yes. So you're not, I mean, it's kind of a guerilla warfare. I mean, you're not going to win. I am winning, we're all winning. We're winning on a daily. This is my next book.

We're winning. We've won before. I'm not joking. The the topic of the next book. Yes. Is the white pill. The white pill is that we're going to we are winning the most horrible people are being rendered into laughing stocks on a daily base in social media. This is a glorious thing. I just so disagree with you. I disagree with you because their side effects that are very destructive. It feels like you're winning, but we're completely destroying the possibility of having like a cohesive society. That's called oncology. What's that mean? Curing cancer. No, your concept of a cohesive society is,

in fact, a society based on oppression and not allowing individuals to live their personal freedom Oh, so you're you're you're toping view of the world you're the utopian you're saying cohesive society I'm saying I don't need that. I'm saying there's gonna be conflict right there's gonna be conflict you and I are disagreeing right now That's not cohesive doesn't mean we like each other less? Does it mean we respect each other less? Cohesive doesn't it's it's just a euphemism for like everyone submitting to what I want. No, I mean cohesive could could could could be that it could be It could be like enforced with violence all that kind of stuff sort of the Libertarian view of the world, but it could just be being respectful

and kind of each other and kind towards each other and loving towards each other. I mean, that's what I mean, Beko Hisev. So when people say free, it's funny, like freedom is a funny thing because freedom can be painful to a lot of people. It's all matters how you define it, how you implement it, how it actually looks like. And I'm just saying it feels like the mockery of the powerful leads to further and further the divisions. It's like the it's turning life into a game to where it's always your plant you're creating these different little tribes and groups and you're constantly

fighting the groups that become a little bit more powerful by undercutting them through guerrilla warfare kind of thing and that's what the internet becomes is everyone's just mocking each other. And then certain groups become more and more powerful. And then they start fighting each other into basically they form groups of ideologies. And they start fighting each other in the internet. Where the result is it doesn't feel like the common humanities highlighted, it doesn't feel like that's a path of progress. Now, like when I say cohesive, I don't mean like everybody has to be, you know, enforcing

equality, all those kinds of ideas. I just mean like not being so divisive. That's, so it's going back to the original question of like, how do we put more love out in the world on the internet? I want divisiveness. Oh, you see, you think divisiveness is that goal? That's very interesting. It's the goal.

So you, we started this conversation while you're talking about you have love for that small group. I think we both would agree to have a bigger group be better, especially if that love comes from a sincere place. I think our country, country, I wrote an article at this four years ago that's time to disunite the states and to secede, this country has been held together

with at least two separate cultures, with dumb texts and string for over 20 years. There's an enormous amount of contempt from one group toward another. This contempt comes from a sincere place, they do not share each other's values. There's absolutely no reason, just like any unhealthy relationship where you can't say, you know what? It's not working out. I want to go my own way and live my happiness and I genuinely want you to go your way, live your happiness. If I'm wrong, prove me wrong, I'll learn from you and take lessons and vice versa, but the fact that we all have to be in the same house together is not coherent and that's not love that is the path towards friction intention. Do you think there is concrete groups? Is it as simple as the two groups of blue and red?

No, it's also very fluid because you and I are allied as Jewish people, as Russians, as males, as podcasters, you're an academic. I'm not there. So there's where they were different, but we each are a Venn diagram, even within ourselves. And I can talk to you about politics, and then we can talk about Russia stuff. And then you could talk about your work, which I don't know anything about. So that would be where you're way up here and a way down here. So there's lots, every relationship with just between individuals, it's very dynamic. So how do we secede?

Like how do we form individual states? Sure. There's a little bit more cohesion. Sure. And voluntary cohesion. So the first step is to eliminate and the concept of political authority as legitimate and to denigrate and humiliate those who would put themselves in a position in which they are there to tell you how to live your life from any semblance of validity. And that's starting to happen. If you look at what they had with the lockdowns, Cuomo and De Blasio in New York,

we have it, I was tired a couple weeks ago. And I said to my friend, oh, just click, maybe I have COVID. And he goes, it's not possible. I go, what do you mean? And he goes, we haven't had any deaths in like two months. And there's only like 100 cases a day for like two months. And I go, you're exaggerating because everything was still closed. And I looked at the numbers and he wasn't exaggerating. And there's no greater American dream to me than an immigrant family comes to the states, forms their own little business. Maybe mom's a good cook as a restaurant, dry cleaner, fruit stand. And those people aren't going to have a lot of money. Those are the first ones who lost their companies because of these lockdowns. They, Cuomo, who's the governor of New York, opened up the gyms, he said, you're clear

to open up. DeBlasio said, and we don't have enough inspectors, you're going to have to wait another couple weeks. To regard that as anything other than literally criminal is something that I am having a hard and hard of time wrapping my head around. You said, I mean, that's something I'm deeply worried about as well, which is like thousands, it's actually millions of dreams being crushed, that American dream of starting a business, of running a business. What about all the young people who you and I

have in our audiences who are socially isolated at best? And now they can't leave their homes. Isolation and ostracism are things that are very well studied in psychology. These have extreme consequences. I read a book called ostracism, and this wasn't scientific, but basically the author was a psychiatrist or a college, whatever. And he had one of his colleagues. They didn't experiment. Let's for a week, you ostracize me completely.

We know it's an, and he goes, even knowing it's the experiment, the fact that he wouldn't make eye contact with me and the fact that he ignored me had an extreme emotional impact on me knowing full well. This is purely for experimental purposes. Now you multiply that by all these, the suicide, the number of kids who are thinking that suicide was through the roof during all this.

And my point is until these people, it's gonna, I would predict like 2024, that's where we're going to have to start having conversations about what personal consequences have to be done for these people, because until then they're going to do the same thing. So you think there's going to be society-wide consequences of this that we're going to see, like ripple effects, because of the social isolation? I know, I mean, we also need to talk about consequences for Cuomo and DiBlasio,

because if politicians respond to incentives and the incentives are there for them to be extremely conservative, because if you have to choose as Cuomo's center press conference between a thousand people dying and a thousand people losing their business, it's not a hard choice that he's right. But at a certain point, it's like, all right, you're losing both. You're losing, not losing that you're making these decisions and not having, all right, you're losing both. You're losing not losing, you're making these decisions and not having consequences for it. And you're going to do it again the next time. So we need to make sure you're a little scared. Okay. And I don't know what that would mean. But you're laying this problem, this, this incompetence. I don't think it's incompetence. I think

it's very competent. I think they're, they're But what but you're laying it not at the hands of the individuals, but the structure of the of government. It's both. Yes. How would we deal with it better without centralized control? Well, we didn't really have centralized control because every country and every state, you know, handled it in a different mechanism, but a city has centralized control. Just yeah, right. I mean, no, that's not true. So, Kuala Man de Blasio, they had a lot of disagreements over this over the months. And this was actually a source of great interest and tension. De Blasio wanted at one point was talking about the quarantining people in their homes. Kuala Man was like, you're crazy. Something with the school, same thing with the gyms, and there were other such examples.

But the point being this was an emergency. This is World War One. I talked to us on Tim Poole's show. It was very dangerous because it gave a lot of evil people some very useful information about what the country put up with and what they can get away with under wartime. This set the model for things like the New Deal and the other things of that nature. It is undeniable in your scientists

so you understand this perfectly well, that this lockdown gave some very nefarious people some very valid data about how much people will put up with under pressures from the state. So fundamentally, what is the problem with the state that existence? Okay. Well, but with the play, Angel's advocate again, you know, government is the people. So come on. You don't you don't you don't you really think this is best. I think it's possible to have representation. Can you actually just like you have an attorney? You're like, do you really think this? As best I think it's possible to have representation.

Can you imagine if you have an attorney, you're like, oh, you can't have the attorney you want. You're going to have this guy who you absolutely hate we share no values with. Why? Because he drives, I mean, leaders, political leaders, and political representation drive the discourse. Like we, you know, the majority of people voted for him or whatever, however, however you define that. And now we get to have a discussion, well, was this the right choice? And then we get to make that choice again in four years and so on. First of all, the fact that I have to be under the thumb of somebody for four years makes no sense. There's no other relationship that's like this, including marriage.

You can leave any other relationship at any time. Number one, number two is- It always impeach what they did that part of it. I'm just saying that the mechanisms are flawed in many ways. Yeah, right. And so that's number one. Number two is it doesn't make sense that if I don't want someone to represent me, that because that person is popular, that they are now't want someone to represent me, that because that person is

popular, that they are now in a position to do. So having a representation and having citizenship based on geography is a pre-land line technology in a post-self-owned world. There's no reason why I have to, just because we're physically in between two oceans, we all have to be represented by the same people, whereas I can very easily have my security be under someone and switch it as easily as cell phone providers. Okay, but it doesn't have to be geographical, it can be ideas. Sure. I mean, this country represents a certain set of ideas.

Yes, it does. It started out geographically. It's still geographically. It was both. It started off as ideas as well. It's like, it was intricately, I mean, that's the way humans are. There's, I mean, there was no internet. So it was your geographic and same location and you sign

a bunch of documents and then you kind of debated and you wrote a bunch of stuff and then you agreed on it. Okay. So you understand that no one signed these documents and no one agreed to it. As Lysandr Spuner pointed out, over 150 years ago, the Constitution or the social contract, if anything, is only binding to the signatories, and even then, they're all long dead. So it's this fallacy that somehow, because I'm in a physical place, I have agreed, even though I'm screaming at you a face that I don't agree, to be subordinate to

some imaginary invisible monster that was created 250 years ago. And this idea of like, if you don't like it, you have to move. That's not what freedom means. Freedom means I do what I want, not what you want. So if you don't like it, you move. Okay. Just to put some, I don't like words and terms.

1110, 1110. Yeah, exactly. That's what your language likes. It is translating it all in real time. But would you call the kind of ideas that you're advocating for and we're talking about anarchy? Yes, anarchism, yes. Okay, so let's get into it.

Can you try to paint the utopia that an anarchist worldview dreams about? The only people who describe anarchism as utopia are its critics. that an anarchist worldview dreams about. The only people who describe anarchism as utopia are its critics. If I told you right now, and I wish I could say this factually, that I have a cure for cancer, that would not make us utopia. That would still probably be expensive. We would still have many other diseases. However, we would be fundamentally healthier, happier, and better off all of us than democracy.

So, uh, sorry, I jump back from the cancer. No, then democracy or government. So it's only curing one major, major life threatening problem, but in no sense, is it a utopia? So what can we try to, uh, answer this question many, same question many times, which is, what's exactly is the problem with democracy? The problem with democracy is that those who need leaders are not qualified to choose them. Those who need leaders are not qualified to choose them.

So that's the central problem of democracy. Not all of us need leaders right We What does it mean to need a leader? Are you saying like people who are actually like free thinkers don't need leaders kind of thing sure But like you don't okay, so do you acknowledge that there's some value in authority Do you acknowledge that there's some value in authority in different subjects? So what that means is I don't mean authority, somebody who's in control of you, but you're doing the definition switch.

Because I am, I am. You're right. You're right. It's unfair. Okay. That's bad. But that's what they do. That's their trick.

Yeah. And this is one of the useful things, by the way, like this total sidebar, if people ask me for advice, I always tell them if you're going to raise your kids, raise them bilingual, because I was trying a little bit of time, I was six, and that teaches you to think in concepts. Whereas if you only know one language, you fall for things like this, because using authority

in the sense of a policeman and someone is a authority in physics, it's the same word, conceptually they're extremely different. But if you're only thinking in one language, your brain is going to equate the two, and that's a trap that people who only speak one language have. Sure, but even if you know multiple languages,

you can still use the trick of using the word C or convenience to manipulate the conversation. But you were trying to do that, but you fell in the way that you did it. Yeah, you're right. We all tend to do that if you only speak one language and think in one language. But I guess let me you fell into it. I accidentally did it. Yeah, you're right. We all tend to do that if you only speak one language and think of one language.

But if, I guess, let me rephrase it. Are you against, do you acknowledge the value of like offloading your own effort about a particular thing to somebody else? Absolutely. Like I've accountant, a lawyer, a doctor, absolute chef, infinite. Isn't that ultimately what a democracy is? No.

Broadly defined. You're basically electing a bunch of authorities. Using the word you in two senses. Using the word you, meaning me, is an individual and not using you as a mass. Yes, as a mass, not using an individual. I would absolutely want someone to provide for my security. I would absolutely want someone to negotiate with me for foreign power or something like that. That does not mean it has to be predicated and what lots of other people who I do not know and if I do knew them probably would not respect, think about. It's of no moral relevance to me.

Nor either them. Do you think this kind of, there could be a bunch of humans that behave kind of like ants in a distributed way, there could be an emergent behavior in them that results in a stable society? Like, isn't that the hope with anarchy is like without an overarching, uh, uh, but answer, I mean answer, the worst example here because ants have a very firm authority. The queen? Yeah. And they're all, they're all drones.

They're all clones of each other. Yeah, but so if you forget the queen, that their behavior, they're all clinging. Well, from your perspective, from your human intelligent perspective, but from their perspective, I probably see each other as a bunch of individuals. No, they don't.

And so are very big on altruism in the sense of self-sacrifice. They do not think the individual matters. They routinely kill themselves for the sake of the hides in the community. But they see that's from the outside perspective. From the individual perspective of the individual, they probably, they don't see

it as altruism. Right, but they they they view and they're right because the ants life is very femoral and cheap that it's more important to continue this mass population that that one individual ant live. Like bees are another, an even better example, the honey bee when they sting, they only need to sting once and they die. And they do it gladly, because it's like, okay, this community is much more important than me, and they're right. Yeah, okay, so fine, let's forget. I mean, I'm being pedantic, but it's important, I think.

I'm not just being pedantic, but it's just being pedantic. But there's something beautiful that I won't argue about, because there's an interesting point there, about individualism of ants. I do think they're more individual. I won't argue about, because there's an interesting point there about individualism of ants. I do think they're more individual than, but let's give your view of ants that they're communists. Okay, let's go with the communist view of ants.

But there's still a beautiful emergent thing, which is like they can function as a society. And without, I would say, centralized control. Yeah, that's another argument. So is that the hope for anarchy? It's like you just throw a bunch of people that voluntarily want to be in the same place under the same set of ideas and the kind of, like the doctors emerge, the police officers emerge,

the different, necessary structures of a functional society emerge. Do you know what the most beautiful example of anarchism is that it's just beyond beautiful when you stop to think about it? I'm not being tongue in cheek. Okay. Language. There's infinite languages. Language, the things that language can be used for are Language is the things that language can be used for are bring tears to people's eyes, quite literally. It's also used for basic things. No one is forcing us, we speak two languages each, at least no one's forcing us to use English, no one's forcing us to use this dialect of English.

It's a way and, and despite there being so many different languages, a lingua franca emerge, you know, people emerge, the languages of Latin, even in North Korea, they refer to the fish and the different animals by the Latin scientific, no one decided this. Sure, there was an organization that sets a binomial nomenclature, but there's no gun to anyone's head referring to Seymoth

as a Pegasus species. And when you think about how amazing language is, and someone other context would say like, well, you need to have a world government and they're deciding which is the verbs and you have to have an official definition and an official dictionary. And none of that happened.

And I think anyone, even if they don't agree with my politics or my worldview, cannot deny that the creation of language is one of humanity's most miraculous, beautiful achievements. Absolutely. So there you go. There's one system where a kind of anarchy can result in beauty, stability, like sufficient stability and yet, that's a possibility to adjust it and so on. And the internet helps it.

You get something like urban dictionary, which starts creating absurd, both humor and wit. But also language and syntax and jargon, immediately you size people up. If you say vertebral, I know you're a doctor because that's how they pronounce it, the spinal column. I'm sure in your field, there's certain jargon, right away, you can know if this person's one of us or not. I mean, it's infinite. I mean, I don't need to tell you any of them.

It's emojis, too. Yes, there's so much there to study with language that's fascinating. But do you think this applies to human life, the meat space, the physical space? Yes. So there's that kind of beauty can emerge without writing stuff on paper, without laws. You could have rules. You don't need, I don't have to be laws. So enforced by violence. Like that's what, what's a law? A law is something that is unchosen. A rule is something.

If I go to my pool, I sign up if you remember a pool, on the wall, there's certain things. It's like, you know, certain number of people in the pool, no peeing in here, good luck enforcing that one. And so on and so forth. Well, that's the problem. Aren't you afraid that people can get peeing the pool? That's not as my big concern is mass incarceration, as the fact that the police can steal more money than burglars can. The fact that the police can steal more money than burglars can, the fact that innocent people can be killed with no consequences, the fact that war can be waged and with no consequences for those who waged it, the fact that so many men

and women are being murdered overseas and here and the people who are guiding these are regarded as heroic. So you think there might, in an anarchist system, there's a possibility of having less wars and less, what would you say, corruption and less abuse of power? Let's talk, yes, and let's talk about corruption

because, and I made this point in Rogen, you and I, again, this is the Russian background. We realize that when it comes to corruption, American is very naive. You and I, again, this is the Russian background. We realize that when it comes to corruption, American is very naive. Corruption, they think is, oh, I got my brother a job and he's getting money on the table. That's not when we're talking about like state corruption, things that are done in totalitarian states and even to some extent in America, like Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Maxwell, things that's stolen it, things that Hitler did. You know, in the CIA was torturing people at Gitmo.

They had to borrow KGB manuals because they didn't know how to torture correctly because they never thought of these things. We, it's very hard for us to get into the mindset of someone who's like a child predator, someone who, let me give you an example from my forthcoming book. There was a guy who was the head of Ukraine in the 30s. I forget his name. Now, these old Soviets, they were tough. I mean, they pride, style, and mean steel. They pride themselves and they're

cruelty and how strong they were. And this was the purge in on Stalin is trying to kill lots of people left and right. And his henchman, Beria, had the quote, find me the man, not find you the crime. You know, they would accuse someone and they would torture him until he talked and confessed and then he had to turn people in. And they took this guy in, like, begin the year, I think it's 3638, he was head of Ukraine by May, he's arrested. And they take him to the Blanca, the basement in the Red Square where they're torturing people. And they put, they did the works on him. And he was a good Soviet and he stood up and he, they, who knows what they did to him, he didn't talk. So they said, okay, one moment, they brought his teenage daughter in, rape turned from

him, he talked. So when we talk about corruption, we would never in a million years think of this. That's not how our minds work. So when you're talking about states and people where you don't have ease of exit, where you are forced to be under the auspices of an organization creating a monopoly, that leads to in extreme cases, but in not as extreme cases, really nefarious outcomes. Whereas, if you have the option to leave as a client or customer, that would have a strongly limiting effect on how a business and what it can get away with. So, but don't you think maybe I don't know who the right example is whether it's Stalin, I think Hitler might be the better example of don't you think or Jeffrey Epstein, don't you think people who are evil will find ways to manipulate

human nature to attain power no matter the system? Yes, and like the the the corollary question is do you think those people can get more power in in the democracy in the democracy and when there's a government already in place. It's easily the more power, more dangerous to have a government place. First of all, sociopaths are known for their charm and for their warmth. Here's the two situations. In a free society, I'm a sociopath, I'm an evil person, on the head of maces.

In a state society, I'm an evil person, I'm a sociopath, I'm an evil person on the head of Macy's. In a state society, I'm an evil person I'm a social pet on the head of the US government. Which of these are you more concerned with? It's like night and day. So you would have far more decentralized military, you would have far more decentralized security forces, and they would be much more subject to feedback from the market. If you have an issue with Macy's or any store with a sweater, look at that transaction. If you have an issue with the state, to hire a lawyer, cost more than a surgeon, to even access the mechanism for dispute, is going to be exorbitant and price poor people at the

market for a conflict resolution immediately. So right away, you have something that's extremely regressive, and even though this is touted as some great equalizer, it's quite the opposite. So in current society, there's deep suspicion of governments and states. Not really. Well, like just your example of Macy's, I mean, don't you think a Hitler could rise to be at the top of a social network like Twitter and Facebook? Okay, let's suppose Hitler ran Twitter. Okay. Let's oppose Hitler and Twitter Okay, now let's take this thought experiment seriously. Yeah literally what could he do?

So all the only tweets are gonna be about how much the juice suck right okay fine Okay, all the cool people are leaving There could be some compelling like you said Evil people are charming. There could be some compelling narratives that could be we've conspiracy theories untruths that could be spread like propaganda. Every criticism of anarchism is in fact a description. Well, the strongest criticism of anarchism are in fact descriptions of status quo. Your concern is under anarchism, propaganda would spread and people would be taught the wrong ideas

unlike the status quo. That's not even a criticism of anarchism. I'm not actually criticizing. It's an open question of it's an open question of in which system will human nature thrive be able to thrive more, and in which system would the evils that arise in human nature would be more easily suppressible. That's the old question. Scientific experiment, and I'm asking only from our perspective of the fact that we've tried democracy quite a bit recently, and I don't maybe you can correct me. We haven't yet seriously tried to enter into our scale.

Well, we don't need to try to, so anarchy isn't like a country, right? It's like, you can't, I'm not, it's like saying, well, if anarchy works, I can we've never had an anarchist government, right? So anarchism is a relationship. And language is an example of this. It's a worldwide anarchic system.

You and I have an anarchist relationship. There's almost no circumstances We'd be calling the police on each other. I mean, it's I'm asking the same question a bunch of different directions out of Born out of my curiosity is why is anarchy going to be Better at preventing the darker sides of human nature, which presumably a criticism of government. Oh, because of these centralization. So the darker side of human nature is an extreme concern. Anyone who says it's going to go away is absurd and fallacious. I think that's a non-starter when people say that everyone's going to be good. Human beings are basically animals. We're capable of great beauty and kindness. We're capable of just complete cruel and what we would call inhumanity,

but we see it on a daily basis even today. And what's interesting is the corporate press won't even tell you the darkest aspects because that's too upsetting to people. So they'll tell you about atrocities and horrors, but only to a point. And then when you actually do the homework, you're like, oh, it's so much worse than,

like that thing about Stalin, right? So we know in a broad sense that Stalin was a dictator We know that he killed a lot of people But it takes work to learn about the holodomor It takes work to learn about what those literal torches were and that this is the person who later FDR and Harry Truman were shaking hands with and taking photos with and was being sold to us as Uncle Joe, you know, he's just like you and me. So when you have a decentralized information network as opposed to having three media

networks, it is a lot easier for information that doesn't fit what would be the corporate American narrative to reach the populations. And it would be more effective for democracy because they're in a much better position to be informed. Now, you're right. It also means, well, if everyone has a mic, that means every crazy person and with their wacky views. And at a certain point, yeah, it has to become then there's another level, which is then

the people have to be self-enforcing. And you see that in social media all the time when someone says this, the other person jumps in. You think, but isn't social media a good example of this? So you think ultimately without centralized control, you can have stability. What about the mob outrage and the mob rule the power of the mobs that that emerge power of the mob is is Very serious concern Gustave Lebon wrote a book in the 1890s called the crowd and this was one of the most important books I've written because it influenced both Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin and they all talked about it

And he made the point that under crowd psychology Human in lynching is another example of this. None of those individuals, or very few, would ever dream of doing these acts. But when they're all together and you lose that sense of self, you become the ant and you lose that sense of individually, you're capable of doing things that like in another context, you'd be like, I should kill myself on my monster. So you're worried about that, but like, isn't the mob, doesn't the mob have more power under energy? No, the mob has much less power on energy because under anarchism, every individual is fully empowered. You wouldn't

have gun restrictions. You would have people creating communities based on shared values. They'd be much more collegial, they'd be much more kind, as opposed to when you're forcing people to be together in a polity, when they don't have things in common, that is a, like, having a bad roommate. If you're forced to, like, liquid jails, if you're forced to be in locked in a room with someone, even if you at first like them, after a while, you're going to start to hate them and that leads to very nefarious consequences. So as an anarchist, what are you doing a society like this? Right. I think I'm doing okay.

I mean, I mean there's an election coming up. There's as you talk I mean, there's an election coming up. There's, uh, as, as you talk, uh, your welcome is one of the 15 shows that you host. Down to one. Okay. It's on to one. But I'm a big fan. I mean, you talk about libertarianism a little bit.

Yeah. I mean, is there some practical political direction, like in terms of ways the society should go? I don't mean we as a nation. I mean, we as a collective of people should go to make a better world from an anarchist point of view. Sure. I think politics is the enemy and anything.

I need to find the enemy and anything. You define politics. The state, the government. Okay. So anything that lessons, it's sway on people, anything that delegitimizes it is good. I run article a few years ago about how wonderful it is that Trump is regardless, such a buffoon because it's very, very useful to have a

commander in chief, who's regarded as a clown, because it's very, very useful to have a commander in chief who's regarded as a clown because it's going to take a lot to get him to convince your kids to go overseas and start killing people and making windows and orphans as well as those kids coming home in caskets. Whereas if someone is regarded with prestige and they're like, oh, we need to send your kid overseas. Oh, absolutely. I mean, this guy's great. So that is a very healthy thing where people are skeptical of the state. But there's a lot of people that regard him as one of the greatest leaders we've ever had. Yeah. Dinesh D'Souza, he's another Lincoln. I, when you talk shit about Trump or talk shit about Biden?

I'm trying to find a line to walk where they don't immediately put you into this person's Trump arrangement syndrome or they have the other alternative to that. I'm more than happy when people are preemptively dismissing me because then I don't have to waste time engaging with them because those people would be of no use to me. When I was on Tim Poole recently, Tim Poole show, Tim Poole's known for his little like hat. I got a propeller beanie motorized and it was just spinning the whole two hours. I know it might be 50s thing. The point being I wore it because there's lots of people who would say I can't take seriously someone who wears a hat like that. And my point being, if you are the kind of person who takes your cues based on someone's wardrobe

as opposed to the content of your ideas, you have no use to me as an ally. So I'd more than happy you preemptively abort, rather than waste our breath. Now this is a deep, this is a very, very deep thing that you and I disagree on, which as this is goes to the trolling versus the love, is I believe that person instinctually dismisses you on the very basic surface level.

But deep down, there is a wealth of a human being that seeks the connection, to seek to understand deeply, to connect with other humans that we should speak to. So, yeah, you're completely disagree. So, you're saying, I'm saying there's no mind there literally. Okay, so, let's about ideas, ideas that they instinctually based on their own current inner circle disagree with and learn to understand, to empathize with the other, like, and in the current climate, there's a divisiveness that discourages that. And that's where I see the value of love, of encouraging people to strip away that surface

in stink show response based on the thing they've been taught based on the things they listen to, to actually think deeply. Have you ever had gone to CVS or Dwayne Reed and your bill, how much you owe them is $6 and you give them a $10 bill in a single and watch the look on their face? You watch them void their bowels and panic because you give them $11 on a $6 bill. This is not a mind capable or interested in thoughts and ideas of learning. No, you're talking about the first moment of a first moment where there's an opportunity,

you think. They are desperate to avoid it. No, they're just, it's and incapable of it. I just, they have the same exact experiences I have every single day. When I know it's time for me to go on a run of five miles or six miles or 10 miles, I'm desperate to avoid it. And at the same time, I know I have the capacity to do it. And I'm deeply fulfilled when I do do it and when I do overcome that challenge. You are one of the great minds of our generation. You are telling me that any of these people can do anything close to the work you do, not

in artificial intelligence, but in the ability to be compassionate towards other people's ideas, like understand them enough to be able to... Passion requires a certain baseline of intelligence, because you have to perceive other people as being different, but of value. Yeah, exactly. That's a sophisticated mindset. I think most people are capable of it. You don't think so. No, I know where they interested in it. But in that kind of, if you don't believe they're capable of it, how can anarchy be stable?

If you don't believe they're capable of it, how can anarchy be stable? If you have a farm, there's one farmer and 50 cows. It's very stable. You're not asking the cows where to farm things. Yeah, but the cows aren't intelligent enough to do damage. Cows certainly can do a lot of damage. They can trample things, they could attack you. cows like how much they weigh like 4,000 pounds can you connect the analogy then because like sure you can't expect that Yeah, saying a cow's a cow isn't a slur. It's not saying you hate cows cows or even let's say I the example

I always use it with good reason is dogs, okay? I always say to study how human beings operate, watch Caesar Milan, because human beings and dogs have co-evolved. Our minds have both evolved and parallel tracks to communicate with each other. Dogs are can be vicious. Dogs for the most part are great, wonderful, but you can't expect the dog to understand certain concepts.

It's not an instant, and now most people are fanned, are you saying I'm a dog? If you're a dog person like I am, this is actually a huge compliment. Most dogs are better than most people. But to get the idea that this is something that is basically your peer is nonsensical. Now, of course, this sounds arrogant and elitist and so on and so forth. And I'm perfectly happy with that. But it is very hard to persuade me or anyone that if you walk, George Carlin has that joke, think how smart the average person is,

then realize 50% of people are dumber than that. If you walk around and see who's out there, these people are very kind, they are of value, they deserve to be treated with respect, they deserve to be secure in their person, they deserve to feel safe and to have love. But the expectation that they should have any sort of semblance of power over me or my life is as nonsensical

as asking last C to be my accountant. So, but that goes to power, that not to the ability the capacity to be empathetic, compassionate, intelligent, what if I were to try to prove you wrong? That's a good question. Okay. What would you be impressed by about society? How would I show it to you? That's a good question.

How would you show it to me? Because I think something has to be falsifiable if we're going to make a claim, right? So what would it, what would it, because we both made claims that aren't a kind of our own like interpretation based on our interaction. Like when I open Twitter, everyone seems to say, why don't you follow one person? Who do you follow? Who's the one person you follow?

It's still a camper. I follow a lot of people. I have a script that I have a script that I have an entire interface. So I think Twitter is really this is real love. It's not ironic love. I love watching it. And I'm sure you do too. I love watching a quality of mind at work because when someone has a quality of mind, they're often not self aware. I catch this on myself of how it operates. And then when other people see it, they're like, oh my God, this is so beautiful.

Cause there's such an innocence to it. But like when I open Twitter, I'm energized. There's a lot of love on Twitter. People say like, I love to, I agree. I have a, you don't think I have a lot of love on Twitter? My fans pay my rent. I mean, I don't know your experience of Twitter, but when I look at your,

which is a fundamentally different thing, I'm saying my experience from the, so maybe you can tell me what your experience is like as a human. So when I observe your Twitter, I think, I wouldn't call it love, I would call it fun. Yes. And because of that,

that's a different kind of love emerges from that, because people kind of learn that we're having, this is like game night. We can talk shit a little bit, and you can even pull in, you can make fun of people, you can have the crazy uncle come over that is a huge Trump supporter or somebody who hates Trump and you can have a little fun. Yes. I get it's a different kind of thing. I wouldn't be able to be the, you're the host of Game Night. Yes, yes. So I wouldn't be able to host that kind of game night. I mentioned a program at your robots and you're asking what is fun and it just starts sparking. Exactly. Yeah.

What is fun. So the robots in my life that survive for the ones that don't survive that whole programming process, they're kind of like they're kind of like the idiot from just the asking. They're very like simple-minded robots. It's fun is moving a can from one table to another. That's game night for for for our kids. You know what I'm one of my quotes is and I think about this every day and I mean it with every fiber of my being. We're born knowing that life is a magical adventure

and it takes them years to train us to think otherwise. And I think that Willy Wonka approach is a very Kamu approach. It's something I believe with every fiber of my being, I try to spread that as much as possible. I think it is very sad. I'm not being sarcastic. It comes up as condescending. I mean it at face value. It's very sad how many people are not receptive to that.

And I think a lot of the function how they were raised. I could have very easily with my upbringing have not maintained that perspective. There's a lot of friends in recovery, like AA, and they have an expression, not my circus, not my monkeys, that you can't really take on other people's problems on your own. At a certain point, they have to do the work themselves because you can only do so much externally and There are a lot of very damaged people out there and there are damaged people who revel and being damaged and They are damaged people who desperately Desperately desperately want to be well who desperately want to be happy who desperately want to find joy

So if I can be the one, and as arrogance that sounds all on it, who does give them that fun, and to tell them, it doesn't have to be like you thought. Like, it could be, it's gonna hurt, it's gonna suck, but it's still a magical adventure, and you're gonna be okay, because you've been through worse. Like, if that could be my message, I would own it all day long. And so what does the adventure look like for you?

Because I mean, it actually boils down to, I still disagree with you. I think trolling can be, and very often is destructive for society. Yes, I want to destroy society. That is the goal. I want to help many people. I don't run a clean.

I run a clean. I run a clean. What do I do with that? Okay. So do with that will is the whole of the law. Like I just want to so your hosting game night and I just want to play monopoly. I want to play what's the risk. Okay, I want to play these games and you're saying. You're a massive games.

Yeah, I was trying to think like a friend of your game, but they're all kind of aggressive. Battleship, access and allies, fun stuff. But like, so that's an adventure, but you're saying that we wanna destroy everything, even like the rules of those games are not. You have voluntarily agreed to those rules. The point is, if someone comes in, who who's not who no one invited to game night and are telling you know when you play Monopoly you have to get money when you land in free parking or you don't yeah, it's like who are you?

Yeah, we're having our own fun and you smell I don't know but there's an aggressive... There's an aggression. Let me speak to that, which I think is picking up on. I had a friend named Martha, Martha, excuse me, she ran something called cuddle parties, which people laughed at about a lot back in the day. And the premise of the cuddle parties, everyone got together and cuddled, right? And it's like, aha, aha. Then you stopped to think about and you realize physical context is extremely important.

And a lot of people don't have it. And if this is a mechanism, people getting that, it actually is going to have profound positive psychological consequences. So after she explained it, I'm like, okay, we laughed at this because it's weird and now that I think about it, this is wonderful. And I asked her about like the tough question go, what if guys get turned on?

And on their website, it's even has a rule like do not fear the erection, right? Cause it's gonna be a natural consequence of physical proximity. And the point she goes, she said this, I think about it all the time, people will take as much space as you let them. It is incumbent on each of us to set our own boundaries. We all have to learn when to say no, you're making me uncomfortable. If someone doesn't

respect your right to have your boundary to be uncomfortable, this person is not your friend. Now they can say, I don't understand. Like, why is this okay? Why is that not? Let me know you better. So I'm respectful of you. But if they roll their eyes and they're like, get over, I'm going to do what I want. This person is not interested in knowing you as a human being. Okay. And that is the aggression. It is you have to draw those lines. I mean, but that's a very positive way of phrasing that aggression. I'm a very positive person. But the trolling, there's a destructive thing to it. Yes. That hurts others. Yes. But it's not bad people. I only troll as a reaction or towards those in power. Okay. So maybe let's talk about trolling a little bit because trawling when it can maybe you can correct me, but I've seen it become a game for people that's enjoyable in

itself. I Disagre that. That's not a good thing. If you are there just to hurt innocent people, you are a horrible human, but doesn't trolling too easily become that? I don't know what easily. Let me give you an example of where trolling came from. The original troll was Andy Kauffman. He was on the show taxi. He was a performance artist, not a standard comedian.

And this is a quintessential example of trolling. He had a character where he was basically like a lounge singer, he had these glasses on and just terrible singers and so on and just a terrible singer and so on and so forth. And he denied it was him. And he came out and I'm blanking on the guy's name. I can't believe it.

Tony Clifton. Wow. Yeah. He came out in the audience and he goes, you know, my wife died a few years ago. Every time I look at my daughter Sarah's eyes, I can see my wife. Sarah, come out here.

Let's do a duet. And Sarah's like 11. Since on his lap. They start singing duet. Her voice cracks. He smacks her across the face. But the hell you're doing. You're making an ass time in front of these people. There, there, she starts crying. The audience is booing and goes, don't bore. You're just going to make her cry more. Now, it ends. This wasn't his daughter. It wasn't even child. It was an actress. This was all set up. He's exploiting their love of children in order to force them to be performers. That is trolling. No one is actually getting hurt. It's a humorous, the twisted exchange. If you go online, looking for weak people and

you are there to denigrate them, just for them being weak or in some way inferior to you. That is the wrong approach. I am best on the counter punch. A lot of times people come to me and they'll be like, I hope you die. You're ugly. You're disgusting. And there's this great quote from Billy Idol, which I'm going to mangle where he's some sudden effective. I love it when people are rude to me. Then I get stopped pretending to be nice. Then you start fights, now it's a chance for me to finish it and make an example of this person, but that's very, very different from

I'm gonna go around and humiliate people for the sake of doing it, in my view. And I can see how one would lead to the other. Yeah, but that's my fundamental concern with it. So my dream is to put use technology Create platforms that Increased the amount of love in the world and to me trolling is

doing the opposite so Like Andy Kaufman is brilliant. So I love obviously sounds like I like I'm a robot saying I love humor okay. Humor is good. 1110 1111 but like it's I just see like 4chan. I see that you can often see that humor quickly turn. Yeah because what happens is a lot of low status people, this is their one mechanism through sadism, uh, to, if you're empowered. And then they can hide behind, well, I'm just joking. Uh, as this dark, yeah, that's not acceptable. And there's a dark, a lot of L.O.L. that people do, which is like, they'll say like the shittiest thing. Right. Because

they feel L.O.L. after like, as if I don't even know like what is happening in the dark mind of yours Because they are feeling powerless in their lives, right? And they see someone who they perceive as higher status or powerful than them or even not appear and they through their words Cause a reaction in this person so they feel like they are in a very lyrical sense making a difference on earth and they matter in a very dark way. It's disturbing. This is not, I mean, it's unfortunate that that term trolling is used for that as opposed to what Andy Kaufman does as opposed to what I do.

It really is a sinister thing. And it's something I'm not at all a fan of or do. How do we fight that so like a neighboring concept of that is conspiracy theories, which is I don't think they're neighboring at all Let me let me give us sort of a naive perspective Maybe you can educate me on this from my perspective conspiracy theories are these constructs of ideas that go deeper and deeper and deeper into

creating worlds where there's powerful pedophiles controlling things like these very sophisticated models of the world that in part might be true, but in large part I would say are our figments of imagination that become really useful constructs. Self-reinforcing. Self-reinforcing for then feeding, like empowering the trolls to attack the powerful, the conventionally powerful. I don't think that's a function of conspiracy theories. Now, let's talk about conspiracy theories

because one of my quotes is you take one red pill, not the whole bottle. This concept that everything in life is at the function of a small cadre of individuals would be, for many people reassuring, because as bad as it looks, you know they, whoever they are, it's usually the Jews, aren't going to let it get that bad, that they will pull back. Or the black pill is that they are intentionally trying to destroy everything, and there's

nothing we can do and we're doomed. And there's an amazing book where Arthur Herman called the idea of the Klein Western history. It's one of my top 10 books where he goes through every 20 years, how there's a different population that's say, it's in the world. Here's the proof. And very often the proof is something that is kind of self-fulfilling where there's not falsifiable. And we both have to think of ways to falsify our claims from earlier. So it is a big danger.

It's a big danger online because very quickly, if someone who you thought was good, but now is bad on one aspect, well, they're controlled opposition, or they've been taken over, or they've been kind of appropriated by the bad people, whoever those bad people would be. I don't know that I have a good answer for this. I don't think it's as pervasive as people think the number of people who believe conspiracy theory. Right. I mean, and also conspiracy theory is a term used to dismiss ideas that have some currency. The Constitutional Convention was a conspiracy. The founding fathers got together secretly under the war to secrecy and

Phil Delphis that were throwing out the Arctic's Confederation were making a new government, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Luther Martin left and he told everyone, this is a conspiracy in there like yeah, whatever Luther Martin. So, and Jeffrey Epstein was a conspiracy, Harvey Weinstein, was a conspiracy book, caused a conspiracy. They all knew. They didn't care. Communist infiltration in America, there's a great book by Eugene Lyons called The Red Decade. They all knew they ex every atrocity that was done under Stalinism was excused in the West. And if you didn't believe it, oh, you've got this crazy anti-Russian conspiracy. So it's a term that is weaponized in a negative sense, but that does not all

imply that it does not have very negative real life consequences because it's kind of a cult of one, right? Like I'm at home in my computer, I bay into this ideology. Anyone who doesn't agree with me, they are blind, they're oblivious, mom and dad, my friends, you don't get it. We were warned about people like you and I think there's a very heavy correlation

and I'm not a psychiatrist, the course, between that and certain types of mild mental illness, like some kind of paranoid, schizophrenia, things like that. Because after certain point, if everything is a function of this conspiracy, it's, it's, it's, there's no randomness or beauty in life. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know if you can say anything interesting about it in the way of advice of how to take a step into conspiracy theory world without completely going like diving deep, because

it seems like that's what happens. People can't look at Jeffrey Epstein. I can tell you the device that has to start. Seriously and rigorously without going, because you can look at Jeffrey Epstein and say there's a deeper thing. You can always go deeper. Right. look at Jeffy Epstein and say, there's a deeper thing. You can always go deeper. It's like Jeffy Epstein was just a tool of the lizard people and the lizard people are the tool.

Well, they say Satanists. In this case, somehow recently, very popular spedophiles somehow always involved. I'm not understanding any of the, I legitimately, I say this both humorously and seriously, I need to look into it. And I guess the bigger question I'm asking, how does this series human being, somebody with a position at a respectable university, like look at a conspiracy theory, look into it. When I look at somebody like Jeffrey Epstein, who had a role at MIT. Yeah. Oh, oh yeah.

And I think I'm not happy personally. I wasn't there when Jeffrey Epstein was there. I'm not happy with the behavior of people now about Jeffrey Epstein, about the bureaucracy and everybody's trying to keep quiet, hoping it blows over without really looking into any like looking in a Deep philosophical way of like how do we let this human being be Among us, can I give you a better example sure that that is kind of conspiratorial the speaker of the house the longest serving Republican speaker of the house Dennis Hastert was a pedophile

He went to jail. The Democrats don't throw this in the Republicans' faces every five minutes. Not even Democratic activists. I find that very, very odd and not what I would predict. Now, I'm not saying there's some kind of conspiracy, but when it comes to things like sexual predation, which is something that I'm very, very concerned about, I'm an uncle now, my sister's just had her second kid recently, he's adorable.

It's something that I don't understand. It feels as if there's a lot of people who want this tall go away. Now, I think it's also because we don't have the vocabulary and framework to discuss it. Because when you start talking about things like children and these kind of issues, we want to believe it's all crap. Because it's for those of us who aren't in this kind of mindset, the idea that this happens to kids

and happens frequently is something so horrible that we, it's just like, I don't even want to hear it. And that does these children and adult survivors and enormous disservice. So I don't know that I have any particular insight on this. But see, like, how do you, I mean, the Catholic church, again, there's all these topics that Public school teachers are far more proportionally

Peders of children in the Catholic Church. I mean, I don't know what I you're right. You're right. Perhaps I'm I've been You know reading a lot about Stalin and Hitler. Yeah, somehow it's more comforting to be able to. And then the atrocities that are happening now, it's a little bit more difficult. There was a New York Times article starting to have to where they had people tracking down child pornography. And I think the article said that didn't have enough people just to cover the video tapes of infants being raped. And we can even wrap our heads around like reading Lolita, like, okay, she's 14, 12, okay, it's still a female. An infant, it's something that, again, like with the Stalin example, we sat down here for 100 years, we would never

think it's something like this, think of it as sexual context, it makes no sense. Yeah. So, and the fact that this is international, okay, we eliminated completely in America. Well, then they're going to go, this. There's infants all over the world. There's video cameras all over the world. So then it has to become a conspiracy because I someone has to film it. I'm filming it. You're buying it. Your kid.

It is literally a conspiratorial, not in the sense of like a mafia conspiracy or some government illuminati, but there is our networks designed to produce this product. See, but like what I'm trying to do now, I mean, part of the, one of the nice things with like a podcast and other things I'm involved with is removing myself from having any kind of boss so I can do whatever that helps. Yes, it's, oh, it's so, it's so wonderful. That just happened to me. It's, it's the most wonderful thing ever. So I could do I can actually

Immotoration consider like look into stuff careful though. I was gonna write a book about this and people pointed out You sure want to do this research? Because you start googling around for this kind of stuff. It's on your computer. Oh In that sense. Yeah, I'm more concerned about you know, it's the Nietzsche thing looking into the abyss like you want to be very Yeah, I believe I can do this kind of thing in moderation without slipping into the depths. Of course. I think that's intelligence that's recently quote unquote looked into the UFO community, the extraterrestrial, whatever community. I think it always frustrated me that the scientific community, like,

roll their eyes at all the UFO sightings, all that kind of stuff, even though there could be fascinating, beautiful physical fun, like, first of all, there could be lightening or the ball lightning, right? That that's at the very basic level. It's a fascinating thing. And also it could be something like, I mean, I don't know, but it could be something interesting, like, worth looking into. My grandfather was an air traffic controller back in the Soviet Union.

And he said, we saw this stuff all the time. These are planes that were not moving, or whatever things that were not moving according to anything we knew about. So it's absolutely real. He's not some jerk with an iPhone in his backyard. This is a military professional who understood technology, who knew where the secret bases were. So if he's telling me, it's some, doesn't mean it's Martians, but he's telling me there's something there. And there are many examples of these like military people.

These aren't some laymen who see the story. Yeah, there's a military people. These aren't some laymen who see the story. Yeah, and so you can dismiss, when you're talking about professionals who are around aircraft all the time, who are familiar with aircraft at the highest levels, and they're seeing things that they can't explain, they're clearly not stupid and they're clearly not underformed. So, Mike, there's different ways to dismiss a, for example, I am, you were saying that trolling is a good mechanism. Against that, but I'm not dismissing it by like rolling my eyes. I'm considering legitimately that you're way smarter than me and you understand the world better than me. Like I'm

allowing myself to consider that possibility and thinking about it. Like maybe that's true. Like seriously considering it. That's what, that's, I feel the way people should approach intelligent people, serious quote unquote people, scientist should approach conspiracy theories. Like, look at it carefully, you know, first of all, is it possible that the earth is flat? It's not trivial to show that the earth is not flat. It's a very good exercise. You should go through it. Yes. But once you go through it, you realize that based on a lot of data and a lot of evidence, and there's a lot of different experiments, you can do

yourself, actually, to show that the earth is not flat. Okay. The same kind of process can be taken for a lot of different conspiracy theories and it's helpful. And without slipping into the depths of lizard people running everything. That's where I've now listened to two episodes of Alex Jones' show because he goes crazy deep into different kind of world views that I was not familiar with. And I don't know what to make of it. I mean, the reason I've been listening to it is because there's been a lot of discussions

about platforming of different people. And I've been thinking about what a censorship mean or been thinking about it, whether because Joe Rogan said he's going to have Alex on again. And then I enjoyed it as a fan, just the entertainment of it, but then I actually listened to Alex. And I was thinking, is this human being dangerous for the world? Like is the idea of he's saying dangerous for the world? I'm more concerned with the Russian conspiracy that we had for three years. The claim that our election was not legitimate and that everyone in the Trump White House is a

stooge of Putin. And the people who said this had no consequences for this. Alex Jones doesn't have the respect that they do. These are both areas of concern for me. But he might, if there's, if he's given more platform. So like the, the, the people who've, and that'd be curious. I'm also a little bit, I don't know what to think about the idea that Russians hack the election. It seems too easily accepted in the mainstream media as a whole.

Now let me cleanse said that how they did it was they had ads on the dark web. Now you and I both know what the dark web is. So the possibility of ads in the dark web having an influence from a portion of influence on the election is literally zero. Perhaps I should look into it more carefully, but I've found very little good data on exactly what did the Russians do to hack elections, like technically speaking. What are we talking about here? As opposed to these kind of weird, the best thing is a couple of books and reporting on

like, farms, troll farms. But let's see the day like how many exactly what are we talking about like what were they doing relative not just like some anecdotal discussions of but like relative to the bigger the size of Facebook like if there's a few people, several hundred say the posting different political things on Facebook relative to the full size of Facebook, let's look at the full size. Like, right. You're thinking like a scientist. The actual impact.

Yeah. Like, because it's fascinating, the social dynamics of viral information of videos when, when Donald Trump retweet something, I think that's understudied the effect of that. Like, he retweeted a clip with Joe Rogan and Mike Tyson, where Mike Tyson says that he finds fighting orgasmic. I don't understand that, but they'd be fascinating to think like, what is the ripple effect on the social

Dynamic of our society from retweeting a clip about Mike. What's your favorite Joe wrote? Um, um, Trump tweet I I tune the model long time unfortunately. I I have um It's this goes to the, you and I have a different relation with Donald Trump. You appreciate the art form of trolling. It's non-sectional. Non-sectional, yeah. So I tend to prefer Bill Clinton.

He's more of my type. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know. You don't like that consent stuff? No, the consent, no. No, you appreciate the art form of trolling and Donald Trump is a master. He's the divinci of trolling. So I tend to think that trolling is ultimately destructive for society. And then Donald Trump takes nothing seriously. He's playing a game. He's making a game out of

everything. He takes a lot of things seriously. I think he's very committed to an international piece. He would make a game out of everything. He thinks a lot of things seriously. I think he's very committed to international peace. Sorry, sorry. I shouldn't speak so strong. I think he takes, actually, yes, a lot of things seriously. I meant on Twitter and the game of politics, he only takes...

Everently. Yeah. And I appreciate it. I just would like to focus on like genuine real expressions of humanity, especially positive. Well, this is my favorite tweet. My fans got it laser etched and put in a block of Lucite for me.

And he said, every time I speak of the losers and haters, I do so with great affection. They cannot help the fact that they were born fucked up. That's an actual Trump tweet. It's my favorite one. And that's kind of nice. And that's love. That's love.

That's kind of nice. Great affection. That, I mean, exclamation point. Even. I'm broke legs. What is love? Yeah, the sparks are flying. But they have to kind of analyze that

from like a literary perspective, but it seems like there's love in there, like a little bit. Yeah, it's a little bit lighthearted because he's saying even when I'm going after them, don't take a little bit. Yeah, it's a little bit lighthearted. Because he's saying even when I'm going after them, don't take it so seriously. Yeah, that's nice. It is nice. It is.

It is acknowledging the game of it. Yes. That's nice. He's not always nice. It's nice. He's very, very vicious. Yeah, very vicious. He's done things that I can tell you about

that I'm like this is a bad person. What do you think about one of the... Okay, listen, I'm not... I, for people listening, I do not have Trump-Drangement Syndrome. I don't... I see... I try to look for the good and the bad and everybody. One thing, perhaps it's irrational, but perhaps because I've been reading history, the one triggering thing for me is the delaying of elections. I believe in elections, and this is the part that you probably disagree with. But I believe in the value of people voting, and I just seem to me dictators, the place where they finally, the big switch happens. When you question the legitimacy of election,

was it in questioning the legitimacy of elections for the last three years? I've only heard Donald Trump do it last year, but the last three years, you're saying somebody else? You don't think not my president, illegitimate, we're not gonna normalize him as president, Russia hack the selection, impeached you, not a real president you don't think that's questioning legitimacy of 2016 yeah it's a good uh i haven't been paying attention enough but i i would i would imagine that argument has

been that i haven't actually heard too many people but imagine that's been a popular thing to say. Oh, very much so. Okay. But nevertheless, that's a part, they didn't, that's not a statement that gained power enough to say that Barack Obama will keep being president or Hillary Clinton should be present. Newsweek had that article, how Hillary Clinton, because they'll be president. Newsweek. No, but she'sical it, because they'll be president. Newsweek. No, but she's not. That's what I'm saying. My worry isn't saying that the election was illegitimate and people whining and mass scale.

And then Fox News or CNN reporting for years or books being written for years. My worry is legitimately martial law, a person's state's president. So here's the issue. Like there's a, there's a, I've got shit that happens. I've not, I did a book on North Korea.

I'm not someone who thinks dictatorships should be taken lightly. I'm not someone who thinks they can't happen here. I think a lot of times people are desperate for dictatorships. So I am with you. And I think this is something, if you're going to hand wave it away, everyone else hand wave it away. Hitler's never going to be a chancellor. He's a lunatic. He's a joke. He's a joke. They couldn't find a publisher from mind-confident English because this is some guy from some random

minor party in Germany spouting nonsense who's going to read this crap. You know, so I completely agree with you in that regard. I think we're there. My point is, Donald Trump this year had every path by opening him to declare martial law. The cities are being burned down. He could have very easily sent in the tanks and people would have been applauding him for this. I feel so good right now.

But am I wrong though? And what he did, he tweeted out to Mayor Wheeler of Portland. He said, call me. We will, we will solve this in minutes, but you have to call. And he sat in his hands and they said, oh, it's his fault. The state is burning down. He's not doing anything. And he goes, I'm not doing anything until you ask me to do it. So I think that is even if you think he's an aspiring dictator, that is at least a sign that there is some restraint on his aspirations. Can I just take that in as a beautiful, like moment of hope?

So I'm going to remember this moment. I'm going to remember this. Beautiful, Ted. I'm going remember this moment. Beautiful, Ted. I'm gonna remember that. I mean, I should say that perhaps I'm irrational. This is the one moment where I feel myself being a little... I don't give a rational. I think there's a symmetry because it's kind of like, okay,

either if I leave the house, it's like Russian roulette. Yeah, maybe it's like a one-in-six shot. I'm pulling the trigger. I'm killing myself, but that's one in six. That's not, and the consequences are so dire that a little paranoia would go a long way. There's something that, if you can't go back. Yeah, you can. You can.

It's an asymmetry, yeah. The thing is, the thing that makes Donald Trump new to me, and again, I'm a little naive in these things, but he surprised me in how many ways he just didn't play by the rules. And he's made me a little aunt in this aunt colony think like, well, do you have to play by the rules at all? Right. Like why are we having elections? Why did you say like it's coronavirus time?

Like it's, it's not healthy to have elections. Like we shouldn't be like, I could, if I put my dictator hat on, Nancy Pelosi said that Joe Biden shouldn't debate. Yeah. Did she? Yes. She says he shouldn't dignify Trump with't debate. Yeah. Did she? Yes. She says he shouldn't dignify Trump with a debate. He's the president.

He could be the worst president on earth, evil, despicable monster. I'll take that as an argument. So she's playing politics, but she's okay. I don't think that's playing politics. I think when there's a certain point where things get, when you start attacking institutions for the emergency at the moment and acting arbitrarily. That is one thing I

are the slippery slope. Yeah. So you're saying debates is one of the institutions. That's one of the traditions to have the debates. I think the debates are extremely important. I now I don't think that someone's a good debater is going to make a good president. I mean, that's that's a big problem. But you're just saying this is attacking just yet another tradition yet another. You know, like how if you're dating, if you're married to someone and someone throws out the word divorce, you can't unring that bell, you threw it out there. I'm saying you don't throw things out like that

unless you really are ready to go down this road. And I think that is, there's nothing in the constitution about debates we've only had since 1980, but still, I think they are extremely important. It's also a great chance for Joe Biden to tell him to his face, your full of crap. Here's what you did. Here's what you did.

So fascinating, that you're both, you acknowledge that and you also see the value of tearing down the entire thing. So you're both worried about no debates or at least in your voice and your tone. There's a great quote by Chesterton. I'm not a fan of him, it's at all. or at least in your voice, in your tone. There's a great quote by Chesterton. I'm not a fan of him, it's at all. But he says, before you tear down a fence, make sure you know why they put it up first.

So I am for tearing it all down, but there's something called a control demolition, like building sevens, or there's- Allegedly. We knew we were in Tel Aviv. And- Hashtag building seven. We knew we were in Tel Aviv. And... Hashtag building sound. We knew we were in Tel Aviv.

But you're faster than me. You're operating in a different level. I need to upgrade my operating system. I told you we're in it. It was 95. Yeah. Building sound. If you're going to...

It's like Indiana Jones, right? If you're gonna tear pull something away, make sure you have something in place first as opposed to just breaking it and then just especially in politics. It's because it escalates. And when things escalate without any kind of response, it, it can go in a very bad, that's when the polling comes in. So what's your prediction about the Biden Trump debates? Again, I just have this weird, maybe we'll return to it, maybe not in this, how do we put more love into the world? And like one of the things that worries me about the debates is it'll be the world's greatest troll against the grandpa and the porch who grabbed his pants. Yeah, yeah, and it'll it will not put more love into the world

It will it will create more mockery like Joe Biden did a great job against Paul Ryan in 2012 Paul Ryan was no lightweight. No one thought he was a lightweight Joe Biden handed Sarah Pail in her ass in 2008, which isn't as easy to do as you think because she's a female, so you're going to come off as bullying that's only have to worry about. So, the guy isn't, I think he is in the stages of cognitive decline. So, I think it's going to be interesting. I want it to be like Mike Tyson beating up a child, because it'll be a source of amusement to me,

but I don't know how it's gonna go. Is it possible that Joe Biden will be the Mike Tyson? Yes, because in his last debate with Bernie, he was perfectly fine. And again, the guy was a senator for decades. And I don't think anyone, if you looked at Joe Biden in 2010, would have thought this guy is gonna be, have his ass handed him a debate.

You wouldn't think that at all. So I don't know who we're going to see. Plus, he's got a lot of room to attack Trump. So I'm sure he's gonna come strapped and ready, and he's gonna have his talking points and watch Trump dance, try to tap dance around. And if he's in a position, I don't know what the rules of the debate debate are to actually nail him to the wall, it might actually,

I'm sure he's going to have a lot of lines too. The problem is Trump is the master counter-puncher. So he, like, when Hillary's, you know, had her lines, she's like, well, it's a good thing that Donald Trump is an in charge of our legal system. And he's like, yeah, he'd be in jail. It's like, it's like, like, lady, you set him up. That's painful to watch those debates. I mean, there's something,

I think it's actually analogous. I'm come to think of it, your conversation with me right now. It's some sleepy Joe. I'm playing the role of sleepy Joe. I actually connect to Joe because there's I also incontinence. There's like these weird pauses.

I do the same thing and I noise a shit out of me that like in mid-settings I'll start saying a different thing and take a tangent. I'm not as slow and drunk as I sound. Always. I swear more intelligent underneath it. I'm slower but less drunk. Exactly. But the result, one of those is true, but not both. Yeah. And and and Trump just like you are a master counter-puncher. So it's going to be messy. Here's the other thing. You know all seriousness. Chris Wallace is the moderator. Chris Wallace has interviewed Trump several times and he was a tough, tough questioner. So I don't think he's going to come in there with softball

questions. I think he's really going to try to nail Trump down, which is tough to do. I like him a lot. Yeah. He's, and he's like, Mr. President sir, that's not accurate. Blah blah blah blah. He's done it. And Trump gets very frustrated because he doesn't just let him say whatever he wants and he hits him with the follow up. He's, he's a, I guess he's unfoxed news. And he, I listen to a Sunday program, uh, every once in a while. Uh, he gives me hope that, I don't know, there's something in the voice like that he's not bought.

He's, there's no question he's gonna take this seriously, which I think is the best you could hope for in a moderator. Like, it feels like there's people that might actually take the mainstream media into a place that's going to be better in the future. And like, we need people like him. You mean like Robesphere?

What do you mean? Like taking the mainstream media to better future. Bring out the guillotine. Okay. See, you put your anarchist hat back on. I don't think Robesphere is much of an anarchist, but yeah, I get what you're saying. You don't think there should be a centralized place for news?

There isn't now. Well, that's what mainstream media is supposed to represent in growth. Well, it's not mainstream media is supposed to represent. That's not what he called that. A place where people traditionally said was the legitimate source of truth. That's what the media was supposed to represent. That's their big branding accomplishment. That was never true.

Yeah, because if we, here's what happens. We remember the Spanish- happens, we remember the Spanish American War, remember the main, we have to take Cuba, yellow journalism, well, you ran off her right, then record scratch, and then we're all objective. Like when did this transition happen? According to

you people, when you were saying that the Kaiser is the worst human being on earth, when you were downplaying Stalin and downplaying Hitler's atrocities, when you were saying we Stalin and downplaying Hitler's atrocities, when you were saying we had to be in Vietnam, at what WMDs, when did it change? It never changed. You just are better con artists at a certain point, and now the mask is dropping. Yeah, but do you think there's at its best, like investigative journalism,

can uncover truth in a way that, that like Reddit subreddits can't. You know, Reddit, sure, I agree. At its best, absolutely. That's not even the spirit. But like, don't you think, like fake it until you make it is the right way to do it, meaning like the- Make the news?

No, no, no. I meant the news saying like we dream of doing, of arriving at the truth and reporting the truth. They don't say that. CNN had an advertisement that said this is an apple. We only report facts. That's a lie. No, that's, no.

And now it's clear things have changed. They haven't changed. You just more, you're more aware of it. What's your canary. But okay, so the... How many people died in Iraq? Because Saddam Hussein was about to launch WMDs. Who had consequences for this?

No one. This isn't a minor thing. This is lots of dead people. Yeah. And also, I mean, dead people is horrible, but also the money, which has, like we said, economic effects that... Marion Williamsson, I think it was, it was, had the, or Trump, both of them had the great point that goes, it's like a trillion dollars. How many schools would that build? How many roads

would that build? Even in here, why are we building hospitals in Iraq that we destroyed when we could building hospitals here? It makes no sense. It's horrifying. So who's responsible for that like who um Alex Jones No meant for while So who's Responsible for arriving at the truth of that of speaking to the money spent I think this is wars in Iraq. This is one of the great things about social media Twitter you have faith in Twitter not not specific was Twitter, but yes, social media is the whole one.

Anyone can be, here's a great, another great example. Before, if you were talking about police brutality or these riots, you would have to perceive it in the way it was framed and presented to Nicholas Sandman's another example. Brianna Taylor, all these things. Well, you would have footage of her. You would have to perceive in the way that it's edited and presented to you by the corporate press. Now everyone is a video, it has a video camera.

Everyone has their perspective. And it's very useful when these incidents happen where you could see the same incident from several angles and you don't need Don Lemon or Chris Wallace to tell me what this means. I can see with my own eyes. Yeah, I've been very pleasantly surprised about the power. See, like, the mob, again, gets in the way.

They get emotional and they destroy, like, the ability for people to reason, but you're right that truth is unobstructed on social media. Like, if you're careful and patient, you can see the truth. Yeah. Like for example, data on COVID, some of the best sources are doctors. Like if you want to know the truth about the coronavirus, what's happening is there's follow people on Twitter. Yeah. There's certain people there who like sources from me versus the CDC and the WHO. It's that's that's fast. I mean, it's well, it's kind of anarchy, right? It's it WHO. It's, that's fast. I mean, it's, well, it's kind of anarchy, right?

It's, it is. It's not kind of. It is anarchy. Yes. I mean, well, there's some censorship and all that kind of stuff. You have censorship in your anarchy in a sense that you're talking about. Like, people you kicked off a Twitter. That's a drawing counter.

I mean, it's a private company. Private company. Most people wouldn't say Twitter is working, but they, it's a private company private company Most people wouldn't say Twitter is working, but they that's probably because they take for granted How well it's working and they're just complaining about the small part of it this broken right yeah Okay, another question about you feel better No, by the way, I mean, I had a personal gripe with the situation about the, not a personal gripe, but I felt overly emotional about the possibility that there will be some of Donald Trump messing with the election process. But you

made me feel better, like saying like he had a bunch of opportunities to do what, like to do what I would have done if I was a dictator, I would the first time those rides over George Floyd, I would institute a martial law. Do you know what I remember very vividly is after 9-11 and everyone was waiting for George Bush to give his speech And he had 98% approval rating and I remember very very quickly because if he had said We're suspending the Constitution Everyone would have cheered for him like he couldn't get enough support at that time and he didn't do it And I can't say anything really good about George W. Bush

I'm not a fan of his to say the least so I think you and I and you know other people who are familiar with you know totalitarian regimes to some extent from my ancestry or whatever from research should always be the ones freaking out and warning. But we should also be aware of we got a ways to go before it's Hitler and thankfully there are a lot of dominoes that have to fall into place before Hitler. It's like the game's Hitler. And thankfully, there are a lot of dominoes that have to fall into place before Hitler. It's like the game secret Hitler, it's a board game, before Hitler becomes Hitler. It's not, especially in America, there's lots of things that have to happen before you really get to that point. I mean, FDR was for all intensive purposes of dictator, but even then, the worst you could say, and this is not something that you just take lightly, was in term of Japanese citizens, but they weren't murdered.

They weren't, you know, under lock and key in the sense of like in cells. So things could have gotten a lot worse for him. We have to, I mean, Hitler is such a horrible person to bring up because- It was Selenie. Yeah, Moselene is better because Hitler is so closely connected to the atrocities of the Holocaust. There's all the stuff that led up to the war in the war itself. Say that there was no Holocaust. Hitler would probably be viewed differently. I should, yes, I should think so. Well, I mean, but...

You think that's a very controversial stance. You think Hitler would be viewed differently if it wasn't for the Holocaust? Well, I mean, but it's a funny thing that the, I would say, the death of how many 40, 50 million, I mean, I don't know how you calculate it is not seen as bad as the six million. Oh, yeah, because of Mao and Stalin. Yeah. And it's interesting. I'm working on it. You're working on it.

Yeah, the next book I'm talking about. Reminding, well, it's good. I'm glad a good writer is because it was not reminded. Well, no one is not reminded. My last book, the new right, you know, had to deal with some like the Nazis. And one of the points they make is how come everyone knows about the Holocaust, but no one knows about the

hall of the more. And they're right. We should know about this because it is a great example of both how the Western media were depraved, but also what human beings are capable of. And those scars are still, many Americans think Russian Ukraine are the same thing. You know, like Trump's in debt with the Ukrainians,

Trump's about the Russians, they think it's the same thing. It's for us, it's completely lunacy. But this is the kind of thing where Pol Pot is another example where people have no clue of what has been done to their fellow man in the face of the Suruth and they should know. How much of that do you lay at the hands of Communism? How much of you were like a Jordan Pearson who has As intricately connecting the atrocities like like you're saying, 1930s, Ukraine, where people were starved. I recently, my grandmother recently passed away, and she survived that as a kid, which is,

it's fat. Those people, I mean, they're tough. They're tough. That whole region is tough, because they survived that and then right after of Germans How much you lay that At communism as an ideology versus Stalin the man I think you know Lenin was building concentration camps, you know why he was around and slave labor I don't I think it's clearly both.

There's certain variants of communism that were far like Khrushchev, you know, and Gorbachev, the reason the Soviet Union fell apart. And this is kind of, I'm going to spoil the end of the book. There's an amazing book called Revolution 1989. It's like the most beautiful book of her read by Victor Sebastian. He's a Hungarian author. And basically what happens in 1989, Poland has their elections, and then in 1990, they kind of led into labor people into the government.

And people start crossing borders, you know, in the Eastern block. And you had Hanukkah from Eastern Germany and Chachesko from Romania, calling Gromachov, because those are the two toughest ones, the communist standards. They go, they're just escaping. We're gonna lose everything. You gotta send in the tanks, like you did in Hungary, like you did in Czech Republic, Czech Slovakia in 68. And Gorbachev goes, I'm not sending in the tanks.

And they go, dude, if you don't say in the tanks, it's all done. And he goes, nope, I'm not that kind of guy. And they were right. I mean, Kraszky was personally shot with his wife up against the wall. Hanukkah, I'd forget what happened to but it, they all self-liberated. My friend who is born in Czech, uh, Czechoslovakia, his mom was pregnant, you know, under communism and she never

even imagined he'd be free and he was born under free, uh, and they were all looking around all these countries that self-liberated because they're like, this is a trick, right? They're just, they're trying to figure out who's like not good so that they can arrest us on mass and they didn't. So, even within communism, there are bad guys and better guys. But we talked about hierarchy, we talked about democracy. Do you see, like there's democratic socialism conversations

going on in the popular culture, socialism is seen as like evil or for some people great. Sure What like what are your thoughts about is in a political ideology evil? If so you're on the evil side. Yes fundamentally. Yes What what what is it? Yeah, what yeah,, what makes it evil? What's like structurally, if you were to try to analyze what you're saying?

Sure, I say three ways. Morally, no person has the right to tell another person how to live their life. Economically, it's not possible to make calculations under socialism. It's only the prices that are information that tells me, oh, this is, we need to produce more of this, we need to produce less of this, we need to produce less of this,

without prices being able to adjust and give information to producers and consumers, you have no way of being able to produce effectively efficiently. And also, it turns people against each other. When you force people to interact, when you force them into relationships, when you force them into jobs,

and you don't give them any choice when there's a monopoly. The consequence of monopoly, everyone's familiar with ostensibly under capitalism, when somehow when it's a government monopoly, all those economic principles don't work, that doesn't make any sense. But there's force in democracy too, which is just you're saying there's a bit more force in and socialism. But that's interesting that you say that there's not enough information. I mean, that's ultimately you need to have really good data to achieve the goals of the system. Even if there's no corruption, you just need to have the information. Right. Which you can't. And capitalism provides you like really strong real time information

that and if like capitalism is best and cleanest, which is like perfect information is available, there's no manipulation of information. That's one of the problems. Okay. Can we talk about some candidates, the ones we got, and possible alternatives? So one question I have is, why do we have within this system, why do we have the candidates we have? It seems maybe you can correct me highly unsatisfactory.

Like the, like, is anyone actually excited maybe you can correct me highly unsatisfactory. Like, is anyone actually excited about our current candidates? I'm kind of excited because no matter who wins, the election is going to be hilarious. So that is something I'm excited about from a human perspective. Yeah. Is that what the whole system is on? So that's one theory of the case. Is the entire thing is optimized for viewership.

Yeah. And excitement by definitions of like the reality show kind of excitement. I think it is, if you look at what happened with Brett Kavanaugh, this is not a career that would draw people who are, you might say, quality. Because no matter who they are, there would be a huge incentive from the other team

to denigrate them and humiliate them in the worst possible ways. Because as the two teams lose their legitimacy among GenPOP, it's gonna get harder and harder for them to maintain any kind of claims to authority, which is something I like, but which does kind of play out in, you know, certain the various ways. So people the best of the best are not going to want to be politicians.

Yeah, because like I could have a job, or have a job interview, and I'm running Yahoo, or whatever, or I could for 18 months have to eat, you know, corn dogs looking like I'm going down on someone and shake hands and have all this my family and on social media daily Call the worst things for what and then I'm still not guaranteed the position But the flip side of that like from my perspective is the competition is weak meaning like You need a certain a minimum amount of eloquence clearly that I don't the bar which I do not pass. I don't think either of them would be

considered particularly eloquent, Biden or Trump. No, I know, but that's what I'm saying, the competition, like if you were wanted to be become a politician, if you wanted to run for president, the opportunity is there. Like if you were at all competent, like if you had, so like Andrew Yang is an example of somebody who has a bunch of ideas, is someone eloquent, like young, energetic, it feels like there should be

thousands of Andrew Yang's, like that would enter the domain. And he went nowhere. Well, I wouldn't say he went nowhere, he generated quite a bit of excitement, he just didn't go very far. Okay. You don't have to run for president to generate excitement with your ideas, you could be a podcast host, I'm not even joking.

That's right. That's right. That's right. And he's both, Andrew Yang. Oh, he's a podcast? Yeah, he has a podcast called Yang Speaks. No, okay, cool. Oh, wow, the music of the way he said, yeah, cool.

Is the way my mom talks to me when I tell her something exciting going on in my life. Oh, that's nice, honey. Oh, you made a robot, that's cool. Oh, you still single, though, aren't you? I wonder why. I wonder why. I want to make you some robot wife.

Give me some robot grandchildren. Okay. But first of all, okay, let me ask you about Andrew Yang, because he represents fresh energy. You don't find him fresh or energetic. You know, like, is there any candidate you wish was in the mix that was in the mix you wish was one of the last two remaining? Yeah, people like Marion Williamson, I thought was great. Tulsi, I thought was great. Amy Klobuchar got a bad rap.

I think she held her own smart. She wasn't particularly funny. That's okay. I think she was non-threatening to a lot of people. What did you like about them? I guess it's named all women. That's interesting. It wasn't even intentional.

Tulsi, I like that she was aggressive, has a good resume and is not staying the course for the establishment. Maryne Williamson, I like because she comes from a place from what it seems of genuine compassion. Maybe she's a sociopath. I don't know. I read her book and it actually affected me profoundly because it's very rare when you read a book and there's even that one idea that blows your mind and that you kind of think about all the time and there's one of that such idea in her book about she was teaching something called a course in miracles in Hollywood. I think she still teaches it.

And this was during the 80s to hide the AIDS crisis and all these young men in the prime of their life were dropping like flies. And she's trying to give them hope. Well, good luck. They're dying, no one cares. And they're like, you can't tell us that they're gonna cure this. Like, you're, that's a lie. And she goes, what if I told you,

they're not gonna cure it? What if I told you it's gonna be to like diabetes? They cut off your foot and you're gonna go blind. Would that be something that you can hope for? And when you put it like that, it's like, yeah, like if you're talking to him, it's like a homeless junkie. And you're like, you could be a doctor, you're a lawyer or a lawyer, like cool story. Like you could have a studio apartment with a terrible roommate and a shitty job.

But when you're on the street, you know, cooking breakfast in a teaspoon and you hear that, you're like, wait, would that really be so bad? Is that really so much worse than this? No, the end it becomes something. So when she put it in those terms, I'm like, wow, this woman that really did a number on me in terms of teaching people how to be hopeful. Small steps.

But it's also then it becomes less of, I need a miracle to be like, oh, this is really magical. Yeah. And it's absurd to think it's impossible. What about what's your take on you, the 2020 that Brent went once then pushed forward? It was DOA. He couldn't even send up to Twitter.

Dead on arrival. Dead on arrival. He couldn't even send up to Twitter, let alone or to Facebook, take a block, let alone to the Facebook. It was usually problematic, by the way, that Twitter would block that. Not at all. I don't Facebook, they got blocked, let alone to the most usually problematic. By the way, that Twitter would block that not at all. I don't know why they blocked it, but I believe I don't know problematic means.

That's a word that does a lot of work that people wanted to do conceptually. The idea that like unity is like taking the rejects from each party and we're going to like have something that no one likes. And therefore it's going to be a compromise is absurd. The last time we had this kind of unity ticket was the Civil War. Well you had Andrew Johnson from the Democrats and Lincoln from the Republicans. This was not something that ended well, particularly nicely for both halves of the country.

So that's the way you see it is. The way I saw it, I guess I haven't looked carefully at it. I haven't either to be fair. The way I saw it is emphasizing guess I haven't looked carefully at it either to be fair. Yeah. The way I saw it is emphasizing centrist which is how's Tulsi a centrist? Tulsi was involved. Yes. He's trying to push Tulsi and like Jesse Ventura or something. Oh So okay, I don't know. I don't know this as a scientist. You also know centristism is an ethical here in term of politics but see now you're like What is it pleading to authority?

No, I'm pleading to my ego. No, no, I'm pleading to how you approach data. If someone is saying the mean is accurate, that only mean, I mean, the mean could be anywhere as a function of what's around it. That mean it's true. I don't even know what centrist is supposed to mean, but what it means to me, there's no idea, a centrist. There's more of a center right or center left. To me, what that means is somebody who is a liberal or conservative, but is open-minded and empathetic to the other side. Joe Biden had the crime bill.

Joe Biden voted for Republican Supreme Court justices. Joe Biden voted for a balanced budget. Joe Biden voted for Bush's war. And I'm sure probably I haven't looked at stuff the Patriot Act. Joe, if you want to center it, you have Joe Biden. Yeah, okay.

He's worked very well with the Republican. That argument could be made. Of course, everybody will always resist that argument. It's indeniable. In fact, during the campaign, some activists started yelling at him at a town hall, not yelling, just saying, Hey, we need open borders. Joe Biden says, I'm not for open borders, go vote for Trump and literally turn his back on the man. And this is during the primary is where it would be who of you to try to appeal to the base.

And of course, you can probably also make the argument that Donald Trump is center right if not center left. Well, I mean, he's very unique as a personality, but if you look at his record and his first name is rhetoric, you can say, is not centrist at all. But in terms of how he governs, the budgeting, I mean, has been very moderate. It certainly hasn't been like draconian budget cuts. The Supreme Court, you could say, okay, he's hard right. Immigration, you could say in certain capacities, he's hard right.

But in terms of pro life, what has he done there? In terms of, you know, so in many other aspects, he's been very much this kind of me too Republican. But certainly the rhetoric, it's very hard to make in the case that he's a centrist. So you don't like, is there any other idea you find compelling? What I like about you in 2020, is this an idea for a different way, for a different party, a different path forward? So ideas just like anarchy is an interesting idea that leads to discourse, so at least

I don't think it's interesting at all. And or leads to I don't think it's interesting at all And here's why I don't think it's interesting. Sweden has eight Parties in its parliament Iceland populations like 150,000. They've got nine I think it was checker public has nine Britain has five So the claim that two parties is Yes, it's insorious of speech but three., now all of a sudden, it makes no sense. That's important to the data, number one.

Number two is Donald Trump demonstrated that you can be basically a third party candidate. It sees the machinery of a existing party and appropriate to your own ends. As Bernie Sanders, almost as Bernie Sanders has never been a Democrat. Major credit to him for, that's not easy to be elected as Sanders and an independent. He's done it repeatedly

So these are two examples of ossified elites right for the picking so to have a third party makes note real sense speaking of which party you talk about quite a bit and Let's like this is a personal challenge to you. Let me bring up the libertarian party. Yeah. And the personal challenge is to go five minutes without mocking them. OK.

In discussing, in discussing this idea. So first of all, what? These are big trolled. Yeah. OK, I'm being trolled. Yeah. OK, I'm being trolled. Yeah, I mean, I'm being trolled.

OK. Yeah. Do you remember the fun friends? There was an episode where Chandler had to not make fun of people. Like, can you go one day Chandler? And Phoebe starts telling him about this UFO she saw. And it's like, that's very interesting. Yeah.

Nice for you. This is exactly that. OK. So a true master would be able to play within the game, within the constraints. So no, I'm pretty sure you'll still mock them. But no, no, I'll stick to the rules. Okay, so a true master would be able to play within the game within the constraints so No, I'm pretty sure you'll still mock them, but no, no, I'll stick to the rules five minutes So first of all speaking broadly about libertarianism can you speak to that how you feel about it? And then also to the libertarian party which is the implementation of it in our current system

So I think libertarianism is a great idea. And I think there's many libertarian ideas that have become much more mainstream, which I'm very, very happy about. I remember there was an article in either New York or New Yorker magazine in the early 90s where they talked about the Kato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank. And they referred to the fact that Kato was against war and against like regulation with a wacky consistency because they didn't know how to reconcile these two things. I don't remember what the two things were, but I remember that expression, wacky consistency. And it wasn't even, we were all taught, and this is very much before the internet, that

there's two tribes. And if you're pro life, you have to hate gays. And if you're for socialized medicine, that also means you have to be for free speech. It was just this very, and like, there's a whole menu and you gotta sign into all of them. And that menu's terrible. They hate America, they want to destroy it. Oh my God, those are horrible evil.

This is the menu you want. And the Libertarian party to some extent and just Libertarian's at Hall said, and just Libertarian as a whole, said, you know, you can do the Chinese buffet and take a little from Kalame, a little from Kalambi, and have an ideology that is coherent and consistent in ideology of peace and non-aggression and things like that.

The Libertarian Party takes its model from like the early progressive and popul its model from the early progressive and populist parties from the early 20th century, which were not very effective in terms of getting people elected, but were extremely effective in terms of getting the two major parties to appropriate and adopt their ideas and implement them and in Britain as well. The liberal party got destroyed and became taken over by labor as the alternative party to the Tories and have those ideas basically become mainstreamed. So I think that and the liberty, my friend who passed away, Eric, I'm missing dearly, was

the webmaster at his whole point is if you don't think about it in terms of party in terms of getting people elected, but if you think of it as a party in terms of getting people educated about alternatives, then there's enormous use for that. That was his perspective. And I don't think that's an absurd perspective. But here's some libertarian ideas that have become extremely mainstream. War should be a last resort.

This is something we've taught as kids, and we all say, but for many years, it's been like, they don't think of it as a last resort. It's like something's bad. Well, it's like the first instinct. Now it's like, let's really give it a week, just a week, like what's going on in Syria. Is there really gonna be a genocide that curds things like that?

So that's one. Another thing is drug legalization. This was, you know, when you and I were kids, oh, it's crazy, it's only hippies want to smoke pot. Now it's like, I was on a grand jury and the point out that people make is, are you sure that this 16-year-old who's selling week? Let's say selling. Should his life be ruined? Should he be imprisoned with rapists and

murderers? Like, if you say yes, say yes, but you have to acknowledge that that's what you're meaning. And then a lot of people are like, wait a minute, there's got to be a third option, then he has no consequences or he's imprisoned prison with the rapist. Like I'm not comfortable with either of these. And I think the other one is a increasing skepticism. The libertarians run top of this first and the hard left of the police. As of now, asset forfeiture steals more from people than burglaries. What people don't know about what asset forfeiture is.

If the cops come to your house and they suspect you you have them convicted of Using your car or your house or whatever in terms of selling drugs They can take whatever they want and then you have to sue to prove your innocence and get your property back It's a complete violation of due process people don't realize it's going on It's a great way for the cops to increase their budgets and it's legal. And libertarians were like the first big one saying, guys, this is not American and this is crazy. And now increasingly, people are conservatives and leftists like, wait a minute, this is, even if you are selling drugs, like they take your house, what are you talking about?

So I think those are some mechanisms that libertarianism, though, but not by name, has become far more popular. Yeah, it's interesting. So the idea, yeah, go here instead of ideas that eventually get integrated into a two-party system. Yeah. The war, that's an issue. You're right. I wonder what the thread there is. I wonder how it connects to 9-11 and so on.

I think the Patriot Act. people who are politically savvy were like, Oh, okay, this is not a joke. This is really a crazy infringement of our freedoms. And both parties are falling over each other to sign into law and the Orwellian name. You don't want to, how can you be against patriotism? Kind of person. You know what I mean? So I think for a lot of people, especially

both civil libertarians on the left and a lot of conservatives who are constitutionalists are like, wait a minute, I'm not comfortable with this and I'm also not comfortable with how comfortable everyone in Washington is with it. Do you write? Probably libertarians and libertarianism is a place of ideas, which is why I have a connection to it.

I like the... every time I listen to those folks, I like them. I feel connected to them. I would even sometimes, depending on the day, call myself a libertarian. We're all the spectrums, that's why. We're all in the spectrum, yeah. But when I look at the people that actually rise to the top in terms of like the people who represent the party, this is where like five minutes right out, right? You can act a golf.

I'm allowed. You can go, why are they so weird? Why aren't strong candidates emerging that represent as political like representatives or as like famous speakers, like that represent the ideology. I think, libertarians tend to, I think John Height in his book and his research, he's a political scientist,

and he does a lot of things about how people come to their political conclusions and what factors force people to reach conclusions. And he found that libertarians are the least empathetic and most rationalistic of all the groups. And by that, he means like they think in terms of logic as opposed to like people's feelings. And that has positives and has negatives.

It would, and we have the AB testing with Ron Paul. Ron Paul ran for president as a libertarian nominee. He was the nominee. He got pretty much nowhere in 1988. Then he ran as a Return to Republican Party as a Congressman from many years from Texas. He ran for the presidency in 2008 and 2012. And in 2008, he stood on stage with Rudy Giuliani and told him that they were here in 9-11 because we're over there, which would have been a shocking horrifying taboo a few years earlier. Many people were like, holy crap, this is amazing.

Juliana was all offended and Ron Paul's like, fuck. That took some guts by the way. I mean, yeah, did. I heard that it was so refreshing. Not what he said, but the fact that he said something that took guts. It made me realize how rare it is for politicians, but even people to say something that takes guts. Well, it's also the idea that like you can't, even if you think America has a right to invade any country on earth as much as it wants and kill people as a consequence of war and blow

up their buildings and destroy their country, you can't with a straight face not expect us to have consequences, even if they're consequence from evil people Even if we're 100% the good guys and they're 100% the bad guys those bad guys some of them are still going to try to do something What happens next, you know what I mean? So that kind of concept that there's any American culpability was where America where you know We are the good guys by definition we're culpable, to have people start thinking about, what if there's another way? What if we're not there, and then they're not here,

and we're kind of doing a back door, we're talking so, different scenarios. So the fact that he got so much more traction as a Republican, the fact that Donald Trump, who came out of nowhere, became not only the candidate, but the president, tells people, it's like getting a book deal, right? You can either go with this three choices.

You can either self-publish, mainstream publisher, or independent publisher. The independent publisher is the worst of all choices, because you're not getting a big advance, they're not gonna be able to promote you a lot, and they don't get the distribution. Mainstream, I've done mainstream itself, right? With self, I don't have the cred,

the respectability of a mainstream for the cashier. It can be a New York Times best seller. Right, it takes a lot of work, but I get a lot more of the profit. If it looks good on the shelf, an Amazon looks identical, so on and so forth, with the mainstream, the benefits and costs

are pretty much obvious to most people. So the same thing, it's like you can either be an independent like Ross Perot, or you could be just sees one of the party apparatus, which the benefits are norms there. But in terms of going third party, I don't know the libertarian party apparatus, other than maybe some ballot access is really that efficacious. And then you're going to have a lot of baggage because if you hear independent Jesse Ventura, Ross Perrell, you think of the person. Now you have to define yourself and you have to defend the party. That's too bridges for most people. Brilliantly put. Okay. Thank you.

Let me speak to you because I'm speaking to you on Brooks soon. I love you. Yeah. I like him. Yeah. But that another example, I was asked him to tell you a joke about iron Rand if he can do it. So there, that's one criticism I've heard you say, which is they're unable to speak to any weaknesses in either iron Rand orivist worldview. Yes.

That's really, you put it, I know you're half joking, but that's actually a legitimate discussion to have. I'm not joking at all. Because that's, to me, one of the criticisms and one of the explanations why the world seems to disrespect Iran, the people that do, is she kind of implies that her ideas are like flawless. She says they correspond to reality. Yeah, that's the term she uses.

That, I mean objective is in the name. It's, you know, it's just facts. Like, it's impossible to basically argue against because it's pretty simple, it's just facts. Like, it's impossible to basically argue against, because it's pretty simple. It's just all facts. Well, it's possible to argue against, but she would say, she's never met a good critic who can argue the facts that misrepresentation, and she's not entirely wrong. She's often caricatured because she has a very extreme personality

and extreme view. But that to me, I mean, some people, there's a guy named in the physics, mathematics, community, cost, even Wolfram. I don't know if you're from. Well from Alpha? Yeah. Okay. He has a similar style of speaking sometimes, which is like, I've created a science, but that

turns a lot of people off like this kind of weird confidence. But he's one of my favorite people. I think one of the most brilliant people people if you just ignore that little bit of Ego or whatever you call that. Yeah, yeah, that there's some beautiful ideas in there and that's a amazing person and that for me objective is I'm undereducated about it about it. I Hope to be more educated, but there's some interesting ideas that again, just like with UFOs Not that there's a connection between two. Don't bring that up to your own.

He won't like it. He won't like it. I'm friends like UFOs. Oh, no, no, no. This interview is over. That's a good yarn. Okay. But, you know, you have to be a little bit open-minded.

But what's your sense of objective as in what's, are there interesting ideas that are useful to you to think about? I own her copy of the first printing of the fountain head. So that should tell you a little bit about how my affection for Miss Rand, how heavy that goes. I, I, Rand does not have all the answers, but she has all the questions. So if you study Rand, you are going to be forced to think through some very basic things and you're going to have your eyes open very very heavily. She was not perfect. She never claimed to be perfect. She was asked on Donahue. Is it true that according to your philosophy, you are a perfect being? She said, I never think of myself that way. And she said, but if you ask me, do I practice what I preach? The answer is yes. And he's soundingly.

She's a fascinating woman. soundingly. She's a fascinating woman. What is really interesting about her and something you'd appreciate personally is when you read her essays, she'll have these weird sides. And it looks like she would talk about art and she'd be like, and this is why the US should be the only country with nuclear weapons. And when you follow a brilliant mind, making these seemingly disparate connections, it's something I find to be just absolutely inspiring and also minute attaining. I think there's lots of things about her that people like Yaron would make uncomfortable. Well, like she, they, so objectivism, like any other philosophy has all these techniques to kind of hand-wave away things you don't want to talk about and like pretend that so they talk about things

like having no metaphysical significance, right? So that means it's like, what about this? I don't want to talk about it. It doesn't matter. Like it literally means advanced philosophical terms doesn't matter. Or they will say correctly that it's very twisted in our culture, that when we have heroes, we look for their flaws instead of looking for their virtues. That's a 100% valid perspective.

However, if I'm sitting here telling you that I think this woman is a badass and she's amazing and she should be studied, but there's also these idiosyncrasies, they don't want to hear it. Because they, and I think it's very convenient for them because there's a lot of things she did that work. Here's an example, Rand was very, very pro, a happiness and poor pleasure. She was very pro-sex,

which is kind of surprising looking at her and how she talked and how stride she was. As a result of this, she never got her cats fixed to deny them the pleasure of orgasm. So her male cats are spraying up her entire house. Like that is, I mean, that's her putting her philosophy into practice, but it still grows. Yeah. So that's

the kind of thing where I don't think he'd be another thing is ran had an article on a woman president and she said a woman should never be president, right? Now when ran says things that are too goofy for them, they say, Oh, that's not objectiveism. That's her personal preference. It's like she did not have these lines. Objectivism was always defined as iron rands writings, plus the additional essays in her books. So if this was in part of those books, this counts as official objectiveism, but they pretend otherwise. So

that's another example. Plus they are they she was and I bet you she was on the spectrum to some extent. I'm not joking. I'm not using it to riceably. She was of the belief and not inaccurately because that humor is used to denigrate and humiliate. And she was thinking about the John Stuart type before there was a John Stuart. And a lot of times, like, how I use mocking, but she was resentful correctly that a lot of times people who are great and accomplished,

little nobodies will make a punchline and just to bring them down and just bother. Here's an example I just thought of. I remember in, I remember when it was, I must spend the 90s, they had a segment MTV of all these musicians who were making their own perfumes, right? And this girl grabbed Princess perfume and before she even smelled it she had the joke right. She just, oh, this smells almost as bad as it's music lately. It's like, first of all, I'm sure the perfume's fine. And second, well, this is Prince. He's one of the all-time greats and you can't wait

to, you know, denigrate him. Like, part, I want to be like, we're like, how dare you? Like as if this perfume in any way, in any way mitigates his amazing accomplishments and achievements, you horrible person. But I do have some great iron ranjokes and he would not be happy about them. The perfume thing, the problem with this is just not funny, not that...

Oh, he sucks. Okay, great. Not that they dared to try to be humorous. Right. Because I don't know why you mentioned that, because Jansk is pretty, can be funny. Right, but he taught a generation, you still see this on Twitter, where things have to be inherently sarcastic and snide. But isn't that, I mean, aren't you practicing that?

No, I use irony and not sarcasm. Here's an example, when people, like you say something and someone reply to you, like, um, last I checked blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'll say that I go, what do you think saying last I checked added to your point? You're giving me valuable information and data, but you are trained to believe that it has to be couched in this sneering. It doesn't just give me the information. This is useful information. Yeah, that's that's true. It's a knee-jerk

But see John Stewart did it masterfully correct. They don't and they don't it's it's like people copy communities certain comedians You try to copy them and use everything in the process of copy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But in terms of the philosophy of, you know, selfishness, this kind of individual focused idea, and I imagine that connects with you. Yes. And I think it would connect with more people if they understood what she meant by it. Nathaniel Brandon, who was her heir until she kind of broke with him. And he was a code that dedicated to you of Atlas Shrugged said, no one will say OnRans

views with a straight face. They won't say, I believe that my happiness matters and is important and is worth fighting for. And that OnRans says this and she's dangerous. Now it's very easy to say this could have dangerous consequences if you're a sociopath, but to put it in those terms, I think is extremely healthy.

I think more people should wanna be happy. And I think a lot of us are raised to be apologetic, especially in this cynical media culture, that if you say I wanna be happy, I wanna love my life, that it's just like, okay, sweetheart. And the eye rolling, and I think that's so prenicious, it's so horrifying, and this is why I'm a Camus person,

because Camus thought the arch enemy was cynicism, and I could not agree more. Like, if you were the kind of person, if someone likes a band, and you're like, oh, you're like a damn mom of blood, it's like, this gives them happiness. Yeah. Now, there's certain exceptions, but if it gives you happiness, it's not for you. That's cool

Okay, this is beautiful. I I so agree with you on the eye rolling, but you see the best of trolling as not the Eye roll Correct. Of course not the best of trolling is taking down the eye rollers I'm gonna have to think about that. Okay, cuz I have a kind of red bull Yeah, cuz I put a. Because I have a red bull. Yeah, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Because I put a ball. My last time was red bull. I kind of put a ball in the same bin. Okay.

And they're not. They're not. They're not. Okay. All right. Here's another example of trolling. I was making jokes about Ron Paul. He just had a stroke.

Right? And someone came at me and they're like, oh, blah, blah, blah, you know, you're ugly. I hope you have a stroke. I hope you're in the hospital. And I just go, I just did have a stroke on your mom's face. So they came at me. And now they got put in their place. With a subpar, I mean, it wasn't clever.

You weren't clever. Not particularly. No. Well, one of your things you do, which is interesting, I mean, I give you props in a sense, is you're willing to go farther than people expect you to. Yes, that's fun. Yeah. In fact, I'll probably edit out like half of this podcast because the thing you did was she kept in, should mention, Mikhail Appear Peterson, not as a podcast, which is nice.

I guess was it on her podcast? She was on mine. She was on yours. We did both, but this is when you're referring to when she was on mine. She was on, yeah, right. And you went right for the, for the, so I'll tell you what it was. You don't have the paraphrase.

I opened up, I say, you know, she's Jordan Peterson's dad and as many people know, Jordan, it's sorry, he's her dad, yeah. She's had a long issue with substance addiction. And I said to her, you're, you know, you're most famous for being Jordan Peterson's daughter, you know, many people, he's changed so many lies around the world. And he's been such an enormous influence to me personally that I've started taking Benza Duazapines recreationally.

And she's like, oh my God, Michael is so warm. Yeah, you put, because you pulled me in with this, because you talk, I mean, you know, because he's going through a rough time now, she's going through just everything was just, you pulled me in emotionally. I was like, this is gonna be the sweet mic. It is gonna be just this wonderful and then just bam

so that's that's that's that was Props to you on that it wasn't Whatever that is that is an art form When done well it can be taken too far my criticism is it that feels too good For some people what do you mean? For oh they're too happy being a reverend because to show that they don't care about anything that feels too good for some people. What do you mean? For, for, for, Oh, they're too happy being a reverend

because to show that they don't care. But I think that's the other form of cynicism now. Right. So I, if you, because you think it's possible to be a troll and still be the live life to its highest ideal in the commonsense. I try.

That's kind of my ideal. I, I believe it's not. It becomes a drug. I feel like that takes you. I think love ultimately is the way to experience every moment of every day. You don't think that was an expression of, I honestly think, let's split hairs here,

because I think there's something of use here. I do think that me being able to make her laugh about this year of hell she was in does create an element of love and connection between me and her. Yeah, but I know she would say that. Yes. It wasn't that. It was what you said in combination with the sweetness everywhere else, the kindness. It's a very subtle thing, but like it's like some of the deepest connection with others is when we

mock them lovingly or that. Yes, correct. But like there is stuff, there's kindness around that, sometimes not in words, but in like, of course subtle things. Because it creates an air of being familial. Like we're through this together. Like it's, yeah. Yeah, that's missing. That's very difficult to do on the internet. I agree with you.

I agree with you. That's why my general approach on the internet is to be more like simple, less witty and more like dumbly loving. But that's not your core competency being witty. Me? Yeah. But I could be witty. You can be, but I'm saying that's not your core competence.

I'm saying you're bad at it, but I'm saying that's not where you go like organically Especially with strangers I just feel like nobody's core competence on the internet is I guess if you want to bring love to the world nobody's core competence is Given the current platforms nobody's core competence is wit. It's very difficult to be witty on the internet with that While still communicating kindness. Like, I'll give you another example in the same way that you can in physical space. I'll give you another example. Someone came at me and they were like, they give me a donation. People do this all the time. And they go, Oh, like, I started reading your books because of my wife and, you know,

now watch your shows together. I keep, and now what your show's together, I keep up the good work, and I go, what does her boyfriend think? So that is an example of wit and love, because that person feels seen, I'm acknowledging them, I'm also making a joke at their expense, we know it's a joke, so I think, you would have a...

Good point, good point. Language is often used in non-literal ways to cue emotional and connectivity. It's difficult whether you're very difficult. What you've done is difficult to accomplish, but you've done it well. I mean, you do, like you did, you do, been doing these live streams, which are nice that people give you a bunch of money and donations and stuff. And then you, you'll often like make fun of certain aspects of their questions and so on. But it's always always lovely. That's not from love. That is genuine annoyance.

Because it has to be some really dumb questions. But they're still underlying. It's not even like there's a kind person under that. That's being communicated. That's interesting. But I don't know if I get that from your Twitter. I know I get that from the video. Something about the face, something about like.

Yeah, of course. It's much hard. The more data, the more easy it is to convey emotion and subtlety. Absolutely. If you only have literally black and white letters, it's going to be or whatever white and black, if you have night mode, it's going to be a very different, it's much more limit-interformation. Yeah, but this is the fundamental thing is like, let's know. Here's another example. Like if they had access to my face, like a lot of times some people don't know who I am and they come at me, call me a Nazi anti-Semite, right? And I start talking about the Jews and just how terrible the Jews are now all my audience

Those I'm Jewish that I went to Shiva. So they're sitting there laughing because this person's making ass of themselves that person It's no idea, but if there was video Then they would be like, okay, wait a minute something. Yeah, yeah, something's up. I Don't know I Think it's entertaining. I think it's fun, but I just I don't think it's up. I don't know. I think it's entertaining. I think it's fun, but I just, I don't think it's scalable. And ultimately, I'm trying to figure out this whole trolling thing, because I think it's really destructive.

I've been the outreach mob, the outreach mobs, just the dynamics of Twitter has been really bothering me. Okay. And I've been trying to figure out if we can try to build an alternative to Twitter perhaps or try to encourage Twitter to be better, how to have nuanced, healthy conversations. Like, the reason I talk about love isn't just for the love's sake. It's just a good base from which to have difficult conversations. Like, that's a good starting point. Because if you start, like I would argue that the kind of conversation you have on Twitter

is fun, but it might not be a good starting point for a difficult, nuanced conversation. Well, I'm not interested in having those conversations with those people. No, I know, but so I agree with you. But your point is valid. Yes. But like I'm saying, so if agree with you. But your point is valid. Yes. But like I'm saying, so if we were trying to have a difficult nuanced conversation about say race in America or policing, is there racism and institutional racism of policing? Okay.

There's the only conversations that have been nuanced about it that I've heard is in the podcasting media, which is the magic of podcasting, which is great. But that's the downside of podcasting is it's a very small number of people, even if it's in the thousands, it's still small. And then there's millions of people on social media and they're not having nuanced conversation at all. They're not capable of it.

That's the difference in your life. That's the difference in my life. I believe they are. So that's a. There's no data that's supposed to be. And then both of us aren't being not scientific. You don't have data to support your world either. You're making the claim.

Well, you are too. No, I'm not. If I'm looking at an object, the claim that it has in mind. Oh, it's broken. Well, no, what? No, your claim is that people has in mind. Well, no, what you're saying? No, your claim is that people are fundamentally stupid. Are you a martial artist?

Yes. That has a feel. I just chewed on on you. Yeah. But you really don't think people are deep down, like capable of being intelligent. No, not at all. Not deep down, not surface. I'm not joking. I'm not being tongue and cheek and not being cynical.

I do not at all think they have this capacity. I'm gonna think, because you're just being so clear about it. You're not even, I'm gonna think about that. Here's evidence for my position, not proof. And this is of course data that is of little use, but's of interest a lot of times when you have an audience as big as mine and people come at you Not only will people say the same thing the same concept. They'll say the same concept in the same way That is not a mind Yeah, that's surface evidence

You're saying this iceberg looks like this from the surface. I'm saying there's a nice bug there that if challenged can rise to the occasion of deep thinking and you're saying nope. Nope. It's just frozen water. Maroje ne. Isn't that the Russian expression? That's ice cream. No, not Marosha ne, not Marosha ne. Doesn't it mean like no one's there? Actually, I don't know. Yeah, it means like, yeah. It's like thought, it means too. Nikova doma.

Okay, well, so you're challenging me to be a little more rigorous. I think I'll try to prove. I'm not challenging you anything. No, not challenging me, but like I'm challenging myself is what you're saying because I'll try to prove. I'm not challenging you anything. I'm just saying, no, not challenging me, but like, I'm challenging myself is all you're saying because I'd like to prove you wrong and find actual data to show you wrong. And I think I can, but I would need to get that data. That's funny.

You said I think I can when they were working on my biography, Ego and Heubress, the title I had suggested was the little engine that could but shouldn't. And they didn't like it. I think that's a great title. That's pretty good, yeah. Speaking of biographies, I mean,

I read your book or listen to your book. Listen to it. There's an audiobook for you, right? Yeah, I did the audio, yeah. Yeah. You read it? My goal is, yes. Okay.

So this was a... I didn't do Yaron Brooks voice in the book. I did all the different voices because he has a list, and I didn't want to sound like I was making fun of him. Yeah, I remember you reading it, but it was I was really enjoyed it. No, okay, it was good. There's like a year, a year and a half ago that I can prove. Well, let me at a high level see if you can pull this off. If I ask you, what's the book you write about? It's about a group of people who are united solely by their opposition to progressiveism who have little else in common, but who are all frequently caricatured and dismissed by the larger establishment media.

But you give this kind of story of how it came to be. Sure. And to me, like we're talking about trolls, but the internet side of things is quite interesting. So first of all, how does alt-right connect? So the alt-right is the subset of the new right, which feels that race not racism is The most or one of the most important sociopolitical issues

Are any of those folks Like part of the mainstream or worth paying attention to not identify the mainstream the alt-right Yeah, by definition they would be part of the mainstream. They would not be part of that. No, they would not. I don't know that any of them, well, worth is not a position, I'm not a position to say worth. I would say that it is of use to be familiar with their arguments because to dismiss any school of thought, especially one that has historically gained leverage, especially one that has historically gained leverage, especially one that has historically gained leverage in very dark ways, especially in America, in Europe, and other places, just to say, oh, the racist, I don't need to think about them. It doesn't be who you.

So what lessons do we draw from the forechance side side of things like the internet side of the movement? Tits are get the fuck out. Can you define every single word in this? Tits are breasts or get the fuck out. That's from 4chan. Okay. That's what what's what's it mean? Oh, sometimes like a woman will appear in 4chan and it'll just reply.

Tits are get the fuck out. I'm trying to understand what. Oh, oh, that's that way. I just, uh, very slow. Uh, so that's, okay, so that's very disrespectful towards female members of the community. I don't understand. So's rules to this community and one of them is, we're not very good with women. Is that one of the rules? It's a principle, it's a principle. We're not going to ever get laid. That's fundamental principle.

Is there other principles? We are going to get picks. Picks. Sometimes. Sometimes they GTFL. GT okay so is there other actual principles of so like it's it's from my maybe naive perspective is they have like the darkest aspects of trolling which is like take nothing serious, make a

game out of everything. That's not for chance per say one of the things that you will learn for chance, which I think is very healthy, is if you have an idiotic, or unique worldview or focus on an aspect of history or culture, you'll be able to find like-minded people who you will engage with you and discuss it without being pre-imply dismissive. That's an ideal that they... Well, it's not ideal.

It's something that happens a lot. Now, for Chan's not really like Paul is their board with politics But they will you know get into some like the people there are much more every night than you think so they do take my my perception Was they take nothing seriously so there's things that they take seriously like discussing ideas I'll give you one example They were the video someone posted of a girl who put kittens in a bag and threw it in a river and they found out where she was within a day and got her like arrested. So yeah, they do take some things very seriously. Okay, but that's like an extreme that I mean, that's good. For sure, that's hard forming that they wouldn't somehow turn that into a thing. That feels like more of what is it? What's the other one? 8chan?

8chan's twice as good as 4chan, yeah. That's their slogan. But it feels like they're the kind of community that would take that kitten situation and make a mockery. Yeah, they're a darker than 4chan. Yeah. I'm not allowed to talk about 16chan. I'm already overwhelmed clearly by Fort Chan, Lingo.

I have actually, I literally wrote down on my notes. In doing research for this conversation, I learned the word pleb. I wanted to ask you what this pleb means. You know what pleb means? No. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't,, I mean, actually, no, I don't, I don't, I don't, you know what a pleb is? I just, I don't know what a pleb is.

Like a plebocyte or plebian. Okay. But it didn't mean something more sophisticated, um, no, it's a very unsophisticated mechanism of being dismissive of like the regular people. Yeah, or someone who comes at me on Twitter. Okay. All right. So back back to the forechan, alt-right, wasn't the those are very different concepts.

Don't don't conflate them. But which internet culture was the alt-right born out of? Well, all right was more born of blogs. And people had different blogs that were posting what they called like racial realism, scientific, which is scientific racism, so-called. And breaking down issues from a racialist perspective. So that wasn't, Fortun is much more dynamic.

It's a message board, it's very fluid. So it doesn't lend itself to these kind of in-depth analysis of ideas or history. But it spreads them. Like it does. It spreads them as Like it, because- It spreads them as memes, yeah. And, you know, but it's not an essential mechanism

of the alt-right historical. No, no, no, no, no. So it's most about blocks. Okay, so what do you make of the psychology of this kind of worldview? When you have, this goes to your conspiracy theory subject earlier, when you have a little bit of knowledge about something, that history that no one's talking about, and there's

only one group that is talking about it, and they, and you have no alternative answers, you're going to be drawn to that group. So because issues about race, anti-Semitism, homophobia, or so taboo in our culture. Understandably, there's good reasons. If you start putting things like, how old should you be, you have sex with kids and just have regular conversations, eventually some people are going to start taking some positions you don't like. So some things have to be sanctified to some extent. They're the ones talking about it. You're going to be drawn to that subculture. And what is the alt-right stand though? I mean, I hear that term used...

So the term has been weaponized by the corporate press for people that they want to read out of society. So it's used both on individual levels, like people like Gavin McGuinness, the Myelody and Opolis, some others. I mean, I think they refer to Trump as alt-right. And it's become a slur, just like in-cell or bot, that has become larger removed from its original meaning. Do you have a sense that there's still a movement that's alt-right or like? Yeah, they call themselves now. OK, so there's something called the dissident right.

And they say we're completely not like the alt-right, because the alt-rights, A, B, and C, and B, C, D, there's a huge overlap. It's very much the same people. Is there intellectuals that still represent some aspect of the moment? I mean, sure. Are you tracking this? Not that much anymore. I think they've there. I don't find it particularly as, now that

the book's done, I'm looking more into history from my next book. You mentioned communism. I'm going to talk a lot about the Cold War. So this kind of stuff, as large as you've fallen away from my radar to some extent. And it's been a very effective movement to get them marginalized and silenced. So they're not as deep as a concern in terms of concern or not, just their impact on size. Yes, it's much less than, yeah.

All right. So, as a troll on Twitter, in the best sense of the word, what do you make of cancel culture? I think it's malism. I mean, the corporate America has done a far better job of implementing malism than the Communist Party ever could. You had this meeting that that long ago from I think it was Northwestern University Law School where everyone on the call got up and said that they were racist

I mean this is something that legally you should be very adverse to saying even if it were true And it's a this kind of concept of getting up and confessing your sins before the collective is something completely Oh, they sorry they admitted this of themselves. Yeah, they were like, because they're saying because they're white they're inherently racist. So my name's John, I'm a racist, my name's this, I'm a racist, it was, you hear it and you're like, okay, this is looting tunes. So you're saying that, wow, that's that's so much, you took a step further. So you're saying there's like a deep underlying force, you know, since cancel culture, it's not just some kind of mob. It's not at all. It's a, it's a systemic organized movement, uh, being used for

very nefarious purposes and to dominate, you know, an entire nation. How do we fight it? Because I sense it inside, you know, I used to defend academia, um, more I used to defend academia more because I still do it to some extent. It's a nuanced discussion because, you know, like folks like Jordan Peterson and a lot of people that kind of attack academia, they refer, they really are talking about gender studies in certain departments. And me for MIT, you know, it's the University of Science and Engineering and the faculty, they're really don't think about these issues or haven't traditionally thought of. But it's beginning to even infiltrate there. It's starting to infiltrate

engineering and science outside of biology. Let's put biology with the gender studies. Like, I'm talking about sciences that really don't have anything to do with gender. It's starting to infiltrate. And it worries me. I don't know exactly why like, I don't know exactly what the negative effect there would be. Except it feels like it's anti-intilatural. Oh, yes, of course. And I'm not sure what to, because on the surface, it feels like a path towards progress. At first, when I'm like zoomed out, you know, just like, like squinting my eyes, you know, not even in

detail looking at things, but when I actually joined the conversation to like listen in the conversation on quote unquote diversity, it quickly makes me realize that there's no interest in making a better world. No, no, it's about domination. It's about getting, yeah. It's a way for,

if you are a lowest status white person using anti-racism is the only mechanism you will have to feel superior to another human being. So it's very useful for them. In terms of fighting it, one of my suggestions has been to seize all university endowments, which are the crystallization of privilege and distribute that money as reparations. So it will be very effective by turning to populations against each other and strongly diminishing the university's intellectual hegemony. The universities are absolutely the real villains in the picture. Thankfully, they're also the least prepared to be addressed upon. And after the government and the corporate press,

they are the last leg of the stool and they don't know what's coming and it's gonna get ugly and I cannot wait. So this is where you and I disagree. One, yeah, we disagree in a sense that you want to dismantle broken institutions. I don't think they're broken. I think they're working like by design.

I think for over a hundred years they have been talking about bringing the next generation of American leaders, which is code for promulgating an ideology based on egalitarian principles and world domination. Let me try to express my lived experience. Okay, sure. Okay. My experience at MIT is that there's a bunch of administrators that are the bureaucracy that I can say, this is the nice thing about having a podcast. I don't give a damn. Is they're pretty useless? In fact, they get in the way. But there's faculty, there's professors, that aren't incredible. They're incredible human beings that all they do all day, they're too busy. But for the most part, what they do all day is just like continually pursue different

little trajectories of curiosities in the various avenues of science that they work on. And as a side effect of that, they mentor a group of students, sometimes a large group of students, and also teach courses, and they're constantly sharing their passion with others. And my experience is it's just a bunch of people who are curious about engineering and math and science, chemistry, artificial intelligence, computer science, what I'm most familiar with. And there's never this feeling of MIT being broken somehow. This kind of feeling, like if I talk to you just now or like Eric Weinstein, there's a feeling like stuff is on fire.

Right, there's some kind of deep-soken. But when I'm in the system, especially before the COVID, before this kind of tension, everything was great. There was no discussion of even diversity, all that kind of stuff, the toxic stuff that we might be talking about right now. None of that was happening. There's a bunch of people just in love with

cool ideas, exploring ideas, being curious and learning and all that kind of stuff. So, my sense of academia was this is the place where kids in their 20s, 30s and 40s can continue the playground of science and having fun. If you destroy academia, if you destroy universities, you're suggesting kind of lessening their power, you take away the playground from these kids to play. It's going to be hard for you to tell me that I'm anti-playground. Yeah, well, I guess I'm saying you're anti- certain kinds of playgrounds, which is... Yeah, the ones that have the broken glass on the floor. Yeah, I am against those kinds of playgrounds. No, you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you themselves in the glass. One kid, it's an entire gent, it's generation after generation. I'm not a washroom mother, I'm the guy with the flame thrower. No, I understand that.

But you're using the one kid who was always kind of like weird, like, gender studies department that hurt themselves on the glass as opposed to the people who are like obviously having fun in the playground and not playing by the glass, the broken glass. And they're just, I mean, to me, some of the best innovations in science happen in universities. Okay.

You can't forget that universities don't have this liberal, like politics literally in every conversation until this year, until this year, there's something happening. But every conversation I've ever had, nothing to do with politics, would never Trump never came up, none of that ever come up, nothing. Like all this kind of idea that there's liberal, all that, that's in the humanities. Yeah, but do you think MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, might be a little bit of an outlier? Yeah, there's probably is. Yeah. But I don't, I honestly don't think when people criticize academia, they're looking at,

they're, in fact, also picking the outliers, which is they're picking some of the, quote, unquote, strongest gender studies department. This is nonsensical. When I was a Bucknell, it was a college student, we had to take, you know, we had a bunch of electives and I wanna take class on individual, American individualism. One of the texts of the five that we had to read was Birth of a Nation, the movie, about the clan. So there's no department where these people

are not thorough going hardcore ideologues. It's not a gender identity. That's a humanity. Fine. All the humanity. It's not just gender studies. Okay. Fine.

I can give you history, English, yes. All of them, every university, as you know, has it mandatory in the curriculum, they have to take a bunch of these propaganda classes. I look forward to YouTube comments because you're being more eloquent. And you're speaking to the thing that a lot of people agree with. And I'm being my usual slow self. And people are going to say not very nice things about me. Don't say anything that nice about Lex. Okay. Please. Let me try to just just shoot up a school. That would be preferable. There he goes again. Only the teachers go to the darkest possible place.

The sunshine baby schools. That's where everyone goes to be happy playgrounds. There you go. It's dark here. Just dives right in like a just go dark and then just comes back off to the surface. I don't have to feel this way anymore. It's one day. You're probably a figment of my G-Nation. I'm not even having this box. Well, after 18 Red Bulls, I'm surprised you could see anything. This is like Fight Club. Red Bull gives you the Luria. Yeah. Fight Club. I got into it at Norton yesterday on the Twitter. Oh, really? Yeah.

I got into it at Norton yesterday on that Twitter. Oh, really? Yeah. Is the, like, the rest of the celebrity here. Yeah, he's like, oh, this is an existential threat to America, Trump's a fascist. He's delegitimizing the Oval Office. I said, went on, on, Dorsen or Trump. Well, you should have went, the bad pit.

He might have a different opinion. But that's a pipe love reference, okay. Yeah. This conversation is over. It's interesting. I'd like to draw a line between science and engineering and science not including like the biological aspect, the parts of biology that touch and humanities in biology. Like I feel because humanities, if you just look at the percentage of universities,

it's still a minority percentage. And I would actually draw different, I think they serve very different purposes. Sure. And that's actually a broken part about universities about like, why, why is some of the best research in the world done at universities? It doesn't like, there might be a different like MIT, it feels weird that a faculty, yeah, these are conceptually different things. Like, we do research and we teach why this the same thing that I've read. Yeah, it feels weird.

But that's just, but I'm also, I'm coming to like the defense of the engineers that never talk about. I'm not like, like, my mind isn't, I'm not like diluted or something where I'm not seeing the house on fire. I'm just saying I am seeing the house because I also lived in Harvard Square. I'm seeing Harvard. But and you see the tanks coming they're coming Lex. There's going to be so beautiful. I'll be like

the American beauty of the plastic bag. I just won't be able to stop crying because I'm so beautiful. Thanks. I can already see it. But the engineering departments, where I believe that the Elon Musk's of the world, that the innovation that will make a better world is happening, and let's not burn that down, because that has nothing to do with any. Like they're all sitting quietly, while the humanities,

or all these kind of diversity probes, they're not having any of these discussions. Listen, my Soviet brother, you both know, we both know that ice water runs in our veins. So if you're calling for mercy, that is not how I'm wired, but I'm not closing the door. Yeah, I'm actually realizing now, so for people listening to this,

I'll probably prepend this and saying that I'm even slower than usual. I didn't sleep last night, but I feel I'm actually realizing just how slow I am and how much preparation I need to do. And if I would like to defend aspects of academia, I better come prepared. I don't think you need to defend them. I think I'm granting you your premise freely.

No, you might be. I don't think to defend them. I think I'm granting you your premise freely. No, you might be. Okay. I don't think the world does that. But actually, you just defend your own argument because it is not at all, have to be the way that a phenomenal research institution like MIT, which no one disputes, has to also be an educational establishment. These two things are not at all necessarily interconnected. But then you have to offer a way to separate. Correct.

But I'm not a big fan. Everybody's different, but I'm not a fan of criticizing institutions without offering a way to change. And especially when I'm like, have ability to change, I'd like to, yeah, I'd like to offer a path. What if they were students, they were all meant to, like, like, meant, like, what's the opposite of mentor? Menti.

Pro de chez, what's the term when you like, what you work at a place, in turns, not in interns, not the one I'm thinking of? But anyway, like basically they're working there instead of going to college there. It's possible, but it's going against tradition. So you have to build new institutions and then. And then I can't have these engineers

building new things. That's crazy. Yeah, these research engineers where they're gonna be building things. Well, one of the things because you're kind of a apprentice. That's the way I was looking at a friend. Which is ironic. We're talking about Trump and we couldn't think of the word apprentice. Yeah, well done. We should both be fired. There you go. These Russian Jews so quick with their wit. Okay, but the thing is, you're fan of freedom. I am. And there's, there is intellectual freedom.

People, this is what I was trying to articulate. I'm failing to articulate, but there truly is complete intellectual freedom within universities on topics of science and engineering. I believe you, I agree with you. I don't think it's gonna take much persuasion, but I'll give you an example. When that, I'm sure you know the more details about this

than I do. When that scientist engineered that probe to land on that comet, and the articles are written because this Hawaiian shirt he was wearing had like pinnip girls on it, which I think is female student, so far it was something like ex-girlfriend. And he had to apologize. This is what Rand was talking about. Yeah. That the great accomplishments of men have to say I'm sorry to the lowest most despicable disgusting people. Yeah, I don't know. You know, let me bring this case up because I think about this.

This might not mean much to you, but it means a lot to certain aspects of the computer science community. The guy named Richard Stalman. I don't know if you know who that is. He's the founder of the free software foundation. He's like a big Linux. He's one of the key people in the history of computer science. One of those open source people, right? But he is like, I believe he's the one of the hardcore ones, which is like, saw all software should be free. Okay. Okay. So it's very interesting personality, very key person in the new, just like, like, Linus, Torval, key person. So, but he also kind of speaks his mind and on a certain chain of

conversations at MIT that was leaked to the New York Times, then was published, let him to be fired or pushed out of MIT recently maybe a year ago. And it always sat weird with me. So what happened is there's a few undergraduate students that called Marvin Minsky, not sure if you're familiar with who that is. I heard the name. He's one of the some of the people in artificial intelligence. They said that they called him a rapist because he met with Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein solicited these are the best facts known to me that I'm aware of. That's what was stated on the chain. Is he solicited a 17 but it might have been an 18 year old girl

to come up to Marvin Minsky and ask him if he wanted to have sex with her. So Jeffrey Epstein told the girl, she came up to Marvin Miske, who was at that time, I think, seven years old, and his wife was there too, Marvin Miske's wife, and he said no, or awkwardly saying, no thanks. And that was stated in the email thread as Marvin participating in sexual assault and

rape of this unwilling sexual assault. And it was called rape of this person, right, of this woman that proposition him. And then Richard Stalman, who's, he's kind of known for this, he's very, he's, you make fun of me being a robot, but he's kind of like a debugger. He's like, well, that sentence is not, what you said is not correct.

So he like corrected the person, basically made it seem like the use of the word rape is not correct, because that's not the definition of rape. And then he was attacked for saying, oh now you're playing with definitions of rape. Rape is rape, isn't he? Yes, right? And then that was leaked in him defending. So the way it was leaked was reported as him defending rape. That's the way it was reported.

And he was pushed out and he didn't really give it down. It's, he doesn't seem to make a big deal out of it. He just left. He made an example of him. They made an example and that, and that everyone was afraid to defend him. So like there's a bunch of faculty, one, you're from the Soviet Union.

Does this hit close to home for you? I don't know what to think of it. It hits close to home, but it was basically, at least at MIT, not MIT is such a light place with this. It's not common at MIT, but it was like 18, 19 year old kids, undergraduate kids with this kind of fire in them. There's just very few of them, but they're the ones that raise all of this kind of fuss.

And the entirety of the administration, all of the faculty are afraid to stand up to them. It's so interesting to me. Like, I don't know if I should be afraid of that. You don't think you should be afraid of that? So with someone who's trying to be specific when it comes to charges of violent assault is looking for that clarity, get their life. Other searchers letting me view more context. There's a little bit more context to Richard Stahlman, which is also rapist.

No, I love that part. He's like, I think making people but he's had a history through his life uh Of you know every once in a while wearing the Hawaiian shirt with like he would make he's a fat Sorry, but he's a fat unattractive. He like what Trump referred to the That's Richard. Okay. I love you know. You know, he is what he is. You know, people, he like, he would eat his own, he would pick skin from his feet and lectures and just eat it.

Okay, yeah. Those videos him doing that. I'm not joking. He must really behind the spectrum then. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And, you know, I think this, and his office, And, you know, I think this, and his office, he, door, he wrote something like, like, hacker, plus, plus lover of ladies or something like that, like, something kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, professional, yeah, I'm professional. And, and a little creepy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's fair. So, he was also... So, they're looking for an excuse to get at him. It sounds like. No, he was just a, who's they? The administration. Yeah, probably, probably.

A lot of times what people don't realize, and this would be my defensive cancel culture, a lot of times when someone gets fired over something like this, this isn't why. This is just giving them cover to get rid of them without getting a lawsuit. Yeah. But it's still, I see. So I think, I guess when I'm trying to communicate,

it feels a little weird and creepy and it may not be the best for the community, but that's not necessarily the message it's sent to the rest of the community. The message is sent to the rest of the community. The message is sent to the rest of the community that being clear about words or the usage of the word rape is like you should call everything rape. That's that's basically the message you send. Or you should call that we say rape rape.

It's about submission. I think I'm you'd be very happy to know that there's a lot of people and she's very crucified but it's like Betsy DeVos, the person of the education, who are aware of this, they are aware of this completely contradicts due process. They're aware of how a rape accusation is something not to be taken seriously, but because it's not to be taken seriously, it has to be also taken seriously in the other context that once that word is around a male, this can ruin his entire life and that's that's the sticky thing of the word like I Like I think about this a lot that

Like how would I defend it if somebody like I've never I can honestly say I've never done anything close to creepy in my life like Like with women. Well, you wouldn't know what if you had, right? That's the thing, a lot of these creepy guys don't think they're creepy. They think they're being cute. Yeah, but I'm just telling you, even like,

well, the fine, let's say, right, let's say I'm not aware of it. But the point that I am aware of is that somebody could just completely make something up. Correct, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. And like, what a, what would I- I just completely make something up correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And like hot what a what a No, he denied the charges. There's an article around everything you did supposedly and it goes Mr. Friedman to land the charges. Yeah, but what creeps me out that happened can I interrupt there's a zorniel her stints one of my favorite writers. She's from the Harlem Renaissance She wrote their eyes are watching God a couple other books. She was just an amazing, amazing figure.

Her biography is called wrapped in rainbows. It's just a masterpiece. I think I read it one day. Can't recommend her enough, fastening, fastening woman. During the 30s, I think it was her 1940. She was out of the country. She was accused of molesting a teenage boy. She wasn't in America.

This could be proven. So it's absolutely false, not even a question. She wasn't in America. This could be proven. So there is, it's absolutely false, not even a question. She was indicted. And she wanted to kill herself because she's like, people are going to see these things. And they're going to think maybe there's some truth to it, maybe there's voluntary. What they're just going to, and you couldn't understand what she'd be so sad over this. So yeah, this is something that's been going on for a long time and the fact that it's becoming, I do agree it's important. I know a lot of women who have been sexually assaulted

more than I'm happy that I know. And if I know that many, that means there's more. So I don't, I think it's a good idea that they feel seen, that they don't feel wounded, they don't feel damned or they could talk to their friends. And I'm like, yeah, this sucks, it's happening. And I don't think you're a slut. I don't think you're asking for it.

I think you feel violent if it gets gross. Talk to me, I do think that that's important. And I also think it's important though, like when things get kind of in a frenzy that a lot of people, like yeah, I also had something happen. And very quickly the line between, he grabbed my boob and he violently raped me. I don't think these two things are the same at all. I think

they're both sexual assault, but in terms of what someone can deal with the next day, the next month, 10 years later, I don't think they're similar scenarios. Yeah. I had one eater, Rodrick, on my show and hearing her talk about, you know, her alleged rape by Bill Clinton was very disturbing for me, very disturbing here, because it was like half an hour. So, you know, we think of these things, we think, okay, older now blah blah blah, and it's done half an hour when so just even someone physically holding you down for half an hour, like not even a sexual assault. Like, that's traumatic. Yeah. You think, am I, your brain's going to think, am I

going to die? When I zoom out, I think the ultimately this is gonna lead to a better world. Like, empowering women to speak to those kinds of experiences, the benefit of it outweighs. The issue is whenever people are given a weapon, some are going to use it in nefarious ways. And that's the lesson of history. Males, females, females, whites, blacks, children, adults, when people are given

a mechanism to execute power over others, some are going to use it. Can I ask you for therapy thing? Sure. Untrolling, in a sense. Because I mentioned somebody making up something about me. controlling in a sense Because I mentioned somebody making up something about me. I Feel cuz I wear my heart on my sleeve I'm not good with these attacks like I've been attacked recently just being called a fraud and all that kind of stuff Just light stuff like I haven't you know

It was like it hurt Okay, well let me help you maybe it's cuz I'm a New Yorker. No, I'm serious, here's why. In New York, a lot of times you'll be walk with your friend and a homeless person will come up to you and start yelling things at you. Your reaction isn't in those circumstances. Let me hear this out. Your reaction is physical safety and getting away.

Now, it's not impossible that that homeless person is actually saying the truth. This happened in my friend's mind. She, this guy was in homeless and he's walking on the street on Smith street and he's just talking out loud. And it goes, why they call them hipsters? What are they hip to?

And she chuckles. And it goes, what do you laugh enough fat? What are they hip to? And she chuckles, and it goes, what are you left in that fat cell? You start something, I'll finish it. And she just couldn't move. Yeah. And it's like, it's my way to problem because that's the first thing he went to. And there's, I don't know that I have any advice,

but when you hear something like this, this is, I think you need to be better in terms of boundaries. I think you should not perceive this as a fellow human, but as a crazy homeless person, because if this fellow human, if I thought that you were a fraud in some context, that's a very weird word to use because fraudulent podcast, these are real mics. But if I was scientist or human. Sure, but I would ask myself, is this person in a position to make this judgment?

Or are they backing it up? Are they saying here your conclusions were wrong? Here's some mistakes in your data and you can engage with them in ideas But whenever someone uses a word to entirely dismiss your life without having the knowledge of your life You do not have to take that seriously. I Appreciate that kind of idea, but some things aren't about data. I see myself as a fraud often, and it's more psychology of it. If I can reduce something to reason, I can probably be fine. My worry is the same as the worry of like teenage girls that get bullied online.

It's like when I'm being open and fragile on the internet, it affects me in a way where I can't, the reason doesn't help. So you don't block people enough. I'm very heavy with the blocking. No, so yeah, I block. Very heavy. I block, it's helped a lot.

I get aggressive in reality, I block immediately. I also think time. I block. It's helpful. I aggress the banality. I block immediately. I also think time is going to help. I don't think you're like, you need to grow up one who be a podcaster, right? That wasn't your aspiration. So in some sense, you are going to feel like a fraud because you're like, what I don't have any training for this. I have a training for a scientist.

I can talk to you about artificial intelligence for literally hours. But in terms of this, I don't know what I'm doing. So when they call you a fake, it's like, yeah, you're kind of right. Because like, I did kind of stumble into this. And this is not my pedigree. So I think that kind of probably speaks to you on some level. Well, but they're attacking not the podcast, I think, but more like the same, the people call Elon Musk a fraud too, which that's the way I rationalize it.

Like, well, if they're calling him a fraud and they're calling me a fraud That like even if you have rockets that go into like if you success we have rockets Landing back on earth the usable rockets. You're still being called a fraud then it's okay Not necessarily it could be that he's not a fraud. You really are It's okay Not necessarily it could be that he's not afraid you really are That's but I it's not resonating with you because your brain knows the logic so you can't right that's but Yeah Yeah, but I don't know this whole trolling thing you seem to be much better at

Seeing it as a game. You know why because you are under the delusion seeing it as a game. You know why? Because you are under the delusion that every human being is capable of intelligent, reason, decision. I don't think I'm right. And I perceive them as literally animals. So when a dog starts barking, all it's saying is that the dog is agitated and this is not going to change my life when I order other

than crossing the street, perhaps. Yeah. I'm going to prove you wrong one day. If you're going to kill yourself, because I'm going to you wrong one day. If you're gonna kill yourself. I should say it. No, the first shoot up a school. But if I don't, I'll prove you wrong. I'll bring the data. And they'd be like, you're right. I have the receipts. I have the receipts. Okay. So, we mentioned Kamu. Oh, yeah, love him. Is there, this is this is this is a question that people Is there, this is a question that people love when I ask. A really smart paper.

No. What books, let's say, three books, if you can think of them, technical, fiction, philosophical, would you have a big impact on you or would you recommend to others? Sure. The Machiavellians by James Burnham. This is a book about how politics works in reality as opposed to how people imagine it working. Mentioned Moldbug who's a figure in these circles who's respected by a lot of people. I was giving a talk and there was a bunch of panelists and we were asked what book would you recommend. I said the Machiavalians independently of me.

That was the book he had recommended. It's art of print. It's hard to find, but that would be one. Is that his book or no James Burnham came out in 1941? I think so can you pause on the mulch is what? It's just mold bug. That's a code name, right? That guy named that guy's the panardist, Yarben.

This is real name. He's in he swims in your circles, which is a kind of program. Oh, he's originally program. Yeah, there's he comes up as a person that I should talk with or I should know about. But then I read a few of his things. They're very quite dangerous. They're very long and verbose. But I think he's an amazing thinker. Yeah, but he's the one who had the idea of sending the tanks to Harvard yard. But doesn't he have like, he's some radical view. I forget what they are.

It's a very radical view. Yeah, he wants a military coup. But you're saying he's a serious thinker that is worthy of not with the. I don't know that you would enjoy having a conversation with him. I think a lot of people enjoy seeing it happen, but I think it'd be a lot of talking past each other and it would be interesting. What do you agree with? What do you disagree with?

What do you agree? What do you disagree with? I agree with him that politics has to be looked at objectively and without kind of an emotional connection to different schools. I talk about him a lot in my book on the new right. Disagree, I don't think a military coup is a good idea. He doesn't think anarchism is stable, I disagree. I mean, you mean him, I did his livestream with him,

which is dorked out a lot about history and like, you know, people who have fallen in the memory hole. So, I mean, he's got a lot of writing. So, so, you know, the sense I got from him was that if I talk with him, a lot of people would be upset with me for giving him a platform. Yeah. I think he's on that edge where they want to read him out of what is acceptable discourse. What's his most controversial, I mean, you can mention the tanks, is that the most controversial viewpoint?

Does he have a race thing? No, he's the, the, the alt-right doesn't particularly like him in many ways, because he's not a big on the race thing. I don't know what would be his most controversial view, to be honest. I think because he is radical in terms of his analysis of culture, anytime someone's radical, that is dangerous. Okay. Book.

So that's one. The background head. The background head, which is a, I would say, not El Shrug. No, and if you read Atlas Shrug before reading the found head, you're doing yourself enormous to service. Don't you dare do it on the philosophical because every novel, every, every level, found heads a better novel, fountain heads superfluous. If you read out the shrug first, fountain heads about psychology and ethics,

it does not have to do with her politics other than its implications. So it's by far the superior book. Um, the third one, oh, this is a good one question. Let me see. Well, I, there's so many good books out there that I love. I, I'm going to, this is not really my third choice, but I'll throw it out there because I, this is such an important worldview, especially people on the right. Are you virtue signaling? No, this is counter signaling. That is Russell's book, A Renegade History of the United States. His thesis is that it's the degenerates that give us all freedom and things like prostitutes, things like matams, things like slaves, things like immigrants because they

were so low status, they could get away with things that then people were higher status demanded and so on and so forth. So I think that thesis and it really has extreme consequences in thinking And no Jonathan height the righteous mind that's those are the four Is that his best I haven't read any of his stuff? Okay That was four but of course forget that is possible put High there, of course you would Now forget that is possible. We'll put high there. Of course you would. No, forget that is. So those are the three.

So we talked about love. Let me ask you the question I'm obsessed with. Are you, do you ponder your mortality? I do a lot, especially now that I'm an uncle, especially now that I have like these younger people that I mentor. I was just yesterday, my friend John Gurgis, who did my theme song for my podcast, who did the book cover for Dear Reader, who's like the most talented person I know.

His song came on, The iPod at the gym, and I almost messaged him, I go, you know, one day one of us is going to bury the other and it's going to be really sad. And I thought about that. And it was kind of like, oh, man, that's really going to suck. And you know about that. And it was kinda just like, oh man, that's really gonna suck. And I don't know which scenario would be better. Like I will be very sad if he's gone. I'm sure he'll be very sad if I'm gone. I mean, are you afraid of it?

No, you know, Rand had this quote about how I won't die the world will end. So I've had enough experiences that I am, I really, at this point, and it everything is icing on the cake. So if you, if I were to kill you at the end of this podcast, it was most painless. That'll be okay. Yeah. You know why? Does anyone know your hero? You know why? I'll ask you for a friend. Here's why. There's that wit. Stay that for Twitter likes.

Do they call you Sasha? No, I'm a Liosha. Liosha. Oh, that's my sister's husband. Okay. So here's why I strongly believe that this is a very kind of Jewish perspective that you just have to leave the world a little bit better than you found it, that all you could do is move the world a little bit better than you found it, that all you could do is move the needle a little.

And one of the things I set out to do with Dear Reader, my book, A North Korea, I set to, I was at a point in my career where I could do something to make a difference instead of just writing like co-authoring books or celebrities, which I'm very proud of, but, you know, are neither here nor there. And I thought, all right, I know how to tell stories, I know how to inform people and 110 people. If I move the needle in America, America, we got a really good here. If I move the needle in North Korea a little bit, the cost benefits through the roof.

I never thought of that actually. I never thought of Dreader from that perspective. So when I set out to write it, I'm like, okay, what can I do? I'm not going to be able to liberate the North Korean regime. What I can do is the camera right now is focused on at the time Kim Jong-il, not Kim Jong-un. And I can do just this a little bit. And I go, behind that guy who you think is funny clown,

there's millions of dead people, there's children being starved, there's people who are performing because they have a gun to their kids head. And if someone put a gun to your kids head, you put on those dancing shoes real quick. And others have managed to change the conversation about North Korea in terms of look at those silly buffoons to those poor people. So the fact that that little

thing I can say with a straight face, I did, doesn't make me a great person, but it does make me someone who, if I have to go tomorrow, I can say I did a little bit to make the world a better place. What do you think is the meaning of life? I think the meaning of life is, um, why are we here? Oh, well, that I'm a commu person, so I'll give the commu answer. So there's two types of people. Those who know how

to use binary, no, there's, thanks, thanks for relating to the audience. One, one, zero, zero, two, two, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down my forthcoming book, you go into a countryside,

a mountain side, and you see a blank canvas on an easel. And one kind of mentality goes, this is just a blank canvas. This is stupid. This is what am I looking at. And the other type goes, what a great opportunity. I'm in this beautiful space. I have this entire canvas to paint. I could do anything I want with it. So I am very much of that type two person. And I hope others start to think of life in that way. You and I have both been more successful than we expected to, especially growing up. And in ways we did not expect. And when you're young, you are so intent on driving the car. And after a certain point, you realize that about driving the car, you're being a surfer that you can only control this little board and you have no idea where the waves will take

you. And sometimes you're going to fall down and someone's going to really suck and you're going to swallow some saltwater. But at a certain point, you stop trying to drive. And you're like, this is freaking awesome and I have no idea where it's going to go. Beautifully put, I know I speak for a lot of people. First of all, everyone Loves the game you play on the internet. It's fun. You make the world not everyone. Today, they came from me hard But it makes the world seem fun and especially in this dark time. It's

It's much appreciated and we can't wait till the next book and the many to come and to hopefully many more Joe Rogan appearances. You guys do some great magic together. That's, you, yeah, you're one of my favorite guests on this show, so I can't wait. Especially if you can make it before the election. Thanks so much for making today happen. I'm glad you came down.

You're awesome. Thank you so much, we had a great conversation. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael Malis and thank you to our sponsors, SCM Rush, which is a SEO optimization tool, DoorDash, which is my go-to-food delivery service and masterclass, which is online courses from world experts. Please check out

the sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 stars and up a podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman. And now let me leave you with some words from Michael Malice. Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit. Thank you.