No Jumper - Destiny & Richard Spencer Debate Race, Religion, Andrew Tate, Joe Biden & More

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

The most unexpected debate took place! Richard Spencer talks about his political views and activities, while Destiny brings counter opinions to his beliefs. ----- 00:00 Intro 0:05 Adam talks about Richard's political ideology changes from being in the alt-right in 2016 2:30 Richard Spencer regrets his former views 3:55 Adam asks Richard Spencer how he ended up in the alt-right before and what caused him to change 9:07 Adam asks Destiny about his opinion on Richard’s change in politics 11:17 Adam asks Richard how he’s implementing changes and says Joe Biden is the best president of his life 13:20 Richard says that the *lt-right and far right people want to say the most outlandish things 14:25 Richard says that Ye and Nick Fuentes were right about religion and wanting to live pure 16:42 Destiny says our brains aren't meant to hold so much information 19:16 Destiny talks about the Ohio train derailment and mainstream media's reporting on it vs. TikTok's reporting 20:50 Richard and Destiny talk about Black men being k__ by police 23:45 Destiny and Richard on 9/11 was the last time that the country was fully united 26:40 Richard says you need opposition in order to learn and unite 30:45 Adam talks about Richard's statements from 2016 being similar to recent identity issues in the Black community 36:08 Richard responds to Destiny and says the BLM and Alt-Right movements are reactions to civil unrest 42:28 Destiny says that people are obsessed with national politics and need to pay attention to state and local issues instead 47:50 Destiny says people were always divided, but now people have the ability to reach people around the country and talk and get along 53:15 Adam asks if there is any common ground between Americans on both sides of the political spectrum 1:00:00 Richard talks about the difference between Trump and Biden 1:02:18 Adam talks about how Hip Hop has changed and gotten stale since 2016 1:03:25 Destiny and Richard say that art and music being commercialized ruined creativity 1:06:35 Destiny talks about his parents in the army, how traveling to countries used to feel like a new world 1:09:02 Destiny talks about how album sales used to feel, compared to the streaming era 1:10:42 Richard talks about downloading TikTok and the algorithm working so quick on a new user 1:13:12 Richard and Destiny asks if TikTok algorithm is built for someone or incepting it into your brain 1:18:30 Adam asks Richard about Matt Walsh and says he’s taking on Richard's old ideology 1:20:45 Richard says the alt-right was anti-conservative and says Trump was a successful leader to recruit younger voters 1:23:50 Adam asks Richard about Scott Adams and the cancellation of the Dilbert comic strip for his wild statement 1:27:00 Destiny says that negatives experiences with different races is the cause of rac**m 1:29:05 Richard and Destiny talk about Republicans that hate watch Libs of TikTok 1:32:55 Richard and Destiny talk about Rufio, Matt Walsh, and Steven Crowder's content and the amount of financial support they get from the right wing 1:35:20 Richard says "corn" is the most dangerous thing for children 1:37:30 Destiny talks about teachers being one of the most important jobs that's extremely underpaid 1:38:28 Richard talks about grooming and that it happens in churches and other places 1:39:20 Adam asks what is a good way to stop "corn", Richard says legalizing pr****ution would help 1:42:50 Richard says that seeing a pr****utite is better than "corn", since you can interact with another human 1:44:00 Destiny says that "corn" and video games is used as a distraction for lonely people 1:54:08 Destiny talks about the positive movements America has done 1:58:50 Adam asks Richard about the Manosphere and his feeling towards Andrew Tate and the loneliness in men 2:10:45 Destiny on men being stuck in traditional mindsets, while women having jobs and control of their reproductive rights have changed dynamics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No jumper. Coolest podcast on the world. Today, I have arranged a conversation. Probably like the best shot that I could have at getting canceled if I had to really guess. We got Richard Spencer in the building. I got my boy Destiny. I wouldn't call this a proper debate or anything, but we're going to just, you know, have a conversation and sort of see where it goes.

Richard, thank you for coming all the way from Montana, I believe. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for having me. No doubt. Okay, so I mean, I guess I'll just throw out my train of thought from the beginning is that Ritcher Spencer seems like he's gone through quite a bit of a political transformation, or at least there's been some recalibration of ideas since like 2016 when people were really inundated with your content or your message.

What's that been like for you since I'm sure that there's a lot of people I had conversations about what's coming towards this interview where I'm like, he's really not, or like, At least he doesn't claim to be the version of him that a lot of people kind of remember from a while back. Yeah, sometimes you need to shatter yourself and pick up the pieces and see how they fit. A lot of it has been organic and intellectual. A lot of it has been just facing down a lot of battles that I don't think I could win. There was this alt-right energy in 2016 and 2017, and we're going to take on the world,

we're going to go save the monuments, and Trump is going to be amazing, and all of this kind of stuff. And there's certainly, there's a tremendous amount of pushback. There's a tremendous amount of violence that can be created by that, and I don't want to be a part of that. I think it's a game you can't really win, so you shouldn't play.

I've also gone through some intellectual development. I think, I mean, some things we can get into, but just to put little placeholders on them, a critique of populism, I would say, in general. I think populism is going to lead to toxic Q&ON, cults and J6, almost invariably. I think that's what populism is. And I've also rethought a lot of things,

politically, particularly with the Ukraine situation. And I generally feel like liberals are a kind of hegemonic entity, and they are the ones who can successfully govern. And you have to kind of confront that. You can't just say no to everything or yell at everyone, be a MTG or something like that, you have to look at what is actually possible in the world, and I think Democrats are much more successful in, again, sustaining and governing the society. So a lot of it's kind of been, in some ways, a kind of Hobbesian bargain and lots of other things. So a lot of it's been organic. A lot of it has been, you know, facing down battles that aren't winnable and not really ones I want to take part in. And I don't know. You kind of get older.

of different opinions. Looking back at that former version of yourself, though, are you able to kind of take a different perspective on the younger version of yourself that was somewhat consumed with your white identity and really wanted to embrace these culture wars in a way that seems like you've kind of stepped back from a bit? Also, real quick, just on that, too.

How old are you now, and how old were you? I'm 44 now, and I'm 39, so I can't claim that I was like 16 when I did all the bad. stuff. I wish I could. But yeah. So repeat the question again. I mean, I guess just looking back at that former version of yourself, how do you feel like you've got there? And to a lot of people, there's a simplification of anybody who has the sort of beliefs that you might have where it's like hatred. You're filled with hatred. And even reading through like the worst stuff written about you, it can be kind of hard to find the stuff that really seems like specifically

hateful, but clearly it was something. Well, yeah. I mean, I, when I first got into all of this stuff, I dropped out of Duke Los, excuse me, Duke History Department, doctoral program in 2007, and I worked

for this magazine called the American Conservative, which still exists, and is a kind of paleo-conservative anti-war kind of magazine and so on, but I always wanted something different. I was always attracted to edgier ideas. I mean, I've been a Nietzschean, really, since I was 20 years old and first picked up

that book. So I wasn't ever a paleo-conservative. But it was a lot of these kind of webzines. We do 2,000 words think pieces on things, and I, you know, use terms like the alt-right and these kind of big tent idea of people going against the system. And there was just this moment with Trump where there was the potential to, in a way, kind of become a meme, I guess, is the best way. I mean, I leaned into it. And a lot of it I look back at and I cringe a bit. A lot of it I look back at, I think there are some good things.

A lot of it I look back at and I think there are some really awful things. You talk about the hate, kind of, you know, look, race is a, it's everywhere. It's talked about inlessly by the mainstream media. by the Atlantic monthly, by live streamers. It's obviously extremely important. We do need to have a conversation about it. But that stereotype of it's all about resentment and hatred and that can lead to violence,

that stereotype isn't entirely untrue. I mean, if you look at someone like the Buffalo shooter or something like that, he was radicalized on 4chan during the pandemic, and he cut and pasted, a bunch of memes, and it became this, you know, basketball game of, you know, I'm going to kill 10, and so the whites are up. Like, just horrible stuff. The fact is, it can lead to that. And people are, when that kind of stuff comes out in the media, especially then, people are

assuming, like, oh, Richard should be happy about this. Exactly. Exactly. And I don't want that. That makes me sick to think about it. And I also, but, you know, and it is unfair, obviously, and it's not legally binding or anything, but at the same time, you do need to ask yourself, are you getting involved in something that actually does lead to someone doing something like this? And it's not most people, it's less than 1%, but is that 1% of the population of your readers

going to hear what you're saying and think, oh, yes, I should go kill non-whites, so we'll be up by 10 this game or something, just some, you have to recognize that. And so I've also taken a bit of a view that in some ways, like, there needs to be layers to how you think about things. And in terms of everyday politics, I mean, this is what Destiny was saying when I first met him. It's like, I don't know if you're now a liberal cuck or whatever, a fascist or whatever.

there's an outer layer of things that you have to address in the real world. Like should we ban abortion? Should we have some more reasonable gun legislation? What should we do in Ukraine? These are just kind of immediate things. And you can have some opinions on them that are, in a way, short-term, immediate stuff. I think it's more important because I still do want to change the world. I still do feel like civilization is degenerating

that we're headed to a very bad place. But that kind of work needs to take place in a different level. It's not going to take place on the level of black crime, you know, Hispanic immigrants or whatever. It's going to take place on a much more deeper and much more spiritual level. And so I feel like my calling for my life

is to focus there. And I have some, I have lots of opinions on contemporary stuff, and I probably am just pretty much of a centrist liberal when it comes to a lot of those things. But in terms of the deeper core of what I'm about, spiritual core, I do want to be radical as hell.

And I do want to, in a way, shock people and try to get the world moving at a different direction. But it's just, it's kind of a very different tact, and I think it's more, it's kind of ironically more pragmatic to deal with spiritual matters like that. Okay. Destiny, like, what pre-assumptions do you have about Richard Goh into this? Do you have like a generally negative or positive opinion of them? And how do you feel about hearing about this transition that he's kind of been through? I mean, obviously my

impression is overwhelmingly negative. I think, I feel like people will call you like the founder of the alt-right. And then I've seen, Because you had the URL, right? Yeah, I don't know about it. But I mean, like, remember the old interviews, I think, of the black guy in the UK asking you. It was like the BBC thing. Yeah, so I saw that video footage. But I mean, I guess my strength is a political commentator.

People that engage with people. Like, I'm always willing to meet people where they are. I know that a lot of people grow and change. There's stuff that I've said four or five years ago that I cringe at now. It's a product of where you're at in your personal development. It could be a product of where you're at in your professional development in the world around you. anti-a-product of what's happening in the world around you. We joked yesterday a lot on the show that, like, COVID did something to a lot of people's minds.

That two-year period, like, fucking exaggerated so many different people's beliefs and opinions about so many different things. And I try not to define myself as a reaction to the things that happen around me, but realistically, we do react, right? And people are reacting constantly to the things that exist around. And I try to point that out to other people, that people can often, be irrational, but people are never random, ever. People mistake somebody's irrational feelings as randomness or hatred or whatever. And it's like, no, if somebody feels a particular way about a race of people, a religion of people, or whatever, it's probably something that push them in that direction, you know. And yeah, I mean, as long as people continue to grow and reflect and change

their thoughts going forward, yeah, I think that's always a good thing. So I don't think Richard just said anything right now that I would offhandedly disagree with, but all of it so far has been like pretty meta-level. So it depends on, I guess, where you've gone on an apply. level with a lot of what you're saying. Some people say like, oh, like, I think it's important. They have like a well-functioning and fair criminal justice system. And on a meta level, that's fine. But then on an applied level, then maybe like, I think anybody that deals drugs should be having the death sentence because it's hurting our children. And it's like, okay, well, we have problems. But, yeah, it just depends on where we go on the applied level with things.

How are you applying these things? Well, I mean, you can see how I apply these things if you, you know, take a look at my Twitter account or something like that. I mean, I guess my reaction, I mean, and I would apply them in liberal ways. I mean, again, Joe Biden has been the best president of my lifetime, no question. Probably a lot of people are going to be deeply shocked to hear you say that, even though I think you've made that pretty clear on social media and stuff, yeah. Right. Well, I mean, look, I've been a Biden supporter longer than a Trump supporter, but I don't think I can ever escape my old shadow. But in terms of Afghanistan,

that obviously needed to be done in terms of something like the CHIP Act. I mean, I met this kid the other day. It was actually New Year's Eve, and he was this young kid with a technology degree, and he was doing all this amazing stuff. I saw optimism among people. They're doing semiconductor work in Montana, of all places. So I think there was just a lot of great things. I think he's right on the abortion question.

I think he's right on gun control. I mean, that is how I apply them in the sense of a central liberal attitude. I mean, that's the proper way to apply it. I think a lot of times, you know, it's like the idea of like what's radical. And I've always been fascinated with this term. I mean, I named my journal, Radix. It's about radical getting to the heart of things. Radix is the root of the word root.

And I think a lot of right-wing commentators, and this includes me, is you kind of want to say something shocking that's immediately shocking. You know, like, you know, if we catch you dealing drugs, we're going to torture you in front of the public. And, you know, all girls who go on only fans should be, you know, thrown into a kitchen, bare feet, forced to make me sandwiches. This is the whole genre these days. It's the kind of Wente's approach. Like, let's be honest, right? Yeah.

Although he's probably not even close to the worst of them at this point. He seems kind of like restrained and embarrassing to a lot of people now. Well, he's getting a little bit older. Yeah. Yeah. And look, a lot of this kind of thing is fun on some level. It's shot. It's meant to shock.

And I think there's this weird game where it's almost done for the liberals. Like they'll say this kind of shocking thing, knowing that like media matters is going to clip it. And then they could go all to their fans and be like, oh, I'm a big badass here. That's all fine and good, but it is very juvenile. And I think, again, I think what our society is missing is an overarching vision. And as Destiny was saying about reacting, it's natural that we react to things and it's necessary. But our society doesn't have some kind of all-encompassing vision where we can define

ourselves as a civilization and as the human race. And whatever, I am not a, I've never been a fan of Kanye West or gay in terms of his music, and I don't even know what I think about him exactly as a person, but I will grant him this, and I'll grant Nick Fuentes this. Nick Fuentes has hated me for years and whatever, we've kind of reached an understanding, but I will give both of those people this, that notion of defining the human race and Americans in particular as a Christian movement that is about love, of love of all people. This is who we are. Our book is our code. I don't agree with this. I mean, I'm a Nietzsche, died in the world, Nietzsche and so on. But I respect the fact that he's

putting that forward, because I do think that that's what we lack. Joe Biden can offer something, some fantasy of like a middle class America, manufacturing, all that kind of fun stuff. We like each other. We're proud. That's all great. But it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's fundamentally lacking, and I think particularly for young people and in the 21st century, it just feels hollow. I mean, I drove by tent cities, you know, on my way out here. The only fans thing, the notion of 22-year-old girls, their entire income is coming from selling their tits and ass to random men.

I mean, there's just something hollow and depressing about this shit, you know? Yeah, as the only fans creator, I can confirm that. Right. There's a lot of times we're like, what the fuck is this? Right, no, no. I feel like, I get it. I'm not really even judging. I would say this to your face.

I'd say this to other people's face with sympathy. But like we've got to get to a point where there's an overarching vision that's going to bring our society to a higher level because everyone wants it. Any kind of poll you hear, are we on the right track or the wrong track? Wrong track. Do you think your children are going to have a better future than you do? Worse. You know, it's just so consistent this.

kind of anxiety and depression, kind of death of God that we're experiencing, that there has to be something new put in its place. And I do feel like that's my calling. If I can contribute to that, I've really done something. If I go on some media interview and be like, you know, whites are the best, you know, who cares? You know, that stuff's ephemeral and meaningless. I feel like one of the contradictions that have existed in America for a long time is we seem to have this idea that And I hear this a lot when people harken to the past. I don't know if there ever was a unified America where we all had this overarching,

this overarching concept or idea that we all pushed from. We felt like we were on the same team. You know, like I'm always quick to point out that, like, I feel like we're divided more today than we ever are, where we ever have been in our history, and then people will point out, well, we had a civil war, which is very true. We did have a civil war,

a pretty big one and a pretty violent one. I think that the, I think that what is inherent to American ideology is that we have so many, different and disconnected groups all living in the same country, and somehow, for a long time, we have made it work better than any other country in, I think, human history, in terms of global hegemony, in terms of economic power, in terms of cultural creation and exportation. Somehow we've got all these different types of people, sometimes with wildly conflicting beliefs, and we've threaded together this idea, both legally and kind of like governmentally conceptually.

We've threaded together this idea of liberal democracy, where we've had all sorts of different people that have managed to live and work under one roof successfully. I think that I hate going back to this because it's so boring. I think there are a lot of really sexy and exciting answers to give for what's going on in the country today. It might be our spiritual decay and our abandonment of Christ. It might be, you know, things like the only fans' girls and the pornography.

It might be things like white supremacy and white colonialism. It might be things like the patriarchy. And these are really fun and cool ideas because it gives you a very clear enemy to fight against. And when you've got an enemy to fight against, you can rally people on your side, you can give speeches, you can raise money, you can go to war,

you can protest and riot, and you feel like you've got this righteous fire in your belly because you're fighting against something that's clearly evil and is clearly destroying your lives. And I feel like what's actually happening is it's a more boring answer, but I think that the amount of information that's available to us today on the internet,

I don't believe that our brains are fundamentally capable of existing in that environment, parsing information responsibly, and getting an idea of what's actually going on. And instead, what's happening is we're being overwhelmed with information, and then our brains, with all of their flaws and biases, are picking and choosing the worst of all worlds to put together this horrible view of the United States and of the world sometimes. I feel this a lot with, I briefly touched on this yesterday, but on February 3rd, I think, there was a pretty big train derailment,

a lot of chemicals that were spelled in East Palestine. On that night, and in the following days, every single mainstream media company reported on this. MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, you can go to Internet Archive and you can look at their top stories and all of them have it on there, every single mainstream media. But nobody cared, because why would we? Trained aroundments happen a lot, chemical spill a lot,

Do we really care? Not really. And then two weeks later, I think I saw two videos go viral. One was a guy literally screaming at the cloud saying, look at that. This is fucking bullshit. They're burning chemicals. And then another one was, I think, a guy in like a van who said, like, my voice sounds like Mickey Mouse now. And after those two things went viral on social media, now everybody's like, oh, my God.

Why did the media cover this up? Why was nobody covering this? What's going on? Nobody was reporting on it. It was reported on. You just didn't give a fuck until it went viral in your fucking TikTok feed. You didn't care until you saw it on Twitter. And now all of a sudden, now you're like,

Well, why didn't anybody make a big deal? They did. They posted it, but nobody cared. I agree with you in terms of the mechanics of what you've just described, but I would look at the psychology of why that happened. And the reason why it happened is that we're almost expecting or even maybe even desiring a kind of Titanic-like event because we know that something is rotten in the state of Denmark,

and we're looking for something that can express that, this big derailment poisoning the water supply, killing animals, all, et cetera. We're looking for it. We almost want it because that's an expression about how we really feel about the country. Yeah, but is it that or is it just like a natural

human tendency to be drawn towards like dramatic and negative events? I'm sure you've played this one, not to poke at your pastor, whatever, but I'll do it. I play this all the time. If you ask people involved in BLM, how many unarmed black, I'm curious, how many unarmed black men do you think are killed every year by the police?

Billions. Yeah, millions, billions. I'm just kidding. It's unfair. A relatively small number, right? It's like, people might say like a relatively small number and guess like maybe like 500. It's like 12. It's a very small number.

But like, think about it this way. But it's an expression of what they feel. I think we have, it might not very well be rational. And you can shove statistics down their throat. but it's an expression of how they feel, and it might even be a certain kind of fantasy element to it as well, in the sense that they do feel out of place and oppressed and not making it or something.

It also expresses a certain kind of fantasy of, like, to make a conflict that is invisible in a way, visible? Yeah, that's what I said before. It feels good to have the patriarchy to fight against, or have cops to fight against, because you get this, because there is a lot of frustration in general in life. I think that's probably part of life. And through a combination of removing all tenacity from people,

because we poison children's minds into thinking that any type of adversity is absolutely fucking negative and you should remove all of it from your life, in terms of removing a lot of the major problems from people's lives, right? Like, realistically, if you're a woman, no one is saying that, like, you can't work that job because you're a woman, so you kind of have to look for sexism in more subtle and nuanced ways, which is good, you should look for it. But when you start to lose a lot of these bigger problems,

it kind of feels like, I don't want to say you have to invent problems. But you remember what Dick said yesterday on the show when we were talking about, like, it feels like some people are like, and I get this feeling sometimes, I get a lot of hate for this, but like, you're middle class, you're white,

parents are decent wealth, you go to a decent school, and then you get online and it's like, I have nothing to complain about. Well, now I'm going to be non-binary, and now I'm going to have the most depression ever. And it's like, is that really like what you need to have something to complain about?

And that's what it feels like a lot of times that people, sometimes you remove so many of the big problems that people like, I need something to fucking complain and bitch and be a victim about. But I feel like that's like the human condition. I remember kids doing it in high school. I went to a prep school and I'll go to these kids' houses.

It's like my fucking family who's got kicked out of our third fucking house. I go to this girl's house who's like one parent is like a dentist and the other is like partnered at a law firm with a mansion. And she's talking about, yeah, I cut myself every night because I'm so depressed. And in my mind, I'm thinking, how fuck can you be depressed? You're rich, you have everything in life. But you know, in their mind, they're like, well, you know,

humans, I think, tend to look for something. Because none of that is meaningful. The big screen TV is meaningful. It's meaningless. They don't actually want it. What they want is meaning and direction in their lives. It's not just about not having something to complain about. Like, we're not being invaded by Russia right now.

We're invaded by Russia. Even the blue-haired feminist would, like, strap on a gun and be ass kicking. Look at 9-11, bro. 98% of the country was ready to go to war with whatever fucking country in the world you threw a dart at. Bro, you tell me Nigerians were the ones that fucking blew, yeah, you know, planes of the world trade centers. I think 98% of my regular, let's go to war with them right now. Yeah, for sure. I was actually in New York City in 9-11, believe it or not.

I experienced this with, you know, this is 23 years ago, is liberal types who I would talk to. And I would almost kind of gently talk to them because I was afraid that they were going to tell me about like the history of the Crusades and, you know, racism against Arabs. And they were like, oh, yeah, we need to go to war right now. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, for sure. So, but what I...

Bush was on Jesus. Like, it's funny because we made fun of, like, Muslims and shit, and imams saying, you know, holy war and jihad and all this shit. And I think, I want to say Bush was on camera saying, like, I prayed and he, and God told me that we need to go to war with Iraq. And I'm like, Jesus Christ. But back then we were ready for it. If that were to happen right now, if we had another 9-11, do you think the country is so polarized that we would never get anywhere close to that, like, 98% agreement on going to war? Yes. I think, I think it kind of is over.

And this is a really big subject that I'm glad we're talking about. But I mean, I was very enthused about the new Cold War that has arisen. And that might sound cynical or sadistic or something. It's not. Because it does, you know, when you have the unipolar world globalism, you don't know who's who and who's what or where we are, who's the enemy. It's murky and kind of weird. Now we're kind of returning to something that we're used to and something that we fought and won previously. a Cold War, a division between a Russian or kind of Soviet-like society. Perhaps China's involved. We'll figure that out.

It's kind of here and there at the moment. But it gives people some stability and meaning. You need, you kind of need someone to hate or someone to fear or someone to be your adversary. Do we? Do we really? I hate that. That's got to be a thing we can change in human nature. It has to be, right?

At least you're being reasonable about it, and you're, yes, we do. And we need something that's bonding as well. Like, what is the origin of religion? Is it you've come up with some rational device to prove that God exists? No, that's not the origin. It's a way to explain stuff that's already going on in the world, essentially, I think. No. It's a way of congealing masses of people without force.

You can't, you can only point a gun at someone and force someone to fight a battle for so long. What you really need to have is for them to want to fight the battle, for them to want you to be an authority, to want to want to die, in fact, in order to accomplish something bigger than yourself. That's the origin of religion, and that's why we need it. Yeah, I just, there has to be a way to deal without enemies. I feel like it's funny because you bring this up, but I actually use this exact argument when I would fight against, like, race, realists and stuff in the past, that people would say things like, we need to get rid of all black and brown people that needs to be only white people. It's like,

Okay, well, if we run this argument to its maximum, right? I don't, like, first of all, if you had any group of white people that got rid of everybody else, don't you think at that point they're going to start looking at, like, well, what percentage white are you? Right? Because, like, if you go to Europe, it's not just white and black people, especially if you go to something, like, especially if you're in Scandinavia, right? Europeans have fucking ethnic eyes, like, I've never seen before.

We're like, oh, that dude over there, he's like 37.5% Russian, I can tell because of his hair line. I'm like, the fuck? It's just a white guy to me. It all looks the same shit to me. But, like, you start to see the divisions more and more. And if you've got people that have made justifications for getting rid of people based on color of skin,

then why not like the Fuentes is next, right? Who are 25% Hispanic. Or why not people with like brown eyes or brown hair? Like where would that, like, would the division ever truly stop? Because Jesus, like go to play, like, former like Yugoslavia. Like you've got like some, so many similar types of people that are all trying to fucking kill each other like crazy. And it's like, what do you guys doing?

I agree, but you don't descend into that infinite regress because you're able to define an enemy and define an us. Yeah, I know. That's, and I understand that. It feels very 1984-ish, because in that book, right, there has to be a constant enemy that you're waging war against because it gives you a forward direction. But can people, can people grow out of that? No. They have to be able to do.

Do we want to? Yes. We do. No, you don't, because it's like resistance and struggle, you understand who you are. You know, I mean, I was not a great athlete at all, so I'm not so bragging about the not so glorious days of my athletics. But like, I learned something about myself by playing on a football team and losing and sometimes winning and struggling against someone. And I wouldn't know who I was if I didn't do that. You need a resistance force and an opposition in order for some kind of synthesis to develop of a real identity.

So I agree one million percent. I'm having an interesting – so I've been streaming for 12 years. I've been on an internet for a long time and I've identified like trends with my content and you know we go through big upswings where we've got a lot of viewership and we go through downswings because it's a little bit more boring

and a conversation that my communities have right now that I figured out is that like my content is at its best when I have opposition. Like I can cover a story I can do political research and that's okay but when there are people opposing me to fight against it becomes a million

times more interesting. I think I carried like 13,000 viewers doing like a six day research stream on like some, the new Pearl Harbor. It was like a five-hour 9-11 documentary. And it's because people were really hyped up for me to debate Nick Fuentes and Sneco after watching it. And I noticed that like having that oppositional figure

drives so much of my political content. But it's hard to hold those oppositional figures because the relationships are very volatile because eventually somebody's feelings get hurt, somebody's ego gets bruised, and they're like, fuck you, I'm never talking to you again. Sure. But one thing that I'm able to do,

and I've met some people that can do this, Dick yesterday was a good example, is I love somebody that, like, we can fight, like, fuck you, I hate you, this is horrible, fuck your ideas are shit, blah, blah, blah. And then at the end, you're like, okay, and then we're done. We're done arguing. It's cool. We disagree. But like, we're okay at the end of the day.

We don't actually fucking hate each other. That's us, destiny. Shit, well, maybe, I haven't got out of yet. But I wish that, like, more people were able to do that. And I notice that, like, the drawing of the battle lines for the us versus them. Like, it's so crazy how my black history is horrible. So obviously, I only know Martin Luther King and fucking Malcolm X. because that's what every white person knows,

for the only two black people in all of fucking US history. But it's so interesting how we went from all of the MLK shit, like, oh yeah, like we all need to come together and be cool people, whatever. So like, actually, we need to bring back segregation and have black only businesses with black customers and fuck white people. And it's like, what the fuck?

How the fuck did we circle all the way back here where, like, there are, like, these people that are talking about, like, the critical race theory and, like, the very heavy, like, college, anti-whiteness, like lectures and shit that are now having, like, black-only sessions where they're talking about, like, anti-blackness and shit. And it starts to feel like really segregated and weird.

When I was reading through the Southern Poverty Law Center thing about Richard last night, which I can kind of assume probably hasn't been updated since like approximately 2016 because they left out some newer stuff. But I'm reading it. And it's like almost every quote that I'm seeing from you talking about your white identity or whatever is something that sounds eerily familiar to something I've heard black people say in relatively mainstream circles in the last couple of years. So I don't know if maybe those statements seemed a little bit different in 2016. but viewed from today's light,

a large percentage of them didn't really seem all that shocking to me. Well, I mean, that's true. I mean, look, there is a double standard in the sense of you can listen with sympathy to a black person talking about identity and maybe even having some hatred of things like that. You can listen to that sympathetically,

but a white person does it, and there's just no sympathy. You could talk about guns, you can talk about Christianity, you can talk about all these other things, but an actual white identity is something that we're just not allowed to talk about. I mean, it is what it is. I mean, maybe it's a good thing in a way in the sense that whites do want to, I mean, the best aspect of being white in a way is to try to transcend your mere material position and to do something that's bigger, to do something that would almost bring people in. I think that's a very strong power in European history.

So, I mean, on some level, this double standard is kind of a good thing. And I will say, too, also, like, on that back, because I can't let you say all that and not say anything because my family's going to hate me. But truly, like, the issue that I have is that, like, there is a difference between, like, white pride and black pride. Like, if we're honest, the histories between these two things are different, and generally the sentiments behind them are different, right? What is the difference? I think the difference is that generally white people are pretty okay in the United States on the qualification of being white. Now, there are poor white people, but their lives aren't fucked because they're white, they're fucked because they're poor.

Or there might be white people that are addicted to drugs, but their lives aren't fucked because they're white, they're fucked because they're hooked to opiates. Whereas for black people, African-American specifically descendants of slaves, a lot of their lives today are still a little bit fucked, not because their parents were poor or their grandparents are poor, but because there were racial policies in the United States from 64 and earlier that actually racially impacted people.

So I'm very empathetic. So you only get to have pride in. if you struggle. I mean, like, I'm not saying you can only, like, here's, here's, that is what you're saying. Well, no, no, no, hold on, no, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that like, I can understand people

treating the things a bit differently. Sure. But the problem is that people take it a little bit too far. And instead of saying like, well, hold on, I think that there needs to be a special, unique place for black people to talk about their place in the US and the history in the US. That evolved into fuck white people.

They can't talk about anything related to whiteness. And now we're only gonna talk about black issues. And if you even dare challenge that, you're racist. Like that evolution is very toxic. I think that that change is what has destroyed so many of the conversations. Thinking back to the phrase, like, it's okay to be white. Like, the response to that should have just, or like, white lives matter, the response to that should have just been like, yeah, they do.

But, like, that's not what we're talking about right now. And, like, that's it. Instead of like, no, you can't say that, that's hateful. It's like, why fight against that? Like, it's so stupid. Right. I don't, I didn't quite follow you there at the end. I mean, I don't, I mean, there is also a kind of double standard of when, you know,

someone has Irish pride or something like that. It's like, oh, that's so cool and beautiful and poetic and things like that. Someone says they have German pride and people have a little bit of a different opinion or Russian pride because it's bigger and stronger and more powerful and can actually affect the world unlike, you know, I don't know, Irish Catholic nationalism or something like that. But you can't just say, okay, it's good if it's weak and it's bad if it's strong. I mean, it's a natural human tendency to want to be a part of a bigger tribe, something bigger than yourself, civilization even.

And so it can't just be justified if people are not politically powerful. Yeah, I think, I mean, it's going to depend on the type of movement you're in and like where you're coming from. Like, because realistically, like, when somebody says white pride, I don't really know, like, white people is a group historically. Like, it's hard to know what that means. Like, if you want to talk about, like, German people, Russian people, Irish people, like, there are achievements and things that you can give to specific national

specific ethnicity, things in the past. But it feels like when people talk about, like, white as an overarching group, at least in my mind, the only thing I think of is slavery. Because I'm like, what did white people do versus like black people? Or you think it's almost too generic and kind of vague. Yeah, that's the issue. And then when somebody appeals to something. What does it mean you go to Target as opposed to the dollar store,

you're white or something? Yeah. You know, I agree with that. Whereas I think there, and then there's a slight difference, too, because when you talk about like African American culture, there was a unifying culture between descendants of slaves, because a lot of them can't even point back to the countries they're from.

And so their culture basically starts at my great, great, great, great granddaddy was a slave, and that's all I have. And here's the culture that I was thrust into, that was thrust upon me, and then this is what we created out of that. And so I'm more sympathetic to, I understand why some people are like I have African-American pride, but it feels a little bit different. It's like, okay,

well, you can go to Ellis Island. You can see exactly where your family came from. Your pride is going to be a little bit more ethnically precise than that. And when you say white pride, it feels a little bit strange, you know? I get what you're saying. and I'm being sympathetic towards it. I have many of the same criticisms. One of the criticisms that I do agree with

that you hear from the left is, you know, they'll show some image of some, you know, Faso screaming white pride or yelling at someone and they'll be like, this is the white supremacist, you know. And there's also that other kind of question of like, what are you actually standing for? What do you want?

Yeah. I think that was a major question that why question about the alt-right and why it failed, and it's kind of part of the past now, is because it couldn't answer. There was no, like, actual spiritual core to what whiteness is. Which I think that's very true. So many movements have that issue.

Remember Occupy Wall Street? What the fuck did they want? That was a huge firm, and it came and it went, and, like, what the fuck did you guys want? Or BLM and the riots and the police? Like, what did you guys want? To abolish policing? They tried that as a place. It didn't work.

Like, what did you guys want? The alt riot Charlotte's Belmont. What do you guys want? And it's like, more Christianity, Catholicism? Not that. What more like what? Like, yeah, there's an issue with a lot of misdirected anger today where it's like channel it on something

and figure out a policy or something to rally by, fuck it, give me legalized like marijuana or something, but find something that you want to champion. That's because America isn't offering that anymore. So when you think about, okay, I mean, I'll do two things real quick, so just, you know, be a little patient. So there is a white identity to the United States that is, I would say, overwhelmingly Protestant.

and overwhelmingly Anglo, and there were a lot of nativist battles against bringing in Italians and Central Europeans and so on in the 19th century. Between about, from the Immigration Act of 1924 and let's say up to the 60s, I think there, and this was also coming after the progressive reforms that did a lot of great things in my opinion, but anyway, I think there was a pretty coherent

white American public. It was perhaps, fleeting. It was kind of more Christian than Protestant, more European than Anglo-Saxon. But it was a real thing. But I also think that like grasping onto that, holding onto it, is kind of clinging to the past. I think we've moved beyond that period of time. It was a great time in many ways. It was a bad time if you were African-A-A-R-R-Not-so-bad, but bad in many ways. Or Chinese, or depending on where you were. I get it, I get it. But it was something, and I think that was probably the essence of the make America great again notion. It was about again going back to the past, rehearsing something.

But I think the main thing is that America is not able to offer any overarching, coherent vision that's attractive, that's irrational even, that's exciting, Dionysian. And thus, we're kind of retreating into this, like, frathing. fragmented societies of BLM angst, alt-right angst, Fuentes, yay, angst, you know, screw the patriarchy, angst. They're probably literally screwing the patriarchy. Because we're not offering anything. When John Winthrop, you know, before he even set foot on the soil, he had an idea of what America was. It was this new Jerusalem concept. It was a highly fundamentalist puritanical notion, one that I don't resonate with, to be honest, but it was something. He defined it even before he was here.

We've had various ways in the Cold War. I mean, I have this article I'm going to publish, but it's about how you two kind of predicted the Cold War or ended the Cold War in some crazy way. Though we're torn in two, we can be won. They sang that in 1983 before 1989, 91 and everything changed. And so they were imagining some vision that you wanted to be a part of. And I think for Bono and you too is actually deeply Christian.

And there has to be something there or we are going to fragment into things like BLM and the alt-right. So here, this is something also that I kind of think in terms of, so earlier I alluded to this idea that I feel like the idea of a unified America was a bit illusory.

I feel like we felt that way, or we feel like in the past it was that way, So, Adam, when you talk about hip hop, and you talk about rappers, I feel like one thing that's really important for a lot of these guys, that a lot of kind of middle class America, and I feel like they were lost, is where you're from. Oh, yeah. Huge. Yeah. But I think that, I feel like in the United States, I feel like we used to be a lot more local. But again, because of the Internet, I think something happened to where now the only thing, everybody knows.

Marjorie Taylor Green. Everybody knows, like, if you ask, like, a fucking conservative in Wyoming or Montana or whatever, like, which politician do you hate the most? They're going to talk to you about, like, people from the House of Representatives in New York. They're going to talk to you about people that have no impact on their lives whatsoever. Right. And I think that there's an illusion, I think, that's created in the past America, where everybody's

involved in their own communities and their own churches and their own unions and their own local politics scene. And you feel like you're kind of a unified America, even though. this community and this community might feel totally fucking different about things, but in their own communities, they've achieved some sort of equilibrium where they feel comfortable and confident. But now, fuck local politics, everybody's on this national level, and no way can you get 340 million people to all feel the same about fucking anything. But in a weird way, we all do feel the same. It's kind of both because, you know, like a rancher in Wyoming,

because he's on social media to some degree, it's going to be like, those BLM riots, they're burning down cities, like, Antifa's coming from me. And it's like, listen, let me, as someone who was assaulted by Antifa, I can tell you, like, they are not coming to rural Montana. Like, just, you know.

But I mean, on that same thing, though. All the media were brought together in this kind of incredible way. Yeah, but in like such a, but in a horrible way. Because the reality is that, like, if you were to poll a ton, like, there's just something, oh my God. my mind, I changed so many opinions on politics when I realize this, is if you're trying to figure out what Americans feel like, first of all, get rid of the idea of Americans, number one, and number two, stop looking at national polling data, because we don't vote national in anything.

We vote for our representatives, we vote for our senators, and then we vote within our states for things, and when you start looking more granularly at American opinion, you start to realize more why things are the way they are. You might think that, like, well, 52% of Americans support the legalization of marijuana or prostitution or gun control or whatever, but when you look state by state, you're like, okay, hold on, this breaks down way differently, depending on where you're looking at things. But we're trying to force... The opposite trend is happening.

Yeah, it might be, but the problem is we're trying to force our national views on everything, where we still have a system, whether we like it or even acknowledge it, that still very much works on the local level. I think BLM and policing is a really good example. We tried to come together as a country and make strong statements on policing, but policing is decided by your mayor. These are your most local elections. Obama's not going to fucking save you from a bad cop.

Trump's not going to do shit about an unfair prosecution, but we all are looking and obsessing at that national level, and then nobody looks at their local communities, and now we're like, well, I feel like we don't get along like we ever did, me where it's like, I don't know if anybody from New York City in the year at 1892 would have gotten along with somebody from, you know, some rural place, some rancher in Texas, but it felt like they, because they never talked to each other.

They never had the opportunity to be exposed to each other. Let me try to bring some of these things together, because you're bringing up some very important topics. So America has never been a coherent nation, and it's never been a nation state at all. It has always been an empire in some degree or another. Sure. So there's actually a thinker who's out of favor now,

who I think is a genius, Jackson Turner, Frederick Jackson Turner, with this notion of the frontier. So in European languages, if you're, let's say, a Prussian, and you have the word frontier, that means border. That means you've got to face off against the Russian Empire, France, you know, some naval invasion, all that kind of stuff. In America, frontier means the opposite. It means endless open space, which we had.

You can just go out there and make a new world, and if you can survive, you're it. And we actually went downward in terms of civilization. So in Boston, you're riding trolley cars and reading the Gospels, and you start to go out into the wilderness, and you're rowing a canoe and reading the Old Testament. So we've almost like gone backwards as you go out into the frontier. So I, and you can see this despite, you know, progressives who kind of FDR as well, kind of nationalized many things made us more of a European coherent nation.

We still, that's not who we are. We do have a kind of outmoded political system on some level. It's at very least not a political system conducive to a nation stay. Sure. We'll never be Finland. A coherent, singular. Right. But that's kind of what I wonder when we talk about.

But, and the irony of it is that we are being nationalized. I agree. A guy in Maine or a guy in Wyoming, who are both kind of right-wing types, they both hate AOC and think she's going to go take their guns or, you know, whatever. So it's like we're going through all of these forces. And I think there's also the contradiction between the ability to deal with domestic issues and then America's identity as a global empire. Like, we, set, since 1944 at the very least, and probably before that, we've set the terms for the world. The world cannot

function without us and the dollar. And I'm not just saying this as some wild American... Or would function in a very different way, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and it would be horrible if this thing went down. All of these Ron Paul types or tankies or liberals saying, you know, like in the American Empire or whatever, they don't know

what that will actually entail and a lot of horrors that that would entail. So this is, America's always been this frontier in this sense of of expansion and globalism. It is what we are. And so there's that contradiction between, like, domestic affairs and our obligations as imperialist.

You hear this with Holly of, you know, we need a party about East Palestine and not a party about the globalist in Ukraine or something. Well, actually, as an American... We need both. Well, you kind of... Obviously, you need both, yeah, to some degree. But as an American, you actually do need to think about Ukrainians.

And not just out of sympathy. which I definitely have, but out of the fact that you have an imperial obligation to think about them. And I don't, I think there's, we have this, one of the kind of contradictions of populism is, you know, in some ways Trump was an expression of the decline of America, not necessarily through his actions, but through his rhetoric of like, come home, take care of ourselves, let's spend money on ourselves, you know, Americans are dreamers, no more immigration, build a wall. All of these things

are kind of like on some level of retreats. The dying of like a, yeah. And even Trump, when he was a better version of Trump in the 80s when he was on Larry King or whatever, he was still kind of like that.

This nationalism of kind of bringing things in. It might have something to do the fact that he came from Manhattan. It's this kind of like pitched battles. But I mean, like look at his investment. The guy spends money and makes money like all over the world too, right?

No question. Yeah, no question. Russia. I think in terms of what you're talking about, The thing that I guess I'd like to appeal to, I guess, circling back to what I said before, is it feels like we're so divided today. But in 1950, like, how often was, like, a Jewish guy from New York debating a guy that lives in, like, fucking New Mexico? Right. It's never happening.

So the division might have existed, but we didn't see it because those people weren't brought together. But now we've taken this version of the American experiment. We've got so many different people living in our country, which we've made work, and that's awesome. but now we're like bashing heads on everything. And I guess it feels so fucking lame because it just feels like such a Lib Cuck thing to say. But I feel like at the end of the day, what we have to appeal to is America has only worked so far

and it will only continue to work if you can accept that some of the people living in your country are Nazis. And some of the people living in your country fucking hate white people and want them to die. And it sucks. But as long as they're not calling for either side to be killed, You have to accept that these people are all going to live here, and the country has to function.

The non-aggression principle is not enough. I agree that that's reasonable, and that we could kind of get along and maybe even kind of laugh at each other. I think there's something to be said even for the friendliness that comes from telling an anti-Italian joke with your Italian friend. You're kind of making fun of them, but in a way you're kind of both being human in a way. So I get that, but it's not enough. There has to be an overarching meaning of what it means to be an American. America is an ideological nation, just like the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was able to coherently do that.

They attracted the minds. But they didn't. That's why they lost it. Right, but they lost it. But I think because part of the- And they collapsed immediately when they lost that legitimacy. Part of the pursuit of that, though, was like the hardcore rucification of all of the little territories and states that they took over. And I think that's part of why it wasn't like the Soviet Union naturally grew out and expanded as it, you know, expanded its empire and its ideology. A lot of it was literally like half of you guys died from a famine. We're going to go ahead and ship two million Russians down to Ukraine. We're going to go ahead and take over all of your governments in Lithuania, Estonia. We're going to go ahead and so of course over time, like the people that never felt like they truly had a buy into the Soviet Union. They were just kind of like subjugated by the Soviet Union. It's like, okay, well, we're here until the Soviet Union falls apart. And now we're fucking leaving immediately, which I think happened when the Warsaw Act and the Soviet Union collapsed.

That's true to a great extent. There was also a kind of nation-building thing of creating nations that didn't exist, giving them national poets. There's kind of countervailing forces. And obviously when they were invaded by the National Socialist Army, there was a call in the motherland and all that kind of Russian nationalism. Russians are kind of more equal than others. Oh, and to your point, Russians still define themselves largely as we beat Nazis. And that's like they're calling, their unifying calling card. It's almost, it's that negative identity that you almost see against with America.

Americans as well, where it's like liberalism can't assert anything. So it becomes this kind of donut or bagel with a hole in it. So you can't really define, like this is what it means to be a man in America right now. This is what it really means. Don't give me the non-aggression principle or I'm tolerant or whatever. This is what it means that my life has meaning. America isn't offering that. It's this liberalism is this kind of donut where there's an empty center and that it can't assert anything.

And I think if anything, there's like Hitler in the center. Because you can define something of, I'm not Hitler, basically, is like liberal morality. That sucks and that will collapse. And I think the Soviet example is very interesting in this regard. You can't just define yourself on the basis of we beat the Nazis. So what does the – so I still reject this, I hope. I'm idealistic because I would hope that we can do something that doesn't require a common enemy. but if it had to be one,

like what would it be? Islam could play that role. I think a... That won't work anymore, actually, because now all these fucking conservative sims, it's so goddamn funny because four years ago, I fought against so many conservatives

were like, I think that women are sluts and they shouldn't do this. I'm like, listen, bro, and I'd say this is a trick of the fucking way. It kind of sounds like you're talking about Sharia law. Like, no, we don't mean that. We would never do that, blah, but now you've got all these fucking tape fans.

Yeah, like, actually, Muslims are pretty fucking women can't drive. They're not allowed to have a say politically sometimes. Like, they have to stay in the household. Like, I don't know. Maybe Tate was right when he converted. It was like, what the fuck? You guys, like five years late to the show.

So I don't even know if you could get conservatives on that one. You can't now. I think Andrew Tate phenomenon is actually incredible because he's the biggest man slut on earth on one direction. Gambling, haram shit. He's a criminal in another direction. He is a Muslim on another direction. And a, in a masculinity icon.

I mean, yeah, it's crazy. But so I don't think the Islam thing will work, although that was tried to some extent. But I think Russia as a big, bad enemy is a positive manifestation, and I think he, you know, Putin could kind of serve that purpose. But there also has to be this assertion of who are we? In opposition to whoever we fight against. Yeah, it's in opposition, but it's also an assertion. It's not an argument and it's not about tolerance, not about liberal, it's an assertion. It's an assertion of identity.

Identity is not an argument. Identity is an assertion. And that is what we need. Is there any common ground that really stands out to you in terms of Americans, like stuff that we really can agree on? Because it is hard to find almost anything. Yeah. I don't think so, actually.

And this is always my biggest argument against Fuentes, because at any time I'll debate somebody in the very far right, it's like, we need to defend our Eurocentric, whatever American identity. He's like, give me some common values between, like, the gayest dude in San Francisco and, like, a fucking farmer in rural Texas. And, like, you just can't. And the reality is, like, I can point to countries around. on the world where conservatives are going to be way more aligned with like Saudi Arabian values

versus like the Rainbow Road in fucking Seattle people's values or whatever. And the reality is, is it like, yeah, it's really hard to find a unifying identity in the United States. And again, it's the gayest thing I've ever said. But like, I really do think it is the, all of the different opinions that we have here that still function under one system that makes us like truly unique as a country. But I mean, maybe it's not enough. I don't know. Like, bro, do you ever play PlayStation or Xbox or whatever. This fucking drove me crazy as a kid. You could never, you could never just play one of the other.

You had to fucking hate the other group, too. You ever notice? It's like, oh yeah, I play PlayStation. It's like, true. Fuck Halo. Oh, sure. Yeah. World Kombat, too, didn't have blood on the Super Nintendo, but it did on Genesis.

So we were looking, I was a Super Nintendo guy, too, and this was just an example where clearly I had to get a fucking game genie if I wanted the blood to be the right color. Yeah, because otherwise it would be green. I remember that. I was deeply offended. But yeah, it feels like every time when you're in a fucking group, it's like, why can't you just fucking like yourselves? It happens a lot with the CRT and the anti-black stuff

where it's like, fuck white people. It's like, bro, why can't you just be happy for yourselves? Like, do you really have to, or for white people and hate and blood? It's because we're animals. I don't, I don't, we're mammals, and that's why we do that. I mean, that's, like, the simplest answer. But I'm not saying that we should do this, like, merely on tribalism. Or, like, you know, I hate my neighbors because they're, you know,

they root for a different football team or whatever. what I'm arguing for is there does need to be a bigger ideological assertion. And I think this might come in a way after we go through this period. I think Biden, you know, he's managing things, it's just fine. But I think we're all kind of aware that we're kind of at the end of something. Maybe. And, you know, what's going to come after that? I think there are a lot of, there are going to be some competing visions for a world.

world order. Obviously, communism was a competing vision for world order. Fascism was a competing vision for a world order. Islam can do that. It can function in that way. It has in the past. And it can create some discipline in society. I feel like something that sucks today, and maybe it was an artifact, or maybe it happened in the history, too. I don't know. But it feels like everything today is so politicized that it's really, really, really hard that we can't take credit for sick shit that we do anymore. Like in 69, leaning on the moon, was really fucking cool. That almost has been a really cool day

to be an American. When you're sitting down and you're watching TV and we fucking landed on the moon, that's awesome shit. But nowadays, it feels like every American invention is immediately claimed

or castigated based on your political rivalry. So, for instance, I, and I might trigger you, I don't know where you guys stand on this. I personally think that the vaccination was like a fucking model success of fucking capitalism.

That U.S. companies, through innovation and working with other companies around the fucking world, biotech in Germany, manufacturing in fucking Switzerland. We found a way to create an insanely sophisticated vaccine in like eight months. It should have been like landing on the moon, right?

That's so cool. And it happened. Yeah, and Trump obviously wants to credit over it. But like, no, that's political shit. Or I'll give the flip side, so I know a lot of right-leaning people are triggered right now. I personally, and I fucking hate the guy, because I think politically is the most cringy fucking dude in the world. But Elon Musk with electric cars and rockets are cool.

That's fucking awesome. The first time you saw one of those fucking SpaceX rockets, Come back and land on the fucking planet. That was the sickest shit in the world. And same thing with electric vehicles. I mean, we probably would have gotten there eventually, but no doubt, I don't even like Tesla's that much because the build quality is iffy. But he did something really fucking cool with Tesla's. There's charging stations all over the United States.

Electric cars are being taken seriously. The car company is worth more like every fucking car company on the planet. But we can't give credit. And these are American inventions. SpaceX and Tesla and the vaccine. These are American things. But it's all like held politically hostage now. So you said before, we have to have like,

We have to have domestic and international, but it feels like the international-facing version is like, it's like two parents disciplining a child. Mom and dad can't provide a unified front when they're fighting with each other constantly. And in the United States, when both sides are trying to tear each other the fuck apart, like how the fuck can we even present

some kind of unified front to the rest of the world? Now with Biden, we're talking about how we want to help Ukraine, we want to save them, we want to provide a strong American vision. And before under Trump, we were like, we want to disband NATO and fuck the rest of the world. And you've got people like Angela Merkel and the Australian Prime Minister

And the Mexican president saying, like, well, we can't rely on America for shit anymore. And yeah, we're like schizophrenic in terms of domestic ideas. We hate each other so much that even when we accomplish good shit, we can't take credit for it. And it makes it impossible to provide, like, a unified vision of what America is and stands for it to the rest of the world. I agree, yes. But I basically, that's why I'm suggesting that we're kind of at the end of this era, because you do need to do that. I think so. I think we need to do it.

I don't know if we're at the end of an era. We always find a way to keep going on, but. A few publications were predicting like a vibe switch coming soon and I think that that was probably largely in terms of the arts or just people's overall disposition but it does feel like the world as a whole is kind of growing

tired of this sort of constant infighting and battling between both sides and it does seem like there's got to be something on the other side of it but nobody's really sure how that could possibly manifest itself at this point because yeah fucking political pundits we're very much we feed into each other

what the media does and what people want. Media wants to blame people for being stupid. People want to blame the media, even though they keep watching it. Like, yeah, there has to start to be, there needs to be conscious decisions. I think it has to come from media first. And when I say media, I include alternative media as well, so people like you and me. You have to make the conscious decision to start to bridge gaps, right? You can do partisan content for your entire life, but you are fucking evil and you're destroying the country when you do that.

When you do hyperpartisan content, you are saying that, like, we are different. from these people on a fundamental level. They're evil, we're good, and we're going to fight that fight and advocate for a fucking national divorce or whatever some people are fighting for. It's like, no, fuck you. We're Americans. You need to be able to talk to the guy that either wears a hood or where's a black fucking hoodie and wants to kill cops, whatever. You have to be able to bring

these people together and talk. And if you're not willing to do that, you are actively contributing to the destruction of the country, in my opinion. I totally agree. And I think there is space for someone who can lean out of polarization. because right now, the most successful politicians just lean into it so hard, and it just becomes nasty and meaningless. And there is a space.

But again, it's like kind of an empty space, because I don't know, Biden hasn't quite successfully done that, even though he has genuinely tried. I give him credit for it for him, but maybe just due to his age, basically, is why he isn't successful, but also why he tried, because he can remember kind of back that. Yeah, because he was a senator for like fucking 7,000 fucking years, right? And yeah, he's talked to and work with it. Yeah, he's also like, you know, me and these segregationists, we used to get things done over in Washington. Go to the old Ebbett grill and have a liquid lunch, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, so, I mean, that's who he is. I think Trump, at his best, kind of tried that. I wish he would. He talked about it. There were so many fucking people on the campaign trail where it's like, are you going to turn it on and be the businessman that I think you can be? Right. But if you look at him most charitably, you could say he was kind of trying that. But he didn't.

leaned into it. He leaned into insane conspiracy cults at the end. I mean, it was a, it was a disaster. But there is a kind of space for something. And, and that's why I do think that we need to talk about these things religiously, like a vibe shift or something. It's almost like a polar ice, or the polar magnetism is going to switch or something. It switches every few thousand. Really, vibe is like a new age word for spirituality. Well, I think about it, right? There is some kind of collective consciousness and in a collective mood. And I don't think I'm being like woo-woo in saying that in the sense of what is the kind of music that defines a period where you just hear it and you know where it is?

Like if you think about the 80s and like synth pop or Madonna or, you know, just can't get enough and all that kind of stuff, you just, you're immediately kind of transported to that time. And at the same time, kind of like the nihilism of punk of like acting. being out of tune and screaming and slamming your instruments, that also defined a particular era. And even if it wasn't the most popular music, it was the kind of, it was the music that defined the vibe of that period.

So I do think we act collectively in this way. I think that's a very real thing. And it's interesting because, like, when I started doing hip-hop podcast, like 2016, so around the same time that you were kind of invigorated with politics and in a different level. And generally, even within the hip-hob podcast, hip-hop community, almost everybody would agree that music at this point, hip-hop is like incredibly bland and that hip-hop is ready for something new, something exciting, something that doesn't feel

so stale. We just have no idea what it is. And I kind of feel like that's the general overall theme because when I interviewed Nick Fuentes, I was ready to be on fucking media matters and ready to be torn apart for having a conversation with him and nobody gave a fuck. And a few years ago, I would have been extremely worried about having a conversation with you. I'm quite sure nobody's going to give a fuck. It just feels like in a lot of ways... Surely they'll give a fuck. They'll give some kind of fuck, but it's just not going to be anything this kind of. I'm probably going to get more heat for this

conversation than you will. Don't you think rock is... I mean, again, I'm more of like a rock guy that, you know, whatever, but like, don't you think it's dead in a way? Oh yeah, guitar-driven music is out this bizarre state of a fair show. It's not just guitar driven me. The problem, and I am an advocate for capitalism. My fucking love capital.

I'm a big capitalist. Jerk it off all day. I'll fight for my markets every day of the week. But holy shit. Art being. like subsumed by capitalism was a not good thing right where you have like don't even blame capitalism to poor this I think it's actually much deeper and and yeah there's the commercialization or boy bands or whatever I think that but because the issue was like rock bands and shit used to be like I think that was it Grohl from Novana or whatever it used like yeah you get a bunch of kids you

know playing guitars they suck shit in garages and they suck shit over and over and over and over and over and until eventually they get on stage and they start doing cool shit oh yeah but now you've got like an exec and It's like, that nine-year-old girl is going to be a fucking star. Let's take her and fucking mold her, and we're going to make all these singers. We're going to make this overproduced rap and hip-hop and everything, and all of it is so different. I look at somebody like Billy Eilish, who made a ton of amazing music. But it's like somebody like her, it would have been nice to be able to see her have some sort of young adulthood

going to clubs and shows and experiencing live music. And instead, she has this seed of potential, and the labels just sink their teeth into her and turn her into a superstar. And she's never able to have any kind of like real life. I agree with everything you just said, but I actually think it's deeper than that. So I mean, if you remember, I mean, I'm, how old are you?

39. 39, okay, so we're closer in age. And do you remember, like, release of Nirvana Nevermind album? Yeah, I mean, I was a little young, but I remember how exciting it was, yeah. It was super exciting. Everyone was talking about it.

Your parents were talking about it. The teachers were worried about it. And it defined a particular moment in American history. And again, Kurt Cobb, Bain, is he a good musician? No. But there was something about him that he just like tapped into a zeitgeist. I'm speaking in generalities, but you know, it's true. I don't think we have that. Now everything is completely fragmented. I think you too served that purpose,

Octum Baby, with the end, which was recorded in Berlin while the wall was coming down. It was like they had just plugged into history at that point. But there are still like, there are things that we get. Let me finish real quick. Yeah, go for it. Now, now, now, we're fragmenting. And there's a lot of cool stuff. Like, someone who's talented can go on SoundCloud and just produce with their synthesizer computer something really great. And I love this. I support

this. But it doesn't speak to us as a population. It doesn't define a moment. And all of the genres that people like are nostalgic. So, I mean, I was talking to a friend of mine who's in his early 20s, and he was saying, oh, yeah, girl, like hipster girls that he dates or whatever, they're listening to Nirvana

in 2023. Oh, yeah. That's cool, I guess. but you're not getting it. Like, you don't understand what 1991 was. And the kind of declineism that was actually kind of setting in, the confusion about the end

of the Cold War, you know, the pro campaign was coming up. We had done pop music to its limit. We need to just shove it in reverse and do just grunge, you know, punk kind of stuff. And I,

we don't have a collective body in that sense. Or is it bad because we're too collective. though, because that's what I wondered too, and that, like, it's just because it's so national and international. I remember my mom and dad used to be in the Air Force, and they would tell me that they

went to, part of, they served over in Okinawa, the base we had in Japan, and they would tell me that when they would go to these countries, as soon as you stepped off base, you're in like a whole other world. It's like, the cultural customs are different, the sounds are different, the people, everything's different. I've traveled, I don't want to say the whole world, I'm into a lot of different countries

now, and everywhere I go, bro, I remember in fucking, I remember this happened in two occasions. It happened in Poland and it happened in Taiwan where I heard people driving up and down the street playing, you remember Gangnam style? Yes, yeah. Yeah, and I'm like, that's kind of funny.

A really popular fucking South Korean song is like, I heard it all the time of the U.S. And all of the culture that we export is now, everybody's kind of like on the same page. And I wonder sometimes, like, does that hurt? And it's ironic and, you know, the lack of sincerity to Gangnam style or whatever that was it,

that was kind of, I mean, surely that was ironic. ironic on some level. Oh, yeah. You know, that whole thing? I mean, and so it's this, like, irony and nostalgia and just these, like, layers of distance between something sincere. Whatever you want to say about Nirvana,

that was sincere music. Sure. You know? But then also, I will say, too, that it's hard to say, like, how much stuff do we have today that we wouldn't have in our current environment, too? So, for instance, like, Kendrick Lamar, it's a really good rap, really great writing.

Like, that's, would he have been able to exist when we only had, like, you know, like gangster rap or, like, West Coast, East Coast, stuff with that kind of writing and that kind of person or like Tyler the creator where you've got like some people that are like by or like other kind of identities like would they have been able to make it in those environments back then too you would know better than I well I mean like when we talk about no longer having a monoculture you're part of the problem because any like the reason why you don't see albums doing the

incredible album sales that used to see 20 years ago or whatever is because you have large chunks of society who are watching fucking destiny reuploads not to mention like even just within hip hop when they look at how bad album sales are these days. I'm like, well, there's all these hip-hop-based podcasts and Twitch streamers and creators, etc., who are out here making content, and I feel like the people, on average, are being trained to

crave conversation more than music. And even a lot of the most, like, ordinary, normie-ass hip-hop consumers that I know have essentially stopped listening to rap probably 90% as much as they used to because now they're consumed by the resulting conversation around the culture.

Which I think plays into my earlier argument about, like, the information over Like back then, I remember back when I was a kid, little younger than you guys, I'm 34, but like new albums being released by certain people. Dude, when there was a fuck, when that, when Meteora came out for fucking Lincoln Park, bro, and the whole ritual behind like going to the store, buying the CD, and you can't listen to it there. You got to fucking drive home. You got to pop into your CD player, and you can't skip for it. You just have to sit there, and you got to listen to it from start to finish. When Kid A came out, radio had albums came out.

Like, these were monumental things. And now it's like, you're inundated with media. and cool shit from everybody everywhere. And I guess it feels a little bit less special. It's harder to take it for, like, when a new Final Fantasy came out, it was like a really big deal in the video game world. And now there's like AAA titles being released, like every month, every two weeks.

And it's like, whatever. Can this type of society be managed? Because, again, like, even, you know, I'm in my mid-40s, I can remember when the big three networks were still a thing. Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings. They were kind of father figures. They could kind of define the general mainststs, opinion of things. I can't name the nightly news broadcasts. I know what you mean. Yeah, I know what you mean.

You know what I could name him, of course, but yeah. I don't even know he's a night broadcast. I think he just has a show, but I know what you mean. Even Anderson Cooper is kind of ironic and he's almost the Seth Meyer's equivalent in a way. Yeah. So we don't have that stability. There was a way to manage a technological society through these big structures like this, like the music industry. Hollywood gave us, Hollywood inflected our dreams. It taught us what our fantasies were. It gave us myths and so on. Now, maybe those are bad myths.

We could talk about that, but it was something that was unifying. And it's now we're in this world of just total fragmentation where it's like I signed up for TikTok just for a little bit. I deleted the app. Good for you. You were being a spyed on? What? The CCP was watching you?

They knew who I was. I could go into this. They figured out exactly who I was. almost immediately, and they were serving me like milfs wearing cowboy boots and Texas hats. So they kind of knew where I was from. And then they started serving me even weirder shit. But they got, they like got into my brain almost immediately. It was, I didn't subscribe to a single person. And they pegged me. It was scary. Yeah. TikTok is those algorithms are on every social. It's so funny because people always like, bring back the feed where we can just see things chronologically.

Like that's what we want. It's like, that's not what you want. I was like, that's not what you want. These algorithms plug into your fucking brain like crazy. And now on Twitter you have the two feeds side by side and you get to see just how boring the chronological order of your friends is. Bring it back. Nobody wants that. Bro, these companies, like, I know guys that work. You don't want chronological feeds.

You want them. But it's something different. But previously it was like Hollywood, CBS, et cetera. They gave you a message. And it was a kind of top down system and you can manage society this way. I think the algorithm is doing something different. and I'm not sure I even quite have the words to describe what's happening.

Because it's getting into your head. It's like finding out the fantasies you wouldn't even admit to. Because it could tell how long you look at the video. I don't know if it's tracking eye movement. I don't know if you guys have figured this out yet. Subscribers don't actually matter that much anymore. Like how many subs the channel has?

Right. Because most people's content that they watch is just on their suggested page. And whether or not you're subscribed to somebody doesn't even necessarily guarantee that a video is put there. Dude, I remember back in 2008, 2010, like, the way to game shit

was to, like, hide keywords and, like, the header of, like, your HTML for, like, the web page and shit. Everything is so sophisticated these days in terms of how stuff figures out. And there's so much. There's so much content. Like, if you wanted to watch a fucking podcast, like, you can follow, like, maybe three or four, whatever, but, like, there's, like, a million hours of every

fucking show that's released all the time. And it's harder to find those monumental releases that everybody used to look forward to. The new fucking radio head album. The new fucking, Kirk Cobain, the new fucking Pink Floyd, or whatever, going back further, the new Beatles shit. Because, yeah, there's just so much shit.

And that's why when it comes time to elect the president, it feels kind of ridiculous. It's like, oh, so we're all supposed to agree on one or two people at this point? Yeah, maybe, yeah. Yeah, Jews. Right. But yeah, but this is a huge problem. I think also with the algorithm, there's that question of, is it figuring out your fantasy

or is it kind of incepting something? Telling you. Yeah. Because I was actually joking with this friend of mine, because we were talking about this exact subject, and I was joking. It's like, why is it giving me all these advertisements for gay cruises? It wasn't, actually. But, you know, yeah.

But so there's that, it's figuring out some inner fantasy. But there's also that notion of it's incepting something into you. And so it's giving you the fantasy. And that's something that Hollywood was really able to do. It certainly did it for me with all these, you know, Indiana Jones and ET and all that kind of stuff. that I still love. I mean, it was able to kind of give you new ways to dream. And I'm wondering, like this algorithm,

it's doing it very differently. You don't go sit down for two hours in a movie theater that's collective with your parents, maybe, or a date. You're just scrolling. Yeah, because everything is so overwhelming. Like, it's really hard for a lot of fucking Zoom. Bro, I had a girl that I was talking to.

It's a 23-year-old girl. And she asked me the question. Or I think I asked her about like, oh, like, is there, I think it was something like, what kind of movies do you like, whatever? And she's like, oh, like, I really like their prestige. Have you ever seen that movie or, like, the clips? I'm like, what the fuck do you mean?

Have I seen the clips? I'm like, what the fuck do you mean when you say, have I seen clips of the movie? You're either asking if I've seen the movie or not. And, like, for a lot of Zoomers, for a lot of people, like, 22, it's hard to even get them to sit down and watch a full movie, let alone, like, without your cell phone.

She's kind of adapting that from us, though, too, because any time you watch a debate or a Twitch conversation or whatever, there'll be a conversation about some piece of content, and somebody will say, I've seen a couple of clips. I didn't watch the whole three-hour thing or whatever. So she thinks that it's normal to say that. Yeah, to see clips of shit.

I know what they're going to clip out of what I just said. Part of what I like about my channel because I still have like the full two or three-hour videos rather than like. But yeah, I mean, now I've gotten into the TikTok game and YouTube shorts and like cutting up short stuff. Yeah, well, it's kind of a weird feeling even doing podcasts these days

because you kind of know that they're going to get more views on TikTok than they ever are on a platform where you're actually being paid for it. Although, to be fair, that those views mean less. I'd rather have 150,000 views. on a YouTube video than a million views on a TikTok clip because I know that the type of engagement I mean, one, you can pay more for it, but like the type

of engagement is a much bigger buy-in from those 150,000 people versus the TikTok people that just like scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, you know? Very true. And it's supposed to be good for your amplification and everything, but a lot of times you wonder. Yeah, well, hopefully you, like if I get like 10 million views on a TikTok video, I hope I've driven at least like,

I guess like 50 or 60 people more to like my long-form content. I can see it sometimes where there's a clip where a girl said that she wanted to get shit on and that was many years ago and every once in a while it'll pop up on TikTok and get 10 million views and then I'll go back and look at the original Vod

and people manage to find it and like 10 million views will equal out to like an extra 50 to 100,000 on the actual YouTube video or you see like big TikTokers will have like 1, 2, 3 million followers and then they'll try to stream and they get like 50 viewers.

Yeah, because the conversion is... Streaming is a much more dedicated connection. Yeah, there's no story, there's no narrative and I think that's a very interesting change in culture where you're looking at maybe a clip of a movie or something like that, or you're looking at just some weird kind of thing where like a girl will just do something kind of silly in her apartment or do a voiceover or all this kind of. There's no narrative.

We've lost, and again, as like humans and maybe even kind of deeper with animals, but certainly as humans, that's how we communicate through narrative. That's how we understand the world. That's how we even understand things scientifically is a kind of story that you can tell. And we're getting that ripped away from us. And I don't even know what the implications of this are going to be for the human experience, but they're going to be huge. It feels like this is the worst comparison I've ever made in a serious conversation in my life. But have you guys, do you guys watch Marvel movies? No. I've seen some. I've heard about them. There was, um, there were all these Marvel movies that were building up all these heroes and characters to these like two grand

huge movies. It was Avengers, or it was Infinity War and Endgame. And I think these are like some of the biggest superhero movies like of all fucking time. But at the end of end game, you had like the completion of like, I think like almost seven different character arcs. And Marvel has been trying really hard releasing new superheroes movie. They call it like phase three, phase four to figure out like their personality or their stories of the arcs afterwards. But after the ending of that one huge conclusion to a lot of the superheroes, the death of some, the finishing of others.

People don't care anymore. And it's just like random superheroes that they don't care about in movies that are like, they're not like horrible, but they're just like meh. And it feels like a bit of an analogy too, but neither of you understand it.

So I was talking to myself. No, I do. It feels like to an analogy to like America where it's like, yeah, we like, we beat communism. We won the Cold War. We landed on the fucking moon. We beat Hitler.

And now we're fighting against or for trans kids, I guess. is like what the whole conversation nationally. Like what was it fucking, was it a, oh, like I just saw Matt Walsh, like, went to fucking Mississippi and he's like, today I stand in proud, honorary talking about this new

anti-transing the kids bill. And I'm like, is this really all conservatives have to talk about today? Like, what the fuck? When you look at somebody like Matt Walsh and it feels like in some ways he's doing like an updated version of what you were doing in 2016, right? Like, what's the feeling in your stomach

when you see what he's putting out there to the world? I feel that I need to do something radically different because the fact is I agree that the vibe of the alt-right has been totally absorbed into conservative ink. And I think that's one of the kind of, in a way, kind of misunderstood things. I think also mainstream people are in a way much more radical than marginal people, which is another, I think J6 was kind of emblematic about that. It was this normie, normies getting together, and next thing you know, they're like overturning the government. I mean, pretty remarkable stuff. But yeah, there's,

there's no doubt that the Matt, while she's not going to touch on race or race realism or the Jewish question or whatever, he's not, he's not going to do that exactly. Although someone like Crowder kind of does. Crowder, I think, has positioned himself as like,

I think he's trying, because Trump, Trump and Trump company is falling apart or has been since the last kind of like, middle elections, oh my God, midterms. And there's like, the daily wire is poised as like that center right.

we want to be the voice of the mainstream modern-day Republican. And I think Crowder is like, well, there's a lot of populace and shit that are from the Trump camp that you guys are ignoring. And I think Crowder wants to be the guy there to absorb all of those types of people. So he's going to sit a bit. So Shapiro won't even touch the Jewish question, obviously because he's fucking Jewish. And he's Ben Shapiro. He'll touch the Jewish question, but in his own. Very, very barely.

But Crowder will definitely, Crowder is never going to come out and be like, you know, Jews are. Yeah, Crowder's never going to come out and be like, Jews are controlling media. But he'll be like, there are a lot of Jews that are in a position. He basically said that. He'll dance around it. Jewish names in Hollywood, I don't know. But he's not even going to go as far right as like Flentes is today.

No, no, he's not going to do Flintzes. But I guess my general point is that situationally, the alt-right was in complete opposition to the conservative movement in 2016. That was the entire cock thing. That was not about liberals. That was 100% about conservative cocks. You know, your losers, your fat. I mean, where did Groypers came from, like, what, bullying Charlie Kirk and shit, right?

Like, that's where a lot of the American First movie came from was fighting, like, establishment conservative. True, but even that was more like, you know, why don't you fulfill your own values? That was actually even more. The alt-right was really anti-conservative. And the best opposition is the one you can control. And the degree to which the conservative movement and the Republican Party has adopted the memes, the, I mean, on the floor of Congress, Ernst from Iowa held up a meme on

the floor with like the gamer. blonde Chad, you know, meme. Like, they do this, and they're able to absorb the all right energy, and it's very successful for them, because they need that kind of radical, angsty, outrageous, even up

to the point of gas chamber memes or something. They've been able to attach that. Trump did it, but he did it in opposition to the Republican establishment. Yeah. So it's very interesting. Because Trump was, I think Trump was really good for recruiting young people, and recruiting, like, fiery like zeal for people in the

Republican Party but he did it in opposition to the Republican establishment so when Trump leaves I don't know if a lot of that zeal kind of like they're bringing it in so when they're trying to but yeah I mean like the Claremont Institute is very interesting in this regard and I don't want to get too technical but I think they have attempted to create

an alt-right almost from central casting so they found all these people who are lesser figures basically and they're kind of fitting them into pegs of the old way. It's hard though when Trump Like my parents, my parents are right or die. Republicans are entire fucking lines. I grew up hardcore Republican.

My mom is Cuban. So very, very right or die Republicans. Yeah. And my parents today, if Trump were to run independent, they would vote for Trump in a heartbeat over any Republican. I think there's still a lot of Trump fans. I would guess like 30 to 40% of Trump's, like loyal people, like people that voted for Trump would probably still vote for independently.

Oh, he could screw over. Absolutely. Because you'd only have to really take what, like 4% of Republicans to destroy the moment? And he'll absolutely take more than that. Yeah. It would be over. It would. But what's interesting, to go back to what I was saying,

I think even the DeSantis campaign, I've seen these murmurings of them trying to bring in these influencer types, Pedro Gonzalez, Jack Murphy, all these kind of weird figures. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry, they're lesser lights. But they're trying to kind of recreate that for a new thing. Almost like almost in a lab they're doing an experiment to reproduce it.

I think a lot of Elon's, purchasing of Twitter has been about that. I mean, Elon has been promoting some pretty, I mean, he's replying with emojis to cat turd. I remember one of his first stories after he bought it. He fucking retweeted that fucking story about Pelosi's husband got attacked by his gay lover and I was like, bro, what the fuck are you saying right now? He eventually deleted it and didn't offer any explanation or anything. Oh, my God.

He's retweeting Medvedev who's playing his own game in the Kremlin. He's starting to be the badass talking about America's going to collapse in the next year. We'll nuke the world if we feel like we're losing. And Elon's like retweeting. It's like, whoa, interesting. I've got to look into this. Like, emoji face. I might be missing something, but I haven't seen that many conservatives lining up to defend Scott Adams after his most recent statements. But Elon responded and said, the media is racist. And pretty much completely took his side, which I don't think anybody expected him to weighing him in such a way. Fucking wild. I don't know. That guys.

Well, okay, let's throw Scott Adams out there. He's just recently had Dilbert removed from hundreds of newspapers because of his statements about black people hating white people and how white people should react by, you know, completely separating themselves and not trying to help black people at all. What's going through your head when you see that story playing out? Well, he's a bit of a dweeb, and I'm not a fan of Dilbert or Scott Adams. But I'll say this, because I have some conflicting feelings about this.

the way he defined black identity as a hate group is contemptible and just weird and wrong that was a very strange poll of it's okay to be white which is a 4chan meme as you know is meant to provoke people and you can understand why black people would be a little offended by a question that they kind of take as insulting

and stupid in the first place right and but there's I think there's another element to it as well because I mean white people have been for a many, many decades now moving to the suburbs, going to a Christian school for the good schools and things like that. I mean, we have segregated in many ways. Now, obviously, Los Angeles maybe is different, of course. Not that different. It's segregated me on a local level. Yeah. And I've lived in New York City for, you know, for a while. I definitely get it.

you could go to places where you walk across a street and you're in completely... You'll still see fucking, and progressives will get on Twitter and be like, I don't know why you guys are so mean towards homeless people. And it's like, okay, because you've never fucking had a homeless guy screaming at you from right fucking behind you. Yeah. Yeah. They're very much segregated themselves.

You know, Montana has two congressmen now. So we have the same amount of congressmen as senators because people are moving in. There's like a big sort going on of a lot of, I guess, red state people from California and Texas. moving to Montana. It's just like one example. So segregation is happening, and yet he's kind of like talking about something that maybe shouldn't be talked about

and articulating white identity in the worst possible way, which is that blacks want to go kill you or something because of a Pew Research poll. So it's kind of weird. I don't have any sympathy for Scott Adams. I just... I also think, going back to what I said earlier

about our brains are bad about parsing information, you've got to figure this out too and I say the same thing for BLM or for racist white people like if blacks wanted to kill white people you'd be seeing a lot of it it wouldn't just be like one or two stories get fucking huge of like the black kid attacking the teacher for the fucking Nintendo Switch

or whatever the fuck I don't know what makes it straight yeah it wouldn't just be one you'd be seen this every single day same thing with like if cops really were out there just wanting to indiscriminate murder black people it wouldn't be like one huge story you know every couple months you'd be seeing it daily right because this is a 330 million person country see there's a ton of people in this country like over 500,000 cops

If those crazy should happen, you see it daily. But again, I think for humans, for our brains, it really only takes like one to three experiences to almost form an immovable stereotype. Like if you had three bad experiences with Chinese people in the course of a year or two, you're going to write off like 2 billion people. And that's just a superhuman thing to do.

He's not even like a teenager who got beat up by a black guy which is kind of understandable that you would have, you know, be racist. He's like a social. media dweeb who like, damn, dude, depending on where you're out on social media, I can understand why you think like fucking people want to murder white

people or whatever. Because holy shit, there are some crazy social media bubbles out there. That's not this is right. That's fucking progressives in crazy shit sometimes. Oh, well that's true. Progressives will do it. But the dissident right is basically doom porn. I mean, that is their identity. It is promoting videos of black high school students

beating up a teacher or a white girl who dated a black guy and is now depicted with black eyes and a child. I remember, and the Trump shit, do you remember there was that video when Trump was running? I think it was a video of like six black people

beating up like one, was it a mentally handicapped white person? Oh, God. And people were like, this is gonna happen to Trump people all over the country gonna start getting killed by black. I was like, bro, what the fuck? Yeah. But I, look, all of these things, you know, there's some factual accuracy to those things,

but it's like, what does it tell you psychologically that you're obsessed about it? I mean, I've ever heard the notion of like, a man who's obsessed with his wife cheating on him. Even if he's correct, he's still pathological. So what I mean by that is like if someone figured out that, if you're obsessed with this notion, oh, she's looking at every guy,

she's going around behind my back and so on. And then you figure out that it is true. Like two years ago she had an affair, you know, in a moment of weakness. Maybe your response to that would be like, well, okay, let's, you know, let's move forward. we can talk about it and so on. But with a pathological person, it can't be okay.

He's got to remain obsessed with it. So the pathology of obsession is there regardless of facts. We spoke about like J.K. Rowling where it's like, I don't think she necessarily makes the worst statement sometimes about trans stuff. I could definitely see a place where I disagree. But God damn, when you're that fucking obsessed with it, it feels like something else is going on. You know, Jesus. Yeah.

Well, yeah. The evangelical preacher who's always talking about. gay people and shit, yeah. You just know, it's not everyone, but you just know that you probably get. Like, yeah, gay bad, we get it. We don't need to hear like the 37th fucking sermon on it. Like, Jesus. Exactly.

Tell me you want to take it up the ass without saying you want to take it up the ass. Like, Jesus, dude. Yeah. So it's like, what is the pathology of the right? And it's not just even the dissident right. I think it's actually a lot of the mainstream right does this exact kind of thing. What is it that you want to watch videos of your race being demeaned and their asses? almost like some like cuckoldry fetish of like, yeah, like,

did you see the lips of TikTok video yesterday where there was this blue-haired teacher talking to fucking kids about like fucking transing the children? I was like, bro, fucking chill. Why are you watching? I was talking to a friend who was saying like construction workers when they'd have an hour off, they're looking at TikTok. And I'm like, what in the hell has gone wrong?

I thought you guys would be, I don't know, like drinking beers or like shooting pool or something. What the fuck you're looking at TikTok? And again, it's that like you dive into that world of, of TikTok and you think every public school teacher is a crazed lunatic child rapist or something. And it's just weird, you know, masochistic indulgence in that. Or like the perfect example was that there was that pupil that was like, what percentage of Americans do you think are trans?

And people said like 80. And it was like 27% of like people. And I'm like, bro, are you fucking wilder? But then I don't even blame people for thinking about that because it's like Leah Thomas. We're talking about it for like three weeks on the news. Republicans are so obsessed with trans people right now. And it's like, yeah, Jesus, like the national conversation, you would think that, like, yeah, half of America is, like, fucking transed out right now or something. And it's like, yeah, it's frustrating.

It's masochistic cucks is the weird thing. Why are you so obsessed with that? The thing, when we talk about all of this, and I reiterate this, every time I have a debate where I feel like this wasn't productive, we didn't talk about anything worth talking about. The reason I get so upset about some of these issues or why I get upset about, like, Matt Walsh signing or not signing a bill, but going and championing that bill in Mississippi about, like, not training the kids, is because we have limited attention and we have limited time to speak. And when you speak on some issues, you ignore other issues. So Matt Walsh going to talk about how he supported some bill in Mississippi to keep kids from getting transling. Mississippi is ranked 50 out of 50 for infant mortality, and it's ranked 50 out of 50 for childhood poverty. If you care about fucking children, well, not fucking children, if you fucking care about children, let me rephrase that,

you fucking care about children, why not speak to these issues? And I'm not saying that you can only talk about one thing at a time, but it's very clear that we're very ideologically driven. and the things we care about. And I feel like sometimes we dedicate so much of our attention to shit that, like, isn't that important. And damn, I would say so much of the way that I view life in American politics is, I hate to say this. Because I never would have said this would have when I was 20. But now that I have a child who's 11 years old, it definitely changes the way that I view a lot of society. I'm like, man, there are so many things that would be cool that I could talk about in favor of enriching my child's life,

especially if I wasn't rich in terms of rich in terms of rich and child my life. And I would just be so upset if every conversation was about fucking trans teachers. Like, Jesus Christ. Like, my kid, like, and I get so sad, like, I get emails initially. They were doing a donation drive for like $400 to buy shit for the classroom. And it's like, the fact that you even have to do that, I live in a wealthy school district. That's fucking insane that you don't have the money to do this. Like, holy shit.

But we're just talking about like grooming teachers and teachers with weird fucking pronouns. I was like, fuck, there are so many more important conversations we should be having. I, I, this gets to what I think has been a theme of this discussion, which is just we've lost this bigger channel of who we are. what we want to assert, and we're endlessly, like, drowning in fragmentation and nonsense. And, yeah, it's where we are, though. Is there a part of you that has some respect for somebody like Matt Walsh or Chris Rufio, who's clearly... I would say that if we take those two and we look at them in comparison to maybe, like,

the career arcs that you and Milo went through in 2016, it's like they have seemed to be quite a bit more effective at pushing their ideas into the mainstream and making this a constant source of conversation, even if their overall disposition might be a little cynical. Definitely, definitely. I mean, yeah, in the sense of Milo or Richard Spencer flaming out or, you know, flying too close to the sun and burning, you know, fair criticism. I would say, though, that Matt Walsh and Rufio have a tremendously greater support system than I did in the sense that... Because they're mainstream on their ideas. They're not pushing boundaries. Right, Matt Walsh and shit, right? Because Milo and Spencer are living at the

edges of like what is acceptable and then oftentimes going beyond it. But like Matt Walsh is like he's fucking employed by the fucking Daily Wire. This is not a guy that's living on the edge of life. He's very safe. And he was like a Daily Wire C-lister for a long time. The fact that they were trying to pay Crowder like $30 million for a YouTube show. I mean, that is totally nuts. To anyone who had any doubts about how valuable you could be within the conservative world, that was a moment where for me, I'm like, oh, okay, so these guys are fucking killing it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, meanwhile, they're,

talking about being canceled by everybody. Right. Crowder shooting down like a crowder. I mean, not that that's a high bar. I mean, it's like, they... He took a stick. He's going to the college campuses trying to have his mind changed. Drew, that was a good idea. I copied that shit. It was a good video. Yeah, but they, so there

is a massive infrastructure that is going to support them. Rufio worked with creationism and younger stuff before. He's now gone into this kind of race-baity critical race theory. But there's a big infrastructure of conservatism behind them. And so, I mean, I can grant them something in the sense that Matt Walsh is articulate, but that's about it. If you were in charge of the books in your child's library, what would be the ones that you'd want to remove? The Bible. Jesus. Wow. Didn't see that going.

No, I say that. That was a bit of a joke. I mean, I am very critical of Abrahamic religion, but I do think in a way you need to read the Bible. I think most Christians haven't read the Bible. They know almost next to nothing about it. You need to read it and really understand it. So that was a joke. But which ones would I remove?

Yeah. It's just, it's a kind of non-issue because it's like, okay, I don't want my, I have a son and daughter. I don't want them reading some of these just kind of weird shit, you know, that Matt Walsh is complaining about. I agree, and they're not going to. But, like, what are, what am I seriously concerned about being that they're kind of pushing preteen? It's watching hardcore pornography on an iPad. That's endlessly more impactful on their psyche than maybe you went to the library and saw a gay book where it's like cartoon characters. And so it's like, let's go after the real thing.

You know, that is a really serious issue. And again, in mid-40s, I can remember internet porn when it was first coming out. And like the page would load slowly. Like, it would take a few minutes. It was almost like a strip tease in a kind of funny way. Half the time it just wouldn't load. You just left waiting.

Well, you didn't get the right video. Your real player opens and it's video. What are you talking about? I was on Kazas. Like, you know, we downloaded videos there. And instead of getting like a, you know, this 30-fucking-minute porn video of some woman's sucking a dick, it ends up being like the whole album of like Lynn Biscuit. And it's like the clean version and it's like, fuck me, I guess.

Yeah. Right. Fuck that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think this is, this kind of stuff is so much more serious than just some library book that they're probably not going to, I mean, they're probably not going to, I mean, they're probably not going to, I mean, I think there's this anxiety. about culture in general and they try to solve this problem

in kind of the dumbest way possible. It can't be solved in schools. Have you ever... I hate to be this guy, but I'll always be this guy. Have you watched The Wire? Yeah. Okay.

Have you seen it? I've never seen The Wire. I'm one of those guys that watches the Wire and so this is the greatest show. I watched it like a couple years ago, so it's still sort of fresh in my mind. So you remember, I think season four was about the schools, right?

Right, yeah. By the time the kid is at school, you're not fixing his problems. Like, you're fucked at that point, especially, God, you've got these teachers making fucking $42,000 a year or whatever, or $38,000 a year, and they're tasked with what is arguably, or almost inarguably, the most important job in our country is educating our children. And they're compensated like shit. They're put in positions.

They're set up to fail in a lot of the times. And they're tasked with, like, fixing problems and creating children who are already, like, fucked before they even get into the classroom. Because of how fuck the family life can be sometimes. No doubt. And the idea that, like, we're going to write culture or do something from the classroom as like, bro, there's, like, so much other things outside of that. Well, look, the grooming issue, I mean, I, perhaps we don't want to talk about this, but, I mean, the grooming issue, so much of this takes place at home.

Sure. And it takes place in really terrible ways that it's not about, it's not even about homosexuality. It's something kind of sicker. But it's like that, that's a real issue. I don't even know how to solve that problem, actually. The grooming that takes place in churches, that's a very serious issue. Don't hear Chris Rufio talk about that. They want to put it on public school teachers or whatever.

So again, it's just they're dealing with this anxiety and they're not solving the problem. I mean, I think the porn issue does have to be solved because we've never lived in a world like this where I can, within 30 seconds, I can have whatever fantasy or nightmare I could ever conceivably imagine, just immediately accessible. What would be a reasonable approach towards, you know, stopping the spread of porn or whatever our society could actually take pride? I think it could come in hand in hand with legalizing prostitution. And so whenever you hear Christians talk about porn, they get it completely wrong.

They basically say things like it inspires rapists, it makes people when it go out and have extramarital affairs. It does the exact opposite, in fact. It's a sex substitute. You watch porn because you're not having sex. If anything, it's going to reduce rape or extramarital affairs. It actually is a study show that it does reduce sexual assault. I don't have it reduced the amount of sex, but when it comes to violent sexual assault

in countries that legalize things like prostitution, those numbers tend to come down. Right. And look, what is the big problem right now? When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was teenage pregnancy. They're having sex at school. Like, what are we going to do about it? What is the issue now? Loneliness.

And those numbers for teenage pregnancies and stuff have fallen. Remember teen pregnancy? Yeah, right. No one's talking about all the fucking time. 16 and pregnant? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, after school special stuff. That's not the issue.

Now, so whether you can prove it or not, there's this major coincidence between ubiquity of porn and sexlessness. It's this grand irony that I don't think we've fully comprehended. It's like we take these problems and we fix them and we make like the newest ones in the funniest fucking way. I think the funniest thing now is I think we're going to get through a point where vaping is more pervasive than fucking cigarette smoking was for teens. I'm addicted to nicotine lozenges. Oh shit. Are you a vapor then?

I'm not a vapor now. I've got one in right now. I need that little nicotine. I got addicted to an anti-smoking aid. It's just kind of funny. Yeah. But I mean, because vaping was originally, or am I inventing this? No, that's true.

Like, get rid of, you can wean off smoking. And now you can vape and sit. And if you look at the graph of, like, teenage cigarette use, it just absolutely plummets. And then the vaping just explodes. And now you've got kids vaping that would have never smoked cigarettes. But now they're vaping and doing tricks and shit. I went to snowboarding the other day for the first time. And I'm waiting at the bottom of the hill for my girl because she fell about 18 fucking times,

covered down the hill. And I see countless people who hit the, bottom of the hill and immediately take off their glove, reach into the pocket, and pull out the vape and just start huffing away on that shit. That has to be some extended fucking metaphor for where we're at in the country today. And it would be impractical for them to smoke a cigarette in that moment, too, so it's

way easier to sort of segment it into their day. This is what we have to think about. It's like the Christian response is kind of anti-sex and anti-life on some level. I mean, they're pro-life, more kids,

proof will multiply. But part of being alive is sensuality. Part of being alive is lusting after things and chasing after girls and girls being excited by boys, and that's who we are. We don't want to end this. So I think we do need a kind of pro-life approach,

and that's why I think porn needs to be curtailed to a great extent, not because it makes you deviant or sexual, but because it replaces sexuality. Like, there was an older porn star that I read he was talking about and he was saying, like, don't worry about me. Like, I'm just fine. Like, I had sex with beautiful women. Like, who's cool?

I worry about the people watching my videos all day who have no experience with another human being. And I've actually never visited a prostitute in my life. But it's a real experience, at least, you know, you're talking. to a human being. You're engaging in life in an act. And so I think you kind of have to like, one hand giveeth and the other taketh away. Like if we're going to try to, if we recognize that pornography is too ubiquitous, it's no longer erotic even. You know, if we recognize that problem, we have to give someone something. We have to say, we want you to have a better life. We're not just taking away your toys, you know. So I think, you know, curtailing pornography

and legalizing prostitution would be a way to do that. I'm just trying to imagine any sort of government official being like, okay, we're taking away the porn or making it harder to access porn, but we've got all these great prostitutes for you guys, and I think in the end of the day, you're going to appreciate us doing this. I don't know if it wasn't politically successful. I feel like I don't know if prostitution is,

I don't know if I agree that porn is a substitute for sex. I know there are a lot of people that masturbate to porn and don't have sex, but I feel like it has more to do with the, I think we're just getting more segregated. And, like, I think that, like, it could be porn, or could they just could be playing, like, League of Legends. Or they could be on TikTok, or they could be at home doing nothing. And also, I would say...

They're definitely not around other people, which is what we were doing when we were young. That's the issue. Because, like, it used to be back in the day, and I would speak about this. Sex was one of the only things to do. That and social media existed as a way to augment your real life, right? Facebook was to check in at fucking parties and see what was going on. It was never a replacement for, like, real life.

Yeah, you would go to the fucking mall, with all your loser fucking friends. You'd walk around and you'd talk to girls, and you'd go to house parties and you'd see people. And regardless of what people think, when men and women are around each other or boys and girls around each other for a long period of time, they're going to start fucking.

It always happens. It happens in a co-worker environments. It happens in schools. It happens in a place where it's not supposed to happen with babysitters and whatever. It happens everywhere. But if you're not around people, you're not fucking.

And it won't. If you're never around girls and you're a guy and you work a job with 90% male coworkers and you're out of school or whatever, you're not going to fuck ever. You can take away all the point in the world and this guy's going to sit at home playing video games. It's even better than the real thing.

So it's... Well, I don't know if I'd say that. It is that... Well, I'm referencing the song, of course. But what I'm saying is that it's even better than the real thing in the sense that it's replacing life as opposed to inspiring life. So it's...

There are many people... Many younger people are suffering from erectile dysfunction. No shot. I don't believe that. No way. Absolutely true. I'll show you data afterward. But... if you just take my point so we can continue the conversation. So they're suffering from erectile dysfunction.

They're suffering certainly from loneliness. It's because when they're with a real girl, you know, look, it's kind of all knees and elbows when you're, maybe not for you, of course. No, we all have virginity stories in the back of our head. It's like extremely awkward. Yeah, exactly. It's the default way for it to be.

Right. It's not going to be what you see in an erotic film or a porn movie or whatever. And you kind of got to get used to that. If you can immediately access like Bukaki gangbangs and just insane stuff, then that girl sitting next to you on the bed is just not so hot. The virtual reality is better than reality. That's like where we are. It's even better than the real thing.

I might just be wrong out of touch. I, bro, I was at fucking 10 years old on fucking Kazal, like trying to find crazy fucking porn. I literally had Bukaki gangbang VHS tapes when I was 12 or 13. 13 years old and it didn't stop me from trying to get some pussy. I'm just saying, I'm not denying that it might have that effect on some people, especially because I was working with such a limited amount of porn that I got bored with it so quickly I had to keep going. Obviously on Porn Hub, you're not going to have that problem. And I wonder if maybe, and I have to, because it's hard to know, like, are you an outlier in somewhere or not?

But, like, yeah, like the first, like, four years that I spent with, like, because the first girl I did in my high school school school, we were together for like three or four years, I think. Like, no amount of porn could have replaced, like, how much fun it was exploring with that sexually. You're preaching to the choir, obviously. I totally agree. I love women. But you've got to look at these big, broad trends. Like, we are not worried about teenage pregnancy. We are worried about people who are 35 and have never in our virgins.

We're worried about people not having friends. Yeah, but I understand, but I think going back to my point. So like that's the trend. Yeah, I think going back to my point, though, again, and I feel like this is another thing that I brought up in the beginning where I say it's fun to have an enemy like pornography. And then the other issue, I feel like it's more amorphous. I feel like our issue is that it is so fucking entertaining to be on our homes today. It's a lot to compete with.

If you want me to go outside, you've got to compete with my video games that I can play that I love. You've got to compete with Netflix. You've got to compete with so many things that I have in my house that are so fucking entertaining to me. And you want me to drive out to a restaurant, buy $15 cocktails, like blah, blah, blah. I don't know if it's a matter of like porn versus pussy or if it's just that like the screens have just gotten so captivating for us. In my office in the backhouse, I have four screens set up, and the other day my power went out, and I felt like I had just been robbed of so much entertainment in that moment, because what I'm left with is either like, oh, I have to go grab one of these books on my bookshelf that I haven't touched in a while and literally light a fucking candle,

or maybe I have like a handful of articles saved on my phone that I could get to load. And I mean, that's pretty dark. And you go to a restaurant today, and I did this with my kid, so I'm just as fucking guilty of this. I'm not castigating. I'm not, you know, chastising parents for it. Like you go into any restaurant today and you look at like every single kid at a table has a fucking iPad

And you'll get these kids that are like three years old And bro, and I watch my son do this, okay? This motherfucker can't even read, okay? He's four. He basically read and he'll take an iPad, okay? And he's like, he's like a fucking, he's like penetrates like 15 paywalls. He's like buying shit.

I'm like, Nathan, how the fuck do you even know how to do this shit? You can't even fucking read the words but he recognized the symbols like, oh my God. And that has to be like fucking wiring kids' brains in insane ways. that like, and I'm so fucking happy because I'm a child of the internet and I grew up on that shit, but I was still very much in the real world because the internet didn't really exist until like 2007, right? Like, they didn't really exist until like the late 2000s.

So I still had a lot of real life experience. And that real life experience is irreplaceable. No amount of video chat or whatever. It's why a podcast today are all like in person because it's way different than doing it on fucking Zoom. But for a lot of young people, like they don't even have that reference point, you know? Like a lot of their socialization happens in Discord rooms on Facebook, on Twitter, on TikTok, on Instagram, and they don't even have the real-life experience of that repertoire built up, such that when they do need to do it, they're like virgins to socializing, right? The sexlessness problem kind of reminds me when we talk about the obesity problem in America

in the sense of like 40% of Americans are overweight. No, it's got to be 40% are obese. I bet like 80% are overweight. Okay, you might be right, obese. And the real problem is that we've created our entire society in such a way that Nobody has to walk. Nobody has to do anything. The easiest food to get your hands on

at any given time is terrible for you. And then when you look at a lot of European cities, they basically demand a lot of physical exercise to just be able to exist in there. Even when I lived in New York City, I was getting so much fucking exercise without trying. Working in this current life that I have, I will get no exercise throughout the day

unless I go out of my way to work out. So we've created a society in which sex is cumbersome and doesn't really come about naturally and to be a healthy, in-shaped person. is going to take a very serious effort. Herculian. See, I was going to say that, but I never know if I should pronounce the U.

Herculian? Herklian or Hercules? Hercules or Hercules? Hercules or Heracles. Yeah. I just try to dance around it. Achilles or Achilles? Yeah, I don't know.

There was like 15 different ways from us. But yeah, no, I agree, yeah, because you're set up to Phil. Right. You really are. And we look at kids, like, it's funny because it's a parent, or it's a child if you remember, like your parents will always tell you,

like, you know, you are who you hang around, garbage in, garbage out. Like, you never, ever, ever would, like, your kid is like, hey, dad, I'm going to go hang out with, like, all these guys that, like, smoke weed and cigarettes do this shit all day. But, like, trust me, like, I'll be, like, a good kid. I'm like, fuck, no, you're not hanging out with those motherfuckers? You're going to hang out with the kid that goes to Sunday school. Because I know that if you hang out with these people long enough, you're going to fucking turn into that, because that's reality. That doesn't stop when you turn 18.

You stick a person who's 30 years old in an environment, like you said, where there is no exercise, there's no walking, we drive everywhere, and the best food available to you is ultra-processed, ultra high in carbs, everything. Like, yeah, of course people are going to get fat. And it's not even, you can't even blame them for it, really, because holy fuck, look at the world we live in, you know? I agree. But being a parent, you do try to put your children in the best situation. Yeah, you have to, because you know that's the only way they're going to succeed.

Totally. So shouldn't we do this for the population for the planet? You know, and that's why it's like you, a leader does need to think of himself as a parent, and you have to think of Americans as children on some level, and they are. And I feel like we don't, again, confront these issues of not, is it liberal or is it legal or is it free or whatever, but what do we actually want? Like, let's talk about ends here. Do you actually want, you know, 12-year-olds obsessed with pornography, playing video games all day, super fat?

Or do you want to kind of, in a way, kind of force them to be free? They're going to say, you've got to get outside, bro. You've got to join a T-Bull team. I'm sorry, it's mandatory now. Like, on some level, we need to start thinking like this. And Americans are just kind of allergic to this notion. It's like an inherent contradiction, like in liberalism, where it's like we really do want people to have the freedom to do whatever they want,

but that probably needs to be constrained at least a little bit. Because left to unlimited. And like, there are some things that, like, and you guys are old enough. I don't know if you guys ever went to Europe in 2010s and experiences. Bro, when I went to Europe in 2012, when I was in Poland a lot, this happened. And then 2013 in Germany, when I'm over there and I'm outside and I smell cigarette smoke, I'm like, holy shit. I'm like sucked back into like being 11 years old at IHOP when you were smoking and non-smoking sections.

I don't know how we did it. I honestly, God, I don't know what the fuck we did. But in the United States, we fucking wipe the fuck out of smoking. And I think that was a good thing, you know? I think it was a really positive. I don't know if you were a smoker and you got offended by that. But I think it was good that we got rid of smoking. You don't smell smoke everywhere.

You go into restaurants. There's not smoking sections. But it would have been bad if we were sending. soldiers into people's homes to steal their Newport cars, right? Sure. Yeah, probably. No, I'd say probably. No, I'd say yes, that would be bad.

But they went about it in a way in which people didn't feel like they were being coerced and it took multiple generations really for this to... And there's still a decent amount of people who smoke. You go to a bar on a Friday night you're going to see a shitload of people smoking and it's actually kind of weird to be like, oh, so this is an activity that's almost exclusively

for people who view themselves through the lens of being a potential smoker, yeah. But it would somehow, but the first thing, the very most important thing, is we identified that it was a problem, and we all agreed we kind of need to do something about it. But it seems really hard to get people to recognize today that certain things are problems that we need to do something about.

Going back to my example for vaccines... You can't get them to take a vaccine? Yeah, going back to my examples of vaccines and masks and everything, the United States, and this is one of the reasons why I was so Trump, I was so angry about Trump kind of dragging his feet initially on the COVID stuff. When the United States puts its mind to something, I do see flashes of like, this is the greatest country in the world, fucking bar none.

because when we are unified on an issue and regardless of how you feel about Ukraine, the way that we approached that was one of those things where we were unified on it, the United States had a mission and a goal and we carried through, we followed through in a way, like, holy fuck, when we put our minds something in the United States, we can do amazing things.

We're mailing out COVID tests everybody, the vaccine shit, and a lot of people don't like the vaccine shit, the PPE that we eventually started to do when we finally took it seriously. If the United States is unified on something, we have so much potential good power that we can throw at a problem. We just can't fucking agree on what any of the fucking problems are anymore, you know?

It's so frustrating. It's so much wasted potential. I agree. And everything, as you were saying, I mean, everything becomes hyper polarized immediately where, you know, a mask wearing is like means you're a liberal. Yeah. Or something like that. You're like a bot.

You're an NBC. Or like sending rockets to Mars is cool. Oh, you want to send a rocket to Mars because you don't care to fix the environment on Earth and you think we can escape to another planet? No, motherfucker. I think it's cool to land shit on Mars. Fuck you. Yeah, it's so frustrating.

As long as we're on the smoking topic, I just want to throw this out there is that now in California you can't buy Newports or you can't buy menthol cigarettes because black people like them too much and they are bad for people so as a result they have been essentially banned and I know multiple

people who are like getting cartons of Newports in the mail and shit and I mean on one hand I guess yeah banning Newports is going to mean less dead black people which is good but at the same time there is a big part of me that's like well if they want to fucking smoke them who the hell are we to be telling them that they can't

There's got to be a comic of like a dude, like two people are on the fucking sidewalk, and one guy's got like a menthol and other who's smoking like weed, and the cop comes up and he bust a dude smoking a menthol cigarette. Like, holy, like some guy, like demolition man sucked from the 80s into today's world are like, bro, you're going to get in trouble for that. The guy's on the fucking, you know, weed, like, yeah, this guy is maybe, but yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Is it the government's job to save people from the stuff that they actually genuinely want to do that.

I think it is. Yeah, it is. That's, we need sugar taxes because, again, left our own device, people are fucking... Bro, like, even I'm fucking... If you put me in my house and I've got nothing to... I'll fucking masturbate for 12 hours. I won't fucking do anything

if I don't have a job. If I don't got a fucking stream I don't have a shit to do, I'll sit around and it'll jerk up all day and do nothing. I'd like to see your analytics during that 12 hour period. Like, what's your heart rate

like during that? I don't know if I could handle that. It's probably not even high. It's like, oh... Could you wear the loop-in? I want to know what's going on in your body during that. But like, we need...

And it's funny because, fuck, everybody knows this and also, simultaneously, everything pretends like it's not true. I'll bully conservatives. Conservatives will do this thing where it's like, fuck college, don't go to school, it's not important, blah, blah, blah, blah. Also, fuck the elites.

The elites are rigging the system. And it's like, what do the elites do with all their fucking kids? They all send them to the best fucking schools. Do you think that Warren Buffett is sending his kids to like, you know, like a two-year college to become an electrician report? No, these guys are all going to Ivy League. What was the scandal like fucking five years ago where a whole bunch

of white people were trying to rig these schools to get their kids into them? Because you know, and what do successful people always say when you're successful? You know this. I'm sure we all know this at this point. Surround yourself with successful people, right? You never, what do you say to drug addicts when they get out of rehab? Stop hanging out with your druggie friends.

We have to work to create a better environment because people will only succeed as much as their environment allows them to, except for some truly exceptional individuals. But those guys are exceptional because they are the exception. It's not the norm. You put people in shitty environments. They're going to be shitty people. It's not even their fault. So yeah, if the government can do fucking anything,

it should be to kind of like gently massage and guide us and like a relatively positive direction. And if you want to jerk off or smoke a menthol every now and then, fine, but there should be a bit of friction there. Whether it's a fucking credit card for a porn site or whether it's, you know, an extra 20 bucks for a syn tax on cigarettes, but something to kind of like guide you in the right direction. But just the taxes on the cigarettes clearly wasn't working

because they decided to eliminate the flavors out here. Taxes will work. There's got to be higher. Yeah, they have $20 packs of cigarettes in New York City. Damn. But they also have legal weed in New York City now too. But you could get a pack of cigarettes for like $4 in a lot of the country, which is pretty unreal. God, I remember my grandma used to buy cartons.

Do you remember those? Did you ever buy cartons? Oh, yeah. I think it was like $20 for like a whole, for a full, it was like $10 or $12. They were like $20 because I used to work at the grocery store and steal them and sell them at school. I remember when my great grandmothers, I heard about this, of course. She was pulled the mic in a little. Oh, I'm sorry.

She was quite fond of Coca-Cola in the 1920s. Something about it. Coke, the Coca-Cola. Yeah. Yeah. Here's one thing I just want to throw out. Richard, how closely are you paying attention to the Manistphere at all? And do you feel like the Manusphere speaks to a lot of the societal ills

that we've been discussing? What role does it play? Yeah, I mean, I think it is addressing something real and offering a very bad solution in general. And I think someone like Andrew Tate is just the full-on expression of of this kind of thing. It's addressing the loneliness. I think it's also kind of, you know, it's funny because it's like no Chad ever trained to be a Chad. He might have gotten some obuncular advice here and there, but he just does, you know? You just, he knows, like, how to go to a

woman and make, you know, have that right combination of flattery and a little negativity, tough guy stuff, I'm in control. He knows how to seduce a woman. He doesn't need to be trained. And it's, these kind of autistic nerds who like turn it into an actual science and that they're going to pick up women. I mean, that's always something that struck me as very odd. But no, I don't, I think it goes back to kind of what we were talking about before is it's just dwelling on extreme negativity about women thinking of them as all race mixing sluts or whatever. They're taking your advice. They have the enemy. They need the enemy. It's so adversarial. All the red pill content is so fucking adversarial.

These are your other halves, not your fucking enemies. It's less adversarial than it is almost like masochist and nihilistic. I don't know. I never liked the manisphir. The one thing that I don't like about a lot of the modern dating shit is it feels like everything is zero sum. If you're winning, she's losing

and you better not fucking lose. So that's like the whole setup on everything. Like how to trick girls out of the most pussy possible, how to misrepresent, whatever. Like girls want this because they're trying to fucking make you mess. We're going to hold them in check and blah, blah, blah. I was like, damn, like, notice that none of the Redpool guys, or at least none of the ones that I've seen,

they never talk about relationships. It's exclusively about hooking up a sex. And then maybe, when they talk about a relationship, we're talking about how important it's to date, like, five girls at once. But it's like, how do you maintain, like, what do you do six months into a relationship when, like, the honeymoon phase has gone? Like, I've never heard a Red Pillar ever in my life talk about this.

It feels like they have to get to that eventually, right? I don't know, do they? Do any of them even fucking date? They don't need to. And their appeal, I mean, like, Andrew Tate's audience was in cells. I mean, this is the other, like, grand irony of the situation where it's a bunch of people almost using him as, like, a mascot or spectator sport about being ultra-masculine.

And you've got these guys making like $25,000 a year talking about how, like, yeah, I'm going to date four women at once because no one woman is going to hold him down because that's our reproductive strategy. And it's like, bro, you're a fucking virgin. What the fuck are you talking about? When you hear the stories about kids in elementary schools and shit or saying terrible things to girls in school

because they listen to too much, that's when it does get kind of scary. It's like, oh, so this shit really is appealing to, like, little boys. And a lot of guys in your... I get women that email me who are, like, paranoid. That, like, I've had some that have broken up with boyfriends that have gotten obsessed with some of the Andrew Tate stuff. And then I've got women that have emailed me who are, like,

ultra-paranoid now, especially black women, that, like, when they're on dates and shit, they don't know if they're significant other is, like, super bought into, like, Red Pill or Tate shit. And, like, they'll say one thing, and all of a sudden, like, fuck, this guy's like... The girls are coming together to, like, figure out what the red flag, are for this guy being an Indutate

Acquite or whatever. And like the other day my girl's assistant went on a date and she told my girl afterwards that the guy on the first date asked her what her body count was. And I was like, I don't think that that was ever a thing my entire life. I think that is 100% the byproduct of this new world we live in. And that's pretty fucking amazing that this guy

didn't think that asking that question was going to hurt his team. It was getting late. Like we had growing up, I think we had like, there were sluts and horrors, like all this. steals sleeps around. I definitely wanted to know, but I didn't think that it was my right to ask. Sure. Yeah. And I don't think there was quite the obsession with like, if you've had more than like two dicks in you, you're like undatable. But I don't, maybe I... No, and a lot of ways it does remind me of the conversations that I was having when I was like 14. I was like, oh, she's fucked eight guys. She's a fucking whore or whatever. And that basically is what you hear on a lot of Manistphere podcast these days. Yeah, weird obsession with purity as well. Like it's not, not big of evil. But they can fuck as many people as they want always. They're not fucking anyone.

I think a lot of them aren't. No, that's the, again, the thing about it, they're not, they're virgin. It's just, it's, because the way that they talk about women sometimes, I, oh, they have no earthly idea what it's like. I've had two different red, Pearl did this to me on a show, and fucking Myron and Frist said me on the show

where they're like, I think that actually women like it when you cheat on them, because it makes them more competitive. What the fuck are you talking about? There's no way you've ever dated women before and you think this shit. I can't believe it. When they find out, they drive you up a trade, they do not like it, but.

Or they talk about how like, oh, high value men, their women understand that their man is going to be with a lot of different women. I was like, what the fucking is? From my experience, that is absurd. There's no way. There's no way. Of millionaires and huge stars. And what is the number one thing that's going to cause them to break up or cause friction in their relationship?

It's them cheating. And yeah, maybe you could pull it off if you're dating like a dental technician and your fucking massive NBA player or something. She could, she could swallow it up. If you're digging down. She's probably not going to want to. And it's probably not going to really be that fun or have like a positive effect. get revenge on you as well. Yeah, she'll figure out a way. Yeah. But I think the, the interesting thing is where we are, is like, in many ways, what we're experiencing now is a kind of return to nature.

So if you talk to Fuentes or something, they would depict monogamy in marriage as like the natural order. And, you know, this is, you know, there's one man for every woman and all that kind of stuff. That's not the natural order at all. I mean, in, in terms of nature, most men are not going to reproduce. It's actually going to be 80 to 90% of males that don't reproduce. No, shot, I don't think that's true. 80 to 90? Absolutely. No way. Yes, way. We can talk about this afterward, but if you just go with me in my argument. Okay. So there's this David Adamborough video that I remember seeing of, he said something like, you know, what you're about to see is a full-on slaughter bench. And it was this field of bees. And the female bees

would come and present themselves from mating, and swarms, hundreds of thousands of bees would descend upon them, and they would get into this massive death orgy where 99% of them would perish fighting to get to the woman. And they don't even know who won in a way because all of the male bees are dead. Now, that's an extreme example,

but it's not unlike deer crashing, rams crashing into each other, et cetera, We, again, things like antlers and so on, this is all about fighting other men for women. And not everyone gets to have a woman. Only the best do. Most of the male population is not going to reproduce themselves. But then that would be most of the female population is not reproducing either. Because it's not like there's a ton of men that are all having sex with like tons of women.

Well, yeah, but it, well, I mean, but it is like asymmetrical. I mean, if you've ever gone hunting, you don't want to kill. a female pheasant, let's say, that's gray. You actually go after the males only. If you're picking crabs out of the ocean, you leave the females there. It's a more valuable resource. Sure, I understand that, but for humans, it's not like

it's normal that, like, one husband has two wives and then they all have kids together. It is, though. I mean, in the sense of, in terms of class dynamics, things have been totally reversed. In terms of class dynamics previously, absolutely people were making love with the peasantry

and spreading their genes that way. And many peasant men in particular going... There might have been some heroms and stuff by like the aristocracy and shit, but I think that for... Not necessarily talking harems. I'm talking upper classes were outbreeding lower classes and the upper class, that notion of

a prima nocta or something like that, that was, it's a myth but it's kind of real in the sense that upper people were mating with lower orders and outbreeding the lower orders and replacing them. So what happened, I mean there's been a lot of

studies with this, but like what happened in previous times was downward mobility. So richer, more intelligent, aristocratic people were outbreeding the lower orders. And so they would move down in social status. And that's something we don't think about. We're all like, my grandfather's a coal miner and now I'm going to college or whatever. The difference there would be my grandfather was king and now I'm a farmer or a shop owner. There's downward mobility. So it was a kind of great replacement of sorts that was occurring throughout history and I think it was probably ultimately beneficial

even if it is cruel and unfair. You can't just let him dog whistle like that. With great replacement? Somebody's gonna call it out in the conference. No, I feel like this isn't true but I don't have the numbers on hand. I feel like... Gregory Clark has written a few books on this.

He's looked in terms of surnames. I just can't believe that 90% of men historically haven't reproduced. I'm not claiming that. I'm saying in nature, in nature for animals and shit I could understand. You will have examples of that. And in the human population, you'll have something closer to that. Pure monogamy has never been natural.

Sure. In the way that we had it in the mid-20th century. Yeah, I understand that. But I think that humans are unique and that our reproductive realities are a bit different than most mammals. And that, one, our women are pregnant for a long time. Right. And two, our offspring are fucking worthless. for like years. Yes.

Like you see like baby kittens and shit are walking, I think on, is it day one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're walking immediately. And they get separated from the mother. Yeah, and our babies, if you like poke their skull, their fucking brains will cave in when they come out of the fucking one.

We've got to be careful. I feel like that dynamic biologically kind of necessitated that there had to, like, you couldn't just fuck like 20 women and then walk away because then the women are going to die and the kids are going to die. You had to have men like taking care of like the women like naturally, otherwise it just wouldn't work.

There's no doubt that. there's a huge spectrum when it comes to this. And we're way over here. Like the amount, you have to put in at least a decade of investment into an offspring. Yeah. In nature, that just wouldn't make sense. Yeah, by decade they're dead. Yeah.

Right, exactly. There's no doubt what you're saying is true. But all I'm saying is even within that spectrum, like pure monogamy as we had it in the 20th century is not really a thing, globally speaking. Sure. Most men, a lot of men are going to lose. out on this. And I feel like we've returned to this state of affairs through crazy means. Like in many ways, we've returned to it through feminism in this weird way, which is extremely picky. They're so picky, they hate men, you know, kind of thing. But all of that is, is a kind of

shit test or challenge to win them over. Like, they're maybe being too picky for their own good, but they are being picky. And that's the, that is a kind of natural order of things. So I think through, like, this postmodern, like, weird stuff we're going through, there are going to be some, there's going to be a selection process for certain people. You know, that Chelsea Handler video that I bet you guys saw a few weeks ago, it wasn't that funny and it was ultimately just kind of sad, where she's just saying, like, I masturbated this morning and I'm going on a Tinder date and I'm going to rewatch the Obama biopic or whatever.

There's just something deeply sad about it. The fact is there aren't going to be more Chelsea handlers. Like she's, she missed it. She missed the boat. And there are going to be different people are engaging in breeding who made the boat. And so a lot of the alpha types, guys who are completely reckless, knocking up women left and right, et cetera,

whatever you want to say about them, they are going to survive. Hyper religious, you know, Christian people, like they are going to have a future. Rich people who maybe want a trophy wife and two trophy kids, whatever you want to say about it, they're going to have a future. So I think we're in this bottleneck of reproduction, and we're hearing this like screams from the people who are getting left behind.

And it's the in-cell community. It's the people attracted to Andrew Tate in the Manosphere. It's the people shooting up a massage parlor. Like there's a lot of pain going on because we are in a, really intense bottleneck right now. Yeah, I agree. I don't know if I'm going to go down a whole fucking two hours of Red Pill conversations.

I guess my broadest sense, I feel like, this is something I've talked about a lot because I've been a lot of Red Bull content lately. I feel like there are two really unique things that are happening right now for women. One is they have control over their reproduction, so they have access to sex

without it being a permanent affair. And two, they're actually making money now, a lot of money. So they don't need a man for a paycheck. I think something that's been really challenging for men is women have done a really good job at being feminine, getting feminine, learning all that shit in the household, but now they've grown up

and they've assumed all of the traditionally masculine roles as well. And the value proposition that the average man now has for a woman is under threat. Before it was like, I earn money. Do you want to get married? Because you're not going to earn any money. And if you want to have a family

or do anything in life, you basically need to be attached to me because I have a paycheck. And now when a woman has a paycheck, like what is the value proposition from an average man, right? She can fuck. It's not hard to get sex.

And she can do it without even getting pregnant, so she doesn't need you to be married over sex. And she's working. So, like, if you have an average job, like, you need more than that. And I think men have had a really hard time catching up in that women have grown and evolved,

whether you can blame affirmative action or pushing them or whatever. The reality is that women have evolved so much. And I think men are still kind of stuck in this, like, 60s, 70s mindset where it's like... Women are more tuned to the world. You know, like, men's fashions

might take, like, a decade or two to change. Women's fashions will change in, like, two weeks. Sure, and we're just, you're finding out that women are... They're more tuned. They can kind of evolve more. But there's not, it's, it's a hard push to get like, because how do you encourage men to, like, level up to the same amount?

Because, like, truly, men, it even sounds gay to say, even when I say. Like, men need to grapple with, like, the feminine side of, like, being able to have good conversations, being emotionally responsive and intelligent, being emotionally, being emotionally, and intelligent, being emotionally, and it's like, bro, being able to provide, like, a good sounding board. Like, like, these are the things that a lot of women, like, truly value in relationships. But when you go online, what's the dating advice? Be more masculine. Be more threatening. And it's like, bro, that's going to work for, like, one percent of the ultra-manman. guys. But it's not like the average guy

is not masculine enough to pick a woman. Like a woman can go and fuck a, like if she wants to fuck an outfit dog, she can get on Tinder and do that. And yeah, I feel like we have a really hard time right now getting men to catch up. Also because it's just not politically popular or viable to talk about helping men. Because fuck men. That's like what society says,

right? So when women will start to out-earn men, they will do it because they're killing us in college. In some communities they're starting to. They're killing us in college. And the idea I've had school, faculty. is more suited to them. Yeah, because a lot of it is...

Multitasking, the office stuff. And service work and, like, communicating with humans and stuff. I think men can do it, but we're just not socially conditioned to do it. Like, traditionally, we thought that women can't do math. They're not going to succeed in school. They're not going to do these things. But as soon as we, like, cater to the... Like, we don't even change the environment.

We just, like, cater to women a little bit more. Now we find out, well, fuck, maybe women are actually better at school than men. Like, if you went to school... I don't know if you guys ever had this, but if you're asking somebody for notes, bro, if you ask a guy for notes, you're getting some fucking, like... like schizoid Jeffrey Dahmer, like, I can't fucking read this shit.

And then you ask girls and it's like, oh, yeah. And you've got like bookmarked sections with like the highlighters. I remember having that experience constantly in school. Just like looking at the girl next to me's homework and being like, oh, this was a lot easier for you to like organize your thoughts and to really smooth out this whole process. Whereas for me to even sit down for an hour and work at my school where he's like pulling the fucking teeth. I'm actually crying. I was really good at math in high school. I did a lot of calculus.

And even I cried in grade. school, I don't want to sit and do 30 fucking hours of math, because it's boring to me. Whereas women have no problem, like, so they're like, oh, yeah, I'll do. Because I think the temperament is a little different. But regardless, what I'm saying is that, like, we've learned this. Women are growing and evolving and changing in all these ways, and we kind of left men behind. We're not, like, helping

men, like, figure it out. It's politically unpopular to talk about it. And the only people giving advice, in my opinion, are giving dog shit advice to do it. And it's like a fucky world. It's absolutely true. I think this might be changing a little bit. I've heard of even, like, so-called redshirting boys putting them in lower school.

a lot later. So putting them at lower school in like H-7, like in kindergarten age seven, just because we do have different, I mean, again, it's like politically incorrect to say that men and women have different brains, but like there's just a different evolution, kind of later blooming. The fact that this is being talked about in mainstream is pretty good. But I think it's also kind of a band-aid on the bigger problem of like being a lumberjack dude, that's, there are jobs like that. There are jobs like that where I live, no doubt. But it's largely a vestige of the past. Exactly.

And you're not, you're not, you don't have a value. Yeah, why does a woman? I don't need a lumberjack. I work at fucking HR block. Like, I make money. Yeah, and I have the, and then like these Red Pill guys come like, don't you want somebody to protect you?

It's like, I can call the fucking cops. There's very little to be protected from me. And what is the biggest threat to a woman in the household? It's a fucking intimate partner. Yeah, it's like Jesus, you got to have more than that, bro. Yeah. But it's hard.

But again, like I said, you even sound gay saying it, like being more emotional. And it's like, no, no, women don't want that. They want a guy that's... Again, if you can hit the top 1% of masculinity, the value proposition is there. If you're a shredded fucking bodybuilder who's like charismatic and you're earning, you know,

six-figure salary, then sure, you could do it. But for 99% of your audience, are getting left in the fucking dust. They're not going to do that. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That advice is horrible. Yeah, no doubt.

You don't... Acting like Andrew Tate and you're a schlub. Only works if you're Andrew Tate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think, again, It's just that bigger issue of like, how do we construct a world where that type of man is going to be valued?

Because we're going to have, whether we like it or not, we're going to have those types of men. And I do want to value them. I think there's something, like, I might not even be their best friend or something, but I like the fact that they're like dudes who are cool and manly, you know, drink beer and watch football. I like, I like it. I think we need that. And so it's kind of like, what can we do for them? That, you know, obviously stop demeaning them, but like what can we do economically and socially for them?

I think it's a huge question. Have you seen the fucking, God, there's some woman on Twitter. I think she's on TikTok, but I see her blowing up on Twitter, where she's putting out videos of her being, like, traditionally feminine, like taking care of the houses, and progressives are fucking losing their mind. Calling this woman, like, all sorts of things. The trad mom. Yeah, yeah.

You're enforcing hierarchies and oppressive traditional generals. I kind of hate those two, though, because it's like the ultimate pick-me kind of thing. But fuck, I mean, if people want to do what they want to do, let them do what they want to do. I agree, but it's like using your life, it's like you're not contributing something to the conversation. You are a mascot for something. I mean, it's just the other end of the girl who's like, I don't ever shave my armpits. And I think guys should accept me even if I'm an asshole. I keep bringing up the Trad Mom identity to different like OnlyFans girls.

and stuff, and I am kind of surprised by how positive the reaction I get to it is, and usually it's either, yeah, I could imagine myself being on that kind of level in a few years, or I can imagine myself doing that right now, or I'm just making too much money right now, but at some point I could see myself just wanting to settle down to be a mom. And I think, if anything, the experience of being the social media only fans creators, probably like really showing women that this is not forever, and that there's probably a version of domestication that you would rather be a part of. Sure. Hmm.

Yeah. Well. We just ran out of things to say, huh? I mean, I'm pretty sure you keep it going for like eight hours if you wanted, but. No, I mean, is there anything pressing that kind of stands out to you that we might want to touch on? Could I do this? Sure. I need to take a quick bathroom break.

Great idea, yeah. And, yeah, maybe, but I'll come back with some, you know, amazing stuff. Okay, we're back from our obligatory urinary break. Anything else that we should, you had time to think? guess while you were urinating. Anything else? God? Heard about them.

Yeah. Not a big fan. I'm seeing the blue hair. I'm thinking he's not so popular on the side of the table. Yeah. What do you think about God in this day and age? As an Apolloist. Right.

Is that how we say it? Apolloist is what we're going with. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the death of God is something that's extremely important, and I think relates to almost everything. that we've talked about. So when Nietzsche announced God is dead, he doesn't say that himself. He kind of puts it in the mouth of this madman who's holding up a lantern in the middle of the day

and everyone's ignoring him or laughing at him. And he's in a way kind of gone crazy. There's another point in Zarathustra. He says, you know, Zarathustra says, you know, I can't believe they don't know that God is dead. So, I mean, even in the 19th century, it was an assumed fact that the Judeo-Christian God doesn't work anymore. And I think we've kind of just been living in the wake of that. I think, you know, in Europe, you'll have societies that are majority atheists at this point, which is really remarkable. And I think genuinely hasn't happened before.

America, we're kind of behind that for some interesting historical reasons. But yeah, I mean, I'm fascinated by what this actually means for the world and society and whether we can really have a society where we don't have a connection to the transcendent and so on. So, I mean, I think some of the impulse behind what Mark Brahmin and I are doing is to understand the problems of Abrahamic religions, understand. why they're failing, and then attempt to see what has worked, like what has been able to generate civilization, higher civilization, what is life affirming and not life denying? Where can

we have a sensual existence within that frame? But I think it, you know, it is under the presumption that religion is necessary. I mean, we're not homo sapiens, we're like homo-religiosis. We need some kind of connection to something. And without it, there's despair or there's just branching off into total insanity. And so I think so much of contemporary postmodern world is grasping for something. It's Marianne Williamson. It's the Trump, like literally. It's hyperfundamentalism.

It's Eastern religion. But it's all this grasping for need of being a part of something bigger than yourself. So I don't know. I mean, these are just some basic things to throw out there. I don't know what you guys think. Am I supposed to have a response to that? I mean, I feel like, yeah, I think, I guess I take a little bit of an existential approach to this

in that, like, I agree that we need meaning from somewhere. I feel like we can invent that meaning, and then we can live for that meaning without it being necessarily theological in nature. I know that historically we've spent a lot of time. God is a very easy kind of, like, blueprint to this is what I live for, this is how I structure my family,

this is where my morals come from. I feel like people are capable of aspiring to more that we can find meaning in the things that we enjoy, the people around us, the hobbies that we do. Hobbies? Yeah, hobbies. Well, I mean, in comparison to something that's divine, I get more meaning out of some of the most transcendental events

I've ever done in my entire life, more than the best sex, more than the coolest mass I went to as a Catholic, has actually been in a room with friends improvising for hours on keyboard while they're playing other instruments. These are some of the most connected, I feel, to other people and to my humanity. We've got, like, a language that we've invented for art that is hitting our ears in a new way and we're creating something together. And that feeling, and if you're a musician, you've done it, you know it. The feeling of jamming out with people, the feeling of improvising, creating something new in doing that is such a, connected experience is so cool. Hobbies can be like a lame thing like I play League of Legends or hobbies can be like really fun things that you pour your heart and your soul into.

Like artists, like all the great artists of, you know, the Da Vinci's and the musicians that we've talked about here. You know, your Nirvana's, all of this. Like these people, these are hobbies. I guess maybe hobby is like a, maybe art should be a better way to refer to it to. But like, yeah, I think that we should be able to find things in our life that give us meaning and purpose and then pour time into those things and then find a way to show those things with other people. Personally, that's where I find the most meaning in my life. That could take the form of music. It could take the form of intellectual or philosophical discussions. But I think that having these things that we pour time into that we can use to connect to others,

for me is like the ultimate human experience. I resonate with so much of what you just said, but I mean, isn't that a part of religion? I mean, a religion isn't just coming up with some, like, abstract proof that God exists. No, I agree. It's not Aquinas's arguments for God. Yeah, I agree. A religion is a really good... That's why I said religion is a good blueprint for that. I think that people have thrown away the blueprint

and they didn't make anything else. So you get a lot of people that are kind of like wandering in this spiritual void because we didn't make anything to replace church. We just got rid of the theology and the religion and we didn't keep all of the rituals, which I think is a problem for atheists or agnostics or just non-spiritual,

non-religious, non-practicing people in general. But I think it can be found. I think you can find meaning in your life. You can find ways to structure your life without religion, but we need to create a new guidebook or have people intentionally and deliberately meditate on that process because you're not going to find it without thinking about it. But, well, you could in the past with religion

because you didn't have to think about it because you were born into a religion, and then all the meaning and purposes is kind of like preconceived and constructed for you. But without that, you have to spend some deliberate time searching, and most people just are never really trained or taught how to do that. Well, it's too much to ask for humanity to come up with the right solution all in their own as well.

I mean, there has to be some kind of guiding structure to lead them there. And I think that's what religion is about. There's so much baggage. Well, yeah, I mean, there's this famous phrase that I'm sure you heard as an atheist from, I think it was a German Jewish historian or something, but it was like a, you know, religious people say that they can turn a bad person good. But it's actually true that religion can make a good person do bad things. You know, it's like how else could you inspire someone to torture a wit?

or invade the evil heathens across the border or something without that. I feel like there's like a hitching's quote where it's like, good people will do good things, bad people will do bad things, but for a good person to do bad things, it takes a religion or something. Right, I bet you was paraphrasing the same idea. But isn't there a lesson in there? Because we need people to do bad things. And if we don't do the bad things, then other people are going to do the bad things.

I feel like you really need a villain in society is what you feel like you're feeling. I just super reject. I hope we don't need to. Maybe I'm idealistic. Well, I definitely think it seems clear. If I listen to him, it's useful. It's just should we then create one? Yeah.

And I understand that, like, the need for having, like, imagine watching, like, what would a movie be without an antagonist? Right. Like, can that exist? I would like to think so for. Oh, goodness. What have you just had no one to beef with for six months on stream? Sounds like a pretty boring six months, right? This is what I like.

James Bond didn't have a villain. He's just basically drinking martinis. Just walking around looking cool. I wish that we can just manage conflict in a better way. I personally, I manage conflict very well. I can go very hard on someone, and at the end, we're chilling cool. But it feels like people just lack the ability to do that. And seeing the actual...

And seeing you be so comfortable having conversations with people like Pointer's or whoever is why I feel comfortable having a conversation with Richard, whereas before I felt like I had been kind of bamboozled into thinking, like, oh, people have dangerous ideas and you can't platform people or whatever, which seems kind of stupid having spent, like, the last year or so watching you go to war, with all kinds of people that you disagree with on things and finding common ground with them. Yeah, there's these five little things

that I figured out politically that remain consistent throughout my life. And one of those things is you have to assume, these are like, if you don't start from these positions, you're lost. The number one assumption that you make is all people are fundamentally trying to do the best thing.

If you start from a foundation of like, that guy's fucking evil, then you're lost. Like in America, conservatives want America to be the best version it can be. And I think progressives do too, and communists and Nazis and everything. They really want, they think they're doing the best.

And when you start from there, you can start to talk to people for real. But if you start from a position, if he just wants to fucking ruin the country, well, how the fuck are you going to have a conversation? Why would you even want to have a conversation, you know? It's kind of like I say that, like, January 6th is a good thing. You really believe the election was stolen, right? You should be out there protesting and trying to fight back. Or, like, killing abortion doctors is good if you really believe that abortion is murdering an infant, right?

But the problem is that, like, the reason why we disagree on this is because there's some foundational difference of, like, you know, what epistemically even is true. What is a fact? What is that? But yeah, you have to start from that foundation that everybody is good and they're trying to do the right thing because if we start any other place, yeah, you're not going to talk to anybody in society necessarily fucking falls apart. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree.

But again, religion can bring people together in that sense. I was saying, like, religion is consensual force as contradictory as that seem. It's a way of hurting and giving people a high and a low and a left and a right that they immediately understand. And I don't think humans can function without such a structure, and we will find a structure in some way if it's not given us through a value system. And so it raises a bigger question of what kind of value system you want. And I think Christianity gets a lot of credit in a way because of leftist or feminist or just degeneration of society and the things of, you know, this is, this is wholesome and real, it's about families and so on. And I get that. And I think it has kind of glommed onto that.

But there's the bigger question of what it actually means to be a Christian. You know, what does it really mean for that figure from the Old Testament, Yahweh, to be the chief. God who you fear. What does it really mean to worship a dying God on a cross? In the ancient world, Christians were accused of being atheist in a way. They had gotten, they had, by Celsius, they'd gotten away from the deities that spoke to people immediately represented their tribe or represented higher values of primordial principles. They were kind of worshiping some kind of on some level, some abstract thing or a dying God, which is impossible in the mind of the ancient world. You have to interrogate, like, what is Christianity?

What kind of system is it leading you towards? This is what I like about Christianity, I guess, is that, like, I can find a way in Christianity to make it compatible with your incestant need for a villain in a way that I think is healthy. So, if you're not going to read the Bible, at least read one of the Gospels. Because I feel like 93% of what happens in the Gospels

people should generally be on board with. Be nice people, don't judge people, treat your neighbor well. It's pretty basic shit. I don't think Jesus is out there saying just some shit, like, you know, like John chapter 7, verse 42, we need to abolish the Federal Reserve for Bitcoin. Okay, he's not talking about a bunch of like really controversial shit. Moses was, like, pretty reasonable. The thing that I like about the framing of Christianity in terms of the villain. Is, well, is what?

I mean, Jesus, I respect maybe Jesus more than you do. I think Jesus was kind of beyond good and evil in a weird way. Well, but the evil that they talk about. He comes with a sword. He comes to divide you. He comes to divide you from your own parents, he says. No, well, hold on. Only if the parents stand in opposition to God, though.

But real quick, let me just finish your real quick thing. I think that for Christianity, the evil, Satan, is a metaphorical idea that's represented in terms of the division that exists within us, that the enemy or the adversary we seek to vanquish is the thing inside of us that alienates us from our idealized form, which is God. The idea that like a sinless person who is capable of respecting their neighbors or parents and living a good and chased life, the evil villain that we're constantly fighting against is sin or the representation of that is Satan. We don't actually need other people's enemies for that to be like the thing that we have to

fight against, right? Like the antagonist can exist within sight of us, which I think is a healthier way to view antagonists than like needing another nation, Oceania or a race or whatever. Right. Well, I think you're giving a rather euphemistic notion of all these things. I mean, look, you're born in sin. There is some profound thing that was brought into the world through Judaism of hating the body, in the sense of just your, the body itself is a problem, sensuality itself is a problem.

I mean, you're a sinner whether you like it or not. There's an attack on things that are physical and beautiful and manifest in the world. Which is... It's also a religion that, at least in the Christian form, debatable Judaism, but it is offering your best life later on. It's offering an afterlife that you will experience these kinds of things. I think there are actually some really negative effects. I think that the attack on the body, I think, is fundamentally good.

And I think in a hidden way, all three of us kind of agreed with it earlier. Left to its own devices, the body will get fat, smoke cigarettes, jerk off to porn. Like, we are in a constant struggle with ourselves to guide ourselves on a good path. That if we were to be more religious in our earlier arguments, we would be talking about, like, the desire for the body to sin. And it does naturally exist at us. And so, in such a high state that we will, given the opportunity to download and masturbate to the craziest porn. gamble do all these horrible things. We have to keep the mind pure. But you're projecting something on to Christianity because Christianity isn't an attack on the dying

body or the degenerating body. I mean, that's Christ. That's what is imaged in a God and a cross. It's an attack on a healthy, powerful body. I don't agree. I don't agree. You can euphemize this, but I mean, you can kind of come up with a Christianity that's more positive. And I would agree that for so many people, like their image of Jesus, is I guess a smiling, bearded, white guy with brown hair, you know, going around. They want, they instinctively want something healthy about it. But what its ultimate message is, is something that you can kind of get to. And I do think that that message is conveyed in all forms of Christianity. You're still worshiping this God that is failing and dying and returning again. And again, you're

worshiping suffering. You're claiming that the body is inherently wicked. I agree that we can miss the mark, which is the Greek word for sin, missing the mark. But I would certainly not think that I am inherently awful or something. I think I can maybe give a glimpse to a, maybe if I'm good enough in my life, I can offer a kind of glimpse of like a higher being or a God. I guess it depends on the way that you want to frame it. Like I feel like, checked, humans can be selfish and dangerous and destructive creatures, but given the mind to pursue something greater than yourself, which is what people would point to is like the Jesus or the godliness in you or whatever, those are the things that you push towards that create a better

a better you, a better community, and a better world. That even when you talk before about sensuality is like dangerous or bad, I don't think the Bible ever says that sensuality is bad or dangerous. It's just something that ought to be reserved for your wife. And I think we can all think of examples of single parents, of rapists, of horrible people that have that gift of sensuality in the body that misuse it and appropriate in a such a way that it becomes, the body itself becomes destructive to society when you pursue the sensuality for the sake of sensuality to that end. But when instead you channel it in a more positive Christ-like way, in a way where you're only using it as a tool to build a family or to strengthen the bond

between father and mother, husband and wife, that it becomes like a more positively channeled thing, a more divine thing. Okay. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think, again, you're projecting thing. What am I projecting? I feel like I learned this shit in school. Wait, what is this not? In Catholic school, you probably learn that because, again, it's like this is this way that we can square the circle. But what is Jesus actually saying? What is the meaning of all of these things ultimately?

What is the Tower of Babel about but an attack on civilization? Babel is Babylon. I thought the Tower of Babel was an attack on the hubris of man to think that he could accomplish great things with the absence of God. We can accomplish great things, but it's never, hubris has never mentioned. The worry that Yahweh has and why he goes down and destroys the tower is that people will be speaking the same language and thus communicating and reaching up higher to the heavens. It's not, it's not, they didn't, it wasn't hubris that was their downfall. Like they built a tower too high and it fell over. It was the very fact that they were doing something in a civilized manner that Yahweh came down to smite it.

So there are some, and Babylon is, it's the origin of the word babel, you know, talking Babel, it's also, a direct reference to Babylon, which is a great ancient civilization. To be clear, also... I am an atheist, so I'm not going to, like, say I support the god shit. Well, I know, but I'm just saying that, like, are you in a way... What?

It's a kind of, like, we, we need to recognize, like, there's a darker element to all of these Abrahamic religions. I mean, I think there can be, but they're... I mean, it can be channeled in a positive way, too. I just did it. I think that, like, there are positive... And I think if you go to mass, if you go to church, if you listen to your preacher or whatever,

they can tune in a little positive ways, too. There can be, like, dark ways to interpret it as well. I remember I got into an argument religious guy over, should we fixate more on people going to hell? Or, like, the afterlife shit versus stuff that exists in the world now, because some people think that it's a good motivator to tell people that you're going to burn eternally in the fires of a house. I think that's a really shitty way to sell religion.

But, yeah, I guess I don't feel like Christianity has to, like, I meant some Christians. It's not like an intrinsically bad, horrible, evil thing. It's more just like a moderating force or principle, like a guiding force of, like, maybe be careful. I even attend church in a kind of social way, because I guess I'm hopefully pro-social. And I do think that there are some civilized aspects to my church and the Episcopalian Church and so on. But I also recognize that we need to move beyond these kinds of messages, and that particularly when we, like all around us, we're experiencing the death of God, just the lack of church going, the lack of real belief.

and a deity, some kind of either hyper-personal or hyper-abstract notion of God, as opposed to the figure himself, Yahweh. I think this is spelling the end of this era, and there does need to be something put forward. And, you know, Apollo is also son of God. He's a god of intelligence, of sensuality, of sending plagues to your enemies, if you need to, of athleticism. He's kind of a polymeticism. He's kind of a polymath and the best at everything is beautiful fundamentally. Wait, what's interesting what you just described in Yahweh?

Yahweh? Yahweh's a fire god who's going to kill you and terrorize you. I feel like he mellows out a lot after Jesus. I feel like he's more melod up. Yahweh, that's Theos in the Newtah and the Gospels. Well, in my, in the Christianity

they're all the same God, right? Right, they translated as God. Yeah, it's different words in the Bibles. But it's still fundamentally it's the same God. The God of the Old Testament is the same God as the New Testament. It might be different words refer to them, but it's fundamentally, it's the same

spiritualism. Is it the same personage who is destroying, you know, villages and acting out of jealousy and so on, that kind of abstract the Eos of the New Testament? I mean, I agree with you. It's meant to be the same thing, but there's, it's a different kind of coloring, and it is a different word. It's a Greek word, obviously, in the Gospels. It's either going to be Elohim, which is plural, interestingly, or Yahweh.

Well, the Gospels originally written in Greek? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Not Arabic or whatever? No. They were written in Coiny Greek. What was the Jewish fucking old shit?

Well, Hebrew. And there was some Aramaic in the Old Tepsum as well. Okay. Aramaic, got you. Yeah. But mostly Hebrew. Okay, got you got it. So the Greek and yeah.

And the Jewish Bible is translated around 250 BC into Greek. That was kind of almost the debutante party for Judaism in a way is when it was presented to the Greek, Gentile world. Wait, so do you believe in Apollo as like a real actual God, or is this just like a euphemistic figure that you use, like, make sense of the world? This is the thing. It's like, I feel like after Christianity we're so invested in the notion of historicity. Like, Jesus had to exist.

He had to walk around, you know, multiplying loaves, raising people from the dead and dying on a cross. The fact is, all of those things are deeply mythical. in their essence. I don't think Jesus, I'm sure there was some guy named Josh who was a preacher around 33 AD or something like that, but no, I don't think there's any historicity to the Bible. I don't think there's any historicity whatsoever to the Old Testament. I think it's all literature and myth. I think for the Old Testament, I think that's true. I don't think there's a single archaeological record of any Jews in Egypt, for instance, at all. All of that is totally

no. And whether there was a Jerusalem, I mean, it might. have been a few olive groves with some badass named David, who was a legendary footballer, something like the notion, all of that history is myth. But that doesn't mean it's bad or you should reject it. You should kind of embrace it. Like, did an ancient person believe in Zeus? And they were like, they talk to Zeus every night. And they, it's a different mentality. I think Christianity, it's both hyper abstract but then hyper historical. Like you're invested in this real story. Actually, I, priest that, my priest, I guess, is an Episcopalian, he mentioned this last Easter. He was like,

listen, I know you love the Easter eggs and the Easter bunny. It's all funny. It's all fun in games, but it's not a metaphor. If you are a Christian, you have to believe that he rose again, and so on. And I respect him for that, even though I don't disagree. I respect him because he's taking it seriously. As a Catholic, we believed in a transubstantiation. Oh, my. Meaning that when they say the prayers to do the blood and body of Christ, that the Eucharist, the unleavened bread is actually biologically transforms into the flesh of Jesus, and the wine actually biologically transforms into the blood of Christ. And so you're endlessly sacrificing him. You know, the sacrifice was completed on the cross,

yet Catholics are rehearsing it over and over again. It's like never letting Jesus rest. I've always thought there was something really profoundly sick about. But that was part of the deal that there's a very weird thing, because I hate all this stupid shit. But like that was a part of the deal that like God made, well, because I feel like I'm arguing fucking on like, who's got a higher power level, like fucking Snape and Harry Potter like Goku and Dragon Ball's E or so shit. But I think the idea was supposed to be that Jesus

came down and he suffered and he killed the part of him that cringes. He got rid of the impure human part. He rose again to become this symbol of like sacrifice. And we celebrate that because it showed that God was willing to send down a representative to help understand, to help us

make us understand that we can destroy the parts of ourselves that are evil and sinful and aspire to something greater and more divine. And we celebrate that sacrifice over and over again, but it's not like he's eternally suffering, right? Like, he had to suffer like a human in order to show us what he wanted to show us. Like, God is happy to do it. He's fucking God.

If you didn't want it to, you could just make it stop. If you believe in that, should I imagine? Right. God, why have thou forsaken me? I mean, it's a really powerful moment. Okay, so you were born and sad, and you were deserving of hellfire, and Yahweh should destroy you and torture you for eternity. However, he was willing to sacrifice

his son or himself, in the Trinitarian way, in order to let you off the hook, as it were. So it's not about inspiring you to be a better person, I guess, kind of, but it's, you're deserving of hellfire. Like, and it needs to be atone for it. Like, yeah, like, without God, but the idea, if you're religious,

is that without God, you're just a fucking human. Who the fuck cares? You're another animal, like we said earlier, but there's something specially unique about humans that we were, we're not just another animal. We're created in the image of, God, that he hand-sculpted us in his image. And the idea of the sacrifice of Jesus and being born in sin is that your body, left to

its own devices, will be wandering the jungle like another animal. But God has empowered you that inside every single human, there is that shard, there is that reflection of God, that reflection of Jesus, of God-turned-man, that if you aspire to follow his teachings and follow what he's told you to do through the Ten Commandments and everything else, you can be that godly person. That was like the point of it. Right, that's a very nice way of treating it, but it's not actual Christianity. Damn, you tell you.

The ability to also manipulate someone through that notion of an eternal soul, the ability to say, you know, if you don't do exactly what I want, you're going to burn in hell, that's a really remarkable thing. That actually goes back to Zaraster and certainly Plato. But anyway, I don't want to get too academic here. But I guess what I'm saying is that, like, you can. can experience being a God by achieving something in the real world. Like whenever you lust after a woman, you're, you're kind of experiencing what it means to be Venus on some level. You're

experiencing that primordial love. When you succeed at athletics or really any endeavor, you're kind of like Apollo. You're experiencing something like that. So with paganism, It was what's called paganism. It's funny. The paganism just means like peasant or whatever, a rural person. But what you were experiencing that ancient religion is just a fundamentally different concept. You didn't have to believe that there was an actual Zeus or Apollo. I don't think anyone dead.

It was more of this. Because people say like you're inventing a new religion. No one actually believes in it. You don't believe it in yourself. No, it's about kind of like fundamentally reorienting. our worldview where we're not falling into the Christian trap of, you know, fearing hellfire and deanimation and needing to sacrifice something to end all sacrifice and all that kind of stuff. We're not thinking about an afterlife that that's where we exist.

It's like we're thinking we need to build the Tower of Babel right here. Like right here, where we live right now. We should have, we should build out of brick a great civilization. So it's ultimately life-referment. I just, I feel like, I feel like you can shade Christianity to have these same views while still being Christian. And I'm sure some Christians would agree and somewhat disagree, but, sure. Yeah. No, I think Christianity has been kind of shaded in that way, as you say.

But I don't think it can really escape itself. And once we become conscious of it, you know, it's kind of like an unending road towards where we are now. I mean, it's, you know, like, once you, once you, once you, once you, once you, see behind Christianity, what it's really saying, the kind of symbolism that it's using and so on, you can't just like do a gloss over it and think that Jesus was Superman or something like that, you know, which I think a lot of people want to do. Okay. I guess it's kind of hard to argue with an atheist because I'm trying to peg you as a Christian.

Yeah, I don't really... I'm trying to peg them too. But yeah, it's interesting here and you say like, oh yeah, nothing in the Old Testament. actually happened. For me, I was like a 14-year-old realizing I was an atheist. I pretty much stopped there. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, that's all I really need to know. I feel like everything I was taught as a kid was a lie. I feel like when you start to become critical, it's very hard, depending on how critical you get to maintain any type of Christianity. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that faith is very difficult. It's, you know, you can kind of understand Christianity,

but that faith, it's, it's very hard. And then you end up making a lot of what Richard's, you make a lot of compromises where it's like, well, the Jews. escaping kind of a euphemism or this is like allegorical, this is metaphorical, like you basically need like an English degree to reinterpret your Christian religion to kind of like make it work. When you debate with like real lifelong hardcore Christians, it's like you face a level of stubbornness that you're pretty unlikely to face when it comes to a lot of other conversations. I don't know if you felt that at all with our last debate or whatever, but yeah. But there's also, to be fair, that's a lifetime buy-in. Like, am I really about to debate you out of the

fundamental assumptions that you've made about human existence, that's probably not going to happen. That'd be like me arguing with you right now, I'm going to convince you that you really live in the matrix. Like, am I really about to undermine your whole existence? Like, it's not going to happen no matter what, you know? Right, right. But yeah, I agree. I think there was an almost painful. I can remember not believing at Santa Claus anymore when I was like nine or something like that. And it just being kind of painful to let that go. Because I think you want to be a part of society. Like, you want to play along. You want it to be true. And I, you know, and as you get older, you kind of have a certain appreciation for Santa Claus. You know, I'm not going to go and

like, it's like, take the red pill, you know, Alex, Santa is not real. But I have some, I know some parents who basically are still like doing everything possible to, to keep the Santa delusion going well into their kids, you know, elementary school career and stuff, because they just, their kid asked them a question, like, how can Santa deliver it to all these houses? And they have to come up with some fucking answer that'll kind of convince their kid. And I'm not entirely convinced that this is not going to have any repercussions. I was the exact opposite. When I came to five, I was like, Santa's some bullshit.

I don't ever, here is my, this is my thought process, okay? When my kid asked me any question about anything ever, I will always give you the real explanation. Now, it's going to be varying levels of detail. You've got to scale it down for the age. Yeah, but when you ask me, when you're five years old, Dad, how do cars work? I'm not going to say, well, there's a little guy that runs and powers the wheels, right? Like, well, there's a mini power plant in your car that spins wheels by blowing up gas.

I might give, like, a really simple explanation. But I always felt like if I start telling you bullshit tales about, like, the tooth fairy and fucking Santa Claus, first of all, okay, I was poor before I got into streaming. I make a lot of money now. I want credit for that, okay? Santa Claus is not fucking getting credit for buying your presence. I am because I work for that shit.

Number one. Number two, if I tell you lies in the long term, I don't know how I'm going to influence the way that you view me. Like, oh, like, there's a couple of things that I told a bullshit I have story about. And now that you're like nine or ten or whatever, I'm going to tell you the truth. I kept adding more lies over the years to keep you believing this because I thought it was cute. Like, my kid is two, so I don't really have to think about it much. It's just purely cute that she thinks that Santa is this great guy.

But yeah, as soon as she starts asking questions, I don't really want to. And Adam is much more hasten than you. No, hold on. Real quick, I'm bringing this back to what you said. More fundamentally, I think that Christmas, And the human experience and everything surrounding that is so beautiful and so awesome without needing that Santa Claus figure. It's cool that we have a day. We buy presents.

We get around the Christmas tree. We drink hot chocolate. We watch the same fucking movies. And we have like all these little rituals. I think that could be so cool and awesome and beautiful without needing the fucking red music. My kid is going to like the mascot at the baseball game. But it's not like I have to convince her that it's a real bird. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's fun to celebrate. Yeah, it's a cool ritual. Yeah, what we're saying. Well, isn't a lie now? in order to properly tell the truth. Nah. And isn't a lie necessary in order to properly run society? I mean, you can't quite handle the truth in terms of what every, you know, if you knew everything

that say the CIA knows, if you knew everything that we've actually done to maintain world order or something, would that make it better? Like uncovering all of that? I think it would because I think in society we've seen ourselves running in the opposite direction. Jordan Peterson, before he went fucking insane on fixating on trans people and eating too many Xanax. Up yours, woke or liberals?

Remember that? He had a really good talk on, he called the concept, was integrating your shadow, that we make this mistake sometimes of we are cringe when we're younger and we're like, I'm not going to be cringe anymore, I'm going to ignore all of that.

I'm going to do the total opposite, fuck all that. When the more mature responses, here are ways that I acted improperly. What are the lessons that I can learn from that? And how can I incorporate that into like a full or better life? And we have this huge problem. So like my country, the United States of America,

has done a lot of really fucked up shit. We did fucked up shit to Indians. We did fucked up shit to African Americans. And we did fucked up shit in the 50s, 60, 70s, in South America, Cold War stuff. We've done a lot of fucked up shit. I still love my country, but I recognize that we're flawed. We're not perfect.

And I think we've made this mistake. where we've accepted this idea that you cannot love something with imperfections, it has to be amazing. So with the United States, unfortunately, with a lot of progressives, you can't really love the United States. That's almost like a white supremacist thing to say. It's a horrible country. We did slavery. We're still doing slavery, apparently. It's like the worst thing ever.

And we run into these issues where health at every size is a really good example. You can't condemn yourself for being fat and still love yourself. So now you have to love all of yourself, even you being fat. That's not true. There are things that can be negative about yourself that you accept. This is a negative, but I still love myself overall. We have a really, really hard time with that latter message. So I do think that we need to get better at experiencing some adversity

and uncovering some uncomfortable truths and accepting that nothing in life is ever all good or all bad. There's always going to be a trade-off. I get that. And I also think that for someone who's overweight, you should tell them the truth and be like, you've got to change your diet and go exercise. And you don't have to hate yourself. You still look okay, whatever, but lose some weight. Why do you love America in a way?

Because, I mean, isn't it a kind of, it's a story you can tell? It's not like there's a ledger where it's like, oh, we killed the Indians, but, oh, civil rights movement here, so that evens out. So, yeah, we're right. I think in a way, but there is a ledger in a way, right?

We have the oldest surviving constitution of any country of the planet. That's really fucking cool. We have a document that was written by dudes that were fucking powdered wigs that now has sections of it that govern, like, space travel, right? we did we've done like civil rights and we've integrated more different groups of people in the

I think there's a lot of cool things on the ledger of U.S. history is really fucking awesome I don't I don't doubt that oh I'm yeah do want to turn off my sorry my phone's ringing I apologize I don't doubt that but it's like you you you like you have an idealized version of yourself in a way that's a kind of story or narrative it's a lie on some level it's poetry And you have an idealized sense of what America is as a nation that almost has to be poetic and a kind of lie. And I don't think we could function without that. I guess I don't know what you mean. A problem with like, say, Julie and Assange as an ideology, not necessarily the person.

It's like, let's just pull open the rock and look at every bug crawling around underneath it. Oh, you know, you think your local sheriff as an idea. sky, well, look at this. Look at these photos I have of him of, you know, an extra middle affair, you know, punching someone in the face in high school or whatever. It's that ultimate, you just get dragged down by all of that negativity. And the way out of it is really to kind of why to yourself. I mean, I remember when I was playing football and I would tell myself when we were running sprints, I would be like, after the next sprint, I'm going to claim I have have a cramp and not do it. Well, I never did that. But I would kind of tell myself this little,

you know, beautiful lie before we did the next thing, and I could keep going. Any kind of person you've suffered, like, with women, or you've had every live stream you do sucks or every book, no one cares about your latest book, you kind of need to lie to yourself to get you to a psychological state where you can do it again. You've got to pretend you're asleep before you can fall asleep. I guess the thing that I disagree on is that, like, ontological, When I think of stories and narratives, what I'm really thinking about is a constellation. Constellations don't really exist, but it's a way for us to organize the stars, right? And I feel like the thing that we do sometimes is like I might have a constellation of 30 stars.

I've got 30 stars that are arranged in a circle, and the constellation that I make is a triangle because I only look at three of them. And that might be a story and a constellation I make, but I'm missing so much of the story by ignoring all of of the other little data points, that these stars are organized at a perfect circle, and the more data points that I can assume in creating that narrative, the better. So when I think about telling liars or telling truths, what I think about is when people want to tell lies to further a narrative, they're ignoring all of the other stars that could make for a bigger and more complicated constellation in favor of one that doesn't really accurately represent what's being captured underneath. So I don't, I think that the lies are hard sometimes because we want to lie about

certain things. But then on the flip side of that, I think about when I think of all the conspiracies that exist today, right, everything is a conspiracy theory when you don't know how anything works, right? If you don't know, like, how the government works, and of course it seems like Fauci gets paid to approve drugs, even though he's not even part of the FDA, you know, or Trump is being weeded out by the deep state because of Anderson Cooper and it's like he's not part of the guy. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess this is something that I, okay, let me wrap the suburb. Okay, sorry. Something that I believed a long time ago was that, conservatives were better than liberals at getting messages across to people because conservatives were telling lies and liberals were trying to tell the truth. And that was a lie that I told myself for a long time. I thought it was a truth. But it's like, yeah, like, if I want to talk about these issues, it's so complicated. And all conservatives have to say is like, be racist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But upon further self-reflection, I don't think that's true. I think that's true. I think what happened was, was conservatives got so good at telling stories and wrapping all their facts together. And liberals did this thing where it's like, well, I'm right, so I don't have to try to tell you a story. Like, I'm just right, like, accept this and that and that, that if we were to go back to trying to try and

to tell stories with more stars in the constellation, we could do a better job than somebody that's omitting some facts that's just telling a comfortable lie, I guess. Right, I mean, I guess the way I would talk about it metaphorically is that you see the entire universe and you can't make out any picture whatsoever. You have more data, you just have kind of more data. There's no way of sifting it.

And any act of sifting, regardless of the quantity, is already an act of which your mind is affecting reality. Like you're projecting your own will onto something, no matter how much data you have. You're projecting a narrative. So I guess what I would say is I agree that, you know, over the past, I mean, one of the reasons why I've been kind of alienated from the dissident right or alt-right 2.0 or whatever the hell it is, it is like the conspiracy theories about vaccines or COVID. I just, I hated it. Fuck them. If you're going to start, you know, promoting that, I'm out.

But I guess what I would say is, and this is a problem. problem of the right in general, the going into conspiracies, but what I would say is that we need a better lie. Like there's no... Why not just a better story? Okay, well, but now we're just arguing some answers. I mean like when you say, I agree with you that the philosophical ways, we would say normativity precedes epistemology, that by choosing facts, we've already intentionally changed. And I agree with you there.

We don't have to lie. That's just like, are you familiar with the interesting like history versus like historiography? Sure. Like, if you want to tell the history of World War II, nobody truly tells the whole history what every single soldier did. You pick and choose, like, these are the parts of the story that we're going to tell.

I don't think that's necessarily a lie. That's just like the narrative. But you understand why I would present it in this kind of fashion. Because you're omitting some kind of... Yeah, it's effective. It's all the news that's fit to print. Like, you're already making a choice even before you begin examining these topics.

I guess lying just sounds like your... Okay, well, let's use storytelling. Okay, sure. I'll grant you that. We need a story. I agree with that. That's what we're lacking. Yes.

And that story is going to be something that we assert about how we view a kind of idealized self or idealized nation. Yeah, as an individual or as a country. We should embrace that. Yeah, I don't disagree. Okay. Well, they're trying to get us the fuck out of here so we can talk to these leftist chicks that I brought in for you. But I thought that this was quite productive and interesting. I think the fans are going to love it.

So, yeah, maybe we should do this again sometime. Yeah, whatever. Anytime, just name it and I'll be here. This is a lot of fun. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Destiny. Everybody can, I'm sure, figure it. If you made it this deep end, I'm sure you can figure out

what the fucking channels of communication are. But, yeah, thank you guys so much. Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. No Jumper, coolest podcast, and I'll check us out on YouTube, TikTok, Patreon, Instagram, etc. Like, comment, subscribe, nojumper.com if you want to support.