Pints With Aquinas - 219: Free Speech & "Cancel Culture" w/ Dave Rubin

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

I interview Dave Rubin about Free speech, cancel culture, and disagreeing without being disagreeable.   ABOUT DAVE Locals: https://rubinreport.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RubinReport    SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints  Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/    GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show.   LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd   MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. Hope you're doing well. Today I'll be joined around the proverbial bar table by Dave Rubin. Super glad to have him on. Before we do that, I want to say thank you to our sponsor, Halo. Halo is a Catholic meditation app that you can download and listen to. It's got five-star reviews on, you know, the app store, and it's pretty bloody great. It's very very well produced there's something on there for everyone whether you're kind of beginning to pray or meditate or whether you're you know been doing it for years this is this would be great for you they've got you know daily gospel reflections you do the rosary divine mercy all that sort of thing they even have sleep stories i did a sleep story for them so you probably don't want to

listen to that one but there's other people who have nice voices you can listen to that they uh it's free to download uh but if you click the link below or have it up after the live stream hello.com slash matt frad you can get access to the entire thing for a month so be sure to check that out all right let's bring on the man himself, David Rubin. How are you? Matt, it's good to be with you. You are a professional podcaster with that ad read. Thank you. I'm completely comfortable. I know you know how to host the show. I'm a little overdressed, I suppose. You're in the t-shirt. I should have done the t-shirt, but I had a team meeting with

my guys today. I felt that I had to, you know, you have to dress up a certain way. Otherwise, it's just chaos with these people. It's tough, isn't it? I know people talk about dressing for success, and I know that there's merit to that. I just couldn't be bothered, especially because I'm self-employed. You're self-employed. I'm like, who are we trying to bloody impress? But I see the merit in it for sure. There's definitely some merit in putting on some clothes when you're at work. I'm actually... No pants, though. I actually am wearing pants right now. You know, a lot of times when I do Fox hits or when I'm doing even my interviews now, now that everything is mostly remote,

where I'm usually wearing shorts or a bathing suit or something, but I am actually wearing pants, but no shoes. Look, I got no shoes on. How close are you to the beach? How close am I to the beach? How close am I to the beach? Well, now it's a little, you know, LA traffic's bananas all the time. These days, because we're half ghost town, you can't tell what's going to happen when you get in your car,

if there's going to be anyone on the streets or not. But roughly about 20 minutes, something like that. Oh, yeah, that's not bad. I was just telling you off air, I was in Orange County for the week, had a lovely time. It was just nice to go somewhere and do something other than stay in my home and record YouTube videos. But I was telling you the mask culture is very different over there than to here. I mean, my wife and I were on the beach and people were running on the beach with masks on and good for them. That's what they want to do, especially if maybe they have a health condition. I don't know, but it was definitely different. I'll tell you that. to do, especially if maybe they have a health condition. I don't know, but it was definitely different. I'll tell you that. Yeah. Well, the funny thing about that is that, oh, see, Orange County, that's a little bit of a sort of more right leaning conservative stronghold in California. So you'd think it would be a little bit better on the personal liberty side. Or,

you know, as you said, people can do whatever they want and they might have health issues and everything else. But, you know, just here in L.A., it's like if I'm walking my dog, I do not wear a mask. I am a relatively young, healthy person. I don't, you know, go two feet next to the guy that's walking his dog, although sometimes we do let the dog sniff butts. But, you know, if you're relatively young and healthy and you're walking down the street, you do not need to be wearing a mask. L.A., it's 85 and sunny every day. Like the idea that you're going to walk around with this thing on you. Yes, if you go to a store and their policy is mask, well, you may

not be into it, but you got to follow their policy. But we have gone a little crazy with some of this stuff. Hey, I got your book recently. I got it off Amazon. Don't burn this book. Well, I'm only a couple of chapters into it, but you know what i love about it is that you write how you speak and so it's very engaging rhetorically what do you say um kind of rigorous not just no not rigorous but kind of like uh energetic it's very energetic so i like it yeah well thanks i uh i did feel that i should write it the way that i speak so you know i think i do a lot. And I think I think I say literally people always say, Dave, you always say literally. I think there's a couple of literalities in there. Why is why did you make it out for Ben Affleck? I see you haven't gotten

that far yet. No, I haven't. The reason it's I think I can guess. Yeah, I recount one of several stories that were really the key moments in my political awakening. And one of them was the very famous viral moment, which I'm sure most of your audience has seen. It's been seen millions and millions of times on YouTube where Ben Affleck was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher and Sam Harris, the famous atheist, was on as well. And Sam was doing the protected interview. That's when you're not part of the panel, the three-person panel. You're on the same side of the desk as Bill.

You're supposed to get a one-on-one interview. They started talking about inner peace, actually. They were talking about meditation and mindfulness. Sam was promoting his book called Waking Up, a guide to spirituality without religion. And somehow they started talking about religion. Thus they got into Islam and radical Islam particularly. And Affleck started just screaming and getting angry

in the famous line he called Bill Maher and Sam Harris gross and racist. Even though they said nothing that was gross and racist, also Islam is a religion, not a race, but putting that aside. It was a perfect wake up moment for me because I had been having all these issues with the lefties and what was going on.

I considered myself a progressive at the time, I was on the Young Turks Network, but there was always this overly emotional reaction to if you discussed anything that they didn't want you to discuss, you were a bigot, a racist, a homophobe, the litany of things that you could be. And when I saw Affleck doing it and he was red in the face and, you know, he was jacked because he was about to be Batman. And I just saw it was like watching this A-list

actor perfectly act out the overly emotional craziness that I had been seeing from the progressives and to launch an attack like that, not on a scary conservative or a scary religious person, but on Bill Maher, who's the biggest lefty we've got in America, and Sam Harris, who's a mild-mannered neuroscientist, who I didn't even know who he was until that night, until seeing it. That was the first time I had ever seen him speak

or even heard of him, I think. To watch that reaction to those guys, it was like, oh, you guys really do eat your own and you don't want to honestly discuss complex issues. And that was one of the couple wake up calls that I that I note in the book. So I credit Affleck because if it wasn't for his overly emotional tirade, I may not be here today. Gosh, that's really interesting. I didn't know that. I mean, I had seen that video on Bill Maher, and I felt really sorry for him. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this guy is just emotional.

There's really no logic. But would you consider yourself, you seem like a mild-mannered folk yourself, bloke yourself, not folk bloke. That means guy. Were you like that? I mean, did you get really kind of heated and emotional? I'm not saying that's a thing that only the left do. Obviously, people on the right get like that as well. But yeah, no, it's a good question because it does seem now to be more of a condition of the left.

Of course, emotionalness and, you know, your rush to judgment and passion isn't a right or left thing. But it does seem that the lefties these days are much quicker to get angry, hostile, call you all the worst things in the world, while people on the right, broadly speaking, you say an opinion that they don't like, they'll usually talk about it with you or agree to disagree or something like that. I can truly tell you this, but people can go back and watch all my videos that I did on the Young Turks. I was a lefty, I was a Bernie supporter, the whole thing, but I was never super emotionally attached. It's not, you know, I think that's partly temperament,

right, like we all have a certain temperament that maybe we're born with, and then nature versus nurture, and my parents are relatively calm people. I grew up in a relatively calm household. And I also, I talk about this in the book, but I grew up in a household where people. I grew up in a relatively calm household. And also I talk about this in the book, but I grew up in a household where we really did talk about everything. I mean, every holiday was people fighting about politics

and going back and forth. And then dessert was served and everybody was good. Like we never let politics turn into like, oh, now we hate each other. And when I saw that thing happening on the left, I realized, and this is now six years ago or so, I started realizing there's something really dangerous here. And that's why now when we see that this thing has burst forth into every part of society and cancel culture and stopping cars on streets and attacking

people and burning down federal buildings and all of these things, you know, people are like, whoa, where did this come from? And I'm like, yeah, I've been trying to warn you guys. I said, don't burn this book, but I should have wrote, I should have wrote a book called don't burn the store that this book is in because that's what they're doing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Now I've heard people say, you know, people on the daily wire, you know, they'll say something like, you know, we think the left is wrong, but the left thinks those on the right are evil and that's the difference. And I wonder if that's just a little too easy there. It seems to me that the underdog is usually the one more willing to talk because he doesn't have the power. And even though people on the left would probably say, well, the right have the power because they have Trump in the Oval Office,

that doesn't seem to be true at all, culturally speaking. So I wonder if it was the other way around, if you've got mainstream media, big tech, Hollywood, if they were all kind of people who are very conservative, maybe you'd find that the right would be more willing to have open dialogues, whereas the left would be aggressive and loud and shout people down. Yeah, it just seems too easy to kind of want to canonize one side and say the other are nuts. But I don't know much about politics. So feel free to tell me where I might be missing the point there. Speaker 1 00 00 00 00 Speaker 2 00 00 00 Speaker 3 00 00 00 Speaker 4 00 00 00 Speaker 5 00 00 00 Speaker 6

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00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 00 Speaker 17 00 00 00 00 Speaker of the left says you're evil and the right says you're wrong. That's, I think, originally a Dennis Prager quote. And I do use it. I do use it often because I think it's broadly speaking, I think it's right. So I can give you a couple examples on this. And I lay all these positions out in my book.

So I'm obviously for gay marriage. I'm married to a man, right? So that's something that's thought of as lefty. Yeah, I'm begrudgingly pro-choice. That's something that I can't wait to talk about that. That's impressive. We can we can get into it. But even though I'm not for eight month abortions, the idea of being pro-choice at any level is thought of as something that's lefty. I'm against the death penalty. That's thought of as something that's lefty. I'm for some level of public education, but I'm starting to waver on that one because the state is so out of control right now.

And now that the Democrats are trying to take away charter schools and homeschooling and everything else, I'm struggling with that one. But my point is I have a bunch of positions that are generally thought of as somewhat lefty positions, right? Now I can talk to anyone on the right about those things. I've debated gay marriage with Ben Shapiro. I've debated the death penalty with Dennis Prager. Just a ton of these issues. Abortion with a zillion people. And what happens is everyone says, we'll agree to disagree. Okay, that's your thoughts. I have my thoughts. You know, we live in a big country.

We're going to work it out. It's okay. We don't all have to think the same thing. The left, I think what has happened, and this may sort of get us into something that's a little more of your wheelhouse, is I think leftism as it stands now, whatever you want to call it, collectivism, Marxism, this thing that we're watching burst forth into society everywhere. It has become religious in nature, in the negative sense of religion. Right. And I don't mean to say no, no, no. I know what you mean by any stretch. If anything, I'm more religious.

I'm more of a believer now than I've been at any point in my adult life. But what I mean is they they believe purely sort of in the secular world. And through that, they think that they can correct humans at all turn. They can eliminate racism. Yeah, human nature. Yeah, you can't eliminate racism. There are always going to be racists. Now, you can hopefully illuminate racist people with better ideas so that you take that away.

But the idea of eliminating racists, we're going gonna have to kill a lot of people, right? People are entitled to have bad ideas and you hopefully can counter those bad ideas with good ideas. I think they have so removed any belief other than what they believe in right now and how they can accomplish it through the power of the state,

which is what they wanna use state power to do whatever they want. That it has, you know, this is cliche, but I think that there is a God sized hole in their hearts and they then fill that with any sort of secular belief. I was chatting with Peter Thiel a couple of days ago. Actually, he said something that I thought was quite brilliant. He said, you know, if if you never look up, so if you never look vertically, then you'll always look

horizontally. And I really think that that that's a really good point. Yeah. Never look to something above you, whatever that might be. And we can debate what that is and why religions have different senses of what that means. Then you'll always look around here. And if you always look around here for the material and what's here and now, you'll always be trying to control it and get meaning out of it. And I don't think that can lead. I think perhaps if you're an exceptional person, that can lead you to a pretty extraordinary life. But I don't think societies can organize around just what is here and now. What you get with that is exactly what we have right now, which is sort of this destructive chaos that's spreading throughout the West.

Yeah, that's really interesting because I find it difficult. How are you going to ground objective moral facts if you're only looking horizontally? In other words, if something's right or wrong and I ought to do it or I ought not to do it, who is it that's issuing that command to me? If it comes from below me, if it comes from evolution and I can now understand it, then I can thwart it. If it comes from, as you say, horizontally, then why the hell should I care what you think about what I should do and what I shouldn't do? If I think this will make me happy, I can choose to say it. Society just means other people. Why should I be terribly interested in what they have to think? It seemed to me that if God exists, then we have kind of a firm foundation for these

objective moral facts that we all want to kind of hold to, like racism is wrong and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. That's why, that's why Ben Shapiro's line about facts don't care about your feelings. I think that that's why it really took off because what happens is if you just, if you base your worldview on just, you feel something, you just feel very strongly about something. Well, guess what? The guy next to you, he feels very strongly about something too, but the chances that you both feel exactly the same strength about the exact same issues is pretty slim. And then what you'll do is destroy each other. So that's why what's happening right now on the left is a real movement of chaos and destruction. And what I think is broadly happening on the right is a movement of, hey,

let's agree to disagree. Let's see if some of us are real Trump people. Some of us are more libertarian. Some of us are more traditional conservatives. But let's see if we can piece this thing together and build a society that's open for everybody. But if you base it all in what you feel, well, man, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I believe most of these people, their intentions are good. I want to eliminate racism. Well, that is a nice thought. I don't think their intentions are to murder people. But, you know, where this will end will be with a lot of gulags and wrong think and other bad things. It reminds me of a father, Zosima, in The Brothers Karamazov.

He was recounting a story of a woman that spoke to him, and she said, the more I love humanity, the less I can stand the person in the same room with me. It feels like that, you know? It's very easy to talk about fighting for humanity and people's rights

and not give a flying crap about the person who lives in the same house as you or your parents or people around you. I think the reason, like, the right, and maybe we should define our term soon, makes more sense and is less likely to become tyrannical is it seems that there's a religious basis for many people on the left, that they think that God exists and so objective truth can be accessed, right, can be known. And that also there is such a thing as human nature.

Whereas it seems to me like if god doesn't exist and we're just sort of like this evolved kind of primates on this speck of dust then we can sort of come up with whatever reality we want to come up with because there's no objective sort of moral facts and human nature isn't really a thing um so i think it's that that it seems right to me that i suppose the logic would seem usually to lay on on those on the left only because I think they have like a Christian basis a lot of the time. I would say, yeah, I would say it has something to do with the fund. You know, you could sort of give a religious framing to this, but I would say it has something to do with a fundamental way you look at the world. I look at the world as it is not as how I want it to be.

I don't I don't need the world to bend to exactly what I think. I can put my thoughts out there. We can have conversations like this. Hopefully someone listening to this will go, oh, Matt's right about that, Ruben's wrong about this, and then piece something together. And then find, for anyone listening to this or watching this, hopefully that helps them

find a cohesive worldview that makes sense. But I don't exist on this planet to make someone bow to my views. I believe that human beings are flawed. We all are flawed. And I absolutely include myself in that. So what happens is the people on the left, they think that they can somehow build a perfect system. They will tell you we're going to eliminate racism, we'll eliminate sexism, we'll eliminate homophobia and blah, blah, blah. Now, to do that, as I said before, you're going to have to kill a lot of people. They're basically Thanos from the Marvel movies,

from Avengers. Thanos knew that there were finite resources in the universe. And what he said is, I will do the thing that no one else will do. I will wipe out half the living organisms in the universe. But he thought he was the good guy. The good guy doesn't kill half the people, but that's why socialism and communism, when they arrive, they come guised in tolerance and diversity and openness, but what belies, what falls right beneath that is a really totalitarian nature, where I think people on the right go,

you know what, I'm not perfect. I don't think we can build a perfect system. All you can do is build a system that hopefully will protect people's rights. What they do in their life is pretty much up to them. The other thing that I'm noticing is the way people will use words, you know, like, for example, Black Lives Matter. You're like, of course they do. BLM Inc. Like, ah, have some questions, you know, or pro-choice. Well, everybody's a fan of choice, but maybe I'm not a fan of murdering the unborn. And we could debate that. The other thing is like homophobia. You know, like I'm a faithful Catholic, right people watching right now think homosexual acts are wrong they also think fornication is wrong masturbation right they have lots of things i think are wrong but they also think that dave rubin is super awesome and i think that really kind of shatters the leftist msnbc narrative that i can't disagree with your actions and at the same time love and respect you um and but homophobia so i've never been afraid of somebody who's had the same sex attraction, like never has occurred to me.

A phobia is an irrational fear. Right. So I suspect that if we were in the same room together, you would not have an irrational fear of me based on one, you know, trait or something like that. you know, trait or something like that. But yes, they're really, really good about using words that sound right and sound good but are not. So these are the people that constantly talk about tolerance and diversity, right? Well tolerance, to any of the people burning down cities right now and attacking people in cars

and all of the awful things that we're watching all of these videos of, do they strike you as really tolerant? Do they strike you as really people who would care for a diverse set of viewpoints? Actually, they're totalitarian. They want you to believe and bow to it. I mean, there's literally, I shared a couple of videos on Twitter this morning. There are a bunch of people stopping cars and saying, you know, you can't use this bridge because one of them was they were literally saying, you're an old white couple. You can't use this bridge. But they're doing it in the name of tolerance. Gosh, does it scare you? Like when you see other people who are

that blind to their own ignorance and their own stupidity, whenever I see that, the first thing I think is, crap, what am I blind to? Like that's the first thing I think of because they clearly don't think that they're blind to something. They think they're doing the right and the moral thing. And then I think, well, I think I'm doing the right and moral thing. Anyway. Well, no, that's a great point. I think that's the best thing you can do as a thinking person. And trust me, I do it all the time. You know, especially on Twitter, where it can sort of bring out the worst of us at different times and you get into fights or whatever it might be. I always think, man, am I suddenly behaving the exact same way I would mock if I was on

the other side of the aisle? And I try not, I try not to fall into those traps, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I, that I never do. But I do promise you that I do examine my own beliefs enough and try to challenge them enough and not just believe them because they make me feel good to believe them. I do try to map them against the real world. And that's why, by the way,

what they're doing is so dangerous, to cancel everybody that you disagree with, or call everybody a racist and a homophobe. What happens is you silence all the opposing voices that you disagree with, and then you have no way of mapping the world. One of the only ways we have of mapping the world is by saying, I think these things,

I believe these things to be true. Now you think these things. Well, now let's look at them together, let's map them together and go, well, one of us is more correct or one of us is more compelling or whatever it might be. But if you eliminate all of the people against your, you have no mirror and now you're just going.

So another one of the words that they use, progressive. Well, that sounds right. Who doesn't like progress? Except progress. You don't want progress just for progress sake. Yeah. If you're drifting off the edge of a waterfall, you don't want to progress that way. Yeah. Of course. If you told me that progress, to be a progressive means you want equality under the law for everyone. Now that's what liberalism is in my view. But if you said that's what progress means, to be a progressive is to want everyone in the United States of America to be treated exactly the same by the law, which we are, by the way, then I would say I'm a progressive. But if your idea of progress is, well, we've already passed that, right? We've passed that point where everyone's equal

under the law, now we're gonna progress to putting people in a stack. And if you're black, you have this much worth, and if you're white, you're really down here, and if you're Christian, you're way down there. If you're Muslim, you're up here. If you're gay, you're here. None of it makes any sense,

but now that's what they tell us is progress. They tell us progress is the exact reverse of what Martin Luther King Jr. wanted. He wanted his children not to be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And they have now progressed to the point where that is now racist in essence. So it's the anti-racists who are actually bringing racism into our society in 2020. Dave, I want to back up a bit and just ask, how difficult was it for you in the first line know, the first line of this book, you, you were going to call this book why I left the left, maybe just really quickly define what you mean by the left. Um,

and tell us how, how difficult that was, because I mean, right now, I'm sure you've got a lot of people who surround you, who love you, who support you, but it's a very scary thing to change. Not just true, not trivial beliefs, but deep seated beliefs. I feel like we all have these, you know, if somebody thinks that the capital of Australia is Sydney, and I say, no, it's Canberra. Canberra!

Yeah. People don't dig their heels in and get upset. But if they think abortion's okay, and I say it's not, or vice versa, the person feels threatened because these beliefs are so woven into the fabric of who they think they are that it's really difficult to kind of change your mind on these things. Tell us about that experience for you. Maybe give us a couple of examples of what was difficult as you made this sort of change. Yeah.

Well, first off, I wish I would have got the Canberra reference in before you said it, because I know it. I was there. I did a show with Jordan, and I believe we were driving from Sydney. And I guess Canberra is right between Sydney and Melbourne. So they just put the capital there. And I mean, there were kangaroos on the road. I still can't believe it. It's incredible. It's a great country. Listen, when I say the left,

so let me answer the first part of that first. When I say the left, I broadly mean the set of views that believe the government is the answer to the problems. And then you couple that now with, what do we mean by modern leftism? Well, they want the government to pretty much do everything, right? It can take from whoever it wants to, it can give from whoever it wants to. If there's a problem, whether it's education or healthcare or anything else, the government is always the solution. And then what also leftists mean, and I guess this is probably more of a direct answer if you want to go what's left and right. Leftism is collectivism that we judge based on groups, black people, white people, gay

people, straight people, atheists, believers, et cetera, et cetera. And then you pick the importance in that hierarchy of how you're going to treat people. So that's collectivism versus on the right, you have individualism that you believe that the only way to really organize a society is around individuals first, and then you can hopefully build something good going up. So I would say leftism is sort of top down, and individualism is sort of bottom up. That's a basic definition. Thanks. To really answer the second part of the question, well, when you leave the left, as I did, and

in many ways this is the whole point of the book, you will be treated horrifically in ways that will be mind blowing to you. You will have, and I talk about this, people that are invited to your wedding that will now tell you you're racist. And you'll ask them, well, what have I said that's racist? And they can never tell you. It's just the essence of what you are now is racist or you're a homophobe even though you're married to a guy.

The endless amount of craziness. You will get endless hate. You will be called a grifter and a traitor or even worse, if you're a black person and you come out, you know, you come out of this political closet and you say I'm not a lefty anymore, you're an Uncle Tom, you're a coon, I mean, a horrific list of words

that they will throw at you. And by the way, every minority feels this. The second you say, oh, whatever it is that makes me a minority, my sexuality, my gender, my skin color, the second they've got that on you, you are enemy number one, and they will do everything they can to take you out because they need minorities. They need minorities to feel oppressed, otherwise they can't control you. And again, this is sort of the weird thing that what I found was

all I started doing really was talking to people on the right, talking to Shapiro, talking to Prager and Larry Elder and a bunch of people. And all I found was, oh, they're willing to disagree, willing to disagree and not chop my head off. Let's keep talking. Really is as simple as that. OK, so it wasn't terribly difficult, but it's funny. The Young Turks seemed like an uncool version of the Daily Wire. Whenever I accidentally stumble across Young Turks, I feel a little sorry for them. They just seem like the uncool little brother that really wants to be like the older brother but can't quite manage it. But that must have been really difficult for you, having friends in that area who maybe turned on you. in that area who maybe turned on you? Yeah, I had friends turn on me. You know, I don't, I don't, in most interviews that I do, at some point someone asked me something about them and I don't ever need to, I don't ever need to throw them under the bus. I mean, they sort of throw themselves under the bus all the time. So it's not really necessary, but you know, it's funny

because we do live in a time where everybody, you know, we're changing the name of the Washington Redskins. We're tearing down monuments, blah, blah, blah. They're called the Young Turks. I mean, the Young Turks were literally the group that committed the Armenian genocide. You can Google it. But for some reason, YouTube doesn't have a problem with them being their like premier news partner, but whatever.

Hey, what was it like when you quit Patreon? Because that's how I do what I do, Patreon. And I'm scared, you know? Like I go against secular dogma. Hey, one point to what you just brought up before because it was so good about the the left hollywood whatever you want to kind of call it like the new kind of religious dogmatists it's almost like like hollywood and big tech companies etc have become what people accused christians of being in the 50s and 60s like boring just like

shut up just boring preach annoying, like just let me live my life. It's really quite fascinating. Yeah. Well, these things are cyclical, right? Like, so there were times when I say the right now is basically pretty good on these issues. If that doesn't mean the right was always good on these issues, let's not forget that 20 years ago, I think we're probably roughly about the same age, 20 something years ago, it was the right that was trying to ban Mortal Kombat, the video game, because if you could rip someone's skull out and there was blood and they thought that violence in video games was going to cause violence, there's actually no scientific evidence of that. So it's not that

the right is somehow inherently better always. These things do ebb and flow. I think the right has a general better bedrock of principles. If you believe in individual rights and in an American context, if you believe in the Constitution, that's a pretty good bedrock. The bedrock of the left, as far as I can tell, is just you just kind of feel things. I feel the $15 minimum wage is right, so it's right. Well, the next guy is going to come and say, well, I think it should be $35. And it's like, oh, well, he must be more moral than you because he picked a bigger number. So that's the asymmetry there. Do you mind me asking about your relationship with God? Because I know these are difficult and personal things, and I don't mean to kind of get you to talk about what you'd rather not talk about, but you did just say it. What did I say

to you right before we started? All right. In that case, shut the hell up. I'm going to ask you a question. You said we have a God-shaped hole in our hearts. And I know you're on Justin Briley's show. And you said, I don't really consider myself an atheist. Like, what changed and what's going on right now? Because my understanding is that you're Jewish. Is that correct? And is this something you're kind of recovering, looking into, or what?

Yeah. Well, so I'll answer this a couple ways. First off, you'll enjoy chapter nine of the book. Yeah, aren't you glad that I didn't pretend that I read it? I only said I read the first couple of chapters. This is what pisses me off when people do interviews with me and you're like, you haven't read anything but the title. And that's pretty much what I've done with you.

No, but it's kind of funny as an interviewer, I'm sure you know this. There are certain interviews where I really do want to read the whole book before because there's a lot of stuff that I want to fully understand and grasp. And then there's sometimes where I'll read a chapter or two. Sometimes I don't read it all

because I feel like that will lead me to better questions. It's all part of it, so it's all good. So what I would say is this. One of the things that I have moved on is that you can be an atheist and be a deeply moral, good, righteous, wonderful person. And I know it's cliche to say, well, some of my best friends are atheists, but several of the books that I have on my set right here are written by some of the most preeminent, prominent atheists in the world, from Sam Harris to Peter Boghossian and Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins, etc. I believe these to be good people who want to live in a world that's probably very, very similar to the world that you and I want to live in. And that

can work at the individual level. What I have come to believe, and I talk about this in chapter nine, where I talk about being on tour with Jordan, Jordan Peterson, and this is one of the things that he would hit often, is that for a society to flourish over time, it has to be built on ideas that are outside of it. And by the way, the United States of America, that's exactly how we were set up. Our Bill of Rights and our Constitution, they talk about God-given rights, while at the exact same time, they talk about a separation of church and state. Think how really brilliant that

is. They say, we didn't give you these rights, the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to peaceably assembly and all these things. We didn't give them to you because if we gave them to you, well, we're people. And that means people gave them to you. And if people gave it to you, well, people could take it away. No, people didn't give it to you. God, meaning something else. And we can get into that. That's where the conversation starts getting bananas of how do we all define God? But something else made us free. I believe as a human being, you are born free. That is a God-given right. And then what the United States said is, we are going to protect your God-given rights.

That is a beautiful system. If you believe that it all just came from you and humans gave you freedom, the government, you're born and suddenly the government somehow gave you freedom, man, that is a prescription for tyranny. And to bring it back to the God-shaped whole thing and my evolution on this, I don't believe a society over time can organize around something that doesn't have a belief outside of itself. You're seeing it happen right now.

The reason it feels like the secular world is collapsing is because the lefties and what I would say are the disaff know, the the disaffected liberals, whatever you want to say, the people who just say, oh, whatever, whatever you want to do, you could do it all the time and whatever. Well, that will be destroyed by bad forces. And we're watching it happen right now. So that if you believe in something outside of yourself, I think you can organize in a stronger way. I mean, the next question, which we don't have time to go into, perhaps, is the idea. is this a fictitious idea that helps to order society, or is this actually a reality? Because if it's only a fictitious idea, you know, it's sort of

like with my kids. I tell them, well, it's December. You be good. I don't actually lie to them about Santa Claus or Father Christmas, but suppose I did. You know, that's a fictitious idea that leads them to act in a certain way, namely moral or better behaved, and feel a certain way, namely happy. And who doesn't want to be bloody moral and happy? But the only problem is, I don't want to be moral and happy if in order to be like that, I have to believe something false. Yeah, it's a great question. We could do six hours on this. The short version would be, I believe that you can functionally believe that. You can

functionally look at it as, oh, we have to believe in something outside of ourselves so that we can build a society that will stand the test of time and not just every time a bad idea comes in, we'll suddenly rattle the entire thing to the point of collapse, which might be where we're at right now. that would be a functional belief. But I would say I'm more than just a purely functional believer, because I believe that thing in and of itself, that need for the functional belief, that is what belief is in a certain respect.

And again, this is where we could do this for six hours. But there is something that my parents believed, that my grandparents believed, and my forefathers before them believed that allowed my lineage to go. I mean, look, the history of the Jews is a brutal, painful, pogromed, holocausted history. Yet for some reason, Jews are still here. It doesn't even really make sense. But you can't disconnect that from some level of belief. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. All right. Let's shift gears a little bit here, Dave.

All right. This is fantastic. How am I doing so far? Oh, dude, you're awesome. I just love chatting with you. This is really great. I want to talk, you know, this is funny. A couple of years ago, I announced that I was going to give up the internet for August. And what's fascinating to me is I promise you, I did not know that you do this as well. And I just want to talk about that because August is coming up next week. You and I, we both said, have been working our butts off

to kind of get everything in order. I want to just kind of talk about why it is kind of we're doing that, how we feel about it, why people might not be able to take a month off, but they might be able to start reintroducing the Sabbath into their life. A lot of Jews and Christians aren't observing the Sabbath in any sense. So, yeah, I mean, feel free to talk about why you started doing that and what that's

like. Yeah. Well, first off on the Sabbath part, you know, I do try not to tweet on the weekends, whether it's Saturday and or Sunday, one or the other sometimes, but I do try to disconnect just on that. Every now and again, I've tweeted out, oh, but I do try to disconnect just on that. Every now and again, I've tweeted out, oh, you know, I don't tweet on the weekends and Shapiro will tweet at me, Ben Shapiro, he's Orthodox Jew, obviously. And I'll say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we've been doing that for 5,000 years, you know? Okay. So the reason, so this will be my fourth August doing it. I think you said to me right before we started, this will be the third. And I failed last year. I want to be clear. Oh, you failed last year. Okay. So, well,

I'm super interested in why you did it as well. I mean, for me, when I decided to do this four years ago, you know, look, I live in this world, in this YouTube world, this Twitter world, this endless, you know, it used to be a 24 hour news cycle. Now it's just like every second, everything's just spinning and spinning and spinning and hate and love. And I felt that I wanted to give myself a little bit of an escape, but doing just a weekend thing wasn't going to do it. And I thought, look, if there's ever a time to do it, August is when generally speaking, things calm down. Now, this August is particularly unique because we're in an election year. We were supposed to have a Republican convention, which now I guess maybe is going to be virtual, but also Biden, 99% will name his VP,

who's going to be the real president because he's just a meatbag at this point that he's going to name. So I'm going to miss some serious stuff, but that's exactly why I'm doing it. People keep saying to me, Dave, you know, you've done it for these last three years, but you can't do it this year. I mean, the world's on fire. The cities are burning. Biden, Trump, you know, blah, blah, blah. That's precisely why you need to. That's why I'm doing it. And what, you know, in years past, what we've done is we've gone away for a couple of weeks and I just I literally I lock my phone in a safe. But it's not just about disconnecting. I don't watch news. You know, we'll watch, I'll watch some television.

So that will be the, you know, Netflix or something like that. Yep. But no, no news, no nothing. And then I come back on the grid. I'll be back on September 1st and I'll have somebody interviewing me and they will catch me up with what I miss. And this year it will obviously be particularly bananas. It'll be particularly crazy.

Five hour show. But what I've found is when you do this, your brain gets a chance to reset. I'm really, when I go off the grid, I'm going to do a live stream this Friday, which I think is the 31st. And I have someone coming on to talk about diet. I have someone coming on to talk about fitness and someone coming on to talk about tech addiction. And I'm going to really try to eat right. You know, I do a pretty good job of that anyway. I'm really going to work on some fitness stuff, which I do a pretty decent job,

and then the tech stuff is obviously self-explanatory. But I'm going to spend a month really just kind of clearing out my mind, taking care of my body, spending time with family and friends. We're not going away because of the stupidity over corona and all that. And that's why I do it,

and I find that I come back refreshed. And I wonder, have you had an experience like this? We're literally about 15 days in. I find old songs are popping into my brain. Like, and I start remembering weird things, like memories are different. And even dreams, even dreams are different. No, 100%.

So for me, you know, I've done a lot of work, you know, helping people break free of pornography, right? And obviously tech is a big component of that. And so I would naturally be seeing these children on their phones all the time, unable to have a conversation. And I began to resent it. And I would look at myself and I'm like, I'm not very different. And so I began by, I would put my phone and my computer in a bag, zip it up, take it to a friend's house because I have no self-control. I can't keep it in my house.

And I would say, I'm coming back on Monday. And it was so funny. I'd be backing out of the driveway and I would have this urge to tweet something. I'm like, oh man, that's a sign. I need some freedom from this. But, you know, so three years ago, I had my wife change the password on my phone, password on my computer. I put a vacation responder up. I actually even got rid of my phone and got a dumb phone for the month and it was terrifying honestly and that is so over the top given what people actually have to face so I'm aware of the irony but

I was like anxious, it's like I'm dying it's like bye, if anyone's trying to talk to me I won't be able to hear you you know, so same thing like you, the way I think of it is you know those rotating fans if you imagine a rotating fan going on full speed and then you yank the plug out of the wall, it takes a while, but eventually the thing starts to slow down and stop. And that's what happened with my brain. And just, just like what you were saying, I think it's so important

that we cultivate, cultivate our interior life, that we have thoughts and we reflect and we ponder and we contemplate, but we're unable to do that if we're plugged in 24 seven to this bloody podcast or your podcast, or it doesn't matter. Even if the opinions are good, I need time to just let my brain breathe. So it was fantastic. So the way I'm beginning this year is I'm taking an eight day silent retreat at a monastery up in Wisconsin. And I said to the monk there, I'll give you my phone. You give it to me when I leave, but I'm going to lock everything down on my phone. My wife will have the password, so I won't be able to get into it and we'll see how I do. But kudos to you. I think that is so

fantastic. And it says a lot about you that you're willing to do that for your own mental well-being. And I bet you your show is going to be better off because of it. Not, not worse, even though it might seem that way in the short term. Yeah. Well, likewise, I love that you're doing it. And let's connect that first week in September, and we'll do something live on one of our channels, or both of our channels, doesn't matter. And let's talk about it, because I'm sure even if we do totally different things, I'm not doing a silent retreat. But even if we do totally different things within that time, look, the idea that we're all on Twitter all day long and you're just being inundated

with other people's immediate thoughts all the time. We all have our own immediate thoughts, but now we're having this collision of other people's egoist thoughts all the time. And again, I'm part of the machine. So we're all part of this thing. But I don't think the human brain was designed to be in this neural network all the time.

Well, we know it wasn't designed for it, right? Because we didn't have it until 20 years ago. So it's only in the last 20 years that we have what I would say is a new, in a certain regard, you could call it a mental condition. And it's on you. You know, the internet is just a tool. And it's on you to decide how to use that tool.

Fire is a tool. Well, it can cook, it can help you cook and boil water, but it can also burn you and burn your house down. And we somehow think that we can just have these things and there'll be no repercussions. And I know you've done a lot on porn related to this. All of these things that we just have access to all the time.

I'm not for banning any of these things, but we have to honestly think how we relate to all of these things because again, it sort of gets back to what we talked about earlier. We're all imperfect creatures and especially these days in this technological adolescence where we're being handed this stuff and 20 years ago we all signed the Facebook take all our information thing. We don't have a lawyer sitting next to us when we do it. So there's so many interesting pieces to this puzzle. We'll click add, you know, I'll put it up on the screen so people can read it. I want to, why don't we begin by just asking a simple question.

I know you could speak a lot on this, but since we've got all these questions coming in, maybe we'll try and keep them somewhat quick. I'll try to be brief. Yeah, I'm trying to think what to ask you. I want to ask you so many things. But how about this? How's Jordan Peterson doing? So I obviously, I can't say anything that's not known to the public. Of course, I did see him a couple of months back.

You know, he did an interview with his daughter, Michaela, about a month ago. So he's getting there, you know, getting getting hooked on these benzos is seriously. It's seriously, seriously dangerous. He had a really adverse reaction. I know he just finished his second book and he will be back, I hope, within this calendar year. But nobody's perfect. He never purported to be perfect. I never saw him once on stage saying he was perfect and he's not perfect. But I know that this is a guy who put a lot of goodness into the world. And I was honored to be on tour with the guy and he'll get there.

I love what he said on his daughter's podcast recently. He said, you know, if you're waiting for someone perfect to come around, except for our blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I'd have to add that you're going to be waiting forever. You know, your only option are kind of broken, wounded people who mess up. All right, let's let's go through these now. I'm not kind of really screening these very much ahead of time. So let's see what we got here. Teresa says, GK Chesterton is my patron saint on how to have a great discussion with people with whom I disagree. Dave, have you ever read Chesterton or will you? Have you ever heard of him? He's an English convert to Catholicism. Yeah, I know who he is. And I don't think I've written or I don't think

I've read any of his books per se, but I get, you know, I, people send me clips of things all the time and, and, you know, the memes and all that stuff. I think a lot of it, whenever I hear his name, I always think, well, this is a lot of the stuff that for whatever reason, I'm okay with conversation. I think that there's, there's a certain type of person. It sort of gets to what we discussed before. You're either wired, I think, for being a little more openness. You know, if this if we were doing a personality test, I am definitely high on on openness. And that allows me to have these conversations. So if you were to tell me that we had some opinion that that diverged completely. All right. What am I going to do about it? Am I going to reach through the screen and choke you? It's like, it's OK. Let's talk

about it. One of the things G.K. Chesedin said, which you might find interesting, is he talked about the democracy of the dead. And when you kind of count how many atheists there are even today, there's not that many. And if you want to take a vote from human beings, not that that's the best thing, obviously. I'm not saying we come to a knowledge of the truth based on who thinks what. But there is something to be said there, that the vast majority of humans throughout human history have believed in god or something like god uh okay here's another question dave met with lila rose a year ago has dave changed his mind further on pro-life uh well it's all in the book uh i don't buy it next question we're gonna try to we're gonna try to do these questions quickly.

I'm begrudgingly pro-choice with a 12-week cutoff except for extraordinary medical situations that maybe would be past that. I don't deny that it's a life. I believe when the sperm meets the egg, that is the genesis of life. I think to be in a truly pluralist society, you have to do it enough so that enough people's opinions and and and beliefs and morality can be incorporated into that. There's no perfect answer on this one for sure. But I think that this is the one where it's like people on the right think that people on the left hate babies and people on the left think that people on the right hate women. And it's like we've got to get past that. And I in this instance, I don't want to live in a religious pure a theocracy. And that's why I think you have to take some secular approach to this. But I will tell you this,

and I've never said this publicly before. And your audience can ask her why I did do an interview for my book with Lila. And she did not air that interview. I spent an hour and a half talking about everything I believe on this. She chose not to air it. So, okay. Here's what it is. Here's my argument against abortion and then I'll let you respond and you can have the final say. Here would be the argument. It'd be something like this. It's always wrong for big, strong people to kill little weak, innocent people. And abortion always involves big, strong people killing little weak, innocent people. Therefore it's always wrong. I don't think that's a terrible argument.

And again, I think this is where you have to lie on the either you're going to be, if you're for the individual, you have to weigh the individual who in this case is the woman, although hopefully I would want the man to be involved in the choice as well versus the individual being the child. And again, I don't deny that it's a lie for any of that. And I go much further into this in the book, But this is an eight-hour one for us. Yeah, for sure. Okay, let's see.

Here's another question from Michael L. He says, hey, guys, I love your guys' work so much. How can we best share good, honest content without big tech pulling the strings? Or maybe he's saying, how do we share? Yeah, go on. Yeah, do a pitch for it, please. I started Locals.com. I know you were in talks with the Locals guys for a while.

I'm not sure where that went, but we give tools for creators to own your content, own your user data, a great app that your guys will get push notifications, obviously ad-free video and audio and all of those things. And if they want to know more about what we've built, you can go to RubinReport.com. That was the first project of those things. And if they want to know more about what we've built, you can go to rubinreport.com. That was the first project of Locals.

We have an iOS app and a Google Play and Android app. And it's as many of the answers for these huge problems as I've seen. And I'm really proud of what we've built and we're continuing to build more. And it's a set of tools. It's not a platform in a traditional sense. Do you feel fairly confident that whoever

it is that's doing the exchange of money isn't just going to turn on you as well? I think. So the way we the way we do the payment processing on locals is it's your Stripe account. Now, Stripe has been pretty good, not perfect on payment stuff, but it's not all going through locals. So they could never just take down locals like that. If they went after you, if Stripe said, well, Matt Fradd can't be on here, well, then I can't solve your problem right now. So I'm not even lying that I'm overpromising we can solve everybody's problem. I can't solve Alex Jones's problem. I don't know that that's the business I want to be in, per se, but I'm trying to solve

as many problems for as many people as possible, and I think that's what we've done with locals. Yeah, that's great. Was it scary when you quit Patreon and do you think they've learned their lesson? Well, it was scary because it was something like 75% of my revenue for my company. And it's not just me, you know, I've got several full-time employees and part-time employees and we've got a great company and all that. So it was scary, but we built a subscription page the next day and our revenue actually jumped by about 30% because I took a stand against Patreon and people, people, people honor you. Thank you for doing that. Yeah. Well, look, if you do something brave, I think people honor you for that. So that's exactly what we can build for you, Matt. And I know it's scary, like the idea of, oh, you're making X amount of dollars on Patreon. But in that regard, it's one way that you're still

controlled by big tech that I'm not controlled by big tech. Now, that's totally it's totally on you. And, you know, you have your own decision making process and all that. I'm definitely open to it. I definitely am. What I've seen of locals, it legit looks super sophisticated, just as sophisticated as Patreon, if not more. So I'll certainly continue to consider it. I'm definitely open to it. And I'd invite everybody to go check it out for sure. And then do you think they've learned their lesson?

Like, it doesn't seem like we've had any massive. No. No. I was so hoping you'd say yes. Yeah, I mean, look, they lost me. They lost Jordan Peterson. They lost Sam Harris. We know that they lost some high profile people and they took a hit.

But learn their lesson. I mean, these big tech companies in many ways, the ideology of social justice or of whatever that is, that is so infected these things that they will all gladly burn themselves down in the name, you know, as opposed to doing what would be right by their shareholders or, you know, as opposed to doing what would be right by their shareholders or, you know, people that really support them. This next question is perhaps more insulting to you, but it's also meant to be an insult to me. I'll read it and explain what it means. And so I apologize for this comment, Dave. I think it's a shitty comment, but should I take a drink?

I could do a spit take. Yeah, do that. Yeah I have it in my mouth? Yeah, here we go. Please don't pull a baron, he means bishop baron, and fail to at least hint at conversation, oh, sorry, at conversion, especially due to him being a sodomite. And so let me say why I think that's a shitty thing to say. Are you a sodomite? Yeah, I love that.

You've been in the hot seat for so long now that this stuff doesn't bother you at all. But I would say, honestly, I think like to, you know, it's one thing to say like, yeah, I am a Catholic. And so a Catholic thinks that sodomy, which may come across as a, as a whatever, I think that's wrong. Right. But it's funny. Like I have people who disagree with my sexual choices. I think they're wrong. Like people don't think I should have four children. I had somebody say to me, they stopped me in Nashville at a coffee shop and they said, bloody hell, don't you have a TV? And I said, if you think TV is better than sex, chaos, they want order. And I think that's what leads people like this to make shocking, blunt statements without kindness and without charity. I suspect this person in their own belief system is probably a sinner, right? As long as this person is not doing something to try to legislate my life, or as long as you're

not doing something to try to legislate my life, as long as you're not doing something to try to legislate my life uh well then you're entitled to your opinions what you may or may not think about my sexuality or something it doesn't really mean that much to me i mean that with all especially if you say it like that oh yeah well yeah all right it's like someone comes up to you in the street and pokes their tongue out and runs away like You're like, I'm not sure what to do with this, you know? Yeah, all right. But yeah, like, so to this answer, like, yes, of course I want, I would love David Rubin to become a faithful Catholic because I think Catholicism is true. Dave Rubin has his reasons for thinking it's not true. And, you know, an hour long interview probably isn't the place to hash that out.

Maybe we'll get together one day and have a few whiskeys, Dave, and we can chat more about these things. All right, let's see. Who else do we have here? All right, let's take one more and then we'll wrap up. This comes from Wildman, I think. I know that you label yourself an atheist, Dave, but do you practically,

and we've maybe advanced this, do you practically believe in agnosticism, aka the decision not to make a decision? Like you're basically an agnostic. Like maybe decision not to make a decision like you basically an agnostic like maybe there is maybe there's not i don't know we already we kind of did this one let's find a bonus one come on yeah you got it uh uh uh just scrolling through a lot of sodomite sodomite yeah yeah there's a lot of anti-semitism that i wasn't aware of until i said i was going to interview you like people are like yeah there's, yeah, there's some assholes on the

internet. Life is more about legislation. We want you to go to heaven. Alright, good. I'm glad. I'm sure Dave's glad that you want him to go to heaven. Thank you. Here we go. You can give us whatever you think here. They're all Catholic. Now, Dave, what's your opinion of

the Catholic Church? Is there anything that you completely agree with? That's a nice question. So there's obviously lots of stuff's your opinion of the Catholic Church? Is there anything that you completely agree with? That's a nice question. So there's obviously lots of stuff you would disagree with the Catholic Church. What do you agree with? Maybe you're not that familiar with what the Church teaches. Well, you referenced or the other questioner referenced Bishop Aaron before, who I've had on my show a couple of times, who I think is a really excellent communicator of the ideas of the Catholic Church and I think is a really good person.

And of course, yes, we have agreed to disagree on certain things. I can tell you this, that most of my friends who are Catholic, who are believers in Catholicism, are basically good people. I mean, I think they're basically good people. So, I mean, you want me to pick like a specific tenant of Catholicism? No, no, that's all right.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Here's a question that you might be able to answer, but were you surprised just how cool Orthodox Christians were? I mean, because I'm sure there was a time where you were fighting for your so-called same-sex marriage to be, you know, put forth. And I'm sure at that point, you're like, what the hell is wrong with all these Christians? Has your opinion of Christians changed as you've gotten to know them? And I don't just mean like liberal, wacky Christians who don't actually believe what the Bible says. I mean, people who believe in what Christianity teaches.

Well, first off, you know, I never, when, even when I was a progressive and I was on the Young Turks and gay marriage was being fought for, and there was this like absolute hatred of religious people. I never felt that way because it's like, if you're going to hate everyone that was against gay marriage, all right, do we all hate our grandparents? Everyone listening to this, their grandparents were not for gay marriage, right? Like, that's just the thing. It wasn't a thing that was talked about at that time. Now we can have the conversation about traditional beliefs and versus modernity. That's fine. But like this idea that you have to hate all of these people

is just, it's just a crazy idea to me. What I can tell you is this, last year I spoke at Liberty University. It is the largest evangelical college in the United States. I spoke at their convocation on, I think it was on Sunday morning and it was in front of 14,000 people, 14,000. It was a true, it felt like a political rally.

To put it in context, the largest audience that I think Jordan and I spoke to, if I'm not mistaken, was Melbourne, which was about 5,000 people, maybe 6,000 people. So it was massive. What I can tell you is these evangelicals were respectful, decent, fun. I then spent the day wandering around campus and people

were coming up to me and hugging me and high-fiving me and taking selfies and it's like do we have some disagreements yeah yeah but zippity damn doodah right yeah but they actually these are the bad guys totes all right final question just because this is really quick dave are you going to move out of california love you both i'm sure you're aware that Joe Rogan just announced recently that he's moving to Texas. Yeah. Well, the funny thing about Rogan moving to Texas is Rogan was a Bernie supporter. So I don't know that the Texans really want Rogan there. I suppose that's for them to decide. Maybe in Austin. Yeah. But do you really want more Bernie supporters in Texas? That's a disaster. Ted

Cruz was like, welcome to Texas, Rogan. And it's like, well, if you're gonna import those ideas, that's a problem. But putting that aside, I wanna stay here and fight for a couple more years. Because really what I decided was, and I was looking in Texas, I really was. But what I thought is, look, if someone like me leaves here, then if that's the route, if that's the future of America,

where we're all just gonna go to different states. Now, I like that idea in terms of federalism, you should go where your beliefs are better suited, that's fine, except we really will end up in a civil war. We will end up in a intractable situation of state against state. And I know that there's a lot of good Californians who, we used to have California Republicans,

let's not forget Arnold Schwarzenegger was the California Republican governor not too long ago. Ronald Reagan from California. So it's not that these things can't exist. And I just want to see if I can stay and fight for a little bit. Yeah, fantastic. Okay, Dave, as we wrap up, tell people maybe whatever you want about your book, about Locals, about your show. Obviously, everyone's probably familiar with your show, but you can get the book at DontBurnThisBook.com or at Amazon.com. And it's RubinReport.com is the first project of Locals. We got a Rubin Report app, which you can search for.

Just search for the Locals.com app. And we're building great communities that will set people like Matt Fradd free to pursue whatever it is that they want to pursue. And that's all I've got to say about that. to pursue whatever it is that they want to pursue. And that's all I've got to say about that. Dave, you're very kind to come on a very, you know, comparatively small YouTube channel and to chat with us today. God love you. Thank you kindly.

Matt, it's been a pleasure. And we will do this over whiskeys, perhaps in Canberra. Yeah, maybe. Enjoy your August. Yeah, you too. All right. We're going to connect in September. All right. Bye. Okay. We, you too. All right. We're going to connect in September. All right. Bye. Okay. We're still live. I just wanted to say, oh, there. Thank you. Whoa, there. Thank you to everybody for being here on the live chat. Yeah. It's sad that I feel like I got to kind of respond to this. Look, it's like as a faithful Catholic, you should want people to cease being involved in serious sin. You should want them to come to know and love Jesus Christ. But I do think,

and I do stand by what I said, that in a time of chaos, we seek kind of certainty. We seek like, we want to say something that's not ambiguous, especially in a day and age where we feel that many people are being ambiguous. But I would just caution us against, we want to speak without ambiguity, but at the right time. I really feel like there are some Catholics out there who wouldn't be happy unless I had Dave on my show, called him a sodomite, and then hung up, which to me just seems like just a terrible thing. Maybe I shouldn't be giving these people attention.

which to me just seems like just a terrible thing. And maybe I shouldn't be giving these people attention. The other thing I would say is this was an interview that I conducted for Dave. In other words, I'm the interviewer. He's the guest. If Dave has me on his show and he has questions about what the Catholic Church believes, I'm happy to talk to him. But the idea that I would bring him on and lecture him and kind of demand that he convert seems not only uncharitable, but a really bad way to get someone to buy into what you believe to be the case. But anyway, many of y'all have been super great and it's been awesome to have you.

And thank you so much. Why don't we take a few questions before we wrap up today? But before we do, I want to say Strive21. You've heard me talk about it before. I just want to give a plug to this because it's 100% free and you can be as anonymous as you want. There's over 19,000 men going through the course right now. There's basically daily videos for everybody. And every day there's a challenge for you to perform. Strive21.com. If you're a man who struggles with porn or lust in any way, please check out Strive21.com. As I say, 100% free.

You can be as anonymous as you want. All right, let's take some of these questions. If you have things you'd like to put up here, there's many of you who are speaking, so it's kind of difficult, but I am happy to hear from you and put your questions or comments on the screen. Teresa says, can't wait to hear you guys talk in September about the TechFast. Thank you very much. Please pray for me. Michael Gormley says, I am so handsome. Thank you, Michael Gormley. If you guys aren't familiar

with Michael Gormley, his excellent show is called Catching Foxes, and I'd highly recommend that everybody checks out that podcast. Joa, forgive me if I got that wrong. You are right, Matt. We just want him to think about these issues. Absolutely. I agree. And let me tell you, if we have a couple of whiskeys together, I'm more than happy to talk about it. Let's see, man. Amen, brother. That is the correct approach to this conversation. Sorry, guys, I'm going blind. I've got to put these bloody bad boys on here. Well done as usual, Matt. Thank you. This person says, sad to see Catholics being so rude and divided. Great interview, fan from Guatemala. Thank you very much. I'm not reading these as I put them up, so I'm not really picking them. But yes, Matt, I mentioned early on in the chat, as a recent convert, Dave and Jordan Peterson were both instrumental in getting my husband on the path to truth.

Glory to Jesus Christ. That's fantastic. Matt, have you read Sex and Culture by J.D. Unwin? No, I haven't. Sorry. You are a joke, Fred. Ruben is a grifter. Okay. Cheers. Question for Matt. What book are you reading? So for August, I plan on reading Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle,

as well as The Idiot by Dostoevsky. Let's see here. Matt, your accent sounds funny yep right cheers uh could you and cameron compromise and you keep your stash i don't think so she doesn't like kissing me my wife so i gotta get rid of this bad boy soon unfortunately um she's not told me to but let's i'd rather kiss my wife than people on youtube tell me my beard looks good matt boyer what are some favorite fictional books look anything by dostoevsky brothers k crime and punishment reading the idiot i love uh i love uh who else do i love talking obviously jamie says i'd love to see dave interview you well thanks very much and if you guys want Dave to interview me you could tell him that on Twitter I'm just a

small fish and so I don't presume that it's a very big thing on his resume to have me on his show but I'd be more than happy to chat with him if he wants to have you read the Imitation of Christ yeah I've read parts of it it's fantastic

Andrew says great interview really interested to see how your conversations progress Have you read The Imitation of Christ? Yeah, I've read parts of it. It's fantastic. Andrew says, great interview. Really interested to see how your conversations progress. Yeah, it was kind of cool to see that he seemed to want to continue a dialogue. So that's pretty cool. Would you ever consider interviewing people like Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro? Yeah, definitely open to that. Thoughts on praying four rosaries a day?

You can. It could be a good thing, could be a bad thing. If you have four small children at home and you're abandoning your responsibilities to go and feel holy, I would say that that would be a wrong thing to do. But if you're a single person, for example, and this is something you can do and wish to do, feel led to do, but at the same time you can keep, you know, keep to your duties, then certainly that's an option. Anthony says, thank you, Matt. Appreciate it. Yep. Cheers.

Jermaine says, great interview. Would love to do interview for Salt and Light Media. That aside, do you have any book recommendations? I'd say read The Brothers Karamazov. I'm reading that for the second time right now and i'm nearly finished it's fantastic mike says hi matt would you ever consider getting firearms i did consider it and i do have them vitamin d says hey matt have you heard of muhammad hijab i think he would be a very interesting person to have on i haven't but, but thank you so much. Caitlin says, how do you think we should talk about these controversial issues with people who have

different beliefs, i.e. homosexuality and abortion? Well, for one, to invite somebody on your show, and you've just got an hour to chat with, and to jump into the topic without sort of being transparent about what you plan on chatting with, I think is a bit rude. So, you know, I'd be happy. Actually, no, I wouldn't be happy. I don't think I would want to do a debate on homosexuality. I'm open to it. Like if Dave Rubin actually wanted to do a debate, I'm certainly open to doing it. How do we chat? I think this is true, right? I think it's a cliche, but people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, right? And so that's why when like a YouTube troll just calls you a sodomite and runs away, it's so unhelpful. But to pray for the people who are involved in serious sin, that they would come to know Jesus Christ and repent of their sins. I think this is a good thing.

And then to pray that the Holy Spirit gives you an opening to speak truth into this person's life. But not to force it in a way, because I think sometimes we can be prudential. We can have a kind of prudential certainty, right? That if I bring this up right now, it's going to be not just unproductive, but counterproductive, right? Like case in point, my in-laws, I love them all. They are not attending a Catholic church. They go to kind of an evangelical church. If I was, you know, at Thanksgiving dinner and decided to bring up the papacy, I think I've got pretty good reasons to think that would be counterproductive, not just unproductive.

So asking the Holy Spirit to kind of help, you know. So there you go. This person, too difficult to read, says, Matt, people definitely need to be more charitable. I really wish you recommended theology of the body. Right, I could have, but trying to explain what just those three words mean would take a lot of time. And there you are. No offense to anybody for what I've said here.

No offense intended. Just giving my two cents. Okay. At least I'm not attacking people on their own forums. Troll lover. All right. Let's try. I'll try to stay away from these comments.

I apologize. Matt, do you catholics should get involved with politics christ is king but it seems we kind of have to nowadays great interview well certainly the church has something to say about politics uh if you're interested uh thomas aquinas has uh an excellent book called day regno on kingship actually it's an it's Actually, it's an audio book. If you become a patron, you can get access to it where he obviously talks about politics. But I don't know much about politics. And honestly, I'm not terribly interested in it,

whether I should or shouldn't be. I'm not sure. Lewis says, I agree. Sometimes you can lead people further away from the truth when the truth is said in an uncharitable way. Would you agree? Yeah, I do. 1 Peter 3, verse 15 says three things.

I think all those three things have to be put together. I need to be walking the walk. I need to be charitable as I speak the truth and defend the truth. Chrissy says, Chrissy says how did you get this interview with Dave Dave had indicated to me that he might want to have me on his show a while back or at least one of his assistants

did I kept in touch with him I went to California last week and told him I'm around if you want to interview me and he said no but he'd love to be on my show that's how that happened let's see here man live so many questions you guys are awesome thanks so much

this folks this bloke here says I thought you did great sticking to the Catholic position how can we as Catholics master the courage to not beat around the bush well I think it's like recognizing that you're not expecting somebody to change their mind on the spot. Here's an honest question for you. When is the last time you changed your mind about something really significant on the spot?

Can you remember? Or was it really, was it rather something else where somebody asked you a question, put a pebble in your shoe, as it were, made you uncomfortable. You had to kind of walk around with that. And then eventually you began to change your mind. I think when we go into a conversation, like if I was to go into a conversation with Dave, like, all right, I'm going to convince him that homosexual acts are wrong. This is, again, I think not realistic in an hour long conversation. I think it's unhelpful. And I think to sort of corner him and without kind of asking him, is this okay if we talk about this, would be uncharitable. But yeah, I mean, just say what you think is true.

Give the reasons for thinking it. But you don't have to get into a full-on debate. You can say, you know what, I'm not prepared to keep chatting about this. I'm happy to if you want. Maybe we can discuss it at a greater time. Glory to Jesus Christ. Here we go. Let's see what this person says. Matt Fradd.

Dave would probably be more likely to debate gay marriage rather than homosexuality. As a libertarian, he shouldn't be demanding the state to recognize and regulate his relationship. Fair enough. Well, my opinion is that marriage is a natural reality which precedes government and therefore cannot be defined much less redefined by government but rather only recognized by government um so it depends on how you define it i obviously don't think that same-sex unions are marriages caitlin says thank you matt you are so right about sometimes it can actually be counterproductive at the right time and I agree prayer is so important thank you for all that you do

this person says wow Ruben volunteered to be on show he is really impressive being gay with a very strong position on abortion and his lifestyle yet was willing to be on a catholic show uh this person says, I'm obviously just asking the same question over and over because of how live stream chats work. Could you ask Dave about his opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict in a future interview? Maybe.

I mean, I don't know. I don't want to promise. Oh, look, what's going on there? I don't know why I think clicking is going to help. All right, guys, absolute pleasure. I just want to ask you, if you don't mind, it would be just so, I'd be so honored and helped if you would like this video and subscribe to the channel.

That actually really supports the show. And, you know, if I have 20 subscribers, Dave Rubin is less likely to come on. Right now I have almost 60,000 subscribers. I'd like to increase that so that I can ask, you know, other guests to come on who aren't willing to come on a small channel. So it'd be great if this could grow and we could do other conversations like this. May God bless you. Thank you very kindly for being here. And as always, I want to say, if you would consider becoming a patron of Pints with Aquinas, that would help out you will get one of these amazing beer steins let's see if we can focus on it come on

come on come on come on you bloody bugger Pints with Aquinas okay I'll stop doing it but we'll send you a beer stein we'll send you signed copies of my book we'll send you stickers you'll get access to online audio library we're doing a whole like masterclass on the confessions later on this year. You get access to a whole bunch of stuff by going to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. We also have a Hispanic channel.

If you type in Pints with Aquinas Español, you'll find it that way. We're doing all sorts of things. And I want to say a big and sincere thank you to all of you who are helping to make it possible. God bless you. And why don't we close by offering a prayer for Dave? I'm a Catholic.

I don't know if you are, but I want to pray for him. Obviously, I want him to come to know and love Jesus Christ. And I just wish him well. So why don't we pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the

hour of our death. Amen. See you guys.