The Boyscast with Ryan Long - James Lindsay on Hoaxing Universities

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

Thank you to everyone who has been supporting the boyscast so i can have conversations with interesting people like James Lindsay. hopefuly you guys think it's cool too. I also am releasing a solo episode this week on the patreon. I think I'm a podcaster now. Standup comedy is over. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And you can tell our friends, and they can have my things when we're dead. But we're gonna live forever. But we're gonna live forever. Welcome back to the Boyscast with Ryan Long. The first podcast exclusively for the boys. Got a pretty badass guest today, James Lindsay. So this guy's one of the coolest guys. They made the Grievance Study study affair four years ago or three

years ago. And basically, if you haven't watched it, you should check it out. It's really cool. It's this big documentary where they essentially there's also a seven minute version that just kind of summarize it and super funny. And you can even watch the seven minute version if you want to before the podcast. But basically what happens is they got all these these papers and studies published by universities and peer reviewed to sort of expose, you know, this grievance study stuff that's all just sort of a load of shit. And a lot of people sent that to me when it first came out and it was kind of going around in my circle of friends. And then he's done Rogan a bunch of times. And I messaged him on Twitter

being like, Hey dude, you know, big fan. If you want to ever do the boys cast. And he, he messed back being like, I just shared some of your videos. So he ended up like kind of knowing all the stuff I was doing. So that boys cast is taken off thanks to the dogs. So if you do want to support the boys cast, you know, either just really do a review on iTunes, share one of the videos on YouTube, a lot of easy ways you can kind of do it or the patrion.com slash the boys cast. And I have another, this, these all come come out early plus I have another podcast coming out Monday on the patreon so there's been a cool run so far I'm getting some of these cool guests on that I've been kind of following for years and everyone's sharing the videos and all that stuff's been helping a ton so I appreciate everyone and because of that now we can get these cool guests

on I've even did two podcasts last last week and then two this week including the patreon so we're up in production things are getting real out here exclusively for the boys all right without further ado once again this is the boys guest and my conversation with james lindsey it's really kind of funny because I work with these conservative guys and the conservative guys are like, they look girly. We can't use them. People love them. What are you talking about? It's like there are women in the world.

You're saying that you're working with some of these conservative guys and they said that your woke minis that you're putting up on Twitter aren't manly enough? Yeah, it's funny. Can we get an eagle on that bad boy? Yeah. Put it in a circle. Oh wait. Oh God. We can't put it in a circle. That would be the end of the world. Cause I actually watched your, uh, the grievance studies doc yesterday again,

which was like one of the funniest fucking things in the world. You said one of the things you're dealing with is when you had all this success and this thing takes off, it's the kind of the right wing publications that are are they're the only ones that kind of want to work with you oh my god it's not even a huge problem just a huge problem it's also a strategy it's like the nastiest nastiest strategy ever so nobody on the left invites you to talk about it at all about whatever it is anything like even like really centrist left-leaning stuff more or less won't touch it so then you end up getting invited to a

bunch of right-wing stuff and they you know half of them are reasonable and half of them just want to spike the football and say crazy stuff and so they bring you on yeah exactly and so so you go on and then like we got invited to like 500 right-wing things and like 10 left-wing things and so then all of a sudden it the the left is like look at all this right-wing things and 10 left-wing things. Then all of a sudden, the left is like, look at all this right-wing stuff they're going on. They're tools for the right. It's like, okay, that's crap. We would have been tools for the left if you tools would have had us on.

Then that doesn't happen, though. Then I found out later, it's like, this is nasty. I was thinking at the time in my innocence and as a sweet summer child back in 2018, I was like, this is a nasty organic thing that's happening. No, it's not. They do it on purpose. I've seen leaked things, not specifically about us,

but about other people that are like, we're going to completely bury these guys. We're going to force them to go on right-wing media. And the second they start showing up on Tucker Carlson, bam, tool for the right. And they're discredited. It's like, holy crap, it's an intentional strategy. It's like, what is this world we live in right now where everything is so insanely divided in a hurry to divide itself further, and then to use the division that it's manufacturing on purpose to divide things even further than that. This is not a good scene.

I get it the other way around where people are like, oh, you seem to be only associating with those people. And I go, listen, the same way that you weren't some right-wing guy, I like troublemakers. I like people that are disruptive. And you can't be disruptive in a religious architecture. It's like if they're like, oh, you want to have bad boys on your show? Well then why didn't you get the church bad boy? They've got a few bad boys and you're like, well, they don't though. So it's, it's very hard to be, it's hard to dissent on that side. So you kind of naturally the people that are doing anything that's out of the

grain or out of the box kind of end up over there, whether they were that or not, you know, some of it's unrelated to politics it's some weird um there's like this weird gravity or something i kept trying to think of a way to describe it in terms of like getting pulled in directions and then you get loved love bombed when you go the way that people want you to go and and you it's so hard to just be your damn self with anybody anymore. It's like, you've got to now, like you get up there. I mean, I watched Jordan Peterson's lecture where he's saying like, how did the Nazis happen? You know,

I can actually do a Jordan Peterson impression, but maybe I shouldn't. So he's like, he's like, how did Nazis happen? How did this arise out of nothing? You know? And so he's like, he's like, Hitler went up there and he gave his speeches and some stuff was duds and other stuff worked. And the stuff that worked, he did more of that. And his audience led him into a genocidal maniac. So you get this idea, though, that if you lean into this kind of audience, you get rewarded for saying certain things. You get all these Twitter likes, you get all these retweets and people send you all these messages that are like cool or whatever. And so, but then if you say the wrong thing, you just get nuked. So it's like, there's this gravity that's pushing people to the edges because that's a lot more. Yeah. It takes a lot more discipline to not be on the edges than to sometimes people are like,

oh, you're being a pussy. And it's like, the truth is you're the one being a pussy by getting radicalized that quickly by any movement. Yeah. Seriously. It's like, I keep finding myself like people's like, what do we do? any movement. Yeah, seriously. It's like, I keep finding myself like people's like, what do we do? And I'm like, girl, what's fine. It's just like, find out who you are, be who you are and be comfortable in who you are and not go

into the social pressure. Like, Oh, idiots on the internet called me bad names. So now I have to change who I am. Like, what are you talking about? It's like probably like, you know, what was it? 400 pound guy in his mom's basement that has like seven sock accounts it's blasting your blessing your life or I mean I would say it's Russian and Chinese trolls but you can tell the Chinese ones because their English isn't that good yet right it's really awkward why do you I can't tell them I can't tell any of them apart I'm talking about trolls not Chinese people you just assume they're all trolls that's what you just do is because why wouldn't they be or like i'm at like okay so i can already

tell you this kind of guy because i was this kind of guy and we relate immediately um when i was 15 if i had the ability to make like a twitter account with something like black woman's face on it and just blow people up and ruin their day i would have done it all day long yeah and i would have been laughing like that guy who unfortunately came up with the okay symbol being white supremacy like and now people are getting fired from their jobs and they're like they took it out of the game call of duty in case somebody's playing call of duty and realizes that you know it's somehow racist to play video game and then they they they did this and it's like if i was the guy who came up with that probably like a 15 year old kid or something,

I would be laughing for the rest of my life. Yeah, you did it. That we're actually letting trolls dictate everything because somehow we're too stupid as a society to realize that the internet is full of people who aren't being genuine and that are screwing with us because it's fun and funny and profitable

for them to do so. Yeah, me and my friends used to make fake profiles and mess with people all the time. Of course. Yeah, Matt, did you add all this nonsense into the mix? Oh, it's so easy. This nonsense is the most open door to sociopaths and grifters and just trolls that you could possibly imagine because it's all lived experience and you hurt my feelings. And it's like, you can't be wrong.

So it's just like, that's white fragility. And it's like, how is it white fragility? You asking me how it's white fragility is white fragility. And so it's like, it's just so easy. And all you have to do is like pretend that you have some kind of, like you don't even have to actually be, say a black person.

You could just be a white person pretending to be a black person on social media and nobody knows. Sean King. Yeah, exactly. And then all you have to do is like cry about your oppression all the time. Then you're making it up. Like you're probably in your parents, like $500,000 house in the basement,

laughing your head off with all of your cool gear. And then, I mean, there's this article in the Atlantic that nailed it a couple of years ago before they went completely off the rails too. And it said, the problem isn't Twitter. It's that we take Twitter seriously. And this seems to have increased not decreased um but it's it's full of people who just want to jerk our chains whether that's you know malevolently motivated or because they're just turds who have a twisted sense of humor which is kind of uh you know when we're talking about

because there's so many people who send me your stuff when, when you, when you had original, like the seven minute version of your, your doc went around, I had like five people sending it to me. And, and if over the years, people have kind of sent me your stuff and be like, yo, this guy kind of came to the same conclusion that you came on a few things like stuff like that. So I thought, I always thought your stuff was super bad-ass, but one of the reasons why you were able to do that. And I mean, like, you know, you made this stuff, penises are a social construct and raping the dog parks and all that stuff,

which is kind of, I was making fun of some of these vice articles that weren't that different from them. Like I've made videos making fun of these videos, these articles that were very similar to the ones you're actually making.

And one of the reasons is you're able to do that is because exactly what you're saying, that people take this stuff so seriously. Like I would say, tell me what you think about my theory. So two of the reasons why is because they've already you can take their bad logic to terrible conclusions and then for two they they don't know the first principles of what they're doing they just know the answer whereas people on the right now they've had to

explain themselves so much that they kind of actually had to figure out their arguments, whether they're right or wrong. I mean, just like utter certainty that they are the only people in the universe who are on the right side of history, but that is the correct analysis. I mean, that's how we wrote our stupid papers is we started with the funny conclusion or horrible conclusion we wanted to reach. And they're like, how do we get to this? And how do we say ridiculous stuff on the way? Yeah. So like that dog humping paper, the, the first thing i was like i sent peter a text and i was like pete what we need to write is a paper where the where we use dog dog training books to to argue that that we um train men the way that we train dogs and that that will solve rape culture and so we started laughing about that and the next

thing you know i was like and dude use your expertise because he has some dogs and he lives in portland so he has to take his dog in a city so he has to take his dogs to the dog park it's like i've never been to a dog park i live in kind of a you know so i don't know it's not rural but it's you know small town so everybody has yards you don't take your dog anywhere yeah you can go to the park together i guess or whatever but But Pete goes to the dog park every day. So I was like, use your expertise of the dog park and just write down some of the crazy stuff that happens there. Like that's evidence.

And the next thing that came out was this. But again, the whole point was to just get to the conclusion that there's rape culture everywhere and that a good way to get rid of it would be to train. Like you have to say something avant-garde and just nonsense. Like we're going to train men the way we train dogs and that'll fix it. and just nonsense. Like we're going to train men the way we train dogs and that'll fix it. You know? And so, I mean, yeah.

When you are absolutely certain of the conclusion and you don't know the slightest idea of how to make an argument, you can just write this crazy stuff down. So easy to mess with them. I had a bunch of people that, you know, on one of my videos, but I was doing the idea that I have a baby and it's trans because it keeps crying and girls cry more. Oh no.

Most people were like pretty on board. Like, you know, if that baby does show feminine characteristics, maybe we start transitioning. I'm like, we, I was in the, in my position, I was telling them the baby was like four months old and they're like, you know, if that's what it is and that's what it is, you gotta, you gotta read its implicit biases from the outside, you know? Um, yeah, this is, it's ridiculous. ridiculous. Oh, we actually thought about writing a paper that was going to argue that everybody's trans. So your baby definitely would be. And the reason is because you're, you're, the only way you can know if you're trans or not is by transitioning. So everybody who hasn't transitioned can't know that they're not trans. So it's better to just assume they are.

But then we were going to, but then we're, yeah, exactly. That was literally what we were copying. And then the other side of it was going to be to say that, that you couldn't really do that though, because then that would, would encroach upon. So we're going to make the argument and then destroy our own argument by saying it can make no sense by saying that um that would take away from like the special status that trans people have because that's what this is really about right so if you

want to add another piece to your puzzle is it's like how do i stare at my own narcissism until i lose my shit and write a paper and put it on the internet because it's like i don't know i've started doing it on twitter sometimes and i'm backed away from it on twitter i'm like i see some of these people tweet and it's like this issue about identity and i'm just like quote tweet me me me me me me me me me me me me it's like focus on me send checks focus on me it's like come on you freaking narcissists this i mean it is there's this is a movement actually of self-pity it's like the narcissistic vacuum that the ideas themselves generate in people yeah like stare at why you don't have it good enough until you hate your life and that it has everything to do with who you are so focus on who you are constantly which is like the gateway to narcissism and then project

that back out into the world in the most kind of like nasty cynical way you can imagine it it's really like it's a whole it's like an entire philosophy of narcissistic injury like self-inflicted narcissistic injury every time you think it's going to break down and like i remember that was why it was annoying me the last couple of days where you know all the jewish stuff has been popping up which i've been saying forever that that's the next logical step is where people get into that stuff but i go uh when the jewish privilege stuff trended trended instead of like all these famous people instead of coming out and being like okay this is stupid this whole thing's retarded they go no no no no i'm actually a victim like it's still it's still them i go

everyone anytime it comes these people they still just go, no, no, no, no. By the way, this whole thing is great where we point fingers and make a hierarchy, but it's just, we're not at the top of it. Just, just to be clear, here's our list of problems. And you go, just say the whole thing. Stupid. Stop playing this game. That's all it actually takes really.

Because again, they don't have an argument. They'll just scream at you for a moment and then they go away and scream at somebody else who will start to apologize just let them scream get their temper tantrum out and kick the floor or whatever they do and it's amazing how how sensitive people are to believing that they are actually complicit in some kind of bad thing just because some random people threw a fit about it. Like the, like the, the degree of like wrath that somebody feels or offense that somebody feels makes it more true what they're saying, which in fact,

it makes it less likely to be true. Cause that's when you know somebody is kind of like off the rails and they're not being reasonable at all. Yeah. Why would that be more likely if someone comes in kicking and screaming and yelling? It's like, is that when they're most likely to be right? And so like, yeah, exactly. So here's like an analogy. It'd be like, all right, our laws put people in prison and prison oppresses people. And so and like, so this is going to be like hot.

I'm leading like this stuff now with my own writing. I saw my own stuff quoted as though it was an authoritative source by the woke earlier today. Like they quoted my definition of their definition of science and they thought it was like the real one but no what people who are in prison are oppressed so people who have had the law not work out for them that's who needs to write all of our laws now let's let's take the people who the law didn't treat right and have them rewrite all of our laws and it's like those are the people that are most invested in, in screwing the law up. What are you talking about?

Asking your children what time their bedtime should be and what they should be eating. Yeah. Chicken tenders, right? Chicken tenders again, chicken tenders again, chicken tenders again. Where's my ketchup? Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. That's my parent privilege. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a thing too, though, right? Breaking down the relationship between adults and children and reversing that. You see it in the classroom for sure that the teacher's imposing on the students.

So gross to watch. I know. It's horrible to watch literal adults take orders from literal children. That president from your documentary is like, what a bitch. Oh, my God. George Bridges. He's like, I have to pee. And they're like, put your arms to your sides, bitch. And he's like, I'm sorry. Oh, my gosh. And they're's like i have to pee and they're like put your arms to your

sides bitch and he's like i'm sorry oh my gosh and they're like i have to pee though and he's like hold it and he's like okay would you like gumbo cake you know that guy has sex with his shirt on dick through the hole 100 oh yeah not good oh geez man that documentary though is full of like crazy stuff like it is fantasy land that these people live in and it's only because of like enabling administrators like that guy that it happened so here's an example i actually saw lots of rough cuts of that documentary so i don't remember if this made it into the real one or not because i saw like 10 versions that didn't go out so maybe it got cut but there was a scene actually on film that i watched at

evergreen where some like just kind of dude is spray painting and sometimes you'll catch me putting this on twitter if you pay attention somebody will say something about evergreen and i just reply limp biscuit and it doesn't make any sense but what was this dude was just spray painting limp biscuit on the side of a building for like no reason and i don't know what the relevant there's probably some relevance to this apparently the nookie is actually a product of white privilege oh okay so there we go so he's he's spray painting um limp biscuit and so this like little gang rolls up on him of these like social justice warriors like literally the one no no i saw that part that was okay it is in there so i made it right and so you got this guy trimmed it up a little bit a lot of blank footage but there's like a there's like a what is he like trans maybe i

don't know gender non-binary non-conforming something the limbisca guy i don't think he's no no no the dude in the wheelchair okay you know the he's got a mobility scooter you know he's doing this this dude in the wheelchair mobile yeah he's well he's rolling up and like his rascal on the guy spray painting stuff like he's gonna fight him and it's like i just watched this like that's the most fantasy land thing i've ever seen in my life like it takes one step to the side by somebody who's not particularly athletic or skilled in fighting whatsoever and a short push and that guy's out of his wheelchair and not only is fight over i mean it's just it's now a catastrophe and only in like utter nonsense land where and then obviously i

you know you can't go beat up people in wheelchairs that's not cool watch me okay well i mean what if they're rolling up on you like hitting you in the shins rolling up on you he was he was like he's gonna hit the guys yeah they hating hating. Catch him riding dirty right into the ground. And so, God, man, it's like only in a world, though, where the books are completely cooked, where certain types of people can never be wrong about anything. Does it make any sense that some dude in a wheelchair scooter thing is like, going to fight this guy. He's going to knock him over with his like little bulldozer he's driving. It's like, oh my gosh.

It was just, you know, it's like, I guess it's nowhere near politically correct to talk about that, but there's just this like scales falling from the eyes. Like, wow, they live in pretend land where everything is always safe and care bears. And nothing bad can actually happen. Never been challenged mentally or physically yeah so if you like completely destroy say the functioning of society and the food supply chain collapses of course they'll still be able to eat no problem because you know the chicken tenders and the fish sticks are still going to be in the grocery store obviously uh it It's like, whoa, this is like, they live,

I mean, they live off in Narnia. It's crazy. The wheelchair stuff's so funny too. It's kind of like with the fat study stuff you guys are going through, but that's always been one of my favorite things where they had like people with no limbs or wheelchair and they're kind of like, you know,

just so you know, it's not better to have, you know, two legs, like just cause you're not worse. And you're like, no know it's not better to have uh you know two legs like just because you're not worse and you're like no it's definitely better to have two legs than one leg yeah it's definitely like it doesn't it doesn't take your your worth as a person but man it's actually better yeah um it's definitely better and yeah it's there's these weird mixes of of ideas like confusion between basic ideas where they want to be like you know oh you mean better like actually better but i hear it like a better person you think people with two legs are better people rather than you know that it's better you're better they think no one all your pieces work well yeah nobody's good at all no except anyone except whoever is running

the grift that person is good at the grift oh it's a total grift i like when you call it hustlers the guys who uh they go to the corporations and then convince they go listen you guys got it's kind of like the guy that uh he says that you have a problem with your roof and then you go oh okay and then he's like also i'm the guy who needs to fix it you're like oh well then fuck you then i thought i was getting some honest info here yeah needs to fix it. You're like, oh, well then fuck you then. I thought I was going to get some honest info here. Yeah, exactly. You guys are racist. You're like, by the way, I mean, I could solve this whole thing for 10 grand.

Yeah, the hustle, that is a big hustle. And I don't understand how we keep falling for it. Because they show up and they're like, yeah, we were checking out how your organization works. And you have lots of spots where systemic racism is all through it. And, you know, by the the way do you not understand systemic racism well we sell a ten thousand dollar corporate training package to get you started and then they come and they do the package and then i mean i saw a video where one of these guys somebody you know all these people are secret recording their trainings and sending them to me

so i see what's it you must get a ton of that oh my god people being like thank you dude i know i get so much of it. And it's like, don't share it. I'll lose my job. So I can't show anybody. But there's this one video I watched where the guy, the person doing the training is like diversity training. We kind of know that the results of this don't stick. They don't work. It doesn't actually create better working relationships across races. So that's why it's so important to go and buy this book and do the extra work at home. And by the way, I wrote the book. It's like, oh my God, our program doesn't work. So we're going to have to have another one. And by the way, you need to go do more work at home. And here are the materials that we printed

off for $150 a person or whatever that you can buy it's like such a hustle and we just and like people are lining up like i'm sorry black people let me let me fall for your scam well those black people are sort of appropriating white white uh telling telling everyone they're bad like that's a white hustle if anything it is like that that stuff of like we're the worst like you know all this like all this privilege talk like that's like fucking white people shit to the max it is it's like like all this stuff like we need to identify what white culture is all about and it's like i hate myself i was actually watching a guy doing a stand-up routine and i wish i could name

him i hate when i can't remember who just doing a good stand-up routine and I wish I could name him I hate when I can't remember who just doing good stand-up routine but he was doing the stand-up routine about how he's jealous that all the other races have like racial solidarity and so he's telling the stories in like Central Park and some dude screams like some racial epithet like the n-word or something it's a black guy and he's like literally other black people like emerged out of the bushes like they you know just and swarm the guy and then he's sitting back there, like the one white guy in the scene, hoping he's not going to get ganked too. And, but he's like, yeah, get him. And he's like, I was just wanted to see the fight. You know,

I wanted to see that guy get wrecked. And so literally I, literally I watched this with my wife and I'm cracking up. And then I go back to work and no shit the word that I was supposed to define like I'm going through my list for my encyclopedia I'm writing was white solidarity and so I'm reading it and they're like whites are the only race that have solidarity and I'm listening to this comedian talk about how we don't have a handshake we don't have nothing we don't have anything it's like but it's like they don't ever really talk about how they're all in league together but they all know it it's like they're socialized into believing

that they're all in league together without ever talking about it this is called a racial contract yeah kind of like it is they think that it's like and when i say they of course we got to be careful because yeah what do you mean by they and then you uh you made three brackets with your hand what does that mean they know so this is actually important because a lot of people think, oh, these people are talking about black people. No, I'm talking about about 4% of black people who are race hustlers that are grifting this stuff. And then probably an army of white consultants. They always have an army with a head lesbian. Yeah. Yes, actually. I mean, this is queer black feminism to the max is what this is yeah name for it um it sounds like the most untouchable thing like listen white man you

definitely can't talk about queer black feminism just keep your hands out of this mess because because you're every every part of wrong if you criticize it meanwhile they're like yeah our objective is to tear down society and destroy the idea of the family. We're going to get rid of fathers completely. And it's like, uh. You're like, you're sick, killing it. You guys should be in charge. Yeah, sure.

Let's just make you president. No problem. Dude, if these, yeah, all these people, you're like, if you were in charge of a company, that company would no longer exist in six months. That's the thing, man. It's like, people keep asking me, me, like, what do I do? And I'm like, quit your job and make a company

that competes with the one you're leaving because it's going to be totally dysfunctional in six months and you're going to be the market leader. Like, just scoop them. Just leave and scoop. They're just killing their credibility. I mean, I always say this with, you know, late night universities, and I've obviously dealt with this way more in entertainment and you're sort of

wheelhouses with the universities and you've you know i have like tons of awesome uh insight on that but the it's it's like they think they have this unlimited amount of power that they can use forever but every time you use it you have less of it right it's like with late night shows but the university degree is the same thing they go i was listening to the this uh podcast about directing and the cans film festival person was on on the film and basically what they were saying was so this year what we're doing is there's no films with white people we're only looking for diversity and we're trying to push this and you go okay so now when i see a film that goes cans film festival i go okay well i know how that works like i know all the shitty comedians that have got on these late night shows you go okay that's devalued like as soon as you you don't

have unlimited capital for your reputation as soon as you start like throwing it around eventually people go you harvard's like oh we'll let anyone in you are well and some of you come to show up with your harvard degree and everyone goes well suck a dick i don't care that's right so this actually taps into what i secretly thought was one of the most brilliant arguments I ever made. And I don't normally think that most of my shit's that smart. And then so this was I was like, wow, there's an economy, right? So I got it all into this like cross interdisciplinary nonsense where I was like, there's an economy of moral understanding. You can think of like victimhood as like having moral currency you like prop up

the victim and i actually didn't invent that i read that in a very famous paper about micro anglicians and so yeah right and so um my argument was i was like these people are doing like venezuela style or zimbabwe style inflation on that currency. Yes. It's like. That's good. Sooner or later, we hit the point where like a $10 trillion victimhood note is worth like. You need a wheelbarrow full of victimhood currency.

That's right. Like if you're calling a guy racist, that used to be like, oh, that was like worth a hundred bucks. Now calling a guy racist, you need like a wheelbarrow of racist cards. That that's right so you used to be able to come up with like a tear on your cheek one crocodile tear would do it then you needed a mug of tears and it's going to be that you need like an olympic swimming pool of tears before anybody gives a crap about any of this because like you said the capital's not infinite and then there's there's also the social capital side of it um like with Harvard. Because the capital's relative, right?

Right. So somebody the other day even said something to me about Harvard. And I'm like, do people take Harvard seriously anymore? Like, didn't that stop? People are like, oh, it's in the New York Times. Somebody sent me a New York Times article the other day. And I was just like, I don't read the New York Times now. That's dead.

Yeah. It's like, that's just my attitude about it. It's like, I don't care what's in the New York Times. Yeah didn't you get the lie to me you know yeah i don't know you know your girlfriend comes and fucking tells you 9 000 lies you okay well we don't we don't take your opinion on this topic anymore that's right it's like how they think i mean their hustle is going pretty well still but i think there's a breaking point and when when the breaking point crosses i think it's just kind of all just i think the hustle is going through good for the people that are in the little group but for everyone else they're realizing how does this help me

you know i mean i'm seeing tons of videos about that i'm seeing tons of videos or people putting out they're like you know it'll be like black lives matter people but not the official organization and they're like this thing's selling black people down the river and it's like yup it's like what does nike have to do with this it's like making money off your pain yeah so you guys are making a bunch of money and i get some likes on facebook i don't think i like this deal anymore yeah this sucks man check out my soundcloud that's all you get dude you were I always thought it was kind of cool watching that doc again, too, that you were one of the original guys, like when, cause all of the, the James Damore and the, the Brett Weinstein, like all of those guys in the university world that were kind of the poster guys for that. I know

James Damore was in tech, but you were sort of in the middle of all that stuff, right? Yeah. And it was at that time i remember even when i was doing comedy like five six years ago and i was kind of talking about all this stuff and on the podcast it was it was very rare i remember like me and my buddy danny we'd meet another guy and he'd be like yo this guy's like kind of into the shit we're into it was kind of like finding an old punk band back then like i don't know when you found brett weinstein like the first you know it was kind of the first people that were like, you'll fuck this. Yeah.

Now we've got to be careful not to go into the green day trap, I guess. All right. Well, I've, I've been a dude to be completely honest with you. I stopped talking about, uh, this stuff in a large way about two years ago. I really pivoted kind of towards, you know, back to masculine versus feminine. And I was kind of talking about different things. Like I sort of, I remember I had a joke where I was saying, you know, back to masculine versus feminine. And I was kind of talking about different things. Like I sort of, I remember I had a joke where I was saying, you know, that everyone's trying to be a victim.

Like, you know, someone would be like, I'm trans, I'm First Nations, disabled, trans, internet explodes. We found, and I remember that was like five years ago. And I remember kind of saying that on stage a couple of years ago and being like, ah, this feels like too, you know, treaded right now. It feels like all these libtards. So I already did a little bit find that pivot, but things have really boiled up again where it feels like all these libtards so i i already did a little bit find that pivot but things have really boiled up again where it feels like this is sort of a second round

yeah there's fucking wild again there's so much stupid that you guys are like and everybody's a little bit scared you seem not to be but most everybody in the comedy world's like gotta just be like bucking against you like champing against gate, ready to just go crazy making fun of this stuff. And once that hammer falls, man, the comedy that's coming out of this. I mean, the only people that have really been driving it have been South Park. Yeah, South Park's always great. But, oh my God, the comedy that's available with this stuff is just next level. I mean, if you can write an academic paper about

dogs humping each other yeah and you can include a line like from my limited perspective as a human and not a dog you know blah blah blah like like you have to ignore the the reviewers made us acknowledge that we weren't dogs so we don't understand when dogs are having sex and when dogs are raping each other it It's like, holy crap. These people have, you know, they have sticks so far up their own asses that it's like coming out their nose. Yeah, but people are afraid to do it. I mean, that's what it is for now. And then there's the other side of people being like, oh, you can't say anything these days.

And it's like, I mean, you can, but you just have to be really good at it. And it's hard. And that's right. I'm glad I'm, you know, especially you just have to be really good at it. And it's hard. And that's right. I'm glad I'm the, you know, especially with standup, like if everyone was on stage being like these fucking, you know, fake, you know, whatever, saying whatever they want to. And everyone was like, ha ha ha. You'd be like, all right, well, I'm not gonna be doing that anymore. Yeah. Lame next. I mean, the first rule is never be boring. Yeah. And then also, I mean, you you know this might be like a stock rule but

if you ever find yourself on like completely the side of the mob you know re-evaluate your positioning right away right away that's right um but you with with so with your like career because you sort of popped off and you have a big following now and all this stuff you know to me you're one of these guys like jordan peterson and these guys or whatever how do you do you see yourself in the realm of him or do you see yourself as like a different than a guy like that I mean he and I actually aren't quite the same people he's like grumpy dad and I kind of really yeah well you're younger jokes yeah um like his approach in general though is kind of like very serious and grumpy and it's very good and it really connects to people and uh and grumpy and it's very good and it really connects to people and uh my style is like i would rather i mean it's kind of bad because people a little more nihilistic to be honest

well i mean i i feel like my biggest inspirations were comedians uh so there is a little bit of that so i have that ability to deconstruct a little bit because that's i think what good comedy's doing is good deconstruction of something that's too pompous and so it's like i was even talking to some of these academic types that were mentioning just yesterday and they were like you know well you can't do this because then you hit this wall and they do that and it's like breaking the walls then just deconstruct it just turn their tool back on them and make it absurd and when everybody starts laughing their the spell is broken it's just deconstructed so if they call you something you deconstruct them calling you that you know they're like you're a racist like what i'm a

racist no you don't call me a racist is you trying to hide your own racism man that's your white fragility is flared up and now they're caught in the in the whirlwind and you're like laughing and other people are like you know they're dropping that meme with like that one black guy who's like oh he's like going through you know he's doing that thing i don't know what his name is is yeah it's a gif you can look it up on twitter.com i don't know what you have to type in though because i'm my gif game is bad my i have this one that i like to put it's like just this dude wearing like a robe that's like v down to here.

And there's babes all behind him. And he's just swinging two nunchucks. And it makes no sense at all. And I'm like, this is me right now. And it's like, I'm like probably sitting on my couch with like my belly showing and like double chins and shit. Eating chips. And I'm like, this is me with all these babes and nunchucks. It's like, everything's so stupid.

It's so fun. Yeah. But that's the thing is if you can't find where it's fun, there's, it's lost, right? You're stuck and you're going to be doing some shit like post comedy where, where you get up and you're like, I'm a lesbian and I'm going to tell you why nothing is funny. And you're going to have to sit here and pretend to laugh for 30 minutes.

If you want to be a soldier for a movement, but why, you know, why would you do this? Well, they want to, you know, obviously these people want sort of the spots in the industry but the reason i wanted your inside scoop on that one question though where do you think that uh because i've been meaning to ask like someone and like you this question but like if you think of like jordan peterson and his like huge rise and why, and cause you know, yourself, like in my opinion, you're like still kind of rising and becoming bigger and bigger and growing. Where do you think that he kind of like messed up in, in terms of his kind of reign disappearing as far as like him being the

predominant figure in that realm? I mean, I think there are kind of three things that, you know, to guard myself from one is like his life situation just got crazy. Bad things were happening. He ended up getting a lot of anxiety disorder issues because, you know, his wife has like some unknown disease or cancer or something. All these things are happening with his family, with health, all this crazy stress. He's doing literally like, I don't know, 200 shows a year or some insane schedule and every podcast in between, plus writing, plus everything else. Oh, I can imagine. So he ends up on like benzos and apparently those aren't a smooth ride.

And so step one, don't take benzos. Okay. That's one rule. Another one is probably, you you know you got to cross your fingers because life is is not certain but you got to hope that there's not going to be anything bad happening that drives you to a breakdown but one thing you can choose to avoid with a breakdown is not to do 200 shows a year it's like you know trying to become i mean maybe it was just circumstances but trying to be the one man army who does everything seemed to be kind of a

direction. Do you think it was like a systemizing problem more than anything? Yeah, maybe. I think so. I think he, I think he just overextended himself a bit and then that creates anxiety and stress disorders and maybe that contributed to the other parts. And then, you know, part of why he rose so well was because he could always back up these sort of like really kind of on the edge statements about like, you

know, there's a lot of people were like, is he actually kind of sexist? Because he's up there and he's like, you know, I'm not saying it's bad. We have women in the workplace. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying we don't know and it's like right uh there's i mean there's a point and i can articulate the point i can discuss the point and i can argue the point and he obviously can back himself up but it made it so easy for like vice to slice that up kind of like your slice up videos you know it's like let's slice up jordan peterson and sell it yeah yeah yeah so it's just to make him look like this raging like caveman with regard to women and homosexuals and things like that. And it's like, as it's in a way,

the world has legitimately moved to a place where that's a difficult position to maintain. You know what else, like with, especially with a guy like you too, like, or, you know, there's these people that are kind of these like brilliant cultural commentators or, you know there's these people that are kind of these like brilliant cultural commentators or you know academic commentators and then like the next logical step kind of becomes to get and be a political commentator and you might not be as uh i don't know whatever the word is uh you know the same have the same brilliance in that realm so it's kind of i always think of

it's like you know i understand like hockey super super well but and i've played in my entire life i understand the game really well but like right now i don't know who the players are i don't really pay attention it's kind of like politics in a lot of ways is that like i i do understand the kind of underlying of everything but like if you ask me who the fuck like is whatever mayor or governor in whatever city like i don't understand it and i think when he sort of dipped his toe in and he sort of said like oh kavanaugh should step down or whatever and everyone's like what the fuck are you talking about yeah and then he was kind of like no i mean uh he shouldn't i take it back and then it was like oh no you kind of dip into the too far into the world that that uh you're not you know spent 30 years becoming brilliant at yeah the linus pauling problem um is that what that is what does that mean oh well i

don't know if that's what it's called lin Linus Pauling was a brilliant scientist who did, he got like a Nobel Prize for how good he was, but it's not what he's most famous for. He's most famous for telling people to take 30,000 milligrams of vitamin C every day and it'll cure every possible disease. So the entire bogus vitamin and supplement industry that rose up was a result of this Nobel Prize winning, I forgot what science he was in, but not that,

deciding that vitamins were the key to everything. And he just went nuts into this whole vitamin. He went all in on vitamins. Yeah. But I found this is actually often the case with politics in particular, because everybody feels like they can like open their mouths about it.

And so that's why I actually have intentionally branded myself and it drives people nuts. So I love it on Twitter as apolitical. It's like I actually don't want to get into that. I've noticed in the past when I try to take the political stances, A, it's divisive. B, it's boring. C, if I actually look at myself in my heart of hearts, I don't know what I'm talking about.

It's true. It's like this is why I step back from politics and trying to be interested. I'm not even interested in politics now because one day i was sitting there you know interrogating myself i guess if that's the word now i was like self let's let's no i didn't actually do that but i did think i was like well what do i really think about immigration and it was it was immigration i was like what do i really think about that and i was like holy shit this is complicated yeah and like that's the only conclusion i could get to is like whoa this is hard maybe i should have to be a policy expert

before i have an opinion about this and then it was like what about guns and i'm like shit this is hard you know it took like in the span of like an hour i realized it's like oh my god i don't know nearly enough of anything to have well if you just pick a team they give you your beliefs and then you can just do it that way yeah it's like you get them on a list it's on a blue piece of paper or a red one and it's like you can tattoo them on your american eagle or your bernie sanders uh that's right that's exactly what you can just put the the the democratic party platform on a tattoo all down your ribs girls you know that'll work out great for you in like four years um but no it's like

i just looked at these issues and i'm like man i don't i actually don't know and they vary from place to place too like it's so easy to be like no guns when you live in you know whatever this place and then when you live 30 minutes away from the nearest police station like you might want a gun you know so it's yeah it only does i, I get asked questions like this all the time and I'm more or less just try to ignore them now. Um, people ask me to weigh in on the politics or whatever that I got every day, almost because of the, since the grievance studies affair, I think every day for like two years, they're like, what do you think of climate change? And I'm like, I think I'm going to not talk about that. so what would you call it yeah what would you call yourself what would be the like would you say like uh cultural you know intellectual

like what would be a i don't know i try and i i call myself james um or jim more often well we gotta label you somehow no that's the thing though i'm your publicist here i actually have the a belief that that the best way to operate as an individual is to let labels be descriptive and not prescriptive. So taking the label upon yourself, it's like the Lord of the Rings thing, right? So where they have that scene and it's in the Athelion. I know I'm getting dorky here, but Sam and Frodo and I love how I'm drawing you into the Athelion. Sam and Frodo and Smeagol Gollum are there and Sam falls asleep.

And then Gollum comes back and he's like, where have you been? You sneak or whatever like that. And then Frodo wakes up later and he's like, you know, what's going on Gollum? And he's like, Smeagol is a sneak. And it's like, don't take names onto yourself. And he says, Smeagol has to take what he's given. And it's like, that is like profound because you can see that Gollum's being a little bitch by taking the label onto himself. So maybe he was being a sneak and the descriptive label is fine, but it becomes a bitch when he takes it onto himself.

Of course. So I don't want to take labels onto myself, but if you were to actually like say, okay, go take the damn test. What do you think about this issue? What do you think about that issue, given that you're pretty moderate, because you just said you don't know anything about these things? Where would I like, where do my impulses and thoughts make me land? I actually end up pretty far left and pretty far libertarian. yeah so you know if there's a political compass test i'm actually really far down to the far left bottom corner um which is like i think the closest public figure to me was like gandhi or something like ha ha but no um i do generally like my my ideas about politics descriptively do bend left but i find that if i start thinking of myself as somebody on the left i start thinking well what do leftists think and then i start like that's what it means to be a good person now is to think that way and i think that's poison i think that's total

poison and that's really what's kind of going on like with this woke thing with the conservative backlash to it the conservative thing that preceded it it was like what does it mean to be this identity and i'm that's how i'm going to define myself as a good person. Conservatives are good people or woke people are the only good people in history. Everybody else's statue must be thrown to the bottom of the river. And so once they start looking at themselves that way, they start looking at being a good person in those terms. And then it's just like the dominoes of radicalization are just like, and then the next thing you know, they're, they're like cutting off ties from their family, defending people in real life. Um, you know, burning down a Starbucks, it just gets out

of control. So I try to avoid the, the identity label. So what do I call myself? Um, I try not to think about it. Yeah you did that uh the montage where it was the the stuff with the church and then the social justice preachers back to back that was one of the that was one of the like best moment things in documentaries ever it was so what happens is there's all these christian preachers and all these social justice preachers and you find basically almost the same sentences and you have religious music underneath it and i was like man you guys that was a that was a big one were you guys pumped when you made that because i fucking oh yeah i loved it um i actually got it like we should give props to the filmmaker mike nana the guy who made that yeah he did the evergreen

documentary he uh man he has got an eye for this stuff he has got a talent and he's he's like tapped right on the pulse of this stuff and he can put some stuff together like that that just shows it right because it's so hard to tell people i tell people the stuff my job is to go out and talk about it and write stuff about it and people are like are you sure uh did you read that right did you i don't know you know i get a lot of like pathological contrarian like noise that people make when they just disagree with everything person. But Mike has this talent to just show it. You watch that Evergreen documentary and you're like, oh, these crazy crackpot beliefs about race and racism are what led these students to act like wild animals and destroy their university.

It's the same thing. With this jerk, George Bridges. Yeah, they found their God. Yeah, and so it's like the same thing, that religious thing where it goes back and forth between these preachers and the point being that they're preaching their religion, and then these woke people, like,

doing their weird, like, seances or whatever. It's so funny, dude. Yeah, like indigenous seances or something that they're doing. It's amazing. It's like, whoa, it's the same thing. Wow. Okay.

Here are actually people. And now there's. I will pledge the whiteness out of my body. I know. I was going to say, now there's footage of like literally they're like crying and washing people's feet. I mean, it's like you couldn't possibly do better to make these. I mean, you could like put this straight in an old track from like

you know a brother where art thou or whatever and it's yeah come on down to the river you know dunking them and it's like they're like washing people's feet and it's like you could fit it right in oh it's so and they don't realize how much people are leaving their church it's kind of like back in the day when the church and they go everyone's holy and then they go to the bar and they're like half their church is at the bar and you go what the hell's going on here and everyone's like i don't we don't really care that's what the comedy clubs are like right now everyone that's posting this online they go they all like my stuff and all the stuff you go you can have most normal people in a room and you can still kill and you the social justice people come

in they go why is everyone laughing at this everyone's still okay everyone's still racist they actually need more church oh gosh yeah it's it's really crazy it's just so such an the university is like to me you that was you had such good points on that because i you went to you're like did you have like a phd in math or something like that right yeah that's right so i did like um uh i have like a math economics like uh just like a bacheloratchler or whatever, right? From Canada. So it's basically like that. I was going to say, if you were in an American university, we could do the handshake, but clearly you don't know it.

No. Yeah. Where we, you get them out of a, you know, a pop machine in Canada. It's very. Yeah, that's right. That's right. The government pays for it. It's worth nothing.

But the, the, so basically when you were talking about how everyone leaves the programs in the end of the similar programs i go and when you're saying that i go because when i was in economics and i was in the math economics by third year everyone switched out of math economics to go to the the other economics where you didn't have to do the math and then my fourth year everyone dropped out of out of all of it to go to just like a BA in business. Or no, sorry, like a Bachelor of Commerce in business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then by fourth year, like my class, which I was good at, by the end it's just like me and seven Asian people.

And I was like, what am I doing here? And I'm trying to play in bands and shit. I could give lots of a fuck about that stuff, right? That's the thing. Yeah. That's the thing. And it's like, you know, now I look at it from the other end because it's like so you have all these people and they were going to be i don't know engineers they were going

to be whatever they were going to be they had their little dreams they went off to college and then calculus like slapped them in the head and they're like ah and then you know it's like they fall down the the list of majors to education and they get a degree in education that's I hate to say it but and it really shouldn't be but it turns out to often be the kind of like the last bastion of anybody can graduate and so then I now I'm looking and I'm starting to think because I look at this woke scholarship that this critical stuff and so I'm especially right now it's flaring up that they're like trying to undo math and it's like I'm reading this article a real academic article the other day and it's like i can't say whether or not i hate math because i don't know math that well but i can say i've never met a math teacher that i liked or whatever right

so i'm just picturing in my head that this dude that's now dismantling math who has a degree in education but not in math and they all all have degrees in education if you want to find somebody tearing up some field, it's the people who have a degree in the education of that subject. That's who's tearing it up. And so it's like they got spanked by calculus. They couldn't do it. And then boom, they land in education with a chip on their shoulder.

And then they're like, I'm going to go get revenge on these math teachers who made it so I couldn't pass calculus because, you know, I refuse to study for the 10 hours it requires a day to understand limits or whatever it is. Yeah, or like my brain doesn't work that because, you know, I refuse to study for 10, the 10 hours it requires a day to understand limits or whatever it is. Yeah. Or like my brain doesn't work that way, you know? And I, you know, I sound like I'm making stuff up here, but I've actually read a lot of this material. So one of my favorite examples of this is I'm reading this example, this book, I got these Swedish people sent me this book and said, well, there's critical nutrition studies. They're like, well, you read this. It's like taking over nutrition studies, nutrition. And I'm like,

okay, I don't know anything about nutrition. They're like, don't worry. You don't need to just, it's all garbage. Just read the thing in the book review. And I was like, okay. So last year I read this book and there's this whole part, it's like the history of critical nutrition studies that they're talking about. And it's like all these weird personal stories because that's how they advance everything is by telling like their diary. Yeah. So it's like, I had a practice where I tried to do holistic health

and integrate indigenous herbs into nutrition and my business failed. And that's just proof that the community doesn't understand how important those views are. And it's like, now I've gotten into, you know, writing this. And when we tried to write it up in a proper nutrition journal, they said, we can't accept this. This isn't nutrition. This is something else. And that just shows that they don't want critical views. And so now we've created our own field where it's critical of nutrition studies.

And it's like, it's the people who failed that are pissed off about it and just want to whine and have now been afforded an academic outlet that makes it look serious it's bad it's like wow that's real it's like so now i'm thinking like these math educators who are like you can't really say two plus two equals four yeah it's more complicated than that that's an objective white way to understand two plus two we have to look at it in other ways of knowing and admit different number systems. It's like, okay. So I look at, I go, I click on their fricking Twitter profile. I go to their website. Hey, look, there's your CV. Oh, wow. Look, bachelor's, master's degrees in education. Huh? How about that?

Not a single mathematician among them just education education education education and of course i've also from the other aspects of what i study it's like no well the education schools are just completely rotten with this stuff and have been since like 1980 so it's been moving intentionally into the education schools to make people just turn into complainers since like 1980 so professional complainers yeah and so it's like you know you start trying to put the puzzle pieces together of how this is happening you're like oh something you know we keep i keep almost every podcast i've been hunting like the last week somebody said it feels like something's rotten in the state of denmark and i'm like just hit me it's like no something's rotten

the colleges of education that if like you had to like apply societal bleach to one thing and maybe fix the problem, I think it's just like purge the colleges of education and make them new with a, you know, rigorous constitution. And you could fix the problem in a generation and a half. And they don't get it, too. idea of if you're you know except every it's like 90 left wing and whatever that's like the that's kind of what colleges are always going to be a little bit because those jobs aren't you know sort of uh philosophical in a lot of ways right but then you go okay do you agree that if it was 90 right wing that's what everyone was being taught would you agree that's a problem okay so you do agree in principle that there should be some objective you just don't mind it right now because it's your thing but, how do you not understand that

these people are all the guy that the girl turned down and then they've dedicated their life to wrecking her? That's right. It is. It's like the scholarly version of revenge porn. Yeah. But it's like, I mean,

this is a fun one with that specific principled argument. So you can say, oh, well, if the schools were being overtaken by like religious instruction. Yeah, exactly, you say like for example imagine if it was like all muslims taking over the school and then these these people they're like oh no no that would be okay we need to we don't have a problem with that we need to let that in and you're like oh well you know i was that's what you would be there sister i meant to say evangelical christians and they're like oh you can't have that that's how you know it's like it's like like haha got you again um but i got obsessed with that

one for a while it sounds like you were into the fat studies thing which is hilarious but the fat studies studies the fat stuff and the the islam stuff i was like there's about four or five years ago i'm talking about this year before but i got so obsessed with it to the point where i go i've just stopped talking about this because i would look at my like 60 minute act and i'd be talking about muslims for like 15 minutes because just like the like i was my that was i was kind of on the side of like yeah muslims are amazing like i want to marry a muslim chick just because their bible has a lot of good really good shit about how to treat women and like you know i mean how your wife should act so i just you know

it's a great really it was kind of that but i was so obsessed with that oh man for the fat studies that's a thing that's a thing so fucking funny it's so hard not to make fun of it like just by describing it it's like fat studies they always say fat phobic i go you know i'm afraid i mean i might be afraid if uh one was rolling down the hill like an avalanche and i was running from it it's like that's fat phobia you can't do that that's fat phobia. You can't do that. That's fat shaming, fat stigma. And it's like, you know, my favorite thing though,

it's like I'm reading through, we got that book, Cynical Theories, and Helen is a very heavy woman. And so it's like, I'm reading this. And of course she's like not having it with fat stigmas. She's like, it's retarded. It is. Yeah. And so we're going, I'm reading through it. And the way she writes certain things is just like, I'm on a plane plane like i was flying to rogan and i read my whole book on my

flight to rogan which was intense and so i'm wearing my mask and i'm super uncomfortable and i'm sitting next to somebody which you would think that they would just not do that but they got to put make some money so whatever so i'm reading this now the last yeah like yeah a few weeks ago yeah yeah so i'm reading i'm reading from the fat studies chapter and it's like helen's got this way of wording things and she's like and they act like it's an immutable characteristic instead of just a result of consuming too many calories and it's just like consistently consuming too many calories so the whole premise of fat studies there's some funny stuff here just like descriptively is that you shouldn't treat fatness it's like immutable like it can't go

away right it's it's just like race it's just like sexuality and it's like if you know the people are doing race and queer theory and stuff are like no and then but they can't say no because that would be fat phobic i said but it's like really uh this is something that not only can but often does change like there are medical cases where it's very difficult or even impossible and we can understand that and make some allowances we're not all assholes but you actually most people can't actually change this and so then like the whole premise of fat studies is we have to lean into the lived experience of fat people to understand what it's like. But if their lived experience taught them the one thing they need to know, which is how to lose weight, you wouldn't even need fat studies. So it's like the whole thing is self-defeating from the very

core of its existence. It's like, have you tried listening to like some diet and exercise coach who lost a lot of weight and then got into the fitness industry because they might have the relevant lived experience you're actually looking for as opposed to the one that's clearly not helping you um and it's bad because you start making fun of people like this but it's so hard not to i could tell a story for example of a friend of mine or i guess former friend of mine from college and she's very heavy and she got all into this fat study stuff and was postpartum