The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Justin Weinberg and Nimesh Patel

Episode Date: August 8, 2020

Justin Weinberg is associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. He is also the editor of Daily Nous*, a popular philosophy news site. Nimesh Patel (Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Seth Meyers) is a comedian and writer. 

You're listening to The Comedy Cellar, live from the table, on the Riot of New York's world-famous comedy cellar coming at you on SiriusXM 99, Raw Dog, and on the Ridecast Podcast Network. We are here tonight with, well, myself, Dan Natterman, as usual, Noam Dorman, the owner of the world-famous comedy cellar and Perry Alashin, the producer. Noam Dorman. Noam Dorman.

Noam Dorman. Noam Dorman. Noam Dorman. It is dormant. It is hibernating. But winter will be over soon. I use that figuratively, of course. Perry Alashin, the producer

of Live from the Table here. Nimesh Patel, comedy seller regular that I have not seen, I don't think, since we went into lockdown No, sir But he's now a married man, is that correct, Nimesh? That is true Well, there's a lot of that going on in the comedy world A lot of comedy babies, too

I don't know if you'll be adding to that at some point. We have any ideas. Okay. And Justin Weinberg, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina Go Tar Heels! Game Cox.

You have to get used to Game Cox when you move down here. The word Cox is everywhere. It's kind of surprising. He is also the editor of, I guess, maybe North Carolina or something. He's also the editor of Daily News, is it pronounced?

Yep, Daily News, basically. Daily News, N-O-U-S. Yes. And we'll get to the etymology of that. A popular philosophy news site. He teaches talks and writes about ethics and political philosophy, as well as the philosophy of philosophy. Not sure what that is.

And is currently working on a project about disagreement. And it couldn't be better timed because we are so divided as a country. Noam, I'll leave it to you to get things rolling. I assume you have something in particular you wanted to talk to Justin about. I may have trouble contributing properly today. I don't know.

Your guys are freezing and stopping. I'm freezing and going. Cancel culture. Where do you stand? Well, I assume Justin's against it, but let's hear from him well there are a couple of questions of course when we say cancel culture for or against it one is what is it and two is does it really exist uh so i would say that I'm generally not in favor of punishing people in material ways, in career ways, in severe social ways for things they say, most people. But it's unclear whether cancel culture, as it's getting a lot of press today is something new, whether it is excessive and whether it's a bad thing actually.

So I think that there's, there's a, there's, there's a problem with the diagnosis. People think society is getting worse. People think society is getting less tolerant and you get that kind of thinking, motivating these complaints about cancel culture. But I think that those kinds of complaints are overblown. The trends aren't going in that direction.

Facts are different. Yeah, but you've seen some of the surveys of people saying that they, 70% feel that they can't speak freely. College professors are widely talking about things that they can't say. We do interviews all the time. Guests will tell us beforehand, please don't bring this up. Please don't bring that up.

Please cut that out. It'll ruin me. We're afraid to talk. You're seeing everybody being fired, boycotted. How can you not say it's real? Okay, well, so one thing is whether our observations are actually accurate. So one thing that we're all susceptible to is what social psychologists call the availability heuristic, and this is our tendency to take our capacity for remembering an instance of something and mistaking that for the frequency with which it happens. So if we can remember a certain kind of thing, we think it happens a lot. Why might we easily remember

something if we're hearing a lot about it, right? And we tend to hear a lot about instances of cancel culture, right? So we might hear about a comedian who was booted off the stage at Columbia, for example, or we might hear about an academic being targeted for something clinically incorrect, they said. And these stories get widely circulated, right? But if you look at the proportion of cases to the types of which they are cases, the number of common performances, the number of academic talks or papers, we're talking about a very tiny number of people being complained about, a tiny number of people being booted off stage or deplatformed.

So there is a perception that this is a widespread phenomenon. Hold on. How many people were blacklisted by McCarthy? Right. So, that's a great question. A tiny number of people. Obviously, every one of these things, you have entire subjects which are off-limits. You have people self-sufficient. Well, what do you think think what's an example of a subject that's off limits okay well if you look well you at least tell me it's off limits right

we're not so censored that we can't complain that we're being censored that's one development too for instance uh uh and i don't even know, JK Rowling said something about trans, whatever she thinks about trans. I don't even know what she said. Right, so JK Rowling made it. So JK Rowling, let's look attacked and she's considered persona non grata by the elite circles now. And a lot of people didn't even want to sign a letter that she was a part of. But more importantly, if I happen to agree with J.K. Rowling, I would never say so now because I can't withstand what she went through. And if I were a professor without tenure, a psychology professor who actually agreed with her, I know that if I were to say it, my students would move to have me fired. And they'd boycott me if I wanted to speak. The self-censorship going on is tremendous right now.

You don't know that? John McWhorter on Twitter talks about every single day he counts up a letter he gets from someone at Columbia who says they're afraid to speak freely now, and he's up to 150 letters he's gotten. I don't know how many people there are teaching at Columbia. So there are a lot of issues here. There are a lot of issues here. There are a lot of issues, right? So, so one thing is whether the fear of self-censorship

is justified, right? Whether people should feel that they can't speak out because of what might happen to them and whether that's justified might depend on what actually happens to most people who speak out on these subjects right that's one thing another thing though is that being able to say I can't talk about this is itself a measure of comfortability with your ability to express yourself. Let me ask you a question. Who is saying the right thing who is also afraid of saying things? Like if you're saying something that you think is correct and then you get corrected, that's one thing. But if you're going to go out and

say all this wild shit that is incorrect on the wrong side of history and you want to say that shit, then unless you're a comedian, in which case you can just say whatever the fuck you want and couch it in a joke as long as it's a joke. But if you're like a professor

and you're saying things that are on the wrong side of history and that is incorrect, then... You're talking about Neiman. How do you know what's on the wrong side of history? I'm just saying, I want to know what you think people are self-censoring. Well, I think that...

Well, go ahead, Justin. Well, I was going to say that, keep in mind, self-censorship is not something new, if I may. First of all, let me just say something. First of all, history is not like if you guys think that never again, I said this the other day, never again, we're going to come to a time when the conventional was totally wrong and that the person who had the offensive opinion turned out to be right, which is a pattern we've seen over and over and over and over through history. If you think we've come to the end of that, where all of a sudden the majority is just going to be right about everything,

that is just crazy talk. All right? I'm not saying that. I don't know who's saying that. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Nimesh is saying that. We depend on a robust exchange. We depend, what are you saying,

on the wrong side of history? How do you know it's on the wrong side of history? I'm asking what you think people are saying. I thought Galileo was on the wrong side of history. Yeah, I'm answering. So there was a guy, David shore who i know who uh who tweeted out he works for a far a far um he's far left but quite a left uh uh left wing um pro-democratic

polling thing uh doing a research and he tweeted out that uh violent riots were bad for democrats people peaceful protests were good for democrats this was in the news a lot and he tweeted out that violent riots were bad for Democrats, peaceful protests were good for Democrats. This was in the news a lot. And he got fired, we assume, because it was somehow criticizing the violent protests for BLM. Now, no one is going to risk that opinion again. Um, and he got fired for tweeting out the study by a black political scientist,

you know, a black liberal political scientist that there is tremendous. Let me tell you something. I've had this argument with a few people and the only people who feel this way are the people who actually have no opinions They're afraid to share Everybody else I know Who works for a living

Who teaches for a living Writers I mean you see how many people sign that Harper's letter You see how many people have joined Persuasion I mean Andrew Sullivan got fired I mean the list is not small And I speak to journalists I mean this it's, the list is not small. And I speak to journalists. I mean, this is, this is just unbelievable denial here. I think, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Another question that should be asked is, is how different is this from other periods of the time? Is it markedly different? Or is just the things you can't say different? Thank you, Dan. It resembles another period of time. It resembles a period of time when you could get fired for communist leanings. That's what it resembles. Go ahead. Sorry.

So I think, Dan, that's a great point. Throughout history, there have always been positions for which you'd get punished for expressing, right? It happens to be that these positions change over time, right? Oh, that's not true. So if you were opposed to racial discrimination, or opposed to slavery, or opposed to interracial marriage, or in favor of gay marriage, or you were an atheist, or you were a communist, there were various periods of time in history in which you would get canceled, executed, shunned by the community for expressing these views, or lose job opportunities and things like that.

So we do want to be careful about overemphasizing. Sorry, go ahead. I'll give you an example. Were I a comedian in 1890s france i'd be very very reticent to do jokes about the dreyfus affair i happen to be reading a book i'm saying give me an example that's why i bring it up i would imagine if you're a comedian in the 1860s give me an example for an abolitionist you wouldn wouldn't want to talk about that either. Well, those are real examples. So people have always felt that there are certain topics or certain positions that they can't fully express themselves on or reveal perhaps their true feelings about because of the general culture at the time. That is not true. That is not true. Given the extent to which our history has been dominated by dictatorships and religious authorities,

I don't see how you could possibly deny that. Hold on. If you're saying that we shouldn't be alarmed because maybe... Let me just say something. I don't know what you're saying, but it sounds to me like you're saying that we shouldn't be alarmed because perhaps we're going back to another time in history when things were terrible. I reject that. We can distinguish between two things.

In the seventies, in the seventies, eighties and nineties, people had tremendous freedom to say whatever they wanted, even very extremely unpopular opinions without suffering the consequences that we're consequent today. So the ACLU could openly defend the Nazis and still be able to go out to dinner and expect to be a cop. People like Mayor Kahane, who was a right-wing racist, could go and speak at universities. Andrew Sullivan published

the bell curve, and believe me, I'm not endorsing the bell curve, I'm just giving an example. He published the bell curve in the New Republic and published an excerpt of the Andrew Sullivan published an excerpt of the bell curve in the New Republic. The New Republic, which was the

90s, along with maybe 20 or 30 rebuttals to it, the new republic, which was the 90s, along with maybe 20 or 30 rebuttals to it, and did not suffer then consequences to his career, although he has finally been fired today in no small part for what he did back then in the 90s. So if you're saying that the pendulum is swinging back to a bad time, I might agree with you, but I'm saying we should not be, that's no excuse to say,

oh, there's nothing to see here because we've had slander before. So if we slip back into it, it's not unprecedented. Okay. So there's always going to be some social lines that are drawn regarding what views most people tolerate and what views most people don't tolerate. These lines move, change over time. Sometimes more might be on one side of the line, sometimes less might be on some side of the line, but we have to sort of figure out on what issues is this line drawn, where are they drawn? And we can say, look, maybe things, we can say, are things getting worse? Or are the norms just changing?

The position is changing. That's one question. Another question might be, well, maybe things aren't getting worse, but they're just as bad, right? I think maybe you'd agree with at least that, that even if they haven't gotten worse, they're still bad.

But Noam thinks they've... Well, I think... You think it has gotten worse, right. Can I say, what line was there, what line in the 1990s, at a time when David Duke, or a Nazi leader, could go on TV and be interviewed by Phil Donahue, in those days,

what line was there that you couldn't cross? The line was, is that if you actually agreed with Farrah Ann, I don't think you'd have a job much longer in a lot of places. I don't think that a comedian, you talked about the bell curve, and maybe it's true that the bell curve was allowed to be published and was in bookstores, and that's all true. On the other hand, as a comedian, if you went on, the bell curve is right. I don't think you'd have much of a career also known uh what are you saying people can't say

i mean i i don't like if you look at what's happening on facebook everyone can say whatever the fuck they want constantly there is a lot of that taken off stage for saying something you weren't supposed to say yeah look i'm i always point to what happened to me as an overcorrection but also i a i was in the right b it was an overcorrection and and and c like i i didn't get canceled i'm doing fine uh and I always I was talking to Hasan about this like Jamal Khashoggi got canceled like the rest of us are doing fine we're okay like you guys just say what happened for anybody who's listening who doesn't know Nimesh's story when he got kicked off stage I was kicked off stage at Columbia University for telling a joke to much national attention somehow.

You can Google it. I did a whole Rogan podcast about it. So that's the Columbia incident that we're referring to. But yeah, I mean, look, I'm an exception to – I don't even look at me as a case of cancel culture. I just think of these – it was like an overcorrection where people misheard stuff and they wanted to protect their own asses before anything happened. But this didn't used to happen. What's that? This didn't used to go on.

Of course it did. Throughout history, there have been people overreacting. There have been cases of people overreacting. And I'll grant you that today we have cases of people overreacting. There have been people, cases of people overreacting. And come to know them, I'll grant you that today we have cases of people overreacting. Right? There is that. The question is, can we generalize from that to some overarching cultural trend? Yeah, I get

comments all the time saying that they don't want to do college shows anymore because they can't say anything. But they can. Yeah, I mean, look, I got to do the best kind of research for this event tonight. I watched a bunch of stand-up comedy the last couple days.

I got a chance to watch Mark Norman's recent special, right, which I love that guy. And he opens his joke with a fat disabled joke. He touches on, you know, on autism. He touches on autism. He touches on politically incorrect views about women. He makes, I mean, there's an anti-Semitism type joke. He's not endorsing these things, but he's making,

he's touching on all of these politically incorrect topics, making jokes about them, and he's doing just fine. He can't do that at a college. He can't do that at a college. He can't do that at a college anymore. What I would say is that I think the social media has rendered things a little hairier.

I agree with Justin that there have always been lines that you would probably not want to cross if you valued your career, especially as a comedian. There have always been topics you probably don't want to go there because it used to be like Lenny Bruce we discussed last night on another podcast that got arrested for saying curse words. But I think the social media has added a dimension where you can get these online mobs, these Twitter mobs,

that you couldn't have in the 90s. And so the consequences can be a lot more severe it's harder to deal with that it's i mean i agree that you know we social media makes it the case that we hear about each of us hears about more cases right and each of us can say something on this platform and together they add up to a pretty nasty effect for whoever's on the receiving end of it like that's that's a fact about technology. Do you recall ever before that the New York Times, which had published, you know, op-eds from Gaddafi, the Taliban, Farah, whatever.

Tom Cotton. Well, that's what he's going to use. Do you ever recall the time where the op-ed editor got fired for a heavily vetted article? He didn't read the op-ed editor got fired for a heavily vetted article. He didn't read the op-ed. He resigned. He resigned and he admitted that he didn't read it before publishing it.

But what was wrong with it? That's a pretty serious abdication of one's responsibility for the editorial page of the newspaper record of the country, supposedly. Not reading what you publish. First of all, hold of the country, supposedly, not reading what you publish? First of all, hold on.

First of all, he actually didn't read it, and that wasn't the initial party line, so that he wouldn't, so he could have some plausible deniability. But second of all, it was, according to all reports, they went back three or four times, fact-checking and all that. But the fact is that the opinions expressed were so, you know, I mean, it was just Republican opinion. And the publisher, but this is the key part. So the publisher initially defended it. He had read it.

And only when Twitter descended, and only when people started to say they felt unsafe and couching the complaint in a, in a, like a worker safety language. At that point he did a 180 and fired the guy. I don't have, I haven't seen anything like that in my lifetime. The opinions I could, I could Google right now, all sorts of outlandish opinions in the New York Times. I mean, he expressed an opinion which polled above 50% in the United States of America. I'm not endorsing the opinion. I got fired for that? So you don't think that that has repercussions? But is this dude known, do you think, to change in people's tolerance for different ideas or social media accentuating intolerance that was already there? It's all of it. I mean, Barry Weiss said very memorably that Twitter has become the executive editor of The New York Times.

I think she understated it. I think Twitter has become the executive editor of American culture. So if that's the case, then we have to ask a question about where we're going to lay the responsibility and how we're going to change things. So here's a question. So when a Twitter mob forms, someone says something that's objectionable and then the mob you know goes wild on twitter so i suppose that you know joe schmoe is part of this mob they read what so-and-so said they don't like it so they're i don't like what this person said or only evil people say this kind of thing are you people should be allowed to say that right i mean you're not opposed to that kind of freedom of expression right okay so i do it and now perriel does it and dan does it and nimesh does it and everyone else does it and now it's you know a hundred thousand people saying something like this if it's okay for me to do it and there's no relevant difference between dan or periel and nimesh and i you know

it's okay for them to do it so it doesn't if there's wrongdoing here it's not clear that it's in the people expressing their opinion we might not clear that it's in the people expressing their opinion. We might think, rather, that it's in the oversensitivity that the gatekeepers and authorities have, the oversensitivity that they're showing in being quick to let go of employees or instill draconian social media policies at their firms or to drop clients. We might think the real blame here goes to the businesses that are saying, we're not going to stand up to the crowd. I think there's blame to go around. I agree with a lot of that. I agree with a lot of that. I've said that many times.

I think that obviously everyone has a right to express their opinion, but I think people should do well to be a little more tolerant of other opinions. We can't legislate that, but that might be something that we could encourage. But I 100% agree with you that people might be overreacting. A case that, of course, the comedy seller case that's directly related is Louis C.K. You know, if you read Twitter, you might think that 99% of Americans wanted C.K. tarred and feathered. But when it came to the comedy seller, because no one refused to back down, the crowd was

happy to see it, except for one or two people. So in that sense, Twitter exaggerated what was really there in the public mind. I think we shouldn't pay too much attention to what goes on on Twitter. That goes for people trying to assess what's going on in the culture, but also I think for the people themselves who are targeted and for the businesses whose employees or clients themselves are targeted. You got to be, you know, just chill out. And we saw, for example, with Trader Joe's recently, they said, look, we have these products. They have these ethnic humorous type names. We just mean it all in good fun.

It's fun marketing. And they, they, they stood up. Right. And everyone's like, yeah, great for Trader Joe's. Right. So that's an example of a company that's doing things a little bit differently. I think it goes to show, though, that the actual consequences for saying something

bad are probably not as terrible as we're led to believe by a few egregious cases from which we're overgeneralizing. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that the gatekeepers are overreacting. No, wouldn't you agree? Well, I do think that the gatekeepers have put blood in the water, and it's terrible. It's very bad to put blood in the water because that encourages people to come looking for it. And every time, I've said this for a long time, every time they fire someone, it creates the expectation in people that if they can find something on the next person, that they can be fired.

And now it's being weaponized. You scroll tweets. The intention actually has changed for many people from looking to engage in a constructive... You have to go outside. Beautiful, sweetheart. My daughter. This is my daughter.

It's all right. You're okay. Go, go. The intention has gone from engaging in the marketplace of ideas, to use the American cliche, which is really essential to our democracy to what,

just literally trying to figure out how to ruin people. And as I said, the, the ruining people really bothers me, but the self-censorship, I mean, the cloud that we live under in this podcast every week, can we, do we have to cut this out? Do we have to cut that out? I mean, this didn't used to when i when i first started this podcast god forbid i i didn't feel this way i i got in i sent on the podcast one time that i read to kill a mockingbird to my daughter and there was a column that got a

lot of attention called dumb dwarman that accused me of being a white supremacist and a racist okay fine right and you don't like that and that's a well-founded opinion right if they're if you're worried about constraints on the freedom of expression it seems weird to complain about someone's expression just because they're having to be criticizing you loudly justin there's a reason it's called cancel culture It's not a crime It is a culture And that's what's scary about it Because they have a right to do it There's all sorts of things As a matter of fact

You could have a racist culture And we have the right to be racist Correct? And I could lament Racist culture is terrible And you could say, what do you mean? They have the right to do that. Everybody's free to be racist.

How can you complain about it? I'm complaining about it because it's bad for the country. Not because they don't have a right to do it. You're quite right. It's terrible for the country. There are all sorts of reasons not to do things on particular occasions that we have rights to do. So I totally agree with you there. But in the case that you're describing that happened to you,

should a person not, is it, should they not be able, or should it, was it improper of them to exercise their right to criticize you that way? I mean, isn't that a robust culture of disagreement and debate that we want in our society? Yeah. So a few things, By the way, my internet is so bad and stopping and starting. Don't mistake me interrupting for interrupting. Sometimes I realize I'm talking frozen, whatever. It is a very difficult thing to have a culture of forbearance. We did have it at one time. The whole notion of, I respect your opinion, but I would, I disagree with your opinion, but I would fight with my life. I would defend with my life your right to say it. We're very quite far from that kind of thing now.

And so you would wish that among intelligent people, they would decline from uh from just asking and add homonyms as we do now sure write a column say why uh you don't think it's right for for no one to read to kill a mockingbird to his children but and it all it's all a a toxic mix because in a pay-per-click environment, there's tremendous incentives to trump up the charge, trump up the headline to get someone to read it. So it's all perverse and all the incentives are bad right now. All the incentives are bad. And that plus a young generation that really believes that speech is violence and is on the lookout for trigger warnings and all this stuff. We are going to find ourselves without the ability to debate difficult issues anymore.

Like we're already there. Like immigration. Immigration is a real issue for a nation to discuss. You can't get through that conversation in 2020 without being called a racist unless you're on the side of AOC. I mean, you can't. I don't think that's true. I think one has to be...

Oh, it's true. I mean, these kinds of debates happen at universities all the time about the permissibility of shutting borders, the permissibility of immigration, the reasons for and against it. In philosophy, especially, we're getting this, but it would be strange to say that in a society in which immigration policy is dictated or is set by Donald Trump, that if you don't agree with AOC, then you can't speak your mind.

I mean, that's crazy. Maybe AOC was an exaggeration, but if you were to say, if any major TV performer said, I agree with building a wall, he would be taking a calculated risk of his career. And now building a wall, I don't support building a wall, but this was a position that many mainstream Democrats had

as recently as eight years ago, right? If you were to say you were opposed to gay marriage, now I support gay marriage, but I know that it was literally very recently that Barack Obama was against gay marriage. Now, I'm not, I support gay marriage, but I know that it was literally, you know, very recently that Barack Obama was against gay marriage. He still became president. Now he's changed his mind. Right. But now, but I'm saying now anybody who hasn't changed their mind on Barack Obama's schedule, anybody who didn't go to Harvard and doesn't, you know, doesn't travel in the most elite and erudite circles and still has some disagreement about because they're religious, they would be taking

their career in their hands to say, to just express their opinion. The entire Catholic church opposes gay marriage. Catholics make up a large proportion of the United States. And while not all Catholics agree with the official position, to say that expressing the official position of one of the most powerful religious organizations in the planet is impossible is also false. What do you think would happen? Look what happened to Canon. What do you think would happen if Jimmy Kimmel came out and said, I oppose gay marriage? What do you think would happen to his talk show? I think it would go badly for him. It would. Especially if he doesn't have any good arguments for it, right?

But even if he did have some kinds of arguments for it, it would go badly, right? I presume that... Let me give a better example. Let me give a better example than gay marriage because I have to admit that to say that about gay marriage, I don't think you have to go that far. What if Jimmy Kimmel were to go on TV and say, you know what? I looked into the statistics, and I don't believe that unarmed black people are killed more than unarmed white people.

Now, that's, I think he'd be done. And, and by the way, he'd be able to point to the statistics from the Washington post if he said it, because that is against the orthodoxy. And that's, that's what, there was a time when people like Pat Buchanan, you know, maybe not old enough. There were some really pretty, yeah. I mean, there was, there were some people saying some pretty strong things back in the 90s and 80s in mainstream newspapers. And we tolerated it, even if we thought it verged on bigotry. We tolerated it because we grappled with the ideas.

No more. What would you think about the following? So it seems true and reasonable that you might be careful about how you say things and what you say things, depending upon whom you're talking to. As a general matter of being a decent human being, a normal, responsible human being, you just might be careful. I mean, after all, the history of humanity is filled with people biting their lips, right? And not saying things to positions of power, but whatever. But I think in general, it's quite normal to say, look, I'm going to be careful about how I say this, or I'm going to pitch it one way rather than another, depending on who I'm talking to, right? So I think this speaks to the point that Dan raised earlier about technology.

In the past, when you were speaking to a specific audience, right, you could say your thing to them. Now, in a way, you're speaking to all audiences at once. And it's very difficult to be appropriately careful and responsible in your speech to a wide array of audiences, to please everyone all the time. But the technological situation puts us in the position of having to do that in a way. i just have to interrupt because nimesh i think has to leave soon and we do want to i i i was just going to say if kimmel came on and said whatever he wanted he'd at the very worst still have the career of tucker carlson like everything's going to be fine for all these people they'll find their audience they'll find's just like, who are you going to...

You point to people not being able to say whatever it is they want to say, but there's plenty of people saying exactly whatever it is they want to say and they have thriving careers. Tim Allen is a perfect example. I can't debate much longer. Well, let's just... Damesh has to leave soon.

I got to bounce, but. You got a special that you did in quarantine. Yeah, man. So last year around this time, I shot an hour at the cellar. I say some wild things on there. I put it out on YouTube right when quarantine started. And it's got almost a half a million hits. And I'm pretty proud of it.

So we'll see what happens afterwards. Anybody can see that on YouTube, you said? Yeah. Just look up Nimesh. We're just finishing this up now because Nimesh has to leave. We want to make sure he gets his plug in. I want to tell Nimesh something. Yeah, old man, I can't wait.

Dan and Periel will back this up. We want to make sure he gets his plug in. I want to tell me something. Yeah, old man, I can't wait. Dan and Perrielle will back this up. We have had world-famous scientists and psychological scientists and medical scientists on this show who have put certain questions off limits and who have afterwards asked us not to cut things out. That's science. That means that there's something wrong. There's something wrong. And if you don't want to, if you, I shouldn't say if you don't want to see it, you may not realize quite how serious it is. I speak to so many journalists who feel, I remember a very sound set would say to me, and I was going to write about that, but I figured why risk my career? People will write for the Atlantic. I mean, this is, and let me say again, democracy depends on a well-informed public.

It's not like, you know, it doesn't matter. Garbage in, garbage out. We need a robust, unfettered debate. So at the time when we have all... Go ahead. I was just going to say, how much do you believe in what you have to say if you're afraid to say it you should if you if you really want to if you want to if you want to die in your sword then you die in your sword like i mean if you have something you're afraid

to say that people have to choose for that why dude i have i have a family okay i have a family people have families to feed they don't they shouldn't have to choose between they should have to choose between presenting data from an experiment and and uh and giving up their lives that's that's they are making the choice and it's like justin said before it's the institution the gatekeepers that should be the ones saying say whatever you have to say this doesn't seem to be a flaw on the side of society it seems to be

a flaw on the side of people who are gatekeeping you can't get fired no one's gonna fire me unless you tell me you're the one holding the power, no one. Like if I worked for you and you said you can't work anymore, and the mob came at you and said he can't work anymore,

and you disagreed with what they were saying, you're the one with the power. I stand up for the comedians when the mob complains. If I didn't, you might actually have a problem with cancel culture. I protect you from it because we get a lot. We actually do get. There were you in Columbia, man. You wouldn't have it under my watch. But you know what?

The comedy seller is important. And if the comedy seller didn't stand up for it, you might have a different attitude about it. You're insulated from it. I think that at a time when technology allows so much, we need to work to build up antibodies against this stuff. We need to build up in kids and people the norm of a thicker skin, of a less retributive attitude about ideas that you disagree with, because that would be good for society. The direction we're going in is bad for our democracy. Bad, bad, bad. Noam, as always, you know, I always appreciate coming on. I always appreciate the support that the seller gives comics.

And I tend to agree with most of the things you say because you're quite convincing. Today was slightly different, but, you know, I hope, luckily I can say whatever I want because there's no comedy seller to go to right now. Uh, uh,

uh, I give you an example. Uh, so today we, I've emailed with you. I thought we'd, so there's this new, um,

I saw the George Floyd. I'm just presumed. You talked to her. There was a Star Trek episode. You have to leave. Can you stay? I just want to make sure. I gotta go.

I gotta go. Okay. No, I'm Justin Star Trek episode. Do you have to leave or can you stay? I just want to make sure. I gotta go. I gotta go. Noam, Justin, on your marriage. Dan, Toriel, thank you guys again. I'll see you guys. Thank you, Dan. Bye-bye. Stay safe. Okay, Nimesh. That was Nimesh Patel, everybody. Comedy cell

irregular, at least used to be and hopefully will be again. Is he gone? He seems gone. All right, that was weird. Okay, so, so Noam, you had, you wanted to bring something up, I just, because he had to go, so I just wanted to say a proper goodbye. Well, I have a question for Noam actually, if it's okay. Is Noam frozen? Noam, are you back?

I'm back. Okay, yeah, so maybe you need a better you about connectivity. No, are you back? I'm back. Okay, yeah. So maybe you need a better router or something. Anyway, go ahead. I have no idea what you heard. No, it's been working all week. It's just that with this storm, I think something is being – the bandwidth in this main is being taxed for some reason.

I don't think it's a connectivity thing. So I just was good i'm just saying there's this new george floyd let me just say there's this new george floyd video that leaked out of what happened when he was killed and there's a lot there that's interesting that you talk about and get a back and forth about with people and what they see in it and uh i'm not i'm not comfortable talking publicly i'm i'm not comfortable i don't know if i might say something you know innocently wrong or someone on the other end of me might say something wrong and they get in trouble we can. We can't discuss this kind of stuff now.

And that's terrible. I mean, I presume that nobody, everybody's against police brutality. My God, go ahead. Well, I can't speak to that because I don't know what you're talking, the specific video you're referring to, there's some new developments on that.

But I can tell you that at least in academic circles, the Black Lives Matter movement is discussed a lot. And the question of... Hello? Hello, Justin Weinberg? Is everybody... Is everybody frozen? He's been cancelled. He's frozen. I'm not frozen. Okay. Justin Weinberg, are you there? You sent me that video of George Floyd. I guess you do not wish to discuss it.

Well, I mean, I'll discuss it a little bit. I'm just saying it's risky. You never know when they're going to come for you. You're talking and nothing happens and then one day you say something and we at least expect it, you're through. There is something I want to talk about with Justin. Oh, no.

He's gone. Which I think we can talk about. Hopefully he'll connect again. You might have to talk about it with us. Anyway. What did you want to talk about? I hope this podcast doesn't become unlistenable because of these glitches.

I guess it would matter for the listeners to decide. Go ahead. Not that bad. Next time this happens, I think maybe I'm going to call in and just do audio. So, um, and of course,

Perry, I'll know how to edit videos. So, um, you know, but maybe you could, you could, uh,

download Adobe, uh, premier or, uh, Sony Vegas or something. And, and, um,

you know, just play around with it and learn how to, you know, learn a little tech there, Perry. Anyway, what did you want to discuss with Justin? Maybe we can have an interesting... If you Google... Kamala Harris seems to be highly favored

to get the vice presidential nomination. And if you Google, there's articles in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Vox, and Reason that accuse her of fighting. Hang on. It seems like he's trying to get back in. One second. I don't see him, though. One second. I don't see him though. One second. I hear you knocking.

Sorry. One second. It's okay. Okay. Here he is. Here come. He's back everybody. He's outside. Justin's back, everybody. He's outside. Yay! Justin's back.

Justin. He's back. Wow, you're in a very bucolic setting there. Where is that? It's my front yard. We just had a blackout, so my internet router went down. So now I'm on my phone in my front yard. Sorry about that.

So, Justinin this is good for philosophy and we'll get we're gonna let you off the hook and uh so so if you if you i started to say if you google um you can find in articles in the new york times the atlantic vox.com and reason among other places articles about kamala har that say, and I'm not exaggerating, say that she fought to keep innocent people behind bars after she knew they were innocent, number one, and number two, that she fought to deny a man on death row who was likely innocent a chance for a DNA test to exonerate himself. So these are the accusations.

I don't know if they're true, of course, but it's not coming from Fox News and Breitbart. It's coming from the New York Times and the Atlantic and Vox. And I'm wondering, how can somebody who might have kept innocent people in jail be not disqualified from being considered the vice president what's going on in this country well i don't think you or i are privy to the real deliberations as to who's being considered one way or another uh and i don't think you and i are really we saw about we saw by we saw the piece of paper in b Biden's hand where he had the talking points about it, remember? We know it. Well, we don't. I mean, again, I feel like it's not that fruitful for us to speculate too much about, A, the facts that are in dispute, and B, who Biden is really taking seriously and who prefers. I don't have a particular stake in that issue.

Well, let me ask you hypothetically. If you knew, okay, well, I mean, Trump was disqualifiable for saying pussy grab and for Trump University. These were, you know, Trump University, those were facts were in dispute, but that was a major, major thing. Would you agree just philosophically that a government official who keeps an innocent person behind bars, knowing that they're innocent, should not be vice president? I would say, yeah, that's a very strong reason not to have that person as vice president. Absolutely. Well, would you agree that that's, I mean, if we could, we want to see that person as vice president. Absolutely. Would you agree that that's...

If we could, we'd want to see that person behind bars for that. That's pure concentrated evil. You're talking about Castro-level atrocity there. Perhaps. I'm not sure I feel as comfortable... Perhaps?

Well, again, in the abstract, yes. As for the specific specific cases i just don't know right it may turn out i'm not talking about in the abstract yes okay so now this is this is what the times has written uh freeze freezer door for having to say his name in in the atlantic analyze her answers and found them totally unconvincing. Harris's answer. So this is the record we have from the liberal media. What more, why are we not, why is she not disqualified? Like, why would we contemplate someone that has a case credible enough that Vox.com says it?

Well, what I like about this example is that it shows that even you have the lines beyond which if people go you're happy to cancel them and i think you know it's a good example right and it's perhaps for you and certainly if someone's locking people up uh or expresses the support for locking up innocent people we might say that's someone who ought not to be in a getting a position that she's aiming for they may not be maybe probably not just to fire that person but to throw them in jail right so you have your lines too right uh if you were if you found out a comic you booked was a neo-nazi

right would you cancel the booking who is the neo-Nazi? An imaginary comic that you've booked. You've now learned that he's a secret neo-Nazi. You cancel the booking? I would cancel the booking. You would? I might not.

If he was a Nazi, yeah. But Noah might not. I might not because I, not because I wouldn't find him despicable, but because I don't want to, I don't know what the limiting principle is there. And I think that that cure is worse than a disease. I honestly do. But we're very far from that.

I'm not talking about canceling Kamala Harris. What I'm saying is that if somebody puts, takes, I mean, it's like kidnapping to me or false imprisonment. There is a law against it, although because she's a prosecutor, she has immunity for that sort of thing. And that's why she can get away with it. But we'd like to see that but i'm just finding it i'm seeing it even with you that again i'm you i hope you you know i'm not like this really is in the atlantic box new york times and reason i think no that this story's about it says fought to keep innocent people in jail so i mean we're living we're living in a weird world where you know like i said trump trump does it say fought to keep people she knew was innocent in jail or thought fought to get that yeah it was but turned out to be innocent in jail fought to keep people she knew were innocent you You want me to read it to you?

No, no. If that's what you say it is, I'll believe it. Fought to keep people she knew were innocent. So I don't know that she did it. In a previous, and this may relate to it, there's no question if this were Republican or in a previous era, the New York Times, who was really good at doing deep dive investigations

into these types of things, the New York Times, bottom was really good at doing deep dive investigations into these types of things. The New York Times is at the bottom of this. There's no question they're not. So the worry here is that someone is engaged, a power holder is engaged in some bad behavior, isn't being held accountable by society, right? And I think that that's an equal opportunity phenomenon across the political spectrum. I mean, for example, if you look at our presidents, each day that there's an enormous scandal that for any previous president would have been a tragedy. And for some reason, he didn't take accountability for these things.

He's been into a scandal. You're avoiding the question here. I mean, Trump, you know, there are scandals with Trump for sure. But if he killed somebody or if he locked somebody up in his basement or or or as president he was responsible for locking someone up he was innocent um i think that would be a difference in in kind from the phone call to the ukraine or you know whatever else is accused of which is reprehensible but but the thing is that we don't you know in a else is accused of, which is reprehensible. But, but the thing is that we don't, you know, in a binary, this is my thing, in a binary choice situation, I understand

holding your nose and voting for the lesser of two evils because the policies matter more. So if she was the nominee and you really hated Trump, you could see voting for her despite the terrible things she did, but she's not the nominee. And I'm saying, Al Franken was forced to resign for the accusation of patting a girl on the ass and we're ready to nominate Kamala Harris with the accusation of keeping people in prison?

I really have no interest in disagreeing with you on that. I'm not interested in defending Harris. Something is wrong. It's not just Harris. There's something deeply wrong with for public debating with our with our media that these accusations are out there they're not refuted and nobody cares at least nobody i mean nobody cares but the new york times will fire you know someone will fire uh

uh bennett i mean this is something really weird going on now. He's not accused of a small matter here. It's the worry that the canceling is who's kind of motivating

his dog to go outside. What's that? Dustin has some dogs that are creating a bit of a ruckus. Those are my neighbor's dogs. I'm getting away from them.

Sorry about that. Fucking neighbors. So, yeah. So. I'm getting away from them. Sorry about that. Fucking neighbors. So, yeah, so I'm not for... If you're complaining that the cancellations that have been going on are politically motivated and politically lopsided, okay, I can grant that. The politics of the majority will change over time

and perhaps from issue to issue that that happens. Societies disagree over time and change their views over time. I'm saying that we're living in a world which talks about principle only for the sake of weaponizing it and for partisan or, you know, agenda aims. And we're, we're getting away from all our principles, including the value of free speech and debate and respect for each other's opinions.

And I mean, it seems to me, like I said, I mean, one of the worst accusations you could imagine. I mean, the whole, the whole outrage of the central park joggers was that they were put in jail innocently

and now, or at least innocent of the charge they were convicted of. And now we have somebody who's the front runner for vice president who's charged in the New York Times with doing the same thing to other people, or trying to do the same thing. I think to me, it's huge. I think that the main division between Justin and Noam is, I think both would agree that it's bad to be intolerant of other ideas, to not listen, to hold to positions against all contrary evidence,

or to not look at contrary evidence. Justin just doesn't see it as quite as new a phenomenon as Noam thinks it is. Is that a reasonable summary? Yeah, so I don't think it's as widespread a phenomenon today. I think we're misled by the availability, heuristic, by media, by hearing about a couple of, the same couple of cases over and over again. We're fooled into thinking it's a widespread phenomenon.

And I also agree that it's an old phenomenon that we've always had people who have been shunned, criticized, condemned for expressing certain kinds of views and always have had parts of the population who've had to watch what they say. have been shunned, criticized, condemned for expressing certain kinds of views, and always have had parts of the population who've had to watch what they say. I mean, black people have had to watch what they say. Women have had to watch what they say. Gay people have had to watch what they say.

Now, ordinary white cis males have to watch what they say too, right? So it's a kind of equality going on. We have to be respectful of, we should be respectful of other people. We should be considerate about how our- Are you saying that- We're bound to them. And just like they have- No, no.

I don't trust them for this. So I think there's some logical flaws in what you just said. First of all, you're bringing up examples. What I think you mean were bad treatment of Blacks, women, and gay people. They had to watch what they say, but that was a bad thing that they had to watch what they say.

Saying, well, now it's happening to white people too. Although I don't think it's happening to not just white people, it happens to Black people who have the wrong opinion as well. But I mean, I think you're having it both ways. You're pointing to things which were bad in the past and then saying that because we have more of that same badness that we don't have a problem. And I'm saying it was wrong back then. And why would we want to turn, like, why would that be a way to sanitize what's happening now? I mean, is it comeuppance? Is that what you're arguing for?

No, not at all, right?. Your point is a good one. There are two kinds of complaints one might have about today's intolerant culture. One is that it's getting worse. I don't think that's the case. I think rather that the norms are changing and the populations who are subject to particular norms are changing, and that's really what's going on. But you might have another complaint. The other complaint is it's always been problematic because society has always overreacted to unpopular opinions and therefore we need to be more, we need to somehow liberalize our culture today, right? So the problems today might have existed in the past, but the fact that they've existed in the past isn't an excuse for them today.

So I think that's what you're saying now, right? So then our question is, well, given that we know that utopia isn't an option, we have to live with certain kinds of problems, which problems do we want to live with? Do we want to live with the problems of people loudly expressing disagreement with one another, which is what people are complaining about to some extent

when it comes to their complaints about cancel culture. Do we want to tell people they can't do that? Do we want to tell people, no, keep your opinion to yourself. It's better if you do that. I think it's not easy. I thought of something. I thought of something about this availability bias. You know, my father used to like to say if he caught somebody, a waitress doing something wrong, not going to a customer or stealing or something, he would always say, well, what are the odds that the one time it happened, I caught it. And in other words, he had the opposite idea,

which is that some things you can't expect to catch them. So when you do see them, you should maybe assume that it's happening much more than you see. So for instance, when Barry Weiss, who I know Barry Weiss, she is a left-wing leaning person. She is left on Israel. She's left on LGBTQ. She's left on immigration. I mean, she hates Trump. She is, you know, she just likes to talk about things,

and it's kind of a bias, but will she will like to write about the one percent or half of one percent of issues that she actually disagrees with the liberal conventional wisdom on rather than write a column a boring column about the 99.5 things that everybody expects her to agree on so that's what she is is. It makes her interesting. Now, when somebody like that, who's a liberal, she would never vote for Republican, you know, if her life was at stake, can't live at the New York Times, maybe you shouldn't say, well, it's just one person. Maybe you should say, oh, maybe there's a much more going on there that I'm not able to catch because not everybody's ready to

leave their perch at the New York Times. Not everybody's ready to put their head above. Now, I'm going to tell you, I know other people at the New York Times, and they will tell you that what I'm telling you is true. I know prominent people at the New York Times who say, Barry was right. Barry was right. So, you know, the availability bias may be the opposite. It may be another bias. Go ahead. Okay, so I think that's a great point. I think there certainly are phenomena that fit better with your explanation, and self-censorship might be like that, right?

We're only going to hear about a couple of cases of self-censorship when the people feel comfortable enough to admit to someone else that that's what they're doing, right? Because to do that is to admit that you have some Jews that are unpopular. Even if you're not specifying which ones they are, it still could be kind of a risky thing. So I agree that if we hear more complaints about self-censorship, or if you hear some complaints about self-censorship, it's reasonable to assume there's more than what we're hearing about, okay? When it comes to the cases of actual cultural and institutional punishment, so to speak, for speech, I tend to hear this about the same cases over and over again.

And I think we have good reason to think that if someone was threatened with institutional punishment by their employer or cultural cultural disapprobation we would hear about it just because the nature of those things they're newsworthy um so the fact that it's the same handful of cases at least in academia uh the same handful of cases in the comic world as far as i know that people keep referring to suggest that there isn't a whole lot of bad consequences for actually speaking out and speaking your mind. Only a few people have actually gotten any kind of flack, serious flack. There's bad consequences for it. And that goes back to the first thing. Should I self-censor? If I'm worried about bad consequences, sure. But if the facts are such that I really don't have anything

to worry about, or there's just such a tiny chance of something bad happening to me, maybe I should be a little braver. Maybe I should be a little, work a little harder to figure out how to pitch unpopular ideas to an audience that's likely to misunderstand. We take example from about a half hour ago, where if Kimmel decided that he's going to start tweeting on his personal Twitter account,

that he believed that police brutality, that black people are not murdered by police disproportionately than white people and Kimmel started tweeting this and Noam said and I think rightfully so that his job would be in jeopardy. So what do you think that's a good thing, a bad thing that Jimmy should just, he doesn't have that opinion, but if he did. Well, so people,

people do debate these facts in academia, right? The explanation for the numbers of black people killed by police, the explanation for that is disputed. Is it all racism? Is it some racism? Is it a more, is it the weapons? Is it a culture of brutality?

It's in principle separable from race, right? These are theses that are taken seriously in academia, and people have advanced under their own name these kinds of things. Now, a late-night comedy show, right, is a weird context to be entering into these kinds of, um, uh, on his personal Twitter account. Right. Okay. Fine.

So he doesn't, well, Justin, I agree with that. You know, if, if the, if the,

if the notion is that a late night comedy host shouldn't be getting involved in this stuff either way, then I'd kind of agree. Like, you know, but if the point is that when there's a, when there's an open road to say anything he wants in one direction or an issue, but he knows another side will get him fired,

that's where we're in a bad situation. I just want to say that I think that cancel, the self-censorship is really 95% of what I'm worried about. My heart does go out to anybody who loses their job. I hate that. But the real casualty is in all of us who can't express our opinions. And then, I mean, I think it's the reason Trump won. One of the reasons I objected to that Harper's letter,

not objected to, one of the reasons I thought, I rolled my eyes at it, there's a letter signed by, I don't know how many acts, complaining about cancer culture, was that they made it sound like this was about Trump, when in fact, I think that this is the very, the reaction against this was why Trump got elected. I mean, the articles that like Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lucchiano wrote in the Atlantic about the coddling of the American mind, front page of the Atlantic, that was in 2015. That was prior to Trump. And in

many of these examples, this guy wrote, So You've Been Cancelled or whatever the name of that book is, that was prior to Trump. And the people had it up to here with political correctness is one of the main reasons people were sympathetic to Trump despite all his bad sides. And now they're trying to pretend that this is a Trump phenomenon, like cancel culture is a reaction to Trump. No, Trump is a reaction to cancel culture. And that's where I think that letter went really wrong.

Yeah, I would also disagree. By the way, go ahead. I just want to say you're a good guy, Justin Weinberg. I'm sorry, say that again. I said you're a good guy, Justin Weinberg, because you're one of the few people who disagree, who will concede a point, which is very healthy for a positive conversation.

So I like you. I hope that when we have a good connection, you'll come on again. Go ahead. I'd be happy to. And I did hear you the first time. I just wanted to hear you say it again. Yeah, so I would just agree that the phenomenon isn't tied to Trump, but that also goes to my point that it's a kind of perennial issue, right? Where you have disagreement among people and some people ostracized or somehow punished for saying things that are unpopular.

Now, if we want people to be less afraid of self-censorship, one thing we shouldn't do is talk up the fear or exaggerate the bad consequences that might happen, right? Because that would just contribute to a culture of self-censorship, right? So that's one thing we could make sure that we're not over-exaggerating the actual bad consequences or the frequency of them, right? Another thing we could do, though, is try to institute protections for employees so that they can't be or are less likely to be damaged by saying something impolitic on social media. So right now, for example, a firm is prevented from using machinery that's unsafe in certain kinds of ways, or there are all sorts of restrictions on hours that you can make an employee work, right? So the businesses have all sorts of business regulations against them. How about we have a regulation that says you can make an employee work, right? So the businesses have all sorts of business regulations against them. How about we have a regulation

that says you can't fire someone for something that they say on social media unrelated to your business? I think that's great. That's been my policy always. I mean, I've always felt that way. I've told the story before, but I'll give you an example

because I think it might even be interesting to you. Years ago in the 90s, I was in a band. I ran the Cafe Wah. And this was at the time of Farrakhan. It said his greatest hits about the Jews. And a musician walked in right in the middle of that with a Farrakhan T-shirt. He was a Nation of Islam supporter. And it gave me pause.

And I said, well, how do I react to this? I mean, this is almost aggressive. And if you think of that analogy today, somebody coming in wearing some, you know, you can think of it in the opposite, somebody white. And I just decided to let it go. And I said to myself, well, you know, it's really none of my business. And I was looking back on it. I'm so happy I did that. First of all, it passed. He stopped wearing it. He didn't get a rise out of me. We kind of became friends anyway.

We're still friends. He's a good musician. I didn't need to, you know, I didn't need to escalate it. And today, somebody who wore a T-shirt for something, some other Hitler, someone else who said kind words about Hitler, everybody would be calling for the employer to fire them and cheering when the guy got fired, you know? And I'm like, no, I don't think that's helpful, actually. It might feel satisfying.

I don't think it's good for the country. Just let it go. That's my opinion. Yeah. They're the loudest and the noisiest people, and they tend to get a lot of the attention. But it's not the loudest and the noisiest for the ones we should be listening to. And this guy in Minnesota, Perry, you couldn't get in touch with him, his daughter, another part about cancel culture,

people are being canceled for things their wives and daughters said. So I don't know if you know the homeless story. This guy, Arabic guy in the Midwest, or I think it's Minnesota, his daughter 10 years ago tweeted terrible things about the Jews. You know, I wish Hitler had finished the job, that kind of thing. And it came to light 10 years later, and all of a sudden, people canceling all their contracts. Nobody wants to buy from this guy anymore.

He's on the verge of bankruptcy. So I contacted him. I offered to buy his homeless because, like, how can you hold somebody accountable for what their daughter said 10 years ago? Like there's something really, there's something really going wrong here culturally. And I think rather than just say, it's good to put it in context, but we, I think we should not put our head in the sand about this. That's, that is wrong. And the fact that everyday people are

not revolted by this, standing up for intention or embracing guilt by association, it's wrong. It's wrong. It's bad. It's a bad direction we're moving. And I think you agree with me on that, actually. Yeah, that sounds, I mean, now that you mentioned, I did hear about that case, and it does seem quite unfair to punish the dad for the thing that the daughter said. And I do think we do have to be cautious about overreacting. But we also should place the focus where I think it belongs. So just to give you another recent case from academia, an adjunct professor at Auburn University, which is a public university, just the other day got in trouble for tweeting, fuck the police, right? And a state representative, a Republican state representative

there is calling for him to be fired, right? So an adjunct professor, kind of, you know, not a particularly powerful person in an academic institution is being, you know, threatened with being fired by a state representative. That's the kind of cancellation I think we should really be paying attention to, that kind of abuse of authority there, because then we're having the legal institutions and legal actors come in and squelching free speech. Well, absolutely. The thing is that it's illegal when a government – I'm not sure if jawboning has been considered a First Amendment violation, but I agree that it's, the state, it presents a different thing when the state is doing it.

But I would argue that whoever does it still has the same deleterious effect on American society. Whether this guy gets fired because a politician called for his head, because the students called for his head, or whoever called for his head or whoever called for his head. If he gets fired, it's blood in the water. Trust me, he will not be the last one that gets fired for it. And everyone else who wanted to tweet, fuck the police is not going to do it. And people should be able to tweet, fuck the police. This is America. And I should be able to talk. I can stand being in a classroom with a guy who said, fuck the police. I can stand it. You know, and I don't like fuck the police.

I can stand it. You'll survive. You will survive. And maybe you even come to some common ground if you talk about it, you know. Maybe you'll teach him something. Talk to the guy. Yeah, I think it's terrible that they try. I read about that.

And what about Brett Weinstein? You know, where they were in, what's the name of that? Evergreen University, you know, where he, you know what? I mean, I got to get your email. I think you're not up on some of these classic cases. I've heard about the Weinstein case. You might even be persuadable if you saw it. Oh, you have. Yeah. I mean, that was terrible what happened to him. He's an ultra-liberal. He's not a conservative. He just didn't think that white people should stay home from class.

Right, there are certainly cases of overreaction, right? The Weinstein case is one of those. The Evergreen case is one that we hear about a lot in academia. It's one of the handful of cases we hear about over and over and over again. And again, stupidity is endemic to humanity, right? We're always going to have people doing stupid stuff, saying stupid stuff. The question is, how much of that is happening and do we generalize from it? Do we let it affect what we're doing? Let me posit a totally uninformed opinion.

If there are a thousand white professors at Evergreen University, I would say at least 800 of them agreed with Brett Weinstein, but didn't have the courage to take the stand he did. And I may be underestimating, but I'm saying is I find it impossible to believe that when he, when he was talking privately to other professors there, they're like, no, no, Brett, you're absolutely wrong. White professors should stay home. I mean, it's, it's total self-censorship and he was brave enough to take the stand and no

one's going to be dumb enough to do that again. Tell you that. So, you know, anyway, I think we have to wrap it up, but you're, you're,

you're an awesome guest. I just, I just apologize for the, for the bad bandwidth. It was a lot of fun. Really good talking with you. It was a lot of fun being here. Really good talking with you. It was a good learning experience.

And I think, actually, there's a whole connection between the comic world and the philosophical world that I think is really worth exploring because both areas are ones in which people routinely talk about things that are thought to be dangerous ideas and controversial, and somehow they survived. I think a good discussion to have at another time for our comedy-oriented listeners.

That would be a good conversation. So Perry, I will contact you about, I guess, trying to set that up at some point. Have a good, hopefully, end of quarantine. Thank you. You too. You can contact us for questions, comments, and suggestions at email. Podcast.com. You can follow us on Instagram

live on the table. And I guess we'll see you next time. And Justin Weinberg, do you tweet, Justin? Yeah, we're Twitter. What about Justin? If you look up Daily News Editor at Twitter, D-A-I-L-Y-N-O-U-S

Editor. N-O-U-S, that's some sort of Latin. We didn't get to the etymology of that, but we can do it another time. Thank you, everybody, and we'll see you next time. Thanks. Bye.